Brainstorming Weapons Overhaul

[DancingWind]

Unforeseen you might want to take a look at <google atomic rockets Project Rho> (sorry cant post links yet). its a website for people that might want create realistic scifi novels, computer games, board-games, and explore space travel potential in general.
They do get to nitty gritty of physics and maths but also explain everything in layman terms how stuff works and what are the consequences when breaking some laws of physics.

for example - light fractional railguns ... emm ppl those things are scarry... even with few percents of c projectiles will hit you like nuclear bombs. And superluminal railguns are nonsense in so many ways.
While all those energy torpedoes are pixie dust filled bags of handwaveium - plasma does not behave like that (its basically superheated gas that expands very rapidly if not contained by .. magic?).

For bombardment ... all you need is rocks ... seriously you dont need anything else. Once you are in orbit - bye bye everyone on the surface.

I'll ad suggestions for weapons.
Particle beams - if you can fit a particle acccelerator on a ship you get a very nice beam that can slice through anything.
Neutron beams/weapons - you wanted radiation? neutrons are very fun form of radiation that does wonderful and scary things to matter.
Missiles that carry various ordinance packages. Beams, mass drives, more missiles, drones, etc.

[mordachai]

Yeah, once I realized that any old garbage scow with a little time on its hands could end all life on any world by simply accelerating a space-rock to have enough momentum... all of the sci-fi models and stories and epic laser battles became laughable.

We worry about a few nut-jobs getting their hands on a nuke? lolz. A disgruntled crew and a nominal sci-fi garbage scow and Armageddon is all she wrote.

[CyclopsSlayer]

ORIGINAL: mordachai

Yeah, once I realized that any old garbage scow with a little time on its hands could end all life on any world by simply accelerating a space-rock to have enough momentum... all of the sci-fi models and stories and epic laser battles became laughable.

We worry about a few nut-jobs getting their hands on a nuke? lolz. A disgruntled crew and a nominal sci-fi garbage scow and Armageddon is all she wrote.

Seriously!
Some many years ago I read a proposal article of a Tactical weapons system, simple beyond belief.
Place in low earth orbit a cluster of 3m long, 5cm wide, Titanium rods, with ceramic nosecone and steerable tail fins, much like the current JDAM.
Using 1980's electronics the author theorized a cluster of 100 rods could be dropped in a 10 x 10 configuration with a 10m spread. Each rod would have an impact kinetic equivalent to 300Kg of high explosive, and a depth penetration and shockwave that could collapse structures buried up to 50m,

[Regularity]

ORIGINAL: mordachaiWe worry about a few nut-jobs getting their hands on a nuke? lolz. A disgruntled crew and a nominal sci-fi garbage scow and Armageddon is all she wrote.

Like a ballistic missile, they would be quite easy to predict the landing point of, as they follow a ballistic trajectory. Given we've been able to do this since the Cold War with both radar and thermal tracking, it's not hard to imagine even relatively lower-tech space faring races could do the same in regards to incoming space-borne objects. The only real issue is if they can project enough firepower at it to stop/deflect the object -- and if they're capable of making space ships, I would probably guess so, but that's highly subjective depending on what sort of setting we're talking about.

ORIGINAL: mordachai
4. Missiles - I'm playing with having those have 1.5K range, but otherwise basically the same. Seems to me that that is the one weapon-niche that is left after energy beams, energy torpedoes, and now railguns (and gravitic and area weapons) - a long range self-propelled weapon. I'm not a fan of missiles normally, so I haven't really experienced what they're like in DW:U yet. (Does anyone know of a race which uses them heavily?)

Even if they aren't necessarily a vital staple weapon, they do (or rather, should) fill an important niche in regards to base defence, as their long range prevents ships from simply sniping at otherwise huge and heavily-armed stations without taking any return fire. So if you're not sure what niche to put them in, maybe consider a siege or counter-siege battery weapon.

[Vellarain]

I too have been looking into a weapons mod and combat rebalance!

The one thing that annoys me most in the current state of the game, is how enemy fleets can jump in point blank on your worlds. This makes almost all early combat a simple matter of who brought the most shields and guns to the party. Unless you blitz your research into hyper deny asap and go into it far enough and get the gravity well tech.

I want to change it so the moment you get your first warp tech you also unlock the gravity well. Additionally the first gravity well will have a much larger range, probably around 10000k to allow for more time and decision making. This change alone would make combat far more tactical and less about the biggest numbers win.

But the weapon changes I have in mind would be very extreme, in both range and speed. I will also be reducing the module size considerably for most weapons, excluding super weapons. This will allow players greater flexibility and allow for combined arms ships to be more viable. The amount of reactors/engines will dictate the speed of their ships, since the amount of extra reactors will have a negative impact on speed. The player will have consider that range and closing the gap will be a huge factor in how they design their fleets now.

Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target. They move at the speed of light so the weapons travel speed will be as fast as the speed of light, so 20k speed or maybe higher. Their range will also be the highest of 7500, right now the longest ranged beam weapon in DU is 560 i think. But they are the only weapon to have damage decay and with the gravity well changes. The rate of fire should come in some varieties, fast firing pulse lasers will have high rof of a laser ever 5 seconds but the damage will bleed off very fast over the slower firing weapons, which will be about 15 seconds. Light weapons will do poorly against sheilds, ignore reactive armor and deal enhanced damage against normal armor.

Rail weapons: The archaic mass drivers systems are truly the jack of all trades, slinging slugs of dense metals into space. In terms of speed and range they come second in both counts, but in space there is very little influence on the slowing of a mass round so they still travel vastly further than original DU, I am thinking 5k and at a speed of roughly 1000, so at max range the fastest round will strike at nearly the 5 second in game mark. They fire much faster than light weapons, around a shot every 2 seconds. Rail cannons can be used as a place holder for orbital bombardment, though not very effective. Mass Driven weapons make short work of shields as they attempt to divert the heavy rounds away from the ship, they ignore reactive armor and deal reduced damage to normal armor.

Plasma Weapons: The plasma cannon type of a weapon is the brawlers choice of weapon. Slow to travel and quick to bleed off its damage potential, this weapon will wreck any ship once they can get close enough. IT has the shortest of all ranges of 1500k and the projectile is sluggish at only 250 speed. But the damage this weapon can inflict is massive since it ignores all armor types and deals enhanced damage to shields. But be mindful about how many you can mount, they are very costly to maintain its 3 second rate of fire.

Torpedoes: The oldest weapon in the history of human war, but very well suited to space combat with the every growing size of potential payload and one of the best weapons for planetary bombardment. Extremely long ranged 10k but very slow to travel, roughly 500 since stealth is primarily how torpedoes approach its target. Its RoF is not measured in seconds, but minutes because the damage a single torpedo will inflict is huge. It is wise to invest in an early type of PDS to prevent your fleets from being devastated by a few torpedo ships. Planets will only be able to last a few salvos of the huge payloads torpedoes can carry before they are reduced to a barren wasteland. But do not think that as a player you can spam this type of weapon, their resource cost will be high and their size per weapon will be the largest save for the super weapons.

Point defense: No changes needed

Missiles: I REALLY dislike the concept of missiles in a space setting. They require volatile fuel to gain velocity and they they are still too slow for any ships PDS system. Their payload is abysmal when you can have any other weapon system do the same job at much lower risk to entire crew by simply housing them on the ship. A torpedoes payload will remain inert even if hit by a weapon, they are kinetically fired into space with a programmed trajectory prior to being fired and are steered by small ion thrusters towards the intended target. Missiles, not so much... Their tracking systems are electronically loud and engine heat would make them easy targets for any PDS system.

anyway, thats all I got for time at the moment, ill talk more about this later!

[mordachai]

Interesting ideas. Not sure how they can all be adapted, but definitely an interesting take on the whole line-up.

[Vellarain]

Adaptation for the majority part will be easy, excluding the two following.

Torpedoes will be the harder one because the race that focuses them from the start will have a huge ship to ship advantage until more composite designs take shape.

My personal biggest issue will be implementing the gravity well... I kinda want to make it so that stars will have a natural gravity well so I wont have to code the AI to have them build a Gravity well on their stations and just have hyper deny be a large station only module. But star based wells would mess with the Ai since they would be unable to instantly warp from friendly stations until they left the radius... and that would mess with... everything.

[DancingWind]

Vellarain what is the difference between your described torpedoes and missiles?
The way I see it you are describing a flavor of a missile. All the disadvantages of missiles still applies to torpedoes.
If you can make 'huge torpedo' why not a missile?
If missiles are slow... a huge torpedo that has no acceleration to speak of is better at huge space distances? And against PDS? Also why chemicals? Wouldnt they use the same engine as a spaceships? Tomahawks for example are actually drones that are powered by jet engine, not chemical rockets.
If torpedo is stealth (emm there is no such thing as stealth in space but whatever) why not a your missile?

It seems to me you are trying to hard just use a magic ST topedo and dont bother explaining how it works
I'm fine with handwaveium, but if you are trying to do explanations, make sure they don't contradict each other.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Some exotic weapons out of SF that might be fun to implement.

-Plasma Torpedo ala Star Trek "Balance of Terror" episode. A massive, fast and long ranged shot capable of planetary scale destruction.

-Tachyonic Weaponry. By old theory Tachyons are particles that have a minimum speed equal to that of light. Travelling at FTL speeds makes them a direct fire or beam weapon that wouldn't interact with normal matter. However, if timed carefully they would decay to Light speed particles inside the target ships shields and armor in a massive release of hard radiation and energy.

-Singularity/Hawking Warheads. In theory create an artificial black hole with a radius of a few meters. In theory this would 'bite' a chunk out of the target. Then reverse the effect and all the captured matter would be released as raw energy. Effectively converting the captured volume of matter as a total conversion bomb.

- Or in the single most extravagant case of over kill in fiction, the destruction of the enemy planet in the "Grey Lensman" book, Take one planet of matter, and one planet of antimatter, accelerate them to near lightspeed moving in opposite directions. Then drop them through hyperspace, popping them out with the target world between them. I am not sure there are enough zeros to calculate THAT energy release.

[Aeson]

Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target. They move at the speed of light so the weapons travel speed will be as fast as the speed of light, so 20k speed or maybe higher.

If you're using the base game's numbers, then the maximum possible speed of light is roughly 2000 range units per real-world second at normal game speed (Warp Bubble Generators allow your ships to move faster than light and have a maximum speed of 2000 range units per second, so c <= 2000 r/s). Maximum theoretical speed of any of the main drive thrusters is 420 r/s (Starburner III, and not an attainable speed), so if you assume that any speed attainable by main drive thruster components is subluminal, that's a lower bound for c. Just something to consider.

Torpedoes: The oldest weapon in the history of human war

Says who? The oldest weapon in the history of human war is probably something along the lines of a club, and the oldest ranged weapon something along the lines of a thrown rock (a very basic 'mass driver'). Torpedoes, depending on the period, could be explosives which need to be attached to or run into the target and then set off (e.g. CSS Hunley's spar torpedo), a floating explosive with a contact trigger (a device which would now be referred to as a naval mine), or a self-propelled explosive device which may or may not have a tracking guidance system and which is generally detonated by a contact or proximity fuse of some form. None of these qualify as the 'oldest weapon in the history of war.' I don't believe that naval rams were ever referred to as torpedoes (at any rate, I cannot recall ever hearing them named as such), so they're probably out as an earlier form of torpedo, and they're still not the oldest naval weapon.

I'd honestly say that mass drivers have a better claim to being "the oldest weapon in the history of human war" than torpedoes do. Slings, bows, guns, your arms; all of these things are basic forms of mass driver, launching unguided or passively-guided projectiles at a target, with the damage of the projectile mostly being dependent on the projectile's mass, velocity, and form.

Missiles: I REALLY dislike the concept of missiles in a space setting. They require volatile fuel to gain velocity and they they are still too slow for any ships PDS system. Their payload is abysmal when you can have any other weapon system do the same job at much lower risk to entire crew by simply housing them on the ship. A torpedoes payload will remain inert even if hit by a weapon, they are kinetically fired into space with a programmed trajectory prior to being fired and are steered by small ion thrusters towards the intended target. Missiles, not so much... Their tracking systems are electronically loud and engine heat would make them easy targets for any PDS system.

The most commonly used definition of 'missile' with which I am familiar is that of a self-propelled projectile with an active guidance system. If the ion thrusters on your 'torpedo' can be used to drive the 'torpedo' in the forward direction, then your torpedo meets all the criteria to be called a missile by the preceding definition. In space, there's little reason why a missile would need to continually expend propellant. Thus, having the ability to fire a thruster in a direction that produces forward motion is sufficient to meet the self-propulsion requirement. This is in contrast to a missile within an atmosphere, which would need to constantly fire its main thruster in order to maintain speed due to air resistance. Now, there may be reasons why you might want a space missile to constantly expend propellant (particularly at a variable, and preferably somewhat unpredictable, rate), as if it's constantly expending propellant it should be accelerating, which should make it more difficult to hit than a constant-velocity target, but carries the downside of being more visible than a constant-velocity target (incidentally, your torpedo is not a constant velocity target unless it never makes use of its ion thrusters).

There's no reason why assisted launch could not be used for missiles, and indeed some modern military missile systems use assisted launch. Thus, that feature of your 'torpedo' is not sufficient, at least in the real world, to distinguish it from a missile.

Your torpedo also has an active guidance system, as it's capable of following a preprogrammed course and has active course correction in the form of the ion thrusters. Target tracking, while useful, is not a necessary feature of an active guidance system or of real-world missiles (e.g. V2 ballistic missiles, and I would assume also many ICBMs; the intended targets are immobile and have known locations, so there's no need for target tracking).

Finally, there's no reason why a missile's payload necessarily must be more volatile than that of your 'torpedo,' unless you're counting the propellant (but on the other hand, there's no real reason why you could not use the same propulsion system on the missile as the 'torpedo' uses). Kinetic impactors, high explosives, nuclear devices, one-shot lasers; all of these are possible payloads for space missiles and space torpedoes alike (and also space shells fired by space guns; this isn't, of course, to say that they're equally valid payloads).

I will further add that a properly designed tracking missile system should have a range advantage over a basic mass driver due to the ability to track the target. Basic mass drivers are limited in maximum effective range by your ability to predict where the target will be by the time the mass driver can reach it and by how accurately/precisely you can point the gun. Both of these limitations are relaxed to some degree by incorporating an active guidance and tracking system into the weapon. As far as the counter of "but PD" goes, a kinetic missile is approximately as immune to PD as a solid projectile from a basic mass driver, depending on relative sizes and the speed of the missile's final stage relative to that of the mass driver's projectile, and something like a bomb-pumped laser is more immune to PD than the basic mass driver's projectile. The missile, at least in theory, can be launched from beyond the effective range of the mass driver (the kinetic missile's final stage should have a similar, though possibly somewhat lower, effective range to the basic mass driver, so the overall range of the weapon should generally be greater), so the question is essentially how much are you willing to pay in ammunition capacity and ammunition cost per unit for greater range.

As far as the stealth aspect of your torpedoes goes, I'd say that that's likely a no-go. A basic mass driver is more stealthy than anything of equal size that can adjust its course by means of firing ion thrusters (at least, unless we allow for magitech), and if you can get the torpedo to a predetermined location using an active guidance system that relies only on passive sensors and a predetermined course you can probably (though not certainly) get a mass driver's projectile to the same location. If your torpedoes lack a homing device, as seems to be the case, then at best you've eliminated the range restriction based upon aiming accuracy, but your range is still limited by target position prediction and projectile speed and your projectile speed is likely slower (because the projectile is likely both larger and more fragile than a basic unguided projectile). You'll also have a higher per-unit cost for the ammunition, and likely less total ammunition capacity because the torpedoes are likely larger than the unguided projectiles you'd use with a basic mass driver, and also (if magitech is allowed) due to the addition of a stealth system.

Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target.

Effective ranges for laser-type weapons depends on:
- Beam spreading. The tighter the beam, the more effective it is at close range and the further out it can reach before the incident power per unit area becomes too low to matter.
- Your ability to predict the position of the target. If you can predict the target's position no more than 1 second into the future, the effective range of your lasers is going to be about 1 light-second unless it's limited by other constraints first.
- Your ability to point the laser in the direction you want to fire and the size of your target. Higher aiming accuracy lets you hit targets of a given size further out than lower aiming accuracy. Larger targets can be hit from further away with a given aiming accuracy than smaller targets can be, though the size differences in game may be slight enough that the resulting maximum effective ranges are effectively equal (e.g. if I can hit a size-100 unit at 10 light seconds and a size 1500 unit at 10.1 light seconds, that's only a 1% difference in effective range and so you might consider there to be no real difference in effective range).

Effective maximum range for unguided projectile weapons depends on:
- Your ability to predict the position of the target and the speed of your projectiles. If you can predict the target's position no more than 1 second into the future and your gun's projectiles move at 0.9c, the effective range of your gun is going to be about 0.9 light-second unless it's limited by other constraints first.
- Your ability to point the gun in the direction you want to fire and the size of your target. Higher aiming accuracy lets you hit targets of a given size further out than lower aiming accuracy. Larger targets can be hit from further away with a given aiming accuracy than smaller targets can be, though the size differences in game may be slight enough that the resulting maximum effective ranges are effectively equal (e.g. if I can hit a size-100 unit at 10 light seconds and a size 1500 unit at 10.1 light seconds, that's only a 1% difference in effective range and so you might consider there to be no real difference in effective range).
- How well the projectiles fired by your gun follow the path along which the gun was aimed. Basically folds into the accuracy and target size constraint above.

You cannot say with absolute certainty that lasers and laser-type weapons will have the greatest effective range of all unguided weapons. If target position prediction is the dominant constraint of both laser and unguided projectile weapons, then sure, lasers will have the greater effective range. It's conceivable for the other constraints on maximum effective range to come into play in such a way that unguided projectile weapons have a greater effective range than the lasers do, especially if your laser weapons have to be much larger than equivalent projectile weapons. That said, I would say that lasers are not particularly unlikely to have the greater effective range, especially if the circumstances of space battles are such that projectiles can be detected in time for ships to take evasive action (which imposes a more severe limitation on target prediction for projectile weapons than for laser weapons, as lasers cannot be detected before they begin hitting the target under standard physics; this however may not be in play depending on detector sensitivity and the ECM picture).

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Aeson

Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target. They move at the speed of light so the weapons travel speed will be as fast as the speed of light, so 20k speed or maybe higher.

If you're using the base game's numbers, then the maximum possible speed of light is roughly 2000 range units per real-world second at normal game speed (Warp Bubble Generators allow your ships to move faster than light and have a maximum speed of 2000 range units per second, so c <= 2000 r/s). Maximum theoretical speed of any of the main drive thrusters is 420 r/s (Starburner III, and not an attainable speed), so if you assume that any speed attainable by main drive thruster components is subluminal, that's a lower bound for c. Just something to consider.

Yeah, there are real problems getting the right scaling between system scale and the galactic scale, and trying to fit the weapons in with that just adds to the problem. There was a discussion of this last year here:

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To some extent, you just can't take the numbers too literally. You could assume, for example, that the weapon speed is not measured in the same scale as the ship speed (I'm honestly not sure whether they are to the same scale, although I suspect they are).

Osito

[Vellarain]

With the input from Aeson, I think I am gonna take a swing at seeing what kind of hoops I can make this game jump through.

Update: Welp, extended gravity wells work perfectly, moved their tech to be available at the hyper drive theory.

I tried tinkering around with energy weapons first. The blaster weapons gunners, need a slap upside the head. At 10000 ru their spread is roughly 90 degrees, though I cannot seem to find a value to control this... I really hope this 'spread' mechanic is not something buried in the engine. But good news! the AI has no trouble exploiting the new range values, so that is a relief.

Well worst case scenario, I can walk away happy with gravity wells actually allowing fleets to actually have the ability to stand off with stronger opponents and ship speed will actually mean something, even in the early stages of combat. No more warping in and blasting everything to pieces before they can even think about turning away!

[Osito]

[mispost]

[mordachai]

ORIGINAL: Vellarain
At 10000 ru their spread is roughly 90 degrees

I wondered if there is any way to overcome this. Osito's Research Unleashed ups the range & speed of ballistic weapons (rail guns), and they've got a wicked spread at even 500 clicks. So... they miss constantly at range. Which helps keep them from being too OP at range. But I don't know of any moddable values for the aiming aspect of weapons..?

[Vellarain]

I know, I am hitting the same issue as well. This would seriously impact rail/blaster weapons meanwhile beams/missiles/torps will see no impact at all. the longer the range, the more brutal the spread.

I see values added to the weapon types, that I cannon alter as well. Rail guns lose 10% accuracy while beams have a 10% bonus, but I cannot find the variable to change that. Additionally, the weapons effect on shields and armor I cannot seem to find and alter as well, say I want Lasers to ignore reactive armor but I cannot because this is a hidden value from what I can see...

I guess targeting computers will be very critical to rail gun and blaster success. Any race that would focus on that tech should also be dedicated to having the latest predictive gunnery.

[Aeson]

To some extent, you just can't take the numbers too literally. You could assume, for example, that the weapon speed is not measured in the same scale as the ship speed (I'm honestly not sure whether they are to the same scale, although I suspect they are).

A quick test using Shaktur FireStorm Is (speed 65), Plasma Thunderbolt Is (speed 125), and a ship with designed cruise speed of 72 and designed sprint speed of 112 suggests that the weapon speed and ship speeds are on the same scale. At any rate, a vessel with a cruise speed of 72 and a sprint speed of 112 was able to overtake its Shaktur FireStorm I projectiles (and quite rapidly if it was at full sprint at the time) and could almost keep pace with the Plasma Thunderbolt Is while sprinting. Another ship design with a designed cruise speed of about 60 was unable to overtake its Shaktur FireStorm I torpedoes but more or less kept pace with them while at cruise speed.

Incidentally, it appears that ships might be programmed not to fire weapons on ships if the target is moving faster than the projectile can propagate, at least in a pursuit scenario.