Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Borealis4x on December 15, 2019, 11:19:35 AM
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...Or can missile defenses eventually negate them?
I'm a bit discouraged to hear that spamming enough missiles get anything done and the only real limitation is that you need to build and stow them. However, with sufficiently advanced tech can you counter most missile barrages?
And going off that, how effective are super-fast, deadly and short ranged missiles launched from carrier-based stealth bombers from up close? Is that a good strategy?
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Massed small missiles are essentially unblockable at equivalent tonnages and tech levels but will be shorter ranged and deal less damage then larger, more effecornt but easier to stop missiles. There is counterplay, that being armor/shields or just having longer ranged missiles. Missiles are absolutely the best option for mainline weapons, but that's because a beam ship both slower then and longer ranged then it's opponent is essentially incapable of winning a battle. It makes them very, very risky to bet on. They're still useful in specialist roles, but missiles are definitely the better option.
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Missiles are suppose to be the primary weapon in the game with beam weapons as an important secondary weapon. Beam weapons is still important, just not for general space superiority.
There are a few Achilles heels with missiles which are logistics and the cost being transferred to one very important resource "Tritanium". You can certainly offer an effective defence against missiles if you soo choose to, especially if you have a good balance of beam and missile weapons and defences such as ECM, armour and shields.
Shields are really good against box launched attacks and beam weapons extremely effective against full size launched missiles as one example.
In C# missile ranges will become shorter, small missiles will become less potent both in therms of range and the fact they can't fit all the necessary electronics that C# will offer that will make bigger missiles more lethal and versatile.
In C# beam weapons will become way more important as you will really need them for defence and offence in planetary combat.
If you have a fleet that can neutralise the enemy missile strength they will have to retreat or face you in beam combat. Missiles are basically like bombardment in that you can be lucky and destroy the enemy, but if you don't you have to withdraw (if the enemy is stronger in beam combat than you are).
So, the game is not just about missile combat... it is a bit more complicated than that. If you play with a multi-faction human controlled campaign you will notice that it is way more complicated than just missiles are better.
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...Or can missile defenses eventually negate them?
I'm a bit discouraged to hear that spamming enough missiles get anything done and the only real limitation is that you need to build and stow them. However, with sufficiently advanced tech can you counter most missile barrages?
And going off that, how effective are super-fast, deadly and short ranged missiles launched from carrier-based stealth bombers from up close? Is that a good strategy?
Missiles are great in any given tactical situation. They have huge logistical problems if you become involved in any sort of sustained conflict. I always end up needing energy-armed ships in any campaign. In fact, if I had to choose between missiles-only or energy-only for a campaign, I would choose energy-only without hesitation.
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So is there a place for small but potent missile launched from small bomber vessels from a carrier WWII style?
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So is there a place for small but potent missile launched from small bomber vessels from a carrier WWII style?
Yes, absolutely. Read my current campaign :)
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Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
No. They are the Dark Side of the the Force. Easier, faster, more seductive, but not stronger.
...Or can missile defenses eventually negate them?
Yes. Anything your opponent can do can be negated in Aurora. This is the essence of why the AI is doomed -- you can tailor your sensors, speed, weapons, sizes, ship types, doctrine, fleet composition, and locations to exploit your enemies' weaknesses. In VB 6 Aurora the AI will not do the same against you. The proposed AI for C# Aurora will address a few of these issues, but not many.
I'm a bit discouraged to hear that spamming enough missiles get anything done and the only real limitation is that you need to build and stow them. However, with sufficiently advanced tech can you counter most missile barrages?
Missiles are tactically very strong, but strategically a huge weakness. I have defeated countless enemies by running them out of missiles (whether locally or empire-wide) and then destroying their useless hulks. It is not particularly difficult to make a ship that is less expensive than the missiles needed* to destroy it. Indeed, the fiction sections on this sitea are full of examples of Empires shooting absurd quantities of AMMs that cost half as much as the missiles they are meant to destroy at 5v1 rates.
And again, at virtually any tech level, you can build 'missile-proof' defenses if you know the details of the missiles you are trying to counter and design things specifically against them.
And going off that, how effective are super-fast, deadly and short ranged missiles launched from carrier-based stealth bombers from up close?
That depends strongly on how fast and how stealthy the bombers are, and how "up close" they get.
Is that a good strategy?
Is it fun for you? That is LITERALLY the only difference between a good strategy and a bad one.
If you don't know, try it and find out. If it's mostly fun -- but annoying in ways A, B, and C -- then don't be afraid to use SpaceMaster mode to alter A, B and/or C.
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Missiles are suppose to be the primary weapon in the game with beam weapons as an important secondary weapon. Beam weapons is still important, just not for general space superiority.
They absolutely are not, and I will fight to the last electron on this topic. I abhor and oppose any suggestion that 'modern wet-navy combat works like X, therefore Aurora must work like X'. Aurora has to have room for Star Wars and Firefly/Serenity and WH40K and the Lost Fleet and BattleTech and Age-of-Sail-in-space, and any other style of space fantasy / science fiction a player wants to play.
NO weapon in Aurora should be "the primary weapon" -- it is detrimental to the game (and fun) for there to be one right answer, and all the rest wrong answers. Missiles need to not be mandatory; parasite craft need to not be mandatory; civilan wealth generation keeping the empire alive needs to not be mandatory.
Every time one dictates that Aurora has to follow this or that assumption, one is cutting off some player's fun.
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Missiles are suppose to be the primary weapon in the game with beam weapons as an important secondary weapon. Beam weapons is still important, just not for general space superiority.
They absolutely are not, and I will fight to the last electron on this topic. I abhor and oppose any suggestion that 'modern wet-navy combat works like X, therefore Aurora must work like X'. Aurora has to have room for Star Wars and Firefly/Serenity and WH40K and the Lost Fleet and BattleTech and Age-of-Sail-in-space, and any other style of space fantasy / science fiction a player wants to play.
NO weapon in Aurora should be "the primary weapon" -- it is detrimental to the game (and fun) for there to be one right answer, and all the rest wrong answers. Missiles need to not be mandatory; parasite craft need to not be mandatory; civilan wealth generation keeping the empire alive needs to not be mandatory.
Every time one dictates that Aurora has to follow this or that assumption, one is cutting off some player's fun.
I think you misjudged that comment...
When you are playing with say a multi-faction campaign the most successful faction will almost always use a healthy mix of missiles and beam weapons. No matter how you view it missiles are king when it comes to deliver a long range lethal powerful strike. That is the benefit of using missiles tactically. The problem is over reliance on any one weapon system as neither is very effective unless you are allot stronger to start with.
As all fleets evolve in the same environment in such campaigns and all sides change their designs and try to adapt and gain the upper hand all the time.
Missiles simply us the tip of the spear while beam weapons is the sword, they are both important and fill a purpose.
That is my experience from playing several rather complex campaigns.
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Are Missiles the Ultimate Meta...
If you don't know, try it and find out. If it's mostly fun -- but annoying in ways A, B, and C -- then don't be afraid to use SpaceMaster mode to alter A, B and/or C.
When you say you can use SpaceMaster to alter that game to your liking, does that mean you can give beam weapons unlimited range like they would have in real life in space?
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IMO the problem is the initial assumption: You can counter missiles just fine with sufficiently LOW tech.
A very low power multiplier engine can cost 5BP, at 25HTK. A base-tech railgun is 1BP, at 3HTK. The railguns will deal with large missiles, and the unstoppable barrage of small missiles that gets the job done will cost much more than the target even before taking the cost of the firing platforms into account.
Standard point defence has no chance of countering missiles ton for ton. In box launchers, you can field more than 6 missiles per HS. You'd need a perfect hit rate with maximum-RoF llowest-size Gauss weapons, impossible. That's good, because missiles have a much higher logistics burden, especially small missiles that won't benefit from shock damage and armour penetration mechanics.
Slow missiles can e kited, interceptors faster than them can shoot down a near-unlimited amount.
Even without that, Gauss or railgun fighters in numbers can be difficult to fight with missiles. Relevant point defence, possibly quite speedy, and even with on-board sensors to avoid overkill there's a second PD opportunity.
I don't think missiles are dominant now. I've tried many different doctrines with different roleplay emphasis and almost anything can work, but if efficiency is a concern I'd go relatively light on missiles, mostly for bombardment and to plug holes in my capability against technologically superior foes. Missiles may have an advantage in an all-out decisive first strike with no concern but immediate victory... but no real-life military fields ICBMs and nothing else.
I'm more concerned about balance in C# going against missiles. Fire controls no longer being a bottleneck for PD, point-blank fire no longer evading most PD is a big change.
But mostly, things will be weird. C# rules seem less robust in many ways, and will require a lot more holding back if one doesn't want to break things.
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I agree that C# will lessen the gap between beams and missiles. Low tech rail-guns are quite cost effective, especially since they can use the same fire-controls as anti ship beams.
My problem with Gauss is that you need pretty advanced versions to beat basic tech rail-guns.
At least build cost is not going to be the only concern in C# as you still need maintenance facilities, so quality will be a bit more important.
I'm pretty sure C# can be broken and will need personal control and limitations just like VB6.
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I'd also add that missiles cost fuel. Not much fuel in many cases, but when you're throwing 80-120 missiles into a magazine per ship it starts to add up. Preventing overkill also requires you to field Active Sensors on your missiles, thus costing Uridium, a valuable resource in and of itself.
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I think that Gauss Cannons need to be looked at and need some love and attention. As they are, they're really, really bad until mid-late game. Given they look to be meant to fill the role of the railgun at the fighter level and for point defense purposes, they suffer from being both way too large and way too slow for those roles.
The stock gauss cannon with 100% chance to hit railgun is 6 HS, compared to 3.x for the railgun. (The x being the size needed for the reactor to power the railgun. If you make the railgun the same size, it now has a base 50% chance to miss on every shot.
Speaking of shots, it starts at 1/5sec, which is terrible given the stock railgun is 4/5s. On a pure research point basis, you're somewhere into the early mid-game before the gauss cannon can fire as many times as the railgun you can build in the early nuclear era. After that, it slowly starts to outstrip the railgun, but continues to fall prey to the problem that it's simply a lot larger then the railgun for the same role. You can (almost) fit two railguns into the space of one gauss cannon, meaning that with a 100% hit chance gauss cannon, it needs to fire 9/5s before its better then having two railguns in the same location.
Now on a ship, the gauss cannons have an advantage in that they can be turret mounted, but that's about their only advantage. Fighters are more then fast enough to aim a beam weapon at the maximum tracking speed, so the balance stays pegged towards the railgun.
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I think that Gauss Cannons need to be looked at and need some love and attention. As they are, they're really, really bad until mid-late game. Given they look to be meant to fill the role of the railgun at the fighter level and for point defense purposes, they suffer from being both way too large and way too slow for those roles.
The stock gauss cannon with 100% chance to hit railgun is 6 HS, compared to 3.x for the railgun. (The x being the size needed for the reactor to power the railgun. If you make the railgun the same size, it now has a base 50% chance to miss on every shot.
Speaking of shots, it starts at 1/5sec, which is terrible given the stock railgun is 4/5s. On a pure research point basis, you're somewhere into the early mid-game before the gauss cannon can fire as many times as the railgun you can build in the early nuclear era. After that, it slowly starts to outstrip the railgun, but continues to fall prey to the problem that it's simply a lot larger then the railgun for the same role. You can (almost) fit two railguns into the space of one gauss cannon, meaning that with a 100% hit chance gauss cannon, it needs to fire 9/5s before its better then having two railguns in the same location.
Now on a ship, the gauss cannons have an advantage in that they can be turret mounted, but that's about their only advantage. Fighters are more then fast enough to aim a beam weapon at the maximum tracking speed, so the balance stays pegged towards the railgun.
Yes... both rail-gun and Gauss should be looked at. I think they both should share technologies such as launch velocity for example, Gauss and rail-gun are essentially the same thing more or less. Then the Gauss cannon need to actually be useful before you spend tens of thousands of research on it.
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What if we just made the 3HS Gauss Cannon to be 100% Accurate and the 6HS to be 200% Accurate?
After all, Beam FCS imposes a 75% accuracy penalty at just 25% of it's maximum range, so this would balance nicely for both Fighter Beam FCS, which have insane tracking speed, allowing Fighters to mount Gauss at the same tonnage as a railgun but w/o the reactor overhead while the big ships could better take advantage of the fact that railguns cannot be mounted in turrets to capitalize on improved tracking speed, but mounting the big 6HS guns so they can skimp on Beam FCS tonnage with respect to range. Beam FCS range can be set to 25% of the Range for 25% of the weight, while Beam Tracking Speed can only be set to 50% of the tracking speed for 50% of the weight.
This would also allow ships that aren't built for PD to mount some w/o the need for an extra bomb... err... reactor. Useful to missile ships, less so for beam ships which would already have a reactor. Just cap Aurora to 100% accuracy so you don't get weird bugs from negative numbers like the infamous "Nuclear Ghandi" glitch. I believe turret armor weight was fixed in C# as well, making turreted gauss even more attractive since it could have higher HTK along with better tracking speed.
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I also find Gauss weaponry unattractive in most applications. Too high RP requirements for a rather narrow niche. 10cm railguns are generally more cost-effective on slow ships and outright superior on fast ships. Even with heavy focus and ideal application, Gauss usually gets a modest advantage in PD at the cost of being much weaker offensively. Welcome if we stumble across the tech including turrets (Precursors?), but rather poor returns on our own R&D investment.
Having a 3HS Gauss cannon be 100% accurate would make them strictly better than 10cm railguns at medium tech levels, also not good - I prefer if different lines present viable options.
Something interesting would be to only eliminate the one-salvo-per-FC limit for turreted weapons or CIWSs. But while the salvo concept added some interesting considerations, it encouraged a few things that feel a little gamey, I can see why Steve wants to scrap it entirely.
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It really depends on whether you are talking about the AI or players. And how sleazy you are willing to be.
It is possible to nullify AI enemy missiles completely, IF you know the exact range of their missiles. And if you want to destroy a fleet that costs ten times as much as yours, you aren't going to be able to do that with missiles. In one fight, I had two 1,000 ton boats with salvaged beam weaponry and fire controls destroy and disable for boarding approximately 30 times their tonnage.
So it really depends on what challenges you set yourself.
For fighting an equal sized foe in a one-off, especially versus a player, missiles are the most likely to get you victory. But if you want a truly lopsided victory, against overwhelming AI tonnage, you have to go with beams.
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@Iranon
- It could also be that 3.5HS or 4HS is 100% Accurate, with 5HS being 125% and 6HS being 150% accurate. If 3.5HS is 100% 4HS could be 112% accurate. My pint is more that I think merely tweaking accuracy per HS could fix the problem in VB6.
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I think there are two problems...
First it is that Gauss is rather expensive to research and that Gauss are not even useful before it can shoot at least four shots.
In order to make Gauss useful I think Gauss should always give 4 shots in the same way that rail-guns do but that they instead get a reduction in weight over time. Combine this with allowing some technology sharing between the two and you might get a good balance between Rail-Guns and Gauss.
I do think that fire-controls should be looked at further to balance the game. there are two things that a fire-control should be limited at more than its range and speed.
A fire-control should have different values for target tracking and weapon control. A single fire-control should have some limitations based on technology in terms of weapons it can control and/or targets it can track and engage.
Two changes like that would reduce the number of loopholes and abuse. You could not fit 20 early tech rail-guns who cost 5 or less BP per gun to a single fire-control.
I think that introducing a "battery" system would be interesting with some rules how different gun systems can be combined and make fire-controls dedicated to batteries.
A missile fire-control would have limitations on missiles fired per turn and number of missiles it can control in total. That would give some limitation and cost to how ships are setup in terms of salvo sizes and total salvo sizes. A really large salvo would need fire-controls specifically designed and if you have a huge number of really small missiles then the fire-controls become quite expensive. It also would be a nudge in favour of larger missiles of higher quality.
On most blue navy ships sensors and fire-controls are the most costly and complicated thing on the ships in conjunction with the computers needed to coordinate it all. I imagine this are still going to be more or less true in the Aurora 4x universe.
I would not want Steve to do anything about this until after C# is released, but having some look into the sensor, fire-control and electronic warfare system would be interesting.
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I don't think I've ever actually used a 100% Gauss Cannon -- certainly not a turretted one.
I started messing around with GC becasue I was trying to build a '74' and the only way to get seventy-four of any weapon on a ship of reasonable size was to use 17% or smaller GCs. (This was before 'reduced-size' lasers were added.)
Since I had the GCs, I started experimenting with them. I rapidly realized 100% GC were a trap, since the 'crew exp' bonus 'to hit' was added to the base chance, rather than multiplied. So a 100% GC with +10% bonus made one shot at 110%, whereas ten 10% GC made ten shots at 20%.
Massed smaller GCs also lessen the effect of the RNG, as total damage is a bell curve, and "at least X damage (a.k.a. missile kills) per salvo" is much higher.
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I would be unhappy with a new 'max weapons per fire control' mechanic, as my 74s will continue to mount seventy-four guns and two fire controls (port and starboard). But I would treat such a technology the same way I currently treat Fuel Efficiency (since sailing ships don't run out of fuel) -- I would SM increase it to the level necessary for my fiction.
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I don't think I've ever actually used a 100% Gauss Cannon -- certainly not a turretted one.
I started messing around with GC becasue I was trying to build a '74' and the only way to get seventy-four of any weapon on a ship of reasonable size was to use 17% or smaller GCs. (This was before 'reduced-size' lasers were added.)
Since I had the GCs, I started expermineting with them. I rapidly realized 100% GC were a trap, since the 'crew exp' bonus 'to hit' was added to the base chance, rather than multiplied. So a 100% GC with +10% bonus made one shot at 110%, whereas ten 10% GC made ten shots at 20%.
Massed smaller GCs also lessen the effect of the RNG, as total damage is a bell curve, and "at least X damage (a.k.a. missile kills) per salvo" is much higher.
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I would be unhappy with a new 'max weapons per fire control' mechanic, as my 74s will continue to mount seventy-four guns and two fire controls (port and starboard). But I would treat such a technology the same way I currently treat Fuel Efficiency (since sailing ships don't run out of fuel) -- I would SM increase it to the level necessary for my fiction.
I just tested how the game calculated the to hit chance because that is not how I remembered it working and it is not.
Lets say you have 12% grade bonus...
*'
Let's say 88% base chance to hit with the fire-control this gives a base chance to hit at 112*0.88 at roughly 98% chance to hit.
This is then modified with TRACKING_SPEED/TARGET_SPEED and then modified with the weapon accuracy.
TARGET_SPEED = 32000
TRACKING_SPEED = 20000
WEAPON_ACCURACY = 50%
(112*0.88)*(20000/32000)*0.5 = 30.8 for a 50% Gauss
(112*0.88)*(20000/32000)*1 = 61.6 for a 100% Gauss
It is always better to have a high accuracy low shot weapon than a low accuracy high shot weapon unless the modified to hit are more than 100% which is very rare due to target speeds and fire control to hit ratios.
Imagine it this way... I have 4 shots at 100%... I will always hit 4 times against 4 incoming missiles. If I have 8 shots at 50% there is always a chance I do less than 4 hits, the chance is actually pretty high that I do. But hitting more than 4 times is a waste and do me no good.
They will both hit on average the same number of incoming missiles but only if incoming missiles are 8 or more.
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When you say you can use SpaceMaster to alter that game to your liking, does that mean you can give beam weapons unlimited range like they would have in real life in space?
No, that is hardcode and cannot be modified by SM.
It's there for two reasons:
1) if beam weapons could have a longer range than Light Speed * 5 seconds, Aurora would need to show them on the map, in the same vein as missile salvos are. They would also wonkily "follow" target ships if you make them roll for a hit only when they arrive at the target, or they would always miss if the target manages to move at all.
2) Steve wanted there to be a clear difference between missiles and beam weapons, in how they are used, how they affect the battlespace and what effect they have on ships and tactics.
So this is extremely unlikely to change.
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When you say you can use SpaceMaster to alter that game to your liking, does that mean you can give beam weapons unlimited range like they would have in real life in space?
No, that is hardcode and cannot be modified by SM.
It's there for two reasons:
1) if beam weapons could have a longer range than Light Speed * 5 seconds, Aurora would need to show them on the map, in the same vein as missile salvos are. They would also wonkily "follow" target ships if you make them roll for a hit only when they arrive at the target, or they would always miss if the target manages to move at all.
2) Steve wanted there to be a clear difference between missiles and beam weapons, in how they are used, how they affect the battlespace and what effect they have on ships and tactics.
So this is extremely unlikely to change.
I would also add that weapons in the game probably do have unlimited range, they just can't hit anything at an unlimited range and most beam weapons will have diminished effect at range to the point they do no damage. Kinetic weapons should of course not have diminished damage over range at all but should instead be incredibly short range due to their speed thus reducing accuracy to such a degree they are practically worthless.
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Energy weapons like lasers would not have unlimited range in real life because the beam disperses at range. A beam a few cm wide at close range would be meters wide at long range, which means destructive power falls off as range increases. You can see this in action with an off-the-shelf laser pointer. haven't done the math but I'm pretty sure Aurora lasers already far exceed the performance of any possible real life lasers in this respect.
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And yeah, I also want to echo the others who have said that missiles are not the ultimate weapon that trumps all else. It is very much possible to create Point Defence thick enough that missiles cannot penetrate it in any reasonable scenario. Over in the Ship Bureau, there are designs for the so-called FlaK barges, which are cheap railgun platforms that can be built by the dozens and will. That's just one example. In the Fiction sub-forum, you can find tales of how human PD defeats all incoming NPR missile salvos.
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And yeah, I also want to echo the others who have said that missiles are not the ultimate weapon that trumps all else. It is very much possible to create Point Defence thick enough that missiles cannot penetrate it in any reasonable scenario. Over in the Ship Bureau, there are designs for the so-called FlaK barges, which are cheap railgun platforms that can be built by the dozens and will. That's just one example. In the Fiction sub-forum, you can find tales of how human PD defeats all incoming NPR missile salvos.
Yes, PD are very effective against regular sized missiles fired from normal sized launchers. NPR almost exclusively use that on normal ships and mostly use box launched ones on FAC and fighters only. When you play in games where the designs are created by human hand on both sides it becomes a bit more tricky as you might face a combination of box launches, reduced size launchers and regular launchers so it is harder to tailor the PD to a specific type. In VB6 there also are the issue with fire-controls which can be abused as well.
Now... I don't think that we should encourage highly abusive tactics either. Using 3BP rail-guns as PD are probably as abusive as using fire-controls or different missiles in one fire-control to get multiple salvos from one fire-control. Another way to completely abuse missiles are to create a missile (MIRV) who have the same speed as your ship, collect all missiles in the inventory in one giant salvo, completely horrible abuse of the mechanics. There are also ways you can trick PD firing at armoured missiles before none armoured as there is a strict order missiles are engaged by PD, don't remember exactly what though.
When we look at the balance I think we need to cut the extremes on either side as anomalies as most players probably house rule against most of them anyway.
When you look at roughly same level technology and you don't abuse either beam or missile mechanics then beam weapons can for the most part deal with normal sized launchers quite effectively and will struggle quite severely against box launched or reduced sized launchers. But if you then combine the PD with Shields you can make missiles quite expensive, throw in decent AMM and it is even better, but now you also invested allot into missile defence... in an environment where there is a human designing ships on several sides then designs are usually built and formed along what the enemy has so you can't blindly rely on either missiles or beams as it depends on what the enemy has.
But with that said, missiles are king at deliver high damage from great range.
You can build impenetrable fortresses around a planet with cheap PD but I have never found that to be a sound strategy in my multi-faction campaigns as planets are immobile and there are no real point attacking a planet or colony from long range, most often I don't want to radiate the planet with them either. The best solution is to bring a fleet strong enough to weather any missiles on the colony and destroy it with overwhelming beam weapons and/or bombs. That is why a very strong beam defence is more important on planets and probably even more so in C# I believe, beam defences are allot more costly and those cheap PD stations are pretty much useless in that scenario. In VB6 you start dropping "bombs" at point blank range on PDCs, bombs also are allot cheaper than regular missiles.
This is why I think that the whole discussion about missiles and beams are pointless. Just because missiles in general are king at ranged combat and therefore space superiority does not mean that you don't need beam weapons, you do as missiles can run out... can be costly to replace and upgrade and are not good in all situations.
I just don't understand why it is so hard to accept that missiles are better at some things and beams at others. A fleet that uses a wide variety of weapons and defences also utilise resources and mining production more efficiently, that should not be underestimated. A fleet that is purely focused on missiles will heavily tax an industry in a really bad way as one example, the same with an industry that rely on one type of Beam weapons.
There is nothing wrong with focusing a fleet on one weapon system, especially if it could neutralise an enemies strength a great deal. You also do it for role-play reasons as factions have limited research capacities or just favour a specific system for one or another reasons... perhaps based on previous experiences and so on. I for one try to play all factions somewhat differently and base their wants and needs based on experience and not my knowledge of the gaming system, so they have to learn the hard way.
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So missiles could be best described as artillery in space. Vital to any engagement and devastating when employed correctly but requires other weapons to back it up and can be limited in how much you can use it.
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Even if you don't use them, missiles are probably the most important weapon in terms of their influence on ship design and tactics, try running an all energy weapon fleet that only assumes it will meet other similarly armed fleets and you are gonna get wrecked. A general knowledge of how missiles work is needed to design appropriate defenses at least.
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So missiles could be best described as artillery in space. Vital to any engagement and devastating when employed correctly but requires other weapons to back it up and can be limited in how much you can use it.
That is a pretty good and short description of how they work, the emphasis is on limited and costly ammunition. If you can make it cost more than it is worth you can neutralise it.
The thing is that range is also a good defensive posture. If you find the enemy, launch a missile barrage and they easily deflect it you may disengage and save your ships. If on the other hand you are able to overwhelm the enemy defences it is very difficult to outrun missiles in general. The problem with beams is that once you engage it can sometimes be difficult to disengage if things go sideways.
That is why missiles is such a strong tactical tool but strategically quite expensive.
We also have to understand that AI NPR will never change their designs based on a players designs. In C# the AI will at least include more or less escort such a missile defence ships if they are engaged with lots of missiles for example, but they will not match sensors or fire-controls to your designs or their missiles to your main ships speeds or their range to outrange your missiles or anything like that.
I would also recommend to refrain from using the more abusive tactics in terms of game mechanics. Aurora are meant to be more of a role-play oriented game so do whatever feels the most fun. If you want to run with only beam weapons then do so and live the with consequences and drawbacks of that. Or why not a missile crazy species that refuse to touch beam weapons and feel the Tritanium shortages that will follow. It is also fun to Challenge yourself to some degree with none optimal solutions.
I also mostly play my games as each faction are pretty dumb and have to learn from their own mistakes and experiences, that is more fun than exploit the game mechanics or my own knowledge of the gaming systems. Most of the times if I for example play a traditional game I would not even have any military ships until I run into something that might be dangerous. Why would a stellar society that enters into space even create a space military when they don't expect to even find an alien advanced enough to venture to space, that seem a bit like waste of resources. But you can fit the narrative to whatever you wish.
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Even if you don't use them, missiles are probably the most important weapon in terms of their influence on ship design and tactics,
I don't think they are, and I strongly believe they shouldn't be. Space fiction is full of universes where missiles are not the primary weapon system. . . or even present at all! Likewise we have dozens of historical naval paradigms to pull from, and all but a very few of them don't include missiles.
try running an all energy weapon fleet that only assumes it will meet other similarly armed fleets and you are gonna get wrecked.
I do. All the time. Virtually every time, in fact. The closest I get to using missiles myself is when I'm simulating 20th century torpedoes.
A general knowledge of how missiles work is needed to design appropriate defenses at least.
Yes. This is also true for every other aspect of Aurora. Ships speeds should be faster than the other guy, sensor sizes & resolutions should be enough to see them at a decent range, weapon strengths should be enough to overcome their shields or punch through their armour, rate of fire should not leave you at their mercy, etc.
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Missiles should not be useless, but they should also not be mandatory.
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Even if you don't use them, missiles are probably the most important weapon in terms of their influence on ship design and tactics,
I don't think they are, and I strongly believe they shouldn't be. Space fiction is full of universes where missiles are not the primary weapon system. . . or even present at all! Likewise we have dozens of historical naval paradigms to pull from, and all but a very few of them don't include missiles.
try running an all energy weapon fleet that only assumes it will meet other similarly armed fleets and you are gonna get wrecked.
This does not mean you have to play like that, just like you do. There is nothing wrong in it
I do. All the time. Virtually every time, in fact. The closest I get to using missiles myself is when I'm simulating 20th century torpedoes.
A general knowledge of how missiles work is needed to design appropriate defenses at least.
Yes. This is also true for every other aspect of Aurora. Ships speeds should be faster than the other guy, sensor sizes & resolutions should be enough to see them at a decent range, weapon strengths should be enough to overcome their shields or punch through their armour, rate of fire should not leave you at their mercy, etc.
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Missiles should not be useless, but they should also not be mandatory.
As long as there are no option to remove missiles from the game then some NPR are likely to use them in overwhelming force. The "problem" with NPR are that they tend to use full size launchers which are relatively weak against beam PD and not enough FAC or fighters for box launchers to matter.
I understand that you don't like missiles but the fact is that you need to have a defence against them. You can only face them with a laser fleet if you either outmatch the enemy technologically or outnumber them (or better both). On equal terms a Laser fleet without turreted PD lasers will be VERY vulnerable against missiles of roughly equal size and tech level. This is just how the game is.
Missiles are NOT mandatory in any way but they are part of the game and have different strengths and weaknesses to beam weapons. If missiles were not as good as they are their huge cost and logistical headaches would make them completely worthless.
In my opinion the game have a very good balance between beams and missiles because the most "efficient" fleet is a combination of both. That does not mean an "efficient" fleet can't be pure missiles or pure beams. As Steve said and I agree... If I had to choose only one weapon type in the game I would choose some kind of beam weapon, probably Lasers as they are very good all-round weapons.
As NPRs are not a huge problem no matter how you play then you can play the game anyway you wish and you will be fine. If you play multiple faction games you can just choose to not use missiles to get the fiction you like. I really don't see the problem with any of this at all.
I would not be upset of Steve made some options to remove missiles or even beam weapons from the game at start for NPR (and players). That would force the NPR to use beam or missiles only designs. But it might be a bit of work as he might need to create specific templates and behaviours as PD obviously would be useless in a game with only beams.
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That was asked for before and Steve shot it down - there's too many different places in the code where it expects missiles or beams, so a toggle at the game start would not be possible without reworking lot of the code.
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I would not be upset of Steve made some options to remove missiles or even beam weapons from the game at start for NPR (and players). That would force the NPR to use beam or missiles only designs. But it might be a bit of work as he might need to create specific templates and behaviours as PD obviously would be useless in a game with only beams.
C# has 'design themes' for NPRs, which allows me to have NPRs that only use missiles or only use beams or use a combination. However, the beam-only races function because they just don't design any ships with missiles. Removing missiles from the game in general is a lot more difficult because of how many places they are referenced. The NPRs with missile-related themes would not know how to handle that situation.
However, given the flexibility of C# for NPR designs, one option would be a game-level flag that ignored missile-based design themes when NPRs were generated and blocked missile-related tech for players. Not for launch, but perhaps in the future.
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The main problem is not missile, it is the massive alpha strike authorized by box-launcher.
You can design a beam based deffense, or a layered defense against standard volley, but if your opponent is able to concentrate all his misile in one shot, you must have a technological and numerical superiority.
One example :
A standard missile fregate. It can have let's say 10 missile launchers and 100-150 missile in reserve. Or an estimated 80 box-launchers.
A standard AA fregate can defend against 10 missiles salvoes, but not against a 80 missile salvo.
Keep in mind that after its alpha strike, the missile fregate has to retreat and rearm, which is not good if you have to defend your homeworld. Your missile must have a sensor, if not you will overkill.
One solution to make beam armed ships more usefull will be to limit massive alpha strike.
Several possibilities come to mind:
- Limit box-launcher to fighters or FAC < 1000 tons
- Create a limit of simultaneous misisle firing per tons of launching ship (what effect on a 10.000 tons ship when launching 80 missiles ? Imagine the Iowa firing ten times its current main guns...)
- Limit the number of missiles who can be guided by a fire control, perhaps with a technology.
Without guidance, you can't fire, or you have a big malus.
You can also restrict the need for guidance in the last 5 or 10 seconds, allowing multiple salvoes, but not a big salvo.
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And at the same time, alternatives to mass-launched box launcher strikes are on their way out: Many simultaneous salvos overwhelming fire controls, point blank fire evading most PD. This does not seem desirable.
Changes to the sensor model make small missile fighters very attracive compared to full-size ships, the limitations above would push things further into that direction.
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The main problem is not missile, it is the massive alpha strike authorized by box-launcher.
You can design a beam based deffense, or a layered defense against standard volley, but if your opponent is able to concentrate all his misile in one shot, you must have a technological and numerical superiority.
One example :
A standard missile fregate. It can have let's say 10 missile launchers and 100-150 missile in reserve. Or an estimated 80 box-launchers.
A standard AA fregate can defend against 10 missiles salvoes, but not against a 80 missile salvo.
Keep in mind that after its alpha strike, the missile fregate has to retreat and rearm, which is not good if you have to defend your homeworld. Your missile must have a sensor, if not you will overkill.
One solution to make beam armed ships more usefull will be to limit massive alpha strike.
Several possibilities come to mind:
- Limit box-launcher to fighters or FAC < 1000 tons
- Create a limit of simultaneous misisle firing per tons of launching ship (what effect on a 10.000 tons ship when launching 80 missiles ? Imagine the Iowa firing ten times its current main guns...)
- Limit the number of missiles who can be guided by a fire control, perhaps with a technology.
Without guidance, you can't fire, or you have a big malus.
You can also restrict the need for guidance in the last 5 or 10 seconds, allowing multiple salvoes, but not a big salvo.
I think that box launcher need to be that strong or missiles become so weak nobody would use them. A layered defence will work almost always, even against box launched attacks.
But I would say you have not don your job as an admiral if you allow an enemy to do that box launch in the first place, so proper scouting and make sure you strike first is key. But it if it does happen you need to be prepared to defend against them. You might take some losses, but it is just one attack and after that the opponent will have to retreat and rearm someplace then you chase them down and destroy them before they can rearm.
Box launched attacks is only good if you allow the enemy to do them continuously over and over... you should confidently be able to survive them with a combination of PD, AMM and SHIELDS I know you can as most of my campaigns see lots of Box launchers and reduced sized launchers as that is the ONLY way to effectively penetrate a decent defence at all. It is WAY to easy to build a perfect defence against standard launchers which make missiles completely worthless in that case.
So... no... you should not make box launchers less effective. Steve already neutered them in a good way that it now will take a loooong time to reload them, that in my opinion was the most important part of the equation that actually made them too good.
Using box launchers on standard ships is a BIG risk, especially of you are on the offensive... where are you going to rearm them. You will have to bring along a ton of maintenance ships to do that and that also come at a potential risk as the enemy can destroy them.
Box launchers is meant for system defence, fighters and FAC that can rearm in a hangar. But the mother ship needs to be hidden from enemy sensors as the reload times are really high now.
I do agree that fire controls and electronic warefare could be axpanded such as how many missile a fire-control can control (but that would be even harsher to fire many salvos as one big one).
In reality ships can't fire missiles from the vertical launchers simultanously as there are physical limitation for doing that. I believe that there need to be some certain distance between the cells in order for missiles in adjacent cells to fire at the same time. I think that you might restrict the volume of missiles fired in 5sek could be some function of shp size. So small ships could fire more missiles for its size than larger ships in relation to size. So you can't build a 10000t ship and fill it up with box launchers because ten 1000t FAC would be much more efficient.
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I pretty much dislike in the extreme games where you end up with "one stat to rule them all" to use the trope title. In Aurora that ends up being speed and missiles. Yes you can stop them, even at a significant tech disadvantage you can make a layered defense that can allow you to survive a missile strike by anti-ship missiles fire in "reasonable" numbers. You can also build escort ships that even at lower techs can deal with things that non-escort ships can't.
But it is easy to make missiles move so fast that they are nearly impossible for beam fire controls to deal with. Cutting your fire control effectiveness by 50-90% means you need to have intercepted them before hand with counter missiles as your point defense systems are an utter binomial crap-shot...and that has a very very different distribution to a guassian.
Couple fast with box launchers and close range...and nothing matters. You can intercept some with counter missiles, your point defense system can be fully functions (but it won't be) and the numbers overwhelm you. 200 missiles in 10+ volleys you can deal with even with exceptionally low tech ships...200 missiles in one volley and pretty much you need high tech.
I'm not saying anything others haven't said but for the NCN to deal with magic missile super salvos I first thought several CLEs and the rest of the fleet providing covering fire but even that requires nearly 90% effectiveness and after 15 or so salvos the CLE will be facing issues of no armour...so the only serious solution is a BBE. Laking that you have to use armoured missiles and hope to run them out of the damn things...
On small salvos...I end up doing that but I also am dispersing my ships in a formation so my point defense fire is also affected. I also have no choice as each ship is counted as a separate task force for firing purposes by the game.
I keep wanting to try a plasma carronade race...but regardless of if you use missiles in combat and I don't think you NEED to...you need missiles for counter missile systems. And if you don't use missiles and are low tech you likely face the issue the enemy ships will be significantly faster than you and so they will define the tactical situation. What changes are in the C version of the game that may make thing shift I don't know (have not been keeping up) but at least with the older versions having beam weapons on your ships strikes me a requirement. Not just for point defense but for when you run your magazines dry...or when the enemies point defense renders it impossible for you to do much with them.
I think one of the hardest parts of game design is making it so there are multiple paths that can be followed to success. Again nothing that others have not said.
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I pretty much dislike in the extreme games where you end up with "one stat to rule them all" to use the trope title. In Aurora that ends up being speed and missiles. Yes you can stop them, even at a significant tech disadvantage you can make a layered defense that can allow you to survive a missile strike by anti-ship missiles fire in "reasonable" numbers. You can also build escort ships that even at lower techs can deal with things that non-escort ships can't.
But it is easy to make missiles move so fast that they are nearly impossible for beam fire controls to deal with. Cutting your fire control effectiveness by 50-90% means you need to have intercepted them before hand with counter missiles as your point defense systems are an utter binomial crap-shot...and that has a very very different distribution to a guassian.
Couple fast with box launchers and close range...and nothing matters. You can intercept some with counter missiles, your point defense system can be fully functions (but it won't be) and the numbers overwhelm you. 200 missiles in 10+ volleys you can deal with even with exceptionally low tech ships...200 missiles in one volley and pretty much you need high tech.
I'm not saying anything others haven't said but for the NCN to deal with magic missile super salvos I first thought several CLEs and the rest of the fleet providing covering fire but even that requires nearly 90% effectiveness and after 15 or so salvos the CLE will be facing issues of no armour...so the only serious solution is a BBE. Laking that you have to use armoured missiles and hope to run them out of the damn things...
On small salvos...I end up doing that but I also am dispersing my ships in a formation so my point defense fire is also affected. I also have no choice as each ship is counted as a separate task force for firing purposes by the game.
I keep wanting to try a plasma carronade race...but regardless of if you use missiles in combat and I don't think you NEED to...you need missiles for counter missile systems. And if you don't use missiles and are low tech you likely face the issue the enemy ships will be significantly faster than you and so they will define the tactical situation. What changes are in the C version of the game that may make thing shift I don't know (have not been keeping up) but at least with the older versions having beam weapons on your ships strikes me a requirement. Not just for point defense but for when you run your magazines dry...or when the enemies point defense renders it impossible for you to do much with them.
I think one of the hardest parts of game design is making it so there are multiple paths that can be followed to success. Again nothing that others have not said.
There are several things that change the way missile designs will work. You will need to build bigger and SLOWER missiles in C# and you are still going to have reduced range. Fire-controls will also have reduced range so really long range fire controls will be very expensive, perhaps so much so that it is not worth it.
You would only face really fast missiles if the enemy can get really close to fire them. Sure... if they have technological superiority they will and it should be difficult to fight a technological superior enemy unless you have numerical superiority.
I think you first and foremost need to look at this from the perspective of at least technological parity. Beam weapons are extremely more powerful if you have technological superiority so why should not missiles be too.
There certainly are some really big issues with missiles in Aurora VB6 at late tech levels... but that is because things like tracking bonus don't work and missile speeds increases faster than tracking technologies.
There is also the point that you can just put more and more engines in them as fuel efficiency and explosive power gets better. One way to fix this could be to allow armour to some degree completely ignore a few points of damage over time, depending on ship size and type of armour. That way you will need to increase the damage output of each missiles and can't just put more and more engines in them. I think such a rule might help with other issues too, such as smaller beam weapons with higher rates of fire almost always doing more damage than larger beam weapons for less weight, they just don't penetrate as much.
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Oh... another issue in VB6 are missile speed and agility... this make late game AMM so effective that the only ASM you can use are extremely small ones like size two or even smaller. That is because the explosive charge needs less space and so you can devote more space to engines and agility, the agility tech also become so effective that you can even intercept a max speed similar tech missile at 100% accuracy or at least closed to it.
I'm not sure if this has been looked at in C# but Steve have acknowledged the problem so he might get around to it eventually.
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Steve already neutered them in a good way that it now will take a loooong time to reload them, that in my opinion was the most important part of the equation that actually made them too good.
Also, if a box launcher is hit in C#, the missile contained within will explode, so that is less useful on large ships unless you are prepared to fire everything rather than risk damage.
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I would also say that at some point using "house rules" as limitations for what you can and can't do in the game when you play it is as legitimate as anything else. If you put some restraint on how you develop missiles, ships, weapons, fire-controls and how they can be combined for the game to feel the way you like it to feel. You can build and form a logical internally consistent world from that which make ships efficiency very different from just using the mechanics as is.
Ships simply can't brake this consistency... As NPR ships tend to use relatively balanced or at least not super optimised builds you will never really face any problems.
If you play a multi-faction games where you run several sides it's not like anyone can cheat either.
Here are some of this things I have used...
Forcing at least some space to be armour in missiles based on their range and sensor tech levels, this represent ECM, comlinks, computers and armour. This radically change how missiles can and must adapt to a bit more "realistic" configurations according to my interpretation of things in my universe.
Force all ships to have at least some "basic" sensors.
Sensors require "power" to be used and the power needed was always size times active strength which made really large sensors very expensive. Since I did not like the linear range of sensors I often did this.
Require a certain amount of fire-controls for weapons, as small weapons with high rate of fire do more damage than large weapons with slow rate of fire I thought this was needed.
Never abuse fire-control saturation with missile salvos in "gamey" ways.
Treat the NPR as if they actually knew what they were doing and not exploit obvious flaws in AI logic.''
And many more things...
It's not like anyone needs anyone's permission to do any of that... If you post a ship design in the forum just include the rules and restriction of the campaign so that anyone who view them understand why you might not have done this or that on the design as they are simply not permissible in your universe. It is then easier for people to comment on their viability.
I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.
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I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.
That is already in the C# rules :)
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103096;topicseen#msg103096
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I'm quite likely to continue using special rules for C# as well. I certainly intend to force at least a 0.25 MSP for sensors on all ASM missiles and probably more for longer ranged ones as one example.
That is already in the C# rules :)
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103096;topicseen#msg103096
Yes... I'm aware of that ;) ... so I would "force" all ASM missile to have at least SOME sensors. So I would be even harsher then regular C# as I probably would force any missile over a certain range to have a minimum of 0.25 sensor equipment of some sort... say 10-50mkm is forced to have 0.25. 50-100mkm 0.5 and so on, just as an example. I did the same with armour in VB6.
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Sensors require "power" to be used and the power needed was always size times active strength which made really large sensors very expensive. Since I did not like the linear range of sensors I often did this.
Off topic, but I always wondered why most ships didn't need a power plant on-board for their systems.
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Sensors require "power" to be used and the power needed was always size times active strength which made really large sensors very expensive. Since I did not like the linear range of sensors I often did this.
Off topic, but I always wondered why most ships didn't need a power plant on-board for their systems.
I think that it could have worked a bit like in Distant Worlds... you have a power plant and the engine supply it with power thus burning fuel. You also could have the equivalent of Energy Collectors that would charge a ships power supply if it is idle so you don't burn fuel for life support and other more static sources on the ship.
You would then have two values for the power plant, power per 5s interval it can supply the ship with and a pool of stored power.
The engines would simply burn power rather than fuel directly.
It would be another set of logistics to master on a ship during ship design. You could design a ship to release a huge amount of power in a short time or a good power throughput to sustain firepower over time. Engines could burn power differently based on speed, so you could have slow rather fuel efficient cruising speed and sprint speed but which burn power like no tomorrow and might drain stored power over time, especially of you want to fire weapons at the same time. You could build a ship to function at sprint speed and fire all its weapons at the same time but that would require more reactors installed on the ship to convert enough fuel into power every 5s turn. You would have to juggle power plants, power cells and capacitors. Shields probably also could be overcharged so they recover faster but at a huge power cost, would work well against large missile volleys for example or ships that are the opponent focuses their fire at during combat.
At least I would be on board for something like that.
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Off topic, but I always wondered why most ships didn't need a power plant on-board for their systems.
They do; such a power plant is simply assumed to be part of the engines and that it produces enough power for all the auxilliary systems and housekeeping and so forth that the ship needs. This is why every level of engine tech has an associated level of power plant tech as a pre-requisite.
When Aurora was first being developed, one of the guiding principles was to avoid anything like a Star Fleet Battles-style power allocation system -- so as not to slow down the game play. This is why shields are either ON or OFF and power up at a fixed rate, and why the player has basically no control over what happens on a ship that can't fully power all of its energy weapons.
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Granted, with the current system it is not possible for damage to leave a ship unpowered -- or underpowered -- for basic systems. Though you can choose to interpret any sort of damage to 'system X' as "loss of power to system X" rather than "system X is destroyed," such a distinction has no effect on result, repair cost or time.
Other than adding certain systems to the 'Electronic DAC' I'm not sure what a separate power plant could do.