OOS Combat Resolution (Was: OOS Missile firing test.)

[jlehtone]

OOS combat report:
* Had a completely unarmed ship and told it to attack a Pirate Base (which I had made mad). Command completes immediately. No attack.
* Gave turret a command and told the ship to attack again. Same result.
* Loaded missiles into the ship. Same result.
* Loaded one gun to turret, turret command 'None', no missiles. Ship proceeds to attack. One installed gun only. No command to use it. Next time I look, the 3 GJ shield of Base is gone and hull has scratches. Single gun. Weak gun. Disabled gun. And the ship still hits really hard.
* Uninstalled the gun. Ship continued its attack. Okay, the 'Attack ..' checks on start if the ship has a gun, but not again. No more damage to Base.
* Transferred Firestorms to the ship. One launches immediately and almost wipes out the Base. Couple seconds later second missile vanishes from the hold, and so does the Pirate Base.

Conclusions:
* Turret commands are not required for ship to use installed weapons OOS.
* Attack power of the ship is a complete mystery.
* 'Attack ..' requires installed gun.
* Missiles are consumed OOS.
* Missiles do damage OOS.

Other observations:
* Only small fraction of Xenon ships has Missile firing probability other than 0%.
* Strong patrol ships are known to die, but not often.
* Xenon Patrols and Pirates can carry Hammerheads.
* Xenon Patrols and Pirates can quickly destroy even 5--7 GJ of shields.


All that seems suddenly very logical. Missiles.

[KipperTheFish]

I think you need to get out more

[Etolf]

thank you, jlehtone, for a very interesting report... and thanks for taking the trouble to do it, and report it properly too.

[Carlo the Curious]

Interesting.

Now, I wonder if MDM works OOS?

[jlehtone]

Now, I wonder if MDM works OOS?

MDM does not work OOS. In fact one of its updates specifically turns it off for ships that are OOS to reduce unnecessary load from CPU. Apparently it is not possible to get list of incoming missiles by script OOS. This is quite understandable, as the missiles probably do not even exists OOS as "objects". I would guess their effect is hardcoded and that they hit instantaneously.

The ship (M2) had all its turret commands at 'None', when it did cause damage to the Base with its only installed gun. If you happen to look at OOS ship with ScriptEditor enabled, you will notice that all the turret scripts are "frozen". Now a question remains whether some hardcoding still checks what commands the turrets are supposed to run, and does it change the OOS behaviour. Logically, it should not because ship can run a third-party turret script and the hardcode cannot possibly know what that script is supposed to do.

From that follows that 'Turret Missile Defence' command is probably not defending against OOS missile attacks. Kind of bad. The opponent has a chance to carry Hammerheads. The opponent has a chance to fire a Hammerhead. Hammerhead hurts. Only M7/M1/M2 can survive single hit. TL and M6 patrols have a fair statistical chance to die.

While turret commands may not have any meaning OOS, it is not totally impossible that there would not be a chance for the missile to fail. Weapon specs could affect that chance. But that is pure speculation.


One thing is sure: If you kill a foe before it shoots, your chance to survive improves.


The assumption that missiles are effective OOS leads to practical problem. How to keep 60+ sector patrols supplied with missiles? CLS2 can almost make that automatic, and FSUP is the easiest manual method.


The test was easy to do, since I have all kinds of "junk" in my HQ, and that Pirate Base was scheduled for termination anyway.

[ThommoHawk]

Hi jlehtone - did you set the 'missile fire probability' to any specific value or was it just on the default 5% ?

[jlehtone]

Umm, I cranked her up to 100% for the test.

Browsing old X2 threads, X2 Dragon (too weakly shielded to reliably handle X2 Cluster OOS) did remarkably well with hold full of Wasps and percentage between 50% and 100%, with 80% most quoted.

[Bunny]

Yeap it is not possible to locate a missile once it has been fired OOS...so technically there is no defence against it. But the game code might check to see if ship turret is running the standard missile defence and could fudge the damage down a bit (never checked that bit).

Some other weird things OOS :
1. Ion disrupters destroy rocks
2. A hornet missile does not destroy a map asteroid but it does spam rocks out
3. Mobile drilling system also fails to destroy a map asteroid (rocks are spammed)
4. Mass drivers are very effective at breaking rocks OOS but do not appear to use ammo (or if they do then it is one shell per rock)
5. Mobile drilling system shots have no blast radius OOS

OOS = twilight zone

I wonder how the game handles unguided missiles (against a moving target)? Blast effects are probably ignored.

(Some may think this stuff is pointless but it is very important to know these things for scripts that run OOS)

[Carlo the Curious]

It's pretty useful to know even not considering scripts - nice to know it is actually worth putting missiles on OOS patrols.

[Dragonteen]

IIRC OOS every shot is considered a hit so an M2 with full only PPCs would be suicide against fighters IS is actually decent OOS because speed of target and turret rotation is ignored.

[XanII]

So this means if i load up my OOS patrols with crappy point and fire missiles, they do a lot of damage OOS if i crank up the probability to fire?

[jlehtone]

I do not know about the crappy ones. It did seem like the first Firestorm hit did about 1,000,000 points of hull damage, as one would expect. Too bad the Base run out of hull points soon after that.

My hypothesis about the OOS combat resolution is that it resembles D&D combat:
* Roll dice to see if you use a missile
* Roll dice to see if you hit
* Roll dice to see how much damage that hit did
* Recharge your own shields

"Easy" hypothesis, as it does not say whether the chance to hit is always 1.0, or dependent on something. And it does not say whether the damage from weapon can vary, or is always the "maximum". It is quite logical to assume that the damage value of a missile is the "maximum" damage value for them. No idea if a Swarm missile damage value is properly multiplied by its warhead count, but I do hope so.

Assuming the hypothesis holds, then dumbfires hit just like any other missile. Too bad the dumbfires have low damage values. It does depend entirely on how the probabilities and damage values are used, whether missiles improve significantly the OOS offensive power of a ship.

It would be logical for the hardcode to check if any turret runs missile defence turret command, and use that as modifier to probabilities. However, if hardcode looks for only one builtin command, then it misses the mother of all missile defence turret commands written by genious scripters. And scripter can replace the stock scripts too, without hardcode knowing. IMO the only simple test would be:

Code: Select all

IF NOT all turrets have command NONE

Another logical option would be to use some spec of the weapons. It seems that damage values might be looked up for weapons already. Sum, Min, or Max of some value could be used to modify the effect of OOS missiles.

One must remember that the OOS combat is on purpose very simple. Anything complex would melt the CPU (and player patience). So there might be no code at all to simulate OOS missile defence.

Practical problem with patrols is that they will run out of missiles. But scripting will solve that, unless it has already done so.

A byproduct of the test was the observation that the ship with no active turret commands and only one installed (BFAA) gun did inflict damage, even a huge amount (3 GJ of shield) in short amount of time. It might depend on the ship running Combat command ("Attack .."), rather than Navigational or None. But if command of the ship is ignored, then any Freighter with installed turret gun will cause damage on enemies OOS, even if player forgets to set any turret command. Not that it really makes a difference. My guess is that command type of the ship does matter.

[ThommoHawk]

Hmmm .... I will try an experiment also I think, as I have a complex which inlcudes 4x Firestorm Torpedo factories ... with a little OOS invasion on a Xenon sector with a few capital destroyers loaded with missiles. I'll get around to it eventually, as I have another project I am working on currently. This may also be a way to finally use up my 500+ Aurora Missiles I have collected over time (which i find too fiddly to use myself).

[Lucike]

We need more OOS tests. What is with fighters, which docked on an OOS-M1? Thereby is the combat capability increased of the OOS-M1?

[wyvern11]

not to my opinion
i think i saw a colossus with 40 M3+ (8aEPW) docked does not stand a single chance against a destroyer - but with undocked fighters it does, at most you lose a fighter

the main problem with fleet vs. fleet OOS is

who is attacked first - and it is not allways the heaviest opponent

example 1
3 centaur 2 LX against a P patrol (2 LX). result: 2 LX lost a centaur maimed - attacking the M instead of the P/LX

example 2
9 M2, 1 M1, 35 M3+, 30 M5 against a spawning J (plus escort) on "kill all".
result: as a rule one to two lost m1 or m2

same fleet on manually kill J - no capital losses

[jlehtone]

halo112358 made that script to stage (and log) OOS fights. I would rather plot the change of shield and hull values (of target ship) as function of time (and used attacker).

As I hinted in OP, I've seen my 7 GJ Condor shields down and with hull damage, still struggling against couple Xenon fighters. The Condor had (and still has) 20 Perseus Sentinels in its bay. Manual lauch of them OOS did save the Carrier that time.

Who shoots first and who is the first target seem to really matter. Patrol script is supposed to target the largest threat first. Supposed.

[LionOfHeart]

has 1 m3 terran, speed 770Ms he has 120 buluga missils. vs 3 M3 pirats ships

dead

again only 80% missils attack.

win

[Carlo the Curious]

I had an Orca patrolling outside X101. 5 LXs docked (and homed) on board.

It ran into a P patrol and they never launched. Still won, but I doubt the docked fighters made any difference as I've seen that Orca kill P patrols alone before, /shrug.

[Gazz]

I don't know about missiles but the blast radius and splash damage of mines is calculated correctly OOS.

[wyvern11]

Patrol script is supposed to target the largest threat first. Supposed.

this does not correspond to my observations

on capital vs. capital i already did some tests :

for to have a 10 success in 10 tries with no loss experiment it takes
4 pythons to a J (no escorts) - adding just 4 prissy M to the J will result in an almost certain loss of 1-2 pythons

pythons were on sector patrol command that is

once i watched 3 python oos - a j jumped in and there was a lone N (!) on the map. my destroyers decided to rip up the scout first - which was an unlucky choice. in the time it took the J to take out all three, my capitals didn't score a single hit on the scout