Newbie questions detected!

[Garfunkel]

I do understand that all of them being slow and having active senors will most likely be frowned upon by the audience, but I really want to have it.

It's important to remember - when you're being flooded under (sometimes) conflicting advice from other players - that it's YOUR game and nobody else's. Having the most efficient systems possible is useless if it kills your interest in the game. Obviously it's important and useful to understand how the various systems and mechanics work, but don't force yourself to abandon something you want to try out just because it's inefficient. You're not playing a competitive multiplayer game with a cash prize.

[Steve Walmsley]

I do understand that all of them being slow and having active senors will most likely be frowned upon by the audience, but I really want to have it.

It's important to remember - when you're being flooded under (sometimes) conflicting advise from other players - that it's YOUR game and nobody else's. Having the most efficient systems possible is useless if it kills your interest in the game. Obviously it's important and useful to understand how the various systems and mechanics work, but don't force yourself to abandon something you want to try out just because it's inefficient. You're not playing a competitive multiplayer game with a cash prize.

Completely agree - this is not intended as a min-max game with a 'correct' strategy. The only person who needs to be happy with your designs is you. Just have fun playing around.

Here is my current AAR. The intention of the designs is role-play an Imperial Navy fleet from Warhammer 40K. All the designs have that as the primary goal, regardless of whether they are 'efficient'.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10441.0

[L0ckAndL0ad (OP)]

He-he.    Yeah, thank you Steve and others for the opportunity to enjoy this game I've been playing it for couple of weeks now, every chance I get, even during my morning breakfast before work, and frequently reading forums/wiki/reddit during the work day itself (nobody should find out!).    It's been a blast so far! Awesome work!

Speaking of not min-maxing. . .   I'm done with designing my first large 100Kt carrier.  And it looks awful logistics wise.  It is very MSP and fuel inefficient.  My first, smaller carrier (35Kt size, 8Kt hangar space) requires five times less and has twice as small AFR percentage (300 vs 600).   37b km for 9M litres of fuel is going to cost me A LOT.   The new carrier is twice as fast though. . .   I may have to tune it down to 2500-3000 km/s. . .   

Code: [Select]

Enterprise class Carrier    100 000 tons     2266 Crew     20982.4 BP      TCS 2000  TH 3500  EM 0
5000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 4-191     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 150     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.54 Years     MSP 17048    AFR 615%    IFR 8.5%    1YR 3690    5YR 55347    Max Repair 3466 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Flight Crew Berths 298   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 32000 tons     Magazine 1208   

J100000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 100000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
1000 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (TR35%) (10)    Power 1000    Fuel Use 43.67%    Signature 350    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 9 180 000 Litres    Range 37.8 billion km   (87 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (2x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
ECM 10

[Michael Sandy]

Not a fan of the beam fighter's active sensor.  You will have massive duplication of it, and I think you are better off with redundant dedicated fighter scouts with larger sensors.

Having a .1 HS active anti-ship sensor would allow them to go after civilian shipping independently, but otherwise, you are most likely deploying these in a combined squadron.

The crew endurance of the Enterprise is a bit excessive.  Unless you are engaged in long term defensive operations at a jump point, you rarely need more than 12 months crew endurance on a military ship.

Picket ships, who have to stay guarding a jump point or enemy planet for long periods of time are different matters.

That magazine seems a little small.  That is one reload for box launcher fighters, and that is it?  Of course, you could have other support ships, colliers, tankers, etc... covering for that.

The ECM-10 gives a pretty minor advantage, but for a large ship, it is an okay investment.  It will make the difference rarely, but again, it doesn't cost much compared to the rest of the ship.

ECCM is vital on beam ships, but only becomes important on missile ships around ECCM 4 or 5, and then only if you have large missile fire controls.

[L0ckAndL0ad (OP)]

Not a fan of the beam fighter's active sensor.   You will have massive duplication of it, and I think you are better off with redundant dedicated fighter scouts with larger sensors.

Having a . 1 HS active anti-ship sensor would allow them to go after civilian shipping independently, but otherwise, you are most likely deploying these in a combined squadron.

Would you or someone else please write down what a likely fighter combat scenario would look like? I'm yet to enter any serious combat so I'm clueless here.  The way I see it:

AAM radar range is rather small vs small missiles, so sensor fighter needs to fly either at the same TG or very close to non-radar fighters.  Say, you use 10 gun fighters + 2 radar-equipped fighters per squadron.  Missiles start flying, or enemy starts flying, and everyone targets radar equipped fighters.  Couple of missiles or lucky enemy fighters get through and both radar fighters explode.  This happens 1 bn km away from the carrier.  Closest radar ships are ASM resolution focused and can't help with small targets.  So now 10 of the fighters are either also dead, or useless.

OR you need even more dedicated radar fighters, which makes the whole concept of efficient space allocation moot.

What am I missing?

The crew endurance of the Enterprise is a bit excessive.   Unless you are engaged in long term defensive operations at a jump point, you rarely need more than 12 months crew endurance on a military ship.

Uhm, yeah, I value endurance and multi-role capabilities (and other means of logistical benefits) on strategic level very highly.  But even then, I tried lowering it and it did not make much difference anyway.

Also, at current speeds, I feel like 1 year is very small timeframe for any sort of mission except for fighting exclusively at Sol. 

That magazine seems a little small.   That is one reload for box launcher fighters, and that is it?  Of course, you could have other support ships, colliers, tankers, etc. . .  covering for that.

Uhm, I plan on having 3x12 = 36 strike fighters and 2x12 = 24 gun fighters.  36x4x4=576, one load.  I have 1208, which means two loads.  Not much, but that's 4 tons of armored ammo magazines already.  That's 3 strikes in total, if we include starting loadout on docked fighters.

But yeah, carriers are nothing without support ships.  Those are always in my mind and will be following combat TGs nearby.  Though, I do think I'll go slow on auxiliary ships.  My current ones are 2500m/s.  I intend lowering my battleline speed to 3200 km/s currently.  There are no AIs nearby that I'm aware of.  The one I know, my bold and strange ally, always flies at 1400 km/s for some reason.  The AI that nuked my previous Earth in first campaign around the same year was moving at 3K.  I think I should be fine for now with 3200 battleline and 2500 on supports, am I right?

The ECM-10 gives a pretty minor advantage, but for a large ship, it is an okay investment.   It will make the difference rarely, but again, it doesn't cost much compared to the rest of the ship.

ECCM is vital on beam ships, but only becomes important on missile ships around ECCM 4 or 5, and then only if you have large missile fire controls.

Thanks for the tip!

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Would you or someone else please write down what a likely fighter combat scenario would look like? I'm yet to enter any serious combat so I'm clueless here.  The way I see it:

AAM radar range is rather small vs small missiles, so sensor fighter needs to fly either at the same TG or very close to non-radar fighters.  Say, you use 10 gun fighters + 2 radar-equipped fighters per squadron.  Missiles start flying, or enemy starts flying, and everyone targets radar equipped fighters.  Couple of missiles or lucky enemy fighters get through and both radar fighters explode.  This happens 1 bn km away from the carrier.  Closest radar ships are ASM resolution focused and can't help with small targets.  So now 10 of the fighters are either also dead, or useless.

OR you need even more dedicated radar fighters, which makes the whole concept of efficient space allocation moot.

What am I missing?

In my own (admittedly limited) experience, fighter combat tends to be quick and dirty, but can be highly effective even if the enemy is both faster than your capital ships and has a longer weapon range.  My current doctrine is to use a dedicated sensor ship with a huge active as bait to lure the enemy in and draw their fire, making their speed work in my favour.  If they come within range of that then my fighters don't need actives and have a chance to sneak up on them undetected.  If the enemy outranges that, then my sensor fighters don't light up their actives until the rest are in range and ready to fire.  Either way I try not to launch fighters until the enemy has depleted their ASM stocks against my PD escorts.

Uhm, yeah, I value endurance and multi-role capabilities (and other means of logistical benefits) on strategic level very highly.  But even then, I tried lowering it and it did not make much difference anyway.

Also, at current speeds, I feel like 1 year is very small timeframe for any sort of mission except for fighting exclusively at Sol.

Big E's crew endurance is double the maintenance life.  I would be concerned about the ship exploding due to age failures long before crew endurance becomes a factor.  Five years is fine for a survey ship, but seems rather long for a warship.  If she's going to be on-station that long you might want to set up a FOB with maintenance facilities or even a drydock.  My own capital ships are slower than yours and only have a one year deployment time but I still expect them to fight offensively two jumps away from their supply bases without issue.

Uhm, I plan on having 3x12 = 36 strike fighters and 2x12 = 24 gun fighters.  36x4x4=576, one load.  I have 1208, which means two loads.  Not much, but that's 4 tons of armored ammo magazines already.  That's 3 strikes in total, if we include starting loadout on docked fighters.

But yeah, carriers are nothing without support ships.  Those are always in my mind and will be following combat TGs nearby.  Though, I do think I'll go slow on auxiliary ships.  My current ones are 2500m/s.  I intend lowering my battleline speed to 3200 km/s currently.  There are no AIs nearby that I'm aware of.  The one I know, my bold and strange ally, always flies at 1400 km/s for some reason.  The AI that nuked my previous Earth in first campaign around the same year was moving at 3K.  I think I should be fine for now with 3200 battleline and 2500 on supports, am I right?

That seems to be a reasonable loadout.  I match my carrier with its escorts and colliers.

[Michael Sandy]

Would you or someone else please write down what a likely fighter combat scenario would look like?

In my campaign, there is a bit of a conflict between the explorer corps and the rest of the navy of the numbering formula for "Xth battle of Y system".

The explorers consider any encounter where the active sensors of an enemy are detected to be a battle.  Other branches only count 'battles' as events where fire was exchanged, so unarmed ships getting blown up don't count.

So, since I consider the scouting battle to be rather important, and a lot of fun, I will go into some detail about it.

Some 10-15 billion km and several jumps from Earth, one of my scout fighters detects enemy presence in a system.  This happens in several ways:

They check major bodies in a system, and discover a listening post with its 5 or 10 thermal, and possibly the scouts actives detect ground troops.
Or they happen upon an enemy fleet.  Depending on whether it is a long endurance pinnace, or a fast fleet scout, the scout might detect the actives in time to run away.  They are most vulnerable if they were detected on thermal sensors, but that generally only happens if the enemy does not have long ranged anti-ship sensors that give away their presence.

Subsequent probes, including with long endurance sensor missiles, localize what bodies the enemy is focused around, and might get information about enemy AMM armament, or possibly beams that kill the probe missiles.

A picket is always left at the jump point to the enemy system.  If the scouts did their job, they don't reveal where they came in.  But if the NPR starts exploring they will have some forces that are harder to account for.  On the one hand, you can defeat them without them having an easy retreat or reload of missiles, but on the other, you won't know where exactly to find them.  So you will want a scout that can shadow the enemy outside the range that it can be detected.  Of course, a player could have relatively stealthy ships waiting in their wake to kill a shadow that blunders into them, but the AI is not that sophisticated.  But they might do something like that accidentally.

If you are on offense vs an enemy that is clearly tied to a particular body, you can lead off with sensor missiles, or preposition scouts for when your main fleet enters their detection range.  For the most part, I prefer that my carriers never enter their system at all.  But when the jump point is pretty far out, part of the job of the scouts is to bring the enemy out to about a billion km from the jump point, where they won't be able to detect the fighters and FACs, and also where they won't be able to withdraw.

Depending on how worried I am about enemy missiles, and relative speeds, I can either have my combined railgun, sensor fighters, and missile FAC proceed inward in a bloc, or just with the railgun fighters, sensor fighters, and a sacrificial bait FAC to draw enemy missile fire.  My missile FACs tend to be significantly slower than my railgun fighters.  Again, this is a tactic that works very well vs the AI, not so much vs players.  And bleeding out enemy missiles is pretty tedious.

A lot depends on whether I have enough railgun fighters to be able to defeat AMM spam.  If you know the exact range of the enemy missiles, you can jink in and out of enemy range, and they just blow up when they run out of fuel.  That is a bit of an exploit.   My missiles fighters tend to have a wide variety of missiles, as I try to use old, obsolete missiles as effectively as I can.  Where possible, I engage with short range missiles that deliver the largest warheads that can be accurately delivered against the known target's speed.

Enemy AMMs are the bane of fighters.  However, the enemy will usually fire 1-3 AMMs at each of your missiles, even if you are firing ridiculously cheap decoys that have no warhead.  So an option is to bleed the enemy of AMMs by firing hundreds of .05 BP cost decoy missiles at them.

Again, this is also a bit of an exploit.

Now, some of these tactics you can do with full sized ships as well.  However, it is a lot easier to figure out the enemy's range vs smallcraft, and a lot easier for them to dodge out of missile range when their missile detection range is a significant percentage of the enemy AMM range.

[Paul M]

I design my ships as best I understand how real militaries design theirs.  They have missions they need to fulfill so you give them the means to fulfill that mission regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in.   So yeah give your fighters sensors that allow them to see the targets they are intended to destroy.  Then you don't need to waste two fighters per squadron with recon birds.

It is a bit like the existence of Hawkeye aircraft meaning you don't include sensors on naval warships.   To see what happens in real life when you allow too many assumptions to determine the capabilities of your warships take a look at the 82 Falklands war.   

But since there is no one right way to do anything in Aurora I would suggest starting off in a way that you find acceptable to your sense of "warships have this" and then modifying the design based on experience.  I can say that the NCNs warships have over time changed until their last two engagements were significantly different from their first few engagements with the 8th Squadron standing off a massive missile bombardment even though they had lost their command ship to a FAC strike at point blank range and then a good chunk of the fleet re-learning that kamakazi attacks are painful...so they lost some CLEs they didn't want to loose in the follow up engagement.   But also they developed the Birddog recon small craft to enable them to engage enemy FACs at range after the 8th Squadron drove off a FAC strike at the cost of most of the FAC cover provided by the 1st Carrier Squadron.  They also learned that enemy point defense systems play havoc with their own missile strikes...so the next generation of missiles for the CAs will be "armoured" to see if that enables at least some of them to penetrate the enemies last ditch fire. 

I also find ECCM-1 to very very useful.   It makes a significant difference in when or even if I can engage the enemy.

[L0ckAndL0ad (OP)]

Wow, thank you for combat tidbits, folks! I welcome any additional short stories! Keep them coming, if you can!

I have a rather simple question.  Since my ships have multiple weapon and FCS types and I can't use autofire on them (I tried and failed in my first campaign), I have a question about how to semi-automate them, at least.  Tell me if I understand this correctly:

Enabling any PD mode for gunnery or missile FCS will allow it to automatically attack ANY targets that are in range.  Correct? Meaning, if I have Gauss PD guns in PD mode (Point Blank PD Mode 1) and AMMs in PD mode (3v1 PD Mode 300), they will also attack any fighters or ships that get into their allowed range (10k and 3M accordingly).  Yes? Or is PD mode against missiles only?

I can manually assign targets for larger ASMs, but want to have AMM and PD fire to be automated.  Am I getting this right? Do I need to know anything else?

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Wow, thank you for combat tidbits, folks! I welcome any additional short stories! Keep them coming, if you can!

I have a rather simple question.  Since my ships have multiple weapon and FCS types and I can't use autofire on them (I tried and failed in my first campaign), I have a question about how to semi-automate them, at least.  Tell me if I understand this correctly:

Enabling any PD mode for gunnery or missile FCS will allow it to automatically attack ANY targets that are in range.  Correct? Meaning, if I have Gauss PD guns in PD mode (Point Blank PD Mode 1) and AMMs in PD mode (3v1 PD Mode 300), they will also attack any fighters or ships that get into their allowed range (10k and 3M accordingly).  Yes? Or is PD mode against missiles only?

I can manually assign targets for larger ASMs, but want to have AMM and PD fire to be automated.  Am I getting this right? Do I need to know anything else?

Autofire has some pretty strict requirements (AFAIK largely undocumented), since it was designed for NPR ships.  I have yet to get it to work.
PD only attacks missiles.
You need to manually select targets for offensive weapons.  PD mode missile and beam fire controls are automated.

[Michael Sandy]

Among the reasons that real ships and presumably real space ships would have their own sensors is the issue of parallax and comm time.  Having the sensors significantly distant from a ship would delay receipt of data, and therefore make it less accurate.

But sensors are apparently FTL, instantaneous, in the Aurora4x universe.

A lot depends on whether you play the RP, or play to the game mechanics.  By the game mechanics, you are more likely to win the detection game, ie, detecting the enemy before they detect you, and therefore be able to choose whether or not to engage based on that advantage, if you have dedicated sensor ships/fighters.  The scouting mini-game in Aurora4x is not reality based, but it is an interesting mini-game by the mechanics.

[Paul M]

In modern warfare all sensors are instantaneous as the speed of light is so much greater than the distances involved.   All platforms are equipped with the sensors required for their mission because no one wants their force mission killed if a single asset is destroyed.  An AWAC aircraft is a force multiplier but if it is lost the fighters can still perform their operations for example.

You can mount a long range sensor on a combat ship just as easily as mounting it on some dedicated sensor platform.  You win the detection game fairly easily, just carry EM sensors.  But that dedicated sensor ship concept only makes sense if you can say with some degree of certainty it won't be destroyed.   When this is not the case then things rapidly become complex.  The 8th survived in major part because I was able to use my pinnaces to increase my detection range by nearly 50% of my base which dramatically increased the odds of an intercept by the CMs...it should have also improved the chances the DPPD arrays killed the missiles but it seems that technology does not work.  But in other battles where it would have been even more critical to get that early warning the enemy engaged and destroyed the pinnaces. Back to the 8th, my Snowbird recon craft picked up the second FAC strike and my FACs were able to intercept it long before I would have otherwise known it was there.   The Birddog recon craft is an untested development of that intercept for example.   Dedicated sensor platforms make sense and you should use them if you wish or need to.  But the existence of dedicated sensor ships is not a really good reason, to me, to not equip your ships with sensors to enable them to perform their intended missions.

Once you know that the AI reacts in a certain way I can't think of a game out there that doesn't let you game the game to your advantage.   But for that reason exploiting this stopped being interesting, for me, a long time ago.  So yeah I RP it in nearly every game I play.

[Garfunkel]

MFC set to AMM mode will launch automatically but only at missiles.
BFC set to PD mode will fire automatically but only at missiles.
AutoFire is for NPRs and does not work, don't bother trying to use it.
You have to destroy enemy fighters the same way as FACs and full-sized ships, ie do it manually.
Of course, you can use any MFC/BFC to target anything you want (with the constraints of resolution/range) so the PD MFC/BFC are usually good for attacking fighters as well as missiles but that isn't an automatic process.

[L0ckAndL0ad (OP)]

Oh well, I'll have to do it manually then. . Sad, but what do you do. .

Another question.  Ground Units/Combat.  I know that you need units to assemble PDCs on empty planets and to uncover artifacts.  I guess capturing enemy ships can be valuable too.  But attacking planets with Ground Forces? What's the point? In my first campaign I got nuked from orbit, and my whole population and entire industry was destroyed.  What's the value of attacking with ground forces? RPing? Taking over hostile population, resources and industries?

Also, I suspect that if you've got enough power to land troops somewhere, you can as well glass everything from orbit.  Is that true? Or is there a more sneaky/easier way of landing than glassing?

[Father Tim]

Another question.  Ground Units/Combat.  I know that you need units to assemble PDCs on empty planets and to uncover artifacts.  I guess capturing enemy ships can be valuable too.  But attacking planets with Ground Forces?

Yes.

What's the point?

Capturing, instead of genociding, the population.

In my first campaign I got nuked from orbit, and my whole population and entire industry was destroyed.  What's the value of attacking with ground forces?

Capturing, instead of genociding, the population.

NPRs aren't programmed for offensive ground combat in VB6 Aurora, so they will never attack you with ground forces, only planetary bombardment.  They'll defend if you attack them, but that's it.

RPing?

Or course.  Literally everything in Aurora only exists to facilitate roleplaying your empire.

Taking over hostile population, resources and industries?

Yes.  Ground combat is almost the only way to do this.  Nuking a colony into surrender pretty much requires you to wipe out half or more of it first.

Also, I suspect that if you've got enough power to land troops somewhere, you can as well glass everything from orbit.  Is that true?

Usually, yes.  VB6 Aurora isn't great at simulating this, as 'unload ground troops' actually functions to instantly transfer all the troops from the ship(s) to the colony, then delay the ship(s) from doing anything else for the many hours and/or days the unloading order supposedly takes.

So if your troop transports survive to land, the troops are safe even if the ship(s) get blown up by missiles, mesons, or whatever ten seconds later.

Or is there a more sneaky/easier way of landing than glassing?

The colony is usually not the problem when landing troops, it's the ships, bases, and other mobile (or not) units.  Luring them away, running them out of missiles, or just decoying their fire to other units can let you land troops without destroying the space-based units, but almost everyone almost always just kills them first and lands after.

Really, the only danger comes from ground-based missile or meson bases, and as soon as they show themselves (by firing) the invader tends to kill them regardless of the ground bombardment effects, so they very rarely affect troop landings.