[redsniper]

NO MISSILES
PRIMARIES ONLY
FINAL DESTINATION

[MatthTheGeek]

Btw: dont think that the GTVA Warships could work without a working supply chain. Specally Missles, Bombs and Flak shells would go out quite fast . They just need less than there UEF counterparts.

Exactly. Think AoA. The 14th managed to operate during these few days, under very intensive conditions, only because they had two Anemoi-class logistic ships fully stocked at their disposal. Even with them, they were low on supplies when they emerged back into our universe, which is a pretty good starting point to estimate how long GTVA ships can operate without support. An equivalent UEF fleet would probably never have made it past Forced Entry.

[Kolgena]

Hmm, I remember thinking that DE might be feeling harder because the new optimised Karunas didn't cause a massive FPS drop everytime they're on screen anymore, after reading this about bp's massive battle.

Might contribute, but not the root of the problem. I think someone posted here that they tested DE while ~ shift K all the beam turrets long before you get close to the warships. Katana still dies.

[LordPomposity]

Beam damage only starts being reduced if you drop below 5.5 fps or so (beams apply damage 5.5 times per second, but seem to skip a damage increment if it would occur on the same frame as the previous one). If your fps is that bad, you have bigger problems than funky beam behavior.

[headdie]

Shooting and broad side of a barn come to mind there

[Scotty]

Beam damage only starts being reduced if you drop below 5.5 fps or so (beams apply damage 5.5 times per second, but seem to skip a damage increment if it would occur on the same frame as the previous one). If your fps is that bad, you have bigger problems than funky beam behavior.

You've never tried to play BP Massive Battle, have you?

[LordPomposity]

Beam damage only starts being reduced if you drop below 5.5 fps or so (beams apply damage 5.5 times per second, but seem to skip a damage increment if it would occur on the same frame as the previous one). If your fps is that bad, you have bigger problems than funky beam behavior.

You've never tried to play BP Massive Battle, have you?

Yes, and I had bigger problems than funky beam behavior.

On a related note, the way beams apply damage lets you break a lot of missions by cranking time compression up to 64x when a friendly ship is supposed to be splattered by a fire-beam event. 

[niffiwan]

I thought I'd check the code to figure out what's really happening...

Code: [Select]

#define BEAM_DAMAGE_TIME            170         // apply damage

...

        // if the damage timestamp has expired or is not set yet, apply damage
        if((r_coll[r_coll_count].c_stamp == -1) || timestamp_elapsed(r_coll[r_coll_count].c_stamp))
        {
            float time_compression = f2fl(Game_time_compression);
            float delay_time = i2fl(BEAM_DAMAGE_TIME) / time_compression;
            do_damage = 1;
            r_coll[r_coll_count].c_stamp = timestamp(fl2i(delay_time));
        }
http://svn.icculus.org/fs2open/trunk/fs2_open/code/weapon/beam.cpp?limit_changes=100&revision=8275&view=markup

It seems to be that the delay between applying beam damage is 170 millisecs, so that would theoretically make the beam dps ~5.88 x beam damage value (it'll vary since at 60fps each frame takes around 16.6 millisecs to display, so you've got up to that much extra time added to the delay which could affect the damage output) - that's close to the 5.5 figure mentioned above.  However, this code runs once per frame so if you get less than ~5.88 frames per second, the beam damage will be less than it's normal value.  That fits massive battle for me, I get 2-4 fps

That's at 1x time compression, if you go to 64x time compression then the delay is reduced to ~2.65 millisecs, at that rate if your frames per second is less than ~376 then beam damage is reduced 

1x = ~5.88 fps
2x = ~11.76 fps
4x = ~23.53 fps
8x = ~47.06 fps
16x = ~94.12 fps
32x = ~188.24 fps
64x = ~376.47 fps

Can anyone see any mistakes in these calculations?

[NGTM-1R]

few days

A day. One. That's all it would take. Crash through the UEF defenses, flatten Earth and Luna, the war is over.

(Also the idea that AoA takes only a few days seems like a rather arbitrary estimate. The idea that the GTVA, which knows it can't depend on a functional supply line, would have a duration of under a week for their warships is just asinine.)

[MatthTheGeek]

true, could be because the UEF does not have Orion-sized logistic vessels 

And because the UEF are so logistic-dependant that even Orion-sized logistic vessels wouldn't be enough.

[qwadtep]

true, could be because the UEF does not have Orion-sized logistic vessels 

And because the UEF are so logistic-dependant that even Orion-sized logistic vessels wouldn't be enough.

What about Colossus-sized logistic vessels?

[-Norbert-]

few days

A day. One. That's all it would take. Crash through the UEF defenses, flatten Earth and Luna, the war is over.

(Also the idea that AoA takes only a few days seems like a rather arbitrary estimate. The idea that the GTVA, which knows it can't depend on a functional supply line, would have a duration of under a week for their warships is just asinine.)

What is so unbelieveable about the GTVA capships getting shot to under 25% and getting fully repaired draining the spare parts of the logistic vessels fast? If anything is unbelievable about AoA it's the speed at which the GTVA ships get repaired, rather than the supplies running low.

They expected to just walz into Sol, demand the surrender and be done with it. In the worst case blow up a few ships and always have the option of sending in another logistic vessel.
For that you don't need more than two weeks worth of food and water supply, ammunition for a small war and spareparts to keep your ships going through half a dozen heavy fights and the Anemois would have been loaded accordingly plus some extra just in case.

[headdie]

My issue is what is the cost benefit of the Anemoi, it is as long as a destroyer and presumably costs something of a similar order to produce and I bet comes with a hefty operating cost.

Its primary purpose is to extend the battlefield duration of a battlegroup's on board supplies and providing a buffer against shaky wartime supply chains and operations away from GTVA space, but what sort of duration does this need to become viable?

in AoA we see one supply ship extending the operations of a battlegroup to a few days under conditions which fluctuate from scouting, skirmishing, and short bursts intense combat with just the Lucifer engagement counting as a prolonged action.  While I normally consider BP to be well thought out, to me this seems too short a time to run a logistics ship dry to be justifiable in a fleet engineered to fight the shivans, even taking into account work done to the Sanctuary.

Unless I am missing something this would mean a logistics ship would be run dry in 1 maybe 2 days under the kind of sustained intense combat typically seen in a Shivan hoard invasion at which point would a few Tritons be better?

[The E]

The thing about Anemois is that they can feasibly produce anything required by a battlegroup, however their internal stores of prefabricated parts are limited. In other words, they have ready supplies for a moderate engagement length, but will have to resupply (either by resupplying from GTVA central storage facilities, or by converting a few nearby asteroids) after that.

Do note that combat engagements in the FS universe tend to be of the short sharp shock kind; prolonged campaigns like the one in Sol are the exception.

[T-Man]

The thing about Anemois is that they can feasibly produce anything required by a battlegroup, however their internal stores of prefabricated parts are limited. In other words, they have ready supplies for a moderate engagement length, but will have to resupply (either by resupplying from GTVA central storage facilities, or by converting a few nearby asteroids) after that.

So they're like the HW mothership essentially? Cool didn't realise that (just thought they were giant freighters). Out of vague saddo interest (passion of mine), would you imagine them able to do the full flog atom-smashing/forging like Star-Trek replicators (trash/slurry/debris goes in, Nyxs/Balors/Trebs come out ), or would they need specific raw materials?

[headdie]

The thing about Anemois is that they can feasibly produce anything required by a battlegroup, however their internal stores of prefabricated parts are limited. In other words, they have ready supplies for a moderate engagement length, but will have to resupply (either by resupplying from GTVA central storage facilities, or by converting a few nearby asteroids) after that.

So they're like the HW mothership essentially? Cool didn't realise that (just thought they were giant freighters). Out of vague saddo interest (passion of mine), would you imagine them able to do the full flog atom-smashing/forging like Star-Trek replicators (trash/slurry/debris goes in, Nyxs/Balors/Trebs come out ), or would they need specific raw materials?

I would be surprised if they weren't incredibly efficient at material reclamation 90+% perhaps but i doubt atomic manipulation would be involved due to energy needs of such a system

[NGTM-1R]

What is so unbelieveable about the GTVA capships getting shot to under 25% and getting fully repaired draining the spare parts of the logistic vessels fast?

The point was over here, you missed it; the GTVA knows it can't necessarily depend on being able to get supplies of beans, bullets, and black oil to people who need them during another Shivan attack, so my objection is based on the idea that you run out of fuel, food, and ammo capacity in under a week and the ship is no longer able to fight at full capacity. (Which would be remarkably stupid.)

Major damage is a different matter.

[headdie]

At the same time the Shivans have repeatedly demonstrated in all previous encounters that when they play, they play hardball and the capacity to repeatedly repair critical damage on multiple ships in the battlegroup should be part of the design specification

[crizza]

What is so unbelieveable about the GTVA capships getting shot to under 25% and getting fully repaired draining the spare parts of the logistic vessels fast?

The point was over here, you missed it; the GTVA knows it can't necessarily depend on being able to get supplies of beans, bullets, and black oil to people who need them during another Shivan attack, so my objection is based on the idea that you run out of fuel, food, and ammo capacity in under a week and the ship is no longer able to fight at full capacity. (Which would be remarkably stupid.)

Major damage is a different matter.

And here I was thinking that alls ships, no matter the size carry fusion engines with them...odd^^

[qwadtep]

What is so unbelieveable about the GTVA capships getting shot to under 25% and getting fully repaired draining the spare parts of the logistic vessels fast?

The point was over here, you missed it; the GTVA knows it can't necessarily depend on being able to get supplies of beans, bullets, and black oil to people who need them during another Shivan attack, so my objection is based on the idea that you run out of fuel, food, and ammo capacity in under a week and the ship is no longer able to fight at full capacity. (Which would be remarkably stupid.)

Bear in mind the intensity of those few days. A single battlegroup, divided into halves, undergoing several major fleet actions while stranded in hostile territory, with no hope of reinforcement against overwhelming numbers, a superdestroyer, and a juggernaut.

Without their Anemoi logistics, the 14th most likely would have run dry and folded in less than a day.

(As for the rate of repair, I kind of assumed the GTVA had developed some sort of rapid-repair protocol so they wouldn't have to pull assets off the front lines just because a Moloch sneezed in their general direction like a certain destroyer)