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Bedfellows is go. I'll try to run Tuesday night US. You can talk tactics for dealing with Miltiades until then. Now that you have her on actives, you see she's a 2,610 ton sloop-of-war. She's definitely a conversion job rather than a pre-war warship. Pyotr signals you that he hopes to board Miltiades so he can have a little chat with her captain. That means either compelling their surrender, or knocking out her engines without destroying the ship outright. Sadly the game doesn't let you target specific components, so the latter comes down to RNG. BwenGun posted:I mean if Chiron has nuclear/fusion reactors that can be rigged to overload when next powered up... Something something gallicite deck plating. Though that's mainly aboard ships or in colony living areas. Places like your factories and the mooring spaces of your dockyard are left in microgravity.
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Jun 21, 2021 20:47
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I'm just a civilian scientist who got sent on the mission because they needed someone to sort out the Prefall Lostech so gently caress it, Bedfellers. I don't wanna die
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Jun 21, 2021 21:33
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FOlks think we can manage to disable them or that not very likely so better to try and surrender? And I guess we have some fighters that are available. Or did we not take any? I have to remember to check loadouts more.
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Jun 21, 2021 21:36
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wedgekree posted:FOlks think we can manage to disable them or that not very likely so better to try and surrender? And I guess we have some fighters that are available. Or did we not take any? You do have Red Squadron aboard. Ashes has a single particle beam, which is a long range but low-dps weapon. You've seen before that Miltiades can outrun Ashes. Pyotr tells you he can catch Miltiades, and your fighters are fast as hell. I should note that the shuttles you took are for dropping onto bodies and not boarding. In basic Aurora, you used the same component for both, but Steve split it into two different modules for C#, and you can't combine them on the same hull. I don't like that change but it is what it is. More on knocking out engines. It's hard to quantify exactly how likely it is. Damage works like this: -If damage gets past shields and armor, the ship takes internal damage. -Internal damage is randomly assigned to components. Bigger components are more likely to be hit. -Each component has a Hit Point value which determines the probability of being destroyed when hit. -When the last component is destroyed, the ship is destroyed. Engines are usually the biggest thing on a ship, so they do get hit a lot, and ships do get disabled a fair bit in my experience.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:13
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wedgekree posted:FOlks think we can manage to disable them or that not very likely so better to try and surrender? And I guess we have some fighters that are available. Or did we not take any? I THINK we brought Red Squadron along, so that's four fighters with 10cm IR lasers, about as basic as military-grade beam weapons get but generally better than repurposed mining equipment. If I recall/understand my Aurora mechanics right, lasers punch through armor nicely but the tightly focused beam doesn't wreck a ship's internals as much as, say, a missile warhead going off. Ordinarily bad, but useful if we wanna cripple it without completely coring it out. Assuming the Miltiades has about as strong of armor as ours (and there's no reason to assume not, it looks like a refurbished commercial ship like the Ashes and not a pre-war military vessel), our weapons SHOULD be able to effectively give it a death by a thousand cuts if we keep our distance from whatever armaments they might have. Still, if we can force a surrender without risking our largely irreplacable ships in a pissing contest, that would be preferable. It was here to covertly follow us, if they thought they could handily win a shooting match they would have started before we pinged them.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:17
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One question. How are we going to stop them from "telegraphing" back home? I know if Miltiades called for help, there is no chance it will come in time.... But how about we jamm ship's comm, so there is less chance Miltiades will send message telling their masters who attacked them.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:49
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Considering the existence of tightbeam communications and the fact that the League has, it appears, boots and facilities on several celestial bodies, it's likely going to be complicated to jam anything but the most basic communication systems, and we'd still need to line up properly with the receiving body to fool anything but the most basic antenna design. And I'm going to be honest, I don't think these guys are using AM with no carrier wave. On the other hand that's entirely on the DM and if TNEs are magic don't care lol makes better space combat and story, then it's that.
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Jun 21, 2021 23:33
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 Ah, our adventure has just started and we are already introducing new people into our beds! This is what I call a win-win situation. Thank you for the news, computer man! That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 21, 2021 23:58
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Jesenjin posted:One question. Like I said earlier, even if we could stop them it wouldn't really change anything, there's no possible cover story that adequately explains the Militades disappearing whilst pursuing us, and if even try it just makes us look weak. We have to think like bullies here, blow this guy out of space then tell his boss "well he disrespected us so he had to die, but we know it was your ship so please accept apology and potentially booby trapped shakedown loot." Ideally if we could capture the ship, then that means we could give it back to the Achileans, and maybe somehow engineer it so the boss and his buddies end up on the ship somehow? A decapitating strike would probably result in half their "navy" trying to set up their own shop, and a bunch of the other polities around here, even if they might not like us much, would surely join in on the golden opportunity to take out the arseholes that keep shaking them down.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:41
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Asterite34 posted:If I recall/understand my Aurora mechanics right, lasers punch through armor nicely but the tightly focused beam doesn't wreck a ship's internals as much as, say, a missile warhead going off. Ordinarily bad, but useful if we wanna cripple it without completely coring it out. Assuming the Miltiades has about as strong of armor as ours (and there's no reason to assume not, it looks like a refurbished commercial ship like the Ashes and not a pre-war military vessel), our weapons SHOULD be able to effectively give it a death by a thousand cuts if we keep our distance from whatever armaments they might have. - Every ship starts with a connect-4 like grid of armor blocks - Every weapon has a template shape of damage based on its type and amount. Lasers are pointier shapes. i.e. a Strength-3 missile is 2 blocks in one column, then 1 in an adjacent column. A Strength-3 laser is 3 all in one column - The damage template gets dropped down a random column. Each damage that doesn't have an armor block gets converted into an internal hit - Every internal hit picks a random ship component with a probability based on size. Engines will come up fairly often since they are big - The hit component rolls vs its hits-to-kill (HTK) value (does not actually measure number of hits required to kill it). If it passes this roll, the hit does nothing and is ignored. If it fails, the component is destroyed. There isn't any gradual damage, components are either pristine or entirely destroyed. - When an engine is destroyed, it rolls vs its explosion chance. If it fails, it explodes and generates a bunch more internal hits. This will generally destroy the ship entirely, or heavily gut it. Because the template is pointier, the expected number of internal hits for laser damage is higher than the same amount of missile damage. To disable a ship, we want to dribble in internal hits one by one to have the best chance of stopping after engines are destroyed without destroying the rest, so a strength-1 weapon would be best, but failing that, a fatter missile template is more likely to only add one internal hit per shot.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:53
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SIGSEGV posted:Considering the existence of tightbeam communications and the fact that the League has, it appears, boots and facilities on several celestial bodies, it's likely going to be complicated to jam anything but the most basic communication systems, and we'd still need to line up properly with the receiving body to fool anything but the most basic antenna design. Too bad. Pharnakes posted:Like I said earlier, even if we could stop them it wouldn't really change anything, there's no possible cover story that adequately explains the Militades disappearing whilst pursuing us, and if even try it just makes us look weak. We have to think like bullies here, blow this guy out of space then tell his boss "well he disrespected us so he had to die, but we know it was your ship so please accept apology and potentially booby trapped shakedown loot." You are right, but I was hoping we could jam their comms to get few extra hours, or whatever, for our own activities. But it is a moot point, as it seems we aren't even capable of jamming anything more complex than a toaster.
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Jun 22, 2021 01:35
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Already waiting in my cockpit for a go signal. Can we tightbeam back home for Ares? Their microwave beams would have been perfect.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:35
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The nice thing is, if we just use our fighters for this engagement, that could give us some plausible deniability, since they're old Russian surplus and if Russia's space military industrial complex is anything like their one back on Earth I bet a whole lotta podunk asteroid colonies and former bases ended up with their surplus space Sukhois.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:47
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Jimmy4400nav posted:The nice thing is, if we just use our fighters for this engagement, that could give us some plausible deniability, since they're old Russian surplus and if Russia's space military industrial complex is anything like their one back on Earth I bet a whole lotta podunk asteroid colonies and former bases ended up with their surplus space Sukhois. Gotta love these export market MiG-21S's, and the related J-7S's from the PRC.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:57
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I think that given the nature of the setting, a ship or two spontaneously exploding is an unfortunate but expected occurrence in the area, especially if it's one of those ships where they slapped guns onto an old freighter and called it a day. I mean, the Achilleans aren't going to be happy, but I doubt it's going to be "THERE WILL BE NO FORGIVENESS" levels of unhappy.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:00
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Depends what the comm situation is like. "Ship stopped communicating and vanished, wreckage later found" is pretty different from "Hey people back home, we are running active sensors and are watching fighters launch from a Hektor ship, fly in, and start shooting at us."
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Jun 22, 2021 03:09
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I actually like the idea of using the fighters for plausible deniability. The pirates were going to help, right? We could take the mothership towards the Ark and just leave the fighters behind to help the pirates, and it would look like the pirates just happened to acquire some old Russian surplus military hardware somewhere.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:11
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Depends on whether the Achillean ship can tightbeam something back home while getting shot at. They know we and Pyotr are out here; best we can probably do is shift all the blame to him.
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Jun 22, 2021 03:40
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This Pyotr from the ship Miltiades is giving me serious Miltiades from Age of Decadence vibes. Seems eminently trustworthy.
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Jun 22, 2021 05:39
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Guper posted:This Pyotr from the ship Miltiades is giving me serious Miltiades from Age of Decadence vibes. Seems eminently trustworthy. Goddamnit, I knew the name was familiar for some reason.
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Jun 22, 2021 06:35
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I also like the idea of getting the fighters to harass whilst we grab up everything worth taking from Chiron with the Bedfellows plan.
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Jun 22, 2021 11:00
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sniper4625 posted:Goddamnit, I knew the name was familiar for some reason. I hope we don't have to send someone back home to do the same btw.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:58
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Bremen posted:I actually like the idea of using the fighters for plausible deniability. The pirates were going to help, right? We could take the mothership towards the Ark and just leave the fighters behind to help the pirates, and it would look like the pirates just happened to acquire some old Russian surplus military hardware somewhere. The Su-108 was indeed pretty common before the war, so we can run with this idea if y'all want. I'm gonna say that with two hours work you can (reversibly) tweak your fighters' engines to run really dirty. You'll make it look like they're terribly maintained like a lot of pirate kit is. This'll cut their range somewhat to 50 Mkm (which shouldn't matter in this situation), and you'll need 1-2 days afterwards to strip down and clean the engines so they don't get damaged by it. For the time being I'm just gonna say no on jamming for the reasons SIGSEGV so helpfully provided. Maybe someday you'll uncover some kind of trans-Newtonian technology for that! Ed: Want to clarify that this modification is reversible when you do your cleanup of the engines. Fray fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 17:03
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Even if we don't modify the fighters, it's plausible deniability. At worst they'll suspect someone is arming the pirates against them, not specifically someone with a 25,000 ton converted battle barge.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:16
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I mean, they'll still strongly suspect us no matter how we cover our tracks. The sloop was sent to follow us. If it disappears while following us, the only ship they know for an undisputed fact was in its vicinity, we'll be the first suspect whether they can get a message out mid-attack or not. I suppose Pyotr does give us a bit of a cover story, but it could just look like us leading them into a pirate ambush on purpose, which might actually make us look worse, if significantly more canny than we actually are. God I wish we had some ship-boarding craft or a tractor beam with us, a largely intact combat-capable ship is valuable, and it would be amazing to deprive the AL of a ship while adding a ship to our own armada (or at least some useful spare parts). I guess Pyotr is gonna get that salvage, or at least whatever he can chop out of its guts before the Achillean fleet chases him and his buzzards off the carcass. Ah well, we have bigger prizes to focus on anyway. Chiron and the Ark await! Kick Red Squadron out the hanger door without skipping a step and keep hard burning toward the finish line while the fighters do what they're named for.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:11
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Are we just dropping the fighters behind us cold so they don't clearly see them departing from our hangars? Because we should do something to make sure they don't obviously come from the Ashes.
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Jun 22, 2021 20:11
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Asterite34 posted:I mean, they'll still strongly suspect us no matter how we cover our tracks. The sloop was sent to follow us. If it disappears while following us, the only ship they know for an undisputed fact was in its vicinity, we'll be the first suspect whether they can get a message out mid-attack or not. I suppose Pyotr does give us a bit of a cover story, but it could just look like us leading them into a pirate ambush on purpose, which might actually make us look worse, if significantly more canny than we actually are. habeasdorkus posted:Are we just dropping the fighters behind us cold so they don't clearly see them departing from our hangars? Because we should do something to make sure they don't obviously come from the Ashes. The pirates just went active, then we went active. We could turn heading away from the pirates and act like we're running from them, while leaving fighters behind to join them. To the League ship it will (hopefully) look like we got spooked by a pirate fleet and tried to run, but the pirates decided to go after the league patrol ship instead of our lumbering Frankenship. Edit: The screenshots don't show the resolution of the league ship's sensor so it's hard to tell if it could spot our fighters if it goes active or not. Bremen fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 20:24
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Yeah, I think we should kick em out the hangar door cold while burning away from Ol' Pete. It at least helps add to our plausible deniability.
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Jun 22, 2021 20:31
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We should be able to roughly bounds out whether their active can resolve our fighters at this range. Observed sensor signature (the GPS 200 when it had active on) is a function of sensor strength (size x tech) and resolution. We know a range where they could see our big ship and if we assume roughly equal EM sensitivity tech, that should put a bound on how small the sensor resolution could be, which will tell us when they will pick up a little fighter.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:05
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I'd say the dirty fighters helping Pyotr, and trying to spin it as Ashley running from pirates (conveniently towards the comet) is as good as we're going to get for this situation. Let's roll the dice and see what comes up.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:05
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For new people I'll just link back to an explainer post on sensors from Saros' LP. The formulae are a bit different in C#, but the principles are the same: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3822055&userid=159300#post472909286 One difference in C# is you don't get to see the range and resolution right away when you pick up a sensor contact. That's probably a good change, but the bad part is that to learn that information, you have to interact with a new electronic intelligence mechanic which is pretty half-baked IMO. To get full details of an active sensor, you have to observe it for one hundred days using a special 500 ton component. Yes, really.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:18
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...oh I had a devious idea. We know the AL sloop is out there. They know WE know because we used active sensors. Both of us know Pyotr's ships are out there nearby. Can we contact the Miltiades and request assistance against the  hostile pirates? "  Oh no, these pirates are more than we bargained for! We give up, you can have Chiron, just protect us from the scary brigands!"Say, for example, we burn directly away from Pyotr in an apparent evasive maneuver, instructing the Achilleans to follow behind between us and the pirates to cover our retreat? WHILE kicking our fighters out the hanger cold for them to blunder into when they follow our approximate flight path? A sudden pincer attack will certainly disorient them.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:27
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While mechanically boarding shuttles and landing shuttles are different now if the ship is disabled and surrenders there is no reason GM fiat couldn't simulate a prize boarding action so we could end out +1 ship if we play our cards right. Most importantly we need to preserve the fighters as they are super fragile so they should engage alongside our piratical friend then if the enemy tries to run force a surrender. We also need them as insurance against our new friend.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:32
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Asterite34 posted:...oh I had a devious idea. They are much more likely to just plain run away. Good propaganda, but not likely to get us the ship. Also I am personally opposed to fouling up the flight's engines. Really wishing we could have practiced cold launches from a moving ship before the moment of truth.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:57
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Also theoretically with fighters they could be launched, do a long burn, then turn off engines and just 'float'. We could calculate speed/trjaectory of other ship, and the fighters probbly won't stick out if they're going at low power and just having inertia take 'em. That also means though that if the enemy ship alters course/speed it's kinda useless though. But it hopefully would let us get them around unnoticed.
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Jun 23, 2021 00:25
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No inertia in aurora.
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Jun 23, 2021 00:58
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If we kick the fighters out of the ship and do a full burn towards the comet... do the fighters have the speed/range to catch up after dealing with our tail?
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Jun 23, 2021 01:49
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Starting now.
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Jun 23, 2021 01:52
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Dirty the fighters, a lovely cover story is better than no cover story
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Jun 23, 2021 03:09
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Paintjob status: ruined.
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Jun 23, 2021 08:49
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