Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 439459 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1875 on: October 14, 2018, 06:50:35 AM »
Hum. That makes high HP units considerably tougher, which I think is probably a good change. One thing I was struck by with my own theorizing was that lots of light weapons were surprisingly effective against heavy units.

I'm interested to see how balance testing goes in the campaign.

Yes, that was exactly my problem :)

It stemmed from the discussion on HCAP vs LAV and I just kept going back to it.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1876 on: October 14, 2018, 07:28:27 AM »
I've been experimenting with the attack vs armour values, along the same lines as previously discussed, trying to balance the various weapons such as LAV vs HCAP. I finally realised the easiest way to handle this was to treat damage in the same way as penetration. If armour is penetrated, the damage calculation is now (weapon damage / hit points)^2. With both penetration and damage now using the same calculation, differentiation in weapons is much easier.

I've changed LAV to AP 2 Damage 3 and MAV to AP 4 Damage 4, to match the HPs of the respective light and medium vehicles.

I also adjusted light and medium bombardment weapons to AP 1 Dam 2 and AP 1.5 Dam 4 respectively.

I'll probably still adjust a little after campaign testing but i am much happier with it now.

Somehow that feels quite counterintuitive to one expects hitpoints to work. I would be very worried about troubles introduced at larger size difference, as armor roughly scales with HP, so you now end up with p^4 scaling in survivability. I'd expect HAV or similar to still preform reasonably well against the largest vehicles, but like that they could  become impervious against anything but themselves.
Would not increasing the amount of HP on vehicles do the job? Give 50HP instead of 30HP to light vehicles? (And add some more HP down the line for vehicles)
The only real gap seems to be at anti-infantry where multishot weapons exist compared to light anti armor.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1877 on: October 14, 2018, 07:43:04 AM »
Here are the new vs old values when attacking a heavy vehicle. This assumes equal tech.

All shots assumes all shots to kill the same target. In reality, this is on the low side because multi-shot weapons could target something else if they kill the first target and have shots remaining.

 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1878 on: October 14, 2018, 09:35:39 AM »
This seems now quite harsh on the MAV compared to the HAV. Using MAV on static bases you get about 35% more units for same tonnage, meaning 35% more damage against medium armored targets. Against heavy targets you only deal one quarter of the damage of the heavy platforms, which sounds like a clear case to exclusively go for HAV.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1879 on: October 14, 2018, 09:55:06 AM »
This seems now quite harsh on the MAV compared to the HAV. Using MAV on static bases you get about 35% more units for same tonnage, meaning 35% more damage against medium armored targets. Against heavy targets you only deal one quarter of the damage of the heavy platforms, which sounds like a clear case to exclusively go for HAV.

There are some other considerations, beyond looking at the % chance to kill for the two weapons. For example:

HAV shots use 36 supply vs 16 supply for MAV. HAV require large vehicles, whereas MAV can be mounted on Medium. If you do go HAV and decide you need heavy armour too, that makes the HAV more than double the price of the MAV. Medium vehicles are harder to hit than heavy vehicles when attacking. HAV will do considerably more collateral damage. You are over-killing with HAV if you face anything smaller than heavy vehicles, etc..

I am trying to make this a choice based on a number of different factors, so that different choices are better in different situations.

 

Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1880 on: October 14, 2018, 12:02:25 PM »
This seems now quite harsh on the MAV compared to the HAV. Using MAV on static bases you get about 35% more units for same tonnage, meaning 35% more damage against medium armored targets. Against heavy targets you only deal one quarter of the damage of the heavy platforms, which sounds like a clear case to exclusively go for HAV.

It's worth pointing out that while Statics with MAV might only be 35% better than statics with HAVs against medium vehicles, they're also 35% better against light vehicles, infantry, and other statics; they can also take 35% more hits.

Is that worth being 75% less effective against heavy, super, and ultra heavy? Honestly, probably not IMHO, but it's not that far off either. And if you happen to know your opponent likes medium vehicles then you'd definitely want to build them instead.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1881 on: October 14, 2018, 01:38:06 PM »
I must say I really like this change since it make different weapons really useful if in their right environment and allot harder to just say one weapon are more powerful than the next because it all depends now. Some weapons might cost huge amount of supplies but if used against the right target it will be worth it over less capable weapons from before.

This change... I think will make optimal efficiency depend on the situation rather than certain things always the best choice.

Balance is of course still a work in progress I assume, but the linear approach to Damage/HP was a bit problematic from a balance perspective.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2018, 01:49:32 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1882 on: October 14, 2018, 04:44:48 PM »
Heavy Bombardment does surprisingly well against heavy armour, even better than an MAV weapon, if we go by size of the weapon.

Of course, like the HAV it guzzles supplies in comparison, but Heavy Bombardment does a pretty good job against anything lighter as well simply by firing more often.
 

Offline Conscript Gary

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1883 on: October 20, 2018, 03:26:51 AM »
It's past 1 in the morning so I can't offer a point-by-point breakdown this time, but I very much like the STO weapon rules so far. The possibilities are deliciously wide open.
 

Offline hyramgraff

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1884 on: October 20, 2018, 10:58:18 AM »
I'm surprised that a Military Academy doesn't require any population to run.  I would expect a facility that generates 1000 ship crew per year to need some civilian support for that many students.

On the other hand, having new scientists being trained on a remote airless rock would make for interesting RP.  If you want to keep the population requirement as is, would you consider making a ship module that functions as the equivalent of a Military Academy?  That would also allow for interesting RP (like recreating Ender's Game).
 
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Offline sublight

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1885 on: October 21, 2018, 09:27:39 AM »
If we assume academies train the local population then they shouldn't function on an uninhabited rock.

While it is easy enough to assume the students are performing all maintenance as part of the 'how to maintain a starship' curriculum, unless the academy consumes population when producing crew they really ought to have a worker requirement sufficiently large to represent a minimum sustainable applicant pool.
 
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1886 on: October 21, 2018, 12:11:14 PM »
If we assume academies train the local population then they shouldn't function on an uninhabited rock.

While it is easy enough to assume the students are performing all maintenance as part of the 'how to maintain a starship' curriculum, unless the academy consumes population when producing crew they really ought to have a worker requirement sufficiently large to represent a minimum sustainable applicant pool.

I always assumed in my RP that the best of the best would travel across half the galaxy to train at Starfleet Academy or your local equivalent.

If there are alot of military state secrets being thought it could even be an advantage to have the academy on an otherwise uninhabited rock somewhere far from any large local population that could observe your fighter maneuvers or whatever your up to.

Compared to the other worker needs I don't think any significant amounts of population would be needed to run an Academy day to day, even if some probably would be needed for the logistics.
 
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Offline TinkerPox

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1887 on: October 21, 2018, 08:12:04 PM »
Quote from: alex_brunius link=topic=8497. msg110543#msg110543 date=1540141874
Quote from: sublight link=topic=8497. msg110542#msg110542 date=1540132059
If we assume academies train the local population then they shouldn't function on an uninhabited rock.

While it is easy enough to assume the students are performing all maintenance as part of the 'how to maintain a starship' curriculum, unless the academy consumes population when producing crew they really ought to have a worker requirement sufficiently large to represent a minimum sustainable applicant pool.

I always assumed in my RP that the best of the best would travel across half the galaxy to train at Starfleet Academy or your local equivalent.

If there are alot of military state secrets being thought it could even be an advantage to have the academy on an otherwise uninhabited rock somewhere far from any large local population that could observe your fighter maneuvers or whatever your up to.

Compared to the other worker needs I don't think any significant amounts of population would be needed to run an Academy day to day, even if some probably would be needed for the logistics.

I will say that the military can easily run their own academies themselves.  However I know that some save alot of money by hiring civilians for laundry, food, mail, tailor, etc.
 

Offline Rabid_Cog

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1888 on: October 22, 2018, 04:39:32 AM »
Remember that Steve stated that worker consumption only refers to workers that would need seperate life-support infrastructure. With that in mind, the logical conclusion is that even if there are civilian teachers/cooks/cleaners/maintenance workers/etc. they are being housed in the Academy itself and supported as part of the upkeep cost of the Academy. An Academy simply does not need an extensive civilian population living around it to perform supporting work for it to function, which is different than 'Has no workers'.

The only place this abstraction falls apart is in the case where a race has 0 total population (where is the Academy pulling its people from?) but in such a case, wealth shortages would probably sink you anyway so who cares? Its a sufficiently edge case not to matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

If we want to be technical about it, an Academy WOULD need a population accessable by trade route. And while having a new trade good "Students" could be funny, I dont think it would add much to the game.
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Offline Panopticon

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #1889 on: October 22, 2018, 12:11:05 PM »
A "student" trade good sounds pretty amusing actually, could lead to getting students from allied empires as part of trade, which seems cool.