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

[Baleur]

I think you need to get out more

At least he did it so you dont have to, with your big fancy life
Thanks for the test m8

[jlehtone]

So how much damage can an AIRE deal in 30secs?

120 kJ per shot, 472 rounds per minute, ... makes 28 MJ per 30 seconds. there might have been single hits over 5 MJ, but not much. Apparently typical streak of RNG. Considering the recharge rate of GJ shields one has to be quick to see the AIRE damage. For next Base I'll use non-Capital ship.

[frymaster]

isn't it the case that a "watched" oos sector performs differently to an unwatched one? I'm sure I read that somewhere in relation to X2 and i've no reason to think it's changed

[jlehtone]

'galaxy flight timestep' is 5 seconds for "watched" and 30 seconds for "nonwatched". That may or may not affect the combat resolution. Its name imply that it definitely affects the frequency of the updates of ship positions. That probably does affect the combat, as the attacker has to "chase" a moving target, which logically should affect the attacks. On regular tests neither target is moving, but in Pirate on Freighter scenario I would expect to see more difference between "watch" and "nonwatch".

One sector is always "in sector". At most one sector is ever "watched OOS". All other sectors are "nonwatched OOS". So yes, the "nonwatched" behaviour is very meaningful in practice.

[wyvern11]

after testing some sessions with sinza i'm pretty sure of the following aspects OOS-wise:

for a beginning player a xenon-ship is about as strong (or even a little stronger) as a player's ship of same type.
if the player starts to mass up own fleets odds seem to turn slowly to xenon fleet

at 20 capital ships it was like 2:1 upto 3:1
at 60 capital ships it was like 4:1

player versus good race was like 1:1 with 20 capitals

more info will folloe

[googlemeier]

hmm...I have built up my fleet now.
for two xenon-sectors oos patrols with 10 Ks each, protected by Ps and LXs and Ls.
I have noticed from previous attempts that there is a difference between "attack all enemies" (aae) and "patrol single sector"(pss)

with aae there was very little chance that my ships (xenon K, all gppc) would survive, but with pss the chances were much better.

now -

1. with the new bonus-pack the fleet commands have changed (group attack target of...) - for the better?
2. back to topic: do missiles change the outcome?
3. if they do - which ones? which percentage of firing?

[jlehtone]

1. with the new bonus-pack the fleet commands have changed (group attack target of...) - for the better?

* All ships on "aae" pick targets however they do.
* In "pss" the lead ship selects targets perhaps a bit differently from "aae", and the escorts attack target of the lead.
* Group Management can set escorts to attack target of "group leader" just like "pss" does, but you still have to give an attack command to the leader, so in practice it has to run "aae". More concentrated than all ships on "aae", but not quite same targeting logic as in "pss".

[googlemeier]

all Ks have hornets now (installed!) set to 80% firing.

let's roll...

[wyvern11]

hi all

did some testing runs yesterday, (100 replays of same fight)

at my momentary player-fleet strength (about 20 M1/M2) combat goes like
1:4 in favor of xenon

a beginning player would experience about 1:1,25 in favor of xenon.
so i think player fleet strength is taken into account

so i added 10 hornets and set fire probability to 100% - effect was that missiles were being used (they were gone afterwards) but outcome was still the same.
consequently i notched up to 10 firestorms. first noticeable effect was that almost always xenons started with a dent of about 1GJ to shields

i took this as evidence for torpedo hit (and for the existence of a real probability for "no hit")

small fleet rates went up from 1:1,25 in favor xenon to 1:1 draw
strong fleet rate went up from 1:4 to 1:1,12

conclusion is - me better build torpedoe-fab

[ttl]

Wyvern11: What about other player assets than the fleet? I was thinking the time evolution algorithm in the game reduces player "initiative" when he has a lot of ships and stations for the game to process every time step. So it is more likely for the Xenon to shoot first at a given time step, and cap ship combat being what it is...

All in all, I have a hard time believing to a purposefully built-in OOS combat logic bias against the player. If there is, it prolly has to do with fight/trade ranks.

So the theory goes that just having 20 Ks shouldn't affect much, but the empire to build those Ks would.

[wyvern11]

@ttl
theres lots of hints in german forum that there are differences between games of same fightrank but different numbers of capitals - and it really looks that way given my experiments

see zazies (to my info he has same fightrank or higher, but no destroyers) post in this thread a page or two ago. he is supposedly able to stop P-patrols with a corvette and a wing of heavy fighters - i definitely am not. i frequently lost ships out of a 3M6 + 2M3+ squad

i am determined to test that

for the fights and the initiative - it almost always looked like player ship hitting first but xenon hitting the harder -> will do a damage-report as jlehtone suggested

[jlehtone]

From what I gathered from S&M, the damage reporter should probably be an "AL-plugin", whatever that is. 'wait' is apparently not a good "timer", but "AL-plugin" is supposed to be.


Question: when I look at the station dialog of a OOS station, I do not actually see the sector map. So am I "watching" that sector after all?


M4 plain Scorpion with 6 AHEPT against Pirate Base:
* Base shield drops about every 30 seconds.
* Base shield recharges about every 2 seconds. Usually steps of 2 MJ.
* First "hit" about 13 seconds after I told the Scorpion to attack.
* After 10 minutes, the Base shield was 2,369 MJ. 631 MJ below full.
* 1 GJ shield should recharge at 250 kW. Three would be 750 kW. In 575 seconds that charges about 431 MJ.
=> 6 AHEPT caused maybe 1060 MJ shield damage with 19 "hits".
=> About 55 MJ per hit.
=> Average of 9 MJ from one AHEPT per 30 seconds.

AHEPT: 1995 kJ damage per shot; 283 rounds per minute => 282 MJ per 30 seconds.
=> average observed damage only about 3% of the "assumed max". (But 19 hits is a small sample.)

It might be that the two consecutive ~100% "assumed max" hits of 8 BHEPT K were a very rare stroke of luck.

I'll transfer those 6 AHEPT into Nemesis Vanguard and try again.


Hornet damage is next to nothing (compared to guns of Colossus). Firestorm is more "noticeable".


EDIT:
* On second try the 6 AHEPT Scorpion (M5, 2,450 generator) got the Base shield down to 2,647 MJ in 600 seconds (19 hits). The first time was 2,369 MJ.
* 6 AHEPT Nemesis Vanguard (M6, 10,000 gen) got the shield to 825 MJ in 600 seconds.
* 6 AHEPT Raptor (M2, 71,800 gen) got the shield to 0 (and did hull damage in 189 seconds (six hits). At 16:12 from start, the Base was dead.
* Second run with Raptor required 8 hits, 280 seconds, to touch the hull.

Either I have devious RNG, or ...

EDIT2:
* 5 AHEPT LX (M3+, 9,250 gen) wiped the 3 GJ shield of the Pirate Base in 526 seconds. Bit faster than Nemesis, but that is probably just randomness.
* The shield of Pirate Base recharges 20-22 MJ in 30 seconds.

[wyvern11]

this is how a damage report looks like - receiving end

Code: Select all

replay       time           ship                         maxsh.     shields      maxhull      hull
12	9	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	6000000	200000	200000
12	10	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	6000000	200000	200000
12	11	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1542744	200000	200000
12	12	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1542744	200000	200000
12	13	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1542744	200000	200000
12	14	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1547232	200000	200000
12	15	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1547232	200000	200000
12	16	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1547232	200000	200000
12	17	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1551720	200000	200000
12	18	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1551720	200000	200000
12	19	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	1551720	200000	200000
12	20	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	444790	200000	200000
12	21	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	444790	200000	200000
12	22	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	449278	200000	200000
12	23	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	449278	200000	200000
12	24	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	449278	200000	200000
12	25	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	453766	200000	200000
12	26	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	453766	200000	200000
12	27	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	453766	200000	200000
12	28	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	458254	200000	200000
12	29	 Ihr Colossus 	6000000	458254	200000	200000

next second it was dead - looks like shield recharge is added every 3 sec, 4488 points. this is one of the longer lists - others are much shorter

[zazie]

@ttl: my theory just tries to explain why players with equal or similar fighting ranks face important differences in AI-behaviour of X-Pats or pirate groups: some can stop them with M6 plus M3+, others loose M2-Patrols. I understand your scepticism because the factual base is very narrow.

But:
wyvern11 seems to have found some hints in this direction! In your words: it would matter (as ONE of the factors) to have the K's, not only to be able to build them.

Today "Akatash" reported in a German thread . Rough translation:

Akatash fully agrees with this theory. By some bug he got roughly 1 Billion credits which he invested in M2 and M1. From this moment on his game changed completely: the pirates cut through his patrols without a problem killing M7 and three M6 and devastated Ianamus Zura. Even his Oddyseus got in troubles.
The Xenon were stronger too, a X-Patrol went through his forces as if they were only M5. So he changed quickly back to the save before the additional 1'000'000'000 credits.

Of course, no evidence. But another hint that there could be a hidden trigger in the game making that the power of the AI-foes does not only expand proportionally to the fighting ranks of the player.

@jlehtone:
I do not want to hijack your thread but the use of OOS missiles is possibly only one part of the answer to the astonishing OOS-fighting power of the AI in late game.
Oh, and IF we are talking about pirates: hijacking is frequent in those societies

[jlehtone]

@jlehtone:
I do not want to hijack your thread but the use of OOS missiles is possibly only one part of the answer to the astonishing OOS-fighting power of the AI in late game.

You are not hijacking. I changed the thread title to include you a bit more.

I do agree that missiles do not play big part. But they did get this thread started and it seems we might actually benefit from this "discussion".

The game has statistics about player property. It is actually smart to make use of that info, if the game indeed does so. And it should not be that difficult to for example bias the average damage of Xenon attack by player M2 count.

@wyvern11: Hit every 10 seconds? And clear difference in amount of damage of successive hits. Colossus has 6 x 1 GJ. That would mean about 1,500 kW (more accurately 6 * 0.9 * 277 kW), ie almost 4500 points per 3 seconds. That 4488 is exactly what expected. Did you have the sector map open this time too?

[googlemeier]

the fleet of 20K (plus fighters) is installed in 347 and 472 now. (see above)

during the last 2 hours the xenon weren't really interested (they had given up 347 anyway) apart from a weak try of a J plus the usual lot.
But that's random.
It was swallowed without any scratch by one of my Ks which fired one hornet, though.

does it matter if you buy or earn your capitals?
maybe the AI does some double thinking...

odd: when combat mode was set to "AAE" the Xeon-Station was pulverized immediately.
with "PSS" they don't care at all.

[zazie]

odd: when combat mode was set to "AAE" the Xeon-Station was pulverized immediately.
with "PSS" they don't care at all.

AFAIK this happens only from TLs upwards (it does not for M6 or smaller)

[wyvern11]

@jlehtone

sector map often open but not sure in this case

[googlemeier]

I had this test with a phoenix (comparable to a J):

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... t=#2044945

[jlehtone]

sector map often open but not sure in this case

I did ask, because the hits were in 10 second intervals, and when I watch station menu of Pirate Base I see hits in 30 second intervals. I would guess that station menu is not "watching" and that "watched OOS" might resolve attacks more frequently, although 10 seconds is not same as the 5 seconds of "galaxy flight timestep". If "watched" indeed resolves attacks with 10 second timestep then it does clearly differ from the "nonwatched" (smaller hits, but can kill three times more small targets per minute).


One more attack on Pirate Base. Dragon, one AIRE, missile probability at 100%.

Attack one: Typhoons. Each hit was pretty close to 30 MJ. Since the Base recharges about 22 MJ between hits, it would eventually die, but ... stopped after use of 8 missiles.

Attack two: Firestorms. Hits were not exactly 1000 MJ each, but very close. Unfortunately, the Base did not withstand statistical amount of hits.

Very small sample, but one could think that the missiles are likely to cause very close to their nominal damage, while guns on smaller ships seem to make more random and below max damage. ~30 MJ per Typhoon makes one think that swarms only use one warhead.

Firestorms can be produced and seem effective killers. But only BigShips can use them. Next missile is the Thunderbolt, with 75 MJ damage. I think fully kitted LX will survive two hits though. There is a big gap in OOS missiles, so guns still rule.