no bigger ships than battleships

[ImperiusArch]

Reality isn't cinematic, nor is it fun. Real Life battle is monotonous firing back and forth.

Let's take naval combat, for instance. Modern day naval combat is combat performed from hundreds of miles away through rockets and sometimes airstrikes. There is no fancy maneuvering, no cool firing of the port guns, nothing like that. The coolest thing is probably the taking off of Aircraft Carriers, which is pretty cool.

When I play games I don't really want to see two Icons standing at one side of the solar system firing at the other side, no. I want to see some cool shots and cinematic combat.

 

[Cannes]

The thing with the battleships being extremely slow to react is fine in and on itself, but the rest of the fleet really should take this into account before mindlessly charging the enemy. And only clever maneuvering should be able to take advantage of this fact, not just the default situations. This makes battleships completely useless unless battleships is the only shiptype you field.
Another thing I would like to see is larger graphical destinction between the shiptypes. It quickly becomes really difficult to tell which are corvettes, destroyers or cruisers in the swarm of ships.

 

[ImperiusArch]

I can agree to that, no logical fleet charges in leaving certain parts of it's fleet behind.

 

[Meraun]

The Dev said a long time ago the Shipssize as in amount of Modules it can hold is completel modable.

And i quite sure we will see Ships DLC'S

 

[ImperiusArch]

The only ship DLCs we'll be getting is probably aesthetic.

 

[KingRolan]

... have you ever been outside?

Have you ever invaded Poland?

 

[ImperiusArch]

Have you ever invaded Poland?

Seven times.

 

[Surimi]

Good military sci fi tends to focus appropriate attention to the problem of astronomical distances and closing speeds, the problem of hitting future friends where they will be rather than where they are, the importance of data links and communications as well as formations both for offensive and defensive action (notably point defense and countermeasures).

The thing is, military sci-fi tends to use naval combat as a model for space combat, which makes it more interesting but in reality totally doesn't hold up. In reality, there is absolutely no reason to even put living crew on your military spacecraft. There's n reason to ever build a spacecraft more than a few meters across, or to put guns on them (unguided projectiles are pointless in space). There is no reason to use formations other than randomly clustering together, because everything will be covered in engines on all sides and constantly changing speed unpredictably. Missiles will basically be tiny, extremely dense bullets with manoeuvring engines moving at many thousands of meters a second probably along deliberately screwy and unpredictable paths, but even then there chances of hitting anything without having their manoeuvring engines damaged by lasers is quite low.

What you've basically got here is two very fast computers who can't actually see each other, only where they were a few seconds before. Each is constantly changing speed and velocity and trying to be as erratic and unpredictable as possible, while at the same time throwing out lasers, tiny bullet missiles and bursts of radiation all over the place in an attempt to predict how the target could have moved. The chance of either side actually doing any damage to the other is relatively low, and ultimately it mostly comes down to luck and whoever has the best computers.

Making space combat interesting always requires us to abandon realism a bit.

 

[Summin Cool]

. In reality, there is absolutely no reason to even put living crew on your military spacecraft.

what

 

[KingRolan]

Seven times.

Nice.

 

[Oscot]

In reality, there is absolutely no reason to even put living crew on your military spacecraft.

Because putting a ship in the hands of an AI that will inevitably decide to use those relativistic weapons to DESTROY ALL HUMANS is really not clever?

There's n reason to ever build a spacecraft more than a few meters across,

What is a fuel tank

or to put guns on them (unguided projectiles are pointless in space).

Kinetic point-defence? the sort of thing that would be really useful when your enemy's firing homing missiles at you ?

There is no reason to use formations other than randomly clustering together, because everything will be covered in engines on all sides and constantly changing speed unpredictably.

Good luck getting anywhere at relativistic speeds if the front of your ship is an engine instead of an ablation shield

Missiles will basically be tiny, extremely dense bullets with manoeuvring engines moving at many thousands of meters a second probably along deliberately screwy and unpredictable paths, but even then there chances of hitting anything without having their manoeuvring engines damaged by lasers is quite low.

I agree with you on your formulation of missiles, but you appear to be shilling for Weylan-Yutani Coherant Light Sources with regards to countermeasures.
POINT
DEFENCE
GUNS

What you've basically got here is two very fast computers who can't actually see each other, only where they were a few seconds before. Each is constantly changing speed and velocity and trying to be as erratic and unpredictable as possible, while at the same time throwing out lasers, tiny bullet missiles and bursts of radiation all over the place in an attempt to predict how the target could have moved. The chance of either side actually doing any damage to the other is relatively low, and ultimately it mostly comes down to luck and whoever has the best computers. Pretty boring, to be honest.

Did you actually just describe a bullet-missile homing-rocket gamma-laser battle between two break-dancing supercomputers in space as boring?

Go back to Russia

 

[Surimi]

what

Living things, from a spaceflight perspective, are utterly useless. They need to be kept in the right atmosphere or they stop working, so you need to carry an atmosphere. They need to consume bits of matter or they stop working, so you need to carry appropriate bits of matter. They produce other bits of matter (which they can't consume) so you need a way to get rid of that. They need to be able to move around or they decay and ultimately stop working, so you need spaces in which they can move around. Moreover, they contribute nothing to the operation of the spacecraft in combat because their silly meat brains can't crunch numbers as well as a machine, and space combat is all number crunching. All the useless stuff you have to carry to keep them working adds to the mass of a spacecraft, which increases the amount of energy required to change velocity, and when in combat your spacecraft needs to be constantly changing velocity all the time.

So basically, they're an expensive, heavy component which does nothing of value.

 

[goliard20]

"Tactical Bork cube?"

On a less deplorable note, I would say it's not so much the paucity of ship classes that upsets me as it is their tech distribution. The Blorgstream's been running for, what, about 10 hours total and we've already researched the top ship class? What sort of game-length is this? Is it for casuals?

In Europe Universalis most countries had all ship classes at the beginning and evven the land canons were available pretty early. Still i wouldnt call it a casual game. A good space casual game i really like for breaks is Faster then Light

 

[Surimi]

Because putting a ship in the hands of an AI that will inevitably decide to use those relativistic weapons to DESTROY ALL HUMANS is really not clever?

You don't need some kind of sophisticated AGI, just a regular computer. Heck, even if an organic creature was on the ship it would not be capable of doing anything except telling the computer it was okay to fire the weapons or engines. Why not do that remotely?

What is a fuel tank

Something which you can reduce the size of by using a lighter spacecraft. Bigger spacecraft = more mass = more energy required to move the mass = bigger engine = more fuel consumed. A spacecraft a meter across with a proportionally sized fuel tank will be just as capable of maneuvering as a spacecraft kilometers long with a kilometer long fuel tank.

Kinetic point-defence? the sort of thing that would be really useful when your enemy's firing homing missiles at you?

Think of the distances involved in space. Well actually.. don't, because it's not possible for the human mind to conceive of those distances. Now, let's say you have a gun which can fire a bullet at 20% of the speed of light, and bear in mind that's a really powerful gun! It's going to be firing with the energy of several nuclear bombs. But yeah, assume you have it.

Firstly, newton's third law. Firing that gun is also going to create an equal and opposite reaction in your spacecraft, and when you're using that amount of energy you're talking a lot of recoil. Frankly, that gun would make a really good engine, just a really poor weapon because secondly, whatever you're trying to hit is moving. As mentioned, anything engaging in space combat is going to need to be constantly changing speed and moving as erratically as possible. Let's say you're shooting at something 0.2 light seconds away, which is not very far in space terms, it's about 1/6th the distance to the moon. Well, firstly you can't actually see where the object you're firing at is, only where it was a fifth of a second ago. Secondly, it's going to take a whole second for your bullet to arrive. Given that the object you're shooting at is probably only a few inches long at most, the odds of successfully making contact are, quite literally, astronomical.

By contrast, a laser fires at the speed of light, which is still pretty crap because it takes .2 of a second to hit anything, which means you're trying to hit with .4 seconds of lag, but is vastly, vastly more likely to hit anything. Plus, you don't need to take worthless ammunition into space.

Good luck getting anywhere at relativistic speeds if the front of your ship is an engine instead of an ablation shield

Good luck getting anywhere at relativistic speeds at all. The only currently realistic plan for attaining relativistic speeds involves strapping most of earth's nuclear arsenal to a spaceship and detonating it one by one. Done correctly, that could accelerate a spaceship to perhaps 10% of the speed of light, assuming you didn't want to ever slow down.

Now, if anything did hit your spaceship at 10% of the speed of light, I'm afraid an ablation shield probably isn't going to save you.

Did you actually just describe a bullet-missile homing-rocket gamma-laser battle between two break-dancing supercomputers in space as boring?

Heh.. Yeah, poor choice of words. What I mean is it wouldn't be comprehensible to a human because it would be taking place too fast, at distances too great for a human to be able to observe or even conceptually grasp and success or failure would essentially come down to impossibly fast number crunching and a bit of good luck.

 

[Chaos_TLW]

Did you actually just describe a bullet-missile homing-rocket gamma-laser battle between two break-dancing supercomputers in space as boring?

Yap, that's going in my signature.

 

[ImperiusArch]

Drones, mate. Drones.

 

[Doskias]

Did you actually just describe a bullet-missile homing-rocket gamma-laser battle between two break-dancing supercomputers in space as boring?

Besides "Helpful", "Agree" and "Respectfully Disagree", i never knew how much I wanted a "Funny" button until I saw your comment....

 

[KingRolan]

Besides "Helpful", "Agree" and "Respectfully Disagree", i never knew how much I wanted a "Funny" button until I saw your comment....

I tend to just use the "Helpful" button ironically.

 

[Summin Cool]

Living things, from a spaceflight perspective, are utterly useless. They need to be kept in the right atmosphere or they stop working, so you need to carry an atmosphere. They need to consume bits of matter or they stop working, so you need to carry appropriate bits of matter. They produce other bits of matter (which they can't consume) so you need a way to get rid of that. They need to be able to move around or they decay and ultimately stop working, so you need spaces in which they can move around. Moreover, they contribute nothing to the operation of the spacecraft in combat because their silly meat brains can't crunch numbers as well as a machine, and space combat is all number crunching. All the useless stuff you have to carry to keep them working adds to the mass of a spacecraft, which increases the amount of energy required to change velocity, and when in combat your spacecraft needs to be constantly changing velocity all the time.

So basically, they're an expensive, heavy component which does nothing of value.

Wasn't really the point I was thinking of.
Remote controlling something is out of the question due to potential signal jamming(No, drones in middle east are not an example - they are using them against a third world "rebellion") so you have to use an AI but if the AI malfunctions and hits say a colony instead the backlash in the western culture will be immense, that being said, all factors could cause the AI to be rouge etc

In addition Crew are very flexible in terms of repair and solving stuff, computers are the dumbest stuff ever in terms of ingenuity unless you use a sapient AI which is a fucking no no. That being said I don't see any reason not to use drones alongside a mothership as strike craft, however due to signal jamming its probably better to use a fighter at that point.

 

[mocoman2001]

The battleships were really slow. By the time they had turned all their corvettes were dead. I'm starting to think lots of corvettes is better than one battleship.... Lots of guns is better than lots of health.

The people making stellaris seem to be big fans of paper scissors rocks. Lasers beat armor, but lose against shields, bullets beat shields, but lose against armor, and missiles get to shoot first, but can be shot down. Big ships beat up medium ships, medium ships beat up little ships, and little ships beat up big ships.

you have 2 options, pick an extreme, and hope it counters, or balance it out. When the game is released, I am sure there will be many theorcrafting threads about minmaxing fleet compositions like we do with eu4, but before that I think its safe to assume a balance is key to reliable success.