Damage Suggestion - Fixing missiles

[Rabid_Cog (OP)]

Problem(s):
1-Missiles are both overpowered and very min-max-able, energy weapons cannot serve any role but that of the pistol in your boot while you are toting an assault rifle (missiles).
2-Non-square damage numbers are suboptimal for warheads.
3-Despite the engine efficiency bonus given to larger engines, smaller missile remain superior due to their much higher rate of fire and greater difficulty in shooting down.
4-Ships can too easily be designed with massive amounts of armour layers (20+) which make such a ship extremely difficult to destroy.

Discussion:
(1) is not necessarily a problem. The same way that big gun battleships are no longer feasable for naval dominance due to the development of aircraft carriers, the same could be the case for missile ships since these work exactly the same way, they just cut out the middle man (the aircraft). Missiles, of course, have their own weakness in the sense of limited ordinance and ability to be intercepted, but they remain your primary striking arm regardless.

(2) is a problem in the sense that it vastly restricts variety in missile designs. In addition, the 'jumps' between optimal warhead sizes get bigger and bigger as you scale up, exacerbating problem (3). Of course, this is barely noticed, because this problem is completely eclipsed by (3).

(3) is the main problem with missiles. The pros of splitting your missile into as many missiles as you can that each deal 1 damage far outweigh the benefits of leaving your missile as a large monster. Not least of these advantages is greater difficulty in interception and the more rapid rate of fire. It has been argued that the optimal warhead size of a missile is 4, especially at higher tech levels, but that only illustrates the problem. Notice that absolutely nobody builds missiles with warheads of size 81 except for rp reasons.

(4) is not really a problem at present. The main reason being, of course, is because it serves as the only counter to massive numbers of small missiles. Yet that is not optimal as this once again restricts variety. There is very little else you can do to prevent 'sandblasting' and for this very reason it cannot be done away with. Not only is it unrealistic, but NPR's never do the same, leaving them at a significant disadvantage.

Solution:
Bear with me, this is where I seem confusing.
-> Armour becomes (partially) ablative. When damage is done to a ship, the equivalent number of armour boxes aren't immediately destroyed. Instead, the damage is added to a 'damage counter', let's call it 'dmg#'. For each armour box that would be destroyed normally, a check is made. A random number is generated between 0 and 1. If that number is higher than dmg#/(1+dmg#), the armour is not destroyed. If it is lower, the armour is destroyed and the next armour box is checked. Regardless of the outcome, dmg# is reduced by 1. If the armour box is not destroyed, the same armour box must be checked again on the next step.

What the hell?
The effects would be the following (math incoming):
AMMs (size 1 wh) would have a 50% chance of destroying an armour box and thus do 0.5 damage effectively (0.5/wh).
Double size AMMs (size 2 wh) would have an expected damage of 1.16 (0.66 + 0.5). (0.58/wh)
Size 4 wh missile would have an expected damage of 2.71 (0.8 + 0.75 + 0.66 + 0.5). (0.6775/wh)

Note: I've tried posting this in the suggestions thread, but it immediately became spammed back several pages by people who feel terraforming needs to be fixed.

[Rabid_Cog (OP)]

Forgot to add the nerf to armour that would have to accompany this nerf in damage.

Each additional layer of armour beyond one would have a multiplier to its weight, say 1.05
So suppose a layer of armour weighs 1 HS. Then a ship with 4 layers would spend 1+1.05+(1.05)^2+(1.05)^3 = 4.310125 hs on armour. Very gentle on lower numbers, becomes quite harsh with high amounts of armour.

[Conscript Gary]

So, giving each cell of armor a non-1 HTK value?
Interesting idea

[alex_brunius]

I would also like to see some mechanic where armor can shrug low damage shots entirely (1-4 damage range). For one it would be great to balance smaller missiles.

The odds of it happening though could depend on a few other factors like:

¤ Total thickness (10 levels thick has a much higher chance then 2 levels)
¤ Armor density (tech level)
¤ Relative angular speed at impact (probably to complex to simulate)


It would also be fun to see some additional detail flavor, like choosing either "reflective armor" (better against laser type damage) or "reactive armor" (better against fragmentation type damage). Could include different technology lines too. It feels wrong to have so many different kinds of weapons, but so few kinds of defenses.

[Conscript Gary]

I don't think the number of layers should increase the HTK. Either have your armor tech increase it, or maybe have it as a textbox option similar to deployment time, with increased armor strength increasing tonnage/cell.
Damage would have to be iterated layer-by-layer to avoid pockets, but it would still buff non-square warhead strengths and larger warheads in general, if every bit of the damage template hits with or as a function of the total warhead strength.

[sublight]

Missiles as a tactically superior weapon is not a problem. As I understand it, Aurora is less about being a 'balanced' game, and more about presenting a variety of options and seeing what viable tactics emerge.

Massive layers of armor is not a problem. In fact, that is one of the few viable anti-missile tactics. Beam weapons, with unlimited ammunition, will eat through it eventually. Also, the ultimate armor-counter, mesons, are already in the game.


I'll concede that sweat-spot warheads and the issues of smaller missiles being generally better is problematic, but for that a simpler solution presents itself: just ask Steve to bring his Newtonian missile damage/armor model down to Aurora.

In the Newtonian model higher armor techs give higher HTK values for armor boxes instead of making the armor thinner. The missile damage template for armor destroyed is dependent on both the warhead strength and the armor HTK value. This does the following:

(+) Any missile that does less than a single armor HTK box is shrugged off with no effect. Hasta la vista anti-missile ablation.
(+) Every different armor tech level has a different sweat spot. Good-buy one-damage fits-all.
(-) Armor-overhead on fighters can't be reduced by tech. Good thing the new engines make larger fighters viable.
(-) Guass cannons are out of luck, unless we round the armor damage by beam weapons up.


The only other thing that bugs me is the way reload-time scales. Even if the damage is balanced across different sizes in a salvo, smaller will still be much better when size-3 is fired twice as fast as size-6. Maybe if reload time was proportional to the square root of size with a higher base-rate?

[Steve Walmsley]

Missiles are very good tactically but they are weak strategically. If you play any long campaigns against substantial enemies, you are going to need beam ships.

Even if missiles are overpowered tactically, that doesn't necessarily means you have to correct it. In modern naval warfare, which is the basis for Aurora, missiles are the primary weapon, although there are many different types, just as in Aurora. They are backed up by guns and point defence systems, as well as shorter-range anti-missiles. A hundred years ago, large calibre rifled guns were the primary weapon. A hundred years before that it was large cannon broadsides. There is always going to be a primary type of long-range weapon.

Armour already requires extra weight per layer, as each extra layer uses a surface area measurement for the ship that includes the previous layer.

I have been considering a different way of dealing with the small vs large warhead question. It's possible ships could suffer shock damage, which would result in a chance of a system being damaged without the armour being penetrated. The chance of shock damage would increase with larger warheads, with the increase being greater than just linear. Another potential change is to increase warhead strengths but have missiles detonating some distance from the target. Only a percentage of damage would be applied. This would remove the advantage of having missiles of certain warhead sizes. Proximity of detonation could be a tech line, with better proximity detection resulting in a higher percentage of damage.

Steve

[Omnivore]

Even if missiles are overpowered tactically, that doesn't necessarily means you have to correct it. In modern naval warfare, which is the basis for Aurora, missiles are the primary weapon, although there are many different types, just as in Aurora.

Modern naval missiles do not get a free 0 mass guidance package.  If missiles with a range greater than 1.5mkm (ASM rather than AMM) missiles required a guidance package component, even one with small mass, the situation would get much more interesting.

[Steve Walmsley]

Modern naval missiles do not get a free 0 mass guidance package.  If missiles with a range greater than 1.5mkm (ASM rather than AMM) missiles required a guidance package component, even one with small mass, the situation would get much more interesting.

I have considered it and I did add something similar to Newtonian Aurora. However, even a 1 MSP missile is 2.5 tons so I didn't think a guidance package could be large enough to make much difference (perhaps 250 kg which is 0.1 HS). In NA its different because a size 1 missile is only 1 ton so it does make a difference.

Steve

[Omnivore]

However, even a 1 MSP missile is 2.5 tons so I didn't think a guidance package could be large enough to make much difference (perhaps 250 kg which is 0.1 HS).

The size of the transluminal receiver portion of a missile guidance package is entirely at your discretion as author  

You can make it as small or as large as you want and no one can argue with it.  You could make it as large as necessary to spoil the 'small missile is best' equation and still avoid penalizing AMM design by reducing (or eliminating) the requirement with a max range limitation of 1.5 mkm or so.

[sloanjh]

Steve:  If you go down the road of trying to adjust the balance in favor of big missiles, I think you should "fix" the armor tech for missiles too, so that higher armor tech ratings requires less mass for a certain level of missile armor (assuming you didn't already do this for 6.x).  I think the major effect that favors small missiles over large is that (without armor) anti-missile fire is N times more effective (in terms of damage attrition) against M size-N missiles than against N*M size-1 missile.  Missile armor changes this effect - the performance impact of level-1 armor is much lower on a big missile than on a small missile.

I think that means that people will need to armor their missiles in order to take advantage of any large-missile benefits you put it; this means that the incongruity of requiring the same armor mass at armor tech level 1 as at level 5 will become more aggravating to players.

John

[Falcon]

The solution could also be in changing how CIWS works.  Since it's supposed to be a 'last ditch' system, why not have it only partially prevent damage to the ship.  Instead of destroying the missile, it could also just detonate it just before a skin-on-skin hit.  The effect wouild be to reduce the damage the missile does - say by stripping off the last dmg ring - a 1 dmg missile would not do any damage, a size 2-4 missile would do 0-1 point, size 5-9 would do 0-4 etc.  At the same time the number of shots and accuracy of CIWS could be increased to keep it balanced.

The same change could also give a good reason to use laser warheads, since they could be less effected by detonating a short distance away from the target (and they could have a certain minumum warhead size to make it impossible to fit them in size 1 missiles).

[crys]

if the problem is about small missiles, maybe it could be an option, to give some mass to essential missile parts.

like there is allways a:
-cooling system for fuel
-fuel pumps
-energy source/generator
-maybe a heatshield between engines and tanks
-the casing of the missile
-some basic navigation/aiming/flightcontrols
-wings/guidence-systems
-basic eccm

all thouse things together could use some space of each missile - all together maybe 0.1-0.2 of a size 1 missile? - some things you can not realy make smaller.
alot of thouse things must not be any/much larger or more complex for larger missiles(it gets normaly only more complicated for smaller missiles), so they can profit of thouse necessary items taking less % of the total missile mass.

edit: maybe you shouldnt be able to shoot normal missiles at planets or in nebulae
 - i mean if a missile with 30k+ km/sec hits the atmosphere of a planet, it will be like hitting a wall compared with flighing in space.
 in addition the chances are, that it will burn up before hitting anything, unless it has alot of heatshielding for this speed. - and this heat shielding is useless mass in space.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

the squared-size warhead thing is a little exaggerated,

size^2+size is also a quite viable. if you are actually penetrating the armor with your hit its double the damage.

size 6 warhead does 2 damage at 2 depth, size 12 does 2 damage at 3 depth, size 20 does 2 at 4, and so on.

///

I agree with the sentiment that the 'missile problem' is mostly one of internal missile balance between large and small.  There's a number of possible fixes but I think they all run up against the AMM problem.  No matter how much you buff big missiles or nerf small missiles vs ships, AMMs are only really balanced when compared to size 3-4 missiles; they're insufficient against missiles smaller than that and increasingly excellent against larger missiles.  This would be the case even if large missiles fired at the same ROF as small missiles - As long as you have adequate Res1 sensor/targeting coverage you should virtually always run out of AMMs before your ships take any serious damage, unless AMM launcher ROF is completely overwhelmed by a box launcher strike.  Big missiles have to be somehow competitive against AMMs. The most immediately apparent ways to do this are buffing missile armor (needs to be mathematically viable) and missile ECM (generates AMM misses?).  That might also result in an interesting arms race mechanic, since AMMs with stronger warheads might be a better choice against super-heavy shipkillers with high HTK.  Of course, those same AMMs would be sacrificing accuracy and perhaps quantity against an enemy using smaller missiles. 

Hmm... though current size 2-4 ASMs would probably work well as anti-heavy-missile weapons.  That might work out with 3 tiers of missiles: AMMs which are good against ASMs which are good against heavies... which can soak current AMMs.   Of course some maniac will build a size 40 missile with a ludicrous warhead and 25 htk.  Godspeed you.

On a related note, I feel the entire missile launcher size reduction line is underpowered until you get to box launchers.   There's also a weird tech problem with box launchers, since you just pretty much max out and can't improve them. It's also a little silly that its harder to figure out boxes than tractor beams or planetary terraforming. xD  I can't imagine what you'd improve for box launchers though. Marginal increases in size reduction? HTK? Reload speed? (haha.) 

I have a mental image of designing missile launcher systems with a # of tubes, size, and reload mechanism.  Sorta more like magazines than current missile launchers.  So instead of mounting 72 box launchers I might mount 6 12-cell launch systems.   
 
Now I have a weird mental image of removing MFCs entirely... //stops before he goes WAAAY too far into the weeds.

[alex_brunius]

On a related note, I feel the entire missile launcher size reduction line is underpowered until you get to box launchers.   There's also a weird tech problem with box launchers, since you just pretty much max out and can't improve them. It's also a little silly that its harder to figure out boxes than tractor beams or planetary terraforming. xD  I can't imagine what you'd improve for box launchers though. Marginal increases in size reduction? HTK? Reload speed? (haha.)

I always though boxed missile launchers was a bit wierd.

Why do I need to invest research to develop launcher rails that we have used to launch missiles and rockets since back when they were invented as a weapon? (World war two days).

Making early missile fighters work depends on box size launchers being available right away and technically it's a very simple contraption. Id like to see all launcher reload vs size options available from start instead.

Perhaps the limit to missiles should rather be some technobabble about maximum range that it can communicate with the Missile FCS? Missiles right now is the only weapon that actually get shorter range as tech improves (seeing how your later 6x engine power designs consume fuel 88 times as fast).  

Long range missiles without guidance of their own don't make much sense since the missile itself needs a big reciever to be able to recieve target data info from the ship FCS. So perhaps that's another way to balance smaller long range missiles. The size of this reciever part of the missile could depend on your tech and scale linear with range.