Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Spoilers => Topic started by: Arwyn on July 29, 2021, 11:42:21 AM
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/message repeats
Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.
I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?
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I want to know what the spawn conditions are for star swarm. I have never had them naturally spawn in my games and I've played multiple 100+ year games across multiple game versions across both VB6 and C#, and yes they have been enabled every time.
It's always weird when I hear about people encountering the enigmatic star swarm that just doesn't seem to exist for me.
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I usually stay away until ion at a minimum and usually later. Because until then they're too hard.
You could just turn them off at the start and then turn them on when you're further a long
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It's important not to feed them, if you cannot beat them just now.
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I disable star swarm in my games.
I find the idea of life surviving out in the open space to be... Unrealistic.
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Unfortunately, I have never met them in C# until now. It has always been Precusors and buggy Rakkas for me. Does the swarm have jump drives and grav survey ships? Man I would like to see some spoilers to be honest.
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Unfortunately, I have never met them in C# until now. It has always been Precusors and buggy Rakkas for me. Does the swarm have jump drives and grav survey ships? Man I would like to see some spoilers to be honest.
Are you on 1.12? 1.13 fixes the rakhas and has been released for quite a while.
As for the star swarm I think they can jump through JPs somehow using some jump drive equivalent, otherwise they wouldn't be an existential threat.
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I've had the same problems as the OP re. the Swarm ... to such an extent that I typed up the linked report/suggestion for Steve. http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10640.msg152683#msg152683 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10640.msg152683#msg152683). Follow-up posts in that thread, each with new player reports, may be of service to Steve.
Here's what little I know about the Swarm, or merely guess about it. Everything's in spoilers, despite this thread now being in the spoiler forum.
Independent Swarms appear in random star systems, as they are generated (or if you SP place them manually). I wonder if they are preferentially placed in resource-rich systems. There appears to be no check on how distant these systems are to your homeworld, or on the size and strength of your empire, or on whether and how many swarms already exist in the universe. The failure to check for this sort of thing is a general issue with Aurora game design.
A Swarm can travel between stars using jump points (!), which means it can be far more dangerous than the Precursors. Its fleet consists of vessels that search for jump points, that scout for new targets, that serve as major fleet combatants, lots of small fast attack craft, and that harvest wrecks (and perhaps other rescources?) to generate more members of the swarm. Their technology level starts at (I think) about ion or magneto-plasma, and can (slowly) increase over time.
The Swarm means death if you cannot beat it off. If it can, it will wipe out your fleet, your shipyards, and endlessly bombard your colonies to dust. If your empire is facing doom, consider editing the database to remove the entire swarm.
Please report any errors or omissions in the above!
If you start the game with the swarm active, then one of two things will happen:
1. The swarm will find and attack you early. You will either already have a fleet in place that can kill several tens of thousands of tons-worth of ion or magneto-plasma ships ... or you will die.
2. The swarm will either never appear, or appear far away or late, having little or no effect upon the game.
Without painstakingly using the database to determine if systems have had a swarm generated in them, you won't know which of these will happen until they start appearing ... or never do.
I therefore recommend that you turn the swarm off, and - when you think you're ready for a minor, but mobile opponent - manually place a swarm in a suitable system.
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@Droll
Yes, this is my first 1.13 game and it is like 3 weeks old. The one before was started in 2020 and ended due to some function error.
@Polestar
This is interesting. My game is at 20% research speed and now after 50 years in the game I might be able to begin building competitive ships at that tech level. I deactivated invaders for this reason, maybe I should deactivate the swarm the next time I begin a new game for a few years.
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If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.
I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.
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i mean, i think the real crux of the matter is their *eagerness* to come after you. its pretty common for players to report on these forums that they really only start building navy after first contact ("for RP reasons"). if nprs werent so dependably passive about prosecuting a war, that behavior would be a non-starter.
conceivably the bugs' willingness to advance out of a system could be made a function of time and maybe distance from their system of origin. without getting super fiddly they could be dialed back as existential threats without ceasing to be extremely dangerous for quite a while.
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Okay, first time finding these aliens... Darn they board my ships... :o
Oh crap need to put marines on every warship, atlest from destroyer and up, a squad or two for small ships and company sized for capitals... :D
Ah new wave of refits in the making, making my ships slightly slower... ::)
Now we shall se what happens, need first to get some fixed defence around the nearest colony.
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Yep, always a fun time when they show up demanding cuddles. :)
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Yep, always a fun time when they show up demanding cuddles. :)
;D
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If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.
I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.
I haven't run into them at all and I consider THIS a bad luck. They seem like super fun and something challenging, unlike invaders who suffered a nerf and don't increase tech so they're not that dangerous, but they always bugged out for me and refused to spawn even with sm.
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If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.
I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.
I haven't run into them at all and I consider THIS a bad luck. They seem like super fun and something challenging, unlike invaders who suffered a nerf and don't increase tech so they're not that dangerous, but they always bugged out for me and refused to spawn even with sm.
I've never seen them either. I wish I would! I keep seeing people complaining about them, and hoping to run into them but so far nada.
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I am in the same boat. I get my Star Swarm kick from reading old Steve AARs.
I have wondered more than once if some quirk of the Swarm generation code causes them to only spawn on some machines...
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I don't think the problem depends on the machine, since I've had games where I couldn't spawn them in SM mode as well as games where they've spawned naturally.
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/message repeats
Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.
I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?
Tried missiles yet?
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/message repeats
Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.
I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?
Tried missiles yet?
Sure have. Early on, the missile velocity is pretty low, and swarm have a lot of energy weapons. I fired the entire complement of missiles on 6 destroyers and 2 cruisers at them and achieved zero hits. All were intercepted.
To my earlier post, early game, I have not found anything that is really viable in fighting them effectively. Massed railgun fire does damage to them, but you will find that exchanging broadsides with them will have your ships melting, literally! :)
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If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.
I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.
I haven't run into them at all and I consider THIS a bad luck. They seem like super fun and something challenging, unlike invaders who suffered a nerf and don't increase tech so they're not that dangerous, but they always bugged out for me and refused to spawn even with sm.
I explore a lot early on, and that is the usual trigger. That game I had pushed out about 70+ systems due to a lot of starless nexus. The more you explore, the higher the chance to have them spawn.
I've never seen them either. I wish I would! I keep seeing people complaining about them, and hoping to run into them but so far nada.
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/message repeats
Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.
I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?
Tried missiles yet?
Sure have. Early on, the missile velocity is pretty low, and swarm have a lot of energy weapons. I fired the entire complement of missiles on 6 destroyers and 2 cruisers at them and achieved zero hits. All were intercepted.
To my earlier post, early game, I have not found anything that is really viable in fighting them effectively. Massed railgun fire does damage to them, but you will find that exchanging broadsides with them will have your ships melting, literally! :)
Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
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Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
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Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).
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Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).
Wow, that's new. My bad!
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Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).
The "if they hit hull" is what I wanted to hear. So given how poor microwaves are at getting through shields (2 dmg per shot) you could do quite well for yourself with energy shields, thereby avoiding DoT as long as the shields are still up.
However the idea of using armored magazines as an internal bulkhead of sorts is an interesting one regardless.
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I'm not 100% on that "hit the hull" thing.
Also, they do use (small) lasers with high rate of fire. So shields can and do get stripped away.
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The reality is they are hard early game and in a low research game
And IMO this is good.
If you aren't at least ion level you probably don't stand a chance unless you use some gamey tactics.
So my suggestion is to turn them off until you think your ready or embrace the suck. Losing is fun.
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So my suggestion is to turn them off until you think your ready or embrace the suck. Losing is fun.
lol, "embrace the suck" Echo Tango Sierra! Or, spot the former infantry! :)
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I'm actually not. LOL. USAF. But because of my job I was regularly stationed with army and marines.
Plus it's one of my favorite sayings because it communicates a truth. Nothing worth doing is easy and if you want to achieve you have to embrace the hard parts that lead to the goal.
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Damn, they land on planets to.... :o
Oh that's good a reinforced infantry division, this should be fun! ;D
"Enemy in sight! Open fire!" Guns, lasers & cannon fire in the background...
"smeg, these are some tough bugs...!"
"Sir! we have reports of bugs attacking our reserve formations..."
"Sir, they have penetrated our defence perimeter... OH GOD, they are inside the command po...."
smeg! :-X
I lost some 5000 groundtroops, ground to space installations, tanks... they lost 42 "men, bugs or whatever called..." Bloody HELL!!! In the first days of fighting... :o
After a few days I am down to less than 60 tanks, 60 soldiers and a lot of support units with little or no ammo left...
Last communication from division command... "You are on your own now!"
Perhaps a 120-150 bugs killed, I lost many, many thousands of troops, need the navy....
Last count on enemy strength, around 10 000 of them...
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Only way to be sure is to take off and nuke them from orbit.... :)
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Only way to be sure is to take off and nuke them from orbit.... :)
Yea I know, but no ships in orbit... ;D Oh well had a few test Mechanoid companies, (Super heavies with a huge gun and large auto cannons), they love the attention and are killing bugs in their thousands, well being a test unit, they had to little of supply, but they still might get the job done...
Had a space battle over Gliese 430 and managed to bag his troop transports, lost a couple of BCs and a lot of destroyer escorts... They I had to "bug" out, when a major bug fleet appeared, I managed to evade it and my 5th fleet is now 2 jumps away, waiting for 3rd and 4th fleet to join the war... I thought I had a fast and advanced fleet, speed around 9200, and ECM/ECCM of 4, but very thin armor (5-12), so glad I introduced shielding, acids are bad after a battle is won/lost... :'( But fighting ships with 16000 km/s, thin armor from 10... ECM of 6... Lasers that hit with 212 in damage... This will be a costly war
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The first trick to dealing with any alien, especially the Star Swarm, is scouting.
Always have small, long endurance scouts that probe at least the main planets first. Always have a sensor satellite places on both sides of every jump point. If you do discover a boojum, do not lead it out. Never transit a ship that the enemy is tracking.
If you can find them without them finding you, you then scout to find out their weapon's mix, speed and range. If you discover an enemy that doesn't have missiles, consider going for short ranged 1 MSP missiles. Yes, you will be sandpapering the enemy, but if you only need 5 million km range or so you can fire to disable, and the small launchers can reload quickly too.
If you have the capacity to blow through the shields of the mother ship, do so, otherwise, just avoid it until you do.
The problem with the Swarm, in my opinion, is people think they are a huge menace and so they go in with their whole fleet, and there will therefore be ships that the Swarm can overtake and destroy. If you only let the swarm see ships that are faster than them, they are manageable. Yes, your swarm hunters will be overengined fuel hogs that can't carry enough missiles to defeat all of the parasites, but they can outrange them and withdraw and lather rinse repeat if necessary.
If you have good information on the enemy, and enough time to retool and build ordnance, you can often have a flawless victory even at low tech level. But to do that you need that information and time.
Having fast scouts is absolutely of critical importance, because they can also buy you significant time as the enemy tries to chase them down, sometimes with their whole fleet.
Once you are absolutely certain you have killed the parasite craft, including gotten some of your fast missile boats in range to fire missiles at the mommy, if that doesn't prompt a reserve launch, THEN bring in that mommy swatters. You don't need particularly fast or accurate missiles to hit that slow ship. You just want the most warhead you can fit into 1 MSP. And you either want a huge launch to kill it in one blow, or rapid fire to peel it apart before the shields regenerate.
I ended up with a lot of different missile categories, as my missile tech advanced while I expanded my ordnance factories. So to be efficient, I made sure that all the missiles of a particular volley would be of the same type. You can also attempt stunts like firing the older and slower missiles first, then the progressively newer and faster ones, so that they cluster on target a bit.
As you start cleansing infestations, you will get a better idea of how many missiles and launchers you need to kill how many ships, and that will determine your pace of operations.
Always scout. Don't bring anything in range of sensors that can't run away. Kill bugs!
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But they love you, with or without condiments.