Information disclosure

[RTGPete]

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?

# of fleets has no bearing once combat initiates; the cruisers would be combined into a single force for the battle. They would have a base fire control of 1. If this is considered low, add a flagship or leaders to modify, or add screens to stretch the battle out, effectively multiplying your fire control through extended battle.

 

I'm working on a method to display much more information about each ship, to especially include a better description of each ship's defensive systems. FOB's to include more information as well.

[Palladium Regency]

Well - some of us have neglected computers And my figures for the Battle Image system are much higher than 2000.....maybe there are other factors affecting the fleet's fire control?

I said 2000 only for the purposes of example. My point was that according to Pete there was no synergistic effect of having both computers and battle imaging systems on a ship. If you have computers with the same or better bridge rating, there is no reason to include both systems on a ship that you are building from scratch. My original belief was that these systems would provide some sort of shift in battle similar to ground combats where having different types of division are better than having all of one type.

 

With respect to manueverablitiy, it acts as a defense against missiles/fighters/drones.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

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.

WKE,

 

This is an excellent example of why the Great Oracle wants us to concentrate on the result and not the way we get there - although seeing and understanding the way we get there is, to me, rather important, if not essential, so we can have confidence in the system

 

Lets assume that, in your example, the 100 tiny ships also have a FC of one so that they all target just one ship.

 

Unless they mass enough firepower to actually take out one of your battleships, then each turn you will destroy one of theirs and they will only damage one of yours.

 

100 'rounds' later, you will have destroyed all 100 of theirs, whilst yours have varying amounts of minor damage. If your ships are all in the same DepLoc, the chance of them being damaged/targetted a second time, is actually quite small, so damage is unlikely to accumulate.

 

Now, think here - you have 100 large ships trying to take out a swarm of little ones. Is it unreasonable that these gnats are difficult targets, no. Do they cause lots of damage, not really.

 

The main point is that it is a tactic that you have to get around. More likely, let us assume you are attacking a player who has 1,000+ tiny ships defending a WP through which you want to attack with a lot less than 100 large ships - let's say 10.

 

In that case, his 1,000 may have enough firepower to take out each of your ships and may indeed take out all 10 for the loss of 10 of his own.

 

The moral of this tale is that well defended WPs are really hard to attack - so, either don't do it, or do it another way........and that's why there are so many options.....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[WKE235]

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.   

WKE,

 

This is an excellent example of why the Great Oracle wants us to concentrate on the result and not the way we get there - although seeing and understanding the way we get there is, to me, rather important, if not essential, so we can have confidence in the system

 

Lets assume that, in your example, the 100 tiny ships also have a FC of one so that they all target just one ship.

 

Unless they mass enough firepower to actually take out one of your battleships, then each turn you will destroy one of theirs and they will only damage one of yours.

 

100 'rounds' later, you will have destroyed all 100 of theirs, whilst yours have varying amounts of minor damage. If your ships are all in the same DepLoc, the chance of them being damaged/targetted a second time, is actually quite small, so damage is unlikely to accumulate.

 

Now, think here - you have 100 large ships trying to take out a swarm of little ones. Is it unreasonable that these gnats are difficult targets, no. Do they cause lots of damage, not really.

 

The main point is that it is a tactic that you have to get around. More likely, let us assume you are attacking a player who has 1,000+ tiny ships defending a WP through which you want to attack with a lot less than 100 large ships - let's say 10.

 

In that case, his 1,000 may have enough firepower to take out each of your ships and may indeed take out all 10 for the loss of 10 of his own.

 

The moral of this tale is that well defended WPs are really hard to attack - so, either don't do it, or do it another way........and that's why there are so many options.....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

Alright, lets look at results. Lets change the battle to be more realistic towards current fleet sizes. Lets say you have 5 Battleships on one side, and 98 Corvettes in deploy location 1 and with 2 Battleships in Deploy location 2. Both sides with Fire Control Ratings of 1.

 

There is only a 1 in 5 chance that the enemy battleships would be fired on in the first 5 rounds, a 1 in 3 chance for the first 10 rounds.

 

Now, if ship targetting was done based on a Size as the primary factor and deploy location supporting, odds are the enemy battleships would be targetted early and destroyed. It's 5 on 2 (all things else being equal), and the attacker might lose a ship, maybe even have another with bad damage. But the enemy battleships are destroyed (despite the FCR of 1) and eventually the corvettes (gnats) are destroyed.

 

Now, if ships could individually fire, even with FCR 1 and current deploy based selection process, odds are pretty good the enemy battlships will be fired on at least once in the first four rounds. Still, the hulking enemy ships get to fire back until they are hit. Despite being 5 to 2 odds, those enemy battleships will dish out a pounding. The attackers get to fire on the big enemy ships sooner. And the corvette screen is whittled down quickly. Still, the attacker could easily lose 3 or more ships in the attack, maybe even lose everything. It's going to be painful.

 

Finally, under the current targetting scheme since the fleet level limits firing on one ship, and the corvettes draw the odds of being targetted by numbers and location. The enemy battleships fire round after round after round of fire into the attackers, virtually unopposed. Sure, as the corvettes are whittled down and with luck, you eventually fire on and a battleship, and then again. But unless you get very lucky in firing on the enemys big ships early on, the 5 attacking battleships will be destroyed. No if's, and's, or buts.

 

 

I know, I'm probably arguing into a wall about this. Of course I am changing my own builds and ships to fit within the way the game plays. Heck, I've been sending ships called Junkers to the lines composed of a Science Lab (found a bunch to use), one jump engine, one nuclear engine, and some fuel tanks (again lots of stuff found in explores). Basically freebies using stuff just laying around, and sending it to the lines (in deploy location 1 of course). Every turn, another large pile is built. But it is all so wrong.

[MadMartinB]

I imagine that fire control of 1 (aka MK I computers) is like an old battleship. No capability to track movement, some kind of primitive internal communications method..

 

Up on the Deck of the Dahak Lance Captain Bullhorn picks up the megaphone. All hands fire on the large ship to my upper left. He points one of his tentacles.

 

Deep down below in the different fireing ports the crew wonder which way the commander is pointing and find it pointless since their Plasma Torp fires a nice path straight forward and that annoying small ship is buzzing bye.

[WKE235]

I imagine that fire control of 1 (aka MK I computers) is like an old battleship. No capability to track movement, some kind of primitive internal communications method..

 

Up on the Deck of the Dahak Lance Captain Bullhorn picks up the megaphone. All hands fire on the large ship to my upper left. He points one of his tentacles.

 

Deep down below in the different fireing ports the crew wonder which way the commander is pointing and find it pointless since their Plasma Torp fires a nice path straight forward and that annoying small ship is buzzing bye.

Or just maybe, you've given the crew a little to much Grog? Port, Aft, Starboard ... they're all the same after a couple of pints of liquid courage.

 

PS -- Megaphones don't work to well. We've found Cans with long tight strings sound clearer.

 

PPS -- It will be nice to see what improvements Pete puts into the FOB / Battles. My #1 item is information on the damage / firepower of drones and fighters.

[octagon999]

Yes, Regency. If it is any consolation, I labored under the same mistaken belief. I now have a few different types of bridge equipment researched rather than spending the combined research on a single, higher level bridge item. I guess we just learn and move on.

[ali-t-akua]

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.

 

Since Pete and Russ were GMs for Schubel and Sons (presumably for Starmaster) I would expect that the combat system would have some similarities.

[RTGPete]

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.

 

Since Pete and Russ were GMs for Schubel and Sons (presumably for Starmaster) I would expect that the combat system would have some similarities.

Ha! You don't want to know how the combats worked in Starmaster...no, really...you don't. Or sector scans, oh man. No resemblance whatsoever to SNROTE battles. Ha ha, you gave me a good chuckle there....whew, the memories of running Starmaster battles, heh. And to think..that was 23 years ago, wow.

[PhaseDragon]

One thing that I always loved about StarMaster was that you could request a lot of information and it was free. I think I still have the complete ship list somewhere. The tech items that were discovered were described on slips of paper included in your envelope which was also kind of nice. There were numerous ways to organize them.

 

I always suspected that a lot of the game was just made up as it went along. Special orders had to be written out and evaluated by a GM. It really fueled your imagination trying to come up with something interesting that your scientists could do to try and gain a bonus.

 

I think that I have probably spents thousands on different variations of this game dating back to StarMaster....and I still love it. Maybe I need help?

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Greetings WKE,

 

[We won't copy the post as to keep this one shorter]

 

There's nothing wrong with your example, although our mathematicians are even more pessimistic over the probabilities that you quoted; the enemy battleships being even less likely to be targetted - although we don't know exactly how the program does it (assuming 1:50 chance of them being targetted in the first place followed by a modifier as there are 98 targets in a DepLoc closer.....).

 

Our real point is that it might not be at all unreasonable that 2 well positioned battleships supported by a great swarm of corvettes cannot expect to take on 5 'ponderous' lumps and run rings round them.

 

In an open space battle, they will win in this circumstance.

 

However, the Corvettes will move only one system at a time and, outside the battle, your 5 battleships can move around much faster.....if they have NTWDs

 

If you really must take on this force as it's sat at a WP that you really have to go through, then design a 'Teeny Tiny Warship Killer' Assault Ship that has an FC of 16 (40% Mk II CS) and firepower enough to take on 16 of those corvettes at once....

 

Send one after another through the WP each time taking out 16 of those Corvettes. Repeat 6 or 7 times and then send your battleships through.......

 

As FC control values increase, then this becomes ever more possible whilst the small ship owner will tie up ever more shipyard slips trying to keep up and always have poor FC in his fleets. He'll never expand far as the small ship fleets move so slowly.

 

This is an advantage to the defender mechanism. It's really not that unrealistic and forces us to construct different tactics for different enemies. It also means we really ought to think of having more balance in our fleet mixes.

 

Played empires that want to defend themselves are going to be extremely tough nuts to crack - and if a player has spent 2-3 years investing in that empire, this is certainly not unreasonable.

 

We have a lot of choices to make and not every choice will work in every situation. This mechanism gives us a chance to make those choices.

 

Lots and lots of little ships/orbitals will defend WPs close to the HW just like laid patterns of minefields.

 

You cannot attack distant targets with minefields unless you take a great deal of time to do it. Whilst your fleet of teeny tiny warships is lumbering towards the enemy, you'd better watch your back......

 

For our part, we're starting to think of balanced fleets with cruiser screens, battleships and escorting carriers - which does at least sound right.......

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Palladium Regency]

Yes, Regency. If it is any consolation, I labored under the same mistaken belief. I now have a few different types of bridge equipment researched rather than spending the combined research on a single, higher level bridge item. I guess we just learn and move on.

I kind of figured that if I did it, there was at least one other player that had as well. Going forward, and attempting to not harp on a past which can't be changed, I worry that this is going to happen again because of lack of information. To bring up an old horse, this is yet another case that benefits races that save RP when they built their race. Granted, I hope any race that has been around for 55 turns was expended their points.

[Palladium Regency]

Our real point is that it might not be at all unreasonable that 2 well positioned battleships supported by a great swarm of corvettes cannot expect to take on 5 'ponderous' lumps and run rings round them.

 

If you really must take on this force as it's sat at a WP that you really have to go through, then design a 'Teeny Tiny Warship Killer' Assault Ship that has an FC of 16 (40% Mk II CS) and firepower enough to take on 16 of those corvettes at once....

 

Send one after another through the WP each time taking out 16 of those Corvettes. Repeat 6 or 7 times and then send your battleships through.......

I disagree. My battleships are anything, but ponderous lumps. The problem I have with the system is that it gets worse the more chaff someone puts in your way. The system doesn't encourage a good fleet mix, especially for the defender.

 

As to sending high FC ships through a warp point, electronics in all its forms is the most expensive material to assemble which makes it even harder to justify attacking someone. Sorry, I am going to just drop it now as I think we've talked it to death.

[Sakarissa]

I've researched multiple items that give Bridge ratings. I don't feel bad about doing that with the new FC revelations. The Skaarl are a race that likes to discover things. And you never know what will unlock what. Besides, when I put multiple devices on a ship that gives Bridge bonuses, it feels like a real ship to me instead of a munchkin'd ship. I can munchkin with the best of them. I'm a big fan of the Weber universe and I like having ships that are equipped fairly realistically.

 

Sakarissa

[EternusIV]

There are all kinds of ways to overlap your research.....it happens with missiles and ground weapons too.

 

You just have to hope that there are some items that can only be obtained by researching broadly. If tha made any sense :lol: Its early.