STO Engineering: how much armor to use?

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

I just designed a new very heavy STO emplacement. It's going to cost nearly 7000 RP to develop the unit. (45cm UV laser, it'll leave a mark. Or write your name on the moon.)

It could cost a third as much, to research, to build, and to maintain. (Though negligibly less in TN minerals.) But I decided to splash out on giving it heavy static armor.

Does anyone have strong opinions or solid arguments on whether it's worth paying for that kind of protection? Whether STOs should go cheap and rely on fortification making them hard to hit, or expensive and have a better shot at surviving if bombarded?

I might lean to cheap for point defense sites, which probably should be deployed in large numbers...

[QuakeIV]

Just since I've seen this kind of thread go unremarked-upon before, I would note that there is as yet relatively little experience in the domain of STO survivability, so there might not be a firm answer out there for you yet.

If anyone has that information though then I am rather interested as well.

[liveware]

Generally speaking I prefer mobile assets to stationary. So I would suggest that you spend your STO resources on naval assets instead.

But I am difficult so take that for what you will.

[xenoscepter]

I'll weigh in a little on this.

Armor improves over time, but so do weapons. Heavy Armor today might be pierced by even the PWL of a couple tomorrows from now, provided you built them early enough.

I'd say if you have Compressed Carbon Armor... go for it. Better armor doesn't add HP, but at least at that tech your armor won't be outclassed by CAP or PW in a couple of decades... or if an advanced species two or three techs higher comes calling.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I say why not if you have the research to spare to build those heavy lasers. The more defences they have the more chances they will be able to keep firing on the enemy fleet when they approach.

I don't think that you care so much about enemy ground troops as against enemy bombardment weapons, STO don't tend to outlive the first ground battle round anyway if they can't repel an invasion.

The worth of armour and weapons levels also highly depend on your relative technology strength. How often you need to replace STO for upgrading armour depends on your game settings, but that goes for everything in the game, not just STO as everything gets old and outdated at some point.

[xenoscepter]

Off-Topic: show

The first ground battle round? What formations are you using for defense that the whole planet falls in eight hours? And if your garrison is that light, why are you even wasting STOs on it anyway? If it's an important world, why do you not have a better garrison? Do you deploy STOs w/o defensive forces within their formation?

Goodness... losing an entire world in one combat round just because you couldn't outright destroy the enemy invasion fleet before it could land troops sounds like such a bad situation that STOs wouldn't matter anyway. Armored or not ain't even a question at that point. Hell my garrisons are like 20,000 Tons in the early game, what are you even using to get such poor results... PWL? Good for unrest, in fact it's the best, but defense forces don't hurt either.

I'm being a little sarcastic above, but I am genuinely curious what you are using that such parameters should occur. Reliably annihilating an invasion fleet is quite a tall order for any STO system I'd imagine, since Troop Transports can be made into huge, CIWS-laden and heavily armored commercial behemoths which very well could plow through missile fire and then just sit there and take the STOs. Ya only need about 12-16 layers and about 5-10 Cargo Shuttles to unload in a reasonable amount of time... in fact if you use Drop Capable bays you can do it even faster, although I think those are Military components...

^Just realized you were talking about enemy Orbital Bombardment... lol. I've heard the to hit chances are terrible for that, but I've yet to test out Orbital Bombardment for myself. And the NPRs haven't shelled me to hell yet either, so I got nothing on that.

Here is an example of an STO template I would use:

Example Template

Code: [Select]

Transport Size: 14,923 tons
Build Cost: 606.3 BP
5x Placeholder STO [Anti-Ship]
5x Placeholder STO [Point Defense]
20x Heavy MG Emplacement
20x AT Emplacement
40x MG Position
40x AT Gun Position
60x AA Gun Position
600x PW Infantry
30x General Purpose Light Tank
10x Logistics Vehicle
1x Headquarters Unit
The Heavy MG Emplacements are H-CAP Static w/ Medium Armor.
The AT Emplacements are MAV Static w/ Medium Armor.
The AA Gun Position are LAA Static w/ Light Armor.
The AT Gun Position are LAV Static w/ Light Armor.
The MG Position are CAP Static w/ Light Armor.

Headquarters unit is Medium Vehicle with Medium Armor and 15,000 Ton HQ unit, plus a H-CAP.
General Purpose Light Tank is a MAC / LAC Medium Vehicle with Light Armor
PW Infantry are just Light Infantry w/ PW.

Both Placeholder STOs are Static and use Heavy Static Armor.

With ground build rate of 400, this takes one and a half years to build and can defend itself from enemies just fine. The LAV Logistics give it 12 rounds of combat. Out-dated units can be replaced piecemeal or not at all if paired with defending forces, for if your defense force is thrashed, so too will your STOs, but even with outdated kit they may yet make them pay for the victory.

EDIT:

One Such Transport, Ion / Composite w/ Max Engine Size 100 and Gauss RoF 2, non-TN Cargo Shuttles. Big, but Superfreighter big, not crazy holy cow big. Unloads fully in two hours, you'd need a helluva set of STOs to put that thing down. Well, not too much as 2 hours is quite a long time, even for those big alpha lasers... The Weequay II has drop capable transport bays though, so it can unload more or less instantly AFAIK. 2,400~2,300 km/s for Ion Tech Commercial Engines isn't too shabby though, and with some fuel consumption tech you could get that up even more.

Weequay Troop Transport

Code: [Select]

Weequay class Troop Transport      262,335 tons       1,770 Crew       12,393.7 BP       TCS 5,247    TH 12,500    EM 0
2382 km/s      Armour 16-365       Shields 0-0       HTK 574      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 29    Max Repair 156.250 MSP
Troop Capacity 100,000 tons     Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3.1 months   

Commercial Ion Drive  EP625.00 (20)    Power 12500.0    Fuel Use 5.59%    Signature 625.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,550,000 Litres    Range 19 billion km (92 days at full power)

CIWS-50 (40x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 5,000 km/s     ROF 5       
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Weequay II Troop Transport

Code: [Select]

Weequay II class Troop Transport      279,176 tons       1,970 Crew       14,900.1 BP       TCS 5,584    TH 12,500    EM 0
2238 km/s      Armour 16-380       Shields 0-0       HTK 610      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 33    Max Repair 200 MSP
Troop Capacity 100,000 tons     Drop Capable   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3.1 months   

Commercial Ion Drive  EP625.00 (20)    Power 12500.0    Fuel Use 5.59%    Signature 625.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,550,000 Litres    Range 17.9 billion km (92 days at full power)

CIWS-50 (40x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 5,000 km/s     ROF 5       
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

[Droll]

^Just realized you were talking about enemy Orbital Bombardment... lol. I've heard the to hit chances are terrible for that, but I've yet to test out Orbital Bombardment for myself. And the NPRs haven't shelled me to hell yet either, so I got nothing on that.

Orbital bombardment where you just shoot at the planet with your ships and pray is woefully hopeless.

OBS with FFDs though are a different story IMO and are a nice edge for an attacker to have. The only problem is that for decent casualties you need a lot of investment. In my case I was invading a planet with 1.7m tons against 1.7m tons (large tech advantage for me) and 14 bombardment cruisers, 2 heavy cruisers and 2 light cruisers shaved off around 100k tons of enemy troops between them. The bombardment cruisers used 8 50cm railguns, heavy cruisers had 12 30cm guns and the light cruisers 20cm guns. This excludes their gauss point defence armament which was also used.

I find that larger caliber weapons do disproportionately better than smaller weapons because they can exploit the few times that they do hit pretty well and can obviously kill heavier units like tanks. Gauss spam is also good against infantry but infantry is the only thing that 1 damage gauss can reliably kill.

Also note that the planet in question accumulated like 9000 dust so a lot of the native population died before I could rescue them with infrastructure.

[liveware]

I just designed a new very heavy STO emplacement. It's going to cost nearly 7000 RP to develop the unit. (45cm UV laser, it'll leave a mark. Or write your name on the moon.)

It could cost a third as much, to research, to build, and to maintain. (Though negligibly less in TN minerals.) But I decided to splash out on giving it heavy static armor.

Does anyone have strong opinions or solid arguments on whether it's worth paying for that kind of protection? Whether STOs should go cheap and rely on fortification making them hard to hit, or expensive and have a better shot at surviving if bombarded?

I might lean to cheap for point defense sites, which probably should be deployed in large numbers...

It's worth considering that STO emplacements seem to get targeted preferentially during invasions. I'm not completely sure what the game mechanic is but whenever I invade a planet the STO's are always the first enemy units that get destroyed, and usually within the first couple of rounds of combat. So there might be an argument for having a huge number of them in order to use them as cannon fodder while your ground forces take out the invaders.

On the other hand... it might be kind of awesome to make some sort of Minas Tirith type of fortified city around each STO, and make huge heavily armored and heavily defended STOs instead.

I myself would probably go with the swarm of ants instead of the fortified city approach, but I could see both working if properly executed.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

I just designed a new very heavy STO emplacement. It's going to cost nearly 7000 RP to develop the unit. (45cm UV laser, it'll leave a mark. Or write your name on the moon.)

It could cost a third as much, to research, to build, and to maintain. (Though negligibly less in TN minerals.) But I decided to splash out on giving it heavy static armor.

Does anyone have strong opinions or solid arguments on whether it's worth paying for that kind of protection? Whether STOs should go cheap and rely on fortification making them hard to hit, or expensive and have a better shot at surviving if bombarded?

I might lean to cheap for point defense sites, which probably should be deployed in large numbers...

It's worth considering that STO emplacements seem to get targeted preferentially during invasions. I'm not completely sure what the game mechanic is but whenever I invade a planet the STO's are always the first enemy units that get destroyed, and usually within the first couple of rounds of combat. So there might be an argument for having a huge number of them in order to use them as cannon fodder while your ground forces take out the invaders.

On the other hand... it might be kind of awesome to make some sort of Minas Tirith type of fortified city around each STO, and make huge heavily armored and heavily defended STOs instead.

I myself would probably go with the swarm of ants instead of the fortified city approach, but I could see both working if properly executed.

STOs are likely to be extremely large units, bigger than most if not all heavy vehicles (though maybe not the superheavy ones.)

On the other hand as static units they can be highly fortified, and should always be located in rear-echelon formations. Even a big one like mine should be only slightly more likely to get hit than any given front-line CAP infantry unit, and they have more HP than infantry and can have more armor as well.

[liveware]

I just designed a new very heavy STO emplacement. It's going to cost nearly 7000 RP to develop the unit. (45cm UV laser, it'll leave a mark. Or write your name on the moon.)

It could cost a third as much, to research, to build, and to maintain. (Though negligibly less in TN minerals.) But I decided to splash out on giving it heavy static armor.

Does anyone have strong opinions or solid arguments on whether it's worth paying for that kind of protection? Whether STOs should go cheap and rely on fortification making them hard to hit, or expensive and have a better shot at surviving if bombarded?

I might lean to cheap for point defense sites, which probably should be deployed in large numbers...

It's worth considering that STO emplacements seem to get targeted preferentially during invasions. I'm not completely sure what the game mechanic is but whenever I invade a planet the STO's are always the first enemy units that get destroyed, and usually within the first couple of rounds of combat. So there might be an argument for having a huge number of them in order to use them as cannon fodder while your ground forces take out the invaders.

On the other hand... it might be kind of awesome to make some sort of Minas Tirith type of fortified city around each STO, and make huge heavily armored and heavily defended STOs instead.

I myself would probably go with the swarm of ants instead of the fortified city approach, but I could see both working if properly executed.

STOs are likely to be extremely large units, bigger than most if not all heavy vehicles (though maybe not the superheavy ones.)

On the other hand as static units they can be highly fortified, and should always be located in rear-echelon formations. Even a big one like mine should be only slightly more likely to get hit than any given front-line CAP infantry unit, and they have more HP than infantry and can have more armor as well.

It's possible my observations of preferential STO destruction are due to hostile STOs not being placed in a RE mode.

Also... ultra-heavy vehicles are a thing. Maybe that would be a better STO platform than a static platform? I'm not sure how that would shake out in terms of fortification and armor and whatnot.

[Migi]

I just designed a new very heavy STO emplacement. It's going to cost nearly 7000 RP to develop the unit. (45cm UV laser, it'll leave a mark. Or write your name on the moon.)

It could cost a third as much, to research, to build, and to maintain. (Though negligibly less in TN minerals.) But I decided to splash out on giving it heavy static armor.

Does anyone have strong opinions or solid arguments on whether it's worth paying for that kind of protection? Whether STOs should go cheap and rely on fortification making them hard to hit, or expensive and have a better shot at surviving if bombarded?

I might lean to cheap for point defense sites, which probably should be deployed in large numbers...

Personally I would go for the low armour option.

If you go for the low armour option you can build 3 times as many, have 3 times the firepower for the same cost. That firepower can keep the area clear of hostile bombardment, rather than rely on armour to survive being hit.

Any position which is important enough to be defended by STO's should be defended by other ground units as well. You should also keep the STO's in the rear to minimise their chance of being targeted.
The STO's protect the ground units from space threats and the ground units protect the STO's from anything which makes it onto the surface.

Heavier armour makes sense on units which you expect to take hits and where you are limited in terms of tonnage you can transport. I don't really see how either of those apply to STO's.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

STOs shouldn't expect to be hit a lot in ground combat, unless the battle is pretty well lost, but they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

I'm somewhat unsure how much the wealth cost actually matters. I haven't built enough ground forces to worry about their impact on the budget, but maybe I should...

Also... ultra-heavy vehicles are a thing. Maybe that would be a better STO platform than a static platform? I'm not sure how that would shake out in terms of fortification and armor and whatnot.

Are ultraheavy vehicles allowed to have STO weapons?

Ultraheavy vehicles have very poor fortification, so they'd be something like four times as likely to be hit. On the other hand they can probably have something like four times as much armor? Which does add up to better survival chances against most threats, I think.

[Droll]

they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

"Might" is the critical word you use - in order for orbital bombardment to explicitly target STOs, you need to forego the bonus of having FFD support, which means that OBS hit rate is going to be worse than pathetic. The primary defense of your static STOs against OBS is not armour, ironically its evasion. High fortification combined with piss poor OBS accuracy means that your STOs are going to be getting a lot of hits while not getting hit back.

Besides, static heavy armour is not strong enough to handle the usual bombardment suspects since people should be using high caliber weapons anyways for OBS duty. Additionally light static armour is more than good enough to handle 1 damage weapons like gauss spam reliably so IMO not worth armouring.

[liveware]

STOs shouldn't expect to be hit a lot in ground combat, unless the battle is pretty well lost, but they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

I'm somewhat unsure how much the wealth cost actually matters. I haven't built enough ground forces to worry about their impact on the budget, but maybe I should...

Also... ultra-heavy vehicles are a thing. Maybe that would be a better STO platform than a static platform? I'm not sure how that would shake out in terms of fortification and armor and whatnot.

Are ultraheavy vehicles allowed to have STO weapons?

Ultraheavy vehicles have very poor fortification, so they'd be something like four times as likely to be hit. On the other hand they can probably have something like four times as much armor? Which does add up to better survival chances against most threats, I think.

Looks like UH vehicles cannot mount STO weapons... my apologies for the poor suggestion. I personally think that would be a nice addition to the game however.

[liveware]

they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

"Might" is the critical word you use - in order for orbital bombardment to explicitly target STOs, you need to forego the bonus of having FFD support, which means that OBS hit rate is going to be worse than pathetic. The primary defense of your static STOs against OBS is not armour, ironically its evasion. High fortification combined with piss poor OBS accuracy means that your STOs are going to be getting a lot of hits while not getting hit back.

Besides, static heavy armour is not strong enough to handle the usual bombardment suspects since people should be using high caliber weapons anyways for OBS duty. Additionally light static armour is more than good enough to handle 1 damage weapons like gauss spam reliably so IMO not worth armouring.

Unless hostile ground troops are present. If Mr. Ulzgoroth is being invaded by hostile ground forces then his STOs will likely be a major target and will not last long. So they might fire a few shots but then hostile ground forces will silence them. And then he is in a really bad situation because he cannot retaliate against orbital naval forces unless he can reinforce from another colony. But presumably reinforcement is not possible or he would not be fighting a STO battle at all.