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SargonKingOfSlith
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SUBORDINATE: Commander, all of our Plasma Torps and Siege Beam Lasers are primed for use. The enemy fuel tankers and command vessels are less than 0.1 AU away and closing behind these enemy screen fleets.

 

COMMANDER: Excellent! Rather than maneuver past these screen vessels that will do little to no damage to our fleet and focus on the one ship that will do us harm, fire all weapons against that 1,000 ton enemy screen vessel!

 

SUBORDINATE: Ummm......aye aye sir!

 

[1,000 ton screen ship explodes]

 

SUBORDINATE: We got it! Ow....that enemy command cruiser just dealt us a pretty serious blow to our hull. What is our next target?

 

COMMANDER: Why, another one of those puny screen vessels, of course! Obliterate that screen vessel!

 

[several rounds go by......]

 

SUBORDINATE: We are down to 2% power. Our weapons systems are down. The enemy command cruiser was accidentally hit two rounds ago when we blasted through a screening vessel. There are two enemy screening vessels left.....Commander, what should we do?

 

COMMANDER: Are you insane? All hands on board. Set ship trajectory for direct contact into one of the remaining enemy screening vessels.....RAMMING SPEED! Brace yourselves! To victory!!!!

 

[The enemy command cruiser marvels at the stupidity of the Commander's decision and finishes off our hero with a final volley of 100 10cm Autocannons]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

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I keep thinking back to the Honor Harrington universe and how the sides are relatively close together. Each ship was a part of a formation that helped each other with point defense and fire control. There were screening ships that would frequently be called upon to take one for the team too. The other thing about the universe is the idea that you actually have to close to weapon range and that each system has a particular range and missiles have magazines that will run out in a protracted battle.

 

I was kind of hoping for fleet battle plans that included standoff attack, close to knife fighting range, etc... I don't know if the current battle plans allow any of this or not, but my impression so far is that forces basically line up and take turns pot shotting one another regardless of weapon types, ship design philosophy or any other consideration.

 

:beer:

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but my impression so far is that forces basically line up and take turns pot shotting one another

 

So our current combat is akin to Starmaster, basically? ;)

 

It also begs the question on what 'maneuverability' COULD be...instead its more like an attribute that lowers your ship's overall "Armor Class" (Pardon for the D&D reference :beer: ) It would be cool if maneuverability allowed a ship to swim through the swarm to pick its targets more wisely.

 

I meant to follow up on something.....maybe future espionage would give us an insight into enemy NUDs, colony locations and research trees?

 

:thumbsup:

 

This could remove some of the uncertainty of what the enemy will bring to the gunfight. I would invest heavily into espionage if I could gain a credible insight into what my enemy was building so that I might 'win' the weapon-type matchups (ie rock/scissors/paper aspect)

 

My understanding from Pete is that if Battle Imaging Systems have a bridge rating of 2000 and Mk II Computer Systems have a bridge rating of 2000

 

Well - some of us have neglected computers :cheers: And my figures for the Battle Image system are much higher than 2000.....maybe there are other factors affecting the fleet's fire control? Its nice to KNOW the fire control ratings of certain components this time around because I had no idea what kind of fire control I needed.....only tha I needed more.

 

This cycle, I'll switch research over to more useful devices...but after reading the info about fire control, thanks to Ken, I had to scramble to get decent fire control. :P I don't want my battle carrier losing to a pathfinder and 250 screen vessels. :lol: (Exaggerating, I know :P but kinda not really)

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SUBORDINATE:  Commander, all of our Plasma Torps and Siege Beam Lasers are primed for use.  The enemy fuel tankers and command vessels are less than 0.1 AU away and closing behind these enemy screen fleets.

 

COMMANDER:  Excellent!  Rather than maneuver past these screen vessels that will do little to no damage to our fleet and focus on the one ship that will do us harm, fire all weapons against that 1,000 ton enemy screen vessel!

 

SUBORDINATE:  Ummm......aye aye sir!

 

[1,000 ton screen ship explodes]

 

SUBORDINATE:  We got it!  Ow....that enemy command cruiser just dealt us a pretty serious blow to our hull.  What is our next target?

 

COMMANDER:  Why, another one of those puny screen vessels, of course!  Obliterate that screen vessel!

 

[several rounds go by......]

 

SUBORDINATE:  We are down to 2% power.  Our weapons systems are down.  The enemy command cruiser was accidentally hit two rounds ago when we blasted through a screening vessel.  There are two enemy screening vessels left.....Commander, what should we do?

 

COMMANDER:  Are you insane?  All hands on board.  Set ship trajectory for direct contact into one of the remaining enemy screening vessels.....RAMMING SPEED!    Brace yourselves!  To victory!!!!

 

[The enemy command cruiser marvels at the stupidity of the Commander's decision and finishes off our hero with a final volley of 100 10cm Autocannons]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

A somewhat accurate rendition of my encounter with the NSI. Just imagine, early on in the battle, I was firing a Type B Plasma torpedo, 2500 Chain Guns, 2000 Light P-Cannon, 800 Mk I Missles, 1200 various Light weapons, 1600 20cm Autocannon, 1200 Interceptors, 1200 Light Drones, and 800 Standard Drones ... all firing on one tiny little 1000 ton Corvette. 4,000,000 in total firepower + the drones and fighters all into one tiny spot. I bet nothing was left bigger than an atom after that assault.

 

In the meantime, the Million ton War Cruiser and four 500,000 ton Heavy Cruisers sitting a little extra distance away were ignored even as they poured (reduced due to distance) firepower onto my Cruisers.

 

So .. how many people have now built a large ship, to sit in say deploy location 12, filled stem to stern with computers and the like (and some defenses of course :beer: )? Simply to get around this in the game.

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A somewhat accurate rendition of my encounter with the NSI.

 

Inspired by it :beer:

 

So .. how many people have now built a large ship, to sit in say deploy location 12, filled stem to stern with computers and the like (and some defenses of course  )? Simply to get around this in the game.

 

thats what I was eluding to with fire control :lol:

 

As soon as I can streamline a long range missile ship with about 250 Fire Control (ie can target 250 ships in one pulse), I'll feel comfortable building fleets again :cheers: Ok maybe 25 :P

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It also begs the question on what 'maneuverability' COULD be...instead its more like an attribute that lowers your ship's overall "Armor Class" (Pardon for the D&D reference  ) It would be cool if maneuverability allowed a ship to swim through the swarm to pick its targets more wisely.

Antiquated D&D reference. AC now gets better as it goes up, not down.

 

-Krelnett the roleplayer

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Hmmmm, a number of thoughts there.......

 

Firstly, I think Pete's done an excellent job here (now we finally understand it) of replicating some of the battle action that we can read into the Weber and Weber/White books that I have enjoyed so much this last year. I would be interested to see if 'Starmaster' is similar, but do not actually understand the reference (Game or Book?).

 

Space is big, but I don't see what that's got to do with ship combat. The books mentioned above seem to me to be perfectly logical in their approach and they deal with it this way. Space is big so getting to contact is actually quite difficult, but the fighting occurs at very close ranges.

 

It's quite reasonable to have screen ships interposing themselves to take fire. It's also quite reasonable that a mechanism exists to support this.

 

Secondly, I now am much closer to understanding things that Pete has said before. We are mis-guided to concentrate on the round-by-round effect, although we do actually want to see it to know what goes on, because it shapes our thoughts and plans. We should be concentrating on the end result.

 

Yes, a single screen ship will take (actually is more likely to) all the fire of a fleet with an FC of only one - but that just means that the FC was poor and you should do something about it.

 

What we have here is a game mechanism to ensure we have to make choices.

 

So, if someone builds extremely 'slow' fleets of lots of teeny screen ships, then just sit behind a WP and blow them all away as they come through. That tactic won't work against someone who builds just big ships, as you will have ships that have traded armor for increased FC.....

 

So, we have weapon match up choices and fleet composition choices. We have fleet deployment choices and strategic movement choices....

 

Lots to choose from.

 

So, let's appreciate the game mechanism and just push Pete when necessary to give us the information we need to make those choices.

 

There is deliberately no single tactic that any of us can follow to ensure vistory in a space battle. Every enemy we discover will have made different weapon choices and different ship choices and different fleet choices. The defender gets a certain built in advantage merely to allow them time to make those choices.

 

What more could we ask for!!!!!

 

And now, back to our regular programming - Pete, go on, tell us what the defensive numerics mean on the battle report. We know it's the same calculation as for Fire Control, but what do the 3-decimal place numbers actually mean. After that we can go away and make choices and only plead for the battle reports to show the effects - my desire is still for a round by round description even though it would make them very long.....However, there may be ways to get round that.....and it's WP assaults that I know we'd love to see.

 

Mx

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Ur-Lord

 

:P

 

Well stated. I might have sounded too harsh on the system. Pete should know me well enough not to take it personally - and I think a healthy conjecture of a parade of horribles is productive for understanding the rules and discussing game mechanics.

 

As for 'realistic' space combat....I don't expect the game to perfectly reflect our basic understanding of 'physics in space'...but here are a couple of things that I think could be discussed.

 

1) There is a microscopic amount of friction in space....so your 'brakes' are thrusters. The ability to stop on a dime and zip off into a new direction would take a tremendous amount of sophisticated ship design (and would ultimately NOT result in the 'fighter jet' model of a spaceship....thrusters in the back only....BAD idea :lol: ) I think having a high 'maneuverability' would be an effective defensive modifer (which it is) and allow ships to move aorund more 'ponderous' vessels (which we don't have the option to do) Its clear that deployment location is a code convenience WHICH IS FINE...but I don't see a problem in wishing for more flexibility to make the offensive sequence more realistic.

 

2) Any sort of light beam weapons should not have a distance penalty at all and I think this is in place. You can also 'split' beams -- reducing intensity but increasing spread...perhaps a last ditch effort at defenses if ships are closing in?

 

 

3) I think the CIDS v missiles, torps, drones, fighters makes perfect sense. I am really curious as to how these match up numerically and I understand Pete is busting his arse to give us numbers to rely upon. :P

 

4) The concept of 'capacitors' or 'energy cores' is missing. How do we 'power' our ships? :thumbsup: But - I think this omission is probably good for the sanity of keeping the system simpler. WE can presume that each component bings its own contribution to the ship's energy in the form of tonnage and thats fine with me.

 

 

I just designed a million ton ship with a fire control rating that allows me to target 4 ships at once. The Battle Image System seems to have a rating of 9000 (I'm pretty sure) and is a significant improvement over the Mk I computer system. I'm hoping to list the fire control rating for each few starting components at some point in the future and would welcome anyone else to volunteer such information as I don't think this is something that should be 'discovered' :beer: Same goes for 'Shield' ratings and 'integrity' ratings.

 

I suspect that we'll understand most of the ratings within the next three turns....and I don't think anyone will miss the 'fog of mystery' that has previously surrounded how these numbers interact with each other :cheers:

 

Again, I think its awesome that Pete is finalyl shedding the light on these ratings ;)

 

Aside - Starmaster was an ancient PBM game. My brother and I were discussing SNROTE combat the other day and he suggested the combat was very similar in some respects.

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In re:

1) I think that rear thrusters are almost workable if you have multiple rotational thrusters at the front and back and a stiff spine. (Not too difficult with steel (*shudder*) components.) Whirls the ship around.

 

2) Lasers, for example, have a collineation factor which expresses how quickly the beam expands, reducing the energy per given area, while not the total energy. If the ranges are in the hundreds of meters, there would be effectively no diffusion at all, but if they are from the earth to the moon (to coin a phrase), the loss of focus would be considerable. So, what do the DepLocs represent?

 

Figures I have for Fire Control:

1000 Mk I Computer System (Level 1)

4000 Mk II Computer System (Level 2)

9000 Battle Imaging System (Level 3)

(per Pete) (Levels are mine)

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Yes, a single screen ship will take (actually is more likely to) all the fire of a fleet with an FC of only one - but that just means that the FC was poor and you should do something about it.

In a way, fire control as designed makes sense. If your ship has a low rating, you have difficulty switching targets. So once you pick a small target and you start to fire on it, disengaging the lock to find another target takes some effort due to the poor systems controls you have.

 

But, the way fire control is implemented along with how fire damage is determined and applied, they both are fleet level. And this is one of the the underlying problems. Imagine a battle where 100 Battleships come across 100 Corvettes and the Battleships have a FCR of 1. Because fire power for damage is a fleet level determination, the ability of each ship to fire on a target is lost. At a minimum each ship in a fleet should be able to select it's own target. Forcing the ships to act in unison like some giant ballet dance is wrong.

 

Here's an interesting question. Lets say as the defender, I have sitting at a Warp point 10 Cruisers. And each Crusier is in it's own fleet (the 901, the 902, the 903, etcetera...). An enemy force comes through the WP to attack (and they have to come through as one large fleet of ships since it's one Warp Order). SO, in the battle to come, does each crusier (fleet) get to select and fire on it's own? Does this in effect divide the Cruiser fire into 10 globs of damage? OR, does the computer simple wrap all the Crusiers up into one large pseudo fleet for the battle to defend the WP?

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Greetings Eternus!

 

I don't think it's a problem, but I'm not sure we should necessarily pursue 'realism' either. Certainly the Weber/White universe, just like the age old E.E. "Doc" Smith Lensman universe of my youth, seems to have reactionless drives and the negation of inertia.

 

This allows our ships to traverse space in-system and in-between WPs relatively quickly. Certainly fast enough to make even light-speed weapon's targetting problematic over anything beyond relatively short range (one light second, or less than 200,000 miles). And even for Autocannon and Missiles I am assuming a reasonably high percentage of light speed.

 

Certainly we aren't dealing with an Einsteinian universe, nor anything that we can understand now......

 

It is certainly interesting that, with this one single understanding of targetting and fire control, so much of the battle and fleet dynamics have suddenly fallen into place.

 

This is why I too have relentlessly pursued Pete, both here and in private, for some of the things I believe are essential to enable us to design ships (given that we actually do that and don't just buy 'Cruisers', which may well be the case with a purely strategic simulation), with a reasonable understanding of what we're doing. For my mind there is now just that one piece of information outstanding and the hope that we can develop the battle report to the point where we can see the theory in reality.

 

However, that said, I also want to heap praise where it is due. This one mechanism of Fire Control and the way it has been implemented is stunningly simple and quite brilliant. There are just so many options and styles that fall from it - and only add to the gigantic scope of the game. Much kudos to the GM! :beer:

 

Mx

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Ur-Lord

 

 

4) The concept of 'capacitors' or 'energy cores' is missing. How do we 'power' our ships? :beer: But - I think this omission is probably good for the sanity of keeping the system simpler. WE can presume that each component bings its own contribution to the ship's energy in the form of tonnage and thats fine with me.

That is in,

 

Shields are powered by capacitors, because they are knocked down, but are at full strength the

next battle.

 

The other defensive Weapons are powered an are working at full capacity until destroyed (as percentage of ship damage).

 

Cestvel

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Here's an interesting question. Lets say as the defender, I have sitting at a Warp point 10 Cruisers. And each Crusier is in it's own fleet (the 901, the 902, the 903, etcetera...). An enemy force comes through the WP to attack (and they have to come through as one large fleet of ships since it's one Warp Order). SO, in the battle to come, does each crusier (fleet) get to select and fire on it's own? Does this in effect divide the Cruiser fire into 10 globs of damage? OR, does the computer simple wrap all the Crusiers up into one large pseudo fleet for the battle to defend the WP?

From personal experience, I believe the different fleets were combined into one "psuedo" fleet. Based on my turn result, it does seem to be the case.

 

Interesting story behind this... An unarmed lone ship (with a Diplomat) in a fleet created from another with a more aggressive ROE jumps through a warp point. This ship then initiated combat with an unarmed explorer ship, which belonged to a neighbor. Unfortunately, at this warp point there was one of my explorer ships also present which was armed and consequently dragged into the battle by the 2000 ton Sentry class fleet scout ship.

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Not only are your 10 fleets combined into one with a single Firecontrol rating, any allies present who would fight on your side are also lumped in, sharing a pooled Firecontrol.

 

 

 

 

In summary, I think Firecontrol is just fine as designed. It's funny to read all the pretend narrative conversations reasoning why its silly for a fleet to shoot at a single screen...

"Captain, we just used the entire fleet to kill that unarmed light screen!"

"Very well, continue to ignore the heavily-armed 1mil ton ship in the rear."

...because all of that is exactly what Firecontrol IS. And if you don't have the equipment on your ships to coordinate fire, you SHOULDN'T.

 

From my persepective, the only thing that has really changed recently regarding this issue is the ability to now actually see the firecontrol ratings on fleets and on ANZ. The guesswork is out, which I appreciate.

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