Author Topic: Mesons  (Read 16834 times)

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Offline Father Tim

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #60 on: December 27, 2018, 08:11:58 PM »
It seems to me that the reason 'shock damage' was added to Aurora was that big, well-defended ships were too good.  Now you're saying that they're not good enough when considering Mesons.  If shock damage is currently "working as intended" -- that is, correctly balanced in the amount of 'big ship kills' that occur from formerly non-fatal damage -- then Mesons should become shock weapons.
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #61 on: December 27, 2018, 08:28:54 PM »
It seems to me that the reason 'shock damage' was added to Aurora was that big, well-defended ships were too good.  Now you're saying that they're not good enough when considering Mesons.  If shock damage is currently "working as intended" -- that is, correctly balanced in the amount of 'big ship kills' that occur from formerly non-fatal damage -- then Mesons should become shock weapons.

Shock damage was intended to give larger weapons and in particular larger missile warheads a way to cause some internal damage against well-armoured ships. The intention was for this to cause occasional internal damage to add interest to a long-range missile duel as well as adding even more chaos to close range energy fights.

Actually, as a result of this discussion I have been looking at shock damage and even that gets too powerful for really large weapons. The percentage chance of shock damage is Damage Caused ^ 1.3. If shock happens, the actual damage is linear from 0 to 100% of (weapon damage / 3).

That works reasonably well at the first few tech levels. A 6-point energy weapon hit is 10% shock chance for example (for 1-2 damage) and a 9-point warhead has a 17% chance of shock and would cause 1-3 damage. However, beyond that point it starts to accelerate out of control. A 20 point hit has a 50% chance of shock (1-7 damage) and a 35 point hit is 100% and 1-12 damage. A lot of campaigns don't get to those levels but the issue still exists.

I should probably start a separate thread to discuss shock damage :) but I need to modify the formula to keep the low level chances and damage without the large increases later. Alternatively, maybe the chance & impact of shock damage should be based on the power of the explosion vs the size of the ship. A very large ship is not going to suffer the same impact shock as a small one from the same explosion strength. Going down that road, I could keep shock damage interesting at all tech levels.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #62 on: December 27, 2018, 08:49:09 PM »
Regarding 3), we need to get away from the assumption that mesons are only useful on fighters. If one large well-protected ship with lasers fights another large well-protected ship with mesons, the mesons are likely to win if they get into range (either slightly faster or waiting at a jump point). The swarm are dangerous because they are fast and meson-armed. Mesons on planets are dangerous (2 above) if you have no option but to enter their range (you need to land on the planet or its also home to one of your populations).

On the other hand, a large well protected ship with lasers will flawlessly defeat a large well protected ship with mesons if it can't close the range, so saying it has an advantage if it does (though unlike the kiting laser ship, it's only better odds instead of a certainty) doesn't necessarily mean it's worthwhile. I'd be extremely reluctant to use mesons as my primary weapon for that reason - three laser ships will probably still beat a faster meson ship, but three meson ships wont beat a faster laser ship. I see what you mean about them not being an exclusively fighter weapon, but they are certainly have a lot of risks on a warship.

Nor do I really think their weaknesses are erased for a jump point defense, as a squad jump is likely to emerge outside of meson range and a jump blind ship can still fly away from the jump point. That isn't to say that mesons aren't a great jump point defense, but I actually prefer meson fighters or FACs on the jump point for that reason (either with high endurance or a no-frills carrier/platform).
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #63 on: December 27, 2018, 09:07:28 PM »
With ground combat being focused on so heavily, and thus hopefully making boarding action effective, mesons could be very useful on full-size warships to repel boarders.

The boarding shuttles are likely to be fighter or FAC sized, and thus very vulnerable to 1-damage hits.  They also have to close to point blank range.
 

Offline Shuul

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #64 on: December 28, 2018, 01:21:57 AM »
As I play mostly with beam weapons (and some heavy fast torpedos) meeting meson-armed enemy feels a bit like being cheated. I do not think that increasing texh cost etc would really help as aquiring the tech would still provide you with op weapon.
Changing it to have a probability to bypass every layer of armor sounds good, so more armor could actually help.
Or just block them with shields.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #65 on: December 28, 2018, 01:25:24 AM »
The discussion in discord leads me to believe that mesons are probably pretty fine where they are, perhaps even needing a buff for ship combat, but the question of them being obscenely OP for ground combat probably still stands. Is there an alternative to make mesons less effective for ground combat? Jamming or ECM maybe? Already it has been pointed out that things like terrain which affects hit percentage is ridiculous when it comes to mesons unless its considered as a difficulty of simply finding your target...
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Offline DIT_grue

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #66 on: December 28, 2018, 01:30:17 AM »
I am considering changing mesons for C# Aurora. They are very powerful, especially against large, otherwise well-protected, targets. As C# Aurora is intended to improve the usefulness of much larger ships, the current implementation of mesons goes directly against that principle.

Taking this as the starting assumption (I don't have a formed opinion of my own on the matter), my first thought on reading it was including armour in the random selection of where it hits. There's easy technobabble explanations for tweaking how that works out: if a flat chance based on hull space (as presently) turns out to nerf them too hard, well after all you'd be trying to aim at the center of the ship so some weighting towards components could be justified. Or you could even consider only the single column of armour its trajectory notionally passes through (possibly a second, "on the far side of the ship" due to overpenetration, though obviously both randomly selected). Handwave about how it ignores vacuum and energy fields (or not, if that is the justification for reduced accuracy compared to its tech level), but as soon as it starts passing through matter there's a chance it will revert: so there's any probability you like that some tile of armour actually stops it, whether that be flat, increasing with depth, increasing with density (or conversely, increasing with tech level of the armour)...

As I read the thread, it was obvious that other people had come up with all of these, and also the idea of tech line(s) to affect some of them from the meson side of things. Father Tim does deserve special mention for being the first to raise a point that really needs to be examined if this discussion is going to have any chance of coming to a good conclusion.

I don't mind too much if the start point is changed (made Ruin-only, research cost bump, whatever), but making them sandblast armour like any other 1-point weapon seems overkill and I'd be uneasy about a fixed threshold of armour-levels even if it would give calibre research an actual function rather than being a second (and worse) range extender. There's just some element of chance that is bundled in my understanding of its base concept.


The discussion in discord leads me to believe that mesons are probably pretty fine where they are, perhaps even needing a buff for ship combat, but the question of them being obscenely OP for ground combat probably still stands. Is there an alternative to make mesons less effective for ground combat? Jamming or ECM maybe? Already it has been pointed out that things like terrain which affects hit percentage is ridiculous when it comes to mesons unless its considered as a difficulty of simply finding your target...

If there is a problem specifically around their interaction with ground combat, it would be easy to borrow the common idea of planetary mass-shadows affecting your sci-fi tech: banning them from firing in the vicinity of planets altogether seems extreme, but you could explain any necessary degree of degraded effectiveness.
 

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #67 on: December 28, 2018, 01:52:44 AM »
Make it only a planetary weapon or for orbital station use only, not ships.

Then adjust sizes and costs, the concept would be like as one cannon is simply too big of a weapon to be carried on a ship unless is a death star.

Offline Whitecold

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #68 on: December 28, 2018, 02:48:21 AM »
Make it only a planetary weapon or for orbital station use only, not ships.

Then adjust sizes and costs, the concept would be like as one cannon is simply too big of a weapon to be carried on a ship unless is a death star.
That makes very little sense, since you can effectively build a death star. If it is so big that it is unsuitable for shipboard use, it is unsuitable for use.
 

Offline totos_totidis

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #69 on: December 28, 2018, 03:23:37 AM »
How about modeling meson decay? Mesons should only cause damage only when they decay, however there is only a chance that they decay inside a ship thus they are not 100% reliable for damage.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #70 on: December 28, 2018, 03:43:18 AM »
How about modeling meson decay? Mesons should only cause damage only when they decay, however there is only a chance that they decay inside a ship thus they are not 100% reliable for damage.
No. Real mesons very well interact with ordinary matter by collisions, and the charged variants act like any other charged particle. Aurora mesons have very little to do with real life mesons, like real life lasers don't behave like aurora lasers, real life HPM don't behave like aurora HPM, never mind having a weapon called mesons and one called particle beam...
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #71 on: December 28, 2018, 05:53:40 AM »
I must admit I've not played that much with messons and as others have mentioned when fighting against the swarm I've found it pretty easy to deal with them (although at the moment the huge HTK of large engines makes that easier then it will be in the future with the change there).

I'd be happy with increased RP costs and build costs to keep them out of early game and then leave as is after that. You will need to invest a lot to use on STOs then and as mentioned once they have been revealed on a planet then opposing forces are going to have a good few ways of dealing with them.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #72 on: December 28, 2018, 06:43:01 AM »
Regarding 3), we need to get away from the assumption that mesons are only useful on fighters. If one large well-protected ship with lasers fights another large well-protected ship with mesons, the mesons are likely to win if they get into range (either slightly faster or waiting at a jump point). The swarm are dangerous because they are fast and meson-armed. Mesons on planets are dangerous (2 above) if you have no option but to enter their range (you need to land on the planet or its also home to one of your populations).

On the other hand, a large well protected ship with lasers will flawlessly defeat a large well protected ship with mesons if it can't close the range, so saying it has an advantage if it does (though unlike the kiting laser ship, it's only better odds instead of a certainty) doesn't necessarily mean it's worthwhile. I'd be extremely reluctant to use mesons as my primary weapon for that reason - three laser ships will probably still beat a faster meson ship, but three meson ships wont beat a faster laser ship. I see what you mean about them not being an exclusively fighter weapon, but they are certainly have a lot of risks on a warship.

Nor do I really think their weaknesses are erased for a jump point defense, as a squad jump is likely to emerge outside of meson range and a jump blind ship can still fly away from the jump point. That isn't to say that mesons aren't a great jump point defense, but I actually prefer meson fighters or FACs on the jump point for that reason (either with high endurance or a no-frills carrier/platform).

Something just occurred to me that probably affects my own view of mesons and maybe others who play campaigns. It is true that staying out of range is the best option for laser vs mesons. In fact, any ship with longer-ranged energy weapons and higher speed is going to win against a slower ship with short-ranged weapons, regardless of the actual weapon. Short-ranged weapons on FACs or fighter swarm or any ship designed to be high speed avoid that problem. However, even against similar speed ships it can still be an issue due to inexperienced crew penalties making it sometimes difficult to control the range, especially in a confused fight. I suspect in one-off tactical fights, inexperienced crew penalties aren't used so that problem doesn't happen.

So, it is almost certainly true in general that mesons are a lot more deadly when employed on fast ships, which usually means FACs or fighters, than on large ships. It is also true that mesons are likely to be far more dangerous than any other beam weapon that can be mounted on fighters.

So lets put the big ship argument aside for the moment, as I suspect it is irrelevant to the main point and I probably just confused the issue by raising it, and concentrate on the fighter/FAC aspects. It still doesn't seem reasonable that a single fighter can penetrate any amount of passive defences when it could not do that with any other weapon in the game, even much larger ones. I accept that removing mesons or reducing their effectiveness would make beam fighters less effective. However, when armed with mesons they are too effective by some distance.

Which brings us right back to the beginning in terms of what to do with mesons. The weight of opinion seems to be make then ruins/spoiler only or allow them penetrate shields and have some ability to penetrate armour that is affected by the depth of armour. The latter gives them a role against shield-heavy designs or designs with limited armour, but not an ability to automatically penetrate capital ship defences.

I like the suggestion from Bremen that each extra layer of armour reduces the percentage chance of penetration, rather than having a fixed amount that can be penetrated. For example, if the penetration rate per layer was 70%, there would be an 70% chance of penetrating one layer, 49% chance of penetrating two, 34% of penetrating three, etc.. In fact, to make mesons scale with increasing defences, there could be an extra tech line for mesons that is their chance to penetrate each armour layer. As you research more tech levels, the chance to penetrate a given thickness of armour increases. That allows you to fight more effectively against mid or late game defences using mesons but also requires a good investment into research if you want to do that. Mesons remain viable against smaller ships, or those with shield-heavy passive defences, and retain a small chance of hitting something vital on a well-armoured ship.

How does that sound in principle?
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 06:48:33 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 
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Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #73 on: December 28, 2018, 06:59:50 AM »
With regard to the "a large, well-defended ship with mesons will defeat a large, well-defended ship with lasers" point, just did some testing:

Taking a laser ship (31kt, 10x86 armour, 120 shields at Inertial Fusion tech level) and swapping the lasers for mesons to yield an "equivalent" meson ship:

Test set 1: Meson ship moving towards laser ship, laser ship remaining stationary (10k km/s relative approach speed)
Test 1: Meson ship dies 10s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine and a fire control) but survives. 
Test 2: Meson ship dies 15s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing two engines and a fire control) but survives
Test 3: Meson ship dies at point blank, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing all engines, most fuel tanks, and a fire control) but survives. 
Test 4: Meson ship dies 5s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine and a fire control) but survives. 
Test 5: Laser ship "dies" 10s from target (both fire controls taken out), destroyed in a further 40 seconds of firing. 
Test 6: Meson ship dies 10s from target, laser ship is lightly damaged (all engines and fire controls intact, but missing a couple of fuel tanks and reactors)
Test 7: Meson ship dies 15s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine) but survives. 
Test 8: Meson ship dies 10s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine and a fire control) but survives. 
Test 9: Meson ship dies 5s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing two engines) but survives. 
Test 10: Meson ship dies 10s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine and most of its reactors) but survives. 

Overall result: Fairly clearly in favour of the laser ship. 


Test set 2: Meson ship moving towards laser ship, laser ship moving towards meson ship (20k km/s relative approach speed)
Test 1: Meson ship dies 5s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing all engines)
Test 2: Meson ship dies at point blank, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing two engines and a fire control)
Test 3: Laser ship dies at point blank (engine explosion), meson ship is heavily damaged (missing two engines)
Test 4: Meson ship dies 5s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (main damage: missing an engine and most reactors)
Test 5: Laser ship dies 5s from target (both fire controls taken out, engine explosion 5s later), meson ship is heavily damaged (missing an engine and a fire control)
Test 6: Laser ship dies 5s from target (engine explosion), meson ship is heavily damaged (missing two engines and most of its fuel tanks)
Test 7: Meson ship dies 5s from target, laser ship is heavily damaged (missing an engine)
Test 8: Meson ship dies at point blank, laser ship is heavily damaged (missing an engine and most reactors)
Test 9: Meson ship dies at point blank, laser ship is heavily damaged (missing an engine and all fuel tanks)
Test 10: Laser ship dies at point blank, meson ship is heavily damaged (missing two engines and a fire control)

Overall result: Much more mixed than the previous test, but still slightly in favour of the laser ship. 


Having the laser ship retreat from combat, or having the ships start at point blank, would be even more in favour of the laser ship. 

However, there does appear to be a bug which may affect peoples' perception of mesons: Meson cost does not appear to be affected by capacitor recharge rate like other beam weapons are.   The result is that mesons (larger mesons in particular) cost far less than other beam weapons.   Once this bug has been fixed, mesons should be more in line with where they should be. 

EDIT: Just saw Steve's post about fighters/FACs being the main concern: I can rerun the tests with fighters but I broadly agree that meson fighters are the best fighter for anti-ship purposes.

The proposal for having mesons bypass shields and have a chance to bypass each armour layer solves both the "mesons don't really need to be researched past the first level" issue and the "small mesons are too strong against large ships" issue, particularly if we tie the bypass chance to the calibre rather than making it an independent tech line.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 07:03:46 AM by somebody1212 »
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Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #74 on: December 28, 2018, 07:42:32 AM »
Some analysis of the proposal for mesons having a chance to bypass armour:

If the block chance is inversely proportional to the failure rate, the bypass chance, number of layers for a 50% penetration chance, and number of layers for a 1% penetration chance, are as follows:




P(block) = 5/C or P(bypass) = 1-5/C                                 
10   12   15   20   25   30   35   40   50   60   70   80
50. 00%   58. 33%   66. 67%   75. 00%   80. 00%   83. 33%   85. 71%   87. 50%   90. 00%   91. 67%   92. 86%   93. 75%
                                 
1   1. 285995697   1. 709511291   2. 40942084   3. 10628372   3. 801784017   4. 496556106   5. 19089307   6. 578813479   7. 966167236   9. 353206685   10. 74005367
6. 64385619   8. 543970471   11. 35774717   16. 00784556   20. 63770232   25. 25850627   29. 87447211   34. 48754705   43. 70869065   52. 9260695   62. 14136013   71. 35537203

P(block) = 4/C or P(bypass) = 1-4/C                                 
10   12   15   20   25   30   35   40   50   60   70   80
60. 00%   66. 67%   73. 33%   80. 00%   84. 00%   86. 67%   88. 57%   90. 00%   92. 00%   93. 33%   94. 29%   95. 00%
                                 
1. 356915449   1. 709511291   2. 234841743   3. 10628372   3. 97553034   4. 843767255   5. 711455882   6. 578813479   8. 312950414   10. 04664925   11. 78010351   13. 51340733
9. 015151104   11. 35774717   14. 84796715   20. 63770232   26. 41285186   32. 18129306   37. 94609151   43. 70869065   55. 23004706   66. 7484928   78. 26531359   89. 78113496
                                                               
P(block) = 3/C or P(bypass) = 1-3/C                                 
10   12   15   20   25   30   35   40   50   60   70   80
70. 00%   75. 00%   80. 00%   85. 00%   88. 00%   90. 00%   91. 43%   92. 50%   94. 00%   95. 00%   95. 71%   96. 25%
                                 
1. 94335821   2. 40942084   3. 10628372   4. 265024282   5. 42227098   6. 578813479   7. 734968008   8. 890886038   11. 20230558   13. 51340733   15. 82433056   18. 13514353
12. 91139247   16. 00784556   20. 63770232   28. 33620797   36. 02478861   43. 70869065   51. 39001508   59. 06976824   74. 42650729   89. 78113496   105. 1345766   120. 4872856
                                 
P(block) = 2/C or P(bypass) = 1-2/C                                 
10   12   15   20   25   30   35   40   50   60   70   80
80. 00%   83. 33%   86. 67%   90. 00%   92. 00%   93. 33%   94. 29%   95. 00%   96. 00%   96. 67%   97. 14%   97. 50%
                                 
3. 10628372   3. 801784017   4. 843767255   6. 578813479   8. 312950414   10. 04664925   11. 78010351   13. 51340733   16. 97974802   20. 44588363   23. 91190337   27. 37785123
20. 63770232   25. 25850627   32. 18129306   43. 70869065   55. 23004706   66. 7484928   78. 26531359   89. 78113496   112. 811004   135. 8395105   158. 8672472   181. 8945064
                              
P(block) = 1/C or P(bypass) = 1-1/C                                 
10   12   15   20   25   30   35   40   50   60   70   80
90. 00%   91. 67%   93. 33%   95. 00%   96. 00%   96. 67%   97. 14%   97. 50%   98. 00%   98. 33%   98. 57%   98. 75%
                                 
6. 578813479   7. 966167236   10. 04664925   13. 51340733   16. 97974802   20. 44588363   23. 91190337   27. 37785123   34. 30961849   41. 24128643   48. 17289793   55. 10447428
43. 70869065   52. 9260695   66. 7484928   89. 78113496   112. 811004   135. 8395105   158. 8672472   181. 8945064   227. 9481712   274. 0011761   320. 0538061   366. 1062025


If the new tech line affected the numerator in that, with the calibre remaining as the divisor, then we solve all of our current issues: Fighter and FAC-based mesons can no longer penetrate capital ships (with the 10cm mesons most commonly used on fighters being able to penetrate between 1 and 6. 5 layers of armour on average, depending on technology), larger mesons are not nerfed into the ground (even at the somewhat apocalyptic 5/C block rate, an 80cm meson can penetrate 10. 7 layers on average), and mesons now need to research more than just the starting levels of their tech tree (as now calibre will be more important, and the new tech line will be important).

Obviously, this is not to suggest that the block rate should necessarily start at 5/C (a 50% bypass chance at the start is somewhat harsh) or that it should increase in increments of 1/C (this leads to huge increases in the average penetration level at the end). 
« Last Edit: April 12, 2020, 07:45:06 PM by somebody1212 »
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