Detection!

[Kurt (OP)]

Just an observation, apropos of nothing   .  Certainly this post should not be seen as having any connection with my campaign.

I am too used to operating in inhabited systems!  Do you know how hard it is to find a ship, or even ships, in an uninhabited aurora system?  

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Okay, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of what I'm talking about.
[attachment=1:1xdurf25]Search Example.gif[/attachment:1xdurf25]

This what Race A sees.  Note the blue circles around the task groups.  Those are their thermal detection ranges for the other race's known thermal signature.

[attachment=0:1xdurf25]Search Example 2.gif[/attachment:1xdurf25]

This is Race B.  Note that this map is at a larger scale, indicating that the scale had to be expanded even to view everything.  Also note that there are no blue circles around their ships.  That's because their thermal detection range is so small at this scale that the blue circles are actually smaller than the dot that represents the task group.  

Please note that I'm complaining about the situation I find myself in, not about Aurora.  

Kurt

[ShadoCat]

Three blind mice, see how they run....

(Be very glad that this board does not record audio)

[Steve Walmsley]

Space is fairly big

Steve

[Kurt (OP)]

Space is fairly big

Steve

So I've discovered (and known, but not really thought about!).  I was fairly happy with the scouts that I designed for Race A,, and their sensor range is good.  Look at the difference in thermal sensor ranges between the two Battle Task Groups and the unit DSS Grav JS 001.  That is the difference between a 350 ton thermal sensor and a 1,000 ton thermal sensor.  Still, even so, the amount of space covered by the sensor is negligible compared to the area they'd need to cover.  

This is something to think about.  As I noted in my first post, I've been spoiled by operating in an inhabited system.  Kind of ironic, given my recent post on the various human fleets.  I spent a lot of time going on about their "Earth-centric" viewpoint, and here I get caught in essentially the same thing.  

Kurt

[Erik L]

Something that might alleviate this is a "warp flare". When a jump point is activated, it flares, with an EM signal detectable in the light-minute range, 20-30LM. Or maybe base the strength of the flare on the size of the ships coming through. 3 x 2000 ton ships produce a smaller flare than 3 x 15,000 ton ships.

[sloanjh]

It's a big ocean errrr I mean solar system out there

I think Kurt's observation really emphasizes how much Aurora is about choke points and bastions, and the similarities to naval warfare (especially pre-20th century naval warfare, when detection ranges were so limited).  This is one of the major reasons that I try to always picket my warp points (both frontier and interior) with cheap pickets at speed 1 (so they can only be picked up by active sensors, the use of which would be a little noisy for someone trying to sneak into the system) - that's pretty much the only opportunity to detect them before they show up on your homeworld's front doorstep.

My recollection is that this is what Steve was going for when he first started shifting from SA to Aurora - isolated strongpoints separated by vast uncharted wastelands.

John

[Sotak246]

I was thinking along similar lines, lots of area means hard to find the enemy even when you know they are there.  That sort of thinking just lost me a fleet, unfortunately.  I have a system with a 3 ship fleet of precursers in it, found them originally by losing a geosurvey ship, so sent in 6 crusiers, 3 lt.crusier escorts, 2 destroyers and a big scout ship with what I though were pretty good sensors.  I entered the system thinkig I would have to search for ever to find them.  Wrong, they ambushed me before I even got my shields up, I wasn't even close to the planets or star of the system yet.  Lost everything but the 2 destroyers and one of them was mangled.  It was sad to see the trail of wrecks as I tried to save my fleet.  

Mark

[SteveAlt]

It's a big ocean errrr I mean solar system out there

I think Kurt's observation really emphasizes how much Aurora is about choke points and bastions, and the similarities to naval warfare (especially pre-20th century naval warfare, when detection ranges were so limited).  This is one of the major reasons that I try to always picket my warp points (both frontier and interior) with cheap pickets at speed 1 (so they can only be picked up by active sensors, the use of which would be a little noisy for someone trying to sneak into the system) - that's pretty much the only opportunity to detect them before they show up on your homeworld's front doorstep.

My recollection is that this is what Steve was going for when he first started shifting from SA to Aurora - isolated strongpoints separated by vast uncharted wastelands.

Yes that is what I was going for. More of an Age of Sail or early industrial in terms of the strategic game and modern naval warfare / honorverse-ish for the tactical game. I was trying to get away from the Starfire situation of lots of habitable worlds, densely populated galaxies and often a series of static battles against heavily defended warp points. I hoped that a situation would develop where multiple races could inhabit or use the same star systems and empire boundaries would not be easily defined and definitely not easily defended.

Steve

[Kurt (OP)]

It's a big ocean errrr I mean solar system out there

I think Kurt's observation really emphasizes how much Aurora is about choke points and bastions, and the similarities to naval warfare (especially pre-20th century naval warfare, when detection ranges were so limited).  This is one of the major reasons that I try to always picket my warp points (both frontier and interior) with cheap pickets at speed 1 (so they can only be picked up by active sensors, the use of which would be a little noisy for someone trying to sneak into the system) - that's pretty much the only opportunity to detect them before they show up on your homeworld's front doorstep.

My recollection is that this is what Steve was going for when he first started shifting from SA to Aurora - isolated strongpoints separated by vast uncharted wastelands.

Yes that is what I was going for. More of an Age of Sail or early industrial in terms of the strategic game and modern naval warfare / honorverse-ish for the tactical game. I was trying to get away from the Starfire situation of lots of habitable worlds, densely populated galaxies and often a series of static battles against heavily defended warp points. I hoped that a situation would develop where multiple races could inhabit or use the same star systems and empire boundaries would not be easily defined and definitely not easily defended.

Steve

I'm looking forward to a series of interesting situations that arise out of the situation listed at the start of this thread.  There will be two civilizations seperated by four or five systems with nothing, or almost nothing, in them.  Ii can see ample opportunities for thrust and perry, picketing, establishing sensor outposts, and various other tricks.

[Paul M]

I have a major question on this.  In my first game I had 4 combat situations show up, 3 of them were over and done with without a chance for me to interact.

The game has to stop at detection regardless of the time step chosen since frankly I may be advancing in 5 day steps but when that results in an alien fleet a few million km from my home world and half my civillian merchant fleet destroyed before I can react or 2 survey ships destroyed again before I can react then this is no fun.

As the player I don't know when a contact will occur but the engine has to determine what the max range of detection is between to forces and pause the game and put up a failry obvious "Enemy Fleet Detected" indicator at that point.

I've now learned to run the game slower during probes and to assign weapons to fire controls and such but still that pause is an absolute necessity.

Advice on what setting to use for the sub step is also appreciated.

By the way...hello again Kurt, good stories as always.

[Starkiller]

Well, it CAN be a tricky thing to decide the subpulse setting. While I'm still feeling my way around that, I have devised a few tricks to increase the
survivability of my ships if I have the subpulse set too high. It makes use of the two conditional orders. In the case of my survey squadrons, the first
conditional is set to "Contact in System" then "Raise Shields", the second is set to "Contact in System" then "Refuel at colony within 4 jumps". Even
if they don't need fuel, the purpose of the second one, is to get my unarmed Huns "the hell outa Dodge". A hostile contact option
would be nice. Hope this can help for the time being. ^_-

Eric

[Paul M]

Yes I noticed the contact issue on the conditional orders before...contact with merchant shipping triggered it.  I don't understand why contact with commercial ships with active transponders is classed as hostile (unless the red color means its a thermal contact only).

That bit about heading to refuel sounds like a good idea.  And for WP defence activating active sensors also seems sensible.