effective early designs?

[Android (OP)]

Hi, I am rather new to Aurora, got through the pains of finding resize enabler to be able to play... anyway I'll just get to where I could use some help -

In the next system over from Sol, I've found an alien race... a hostile alien race - attacks my ships immediately on contact. I found out where to attempt to initiate contact, and after about 2 years, all I got out of it was their name - the "Invaders". Well, I went over some general designs people post for their warship on the board here, and I replicated them as best I could with the tech I had at the time (about 15 years into the game).

Belknap class Missile Boat    6500 tons     643 Crew     1003.2 BP      TCS 130  TH 300  EM 0
2307 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 24
Annual Failure Rate: 112%    IFR: 1.6%    Maint Capacity 289 MSP    Max Repair 169 MSP    Est Time: 1.26 Years
Magazine 184    

J6500(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 6500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Ion Engine E8 (5)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 86.5 billion km   (434 days at full power)

Size 8 Missile Launcher (3)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 120
Missile Fire Control FC23-R20 (1)     Range 23.0m km    Resolution 20
Size 5.35 Anti-ship Missile (37)  Speed: 33,600 km/s   End: 8.3m    Range: 16.8m km   WH: 10    Size: 5.35    TH: 112 / 67 / 33

Active Search Sensor MR19-R20 (1)     GPS 3200     Range 19.2m km    Resolution 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

First off, yes I realize now that a size 8 launcher firing size 5 missiles isnt efficient, I will rectify this on future designs.

Anyway, I built 3 of these, and sent them in to gain some revenge for lost craft. Well, I was able to find 2 enemy ships near the wreckage of my destroyed ones, and well the data the sensors found was disturbing - These ships are capable of moving 10,000 km/s, and have shields of strength 450, and have ECM of 60 (which cuts my missile max range down to just under 10m km).

So anyway, my ships get close enough to fire, and just as the volley leaves, the second ship in the formation gets hit by 16 missiles. This barrage was miraculously absorbed by armor, but each subsequent salvo was much more devastating. Now my missiles are about to hit... wait, 8 of the 9 got intercepted! Oh well maybe that 1 has a chance... miss. Well the rest of this encounter did not get better by any stretch.

So anyway I am just researching more tech overall to build better ships, as it seems this race has no interest in coming through the jump point and wiping me away. So I just need to know what my design is missing in general, particularly in the form of anti-missle. I know I can use size 1 missiles to do it, but I also would like to know effective alternatives. Thanks!

[Kurt]

Hi, I am rather new to Aurora, got through the pains of finding resize enabler to be able to play... anyway I'll just get to where I could use some help -

In the next system over from Sol, I've found an alien race... a hostile alien race - attacks my ships immediately on contact. I found out where to attempt to initiate contact, and after about 2 years, all I got out of it was their name - the "Invaders". Well, I went over some general designs people post for their warship on the board here, and I replicated them as best I could with the tech I had at the time (about 15 years into the game).

Belknap class Missile Boat    6500 tons     643 Crew     1003.2 BP      TCS 130  TH 300  EM 0
2307 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 24
Annual Failure Rate: 112%    IFR: 1.6%    Maint Capacity 289 MSP    Max Repair 169 MSP    Est Time: 1.26 Years
Magazine 184    

J6500(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 6500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Ion Engine E8 (5)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 86.5 billion km   (434 days at full power)

Size 8 Missile Launcher (3)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 120
Missile Fire Control FC23-R20 (1)     Range 23.0m km    Resolution 20
Size 5.35 Anti-ship Missile (37)  Speed: 33,600 km/s   End: 8.3m    Range: 16.8m km   WH: 10    Size: 5.35    TH: 112 / 67 / 33

Active Search Sensor MR19-R20 (1)     GPS 3200     Range 19.2m km    Resolution 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

First off, yes I realize now that a size 8 launcher firing size 5 missiles isnt efficient, I will rectify this on future designs.

Anyway, I built 3 of these, and sent them in to gain some revenge for lost craft. Well, I was able to find 2 enemy ships near the wreckage of my destroyed ones, and well the data the sensors found was disturbing - These ships are capable of moving 10,000 km/s, and have shields of strength 450, and have ECM of 60 (which cuts my missile max range down to just under 10m km).

So anyway, my ships get close enough to fire, and just as the volley leaves, the second ship in the formation gets hit by 16 missiles. This barrage was miraculously absorbed by armor, but each subsequent salvo was much more devastating. Now my missiles are about to hit... wait, 8 of the 9 got intercepted! Oh well maybe that 1 has a chance... miss. Well the rest of this encounter did not get better by any stretch.

So anyway I am just researching more tech overall to build better ships, as it seems this race has no interest in coming through the jump point and wiping me away. So I just need to know what my design is missing in general, particularly in the form of anti-missle. I know I can use size 1 missiles to do it, but I also would like to know effective alternatives. Thanks!

You already mentioned the missile size vs missile launcher size, so I won't go into that.  The real issue, as you've discovered, is that your salvo size isn't large enough to saturate their missile defenses.  With only three launchers per hull you are going to have to have a lot more hulls to overwhelm their defenses, or find a way to squeeze more launchers into each hull.  For the short term I would design improved size 8 missiles with armor that might be able to penetrate their defenses.  

As for defenses for your ships, there are a couple of ways to go:
1.  Anti-missile missiles.  As you noted, these are size one missiles, and you will need launchers, magazines, sensors, and targeting sensors, in addition to the missiles themselves.  These can be the most effective defense, but at lower tech levels the entire system will require considerable space, as the sensors needed to detect incoming missiles at a useful range can be large.  
2.  Turreted lasers or gauss cannons.  These can be used, based on fire control settings, to defend the entire fleet, and can be effective, but can be overwhelmed by missile waves.  They require the base weapon (laser or gauss cannon), a turret assembly, beam fire control, and some sort of anti-missile sensor, although the sensor doesn't have to be as long-ranged as the one required for the anti-missile missiles above.  
3.  Hull-mounted gauss cannons.  These aren't as accurate as turret-mounted gauss cannons, but you can mount more.  
4.  CIWS.  These are relatively cheap and small compared to turrets, but can only defend the mounting ship and so can be overwhelmed by large waves of missiles.

The best, most effective missile defense system, IMO, is a layered defense consisting of long-ranged anti-missile missiles (ideally 1.5 million kilometers range or more), backed up by turreted point defense weapons to intercept anything that leaks past the AMM's, and perhaps bolstered by CIWS on important targets.

Kurt

[Brian Neumann]

One other thing to note about your ship design is it a jump ship.  Each one of these ships could have brought along 2 other ships that do not have jump engines.  The JR 3-50 means that up to 3 ships can transit with this jump engine and they will come out within 50,000km of the jump point.  The number of ships does include the ship mounting the jump engine.  

At your tech level you will find that dropping the jump engine will have a big impact on how much room there is in the ship for weapons.  I would suggest one escort design with either anti-missiles or a point defense beam weapon (ps railguns are actually fairly good at this tech level, they can not be mounted on turrets but they still work well due to their high rate of fire.)  The other ship should be an offensive missile launch platform.  I would also suggest a smaller size launcher, probably a size 4 launcher.  It will work probably need a size 4 warhead to be any good, but that should allow for some agility so it's chance to hit will be better, also more of them will get through in each salvo if you can overload their point defense.  It sounds like you came close to that with what you fired originally.

A second point about jump ships is that they are typically horible as main combatants.  The jump engine is taking up 20-33% of the total volume of the ship which leaves very little space for a decent offensive armament.  I either set my jump ships up to act as a secondary fleet scout, or as a dedicated anti-missile platform.  While they won't have as much ammo in a lot of cases they will still be able to help defend the fleet so they do not end up as an operational liablility once the fleet is in system.

Good Luck, you are facing one of the tougher types of enemies in the game.

Brian

[sloanjh]

A few add-on comments:

1)  As has been pointed out above, single- or dual-role ships work a LOT better in Aurora than multi-role ships.  This is because multi-role ships end up having a lot of extra mass to drag around (corresponding to the un-used roles) whenever they're trying to fulfill a particular role.  This is especially true for jump ships (hence the recommendation to only have non-combatant jump ships), but it is also why dedicated escorts etc. were suggested.

2)  The main weakness of missile-armed opponents is logistics.  This means that if you can get the bad guys to shoot themselves dry, you won't have to worry about them blowing up your ships with missiles (obviously).  The recommendation from this is to consider going VERY heavy on the armor.  Generally speaking, you need to be either fast enough to run away from bad guys, or tough enough to survive them pounding you (and still have enough offense to pound them back).  There's no way you're going to beat them on speed, but you might be able to out-ammo them by forcing them to expend their missiles destroying what are effectively big blobs of armor.

3)  Going even further on the out-ammo side, you might want to consider using beam weapons as your primary weapons system.  The advantage here is that they never run out of ammo.  The downside is that the aliens are so far ahead of you tech-wise, that they may already have powerful beams too.

4)  On your jump ships - if the aliens are picketing the warp point, then you might want to devote (almost) all the extra mass of your jump ships to armor, making them more like to survive (and be able to run away ).  I say "almost" because a big honking active sensor might be useful too (the scout rolem mentioned above).  You might also research squadron-size-4 so that you can have a better ratio of combatant to jump ship.

5)  When Brian says "size-4 warhead" on the "size-4 missile", he means the warhead's strength, not the number of spaces.  At your tech level, you can probably get strength 4 with 1 or 1.3334 spaces.  Note that you should try to make warhead strengths to be squares of integers, e.g. 1, 4, 9, ...., because these are the strengths at which the damage penetrates to the next layer.

John

[Brian Neumann]

A few add-on comments:

5)  When Brian says "size-4 warhead" on the "size-4 missile", he means the warhead's strength, not the number of spaces.  At your tech level, you can probably get strength 4 with 1 or 1.3334 spaces.  Note that you should try to make warhead strengths to be squares of integers, e.g. 1, 4, 9, ...., because these are the strengths at which the damage penetrates to the next layer.

John

Good points all John.  You are quite correct on the missile question,  I sometimes forget to check my wording with missiles as it can get very confusing.  

Against those size 16 missile warheads you will need a lot of armour.  at this size warhead each impact is gouging out a crater that is 4 levels of armour deep.  I would recommend at least 9 levels of armour.  This will mean that you can take 2 hits at the same place without having a hole in your armour.  With the way that damage is applied to armour (which column is hit is random for each individual missile)  you will probably get 3 hits close together before you take any significant damage internally.  If you can manage it a couple of extra levels of armour will really help.

SPOILER ALERT on the invaders, read if you want to spoil any suprise.



[spoiler:29m2lqr1]The invaders missile weapon will never run out of ammo.  They are plasma torpedo's which is a new weapon that Steve has just introduced[/spoiler:29m2lqr1]


Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

[spoiler:2vvwwfsk]From my experience the Invaders are using at least level 6 tech as well as 2 new tech tracks.

The new tech tracks being Absorbsion Shields (roughly equal to SFB Andromadian PA Panels) and Plasma Torpedeos.  The Torps neither require ammunition nor power reactors.  The PA panels have a high recharge cycle (30 seconds) making them extremely difficult to overwelm.

This a very cheesy/beardy tactic that I've found to work.  Build cheap light units (fighters?) that have an active sensor and a speed over 10k.  These are used as a screen in the face of the Invaders your engaging to soak thier fire thus protecting your main combat units.  The main combat units are armed with meson cannons with as high a cyclic rate as your tech base will support.  They also have +10k speed. Your main units standoff outside the screen and engage the Invaders ships.  Mesons have the advantange of ignoring shields and armor inflicting internal damage.  

The AI will engage the closest active  sensor source.[/spoiler:2vvwwfsk]

[welchbloke]

[spoiler:rjq2l30u]From my experience the Invaders are using at least level 6 tech as well as 2 new tech tracks.

The new tech tracks being Absorbsion Shields (roughly equal to SFB Andromadian PA Panels) and Plasma Torpedeos.  The Torps neither require ammunition nor power reactors.  The PA panels have a high recharge cycle (30 seconds) making them extremely difficult to overwelm.

This a very cheesy/beardy tactic that I've found to work.  Build cheap light units (fighters?) that have an active sensor and a speed over 10k.  These are used as a screen in the face of the Invaders your engaging to soak thier fire thus protecting your main combat units.  The main combat units are armed with meson cannons with as high a cyclic rate as your tech base will support.  They also have +10k speed. Your main units standoff outside the screen and engage the Invaders ships.  Mesons have the advantange of ignoring shields and armor inflicting internal damage.  

The AI will engage the closest active  sensor source.[/spoiler:rjq2l30u]

[spoiler:rjq2l30u]This is exactly what I am doing, the only diffeence is that I'm using 1000 ton FACs rather than main combatants to carry the Meson cannon.  Sorry if I have misunderstood you Charlie; IIRC you mentioned FACs in your original posts about counter invader tactics.[/spoiler:rjq2l30u]

[Charlie Beeler]

[spoiler:3d54wbqz]This is exactly what I am doing, the only diffeence is that I'm using 1000 ton FACs rather than main combatants to carry the Meson cannon.  Sorry if I have misunderstood you Charlie; IIRC you mentioned FACs in your original posts about counter invader tactics.[/spoiler:3d54wbqz]

[spoiler:3d54wbqz]I think I did mention FAC's.  At the time I only had Ion engine tech and the GB's with meson cannons were to slow.  That's why the Tennessee class I posted (2 weeks ago?) was actually a standard ship that is over engined.

Code: [Select]

Tennessee class Corvette    2850 tons     308 Crew     678.1 BP      TCS 57  TH 201.6  EM 0
10105 km/s     Armour 1-17     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 6
Annual Failure Rate: 64%    IFR: 0.9%    Maint Capacity 149 MSP    Max Repair 77 MSP    Est Time: 1.99 Years

Ion Engine E8.4 (8)    Power 72    Fuel Use 84%    Signature 25.2    Armour 0    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 7.5 billion km   (8 days at full power)

R20/C4 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 64,000km     TS: 10105 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 20    ROF 15        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 32-16000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 4.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
I was able to defeat the 3 64k ton ships at the cost of about 50 light fighters using the DD's I had at the time.  (The first Tennessee's hadn't completed before the third incursion)  Savaged a lot (over 100) of Internal Confinement Fussion engines.  Disassembled all of them for the tech points and got Magneto-Plasma engine tech intially and ICF engine tech just recently.  Designed (GP)MP engines and now have these in the hands of the yards to build up for the defense squadron.

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Alaska class Patrol Ship    950 tons     126 Crew     227.8 BP      TCS 19  TH 67.2  EM 0
10105 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6
Annual Failure Rate: 12%    IFR: 0.2%    Maint Capacity 90 MSP    Max Repair 84 MSP    Est Time: 3.73 Years

GB Magneto-plasma Drive E84 (1)    Power 192    Fuel Use 840%    Signature 67.2    Armour 0    Exp 48%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 2.3 billion km   (62 hours at full power)

R20/C4 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 64,000km     TS: 10105 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 20    ROF 15        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 32-16000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 4.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Basicly 1/3 the csot and construction time for the same combat effectiveness.[/spoiler:3d54wbqz]

[Android (OP)]

Ok, I make an anti-missile missile setup, and I am trying to set it to fire 3 anti-missiles on the combat options screen, but its not saving... whats up?

edit: disregard the above, i figured it out. However, it really nags me that when you are jammed by ECM Aurora only moves at 5 sec increments until within the new range.

[Beersatron]

Ok, I make an anti-missile missile setup, and I am trying to set it to fire 3 anti-missiles on the combat options screen, but its not saving... whats up?

edit: disregard the above, i figured it out. However, it really nags me that when you are jammed by ECM Aurora only moves at 5 sec increments until within the new range.

Tell the jammed ship to cease fire until you are back in range and you shouldn't get the increment interrupt.