[Spaceships] I'm closing on nothing, and 4 other confusions.

[weevis]

As I was working out some test combats I drew a flowchart for Pilot Move. To me, this was the hardest part to grok and remember. Here is the flowchart:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y_3...ew?usp=sharing

Now I see from Fred Brackin that maneuvers may not be that important! But maybe this will help someone else in my position. Let me know if you notice any errors!

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by weevis

As I was working out some test combats I drew a flowchart for Pilot Move. To me, this was the hardest part to grok and remember. Here is the flowchart:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y_3...ew?usp=sharing

Now I see from Fred Brackin that maneuvers may not be that important! But maybe this will help someone else in my position. Let me know if you notice any errors!

Okay, I would probably re-order the options slightly, because it took me a couple of tries to figure out your chart. From the top, I would do: Uncontrolled Drift, Controlled Drift, Hold Course, Retreat, Evasive Action, Closing. And then I would swap the order of conditions for Evasive/Closing and Retreat. Then the +s would still descend from left to right, but there wouldn't be that gap between Evasive and Closing.

Maneuvers don't matter as much as they could because:
1) Missiles are much too powerful.
2) Beam weapon damage is too high relative to the HP of large ships.
3) point defense is all or nothing

Based on my sample combats, Spaceship combats is an exchange of beam weapons until a ship loses point defense, and then a barrage of missiles destroys it. In theory, you can overwhelm a ship's PD with missiles, but that's a strict design and force structure question: does your fleet have more missile launchers than your target has PD shots? If you do, your target dies, and if not, you wasted all your missiles.

But the first two sample combats I did were between small spaceships (SM+5 to SM+6), primarily armed with beam weapons, with enough PD that PD couldn't be overwhelmed until the spaceship was damaged. At that point, maneuvering mattered a lot to get good range for their beam weapons.

But well-designed Spaceships are missile and PD batteries, and a fleet engagement involves single ships blowing up on each side until one fleet lacks enough launchers to blow up a ship on the other side, at which point that fleet is destroyed. Which is possibly realistic but not particularly fun.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Based on my sample combats, Spaceship combats is an exchange of beam weapons until a ship loses point defense, and then a barrage of missiles destroys it. In theory, you can overwhelm a ship's PD with missiles, but that's a strict design and force structure question: does your fleet have more missile launchers than your target has PD shots? If you do, your target dies, and if not, you wasted all your missiles.

But the first two sample combats I did were between small spaceships (SM+5 to SM+6), primarily armed with beam weapons, with enough PD that PD couldn't be overwhelmed until the spaceship was damaged. At that point, maneuvering mattered a lot to get good range for their beam weapons.

My sample combats didn't reach quite this clear a result but only 2 of them were for the Basic system.

The first was as much about testing the general design system as I tried to port over some ships from the old Star Frontiers game. Basically the Sathar were sending a dstroyer to attack a Space Station and the Feds had 2 Assault Scouts to defend,

What made sense for the Sathar was to pull a Fast Pass and launch missiles as they screamed by. The Feds decided to Fast Pass the Sathar first in defense. Lesson? Missiles launched during a Fast Pass are absolute killers. It may ahve been hekpful in working out the Fast Pass rules.

In the second I took one of the sample ships called an "Ares-class cruiser" (it ended up in the Designer's Notes) which was said to have trouble v. Missile boats in its' text blurb and test that proposition.

I tokk the Ares and swapped out its' largest gun battery for missiles and ta-da! I had designed the Hydra-class. This is one of the things Spaceships does best.

The first thing I discovered thwas that the Ares had no beams larger than a secondary battery and could not pentrate its' own frontal armor. It could ahve tried to maneuver into position to attack the Hydra's Central armor but the two ships had the same acceleration and crew skill so even in the Basic system only freakish luck would make this possible.

Meanwhile the Hydra's missiles could penetrate the Ares' front armor. if they got past PD. I promptly designed the Ares II with fewer but larger beams. In that battle the Ares II was doing at least a litle damage every round. Lesson? Many smal gusn are not better than a few big guns and use of missiles requires careful tactics.

I did 2 more big sample battles for the Advanced system and missiles dion't figure into those or at least not in ship-to-ship. the ship-to-ship parts invovled big or at least biggish shisp with really long range beam weapons and missiles just weren't fast enough to strike before the beams settled things.

However, the point of the ship-to-ship in one of them was to clear the way for a Nova-class carrier to make a Fast Pass on a Gibralter-class (SM+14) Battle Station. in stead of the Nova's usual complemetn of fighters and assault boats its' hangar bay was filled with 100 TL8 kamikaze ASATS.

When the Nova launched those while going past at 70 miles per second they each launched 3 smaller missiles and even one of them hitting was a -10x HP kill. The Gibralter's normally adequate VRF Tertiary Battery was not enough PD even with larger beams and missile batteries joining in. Lessons? Lots of even amall missiles at Fast Pass velocity can beat almost anything. Kill the enmy bepfre he gets in missile range if you can.