Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[kilo]

Which support ground units should I avoid giving the avoid combat trait?

Anything which does not fire in the ground combat phases. 

Combat elements: Personal weapons, crew-served anti-personnel, anti-vehicle, bombardment, autocannon, and anti-air. 

Non-combat elements: forward fire direction, logistics modules, headquarters, construction, geosurvey, xenoarcheology, and STOs. 

Thanks! And hm, I just noticed Medium Autocannon is heavier than Medium Anti-Vehicle.  Is that WAI?

Yeah, autocannons are surprisingly heavy, but they can be extremely useful when fighting enemies with heavily armored infantry or lightly armored vehicles. They fire 3 shots instead of 1 for the medium anti-vehicle for instance.

[nuclearslurpee]

Thanks! And hm, I just noticed Medium Autocannon is heavier than Medium Anti-Vehicle.  Is that WAI?

Autocannons are often considered a weak weapon due to their size and lack of specialization but they are actually quite useful. Not only are they a useful middle ground between CAP and AV weapons, but they are also very effective against the middle of the range - light vehicles and statics, as well as power armor infantry (often the most effective weapon type against these). I tend to think of them as being very similar to the artillery components, except direct-fire and usually a bit better against armor.

[Tavik Toth]

Is light or medium vehicle better for bombardment weapons?

[ArcWolf]

Is light or medium vehicle better for bombardment weapons?

I medium vehicle with 2x medium bombardment weights the same as 2x Light Vehicles each with 1 Medium Bombardment. So in that regard ton-for-ton they are the same. I would have to check production costs, weather 2x LV are cheaper or not compared to 1xMV.

The Biggest difference i can think of is that MV can have medium armor while LV can only have light armor, meaning MV have better survivability.

Edit: Just read Nuclearslurpee's response, it's a better explanation.

[nuclearslurpee]

Is light or medium vehicle better for bombardment weapons?

Yes.

The comparison is between:
LVH+MB: 52 tons * 2 armor = 2.08 cost
VEH+2xMB: 98 tons * 2 armor = 3.92 cost, but 2x weapons so 49 tons/1.96 cost per weapon

On paper, this makes the VEH option seem a bit more efficient. However, each time a VEH is destroyed by a shot you will lose twice as many weapons, so the VEH-mounted artillery brings a bit more firepower but gives a more fragile formation. Of course VEH is a bit harder to kill due to having 4 HP versus 3 HP for the LVH, but I don't think that will make much of a difference in practice unless you have superior tech compared to the enemy.

While VEH can have 4 armor instead of 2, it is worth considering that doubling the armor also doubles the cost of the unit, so you are not going to be able to build as many weapons for the same build cost, although the weapons you do build will have ~4x as much survivability against counter-battery fire. As build cost is usually a major constraint for ground forces I would probably avoid armoring my artillery.

Personally I usually prefer the LVH variant as I prefer the more resilient formation that results, but either one is about equally good.

Note that if you care about optimization, it is difficult to beat STA+MB as these can have only 1 armor (thus are much cheaper to build) and can benefit much more from fortification than any vehicle type. Artillery does not benefit from the evasion stat of vehicle base types since that stat is only effective when a formation is in front line attack stance. In comparison, LVH+MB is really only a roleplay choice if you want to have mechanized formations. of course VEH+MB and heavier vehicle types still have some utility especially if you use the stronger armor to maximize survivability.

[Tavik Toth]

Do construction units fortify units lower in the hierarchy if they are placed in a HQ formation?

[nuclearslurpee]

Do construction units fortify units lower in the hierarchy if they are placed in a HQ formation?

Yes, but they will fortify the units in their own formation first. IIRC they will also eventually fortify any units in their parent formation hierarchy as well, which allows you to attach a construction brigade to a HQ and have it fortify everything.

[smoelf]

How do you assess the effectiveness of ground support fighters? I'm currently in a ground war and have assigned ground support fighters to formations with FFD components, but they don't seem to do anything but get blown up by AA. There are events saying they got hit by AA, but I cannot see any events stating that they destroyed any enemy forces nor see it on the ships themselves.

[kilo]

How do you assess the effectiveness of ground support fighters? I'm currently in a ground war and have assigned ground support fighters to formations with FFD components, but they don't seem to do anything but get blown up by AA. There are events saying they got hit by AA, but I cannot see any events stating that they destroyed any enemy forces nor see it on the ships themselves.

The enemy is currently fielding TONS of AA, especially when you are fighting home worlds. On top of that, it is incredibly tedious to assign and manage ground attackers, which is why I am not fielding them anymore. What is usable are bombardment ships with cheap weapons and no engine. I tugged them to the planet, but they are more or less a role play thingy only.

[Droll]

How do you assess the effectiveness of ground support fighters? I'm currently in a ground war and have assigned ground support fighters to formations with FFD components, but they don't seem to do anything but get blown up by AA. There are events saying they got hit by AA, but I cannot see any events stating that they destroyed any enemy forces nor see it on the ships themselves.

The enemy is currently fielding TONS of AA, especially when you are fighting home worlds. On top of that, it is incredibly tedious to assign and manage ground attackers, which is why I am not fielding them anymore. What is usable are bombardment ships with cheap weapons and no engine. I tugged them to the planet, but they are more or less a role play thingy only.

To contextualize this, the last NPR I fought had 10k+ AA tanks and 37k+ infantry AA. I had 60 CAS fighters.

I only brought the CAS fighters in once the enemy AA was mostly destroyed. But by that point the battle was already pretty much won. CAS fighters are completely inconsequential to ground combat so only bother using them where your RP demands it.

[nuclearslurpee]

How do you assess the effectiveness of ground support fighters? I'm currently in a ground war and have assigned ground support fighters to formations with FFD components, but they don't seem to do anything but get blown up by AA. There are events saying they got hit by AA, but I cannot see any events stating that they destroyed any enemy forces nor see it on the ships themselves.

This may be a dumb question, but are your GSFs armed with fighter pod bays and are the bays loaded with suitable pods? A regular old laser cannon will not work for ground support missions.

[Tavik Toth]

Hm, what is a good number of xenoarchaeology vehicles when it comes to getting a decent rate of ruin extraction?

[TheTalkingMeowth]

None, because xenoarcheology vehicles don't recover things from ruins, construction vehicles do.

Actual answer is in the mechanics post: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg111167#msg111167

The probability of translating in a construction cycle is cycle length/year*# of xenoarcheology modules/200.

Assuming a 5 day cycle and 365 day year (is it 360?), 200 modules would give you a 1.4% chance/cycle and the chances of translating within 1 year would be 63%.

I don't know the precise rules for recovering stuff.

[Density]

Assuming a 5 day cycle and 365 day year (is it 360?),

In C#, 365. Uniform 30-day months was a VB6 thing.

I don't know the precise rules for recovering stuff.

I don't that either. But from experience, when I send the same tonnage of construction as I sent in xenos, ruin recovery goes super fast compaired to translation.

[ArcWolf]

Assuming a 5 day cycle and 365 day year (is it 360?),

In C#, 365. Uniform 30-day months was a VB6 thing.

C# actually includes leap-years. so it's technically 365.25 days/year.