Pre-SysNES2: Beta-testing and Submission

[Kal'thzar]

@Dis Sounds cool!

Can you give us the techs that we are going to start with? Then we can check to make sure people can put together competent fleets without maxing out everything everywhere.

EDIT: so the allied ship fighting cannot influence things?
EDITEDIT: nm a 25% to 75% chance is ok I guess...

 

[Thlayli]

I think that people should have some control over that; like be able to pick three fields they want to start high in that makes sense with their background.

Par exemple, the Confederates are skilled in spaceship design, so a higher Materials and Propulsion might be a a good call, with less development in say, Energy and Social.

 

[Disenfrancised]

@Dis Sounds cool!

Can you give us the techs that we are going to start with? Then we can check to make sure people can put together competent fleets without maxing out everything everywhere.

EDIT: so the allied ship fighting cannot influence things?
EDITEDIT: nm a 25% to 75% chance is ok I guess...

Nah the techs will be one of the last things I do, after starting worlds have been set up to balance things. You'll all have at least twenty techs, and T3 in 5 of the 9 fields.

@Thlalyi: If I give you techs that feel incongruous with your background and traits, you probably should have written them better .

 

[Symphony D.]

I like the sound of those changes for small guns, and they achieve a similar effect to what I was proposing without the attached handwaving. The change to big guns also sounds solid at making them effective. Strong approval.

For specialist component titles in the Coilgun class (maybe rebrand the class as "Point Defense Guns"), use any of the following you feel like: "Improved Ammo Feed," "Fragmentation Rounds," "Explosive Shells," "Proximity Fuses," "Smart Tracking," "Rotary Barrels/Revolver Chambering," "Advanced Cooling"... I could come up with more.

For the Mag Launcher (possibly rebrand them as "Main Guns"), you could have the intro version be generic, and then specialize: dedicated Electromagnetic Catapults, versus dedicated weapon Rail/Coilcannons/Mass Drivers (possibly take the old sci-fi standby of addressing them as "Gauss" weapons). If you want to give these any boosting components like the PDGs, the same titles could work, though probably use "Autoloaders" instead of "Improved Ammo Feed," and maybe focus on warheads/specialist applications (Plasma, Magnetohydrodynamic Beam, etc).

 

[Thlayli]

Question:

Will these changes make fielding a particle-centric fleet viable? Particle ships need to have a decent chance at getting kill/death ratios similar to the other two weapon classes, so I advise playtesting to ensure that they achieve this.

 

[Symphony D.]

*If you look at the tech tree you can see that Railguns are already on there SymD (spoilers: it's the more advanced coilgun)

I've never managed to find these new, higher-tech entries anywhere, under Design, CC, TT (pictured), or Description:

So...

 

[Disenfrancised]

I meant here:

Spoiler :

In materials 3. Since its weapons requirement is 3+ the Railguns component stats are not yet available for viewing .

 

[Kal'thzar]

No? If two high IP fighters are having a dogfight or chase, how would a wallowing command ship be able to engage them. You make an engagement check against the lowest speed (with opposing int if said lowest speed is unfriendly, without if friendly) in the close instance to merge with it.

Wait, let me discuss/think out my ass for a bit. Because it doesn't make sense to me that if you want to join the engagement its better to have the slower ship in it (potentially 25% to close vs ALWAYS 75% to close(well, almost two ships with 0 int would get you 25%))! I rather like the idea that you have fast ships to pin down engagements and help you join them. I thought that perhaps there could be an engagement between the two (worst) ships in the combat to see who gets to be closed with. Could be justified as one side getting the tactical advantage.

Too convoluted?

 

[Disenfrancised]

My thinking was that during combat all the ships are going to be constantly powering through their orbits (otherwise their position is predictable and long range weapons will crumple them). Any close range instance will be defined by the slowest speed there in, with the faster ships keeping pace in order to fight. Therefore joining an instance requires matching orbits with the slowest ship in said instance.

Why would having a faster ship already engaged help you? Its not that ship you're trying to match orbits with.

 

[Kal'thzar]

My thinking was that during combat all the ships are going to be constantly powering through their orbits (otherwise their position is predictable and long range weapons will crumple them). Any close range instance will be defined by the slowest speed there in, with the faster ships keeping pace in order to fight. Therefore joining an instance requires matching orbits with the slowest ship in said instance.

Why would having a faster ship already engaged help you? Its not that ship you're trying to match orbits with.

Faster ships can drop into faster orbits and then move up to higher orbits, thus the slower ship has to spend more time avoiding the faster ships attempts to line up its attacks and the Long range stuff, having wider maneuvers in its orbital. Push it hard enough and you can help another ship catch up. The faster ship is not so affected, already under utilizing its engine.

Right?
I need to go think of the physics.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Small Bug Report: On the design page of the ship designer, the cell R11 points towards the propulsion technology in the TT page, as opposed to the weapon technology.

EDIT: also, Water Suspension points towards if you have Commlinks in the TT page.
EDIT: Actually everything from Command Deck to Computer module was pointing to the wrong cells on the TT page

 

[Disenfrancised]

Both fixed. V7 will be out soon, just having to do all the refinement costs.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Only caught them because I'm modeling starting tech situations!

Sounds good. I'm really interested in the refinement costs. They add an entirely new dimension to things...

 

[Disenfrancised]

ShipDesigner and BattleCalc V7

Change Log
-Ammo Components section added
-Particle weapons redesigned as reported earlier
-Pushing sails and mag catapult start bonus calculator added
-Refinement costs added - I know they're expensive, it is not my intent for you to be able to refine everything . Instead you should plan what you want to refine and attempt to leverage it. You will have more s at the start than you did in SysNES1
-Various bugs fixed

 

[Kal'thzar]

Next simulation:

Edit: see down a bit.

 

[Thlayli]

Can you explain what's going on with the stats in the particle section?

 

[Disenfrancised]

Can you explain what's going on with the stats in the particle section?

I forgot to clear the cells correctly? So oh noes, you have some values for weapons (values that will change before final release), but no idea where they occur in the tech tree.

 

[Thlayli]

I thought it might be some sort of weird coupling stat for Coilguns, just checking.

 

[Kal'thzar]

ShipDesigner and BattleCalc V7

Change Log
-Ammo Components section added
-Particle weapons redesigned as reported earlier
-Pushing sails and mag catapult start bonus calculator added
-Refinement costs added - I know they're expensive, it is not my intent for you to be able to refine everything . Instead you should plan what you want to refine and attempt to leverage it. You will have more s at the start than you did in SysNES1
-Various bugs fixed

Small error; Every single sum does not include the new ammo stuff at the bottom.

Edit: Another error, in the CC sheet they refer to the wrong design sheet entry.

 

[Disenfrancised]

Next simulation:

Lets go with 500 e for fleet.
500e that you can spend as you want on Refinement.

Include racial bonus. And if you could designate your fleets operational role (as Symphony D. has been doing).

I'm going to be attempting to designing IS War Fleets with the role of destroying ships (so I need to include Range for 2 years or more, and IS Transport)

Quick patch - please replace K21 with =SUM(CC!BO3:BO195)-SUM(CC!BO149:BO153)

500 is a bit low on the refinement, perhaps 1000e and 1000s is more viable?