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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 14, 2017 13:48:33 GMT
Let's not hijack this thread...?
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Post by David367th on Jan 14, 2017 13:53:09 GMT
Let's not hijack this thread...? Just like to point out that we can technically vote for 2 ships in the poll and I appear to be the only one to do so.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 14, 2017 14:02:33 GMT
Let's not hijack this thread...? Just like to point out that we can technically vote for 2 ships in the poll and I appear to be the only one to do so. Thanks for pointing that. I somehow voted for missile carriers.
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Post by David367th on Jan 14, 2017 14:03:30 GMT
Gunships and Warships are cool and all, but Missile and Drone carriers have better combat efficiency.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 0:29:18 GMT
I'm all with you, the Missile Schooner is a very good and cost effective craft. You can get almost 8 for the cost of every Gunship. The only thing is that a Gunship can beat up to 10 Siloships, so even seven massed Missile Schnooers would lose for sure if the skill of their commanders was equal. The problem is that anything more than about 30 or so missiles pre-detonate each other instead of hitting the target, right? Also the Missiles Schooner only carries Strikers which the Gunships 4 100MW lasers can destroy with ease before they get close. So when it comes to missile ships vs the Gunship due to it's flak and lasers, they are at a huge disadvantage, right? Against any other craft minus larger missile ships or Carriers (or Ranger or Corvette), Missile Schooner is close to top dog. How is a Gunship beating 10 Siloships? The Gunship can only fire one 100MW laser at a time (120MW powerplant, modules require full power to operate) and strikers and flaks can get through that with a 25-50% loss rate, to say nothing of devastators. The thing lasers quickly kill is drones, so it might beat 10 Fleet Carriers. I just ran a few tests based on equal mass (equal cost would mean more Schooners), giving 5 Schooners and 1 Gunship: - Both balanced AI - Gunship's flak missiles took out all Schooner delta-v but once those were spent it just got bombarded with a torrent of nukes (flaks couldn't penetrate the armour) until it lost power generation. - Assuming more ideal strategies on both ends (aggressive Gunship and ranged Schooners) results in the Gunship intercepting and killing the Schooners without them firing anything back, which seems to reveal a shortcoming of the AI more than anything else. The rock-paper-scissors of both stock and player design balance appears to be missiles > lasers > drones (this isn't quite cyclic, drones > missiles only if they can justify their increased cost through a high enough kill/loss ratio, otherwise you're stuck with missiles = missiles, broadly speaking). Guns can augment laser PD versus missiles though, meaning between equal fleets there's this big attritional shitfest followed by them engaging like battleships anyway, or retreating. Missiles' danger to themselves varies by design. In my experience the range of the damage of strikers is limited enough that you might get one or two pairs collide and detonate as they enter the terminal stage without affecting the rest of the wave. You're right. When I reran the simulations with the Siloship launching all missiles at once (340), 1 Siloship beats a Gunship, but just barely and only if the Gunship doesn't use flak to intercept most of the missile fleet.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 0:39:10 GMT
Gunships and Warships are cool and all, but Missile and Drone carriers have better combat efficiency. So in head to head One on One combat... Drones (UAVs) kill Missiles (MSLs) Heavy Laser (Ls) kill UAVs but Heavy MSLs like Devastators kill Ls So it's kind of like paper, rock, scissors. Missiles and Drones allow a ship to attack multiple targets at once anywhere in the Hill Sphere, but having them means less lasers/point defense. So it makes sense to make space fleets similar to naval fleets. Mix and match pairs of ship classes into one fleet to get maximum lethality.
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Post by David367th on Jan 15, 2017 1:42:05 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine.
Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 2:03:14 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. TLDR: People like the gunship/warship because their crew is in unnecessary harm giving the sense of risk and excitment I personally voted for missile ships, but I am not really surprised that gunships / warships are winning. It was a poll on favorite play style not most effective play style. Missile and drone carriers (while very effective) have no real challenge to them or threatening feeling. You start the mission lob all of your missiles or drones and fiddle with trajectories until the mission is over. Your capital ship is never posed any risk (probably didn't even have to move from the spawn in point). While I personally get a huge amount of glee from micromanaging tiny fleets of missiles and drones I can see how it would be boring to most people as you never have any feeling of risk or danger. People want the feeling of big capital ships slugging it out with each-other (basically WWI era naval war in space). The problem is that mythos is even falling away at current technology level (missile cruisers/destroyers and aircraft carriers have pretty much already replaced battleships). Commanding a battleship is cool big guns pew pew trading slugs with another target you can see and feel but watching an up-to-date map on where your missiles are at 100s of kilometers away is pretty boring. So unless you find enjoyment from efficiency itself gunships/warships are really the only option. If a game like world of warships brought in current tech of spy satellites to find the fleets and hyper-sonic attack missile swarming every match would be over in the first minute as all ships fire their attacker swarms and decimate each others fleet. While realistic this is really boring gameplay.
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Post by David367th on Jan 15, 2017 2:08:36 GMT
Quickly sells all his Aircraft Carriers in World of Warships... Yeah I guess that makes sense, Carriers are rather boring I suppose.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 5:38:23 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. I'm with you regarding drones and missiles being cheaper/smarter overall than "battleships". But with good point defense/lasers, they have the potential to outfire/overwhelm missiles/drones. Each Cannon, Railgun, and Coilgun on average carries 10,000 rounds. Lasers can fire as long as there is power infinite rounds. Dead is dead, and once a Carrier or Missile Ship is out vs a "Battleship", it is really done for, because without the extra weight and size involved of packing drones/missiles, it can carry all the more Guns for the same or even less cost. Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. On earth carriers/ missile ships have replaced battleships only because 1. battleships can't see over the horizon, 2. guns weren't controlled by computers, 3. battleships were helpless vs. aircraft. This is already changing with use of sat spotting and great point defense. In space the carrier has almost no advantage over the "battleship" provided it is designed with long enough enough range weapons to take out drones and missiles far away from the ship. In game the Laser Frigate can destroy/beat all of the Carriers and Missile Ships Except the Fleet Carrier, although it is not much cheaper. Check out my updated chart with prices, and full armaments for each stock ship, tell me what you think.
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Post by David367th on Jan 15, 2017 5:41:48 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. [...] Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. The Fleet Carrier actually carries those 240 some mm 5kg coilguns that tear ships appart. Though the Gunships 15g railgun would give it a run for its money.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 5:54:08 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. I'm with you regarding drones and missiles being cheaper/smarter overall than "battleships". But with good point defense/lasers, they have the potential to outfire/overwhelm missiles/drones. Each Cannon, Railgun, and Coilgun on average carries 10,000 rounds. Lasers can fire as long as there is power infinite rounds. Dead is dead, and once a Carrier or Missile Ship is out vs a "Battleship", it is really done for, because without the extra weight and size involved of packing drones/missiles, it can carry all the more Guns for the same or even less cost. Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. On earth carriers/ missile ships have replaced battleships only because 1. battleships can't see over the horizon, 2. guns weren't controlled by computers, 3. battleships were helpless vs. aircraft. This is already changing with use of sat spotting and great point defense. In space the carrier has almost no advantage over the "battleship" provided it is designed with long enough enough range weapons to take out drones and missiles far away from the ship. In game the Laser Frigate can destroy/beat all of the Carriers and Missile Ships Except the Fleet Carrier, although it is not much cheaper. Check out my updated chart with prices, and full armaments for each stock ship, tell me what you think. yeah but we are talking about stock ship point defense... The default striker and flak missiles didn't have that terrible of armor (1cm AC). Even the AI's default 20 missile swarm could usually over saturate ship defenses and it gets waaaaay worse if you do the logical thing and fire more than that. The laser frig does not stand a chance against a full salvo of cost / mass equivalent missile schooners (which is ~3 schooners). You can fire 600 total missiles (300 flak and 300 strikers) all at once and obliterate it at slightly less cost and mass. Even an alpha strike from a single schooner (firing 200 missiles) will down a laser frigate with a laughable amount of overkill.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 5:56:15 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. TLDR: People like the gunship/warship because their crew is in unnecessary harm giving the sense of risk and excitment I personally voted for missile ships, but I am not really surprised that gunships / warships are winning. It was a poll on favorite play style not most effective play style. Missile and drone carriers (while very effective) have no real challenge to them or threatening feeling. You start the mission lob all of your missiles or drones and fiddle with trajectories until the mission is over. Your capital ship is never posed any risk (probably didn't even have to move from the spawn in point). While I personally get a huge amount of glee from micromanaging tiny fleets of missiles and drones I can see how it would be boring to most people as you never have any feeling of risk or danger. People want the feeling of big capital ships slugging it out with each-other (basically WWI era naval war in space). The problem is that mythos is even falling away at current technology level (missile cruisers/destroyers and aircraft carriers have pretty much already replaced battleships). Commanding a battleship is cool big guns pew pew trading slugs with another target you can see and feel but watching an up-to-date map on where your missiles are at 100s of kilometers away is pretty boring. So unless you find enjoyment from efficiency itself gunships/warships are really the only option. If a game like world of warships brought in current tech of spy satellites to find the fleets and hyper-sonic attack missile swarming every match would be over in the first minute as all ships fire their attacker swarms and decimate each others fleet. While realistic this is really boring gameplay. Check out my response to David and tell me what you think. In short the advantages of Drone Carriers and Missiles Ships is party moot in Space Warfare. 1. In space there is no horizon so Carriers and Missiles Ships cannot "see further" than the "Battleship". 2. With good point defense (strong lasers, etc.) the advantage of Missiles and Drones is severely blunted. Every Drone and Missile launched that is destroyed before it reaches the target is tons of weight and cost that could have been used to add an extra long range laser or gun. 3. Computers and great sensors can react more quickly than any human removing the advantage. When it comes down to it what is a missile or drone? A missile is just a way of getting an explosive charge to the enemy. A drone is just a way of getting a gun of some type close to the enemy. Does it matter if that missile's explosive charge is delivered by Gun (Flak or Nuke Railgun or Coilgun) instead, or that drone's projectile is delivered with a faster and longer range ship mounted gun instead? I would say it doesn't. For those who say Drones and Missiles can simply be up armored to make them more effective against ship mounted lasers and point defenses, you can only add so much armor before the main advantages of missiles/ drones is eliminated, mainly their small size, which means low delta v to maneuver.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 6:01:31 GMT
[...] Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. The Fleet Carrier actually carries those 240 some mm 5kg coilguns that tear ships appart. Though the Gunships 15g railgun would give it a run for its money. You're right. The Gunship has 2 extra 1mm-TRGs and the 2 100MW lasers, but besides that the guns/lasers on the Fleet Carrier are the same. Really I think the Gunship was deliberately not armed with more weapons because otherwise it would nerf the game. As it stands the Gunship ties with the Fleet Carrier. Add 2 more 100 MW lasers like the Laser Frigate has, or add 2 more 286mm TRGs, and it wouldn't even be a competition. Now that I think of it's a bit strange that the "Carrier" and the "Battleship" of this game have almost the same exact "gun" armament. You would think the Gunship would have at least double or triple the amount of guns vs a carrier.
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Post by David367th on Jan 15, 2017 6:16:01 GMT
Yes Drones can be uparmored enough to withstand lasers. All you need to do is get a decent hit on a Defence Laser and the ship is as good as dead against drones and missiles, and a few extra seconds from thicker Aramid Fibers can do that.
The idea I've always seen is you damage with missiles, cripple with drones, and mop up with gunships.
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