Fighter tracking speed question C#

[spazomatic (OP)]

I remember reading somewhere that a fighter can use it's movement speed instead of tracking speed on a BFC, but I can't find the post I saw that in originally and I am pretty sure it was from the VB Aurora days.  Does anyone know if this is true and if it made it into the C# version?

[TheTalkingMeowth]

You're mixing up two things.

A beam weapon's tracking speed on ANY ship, fighter or not, is:

min(beam fire control tracking speed, max(turret speed or hull speed,racial tracking speed))

Ship speed is the weapon tracking speed if the weapon isn't turreted (as long as your fire control has sufficient tracking speed), but if it's less than the racial tracking speed you get to use that instead of the ship speed.

VB6 had a special rule that let fighters have really high tracking speed fire controls. That was removed.

[spazomatic (OP)]

what is this 'racial tracking speed' ?

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The highest level beam fire control tech you've researched. For tracking purposes, any ship you build is treated as being able to move at least that fast (i.e. helpful for railgun and particle beam bases that don't move and can't use turrets).

[xenoscepter]

 - So it works like this:

 - Racial Tracking Tech: Unless your Beam FCS is deliberately slower than this, this is your minimum tracking speed. Even if your ship can't move this fast, if your Beam FCS can track AT LEAST this fast, then it's weapons can too. This makes reduced tracking rate FCS rather unattractive options overall.

 - Tracking Speed: If your ship is faster than your Beam FCS' tracking speed, it will use the lower speed. If your ship's speed is slower than the Beam FCS tracking speed, it will also use the lower speed. If you have a turret which tracks faster than the Beam FCS, than it will use the lower speed. If you have a turret that tracks slower than the Beam FCS... it ignores it and still tracks at the same speed. Nah I'm kidding it uses the lower speed.

 - It always uses the lowest speed. Building a Beam FCS with more tracking than you can use is only useful if you intend to upgrade the weapons and /or engines later... or just don't want to research a new one for a while. Using a Beam FCS with a lower tracking speed than the Racial Tracking speed is ONLY useful if you want really small, really cheap Fire Controls... say for dedicated Orbital Bombardment or some such.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

One thing I do wonder is:

If I build a 4000km/s turret and put it on a 5000km/s ship, with racial tracking speed 3000km/s and a 6000 km/s fire control.

Is my tracking speed 5k? Or 4k?

[Iceranger]

One thing I do wonder is:

If I build a 4000km/s turret and put it on a 5000km/s ship, with racial tracking speed 3000km/s and a 6000 km/s fire control.

Is my tracking speed 5k? Or 4k?

Should be 4k as a turret's tracking speed isn't affected by ship speed.

[Kylemmie]

One thing I do wonder is:

If I build a 4000km/s turret and put it on a 5000km/s ship, with racial tracking speed 3000km/s and a 6000 km/s fire control.

Is my tracking speed 5k? Or 4k?

Should be 4k as a turret's tracking speed isn't affected by ship speed.

Noob here - Not questioning your explanation or that the mechanics currently work as you explained. My question is based on why the decision was made to not include ship speed w a turret tracking speed. It seems like a no brainer to add them together. A turret should add to the agility and maneuverability of a firing platform (and therefore create additional advantageous firing opportunities over a non-moving platform). It shouldn't make a ship track slower than it's speed, right?

If I superglue the turrets so they can't rotate, can I get my 5k tracking speed back? lol

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, or there is a link someone can throw at me has a convo as to why this was decided for game balance etc.

[Droll]

One thing I do wonder is:

If I build a 4000km/s turret and put it on a 5000km/s ship, with racial tracking speed 3000km/s and a 6000 km/s fire control.

Is my tracking speed 5k? Or 4k?

Should be 4k as a turret's tracking speed isn't affected by ship speed.

Noob here - Not questioning your explanation or that the mechanics currently work as you explained. My question is based on why the decision was made to not include ship speed w a turret tracking speed. It seems like a no brainer to add them together. A turret should add to the agility and maneuverability of a firing platform (and therefore create additional advantageous firing opportunities over a non-moving platform). It shouldn't make a ship track slower than it's speed, right?

If I superglue the turrets so they can't rotate, can I get my 5k tracking speed back? lol

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, or there is a link someone can throw at me has a convo as to why this was decided for game balance etc.

I see your point - normally you would turn the ship with the turret if needed to further assist in getting the guns to bear. I think the problem is that it would be a significant nerf to missiles as without the ability to armor them like in VB6, their only form of defense is their speed.

Turrets in aurora are primarily there to make it possible to build point defense guns that can with some degree of consistency hit fighters and missiles. They aren't necessarily there to exist as anti-ship weapons as the gear and armor on the turret makes them space inefficient as opposed to hull mounted guns.

I am never going to be against making turrets more powerful though - I generally roleplay using only turret weapons on my ships but am ultimately aware of the fact that it is un-optimal.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

I dunno. Turreted PD is currently pretty bad; you need something like gauss cannon rate of fire 4 before it's even possible to be better than railgun PD, and if your ships are pretty fast, you need to go even higher. Making turret tracking speed add to hull speed would help a bit.

[Garfunkel]

You are confusing hull-mounted GC with turreted GC.

Hull-mounted RG is superior to hull-mounted GC until GC RoF 4 because of size and chances to hit. However, turreted GC is always the superior PD method for the same reasons. Giving them free extra speed would just make missiles even less efficient - it is already very possible to make PD so strong that no missiles can get through.

Turns out I was misremembering things.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The issue with GC is that they are bigger than railguns. You need enough shots per ton that, with the tracking speed advantage of the turret, the GC is better than a railgun.

If I've got ROF2, then a GC has 1/4 the shots/ton of a railgun. So I'd need to turret it to 4x the hull speed to be more efficient...except the turret gearing reduces the shots per ton still further, so it's actually worse.

The exact break even point depends on your hull speeds, turret gear tech, etc. But it's around ROF 4 for the pattern of tech development I tend to go in for.

[Kylemmie]

Suddenly I'm aware this is a odd topic title for where I took the convo. Feel free to split this off if I'm distracting from the topic at hand.

It sounds like it is purely a game balance decision. Logic be damned, it makes the game playable. Not complaining about it per se, happens in game design often. But with the in depth conversations I see here about minutia in formulas etc (that I enjoy reading), it seems like a decent topic to brainstorm a bit and see if we can't come up with something that makes better sense (physics) and keeps balance. The idea of having a ball turreted weapon causing my ship to Track at a worse rate than if I had it hull mounted just feels silly.

If it turns out to be impractical to code for Steve, so be it.

1) Possible to reduce the gearing rates and reduce the overall effectiveness of a turret? Thus the bonus on top of ship speed would be mitigated.
           a) to not penalize static platforms perhaps use a formula where the ratio of Ship Speed/Turret Speed is a modifier.  To me, Logic dictates that while helpful on a moving ship, Turrets would be actually be % more helpful on a static platform since the
               agility goes from zero to the turret speed. From zero to something is almost always better than % increase on top of an existing current ship speed.


2) New player and I haven't tried RG yet but if I understand correctly it sounds like RG are better at early tech and Turreted Gauss is better at mid to late tech for anti-missile work? This feels like an excellent ying/yang mechanic. One problem would be making RG
    useful later too. Perhaps a new tech that reduces failure rate on RG? No experience myself, but I've read here that mass RG fleets can be problematic with breakdowns and MSP burn rate?

3) Make Gauss so it can only be mounted in turrets or CIWS and lower Gauss % so that Turret Tracking addition brings it back in line.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Railguns are dramatically better than GC turret at low tech.

At higher tech, GC eclipse them, but railguns remain far more effective in the anti-ship role. Their niche becomes "dual purpose" weapon, rather than "dedicated PD."

[Garfunkel]

Yeah, that's my bad. I remembered it wrong.

If people wanna see the evidence, it's here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11317.0

and when you get GC to rate of fire 4, you'll want small turrets as explained here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11325.0