GB, Fighter and Missile jump drives

[sloanjh (OP)]

Hi Steve,

I was just in the middle of reading Resolute (one of the Kris Longknife stories by Mike Shepherd), and hit a spot where he talks about warp point navigation bouys that are used to precede a ship that wants to jump to make sure that noone jumps through in the opposite direction while the ship is jumping (which in his universe would make a big boom).  They're using the bouys to scout unexplored WP - the bouy jumps in, looks around with sensors, then jumps back.  This got me thinking about SF recon drones, and Aurora.

It seems like the game is developing a layered capability approach to drives and ships - there's commercial, normal, gunboat, fighter, and missile versions of regular drives and hulls,  and commercial and normal versions of civilan and jump drive systems.  Why not move jump drive systems into the type of system that has flavors for GB, fighter, and missile?  You could apply the same sort of scaling progression you do for the other systems, so that the game doesn't end up with a bunch of combat-capable jump fighters running around.  This would give players some more survivable and lower cost scouting options for unexplored and enemy WP.  Even the ability to design a scout GB would be a big win, I think.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi Steve,

I was just in the middle of reading Resolute (one of the Kris Longknife stories by Mike Shepherd), and hit a spot where he talks about warp point navigation bouys that are used to precede a ship that wants to jump to make sure that noone jumps through in the opposite direction while the ship is jumping (which in his universe would make a big boom).  They're using the bouys to scout unexplored WP - the bouy jumps in, looks around with sensors, then jumps back.  This got me thinking about SF recon drones, and Aurora.

It seems like the game is developing a layered capability approach to drives and ships - there's commercial, normal, gunboat, fighter, and missile versions of regular drives and hulls,  and commercial and normal versions of civilan and jump drive systems.  Why not move jump drive systems into the type of system that has flavors for GB, fighter, and missile?  You could apply the same sort of scaling progression you do for the other systems, so that the game doesn't end up with a bunch of combat-capable jump fighters running around.  This would give players some more survivable and lower cost scouting options for unexplored and enemy WP.  Even the ability to design a scout GB would be a big win, I think.

Interesting idea. There is an intended progression for engines which is shown below. As you can see there is a missing step for a engine at 1000x fuel and 4x power but I haven't decided what to do with that one yet.

Commercial: 0.1x Fuel, 0.5% Power, Size 25HS
Military: 1x Fuel, Normal Power, Size 5HS
Gunboat: 10x Fuel, 2x Power, Size 5HS, Max 1
Fighter: 100x Fuel, 3x Power, Size 1HS, Max 1
Missile: 10,000x Fuel, 5x power, No restrictions on size

With regard to jump engines, I have resisted the temptation for smaller jump engines so that jump-capable ships remain special and there are not a lot of small jump-capable ships running round. Even with the new reduced minimum sizes for jump engines, the ships themselves don't get much smaller because of higher efficiencies. There is no real game reason for that approach - its just a matter of personal taste - and the challenge within the game is often developing large jump engines rather than small ones. Although Starfire had warp-capable small craft such as pinances and they were not particularly game breaking, although I wasn't that keen on SBMHAWKs.

Assuming for a moment that I did introduce small jump engines, the easiest thing would just be to remove the minimum size restriction, so that you could create a fighter/shuttle with a 1 HS jump engine, rather than designing a new type of jump drive. 'Ships', 'Gunboats' and 'Fighters' are really all just Ships and are all designed the same way, using similar systems. A GB is generally described as such because it uses a 'GB' engine and is 1000 tons or less but there is nothing to stop you designing a 5000 ton ship with a gunboat engine or a fighter engine or an 800 ton ship with a regular engine. 'Gunboats' and 'Fighters' are just descriptions of a certain role for a Ship usually based on the fact that Ship uses a particular type of engine tech. Which is a rather long-winded way of saying that I don't want to introduce any type of tech specific for particular size of ship. All ships, even very small or very large ones, should all be able to use the same tech and should all abide by the same restrictions or we risk the uber-fighter problem .

So, having said all that, I am interested to hear opinions/concerns on the idea of reducing the minimum jump engine size to 1 HS.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Interesting idea. There is an intended progression for engines which is shown below. As you can see there is a missing step for a engine at 1000x fuel and 4x power but I haven't decided what to do with that one yet.

Commercial: 0.1x Fuel, 0.5% Power, Size 25HS
Military: 1x Fuel, Normal Power, Size 5HS
Gunboat: 10x Fuel, 2x Power, Size 5HS, Max 1
Fighter: 100x Fuel, 3x Power, Size 1HS, Max 1
Missile: 10,000x Fuel, 5x power, No restrictions on size

Maybe make it an alternative for missiles.  Call it a buoy engine.  You wouldn't ant it on anything that would be targeted at a moving object but it would have a range advantage.  It could deliver a sensor or other sub-munition to a very long range.  The only weapon application that I can see is bombarding planets (it's unlikely that ship sensors will be able to see most of the targets within this vehicle's range).

So, having said all that, I am interested to hear opinions/concerns on the idea of reducing the minimum jump engine size to 1 HS.

I'm not in favor of that as a personal preference but I don't see how it would break the game.

[Steve Walmsley]

Interesting idea. There is an intended progression for engines which is shown below. As you can see there is a missing step for a engine at 1000x fuel and 4x power but I haven't decided what to do with that one yet.

Commercial: 0.1x Fuel, 0.5% Power, Size 25HS
Military: 1x Fuel, Normal Power, Size 5HS
Gunboat: 10x Fuel, 2x Power, Size 5HS, Max 1
Fighter: 100x Fuel, 3x Power, Size 1HS, Max 1
Missile: 10,000x Fuel, 5x power, No restrictions on size

Maybe make it an alternative for missiles.  Call it a buoy engine.  You wouldn't ant it on anything that would be targeted at a moving object but it would have a range advantage.  It could deliver a sensor or other sub-munition to a very long range.  The only weapon application that I can see is bombarding planets (it's unlikely that ship sensors will be able to see most of the targets within this vehicle's range).

That's a good idea. My concern is avoiding super-long-range missiles. I could use it as an alternative missile engine but impose a large minimum size and a significant targeting penalty - although I would need some technobabble reason for the targeting penalty. It would still be able to attack planets from a great distance but that is not necessarily unrealistic, especially as you would still need to target those planets with a fire control system. Although I guess you could put a warhead (or sub-munitions) and some on-board sensors on it. One other potential problem is that while the engine does not have the same power-weight ratio as a missile engine, it does have 80% of the power and with the much reduced fuel requirement it might actually make a better missile engine unless I can find a rationale for the targeting penalty. I'll give this some thought.

An alternative name might be a drone engine

Steve

[sloanjh (OP)]

So, having said all that, I am interested to hear opinions/concerns on the idea of reducing the minimum jump engine size to 1 HS.

I suspected this might be the case, which is why I stuck this in a separate thread

You probably recall that I've been in favor of removing the lower bound on jump drive size, so that small courier boats would make sense.  I suggested the gradiated approach because I thought that would achieve the same general idea, with even less chance of an uber-fighter showing up.  This would especially be true if the small-craft jump drive had a max squadron size of 1.

That being said, I don't think that allowing small jump drives would be game breaking.  This is because aurora seems to drive ship designs to specialization - the jump drive mass penalty is so large (especially for small shipts) that it would significantly impact the offensive power of a jump-capable fighter or GB, i.e. a jump-capable uber-fighter would be no match for a non-jump-capable one, especially if the max squadron size were 1.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

That being said, I don't think that allowing small jump drives would be game breaking.  This is because aurora seems to drive ship designs to specialization - the jump drive mass penalty is so large (especially for small shipts) that it would significantly impact the offensive power of a jump-capable fighter or GB, i.e. a jump-capable uber-fighter would be no match for a non-jump-capable one, especially if the max squadron size were 1.

Interesting point. As you suggest, perhaps the compromise is that below the existing tech line of minimum jump drive size, the max squadron size doesn't apply. The existing minimum size tech line would still apply, with slightly altered wording to change it to the minimum size for a jump-drive with squadron jump capability, while the jump drive design window would include sizes from 1 HS upwards. Below the minimum size, the design code would just ignore the squadron size parameter and set it to one

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Interesting idea. There is an intended progression for engines which is shown below. As you can see there is a missing step for a engine at 1000x fuel and 4x power but I haven't decided what to do with that one yet.

Maybe make it an alternative for missiles.  Call it a buoy engine.  You wouldn't ant it on anything that would be targeted at a moving object but it would have a range advantage.  It could deliver a sensor or other sub-munition to a very long range.  The only weapon application that I can see is bombarding planets (it's unlikely that ship sensors will be able to see most of the targets within this vehicle's range).

That's a good idea. My concern is avoiding super-long-range missiles. I could use it as an alternative missile engine but impose a large minimum size and a significant targeting penalty - although I would need some technobabble reason for the targeting penalty. It would still be able to attack planets from a great distance but that is not necessarily unrealistic, especially as you would still need to target those planets with a fire control system. Although I guess you could put a warhead (or sub-munitions) and some on-board sensors on it. One other potential problem is that while the engine does not have the same power-weight ratio as a missile engine, it does have 80% of the power and with the much reduced fuel requirement it might actually make a better missile engine unless I can find a rationale for the targeting penalty. I'll give this some thought.

An alternative name might be a drone engine.

I would think that it's slow speed (compared to missile engines) would make it harder to hit a target and easier for AM systems to target.  Maybe there won't be enough of that effect to balance it.  

How about explaining that the engine trades maneuverability for speed?  If you make the engine large, make agility increases large as well.  

You could also justify a two hit penalty by saying that the larger size (larger mass) makes it harder to jink it around.

Maybe the engine is especially noisy?  The drone might show up as larger than it is making it easier to spot than its size would indicate.

[waresky]

Guys..probably am wrong,but..not r MORE important Suggestions before a strange "pityfull Jump Drive"?
Srry,my personel idea.

But..
1) Better task Groups management: different between CIVS groups and MILITAR group r welcome.(expecially for found in many Systems around..any idea r welcome)

2)Better Troops management,regroup,more useful windows scrolling (argh! every time am assign ONE battalion scroll UP and try to found a damned battalion for new assignement)

3)A more handy and Sympa (Funny?) COMBAT SCREEN,weapons selections and assignement.

Srry Steve,but DRIVE r expectional atm,for me:)

Are many others the suggestions need

And at last but interesting: Hexagon planetary Maps visual:)..on jump in zoom,for troops combat..

[Steve Walmsley]

I would think that it's slow speed (compared to missile engines) would make it harder to hit a target and easier for AM systems to target.  Maybe there won't be enough of that effect to balance it.  

It is still 80% of the speed so it would make a missile 16,000 km/s instead of 20,000 km/s for example. Makes it easier to hit but not enough to justify a 10x increase in range.

How about explaining that the engine trades maneuverability for speed?  If you make the engine large, make agility increases large as well.

You could also justify a to hit penalty by saying that the larger size (larger mass) makes it harder to jink it around.

Maybe the engine is especially noisy?  The drone might show up as larger than it is making it easier to spot than its size would indicate.

Agility for large missiles/drones is already factored in as the manoeuverability rating for missiles is based on agility rating vs size. However, any Precursors that carry out ramming attacks use a base manoeuverability rating of 5, compared to a base MR of 10 for missiles, and have no ability to increase that. Therefore, it could be argued that "Drone Engines" have a lower base MR than "Missile Engines" and perhaps also that no agility can be added. Also, if the engine is given a large minimum size (say 10 msp or 0.5 HS) that adds all sorts of other penalties, the most obvious of which is much smaller salvos sizes due to the launcher size that would be required.

I think the end result of all that is that drones would probably be used for recon, where they could be fired at a waypoint without the need for guidance, or for long-range attacks on planets, which wouldn't require high speeds. In a ship to ship engagement, fire control ranges become a factor and having an uber-range large missile is not much use if you can't target it. Besides, Aurora combat fleets tend to have good missile defences so a few size 24ish missiles are going to have a hard time compared to five times as many smaller missiles.

My inclination is to add this so players can play around with it. I think I would also have to change NPRs so they guarded their planets with anti-missile defences.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Agility for large missiles/drones is already factored in as the manoeuverability rating for missiles is based on agility rating vs size. However, any Precursors that carry out ramming attacks use a base manoeuverability rating of 5, compared to a base MR of 10 for missiles, and have no ability to increase that. Therefore, it could be argued that "Drone Engines" have a lower base MR than "Missile Engines" and perhaps also that no agility can be added. Also, if the engine is given a large minimum size (say 10 msp or 0.5 HS) that adds all sorts of other penalties, the most obvious of which is much smaller salvos sizes due to the launcher size that would be required.

The "ramming maneuver" is what I had in mind when thinking of drones; better than ships but not great.

I think the end result of all that is that drones would probably be used for recon, where they could be fired at a waypoint without the need for guidance, or for long-range attacks on planets, which wouldn't require high speeds. In a ship to ship engagement, fire control ranges become a factor and having an uber-range large missile is not much use if you can't target it. Besides, Aurora combat fleets tend to have good missile defences so a few size 24ish missiles are going to have a hard time compared to five times as many smaller missiles.

As far as recon drones go, how many msp would that drone jump drive be?  

My inclination is to add this so players can play around with it. I think I would also have to change NPRs so they guarded their planets with anti-missile defences.

Sounds good to me.  They can always be removed if they are too difficult to balance.

[Steve Walmsley]

I have just been looking at the mechanics of the "Drone Engine" and I have run into an unexpected snag. Since March 2008 (v2.6) when missiles were changed to their current format, I have been posting that missile drives are 5x power and 10,000x fuel. It turns out they are actually 4x power and 10,000 fuel. No one, including me, has ever noticed

The actual progression is:

Commercial: 0.1x Fuel, 0.5x Power, Size 25HS
Military: 1x Fuel, Normal Power, Size 5HS
Gunboat: 10x Fuel, 2x Power, Size 5HS, Max 1
Fighter: 100x Fuel, 3x Power, Size 1HS, Max 1
Missile: 10,000x Fuel, 4x power, No restrictions on size

So I am now having to rethink how to fit in drone engines. The options appear to be:

1) Forget drone engines altogether as missiles are already in the 4x power slot.
2) Change missiles to 5x power and introduce drones at 4x power and 1000x fuel
3) Leave the above as it is and Introduce drones as a cut-down fighter engine. Perhaps a set 0.25 HS or 0.5 HS size, 3x power, 1000x fuel

I am tempted at the moment by 2). Since the introduction of the new missile model in March 2008, the effectiveness of missiles has been steadily reduced by the new armour model, the introduction of gauss cannon, the missile tracking time bonus, the removal of the ability to 'stack' missiles at waypoints and most recently the introduction of CIWS. It is actually very hard to get any missiles through the defences of a well organized fleet. Increasing the speed of missiles, and therefore their chance of avoiding point defence, by 25% may not be a bad idea. Anti-missiles would not be affected very much as their own speed would also increase. I know this will re-open the question of beam fire control tracking speeds. I can see a couple of options here. One is to leave it alone, as my intention was never to have beam fire control tracking at max missile speed anyway. The other is to introduce a 5x size, 5x speed option, as that would equal the increase in missile speed, but that would negate the idea of giving missiles a little more penetration power.

Doing this would open up the slot for a 4x power, 1000x fuel drone engine. I would probably have this as a set 0.25 HS engine (5 MSP), or at least a minimum 0.25 HS engine. Their base manoeuvre rating would be 5 (10 for missiles) and 'drones' would not be allowed extra agility.

Comments?

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Using the parameters described above, including a fixed 0.25HS size for drone engines, and the League of Nations tech, here is a recon drone using 5 MSP for engine, 5 MSP for fuel and 3 MSP each for thermal and EM

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Size 16 Recon Drone
Missile Size: 16 MSP  (0.8 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 15000 km/s    Endurance: 893 minutes   Range: 803.6m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.9    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  900,000 km
EM Sensor Strength: 0.75    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  750,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 5.525
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 75%   3k km/s 25%   5k km/s 15%   10k km/s 7.5%Here is the same drone with a warhead replacing the sensor package. As you can see, it has immense range. Targeting it at that range will be a problem, its chance to hit is problematic and salvo size is going to be an issue. It is obviously a far better platform for recon than tactical combat.

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Size 16 Bombardment Drone
Missile Size: 16 MSP  (0.8 HS)     Warhead: 18    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 15000 km/s    Endurance: 893 minutes   Range: 803.6m km
Cost Per Missile: 8.375
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 75%   3k km/s 25%   5k km/s 15%   10k km/s 7.5%Here is a missile with the same allocation of MSP as the drone above. Much shorter range but better chance to hit, although four size 4 missiles would probably be a better option for anti-ship duty.

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Size 16 Anti-Ship Missile
Missile Size: 16 MSP  (0.8 HS)     Warhead: 18    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 18700 km/s    Endurance: 71 minutes   Range: 80.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 9.5
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 187%   3k km/s 60%   5k km/s 37.4%   10k km/s 18.7%As an alternative, here is a long range bombardment drone with a smaller warhead but using an active sensor for targeting. As things stand at the moment in Aurora, missiles can only use their own sensors to home in on ships, not populations or shipyards. This is to avoid  unfortunate incidents, possibly with your own populations given that they can have very large signatures.  If this remains the case then using drones for long-range self-guided bombardments of populations wouldn't be possible. My inclination is to change this so that missiles will home in on any available target, not just ships, which makes long-range self-guided bombardment possible but a little like shooting in the dark.

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Size 16 Bombardment Drone
Missile Size: 16 MSP  (0.8 HS)     Warhead: 12    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 15000 km/s    Endurance: 893 minutes   Range: 803.6m km
Active Sensor Strength: 2.1    Resolution: 100    Maximum Range: 2,100,000 km    
Cost Per Missile: 8.975
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 75%   3k km/s 25%   5k km/s 15%   10k km/s 7.5%Finally, here is a larger, longer-range recon drone with the 5 MSP engine, 15 MSP Fuel and 2 MSP each for Active/Thermal. This could be used for point recon of habitable worlds as an alternative to a scout fighter.

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Size 24 Recon Drone
Missile Size: 24 MSP  (1.2 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 10000 km/s    Endurance: 2679 minutes   Range: 1607.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 2.1    Resolution: 100    Maximum Range: 2,100,000 km    
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.6    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  600,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 6.575In the combat roles for drones described above, they strike me as an interplanetary equivalent to ICBMs (IPBMs?) or for TLAMs. Not very useful for tactical anti-ship combat but potentially useful for planetary attack or bombardment of fixed installations. I guess there is also the possibility of using them in a MIRV format with missiles as sub-munitions, or perhaps as a way of delivering a recon buoy or mine from a great distance.

Steve

[waresky]

oing this would open up the slot for a 4x power, 1000x fuel drone engine. I would probably have this as a set 0.25 HS engine (5 MSP), or at least a minimum 0.25 HS engine. Their base manoeuvre rating would be 5 (10 for missiles) and 'drones' would not be allowed extra agility.

Comments?

Steve

______________

Droning,open a whole Tech area: ROBOTICS.
Ortillery,Droning Fighters,Automatic Indus

[sloanjh (OP)]

1) Forget drone engines altogether as missiles are already in the 4x power slot.
2) Change missiles to 5x power and introduce drones at 4x power and 1000x fuel
3) Leave the above as it is and Introduce drones as a cut-down fighter engine. Perhaps a set 0.25 HS or 0.5 HS size, 3x power, 1000x fuel

I think either #2 or #1 would be better than #3.  The idea for drones came from the hole (that I wasn't aware was supposed to be there) in the progression; #3 just moves further away from an orderly set of natural laws in your universe.

It sounds like you're pretty excited about the drone idea, so that would imply going with #2.  Something to think about before going down that road though is advanced fire control.  At present, only the firing ship can guide a missile.  If you ever plan to allow missiles to be "handed off" to another platform that's closer to the target (e.g. a Forward Air Control GB), then you might want to think about if drones will be unbalancing by allowing long range heavy bombardment platforms into the game that lob drones out from 1/2 way across the system.  

The above just led me to think up a whole can of worms....  

First, I was thinking that the "heavy bombardment" missiles that could be handed off to a FAC for terminal guidance would be a good thing - it would add to the complexity of trade-offs in weapons-mix decisions.

Second, I was thinking that it would also be a good thing by allowing a planetary base to take its entire system under fire by long-range drones (assuming it had FAC GB based on it).

Third, I just realized that the "hand off" ability might be necessary if you introduce drones.  Otherwise you've just given a huge range advantage to ships over planets - the ships can standoff outside of the planet's missile range and pound it into dust with drones.  This seems to contradict your original goal of having "bastion planets" which would be difficult to attack from space.

No conclusions, just those thoughts....

John

PS - Did you decide to code up the jump drive change to lower the minimum size to something small and interprete the current tech line as the minimum size needed to activate the squadron size property?

[ShadoCat]

So I am now having to rethink how to fit in drone engines. The options appear to be:

1) Forget drone engines altogether as missiles are already in the 4x power slot.
2) Change missiles to 5x power and introduce drones at 4x power and 1000x fuel
3) Leave the above as it is and Introduce drones as a cut-down fighter engine. Perhaps a set 0.25 HS or 0.5 HS size, 3x power, 1000x fuel

#3 has the appeal that it doesn't mess with any other subsystems.  Also, if you intend for drones to use ramming rather than to-hit rules, having it be a modified fighter engine reduces the hand waving needed.

OTOH, #2 gives you an excuse to boost missiles if that is your wish.