Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Thiosk on February 24, 2012, 04:39:56 PM
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I decided to make this post based on the quote below:
*There's no point to the strength 2 shields.
I'm not getting shields. I've seen it posted numerous times in the forums that anything below gamma shields are pointless, and having a couple shield units installed on your ships are likewise pointless. The only times any enemy fire actually hits my ships (which usually sport 10 to 15 shielding units on even the smaller vessels) is usually meson or saturating missiles-- making any amount of shielding essentially worthless anyway because if they're hitting me im swamped.
What I want to know is, how is the average Auroreer (term coined, submitted for your approval) to decipher how much stopping power our shields actually have? Which figures should I be looking at to know how many damage points my shields are absorbing? How much of a boost is Xi to Omicron, in real terms? Is two points of shields actually just two points of damage? How is that mitigated in terms of penetrating force of missiles-- the total warhead strength diminished by two and then a normal damage profile based on the smaller warhead strength?
Discuss! Lets hear shield strats.
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Say you got 2 pts of shields. Say you have 2 missiles coming at you. You do not intercept either. You get hit by a 4pt warhead. Shields gone, and armor takes 2 pts. Next missile hits, does 4 pts. 4 pts of armor gone. Your 2pt shields will fully regenerate in 300 seconds. In the next 5 second increment, your shields are now at .033333.
Another 2 missiles come in. One does 3.966667 damage (most likely rounded up to 4), and the other does 4.
That is why low amounts of shields are regarded as useless, as well as low-tech ones. Higher tech = faster regen rate.
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Shields have two tech lines. The first is the name of the shield and each point of shields stops 1 point of damage. The second is how many points your shield regenerates. If the two techs are at equal levels then your shields will take 300 seconds to fully recharge. If you have strength 30 shields then this equalls 1 point of shields every 10 seconds. A strength 60 shield will regenerate 1 point per 5 seconds, ect. Note I am only refering to the total strength of your ships shields. It really does not matter what the tech levels of your shields are for this part. What does matter is how many hull spaces you need to get to that level of shields.
In most of my fights I find a shield strength of less than about 30 to not do much good. In addition the shields rarely make much of a difference in beam combat. They can make a big difference in missile combat where salvo's tend to be seperated by 20-40 seconds. One of the reasons that they help me in missile combat is I tend to go for a fleet structure where I use some anti-missiles to thin out the incomming salvo's and then have my beam weapons shoot down most of the rest. This often does result in a couple of leakers getting through from each cycle of incomming shots. The shields keep a lot of armor damage from occuring in this scenario. Realy heavy shields are good for stopping a lot of damage, but they can take a lot of hull spaces, and they have a massive em signature as well.
As far as I can tell the damage done to your armor is based on what actually hits the armor. So if a strength 16 warhead hits a ship with 5 points of shields left then the damage template would be that of a 11 point warhead. You just reduced how deep the damage in your armor is.
Brian
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The big advantage to shields is economic and strategic.
1) Shields repair themselves (regenerate) which means a shield equipped ship will have some protection going into combat even if her armor is holed.
2) Since shields regenerate, you don't have to repair them. This keeps ships out of the shipyards, and cuts down on the materials required to repair them. This can be pretty important in mineral poor games, or if you have a fleet far out from a repair center.
Those two factors keep ships (and fleets) in the filed longer during hostilities. I use them extensively now, where before I generally did not, but I also spend the points on bringing my shield tech up quickly. On the plus side, shield research is cheap in comparison.
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I don't really use shields that much but I can throw some numbers out from my current game. Best shields I can now produce would be Delta R375/10 Shields, giving me the following:
Shield Strength: 2.5
Recharge Rate: 2 Recharge Time: 375 seconds
Cost: 9 Crew: 3 Daily Fuel Cost while Active: 10
Materials Required: 2.25x Duranium 3.75x Corbomite 3x Boronide
Size is 50 tons so 1 HS. Not too bad. Hmm, difficult to compare directly with armour since it depends on the size of the vessel. For small ships, armour would be cheaper, whereas the larger the ship is, the more efficient the shield becomes.
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No shields for me. I find the weight trade-off to be poor.
Better to stuff more offense instead. Kill him before he kills you, that sort of thing.
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Im thinking in my next game, i'm going to play a beam only-90% shield game. Very little armor, tons of shields. just for the roleplaying. But i think it will be even more interesting than an all beam game.
(but orbital bombs are ok)
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Im thinking in my next game, i'm going to play a beam only-90% shield game. Very little armor, tons of shields. just for the roleplaying. But i think it will be even more interesting than an all beam game.
(but orbital bombs are ok)
What I like to do is use the random allocation of RP at the game setup. This does not provide a balanced tech start. I use this to say the areas that get the most tech allocation are the techs I'll follow. So I can end up with lasers and plasma carronades and no missiles.
One idea is to use the random allocation, and then anything that did not get any points is off limits. So you can end up with great missile speed and warheads, but no reload rate. Or beam weapons with no good capacitor tech.
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hm, i suppose steve could roll in tech strenghts and weaknesses at game start. Some tech lines are strong-- research at normal rates. Some techs are difficult for your race, so they require a varying amount of extra RP-- I'm thinking 100% to 500% more to make pursuing the powerful techs of things you're bad at prohibitive.
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There is an easier way to do that than asking Steve to code yet another feature: Whatever scientists you start with are what tech lines you get. Just don't research anything else - fire the scientists if the academy provides you with one.
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I was thinking of a varient where you can only research in trees where you have a researcher with skill in the field.
The problem with your idea Xeryon is I've had games where I start with a defensive, biology and ground/logistic researcher. Not being able to research anything else would make for a... short game. (No new engines, jump drives, sensors, or weapons?)
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Within reason... At the start of a game I tend to go back and reroll scientists until I get a power, sensors and construction. You can have a game go pretty far without a power scientist really. It's all in the RP. I tend to play without 2 of the 3 spoiler races and the game is fairly easy enough at that point to work around the limitations of research restrictions.
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Shields are not so bad at all, not even at low tech levels, and sometimes even in small quantities. The advantage is that shields constantly increase the ability to absorb damage, while many other methods have diminishing returns for extra investments.
That is particularly true when you compare the three only methods that allow sutained damage absorption: Beam PD defences, shields and speed. (Armour, internal hitpoints and AMM only allow temporary damage absorption/prevention, i.e. they run out eventually).
A shield will continuously recharge (if any damage has been done), i.e. it allows absorbing a given amount of damage per second. For instance a shield might be recharging 1 point per 100s. The important bit is that this scales perfectly with the number of shields, i.e. 2 shields will recharge 2 points per 100s, 20 shields will recharge 20 points per 100s etc. So the addition of a single shield (at this tech) adds 0.01 D/s (damage absorption per second) –regardless of whether it’s the first or the fifties shield on the ship.
This is not true for speed or beam PDs. As a simple (and unrealistic) example: An enemy launches a single missile every 20s. The missile is 10 agility, travels 20,000km/s and has a warhead of 4.
- Assume we don’t have any engines: speed is 0, the enemy missile has a 100% chance of hitting, causing 4 damage every 20s.
- The addition of single engine might change our speed to say 4,000 km/s. The enemy missile is now only 50% likely to hit, causing 2 damage every 20s. Thus the first engine might reduce the damage by 4D/40s =0.10 D/s (ten times better than the shield!)
- A second engine will increase the speed further, lets say to 8,000 km/s (of course the speed will not increase linearly to the number of engines, as those must propel themselves as well, but lets keep it simple). Now the enemy missile is 25% likely to hit, causing 4 damage every 80s. Thus the second engine has reduced damage by only 4D/80s=0.05D/s. So the second engine prevent much less damage than the first – and the third will prevent even less and so on. Moreover, the second engine is already equal to the shield in this crude example (you could use 5 shields a 50t instead of 1 engine a 250t).
The point is that the more engines we add, the less they add to our protection. And in particular, because they become less and less valuable, at some point adding more engines will be less valuable than shields.
The same holds for (most) beam PD weapons. Assume the example from above: enemy missile approaching at 20,000 km/s. Lets use a turreted PD laser at a tracking speed of 10,000km/s to combat that.
- The first laser has roughly a chance of 50% to kill the missile in final fire. Thus it will destroy 4 damage points from reaching the ship every second salvo (40s). Assuming the ship travels at 4,000km/s, it will thus prevent 2 damage points from hitting the ship every 40s (missile is 50% likely to hit if it reaches. In other words the beam might destroy a missile that would have missed anyway). So the “value” in terms of prevented damage is 2D/40s=0.05 D/s.
- If we add a second laser, it can only operate against the single enemy missile if the first laser has missed (otherwise there would not be a target left). Thus the chance of the second PD firing is 50%. The chance of it hitting when it fires is also 50%, thus it can stop 1 missile (4D) from reaching the ship every four salvos. Taking into account that these missiles might miss anyway, the second laser prevents 0.025D.
Again, beam weapons exhibit a decreasing return: The more you add, the less valuable the next one becomes.
Thus inevitable at some point shields will become the best investment for prolonged protection. The exact point at which that happens depends on a lot of factors- technology, warhead and speed of the enemy missiles and size of their salvos. But regardless of these factors there will be such a point.
Interestingly: that point where shields become superior to other methods will be relevant for beamwarships in open space actions (i.e. away from jumpgates) regardless of the techlevel! If you need to cross the distance to an enemy missile ship, you will invariably be exposed to a huge amount of damage that needs to be absorbed. Thus you cant rely on armour or PD missiles alone – try fielding enough armour to sustain 2 hours or so of unopposed bombardment, or carrying enough PD missiles to last that long. But you do not only want to rely on the sustainable methods of protection, you also want to be very certain that very few enemy missiles get to cause real damage. As we saw above you need increasing amounts of say beam PDs to be more and more sure to kill the enemy missile. A single mount allowed 50% kill likelihood, but that meant half of the missiles of the enemy still got through, which would not help much. Two mounts meant 75% likelihood, still to little. To get a 90% likelihood of killing the enemy missile we would need 4 Pd weapons, in order to get 99% we would need 7 (against a single missile!). 100% can never be reached... So pretty much by default we would get to the point where shields start to look interesting. Consider say a strategy where 90% of incoming missiles get shot down, and shields are sufficient to absorb the remaining 10% of damage…
And we have not talked about beam weapons and how shields are more effective than armour at countering the “narrow, deep” damage profile of say lasers.
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Sadly, I can't devote enough time to this post to honour your sophisticated research into the topic, but I find your example too abstract to successfully measure the efficiency of shields. I can't decline that shields would be most valuable on ships that are prone to take hits, namely beam ships but also sensor ships - and maybe sufficiently large battleships or (assault) carriers.
Engines have further strategic value for increasing the approaching ship's speed, not only reducing the enemy's hit rate, which shortens the required time to close in (=> increase in evaded damage).
Missiles arriving one by one is an unrealistic example that disregards the usual combat situations. An increased number of missiles allows for a higher efficiency of beam-PD, whom aren't 'wasted' if multiple targets can be engaged and destroyed. Shields on the other hand have a constant regeneratory factor that is affected by all enemy missiles equally, while beam-PD is at least slightly luck based and offers internal redundancies, regardless of technology levels. While this proves disadvantagous for head-on calculations, the chance to score a lucky hit or two increases with additional beam-PD weapons.
Something you disregarded by choice is that even in final-fire mode, the beam-PD is at full strength for every impact while shield strength starts out strong and is ultimately reduced to its regeneration speed. This, however, is a point for shields, as they're the only defensive measures that allows you to actually increase your defensive capacity to a certain point above regeneration rate.
Due to these antics I believe shield efficiency to behave more along a linear function corrected for stagnation after a certain point has been crossed (with the decline explained by wasted HS), while beam-PDs appear to me as an exponential function corrected for stagnation after a certain point. Engines could be close to a bell curve.
For prolongued conflicts - like beam ship approaches - you'd also have to calculate in the likelihood of the enemy running out of ASMs into your simulation.
Something that I would personally like to be included - especially if you argue with beam ships - is cloaking. The damage absorption of cloaking technologies can be expressed by missiles not fired while the ship's approach remains hidden, probably corrected for increased speed efficiency as the enemy is unlikely to run away from an unknown thread (at least in an intelligent way).
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Missiles arriving one by one is an unrealistic example that disregards the usual combat situations. An increased number of missiles allows for a higher efficiency of beam-PD, whom aren't 'wasted' if multiple targets can be engaged and destroyed.
You are quite correct in saying that beam-PD stays efficient when shots are not wasted through a lack of targets. In other words: As long as there are more incoming missiles than beam-PDs, adding beam-PDs is a very sound strategy.
However I am arguing that this is a lost proposition to begin with. If you have 20 incoming missiles and you shoot down 4, then this does not constitute a sustainable defence strategy.
Conversely, a sustainable strategy always implies that a vast majority of the incoming missiles is countered in one way or the other. And if you were exclusively using PD-beams, you would (necessarily!) get to the point where most shots will be wasted. The hits caused by beam-PDs follow a binomial distribution, capped at the number of incoming missiles. If you want a small chance that all shoots miss, you will invariably get a large chance of an "overkill".
My example from above (single missile) was for illustration only, as its easy to see the diminishing returns. The effect is not dependent on that particular number however, it is simply the most convenient. A “real” example from my current campaign: Running against an enemy launching 30 WH7 missiles every 20s. My Gaussguns have a chance to kill of 50% per shot (and fire four shots each), while my shields regenerate 0.02 Damage per second. On a per-weight basis the first gaussgun is 3 times as efficient as a shield. But having one Gaussgun (and shooting down 2 out of 30 missiles) wont really keep me alive for long. At the 11th gg, the diminish returns start to kick in – but at that point I can still be 99% sure that enemy missiles will come through every time. At 19 GG, I would still have to expect that 11% of the times enemy missiles will get through – and at that point GG are actually only half as efficient as regenerating shields. The optimal strategy for me is to use 17 GG and 15 shields. This way I can sustain the enemy fire pretty much until infinity- which would never be possible with any other method than shields.
EDIT: There is one exception to all this, which is when your beam-PDs can actually achieve a 100% hit chance against incoming missiles. Although this might be slightly theoretical, in such cases beam-PDs would stay a superior choice.
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I ran a lovely combat that gutted my fleet against a technologically inferior enemy. My beam PD had easily a 100% hit rate in final defensive fire mode. However, he had on the order of 100 vessels firing large salvos simultaneously. My entire complement of missile PD ran out after about 2 salvos, and while the full-sized quad turret gauss PD shredded every salvo they targeted, I started taking large amounts of damage.
However, the enemy was targeting a wide assortment of ships. If I had just been running some shields, my primary command ship would have never probably remained active, and I would likely have survived the engagement.
Lucky for me, enough of the beam PD ships escaped the carnage and sat quietly at the jump point until the enemy standard transited through.
Standard. Transited. Ha! Shred city.
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Conversely, a sustainable strategy always implies that a vast majority of the incoming missiles is countered in one way or the other.
This is not necessarily true, since at least during early to early mid game missiles could be countered by superior engine technology, making the enemy missiles miss. Note that I haven't done any math on what engine technology compared to what missile technology this would require.
A small bonus for large amounts of PD-beams is their minor contribution to an actual beam engagement, but you arguments for shields is more than valid.
However, even with shields, no defense strategy would be infinitly sustainable, as even shields consume fuel. With their quite low consumption they provide the defense with the longest durability, but this caps of their usability in incredibly high numbers.
Concerning their damage per second absorption, the increase in maximum capacity shield energy caused by more advanced technology fixes a generation of equally far advanced shield generators to exactly 300 seconds until full regeneration. I don't have aurora on my laptop, so I can't check how lower shield classification (say, alpha shields) with high regeneration rates affect the costs and consumption of the finished shield generator designs. Food for thought perhaps, would be an attempt to keep the total shield strength low and increase only the recharge for better damage per second regeneration.
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I don't have aurora on my laptop, so I can't check how lower shield classification (say, alpha shields) with high regeneration rates affect the costs and consumption of the finished shield generator designs. Food for thought perhaps, would be an attempt to keep the total shield strength low and increase only the recharge for better damage per second regeneration.
Alpha shields (lvl1), no fuel efficiency, shield regeneration 1 : Shield strength 1, recharge rate 1 per 300 sec, fuel cost 10 (per 300 sec?)
Alpha shields (lvl1), no fuel efficiency, shield regeneration 5 : Shield strength 1, recharge rate 5 per 300 sec, fuel cost 10
Xi shields (lvl7), no fuel efficiency, shield regeneration 1 : Shield strength 5, recharge rate 1 per 300 sec, fuel cost 50
Xi shields (lvl7), no fuel efficiency, shield regeneration 5 : Shield strength 5, recharge rate 5 per 300 sec, fuel cost 50
Fuel cost is affected by the shield type and fuel efficiency, but not regeneration rate. Very interesting...
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How does it impact research and production costs?
It might prove more cost efficient to produce lower-tier shields that regenerate their full strength within a five second increment (theoretically speaking, I doubt such a high regeneration is achievable). It would nullify the potential to build up higher defense capacities over time, but remain at the exact same damage per second absorption for the long haul.
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Fuel efficiency only changes fuel consumption, not component cost nor component research cost, so there's no downside to it.
Both shield strength and shield regeneration tech cost 2 minerals (0.5 dur, plus 1.5 corb for shield and 1.5 bor for regen) and 200 RP per point given. Some shield techs only give half points (beta, delta). Xi shield gives 5 strength.
Example :
Alpha and regen1 will cost 4 and 400 RP.
Alpha and regen5 will cost 12 and 1200 RP.
Xi and regen1 will cost 12 and 1200 RP.
Xi and regen5 will cost 20 and 2000 RP.
I wouldn't know how to begin analysis of those costs...
For the performance of a low-strength high-regen shield, as long as the time to fully regenerate is longer than the delay between enemy attacks, all you lose is initial strength. Basically, the longer the engagement, the more important shield regen becomes. The shorter the engagement, the more important shield strength gets.
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Unless something has changed drastically the fuel use of the shields is per day of being energized. This only really becomes an issue when defending a jump point where you might want your shields up for months on end.
As for having lower strength shields with a faster recharge rate, it generally doesn't help over the higher strength shield. This is because how many points are regenerated is always proportional to the total number of shields. Even if you have a really high regen rate, that rate is still based on the total shield strength. Some really basic math. Delta shields and recharge rate give 2.5 shields per hull space. If you up 1 level you get a total regen time of 240 seconds instead of 300. 10 hull spaces of shields give 25 total shield points with a recharge rate of .104 shields/second. Epsilon shields with matching recharge rate are 3 points of shields per hull space and regen fully in 300 seconds. This gives us a recharge rate of .1 shields/second. There is a marginal improvement in how much you get back, but even over a 60 second cycle time it doesn't amount to 1 extra point of shielding.
Brian
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The point of using lower tech shields with high regeneration would be to get cheap shields that are still effective, not to get even higher regeneration. Any gain you get would be from rounding errors...
The regen is based on total shield HS, not strength. With the end-game shield regeneration 15, you can get Alpha shields recharged to full in 20 seconds (which is the max possible). Is it any good? Well, for the same size ship, you could get shields that regenerate during a full 5 minutes at that same rate, able to sustain 15 times the punishment without failing. Using maximum available techs will always be superior (using hull space to its fullest) unless cost and build time is important to you.