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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on November 05, 2018, 10:57:12 AM

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 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.