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Post by argonbalt on Sept 27, 2016 17:38:27 GMT
While playing I was thinking about the repercussions of each of these orbital battles - the amount of debris afterwards could make the orbits of these battles unusable for decades or longer. Given how faithfully the game models hard science here, it would be an interesting topic how these fleets would deal with the space debris present then they crossed orbits near previous engagements. Would they just depend on their armour to suck up the damage? Would they be able to track and avoid that many objects? Snipe debris as it comes in? Just declare the orbit scorched earth and avoid it? Btw for background of a real test and the debris it caused check out the Chinese test in 2007. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test#3A few years ago some proposals were made for various "laser brooms" orbital or ground based satellites that would melt or push matter into the atmosphere to destroy it. Id imagine that most stations in COADE are equipped with such countermeasures, or private companies are paid to remove the debris.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 27, 2016 17:34:40 GMT
I really don't think so, after going back and re reading all the dialogue in previous missions, there is nothing in particular to show that the USTF is in anyway particularly "good" guys or that the free peoples are the "bad" guys. While the war was most likely instigated by the UFP to their advantage, beyond some laughable corruption, nothing specifically shows any moral decide. Arguably everyone in the conflict is grey as fuck, it is a vary bare bones survivalist war, very realistic.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 27, 2016 4:35:42 GMT
Had some fun optimizing too. Got a good 406kps one. Other friend got a 1.01Mmps one (yes, megameters a second). Needless to say, the sandbox scenarios don't really work so well with them. So uh everyone's just building doomsday coilguns, it's beautiful
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 25, 2016 21:30:21 GMT
Designed the gun myself, there is roughly a 50/50 split between rails and the reaction wheels. Is this why it is able to fire all 4? I honestly thought it was a bug as a similar thing is happening to a friend except with lasers. Hmm that does sound strange, i however have had the same problem, yet on another laser ship i did not have enough power and could only fire two lasers a time. Can you post a screenshot of the ship firing with the module section shown as well(specifically the railguns)
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 25, 2016 19:12:58 GMT
Hi, Awesome game so far. Have a question about power consumption from weapon systems. I have a ship with 50.5MW of power available, and 4 50MW railguns firing simultaneously. Is this intended behaviour? Would you not require 200MW of power to run this setup? Can post screenshot of ship if required. This should probably go in the game play section, hmm, how much of the 50 MW is the linear motors, and how much is the reaction wheels? As it currently stands there are many guns which have a 200 kw range cannon, but the turret reaction wheels are set to consume 10+ MW of power. It might be that the turret needs the majority power not necessarily the gun itself.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 25, 2016 19:09:12 GMT
That wouldn't work for what I'm envisioning, so let me explain a little better. Imagine a ship that has weapons on only the "front" side. Using the radial armor widget you get a half shell of armor material A on the "front" side. What you can't do is get a half-shell of armor material B on the "back" side without also adding it as a layer under the "front" side as well. Ah ok yeah that makes more sense.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 25, 2016 15:34:07 GMT
So, I had to google bi-eleptic transfer (hey KSP is simple compared to this). So my main issue is not having enough DV to go retrograde in the starting circular orbit, and I'm not sure what you are suggesting. Are you saying to get into a higher orbit first and then go retrograde? Do i still burn retrograde at periaps? Yes remember that the closer you are to a body the higher the gravity "tax" you need to pay to move, unless you are continuing a burn in the same direction as a majority of your velocity is already moving (presumably through the periapsis of the orbit of a body). So if you wanted to hit a retrograde target that is also near the planet, you would instead burn to an ellipse, then at apoapsis, burn your retrograde movement to turn your orbit retrograde. Even though it sounds like you are doing more, it is a far cheaper way of getting to the target.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 25, 2016 15:11:44 GMT
All you have to do is radially move your desired modules to a 180o difference of angle to the side away from or onto the armour to do what i think you are trying to do, alternatively you can simply stack two layers and rotate as desired.
I would agree that a rotate armour section button would be nice.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 24, 2016 0:40:20 GMT
you likely won't be able to take out any missiles with shrapnel. blast damage is inversely proportional to the square of the target's distance - in other words, it scales horribly badly. Your nuke is roughly 10TJ in power(assuming the game doesn't model the uranium armor as tamper). This gives you a blast distribution of about 800 MJ per steradian. multiply your target's distance by 1000 times(in other words, a missile with a 1m² visual section 1km away) and it's gone down to 800J - which is already less than most small caliber projectiles even before we take a blast absorption cut. Thanks for crunching the math, but the nuke/ armour was still in the prototype phase, more so i just want a universal warhead creator that has both detonator options and delayed reaction mass in a single dynamic builder. Honestly most warheads are already laughably dupe able.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 24, 2016 0:36:59 GMT
Essentially the maneuver I'd want to do with the nuclear missiles you get is to spend about 2/3 of their delta V headed for where the enemy ship will be in orbit at the time of a high speed intercept. I had a lot of trouble with the controls. Even dragging the mouse off screen (I wanted to burn up at least 400 m/s) I would only get a vector with 11 m/s or so. The AI has no trouble with such a maneuver and will happily launch it's nuclear missiles headed right for you with a time to intercept in the near future. Are there some additional trajectory controls somewhere? You might want to check out Multi-axial thrust manipulation in the options menu, it is a little more dynamic and fine tuning oriented
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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
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 20, 2016 16:04:14 GMT
If broadside does pick the largest weapon this is a confusing name for keel mounted weapons. Much like how you found missiles with sloped noses were more survivable my ship construction idea was nose mounted weapons. I'm not sure what a good replacement name would be. "Focus fire" "Target"? \: Have to go check the top left select button to double check as I'm at work. However if memory serves that only lets you select from fleets that are co-located. I was looking for a listing of all fleets under my control. Having an option not to correct post combat orbit changes might be nice for very tight delta-v situations. Maybe a pop-up after leaving combat so you can see what the new orbit looks like. Probably a feature for a future release as it sounds non-trivial. Yeah Broadsides sounds very cool but inevitably actually means "longest gun oriented towards target" i have brought up before that multi gun nose areas are a needed addition.
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 17, 2016 10:07:35 GMT
A delayed timer control detonator for heat flares, similar to the nuclear detonation button. All flares currently just activate upon launch from launcher. Here is a design i have been playing with, a two stage anti missile formation warhead. The idea is to neutralise closing missile formations with a two hit punch, first a super heavy flare to trigger proximity and homing, then when closed in a nuclear charge blasts the depleted uranium armour off as shrapnel. Unfortunately the flare issue is an issue, and screen scaling still seems to be unfixed. Attachment Deleted
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 17, 2016 2:13:31 GMT
So, weapons currently do lead their targets. They do not, however, account for enemy acceleration (via dodging), which is what your are seeing. The trouble with trying to anticipate dodging/acceleration is there is a huge amount of dodging options for the enemy to take. Simply spinning a ship is very fast way of dodging anything if your ship is long and thin (as long as the enemy is not targeting your center of mass). The longer the range, the easier it gets to dodge because of the delay time between when as shot launches and when it hits, which is why this issue appears at 200 km ranges. I could add in leading based on the way the enemy is currently dodging, but then it would make sense to simply have the enemy always switch how they dodge every second or so. #2 is a heavily requested feature, I intend to get to this at some point. #3 sounds interesting, though it would require two angles, pitch and yaw. I'm curious what the use case for it is? I like that idea for #1, obviously you would not want to put the game into intense easy mode. My main reason is coming off of flight sims and leading and landing a super long range shot is unquestionably satisfying, most of the time when it misses it does so along a linear path where in the target ship is accelerating or strafing linearly sideways in one direction. I feel like automating it fully would be too on the easy side of thing, unless the enemy also had randomised strafing, in which case you open up a whole new bag of worms where battles not only have intense fighting but the roll, scatter, re orient, (actually this is where i think i should mention that a dedicated strafe function is needed to differentiate between reorienting the whole ship and using retranslation instead of only reorientation, but i digress) become intensely important and you now have something akin to orbital Air Combat Manoeuvres(awesome but holy shit tense). Im not sure if you would be cool with such a huge set of overhauls, which is why i suggested the more moderate nudge option to help land shots. I mean automating everything would be nuts, you would need like super manoeuvrable CIWS ships to act as some sort of in between for ships and drones, like the cutter. It sounds very cool in my head but you are the king of this project so it's up to you. -Automated lead/pure/lag pursuit options /w/ automated dodging= very cool but very costly on the D/v Perhaps a setting of pursuit options would also benefit those trying the rail-gun missile tactic? Like wise a set of evasive movement options (none/moderate/extreme) coupled with the current jumble of roll/re orient/ etc Manual aiming would be fun for one gun at a time used in conjunction with the ai to help land shots, i think it would feel very "space captain" ish I realise im just vomiting ideas at this point. As for #2 pretty straight forward and for #3 mainly to help ships with corner mounts on the outer hull, i have been experimenting with Marauder variants and have found that the current placement of turrets makes them only 50% as use full, as they can only point out (if mounted forward they clash with the main coilgun, and even without the coilgun they still only cover a rough 180 frontal arch). So that got me thinking about corner, or even nutso spacer mounted cannons. I mean think about it if you could effectively corner mount a frontal/side wise cannon you would cut down on the number of turrets (and horrible weight) your ship would need. Add in a support brace that extends from the hull and now not only does the turret have a 360o firing angle(save for the ships dead-zone, which it is attached to) You would also space out your cannons on gun pod like mounts making your frontal target larger but also less centralised, as the pole turrets would (if fired upon) draw shots away from the central hull. This all leads to what just popped in my head as #4: Side mountable spacers(or i guess struts now?) not directly mounted into the central "spine" stack. These could hold a number of useful designs, everything from a nuclear generator separated outside the hull, sparing radiation effects for the crew, radiators mounted away from the hull so as to not endanger other components if lost(also they look like cool space wings wowey zowey space!) to the aforementioned turrets or flare launchers or missile launcher etc. I suppose tensile strength would need to be considered as well as centre of mass. OH ALSO! OFF BODY THRUSTERS! Like the star furies in Babylon five! yielding much faster rotation and translation speeds. Armouring the struts would ideally be done directly to the unit and not with the current full body main armour layer. few ok that's all i can think of for now, i guess this is my ideas thread?
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Post by argonbalt on Sept 16, 2016 19:03:28 GMT
so i have some genera ideas regarding combat and ship design. They break down as following. 1: A target nudge option in ship command. Now this is already half implemented with the "reorient" option. I half been building and testing huge marauder style ships equipped with coil and rail guns. When i go into combat i encounter a recurring problem. They often fire at maximum range, but are always just a few decametres off target. I then have to set my ship to active or controlled homing to properly target. when this works (which at this point is around 35% of the time) the beam of speedy death finally lines up and hits the target. The issue is that i have to sacrifice precious distance and give the enemy a growing proximity of range to engage me. clearly the ability to move like ten metres left and three up is not within the parameters of the firing computer. Since realism is still the ideal goal here, i feel like this is when the on board ship fire control master would take over and be able to "nudge" the shots. This is already a historical tactic for fighter pilots, who have to centre their guns and instead lead their shots. Clearly the ai was never designed to compensate and correct for 200km ranges, or the fact that a ship might casually move to the side. I know space has allot of distance and that those few seconds could mean tens of km, but i feel like shooting the duck with them fast bits what come out the pointy end AHEAD of were it will be based on it's current velocity and acceleration should be done. A manual nudge mode, or some sort of auto correct for a lead pursuit instead of missing because it is stuck on pure imperialnews.network/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/pursuit-curves.jpg2: Have frontal armour be a space, not just a single slot. This would help in mounting many types of weapons on the smallest area possible on the front of the ship. 3: default turret angle, a default angle the turret is set to, but is free to rotate from in combat.
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