Carrier Battles Mod

[scJazz]

Will said:
Missiles would only be out-run in small skirmishes involving ships on the order of 10s. Carrier Battles is centered on large fleet operations, fleets in the 100s, plus fighters, and in those battles, you cannot run away from missiles because there is nowhere to move.
<SNIP>

You guys keep saying huge fleets, Battle of Tudran, no place to maneuver, etc. SJ has already said that he isn't making the missiles any faster. Fine. I will. Why?

Because I don't play setups where I have 50 turns without contact in an enormous galaxy with limited players allowing the time for huge fleet build up. I don't play setups where anyone has the luxury of creating multiple 100+ ship fleets guarding every warp point entrance to my space. I understand that it is what you guys playing CB PBW games seem to enjoy. I just don't like it. I'm rather confused by the fact that you all seem to want me to like it. You all seem to want me to like it because your always referring to having things set up a certain way to basically encourage it. Great... have fun! Me I'm editting CB 1.6 v2 to have faster missiles!

[Will]

Well, you could do that. But really, there are reasons why the missiles aren't any faster than they are already, which is what everyone else is trying to say. Missiles are king in the early game when everything else is slow anyway, but there's still room to move around in battles. Then toward the end game, you need a variety of weapons to win any battle. The focus of the game is how to keep your fleets as balanced as possible, but if you increase the power of missiles too much (by increasing speed), the game simply becomes "who can build more missile boats faster?" And there comes a point where if you increase the speed any more, missiles just become glorified, never-miss, direct fire weapons.

[AngleWyrm]

Submitted for your approval...

For the Battlestar Galactica race, a little image modification, to reflect the new series. The attachment has two bmps that go in the pictures/BSG folder.

[Suicide Junkie]

SCjazz:

Lets hit this from a different angle...
Given the slow missile speed, are you making more use of direct fire weapons?
Are you completely ignoring missiles?
Is the enemy damaging/destroying your ships with missiles still?

[scJazz]

Suicide Junkie said:
SCjazz:

Lets hit this from a different angle...
Given the slow missile speed, are you making more use of direct fire weapons?
Are you completely ignoring missiles?
Is the enemy damaging/destroying your ships with missiles still?

1) My fleet escorts (not counting support ships like repair, supply, non-combatants, etc) are divided roughly along the lines of 1/3rd torpedo boats (Torps and DUC mix), 1/3rd Point Defense, 1/3rd Guided Missile ships. Similarly, Carrier fighter complements are 1/3rd Interceptors, 1/3rd Space Superiority, 1/3rd Attack Bombers. In the early game there is no problem at all.

2) During late-mid game and late game I strongly de-emphasize missiles on my fleet escorts because they are outrunning the missiles they fire or are being screened by. The recent addition of +1mp will push this back to a later point in time but it will still happen to my last generation fleet escorts. My A series fighter bombers get hammered for most of the game however because not having missiles is equally suicidal.

3) During the mid and late games. Basically, no. My ships are as fast as or faster than the missiles so when they are moving away from the enemy they have lots of time to shoot down the missiles with their PD lasers (Jazz design rule #439 all ships better at least be prepared to try and shoot down missiles aimed at them!). I've watched my escorts scream in to attack range, fire, and start withdrawing suffering minor damage (with exception of lucky hits that take out drives).

I'm not suggesting that all missiles at every point in tech get faster. I'm saying add a MP probably based on manufacturing (or something) so that L3 Manufacturing gets +1MP and like L5 manufacturing gets +1MP. Total max spd: 6 for the explosives, 5 for Nukes. Bump hvy kinetics 1MP on L3, L4 and L5 manufacturing in order to even try to keep up with fighters.

This doesn't turn them into super direct fire long range weapons. Torpedos and lasers are still longer ranged. Missiles still have to get launched and then move. Taking fire from Light Kinetics and PD lasers.

Best of all, and the part that really torques me, I don't have to watch my DDGs and CCGs dumping valuable supplies firing 3 to 5 waves of missiles at a target just to see the bogey get vaporized by one of my DUC PT boats right before the first wave makes it to the target. Or conversely watch my PT boat get vaporized because the missile screen that should have covered it is far behind!

[Suicide Junkie]

Strategies will help that last one a lot.

Set the firing options to 10% damage to targets, and do not target nearest. Instead, pick ones that are unlikely to target the same ship twice in a row... Has weapons, fastest, and least damaged are good ones. Farthest works too, since it will target the things that your PT boats will definitely not be shooting at.

You definitely don't want your whole fleet firing on the same ship.

[AngleWyrm]

Hey,

I've been trying to design a good PD Cruiser vs my current generation of missile fighters, but the PD ships can't seem to successfully shoot down missiles.

In Simulations, a wing of five missile fighters lauch five heavy explosive missile-IIs (seeker dmg resistance:24kT each). So it seems like the stack should have 24x5=120hp?

The PD ship is armed with 1x80mm Laser-III, 1x60mm Laser-III, and 3x40mm Laser-III. It also has Gun Crews-I. This should be a possible three missiles, and a possible two targets, right?

Edit:
But during combat, it fires on incoming missiles from range one to range four with almost no effect; During the course of the simulation, in thirty turns it might kill two missiles out of the twenty to twentyfive that are launched at it.

Am I missing something about damage allocation or to hit rolls or something?

For reference, The laser three damage tables:
(3x)40mm: 38, 36, 33, 30
(1x)60mm:103, 96, 89, 82
(1x)80mm:205, 205, 192, 178, 165

[Suicide Junkie]

As for damaging missiles:
Provided that you hit, damage only applies to one missile; any excess damage does not hit the second missile, but is lost.

With such firepower, the only way I can see you not killing missiles is due to missing.

Larger weapons have accuracy issues (+40, +20, 0, -10, -20), and missiles have a hefty evade bonus (60%)... Base accuracy is 70%, -6% per square.

20mm guns should get you a significantly higher hit rate.
Using a smaller hull will get you some hit bonus as well.

And, of course, if you chose the pacifist culture, they have -50% to accuracy off the top.
In that case, you need the antimissile missiles, since nothing else will hit (1% minimum hit chance for DF weapons).

[AngleWyrm]

That -50 has got to be it. After a little spreadsheeting, it does seem to add up. Then it's missiles for this game, and I'll try different next game.

On another oddity that's come up: I've tried building "Highly Industrialized Sector" on a couple of my larger worlds, a 2.5 year project. I came back to them several months later, and they were instead building "Legacy Infrastructure", a 10~12 year project! I had to cancel four months production, and restart them on "Industrialized" again.

[Suicide Junkie]

You must have clicked the "Upgrade All" button on the queues list. That's a fairly dangerous button in CBmod.