Multiple Missile Salvoes Arriving Simultaneously

[AnotherDilbert]

I think we have a problem.

In it's simplest form:
A ship launch 100 standard missiles on round 1 at Distant, arrives round 11.
A ship launch 100 advanced missiles on round 4 at Distant, arrives round 11.

The target might be able to kill 80 missiles per round, so it can survive a single salvo every round.
But in this case two salvoes arrive round 11, overwhelming point defence, and probably destroying the target.

Before TL 14 there is no defence, the double salvo will almost certainly destroy the target. At TL 14+ the defence is to fill almost all hardpoints with PD Batteries, forsaking most offensive weaponry.

Squadrons of tiny missile drones will make cruisers and battleships as outdated and quaint as sail ships.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I will be taking the repulsor array rules from GT:ISW to solve this problem.

Each repulsor array can affect up to 100 missiles per turn and provides a -15 to hit DM.

 

[Nerhesi]

Hrm...

Kneejerk is to make PD per salvo - of course that totally swings it the other way, so no.

The problem presents because we go from "tracking the missiles" per turn (launch on X, hit on X+11) - to move the missiles as you see fit.

This also seems to be a bigger issue for distant range launches.

I feel like to counter we need to... for example, put a half-life on missile flight-time. (maybe half salvo strength every 5-6 turns). Not only does try to simulate that -6 distant launch DM, it may also balance the long range missile sniper (a little)

AnotherDilbert - thoughts? Alternate options?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A brutal way to alleviate the problem is to remove the high acceleration missiles. If all missiles travel at the same speed it's much more difficult to achieve a double salvo.


Otherwise we could consider the double salvo the new normal and make PD twice as efficient to deal with it. That clashes with the Core book, and makes combat more complex. I guess most people do not want to have to calculate arrival times and only launch missiles at precalculated rounds.


We could make PD batteries percentage based, like it was in January, i.e. intercept each missile on 4+. Can obviously not be combined with Point Defence software.

This might actually work: Say that PD Batteries are last-ditch defences simply killing half of all incoming missiles, after laser turrets are done. One PD Battery required per 1000 dT of ship, round up. Laser turrets work as usual and can be shared with Point Defence software.

If we wanted to complicate things we might say each 10% of hardpoints dedicated to PD Batteries kills 25% of incoming missiles, to a maximum of 75%. That would take 30% of your hardpoints and 6% of the ship's tonnage, that is a hefty price.

Some missiles would always hit, and a double salvo would be very good, but perhaps not completely devastating.

We would need to test it...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Assume this:

Say that PD Batteries are last-ditch defences simply killing half of all incoming missiles, after laser turrets are done. One PD Battery required per 1000 dT of ship, round up. Laser turrets work as usual and can be shared with Point Defence software.

Take a Missile Ship http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=900258#p900258

Take a BC Particle Ion http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=900151#p900151
modified with 1 PD Battery / 1000 dT. All turrets (744) are laser. We get some space over so upgrade spinal from 6DD to 7DD.

We get:
TL 15, 110 kT, 36,7 kT Drop tank, Armour 15, 8066 Hull, GCr ~113.
J-4, M-9 (with drop tank)
Particle Spinal: 7DD
50 small Ion Bays
744 laser turrets
110 PD Batteries


The missile ship launches 7905 missiles / attack
A double salvo is 7905 Advanced missiles and 7905 nuclear missiles.
Laser turrets kills 4464 nuclear missiles, 3441 nuclear missiles remains.
PD kills 1720 nuclear and 3952 advanced missiles, 1721 nuclear and 3953 advanced missiles.
Damage is 1721 * 6 + 3953 * 3 ≈ 22185 or 27,5% of the ship. A heavy blow, but not completely devastating.


A normal single salvo of 7905 nuclear missiles would be:
A salvo is 7905 nuclear missiles.
Laser turrets kills 4464 nuclear missiles, 3441 nuclear missiles remains.
PD kills 1720 nuclear missiles, 1721 nuclear remains.
Damage is 1721 * 6 ≈ 10326 or 12,8% of the ship. Not unreasonable?


Note that this is basically the best missile defences we can achieve, we can never completely kill a large missile salvo.


Possibly laser turrets are a bit weak, we could fix that by giving them a small bonus with PD software, say +1 and +2 respectively.

 

[phavoc]

One of the basic maxims of combat is to overwhelm the defenders defenses in order to inflict damage.

This question re-opens the basic question about how distance combat should work, and whether or not the system is designed to make it effective, or it's more about getting lucky.

You also need to consider how the rules affect smaller, adventure-class ships, and much larger pure military ships. How two destroyers fight is different than how two cruisers fight, and different than how two battleships fight. If you are in a free trader and a dozen missiles are heading your direction you probably should be pretty worried. If you are a 250,000 battleship and 40 missiles break through your defenses, should you be equally worried, or just shrug it off?

 

[Nerhesi]

Yeah that seems to be a significant change to how PD batteries work - so not a big fan of that approach.

I tend to look at it as:

- This isn't a problem in the base game (where if you launch of separate turns, they hit on separate turns).

- Therefore if this is an issue using the radial-sector movement based thingy, we need to address it for just THAT.

So:

a) Is it a problem? (yes? maybe not? Do also have scenarios where missiles launched in the same turn will now strike in different turns? - aka vice versa.

b) If yes - jury-rig fix it to address the problem scenario, rather than re-open the core mechanics.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

- This isn't a problem in the base game (where if you launch of separate turns, they hit on separate turns).

No, you can achieve this with the Core book, by firing missiles from different ranges. You can achieve this in Basic High Guard with missiles with different acceleration. You can achieve this in Fleet Combat.

It is a serious problem: A cheap missile drone http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=900314#p900314 easily defeats any ship using this trick.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Example Core Book:
We fight a Patrol Corvette with 4 triple pulse laser turrets vs 8 Light Fighters with a single missile rack.

The Patrol Cruiser (4G) will try to close in to Long range, then it will try to keep the range to avoid dogfight.
The Fighters accelerates towards the Patrol Cruiser at 4G, since we cannot hit at Distant range.
We reach Very Long range in round 7, Long Range in round 10.
The Fighters launch in round 6 at Very Long, arriving in round 10.
The Fighters launch in round 7 at Very Long, arriving in round 11.
The Fighters launch in round 10 at Long Range, arriving in round 11.
In round 10 the Corvette is targeted by 8 salvoes of 1 missile, uses PD against 4 salvoes killing them, 4 remains.
In round 11 the Corvette is targeted by 16 salvoes of 1 missile, uses PD against 4 salvoes killing them, 12 remains.
Missile to hit is: 2D +1[No of missiles] +1[Smart] = 2D + 2, hit on 7+ (58%), average Effect 2,1
Missiles hit ( 4 + 12 ) * 58% ≈ 9
Missile damage ( 4D - 4[armour] ) * 9[missiles hit] * 2,1[average effect] ≈ 10 * 9 * 2,1 ≈ 189, Corvette destroyed

 

[phavoc]

Then would the suggestion be fix missile all missiles to be X speed, and all torpedoes to be X speed?

So long as the range bands exist as they do, a clever player will deploy their missile-capable assets in order to swamp a defender with the maximum number of missiles in a single turn.

One way to help adjust this is to have small craft, such as fighters, to be equipped with fighter-only missiles and torpedoes. By doing so you can limit the range of them to short/medium, thus forcing fighters on the offensive to close with an enemy. Starfire had two classes of missiles - starship based ones, and fighter-based ones. It caused fighters to close with the enemy, and they often suffered big losses. On the other hand, a fighter strike with missiles and then lasers or primaries tended to end the life of starships rather abruptly.

It comes down to how simple do you want the combat rules. If we abstract everything you will continue to find situations like this that cause a problem. Since we don't use vector-based movement, ships can do all kinds of outlandish movements, as can missiles. There's no fix for that but throwing out the current rules and starting over with a base line that can handle changes of this type. Pretty much every weapon should have some sort of counter or defense, so that should be the basis from which you build your combat system. But Traveller fleet combat has never been as well laid out as other gaming system. The original HG abstracted the crap out of everything. And as the first few tournaments showed, the rules had lots of ways to exploit them.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Then would the suggestion be fix missile all missiles to be X speed, and all torpedoes to be X speed?

No, note the Core book example above used only standard missiles.

But Traveller fleet combat has never been as well laid out as other gaming system. The original HG abstracted the crap out of everything. And as the first few tournaments showed, the rules had lots of ways to exploit them.

I rather liked it, it was streamlined enough (with statistical combat resolution) that you could actually fight a few battleships without dying of boredom. Most of the perceived problems with HG is that people didn't like the results, i.e. fighters and battleships didn't work.

 

[phavoc]

Then would the suggestion be fix missile all missiles to be X speed, and all torpedoes to be X speed?

No, note the Core book example above used only standard missiles.

But Traveller fleet combat has never been as well laid out as other gaming system. The original HG abstracted the crap out of everything. And as the first few tournaments showed, the rules had lots of ways to exploit them.

I rather liked it, it was streamlined enough (with statistical combat resolution) that you could actually fight a few battleships without dying of boredom. Most of the perceived problems with HG is that people didn't like the results, i.e. fighters and battleships didn't work.

Yes, it's always a question of how fast/how long do you want your ships to last in actual combat. In other gaming systems (RL, Starfire) you can have ships die each turn, sometimes your battlewagons, sometimes pesky escorts. Really depends on how the player focuses their fire. Right now it feels like the abstraction is at a level that is trying to stay in the CT-HG mindset, but also give people more map-like maneuvering. The problem is the mix doesn't seem to work well at all levels. Either we need MORE details, or MORE abstraction.

 

[PsiTraveller]

And with all the control software available, does a missile HAVE to move at top speed all the time. Is it possible to launch a missile salvo at speed 5 in round 1, then launch a second salvo moving Thrust 10 in round 2 that catches up with the first salvo of missiles and joins it and the newly formed larger salvo then moves ahead at whatever speed you want.

Yes this makes missiles even more dangerous, but from a salvo standpoint as an attacker you want large salvos because they overwhelm PD. Forming larger salvos would be a strong tactic.

It opens up the first salvo to multiple EW attempts, but if you are willing to take that chance, why not?

 

[Nerhesi]

I think this will have to remain a valid tactic, because to paraphrase Phavoc, it is a valid tactic.

Defenses can either be unrealistic like "saves" - where basically, once you have enough coverage, then lets say you have a 3+ vs torps and 2+ vs missiles (on 1D). This is unrealistic because my defense is the same effect whether I'm attacked by 1 or 10,000 missiles.
Or
Defenses can be based on an X projectiles per turn defended against. This is the more realistic approach (example, 1 turret can engage up to 5 missiles a turn). The problem that Salvo "arrival" can be manipulated as AnotherDilbert has skillfully shown.

I think that "salvo manipulation" is a valid tactic though - I'm sure we all remember doing this from wing-commander, to tie-fighter, to Freespace, to X-series games, where we would launch missiles at a low craft speed, increase speed to catch up, then very quick reduce speed and launch another salvo - thereby allowing more missiles than you can launch at once to strike at once This was also possible via launching, afterburner/boost, catchup and launch again, repeat.

The only realistic defense to this was AoE/explosive/Flakk style defence (The closest would be fragmentation missile). This would be extra effective versus that "clump" of "simultaneously arriving missiles".

So we are left with the following options:

a) Small text box indicating how Fragmentation missiles work vs incoming salvos. I would be very apprehensive about this, as we would be increasing the value of missiles yet again (this time by making the best anti missile defense, also missiles!). I would also make sure this is not effective against torpedos. We'd be looking at 1 frag missile required to remove 1 missile. So salvos of equal size required (not due to damage required, but ensuring you capture an incoming missile in the blast). Improving this would simply have everyone using all missiles all time - and I'm not sure I even like this option...

b) Leave the issue as is. Not an issue but a tactic.

c) This is not elegant, but it will significantly cut down on the possible abuse: "Salvo strength is reduce by 50% per 5 turns of travel due to attrition (fuel, whatever, etc)" - That way that simultaneous salvo tactic is less impactful when launched from distant range. From closer rangers, you're dealing with possible fire while trying to time your salvos

 

[arcador]

you say c) is not elegant, but it actually solves part of the case (or the whole case?) without changing any rules in a way that will require revaluation of the designs up to this point (no change in how PD works, no change in missle speeds, no extra rules that might seem lame). An argument might be that the missiles are losing fuel; or the defending ship can now optimize it's evade trajectories/angle since because of the momentum the missiles are becoming predictable (so space stations won't benefit from this).

It can simply be added to firing missiles in Distant - instead of the current rule (for meek -6) to this. This actually might make missiles a bit more viable in long range for adventure class ships (becasue -6 at that scale can be a lot), and at the same time make the rule has some impact on bigger scales (because -6 means nothing in hundreds of missiles).

And btw there is no EW in the fleet combat rules?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

a) Small text box indicating how Fragmentation missiles work vs incoming salvos. I would be very apprehensive about this, as we would be increasing the value of missiles yet again (this time by making the best anti missile defense, also missiles!). I would also make sure this is not effective against torpedos. We'd be looking at 1 frag missile required to remove 1 missile. So salvos of equal size required (not due to damage required, but ensuring you capture an incoming missile in the blast). Improving this would simply have everyone using all missiles all time - and I'm not sure I even like this option...

I don't think this would break anything, it would be less effective than PD Batteries either per ton or per hardpoint. Besides, missiles cost money and possibly magazine space.

b) Leave the issue as is. Not an issue but a tactic.

We risk making capital ships obsolete.

c) This is not elegant, but it will significantly cut down on the possible abuse: "Salvo strength is reduce by 50% per 5 turns of travel due to attrition (fuel, whatever, etc)" - That way that simultaneous salvo tactic is less impactful when launched from distant range. From closer rangers, you're dealing with possible fire while trying to time your salvos

This will mostly remove missile sniping from Distant range, making missiles much less powerful. Not unviable, of course.


We might let a fighter-squadron screening a bigger ships interpose themselves and take any attack aimed at the screened ship. Since fighters are basically immune to reasonable salvoes in Fleet Combat... This would also make capital ships less vulnerable to crit fishing in Basic and Ions in Fleet Combat.

 

[phavoc]

c) This is not elegant, but it will significantly cut down on the possible abuse: "Salvo strength is reduce by 50% per 5 turns of travel due to attrition (fuel, whatever, etc)" - That way that simultaneous salvo tactic is less impactful when launched from distant range. From closer rangers, you're dealing with possible fire while trying to time your salvos

This will mostly remove missile sniping from Distant range, making missiles much less powerful. Not unviable, of course.

But doing so nerfs what missiles are meant to be - the ability to project damage across broad distances beyond energy range. If missiles become less, or even useless at long range then what is the point of having them?

We might let a fighter-squadron screening a bigger ships interpose themselves and take any attack aimed at the screened ship. Since fighters are basically immune to reasonable salvoes in Fleet Combat... This would also make capital ships less vulnerable to crit fishing in Basic and Ions in Fleet Combat.

This would be a bad idea. Fighters have always had the ability to shoot at missiles in a point defense role. In this case you could have fighters attempting to engage a missile salvo, which is fair. They would only get a single attempt obviously, but still within acceptability. However having fighters routinely act as damage sinks for missile attacks smacks to me of rules lawyering. Unless your military routinely employs suicidal crews and ships this tactic would be rife for abuse. Also the missile are programmed for a specific target, to stop this from happening you could simply add in an evasion program to avoid anything not set as your target.

Overwhelming a ships defenses is the entire point of concentrated fire. If a ship is seeing the potential for a massive incoming salvo it has the ability to reverse course and run and make the salvo less of a threat. Or multiple ships can engage the salvo to lessen it's impact, or destroy it totally. And a player, if they are worried about missile salvoes, can load up on point defense to make the primary offense of their opponent useless.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

But doing so nerfs what missiles are meant to be - the ability to project damage across broad distances beyond energy range. If missiles become less, or even useless at long range then what is the point of having them?

Exactly what I wanted to point out. They are still very powerful at shorter ranges, though.

This would be a bad idea.

Normally I would agree with you, but I am desperately trying to save the concept of the capital ship.

Overwhelming a ships defenses is the entire point of concentrated fire.

Yes, but with double salvoes we can instantly kill ships, even if they have very good missile defences. We should give the defending ships a chance of surviving.

 

[Nerhesi]

I do not think punishing missiles for long-range-flight would affect their strength to such a degree that they would become useless. I think it would affect the unbalanced nature of firing while being out of range from any other weapon.

Firing from long range would still be heavily in their favour due to the -4 penalty associated with direct fire weapons and the simple fact of how much damage missiles can do per hard point.

Hence, why I'm in favour of "reduce salvo strength by 50% for every 5 turns of travel."

Now - do you think we should apply this to Torpedos and Long Range Missiles? I'm inclined to say no. Thoughts?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I do not think punishing missiles for long-range-flight would affect their strength to such a degree that they would become useless.

Certainly not. You would just stop using them from Distant, like adventure ships in Core.

Firing from long range would still be heavily in their favour due to the -4 penalty associated with direct fire weapons and the simple fact of how much damage missiles can do per hard point.

Yes. But in the defence of Particle and Meson, they do damage immediately.

Now - do you think we should apply this to Torpedos and Long Range Missiles? I'm inclined to say no. Thoughts?

You may want to include the Advanced missile, the high tech Long Range missile.


But it will not solve the problem with double salvoes...