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Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Dec 2, 2017 0:42:45 GMT
Hm... are unguided missiles (I'm thinking rocket-propelled shells) within the boundaries of the challenge? I think they're technically prohibited, but maybe within the spirit if there are no remotes? sure, i guess. Also, if you have a shell with a control module but no engine (to proximity detonate) its fine
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Dec 2, 2017 0:48:56 GMT
Hm... are unguided missiles (I'm thinking rocket-propelled shells) within the boundaries of the challenge? I think they're technically prohibited, but maybe within the spirit if there are no remotes? sure, i guess. Also, if you have a shell with a control module but no engine (to proximity detonate) its fine I don't think you can have working engines without a control module though? You can make an unguided missile by customizing the guidance logic and having a single ungimballed engine on your missile though.
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Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Dec 2, 2017 1:03:16 GMT
sure, i guess. Also, if you have a shell with a control module but no engine (to proximity detonate) its fine I don't think you can have working engines without a control module though? You can make an unguided missile by customizing the guidance logic and having a single ungimballed engine on your missile though. yeah that probably would work. I wish that if you dont have a controller, the engines would just fire until they run out of fuel
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Post by Enderminion on Dec 2, 2017 1:30:23 GMT
do note that if you shoot unguided rockets from a turret they will always miss, the turret aims for Muzzle velocity, not Muzzle Velocity + Delta Velocity.
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Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Dec 2, 2017 5:28:10 GMT
do note that if you shoot unguided rockets from a turret they will always miss, the turret aims for Muzzle velocity, not Muzzle Velocity + Delta Velocity. ouch give it a ridiclous muzzle velocity then
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Post by treptoplax on Dec 2, 2017 13:35:28 GMT
sure, i guess. Also, if you have a shell with a control module but no engine (to proximity detonate) its fine I don't think you can have working engines without a control module though? You can make an unguided missile by customizing the guidance logic and having a single ungimballed engine on your missile though. Ok, maybe does require a remote which makes it even more marginal; hadn't tried it, was added in last patch anyway. "--- Dumbfire Rockets - Can build spacecrafts without turning ability without error."
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Dec 2, 2017 14:04:29 GMT
I don't think you can have working engines without a control module though? You can make an unguided missile by customizing the guidance logic and having a single ungimballed engine on your missile though. Ok, maybe does require a remote which makes it even more marginal; hadn't tried it, was added in last patch anyway. "--- Dumbfire Rockets - Can build spacecrafts without turning ability without error." I have tested dumbfire rockets before, and they can be absurdly effective against near-stationary targets. They can put out so much more kinetic energy than any other gun in the game, and they're not too expensive either. See here for my tests: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/28465/threadI also tested my ship against your small one. Looks like with the proper AI enabled, mine wins every time, at least out of the around five tests I ran. The homing AI causes my ship to continue dodging even when in range, and the ship has enough armor to manage the few scattered hits that do hit during close passes. I did optimize my design a little, bringing the cost down to 33 Mc, meaning I only had to beat 34 of your ships to be cheaper.
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Post by treptoplax on Dec 3, 2017 3:25:48 GMT
Ok, maybe does require a remote which makes it even more marginal; hadn't tried it, was added in last patch anyway. "--- Dumbfire Rockets - Can build spacecrafts without turning ability without error." I have tested dumbfire rockets before, and they can be absurdly effective against near-stationary targets. They can put out so much more kinetic energy than any other gun in the game, and they're not too expensive either. See here for my tests: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/28465/threadI also tested my ship against your small one. Looks like with the proper AI enabled, mine wins every time, at least out of the around five tests I ran. The homing AI causes my ship to continue dodging even when in range, and the ship has enough armor to manage the few scattered hits that do hit during close passes. I did optimize my design a little, bringing the cost down to 33 Mc, meaning I only had to beat 34 of your ships to be cheaper. I've been reluctant to mess with the AI stuff, but maybe I should look at that. I can see it, though; I hadn't looked closely at the acceleration on that ship before (3G dry?!). Gonna be awfully hard to take him out with conventional cannons if it's maneuvering sanely... maybe the most realistic strategy would be to throw a couple small waves of attack craft at it to try to exhaust delta-V. But now you're really off into the weeds of AI stupidity, so who knows. It did inspire me to move my guns from the pretty but probably not useful for this situation ring to standard broadside and increase engine count from 1 to 4; helped but probably not dramatically. Really that craft may be a little too small - too much crew is overhead and not enough weapons.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Dec 11, 2017 1:58:31 GMT
I've made a far better ship than my previous one. Rather than cowardly attempting to avoid enemy projectiles, I made the ship strong enough to withstand most projectiles for a very long time indeed. It can shrug off most projectiles thanks to its very pointy nose and our favourite friend, VCS. The slim profile and pointiness means that even a thin layer of VCS can, with the help of a standard whipple shield, deflect enormous amounts of bullets before ablating completely. With some additional redundancy in the design ensuring that a few penetrations won't hurt anyone other than some non-vital personnel, the ship can take a very long time of being fired at. It also has 130 heavy conventional autocannons, as well as some engines giving it a leisurely 1g of acceleration, ensuring that it can stay in combat long enough to kill anything coming its way. At 20 MC, it's also cheap enough to easily beat its own worth of cheap spammy ships. I won 100% of the time against both treptoplax's ship, as well as one that I designed in an attempt to beat my ship. So, without further ado, I present my new tournament entry, BINGO BONGO VCS STRONGO Ship export, screenshots and combat footage below: Link to ship design: dl.dropbox.com/s/8mdvi0fmpze9rm3/jtyot%20BINGO%20BONGO%20VCS%20STRONGO.txtScreenshots of the ship: exterior: interior: Combat footage: New AI:
MilitaryDoctrine Madmann MissileLaunchDoctrine OnlyWhenNodal true StaggerDistance_km 10000 DistanceMaximum_km 20000 WingsInFlightNeeded 3 AttackWingSize 20 ReserveSize 5 DroneLaunchDoctrine OnlyWhenNodal true StaggerDistance_km 20000 DistanceMaximum_km 25000 WingsInFlightNeeded 2 AttackWingSize 10 ReserveSize 5 CapitalShipInterceptDoctrine DeltaVBudget_Percent .75 InstantaneousDeltaVBudget_Percent .20 DistanceMaximum_km 10000 InterceptCapitalShips true TonnageWeightFactor 1. DistanceWeightFactor 0. MissileInterceptDoctrine DeltaVBudget_Percent .95 InstantaneousDeltaVBudget_Percent .15 InterceptCapitalShips true InterceptDrones true TonnageWeightFactor 1. DistanceWeightFactor 1. DroneInterceptDoctrine DeltaVBudget_Percent .95 InstantaneousDeltaVBudget_Percent .10 InterceptCapitalShips true TonnageWeightFactor 1. DistanceWeightFactor 1. CombatDoctrine CapitalShipDoctrine EnterCombatOrder Homing TargetInRangeOrder Homing TargetsOutOfRangeOrder Homing CivilianShipCombatOrder Homing DroneDoctrine MinimumInterceptTime_s 30. InterceptDeltaVLimit_Percent .20 LaunchDefensively true WeaponDestroyedOrder Homing TargetInRangeOrder Broadside TargetOutOfRangeOrder Homing EnemyMissilesInboundOrder Scatter MissileDoctrine MinimumInterceptTime_s 90. SeekOrder Homing EnemyMissilesInboundOrder Scatter WeaponsDoctrine IgnoreRangeIfOverAmmoThreshold_Percent .05 IgnoreRangeOnlyWhenThreatsAreFiring true FlareDoctrine AntiFlareOrder Homing FlaresNeededInFlight 5 LaunchEvenIfHeatIsNotEnough true OnlyAgainstUncrewedEnemies false
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Post by treptoplax on Dec 11, 2017 4:33:50 GMT
FWIW, here's a carrier; it comes in a shade under 50Mc, and carries 30 of the small manned attack ships. Interesting trivia; it never launches those on strategic map because manned craft are neither missiles nor drones... It does pretty well in my limited testing, but most of that is probably because stock AI has no clue how to deal with long engagement ranges (launchers trigger at 1001Km) with conventional cannons. YMMV, void where prohibited. A similar ship carrying unmanned drones of similar performance would probably be about 2.5Mc.
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Post by treptoplax on Dec 11, 2017 5:12:31 GMT
Also, here's a new tweak of my cheap manned attack craft. Cost on this one has crept up to a about 1.4Mc, but it has 4 engines instead of one and the new guns have slightly higher velocity and 4x the projectile mass (60g at 2.05 Km/s). Overall I think the upgrade is worth the cost and it should do better against heavy armor.
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Post by The Astronomer on Dec 11, 2017 5:18:09 GMT
Anybody here who tried staged blast launcher guns?
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Dec 11, 2017 11:05:18 GMT
I tried a single run against your improved ship. Looks like they still don't put out enough energy to drill through the armor fast enough, though a single test is not enough to say anything conclusive. Yesterday I tested it against a gun firing 13-kg lead rods at a decent speed, and even those don't penetrate the armor outright. The angle of impact is so shallow that pretty much anything seems to just ricochet off the VCS layer at the bottom. I tried it against your carrier too but my ship opens fire as soon as yours starts launching craft, which means the game grinds to a halt around 20 minutes before intercept. Setting the engagement range that high makes very little sense, as your own ships will take forever to reach combat ranges. I'm not sure what use the carrier has either since the game AI can't handle fast intercepts. This means you'll only save around 500 m/s at maximum, while forcing the engagement to take forever, or possibly even not happen at all in the first place due to ships running out of fuel. A ship like my first one, with a few dozen gees of acceleration and 10-15 km/s dv could make the engagement happen within around a minute of combat start, but I don't see why I would make a totally new design with its specific AI mode designed around 1 Mm engagements, and most of my budget spent on mobility that your long-range craft does not have.
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Post by treptoplax on Dec 11, 2017 16:22:42 GMT
The carrier is a bit more mobile than it looks (or than the AI operates it); it has a dual MPD/resistojet setup, so the deltaV in MPD mode is respectable (although acceleration is pathetic).
That design was initially intended as a possible counter to your fast-dodging gunship; it was proving impossible to actually hit, so the idea was that by launching multiple waves of attackers I could extend the engagement long enough to exhaust deltaV, at which point it could be safely ignored or targeted. There's a launch cap on the carrier, so I planned it to send out about half the craft and then replace them as they were destroyed. What happened in practice is that starting at that range meant the encounter happened at such speed that everything but the carrier itself made one ineffectual pass and ran out of dV and flew out of the local SoI.
I do wonder if feints-intended-just-to-waste-dV are the best chance to overthrow the laser-doomstar meta, but the AI is totally clueless on how to deal with that (it's one of the easier ways to cheese your way through much of the campaign), and as a player I'm honestly not sure how to handle some of those situations either. Maybe I'll try reducing launch range to like 50-200Km and see what happens (feel free to give it a shot if you like); I still have to look into how to install mod AI safely, haven't fiddled with that before and have been too lazy to sort out details.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Dec 11, 2017 17:19:33 GMT
The carrier is a bit more mobile than it looks (or than the AI operates it); it has a dual MPD/resistojet setup, so the deltaV in MPD mode is respectable (although acceleration is pathetic). That design was initially intended as a possible counter to your fast-dodging gunship; it was proving impossible to actually hit, so the idea was that by launching multiple waves of attackers I could extend the engagement long enough to exhaust deltaV, at which point it could be safely ignored or targeted. There's a launch cap on the carrier, so I planned it to send out about half the craft and then replace them as they were destroyed. What happened in practice is that starting at that range meant the encounter happened at such speed that everything but the carrier itself made one ineffectual pass and ran out of dV and flew out of the local SoI. I do wonder if feints-intended-just-to-waste-dV are the best chance to overthrow the laser-doomstar meta, but the AI is totally clueless on how to deal with that (it's one of the easier ways to cheese your way through much of the campaign), and as a player I'm honestly not sure how to handle some of those situations either. Maybe I'll try reducing launch range to like 50-200Km and see what happens (feel free to give it a shot if you like); I still have to look into how to install mod AI safely, haven't fiddled with that before and have been too lazy to sort out details. Staggering waves sounds like something that should be done on the strategic map in order to avoid wasting too much time. Since the ship homing AI doesn't care about its own dv budget, very long-range intercepts are a good way to get all ships participating in the combat to burn all their fuel to get into firing range. Another issue with this is that you can't allow ignore range orders at 1 Mm ranges, but once the ships do get to shooting range, they're moving close to 10 km/s relative to each other, giving them a firing window of just a second or two, which makes no sense. All of this could be solvable by having better combat AI, but currently I wouldn't bother with long-range combat, at least not in AI vs AI scenarios. I did see some mention about battle group sizes in the AI definitions. It might be possible to get the AI to split manned ships into several fleets, engaging with each fleet in a staggered fashion. This would be a far better solution to the problem you're trying to solve, though I'm not sure if that's what it actually means. I don't recall seeing the AI split ships unless it had ships with 0 dv mixed in an otherwise mobile fleet, so it might not be possible. But I'll have a go at modding the AI and seeing what happens.
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