I love Atomic Rocket but Stellaris is not a simulation - warfare in Stellaris is more like the pre-Dreadnought battleship era than what is described in Atomic Rocket because that is a metaphor that people can grasp.
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Why all the hate for static defenses?
- Thread starter Afrotoaster7
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I love Atomic Rocket but Stellaris is not a simulation - warfare in Stellaris is more like the pre-Dreadnought battleship era than what is described in Atomic Rocket because that is a metaphor that people can grasp.
I have one problem and one problem only with static defenses:
If you leave your ships on autodesign, the AI will give your Fortresses two Snares.
Would be nice if they didn't do that.
If you leave your ships on autodesign, the AI will give your Fortresses two Snares.
Would be nice if they didn't do that.
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Oh, I don't disagree that Stellaris is far too soft for Atomic Rockets to be terribly relevant- I've already voiced my opinion that cloaking fields are perfectly viable as a game mechanic if they add fun and interesting gameplay because the game is already terribly unrealistic.
But the discussion of "is stealth in space realistic" exists a bit outside of Stellaris, and neither "venting your heat away from the enemy" nor "cooling lasers" are actually workable solutions.
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If you say that stealth under all circumstances does not exist, then that is true - even on earth (our stealth is directional and has all sorts of constraints). However, Atomic Rockets keeps things very general. Perhaps, the most important thing is how you define stealth. If I can remain hidden long enough to reach a position and time to achieve tactical surprise, I would take that. Here are a few things to consider:
1) Directionality does matter. You can suspend a cooling fin reflective and insulated parabolic dish. Attach these with gimbals to an insulated, superconducting tether and you can have a nice directional heat sink. Then, put your space ship behind an actively cooled mushroom cap like structure and you definitely control your signature to one side (at the expense of being even hotter to the other side).
2) Atomic Rockets gets around this by rightly stating that you could not mask any kind of drive signature if you were under active thrust. However, they do state that cold objects launched without drives (say electromagnetically) would be very hard to detect. They limit this to small autonomous attack drones that would light up when they arrive at their attack position. If you consider point 1, then you could expand this to fighters launched from a carrier object of some type.
3) Tactics matter. Consider an orbit using the Sun as a gravitational sling shot to direct an object at its target (one that passes as close as possible to the sun for maximum acceleration). Once this object fires up its drives, it would be visible just to the outside of the Sun, but then would be approaching the target with the Sun at its back. This ship would now have all the resources of a very large 5000K source to help mask its signature.
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Regarding stealth: tacheon cannons are an in game weapon. If you really need to vent heat, abusing tacheon lances to send the waste heat back in time wouldn't make the game less scientifically accurate at this point.
Gameplay wise, having stealth would be ok I think? I feel like it should be at tiers 1/2/3 around the same time as shields are hitting tier 3/4/5, as an auxiliary. Maybe it could also give an in combat evasion bonus (yes, even to static features; it's messing with your ability to aim, rather than it's ability to dodge). Also stealth ships don't show up on the galaxy map unless they're in range of ships with sensors at least 2 tiers higher (so tier 5 sensors for vs. tier 3 stealth).
It is a pretty common sci-fi trope and I feel it could be fun.
Gameplay wise, having stealth would be ok I think? I feel like it should be at tiers 1/2/3 around the same time as shields are hitting tier 3/4/5, as an auxiliary. Maybe it could also give an in combat evasion bonus (yes, even to static features; it's messing with your ability to aim, rather than it's ability to dodge). Also stealth ships don't show up on the galaxy map unless they're in range of ships with sensors at least 2 tiers higher (so tier 5 sensors for vs. tier 3 stealth).
It is a pretty common sci-fi trope and I feel it could be fun.
Bearing in mind I'm all for stealth as a gameplay mechanic, do the Tachyon Lances make any mention of using Tachyons for time-travelling properties? I was under the impression they were just being used in a "high-energy particle" sense.
I too think it was in the high energy particle sense. If it was in the going back in time sense, one would think the accuracy and tracking would be higher.
Dunno. Isn't having time travelling properties the only thing tachyons are good for? Mostly I meant that the fluff for a lot of the weapons and technologies (oh look I researched fusion missiles - that thing most modern nuclear weapons are) is silly enough already that whether it was possible doesn't matter. Although to be honest at this point it looks like the conversation was more between "it's possible and should be in stellaris" and "it's not possible, but it should still be in stellaris" regarding stealth, so I think a lot of my comments were in retrospect regarding a moot point.
Their time-travel properties are a side-effect of moving faster than light. Given the game gleefully includes crashing a ship at FTL speeds as a means of making a really, really big crater, I'd assume it just means "the guns shoot particles REALLY FAST and they hit REALLY HARD" outside of any specific mention of time travel.
I dunno if moving faster than light is really a good description of tachyons; I think they're outside the cone for which "past" and "future" are reasonable descriptors? They're better described as teleporting. As I understand it, they aren't actually more energetic than regular particles (and the more energetic they are, the closer the ~dt/dx is to 1/c, I think?).
Though don't quote me on that.
But nevertheless, the point was that it was a factious comment about the game's place on the 'sliding scale of science fiction hardness'.
If you can't mask a reaction drive that pushes you by shooting high energy particles out the back, then maybe part of 'stealth technology' is having a way to move that doesn't involve doing that.
Really, though, I remember reading through the whole Atomic Rockets stealth crap a while ago and not finding it very convincing. At best they're listing the challenges that you have to solve, and a lot of the objections are just dumb.
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Static defences should be as powerful as the player investment on it. If this game is intended to be a sandbox, why can't I create a defensive empire? If I want to invest my resources on defenses instead of having a massive fleet? The first time I played this game I wished to have awesome static defences to defend my empire. Then I noticed that stations are crap, completely useless and a waste of resources that did nothing apart from delaying a fleet until it gets destroyed. It should be an option because there are players that are more interested on building, defense and management that creating the biggest doomstack you can and start steamrolling the universe.
Playing defensively doesn't hurt anyone. The developer team is the responsible for establishing a balance between defense/offense but wiping out one part of the strategy leads to the boring doomstack strategy which I deeply hate. Make the game funny for everyone, for those who want to play aggressive and for those who want to play the defensive game. I am one of the players who like playing on the defense and in this game I can't.
Playing defensively doesn't hurt anyone. The developer team is the responsible for establishing a balance between defense/offense but wiping out one part of the strategy leads to the boring doomstack strategy which I deeply hate. Make the game funny for everyone, for those who want to play aggressive and for those who want to play the defensive game. I am one of the players who like playing on the defense and in this game I can't.
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Interesting thing: In my current game (which is very importantly HYPERLANE ONLY) I found that building a huge complex of Fortresses at the main choke-point to enter my empire did effectively stall incoming enemy forces, even ones who should have been able to beat the whole thing; they would jump in, fight for a bit, then retreat. I would build the place back up again with a constructor. All in all the effect was tying up the entire enemy fleet (about the same size as mine, perhaps slightly smaller) while I sieged and occupied their planets.
The main things I took away from this were:
* When a fleet fights a load of forts and defence platforms/stations all positioned together, there needs to be ONE BATTLE REPORT, not one per station.
* Multiple forts engaging the same target should act like a single fleet (this would also solve the above issue), with more co-ordinated targeting.
* It would be cool to be able to asign a military commander to such a fort network.
* It would be good if fortresses could have a slot with a single spinal mounted weapon.
* The minmum range between fortresses could be reduced slihtly (so fortress range -> current defence station range, defence station -> defence platform etc) and it wouldn't be a bad thing.
* The effectiveness of forts is heavily dependent on the type of FTL allowed in game.
* The AI doesn't know how to use forts effectively. (Putting one fort with an FTL jammer by itself).
The main things I took away from this were:
* When a fleet fights a load of forts and defence platforms/stations all positioned together, there needs to be ONE BATTLE REPORT, not one per station.
* Multiple forts engaging the same target should act like a single fleet (this would also solve the above issue), with more co-ordinated targeting.
* It would be cool to be able to asign a military commander to such a fort network.
* It would be good if fortresses could have a slot with a single spinal mounted weapon.
* The minmum range between fortresses could be reduced slihtly (so fortress range -> current defence station range, defence station -> defence platform etc) and it wouldn't be a bad thing.
* The effectiveness of forts is heavily dependent on the type of FTL allowed in game.
* The AI doesn't know how to use forts effectively. (Putting one fort with an FTL jammer by itself).
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