v2.2.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Destragon]

Considering almost every weapon seems to have gotten a sort of rework this update, are you considering something for railguns, microwaves, mesons, too?

[kilo]

I do not think sub 1 damage beam weapons would do too well, as they would have a significantly lower range than the higher range versions. That would make them completely useless against missiles with a laser warhead.

Considering almost every weapon seems to have gotten a sort of rework this update, are you considering something for railguns, microwaves, mesons, too?

I am hoping for a few larger caliber techs so that you do end up with the same racial ground attack values regardless of the beam weapon tech you choose. That would mean higher damage for railguns. What would you do about the other two? They are very niche, as one is sort of an EWAR weapon that fries sensors and fire controls for good. The other is kind of irrelevant as it does not ignore armor well enough or cause enough damage to be valid for me. Mesons were problematic though, as they were quite formidable as a secondary battery in VB6 ignoring all defenses. Maybe it could have an increased rate of fire like gauss canons.

What I would love to see is the option to mount all guns except spinals and lances into turrets when it comes to using them as STOs.

[Zap0]

Does the half size half cost now also mean that carronades are even cheaper to increase your ground unit weapons strength as it is based on the focal strength?

This always was sort of a weird interaction with ground force unit offensive values.

Personally I think that ground unit weapons and armour strength should have their own tech lines. It is generally fine when they interact with armour as you really need that technology but weapon techs have quite varied costs and sort of incentivise you to focus on one type and certainly push you toward Carronades to get an early good weapon penetration value on your ground forces.

I like that Carronades give you an option to invest in your ground force strength more cheaply than by researching heavier beam weapons. Gives a niche to the carronade tech line that they're otherwise missing. Plasma weapons are great on the ground, but kinda crummy in space.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

So does the new carronade change mean that we can have reduced-size carronades? 

No, as they are half size already

However, after considering it overnight I see no reason they can't have a spinal version, so I have added that to the post.

Does the half size half cost now also mean that carronades are even cheaper to increase your ground unit weapons strength as it is based on the focal strength?

This always was sort of a weird interaction with ground force unit offensive values.

Personally I think that ground unit weapons and armour strength should have their own tech lines. It is generally fine when they interact with armour as you really need that technology but weapon techs have quite varied costs and sort of incentivise you to focus on one type and certainly push you toward Carronades to get an early good weapon penetration value on your ground forces.

It is now more expensive to use carranodes as cheap ground forces tech, because their research costs have increased.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I do not think sub 1 damage beam weapons would all too well, as they would have a significantly lower range than the higher range versions. That would make them completely useless against missiles with a laser warhead.

Considering almost every weapon seems to have gotten a sort of rework this update, are you considering something for railguns, microwaves, mesons, too?

I am hoping for a few larger caliber techs so that you do end up with the same racial ground attack values regardless of the beam weapon tech you choose. That would mean higher damage for railguns. What would you do about the other two? They are very niche, as one is sort of an EWAR weapon that fries sensors and fire controls for good. The other is kind of irrelevant as it does not ignore armor well enough or cause enough damage to be valid for me. Mesons were problematic though, as they were quite formidable as a secondary battery in VB6 ignoring all defenses. Maybe it could have an increased rate of fire like gauss canons.

What I would love to see is the option to mount all guns except spinals and lances into turrets when it comes to using them as STOs.

If I did create energy weapons with less than 1 point of damage, they would only be viable as point-blank point defence weapons.

I won't be adding other weapons to turrets as no one would use anything except railguns.

I will do something with mesons at some point, but I am not in any rush. In Traveller (the source of the original meson mechanics), they are very large and often buried underground for planetary defence. One option might be to give them something close to the old mechanics, but make them very large and give them some defensive bonus when located on planets. That would make planets a very dangerous place for large ships to approach, so it might encourage more skirmish battles to take out planetary defences rather than just moving in with large, shield-protected battleships.

[Warer]

What if one of the cannonballs from the Man of War scores a direct hit and into the thermal exhaust port of the future Battleship?

"Don"t be too proud of this technological terror you"ve constructed"

The ship is down an exhaust port then xD

Also I really like how the missile and PD changes are looking, even if I don't really get the PD changes fully.

[Vivalas]

One thing I like about this last batch of changes is it seems easier now to protect lone ships against missile spam, specifically precursor spam. Like, point defense used to be a "commit to it" or else type deal, now it seems if you up-armor your survey ships just a bit, and give em decoys and some basic ECM missile jamming, they have a somewhat significant chance of not always being shredded by AMMs. Would it be optimal to protect them at all? Not sure, but it's certainly a nice RP thing if you want to look after your troops. That and it seems a lot of players measure utility in a hard cost / tonnage vs damage / protection metric where there's other softer metrics that can mean more, like not having to keep retool a shipyard if you lose a bunch of survey ships, for example. (Or if you follow Steve's "contact" house rules, which I do, it means you get to know right away that there's a hostile presence in a system rather than having to wait for another ship to stumble into the region).
"

[Bremen]

If ship decoys work similar to missile decoys in that they can absorb an infinite number of missiles in a single increment, then are gone forever, it's also a nice counter to mass box launcher salvos. It might even be worth it to use high rate of fire launchers and spread your targeting to different ships, which were always bad tactics before.

It might take some time to get the balance right but I'm excited for what sounds like a whole new combat meta in the new version.

[xenoscepter]

 --- 2.2 seems to be turning into 3.0

[SpaceMarine]

Quick question steve to what extent will NPRs/AI use these changes specifically regarding missiles, am concerned they wont and this will significantly reduce the usefulness of the changes, furthermore Id love to see changes to the AI ship templates perhaps people can submit ship templates on the forum for you to grab, maybe even a difficulty option to use harder ship templates, improvements to the AI using more of the changes of C# i feel should be looked into.

[Bremen]

Quick question steve to what extent will NPRs/AI use these changes specifically regarding missiles, am concerned they wont and this will significantly reduce the usefulness of the changes, furthermore Id love to see changes to the AI ship templates perhaps people can submit ship templates on the forum for you to grab, maybe even a difficulty option to use harder ship templates, improvements to the AI using more of the changes of C# i feel should be looked into.

I've always really liked the idea of moddable/user submitted AI design "styles", though I realize it's probably more complicated than it sounds since the AI itself would have to understand how to use the ships properly. So you couldn't just toss in a design for a cloaked missile ship or railgun fighter based point defense fleet and expect the AI to actually know how to use them.

That said, Aurora tends to have some pretty dedicated fans so I suspect even if it was moddable ship design templates with no AI changes we'd get some creative solutions that worked with the current AI.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Quick question steve to what extent will NPRs/AI use these changes specifically regarding missiles, am concerned they wont and this will significantly reduce the usefulness of the changes, furthermore Id love to see changes to the AI ship templates perhaps people can submit ship templates on the forum for you to grab, maybe even a difficulty option to use harder ship templates, improvements to the AI using more of the changes of C# i feel should be looked into.

The new missile changes have already been added to the new NPR missile design AI.

There isn't really such a thing as ship templates for NPRs. There is a table for automated designs in the DB but they need code as well.

Also, please don't change the titles of threads like this one, or the other main threads such as suggestions. I've changed it back with this post.

[nuclearslurpee]

--- 2.2 seems to be turning into 3.0

Don't give Steve any ideas!! 

[Serina]

I also thin it would be more fun if jamming actually was jamming and not some way to masking you like stealth, that is something very different.  It also would make throwing all eggs in one basket type of attacks become dangerous as you might get jammed and waste an entire salvo of missiles.

If it can be solved with how they AI operates in the game then I like for jamming to be an of/off thing that also emit EM signals.  You also could fit missiles with EM sensors to hit jamming sources too. 

If we then had the ability to lock on to either EM and Thermal sources and hit them we would walk around in the circle and be back the first step again.  An EM sensor missile should then have a chance to intercept any jamming ships.  If these sensors are expensive enough you can't equip them to just every missile.

This would then make missile combat more realistic and in my opinion fun. . .  but I do understand that the AI probably would suffer here.

I mean you can already design a missile with an EM sensor that would go after any shield ships or anything with an active sensor array.  All you would need to do is add code that means that having a jammer on means generating an EM signature.  That said, I think there's something to be said about making things a bit. . .  too complicated? Because IRL, you would then start working on tech like Home on Jam or Electro-optical guidance, or wake homing. 

I think however that It should be considered whether these decoys will actually destroy the missiles or if missiles with either retargeting systems and/or local terminal guidance (EM/TH) Might be able to search for a new target after missing, though they would need to wait until the next time increment to attempt their reattack, meaning that the decoys aren't perfect but will allow you to divert any missiles that fall for it long enough for guns to recharge.  If nothing else, ship based decoys should require a sizable usage of MSP, or require something in order to avoid them being infinite.  There is after all a real risk of people just ignoring including PD and stacking ship decoys and shields to deal with missiles after all.  And let's not forget there are cases of friendly fire happening due to CIWS firing at chaff clouds released by friendly ships. 

[Snoman314]

--- 2.2 seems to be turning into 3.0

Don't give Steve any ideas!! 

Yeah, I'm super conflicted. On one hand, stoked about the announced changes, excited by the pace of changes right now, also really gutted it's now probably going to be ages to be able to play all the new features ¯\_(ツ)_/¯