v2.2.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The player can choose to assign his shorter range weapons to high priority fire controls. That gives him more control than forcing shorter range weapons to fire first. There may be situations where the latter behaviour isn't desired.

I didn't mean to replace your mechanics with just shorter ranged weapons firing first. What I did mean is to use weapons, that are already assigned to some (choosen) fire control, in order of their max range ascending (the same way their targets are already ordered).
It will not change the option to diligently manually assign shorter ranged weapons to a separate FC with higher priorities (or other way around) and so make a leak even less probable just with a cost of more FCs to build and more micromanagenent to bring on. Yet it can make manual reassignments less tedios during battle and a rule "you need a separate FC for every max range of weapons or your PD will strangely leak" less suppressing.

I forgot to mention it in the changes post, but when a fire control cycles through weapons to assign to targets, it does so in ascending order of weapon range. Is that what you mean?

[serger]

I forgot to mention it in the changes post, but when a fire control cycles through weapons to assign to targets, it does so in ascending order of weapon range. Is that what you mean?

Yep!

[DNAturation]

For the missile retargeting, could I theoretically launch missiles with 0 warhead, 0 agility, and all fuel/engines to just make a swarm around an enemy ship that will last for hours?

[xenoscepter]

 --- So, when can we expect to get our hands on 2.2?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

For the missile retargeting, could I theoretically launch missiles with 0 warhead, 0 agility, and all fuel/engines to just make a swarm around an enemy ship that will last for hours?

No, because it will still attack and be destroyed, or hit by point defence. A lack of warhead doesn't prevent a missile from attacking.

[Froggiest1982]

--- So, when can we expect to get our hands on 2.2?

It will be ready when it will be ready^TM

[nuclearslurpee]

--- So, when can we expect to get our hands on 2.2?

Soon™ 

[Snoman314]

Holy moly. Work sends me away for a few weeks and I missed a lot!

Overall, love the sound of the changes made so far. In particular the re-worked PD mechanics are great. I also like the addition of more components that can be added to missiles, giving reasons to decide to build larger ones.

I'll add two points that I picked up from following Nebulous: Fleet Command's missile re-balance. They had a similar problem: All-or-nothing missile combats, dominated by massive swarms of cheap missiles to overwhelm PD. A couple of the solutions used there could be applicable:

1. Add more penetration aids, to make larger ship-killers with expensive features more lethal by giving them more options to penetrate PD fire.
 I see the ECM has been re-worked, which I think will prove to be a good move. ECM is a good way to abstract many of the specific penaids that Nebulous allows (decoys, jammers, more decoys, evasive terminal attack profiles etc), under one heading. I'd just ask that if we're only going to have the one penaid option (ECM), can we make it non-binary? I.e. I'd like to see the option to pay more mass to get more ECM.
 Perhaps instead of a tickbox, on/off arrangement, we could enter a value like we do for sensors, and get certain number of ECM points per MSP. If it was scaled exponentially relative to the racial ECM tech level, that'd make going over the current ECM tech expensive and of limited value, keeping useful ECM values close to the racial level, but allowing some variation and design compromises.

2. Put limits on salvo sizes, to make a doctrine based around large salvoes have significant trade-offs in terms of fire control.
 I see this did get brought up in the discussions, but mostly dismissed. I think this was probably the biggest thing in Nebulous that forced players to start experimenting with smaller, more lethal salvoes. I think we should consider it further for Aurora. Something like an MFC tech line that increases number of missiles that can controlled at once? Or maybe just the number launched at once?
 The idea would be to add more of a trade off to going for large missile swarms. Combined with making smaller, more lethal salvoes more viable, it would hopefully give a wider range of viable tactics.

[Zap0]

You should probably note that the to-hit chance penalty applies multiplicatively now instead of additively.
It does, right?

Since before it was additive, i.e. a 35% hit chance with a 20% ECM reduction would get reduced to 15% hit chance.
Now it's 20% of those 35%, so it'll get reduced by 7% to 28% hit chance.

A note and example like that would help clarify, especially since it was the other way around before. The change itself I like, as it makes a tech advantage less oppressive.

[Snoman314]

You should probably note that the to-hit chance penalty applies multiplicatively now instead of additively.
It does, right?

Since before it was additive, i.e. a 35% hit chance with a 20% ECM reduction would get reduced to 15% hit chance.
Now it's 20% of those 35%, so it'll get reduced by 7% to 28% hit chance.

A note and example like that would help clarify, especially since it was the other way around before. The change itself I like, as it makes a tech advantage less oppressive.

Yes, except that each level of ECM counts for twice as much, so it'd be more like:

old: 35% - 20% = 15%
new: 35% * 0.6 = 21%

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Holy moly. Work sends me away for a few weeks and I missed a lot!

Overall, love the sound of the changes made so far. In particular the re-worked PD mechanics are great. I also like the addition of more components that can be added to missiles, giving reasons to decide to build larger ones.

I'll add two points that I picked up from following Nebulous: Fleet Command's missile re-balance. They had a similar problem: All-or-nothing missile combats, dominated by massive swarms of cheap missiles to overwhelm PD. A couple of the solutions used there could be applicable:

1. Add more penetration aids, to make larger ship-killers with expensive features more lethal by giving them more options to penetrate PD fire.
 I see the ECM has been re-worked, which I think will prove to be a good move. ECM is a good way to abstract many of the specific penaids that Nebulous allows (decoys, jammers, more decoys, evasive terminal attack profiles etc), under one heading. I'd just ask that if we're only going to have the one penaid option (ECM), can we make it non-binary? I.e. I'd like to see the option to pay more mass to get more ECM.
 Perhaps instead of a tickbox, on/off arrangement, we could enter a value like we do for sensors, and get certain number of ECM points per MSP. If it was scaled exponentially relative to the racial ECM tech level, that'd make going over the current ECM tech expensive and of limited value, keeping useful ECM values close to the racial level, but allowing some variation and design compromises.

2. Put limits on salvo sizes, to make a doctrine based around large salvoes have significant trade-offs in terms of fire control.
 I see this did get brought up in the discussions, but mostly dismissed. I think this was probably the biggest thing in Nebulous that forced players to start experimenting with smaller, more lethal salvoes. I think we should consider it further for Aurora. Something like an MFC tech line that increases number of missiles that can controlled at once? Or maybe just the number launched at once?
 The idea would be to add more of a trade off to going for large missile swarms. Combined with making smaller, more lethal salvoes more viable, it would hopefully give a wider range of viable tactics.

The EW update I posted was mainly to emphasise the change from absolute to relative.

I am currently in the process of splitting ECM into three categories. Sensor jammers that reduce the effective range of active sensors and missile fire controls vs the protected ship (although cross-section remains the same), fire control jammers that interfere with ship to ship targeting systems (reducing to-hit for beam fire controls) and missile jammers that attempt to degrade the link between missiles and their parent fire control systems (reducing to-hit for missiles). Each one has its own tech progression with half the RP requirements of the current ECM progression. I might change the sensor jammers to -20% per point of difference. At the moment these are all 150 tons, so smaller classes may only mount one or two rather than all three, probably based on their role. They may also have different tech lines at different stages, probably depending on the nature of the opponents.

The next part is thinking out loud and hasn't been coded yet.

Given the nature of these changes (there are no compact versions yet), I will probably replace the ubiquitous ECM component from missiles (ECCM will remain) with a new line of decoys with ECM tech built in - probably 0.25 MSP for the controller and maybe 0.5 MSP to 1 MSP each for the decoys. Rather than track these independently, the mechanics will assume they are deployed at an appropriate time. When the missile is attacked by PD or AMM, the chance of hitting the actual missile will 1 / (1 + Decoys). If a decoy is hit, it will noted as such in the combat log and removed for future checks. If the attacking missile or fire control has ECCM greater than the ECM of the decoys, the number of decoys used in the calculation will be reduced by 1 for each point of difference.

If that sounds like a huge boost for missiles, it is. However, I will also be adding ship-deployed decoys as well to distract missiles. These will be much larger and more costly, but will affect all missiles heading for the ship, probably with similar mechanics. That will have the greatest impact on very large missile waves. I am hoping to create a situation where larger, smarter and higher tech missiles may have a better chance of inflicting damage than a swarm of small missiles. These will be a huge change so I will be doing a lot of playtesting and tweaking once the changes are done probably via a campaign with multiple player races.

I've updated the last changes post to reflect the first paragraph above.

[Destragon]

"When an Active Sensor is trying to detect a target or a Missile Fire Control is attempting to lock on to a target equipped with a Sensor Jammer, the ECCM strength of the Active Sensor or Fire Control is deducted from the Sensor Jammer Strength of the target. The result is known as the ECM Penalty and cannot be less than zero. The range of the Missile Fire Control will be reduced by 20% * ECM Penalty."

The last sentence here only mentions the range of Missile Fire Controls being reduced, but it also reduces the range of Active Sensors, right?

Also, the reduced range is only applied when the sensor is specifically targetting the ship that has the jammer, right? So if you have a fleet of two identical ships, except one has a jammer, the sensor might detected the one ship and not the one with the jammer?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

"When an Active Sensor is trying to detect a target or a Missile Fire Control is attempting to lock on to a target equipped with a Sensor Jammer, the ECCM strength of the Active Sensor or Fire Control is deducted from the Sensor Jammer Strength of the target. The result is known as the ECM Penalty and cannot be less than zero. The range of the Missile Fire Control will be reduced by 20% * ECM Penalty."

The last sentence here only mentions the range of Missile Fire Controls being reduced, but it also reduces the range of Active Sensors, right?

Also, the reduced range is only applied when the sensor is specifically targetting the ship that has the jammer, right? So if you have a fleet of two identical ships, except one has a jammer, the sensor might detected the one ship and not the one with the jammer?

Yes, to both. I considered area jamming, but thought it would be too powerful. I also considered allowing the jamming to be turned on and off and to have EM emissions associated with that jamming, but it leads to a lot of unnecessary complexity (what if jammers are turned on with missiles in flight and the ship now outside range of the sensors and fire controls). Fine in a multi-player game, but would be tricky for the AI to avoid those situations.

[Snoman314]

...Big EWar update...

I love the direction you're going, but yeah, these are big changes that will take a lot of balancing. Just when I was hoping to play a new version!! Lol.

Does the Sensor jammer increase EM emissions? (Trading reduced active detection / lock range for greater passive detection range)? If so, can it be toggled on and off? Or is it a straight stealth boost?

I will definitely want to have the option of compact versions.

If the missile is hit, will it's decoys go poof? You say the decoys will be abstracted to deploy at an appropriate time, does this mean that a decoy bus mixed in with the salvo, even if unluckily killed early, could still potentially have decoys flying along with the salvo, further distracting PD? This would probably require tracking the decoys independently after all, but could allow for tactics involving changing salvo composition during battle.

I love the ship decoy idea as well. A new system? Something fired out of a missle launcher tube? Expendable decoys vs a rechargable system of some kind? Maybe a bit of both in that it requires Maintenance Supply to reload?
 Ideally the Defensive fire controls will not add missiles tracking to engage the decoys, to the list of missiles being allocated PD shots. Would this be binary, or have some degree of uncertainty?

Man this is getting so many ideas going!

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

...Big EWar update...

I love the direction you're going, but yeah, these are big changes that will take a lot of balancing. Just when I was hoping to play a new version!! Lol.

Does the Sensor jammer increase EM emissions? (Trading reduced active detection / lock range for greater passive detection range)? If so, can it be toggled on and off? Or is it a straight stealth boost?

Read my post just above yours

I will definitely want to have the option of compact versions.

If the missile is hit, will it's decoys go poof? You say the decoys will be abstracted to deploy at an appropriate time, does this mean that a decoy bus mixed in with the salvo, even if unluckily killed early, could still potentially have decoys flying along with the salvo, further distracting PD? This would probably require tracking the decoys independently after all, but could allow for tactics involving changing salvo composition during battle.

I love the ship decoy idea as well. A new system? Something fired out of a missle launcher tube? Expendable decoys vs a rechargable system of some kind? Maybe a bit of both in that it requires Maintenance Supply to reload?
 Ideally the Defensive fire controls will not add missiles tracking to engage the decoys, to the list of missiles being allocated PD shots. Would this be binary, or have some degree of uncertainty?

Man this is getting so many ideas going!

Yes, decoys will vanish when the missile does. Ship decoy may be a very large missile that follows the parent ship, as that is easiest with current mechanics, or maybe a new onboard system with a fixed number of reloads.

In terms of decoy mechanics, every shot in the same increment will be resolved with all the decoys in play. I will track which decoy is hit by which shot and then remove any decoys with at least one hit at the end of the phase. If the parent ship or missile is destroyed, all associated decoys will be lost.