Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on October 13, 2018, 05:49:54 AM
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I've reached the point of coding how Surface-to-Orbit weapons function in naval combat.
As part of that process, for each STO ground unit design I have added a small resolution - 1 active sensor with a minimum size of 5 tons (0.1 HS) and a maximum size equal to that required to exceed the range of the mounted weapon. In practical terms, because of the new active sensor rules, this is going to be very small in comparison to the size of the STO unit and add minimal cost. This functions like any other active sensor, detecting ships and being detected by EM sensors. The active sensors for each formation element can be turned on and off using a button on the Ground Forces window.
This doesn't mean that STO units can be pinpointed by their sensor emissions as the sensor is assumed to be remote from the weapon. I also considered having separate sensor vehicles but decided it was easier to keep everything together, like a CIWS.
Which brings us to how the STO weapons are targeted. Originally, I planned to add the STO weapons to the naval organisation window, or perhaps a new tab on the ground forces window. However, I ran into some questions. For example, should ground units follow the same restrictions as naval units when changing targets mid-combat? Should training mitigate that? Should all units in the same formation element target the same ship, or should I allow individual weapon targeting? Another concern was the sequence of play, where combat follows detection. Given that hostile ships will be trying to get in and out of range as quickly as possible, giving them a potential 'free round' while the player allocates targets post-detection may not be a good idea - although I could ensure ground-based sensors are more powerful to mitigate that (with increased cost and easier EM detection).
As a result of all that, I reached the conclusion that STO weapons should probably be treated like point defence. The player provides some rules for each formation element and the STO weapons (if active) target anything in range according to those rules. Different elements on the same planet could have different rules. On this basis, they would be able to engage in the same increment as the target was detected (like point defence). Rules could have multiple elements and cover areas such as:
- Whether to engage at all
- Whether to concentrate fire, target individually or target with groups of weapons (in pairs, triples, etc.)
- Whether targeting should be random or according to a rule
- Non-random target rules could be based on closest, slowest, largest, smallest, highest chance to hit, etc.
- When STO weapons do not all attack the same target, the above could be in order of closest, largest, etc.
I am looking for feedback on this idea, or suggestions for alternatives, bearing in mind the questions I raised.
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One option I could consider would be to treat them like PtS (Planet to Space) weapons in Emperor of the Fading Suns.
In EotFS, ground based weapons couldn't directly attack ships in orbit (it was assumed they'd just stay out of range/sight if they could), but would automatically fire when a space unit attempts to interact with the planet - either coming in to land troops or conduct orbital bombardment. I think this would be the option if you wanted STO weapons in Aurora to function on the ground combat time scale. It would limit the situations they'd be useful in (unable to support a fleet in orbit), but also have some advantages (they could get away with powerful, low charge rate lasers since they'd be firing once every 3 hours, and they couldn't just be picked off like ships using the naval targeting window, but would have to be targeted through orbital bombardment). This would also set up the situation where it was feasible for ships to conduct ground bombardment without wiping out all STO weapons first, since they'd be taking 1 round of fire for 1 round of bombardment instead of 3 hours worth of fire.
How I would see it working is that ships would have an additional order option with regards to planets - one for providing orbital fire support to FFD units, and one for "Bombard STO Weapons." During a ground combat round STO weapons would fire on any ships that were either landing troops, bombarding STO weapons, or providing orbital fire support, then any surviving ships would carry out those orders. If going with this, I would probably make drop ships take one ground combat increment to drop troops - even drop ships should be vulnerable to STO weapons, and it doesn't really have to represent an actual three hours so much as moving into position to drop troops and then the STO weapons firing at the drop ships as they race in. The bonus of using drop ships instead of normal transport would be a single combat increment and that the troops all get unloaded at the same time and can't be attacked piecemeal.
The other option would be the current method of having them function sort of like ships, on a naval combat time scale. I'd suggest that either player directed targeting or completely automated would be the way to go - I think the player trying to set rules for what target to pick would get complex fast, there's just too many variables for it to be user friendly to set up a list of targeting priorities. Possibly both - players could specify targets for STO weapons but if they don't they fire on any ships firing on them first, random targets second.
If you do go for automated targeting, I think it's only fair to make it automated the other way around, too. STO weapons on a planet could be considered hidden (just showing up as normal ground forces) except when firing, and weapons on ships could gain a new point defense setting - "Suppress Planetary Fire" or something like that. STO weapons would attempt to fire (randomly or automated targeting priorities of some sort) at ships in range, and all weapons set to Suppress Planetary Fire would attempt to fire back at all STO weapons that fired that increment. Their sensor would only need to turn on while firing, assuming automated targeting. An option to have STO weapons hold their fire would be useful there (possibly just having them set on rear instead of support) - it would mean you could conceal their existence until you wanted to have them fire.
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In terms of game physics/engineering/playability, why are STO weapons systems (including/especially sensors) any different from ship-based systems? I think you should follow your core principle of "if I can put this weapons system on platform x, then why can't I put it on y" very closely.
If I follow through on this the following consistency questions arise:
1) Why shouldn't an active sensor be vehicle mounted (if small) or static (if big)?
2) What's wrong with a response of "too bad - so sad - can't be justified by Aurora physics" when players complain that the range of their active sensor is too short to allow them to acquire and fire when a spaceship does a rapid fly-by? (Something I just thought of - Aurora sensors don't have line-of-sight requirements, so active sensors can still target a spaceship below the horizon/on the other side of the planet.) This was the response for years when people wanted specialized weapons systems to put on fighters (to be clear, that was a neutral observation, not a complaint).
3) Why are ground-based active sensors limited to resolution 1? That would mitigate the range problem a lot for large spaceships.
4) Why aren't ground-based weapons designed exactly the same way naval weapons are designed? (Possibly with some alternative [EDIT] tech tracks [/EDIT] for things like magazines to represent vehicle hauled missiles, although even there a patriot battery looks an awful lot like a box launcher.)
5) Why not simply allow the put a CIWS system in some STO units and "regular" weapons systems in others.
6) Why not allow ground-based missile systems?
I think that where this leads is:
A) The ghost of PDCs comes back as a ground unit. I think that an STO unit should show up as a formation(?) (that can have mobile and/or static elements) - the formation could then be the equivalent of a ship in terms of user interface. Formation might not be right term here - I mean a grouping of elements that isn't necessarily highest in the chain of command. Maybe the STO system becomes HQ-centric - there's a special HQ that acts like a spaceship's bridge, and that's the thing that binds the weapons systems, magazines, and sensors. Essentially, PDCs turn into an HQ.
B) Players use the naval technology/systems development mechanism to design STO systems (sensors, energy weapons, missile launchers, magazines,CIWS). There are probably separate "ground based" tracks for portability and reload efficiency.
C) There might be a "CIWS control truck" that can meld the individual components (sensor+weapon+computer) of a CIWS into a sub-formation that can be attached to any formation (not just an STO formation). Note that this might feed back into changes in how CIWS is considered in ship design.
D) The rules of STO combat follow "regular order" :) in all ways. An STO HQ essentially acts as a space system on space system timescales.
E) Active sensors and fire control are probably going to generally be too big to be mobile, so there's going to be a lot of static stuff.
F) This brings up the question of armor for static units, which begins to circle back to PDCs.
G) In terms of the original Aurora concept, that planets are tough nuts to crack, I think the general philosophy should be the same as 19th century coastal forts: the ground is a very stable and tough weapons platform that can be used for area denial.
H) The naval crewing requirements will translate into manpower requirements in the STO units.
I) From a coding/design point of view, this minimizes the amount of big-bang rewrite/introduce a bunch of new set of rules. This is good both because it cuts time-to-release and (probably more importantly) it cuts back on the potential for inconsistency between the two rules sets.
There are probably more, but I can't think of them at the moment....
John
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I probably didn't make it clear but the STO weapons are not any different from ship-based systems.
1) The weapon is a normal weapon designed for use in warships and the cost/size/ minerals are the same.
2) The active sensor uses the normal sensor design rules. It is resolution 1 so it can shoot at anything. Cost/size/ minerals are the same. Range is the same as ship-based.
3) The beam fire control uses the normal beam fire control rules. Costs are halved with the rationale that it is intended to control a single weapon.
4) A reactor is designed using the normal rules to power the weapon. Cost/size/ minerals are the same.
The active sensor range isn't a problem. For the Commonwealth with Strength 21 and EM 11 tech, a 0.1 HS resolution 1 sensor has a range of 2.7m km.
My only question here is how to control their targeting. Automatic or manual.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
I will tackle the orbit-to-surface next, which is easier because the whole naval fire control situation is well-defined. First though, I need to determine how the STO units handle target assignments.
It's also worth pointing out that while ground combat takes place every three hours, this is intended as a summation of all the events in those three hours, not a situation where everybody fires once every three hours. Orbital bombardment support represents ships firing when required during that period, rather than either continual combat or a three-hour cycle. Slow-firing weapons will be penalised when used for orbital bombardment support.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
If this is the case then I think STO weapons have to be player directed. Having ships able to directly target STO weapons but not the other way around would be an inherent asymmetry that would be basically impossible to keep balanced.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
If this is the case then I think STO weapons have to be player directed. Having ships able to directly target STO weapons but not the other way around would be an inherent asymmetry that would be basically impossible to keep balanced.
That was my first thought. However, that puts STO at a disadvantage because they would have to wait until the increment after a ship is directed before they can fire at it. Given how briefly a ship may be in range that could be a problem. With automated targeting, they could fire in the same increment, effectively giving them an extra round of fire. This could be in those situation where the detection takes place close to maximum range, or maybe because several ships are holding out of range and you may not target the right one if you try to guess. Conversely, ships are actually firing at a group of targets (STO weapons), not individual targets, because they are shooting at the element, not the units.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
If this is the case then I think STO weapons have to be player directed. Having ships able to directly target STO weapons but not the other way around would be an inherent asymmetry that would be basically impossible to keep balanced.
That was my first thought. However, that puts STO at a disadvantage because they would have to wait until the increment after a ship is directed before they can fire at it. Given how briefly a ship may be in range that could be a problem. With automated targeting, they could fire in the same increment, effectively giving them an extra round of fire. This could be in those situation where the detection takes place close to maximum range, or maybe because several ships are holding out of range and you may not target the right one if you try to guess. Conversely, ships are actually firing at a group of targets (STO weapons), not individual targets, because they are shooting at the element, not the units.
I'd suggest making it so ships can only target STO weapons if they're in orbit and not moving, then.
Or other ways of giving STO weapons a range bonus but that hits up against the 5 light second limit.
Maybe just halving (or other multiplier) the range of ships firing on ground units? They're awfully small targets to be hitting from beyond the moon's orbit, after all.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
If this is the case then I think STO weapons have to be player directed. Having ships able to directly target STO weapons but not the other way around would be an inherent asymmetry that would be basically impossible to keep balanced.
That was my first thought. However, that puts STO at a disadvantage because they would have to wait until the increment after a ship is directed before they can fire at it. Given how briefly a ship may be in range that could be a problem. With automated targeting, they could fire in the same increment, effectively giving them an extra round of fire. This could be in those situation where the detection takes place close to maximum range, or maybe because several ships are holding out of range and you may not target the right one if you try to guess. Conversely, ships are actually firing at a group of targets (STO weapons), not individual targets, because they are shooting at the element, not the units.
I'd suggest making it so ships can only target STO weapons if they're in orbit and not moving, then.
Or other ways of giving STO weapons a range bonus but that hits up against the 5 light second limit.
Maybe just halving (or other multiplier) the range of ships firing on ground units? They're awfully small targets to be hitting from beyond the moon's orbit, after all.
It is already difficult for ships to hit STO weapons, particularly in certain terrain, so I don't want to make it even harder. As it is, a fully fortified STO in jungle mountain terrain will be hit 1 time in 144 by a ship without crew or commander bonuses.
My main concern is how to avoid the 1 round delay associated with manual targeting for the STOs. That isn't a problem for ships because they can set their target and then move into range. In situations with late-detected targets, or multiple-potential targets, STO have delayed reactions. It is like similar to manually targeting point defence. Auto-targeting solves the problem and also makes managing STOs much easier for the player.
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It is already difficult for ships to hit STO weapons, particularly in certain terrain, so I don't want to make it even harder. As it is, a fully fortified STO in jungle mountain terrain will be hit 1 time in 144 by a ship without crew or commander bonuses.
My main concern is how to avoid the 1 round delay associated with manual targeting for the STOs. That isn't a problem for ships because they can set their target and then move into range. In situations with late-detected targets, or multiple-potential targets, STO have delayed reactions. It is like similar to manually targeting point defence. Auto-targeting solves the problem and also makes managing STOs much easier for the player.
Halving the range wouldn't make the weapons any less accurate if being fired from orbit, it would just make it harder to try to snipe at them by ducking in and out of range. That said, it would still leave it possible to conduct a general bombardment by ducking in and out of range, and I think powerful STO weapons should be able to stop a small force from conducting a general bombardment (without missiles, at least).
I still feel that the best solution is to make it so both sides have automated targeting, and would urge you to at least spend some time thinking about it. However, if you're set on avoiding that, and also set on automated targeting for STO weapons, why not both? Make it so STO weapons can be given manual targeting orders the same as ships, but also given an autofire order that will make them fire on any hostile ship in range. That will also mean players can avoid managing STOs if they don't want to but avoid the problem of exploiting the targeting rules to trick the STO units into firing suboptimally.
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It is already difficult for ships to hit STO weapons, particularly in certain terrain, so I don't want to make it even harder. As it is, a fully fortified STO in jungle mountain terrain will be hit 1 time in 144 by a ship without crew or commander bonuses.
My main concern is how to avoid the 1 round delay associated with manual targeting for the STOs. That isn't a problem for ships because they can set their target and then move into range. In situations with late-detected targets, or multiple-potential targets, STO have delayed reactions. It is like similar to manually targeting point defence. Auto-targeting solves the problem and also makes managing STOs much easier for the player.
Halving the range wouldn't make the weapons any less accurate if being fired from orbit, it would just make it harder to try to snipe at them by ducking in and out of range. That said, it would still leave it possible to conduct a general bombardment by ducking in and out of range, and I think powerful STO weapons should be able to stop a small force from conducting a general bombardment (without missiles, at least).
I still feel that the best solution is to make it so both sides have automated targeting, and would urge you to at least spend some time thinking about it. However, if you're set on avoiding that, and also set on automated targeting for STO weapons, why not both? Make it so STO weapons can be given manual targeting orders the same as ships, but also given an autofire order that will make them fire on any hostile ship in range. That will also mean players can avoid managing STOs if they don't want to but avoid the problem of exploiting the targeting rules to trick the STO units into firing suboptimally.
+1
I think there's some asymmetry between ships and STO that you're worried about that I'm missing, and I think it has to do with ducking in and out of orbit. If so, I agree with Bremen that allowing both modes (automatic and manual) seems to make sense, with the slight modifier that automatic mode would be a secondary order (similar to conditional/secondary movement orders in ships) - if the manually selected target is available it fires at that, otherwise it uses the automatic mode to decide if/what to fire at.
To make sure I've got your concern correct, let me try to formulate what you're worried about in pure ship-to-ship terms:
Let's say I've got one ship A that is very powerful but only has one fire control (and so can only target one enemy ship at a time). It's chasing (using follow command) two ships B1 and B2, which are both targeting A, moving at the same speed (but have higher max speed), in two different TG, and slightly out of range (same weapons range on both sides). Let's say it's targeting (and following) B1. The B commander could give B2 an order to slow down enough to drop it into range and update by 5 seconds. Since A is targeting B1 (which is still out of range), it doesn't get to fire. Since B2 is targeting A, it does get to fire. For the next increment B2 speeds up enough to get back out of range of A, resulting in B2 having gotten a free shot at A. Is this what you're concerned about? It's the ship-to-ship equivalent of B2 having quickly ducked in and out of orbit.
In the case above, it seems like the solution is to give A the potential for having a secondary firing command of "fire at any target within some criteria" (similar to your automated orders). The fact that it's secondary means that it avoids the "duck in and out" exploit while still allowing manual fire control allocation if the entire B task group comes into range and sticks around to fight it out.
John
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In the case above, it seems like the solution is to give A the potential for having a secondary firing command of "fire at any target within some criteria" (similar to your automated orders). The fact that it's secondary means that it avoids the "duck in and out" exploit while still allowing manual fire control allocation if the entire B task group comes into range and sticks around to fight it out.
And the other option would be just to accept the retargeting delay and accept that 1/2 the time A will guess wrong as to whether B1 or B2 is the next one that will zip into range. There are good arguments in favor of that - numerical superiority and higher agility against a fixed target should make a difference. The fact that every now and then the defenders would guess right means their fire would be diluted, not absent.
John
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I think there's some asymmetry between ships and STO that you're worried about that I'm missing, and I think it has to do with ducking in and out of orbit. If so, I agree with Bremen that allowing both modes (automatic and manual) seems to make sense, with the slight modifier that automatic mode would be a secondary order (similar to conditional/secondary movement orders in ships) - if the manually selected target is available it fires at that, otherwise it uses the automatic mode to decide if/what to fire at.
To make sure I've got your concern correct, let me try to formulate what you're worried about in pure ship-to-ship terms:
Let's say I've got one ship A that is very powerful but only has one fire control (and so can only target one enemy ship at a time). It's chasing (using follow command) two ships B1 and B2, which are both targeting A, moving at the same speed (but have higher max speed), in two different TG, and slightly out of range (same weapons range on both sides). Let's say it's targeting (and following) B1. The B commander could give B2 an order to slow down enough to drop it into range and update by 5 seconds. Since A is targeting B1 (which is still out of range), it doesn't get to fire. Since B2 is targeting A, it does get to fire. For the next increment B2 speeds up enough to get back out of range of A, resulting in B2 having gotten a free shot at A. Is this what you're concerned about? It's the ship-to-ship equivalent of B2 having quickly ducked in and out of orbit.
In the case above, it seems like the solution is to give A the potential for having a secondary firing command of "fire at any target within some criteria" (similar to your automated orders). The fact that it's secondary means that it avoids the "duck in and out" exploit while still allowing manual fire control allocation if the entire B task group comes into range and sticks around to fight it out.
Yes, that's a good summary. Although B in this case could have a dozen ships and lots of patience.
I think I agree with both of you that allowing both manual and automatic modes makes the most sense.
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I want STO weapons to function on naval timescales as part of naval combat. Their main function is to counter planetary assault, prevent orbital bombardment and interdict fighters moving to and from the planet. Warships will be able to directly target STO units once they fire (in effect they will be detected as a separate target from normal ground forces once they fire).
If this is the case then I think STO weapons have to be player directed. Having ships able to directly target STO weapons but not the other way around would be an inherent asymmetry that would be basically impossible to keep balanced.
I don't think this is as much of a balance problem as it seems at first glance. I vote for automatic firing, like PD, for STO weapons. The attacker can overwhelm the STO defences with cheap flying bricks, but they can already do that against missile-armed PDC defenders too. And in real life, target acquisition is a real issue, you can't always select perfectly what you want to shoot at.
Of course, allowing both, if feasible, would be ideal.
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I don't think this is as much of a balance problem as it seems at first glance. I vote for automatic firing, like PD, for STO weapons. The attacker can overwhelm the STO defences with cheap flying bricks, but they can already do that against missile-armed PDC defenders too. And in real life, target acquisition is a real issue, you can't always select perfectly what you want to shoot at.
Of course, allowing both, if feasible, would be ideal.
Manual will be a little messy, as I will have to create a new targeting system to replace the fire controls, weapon assignments, etc. that the combat code currently uses and create a targeting UI on the ground combat window. I'll probably add automatic first and then manual later.
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One reason one would want bigger planetary sensors is to rack up tracking time for your point defense.
I asked this in another place, but did not get an answer: Can one set STOs to point defense?
Also, can turreted weapons be used for STO? Any STO will require some kind of turret, since you can't turn the planet to point it at its target, but can you get higher than your racial tracking speed on your STOs? This is not only important against missiles, but also to intercept supporting fighters.
Also, what is the hit chance against active STOs compared to passive STOs in hiding? I assume hiding STOs are treated like any other ground unit.
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I don't think this is as much of a balance problem as it seems at first glance. I vote for automatic firing, like PD, for STO weapons. The attacker can overwhelm the STO defences with cheap flying bricks, but they can already do that against missile-armed PDC defenders too. And in real life, target acquisition is a real issue, you can't always select perfectly what you want to shoot at.
Of course, allowing both, if feasible, would be ideal.
With a missile PDC, you can manually target the ship you want to. With automatic targeting, it gets tricky.
Let's say automatic targeting picks a target at random. An attacker could use 20 1000 ton blocks of armor (or perhaps shields) and 1 30,000 ton battleship to bombard; the result is that 20/21 STO shots are wasted. If instead automated targeting picks the largest ship, then a fleet could have a single large armor brick and a bunch of smaller bombardment ships, and again avoid fire.
The solution Steve seemed to be proposing was that the defender could set their own targeting priorities, whether it was biggest ship, slowest ship, etc, but I really don't think there's a user friendly way to do this; it would either have to be a limited set of options (which could be gamed) or basically end up as a pseudo coding system.
Having STO weapons be something you can target but also have an autofire setting where they pick targets at random seems a good compromise.
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One reason one would want bigger planetary sensors is to rack up tracking time for your point defense.
I asked this in another place, but did not get an answer: Can one set STOs to point defense?
Also, can turreted weapons be used for STO? Any STO will require some kind of turret, since you can't turn the planet to point it at its target, but can you get higher than your racial tracking speed on your STOs? This is not only important against missiles, but also to intercept supporting fighters.
Also, what is the hit chance against active STOs compared to passive STOs in hiding? I assume hiding STOs are treated like any other ground unit.
STO cannot be turreted and are not intended for point defence. You can have CIWS on planets though. The idea behind the STO weapons is best represented by a book called Through Struggle the Stars.
https://www.amazon.com/Through-Struggle-Stars-Human-Reach-ebook/dp/B005FGNLDM
STO hit chances are based on normal ship-to-ship hit chances and use the tracking speed at design time. This is briefly covered in one of the rules posts, along with a screenshot:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg105824#msg105824
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So just thinking, I'm reminded of the Space to planet interactions in The Shiva Option. Will/could there be something like the kinetic interdiction strike system? I myself would love to do a Operation Cushion Shot and ram planetoids together :)
To be honest, as long as there is a way to sit back and just destroy all life on a planet (constant barrage of missiles?) without being exposed to return fire I'll be happy. (which if our missiles have the same range as mine, shouldn't shooting out of a atmo/gravity field reduce range?)
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For those who haven't read it, in The Shiva Option there's a planet so massively fortified by genocidal aliens that the protagonist side ends up diverting an asteroid on a collision course, because any frontal assault would be suicide. Diverting the asteroid takes months, and could be stopped by the enemy warships, but the friendly fleet escorts it in - it basically forces a naval engagement instead of just defending the planet since the hostile ships have to come out and try to divert it.
I don't think an option like that is really possible or necessary in Aurora. You can always, as you note, bombard a planet with missiles from outside STO range, since there isn't an option for ground units that launch anti-ship missiles.
As I understand the system, if you're faced with an ungarrisoned enemy colony, you can just vaporize it with beam weapons at essentially no cost (maybe a few MSP due to the new weapon failures), or you can bring in enough troops to garrison it and gain a functioning colony. If the colony is defended by ground forces, you have various options:
1a) Destroy it with missiles from out of STO weapon range. No danger to your ships, but costs missiles (potentially a LOT of missiles if the planet has large numbers of CIWS ground units). Enough CIWS relative to your fleet might eliminate this option, though I imagine it would be cost prohibitive.
1b) Destroy it with beam weapons. Means you'll probably take some hits from their STO weapons, but it would be in many ways similar to a fight between warships.
2a) Bombard the ground units with missiles, then invade. This will destroy a lot of the stuff you're trying to capture since missiles inflict more collateral damage than beams and (I think) the STO weapons don't reveal themselves until they fire, so you'll have to bombard all the ground forces.
2b) Engage the STO weapons with your warships, then conquer the planet with orbital fire supporting your ground forces. Like 1b, involves a fight in which some of your warships will probably be damaged if not destroyed. Inflicts less collateral damage and wont use up your missiles.
2c) Launch an invasion unsupported by orbital ships; you might lose some troop transports to STO fire but hopefully most will get through, drop their troops, and retreat. Will likely inflict the least collateral damage and give you the most loot captured buildings.
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Thanks for the clarification Bremen! I've been trying to keep up with all the ground forces changes and interactions and i'm always thinking in the back of my head: But what if I don't want to inhabit the planet. . . I just want to glass it. (preferably with low casualties) And wish I could just throw rocks down the gravity well rather then missiles.
Although now that I think about it, if CIWS is defending and shooting incoming objects, would that require supply to be used as they are in combat? (just thinking that might be another attrition aspect).
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But what if I don't want to inhabit the planet. . . I just want to glass it. (preferably with low casualties) And wish I could just throw rocks down the gravity well rather then missiles.
Well, then you're just out of luck. I mean, you absolutely CAN just boil the seas, melt the crust, and blast off the atmosphere. . . but you have to do it with (expensive) missiles, not cheap rocks if you want zero friendly casualties.
Or you risk getting shot at and move closer to use your guns.
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Manual will be a little messy, as I will have to create a new targeting system to replace the fire controls, weapon assignments, etc. that the combat code currently uses and create a targeting UI on the ground combat window. I'll probably add automatic first and then manual later.
I vote for automatic first (-and-only) for C# Aurora 1.0, and save manual targeting (with rules) for 1.0.1.
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One reason one would want bigger planetary sensors is to rack up tracking time for your point defense.
I asked this in another place, but did not get an answer: Can one set STOs to point defense?
Also, can turreted weapons be used for STO? Any STO will require some kind of turret, since you can't turn the planet to point it at its target, but can you get higher than your racial tracking speed on your STOs? This is not only important against missiles, but also to intercept supporting fighters.
Also, what is the hit chance against active STOs compared to passive STOs in hiding? I assume hiding STOs are treated like any other ground unit.
STO cannot be turreted and are not intended for point defence. You can have CIWS on planets though. The idea behind the STO weapons is best represented by a book called Through Struggle the Stars.
https://www.amazon.com/Through-Struggle-Stars-Human-Reach-ebook/dp/B005FGNLDM
STO hit chances are based on normal ship-to-ship hit chances and use the tracking speed at design time. This is briefly covered in one of the rules posts, along with a screenshot:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg105824#msg105824
Through Struggle the Stars is not the best example, since their laser batteries switch between missile defense and anti-shipping duties.
My main concern is that one thing I would expect from fixed fortifications is the ability to defend shipyards and any ships that retreat there. If that can only be accomplished by orbital bases, you already need a heavy point defense screen there to make it viable, making planetary CIWS redundant.
Furthermore, likely landing craft and fighters will have much higher speeds than racial base speed, so you want turrets to intercept them. With ECM and no ECCM on ground units you will be able to build uninterceptable landing craft.
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Automated firing looks fine to me. I’m less worried about gaming the system, people can ultimately always do that just through the use of save games so trying to avoid other ways of doing it should always be a bottom priority.
I assume in any case that if there are undetected stos that are on the planet they are going to get the first shot in any case as ships will need to move into range to trigger them firing and have the same disadvantage of needing a detection phase before they can fire first time round?
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One reason one would want bigger planetary sensors is to rack up tracking time for your point defense.
I asked this in another place, but did not get an answer: Can one set STOs to point defense?
Also, can turreted weapons be used for STO? Any STO will require some kind of turret, since you can't turn the planet to point it at its target, but can you get higher than your racial tracking speed on your STOs? This is not only important against missiles, but also to intercept supporting fighters.
Also, what is the hit chance against active STOs compared to passive STOs in hiding? I assume hiding STOs are treated like any other ground unit.
STO cannot be turreted and are not intended for point defence. You can have CIWS on planets though. The idea behind the STO weapons is best represented by a book called Through Struggle the Stars.
https://www. amazon. com/Through-Struggle-Stars-Human-Reach-ebook/dp/B005FGNLDM
STO hit chances are based on normal ship-to-ship hit chances and use the tracking speed at design time. This is briefly covered in one of the rules posts, along with a screenshot:
hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=8495. msg105824#msg105824
Through Struggle the Stars is not the best example, since their laser batteries switch between missile defense and anti-shipping duties.
My main concern is that one thing I would expect from fixed fortifications is the ability to defend shipyards and any ships that retreat there. If that can only be accomplished by orbital bases, you already need a heavy point defense screen there to make it viable, making planetary CIWS redundant.
Furthermore, likely landing craft and fighters will have much higher speeds than racial base speed, so you want turrets to intercept them. With ECM and no ECCM on ground units you will be able to build uninterceptable landing craft.
Seeing as large aurora ships (Above Fighter-class) simply cannot enter atmosphere, bear in mind that all shipping infrastructure is already orbital-based and therefore ground-based defense may be suboptimal at defending them
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It would be good to have no ambiguity on this. Shipyards are incredibly precious. I would iniitially hope that planetary CIWS would defend them from missiles, just as it would defend other shipping from missiles if they are at stationary orbit of the planet. I would have thought the same for planetary energy weapons as well, even though they might not be effective due to low tracking. In this case, there might be a tactical reason to hold fire (ie. not give away the STO weapon as a target)
One reason one would want bigger planetary sensors is to rack up tracking time for your point defense.
I asked this in another place, but did not get an answer: Can one set STOs to point defense?
Also, can turreted weapons be used for STO? Any STO will require some kind of turret, since you can't turn the planet to point it at its target, but can you get higher than your racial tracking speed on your STOs? This is not only important against missiles, but also to intercept supporting fighters.
Also, what is the hit chance against active STOs compared to passive STOs in hiding? I assume hiding STOs are treated like any other ground unit.
STO cannot be turreted and are not intended for point defence. You can have CIWS on planets though. The idea behind the STO weapons is best represented by a book called Through Struggle the Stars.
https://www. amazon. com/Through-Struggle-Stars-Human-Reach-ebook/dp/B005FGNLDM
STO hit chances are based on normal ship-to-ship hit chances and use the tracking speed at design time. This is briefly covered in one of the rules posts, along with a screenshot:
hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=8495. msg105824#msg105824
Through Struggle the Stars is not the best example, since their laser batteries switch between missile defense and anti-shipping duties.
My main concern is that one thing I would expect from fixed fortifications is the ability to defend shipyards and any ships that retreat there. If that can only be accomplished by orbital bases, you already need a heavy point defense screen there to make it viable, making planetary CIWS redundant.
Furthermore, likely landing craft and fighters will have much higher speeds than racial base speed, so you want turrets to intercept them. With ECM and no ECCM on ground units you will be able to build uninterceptable landing craft.
Seeing as large aurora ships (Above Fighter-class) simply cannot enter atmosphere, bear in mind that all shipping infrastructure is already orbital-based and therefore ground-based defense may be suboptimal at defending them
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It would be good to have no ambiguity on this. Shipyards are incredibly precious. I would iniitially hope that planetary CIWS would defend them from missiles, just as it would defend other shipping from missiles if they are at stationary orbit of the planet. I would have thought the same for planetary energy weapons as well, even though they might not be effective due to low tracking. In this case, there might be a tactical reason to hold fire (ie. not give away the STO weapon as a target)
Planetary CIWS only defend the surface of the planet. Even this is stretching things a little as CIWS can only defend the mounting ship - in this case the 'ship' is a planet. If planetary CIWS can defend ships in orbit than it would be difficult to explain why the CIWS on a ship in orbit can't defend all the other ships in orbit.
However, what you can do is build a orbital weapon platform with point defence. Normally, such a platform is vulnerable to energy-armed ships that move within their own range but outside the range of the platform's point defence weapons. You can use the STO weapons on the planet to defend the OWP from energy attack, which in turn can defend other ships in orbit from missile attack.
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Automatic with options sounds reasonable for a first pass. yes its possible to game the system with it by sending in armoured bricks small and large but that would be at the player discretion (but this is a single player game after all not an e-sport).
I personally prefer the automatic system with PDS style controls, it seems to give just enough control to allow for tweaking with a small element of randomness of what targets exactly are going to be hit.
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It would be good to have no ambiguity on this. Shipyards are incredibly precious. I would iniitially hope that planetary CIWS would defend them from missiles, just as it would defend other shipping from missiles if they are at stationary orbit of the planet. I would have thought the same for planetary energy weapons as well, even though they might not be effective due to low tracking. In this case, there might be a tactical reason to hold fire (ie. not give away the STO weapon as a target)
Planetary CIWS only defend the surface of the planet. Even this is stretching things a little as CIWS can only defend the mounting ship - in this case the 'ship' is a planet. If planetary CIWS can defend ships in orbit than it would be difficult to explain why the CIWS on a ship in orbit can't defend all the other ships in orbit.
However, what you can do is build a orbital weapon platform with point defence. Normally, such a platform is vulnerable to energy-armed ships that move within their own range but outside the range of the platform's point defence weapons. You can use the STO weapons on the planet to defend the OWP from energy attack, which in turn can defend other ships in orbit from missile attack.
Well, that is why I consider shipbound CIWS a waste of space on anything but support ships I want to qualify for civilian maintenance. I'd propose to allow turreted lasers/etc to be valid options for STOs, and have STOs be able to set them to point defense.
Missile defense is one thing, the other is invincible ships. At the same tech level racial tracking speed = 20% engines at x1 power multiplier. 2x power at 40% engines gives you 25% chance to hit, with ECM3 that is 0% chance to hit. Tack on some plasma carronades, and you have an invincible bombardment ship.
The main question is, if CIWS works, why can't you use the other beam weapons like it. Why should you need to mount a laser in orbit for it to be able to intercept missiles, when the same laser works identical on ground against anything but missiles?
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With a missile PDC, you can manually target the ship you want to. With automatic targeting, it gets tricky.
Let's say automatic targeting picks a target at random. An attacker could use 20 1000 ton blocks of armor (or perhaps shields) and 1 30,000 ton battleship to bombard; the result is that 20/21 STO shots are wasted. If instead automated targeting picks the largest ship, then a fleet could have a single large armor brick and a bunch of smaller bombardment ships, and again avoid fire.
The solution Steve seemed to be proposing was that the defender could set their own targeting priorities, whether it was biggest ship, slowest ship, etc, but I really don't think there's a user friendly way to do this; it would either have to be a limited set of options (which could be gamed) or basically end up as a pseudo coding system.
Having STO weapons be something you can target but also have an autofire setting where they pick targets at random seems a good compromise.
Again, I don't think "gaming the system" is really a concern. Nothing stop a player currently from shooting 10000 cheap Size 1 missiles at an NPR planet, thereby exhausting all their AMMs. Or building one or two 10k ton shield/armour brick that just tanks everything the NPR PDCs can throw at it, preferably by leaping back and forth over maximum missile range. Any system can eventually be analysed and gamed. Going even further, the SM mode means that players can "cheat" as much as they want. The various game features and options should function in "good faith", ie assume that the player is playing "straight" or "legit", not on purpose trying to exploit stuff.
Thus an automatic system similar to PD/AMM where the player can, beforehand, select from 3-5 targeting options, would be IMHO quite sufficient. Like you select whether to use 1 or 5 AMMs per enemy missile, and the range for Area Defence beams, and whether PD is self-defence or TG defence. Similarly, STO could have the options for largest, smallest, fastest, slowest and if you have four different STOs on the planet, each could have a different priority if the player so chooses.
Thus STO ground units could use the same System Combat window as ships do and Steve only needs to add the options to the PD menu-bar/thingy, where the old options already exist.
The main question is, if CIWS works, why can't you use the other beam weapons like it. Why should you need to mount a laser in orbit for it to be able to intercept missiles, when the same laser works identical on ground against anything but missiles?
While I understand the need to keep everything working functionally the same across the board, and I do agree with that goal, making CIWS more useful just kills the need for purpose-built PD ships. And if ground units CIWS are as limited as ship CIWS, then they could only defend their own formation instead of the planet, which kinda defeats the purpose of having them in the first place, ie to protect the civilian population and ground-based facilities in addition to the military units.
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The main question is, if CIWS works, why can't you use the other beam weapons like it. Why should you need to mount a laser in orbit for it to be able to intercept missiles, when the same laser works identical on ground against anything but missiles?
While I understand the need to keep everything working functionally the same across the board, and I do agree with that goal, making CIWS more useful just kills the need for purpose-built PD ships. And if ground units CIWS are as limited as ship CIWS, then they could only defend their own formation instead of the planet, which kinda defeats the purpose of having them in the first place, ie to protect the civilian population and ground-based facilities in addition to the military units.
I don't want to change anything on CIWS. What I would like to change is the functionality of STO weapons to make them work as PD. This would make ground force CIWS redundant, as you can simply build Gauss STOs, but then again CIWS is a fix to allow PD on civilian ships.
There is no such thing as civilian ground forces, so there is no special need for a civilian, purely defensive version. STO already include their own fire control and sensor, meaning even less need for a special integrated CIWS unit, instead of allowing turrets as STOs, because every unit is essentially an integrated weapon system already unlike ship mounted beams.
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I've read through the above posts and I will give STO vs CIWS more thought.
My original thinking for excluding turret-based weapons on planets was the intended 'static' STOs would be well-fortified and therefore not ideal for tracking fast targets such as missiles. Turrets would need room to 'manoeuvre' and therefore didn't match the well-fortified concept. CIWS on the other hand were very short-range and intended to hit targets coming directly at them.
Another reason for not having turrets was that I didn't necessarily want planets to have defences that were so strong you couldn't penetrate them, because those turrets would be as effective as orbital bases but much harder to kill.
However, some good arguments have been made against those concepts. Firstly, CIWS in this context are effectively covering the whole planet, which doesn't really match the CIWS on ships. Secondly, the new STO units are really the same type of integrated weapon as CIWS, making CIWS less 'special' in this context. It probably does make more sense (and is more consistent) to remove planetary CIWS and allow STO to include fast tracking weapons, as CIWS is really just an integrated gauss turret anyway. This also makes it clear that planetary defences can protect ships that are in orbit or close to the planet. If I made this change, I would add point defence modes to the other automated options for STOs, which would also mean that 'normal' STO could be used for point defence in an emergency.
The 'downside' is that some planets/bases may become very hard to defeat, although that is not necessarily a bad thing. It also restricts the potential use of small, fast craft for dropping troops and the best option is probably large, heavily-armoured assault ships. Again, not necessarily a bad thing.
I think I decided early on to go with non-turreted STO plus CIWS and then stayed on that track. At this point I am just stepping back and questioning my own assumptions :)
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The 'downside' is that some planets/bases may become very hard to defeat, although that is not necessarily a bad thing. It also restricts the potential use of small, fast craft for dropping troops and the best option is probably large, heavily-armoured assault ships. Again, not necessarily a bad thing.
I admit, my first thought was picturing entire corps of fast tracking STO weapons making the planet an absolute deathtrap for any orbiting ships and also nearly impervious to missiles.
On the other hand... there's no rule that says orbital bombardment has to be done while in orbit. If the STO weapons are gauss based (I assume railguns still wont be able to be turreted), the orbiting ships can easily conduct some bombardment while staying out of gauss range, and if the STO weapons reveal themselves they'll be vulnerable to being bombarded from out of range (and if they choose not to reveal, the attacker could try launching a few missiles or land ground forces in stages). If they're laser based, they'll have considerably longer range against ships but at the cost of being much less effective against missiles. And a mixture of gauss weapons vs heavy lasers would still mean the ships could engage the lasers from outside the gauss range.
I think in practice it will still be extremely difficult to make a planet immune or prohibitively expensive to attack. What it might do is turn the invasion of a heavily fortified planet into a multi-stage siege affair (first engaging any heavy STO weapons from long range, gradually working one's way inward as they're reduced, then forcing the short ranged PD weapons to reveal themselves with successive attacks so they can be picked off). Which... actually sounds pretty fun to me.
Mind you, I'm not opposed to the dedicated CIWS vs anti-ship weapons either. I think they both sound like workable concepts.
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Steve, thanks for reconsidering. I think Whitecold has made some really good points. I don't necessarily think a turret needs room to maneouvre - I have always envisaged eneergy weapon turrets being fast-moving MIRRORS anyway, you're just moving optics not the weapon. A fortified, agile STO weapon could be a laser buried 5 miles under the surface, but with multiple redundant subterranean beamlines and surface optical assemblies
It also makes sense to me that if a planet has energy weapons, approaching it should indeed be hell, and trying to force a hostile landing with small, lightly armoured craft would only be possible if you're willing to except massive losses. I think my amphibious forces are going to want shielding...
On the other hand... there's no rule that says orbital bombardment has to be done while in orbit. If the STO weapons are gauss based (I assume railguns still wont be able to be turreted), the orbiting ships can easily conduct some bombardment while staying out of gauss range, and if the STO weapons reveal themselves they'll be vulnerable to being bombarded from out of range (and if they choose not to reveal, the attacker could try launching a few missiles or land ground forces in stages). If they're laser based, they'll have considerably longer range against ships but at the cost of being much less effective against missiles. And a mixture of gauss weapons vs heavy lasers would still mean the ships could engage the lasers from outside the gauss range.
Question - if I have laser based on the Moon with sufficient range/FC to hit targets on earth, shouldn't the lunar laser be able to assist if Earth is invaded?
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I think it is quite interesting that assaulting anything decently defended actually will require some effort and not just a side show.
Unless you intend to glass the planet with nuclear missiles and bombardment it should take some planning and effort.
You should be able to build proper assault ships, heavily shielded and armored to rush in and launch a swarm of heavily armored assault shuttles to land on the planet from a relatively short distance. Such shuttles should be able to take shots from most turreted weapons and be numerous enough so most of them survive.
Of course any attack should be preceded with proper bombardment before the assault much like the island hopping in WWII. These Islands were shelled by the navy and attacked by the air-force before assaulted for some time.
If an attack is well coordinated there should be so many targets that it will be impossible to do that much damage unless the world being invaded are like a fortress world, in which case you might be better of just siege it and starve it for resources and move on.
The more dynamic the space to planet interaction is the more fun I think it will be. Ground defense might actually change navy doctrine as well since it could potentially protect navy forces. It obviously will be dangerous to just bypass a well defended military installation which could potentially launch attacks at any logistical ships trailing your fleets.
There are many interesting role-play aspects to draw from these more dynamic ground combat rules. Especially in multi empire play throughs.
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I think I decided early on to go with non-turreted STO plus CIWS and then stayed on that track. At this point I am just stepping back and questioning my own assumptions :)
While you're questioning your assumptions :)
I think this is where I was trying to go with my post upstream about "why are weapons systems on the ground special". There was a post you made later that confused me (although I didn't press it) that you'd have to write a whole bunch of new code to manage manual targeting for ground unit. My confusion was that if ground unit weapons systems are really acting as those on ships, then you should be able to abstract out a "Naval Weapons Platform" interface and have ground unit fire go through the same code paths (and possibly even dialogs), so you shouldn't need to do a bunch of extra coding.
Let me push again on a previous suggestion: I suspect that if you have a special kind of HQ (that looks a lot like a naval bridge in terms of officer assignments etc.) then for combat purposes a ground unit under that HQ can be considered a ship with zero speed (in C# terms, the HQ object implements INavalWeaponsPlatform). For example (I think) this solves the CIWS problem - the CIWS is associated with the HQ, not the planet.
The reason I keep going down this road is because it feels like you're starting to hit logical problems with having two different weapons systems (naval vs. ground-based) that are supposed to be the same but have different rules. I think this is going to present you with both the PDC conundrum (lots and lots of special case code to manage "is the firing system on a ship or a ground unit") and the issues with early fighters and missiles (completely different rules for things that are essentially tiny ships). I think if you introduce the INavalWeaponsPlatform concept and a ground HQ unit that implements it, then the special-casing that you're forced into will be a natural extension of the differences between weapons on the ground and weapons on ships, as opposed to trying to mesh two fundamentally different implementations of the same mechanics.
That being said, one of those differences that might be hard to code up is that ground units can be reorganized on the fly, so the weapons and sensors attached to the ground HQ could change. If you've hard-wired a concrete "ShipClass" class into the combat mechanics, then I could see a lot of rewriting involved. I'm sure there are other spots I haven't thought of too. So even if you agree in principle about the HQ idea above, it still might be a lot of refactoring to get there. I'm sure there are other such things as well that I haven't thought of.
Hope the above helps....
John
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As long a Spinal Mount beams are a thing, ships are going to have a (theoretical) range advantage over StO ground forces.
Although that did lead me to a thought. Could a sufficiently long-ranged StO battery on Luna be used against ground forces on Earth?
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As long a Spinal Mount beams are a thing, ships are going to have a (theoretical) range advantage over StO ground forces.
Although that did lead me to a thought. Could a sufficiently long-ranged StO battery on Luna be used against ground forces on Earth?
You can use 'spinal' mounts on the ground (lots of room) and ground-based have a 25% fire control range advantage.
It depends how I implement it, but by intention is that Luna can shoot at Earth,
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I've read through the above posts and I will give STO vs CIWS more thought.
My original thinking for excluding turret-based weapons on planets was the intended 'static' STOs would be well-fortified and therefore not ideal for tracking fast targets such as missiles. Turrets would need room to 'manoeuvre' and therefore didn't match the well-fortified concept. CIWS on the other hand were very short-range and intended to hit targets coming directly at them.
Another reason for not having turrets was that I didn't necessarily want planets to have defences that were so strong you couldn't penetrate them, because those turrets would be as effective as orbital bases but much harder to kill.
However, some good arguments have been made against those concepts. Firstly, CIWS in this context are effectively covering the whole planet, which doesn't really match the CIWS on ships. Secondly, the new STO units are really the same type of integrated weapon as CIWS, making CIWS less 'special' in this context. It probably does make more sense (and is more consistent) to remove planetary CIWS and allow STO to include fast tracking weapons, as CIWS is really just an integrated gauss turret anyway. This also makes it clear that planetary defences can protect ships that are in orbit or close to the planet. If I made this change, I would add point defence modes to the other automated options for STOs, which would also mean that 'normal' STO could be used for point defence in an emergency.
The 'downside' is that some planets/bases may become very hard to defeat, although that is not necessarily a bad thing. It also restricts the potential use of small, fast craft for dropping troops and the best option is probably large, heavily-armoured assault ships. Again, not necessarily a bad thing.
I think I decided early on to go with non-turreted STO plus CIWS and then stayed on that track. At this point I am just stepping back and questioning my own assumptions :)
hmm... not sure..
I understand the point about CIWS being able to defend the whole planet - but that might me solved by saying that 1 CIWS is only able to "defend" only the area of a planet it can reach because of the curvature of the planet/body ...
let's say a CIWS mounted on the highest mountain/hill in the region has a "field of view" of 10-25% of the Body max ...
which would lead to a 10-25% chance for a CIWS to get a shot.. the defender would have to build a lot of CIWS to make sure they can defend a planet without the planet being hit....
which would make sense... the defender in ground-air-combat is in RL at a disadvantage every time.. the attacker can mass his attack at 1 point while the defender has to defend the whole area...
not every German FLAK all over the Reich was shooting at incoming bombers - only these in range...
for turret based STO units... I am afraid that this would be the end of "defence platforms" in space near a planet...
the main line of defence for a planet should be a mobile fleet, the second line of defence should be the defence bases in orbit and any ground based defence line should just be "last ressort" - not the main (and cheapest) solution to go...
there would be no point to build orbital defences at all if you could just build ground based ones which are cheaper (as without all the other things you need for a defence platform) and less easy to destroy themself... (we have this in VB6 as (nearly) nobody would build a orbital defence platform because the ground based "bunker" was the better/cheaper solution)
for me, planet based weapons should assist the orbital defence to some kind but that would be all... if the orbital defences are destroyed, the planet should be "doomed" - the army able to defend from an invasion but not to repulse an bombardment..
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if it is the main problem to make sure that "all weapons work same in orbit and on ground" - I cannot say I like this argument ... it is not wrong but thinking this through it would mean (for me) to just don't use the same weapons in ground units and add new weapon types for them instead...
nobody wants this so I am OK with the "same" weapons work differently... they are just "modified ground based types of the same principle"
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On the other hand, planetary bombardment presumably targets the centers of population/defense/production, not an even spread across the whole planet, allowing defenders to concentrate a lot.
Additionally, I feel that the effect of flak in the Second World War might have been different if the flak-88 timed-fuse gun batteries were replaced with rapid-firing computer-guided laser beams that could deal comparative damage to nuclear detonations at a range of 200,000 kilometers (half the distance between the earth and the moon).
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for turret based STO units... I am afraid that this would be the end of "defence platforms" in space near a planet...
the main line of defence for a planet should be a mobile fleet, the second line of defence should be the defence bases in orbit and any ground based defence line should just be "last ressort" - not the main (and cheapest) solution to go...
there would be no point to build orbital defences at all if you could just build ground based ones which are cheaper (as without all the other things you need for a defence platform) and less easy to destroy themself... (we have this in VB6 as (nearly) nobody would build a orbital defence platform because the ground based "bunker" was the better/cheaper solution)
for me, planet based weapons should assist the orbital defence to some kind but that would be all... if the orbital defences are destroyed, the planet should be "doomed" - the army able to defend from an invasion but not to repulse an bombardment..
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if it is the main problem to make sure that "all weapons work same in orbit and on ground" - I cannot say I like this argument ... it is not wrong but thinking this through it would mean (for me) to just don't use the same weapons in ground units and add new weapon types for them instead...
nobody wants this so I am OK with the "same" weapons work differently... they are just "modified ground based types of the same principle"
I can't exactly follow this reasoning. For one, we still don't have missile platforms in space, so those need to be space based. For beams however there is not enough room for two kinds of systems accomplishing the same thing.
One of them will be better, and will be used over the other, and as for assisting orbital defense, that was exactly what STO can now provide, they can defend ships in orbit, and the precious shipyards, and if destroying the orbital defenses already dooms a planet, why bother putting on any ground units or STOs?
Having multiple lines of defense usually requires that you can retreat most of your forces from one line to another, whittling the attacker down. If each line means you loose everything, you'd be better off putting every bit of resource into the first line to win it there.
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I don't see any particular problem with ground assets being more efficient that space assets at defense in general. The planet have almost infinite space and power in comparison with a station in orbit anyway. Sure a space cannon on the ground will have some more limitation on what it can shoot at but that would be an abstraction we should not deal with.
As Whitecold said... it make no sense to even have STO based cannons of a planet without space defenses are doomed anyway.
It really does not matter if er build them in space or not, but one of them will be the better choice and always used anyway. Having the on the ground introduce the fact that they are cheaper and more effective which is important from a game play balance perspective so it actually is interesting to defend it in the first place.
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I don't see any particular problem with ground assets being more efficient that space assets at defense in general. The planet have almost infinite space and power in comparison with a station in orbit anyway. Sure a space cannon on the ground will have some more limitation on what it can shoot at but that would be an abstraction we should not deal with.
As Whitecold said... it make no sense to even have STO based cannons of a planet without space defenses are doomed anyway.
It really does not matter if er build them in space or not, but one of them will be the better choice and always used anyway. Having the on the ground introduce the fact that they are cheaper and more effective which is important from a game play balance perspective so it actually is interesting to defend it in the first place.
Thinking further on this, having ground-based anti-missile defences makes it far easier to defend any planet, not just heavily populated ones. Currently, I don't think many players send ground or naval forces to small outposts because they are just too vulnerable. This adds a lot more options for defending mining colonies, listening posts, terraforming operations, etc. You could even establish a base on a close-in moon to defend harvesters. It just makes the game more interesting.
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Also, there's no way that harvesters wouldn't be defended properly wherever possible. I mean, you can't mine the Sorium there for jump engine construction, so you might as well reserve your planetary Sorium production for that and get all the fuel you can from gas giants.
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As long a Spinal Mount beams are a thing, ships are going to have a (theoretical) range advantage over StO ground forces.
Although that did lead me to a thought. Could a sufficiently long-ranged StO battery on Luna be used against ground forces on Earth?
Ooh that reminds me of one of the original battle star galactica episodes where they had to go and destroy some very large planet based weapons to be able to get the Galactica away.
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While you're questioning your assumptions :)
I think this is where I was trying to go with my post upstream about "why are weapons systems on the ground special". There was a post you made later that confused me (although I didn't press it) that you'd have to write a whole bunch of new code to manage manual targeting for ground unit. My confusion was that if ground unit weapons systems are really acting as those on ships, then you should be able to abstract out a "Naval Weapons Platform" interface and have ground unit fire go through the same code paths (and possibly even dialogs), so you shouldn't need to do a bunch of extra coding.
Let me push again on a previous suggestion: I suspect that if you have a special kind of HQ (that looks a lot like a naval bridge in terms of officer assignments etc.) then for combat purposes a ground unit under that HQ can be considered a ship with zero speed (in C# terms, the HQ object implements INavalWeaponsPlatform). For example (I think) this solves the CIWS problem - the CIWS is associated with the HQ, not the planet.
The reason I keep going down this road is because it feels like you're starting to hit logical problems with having two different weapons systems (naval vs. ground-based) that are supposed to be the same but have different rules. I think this is going to present you with both the PDC conundrum (lots and lots of special case code to manage "is the firing system on a ship or a ground unit") and the issues with early fighters and missiles (completely different rules for things that are essentially tiny ships). I think if you introduce the INavalWeaponsPlatform concept and a ground HQ unit that implements it, then the special-casing that you're forced into will be a natural extension of the differences between weapons on the ground and weapons on ships, as opposed to trying to mesh two fundamentally different implementations of the same mechanics.
That being said, one of those differences that might be hard to code up is that ground units can be reorganized on the fly, so the weapons and sensors attached to the ground HQ could change. If you've hard-wired a concrete "ShipClass" class into the combat mechanics, then I could see a lot of rewriting involved. I'm sure there are other spots I haven't thought of too. So even if you agree in principle about the HQ idea above, it still might be a lot of refactoring to get there. I'm sure there are other such things as well that I haven't thought of.
Yes, you make an interesting point. I started with the relatively simply idea of a weapon on the ground that could shoot into space. Then I added reactors, then fire control, then active sensors and I will probably need ECCM too. It is is becoming more detailed.
However, a lot of things are already setup to deal with different options. For example, I have a combat result object that accepts a chance to hit, a weapon, a target, etc. and then resolves the combat and allocates the damage (which is the more complex challenge). This can deal with any type of weapon against any type of target. The main issue for the STO weapons was deciding what to fire at and how the player should interact with the UI (so I could generate the combat result object).
One option I considered was to design a 'weapon mount' using the ship class design interface and make that an option for mounting on STO units. The formation element could then be a single ship with multiple weapons and fire controls, or a ground unit, depending on the context. That could then appear on the naval combat window. However, I am heading back down the PDC route then and would face the question of why other ship systems can't be in ground units. Currently STO is similar to CIWS in that it is an integrated system where design is automated. Also, it isn't completely straightforward in terms of integration with the naval combat window. BTW I know that isn't quite what you are suggesting - just a different way I could utilise existing code and mechanics.
The automated route I am currently heading down presents the player with a list of his STO elements and requests targeting type and the number of weapons per target. This will be acted upon in normal naval combat to generate the combat results. It should not be difficult to code and maintain the distinction between ground and ship in this scenario. I already have PD code which picks up the ground-based CIWS and could be easily adapted to STO-PD weapons. The STO vs ships is also straightforward with the automated targeting. This keeps the ground units distinct and relatively simple while giving them a real role in naval combat.
I think the area where your solution creates the greatest benefit is for manual targeting. I am bouncing back and forth on whether to implement this in addition to the automated targeting. In that case, I probably could add an interface to the ground unit that effectively creates a 'fire control' object that can display on the naval combat window.
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Steve have you considered having places where STO weapons are located show up as a 'ship' in the naval combat screens? Have them appear below the ships, and have them follow similar rules for assigning targets and firing.
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Two comments:
Yes, you make an interesting point. I started with the relatively simply idea of a weapon on the ground that could shoot into space. Then I added reactors, then fire control, then active sensors and I will probably need ECCM too. It is is becoming more detailed.
[SNIP]
One option I considered was to design a 'weapon mount' using the ship class design interface and make that an option for mounting on STO units. The formation element could then be a single ship with multiple weapons and fire controls, or a ground unit, depending on the context. That could then appear on the naval combat window. However, I am heading back down the PDC route then and would face the question of why other ship systems can't be in ground units. Currently STO is similar to CIWS in that it is an integrated system where design is automated. Also, it isn't completely straightforward in terms of integration with the naval combat window. BTW I know that isn't quite what you are suggesting - just a different way I could utilise existing code and mechanics.
I know you know that isn't quite what I'm suggesting, but for avoidance of doubt (to much contract-reading lately :) ):
I think the difference here is "why do all the systems need to be on a single vehicle"? If you just have the concept of how many tons a vehicle can carry, then the components can be distributed. In fact that could be a tech line - vehicle payload - that would have to be incorporated into mobile ground versions of naval components. I would recommend the size/cost of the vehicle scale non-linearly with payload (e.g. payload^1.5) to represent the fact that (probably) a single 100 ton dumptruck is more than 10x the size/cost of ten 10 ton dumptrucks. Or maybe the techline simply has a maximum size. This dovetails nicely with your "weapons mount" idea - it morphs into "static ground fitting" (which might have zero cost/mass, since it's already built into the component) and "mobile ground fitting" which is the vehicle chassis. This also fits well with modern AA missile units - I believe theirs typically a launcher vehicle, separate radar/fire control vehicle, separate command truck, reload truck etc., some/most of which are specially designed units.
As for "why can't other ship systems be in ground units" - let them (by default)! You can restrict which system types have ground versions through the tech design window, and from a technobabble point of view if they want to put something on a truck or on the ground they can do so - if it doesn't make sense then it just gives them no value in gameplay. In particular, I think ground-based missile launchers should be allowed, and let the chips fall where they will (in terms of balance). I'm putting this in the same category as fighter weapons - this is a core physics consistency issue, and once the door is open to forbidding ground systems because of balance then it opens up a host of other decisions about every other component.
The automated route I am currently heading down presents the player with a list of his STO elements and requests targeting type and the number of weapons per target. This will be acted upon in normal naval combat to generate the combat results. It should not be difficult to code and maintain the distinction between ground and ship in this scenario. I already have PD code which picks up the ground-based CIWS and could be easily adapted to STO-PD weapons. The STO vs ships is also straightforward with the automated targeting. This keeps the ground units distinct and relatively simple while giving them a real role in naval combat.
I think the area where your solution creates the greatest benefit is for manual targeting. I am bouncing back and forth on whether to implement this in addition to the automated targeting. In that case, I probably could add an interface to the ground unit that effectively creates a 'fire control' object that can display on the naval combat window.
I'm also advocating that if there's an automated mode for ground units, there should be one for ships. If they're following the same mechanics this should be easy.
Gotta run to work :)
John
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In fact that could be a tech line - vehicle payload - that would have to be incorporated into mobile ground versions of naval components. I would recommend the size/cost of the vehicle scale non-linearly with payload (e.g. payload^1.5) to represent the fact that (probably) a single 100 ton dumptruck is more than 10x the size/cost of ten 10 ton dumptrucks.
This would be inconsistent with how size efficiency works for all other purposes. We wouldn't have larger Trucks, Container Ships or Airplanes IRL if there was no benefit in doing so, like increased payload per investment or reduced running cost per payload.
A truck/ship/plane that's twice as long in all directions have 4 times the surface area ( resistance from air/sea/ground ) and 8 times as much volume. ( Very simplified but basic physics go in this direction ).
The formulas in Aurora are similar, larger engines or ships are more efficient than smaller ones on a per ton basis.
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In fact that could be a tech line - vehicle payload - that would have to be incorporated into mobile ground versions of naval components. I would recommend the size/cost of the vehicle scale non-linearly with payload (e.g. payload^1.5) to represent the fact that (probably) a single 100 ton dumptruck is more than 10x the size/cost of ten 10 ton dumptrucks.
This would be inconsistent with how size efficiency works for all other purposes. We wouldn't have larger Trucks, Container Ships or Airplanes IRL if there was no benefit in doing so, like increased payload per investment or reduced running cost per payload.
A truck/ship/plane that's twice as long in all directions have 4 times the surface area ( resistance from air/sea/ground ) and 8 times as much volume. ( Very simplified but basic physics go in this direction ).
The formulas in Aurora are similar, larger engines or ships are more efficient than smaller ones on a per ton basis.
The real limit on ground vehicles is usually the weight limit of bridges, as well as the size of tunnels, roads and railcars. Also, STO are all static mounts, so for transport they are broken down into parts which would likely be either their own specialty vehicles or fit onto standard trucks. You would have a fire control vehicle, generators fitting into containers that power a laser in a container, which then feeds the mirror turrets on their own platforms.
There is no need to build everything into a monolithic platform on the ground, especially when you want to set it up in cramped underground bunkers.
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Modern AAA/SAM systems are mobile and, as others pointed out, mounted on multiple vehicles. Generally there are 1-3 weapon platforms, 1-3 loader platforms (for missile systems, for cannon systems there are 1-2 ammunition vehicles), a fire control vehicle, and a support/mechanic vehicle. These systems rely on external other units to provide up-to-date area surveillance information, which can also be mobile, so you could add a search radar vehicle to the total count. Similarly, for Theatre Ballistic Missiles and Artillery Missiles, the systems are roughly similar: you have multiple launch vehicles, equal number of loader vehicles, and a command & control vehicle, plus supply/support vehicles.
I don't know how feasible it would be to code something like this in C# Aurora. Once you design an ground-based STO weapon, the game automatically creates a unit that includes reactor vehicle, gauss cannon vehicle, beam fire control vehicle, and then the player can adjust their numbers for that unit? Or just design each vehicle separately and group them together, like any other ground unit? How would that fit together with static units, do they need separate components as well? Can the game easily check that all necessary components/vehicles are in a unit, without creating undue memory/CPU usage?
On one hand, being able to put ship component to vehicles would neatly sidestep any special rules issues like we had with PDCs. But I don't know how "bad" it would be under the hood, and I've understood that Steve's one priority for C# has been to streamline the code and make it more uniform, ie as few special cases as possible.
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I'm comfortable with the STO ground units being one unit just for simplicity purposes. My main concern is if you start adding things like ECCM and active sensors they might get too big to be practical, but that will have to be seen I think.
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One unit doesnt neccesarily mean "one object" though, right? Like a brigade HQ is 500 tons, but that doesnt mean its a 500-ton vehicle?
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I'm comfortable with the STO ground units being one unit just for simplicity purposes. My main concern is if you start adding things like ECCM and active sensors they might get too big to be practical, but that will have to be seen I think.
The active sensor is tiny. The STO design for the Commonwealth (from the Colonial Wars campaign) for a 25cm spinal laser is 507 tons. Of that, the active sensor is 5 tons, the static mount is 12 tons, the reactor is 40 tons, the fire control is 50 tons and the weapon is 400 tons.
Given the relatively small size of the non-weapon components, it is easier and simpler for this to be a CIWS-style integrated unit.
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The active sensor is tiny. The STO design for the Commonwealth (from the Colonial Wars campaign) for a 25cm spinal laser is 507 tons. Of that, the active sensor is 5 tons, the static mount is 12 tons, the reactor is 40 tons, the fire control is 50 tons and the weapon is 400 tons.
The one big question I have is how does the cost (not size) scale when you extend the fire controls up to the maximum allowed in the late game. In VB, late game sniper laser ships tend to have most of their cost in the FC, even when they pack a lot of lasers per single FC. Does only using integrated FC make STO defences cost-prohibitive when your enemy can shoot at you from a million km away?
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The active sensor is tiny. The STO design for the Commonwealth (from the Colonial Wars campaign) for a 25cm spinal laser is 507 tons. Of that, the active sensor is 5 tons, the static mount is 12 tons, the reactor is 40 tons, the fire control is 50 tons and the weapon is 400 tons.
Wait, a 12tn mount is holding up a 400tn weapon?
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In fact that could be a tech line - vehicle payload - that would have to be incorporated into mobile ground versions of naval components. I would recommend the size/cost of the vehicle scale non-linearly with payload (e.g. payload^1.5) to represent the fact that (probably) a single 100 ton dumptruck is more than 10x the size/cost of ten 10 ton dumptrucks.
This would be inconsistent with how size efficiency works for all other purposes. We wouldn't have larger Trucks, Container Ships or Airplanes IRL if there was no benefit in doing so, like increased payload per investment or reduced running cost per payload.
A truck/ship/plane that's twice as long in all directions have 4 times the surface area ( resistance from air/sea/ground ) and 8 times as much volume. ( Very simplified but basic physics go in this direction ).
The formulas in Aurora are similar, larger engines or ships are more efficient than smaller ones on a per ton basis.
Don't want to rathole/hijack thread on this, but the square-cube law is why I suspect that for ground vehicles bigger might make things worse - twice as tall means that the suspension system needs to be twice as strong, which changes materials properties and all sorts of other stuff. If you also assume only having wheels on the outside (one row on each side) then you've also got to strength issues for as you make the width larger. So I suspect that the chassis cost for 4 10-ton turrets is cheaper than the chassis cost for one 80 ton turret (twice as big in all directions) or even one 40 ton turret (same turret mass, but twice the weight per axle and axles that are twice as long). I expect you're correct at the low end of the payload range (that bigger vehicles give economies of scale), but at the high end (e.g. huge mining dump trucks) it seems that there's something that's cutting things off and I suspect it's the above discussion. If Steve were to go down this road (which it sounds like he's not, hence my desire not to hijack the thread), there should probably be a mechanism to cut off the size of the bigger systems. Increasing cost faster than linearly was simply a kludge way to manage that abstraction.
But what I really wanted to say was:
Just did a bunch of googling on dump trucks and military vehicles. Appears that typical dump trucks are rated for 20-40 tons, monster mining dump trucks are rated as much as 300-450 tons. Tank transporters are > 70 tons. Soviet (it looked like) mobile ballistic missile launcher carried a 50 ton missile. Seems like axle loads for the bigger military transporters are 10-15 tons per axle. So I suspect with current tech, you can have fairly mobile (tank transporter) vehicles with ~100 ton payload or slow (big mining truck) vehicles with ~400 ton payload. Above that, and I suspect you're into "crawlers" which move at walking speed or slower and probably should simply be considered static. Note that I'm thinking in terms of "ready to fire" weapons systems in the above, which can't be broken down into smaller pieces and reassembled.
This says to me that Steve's 25cm spinal laser could be conceivably be vehicle mounted, especially with TN tech, whether components are individually mounted or unified into a CIWS-like system.
John
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The active sensor is tiny. The STO design for the Commonwealth (from the Colonial Wars campaign) for a 25cm spinal laser is 507 tons. Of that, the active sensor is 5 tons, the static mount is 12 tons, the reactor is 40 tons, the fire control is 50 tons and the weapon is 400 tons.
Wait, a 12tn mount is holding up a 400tn weapon?
I think the 400 tons includes the mount. When you put a 400 ton weapon on a ship, it only gets 400 tons bigger, which implies that weight includes all the structure and aiming apparatus.
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I've decided to remove ground-based CIWS and allow any weapon, including turrets, to be a surface-to-orbit weapon. You will be able to set STO weapons to point defence modes. If set to defend others, they will try to shoot down missiles attacking nearby targets (such as ships, orbital shipyards, etc.).