Space Combat Techniques Discussion

[Hielor]

Sure, real space warfare will also include ground-based encounters, but I don't think that sort of thing is particularly interesting to add to Orbiter, since a large part of what's interesting about ground combat is terrain. Most successful combat sims focus on a specific primary area (ie, "aerial combat and bombing") and only simulate everything else to the extent required to make the primary area's interactions with that interesting (such as tanks or infantry in an flight combat sim--they're never really seen up close and just need to look good enough from a distance to do the job). Trying to simulate everything seems to me like it's more likely to end up getting lost in the complexity of the thing.

Plus, there are other games out there to simulate things like ground-based warfare or infantry (such as [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shattered_Horizon"]Shattered Horizon[/ame] for zero-g infantry combat), but there aren't really any games that realistically simulate ship-based space combat.

 

[T.Neo]

I really fail to see why you need zero-g, vacuum infantry combat, unless you're trying to board a ship or something. Otherwise all actual human-human fighting would be onboard spacecraft (presumably ones you'd have boarded).

 

[Urwumpe]

LRM's are fired in an arc and drop down on the target. it wasnt until the clans showed up with "old technology" that inner sphere armies re-learned how to make guidance systems

Small corrections:

1. LRMs are actually always guided, but not homing. The MRMs of the Draconis Combine are completely unguided multiple rocket launchers. With painful penalties.
2. The Artemis IV set improves this guidance, appearing to be SACLOS command guidance.
3. Another guidance set for the missiles is the TAG, which seems to be as simple as laser guidance.
4. The Clans did not permit the Inner Sphere to relearn this, the only new technologies that the Clans brought to the IS had been Omnimechs and Elementals. The IS already got most lost technologies back by the Helm core memory, before the invasion, but the introduction of new weapons had been very slow before the Invasion forced the successor states to cooperate.

I have already done some work on BattleTech vessels in Orbiter...if somebody would take the meshing frustration from me, I could even be faster.

A proper combat system would also be nice as extension, though I would prefer a system based on the Battletech universe "physics" for it. Like the roleplaying game rules extended towards space combat. Luckily the weapons in CBT are not that unrealistic, especially in the roleplaying game rules, where they also received realistic ranges, but the damage models might be harder to get trimmed right.

 

[Hielor]

I really fail to see why you need zero-g, vacuum infantry combat, unless you're trying to board a ship or something. Otherwise all actual human-human fighting would be onboard spacecraft (presumably ones you'd have boarded).

Well, combat on board spacecraft would be in zero-g unless you're positing the existence of artificial gravity.

As for vacuum, I wouldn't be surprised if most ships evacuated the air from livable areas prior to engaging in combat--you're going to want all crew members already in suits anyway due to the risk of decompression, and at that point you might as well remove the risk of decompression entirely. Plus, during a boarding action, the attackers could easily be exposing the parts of the ship they pass through to vacuum, to make life harder for the defenders--or the defenders could do the same, to make life harder for the attackers (all depending on the exact scenario). In any case, I don't imagine that there will be much infantry combat in anything but vacuum & zero-g environments in space--zero-g's a given, and you're going to have to be fully suited against vacuum anyway in the event your opponent exposes the combat area to vacuum, so you might as well be fighting in a vacuum to start with.

Unless you meant "vacuum" in terms of "out in the open," which isn't the case at all--in Shattered Horizon, all of the "maps" are in and around stations and asteroids and the like.

 

[Izack]

Sure, real space warfare will also include ground-based encounters, but I don't think that sort of thing is particularly interesting to add to Orbiter, since a large part of what's interesting about ground combat is terrain. Most successful combat sims focus on a specific primary area (ie, "aerial combat and bombing") and only simulate everything else to the extent required to make the primary area's interactions with that interesting (such as tanks or infantry in an flight combat sim--they're never really seen up close and just need to look good enough from a distance to do the job). Trying to simulate everything seems to me like it's more likely to end up getting lost in the complexity of the thing.

Plus, there are other games out there to simulate things like ground-based warfare or infantry (such as Shattered Horizon for zero-g infantry combat), but there aren't really any games that realistically simulate ship-based space combat.

I agree completely. There are other platforms better suited to ground and air warfare. Orbiter is a spaceflight simulator, with enough functionality in the atmosphere for suborbital hops, reentry and the like. I frankly don't understand why there is any effort at all placed in ground-based combat. Unless the developers are planning on integrating Counterstrike into Orbiter somehow, the best they can hope for is a bunch of UMmus sliding around holding tubes firing dots at each other on a perfectly flat field. The potential for ASAT and any other type of orbital/suborbital interception and combat is limitless, though.

 

[orbitingpluto]

I would think the ground combat is really only meant for near base fighting, and that is where the focus ends. The surface bases are the most important places, as they are the place to get refueled after shooting up some invaders from Mars. If you couldn't claim a base and protect it, there wouldn't be any 'safe' place to refuel, rearm, and coordinate operations. HQ need some where to be, and a bunker deep underground offers a good place to dig in and have a chance of surviving the attack. Most of the ground based stuff doesn't have to be Ummus, it would be fixed launch sites like KSC or Wideawake or mobile launchers converted from trucks and tanks firing missiles and what not to protect the base or attack orbital assets. When you have a planet with as much surface area as Earth does it is a shame not to use it.

The point is, ground comes first because it is not only the home of the fighters but also the area in which space combat will begin from. Remember that ASATs have to come from somewhere and that place is easier to strike at than the ASAT itself!

 

[earthorbit]

I wonder if it's allowed to convert some Meshes from Battlefield Vietnam into Orbiter Meshes and use them for the Combat Simulation.. It'd be cool to have Sheridan Tanks rolling on the moons surface.

 

[RisingFury]

I wonder if it's allowed to convert some Meshes from Battlefield Vietnam into Orbiter Meshes and use them for the Combat Simulation.. It'd be cool to have Sheridan Tanks rolling on the moons surface.

Space fighters and Sherman tanks? A bit of a technology leap, don't you think?

 

[T.Neo]

As for vacuum, I wouldn't be surprised if most ships evacuated the air from livable areas prior to engaging in combat--you're going to want all crew members already in suits anyway due to the risk of decompression, and at that point you might as well remove the risk of decompression entirely. Plus, during a boarding action, the attackers could easily be exposing the parts of the ship they pass through to vacuum, to make life harder for the defenders--or the defenders could do the same, to make life harder for the attackers (all depending on the exact scenario). In any case, I don't imagine that there will be much infantry combat in anything but vacuum & zero-g environments in space--zero-g's a given, and you're going to have to be fully suited against vacuum anyway in the event your opponent exposes the combat area to vacuum, so you might as well be fighting in a vacuum to start with.

You aren't going to be concerned about decompression, if your crew is in pressure suits and your electronics and other systems are built to handle it. You're going to be worrying about pressure vessel integrity. If there's a slow leak in the pressure vessel it will be of little concern beyond locating and patching it. If there is something severe enough to cause explosive decompression, it is likely severe enough to cause a large amount of physical damage to the crew and structure in and of itself. Depressurising the spacecraft voluntarily sounds like a risky and unnecessary activity, especially in an environment when resources and infrastructure are limited.

I'm doubtful of "long corridors" and many "multiple compartments". Combat spacecraft will mostly be propellant, propulsion, and weaponry, perhaps with a good deal of passive defence as well. Relatively little space will be dedicated to actual crew and avionics.

Unless you meant "vacuum" in terms of "out in the open," which isn't the case at all--in Shattered Horizon, all of the "maps" are in and around stations and asteroids and the like.

Firstly I'd like to mention the absurdity of the Shattered Horizon debris ring...

Secondly, why would you want to fight with infantry in space? That's like having an air force based on people flying paragliders.

I can understand ship-to-ship boarding, but it would be a specialised thing, similar to some of the operations of the Navy Seals, rather than being like infantry IN SPACE.

all i really want is to keep those little grey bastards off my pasture.

As RF said, only a matter of time... though our grey bastards won't be the little ones you might be accustomed to. :thumbup:

It'd be cool to have Sheridan Tanks rolling on the moons surface

Why would you want to have Sheridan tanks on the surface of the Moon? They won't even work there, starting with the most important fact, which is that they will not work without air for the engine...

Space fighters and Sherman tanks? A bit of a technology leap, don't you think?

Space fighters? :facepalm:

 

[jedidia]

I'm doubtful of "long corridors" and many "multiple compartments". Combat spacecraft will mostly be propellant, propulsion, and weaponry, perhaps with a good deal of passive defence as well. Relatively little space will be dedicated to actual crew and avionics.

I'm doubtfull of any people on combat spacecraft whatsoever. Except for the C&C somewhere in the last "line" (battle lines is a somewhat silly term for space, we'll need a sensible terminology sooner or later).

 

[Hielor]

Secondly, why would you want to fight with infantry in space? That's like having an air force based on people flying paragliders.

I can understand ship-to-ship boarding, but it would be a specialised thing, similar to some of the operations of the Navy Seals, rather than being like infantry IN SPACE.

I agree entirely, which then returns us to the original question--why is OBSP attempting to simulate infantry combat?

 

[earthorbit]

Space fighters and Sherman tanks? A bit of a technology leap, don't you think?

It was the Sheridan tank in Vietnam, not the Sherman. I don't know, but with some laser cannons, guided missiles and force fields it would be cool.
And how about converting some models from quake 3 arena? These are open source. And having a railgun in orbiter would be very cool.

 

[Ghostrider]

I agree entirely, which then returns us to the original question--why is OBSP attempting to simulate infantry combat?

Because, to the everlasting glory of the Infantry shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!

 

[jedidia]

:lol:

Good one!

As far as I gathered so far, Infantry combat is kind of a testbed for OBSP. Which is understandable, since all functions for hit detection, weapons firing, damage processing etc. are directly aplyable to spacecraft later on (a UMMU is a vessel after all), without yet having to deal with all the other complexities.

I don't know, but with some laser cannons, guided missiles and force fields it would be cool.

We'll probably repeat this many times over, but what the hell:
This isn't going to be a space shooter. This is trying to be realistic. As such, force fields are out of the question anyways, as is a tank design from the fifties refitted with "teh lazorz". Let's not mention Quake 3 models, where form follows cool instead of function.

 

[T.Neo]

I'm doubtfull of any people on combat spacecraft whatsoever. Except for the C&C somewhere in the last "line" (battle lines is a somewhat silly term for space, we'll need a sensible terminology sooner or later).

Well, you do have light-time lag, so for in-the-loop human decision making, there is some incentive to have a small crew aboard a ship. Actual functions on the ship would probably be controlled by computer though.

 

[T.Neo]

There has been a lot of talk about Metal Storm, but there are problems- the effective barrel length changes with every shot, and the pressure from firing has to go somewhere. In a normal firearm that goes into, say, the bolt- here it goes into the projectile behind the projectile being fired. And that is bad news if you are firing HE rounds like 40 mm grenades.

See this vid of the MAUL being fired; a 12 guage that can be fired out of a pistol (though it seems the standalone version is now attached to a pistol grip with a stock) with that little recoil, must have a very light load. That and the fact that the audible sound of each shot changes, especially near the end, makes me a tad uncomfortable.

I doubt that Metal Storm will replace weapons that work in a more conventional manner.

You nevertheless raise a good point; I am not sure of that aspect of the simulation yet, we are going to simulate bullets as vessels.

 

[Hielor]

Re: infantry combat - considering machine guns (or metal storm) will be frequently used, do you plan to track each bullet or resolve hits statistically? Orbiter doesn't like very large scenarios yet.

You nevertheless raise a good point; I am not sure of that aspect of the simulation yet, we are going to simulate bullets as vessels.

With the minigun that I made a couple years ago, I had the rounds disappear ~20seconds after being fired. If you haven't hit anything by that point, you probably won't be hitting anything ever. It was running ~600rounds per minute, I think, which put 200 rounds in the air from a single gun at a time, and I never noticed slowdown if vessel labels were turned off. With vessel labels on there was a definite framerate hit.

It might become an issue if you have several things all firing at once, but with just the one there wasn't an issue, even though each round wasn't just a "dumb" config vessel--each timestep, each round was doing calculations to move itself (to avoid plasma trails in atmosphere) and determine how much it should stretch (to give the effect of the round travelling several meters during one frame of video).

 

[Ghostrider]

I doubt that Metal Storm will replace weapons that work in a more conventional manner.

That's my 2 cents as well. However, Metal Storm-like weapons can find their niche anywhere you need a massive, concentrated volume of fire such as in CIWS applications. The discharge from such a weapon can easily shred a guided missile, for instance.

 

[guitarist473]

This is looking like an amazing project/add-on.
cant wait for the first release.

im not sure of any ideas to put forward at the moment but keep up the good work with this project.

i dont no if your still looking but i would be glad to beta-test.

thanks

 

[deltawing777]

Sorry, but I think that's about the dumbest idea I've seen propsed here in a long time.
Why is there a need to add combat or weapons to a space simulator ?????
If that's what your after just stick with "Halo" or any of the other "shoot them up" games.

Not a good idea. :facepalm:

Umm yeah I think its great to have combat and collision and damage in orbiter. The beauty of orbiter is the fact you can go and do as you please. You dont want combat then dont do combat. But the fact that its there if you want to is the beauty of it. I think its great and the code behind it can really open up other doors in orbiter as well...I say hell yeah! :thumbup: