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Aeson -> RE: Carriers (8/24/2015 11:07:44 PM)
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quote:
Maybe I have the "Tactical Behavior in Combat" set wrong or miss understand them all together. As I understand the settings: "Evade" seems pretty self evident ("Run away! Run away!"). "Stand off" should mean engaging with only your longest ranged weapon. "All Weapons" means to engage and close range, beginning your attack with your longest ranged weapon and moving closer so each decreasing ranged weapon on your ship is brought into action. "Point Blank" suggests none of your weapons fire until your shortest ranged weapon is at its minimum range, then every weapon on your ship is fired at once at the target.
The "evade" setting appears to cause the ship to close to roughly the maximum range of the shortest-ranged weapon carried by the ship which will result in the ship remaining beyond range of the weapons carried by the target, with preference given to remaining out of range, based upon a small set of tests against a station armed exclusively with long-range guns and another station armed exclusively with unupgraded maxos blasters. Against the gun station, an evade/evade test ship armed with epsilon torpedoes and maxos blasters was happy to close to within blaster range of the target, remaining at roughly the same range as an otherwise identical all weapons/all weapons design; against the blaster-armed station, the evade/evade test ship refused to close to within blaster range but did close to torpedo range, remaining at roughly the same range as an otherwise identical standoff/standoff ship (note that occasionally the ship would close to just outside of torpedo range, probably due to the small difference in range between unupgraded Epsilon Torpedoes and unupgraded Maxos Blasters). Evidence for the preference of the ships to remain beyond range of hostile weapons over closing with the target to bring it within range of their own weapons comes from a test where ships armed with unupgraded Maxos Blasters refused to come within range of a station armed with a single unupgraded Maxos Blaster and another pair of tests where ships with Assault Missiles refused to come within firing range of a station armed with identically-upgraded Assault Missiles. I did not test this sufficiently to determine if evade chooses a range of x*(target's maximum range) where x > 1 or a range of (target's maximum range) + x where x > 0, or simply chooses the shortest-ranged weapon whose range exceeds that of the hostile target, but the last seems most likely to me based upon the behavior of the evade/evade ships when closing with a target.
Ships on standoff orders will maneuver to open the range up to roughly the maximum range of their longest-ranged weapon and ships on all weapons orders will maneuver to open the range to roughly the maximum range of their shortest-ranged weapon if they begin the engagement significantly closer than that, but ships with evade orders do not appear to bother maneuvering to increase the range as long as they are outside of the range of the longest-ranged hostile weapon (based upon a test where three ships armed with Assault Missiles engaged a pirate station armed with Pulse Blasters having begun the engagement well within assault missile range of the station but beyond the range of the station's blasters; the all weapons and standoff designs went to maximum range, but the evade design just sat where it started). In the unlikely event that ships with evade/evade orders engage one another (unlikely because no military design defaults to evade/evade stances and civilian ships by default flee upon sighting warships, but such a scenario may arise if you have some ships of evade/evade designs and some defect to or are captured by a hostile faction), you're likely to see the ships dance into and out of firing range of one another, assuming the ships have similar maximum weapon ranges. While military evade/evade designs will not intentionally close to within range of a hostile ship's weapons, they will attempt to remain relatively close to the target, and the interplay of the various ships' maneuvers as they attempt to remain close but not too close to one another will occasionally result in the ships coming within firing range of one another.
Stance settings additionally appear to have no bearing on the range at which a ship will begin to fire its weapons; a ship set to point blank/point blank began firing at approximately the same range as ships of identical designs set to standoff/standoff and all weapons/all weapons instead of point blank/point blank. Weapons therefore appear to begin firing as soon as a valid target comes within range, regardless of stance setting.
quote:
That being said, are fighters considered a "Weapon" of the carrier or not? If so, I could set the carrier at Stand Off and launch my fighters at the target while my ship would attempt to remain at a relative safe distance from the target. Or if fighters are not considered a "Weapon" of the carrier, then I should use DeadlyShoe's suggestion above to keep my carrier as far out of range of retaliation from the target as possible. I really don't want my carriers in close combat even with a weaker opponent (nor my Troop Transports either). I really like Shark7's idea for a pre-invasion strike fleet and want to utilize my ships appropriately when I attempt it.
Fighter bays appear to be considered weapons; default military roles accept them as the only armament of the vessel, and standoff orders do not put the carrier in close proximity to the target even if the fighter bays are the only 'weapons' carried by the ship (not certain of the exact range, but the range used appears to be somewhat greater than that of similarly-advanced missiles). My personal preference at this point is evade/evade for dedicated carriers, though I don't recall ever having any real problems with standoff stance.
As far as whether or not to arm dedicated carriers with primary weapons (missiles, torpedoes, blasters, railguns), my preference at this point is to not bother with primary weapons on dedicated carriers; a missile/torpedo or two is not going to make much of a difference on a carrier which already has several fighter bays, nor is such an armament likely to help the carrier to any significant degree if the carrier is for some reason engaged while missing a significant fraction of its fighter force or if an opposing force manages to push through a carrier fleet's fighter group. I'd sooner have additional shield generators, additional armor, additional drive or maneuvering thrusters, a spare hyperdrive, spare damage control (or preferably repair) and countermeasures components, a spare command center, specialty weapons (tractor beams or an area graviton weapon, preferably, as these can help control the engagement range, but graviton beams or ion cannons can work), or perhaps even a bit of extra fuel than a handful of primary weapons. Remember, despite the fact that dedicated carriers can be 50% larger than standard warships, a full-size carrier has at least 10% less space available for components other than fighter bays than a full-size standard warship, and if you want said full-size carrier to be as fast and as maneuverable sublight as the full-size warship you're already spending about 50% more space on drive and maneuvering thrusters (granted, this is more a consideration for carriers intended to see fleet actions, where being roughly as fast as the opposition is desirable if it doesn't cost the ship too much elsewhere, than for carriers intended to bust spaceports).
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