Thoughts and Suggestions on Space Combat

[GeneralVryth]

To start with with I love playing Terra Invicta, I have completed games on normal, veteran, and brutal difficulties, and having seen the .4.X changes I am looking forward to playing them and they appear to address part of what I am about to get to in to.

My thesis in short is the dominant strategy for players right now is heavily armored flying bricks, using the best projectile weapons they can get their hands on plus some lasers for PD. The .4.X changes appear to at least partially address this, but I think they are just making it harder to do, rather than addressing one of the sources of the problem.

At a high level there are at least 3 kinds of weapons in the game:
1. Unguided, solid slug, projectiles. These exist in game right now as your starting cannons, and your rail/coil guns (maybe plasma guns?). In theory they should be strong against stationary and low maneuverability targets. Armor should only slow them down, it shouldn't stop them unless there is a large disparity in target and weapon size/technology. PD should maybe help slow down an onslaught, but probably shouldn't be able to stop the solid slugs that make up this category. High maneuverability ships should be able to dodge projectile weapons almost indefinitely as long as there is a large enough flight time for the projectile.
2. Guided, explosive warhead, projectiles. These exist in game right now as the variety of missile and torpedo weapons. In theory they should be strong against anything without sufficient PD to stop them. Armor should be more or less irrelevant. But they also should be much more limited in terms of ammo.
3. Beam weapons. These exist in game right now as the various laser weapons (and maybe the particle weapons). In theory they should be strong against low armored targets regardless of PD or maneuverability.

There is also (though not in the game):
4. Unguided, explosive warhead, projectiles. I don't think these exist in the game in any form. They in theory would be good against stationary and low maneuverability targets that are heavily armored. The projectiles themselves being more vulnerable to PDs but able to sustain a much longer/larger barrage than guided weapons to overcome the PDs.

On the defensive side there is 3 components:
1. Armor. Should counter beam weapons, and weaken solid slug weapons depending on thickness.
2. PDs. Should counter explosive warhead and guided weapons. Impact on solid slugs should be relatively small.
3. Maneuverability. Should counter unguided weapons as long as the time to impact is high enough.

In practice though a few things bring down what should be the counter-play options created by the above.
1. Maneuvering ships as a player is tedious, especially when you want very small adjustments, or precision flying.
2. The built-in defensive flying option can be DV inefficient relative to player precision flying, and will break formations.
3. Unguided weapons are reasonably well countered by PDs.
4. Most alien ships are equipped with lasers and PDs.
5. Trying to cluster launch several guided weapons at once from a ship requires precision flying (and ideally a customized max accel), which is needed to overcome alien PD (see 3).

Fact 1 and 2, means its easier to command high armor ships versus highly maneuverable ones. Fact 3 makes it so a high armored ship with PD can counter just about everything that can be countered. Facts 4 and 5 mean it's usually best to combine your lasers and PD with projectile weapons or just strong lasers. Which leads us back to the thesis. The dominant strategy for players right now is heavily armored flying bricks, using the best projectile weapons they can get their hands on plus some lasers for PD.

To try and address this I suggest the following:
1. Add an "evasion" attribute to ships. This should logically positively correlate with turning radius. It would represent a ships ability to sidestep or juke an unguided projectile without meaningfully altering its course. Basically, it would be like what ECMs currently do for guided weapons, but for unguided weapons. Where E = evasion, H = hit chance, and T = time to target for a projectile, you can get an equation like H = 1 - E*T. Maybe with some constants added in. From a realism standpoint most spacecraft that need to do any kind of precision flying (like docking) are going to have maneuvering thrusters to allow side to side and up and down translations without firing their main engines. Those same thrusters (or combat versions of them) are what should allow the sidestep of the proposed evasion attribute.
2. Increase the speed (and adjust damage as needed) for most unguided projectile weapons. This would directly reduce the effectiveness of PDs on them, and make it harder/unrealistic to double dip with evasion to avoid them. Or at the very least make unguided slugs less vulnerable to PDs.
3. Add some kind of option or method to bulk fire guided weapons. To keep the realism aspect, this should probably just take the form of a missile or torpedo matching the launching ships acceleration until receiving some kind of go command. To adjust the UI for this with minimal changes, it could just be a value somewhere (likely global and attached to individual ships) called "volley size" where after launching X (the volley size) guided weapons they all begin there maneuvers towards their target instead of matching acceleration with the launching ship. This would have the added bonus of improving the volley fire option in the UI since you may not always want to launch 1 weapon per magazine from each launcher.

The net effect of the above should be to make ships that utilize evasion for a defense much more viable, make guided weapons more effective (with less tedious maneuvering), and in general provide more room for counter-play (or at least create benefits for having a variety of ships in a fleet). Additionally, maneuvering becomes more about angle of attack and grouping as you are no longer trying to do finicky precision maneuvers to avoid weapons fire or group launch guided weapons.

[StrykeSlammerII]

Are flying bricks still the dominant strategy? I thought that had shifted somewhat. Eh.
Personally, I'm looking forward to better AI (including more design variation) and the overall changes to weapons

(I agree that plasma doesn't quite fit your "unguided solid" class--it can't be PD'd, but it's also too fast to be easily avoided. It almost fits your beam classification, as armor is the best counter once the target is inside "can't be dodged" range.)

Noting some areas I think your thesis missed:

On the defensive side there is 3 components:
1. Armor. Should counter beam weapons, and weaken solid slug weapons depending on thickness.
2. PDs. Should counter explosive warhead and guided weapons. Impact on solid slugs should be relatively small.
3. Maneuverability. Should counter unguided weapons as long as the time to impact is high enough.

I won't argue here whether beam PD should affect unguided solid slugs, but solid slug PD should definitely affect unguided solid slug projectiles. At the very least they'd deflect them somewhat, based on mutual momentum.

2. Increase the speed (and adjust damage as needed) for most unguided projectile weapons. This would directly reduce the effectiveness of PDs on them, and make it harder/unrealistic to double dip with evasion to avoid them. Or at the very least make unguided slugs less vulnerable to PDs.

Increasing projectile mass is an alternative for reducing beam-PD effectiveness, as the current combat model directly reduces projectile mass when beam PD hits it.
I think there was some discussion on this topic (speed vs mass of railgun projectiles, and how beam PD effectiveness changed) in the Discord, but I don't recall the results

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

[GeneralVryth]

Are flying bricks still the dominant strategy? I thought that had shifted somewhat. Eh.
Personally, I'm looking forward to better AI (including more design variation) and the overall changes to weapons

That's been my experience in my playthroughs and what I have seen in the steam forums. To be clear when I say dominant I mean what players are inclined to gravitate towards, even if it's not the absolute best but because its easiest.

I won't argue here whether beam PD should affect unguided solid slugs, but solid slug PD should definitely affect unguided solid slug projectiles. At the very least they'd deflect them somewhat, based on mutual momentum.

That's a good point, though I do wonder how effective a solid slug PD would be against unguided slug weapons. Compared to a rail/coil weapon it's not moving as fast, and it certainly won't be anywhere close to the same in mass, and without air their are no aerodynamic aspects to worry about. So then it's just a physics problem, a deflection is what you would be hoping for, but the optimal direction for a deflection would be close to orthogonal to movement and a PD on the target ship isn't going to have a good angle for that until the incoming slug is close, which would likely make it too late to make a difference. But that's my gut feeling on the interactions, I could be quite wrong.

2. Increase the speed (and adjust damage as needed) for most unguided projectile weapons. This would directly reduce the effectiveness of PDs on them, and make it harder/unrealistic to double dip with evasion to avoid them. Or at the very least make unguided slugs less vulnerable to PDs.

Increasing projectile mass is an alternative for reducing beam-PD effectiveness, as the current combat model directly reduces projectile mass when beam PD hits it.
I think there was some discussion on this topic (speed vs mass of railgun projectiles, and how beam PD effectiveness changed) in the Discord, but I don't recall the results

That would also work, though one nice thing about the increased speed is if you add the evasion mechanic to ships, is it removes the option for ships to manually try and evade individual projectiles. So players no longer feel the need to try, and focus on maneuvers as more of a positioning and which ships are engaging which aspect.

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

I am not sure that is a good thing. Using maneuvers to synchronize attacks is very clunky, and is an artifact of the combat system. The ships themselves should be able to trivially synchronize their shots without needing to make special maneuvers.

[PAwleus]

Fact 1 and 2, means its easier to command high armor ships versus highly maneuverable ones.

Except, in 0.3 versions you can have both a high armor and highly maneuverable ship at the same time. If by high armor you just mean ships that don't maneuver substantially then yes, it is easier to command them but their cost-effectiveness is so low in comparison to highly maneuverable ones that I actually don't understand why people choose them instead of putting some small effort into maneuvers - with Group Orders the effort needed is minimized (you order a group as if it was a single ship) so I have no idea why you think it's tedious. This effort could of course be further lessened with more UI improvements and I even feature-requested them some time ago.

Fact 3 makes it so a high armored ship with PD can counter just about everything that can be countered.

That's not because of fact 3 but because AI is still bad at tactics - if only it used proper missile tactics then a static wall of highly armored ships would be suicidal even against a smaller force as you could see in this Skirmish example: https://imgur.com/a/udCaKvI

The net effect of the above should be to make ships that utilize evasion for a defense much more viable, make guided weapons more effective (with less tedious maneuvering), and in general provide more room for counter-play (or at least create benefits for having a variety of ships in a fleet).

While I liked ideas of evasion and UI grouping missiles you might ask yourself why it wasn't already introduced as they were quite obvious? Thinking about it take under consideration, please, that in 0.3 versions highly maneuverable ships are already vastly superior thanks to their cost-effectiveness and static walls of large ships are dominant in player use only because they are generally lazy or not-yet-knowledgeable enough - generally, your proposals would make already strongest ways of playing the game even stronger so they alone are definitely not enough, especially thinking about a variety of ships in a fleet.

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

I am not sure that is a good thing. Using maneuvers to synchronize attacks is very clunky, and is an artifact of the combat system. The ships themselves should be able to trivially synchronize their shots without needing to make special maneuvers.

It's actually great also against maneuverable ships (even more needed in 0.4 versions) and not because of synchronizing but because you can effectively increase missile deltaV in this way more (so they can actually hit evading ships and in 0.4 AI is much better at evading missiles) while at the same time you make your ships safer (if they have enough deltaV and acceleration, and you do it well enough).

[GeneralVryth]

Fact 1 and 2, means its easier to command high armor ships versus highly maneuverable ones.

Except, in 0.3 versions you can have both a high armor and highly maneuverable ship at the same time. If by high armor you just mean ships that don't maneuver substantially then yes, it is easier to command them but their cost-effectiveness is so low in comparison to highly maneuverable ones that I actually don't understand why people choose them instead of putting some small effort into maneuvers - with Group Orders the effort needed is minimized (you order a group as if it was a single ship) so I have no idea why you think it's tedious. This effort could of course be further lessened with more UI improvements and I even feature-requested them some time ago.

The fact you can have both is potentially problematic. Anyways the tediousness comes from the need to constantly make course changes if you want to "dodge" unguided weapons fire. Which means constant pausing and adjustments throughout the course of the battle (and there are likely many battles in the game). The desire to not want to constantly re-adjust (which can add up to a lot of time over the course of many battles), is my guess for why you get the behavior in question. Also, ships are just clunky when it comes to precision maneuvering, and a lack of side-slip options can be noticeable. The whole point of the evasion suggestion is to remove players from needing to be involved in the dodging equation.

Fact 3 makes it so a high armored ship with PD can counter just about everything that can be countered.

That's not because of fact 3 but because AI is still bad at tactics - if only it used proper missile tactics then a static wall of highly armored ships would be suicidal even against a smaller force as you could see in this Skirmish example: https://imgur.com/a/udCaKvI

True, though once both sides are using proper missile tactics, it's probably going to lead to increase in PD strength which could bring us back to this issue if other changes aren't made.

The net effect of the above should be to make ships that utilize evasion for a defense much more viable, make guided weapons more effective (with less tedious maneuvering), and in general provide more room for counter-play (or at least create benefits for having a variety of ships in a fleet).

While I liked ideas of evasion and UI grouping missiles you might ask yourself why it wasn't already introduced as they were quite obvious? Thinking about it take under consideration, please, that in 0.3 versions highly maneuverable ships are already vastly superior thanks to their cost-effectiveness and static walls of large ships are dominant in player use only because they are generally lazy or not-yet-knowledgeable enough - generally, your proposals would make already strongest ways of playing the game even stronger so they alone are definitely not enough, especially thinking about a variety of ships in a fleet.

And that is why I suggested increasing projectile speed. The fact you can only adjust your flight path 6? to 12? seconds in the future means projectiles can no longer be dodged via adjusting your flight trajectory.

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

I am not sure that is a good thing. Using maneuvers to synchronize attacks is very clunky, and is an artifact of the combat system. The ships themselves should be able to trivially synchronize their shots without needing to make special maneuvers.

It's actually great also against maneuverable ships (even more needed in 0.4 versions) and not because of synchronizing but because you can effectively increase missile deltaV in this way more (so they can actually hit evading ships and in 0.4 AI is much better at evading missiles) while at the same time you make your ships safer (if they have enough deltaV and acceleration, and you do it well enough).

I have no doubt it's effective, I just think the idea of needing to use maneuvers to synchronize fire is silly (any vessel capable of fighting in space is going to have the computer power/communications necessary to work with nearby ships). Now using it to add DV to guided weapons makes perfect sense.

[StrykeSlammerII]

I won't argue here whether beam PD should affect unguided solid slugs, but solid slug PD should definitely affect unguided solid slug projectiles. At the very least they'd deflect them somewhat, based on mutual momentum.

That's a good point, though I do wonder how effective a solid slug PD would be against unguided slug weapons. Compared to a rail/coil weapon it's not moving as fast, and it certainly won't be anywhere close to the same in mass, and without air their are no aerodynamic aspects to worry about. So then it's just a physics problem, a deflection is what you would be hoping for, but the optimal direction for a deflection would be close to orthogonal to movement and a PD on the target ship isn't going to have a good angle for that until the incoming slug is close, which would likely make it too late to make a difference. But that's my gut feeling on the interactions, I could be quite wrong.

The smallest rail batteries have defensive fire options (I think coil should also, but haven't checked in a while).
They're not super effective in 0.3 because each salvo only targets a single incoming projectile, but I have used them as extra PD on stations before.
Yes, their momentum is less than the larger mag guns, but should be quite similar to some of the early/lighter rail weapons.
(Autocannon PD might not have much effect, but rail battery PD should be relevant.)

Orthogonal deflection is a little less important for rail PD. A glancing rail-on-rail hit may not reduce momentum, but should cause noticeable deflection at the typical scales involved.
Rail PD may see a decrease in efficiency at "close enough" ranges (unlike beam weapons).
I admit I'm not doing the math here either

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

I am not sure that is a good thing. Using maneuvers to synchronize attacks is very clunky, and is an artifact of the combat system. The ships themselves should be able to trivially synchronize their shots without needing to make special maneuvers.

Maybe I misunderstood what you mean by "cluster launching"?
I'm referring to a technique that causes a single ship's projectiles (guided or unguided) clump together. PD then has less time to respond to the same number of projectiles, making stationary PD much less useful.
Assuming the attacker is maneuverable enough, it also artificially increases the velocity of unguided projectiles even further--which as you noted is a huge bonus for the attacker.

Similar in concept to a "time on target" barrage, only the projectiles are all fired from a single (accelerating) platform.

[PAwleus]

The fact you can have both is potentially problematic.

This is probably why it's already addressed in 0.4 versions.

Anyways the tediousness comes from the need to constantly make course changes if you want to "dodge" unguided weapons fire. Which means constant pausing and adjustments throughout the course of the battle (and there are likely many battles in the game).

I am not sure how you play the game but I do such adjustments usually not more than several times during a battle (in Group Orders for the whole formation) and usually those several times in one go (so current and future adjustments at the same time). It might actually be much more demanding when you tighten your formation for a static wall.

True, though once both sides are using proper missile tactics, it's probably going to lead to increase in PD strength which could bring us back to this issue if other changes aren't made.

When both sides use proper missile tactics it's even more important to have an advantage in maneuvering and only if both sides has similar such abilities (including deltaV) then it comes to the attrition warfare in which advantage in PD strength is important (you can go through any reasonable PD with enough risk and deltaV expenditure). However, the current UI is highly insufficient for the scenario when both sides fight this way as it doesn't even show relative velocities which is a fundamental matter.

And that is why I suggested increasing projectile speed. The fact you can only adjust your flight path 6? to 12? seconds in the future means projectiles can no longer be dodged via adjusting your flight trajectory.

This would heavily promote combat at long ranges and it's already extremely strong. I don't know if you are aware of it but you can shoot projectiles and missiles from much longer ranges than 1000km despite a weapon has nominal 1000km range. I like this feature but there is no need to make it even more important.

I have no doubt it's effective, I just think the idea of needing to use maneuvers to synchronize fire is silly (any vessel capable of fighting in space is going to have the computer power/communications necessary to work with nearby ships).

Yes, it's obvious enough - I suspect it's as it is only because Devs couldn't find another way to balance missiles with other weapons as there is virtually no PD that could fully stop a well synchronized missile attack as the attacker has the advantage of choosing enough missiles.

[GeneralVryth]

The smallest rail batteries have defensive fire options (I think coil should also, but haven't checked in a while).
They're not super effective in 0.3 because each salvo only targets a single incoming projectile, but I have used them as extra PD on stations before.
Yes, their momentum is less than the larger mag guns, but should be quite similar to some of the early/lighter rail weapons.
(Autocannon PD might not have much effect, but rail battery PD should be relevant.)

Orthogonal deflection is a little less important for rail PD. A glancing rail-on-rail hit may not reduce momentum, but should cause noticeable deflection at the typical scales involved.
Rail PD may see a decrease in efficiency at "close enough" ranges (unlike beam weapons).
I admit I'm not doing the math here either

I actually forgot about railgun PD. So fair point. Though now I wonder how realistic is it really to try and stop 1 unguided slug moving at high speed with another. They aren't going to be that big, and they don't have an engine/targeting system lighting up their location like a guided weapon, that's a lot of space to hit a bullet with another bullet in.

* Speaking of Discord--one of the railgun tactics I saw mentioned there replicates "cluster launching" for unguided as well as guided munitions:
Start as far away and as slow as possible, immediately turn tail and back off to a distance of 1500km (or more), then accelerate back towards the target.
I don't recall what acceleration works best for this or if/when you stop accelerating (Unguided projectiles themselves don't accelerate after launch, so you don't want to get in front of the first ones you fire )

It's not great vs maneuverable ships (assuming the AI is paying attention), but once you work out the details it greatly trivializes station PD.

I am not sure that is a good thing. Using maneuvers to synchronize attacks is very clunky, and is an artifact of the combat system. The ships themselves should be able to trivially synchronize their shots without needing to make special maneuvers.

Maybe I misunderstood what you mean by "cluster launching"?
I'm referring to a technique that causes a single ship's projectiles (guided or unguided) clump together. PD then has less time to respond to the same number of projectiles, making stationary PD much less useful.
Assuming the attacker is maneuverable enough, it also artificially increases the velocity of unguided projectiles even further--which as you noted is a huge bonus for the attacker.

Similar in concept to a "time on target" barrage, only the projectiles are all fired from a single (accelerating) platform.

I think you had it right. I just don't like the general idea of needing to use maneuvering to do something (synchronized fire) that realistically it shouldn't need it for. It's an artifact of the combat system.

The fact you can have both is potentially problematic.

This is probably why it's already addressed in 0.4 versions.

Which is good. But the method isn't the greatest. It's not addressing why it was happening, it's just removing the option (to a degree).

Anyways the tediousness comes from the need to constantly make course changes if you want to "dodge" unguided weapons fire. Which means constant pausing and adjustments throughout the course of the battle (and there are likely many battles in the game).

I am not sure how you play the game but I do such adjustments usually not more than several times during a battle (in Group Orders for the whole formation) and usually those several times in one go (so current and future adjustments at the same time). It might actually be much more demanding when you tighten your formation for a static wall.

It's possible my understanding of movement/projectiles is wrong. But my understanding is an unguided projectile is launched to where you will be at the point of impact on your current course. So to dodge the projectile you need to adjust after it's launched. Which in theory means to dodge every projectile you need to make a course correction after every single one is launched. Which seems near constant, I guess it depends on your definition of several assuming I am understanding things right.

And that is why I suggested increasing projectile speed. The fact you can only adjust your flight path 6? to 12? seconds in the future means projectiles can no longer be dodged via adjusting your flight trajectory.

This would heavily promote combat at long ranges and it's already extremely strong. I don't know if you are aware of it but you can shoot projectiles and missiles from much longer ranges than 1000km despite a weapon has nominal 1000km range. I like this feature but there is no need to make it even more important.

I am not sure how increasing projectile speed would increase combat range. I am aware you can shoot projectiles from beyond the 1000km range, but my understanding that is based on your targets projected course landing inside the 1000km range (which is why stations pretty much always can shoot first for a little while if they have max range weapons).

I have no doubt it's effective, I just think the idea of needing to use maneuvers to synchronize fire is silly (any vessel capable of fighting in space is going to have the computer power/communications necessary to work with nearby ships).

Yes, it's obvious enough - I suspect it's as it is only because Devs couldn't find another way to balance missiles with other weapons as there is virtually no PD that could fully stop a well synchronized missile attack as the attacker has the advantage of choosing enough missiles.

There has to be a better balance option. Also, it's nice in that it's a very realistic issue. When you here discussions about China and the U.S. at war, one of the main things that comes up is the Carrier Strike Groups and how to deal with a large missile barrage if they are close to China.

Anyways, PAwleus my read on your posts so far is you don't like my suggestion. So my question is why do you think the current method of needing to manually dodge is better? Assuming the balance issues would be addressed I am not sure what the downside is versus what's currently there or coming to far in .4.X.

[PAwleus]

my understanding is an unguided projectile is launched to where you will be at the point of impact on your current course. So to dodge the projectile you need to adjust after it's launched.

Yes, you are right your CURRENT course is taken under consideration but you understand it as if your planned future changes to it are also considered - they are not considered exactly because you could change those plans after projectiles are launched and it would only add an unnecessary micromanagement (and because in reality your opponent wouldn't know what your plans are unless your systems were hacked). Trust in Devs sometimes pays

I am not sure how increasing projectile speed would increase combat range.

I can't explain it without being able to explain the 1000km limitation which I honestly can't. However, I know from experience it's a nice balancing gameplay feature - it's probably a part of balancing efforts for projectiles and missiles against always hitting beam weapons which were horribly overpowered in the past.

There has to be a better balance option.

It's a common issue in games - missiles are just very hard to balance without introducing some artificial limitations.

Anyways, PAwleus my read on your posts so far is you don't like my suggestion. So my question is why do you think the current method of needing to manually dodge is better?

As I already said I like your ideas generally but I don't like details - for details to be right you need to have a better understanding of what's possible in-game, currently. This is also a common issue - creating game mechanics devs also don't have full understanding what they will allow in-game unless they already have previous experience with them and a similar enough game setting. It makes innovative games, and TI certainly is such a game, harder to make.

You are not the first one to suggest the lateral movement on this forum - look eg. here viewtopic.php?f=26&t=29817

Manually dodging is better because it gives a player more agenda and I don't find it tedious in its current state - it just doesn't work at shorter ranges so it's far from ideal. I hope that in the next game, when Devs have better feel of it, there won't be any manual combat and players will just define their tactics before combat similar as in the simultaneous mode of Space Empires 5 (just better done, please ).

[johnnylump]

I don't remember when we added it or am sure how useful it is, but there's a "Defensive Maneuvers" option in the special maneuvers panel (top center).

[GeneralVryth]

Yes, you are right your CURRENT course is taken under consideration but you understand it as if your planned future changes to it are also considered - they are not considered exactly because you could change those plans after projectiles are launched and it would only add an unnecessary micromanagement (and because in reality your opponent wouldn't know what your plans are unless your systems were hacked). Trust in Devs sometimes pays

Huh, I will need to try this out. Still feels like a lot of micromanagement (which is where the tedious term comes from).

I can't explain it without being able to explain the 1000km limitation which I honestly can't. However, I know from experience it's a nice balancing gameplay feature - it's probably a part of balancing efforts for projectiles and missiles against always hitting beam weapons which were horribly overpowered in the past.

I am not sure what you mean here. It sounds like you're saying projectile speed doesn't increase combat range.

It's a common issue in games - missiles are just very hard to balance without introducing some artificial limitations.

Terra Invicta more than most games has a logical counter to missiles; PDs of various forms (laser, autocannon, counter missile). So it seems given the other aspects of the game, may as well go for more realism where possible, and in the case of missiles just increase the strength of PDs.

Anyways, PAwleus my read on your posts so far is you don't like my suggestion. So my question is why do you think the current method of needing to manually dodge is better?

As I already said I like your ideas generally but I don't like details - for details to be right you need to have a better understanding of what's possible in-game, currently. This is also a common issue - creating game mechanics devs also don't have full understanding what they will allow in-game unless they already have previous experience with them and a similar enough game setting. It makes innovative games, and TI certainly is such a game, harder to make.

You are not the first one to suggest the lateral movement on this forum - look eg. here viewtopic.php?f=26&t=29817

Manually dodging is better because it gives a player more agenda and I don't find it tedious in its current state - it just doesn't work at shorter ranges so it's far from ideal. I hope that in the next game, when Devs have better feel of it, there won't be any manual combat and players will just define their tactics before combat similar as in the simultaneous mode of Space Empires 5 (just better done, please ).

That thread is an interesting read. It's coming at this from another angle. I still think manually dodging is likely to end up as tedious (in part because of the lack of lateral movement, and facing locking options). So I still think some kind of dodge characteristic on ships would be a better replacement. But I also think it's a matter of taste at this point (beyond its obvious need for extra dev work if they wanted to implement it).

I don't remember when we added it or am sure how useful it is, but there's a "Defensive Maneuvers" option in the special maneuvers panel (top center).

I have tried using it. The problem is it's a DV hog, and breaks formations where shared PD coverage is usually more important for avoiding non-laser hits.

As a more general question to anyone who knows, is there a preferred place on here to make suggestions? I had a couple simple QoL suggestions, and I wasn't sure where to put them (I was obviously guessing with the location of this thread).

[PAwleus]

It sounds like you're saying projectile speed doesn't increase combat range.

I am not sure where I said something that suggested it.

Terra Invicta more than most games has a logical counter to missiles; PDs of various forms (laser, autocannon, counter missile). So it seems given the other aspects of the game, may as well go for more realism where possible, and in the case of missiles just increase the strength of PDs.

Certainly not - most games have this PD counter (at least most of I've played). What is not common in case of Terra Invicta is that maneuver is such a strong counter to missiles as it should be in space - its importance is unfortunately rare in games despite even such old games as Master of Orion (the first one) had primitive elements of it.

I don't remember when we added it or am sure how useful it is, but there's a "Defensive Maneuvers" option in the special maneuvers panel (top center).

I have tried using it. The problem is it's a DV hog, and breaks formations where shared PD coverage is usually more important for avoiding non-laser hits.

Yes, Defensive Maneuvers work for a player only in the late game single ship combat and keeping formations is important not just because of own PD coverage (enemy PD coverage is also not the only one additional factor).