v2.2.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[kilo]

The ranged defensive fire is unclear to me. Will it work as final fire but with a manually set engagement range or will it be a new area defense mode? Area defense had the huge disadvantage of missiles being able to pass without an intercept.

[Destragon]

Yeah I wanted to ask about that, too. Will these new PD modes be able to intercept missiles that have travelled a long distance in the last time increment?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The ranged defensive fire is unclear to me. Will it work as final fire but with a manually set engagement range or will it be a new area defense mode? Area defense had the huge disadvantage of missiles being able to pass without an intercept.

It works exactly like final fire, except it can target missiles (that don't exist yet) with stand-off warheads. So if a theoretical laser warhead missile is about to detonate at 50,000 km from the target, ranged point defence will engage before it detonates.

Of course, you could argue about how the point defence would know when to target it. I considered having tactical intel on missiles to figure that out, but the reality is that you would adjust after the first detonation so it seemed like a lot of coding to handle that first-and-only situation. Instead, ranged PD will work from the start. There is no manually set engagement range. It will use the max range of the assigned weapons instead.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Yeah I wanted to ask about that, too. Will these new PD modes be able to intercept missiles that have travelled a long distance in the last time increment?

The distance they travelled doesn't matter. They are engaged just before the point of detonation.

[Droll]

I do not usually post about changes as I find most are good but if the idea is to make non box missiles more useful/better I feel the changes of removing agility is just a flat nerf across the board, combined with fractional warheads which cool are just nerfing lower tech AMMs which are already awful as you need atleast 1 warhead strength to destroy a missile 100% of the time with fractional warheads.

I think this is actually a net buff for early game/low tech AMMs. Fitting a full WH1 into a size-1 missile with the lowest tech levels is very difficult, whereas putting say WH0.3 into a size-1 missile at low tech leaves a lot more room for necessary engine size to get a good interception speed. At the same time, with the removal of Agility we won't have higher-tech AMMs becoming dominant against all missiles beyond a certain point in the tech tree, so AMM vs ASM balance will become fairly constant - AMMs will improve at low tech but never become unbeatable at high tech.

A change to make non-box launcher setups viable is going to have to come from making a change relative to box launchers (such as discussed in the ongoing thread Steve referenced), since regardless of how they are launched every missile is subject to the same mechanics once it leaves the tube.

I had a quick read and i think there a lot of good changes in there, from my perspective I think the biggest interaction that needs changing is that of the alpha salvo wins all, currently missiles vs PD are a zero sum game either you get through PD or you dont, if this interaction can be changed again to more like how honorverse reads id be really happy, have more of an exchange of weapons, more tactics, loading different kinds of warheads, setting how many decoys to fire this kind of thing will make such combat much more enjoyable.

One thing I've often thought about is reworking PD to operate on a basis of engaging every missile (or up to some reasonable upper limit) with some %chance per missile to intercept, and all beam PD functioning on a ship-only basis as CIWS does now. This shifts the "all or nothing" current mechanics into a picture where more CIWS attenuates more missiles but there are always at least a few leakers (which I think more realistically reflects how modern air defense works in practice, for example). I don't think this would work in Aurora though which has some established mechanics that need to remain consistent, and I don't know how AMMs would fit into this picture.

This seems like a great way to render Beam-PD escorts obsolete - I think a compromise solution would be to allow ships to protect eachother using the new area defense mode and then remove the point blank fleet defense mode. But even then at that point it's still probably better to just not bother with dedicated Beam-PD escorts and just have the each individual ship have good defenses.

[Black]

Is the new Ranged Defensive Fire able to fire on single salvo several times if it has enough range and fast enough fire rate?

[Iceranger]

The ranged defensive fire is unclear to me. Will it work as final fire but with a manually set engagement range or will it be a new area defense mode? Area defense had the huge disadvantage of missiles being able to pass without an intercept.

It works exactly like final fire, except it can target missiles (that don't exist yet) with stand-off warheads. So if a theoretical laser warhead missile is about to detonate at 50,000 km from the target, ranged point defence will engage before it detonates.

Of course, you could argue about how the point defence would know when to target it. I considered having tactical intel on missiles to figure that out, but the reality is that you would adjust after the first detonation so it seemed like a lot of coding to handle that first-and-only situation. Instead, ranged PD will work from the start. There is no manually set engagement range. It will use the max range of the assigned weapons instead.

If the assigned weapons have longer range than the BFC, will this firing mode miss all shots by firing at weapon's max range (thus the BFC's max range)?

[nuclearslurpee]

This seems like a great way to render Beam-PD escorts obsolete - I think a compromise solution would be to allow ships to protect eachother using the new area defense mode and then remove the point blank fleet defense mode. But even then at that point it's still probably better to just not bother with dedicated Beam-PD escorts and just have the each individual ship have good defenses.

To be clear: I didn't mean that as a suggestion, as it would require completely redoing beam PD in Aurora from the ground up. It's just an interesting idea to me.

If the assigned weapons have longer range than the BFC, will this firing mode miss all shots by firing at weapon's max range (thus the BFC's max range)?

The firing range is determined by the standoff range of the missiles; your weapons are not firing "as soon as possible" (i.e., at maximum range) but "just in time" (i.e. just at the point where the missile detonates), so I don't think this would be a problem in practice.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Is the new Ranged Defensive Fire able to fire on single salvo several times if it has enough range and fast enough fire rate?

As stated in the previous answer:

"It works exactly like final fire, except it can target missiles (that don't exist yet) with stand-off warheads. So if a theoretical laser warhead missile is about to detonate at 50,000 km from the target, ranged point defence will engage before it detonates."

The beam weapons associated with the fire control don't gain any new abilities or lose any existing ones. They fire on the target once, just before it detonates, exactly as they do now.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The ranged defensive fire is unclear to me. Will it work as final fire but with a manually set engagement range or will it be a new area defense mode? Area defense had the huge disadvantage of missiles being able to pass without an intercept.

It works exactly like final fire, except it can target missiles (that don't exist yet) with stand-off warheads. So if a theoretical laser warhead missile is about to detonate at 50,000 km from the target, ranged point defence will engage before it detonates.

Of course, you could argue about how the point defence would know when to target it. I considered having tactical intel on missiles to figure that out, but the reality is that you would adjust after the first detonation so it seemed like a lot of coding to handle that first-and-only situation. Instead, ranged PD will work from the start. There is no manually set engagement range. It will use the max range of the assigned weapons instead.

If the assigned weapons have longer range than the BFC, will this firing mode miss all shots by firing at weapon's max range (thus the BFC's max range)?

PD weapons won't fire if they have zero chance to hit - this is the same as all beam weapons now.

[paolot]

I don't understand...
How can my ships know the point at which the enemy missiles (will) detonate?
Do they sense/intel the missiles?
If so, how?
ECM and ECCM of the launcher and/or of the missiles don't they protect the missiles, distracting the sensors?

[Droll]

Is the new Ranged Defensive Fire able to fire on single salvo several times if it has enough range and fast enough fire rate?

As stated in the previous answer:

"It works exactly like final fire, except it can target missiles (that don't exist yet) with stand-off warheads. So if a theoretical laser warhead missile is about to detonate at 50,000 km from the target, ranged point defence will engage before it detonates."

The beam weapons associated with the fire control don't gain any new abilities or lose any existing ones. They fire on the target once, just before it detonates, exactly as they do now.

So using area fire to have a single dual-purpose weapon fire multiple times is a thing of the past now?

[KriegsMeister]

Would it be possible to have a weapon on ranged defensive fire, and the next immediate 5sec tick switch to Point-blank and fire again (if the weapon/capacitor reload is 5secs or less)?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Why not leave area fire in for those of us that use it from time to time... I mean it would not hurt the game balance in any way and the mechanic is already there?

In my multi-faction games I often intercepted long range slow mirv missiles with beam ships/FAC or fighters... that will not even be possible anymore as you can't hit a missile unless it is about to strike something unless you use an AMM. I really think you should be able to fire on a missile even if it is far away from striking anything with beam weapons.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Would it be possible to have a weapon on ranged defensive fire, and the next immediate 5sec tick switch to Point-blank and fire again (if the weapon/capacitor reload is 5secs or less)?

Yes, although you could just leave it on ranged and get the same effect.