ARGONBALT'S BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SPACE WARFARE IN COADE
Sept 21, 2016 19:06:46 GMT
qswitched, diemosthenes, and 1 more like this
Post by argonbalt on Sept 21, 2016 19:06:46 GMT
Hello! This guide is a summation of some easy to learn tactical and strategic information i have learned from playing COADE for more or less a month. I have no doubt that majority of this information has already also been performed by other players, but the goal here is not pure originality, but rather a concise information pool. With that being said let's begin!
Section 1: SCIO TY, SCIO INIMICUM TUUM
We should first establish a basic list of the most basic war craft. I myself have made the HECTAGRAM OF PURE SATANIC EVIL(and combat simplicity) An orange vector ending pointing to a target indicates an advantage, a red squiggle indicates an origin.
If we simplify a ship down to one key weapon or feature we arrive at six basic forms of combat craft, they are(clockwise from 12oclock):
-The Missile
-The Drone
-The Gunship
(-Gunship or/and cannonship denotes a combustion focused design
-Railship denotes a railgun based vessel
-Coilship denotes a Magnetic Accelerator, or Mass Driver vessel)
-The Lasership
-The Carrier
-The Siloship
Once we understand the strengths of each of these individual specifics, we can extrapolate a ship with any combination of them.
- Missiles are fast and manoeuvrable, with no major radiators for weakness and a nice disposable nature makes them unencumbered, they themselves also don't make much heat(though their launchers do). On the down side, they will probably never have as much Dv as a ship, are heavy to carry around, easy to dupe and evade, and need to get very close to their targets to do any considerable damage.
-Drones are the space equivalent of a fighter, riding fast and loose, tucked within a carrier until ideally launched, they can quickly swarm a target. Fifty guns on a ship vs fifty drones, the drones will most likely win, as the drones in formation have a broader more spaced area with only tiny targets to hit, as well as having a 100% lead, able to turn roll and aim much faster than a larger craft. Unfortunately Drones also have tiny radiators that can be easily overwhelmed in laser fire, cooking the reactor and brains of the drone, it also has a sometimes better, sometimes worse Dv situation like the missile, but never being able to match a ship. Harder to dupe, but still easily evaded with the proper manoeuvres.
- The Gunship is a good all around brawler, ammunition and energy can be plentifully applied to smash long distance problems with kinetic force. A large variety of conventional and rail and coil based systems are available, multiple turrets can make systems redundant and protect large flat sides of the ship. Ballistics also tragically have a very short range, second only to that of the laser, they also generate heat and a large amount of recoil. Also please do not shoot directly at the ammunition bays.
-The Laser ship, A very energy based model, can easily eat drones and with some backup take care of missiles as well, requires no ammunition and generates no recoil. All of this comes at some tremendous costs, poor-terrible efficiency, copious heat, very CLOSE range(unless ignore max range is checked) and power hungry to boot.
-The Carrier is one of the two launch oriented ships made as a holder and controller of extended weapons, It moves the heavier drones from and out of orbit, saving them the precious Dv they need for combat. All the advantages of the drones are directly stack-able onto this ship, likewise all of the weaknesses as well, namely: No drones=No major defence or offence, one could supplement this with on board weapons, but that steals precious mass away from the drone payload. Arguably with the drones this ship has a very long offensive range, but minus the drones and even a way ward laser ship could pop a carrier.
- Last but not least, the Siloship, the second launcher, instead it holds the plentiful atomic and shrapnel bounties. Able to carry ten times the number in missiles in equivalent weight to drones, this ship often stacks rounds in the hundreds as opposed to merely dozens. Once again all the advantages of it's payload apply to it, and so two do it's issues. In addition, if your payload or missile fuel supply gets hit, just remember (explosive payload of one warhead)x(Number of warheads)+(missile fuel supply if volatile or pressurised)x(number of missiles)+(on board ships fuel if volatile or pressurised)=boom Im not joking, the current default siloship violently tears itself to shreds once the payload goes critical.
Generally speaking, the Missile, Drone and Gunship(or Coilship, Railship etc) are more offensively oriented while the Lasership, Siloship and Carrier are more Defensive or support based. From all this you might ask " But none of the ships in game are this simple, how does this apply when you have a hybrid vessel???" Simple, average it out. While most ships do have a mix they are more or less heavily weighted to one specific weapon. Any ship that has all is usually not very good at any one and/or is very large and thus exploitable. "But what if there is a fleet???" This is arguably the historical reason for fleets in the first point, besides the obvious logistic efficiency and force and defence multipliers, a fleet can overlap it's abilities. Then the matter becomes a simple one of looking for the statistical least strong defence( a small carrier, over reliance on small gunships, an explosive missile ship)or weakest offensive ability, and leveraging your set up against that.
Section 2: Basic combat movement and manoeuvres
Part 1: Meeting your enemy.
(caution all of these terms are made by me, a 100% legitimate science man and not just some space nerd guy, they are certified COOL and HIP)
Meeting against an enemy can be broken down into a ratio of degrees of efficiency and success, this is in relation to burning from one planet or moon to another:
-PERFECT INJECTION-Actually impossible unless you teleport, the arrival at the combat zone with a full tank and full Dv, without using drop tanks or tankers,any smart Enemy will try to foil this as much as possible.
-Ideal Injection, arrival with full tank and full Dv. Used with drop tanks(we really need to add this) and disposable tanker ships, efficiency is somewhere between 90-99% for combat ships fuel stores, does not include closing burn to meet enemy but mainly the burn to orbit at the same rate as the enemy, orbits that meet the enemy without orbiting the body directly can be considered this when the apoapsis of the largest closest body while moving towards target. Allows for the most efficient and plentiful movement in the closing stages and in combat.
-Viable injection: 60%/100-90%/100 ratio of remaining Dv to total, once again does not count closing burn to combat engagement.
-1/2 Injection: ratio of 50%/100
-1/3 Injection: ratio of 33$/100
-1/4 Injection: ratio of 25%/100%
-0/1 Injection: A shit fucking injection, you made it but you are dead in the water, you can make a nice enough station i guess.
Now many of you might ask,"Wait what about carriers and silo ships? their fuel reserves are not part of the main ship?" Simple, find the Dv of the missile or drone, then add that individually as each is launched or as a singular if a group is launched. Ideally you are always aiming for your on board armoured tanks to be full when you move in for the kill.
Part 2: Defending against your enemy.
This is not so easy to define as attacking, many times you will be unaware, or have to manually calculate the attacking forces Dv but individually adding up their Dv from Each ship, as well as finding the Dv of at least one of all types of their missiles and drones. Then it is more or less like attacking but in reverse. To do this also requires balancing out the Dv of any defensive orbital positions you take into account
-PERFECT DEFENCE! Congratulations! God has crapped you out in a retrograde tadpole orbit around a Lagrange point which is from a moon(made of plutonium diamonds He3 and gold) axially orbiting a Kuiper belt Nebiru! Make sure to congratulate your birthday with your unicorn first mate and chief engineer Elvis. No one is getting to you on a full tank.
-IDEAL DEFENCE Enemy Dv=0, hurrah! the enemy has expended all their mass, you can do this by putting yourself in a wack ass orbits or simply changing your velocity consistently. You now also have to keep your Dv as close to 100% as possible for the fight, and remember before you think this is unfair, the other guy has to burn across half the solar system just to get to you.
-1/5 Defence Enemy Dv is 25%, not bad remember you are still aiming for as close to 100% on your own fuel metre as possible
-1/3 Defence Enemy Dv is 33%
-1/2 Defence Enemy Dv is 50%
-6/10-9/10 Defence
-Ruh Roh scoob the bad guys are here and they have a full tank of gas! With that we can move into:
Part 3: (Three times faster)+(the secret of the Joestar family)
Uh well it looks like it has finally come down to the blows! time to fight! But it looks like the enemy is sending those damned lawn darts again! Now is the time to go over the basics of combat in regards to movement. Much like the modern jet fighter shooting is only the last shortest part of fighting, most of the fight can be done by simply evading your enemies or tricking them with your movements. Time for some necessary and cool terms.
<---Antihostum is to burn away from your enemy, this means against an otherwise pre designated intercept, Prohostum is to speed towards them--->
<---Perihostum is to move to the left (in relation to the vertical and horizontal planes of your ship along it's axis) In orbit of a body with significant gravity this would be a burn towards it, but the important object is the enemy ship, not gravity in this case. Apohostum is to burn to the right (or away from the nearest governing body)--->
<---Alhostum is to burn off plane into the positive relative to the enemy ship or yourself(or more likely the governing gravitational body)Suhostum is likewise but into the negative--->
Now that we have established the language, the reason for which is discerning a burn in relation to an enemy vessel specifically as posed to merely a planet. Lets go over the most basic use of such movement in regards to running away! Running away is great! it can exhaust most drones, and missiles are likewise all but bound to run out of steam just trying to keep up. There are six basic movements a ship can take to divert away from and oncoming fight. Lets say your ship is running head on for a fight with some missiles what do you do?
First you can do a Heinlein+ hop+, a quick burn Alhostum and Perihostum puts us moving two 90o turns away in orbit from an enemy missile cluster,do the Hellfire- Heart- and be moving in the same way but away and off plane in the opposite direction to the first manoeuvre. Add in a Pro or Antihostum burn instead and you will be in a higher or lower relative orbit to the missiles.
If you simplify it to one dimension several movements can still be made, the SweetJ.P.- Strafe+ will move you fast past the right side of the missiles that if done right, will cause them to spin around 90o if they want to catch you.
Even limited to one movement, a strong Antihostum burn with send you retrograde that if done fast enough should put you well out of reach of the enemy fleet.
Generally you want to always be aware of the enemies movements and make him expend as much energy as possbile to get to you while sparing none or a little as possible for your self.
That pretty much covers the basics of combat and ship design, i will be back soon to add WEAPONS SPECIFICS, COUNTER MEASURES and FANCY MOVING
Section 1: SCIO TY, SCIO INIMICUM TUUM
We should first establish a basic list of the most basic war craft. I myself have made the HECTAGRAM OF PURE SATANIC EVIL(and combat simplicity) An orange vector ending pointing to a target indicates an advantage, a red squiggle indicates an origin.
If we simplify a ship down to one key weapon or feature we arrive at six basic forms of combat craft, they are(clockwise from 12oclock):
-The Missile
-The Drone
-The Gunship
(-Gunship or/and cannonship denotes a combustion focused design
-Railship denotes a railgun based vessel
-Coilship denotes a Magnetic Accelerator, or Mass Driver vessel)
-The Lasership
-The Carrier
-The Siloship
Once we understand the strengths of each of these individual specifics, we can extrapolate a ship with any combination of them.
- Missiles are fast and manoeuvrable, with no major radiators for weakness and a nice disposable nature makes them unencumbered, they themselves also don't make much heat(though their launchers do). On the down side, they will probably never have as much Dv as a ship, are heavy to carry around, easy to dupe and evade, and need to get very close to their targets to do any considerable damage.
-Drones are the space equivalent of a fighter, riding fast and loose, tucked within a carrier until ideally launched, they can quickly swarm a target. Fifty guns on a ship vs fifty drones, the drones will most likely win, as the drones in formation have a broader more spaced area with only tiny targets to hit, as well as having a 100% lead, able to turn roll and aim much faster than a larger craft. Unfortunately Drones also have tiny radiators that can be easily overwhelmed in laser fire, cooking the reactor and brains of the drone, it also has a sometimes better, sometimes worse Dv situation like the missile, but never being able to match a ship. Harder to dupe, but still easily evaded with the proper manoeuvres.
- The Gunship is a good all around brawler, ammunition and energy can be plentifully applied to smash long distance problems with kinetic force. A large variety of conventional and rail and coil based systems are available, multiple turrets can make systems redundant and protect large flat sides of the ship. Ballistics also tragically have a very short range, second only to that of the laser, they also generate heat and a large amount of recoil. Also please do not shoot directly at the ammunition bays.
-The Laser ship, A very energy based model, can easily eat drones and with some backup take care of missiles as well, requires no ammunition and generates no recoil. All of this comes at some tremendous costs, poor-terrible efficiency, copious heat, very CLOSE range(unless ignore max range is checked) and power hungry to boot.
-The Carrier is one of the two launch oriented ships made as a holder and controller of extended weapons, It moves the heavier drones from and out of orbit, saving them the precious Dv they need for combat. All the advantages of the drones are directly stack-able onto this ship, likewise all of the weaknesses as well, namely: No drones=No major defence or offence, one could supplement this with on board weapons, but that steals precious mass away from the drone payload. Arguably with the drones this ship has a very long offensive range, but minus the drones and even a way ward laser ship could pop a carrier.
- Last but not least, the Siloship, the second launcher, instead it holds the plentiful atomic and shrapnel bounties. Able to carry ten times the number in missiles in equivalent weight to drones, this ship often stacks rounds in the hundreds as opposed to merely dozens. Once again all the advantages of it's payload apply to it, and so two do it's issues. In addition, if your payload or missile fuel supply gets hit, just remember (explosive payload of one warhead)x(Number of warheads)+(missile fuel supply if volatile or pressurised)x(number of missiles)+(on board ships fuel if volatile or pressurised)=boom Im not joking, the current default siloship violently tears itself to shreds once the payload goes critical.
Generally speaking, the Missile, Drone and Gunship(or Coilship, Railship etc) are more offensively oriented while the Lasership, Siloship and Carrier are more Defensive or support based. From all this you might ask " But none of the ships in game are this simple, how does this apply when you have a hybrid vessel???" Simple, average it out. While most ships do have a mix they are more or less heavily weighted to one specific weapon. Any ship that has all is usually not very good at any one and/or is very large and thus exploitable. "But what if there is a fleet???" This is arguably the historical reason for fleets in the first point, besides the obvious logistic efficiency and force and defence multipliers, a fleet can overlap it's abilities. Then the matter becomes a simple one of looking for the statistical least strong defence( a small carrier, over reliance on small gunships, an explosive missile ship)or weakest offensive ability, and leveraging your set up against that.
Section 2: Basic combat movement and manoeuvres
Part 1: Meeting your enemy.
(caution all of these terms are made by me, a 100% legitimate science man and not just some space nerd guy, they are certified COOL and HIP)
Meeting against an enemy can be broken down into a ratio of degrees of efficiency and success, this is in relation to burning from one planet or moon to another:
-PERFECT INJECTION-Actually impossible unless you teleport, the arrival at the combat zone with a full tank and full Dv, without using drop tanks or tankers,any smart Enemy will try to foil this as much as possible.
-Ideal Injection, arrival with full tank and full Dv. Used with drop tanks(we really need to add this) and disposable tanker ships, efficiency is somewhere between 90-99% for combat ships fuel stores, does not include closing burn to meet enemy but mainly the burn to orbit at the same rate as the enemy, orbits that meet the enemy without orbiting the body directly can be considered this when the apoapsis of the largest closest body while moving towards target. Allows for the most efficient and plentiful movement in the closing stages and in combat.
-Viable injection: 60%/100-90%/100 ratio of remaining Dv to total, once again does not count closing burn to combat engagement.
-1/2 Injection: ratio of 50%/100
-1/3 Injection: ratio of 33$/100
-1/4 Injection: ratio of 25%/100%
-0/1 Injection: A shit fucking injection, you made it but you are dead in the water, you can make a nice enough station i guess.
Now many of you might ask,"Wait what about carriers and silo ships? their fuel reserves are not part of the main ship?" Simple, find the Dv of the missile or drone, then add that individually as each is launched or as a singular if a group is launched. Ideally you are always aiming for your on board armoured tanks to be full when you move in for the kill.
Part 2: Defending against your enemy.
This is not so easy to define as attacking, many times you will be unaware, or have to manually calculate the attacking forces Dv but individually adding up their Dv from Each ship, as well as finding the Dv of at least one of all types of their missiles and drones. Then it is more or less like attacking but in reverse. To do this also requires balancing out the Dv of any defensive orbital positions you take into account
-PERFECT DEFENCE! Congratulations! God has crapped you out in a retrograde tadpole orbit around a Lagrange point which is from a moon(made of plutonium diamonds He3 and gold) axially orbiting a Kuiper belt Nebiru! Make sure to congratulate your birthday with your unicorn first mate and chief engineer Elvis. No one is getting to you on a full tank.
-IDEAL DEFENCE Enemy Dv=0, hurrah! the enemy has expended all their mass, you can do this by putting yourself in a wack ass orbits or simply changing your velocity consistently. You now also have to keep your Dv as close to 100% as possible for the fight, and remember before you think this is unfair, the other guy has to burn across half the solar system just to get to you.
-1/5 Defence Enemy Dv is 25%, not bad remember you are still aiming for as close to 100% on your own fuel metre as possible
-1/3 Defence Enemy Dv is 33%
-1/2 Defence Enemy Dv is 50%
-6/10-9/10 Defence
-Ruh Roh scoob the bad guys are here and they have a full tank of gas! With that we can move into:
Part 3: (Three times faster)+(the secret of the Joestar family)
Uh well it looks like it has finally come down to the blows! time to fight! But it looks like the enemy is sending those damned lawn darts again! Now is the time to go over the basics of combat in regards to movement. Much like the modern jet fighter shooting is only the last shortest part of fighting, most of the fight can be done by simply evading your enemies or tricking them with your movements. Time for some necessary and cool terms.
<---Antihostum is to burn away from your enemy, this means against an otherwise pre designated intercept, Prohostum is to speed towards them--->
<---Perihostum is to move to the left (in relation to the vertical and horizontal planes of your ship along it's axis) In orbit of a body with significant gravity this would be a burn towards it, but the important object is the enemy ship, not gravity in this case. Apohostum is to burn to the right (or away from the nearest governing body)--->
<---Alhostum is to burn off plane into the positive relative to the enemy ship or yourself(or more likely the governing gravitational body)Suhostum is likewise but into the negative--->
Now that we have established the language, the reason for which is discerning a burn in relation to an enemy vessel specifically as posed to merely a planet. Lets go over the most basic use of such movement in regards to running away! Running away is great! it can exhaust most drones, and missiles are likewise all but bound to run out of steam just trying to keep up. There are six basic movements a ship can take to divert away from and oncoming fight. Lets say your ship is running head on for a fight with some missiles what do you do?
First you can do a Heinlein+ hop+, a quick burn Alhostum and Perihostum puts us moving two 90o turns away in orbit from an enemy missile cluster,do the Hellfire- Heart- and be moving in the same way but away and off plane in the opposite direction to the first manoeuvre. Add in a Pro or Antihostum burn instead and you will be in a higher or lower relative orbit to the missiles.
If you simplify it to one dimension several movements can still be made, the SweetJ.P.- Strafe+ will move you fast past the right side of the missiles that if done right, will cause them to spin around 90o if they want to catch you.
Even limited to one movement, a strong Antihostum burn with send you retrograde that if done fast enough should put you well out of reach of the enemy fleet.
Generally you want to always be aware of the enemies movements and make him expend as much energy as possbile to get to you while sparing none or a little as possible for your self.
That pretty much covers the basics of combat and ship design, i will be back soon to add WEAPONS SPECIFICS, COUNTER MEASURES and FANCY MOVING
