Naval Combat Primer (old)

[woolfe99]

Fire control is their primary function. They may have other uses, but fire control is their main purpose. As the combat primer notes, there is no need to get carried away with putting computers on (ie, don't try the Supernova II strategy of trying to get your ships to 95% hit chance while reducing the enemy to 5% hit chance - that doesn't work here). If you need more fire control, add some on (or other bridge gear). They're pretty efficient, so you don't even need all that much unless you absolutely have to get a high fire control rating. New combat reports will list exact #'s for fire control calculations.

Two questions.

 

First, given that all these bridge systems really just add to fire control, and don't do much of anything else, what is the difference between researching Computers and, say, Battle Imaging Systems, or Advanced Battle Displays? My impression was that Battle Imaging gives more fire control per tonnage than Computers at an equivalent tech level, but Computers do other things besides fire control. I never believed that the effect of Computers was huge. But I thought there was a modest effect there that would justify pursuit of Computers up the tech tree.

 

Which leads to my second question: what is the point in putting RC's into researching Computers to high levels since even low level computers will give you the max fire control rating at a relatively low tonnage ratio? For example, the difference between Mk III and MK IV Computers might be something like maxing fire control at 2% tonnage vs. maxing fire control at 1% tonnage. Doesn't sound too earth shattering compared to the benefits of other tech advances that you could have used your RC's for.

 

- woolfe

[Locklyn]

Happy to see that Experience and Morale is finally reported! Now, what do the various levels entail? What is the difference between timid and Stout Morale? Is Seasoned better or worse than Line?

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

[RTGPete]

First, given that all these bridge systems really just add to fire control, and don't do much of anything else, what is the difference between researching Computers and, say, Battle Imaging Systems, or Advanced Battle Displays?  My impression was that Battle Imaging gives more fire control per tonnage than Computers at an equivalent tech level, but Computers do other things besides fire control.  I never believed that the effect of Computers was huge.  But I thought there was a modest effect there that would justify pursuit of Computers up the tech tree.

 

Fire control values will be detailed in the new space combat reports. You will be able to make your own judgment regarding value per ton from that. Otherwise, each system runs down a different branch of the tech tree, and may well lead to varying advances related to, or perhaps unrelated to, other bridge systems. This complicates the decision process, which is of course the whole idea

 

Which leads to my second question: what is the point in putting RC's into researching Computers to high levels since even low level computers will give you the max fire control rating at a relatively low tonnage ratio?  For example, the difference between Mk III and MK IV Computers might be something like maxing fire control at 2% tonnage vs. maxing fire control at 1% tonnage.  Doesn't sound too earth shattering compared to the benefits of other tech advances that you could have used your RC's for.

 

There is no maximum fire control since it is impossible to determine here how many ships your opponent might have, or how he has them deployed. The decision to devote 2% of your ship to bridge systems instead of 1% is like most other tech advances: if you use an inferior laser system, you would need to devote more ship tonnage % to achieve the same firepower output. How you balance the various tech upgrades to save on % efficiency is up to you. You might research up the bridge tree while an ally runs up the weapon tree, and then you would both benefit.

 

If fire control only represents a tiny % of your ship designs, then there is less need to worry about it. As it happens, there will be a wide variety of details displayed in the new space combat reports. Plenty to mull over.

[RTGPete]

What is the difference between timid and Stout Morale? Is Seasoned better or worse than Line?

Stout is better than Timid, and Line is better than Seasoned. Both morale and experience help a ship in a variety of ways, with defensive system improvement being a good example.

[Locklyn]

Hmmm...I have some Veteran ships as well are those better than Line too?

 

/Locklyn

[PhaseDragon]

Here is an example of the ground combat report. The columns don't translate accurately from PDF to here.

 

-----GATK (Ground Attack)-----

GATK: 3

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

** GROUND COMBAT REPORT **

----- ****** [ M (Red) 1 V ] [single Star] - 1 -----

DEM Shadowlords of Lolth # 4851 'Prismatic Swirling Web'

Average sized 4-armed humanoids with jet-black skin, white or silver hair, and glowing red, violet or green eyes. They move

silently and prefer stealth and poison in close underground combat.

NEUT Primitive Neutral # 9009 'Tentacles Tearing Apart World'

These primitive three-headed octopi are not particularly fierce, but can fight fiercely when attacked. If cornered, their

ability to eject large volumes of jet-black ink allow them to close and use their powerful constricting tentacles and heavy

beak to great effect. Swimmers beware!

** Table of Organization & Equipment: Invasion Army 3 # 3 **

Shadowlords of Lolth # 4851

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

1 Imperial Guards Heavy Air Defense

1 Imperial Guards Heavy Infantry

2 Imperial Guards Infantry

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

Air Defense [800] Anti-Aircraft Artillery

Close Combat [8100] Ablative Armor, Battleaxe, Chainsaw, Club, Dagger, Flak Jacket

M75 High Explosive Grenade, Spear, Sword

Heavy Weapons [1300] Recoilless Rifle

Small Arms [2400] Carbine, Harpoon Gun, Semiautomatic Pistol, Shotgun

** Table of Organization & Equipment: Warriors # 286 **

Primitive Neutral # 9009

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

1 Imperial Army Infantry

1 Special Talent

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

Close Combat [2700] Ablative Armor, Battleaxe, Chainsaw, Club, Dagger, Flak Jacket

M75 High Explosive Grenade, Spear, Sword

Heavy Weapons [200] Recoilless Rifle

Intelligence [100] Smoke Projector

Small Arms [1200] Carbine, Harpoon Gun, Semiautomatic Pistol, Shotgun

Telepathics [12000] 1st Generation Telepathics

** Tactical Rating Modifiers **

Air Defense Air Support Air to Air Ammunition Amphibious Antitank Aquatic

+10 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0

Armor Artillery Biodefense Bioweapons Broken Terrain Camouflage Chemdefense

+0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0

Chemweapons Close Combat EW Engineering Environmental ESP Heavy Weapons

+0 +5 +0 +0 +0 +0 +6

Intel Medical Nuc Defense Nuc Weapons Open Terrain Orbital Bmb Security

-1 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0

Small Arms Space Defense Special Wpns Subterranean Telekinesis Telepathics Transport

+1 +0 +0 +0 +0 -10 +0

Unmodified odds: 4.667532 Total tactical combat odds shifts: 1.1

Attacking divisions counted as if they were 2.25 divisions each for casualty purposes

Defending divisions counted as if they were 6 divisions each for casualty purposes

Ground combat round # 1

Attacker losses: 1 Imperial Guards Infantry

Defender losses: <none>

Ground combat round # 2

Attacker losses: 1 Imperial Guards Infantry

Defender losses: <none>

Ground combat round # 3

Attacker losses: 1 Imperial Guards Heavy Air Defense

Defender losses: 1 Imperial Army Infantry

Ground combat round # 1

Attacker losses: <none>

Defender losses: 1 Special Talent

After a fierce battle, the defense crumble and the planet falls to the invaders!

[Lord Xaar]

Hmmm...I have some Veteran ships as well are those better than Line too?

 

/Locklyn

Veteran is better than Line.

 

 

And a Stout is always better than a Timid (beer).

 

 

This has been a very informative thread. Thanks, guys.

 

-LX

[RTGPete]

And a Stout is always better than a Timid (beer).

Ha! Cheers to that!

[ali-t-akua]

Hehe. Maybe the experience levels should be Pilsner, Lager, Porter and Stout.

[Locklyn]

Pete,

When do you think these new battle reports you spoke of will come into play as they are not yet and make wargames pretty useless.

 

/Locklyn

[Ur Lord Tedric]

These 'ere new battle reports

 

Okay, so we're getting a flavour of the new battle reports......

 

They're certainly a bit confusing at the moment, could we please have a little explanation so we can see where things are going before they're finalised and we can help populate the updated Naval Combat Primer?

 

If we're reading them right we now get a 'full' design breakdown of the ships, rather than the partial we had before along with the descriptions of the 5 attributes, with ships detailed as to Dep Loc?

 

We then get the weapon 'totals', with a bracketed modifier for range?

 

Lastly we see attributes with 3 decimal place numerics for some of the attributes and defenses? (Fire Control's not yet added?)

 

The numerics are based upon tonnage? (The maneuverability one seems to be a true 3 decimal place AP calculation)

 

You then get the same for the opposing force?

 

Each ship shows if it was damaged or destroyed and, if destroyed, what order it was destroyed in?

 

Have we got that right?

 

And will the FOB order be updated to show the same thing for just your fleet (which would make a lot of sense)? Then the battle reports will effectively combine FOBs for you and your opponent and a FOB will give you the information of a 'practice' battle....

 

Pete, have we got that all right?

 

Finally, and I suspect the answer is 'YES', which would make sense as we don't have a functional tactical battle, do ships always fight at the range of their DepLoc? Or if there's no ships 'in front' of them, do they automatically move closer to the front? [There would be the difficulty of comparing 'speed' here and the ability to close or maintain the range]

 

Yours Hopefully

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

 

PS Is there any chance of a multi-ship trial battle that shows off all you've coded and that we could see again as you refine and finalise?

[LenLorek]

PS  Is there any chance of a multi-ship trial battle that shows off all you've coded and that we could see again as you refine and finalise?

This gets my vote !!

[Lord Xaar]

<snip>

If we're reading them right we now get a 'full' design breakdown of the ships, rather than the partial we had before along with the descriptions of the 5 attributes, with ships detailed as to Dep Loc?

 

We then get the weapon 'totals', with a bracketed modifier for range?

<snip>

Lastly we see attributes with 3 decimal place numerics for some of the attributes and defenses?  (Fire Control's not yet added?)

 

Finally, and I suspect the answer is 'YES', which would make sense as we don't have a functional tactical battle, do ships always fight at the range of their DepLoc?  Or if there's no ships 'in front' of them, do they automatically move closer to the front?  [There would be the difficulty of comparing 'speed' here and the ability to close or maintain the range]

 

<snip>

The "full" design breakdown effectively throws the whole "fog of war" argument right on its ear.

 

Does any one else think it should just be a little bit more difficult to find out what tech another player has? I mean, I could throw a 1000 ton ship at a Dreadnought and in the process of getting vaporized learn every piece of equipment that is on a (likely) vastly superior ship?

 

Better start building those Gnats.

 

I had hoped at one point that battle reports would show what your Captains *thought* the enemy was using. (which could open a whole fun tech line designed to confuse enemy sensors...but that's probably a lot of work...<sigh>)

 

Knowing the categories of weapons (coherent beam, projectile, etc) but not the actual weapon -- without a little bit of extra work -- would be more realistic. You should be able to learn more about an adversary's ship if you have good computers/sensors, and you should learn less if you are defeated (transmission to sector base is cut off as a plasma torpedo guts your ship in a blazing flash). I think a 1000 ton ship should learn nothing from a battle with a 10M ton attack vessel.

 

The limited ship detail of the previous style reports seemed an okay compromise, but getting everything for free seems a bit too much.

 

Of course I'm basing this on very limited info, so maybe I'm misinterpreting the results a bit.

 

I think the addition of the numeric info is nice (I'm sure some of the spreadsheet jocks out there are thrilled with the new data they have to play with), but did like the descriptive terms. "Ponderous" was a personal favorite.

 

 

Ur Lord Tedric,

My thought about ship speed goes as follows:

 

Ships are "static" in their deployment location. Speed is a rating that determines how well they evade missiles, torpedos and Fighters/Drones. The higher speed a vessel has the lower % those weapons strike.

 

In general I think the combat system is very "static". There is an attack number and a defense number for each ship. There are some percentage modifiers that increase or decrease those numbers. There is a bit of random chance.

 

Then it's all rock, paper, scissors.

 

If your ships' Integrity rating is high enough it survives. I don't see ships moving around between deployment locations at all.

 

Pete,

I'd love to see some mock results so that we could all get a sense of what you are thinking for the combat system (surely I'm not the only one here ). If you did it with only starting tech then I don't think it would give too much away, but would be incredibly helpful to all of us, no doubt. (Even those of us that are already testing the combat system, or in active war.)

 

 

-LX

[hobknob]

I would think that a dreadnought is not going to open up with every weapon on board to vaporize a corvette. That being the case I would certainly hope that the corvette pilot would only be able to detect and know what weapons are actually fired at him. It also makes sense that defenses would only be discovered when used. The player using fighters and drones will certainly want to know if the opposing fleet is packed with CIDS and that should only become apparent when they are used, not from some suicide shuttle that flies in to get the ship design.

 

So far I like the idea that the amount of data is being increased so you can tell how well your ship designs are, but the data should be limited to your own side of the equation, at least at first. Details of enemy ships should only be available upon capture and after a successful engagement versus that ship class.

 

I also still have questions about morale checks and efforts to break off from the engagement. I still hope for some sort of setting or control of my fleet commanders that will turn off the stupid button when they are completely outmanned, outgunned and out fought. So far I haven't heard of any ships actually breaking off from combat and running away. I would assume, with all the preconditions required with assumptions, that my 20 APwar ships can outrun my enemies 2 AP war ships.

 

Edited July 6, 2004 by hobknob

[Ur Lord Tedric]

I'd like to throw in one simple idea for the 'fog' of war bit having now seen the sort of thing we're heading for.

 

For your own ships, and repeatable for just yourself with the FOB order, you do indeed see the full design details, the 5 'descriptors' and now the whole set of numeric ratings (for any and all that you have).

 

For any 'enemy' ships, however, you see just the descriptors and the numerics, so you can see where each of you out pointed each other.

 

I do agree with hobnob about what you may, or may not, see depending on what could actually occur in the battle, but this may be a level of AI coding that might not be worth the effort it could take to program it.....especially as there's other areas that then might take a higher priority.

 

And yes, a throwaway scout may find out a lot more than he 'could', but that's what throwaway scouts are for. And if an enemy starts to use that tactic, then you can allow for it.....

 

Regards

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric