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Posted by: Iceranger
« on: June 01, 2020, 08:33:40 PM »

A multi-role fighter-bomber I guess?
Code: [Select]
Nail class Interceptor      168 tons       5 Crew       89.7 BP       TCS 3    TH 134    EM 0
40132 km/s      Armour 1-2       Shields 0-0       HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 1.2
Maint Life 13.37 Years     MSP 33    AFR 2%    IFR 0.0%    1YR 0    5YR 5    Max Repair 67.20 MSP
Magazine 8   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 days    Morale Check Required   

Inertial Fusion Drive  EP134.40 (1)    Power 134.4    Fuel Use 1041.55%    Signature 134.40    Explosion 30%
Fuel Capacity 14,000 Litres    Range 1.4 billion km (10 hours at full power)

Size 6.00 Box Launcher (1)     Missile Size: 6.00    Hangar Reload 122 minutes    MF Reload 20 hours
Size 1 Box Launcher (2)     Missile Size: 1    Hangar Reload 50 minutes    MF Reload 8 hours
Missile Fire Control FC15-R1 (1)     Range 15.6m km    Resolution 1
Missile Fire Control FC42-R20 (1)     Range 42.4m km    Resolution 20
ASM 6/25/82k/15M/ECM/ECCM (1)    Speed: 82,200 km/s    End: 3.1m     Range: 15.1m km    WH: 25    Size: 6.0000    TH: 548/328/164
AMM 1/1/82k/16M (2)    Speed: 82,200 km/s    End: 3.2m     Range: 15.6m km    WH: 1    Size: 1.0000    TH: 1671/1002/501

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
Posted by: Ulzgoroth
« on: May 27, 2020, 06:48:45 PM »

Quote from: sneer on May 27, 2020, 06:11:25 PM
it is not gamey to have firing unit like 6 x size 20 or 20 x size 6 as it is same tonnage used on the ships ( I'm always using box launchers )
when you have invaders in sol system 50 years in game you usually start to be very creative ( no NPR was harmed by this design )
gamey would be artificially changing sizes of the volleys so enemy pd is ineffective
mixing sizes as long as ship designs are valid shouldn't be
If the ship designs aren't valid, that's not gamey that's failing to play the game at all.

The rest of what you mention is nothing like what anyone else is talking about. The subject is engineering a volley of decoy missiles that, due to the simplicity of the targeting priority rules, will draw fire away from other more valuable and dangerous missile volleys.
Posted by: sneer
« on: May 27, 2020, 06:11:25 PM »

it is not gamey to have firing unit like 6 x size 20 or 20 x size 6 as it is same tonnage used on the ships ( I'm always using box launchers )
when you have invaders in sol system 50 years in game you usually start to be very creative ( no NPR was harmed by this design )
gamey would be artificially changing sizes of the volleys so enemy pd is ineffective
mixing sizes as long as ship designs are valid shouldn't be
 
Posted by: SpikeTheHobbitMage
« on: May 27, 2020, 05:48:46 PM »

Quote from: Ulzgoroth on May 27, 2020, 02:27:50 PM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on May 27, 2020, 02:13:12 PM
While I agree that Steve probably will read this and do some reflection I know that he often have responded with "just don't do it" as he don't mind the occasional quirky edge cases.

It would make some sense if PD did target large missiles before smaller ones... but then you build salvos of several 1 size 5 and the the rest are larger salvos of size 4.99 and feel clever about it...  ;)

It is really difficult to stop all gamey quirks in something as complex as this.

As I said... there is nothing wrong with this tactic and it would work really well. I just highlighted some aspect of why you might not use it anyway... but it depends on your campaign and your house rules.
Well, it would be conceptually (though not necessarily practically) easy to add an explicit prioritization of known alien missiles based on intelligence information, which would give such tricks a limited shelf life.

Of course, the way small salvos of missiles cause problems for multi-shot defensive mounts, which is presumably the reason for the change but isn't solved by it, is still going to bring perversity to that picture.
The quirks of the salvo system itself is the root of the problem.  Cheesing it just demonstrates what is happening.

I think the simplest solution is to prioritize by speed, then by missile size, and then by salvo size.  That would fix the core problem demonstrated while also improving general PD behaviour, since a large missile should be more dangerous than a group of smaller ones and thus higher priority.  There is still the possibility of using a large missile with ECM to protect smaller ones, but that is balanced by the cost of the larger missile.
Posted by: Ulzgoroth
« on: May 27, 2020, 02:27:50 PM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on May 27, 2020, 02:13:12 PM
While I agree that Steve probably will read this and do some reflection I know that he often have responded with "just don't do it" as he don't mind the occasional quirky edge cases.

It would make some sense if PD did target large missiles before smaller ones... but then you build salvos of several 1 size 5 and the the rest are larger salvos of size 4.99 and feel clever about it...  ;)

It is really difficult to stop all gamey quirks in something as complex as this.

As I said... there is nothing wrong with this tactic and it would work really well. I just highlighted some aspect of why you might not use it anyway... but it depends on your campaign and your house rules.
Well, it would be conceptually (though not necessarily practically) easy to add an explicit prioritization of known alien missiles based on intelligence information, which would give such tricks a limited shelf life.

Of course, the way small salvos of missiles cause problems for multi-shot defensive mounts, which is presumably the reason for the change but isn't solved by it, is still going to bring perversity to that picture.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 27, 2020, 02:13:12 PM »

Quote from: DFNewb on May 27, 2020, 01:04:50 PM
Quote from: Zincat on May 27, 2020, 12:25:04 PM
Sorry to say, but I fully agree with Jorgen.
It is a single player game, so you can do whatever you want. You can also use it in a multi start campaign, or perhaps in a pvp tournament in discord if the rules allow it.
But it is not a "roleplay" or a "balanced" thing.

Using the designs above is not something that is WAI. You are purposefully using a quirk of the mechanics (the volley mechanics and the fact that larger volleys are targeted first) to create an attack that simply cannot be stopped AND is still very cost effective.
The game is simply not balanced for it at all. As such, no NPR or spoiler can deal with it, because in the end, it's impossible to stop unless you build a fleet specifically to counter it.

Once again, it's not the tactics that I'm against. You are of course free to use anything you want in your games, who am I to judge that. There's far worse ways to break the game, like using SM and add stuff.
Just please don't tell me it's a "roleplay thing" or a "WAI tactic". We all know it is not.

Well I guess good thing I shared this so maybe Steve will look into it and add a line of code that makes it target larger missiles first or something or maybe he will see this and think it's clever and leave it as is.

While I agree that Steve probably will read this and do some reflection I know that he often have responded with "just don't do it" as he don't mind the occasional quirky edge cases.

It would make some sense if PD did target large missiles before smaller ones... but then you build salvos of several 1 size 5 and the the rest are larger salvos of size 4.99 and feel clever about it...  ;)

It is really difficult to stop all gamey quirks in something as complex as this.

As I said... there is nothing wrong with this tactic and it would work really well. I just highlighted some aspect of why you might not use it anyway... but it depends on your campaign and your house rules.
Posted by: Zincat
« on: May 27, 2020, 01:10:40 PM »

Quote from: DFNewb on May 27, 2020, 01:04:50 PM
Well I guess good thing I shared this so maybe Steve will look into it and add a line of code that makes it target larger missiles first or something or maybe he will see this and think it's clever and leave it as is.

That would make sense, for PD to target the largest thermal contacts first if speed is the same. It would be safe to imply those are the ones with bigger warheads

And yes I know, one could make cheesy designs with that in mind too!  ;D
Posted by: DFNewb
« on: May 27, 2020, 01:04:50 PM »

Quote from: Zincat on May 27, 2020, 12:25:04 PM
Sorry to say, but I fully agree with Jorgen.
It is a single player game, so you can do whatever you want. You can also use it in a multi start campaign, or perhaps in a pvp tournament in discord if the rules allow it.
But it is not a "roleplay" or a "balanced" thing.

Using the designs above is not something that is WAI. You are purposefully using a quirk of the mechanics (the volley mechanics and the fact that larger volleys are targeted first) to create an attack that simply cannot be stopped AND is still very cost effective.
The game is simply not balanced for it at all. As such, no NPR or spoiler can deal with it, because in the end, it's impossible to stop unless you build a fleet specifically to counter it.

Once again, it's not the tactics that I'm against. You are of course free to use anything you want in your games, who am I to judge that. There's far worse ways to break the game, like using SM and add stuff.
Just please don't tell me it's a "roleplay thing" or a "WAI tactic". We all know it is not.

Well I guess good thing I shared this so maybe Steve will look into it and add a line of code that makes it target larger missiles first or something or maybe he will see this and think it's clever and leave it as is.
Posted by: Zincat
« on: May 27, 2020, 12:25:04 PM »

Sorry to say, but I fully agree with Jorgen.
It is a single player game, so you can do whatever you want. You can also use it in a multi start campaign, or perhaps in a pvp tournament in discord if the rules allow it.
But it is not a "roleplay" or a "balanced" thing.

Using the designs above is not something that is WAI. You are purposefully using a quirk of the mechanics (the volley mechanics and the fact that larger volleys are targeted first) to create an attack that simply cannot be stopped AND is still very cost effective.
The game is simply not balanced for it at all. As such, no NPR or spoiler can deal with it, because in the end, it's impossible to stop unless you build a fleet specifically to counter it.

Once again, it's not the tactics that I'm against. You are of course free to use anything you want in your games, who am I to judge that. There's far worse ways to break the game, like using SM and add stuff.
Just please don't tell me it's a "roleplay thing" or a "WAI tactic". We all know it is not.
 
Posted by: sneer
« on: May 27, 2020, 11:57:25 AM »

in vb 6 I messed size 4 with size 20 monster torpedos
same speed for both and 20size head 2 or 3 level armor and ecm onboard
and it worked as such hit at medium to high tech delivered really nice shock bonus damage
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 27, 2020, 11:32:31 AM »

Quote from: DFNewb on May 27, 2020, 10:30:47 AM
About it cheesing the mechanics, the idea of this originally came from me wanting a small ship with a big bomb to take out enemy capital ships. With no missile armor in C# it made large missiles just as easy to PD fire down as small ones so I was using a bunch of size 1 damage 1 missiles for a long time. They were effective but cost a lot per volley so I started looking into ways of making my dream of big missiles come true. I realized that if they flew the same speed, the smaller missiles would serve as distractions (can be RP'ed as decoy missiles made to look deadlier than they are) and I can finally get a big torpedo hits I always wanted.

If larger missiles were able to have armor or have more HtK then I would of never come up with this but since they are the way they are (and thus almost always worse than smaller missiles) I wanted to come up with a way to make them work.

To be honest the game mechanic is not intended to make humongous missiles viable ASM...

You can use quirks in the mechanics and AI behaviour to make them work but it will never become balanced as the NPR will never be able to deal with it using conventional means. A more dynamic opponent could at leas deal with it using AMM but never with regular PD but could switch to Area PD to target the big missiles and ignore he small ones... so they would have to build PD cannons of their 15cm lasers to deal with it and then ignore the small missiles and have them impact the shields.

If you were to play both sides in a conflict you could construct defences against this.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 27, 2020, 11:21:21 AM »

Quote from: Iceranger on May 27, 2020, 09:43:40 AM
If we want to consider any realism... then it is easy to justify that the decoy missiles have things like retroreflective devices or something of that nature on them so the radar cannot tell if they are large missiles or not, or even trick the fire control computer to think they are large missiles themselves. We already have something like this on 'conventional' MIRV ballistic missiles.

After all, it is more about RP, not balance... :)

So... that's what ECM/ECCM is an abstraction for in the game pretty much. You only offer an explanation for it but there are no in game mechanic to deal with it other than manual targeting the large missiles yourself if done against you, the NPR are pretty much screwed.

MIRV missiles also have some significant drawbacks as well in the game such as early interception and such... I did not rate MIRV too effective in my multi-faction games as they could be intercepted  before separation.

Also... there is no problem dealing with 1 damage point size 1 missiles as they are extremely expensive and dealt with a combination of PD, shields, armour and sufficiently big ships.

I mean you can spin it any way you wish.. it still break the game balance and NPR are NOT equipped to deal with this what so ever and beam PD become completely useless because of the way they engage salvos.

I don't say you should not do it... just that you understand how the balance of the game shifts and the consequences of using such tactics from a game-play perspective.

As I said... it is your game you can do whatever you like with it.
Posted by: DFNewb
« on: May 27, 2020, 10:30:47 AM »

About it cheesing the mechanics, the idea of this originally came from me wanting a small ship with a big bomb to take out enemy capital ships. With no missile armor in C# it made large missiles just as easy to PD fire down as small ones so I was using a bunch of size 1 damage 1 missiles for a long time. They were effective but cost a lot per volley so I started looking into ways of making my dream of big missiles come true. I realized that if they flew the same speed, the smaller missiles would serve as distractions (can be RP'ed as decoy missiles made to look deadlier than they are) and I can finally get a big torpedo hits I always wanted.

If larger missiles were able to have armor or have more HtK then I would of never come up with this but since they are the way they are (and thus almost always worse than smaller missiles) I wanted to come up with a way to make them work.
Posted by: Iceranger
« on: May 27, 2020, 09:43:40 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on May 27, 2020, 08:57:08 AM
Quote from: Pedroig on May 27, 2020, 08:04:06 AM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on May 27, 2020, 01:34:41 AM
At some point it is just abusing loopholes in the games mechanics and serves no real purpose in my opinion.

There is no reason why realistically that you would not target the larger ASM first (automatically) before even attempting to intercept the smaller missiles and have the smaller missiles hitting your shields and armour and do pretty much no damage and no chock damage what so ever. Destroying an enemy ship that way would probably cost more than the ship you are destroying most likely.

It does serve a purpose, just not one that you may agree with or RP with.

The reason why one would realistically, or RP, do this, is that the size 1 volley is actually an AMM-AMM, but since the game does not allow one to target missiles until after they are launched, this emulates that via game mechanics.  The smaller missiles "missing" their actual targets (the AMM's) and hitting the ships is purely a coincidental bonus.

Now if your enemy does not use missiles, and relies solely on DPD, then saturation should be achieved by using multiple prime number salvos of ASM to reach saturation point.

In general societies tend to work their defense based upon their own capabilities, and then adapt to the capabilities of exterior forces/engagements/capabilities.  So if one runs a missile heavy fleet, one will have an extensive AMM/PD doctrine.  However, if one runs a BFC heavy fleet, with little to no MFC capability, then they will not, and when they meet an enemy which does focus on missiles, will have to adapt to the changing environment.  How they do that is up to them, but the march of progress on offensive and defensive capabilities will continue onwards, as it always has.

It is not from pure RP but how the game mechanic breaks down... I'm not against using size 1 missiles just becasue... but using them to hide larger missiles that is abusing the game mechanics.

PD for example will always fire on the larger salvos first... so the large missiles are most likley NEVER engaged by PD at all.

Any logical reasoning then you would tell the fire computer to target the big missiles first and likewise with the AMM.

The electronics part that is just a self imposed rule and has nothing to do with that other stuff...  ;)

In my opinion it is about game balance... if you can just completely overwhelm enemy PD to the point they are worthless no matter what tech level you use then the system is broken and such tactic should be avoided in my opinion, not fact. You can use SM to give yourself allot of advantages too and that is fine as well.

I'm just pointing out that it is using the mechanic in a way it is not likely intended as it breaks the balance when you get down to the nitty gritty of things. There is nothing wrong with it... just pointing to the fact that it has consequences to overall balance.

If you take it to the extreme and you had an opponent that could deal with it you would then get a situation where no one create any ASM defences and rely solely on offensive action. But if that is the kind of action you want it might be interesting to.

The game is personal and you do whatever you like.

If we want to consider any realism... then it is easy to justify that the decoy missiles have things like retroreflective devices or something of that nature on them so the radar cannot tell if they are large missiles or not, or even trick the fire control computer to think they are large missiles themselves. We already have something like this on 'conventional' MIRV ballistic missiles.

After all, it is more about RP, not balance... :)
Posted by: Pedroig
« on: May 27, 2020, 09:09:14 AM »

I agree, just pointing out one way of looking at it.  When I do Age of Sails in space, I don't use any missiles or PD UNTIL I face an enemy who uses missiles or fighters, then I have to adapt.  When I am playing a Honorverse game however, beam range between capitals becomes increasingly rarer, and everything becomes about ASM, AMM, PD, and missile ECM and ECCM.