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BadOptics posted:So you basically re-invented missiles. Congrats. I didn't reinvent anything, it's just there's basic reasons that missiles and fighter jets dominate modern combat. Missiles are great but you run into CNC issues fairly quickly with them in space because the distances are so great. There's a 4-24 minute delay between Earth and Mars - far too long for making effective combat decisions. Heck there's more than a 1 second delay between Earth and the Moon, which is already pushing the bounds of an acceptable response rate. So you'll want to mount those missiles on a control vehicle. But how do you protect that vehicle - with armor or with manuverability? Armor isn't perfect against everything so pretty quickly you're sitting right back in a fighter jet. I mean this is not to say that manuverability will be important in every eventuality. Settings where militaries use nukes freely, or where AI dominates, or where lethal speed of light weapons are common, all present good reasons to not use manned fighter jets. But even then there are reasonable ways for space fighters to operate in that environment. James Doohan (the actor who played Scotty on Star Trek) actually wrote some fairly decent books featuring starfighters in a Newtonian setting, check them out! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/801968.The_Rising Kaal fucked around with this message at 13:42 on May 15, 2018 |
# ? May 15, 2018 12:52 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 21:51 |
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Strategic Tea posted:At the same time, I imagine today's armchair military physicists can predict space combat about as well as regular armchair generals can predict regular combat. BadOptics posted:Edit: That being said, 4X games should adhere to two rules: is it fun and is it cool? Deploying large amounts of disposable highly maneuverable targets. Deploying ground troop shuttles. Deploying boarding party shuttles The first is covered by corvettes. The second is covered by transports. The third is a possibility, but makes the dogfighting layer an afterthought rather than the core competency. Though, a bunch of strike craft milling about shooting each other with the winning side impacting ships and imposing various malluses could be neat... Ideasguying aside, the big dogfighter design space is already sewn up with corvettes. They're fast, maneuverable, and "disposable" (they escape easy and by the time you're massing cruisers the ones that do die are dirt cheap to replace). Until there's something only strike craft can do in Stellaris they're just going to be weird missiles with funny mounts. Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:32 on May 15, 2018 |
# ? May 15, 2018 13:29 |
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Splicer posted:The third is a possibility, but makes the dogfighting layer an afterthought rather than the core competency. Though, a bunch of strike craft milling about shooting each other with the winning side impacting ships and imposing various malluses could be neat... Yeah I quite like the idea, and I think it would work well with the existing system because it wouldn't require them to introduce a totally new combat mechanic to make it work. Fighters would be useful but not critical - finding the right balance of carriers and point defence would be an interesting sidebet. Kaal fucked around with this message at 13:49 on May 15, 2018 |
# ? May 15, 2018 13:46 |
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Some sort of boarding party mechanism would be fun, along with the chance to disable ships, capture them and take them into your fleet.
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# ? May 15, 2018 13:53 |
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Soylent Pudding posted:Is there a good source that summarizes why Wardell is a piece of poo poo? this really tells you everything you need but if you need more, this is from fairly recently https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/21/17146940/star-control-leak-settlement-offer-stardock-reiche-ford-wardell he's also huge into gamergate and made an extra effort to be a jerk. there was also a huge amount of trash that came out from the sexual harassment lawsuit - it was dismissed so take pretty much everything with salt there but taking wardell's word for everything involving that still didn't make stardock look like an awesome work environment, to put it mildly https://kotaku.com/5940401/pc-gaming-studio-said-she-ruined-their-game-but-only-after-she-sued-the-boss-for-sexual-harassment Lum_ fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 15, 2018 |
# ? May 15, 2018 15:32 |
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Just slow down in-combat ship speed, give strikecraft higher uptime on their attacks (by tweaking the firing arcs, flight pattern and weapon range) and give them more speed and engagement range. They don't need big mechanics changes to work, they just need to be properly integrated into the combat system. When corvettes are faster than strikecraft, and corvettes pack anti-capital torpedoes (all your carriers are capitals) and your fighters only fire a small percentage of the time they actually could fire of course fighters are going to be poo poo. And bring back the interceptor/bomber distinction, that was cool.
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# ? May 15, 2018 15:33 |
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Oh dang, my favorite game turned 2 on may 9 and I forgot to send a card! In honor of this belated birthday, I'd like to take a moment to argue that assigning liberal, democratic values to the "individualism" ethos, while authoritarian, slave-keeping, tyrannical values are assigned to the "collectivism" ethos is an intellectual, political, and moral outrage. Here is why, in 8 parts;
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# ? May 15, 2018 16:24 |
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Kaal posted:Yeah I quite like the idea, and I think it would work well with the existing system because it wouldn't require them to introduce a totally new combat mechanic to make it work. Fighters would be useful but not critical - finding the right balance of carriers and point defence would be an interesting sidebet. Epicurius posted:Some sort of boarding party mechanism would be fun, along with the chance to disable ships, capture them and take them into your fleet.
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# ? May 15, 2018 16:32 |
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So, I just got the great khan to spawn in my game where I’m playing a super-tall race of fanatic spiritualist/militaristic plant people. I’d previously been running around the galaxy, vassalizing all of my enemies, keeping only the Gaia worlds for myself. Next to me were the (plantoid) marauder empire and a machine empire. I didn’t want to vassalize the machine empire, since they would all just self destruct on account of the spiritualist ethic. The khan emerges and vassalizes the machine empire. I kill the khan (barely!) and the leader of the successor state is some flavor of militaristic. We become best friends, and vassalize the galaxy together. The plant people federation is born. This game can be magical sometimes.
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# ? May 15, 2018 16:44 |
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Scale down the 'vettes and give them some kind of enemy territory attrition mechanic. Then, make the cruisers and battleships BIG enough to carry them around. Corvettes that are slotted into their respective hangars get a bonus or lose some malus and get automatically replenished (given time and resources) after combat. Anyway, does anybody recognize those guys? They were sitting in a zealot FE system that I just ate - and they still sit there all neutral and unidentified with no way to investigate them.
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# ? May 15, 2018 16:45 |
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RedSnapper posted:Anyway, does anybody recognize those guys? They'll let you know when they're ready.
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# ? May 15, 2018 16:49 |
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AG3 posted:They'll let you know when they're ready. Read: literally never, in most cases.
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# ? May 15, 2018 17:08 |
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This is a good scene with missiles being drones being anti-missile escorts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCC0zMqPhsA&t=212s Also there's no such thing as "inertial dampers" or what ever. A g is a g and a missile will always out-perform anything with meat inside. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 17:13 on May 15, 2018 |
# ? May 15, 2018 17:10 |
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Kaal posted:I mean obviously there's a lot of good points to be made here, and sci-fi writers often are lazy when it comes to exploring outside WW2 combat tropes. But just to defend space fighters a little bit: As long as manuverability is important they're going to exist. Just in purely mathematical terms, there's an inherent advantage in a vehicle having a high thrust to mass ratio. And in an environment where projectiles are devastatingly powerful and accurate, being able to quickly change your velocity will be very important. You can always handwave/invent physics/magic/whatever to make it make sense but the real life physics problems with all this are on that page linked. 4 times the delta v required is huge. Stellaris of course appears to have reactionless drives which has their own massive issues for the setting: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/reactionlessdrive.php (ie, why can't we ram ships into planets at 0.9999c and blow them up?)
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# ? May 15, 2018 17:18 |
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I don't think anyone's saying Stellaris is bad because it's not realistic or even believable in the slightest, just that it would be nice to see some sort of 4X space game with a bit more of a nod towards how space actually works. Although I'd be happy if Stellaris laid out how its fantasy setting works and stuck to some sort of vague internal consistency at the least.
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# ? May 15, 2018 17:22 |
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Baronjutter posted:I don't think anyone's saying Stellaris is bad because it's not realistic or even believable in the slightest, just that it would be nice to see some sort of 4X space game with a bit more of a nod towards how space actually works. Star Ruler 1 for your 4x if you want something newtonian with more traditional sci-fi techs. Children of a Dead Earth is super hard sci-fi with current or know-how-to-make tech on a smaller (solar system) scale. Star Ruler 2 if you want SR1 but actually fun instead of just weird. Nexus: Jupiter Incident if you want a fairly-hard small scale RTT (that veers into more traditional sci-fi after the prologue sadly).
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# ? May 15, 2018 17:55 |
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Baronjutter posted:I don't think anyone's saying Stellaris is bad because it's not realistic or even believable in the slightest, just that it would be nice to see some sort of 4X space game with a bit more of a nod towards how space actually works. You might enjoy the original Star Ruler. E ^ Personally I enjoy SR1 more than 2 because of the economy changes.
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# ? May 15, 2018 17:56 |
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I could never get into star ruler, too much of just a unit-building RTS. Hell, stellaris doesn't have enough of an internal economy/politics Children of a dead earth is cool but it's not really a civilization builder. I need newtonian Vicky pops in space.
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# ? May 15, 2018 18:05 |
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Baronjutter posted:This is a good scene with missiles being drones being anti-missile escorts. that was a good episode. you syfy
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# ? May 15, 2018 18:16 |
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Hopefully Amazon pick it up. If not, Marco Inaros did nothing wrong.
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# ? May 15, 2018 18:24 |
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Please no spoilers for those of us who stabbed cable TV in the neck ages ago and have been enjoying the show on Prime which only has up to season 2.
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# ? May 15, 2018 20:09 |
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Which is more interesting, biological or synthetic ascension? I'm about to start a fanatic materalist/authoritarian run and haven't done either of the two.
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# ? May 15, 2018 20:40 |
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Vasudus posted:Which is more interesting, biological or synthetic ascension? I'm about to start a fanatic materalist/authoritarian run and haven't done either of the two. Synthetic. Biological ascension is just endlessly micromanaging very strictly bonus/malus balanced versions of your main species. It's awful.
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# ? May 15, 2018 20:50 |
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Nevets posted:Please no spoilers for those of us who stabbed cable TV in the neck ages ago and have been enjoying the show on Prime which only has up to season 2. the only spoiler is that unless Amazon picks up the series, season 3 will be the last season because it wasn't sufficiently profitable for syfy.
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# ? May 15, 2018 20:51 |
Vasudus posted:Which is more interesting, biological or synthetic ascension? I'm about to start a fanatic materalist/authoritarian run and haven't done either of the two. for an authoritarian or xenophobe, probably synthetic? the thing with synthetic is that it totally wipes out your species diversity, which is a bummer when you're playing as a multicultural egalitarian/xenophile type empire
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# ? May 15, 2018 20:57 |
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Captain Monkey posted:Synthetic. Biological ascension is just endlessly micromanaging very strictly bonus/malus balanced versions of your main species. It's awful. Depends on your preferences. I see synthetic as the more boring choice because, as already mentioned, it wipes out species diversity and robomodding has fewer options than gene modding. You don't *have* to descend into micromanagement hell with bio ascension if you don't want to, it's still a significant boost even if you just upgrade to the unique traits. Also I hate building pops.
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# ? May 15, 2018 21:09 |
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I'm running a fanatic materalist + authoritarian run (Despotic Hegemony), with Slaver Guilds and Syncretic Evolution. My slave species does the mining and farming, my master species does the research and energy. I did somehow manage to get my first surveyor to proc psionics as their level 5 trait which I guess is cool. I'm planning on running tall, then vassalizing the galaxy with my superior technology. I guess since I'm running tall I wouldn't mind the janitoring of traits, and I would probably get more out of biological since I can boost my slave species too.
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# ? May 15, 2018 21:24 |
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Do you want Space Marines? They're in biology path.
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# ? May 15, 2018 22:29 |
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Vasudus posted:Which is more interesting, biological or synthetic ascension? I'm about to start a fanatic materalist/authoritarian run and haven't done either of the two. Stop at cyborg and go hard into megastructures instead.
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# ? May 15, 2018 22:56 |
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While I'm playing I actually said "SPACE MARINES...MEGASTRUCTURES" to the tune of Lisa Needs Braces. I've been playing this game too much lately. I went Biological.
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# ? May 15, 2018 23:14 |
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hobbesmaster posted:You can always handwave/invent physics/magic/whatever to make it make sense but the real life physics problems with all this are on that page linked. 4 times the delta v required is huge. Stellaris of course appears to have reactionless drives which has their own massive issues for the setting: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/reactionlessdrive.php Well again the issue with relying on long-range cruise missiles is that the scale of combat is just so much larger than terrestrial combat. At a certain point you're going to need a vehicle to carry those missiles rather than firing them from a planet, because a 30 minute CNC delay is just too long. Heck, modern militaries essentially have instantaneous control of their cruise missiles and they still prefer using jets and drones (for combat awareness reasons as much as cost). In fact Ken Burnside acknowledges that a vehicle would be required in the link. So then it just comes down to haggling over whether armor or maneuverability is more useful for your purpose. Kaal fucked around with this message at 03:48 on May 16, 2018 |
# ? May 16, 2018 00:21 |
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Or you just go for the Ork method and have someone pilot the missile.
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# ? May 16, 2018 00:26 |
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I'd again emphasize that the point should not be realism (which makes space combat stupidly apocalyptic) but whatever desirable level of verisimilitude is needed. The Expanse is still my standard right now. It deals with the physics that are convenient to deal with: g-forces, time scales, newtonian flight. It does not deal with physics that are inconvenient: mostly related to fuel and supplies (it's implied a main drive in the Expanse universe can accelerate so long and so fast that the only meaningful limit is the meat inside). Like, this isn't some bizarre situation where a sci-fi series or game or anything needs to be 100% hard sci-fi or 100% immortal psychic space dolphins. It's totally okay to pick and choose to taste and benefit from both types of sci-fi storytelling.
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# ? May 16, 2018 01:20 |
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RedSnapper posted:Scale down the 'vettes and give them some kind of enemy territory attrition mechanic. Then, make the cruisers and battleships BIG enough to carry them around. Corvettes that are slotted into their respective hangars get a bonus or lose some malus and get automatically replenished (given time and resources) after combat. Escapees from SotS!
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# ? May 16, 2018 01:55 |
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Real quick, what does 'running tall' mean?
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# ? May 16, 2018 05:06 |
Lou Takki posted:Real quick, what does 'running tall' mean? Few systems and colonies but highly developed. Eg the main 'tall' strat I've seen talked about lately aims for ~15 systems and 3 colonies until mid-game, then you fill your handful of systems with habitats and go hog wild on the rest of the universe. Vs 'running wide' which is the usual 'paint the entire map my color unleash the hordes'
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# ? May 16, 2018 05:12 |
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There's also the approach where you just keep killing people until you hit a good choke point, then start filling in your empire.
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# ? May 16, 2018 05:38 |
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Arrath posted:Few systems and colonies but highly developed. An addendum to this is that vassals and federations are very good for tall empires. You can conquer a bunch of enemies and then release your newly conquered worlds as vassals. These new vassals start at your (presumably high) tech level, gain a huge bonus when researching techs you know, and add to your unity gain (once you’ve filled out the tradition tree.) You then avoid the tech/unity malus from having too many systems. Similarly, the federation fleet gets all your sweet techs and contributes to unity with the appropriate traditions. Unfortunately the AI vassals seem to expand glacially even if you have the “your vassals can expand” empire trait. Does anyone know if there’s a hidden penalty to vassal expansion?
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# ? May 16, 2018 06:15 |
All good points, I hardly ever play as a diplomatically inclined kinda empire.
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# ? May 16, 2018 07:10 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 21:51 |
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RedSnapper posted:Scale down the 'vettes and give them some kind of enemy territory attrition mechanic. Then, make the cruisers and battleships BIG enough to carry them around. Corvettes that are slotted into their respective hangars get a bonus or lose some malus and get automatically replenished (given time and resources) after combat. Space nomads They're supposed to wander around the galaxy and sometimes ask if they can drop some of their people off in your empire, before leaving for some other galaxy. You can choose to integrate them in an existing colony, let them colonise a random planet in your space but still be part of your empire, or colonise a random planet in your space and become a protectorate. Most of the time they seem to just get stuck doing nothing in particular. Also as a note, biological ascension lets you capture a particularly annoying enemy and give their entire race a full array of every negative trait if you're feeling vindictive. One thing that frustrates me with the various ascensions is migration treaties having people go off to other places and then come back as their base form after you've spent so long carefully tailoring your race to be genetic/psychic/synthetic supergods. You can't mod a growing pop either, so if you've got gene/robomodding, you have to wait until the pop is done growing to change them at which point another pop will start to grow.
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# ? May 16, 2018 09:18 |