Range: Beam??

[Prospective]

Ok, here's something I'm confused about. I'm probably confused because I'm trying to apply real world physics to this game, which I shouldn't, but can't help myself.

 

Regarding beam type weapons, why do they degrade over longer distance? I understand that light beams to spread out over distance. But, a COHERENT beam such as a laser should not spread out too much over great amounts of distance. AND, it seems that a high tech weapon system should be able to "focus" the beam in order to increase it's coherence at some nominal distance, so it seems that whether you are at deploc 1 or deploc 12, the damage rating should stay relatively the same.

 

Even a stronger argument for projectile type weapons... one of that Newton guy's laws, something about body in motion keeping it's motion and all that... Seems that damage from a projectile should have NO degradation over distance, that all of the energy imparted to the projectile by the time it reaches the end of the "barrel" should be there and waiting for transferrance at the point of impact.

 

Here's another question... how do "spinal" type weapons degrade at various deploc's? It seems to me that if we accept the game logic of degrading performance over distance, then the rate of degradation should decrease do to increased energy that larger type weapons can generate... or that degradation should not begin until getting to a farther out deploc (say no degradation to damage until reaching deploc 3-5 ranges and further out for higher Mk systems).

 

Thoughts or comments?

[hobknob]

You are right. You are thinking too much. Quit it right now. Weapon ranges have nothing to do with making sense. They are a game artifact created by PEte to make things balance.

 

[ali-t-akua]

While I agree with Hobknob that this game does not necessarily follow the laws of physics, there will be energy loss even with a coherent beam of energy due to scattering at the wave lengths of transmission especially as I would assume that the distances between DepLocs is large.

[General Miles Avatar]

And add that while projectiles fired out a weapons designed to fire in space may impart some

insane velocity to the expelled projectile it will not even come close to the speed of 'beam' weapons. Now you could assume newtonian physics are in play and they arent (at least I dont think they are) and you could given incredibly advanced targetting computers and sensors

acurately predict the location of a given target and blast em with those 'dumb' projectiles. I

remember a book I read long ago called Ender's Game where Terran ships used Guass type weapons with devastating affect by these means.

 

In the end you cant think of SNOTE combat like that as Hobnob pointed out. You will just fry your

brain.

[T'Lariss]

Hobby is 'of course' correct. the whole weapon range thing is all designed around play balance, but........ you guys are thinking about this all wrong. It has nothing to do with how effective the weapon is at range, it is all about how easy/hard it is to hit a target at range. Simply the closer something is the easier it is to get a solid hit on it. Trying to hit even a target as large as a battle moon at 2 lightseconds is problimatic even with very good computers, especially in the heat of battle where ships are dodeging and doing all they can to target an enemy ship and get missed by that ships weapon systems. Anyway something to think about

[ShadowKitsune]

I thought that weapon type and DepLoc affected the 'strength' of a weapon in SN:ROTE. That is, for example, weapons classified as short-range on a ship at DepLoc10 don't hit as "hard" as they would if the ship was at DepLoc1. Or am I thinking of a different thread?

 

(I'm not even going to get into mind-numbing mathematics of "dog-fighting" in real space. I'm happy in my semi-Newtonian space opera universe, thank you very much. Lumeniferous aether, anyone? )

 

-SK

[hobknob]

The strength of a weapon is the amount of damage that you inflict at best range for the weapon. Ranges can reduce that damage by as much as 90% so a beam weapon fired from deploc 10 will likely have a max damage of 10% of the normal strength of the weapon. This is then further reduced by the defensive systems found on the defenders ships like deflectors, ECM etc.. Then you get your shields that suck up damage and finally you have armor that absorbs damage. Armor damage is permanent and will have to be repaired before the next battle. This is accomplished by repairing the ship or having the ship sit around for a while until the autorepair takes care of the damage.

 

hope that helps.

 

 

BTW - There is no way to monitor the autorepair or to tell which ship is damaged if you have more than 1 of a design. We also don't any real idea what the various levels of damage actually mean.

 

Edited June 9, 2005 by hobknob

[Pandaemonium]

As ali indicated, coherent beams scatter. In the 60's, they shone a laser on the moon (roughly a quarter million miles away; OK, very roughly) and it ended up a quarter-mile across, roughly a 1-in-1,000,000 spread. At that time, therefor, there would have been a diminishment of the damage per square area by a factor of approx. four for each doubling of range.

 

A round's attacks probably do not consist of a single laser pulse, or missile, or fighter run, but of several, and, as T'Lariss points out, the damage done is not just that of a successful hit, but is also affected by the proportion of attacks in that round which actually hit.