Naval Combat Primer (old)

[woolfe99]

Love T'Lariss' battle report concept. I would add in there special weapon effects. E.g. if an electrical discharge weapon interferes with enemy electronics during battle, that would be mentioned. Otherwise, I'd be fairly happy with something like that.

[Mechanica]

Hi All,

 

I finally had a chance to read through the naval primer. I have a couple questions :lol:

 

 

1. How does a ship earn exp from combat? Is it earned simply for surviving the action whether your side wins or loses? In that regards does each ship earn the same amount of exp or is the exp modified by some factor, say amount of damage dealt to opposining ships? I'm curious because I am considering specialized ships for C3 and PD roles which may not deal a lot of damage to the enemy but will provide major support to my main combatants.

 

2. Could someone provide examples differentiating between heavy screen, light screen, and escort mission ships? Since we are supposed to identify the mission type on the NUD I'd like to now what type ships should be categorized by these mission designators. If its solely based on tonnage then what are the increments involved?

 

3. Repair capability. I hope that some repair capability is planned for whether it will be in the form of repair tenders or just doing repair work in shipyards. There needs to be some ability to repair ships without having to do scrap and build commands and losing all associated experience. If repair ships are used then there should be a cap on the amount of damage they can repair in the field, say 50%. If ships are allowed to be repaired then I would suggest that the amount of experience lost to damage be equal to the percentage of damage taken by the ship. This loss would represent the crew that needs to be replaced by untrained, or not as well trained, spacers. Thus if a ship with 60% damage is repaired to full it would lose 60% of its total experience.

 

4. Not combat related but still a concern to me is the lack of a refit or upgrade ability. What I'm talking about is the ability to bring in a ship, remove a type of item, lets say Light Beam Lasers, and replace them with Medium Beam Lasers. As long as I have the appropriate tonnage of the replacement item on the world where the upgrade will occur then it should be possible to refit the ship without having to lose all the experience it may have gained. There could even be a slight reduction in experience due the crew's lack of familiarity with the new equipment, say a 10% to 20% reduction. This would require one turn to refit, the usage of one shipyard slip and tonnage equating to the tonnage of items being upgraded.

 

I realize that the scrap and build orders will mimic 3 and 4 but it currently strips the ship of all experience when the ship leaves the build queue. Maybe the most expedient method would be to retain the scrap and rebuild feature but have different versions of the scrap command. Scrap (N) would just reduce the ship to its base components. Scrap ® would repair the ship back to 100% with a corresponding reduction of experience based on percentage repaired. Scrap (U) would act like a normal scrap command but tag the components for rebuilding into the new ship and retain 80% of the experience. When the scrap R and scrap U commands are run it could place the corresponding builds into the shipyard production queue but tagged as items NOT to be worked on during that turn. After the shipyard production sequence is run for the turn then these tags could be removed and they would show up as normal ships in the queue for the next turn. Also the Scrap (U) command could only work on an undamaged ship. You'd have to do a scrap ® to repair a damaged ship and then a scrap (u) to upgrade that previously damaged ship.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

 

There might be another very interesting way to deal with the ship experience/repair/rebuild/rearm issue.....

 

We could have Crew!

 

Pop could be converted to 'Rookies' with an order just like CTRN. They could then be put (LC) into ships (if we got detailed enough then it could be on a per item level, but some ratio could be used - some things like Cargo Bays wouldn't need them, but weapons would - or we could have them on a per Bridge systems tonnage ratio and every ship would need at least 1 computer).

 

Crew could then come in 4 guises...

 

'Rookies' could become 'Trained' through LFE and Combat (and not all at once).

 

They could only advance to 'Experienced' and then on to 'Veteran' through combat.

 

It would indeed be something entirely new, but it would make a very interesting way to both see the effects and move your experienced crew around......

 

Just for thought....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Mechanica]

Once you introduce crew then you would probably have to start tracking experience by crew point. I say this because eventually even your most veteran crew will run across a battle where their ship gets mauled. Since damage is assumed to affect all systems equally, or at least that the assumption I have picked up in the primer and these discussions, then you would also lose that percentage of crew. Now unless you have a pool of veteran crew laying around you will have to use either Rookies at worst or maybe trained at best as replacements. Then that ship would have x number of veterans and y number of rookies/trained.

 

Or lets say that you have a 100 being veteran crew of a light cruiser and want to transfer them to a 1000 being crewed battleship. You're still going to need 900 more crew points. So to maintain veteran status you need to transfer in 900 more veterans or most likely dilute the exp by adding rookies or trained.

 

While I agree that adding crew would be nice touch, I think that might be adding more headaches to the equation than it may add to realism.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

 

Oh yes, it would indeed be something new...

 

But to take your point - you would indeed need to add 900 Rookies with the 100 Veterans when you moved them to a new ship, but at least, especially as the Rookies could be trained with a period of LFEs, you would then have a mixed crew of 900 Experienced Crew and 100 Veterans.

 

The 4 types of crew would be entirely separate, continually show you how your training and experience had gone and not be lost through SCRP & SHIP. It's not really any different than having characters with 7 Ranks.

 

And yes, as %'ages of your ship were lost through damage, so the same % of crew would die. You could rebuild the ship, but you'd need new crew.

 

As I said, it's only an idea, but it would provide an alternative and logical way to do it.

 

We've got it too easy as it is - I haven't even suggested 'paying' the crew..

 

Chief Warmaster (with help from the Chief Planner) to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Paradigm]

As I said, it's only an idea, but it would provide an alternative and logical way to do it.

 

We've got it too easy as it is - I haven't even suggested 'paying' the crew..

I spend enough order blocks on logistics as is. It's not the Emperor's job to juggle crew assignments.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

As I said, it's only an idea, but it would provide an alternative and logical way to do it.

 

We've got it too easy as it is - I haven't even suggested 'paying' the crew..

I spend enough order blocks on logistics as is. It's not the Emperor's job to juggle crew assignments.

:lol:

 

You can never spend too many orders on logistics!

 

In fact, the best simulations of combat in the world have the most detailed logistics elements behind them.

 

The highest expression of the art of being a good general is to make sure you've won the battle before you even fight it.....

 

Which is, after all, the idea behind this whole thread!

 

What I'm sure we'd all like to know is:

 

Race (because we do that first) + Designs (using all those lovely things) + FBPs (Tactics to give us even more choices) = Reasonable Result when compared to opponents choices (so we can all wee why we lost and can accept it! )

 

If the Battle Reports will do that, then anything else is just cream.

 

And now looking forward to turns to bring more excitement....

 

Chief Warmaster (because the Ur-Lord needs more helpers than just the 'Emperor', even with the ever popular Chief Planner helping) to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Paradigm]

You can never spend too many orders on logistics!

 

In fact, the best simulations of combat in the world have the most detailed logistics elements behind them.

That's all fine and well but there are limits to how much time and money I'm going to spend on this game, and more logistics / economics is going to start crossing some lines for me. And I know I'm not alone in this regard. It's already been referred to as Spreadsheets In Space for good reason.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

You can never spend too many orders on logistics! 

 

In fact, the best simulations of combat in the world have the most detailed logistics elements behind them.

That's all fine and well but there are limits to how much time and money I'm going to spend on this game, and more logistics / economics is going to start crossing some lines for me. And I know I'm not alone in this regard. It's already been referred to as Spreadsheets In Space for good reason.

Well, and that's why some of us love it so!!!!

 

Depth and Breadth don't come without making the effort.....

 

Chief Planner and Excel Master to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Pig Skin]

My votes:

 

More detailed information for battles: YES

 

Better explanation of the impact of components on combat: YES

 

more complete round by round summaries, even if only available as a separate file, even for a small fee: YES

 

Explanation how to capture ships in battle (or prevent it), if you can: YES

 

A way to repair ships without scrapping them, if they keep battle damage: YES

 

A way to display your fleets complete roster (assigned on a fleet by fleet basis to get "Detailed Summary" of morale, XLFE, damage, ship number): YES

 

A way to reorganize a ship within a fleet based upon it's ID number rather than name: YES

 

Crew units that require MORE orders to manage: NO

 

MORE Orders to increase color of game with no functional use: NO

 

MORE Orders for the heck of it: NO

 

Depth and Breadth that require MORE orders: NO

 

More detailed logistics that require MORE orders: NO

 

Complexity just to makes things complex that require MORE orders: NO

 

-pig skin

[ShadowKitsune]

So in other words -- more information, less orders? :lol:

[hobknob]

Here are a few things that I would like to get from battle reports.

 

1) I want to be able to tell which weapons perform well and poorly

2) If I never get into range for a weapon to be used effectlively I want to know it and also get some indication of why, enemy fleet is too quick, tactics employed didn't call for closing, enemy was already blown up before range was closed etc..

3) When I take damage I want to know where it came from, which specific enemy weapons are being the most effective

4) If we are going to have ranges I want a better feel for weapons effective ranges. If we aren't going to have effective ranges then please say so. This would also include updating the descriptions to indicate ranges.

5) I want to be able to tell if my tactics are working, was my fleet able to close to short range quickly or not?

6) I want to be able to tell if my CIDS systems are being effective or not. We need to have some indication of relative usefulness of these systems.

7) I would like to have some indication of the enemies lifeform bonus for Space combat.

8) Everything else considered I want enough information to be able to make intelligent choices for ship designs and for future research paths based on the results of combat. Just knowing that you won or lost, but having no idea why you won or lost won't cut it.

9) Given my choice I would rather have some some sort of blow by blow to gauge how things went. I want to know if my soak ships survived because they are tough or because nobody saw fit to target them. This is critically important if conducting a warp point assault.

10) If I have 6 different cruisers designs in the fleet I would expect sufficient information to determine the various strengths and weakness of the different designs. I can't get this if all of the systems are just compiled. I need ship by ship information otherwise you can't tell why a design was good bad or just plain lucky/unlucky.

 

 

 

I think that about does it for battle reporting. There have been may good suggestions that I also like but they go beyond battle reporting. If some of this stuff isn't possible I can live with that too, I just want to know ASAP what is and isn't possible that way I can revise my strategy accordingly.

 

[octagon999]

That's all fine and well but there are limits to how much time and money I'm going to spend on this game, and more logistics / economics is going to start crossing some lines for me. And I know I'm not alone in this regard. It's already been referred to as Spreadsheets In Space for good reason.

Well, and that's why some of us love it so!!!!

 

Depth and Breadth don't come without making the effort.....

 

Chief Planner and Excel Master to Ur-Lord Tedric

Consider that for every single warp point you explore, you will have to expend a minimum of two orders, not counting the system scan. Every single INST requires at least a single order, possibly many more if you are continually building. Every planet, if you are serious about exploration will require up to four orders EACH.

 

Every character transferred is an order.

 

There are PLENTY of things to keep us using orders. I would concur with Pigskin that my ration of orders has run out. Add more reporting, whatever, but please don't come up with any more order generators.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

There are PLENTY of things to keep us using orders. I would concur with Pigskin that my ration of orders has run out. Add more reporting, whatever, but please don't come up with any more order generators.

Cor, less of the negative waves, man! :lol:

 

I suggested the mere possibility of 'crew' as a way to get round the loss of experience and morale when having to SCRP and SHIP a ship in order to effect a major repair.

 

From another point of view, it would be a way of keeping the hard one experience gained with obsolete ships and transferring it to the new ones. Wouldn't that be a benefit?

 

Given that we're only talking about a futher item to be added to LC & OC orders, I really don't see where the increase in orders would come.

 

When you SCRP a ship you have to issue an OC order first to dump at least the fuel, so you wouldn't have to do any more to offload the crew.

 

And when the ship is (re)built you have to load it with fuel, various fighters, perhaps troops and colony beacons, so you just add those precious trained crew into the mix.

 

So, no extra orders there at all......

 

In fact, the more I think about it, I believe it would be a great enhancement....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric, who wants to keep his experienced and veteran crew..........

[hobknob]

Saving a bit of fuel isn't worth the order to unload it. Even some cargo isn't worth the order to unload it before scrapping. If anything I would like an OC to be automatic with a scrap order. Since they yard dogs are taking a ship apart and not destroying it they would take eveything off os the ship anyway.