Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Jorgen_CAB on February 05, 2020, 04:28:50 AM
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Now this is not a suggestion for changing anything to the current release as it obviously would be too extensive, instead it is a suggestion for some future major change as it would be a MAJOR change.
I have pondered often about what could make the game even more tactical/strategic and this would be to widen the field in terms of ship engagements and strategic manoeuvrability when engaging an enemy and conducting more of an asymmetrical warfare.
Now, my suggestion as a thought experiment would be to change a bit how ships can jump between systems.
We would still search and use jump point pretty much in the same way as we currently do and utilise the jump points in exactly the same way. In addition to this military jump drives get a secondary way to jump between the stars.
If we look at the old hyperdrive mechanic we could activate a hyperdrive when ships was outside a certain distance from its star, now we could use the same method but instead of using hyperdrive we could actually make a jump to ANY system that has a jump point in this system. As long as the jump ship is placed outside the perimeter it can choose to jump to any of those systems using a military jump drive only, the downside is that the squadron jump would take the ship to a random position that lies outside the hyperdrive limit in the opposing star. Even if you jumped two squadrons at the same time from the same position they would both end up in a random position at the opposing star.
Making such a jump should obviously be allot more difficult and dangerous so the initial jump might require the ship to do some pretty hard pre jump calculations of 20-30 minutes or so and the ships would be sensor blind for allot longer after the jump to, perhaps 10 times longer if not more.
In any way... I know that Steve have pondered similar changes before and if anything like this was considered it obviously would be a huge change.
My reasoning for such a change would simply be to open up the field for alternate strategies of more asymmetrical warfare. Being able to bypass enemy systems and strike deep could force some interesting new choices.
You obviously would still need to know the jump points origins in order to make these jumps... you might also force such jumps to consume some amount of fuel so ships can't jump around unlimited distances this way or some other restrictions how these jumps can be performed. A ship might only be able to make a limited such jump before it need to resupply the ship. So each jump would actually consume supplies as certain parts of the ship are consumed permanently while performing such jumps. Or simply make it so that they have a limited number of jumps before they need to go back to a space port for maintenance or something.. just some limitation on them... something that could be extended with technology perhaps.
But it would now be fully possible to conduct covert operation, surprise strikes and use submarine like warfare against civilian traffic.
It would also help defenders as well as they could more easily respond to an enemy from a far greater distance allot quicker, so it would not only be a tool for the attacker.
Jumping in a large fleet this way also might be a huge risk as the fleet will be scattered all over the place and would need to resemble. While doing so a defender might be able to notice them and react and pick the fleet apart piece by piece.
This system could also be used as a means of escaping... as long as a ship operates close to the hyperlane border they have a decent chance of escaping if the need arises.
Perhaps we could have a discussion on the pros and cons of such a change.. would it add to the game or not... what would the pitfalls be and how would it otherwise impact the game. What type of restrictions should be implemented for it to be a balanced feature and so on.
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Brainstorming some additional restrictions that could make sense for me:
- Squadron jumps are not allowed at all for this new method of travel. This means you either must design a jump capable massive Carrier ( Which makes detection on arrival likely but keeps the force together ) or have smaller independently acting ships where all of them have jump drives ( acting more like stealthy submarines/scouts that act independently )
- You require some sort of special jump drive design to pull it off which is getting prohibitively expensive for larger ships.
- You end up so far from the target system that it doing it with major forces would risk them being too far away to turn around if a threat materializes on another front.
Another question I feel is very important to ask here is, if submarine type strategic warfare options were to be added, would it actually be fun or just tedious?
Ordering around 100+ smaller raiding ships independently could very well prove to be just as frustrating as trying ( and failing ) to defend your long lines of spread out civilian traffic would be...
If you want to make this work and be fun I feel the biggest challenge might actually be how to automate raiding and convoy sailing + escorting & reaction forces so it does not become tedious, and still remains plausible and meaningful gameplay wise. Even more so when it comes to having AI opponents both conduct raiding and defend against it in an "acceptably intelligent way", which I feel would NOT be an easy task to accomplish..
I certainly love the Idea but I'm still not sure it would be a good idea due to the above reasons.
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Brainstorming some additional restrictions that could make sense for me:
- Squadron jumps are not allowed at all for this new method of travel. This means you either must design a jump capable massive Carrier ( Which makes detection on arrival likely but keeps the force together ) or have smaller independently acting ships where all of them have jump drives ( acting more like stealthy submarines/scouts that act independently )
- You require some sort of special jump drive design to pull it off which is getting prohibitively expensive for larger ships.
- You end up so far from the target system that it doing it with major forces would risk them being too far away to turn around if a threat materializes on another front.
Another question I feel is very important to ask here is, if submarine type strategic warfare options were to be added, would it actually be fun or just tedious?
Ordering around 100+ smaller raiding ships independently could very well prove to be just as frustrating as trying ( and failing ) to defend your long lines of spread out civilian traffic would be...
If you want to make this work and be fun I feel the biggest challenge might actually be how to automate raiding and convoy sailing + escorting & reaction forces so it does not become tedious, and still remains plausible and meaningful gameplay wise. Even more so when it comes to having AI opponents both conduct raiding and defend against it in an "acceptably intelligent way", which I feel would NOT be an easy task to accomplish..
I certainly love the Idea but I'm still not sure it would be a good idea due to the above reasons.
Yes... I think that you should ask if it would make sense to have the need to defend and move more small taskforces around to protect them.
The answer to that probably is a bit more difficult but I could see several things to help with this.
There could be a pool of escort ships that you can give to the civilian AI to use as convoy escort ships that patrol together with the civilian ships in systems you have designated to be patrolled. Civilian ships in such system must follow in strict convoy formations and not move individually around.
You could get better automated patrol orders where you assign way-points in space and the ships will randomly patrol within them until you disrupt them.
It would obviously be more important to build a network of spy satellites and spread out listening posts as a means to detect enemy raiders.
I have played quite a bit of multi-faction campaigns where it was quite common for factions to have bases and colonies in the same systems. I did not find it to be too tedious for those factions to employ similar actions there as I think would be more common with something like this possible.
I do think it should be possible to even program the AI with a decent raider routine.
Beam weapons would also be the preferred weapons of choice to go after civilian targets you would not need a huge amount of raiders to disrupt civilian trade.
Only allowing ships to self jump would be one good way to restrict this method of travelling.
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Honestly speaking, I'm not much of a fan of this idea. I'm a very defensive and cautious person and a lot of my early game efforts in Aurora are in estabilishing a strong defensive "border", as to claim a certain number of systems as "mine". I often employ substantial jump point defensive fleets.
Unsurprisingly, I would not be a fan of any solution which weakens my ability to defend MY territory.
I suppose I would be ok with something like this, maybe not with this exact mechanism, IF it is strictly limited to "raiding". Basically, if it's strictly limited in size and number of ships. If it's something akin to a "submarine", so to speak. Send a limited amount of ships of limited size to harass civilians and maybe attack a few truly undefended locations, or to scout. That I could accept, I guess.
But I'm vehemently against anything that allows a main invasion fleet to just ignore my borders and get inside my territory. Even if they would get scattered, that's NOT enough, I'd really hate that. Sorry, just the way I play and roleplay my games.
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Honestly speaking, I'm not much of a fan of this idea. I'm a very defensive and cautious person and a lot of my early game efforts in Aurora are in estabilishing a strong defensive "border", as to claim a certain number of systems as "mine". I often employ substantial jump point defensive fleets.
Unsurprisingly, I would not be a fan of any solution which weakens my ability to defend MY territory.
I suppose I would be ok with something like this, maybe not with this exact mechanism, IF it is strictly limited to "raiding". Basically, if it's strictly limited in size and number of ships. If it's something akin to a "submarine", so to speak. Send a limited amount of ships of limited size to harass civilians and maybe attack a few truly undefended locations, or to scout. That I could accept, I guess.
But I'm vehemently against anything that allows a main invasion fleet to just ignore my borders and get inside my territory. Even if they would get scattered, that's NOT enough, I'd really hate that. Sorry, just the way I play and roleplay my games.
No... I agree that this was not really my intentions with this either... it was mainly meant to encourage more asymmetric warfare, scouting and spy operations.
If we only allowed special types of military jump drives to do it... and only self jumps. These drives could be slightly smaller than a normal jump drive but still only allow the ships itself. The drive should also only allow a limited amount of such jump before you need to go back to port.
Equip and jumping in an entire fleet would not be impossible but highly impractical as it would then be scattered all over an entire solar system and you would need to equip every ship with such a drive. The possibility might scare you, but the likelihood of anyone doing it would be rather slim. Rest assured AI NPR would never do it.
You could on the other hand see small task forces of special ops jumping into enemy system to deploy small marine forces on enemy bases or raiders going after civilian targets and things like that.
An attack of a system would generally start by scouts, raiders and special ops being sent in to harass before the main fleet arrive though the JP.
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Let me expand a bit more as I just found out I have some free time during lunch break ;D.
The main point for me is the "functionality" of this. I like, generally speaking, the idea of a strongly defined "national border". Systems that are claimed and owned by national powers. Of course, not all systems would have the same degree of "ownership", so to speak, with outlying systems being sort of contested, while strongly inhabited and "central" systems being seen more owned.
As said, I usually spend a rather decent effort in building blockade fleets to picket jump points which lead to the "outside", and especially to other races territories.
The main point is defending what is my "territory" against possible invasions. Of course I also rely on orbital bases and local defenses for important planets or installations, but generally I try to block invasions at my border.
Generally speaking, I would not be against the possibility for enemy powers to operate some "raiding" or "covert scouting" in my territories, and I would certainly not dislike being able to do so, IF that is all it is. As said in my previous posts, if an enemy fleet can just bypass my blockades and stage a serious deep strike against me, then what is even the point of owning territory? Your only viable way of playing becomes slapping strong and numerous orbital bases over any single planet you own, as you cannot defend anything any other way.
I feel that scattering, long jump time and long sensor blind time are simply not enough of a deterrent. Just point your mega fleet to a system, jump, and even if you are scattered you can regroup. Maybe form a few strike groups with the scattered ships and then regroup. Even if you lose a couple who cares, you can inflict massive damage.
Do consider the possibility that a very favourable scatter can results in your ships "randomly" ending close or in a favorable position for strikes against critical targets. In a situation like this, the ONLY possible defense is in having very strong fleets or defenses over anything that is even remotely of value. For example, an enemy battleship might be scattered close to a large civilian mining complex over a comet. Or to a fuel harvester operation on the last planet of the system. Ooops, my economy is severely damaged just because of a random dice roll.
This problem is further accentuated in very large systems. Systems with planets 10+billions km from the star are not rare. In this situation, travel times are very long so scattered ships have a much better chance of survival and regrouping. In fact, it's very likely that most of the "scattered" fleet will be out of sensor range, thus being invisible, and you can regroup at your leisure and then strike with your whole fleet. Keep in mind that sensor changes in c# aurora have reduced the range of detection anyway.
I feel that the only way this could sensibly work is if ships that can make this type of jump are either very costly or severely limited in size/power, or both. Only this way the game balance could conceivably work, as these ships become "elite", costly vessels you make for specific purposes.
Maybe this jump system could be very costly and take a large part of the ship, or very costly and be rather limited in HS size. With of course a tech line to increase that limit, but still never allowing these ships to reach the caliber of normal ships. So you're free to build a few "corsair" raiders, or covert espionage ships, but not just build 100 cheap vessels, point them at an enemy system and wreck their economy.
It is very easy to build a cheap, fast to produce ship capable of killing civilian targets. One large laser, one reactor, one engine, one small fire control, one small sensor, a jump system. No defenses, ultra expendable Cheap, small, fast to produce. And deadly with this type of jump without serious limitations.
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I do understand this "fear"... but my intention would mainly be raiding and scouting but I would not exclude it as a strike capability either just because... I think that would be too limiting and I don't think it would work effective if it was not at least a possibility given enough resources put into it.
But in general the downside of the force being scattered and the additional cost would be hugely prohibitive to use it as such unless you have such vast superiority in industrial power that it is of not consequence, but then no amount of JP defence would work anyway as you could just use that might to smash right through that anyway.
It would obviously be a question of balance.
I also think that the NPR would probably only be programmed to use raiding, scouting and possibly covert ops, small strike kind of missions anyway. The kind of strike with a whole fleet would be a human player only thing. In SP you could just decide that no one would ever consider such a tactic and simply not do it.
If you are mainly playing against the AI you would never have to fear any such type of attack no matter how the mechanic would work as the AI would not be programmed for it.
On the other hand it would give people that DO like to have the opportunity to play with the notion of deep strike with a larger fleet and could potentially do so, given enough resources invested into it.
The game is after all a relatively open sandbox which is very useful for role-play.
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Jumping to any system wouldn't be used nearly so much for raiding as it'd be used for strategic mobility for the defenders, I'd wager. At this point, I don't even need bases or borders - just sensors, and a big fleet to mousetrap anyone who attacks.
If you want this, I'd be more inclined to add the ability for ships that self-jump to get much wider radii around the jump point. Load up a ship with cloaking devices, and use it as an "attack submarine".
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Jumping to any system wouldn't be used nearly so much for raiding as it'd be used for strategic mobility for the defenders, I'd wager.
I expect it would be used almost entirely for ships that are faster with longer-ranged weapons than the opponent, thus removing the only time such ships are forced to battle face-to-face.
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The goal of 'more commerce raiding/protection' is laudable and definitely something Aurora should be pursuing. I don't think this is the way to achieve it, though.
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Jumping to any system wouldn't be used nearly so much for raiding as it'd be used for strategic mobility for the defenders, I'd wager. At this point, I don't even need bases or borders - just sensors, and a big fleet to mousetrap anyone who attacks.
If you want this, I'd be more inclined to add the ability for ships that self-jump to get much wider radii around the jump point. Load up a ship with cloaking devices, and use it as an "attack submarine".
You would not be able to jump to ANY system... only to the same systems that you have JP in that system.
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Jumping to any system wouldn't be used nearly so much for raiding as it'd be used for strategic mobility for the defenders, I'd wager.
I expect it would be used almost entirely for ships that are faster with longer-ranged weapons than the opponent, thus removing the only time such ships are forced to battle face-to-face.
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The goal of 'more commerce raiding/protection' is laudable and definitely something Aurora should be pursuing. I don't think this is the way to achieve it, though.
I actually think it would be able to do that quite well. If you jump a few beam ships into a system that is basically what raiders is all about... they probably would be relatively fast vessels as speed would be one of their way to stay secure. These ships would be very inefficient as general combat ships, resource wise.
Building an entire fleet of them would be so expensive that building a JP assault fleet would make much more sense.
It obviously would be a balance issue and it would be up to the player how to exploit it in their campaign.
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I actually think it would be able to do that quite well. If you jump a few beam ships into a system that is basically what raiders is all about... they probably would be relatively fast vessels as speed would be one of their way to stay secure. These ships would be very inefficient as general combat ships, resource wise.
Building an entire fleet of them would be so expensive that building a JP assault fleet would make much more sense.
It obviously would be a balance issue and it would be up to the player how to exploit it in their campaign.
This is, in fact, how I do 'commerce raiding' now. . . I just do it through the regular jump point. VB Aurora is not great at continually defending (as opposed to picketing) a jump pont to 'enemy' space, so when I throw a couple dozen raiders through at least half of them survive to hide deep out-system. Most times all but one or two of them survive.
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Jumping to any system wouldn't be used nearly so much for raiding as it'd be used for strategic mobility for the defenders, I'd wager. At this point, I don't even need bases or borders - just sensors, and a big fleet to mousetrap anyone who attacks.
If you want this, I'd be more inclined to add the ability for ships that self-jump to get much wider radii around the jump point. Load up a ship with cloaking devices, and use it as an "attack submarine".
You would not be able to jump to ANY system... only to the same systems that you have JP in that system.
Okay, but it still saves you the time spent crossing the system. So instead of jumping, flying a week(or whatever) to the next JP, and jumping again, you could just jump, wait out a ten-minute timer, and jump again. You wouldn't even burn fuel. And I don't care about being scattered across the system if I'm just jumping to the next one from where I stand, so my fleet could be anywhere in my empire within a few hours. Scattered or otherwise, that's a big win.
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Yeah so I'm not a fan of this idea at all. I hated how in Starfire closed war points became ubiqutious once the "galaxy" grew to a certain size so you would routinely have enemy ships popping up in your core systems - and due to travel times, it was impossible to be strong everywhere to a point that you would lose multiple colonies/systems. The problem isn't quite as nasty in Aurora as the galaxy is so much bigger - at least if you're using Real Stars or use the default 1000 stars at game start.
This proposal would make it worse. All the limitations & restrictions you guys talked about are not actually reducing the impact as far as I can see - because once an empire is bigger than twenty colonized systems, it starts getting really expensive to keep each system well defended against real enemies as well as making it take a long time for any reaction fleets to move around as necessary.
Now, I'm all for getting my hand burned when I overextend. I'm not so keen on having a research colony wiped out because the one FlaK-Barge handling the system PPV requirement couldn't stop every planet buster launched from a single ship - because you know that with suitably high tech, a relatively small ship with box launchers can carry a heavy load of really dangerous missiles.
So, not only would every system need surveillance & tracking resources in the form of planetary tracking stations (of which you now need lot more in C# than before due to the new sensor model), but you also need STO and PD ground units to protect every colony that you don't want wiped out, plus you need active sensors so either a sensor ship or sensor satellite (because the old technique of having a cheap PDC that only had a size-50 AS on it is now gone), plus you would need system patrol ships touring the "hyper drive limit" to get some early warning because there's no way you can sensors in the inner system big enough to also keep an eye on the outer system, and then you would need an actual Combat Fleet that can reliably deal with any sort of raiders that the enemy might send out to you. And unless you're really lucky with planets and JP locations, you need that Combat Fleet in EVERY inhabited system, because it'll probably take too long for them to arrive otherwise.
Again, I'm 100% fine for doing that for every front line system. I'm also fine with maintaining that sort of presence at the home world system. But to do it for every system? No thank you.
Also a reminder and to echo what alex_brunius said: the submarine warfare aspect has been the worst thing in each Hearts of Iron game. It was also the worst thing in both the Pacific War and the War in the Pacific games.
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Do we really want this rapid movement of fleets? I'm not sure it would be an advantage to the defender. As long as you have knowledge of the jump points you could just as well use it to move your attacking fleet through enemy space.
And if ships need a special expensive jump drive it would limit your defensive fleet as much as the attackers.
While I like the idea of jumping further from the jump points a change like this will change a lot more than just raiding.
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I will not defend the idea just because but I think there are some misconception of what it might do and why I don't think it necessarily would do the thing you fear.
First of all it would be resource prohibitive to fit a jump engine like this on every ship... it would be more sound to just build a better fleet for smashing through any defences on a JP instead. So the feature should be balanced around that fact so it is mainly for raiding, scouting and making surgical strikes at enemy listening stations and weaker bases with marine forces in preparation for a strike through the JP.
There should be a cost of doing the jump, let's say there is a very high chance of the engines breaking down so you need lots of supplies if you want to do more than a couple of jumps.
You also could not jump into a system that you don't know exist from the system, so you must know the JP and where it lead first.
Jumping in a whole fleet with dozens or even hundreds of ships would see then completely scattered all over the system, this would be extremely weak as the enemy are then likely to detect some of them and destroy them piece meal, not to mention such a fleet would be very expensive to build in comparison with a regular fleet.
The cost and drawbacks need to be scaled so that you are unlikely to move an entire fleet that way unless you want to do it for role-play reasons.
I also think it is important to understand that the AI are not going to attack you with entire fleets this way... it would be programmed to scout and raid and perhaps do some small invasions as that would be fun.
I think it is important to understand that it would need to be balanced in a way that you would not use entire fleet as a routine, but it should not be impossible given the right technology and resources available. But still, the AI would never do it and you as a player would not be forces to do it either.
I think it would be good for overall role-play... I'm less concerned about how it could be abused as you don't have to abuse it in your campaign like so many other things in Aurora. It is fore most a role-playing platform after all.
I also would not give much stock to how other games handled raiders... I also don't care about the AI when I play multi-faction campaigns anyway.
You could go with the idea to widen the jump from a JP... but the problem then is... how do they get back... is this some kind of suicide mission?!? Where do I get crew and officers to routinely sign up for such crazy missions, must be rare circumstance any way.
I know that Steve have toyed with similar ideas himself and also talked about submarine and covert ops type ships, now... with this type or something similar we would get that. In order for submarine or covert ops like missions to be even remotely part of the game we need ships to get into system while being undetected, otherwise it will not work. There also must be a way for them to get back relatively safely.
I'm also open for other suggestion for how to solve adding more of an asymmetric warfare system to Aurora. If you are just categorically against it that is fine I will not argue that point as I simply don't agree with it.
The rules should then be that ships need to be able to get into and out of systems unnoticed and it need to have a reasonable rate of success.
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Do we really want this rapid movement of fleets? I'm not sure it would be an advantage to the defender. As long as you have knowledge of the jump points you could just as well use it to move your attacking fleet through enemy space.
And if ships need a special expensive jump drive it would limit your defensive fleet as much as the attackers.
While I like the idea of jumping further from the jump points a change like this will change a lot more than just raiding.
It is NOT intended to be a rapid movement of fleets... it could in SOME instances be used for that. But equipping entire large fleet this way would not be economically viable, you still would need to station fleets close to where they need to be.
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I also would like to add something about JP defence scenarios.
Outside building up a huge and super strong JP defence fortress garrison for a very short time frame it is a huge waste of resources and energy. It is by FAR more economical with a modest JP defence force and a rapid response fleet near by, perhaps even in the same system... especially over large stretches of time. If you also know the enemy is stronger in beam combat to begin with then huge JP defence forces is not a very good option to begin with.
So... in MOST scenarios you can just overrun any JP defence forces as the attacker don't have to have a fleet stationed at their JP if they know their fleet is stronger. They can just bide their tide and then suddenly strike and overrun the defences. The attacker will almost always have the advantage of time on their side.
Which I think that the argument of defending JP for those reasons are not really a very convincing argument, especially when you consider how much more expensive an entire jump equipped fleet would be and how strategically vulnerable it would be while scattered all over a system.
A well defended fortress world would be far more potent... a fleet would not dare bypass such a world as it wold be impossible to keep the fleet supplied.
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I think you have a great idea -- specifically, that it should be possible to sneak single ships through defended jump points in order to perform commerce raiding or other 'submarine'-type missions -- that was presented with terrible mechanics (jumping to somewhere else).
I would LOVE it if Aurora better simulated submarines (though, personal preference, early submarines of the type that spend 90% of their time on the 'surface' and only 'submerge' to attack or evade).
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I think you have a great idea -- specifically, that it should be possible to sneak single ships through defended jump points in order to perform commerce raiding or other 'submarine'-type missions -- that was presented with terrible mechanics (jumping to somewhere else).
I would LOVE[/b it if Aurora better simulated submarines (though, personal preference, early submarine of the type that spend 90% of their time on the 'surface' and only 'submerge' to attack or evade).
I'm open to discuss any ideas, really... my goal was to add asymmetrical warfare to the game.
That includes...
Raiding, Scouting and inserting special forces onto lightly defended enemy installations.
Perhaps if the game would add some cloaking mechanics... but how would the get passed a JP point security force... especially on their way back as they always need to jump from the JP point?
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I also updated the name of this tread as it is more about Asymetrical warfare than a set in stone way to use jump engines... ;)
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I think you have a great idea -- specifically, that it should be possible to sneak single ships through defended jump points in order to perform commerce raiding or other 'submarine'-type missions -- that was presented with terrible mechanics (jumping to somewhere else).
I would LOVE[/b it if Aurora better simulated submarines (though, personal preference, early submarine of the type that spend 90% of their time on the 'surface' and only 'submerge' to attack or evade).
We have cloaking, but it doesn't seem to achieve the job on its own. I do wonder if there's enough in the form of things to raid, however. Planetary PD in C# should be enough to stop a few subs from effectively striking planetary assets, which is fine. Shipyards are a good target, but shipyards are rarely without ships that'd intercept a submarines worth of missile fire. Fuel harvesters are probably a good strategic target, and I imagine most folks just leave them alone, maybe with a civilian PD on 'em. Civilian shipping losses don't have much impact outside of RP purposes, so the effective value of raiding might be low. There's not much in the way of military supply convoys. Still, that's less relevant than being able to try and do it anyway, I just wonder if there's anything we can do to add options. Stealth military insertions, maybe?
As far as how to breach these points go, perhaps some sort of emissions sinking, coupled with special regular-space engines to allow you to capture the thermal signal from them (and make it cost prohibitive), and a heatsink line of tech. When a ship is sinking emissions, its completely blind, and heating up. Get too hot, you can take internal damage from it. Cooling the ship lights you up, more/better heatsinks extend this time. Combine this with cloaking to reduce your active cross section, and the jump dispersion that already exists, and you'll be invisible to passives, and hard to detect with actives. But stay 'submerged' too long, and it'll kill you, and the mission tonnage spent on special engines and heatsinks means getting caught will leave you easily outgunned for the cost.
My hope is the heat mechanism and heatsinks provides an upper limit on how 'big' of a submarine you can feasible achieve at a tech level, between the cloaking and the tonnage limits. It also means that submarines don't become feasible until you develop some technology, so it is an investment to develop this stealth tech, atop the manufacturing costs of the special parts. I can't imagine thermal sinking hasn't been proposed before though, so I look forward to seeing the flaws in this :P
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I think you have a great idea -- specifically, that it should be possible to sneak single ships through defended jump points in order to perform commerce raiding or other 'submarine'-type missions -- that was presented with terrible mechanics (jumping to somewhere else).
I would LOVE[/b it if Aurora better simulated submarines (though, personal preference, early submarine of the type that spend 90% of their time on the 'surface' and only 'submerge' to attack or evade).
We have cloaking, but it doesn't seem to achieve the job on its own. I do wonder if there's enough in the form of things to raid, however. Planetary PD in C# should be enough to stop a few subs from effectively striking planetary assets, which is fine. Shipyards are a good target, but shipyards are rarely without ships that'd intercept a submarines worth of missile fire. Fuel harvesters are probably a good strategic target, and I imagine most folks just leave them alone, maybe with a civilian PD on 'em. Civilian shipping losses don't have much impact outside of RP purposes, so the effective value of raiding might be low. There's not much in the way of military supply convoys. Still, that's less relevant than being able to try and do it anyway, I just wonder if there's anything we can do to add options. Stealth military insertions, maybe?
As far as how to breach these points go, perhaps some sort of emissions sinking, coupled with special regular-space engines to allow you to capture the thermal signal from them (and make it cost prohibitive), and a heatsink line of tech. When a ship is sinking emissions, its completely blind, and heating up. Get too hot, you can take internal damage from it. Cooling the ship lights you up, more/better heatsinks extend this time. Combine this with cloaking to reduce your active cross section, and the jump dispersion that already exists, and you'll be invisible to passives, and hard to detect with actives. But stay 'submerged' too long, and it'll kill you, and the mission tonnage spent on special engines and heatsinks means getting caught will leave you easily outgunned for the cost.
My hope is the heat mechanism and heatsinks provides an upper limit on how 'big' of a submarine you can feasible achieve at a tech level, between the cloaking and the tonnage limits. It also means that submarines don't become feasible until you develop some technology, so it is an investment to develop this stealth tech, atop the manufacturing costs of the special parts. I can't imagine thermal sinking hasn't been proposed before though, so I look forward to seeing the flaws in this :P
I would say that my main issues is somewhat something that you touch on... I would need these ships to be able to bypass JP defence grids without detection but be too expensive to fit entire fleets of them (unless you are mad that is).
In terms of having cloaked ships being able to take out targets I still think there are allot of options that can make this viable. Steve is looking at adding more morale effects to planets. Having civilian ships, mining stations invaded and fuel harvested destroyed or captured could severely impact colonies in this and even neighbouring systems.
Several cloaking ships could work together to attack a shipyard or maintenance facilities based in space. Think of them as Wolfpacks... ;)
I really like the role-playing aspect of this.
If there were some technology that could mask a ships entire heat and TCS for a short time frome (when the submarine sumege) it would be a fine way to have them slip past a jump point garrison.
There could be some type of countermeasure for this, but it would have to be something like a missile that create some type of EMP like wave (think depth charge here) to have a chance to disrupt the cloak target. But a JP defence station could not use them all the time, you would only be able to use them when you have a decent idea where the cloaked ship is.
The cloak would actually sink the ship into the ether entirely and make it virtually invisible as long as it is in there.
Now... what should limit the ships use of this cloak where it slips into the ether for a short while entirely. I would suggest damage to be one such limitation and by extension a cost in supply which would make it prohibitive to use the cloak for very long. You could say that for every minute it is used it will cost you a certain amount of supply based on the ships size. You could argue that smaller ships cost less supply so it would be prohibitive with really large ships, now technology might improve on it though. But you might also say that ships can't be too small either or they can't fit the cloaking device properly (or some such)
What else... a ship could not use its own active sensors or fire-controls while in cloaking mode. The ship would have it's speed caped at a certain rate depending on the tech level of the cloak.
Anything else?
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Oh... I also thin kwe would need to rename the old cloak technology to something else... I would go with "Stealth Hull Design" or something for the old cloaking technology. Reducing your TCS would still be very useful as would reduced thermal engines be, especially for these kinds of vessles.
To create a fully super stealthy "submarine" you would need very high tech as you need engine stealth, stealth hull, jump engines and the cloaking device... all of these things will take up space and have a huge cost... allot more so than submarines of today.
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I am fundamentally against any transit method that ignores the limited connections, because it nullifies the strategic terrain of the galaxy. There is a reason stellaris was changed in order to limit transit to hyper-lanes. When your enemy can ignore terrain, it removes strategy, rather than increasing it. I have a counter-proposal however which I think could help provide the desired effect.
The basis is adding a variety to the "Size" of JPs. If we think of what jump points are in terms of wet navies, they are straits. But not all straits are the same width. Some are narrower than others. Additionally, while you can exit a JP at a distance from it, you have to be directly on top of it in order to enter. This means that even if you can sneak through one JP, it's very unlikely you will make it through the second. I would reform JPs such that each would have a "size" or maximum distance from the point where a military JD can be used to enter / exit. The techline which allows ships to appear further from the point would then instead simply act as a multiplier to this JP size, rationalising that the more powerful drives can break through further from the weakpoint.. This wouldn't have that much of an effect if you're trying to bring through a battleship, but it should make it so that small and or stealthed ships can more easily break out into the enemy trade lanes. However, they don't simply ignore the terrain, it's still very important.
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I am fundamentally against any transit method that ignores the limited connections, because it nullifies the strategic terrain of the galaxy. There is a reason stellaris was changed in order to limit transit to hyper-lanes. When your enemy can ignore terrain, it removes strategy, rather than increasing it. I have a counter-proposal however which I think could help provide the desired effect.
The basis is adding a variety to the "Size" of JPs. If we think of what jump points are in terms of wet navies, they are straits. But not all straits are the same width. Some are narrower than others. Additionally, while you can exit a JP at a distance from it, you have to be directly on top of it in order to enter. This means that even if you can sneak through one JP, it's very unlikely you will make it through the second. I would reform JPs such that each would have a "size" or maximum distance from the point where a military JD can be used to enter / exit. The techline which allows ships to appear further from the point would then instead simply act as a multiplier to this JP size, rationalising that the more powerful drives can break through further from the weakpoint.. This wouldn't have that much of an effect if you're trying to bring through a battleship, but it should make it so that small and or stealthed ships can more easily break out into the enemy trade lanes. However, they don't simply ignore the terrain, it's still very important.
Given how active and passive sensor work these "zones" would have to be very big.
To be honest I like the cloaking idea better from a role-play perspective and it would achieve roughly the same thing.
Most ships are probably going to be detected at one time or another and they will also run out of supplies or whatever restrictions set on the cloaking device eventually anyway.
As it would only effect some ships not everyone in your fleet it really should not be a huge problem, especially not from a strategic sense as you are still locket to jump-point for the majority of your fleets.
Steve also mentioned that he might want to have some kind if cloaking effect on ships in some form... so this might be worth exploring. I certainly like the cloaking idea better than my first idea.
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Jumping on your idea, I would actually like to see some ability to 'stealthily' insert forces onto a planet - perhaps some concealment ability - so I could put a small special forces detachment on an enemy world which could then raid, or up the chance of insurgent formations being generated.
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Jumping on your idea, I would actually like to see some ability to 'stealthily' insert forces onto a planet - perhaps some concealment ability - so I could put a small special forces detachment on an enemy world which could then raid, or up the chance of insurgent formations being generated.
With the cloaking ship idea such operations would technically be possible to perform.
I could see a cloaking ship carrying marines silently deploying some marines on a small military outpost, being able to bypass orbital defences and then slip away.
Or you could have an insurgency mechanic and you could designate your special forces as insurgent and help a colony organise its resistance.
There are many interesting role-play scenarios that I could find with such a mechanic.
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I'm really looking forward to the new ground combat system - but one of my questions/concerns is that combat becomes a large conventional force on force which is bloody and quick. I like the idea of having special forces/insurgents on planets with long drawn out campaigns which can last weeks to months. It just isn't the stealthy insertion of ships, but the ability of the ground formation to stay hidden on the planet.
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I would imagine you would want some sort of unit that deals high collateral damage and is highly evasive to combat. Perhaps it can only be engaged by a limited force, or otherwise is relatively difficult to kill, but does very little unit to unit damage. So it'd be fairly ineffective as a planetary invasion unit when you want to capture a planet, unless you don't care at all about collateral. It wouldn't be able to fight other units an its high collateral makes it ineffective as a defensive unit as well, so its niche is specifically infantry that damage planets, anything from specialist commando strikes to terrorists and rebels causing chaos.
Most of these units would probably be around for only one combat round, if you had commando's show up on your world, your gonna start hunting for a stealth ship that can't stay stealthed for much longer, and it'll either have to leave the commando's or die with them if your not willing to evacuate them. Thats assuming evasion and luck keeps them alive past their first round.
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I would imagine you would want some sort of unit that deals high collateral damage and is highly evasive to combat. Perhaps it can only be engaged by a limited force, or otherwise is relatively difficult to kill, but does very little unit to unit damage. So it'd be fairly ineffective as a planetary invasion unit when you want to capture a planet, unless you don't care at all about collateral. It wouldn't be able to fight other units an its high collateral makes it ineffective as a defensive unit as well, so its niche is specifically infantry that damage planets, anything from specialist commando strikes to terrorists and rebels causing chaos.
Most of these units would probably be around for only one combat round, if you had commando's show up on your world, your gonna start hunting for a stealth ship that can't stay stealthed for much longer, and it'll either have to leave the commando's or die with them if your not willing to evacuate them. Thats assuming evasion and luck keeps them alive past their first round.
Sounds like you just described a missile in it's entirety, in every respect.
So much so that it would only even work as a missile, not a ground unit. There is no envelop or "blindspot" for a stealth transport to get close enough to launch units, whereas a missile ship can run engines low and use stealth modules to get deeper into any active sensors or DSTS based at a planet, and fires missiles which do significant damage to ground units and industry alike.
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The basis is adding a variety to the "Size" of JPs. If we think of what jump points are in terms of wet navies, they are straits. But not all straits are the same width. Some are narrower than others. Additionally, while you can exit a JP at a distance from it, you have to be directly on top of it in order to enter. This means that even if you can sneak through one JP, it's very unlikely you will make it through the second. I would reform JPs such that each would have a "size" or maximum distance from the point where a military JD can be used to enter / exit. The techline which allows ships to appear further from the point would then instead simply act as a multiplier to this JP size, rationalising that the more powerful drives can break through further from the weakpoint.. This wouldn't have that much of an effect if you're trying to bring through a battleship, but it should make it so that small and or stealthed ships can more easily break out into the enemy trade lanes. However, they don't simply ignore the terrain, it's still very important.
Given how active and passive sensor work these "zones" would have to be very big.
To be honest I like the cloaking idea better from a role-play perspective and it would achieve roughly the same thing.
Most ships are probably going to be detected at one time or another and they will also run out of supplies or whatever restrictions set on the cloaking device eventually anyway.
Yes, they would need to be quite large, but where's the problem with that? You can add your submarines, but they are never going to be able to penetrate more than a single system deep, because they still have to transit to the second system via a single point. So a single size 1 sensor buoy will detect them. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the jump corridors would be very large, some would be tiny. That adds another layer of depth to the strategic terrain.
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Touching on the initial proposition, I quite like the idea though think the components needed for such movement should be size prohibitive so as to only really be viable for larger military (And some extreme exception case commercial) ship usage.
I'd probably introduce some additional conditions to the functionality alongside extended sensor dead time, for example the ship arrival point being semi-randomised more toward the fringes of the system and on arrival a kind of spacial disruption area being established for a couple of days that prohibits the use of hyperdrives within that area both for leaving and entering the system, so if you send multiple independent ships to the same system in a short period of time their arrival point would be spread apart by a minimum of the size of the spacial disruption caused.
So large independent ships could use this movement option to cover vast distances but they would very much be alone for a period of time and would need time to regroup even if multiple ships are dispatched at the same time. And if they are intercepted before they can distance themselves from the disruption field their arrival created then they have no immediate means to retreat.
In the case of larger systems with multiple stars where distances in the system can be huge, the viability of jumping in and arriving on the fringes of the system would require the hyperspace capable ship targeting that system to be specially designed with a means of carrying or resupplying its own fuel for such situations as well which would discourage the idea of singular large Hyperspace capable designs that would work in all situations.
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I am fundamentally against any transit method that ignores the limited connections, because it nullifies the strategic terrain of the galaxy. There is a reason stellaris was changed in order to limit transit to hyper-lanes. When your enemy can ignore terrain, it removes strategy, rather than increasing it.
The more I think about this suggestion, the more I feel like this. I just don't think that being able to ignore "terrain" is a good idea, no matter how it is implemented.
It is different in ground-based strategy games, because there terrain type has a meaning. So maybe you can avoid a fortress or choke point by going around, but you need to traverse mountains and so you take more time, or have attrition etc. But space... is space. The ability to ignore a jump point chokepoint just removes choices and forces me to defend everywhere. I can't think how this would be a good idea.
I will say it again. If I can ignore "borders", then creating mass cheap kamikaze stuff to destroy the opponent's weak economy points is always a sound tactic. The game allows to easily build cheap, fac-like attack craft whose only purpose is to die destroying the economy. If I cannot stop these before they get into my core systems, well... A random, scatter-like mechanic would make things even worse. I just... don't like this idea.
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Yes, they would need to be quite large, but where's the problem with that? You can add your submarines, but they are never going to be able to penetrate more than a single system deep, because they still have to transit to the second system via a single point. So a single size 1 sensor buoy will detect them. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the jump corridors would be very large, some would be tiny. That adds another layer of depth to the strategic terrain.
The major problem is that is will scale really bad with increases in sensor technology unless the corridor size change with it. You also don't solved the issue with returning to where you come from?!?
I don't think it is a good mechanic if missions are suicide missions...
I still like cloaking better as it will have other benefit that is more interesting from a role-play perspective.
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I am fundamentally against any transit method that ignores the limited connections, because it nullifies the strategic terrain of the galaxy. There is a reason stellaris was changed in order to limit transit to hyper-lanes. When your enemy can ignore terrain, it removes strategy, rather than increasing it.
The more I think about this suggestion, the more I feel like this. I just don't think that being able to ignore "terrain" is a good idea, no matter how it is implemented.
It is different in ground-based strategy games, because there terrain type has a meaning. So maybe you can avoid a fortress or choke point by going around, but you need to traverse mountains and so you take more time, or have attrition etc. But space... is space. The ability to ignore a jump point chokepoint just removes choices and forces me to defend everywhere. I can't think how this would be a good idea.
I will say it again. If I can ignore "borders", then creating mass cheap kamikaze stuff to destroy the opponent's weak economy points is always a sound tactic. The game allows to easily build cheap, fac-like attack craft whose only purpose is to die destroying the economy. If I cannot stop these before they get into my core systems, well... A random, scatter-like mechanic would make things even worse. I just... don't like this idea.
I simply disagree that terrain is that important that raiders can't get through them... this is just an issue of I don't like it... does not mean it have the potential of a good mechanic.
I take huge issue with missions being one way street suicide missions... it is NOT suitable for allot of RP reasons.
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Yes, they would need to be quite large, but where's the problem with that? You can add your submarines, but they are never going to be able to penetrate more than a single system deep, because they still have to transit to the second system via a single point. So a single size 1 sensor buoy will detect them. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the jump corridors would be very large, some would be tiny. That adds another layer of depth to the strategic terrain.
The major problem is that is will scale really bad with increases in sensor technology unless the corridor size change with it. You also don't solved the issue with returning to where you come from?!?
I don't think it is a good mechanic if missions are suicide missions...
I still like cloaking better as it will have other benefit that is more interesting from a role-play perspective.
I've already said that the current techline that increases the distance you can exit a jump point in a squadron jump would be re-formatted to increase the effective size of the corridor, so as you increase tech size does scale with sensor range. As for the issue of returning, I have fixed it? Traversing into enemy space is the exact same as leaving it. it's the same level of danger. No offense but I have to ask if you really read my posts?
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Yes, they would need to be quite large, but where's the problem with that? You can add your submarines, but they are never going to be able to penetrate more than a single system deep, because they still have to transit to the second system via a single point. So a single size 1 sensor buoy will detect them. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the jump corridors would be very large, some would be tiny. That adds another layer of depth to the strategic terrain.
The major problem is that is will scale really bad with increases in sensor technology unless the corridor size change with it. You also don't solved the issue with returning to where you come from?!?
I don't think it is a good mechanic if missions are suicide missions...
I still like cloaking better as it will have other benefit that is more interesting from a role-play perspective.
I've already said that the current techline that increases the distance you can exit a jump point in a squadron jump would be re-formatted to increase the effective size of the corridor, so as you increase tech size does scale with sensor range. As for the issue of returning, I have fixed it? Traversing into enemy space is the exact same as leaving it. it's the same level of danger. No offense but I have to ask if you really read my posts?
Yes... I actually realised that after writing that post... so I apologise for that... although it does not change the fact that you can't return as you still need to get to that point on the return trip... this is a no go mechanic for me... not very usable at all.
I also completely disagree that it would be no fun for cloaked ships to get deep into enemy territory... I say that is exactly the point with asymmetric warfare to begin with... not just playing around on the outskirts... that is too easy to deal with and would make the whole mechanic kind of pointless. It is too easy to just keep a few buffer system between you and a potential enemy.
So I simply disagree with that entire philosophy.
As it would NEVER mean that you slip past en entire fleet (unless you are mad and build only cloaked ship, which could be fun though from an RP perspective) as it would be cost prohibitive.
I can imagine many role-play stories where cloaked ships suddenly appear above a core colony that is not well defended and start terror bombing it. From a story perspective this would be FUN.
Or...
A small squadron of missile destroyers approaches a JP in the core systems to jump when a couple of cloaked beam cruisers de-cloak at knife range in front of them... what is not to like about that scenario from a story perspective.
Or...
three cloaked destroyers engages a weakly escorted support task-force with short range torpedoes.
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Yes... I actually realised that after writing that post... so I apologise for that... although it does not change the fact that you can't return as you still need to get to that point on the return trip... this is a no go mechanic for me... not very usable at all.
I still don't understand what you mean? yes you still have to transit a jump zone on the return trip, but if you could make it in you have a decent chance of making it out no? There's risk both ways, just like with submarines IRL.
look at it in terms of WW2, German submarines had to traverse either the Channel or the North sea in order to get to the British commerce, this offered them a choice, to go the short but more dangerous way, or the long way round and have much decreased range. meanwhile the British could patrol the north sea to try and intercept the subs, and cause some losses to the Germans, but it would they didn't have the resources to cover the whole place at once so subs could still get through. Then when France fell, submarines could operate out of Brittany, completely changing things as the terrain had changed, affecting the war massively. My system is designed to try to replicate this.
Now take your system of being able to teleport around. The German subs leave port and appear in the Mid atlantic gap. There are no choices to make, no advantages to be gained, and no real options for the british in terms of defence. Instead of choosing between assigning more escort ships to... escorting, or sending them to patrol the submarine lanes (Which turned out to be the wrong choice but still), or deploying minefields and barrages, they have no choice at all, except which convoys to escort more than others.
Your system also suffers massively from scale. As empires get bigger, the number of systems and assets to be secured grows, so the amount of defences at any one place can't really increase, whereas the number of stealth ships able to be fielded, and concentrated in one place, grows too. So at a certain point you can't really defend effectively.
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There's risk both ways, just like with submarines IRL.
Look at it in terms of WW2, German submarines ...
It's worth pointing out that with this real-world example, hideous losses among submarines were deemed acceptable by the Kriegsmarine. Which says to me that the prospect of 'suicide misisons' is not a good reason to change a tactical game system in itself.
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Yes... I actually realised that after writing that post... so I apologise for that... although it does not change the fact that you can't return as you still need to get to that point on the return trip... this is a no go mechanic for me... not very usable at all.
I still don't understand what you mean? yes you still have to transit a jump zone on the return trip, but if you could make it in you have a decent chance of making it out no? There's risk both ways, just like with submarines IRL.
look at it in terms of WW2, German submarines had to traverse either the Channel or the North sea in order to get to the British commerce, this offered them a choice, to go the short but more dangerous way, or the long way round and have much decreased range. meanwhile the British could patrol the north sea to try and intercept the subs, and cause some losses to the Germans, but it would they didn't have the resources to cover the whole place at once so subs could still get through. Then when France fell, submarines could operate out of Brittany, completely changing things as the terrain had changed, affecting the war massively. My system is designed to try to replicate this.
Now take your system of being able to teleport around. The German subs leave port and appear in the Mid atlantic gap. There are no choices to make, no advantages to be gained, and no real options for the british in terms of defence. Instead of choosing between assigning more escort ships to... escorting, or sending them to patrol the submarine lanes (Which turned out to be the wrong choice but still), or deploying minefields and barrages, they have no choice at all, except which convoys to escort more than others.
Your system also suffers massively from scale. As empires get bigger, the number of systems and assets to be secured grows, so the amount of defences at any one place can't really increase, whereas the number of stealth ships able to be fielded, and concentrated in one place, grows too. So at a certain point you can't really defend effectively.
I might be misunderstanding how you like it to work... if you mean that you can jump from a certain distance from both direction then I would be OK with it.
But then you could do that on every JP further down as well, or I might just misunderstand that as well.
There also is a difference between acceptable risk to certain doom that it would be if you need to jump from the JP itself as it would for a lone or couple of ship. Perhaps not against the AI but certainly in a multi-faction game where all sides is played by a human.
I still prefer the cloaking device no matter what as I think it has better storytelling opportunities. You also don't have to make it entirely non detectable... I did give an option of using some sort of depth charge device to disrupt the cloak... You might also attach an active special "sonar" module to ships which might have a chance to detect the cloaked ship as well. But the cloaked ships need to have a rather decent chance to remain undetected.
The cloaking mechanic also give other benefits as the examples given above which certainly add to the storyteller element of the game.
So... no the cloak would not mean it can teleport around... there would be negatives to using the cloak as it would have some sort of cost and you would be able to detect it, especially if you have a decent idea where it is.
Having some sort of cloaking mechanic would simply be more fun as it have more and interesting effect other than slipping past JP.
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There's risk both ways, just like with submarines IRL.
Look at it in terms of WW2, German submarines ...
It's worth pointing out that with this real-world example, hideous losses among submarines were deemed acceptable by the Kriegsmarine. Which says to me that the prospect of 'suicide misisons' is not a good reason to change a tactical game system in itself.
The problem is not that you would accept the losses... it is that they did not expect the losses but received them anyway. There is a very big difference...
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I'm sorry to say I have to come down on the "negatory pig-pen" side of this. Stealth ships and being able to insert said into the enemy territory are two things which pretty much destroy a game. While it is a neat story thing when 3 DDs drop their cloak and attack the hapless convoy...why is it 3 and not 30 or 300? If the answer to that is "it is expensive" my reply is so what? Is there a worth to it? Lets say the answer is "Yes" then it will be done and it will not be done in limited numbers and restricted to small ships. Why not insert an unclassified titan scale warship this way?
Also if I know what is on the other side of a jump point exactly, which is what you would be able to determine....then I won't loose a regular assault. The fortune cookies of war isn't my favorite military text but "a general who knows himself and his enemy need not fear defeat" is for the most part true. The ability to scout jump points is a huge advantage. The ability to sow massive disruption behind enemy lines is potentially a huge advantage...but mainly is just annoying to the person it happens to.
So given the munchkin response to 0.1% improvement I'd imagine they would go whole hog for this technology. And I've learned in Starfire that money is not a barrier it just pushes things outwards...galactic starfire attempts to get rid of the 3rdR snowball by increasing maintenance costs and reducing incomes and all it does is push the turn when it happens beyond what most games that the creator liked ended at. If a technology was good what it cost was rarely a determining factor in if it was used.
Cloaking devices need very very hard rules on them to stop them from just becoming dominant in games...look at Eve online for example. Stealth and its use was critical to sec 0 fights...but they dialed waaaaay back the effectiveness of stealth ships as strike platforms. And still I think their biggest value was in recon. Knowledge is power.
I mean the idea is sound from a drama/book/show/whatever perspective but for a game it is just something I think is best avoided. hell Starslayer and I have just hit the point where one of the bug races revealed their use of cloak...having 6 SDs uncloak during a warp point assault I was doing...that was...like..."oh smeg" ....thankfully I had SDs of my own I could toss through the WP and more importantly several hundred missile pods...that had been planned to be used in the follow up battle....but which saved me from having my assault force hammered into scrap metal. Every one of those SDs I tossed through the WP had to be repaired, plus I lost 6 assault CAs and I'm fairly sure the BCs got hammered on too... So yeah stealth is a game changing system when you have it in a game it is best to think long and hard on if you want it.
I don't think you need jump points/warp point/hyperlane connections but if you don't have them then you face a very different sort of battlespace one where you have to do disperse your fleet something which gamers in general don't like due to the inevitable micromanagement it costs. I mean a naval warfare game with strategic level decisions (or a good WW2 simulation) forces you to decide how to disperse your fleet to cover multiple theatres this is the same as what a space game has...where every system is "basilisk station" or "midway" or whatever. But who wants to have CL/DD groups patrolling your space compared to having a big fleet or two? I mean there is a reason most real navies had loads of DDs and such ships and why most games focus on battleships...one is sexy the other is...mundane and useful...
It is also worth noting the 8th Squadron in Tau Ceti blundered into 6 wolver FACs while moving through the system and had a point blank range encounter with them so even in the older game such events are possible without adding in new tech.
I also didn't read every reply in super detail so if I misunderstood something that is my fault.
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I'm sorry to say I have to come down on the "negatory pig-pen" side of this. Stealth ships and being able to insert said into the enemy territory are two things which pretty much destroy a game. While it is a neat story thing when 3 DDs drop their cloak and attack the hapless convoy...why is it 3 and not 30 or 300? If the answer to that is "it is expensive" my reply is so what? Is there a worth to it? Lets say the answer is "Yes" then it will be done and it will not be done in limited numbers and restricted to small ships. Why not insert an unclassified titan scale warship this way?
Also if I know what is on the other side of a jump point exactly, which is what you would be able to determine....then I won't loose a regular assault. The fortune cookies of war isn't my favorite military text but "a general who knows himself and his enemy need not fear defeat" is for the most part true. The ability to scout jump points is a huge advantage. The ability to sow massive disruption behind enemy lines is potentially a huge advantage...but mainly is just annoying to the person it happens to.
So given the munchkin response to 0.1% improvement I'd imagine they would go whole hog for this technology. And I've learned in Starfire that money is not a barrier it just pushes things outwards...galactic starfire attempts to get rid of the 3rdR snowball by increasing maintenance costs and reducing incomes and all it does is push the turn when it happens beyond what most games that the creator liked ended at. If a technology was good what it cost was rarely a determining factor in if it was used.
Cloaking devices need very very hard rules on them to stop them from just becoming dominant in games...look at Eve online for example. Stealth and its use was critical to sec 0 fights...but they dialed waaaaay back the effectiveness of stealth ships as strike platforms. And still I think their biggest value was in recon. Knowledge is power.
I mean the idea is sound from a drama/book/show/whatever perspective but for a game it is just something I think is best avoided. hell Starslayer and I have just hit the point where one of the bug races revealed their use of cloak...having 6 SDs uncloak during a warp point assault I was doing...that was...like..."oh smeg" ....thankfully I had SDs of my own I could toss through the WP and more importantly several hundred missile pods...that had been planned to be used in the follow up battle....but which saved me from having my assault force hammered into scrap metal. Every one of those SDs I tossed through the WP had to be repaired, plus I lost 6 assault CAs and I'm fairly sure the BCs got hammered on too... So yeah stealth is a game changing system when you have it in a game it is best to think long and hard on if you want it.
I don't think you need jump points/warp point/hyperlane connections but if you don't have them then you face a very different sort of battlespace one where you have to do disperse your fleet something which gamers in general don't like due to the inevitable micromanagement it costs. I mean a naval warfare game with strategic level decisions (or a good WW2 simulation) forces you to decide how to disperse your fleet to cover multiple theatres this is the same as what a space game has...where every system is "basilisk station" or "midway" or whatever. But who wants to have CL/DD groups patrolling your space compared to having a big fleet or two? I mean there is a reason most real navies had loads of DDs and such ships and why most games focus on battleships...one is sexy the other is...mundane and useful...
It is also worth noting the 8th Squadron in Tau Ceti blundered into 6 wolver FACs while moving through the system and had a point blank range encounter with them so even in the older game such events are possible without adding in new tech.
I also didn't read every reply in super detail so if I misunderstood something that is my fault.
I think you understood thing pretty well so I appreciate your opinion on the matter.
When we talk about JP assaults it is not very hard to scout and get information on their strength even without cloaking devices so I think that is a moot point. You just have to probe it and get the information.
I might also disagree about cost not being a strong factor as it certainly work in general... you would NEVER be able to use large invasion fleets with cloaks for example, those ships just are far to big and making them into military instead of commercial simply is not viable. One of the limitation we spoke about was ship size for example. You also do not have to make the cloaks 100% perfect either.
Aurora already have very little in regard to stopping snowballing the economy other than distance to resources.
I think it is more constructive to discuss what you need to do to make cloaks work rather than discus if you want asymmetrical warfare or not. I clearly simply do not agree with that notion that asymmetrical warfare would not add to the game. The point of the discussion is to make it balanced in terms of making it very uneconomic to use only cloaked ships or simply some severe limitation to them that make it undesirable.
So... why don't navies today use ONLY submarines... well it is prohibitively expensive and they are not very good at transporting stuff in any quantity. They can't operate aircraft or helicopters... but they could potentially operate drones in the future at least.
In the game then range would still be a problem as would the cost of the supplies necessary to operate them on enemy territory... there always are the chance of them being detected as you can only use their cloaks periodically and are more like U-Boats not submarines. In order to make them truly stealth you would need stealth engines, stealth hulls AND they also all need their own jump-drive as squadron jumps don't work while they are using the cloaking system... these are ALL very limiting things and would make them very inefficient for combat purposes unless you have extremely high technology.
They obviously would be good for scouting mostly and for light raid... as combat vessels it would take considerable effort of research... research someone else could use to get ahead in other technologies instead.
So no.. it would take huge investments to be at a stage where you could operate a fleet powerful enough to do any kind of fleet operation of any substantial nature and you would need a huge tech and industrial advantage.
In my opinion you would probably be allot better off to invest all that time and energy into just building a proper fleet as that wold be way more efficient to win actual battles.
The idea is to use them for covert ops, raiding and scouting... there should be ways to find and neutralise them (without too much micromanagement), they would need to be much harder to find than regular ships as it otherwise would make very little sense to use them at all.
You need to view them as U-Boats rather than submarines as their capability to remain cloaked for long periods should be very limited.
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Here is a list of things that could make cloaks on ships balanced in terms of usability versus cost and risk...
1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
2. The cloak can only be used for a limited set of time every time it is activated, it could be more of a soft cap as it would start to eat more and more supplies the longer it is used. This could also be modified by technology.
3. The size of the cloak would scale inversely with the size of the ship in some fashion so big ships would require proportionally larger cloaking devices, this could also be effected by technology.
4. "sonar" like technology could be used to disrupt enemy cloaking devises and increase the chance of passive sensors detecting them.
5. "sonar"buoys could be deployed that also could disrupt cloaking devices delivered by missile launchers.
6. "depth charge" like missiles could be used against suspected cloaked ships to completely disrupt the cloaking device.
5. A ship can't use any active sensors, fire-controls, launch or recover parasites, drop troops or load/unload any cargo while cloaked.
What more could be added to so they are not too powerful... they should feel vulnerable but still powerful enough to be used. As others have said... knowledge is power. We have to remember that as soon as a ship like this use any form of active sensors they will become hunted and using their cloaking systems is a limited capacity so they are likely to be hunted down and destroyed.
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The concern is that it's too easy for ships that jump through to be picked up by the gate defenses. There's already a tech line designed to deal with this - the jump radius techs - and those can be expanded upon fairly easily in various ways.
For example, add a self-jump radius multiplier. Jump drives that are self-jump-only get an extra multiplier to radius. Make it fairly costly, if you like, but there's already a goodly cost in giving every ship a jump drive to take advantage of this. If you can jump a ship in at 5x or 10x the usual radius, and it's well-cloaked, there's a good chance of survival against all but the heaviest defenses. It still allows counter-play, by equipping stations on the JP with huge sensor arrays, but you can still sneak some things through sometimes.
Ideally, this tech would also let them jump back out of the system from a wider radius around the JP as well, so it's not just a one-way mission. I don't know how practical that is, though.
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1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
If the ship can still be detected by actives, then what is the point?
What I say is my proposed changes to jump points combined with the already existing cross-section reduction and thermal dampening technologies are enough to provide the desired effect. i'm not entirely against however versions of these technologies which are more powerful for the same cost, but limited to a duration between a few hours to days.
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If the ship can still be detected by actives, then what is the point?
What I say is my proposed changes to jump points combined with the already existing cross-section reduction and thermal dampening technologies are enough to provide the desired effect. i'm not entirely against however versions of these technologies which are more powerful for the same cost, but limited to a duration between a few hours to days.
If getting through is automatic, defences become pointless, and this mini-game is boring. If getting through is impossible, nobody will try, and this mini-game is boring. It needs to be possible, but not automatic.
"Possible, but not automatic" basically means falling back on sensor mechanics, but lining them up in such a way that the disadvantage of a known location (which makes it easy to stack sensors there) can be compensated for by players being able to make an effort to minimize the effect of those sensors somehow. That means either extra cloak power, extra range, some sort of ability to blind sensors (that doesn't advertise your position), or a big mechanic change that reshuffles everything. Extra cloak power on jump would be rather odd, blinding seems implausible, and therefore I've been going for range.
That said, a "super-cloak" mode that stepped up cloak power for a limited time, at the cost of heavy resource use of one sort or another (fuel or destruction risk, probably) might be another alternative.
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Wow...where to start?
Firstly I think we have to understand that in Aurora when we use Jump we mean jumping into Hyperspace which is slightly different than the FTL jumps you have in Battlestar Galactica for instance. The hyperspace jump uses hyper-lanes which for strategy games is a blessing and as been already said in this thread even Stellaris did change the system to better exploit the hyper-lanes.
For those who are familiar with Avorion, the following will be more easy to follow. While you have 2 or more systems connected by hyperlinks with or without gates you could still jump from system to system bypassing such lanes to reach also uncharted systems and the limit would then be the radius of your FTL drive. So back to Aurora you should have 2 techs, one for Hyper Jump Drives and one for FTL Jump Drives.
Now I will spare you all consideration as many valid points have surfaced already in this thread but if we really were to introduce such tech I would make it available only AFTER all Hyper Jump Drive techs are discovered. Also, we will have to introduce a variant to the normal FTL theory which is the ability to jump only into known systems meaning a first hyperjump would still be required for us to jump into a system in FTL mode and pretty much getting rid of uncharted systems and FTL exploration possibility. (In Stellaris, you still have systems outside the Hyperlanes by the way which are now more interesting to reach).
Regarding the ability to jump, again we have to limit based on Radius Reach which will be easy to introduce due to the already existent distance between stars in LY. So if you have a tech level 3 let's say FTL drive Jump which will allow you to jump only 20LY you wouldn't be able to jump further than that. Finally, this is a 1 ship tech only and therefore each ship should have its own drive. Now considering all the above which are essential due to Aurora structure and functionality along with FTL literature out there I think we are going through a wasp nest just because of the JG defence annoyance. So maybe we have another and most simple solution to avoid that? I don't know but Steve does I am sure.
So bottom line: would I do it or want it for Aurora? I don't think so (even if the annoyance of JP defences it's understandable) but if I were to introduce it I would do it with the following limitations:
END TECH or RARE RUIN TECH ONLY (meaning we can disable if we don't want to deal with it)
LIMITED RADIUS RANGE (30LY or 50LY only?)
ONE DRIVE PER SHIP
MILITARY TECH ONLY
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1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
If the ship can still be detected by actives, then what is the point?
What I say is my proposed changes to jump points combined with the already existing cross-section reduction and thermal dampening technologies are enough to provide the desired effect. i'm not entirely against however versions of these technologies which are more powerful for the same cost, but limited to a duration between a few hours to days.
I missed to point out that Active would never spot it at all... only passive could get sort of ghost image of where it is and then you would have to use active "depth charges" to disrupt the cloak to make it visible.
I also forgot to mention that the cloak would also cap the speed of the ship depending on technology level as well, that actually would be important.
I would not be against your version of how it could work either.. I just like the cloak model a bit better as it could be used in other situations as well and it is cooler from a story perspective in my opinion.
To me it would be important that ships could reach allot further than just one or two systems as one or two systems often are not far enough to do much of anything. So not only would these ships have to pass more than on JP they also would need very long deployment times, maintenance cycles so they don't break down and lot's of fuel and/or fuel efficient engines in combination with good speed for evading enemy ships. Plus you also might want thermal reduction and hull stealth or just regular Aurora Cloak to reduce TCS.
The cloak could on occasion make it possible for an otherwise inferior raider get the drop on some missile ships in close combat. There are a few other interesting scenarios I could think of.
I also would stress that I don't think these cloaking ships should be undetectable. But it should require you to invest in technology to do it beside regular sensor technology. So... someone who have an advantage in cloaking versus someone with rudimentary "sonar" technology would be very difficult to detect without allot of effort or some luck.
Updated list of cloaking systems...
1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
2. The cloak can only be used for a limited set of time every time it is activated, it could be more of a soft cap as it would start to eat more and more supplies the longer it is used. This could also be modified by technology.
3. The size of the cloak would scale inversely with the size of the ship in some fashion so big ships would require proportionally larger cloaking devices, this could also be effected by technology.
4. "sonar" like technology could be used to disrupt enemy cloaking devises and increase the chance of passive sensors detecting them.
5. "sonar"buoys could be deployed that also could disrupt cloaking devices delivered by missile launchers.
6. "depth charge" like missiles could be used against suspected cloaked ships to completely disable the cloaking device.
5. A ship can't use any active sensors, fire-controls, launch or recover parasites, drop troops or load/unload any cargo while cloaked.
6. Active sensor can never spot cloaked ships.
7. The cloaking device will put a cap on the ships speed while the ship is using it.
8. A ship making a jump through a JP must use its own jump drive while cloaked.
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Wow...where to start?
Firstly I think we have to understand that in Aurora when we use Jump we mean jumping into Hyperspace which is slightly different than the FTL jumps you have in Battlestar Galactica for instance. The hyperspace jump uses hyper-lanes which for strategy games is a blessing and as been already said in this thread even Stellaris did change the system to better exploit the hyper-lanes.
For those who are familiar with Avorion, the following will be more easy to follow. While you have 2 or more systems connected by hyperlinks with or without gates you could still jump from system to system bypassing such lanes to reach also uncharted systems and the limit would then be the radius of your FTL drive. So back to Aurora you should have 2 techs, one for Hyper Jump Drives and one for FTL Jump Drives.
Now I will spare you all consideration as many valid points have surfaced already in this thread but if we really were to introduce such tech I would make it available only AFTER all Hyper Jump Drive techs are discovered. Also, we will have to introduce a variant to the normal FTL theory which is the ability to jump only into known systems meaning a first hyperjump would still be required for us to jump into a system in FTL mode and pretty much getting rid of uncharted systems and FTL exploration possibility. (In Stellaris, you still have systems outside the Hyperlanes by the way which are now more interesting to reach).
Regarding the ability to jump, again we have to limit based on Radius Reach which will be easy to introduce due to the already existent distance between stars in LY. So if you have a tech level 3 let's say FTL drive Jump which will allow you to jump only 20LY you wouldn't be able to jump further than that. Finally, this is a 1 ship tech only and therefore each ship should have its own drive. Now considering all the above which are essential due to Aurora structure and functionality along with FTL literature out there I think we are going through a wasp nest just because of the JG defence annoyance. So maybe we have another and most simple solution to avoid that? I don't know but Steve does I am sure.
So bottom line: would I do it or want it for Aurora? I don't think so (even if the annoyance of JP defences it's understandable) but if I were to introduce it I would do it with the following limitations:
END TECH or RARE RUIN TECH ONLY (meaning we can disable if we don't want to deal with it)
LIMITED RADIUS RANGE (30LY or 50LY only?)
ONE DRIVE PER SHIP
MILITARY TECH ONLY
Some interesting ideas here and I would agree to most of it.
Although if Steve would even consider such a change I doubt he would put it as en end game tech which almost no one would use. Put so much effort into a mechanic pretty much no one will use including himself are something I'm 99.999% sure he would never do. Having is as Rare Ruin tech would fall into the same category in my opinion...
I say it would be something you could unlock after you unlocked the regular hyper jump drives but be a bit more expensive, otherwise there would be no point in including it.
I know many in this thread is afraid of what a system without hyperlane type would be but I don't think it would make the game worse by any means... games such as Distant Worlds have far more interesting and strategic combat than a game such as Stellaris for example and it has no limitation on where you can go except fuel and logistics.
I think that hyper drives should probably cost fuel in order to use and depending on the range it would consume a large chunk of fuel, any such endeavours would almost always need supply and fuel support ships.
I know that allot of people are entrenched in the opinion of hyper-lanes versos hyper-drive strategic combat. In my opinion they can be equally good for different reasons and have no real preference for either.
Here also is a thread where Steve talk about a possible hyperdrive system for Aurora II http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=3011.0
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I get the feeling that whatever stealth system is in play, the economics of squadron jumping and ordering a large enough task group to immediately split in different directions on entry would outweigh sneaky options in almost any case beside those where the stealth system is patently overbearing. So i have another idea:
-Set the base squadron jump radius to a much higher value than it currently is.
-Allow the construction of a terrestrial facility, or orbital module for a primary, which significantly contracts the jump-squadron radius a targetted jump point to a more manageable level.
-Limit the module to only one per system.
Alternatively, make the module "outgoing", so it's more like
"Squadron jumps leaving this system without allied affiliation to this module's owner have their jump radius significantly reduced."
In the former case, "one per system" allows you to use the device to prioritize specific risky routes to secure, without being able to arbitrarily lockdown whole segments of the galaxy if you get lucky with mineral, or you're an NPR that ignores upkeep.
The latter case, however, could lead to some interesting gameplay: a system can be pretty locked down until you assault a specific asset, however, the asset necessarily is out in the open, attached to the system primary, and accompanied by whatever defenses are floating with it. That it encourages open-space combat as a way to allow you a shot to get past or directly assault jump-point barricades at better odds is an idea I'm liking.
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I get the feeling that whatever stealth system is in play, the economics of squadron jumping and ordering a large enough task group to immediately split in different directions on entry would outweigh sneaky options in almost any case beside those where the stealth system is patently overbearing. So i have another idea:
-Set the base squadron jump radius to a much higher value than it currently is.
-Allow the construction of a terrestrial facility, or orbital module for a primary, which significantly contracts the jump-squadron radius a targetted jump point to a more manageable level.
-Limit the module to only one per system.
Alternatively, make the module "outgoing", so it's more like
"Squadron jumps leaving this system without allied affiliation to this module's owner have their jump radius significantly reduced."
In the former case, "one per system" allows you to use the device to prioritize specific risky routes to secure, without being able to arbitrarily lockdown whole segments of the galaxy if you get lucky with mineral, or you're an NPR that ignores upkeep.
The latter case, however, could lead to some interesting gameplay: a system can be pretty locked down until you assault a specific asset, however, the asset necessarily is out in the open, attached to the system primary, and accompanied by whatever defenses are floating with it. That it encourages open-space combat as a way to allow you a shot to get past or directly assault jump-point barricades at better odds is an idea I'm liking.
While an interesting idea I don't think it address what I'm after which is more of a low intensity raiding and scouting operations and not full scale invasion or brute force incursions.
The system would need to be able to insert and extract ships to system with stealthy means and the defence of these ships would generally be through evasion. You also would have the need to insert these forces pretty deep into enemy territory, not just one perhaps two system penetration.
The main thing would be that the enemy would not know those ships are even there.
The general problem that I see with widening the jump point entry would be that it seriously could lead to weakening of the JP defence strategy as a whole.
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How exactly do you think the tonnage of this fleet is to be restricted to make it "small scale"? It seems untenable to make the feature make any sense where the scaling of this game comes down to "big things are made of smaller things working together".
Raiding, if anything, should only be meaningfully conducted in systems that are realistically vulnerable to raiding. That is, ones that don't have fully invested JP defenses and sensor screens literally everywhere. If you want a sensor asset in the system, the best you should really be doing is making a civilian vessel with 1 HS sensors, getting there first, and killing the engine. Maybe setting up some DSTS to give higher clarity warning of stuff actually moving through the system.
These scouts wouldn't even be useful for detecting military assets, because the wise thing to be doing from that point on is to just be putting those stealth modules on everything that'll accept them.
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These scouts wouldn't even be useful for detecting military assets, because the wise thing to be doing from that point on is to just be putting those stealth modules on everything that'll accept them.
Except we have already gone over how that would be highly inefficient from a cost perspective and you would never be able to use your cloak more than occasionally. So any cloaked ship would have to loose the cloak and run normal most of the time. The cloak is only for evading or when you approach a target site that you wish to scout.
For the most part there would be no point in cloaking all ships as it would be better to just make them stronger and attack through the JP instead if you have that much resources for ships.
Moving a large amount of ships through a JP would very likely get a fair amount of them detected and would directly alert the enemy to your activities as the cloak is never a guaranteed thing.
Once a fleet is located or at least their positioning is fairly known a cloaking system would have limited use as there are active ways to hunt them and the cloaks can not be used without limitations. That is now an entire fleet compromised.
Cloaking should only be for smaller squadrons of ships and not for really large ships.
Look at the list above and tell me how you would make an effective fleet of cloaked ships from all those restrictions.
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The fleets don't necessarily have to move as one unit. Imagine having to deploy active countermeasures to every 20 kkm^2 of a half lightyear wide system, as a fleet breaches, splits and goes into hard stealth throughout the system. Doesn't sound fun to micromanage by any measure conceivable, and not something I'd want to see getting encouraged by mechanics further. Getting sensor coverage over the whole darn thing is hard enough as it is, even with DSTS.
And then, of course, the stealth modules wouldn't be helpful on the outward-facing side of a jump point if there are any sensors worth respect located there as well, effectively doubling the sensors you'd have to cross through just to get to the jump point. If stealth ships were allowed to slip past that, including getting close enough to be point blank, i don't see any reason the AI can't run ramming stealth ships, either, which is it's own can of worms.
Similarly, seeing as actives are completely broken by cloaking, it also means you'll be able to do things like dodge missiles and fighters and just about anything else by entering cloak just as they're engaged. Essentially making the cloak system acting as the "I am now become indestructible" button, effectively. Dreadful. Can even be used to dodge long range missiles even if you give it a warmup period. The sonar systems having a "chance" to disband the cloak is even a more shameful stack upon stack of RNG.
The important thing that absolutely must not be forgotten: how heavy is a cloak in HS, how expensive is it, and how expensive is it's countermeasures? I can't see a situation where both feel like viable, meaningful options. Either running the cloak is an absolute resource burn for the opposing race, as any sane individual would put what's needed to make a jump point airtight, or is not worth using outright, given that any mission attempted will be slapped down instantly, as the opposing race just guarantees that you can't squeeze through the jump point.
Which goes to the next point, this balancing consideration means they're not a solution for asymmetrical warfare at all. If they're strong enough to punch upwards at more well equipped races, then they're also capable of being used to completely squeeze past any defense a weaker race mounts and punch downwards with impunity.
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The fleets don't necessarily have to move as one unit. Imagine having to deploy active countermeasures to every 20 kkm^2 of a half lightyear wide system, as a fleet breaches, splits and goes into hard stealth throughout the system. Doesn't sound fun to micromanage by any measure conceivable, and not something I'd want to see getting encouraged by mechanics further. Getting sensor coverage over the whole darn thing is hard enough as it is, even with DSTS.
And then, of course, the stealth modules wouldn't be helpful on the outward-facing side of a jump point if there are any sensors worth respect located there as well, effectively doubling the sensors you'd have to cross through just to get to the jump point. If stealth ships were allowed to slip past that, including getting close enough to be point blank, i don't see any reason the AI can't run ramming stealth ships, either, which is it's own can of worms.
Similarly, seeing as actives are completely broken by cloaking, it also means you'll be able to do things like dodge missiles and fighters and just about anything else by entering cloak just as they're engaged. Essentially making the cloak system acting as the "I am now become indestructible" button, effectively. Dreadful. Can even be used to dodge long range missiles even if you give it a warmup period. The sonar systems having a "chance" to disband the cloak is even a more shameful stack upon stack of RNG.
The important thing that absolutely must not be forgotten: how heavy is a cloak in HS, how expensive is it, and how expensive is it's countermeasures? I can't see a situation where both feel like viable, meaningful options. Either running the cloak is an absolute resource burn for the opposing race, as any sane individual would put what's needed to make a jump point airtight, or is not worth using outright, given that any mission attempted will be slapped down instantly, as the opposing race just guarantees that you can't squeeze through the jump point.
Which goes to the next point, this balancing consideration means they're not a solution for asymmetrical warfare at all. If they're strong enough to punch upwards at more well equipped races, then they're also capable of being used to completely squeeze past any defense a weaker race mounts and punch downwards with impunity.
You mentions some concerns that I thought about too, such as dodging missiles. There are several ways you can deal with that. It might be that engaging the cloak will take some time or you could slightly change how missiles behave if a ship disappear. Missiles would go to the last know coordinate of the target and stay there, any missile with a depth charge warhead will detonate and if a ship is revealed it is attacked by missiles that self detect using passive or active sensors. Disable the cloak also make the cloaked ship defenceless for at least a 5 sec turn after the cloak is gone thus vulnerable to really close missiles attacking them in the next 5 sec turn with only CIWS being able to hit them.
Why would you use "depth charge" randomly... that would be terribly inefficient. They would only be used against suspected ships that you detected with passive first. The sonar is like an active sensor that have a chance to disrupt the cloak thus making it easier to detect it with passive sensors. Once a ship is spotted it would appear as a cloaking contact and you would use depth charge against that contact. The depth charge would have a decent radius, perhaps 5-10 million km or so there is a high chance to disable any cloaking devices. But it would not be 100%.
You could also streamline it more and simply say that a ship that is spotted can be lit up by active sensors. Once you know what you are looking for it can't hide anymore. So, if a ship already is lit up by your actives would not benefit from it's cloak anymore. It would have to get out of both passive and active range before the cloak will have any effect again. This would fix the dodging missiles effect and make spotting finding them allot less micromanagement heavy using "depth charge" warheads.
The attacking the weaker opponent is completely a moot point because smashing through the JP using regular means would still be the cheaper option in that case anyway and just attack normally with your fleet. Also consider all the research you spend on using for the cloaking system to begin with that could be used for other things.
Though... using a cloaking system could still be an option for the one who wishes to explore that path for role-play reasons... it would be a nice story element.
I really don't see many scenarios where the cloaking system would be OP. What size and cost it would be is a balance issue, but I would assume similar to the current cloaking technology perhaps. We also have to understand that Aurora is foremost a role-playing sandbox game. The AI will only do what it is programmed to do. The AI would not be programmed to flood you with cloaked ships, only use them for scouting and raiding purposes. What you as a player use it for is up to you.
If you want to slip past a JP with a larger fleet using cloaking devices they would not only need the cloaking device they also all need their own jump engine and they still would not be 100% to slip past, it would be very likely that at least one or more ship is detected. Once a ship is detected then the use of any "depth charge" would be disastrous to the entire fleet.
The main function of the cloaking system is to enable some asymetrical warfare, not to generally equip entire fleets with them (although it would be a story element for role-play to do so if you wish). The cost and opportunity would not make them worth it in the long run unless you already have a huge lead in both technology and resources in which case it does not really matter how you do it.
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The need for depth charges, which are unreliable, and sonars, which are unreliable, have very significant tonnage implications against any fleet trying not to leave themselves wide open to stealth ships. If the implications weren't serious, then the capabilities of stealth ships aren't very serious either (read: impotent).
You mentions some concerns that I thought about too, such as dodging missiles. There are several ways you can deal with that. It might be that engaging the cloak will take some time or you could slightly change how missiles behave if a ship disappear. Missiles would go to the last know coordinate of the target and stay there, any missile with a depth charge warhead will detonate and if a ship is revealed it is attacked by missiles that self detect using passive or active sensors. Disable the cloak also make the cloaked ship defenceless for at least a 5 sec turn after the cloak is gone thus vulnerable to really close missiles attacking them in the next 5 sec turn with only CIWS being able to hit them.
For any significant measure of range of missile combat, that's more than enough time for a ship to get out of autodetection range of any sensibly sized re-locking onboard missile sensors, as they can't hope to be reliably trying to intercept a target that literally vanished. Considering that you'd be able to break aggro with several hundred points of warhead this way, it seems quite abusable, kinda similar to how AI fires on targets it should know are capable of escaping the edge of the firing envelope trivially. Not good.
You could also streamline it more and simply say that a ship that is spotted can be lit up by active sensors. Once you know what you are looking for it can't hide anymore. So, if a ship already is lit up by your actives would not benefit from it's cloak anymore. It would have to get out of both passive and active range before the cloak will have any effect again. This would fix the dodging missiles effect and make spotting finding them allot less micromanagement heavy using "depth charge" warheads.
Whether you're actually in range of a ship's actives is privileged information, you can only find this out based on the alien race's tech level, firing behaviors, and EM signatures. Is the stealth module just going to expose the information needlessly?
The attacking the weaker opponent is completely a moot point because smashing through the JP using regular means would still be the cheaper option in that case anyway and just attack normally with your fleet. Also consider all the research you spend on using for the cloaking system to begin with that could be used for other things.
Though... using a cloaking system could still be an option for the one who wishes to explore that path for role-play reasons... it would be a nice story element.
Consider: an NPR with cloaking technology and aggressive ramming behaviors. There is no sane reason why that race would not be abusing the cloaking tech at every moment available to them.
I really don't see many scenarios where the cloaking system would be OP. What size and cost it would be is a balance issue, but I would assume similar to the current cloaking technology perhaps. We also have to understand that Aurora is foremost a role-playing sandbox game. The AI will only do what it is programmed to do. The AI would not be programmed to flood you with cloaked ships, only use them for scouting and raiding purposes. What you as a player use it for is up to you.
You don't need to convince me to convince you to make your own game, the tools like that exist out there. You're not steve, though, so "i declare balance and design issues in suggestions unimportant" is not so relevant here.
If you want to slip past a JP with a larger fleet using cloaking devices they would not only need the cloaking device they also all need their own jump engine and they still would not be 100% to slip past, it would be very likely that at least one or more ship is detected. Once a ship is detected then the use of any "depth charge" would be disastrous to the entire fleet.
The main function of the cloaking system is to enable some asymetrical warfare, not to generally equip entire fleets with them (although it would be a story element for role-play to do so if you wish). The cost and opportunity would not make them worth it in the long run unless you already have a huge lead in both technology and resources in which case it does not really matter how you do it.
Except. They will need to get past the sensor buoys on the other side of the jump gate too. If the stealth is really strong enough to get 0 km from a target without guaranteed detection, then see the above point about ramming. If not, then necessarily shooting down things on the jump point from afar is necessarily announcing your entrance.
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The AI will only do what it is programmed to do. The AI would not be programmed to flood you with cloaked ships, only use them for scouting and raiding purposes. What you as a player use it for is up to you.
Sorry but I have to strongly disagree with this. This is not a case of "using size one missile salvo to overwhelm PD because I'm abusing the fire control mechanics". THAT is an exploit and the AI should not do it.
If what you propose is implemented the way you wrote, that using "cloacks" is the best TACTICAL and STRATEGICAL solution, then the AI should definitely do it, else it's just a very dumb AI. It is not a mechanical exploit, it's simply doing the best tactical and strategical choice.
A cloacking system does not breaks balance either if it is very ineffective, or extremely costly. Of the two, I'd prefer the extremely costly way, because that does not imply dice rolls that I may win or lose just because of luck. A costly cloacking system means my successes or failures would be the results of my planning, not blind luck.
If cloacking is cheap and effective then it's just completely out-of-wack balance wise
If it is relatively cheap, then as I wrote before I can and should build (and the AI should too!) lots of kamikaze cheap ships and flood the enemy territory with them, because they cannot prevent me from doing that!
I don't even need to do that. I can simply make cloacked ships which are faster than the enemy. They don't even need to be that cheap. Just make them faster, and flood the enemy systems with them. Once I'm through a blockade, how is the enemy going to stop me? Jump point defense is the only real defense against an enemy decently faster than me. If that becomes meaningless the only solution is to defend a few key locations with orbital defense bases. How long before that becomes untenable? How long before I control your systems, and you're relegated to staying close to your planets?
Sure, they will eventually all be hunted down, but so what? If they deal more damage than their cost, it is well worth the effort! Plus I disrupt the enemy and probably force him to mobilize his fleets, which makes him weaker in a lot of places.
A cheap and effective cloaking system completely breaks any semblance of balance. In fact, its' not asymmetrical warfare at all, it becomes the new normal. It becomes the default solution that every ship should mount, because it can be useful in so many ways both offensively and defensively that building a ship without such cloaking system is suboptimal. Not to mention the extreme tedium involved in the result of having a bazillion one-ship task forces in every system, trying to harass OR prevent harassment from the enemy
And once again, it has nothing to do with roleplay. That is that, this is this. Have you looked at the attrition rate of airplanes, tanks and infantry in either of the world wars? How many suicide or bordeline suicide operations were conducted? How many lives and equipment thrown in the meatgrinder? And even more so in an space war against aliens which may eat you or turn you into fertilizer?
In a struggle-for-survival war EVERYTHING is completely expendable. You are afforded the luxury of being concerned about losses only if you are so superior compared to your enemy that you're going to win anyway. Or if the consequences of losing are small. The best way to fight in a serious war is always the most cost effective one, and so if kamikaze ships are the best possible solution, you can bet they will be used.
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The AI will only do what it is programmed to do. The AI would not be programmed to flood you with cloaked ships, only use them for scouting and raiding purposes. What you as a player use it for is up to you.
Sorry but I have to strongly disagree with this. This is not a case of "using size one missile salvo to overwhelm PD because I'm abusing the fire control mechanics". THAT is an exploit and the AI should not do it.
If what you propose is implemented the way you wrote, that using "cloacks" is the best TACTICAL and STRATEGICAL solution, then the AI should definitely do it, else it's just a very dumb AI. It is not a mechanical exploit, it's simply doing the best tactical and strategical choice.
A cloacking system does not breaks balance either if it is very ineffective, or extremely costly. Of the two, I'd prefer the extremely costly way, because that does not imply dice rolls that I may win or lose just because of luck. A costly cloacking system means my successes or failures would be the results of my planning, not blind luck.
If cloacking is cheap and effective then it's just completely out-of-wack balance wise
If it is relatively cheap, then as I wrote before I can and should build (and the AI should too!) lots of kamikaze cheap ships and flood the enemy territory with them, because they cannot prevent me from doing that!
I don't even need to do that. I can simply make cloacked ships which are faster than the enemy. They don't even need to be that cheap. Just make them faster, and flood the enemy systems with them. Once I'm through a blockade, how is the enemy going to stop me? Jump point defense is the only real defense against an enemy decently faster than me. If that becomes meaningless the only solution is to defend a few key locations with orbital defense bases. How long before that becomes untenable? How long before I control your systems, and you're relegated to staying close to your planets?
Sure, they will eventually all be hunted down, but so what? If they deal more damage than their cost, it is well worth the effort! Plus I disrupt the enemy and probably force him to mobilize his fleets, which makes him weaker in a lot of places.
A cheap and effective cloaking system completely breaks any semblance of balance. In fact, its' not asymmetrical warfare at all, it becomes the new normal. It becomes the default solution that every ship should mount, because it can be useful in so many ways both offensively and defensively that building a ship without such cloaking system is suboptimal. Not to mention the extreme tedium involved in the result of having a bazillion one-ship task forces in every system, trying to harass OR prevent harassment from the enemy
And once again, it has nothing to do with roleplay. That is that, this is this. Have you looked at the attrition rate of airplanes, tanks and infantry in either of the world wars? How many suicide or bordeline suicide operations were conducted? How many lives and equipment thrown in the meatgrinder? And even more so in an space war against aliens which may eat you or turn you into fertilizer?
In a struggle-for-survival war EVERYTHING is completely expendable. You are afforded the luxury of being concerned about losses only if you are so superior compared to your enemy that you're going to win anyway. Or if the consequences of losing are small. The best way to fight in a serious war is always the most cost effective one, and so if kamikaze ships are the best possible solution, you can bet they will be used.
Well, the cost would not be cheap so I don't see how this is even remotely in line or an argument against having such cloaking technology in the game. My mentioning the AI is because of the fact that it is not economically viable to do what you suggest...look at what is needed for this to work... and defenses against it would be far cheaper too.
But it would be viable as a roleplay thing as you can SM all the needed tech for a faction for example... That is what I meant.
You might gain an advantage some times and sometimes not... but is that not the point about balance?
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What's the problem with the current mechanics (and changes/features added in C#) that we're trying to fix here?
It is already possible to get stealthy ships through a defended JP. Jump distance is a thing and you can get to decent amounts relatively quickly if you then use small sized self-jumping ships with thermal dampened engines and cloaking device. They might avoid notice altogether or they can be far enough that they vanish out of sensor range quickly. In contract, you can also do it the brute force way, jumping in a dozen really fast ships via bunch of squadron jumps and then have them disperse, hoping that the defenders can't catch them all until they can vanish from sensors. If they have some PD with them, it is possible to stop small missile salvos. Depending on comparative tech levels between the opponents, either (or both) approaches can range for easy to impossible.
I wouldn't want to introduce a feature that makes either approach an automatic success. Plenty of German submarines were sunk when they tried to sneak past Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, to use the most famous example.
Now, I've personally never tried either approach seriously because, honestly, there is nothing for such raiders to do aside from reconnaissance. Outside of multi-faction Sol starts, convoys almost don't exist and even when they do, they are seldom crucial - because mass drivers are a thing. As for scouting purposes, it is very much possible and both approaches work. I guess with C# allowing orbital bombardments without missiles, we could use beam armed ships to bombard unguarded colonies into dust and hope our raiders have enough MSP to cover the 1% malfunction rate but that's pretty grim and certainly not something that would go with every game play style.
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What's the problem with the current mechanics (and changes/features added in C#) that we're trying to fix here?
It is already possible to get stealthy ships through a defended JP. Jump distance is a thing and you can get to decent amounts relatively quickly if you then use small sized self-jumping ships with thermal dampened engines and cloaking device. They might avoid notice altogether or they can be far enough that they vanish out of sensor range quickly. In contract, you can also do it the brute force way, jumping in a dozen really fast ships via bunch of squadron jumps and then have them disperse, hoping that the defenders can't catch them all until they can vanish from sensors. If they have some PD with them, it is possible to stop small missile salvos. Depending on comparative tech levels between the opponents, either (or both) approaches can range for easy to impossible.
I wouldn't want to introduce a feature that makes either approach an automatic success. Plenty of German submarines were sunk when they tried to sneak past Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, to use the most famous example.
Now, I've personally never tried either approach seriously because, honestly, there is nothing for such raiders to do aside from reconnaissance. Outside of multi-faction Sol starts, convoys almost don't exist and even when they do, they are seldom crucial - because mass drivers are a thing. As for scouting purposes, it is very much possible and both approaches work. I guess with C# allowing orbital bombardments without missiles, we could use beam armed ships to bombard unguarded colonies into dust and hope our raiders have enough MSP to cover the 1% malfunction rate but that's pretty grim and certainly not something that would go with every game play style.
I never said it would be automatic (at least not in its current iteration). The idea here was to come up with a sustainable idea of an asymmetric warfare model that is better than what we currently have. One of the biggest problem with the current model is that you can reasonably get in but not out, more or less so it basically become a suicide mission.
Now.. against the AI it might not be a huge issue as it is not the best at defending JP all that much, but not everyone play only against the AI all the time.
I know that Steve have said he might like some sort of submarine or cloaking mechanic, I also know he has toyed with the first idea that I suggested as well. So this thread is about discussing that.
I don't think it is useful to just dismiss either idea just becasue one like the status quoe of JP defense is king and always will be, there are nothing that say that things could not change and new mechanics added for an even greater experience.
I get that some people are entrenched in the idea that it is boring with raiding enemies the likes if U-Boats or that ships potentially could bypass jump points. I know that Steve had som pretty interesting ideas in his Aurora II project of ships able to travel without jump gates. I actually think you could have both systems in a game and make it work if you are creative enough. But currently I'm more interesting in the U-Boat idea as it it quite interesting from a story perspective.
There is nothing particular wrong with how Aurora work right now and I never said so, but the current version don't have U-Boat like warfare or a very good system for something like it.
I do agree that such a system should not make JP defence obsolete, I don't want that. But I don't agree with some of the comment it can't be done as the cost of drawbacks from what has been suggested is huge, both from a logistical, industrial and research perspective. The benefit of Stealth scouting should be powerful when you consider the costs involved. Building a substantial fleet of cloaked ship would be very costly if compared with a conventional fleet, I don't think it would be viable if you had two powers of equal opportunity opposing each other, even if one side could cause some mayhem at the beginning of a war the other would likely win through conventional means in the end.
The feeling I get from some of the answers are mostly one of emotion and not rational. I respect if some people don't want to deal with raiders in their backwater or that they don't want to deal with a defence in depth system.
The cloaking system that I suggested so far could be defeated with a good enough cover of DSTS and patrol ships in important systems. You might need to put some research into anti-cloak technology but I don't think that would pose a huge issue.
I'm pretty sure there are those that would like to deal with a U-Boat like strategic warfare in addition to what Aurora offer today.
If you are just categorically against asymmetric warfare I respect that but I don't agree with that notion.
I think the discussion is better to keep in the direction of what to do to get that feeling IF Steve would find anything remotely like that to be interesting in the future.
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The need for depth charges, which are unreliable, and sonars, which are unreliable, have very significant tonnage implications against any fleet trying not to leave themselves wide open to stealth ships. If the implications weren't serious, then the capabilities of stealth ships aren't very serious either (read: impotent).You mentions some concerns that I thought about too, such as dodging missiles. There are several ways you can deal with that. It might be that engaging the cloak will take some time or you could slightly change how missiles behave if a ship disappear. Missiles would go to the last know coordinate of the target and stay there, any missile with a depth charge warhead will detonate and if a ship is revealed it is attacked by missiles that self detect using passive or active sensors. Disable the cloak also make the cloaked ship defenceless for at least a 5 sec turn after the cloak is gone thus vulnerable to really close missiles attacking them in the next 5 sec turn with only CIWS being able to hit them.
For any significant measure of range of missile combat, that's more than enough time for a ship to get out of autodetection range of any sensibly sized re-locking onboard missile sensors, as they can't hope to be reliably trying to intercept a target that literally vanished. Considering that you'd be able to break aggro with several hundred points of warhead this way, it seems quite abusable, kinda similar to how AI fires on targets it should know are capable of escaping the edge of the firing envelope trivially. Not good.
You could also streamline it more and simply say that a ship that is spotted can be lit up by active sensors. Once you know what you are looking for it can't hide anymore. So, if a ship already is lit up by your actives would not benefit from it's cloak anymore. It would have to get out of both passive and active range before the cloak will have any effect again. This would fix the dodging missiles effect and make spotting finding them allot less micromanagement heavy using "depth charge" warheads.
Whether you're actually in range of a ship's actives is privileged information, you can only find this out based on the alien race's tech level, firing behaviors, and EM signatures. Is the stealth module just going to expose the information needlessly?
The attacking the weaker opponent is completely a moot point because smashing through the JP using regular means would still be the cheaper option in that case anyway and just attack normally with your fleet. Also consider all the research you spend on using for the cloaking system to begin with that could be used for other things.
Though... using a cloaking system could still be an option for the one who wishes to explore that path for role-play reasons... it would be a nice story element.
Consider: an NPR with cloaking technology and aggressive ramming behaviors. There is no sane reason why that race would not be abusing the cloaking tech at every moment available to them.
I really don't see many scenarios where the cloaking system would be OP. What size and cost it would be is a balance issue, but I would assume similar to the current cloaking technology perhaps. We also have to understand that Aurora is foremost a role-playing sandbox game. The AI will only do what it is programmed to do. The AI would not be programmed to flood you with cloaked ships, only use them for scouting and raiding purposes. What you as a player use it for is up to you.
You don't need to convince me to convince you to make your own game, the tools like that exist out there. You're not steve, though, so "i declare balance and design issues in suggestions unimportant" is not so relevant here.
If you want to slip past a JP with a larger fleet using cloaking devices they would not only need the cloaking device they also all need their own jump engine and they still would not be 100% to slip past, it would be very likely that at least one or more ship is detected. Once a ship is detected then the use of any "depth charge" would be disastrous to the entire fleet.
The main function of the cloaking system is to enable some asymetrical warfare, not to generally equip entire fleets with them (although it would be a story element for role-play to do so if you wish). The cost and opportunity would not make them worth it in the long run unless you already have a huge lead in both technology and resources in which case it does not really matter how you do it.
Except. They will need to get past the sensor buoys on the other side of the jump gate too. If the stealth is really strong enough to get 0 km from a target without guaranteed detection, then see the above point about ramming. If not, then necessarily shooting down things on the jump point from afar is necessarily announcing your entrance.
Some answers to your questions...
Let's assume that sonar is a module much like ECM or ECCM at roughly 250t that simply increase the chance of you finding a ship using your passive sensors. It would be a very minor tonnage requirement from a cloaking ship that would need both the cloak perhaps 10-25% of the ship total hull space and jump engine which also is about 10-25% of the ships hull space. If you also would like to add stealth hull it is another 10-25% hull space requirement. Heat reduction of the engine would be another big cost, especially if you also want a fast ship.
As you can see... it would take quite some tech research and resources to make these ships viable as main warships in any effective capacity. They would at best be diversions... perhaps they can be used to attack poorly defended support ships and other weaker targets.
Cloaked ships will mainly be scouts at low level and raiders at intermediary level and potential warship at very late game technology. Stealth scouting can be quite potent as information is key to any successful campaign but there is no certainly that it will be worth it, the same goes for raiding ships in this context. It could be worth it, but it might not... you don't know all the variables in each individual scenario.
I gave you an example that once detected it stay detected until you manage to get out of their active or passive sensor envelope. And to answer your question if you know... then I say that you don't... you don't know if the enemy actually see you through the cloak or not... you will have to gauge that based on their reaction to your movements... but they could trick you of coerce.. ;)
So this would work exactly the same as for any other sensor mechanic.
About an NPR with ramming behaviour and cloaking... then I say YES... that would be super cool feature. I would become paranoid as hell trying to deal with that. Super fun in my opinion... There could be some specific rules for how this would work specifically for NPR that could or would do that.
About role-play and balance or game features in general then Steve have said many times that fun beats perfect balance when it comes to Aurora. He have many times said that in SP some mechanics can be broken in fringe cases and you don't have to do them as the AI never do them. That is not me saying that... he specifically said that.
That does not mean that he nor me is not interested in balance because I know that he is, very much so. He might just no care in some situations and in some specific cases.
As I said I would not want to make cloaking a 100% sure thing, but it should be viable to slip ships past most JP defences unnoticed unless they have really good anti-cloaking spotting technology, then it might become difficult but not impossible. Ships then needs to survive inside enemy territory, perhaps several JP to get to a where they need to get and come back again.
The cost and efficiency of these ships should such that producing them to the point that you can use them as a main fleet should be the extreme and not the norm but not impossible given enough of a technological and industrial advantage. But such advantage would have yielded the same or perhaps even greater advantage with a regular conventional fleet but it would not have to be a given.
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How exactly do you think the tonnage of this fleet is to be restricted to make it "small scale"?
If it costs the same in tech & resources to build one stealthy light cruiser 'submarine' as it does to build one superdreadnought battleship, you're probably going to assualt that jump point with dozen Yamatos rather than a dozen U-boats.
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Updated list of cloaking systems...
1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
. . .
6. Active sensor can never spot cloaked ships.
I don't think we need point 1 if we have point 6. A ship can 'disappear' from EM passives if it stops radiating, and from most thermal passives if it drops to speed 1. From my point of view, this gives us the bonus that being stealthy naturally makes a ship slow -- because it chooses to be slow.
With this set up, I think a U-boat would look like:
-- a small(ish) ship, to aid long-term hiding from actives (when not actively cloaked)
-- with current TCS-reduction tech (assuming Aurora retains that)
-- with thermal reduction tech (so it's less painfully slow when hiding)
-- with a small and reduced-power active sensor / fire control (for killing commercial ships up close)
-- probably with sensor-equipped missiles for waypoint firing
-- with a self-jump-only jump engine
-- probably with CIWS for PD
-- with pretty good passive sensors of its own so it can find out what the heck is happening in the system
-- and that most commonly hunts traffic via their transponders, thus 99% commercial vessels
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Updated list of cloaking systems...
1. The cloak will make the ship almost undetectable by passive sensors but there could be a small chance of enemy passive sensor to randomly detect the ship if it otherwise could. This chance would then depend on the difference in technology level of the competing factions knowledge of cloaking devices.
. . .
6. Active sensor can never spot cloaked ships.
I don't think we need point 1 if we have point 6. A ship can 'disappear' from EM passives if it stops radiating, and from most thermal passives if it drops to speed 1. From my point of view, this gives us the bonus that being stealthy naturally makes a ship slow -- because it chooses to be slow.
With this set up, I think a U-boat would look like:
-- a small(ish) ship, to aid long-term hiding from actives (when not actively cloaked)
-- with current TCS-reduction tech (assuming Aurora retains that)
-- with thermal reduction tech (so it's less painfully slow when hiding)
-- with a small and reduced-power active sensor / fire control (for killing commercial ships up close)
-- probably with sensor-equipped missiles for waypoint firing
-- with a self-jump-only jump engine
-- probably with CIWS for PD
-- with pretty good passive sensors of its own so it can find out what the heck is happening in the system
-- and that most commonly hunts traffic via their transponders, thus 99% commercial vessels
Yes, that is roughly the idea behind what I think they could look like.
These ships will need to have decently good engines (both range and speed), good sensors especially passives. They would also like to have stealth hulls too if possible but now we are talking about huge amount of research going into this... ;)
I mainly imagine that someone would generally develop these if they have some technological superiority, or as a surprise against an otherwise equal enemy.
In anyway... your idea with the passive and speed is rather sound... keeping thermal low will of course force you to move slow so might be good in and of itself.
I still think that the cloaking would need "sonar" to pick them up together with passive sensors. One of the reasons of course is that we want these U-Boats to have a chance to silently slip past a JP.
The problem that I see is to make the detection system balanced in allowing them to slip past JP defended points at both directions without being too hard to find otherwise with the cloak on.
One way would be for ships to completely mask their heat signature for a very short period to become practically invisible, should then be part of the reduced heat engine technology. But this then would need to have some sort of cost and be a very limited ability. It could allow a ship to run at say 10% of it's speed for zero heat radiation for a short period of time. But now things become a bit complicated and I don't like that.
To be honest I don't have a good solution for this problem that is easy to understand and play with. I'm open to ideas...
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I have to agree with the people that say the game as it is in (6.10 at least) allows for solo jump stealthy ships that can via heat shrouded engines and reduced velocity escape detection without introducing anything new tech wise. The NCN concluded that the cost of developing a useful (for the ship they wanted to install it on) cloak was too high for the moment and the research effort was better spent elsewhere...but with enough beating down of the minimum size and increasing the effectiveness of a cloak plus with a really long range jump engine and some luck you can get ships in...out is a different question but in for sure.
But why? I mean this is the point where I hit a problem. I have loads of experience from starfire...my empires routinely patrol their space, no colonized world doesn't have a DSB-Xr sensor network by the time it gets to small population. Starslayer does much the same thing. The risk of a sudden intrusion via closed WP is just too high. In Aurora the NCN has defense bases on each colony, most times a brigade of light infantry, and all jump points have a sensor/comm beacon on them. I have always had in my head plans to give colonies more defenses in the sense of anti-ship missile bases and more patrolling. Those two I have no real need for and are micromanagement intensive but the patrol force exists to a degree and is being strengthened which is why implementation has been slow on my part.
So lets look at what the raiders could do... Outside of providing real time data on the enemy they can do the following (and maybe more the more creative you are): attack infrastructure (terraforming ships, fuel harvesters, yards, etc), attack civilian shipping, attack colony ships, attack resource carriers, engage military convoys and lastly attack colonies. The trouble with this is that again assuming you are talking a limited number of raiders these sorts of things come down to: "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."
First the system you jumped into is a border system so it has defenses and a mobile force which would respond to this sort of attack plus most targets would be to some extent hardened. The systems behind this one...the first time you jump in your raiders would likely be soft targets. The NCA have a brigade of light infantry on all colonies so I'm dubious you could easily do a raid with troops...without using missiles to bombard them....and a lot of more developed colonies have fairly substantial point defense capacity so that bombardment would not be so easy. Same same for just general bombardment...and for those without atmospheres....lets just say closing to beam range would be a bad plan. At any rate attacks on colonies are going to depend on what the other person has for protection and it is a safe bet they will have something.
Attacks on infrastructure well this will work and work well the first raid. Losing harvester ships and terraformers are annoying as all hell. Worse so for people who don't build them on hulls but use some sorta tug to get them there. But basically only the first time...after that they will be hardened...and if that isn't sufficient, then by the time after that forget it.
Attacks on colonization convoys would be hurtsome...as that is a lot of time investment in the stuff they are transporting but again only the first time as after that they will gain an escort.
Attacks on resource convoys are also annoying but given the usual stockpiles I doubt the loss of one or more resource carrying ships in a limited number of systems would be a significant impact on production. I use ships more often than mass drivers to move things around...so yeah the NCN has raidable resource ships but again once and once only.
Attacks on civilian shipping firm ships would be more than possible and virtually impossible to defend against as you can never know exactly where they are going but the can at least be avenged by a patrol force.
Attacks on military convoys....this is dubious to be successful. I can't think of any military ship I have that isn't armed except the very smallest support ship which would rarely if ever be by itself. So what a few lightly armed ships could accomplish I say is pretty much minimal.
So basically what this causes is an increase in lighter hulls useful for patrol purposes. It also increases micromanagement requirements...in starfire I automate a lot of this but that has its own drawbacks as you tend to forget what you have done and can also forget to keep it updated. Just because it is a bloodly lot of work that is mostly not very fun.
The thing is raiding isn't bringing the raider anything, it is costing the raided empire something the first time then it costs them again when they have to harden things and it costs the player micromanagement to keep the hardening working and up to date. But the raider gains nothing from the risk they are taking...this was also true of Uboats in WW2 but they were going for the strategic goal of cutting off the UKs supply lines...here I see no obviously similar strategic goal in general...baring a critical resource production centre being located in raidable range.
So yeah...a good idea in theory and works like spit in practice? I'm likely being too harsh. I know players in starfire who left behind raiders if they were forced out of a system to harass the advancing enemy supply lines so the concept has a valid use there even in Aurora...or more likely better there in aurora than starfire. But unless you can get a lot of raiders into the enemies space and unless they are capable of somewhat serious combat even killing a fuel harvester group of 3 would likely drain their magazines...and fuel would ultimately be the limitation to maintaining a large raiding force in the enemy territory.
Honestly raiding an advancing enemies supply lines seems far more a viable useful use of ships of this nature than any degree of basically infrastructure destruction...which largely comes down to annoying the other player once. Unless you count the whole "divert construction into frigates" as valuable.
I would just avoid introducing technologies that have "game breaker" written all over them...especially for something that so far as I can see is hardly overwhelming in its obvious utility as proposed but the whole "unclassified titan scale warship drops its cloak next to your homeworld" is rather a different kettle of fish. I do agree that from a story perspective such raiding is interesting...as it unlocks the whole "root for the underdog" theme but yeah...I am just unconvinced it is worth it in game terms.
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I have to agree with the people that say the game as it is in (6.10 at least) allows for solo jump stealthy ships that can via heat shrouded engines and reduced velocity escape detection without introducing anything new tech wise. The NCN concluded that the cost of developing a useful (for the ship they wanted to install it on) cloak was too high for the moment and the research effort was better spent elsewhere...but with enough beating down of the minimum size and increasing the effectiveness of a cloak plus with a really long range jump engine and some luck you can get ships in...out is a different question but in for sure.
But why? I mean this is the point where I hit a problem. I have loads of experience from starfire...my empires routinely patrol their space, no colonized world doesn't have a DSB-Xr sensor network by the time it gets to small population. Starslayer does much the same thing. The risk of a sudden intrusion via closed WP is just too high. In Aurora the NCN has defense bases on each colony, most times a brigade of light infantry, and all jump points have a sensor/comm beacon on them. I have always had in my head plans to give colonies more defenses in the sense of anti-ship missile bases and more patrolling. Those two I have no real need for and are micromanagement intensive but the patrol force exists to a degree and is being strengthened which is why implementation has been slow on my part.
So lets look at what the raiders could do... Outside of providing real time data on the enemy they can do the following (and maybe more the more creative you are): attack infrastructure (terraforming ships, fuel harvesters, yards, etc), attack civilian shipping, attack colony ships, attack resource carriers, engage military convoys and lastly attack colonies. The trouble with this is that again assuming you are talking a limited number of raiders these sorts of things come down to: "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."
First the system you jumped into is a border system so it has defenses and a mobile force which would respond to this sort of attack plus most targets would be to some extent hardened. The systems behind this one...the first time you jump in your raiders would likely be soft targets. The NCA have a brigade of light infantry on all colonies so I'm dubious you could easily do a raid with troops...without using missiles to bombard them....and a lot of more developed colonies have fairly substantial point defense capacity so that bombardment would not be so easy. Same same for just general bombardment...and for those without atmospheres....lets just say closing to beam range would be a bad plan. At any rate attacks on colonies are going to depend on what the other person has for protection and it is a safe bet they will have something.
Attacks on infrastructure well this will work and work well the first raid. Losing harvester ships and terraformers are annoying as all hell. Worse so for people who don't build them on hulls but use some sorta tug to get them there. But basically only the first time...after that they will be hardened...and if that isn't sufficient, then by the time after that forget it.
Attacks on colonization convoys would be hurtsome...as that is a lot of time investment in the stuff they are transporting but again only the first time as after that they will gain an escort.
Attacks on resource convoys are also annoying but given the usual stockpiles I doubt the loss of one or more resource carrying ships in a limited number of systems would be a significant impact on production. I use ships more often than mass drivers to move things around...so yeah the NCN has raidable resource ships but again once and once only.
Attacks on civilian shipping firm ships would be more than possible and virtually impossible to defend against as you can never know exactly where they are going but the can at least be avenged by a patrol force.
Attacks on military convoys....this is dubious to be successful. I can't think of any military ship I have that isn't armed except the very smallest support ship which would rarely if ever be by itself. So what a few lightly armed ships could accomplish I say is pretty much minimal.
So basically what this causes is an increase in lighter hulls useful for patrol purposes. It also increases micromanagement requirements...in starfire I automate a lot of this but that has its own drawbacks as you tend to forget what you have done and can also forget to keep it updated. Just because it is a bloodly lot of work that is mostly not very fun.
The thing is raiding isn't bringing the raider anything, it is costing the raided empire something the first time then it costs them again when they have to harden things and it costs the player micromanagement to keep the hardening working and up to date. But the raider gains nothing from the risk they are taking...this was also true of Uboats in WW2 but they were going for the strategic goal of cutting off the UKs supply lines...here I see no obviously similar strategic goal in general...baring a critical resource production centre being located in raidable range.
So yeah...a good idea in theory and works like spit in practice? I'm likely being too harsh. I know players in starfire who left behind raiders if they were forced out of a system to harass the advancing enemy supply lines so the concept has a valid use there even in Aurora...or more likely better there in aurora than starfire. But unless you can get a lot of raiders into the enemies space and unless they are capable of somewhat serious combat even killing a fuel harvester group of 3 would likely drain their magazines...and fuel would ultimately be the limitation to maintaining a large raiding force in the enemy territory.
Honestly raiding an advancing enemies supply lines seems far more a viable useful use of ships of this nature than any degree of basically infrastructure destruction...which largely comes down to annoying the other player once. Unless you count the whole "divert construction into frigates" as valuable.
I would just avoid introducing technologies that have "game breaker" written all over them...especially for something that so far as I can see is hardly overwhelming in its obvious utility as proposed but the whole "unclassified titan scale warship drops its cloak next to your homeworld" is rather a different kettle of fish. I do agree that from a story perspective such raiding is interesting...as it unlocks the whole "root for the underdog" theme but yeah...I am just unconvinced it is worth it in game terms.
Seems like some valid criticism of the value but I do think there are a few more things to consider in Aurora that could make them allot more effective.
You could have pretty long range raiders and if they can penetrate rather deep inside an enemy territory they could do allot of damage. They also could potentially hit places such as fuel harvesters, refuelling stations and things like that to disrupt military operations. Obviously if would have a consequence of the enemy responding to these threats but that is just the nature of war so no surprises there.
I'm not super worried about micromanagement as most patrol and things like that can be automated in Aurora so it is just a matter of setting them up.
I do know that some people don't like anything but large naval battles and to keep things simple, but I really enjoy to have to think more long term, plan for any eventuality and have the little things actually matter. I'm also sure I'm not entirely alone in feeling this is interesting.
What you describe as boring micromanagement I see more as realistic considerations and would make societies to focus on things a bit more realistic, and I find these things interesting and fun. So things are relative...
For example... Steve have implemented a rule where population need a certain number of PPV in system or they become unhappy... this is a reflection of what this system instead would simulate. If mining facilities, fuel harvesters or civilian chips gets attacked, destroyed and/or boarded by enemies then it should negatively effect population morale and thus you need to have the patrol forces there naturally instead of artificially.
I always find it odd that I need military patrols in my empire when I have no enemies and pirates are not really realistic at most stages either, at least not in all fictions that we dream up.
And as I have said now many times... it is certainly possible albeit very risky to get in to a system... getting out is nearly impossible with even a modest JP garrison.
The cloaking system should be a way for these types of ships to have a decent chance to evade and keep hidden and sneak up on enemy installation to examine them and the slip away again.
I also envision must raiders to be carrying beam weapons or even smaller beam fighters to do most of the combat work against civilian shipping and installations. Missiles would not be all that useful for long time deployment missions. Sure you could have cloaked resupply ships as well.
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I clearly was not making my point well. I don't consider it dreary micromanagement, I think it is important and was pretty much the first person in our starfire group to do full scale patrolling of my space. It is something you should do. My point is that it becomes dreary micromanagement fairly fast...as you can't automate patrols except those that are one continuous loop Goto A, Goto B, GotoC, GotoA. Which is what starfire assistant does...but starfire doesn't have fuel, maintenance supplies, maintenance clocks and so on. So watching over 6 or so patrol groups will rapidly cease to be "fun" at least for me. This is the reason people who do this sort of stuff for a living have staff officers (baring nutters like everyones favorite short Austrian corporal most supreme leaders don't care about things like that!). Plus that is still not ideal as you expand and your patrols are set up one way...or hell you forget what you have patrolled and what not and so on. To be clear the NCNs re-organization has a lot to do with breaking the fleet into a sol defense force, a patrol force and a combat force...and the patrol force would be four destroyer squadrons initially. My main problem is lack of maintenance facilities and fleet bases and such.
It is a reason to have a tool to set things up that is for sure.
My main objection is that military utility of what you can accomplish with a small number of raiders is pretty much zero...except for real time intel. And the number of such raids you can accomplish is about 1 since no one is going to not do "something" about the raiders. And even in raid 1 once they are discovered...they will be hunted down and destroyed. I fail to understand how you could convince crews to do this unless their homeworld was under threat of saturation bombardment. Ultimately fuel defines how long they can stay operational as they pretty much have to be constantly on the move so even if you have unlimited ammo for you beam weapons (and here I would definitely not allow this for mass drivers) then still at some stage the fuel bunkers have only fumes in them.
As for fleet sizes I am the first to say that above a certain number of ships battles stop to be fun in starfire. I learned this from experience...between 6 and 20-30 ships they are fun after that they are pretty much not. The 6 is a limit in starfire due to the lack of detail of the ships which makes a few ships against a few ships not so much fun (where as in Starfleet battles they are). I don't object to it because it is small numbers of ships in the fight. Though I will point out that slaughtering ships that can't fight back is about as fun as watching paint dry...and that is what engaging soft infrastructure targets would be...gankers in Eve love this sorta crap I don't understand the appeal. heck starslayer and I are running into the limit with small craft/fighter/gunboats as well at some point they start getting into bookkeeping hell.
I really don't think the idea is a bad one...I just don't see how it translates to a game well. Outside of some sort of scenario in something like the stars at war....there it would be fun and interesting.
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I hear you... ;)
I do agree that you do NOT want necessarily repeated micro for the sake of having them. But I don't think the solution to that is to give up but to the add the necessary support to fix that.
I do not agree that using raiding techniques would necessarily be a net loss as the pure threat of it will impact the way you conduct a campaign and even how you design your ships. How you defend trailing support forces, defend fuel and supply outposts and patrol core system from possible incursions. I also would like to stress that it is not all about raiding. Scouting is probably an even greater part of it and stealth strikes can be a third.
It will give more of a feeling of uncertainty and not all focus on just pure combat, it will change the character of conflicts in general.
I have played in a few multi-faction campaigns where factions quite often had forces in the same system and combat was allot more fluid than what you experience in a regular standard Aurora campaign, the need to patrol and have security forces and military bases scattered all over the place give the game a whole new character. I'm not directly after that, but the pure threat of enemy military vessels deep into your territory will impact more than just sending ships on patrol.
If you also tie it into population reaction of home territory being compromised thing cold be interesting from another perspective.
In my opinion having the option of cloaking ships might actually become sort of multiplier effect when handled correctly.
In general I do think that Aurora already have the tools needed for most patrol orders you need. You can have patrols move about and stop to refuel/resupply and wait for crew to rest properly. It also will be allot easier to sprinkle about maintenance facilities in C# to keep ships maintained even at smaller military bases. This means that a ship that stay in port to rest the crew will not have their maintenance clock run.
As you also can save patrol orders it is quite easy to take a ship off patrol and have them make some overhaul and then add that patrol order back to the ship.
So... a small patrol ship with a deployment time of say 15 days could be out on actual patrol about 10 days, then refuel and rest for 5 days. If it also have a maintenance cycle of say 2-3 years it probably could operate for about 5 years like this before it needs its first major overhaul. You generally would need two to three ships on on same patrol order to have ships constantly paroling the area, obviously depending on the area patrolled.
I also gave some other options earlier in the thread such as being able to assign a system as convoy zone for commercial ships and assigning escort ships to the commercial AI. The AI would then pool all transport ships with some escort for all travelling in the system. This could be set up using some AI logic.
The other thing probably also is that they will not need to be actively patrolled all the time. You will only set up patrols as you see that you need them.
I certainly don't think that the lack of automation tools is a good argument for not including it... I think the tools should be added if they are absent. I also think that Aurora will have most of the tools needed as is, but might need some additional tools to round it out. The new organisational view and use of ships certainly will help with organising fleets and patrols without going insane. ;)