All-encompassing armored ground warfare: A suggestion

[[QS] Combustible]

I posted this on discord as well, I’d like to hear some more opinions on it!

Why do we need this?
Due to Starbase’s unique damage and method of design, armored ground combat would possibly be the best of any game. Every part in a vehicle would have a purpose, every vehicle would be designed for a specific role, and would adapt to an entirely unique meta. The potential in this realm of design and combat are immeasurable.

What’s added?
Transportation
Wheels and/or tracks. This is mostly up to the developers and how they want to style their game, and is mostly inconsequential. Tracks would make the vehicles have less turning capability, on average slower, and would have easy targets to quickly immobilize them. They would have better handling over varied terrain, and have a lower profile. Would be best to allow us to customize down to each wheel/track part for different choices relative to repair, mobility, and strength.

A new generator is added, consuming fuel and producing a unique power used only to drive wheels or tracks. This generator produces enough power to move extremely heavy vehicles.

Armor
An extremely heavy armor is added, resistant to all but torpedoes and AP rounds to different degrees (covered next). Ground vehicle armor would be in 3 different categories:
Cat 1: Light armor. Extremely fast vehicle, but tripods cut through it like butter. Still resistant to most infantry weapons.
Cat 2: Onium/Aegisium. Still quite fast, and resistant but not impenetrable by tripods.
Cat 3: New material. Usually slower, but is resistant to all weapons except torpedoes and AP rounds at 1 plate of thickness.

Weapons
Multiple guns would be added, with the barrel (customizable in length, affects accuracy and projectile speed) and breech (main part of the gun). Guns would be separated by millimeter width, and have unique barrel parts and breeches for each size. Each weapon will have individually loaded ammunition, of AP and HE.

Gun calibers
40mm: A smaller, light, and fast firing gun, shredding whatever it can penetrate. Not able to penetrate the new material, but just about anything else is a piece of cake. Due to it’s fast firing, the vehicle has to carry a very large amount of ammunition. This gun has the unique ability of being belt fed, rather than individually loaded rounds. Ammunition racks and a belt would be added as parts, with the belt acting like a resource bridge, able to be attached and detached from the breech. The barrel may not be a customizable length. This gun can be easily used for a close range AA vehicle as well as suitable for IFVs and APCs.

100mm: The smallest individually loaded gun, this is best for light tank destroyers. Able to penetrate the new material, but has trouble with more plates than one or two.

120mm: A medium gun, best for all-around MBTs. Able to deal with multiple plates of the new material.

150mm: A heavy and hard-hitting gun, able to penetrate almost everything easily. Very slow to transport, best suited for not being in the line of fire, like artillery.

These numbers are not concrete, and can easily change. They are used to give names to different capabilities.

Ammunition
Each caliber will have their own AP and HE rounds. able to be loaded into the breech similar to how ship weapons are loaded. Ammunition will explode if a projectile meets it. AP, or armor penetrating, will be the main anti armor round. HE will have a light penetration capability, but they will mainly have a fragmentation effect, destroying infantry and low armor plates/items within a radius decided by caliber. Autoloaders may be added and possibly customizable, but will always take a significant amount longer than an endo loader.

Controls
A turret ring and gunner seat are added, making a turret act similar to a tripod weapon, able to move uniquely to the hull, and by another person, but only left/right.
To move up/down, you need to mount your breech to a unique turntable. This limits barrel length due to a weight restriction. Turrets are controllable with mouse controls, using ship mouse controls to feed values to the ring and turntable, but YOLOL and levers are able to feed values (not needed if it interferes with hosting, but would be very nice). You are able to man an armored vehicle by yourself, but greatly restricts capability and combat effectiveness, so it is only encouraged for specially designed vehicles. The driver has generic lever controls linked to tracks/wheels turning (not very influential in how it’s decided).

SAM-like systems using torpedoes and radiation tracking would be a good addition as well, possibly a wire-guided version as well (guided with mouse controls), mainly for another AA option besides the 40mm cannon

The gun operator with have the ability to zoom in, like using the handheld railgun in 3rd person. You’ll still have to design strong viewports for crew members, since 3rd person won’t be a thing while operating vehicles

Won’t this be used in ships?
Yes, and that’s not necessary a bad thing! Tank busting cannons would be a great addition. due to their weight, these guns and new material will not be effective in most ship to ship combat. Ship-side balancing isn’t really where I have the most informed ideas in, but I don’t believe it will be much of a shake-up in the ship side of combat. I believe that’s it for now, and don’t hesitate to @ me for questions about anything!

(Little disclaimer: this shouldn’t be added before EA. It’s an expansion on the game, and exploring the potential this universe brings, but isn’t required for any sort of function game in this genre. I’m not calling for it to be added anytime soon, just when it can be this is how I’d like it.)

 

[Captain-General Kitten]

Yes please. I need my Leman Russ and baneblades

 

[Verbatos]

This sounds like it could be really cool, but hard to justify if ships can mount all of the same weaponry.

Maybe one of the moons could have massive gravity? It would mean that ships would not be able to fly properly and give way for sturdy ground vehicles.

 

[five]

You should not expect ground combat to be anywhere similar to what it is today. This idea is exceptionally well thought out. So since I cant really be like "oh u could change that" or "wow i want that so much" cuz be honest we all want a howitzer in the game, I will give my opinion on ground combat in general: There wont be any (stay tuned for my release of Art of War - Starbase)

 

[Venombrew]

if you guys look at the road map, which i re-found it on their discord under official-starbase-media channel, shows that in q4 when they begin implementing siege mechanics, they will allow for you to weld obstacles together, like barricades and what not. i do believe their goal won't be to make ship attacks useless on siege attacks but with proper ground defenses(gunnery, barricades, etc.), it would force players to deploy ground forces. specially if the station your attacking has their shit together.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

This sounds like it could be really cool, but hard to justify if ships can mount all of the same weaponry.

Maybe one of the moons could have massive gravity? It would mean that ships would not be able to fly properly and give way for sturdy ground vehicles.

I think that the increased stability of operating on the ground will make itself known. High stress from firing the weapons would be a good addition though, so you can’t just throw a ton of massive guns on a fighter.

You should not expect ground combat to be anywhere similar to what it is today. This idea is exceptionally well thought out. So since I cant really be like "oh u could change that" or "wow i want that so much" cuz be honest we all want a howitzer in the game, I will give my opinion on ground combat in general: There wont be any (stay tuned for my release of Art of War - Starbase)

I honestly think we can draw a lot of genuine comparisons to real life ground combat, and thanks for the complements!

if you guys look at the road map, which i re-found it on their discord under official-starbase-media channel, shows that in q4 when they begin implementing siege mechanics, they will allow for you to weld obstacles together, like barricades and what not. i do believe their goal won't be to make ship attacks useless on siege attacks but with proper ground defenses(gunnery, barricades, etc.), it would force players to deploy ground forces. specially if the station your attacking has their shit together.
View attachment 2385

Yeah, this is much more for moon combat, but there could possibly be some wheel/track use on stations, not having gravity would be a little hard.

 

[Venombrew]

Yeah, this is much more for moon combat, but there could possibly be some wheel/track use on stations, not having gravity would be a little hard.

ok so you open new ideas for me, i been still more thinking of space station combat and trying to deploy ground troops which won't be easy while under siege fire, but a moon city! you can deploy ground forces safely on the moon away from cannon fire and use multiple directions of assault with ground and ship. i mean theres what 9-11 moons right now? i see moon city warfare being more enjoyable, which this is strictly my opinion.

good info Combustible

 

[five]

I honestly think we can draw a lot of genuine comparisons to real life ground combat, and thanks for the complements!

Imagine an A-10 could hover over the combat zone like an apache. Thats why I dont think ground combat will be effective

And i have more examples, do not try to challenge me

 

[Venombrew]

Imagine an A-10 could hover over the combat zone like an apache. Thats why I dont think ground combat will be effective

i dont usually agree on certain subjects until it has been tested BUT this is one of them areas i do feel is lacking but i think that will change with numbers to hash it out. im hoping after EA launch with an actual population we be able to really tackle these areas that can only be worked out with numbers.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Imagine an A-10 could hover over the combat zone like an apache. Thats why I dont think ground combat will be effective

And i have more examples, do not try to challenge me

I addressed that in the post, the 40mm and SAMs will be good air countermeasures. CAS ships could definitely be useful, but their work will be dangerous.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

I belive that you could make tanks indeed much more armored, since there would be very few parts that have to be directly connected to the reactor or are easy to explode. No such things like thrusters that can disable movement if just hit once. Im all in for ground combat to be a thing, just depends if there would be a good reason for people to use it. High gravity could be such a thing, but we also need something on those moons for people to actually want to live there. One such thing would be that its quite hard to fight against bases there, as fighters and ships in general would just crash.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Updated terminology and fixed grammar/spelling issues

 

[Womble]

The balance between ground power and air power gets really difficult to draw when you start ignoring gravity wells. The reason a RL MBT is more survivable than an RL aircraft (once something hits it) is because an aircraft needs to be light, so can't carry enough armour to have any chance of surviving a hit from something like a tank's main gun. When you don't need to worry about weight, a floating fortress is liable to be more mobile and just as well protected and heavily-armed as any ground vehicle.

Just making an armour type "very heavy" won't stop people using it on ships; they'll just up the number of thrusters to keep it moving, or just live with the slow flight. Ditto, weapons. The ability to ignore gravity totally changes the reasoning behind having ground vehicles.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

@Womble I dont really get what you mean.
We have gravity already on moons (tho its quite weak since they are moons) So having really heavy armor would work on ground vehicles while ships with such armor would either be very slow, fall to the ground, or have a lot of thrusters on their bottom. And thrusters are easy to destroy.
I agree that its hard to balance between ground power and air power, but i wouldnt mind having some moons or even planets in the future that have such strong gravity that there couldnt be air power. It would be hard to even fly, let alone armor a ship.
That way you could have a planet thats totally different, and needs new and unique aproaches to known issues.
I defenetly dont want that to be the case for all planets tho.

 

[Womble]

@Womble I dont really get what you mean.
We have gravity already on moons (tho its quite weak since they are moons) So having really heavy armor would work on ground vehicles while ships with such armor would either be very slow, fall to the ground, or have a lot of thrusters on their bottom. And thrusters are easy to destroy.
I agree that its hard to balance between ground power and air power, but i wouldnt mind having some moons or even planets in the future that have such strong gravity that there couldnt be air power. It would be hard to even fly, let alone armor a ship.
That way you could have a planet thats totally different, and needs new and unique aproaches to known issues.
I defenetly dont want that to be the case for all planets tho.

Reading your post, I think you do get what I meant!

Sure, if you make gravity "stoopid strong", things with solid connections to the ground start to get more useful. But then you have the whole "getting things out of the gravity well" problem. If a high power-to-weight ratio ground attack bird can't carry ordnance and armour, then your high power-to-weight freighter can't haul kilotons of valuable resource from surface to orbit, so those resources your after on or under the ground become irrelevant. Or people just build higher power-to-weight vehicles, at which point the carrying of armour and ordnance once again becomes trivial. You've got to design your flyers to manage in the well, so they'll manage, whatever the load they have to bear. Or they won't and what's at the bottom of the well becomes irrelevant because it can never leave.

It's difficult, not "impossible" to balance the conflicting needs when you have delta-vee available in the steam-shovelfuls that we do for spaceships. Whether the fine lines that need to be drawn can be drawn in a satisfying way given the existing setup remains to be seen.

 

[J.D.]

in order to take a station, endos have to be on the surface of the station.. well, at least that WAS the way it was... im not sure how it is now since they completely changed the way stations are built.. but, yea wheels have been something that has been discussed a bit in the past. it would be cool for moons.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

@Womble Like i said... If you want to fly on a planet with a lot of gravity you can do so, you just need a lot of thrusters on the bottom of your ship. And thrusters are really easy to destroy. And you cant armor them.
So there we have it, you can carry stuff out of the gravity well, you can fight in your armored ship if you want to, but if your hit with a railgun on the bottom of your ship you will simply die.

 

[LauriFB]

Current station building represents only two of the three methods (EBM and one piece at time). Third method, the station planner seen in alpha, will be also coming back and all three will work together to build origin-size (and beyond) stations.

Siege is planned to happen mainly against such large stations, so they definitely will need troops on the station to be captured. Large stations and chaos of the war will also offer plenty of opportunities for adventurers.

 

[J.D.]

Current station building represents only two of the three methods (EBM and one piece at time). Third method, the station planner seen in alpha, will be also coming back and all three will work together to build origin-size (and beyond) stations.

Siege is planned to happen mainly against such large stations, so they definitely will need troops on the station to be captured. Large stations and chaos of the war will also offer plenty of opportunities for adventurers.

Nice, I had hoped you guys would bring back the old way, because this new way is pretty complicated, and time consuming, although, that’s not a bad thing for players who want to do so. I always love creativity with less limits…. So, larger stations can be sieged.. are you implying that small ones cannot?

 

[Womble]

So your armoured ship has redundancy in its drives. That railgun hit just slowed it down a bit.

@Womble Like i said... If you want to fly on a planet with a lot of gravity you can do so, you just need a lot of thrusters on the bottom of your ship. And thrusters are really easy to destroy. And you cant armor them.

But you can fly close to the ground. How is someone going to get a shot up your kilt when you're passing them at a quarter the speed of sound at 10m altitude? And you can build in redundancy. Or you can just land, and use your vastly superior mobility when nobody's beneath you.

Maybe there's a balance point where tracks are worthwhile. Never said there couldn't be. Said it's difficult. More difficult than you're blithely waving your hand at.