Author Topic: Mesons  (Read 16825 times)

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Offline MajGenRelativity

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #75 on: December 28, 2018, 08:10:23 AM »
I'm amenable to Steve's take on Bremen's suggestion.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #76 on: December 28, 2018, 08:12:10 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:

Thanks for running a test. A couple of points:

1) Could you rerun with a more 'normal' level for campaigns. Maybe ion-level tech. I've been running campaigns for about 14 years and I never reached Inertial Confinement :)  In fact, that is probably why I missed the issue with shock damage. The higher tech levels are rare, especially if starting at conventional, so the play-testing is limited.

2) Once the meson ship is in range, it should stay at that range. Otherwise the laser ship has the advantage. When fighting mesons with lasers, I try to stay out of range or, if that fails, try to get as close as possible. The meson ship will be trying to hold at close to maximum range.
 
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Offline Zincat

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #77 on: December 28, 2018, 08:14:35 AM »
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.

That sounds acceptable. The question then becomes how to carefully balance the penetration chance. And that is strongly dependent on how many armour layers the meson is facing.. I don't have a lot of experience with end-tech ships, I assume most ships will NOT go beyond 20 layers of armour.
 I threw together a 1 minute thing in excel, with base chance of penetration, and how much it is likely the meson will penetrate x layers of armour.

Chance    5 armour 10 armour  15 armour 20 armour
70,00%   16,81%   2,82%   0,47%   0,08%
71,00%   18,04%   3,26%   0,59%   0,11%
72,00%   19,35%   3,74%   0,72%   0,14%
73,00%   20,73%   4,30%   0,89%   0,18%
74,00%   22,19%   4,92%   1,09%   0,24%
75,00%   23,73%   5,63%   1,34%   0,32%
76,00%   25,36%   6,43%   1,63%   0,41%
77,00%   27,07%   7,33%   1,98%   0,54%
78,00%   28,87%   8,34%   2,41%   0,69%
79,00%   30,77%   9,47%   2,91%   0,90%
80,00%   32,77%   10,74%   3,52%   1,15%
81,00%   34,87%   12,16%   4,24%   1,48%
82,00%   37,07%   13,74%   5,10%   1,89%
83,00%   39,39%   15,52%   6,11%   2,41%
84,00%   41,82%   17,49%   7,31%   3,06%
85,00%   44,37%   19,69%   8,74%   3,88%
86,00%   47,04%   22,13%   10,41%   4,90%
87,00%   49,84%   24,84%   12,38%   6,17%
88,00%   52,77%   27,85%   14,70%   7,76%
89,00%   55,84%   31,18%   17,41%   9,72%
90,00%   59,05%   34,87%   20,59%   12,16%
91,00%   62,40%   38,94%   24,30%   15,16%
92,00%   65,91%   43,44%   28,63%   18,87%
93,00%   69,57%   48,40%   33,67%   23,42%
94,00%   73,39%   53,86%   39,53%   29,01%
95,00%   77,38%   59,87%   46,33%   35,85%
96,00%   81,54%   66,48%   54,21%   44,20%
97,00%   85,87%   73,74%   63,33%   54,38%
98,00%   90,39%   81,71%   73,86%   66,76%
99,00%   95,10%   90,44%   86,01%   81,79%

I assume here that most ships will never have more than 20 layers or armour.
Based on this, I'd say that penetration chance should start at around 70% and  reach 86%, with all the tech upgrades. That is quite effective against relatively low armour. And it still has 10.4% chance to penetrate 15 layers, and 4.9% chance to penetrate 20 layers of armour.
In my opinion, this is a fair tradeoff. If an enemy ship has even more than 20 layers of armour, yes it will be almost impenetrable to mesons, but on the other hand, it will have less shields and less weaponry. So... I think it's a good tradeoff.
Of course this assume that 20 layers or amour is a very high amount. If at very high tech level that ends up being sort of normal, then penetration chance could be raised. Needs balancing depending on actual numbers, once we do have them.

Edit: to further explain, keep in mind that I assumed that if you are using meson fighters, of course you have a large amount of them. That is what should be expected. So those numbers are fine because there's a lot of attacks going on every round.

And yes, you may have to escort your meson fighters with interceptor fighters to shoot down the enemy's fighters or AMMs that might attack your meson fighters. The meson fighters in this scenario operate as small " anti-capital bombers" which you have to protect
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 08:32:01 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #78 on: December 28, 2018, 09:23:16 AM »
Quote from: Zincat link=topic=10229.  msg111656#msg111656 date=1546006475
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=10229.  msg111644#msg111644 date=1546000981
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. 

That sounds acceptable.   The question then becomes how to carefully balance the penetration chance.   And that is strongly dependent on how many armour layers the meson is facing.  .   I don't have a lot of experience with end-tech ships, I assume most ships will NOT go beyond 20 layers of armour. 
 I threw together a 1 minute thing in excel, with base chance of penetration, and how much it is likely the meson will penetrate x layers of armour. 

-snip-

I assume here that most ships will never have more than 20 layers or armour.   
Based on this, I'd say that penetration chance should start at around 70% and  reach 86%, with all the tech upgrades.   That is quite effective against relatively low armour.   And it still has 10.  4% chance to penetrate 15 layers, and 4.  9% chance to penetrate 20 layers of armour. 
In my opinion, this is a fair tradeoff.   If an enemy ship has even more than 20 layers of armour, yes it will be almost impenetrable to mesons, but on the other hand, it will have less shields and less weaponry.   So.  .  .   I think it's a good tradeoff. 
Of course this assume that 20 layers or amour is a very high amount.   If at very high tech level that ends up being sort of normal, then penetration chance could be raised.   Needs balancing depending on actual numbers, once we do have them. 


Basing the entire analysis on meson fighters is going to lead to larger mesons being useless (there's already a strong feeling within the Discord that larger mesons are mostly useless in VB6, and further nerfs in C# will just cement that position). 

Having a fixed (or just tech-dependent) block rate will inevitably lead to either meson fighters being more powerful than desired (block rate too low) or larger mesons being useless (block rate too high), due to the much smaller numbers of mesons used on a ship compared to a fighter swarm. 

Calibre-dependent (whether or not it is tech-dependent as well) would solve this issue by giving larger mesons a reason to exist: they take on the anti-capital role that all mesons currently have, while the fighter and FAC-level mesons act as more of an anti-escort weapon due to their inability to penetrate capital ship armour. 

EDIT: Having it be both calibre-dependent and tech-dependent would solve both the "meson fighters are too strong" and the "mesons are too strong in the early game" issues.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 09:45:43 AM by somebody1212 »
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Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #79 on: December 28, 2018, 10:33:08 AM »
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=10229. msg111655#msg111655 date=1546006330
Quote from: somebody1212 link=topic=10229. msg111647#msg111647 date=1546001990
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:

Thanks for running a test.  A couple of points:

1) Could you rerun with a more 'normal' level for campaigns.  Maybe ion-level tech.  I've been running campaigns for about 14 years and I never reached Inertial Confinement :)  In fact, that is probably why I missed the issue with shock damage.  The higher tech levels are rare, especially if starting at conventional, so the play-testing is limited.

2) Once the meson ship is in range, it should stay at that range.  Otherwise the laser ship has the advantage.  When fighting mesons with lasers, I try to stay out of range or, if that fails, try to get as close as possible.  The meson ship will be trying to hold at close to maximum range.

After rerunning the test at Ion level, yes, the meson ship reliably wins most fights when kiting.

This would indicate that the problem with mesons is not mesons in general, but early-game mesons in particular, where they are the only reliable way to bypass shields and armour due to the low chance of shock damage from other weapons.
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Offline MajGenRelativity

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #80 on: December 28, 2018, 10:46:47 AM »
Just to add my comment to respond to Zincat, ships do go over 20 layers of armor.  I personally go above it, and I have seen other designs do so as well.  I haven't seen over 30 layers, but over 20 is not rare.
 

Offline Panopticon

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #81 on: December 28, 2018, 10:54:18 AM »
Just to add my comment to respond to Zincat, ships do go over 20 layers of armor.  I personally go above it, and I have seen other designs do so as well.  I haven't seen over 30 layers, but over 20 is not rare.

I dunno man, twenty is pretty rare in my experience, I agree in principal that provisions need to be made for super heavy armor designs though.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #82 on: December 28, 2018, 10:55:08 AM »
After rerunning the test at Ion level, yes, the meson ship reliably wins most fights when kiting.
This would indicate that the problem with mesons is not mesons in general, but early-game mesons in particular, where they are the only reliable way to bypass shields and armour due to the low chance of shock damage from other weapons.

Thanks. Based on that, it sounds like the main disagreements between the discord and the forum is due to a large difference in the tech levels being used. There isn't much campaign play testing at high fusion and beyond and those levels are really just to ensure no one runs out of tech levels, rather than because a lot of campaigns operate at that level. The main non-player campaigns threats don't exist at those levels because Precursors and Star Swarm are usually MPD or low fusion and VB6 NPRs do not tend to progress in tech levels very well, although C# NPRs should be much better at managing tech progression. Invaders are almost end-game tech in campaigns and they are usually about Magnetic Confinement Fusion.

Aurora is really intended for role-playing one or more interesting empires in early to mid tech levels, rather than min-maxing tactical combat at high tech levels. I haven't spent much time at all on the latter as it isn't something I would enjoy. In fact, Aurora only exists because when Starfire moved from 3rd to 4th editions, it abandoned the role-playing elements and background fluff to become a more technical, competitive min-max game. That turned me off the game, so I initially created a much more in-depth version of 3rd edition Starfire in about 2004 and things just evolved from that point. Aurora is really just a game I code for me to play, not a commercial game. I have fun sharing it and in return I get a lot of improvements in the game from community suggestions.

I don't mind considering the implications of the high tech min-max for those that want it, but the priority is always going to be the low to mid-tech campaign play, because that is what I enjoy myself. The early struggle into space against superior aliens is also what makes the most interesting fiction and creating that fiction is one of my primary reasons for playing.
 

Offline MajGenRelativity

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #83 on: December 28, 2018, 10:57:36 AM »
Numerous tournament designs exceed 20 layers of armor. 
1) Tillman Class (me)
2) Ball of Steel and Guns (Somebody1212)
3) Unnamed armor ball (Somebody1212)
4) Deus Ex Rodina (Me/Rod)
5) Deus Exit Rodina Modified (Me/Rod/Teris)

Edit: My Tillman and other tournament designs are taken from my personal campaign I have been posting on the Aurora subreddit, not a min/max event. Some campaigns do hit the high fusion levels.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 11:00:13 AM by MajGenRelativity »
 

Offline Iceranger

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #84 on: December 28, 2018, 11:10:49 AM »
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=10229.   msg111655#msg111655 date=1546006330
1) Could you rerun with a more 'normal' level for campaigns.    Maybe ion-level tech.    I've been running campaigns for about 14 years and I never reached Inertial Confinement :)  In fact, that is probably why I missed the issue with shock damage.    The higher tech levels are rare, especially if starting at conventional, so the play-testing is limited.   

At Ion level, indeed there is no good way to counter fighters in general.    Missiles, the best way to counter fighters in higher tech levels, lack the performance at or below MPD tech to reliably hit fighters.    Also, at Ion level, the lack of reliable shock damage also makes mesons the only reliable way to ignore heavily armored ships.    Combine these 2 factors, meson fighters are quite dangerous at Ion level.   

However, at higher tech level (magnetic confinement fusion and above), fighters are decently countered by missiles, due to the vast improvment on missile performance (mainly due to the missiles have more techs related to it).    At such tech levels, a meson swarm is easily countered with proper anti fighter defense in the fleet.    At this tech level, nerfing meson will make it even less relevant.   

A simple solution for this early game meson fighter swarm (and to an extent, ground based meson weapons), is that start meson tech at medium caliber, and have the tech tree work its way up and down.    The RP cost between tech tiers should be higher than current values since the tech tree will be half as deep.    In this way, early meson techs are so large so they can not be mounted on fighters/early game small ground vehicles.    And at later techs when meson fighters and ground weapons is a thing, they have proper counters.   
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 11:25:36 AM by Iceranger »
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #85 on: December 28, 2018, 11:13:33 AM »
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?

I think that if we accept the premise that mesons are too powerful on beam fighters, then that's probably the best way to limit them. However, I do still kind of question that initial premise.

It's not that I don't agree that meson fighters are more dangerous than any other beam fighter by a large margin; they are. It's just that I think as the design currently stands beam fighters are extremely weak, and meson fighters are the closest they come to being actually competitive. I'm curious how much you've tried to use them; I don't recall them ever coming up in your test campaigns. I can say that they seldom come up on the ship design or tactical discussion boards, enough that I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as the only one that actually uses beam fighters.

They tend to be extremely vulnerable to missiles (both anti-ship and AMMs), and then when they get to range get cut down quick to any beam weapons on the other end. Additionally, meson fighters have an additional weakness in that they normally have to get into range of gauss based point defense weapons, whereas other beam fighters can fire from outside it.

So I guess my take on that is that it's the best way to go if you want to nerf mesons, but the result will be weakening a weapon system I already see as underused and possibly underpowered.

Edit: Looking at Iceranger's reply I admit tech level probably has a lot to do with it. For some reason that must be spectacular coincidence, I almost never seem to stumble on NPRs no matter how high I increase the generation chance, so my campaigns tend to go long and end up at medium to high tech levels. I kind of like the idea of meson weapons starting at a medium calibur and getting the smaller (and shorter range) variants later.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2018, 11:15:51 AM by Bremen »
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #86 on: December 28, 2018, 01:19:53 PM »
I also think that some (most?) of the people who think Mesons are too powerful are actually dealing with the problem of "my ships are too slow."  I routinely see designs posted with 30-40% explosion chances for engines and power plants (and magazines).  My empire considers it a design flaw to have any component with an explosion chance over 1%.

(EDIT:  I made a huge mistake here, and meant explosion chance over 10%.)

If your battleship is exploding to Meson fire because 60% of its DAC is a 25% chance of catastrophic chain reaction, it's not surprising that you think Mesons are unbalanced.


Question for Somebody1212:  What's the explosion chance on your test vessels' engines?
« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 03:53:55 PM by Father Tim »
 

Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #87 on: December 28, 2018, 01:33:05 PM »
Quote from: Father Tim link=topic=10229. msg111680#msg111680 date=1546024793
I also think that some (most?) of the people who think Mesons are too powerful are actually dealing with the problem of "my ships are too slow. "  I routinely see designs with 30-40% explosion chances for engines and power plants (and magazines).   My empire considers it a design flaw to have any component with an explosion chance over 1%.

If your battleship is exploding to Meson fire because 60% of its DAC is a 25% chance of catastrophic chain reaction, it's not surprising that you think Mesons are unbalanced.


Question for Somebody1212:  What's the explosion chance on your test vessels' engines?

For both the ion and fusion tests, the engines were 50HS (25HTK), 1. 3 power modifier (so a meson would have a 4% chance of causing damage, then a 13% chance of that damage leading to an explosion for an overall explosion chance of 0. 52%.

The powerplants were 1 HS, 50% boost for fusion (35% explosion chance) and 25% boost for ion (20% explosion chance).  It's worth noting that none of the tests ended in a powerplant explosion, in every case the powerplant explosion either failed to kill the ship, or was caused by an engine explosion which would have killed the ship even without the powerplant going up.

Due to the effect of power modifier on engine explosion chances, it's normally the fast ships that have a high explosion chance rather than the slower ships.  (this does raise the question of whether we should have engine techs to reduce the explosion chance at higher power modifiers)
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Offline MajGenRelativity

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #88 on: December 28, 2018, 01:47:57 PM »
My empire considers it a design flaw to have any component with an explosion chance over 1%.


If your engines have an explosion chance of 1%, your power modifier must be tremendously low. Would you mind sharing some of your ship designs with me? I don't want to clutter them up here, so you can either PM me here or on Discord at MajGenRelativity#4971. In my opinion, it's impractical to have a military ship with that low a modifier, as it would be very slow.
 

Offline somebody1212

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Re: Mesons
« Reply #89 on: December 28, 2018, 02:00:51 PM »
Quote from: MajGenRelativity link=topic=10229. msg111684#msg111684 date=1546026477
Quote from: Father Tim link=topic=10229. msg111680#msg111680 date=1546024793
My empire considers it a design flaw to have any component with an explosion chance over 1%.


If your engines have an explosion chance of 1%, your power modifier must be tremendously low.  Would you mind sharing some of your ship designs with me? I don't want to clutter them up here, so you can either PM me here or on Discord at MajGenRelativity#4971.  In my opinion, it's impractical to have a military ship with that low a modifier, as it would be very slow.

Given the impracticality of running military ships with a 0. 1 power modifier to get a 1% base explosion chance, I'm assuming Father Tim is referring to the overall chance of an explosion when being hit by a meson (i. e.  base chance / HTK )

If he's referring to the base chance, yes, I thoroughly agree with MGR.
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