Pre-SysNES2: Beta-testing and Submission

Symphony D. · Feb 22, 2012

Disenfrancised said:
I am considering making the Jammer score of ship reduce the Fleet Int it can provide in some way. So your jamming will hit your Fleet Int and the enemies total Int.

The two working at cross-purposes to one another will make for an interesting difference between Missile fleets and everything else. Missile fleets will want to have as high an Init at possible to improve hit odds, so they'll probably go for the Command options without Jammers; everything else can generally opt to decrease Init as much as possible instead to make Missiles less effective. and will go Jammers without Command options. Or you'll have to field two dedicated ships to do each.

Jammers automatically engaging even at long-range is also an interesting dynamic I hadn't been considering previously. I like these ideas in aggregate.

---

Q: since carriers take a turn to unload, and the long-range shooting bit of combat comes first, shouldn't it be possible to kill a carrier before it unloads anything if it makes a hot jump into combat? What's the outcome if this occurs? Does everything on board die?

Disenfrancised · Feb 22, 2012

Symphony D. said:
Q: since carriers take a turn to unload, and the long-range shooting bit of combat comes first, shouldn't it be possible to kill a carrier before it unloads anything if it makes a hot jump into combat? What's the outcome if this occurs? Does everything on board die?

Hmm good point, I'll have to think about that. New ship calculator and battle calc tonight at some point.

qoou · Feb 22, 2012

Disenfrancised said:
Yes.

As in, it takes over 57,000 shields to get the array's fleet bonus to 3.

SS Berserker
1 x Deuterium Drive (Ref)
1 x Pulse Drive (Ref)
1 x Fusion Buster (Ref)

Refining the ship as well reduces the e cost to 8 a piece. You need 15 for each of the Cobra and Pythons to guarantee round 1 destruction, and you will take 70-100% losses to do so, however that is spending 120e to kill a 240e ship. Unlike most of the highly specific counters, this is cheap enough to design that I think it's actually a viable military option (and you'll not mind refining those components for use elsewhere), and you can always use the Berserker as a small planetary bombardment craft later on.

In addition, the capacitor fleets need for bases means the carrier for the Berserker fleet can arrive at an uninhabited world of the system and release the Berserker assault the following year whilst staying safe itself.

Do the Bersekers not get affected by the Jammer -5 int debuff? (which would be enough to stop them from hitting the Cobra I)

Fleet Design Mongoose

Spoiler :

Code:

[b]Fleet Mongoose[/b]

[b][u]NAME		NUM	e	s	m	v[/b][/u]
[i]Mongoose[/i] class 	1x	58e	26s	43m	6v

[b]TOTAL:			58e	26s	43m	6v[/b]

Cheap long-range EM ship, guaranteed to take out 2 Cobra IIs. Good against large unarmored ships. Means you can't afford to use low-armor ships, or a Mongoose (26e when refined) will come by and blow it out of the sky. Seems far stronger than it should be.

Edit:

Spoiler :

Two of these will take out a ship with armor in the low 30s. Barely e-effective against the Python II, and quite a bit more v-expensive.

Disenfrancised · Feb 22, 2012

qoou said:
Do the Bersekers not get affected by the Jammer -5 int debuff? (which would be enough to stop them from hitting the Cobra I)

Derp derp yes. On the other hand a command ship that can overcome that wouldn't be too hard to field and still keep the anti-MAD WORLD function cost effective, since the berserkers only need the int for 1 combat round.

Symphony D. · Feb 22, 2012

Can Init be lowered below 0 by Jamming or EW actions, or does it plateau there?

qoou · Feb 23, 2012

Finally read through most of the thread. Here's a rough sketch of a 600e fleet.

Fleet Design Lightning

Spoiler :

Code:

[b]Fleet Lightning[/b]

[b][u]NAME		NUM	e	s	m	v[/b][/u]
[i]Kangaroo[/i] class 	1x	35e	17s	44m	1v
[i]Hornet[/i] refine 	1x	46e	12s	0m	0v
[i]Hornet[/i] class 	15x	240e	17s	255m	120v
[i]Light Mongoose[/i] 	1x	53e	24s	43m	5v
[i]Heavy Mongoose[/i] 	2x	144e	26s	154m	52v
[i]Hawk[/i] class 	1x	76e	37s	34m	3v

[b]TOTAL:		20	594e	133s	530m	181v[/b]

Code:

[b]Refinement costs[/b]

[b][u]NAME			IND	SCI[/b][/u]
Burst Drive		400e	200s
Pellet Fusion C		300e	100s
Pulse Drive		400e	100s
Coilgun			300e	100s
Jammers			400e	200s
Microwave Beamer	300e	100s

[b]TOTAL:			2100e	1200s[/b]

This is meant to be a flexible jack-of-all-trades fleet whose composition changes with the enemy. Against Mad World for example, the Mongooses are all that's needed. Against a 600e fleet of 7 medium ships, 3 Light Mongooses would be enough, though it could hopefully instead be handled by 1 Mongoose and 7 Hornets (lower losses).

Two Heavy Mongooses together will one-turn any capital ship with less than ~32 armor, and a lone Heavy Mongoose can one-turn any capital ship with less than ~17 armor. The Light Mongoose can take out 3 ships with less than 5 armor, or can concentrate fire and take out things with up to ~13 armor.

Hornets are very fast fighters that can be used to keep the enemy out of close-range with the Mongooses, if needed. They're also pretty hard to hit by anything from long-range or missiles from short range, and if massed can do some serious damage against unshielded opponents.

Hawk is only there to let the Mongooses hit through any high init/dodge fleets and then die at the end of the round. I guess it can also help against swarms, and might even survive one. Kangaroo is cheap enough that it can be sacrificed; another can be sent to pick up the surviving Hornets.

~~Edit: And it loses to my Coop.~~ Edit2: And it ~~beats~~ absolutely trounces my Coop with Hornets, Kangaroo, and Hawk alone.

Symphony D. said:
Can Init be lowered below 0 by Jamming or EW actions, or does it plateau there?

Dis confirmed that it can somewhere earlier in the thread iirc.

Symphony D. · Feb 23, 2012

APR for that fleet is 3450, which is way above 3000 (15%). If you want to play around with a 3500 APR fleet instead of a 3000 then things get a lot different.

Symphony D. · Feb 23, 2012

ANTIVERSION

If you want to talk 3000-3500 APR, have this. Somewhat futureproofed for V9 in assuming Fleet Init and Jamming will be mutually exclusive on a single ship, but interoperable in a fleet. T3, CON4, Advancer, Poor Safety:

---

Caiman class Command Frigate

1 Twist Drive
10 Metal Capacitors (Refined)
2 Pulse Drive
1 Command Deck
1 Commlinks
1 Scanners
20 EW Broadcasters (Refined)
1 Algorithmic Interlocks
15 Coilgun (Refined)
1 Lubricants
1 Barrel Casings
1 Plasma Shield
24 Carbon Armor (Refined)
1 Heavy Cladding

Cost: 287e (129e) / 73m / 10v / 0a / 0t / 97s
Size: 77 / Mass: 57 / Power: 29 / Heat: -5
IS: 3 / IP: 1 / Range: 0
Init: 3 / Dodge: -16 / Avoid: 15 / Armor: 59 / Shield: 12
Refine: 481e / 120s

Projectile Gun Total Damage: 30 (15x10D through A0/S0)
Init Bonus to Fleet: 8
EW Attacks: YES
EW Score: 79
EW Vulnerability: 0
Ship-to-Ship Boarding: -10

Notes: Immune to contemporary Particle weapons. 0% hit rate by FMs through 10 Init, 1% hit rate by FMs through 11 Init. Guns are uncoupled to deal with massed, unarmored targets.

---

Anaconda class Support Frigate

1 Twist Drive
12 Metal Capacitors (Refined)
2 Pulse Drive
1 Computer Module
1 Scanners
15 Jammers
1 EW Broadcasters (Refined)
15 Coilgun (Refined)
1 Lubricants
1 Barrel Casings
1 Plasma Shield
3 Titanium Armor
13 Carbon Armor (Refined)
1 Heavy Cladding

Cost: 258e (116e) / 100m / 13v / 0a / 0t / 85s
Size: 77 / Mass: 77 / Power: 26 / Heat: -5
IS: 3 / IP: 1 / Range: 0
Init: 3 / Dodge: -23 / Avoid: 15 / Armor: 45 / Shield: 12
Refine: 402e / 101s

Projectile Gun Total Damage: 30 (15x10D through A0/S0)
EW Attacks: YES
EW Score: 27
Jammer Init Debuff: 7
EW Vulnerability: 0
Ship-to-Ship Boarding: 5

Notes: Immune to contemporary Particle weapons. 0% hit rate by FMs through 10 Init, 9% hit rate by FMs through 11 Init. Guns are uncoupled to deal with massed, unarmored targets.

---

King Cobra class Attack Frigate

1 Twist Drive
16 Metal Capacitors (Refined)
2 Pulse Drive
2 Computer Module
1 Scanners
3 EW Broadcasters (Refined)
1 Algorithmic Interlocks
15 Coilgun (Refined)
1 Lubricants
1 Barrel Casings
1 Microwave Beamer (Refined)
1 Plasma Shield
4 Titanium Armor
12 Carbon Armor (Refined)
1 Heavy Cladding

Cost: 216e (98e) / 92m / 13v / 0a / 0t / 77s
Size: 77 / Mass: 77 / Power: 98 / Heat: -5
IS: 12 / IP: 1 / Range: 0
Init: 3 / Dodge: -18 / Avoid: 15 / Armor: 46 / Shield: 31
Refine: 334e / 84s

EM Total Damage: 303L (1x21D through A50/S#)
Projectile Gun Total Damage: 30 (15x10D through A0/S0)
Extra Particle Ammo: 2
EW Attacks: YES
EW Score: 21
EW Vulnerability: 0
Ship-to-Ship Boarding: -10

Notes: Immune to contemporary Particle weapons. 0% hit rate by FMs through 10 Init, 3% hit rate by FMs through 11 Init. Guns are uncoupled to deal with massed, unarmored targets.

---

Code:

[b][u]REFINEMENT COSTS[/b][/u]

[b][u]NAME			IND	SCI[/b][/u]
Metal Capacitors	300e	100s
EW Broadcasters		300e	300s
Coilguns		300e	100s
Microwave Beamer	300e	100s
Carbon Armor		300e	150s
[I]King Cobra[/I]		334e	84s
	
[b]TOTAL:			1834e	834s[/b]

Code:

[b][u]Fleet ANTIVERSION[/b][/u]

[b][u]NAME		NUM	IND		SCI	MET		VOL[/b][/u]
[i]Caiman[/i]		1x	287e		97s	73m		10v
[i]Anaconda[/i]	1x	258e		85s	100m		13v
[i]King Cobra[/i]	4x	392e (98e)	77s	368m (92m)	52v (13v)	

[b]TOTAL:			937e		259s	541m		75v[/b]

Code:

[b][u]TOTAL RESOURCE INVESTMENT[/b][/u]

s: 1093
e: 2771
m: 541
v: 75

Agg. Prod./Res.: 3387

t: 4
a: 0

Four King Cobra are not capable of one-shotting all conceivable vessels within the CON4 HP limits, but they will kill any vessel in those limits in two turns of fire, are invulnerable to Particle, strong in EW, strong against Missile, and can survive extended battles with Laser-based peers. Caiman boosts Init by 8 from 3 to 11 across the board. Anaconda lowers enemy Init by 7. Between these and innate Avoid, you stand a good shot of surviving most missile fleets.

The unlinked guns on each of these platforms are capable of one-shotting a Berserker type ship, whereas 2 or 3 will kill a Frey type boarder. In the event that someone opts for fewer ships with more armor you could start tri-coupling guns to increase damage at the expense of fewer engagements per turn.

---

Against Berserkers, if they have a command ship but no jammer ship (+8 and then -7 Init, 1 total if no racial bonuses, vs. 11 Init), ANTIVERSION can kill 90 per turn at 100% hit rate if they swarm attack; it will die likewise because the Init/Avoid difference isn't big enough to get beyond 100% hit rate for BMs in close range, but the total APR of that many Berserkers is 2842 (1222 refinement, (8+4+6)*90 = 1620 resource input), without a command ship or a carrier, so it's a fair trade. If can probably kill a hypothetical jammer ship in long range before this, or if there is none, it can kill the command ship; in the latter case, -6 Init Berserkers only have a 69% hit chance in close range; ANTIVERSION almost surely still dies, but will have a slaughter in doing so. Only way to avoid this is to have the Berserkers come in in small waves, ideally single-file per ship.

Against AESIR FLEET, ANTIVERSION will lower Init and boost its own Init (can't be bothered to build the designs to do a full analysis; include your designs' stats, Kal). AESIR FLEET cannot engage through Avoid at long range.

Against STEEL REIGN, ANTIVERSION will lower Skipjack and Beluga to 6 and 5 Init, while being boosted to 6 Init itself. STEEL REIGN cannot engage through Avoid at long range.

Against COOP, ANTIVERSION will lower Chicken and Fox to 10 and 12 Init, while being boosted to 4 Init itself. COOP cannot engage through Avoid at long range.

Against LIGHTNING, ANTIVERSION will lower Light Mongoose, Heavy Mongoose, Hawk, and Hornet to 1, 1, 4, and 2 Init, while being boosted to 4 Init itself. LIGHTNING can engage and will kill a single ship with focused fire (D291 vs. A45 = 22, D388 vs. A45 = 30, summed: 82) but all three Mongooses and the Hawk will be one-shotted during the same long range phase.

---

I think I more or less win V8.

Looking forward into the future of this fleet, refine Jammers to fit more of them onto the Anaconda (fit 19 of them, drop a Titanium Armor, and add way more Carbon Armor) to get it to -9 Init to totally wipe out Fleet Init bonuses and steamroll Missile people or low Init fleets hardcore. Boosting your own Init and murdering the enemy's seems like the most important job support ships can do, because Init isn't everything, but it's pretty close. Whether you should refine Jammers or EW Broadcasters first is something of an open question based on whoever's nearby, but you're gonna want one or the other early on.

---

Coilguns rock. Long live flak. Magnetic Catapults are lackluster in comparison, again hoping there's a more combat-oriented version of those.

Also, you know what's a cool idea? An extremely heavily armored battlewagon with decent IP speed, multiple Sappers, and a lot of Coilguns. Against a low-armor Laser design like the Mongoose, even if it had some Shields, it'd be murderous.

Disenfrancised · Feb 23, 2012

On the carrier issue, right now the turn structure looks like this

Start Phase
Ability Phase (boarding attempted if at boarding range, EW attempted, Ships deployed from carrier, Fleet Int and Jamming applied)
First Weapons Phase (weapons fired at long or close range)
Engagement Phase (Ships attempt to engage or flee or move to boarding range)
Second Weapons Phase (Ships that didn't fire in the first phase now can fire, typically close range ships having successfully engaged)
Cleanup Phase (Lingering damage and debuffs applied)

Thus a carrier will have deployed its ships by the time long range weapons fire arrives. If you have surprised the foe, and get a free combat round, you can potentially destroy the carrier and all ships within it.

On capturing ships, at the end of the battle when there are no free enemy ships left you get any ships you have seized or EW Corrupted. Ships that are Immobilised or EW Locked down at battle end may surrender or suicide, but that'll be a roll play decision I'll make based on your factions, attitudes, agreements and war conduct. You can only repair captured ships if you have all their tech requirements, and they are operated at half their normal int and don't provide fleet int. Having a bunch of captured ships is probably a good negotiating tool though

.

Ship Designer V10 Change Log
-Lots of things rebalanced, I might have forgotten some stats tweaks
-Heat management now goes 10 to -10
-HP meter added, average of size and mass, very slightly weighted (heh) towards mass. A notable change from this is Titanium armour is the cheapest way to add HPs at <T3
-'Construction tech needed' ambiquity corrected
-Description texts updated
-EMP and [Redacted] Missiles now roll to hit against every ship in a close range instance (including the ship they're launched from if it's in the same instance).
-The MV provided by pebble and laser nets is buffed
-EM weapons now produce heat derived from the level of surplus power inputted. Base heat reduced to compensate.
-Fleet int now negatively non-linear (though much like base int, this is not very harsh). Elite training boosts fleet int
-Mag catapult split into Ring Catapult and Linear Catapult (the former having huge energy demands and the latter being very high size), both do more damage than the old mag catapult and recieve bonus damage and pushing power from materials and construction respectively.
-Barrel Casings, now like algorithmic interlocks, can be taken up to three times depending on tech level, additional catapult damage now flat rate. Much more expensive to refine.
-Another secret long particle weapon added
-Confinement Field I-III added, improves particle cannon and particle jet damage and the latters pushing ability
-Two new secret ammo components added :3
-Autoloaders buffed, now starts giving additional ammo at comp 4, 7, and 9.
-Jammers now jam at reduced strength for long range. This long range jamming effect takes away from your fleet int as well (not calculated in battle calc)
-Shield Arrays slightly buffed
-EW broadcasters now more expensive, ships make as many EW attacks as they have broadcasters
-Planetary installations heat management function now implemented
-Planetary and orbital easier construction limits now implemented (Orbitals can be 4 times as big and 2 times as heavy than the con limit, Planetary can be twice as big and four times as heavy)
-All weapons can be coupled
-shields produce more heat
-Supply sections require a habitat section to give supply to other ships (but still can use the bonus from recyclers and hiberpods)

Battle Calc V10 Change Log
-Fixed a problem with the interceptor table
-EW actions redone and better described, ~~EW bug fixed~~ EW completely reworked.
-EW stats section added
-Ship boarding stats section added
-PC's interaction with shields changed in the catapults favour

Rules changes
-As mentioned ships now make as many EW attacks as they have EW broadcasters/Commlinks
-You now choose the EW action before rolling, and if you fail that you don't get to do something else.

BattleCalc_V10 and ShipDesigner_V10

Next up is redoing the armies a lot.

Kal'thzar · Feb 23, 2012

Aww Damn.

I was just putting together some additions to the Aesir Fleet; since I had so much extra e/m/v. Trying to push as many threats as possible (so a mix of mag catapults/boarding/Kinetic Lancer/Bombers/EW (as in, designed for Close Ranged Instances).

Still the change log shows some promising changes, and its really good that you put out a turn structure and updated the descriptions!

Thlayli · Feb 23, 2012

Haven't checked yet, though I'll assume the Maneuvering Jets tweaks are in. Changelog looks good though.

Disenfrancised · Feb 23, 2012

Thlayli said:
Haven't checked yet, though I'll assume the Maneuvering Jets tweaks are in. Changelog looks good though.

Nope.

Disenfrancised · Feb 23, 2012

New Ship Concept

SS Patrician
15 x Burst Drives (Ref)
8 x Deuterium Drive
1 x Recyclers
1 x Hibernation Pods
3 x Cargo Bay
5 x Comp Module (Ref)
1 x Scanner (Ref)
9 x EW Broadcasters (Ref)
1 x Ice Sink
1 x Ion Jet
1 x Coilgun
10 x Carbon Armour

An expensive scout ship that can quite easily rape someones datasphere if you should come across one. Against Missile Fleets it shuts down their missiles and runs away, against lasers its IP 3 should be sufficient for the running away, and against particle it just loses

. During warfare it tasked for outrider duties, finding isolated ships/worlds and corrupting them/shutting them down, or main fleet support duties if the foe has a low enough EW.

Thlayli · Feb 23, 2012

Can you give us an idea of how pollution works? Like, how much of it do you need to actually degrade a biosphere/add social stress?

qoou · Feb 23, 2012

Dis, in the Ship Designer v10 there's two secret parts in the "Special" section. Everything for those two secret parts is blank, except for the description (and refinement costs). Looks like you forgot to blank out the description to me.

And less pressing, but the negative number raised to a power bug is back. Having negative power will lead to the heat given off by EM being undefined (even though you have no EM), which leads to the heat management and armor displays being undefined. Slightly annoying when you're messing around with designing.

Symphony D. said:
APR for that fleet is 3450, which is way above 3000 (15%). If you want to play around with a 3500 APR fleet instead of a 3000 then things get a lot different.

Oops, sorry: I was only paying attention to the e cost. Yeah, you definitely can't compare a 3450 fleet to a 3000.

(and you forgot to add the Command Staff and Computer Module to the Caiman; without it you can't get 8 init bonus to fleet, unless I'm missing something. I also made a couple of typos in Lighting related to the Heavy Mongoose, but it was a fairly awkward concept in the first place and is now fully obsolete)

Symphony D. · Feb 23, 2012

They just weren't tallied in the write-up. The costs should be reflective of their inclusion. On the other hand, ANTIVERSION is also totally obsolete, particularly since Microwave Beamers now massively lower armor (by like half).

I'm happy with the changes I see so far though it'll take awhile to adjust to the new builder. I'm also glad to report that really basic designs were minimally affected. I do miss the heat indicator going green or orange depending on the value.

e: Guessing the Specials are a reworked Sapper and something similar to one.

Minor Bug Report: although the Mass / Size indicators stay green if you go above your CON-limit in either Planetside or Orbital, the CON indicator in Tech Needed will go red.

Thlayli · Feb 23, 2012

So certain ships are now getting negative ship to ship scores with Intrusion Units. Bug or feature?

qoou · Feb 24, 2012

In my opinion, the EM nerf was too harsh. To support the kind of power the Cobra was fielding, you now need some 30 refined radiators and twice as much size. Not to mention the massive armor penalty.

Sure, EM might've been a bit too strong, but I don't like the angle it was approached from. Huge laser ships should be powerful. A 300-size laser orbital platform should be able to zap multiple things right out of the sky. The problem I saw was that you could stick lots of power on a little throw-away ship and kill far more expensive things in one round. The Cobra was a decently large sized laser platform and wasn't /that/ strong: it had counters (albeit not many good ones) it cost a decent amount, and it was completely dependent on a nearby source of power. The Mongoose on the other hand was a 50-60e ship that could kill any 2-3 capital ships, no matter how expensive, as long as they didn't throw lots of armor on to make up for the natural negative armor.

So my point is: this change hits EM fairly hard all across the board, rather than just where the problem was. Wouldn't it have been better to tone down the armor/heat nerf, then change the EM hitrate by a medium amount (~3-5 init/dodge) so that EM can't be shot with 100% success rate through a 15 int difference against a low-dodge ship?

Edit: I'm overreacting.

Thlayli said:
So certain ships are now getting negative ship to ship scores with Intrusion Units. Bug or feature?

It happens in the older version as well; fairly sure it's a feature. Intrusion Units allow boarding but don't give any Ship-to-Ship bonus... maybe they should?

Symphony D. · Feb 24, 2012

I think you're building it wrong. Radiators suck.

1 Twist Drive
13 Metal Capacitors (Refined)
2 Pulse Drive
1 Computer Module
1 Scanners
3 Ice Sinks
1 Radiators
1 Microwave Beamer (Refined)
1 Plasma Shield
1 Titanium Armor
18 Carbon Armor (Refined)
1 Heavy Cladding

Cost: 125e (56e) / 55m / 42v / 0a / 0t / 48s
Size: 77 / Mass: 77 / HP: 81 / Power: 89 / Heat: -4
IS: 11 / IP: 1 / Range: 0
Init: 3 / Dodge: -17 / Avoid: 0 / Armor: 39 / Shield: 29
Refine: 186e / 47s

EM Total Damage: 279L

This EM is about 100 lower than a Cobra-type's, but still respectable. You just can't fit all the other counter-gear and have this much power and still cool it. So a heavily diversified Cobra-type ship is now in the realm of CON5/CON6 and a lot more expensive.

Kal'thzar · Feb 24, 2012

Can Long Range jamming be turned off? As in can you choose to not use it? Or is it always on and just worse close up?

Pre-SysNES2: Beta-testing and Submission

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