A Lesson in Combat
Good morning, welcome to today's discussion. This discussion session has been organised after we received some questions about mobility and combat. Allow me now the opportunity to answer those questions in this public forum. We hope this session might better enable Captains to understand how combat works and give them the edge when it comes to fighting each other; Stations or strange and unknown super-sized cubes carrying lethal Death Rays.
Question #1 said:
1.) Do ships have some mobility stat even without thrusters?
The best way to understand mobility is to imagine two vessels meeting each other in space. The first, a small Size 1 Fighter with only a single pair of blasters to account for. His opponent, a Size 500 Behemoth blistering with an array of lethal weaponry ready to rain down fire and brimstone on all who come before it. The first thing to know is how fast each vessel can travel. Speed is important, as a fast ship is obviously much more agile and able to manoeuver into an appropriate firing position than a slow ship. An important thing to understand too, is that a small vessel will be able to accelerate to its maximum speed much faster than a larger ship would, enabling it to rapidly change direction at considerable speed - where-as its larger companion would take some time to reach its maximum velocity (depending of course, on the larger ships' Engines), making it much less able to manoeuver quickly.
Thus, the first step we do in ascertaining a vessel's mobility in combat is to divide its total available thrust by its size. This will give us each ship's acceleration factor. Thankfully, this statistic is already well-known to all ship captains as Thrust per hour or T/ph (NOTE: We advise with some caution that this is merely a simple explanation. As experienced Captains would be aware, there are other factors which come into play when determining a ship's total T/ph, such as whether its engines have been over-clocked and the known diminishing thrust factor larger ships have - which I will leave to another discussion).
Now for our example, let us say our Small Fighter is able to move at 30 T/ph while our Behemoth can only muster a meagre 10 T/ph. Now that we have the speed of each vessel, we need to understand how this comes into play in combat. For that, imagine each ship moving and dodging, trying to out-manoeuver its opponent. While the Fighter is 3 times faster than the Behemoth, we must not under-estimate the Behemoths own ability to move. Therefore, it's best to think in terms of the total speed available which in this case is 40 T/ph - 75% of which belongs to our Fighter and 25% of which belongs to our Behemoth. This is an important concept to grasp as if - for example - our Behemoth was able to move at the same speed as the Fighter, then in terms of speed both opponents would be evenly matched (with each having 50% of the available speed).
Simply put, if a ship is twice as fast as its opponent (with all other factors being equally mathced) it has been observed that it will hit 2/3 of the time. Like-wise if a vessel is half the speed of its opponent, it will only hit about 1/3 of the time. As has been witnessed in combat, this speed differential can be used by small fighters to deadly effect, as their increased speed allows them to target vital ship components more easily, causing more critical damage.
However, if we're talking about "ships without thrusters" than what we're really talking about is size (It should of course be noted that a ship without thrusters has no basic "mobility" in and of itself but that doesn't mean it will be easy to hit)...
Question #2 said:
2.) How important is ship size?
In a word: Very! Now that we understand speed, the next thing to take into consideration is ship size itself. Our aforementioned Behemoth may have many guns but even the simple observer would note that at least half of them will be on the wrong side of the ship at any given time - and thus completely unable to cause any damage to their intended target. This is compounded as the size differentiation between combatants increases. Our small Size 1 Fighter in this example would only be in range of very few weapons at any given time. Combat experienced Captains would know that these weapons that are outside of range don't actually fire (as doing so would be both a complete waste of time and ammunition) - but they are still recorded as a 'MISS!' in the ships' computer system (NOTE: It must be stated that of course, projectile weapons such as missiles, rockets and torpedos will always fire - given their ability to manoeuver and hit targets that would otherwise be unreachable). Finally, it is of course quite obvious that a larger target is considerably easier to hit than a smaller one and this plays a significant factor in combat.
Thankfully, it has been observed that size works in much the same way as speed. That is to say, if both ships are the same size (with all other factors being equal) then either ship will have a 50% chance to hit. If one ship is twice as big as the other, then once again we find that statistically, they have a 33% chance to hit the smaller ship. This means that even a massive ship will have a reasonable chance to hit a much smaller Fighter. The best way of explaining this is by saying that while you may be a smaller target, there's a lot more enemy ship for you to dodge.
In the case of our Fighter though, we find a large size differential between the two vessels. At 500 times larger than the Fighter, the Behemoth presents a considerable target while the Fighter is almost miniscule by comparison. In this instance the Behemoth will find it very difficult to hit the Fighter, while the Fighter will be able to blast away. Obviously though, the Behemoth will have a great deal number of guns more than the Fighter which will increase its chances to hit during any given combat pass. The other factor to take into consideration at this stage is that the Fighter is likely to have only a single set of Blasters which will cause very little damage to the Behemoth. In this instance, while it may find it difficult to hit, the Behemoth will find:
- Because its guns are considerably larger and much more powerful, when they do hit, they'll most likely vapourise the Fighter in a single blow.
- It's not like the Fighter will be causing much damage anyway; the Behemoth will most likely shrug off its pathetic attacks.
The final consideration then, is the mobility of the weapons' systems themselves, which leads us into our next question.
Question #3 said:
3.) I notice some weapons have a mobility factor, what does it mean?
If only speed and size were taken into consideration, then our Fighter would have a significant advantage over the Behemoth. In fact a fleet of smaller Fighters equipped with appropriate weapons would pose a significant risk to an overly large Battle Station. Recognising this, manufacturers began developing turret systems. These systems are often quite large and so will only fit on larger vessels. They also commonly require a lot of power to drive their motors at the rapid speeds required to keep up with faster and more nimble vessels. As such, they sacrifice damage potential for accuracy. When fighting small Fighters this isn't a problem as even a lower damaging Turret system can one-hit most small Fighters. However, it does pose a risk if the enemy is a heavily armoured combatant of approximately the same size who's decided to out-fit their ship with the heaviest weaponry available. How Captains choose to balance Turrets with Capital Weapons is a decision for them to make.
What we care about, is what the weapons' mobility means. Well, thanks to modern quantum computing, many manufacturers are able to offer weapons with advanced tracking capabilities. If we can believe their designers, these weapons provide "guaranteed hit rates" - in some cases of up to 50% for some of the more advanced turret systems. Given that, it's easiest to think of Weapon Mobility as a "base" to hit chance, upon which the other factors of speed and size (as outlined above) will build accordingly. This means a large, immobile Station loaded with mobile weapons systems is a much scarier threat to a small Fighter, than an equivalent Station loaded with low mobility - but high damage - weapons.
Of course, we should also briefly mention here that Targetting Computers and similar Equipment will also increase your weapons' mobility rating.
Question #4 said:
4.) So what then, is ship mobility?
Unlike Thrust which allows you to move through space, mobility only affects your ability to out-manoeuver your opponent during combat. In many ways it works much the same as Thrust - though it does have quite a few unique quirks (which for time reasons, we won't go into today). Essentially, your mobility is increased by purchasing equipment such as Thrusters, Boosters or advanced Navigation Equipment which allows you to change course rapidly. Your mobility is then taken into consideration when fighting another vessel. As the opponent vessel will also have some mobility (depending on their equipment purchases) it boils down to: He who has higher the mobility, has the greater advantage.
Captains should keep in mind however, that all other factors should be taken into consideration when determining your final chance to hit. We can however, express how these factors come into play together with the following equation:
- Mobility of the Weapon you're Firing + (((Your Size vs Their Size) + (Your T/ph vs Their T/ph) + (Your Mobility vs Their Mobility)) / 3)
This means that with high mobility weapons, it is possible to achieve a to hit chance greater than 100%. That of course would effectively guarantee a critical hit every time (assuming the weapon is capable of delivering critical hits) but we will leave the ins and outs of weapons themselves and the damage they cause for another discussion.
Hopefully this session has helped give Captains a better idea of combat and allows them to design ships appropriately. As some final take away advice, the most important factor is not how high your T/ph, mobility or the size of your ship is in and of itself. What matters most is how your ship matches up against the opponent you're fighting.
