BigGun II ?

[Nobody]

Some might have heard that Carthaginian is thinking of using BigGun as the tool of choice to determine our ships guns and armor performance. However, it does not run on any system you can buy nowadays 'out of the box', because it is a 16bit program and as such cannot be executed in a 64bit environment.
Some might also know that I once wrote my own program doing a similar job, but has its own set of problems.

Now since we are restarting, I thought 'Why not make our own program?'. I was thinking of combining my ballistic calculations with the penetration algorithm from BigGun and combine it with a user interface that better fits our needs.


I'm planning on a 'clean start' which brings the question of how the new program should be like. I see the following 2 choices:

• a simple text-mode program (like BigGun). Small, quick results, easy to maintain and compatible to any platform my compiler supports (including x86, x64, ARM, PowerPC, Spark, Windows, Linux, Macs, Android, WinCE and Java), BUT no graphic whatsoever (it would break the system independency)

or

• a fully grown program with a nice GUI (graphical user interface)

Now my questions to you are:
What do you think?
Would you be interested in working on the program?
And would you be okay with text only or do you think that a GUI is necessary?

[KWorld]

Text only is fine by me.  Being able to run it on Linux (my OS of choice) is a bonus, certainly.

[Nobody]

Text only is fine by me.  Being able to run it on Linux (my OS of choice) is a bonus, certainly.

Well, the x86/x64-Linux compiler is compatible with the GUI and Windows versions tend to run just fine in Wine anyway.

[snip]

I can role with whatever. Let me say that this would be really nice to have, as sticking to historical guns can get a bit repeditive if you find one you really like *cough*Russian12"L52*cough*

Also, I have a mac (on it now acutaly) but it will have a running WinXP VM by the end of the day and a Ubuntu partition after finals.

[Carthaginian]

Text only with greater platform independance is my vote.

[Jefgte]

 ???

I'm not interresting  with any balistic program.
Use what you want.
So, Nova Francia use the French historical guns & turrets.
NavWeapons is my principal source.

Jef

[Nobody]

Jefgte, even if you use historical guns, they would still have to go to some kind of 'process' to determine their in-game performance. Just like all ships have 'to go trough' SpingSharp3. At least thats how I see it.

[Jefgte]

Text is easy to understand.
You made a nice board calculator,Nob.
I like too.
But, where found all scientific caracs of a gun ?

Jef

[Nobody]

But, where found all scientific caracs of a gun?

What do you mean Jefgte?

[Jefgte]

Scientific terms like:
Overall
bore lenght
Riffling
gas presure
kinetic
Impulse.
-----------------
I just use
Caliber
Gun lenght (in caliber)
Shells weight - HE -APC
muzzle velocity - m/sec
rof
range

EX: 240mm mlle 1902 - 50 cal - shell 220kg - mv800m/sec - rof 2/mn


Jef

[Logi]

I would opt for text-based. As Nobody said, much easier to maintain and update. Updating GUIs is a horrible pain. Although if it comes to it, I did do a platform independent graphics engine a while ago, so I can recycle and convert into c code so we have a GUI - if necessary.

But really I would be more concerned with the formulas, the accuracy, and how it would be converted to an in-game performance. Not even just forcing Big Gun to run works to this effect.

[Nobody]

Scientific terms like:
Overall
bore lenght
Riffling
gas presure
kinetic
Impulse.
-----------------
I just use
Caliber
Gun lenght (in caliber)
Shells weight - HE -APC
muzzle velocity - m/sec
rof
range

EX: 240mm mlle 1902 - 50 cal - shell 220kg - mv800m/sec - rof 2/mn

Don't worry Jef, caliber, nominal length mass and v0 should be sufficient (and somewhat connected through each other trough the rules, so that we don't see super-heavys in 1915). I want it to be as simple as possible and as complicated as necessary.

But really I would be more concerned with the formulas, the accuracy, and how it would be converted to an in-game performance. Not even just forcing Big Gun to run works to this effect.

We (I) should already have most of the formulas - in theory at least.
The accuracy will be 80-bit floating point (and yes I know that's not what you mean^^).
Converting results into an in-game system will be the most interesting aspect of writing our own program. I think Carth is working on that, so all he would have to do is tell the programmer(s) what he wants/needs.

[Carthaginian]

Without giving away too much:
The bigger the guns, the more damage they do.
Smaller 'Capital Ship' guns do 1D6 damage (11"-12"); larger 'Capital Ship' guns will do 6D6 damage (aprox 18").
The bigger the guns, the farther they shoot.
1" = aprox 500 yds; that's about the size of it, gents... and this scale works for torpedoes too.

========================================================================

Guns below 'Capital Ship' classification will suffer penalties to 'armor penetration' (by not being able to score Critical Hits on ships above a certain armor rating).

Thicker armor schemes will result in higher 'Armor Rolls' for a ship. Generally, Battleships will have a 5+ or greater; this means that they will ignore any damage roll of <5.

More powerful guns will get bonuses to penetrate armor, less powerful guns will receive a penalty; some 'Capital Ship' guns will gain penalties as they age (especially those built prior to 1910 ;)).

Submarines are slightly abstracted under most circumstances, but I have good rules to bring them into battles (detection, evasion, etc).

Results of any kind of hit against non-military vessels are doubled (or more, depending on the construction level).

[Nobody]

Without giving away too much:
The bigger the guns, the more damage they do.
Smaller 'Capital Ship' guns do 1D6 damage (11"-12"); larger 'Capital Ship' guns will do 6D6 damage (aprox 18").
The bigger the guns, the farther they shoot.
1" = aprox 500 yds; that's about the size of it, gents... and this scale works for torpedoes too.

========================================================================

Guns below 'Capital Ship' classification will suffer penalties to 'armor penetration' (by not being able to score Critical Hits on ships above a certain armor rating).

Thicker armor schemes will result in higher 'Armor Rolls' for a ship. Generally, Battleships will have a 5+ or greater; this means that they will ignore any damage roll of <5.

More powerful guns will get bonuses to penetrate armor, less powerful guns will receive a penalty; some 'Capital Ship' guns will gain penalties as they age (especially those built prior to 1910 ;)).

Submarines are slightly abstracted under most circumstances, but I have good rules to bring them into battles (detection, evasion, etc).

Results of any kind of hit against non-military vessels are doubled (or more, depending on the construction level).

That's rather boring (albeit I admit it's simple). But then what is the point in designing 'nice' ships knowing that almost all potential differences are likely going to be ignored by the combat system?

[Carthaginian]

That's rather boring (albeit I admit it's simple). But then what is the point in designing 'nice' ships knowing that almost all potential differences are likely going to be ignored by the combat system?

The differences are ignored in ALL RULE SYSTEMS to some greater or lesser degree, Nobody. ;)

Potential differences aren't going to be ignored as badly as you fear, I think. There are various 'traits' that each ship can have- one makes a ship more vulnerable to underwater damage, one simulates super-heavy shells, another simulates a Torpedo Bulkhead, and yet another makes sure that destroyers are sure to go off like a firecracker when hit by a heavy shell.
Using these, there will be a great deal of room for the things that make a ship 'unique.' I can simulate the trouble that a semi-dreadnought has with differentiating shell splashes in this ruleset. I can handle ships with inadequate flash protection. I can do quite a bit to make two ships with seemingly identical stats turn out to be rather unique.

It'll take a battle to make the degree of differentiation apparent, I'm afraid. ;D