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.
Description:
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.