Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Advanced Tactical Command Academy => Topic started by: Michael Sandy on October 23, 2018, 01:05:08 PM
-
So the prompt for this topic was a base I designed, primarily for colony morale, but intended to be useful as well.
AMM Base class Base 1 000 tons 9 Crew 156 BP TCS 20 TH 0 EM 0
Armour 5-8 Sensors 1/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 16
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 32
PDC AMM launcher PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher (16) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 5 (96 BP)
Bullet Catcher Missile Fire Control FC18-R1 (1) Range 18.8m km Resolution 1 (45 BP)
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections
An early magnetic plasma era design, with fire control technology salvaged from Precursors, so it is a bit more advanced.
Pretty cheap, I figured. Not the cheapest way to get PPV, but at least somewhat useful. Especially if you had a stockpile of semi-obsolete AMMs to use on the colony. I gave it a single magazine so it could always have a ready load, and to slightly reduce the micro of reloading from colony.
But here is the thing, it is most effective in dealing with large missile volleys. Which the AI tends to do a lot, even if they have extra fire controls they won't generally split fire. But players can do smart things like having some .1 HS MFCs so they have the option of splitting up their volleys to deal with heavy point defense. Or having nearly identical missiles with very slightly different speeds so their volleys are split as they fire. Say, a 5.9997 MSP missile, a 5.9998 MSP missile, etc...
So designing versus a player, you will often want a significantly higher ratio of fire controls than versus the AI.
Versus the computer, if your fleet has enough point defense, you don't really need armor or shields on your missile ships. You can count on the computer to fire missiles at a target until it is out of missiles, at which point they become safe to approach. Players, however, would reserve missiles for point blank attack, or if their opponent split their forces and provided an opportunity to destroy them in detail. Versus the computer, once you have determined the weapon mixes of the enemy ship types, you can often safely approach with a beam armed ship that is just slightly faster and slightly longer range and count on methodically tearing them apart.
But players can do things like suddenly have one ship withdraw, or one ship close, and figure out which ship their enemy is basing their range on, and thereby sneak into range. They can also sandbag in terms of their displayed speed, or simply build a whole bunch of nearly identical ships that are all distinct classes, thereby denying exact information to their opponent.
Players can also both make use of forward observers, and develop tactics for blinding their enemy. The scouting war can be far more involved for players than for the AI. Long ranged EM homing missiles, just as an example.
It is fairly easy to design for flawless victories facing the AI. Use decoy missiles versus their AI, railgun fighters versus conventional missile volleys, and AMM to weaken box launcher volleys, and short ranged missiles to kill enemy beam ships. Easy peasy. But players can conceal their max speed, hold missiles to the last second, choose NOT to use any AMM in order to reserve them for offense, and a variety of other tactics that make equal tech fights likely to involve casualties on both sides.
What other designs and tactics are particular effective vs the AI, but are either useless or unreliable versus players? Or just unbelievably TEDIOUS?
-
I would also point out that fleets designed for an Arena fight are also very different. Because normal fleets evolve, components are built with earlier technology, to deal with earlier foes. Arena fleets can be designed of a piece, without regards for shipyard costs or shipyard retooling.
-
Staged missiles, for one. They offer massive improvements in range over single-stage designs while still having a terminal stage fast enough to counteract point defence, and are thus pretty effective against NPRs, which tend to blob their ships in one region. But against players? They get wrecked - all it takes is a single escort ahead of the main group to shoot down the missile buses before they can launch their payloads.
-
Staged missiles, for one. They offer massive improvements in range over single-stage designs while still having a terminal stage fast enough to counteract point defence, and are thus pretty effective against NPRs, which tend to blob their ships in one region. But against players? They get wrecked - all it takes is a single escort ahead of the main group to shoot down the missile buses before they can launch their payloads.
I find fighter crafts to be much more useful than multi-stage missile, both against AI and in multi-human campaigns. In multi-human campaigns there is a good chance a multi-stage missile is intercepted before it separates. Stand-off ranges from fighters can generally be much further and safer, plus you get the carrier of the missile back to do the same thing over and over.
I also agree with the arena versus practical application in real terms. There are never going to be a super best most efficient design because designs will evolve through the situation and confinements they are formed in.
One rule cheat is to create five exactly the same missiles and fire them from the same FC. This will make each missile its own salvo... very effective against point-defenses.
There are so many things you can do to game the game that simply make no sense and you simply should not do it. If you played against a real human opponent you just need to agree to which degree these things are fair game. To be honest you know full well when you are using a loophole in the game.
Build all hangar stations and have maintenance free sensors, point defenses etc... then build civilian freighters to tow them into combat using tractor beams. Each hangar can then house anything like a modular ships. Sensors and weapons actually can be used inside a hangar or deployed when needed. This is all a byproduct of how the game rules system works and if you were playing in a competitive environment with no house rules that is what you would see.
This game are simply not designed for competitive play, it is designed for role-play.
-
I think that 2-stage missiles could be effective against a player, but that they would adapt to it far better than the AI ever could.
That also touches on another tactic human players can do that the AI can't. Humans can bait out missiles and then run out of sensor range, but the computer isn't really good at that. A player vs player missile duel, you also can't assume you will get to make use of your full missile range, because if you fire at maximum range, your opponent might turn away, reducing the effective range by 20% or so.
-
I think that 2-stage missiles could be effective against a player, but that they would adapt to it far better than the AI ever could.
That also touches on another tactic human players can do that the AI can't. Humans can bait out missiles and then run out of sensor range, but the computer isn't really good at that. A player vs player missile duel, you also can't assume you will get to make use of your full missile range, because if you fire at maximum range, your opponent might turn away, reducing the effective range by 20% or so.
A smart player will use a calculator and fire active searching and/or passive missiles and never reveal your position in the first place. You use passive sensors to fin the enemy and then fire missiles. This will work much better in C# with small sensors getting a huge boost.
But this is all hypothetical since any tactic can be thwarted if you know or suspect it is going to be used, but sensors and scouting is going to be the most determining factor in player versus player conflicts not the weapons you use.
-
I think players would still be vulnerable to a Pearl Harbor type attack involving 2-stage missiles. It depends on whether the separation distance exceeds the 50 HS Res 1 detection range. Something else player vs player designs have to take into account in a sudden transition from peace status to war status.
Players will discover some interesting problems with pvp passive missiles. Namely, what happens if the target fleet scatters, resulting in the loss of the noisiest ship, but that being about it.
-
I think players would still be vulnerable to a Pearl Harbor type attack involving 2-stage missiles. It depends on whether the separation distance exceeds the 50 HS Res 1 detection range. Something else player vs player designs have to take into account in a sudden transition from peace status to war status.
Players will discover some interesting problems with pvp passive missiles. Namely, what happens if the target fleet scatters, resulting in the loss of the noisiest ship, but that being about it.
Given how easy it is to monitor Jump Points, especially in VB6 Aurora it is very unlikely you will manage a Pearl Harbor type strike... and I still fail to see what makes multi-stage missiles better than just using either a cloaked ship or fighter to fire the missile beyond enemy sensor range. I also question why active sensors would be on at all if you don't expect an attack, unless it is a station or a planet. Fleets in space should never use active sensors unless they know they are spotted, which defeats the purpose of a Pearl Harbor type attack.
A human versus human game would feature ferocious scouting element and the one who detect the other first will have a huge advantage. First strike is key, no matter how you do it.
In VB6 Aurora it is a bit too easy to find stuff in C# Aurora this will change and it will make fleets split up into different task-forces way more necessary and so combat will become much more complex.
Investing in a 50HS sensor in C# Aurora will be a real gamble, in VB6 Aurora not so much. In C# Aurora it will be way more difficult to launch a multi-stage missile strike with lots of picket defenses around a fleet given how powerful smaller sensors will become. You are going to need to sweep the screen of the fleet before you do anything, more or less. A multi-staged missile need to be pretty big if you want good fuel economy and range, especially in C# Aurora this will make it pretty easy to spot by rather small scouts. Fighter platforms will probably have allot better fuel economy than missiles now, even if they will also have reduced range. The hugely increased fuel consumption of missiles will make separation ranges much shorter and if deployed sensibly sensor scouts can still see pretty far.
If you send in a fighter strike you can abort of you detect a threat or you might send an escort to deal with any anti-fighter threat. Missiles don't have that luxury, once fired you just have to hope for the best.
I'm not saying that multi-staged missiles is bad in all situations, but I don't think it is a very good all purpose solution. It simply is too predictable, it also might reveal the position of your fleet more easily. Which is why I like fighters/FAC over multi-staged missiles. If I ever need to reveal or use on board missiles on my main ships something has gone wrong or I fire from a position of superior strength.
-
I don't see it as multistage OR cloaked ships, as multistage missiles would make a good weapon choice for a cloaked ship. But multistage is definitely available a lot EARLIER. And as such, would influence early ship and fleet design.
A 2-stage missile that separates outside of the range of the largest possible Res 1 sensor available to the target is not very likely to be detected before separation. Which suggests that 2-stage missiles would have a somewhat limited tech window, as the detection range increases beyond the range a boosted engined submunition is likely to have.
As far as yes, it is easy to monitor Jump points, but a lot of the after action report fiction deals with multination starts. There is a lot of action within one system. And while you might be able to hide your fleet, hiding your shipyards and maintenance facilities is a lot harder. And they need to be protected full time, or else a conventional long ranged missile bombardment could wipe them out.
Yes, you could have extremely strong passive sensors capable of picking up even very small signatures in time to activate active sensors, but in VB6 there may be a rounding issue. Sufficiently slow and small missiles might have a signature below 1, that would round to 0, and be undetectable on thermals.
Of course, multination starts are so unstable that it is almost a Fermi Paradox variant.
-
A 2-stage missile that separates outside of the range of the largest possible Res 1 sensor available to the target is not very likely to be detected before separation. Which suggests that 2-stage missiles would have a somewhat limited tech window, as the detection range increases beyond the range a boosted engined submunition is likely to have.
It can still be shot down before stage separation. If the hostile task group can be seen, and you have more than one AMM warship, all you need to do is place them a few million kilometres apart and swap their positions every now and then.
-
A 2-stage missile that separates outside of the range of the largest possible Res 1 sensor available to the target is not very likely to be detected before separation. Which suggests that 2-stage missiles would have a somewhat limited tech window, as the detection range increases beyond the range a boosted engined submunition is likely to have.
It can still be shot down before stage separation. If the hostile task group can be seen, and you have more than one AMM warship, all you need to do is place them a few million kilometers apart and swap their positions every now and then.
Yes... it is far easier to over engineer AMM fire-controls and range on AMM is not that difficult either not to mention fighter interceptors are very good at shooting down slow multi-stage missiles as well.
A human opponent would have smaller scouts and recon vessels extending the R1 and passive cover around their fleet. No experienced human would just rely on the sensors of their core fleet. You will need to deal with the escort first. In C# Aurora this will even be more so... if you need to deal with the escort you might as well send fighters to fire the missiles anyway.
Multi-stage missiles tend to be really slow which give ample time to both detect and defeat them once detected. Time can be a huge factor if you need to actively paint the target until the missile hits as well.
As I said before... they can be useful in some situations. But if you rely on them for your main ships they will reveal your general location and that is not a good thing versus a human opponent and a human opponent will have many ways to extend their passive and active detection system around any significant fleet.
A fighter craft can move to a position as not to reveal the general position of your fleet and can slip past any passive sensors by moving to an intercept position ahead of time and then fire their missiles and just run away, if you use active/passive targeting that is.
In VB6 multi-staged missiles are more useful than they will be in C# Aurora, for the main reason fleets will need to break up more in C# and rely on more scouting crafts. Big sensors and fire-controls will have less range as well and favor small scouts and good positioning. Fighting will become more up close and personal with reduced missile ranges overall.
I could see multi-stage missiles as a means for extending the range of missiles on any platform as a viable option but they have problem being self guided the way the mechanic in the game works, so you will need to guide them with an active sensor which can be a potential problem unless you located all the enemy escorts and their core fleet. Not to mention extra cost of more powerful missile control systems, both research and build cost.
-
Honestly, I'm not certain carriers with fighters will in any way be superior to missile warships, at least in terms of combat efficiency. It's unlikely a fighter will have more than a third of its mass dedicated to launchers, and they frequently need to sacrifice range for the speed needed to outrun warships. And they get only one alpha-strike before they need to reload, which, given C# reloading rules will take a long time. Perhaps enough time for missile warships to locate and engage the large, slow carrier. I mean, all you really need to do is trace their vector as they run away form you. I don't really see carrier-fighter groups winning unless they have a 2 : 1 tonnage advantage or more. The flexibility they offer may make them worthwhile, though.
-
Honestly, I'm not certain carriers with fighters will in any way be superior to missile warships, at least in terms of combat efficiency. It's unlikely a fighter will have more than a third of its mass dedicated to launchers, and they frequently need to sacrifice range for the speed needed to outrun warships. And they get only one alpha-strike before they need to reload, which, given C# reloading rules will take a long time. Perhaps enough time for missile warships to locate and engage the large, slow carrier. I mean, all you really need to do is trace their vector as they run away form you. I don't really see carrier-fighter groups winning unless they have a 2 : 1 tonnage advantage or more. The flexibility they offer may make them worthwhile, though.
The whole point with fighters is to launch a large enough volley to knock out the enemy high value targets so they need to retreat, that is a Strategic victory which is what is important in war. When you use fighters the whole point is using them as to mask where the carrier is located. This is pretty much how real world carrier operations are meant to function. Approach vector from fighters say nothing on where the carriers are in any way.
The fighters will usually be able to carry more missiles in one volley than comparable ship tonnage, this is what matters in fighter combat, getting that heavy strike to the target and do it in such a way your own strike force remain hidden. They can then dock and if the enemy does not retreat they can reload and strike again. This is of course the optimal way an engagement should go but rarely will.
Fighters are also allot cheaper to research and develop than comparable ships to, not to mention maintain and replace when new technology comes around. Hangars is also very cheap and something that remain cheap throughout the entire game, this make carriers relatively easy to maintain and cheap to upgrade.
I also dislike the combat efficiency term, efficiency means nothing if you can't use it effectively... small ships/fighters are more dynamic. The main benefit of larger ships is their capacity to withstand damage and defend themselves. Fighters and FAC are more dynamic as an attack platform, the large ships are mostly for support at least until you have advanced cloaking systems or very early in the game when you don't have enough fighter technology.
I also don't think any force will win at a 1:1 scenario.... the whole point is to make sure an engagement is as unfair as you possibly can. This means sensors and scouting is they key to success for the most part so you can have the right force at the right place at the right time.
-
And that's where carriers/fighters shine. You can bring in a bunch of under 500 ton scout fighters with a carrier. Use passive scouts to get the enemy's location, then use waypoints to bring your strike force from an unexpected direction, use active scout to paint the target and launch the alpha strike. Return via same waypoint so the enemy survivors cannot just easily vector back to your carrier.
Only obstacle is fuel, especially now that refueling will take time, but it is very much possible, especially once you get the underway replenishment tech - just have a tanker fighter or two flying with the strike force and, at the way point, have them turn back. This will extend the range of your fighters.
Naturally the way to counter that is to have scouts of your own. This actually reminds me a lot of the Soviet vs American cat-and-mouse game around the Carrier Battle Groups during late Cold War, of Soviet long-range recon planes shadowing CBGs from a distance and American CAP fighters preparing to shoot them down if necessary.
-
The whole point with fighters is to launch a large enough volley to knock out the enemy high value targets so they need to retreat, that is a Strategic victory which is what is important in war. When you use fighters the whole point is using them as to mask where the carrier is located. This is pretty much how real world carrier operations are meant to function. Approach vector from fighters say nothing on where the carriers are in any way.
The fighters will usually be able to carry more missiles in one volley than comparable ship tonnage, this is what matters in fighter combat, getting that heavy strike to the target and do it in such a way your own strike force remain hidden. They can then dock and if the enemy does not retreat they can reload and strike again. This is of course the optimal way an engagement should go but rarely will.
Fighters are also allot cheaper to research and develop than comparable ships to, not to mention maintain and replace when new technology comes around. Hangars is also very cheap and something that remain cheap throughout the entire game, this make carriers relatively easy to maintain and cheap to upgrade.
I also dislike the combat efficiency term, efficiency means nothing if you can't use it effectively... small ships/fighters are more dynamic. The main benefit of larger ships is their capacity to withstand damage and defend themselves. Fighters and FAC are more dynamic as an attack platform, the large ships are mostly for support at least until you have advanced cloaking systems or very early in the game when you don't have enough fighter technology.
I disagree.
Let's assume a 10,000 ton missile warship can dedicate 4,000 tons to launchers, magazines, and fire controls. A 1:2:1 ratio between them seems reasonable, so that's 1,000 tons in launchers, 2,000 tons in magazines, and 1,000 tons to one 750 ton sensor and one 250 ton fire controls. Let's also assume that a 10,000 ton carrier, being slower, can dedicate 5,000 tons to hangars, magazines, crew berths, and spare fuel. If the overhead is 20%, then the carrier can support 4,000 tons of fighter. Fighters normally need to dedicate 40% of their tonnage to engines, and miscellaneous stuff is likely to consume another 20%, so they'll only be able to dedicate 40% of their mass to launchers and fire controls. Assuming a 3:1 ratio, that's a total of 1,200 tons of box launcher and 400 tons of fire control, across perhaps eight fighters. So the fighter-carrier can deliver an alpha-strike twice as large as the missile warship. Except the latter can sustain that, since it has perhaps four times the magazine capacity. In order to match magazine capacity, the fighter complement needs to halved, which brings their alpha-strikes more in line with each other. So a carrier effectively becomes slower missile warship with greater range but terrible reload rate.
But we haven't considered the sensor issue. Assuming resolution-optimised fire controls, the 250 ton MFC on the missile warship [root(10)*5=15.81x] will actually be able to engage the fighters at greater range than the fighters' 50 ton fire controls [root(200)*1=14.14x] can engage the warship. And notice how the warship comes equipped with its own sensor, while the fighters must either rely on an external sensor or have a quarter of the carrier's alpha-strike chucked to incorporate a sensor-fighter. Then there's the issue of ECM and ECCM, which larger ships have the tonnage to equip, unlike fighters.
There's also the fact that the faster missile ships will have greater strategic mobility, and can literally blitz through hostile territory faster than carriers can react. Any allied system, especially on a border with a hostile state, is likely to be a host to DST networks that will instantly see anything and everything trying to enter the system, not to mention that most players stick a sensor buoy on every jump point they run across. If you're invading hostile space, I see little reason to deal directly with a carrier fleet when it can be dealt with through siege tactics. The point of a war is to seize enemy worlds, not burn their fleets. The ideal way to deal with a carrier threat is to run for the hostile colony while fending off missile attacks with AMM spam, and then either drop ground forces or bombard the population into submission, gaining access to their DSTs and cutting off the carriers from resupply. Of course, this works for everything.
Perhaps I'm biased, but most of my doctrine revolves around being able to rapidly deploy wherever I need to, and this demands speed. Faster ships are better at concentrating forces and responding to threats, and faster ships demand bigger and more expensive engines, which get expensive to replace. Older ships are quite often far too slow in comparison to contemporary warships to be very useful, so it isn't worth it to keep them around.
Of course, there's no right or wrong way to play Aurora ....
-
The problem with what you just described is that efficiency is completely worthless in and of itself... it is all about the logistics, research and economy supporting the fleet and how it comes to be in an organic way.
The carrier and fighters need way less research and the carrier are going to be way cheaper and thus faster to build as well, easier to upgrade and need much less upgrading at all. You will have these ships over a vast period of time and continuously upgrade them. I also fail to see why a carrier would be slower than a missile ship... I mean this is all down to operational doctrines. Slower engines also mean better fuel economy and cheaper engines thus cheaper ships and less research to design them.
You also have to factor in that it is way easier to redesign your fighter/FAC fleet based on intelligence of the enemy than it is to upgrade sensors, fire controls and weapons on large ships. Both from an engineering and research perspective... this is really an important strategic consideration.
You then have the scouting war, who will have the most efficient scouting force. If the missile ships lack in this area they will have a hard time even locating the carrier force... everything is not always about who have the most missiles to space ratio, I would say that is a minor thing as a whole.
In my experience it is all about the large salvo to overwhelm enemy point defenses. Regular missile launchers simply don't cut it against a combined AMM and PD protected battle-group of any relevant size. Sustaining en engagement over a long time is just wasting money and resources... if the initial attack is too weak you brought too little fire power and it is time to think about a tactical withdrawal to rethink your strategies.
Hands down the strength of size of a ship is defense not attack... small platforms are hands down the best attacking platform per tonnage no matter what weapon you stick on them. They obviously are not great for beam fire combat because that endangers them being so frail.
This is the problem I see with just looking at the numbers and not the total chain from miners taking minerals out of the ground to firing the missiles at the enemy and how everything work together as one piece. You would never build a good offensive fleet to begin with if you did not expect it to be able to perform, you would mainly have to stick to defensive tactics otherwise. You need to use strategy and economy to defeat the opponent not to mention intelligence.
I probably also look more closely at what C# Aurora will bring where fuel economy, sensors and missile ranges are way different from VB6 Aurora... I can't even play VB6 Aurora anymore because of all the good changes coming to C# Aurora, I play other games in the mean time.
-
I also wonder what you mean about blitzing through enemy space... how would that work against a human opponent if you leave your supply and logistical support ships behind who are not going to be even close to as fast as your warships, unless you over engineer them too?!?
Is it not reckless to blitz though unknown territory in a game such as Aurora... one misstep can easily get your entire fleet wiped out rather cheaply from some hidden base somewhere.
If you don't bring any troops and toops ships you will have to basically bypass defended planets and military bases, eventually you run out of gas and then what. I do understand that playing against the AI this work really well... but against a human opponent that really tries to build up a good economy and don't waste resources on over engineered military ships and who have a good intelligence network to monitor your moves. Bum-rushing into unknown territory is a HUGE risk.
In my world a large carrier is an offensive weapon only used if and when I need to conduct offensive operations. If there was an aggressive neighbor I would have to build up a military presence to defend that area with mainly defensive assets and some mobile fast moving reaction forces. The type of ships would entirely depend on the situation and my intelligence of the opponent.
We simply can't compare two ships devoid of everything around them to support them and what you do with them, the situation and WHY you have them. This is why I hate videos on Youtube that rank and compare different tanks and who is the best... the type of gun and armor is completely irrelevant to the overall picture... no one intentionally fight a fair fight, that is stupid.
-
One more thing I though off regarding FC versus active scanning... since I rather look at C# Aurora than VB6 Aurora.
In C# Aurora the sensor model is way different and if FC still have three times the range then you will NEVER EVER be able to counter them with one single active sensor unless you have a serious tech advantage and can afford the massive amount or RP to invest in size 50 sensors suites.
In C# if a Res 5 size 50 sensor give you a coverage of roughly 100m km you could match that with a size 1 FC for a resolution of 100 which have a range of roughly 120m km, you could probably lower the size of that FC to almost 0.6 or something and still be close. Given the huge discrepancy in logistical cost of these things its hard to not understand how wasteful such a huge specific sensor would be to your economy. In VB6 Aurora a size 50 res 5 at the same tech level would reach out to 260m km and you wold need a size 4 FC to cover that distance and more, the problem would be more one of missile range in that case.
I'm not saying that such a sensor can become useful at some stage, but you probably need a very high tech level to begin with and probably also be more advanced than your adversary.
In C# you will be relying allot more on scouts and smaller task-forces to protect your scouting elements. No scouts means you become almost blind.
-
In C# Aurora the sensor model is way different and if FC still have three times the range...
Missile fire controls now have double the range of an equivalent active sensor.
-
Thanks... that seem a bit more sensible to be honest... a 0.6 res 100 FC should perhaps not be the same range as a size 50 res 5. There still is a considerable difference in range for a small FC versus scanning equipment.
-
I've played a long campaign with two players races, one using large (size 16) multi stage missiles and one using fighters. Both have clear pros and cons.
For the fighter users I've lost complete squadrons of earlier stage fighters to precursors as the ECM has been such they had had to get into AMM range (35m ish) to launch and have been slaughtered as a result. Also whilst later versions have been strong against other opponents the time and effort to replace fighters with new models is a huge investment not just in build time but also in training.
For the big missile launcher race they have had great success with slow firing heavy saturation missile waves with high numbers of small (size 2) secondary warheads. They have lost a reasonable number of missiles to targets changing course and moving out of range and also to having the main missile shot down before its reached separation range. However with new tech its been very easy to upgrade those missiles which have then been equally easy to deploy to older ships making them remain very effective for longer periods. The other point to note is its one thing to detect and fire on the larger missiles but its quite another to get your AMMs to then reach and destroy the large missiles before separation - I've regularly seen hostiles waste large numbers of AMMs shooting down the larger missiles that have already deployed whilst the smaller, still undetected sub munitions, have made it further inside their firing range.
All in all then I see pros and cons on both and no clear winner which to me means there is good enjoyable balance in the two strategies.
-
I'll have to write that down, sounds like a great way to differentiate player races.
-
I've played a long campaign with two players races, one using large (size 16) multi stage missiles and one using fighters. Both have clear pros and cons.
For the fighter users I've lost complete squadrons of earlier stage fighters to precursors as the ECM has been such they had had to get into AMM range (35m ish) to launch and have been slaughtered as a result. Also whilst later versions have been strong against other opponents the time and effort to replace fighters with new models is a huge investment not just in build time but also in training.
For the big missile launcher race they have had great success with slow firing heavy saturation missile waves with high numbers of small (size 2) secondary warheads. They have lost a reasonable number of missiles to targets changing course and moving out of range and also to having the main missile shot down before its reached separation range. However with new tech its been very easy to upgrade those missiles which have then been equally easy to deploy to older ships making them remain very effective for longer periods. The other point to note is its one thing to detect and fire on the larger missiles but its quite another to get your AMMs to then reach and destroy the large missiles before separation - I've regularly seen hostiles waste large numbers of AMMs shooting down the larger missiles that have already deployed whilst the smaller, still undetected sub munitions, have made it further inside their firing range.
All in all then I see pros and cons on both and no clear winner which to me means there is good enjoyable balance in the two strategies.
I have also used both in several multi nation campaigns and I can also say they have their merits for different reasons, you can also use both sometimes. Nothing stopping you from putting multi-stage missiles on fighters either.
What has happened in those campaigns was that nations that had slightly less research strength used multi-staged missiles since good fighters required a bit more initial research to get going. It was also quite frequently needed to deploy multi-stage missiles on both fighters and especially FAC to outrange the sometimes ridiculous long range small res sensors.
But in most of those campaigns the majority of the offensive missiles was situated on smaller ships or fighters while the larger ships provided support and protection of the fleets and tried to stay out of fire range if possible. Poor countries often relied on long range FAC to fight their wars because large shipyards are prime real estate in a mutli nation environment where ships now at medium quality is ten times better than a high quality ship in the future.
I have also found that I sometimes wanted very small FAC, such as 550-650 ton because sometimes I want the possibility of upgrade and retain the crew of those attack crafts. Also not giving the other side one optimal size to build sensors for can be quite important. So having smaller crafts ranging from 150-1000 ton are quite useful.
The benefit of "fighters" in 600 ton range is how fast they can be constructed and upgraded when you have premade components done by your industry.
-
If you are controlling both sides of a battle, you will get to see the missiles that got outranged go off into nowhere. But if you are only playing one side, you generally won't. So even if bouncing in and out of range is a successful strategy, it is kind of hard to tell sometimes. If you are playing the game in part to create after action reports, even if they are only in your head, it is a bit awkward.
It may be a reason a lot of the most enjoyable after action reports involve beam engagements. Because the player can actually see or infer most of the action that is going on.
Writing the story of a scouting battle sounds challenging. It is a type of battle that both sides could think that they won, or that both sides thought that they lost.
Setting up a scouting/screening formation is a heck of a lot more time consuming and challenging than the classic Empire State Building formation, stick everything in a single dot formation.
I would be reluctant to use missiles larger than size 6 against an opponent that used a lot of AMMs. Giving them more range and potential engagement time against them doesn't seem worth the extra capacity of the missiles and submunitions.
I am curious if anybody uses minimum sized gauss fighters as a long ranged anti-civilian shipping tool in pvp games. They have a ridiculously low dps, but it is sustainable, so any unarmed ship and unescorted ship they can find, they can kill. And escorting isn't cheap in terms of fuel. It is a tactic that is potentially stronger against players than against the AI, a rarity, because players may depend on ununarmed jump tenders they leave behind at a jump point. It is a cheap tactic that either yields a huge payout, or at least forces your opponent to significantly divide their forces and attention.
My colony defense scheme in general involves basing a scout element at each colony, as well as some cheap, fast, beam fighters for hunting down enemy survey ships and scouts. The idea being that it is impossible to be strong everywhere, but having the ability to kill unarmed ships reliably is a way of holding and claiming territory. Psychologically, if they meet another race that fights them enough to get a feel for their doctrine, encountering a scout force that can spot them that MIGHT be providing targeting information to a hidden missile fleet might allow the defending scouts to bluff the enemy away from the colony. Or at least, that is the logic sold to nervous colonial politicians. ;)
-
I have had raiding ships that generally had one or a few beam fighters for the purpose of engaging defenseless ships and then quickly slip away to dock with the raider. Quite useful and annoying tactic. Mainly because many factions often share the same systems and such which make low intensity warfare allot more common. In most of my role-playing the identity of ships are not always known either.
I'm used to use allot of scouting forces in VB6 Aurora since I put restriction on sensor sizes which made scouting a bit more interesting. You can easily use the escort functionality of the game to create patrol pattern around your fleets. Some more tools for patrol zones and such would be nice in C# Aurora though, perhaps Steve should steal some ideas from Command Air & Naval Operations... nudge nudge... ;)
-
I would contest that claim.
Most doctrines generally either involve independent warships and their logistics train or parasites and their carriers. Your argument is that the fighter-carrier doctrine is cheaper in terms of logistical, research, and construction costs. That isn't exactly true. In terms of research, an empire dependant on fighters is at the very least is required to pursue the Fighter Production Rate tech line, as well as both the Small Craft ECM and ECCM tech lines, none of which are cheap, and the costs of which will easily offset the expense of larger engines, sensors, and fire controls. There's also the issue of shipyards being better at construction than fighter factors - assuming 400 BP per shipyard per year and 10 BP per fighter factory per year, a 10,000 ton military yard with four slipways consumes five million population, costs 11,760 BP and builds at 2,400 BP per year, while a hundred fighter factories consume five million population, cost 12,000 BP and build at 1,000 BP per year. While the shipyards will take a while to expand to capacity and add slipways, once it's done, it's just retooling that's a concern. And with careful planning, you can build multiple hulls in the same shipyard, so multiple shipyards aren't always a requirement. Then there's also the fact that the carriers themselves will require large yards with multiple slipways, apart from any FAC designs. Fighters aren't actually significantly cheaper than full-blown warships.
Doctrine-wise, I'm not exactly a proponent of blob tactics either, so let me get this straight : I am not arguing that bunching up an entire fleet in one location is a good idea by any means, and I am not attempting to dismiss the efficacy of scouting and reconnaissance.
That being said, some of your claims aren't backed up by Steve's figures. To standardise things, I'll be comparing the performance of 250 ton missile fighter engaging a 5,000 ton escort using the figures in the C# Aurora Changes List subforum.
Let's start with engagement range : a 250 ton fighter can maybe host a 50 ton fire control, so it can target the escort at a range of 56m km. Taking into account the 20% disparity between ECM levels (small-craft ECM vs compact ECM), a 250 ton fire control is needed to match range, which the escort can definitely afford. The escort can also comfortably mount a 500 ton fire control that will blow the fighter out from well beyond range. I'm confused as to where there's been a mention of a 50 ton fire control having range of 120m km? This is also ignoring passive sensors, which, in C# Aurora, will be quite good at detecting powerful engines at close range.
Let's move on to the fuel issue. In C# Aurora, fighters will have considerably reduced range, while larger ships will see increased range. A 250 ton fighter can take a 100 ton drive, which, given C# Aurora's rules, will have a fuel consumption modifier of x2.23. The 5,000 ton escort, mounting a 2,000 ton drive, will have a modifier of x0.50. In my fleet, that'll be a 1,500 ton drive with power modifier of x2.0 and a fuel modifier of x1.41, or a 100 ton drive with a power modifier of x3.0 and a fuel modifier of x34.86. The fighter is only twice as fast, but has maybe one twentieth the range. With a bit of insanity and 50% engine ratios, you can actually get an escort up to fighter speeds with only a x1.55 fuel modifier. I don't see how that can be realistically countered, especially since speed is everything in missile combat. You can also scout effectively with these larger ships.
There's also the issue of magazine depth. I'm not arguing that a fighter swarm will not be able to throw a larger alpha-strike than a warship. I'm arguing that the extra strike volume is useless because it's literally impossible to kill or even cripple more than one or two warships in a single salvo out of a fleet of a dozen, unless you have a ridiculous 10:1 tonnage advantage or something like that. Alpha strikes stop mattering in large-scale ship-to-ship brawls. In a fight between two equal-speed fleets, one with x0.3 reduced size launchers will kill more of the fleet with x0.75 reduced size launchers in the opening salvo, but there's a good chance it'll get annihilated before it can fire again.
All I'm trying to assert is that a lot of what can be done by a fighter-carrier combo can quite often be done with equal effectiveness by a warship-auxiliary combo.
-
In C# Aurora FC have twice the range of an Active scanning device... so a Size 1 resolution 100 FC have a range of roughly 80mkm that takes a size 30 resolution 5 comparable active sensor or size 16 res 5 FC for the same range. Certainly not beyond the range of possibility.
One problem though is that small crafts can easily range from say 200 to 1000ton and can deliver offensive missiles from many different ranges. It will be MUCH harder to match fighter FC in C# Aurora.
You also need to factor in that fighters are a bit more efficient in their offensive capacity than a big ship in general and you are not restricted to just one fighter size type. You can have multiple different types of fighters making it very hard for the opponent to match their size perfectly with both active and FC. I don't think you would even try doing that in general given how efficient small active sensors now are in comparison to larger ones.
You also forget that both passive and actively guided missiles will be way more viable in C# Aurora because of how efficient small sensors now are. That means missiles can be launched beyond FC range in many instances, so that is not always a heavy requirement.
You also need to look at the industrial cost of the fighters themselves, they don't have to be that expensive. You don't have to over engineer their engines. Most strike fighters/FAC only need about twice the speed of a normal ship. For the most part a minority of my fighters are faster than that such as interceptors and the like. This keep their cost reasonably cheap to produce. Just for comparison a 400t fighter I created had a cost of roughly 100BP and a 10.000 sort of standard Missile Ship did cost around 1700BP with the same tech levels. Each fighter had 4 Size 6 box launchers and the ship had 8 size 6 full size launchers. So the fighter packs roughly 1 launcher per 100 ton, that means a carrier with say 4000t hangar can launch a strike with a 40 size salvo, not too shabby.
Carriers don't need to be that large either, not larger than most other capital warships.
I would never build capital ships with hugely overpowered engines, but that is up to operational doctrines of course. Large engines like that are extremely expensive on your fuel infrastructure to support and take too much research to build in my opinion to be worth it. You also need huge amount of space for fuel on the ship itself if you want any sort of range. Fighters don't need much range often less than a billion km.
I agree that the initial research for fighter centric combat is more expensive but the dynamic and versatility of fighters is certainly worth it. It will force the opponent to spend lots of research to try and counter it and often that is fighters of their own eventually.
-
I thought a 50 ton fire control acted like a 100 ton sensor? :P
Let's reconsider this whole mess from a wider perspective. The range at which a fleet can hide is entirely dependent on the size of its largest constituent ship. Now that sensors need to be four times the size of a fire control for the same range, fighter sensors will be size limited. Assuming a 40% payload ratio, a 250 ton fighter can host a 100 ton sensor with range of 56m km, a 500 ton fighter can host a 200 ton sensor with a range of 80m km, and a 1,000 ton FAC can host a 400 ton sensor with a range of 113m km. Another important thing to consider is the difference in ECM level - the fighters cannot afford to match shipboard ECM and will likely suffer a 20% degradation in range, allowing shipboard sensors to remain viable. In order to match range, you'll need three 800 ton sensors of variable resolution - which would probably fit on a 5,000 ton recon frigate. They're not that expensive either - the three of these together will only cost as much as the equivalent small craft ECM tech.
There's also the fact that 500-1,000 ton crafts are FACs, and not fighters - they can't be built in fighter factories and thus need shipyards, which will require constant retooling, limiting flexibility. Retooling gets expensive and time-consuming with the smaller yards, as they build slower and also normally have dozens of slipways. So I can be fairly certain that your fleet's FAC complement will not change without significant warning.
I also don't believe that missiles can be launched from beyond sensor range. You need a lock to fire, but they're free to go after that if they get within their own sensor range.
Also, twice the speed of a normal ship against me and my overbuilt contraptions is 40% engines at a 3.0x boost. That'll get expensive fast. It might work against a slower opponent, though.
EDIT : Curiously, the C# rules have actually made mid-sized low resolution active sensors more effective than their VB6 counterparts. The size at which a C# sensor matches range with a VB6 sensor is 100 tons for R200, 150 tons for R100, 250 tons for R20, 400 tons for R5, and 750 tons for R1. It appears that small warships (2,000-5,000 tons) will now be very effective at scouting.
-
I thought a 50 ton fire control acted like a 100 ton sensor? :P
Let's reconsider this whole mess from a wider perspective. The range at which a fleet can hide is entirely dependent on the size of its largest constituent ship. Now that sensors need to be four times the size of a fire control for the same range, fighter sensors will be size limited. Assuming a 40% payload ratio, a 250 ton fighter can host a 100 ton sensor with range of 56m km, a 500 ton fighter can host a 200 ton sensor with a range of 80m km, and a 1,000 ton FAC can host a 400 ton sensor with a range of 113m km. Another important thing to consider is the difference in ECM level - the fighters cannot afford to match shipboard ECM and will likely suffer a 20% degradation in range, allowing shipboard sensors to remain viable. In order to match range, you'll need three 800 ton sensors of variable resolution - which would probably fit on a 5,000 ton recon frigate. They're not that expensive either - the three of these together will only cost as much as the equivalent small craft ECM tech.
There's also the fact that 500-1,000 ton crafts are FACs, and not fighters - they can't be built in fighter factories and thus need shipyards, which will require constant retooling, limiting flexibility. Retooling gets expensive and time-consuming with the smaller yards, as they build slower and also normally have dozens of slipways. So I can be fairly certain that your fleet's FAC complement will not change without significant warning.
I also don't believe that missiles can be launched from beyond sensor range. You need a lock to fire, but they're free to go after that if they get within their own sensor range.
Also, twice the speed of a normal ship against me and my overbuilt contraptions is 40% engines at a 3.0x boost. That'll get expensive fast. It might work against a slower opponent, though.
EDIT : Curiously, the C# rules have actually made mid-sized low resolution active sensors more effective than their VB6 counterparts. The size at which a C# sensor matches range with a VB6 sensor is 100 tons for R200, 150 tons for R100, 250 tons for R20, 400 tons for R5, and 750 tons for R1. It appears that small warships (2,000-5,000 tons) will now be very effective at scouting.
Those ship engines will eat your economy (both resource and research) dry in comparison with an economy that use more moderately expensive engines overall. Fuel economy is really important for your overall logistical and industrial efficiency. Some over engineered fighter engines with very limited range and fuel cost is nothing in comparison in cost throughout an entire campaign... ;)
Not to mention being easily detected by thermal sensor if you actually use that speed unless you don't make them even more expensive with thermal reduction as well. How much fuel do you put in those things?!?
Also consider you will not be able to cheat fleet training anymore so you will burn ALLOT of fuel and maintenance while doing so. Can it work, perhaps... but for me... I'm too much of an economist for doing that. I rather spend more research into better long term engine technology.
Any way.... remember that passive sensors is what will detect most things. Most passive will detect sensors before they themselves are detected. If you go active sensors you are likely to be detected before you see anything and likely to attract attention and an attack.
It is possible to fire weapons at a point in space after which the weapon can use either active and/or passive to find a target. Since those very small sensors now are much more powerful using such weapons are much more likely and easy to use. You can fire them long before you are detected and just turn around. You don't need an active lock to do any of that.
The point is, detecting the enemy is key... in C# Aurora that means scouting with smaller assets and then protecting them will be important. This is why the fighter/FAC platform will become even more important overall. It will not invalidate larger ships as support for those smaller platform though, they will work good as a combined arms force.
Yes... smaller ships is now more effective at the scouting role which is nice.
Just also remember that everything ties together, industry, research and military doctrine. Anything very expensive and over engineered must be in limited numbers or you will put brakes on both industry and research which in turn means your quality drops over time against what it should have been. Just take sensors as an example. The larger and more types you research means you put better general sensor tech on hold. At lower tech level a very big active sensors can almost represent en entire tech step advancement as an example. Now when range is not linear you are likely better of with relatively small sensors in general.
-
Those ship engines will eat your economy (both resource and research) dry in comparison with an economy that use more moderately expensive engines overall. Fuel economy is really important for your overall logistical and industrial efficiency. Some over engineered fighter engines with very limited range and fuel cost is nothing in comparison in cost throughout an entire campaign... ;)
Not to mention being easily detected by thermal sensor if you actually use that speed unless you don't make them even more expensive with thermal reduction as well. How much fuel do you put in those things?!?
Also consider you will not be able to cheat fleet training anymore so you will burn ALLOT of fuel and maintenance while doing so. Can it work, perhaps... but for me... I'm too much of an economist for doing that. I rather spend more research into better long term engine technology.
Just also remember that everything ties together, industry, research and military doctrine. Anything very expensive and over engineered must be in limited numbers or you will put brakes on both industry and research which in turn means your quality drops over time against what it should have been. Just take sensors as an example. The larger and more types you research means you put better general sensor tech on hold. At lower tech level a very big active sensors can almost represent en entire tech step advancement as an example. Now when range is not linear you are likely better of with relatively small sensors in general.
I prefer to start building a serious fleet only around mid-game, when I start expanding, so I tend to aim for around 10,000 km/s speed and 40 billion km range for the slowest ships at Magnetic Confinement Era. I don't generally have issues with fuel at that point - sorium harvesters are really good. Running the entire fleet of a hundred ships at full throttle nonstop for a year will cost me around a million tons of fuel, but at that point, my production is normally in the low hundreds of thousands of tons per year, with a multi-million ton strategic reserve, and a logistical train of tens of tankers and tugboats. I also fail to see why I'd need my ships to cover 400 billion kilometres per year?
And regarding research costs, do note that what you said only holds true for the largest 2,500 ton sensors, which I've never seriously considered. I'm talking about sensors a third of the size; the additional research cost will be offset by the fact that I don't need to research Small Craft ECM and ECCM, and Fighter Production Rate, all of which are full techs and thus ridiculously expensive. Three 800 ton sensors and their fire controls plus two over-engineered, over-boosted engines will still not cost significantly more than those three. Here, let me prove it : at around Ion Era [~10,000 RP], the three 800 ton sensors cost 3,360 RP each, their equivalent fire controls cost 840 RP each, a 2,500 ton 1.6x drive costs 4,800 RP, and a 1,500 ton 2.0x drive costs 3,600 RP, for a total of 21,000 RP. In contrast, you'll be spending 2,940 RP on a 100 ton, a 200 ton, and a 300 ton sensor, another 735 RP on their fire controls, 4,000 RP on small craft ECM and ECCM, and 10,000 RP on fighter production rate 16 BP, for a total of 17,675 RP. The difference in research costs is 3,325 RP - pretty much negligible when the next tech level starts at 20,000 RP.
Any way.... remember that passive sensors is what will detect most things. Most passive will detect sensors before they themselves are detected. If you go active sensors you are likely to be detected before you see anything and likely to attract attention and an attack.
It is possible to fire weapons at a point in space after which the weapon can use either active and/or passive to find a target. Since those very small sensors now are much more powerful using such weapons are much more likely and easy to use. You can fire them long before you are detected and just turn around. You don't need an active lock to do any of that.
The point is, detecting the enemy is key... in C# Aurora that means scouting with smaller assets and then protecting them will be important. This is why the fighter/FAC platform will become even more important overall. It will not invalidate larger ships as support for those smaller platform though, they will work good as a combined arms force.
Yes... smaller ships is now more effective at the scouting role which is nice.
Actually, as Steve himself has stated, passive sensors will be better at detecting cooler, nearby objects than hotter, more distant objects. A 500 ton fighter will, at minimum, have one-twentieth the signature of a 10,000 ton cruiser, so thermal sensors will see the ship x4.47 farther out. However, passive sensors have vastly inferior range compared to active sensors, so this is a non-issue. Unless, of course, you're worried about DSTs, but those'll see you half a system out anyway, so why bother?
And that tactic of firing missiles at a waypoint will not work unless the hostile fleet is somehow expected to remain perfectly still and the hostile commander is expected to have absolutely no concept of the military tactic of drunk-walking.
-
Sure... but this thread is about human versus human tactics not against the AI. When you play in a multi-human campaign you need to think about serious fleets from day one and fleets, logistics, industry and research need to progress dynamically. You can't really waste anything and it is far better with a crappy ship now than a good one in five to ten years down the line. In these scenarios you will never really be able to have a perfectly homogeneously fleet with the same tech level etc... it is almost impossible.
When you seriously over engineer the engines it will be a strain on your fuel, research and mining economy and no matter what it will spill over into the general economy over time quite allot. In your case you might be able to have twice or three times as many ships if you had the need to have fleets from the start of the campaign if you were a bit more considerate of the total cost of the military equipment and the need you have for them. Do you need to be offensive or generally mainly a defensive military. Also, in a multi-nation (human) campaign you develop things based o what you know about the opponent so are heavily influenced by that, things are not developed in isolation and just by some logical standard.
You are quite likely to run much smaller sensors and spread them out now, this was not really needed before. The same thing with passive sensors... you spread them out with smaller sensors and get a much better coverage. A small sensor scout with some basic thermal and em sensors will be cheap and can be deployed en mass to cover your needs quite well. Small engines are so cheap to develop that using reduced thermal on them is also pretty cheap. Usable on both small ships and fighter/FAC class ships.
You also need to protect all these scouts as well or you effectively become blind when they are engaged and destroyed, this is what I find so interesting in the new dynamic of C# and how I tried to role-play before by limiting the size of sensors in my campaigns.
Given that the range of active and passive sensors will be so much more effective you will likely be able to use them quite well now, at least when the enemy don't know they are targeted or even detected. Look at the formula and you will se that even an active sensors can no scan many million km at 0.25-0.50 MSP size. You can probably get the range up to 5-20m km or so depending on the resolution and tech levels which is quite impressive. Passive are equally useful now at rather low sizes too. A missile with both thermal and active sensors might be difficult to dodge. If you use the engines the thermal passive detects you if you don't run away you get into the envelope of the active sensors. It will be interesting to see how it work in practice.
The amount of research I need to dump into fighter factory production are not that significant since it is mainly a continuous process and you would only spend research there if you feel it is really needed. Keeping a fleet 100% up to standard is not realistic in a multi-faction campaign anyway. To be honest the rate at which you produce stuff is not all that matters it is the cost of that production that matters the most. Advanced construction rate is only important when you need to produce something fast in terms of ships, missiles and fighters that is
The important thing is construction factories, fuel and mines and the logistic to support that. Better construction rate of both ships and fighters are in my opinion a good to have technology only useful if you can't produce things that you need fast enough. This is the same for both ships and fighters... you also need much less fighters than you need ships since they are very specialized to a relatively low cost.
But it is a somewhat expensive endeavor to begin with, but worth it due to the versatility of the platform and even more so in C# Aurora I believe.
-
In a human versus human campaign, running out of population to man your industry is a significantly greater issue than running out of materials. At least, that's what I've found - I've always hit the population crunch first, provided corundium and duranium are locally abundant for me to get exponential growth going. Which is why I tend to focus on having an industry that can support more firepower per million people than one that can do so more cheaply. If you choose not to research production-boosting techs then that's your own choice, but shipyards will end up outproducing your factories by a factor of three or more. That kind of tonnage advantage can't be beat. I don't particularly care about gallicite costs as only engines use that resource - from my perspective, it's free materials that I can't use for anything else anyway. If components are pre-built, especially engines, you'll find that the construction times for ships are sliced by a factor of two or greater. And as for wealth, that's what the economy-improvement techs are for.
I don't require a perfectly homogeneous fleet - I'll build new ships as tech advances, re-purpose the older ones into supporting fleets or colony defences, and retire the oldest ships. I've found that about fifteen million population in military yards is enough to replace an entire fleet in under a decade. And I do build ships to doctrine, it's just that I have little in the way of shooting wars going on till I leave Sol, so there's just no need. It'll obviously be different in a human versus human campaign, especially in a single system start. Another factor to consider is that yards can be transported by tug, and are actually fairly small - a 10,000 ton yard with four slipways shows up as a 80,000 ton contact. Compare that to the mass of fighter factories that'll be manned by five million people - about 2.5 million tons. Yards are far easier to shift around, so shipbuilding is, to an extent, protect-able. And for an Earth start, with sensors on hand, anything manufactured on the planet will get instantly detected and logged, so hiding a ship's existence is impossible and masking it's broad signatures gets difficult.
Also, passive sensor missiles locking at ~20 million km will be within the range of anti-fighter missiles. The platform is definitely getting shot at. There's also the issue that with sensors, your missiles get worse per - 0.5 MSP of sensor could be 0.5 MSP of warhead, or armour, both of which will assist in penetration against well-defended targets while sensors do nothing.
I also fail to see why a fleet with superior speed has a necessity to hide. Once the faster warships are underway, fighters will get two, maybe three strikes before the slower carriers fall behind and lose range. An interesting tactic with this would be rushing a fleet past an enemy force and blockading the jump point on the far side of the system, cutting off access. Any attempt at throwing missiles will be defeated by simply jumping to the next system then jumping back, making the missiles lose lock and self-destruct.
-
Sure... population can become a problem but if you have ship production that surpass your mining and factory output you already have a high discrepancy in your production engine... more or less... that was my point. The important thing is to settle good places to increase your population growth in that case. In most of the campaign I played with lately I had a pretty big neutral population to feed my colonies with so population probably was a much less of an issue in my last couple of campaigns.
The important thing is that the industry you do have can produce 24/7 and never need to be idle. That is why I don't put research into production efficiency of ships/fighters as a super high priority over the civilian industry and general research progression which in turn increase those more military focused part of the economy as the civilian economy increase. This is very important in a multi-faction environment to pay close attention to. Not fall too much behind in military presence while making sure your civilian economy expand faster than the opponents. It is after all the civilian economy that support the military when all things is counted.
The most important thing is to make sure your science and general colonization effort is going so you can afford that fleet in the first place and that usually mean less military or cheaper military in general and then increase it as need rises and your technology level rises. When you need to figure all of these things out at the same time it is way more difficult to max out population and you need to be more focused on balancing all the different things in your economy.
You will need to invest a great deal on military all the time since your opponent does as well, you need to protect your colonies and patrol your trade routes and give a great show of strength so no one dare to attack you in the first place.
I don't think speed is all that important as are the strategic goal of what you want to achieve. If the enemy survive intact after the first strike I don't think it is wise to stand for a second strike. And two or three strike should be all that is needed to force an opponent to run away. The strategic victory is what counts in my book, not destroying the opponent. If my strategic goal is to take and hold a particular planet or system and I destroy a couple of ships from the opponent who then withdraw that is enough.
There is a reason why you never use all your eggs in one basket, you need to have some place to retreat to which are powerful enough the enemy can't follow you.
In a multi-faction campaign you will constantly be forced to do things which are NOT optimal all the time... you will need to have many different ships and you will not have time to upgrade all older ships and will have a fleet consisting of a plethora of quality ships. You can't wait for five years for a shipyard to expand to the optimal tonnage or upgrade your ships to the latest class.... they are needed in the field for many different reasons etc... you simply will not be able to effortlessly without interruption build of the perfect infrastructure before you build an optimized fleet, those things never happen in such a political climate.
You might need to design a new sensor but you need it very fast so you go with a smaller variant and put it on your new FAC scout platform because that is the fastest way to get it operational it good enough quantity when counting everything from research to retooling and production etc...
I can promise you that the new changes to sensors, missile ranges etc.. will favor fighters now more than ever.
-
One more thing I thought of...
In a multi-faction environment you will progress through the tech race much more slowly because resource must continually be diverted to more pressing matters, researching more components to offset an enemy or build up some defensive post somewhere out of necessity instead if more research labs, try to match an opponent that seem to muster new ships or bring out a new weapon system or class of ship you now need to take into account. A new planet just got detected and there is a race to colonize it, perhaps ground hostilities break out someplace and so forth.
In general the economy you can build in retaliative safety in single player standard game generally progress in lightning speed in comparison (that is my experience), this is why industrial efficiency and sub par ships are more powerful because they mean you actually have something rather than some theoretical thing on the drawing boards.
The problem with fighters is that it will take some time to replace older fighters for newer versions since you can't use construction industry to provide components in a pinch as you can with naval yards and ships. But on the other hand fighters in my experience do pretty well when in the previously tech level as long as you have some spearheading squadrons around for the quality attacks such as on board carriers. Older fighters just get relegated to more defensive operations and eventually scrapped when simply too old. I have also found that even older fighter can suffice for a pretty long time. The new sensor system certainly make older fighters more viable since the step between sensor levels now is smaller in general range terms, as long as their speed advantage is maintained fairly well they will remain viable for a pretty long time, longer than most ships before you want to upgrade them but in a different way. Ships can stay viable for a pretty long time though if designed well for upgrade purposes.
-
Also, passive sensor missiles locking at ~20 million km will be within the range of anti-fighter missiles. The platform is definitely getting shot at. There's also the issue that with sensors, your missiles get worse per - 0.5 MSP of sensor could be 0.5 MSP of warhead, or armour, both of which will assist in penetration against well-defended targets while sensors do nothing.
Not sure you understand how it work or you just misunderstood me... that would be the range where the missile can track the target on its own... the point in space you target... the launch platform can be way beyond that point and fire the missile from a completely different angle as well.
This is not just a point for fighters though... this is as useful for ships as it is fighters. It means that missile ships can fire their large multi-stage missiles from very far away and then have the missiles track the target themselves thus never having to reveal their true position, the missiles would not have to be fired in an angle that reveal the ships firing position either.
-
That only works if you are confident that you've predicted the speed and heading of enemy ships correctly, or that they never vary either. Granted, it's a lot of micro for a human player to do, but you don't need much to change over millions of kilometers for it to have a noticeable effect.
-
Yes... it used to be that... but the new sensor model give allot more range to play with and so it will be a more viable way to engage someone, especially if the target is not aware of the attack.
Doing the basic calculation is easy to do with some nice application to help you do it. In my opinion the game should just be able to do it for you, you should not need to create a separate app where you enter the vector and speed of missile to know where they intersect if nothing change, this is a simple and straight forward calculation to do and the game could just do it for you.
Select target and missile and the game give the point where they will intersect based on the currently known information. It could also show a area in which the on board sensors should be able to track them if fired. The only thing you need to do is place a point in that area and fire the missiles and hope the target will not change course to early to avoid the missiles.
-
Indeed. The tyranny of the sensor resolution advantage brought by smaller size is what makes the Fighters + Small ship approach so powerful, and also gives the reason why I agree with Jorgen_CAB that fighters are likely to be superior to multi stage missiles in C# Aurora when it comes to taking out Capital ship targets. Based on experience of missile combat in VB6 Aurora I also would choose twice as big alfa strikes over 5 times as deep magazines for offensive use any day of the week.
Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:
Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader
For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.
Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.
The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.
I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.
-
Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:
Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader
For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.
Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.
The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.
I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.
Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter. Given a reasonable 100 ton sensor, you'll 'only' need a 1,200 ton sensor to match range if you're assuming the ship is 10,000 tons. But that certainly won't be the case - it would be inadvisable for larger sips to run without escort, and a 5,000 ton destroyer is not getting caught by those R200 sensors till it's already fired its magazines dry. The only solution would be to reduce the resolution on the fighter sensors, cutting down range, and either splitting the swarm between fighters intended to go after larger targets and smaller targets, or focus entirely on shredding the escort screen first. I also fail to understand why everybody is ignoring the issue of ECM, which is where larger ships have an advantage, and which will mean a 20% degradation in fighter range as compared to ship missile range.
And yeah - there's no reason why a fighter screen wouldn't have missile defences, and I, too, have serious doubt regarding how long missile range will actually be in C# Aurora. While larger missiles may now be a better pick than before, with the new sensor revisions, there's an actual benefit to reducing missile size below 6 MSP. Also, @Jorgen_CAB, for a five million km range against a 1000 EP target, you'll need a 0.455 MSP sensor plus reactors. If it's fired from 50 million, a ship just a tenth as fast would escape the detection bubble before the missile reached the waypoint. I don't see how that's effective.
-
Just for comparison a 400t fighter I created had a cost of roughly 100BP and a 10.000 sort of standard Missile Ship did cost around 1700BP with the same tech levels. Each fighter had 4 Size 6 box launchers and the ship had 8 size 6 full size launchers. So the fighter packs roughly 1 launcher per 100 ton, that means a carrier with say 4000t hangar can launch a strike with a 40 size salvo, not too shabby.
Have a look at this nice thing here:
Fort class Point Defence Base 10 000 tons 94 Crew 487.4 BP TCS 200 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 2-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 168
Maint Life 1.21 Years MSP 30 AFR 800% IFR 11.1% 1YR 21 5YR 316 Max Repair 14 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.05 months Spare Berths 1
TF 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (56x4) Range 10 000km TS: 3000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF BFC (24-3) S00.6 24-3750 (10) Max Range: 48 000 km TS: 3750 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 PWR-4.5 (13) Total Power Output 58.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesFor less than 500 BP I get a base that can with high probability defend against an attack by the fighters you mentioned without taking any major damage, assuming similar tech level. These things also age very well - because the fire controls are overengineered regarding their tracking speed, they are still mostly fine at the next tech level - The railguns upgrade to the next tracking speed level for free, once researched. And another tech level later, only the fire controls need to be replaced, retaining crew experience, while you would need to replace your whole fighter force every time.
Of course, this is a stationary base - so what would it cost to get a mobile version?
Mobile Fort class Escort 19 000 tons 650 Crew 923.2 BP TCS 380 TH 600 EM 0
1578 km/s Armour 2-63 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 168
Maint Life 0.74 Years MSP 121 AFR 722% IFR 10% 1YR 163 5YR 2438 Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
TF S50 200 (0.5) EP 0.9 L/EPh NP Engine (3) Power 200 Fuel Use 7.96% Signature 200 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres Range 17.8 billion km (130 days at full power)
TF 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (56x4) Range 10 000km TS: 3000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF BFC (24-3) S00.6 24-3750 (10) Max Range: 48 000 km TS: 3750 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 PWR-4.5 (13) Total Power Output 58.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Double the price - but this is mainly due to the required crew quarters - and those do not get more expensive with better tech. It also has double the HTK (170!). When upgrading, the engines would need to be replaced, but they are cheap commercial ones - so no big deal. And the cost of upgrading the fire controls stays the same compared to the stationary design.
I doubt you can design a carrier force or a force of warships with cycling launchers at comparable tech level within the same price range, including missile cost, that can decisivly win here, exept by using very small missiles, and even then the missiles are going to get rather expensive compared to what thes destroy. The only way to really get enough of an alpha strike is to omit the carrier and directly use box launchers on warships.
-
Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:
Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader
For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.
Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.
The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.
I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.
Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter. Given a reasonable 100 ton sensor, you'll 'only' need a 1,200 ton sensor to match range if you're assuming the ship is 10,000 tons. But that certainly won't be the case - it would be inadvisable for larger sips to run without escort, and a 5,000 ton destroyer is not getting caught by those R200 sensors till it's already fired its magazines dry. The only solution would be to reduce the resolution on the fighter sensors, cutting down range, and either splitting the swarm between fighters intended to go after larger targets and smaller targets, or focus entirely on shredding the escort screen first. I also fail to understand why everybody is ignoring the issue of ECM, which is where larger ships have an advantage, and which will mean a 20% degradation in fighter range as compared to ship missile range.
And yeah - there's no reason why a fighter screen wouldn't have missile defences, and I, too, have serious doubt regarding how long missile range will actually be in C# Aurora. While larger missiles may now be a better pick than before, with the new sensor revisions, there's an actual benefit to reducing missile size below 6 MSP. Also, @Jorgen_CAB, for a five million km range against a 1000 EP target, you'll need a 0.455 MSP sensor plus reactors. If it's fired from 50 million, a ship just a tenth as fast would escape the detection bubble before the missile reached the waypoint. I don't see how that's effective.
First of when you fire self guided missiles the enemy don't know that is happening... that is the whole point. You can't really try to evade it before you detect it so it will be viable to use them allot more now than before. Not sure exactly but I think that the sensor now is a complete package with reactor and all to simplify the design but that remains to be seen... missile will include allot more electronics now. This does not mean you will not also be able to strike in a more conventional way, it is an option to do it. Versatility is a strength in and of itself.
It is quite obvious that long range missiles will be much bigger to fit everything and also to manage the range necessary. Exactly how it will be we will find out soon enough.
The exact range sensors will detect thing will obviously depend on tech level and what it tries to detect.
What Alex meant with fire controls is that a fighter housing say a 50 ton res 100 sensor will have such a range advantage over a 5000t ship that they need roughly a 50 ton res 5 sensor to detect that 250t fighter. Also remember that fighters comes in all shapes and sizes so it is pretty difficult to match perfect resolution against them. It is simply not going to be economical to even try matching sensor like that anymore unless you are seriously more advanced with a much stronger economy.
To be honest I don't think you will need a 50t missile fire-control on fighters to get good range in C# Aurora because no sane faction would build such ludicrous large active sensors over having a dispersed scout screen, it just would be too easy to overcome with just over engineer your quite cheap FC and make all that research completely a waste. You are also having those sensors and a very select few ships and they will also become a priority target. This whole thing is just theoretical but in practice with competing fiction of similar strength and capabilities it will just not be feasible, at least not until very late tech... but them you have advanced cloaking devises and fighters are no longer an issue anyway.
You can also launch self guided missiles and that means scouting and finding the enemy is the most important thing now. Rushing strait into enemy controlled space without proper scouting would perhaps be very unwise, this also mean you need to protect the scouts without revealing your main fleet and its logistical arm.
If you can find and strike an opponent without revealing your fleets position you strike from the strongest possible position you can be in, that is just a fact.
-
The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.
I agree that we don't know the impact of this yet... most likely anti-ship missiles will grow larger and a bit slower than we are used to, especially if you want good range on them too.
I think some of this talk are so theoretical and devoid of how they would actually function in an intelligently applied environment and not against the AI. Obviously every such environment will have extra rules for mechanics you want to avoid exploiting. These rules will also change how you operate in general.
We also need to remember that the general environment is what put in the restraint and possibilities if using different technologies and strategies.
But one thing is crystal clear... small sensors are now clearly superior en mass over a few large powerful sensors no matter how you twist and turn the theoretical numbers. This will favor sprinkling smaller sensors over many platforms and separate your fleet assets more.
-
Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter.
Ah right, due to the new ^2 sensor scaling... Good point.
This makes fighters even more powerful because you can get away with even smaller fire controls compared to the sensors needed to detect them, further reducing the size of the fighters as long as you got some other ship able to paint the target for them.
Smaller fighters can sneak closer allowing higher performance missiles.
-
Someone should do a scale map/chart or something, that shows fighter MFC range versus warship AS range at low/mid-game AS/EM tech levels. Like, a 50 ton MFC in a fighter will shoot at a 5k ton warship at X range whereas the warship needs a sensor size Y to see the fighter at the same range, or alternatively that the warship, with equal sensor tonnage, can only see the fighter at X-Z range. If I'm making any sense. Would be useful to put to the Wiki and to illustrate this issue to players new and old.
-
Sure... but this thread is about human versus human tactics not against the AI.
Er... it is about the DIFFERENCES between the tactics and builds vs AI compared to vs players, but I am really enjoying the discussion, so that is a quibble.
I would say that there are at least THREE categories worth discussing here, Player vs AI, PvP arena one-off, and PvP campaign.
In a PvP arena, you generally have equal tech, and equal range. This is a huge consideration. Slugger builds where you win with armor are pretty much only possible when both sides have the same cap on beam range. Now I have a situation in my campaign when I will have an effective cap on my beam fire control and range for a significant period of time, because I am utilizing salvaged Precursor beams and fire controls, and I have a crappy Sensors researcher. So I will probably end up with a parasite Frigate, probably under 10,000 tons, which has salvaged ECM, ECCM, and counts on out dueling Precursors because of its speed advantage and shields. As long as my shields can take one round of damage at maximum range, I can count on whittling down an enemy without shields without taking casualties.
Which brings up another difference: playing versus the AI, one can generally come up with a flawless victory build and fleet strategy. In Arena, the casualties are certain to be high on both sides because they are equal BP, equal tech, and fighting an all or nothing battle. In campaigns, most players would scout and avoid a fight if they could where they could not inflict lopsided damage. At least campaigns where there were a multiplicity of powers.
-
That's true. Even in a single human player versus NPR and spoilers, most players would (IMHO) avoid a battle that they are unsure of the outcome of, if they can. Rebuilding your fleet takes a lot of time and resources and leaves you vulnerable.
-
Yeah... sorry if I nitpicked the player versus AI or campaign play... you are right... it will make you play the game differently... I do too.
When I play against the AI I can generally optimize my economy since the AI are relatively predictable, especially the precursors and the like when you encounter them. Even if I role-play allot of restrictions in my games, such as building any kind of military ships outside patrol ships before I meet any hostile aliens.
When I play only against the AI it is rather easy to optimize industry, research and build up a very effective ship construction and fuel producing infrastructure.
It is very different from my multi-human campaigns that can have as many as half a dozen or more factions in them and sometimes even a few AI factions as well. These campaigns evolve completely different from my one human faction versus AI games.
Arena fighting are not something that interest me that much to be honest because they feel too arbitrary and limiting and extremely unrealistic. Things that work well in an arena fight rarely does so in practical terms because that kind of optimization are rarely possible in a dynamic evolving setting. I could talk about that as well of course but not my favorite subject, especially since Aurora are not meant to be a competitive game and have too many mechanical loopholes.
What I find extremely important in multi-faction campaigns are a very sound and realistic long term plan, both when it comes to research, industry and logistics to support the doctrine you intend to pursue. Having too much over production in both shipyards, missile and fighter factories can set back your overall development as well as population resource. I have had some factions investing a bit too much into its military side and sure they could produce ships and missiles fast but they could not sustain that over a long period. Other factions with similar access to resources would expand a bit faster and continually build ships and military equipment at a lower pace. They might probably always have their fleets in perpetual state of flux in terms of upgrade and old versus new equipment but over the decades their fleets was bigger and more modern and their industry more developed as well.
From my experience it usually meant that no faction would really commit to full hostility unless they was very sure they had a superior fleet or military to begin with. This usually meant that most faction build relatively defensive forces until they managed to get some sort of edge or local superiority or could get some beneficial alliance going. This meant they could switch gear on the doctrine and ship types and start thinking about true offensive terms.
In essence the true deciding factor was almost always economy and politics rather than what type of ships they used. Obviously they wanted losses to be as small as possible so aggressive tactics usually was in the form that resulted in the least friendly losses. Some were more interested in preventing resource losses some put more emphasis on crew/soldier losses, this depend highly on the type of government and ethical side of the spectrum that faction is on.
In a campaign you also need to take into consideration how important the lives of the people living in it is in respect to the governments general strategical choices and doctrines. A very territorial empire that function much like a feudal society will be extremely fractured in terms of what areas are important to protect, those with the most political power usually get to decide what is important to protect and what is not. In a democratic society you might not accept any loss of life anywhere unless it is completely unavoidable due to the survival of the many or the means to defend yourself. All of this will lead to different decisions on where to spend resources in such campaigns which is not really optimized from a RESOURCE perspective, but it is from a POLITICAL and/or SOCIAL perspective. We need to understand that this will influence what choices you put on your ships.
When you talk about optimization I generally question what type of optimization you talk about because no intelligent society with free thinking people will be able to optimize for the greater good to 100%, there are too many wills pulling in too many directions and people will never agree which one are the most optimal path to take and often decisions are highly influenced by bias, imperfect information and egotism. You could on the other hand be playing a perfect hive mind race which basically only have one will... which is totally fine.
So... are the discussion only about resource optimization where people and the will of the people does not exist as anything but a number on the screen? I think that is a valid question to make as well.
-
I think a key to multifaction games is for them to be on distinct worlds to start with. Multifactions on one world is just asking for someone to build Meson PDCs and whoever builds them first wins. If everybody starts with significant defensive PDCs, then it is hard to knock a faction completely out. So fights over outer system resources don't immediately turn into all-out wars of extermination. After all, if a faction overcommits its mobile force against somebody's fixed defenses, they could end up with such a trashed fleet that they won't be able to hold on to anything except at their homeworld.
This allows people to choose to focus on economic development at the expense of their navy, with the result they won't be able to claim resources in the moons and belt.
-
I think a key to multifaction games is for them to be on distinct worlds to start with. Multifactions on one world is just asking for someone to build Meson PDCs and whoever builds them first wins. If everybody starts with significant defensive PDCs, then it is hard to knock a faction completely out. So fights over outer system resources don't immediately turn into all-out wars of extermination. After all, if a faction overcommits its mobile force against somebody's fixed defenses, they could end up with such a trashed fleet that they won't be able to hold on to anything except at their homeworld.
This allows people to choose to focus on economic development at the expense of their navy, with the result they won't be able to claim resources in the moons and belt.
In almost all of my multi-faction games with multiple Earth factions there have been political restrictions on weapons at Earth itself... nobody want's a nuclear war there. This have usually resulted in factions being able to expand in relative safety since Earth and its immediate surrounding have been a neutral zone. In some games there have even been a militarized space UN to make sure factions behave properly in the entire Sol system.
The way you can play and which strategies are viable are obviously completely up to the setting in which they are made.
In C# Aurora ground units will be able to reach out in a way they could not before since retaliating against ground based military will now be less direct. You will need to deal with the entire ground defense system now.
-
One other thing in favor of the fighter type craft we have not discussed is that it now will become rather important for ground combat and defense of planets. Both at the planet itself and to project power out into space around the planet.
This will almost make it mandatory to now research the fighter technology. So not only for space superiority combat bat also planetary combat as well. Regular missile strike fighters can also substitute as ground support platforms as well even if not optimal for that purpose.
I think this will most likely mean that we can pretty much ignore the cost of researching fighter production technology as a negative but rather a thing you would benefit further from by using fighters for more than just planetary combat. More or less...
We will probably also see a dramatic reduction in range of AMM and anti-fighter/FAC missile types as well. These missiles need extreme speeds and maneuverability to be useful and to combat fighters and FAC you need a decent warhead as well. We might perhaps see fire-controls to be the least of our problem when it comes to such missiles in C# Aurora at similar tech levels. This is all conjecture though based on the information released.
The new sensor model might also see fighter escort being able to reliably actually shoot down incoming anti-fighter missiles. Since smaller active sensors will now pick up missiles at a decent distance this will be easier and cheaper to perform in general.
I think that this will make smaller escort platforms quite viable as AMM/Fighter/FAC defenses or other types of dedicated anti-fighter screen task-forces.
They way I see myself designing my escort type ships is as a combination off AMM and anti-fighter missiles as well as either some box launched or most likely 30% reduced launchers for medium ranged anti-ship missiles. These anti-ship missiles are for "close" missile range combat oriented at either an inferior opponent or as a self defense weapon against an aggressive opponent. Those missiles would act much like Harpoon missiles on current US destroyers. Harpoon missiles is hardly the main defense against other capital or ship task-forces. Such ships in defensive configuration would hold at most one extra rearming of the anti-ship launcher and perhaps only the missiles in the launchers themselves. But the ship could be re-equipped from collier with more anti-ship missiles if the mission require it, usually if engaging a numerically inferior opponent would such a strategy work well.
One thing that I find being a huge constraint in my multi-faction games is having the yards necessary to continual build the different kinds of ships need in the proper numbers. Some rather specialized ships you only need in very few numbers so having a dedicated yard for only them is sometimes wasted and the constant retooling between different classes can also become both time consuming and costly. This generally mean that the stronger faction get access to a few more specialized platforms while those struggling slightly behind rely more on general purpose platforms to carry the day. There is a fine line to walk between quality and quantity and making sure you have what you need when you need it. As I said before... it is better to have decent ships now than optimized ships in the future if the conflict is now. In a multi-faction game the problem is that you can not know when that conflict will occur so you always need to have some ships ready for combat at all times.
In most multi-faction games I rarely manage to get very far into the technology tree either with the current VB6 game before it slow down too much since the economies grow too large and/or there is a new version of the game out that I want to use the new features on. This means that for me the mid game tech level are pretty late game tech levels... more or less. This will obviously color my usage of how industry, production and technology is used in general.
-
Let's move on to the fuel issue. In C# Aurora, fighters will have considerably reduced range, while larger ships will see increased range. A 250 ton fighter can take a 100 ton drive, which, given C# Aurora's rules, will have a fuel consumption modifier of x2.23. The 5,000 ton escort, mounting a 2,000 ton drive, will have a modifier of x0.50. In my fleet, that'll be a 1,500 ton drive with power modifier of x2.0 and a fuel modifier of x1.41, or a 100 ton drive with a power modifier of x3.0 and a fuel modifier of x34.86. The fighter is only twice as fast, but has maybe one twentieth the range. With a bit of insanity and 50% engine ratios, you can actually get an escort up to fighter speeds with only a x1.55 fuel modifier. I don't see how that can be realistically countered, especially since speed is everything in missile combat. You can also scout effectively with these larger ships.
I prefer to start building a serious fleet only around mid-game, when I start expanding, so I tend to aim for around 10,000 km/s speed and 40 billion km range for the slowest ships at Magnetic Confinement Era. I don't generally have issues with fuel at that point - sorium harvesters are really good. Running the entire fleet of a hundred ships at full throttle nonstop for a year will cost me around a million tons of fuel, but at that point, my production is normally in the low hundreds of thousands of tons per year, with a multi-million ton strategic reserve, and a logistical train of tens of tankers and tugboats. I also fail to see why I'd need my ships to cover 400 billion kilometres per year?
Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...
First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.
With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%, size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.
I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.
A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.
If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.
I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0) thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.
I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.
-
I agree that logistics matters a heck of a lot for missile combat in a campaign.
I have won a LOT versus the AI by simply running them out of missiles and then railgunning empty missile ships. And I have had to withdraw in other games because my missile ships simply didn't have enough missiles to kill all the enemies at long range.
My current fleet concept is capable of very high tempo, as short ranged missiles carry a lot more damage per MSP of magazine space, so I can reliably carry enough kill power to destroy enemy beam weapon ships, and because I only need to kill the beam ships, I don't need that much ammunition to win the fight.
I expect I will develop long ranged missiles at some point, but more for going after enemy scouts and dispersed survey ships efficiently. Honestly, I am not sure what in game problem would cause me to give up on my heavy railgun point defense fleet concept. I suppose if I ran into an enemy with laser warheads maybe. Railguns wouldn't be as effective in Area PD mode.
-
I agree that logistics matters a heck of a lot for missile combat in a campaign.
I have won a LOT versus the AI by simply running them out of missiles and then railgunning empty missile ships. And I have had to withdraw in other games because my missile ships simply didn't have enough missiles to kill all the enemies at long range.
My current fleet concept is capable of very high tempo, as short ranged missiles carry a lot more damage per MSP of magazine space, so I can reliably carry enough kill power to destroy enemy beam weapon ships, and because I only need to kill the beam ships, I don't need that much ammunition to win the fight.
I expect I will develop long ranged missiles at some point, but more for going after enemy scouts and dispersed survey ships efficiently. Honestly, I am not sure what in game problem would cause me to give up on my heavy railgun point defense fleet concept. I suppose if I ran into an enemy with laser warheads maybe. Railguns wouldn't be as effective in Area PD mode.
Yes... this is relatively easy to do in some circumstances and especially against the AI. PD weapons are very effective against missile volleys (rail-guns especially in early and mid games for me), either against inferior technology or same tech missiles fired through full size launchers, especially AI designs.
This is why most multi-faction campaigns usually end up with reduced sized launchers and fast attack crafts with box launchers so that initial volley is as big as possible to overwhelm PD on the enemy. PD still is important as is beam weapons to repel just such attacks as you describe.
This is also why it is important to use a staggered and layered defense against missile attacks. You don't want to over commit with AMM so they last a long time. AMM job is to thin down the incoming volleys so Beams, PD, Shields do the rest to save the strain on the logistical side. It is also really important to know when to fight and when to flee and take that decision as early as possible... in best case before the first shot is fired. This is why scouting and recon will be much more important in C# Aurora with the new sensor rules. If your scouts are overwhelmed then withdraw the fleet before it is even detected as one suggestion.
It also is important to spread out your beam weapons among most of the ships in the fleet so those beam resources can't be sniped and the fleet completely defenseless in close combat. Having some ship who is heavy on Beam is OK and some with no beam weapons, but in general as many ships as possible should have some form of beam weapons for self defense. It is allot better to have 8 beam weapons on 8 ships than 10 beam weapons on two ships for beam combat.
You also should save some offensive missiles for close ranged fighting, AI don't really do that but for the most part that is what happens in most of my games as well... but on all sides.
For the most part close ranged ship combat is usually avoided in my games just because they are so decisive and destructive for both sides. They usually only happen when the fight is loop sided, the risks otherwise is too high. In my multi-faction games captains and admirals need to answer for their actions and this is part of the decision to engage or disengage from any combat situation. This is part of the political role-play in my campaigns and can be important to why a combat will happen or not, how important is the strategic goal either side is attempting to pursue.
-
I just re-read Steve's Trans-Newtonian Campaign and while it's really old, that point about layered defence saving missiles comes up. It's really easy to want to play it safe and use 5 AMMs per each ASM but that can burn through your AMMs pretty fast. Steve's humans did that on many occasions, despite the fact that they had very capable railgun armed escorts. And the humans were constantly short on missiles. Naturally, there were a lot of complications and other stuff happening, but using fewer AMMs per salvo, relying on the railguns, and thus saving AMMs would probably have been useful.
What I am really interested in, with the sensor and missile changes in C#, is whether the modern air-combat staple of strike groups will become mechanically superior. I'm talking about having a fighter or FAC sized AWACS style vessels, guiding your strike fighters to their target, who is escorted by interceptors who take out enemy scouts and sensor fighters that are targeting your AWACS or your "bombers". Currently, with the advantages of big sensors, it's easier and better to just build a command ship with size 50 active sensor and use that. I presume that in C# Aurora, this will change.
-
Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...
First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.
With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%, size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.
I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.
A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.
If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.
I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0) thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.
I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.
Tech levels vary from person to person and that's fair enough. I'm actually a bit of a turtle, so I don't generally need combat ranges in excess of ~10 bn km till the late Magnetoplasma era, which is when I start serious expansion beyond Sol.
Your drive math is a bit problematic though. I fail to see why you're simply boosting the drive and adding fuel to compensate rather than simply increasing the size of the drive. With engines being large, easily pre-built components, ships will actually build faster this way. You've also failed to specify the sizes of the drives you're mounting.
It's also important to consider that C# Aurora will be halving or even thirding fighter ranges, while at the same time providing a noticeable boost in efficiency to larger drives. I'm assuming you've used VB6 math here?
Another thing to consider is that what you've described as a Destroyer I would classify as a Cruiser, considering that my escorts rarely exceed 5,000 tons and my capitals are capped at 10,000 tons, so they'll actually be going slower than that to save on fuel.
I would also disagree with you over the importance of superior speed in combat. If I have a speed advantage, I can snipe your task group from range without having to worry about return fire, and there's a good chance that slower missiles will have their ranges against me slashed considerably. If I run out of ammunition, I can retreat without worrying about getting chased back to my auxiliaries. It doesn't matter what logistical advantage you have if I control every engagement.
-
This is certainly an interesting discussion!
I have to say it is threads like this that has me hankering for complete galaxies generated on turn 1 with a seed code such that we could all play a game with exactly the same opponents, resources etc and see how these differing strategies actually work out.......
-
Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...
First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.
With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%, size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.
I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.
A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.
If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.
I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0) thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.
I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.
Tech levels vary from person to person and that's fair enough. I'm actually a bit of a turtle, so I don't generally need combat ranges in excess of ~10 bn km till the late Magnetoplasma era, which is when I start serious expansion beyond Sol.
Your drive math is a bit problematic though. I fail to see why you're simply boosting the drive and adding fuel to compensate rather than simply increasing the size of the drive. With engines being large, easily pre-built components, ships will actually build faster this way. You've also failed to specify the sizes of the drives you're mounting.
It's also important to consider that C# Aurora will be halving or even thirding fighter ranges, while at the same time providing a noticeable boost in efficiency to larger drives. I'm assuming you've used VB6 math here?
Another thing to consider is that what you've described as a Destroyer I would classify as a Cruiser, considering that my escorts rarely exceed 5,000 tons and my capitals are capped at 10,000 tons, so they'll actually be going slower than that to save on fuel.
I would also disagree with you over the importance of superior speed in combat. If I have a speed advantage, I can snipe your task group from range without having to worry about return fire, and there's a good chance that slower missiles will have their ranges against me slashed considerably. If I run out of ammunition, I can retreat without worrying about getting chased back to my auxiliaries. It doesn't matter what logistical advantage you have if I control every engagement.
My point with the fuel was efficiency not the particular drive... that does not matter one bit. If you have a ship with fuel efficiency of x1.45 and you design it with 40bkm as you stated in that post you will need 32% of the ship to be made up of fuel which is a big chunk.
The speed at which you drive the ships don't matter one bit you burn the same amount of fuel per distance traveled even if you drive the ships 1km/s or 10000km/s.
I just tried to make a point about fuel usage and the cost it brings, especially in a rather tight multi-faction environment.
I don't argue that speed is not useful... I just say it is not as important than logistics and intelligence. If you don't bring the proper amount of force to engagement due to lack of intelligence you are essentially relying on luck.
Speed is good but it matters little if you can't bring enough force in the right place. Speed will not in and of itself find and identify the enemy forces either... scouting does. You don't scout with your core fleet itself that is dangerous unless you know for a fact you are numerically superior to the enemy.
In C# you are not as likely to be able to use speed as efficiently in beam combat either since an opponent with shields will be able to tank long range combat long enough for ships to run out of supplies. There is also the problem of formations... I have had slower ships being able to out maneuver and force of faster but numerically inferior opponent to withdraw with losses. But as I said... beam combat is pretty rare in my campaigns unless they are loop-sided, they simply are too dangerous unless you are certain of victory.
With missiles the point is to make a large strike from an unknown position and never reveal the main strike force. If you have sound logistical strategy then that one strike will cripple the enemy who will turn back and you win a strategic victory. In my opinion the goal is never to destroy the enemy... it is to obtain your strategic goal which rarely is to destroy the enemy fleet... it most often is to take and hold some strategic point in space, a system, installation or planet.
-
Here is a cheap design to make box launchers somewhat less attractive. Or at least require the attacker have a LOT more fire controls to manage them.
Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor 10 350 tons 99 Crew 304 BP TCS 207 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 180
Maint Life 21.56 Years MSP 1073 AFR 214% IFR 3% 1YR 4 5YR 66 Max Repair 19 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 8
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres Range N/A
brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4) Range 10 000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 4000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (10) Total Power Output 20 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Yes, it has only 1/3 the power needs to cycle the railguns, so it has an effective cycle time of 45 seconds, but that is just fine if the main threat is reduced sized launchers. At 304 BP for 180 PPV, it is also a dandy way of keeping the civilians happy. A major concern if there are battles with lots of casualties to get them demanding protection.
-
What I am really interested in, with the sensor and missile changes in C#, is whether the modern air-combat staple of strike groups will become mechanically superior. I'm talking about having a fighter or FAC sized AWACS style vessels, guiding your strike fighters to their target, who is escorted by interceptors who take out enemy scouts and sensor fighters that are targeting your AWACS or your "bombers". Currently, with the advantages of big sensors, it's easier and better to just build a command ship with size 50 active sensor and use that. I presume that in C# Aurora, this will change.
It remains to be seen... but it will break up formations into multiple groups... at least in multi-faction games. Against the AI you are probably not have to do that as much. I don't think the AI will be super good at scouting and combat enemy scouts but a human will.
The only thing we can say for sure is that multiple small sensors on smaller platforms will be preferable for scouting purposes. But larger ships will still be better for defensive purposes. There are many new perks for larger ships that will make them more efficient in many ways. Fuel economy, defensive capabilities etc..
My prediction is that ships will become more of a support platform rather than the main offensive platform, depending on technology level of course. Ship launched missiles should be more viable at lower tech levels where fighter technologies are not fully developed yet or the carrier doctrine have not been replacing missile ships yet. Eventually ships will replace fighter sized craft with advancement in cloaking systems. Not very different from before in many respect.
What I find intriguing is the new type of scouting and the different strategies and ship builds to be the best at it. Since you can't just to the lazy thing and slap a size 50 senor on a single ship and see everything it will be allot more interesting. Finding the enemy first and getting first strike will be more important as will the recon in force strategy now be more interesting.
-
Here is a cheap design to make box launchers somewhat less attractive. Or at least require the attacker have a LOT more fire controls to manage them.
Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor 10 350 tons 99 Crew 304 BP TCS 207 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 180
Maint Life 21.56 Years MSP 1073 AFR 214% IFR 3% 1YR 4 5YR 66 Max Repair 19 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 8
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres Range N/A
brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4) Range 10 000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 4000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (10) Total Power Output 20 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Yes, it has only 1/3 the power needs to cycle the railguns, so it has an effective cycle time of 45 seconds, but that is just fine if the main threat is reduced sized launchers. At 304 BP for 180 PPV, it is also a dandy way of keeping the civilians happy. A major concern if there are battles with lots of casualties to get them demanding protection.
Pretty effective against any type of missile attacks to be honest. I probably would give it a few more fire-controls and make it fire a bit more often to cover all the bases. A clever opponent might be able to take advantage of it otherwise. Box launched missiles can be staggered in many salvos over several 5 second turns if need be, even if that is a bit gamey but so is the design to counter it as well.
Fighters might fire box launched missiles in relatively small volleys for example.
To be honest I'm not too keen on the whole FC, salvo mechanic at all... it really make no real sense. FC should instead be about how many targets or missiles they can track or guide. The current system can easily be abused so I rarely try to do that in my campaigns.
One other key factor is maintenance facilities in C#... they are based on total weight so we will want to use as much quality stuff as possible, cheap will not always be the best thing anymore.
But defensive stations and ground based beam weapons will always be more efficient than regular ship mounted systems... but they are also pretty immobile in comparison.
-
Quote from: Michael Sandy on Today at 12:21:11 PM
Here is a cheap design to make box launchers somewhat less attractive. Or at least require the attacker have a LOT more fire controls to manage them.
Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor 10 350 tons 99 Crew 304 BP TCS 207 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 180
Maint Life 21.56 Years MSP 1073 AFR 214% IFR 3% 1YR 4 5YR 66 Max Repair 19 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 8
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres Range N/A
brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4) Range 10 000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 4000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (10) Total Power Output 20 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Yes, it has only 1/3 the power needs to cycle the railguns, so it has an effective cycle time of 45 seconds, but that is just fine if the main threat is reduced sized launchers. At 304 BP for 180 PPV, it is also a dandy way of keeping the civilians happy. A major concern if there are battles with lots of casualties to get them demanding protection.
The low 4000 km/s tracking speed is why there are so many railguns per fire control. Ion Tech missiles routinely achieve speeds of 20,000 - 24,000 km/s. this means your 84% final fire percentage will drop as low as 14% so one beam control per twenty railguns would be about right to be able to clear a salvo of 10 missiles. Versus better missiles it would be quickly smashed to bits by even small volleys. I always add a small (6 seconds range of the best missile I or my enemy is building)resolution 1 active sensor on each ship to reduce mission kills on my sensor ships. I also do not see the value of a 0.1 deployment time other than to reduce quarters and crew requirement, but for a 10,000 ton ship that will sit in orbit that seems like gaming the system.
-
Here is a hypothetical defense base in C# Aurora... no fleet would probably dare trying to just bypass it because it will be able to put out some serious trouble if not dealt with properly.
We find a good defensible moon or planet in the system... perhaps some with a high pressure and extreme heat with good defensible terrain.
Here we build up some DTS and a sizable ground force (woth ground to orbital defense weapons) with a few fighter squadrons, some for ground protection and some for space superiority (including recon crafts). A small maintenance capacity for say 30.000t total capacity. We add roughly 20.000t of FAC missile attack crafts some smaller patrol boats for a few thousand tones and then a command station with a flag bridge and mainly AMM capacity. You can also station one or several small tankers there to extend any range of the FAC and fighters if need be.
First of all you would need to bring a considerably much stronger fleet and invasion force to bring down that military installation and it would take time... probably enough time for a retaliatory strike from a friendly fleet nearby.
You would need invasion ships, troops etc to remove the threat.
This base would be like an entrenched fortress and very dangerous... you might also not detect it if you don't scout properly and that can come as a nasty surprise. Since scouting takes time an allied fleet might even be able to reach the system in time for a coordinated strike on an invading fleet.
The fleet needed to remove this base would probably be a few order of magnitude more expensive than the defensive force. You also could not know when and if allied fleet assets would be close by to support it.
-
I also do not see the value of a 0.1 deployment time other than to reduce quarters and crew requirement, but for a 10,000 ton ship that will sit in orbit that seems like gaming the system.
I would basically view that as the crew are not really sleeping and living on the station but just working there. A 0.1 deployment time is still a few days so no problem working there for an 8 hour shift and then get back down to the surface or any other civilian station in the same spot.
Seem quite ok from a role-play perspective in my opinion.
Almost all military stations that I build use that logic which also make them different from regular ships.
-
I thought about adding a hangar or two to the design, and base scouting vessels on board. That way, the expensive sensors don't cost maintenance. And the above design, just under 20% of the cost is fire controls. Adding hangars would allow for more fire controls while keeping that ratio, allowing it to be easier to upgrade fire controls.
But giving the base even a little more crew endurance is surprisingly expensive. A lot of the hidden cost of base tech railguns is the crew requirement. Going from .1 to 1 month endurance adds over 100 BP on a 300 BP design.
-
I thought about adding a hangar or two to the design, and base scouting vessels on board. That way, the expensive sensors don't cost maintenance. And the above design, just under 20% of the cost is fire controls. Adding hangars would allow for more fire controls while keeping that ratio, allowing it to be easier to upgrade fire controls.
Just remember that you will pay maintenance for ships and other stuff in Hangars in C#, but for VB6 you don't have to. We now pay supplies for stuff and that is extended to things in hangars too, I think that is a good change.
-
I doubt I will be playing C# anytime soon. I want to get my current game to fairly high tech, and I haven't been following all the changes. So I will want to see some after action reports from C# games to really get me into it.
-
But giving the base even a little more crew endurance is surprisingly expensive. A lot of the hidden cost of base tech railguns is the crew requirement. Going from .1 to 1 month endurance adds over 100 BP on a 300 BP design.
That is why I mentioned it. The decreased crew and quarters requirements are intended to make fighters and especially beam fighters viable without extremely high tech levels. The high crew requirements for weapons on ships or bases is because they have to be maintained and manned around the clock. For fighters the maintenance is assumed to happen on the carrier in a hanger deck. Just like a modern jet fighter has a crew of 1 or 2 pilots but a ground crew of 16-20 to service it. That is why a US carrier with 90 airplanes and helicopters has an air wing complement of 2500 crew in addition to the 3500 crew running the ship. I doubt you are planning to station these monitors in a large hanger deck, thus the exploit only works if you ignore the actual crew required to maintain the monitor for more than a 3 day tour.
-
But giving the base even a little more crew endurance is surprisingly expensive. A lot of the hidden cost of base tech railguns is the crew requirement. Going from .1 to 1 month endurance adds over 100 BP on a 300 BP design.
That is why I mentioned it. The decreased crew and quarters requirements are intended to make fighters and especially beam fighters viable without extremely high tech levels. The high crew requirements for weapons on ships or bases is because they have to be maintained and manned around the clock. For fighters the maintenance is assumed to happen on the carrier in a hanger deck. Just like a modern jet fighter has a crew of 1 or 2 pilots but a ground crew of 16-20 to service it. That is why a US carrier with 90 airplanes and helicopters has an air wing complement of 2500 crew in addition to the 3500 crew running the ship. I doubt you are planning to station these monitors in a large hanger deck, thus the exploit only works if you ignore the actual crew required to maintain the monitor for more than a 3 day tour.
Why?!?
The station is in orbit of a planet or part of some station complex with maintenance facilities and civilian stations to house the crew.
The crew only operate the station.. maintenance is done by dedicated maintenance personnel from the maintenance facilities and the crew don't live on the station.
I really don't see much conflict in this.
-
I doubt I will be playing C# anytime soon. I want to get my current game to fairly high tech, and I haven't been following all the changes. So I will want to see some after action reports from C# games to really get me into it.
For me it is the reverse... can't get myself to play VB6 Aurora anymore... tried a few campaigns but I just want the new stuff. :)
That is why I keep referencing what I would do in C# Aurora, there are so many fundamental changes to that version.
-
Since my primary computer is a laptop with a short screen, VB6 was playable but not nearly as fun as it is on a taller monitor. I am waiting to play my next campaign on C# Aurora.