v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Jorgen_CAB]

Regarding the whole 'there is no way to establish the damage within the necessary timeframe to retarget' I feel the need to point out that nuclear explosions (as they stand with current, real nuclear bombs) will propagate a fireball on the order of hundreds microseconds to milliseconds.

Here you can see from the trinity test a fireball is already propogating from 100 to 940 microseconds (no scale due to poor resolution of the images):


In other words I am saying I reject the notion that 'there is no way to determine if the target is destroyed or not in that timeframe' because assuming instantaneous intel as to the status of the target (whether we are detecting severe phase changes to the internal volume, or simply detecting its translation into real space via our magical FTL TN sensors) its perfectly possible to potentially gather that information and then make decisions based off of it in a very expedient manner and potentially for both the bombs and the computers involved to meet the timing requirements posed.

Now you have a swarm of hundreds of missiles hitting the same ship?!?

It is not just the damage that needs to propagate it also is the feedback into the sensors and then the calculations on what the results are and the time it takes for the actual damage to propagate the media. There simply is not time for any of this... it is just complete fiction in my opinion without some magic ingredient.

Anyone can technobabble anything, you can use time perception changes, precognition or what have you, that would make it more "realistic".

[QuakeIV]

The sensors are ostensibly literally instantaneous, and computers have no problems making decisions on the scale of milliseconds (which would appear to be the timeframe we are discussing).  It is in fact possible on that specific basis.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The sensors are ostensibly literally instantaneous, and computers have no problems making decisions on the scale of milliseconds (which would appear to be the timeframe we are discussing).  It is in fact possible on that specific basis.

In my opinion it make no sense and it just is a game-mechanic that works because it has to work in some fashion and does not have to make full sense.

There simply is no logical reason for it to work as you describe, it is just absurd and from a realistic perspective and would never be possible. Being able to make sense of damage will require allot more time no matter how you do it.

Even if the missile could get a decision to re-target it also physically have to actually do it and hit something else?!?

It make perfectly sense that it will require some time and it also make perfectly sense from a game mechanic perspective if missiles can't re-target within the same 5 second increment either.

[QuakeIV]

I'll write and compile an example executable later (IE probably tomorrow since its almost 1am), but if you were to for instance assume that your TN sensors are working like infrared cameras and deducing internal temperature (and then averaging a 3 dimensional grid of measurements), I think you will be surprised by the amount of such calculations your own computer can manage in the timeframe we are talking about.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'll write and compile an example executable later (IE probably tomorrow since its almost 1am), but if you were to for instance assume that your TN sensors are working like infrared cameras and deducing internal temperature, I think you would be surprised by the amount of such calculations your own computer can manage in the timeframe we are talking about.

Ascertain damage is one of the more difficult process in real military applications, it usually take quite some time to find out if a target is destroyed or not. Even of you assume communication are near instant.

I never really imagined that communication in Aurora is instant, that is in my opinion just an artefact of game-mechanics, it would be very difficult to add time-delay with communication especially over distances so we just assume perfect knowledge because of it. Pretty much every game does that, even the ones that model realistic conflicts. It does not mean that either sensor data or communication is actually instant.

For me it make perfectly sense from a mechanical perspective we can't re-target missiles in the same 5-sec increment, that is good enough for me.

[QuakeIV]

Well of course, you could perfectly reasonably say that the needed information is not actually available for a whole host of reasons, but if you assume FTL sensors (which you could reasonably assume since its magical TN sensors made out of TN materials which enable instantaneous FTL travel via various modes, plus the fact that in-game the sensors are depicted as working that way) providing information on the target (for instance temperature) then all I am saying is its possible for it to happen.  The bombs can maybe do it depending on how you are inclined to say that nuclear bombs interact with TN armor, and the computers can definitely do it.

To be clear I am specifically objecting to the notion that its inconceivable and impossible to justify due to the timing requirements.  No such thing is true.

e: Also I understand that modern BDA is quite slow, this setting however does (potentially) provide significantly better information gathering tools than those currently available to us today.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well of course, you could perfectly reasonably say that the needed information is not actually available for a whole host of reasons, but if you assume FTL sensors (which you could reasonably assume since its magical TN sensors made out of TN materials which enable instantaneous FTL travel via various modes, plus the fact that in-game the sensors are depicted as working that way) providing information on the target (for instance temperature) then all I am saying is its possible for it to happen.  The bombs can maybe do it depending on how you are inclined to say that nuclear bombs interact with TN armor, and the computers can definitely do it.

To be clear I am specifically objecting to the notion that its inconceivable and impossible to justify due to the timing requirements.  No such thing is true.

e: Also I understand that modern BDA is quite slow, this setting however does (potentially) provide significantly better information gathering tools than those currently available to us today.

100 missiles that is an average of 100km distance per missile... so the missile would need. A missile travelling at 30.000km/s that is what 0.003 seconds. In this time it needs not only to know what damage another missiles did it also need to physically re-target into another target and more importantly actually hit close to it and then the following missiles need to react to that one.

What if the missiles already passed all other eligible targets in the area... is it going to turn around and hit something else... perhaps possible!?!

In my opinion this is just bending backwards trying to rationalise something you don't have to. From a realistic perspective it is just fantasy so you need magic to explain it. If we use magic then anything goes. 

And as I said.. from a mechanical perspective we don't need it.

[Malorn]

I would like to add, to the whole 'access damage thing', that there is another factor.

Any method you use to check if the ship is damaged, is a weakness in the 'code' of your missiles. It gives the target something to spoof, via ecm. Make that too sensitive, or too fast to assume a target is destroyed, and the enemy will find a way to convince all your missiles that it is 'dead' after the first few explosions. Playing dead is a very real tactic, and trying to get fancy with missile AI is a good way to leave yourself quite vulnerable.

It's better to 'waste' missiles that don't have time for detailed checks on the target, than risk having most of your missiles make mistakes and ignore the enemy.

[nuclearslurpee]

snip snip
nuclear bomb pictures
snip snip

You're not wrong but in my view, far more important than the time it takes for a nuclear explosion to propagate (and I do think a time scale on the order of ms is significant for missiles in the same tight-formation salvo, but I digress) is the fact that the destruction of a ship, particularly one built to withstand multiple nuclear explosions in close proximity, is not an instantaneous or even millisecond-scale process. Obviously the exact details are going to be highly variable particularly related to just how we envision the ships in our personal headcanon, but in any case the time required for a ship to go from suffering several missile impacts to clearly killed is non-trivial.

I'll buy everything about near-instantaneous compute and signal times for the purposes of retargeting other salvos in the same time increment as these are presumably staggered by a much greater degree than the missiles in a single salvo, but I do think the missiles in a single salvo are close enough together that by the time those milliseconds elapse, they will all have hit or attempted to hit the target simply by virtue of covering the distance to that target in less than a millisecond. Of course one can always headcanon anything one likes, but I simply don't see a good justification for same-salvo retargeting without making a lot of leaps beyond what seems apparent in the actual game. Again, other-salvo retargeting in the same increment is perfectly fine.

Others have raised excellent points as well, and certainly game mechanically I don't think same-salvo retargeting is needed as the existing mechanic introduced interesting decisions regarding use vs. conservation of ordnance which is a good thing even if some players die a little bit inside when they "waste" a missile.

[captainwolfer]

Yeah, my main problem with missile sensors is
1. They seem to stop in space if the FC assigned target is destroyed, insteading of continuing to head in the same direction
2. The missiles in any given salvo that are using sensors all target a single ship, instead of targeting multiple ships.

I don't mind that if I fire 40 missiles in one salvo, they won't retarget in after killing their target
What I mind is that if I fire two salvos of 20 with a 15 second delay, and the first salvo kills the target, the second salvo will only ever hit 1 ship.

Example of why this is bad: If fighting FACs and launching salvos as rapidly as possible, the moment a target is killed all other salvos going for that target that hadn't hit yet will hit a single FAC, instead of spreading out, meaning that using missile sensors to prevent follow-up salvos from being wasted is almost useless.

[nuclearslurpee]

Yeah, my main problem with missile sensors is
1. They seem to stop in space if the FC assigned target is destroyed, insteading of continuing to head in the same direction
2. The missiles in any given salvo that are using sensors all target a single ship, instead of targeting multiple ships.

I don't mind that if I fire 40 missiles in one salvo, they won't retarget in after killing their target
What I mind is that if I fire two salvos of 20 with a 15 second delay, and the first salvo kills the target, the second salvo will only ever hit 1 ship.

Example of why this is bad: If fighting FACs and launching salvos as rapidly as possible, the moment a target is killed all other salvos going for that target that hadn't hit yet will hit a single FAC, instead of spreading out, meaning that using missile sensors to prevent follow-up salvos from being wasted is almost useless.

This is supposed to be handled if you put active sensors on your missiles...admittedly it's a bit silly that the ship's own sensors/MFC cannot issue the correction to the missiles but that's how it's done in-game.

That said, tactically it's rarely a good idea to send a follow-up salvo unless you've badly underestimated a ship's capabilities. If your first salvo which "should" be enough to kill the target fails, it should still have mission-killed the target and rendered it combat-ineffective, thus you are better off shooting at another target anyways and leaving the first target for mop-up work. Of course if the first ship is not mission killed or even heavily damaged, mistakes have been made as they say.

[Jorgen_CAB]

This is supposed to be handled if you put active sensors on your missiles...admittedly it's a bit silly that the ship's own sensors/MFC cannot issue the correction to the missiles but that's how it's done in-game.

That said, tactically it's rarely a good idea to send a follow-up salvo unless you've badly underestimated a ship's capabilities. If your first salvo which "should" be enough to kill the target fails, it should still have mission-killed the target and rendered it combat-ineffective, thus you are better off shooting at another target anyways and leaving the first target for mop-up work. Of course if the first ship is not mission killed or even heavily damaged, mistakes have been made as they say.

Yes... I think it is important that we don't get lazy and use the information that we have to judge the amount of missiles you need to severely damage or destroy an enemy ship without wasting ammunition.

If it is the first salvo you fire against an enemy with unknown capabilities you should consider the first salvo a probing attack to understand the opponents capabilities. If you massively overkill in your first attack it might be difficult to understand what their overall capabilities are. My first attack on an unknown enemy usually mean I spread the damage among as many different enemy ships so I can get as much information about them as possible.

It also generally is more efficient to damage enemy ships than outright destroy them in the first attack, it makes them more vulnerable to a second strike and overall you will use less ordnance. I also think that you should make sure you have enough fire-controls so each salvo is not too large.

[xenoscepter]

 - My 2 cents on Missile Sensors. I just want missile sensors fixed so I can go back to using mines and performing Waypoint Firing with my passive sensors stealth ships. I never use the re-targeting function, tbh.

[Jorgen_CAB]

- My 2 cents on Missile Sensors. I just want missile sensors fixed so I can go back to using mines and performing Waypoint Firing with my passive sensors stealth ships. I never use the re-targeting function, tbh.

Yes... that would be nice... just as long as not all your missiles target the same ship this would work fine.

[LiquidGold2]

All this missile talk might be better off in its own thread.