Evochron Mercenary Technical Guide

[Coyote]

Unfortunately as this is only my second post, I can't reply on U2U yet but the technical guide is quite simply awesome. I'd read the 3rd edition which had prompted a lot of my thinking about mining, trade and technology but that is another topic.

As a caveat on the whole document; I don't know whether the document is fan fiction, an attempt to justify and rationalise design decisions that have been made, inside knowledge on forthcoming developments, an attempt to influence the development path or a combination. I also haven't played the game enough to have seen everything in the guide or to know whether things mentioned in the guide aren't in the game and have only really seen Vice's design question thread as a guide to the game's possible future direction. Consequently, my comments treat the document as a design document and may vary from what is already in the game.

With respect to the cargo ships, I really like the CHV model and the standardised layouts based on the jumpgate with the supporting tugs and landing infrastructure. The extension to add the CTS as the mass transporter is also sound and the backstory makes it all fit together.

I do query the summary of the roles though. I would have assumed CHV's to be the most common means of moving freight along the gate network, with CTS's being phased out because of their massive size. CVH's would be unheard of in ungated systems and CTS's would be infrequent supply ships. With the comparative levels of carrying capacity, the amount contributed by the mercenaries is noise and isn't sufficient to affect market prices.

To compare to the modern real world. CTS's would be freight ships, CVH's would be the lorries and freight trains and mercenaries would be courier vans.

In terms of CHV armament, it seems about right, with four pairs of cannons and the Excalibur. The CTS should probably have similar.

Looking at the Capital ships, I think the scaling up of the guns is really good. It looks like there are some typos in the railgun rate of fire where minutes should be seconds for the reload times. In the comments I had made in the design thread, I had made the assumption that the main guns would be side facing as naval warships guns were and so that more of these massive weapons could be brought to bear at once. But the rationale for forward facing guns mounted on or in large wings makes more sense given Newton's 3rd law and the consequent need to balance recoil from the rail gun with engine thrust to maintain position. The extreme range of the weapons makes up for these craft's lack of manoeuvrability.

I think the loadout and roles of the various capital ships could do with some modification. I agree that a full primary gun salvo of a battleship should be able to destroy an enemy (Vonari) battleship equivalent, but I think 3 guns is too few - maybe 6 guns out of 8 would need a direct hit, with 1 or 2 primary guns sufficient to destroy a cruiser. I was surprised by the number of area defence cannons, with that many no fighter could get anywhere near a capital ship and I would expect the balance between offensive and defensive capability to be more aggressive. Point defence missiles don't feel right either, they are quite expensive for what is a counter to an individual minor threat so to my mind either more point defence cannons would be installed or an extra secondary gun would be in place rather than a point defence missile battery. I would prefer to see dedicated carriers rather than a wing of fighters attached to fighting ships as the fighters are diluting the role, though they do have a place on the multi-role, peacetime ships. The command ships could probably be replaced by the carrier, which is often the command ship in the navy and there is no in-game AWACS equivalent for air command. The Battlecruiser role appears to have been omitted and is valid in the strategic description provided on 183. Historically, these were used to wipe out cruisers before they could form a pack to attack battleships, being armed with several powerful primary guns but with the speed and manoeuvrability of the cruiser. The other roles sound very good. A 'submarine' class capital ship could be an interesting addition. Basically a stealth ship with a battery of capital missiles that is relatively slow moving and has virtually no defences but can unleash devastating amounts of damage and would have to uncloak to fire or to engage the jump drive.

Overall, as I said at the start I think the guide is awesome and I appreciate being asked to comment. I realise my commentary on the capital ships is a little critical and I would still be delighted if the game had (or already has) the capital ships as written up in the current manual.

Thank you for spending the time and effort researching this fantastic manual.
Coyote

[DaveK]

Hi Coyote! Thanks for the kind words and for taking the time to comment so thoughtfully. Here is some of the philosophy and reasoning for choosing what I did.

As you might be able to tell I used WWII battleships and heavy cruisers as the comparative model (we're only a few hundred years into the future!). Each primary is supposed to model a full WWII turret, hence only three primary railguns; Similarly The abundance of smaller close defence railguns mirrors the modifications made to battleship and cruisers when air power effectively made them redundant.

The second part of the primary and secondary weapons systems - missiles - (mimicking naval torpedoes) actually gives a far more practical space based threat/weapon. Most WWII battleships didn't have torpedo tubes fitted and those that did had a handful of 21" - the same size as destroyers and small torpedo boats! So in many ways, the missiles are what makes our capital ships 'day-to-day' useful

I'll look again at the recharge timings, but I wanted to emphasise the massive size and the sheer impact power of the primary and secondary railguns. Being almost 2 km long they take up a significant volume of the ships' internal space (taking into account the fusion generators, charge storage capacitors and massive structural supports) and when you consider the need for engines, jump drives, crew space, fighter space (including engineering workshops, hangars and a launch platform) etc, there is limited capacity for the fusion generators required to charge the awesome sized capacitors required to take a heavy round from stationary to a significant % of the speed of light in 1500 metres or so - hence the reload time. WWII battleships have fire cycles of at least 30 seconds and they are simply ramming the powder bags and shell into the breech. Railguns need charging and there is a limit to the current that you can push through wiring, so there is a time requirement to recharge the capacitors. There is also a cooling down time for the barrel, wiring and capacitors given the awesome current running through the coil magnets.

Basically, outside of Vonari conflict I wanted to describe something unstoppable - potential city killers and able to take out other capital ships with one salvo; but I didn't want to make them so awesome that mercs lost their big role in the Vonari and other conflicts (otherwise we mercs wouldn't have a job in the Evoverse! )

I also judged that it would be more economically and politically cost effective to have a large number of 'smaller' battleships as opposed to a few 'hyper-ships'; The Evoverse is a large volume to 'police' and being Vonari killers is only part of their role. With fewer hyper-ships there is a risk that the Vonari would use suicide tactics to take them all out, as at Pearl Harbour and the Battle of Taranto - but with so many of our present sized battleships (they are around 2km long, after all) available, you can see them in most systems, even many of the hundreds of systems in game that are uncharted. The Vonari can't take out a significant proportion of the combined fleet even with the best pre-emptive strike.

[Marvin]

Two things.

One, WWII ships had very few choices when it came to defense. Guns and armor plating. Too many guns and especially too much plating would make the ship too heavy to maneuver (or even float). Space ships have an additional defensive option ... one which doesn't add much weight: force fields. Force field generators would get smaller with time (like the portable vacuum cleaner motor from Dyson), allowing for more powerful force fields at little cost in weight. Ergo, capital ships would eventually have stand-off capability ... the kind where opposing battleships could go at it forever (almost).

Two, submarines are cool. I'd sacrifice a lot of other stuff if I could enter a major battle against the Vonari undetected. Until I fired that first volley. Then what? "Run silent, run deep," wouldn't work. Silent, yes. But how do you run deep to evade the Vonari "depth charges" ...? (Still, it's a cool idea and worth consideration.)

[PaulB]

Two things.

One, WWII ships had very few choices when it came to defense. Guns and armor plating. Too many guns and especially too much plating would make the ship too heavy to maneuver (or even float). Space ships have an additional defensive option ... one which doesn't add much weight: force fields. Force field generators would get smaller with time (like the portable vacuum cleaner motor from Dyson), allowing for more powerful force fields at little cost in weight. Ergo, capital ships would eventually have stand-off capability ... the kind where opposing battleships could go at it forever (almost).

Two, submarines are cool. I'd sacrifice a lot of other stuff if I could enter a major battle against the Vonari undetected. Until I fired that first volley. Then what? "Run silent, run deep," wouldn't work. Silent, yes. But how do you run deep to evade the Vonari "depth charges" ...? (Still, it's a cool idea and worth consideration.)

Two options to avoidance was to try and find a cold layer that Sonar couldn't penetrate (I don't know what the equivalent in space would be unless it was a gravitation warp to confuse space against Radar, and the 2nd was German - Pillenwerfer - also to confuse Sonar - so maybe an equivalent for Radar in Space. But IMHO as standard equipment and not another "buy and take up a more useful Equipment or Hardpoint slot".
And they wouldn't be 100% effective since the US Sonar operators learned to recognize a "Pill" when the German Sub's released them but they still often had to find the Sub again since they would immediately alter course after dropping one.

[Edited on 8-17-2015 by PaulB]

[Marvin]

Well, space might not have a thermocline but many star systems have a nebula or two.

[Coyote]

Hi Dave, thanks for the prompt reply to my feedback. The three primary guns makes perfect sense now, thanks. I may have misunderstood the role of the CSC(9) and CSC(10) cannons, I think their number is a massive overkill for shooting down fighters but if their size is such that they are really only effective against missiles and as flak then they are probably appropriate. The level 6 guns are perhaps a little high for gameplay purposes with that many guns available, a single capital ship should have no problems destroying several wings of fighters simultaneously and also removes the necessity of the different roles of the different capital ship designs.

The reload times maybe a type as you have listed as CSC(R)2 gun as having a 4RPM rate of fire but a 15 minute recharge time. One shot every 15 secs seems reasonable, but one shot every 15 mins means that with the speed of combat in the game the battleship might as well jump in, fire and jump out again as it can do nothing offensively after launching it's initial salvo.


The submarine class could be pitch black and non-reflective so quite difficult to spot and invisible on radar when stealth is engaged. When in stealth mode it could be effectively dead, HUD off, unable to change speed or heading and unable to fire missiles or the jump drive. To fire, stealth would have to be disengaged and then the other systems powered up, maybe for 5-10 seconds.

The pilot would then need to assess the target and pick their heading and speed after jumping before going into stealth mode and coasting. A judgement call (or the passive scanner mentioned on another thread) would be used to determine when to uncloak, gain missile lock, fire and engage the jump drive. Whilst uncloaked the ship is very vulnerable so the timing had better be accurate. This aspect might then encourage alternative submarine hunting tactics. I'm assuming that a submarine pilot might engage the emergency straight ahead jump rather than waste time setting jump coordinates, but the hunting ships could do likewise. There could even be a new piece of equipment to allow a hunting ship to follow another ship's jump.

[Marvin]

Well, the game already has two varieties of stealth ... but both are relatively short-term cloaking devices. I've made good use of both types. Nonetheless, if I was to dedicate myself to being skipper of a space submarine, I'd want to see the same kind of game play I find in Silent Hunter V. And that's not likely to happen (given the game's download size).