v2.2.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

@Steve, regarding the new PD mechanics, I have a few questions below mainly regarding the fire concentration limit

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3) Each Beam Fire Control is assigned a Fire Concentration from 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest and 3 the default. If this many shots are already allocated against a missile, this fire control will ignore that missile for targeting purposes.
...
c) For each salvo in the 'Potential Salvo Targets' list that is not ignored, the fire control creates a 'Missile List' of the missiles in that salvo in ascending order of the number of point defence weapons currently assigned to attack that missile. The fire control then cycles through that 'Missile List'.
i) If the missile has already been targeted by a number of point defence weapons equal to or greater than the 'Fire Concentration' value of the Fire Control (see point 3), the missile is ignored (as are all remaining missiles in the salvo).
Does this mean if the defender has more than 10x shots than the incoming missiles, only 10 shots will be fired at each missile regardless? Do you think adding higher limits, or an 'unlimited' option here could be useful? Higher limits may be useful for PD ships utilizing small-sized Gauss cannons as the shots are numerous but each shot has a low hit chance.

The second question is whether it makes sense to limit the 'number of expected/average hits against a missile' instead of the 'number of shots fired at a missile'. I think the former keeps the goal of making leakers and overkilling shots possible and makes better sense due to the following reasons:

• It provides a better idea of 'how many shots are wasted (overkilling shots)' for all beam PD types regardless of their base hit chance. 3 shots from a 66% Gauss turret have way more expected number of hits than 3 shots from a 16% Gauss turret. Whereas 3 expected hits from either weapon are expected to have 2 overkilling shots.
  
• Since it is limiting the expected hits, the list can be shorter and potentially makes the UI less cluttered.
• It works for all incoming missile types regardless of their speed and ECM capabilities. The players do not have to increase this number against better/faster missiles or lower this number against inferior missiles when their shots have a 100% hit chance.
• Players also do not have to reduce this number to 'save' unnecessary shots when their ships get better combat bonuses during the course of a game.

To achieve this, the coding isn't complicated. For each shot, the expected number of hits is its chance to hit, which will be calculated during the PD calculation anyway. Then, instead of recording the number of PD shots currently assigned to attack each missile, record the sum of the chance to hit from the weapons attacking that missile, and sort the missile list in ascending order of the number of expected hits.

The x10 was a quick UI fix. If I find in playtest that is too much of a restriction, I will make it a popup entry with unlimited options instead of a drag-drop.

Someone else suggested the expected hits rather than number of shots. It is perhaps better from a pure maths perspective but isn't as straightforward for players to comprehend when setting up point defence or designing ships so I will stay with shots for the first campaign and see how it goes.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I think it would be cool if each individual warhead hit the same spot on the enemy ship, I think it would allow for more armor penetration per point of damage if you did that. Though I guess then you'd just have each missile have 1-strength warheads that basically converts it into a particle lance.

I've been considered tandem-warheads that do exactly that, like a Javelin, but that would be a different design than the multi-warheads, which are more like a fragmentation shell.

[somebody1212]

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.

Having the initial meson being large and needing to research smaller mesons was one of the ideas that was floated during the initial discussions about the meson rebalance. I'm still quite a fan of it.

If mesons started off at 80cm (25HS) and the meson focusing techs were rebalanced to work more like the particle beam range techs (to avoid these early-tech mesons outranging any of their counterparts), this would solve the main issue that was identified with mesons (namely, that they were too effective compared to other weapons at low tech levels). Early mesons would be massive, power-hungry weapons that still only end up dealing a single point of damage at the end of it, and by the time a faction has developed more compact mesons the other weapons have reached a point where their time-to-kill will be broadly similar to mesons.

[Destragon]

I think it would be cool if each individual warhead hit the same spot on the enemy ship, I think it would allow for more armor penetration per point of damage if you did that. Though I guess then you'd just have each missile have 1-strength warheads that basically converts it into a particle lance.

I've been considered tandem-warheads that do exactly that, like a Javelin, but that would be a different design than the multi-warheads, which are more like a fragmentation shell.

Sounds cool, but would the trade off for the higher penetration just be a MSP cost? Seems like they would be more powerful in comparison to normal warhead ASMs.
Or are you perhaps thinking of implementing a layer of active anti-missile armor for ships that these tandem warhead missiles would be intended to counter?

[Jorgen_CAB]

The x10 was a quick UI fix. If I find in playtest that is too much of a restriction, I will make it a popup entry with unlimited options instead of a drag-drop.

Someone else suggested the expected hits rather than number of shots. It is perhaps better from a pure maths perspective but isn't as straightforward for players to comprehend when setting up point defence or designing ships so I will stay with shots for the first campaign and see how it goes.

In my opinion a probable hit ratio seem much simpler than having to do the math yourself, the game would just assign shots based on a minimum level of total hits at any missile.

[xenoscepter]

 --- As it stands, I think a good way to put Mesons in a good place without too much work in game balance terms is to give bigger mesons more damage pulses. Currently all mesons do one damage with a chance to ignore armor that is rolled per layer.

 --- Bigger mesons could have more "shots", and each of those shots rolled per armor layer separately. However all of the "shots" would have one attack roll, so miss and you still do no damage. Not like railguns where the shots roll to hit independently.

 --- So bigger mesons would have more power, but as they passed through more and more armor, they'd lose power as they go. Thus, to get the most powerful mesons, you'd need both big mesons, the capacitor tech to fire them at a meaningful rate, and the armor retardation tech to allow those big meson shots to maintain energy through enemy armor.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The x10 was a quick UI fix. If I find in playtest that is too much of a restriction, I will make it a popup entry with unlimited options instead of a drag-drop.

Someone else suggested the expected hits rather than number of shots. It is perhaps better from a pure maths perspective but isn't as straightforward for players to comprehend when setting up point defence or designing ships so I will stay with shots for the first campaign and see how it goes.

In my opinion a probable hit ratio seem much simpler than having to do the math yourself, the game would just assign shots based on a minimum level of total hits at any missile.

Yes, but you would still need to do the math. If you have 100 missiles and 300 weapons, how do you know that setting the kill % to (for example) 50% or 100% won't result in only targeting half the missiles with all your shots (because they are hard to hit)?

The shot version means that every missile is targeted at least once and with only basic priority settings you can ensure your most effective weapons are used first and less effective later, so you distribute the shots more effectively and don't have to start adding up the to-hit probabilities in order to pick the right concentration number.

[Iceranger]

The x10 was a quick UI fix. If I find in playtest that is too much of a restriction, I will make it a popup entry with unlimited options instead of a drag-drop.

Someone else suggested the expected hits rather than number of shots. It is perhaps better from a pure maths perspective but isn't as straightforward for players to comprehend when setting up point defence or designing ships so I will stay with shots for the first campaign and see how it goes.

In my opinion a probable hit ratio seem much simpler than having to do the math yourself, the game would just assign shots based on a minimum level of total hits at any missile.

Yes, but you would still need to do the math. If you have 100 missiles and 300 weapons, how do you know that setting the kill % to (for example) 50% or 100% won't result in only targeting half the missiles with all your shots (because they are hard to hit)?

The shot version means that every missile is targeted at least once and with only basic priority settings you can ensure your most effective weapons are used first and less effective later, so you distribute the shots more effectively and don't have to start adding up the to-hit probabilities in order to pick the right concentration number.

I think each of the 3 approaches (limiting total shots, limiting total expected hits, and limiting overall hit ratio) will make sure every missile is targeted at least once, as long as the shot allocation is done in the current way (i.e., one shot to each missile first, if there are remaining shots, rinse and repeat), and the limits are set as upper bounds (to avoid excessive overkills). Setting a

• Limiting total shots: tracks the total number of shots fired on each missile, order this list ascendingly. For each shot assigned, add 1 to the counter.
• Limiting total expected hits: tracks the total expected hits (chance to hit) for shots fired on each missile, order this list ascendingly. For each shot assigned, add the chance to hit of that shot to the counter.
• Limiting overall hit ratio: track the overall chance to miss. This is slightly different, the array starts with all elements of 1, meaning each missile has a 100% chance to leak when no shots are taken. When one shot is allocated to a missile, multiple the (1-chance to hit) to the current record. Order this list descendingly.

I can see the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

• Limiting total shots is the most straightforward to understand, and more useful to plan for the MSP needed for weapon failures. The main disadvantage in my opinion is it must be set up individually for each type of beam weapon to reach the desired effectiveness.
• Limiting the total expected hits is straightforward to plan for 'how many overkilling shots I am willing to spend at most', and it works for all beam weapon types. Its disadvantage is that it is harder to track how many actual shots are limited for each weapon
• Limiting the overall hit ratio gives the best idea of 'what's the minimal chance of each missile leaking when I have more PD than they have missiles', and it works for all beam weapon types. Its main disadvantage is that the number of shots needed (and potentially wasted) to reach the limit will grow exponentially, which is not straightforward.

I love examples so I will give a very simple one Consider 3 incoming missiles, and there are 2 BFCs. BFC1 has 2 shots with an 80% chance to hit, and BFC2 has 24 shots with a 20% chance to hit. In this scenario, typically it is considered the defender has more than enough shots for missiles.

For limiting total shots per missile:

• If the concentration limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 3 (default), then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 12.8%, 12.8%, and 51.2% chance to leak

• If the concentration limit for BFC1 is set to 1 and BFC2 is set to 10, then the missiles will be allocated as (note that in the end there are not enough shots to allocate 10 shots per BFC for BFC2):
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (9 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (9 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (8 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 3.4%, 3.4%, and 16.7% chance to leak

For limiting total expected hit per missile:

• If the total expected hit limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 1, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20% (2 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20% (2 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 16%, 16%, and 32% chance to leak

• If the total expected hit limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 2, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (7 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (7 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (10 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 5.2%, 5.2%, and 10.7% chance to leak

For limiting the overall hit chance against each missile:

• If the overall hit chance limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 80%, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80% (1 shot)
  • Missile 2: 80% (1 shot)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (8 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 20%, 20%, and 16.7% chance to leak

• If the overall hit chance limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 90%, then the missiles will be allocated as (notice the significant increase in the number of shots compared to the last scenario):
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (11 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 8.2%, 8.2%, and 8.6% chance to leak

[MarineAres]

I can't see the Word screenshots detailing the PD changes (on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari), so how will AMMs work if the missiles they're targeting are faster than them? Will they just have to self-destruct after missing the first time because they can't catch up or will the same go-around mechanic still apply?

[Pedroig]

I can't see the Word screenshots detailing the PD changes (on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari), so how will AMMs work if the missiles they're targeting are faster than them? Will they just have to self-destruct after missing the first time because they can't catch up or will the same go-around mechanic still apply?

The only way it logically makes any sense if it acquires a new target further downrange.  However, AMM's which are slower than the missiles they are targeting currently don't have much of a chance of hitting anyway.

[Arwyn]

So, is it just me, or has anyone else lost their enthusiasm for their current campaign cause of all the new goodies coming in the next release? 

[Bremen]

So, is it just me, or has anyone else lost their enthusiasm for their current campaign cause of all the new goodies coming in the next release? 

This is frequently what happens to me, yes. It's also true for Paradox games.

[Nori]

So, is it just me, or has anyone else lost their enthusiasm for their current campaign cause of all the new goodies coming in the next release? 

I've been waiting for a while since there is so much great stuff queued up. 

[Snoman314]

So, is it just me, or has anyone else lost their enthusiasm for their current campaign cause of all the new goodies coming in the next release? 

I've been waiting for a while since there is so much great stuff queued up. 

100%. In fact I think 2.1.1 was only out for a couple of weeks before I hit that point, lol.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The x10 was a quick UI fix. If I find in playtest that is too much of a restriction, I will make it a popup entry with unlimited options instead of a drag-drop.

Someone else suggested the expected hits rather than number of shots. It is perhaps better from a pure maths perspective but isn't as straightforward for players to comprehend when setting up point defence or designing ships so I will stay with shots for the first campaign and see how it goes.

In my opinion a probable hit ratio seem much simpler than having to do the math yourself, the game would just assign shots based on a minimum level of total hits at any missile.

Yes, but you would still need to do the math. If you have 100 missiles and 300 weapons, how do you know that setting the kill % to (for example) 50% or 100% won't result in only targeting half the missiles with all your shots (because they are hard to hit)?

The shot version means that every missile is targeted at least once and with only basic priority settings you can ensure your most effective weapons are used first and less effective later, so you distribute the shots more effectively and don't have to start adding up the to-hit probabilities in order to pick the right concentration number.

I think each of the 3 approaches (limiting total shots, limiting total expected hits, and limiting overall hit ratio) will make sure every missile is targeted at least once, as long as the shot allocation is done in the current way (i.e., one shot to each missile first, if there are remaining shots, rinse and repeat), and the limits are set as upper bounds (to avoid excessive overkills). Setting a

• Limiting total shots: tracks the total number of shots fired on each missile, order this list ascendingly. For each shot assigned, add 1 to the counter.
• Limiting total expected hits: tracks the total expected hits (chance to hit) for shots fired on each missile, order this list ascendingly. For each shot assigned, add the chance to hit of that shot to the counter.
• Limiting overall hit ratio: track the overall chance to miss. This is slightly different, the array starts with all elements of 1, meaning each missile has a 100% chance to leak when no shots are taken. When one shot is allocated to a missile, multiple the (1-chance to hit) to the current record. Order this list descendingly.

I can see the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

• Limiting total shots is the most straightforward to understand, and more useful to plan for the MSP needed for weapon failures. The main disadvantage in my opinion is it must be set up individually for each type of beam weapon to reach the desired effectiveness.
• Limiting the total expected hits is straightforward to plan for 'how many overkilling shots I am willing to spend at most', and it works for all beam weapon types. Its disadvantage is that it is harder to track how many actual shots are limited for each weapon
• Limiting the overall hit ratio gives the best idea of 'what's the minimal chance of each missile leaking when I have more PD than they have missiles', and it works for all beam weapon types. Its main disadvantage is that the number of shots needed (and potentially wasted) to reach the limit will grow exponentially, which is not straightforward.

I love examples so I will give a very simple one Consider 3 incoming missiles, and there are 2 BFCs. BFC1 has 2 shots with an 80% chance to hit, and BFC2 has 24 shots with a 20% chance to hit. In this scenario, typically it is considered the defender has more than enough shots for missiles.

For limiting total shots per missile:

• If the concentration limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 3 (default), then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20% (3 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 12.8%, 12.8%, and 51.2% chance to leak

• If the concentration limit for BFC1 is set to 1 and BFC2 is set to 10, then the missiles will be allocated as (note that in the end there are not enough shots to allocate 10 shots per BFC for BFC2):
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (9 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (9 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (8 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 3.4%, 3.4%, and 16.7% chance to leak

For limiting total expected hit per missile:

• If the total expected hit limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 1, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20% (2 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20% (2 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 16%, 16%, and 32% chance to leak

• If the total expected hit limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 2, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (7 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (7 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (10 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 5.2%, 5.2%, and 10.7% chance to leak

For limiting the overall hit chance against each missile:

• If the overall hit chance limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 80%, then the missiles will be allocated as:
  
  • Missile 1: 80% (1 shot)
  • Missile 2: 80% (1 shot)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (8 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 20%, 20%, and 16.7% chance to leak

• If the overall hit chance limit for BFC1 and BFC2 are both set to 90%, then the missiles will be allocated as (notice the significant increase in the number of shots compared to the last scenario):
  
  • Missile 1: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • Missile 2: 80%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (5 shots)
  • Missile 3: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% (11 shots)
  • In the end, each missile has a chance of 8.2%, 8.2%, and 8.6% chance to leak

I think I still like the third option out of all of those it is the simplest one as long as you understand that getting 100% is most of the time nearly impossible.

There could be three inputs that you use for each fire control in this instance... you set a "minimum" number of shots distributed for each incoming missiles a desired "minimum" hit chance per missile and the lastly a percent of how many shots out of the total assigned to that fire-control it is allowed to use (both minimum and maximum).

This give you a pretty good control over how the fire-control works with relatively little math needing to go on in your head aside from figuring out if you want to restrict the number of shots the fire-control may use.

This also should make it fairly simply to code... if you say that it has to shoot a minimum of "2" times per missile it will do that as first priority, then it will look at the minimum hit probability of there is any shots left. The minimum shots per missiles override both of the other settings, so if you set the fire-control to fire only 50% of it's shots that inly impact when it looks at the minimum hit chance. It should always respect minimum number of shots per missile regardless.

So.. I could set that I want to at least 2 shots on each missile and a minimum hit probability of 80% and that it may use 50/100% (minimum 50% and a max of 100%) of the weapons assigned.

The two shots are respected in combination with other fire-controls in the fleet... the fire control with then use at least half of the shots to reach the minimum hit probability. The fire-control will use at least half the shots even if the minimum to hit probability is reached and is allowed to fire all shots but will stop when to hit probability is reached. Shots above the minimum probability should just be evenly distributed among all missiles with no real regards with "to hit" probability anymore.


This way you can use both these methods... you can say you want to fire 5 shots on each missile and have a hit probability of 10%. Then you effectively are just using the first method in that instance.

I think that with these three simple settings you would mainly have to set it up with intuition rather than using a bunch of math. The minimum to hit probability is something you will only misunderstand once when you put 100% and all shots go into one missile. Also, what I'm trying to avoid here are that I have to tinker with the PD settings for each incoming missiles salvo. I want something that can most of the time be quite generic. Say "2" shots per missile 90% minimum hit probability and 75-100% usage of the fire control. This should then work in 90% of all cases most likely, especially if I have shields to cover any leakers.