Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on March 11, 2018, 06:52:22 PM
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In VB6 Aurora, if you have a magazine explosion it only uses 20% of the warhead strength. I am considering using 100% for C# Aurora. It is certainly more dramatic, adds more of an incentive to consider magazine design and reduces the advantages of missiles vs beams.
For both VB6 and C#, the only missiles that can explode are those that exceed the remaining total magazine capacity. So if the current missile load is less than the post-damage magazine capacity, there won't be an explosion.
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Please add some sort of capability to create separate magazines. If the fore magazine blows, there is no guarantee the aft one will (unless there is too much damage).
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I approve of the change, though I'm not sure it will change the balance of beams vs missiles as much as you think (yeah, magazine explosions can only happen to ships with missiles, but in normal combat they'll also only be triggered by missiles since it's impossible to close to beam range without your opponent emptying their magazines first).
Would it be possible to make magazine losses apply proportionately to all missiles? IE, if you lose half your magazines, you lose half your remaining missiles even if they'd fit in the surviving magazine. This would make sense both for explosions and for magazine damage that manages to successfully eject.
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In VB6 Aurora, if you have a magazine explosion it only uses 20% of the warhead strength. I am considering using 100% for C# Aurora. It is certainly more dramatic, adds more of an incentive to consider magazine design and reduces the advantages of missiles vs beams.
This would make box launchers maybe even too explodey. If half your ship DAC consists of size-6.67 (or whatever size gets them the 1HTK/launcher) box launchers, filled with WH-16 missiles, and your box launcher "ejection" tech is worse than 12.5%, statistically blowing up a single launcher blows up the entire ship in a chain reaction. (Every point of damage to a box launcher causes on average more than one additional box launcher to go up.) Since you wanted to discourage box launchers, this might be desirable, but it might move the needle too much in the "only usable on fighters" category.
How many missiles will blow up from a single magazine explosion? This could of course also be fixed by allowing "magazine armor" for extra HTK on box launchers.
For both VB6 and C#, the only missiles that can explode are those that exceed the remaining total magazine capacity. So if the current missile load is less than the post-damage magazine capacity, there won't be an explosion.
How does this work with box launchers? If you have fired off a couple, or just left a couple empty, no detonation? How about mixed box launchers and magazines?
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I'm wary:
Changes to sensors already greatly favour fighters in missile combat, this will add to that.
A quirk of the damage model aiui (encouraged to have different magazine types to prevent a chain reaction) becomes more pronounced.
While box launchers aren't as safe in the upcoming version, they can be emptied instantly in case of danger, ideally at a target. So if ordnance on board becomes a bigger risk, they may still end up too good.
Last not least, I don't want "fair" designs to become any more vulnerable, battles tend to be quite one-sided as it is.
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There is still shock damage in c# yes? Would think 100% damage could get quite harsh if it leads to major explosions even when you have intact unpenatrated armour. Would you consider this only for direct damage?
I don’t suppose you would consider tracking missiles in individual magazines? Just wondering if in the new damage v destroyed world should there be a situation whereby damaged magazines with missiles in them won’t explode but those missiles won’t be available for use?
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I would like this change a lot, for the simple fact that it makes sense.
It never really made sense that if missiles do explode on your ships they do less damage. Why is that even a thing? Also, it would finally encourage to design magazines which are less likely to explode.
Right now, you can basically ignore that and just go for volume, and that is also due to the fact that the explosion damage is lower than it should be.
Also, forgive me if I am blunt, but so what if "This would make box launchers maybe even too explodey. " ? A ship full of box launchers is basically full of missiles. Of course that should come with a proportionate risk. If one of your missiles explode, in a ship that's 30% composed of missiles, it is obviously the end. And in fact, it SHOULD be obviously the end...
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Please add some sort of capability to create separate magazines. If the fore magazine blows, there is no guarantee the aft one will (unless there is too much damage).
All the magazines are treated separately. If you have five magazines and one is hit, only that magazine explodes. Even then, it will only explode if there are more missiles than the other four magazines can hold and the explosion will only be for those missiles that don't fit on the other magazines.
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How does this work with box launchers? If you have fired off a couple, or just left a couple empty, no detonation? How about mixed box launchers and magazines?
The damage allocation assumes that empty box launchers are hit first.
All possible magazine capacity, including box launchers and normal launchers, is added together. Only missiles that exceed that combined capacity can explode.
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All the magazines are treated separately. If you have five magazines and one is hit, only that magazine explodes. Even then, it will only explode if there are more missiles than the other four magazines can hold and the explosion will only be for those missiles that don't fit on the other magazines.
Is this for balance reasons? It doesn't make logical sense that a missile can teleport out of an magazine into another one just before it gets destroyed. I would have thought that it would make more sense to just equally divide missiles between magazines and have those ones in the damaged magazine potentially explode.
The damage allocation assumes that empty box launchers are hit first.
All possible magazine capacity, including box launchers and normal launchers, is added together. Only missiles that exceed that combined capacity can explode.
Again, I'm interested as to why empty box launchers are hit first, rather than it being a percentage chance (ie 50 missiles in 100 launchers is a 50% chance of a destroyed launcher having a missile in it).
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Is this for balance reasons? It doesn't make logical sense that a missile can teleport out of an magazine into another one just before it gets destroyed. I would have thought that it would make more sense to just equally divide missiles between magazines and have those ones in the damaged magazine potentially explode.Again, I'm interested as to why empty box launchers are hit first, rather than it being a percentage chance (ie 50 missiles in 100 launchers is a 50% chance of a destroyed launcher having a missile in it).
I concur. I thought a hit could randomly target even a full magazine. Why is that not the case?
If I understand correctly, then this seems a very big balance problem to me. Because a missile ship can basically never be "unlucky" and just explode because a magazine is hit, as long as there are more empty magazines. For example, a ship that used up half of its missiles can never be the target of a magazine explosion until half of its magazines are destroyed.
Seems really unbalanced to me. Considering that a "beam" ship can just blow up because of a reactor explosion.
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Really interesting responses.
I was assuming that I should err on the side of caution when assigning magazine damage to missiles and the most effective way to do that is assume empty is hit first.
I am quite happy to go for a proportional damage option, although that means a higher promotion of catastrophic magazine hits. If we go down that route:
1) For magazines, that means a magazine hit would destroy a proportion of missiles equal to the proportion of remaining magazine capacity being hit (assuming ejection fails)
2) For box launchers, the chance of destroying a missile would be equal to the (number of launchers with missiles / total missiles).
Is that a preferred option?
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Really interesting responses.
I was assuming that I should err on the side of caution when assigning magazine damage to missiles and the most effective way to do that is assume empty is hit first.
I am quite happy to go for a proportional damage option, although that means a higher promotion of catastrophic magazine hits. If we go down that route:
1) For magazines, that means a magazine hit would destroy a proportion of missiles equal to the proportion of remaining magazine capacity being hit (assuming ejection fails)
2) For box launchers, the chance of destroying a missile would be equal to the (number of launchers with missiles / total missiles).
Is that a preferred option?
As far as I am concerned, I would absolutely prefer this option. As you said, it means a higher promotion of catastrophic magazine hits. But that is not a bad thing. It is realistic, and it would also be more balanced when we compare the situation to "beam" warships, who have large reactors that can likewise explode with catastrophic results.
Also, it is a good thing because it promotes actually using defenses on missile ships. IF a nation decides to forgo defenses and build "glass cannon" missile ships, I don't see why they should not face the possible consequences. High risks, high rewards, right? If you want to have ships that basically consists of a mobile missile launcher and nothing else, you will surely have a high firepower/tonnage ratio.
But on the other hand, every hit you suffer can turn out to be lethal. As it should be, carrying around explosive has never been safe. If you want to avoid that and don't consider your missile ships as expendable, you'll have to invest more of the tonnage in shields, armor or point defense. And build/research better magazines
As the world wars have shown, ships can and will go down just because of catastrophic magazine explosions sometimes. I don't see why Aurora should be any different.
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Really interesting responses.
I was assuming that I should err on the side of caution when assigning magazine damage to missiles and the most effective way to do that is assume empty is hit first.
I am quite happy to go for a proportional damage option, although that means a higher promotion of catastrophic magazine hits. If we go down that route:
1) For magazines, that means a magazine hit would destroy a proportion of missiles equal to the proportion of remaining magazine capacity being hit (assuming ejection fails)
2) For box launchers, the chance of destroying a missile would be equal to the (number of launchers with missiles / total missiles).
Is that a preferred option?
I greatly prefer this to empty magazines get hit first. That would be too easy to game so as to make magazine hits irrelevant, even if you don't actually try to.
However, as it makes missile ships much more likely to die from low damage, it would reinforce the advantage longer range has over everything else. If I got to pick an outcome that I wanted the system to promote, I would go for "magazine hits are always very serious and often crippling, but rarely truly catastrophic to the point of taking out ships in single hits." To achieve this, I would suggest that the odds of a successful magazine ejection go up dramatically as chain detonations spread. Maybe:
odds of a magazine detonating after being destroyed = (1- magazine_ejection_chance)^(1+ #_of_magazines_already_destroyed_during_this_damage_round)
So the first magazine goes up with full probability, doing a lot of damage, but following that the chance rapidly dwindles. This could represent smart ejection systems getting more time to prepare as they detect neighboring magazines blowing up. So hit to a magazine is still really, really bad, especially as the missiles do their full damage to internals instead of armor, but less likely to immediately result in a chain detonation that always takes out the entire 40kT strike cruiser.
Another change I'd be interested in is to make the ejection system chance to be per-missile, instead of all-in. So if a mag gets hit, it computes the amount of MSP in it, and then picks random missiles worth that much msp, computes the ejection chance for each one and either ejects them, removing them from the ship's stores, or blowing them up and adding the damage to what's going to be applied after the magazine is resolved. Again, to make the damage somewhat more likely, but also less catastrophic.
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As long as we're getting this specific about the "shape" of ships, tracking which magazines are full and all, can we consider allowing the player to "draw" the armor diagram rather than having it always be rectangular?
You could then make it thicker in some places and thinner in others, like how WW2-era battleships were armored. The engines and magazines were in a heavily armored citadel, while everything else was left mostly unprotected.
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As long as we're getting this specific about the "shape" of ships, tracking which magazines are full and all, can we consider allowing the player to "draw" the armor diagram rather than having it always be rectangular?
You could then make it thicker in some places and thinner in others, like how WW2-era battleships were armored. The engines and magazines were in a heavily armored citadel, while everything else was left mostly unprotected.
You can design magazines to have a higher HTK by sacrificing internal space, which serves as a type of armour.
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I raise my hand for the "proportion-solution" :)
much more realistic than a magical "hit the empty ones first" system
a hit in the magazine should be as catastrophic as it would be for real (just looking at the HMS Hood or the "Battle of Jutland" 8) )
I really would like a system like this 8)
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I'd say go with the proportional solution as well. If it turns out ammo explosions become too common, that could be settled in future patches by reducing the explosion chance or other balance changes.
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However, as it makes missile ships much more likely to die from low damage, it would reinforce the advantage longer range has over everything else. If I got to pick an outcome that I wanted the system to promote, I would go for "magazine hits are always very serious and often crippling, but rarely truly catastrophic to the point of taking out ships in single hits." To achieve this, I would suggest that the odds of a successful magazine ejection go up dramatically as chain detonations spread. Maybe:
I wonder how often this would make a difference? In other words, what are the chances of a ship surviving the detonation of even a single magazine worth of missiles inside the armor belt? I don't have the game in front of me, but picking randomly from Steve's own missile cruiser designs a 13000t magneto plasma cruiser has 170 ASMs with strength 6 warheads and 440 strength 1 AMMs. Even if you split that payload across 5 magazines you'd still get 34 ASMs and 88 AMMs going off, for 292 points of damage. 10 magazines would still give you 146 points of internal damage on a 13000 ton ship. And that's ignoring the chance of further secondary explosions from eg engines.
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I also favour a proportionate system, however I am concerned about the balance issues. With the change to 100% damage it seems like large ships are now much more likely to be killed by a single lucky shock damage or meson hit to the magazine. I think that I prefer sticking with the 20% damage, which you can think of as armour around the magazine directing the force of the explosion outwards through a vent or some such into space.
I am open to other suggestions, but with the proposed changes 5 10kt ships seems to become a much more appealing option than the already more difficult logistics of 1 50kt vessel.
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I also favour a proportionate system, however I am concerned about the balance issues. With the change to 100% damage it seems like large ships are now much more likely to be killed by a single lucky shock damage or meson hit to the magazine. I think that I prefer sticking with the 20% damage, which you can think of as armour around the magazine directing the force of the explosion outwards through a vent or some such into space.
I am open to other suggestions, but with the proposed changes 5 10kt ships seems to become a much more appealing option than the already more difficult logistics of 1 50kt vessel.
I don't really see the problem. If your 50kt ship is a missile ship, and has something shooting mesons at it, you have already lost whatever strategic war you were fighting. So I see no reason to artificially make missile ships magically resistant to explosion damage.
Missile ships and carriers should NEVER allow the enemy close enough to shoot "beam" weapons at it. If they do, your military has been proved inadequate, or you have been ambushed (which also means your military has been proved inadequate). Whatever missile you have should have been launched before that point.
This is not just random things I am writing. Since World War 2, carriers have been kept away from the battle fronts. More recently, the same is true for missile ships. They are never supposed to be close enough to any enemy that shoots "direct weapons".
Even for a modern, real world carrier, if something gets close enough to actually directly shoot at it, it will most likely sink. That is why they move with battlegroups that provide defenses. And field a lot of fighters and anti-air systems.
Once again, I don't see how Aurora should be any different. And you can improve your chances by investing in better magazines and better defenses, SHOULD something get close. Escort ships would be a good idea too.
Also once again, a single meson hit can also destroy a 50ktons "beam" battleships by making the reactor explode. So I see no reason to differentiate between the two, they are in the same boat. I don't see why missile ships should get a preferential treatment.
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With the proposed changes to exploding chances for magazines (and the size of the explosions) there should probably be a way to lower the chances of things going wrong beyond just slapping more armour on magazines themselves. There's already an ejection chance tech, which helps, but as missile yield tech improves and more missile yield can be squeezed into the same amount of missile size points the damage a single magazine can do increases considerably.
So much so that while a magazine explosion at lower tech levels is crippling, yields of the missiles and the required sizes for other components to effectively fight at missile ranges can result in there being something left of a ship. At higher tech levels however between the near certainty of the detonation of multiple magazines and the greater yields there might be a cloud of debris left. Might.
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Ejection tech increases the ejection chance to almost certainty though. It's not difficult to reach 90% chance.
I'm in favour of making things more lethal.
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Perhaps make it so magazine ejection isn't binary. Giving the magazine a random chance of either dumping the entire magazine or blowing up 100% of the stored missiles seems like playing the roulette table with explosives. A gradiant system of having only 1/2 or 1/4 of the magazine blowing up, depending on the RNG and tech, might be a little more forgiving without being too all or nothing.
You could even make it a part of magazine design, having ejection success rates depend on the size, tech and layout of the magazine.
Eg 1: Instead of there being a stock chance of ejecting the whole magazine, make it so larger magazines have a higher chance of only ejecting a certain percentage of their stored payload, while smaller ones are more likely to successfully eject, even with low tech.
Eg 2: Armoured magazines could have a better chance of partial ejection, or have more chances to try and eject.
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Is this for balance reasons? It doesn't make logical sense that a missile can teleport out of an magazine into another one just before it gets destroyed. I would have thought that it would make more sense to just equally divide missiles between magazines and have those ones in the damaged magazine potentially explode.
Magazine explosions themselves don't make "logical sense", nuclear weapons don't detonate when they're destroyed. If they did, terminal ballistic missile defense systems wouldn't be much use. We're not talking about an unstable high explosive here. Though I understand that the feature is included for balance and because it makes intuitive sense and I agree that proportional explosions make more intuitive sense.
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If you expose the warhead to a huge amount of radiation, especially neutrons, it will ignite to some degree or another. Given the weapons in play, I think magazine explosions are perfectly reasonable, especially once you research antimatter warheads.
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Perhaps make it so magazine ejection isn't binary. Giving the magazine a random chance of either dumping the entire magazine or blowing up 100% of the stored missiles seems like playing the roulette table with explosives. A gradiant system of having only 1/2 or 1/4 of the magazine blowing up, depending on the RNG and tech, might be a little more forgiving without being too all or nothing.
You could even make it a part of magazine design, having ejection success rates depend on the size, tech and layout of the magazine.
Eg 1: Instead of there being a stock chance of ejecting the whole magazine, make it so larger magazines have a higher chance of only ejecting a certain percentage of their stored payload, while smaller ones are more likely to successfully eject, even with low tech.
Eg 2: Armoured magazines could have a better chance of partial ejection, or have more chances to try and eject.
I like this, or at least a more simplified version of it. I think it would be nice if magazine destruction computed a proportionate number of missiles (so if the ship had 11 missiles, destroying half its magazines would hit 5 missiles with a 50% chance for a sixth) and then rolled the ejection chance for each missile. The result would be losing a magazine was damaging, both in lost ammo and the high chance for extra internal damage, but unlikely to be instantly lethal or cause an out of control chain unless you had huge magazines on a small ship (or civilian magazines on an auxiliary).
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I don't really see the problem. If your 50kt ship is a missile ship, and has something shooting mesons at it, you have already lost whatever strategic war you were fighting. So I see no reason to artificially make missile ships magically resistant to explosion damage.
Missile ships and carriers should NEVER allow the enemy close enough to shoot "beam" weapons at it. If they do, your military has been proved inadequate, or you have been ambushed (which also means your military has been proved inadequate). Whatever missile you have should have been launched before that point.
This is not just random things I am writing. Since World War 2, carriers have been kept away from the battle fronts. More recently, the same is true for missile ships. They are never supposed to be close enough to any enemy that shoots "direct weapons".
Even for a modern, real world carrier, if something gets close enough to actually directly shoot at it, it will most likely sink. That is why they move with battlegroups that provide defenses. And field a lot of fighters and anti-air systems.
Once again, I don't see how Aurora should be any different. And you can improve your chances by investing in better magazines and better defenses, SHOULD something get close. Escort ships would be a good idea too.
Also once again, a single meson hit can also destroy a 50ktons "beam" battleships by making the reactor explode. So I see no reason to differentiate between the two, they are in the same boat. I don't see why missile ships should get a preferential treatment.
My balance concerns are not about missile vs beam, but about large missile ships vs multiple smaller vessels. If magazine explosions become too lethal, especially to unfortunate lucky ships, it just gives a huge incentive not to use large vessels. Currently the only real advantages to using very large vessels is increased survivability, but with the changes to shock damage combined with this, that may be reversed. That means that the increased logistical problems related to running larger vessels, like needing larger tenders, larger shipyards etc, will have no real payoff.
Additionally, from what I understand reactors usually make up a very small percentage of a beam ships tonnage, making lucky shots possible, but unlikely. A missile ship however can regularly run with 20+% of its tonnage as magazines.
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My balance concerns are not about missile vs beam, but about large missile ships vs multiple smaller vessels. If magazine explosions become too lethal, especially to unfortunate lucky ships, it just gives a huge incentive not to use large vessels. Currently the only real advantages to using very large vessels is increased survivability, but with the changes to shock damage combined with this, that may be reversed. That means that the increased logistical problems related to running larger vessels, like needing larger tenders, larger shipyards etc, will have no real payoff.
Additionally, from what I understand reactors usually make up a very small percentage of a beam ships tonnage, making lucky shots possible, but unlikely. A missile ship however can regularly run with 20+% of its tonnage as magazines.
I am sorry to insist, but you are completely ignoring my argument that a missile ship's main defense is being far away form the action, and just insisting on the magazine thing. Which is pointless by itself, because it has to be considered in the whole context, not by itself.
This possibility of your ship blowing up just from small damage ONLY happens with mesons. That means, meson fighters or meson warships. If you let a meson ship in range of your missile ships, your entire war doctrine has completely failed. Missile ships are made for long range engagements, if you let something with mesons this close, your military is inadequate.
In that case I see no problem with the fact that you are risking death. In fact you should, because you have failed. And you can still build magazines with a 90% ejection chance and a high HTK as written above, to lower the chances of unlucky hits. And large ships should always have an escort, and anti-fighter defenses as well. So yes, can happen but unlikely to do so. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
For any other kind of damage, be it long range missiles or any other kind of direct fire weapons, all your defenses apply. So the large ships will have a proportional advantage, compared to the smaller ones. Plus the aforementioned better magazines. Plus the fact that you SHOULD be far away, and so that you should kill your opponents before they get close, and have an escort just in case. So once again, if the magazine explosion thing happens, your war doctrine has failed or you were outgunned to begin with.
Ultimately, unless you are outmaneuvered/outgunned/outresearched, the chances of this happening are really very low. And war is NOT meant to be some kind of exact science. Just having a large ship should not make you immune to everything and anything.
Once again, real world reference. If you let an old, decrepit Word War 2 battleship, or any submarine, close in to ANY modern missile cruiser or carrier, I assure you the missile cruiser/carrier will be sunk in SECONDS. Range is their main defense.
So bottom line, yes I am in favor of both 100% damage and proportional explosions based on how full the magazines are. Because using missiles has to carry the realistic risks it implies.
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This possibility of your ship blowing up just from small damage ONLY happens with mesons.
It also happens with shock damage from missiles.
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Or for that matter, any weapon that only barely manages to pierce the armour and kills a magazine through sheer luck.
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IMO, what Graham is "ignoring" is simply not relevant to his point.
Beam vs. missile concerns don't enter the problem that too explodey magazines would make full-size beam ships unattractive compared to splitting the tonnage.
Blowing up from small damage doesn't only happen with mesons. It can happen from shock in a missile vs. missile fight. I don't see an obvious advantage for the larger ships here that more than mitigates the explosion risk. With the new sensor system, large ships will actually require a lot of support to not be blindsided by smaller ships, cutting into any efficiency gains (a 150t fighter hunting for 5000t+ ships will not be picked up at its weapon range by a 50HS sensor looking for 250t fighters).
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Or for that matter, any weapon that only barely manages to pierce the armour and kills a magazine through sheer luck.
The larger ship is supposed to have a lot more defenses. So it should be a lot more impervious to "something that only barely manages to pierce armor"
Hence my comment that the only problem is mesons. If you are taking enough damage to pierce the shields and strip the armor, then you are NOT taking small damage.
Unless you run your ships without shields,armor and point defense, but in that case in my opinion you asked for it so you have no right to complain. Same with running around without escorts. If you do not have a "fleet" that can deal with any type of incoming enemy, be it missiles, "beam" warships, or fighters, you are accepting the risk that if you are caught with your pants down you will die. If you treat your ships as disposable, they should be disposable.
And if instead you are in an epic battle, with dozens of ships on either side, with both sides taking a lot of damage, then yes it is possible that a ship will die just because of sheer unluck. A chance you can truly mitigate with proper research and magazine design however, so you can do something about it. Just, you can never be sure it won't ever happen.
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If you are taking enough damage to pierce the shields and strip the armor, then you are NOT taking small damage.
It is not necessary to pierce the armor to do internal damage. As I and others have said repeatedly here shock damage from missiles will ignore armor.
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It is not necessary to pierce the armor to do internal damage. As I and others have said repeatedly here shock damage from missiles will ignore armor.
Yes, shock damage from missiles will ignore armor. I haven't played in 6 months, but unless I remember wrongly in order for your ships to explode what needs to happen is:
1: Your anti missile defenses, be they AMM or PD or ideally both if you have a fleet, are bypassed
2: Your shields are down
3: You actually get shock damage, which is not a given. Especially if the warheads are not large.
4: The damage actually targets a magazine
5: The damage actually "wins" the damage check and destroys the magazine. If your magazine has high HTK, that's very unlikely as shock damage is likely lower than the HTK. Unless you've been hit by a huge warhead torpedo, but your PD should have taken care of that.
6: Said magazine fails to eject the missiles. Magazine ejection chance can go up to 90% so that's unlikely
I think that the likehood of ALL this happening is very low if you're not taking a lot of damage. Especially it you design proper magazines. It is not zero, but then again it should NOT be zero.
If I got something wrong with that sequence instead then I would like to know and I apologize for my suppositions.
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There are two ways to go here.
1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .
2) Have mitigation so that magazine explosions usually cause significant, but usually not fatal, damage.
The former option is the 100% warhead strength & proportionate missiles lost scenario. For the latter option I like the suggestion that the magazine rolls for explosion chance, then a proportionate number of missiles individually roll. That still allows for catastrophe, but makes it much less likely.
However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.
Although larger magazines can be armoured (increased HTK) more easily and have better capacity than an equivalent size of smaller magazines, it probably isn't worth it compared to accepting smaller capacity with less damage from a single hit. I could add a couple of additional features.
1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.
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So bottom line, yes I am in favor of both 100% damage and proportional explosions based on how full the magazines are. Because using missiles has to carry the realistic risks it implies.
Except these are nuclear warheads not conventional munitions, so you cannot argue that 100% yield is realistic. Nuclear warheads are extremely complex, with staged fission and fusion and are actually extremely difficult to set off. A hit from another warhead may well cause some partial fission, but it almost certainly will not have a full yield, so 20% may actually be the more realistic option.
But I digress, my point was and still is that with all the new changes taken into account, Splitting large vessels into multiple smaller vessels is looking very advantageous.
Pros of large ships:
Larger armour belt.
Possibly more efficient engines.
Pros of smaller vessels:
Much smaller sensor footprint.
More targets to engage so increases chances of enemy overkill.
No possibility of a lucky hit taking out everything.
Smaller jump tenders required.
Smaller shipyards required.
Edit (I have probably missed a load here, but I can't think of any more)
But the increase in armour is not overly high, while all changes from VB6 to C#, with the exception of maintenance changes, favour smaller vessels.
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All changes from VB6 to C#, with the exception of maintenance changes favour smaller vessels.
Based on that statement, I wondered if I had unconsciously favoured smaller ships so I ran through the changes list: The following favour larger ships:
Command & Control: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101818#msg101818
Engines: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102620#msg102620
Power Plants: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102707#msg102707
Shields: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102769#msg102769
Turrets: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103323#msg103323
Maintenance Changes: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101959#msg101959
You could also argue the New Sensor Model makes small ships harder to employ as they can be detected more easily by smaller sensors.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103085#msg103085
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102701#msg102701
The missile changes favour larger missiles and launchers, although you could mount those on smaller ships.
I didn't really find anything that favoured smaller ships (my intention with C# is the opposite).
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It appears I was mistaken then, probably due to confirmation bias since for some reason even though I've read through those changes I just didn't think of them. Apologies.
Thank you, although I would argue that the sensor changes also favour small ships, since the range of small sensors has been increased while the range of larger sensors has fallen. Still though yes on balance I probably have nothing to worry about.
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There are two ways to go here.
1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .
1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.
I would be in favor of all this. In my opinion, a magazine explosions should almost always be lethal. I have no problems however with large and highly advanced magazines having very low chances of explosion. So more HTK and better ejection systems for larger magazines sounds good.
In general I am always in favor of a small degree of uncertainty in combat. I think it really adds to the game. Consider these 2 cases:
1) I am 100% sure that the first 12 hits will not kill me so I can completely ignore them.
2) I am ALMOST sure that the first 12 hits will not kill me. But not 100%, so if I can I will mitigate/avoid/intercept them
The first case allows for "gaming the system" in my opinion, and lowers the tension. It is always, in my opinion, a lot more boring.
Instead case 2) really encourages you to stay on your toes. Always be cautious, never take the outcomes for granted, do not be afraid to use your "limited" resources like AMM to defend yourself. Field more balanced fleets, too.
And if sometimes things do not go according to plans, so be it. That is normal and realistic as well.
I also apologize if I seemed confrontational. That was not my intention, I am just very passionate about this ;D And I don't think C# Aurora will favor small ships, there's plenty of changes that favor larger engines, shields etc in the changelog.
EDIT: and Steve already went and listed the changes. I should have checked the new posts made while I was typing, instead I went and had lunch ;D
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There are two ways to go here.
1) Accept that a magazine explosion is very likely going to cause the loss of the ship (I think that is probably the most realistic) .
2) Have mitigation so that magazine explosions usually cause significant, but usually not fatal, damage.
The former option is the 100% warhead strength & proportionate missiles lost scenario. For the latter option I like the suggestion that the magazine rolls for explosion chance, then a proportionate number of missiles individually roll. That still allows for catastrophe, but makes it much less likely.
However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.
Although larger magazines can be armoured (increased HTK) more easily and have better capacity than an equivalent size of smaller magazines, it probably isn't worth it compared to accepting smaller capacity with less damage from a single hit. I could add a couple of additional features.
1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.
To throw another observation into the mix: post-WWII carriers actually seem to be pretty resilient to chained explosions, e.g. the 1967 Forrestal fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire Even in WWII, I don't recall off the top of my head any catastrophic insta-kill magazine explosions of "modern" (e.g. Essex) carriers. So I think there's a lot to be said for significant over fatal.
Aaaaand I just had a thought while thinking "that's probably because the magazines on modern carriers are deeply buried in the core of the ship":
Another option would be to have two "zones" in the interior systems of a ship: "core" and "surface". The core would be 1/8th the interior volume; the surface 7/8 (corresponding to the core being 1/2 the total radius). Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage until the last surface component was destroyed. Weapons (including box launchers) would be required to be in surface. So one could put vital spaces (bridge, magazines, reactors) in the core, but be on a tight space budget. Another possibility would be to have a fixed depth for surface, so that the proportion of core would go up with bigger ships (this should be easy to calculate, since Aurora already does a radius calculation for determining armor mass). I think this might be a really good mechanic to solve the problem with swarms in SF that you wanted to address at the beginning of Aurora.
John
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Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage
Actually, I would put the probability of damage penetrating to the core at the % destroyed surface HS. So the first hit would be absorbed in the surface, but later hits might penetrate as surface systems are destroyed.
John
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Another option would be to have two "zones" in the interior systems of a ship: "core" and "surface". The core would be 1/8th the interior volume; the surface 7/8 (corresponding to the core being 1/2 the total radius). Core systems would be invulnerable to shock damage until the last surface component was destroyed. Weapons (including box launchers) would be required to be in surface. So one could put vital spaces (bridge, magazines, reactors) in the core, but be on a tight space budget. Another possibility would be to have a fixed depth for surface, so that the proportion of core would go up with bigger ships (this should be easy to calculate, since Aurora already does a radius calculation for determining armor mass). I think this might be a really good mechanic to solve the problem with swarms in SF that you wanted to address at the beginning of Aurora.
John
And this is one of the things that once you read it makes you go: "Why didn't I think of it before?"
I would be totally in favor of having "core" and "surface" zones, and especially with the additional proposal that larger ships have a lot more "core" volume. This would both make larger ships more viable, and allow to have some systems in a more protected location. Small ships should probably have no "core" zone at all.
I don't know if being in the "core" zone should grant total immunity from shock damage. It should however, in some way, ensure a higher survivability of the systems located there. The exact mechanic could be discussed in detail.
I don't know however how much coding this would require, and whether or not Steve would be willing to add it. I would totally like it though. ;D
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In the past I have avoided any distinction between different areas of a ship, or ship facing, to keep tactical complexity down. However, the 'Core' suggestion could work without any disruption to combat. It just affects damage resolution.
Tracking which components are 'Core' and the damage resolution code (which as you might guess I have been recently working on), would be relatively easy. The tricky part would be implementing this in the ship design UI.
For damage resolution, the easiest option is probably to simply reduce the 'size' of core components on the damage allocation chart (DAC). That makes them less likely to be hit, but not impossible. I've already implemented a change in C# Aurora for the DAC so that when a component type is selected for damage, there is a chance equal to the proportion of intact systems that this component will actually be hit. Otherwise a new damage roll is made. This is to prevent a ship with several identical large components losing all of them quickly. In addition to my original intention, this means that any 'core' section would have more chance of being selected as other components are destroyed.
In terms of how large the core would be, there could be a certain depth beyond which the core exists (based on the assumption the ship is a sphere). For example, if we assume anything deeper than 5 metres is in the core section, that means any ships with a diameter of 10m or less have no core. Beyond that point, the core gets larger and larger relative to the overall size of the ship. We could even have an 'inner core' at 10m depth. (haven't run the numbers - I am just picking them out the air).
The program could calculate the size of the core area and make that a field on the class design window. You could then select components up to that size as 'Core' (probably on the component list section). Certain systems, such as weapons, engines, sensors, etc. would be ineligible for core. I would have to unset systems automatically if the design size shrinks.
Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.
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For damage resolution, the easiest option is probably to simply reduce the 'size' of core components on the damage allocation chart (DAC). That makes them less likely to be hit, but not impossible. I've already implemented a change in C# Aurora for the DAC so that when a component type is selected for damage, there is a chance equal to the proportion of intact systems that this component will actually be hit. Otherwise a new damage roll is made. This is to prevent a ship with several identical large components losing all of them quickly. In addition to my original intention, this means that any 'core' section would have more chance of being selected as other components are destroyed.
This sounds sensible. Lower chance, but not impossible because the "damage energy" might, for example, "run down" through a corridor or a weak/empty section and reach an internal part of the ship.
In terms of how large the core would be, there could be a certain depth beyond which the core exists (based on the assumption the ship is a sphere). For example, if we assume anything deeper than 5 metres is in the core section, that means any ships with a diameter of 10m or less have no core. Beyond that point, the core gets larger and larger relative to the overall size of the ship. We could even have an 'inner core' at 10m depth. (haven't run the numbers - I am just picking them out the air).
Since ships come in all shapes and you want to keep the tactical complexity down, I'd just calculate it as a percentage of the total volume. It would be 0 under a certain threshold, and then start from 10% and rise as the ship total volume raises. It could be a logarithmic behavior, the percentage rising faster at first and slower once you are above 60% or so. I am not completely sold on making even an "inner core" zone, you would need to think well of the way to implement this.
The program could calculate the size of the core area and make that a field on the class design window. You could then select components up to that size as 'Core' (probably on the component list section). Certain systems, such as weapons, engines, sensors, etc. would be ineligible for core. I would have to unset systems automatically if the design size shrinks.
Sounds ok, and should not be too hard to handle I think.
Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.
Well, yes they probably should, although I'm not sure how. Maybe halving the benefit of the "core" zone? Also mesons could maybe have an easier time penetrating in order to hit core systems.
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Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.
guess they should.. a beam-weapon which is able to penetrate through m's of solid military armour would just go through a ship and all which is in its way till it is stopped from the armour at the other side of the ship... no matter what... even if the "core" is armoured by itself it is not as thick as the outer armour plating... so whatever is able to penetrate the outer armour should knife through it like butter...
also I am not sure about a "core" mechanic at all... a magazine in the "core" would be hell to transport missiles in/out . and ejecting missiles from a magazine which is in the core of a ship would be really impossible...
hmm... sounds like a nice mechanic in theory but I am not sure at all...
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also I am not sure about a "core" mechanic at all... a magazine in the "core" would be hell to transport missiles in/out . and ejecting missiles from a magazine which is in the core of a ship would be really impossible...
That is a good point, although what we really have is a mechanic to avoid magazine explosions. Currently we use 'Ejection' technobabble but we could use the equivalent of flooding the magazine instead (some process that quickly, safely and permanently disables the missiles). The ejection chance becomes the chance of this process happening fast enough (or at all) in response to damage.
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If any type of core is added it should IMHO be called a citadel and defended by a secondary armor layer ( which increase ship size less due to not covering all of it, just key components and can thus be made thicker ).
Edit:
It makes little sense to have it be protected from weapons rivaling nuclear detonations in strength by some components like Empty Hangars, Fueltanks or Maintenance Storage Bays.
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But in game weapons are already shown not to penetrate components unless they have more than enough damage to destroy them, so having a “core” section which is less likely to be hit first makes sense to me.
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But in game weapons are already shown not to penetrate components unless they have more than enough damage to destroy them, so having a “core” section which is less likely to be hit first makes sense to me.
Yes, it would also be a lot simpler to treat weapons equally with regard to the core concept. The advantage of lances (for example) would be to penetrate armour in the first place.
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I've been thinking more about the core idea. One issue is that not many systems would work in the core. Weapons, engines, sensors, hangars, etc would all need to be close to the surface.
Systems such as jump engines and shields would depend on whether it is realistic to expect them to function from within a ship - probably not.
The systems that remain are on the lines of engineering, command & control, magazines and fuel.
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However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.
The discussion seems to have moved on, but I wanted to mention that I think, mathmatically, the result would be the opposite. If magazine explosions become extremely lethal then you'd want fewer, larger magazines, because any damage beyond what's needed to destroy the ship is irrelevant and thus decreases the average damage of the magazine exploding.
For example, let's say a 100 HS ship has 10 HS of magazines, and the destruction of each HS of magazine would be enough to destroy 20 HS of internal components.
If the ship has a single 10 HS magazine, then 1 internal damage has a 1% chance of destroying the magazine (10% to hit it and 10% to kill the 10 HTK magazine). The explosion would "do" 200 damage, but in practice it only does 100 because the ship only has 100 HTK. Thus the average damage is 1; 1% of 100.
If the ship has 10 1 HS magazines, then 1 internal damage has a 10% chance of destroying one magazine, doing 20 damage. Thus the average damage is 2, 10% of 20. And this ignores the odds of the 20 damage hitting another magazine, which in this case would be awfully high.
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The discussion seems to have moved on, but I wanted to mention that I think, mathmatically, the result would be the opposite. If magazine explosions become extremely lethal then you'd want fewer, larger magazines, because any damage beyond what's needed to destroy the ship is irrelevant and thus decreases the average damage of the magazine exploding.
For example, let's say a 100 HS ship has 10 HS of magazines, and the destruction of each HS of magazine would be enough to destroy 20 HS of internal components.
If the ship has a single 10 HS magazine, then 1 internal damage has a 1% chance of destroying the magazine (10% to hit it and 10% to kill the 10 HTK magazine). The explosion would "do" 200 damage, but in practice it only does 100 because the ship only has 100 HTK. Thus the average damage is 1; 1% of 100.
If the ship has 10 1 HS magazines, then 1 internal damage has a 10% chance of destroying one magazine, doing 20 damage. Thus the average damage is 2, 10% of 20. And this ignores the odds of the 20 damage hitting another magazine, which in this case would be awfully high.
In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.
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In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.
Ah.. then yeah, the advantage would go to smaller magazines, but that would be regardless of explosion chance. It just creates more internal HTK at no cost (unless you armor the magazines)
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I've been thinking more about the core idea. One issue is that not many systems would work in the core. Weapons, engines, sensors, hangars, etc would all need to be close to the surface.
Systems such as jump engines and shields would depend on whether it is realistic to expect them to function from within a ship - probably not.
The systems that remain are on the lines of engineering, command & control, magazines and fuel.
Power Plants, Damage control, Crew Quarters & Flight crew berths, Cargo & Storage/Transport probably could be core as well? ( With cloaking device being "maybe" just as jump engines/shields ).
And it also depends on your viewpoints. The part of the engines that is susceptible to explosion and is sensitive is probably the powerplant, which could probably be located deep inside a ship.
Huge spinal weapons along the length of a ship also might have some central part of them inside the core.
Hangars could be connected from the core with catapults to quickly launch Fighters ( but probably not so practical ).
Looking at historical warships the two main critical components to protect internally ( under secondary citadel armor ) would be engines and magazines.
If we think about other Sci-Fi components that could potentially be protected ( but are currently not in Aurora ) we could also imagine data centers, and energy storage ( batteries/capacitors ) would be located in the core.
In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.
Can't you armor them to have more?
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Putting the engines in a protected location is a lot more practical for a seagoing ship than a space vessel, though.
I'm kind of ambivalent about "core" components myself. It makes sense, but I don't think the damage model needs to be too detailed either.
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Putting the engines in a protected location is a lot more practical for a seagoing ship than a space vessel, though.
That depends greatly on the type of Sci Fi.
In most Sci Fi universes the powerplant / reactor that powers the engine is in the very core of the vessel, and in some of them the thrusters are no bigger then a propellers & rudders are on a seagoing ship and engines extend into the very central parts of the ship.
One example would be Star Trek where the red impulse engines are very small:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memory-gamma/images/0/07/USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701-D%29_enters_asteroid_field.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180101041459
I don't think it's a good idea to use the ineffective rocket engines of today as a model for how Sci Fi space ships would look, since inevitably with 20-50% mass being engine & fuel and 50-80% being payload Sci Fi ships should look alot more like seagoing ships in terms of mass distribution then they would look like our primitive Rockets.
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Sort of yes, sort of no. It really depends on how the engine works; a rocket engine benefits greatly from putting the reaction chamber as closely as possible to the nozzle. It means a much lower amount of things to cool for one. For a seagoing ship with propellers? Drive shafts are very efficient ways of transferring energy, which makes it possible to extend the distance between the energy source and the propeller.
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It doesn't necessarily follow that weapons need to be close to the surface. I have always imagined laser weapons to have the beam generation in a internal plant, and the turrent only represents moving mirrors/focusing optics. Things like spinal weapons or railguns which we would assume to extend the full length of the ship would probably be internal too.
I'm not sure the concept of extremely sensitive magazines ever made much sense to me. Nuclear weapons are insensitive to shock and even if the conventional explosive lense were to detonate, this would likely not be sufficiently symmetrical for criticality. Volatile power plants, engines or jump engines always made more sense for secondary explosions to me!
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1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring. In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size). This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above. So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.
I think these changes would have a balancing effect.
Like people have said, if your anti-ship missile ship is within range of a beam ship the consequences are severe if they can penetrate your defences (or they are meson based).
That leaves the main worry being shock damage from stray missiles. Would it make sense for magazines to have 'shock stabilisers' that reduce the shock damage to magazines. That means having higher HTK and better shock stabilisers would leave a larger magazine less vulnerable to shock damage. Shock stabilisers could be another tech line for magazines.
I think the idea of 'core' components could get very complex very quick and I wouldn't think that core components would be any less vulnerable to shock damage so doesn't really solve that issue. I think it is also a little limiting to people's RP as everyone is going to have differing opinions on what the technobable means for ship shape and locations of various components in the ship
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Yes, it would also be a lot simpler to treat weapons equally with regard to the core concept. The advantage of lances (for example) would be to penetrate armour in the first place.
A few random replies to the thread:
Yes, in my 2nd post I originally had "HS or HTK destroyed" (for the % chance of penetration to core). I deleted HTK and just said HS because you want things like hangers (with high HS/HTK) to NOT be a good shield for the core. A ship with high HS/HTK (like hangars) in the surface area will and should have damage more quickly penetrate to the core than one with low HS/HTK (i.e. dense) components. So a hangar which can absorb 1 damage point will stop the first point of damage, but its loss will lead to a much higher likelihood that the next point of damage will get through to the core compared to the loss of e.g. a laser mount.
Also, I think it's really important to keep the core concept really simple. As Steve said (to paraphrase), the reason he's resisted (with good reason) distribution of components is that it leads to micromanagement nightmares. I think dividing the components into two pieces is a great compromise between the random damage of Aurora and the predictable ordered damage of SF. As such (if Steve puts it in), there shouldn't be a lot of tracking of components that are partially in and partially out - it should be a couple of very simple yes/no answers: "Is this component eligible for the core?" "Is it in the core?".
I thought about whether magazines should be allowed to be in the core (due to transport distance) when I suggested it. My feel is that this is a "gameplay over reality" issue - the transport distance issues are modeled in the lower RoF compared to box launchers (which should be required to be on the surface), while the ability to protect magazines by burying them in the middle of the ship is one of the primary gameplay motivations for the introduction of the mechanic.
I thought of the "armored core" idea too. Since Steve's calculations are already based on radius it wouldn't be that hard to do. It's probably a step too far over the complexity line though, especially when you start asking if there's another armor box pattern in the inner layer.
One thing I thought of after posting - internal explosions should probably ignore the core/surface shielding effect since you're already in the body of the ship.
John
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We can get the "core" mechanic by just allowing the player to draw the armor pattern, instead of having them all be rectangular. Non-rectangular armor patterns already work fine for damage calculations, you can see it on damaged ships.
A system in the "core" would just have more armor segments above it on the armor pattern. We don't need any new mechanics.
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I like the idea of magazine destruction potentially causing a catastrophic failure of the vessel but agree some better ways to mitigate this would also be good. Was just thinking that perhaps the damage control rating of a vessel could not only support rate of repair but also improve the chances of avoiding a magazine explosion. This would probably mean that larger ships with fuller damage control would have a better chance of avoiding the problem.
On a separate note I was just thinking that with the potential change in states of components to now include damaged would another look at how damage controls work be a good idea. If a damaged component came with a risk of becoming destroyed if damage control was not applied in a certain period of time it could make that a lot more relevant in the normal combat time scales rather than just being an after the fact action if your ship has survived the combat.
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We can get the "core" mechanic by just allowing the player to draw the armor pattern, instead of having them all be rectangular. Non-rectangular armor patterns already work fine for damage calculations, you can see it on damaged ships.
A system in the "core" would just have more armor segments above it on the armor pattern. We don't need any new mechanics.
This might be an interesting way to do it, but then we also need some way to visualize and specify what components are covered with what armor thickness.
Sort of yes, sort of no. It really depends on how the engine works; a rocket engine benefits greatly from putting the reaction chamber as closely as possible to the nozzle. It means a much lower amount of things to cool for one. For a seagoing ship with propellers? Drive shafts are very efficient ways of transferring energy, which makes it possible to extend the distance between the energy source and the propeller.
Agreed. But given the technobabble of "fluid dimension" used in Aurora for propulsion I don't think a rocket engine is relevant for anything except maybe conventional engines.
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Sorry I am late to this discussion.
It may be worth remembering that most magazine explosions were the result of a cordite fire - the propellant! Thus while the nuclear warhead may contribute only 20% or less of its explosive potential (up to antimatter warheads) the sorium fuel may contribute considerably more. It depends whether being TN material some of the resultant energy is expelled "out of phase" with this universe. Only Steve can tell us that ;D .
I quite like the idea of core area which has some form of extra protection, be this thickened armour or whatever. But I suspect the most apposite solution may be to apply the KISS principal. :D .
Ian
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I agree with Ian.
The biggest threat will be the fuel carried by the missiles. I think it would be more appropriate to base the explosive damage off of the fuel contained in the magazine than the warheads. this way, drones and other ordnance are just as deadly if struck. Nuclear warheads are unlikely to detonate in an explosion, and the HE 'starter' would be negligible compared to the fuel in the storage (could be modeled at 20% total theoretical damamge).
Aside: I think the energy from 1 trident missile booster is enough to melt all of the steel in a submarine that carries it.
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I agree with Ian.
The biggest threat will be the fuel carried by the missiles. I think it would be more appropriate to base the explosive damage off of the fuel contained in the magazine than the warheads. this way, drones and other ordnance are just as deadly if struck. Nuclear warheads are unlikely to detonate in an explosion, and the HE 'starter' would be negligible compared to the fuel in the storage (could be modeled at 20% total theoretical damamge).
Aside: I think the energy from 1 trident missile booster is enough to melt all of the steel in a submarine that carries it.
I did consider using the fuel. However, in that case what happens when the ship's main fuel tank gets hit? I also considered have the missile engines explode (using the same rules as ship engines) but they weren't really powerful enough.
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If I remember right the lore justification for missile engines being allowed higher multipliers than the current power tech was that they were solid-fuelled, correct? With that in mind, their volatility compared to normal fuel could be justified, whether by itself or combined with the engines.
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I don't know about the multipliers, but didn't the fuel efficiency for missiles compared to ships now work according to the same formula in C#? that heavely implies the same fuel being used.
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I don't know about the multipliers, but didn't the fuel efficiency for missiles compared to ships now work according to the same formula in C#? that heavely implies the same fuel being used.
Yes, missiles and ships use the same rules now.
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Hmm... Do we need big ass guns firing Anti-Matter slugs that are stored in magazines just to have an excuse for big magazine explosions? ;D
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There's no reason fuel has to be volatile and warheads shouldn't be; since sorium isn't treated as explosive anywhere else in the game, I figure it's best to assume it isn't easily set off without the equipment to do so (thus explaining engine explosions). Meanwhile, yeah, nukes don't go off if you set them on fire, but not all missiles are nukes and it might be weird to have different rules for antimatter missiles. Also, these are TNE nukes, they might be different.
I'd say go with what's most intuitive to the player, and that's probably having the missile warheads explode.
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If the intention is that a magazine explosion will usually be devastating to the ship then it's mechanically fine to use the warhead strength as the factor rather than overly complicate things using some new fuel explosion rules (which wouldn't necessarily make "realistic" sense either). A dead or crippled ship is a dead or crippled ship.
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First off, I just blew through this entire thread in one go. . . So, I apologize if I missed something, or misread something.
I'm all for catastrophic magazine detonation. I think it needs to be in there, a rare chance, depending on your ship design and technology, but a real possibility. And since magazines, generally, are associated with big explosions when damaged, or even just lightly touched with any kind of abnormal amount of energy, I feel like its a good place to apply the risk.
As well, the 100% warhead damage seems reasonable.
My only question(s) is this. . . Does the location of the explosion matter? Is it damage on "nearby" components? or does it move through the ship?
If it's not a question of location, could it be? Is there some kind of formula we could use to determine a probable "blast radius" inside the ship. If X number of Y strength missiles detonate, a size Z explosion is applied to A number of components. Or, perhaps that's already how this is working. . .
Edit: Thinking about that, I realized that, at least with most of my larger ships that might actually survive a major explosion, there are MANY small components. Mostly engineering spaces. Which means, I'm not good enough at math for this.
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the components dont have a fixed position. the damage is applied to components in the ship, until all of the damage has been done if i recall correctly.
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The components are grouped by type I think. So engines are always listed first, then weapons or whatever (not sure the order, largest systems first? I could be remembering wrong). Damage is applied to a random spot on the hull/armor and is spread out based on the damage template and hits whatever is under those spots.
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Alright, so I just read up on the Damage Allocation Chart, on the Aurora wiki.
And, based off the damage model that was already talked about in this thread, which I forgot. . . It sounds like this is well and under control. So, I will bow out.
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Setting aside the concept of the core vs the surface, since I don't have an opinion on that. (It might be cool. It might not. I can't say.)
Most examples of magazine explosions (or, really, turret explosions) I can think of have severely damaged the ship in question, and many of them have fooled observers into thinking the ship was out of action (e.g. Seydlitz at the Battle of Dogger Bank). However, I can't think of any magazine explosions which have actually completely destroyed the ship in question.
With that in mind, I'd model it like the following:
- First, magazines designed with proper ejection technology have whatever percentage chance to avoid a magazine explosion at all when HTK on a magazine is successful.
- Assuming the magazine fails this role, it has a 10% (or other small, flat, non-negligible) chance for a catastrophic explosion
- Catastrophic explosions add together the warhead damage of all missiles remaining in the magazine in question and apply it to the internals of the ship. Bye-bye.
- Non-catastrophic explosions add together the warhead damage of all missiles remaining in the magazine in question, then multiply it by some fraction (e.g. 80%). This can be flat or tech-dependent, as makes sense. If tech-dependent, I would suggest it's the same tech as magazine ejection chance. This models that proper magazine design not only provides for emergency ejection, but attempts to channel as much of the explosion of possible outside the ship in the case of ejection failure. Then, the explosion is applied to the ship internals, as above.
To provide balance (and, I think, realism) with ships which rely on reactors, reactors should also have a safe-ejection technology which will mitigate the chances and effects of power-plant explosion, though a catastrophic failure could always happen, as with magazines above.
(And of course, 'always hit an empty magazine' is silly.)
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However, I can't think of any magazine explosions which have actually completely destroyed the ship in question.
The HMS Hood is the best example I can think of. Other's I'm aware of are the IJN Yamato and the HMS Barham, though these two would have sunk even if they didn't explode.
Obviously these ships weren't vaporized by the blasts, but they sank in very short order. If I remember correctly the Hood had sunk completely before the smoke even cleared.
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Several British ships during the Battle of Jutland as well. While ships do not seem to evaporate or disappear in a blast of fire and smoke when a magazine goes off, damage was at best crippling and the ship often swiftly sank after the magazine went up.
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HMS Hood would count, I think. As would HMS Queen Mary
But Seydlitz, for example, even managed to continue firing on the enemy after a very impressive turret explosion, and many another ship was rendered combat-incapable, but not outright destroyed.
Edit-to-add: It's important to note, also, that all these are ships which didn't have magazines carefully designed to eject and port off explosions. They are in fact why gun turrets and magazines were re-designed to avoid these explosions.
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One interesting thing to consider is a lot of the catastrophic magazine detonations mentioned above were due to those ships using two part ammo, a shell and a charge. I was looking up magazine detonations to try and abstract it in a way that would fit Aurora as missiles are a single unit. I did find some things on smaller ships that had their magazines detonate such as destroyers in the Pacific, these use self contained shells which people are more familiar with (single unit ammunition). In pretty much all cases I found this resulted in the loss of the ship. The only real exception I could find was during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The USS Shaw took a hit and had its forward magazine detonate while in dry dock, they ended up having to replace the entire Bow of the ship. Another thing to note is that the most common cause of a magazine detonation was fire rather than a direct hit. While it would be neat to see fires and their effect on crews (I would love to be able to recover and press burnt out hulk back into service) I'm not sure how well it would fit in Aurora (although I could've swore Ive seen something for this in the VB Aurora database).
Another angle to approach this from in terms of ammunition detonation would be in Tanks. A few modern tanks have blow out panels which allow the force of a magazine detonation to be mitigated. These blow off panels allow energy to escape rather than keeping it bottled up and causing more catastrophic damage to the vehicle. Instead of outright ejecting ordinance could a system where the damage is basically vented off be a better hand wave? Would this dump the damage outright or would it be more of a mitigation? Could this be simple damage mitigation (Y% chance of X% of damage is vented into space) for low tech magazines and better chances for partial or even total mitigation of damage? Would this cause the ships thermal signature to skyrocket? I feel something along these lines would provide more variance rather than the all or nothing approach we have now. It would also still allow for big explosions (ask me about my deep magazines, combat colliers, and large numbers!) and allow the player to mitigate or stop this damage by design/tech.
As for the whole "Nukes don't set off other nukes" thing, maybe TN elements integrated into warhead designs do too good of a job at turning energy into neutrons. :P
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The "nukes don't just explode" point was as a counter to the idea of how much power is "realistic". You can handwave it however you want, that won't affect how realistic it is. You could handwave any value. The explosions should be balanced around the intended ingame effect, is more the point. Explanations of what is happening can be left to the individual. Now there's a side issue of whether magazine explosion strength should be based on warhead value or fuel amount but ultimately it won't matter to the player if they both achieve the same ingame effect. That should really be about what makes it easier to achieve the desired balance in the game.
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Well the issue is that they likely won't achieve the same effect. AMM's generally have a much larger fuel:warhead ratio than ASM's because there's no reason really to have more than 1WH on an AMM. So Anti-missile ships will be much more vulnerable than ASM ships if the magazine explosion size is determined by the fuel quantity rather than the warhead size.
Maybe it should be both fuel and warhead? And we could have magazine armor reduce the damage done by the blast, to simulate the idea that a heavily-armored magazine would do a better job containing the blast than a paper-thin one.
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Well the issue is that they likely won't achieve the same effect. AMM's generally have a much larger fuel:warhead ratio than ASM's because there's no reason really to have more than 1WH on an AMM. So Anti-missile ships will be much more vulnerable than ASM ships if the magazine explosion size is determined by the fuel quantity rather than the warhead size.
Maybe it should be both fuel and warhead? And we could have magazine armor reduce the damage done by the blast, to simulate the idea that a heavily-armored magazine would do a better job containing the blast than a paper-thin one.
AMMs actually would tend to have a larger WH:fuel ratio than ASMs. There's no point in larger than a strength 1 warhead, but there's basically no point in any fuel beyond the tiniest amount either.
Another difference would be that warhead based explosions would scale with tech, but fuel based ones wouldn't (since higher tech missiles generally have similar fuel distribution as lower tech ones, but stronger warheads).
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Well the issue is that they likely won't achieve the same effect. AMM's generally have a much larger fuel:warhead ratio than ASM's because there's no reason really to have more than 1WH on an AMM. So Anti-missile ships will be much more vulnerable than ASM ships if the magazine explosion size is determined by the fuel quantity rather than the warhead size.
Maybe it should be both fuel and warhead? And we could have magazine armor reduce the damage done by the blast, to simulate the idea that a heavily-armored magazine would do a better job containing the blast than a paper-thin one.
This was my point about the choice should be dependent upon which it's easier to balance for the intended gameplay effect.
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This is getting needlessly convoluted. TN physics, we don't know how they works. These are warheads built with imaginary materials. As such the arguments "nukes don't explode" is pointless and just wastes time. Trying to evaluate the explosion based on fuel is also pointless and just running around the issue.
If the intention is: "warheads are volatile and so magazines can explode", then they do. I think it clear that Steve wants this one option. Personally, I also like this option.
Since this is what happens in game, then it follows that magazine explosion, while unlikely and rather rare, should be deadly. You have a powerful explosion happening INSIDE your ship. And it should be based on warhead size, not on flimsy things like fuel amount...
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I am usually not a fan of huge critical hits, since in my experience since they are so rare they almost never occur, and so add nothing. Or when they do occur and the flagship of your fleet detonates on a 1 in 1000 chance you are just left with a bad taste in your mouth.
Since any side can be argued from a “realism” point. I would rather explosions be common enough to be a factor in most large battles, but with enough negation tools available to deal with it.
Say that you can build something into your magazine which reduces the explosion by a flat %. The higher the % the higher the efficiency cost to the magazine. That way you can just roll the dice, bit at least then when your newly commissioned flagship explodes in a cloud of hellfire, you know it was your fault and not just something you had no control over.
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I am coming over to the side of magazine explosions as well. Preferably more common ones with more tools to deal with them as the guy above said, huge randomization is no fun at all. Explosions in general however are quite fun.
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This is getting needlessly convoluted. TN physics, we don't know how they works. These are warheads built with imaginary materials. As such the arguments "nukes don't explode" is pointless and just wastes time.
Again, sort of the point. It was purely a counterargument to "it's more realistic that they explode at full strength" as I think that it's more important for this balancing choice to be done for desired gameplay effect rather than "it's realistic". Because neither is "realistic" and anything can be justified ingame. So yes, arguing what is more realistic is indeed a waste of time. Sort of the point, as I believe I was the one who first said it, yet have never been against missiles exploding at full warhead strength, I just think that trying to portray any particular way as "unrealistic" is pointless.
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I don't really mind either way ( warheads vs fuel ), as long as it's consistent with other mechanics, is "fun" and work well from a game balance perspective to provide meaningful warship design choices.