Carrier Battles Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Arkcon said:
If only the armor had another detriment -- say, making to ship too very massive would rob you of some propulsion. Can you give armor a fractional minus to propulsion?

QNP does that automatically.

If you want to spend 10% more space on armor, you have to take the tonnage out of engines (or guns), and thus reduce your speed (or firepower).

If you want to allow some "free" armor, you can add some 0-kt components with a 10-per-ship limit.

[Nodachi]

Suicide Junkie said :

Anti-Missile action was not a priority for any of them, though they did take some pot shots at missiles when there were no ships in range.

Would putting a level of Multiplex Tracking on the hull solve this, assuming that the anti-missile weapons can't target anything else?

[Suicide Junkie]

Nodachi said:
Would putting a level of Multiplex Tracking on the hull solve this, assuming that the anti-missile weapons can't target anything else?

There were no missile-specific weapons on the figthers, so no.

I'm not sure if fighters get free multiplex, but I think I'll add some to the hulls just to be sure.
There are lots of fighters in the stack, so multi-targetting should not be a problem.

[VaultDweller]

Suicide

Hows the progress going, I'm really interested in this idea and wanted see if the idea is still alive.


VaultDweller

[Suicide Junkie]

Lots of progress I think.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...tles_alpha.zip

Almost all of the base missiles are in, plus four standard guns.
Only one level of each weapon for now: the tree can be extended once the balance is right.

The balance between fighter and ships still needs work...
The stacking of small fighter guns is a problem.
Making the fighter guns do quarter to shields might help, but having some really high damage anti-fighter missiles is probably nessesary in order to force the fighter group sizes down.

---

One odd glitch I've noticed in the simulator; only one missile in a stack actually dies when the stack is hit, unlike normally where PD toasts a handful of missiles per hit...

PS:
Beware of the strategies... they're only half-decent and shouldn't be used in public

[ZeroAdunn]

So far I like it, definately like it. Can't wait to see the finished product.

[Suicide Junkie]

Fired up a live-combat exercise just now, with some anti-fighter cluster missiles.

Interesting stuff...
The two carriers were optimised for defense, and were loaded with lots of anti-missile and anti-fighter weaponry.
Fighter loadout included some bombers, heavy attack and armored interceptors. With Maxrange/CAP/Point Defense strategies.

1) The fighter-launched missiles only die one at a time, max. Odd, since they still hit as a stack for one big damage punch.
The interceptors were crucial to the defensive effort, since they fired multiple shots from the various stacks, and whittled down the incoming missile stack one missile at a time.
2) AI targetting of the Anti-missile missiles is good.
It fired about enough missiles for a 4x overkill on each target, then moved to the next with its remaining missiles. When it ran out of targets, it would save some shots for the next round of combat.
3) Since the combat was pretty balanced, it was down to the two carriers in the end. Without direct fire guns to worry about, and the other carrier's missiles to attract them, the two carriers ended up side by side with a thin haze of fighters dogfighting around them.
Both carriers were launching volley after volley of anti-missile missiles, shooting down the enemy anti-fighter missiles as fast as they could be launched .
4) Supplies were way out of whack.
Engine usage has been cut by 10x and ship's supply storage has been increased by 10x.
The 600kt carriers took about 2000 supplies to cross about 3 systems, and cooked off 7000 supplies worth of missile fire during the battle.
Considering that this happened with no extra supply storage components, I'll probably reduce the supply storage by half.
Fighting a battle like this will then require one or two supply bays or a supply tanker ship to restock from after battle. You'll definitely also need cargo ships with a fresh batch of fighters.
5) The final score was all but 5 fighters lost (half a wing of bombers successfully ran after firing), and a handful of components damaged on both carriers. Mostly armor, with 1-2 spare engines knocked out.
6) Maintaining the carriers from the homeworld was hard... some economic tweaking will probably be next.

I've updated the zip.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...tles_alpha.zip

[Arkcon]

Oops, didn't really think that through, did I? Sorry, I was stuck in the standard game rules late last night. Hee.

But the free space armor is always nice. P&N has buckytube gel armor, maybe you could call the free armor in this mod "re-enforced bulkheads", if you feel like being original.

I always wanted that as an option when building an important warship -- one specificall designed to stand up to punishment.