If you can completely redesign Stellaris military systems, which would be your first priority?
- Thread starter Iosue Yu
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It's not aiming being the problem. It's your cannonball not travelling the path you aim.There's a lot of stuff in this thread, but you forgot a pair of things, there are tachyon sensors that are instantaneous and tachyon lances that are instantaneous because tachyons travel backwards in time, people keep thinking stellaris is eu4 or hoi4 in space but they forget all the advanced tech in stellaris:
Physics research - Stellaris Wiki
stellaris.paradoxwikis.com
Tachyon Sensors
Advanced sensors that rely on rotating tachyon beams to detect ship movements even at extreme distances.
Tachyon Lances
A more powerful version of the particle lance, this weapon fires a tachyon beam of immense power. Like its predecessor, its use is limited to battleships and titans.
A tachyon (/ˈtækiɒn/) or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light.Tachyon - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Even if you are shooting tachyon beams, it's still the same problem: Uneven machining, space-time fluctuations and small errors in measurements will give you a great distance off your mark.
The only possible solution is that your beam is used like a ridiculously long sword you slide it from one point to another so you can slash your target. Otherwise it is still going to have the same error source.
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They do, they travel backwards in time because they're faster than light:
Tachyon - Wikipedia
A tachyon (/ˈtækiɒn/) or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Most physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics.[1][2] If such particles did exist, and could send signals faster than light, then according to the theory of relativity they would violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes of the "kill your own grandfather" type.[2] Tachyons would also exhibit the unusual property of increasing in speed as their energy decreases, and would require infinite energy to slow down to the speed of light. No experimental evidence for the existence of such particles has been found.
As noted by Albert Einstein, Tolman, and others, special relativity implies that faster-than-light particles, if they existed, could be used to communicate backwards in time.[14]
I don't think it's a problem with stellaris level of tech to make a beam sword made of tachyons?
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Let's do the maths.
Let's say you're trying to hit a mark with perfect circular shape with 500m radius, which is analogous to a very large ship. Then let's say your reliability standard has it that you accept an error rate of 0.5°, accounting for all polishing, machining and mass fluctuations.
So 500m / Target distance = tan(0.5°)
It gives Target distance = 57294m
So with this error rate and such a large target size, you can only be able to shoot it with 100% accuracy at 57.3km. Anything more will have accuracy reduced with direct proportion to any extra distance. At 114.6km, you only have like 50% of chance that it hits.
This error margin is already very lenient as ships usually are not in perfect circular shapes and are not as large as 500m in radius (1km long).
This maths can simply never be avoided no matter how faster than light your fancy cannonball is flying.
Let's say you're trying to hit a mark with perfect circular shape with 500m radius, which is analogous to a very large ship. Then let's say your reliability standard has it that you accept an error rate of 0.5°, accounting for all polishing, machining and mass fluctuations.
So 500m / Target distance = tan(0.5°)
It gives Target distance = 57294m
So with this error rate and such a large target size, you can only be able to shoot it with 100% accuracy at 57.3km. Anything more will have accuracy reduced with direct proportion to any extra distance. At 114.6km, you only have like 50% of chance that it hits.
This error margin is already very lenient as ships usually are not in perfect circular shapes and are not as large as 500m in radius (1km long).
This maths can simply never be avoided no matter how faster than light your fancy cannonball is flying.
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No, but there's no reason to think that 0.5 degrees (or any other particular number) is the limit to how accurate weapons can be made.
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If you make it a million times more accurate so it's 100% accurate at 57,3 million kilometers, a third of astronomical unit, it would still be too inaccurate from stellaris:
Astronomical unit - Wikipedia
The astronomical unit (symbol: au,[1][2][3] or au or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and equal to about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) or ~8 light minutes.
149597870700 m.
The range of a large weapon is 120, XL 130 and titan cannons are 250 I think, andI saw in another thread talking about distance that earth was at 90 distance and a ring world at 45 from the sun:
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...
So since an AU is 150 million km and 90 range in stellaris, a large weapon is 120 in range and 200 millions km, so to be accurate it's 4 millions more of what you said, so 0,000000125°
That's right, you have to take into account stellaris tech, scale and the weapons range.
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I certainly agree with the last part. Don't know if it'll improve gameplay but man, it would improve coolness!
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how about giving it a military system, or combat, or warfare in the first place
cause rn its not about tactics OR strategy, but about economics
PURELY about economics
cause rn its not about tactics OR strategy, but about economics
PURELY about economics
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For what it's worth, the habitable zone is the same for all star classes, including red dwarfs and blue giants. So it's not consistently 1 AU.
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I would tie fleet size and number of fleets to planets and pop. Each planet can support a fleet, the size of that fleet is based on the pops of the planet. This would give advantages and disadvantages to playing tall vs wide. The taller your planets get the bigger your fleets but the smaller amount of fleets you can field.
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That's a solid argument for missiles, but I'm not sure about strike craft. Adding all the life support, propulsion for a return trip, defensive countermeasures (pilots are expensive, and you want to get them back if at all possible), it all adds up. I'm not sure the pilot offers enough of a benefit to be worth the downsides, especially when you consider how smart a missile computer these futuristic civs could build. (Hmm... sapient missile components? Sapient strike craft?) A missile may be slightly less "smart", but all else being equal it will be smaller, faster, more maneuverable, and have more payload.
Where I would see strike craft being most useful, personally, would be at extreme short range, where the ability to project multiple points of attack is valuable. If your enemy is close enough to slip strike craft behind or inside their formation, that disruption could be extremely effective.
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Hey I was quoted here
On the topic of strikecraft, logically they only really have small uses in planetary skirmishes and invasions as well as minor fleet battles were a squadron of missile carrying fighters should have the firepower to thousand cut smaller ships. It's a bit of a sci fi trope with real life influences, your big standard fighter on it's own isn't killing a Corvette let alone a Frigate/Destroyer.
What it can do is harm auxiliary systems and in larger numbers harm additional auxiliary systems if they can't outright kill a ship with additional strike craft. Thus fighter/bombers are force multipliers. They are essentially smarter missiles capable of damaging or disabling the smallest ships in large numbers and changing their attack patterns to break off and target other ships.
Well at least that's the logic used in most sci fi where fighters are used in space.
Though this kinda ignores that Stellaris combat ranges are registered in light minutes or in the case of XL weapons fucking light hours. Those will have to be some fast fighters to be viable.
On the topic of strikecraft, logically they only really have small uses in planetary skirmishes and invasions as well as minor fleet battles were a squadron of missile carrying fighters should have the firepower to thousand cut smaller ships. It's a bit of a sci fi trope with real life influences, your big standard fighter on it's own isn't killing a Corvette let alone a Frigate/Destroyer.
What it can do is harm auxiliary systems and in larger numbers harm additional auxiliary systems if they can't outright kill a ship with additional strike craft. Thus fighter/bombers are force multipliers. They are essentially smarter missiles capable of damaging or disabling the smallest ships in large numbers and changing their attack patterns to break off and target other ships.
Well at least that's the logic used in most sci fi where fighters are used in space.
Though this kinda ignores that Stellaris combat ranges are registered in light minutes or in the case of XL weapons fucking light hours. Those will have to be some fast fighters to be viable.
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Usually strike craft are used in Scifi where big ships can't safely go (in unrealistically dense asteroid fields, or within range of a super-duper starbase that could knock them out) but neither of those are an issue in Stellaris. And ships are rarely costly, or take long, to replace, even if super-starbases existed.
If we saw PDX adding anti-class guns (e.g. anti-corvette, anti-battleship) that can outrange most vessels of that class, it might make the case for missiles - or strike craft - much stronger, at least against certain hard targets. Ditto on longer build/repair times for large ships. In a way, ION cannons already act as a threat VS capital ships ... they are just so bad when you look at the number of targets / fire rate involved, that it is a non-factor.
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If you focus energy weapon attack speed, ion cannons might just barely be viable now, since they're finally affected by repeatables.
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I think I would probably make my first priority redoing the numbers on the primary mode of combat in stellaris - the four main hull sizes fighting each other with S/M/L slot weapons - so that they are balanced against each other with a counter system.
Namely, playing with evasion and adding resistances so that an end game fleet has a reason to use multiple hull sizes.
This might look something like each hull size (corvette/destroyer/cruiser/Battleship) being matched to a weapon slot size (S/M/L/X) such that the evasion of the hull and the tracking of the weapon cancel. There would be large gap between these tiers - say, 20% - and evasion/tracking upgrades would be such that extra evasion from thruster upgrades would be cancelled by extra tracking from sensor upgrades.
I would then layer on top of this hull resistances against weapons "smaller" than it's paired size. So destroyers might have a little resistance to S guns, Cruisers might resist S and M, etc.
The entire point of this numeracy scheme is to set up the core dynamic that each hull is most effectively defeated by particular sizes of weapons. By adjusting what hull sizes can carry which types of guns, we can set up a wonderful dynamic where one might kit destroyers with S guns to take on corvettes, but M guns to take on other destroyers. Etc. I envision X weapons to just be a larger size of turret (like what juggernauts use) instead of spinal mounts. You can think of them as the "main battery" of a battleship, and primarily useful for taking on other battleships.
The entire thing is enforced by the effective time to kill a hull size with a given slot, and this can be tuned precisely to be dramatic or noticeable but minor, depending on how we want things to go. The less dramatic it is, the more you can sort of "do whatever," the more dramatic the difference, the more important counter building becomes.
My second priority would be to make G/P/H slots actually function as a part of this system too. G is how small ships could take on much bigger ones, H is how big ships can deal with much smaller ones. I might also change the underlying code so everything is just straight simulated with numbers - there is no needing to fly the fighters and turn them for attack runs etc, they just appear on the screen as a representation of what's actually going on.
My third priority would be shaking up the energy/kinetic, shields/armor, and the way we budget ships using reactor power, to really deepen the possibilities.
Namely, playing with evasion and adding resistances so that an end game fleet has a reason to use multiple hull sizes.
This might look something like each hull size (corvette/destroyer/cruiser/Battleship) being matched to a weapon slot size (S/M/L/X) such that the evasion of the hull and the tracking of the weapon cancel. There would be large gap between these tiers - say, 20% - and evasion/tracking upgrades would be such that extra evasion from thruster upgrades would be cancelled by extra tracking from sensor upgrades.
I would then layer on top of this hull resistances against weapons "smaller" than it's paired size. So destroyers might have a little resistance to S guns, Cruisers might resist S and M, etc.
The entire point of this numeracy scheme is to set up the core dynamic that each hull is most effectively defeated by particular sizes of weapons. By adjusting what hull sizes can carry which types of guns, we can set up a wonderful dynamic where one might kit destroyers with S guns to take on corvettes, but M guns to take on other destroyers. Etc. I envision X weapons to just be a larger size of turret (like what juggernauts use) instead of spinal mounts. You can think of them as the "main battery" of a battleship, and primarily useful for taking on other battleships.
The entire thing is enforced by the effective time to kill a hull size with a given slot, and this can be tuned precisely to be dramatic or noticeable but minor, depending on how we want things to go. The less dramatic it is, the more you can sort of "do whatever," the more dramatic the difference, the more important counter building becomes.
My second priority would be to make G/P/H slots actually function as a part of this system too. G is how small ships could take on much bigger ones, H is how big ships can deal with much smaller ones. I might also change the underlying code so everything is just straight simulated with numbers - there is no needing to fly the fighters and turn them for attack runs etc, they just appear on the screen as a representation of what's actually going on.
My third priority would be shaking up the energy/kinetic, shields/armor, and the way we budget ships using reactor power, to really deepen the possibilities.
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Operational radius and limited ammunitions for fleet in order to make starbase essential.
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That just sucks the fun out of fighting players in a maneuver war, though maybe it will stop the AI from going full hannibal and running amok in my backyard like assholes.
But for the players sake I don't think fleet logistics is a good idea.
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The thing is even if you have really nice technology, you're tasked to build 1 Corvette within 60 days, and a year to build a Battleship.
If those are one-off prototype custom units, you can be as delicate as you can with ridiculous accuracy. But a factory model will just be so accurate up to a certain degree. Using 0.5° is an arbitrary number chosen for the example. It shows you the order of magnitude that accuracy matters.
You are absolutely right here. Even if we up 1000 times the order of magnitude, it's still very unrealistic for Stellaris's distances.If you make it a million times more accurate so it's 100% accurate at 57,3 million kilometers, a third of astronomical unit, it would still be too inaccurate from stellaris:
Astronomical unit - Wikipedia
The astronomical unit (symbol: au,[1][2][3] or au or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and equal to about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) or ~8 light minutes.
149597870700 m.
The range of a large weapon is 120, XL 130 and titan cannons are 250 I think, andI saw in another thread talking about distance that earth was at 90 distance and a ring world at 45 from the sun:
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...forum.paradoxplaza.com
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...
What aspects of Stellaris hurt your suspension of disbelief?
For me, the following are hard to head-cannon away: Bureaucracy buildings can be better when not on your homeworld. This makes no sense to me, as you would expect that type of thing on a homeworld. The solution is to remove the bureaucratic...
So since an AU is 150 million km and 90 range in stellaris, a large weapon is 120 in range and 200 millions km, so to be accurate it's 4 millions more of what you said, so 0,000000125°
That's right, you have to take into account stellaris tech, scale and the weapons range.
I'd say this is the very reason why Strikecrafts are made obsolete, because the extra distance they offer are like 2x your regular weapons (if my memories serve). But in reality, you'd expect your Strikecrafts to be able to hit at least 100x your max gun range.
If my argument on accuracy is taken with face value, then your normal ranges of engagement would not exceed 1000km. Even if we add some magic accuracy on top, then it'd still be around 10000km.
Then we need to think when we talk about missiles, what kind are we actually referring to? Tomahawk and Harpoon? Homing Missiles typically shot from fighters? Or even stuff with ranges like Ballistic Missiles?
In Stellaris when SF isn't seriously thought out, we just assume the Missiles can track. It isn't wrong per se. But the thing is longer ranged missiles usually are built on the assumption to hit a resting target, while shorter ranged missiles are more capable to tracking heat signature.
But the biggest question is now... do you shoot missiles and wait for hours before it hits? Or do you shoot missiles when you're already in an engagement that simply missiles offer greater range and accuracy? Do you shoot one single cruising missile with a nuclear warhead and wait for 4 hours until it hits? Or do you shoot a volley of missiles and create an explosion screen as the alpha strike expected to deliver in 10 seconds?
Long ranged missiles are accurate because they follow the coordinates they are told. But once they arrive, it's already hours later. Your target may already have left.
Engagement used missiles are there giving you superior range and accuracy. But they are still powered by rockets. So they are themselves targets to be taken down by PD and flak guns. It will only ever be useful if you fire a whole volley of them as the alpha strike.
Stellaris missiles are strange creations. They work like fighter missiles because they don't work individually and you are firing them in a volley when you're already in an engagement. But the warhead it carries and the range are both of the ballistic missiles. So I don't know what to make of them.
This cannot exist alone. Stellaris ranges are ridiculous. Flying from a few jumps takes a year or so. Returning home takes 4 years.
But the main issue is that each valid "step" in Stellaris is too big. One step is one star system and it takes 2 to 3 months to go 1 step. So there's really no room to make supply stations every X steps. Otherwise you'd just be flying in for 2 years, fight for 2 months and then fly back out for 2 years because you need supplies.
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