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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses  (Read 60786 times)

SCC

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #15 on: August 16, 2018, 01:43:33 PM »

(I think maybe there's an assumption that factions engage in these sorts of raids all the time? That's not the case.)
But can they with mods? I hope so, though then they'd have to know what to do with loot, including buildings.
getting a blueprint doesn't take it away from the faction
I'm going to fly around in a pirated ship in pirated Starsector, running on pirated Windows, and... Well, I hoped there could be more things to put in this joke.
The fuel usage makes sense to me (in terms of lore anyways), assuming that the bombardment options aren't 'true' orbital bombardment and your ships would have to maintain flight near a planetary surface / in atmosphere while they're shelling everything back to the stone age.
I actually forgot what fuel is this time, antimatter, inferium... Anyhow, I wouldn't be surprised if it was very explosive. So far, it's true for every type of fuel and some batteries, it's to be expected hypothetical kinds are dangerous as well.

Alex

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #16 on: August 16, 2018, 01:53:04 PM »

The fuel usage makes sense to me (in terms of lore anyways), assuming that the bombardment options aren't 'true' orbital bombardment and your ships would have to maintain flight near a planetary surface / in atmosphere while they're shelling everything back to the stone age.

It's all down to what makes sense to you personally, imo.

That said, I'm curious if the Valkyrie is the only ship with that raid/invasion hullmod, or will there be other vessels? Mechanically they might not be needed, but variety is the spice of life and all that.

At the moment, it is, but I could totally see adding that mod to another ship or three; perhaps a hybrid. None of the current ships jump out to me as being a great fit for it, though.


Oh boy, all of this looks fun! Questions:
Can we GIVE factions stuff like nano forges for them to use? Or hell, other faction's planets? Or somehow boost up other factions. IE steal the nanoforge from the Heg and give it to the TT along with some people?

There's a limited case where this works, though the details are highly classified. I do have a TODO item to have a more detailed look at it.

Not sure about giving planets; that would properly belong in the same bucket as invasions, i.e. "not now".

Also, why fuel for saturation bombardments when you could just set even a frigate on a high speed collision course with the target? Even if SS ships don't have "true" FTL, they still move at significant portions of C. And since a ship would be a much larger and more massive target that is MEANT to be shot at, it would be much harder to take down. Bonus points for a reactor that could easily act as a improvised warhead. And since this is in atmo, it would be MUCH move destructive as well.
Hell, what stops old wrecks of ships, either not salvaged or too damaged to use or just flat out missed, from becoming KKVs themselves?

Hmm, I feel like "realism" is the wrong tack to take here, since even mild amounts of handwaving could take things in any direction, as required.

For example: I'd imagine ships actually don't move at a significant fraction of C. Or if they do, relative to the outside world, anyway, then there's some space-warping/inertia-dampening tech involved that means the actual kinetic energy of a moving ship is quite low.

Finally, who's to say what ground defenses are capable of? If "drive a ship at the planet" was indeed such a sure-fire way to cause massive devastation, then surely whatever ground defenses were developed would focus on neutralizing that threat first and foremost.

As it stands with fuel, there's an economic balance where the expense of a bomardment makes it mostly undesirable. I think it makes sense that the development of counter-measures would mostly stop at that point, even if they can be overwhelmed with un-economic quantities of materiel.

(The alternative is that bombardments are easy and simply can't be stopped by the available technology, but that's not what I want mechanically, and will vigorously hand-wave in the opposite direction :))

Edit: Oh hey, I noticed that hull mod chips got a new boarder!

Yep! I have to be honest, I'm pretty psyched about the new "fake 3D" style graphics for the various chips.

Very interesting. Well-thought out, as always.

Does fleet composition affect bombardment/raid effectiveness? Ground defenses determining the cost is fine but does that mean my starting fleet of a Wolf and Kite (A), if it could acquire a few Phaetons full of fuel, could bombard a planet with the same effectiveness of my end-game fleet with multiple capitals, ground defense rating being equal? I'm not a big fan of the "realism" argument but shouldn't a Paragon bombard a planet better than a Dram? However, since bombardment effectiveness is a function of fuel capacity, any small frigate fleet with a Prometheus in tow is a WMD! Perhaps the word "bombard" insinuates big guns firing on a planet to me so naturally, more guns=better bombardment.

To the point: Capitals (and to a lesser extent, Cruisers) should work as a multiplier of the attacker's ability to bombard, reducing fuel cost, if such a thing isn't in already.

Hmm, I think it is indeed a matter of perception. Bombardments are a largely industrial activity, in terms of the materiel and personnel involved. Combat ships do not contribute to them, aside from making them possible in the first place by destroying orbital defenses.


But can they with mods? I hope so, though then they'd have to know what to do with loot, including buildings.

Sure, no reason why not - it's all mod-accessible code. It's also fairly simply to write up something that would reproduce the effects of a raid, and in terms of fleet behavior, fleets can be made into "raiders" with a variable, and have a callback to execute custom code to perform the actual raid.

I'm going to fly around in a pirated ship in pirated Starsector, running on pirated Windows, and... Well, I hoped there could be more things to put in this joke.

Hah!

I actually forgot what fuel is this time, antimatter, inferium... Anyhow, I wouldn't be surprised if it was very explosive. So far, it's true for every type of fuel and some batteries, it's to be expected hypothetical kinds are dangerous as well.

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Standard starship fuel on which interstellar civilization relies. Composed of anti-matter trapped in fullerene shells mixed in a semi-stable foam with heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Fairly safe.
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Gothars

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #17 on: August 16, 2018, 02:14:18 PM »

Sounds like a fun mechanic, glad there's no mini game involved. And oh, the Prometheus suddenly appears in a completely new light ;D


Are there plans to integrate this into missions? Seems like an obvious thing that faction would pay third parties to raid their rivals. Maybe there could even be special "extraction" raids where you safe an exposed operative or something.


I could totally see adding that mod to another ship or three; perhaps a hybrid. None of the current ships jump out to me as being a great fit for it, though.

The Pirate Colossus Mk.II/III comes to mind. It could use some help anyways.


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Standard starship fuel on which interstellar civilization relies. Composed of anti-matter trapped in fullerene shells mixed in a semi-stable foam with heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Fairly safe.

It would be appropriate to add a line about how it can also be used for orbital bombardment, wouldn't it? Seems a good fit after "Fairly safe." ;)

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StarSchulz

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #18 on: August 16, 2018, 02:36:44 PM »

That was awesome to read, and see all your reasoning behind it. I wanted to ask, If for the most part pirates likely wouldn't bombard your military facilities as the cost is too great, would they ever do it out of spite, say if they were vengeful towards you?

Eji1700

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #19 on: August 16, 2018, 02:43:11 PM »

Sounds great, but some small suggestions (mostly cribbed from Endless Space 2's ground combat system):

1. A max invasion cap that can be modified by ship types (troop transports/siege?), modules, skills.

This limits the amount of just "oh i'll raid today, swap out the spare guns, sell all the trash and AI cores from our last run and load up the gun totting hobos we keep in storage".  Fleet composition will actually matter more for serious raids.  No showing up with a cruiser and 4 atlas' full of marines and expecting a quick and easy victory.

2. To piggyback on this, raid stages.  Make it so that it's possible to only partially complete a raid depending on forces, you can then continue the raid (thus leaving your ship in orbit longer) for better results.  This gives the max cap more meaning as you CAN accomplish something with fewer troops, but it'll take more time, while bringing a bunch of troops and enough ships to properly deploy them means you could maybe accomplish your goal in one go.

Edit- just read about getting away from "in orbit holding position tasks" due to error handling stuff.  In that case you could still do something like multiple attempts/tiers with a cd in between.

3. Once you have time as a factor as well as defenses, tactics could be an option.  You've arguably already got 3 (raid, bomb, Bomb Harder) , but given that raid seems like the default attempt you might want something like Aggressive (faster but higher casualties, Best results, worse rep penalties and maybe even noticed even if stealth), cautious (slower, less casualties, worse results), smash and grab (very fast, extreme casualties, only very specific results).

4. Lastly you could consider troop types as an additional modifier (again this only matters if you cap troop deployment).  I'm not thinking anything major, but something simple like:

Base marine.  Good at winning fights and not dying, not great at other objectives. More likely to die than other types (they protect them).  Average rep penalties.
Saboteur- die like flies but very good at accomplishing your goal and tend to cause very high rep penalties.  Work fast.
Infiltrator- don't contribute much at all to fights but also not likely to die.  Not results are eh but very weak rep penalties.

Anyways all of it's just spitballing ideas.  As always i'm just glad the system exists in the first place.  The base game as is is so fun, I just want more reasons to do things with it.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 02:45:53 PM by Eji1700 »
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Botaragno

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #20 on: August 16, 2018, 03:14:04 PM »

I'm kinda miffed that this system is still mostly passive.

I get the whole game is based around Space - Space combat, but after you chew through the system patrols, the space stations and the garrisons; all space fights, your fleet just sits pretty and untouched while it dumps fuel bombing some hapless colony to dust, and that doesn't feel right.

Space - Planet invasions and other dickery I feel should be dissuaded for both fluff and mechanical reasons, fluff wise because Starsector spaceships are built in space for space by space, they can't really do much other wise. What can a fleet do to directly damage a planet? Turn it's HVDs perpendicular, aim at a city and hope for the best? And these are colonised planets, rare feats given the collapse of tech in the Star Sectortm, having Urist McPlayers rinky dink murderhobo fleet upend that so easily (yes I know but if it's all space fights and you can cheese late game then what is the point?) just feels... cheesey?

And mechanically, there's no real "resistance" to fleets from planets, adding a layer actively damaging defenses for planets makes sieging and raiding as dangerous as it should be. Have anti-ship missles from ground and low orbit bases fire off towards your fleet, they don't have to be directly impacting a ship, just strap an armed nuke, proximity fuse to the 500 or so km required and let the blast wave do the trick.

I feel like tying fuel to this for handwave woo doesn't really provide an engaging gameplay element to the whole thing
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 03:17:05 PM by Botaragno »
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #21 on: August 16, 2018, 03:15:36 PM »

My first thought after reading this: "Well, I'm sure Megas will be happy to finally be able to bomb out all the pre-existing colonies.  >.<"
First thing I saw was raiding for valuables, and I thought was... "Yay! I can steal all of those blueprints and hullmods I cannot buy!"  Probably a last resort option.

Honestly, aside from stealing stuff I cannot get any other way, I probably would not attack colonies until I am ready to wipe it out and build a new colony over its atomized remains.  Yes, Wyvern, this can be fun.  This is what we do in Nexerelin (except erasing colonies), and now the normal game might feature sector conquest after all of these years.

Saturation bombing and everyone getting angry?  Everyone will get angry eventually if I plan to attack everyone.
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Kanil

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #22 on: August 16, 2018, 05:40:22 PM »

If planets can become decivilized, then invasions (or some other mechanic to transfer ownership) would be required to avoid the whole "I want this so I'm just going to nuke it until it's uninhabited" thing.

Of course, that's something to worry about later.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #23 on: August 16, 2018, 06:18:48 PM »

If you can raid with your transponder off for reduced reputation loss, can you also fight fleets with your transponder off and lose less reputation? maybe I missed that in some old patch notes
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Megas

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #24 on: August 16, 2018, 07:24:05 PM »

Killing fleets is only -5 rep instead of auto-hostile if they do not know who you are.  (It came in handy with a Scarab start during the 0.7 era.)  Turning transponder off too late does not help, it must be off for a while.  The game will warn you if they know who you are if you try to attack them and they are not hostile.
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Morgan Rue

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #25 on: August 16, 2018, 07:30:41 PM »

Sounds great, but some small suggestions (mostly cribbed from Endless Space 2's ground combat system):

1. A max invasion cap that can be modified by ship types (troop transports/siege?), modules, skills.

This limits the amount of just "oh i'll raid today, swap out the spare guns, sell all the trash and AI cores from our last run and load up the gun totting hobos we keep in storage".  Fleet composition will actually matter more for serious raids.  No showing up with a cruiser and 4 atlas' full of marines and expecting a quick and easy victory.
Marines use crew quarters, not storage. So most ships aren't able to carry large numbers of marines. The ship that is built for raids, the Valkyrie, can carry a lot of crew.


Maybe Pirates should get some not quite Valkyrie ship for their raids? A modified Cerberus could fit nicely.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 07:42:25 PM by Morgan Rue »
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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #26 on: August 16, 2018, 08:38:48 PM »

Sounds like fun.  ;D

I thought we were the testers :)
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #27 on: August 17, 2018, 12:00:00 AM »

Interesting stuff, very much looking forward to the next release (at long last, it appears on the horizon...or so I believe).  Though, if I may be honest, I think you put a bit too much time into considering if a single, certain mechanic is "good enough" or not, and you only do it one at a time rather than seeing how a bunch of future, planned mechanics would fit together - or at least that's the vibes I get from the past blog posts.

I also look forward to perhaps the Colossus Mk.III getting that Ground Support Package hullmod - whatever's left of that once-roomy cargo, extra weapons bolted to to hull, and the ability to manufacture and launch it's own fighters.  Sounds like something out of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.  Even if it can't hold as many Marines as one might like, it really fits the role of ground support well.  In comparison to the naval invasions, think of them as the destroyers off-shore bombarding positions rather than the landing craft bringing the troops in.
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Madao

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #28 on: August 17, 2018, 12:10:29 AM »

As always your mad science is the best  ;D

Will we be getting any ships that can passively help with bombardment in future releases? Some sort of useless for normal work ship that is a pain to lug around. It would make it interesting if you see a fleet approaching your system with a few of these in tow you will know they mean business. Well it's an idea at least.

As for the aforementioned bombardment video and evil music I would vote in favour of this at some point in the future. Aiming down sights with a stellar converter in Master of Orion 2 was always a blast, and always left me feeling mildly conflicted after doing so.

Raiding and bombardment really adds a whole new dimension to the game, I'm excited to try it out. Now I can save up a ton of resources and wipe out another factions important planet, future goals!
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Tartiflette

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Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses
« Reply #29 on: August 17, 2018, 12:48:43 AM »

Sounds pretty good, I kind of wish there was some granularity involved with bombardment like there is with the raids themselves, especially on the fuel side but with vastly diminishing results. "You have 58% of the fuel necessary, bombardment efficiency reduced to 15%" kind of deal.

Hmm, why? If it's a feel issue, i.e. "why can't I bombard at all when I have 99% of the fuel", then let's say that in-fiction, the fuel required to bombard is just a touch over what the defenses have the capability to stop. So, if you're using 1000 fuel, only 1% of it or thereabouts is actually hitting.
Not just that but situations where you need to weather down the defenses just a notch to get a proper raid result. By using fuel and lacking granularity, there will be a common situation where it will more advantageous to just make a trip to another market to get those extra 50 marines rather than carpet bombing the resistance. Or where you have to farm the small patrols spawning from the market to get some extra leeway...

thus:
I think having a resource with multiple uses is more interesting since it creates more interesting tradeoffs - "I want to use it for X, but also need it for Y; which is more important right now?". I also don't want to add *more* resources, though I guess an existing one - such as transplutonics or volatiles - could be used instead of adding a brand new one. Fuel also has the advantage of being readily available, so while it's an expense, it's not something that has to be meticulously planned in advance, in the face of potentially unknown costs. Also, as you say, running out of Fuel is bad, and I really wanted bombardments to have a tradeoff that explained why they're not common.
Here I was more thinking about renaming the small arms ressource to something else, and make it highly illegal in high security space while you are not in very good terms. After all, they can only be used for a single purpose! Then you get all kind of interesting implications like troubles to aquire such ressource (except from cooperative factions), avoiding patrols near the system you want to raid because if they scan these, the defenses will get prepared in advance, opportunities for missions to procure that ressource to a faction lacking the proper relations (then they might launch their own raid, so you might want that to happen if you have comon enemies), or even better, it could be uses as a shortcut to bribe and join the pirates...

My issue with fuel is that it is indeed universally usefull, and having more will never be a wasted investment. So having it used for bombardment will just mean having an extra tanker with you and that's it, no gameplay change from the curent loop (especially compared to games with Nexerelin which requires marines to invade markets). Whereas having a dedicated valuable and sensitive ressource plus adding some granularity to the result means making a calculated investment both in how much you buy, and how much you use once there compared to your projected marines losses.
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