Corporate Federation - Comments

[Kurt (OP)]

I'm pretty skeptical of the chances of this fast missile plan too. Even if the fleet lands some hits, will they actually do enough damage to degrade the orbital defenses?

The only other alternative that I (AKA: The Republic's Admiralty) could think of was either the armored missiles, or complete change in fleet design strategy.  The fast missiles will be easy, designed with off-the shelf components and built in existing munitions factories and fired from existing missile ships & pods.  It will only take a few months (okay, maybe a bit more than a 'few'), but if they fail the only other alternative is to build up a beam-armed fleet to challenge the Dregluk defenses at short range.  That is going to take some time and effort. 

However, the fast-missile option doesn't have to score a complete kill on the defenses to be a winning strategy.  If the first attack with fast missiles can degrade the defenses, even a little, then the follow-on attack should be decisive. 

Kurt

Kurt

[King-Salomon]

well, the Republic could try to overwhelm the AMM defence with it's own AMM in attack mode... hoping that the defence own AMM are concentrating on shooting down AMM instead of the bigger boys...

also the attacking fleet could move way into the AMM radius of the defenders (just short of the energy weapons) to shorten the range and so the number of AMM attacks the attacking missiles have to survive.. this could and would most possible lead to an attack from the planet with AMM themself but the attacking fleet would have to take the damage to make sure it's own missiles reach the target... without the AMM a large enough missile wave (maybe beefed up with size 1 AMM too) could penetrate the defence...

I guess the Republic just should take the losses - it is used to win without looses.. at the beginning at the war they understood to take the looses if necessary.. guess they are a little bit self-satisfied

and... having to change doctrine to energy-weapon ships would mean to take those looses non the less...

[Panopticon]

Yeah I think turning it into an AMM fight might end up being the easiest option if your fast missiles don't work, for that matter a dedicated anti-ship size one missile might be useful anyway.

[Garfunkel]

I'm just glad that Kurt isn't cheesing it with the old "move into range, spot missiles in flight, get out of range" trick, to exhaust the Dregluk missile stores. Much more enjoyable, as a player and as a reader, to defeat an enemy honourably!

[Kurt (OP)]

I'm just glad that Kurt isn't cheesing it with the old "move into range, spot missiles in flight, get out of range" trick, to exhaust the Dregluk missile stores. Much more enjoyable, as a player and as a reader, to defeat an enemy honourably!

Yeah, if I was playing against a human, even myself, that would be a fair tactic.  It just doesn't seem sporting against an AI that can't really adapt to my tactics.  Had I wanted to, I could have forced the Dregluk to exhaust their missiles during every attack they launched on the solar system by sitting on the jump point to Sol in the Washington system and waiting until they launched against my fleet, then jumping out.  I think I allowed myself to do that once, but after that a human would have learned caution in that situation, so I didn't want to keep doing it when another human wouldn't have fallen for it.  Probably.  Well, some humans I know...

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Yeah I think turning it into an AMM fight might end up being the easiest option if your fast missiles don't work, for that matter a dedicated anti-ship size one missile might be useful anyway.

The Republic is very risk adverse with its fleet, as others have noted.  Humanity came really close to getting wiped out, and that has taught them to be cautious and not take risks.  Coming into AMM range of the planet counts as a big risk.  If forced to go with the beam option, then the missile ships will close with the beam ships, and then cover them with AMM and ASM launches until they get into range, but that is definitely not the Admiralty's first choice.  They prefer to stay out of the enemy's range and bombard them, then rely on their faster ships to withdraw and reload. 

The real question is - what's going to happen when they meet someone that has faster ships?  That will really cause problems for the Republic's missile ships. 

Kurt

[Garfunkel]

Interesting designs! Check the code tags though, there's a slip-up that left the Missile Ship introduction inside the code block for one of the ship designs.

And man, those beam combatants are fast. Can't wait to see them in action!

[Father Tim]

I note that the Agamemnon(G) retains an assigned 'Class Loadout' of 188 Raptor ASUMs, even though the launchers & magazines have been removed.

And as Garfunkel noted, the Nautilus class Fast Frigate has a broken and/or missing close-code tag.


I eagerly anticipate seeing these new designs in action.  Let the photons fly!

[Kurt (OP)]

I note that the Agamemnon(G) retains an assigned 'Class Loadout' of 188 Raptor ASUMs, even though the launchers & magazines have been removed.

And as Garfunkel noted, the Nautilus class Fast Frigate has a broken and/or missing close-code tag.


I eagerly anticipate seeing these new designs in action.  Let the photons fly!

Fixed, and thanks to both of you for the catch!

And the beam combatants are going to get quite the workout, just not in the way I expected. <G>

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

First off, please understand that this is not a complaint.  I understand that this is a known issue, and, as I understand it, was one of the motivating factors for C# Aurora.

Having said that, I'm going to whine.  Err…explain.   The Corporate Federation campaign has been going for twenty years of game time, having started in January, 2125.  To cover that game-time, I have had approximately 92 campaign-related posts, either story, maps, or ship designs.  For most of that time I have been playing out events 1-2 years ahead of the events I post to the board.  This allows me to catch and fix mistakes, and to, hopefully, tell a better story by building up events before they happen.  Also, I tend to use the time Aurora takes while processing turns to write the stories and fill in the timeline.  Unfortunately, Aurora is getting slower and slower. 

Out of curiosity, this morning I timed a couple of Aurora turns, and found out that it is taking an average of 10 minutes to process a time advance (anything over around 3 hours will take at least this long).  As there are an average of 4.7 time interrupts between five day economic turns, it is taking an average of 47 minutes per 5 day economic turn.  Plus whatever time it takes me to issue orders to various fleets and keep R&D and construction going.  As I said, I fill some of this time with writing, but there is still a lot of slack time to spend(waste). 

I have filled this time with useful pursuits, such as re-watching "Legends of the Galactic Heroes", but the time it is taking to get anywhere is beginning to wear on me.  I will finish this campaign, one way or another, but I've decided that I won't do another large-scale campaign in VB6 due to the time it takes to get things done.  I may do some small campaigns, if I can come up with something interesting, or I may do a Starfire campaign.  We'll see.  I anticipate this campaign taking several more years to wrap up at this point, so it will be continuing for a while. 

Kurt

[Garfunkel]

Fully understandable and the Dregluk menace makes for a good, self-contained story anyway. You've already made it farther than any of my stories, as they've always succumbed to DB issues and such.

[TMaekler]

How did you calculate the positions for the fleets so that the missiles would reach Drekluk Prime at the same time, taking into account that it is an orbiting target? Or... I see, the position of the planet is only calculated by the game every five days, right? So five days would be your window of opportunity, I guess... .

[Kurt (OP)]

How did you calculate the positions for the fleets so that the missiles would reach Drekluk Prime at the same time, taking into account that it is an orbiting target? Or... I see, the position of the planet is only calculated by the game every five days, right? So five days would be your window of opportunity, I guess... .

Yes, I didn't have to worry about orbital motion.  That was handy this time, but has been problematic in other campaigns. 

Basically, all I did was pick a range at which the shorter ranged missiles (in this case the faster missiles) would be launched at.  I then calculated the time it would take them to reach the target.  I then calculated the distance that the slower missiles would travel in that same amount of time, and positioned my missile ships equipped with the slower missiles at that distance from the target.  The only really difficult thing was timing the launches to be simultaneous.  I was fortunate that the launch went off without a hitch.  I felt like you should be able to do something like that in real life relatively easily, with experienced forces, but Aurora doesn't make something like that easy. 

Kurt

[Karlito]

Well, it seems my pessimism was unfounded. Well done solving the tactical problem.

[Panopticon]

Yeah I wasn't expecting fast missiles to work so well.

I think logistics are still going to fore your fleet redesign, but at least you don't need a new fleet for the planetary attack.