Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: LtWarhound on June 06, 2011, 07:10:03 PM
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The jump gate led into the NPR home system, with a gate on each side of the point. I knew there was a small fleet of defenders (roughly 10 ships, a mix of 6800 ton and 13700 ton designs) sitting on the jump point, so I designed a captor mine with specialized submunitions:
Mine(1): CM S5g1 sW4x4 D2.9m A360k T9k s800k (1) Speed: 0 km/s End: 87d Range: 0.8m km WH: 0 Size: 5 TH: 0 / 0 / 0
Submunition(4): SBA S1g1 W4 a360k r1.1m (1) Speed: 37,200 km/s End: 0.5m Range: 1.1m km WH: 4 Size: 1 TH: 248 / 148 / 74
The twelve 6000 ton destroyers loaded 20 of the mines in place of the standard ASM, jumped through, fired one salvo of their 20 launchers (each) at the jump point and jumped back through.
The 240 captor mines went active, immediately launched their 4 submunitions, 960 warhead strength 4 missiles went active, and when the smoke cleared the defenders were dead.
Total damage to the attacking fleet? Zero. Since the defenders hadn't been bothered in a few months, their active sensors were down. Before they could respond the attacking fleet had fled back through the jump point, completely unharmed. And the captor mines launched immediately, without taking fire, letting the submunitions rampage through the defenders.
This just seemed too easy. The recovery delay after a jump point transit doesn't seem to apply to dumping mines, or to the mines' electronics. Had I kept the launchers loaded with ASMs, and tried to stay in the enemy system long enough to recover and fire, I'd have taken a lot of damage, probably lost the fleet. Jump point assaults are supposed to be hard, right?
Timeline of the attack:
0 seconds elapsed / 5 seconds 'tick': Attackers execute 'standard transit' through the alien built jump gate.
5 seconds: Hostile thermal contact warnings pop up as the attackers arrive on the far side.
10 seconds: Attackers fire missiles at the jump point (laying the mines) and standard transit back through the jump gate. Defenders turn on active sensors. Even if the defenders had ASS running, they would have gotten only one salvo at the attackers.
15 seconds: Mines go active, ASS spot enemy ships.
20 seconds: Mine launch missiles. Missiles go active, their ASS spot enemy ships.
25 seconds: Missiles travel, some reach the targets right on the jump point.
30 seconds: Some more missiles reach targets loitering just off the jump point.
40 seconds: All missiles have reached their targets, all defenders dead. There is no overkill, there is only 'open fire' and 'mission accomplished'.
So, tinkering with the mechanics of minelaying after a jump point transit may be in order.
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If that hadn't worked, plan B was to send a swarm of 100 ton interceptors through the jump gate, have them just outrun the defenders, then come back for an attack after the recovery delay elapsed. When the fighter is moving 37500 km/s, it doesn't stay in beam weapon range very long.
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This just seemed too easy. The recovery delay after a jump point transit doesn't seem to apply to dumping mines, or to the mines' electronics. Had I kept the launchers loaded with ASMs, and tried to stay in the enemy system long enough to recover and fire, I'd have taken a lot of damage, probably lost the fleet. Jump point assaults are supposed to be hard, right?
Great example!
I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work this way - you seem to have found a loophole in the fact that you can fire at WayPoints before the fire control is back on line. If you want to work around the bug, I'd recommend simply not launching mines etc. until after the recovery delay clears.
It sounds to me like there's two concrete suggestions here:
1) No firing weapons (missile or beam) while in jump recovery.
2) No jumping while in jump recovery. I'd already noticed this when probing systems - it doesn't seem right that I should be able to jump through a jump gate and then jump right back....
I personally don't think the fighter tactic is a problem - I imagine they're pretty fragile if they're that fast. Another thing to keep in mind: IIRC, Steve wanted Aurora to be less choke-pointed than Starfire. So the 3rd suggestion would be to disallow movement at all during recovery, but I think that would probably be excessive....
John
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Heh, neat tactic! One balance possibility (although this may be more complicated to code than just preventing firing at waypoints while in recovery) would be to make the sensors on *missiles* affected by the sensor blindness in the same way that the ship that launched them is. After all, if you transit and then launch fighters while blind, the fighters have sensor blindness too. So missiles should work in exactly the same way - whatever disturbance is affecting your sensors should affect any sensors that were on board your ship when you jumped. And that includes the detectors on captor mines.
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I use the same tactics, but I normally just fire swarms of homing missiles instead of Mines. Sometimes it works, sometimes they selfdestruct.
A single 10 k ton ship can have a mass of Size 4-6 box launchers.
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Considering current mechanics, an excellent tactical solution. Much better than what I've been doing, squadron jumps with jump engines that have 500k km range. Leaves the attack fleet scattered in TG packets around the jump point. Both methods require good crews and task force training.
If I'm reading your notations on the mine correctly the active sensor is set to Resolution 180, detects 9k ton targets at 800k km and fires the submuntions if a valid target is within 360k km... correct?
What is the sensor configuration of the attack munition? Looks like it is set to attack at 360k km and can see targets out to 1.1m km but I don't see the resolution.
I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay. :o
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I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay. :o
IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.
BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).
John
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IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.
BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).
John
doesn't military jump engines and commercial engines differs in terms of jump delay? It stands to reason that a jump gate would have a even shorter delay, rendering the scenario described still troublesome even accounting for an added delay to mine sensors.
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IIRC, you can't launch parasites while in jump delay.
BTW, the original poster should put a reference to this thread in the official suggestions thread if he hasn't already (see Steve's recent request).
John
The only thing I find documented is the sensor delay and I have used assault carriers and launched parsites while under transit blindness, but not since v4.91.
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I personally don't think the fighter tactic is a problem - I imagine they're pretty fragile if they're that fast. Another thing to keep in mind: IIRC, Steve wanted Aurora to be less choke-pointed than Starfire. So the 3rd suggestion would be to disallow movement at all during recovery, but I think that would probably be excessive...
100 ton interceptors, pretty much the definition of fragile. But, at that speed (37500 km/s), they transit and evade without much trouble. I ran 10 of the interceptors (two scouts, 8 strike fighters with 3xstr 4 missiles) through (used a save game, just to see if the results matched theory). The ten defending NPRs got off one salvo (ASS was active, I had poked them to make sure of that for purposes of the test), killed 2 of the fighters, and then didn't get another shot. The fighters ran a short distance, the NPRs quickly stopped pursuing and fell back to the jump point. The fighters returned, launched, killed two ships and ran back through the jump gate without any further harm. That's a single squadron, 1000 tons (one hanger deck). My current supply of small craft support tenders would have been able to bring 6 such squadrons, and that would have cheaply cleared the jump point.
Sending in the fleet, and letting the defenders get one salvo off, it stripped the 8 layers of armor off the 6000t destroyer they focused fire on, no internals. So, trying to sit and survive long enough to get the sensors back online would have killed the fleet, I think. Or at least gutted it.
If I'm reading your notations on the mine correctly the active sensor is set to Resolution 180, detects 9k ton targets at 800k km and fires the submuntions if a valid target is within 360k km... correct?
What is the sensor configuration of the attack munition? Looks like it is set to attack at 360k km and can see targets out to 1.1m km but I don't see the resolution.
I have a feeling that Steve will be making changes to missile and parasite launchs in relation to jump delay. :o
Notation I use is 'Type of munition' 'Size and generation' 'Warheads' 'Duration' 'Active sensor range' 'Thermal sensor range' 'Max Separation'.
So, Captor Mine, Size 5 gen 1, submunition warhead str 4 x 4, duration 2.9 months, Active sensor range 360 km (resolution 100, undocumented, but these were custom built for the defenders I had previously scouted), Thermal 9k (I don't recall why, now) and a max separation range of 800k. I think it had some armor as well, but they never took fire.
The submunition (SBA for a submunition with active sensor, it would be SBM without sensors) has the same sensors as the CM. The 1.1m km range allows for high speed targets, so they can't simply run the SBM out of fuel. Some of the destroyer sized ships the NPR used were seen to go just short of 10k km/s.
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The fighter swarm rush tactic is a legitimate one, and while hard to defend against, it doesn't violate the spirit of the game. If the defenders are gonna sit there when there is a jump gate on both sides of the point (they built them, so they definitely know about them), and let me send a swarm through, that's just too bad for them.
Minelaying and instantly jumping back through the gate to safety, that's a tactic that shouldn't be possible, given the way the game seems to be intended. So, now that I know it works, I'll toss it aside. I could keep using it, but what's the fun in that? Oh, and I've seen an NPR do this, a scout jumped in, I went active on the jump point defense platforms' sensors, and the scout jumped right back out.
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Posting a comment in the suggestions thread pointing back here.
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doesn't military jump engines and commercial engines differs in terms of jump delay? It stands to reason that a jump gate would have a even shorter delay, rendering the scenario described still troublesome even accounting for an added delay to mine sensors.
TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay. "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay. This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about. The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.
John
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The ten defending NPRs got off one salvo (ASS was active, I had poked them to make sure of that for purposes of the test), killed 2 of the fighters, and then didn't get another shot.
I've been toying around with making a suggestion that wormholes be tracked even more closely, i.e. adding "open wormhole" and "close wormhole" orders, which would take finite time, be noticable, and apply even to commercial gates. This was mainly in the context of communication links, when my pickets are talking through the wormhole, but it would also be nice to get an event when a wormhole is about to open so you can start waking up your crew. It sounds like it might be useful in the context of "heads up, fighters might come through".
The fighter swarm rush tactic is a legitimate one, and while hard to defend against, it doesn't violate the spirit of the game. If the defenders are gonna sit there when there is a jump gate on both sides of the point (they built them, so they definitely know about them), and let me send a swarm through, that's just too bad for them.
Minelaying and instantly jumping back through the gate to safety, that's a tactic that shouldn't be possible, given the way the game seems to be intended. So, now that I know it works, I'll toss it aside. I could keep using it, but what's the fun in that? Oh, and I've seen an NPR do this, a scout jumped in, I went active on the jump point defense platforms' sensors, and the scout jumped right back out.
Agreed.
John
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TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay. "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay. This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about. The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.
John
Aha, did not know that. That explains much.
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TG can only use "standard" transits when using a jump gate, which have a much longer time of jump delay. "Squadron" transits (which require a jump ship) have a much shorter delay. This is exactly to address the balance issue that it sounds like you're concerned about. The game is set up so that you have to make a choice between being able to jump a LOT of ships in without the need for a jump ship and being sitting ducks for a long time, and paying for specialized jump ships but having a much shorter time of (what is supposed to be) helplessness.
You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where :). This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.
Steve
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You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where :). This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.
Steve
Sorry - I didn't mean to imply that standard transits were "jump gate only". The original post (IIRC) was talking about using a jump gate, hence the jump-gate-centricity.
John
PS - don't forget that the original exploit was being able to fire captors at waypoints and exiting the system while fire control/sensors are still down....
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You can use standard transits with a jump ship. There is some technobabble on this somewhere bit I can't remember where :). This diadvantage of the standard transit is the much longer fire control/sensor downtime and the predictable emergence point. What I need to do is extend that downtime to parasites.
Steve
But that still begs the question...do munitions count as parasites in this case? If not should they?
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Do they need to?
It totally makes sense to be able to fire ordnance without aiming. After all, those mines will be blind for a good minute, and thats plenty of time to leave.
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Do they need to?
It totally makes sense to be able to fire ordnance without aiming. After all, those mines will be blind for a good minute, and thats plenty of time to leave.
The problem is that the mines are not blind. They fire 5 seconds after the mine was fired off in the first place. Effectivly this is 10 seconds after transiting they are fully functional.
Brian
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Then make the mines blind as well?
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Then make the mines blind as well?
Then you're back (to a certain extent) to the problems we used to have with fire control, where one was able to "stack" missile salvos by having them hover at a waypoint. Admittedly there are several differences, but the end effect would be that you could launch your entire stock of "mines" before coming out of sensor blindness. It seems simpler just to disable the launchers too.
John
PS - I view sensor blindness in this case like the total disruption of people and computers from The Mote in God's Eye.
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I said that mines should go blind because Steve said he wanted to do that a half page back.
I suppose it is the easiest to implement.
I think this is the best solution because one of my favourite, though hardest to pull off tactics is cloaked ships that fire missiles with thermal guidance without active sensor contacts.
Submarine Style.
This would totally be broken if one has to have working sensors for this, or it would be a disruption in fluff.
I totally don't have a problem with those huge missile swarms;
While the mines are blind, the enemy can leave their visual range or destroy them, and you can't fire them all because you have one tick before jumping back.
I would love a Jump drive charge time, though; Maybe half the sensor disruption?
If you're that worried over huge missile swarms, give fire controls a limit of how many missiles they can guide at a time, and missiles that have no guidance (even if it just says "no target visible" due to jump delay) and no activated sensors would detonate.
Everything that makes it more complex should be an improvement in some way, and not being able to literally fire missiles into nothing because they couldn't be guided if you actually aimed at something seems kinda off to me.
Inconsistent.
Maybe it's just me, though.
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UnLimiTeD I think your reading more into John's statements than I am.
Currently Active Sensors suffer from post jump restrictions.
The suggestion consensus, as I understand it, is to also restrict launches (parasites and missiles) and jump point transitions during the post jump sensor blindness period.
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UnLimiTeD I think your reading more into John's statements than I am.
Currently Active Sensors suffer from post jump restrictions.
The suggestion consensus, as I understand it, is to also restrict launches (parasites and missiles) and jump point transitions during the post jump sensor blindness period.
Charlie has the correct interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I never meant to suggest taking away all firing at waypoints....
John
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I think the simplest solution to this would be to extend the effects of jump point transit to include weapon systems, such as missile launchers, and to make sure that parasites suffer the effects as well. A bigger question is whether jump drives should be affected.
Steve
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I think the simplest solution to this would be to extend the effects of jump point transit to include weapon systems, such as missile launchers, and to make sure that parasites suffer the effects as well. A bigger question is whether jump drives should be affected.
Steve
I would go with the jump drives being affected. It makes sense that you can't jump out untill your sensors are back on line to let you see the jump point in the first place.
Brian
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I would go with the jump drives being affected. It makes sense that you can't jump out untill your sensors are back on line to let you see the jump point in the first place.
Brian
Needless to say, I agree as well.
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Thirded
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Infinited!
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aleph-oneded :)
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10 seconds: Attackers fire missiles at the jump point (laying the mines) and standard transit back through the jump gate. Defenders turn on active sensors. Even if the defenders had ASS running, they would have gotten only one salvo at the attackers.
Was this launch made by using the Msl Launch button on the fleet or ship windows? I have added a Fire Delay check to that button but just wanted to check if I had missed something else.
Steve
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Steve, if I remember right, it was done with the 'Launch Missiles at' command, selecting the jumppoint. F12, Task Group screen, selected the jump point from the 'System Locations Available' pane, then 'Launch Missile at' from the Actions Available pane. Queued the jump in, launch and jump out, they all showed in the 'Plotted Move' pane. Pretty painless, really. Well, for me, not so for the NPRs.
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Quick question;
How do you prevent all your submunitions going after the same target?
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Quick question;
How do you prevent all your submunitions going after the same target?
You don't :). Sub-munitions will always pick up the target of their parent missile if they are guided by fire control. If they are using internal sensors and they are in the same salvo, they will likely pick up the same target.
If you mean, how do stop all your mines attacking the same target, then spread them out as you would in a real minefield.
Steve
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How about being able to set a delay for mine activation?
That way, they wouldn't go off all at once.
After all, "on one spot" is still a sphere of 10k km, that's not exactly clumped up.
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Use different mines, if you insist on clumping them all in one place. Have a mine with a sensor that reaches out 1m km, another mine that reaches out 650k km, and a close range one that reaches out 250k km. That way you get staggered launches.
Or, have mines with the same sensor range, but different speed submunitions. So, the salvo from the fast submunitions (which all should have their own active sensor) destroys the target, the slower submunitions will get to the last target location and start looking for a new target. Same effect of staggered launches.
The means are in the game, just think a little outside the box, you know, the one labeled 'make Steve tinker in a new feature just for me'. That box is pretty small, and tends to be overflowing already.
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I'm supposed to create a few dozen mines, and research them, and them launch them all, and that's less work then putting them in different places?
Ultimately, mines only work offensively like in this now fixed abuse in Aurora, for they are just huge, stationary missiles, easy to see, easy to dispose of, and there is no logistically efficient way to put down a high enough volume that an equal tech point defense would have a serious problem with it.
The only thing they are good at is jump points, whether offense or defense, and there they exaggerate the logistical problems that missiles already have over the course of the game; because you now have missiles that you periodically have to replace even without using them or advancing in technology, with extra size devoted just to keep them existing.
I just don't think mines have any justification aside from role-play.
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I don't really see how the use of mines is justifiable for anything beyond mining jump points. And I think thats ok.
Even if you gave them a bonus to detection avoidance, you'd have to BLANKET millions of kilometers of space to have much hope of actually getting ships to fly through them, with the exception of course of planetary orbits and jump points.
i mean, its mines. in space. space is big. I don't think navies typically dump a bunch of mines in the pacific ocean and hope fleets cross it, you put them in front of the harbors and between islands in order to damage and slow down ships that are going places you don't want them to go.
You know what would be cool? Tractor beam mines.
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If the mine is using passive sensors, its no more (or less) noticeable than a similar sized missile. Actually, less, since there is no drive thermal signature to give it away.
If you are running into problems with NPRs that outrange your missiles and outrun your ships, try running away (directly away) so the NPRs pursue you in a straight line. Then dump some passive sensor mines overboard and keep moving, letting the mines take care of the pursuers.
Don't want to bring your fleet into range of the launchers in the PDCs on that NPR homeworld? Drop a minefield in the orbital path and let nature take its course.
With mines, you can stack a huge salvo, since you can offload all your mines in one pile, then turn on the big ASS on that fleet scout, and lure the targets into range. This lets you swamp point defense that your standard salvo can't breach.
That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more tactics possible with mines. Saying that mines have no justification other than role play is a bit short sighted.
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That's still less sensor range than an equal tech Anti-Missile sensor.
Then you have a dilemma of choice.
Put them all on one spot, and a single fighter is going to set them off.
Spread them out, and the enemy can activate them one at a time and take them down, not creating a huge salvo at all.
Alternatively, you can fit your ships with reduced size launchers, and invest the material you save on sensors and generators in more ships and more missiles.
If an enemy outranges and outruns me, sure I can use mines, but I can also just use point defense.
For one S5 launcher for a mine with 3 submunitions in such a runaway situation, at normal fire speed to get enough mines, I could also have 30+ S1 box launchers to have the same submunitions without sensors.
I mean, to actively attempt that tactic, I need ships with huge missile Launchers, and design mines for it; wouldn't it be easier to just design a missile with higher range in that case?
Mines exponentiate the Logistic problems of Missiles, as I stated already.
Is that really worth the effort?
Sure you can trap NPRs, but they aren't exactly bright to begin with, and against idiots, anything goes, you really don't need any help there.
Really only leaves RP for me.