Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Iain Baker on December 15, 2019, 02:49:04 pm
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Hi folks!
I have been playing around with FRED doing 'who would win' missions. 1 Sathanas Vs X numbers of destroyers.
Results thus far: To reliably take out a Sathanas using Zapp Brannigan tactics (i.e. all ships attacking head on so all are in the fire-arcs of the Sath's main beams) whilst still leavling at least one destroyer alive at the end requires a minimum of:
9 Orions / Hatshepsuts / Hecate / (Mix and match of these, not 9 each)
2 Titans + 2 Erebus (Which just goes to show just how much more powerful they are) :cool:
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Who should I put up against who next? ;7
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How many Collossi vs one Sathanas. How far can 1 Collossus bring down 1 Sathanas with the same tactics.
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Infinity bombers vs 2 big fat saths.
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Note: I think that if you're using FSBlue, the allied destroyers will have their stats boosted a bit. Or the Sath's main cannons aren't as powerful like they used to in FS2.
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Hmm...
How many Mjolnirs vs 1 Sath?
Or, how many Ravanas vs 1 Sath? :p
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Try the Hades.
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Honestly that's not a really meaningful comparison. There's so many different variables that go into an actual engagement that just smashing them together like action figures doesn't really tell you much about "who would win?"
OTOH it's fun watching ships shoot giant beam cannons at each other, so what the heck.
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OTOH it's fun watching ships shoot giant beam cannons at each other, so what the heck.
Indeed it it. I wonder how Fenris attacking head on it would take to bring down a Sath.
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2 Titans + 2 Erebus (Which just goes to show just how much more powerful they are) :cool:
... but is that a good thing?
Say what you will about the Sathanas being the "this is where the mission ends and the cutscene begins"-presence it still remains - for the lack of a better word - playable; something that cannot be said about BPs overgunned with specialized guns capital ships.
Part of what makes capital ships in FS2 such a compelling presence is also the fact that they are not the game's version of a terrain piece of scenery or "shoot the glowy bits"-boss fight (notable exception of the Lucifer)... Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't find better ways to interact with them, if you are set on keeping capital ships a neccessary presence (and no lobbing TAG missiles at them instead the usually dive bombing runs is not sufficent innovation IMO)
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Post some screens!
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2 Titans + 2 Erebus (Which just goes to show just how much more powerful they are) :cool:
... but is that a good thing?
Say what you will about the Sathanas being the "this is where the mission ends and the cutscene begins"-presence it still remains - for the lack of a better word - playable; something that cannot be said about BPs overgunned with specialized guns capital ships.
Part of what makes capital ships in FS2 such a compelling presence is also the fact that they are not the game's version of a terrain piece of scenery or "shoot the glowy bits"-boss fight (notable exception of the Lucifer)... Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't find better ways to interact with them, if you are set on keeping capital ships a neccessary presence (and no lobbing TAG missiles at them instead the usually dive bombing runs is not sufficent innovation IMO)
what
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@Orpheus: Err, this thread isn't a "Do you think BPs capship combat model could be improved?" but "Lets have ships beamed to death by Saths!!!"...
@Iain: Actually, does debris count too?
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@Orpheus: Err, this thread isn't a "Do you think BPs capship combat model could be improved?" but "Lets have ships beamed to death by Saths!!!"...
For the record, it is not just BP (its just because it has come up), I've been saying it for a while that many of the community-made ships are not very useful as they tend to have (*deploying hyperbole for effect*) turrets on every free surface and then two more for good measure; and in all honesty I am beginning to have the same reservations about the Aelous, the Deimos and the Sobek as well (the Moloch and the Mentu deserve the same kind of scrutiny if their retail armaments were as ... perculiar as they are)
And why not have a discussion about how to evaluate what can be seen by throwing capital ships at the Sath - about the design of both the Sath and any ship you pit against it.
Let's face it the Sath belongs to these terribly utilized ships, probably because of its role as the big show-stopper of FS2 - Now, I personally have no inclination to spend time on "making the Sath work as mission centerpiece", because none of the campaigns on my slate require me to (my next target is the SSD Bhaal FYI)
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IMHO that sounds like a mere aesthetical issue at best... what would be the point about having fewer turrets?
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Orpheus, I honestly have no idea what you're on about. Your complaint is that capital ships are bad because . . . they have too many turrets? What?
Capital ships are props and scenery (and occasionally characters). They exist as tools for the designer to provide backdrops, or story beats, or alter the area layout, or to put a thumb on the scales of an engagement. Talking about them in terms of balance is meaningless because the player's ability to interact with them is so much more limited than with a fighter. Their handling doesn't matter. Their speed doesn't matter. Their armor and loadouts don't matter since those can be changed easily through one of about a billion tools in FRED. You're not going to find people who design ships with thin coverage like an Aten because something like that isn't very useful as a prop because weapons are the primary way that a capship interacts with the mission.
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The whole BP capship combat paradigm is about slowing things down so ships live longer and get to do more instead of vaporizing each other in beam discos. A BP destroyer has more effective HP than the colossus. And there are far more mechanical interactions with capships than in retail. It’s the opposite of what you’re trying to argue.
It comes off like you’re saying “I’m the only one who’s thought about this and everyone else is doing it wrong.” That is not very pluralistic.
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Also the first BP campaign uses the Sath very well, it’s not just a big lump once its forward beams are gone. So there’s still urgency to the fight.
Using capships well is really more about the mission designer than the model.
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Say what you will about the Sathanas being the "this is where the mission ends and the cutscene begins"-presence it still remains - for the lack of a better word - playable; something that cannot be said about BPs overgunned with specialized guns capital ships.
Just to be sure, you're saying BPs capitals are unplayable? That's a bit of a strange statement if that's what you really mean given how much of a significant centerpiece they are in a large and highly successful mod! You might disagree with their design methodology, but to claim they're unplayable is patently and obviously false.
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an Aten because something like that isn't very useful as a prop because weapons are the primary way that a capship interacts with the mission.
The Aten is a good a example for what my point of dissent is: As a ship with less weapons to make it a piece of scenery you have to stay away from (a fact combounded with weapons designed to more a ship more like scenery e.g. massed Flak), and makes it more a prop. Additionally, it provides you with much more of an incentive to actually work out it role as a prop - to find a role for ship to be there other than to shoot its guns.
I am not saying there are no other ways to go about it - Solaris made it work perfectly well by utilization of ship-to-ship missiles: while the ships themselves on continuum from prop to scenery were much more scenery, the missile combat allowed for a point of interaction. (so does the use of ship-to-ship torpedoes in BP, as seen in AoA's Forced Entry)
Likewise, if another factor is involved, let's say a thematic throughline about the technology not being able to make up for poor decision making, you can also make ships armed to the brim work (which is how FS2 works that angle IMO)
Say what you will about the Sathanas being the "this is where the mission ends and the cutscene begins"-presence it still remains - for the lack of a better word - playable; something that cannot be said about BPs overgunned with specialized guns capital ships.
Just to be sure, you're saying BPs capitals are unplayable? That's a bit of a strange statement if that's what you really mean given how much of a significant centerpiece they are in a large and highly successful mod! You might disagree with their design methodology, but to claim they're unplayable is patently and obviously false.
What I mean with saying the Sathanas is playable is that besides its role as "steamroller", as it has in Bearbaiting and Straight, No Chaser, you can technically move action around at any distance and have the model at least give you the option to provide an managable impact - something I don't see working quite as well with the BP capitals ships, due to the abundance of overlapping fields of fire.
Now, I am currently mostly occupied with rehashing old stuff (the Rain on Ribos IV and Drums of War re-releases are around the corner basically), but I will put up in support of what I am saying in due time. I think once I get the whole sorry affair out as something playable, it will probaly be easier to understand what I am trying to get at.
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You can just slow down the turret rate of fire if you need to, or slap on different weapons. There are a ton of tools to manage lethality, and it's much better to have too many turrets than too few - you can just lock the turrets you don't need or remove them from the table entirely; you can't add additional turrets. BP's lethal anti-fighter fire is a design decision for the mod's gameplay and narrative, not something baked into the models.
Respectfully, I don't think you have understood the tools available to you.
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I think it's just a matter of scale, with what you can interact (like shooting down a Fenris) and what not (Deimos etc). An Aten does not appear useful, but perhabs one could argue that a cruiser should always be more dangerous than a wing of fighters.
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Generally speaking, I tend to prefer working with ships that have more turrets as it leaves you more options to fine tune how they perform. And BP proved that no matter how overgunned a ship is, making it as weak as the plot requires is rather trivial, whether you justify it through mission dialogue or do it more under the table (heheh, table).
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@Orpheus: Err, this thread isn't a "Do you think BPs capship combat model could be improved?" but "Lets have ships beamed to death by Saths!!!"...
@Iain: Actually, does debris count too?
Yup, it does. The Sath's 'arms' explode violently some time after the Sath itself has exploded. The explosion was enough to take a Erebus from 100%HP down to explody death 0% in an instant. Which is why you probably shouldn't engage a sath head on at point blank range :lol:
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On the other hand, outright ramming the Sath would probably safe the lives of many destroyers.
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How many Collossi vs one Sathanas. How far can 1 Collossus bring down 1 Sathanas with the same tactics.
More than two. One Collossus can bring it down by 15-20%. I will try more Collossi and see what happens :)
NB - Is there an optimal orientation for a Collossus to attack something large? I have tried broadside and at an angle which allows broadside and some of the forward facing beams to fire.
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I think that's the way to go. BTW does Colly have BGreen or BFGreen (like in the FS2 campaign) equipped?
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Note: I think that if you're using FSBlue, the allied destroyers will have their stats boosted a bit. Or the Sath's main cannons aren't as powerful like they used to in FS2.
Yeah, I noticed that. I looked at AI profiles. When the Sath was set to general and the destroyers to BP General the raitio raised somewhat, needing 3 Erebus and 3 titans to take it down with any chance of any of the destroyers still surviving.
I noticed there were additional AI profiles for BP, such as 'BALLS OF STEEL' and 'Fedayeen'. Anyone know what these do?
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I think that's the way to go. BTW does Colly have BGreen or BFGreen (like in the FS2 campaign) equipped?
Good question, I'll have a look. I suspect the former considering how ineffectual they were. If so I'l try with BFGreens :cool:
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On the other hand, outright ramming the Sath would probably safe the lives of many destroyers.
Possibly, although ramming doesn't appear to do much in FS. The Hades was still in one piece after being rammed by a Typhon, and I have collided at full afterburner speed with other fighters and been fine (which is perhaps why they revoked my pilots licence :lol: )
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Post some screens!
Will do - but noob question inbound - How?
I was thinking of recording video of the engagements and posting them on YT too - but again - I don't know how.
Old dogs trying to learn new tricks is hard :lol:
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Hmm...
How many Mjolnirs vs 1 Sath?
Or, how many Ravanas vs 1 Sath? :p
Great ideas, I'll add them to the list :)
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Try the Hades.
Yup, definitely going to give that one a go :lol:
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Oh my, 6 posts in a row..
Just press print to take screens, the game safes them automatically so you don't have to paste them somewhere.
OBS allows you to capture in-game footage.
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My issue with Solaris capital ship combat is letting a single missile salvo through often loses you the mission, and forces you to be a either a point defense "gun" or bum rush the enemy ship to take out the launch. At which point there's nothing else you can do. These are warship which are supposed to be able to defend themselves to a marginal degree, take a beating and hand one out.
FS2 Warships do this more slowly, but their damage is more consistent.
FS2 capship combat feels like two skyscrapers beating each other to death, which I honestly prefer.
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It's a more realistic design choice to have a kilometer long ship explode after a hit with a multi megaton nuke than taking several gigatons without big trouble.
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It's a more realistic design choice to have a kilometer long ship explode after a hit with a multi megaton nuke than taking several gigatons without big trouble.
Actually the opposite might be closer to the truth - you know, redundant compartments and reactive armor and such
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Without having done any calculations I'm pretty sure that there wouldn't be much left of a 2km long ship if you detonate 5GT next to it unless it's made of exotic matter.
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Realistic dynamics of combat in space is a pretty deep rabbit hole that probably isn't particularly useful for the topic of what makes a good/fun freespace capital ship, or for the topic of how many X a sathanas can beat in a fistfight
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Sure it isn't, the one thing above is "how many MT can a destroyer, built hundreds of years in the future withstand", what is obviously pointless as they were just typed in there by some guy who didn't thought the weapon tech descriptions.
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5GT
... which is yield that has no strategic or tactical use. Nightmare, you really have to loose the illusion that weapon yield says something about its usefulness.
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It's the Harbinger yield FYI. If you prefer a weapon the size of a Tempest with 0 Exatons of TNT equivalent, go ahead.
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My background in service, and job now and forever is in munitions, ERW, UXO and EOD. This is a hilarious convo.
I'm not going to engage but yah, this funny.
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I mean, contribute or don't? Don't just dangle it out there.
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Just read the last posts in the thread and put the pieces together.
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I mean, contribute or don't? Don't just dangle it out there.
I choose not to contribute. But take a second and think about just how many posts, in how many topics say something without contributing.
I'm certainly not going to ignore how farcical what prompted my comments was. I'm not ego hungry enough to force it in other people's faces, but I am far from above letting people know there's an elephant or two wandering around the house.
I'll set one link down here and point one out for you lot to quibble over. But I won't let in my opinion unqualified people dilute my mindset, affecting my work by talking "shop" over (and think hard about it) weapons in a game by the same company that made the dubstep gun.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield
I'm very qualified in this subject, I teach people who've been in the army doing what I did, I TEACH them when they get out into the civilian sector so I know more than anything people will find on the Internet to try and force an incorrect opinion down my throat. It's my kung fu. It pays my mortgage and any speculation based on anything less than first hand experience is worth as much as a jam sandwich being used in a heart transplant.
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I mean, contribute or don't? Don't just dangle it out there.
I choose not to contribute. But take a second and think about just how many posts, in how many topics say something without contributing.
I'm certainly not going to ignore how farcical what prompted my comments was. I'm not ego hungry enough to force it in other people's faces, but I am far from above letting people know there's an elephant or two wandering around the house.
I'll set one link down here and point one out for you lot to quibble over. But I won't let in my opinion unqualified people dilute my mindset, affecting my work by talking "shop" over (and think hard about it) weapons in a game by the same company that made the dubstep gun.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield
I'm very qualified in this subject, I teach people who've been in the army doing what I did, I TEACH them when they get out into the civilian sector so I know more than anything people will find on the Internet to try and force an incorrect opinion down my throat. It's my kung fu. It pays my mortgage and any speculation based on anything less than first hand experience is worth as much as a jam sandwich being used in a heart transplant.
I guess thats everyone told...except...what if the heart surgeon gets low blood sugar and gets the shakes? A Jam sandwich might be just the ticket in that situation :p
Popular mainstream Sci-Fi weapon yields tend to be stupidly over powered since the writers probably have little knowledge of realistic weapons and are following the rule of 'moar is better'.
A perfect example of a mis-match between stated specs and on-screen effect is the Helios torpedo. It allegedly has a yield of 10.5 GT (Gigatons of TNT) - which is frankly ludicrous. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba - the largest nuke ever detonated - had a yield of about 50MT.
10.5GT = 10500MT. This mean the Helios is about 210 times more powerful in raw yield than the Tsar Bomba. I have launched twin Helios torps at targets at point blank range and got away unharmed. Considering the Tsar Bomba's fire ball was several KM in diameter this seams unlikely. Ok - yeah, its space different medium different effects yada yada but we have detonated far smaller nukes in space which caused significant issues.
TL;DR - its a game, no need to take it seriously. Plus we all know the ultimate sci-fi weapon is to use an infinite improbability drive to turn your enemy's fleet into a collections of wales and and sentient pot plants :lol:
https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTM_Helios (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTM_Helios)
http://www.kylesconverter.com/mass/gigatonnes-to-megatonnes (http://www.kylesconverter.com/mass/gigatonnes-to-megatonnes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime)
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On a side note, both nuclear and antimatter weapons have still physical limitations in terms of the energy they can generate, so while it wouldn't change much about the discussion here (destroyers would be gone anyway) it's not like you could just enter what you want either.
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I mean, contribute or don't? Don't just dangle it out there.
I choose not to contribute. But take a second and think about just how many posts, in how many topics say something without contributing.
I'm certainly not going to ignore how farcical what prompted my comments was. I'm not ego hungry enough to force it in other people's faces, but I am far from above letting people know there's an elephant or two wandering around the house.
I'll set one link down here and point one out for you lot to quibble over. But I won't let in my opinion unqualified people dilute my mindset, affecting my work by talking "shop" over (and think hard about it) weapons in a game by the same company that made the dubstep gun.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield
I'm very qualified in this subject, I teach people who've been in the army doing what I did, I TEACH them when they get out into the civilian sector so I know more than anything people will find on the Internet to try and force an incorrect opinion down my throat. It's my kung fu. It pays my mortgage and any speculation based on anything less than first hand experience is worth as much as a jam sandwich being used in a heart transplant.
I guess thats everyone told...except...what if the heart surgeon gets low blood sugar and gets the shakes? A Jam sandwich might be just the ticket in that situation :p
Popular mainstream Sci-Fi weapon yields tend to be stupidly over powered since the writers probably have little knowledge of realistic weapons and are following the rule of 'moar is better'.
A perfect example of a mis-match between stated specs and on-screen effect is the Helios torpedo. It allegedly has a yield of 10.5 GT (Gigatons of TNT) - which is frankly ludicrous. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba - the largest nuke ever detonated - had a yield of about 50MT.
10.5GT = 10500MT. This mean the Helios is about 210 times more powerful in raw yield than the Tsar Bomba. I have launched twin Helios torps at targets at point blank range and got away unharmed. Considering the Tsar Bomba's fire ball was several KM in diameter this seams unlikely. Ok - yeah, its space different medium different effects yada yada but we have detonated far smaller nukes in space which caused significant issues.
TL;DR - its a game, no need to take it seriously. Plus we all know the ultimate sci-fi weapon is to use an infinite improbability drive to turn your enemy's fleet into a collections of wales and and sentient pot plants :lol:
https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTM_Helios (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTM_Helios)
http://www.kylesconverter.com/mass/gigatonnes-to-megatonnes (http://www.kylesconverter.com/mass/gigatonnes-to-megatonnes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime)
Those weren't 'in space' though, they were in the upper atmosphere. And IIRC it was stated in FS1 that energy shields are very effective against explosive shockwaves, causing them to 'wash over' the ship without much damage. Before you got shields, even the detonation of something like a Ma'at would kill you if you got too close.
The weapon yields are actually underpowered, if anything.
Consider the equation KE = 1/2 * M * V^2 (Kinetic Energy equals one half times mass times velocity squared).
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs had an impact energy of around 100 teratons. This asteroid was estimated to be about 10 km in diameter, barely larger than a Sathanas. Of course the asteroid was solid whereas the Sathanas isn't, but that could be somewhat compensated for by the Sathanas being made of much denser materials than rock. Even if we assume that the Sathanas has only 1/10th of the mass of the asteroid, that means it would only have to be moving a little over 3 times as fast to have as much kinetic energy.
The asteroid would have hit at the typical speed of reentry for a meteor (around 17 kilometers per second). As long as we ignore the ridiculously slow ingame ship speeds (which make no logical sense and can be chalked up to game mechanics, and IIRC we see ships moving much faster in cutscenes, such as when they escaped Vasuda Prime), this isn't farfetched. Combine that with the fact that in space, there is no effective 'speed limit' aside from the speed of light itself - with continuous acceleration, any object will just continue to speed up, as there is no friction to slow it down. So in effect, measuring the 'speed' of a spaceship is less relevant than measuring its acceleration. Even real life space probes have reached speeds of over 68 kilometers per second, and that is using technology hundreds of years behind that in Freespace.
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Those weren't 'in space' though, they were in the upper atmosphere. And IIRC it was stated in FS1 that energy shields are very effective against explosive shockwaves, causing them to 'wash over' the ship without much damage. Before you got shields, even the detonation of something like a Ma'at would kill you if you got too close.
Not sure about the FS1 shield statement, but I agree with the latter part. In early missions of FS1 the player really has to be very careful of objects larger than fighters exploding. That also includes bombs, I definitely died a bunch of times when chasing them down.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs had an impact energy of around 100 teratons. This asteroid was estimated to be about 10 km in diameter, barely larger than a Sathanas. Of course the asteroid was solid whereas the Sathanas isn't
Yes, but no. The asteroid would still be significantly larger than a Sathanas (comparing a blob 5km in radius to a 4 by 2 km object with... strange geometry), not to mention that the Sathanas would be largely hollow both due to its external and internal geometry.
But remember that asteroids are usually basically large batches of loose gravel held together by whatever minor gravity they generate, while a Sathanas is a warship and has much more "solidity" to it than a blob of loose gravel.
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The Sathanas actualy body is 2.5*2.5*3.5 km, the rest is just spike which easily fit into the empty space of this smaller bounding box. Ofc it's just headcanon but since the Sath probably isn't massive on the interior it could have the same density as rock since the higher density of steel is compensated by shivan athmosphere.
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Well my point is that if you have engines that can move multi-km chunks of metal through space at speeds that can actually get them anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, then 10 gigaton bombs are perfectly reasonable.