Author Topic: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...  (Read 8713 times)

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Offline Father Tim

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #30 on: December 18, 2019, 08:07:08 AM »
Even if you don't use them, missiles are probably the most important weapon in terms of their influence on ship design and tactics,

I don't think they are, and I strongly believe they shouldn't be.  Space fiction is full of universes where missiles are not the primary weapon system. . . or even present at all!  Likewise we have dozens of historical naval paradigms to pull from, and all but a very few of them don't include missiles.

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try running an all energy weapon fleet that only assumes it will meet other similarly armed fleets and you are gonna get wrecked.

I do.  All the time.  Virtually every time, in fact.  The closest I get to using missiles myself is when I'm simulating 20th century torpedoes.

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A general knowledge of how missiles work is needed to design appropriate defenses at least.

Yes.  This is also true for every other aspect of Aurora.  Ships speeds should be faster than the other guy, sensor sizes & resolutions should be enough to see them at a decent range, weapon strengths should be enough to overcome their shields or punch through their armour, rate of fire should not leave you at their mercy, etc.

- - - - -

Missiles should not be useless, but they should also not be mandatory.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #31 on: December 18, 2019, 10:02:39 AM »
Even if you don't use them, missiles are probably the most important weapon in terms of their influence on ship design and tactics,

I don't think they are, and I strongly believe they shouldn't be.  Space fiction is full of universes where missiles are not the primary weapon system. . . or even present at all!  Likewise we have dozens of historical naval paradigms to pull from, and all but a very few of them don't include missiles.

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try running an all energy weapon fleet that only assumes it will meet other similarly armed fleets and you are gonna get wrecked.

This does not mean you have to play like that, just like you do. There is nothing wrong in it

I do.  All the time.  Virtually every time, in fact.  The closest I get to using missiles myself is when I'm simulating 20th century torpedoes.

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A general knowledge of how missiles work is needed to design appropriate defenses at least.

Yes.  This is also true for every other aspect of Aurora.  Ships speeds should be faster than the other guy, sensor sizes & resolutions should be enough to see them at a decent range, weapon strengths should be enough to overcome their shields or punch through their armour, rate of fire should not leave you at their mercy, etc.

- - - - -

Missiles should not be useless, but they should also not be mandatory.

As long as there are no option to remove missiles from the game then some NPR are likely to use them in overwhelming force. The "problem" with NPR are that they tend to use full size launchers which are relatively weak against beam PD and not enough FAC or fighters for box launchers to matter.

I understand that you don't like missiles but the fact is that you need to have a defence against them. You can only face them with a laser fleet if you either outmatch the enemy technologically or outnumber them (or better both). On equal terms a Laser fleet without turreted PD lasers will be VERY vulnerable against missiles of roughly equal size and tech level. This is just how the game is.

Missiles are NOT mandatory in any way but they are part of the game and have different strengths and weaknesses to beam weapons. If missiles were not as good as they are their huge cost and logistical headaches would make them completely worthless.

In my opinion the game have a very good balance between beams and missiles because the most "efficient" fleet is a combination of both. That does not mean an "efficient" fleet can't be pure missiles or pure beams. As Steve said and I agree... If I had to choose only one weapon type in the game I would choose some kind of beam weapon, probably Lasers as they are very good all-round weapons.

As NPRs are not a huge problem no matter how you play then you can play the game anyway you wish and you will be fine. If you play multiple faction games you can just choose to not use missiles to get the fiction you like. I really don't see the problem with any of this at all.

I would not be upset of Steve made some options to remove missiles or even beam weapons from the game at start for NPR (and players). That would force the NPR to use beam or missiles only designs. But it might be a bit of work as he might need to create specific templates and behaviours as PD obviously would be useless in a game with only beams.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2019, 10:14:45 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #32 on: December 18, 2019, 10:14:57 AM »
That was asked for before and Steve shot it down - there's too many different places in the code where it expects missiles or beams, so a toggle at the game start would not be possible without reworking lot of the code.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #33 on: December 18, 2019, 12:46:19 PM »
I would not be upset of Steve made some options to remove missiles or even beam weapons from the game at start for NPR (and players). That would force the NPR to use beam or missiles only designs. But it might be a bit of work as he might need to create specific templates and behaviours as PD obviously would be useless in a game with only beams.

C# has 'design themes' for NPRs, which allows me to have NPRs that only use missiles or only use beams or use a combination. However, the beam-only races function because they just don't design any ships with missiles. Removing missiles from the game in general is a lot more difficult because of how many places they are referenced. The NPRs with missile-related themes would not know how to handle that situation.

However, given the flexibility of C# for NPR designs, one option would be a game-level flag that ignored missile-based design themes when NPRs were generated and blocked missile-related tech for players. Not for launch, but perhaps in the future.
 
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Offline hubgbf

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #34 on: December 19, 2019, 05:27:20 AM »
The main problem is not missile, it is the massive alpha strike authorized by box-launcher.
You can design a beam based deffense, or a layered defense against standard volley, but if your opponent is able to concentrate all his misile in one shot, you must have a technological and numerical superiority.

One example :
A standard missile fregate. It can have let's say 10 missile launchers and 100-150 missile in reserve. Or an estimated 80 box-launchers.
A standard AA fregate can defend against 10 missiles salvoes, but not against a 80 missile salvo.

Keep in mind that after its alpha strike, the missile fregate has to retreat and rearm, which is not good if you have to defend your homeworld. Your missile must have a sensor, if not you will overkill.

One solution to make beam armed ships more usefull will be to limit massive alpha strike.

Several possibilities come to mind:
  • Limit box-launcher to fighters or FAC < 1000 tons
  • Create a limit of simultaneous misisle firing per tons of launching ship (what effect on a 10.000 tons ship when launching 80 missiles ? Imagine the Iowa firing ten times its current main guns...)
  • Limit the number of missiles who can be guided by a fire control, perhaps with a technology.
    Without guidance, you can't fire, or you have a big malus.
    You can also restrict the need for guidance in the last 5 or 10 seconds, allowing multiple salvoes, but not a big salvo.
 

Iranon

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #35 on: December 19, 2019, 06:55:42 AM »
And at the same time, alternatives to mass-launched box launcher strikes are on their way out: Many simultaneous salvos overwhelming fire controls, point blank fire evading most PD. This does not seem desirable.

Changes to the sensor model make small missile fighters very attracive compared to full-size ships, the limitations above would push things further into that direction.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #36 on: December 19, 2019, 08:11:20 AM »
The main problem is not missile, it is the massive alpha strike authorized by box-launcher.
You can design a beam based deffense, or a layered defense against standard volley, but if your opponent is able to concentrate all his misile in one shot, you must have a technological and numerical superiority.

One example :
A standard missile fregate. It can have let's say 10 missile launchers and 100-150 missile in reserve. Or an estimated 80 box-launchers.
A standard AA fregate can defend against 10 missiles salvoes, but not against a 80 missile salvo.

Keep in mind that after its alpha strike, the missile fregate has to retreat and rearm, which is not good if you have to defend your homeworld. Your missile must have a sensor, if not you will overkill.

One solution to make beam armed ships more usefull will be to limit massive alpha strike.

Several possibilities come to mind:
  • Limit box-launcher to fighters or FAC < 1000 tons
  • Create a limit of simultaneous misisle firing per tons of launching ship (what effect on a 10.000 tons ship when launching 80 missiles ? Imagine the Iowa firing ten times its current main guns...)
  • Limit the number of missiles who can be guided by a fire control, perhaps with a technology.
    Without guidance, you can't fire, or you have a big malus.
    You can also restrict the need for guidance in the last 5 or 10 seconds, allowing multiple salvoes, but not a big salvo.

I think that box launcher need to be that strong or missiles become so weak nobody would use them. A layered defence will work almost always, even against box launched attacks.

But I would say you have not don your job as an admiral if you allow an enemy to do that box launch in the first place, so proper scouting and make sure you strike first is key. But it if it does happen you need to be prepared to defend against them. You might take some losses, but it is just one attack and after that the opponent will have to retreat and rearm someplace then you chase them down and destroy them before they can rearm.

Box launched attacks is only good if you allow the enemy to do them continuously over and over... you should confidently be able to survive them with a combination of PD, AMM and SHIELDS I know you can as most of my campaigns see lots of Box launchers and reduced sized launchers as that is the ONLY way to effectively penetrate a decent defence at all. It is WAY to easy to build a perfect defence against standard launchers which make missiles completely worthless in that case.

So... no... you should not make box launchers less effective. Steve already neutered them in a good way that it now will take a loooong time to reload them, that in my opinion was the most important part of the equation that actually made them too good.

Using box launchers on standard ships is a BIG risk, especially of you are on the offensive... where are you going to rearm them. You will have to bring along a ton of maintenance ships to do that and that also come at a potential risk as the enemy can destroy them.

Box launchers is meant for system defence, fighters and FAC that can rearm in a hangar. But the mother ship needs to be hidden from enemy sensors as the reload times are really high now.

I do agree that fire controls and electronic warefare could be axpanded such as how many missile a fire-control can control (but that would be even harsher to fire many salvos as one big one).

In reality ships can't fire missiles from the vertical launchers simultanously as there are physical limitation for doing that. I believe that there need to be some certain distance between the cells in order for missiles in adjacent cells to fire at the same time. I think that you might restrict the volume of missiles fired in 5sek could be some function of shp size. So small ships could fire more missiles for its size than larger ships in relation to size. So you can't build a 10000t ship and fill it up with box launchers because ten 1000t FAC would be much more efficient.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2019, 08:18:23 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Paul M

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #37 on: December 19, 2019, 08:14:39 AM »
I pretty much dislike in the extreme games where you end up with "one stat to rule them all" to use the trope title.  In Aurora that ends up being speed and missiles.  Yes you can stop them, even at a significant tech disadvantage you can make a layered defense that can allow you to survive a missile strike by anti-ship missiles fire in "reasonable" numbers.   You can also build escort ships that even at lower techs can deal with things that non-escort ships can't.

But it is easy to make missiles move so fast that they are nearly impossible for beam fire controls to deal with.  Cutting your fire control effectiveness by 50-90% means you need to have intercepted them before hand with counter missiles as your point defense systems are an utter binomial crap-shot...and that has a very very different distribution to a guassian.

Couple fast with box launchers and close range...and nothing matters.   You can intercept some with counter missiles, your point defense system can be fully functions (but it won't be) and the numbers overwhelm you.  200 missiles in 10+ volleys you can deal with even with exceptionally low tech ships...200 missiles in one volley and pretty much you need high tech.   

I'm not saying anything others haven't said but for the NCN to deal with magic missile super salvos I first thought several CLEs and the rest of the fleet providing covering fire but even that requires nearly 90% effectiveness and after 15 or so salvos the CLE will be facing issues of no armour...so the only serious solution is a BBE.   Laking that you have to use armoured missiles and hope to run them out of the damn things...

On small salvos...I end up doing that but I also am dispersing my ships in a formation so my point defense fire is also affected.  I also have no choice as each ship is counted as a separate task force for firing purposes by the game.

I keep wanting to try a plasma carronade race...but regardless of if you use missiles in combat and I don't think you NEED to...you need missiles for counter missile systems.  And if you don't use missiles and are low tech you likely face the issue the enemy ships will be significantly faster than you and so they will define the tactical situation.  What changes are in the C version of the game that may make thing shift I don't know (have not been keeping up) but at least with the older versions having beam weapons on your ships strikes me a requirement.  Not just for point defense but for when you run your magazines dry...or when the enemies point defense renders it impossible for you to do much with them.

I think one of the hardest parts of game design is making it so there are multiple paths that can be followed to success.  Again nothing that others have not said.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #38 on: December 19, 2019, 08:33:05 AM »
I pretty much dislike in the extreme games where you end up with "one stat to rule them all" to use the trope title.  In Aurora that ends up being speed and missiles.  Yes you can stop them, even at a significant tech disadvantage you can make a layered defense that can allow you to survive a missile strike by anti-ship missiles fire in "reasonable" numbers.   You can also build escort ships that even at lower techs can deal with things that non-escort ships can't.

But it is easy to make missiles move so fast that they are nearly impossible for beam fire controls to deal with.  Cutting your fire control effectiveness by 50-90% means you need to have intercepted them before hand with counter missiles as your point defense systems are an utter binomial crap-shot...and that has a very very different distribution to a guassian.

Couple fast with box launchers and close range...and nothing matters.   You can intercept some with counter missiles, your point defense system can be fully functions (but it won't be) and the numbers overwhelm you.  200 missiles in 10+ volleys you can deal with even with exceptionally low tech ships...200 missiles in one volley and pretty much you need high tech.   

I'm not saying anything others haven't said but for the NCN to deal with magic missile super salvos I first thought several CLEs and the rest of the fleet providing covering fire but even that requires nearly 90% effectiveness and after 15 or so salvos the CLE will be facing issues of no armour...so the only serious solution is a BBE.   Laking that you have to use armoured missiles and hope to run them out of the damn things...

On small salvos...I end up doing that but I also am dispersing my ships in a formation so my point defense fire is also affected.  I also have no choice as each ship is counted as a separate task force for firing purposes by the game.

I keep wanting to try a plasma carronade race...but regardless of if you use missiles in combat and I don't think you NEED to...you need missiles for counter missile systems.  And if you don't use missiles and are low tech you likely face the issue the enemy ships will be significantly faster than you and so they will define the tactical situation.  What changes are in the C version of the game that may make thing shift I don't know (have not been keeping up) but at least with the older versions having beam weapons on your ships strikes me a requirement.  Not just for point defense but for when you run your magazines dry...or when the enemies point defense renders it impossible for you to do much with them.

I think one of the hardest parts of game design is making it so there are multiple paths that can be followed to success.  Again nothing that others have not said.

There are several things that change the way missile designs will work. You will need to build bigger and SLOWER missiles in C# and you are still going to have reduced range. Fire-controls will also have reduced range so really long range fire controls will be very expensive, perhaps so much so that it is not worth it.

You would only face really fast missiles if the enemy can get really close to fire them. Sure... if they have technological superiority they will and it should be difficult to fight a technological superior enemy unless you have numerical superiority.

I think you first and foremost need to look at this from the perspective of at least technological parity. Beam weapons are extremely more powerful if you have technological superiority so why should not missiles be too.

There certainly are some really big issues with missiles in Aurora VB6 at late tech levels... but that is because things like tracking bonus don't work and missile speeds increases faster than tracking technologies.

There is also the point that you can just put more and more engines in them as fuel efficiency and explosive power gets better. One way to fix this could be to allow armour to some degree completely ignore a few points of damage over time, depending on ship size and type of armour. That way you will need to increase the damage output of each missiles and can't just put more and more engines in them. I think such a rule might help with other issues too, such as smaller beam weapons with higher rates of fire almost always doing more damage than larger beam weapons for less weight, they just don't penetrate as much.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #39 on: December 19, 2019, 08:42:20 AM »
Oh... another issue in VB6 are missile speed and agility... this make late game AMM so effective that the only ASM you can use are extremely small ones like size two or even smaller. That is because the explosive charge needs less space and so you can devote more space to engines and agility, the agility tech also become so effective that you can even intercept a max speed similar tech missile at 100% accuracy or at least closed to it.

I'm not sure if this has been looked at in C# but Steve have acknowledged the problem so he might get around to it eventually.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #40 on: December 19, 2019, 09:25:10 AM »
Steve already neutered them in a good way that it now will take a loooong time to reload them, that in my opinion was the most important part of the equation that actually made them too good.

Also, if a box launcher is hit in C#, the missile contained within will explode, so that is less useful on large ships unless you are prepared to fire everything rather than risk damage.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #41 on: December 19, 2019, 02:52:34 PM »
I would also say that at some point using "house rules" as limitations for what you can and can't do in the game when you play it is as legitimate as anything else. If you put some restraint on how you develop missiles, ships, weapons, fire-controls and how they can be combined for the game to feel the way you like it to feel. You can build and form a logical internally consistent world from that which make ships efficiency very different from just using the mechanics as is.

Ships simply can't brake this consistency... As NPR ships tend to use relatively balanced or at least not super optimised builds you will never really face any problems.

If you play a multi-faction games where you run several sides it's not like anyone can cheat either.

Here are some of this things I have used...

Forcing at least some space to be armour in missiles based on their range and sensor tech levels, this represent ECM, comlinks, computers and armour. This radically change how missiles can and must adapt to a bit more "realistic" configurations according to my interpretation of things in my universe.

Force all ships to have at least some "basic" sensors.

Sensors require "power" to be used and the power needed was always size times active strength which made really large sensors very expensive. Since I did not like the linear range of sensors I often did this.

Require a certain amount of fire-controls for weapons, as small weapons with high rate of fire do more damage than large weapons with slow rate of fire I thought this was needed.

Never abuse fire-control saturation with missile salvos in "gamey" ways.

Treat the NPR as if they actually knew what they were doing and not exploit obvious flaws in AI logic.''

And many more things...

It's not like anyone needs anyone's permission to do any of that... If you post a ship design in the forum just include the rules and restriction of the campaign so that anyone who view them understand why you might not have done this or that on the design as they are simply not permissible in your universe. It is then easier for people to comment on their viability.

I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #42 on: December 19, 2019, 04:35:56 PM »
I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.

That is already in the C# rules :)

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103096;topicseen#msg103096
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #43 on: December 19, 2019, 04:47:32 PM »
I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.

That is already in the C# rules :)

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103096;topicseen#msg103096

Yes... I'm aware of that  ;) ... so I would "force" all ASM missile to have at least SOME sensors. So I would be even harsher then regular C# as I probably would force any missile over a certain range to have a minimum of 0.25 sensor equipment of some sort... say 10-50mkm is forced to have 0.25. 50-100mkm 0.5 and so on, just as an example. I did the same with armour in VB6.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
« Reply #44 on: December 21, 2019, 01:00:21 PM »


Sensors require "power" to be used and the power needed was always size times active strength which made really large sensors very expensive. Since I did not like the linear range of sensors I often did this.



Off topic, but I always wondered why most ships didn't need a power plant on-board for their systems.