antistarfighter laser cannon

[teukros]

Fooling around right now with the Golan III, giving it 600 laser cannon with range of 40 and weapon recharge of 600, and then watching the pitiful spectacle of it trying to shoot down a single miserable flight of 4 Y-Wings, I'm wondering how much the attacking ship's maneuverability (and/or speed) figure in to whether the target is hit, and/or to how much damage is applied....

[Lord_La_forge]

Dunno Teukros, but it seems liek you'll be our main tester for Reloaded Keep up yout testings!

[teukros]

Heh.

 

I reduced the maneuverability and speed of all starfighters by 3, so now the bombers have speed and maneuverabilty of 4 and 4, and for A-Wings it is 8 and 8... tonight I will see how well three Corellian Corvettes do against four Y-Wing starfighters. Depending on the results of that, I might reduce all starfighters' armor as well.

 

Hey we still need a Mon Mothma, right? I might have someone who can do those lines...

[teukros]

All IMO based on my recent observations....

 

It seems that when calculating hits/damage, the SL-Speed and Agility of the shooter is just as important as the SL-Speed and Agility of the target (with SL-Speed being most important). Possibly the target's SL-Speed (Agility) is subtracted from the shooter's SL-Speed (Agility) to provide real simple numbers for whatever formula is used for determining hits/damage. Now this works (kinda) okay with starfighter to starfighter combat (nobody expects T.I.E. Bombers to shoot down A-Wings), but when it comes to ship to starfighter combat, it's broke, and it can't be fixed.

 

(Although it does explain why Corellian Gunboats are so damned deadly, and why Lancers are useless)

 

A Golan III, bristling with 600 Laser Cannon per facing, with a completely fantastical weapons recharge of 600, requires four or five shots to shoot down a single Y-Wing FLIGHT (that's four Y-Wings) with SL-Speed of 6, Agility of 6, and armor + shields of "only" 19. That's AFTER I reduced all starfighters' SL-Speed and Agility by 2 each... and after I slashed all armor + shields by half!

 

For in my attempts to make starfighters more "realistic", I unwittingly made them almost invulnerable to capital ships' Laser Cannon (in my games, the focus is always on starfighter combat so I didn't notice). Last night I used trials with one Y-Wing Flight on one side and three Corellian Corvettes on the other side to make adjustments until I felt that the Y-Wings were taking reasonable losses from the Corvettes defensive batteries.

 

Unfortunately this now means that starfighter to starfighter combat will be a bloody slaughter. Like a meat grinder on fast forward. But I am not imaginative enough to think of a way to fix this, without breaking something else.

 

 

For reference this is where I'm at with the basic starfighter numbers right now (most Capital ships are essentially unchanged, except for Turbolasers, which have been doubled). The costs are per squadron, naturally.

 

                       Res.   Mat/Mnt Armor/Screens   Speed/Agility    Las /Ion /Torp 

Y-Wing Starfighter      0     24/24      14/ 5            6/ 6          30 / 48 / 64 
X-Wing Starfighter      1     30/24      10/ 5            6/ 7          48 /  0 / 32 
A-Wing Starfighter      4     30/30       9/ 4            9/ 9          45 /  0 /  0 
B-Wing Starfighter      6     42/48      20/15            5/ 5          48 / 72 / 64 
T.I.E. Fighter          0     12/ 6       6/ 0            7/ 7          30 /  0 /  0 
T.I.E. Bomber           0     18/24      18/ 0            5/ 5          30 / 48 / 64 
T.I.E. Interceptor      5     18/18       8/ 0            8/ 9          48 /  0 /  0 
T.I.E. Defender        11     54/60      12/14            8/ 8          63 / 48 / 32

[Paul]

Why are the fighters so expensive in your games? Just wondering.-Grand Moff Conway

[Darth-Griffin]

Teukros a question....

 

If the stats for the fighters are left as per rebellion standard, how does the GIII fair then with the lasers at 600?

[teukros]

Darth Griffin, I'm sure the DP III would do better (I did reduce the SL Speed, Maneuverability and armor of all fighters to make them more vulnerable to cap ship defensive fire), but I suspect that it would still suck. I remember how poorly the Lancer fared against Rebel starfighters in unmodified games, and the Lancer has SL Speed of 6 and Maneuverability of 3...

 

GM Conway, I'll answer your question in a few minutes. But last night I did slash the Maintenance of all ships AND all starfighters by half. The Empire starts off with impressive forces when you do that. Two ISDs, four VSDs, a DP III, some odd number of Carracks... fun!

[Darth-Griffin]

But last night I did slash the Maintenance of all ships AND all starfighters by half. The Empire starts off with impressive forces when you do that. Two ISDs, four VSDs, a DP III, some odd number of Carracks... fun!

 

I take it the GIII had no problems once this was done then?

[teukros]

GM Conway: I've been tinkering with the starfighter stats for some time, trying to make them more realistic. The starfighters in my game are actually underpowered (there is no way that any unescorted ISD could survive a pass from 48 Y-Wings except as a burning hulk), and versus other starfighters, they are far less survivable than they should be. But I figure it all balances out in the end (fingers crossed).

 

As far as the cost is concerned, it's because starfighters dominate the game (even the unmodified game) and I wanted both sides to build ships and not just starfighters and carriers! This is fine because the starfighters are so deadly now and are a good value - probably a better value than with default values. But I think it's close to being balanced i.e. a Rebel strike force of two carriers, five X-Wing Squadrons and seven Y-Wing Squadrons would cost about as much as an Imperial Task Force (with no carriers) that could stand up to it. And replacing starfighter losses will cost enough so that any player will think twice before committing them to a hopeless battle.

 

Something else of course is that because of the superiority of their starfighters, the cheaper they are across the board, the more the game favors the Rebels.

 

As far as the T.I.E. Defender is concerned, even if Zaarin had not turned traitor and even if Thrawn had won, the Empire would never have been able to replace all T.I.E. Fighters with Defenders! Interceptors, maybe (hopefully). But as the T.I.E. Fighter's raison d'etre is to protect its mother ship from enemy starfighters, the idea of replacing them with Defenders (or even Advanceds) would have seemed ludicrous. The Defender squadrons would always be a precious resource only used for special missions - never for routine patrols.

 

And even having said all that, the Maintenance costs are still high. Absurdly high. Again, it is simply a very crude way of forcing the player to build things other than carriers and starfighters. To jump onto my soapbox, if I could change just one thing about Rebellion, I would add a fourth stat to the top of the screen: along with raw materials, refined materials, and maintenance points, the game would also keep track of available (unassigned) starfighter pilots. Each starfighter pilot "point" could be expended to build one Squadron. The Empire might start off with 50, the Alliance with a much smaller number e.g. 4 (The Squadrons each side started the game with would already have pilots and would not count against these pools). Replacements would trickle in very slowly; perhaps a system's occupied energy slots could be a reasonable approximation of that system's population, for this purpose at least (and modified by loyalty, and then multiplied by a base number like 1/1000 per turn). So if the Duros are using 10 energy slots and they are 50 percent loyal, each turn there would be a 5/1000 or 1/200 chance that enough starfighter pilots would be recruited for one squadron. Maybe if the system was 100% loyal there could be a recruiting bonus (for the Empire at least).

 

Something like that would have been easy to code. Ah well.

[teukros]

But last night I did slash the Maintenance of all ships AND all starfighters by half. The Empire starts off with impressive forces when you do that. Two ISDs, four VSDs, a DP III, some odd number of Carracks... fun!

 

I take it the GIII had no problems once this was done then?

 

Well it still shoots like a Lancer with a crew of inebriated stormtroopers who can't see a thing out of their helmets. About four shots to destroy a Y-Wing flight.

 

In the game I started last night I started with three DP IIIs! Basically I'm packing them full of T.I.E. Fighters, and then I'm basing more T.I.E. Fighters from the ground...

[Darth-Griffin]

I'm liking the idea of halving the costs of the ships but doubling the turbolasers. Sounds like fun.

 

After a few tests of my own i have decided to up the G3 to 600 laser as it just got pounded by a x-wing squad(12)

 

Keep the ideas coming and please let me know how things go

[teukros]

I've also got a "Guns or Butter" thing going on. I have each mine requiring three days to produce one unit of raw materials, but I have each refinery requiring only two days to process refined materials. Therefore if you want to maximize MAT you will need three mines for every two refineries. But if you want to maximize MNT you will need to build enough refineries to bring the ratio up to 1:1...

 

EDIT: Woo! Check out my shiny new rank insignia!

[Darth-Griffin]

Sir.. Yes Major sir

 

Congrats.

[Darth-Griffin]

Sorry forgot to insert the timely salute there

[Darth-Griffin]

Teukros what maint and constr did you give the G3 after halving them

[teukros]

Teukros what maint and constr did you give the G3 after halving them

 

That's a little complicated. The idea was to be able to build a Navy twice the size in the same amount of time, while keeping starfighters just as expensive relative to capital ships.

 

I've got Construction Yards, Ship Yards etc. doing their things in half the time, I've also got mines doing their things in 60% of the time and refineries doing their things in 40% of the time. However you still get the same amount of MNT from one mine-refinery pair, so I was forced to slash the MNT costs of all ships and starfighters by 50% (rounding down in all cases).

 

Two other Imperial ships for reference are the VSD which costs 68 MAT and 22 MNT, and the Nebulon-B which costs 34 MAT and 17 MNT.

 

Now as far as the GA DPIII is concerned, I made it cheap: 75 MAT and 22 MNT. I figure that it's stuck in one system and the Empire might want one at Coruscant, but it might be a waste to build any anyplace else. The best thing is if you start a game with the DPs already built, so I might actually make them even cheaper (so you'll start the game with more of them).

 

Of course, the experience of actual gameplay will probably make me change my mind.

[Darth-Griffin]

Im now trying a game with the maint & constr halved and turbolasers doubled on all ships. Going to see how things pan-out. All other sections left as they were for this test.

 

To start with i thought i would get a lot more ships around Coruscant, however on three F1 restarts i only get one ISD1 & a Carrack at Coruscant. On the plus side there are a lot more fleets spread out to other planets on the map now.

Seen as i have the XQ2 stations at research level 0 i expected to get a few of these as well. Strangely i did not. The only thing i can put this down to is the turbolaser & laser level given to the starbase.

 

More tests to come on this

[teukros]

What are your stations replacing?

 

My Golan Arms station replaces the "Imperial" Dreadnought (the Dreadnought in the "Alliance Dreadnaught" (sic) slot can be built by both sides). Funny thing is that the station ALWAYS starts with one "squadron" (as the game defines it) of T.I.E. Fighters, and ALWAYS starts with one regiment of Naval Infantry - regardless that I had the DPIII value for Troop Capacity set to zero. If I moved the Naval Infantry to the planetary surface and then tried to move them right back to the station, it wasn't allowed. Apparently during setup the game still thinks of it as a Dreadnought because that is the slot it occupies.

 

EDIT: for sanity's sake, I changed the DPIII's Troop Capacity to '1'.

Edited March 6, 2005 by teukros

[Darth-Griffin]

The XQ2 replaces the Strike Cruiser as i never built the things. Likewise the G3 platform replaces the VSD2 as i seriously have a grudge against them.

 

In the latest tests i have been alowing the Rebels the option of building XQ2 stations but not the big G3 platform. Havent faced one yet so not sure how it is going.

[teukros]

Strike Cruisers rock! but the default costs are about 50% too high. My Strike Cruiser (with MNT cut by half, compare to the costs of the VSD and Neb-B above) costs 47 MAT, 20 MNT.

 

Their damage control sucks. In all other ways, they're top of the line.