SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas

[Suicide Junkie]

How about a simple idea:
Leaky point defense.

Since SE5 dosen't have any concept of multiplex tracking or autofire, we need a new way to make PD leaky.

1) Make each PD shot capable of taking out a missile in one hit, maybe 2 for a heavy missile.
2) Make the PD refire rate 50ms.
3) Give the PD -999% chance to hit.
4) PD shots should be very fast. Beams are good too. There should only be one or two shots from each gun on screen at any one time.
5) For varing PD resistance on your missiles, use *speed* rather than hitpoints or ECM.
6) For varying PD techs, reduce size and cost, increase range.

This gives you a poisson distribution of PD hits...
One missile can get lucky and penetrate 5 PD guns, or one PD gun could get lucky and shoot down 3 missiles at once.

For example, if PD guns have a range, fire rate and incoming missile speed such that they can each fire 50 times, then:
- One PD gun has a 40% chance of shooting down at least one missile. A 9% chance of shooting down two or more missiles, and 1.5% chance of shooting down three missiles.
- Two PD guns have a 63% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 26% chance of shooting down two or more, 8% chance of shooting down three or more, and 2% chance of shooting down 4+
- Four PD guns have a 87% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 59% chance of shooting down at least 2, 32% of shooting down 3 or more, 14% for 4 or more, 5% of 5 or more, etc.

Longer range gives more shots before the missile hits, until the point where the second wave starts coming into PD range before the first wave of missiles has hit.
Smaller PD guns, lets you fit more guns to increase your fire rate for more shots total again.

Key features of this system:
- One missile CAN sneak in occasionally. (13% chance vs 200 enemy PD shots)
- Graceful degradation of PD as the number of missiles increases (unlike stock where the first X missiles are shot down, and the rest all hit)

Downsides:
- Lots of shots make the CPU work a little harder
- ECM and combat sensors do not affect PD. (But there are other ways to do it; speed, range, etc)

[Suicide Junkie]

Phoenix-D said:

The same thing applies in solo if the AI is smart enough to recognize it.

The AIs that Rollo made for CBv1.5 should fit that bill. As AIs, they are pretty limited in flexibility, but they should be able to show you how it works.
(Use no bonus setting. Low bonus = steamrolling)

Humans are the ultimate opponents, though some more than others. Myself, I'm a good ally, but a weak opponent

[Kana]

I love it...

Suicide Junkie said:
How about a simple idea:
Leaky point defense.

Since SE5 dosen't have any concept of multiplex tracking or autofire, we need a new way to make PD leaky.

1) Make each PD shot capable of taking out a missile in one hit, maybe 2 for a heavy missile.
2) Make the PD refire rate 50ms.
3) Give the PD -999% chance to hit.
4) PD shots should be very fast. Beams are good too. There should only be one or two shots from each gun on screen at any one time.
5) For varing PD resistance on your missiles, use *speed* rather than hitpoints or ECM.
6) For varying PD techs, reduce size and cost, increase range.

This gives you a poisson distribution of PD hits...
One missile can get lucky and penetrate 5 PD guns, or one PD gun could get lucky and shoot down 3 missiles at once.

For example, if PD guns have a range, fire rate and incoming missile speed such that they can each fire 50 times, then:
- One PD gun has a 40% chance of shooting down at least one missile. A 9% chance of shooting down two or more missiles, and 1.5% chance of shooting down three missiles.
- Two PD guns have a 63% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 26% chance of shooting down two or more, 8% chance of shooting down three or more, and 2% chance of shooting down 4+
- Four PD guns have a 87% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 59% chance of shooting down at least 2, 32% of shooting down 3 or more, 14% for 4 or more, 5% of 5 or more, etc.

Longer range gives more shots before the missile hits, until the point where the second wave starts coming into PD range before the first wave of missiles has hit.
Smaller PD guns, lets you fit more guns to increase your fire rate for more shots total again.

Key features of this system:
- One missile CAN sneak in occasionally. (13% chance vs 200 enemy PD shots)
- Graceful degradation of PD as the number of missiles increases (unlike stock where the first X missiles are shot down, and the rest all hit)

Downsides:
- Lots of shots make the CPU work a little harder
- ECM and combat sensors do not affect PD. (But there are other ways to do it; speed, range, etc)

[President_Elect_Shang]

I haven’t seen it yet Phonix-D. Then again as SJ pointed out (man am I glad I read all the new posts first) the AI is only as smart as the modder who tells it how to build those designs. For me I just find the hole in the design and build ships to deal with it. Then you are right back to an optimal middle of the road design. Sorry Phoenix-D but I’m not buying it till I see it. “It” being an AI that can recognize the flaw in my middle of the road design and adjust its designs to counter and exploit that flaw.

SJ at a -999% chance to hit I’m not seeing how you are calculating such good odds for the P-D to hit. Can you drop your formula here? I might try the CBMod again when it comes out for SE5.

Maybe I should dust off SE4 and try a MP game after all… MP experience allowed Kana to point out a flaw in one of my component ideas and I haven’t even finished the TC yet! Or maybe when I get far enough I can do a MP to track errors in the TC!

[Phoenix-D]

The odds are good because the fire a lot. At 50 fire rate you get 20 shots a second. That means even with a -999 hit chance you still get an average of one hit every 2 seconds.

I see a few problems, though:

-In Starfury, very fast projectiles had a tendency to randomly explode before hitting. This might have carried over to SE5.
-SE5 might not calculate very low hit possibilities correctly

[Suicide Junkie]

-999% should still equal 1% minimum.

The chance of scoring no hits at all in a volley of 50 shots is (0.99^50) = 0.605 Therefore the chance of scoring one or more hits is 39.5%.

The Poisson distribution will quickly find the value for exactly 1 hit, the probability of two or more hits is equal to the probability of one or more hits, minus the probability of exactly one hit.
Recursively, that finds all the probabilities I quoted.

[RCCCL]

Suicide Junkie said:
How about a simple idea:
Leaky point defense.

Since SE5 dosen't have any concept of multiplex tracking or autofire, we need a new way to make PD leaky.

1) Make each PD shot capable of taking out a missile in one hit, maybe 2 for a heavy missile.
2) Make the PD refire rate 50ms.
3) Give the PD -999% chance to hit.
4) PD shots should be very fast. Beams are good too. There should only be one or two shots from each gun on screen at any one time.
5) For varing PD resistance on your missiles, use *speed* rather than hitpoints or ECM.
6) For varying PD techs, reduce size and cost, increase range.

This gives you a poisson distribution of PD hits...
One missile can get lucky and penetrate 5 PD guns, or one PD gun could get lucky and shoot down 3 missiles at once.

For example, if PD guns have a range, fire rate and incoming missile speed such that they can each fire 50 times, then:
- One PD gun has a 40% chance of shooting down at least one missile. A 9% chance of shooting down two or more missiles, and 1.5% chance of shooting down three missiles.
- Two PD guns have a 63% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 26% chance of shooting down two or more, 8% chance of shooting down three or more, and 2% chance of shooting down 4+
- Four PD guns have a 87% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 59% chance of shooting down at least 2, 32% of shooting down 3 or more, 14% for 4 or more, 5% of 5 or more, etc.

Longer range gives more shots before the missile hits, until the point where the second wave starts coming into PD range before the first wave of missiles has hit.
Smaller PD guns, lets you fit more guns to increase your fire rate for more shots total again.

Key features of this system:
- One missile CAN sneak in occasionally. (13% chance vs 200 enemy PD shots)
- Graceful degradation of PD as the number of missiles increases (unlike stock where the first X missiles are shot down, and the rest all hit)

Downsides:
- Lots of shots make the CPU work a little harder
- ECM and combat sensors do not affect PD. (But there are other ways to do it; speed, range, etc)

If your changing the stock file, you'll have to change the Bomblet missle PD weapon to use no ordinance, otherwise, at the high rate of fire you'll soon be shooting blanks.

[Suicide Junkie]

Missiles are not part of this system.
They fail the 1% accuracy requirement.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I’ll take your collective words for it especially since I am not a math type person. To me -999% is equal to -9.99 which multiplied by anything (but another negative) is still negative. If you are saying SE5 will force a round off to 1% because it won’t accept a negative number that large; than I will have to accept what you say as I certainly have no way of telling different without some type of testing. All I know about the way SE5 handles negatives now is that -90 (the largest negative I have used thus far) is calculated as a negative and not rounded off. Now why and more to the point what are you trying to make here? Leaky PD to me is PD which allows some missiles to get through and others are stopped cold turkey. As far as I know that is what is in the game now; it is certainly what I have created with my system for StarFire. It works fine on the fighters, shuttles, pinnace, IDW, and HAWK Pods I use and especially those large swarming missile (seekers) barrages. Let me stop and go back to my coffee! First cup-o-d-morning!

[Suicide Junkie]

Nono, after all the modifiers are added together (in this case, the -999% means that the result is ALWAYS negative), the game restricts the accuracy to the range of 1% to 99%.

Except in the case of SE4's talisman, which gives you 100% accuracy.
Even against planets, 1 in 100 shots will miss completely, but its fun to razz somebody over it anyways when playing hotseat