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A new battle to ponder


WKE235
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Alright -- Here is a recent battle between the Concordium and NSI forces. I specifically designed the Medusa ship in this battle (with a Base Fire Control of 31 and over 120,000+ firepower to distribute in the pulses) to test out more of the battle process in the game. Here are the results (I have rearranged all of the game data for what is easier access and viewing, or so I think).

 

ON the side of the Concordium

1 FF Medusa (Frigate - 42,400 tons) --- [integrity: 35,040]

Fire Control: Phenomenal .. Maneuverability: Moderate ..

Sensors: Oblivious .. Shields: None .. Structural Integrity: Average

150 Battle Imaging System (Bridge = 1,350,000)

7 Heavy P-Cannon (Plasma: 123,200)

68 Mk I Fusion Engine (Maneuverability: 1.603)

5 Mk I Medium Range Sensor (Sensors: 0.058)

1 Mk II Nuclear Jump Drive, 6,000 Fuel Tankage

 

ON the side of the NSI

1 SCA Mutt (Strike Cruiser - 725,000 tons) --- [integrity: 4,717,500] --- [shields: 150,000]

Fire Control: Fair .. Maneuverability: Lumbering ..

Sensors: Oblivious .. Shields: Feeble .. Structural Integrity: Durable

5 Battle Imaging System, 10 Mk II Computer System (Bridge = 85,000)

2,386 2.5cm Needler (Projectile: 104,984)

518 Light Magnetic Grapple, 13 Medium Magnetic Grapple (Gravitonic: 184,800)

8 Mk I Lightning Arc Generator (Energy Discharge: 8,800)

9 Light Sonic Disintegrator, 112 Light Stun Beam (Sonic: 67,760)

500 Light Thermal Lance (Plasma: 132,000)

74 Mk II Interceptor Missile, 9 Mk II Long Lance Torpedo (Missile: 54,800)

1 Type A Energy Web Projector (EnergyAbsorber: 11,000)

10,000 Laser CIDS, 40 Mk I Plasma Pulse CIDS (Point Defense: 0.812)

55 Mk II Short Range Sensor (Sensors: 0.037)

500 Mk I Force Shield [shields: 150,000]

25,000 Ablative Armor Coating (Reflective Coating: 0.344)

11 Fuel Shuttle, 25,500 Fuel Tankage,

1 Mk I Nuclear Engine (Maneuverability: So low not even listed)

1 Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive,

200,000 Selenite Battle Weave, 9,000 Standard Hull Plate,

 

5 CA Pooch (Heavy Cruiser - 500,000 tons) --- [integrity: 2,490,700] --- [shields: 210,000]

Fire Control: Superior .. Maneuverability: Lumbering ..

Sensors: Oblivious .. Shields: Feeble .. Structural Integrity: Durable

10 Battle Imaging System, 20 Mk II Computer System (Bridge = 170,000)

200 20cm Gauss Gun (Projectile: 352,000)

75 Heavy Beam Laser (Coherent Beam: 495,000)

100 Light P-Cannon (Plasma: 110,000)

5,000 Laser CIDS (Point Defense: 0.500)

25 Mk I Medium Range Sensor, 25 Mk II Short Range Sensor (Sensors: 0.050)

300 Mk II Force Shield [shields: 210,000]

50,000 Ablative Armor Coating (Reflective Coating: 1.000)

100 Mk I Deflector (Deflectors: 0.100)

9,300 Fuel Tankage

1 Mk I Nuclear Engine (Maneuverability: So low not even listed)

1 Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive

100,000 Selenite Battle Weave

 

5 CL Pup E (Light Cruiser - 200,000 tons) --- [integrity: 315,000]

Fire Control: Minimal .. Maneuverability: Lumbering ..

Sensors: Blind .. Shields: None .. Structural Integrity: Sturdy

2 Mk I Computer System (Bridge = 2,000)

105 10cm Autocannon (Projectile: 11,550)

300 Light Beam Laser (Coherent Beam: 66,000)

105 Light Thermal Lance (Plasma: 27,720)

21 Mk I Short Range Sensor (Sensors: 0.026)

5 Fuel Shuttle, 15,000 Fuel Tankage

20,000 Reflective Armor Coating (Reflective Coating: 0.500)

1 Mk I Nuclear Engine (Maneuverability: 0.001)

1 Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive

65,000 Standard Hull Plate

3 Type A Defense Screen (Screens: 0.075)

 

45 CO Dog Meat (Corvette - 1,000 tons) --- [integrity: 800]

Fire Control: Minimal .. Maneuverability: Clumsy ..

Sensors: Blind .. Shields: None .. Structural Integrity: Average

60 Laser CIDS (Point Defense: 3.031)

200 Fuel Tankage

1 Mk I Nuclear Engine (Maneuverability: 0.300)

1 Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive

 

 

 

Let the battle begin

 

Fleet Statistics

 

Concordium Fleet

 

Total tonnage: 42,400

Base Fire Control: 31 [1,350,000 bridge]

1 FF Medusa - Deploy Location 7

 

NSI Fleet

 

Total tonnage: 4,270,000

Base Fire Control: 1 [945,000 bridge]

Legendary Characters: Fleet Admiral Pephredo Brencis Uiseann

1 SCA Mutt – Deploy Location 1

45 CO Dog Meat – Deploy Location 1

5 CA Pooch – Deploy Location 2

5 CL Pup E – Deploy Location 2

 

 

BATTLE RESULTS

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Concordium Losses / Damage:

 

**DESTROYED** [2nd] FF Medusa (Frigate - 42,400 tons) [integrity: 35,040] (Green, Timid)

 

NSI Losses / Damage:

 

**DESTROYED** [1st] CO Dog Meat (Corvette - 1,000 tons) [integrity: 800] (Green, Timid)

 

 

Here is the question I posed to Pete: How can a ships with a fire control of 31 go into a battle and manage to destroy only 1 Corvette, and not even apparently shoot any other ships. Pete is still researching this.

 

My ponderings:

 

I think the computer divides a round of battle up into sub-rounds, based on the highest Base fire control. Hence Round 1 of battle becomes 31 sub-rounds. It then processes the battle in each subround (pulse of fire) and (the key) adjusts the fleet for ships lost in the sub-round.

 

This would explain the above result. In sub-round 1 of 31, the Concordium targets, and destroys, one Corvette with a blinding pulse of energy. In sub-round 1, the NSI ship blasts the puny Concordium Frigate into dust. The computer adjusts the fleets. The Concordium fleet loses the FF and firepower for the fleet drops to 0. Sub-round 2 of 31 begins, and a pulse of 0 / 31 = 0 is fired for no effect on the NSI fleet. Eventually, 31 sub-rounds are played out, leading to the listed final result.

 

Thoughts anyone???

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I will point out the obvious rejoiners:

 

1) There are not supposed to be "rounds" of combat as each sides firing is suppose to be simultaneous.

 

2) It is entirely possible that the other 30 volleys of fire hit the larger SCA and just dusted the shields.

 

3) It is also possible that the your fire finally resolved into something so pathetic that it took several hits on a corvette before any damage was sustained and only multiple hits on a single corvette resulted in the loss of said corvette.

 

4) None of the above and we still don't know how things are suppose to work.

 

As I understand the targeting system and combat, the 31 pulses should have been determined prior to any damage allocation and each pulse should be distributed according to the targeting scheme. Since the pulses all fired at the same time to create a total mass of fire, which is later divided into globs ( gotta love the technical jargin :ninja:) the only thing left is for the target to be selected and the damage applied. This should be a simple routine to grab a target and then apply the fire while making adjustments for defensive systems.

 

If this stands then it makes the puffball strategy a bit more viable.

 

Please let us know if you get any sort of resolution/response to this.

 

:thumbsup::wub:

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I will point out the obvious rejoiners:

 

1) There are not supposed to be "rounds" of combat as each sides firing is suppose to be simultaneous.

 

2) It is entirely possible that the other 30 volleys of fire hit the larger SCA and just dusted the shields.

 

3) It is also possible that the your fire finally resolved into something so pathetic that it took several hits on a corvette before any damage was sustained and only multiple hits on a single corvette resulted in the loss of said corvette.

 

4) None of the above and we still don't know how things are suppose to work.

 

As I understand the targeting system and combat, the 31 pulses should have been determined prior to any damage allocation and each pulse should be distributed according to the targeting scheme.  Since the pulses all fired at the same time to create a total mass of fire, which is later divided into globs ( gotta love the technical jargin :ninja:) the only thing left is for the target to be selected and the damage applied.  This should be a simple routine to grab a target and then apply the fire while making adjustments for defensive systems. 

 

If this stands then it makes the puffball strategy a bit more viable.

 

Please let us know if you get any sort of resolution/response to this. 

 

:thumbsup:  :wub:

 

I'm sure all will be explained in the forthcoming Naval Combat Supplement

 

:cheers:

 

/Locklyn

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I will point out the obvious rejoiners:

 

1) There are not supposed to be "rounds" of combat as each sides firing is suppose to be simultaneous.

 

2) It is entirely possible that the other 30 volleys of fire hit the larger SCA and just dusted the shields.

 

3) It is also possible that the your fire finally resolved into something so pathetic that it took several hits on a corvette before any damage was sustained and only multiple hits on a single corvette resulted in the loss of said corvette.

 

4) None of the above and we still don't know how things are suppose to work.

 

As I understand the targeting system and combat, the 31 pulses should have been determined prior to any damage allocation and each pulse should be distributed according to the targeting scheme.  Since the pulses all fired at the same time to create a total mass of fire, which is later divided into globs ( gotta love the technical jargin :ninja:) the only thing left is for the target to be selected and the damage applied.  This should be a simple routine to grab a target and then apply the fire while making adjustments for defensive systems. 

 

If this stands then it makes the puffball strategy a bit more viable.

 

Please let us know if you get any sort of resolution/response to this. 

 

:thumbsup:  :wub:

 

(1) Pete has repeatedly said there are simultaneous rounds of combat. But he has never quite clearly explained what happens during fire pulses. It could be the fire pulses are simultaneous for each pulse, not the whole round. Hence my pondering above.

 

(2) If the way a ship is selected is random as per Pete, and for each pulse it selects a target, selects again, then fires on the more interesting one .. the odds of selecting the SCA (ignoring the cruisers) is about 4.4% each fire. Firing on the SCA 30 times and only once on a corvette would be a 5.6 x 10 negative 40 percent chance. Pretty slim odds.

 

(3) With Base Fire Control of 31, and with 123,200 firepower from 7 Heavy P-Cannons, that's 31 shots at 3974 firepower. Firing from deploy location 7 woudl mean a 60% reduction in firepower (Heavy P-Cannon are rated as Beam, so they lose 10% per deploy location past Deploy Location 1). That means 31 shots at 1589 firepower. The enemy fleet is mostly deployed in location 1 with all the shiny Corvettes. So no bonus for them. HENCE, the firepower should be sufficent for each pathetic 800 integrity corvette.

 

(4) I'm leaning with this one. Because otherwise, the final option is:

 

(5) Combat is broken, Fire Control is not being properly used, not even the GM knows how it works. And I'm unwilling to believe in this one at this time.

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First, thanks for putting the battle in a format that was easy to follow. :ninja:

 

 

Second, and most importantly. Locklyn is right.

No one has a clue how the combat system really works and we're all stumbling around in a cave trying to figure out the pretty shadows on the wall (borrowed from Socrates without permission).

 

I see no problem with WKE235's description of how he thinks it works. However, it is a guess after all, and Hobnob could be just as right. That's the problem we have without a naval combat document, nobody knows. :wub:

 

 

Lord Uriel

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(2)  If the way a ship is selected is random as per Pete, and for each pulse it selects a target, selects again, then fires on the more interesting one .. the odds of selecting the SCA (ignoring the cruisers) is about 4.4% each fire.  Firing on the SCA 30 times and only once on a corvette would be a 5.6 x 10 negative 40 percent chance.  Pretty slim odds.

 

 

 

One point I note is while the odds of hitting the SCA in terms of number of ships is 2.2% (1 out of 46), on a tonnage basis it is 94% (725kT out of 770 kT). On this basis the odds of all but one of the pulses striking the ship is pretty high since one round in 17 will actually strike a corvette. If my supposition is correct, then targeting is focused on the closest deploy location and then spread by mass. Of course this is a pure guess and I am trying to fit the theory to the data presented so I too am anxious to hear Pete's resolution. :ninja:

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(5)  Combat is broken, Fire Control is not being properly used, not even the GM knows how it works.  And I'm unwilling to believe in this one at this time.

 

Since I've seen combat results which seem to defy the published data on space combat, and the other explanations seem too far fetched, I would put my money on #5. Hopefully Pete will comment when he has had time to analyze it. My personal guess is that combat resolution is intended to work as described, and maybe it does much of the time at the macro level, but there are bugs in the code that Pete has not found yet. That's the main reason I'm on the side advocating giving the players more information on how combat works and more data from battles as they are fought. Most big bugs will be very quickly found as players analyze their battle reports and can then be fixed by RTG. Since a single major battle can determine the fate of an empire that's taken a player years to build, I feel it's essential for the combat system to be as flawless as possible. This trumps concerns of making combat too observable in my mind.

 

Assuming he doesn't do so already, I suggest that Pete tweak the combat resolution program to create a log file with debug data on every battle. Disk space is dirt cheap and the data only needs to be retained until the next turn cycle. Then whenever someone finds what looks to be a flaw in a battle's outcome, Pete can analyze the debug log on that battle and either find the bug or reassure the player that the battle processed correctly. My #1 concern as a player is that I don't loose an important battle due to a software bug. Of course that then raises the issue of what to do if a bug is in fact found that obviously affected the outcome of a battle.

 

Thanks for posting the results of your experiment. Maybe you can repeat it or variations of it? Say make a new bigger Medusa that should last several rounds of combat and see if it kills off all the Dog Meats before dying?

 

On the recurring subject or there being rounds or not in combat. It's a program and somewhere there is a loop, so call them what you will, but there is some discrete time unit involved. I seriously doubt Pete coded an event driven multi threaded battle program. They may not be rounds in the literal gaming sense of you-go/I-go, but I think we all understand it's being used in SNROTE discussions as a generic term for a battle progressing over time in cycles.

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If targetting is based solely on number of targets one would expect to see more corvettes destroyed.

 

If targetting is based on tonnage/deploc formula then you have to throw in the 10 other ships in DepLoc 2, each of which has more tonnage than all 45 corvettes.

 

It also appears that, even though the ship may be able to fire 31 times, each glob that fires is targeted independently and not necessarily at 31 different targets.

 

Basic answer is no one really knows.

 

 

Hmm, I also noticed that even though your Fire Rating is over 123,000 you actually only have 7 weapons involved. It could be that even though your FC rating was 31 you actually only fired 7 globs. With 6 spread out over the big boys and 1 against a minnow. Also do we know for sure whether each shot actually hits?

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According to everything I have heard and read, if a ship gets "dusted" it will show up as taking some damage. (perhaps unless the damage is so minor as to be miniscule)

 

However, since he has a fire control of 31, he should have done 31 IDENTICAL (or nearly so) pulses of damage to various ships, so in any case, if his firepower was sufficient to destroy a single corvette, it should have (if probability means anthing) destroyed more than one, and it should have damaged to at least a small extent, other ships as well.

 

Sounds to me on first blush, like a defect. I am in complete agreement with Paradigm. Not only do I think it looks like the system (at least in this instance) is broken, but without the actual mechanics, we have no ability to help RTG identify and correct such occurences.

 

Give us the mechanics. Please. Not so we can reduce the game to number-crunching. That's being done more or less anyway. Just the hard way. Let your smart and numerous playerbase help solve whatever is lurking in the code, and then we can all move on (and save RTG a lot of heartache in the meantime).

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How do we know if damage is allocated on a point per point basis? It is possible that you need 3 or 4 times the integrity rating of a ship to actually destroy it. If that were the case, then each corvette would require several hits to be destroyed.

 

As for the tonnage factor, Pete has maintined that targeting is not weighted toward tonnage, ship class or any other useful variable from our perspective. That being the case, there should not be any difference between a corvette and an SCA.

 

Of course, Pete may be "tweaking" the code to give us just such a weighted targeting system.

 

The SCA would not show any damage if it was targeted since its shield rating exceeded the total fire power of the opposing unit.

 

BTW - Has there been any sort of clarification on the previous battle that was posted?

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I think i is a kind of #5.

 

Pete stated the following:

1) Combat ends if one side is completely destroyed

2) Each gob is targeted separately of each other, but not on already destoyed ships.

 

To do this, the code must do the gobs after each other.

But I think 1) is wrongly evaluated in the gobbing subround, instead in the

surrounding "round".

 

So combat ended premature with not all gobs evaluated, as the Medusa got hit and dusted.

 

Cestvel

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I will point out the obvious rejoiners:

 

3) It is also possible that the your fire finally resolved into something so pathetic that it took several hits on a corvette before any damage was sustained and only multiple hits on a single corvette resulted in the loss of said corvette.

 

 

:wub:  :ninja:

 

3) With Base Fire Control of 31, and with 123,200 firepower from 7 Heavy P-Cannons, that's 31 shots at 3974 firepower. Firing from deploy location 7 woudl mean a 60% reduction in firepower (Heavy P-Cannon are rated as Beam, so they lose 10% per deploy location past Deploy Location 1). That means 31 shots at 1589 firepower. The enemy fleet is mostly deployed in location 1 with all the shiny Corvettes. So no bonus for them. HENCE, the firepower should be sufficent for each pathetic 800 integrity corvette.

 

 

Your statement is based upon the assumption (a false assumption, I believe) that one point of firepower is sufficient to destroy 1 point of integrety.

 

From all the battles I have seen, this cannot be the case. My analysis indicatest that it takes at least 2, but not more than 4 points of offensive firepower to destroy each point of ship's integrety. This means that it would take multiple hits for you destroy one of his screens.

 

If this theory is correct, then there should be a large number of damaged Corvettes in his fleet after the battle. I do not see that point of information in your initial battle description. How many damaged ships did he end up having?

 

TErnest

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What we need on the combat report is a targeting resolution list. A summary at the end of each round.

 

Hmm, I also noticed that even though your Fire Rating is over 123,000 you actually only have 7 weapons involved. It could be that even though your FC rating was 31 you actually only fired 7 globs.

 

One weapon per target, I would agree. So he only would have 7 shots. Targetting summary, would tell us how mant missed.

 

My analysis indicatest that it takes at least 2, but not more than 4 points of offensive firepower to destroy each point of ship's integrety.

 

Would Pete design in this confusion factor?

So we need up to 4 times the weapon strength to ship integrity to destroy it?

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