A shipboard weapon is able to hit a target without hitting adjacent friendly units. Then, a preliminary radar or lidar scanning of the surface in possible to check these same coodrinates withot taking a risk of hitting friendly unit, and after that the weapon is safe to use.
Radar, lidar or any other scanning emissions are impossible from the TN ship because of the Aether nature. Then, neither spotting units to hit them with active radars, nor using weapons to hit any specific targets on the surface are possible regardless of the friendly presence downthere.
Any mixing of these options is impossible, because laser weapons and lidars (for example) do use absolutely the same physics regardless if itâs transnewtonian or not.
Sure, itâs absolutely possible just to state that something works this way, I donât care why, I donât care if itâs any kind of consistent, I just want to play with this set rules, period.
I think there is no reason in this case to play Aurora at starmaps with real stars, very realistic planetary systems, and lasers, railguns, gsusses and so on, instead of the great game of Chess or some other fully abstracted game.
I think FFD would be more interesting if they enabled special effects instead of just allowing for more accurate, and much less voluminous, orbital bombardment. Orbital bombardment right now is to me kinda silly as the NPRs mostly build infantry, and the idea of a 30cm laser cannon from space picking off individual infantry doesnât work for me.
For example, a formation successfully engaged by an Orbital Bombardment Support attack could get a big Cohesion Rating modifier, which would greatly increase the chance of a breakthrough against the engaged formation. This would simulate the idea that an attacking formation with an embedded FFD was able to coordinate real-time effects to shatter the other formationâs cohesion and break through.
Alternatively, successful OBS could reduce the Fortification level of the engaged formation (on FLD), increasing its casualties without necessarily having to inflict them. The FFD-coordinated orbital fires were so precise that the defending formation had to (at least partially) abandon their fortifications or be defeated in detail from above.
Those are just two quick and easy ideas, Iâm sure there are plenty better. Orbital bombardment in general could probably use some other improvements regardless. Like specifically targeting âvulnerableâ back line units such as logistics, bombardment, and HQ, or deliberately attacking the largest/best armored units instead of âweighted randomlyâ choosing.
I strongly prefer mechanics, representing clear logics at every step, and if itâs a combat model, then every step must represent real combat processes. This way, as a programmer, I can control whatâs going on in every function, where are possible border effects, and make less stupid mistakes. Adding effects, which are jumping overhead of both existing mechanics elements and the logics of real life is, I think, very bad idea. It can give a solely desirable result a bit faster, yet then these bravely cut corners would kick you under the knees with unexpected border effects and it would take a lot of effort to patch it, and every following build up of the mechanics would take much more time and effort, because the model is already in itâs senile stage of developement - unnesessary entangled, illogical and just hard to remember the scheme of interactions.
Changing the combat model overall to allow targetting of particular types of units/elements is ok. It would represent the logic of real combat, makes sense, allows many interesting mechanics. Jumping from supporting fire directly to cohesion of the supported formation is VERY bad. Breaks all kinds of logic, both playing and programming one, while ignoring the existing logical way of reaching the same result by knocking out some targets. If you want to affect cohesion - at least do it through the cohesion of targetted formation, not friendly one. Fire support do nothing with fiendly cohesion, aside of friendly fire negative effects, so do not add a mechanics that breaks the model entirely.
We could reason of friendly fire. But almost god-driven weapons that we can imagine being in the game, IMO will never shoot a friend unit.
Has anyone here ever seen such a thing happening? in my few matches, never.
So, I agree with Serger about not considering at all to include some sort of friendly negative effects of support fire.
The concept is applied in space combat already, and if I can lie to enemy sensors in space, I can do it on the ground.
Any orbital artillery is far enough away, that even little errors can make an unholy mess of any ground engagement at line of sight (single digit kilometers in most cases, no matter your tech base).
No further special rules needed - it is up to the player, whether to risk friendly casualties by firing orbital missions against enemy EW superiority.
About 30cm Lasers picking off individual infantrymen:
Youâd only do that in vacuum. In atmosphere a space combat scaled Laser would produce explosive effects by superheating a column of whatever passes for air at the location.
Scaling up to Dresden-type Firestorms for dozens or hundreds of mounts doing that all at the same time.
Edit: In Vacuum a Laser would instantly vaporize a chunk of ground, which would in turn expand explosively to form shrapnel - so no sniping needed there either.
In the window System Generation and Display, I canât find how to show the Lagrange Points.
If itâs not possible, could we have them?
And even more, to highlight the bodies that could have a LP, if one is not already present.
Is there a brief write up somewhere about LPs - Iâve never used them as I donât know what they do or what they are and am beginning to feel Iâm missing out on something
LPs are like jump points, but within a system, available for every ship, and with no jump shock.
Every body larger than or equal to 0.25 Earth mass can have a LP, which is located at 60° behind the body along its orbit.
Giovians and larger bodies have one ânaturallyâ, i.e. during system generation. The other bodies need a LP stabilisation, performed by a stabilisation ship.
The smaller the body, the longer the time to stabilise the LP.
The game auto path routine uses them, if they are in a system.
I use them rather often.
One LP is no use. You need two or more.
You can also give moons a LP if they are large enough, which is really helpful as it uses the Moons orbit.
They also work in multi-star systems. So you can go from an LP around star-A to an LP around star-B etc. So remember to check if you need to send a stabilization ship over the vast void between them to save fuel and weeks/months of travel once it is active.
In the View Technology window, for weapons that can be spinal mount, would it be possible to add a column showing this?
It could say â-â for standard mount, âYesâ for spinal, and âAdvâ for advanced spinal.
In the Naval Organization window, would it be possible to show in red a fleet where at least a ship has problems?
A single ship already is marked in this way, but this is not evident at fleet level, if you donât expand the ships list.
I found myself wanting it on the fleet list tab on the right, as I use a lot of sub fleets and have to open each one on the left to find any damaged ships.
Interaction with multiple components in the ship Damage Control tab.
For example, when capturing a large cruiser, I would like it to repair only the engines, and not spend MSP on repairing other components. To do this, I will need to remove each other component individually from the automatically generated repair list. It would be much more convenient if I could select several components via Ctrl or Shift and remove them all by pressing the Remove button.
In the Intelligence and Foreign Relations window, in the list of the NPRs, would it be possible to show in red the ones that are surely eliminated?
Iâve defeated a couple of Rakhas, and IMO itâs no use to still see them in the NPRs list.
Or (better, IMO), could there be a checkbox, next to the list, that allows to show all the NPRs or only the active ones currently known by the player?
