Naval Combat Primer (old)

[Locklyn]

I would like to see all the above

Also I'd like to see some sort of rating for the fleet in how able it is to capture other ships, for example I have a line of Imperial Raider Ships that armed just with Heavy Stun Beams and Heavy Magnetic Grapples for capturing other ships as the text in the ANZ of these let you guess that you can do this.

 

Also a rating for the boarding capability of various fleets and when it takes affect and some sort of stealth rating for the fleets.

 

I agree with Paradigm that detection of fleets is a very uncharted area in the game as it comes to sensors. I am one of those paranoid ones who have detection fleets at all my warp points and gas giants doing XSENS x2 but since the SENS order seems a wee bit weird I am wondering how it really works with detection ranges and sensors?

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Yes! Time to think very carefully…….dig out the Warmaster’s diary notes.

 

Having re-read the Naval Combat Primer, can we first ask for some clarification?

 

In the Combat Primer specific mention is made of “Combat Rounds” after which “all destroyed targets are removed and the next round begins”. Just after, in the Deployment Location section, “targets are selected by ship”. However, in your re-opening note above you have…

 

“It should be noted that the space combat system in SN:ROTE is not decided by having individual ships pick out a selected ship on the other side and firing at it. Your fleet operates as a unit, with ships firing their weapons in groups to eliminate the enemy. There are no combat rounds per se, but rather a flowing damage allocation system to dish out firepower, so results by round don’t make much sense.”

 

Now, obviously there is some conflict and plenty of room for misunderstanding. Could we have that clarified first? From the Combat Primer, it would certainly make perfect sense for us to have a Battle Report that showed combat by round and which ships had been targeted and why. However, if it’s not like that, then, quite reasonably, the report couldn’t show it.

 

On a related subject, we would like to ask for consideration for development of the FOB order, which could provide a lot of information that would otherwise be wanted in the Battle Report. It could also be used by empires to gain information, without having to fight actual battles and so meet many desires.

 

The presence and actual effects of Legendary Characters in fleets could be detailed in the FOB order. As could morale and individual ship experience and training. Firepower available at the various ranges mentioned could also be put here. It is quite possible to determine the effect of Poor vs Fair vs Adequate technologies in the Ground Arena, from the TAC order. It is therefore reasonable that we could determine the same for the ship systems from the FOB order. This would allow all the very reasonable pre-battle planning (and some things for the number crunchers!) and be exactly the sort of information we should all know from our own ‘testing’. Range for weapons has been mentioned several times. We believe this is something that should be added to the weapon’s ANZs and the explanation of Short (DL1-4), Medium (DL5-8) or Long (DL9-12) detailed, if that’s what it is….

 

Finally, for consideration, we are not entirely sure that individual ship results are not the best thing. Much encouragement has already been given to the idea that ‘big is best’. So far, our own fleet plans have not really needed us to take our socks off as yet (humanoid, bi-pedal, pentadactyl!). In fact ‘squadron’ is a far better descriptor. Transwarp drives are so expensive that large does seem to be the way to go. Whilst not impossible, we would be surprised if really large numbers of ships are commonly involved. However, the ‘gnat swarm’ option might have its place and that would start to get silly….

 

As an opening gambit, therefore, we would certainly like the following in Battle Reports, in a logical order depending on how the program spits it out:

 

1) What’s affecting where the battle is: Terrain & Installations

2) Character & Species effects between the combatants

3) The Deployment Lines (DLs) and the Fighter and Drone options (which also needs further clarification in the Primer re-write). If reporting is not done by individual ship, then it could certainly be done by DL.

4) Per Combat Round, or ‘flowing’ equivalent:

a. What’s targeted

b. What the firepower total is per target

c. How much firepower was degraded

d. What damage was caused

e. What’s left for the next bit

f. All either by DL or ship

5) The end result and why.

 

In a real short summary – between the FOB and subsequent battle results, we really should be able to make sense of: the species we created; the ships we’ve designed; and the tactics we’ve chosen.

 

With much hope…

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric, with the approval of the Conclave of the Star League.

[octagon999]

Some kind of order to tell your ships not to be suicidal - retreating after a certain amount of damage, perhaps - would be nice.

Excellent, and how about making engagement orders conditional upon tonnage comparisons.

 

Yes, I want my Pathfinder II to engage anything 5,000 tons or less, but perhaps, if the Mk VI Battleship warps in, you might wanna just find a place to hide.

 

Another bonus from the retreat percentage thing is that it would make it easier to have ships break off combat at a certain percentage of damage during planned wargames, so that neither ship is destroyed.

[Lord Xaar]

Good suggestions so far. It also appears that we're not requesting anything mutually exclusive yet, which in itself is a fine acheivement.

 

As Ur Lord Tedric wrote, I think some more clarification on the concept of "rounds" may be necessary. There is explicit reference to rounds coming into play during warp point assaults. The concepts of warp bubbles and w.p. sizes seem to necessitate the 'pulsed' arrival of ships.

 

In regards to Krelnett of Kraan's suggestion about 'suicidial' fleets: this would suggest they would surrender to a superior foe? They don't really have a place to go and hide as things function now. Maybe an order (or part of the ROE settings) could define a strategic withdrawl point in the system that the fleet would attempt to move to (if it can get away from the other fleet, that is). I suppose you could define a s.w.p. on the system level, but perhaps having flexibility on a fleet level is best. It would be nice to have a little finer control over when our ships actually will engage since it usually is battle to the death.

 

Something along the lines of the TAC order for an improved FOB order.

 

How about a wargames order? People have talked about something like this in the past, but usually in regards to testing one's own ships - what if there was "mock combat" between two empires? This may involve too much coding for the payoff, but as it stands those of us testing combat actually have to commit resources (albeit in the form of very small warships) to determining what our ships do. The thing is, my ship with one autocannon and one engine and some armor is a categorically different beast than a 2mm ton ship with 24 components. I may not want to commit so many resources to a wargame where I could lose my ship, but if I'm willing to work with a neighbor on testing, the array of ships I'd like to test grows considerably. As far as testing one's own ships without a neighbor, I'm not sure I'd support that -- even if it's not realistic exactly, I think it's good incentive for diplomatic contact.

 

 

Lastly, as others have said, some more general detail on offensive/defensive systems and game concepts (range, firepower, etc.) in a qualitative sense...I don't think raw numbers should be coming out of any of this, but some more specific color would help. Also to all the players, reread the combat primer carefully: I took a closer look at it tonight after not reading it for a long time and there is *a lot* good info in there - many questions asked in this thread are commented on. Particularly the "Other Considerations" section.

 

-LX

[WKE235]

While I would like to learn things like how formations impact a battle, I do not want specifics. Say I'm using Englobe and the enemy is Column. Some blurb in the battle about what happened due to this would be nice ("NSI Forces are able to bring more weapons to bear on the Concordium fleet as their column pierces the an attempted englobement "). But I do not want to see lots of numbers (ie -- I do not want to know NSI was 20% more effective). The same applies to all the other items. A blurb about "Concordium forces attempt to evade the NSI ships, using their superior speed and manuvering to stay out of NSI weapons reach while long range drones and missles chop up the NSI fleet" says a lot.

 

My own personnel belief is if we know to much about the numbers behind the battles, then, to keep things interesting, Pete would have to add Randomness to the battles. Nothing is ever as simple as a calculation. I do not want to see enough information out there that folks could attempt to put all the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and calculate out how to maximize x, y, and z. If people can place it into a calc sheet and all the battles come down to simple numbers, then why battle? Heck, there may be a random factor in the battles to begin with (though I have yet to see a blurb like "Bad Chicken Curry results in your gunners not being as effective as normal").

[woolfe99]

Great thread. I really appreciate this opportunity. Rather than add to the excellent ideas already posted (which I support), I have two questions that are nagging me.

 

1. If there are no combat rounds, are we to understand that battles occur in essentially one pulse or phase? That has implications for such things as weapons that degrade the effectiveness of enemy ships during combat (they wouldn't work), and the destruction of fighters and drones (it wouldn't have any effect during combat).

 

2. If all ships fire as one unit, what differentiates the range factor from one ship to the next? My understanding is that different ships fire at different ranges depending on where they are in your order of battle. Also, I thought you could set tactics for fighters like "deep strike" and so forth. I am having a hard time understanding the meaning of such tactics when weapons are all used per fleet.

 

- woolfe

[woolfe99]

While I would like to learn things like how formations impact a battle, I do not want specifics.  Say I'm using Englobe and the enemy is Column.  Some blurb in the battle about what happened due to this would be nice ("NSI Forces are able to bring more weapons to bear on the Concordium fleet as their column pierces the an attempted englobement ").  But I do not want to see lots of numbers (ie -- I do not want to know NSI was 20% more effective).  The same applies to all the other items.  A blurb about "Concordium forces attempt to evade the NSI ships, using their superior speed and manuvering to stay out of NSI weapons reach while long range drones and missles chop up the NSI fleet"  says a lot. 

 

My own personnel belief is if we know to much about the numbers behind the battles, then, to keep things interesting, Pete would have to add Randomness to the battles.  Nothing is ever as simple as a calculation.  I do not want to see enough information out there that folks could attempt to put  all the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and calculate out how to maximize x, y, and z.  If people can place it into a calc sheet and all the battles come down to simple numbers, then why battle?  Heck, there may be a random factor in the battles to begin with (though I have yet to see a blurb like "Bad Chicken Curry results in your gunners not being as effective as normal").

Would you support knowing how many weapons hit (per fleet) and how many were stopped by enemy defenses? Seems like a basic thing to me...

 

I like the word descriptions as well, and do not support excessive numeric detail, but some actual hard data is appropriate and will enhance the fun factor. I don't want to have battle results that are *totally* non-transparent. My test of how good the battle results are is, do they leave me with a shrug, thinking "OK, that's how the battle went. I have no idea WHY it went that way, but that's how it went." We need to be able to learn at least *some* things about the way combat works. It's just a question of how to balance it properly, i.e. providing enough information to make battle results useful to future tactical decisions vs. providing so much that people "crack" the system and it spoils the fun of the game. Apart from specifics, I think that is really Pete's task here. I have every confidence that he'll handle it well.

[Eldred]

Just a few observations on the subject of ships damaged in battle...

 

1. It would be nice to have some guidance as to how a fleet has fought a significant (but lesser) enemy and has apparently escaped unscathed. If this was because... the enemy was destroyed in a pre-emptive strike/the enemy was too slow/enemy fire was absorbed by shields or armor/they were massively outnumbered/or whatever. Currently there is no indication of this and the fleet admirals are sometimes left scratching their heads as to why their robust but not insignificant fleets caused no damage whatsoever to their foes!

 

2. If a ship is damaged in battle is the damage assigned "pro rata" across all ship systems? If not it would be nice for ships to have the chance to flee the battlefield if their MkIV engines are still intact even though many other ship systems may have taken severe damage. Perhaps ships could flee to a random location in the system (ie WP, world, moon, etc). If the system is a nexus with only one WP then there is nowhere to run!

 

3. Does a ship damaged in combat impact on the crew's morale - after all many crew members may have perished in the battle?

 

4. There must be a better way to repair ships than scrapping and rebuilding. What if we were also able to build orbital space docks which could repair ships over a longer period at greater expense? The advantage of going with the space dock option is that crews could retain their experience and morale.

[WKE235]

In addition to better repair abilities for ships, it would be interesting to be able to scan the battle site and attempt to collect equipment from the battle.

 

Think about it. Several ships battle using drones. At the end of the battle, the drones on the losing side stop operating as the mother ship(s) are gone. So if you had empty slots in your drone racks, why not pick them up? Heck, I can explore a world, find Heavy Drones made by an Alien culture, stick them in the racks and away we go to battle. But all the drones at the end of the battle are just lost.

 

Drones make a lot of sense. But there could also be other items floating in the ship debris field. I admit there might not be a lot left of value. The bigger the weapon (like a 25,000 ton Type A Plasma Torpedo), the more likely it would be damaged beyond repair in the battle. But maybe in scanning you could (like an explore) find a few items of interest like MK III Force Shields (100 tons each, very likely to survive as a ship breaks up) or MK I Antimatter Engines. Or even better, you get a little R&D hit (Analysis of the Selenite Battle Weave used on the ships of the enemy allow your scientists to make a small breakthrough in Selenite Battle Weave research).

 

Of course all the amounts would be low, and chances would be low. So give all the other enhancements that can be made to make this game even better, I suspect this would be low on any priority list. Hmmmm .. Maybe instead of a scan order it's could be just a random small chance bonus that after a fight, if you have cargo space, you find something? Military personnel always attempt to look over the remains of a defeated enemy to learn about them and stay one step ahead.

[hobknob]

While I have many comments to make on this issue I will start with the repair issue. As it sits you have ships that can be individually damaged, but we have no mechanism to seperate out those ships from a fleet of undamaged ships. Even if we leave the repair system as scrap and rebuild you need to have some way to pick an individual ship. Lacking such a system, any sort of repair other than automatic shipboard repair fails to work.

 

If an individual ship tracking system is implemented or turned on then that could also be used for tracking moreal and experience, which would then solve some of the other issues raised here.

 

 

BTW - The above comments shouldn't be construed as support for an individual ship tracking mechanism. Rather a look at how badly the current repair system fails.

[Guest Zy'lar'isa]

Ok - let's dig in to what you'd like to see if I were to rewrite the naval combat results pretty much from scratch, making sure to include whatever I could to provide the detail you want. I don't mean the engine itself, which is horribly complex, biting and hissing whenever anybody comes near it but the display part, where the battle results are posted to your turn files. I'm very happy with the engine - it handles everything from small battles to massive fleet engagements including multiple empires.

I love it. Pete states in very simple english he wants to discuss the report, not the engine. So what is most of the comments on? The engine.

 

What do I want in a report? I want to know what the hell just happenned and why!

 

Zy'lar'isa, Queen of The Nest

[T'Lariss]

Hmmm

 

Here is what I think a good battle report should look like, there should be enough detail here to show the effectiveness of all the various pieces of equipment on the fleets and still be general enough to Keep things interesting.

 

4 Kron Battle Cruisers Vs 4 Mighty mite corvetts and 1 Turtle class Battle Dreadnought

 

4 kron Battle Cruisers (empire name), (Empire symbol), (engagement order), (Fleet summery(from FOB))

 

4 Mighty Mite Corvetts (empire name), (empire symbol), (defensive order), (Summery)

 

1 Turtle BDN (Empire Name), (Empire symbol), (Defensive orders) Summery)

 

Fleet Commander Cody proves his superior skill over Commodore Krane increasing the effectiveness of his ships

 

Bridge systems allow kron Battle Cruisers to target 4 enemy vessels

Bridge systems allow Might Mite Corvettes to targe 1 enemy vessle

Bridge systems allow Turtle BDN to target 17 enemy vessles

Command and control systems increase Mighty mite Corvettes targettin by 2

Command and control systems Increase Turtle BDN targeting by 2

____________________________________________________________________

Kron Battle Cruisers(Battel line) fire: 160 Light Thermal Lance targeting 3 Mighty Mite corvetts(escort). 40 light termal lances hit enemy vessels 10 are stopped by shileds and armor prevents some damage.

3 Mighty mite corvetts destroyed

 

Kron Battle Cruiser (Battel line) fire 40 Heavy Thermal Lance targeting Turtle BDN (Battle Line). 20 hit enemy vessel, 15 are stopped by Shitles. Adamantite armor prevents any damage

 

Mighty Mite Corvetts (escort) fire 8 Standard Missile targeting Kron battle ruisers(Battle Line), 8 are stopped by Laser CIDS for no hits

 

Turtle BDN (Battle Line) fires 150 Heavy Missle targeting Kron Battle Cruisers, 77 are stopped by Laer CIDS, 37 hit enemy vessels, 18 are stopped by shields Armor prevents all but minimal damage

 

Turtle BDN(battle line) fires 400 Standard Missle targeting kron Battel Cruiser, 189 are stopped by Laser CIDS, 112 hit enemy Vessels 42 hits are stopped by shilds, Armor abosbs some damage

2 Kron battle cruisers Lghtly damaged

1 Kron battle cruiser damaged

1 Kron battel Cruiser heavily damaged

 

____________________________________________________________________

 

 

And so on. this will give the Number crunchers something to do and still keep things Vague enough to prevent the "this weapons is .2 percent better than that weapon" nonsense. As ships are grouped there is no indiviual reporting (making Pete Hapy) and there is stil enough detail to show the effeciveness of all the various equipment in use.

 

For your perusal and comment

[Locklyn]

Nice example T'lariss!

But how I've understood armor is not that it prevents damage but that it simply has more "hitpoints" per unit than say fueltanks and so can soak up more of the damage per unit ie your ship could be damaged and essentially all of the damaged was to the armor section? Not sure how damage is allocated if it is like in Starfire or other such games where damage is automatically deducted from the armor section first?

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

[Ur Lord Tedric]

I love it. Pete states in very simple english he wants to discuss the report, not the engine. So what is most of the comments on? The engine.

 

What do I want in a report? I want to know what the hell just happenned and why!

 

Zy'lar'isa, Queen of The Nest

 

Whilst I have a little bit of sympathy for your view, it is very difficult to suggest constructively the sort of things we'd like to see in a Battle Report, if we have no idea how the engine works....

 

What I assumed Pete wanted was to find out what we would like him to report from what the engine can put out, rather than us telling him what the engine should do.

 

However, we do need to understand what the engine does, to be able to do that.

 

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Ur Lord Tedric]

And On Randomness

 

It would be very nice to know that there is indeed a random factor present in both the Space and Ground Combat engines.

 

It does make life so much more interesting and give the under-dog a little bit of extra hope....

 

Chief Warmaster (barking loudly) to Ur-Lord Tedric