Regarding research

[Bigjoe5]

IIRC, LR weapons will be restricted to indirect fire weapons. All direct fire weapons will probably be called SR, even if their range is longer than most/all other short range weapons. The idea is that all PD weapons will counter all LR weapons, which would not be the case if there were LR beam weapons.

[IConrad]

The idea is that all PD weapons will counter all LR weapons, which would not be the case if there were LR beam weapons.

Why not? I just posited a situation where that could in fact be done.

[Krikkitone]

I think the emphasis was on ALL pd weapons must be able to counter ALL lr weapons.

If one has a pd laser, its going to be hard to explain how it intercepts a lr beam weapon.

Also it would require an instant response, the beam would not "travel" meaning that it wouldn't have a "location" to be fired on.

you could have some 'gravity pulse beam', where the gravity pulse can be disrupted my large amounts of energy going through it (ie a laser could 'shoot it down') and where it doesn't go too fast. (basically not much more than 3-4x the speed of a missile... of course that means it would have ~1/3-1/4 the "hp" of a missile)

[IConrad]

Considering that lasers do not travel at FTL speeds, and we are assuming that realism isn't necessarily all that significant... I'll recall this previous statement by myself:

I'm also thinking, by the way, that even the LR beam weapons could be intercepted by PD stuff. This would be something equivalent to throwing up Chaff; if you shoot a rocket at the path of a Laser, when the laser hits the rocket it is effectively harmlessly disbursed. If you throw up a beam PD weapon against a Gravity beam, it simply lacks the mass / decoheres the beam such that it no longer has its nifty gravitational-like effects. Etc. (This preserves the LR / PD 'arms-race' value whilst allowing beam-based LR weaponry.)

The idea here being that declaring a beam weapon to be LR means that PD could intercept it. Active defenses are... well, active. And we're assuming that our ships will have FTL sensor systems... which means they'd know when/where the beams were coming from.

LR/PD allows for LR beams, IMO.

[Bigjoe5]

Because any PD weapon would be able to shoot down any LR weapon, LR beams would only be viable if they could be shot down on reaction, by any PD weapon, which I don't see making sense. Also, a major aspect of LR weapons is that they take a while to get to their target. Without that aspect, the concept of the LR weapon is lost.

[IConrad]

Also, a major aspect of LR weapons is that they take a while to get to their target. Without that aspect, the concept of the LR weapon is lost.

I can see you're thinking that beam weapons are instantaneous-always-hit. I've been suggesting this entire time that this would not be the case at LR. It would still travel linearly -- but not instantaneously. Certainly, quickly -- but not instantly.

[Sui Generis]

Also, a major aspect of LR weapons is that they take a while to get to their target. Without that aspect, the concept of the LR weapon is lost.

I can see you're thinking that beam weapons are instantaneous-always-hit. I've been suggesting this entire time that this would not be the case at LR. It would still travel linearly -- but not instantaneously. Certainly, quickly -- but not instantly.

So in short, beams can be considered missiles with similar characteristics, such as interceptability, longer range and non-instantaneous travel-time if we only write something appropriate in the flavour text.

Well I think the key Idea is the declining/limited Returns

Laser I < Fusion I <LaserII-III <Fusion II-III< Laser IV+ < Fusion IV+<'Blaster'

so that the Laser Refinements are cheap, but if you researched+refined Fusion weapons instead you would be farther ahead in the long run.... because eventually those Laser Refinements will NOT be cost effective. Refinements extend a tech's useful life, not indefinitely so eventually the Refinements were a waste... a Short term investment with not much long term value.

I think that if it just comes down to that, researching the next weapon outright would generally be more useful. Refinements would only really be used in the endgame. But if the decision is between refining one type of weapon and getting a totally different type of new weapon, then players probably will choose to refine old weapons a bit before they get to the one that's just a more powerful version of the same weapon. The key isn't diminishing returns, but just plain different returns.

It seems to me that Krikkitone is thinking of an earlier idea I suggested in an older thread concerning tech refinement and advancement. If so then that was not what I meant; it is not enough to merely have refinements provide a diminshing short-term bonus to the power of weapons/shields, as this doesn't provide enough of an incentive to research them at all.

The way to make refinements and diminishing returns interesting is to make a small amount of refinement highly desirable (and almost necessary if the player intends on using the tech much), but let further refinement become less beneficial. To illustrate how this would work, please consider what I have termed

The graphics card model of technology obsolescence
So named because it models how new bleeding edge tech starts off at a very high cost, but drops very quickly. A lot like computer graphics cards of course!

Military technology starts out with a disporportionnately high production cost to add on to a ship. Say the ship hull costs 100 PP then the weapon might add 40 PP per slot it is mounted. This is because producing these devices is costly as they are currently little better than prototypes.
the first level of refinement knocks 10 points off of the cost
the second 7
the third 6
up until the tenth which does just 2 (for example)

Note that these numbers are completely arbitrary and made up. The intended behaviour is basically EXPONENTIAL DECAY.

Thus it is very useful and desirable to research the first two or three levels, as together they will more than halve the cost or some such number we deem fit. Without them, you could still use the new weapon/shield, but the production price tag would be exorbitantly high. But then if you intend to build a lot of these weapons, it could be sensible to research the next level or two as well, as it will permit the construction of more military ships with fewer PP.

The crux is that your refinements are limited in effect to just one weapon/shield/military device type - when you develop a new application it gains either very few or none of the refinement bonuses of the previous tech (Unless we deem the techs to be sufficiently similar, eg. mass driver family.). So you have to choose between short-term cost-reduction of existing tech, or instead of maturing the current technology refinement can be 'bypassed' in favour of the next theory up.

You might say the player can already bypass techs by just going from theory to the next level theory and not bothering with the application of the simpler tech, but this system extends that idea and makes it more flexible. Instead of it being an all-or-nothing choice between researching or bypassing a military application, the player has degrees of adoption to choose and must decide how much to invest in making the current gen better value for PP versus advancing to the better techs.

There would be a sweet spot where refining current tech brings lower benefits than researching the next gen, but refinements would always be the carrot that hangs closest, as a single level is quicker than researching a whole new theory and application. Plus if the player didn't especially need that weapon then just as they could skip researching it's application they could research the application (so it's ready to be refined if they need it) but otherwise move on to the next theory up.

[IConrad]

So in short, beams can be considered missiles with similar characteristics, such as interceptability, longer range and non-instantaneous travel-time if we only write something appropriate in the flavour text.

Think "torpedoes" essentially - but yes.

The one snag in this concept is laser weapons according to my above suggestion. Here, the program would have to have a tiny bit of intelligence. Effectively a laser would be two separate weapons in the same slot, with the weapon being used determined by the range between the two vessels. If within range of the SR version, then it is only a short-range weapon and does its full damage. If outside of the range of the SR version, then it is effectively a very fast, relatively weakly damaging, missile that can be intercepted by PD weapons. It would still have the same graphic, however -- it's just the mechanics that are different here.

That's what I'm envisioning, anyhow. We could also bypass the whole problem just by making Laser-type weapons cheaper than the other weapons of their generation -- they lack the extra punch per weapon, but being cheaper would mean you could build more ships. I'm not fond of that solution because the costs would have to be disproportionately cheaper for it to overcompensate for the core costs of a ship.

[Bigjoe5]

You still haven't explained how it makes any sense for a beam PD weapon to be able to shoot down a beam LR weapon.

[Yeeha]

I think pd weapons intercepting all LR weapons is bit absurd if there are going to be LR beam weapons and i think there should be some. Why not just class slow projectiles and plasma torpedoes and such as missile weapons and leave LR beamweapons to late techs with other countering methods such as advanced shields? It would make sense as energy beam gets unfocused over long distance and shield would be able to reflect such unfocused beam more easyly - reflective shield as ship upg?

[Sui Generis]

You still haven't explained how it makes any sense for a beam PD weapon to be able to shoot down a beam LR weapon.

I think pd weapons intercepting all LR weapons is bit absurd...

One word: technobabble. It would be sufficient to say something like all PD versions of beam weapons come with a special 'decohesion' effect that allows it to disperse the beam, or maybe some kind of destructible sacrificial object, (fired like a slog from a mass driver) could be fired to intercept it, or whatever other idea you can think of. In either case, having to explain how and why this is possible deserves no greater priority than how we explain away such effects as FTL travel, (hollow space anyone?) or how you manipulate gravitons to create gravity wells. An artistic license is permitted, because realism is no reason to do anything.

Alternatively, if we decide beams intercepting beams is going too much against the grain, we can quite easily say that Iconrad's beam is just another special type of missile. (After all, it might aswell be flying cows that say moo, for all the difference it makes to whether the game is fun or not.) The key part of his idea, I think, was that we might have weapons that combine the effects of SR and LR, presumably with some kind of cost or damage or rate of fire trade-off to make it balanced. If they can be used to make the game more fun (and I think they might) than it is worth trying to include them.

[Bigjoe5]

So you don't think it matters if we relabeled "research points" to "pounds of fish"— as long as everything else was the same?

The issue isn't realism, it's understandability.

Furthermore, I haven't seen any arguments explaining exactly what new strategic options the LR beams would offer. Your only argument in favor of them appears to be that it would be more realistic to be able to use such weapons from longer ranges with decreased power.

[Sui Generis]

The issue isn't realism, it's understandability.

That's missing my point. I didn't mean to say it was a problem because it was unrealistic - I was saying any difficulty with understanding could be solved with an appropriate description in the help/'galactopedia'/a tooltip.

If players are likely to find a part of the game 'absurd', then this can be solved by giving some rationalisation in the description, and effectively just saying something to the effect of "in FO things work like X". E.g.

...It would be sufficient to say something like all PD versions of beam weapons come with a special 'decohesion' effect that allows it to disperse the beam, or maybe some kind of destructible sacrificial object, (fired like a slog from a mass driver) could be fired to intercept it, or whatever other idea you can think of...

Just write something like that for each weapon or tech where it is needed. We would hopefully put more than the few seconds of thought I put into it and come up with something a bit better sounding of course! But if we ever feel that the game can be improved by putting something 'absurd' in (like beams intercepting beams or whatever) then we shouldn't hesitate to come up with something like this. After all, it is a game.

Furthermore, I haven't seen any arguments explaining exactly what new strategic options the LR beams would offer. Your only argument in favor of them appears to be that it would be more realistic to be able to use such weapons from longer ranges with decreased power.

Yes this is, I feel, the most important question.
Personally, I don't see that they are forced to be beams. Missiles or torpedoes would work just aswell.

The important characteristic of these LR/SR beams is that they will work at both ranges. Clearly they would have to have some kind of con aswell so that they don't become unbalancing and make all the other weapons worthless.

It's a bit hard to be specific about what strategic options would be opened at this stage, as they would depend on what kind of malus we choose for them; whether they would be less damaging, slower firing, less accurate or simply more expensive to research or build for example. But what we could say with certainty would be that an equipped ship would move on a scale from being highly-specialised towards being a versatile, 'jack-of-all-trades' type ship. It would be worse than a LR ship at LR, but be better than it at SR, and vice-versa for a SR ship too. It would be usable in more situations in a battle as it fires at both long and short range, but less effectively than a specialised ship would at the range it was designed for.

Thus the player could build a fleet with a certain proportion of 'jack-of-all-trades' ships as well as the usual LR and SR (and PD too) to supplement the fleets capability in each situation. The player would be more able to damage the enemy fleet if it frequently changed it's distance from yours, but in an otherwise straight fight against specialist ships at their 'native' range, they would come off worst. (Because the 'versatile' ships' weapons would be either weaker, slower firing, or have cost more to build and thus the player has less ships than if they had gone for specialist LR or SR)

To put it at it's most abstract, opening this option would allow a player to trade off on a spectrum from specialisation to versatility. Increased specialisation tends to make your ships more effective, but you are less able to cope if you happen to have a shortage of say SR ships at the time. Increased versatility does the opposite and makes your ships more fungible. It means you are better insured against surprise or the unknown, if for example an enemy used counter-intelligence to disguise a large build-up of LR ships at your border. Or if you faced two potential enemies - one of whom tended to favour SR ships, the other LR ships - both build them in large numbers and it would be prohibitively expensive to build enough ships of the countering class to beat both. In that case building more versatile ships means your same ships would be better able to cope with both situations and less likely to be catastrophically damaged than if you had your fleet 'configured' for the wrong type of enemy ships.

That is certainly what I would consider a very strategic decision, but it only becomes relevant if we allow such weapons to exist in the first place. Hence my advocacy.

[Bigjoe5]

I see your point, but AFAIK, there will be more than one weapon type permitted per ship, so if you wanted, you could build your versatile ship which can be used at LR and SR, but is less effective at both because it has half the weapons of each type that a specialized ship would, simply by filling half the external slots with SR and the other half with LR.

[IConrad]

Wow. Never expected to be /this much/ of an instigator!

I see your point, but AFAIK, there will be more than one weapon type permitted per ship, so if you wanted, you could build your versatile ship which can be used at LR and SR, but is less effective at both because it has half the weapons of each type that a specialized ship would, simply by filling half the external slots with SR and the other half with LR.

Well, that's true and not-true. Sure, there will be multiple slots made available but those slots won't be just for weapons. Allowing a weapon to be both LR and/or SR (depending on the actual range of fire) opens up other slots for things like scanners, drive augmentations, stealth equipment, etc. Requiring someone to essentially have one fewer slots just to be able to work in both LR and SR capacities is actually much more crippling than if the weapon itself were merely less effective.

Insofar as I can see it, the idea of a weapon that changes from LR to SR 'type' depending on distance between attacker and attackee is no more greatly complicated a coding project than a weapon which damages all ships within a specific range of the first target. (Not that I'm a programmer.)

If one of the people who //will// be coding The Beast We Name Combat is reading this, do you have any thoughts on the matter?