Meson Screens

[AnotherDilbert]

Example build: Meson cruiser (J3,9G,15Prot) with minimum meson spinal, 25% hard points in PDBatt, rest in turrets.

Assuming 8+ to succeed a good screen gunner averages 7 + 5(gunner) - 8 = 4 Effect. Each screen prevents 2D * 4(effect) = 28 damage on average. To prevent the damage from a single minimum spinal we need 3500 / 28 = 125 screens.

w/o screen: 50 kT, 25 000 Hull, GCr36.5
w screen: 55 kT, 27 500 Hull, GCr42

In single combat the ship with screens prevents almost all damage and clearly wins.
in a 10 vs 11 (equal cost) squadron fight the screen prevent 1 attack each round. Both sides kill the same number of ships per round, so the unscreened side should win simply because it has more hulls.
in a 20 vs 23 (equal cost) squadron fight the unscreened ships win.
in a fight against any other strategy (fighters, missiles, particle) the unscreened ships are better.

Conclusion: Inconclusive, might be worth it depending on fight, so reasonable cost, perhaps slightly expensive.

 

[Chas]

Be interesting to see the permutation with free TL upgrades... or minimal cost upgrades... with the weight reduction applied to the screens

 

[Chas]

Warning! A ramble. Just thinking aloud here :lol:

OPTION 1 - Angling Screens by either gunner or software

Okay, let's see if I've got this correct.

We want I think to be looking at the 5 screen combo = 1D damage reduction = 35 on average * effect = 35x4= 140 however I note that this is exactly the same average as the 5 x 28 individual screen calculation you've used AnotherDilbert so nothing there to worry about.

So if we have base Mesons per my suggested (and I think generally thought workable) 2DD for 7500 tons we get 7000 hull points for the base meson.

Which is to remove half of this damage = 3500 hull points = 125 screens you've noted above. Nothing particular in this, just want to clarify this again so it's clear. But I want to use half damage as that will be a good benchmark... it will give you an advantage vs. an equal weight particle spinal and give you a winning advantage vs. another meson spinal.

125 screens = 1250 tons = 3750 power = 2500MCr

That's playing
7500 tons of spinal at 2000 power and 2000 MCr (my suggested matrix)

Looking at the angle screens thinking 1 potential option is as follows (given my matrix is likely not too far off target):
1) We do need to change this issue with the use of the screens vs. a target that is still to roll to hit. The screens need to be used on hits.
2) Tonnage could be made smaller, we want meson screens not to own a ship, just problematic to fit enormous numbers. Right now high jump ships are very very constrained for space. We want to avoid the situation AnotherDilbert has shown where the unscreened ships are better than screened ships. If we include these screen rules in we will be really pinching what can be fitted into a Jump 4 craft again forcing to build big. How would people think about the equivalent of 1/10 tons of meson screens to hull points i.e. about 700 tons as base here? 1400 tons of screens to remove 2DD but with the size reduction on TL so the TL15 Jump 4 can fit these in without destroying the ship build paradigm. 700 tons with the 30% reduction is 490 tons - doable I think for survival though providing an advantage to lower jump ships.
So that would be 5.6 tons per screen at the same screen effect value, let's call it 5 tons/screen as good number here I think.
3) Cost to come down, the screens which are going to have to be included in every ship don't need to break the bank. If we say MCr 10 each?

Software
Now what say we allow optimize screen software to:
- only work on mesons that hit
- have an effective screen gunner skill of 3 or 4
- use multiple times against multiple attacks but only get one chance.

So in this instance, you will still fail rolls. Most ships will still use expert screen gunners you'd think even if you limit this to 1 peron / 50 screens or otherwise. However it could be easily argued only computerized software can do this job, humans just aren't up to it. So let's go with no gunners.

Lets look at the pros and cons of the two systems.

If the angle screens only allows one use/gunner/attack it can quickly get over whelmed by multiple equal weight attackers, it could be made to make the ship reasonably meson proof vs. equal weight 1 on 1 fights... which is not desirable. So we go back to a heavier more expensive screen as current. Which will completely preclude any opportunity of defense against multiple attackers there are too many resources tied up in the current screens and really disadvantage high jump ships.

If the optimize screens system is used, depending on the effect there'll be more outright misses of attacks and lower damage removal on each use. The power usage is such you'll get to use these a lot, the power drain is not so critical for the weight, it will be a big ship that is mounting a 7000 ton spinal. Which is workable, you won't get a situation where a ship is invulnerable to attacks.

If you used a good gunner for that multiuse system that would make the ship virtually invulnerable.

***

OPTION 2

Let's use the base screen power vs damage and auto success. In this instance we need very inefficient screens without use of the energy efficient power TL advancement.

7000 hull points vs 125 screens in this instance is 3750 power points. Those power points converted directly to damage reduction if I'm using 3500 hull points as my benchmark is close enough so let's keep things as is. However the efficiency here is not a strain on ship's resources.

So let's use 2 x powerpoint = 1 x damage points.
.

The weight is current, 1250 tons can remove a maximum of 3750pts so we double the current power demand to 60 power points.

7,500 power points bites at a 50k or 75K cruiser that might be mounting a 7000 ton spinal in terms of the base power points of normal ship. It's only 375 tons in power plant at TL 15 though, and less if high efficiency batteries are used. So easy for a ship to double up on this and work against multiple attackers. But is that a bad thing? No, but what I don't like in this system is that you can still completely nullify the spinal, which I don't like. Yes, it makes sense on a fleet scale. We can push the inefficiency up even further, but that gets back to the same situation with the angle screens, you're invulnerable to one attack, but quickly overwhelmed for multiple attacks... for an unbearable resource allocation. Looking at it this way I'm not so keen on it.

What I might feel suits is like a curve of diminishing resources. 50% power points of screens removes 50% damage, 75% screens removes 66% damage, 100% screens removes 80% damage. Max.
You get to choose your resource burn, but will get smacked no matter what. Still under multiple attacks, you can do a bunch of 50% damage and still survive... if you have the power points.

So how to implement this in a simple game manner. Make it 2 choices, 50% for 50%, 100% for 75%. Workout the damage of the meson spinal attack. Decide to nullify 50% of 75% of the attack calculate the powerpoint burn. Away you go.

In the game system maybe the occasionally missing optimize screen solution is the way to do it.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think you are making this much too easy...

A warship will not have a thousand tons free somewhere. So to squeeze in the screens you will have to make the ship bigger, with bigger and more expensive hull and drives. You also have more hard points for secondary armaments, so you fill those, again making the ship bigger...

Basically you have to make a reasonable design (Ship A), then toss in the screens, adjust till it fits and you have a new design (Ship B). Then you can compare Ship A vs Ship B, but since Ship B is probably more expensive, you have to compare say 12 Ship A vs 10 Ship B so you compare the same cost.

Now you can draw conclusions about effectiveness.

And then you have to remember that meson screens only work against Meson Guns. So if the enemy comes after you with missiles or fighters they are just dead weight...

 

[Nerhesi]

I think you are making this much too easy...

A warship will not have a thousand tons free somewhere. So to squeeze in the screens you will have to make the ship bigger, with bigger and more expensive hull and drives. You also have more hard points for secondary armaments, so you fill those, again making the ship bigger...

Basically you have to make a reasonable design (Ship A), then toss in the screens, adjust till it fits and you have a new design (Ship B). Then you can compare Ship A vs Ship B, but since Ship B is probably more expensive, you have to compare say 12 Ship A vs 10 Ship B so you compare the same cost.

Now you can draw conclusions about effectiveness.

And then you have to remember that meson screens only work against Meson Guns. So if the enemy comes after you with missiles or fighters they are just dead weight...

Dead on - I'm actually currently satisfied (as you've shown in the OP) by their performance. They are dead-weight against other weapons.

 

[Chas]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just wanted to see how the options looked. Let's keep focused on the key issues for now:

1) The usage of screens on spinal attacks that might miss. This is not on, if we allow this then screens might as well not be used, the cost and resources in this case are not justified. It needs to be reworked so that either it happens when a screen hits, or if the spinal misses the screens are still available for use for another shot.

2) The cost. I don't see that paying more than the weapon to reduce half the damage of the weapon is fair. I'd prefer this was dropped to 10MCr/screen.


Other issues:
I'm personally not so happy with the need for all these 'expert' meson screen operators. What happens in the interim. The Imperial Navy has operators spending entire tours inside meson attack simulators before they're allowed out in the real world?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I'm personally not so happy with the need for all these 'expert' meson screen operators. What happens in the interim. The Imperial Navy has operators spending entire tours inside meson attack simulators before they're allowed out in the real world?

That would be a reasonable assumption. Don't forget the surgical augmentation...

Even more troubling are the 1000 expert gunners manning the PD laser turrets that a battleship might require.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Or in another way of thinking about it: We have a Navy of fighter jocks, not press-ganged swabbies.

 

[Chas]

I'm personally not so happy with the need for all these 'expert' meson screen operators. What happens in the interim. The Imperial Navy has operators spending entire tours inside meson attack simulators before they're allowed out in the real world?

That would be a reasonable assumption. Don't forget the surgical augmentation...

Even more troubling are the 1000 expert gunners manning the PD laser turrets that a battleship might require.

Very valid point. Still prefer a good software option here personally, rather than the massed crews Matt seems to be favoring.

Regardless any thoughts on the other two points: the working on hits and cost?

 

[Nerhesi]

Or in another way of thinking about it: We have a Navy of fighter jocks, not press-ganged swabbies.

The Aslan and Zhodani Navies!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Regardless any thoughts on the other two points: the working on hits and cost?

I think we can use the ships from the OP, even with your suggested spinal damage.

w/o screen: 50 kT, 25 000 Hull, GCr36.5
w screen: 55 kT, 27 500 Hull, GCr42

One on one we can see that the ships with screens take half as much damage and wins easily.

20 vs 23 (equal cost): Each ship is killed by ~4 spinal hits. The Meson Screen prevents half a hit. With ~50% hit chance [probably 42%-58% at Long range, w dodging] we need to fire roughly 8 mounts to get 4 hits. Basically the meson screen prevents a shot whether it hits or not, so we need another shot at the screened ships, for a total of 9 shots.
The 20 screened ships kills 20 / 8 ≈ 2,5 non-screened ships per round.
The 23 Non-screened ships kills 23 / 9 ≈ 2.5 screened ships per round.
Conclusion: The non-screened ships win because they have more ships to start with.

The big problem for screens is that they can only be used once. In squadron combat where we will concentrate fire they will not be very effective.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

To make the case for screens a little better we can make modular hulls with a big defensive module. Modules can be Meson Screen, PD Batteries, or secondary bay armaments.

So if we need to fight an enemy that likes missiles we use the PD module, against meson fans we use the Meson Screen module, and so on...

Each module will be very expensive and buying several modules for each ship will not be cheap, even if it is much cheaper than mounting all the defences on the ships.

 

[Chas]

Regardless any thoughts on the other two points: the working on hits and cost?

I think we can use the ships from the OP, even with your suggested spinal damage.

w/o screen: 50 kT, 25 000 Hull, GCr36.5
w screen: 55 kT, 27 500 Hull, GCr42

One on one we can see that the ships with screens take half as much damage and wins easily.

20 vs 23 (equal cost): Each ship is killed by ~4 spinal hits. The Meson Screen prevents half a hit. With ~50% hit chance [probably 42%-58% at Long range, w dodging] we need to fire roughly 8 mounts to get 4 hits. Basically the meson screen prevents a shot whether it hits or not, so we need another shot at the screened ships, for a total of 9 shots.
The 20 screened ships kills 20 / 8 ≈ 2,5 non-screened ships per round.
The 23 Non-screened ships kills 23 / 9 ≈ 2.5 screened ships per round.
Conclusion: The non-screened ships win because they have more ships to start with.

The big problem for screens is that they can only be used once. In squadron combat where we will concentrate fire they will not be very effective.

Yes, and that was basically the conclusion I reached. Make the screens too easy to implement and in a one on one, the meson will never win because it's too easy to make a ship invulnerable. But on a one time use the screens aren't doing much on a fleet scale. But make the screens multiple use and you get ships invulnerable to all meson attacks.

There's a fine line here.

I think we might be able to walk that line with:
- existing mesons screens at multi use
- with much greater power drainage. If we triple or quadruple the power consumption - we want to completely pull the power from a ship's grid where it has to cap out vs. multiple attacks

 

[Chas]

Hmmm... thinking this through a bit more... as long as we make the screens only one time use... we can use the screens in a large ship for cruisers expecting a one on one situation or having to run if out numbered. Otherwise mesons rule on the battlefield.

I'd still like to make them a bit cheaper, 10MCr.

And perhaps trim the difference between meson's and the other spinals if screens aren't going to be that effective/popular in mass use?

The meson's are at an easy calculation point now so:

How about -2% armour for particles and -1% armor for rail guns?