Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Jorgen_CAB]

When you design a missile launcher there could be a "hybrid" option that is 10% larger then normal. That means you can load several missiles of the same type in one launcher and launch them separately as if in their own launcher. This way you could make a size 8 launcher and having launching 8x size 1 or 2x size 4 missiles if you want to.

I think it would be an interesting option to have.

[lumporr]

...40k ground forces theory crafting...

Bonus Generic Hit Chance Capability for Ground Forces

Per the post I made over here, and after a cursory search for similar suggestions, I'd like to propose some sort of appropriately expensive bonus Hit Chance modifier capability for ground forces across all terrains, as perhaps the last part of the Infantry Genetic Enhancement tech line. I am aware that the current meta is A Lot Of Dudes With Machine Guns, and that this would make that strategy perhaps even more dominant on paper after the requisite research, but I think it would go a long way in the representation of a special, elite force, alongside some horrific x8 (or more? less?) cost modifier to prevent wanton abuse. Furthermore, if the capability was not infantry only, I'd feel much better about the usefulness of a UHV superweapon or something to that effect, though I feel pretty strongly that the proposed tech would need to be gated behind some other capability.

Right now, there's many options for making a given unit more survivable - which indirectly contributes to overall deadliness given the lack of reduction in active forces over time - but there is no way to make a given unit directly more deadly (outside of terrain capabilites which usually apply under very specific circumstances). This sounds like something that is true for a good reason, but I'd love to know how bad it actually gets. The precedent for increased hit chance already exists with terrain modifiers as metioned, so it might not actually be too crazy unless one started stacking them all. If any proficient DB modders are out there, I'd love to test this capability out, but lack the know-how. Has anybody tried anything like this before?

Alternatively, and I'm even more sure that this has been suggested and that there are even better reasons to not do this (perhaps difficulty of implementation with regards to current balance?), but overkill effects would also go a long way in mitigating the feeling of heavy hitters being impotent.

Tangentially, does anyone know of actual numeric examples of Astartes kill rates/ratios? I know that it'd likely vary wildly between authors, but still, real numbers would be nice. My goal here is to be able to percieve a solid, meaningful difference between a 250kt battlegroup and a 250kt battlegroup plus a few ~2kt companies of Astartes, but maybe my initial assumption about Astarte potency is simply out of sync with the fiction. Per my original post, in ideal circumstances, an 8kt group of my Astartes would provide an equivalent of ~128kt generic troops. Does this feel sufficient to most people? I go back and forth. Mostly, I just want to do tests...

[nuclearslurpee]

Tangentially, does anyone know of actual numeric examples of Astartes kill rates/ratios? I know that it'd likely vary wildly between authors, but still, real numbers would be nice. My goal here is to be able to percieve a solid, meaningful difference between a 250kt battlegroup and a 250kt battlegroup plus a few ~2kt companies of Astartes, but maybe my initial assumption about Astarte potency is simply out of sync with the fiction. Per my original post, in ideal circumstances, an 8kt group of my Astartes would provide an equivalent of ~128kt generic troops. Does this feel sufficient to most people? I go back and forth. Mostly, I just want to do tests...

There is no hard number because it varies wildly between authors/sources, but from what reading I've done I would consider the Astartes power armor to be roughly on par with standard tank armor (so in Aurora, 4x armor), so I think we could assume the same scaling for HP to keep things simple (4x HP). The standard weapons are nominally considered to be equivalent to the crew-served Heavy Bolters that the Guard uses, IIRC, so canonically you'd be using an INF+CAP or INF+HCAP unit class with the same basic killing power as the normal weapons (though I'm sure there's lots of room for fudging with tech levels if you want an even more powerful force).

With 4x Armor and 4x HP you do get that approximately 16x improvement in combat ability per ton (256x survivability reduced by 1:16 tonnage ratio per Lanchester's Square Law). Both of these could easily be added to the DB as techs, and personally I wouldn't mind expanding both of those tech lines anyways (maybe 2.5x, 3x, 4x for armor and 2.5x, 3.2x, 4x for HP, keeping in line with current tech progressions) to give something more to the late-game for ground units.

[papent]

I love the idea of a ground force bonus accuracy modifier tech line.

I think a system with more tech lines for ground forces would be neat and allow empires to have distinction with their ground unit organization with the options to specialize in heavy armor UHVs or glass cannons LVs.
Additionally decoupling of weapon / armor strength would allow for more incremental scaling in ground combat. 

Ground Force Suggestion - New ground forces tech lines.

• Ground Unit Weapon Strength - increase empire weapon strength
• Ground Unit Armor Strength - increase empire armor strength
• Ground Unit Countermeasures - (To-hit modifier) decrease ground unit classes chance to be hit, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Toughness - (Hit Points) increase ground unit classes hit points, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all units types
• Ground Unit Entrenchment - (Fortification) increase ground unit max fortification level, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Armament Munitions Improvement - (Supply Use) decrease ground unit weapons supply use, possible a tech line per weapon class or a standard % decrease for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Penetration Improvement - (Penetration) increase ground unit weapons penetration, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Rate of Fire Improvement - (Shots) increase ground unit weapons shots, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Capability Training- decrease cost modifier for additional ground unit capabilities

~Snip~

When you design a missile launcher there could be a "hybrid" option that is 10% larger then normal. That means you can load several missiles of the same type in one launcher and launch them separately as if in their own launcher. This way you could make a size 8 launcher and having launching 8x size 1 or 2x size 4 missiles if you want to.

I think it would be an interesting option to have.

Agreed that it should be a cost to a launcher that can handle multipacks perhaps 5% increase in size and 5% increase in cost/minerals?
What did you think of the options I've listed for Firing Modes?

[QuakeIV]

Its honestly pretty standard for nato box launchers to support quad or octuple stacking by default.  They are not MIRV they just put multiple missiles into the box in a 'bus' that holds the missiles and handles firing them individually.  So there is space inefficiency but they aren't constrained to 1 missile per tube or 'all at once'.

[papent]

Its honestly pretty standard for nato box launchers to support quad or octuple stacking by default.  They are not MIRV they just put multiple missiles into the box in a 'bus' that holds the missiles and handles firing them individually.  So there is space inefficiency but they aren't constrained to 1 missile per tube or 'all at once'.

I was thinking something like this:

~Snip~

My suggested mechanic to have something similar to this for Aurora is to have smaller missiles may be assigned to the larger launchers as suggested by GrandNord.

• A Multi-packed Missile launcher utilize firing mode options (similar to the PD mode options) such as X missile per launch or launch all loaded missiles (with the default option being launch all loaded missiles).
• A loaded launcher with missiles remaining rate of fire could be every 5 seconds or perhaps the racial ROF for whatever size missile is packed inside divided by 2 rounded up to the nearest 5 seconds.
• Reloading multi-Pack Missile launcher is based on launcher size and perhaps with a extra delay of 1 second per missile rounded to the nearest 5 seconds.

Plus the additional suggestion by Jorgen_CAB to have minor size and cost increase as this launcher would be more sophisticated.

Combining all these great ideas: Would create a missile launcher that could launch 1 missile at a time, double-taps, or burst launch everything in the launcher. Flexibility for a increase in cost and size.

[nuclearslurpee]

A few small number tweaks that I think would clean up a few smaller "balance issues" and make certain options more feasible:

(1) Target: Armour tech line
Current values: (1 | 2 | 3) | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 25 | 30 | 36 | 45
Suggested values: (1 | 2 | 3) | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12.5 | 16 | 20 | 25 | 32 | 40 | 50 | 64
Rationale: Armor as it stands right now falls off badly against shields in the mid-to-late game, in addition to the strategic benefits of shields it has been shown across the forum by now that shields start to become tactically superior around Epsilon tech level. This change puts the armor tech levels in line with the typical tech progression used in most tech lines and makes armor a little bit more competitive against shields (shields cap out at about 50% to 55% per-HS strength compared to armor, which still leans in favor of shields but much less so than currently). Additionally, the base Duranium Armour tech annoys me right now since for ground units the baseline armor and attack levels (4 and 5) do not match, so I fixed it.
Note: This would also require changing the ground unit attack tech levels to match the armor levels, or else making GU attack its own tech line (which I would strongly recommend).

(2) Target: Meson Armour Retardation tech line
Current values: 50% | 40% | 32% | 28% | 24% | 20% | 16% | 14% | 12% | 10% | 8.5% | 7%
Suggested values: 50% | 40% | 32% | 25% | 20% | 16% | 12.5% | 10% | 8% | 6.25% | 5% | 4%
Rationale: Mesons need help. This change brings the retardation tech into the same progression used by most other tech lines, improves relative meson effectiveness as tech level improves (a worthwhile return for such an expensive research direction with three techs required!), and keeps pace with the armor changes above if accepted.

(3) Target: Improved Personal Weapons (PWI) ground unit component
Current values: AP 1.25, attack 1.0, GSP 1.25
Suggested values: AP 1.25, attack 1.25, GSP 1.6
Rationale: Makes the PWI component more interesting and distinct from the standard PW component, both for flavor and as compensation for the reduced volume of fire from using PWI over PW.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm not 100% sure that you need to change armour effectiveness, you need to consider the extraordinary amount of research you need to get those levels of shields. You can't just look at "level" of shield technology and compare as it they are equal just because they have the same cost individually. You MUST research armour technology regardless and almost all the time armour will be one or two levels above shields for the better part of most games.

Armour also give you better ground unit defence as well, shields don't. Armour is really important for smaller ships such as fighters/FAC where shields make no difference at all.

So... in my opinion the comparison between shields and armour is not really accurate. You need to research armour regardless for many different reasons, shields is not even necessary to research at all and you can possibly skip that for researching something else or even better armour technology.

[Platys51]

New component: atmospheric thrusters.
Gives ship equivalent of 1 cargo shuttle, designed as hyperdrive, based on total size of the craft, remaining tiny for fighter sized crafts, but quickly scaling up after.

Fixes fighter transport ships, removes arbitrary limit.

Quick and dirty way to implement: just make it size 0, 1 or 5t module researched at beginning that gives 1 cargo shuttle but throws error if above 500t or 2 in design.

Would be nice to have fighter sized cargo bays to go with it.
1-2hs

[Jorgen_CAB]

New component: atmospheric thrusters.
Gives ship equivalent of 1 cargo shuttle, designed as hyperdrive, based on total size of the craft, remaining tiny for fighter sized crafts, but quickly scaling up after.

Fixes fighter transport ships, removes arbitrary limit.

Quick and dirty way to implement: just make it size 0, 1 or 5t module researched at beginning that gives 1 cargo shuttle but throws error if above 500t or 2 in design.

Would be nice to have fighter sized cargo bays to go with it.
1-2hs

Fighters already can land on planets and fly in the atmosphere of planets. That is also why you can build fighters with fighter factories on the surface of planets.

[xenoscepter]

New component: atmospheric thrusters.
Gives ship equivalent of 1 cargo shuttle, designed as hyperdrive, based on total size of the craft, remaining tiny for fighter sized crafts, but quickly scaling up after.

Fixes fighter transport ships, removes arbitrary limit.

Quick and dirty way to implement: just make it size 0, 1 or 5t module researched at beginning that gives 1 cargo shuttle but throws error if above 500t or 2 in design.

Would be nice to have fighter sized cargo bays to go with it.
1-2hs

Fighters already can land on planets and fly in the atmosphere of planets. That is also why you can build fighters with fighter factories on the surface of planets.

 --- Currently bugged.

[nuclearslurpee]

I'm not 100% sure that you need to change armour effectiveness, you need to consider the extraordinary amount of research you need to get those levels of shields. You can't just look at "level" of shield technology and compare as it they are equal just because they have the same cost individually. You MUST research armour technology regardless and almost all the time armour will be one or two levels above shields for the better part of most games.

I'm not sure that it's quite correct to claim that armor will be 1-2 levels above shields. There are a couple of factors to consider here: one is that you do not necessarily need to research the full set of shield techs to get the benefits versus armor, for example just researching the main tech + generator size will cost you about 150% to 160% of whatever the equivalent armor tier costs, the recharge tech can lag behind in many cases as having fast recharge for shields is not really essential, and the tactical benefits of shields over armor are reason enough beyond about Epsilon tier. The other factor is that since shield tech is split across several techs, it's not quite correct to compare based only on pure RPs required as you can have multiple DS scientists working on the tech lines. In fact, for me this is the normal situation since I use the reduced scientist admin option in all my games so I maintain a large number of scientists who all need something to do. Not all players use this option, of course, but there are plenty of other reasons why players would have multiple DS scientists needing things to do - leveraging Ancient Constructs for example, or on reduced research rate games it is possible for lab construction to outpace research rate quite easily and then you have a surplus of labs.

Note that even with a buff to armor, shields retain a slight tactical superiority (>50% per-HS effectiveness vs. armor) at "equal" tech level, and of course all the usual strategic benefits. The idea here is simply that using armor instead of shields at higher tech levels shouldn't be a clearly inferior decision unless the enemy uses mesons (which... LOL). Currently you can be 1-2 levels advanced in armor and shields are still tactically superior at mid-high tech levels, because they approach ~75% per-HS efficiency versus armor due to Size^(3/2) scaling.

[QuakeIV]

Am I the only one who likes when the optimal strategy changes with technology, instead of staying flat and choices essentially being flavor for sake of 'all options being equally viable'.  It seems like the only retort to that is 'well with these changes its still slightly different its merely much more similar now'.

[nuclearslurpee]

Am I the only one who likes when the optimal strategy changes with technology, instead of staying flat and choices essentially being flavor for sake of 'all options being equally viable'.  It seems like the only retort to that is 'well with these changes its still slightly different its merely much more similar now'.

I prefer when there is not a clear "optimal" strategy at all, but each strategy is useful for different situations and doctrines rather than one strategy being optimal in the large majority or even totality of cases. This doesn't mean every option should be equally viable, for example even with my suggestion for armor changes shields will still remain superior in general, but the choice to prefer armor would have enough going for it that it can be viable in a good enough range of scenarios to create an interesting decision space that I don't feel exists currently.

[QuakeIV]

Seems like a flat buff doesn't really have any of the nuance you claim it does.