4.3 Suggestions

[Father Tim]

As it stands, the political status modifier of populations exists in discrete, 20% chunks.  A newly-conquered pop produces 20% of normal, until its political status upgrades to Occupied, at which point it suddenly doubles to 40%.  It seems a shame to possess the computing power of a math co-processor and not use it.

I suggest changing the political status modifier and the way it is calculated.  A newly Conquered population should begin at 0% production/trade/wealth, and each production cycle increase its modifier by a factor calculated from the amount by which the current Occupation Strength exceeds the required minimum.  Perhaps cap the increase rate at some amount, so a small mining outpost doesn't immediately jump to full imperial citizenship.  Then a simple derivative ( 1/2 * a * t^2 ) tells you the effective rate at which production occurred over the previous increment.  (Where a is the rate for that increment, and t is the time in seconds.)

The political status of the colony would then be determined by the current modifier, rather than the other way around:
 0% to 20%  Conquered
>20% to 40%  Occupied
etc.

I would expect the Trade & Wealth modifiers to increase more quickly than the Production modifier, maye double - after all, the government still makes money on rebuilding things.  Tremendous profits came out of Europe in the late forties and fifties rebuilding after World War II.

Oh, and a minor thing.  At the bottom of the left panel of the F2 'Population & Production' window is an option to display extra 'Summary Information' in the colony list.  Could we please have production modifiers added as an option?  And have Maintenance Facilities, Maintenance Supplies, and Fuel combined into one option (I'm not sure there's enough space to display all three, in which case I'd still like Supplies & Fuel combined in one entry).

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm going to revisit a couple of suggetions I've made in the past related to turrets and gauss cannons.

Turrets
Tracking speeds are way behind similair tech level missiles as well as max (x4) tracking speed of same level beam fire control.  

My suggestion is to change turret tracking speed to match to (x4) max tracking speed of the same level beam fire control.  Also adjust the cost to match base cost for the same level (x1) beam fire control.

Gauss Cannon
Currently to sizes are .5 to 6 hull spaces.  (50 - 300 tons)  When we were first talking about a weapon subsystem for fighters that could also function as a point defense subsystem I invisioned something sized like an M61 Vulcan (200 - 300 lbs) not mk45 5" deck gun (21+ tons).  Actually just something that is proportionally smaller that 10cm rail gun as the M61 is to the mk45.  

My suggestion is to change the current sizes to .1 - 1 hull space.  This would make the GC's proportionally smaller than main beam armorments and combat viable for fighters as secondary subsystems.  Yes it will as make quad GC turrets more mass viable for ship design.  They would be more inline with the concepts of the current CIWS systems.  

I have to admit that I handn't really thought about these points until Charlie mentioned them; however, they do make sense to me.  In particular, due to the mass penalties, close in weapons systems are limited to specialist ships or large combatents.  If we use modern naval designs as a model then the Aurora CIWS are overmassed in comparison.  I haven't used fighters enough to really have a handle on what the GC changes would mean but they seem reasonable.  I think a change in tracking speeds would not change the game dynamic too much. I have my body armour on and I'm ready to take flak for my views  

I need to take the time to look at the numbers for these ideas. My immediate reaction is that it would blow away all other weapons in terms of point blank effectiveness against other ships (in terms of damage per HS) and gauss cannon are really supposed to be an anti-missile weapon rather than anti-ship. I am also worried that such a dramatic improvement in anti-missile firepower (in terms of effectiveness per HS) could make missiles almost useless. I'll respond properly once I get time to really think it through. In terms of Aurora fighters - they are a lot larger than F-16s, more like small missile boats really, so the 5" gun is really a much better analogy for their armament than the M61 vulcan.

Steve

[Brian Neumann]

I'm going to revisit a couple of suggetions I've made in the past related to turrets and gauss cannons.
Gauss Cannon
Currently to sizes are .5 to 6 hull spaces.  (50 - 300 tons)  When we were first talking about a weapon subsystem for fighters that could also function as a point defense subsystem I invisioned something sized like an M61 Vulcan (200 - 300 lbs) not mk45 5" deck gun (21+ tons).  Actually just something that is proportionally smaller that 10cm rail gun as the M61 is to the mk45.  

My suggestion is to change the current sizes to .1 - 1 hull space.  This would make the GC's proportionally smaller than main beam armorments and combat viable for fighters as secondary subsystems.  Yes it will as make quad GC turrets more mass viable for ship design.  They would be more inline with the concepts of the current CIWS systems.  

Steve, if you are worried about the mass/damage effectivness you could remove the range multiplier for gauss cannon.  This would limit them to final protective fire only and make it much harder to use them against ships.  Alternativly you could make the size scale from .1 to 1 hs linear with 1 hs being a 50% hit rate and then scale from 1 to 4 hs to get 100% hit rate.  This would make the smaller installations more useable for fighters and gunboats, while still keeping the overall size for a 100% hit rate up there.  If you want your full chance to hit, then you need the specialist ships.  If you don't mind the reduced chances then lots of 1hs units works well, untill they are shooting at a target with even a point or two of ecm that is not countered.  Then their to hit chances are horrible, while the large units are still getting thier hits.

Brian

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm going to revisit a couple of suggetions I've made in the past related to turrets and gauss cannons.
Gauss Cannon
Currently to sizes are .5 to 6 hull spaces.  (50 - 300 tons)  When we were first talking about a weapon subsystem for fighters that could also function as a point defense subsystem I invisioned something sized like an M61 Vulcan (200 - 300 lbs) not mk45 5" deck gun (21+ tons).  Actually just something that is proportionally smaller that 10cm rail gun as the M61 is to the mk45.  

My suggestion is to change the current sizes to .1 - 1 hull space.  This would make the GC's proportionally smaller than main beam armorments and combat viable for fighters as secondary subsystems.  Yes it will as make quad GC turrets more mass viable for ship design.  They would be more inline with the concepts of the current CIWS systems.  

Steve, if you are worried about the mass/damage effectivness you could remove the range multiplier for gauss cannon.  This would limit them to final protective fire only and make it much harder to use them against ships.  Alternativly you could make the size scale from .1 to 1 hs linear with 1 hs being a 50% hit rate and then scale from 1 to 4 hs to get 100% hit rate.  This would make the smaller installations more useable for fighters and gunboats, while still keeping the overall size for a 100% hit rate up there.  If you want your full chance to hit, then you need the specialist ships.  If you don't mind the reduced chances then lots of 1hs units works well, untill they are shooting at a target with even a point or two of ecm that is not countered.  Then their to hit chances are horrible, while the large units are still getting thier hits.

The increase in hit rate still has to be linear. If a 1HS installation could hit at 50% and the 4 HS installation at 100%, then a ship would always be far better off with 4x 1HS installations than a single 4 HS installation. The problem I am trying to avoid is the one that plagues a lot of 4x games. Fighters are given powerful weapons and then for some reason ships don't use the small powerful weapons that fighters have. For example in Starfire, why don't ships just mount massed batteries of fighter lasers or fighter primaries or carry launchers capable of firing fighter missiles. if I was to create a 0.1 HS gauss cannon, even with a 10% to hit chance, then escort ships would just carry several hundreds of those. 300 0.1 HS installations with a 10% chance to hit is little different than 30 1HS installations with a 100% chance to hit. Try getting a missile wave though that.

Steve

[Brian Neumann]

The increase in hit rate still has to be linear. If a 1HS installation could hit at 50% and the 4 HS installation at 100%, then a ship would always be far better off with 4x 1HS installations than a single 4 HS installation. The problem I am trying to avoid is the one that plagues a lot of 4x games. Fighters are given powerful weapons and then for some reason ships don't use the small powerful weapons that fighters have. For example in Starfire, why don't ships just mount massed batteries of fighter lasers or fighter primaries or carry launchers capable of firing fighter missiles. if I was to create a 0.1 HS gauss cannon, even with a 10% to hit chance, then escort ships would just carry several hundreds of those. 300 0.1 HS installations with a 10% chance to hit is little different than 30 1HS installations with a 100% chance to hit. Try getting a missile wave though that.

Steve

There are two reasons behind my idea.  Most people can confirm that it is fairly easy to get the first 60-80% of accuracy on just about anything that you do.  The last bit is much harder and for fire control would take much more precise weapons to be able to track and hit with this sort of precesion.  The second part is that under normal conditions you are right.  It would be better for people to take the mass of less accurate weapons instead of fewer but more accurate installations.  Where this breaks down in your game is that every time a penalty to hit is applied for an ecm difference it is a flat 10%/level.  A weapon that had a base 90% chance to hit, modified by its 50% for being a small system has a 40% chance.  Take 10 from that and you are at 30%.  A 4hs weapon with a 90%-10% is at 80% effective.  If instead of doing it this way against missiles you first figure the to hit chance based on it's speed, say 30% per shot divide in half for the 50% modifier and then take 10 from that you only get a 5% to hit chance.  The larger installation has a 20% chance to hit.  At this point the chance of intercepting the missile is equal.  If it is a 20% reduction then the larger installation still has a 10% chance while the smaller does not even fire as it's chance is below 0%.

I don't know about you, but only my biggest ships can afford to mount multiple full size eccm to cover all of the fire control.  Most ships end up having one full size eccm and the rest are the compact eccm.  This means that if the missiles have a full hs devoted to ecm from a comparable tech culture that the defensive fire control is probably operating at that 10% penalty to start with.  If you want a little more linear between the first 50% make that 2hs and the 100% 6hs with 4hs being 75%.  This will obviously change the numbers above but it should still work to make the larger installations have a purpose.  Smaller ones will tend to be on smaller ships where they just don't have the tonnage for a full turret, while larger ones will be on the larger, or more specialized ships.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

I need to take the time to look at the numbers for these ideas. My immediate reaction is that it would blow away all other weapons in terms of point blank effectiveness against other ships (in terms of damage per HS) and gauss cannon are really supposed to be an anti-missile weapon rather than anti-ship. I am also worried that such a dramatic improvement in anti-missile firepower (in terms of effectiveness per HS) could make missiles almost useless. I'll respond properly once I get time to really think it through. In terms of Aurora fighters - they are a lot larger than F-16s, more like small missile boats really, so the 5" gun is really a much better analogy for their armament than the M61 vulcan. Steve

And I think a system with the intended function of fighter-v-fighter and/or missile defense should be superior at ship-v-ship ranges vs other systems.  A system for that function should be substantually less massive as well.  Whether we're talking about a 12 ton F16(A versions were in this range) or a 500 ton Aurora fighter, the mass differential between a system to be used as a fighter gun should be segnificantly smaller that that of a system intended (even at the low end) as main gun for a combat ship.  

In the ship-v-ship role this is not going to be a dominating change.  About the only time they'd come into play is if the combatants started at very close ranges.  My experience has been that fighters are toast before they can get close enough to use GC's...once fire controls are live.  In both cases the GC's act as sand blasters (stripping away the outer layers of armor) and rarely penetrate to do internal damage.  If a ship has enough damage for the GC's to really be dangerous it either has extremely weak armor (1-2) or has already taken segnificant hits and the GC's really making much of an impact on the outcome.  

My goal is two fold.  First to make a game standard system that gives fighters an effective weapon against other small ships (fighters and GB mainly) that is not a missile or full sized beam.  Second is to have subsytem that allows for a PD turret that is effective without a major reduction in mass available for offensive systems for a combat ship under 10k tons.

Keep in mind I'm not asking for a change in beam fire control.  To take advantage of the turret tracking speed change the beam fire control is still going to 4x the mass of the base fire control.  

Can these changes be gamed to be situationally dominating? Yes.  So can just about everything in the game.  

Is this going to impact game balance? Yes to a degree.  It's going to help make fighters and dedicated point defense turrets more viable choices.

Nor am I suggesting that the to hit numbers be changed.  Maybe reduce the velocity increments and increase the cost per increment to offset the lower mass.

Charlie

[Steve Walmsley]

The increase in hit rate still has to be linear. If a 1HS installation could hit at 50% and the 4 HS installation at 100%, then a ship would always be far better off with 4x 1HS installations than a single 4 HS installation. The problem I am trying to avoid is the one that plagues a lot of 4x games. Fighters are given powerful weapons and then for some reason ships don't use the small powerful weapons that fighters have. For example in Starfire, why don't ships just mount massed batteries of fighter lasers or fighter primaries or carry launchers capable of firing fighter missiles. if I was to create a 0.1 HS gauss cannon, even with a 10% to hit chance, then escort ships would just carry several hundreds of those. 300 0.1 HS installations with a 10% chance to hit is little different than 30 1HS installations with a 100% chance to hit. Try getting a missile wave though that.

Steve

There are two reasons behind my idea.  Most people can confirm that it is fairly easy to get the first 60-80% of accuracy on just about anything that you do.  The last bit is much harder and for fire control would take much more precise weapons to be able to track and hit with this sort of precesion.  The second part is that under normal conditions you are right.  It would be better for people to take the mass of less accurate weapons instead of fewer but more accurate installations.  Where this breaks down in your game is that every time a penalty to hit is applied for an ecm difference it is a flat 10%/level.  A weapon that had a base 90% chance to hit, modified by its 50% for being a small system has a 40% chance.  Take 10 from that and you are at 30%.  A 4hs weapon with a 90%-10% is at 80% effective.  If instead of doing it this way against missiles you first figure the to hit chance based on it's speed, say 30% per shot divide in half for the 50% modifier and then take 10 from that you only get a 5% to hit chance.  The larger installation has a 20% chance to hit.  At this point the chance of intercepting the missile is equal.  If it is a 20% reduction then the larger installation still has a 10% chance while the smaller does not even fire as it's chance is below 0%.

That's not how it works. The modifer to hit for smaller gauss cannon is applied after ECM has been accounted for, not before. Assume you had a 30% chance to hit after ECM has been accounted for. If you had a full size gauss cannon with a 100% modifier to hit, your chance to hit would still be 30%. If you had a 1/2 size gauss cannon with a 50% modifier to hit then the chance to hit would be 15%. Which is why I have to reiterate my point that the modifier to hit must be linear in comparison with the size. If we had the original example of a 4HS 100% gauss cannon compared to a 1HS 50% gauss cannon, then vs the ECM situation above you would get four shots at 15% compared to one shot at 30%. Which means an actual chance of a missile kill of 48% for four small GC compared to 30% for one large GC. The 48% is derived from multiplying 85% x 85% x 85% x 85% and deducting the result from 100, which is the chance of all four shots missing. The 4 small GC have a further advantage in that they could kill up to four missiles while the single large GC can never kill more than one.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

I'll try and resolve this by comparing existing weapons with the proposed reduction of gauss cannon to approximately 1/6th of their current size.

I will use 8000 RP as the max tech level for this. All the systems below will use the following fire control for missile defence, which is a standard 4x Speed system.

Code: [Select]

Fire Control
50% Accuracy at Range: 32,000 km     Tracking Speed: 16000 km/s
Size: 4 HS    HTK: 1    Cost: 77    Crew: 20

Code: [Select]

Full size GC without turret
Damage Output 1     Rate of Fire: 3 shots every 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km     Size: 6    HTK: 2

Code: [Select]

Max GC in a triple turret
Damage Output 1x9      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 24    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 6
Maximum Tracking Speed: 16000km/s

Code: [Select]

Min Size GC with 8% modifier to hit
Damage Output 1     Rate of Fire: 3 shots every 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km     Size: 0.5    HTK: 0
This weapon has a penalty to accuracy. Chance to hit is multiplied by 0.08

Code: [Select]

Min GC in a triple turret
Damage Output 1x9      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 2    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 0
Maximum Tracking Speed: 16000km/s
Lets assume an incoming wave of missiles with a speed of 20,000 km/s. The turret tracking speed and fire control tracking speed are both the same at 16,000 km/s. The Fire control has an 84% chance to hit at 10,000 km/s and the final chance to hit is Chance to hit x (Tracking Speed / MissileSpeed), which is 67.2%. For the small GC turret the chance to hit will be 67.2 x 0.08, which is 5.4%. However, you can fit eight small turrets in the same space as one large one so the real comparison is nine shots at 67.2% vs seventy-two shots at 5.4%

Lets compare this to a 10cm laser turret of similar size and a non-turreted 10cm railgun, both of which are popular anti-missile systems. Both these systems also need power plants so those will have to be taken into account as well within the 24HS.

Code: [Select]

Twin 10cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret
Damage Output 3x2      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 4
Max Range 120,000 km    Turret Size: 8    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 6
Maximum Tracking Speed: 16000km/sA pair of twin 10cm Ultraviolet lasers plus power planets is 20 HS. If we assume a twin and a triple, it actually works out to 25HS but that is close enough. That setup allows for five shots at 67.2%, compared to the nine of the equivalent GC. Although that makes the GC almost twice as good, that is acceptable because the laser can also be used in an anti-ship mode. The anti-ship capability of the laser vs GC even at point blank range is 15 vs 9 and the laser has a longer range as well.

Code: [Select]

10cm Railgun V4/C3
Damage Per Shot (4): 1     Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 4
Max Range 40,000 km     Railgun Size: 3 HS    Railgun HTK: 1
Power Requirement: 3    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 3Now the railgun tracking speed is limited to the speed of the ship. Lets assume 4000 km/s for an Ion-engine escort. The chance to hit is therefore only about 16.8% (84% fire control x 4000 ship / 20,000 missile) but the railgun gets four shots. Each railgun is only 3 HS so allowing for enough power plants (2/3HS per railgun), that gives us approximately 6 railguns with 24 shots at 16.2%. The railguns are reasonable at point blank range against ships as they have a higher potential damage output than the lasers but only against slower targets

So that gives us an anti-missile comparison:
Large GC: Nine shots at 67% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 6)
Lasers: Five shots at 67% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 3)
Railguns: Twenty-four shots at 17% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 4)
Small GC: Seventy-two shots at 5.4% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 4)

Lets also assume an anti-ship role vs a 4000 km/s target at point blank range
Large GC: Nine 1 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 7.6)
Lasers: Five 3 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 12.6)
Railguns: Twenty-four 1 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 20.1)
Small GC: Seventy-two 1 point shots at 6.7% (estimated damage 4.8)

The railguns look good in anti-ship mode but they have a max range of 40k and the GC have a max range of 30k. The laser can shoot out to 120,000 km.

Now lets make the GC one-sixth the size and run the numbers again.

Anti-missile comparison:
Large GC: Fifty-four shots at 67% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 36)
Lasers: Five shots at 67% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 3)
Railguns: Twenty-four shots at 17% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 4)
Small GC: Four hundred and thirty-two shots at 5.4% (Estimated Missiles Destroyed: 23)

Lets also assume an anti-ship role vs a 4000 km/s target at point blank range
Large GC: Fifty-four 1 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 45)
Lasers: Five 3 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 12.6)
Railguns: Twenty-four 1 point shots at 84% (estimated damage 20.1)
Small GC: Four hundred and thirty--two 1 point shots at 6.7% (estimated damage 29)

Now it may just be me, but that makes gauss cannon amazingly, game-breakingly good. A single escort is going to be mowing missiles down in hundreds, not to mention completely obliterating anything that appears through a jump point. Here is a 7500 ton escort with eighteen triple GC turrets that are 4HS each instead of 24HS. It can put out one hundred and sixty-two shots every 5 seconds with a 100% modifier to hit. That means assuming 20,000 km/s missiles, it will kill more than one hundred missiles every 5 seconds! If used as a jump point picket ship, it could inflict 136 points of damage every 5 seconds vs a transiting ship moving at 4000 km/s. Bearing in mind that it takes 30 seconds or do to recover from transit, this ship is going to able to inflict 1000 points of damage before anyone could respond.

Code: [Select]

Tennessee class Cruiser    7500 tons     1675 Crew     3180.4 BP      TCS 150  TH 600  EM 0
4000 km/s     Armour 1-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 72
Annual Failure Rate: 112%    IFR: 1.6%    Maintenance Capacity 1060 MSP    Max Repair 138 MSP

Ion Engine (10)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 51.4 billion km   (148 days at full power)

Triple GC R3-100 Turret (18x9)    Range 30,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control  (3)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
Active Search Sensor  (1)     GPS 21     Range 210k km    Resolution 1Now I don't mind if players want to change the stats of weapons within Aurora, it is that type of game after all, but based on the above I just cannot see any way I could drastically reduce the size of gauss cannon. I went through a similar exercise when I created them, which is why they are the size they are now.

Steve

[waresky]

..screen
Steve.
Can set a RESEARCH capability same as Industrial "begin project2 with percentage solution?

With 100 research Center can manage 1 by 1 with a single or more or aggregated project?
10 study Engine
5 another ecc..ecc...?

R very real no?

[Charlie Beeler]

Which is why GC should never have equivilant ranges to main beams.  Personally I'd be content with them only ever having a max range of 10k.  Start the velocity at 1 and advance by .5 per level.  etc.  

I also said that the system could be gamed.  The counter to the escort loaded with GC turrets sitting on the jump point is easily 1 of several options.  Built a jump gate and send a swarm of gun fighters through.  Jump engines with jump distance of say 200.  Box launchers and Thick armor and Armored missiles.  etc etc etc.  

Point blank battles are the exception not the rule.  In most cases anyone that finds themselves there has usually done something drasticly wrong and pays for the mistake.  

You do not agree with me and I can live with that.

[Beersatron]

From Steve's numbers it looks like with the proposed GC changes the rock-paper-stones relationship would be:

GC beats missiles
Rails beats GC if ship faster
Laser beats Rails is ship faster
Missiles beat Rails at range
Missiles beat Laser at range

From what I understand, the GC is only good for use in final-self-defense due to the short range, right? So it would be a very specialized boat, either a JP picket or a purpose built missile magnet sent ahead of the fleet to soak up the fire and deplete enemy magazines.

In the JP picket role, if the GC can keep within range of it's target then it will absolutely own it, otherwise the target will be able to get out of range and keep it there, firing it's rails and laser with impunity. Also, would point blank missiles have a better chance to hit because of the reduced tracking time?

The easiest way to counter a GC fighter is with a laser fighter. They will both likely have similar speeds but the reach on the laser will give the first shot to the laser fighter. You could up the armor on the GC to survive the first shot but then you would be running slower than the laser fighter.

Hmm, I appear to arguing in circles with myself and I can not decide what I like the best.

End of the day, it is your game Steve

[Andrew]

I see no need for a smaller Gauss cannon. The logic for not shrinking them is good and I see no good logic to shrink them. To me a fighter in Aurora is not an F-16 , it is more of a modern day FAC or MTB , a small fast ship as such I see no need or nich for the 20mm Vulcan equivalant . A large fighter can mount a beam or GC if you want one, otherwise Box launchers work well for them

[Steve Walmsley]

Which is why GC should never have equivilant ranges to main beams.  Personally I'd be content with them only ever having a max range of 10k.  Start the velocity at 1 and advance by .5 per level.  etc.  

I also said that the system could be gamed.  The counter to the escort loaded with GC turrets sitting on the jump point is easily 1 of several options.  Built a jump gate and send a swarm of gun fighters through.  Jump engines with jump distance of say 200.  Box launchers and Thick armor and Armored missiles.  etc etc etc.  

The gun fighters would be GC as well so that doesn't solve the uber-GC problem. The rest are possibilities but would cost far too much in comparison to the 3000 BP escort. A box launcher design might throw out similar firepower but only once. The GC escort can dish out massive firepower every 5 seconds forever.

Point blank battles are the exception not the rule.  In most cases anyone that finds themselves there has usually done something drasticly wrong and pays for the mistake.  

Point blank battles are the rule in a jump point defence, which is where the 1/6th GC would be overpowering. No equivalent cost missile-ship would have a prayer of overcoming its defences so the only way to kill it would be in deep space with a faster beam ship, assuming the beam ship could get into the system.

You do not agree with me and I can live with that.

Well, it's not really about the anti-ship capability anyway. That was just a side-effect. My main concern is the anti-missile ability of the much smaller GC. Assuming that the 1/6th size GC had NO anti-ship capability, it would still be massively overpowered as a pure anti-missile weapon. How would a missile-using race overcome the escort I designed using the 1/6th GC without outnumbering it at least 5-1 in cost terms? Don't forget that on average it can kill 100+ missiles every 5 seconds if the missiles are 20,000 km/s.

I am sorry if I sound like I am being negative about your idea and I understand your desire for a small fighter weapon but the reality is that Aurora fighters are not fighters in a wet-navy sense. They are more like fast missile craft. An equivalent to a wet navy fighter would be perhaps 0.5 hull spaces as a maximum and I really don't want to have hordes of tiny ships running around as it would kill performance. I think the underlying problem is that weapons in Aurora are larger as a proportion of ship size than in a modern navy. This is mainly because I have not bothered to model all the other systems that are needed in a modern warship and take up much of the hull space and therefore weapon assume a much greater importance in terms of a proportion of hull size. The fact that weapons are large means that making a smaller equivalent results in a very low powered weapon. However, I really, really don't want to have the Starfire problem of uber-fighter-weapons that ships don't carry for some inexplicable reason.

There is probably some workable idea for creating a fighter-sized beam weapon that wouldn't be attractive to ships. However, I really don't believe the answer is to make existing weapons significantly smaller without any real penalty so they fit on fighters because then ships would just carry hordes of that weapon and kill game balance. Perhaps an alternative to the low chance to hit idea of the small GC or the low reload rate of the reduced-size laser is a low chance to damage. Perhaps a laser that is much smaller than a ship laser but when it hits armour it only has a 10% chance to actually cause any damage. This would result in fighters doing a lot of shooting at one another but only causing infrequent damage. This would still work over dogfight timescales as the weapons are likely to be firing every 5 seconds so hits might be scored every minute or so. It obviously wouldn't be that useful against a warship but how often do fighters strafe warships in modern combat? It would be perfectly useful however against a freighter that couldn't shoot back. I'll give this some further thought.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

GC beats missiles
Rails beats GC if ship faster
Laser beats Rails is ship faster
Missiles beat Rails at range
Missiles beat Laser at range

I think I introduced a red herring with my somewhat tongue-in-cheek comparison of anti-ship capability for the proposed mini-GC. The real problem is its anti-missile capability. With that 1/6th GC in the game you can pretty much forget using missiles. One single escort of the type I designed would be able to hold off an entire fleet of missile ships. Even the existing GC is very good against missiles - killing missiles is the whole point of the weapon. Making it six times better than the existing best anti-missile weapon would obviously cause some game balance problems

Steve

[Beersatron]

GC beats missiles
Rails beats GC if ship faster
Laser beats Rails is ship faster
Missiles beat Rails at range
Missiles beat Laser at range

I think I introduced a red herring with my somewhat tongue-in-cheek comparison of anti-ship capability for the proposed mini-GC. The real problem is its anti-missile capability. With that 1/6th GC in the game you can pretty much forget using missiles. One single escort of the type I designed would be able to hold off an entire fleet of missile ships. Even the existing GC is very good against missiles - killing missiles is the whole point of the weapon. Making it six times better than the existing best anti-missile weapon would obviously cause some game balance problems

Steve

Does the final defense setting on PD cover the whole fleet or just the ship that has the PD installation? I ask because of the relatively short GC distances involved and I have noticed before when using laser PD that area defense shoots after the missile has made it's move.

So, I guess what I am asking is does final defense fire before the missile gets it's move turn? And does it protect the whole fleet?