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Topic Summary

Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: April 08, 2010, 08:49:42 AM »

Quote from: "Andrew"
Some problematic NPR Behaviour(not sure if they can be fixed)
1) 2 Different NPR's have sent armed ship squadrons with active sensors to my homeworld while apparently not being hostile , of course this behaviour made me shoot them. Perhaps NPR's should not approach within some distance of a large population without hostile intent with armed ships
2)In the ensuing battles they targeted the largest ship present which was a freighter , while this cost me signigigant infrastructure loss it did not help them win the battle.
3) One NPR chased 2 ships faster than his fleet away from his homeworld and continued chasing them even as 35 more ships moving more slowly entered the system  with active sensors and headed for his homeworld. this allowed me to attack the planet without fighting his fleet , they should have gone for the bigger threat or retreated to the homeworld
4) NPR's seem to fixate I found that one NPR had sent 4 gate construction ships into the same system which had a precursor in , I did this by counting the wrecks perhaps they should stop sending unarmed ships into a system until they have cleared it with warships
5) The orbital battlestations around their homeworld did a good job of shooting down missiles but they would be much more effective if they added some offensive missile launchers
6)The point defense AI spends too much time shooting at size 1 missiles when their are size 6 missiles incoming
I am planning to tackle some of these, although probably not for v5.1. Its a useful summary list though so I will add it to my to do list.

Steve
Posted by: Octavian30
« on: April 06, 2010, 08:04:41 PM »

Hey Erik - do you ever build escorts for your jump ships - i.e. same design but with no jump engine - usually twice the armament int he freed up space - to jump with jump ships ?
Posted by: Andrew
« on: April 05, 2010, 08:20:41 AM »

Some problematic NPR Behaviour(not sure if they can be fixed)
1) 2 Different NPR's have sent armed ship squadrons with active sensors to my homeworld while apparently not being hostile , of course this behaviour made me shoot them. Perhaps NPR's should not approach within some distance of a large population without hostile intent with armed ships
2)In the ensuing battles they targeted the largest ship present which was a freighter , while this cost me signigigant infrastructure loss it did not help them win the battle.
3) One NPR chased 2 ships faster than his fleet away from his homeworld and continued chasing them even as 35 more ships moving more slowly entered the system  with active sensors and headed for his homeworld. this allowed me to attack the planet without fighting his fleet , they should have gone for the bigger threat or retreated to the homeworld
4) NPR's seem to fixate I found that one NPR had sent 4 gate construction ships into the same system which had a precursor in , I did this by counting the wrecks perhaps they should stop sending unarmed ships into a system until they have cleared it with warships
5) The orbital battlestations around their homeworld did a good job of shooting down missiles but they would be much more effective if they added some offensive missile launchers
6)The point defense AI spends too much time shooting at size 1 missiles when their are size 6 missiles incoming
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: February 15, 2010, 06:30:36 PM »

Quote from: "Beersatron"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"

Quote
This game as been virtually bug free and running for ages with 3 NPRs (although one is stuck in a distant B component 50billion km away from nearest survey location and another started same time as me but with poor shipyard generation) 6 Swarms and 6 precursor systems. Total of about 60 systems so far.
Fascinating updates. Sounds like you have a very enjoyable game going.

Steve

It truly has! Unfortunately I am no good at keeping notes or doing proper write ups so I can't help with 'advertising' the game in the fiction forums.
I thought the brief write-up here conveyed very well how much fun you were having :)

Steve
Posted by: Beersatron
« on: February 15, 2010, 04:17:57 PM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"

Quote
This game as been virtually bug free and running for ages with 3 NPRs (although one is stuck in a distant B component 50billion km away from nearest survey location and another started same time as me but with poor shipyard generation) 6 Swarms and 6 precursor systems. Total of about 60 systems so far.
Fascinating updates. Sounds like you have a very enjoyable game going.

Steve

It truly has! Unfortunately I am no good at keeping notes or doing proper write ups so I can't help with 'advertising' the game in the fiction forums.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: February 15, 2010, 03:05:29 PM »

Quote from: "Beersatron"
Problem (already noted by Steve I think) is that the NPR home fleet came along and bombarded the planet later.
Noted but not tackled yet :)

Quote
This game as been virtually bug free and running for ages with 3 NPRs (although one is stuck in a distant B component 50billion km away from nearest survey location and another started same time as me but with poor shipyard generation) 6 Swarms and 6 precursor systems. Total of about 60 systems so far.
Fascinating updates. Sounds like you have a very enjoyable game going.

Steve
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: February 15, 2010, 02:49:18 PM »

Quote from: "Hawkeye"
This is a suggestion for the Star Swarm.

In a recent engagement, I brought in 6 CG, 3 CE, 12 DDG, 6 DE, 3 DD (Laser), 36 Missile-FAC, 6 Scout-FAC
I was facing 200+ Star Swarm Gunboats.

After emptying the magazins of the CG/DDGs/Missile-FACs, I was in full retreat, with some 80 gunboats still in pursuit. It was obvious, I wouldn´t make it to the jumppoint.
So I ordered the FACs to slow down, so they would trail the main fleet some 200k km. When the gunboats reached firing range with the FACs, they too slowed down, allowing the main fleet to open the range. I then let the FACs stop and the gunboats too stopped. The time they needed to take out my FACs was enough to kill about 50 of them with AMMs from my escorts (most were damaged allready and while the whole swarm concentrated on one FAC, I spread my fire as much as I dared).
In the final phase, the remaining 25 to 30 gunboats cloased to point blank range, which let me use the numberous Meson PD-turrets on my escorts (range 15.000km). They were ripped appart. If they would have stayed at range, I probably would still have taken them out, but with a lot more damage to my fleet.

So, suggestion 1: The swarm should spread fire at least somewhat, at least against small targets.

suggestion 2: The swarm (but any NPR, realy) should ignore ships, that are no longer any threat and go for the bigger fish

suggestion 3: Beam armed NPR ships should use the range of their weapons. Don´t go to point blank range, if you outrange the majority of the enemies warships.
Funny you should mention this :). I have been making changes to the target logic for NPRs and for the new Automated Fire option for player ships in v5.0 . It incorporates suggestions 1) and 2)

3) is a little trickier as it also depends on fire control. A ship will do more damage closer-in because of increased damage but also because of better fire control. Because battles can be complex, such as close-range beam fights with missile ships firing into the melee (as just happened in my own campaign), staying at long-range from enemy beam ships that you outrange may not be the best option if you are also taking missile fire. Accepting some damage to take them out quickly might be better. Dealing with this type of situaiton is something I haven't really cracked yet in the NPR logic.

Steve
Posted by: Beersatron
« on: February 15, 2010, 01:16:39 PM »

Three updates from my 4.82 game:

I just lost 9 10k ton GEs to a swarm, they were 2nd generation refits with good officers and crews. They were also my only GEs!

------

I am currently at war with an NPR, I am faster than them, but do not have the salvo density to get passed their massive home fleet so I bypassed it and chased down some freighters/colony ships and then headed to their homeworld (in the B component) figuring I could get a few licks in before home fleet caught up. This is with 3 CruRons of: 1 CLJ, 1 CLE, 2 CLG.

I could barely manage a few hits on their orbital bases, which was sweet btw. So I moved into AMM range to thicken my salvo density but in doing so I entered their longer AMM range so the PD protocols were overriding my specific targeting - which is correct imo. What ended up happening though is that their bases were reloading from the planet and my PD AMM were trying to hit their AMM that was trying to hit my ASM. Very confusing and I lost hundreds of AMM from self destruction!Not sure it is possible to make this 'smarter' unless there was a way to tell the PD if an incoming missile is targeted on a ship.

I ran out of AMM and decided to run away gracefully, the 500k KM I had to traverse to get outside their FC range was hellish as wave after wave of massive AMM salvos bore down on me. One armor 5 15k ton CLE got totally sand papered and lost some engines before finally limping out of range. I repaired the CLE and headed at a slight tangent back in general direction of entry JP. I do not know if they did it on purpose, but they managed to get a fleet in the direct line of my tangent course and the JP (I only know of the single JP, haven't surveyed so they could have came from further out). I skirted that fleet and decided to head to a colony of theirs in the A component. It had no defences and just a small garrison so I bombarded expecting to just do damage and then high tail it out of there. The population surrendered! Alas I had done too much damage and destroyed most of everything, not sure if they had any missiles before I leveled the place.

Problem (already noted by Steve I think) is that the NPR home fleet came along and bombarded the planet later. But also, a freighter came along too so I pwned it and captured the crew as earlier. Of about 15 crew interrogations I got partial geosurvey results for one system - anybody know the formula for intel?

I finally ran for the JP and got away and that got me to thinking that if they had a small squadron of cruisers sitting there waiting I would have been mince meat.

While this fighting was going on, production of 2 more CruRons completed at Earth. I had a 4th CruRon standing guard over the GEs that I had lost earlier - but had brought it home for repairs and refuel :(

Once I get a couple months training for all 6 CruRons I am going to go back in and see if I can either penetrate their home fleet defences or get some proper hits on their actual home world. Problem is, I have a colony 4 jumps from them and we have both built a lot of JGs! It has one 20k ton PDC and 12 FACs guarding it - snow balls chance in hell of surviving if their home fleet comes out to play.

Currently researching railguns from scratch to design a heavy hitter if I can't get passed their PD.

------

Precursors and Star Swarm just spawned in the same system!

And these Precursors have Beam/Missile defence bases plus a very sizable fleet. I finally dragged myself away from the PC around 1:30am after my NPR fight so haven't been watching the Precursor-Swarm fight yet, but they are fighting.

I never realised, but I presume that Precursors scale the same way NPRs scale as the game progresses? Hence the larger fleet, bases and mine fields?

This game as been virtually bug free and running for ages with 3 NPRs (although one is stuck in a distant B component 50billion km away from nearest survey location and another started same time as me but with poor shipyard generation) 6 Swarms and 6 precursor systems. Total of about 60 systems so far.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: February 15, 2010, 10:50:58 AM »

This is a suggestion for the Star Swarm.

In a recent engagement, I brought in 6 CG, 3 CE, 12 DDG, 6 DE, 3 DD (Laser), 36 Missile-FAC, 6 Scout-FAC
I was facing 200+ Star Swarm Gunboats.

After emptying the magazins of the CG/DDGs/Missile-FACs, I was in full retreat, with some 80 gunboats still in pursuit. It was obvious, I wouldn´t make it to the jumppoint.
So I ordered the FACs to slow down, so they would trail the main fleet some 200k km. When the gunboats reached firing range with the FACs, they too slowed down, allowing the main fleet to open the range. I then let the FACs stop and the gunboats too stopped. The time they needed to take out my FACs was enough to kill about 50 of them with AMMs from my escorts (most were damaged allready and while the whole swarm concentrated on one FAC, I spread my fire as much as I dared).
In the final phase, the remaining 25 to 30 gunboats cloased to point blank range, which let me use the numberous Meson PD-turrets on my escorts (range 15.000km). They were ripped appart. If they would have stayed at range, I probably would still have taken them out, but with a lot more damage to my fleet.

So, suggestion 1: The swarm should spread fire at least somewhat, at least against small targets.

suggestion 2: The swarm (but any NPR, realy) should ignore ships, that are no longer any threat and go for the bigger fish

suggestion 3: Beam armed NPR ships should use the range of their weapons. Don´t go to point blank range, if you outrange the majority of the enemies warships.
Posted by: Greiger
« on: January 28, 2010, 07:43:44 PM »

Is there some trick then to making sure your ships aren't targeting dead ships or multiple ships targeting a single ship when they really shouldn't be?  I have trouble keeping up with that with a half dozen ships.   There must be to be keeping up with some 90 ships in combat.  Right now I just go through the combat assignments screen, compare the target #s to the target #s assigned to the fire controls and change the target if the fire control has something as it's target that dosn't appear to exist anymore.  

With 7 or 8 ships that takes me 2 minutes per 5 seconds of game time.  More If I have missile ships firing into the furball to try to minimize the number of missiles that self destruct because what it was targeting just got cut in half by a 30cm laser or something.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: January 28, 2010, 06:14:45 PM »

Continuation of the above with some thoughts.

I need to redesign the SS-7 series. The extended range is nice, but I might increase the size to 8 and dedicate the extra space to warhead. That will double the damage to 10. Which seems right to me that a larger missile should do more damage than a smaller one. Of course, that also drops the speed to under 20k.
Code: [Select]
SS-8-X1
Missile Size: 8 MSP  (0.4 HS)     Warhead: 10    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 18700 km/s    Endurance: 85 minutes   Range: 95.4m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.055    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 5.055
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 187%   3k km/s 60%   5k km/s 37.4%   10k km/s 18.7%
Materials Required:    2.5x Tritanium   0.055x Uridium   2.25x Gallicite   Fuel x8500

Development Cost for Project: 506RP

A little toying around comes up with this.
Code: [Select]
SS-8-X2
Missile Size: 8 MSP  (0.4 HS)     Warhead: 10    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 26200 km/s    Endurance: 43 minutes   Range: 67.4m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.055    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 6.055
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 262%   3k km/s 80%   5k km/s 52.4%   10k km/s 26.2%
Materials Required:    2.5x Tritanium   0.055x Uridium   3.25x Gallicite   Fuel x6000

Development Cost for Project: 606RP

Of those two designs, I'm partial to the SS-8-X2 over the X1.

Also as I mentioned, the Enterprise JCV need internal mags for the parasites. 4 shots and they are done. Of course, 160 of the Banshee missiles would put a cramp in anyone's day.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: January 28, 2010, 06:04:39 PM »

Posted by: Greiger
« on: January 28, 2010, 04:34:30 PM »

I suddenly have the distinct feeling my "supermegafleets" are tiny little insignificant things.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: January 28, 2010, 08:30:49 AM »

I took in around 70 ships against this. I encountered three classes. One which stuck on a moon, the queen and the drones. The drones did nothing to me after exterminating my survey fleet that found them. Not sure if that is a bug or not.

I had 40 missile ships (2 classes DDG/CAG), 10 escorts, 2 scouts and 30 beam ships (DD/CA). Total tonnage of my fleet was just under 600k tons. My missile ships fired dry (nearly). I think I had two CA with ~10-12 missiles total. Not having the designs on this computer, I think my fleet had around 5500 missiles, not counting the 4500 AMMs.

I'm not sure why the drones didn't close on me. They had a speed advantage of 5500 kps. I destroyed the last of them at around 20m km. The Queen popped prior to them, as that is what I focussed my fire on.
Posted by: Greiger
« on: January 28, 2010, 08:16:14 AM »

Just fought that thing myself.  Heavy focus on laser weapons for me, with some low tech missile capability for long range, and plasma carronades for main ship guns.   I managed to take down the first wave of GBs with every fire control targeting a diffrent drone.  Only losing my two small missile boats.  Then I got to the queen and started firing everything I got, finally putting those Plasma Cannons to use for something other than overkill.

As far as I could tell in a full minute of nonstop firing on it I never got through it's defenses.  And after 30 seconds, it launched another swarm of GBs.  I never stood a chance.      3 10000 ton laser corvettes, 2 8000 ton PD destroyers, 3 10000 ton missile corvettes and a 15000 ton EWACS,  Resulted in no noticeable damage.  I don't even know If I managed to penetrate the shields.

The EWACS was back picking up alien lifepods from the first wave, so at least it made it back out of system when the fight went bad.