Increasing the range of beam fire controls

[Micro102 (OP)]

It's my understanding that beam fire controls are limited to the speed of light in a 5 second instance, as Steve would have to work out projectiles over time otherwise, but I don't think that's necessary. Just treat the shot as a hit or miss from the start, but delay the damage. For instance a shot that would take 6 seconds to reach the target will calculate the hit on the first 5 second instance but wait another instance before actually doing damage.

If people are concerned about the ability to swerve back and forth, then I would point out that is already taken into consideration. 5 seconds is enough time for a pilot to react to a shot and swerve. Just keep making the hit-chance progressively worse with the distance and reaction skill of the enemy pilot, and maybe add a bonus per shot fired in one instance to account for having less places to safely maneuver away (a sort of suppressive fire)

[Pedroig]

One cannot react to a shot at the speed of light, one doesn't know the shot has happened until it hits, or doesn't.  Furthermore, there is a big problem when it comes to light, the one-way speed in one direction or the other is undefined (and not simply unknown), unless one can define what is "the same time" in two different locations.  This really matters once we start talking about objects moving over ~10,000 km/s due to relativity.  After we can decide that "simple thing" we now have to look at Lorentz transformation, which is dependent upon the local spacetime reference frame and the gravitational interaction upon said frame.

[Micro102 (OP)]

Didn't think about how they wouldn't be able to detect something going at the speed of light. But given that we seem to be able to detect ships beyond what the the speed of light would allow and have materials that are literally defined as transcending physics, I think we can fluff some details in. Game balance and not losing 3 million range on lasers is more important than making sure theoretical physics are incorporated.

[Ulzgoroth]

The problem with shooting over significant light-lag distances isn't that the target sees it coming and dodges, but simply that they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliaility. TN ships move millions of meters in 5 seconds, and (in gameplay) can reverse course within that timeframe. So the evasion envelope over 5 seconds is vastly larger than the ship is.

The beam fire control range drop-off math doesn't make any kind of physical sense I can come up with. It's just a conveniently simple game calculation.

[Droll]

The problem with shooting over significant light-lag distances isn't that the target sees it coming and dodges, but simply that they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliaility. TN ships move millions of meters in 5 seconds, and (in gameplay) can reverse course within that timeframe. So the evasion envelope over 5 seconds is vastly larger than the ship is.

The beam fire control range drop-off math doesn't make any kind of physical sense I can come up with. It's just a conveniently simple game calculation.

I agree, the fact that ships can turn on a dime means that beam weapons have to hit before the crew can react and push the button to do so. Note that each "point" in aurora is actually a 10000km^3 volume, so even with really large fleets the amount of theoretical empty space between each ship is very large. Furthermore, at the distances that beam weapons fire at even a miniscule course correction will make the weapon completely miss.

On a somewhat related note it would be interesting to have some sort of FTL beam weapon. Not quite as long range as missiles but able to out range other beamy bois at least at low damage.

One thing I do wish is for beamy bois not to suffer from damage falloff to the extremes that they do, that does significantly reduce the effective combat range of most pew pews.

[Pedroig]

Didn't think about how they wouldn't be able to detect something going at the speed of light. But given that we seem to be able to detect ships beyond what the the speed of light would allow and have materials that are literally defined as transcending physics, I think we can fluff some details in. Game balance and not losing 3 million range on lasers is more important than making sure theoretical physics are incorporated.

I can work with that, the TN materials are detectable in use by TN sensors.  Heck, for that matter, maybe the TN power/lenses means that the weaponized energy travels FTL... 

Still got the dodge and weave doctrine. 

[Micro102 (OP)]

The problem with shooting over significant light-lag distances isn't that the target sees it coming and dodges, but simply that they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliaility. TN ships move millions of meters in 5 seconds, and (in gameplay) can reverse course within that timeframe. So the evasion envelope over 5 seconds is vastly larger than the ship is.

The beam fire control range drop-off math doesn't make any kind of physical sense I can come up with. It's just a conveniently simple game calculation.

The game definitely has room to become more realistic and complex, and this is a step towards that. If random maneuvering is what ships use to dodge shots now, and we can still hit them, then there is no use on talking about what if they maneuver even more over a longer period of time. Just drop the hit chance harder. This is why I suggested multiple shots increasing hit chance. If I had to shoot at something that has 5 seconds to dodge and is moving erratically, I would use a lot of bullets. So one shot could have 1% chance to hit. The second have 1.1%, then 1.2% or something like that (probably with diminishing returns). So if you fire 100 shots at a ship, you get far more than than the 63% (99% chance to miss 99 times in a row) chance to hit one shot, because dodging in 15 different angles is still going to get you hit by some of the shots.

[Ulzgoroth]

The problem with shooting over significant light-lag distances isn't that the target sees it coming and dodges, but simply that they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliaility. TN ships move millions of meters in 5 seconds, and (in gameplay) can reverse course within that timeframe. So the evasion envelope over 5 seconds is vastly larger than the ship is.

The beam fire control range drop-off math doesn't make any kind of physical sense I can come up with. It's just a conveniently simple game calculation.

The game definitely has room to become more realistic and complex, and this is a step towards that. If random maneuvering is what ships use to dodge shots now, and we can still hit them, then there is no use on talking about what if they maneuver even more over a longer period of time. Just drop the hit chance harder. This is why I suggested multiple shots increasing hit chance. If I had to shoot at something that has 5 seconds to dodge and is moving erratically, I would use a lot of bullets. So one shot could have 1% chance to hit. The second have 1.1%, then 1.2% or something like that (probably with diminishing returns). So if you fire 100 shots at a ship, you get far more than than the 63% (99% chance to miss 99 times in a row) chance to hit one shot, because dodging in 15 different angles is still going to get you hit by some of the shots.

...Neither of those things is true? Or if you mean in Aurora 1.11.0, one of those things is true but we really have no evidence for the other.

[Micro102 (OP)]

The problem with shooting over significant light-lag distances isn't that the target sees it coming and dodges, but simply that they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliaility. TN ships move millions of meters in 5 seconds, and (in gameplay) can reverse course within that timeframe. So the evasion envelope over 5 seconds is vastly larger than the ship is.

The beam fire control range drop-off math doesn't make any kind of physical sense I can come up with. It's just a conveniently simple game calculation.

The game definitely has room to become more realistic and complex, and this is a step towards that. If random maneuvering is what ships use to dodge shots now, and we can still hit them, then there is no use on talking about what if they maneuver even more over a longer period of time. Just drop the hit chance harder. This is why I suggested multiple shots increasing hit chance. If I had to shoot at something that has 5 seconds to dodge and is moving erratically, I would use a lot of bullets. So one shot could have 1% chance to hit. The second have 1.1%, then 1.2% or something like that (probably with diminishing returns). So if you fire 100 shots at a ship, you get far more than than the 63% (99% chance to miss 99 times in a row) chance to hit one shot, because dodging in 15 different angles is still going to get you hit by some of the shots.

...Neither of those things is true? Or if you mean in Aurora 1.11.0, one of those things is true but we really have no evidence for the other.

Huh, when you said "they maneuver unpredictably and as a result are impossible to hit with any sort of reliability" I thought you meant during battle, because it makes sense that changing position constantly would help with attacks you can't see. It's not hard for a program to predict movement if something is traveling in a straight line, and these guy have super-tech fire controls that weigh tons. As I see it, if pilots maneuver constantly to avoid being hit then fire-controls are there to overcome that. If they don't then it must be because they CAN see the light-speed shots. So we can either go with "they can't see and maneuver randomly to reduce chance of being hit" or "they can see and maneuver to evade". In the end we just have to simplify it to a hit-chance that allows for actual game play and makes sense lore-wise.

[Ulzgoroth]

It makes no sense physics-wise. Fire control can't compensate for the ability of the target to maneuver after the shot is fired. Not unless you've got guided lasers. Or algorithms that can predict their dodge 'pattern', but guided lasers are probably more plausible.

(Saturation shooting doesn't work either. People tend to have this intuition about 'filling the space with bulletsbeams' but the space involved is so big that hundreds of shots won't even begin to fill it.)

[Micro102 (OP)]

Yeah I was going with a supercomputer that weighs more than a blue whale that can predict movement. I can't think creatively enough to find a way to guide light.

As for saturation shooting, the game has FCs that change the chance of hitting a target from 0% to non-0%. Therefore there is SOME prediction there. Therefore less options for the enemy means that predictive power is stronger. I would even be willing to see the chance to hit from FCs tank immensely, having to compensate for it with many, many weapons. There is a very fun engineering aspect after all.

[serger]

Repliyng to Steve's new post in FAQ (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11578.0).

I think it will be cool, if there will be no blunt "max range" parameter at all, because there is no parabolic ballistical trajectory of energy and kinetical impacts in Aether, I suppose.
That's enough to have hit chance decreasing with distance, so with current fire mechanics, where guns devouring maintainance during fire, there will be no endless kiting and so no big advantage of long range beam weapons.

[Micro102 (OP)]

Ahhhh so it's for balance reasons. Hopefully it will all get sorted out in time then.

[Ri0Rdian]

I do not think there is anything to sort out (especially after Steve's reply). It always worked like this for the reasons he specified.

As avid beam user (and hate of Aurora's missile focus  ) I can live with that, I never knew anything else afterall. 

[Micro102 (OP)]

Well there is an obvious physics/lore problem to sort out, as light based weapons and kinetic based weapons should act differently. Just like how missiles haven't been reduced to 1 million range because they have a mechanic that counters them, lasers could be given more range in exchange for being smeg against shields, or reflective armor, or whatever Steve thinks makes sense.