Torpedoes< >Missiles... The sum of Banter. > with later addition

what about gamma pulse torpedos?

It sounds reasonable but if you think along those lines - isn't that what the drone really is if armed correctly with the right engines and warheads?

Actually no, what we are getting at is that torpedos should increase damage with range. A drone with a warhead on it is like a torpedo in large scale, but a torpedo should suck at close ranges and get much stronger further out, making it a true sniper weapon, but still have a max range.

Torpedoes that do more damage the farther they go only do so because they get their damage from physically hitting the target. These torpedoes simply detonate, which does damage regardless of speed.

That's not to say I wouldn't like to see a weapon like this. Having an acceleration variable for weapons would make this possible, since you can script damage so that it increases with distance.

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Watch for my mod - codename: Dimensions - coming by Summer, 2007!

When the torpedo explodes, what causes more damage, being 2 inches into the hull from sheer ramming power or exploding on the surface?

Of course it could just become harder to hit instead the further it travels, but I don't see how to do that.

Actually, the way it's set up right now, seekers (missiles and torpedos) automatically hit and deal damage if they reach their target. Only Direct Fire weapons have to worry about accuracy.

Mind you, your idea isn't bad and can be adapted - a Payload tech for damage and a Propulsion tech for speed. If you wanted to increase range as well, you'd need a complicated damage formula - take a look at Components.txt and see how existing weapons are coded.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

--Double post--

Is it possible to add new wehicle type, something like drones, that would be small (eg 2-5 tons), would have slow acceleration and turn speed and once targeted would be uncontrollable?

They would be almost ideal misiles.

Imagine that you could eg. use them from big range, so they would reach HIGH speed and cross PD range FAST, or close range and PD would pick them off easily, if they would miss (becose of oponent manuever, they would slowly turn (unless fly out of combat) and attack again.
And there would allow making external ordonance component for them (realy slow launching launcher).

You can use fighters with Kamikaze warheads.

Inter related Mod already does this for most seekers

So to sum up:
1) Yes it's possible to do 2 techs cross-indexed - might have to make many many entries in the Components.txt however (as well as maybe have an advanced filtering category as otherwise you'd be swamped with lots and lots of versions of the same weapon cluttering your screen).
2) A mod already exists which does this. I cannot comment further as I've never played Inter-related Mod.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Missile speed on impact could have a factor of AP, armor piercing, capability, essentially ignoring armor if it got going fast enough, assuming there were no shield to stop it.
Better Armor would stop slower missiles, etc.

it does not seem to work anymore. I never seen a seeker miss in a long time, even with no turning rate, or one set to 0 (just made a few tests in my mod). Turning rates are broken right now.

Badger, it's not a bad idea and quite suitable for a mod, but not sure how likely such a system would be for stock. That said, it's also very easy to do using the "Get Empire Tech Level" for things like improving seeker defense structure with research in armor etc., rather than force the use of Mounts (Component Enhancements).

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I don't know why there are different torpedoes. In my mod I might remove torpedoes totally and add different missile warheads for different purposes. Like EM warheads for anti-shields, tandem charge for armor piercing, and maybe even plasma warheads which do extra damage but can be alleviated with reflective armor.

I actually plan on changing the weapon scheme quite a bit.

One thing that might work is to treat the weapon as the engine, and the mount as the warhead. That would cut down on the entries to create as each mount is an alteration (IE change) in the base weapon.

So, the idea is (for a torpedo) a drone with a certain engine type with a certain warhead. You could just copy and modify the drone sizes (so theyre more like combat ranged missiles than system wide seekers) and make some new warheads. it'll be easy. i always wanted to have an over-powered capital ship missile drone.

Fighters shouldn't be required for drone tech. Drones can be representative of many different things, such as David Weber's Missile pods, or you can view them as super-missiles, or you could see them as computer fighters, but one thing all three of those have in common, no pesky crew to keep alive. The techniques for building them are different, internal components different, and the people inside that can come home in body bags are different. That's not to say every society values life to a degree they try to keep fighters alive, but the concepts about "safety factor" and maintaining a habitable space inside them are still valid.

Target difficulty, well, living pilots would be quicker and smarter with "Evasive Manuvering" then the missile. So it's not that far from unrealistic.

Now, as for ordinance, All the ammo needs to be stored and have the system to process it quickly and efficiently throughout the ship. A DUC round wouldn't take as much space to ship it from the ordinance storage to the launcher unit like a CSM would. Even so, space to store it at, and all the handling and processing equipment would take up alot of space. They start at 200 tons each for the missiles, That sounds a little high, don't it? At 25 (Max Stock Level) there is room for 2550 supply. That means 255 missiles. That puts each missile at around 19 tons each.

YOu don't have to destroy all the armour to blow holes through it such that it no longer is usefull. The missile coming at you with some holes in it is still going to have it's warhead detonate.......

Numbers don't tell the whole story.

Though I semi agree on the targeting difficulty but..... PD usually only gets to shoot once, maybe twice at a missile, it gets to shoot a lot more at a fighter. If you make it too hard for PD to hit you'll make missiles immune to PD because of how few shots get fired, where as a fighter they get a lot more time to aim at.

And a 5KT ordance storage bay.... Who says it only weighs 5KT when full.... maybe thats 5KT of effective structure space, but when full the ordance weight is more.

Though a thought on the targetting..... That could be based on chemical propulsion and get harder to track as the engine tech went up to reflect longer burn times possible and greater manauverability caused by not needing an exhaust etc

First of all, state that I play Kwok´s Balance Mod (BM), so my comments are made about it. Of course, They can be applied to stock too.

1.- Current BM missiles and torpedoes:

Badger has a very good point about evasion/structure in missiles. No matter how good a missile is (unless we talk about super missiles, AKA drones, and this case is very different), it should be disintegrated, or simply rendered useless, with the slightest PDW hit.

On the other side, it is not logical to find out that fighters are harder to hit than missiles...

So let´s play with current equation parts to make things a bit more logical.

Right now, missiles in Balance mod have some HP, this giving them a chance to survive a hit. Against PD Cannons this chance is about 50%. IMO, the solution is easy: Increase evasion, decrease HP, and get the same survival chances for missiles.

This way, a CSM should have 70-75% evasion and 5 HP. As you research more levels and missiles get better, you can give them 1% extra evasion bonus, instead of 1 extra HP.

PDW should be tweaked in this way too. Instead of making more damage, increase their hit bonus/level, and lower a bit base damage to avoid get them overpowered VS fighters.

Against fighters, situation should´t change much. PDW would hit them more this way, but make them less damage, so in the end we get the same.

But this should allow two different PDW systems: High damage/low rate ones (Flack Cannon, Bomblets) would made perfect anti-fighter PDW, weak VS missiles, while High precision/low damage ones (PDBlasters, PDBeams) should work perfectly VS missiles, but poorly VS fighters. PDCannons should be an average damage/precision solution (but a bit weaker than the others).

This should give BM more depth and strategic options. My enemy uses lots of fighters? I use Flack cannons/ bomblets. He has lots of missile boats? I go PDBlaster/PDBeam. He attacks my PDBlaster frigates with fighters? I´m in trouble...

2.- About general missile techs:

Again, Badger´s comments have a lot of sense. The question is how to addapt them to the game. I suppose that the easiest way should be giving a tech to each missile statistic we have:

-WARHEAD TECH: Researching this, you get more damage to your missiles (10 damage/level, 21 levels).

-MISSILE PROPULSION TECH: Researching this, you get more range for your missiles (10KM/ level, 16 levels)).

-MISSILE COMPUTER TECH: Researching this, you get more evasion for your missiles (5% eva/level, 7 levels, You get this tech after researching "Computers").

Speed could be increased when increasing both Missile Propulsion & Computer: Base missile is 40 KM/s, increasing by 5 each 3 levels of Propulsion & 1 of computer (45KM/s at lvl 3/1, to a max of 65Km/s at level 21/7 of both techs).

Missiles could start with 40% evasion, 40KM/s speed, 100 Damage and 100 range. When maxed, after 21 levels of all 3 techs, they could have 75% evasion, 65 speed, 300 damage and 250 range.

You could concentrate research in warheads, getting short range heavy damage missiles, or longer range but weaker missiles, or super missiles after a costly research of all 3 techs.

Other techs could "unlock" special warheads: Biology could give viral warheads, with 5x damage multiplier VS population, Photon Engines -> Photon warheads, 1.1x damage multiplier, Quantum tech -> Quantum warheads, 1.5x damage multiplier, Warp weapons -> Warp warheads, AP ability...

All this options could give much more depth to the game.

3.- Non explosive ordnance: Well´again Badger comments have sense... (Give us a breath!! Please!!!).

I suppose the easiest way could be to implement this like in Battletech:

Ammo explodes: ship suffers ammo damage X number of remaining ammo rounds. And, if this results in a ship destroyed, surplus damage affects nearby ships in a certain radius due to ship debris transformed in shrapnel.

4.- Armor...: (Arrggghhh...!!!) Ok, what about if we say that armor just represents the amount of armor You beed to breach before damaging internal components, instead of all armor in the ship?

Directional armor should be very intersting (front shots affect front armour, etc), allowing a lot of strategic possibilities (attacking ships from their rear, where they are weaker, etc)... if implemented. I suppose that´s a work for Aaron and MM.

I think exploding ordinance should deal damage (D) thus-

O/N = D
Where O is Ordnance on the Ship and N is Number of Ordnance supply storage bays you have, devided equally amongst the components directly bordering that component, as well as components in the same slot in other decks.

Modern day tanks and ships are designed to prevent such thing from happening. When ammo storage get hit, the explosion get redirected toward the outside so the ship/tank stand a chance of surviving, or at least, spare the crew from instant death.

So i think it's realistic that destroyed supply and ordnance storage to take away the ship with them.

It was very funny to see mechs blowing in massive ammo explosions that affected nearby mechs... It could even cause a chain reaction!!

Well, euhm, if something explodes, then the weakest link will blow away. Now, imagine a spaceship where the outer hull blows away because the inner one is stronger. That's something quite odd, don't you think? It's quite like a $1000 amplifier blowing to protect a $0.05 fuse. Besides, in space, when the hull is gone, what about the oxygen and such? With a hole in the hull, you'll lose it fast, very fast. And also, when your outer armor is weaker then the internal structure, then you've a serious design issue. A warship is designed to withstand blows from it's enemy, not to withstand it's ammo depot going bezerk. In normal situations, an ammo depot won't blow itself up, unless for the occasional critical hit, but then, in space, you don't have the luxuary to just walk to the base

I wouldn't compare a modern tank with a spaceship. If the ammo on the tank blows, just step out, if the ammo on the spaceship blows ... well, I doubt they'll just go outside of it. The debris on it's own is already lethal in space, and then I'm not speaking about the fact that ships are quite big and therefor taking cover behind it would take too long (if your ammo blows, then it's most of the time due to hostile actions.

Annyway, just my oppinion about that matter and why ammo blowing should be deadly in all situations.

Don't need to blow the whole outer hull for that, a small section would do. By default, an explosion will push in the direction of the least resistance, if the weakest pannel is toward space, it's where it will blow.

A warship don't need to be fully presurised, lot's of sections can be left in vaccum without affecting the ship operation. Also, more than likely key sections of a ship would be more heavily protected from leaking atmosphere.

Who said stepping out of it? A ship should not be crippled by having one of it's ammo storage hit. Modern day ships have redundancy, a space one would surely have the same. If the ship is dying though, it's escape pod time.

Hi, just thought I would add my 2 cents worth in regards to Grendel's comments on the directional armour.

I have figured out how to get that working. I created a component that did nothing but had lots of structure points, and allowed it to be placed only on the outer hull sections.

Its effect in the game is to provide any component "behind" it protection for as long as it lasts. ie. A section of internal armour at the very front of the ship, and a basic sensor behind it. The internal armour takes all frontal damage until destroyed, and only then does the basic sensor take damage. It does not however provide protection from side hits.

So in effect it works exactly like directional armour. The only issue will be getting the AI to use it. I suspect the best way at this stage will be to have it listed as a component to fill up with once everything else has been added.

That's more or less the system that Suicide Junkie has used in his Gritty Galaxy Mod for SE:V.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Just like in real life (Yes I know SEv is life, just work with me) Torps and Missiles can and should be able to be jam, and directional armor is a good idea, maybe make it with different protection values....I.e. the front of a tanks armor is stronger then the top.

7th word is the point. they are DESIGNED better. If you put an ammunition storage in such a way as the crew were between it and the "Path of Least resistance" you'd have what my ships look like, since ammo doesn't explode

I can believe i made such an attrocious typo...

So i think it's realistic that destroyed supply and ordnance storage to NOT take away the ship with them.

Mechwarrior, which is a game I admire quite a bit for the depth it has, has limits on exploding ammunition. If an ammo bin is in a mech's arm, the damage doesn't carry over to the rest of the mech. Additionally, one can dedicate some weight to case ammo, which directs the blast in a specific direction, preventing practically all damage. Unfortunately exploding ammunition does full damage, which comes out to an obscene number and it often cripples that mech, but by toning down the damage exploding ordinance can still hurt, but not hurt by much.

I haven't played the game that much, but I was looking at the definitions of torpedo/missile and realized on our planet (Earth) they are often the same thing moving through different mediums, the range of (tactical) missiles is often actually much longer than torpedoes, due to the drag-inducing nature of water. In older science-fiction torpedoes are projectile weapons, launched and unguided after launch. Torpedoes are self-guided Kamikazes, trying to crash into their target. Cruise missiles work the same way, flying in the air (mostly) to their target.

BTW, in our current world many short-range missiles, especially SAM's, have a short-duration solid chemical booster, and then a liquid chemical 'sustainer', allowing much longer range than solid fuel alone. Wouldn't it make sense in the future that a similar pairing of propulsion technologies would occur, given the nature of preserved momentum in the realtively frictionless environment of space?

Ordance is ordance...even in space. If a hit takes out an ordance bay it is going to explode. Their won't be enough left to vent or breakaway. In real life the ordance of any vessel are well armored and yes there is a design in modern MBT that "vent" the explosion, but trust me it never works as intendeded. The vessel always suffers extreme damage, and in space (sheild doors or blast doors for the imagimative excluded) the sheer force of the vaccum of space will tear a vessel apart.

You are all assuming that it's explosive ordanance that generates an explosion when it's damaged. A lot of the 'ordanance' wouldn't. Food Ordanance to feed your organic weapons so they can shoot.... Food doesn't explode. A lot of the weirder tech kinds of ordanance, they probably wouldn't explode on impact either. Sure some of the stuff would, but it all depends what sort of ordanance it is. And somewhere in a game we have to make sacrifices for simplicity, or we would spend all year trying to design our space ships to even travel then manage to end first turn.

And death by Taco Bell becomes more of a reality...

Actualy certain foods will explode under pressure and others can do a lot of damage just my ignighted.

Wheat flour under the right conditions will produce very nasty fuel air type expositions and many flour mills where destroyed in them all you need is the right or the wrong depending on t he way you look at it mix of flour and air.

Its not easy I spent months trying to create this mix in a school kitchen once before deciding that calling in environmental health worked just as well if not so explosively.

I know blowing up the school is an all time dream of every school going person, but there are easier ways of making somthing go boom. Try science class, not home economics. Unless of course it is my cooking.. (banned in 15 states)

I was trying to use the materials to hand in the kitchen as I thought any of the interesting nitrogen containing compounds would have looked a bit well deliberate and gas never works that well. Also saw marks on the pipe work look deliberate it was suposed to look like an accident. As it was Environmental health turned up about cockroaches etc and the place was closed on the instant and demolished within the month.

Just a side note, despite the presence of (very) flammable fuel on almost all tanks in WWII, only about 30% 'brewed up' (caught fire explosively). And this in spite of the fact that most had 50+ gallons of regular gasoline on board. Secondary explosions on vehicles carrying ordinance is not a guarantee, but a definite possibility.

While you are correct on this issue, part of it was due to the ordanced used. Most WWII tanks, especially the Axis, used AP shells, which were designed to knock a tank out not "brewed up" the allies countered this by placing water sacks in with the ammo to keep it from exploding. But you are correct ordinance will not always go boom when hit.

Note - Why are the Terrans always the economic race? For 5000 years of written history there has only been 50 years of peace. We should be the ass kickers of the galaxy. Lets lose the Star Trek image and be what we are. -

Another note is that Tanks are made up of primarily Steel, which takes a lot to burn. Also 30% is a lot when you consider the number of Tanks used in WWII.

Ships in the game are larger and have other factors that would that would make ordinance protection a very important factor if it was coded to make a difference. I don't know about you but I don't want to be in an explosion around active and armed weapon systems.

- And she went to the well and wept for lost.....

FWIW, I used to be a tanker in the U.S. Army. I talked to a non-comm once who had a fellow tank have its ammo supply hit during Gulf War I. The ammo blew, the crew was shaken up but unharmed (other than some ringing in their ears for a few days). So, the concept of protected ordnance does work. Of course, if they had been loading the main gun at the time, and thus had the ammo door between the ammo storage and the crew compartment hit, it could have been a different story.

I like the concept of internal ordnance having a greater chance to do more damage than external.

But reactive armor is just pack of explosives strapped on top of the standard armor, they can only stop one attack...

Kinetic weapons do have the potential of having unlimited range, but getting that shot off and scoring a hit is another story. Anything man made is imperfect, the calculations may say you can do it, but this assume perfection. Perfection is detection, perfection in targetting, perfection in the delivery system and perfection in the trajectory prediction. I don't believe in that kind of perfection, so i don't want it in my mod...

The projectile speed is just one part of the problem. The weapon must be able to track the target and keep lined to it. And with larger range, there might be a small delay between target movements and the attacker capability to notice the change and adapt to it. This may make the weapon miss over long distances even though the projectile is fast enough... You don't need much margin of error to miss in space...

This is one reason i don't like the absurd range you get in the Honor Arrington novels. It just assume extreme perfection...

Vacuum won't tear any vessel apart. Look at cars- they're hardly designed to handle pressure, but they don't crush like a bear can when they sink. That can easily be two or three atmospheres of pressure, where going from surface->vacuum only loses you one ATM.

As far as the HH ranges go- for laser weapons its only one light second or so; easily within aiming distance. Missiles, being self-guided, are another story..and HH ships have HUGE emmisions signatures, making them very easy targets.

Today, NOW, we can target an individual object that we know it's previous location in space and hit it with lasers. We can do this with objects smaller then a typical house. They are called "sattalites"

Yes, over vast differences small errors add up, but it's all about how precise your input for a calculations are

If you have a 17 mile diameter circle and are trying to find the circumference based on 3.14, you'll get 53.38 miles. You do the same with 3.14159265, you get approximatly 53.407 miles. Know what the difference is? Over a hundred feet. we CAN get the precision required for shooting at certain distances in this day. We have enough precision to shoot at something fairly static that orbits a world (Jupiter's moons)

Honor Herrington's books deal with this and explain how it works in his world. If you missed it, I suggest you re-read them. You probably caught it though and disagreed with the fictional science behind it.

But remember, in math you get extreme precision only if your data is extremely precise. Math allows you to do it in the real world, and as our calculation tools, space object detection tools, and understanding increases, so does our ability to hit spatial objects with extreme precision.

Give it a hundred years and we might be laughing at the pathetic distances that were listed in the honor herrington books that were set thousands of years in the future.

And phoenix, what about the races who live in gas giants? they will be under tens of atmospheres...

Satellites sound better. And from what i learned when adjusting satellites dish, you throw a wide signal at them, not a focussed beam like a combat laser.

Now, explain to me how you would aim that weapons to follow your calculations.

I did not miss it. I just don't find it that believable.

You confuse math and engeenering. We can make calculation as precise as we bother to make them, but engeenering a device that can live up to our expectations is another story. We can send a spacecraft to Saturn with a reasonnable precision, but the ship does need to make course corrections several times during the long flight. Not making them may send the ships way off course...

Maths could potentially predict the future... But the insane amount of data along the required precision make me seriously doubt anyone would succed...

Your all forgetting the Chaos Theroy of Realativity.... That'll screw up any mathamatical algrithim.

PD should work like Phalanx at short range and RAM at long range. It shoudl be cut and dry, and as mentioned in another thread, should multi target. I hate when all guns are shooting at a destroyer while a dreadought is firing away.