Author Topic: Capital Weapon Analysis  (Read 21565 times)

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #30 on: 04 April 2018, 14:11:36 »
Except that equation doesn't quite match the rules but does show me where I was going wrong myself but I'll leave the brute force in my sheet since I know it works according to the rules.

By the rules 21-59 guns still only get 0.1 because you take number of guns in the (arc-arc limit)/20 round that down times 0.1 to a minimum of 0.1 for 21+.  So you don't get 0.2 until 60-79 guns.

So it'd really be =IF(A1>20,FLOOR((A1-20)/20,1)*B1/10,0)

Dropships and Small Craft don't get that discount, which I think does cause confusion.

NAC-10s do eventually come good thanks to the fire control and minimum ammunition factors but it is such a large number of NAC-10s that for all intents and purposes you are correct.

Alsadius

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #31 on: 04 April 2018, 14:30:49 »
I think you're reading it wrong.

Quote
To determine the weight of these systems, divide the number of weapons mounted in any firing arc that exceeds its weapon limits (12 for JumpShips, 20 for Space Stations and WarShips) by the limit value, and round the result down to the nearest whole number. Multiply this result by 0.1 times the total weight of all weapons mounted in that arc (discounting ammunition), and round the final result up to the nearest half. This is the final weight of any expanded fire control and power systems the unit requires for such weaponry.

Let's look at a WarShip arc with 45 LSCCs.

1) divide ...

a) the number of weapons mounted in any firing arc = 45

b) that exceeds its weapon limits (12 for JumpShips, 20 for Space Stations and WarShips) = it does, so proceed

c) by the limit value = 20

So (1) is 45/20 = 2.25

2) and round the result down to the nearest whole number. = round down to 2.

3) Multiply this result (which is 2)

a) by 0.1

b) times the total weight of all weapons mounted in that arc = 45 LSCCs weigh 9000 tons

So (3) is 2*0.1*9000 = 1800

4) and round the final result up to the nearest half = no change.

That's 1800 tons, not the 900 you're implying. It's possible I made a mistake here, but I don't think so. Hopefully if I did, going through my thinking in this detail will help you point out where I erred.

Also, your function is wrong for cases where it has 21-39 weapons - it'd give a fire control mass of nil, if you evaluate it. You want to replace "(A1-20)/20" with "MAX((A1-20)/20, 1)" to do what you're saying.
« Last Edit: 05 April 2018, 05:19:43 by Alsadius »

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #32 on: 04 April 2018, 17:08:07 »
The trouble is where the comma is.

I read the instruction as:

divide the number of weapons mounted in any firing arc that exceeds its weapon limits

It is one instruction, not two separate instructions.  If it contained the subclauses as you conclude there would be another comma or some other grammatical indicator.

Either way StratOps really should have included an example where Fire Control came into play because the instructions do read so differently from Dropship and Small Craft instructions.

Vition2

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #33 on: 04 April 2018, 17:27:20 »
I read it how Alsadius does.

For me it reads like this (for warships): If firing arc mounts more than 20 weapons, then divide by 20, round result down to nearest whole number.  Then Multiply the result by 0.1...

So 1-20 = no increase
21-39 = 0.1 multiplier
40-59 = 0.2 multiplier
etc.

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #34 on: 04 April 2018, 17:47:51 »
At this point I'm not sure it really matters since we do agree there is a point where each NAC can outperform enough LSCCs to get the same damage.

Even with Alsadius' numbers that point makes things a bit uncomfortable for all the NACs for why you should use them if given the choice.

Cryhavok101

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #35 on: 05 April 2018, 16:30:48 »
I also parse it the way Alsadius does.... but now he has posed the question of who is right in the rules questions forum here; https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=60970.0

So I'll wait to see what they say about it.

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #36 on: 05 April 2018, 18:32:29 »
It is a weird wording compared to Tech Manual's on the matter.  Which I find much clearer and it happens to have examples to make it even clearer.

To make matters more complicated none of the TROs or record sheets list fire control tonnage.

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #37 on: 05 April 2018, 18:37:02 »
Though I do see he is slightly misunderstanding how I parse it.

I parse it as 21-59 is modifier 0.1 and applied only to weapons 21-59, not weapons 1-20.

Alsadius

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #38 on: 05 April 2018, 18:55:32 »
Though I do see he is slightly misunderstanding how I parse it.

I parse it as 21-59 is modifier 0.1 and applied only to weapons 21-59, not weapons 1-20.

I know that's how you're arguing it works, but it doesn't work that way under any reading that I can see. If you subtract 20 and then divide the result by 20 and round down, you're left with zero until you have 40 weapons.

Also, which weapons are "the extra ones"? If a facing has 7x MNPPC, 7x LSCC, and 7x UAC/20, is the fire control weight 180 tons for the MNPPC, 20 tons for the LSCC, or 1.5 tons for the UAC? It seems pretty unambiguous that it applies to all weapons in the arc, not just the extras.

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #39 on: 05 April 2018, 19:14:13 »
I am interpreting the instruction to round down to a minimum of 1, never rounding down to zero.

As for your example the way I've always done it it'd be 1.5 tons.

But odds are I am wrong as space isn't something I spend a lot of time designing stuff for.  Last time I think I did it the official rules were still Battlespace.

marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #40 on: 10 April 2018, 19:20:13 »
Ignorant newbie designer here -

As I'm looking at the math, and assuming that under the advanced rules there is no upward limit on the number of fighter scale weapons that can be mounted (assuming one is willing to accept the rapidly mounting fire control cost)

Is it just me, or is it not the case that sufficiently large numbers of fighter-scale weapons will out-perform, in terms of damage to mass (not to mention their anti fighter utility) capital scale weapons, even up to the largest numbers of capital scale weaponry one is likely to mount?

For illustration, as I'm mathing it:

A facing mounting 600 Clan ERLL will deal 600 Capital Scale Damage at Extreme Range.  It will mass a hair under 9.4KT including fire control, and produce 7.2K heat - for an effective mass, assuming DHS, of 13KT

A matching mount of 40 Large Capital PPCs will deal the same 600 Capital Scale Damage, while massing 132KT including FireCon, and producing 9K heat.  Effective Mass 136.5KT

Roughly 10 times as efficient.

I have to be missing something.




monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #41 on: 10 April 2018, 19:34:15 »
Sort of.

Sub-Capital and Capital weapons have double the range.  So yeah on a pure damage to weight comparison without considering range yeah it is pretty bad.

marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #42 on: 10 April 2018, 19:36:56 »
Hmm.  I wonder if there is a niche for 'sudden death flashbulbs' with enough armor to survive to weapons range and enough firepower to kill anything in a single pass once they get there...

Oh, well.  Even if there is, I dont want to play that game, and I'm going to assume that theres some in-universe reason we dont see it.

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #43 on: 10 April 2018, 20:00:32 »
The rules don't really do enough to stop that sort of thing but I don't think it happens in universe because things work quite differently and is why I personally hope when they do revise the rules again that standard weapons are not nearly so effective against Warships.

marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #44 on: 10 April 2018, 20:07:31 »
Well, the problem is that if you give Warships some sort of special resistance to normal scale weaponry, fighters suddenly become useless against them.

The best bet, as I see it, is to further extend the range advantage of capital (and subcapital) scale weaponry.  Say rather than x2, maybe scale it to x10.. such that on a capital ship battlemap, fighters 'reach' is at most 1 or 2 hexes. 

Just spitballing, here.

Alsadius

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #45 on: 11 April 2018, 06:49:23 »
RL battleships had effectively total immunity to normal-scale weapons, but small planes took them down just fine. They just mounted capital-scale weaponry to do it - it wasn't a fighter's machine guns that did Taranto and Pearl Harbor, it was 800kg bombs and full-sized torpedoes.

If you want the same dynamic in BT terms, make it so that the guns of a fighter wing aren't what they attack WarShips with. Use the bomb hardpoints instead. With minimal adjustment, a fighter can carry capital missiles using one hardpoint per five standard-scale points of damage. Clean up the AMS rules a bit(so that they don't provide de facto missile immunity), and you have an attack style much more like WW2, with organized attack waves, than the "SWARM OF BEES!" approach. As a bonus, it also justifies those gigantic cargo bays on the SLDF ships, as well as their relative lack of small guns - fighter resupply gets a lot more weight-intensive when each plane is launching off its own mass in missiles every sortie, and the fighters themselves get less worrisome.

It's not a perfect swap, but something in that vein ought to work, IMO.

marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #46 on: 11 April 2018, 08:36:22 »
I at first read ‘RL’ as ‘Renegade Legion’ rather than ‘Real Life’, and thought ‘I kill Leviathans with massed 7.5/6 fire just fine, TYVM’.

Amusing anecdote aside - That would be just peachy with me, though it would demand that Warship Armor have some resistive, rather than purely ablative, component - a departure from most Battletech armor assumptions.  Though I note in passing that Battlemech Armor has resistive properties against lowtech cannons, etc - though amusingly not against infantry carrying springfields..

Immunity to non capital scale weaponry, coupled with a fix to AMS performance and a focus on fighter waves delivering missiles swarms in a strike role, would go a long way.  Would also put more dimension in the fighter interactions - you need fighters to fend off opposing fighters at long range before they launch, or at the least to force your enemy to put some fighters in the escort role (to defend their calitsl missile laden friends) against your fighters - diluting the strike into survivability.

Some of this depends on what feel we want - do fighters sweep space of Battleships?  Can Battlewagons mount enough defense to turn fighter attacks into hideous wastes or at best pyrric victories?  How do we make it play well in the normal case, when the design system easily allows for fighter carriage that totally outstrips anything currently seen?

Still, good thoughts/discussion.

Ruger

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #47 on: 11 April 2018, 18:44:41 »
RL battleships had effectively total immunity to normal-scale weapons, but small planes took them down just fine. They just mounted capital-scale weaponry to do it - it wasn't a fighter's machine guns that did Taranto and Pearl Harbor, it was 800kg bombs and full-sized torpedoes.

While their guns didn't take out battleships, (WW2) fighters could use there guns to effectively attack deck crews, bridge superstructures, etc. of those ships...and they also worked well against smaller ships like destroyers, frigates and corvettes (or what would be called those types these days)...especially those armed with .50 caliber machine guns or 20 mm (or larger) cannons...

It'd be basically like using infantry squads vs. BattleMechs, but not armed with support weapons...

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #48 on: 11 April 2018, 21:39:53 »
Well, the problem is that if you give Warships some sort of special resistance to normal scale weaponry, fighters suddenly become useless against them.

You'd have to pair that up with some way of indicating how many guns are being fired in a bay.

For example, assuming the two sets of weapons, you would have two weapon lines:

Bay 1: CERLL  600 (6000 std)  (heat)  (various shorter ranges)
Bay 2: HNPPC  600 (6000 std)  (heat)  (various ranges)

But if you changed it to include number of weapons:
Bay 1: CERLL*600 (6000 std)  600  (heat)  (various shorter ranges)
Bay 2: HNPPC*40 (6000 std)  600  (heat)  (various ranges)

Then you could have a simple set of math.  If a target ship has 1 standard pt of resistive armor, then you subtract (the number of weapons * amount of resistive armor) from the standard damage being delivered:
So the CERLL Bay would do 5400 damage: 6000 - (600 * 1) = 5400 standard damage
The HNPPC bay though would do 5960 damage: 6000 - (40 * 1) = 5960 pts of damage

If the target had 5 pts of resistive armor, then the calculation would be:
The CERLL Bay: 6000 - (600 * 5) = 3000 standard damage
The HNPPC bay: 6000 - (40 * 5) = 5800 pts of damage

The types of weapons would not make any difference, as mixing weapons with different damage output would make the bay less effective against resistive armor.

For example, instead of using 600 CERLL, you use 300 CERLL, and 600 ISML:
Bay 3: Mixed laser*900 (6000 std)  600  (heat)  (various ranges)

1 pt of resistive armor means this bay will only do 5100 pts of standard damage (6000 - 900 * 1).  The pure CERLL bay above did 5400 pts of damage.  Technically the bay should be doing some damage against 7 pts of resistive armor (300 CERLL * net of 3 pts of damage each = 900 standard damage), but in the interest of making the math easy I am not going to bother with that.

At 5 pts of resistive armor, inner sphere small and medium lasers, along with Clan small lasers are no longer useful for damaging hardened armor hulls.  Fighters would have to use AC/10, AC/20, PPC, and similar weapons to do damage.

LRMs would be treated as 5-pt hits, SRMs would be 2-pt hits, though you'd want a critical hit table to reflect the fighters trying to target critical items on the surface.  The problem is the fighters have to get close to avoid massive to-hit penalties, and the ship they are targeting is likely using a jammer that is more massive than their entire squadron.

This is similar to another mecha game where the resistive armor in a location was equal to its current armor points, divided by 10, FRD.  So a 50-pt slab of armor would be immune to medium laser hits, but a 49-pt slab of armor repeatedly hit by medium laser fire would fail after 23 hits (and the first 10 hits only bring it down to 39 pts of armor).

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #49 on: 18 April 2018, 15:47:49 »
since it was warship armor tech that allowed the damage reducing Ferro-lamellor armor for mechs, perhaps warships should get a simple reduction on standard damage taken? i mean, F-L armor on a mech or vehicle reduces damage taken by 20%, rounding up. having standard warship armor reduce standard weapon damage taken by say, 10%, with the advanced armors giving a higher %, would seem reasonable. the use of massed fighters remains effective as an anti-warship tactics, but it puts more emphasis on the heavy hitting big fighters with their massive weapons loads, instead of the cheaper interceptors and other lighter designs with a few popguns. it also gives further justification for why so many warship designs go in for the advanced armors beyond the slight increases in armor points. (which don't really give much of an advantage, given the amount of mass saved vs the spare kilotonnage most of the designs have)

Alsadius

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #50 on: 19 April 2018, 06:01:52 »
I wouldn't want a percentage, I'd want a flat number. Percentages hit warship weapons as hard as fighter weapons, which isn't the goal.

Also, warship armour is not capped by points like mech armour, it's capped by tons. Advanced armour doesn't save you weight, it actually increases your possible protection by a large amount.

marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #51 on: 19 April 2018, 06:31:49 »
Even if its a flat number, of the number is (mich) short of immunity, were still gonna see stacks of, say, Heavy Gauss Rifles, NPPCs, etc.

Maybe simplest to just let fighter-scale weapons deal no damage.  “Capital Scale Armor is Immune to Standard Scale Weaponry” - if you want to hunt capships, carry capital or subcapital weaponry, and hang subcap missiles off your fighters.

Cryhavok101

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #52 on: 19 April 2018, 09:49:47 »
Make the armor on any given facing reduce all standard scale damage by the armor threshold on that facing.

This would make individual fighters pretty terrible against capital armor, and it would make squadrons that concentrate fire on specific locations more dangerous. It would also use numbers already on record sheets rather than having to add more numbers in somewhere.

HobbesHurlbut

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #53 on: 13 May 2018, 15:07:17 »
Well, the problem is that if you give Warships some sort of special resistance to normal scale weaponry, fighters suddenly become useless against them.

The best bet, as I see it, is to further extend the range advantage of capital (and subcapital) scale weaponry.  Say rather than x2, maybe scale it to x10.. such that on a capital ship battlemap, fighters 'reach' is at most 1 or 2 hexes. 

Just spitballing, here.
That is why the ASF has Alamo and anti ship missiles for external ordnance.
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idea weenie

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #54 on: 17 May 2018, 22:49:36 »
Make the armor on any given facing reduce all standard scale damage by the armor threshold on that facing.

This would make individual fighters pretty terrible against capital armor, and it would make squadrons that concentrate fire on specific locations more dangerous. It would also use numbers already on record sheets rather than having to add more numbers in somewhere.

Terrible?  It'd make individual fighters almost useless, unless you optimized cheap small weapons to punch through.  You might be able to design an ASF with a large number of Medium Lasers to damage a warship based on total standard damage.

AC/20 is 14 tons for 20 pts damage and produces 7 pts heat, for 17.5 tons for heat neutral using DHS.  (1.143 dmg/ton)
Medium lasers are 1 ton, 3 heat, 5 damage per, for 4 tons each (assuming only using SHS).  That makes Medium Laser spam capable of doing 1.25 dmg/ton

1 AC/20 and 4 Medium lasers will appear the same on the ASF record and do 20 std dmg at short range, but one of them does all the damage at a single impact, and the other is likely to spread them around.

To me the AC/20 are more likely to do damage against thicker armor, so I would like some way of knowing if I am getting hit by papercuts, or hammers.  The only way to know that is by listing how many weapons are being fired from that location.

Since ASF at Warship scale should be like infantry at Battlemech scale, an easy method would be changing it where ASF cannot damage capital scale armor, except for a limited number of anti-armor shots (aka antishipping missiles carried underwing).  As the antishipping missiles are fired, they are marked off the squadron's sheet, similaar to how SRM volleys are marked off Battlearmor sheets.

But note that ASF does not damage Capital scale ARMOR.  If the armor is breached in a location, the ASF can have fun damaging the internals.  Or would allowing ASF to roll to try for critical hits be allowed?  I.e. instead of damaging the Warship, they perform their squadron attack and roll for critical hits, where the roll is based on the damage and number of ASF still left in formation.

HobbesHurlbut

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #55 on: 18 May 2018, 07:18:28 »
Terrible?  It'd make individual fighters almost useless, unless you optimized cheap small weapons to punch through.  You might be able to design an ASF with a large number of Medium Lasers to damage a warship based on total standard damage.

AC/20 is 14 tons for 20 pts damage and produces 7 pts heat, for 17.5 tons for heat neutral using DHS.  (1.143 dmg/ton)
Medium lasers are 1 ton, 3 heat, 5 damage per, for 4 tons each (assuming only using SHS).  That makes Medium Laser spam capable of doing 1.25 dmg/ton

1 AC/20 and 4 Medium lasers will appear the same on the ASF record and do 20 std dmg at short range, but one of them does all the damage at a single impact, and the other is likely to spread them around.

To me the AC/20 are more likely to do damage against thicker armor, so I would like some way of knowing if I am getting hit by papercuts, or hammers.  The only way to know that is by listing how many weapons are being fired from that location.

Since ASF at Warship scale should be like infantry at Battlemech scale, an easy method would be changing it where ASF cannot damage capital scale armor, except for a limited number of anti-armor shots (aka antishipping missiles carried underwing).  As the antishipping missiles are fired, they are marked off the squadron's sheet, similaar to how SRM volleys are marked off Battlearmor sheets.

But note that ASF does not damage Capital scale ARMOR.  If the armor is breached in a location, the ASF can have fun damaging the internals.  Or would allowing ASF to roll to try for critical hits be allowed?  I.e. instead of damaging the Warship, they perform their squadron attack and roll for critical hits, where the roll is based on the damage and number of ASF still left in formation.
Yeah critical hit rolls should be doable. Armor cannot cover everything in equal thickness and some equipment simply cannot be armored completely.
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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #56 on: 18 May 2018, 08:28:07 »
Does this thread need to be moved to Fan Rules?
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marcussmythe

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #57 on: 18 May 2018, 11:29:56 »
Maybe?  Or maybe we just need to make a new one there...

monbvol

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #58 on: 18 May 2018, 12:25:08 »
There is already a thread for how one would change the Aero rules down there.

So if we can keep this about analysis/comparison I see no need to move this entire thread but perhaps it could use some pruning?

On that note to add something useful I've been contemplating the other Sub Capital weapons and how they compare to their Capital counterparts.

Sub Capital lasers are probably the most interesting of the bunch.  They lose range as damage increases thus making it hard to compare anything but the SC-1 to anything other than the NL-35.  Once we get a clarification on the fire control issue I'll run the numbers but eyeballing the weight and heat already pretty well tells me the NL-35 is likely obsolete.

The missiles could prove more interesting than what my eyeballing indicates but I do suspect once I actually get into the numbers they will have the toughest time competing against their Capital counterparts.

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Re: Capital Weapon Analysis
« Reply #59 on: 20 May 2018, 11:27:01 »
The NL-35 wasn't made obsolete by the NL-45?  I always thought the extra range band was more than worth the slight increase in weight...

 

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