Naval tactics in the modern age and why I think they are misrepresented in Sins.

Sins is not a representation of modern naval tactics.

-Dr. B

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Im just saying, carriers seemed nerfed to me.

That may be, but then arguments have been made that the capital ships have been nerfed, frigates should be more powerful, defenses more effective...etc...

The point is in a game with so many units the goal is to try and balance everything in such a way that nothing stands out as glaringly overpowered and if something is then there should be a counter to it. If strike craft were that powerful then there would be no need to build anything else.

When making a game like Sins it is impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time, but I think most people agree that most of us are happy most of the time and that's pretty dammned good.

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You're forgetting that this is far into the future. The size difference between a modern bomber and a carrier isn't that much, but the difference between a bomber and a cap ship in Sins is quite large (or at least, it should be if scale was represented correctly in-game).

It's easy to imagine a group of bombers taking down a carrier in real life (partly because it's happened), but imagine 4 bombers trying to take down a massive capital ship with shields and dozens of batteries of guns.

The point is that this game takes place thousands of years from now, and modern naval combat is about as important in Sins as naval combat from 3,000 years ago is now.

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If you made bombers that powerful then not only would nobody make anything else but the balance of the game would be off. and if you compensated by increasing the firepower of the other weapons you would be able to destroy a capital ship with one shot. if you compensaed for that by increasing the sheilds and hull then you would have the exact same situation just with more zeros. A bomber in world war II could destroy a carrier but then carriers in world war II didn't have sheilds. A lone squad of bombers taking out a capital ship is like a lone x-wing blowing up the death star! Hmm... maby not the best metaphor but still imagine if the death sar had no vents!

Samurye

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

More importanly, in space you don't have the ocean to finish off a damaged ship. Think of how the Yamato was sunk - in space, a handful of strategically placed hits won't turn your dreadnaught turtle, just leave it mildly damaged and royally pissed off.

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Space is actually a much more dangerous place than the ocean . Dont get me wrong on this post folks SINS is AWESOME FUN but Im just wondering about the translation of tactics. The reason that carriers were actually the focus of tactics was because of the damage they could dish out compared to the risk. Even though the US navy lost most of its assaulting planes in the battle of midway they only lost 300 people when compared to the 3500 the japanese lost. It was actually an EPIC FAIL on the part of the pilots. They had so many oppurtunities. It was naval command that made up for it with tactical brilliance. But it still applies relatively smaller strike craft with a heavier payload range extended with a mother ship. Specifically I think bombers have been nerfed.

oooh also another side point: the US carriers had MUCH better damage control and recon(RADAR!) while Japs had better numbers. A lot better numbers,

4 carriers,
7 battleships,
~150 support ships,
264 carrier aircraft,
16 floatplanes

Americans:

3 carriers,
~50 support ships,
233 carrier aircraft,
127 land-based aircraft

The assaults were taking place from an hour flight time or more away! The battleships were useless.

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Go here http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html and read the section about fighters it explains things a whole lot better than I could. Also remember a ship equipped with nukes in space is only constrained by its sensors and honestly anything big in space is going to light up like a christmas tree. So fighters bombers etc lose that range advantage for protecting the carrier ship. Also remember no horizon in space so that advantage of bombers is also removed.

+1

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GOD dammit I was JUST about to post that. But Izaroke wins a karma I saw it on the schlockmercenary forums. http://zoo.nightstar.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=17421&sid=412c2adae2a84b61f57bfbaae8e554a3
It takes my argument and PWNS it.

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Yeah its an excellant explanation of the limitations of fighters and what actual space combat might look like. He is also a much better writer than me. Honestly is someone came up with a game sort of like silent hunter(in terms of depth) but based off of a realistic interpertation of space combat I would snap that up in a second.

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Ummm....again, it DOESN'T translate.

First, Midway...I'm not really sure what you are trying to say....

The US lost most of its planes because Zeros were extremely effective fighter planes. If anything, it was pretty damn brave of our pilots to assault the Japanese fleet in torpedo bombers that were sitting ducks for a Zero. If memory serves, a squadron of high altitude dive bombers located the Japanese fleet and caught them with their munitions on the deck. US intelligence had anticipated Midway and the island had been reinforced, so the Japanese planes that were supposed to be fitting torpedos to go after the US fleet were switching back to bombs to hit Midway again. This was NOT a quick process back in those days. It was really fascinating reading that I did Many ages ago, because while we take it for granted we won the Pacific war, it becomes clear how close we came to not winning some of those fights. Midway was one of those incredible battles that could just have easily been a total loss to us. Luckily, good intelligence, good tactics, and a little luck, and we got their carriers before they got ours. They lost their crews, and luckily, Yorktown was only crippled, it didn't go right down with hers.

Sins...totally different. There is no "find the enemy" once you are in the same system. Bombers are just strikecraft with heavy munitions capable of harming a heavily shielded, heavily armored target. Sins Carriers are not big floating runways with fuel and bombs stacked on the deck. They don't have WOODEN decks that burn. They are only slightly less dreadnaughts in their own rights, that choose to carry strikecraft rather than naval sized weapons.

To be honest, I don't find the damage put out by any ship in these games to be terribly compelling. It takes a hella long time for two fleets to beat each other down. If a Bomber squadron could take out a capital ship, just imagine what a missile frigate could do! Not to mention a spinal mounted weapons on the front of a battleship. They should be one shotting anything they are capable of hitting.

The whole balance of damage in the game is so people have time to react and play a bit before their ships evaporate. So in short, this is just a game, balanced as such.

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Cykur my post was not a criticism of the game, I love it, but just a curiosity of realistic tactics. Everyone quickly pointed out the balance in the game and I agree. However my discussion was just about the types of tactics that could be used in space. Izaroke pointed to an extremely awesome website with an extremely well thought out discussion of space warfare.

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NO worries, I'm not shaking with geekfury or anything, just discussing it. BTW, Izaroke, this is a fabulous link. Fabulous.

I'm not sure how much fun it would be to play a game where the first bomber / missile to penetrate your fighter and PD screen manages to cripple your capital ship. It is certainly probably more realistic. Again, I will state that I get annoyed at how long it takes end game fleets to kill each other in general.

To be honest, if anything could survive space warfare, it would be a capital. If you build it with enough metal, and assume it has a big enough "energy shield", it could shrug off nukes. The small ships would be screwed though.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

From what I can tell after about WWII Naval tactics in the modern age have revolved around the carrier and air to sea assaults. So why are strike craft nerfed so much in Sins? I mean I like the honor harrington approach as much as the next guy(I know its not exact but go with it ). Strike craft should have the advantage of being able to do massive damage(bombers specifically). I mean 4 bombs took out a carrier in WWII at the battle of midway.(before they had damage control ) Im just saying, carriers seemed nerfed to me.

Sins is not a representation of modern naval combat. Sins is a SciFi space combat RTS that claims to have 4X features. It does not claim to represent modern naval combat.

For one thing, fighters and bombers in World War 2(and even now) had some things that ships didn't have:

-They could fight over the horizon.

-They travelled through air, not water(therefore much faster).

There is no horizon in space(unless your fighting near a star, a gas giant, or a black hole). There is only one medium, space itself. And the size difference between fighters/bombers and capital ships in Sins is much bigger. Plus, a group of 5-7 dive bombers could carry enough firepower to cripple a warship.

If you want to draw analogs, Advent & TEC fighters/bombers in Sins are more like WW2 motor gunboats, but with the size of a canoe relative to capital ships. Vasari fighter/bombers are again like German Schnellboot vessels(heavier gunboats), but again miniaturized. Basic Assault, Long-Range and Anti-Strikecraft frigates are like WW2 destroyers or destroyer-escorts, your "tin can" ships - basic cheap combatants armed with a few smallish cannons, flak guns or torpedoes. Heavy Cruisers are like WW2 heavy cruisers - powerful heavily armored ships with strong engines and big guns. Capital Ships are Yamato/Iowa/Bismarck level super-battleships. There are no planes or submarines in space.

And then there's the biggest difference of all - WW2 and modern navies are reality. Sins is fiction.

@others,

"GOD dammit I was JUST about to post that. But Izaroke wins a karma "

"NO worries, I'm not shaking with geekfury or anything, just discussing it. BTW, Izaroke, this is a fabulous link. Fabulous"

Hey! I posted that link a long time ago in this thread. I never got a prize.

+1

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Hey! I posted that link a long time ago in this thread. I never got a prize.

Well, it is a fabulous link. I just didn't see it the first time you posted it. Good job!

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Quoting PeskyFly,

reply 13

quoting post

Hey! I posted that link a long time ago in this thread. I never got a prize.

You get a karma from me for the link along with the naval tactics discussion, you were actually able to explain the thing I wanted to intelligently and succinctly.

Cykur, yeah i realise a game were a single mistake would likely result in game over is probably not going to have the biggest audience, but I think the idea has potential although you would need a really commited dev team to do it. And I can always dream right?

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space =/= naval warfare, just go ahea- argh dammit somebody already posted the atomic rockets link (READ IT!)

by the way...not to stray too far off-topic, but has anyone noticed how much bioware "stole" from that page in mass-effect? i mean literally, some parts could just have benn copy-pasted into it....

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Quoting danw13335,

reply 3

You're forgetting that this is far into the future. The size difference between a modern bomber and a carrier isn't that much, but the difference between a bomber and a cap ship in Sins is quite large (or at least, it should be if scale was represented correctly in-game).

It's easy to imagine a group of bombers taking down a carrier in real life (partly because it's happened), but imagine 4 bombers trying to take down a massive capital ship with shields and dozens of batteries of guns.

The point is that this game takes place thousands of years from now, and modern naval combat is about as important in Sins as naval combat from 3,000 years ago is now.

I agree with your points, but I'd just like to say............. Death star.

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CobraA1

Join Date 09/2006

+26

A game != real life. Fun overrules trying to be physically accurate.

I play Falcon 4.0, perhaps the most physically accurate depiction of the F-16 fighter.

I spend a good part of hour flying to where I need to be, lock a target, fire long range missiles against a target too far to see with the naked eye, turn around and go home. Truth be known, it's a long period of boredom punctuated by *maybe* a minute or so of excitement if they try to pursue me.

I figure space combat will likely be the same, except it's 100% boring. You launch some sort of automated weapons platform when you detect the enemy, and it takes care of them. If it doesn't, you do whatever is the equivalent of waving a white flag and hope they don't destroy you. Or, if you have the engines and fuel, run.

So a game pretty much has to forget trying to be realistic and try to be fun instead.

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Also bringing up midway, the only reason we won that fight was because a japanese destroyer broke off the main japanese fleet to chase down one of our submarines to make sure it didn't last long enough to surface and communicate to our forces about the japanese presence. The reason why something that little was significant because at the same time we launched our entire air attack force to kill the japanese fleet, but since our sub was discovered the japanese switched thier heading, meaning that our planes were going in the wrong direction, the thing that saved them was that japanese destroyer gave up chase to head back to its fleet and it ended up leading our attack force back to the japanese fleet and thats where we caught them off guard.

I understand some peoples fustration with the unrealistic combat, but as said, its way in the future, we have no clue what space combat will be like, we only have theories. For me its not the unrealisticness that bothers me, its how the ships are classified. The battlecruiser is not an actual battlecruiser by definition, and the same goes for alot of the cap ships.

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Quoting UEF Soldier,

reply 17

I agree with your points, but I'd just like to say............. Death star.

as I said before "what if the deathstar had no vents!"

Samurye.

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Quoting CobraA1,

reply 18

A game != real life. Fun overrules trying to be physically accurate.

I play Falcon 4.0, perhaps the most physically accurate depiction of the F-16 fighter.

I spend a good part of hour flying to where I need to be, lock a target, fire long range missiles against a target too far to see with the naked eye, turn around and go home. Truth be known, it's a long period of boredom punctuated by *maybe* a minute or so of excitement if they try to pursue me.

I figure space combat will likely be the same, except it's 100% boring. You launch some sort of automated weapons platform when you detect the enemy, and it takes care of them. If it doesn't, you do whatever is the equivalent of waving a white flag and hope they don't destroy you. Or, if you have the engines and fuel, run.

So a game pretty much has to forget trying to be realistic and try to be fun instead.

Of course. All combat with war machines is 99.9% arcane boredom punctuated with a short burst of excitement and stark terror, after which either your dead, or you return to the state of boredom. It's been so throughout the ages. Whether you talk about Greek or Roman trireme ram-ships, the cannon-armed sailing ships-of-the-line of the 1500-1850 AD era, the U-Boats in WW2, and even the modern day with aircraft carriers, jets and nuclear submarines.

B-2 pilots have to endure some 21 hours of stark boredom in a standard mission profile while flying to their target, getting to wake up a bit to refuel from strategic tankers and to attack their target, after which they have another long boring trip to the nearest B-2 base(Guam or Diego Garcia). Submarine crews have it worse.

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Also bringing up midway, the only reason we won that fight was because a japanese destroyer broke off the main japanese fleet to chase down one of our submarines to make sure it didn't last long enough to surface and communicate to our forces about the japanese presence. The reason why something that little was significant because at the same time we launched our entire air attack force to kill the japanese fleet, but since our sub was discovered the japanese switched thier heading, meaning that our planes were going in the wrong direction, the thing that saved them was that japanese destroyer gave up chase to head back to its fleet and it ended up leading our attack force back to the japanese fleet and thats where we caught them off guard.

Yeah, exactly, I recall reading about this and didn't go into so much detail. Our generation kind of takes for granted that we won, but some of those battles could have gone either way. Midway was a prime example. What if our dive bombers had not found the destroyer? What if the Japanese carriers did not have decks covered in munitions and fuel? A couple small twists of fate, and we would have lost Midway, possibly drawing out the Pacific war by years. The statistics at the end don't really tell the story of how easily the fight could have been different.

Which has NOTHING to do with space combat! lol

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Quoting Samurye,

reply 20

as I said before "what if the deathstar had no vents!"

Indeed. Without that rather convenient and unlikely plot device, the rebels would have been completely wiped out, and the Empire would have ruled for millenia.

+1

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Quoting UEF Soldier,

reply 17

I agree with your points, but I'd just like to say............. Death star.

No sane starbase designer would put a thermal exhaust port leading directly to the power generator. Firstly, the utility of a thermal exhaust port in space would be very limited: space doesn't have much to conduct heat with. Any exhaust port would need to be venting the station's atmosphere in order to do much anyway, which would cause plenty of problems on its own. Second, assuming they do decide to put an exhaust port, they will have seen Star Wars too (or at the very least they will have read the Evil Overlord List). They'll put a U-bend in or something, and avoid trenches that would offer protection from any external defenses.

I really think that the bombers are fine as they are, especially when compared to the rest of the fleet. For an extreme example, look at the Kol Battleship. Its front guns have at least the radius of Miami (assuming the ships and planets are to scale). And it still needs to hit things a lot to kill them. There's no way a bomber should be able to top that.

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oh my god, this thread is in a sense very funny. I don't believe the poster can compare modern day naval warfare to spaceship combats in Sins. Come on, it is a sci fi game. Unless someone wants to turn Sins into a TV show like Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Remember those combats in those Dominion Wars episodes. I think that comes as close as what can be compare to modern day naval combat. But then, making Sins' combat that fast will make the game tedious, repetitive and boring.

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Naval tactics in the modern age and why I think they are misrepresented in Sins.

Naval tactics in the modern age and why I think they are misrepresented in Sins.

correct me If I am wrong.