I’ve talked about this topic before, but right now I’m working on a sizeable suggestion regarding ship and weapon sizes that is bringing to my earlier thoughts a greater level of precision. Please note that for the most part, I’ll be talking about general concepts and not the specific Stellaris rules, until I specifically call for them:
Tracking can be viewed as the ability of a turreted weapon system to keep up with the angular velocity of a target. The closer the target is and the higher its relative speed to the attacker, the higher its angular velocity will more likely be relative to the turret and the harder it will be to track by the turret. This is different from the evasion of a target, which is much more about the ability of the target to deviate from its previous predicted course dependent on the length of time between when the attacker’s shot is fired and when it would otherwise impact the target, plus any time involved in sensor lag for the attacker.
For example: a targeted ship (of any size) is crossing in front of an attacker. The target is travelling at around 1,700 km/sec (a little bit over half a percent of the speed of light, 0.57% c), which is pretty easily reached by a starship capable of sustained 1-gravity acceleration for two whole 24-hour days (I had also in previous threads indicated it as an approximate early-game travel speed for a ship in Stellaris). It crosses the vector of the attacker at a range of around 10,000 km (1/30th of a light-second). At that range and that speed, the attacker’s turrets will have to turn fast enough to cover 90 degrees in about 9 seconds – that’s approximately the capability of the turret on a WWII Sherman tank. With advancements in materials and motors, a significantly larger turret could probably make the same sort of movement, but there would still be a limit on the size of turret that could do it. As the target’s speed increases, it could maintain a greater range and still be as hard to track
Note that at this point it does not matter what size the target is. This is because the components of the target’s movements are over 99.9% in its original travel vector and at most 0.1% in its ability to accelerate in some way different from that initial vector, especially in the limited amount of time between entering the firing zone and the shot being fired. As indicated above, a given turret is only going to keep up with a maximum angular velocity (between speed and range) – assuming proportional subsystems and equal technology, a smaller turret will typically reach a higher angular velocity and a larger turret will only reach a lower angular velocity. Square-Cube Law would put that ratio at about the cube-root of the difference in size: another turret twice as large (in volume and mass) as the first would turn about 79.4% as fast as the first, and one 8 times as large would turn about half the speed of the first. (But also note that an 8x larger ship, with comparable materials and tech, would probably accelerate at about half the rate of the original ship.)
If the turret cannot exceed a given angular velocity, then it becomes a binary situation: either the target stays below the angular velocity capacity of the turret and the turret is able to take a shot with any chance to hit, or the target moves faster than the turret’s max angular velocity and the turret cannot line up any legitimate shot. Now a targeted ship is unlikely to maintain a consistent angular velocity to the turret, with either the target moving away or slowing down (and becoming easier to hit), or moving closer or speeding up (and becoming harder to hit). Targeted ships at a given speed and range from the turret could be at any number of different angular velocities to the turret, with most not at the highest possible value.
Within the context of a game like Stellaris, you would determine a rough average angular velocity for a given product of the range and speed values (accounting for shorter range = higher value) and then penalize the attacker when trying to attack a target right around that turret’s maximum angular velocity. The penalty would be a percentile chance that the intended attack on the target ends up simply being wasted, either as a wild shot with no chance of hitting anything or a shot not fired when it would have used the opportunity to do so (i.e., not able to instead fire on a different easier target). The percentage chance would probably be 25% at the “maximum” value and then an increasing chance to miss, probably 50% at 5% past, 75% at 10% past, until completely guaranteed to miss at 15% past “maximum”.
As technology improves within the game, turrets can handle higher angular velocities, alongside those techs that allow for improved thruster performance having more ships reach those higher angular velocities. Auxiliary modules might allow for a slight shift in the “maximum” value of all turrets on the ship. A specific issue for Stellaris is that the game does not do a good job of trying or being able to maintain range for ships that would prefer to keep it, but ships that are actually moving at even “just” 1,700 km/sec would be moving into and out of preferred ranges quite often.
All of this is based on turreted weapons: it doesn’t make allowances for forward-fire-only cannons (which I would look to transition away from) and isn’t intended for guided weapons (which I would probably look to integrate parts of some of my earlier suggestions). I also haven’t yet resolved the aspect of the attacker’s movement, in order to understand relative velocities – two fleets heading in basically the same direction would be dealing with quite small angular velocities, while those with perpendicular paths would face the largest angular velocities (and very short engagement periods). As I said earlier, I’m working on a more encompassing suggestion and this is just one part of it. I wanted to get your opinion on this portion, to try to integrate your comments into it before I drop a book-sized suggestion on the site. I can touch on some of those other elements briefly in the comments.
Tracking can be viewed as the ability of a turreted weapon system to keep up with the angular velocity of a target. The closer the target is and the higher its relative speed to the attacker, the higher its angular velocity will more likely be relative to the turret and the harder it will be to track by the turret. This is different from the evasion of a target, which is much more about the ability of the target to deviate from its previous predicted course dependent on the length of time between when the attacker’s shot is fired and when it would otherwise impact the target, plus any time involved in sensor lag for the attacker.
For example: a targeted ship (of any size) is crossing in front of an attacker. The target is travelling at around 1,700 km/sec (a little bit over half a percent of the speed of light, 0.57% c), which is pretty easily reached by a starship capable of sustained 1-gravity acceleration for two whole 24-hour days (I had also in previous threads indicated it as an approximate early-game travel speed for a ship in Stellaris). It crosses the vector of the attacker at a range of around 10,000 km (1/30th of a light-second). At that range and that speed, the attacker’s turrets will have to turn fast enough to cover 90 degrees in about 9 seconds – that’s approximately the capability of the turret on a WWII Sherman tank. With advancements in materials and motors, a significantly larger turret could probably make the same sort of movement, but there would still be a limit on the size of turret that could do it. As the target’s speed increases, it could maintain a greater range and still be as hard to track
Note that at this point it does not matter what size the target is. This is because the components of the target’s movements are over 99.9% in its original travel vector and at most 0.1% in its ability to accelerate in some way different from that initial vector, especially in the limited amount of time between entering the firing zone and the shot being fired. As indicated above, a given turret is only going to keep up with a maximum angular velocity (between speed and range) – assuming proportional subsystems and equal technology, a smaller turret will typically reach a higher angular velocity and a larger turret will only reach a lower angular velocity. Square-Cube Law would put that ratio at about the cube-root of the difference in size: another turret twice as large (in volume and mass) as the first would turn about 79.4% as fast as the first, and one 8 times as large would turn about half the speed of the first. (But also note that an 8x larger ship, with comparable materials and tech, would probably accelerate at about half the rate of the original ship.)
If the turret cannot exceed a given angular velocity, then it becomes a binary situation: either the target stays below the angular velocity capacity of the turret and the turret is able to take a shot with any chance to hit, or the target moves faster than the turret’s max angular velocity and the turret cannot line up any legitimate shot. Now a targeted ship is unlikely to maintain a consistent angular velocity to the turret, with either the target moving away or slowing down (and becoming easier to hit), or moving closer or speeding up (and becoming harder to hit). Targeted ships at a given speed and range from the turret could be at any number of different angular velocities to the turret, with most not at the highest possible value.
Within the context of a game like Stellaris, you would determine a rough average angular velocity for a given product of the range and speed values (accounting for shorter range = higher value) and then penalize the attacker when trying to attack a target right around that turret’s maximum angular velocity. The penalty would be a percentile chance that the intended attack on the target ends up simply being wasted, either as a wild shot with no chance of hitting anything or a shot not fired when it would have used the opportunity to do so (i.e., not able to instead fire on a different easier target). The percentage chance would probably be 25% at the “maximum” value and then an increasing chance to miss, probably 50% at 5% past, 75% at 10% past, until completely guaranteed to miss at 15% past “maximum”.
As technology improves within the game, turrets can handle higher angular velocities, alongside those techs that allow for improved thruster performance having more ships reach those higher angular velocities. Auxiliary modules might allow for a slight shift in the “maximum” value of all turrets on the ship. A specific issue for Stellaris is that the game does not do a good job of trying or being able to maintain range for ships that would prefer to keep it, but ships that are actually moving at even “just” 1,700 km/sec would be moving into and out of preferred ranges quite often.
All of this is based on turreted weapons: it doesn’t make allowances for forward-fire-only cannons (which I would look to transition away from) and isn’t intended for guided weapons (which I would probably look to integrate parts of some of my earlier suggestions). I also haven’t yet resolved the aspect of the attacker’s movement, in order to understand relative velocities – two fleets heading in basically the same direction would be dealing with quite small angular velocities, while those with perpendicular paths would face the largest angular velocities (and very short engagement periods). As I said earlier, I’m working on a more encompassing suggestion and this is just one part of it. I wanted to get your opinion on this portion, to try to integrate your comments into it before I drop a book-sized suggestion on the site. I can touch on some of those other elements briefly in the comments.
