Realistic Strike Craft

[SeraphAscending]

So in answer to your question:
"Should it really make a strength difference for a ship to carry it's own weapons + ammo than carrying smaller vessels with weapons and ammo?"

Yes, you save at least by 35-40% on fuel just from having in-flight refueling, not to mention all the other stuff I've already mentioned.
Even if the Carrier is out of range of friendly tankers, friendly depos and cannot sit outside the field of battle refining fuel while it is stationary. Just from the fuel savings of in-flight refuelling alone you could still see a saving of 35-40% fuel use... and fuel savings could, using a realism argument, be represented by higher DPS.

I am uncertain if i understand that.
The total amount of fuel consumed in a battle is less is what you are arguing, right?
But I think you are saving 35-40% of like 1% of fuel use, because the strike craft are a negligable amount of mass compared to the carrier.
Or are you suggesting that your Strike craft are so incredibly multi-purpose that they can be used for refueling the carrier? I highly doubt we'd ever consider using F-22 to get fuel for an aircraft carrier. That'd need to be specialised vehicles.

But what about the hangar space, the more enhanced maintenance and all that's required for it?
If you want mega-multi-purpose strike craft, they necessarily lose efficiency, too. Unless you assume it's iron man's nanotech that can form any complex machinery from nanites, including thrusters and weaponry, etc.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I am uncertain if i understand that.
The total amount of fuel consumed in a battle is less is what you are arguing, right?
But I think you are saving 35-40% of like 1% of fuel use, because the strike craft are a negligable amount of mass compared to the carrier.
Or are you suggesting that your Strike craft are so incredibly multi-purpose that they can be used for refueling the carrier? I highly doubt we'd ever consider using F-22 to get fuel for an aircraft carrier. That'd need to be specialised vehicles.

But what about the hangar space, the more enhanced maintenance and all that's required for it?
If you want mega-multi-purpose strike craft, they necessarily lose efficiency, too. Unless you assume it's iron man's nanotech that can form any complex machinery from nanites, including thrusters and weaponry, etc.

I understand it isn't obvious. But fuel has a massive role in real-world spaceflight and combat.

In something like the Falklands war, aircraft only managed to reach the battle because of in-flight refuelling. It's fascinating to read, although a bit dry:

Air-to-air refuelling in the Falklands War - RAF Museum

Volunteer Norman Brice tells the story of air-to-air refuelling by the Handley Page Victor during the Falklands War.

www.rafmuseum.org.uk

Avro Vulcan B2

At the very end of their operational lives, Vulcans were called upon to undertake what was then the longest bombing raids in the world – the nearly 4,000 miles (6,400 km) from Wideawake Airfield, Ascension Island, to Port Stanley, Falklands Islands, a 16 hour round trip – in the famous “Black Buck” raids; it took 13 Victor tankers to put one Vulcan over the target, with 15 air-to-air refuels (AAR) between the sole Vulcan and between Victors (some of the latter flying two sorties that night).

Here you have 12 out of 13 aircraft being used for fuel. That's 92% of the ships used just to carry fuel when operating at extreme range (like strike craft in Stellaris).
Although the Victors used as tankers weigh slightly less than the final bomber actually (200k vs 250k lb), so total launch mass used for fuel is a mere 90.6%.

It's quite cool in that example, you get string of fighters and bombers sharing fuel to allow the one actually carrying the bombs to reach the target. And the result of all that is reaching a target you couldn't otherwise reach.

But the same principle can apply to reaching a target that was already in range. You don't carry as much fuel as you need to reach the target when you launch and use that space for a few more weapons instead. It only works if you can be refuelled on the way, but doing this also actually saves fuel overall by 35-40%. But comes with risks, especially when the fighters were not designed to operate like that or when pilots aren't trained for it, there have been some bad accidents in the past.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I understand it isn't obvious. But fuel has a massive role in real-world spaceflight and combat.

In something like the Falklands war, aircraft only managed to reach the battle because of in-flight refuelling. It's fascinating to read, although a bit dry:

Air-to-air refuelling in the Falklands War - RAF Museum

Volunteer Norman Brice tells the story of air-to-air refuelling by the Handley Page Victor during the Falklands War.

www.rafmuseum.org.uk

Here you have 12 out of 13 aircraft being used for fuel. That's 92% of the ships used just to carry fuel when operating at extreme range (like strike craft in Stellaris).
Although the Victors used as tankers weigh slightly less than the final bomber actually (200k vs 250k lb), so total launch mass used for fuel is a mere 90.6%.

It's quite cool in that example, you get string of fighters and bombers sharing fuel to allow the one actually carrying the bombs to reach the target. And the result of all that is reaching a target you couldn't otherwise reach.

But the same principle can apply to reaching a target that was already in range. You don't carry as much fuel as you need to reach the target when you launch and use that space for a few more weapons instead. It only works if you can be refuelled on the way, but doing this also actually saves fuel overall by 35-40%. But comes with risks, especially when the fighters were not designed to operate like that or when pilots aren't trained for it, there have been some bad accidents in the past.

Hmm... okay

To me it still feels odd to see fuel be of such importance considering how space craft are represented in stellaris.
Especially battles.
If fuel is of significant importance, space ships (including strike craft) would not fly around or stay stationary as they currently do in the combat animations.
I think it is odd to argue for realism regarding such physics concepts if the representation within the game is absolutely defying any physics reasoning one could have.

I just feels weird to add realism in the game design reasoning when the visual representation clashes hard with that reasoning.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Hmm... okay

To me it still feels odd to see fuel be of such importance considering how space craft are represented in stellaris.
Especially battles.
If fuel is of significant importance, space ships (including strike craft) would not fly around or stay stationary as they currently do in the combat animations.
I think it is odd to argue for realism regarding such physics concepts if the representation within the game is absolutely defying any physics reasoning one could have.

I just feels weird to add realism in the game design reasoning when the visual representation clashes hard with that reasoning.

Flying around (evasive movements) is exactly why combat would require so much fuel compared to coasting along with no acceleration. You need to keep burning continuously, aggressively and erratically so the enemy struggles to calculate or predict your movements and where to return fire. Just like how artillery often employs a "shoot and scoot" technique.

Shoot-and-scoot (alternatively, fire-and-displace or fire-and-move) is an artillery tactic of firing at a target and then immediately moving away from the location from where the shots were fired to avoid counter-battery fire (e.g. from enemy artillery).

But combat animations aren't really close to realistic. Firstly Stellaris is a 2D plane rather than a 3D sphere (so any Z-axis movement isn't shown). Second space is so monumentally huge the entire battle and all the ships, even the planets would be a tiny speck, not even a single pixel when you have the entire orbital system in view.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - A tediously accurate map of the solar system

joshworth.com

Here you can see how boring combat would be if you had to scroll for ages to find anything and even planets were only a single pixel wide (as they are in reality).

I like to think of the battle we see in Stellaris as just a summary of lots of skirmishes all around the system. The modern version of a war room table with little tokens being shoved around on long sticks to represent the battle (but each token like a planet is massively oversized so the commander can actually see what's going on).

When the ships look stationary it just means there's no advance, they would still be moving around to get that +90% evasion that a destroyer can reach even if they don't rush around in circles like corvettes.

EDIT: And yes, I agree using realism for balance would be ridiculous. Hence why I'm against lowering Strike craft DPS for realism, or changing them in other ways for realism. Changes need to be fun first and foremost.

 

[SeraphAscending]

EDIT: And yes, I agree using realism for balance would be ridiculous. Hence why I'm against lowering Strike craft DPS for realism, or changing them in other ways for realism. Changes need to be fun first and foremost.

Yeah.
I would much prefer the devs lean into some sci-fi trope to justify balancing out different gamestyles rather than going full realism and us losing a lot of game mechanics, because they are simply too weak now.
I'd much rather have variety than realism in this game.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Yeah.
I would much prefer the devs lean into some sci-fi trope to justify balancing out different gamestyles rather than going full realism and us losing a lot of game mechanics, because they are simply too weak now.
I'd much rather have variety than realism in this game.

Yes, the best part of Stellaris for me is how easy it is to put almost any sci-fi franchise into the game with ease. Star Wars and Star Trek both are here thanks to great mods that fit surprisingly well without changing too much. Being too realistic with mechanics means you lose the flexibility to add any more fantastic elements (like giant space monsters or other fun, but unrealistic tropes from fiction).

But even the base game excels at being balanced on the edge of realistic and fantastic. It cuts away some features that are complicated and fiddly like fuel was represented in Sword of the Stars (where you could end up with lots of tankers and stranded fleets). But instead lets players imagine more of the daily life, what's happening with buildings, sites, events, logistics, politics and wars rather than reducing empires to a population number and income amount, or getting bogged down in making one aspect too realistic.

I'm perfectly fine with changing weapon stats, and I look forward (nervously) to a full combat rework. Just as long as there's a gameplay reason for the changes (giving everything a role). I want more options, more beautiful and epic fights. I don't want Strike craft nerfed into uselessness because someone thinks the concept is unrealistic. There are a lot of very unrealistic things that I adore that I wouldn't want to lose (Bubbles).