I wanted speed. Extreme speed. But all I got was a firecracker.

[Polestar (OP)]

Recent versions of Aurora have revolutionised ship design. One feature that struck me is that ship size no longer determines the limit on maximum ship speed.

How ... interesting.

So, what happens when you
1. spend 1.25 million research points,
2. tech up to Magnetic Confinement Fusion, x3 max engine power, and other techs up to the 15000- or 30000-cost level, and
3. design a 20,000-ton capital ship that moves at almost fighter speed?

Code: [Select]

Aquila Roma class Cruiser    19,950 tons     157 Crew     8952.5 BP      TCS 399  TH 9975  EM 3000
25000 km/s     Armour 12-65     Shields 100-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 27     PPV 132
Maint Life 4.17 Years     MSP 1963    AFR 454%    IFR 6.3%    1YR 181    5YR 2708    Max Repair 270 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 15   

Pyram Stellarum Minor (133)    Power 75    Fuel Use 462.98%    Signature 75    Exp 30% (included in the design shown)
OR
Pyram Stellarum (3)    Power 3300    Fuel Use 261.89%    Signature 3300    Exp 30% (plus adjustments to fuel and engineers)

Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 1.0 billion km   (10 hours at full power) (NB: my empire's fuel efficiency tech is unecessarily high)
Hasta II (SS 4, 300s) (25)   Total Fuel Cost  300 Litres per hour  (7,200 per day)

Lux Ira (M, 5s, 45k) (4)    Range 45,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 3-4     RM 4.5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fortis Bellator (4x1, 5s, 50k) (40x4)    Range 50,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
ARGUS Minor (50%@24k, 12.5k km/s, EH50%) (4)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12500 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
ARGUS (50%@72k, 25 k km/s) (2)    Max Range: 144,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     93 86 79 72 65 58 51 44 37 31
Tokamak II (14)     Total Power Output 140    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Lynx (50ton@5m, missile@548k, EH2) (3)     GPS 28     Range 5.0m km    Resolution 1

Compact ECCM-1 (1)         This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
(open image in new tab for original size. not sure why this forum is shrinking it)


I honestly thought this design had promise. You're looking at 12 layers of shielded armor that burn rubber at 25k and fires 160 shots every game tick! Good luck being cost-competitive with THIS, missile boys! This baby spends 37% of its total space on weapons and their power generators, 23% on armor, shields, and redundent sensors, 33.3% on engines, and 7.2% on everything else - fuel, engineers, crew spaces, primary sensors - everything! Not only is it a potent missile-killer, it's also not easy to kill with lasers, railguns, torpedos, or particle beams, and I have the support ships to give it sensor support, range, and cruising time on demand.


However, I now don't just think this design sucks, I KNOW it sucks because I've tested it. If you field ships that have to fight at beam weapon range, and your enemy isn't stupid, then you need to be able to cope with both Mesons and Microwaves. And this ship can't.

Let's take Mesons first. What happens when you bypass all those lovely armor plates and shields with Mesons? You get to see some pretty fireworks.

This ship has more than a 50% chance of insta-death if 11 points of damage penetrate to the components (as per the "Apply Damage" button that appears when in SM Mode, in the Individual Unit Details window, Damage Control tab).

Each engine has a 30% chance of explosion on death, and this ship has a LOT of engines. Explosions of 50-ton engines range anywhere from 2-12 extra damage, but the point to note is that the average is probably more than 4. So, as soon as one engine explodes, the explosion on average kills enough other engines in this design to cause a chain reaction. Ship dead. Larger engines cause much larger explosions (if one goes bang, the ship is *annihilated*) but their saving grace is that any given hit is less likely to cause an engine to be destroyed and run the risk of an explosion. So your ship will last a few game ticks longer.

Some conclusions:
1. If you want your ships to be survivable against Mesons, then they cannot use engines that are boosted very high.
2. Because Mesons are so important, and so easy to research and field, this really means that trying to make any ship that fights at beam weapon range go too fast is asking for trouble.

I personally think that last conclusion, if indeed true, is terribly disappointing. The combination of Fuel consumption, Gallicite expense, total build cost, space required for engines and fuel, and range ought to be enough balance for speed.


Now, let's consider Microwaves. This time, I actually did field trials of Eagles against each other. While the Railguns, as expected, merely sandblasted the armor, the far fewer microwaves very quickly wiped out the sensors - despite this design's multiply redundant, electronically hardened backups.

I have no clue how to protect a ship that has to get into beam weapon range from microwaves. Shields help, but because microwaves do 3x damge to shields, I'm not seeing them help enough. Microwaves are short-ranged, but this ship can, in a single game tick of five seconds, close from "far enough to make it difficult for any weapon and fire control to target" at this tech level to "close enough for any weapon", at the same tech level. The average design might take 10 or 15 seconds, but that's still not much. I do not know how to tell a ship to try to keep a specific distance from an enemy and automatically move as needed, and doubt that such a system would work anyway, given the low ratio of the speed of ships divided by the difference between far and near beam range.


So, we're renaming this bird the "Dies Horribly" ...

... and I come to you for help, because at least one of two things are true:
1. I need to eat humble pie and ask for advice from more experienced players, or
2. Steve needs to hear about this story and rethink engine explosions, the effect of microwaves, and/or speed versus weapon range.

[telegraph]

Well, you drove your speed insanely high. What did you expect? It is only logical that such Achiless would have his tendon(a lot of much cheaper and quicker and lower-tech fighters with mesons). I see nothing wrong with that.

As to suggestions: proper anti-meson strategy is long-range weaponry (longer then meson) with either high RoF(to kill incoming waves before they close in enough) or mounted on a faster ship(to constantly stay one step out of enemy range). If weapon of choice is not missiles - ECM helps a lot too.

[Nightstar]

Obviously, going supercritical in the nuclear sense carries problems. I'd have more shields and less armor because leaking any damage is so bad. This also increases your HTK some, to help with the criticality. Size 1 engines actually have better HTK per HS than larger engines BTW.

As for beam weapon balance, not all beam ranges are equal! Mesons and microwaves are much nastier than anything else against heavily armored ships, but they have less range than lasers and particle beams.

Stick a big laser/particle beam on it, and kill everything from afar. At this tech level you can easily hit 300k range. You dictate range with this kind of speed.

Remember that against slower ships, you can go in, take some damage to the shields -- and run away. The shields will recharge, and you can try again.

[Brian Neumann]

If you want to maintain a distance against a target you can do so from the F12 screen.  Designate the force that you want to keep a set distance from and you should have a box for minimum distance.  Your ships will move to that range and stop.  It really helps to have initiative as higher initiative moves last.  This means if the enemy has initiative on you that you will move to the range set, and then they move either closer or farther away based on thier orders. 

As far as the weapons problems you noticed there are not a whole lot of answers.  Mesons are deliberatly kept to a supposedly shorter range.  The problem is that larger mesons will still tend to max out the fire control range for all practical purposes.  The best defense against mesons is to have systems with high HTK (hit to kill) numbers.  For weapons this is either larger weapons, or turrets.  For engines this would be larger engines.  If a weapon does not do enough damage in a single shot to equal the htk number then it only has a chance of killing the system (1/htk for mesons).  As a side note the apply damage button applies the damage as a single hit of that strength and not multiple size 1 hits. 

The HPM on the other hand is a very specialized system.  It only damages the electronics and shields.  Against shields it does 3 points of damage regardless of the size of the firing weapon.  The best counters to the HPM are to stay out of its range (same problem here as against the mesons) or have heavy shields.  The hardening of systems is rarely going to be much help as the cost goes up really fast (that 50% hardened level means that in general it takes twice as many shots to take the systems down, but it is already costing twice as much to build)  And if you are taking more than a few HPM hits then you are generally going to lose systems regardless.

With the ship design you posted you really need to use the maintain minimum distance orders.  If the enemy has initiative set the distance as farther away so when they do close you are still at a longer range.  You would also need some longer range weapons to make all this work.  Either mount some heavier railguns (the 15cm would probably work for this design) or some medium sized lasers (15cm would work well and have a fairly short cycle time). 

Brian

[Nathan_]

If you want a fighter design, keep them around the less than 500 ton range. Building a 20k fighter is obviously asking for trouble.

add 10ish Size 1 magazines with 10 armor to the design.

[Gyrfalcon]

I think of it more as a Battlecruiser - enough speed to get itself into trouble, not enough punch to get itself back out of trouble. In this case, as others have said, giving it a battery of lasers will allow it to outrange meson/microwave enemies, and it's fast enough to play keep away with some fighter and FAC designs.

[Garfunkel]

Yes, the problem this design has is the short-range of it's main weaponry.

But I just love the idea of a HUUUUUGE chain reaction of exploding engines, thanks for the mental picture 

[Polestar (OP)]

I'm not sure that everyone responding understands this design's real problem.

To better demonstrate the limits I'm running into, here's a weapons testing station, designed with all weapon and sensor tech up to level 6 (ex. Soft X-ray Lasers, Meson Focusing Technology 6, Fire Control Speed Rating 6250 km/s, Beam Fire Control Range 48k km).

All ranges are in 50,000 km increments.

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Weapon range demonstration class Ship 3,500 tons    (snip)

Fire Control S08 192-12500 (1)    Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 12500 km/s     87 74 61 48 35 22 9 0 0 0
NOTE: This beam control system has 4x the size and range of base. It's as long-ranged as I can build at this tech level.

30cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 24-6     RM 6    ROF 20        24 14 9 7 5 4 4 0 0 0
R72/C6 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 24-6     RM 72    ROF 20        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
R72/C6 High Power Microwave (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 24-6     RM 72    ROF 20        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
30cm Railgun V6/C6 (1x4)    Range 384,000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 21-6     RM 6    ROF 20        7 4 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 0

Now take a look at the hit chances and weapon damages. The same hit chance applies to all weapons, and all tech level 6 weapons - mesons and microwaves included - are capable of doing damage out to maximum range of the longest-ranged fire control a ship can field at level level 6.

But that's not all. Notice that mesons and microwave damage is unaffected by range, up to the limit of the sensor, while lasers and railgun damage drops off with range. The longer the range, the more competitive mesons and microwaves are, at this tech level.

Combined with the terrible vulnerability of even hardened sensors to microwaves, and the insta-kill capacity mesons have against ships - however protected - with sufficiently boosted engines, it's clear that the weapon balance in this game as of version 6.2 needs some attention.

Does this now make my original design's problem clear?

[MagusXIX]

The problem is that beam fire controls are limited to a maximum range of 1,400,000km.  After that range, all beam weapons will have a 0% chance to hit even if the range of the weapon is longer than the maximum range of the longest-ranged beam fire control.  Microwaves, Lasers, Mesons, Plasma Carronades, and Railguns all reach (and surpass) this maximum range.  Particle Beams come close at 1.2mil km.  This means that at the highest technology levels, range is a non-factor and so weapons whose primary advantage is to be longer ranged (such as lasers) become out-classed in every way as main ship-to-ship weapons.  Range is a non-factor, so why would you ever choose lasers over plasma carronades, or mesons?  For that matter, why is it even possible to make a laser whose maximum range is far, far greater than the maximum range of the best beam fire control system?  This should be an easy fix, though, as all it would take is to increase the range increments per level of fire-control range until the best fire control range is equal to the range of the farthest reaching laser weapon.

If there's something I'm overlooking here, please let me know.

[Nightstar]

You're missing damage drop off for one. Plasma Carronades may reach max range, but they'll do really poor damage at that range. A maxed laser on the other hand, can vaporize large sections of armor at that range.

Mesons and microwaves don't have that problem admittedly. On the other hand, they're obscenely expensive at maxed levels, at least compared to other guns.

That and the game was never really designed for balance at the highest tech levels. Play something below precursor level.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

@polestar

Mesons and Microwaves don't get more competitive as weapon size increases. They get less competitive, because their damage doesn't scale up with weapon size. Lasers, railguns, and plasma cannons all scale both damage and range with weapon size. Particle beams only scale damage, but are a little underpowered anyway.

You can protect against microwaves with shields, btw.

Mesons are a little overpowered, but not that much.30% explosion chance requires a ridiculous amount of engine boost.

 

[Nathan_]

Combined with the terrible vulnerability of even hardened sensors to microwaves, and the insta-kill capacity mesons have against ships - however protected - with sufficiently boosted engines, it's clear that the weapon balance in this game as of version 6.2 needs some attention.

So your uber uncounterable ship has a counter, and this is a sign of poor balance in other words? The only solution I have for you is to game the DAC, which is totally possible by the way: mesons and microwaves can't really cope with lots of small hard to kill components.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Its beautiful.  They should have sent a poet.