Big vs Small ship balance

[Ohm is Futile]

Ohm is Futile wrote:

You've got this "equation" wrong. First, a 15 slot ship requires far, far more volume than 15 1-slot ships added together, or even far more than 5 3-slot ships and still more than 3 5-slot ships as the requirements for each additional slot is not linear but exponential.

 

This means that if you split the resources of a 15-slot ship into multiple smaller ships, you can easily end up with way, way more slots and, as such, way more weapons.

 

OFC that the same ammount of players per side should win the ones with bigger ships...

 

...But that's not what I'm talking about.

 

I'm talking of what to do when the Bully of the server comes to your door with a gigantic ship simply because he WAS FIRST on the server.

 

That's why it's balanced now... Because with enough players in far smaller ships with a fraction of the resources you take down that big ship...

 

...A PvP game that doesn't work as this, is dead before even starting... Some tittles make this mistake, and they kill the initial flux of players in no time.

 

I get the feeling that creative players want to mimic the big powerful multiturret capital ships they have seen on their prefered Scifi... Meanwhile the problem comes when PvP griefers get this same net operative advantage that can make life misserable to ENTIRE GROUPS of players.

I thought we were talking about balance, not griefing. I mentioned the number of players because in a fight, you can't not account for players as a resource.

 

Ohm is Futile wrote:

Also, maneuverability *is* mostly rotation. We have a newtonian-ish flight system, there's nothing stopping you from only having good forwards thrust, accelerating, turning your ship sideways and then just holding the strafe key to prevent the auto-brakes from firing.

 

Erm... The fact that WHILE rotating you are denying your own shooting capabilities and the fact that your "dodge technique" will just make yourself a target following a stable trayectory? Try that on the current game... Even AI shooting cannons with its basic predictive behaviour (Target Lead = Target Relative Speed * Bullet Travel Time) will hit you all the time. In fact, your tactic HEAVILY favors the multiple ships against a single Big one... Because the current target can do that (Forfeiting his firepower) while the rest keep attacking the Big one.

 

Dodging fire is about moving your smaller axis back and forth so you become unpredictable... Can be done by increasing YOUR ACCELERATION and reducing your "dodge axis"... The Bigger the ship the harder this become (in fact this simple factor ALSO helps fighting the "cube syndrome")... And it's not accidental... That's why there are instant weapons on the game that deny this fact... And that's why SO FAR they have less range than the proyectiles... The Dev seems to be perfectly aware of this, while at the same time provides the tool for ppl to "customize" their experience between Big vs Small on their servers... They just need to "remove" this key factors.

 

 

EDIT: Sorry for the multiquoting... I'm used to forums that also link the user also on partial quotes, I added them manually... Hope it gets clearer this way.

I didn't exactly interpret maneuverability as the ability to dodge fire. To be honest, it's pretty hard to dodge anything (except missiles) at ranges less than 4km. Even with a fast ship. Within 4km, dodging a volley is going to require rotation + forwards boosting.

 

Also, I still stand by what I said. If your ship can rotate pretty fast, then it can strafe pretty fast, too, unless you are using gyros as the main source of rotation.

[oreganor]

To be realistic, though, it would have to be 15 slot monster vs what... 12 slotters? any smaller than that and it might be too big for a server. Because mass-wise it would be what... 8? with no running off and regenerating?

Player-created ships or procedural monsters?

 

You don't need to create such an experiment... Happens all the time on sectors close to the core, at least in my galaxy.

 

 

 

Factions next to the Galaxy Core go around using dreadnoughts as sector defenses...

 

...See how they "fare" against a group of the typical Xsontan squadron with smaller ships with a fraction of the shields & hulls but combining turrets multiples higher than those dreadnoughs.

 

 

 

The current AI, sadly, is not a good test:

 

- Ignores the highest DPS facing of the designs it pilots.

 

- Have no clue on how to dodge incomming fire... It performs some intentional trayectory breaks while closing to weapon range... But once it reaches it, just tries to orbit the target if it wanders... Or simply parks there immobile... It also has the HORRIBLE habit of holding fire until the shortest weapon is in range... Instead of using each turret at the range that can hit their targets (Procedural enemies masks this by generating ships with a SINGLE type of turret... But you can painfully see this in action if, for example, you make the fatal mistake of leaving your mining/salvaging turrets on your combat vessel and order it to attack enemies).

 

 

To be honest, it's pretty hard to dodge anything (except missiles) at ranges less than 4km. Even with a fast ship. Within 4km, dodging a volley is going to require rotation + forwards boosting.

 

4k is already "deadly range" for smaller ships... Instant weapons like lasers & railguns deny any kind of maneuvering as defense. That's why I focus on cannons... Those require skill BOTH at aiming and dodging and is the weapon a small profile ship could exploit against a bigger one, because can be used from OUTSIDE instant weapon range.

 

 

I thought we were talking about balance, not griefing. I mentioned the number of players because in a fight, you can't not account for players as a resource.

 

But that's the whole point... Ship size, and all the benefits it brings for a single player, can't be removed/lessened... Because a player have to spend more time saving resources and risks more by flying those Capitals... It has to come with a benefit. It's the delicate problem of how to counter one, if the needs arise, what needs to be carefully considered... A single player piloting a single big ship cannot just die by another single player piloting a ship much cheaper...

 

...But you can't NEVER go to the extreme of allowing such ammount of power so a single player can counter multiple ones easily because it has an initial advantage of resources... You have to create a meta that allows newer players to "cut the distance"... Hence why I like the current approach. Otherwise this game would clone the typical failure of most MMO RPGs... Which just encourage a rush to reach "high end" (ie Max Level) to later go back and grief players that are still accumulating "the resources" to be able to deal 1 on 1 with an enemy...

 

...OFC that's more challenging having to relay on multiple players to beat the Big Lone Wolf... But at least is an option that requires less resources on the current system... And a REAL reasson to gather together once Alliances are a reality.

[Bimdurian]

 

That certainly doesn't make sense, so I may be misreading your statement. But if you double your mass (not the size, volume, deliciousness, or any other such thing. Mass) then you should need to double your thrust (engines, as well as directional thrusters/gyroscopes/etc) to retain the same movement profile. Twice the mass means twice the energy to move it at the same speed. If we had to account for other variables such as drag, fuel, or whatnot, then your point would make sense.

 

I did a verification as follows:

 

 

 

Size	Mass	Thrust	Max V.
2³	0.48	504.2	259
4³	3.81	504.2	526
8³	30.46	504.2	831

 

 

Who did you verify that?  In game?  Because in game data are not realistic.

 

Just as you would increase the acceleration on and item with fixed mass the energy increase is not linear

 

Same thing happens when you increase the mass but want to keep the acceleration. the more you increase the mass the increase of energy input increases more then a normal linear scale.  I do not remember the exact formula for space, was a few years ago worked with those things.

 

Not to be picky but size do actually matter even in space more then you think because you do have dust clouds and will provide with friction.  Not that huge deal for the travel we are thinking about in real life but for the 3*3*3k meters in game should notice those clouds.

[Blondersheel]

So this is actually a very basic physics equation: F= M x a (force = mass x acceleration). This is a linear equation.

 

The number reported in game under "thrust" is actually your ships acceleration. Now solving for acceleration, the equation becomes a = F / M. If you double the force and keep the mass constant, the acceleration will double. If you double the mass and keep force constant, the acceleration will be half. If you double both the force and the mass, the acceleration will remain the same.

 

This is a linear relationship.

 

P.S. there is no friction (I.e. Air drag) in space

[Brigadon]

Well, actually there is friction in space, in the form of microparticles and cosmic rays. But this would not start causing an appreciable drag effect until you start approaching a respectable fraction of C, which this game does not.

 

Although the damage you take from not having enough mechanics nicely simulates the ongoing damage from micrometeorites and radiation that a travelling spaceship would likely take.

[Bimdurian]

So this is actually a very basic physics equation: F= M x a (force = mass x acceleration). This is a linear equation.

 

The number reported in game under "thrust" is actually your ships acceleration. Now solving for acceleration, the equation becomes a = F / M. If you double the force and keep the mass constant, the acceleration will double. If you double the mass and keep force constant, the acceleration will be half. If you double both the force and the mass, the acceleration will remain the same.

 

This is a linear relationship.

 

Well that was not what I meant really but while where at it:

I see you are using Newton's second law of motion but morally in this caves you would use Einstein special relativity to calculate mass increase in this cases.

 

m=m0/sqrt(1-v*v/c*c)

 

m0 = Rest Mass

v = Velocity

c = speed of light (under normal circumstances are constant at 299792458 m/s but there are exceptions)

 

 

But yes his equation still show linear mass increase winch was not my point.

 

P.S. there is no friction (I.e. Air drag) in space

 

Just because there is no air doesn't mean there is no FRICTION with other partials. In space there is about one particle per cm3 cording to Dr. Louis Barbier at NASA. The density do not effect the craft we are bounding in real life so far, however the sizes we are sizes in  Avorion?  If you have a ship (Borg cube) with a side that is 9 241 600 m2 sided cube (3040m * 3040m * 3040m cube) those particles would make a difference.  And yes there is with even bigger cubes then that out there with maxed out rads.

[Blondersheel]

I think you are unnecessarily complicating the scenario with regards to in-game conditions. We aren't approaching the speed of light here, we're talking relatively low speeds in which the physics is relatively simple. I think the game does a good job of modelling them with a fair degree of accuracy.

 

In the interest of avoiding a theoretical physics debate let me restate what I was trying to communicate: I have seen some re-occurring comments about how a doubling of mass will require more than double the applied force (thrusters) to achieve the same acceleration. At the speeds/conditions we're operating at in Avorion, this is untrue; if mass is doubled and applied force is doubled (thrusters), acceleration should be the same and the game models this correctly.

[Bimdurian]

You have point that the formulas are unnecessary but I just wanted.to point out that the first one wast the wrong one to use.

 

However you are wrong in you assumption that: "Avorion, this is untrue; if mass is doubled and applied force is doubled (thrusters), acceleration should be the same and the game models this correctly"

 

Firstly we have the friction in space  as we spoke of earlier.

 

Secondly, and even worse we have gravity: When you are saying that "if mass is doubled and applied force is doubled acceleration should be the same" you are referring to Newton in his First Law of Motion. Problem with that is it states: " ..an object not subject to any net external force..".  If a object are under the force of gravity then you cant use the First Law of Motion.  In Avorion you are mostly inside solar system where you are constantly under the effect of both the suns and planets gravitational force.  If you then are using a ship that have more mass then some of the moons in our system you are bound to have some extra gravitational affecting you ship.

 

However while in between systems the gravitational should be more or less null.

 

[Blondersheel]

but I just wanted.to point out that the first one wast the wrong one to use

The equation you suggested is not actually a replacement for the equation I listed, it only outputs a relativistic mass at a given speed (the increased relativistic mass is negligible at the range of speeds we're talking about).

 

m=m0/sqrt(1-v*v/c*c)

 

m0 = Rest Mass

v = Velocity

c = speed of light (under normal circumstances are constant at 299792458 m/s but there are exceptions)

Have you actually used the equation you listed? Relative mass is only significant at speeds approaching the speed of light. Try plugging in some numbers to that equation:

m0 = 10000 (use whatever you want)

v = 300,000 m/s (much faster than anything you'll be travelling at in normal Avorion play)

c = 299792458 (this is the speed of light in a vacuum, i.e. space; light travelling through other media will move marginally slower)

The "increased mass" of the object is 10,000.005 *negligible*

 

However you are wrong in you assumption that: "Avorion, this is untrue; if mass is doubled and applied force is doubled (thrusters), acceleration should be the same and the game models this correctly"

No this is correct. As shown above, the difference is negligible at .00005%. It will be even less at lower speeds (reminder: I used 300km/s)

 

Firstly we have the friction in space  as we spoke of earlier.

All this mention of friction....do you have any idea how little matter there is in space?? Let's quote Louis Barbier as you have previously.

 

"The density of matter in our Galaxy is about 1 particle/cm3 (in the disk, with the halo being less dense). The density of matter in intergalactic space (between galaxies) is about 2 x 10-31 gm/cm3, mainly hydrogen. At these densities, I don't think one has to worry about friction."

-Dr. Louis Barbier

 

Dr. Louis Barbier doesn't think we need to worry about friction in space, but let's take a look anyway.

 

Let's take a second and calculate the number of atoms in a cubic kilometer of space:

1 atom per cubic centimer * 100^3 (cubic centimeters in a cubic meter) * 1000^3 (cubic meters in a cubic kilometer) = 1 x 10^15 atoms!!!! A lot right!....No. Do you know how many atoms are in a single cubic centimeter of air on earth? ~1 x 10^19 (that means there are as many atoms in a cubic centimeter on earth as there are in 10,000 cubic kilometers of space)

 

Assuming you decide you still want to consider this effect, friction does not change the equation of F = M x a. Every force applies its own acceleration on an object...friction is it's own force and will apply its own acceleration on the object (albeit very small in this case) that is completely separate from the acceleration applied by the thrusters.

 

Secondly, and even worse we have gravity: When you are saying that "if mass is doubled and applied force is doubled acceleration should be the same" you are referring to Newton in his First Law of Motion. Problem with that is it states: " ..an object not subject to any net external force..".  If a object are under the force of gravity then you cant use the First Law of Motion.  In Avorion you are mostly inside solar system where you are constantly under the effect of both the suns and planets gravitational force.  If you then are using a ship that have more mass then some of the moons in our system you are bound to have some extra gravitational affecting you ship.

Not remotely true. Every force on an object applies its own acceleration as mentioned above. A perfect example of this is space flight in real life. A spacecraft in orbit, for example, is constantly under radial acceleration (causing it to orbit the Earth) due to gravity applied by the Earth. However, if you fire a thruster on that SOB it's still going to apply an acceleration in line with the F = M x a equation.

 

TL/DR: If you double the mass of a ship and double the force applied (thrusters) the acceleration should stay constant.

[Ohm is Futile]

...aaaaand with all that technical talk, which makes sense by the way, I think it's already the case ingame that larger ships need to dedicate a greater percentage of their mass/volume to thrusters to achieve the same accelerations, which is unrealistic, but favours smaller ships in that sense... or am I crazy?

 

I'm not saying it's impossible for a larger ship to achieve the same values or greater than a smaller one, only that doing so means you are giving something else up for it. Of course, part of the problem is that the thing you can give up is simply more resources, go even bigger and get insanely high shields/HP anyway and still make up for a loss of thruster efficiency by simply going even bigger.

 

...and there is no disadvantage at that point to just spend your resources on getting a bigger ship...

[Blondersheel]

As far as engines go, it works as Guswut already mentioned (double the mass, and the engines, and the forward thrust stays constant). Thrusters work a bit differently and I do think its designed to make big ships feel more cumbersome.

[gblnk]

As far as engines go, it works as Guswut already mentioned (double the mass, and the engines, and the forward thrust stays constant). Thrusters work a bit differently and I do think its designed to make big ships feel more cumbersome.

 

I don't believe it's true that thrusters are different. Everything I've seen suggests thrust scales in proportion to volume and the mass of the ship is inconsequential. I've only tested this with braking thrust, but it holds true in that case. Multiply braking deceleration (game calls it braking thrust) by the mass of the ship to get the actual force of the thrusters. You can add or subtract mass from the ship, but that number should always stay the same.

 

In theory anyway. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[Bimdurian]

Have you actually used the equation you listed? Relative mass is only significant at speeds approaching the speed of light. Try plugging in some numbers to that equation:

m0 = 10000 (use whatever you want)

v = 300,000 m/s (much faster than anything you'll be travelling at in normal Avorion play)

c = 299792458 (this is the speed of light in a vacuum, i.e. space; light travelling through other media will move marginally slower)

The "increased mass" of the object is 10,000.005 *negligible*

 

 

Thing is that I never said that the increased mass due to speed was an factor.

 

I only said was: Increase the acceleration on an item with fixed mass the energy increase is not linear.And I stand by that!

 

That have nothing to do with speed increasing the mass and I never said so, think some kind of miscommunication must have happened because all of a sudden a equation with Newton's second law of motion was on the board. I just pointed to Einstein relativity equation instead since that will give you better resits in cases like this.  Anyhow...

 

If you really read what Dr. Louis Barbier says is 1 particle/cm3 not atom that is a huge difference from 1 atom.

 

So a 3040m * 3040m *3040m cube at 100m/sek (REALLY slow speed but lets start some where.) would push thru 304000 m3 of space very second interacting with 304 000 000 000 particles every second.

 

And you still have problem with the sun and planets, sometime even the ship it self, gravity pulling that will have a huge effect as long you are withing a solar system.

 

I'm not saying in any means that a game like Avorion should simulate all this, not sure it can. But I get somewhat annoyed when someone trying to get it out there that it's a perfect simulation.

 

[Blondersheel]

I don't believe it's true that thrusters are different. Everything I've seen suggests thrust scales in proportion to volume and the mass of the ship is inconsequential. I've only tested this with braking thrust, but it holds true in that case. Multiply braking deceleration (game calls it braking thrust) by the mass of the ship to get the actual force of the thrusters. You can add or subtract mass from the ship, but that number should always stay the same.

 

I totally agree with you on the changing mass aspect. The other half of the equation though...the force from the thrusters doesn't scale directly with mass since its related to surface area (at least on full release, haven't played beta DTU yet). That means that small ships have a higher surface area-to-mass ratio and feel a little bit more maneuverable. I'm assuming that was the reason for initially going with surface area-based thrust, at least until people started stacking thin thruster plates and broke the system.

[Ohm is Futile]

I totally agree with you on the changing mass aspect. The other half of the equation though...the force from the thrusters doesn't scale directly with mass since its related to surface area (at least on full release, haven't played beta DTU yet).

Well, that's going to make the debate rather difficult. There have been some rather significant changes to thrusters and movement in the game in the later beta branches...

 

The non-beta branch works totally off of surface area and has all kinds of artificial multipliers that are hidden and that allows players to make ridiculously mobile ships, as long as you make thin slices of thrusters.

 

This is quite different in the beta branch. As far as I know it's virtually impossible to just scale a ship up and expect it to have the same values. Just copy-pasting a ship design and using the "w" key to scale everything up, even by a few steps, shows smaller speed/rotation values for the same design. It's not a perfect test, but still.

 

Is that realistic, not necessarily. Does it help smaller ships, well yeah.

[Blondersheel]

Yes, I'm familiar with the changes, just haven't gotten a chance to experiment with them yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I do like that the way Avorion is coded makes it harder to maneuver a large ship than a small one and don't want that to change.

 

I didn't really mean to take a stand for or against the current and/or beta thruster mechanics, I just wanted to clarify a few things on the real-life physics side as there was (and still is) some misinformation floating around. Seems that I'm not getting through to everyone so I think I'll leave it be.

[DivineEvil]

This is quite different in the beta branch. As far as I know it's virtually impossible to just scale a ship up and expect it to have the same values. Just copy-pasting a ship design and using the "w" key to scale everything up, even by a few steps, shows smaller speed/rotation values for the same design. It's not a perfect test, but still.

 

Is that realistic, not necessarily. Does it help smaller ships, well yeah.

It is fine from the point of realism, as larger ships will endure more inertial stress, and some maneuvering can be rather unpleasant for crew members, so some safety dampening might be in place.

[gblnk]

Just copy-pasting a ship design and using the "w" key to scale everything up, even by a few steps, shows smaller speed/rotation values for the same design. It's not a perfect test, but still.

 

I'd never played around with scaling ship designs so I decided to test this. I see what you're talking about. Braking scales with the ship size (doesn't change noticeably) but yaw, pitch, and roll do change pretty significantly. I assume lateral and vertical movement scale the same as braking, but I didn't test it. So basically turning and rolling ability decreases but thrusting along x,y,z stays mostly the same.

 

I also noticed that "w" scaling has some pretty weird effects. I tested with a roughly spherical ship and it scaled fine. But then I added two big cargo bays to the sides and the more I scaled it down the more it started to look like a football.

[Soppatykki]

Well bigger is all ways better in naval world. So naturally it is in Avorion too. Because in space everyone is equally mobile and then it is better to bring more guns and shields then your opponent.

 

IR Gunboat<Destroyer<Cruiser<Battleship, and same applies here. 1 on 1, if everything else is equal, bigger, just is better. If you do not believe this, find a small child and beat him/her and see how size matters. After all you both are humans, yet the bigger of you wins.

 

What limits size is cost, in what ever form that cost comes. In Avorion that cost exist and if in PVP games you have limited resources you cant just build the biggest meanest ship, but at some point you must compromise as the bigger ship just outstrips your resources.

 

So in 1 on 1 bigger is better, but navies are not made of lone ships, but are made of ships made for particular missions. Because in many naval missions having a small vessel is better, then just having the biggest ship. And unless you have unlimited resources you must make compromises over number of ships versus their power. Will you have few and powerful ships, many weak ships or a mixture of both.

 

Fact still remains: bigger is more powerful, but more costly. 

 

 

[Ohm is Futile]

IR Gunboat<Destroyer<Cruiser<Battleship, and same applies here. 1 on 1, if everything else is equal, bigger, just is better. If you do not believe this, find a small child and beat him/her and see how size matters. After all you both are humans, yet the bigger of you wins.

Well, that's slightly disturbing. By the way, beyond comparing with a small child, have you ever seen martial arts? Technique and strengths and weaknesses matter more than just weight and reach.

 

Also, your comparison with naval warfare is rather limited. Most military vehicles have specialties regardless of size and those determine what kind of engagements they can expect to win and lose. It's not as simple as bigger = better.

 

The current problem is that there's very little way to specialize because weapons simply get better across the board instead of having specialties and the penalties for having a big ship are rather minimal.

[Alpha393]

Having more niche weapons designed around excelling in certain situations sounds like a good idea to promote build diversity.