Author Topic: Replacing PDCs  (Read 82118 times)

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Offline Whitecold

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #450 on: December 04, 2017, 01:17:55 PM »
In regard to large ships or small ships braving the STO fire, you still have the option to build specialised physical drop ships (using smaller formations). However, a 100 ton tank will take up the same amount of space on a large ship intended for deep space, or a small one intended to make the final run. What you say is true for infantry, but as I noted in my original post I could create specialised short-duration troops bays only for infantry and allow transfers from long-duration to short-duration bays. That adds complexity and you still need to get the vehicles down using larger ships so I am not sure the game play gain is commensurate with the extra complexity.

One alternative I considered was to include the total manpower for each Ground Unit Class (assuming a certain number of crew per vehicle / weapon type) and then have transport sizes without life support. Extra life support could be added to the ship to support the ground personnel and would be modified depending on the deployment time of the ships. However, you would need to know up front in this case how many personnel were likely in your future ground units. In the end I decided that added too much complexity and went for the simpler idea of abstract drop ships.

As for abstract drop ships vs landing on the planet - actually landing would open up the ships to fire from anti-air (or even enemy vehicles) so I think sending down drop ships from orbit is the equivalent of sending in landing craft on D-Day. The STO units are the equivalent of coastal artillery.

I don't like the drop module idea, as you don't send in the landing ships; Your transports carry ships which carry landing ships, which has one layer too much. If you go for fast craft, they almost need a carrier due to the resulting fuel consumption, and I don't see how a drop pod should be faster or more survivable than an entire small ship landing on the ground. Also, such a ship definitely should not be burdened down with any long term life support.
Replacing drop modules with needing extra crew space plus cargo space on an ship would smoothly integrate troop deployment times with ship deployment times, and allow to build separate ships for infantry/heavy units. A marine boarding shuttle might need no extra cargo space at all, while a tank lander only carries very little personnel.
You can still build your own drop pod by building a ship with minimal engine, enough cargo space and a lot of short term crew berths, and stick them into a hangar until you are right on top of the planet.
The abstraction of drop modules runs contrary to the more detailed ground forces; If we can pick the exact unit composition we want our tank battalions to have, please give us the freedom to design perfectly matched landing craft to go along with
 
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Offline TCD

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #451 on: December 04, 2017, 01:35:46 PM »
1. We have now ground units, that can be deployed for unlimited time on any celestial body, that have solid or liquid surface (atmosphere is not necessary). So, they have their own unlimited life support. Why are they can be deployed at comet, but cannot be deployed at any hold?
Is this actually true? I don't think Steve has said anything about whether ground units will require maintenance supply points? I agree that it wouldn't make sense for a super heavy TN tank to be maintenance free, but I don't think it will be. Having troops consume local/orbital MSPs or suffer escalating losses would be a neat addition.
 
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Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #452 on: December 04, 2017, 03:48:54 PM »
IMO the self design paradigm for dropships runs up against the problem that the typical scifi dropship is way too small to carry Aurora-C formations.  literally the only scifi book, game, or show dropship i can think of that would fit would be Battletech, which used very large dropships so they could fit large numbers of very large battlemechs. 

like, a 'drop pod' carrying companies of tanks or hundreds of infantry is kinda ridiculous for the vast majority of RP.

Maybe dropships could also be set up as a kind of ground unit..? *shrug*

 
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Offline obsidian_green

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #453 on: December 04, 2017, 08:18:54 PM »
I favor the abstraction approach myself as well, but I'm thinking about it in maybe a different way.

As I see it, we have two mechanics, "bombardment" from artillery and "orbital bombardment" from ships, that maybe should be treated as one mechanic. As powerful as they are, they don't win the battle; you still need boots on the ground for that. Well, mostly anyways; I think a fleet with enough firepower and a scorched earth policy should probably be able to glass a planet from orbit without landing troops.

"Boots on the ground" is exactly the concern I'm addressing. If orbital fire support is applied as a modifier to ground combat, there's no need to calculate anything except the bonuses that get applied to ground unit effectiveness and no need to give special/extra orders---it makes sense, why would weapons in orbit not support combat on the surface? The same could be true of artillery bombardment, air power, special infantry formations, and perhaps even armored vehicle equivalents---each just a different bonus that gets applied to unit effectiveness. In the absence of ground units, there's no such thing as orbital fire support; we either glass the surface, damaging installations and environment, or leave it, as I believe is the case in 7.1 already.

Some of this discussion seems to trip over tactical considerations when we aren't making any tactical decisions. We're going to drop troops on a planet and the game is going to resolve the outcome; we make the strategic choices about what worlds to attack and the composition of the forces we attack with. The only thing the game needs to do is make those outcomes believable by using a combat mechanic that properly weights the effect of various ground unit types and external factors (like the number of shipboard weapons counting towards an orbital fire support modifier, planet type modifiers, etc.) against each other.


Quote
The question then is how to ensure you can't completely destroy your enemy with support bombardment. There's already a module for calling down artillery fire, which is good, but there should probably be some method to limit how much that benefits you. Having a thousand ships providing bombardment shouldn't be a thousand times as effective as having one, basically. One option is to give a bonus to the rolls of the supported unit, but I'm not so sure about that; might be too abstracted for me. I think a good balance mechanism might be to limit how much artillery can fire at a single enemy unit; after all, targeting is the issue, and landing a hundred shells on the same spot is probably not that much more effective than a dozen.

Solved when there can't be fire support without combat units to which to apply the modifier and the modifier doesn't have to scale geometrically---as you say, there'd be no added benefit to, say, a hundred ships versus ten, if the mission is orbital fire support. Diminishing returns seems like it'd be easy to bake into the equation. I highlighted the very thing I've been suggesting in your quote. Unless we're giving orders to individual combat units, it's already abstracted, which is a good thing---if the rules are simple enough, the NPRs might be able to handle it in the future.

I keep trying to grasp the fire direction module business ... seems like a range-finder, a comm-link, and GPS would do the trick without even a 1 HS component being necessary. I have fire controls that can track at 40,000km/s and hit targets 600,000km distant, but these weapons can't lay down accurate fire from a couple of miles above a planet's surface? Fire director/controllers seem like they're solving a problem that doesn't exist. What's being gained other than taking a tactical necessity and scaling it up to a strategic hassle? Targeting is not a problem on the scale on which the game is being played; fire support effectiveness just needs to scale with the attrition of its target as you've suggested.
 
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #454 on: December 05, 2017, 03:10:11 AM »
I keep trying to grasp the fire direction module business ... seems like a range-finder, a comm-link, and GPS would do the trick without even a 1 HS component being necessary. I have fire controls that can track at 40,000km/s and hit targets 600,000km distant, but these weapons can't lay down accurate fire from a couple of miles above a planet's surface? Fire director/controllers seem like they're solving a problem that doesn't exist. What's being gained other than taking a tactical necessity and scaling it up to a strategic hassle? Targeting is not a problem on the scale on which the game is being played; fire support effectiveness just needs to scale with the attrition of its target as you've suggested.

Fire direction isn't about targeting. It's about spotting/designation of priority targets and communicating them.

Basically from orbit all your ships would see is a huge ocean of moving dots, foes and friendlies. Knowing which foes that needs taking out with priority because they are threatening/firing on your friendlies, or because your friendlies need them suppressed to advance is what Fire direction is about.

Another important point of forward fire direction/observation is assessing the damage inflicted and if further fire is needed or not.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2017, 03:49:11 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #455 on: December 05, 2017, 11:10:23 AM »
One problem with having orbital bombardment only be a modifier on ground combat is that you can't soften enemy ground units up before yours arrive.  In WW2 in the Pacific, some Japanese-held islands were shelled for weeks before the marines arrived.
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #456 on: December 05, 2017, 11:20:52 AM »
You can still do that, it just has to be an indiscriminate bombardment that'll cause lots of civilian casualties
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #457 on: December 05, 2017, 01:17:04 PM »
You can still do that, it just has to be an indiscriminate bombardment that'll cause lots of civilian casualties
Why? Unless you are using nukes, you should be able to limit collateral damage. With beams/railguns in orbit, you should not be hitting anything you did not intend to. That doesn't mean there is no collateral damage, but in no way comparable to an indiscriminate bombardment.
The tricky part about orbital bombardment is that it has various effects:
-Direct damage against units spotted from orbit, independent of ground forces
-Direct damage against units from fire missions called in by own troops, very much dependent on ground forces.
-Damage against logistics, transportation.
-Denial of space, forcing units move under cover, restrict enemy use of aircraft/drones, removal of enemy observation satellites
 

Offline obsidian_green

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #458 on: December 05, 2017, 10:09:06 PM »
Fire direction isn't about targeting. It's about spotting/designation of priority targets and communicating them.

Basically from orbit all your ships would see is a huge ocean of moving dots, foes and friendlies. Knowing which foes that needs taking out with priority because they are threatening/firing on your friendlies, or because your friendlies need them suppressed to advance is what Fire direction is about.

Another important point of forward fire direction/observation is assessing the damage inflicted and if further fire is needed or not.

There's no way company-sized ground units don't already have spotting and target-designation capability; I think squads in modern armies already have it. Relaying information to orbital artillery is little different than relaying it today to artillery, to air assets, naval fire support, etc ... except maybe the ability to skip a satellite relay, when that's necessary because the orbiting ship would be the satellite. The link isn't to the firing platform, but to HQ. Range-finder, GPS, and a comm-link. And I'm sure the ships in orbit have telescopes; current spy satellites see a good bit more than dots---can't they read license plates?

However, a ship component (as opposed to some ground coordination element that would be a redundant HQ) might not be a bad idea, not as a fire direction module, but as a surface-support coordination station/center that can be assigned an army officer instead of a naval officer, and that officer can provide an additional or better orbital fire support bonus. Maybe the standard modifier (no surface-support coordination center) does a better job at providing a defensive modifier to ground forces than an offensive one, but the station allows planning for the coordinated strikes that get expressed in the mechanics as a better offensive bonus to ground forces.

Why? Unless you are using nukes, you should be able to limit collateral damage. With beams/railguns in orbit, you should not be hitting anything you did not intend to. That doesn't mean there is no collateral damage, but in no way comparable to an indiscriminate bombardment.
The tricky part about orbital bombardment is that it has various effects:
-Direct damage against units spotted from orbit, independent of ground forces
-Direct damage against units from fire missions called in by own troops, very much dependent on ground forces.
-Damage against logistics, transportation.
-Denial of space, forcing units move under cover, restrict enemy use of aircraft/drones, removal of enemy observation satellites

I think this outlines the considerations well and I think the application of a ground unit modifier covers all the bullet points that aren't already handled under the 7.1 ship combat rules. Direct damage vs. units from orbit is how 7.1 already works. Independent ground contacts are already targetable, iirc (and cause some collateral damage---I know it kicks up dust). The rest could all be covered by the modifier applied by the presence of ships in orbit and could have different effects if there are discrete mechanics for the elements covered in the last two bullet points. I think the ability to model those effects is a good selling point for orbital fire support as a modifier rather than devising a completely new scheme to count "space shots" like ground shots are being counted. It achieves the purpose/effect of orbital fire support without the extra combat rolls and adds flexibility for other potential effects (like the spotting and mobility issues mentioned).
 

Offline serger

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #459 on: December 05, 2017, 11:45:05 PM »
And I'm sure the ships in orbit have telescopes; current spy satellites see a good bit more than dots---can't they read license plates?
They can't.
Atmospheric disturbance limit their max resolution to the objects with a size of 0.2 - 0.5m.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #460 on: December 05, 2017, 11:55:23 PM »
One problem with having orbital bombardment only be a modifier on ground combat is that you can't soften enemy ground units up before yours arrive.  In WW2 in the Pacific, some Japanese-held islands were shelled for weeks before the marines arrived.

I think this should probably be the case no matter what, so that you can't just destroy ground forces from orbit without landing soldiers. Yeah, it worked in WW2, but only when bombarding relatively small areas where you knew there had to be enemies and had no worries about damaging civilian structures, and even then it was fairly limited in effectiveness.

Against an entire planet, where you have no idea where the ground units might be hiding? Yeah, probably not practical with anything short of general destruction on a planetary scale.
 

Offline Kelewan

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #461 on: December 06, 2017, 04:09:54 AM »
Hi,

I would like to point out that there are 3 level to consider in this discussion.

level 1 (game balance): There have to be multiple ways to conquer a planet, and ways to counter them.  On one hand, If there is one way to always
    win the battle without a downside, everyone will be using it and it will get boring or frustrating depending if you are the attacker or the defender. 
   On the other hand if you can defend every planet that will be boring or frustrating the other way around.  So the game mechanics have to provide
   multiple methods, each with pros and cons, to provide a  challenging  experience. 

level 2 (programming): Steve has to convert the mechanics into code that is fast enough that is still fun to play and that we don't die of old age or boredom.
    Reducing special cases will speed up the game, but more important it will also speed up programming and it will reduce the likelihood of bugs.

level 3 (realism / suspension of disbelief): We need some sort of reason why some things work or don't work.  That need to be somewhat consistent. 
    IMHO this is the least important level of discussion, but it seams it is the dominant part of this thread. 
    Don't get me wrong.  I am not against using WW2 ships and coastal landing as guideline or model but this is a fictional game where we can make
    up reasons why some things are working and others are not .

This discussion started with my question how the new ordnance handling would impact PDCs, and Steve realized that his would be an other special
case (level 2 (programming)) and that there are many ways to abuse PDCs (level 1 (game balance))

So I think we should focus more on the following questions

- Is the new system balanced?
- Are there different ways to try to conquer a planet,  and are there ways to counter these ways and ways to counter the counter, . . . .
- Is there something missing in ground combat that will help the balance?
- Are there other ways to make the ground combat  challenging and interesting, that are at least as easy to program?
- Are there ideas that keep the balance and use mechanics already in the game.   

and at last if we have figured out the rules we want

- Which are the "in game reasons" why the rule work the way the work

 
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Offline serger

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #462 on: December 06, 2017, 05:11:57 AM »
First, I cannot agree that realism / suspension of disbelief is the least important level of discussion, third after programming problems.
Quite the contrary, I think that game balance and suspension of disbelief are the most important, the most fundamental aspects of the game, while realism is just subsidiary instrument (one of them) of disbelief suspension. So there are 2 levels, and balance / suspension of disbelief are just 2 parallel parts of 1st level.
And, more of that, Aurora is a great and unique story telling SciFi game, not a game of great challenges (I have won at 1000% of difficulty with the same easiness, as at 100% or 200%). So, suspension of disbelief is much more important for me in Aurora.

Second, if we look at programming level, then we see that balancing of the multiple methods is a great problem itself just at that level. Current version of AI is already broken, AI just cannot use those multiple methods, and multipleyer is not an option for all players except, maybe, very rare maniacs. It's very hard to code good balanced AI. On the contrary, that's relatively easy to code interconsistent model, not a patchwork quilt of different methods and objects. And that interconsistency is a key instrument of disbelief suspension.

I think, that for the first versions of C# Aurora it will be good to have some simple mechanics (to have working AI at all), even if it will be some "one button strategy". We'll get our pleasure for long months just finding that strategy, while Steve always will have an option to add some new feature.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2017, 05:16:44 AM by serger »
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #463 on: December 06, 2017, 04:35:15 PM »
I think this should probably be the case no matter what, so that you can't just destroy ground forces from orbit without landing soldiers. Yeah, it worked in WW2, but only when bombarding relatively small areas where you knew there had to be enemies and had no worries about damaging civilian structures, and even then it was fairly limited in effectiveness./quote]
Pointless nitpick but it didn't actually work in WW2 at all, nor in WW1. Iwo Jima is probably the best example but there are hundreds of them, where the attacker wasted hundreds or even thousands of tons of high explosives without gaining much, if any, advantage. Iwo Jima was bombarded/raided for nine months, which was upgraded to a continuous bombardment of the entire island for the last 3 days before the invasion. While the shelling did cause some caves and pillboxes to collapse, it did not cause significant casualties nor did it crack the morale of the Japanese. We can also look at Sevastopol or Normandy for extensive and/or lengthy bombardments of geographically restricted areas that did not achieve their goals.

Similarly, in the 2003 Iraq invasion, the US led coalition forces were ambushed by Iraqi defenders at several occasions, despite a complete control of air and the most sophisticated fire-support network possible. Iraq had been divided into squares that were continuously monitored by Global Hawk UAVs and each GH-square was then divided further into Predator-monitored smaller squares. While this prohibited mechanised Iraqi forces from moving, it was not capable of wiping out resistance on ground, and localized counter-attacks happened, especially in urban areas.

But we are in agreement: there really should be no way to destroy enemy ground forces from space, not even if you blanket the planet with nukes. Planets are just too big and humans are resilient. Unless Steve introduces an EXTERMINATUS option, of course  ;D

 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #464 on: December 06, 2017, 05:50:17 PM »
I'm fine with being able to just glass planets from space, as long as it wipes out anything you'd want to take when you do it (and potentially ruins habitability for some time as well, so you can't even recolonize). After all, if someone doesn't want to bother with ground forces, then I don't think they should have to.