Proposal for TechSystem table updates

[ardem]

My point of view around fighters being harder to hit, whether it is missile or beam fighter, does not come from game design. It comes from reality. I will spell it out very simply

Smaller craft like the space shuttle can be moved with thrusters faster and easier then a large ship, which creates a harder target to hit. Simple physics.

Fighters have a smaller cross section, making it harder to hit

If I recall Missile Do currently have an evasion/manuverability bonus, with the Agility score already, whereas a fighter does not have this bonus that I can see, or ability to modify this bonus, unlike missiles. The argument missile code would have to change is flawed as the code is already in for missiles.

On follow when it slows down the speed of the fighters is where the target enemy has the best ability to shoot down the fighter, whereas in reality it is the opposite close into the guns the fighters buzzing around are harder to hit with minimum windows of opportunity to target as it crosses the in and around the vessel.

[Brian Neumann]

If I recall Missile Do currently have an evasion/manuverability bonus, with the Agility score already, whereas a fighter does not have this bonus that I can see, or ability to modify this bonus, unlike missiles. The argument missile code would have to change is flawed as the code is already in for missiles.

The agility bonus is to the missile chance to hit its target.  Base agility is 10% times the missile speed and compared to the target speed.  If the missile is ten times as fast then it has a 100% hit chance.  If it is four times as fast then it is only a 40% chance to hit, ect.  Additional points put into agility give the missile a higher chance to hit.  The points are however divided by the size of the missile so it is hard to get a big missile to be as agile as a small missile.  An agility score of 20% would give you twice the chance to hit of an agility 10 score assuming the same speed missile.  At no time does the agility bonus of a missile make it harder to hit the missile itself.  It is strictly an offensive bonus not defensive.

Brian

[sloanjh]

Smaller craft like the space shuttle can be moved with thrusters faster and easier then a large ship, which creates a harder target to hit. Simple physics.

Trans-Newtonian drives are inertia-less, so large craft can jink just as well as small craft.  Steve made a concious design decision to abstract away jinking by assuming that fast ships are better at jinking than slow ships, with an effect proportional to the speed ratio.

Fighters have a smaller cross section, making it harder to hit

For a moment, I thought this might be a winning argument (at least for beam fire), but then I realized that it would kill point-defense beams.  The problem is that a 5HS fighter is ~16x larger than a size-6 missile.  Even if you throw in a power of 2/3 to take area vs. volume into account, this means that anything you do to significantly reduce the odds of a weapon hitting a fighter will completely kill the odds for that weapon hitting a missile.  The same argument applies for missiles. 

If I recall Missile Do currently have an evasion/manuverability bonus, with the Agility score already, whereas a fighter does not have this bonus that I can see, or ability to modify this bonus, unlike missiles. The argument missile code would have to change is flawed as the code is already in for missiles.

As Brian said, this is an offensive bonus - defensive agility is considered to be already taken into account because of speed.  Any change to this would probably imbalance in favor of missile agility.

On follow when it slows down the speed of the fighters is where the target enemy has the best ability to shoot down the fighter, whereas in reality it is the opposite close into the guns the fighters buzzing around are harder to hit with minimum windows of opportunity to target as it crosses the in and around the vessel.

Now this one I REALLY like, although if there were other ships besides the followed ship you'd have to consider follow mode to be "zero range", i.e. the distance between the fighter and the followed ship would need to be small compared to the radius of the followed ship, otherwise the escorts could simply shoot the fighter off.  The problem here is that point-blank range is 10,000 km, which it takes a typical fighter a second or so to cross (forever in computer time).  So the idea (it sounds like) is that the fighter closes to zero range, at which point the target ship's weapons can't bear and escorting ships' weapons can't fire for fear of misses hitting the target ship.  The really fun part here would be to allow the escorts to fire at the fighter, but to have a probability of misses hitting the target ship, based on the target ship's size.

Another nice thing about this idea is that it doesn't affect missile balance - once missiles are at zero range, they'll simply attack, so they can't take advantage of it.  And another one is that the benefit should be bigger for big target ships - it gives the "gnat-like fighters vs. lumbering behemoth" feel.

I also like (and hope Steve will) the aspect that it doesn't make fighters harder to hit while closing.  So even though you're giving them a "safe zone" once they're up close, they'll probably still take heavy casualties on the way in.

Finally, the effect isn't a "fighters-only" thing - a destroyer could use it too against a super-dreadnaught.  The important part is the size ratio and speed advantage between follower and followee.

As a sanity check, I wonder how this would change Star Swarm Attacks.

John

[jseah]

o.O  Follow mode to get below the firing arcs of weapons and make misses from other ships hit the target ship... good idea!

And if it works with FACs vs large ships like freighters, it really plays up the "swarm of bees" feel for star swarm. 

Just an extension to the idea, CIWS should be able to target the following ships.  CIWS was practically made for this. 


And just to throw out some numbers: - Just something to manipulate

"Blindsiding" a ship requires the tailing ship to be 5x smaller and 2x as fast as the target ship.  At this exact ratios, the effect is 0 but increases from here. 
Of course, doing this requires closing to 0 range. 

Blindsiding a ship makes weapons on the followed ship have a weapon tracking speed penalty.  The ratio of the following ships' size to 1/5th the size of the followed ship is the penalty to tracking speed.  (at 1/10th the size, the tracking speed penalty is 50%)
This penalty only applies to weapons and turrets and simulates the increased angles the weapon has to turn to track the following ship.  Firecontrols can track them with no problem. 
 - Allows the creation of specialized anti-fighter turrets that are huge and have insane tracking speeds far above the firecontrols

Speed of following ship / 2x speed of followed ship - 1, minimum 0 is the chance that misses from other ships' beam weapons damage the followed ship.  This simulates how well the following ship can hug the surface of the followed ship.  At 4x the speed of the followed ship, all misses hit the followed ship. 

Missiles that miss never detonate.  For missiles that hit, there is a chance that any damage that spills over one side of the armour is applied to the followed ship instead of wrapping around.  This happens with the same chance of an energy weapon miss damaging the followed ship.  This simulates the use of nuclear warheads in very close proximity. 

[ardem]

Trans-Newtonian drives are inertia-less,

Damn I keep forgetting this, you are correct. Although I never truly wrap my head around inertia-less.

On missile my apologies, I thought they were both attacking and defensive benefits, if that is the case that rating is fairly useless as you put the same points into speed which increases the hit ratio anyway.

Trans-Newtonian drives are inertia-less, missiles should never miss, funny concept but I think we have inertia-less some mixed in inertia parameters, I understand why though just sometimes plays with my head. <smile>

[Narmio]

On missile my apologies, I thought they were both attacking and defensive benefits, if that is the case that rating is fairly useless as you put the same points into speed which increases the hit ratio anyway.

Agility gives a significantly larger bonus to hit than increased speed does. For ASMs it is a tradeoff - hit more vs be harder to hit with AMMs.  For AMMs, though, agility is great, as raw speed is less useful than to-hit chance.

On the subject of close-in targets being hard to see, remember the ranges that we're talking about. The 0km range band is really a sphere 5000km in radius, not exactly hull-bumping range.

I really like the idea of beam-fighters, but it does seem like active missile defences will always be able to hit them.  One possible approach is to give fighters 3-4 layers of armour, at which point they should be able to take more than a few AMMs without exploding. Or you can go the Star Swarm route and make fast beam-armed gunboats with quite a few (6-8) layers of armour.  Since active missile defence is such a big part of this game I just can't see close-in fighters being able to dodge them.  It's possible that mechanics could be developed to make fighters tougher rather than faster, though. They are a lot bigger than most missiles, so they should be significantly more difficult to blow up.

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

This is getting way off topic.  I ask that we keep the discussion on the game benefits and potential issues of the 3 primary suggestions:

1)Changes to fighter engines that allow for increased total engine power while staying within the constraints of 10hs/500tons.  Either increasing fighter engine power multiplier from 3 to 5, or removing the single engine restriction(also gunboat FAC engines).  

2)Changing the Turret tracking speed from matching the same tech level baseline beam fire control tracking speed to matching the 4x tracking speed.

3)Removing the beam fire control range 5 light second limitation and having each tech level of beam fire control range be 50% of the max range of lasers for that same tech level(beam fire control range is actually the 50% tohit range and actual max range 2x that)

The first is consistant with the concept that all fighters for a given tech level of engine power should be faster than gunboats/FAC, currently this is not true.

The second is an attempt to address the heavy mass penalty of point defense turrets.  The original concept, as I understood it anyway, was that each level of tracking speed would be at the cost of an addition 10% hull space.  The reality is that most turrets at the 4x level are actually paying a 60% penalty do to roundup functions in the gear percentage calculation.

The third really should be withdrawn, it has a great potential of unbalancing the game.

[Erik L]

3)Removing the beam fire control range 5 light second limitation and having each tech level of beam fire control range be 50% of the max range of lasers for that same tech level(beam fire control range is actually the 50% tohit range and actual max range 2x that)

I believe this one is in place because otherwise your weapons are firing at speeds greater than c.

[jseah]

In that case we obviously need to have a weapon based off the Ion Engine tech.  After all, I've heard that ion engines can be coverted to weapons. 

Make it cost fuel to shoot or something.  =P
Then we can stick hyperdrives on it to make it go past the 5 second limit. 

EDIT:
Come to think of it, that's basically what a particle beam is. 

Perhaps particle beams can have hyperdrives on them to make them shoot further than 5 lightseconds.  Follow the hyperdrive tech line for weight increase?

[Narmio]

2)Changing the Turret tracking speed from matching the same tech level baseline beam fire control tracking speed to matching the 4x tracking speed.

As I said before: If turreting a weapon only adds about 10% to its mass, all weapons will be turreted.  There will be no reason not to do so.  That would be terrible for game balance and ship design diversity. This suggestion would be even worse for game balance than removing the 5 light second range cap.

A much more interesting suggestion was made up thread: Add the ship speed to the turret speed to determine total tracking. It's sensible, realistic and seems balanced.  Also, rounding turrets to 0.1HS rather than 1HS.  These two proposals address the same issues as your ideas, but seem less unbalancing.

[Brian Neumann]

On missile my apologies, I thought they were both attacking and defensive benefits, if that is the case that rating is fairly useless as you put the same points into speed which increases the hit ratio anyway.

Also at higher tech levels the benifit of the agility really does get to be huge.  By the 6 agility tech I am starting to see agility ratings around 40-45%.  By the 10th tech it is more like 100% and still having a decent speed, warhead, and range.  Like a lot of things in the game the lower tech levels have less effect but the cumulative reasearch really does make a difference.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler (OP)]

I believe this one is in place because otherwise your weapons are firing at speeds greater than c.

Ah, the proposal is to remove the C restriction.  I really don't think Steve will go for it since it's been a fundamental principal since inception. 

As I said before: If turreting a weapon only adds about 10% to its mass, all weapons will be turreted.  There will be no reason not to do so.  That would be terrible for game balance and ship design diversity. This suggestion would be even worse for game balance than removing the 5 light second range cap.

A much more interesting suggestion was made up thread: Add the ship speed to the turret speed to determine total tracking. It's sensible, realistic and seems balanced.  Also, rounding turrets to 0.1HS rather than 1HS.  These two proposals address the same issues as your ideas, but seem less unbalancing.

I'm not sure you understand how beam weapons tracking speed is determined.  Non turreted beams have max potential of the ships speed or the baseline beam fire control speed, whichever is the greater.  Turrets are the means to use the fire control speeds that are greater than baseline.  With turreted weapons the lesser of either the fire control or the turret is used.  Fighters have specialized fire control available that starts at the 4x the ship type fire control.

Changing the mass requirements for turrets is much less game changing than removing the 5LS range restriction.  Allowing the greater ranges ramps up the short range to-hit numbers by a significant amount.

I think that Steve will be much more willing to change how and where rounding occurs than actually matching the turret speed with the max fire control speed within a tech level.


One reason I posted this as mainly being a TechSystem table change is that those veterans with the database password can make test copies of the database so that they may make similar changes and evaluate the results.

[sloanjh]

As I said before: If turreting a weapon only adds about 10% to its mass, all weapons will be turreted.  There will be no reason not to do so.  That would be terrible for game balance and ship design diversity. This suggestion would be even worse for game balance than removing the 5 light second range cap.

A much more interesting suggestion was made up thread: Add the ship speed to the turret speed to determine total tracking. It's sensible, realistic and seems balanced.  Also, rounding turrets to 0.1HS rather than 1HS.  These two proposals address the same issues as your ideas, but seem less unbalancing.

I'm not sure you understand how beam weapons tracking speed is determined.  Non turreted beams have max potential of the ships speed or the baseline beam fire control speed, whichever is the greater.  Turrets are the means to use the fire control speeds that are greater than baseline.  With turreted weapons the lesser of either the fire control or the turret is used.  Fighters have specialized fire control available that starts at the 4x the ship type fire control.

I don't understand why you think Narmio's post indicates a lack of understanding of tracking speed.  I believe that the point he is trying to make is the following.  Let's say you've got 4000kps turret tracking, and a ship that has a speed of 10000kps, and a fire control with a tracking speed of 16000kps.  This setup will have an overall un-turreted tracking speed of 10000kps, limited by the ship's speed.  In order to get an overall tracking speed that matches that of the fire control, you'd need a 40% turret.  The point is that the first 25 of those 40 percentage points are "wasted" - all they're doing is catching up with the 10000kps ship's speed.  The proposal  changes the trackings speed of a turret to be (ship speed+speed from turret percentage), so in this case you'd only need a 15% turret (with no wasted mass).  Your proposal effectively cuts the turret mass penalty by 4x, so in your case this would be a 10% turret, even for a lumbering (e.g. 4000kps) behemoth.  The differences between the two proposals are 1) that yours is more aggressive (10% vs. 15% in the example, even more so for higher speeds) and 2) the overall tracking speed of the same turret on the behemoth is only 10000kps (4000 speed + 6000 from the turret) - it would require a 30% turret to bring the behemoth up to 16000kps.

What Narmio is saying (I think) is that, with your proposal, it would be VERY cheap to turret the main battery on a BB, so effectively you've removed ship's speed from the tracking speed equation - it's almost no cost to put enough turret mass in to beat the ship's speed.  This means that all turretable beam weapons effectively become dual-use turrets, because the dual-use penalty is too small.  The (ship+turret vice max(ship,turret)) proposal, in contrast enhances the "faster ships have a better chance of hitting fast targets" effect, especially when coupled with bumping up the max possible fighter speed by removing the single-engine restriction (I don't think Steve will go for a change in the power ratio).  This fulfills the stated goal of giving fighters better tracking speed, while having a much smaller effect on slower combatants.  BTW, this "wasted points" issue has been something that's been bothering me for a loooooong time.

So in summary, I think I agree with Narmio:
1)  Turrets add to ship's speed, rather than replacing it for tracking calculations.
2)  Round turret size to the nearest 0.1 (or even 0.05).  Steve said he was planning to rework weapon design, so I assume he'll do this.
3)  Remove the single-engine restrictions from GB/FAC, or even better allow variable mass engine designs (with no max size restriction).

John

PS - It feels like these proposals might be intended to correct a perceived imbalance.  At present, I think it's very difficult to design a fleet that can go up against a missile-armed opponent with only beam point-defense.  Is the goal of your original suggestions to shift that balance so that beam-only PD is an effective strategy?

[UnLimiTeD]

Sloanjh sums it up perfectly, and I agree with all of Narmios proposals.
That'll really allow for more diversity, and it's not even a lot of changes.
Well, I don't know about the tracking, I can't really tell if it's a lot codewise.
Now we just need to be able to buy multiple engine types, and I might need to find a free weekend again to play a real campaign.

[Brian Neumann]

In response to your comment about how hard it is for a pure beam pd to work against missile attacks.  I have done this.  If you put the points that would otherwise be going into missile reasearch then you can do it.  The key is to push the beam tracking speed, and to have all of your ships mount decent point defense.  Either lasers, or mesons in turrets, or alternately lots of 10cm railguns.  I prefer an all laser armament for this as this keeps my weapons research down to 1 track total.  I even turreted my big lasers (35cm iirc) to help in thickening up the point defense.  Also use shields heavily as these will recharge between salvo's.  If their math is off and the use to few missiles to take a ship out then by the time they come back to shooting at you, your shields will be back to full strength.  The only thing that worked against me was being either massivly outmassed, or mass salvo's from box launchers.  In this case they are giving up any future attacks until they get back to a planet for one massive salvo.  Even then the couple of times that this happened I was able to shoot down enough that they didn't kill many of my ships.  I won't say it was an easy setup to play, but it is doable, and has its own rewards - not having to build munitions reduces the cost of my fleet in a big way.

Brian