Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Spoilers => Topic started by: Kurt on July 11, 2023, 12:53:27 PM
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Spoilers - of course
So, in my learning campaign, my race has discovered an alien race squatting on a marginally habitable planet. This entire experience has been both educational and very frustrating. By way of background my race is pacifistic and minimized the military until it became necessary. The timeline below will reveal my lack of experience with current Aurora and how I continually underestimated the situation:
Sept 24, 2091: A Geo-Survey ship is destroyed over a planet with an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere by fire from STO's.
Jan 23, 2092: A battlegroup composed of a 20,000 ton mothership carrying five 1,000 ton missile armed interceptors and two 9,000 ton escort frigates approaches the planet. Due to a misunderstanding over their orders, they approach too close, and the mothership is destroyed by ground fire before it can launch its interceptors. The two frigates retreat. Sensors confirm there are STO's present, along with a ground force of approximate divisional size (40-50,000 tons).
May 14, 2092: A new fleet arrives at the planet, stopping at 15 million kilometers this time, to stay out of range of the STO's. This fleet consists of another mothership, four FFE's, and the Earth's last four interceptors. The interceptors launch on the STO's and destroy all known STO's. The interceptors close on the planet with frigates escorting them. As the interceptors approach the planet they are taken under fire by previously undetected STO's and destroyed. The FFE's, which had hung back, open fire with their AMM launchers, but their missiles are ineffective against the STO's armor and they are forced to retreat. Some of the STO's are firing very destructive but short ranged beams. As the frigates retreat they are fired on until they pass the 600,000 kilometer mark.
<what follows is a massive building campaign which includes the introduction of several new ship types>
July 19, 2095: The Commonwealth's Assault Fleet approaches the alien planet. The fleet is composed of three 20,000 ton battlecruisers equipped with shields and moderate armor, and beam weapons and box launchers for ASM's. In addition, there are two motherships carrying six interceptors and twenty fighters, and two FFE's. The battlecruisers approach the planet and are taken under fire at 565,000 kilometers, which is outside their own range to respond. Their shields can handle the fire easily, though, so they continue forward. The BC's close to 150,000 kilometers and open fire but the STO's are hard to hit and they aren't doing enough damage to penetrate if they do hit, so they continue to close. When the BC's close to 75,000 kilometers (or so), the heavy STO's open up, destroying the lead BC and depleting half of another's shields. The BC's beam weapons are faster firing, but they aren't hitting enough or doing enough damage to eliminate the STO's before the remaining BC's are destroyed. The two remaining BC's turn away and are quickly out of range of the heavy beam weapons. The Fleet's interceptors and fighters opened fire while out of the STO's range, inundating them with missiles, eventually destroying them all.
Before being destroyed, the STO's killed an exploration ship, a 20,000 mothership, a 20,000 ton battlecruiser, and nine 1,000 ton interceptors.
Aug 7, 2095: Two full Commonwealth armored divisions land, along with elements of a third. Each division is nearly 50,000 tons, and is composed of 1,896 heavy infantry, 59 Rapier II tanks, 25 Reaper II anti-infantry tanks, and assorted artillery and AA vehicles, anti-tank infantry, and HQ's. The Rapier tanks are medium vehicles with two hvy anti-vehicle weapons (pen/dam 48/48) and medium armor (arm/HP 40/40). The heavy infantry is equipped with power armor (arm/HP 15/10) and a heavy crew served AP (shots/pen/dam 6/12/8). Racial weapon strength is 12, armor is 10. In all approximately 140,000 tons of ground troops are committed. This is 3-4 times the tonnage of the detected enemy units. The result is a massacre. The Commonwealth force is destroyed in two days of heavy fighting after inflicting negligible damage on the enemy.
The Commonwealth was decisively defeated on the ground. The only unit that had any chance of penetrating the enemy's armor was the Rapier II tanks, and there weren't enough of them. The infantry was completely useless except as a bullet sponge.
So, what I've learned or need to figure out.
1. I completely underestimated the threat every step of the way. Don't do that!
2. My final plan for dealing with the STO's without irradiating the planet involved sending large well shielded and armored ships to pick apart the STO's, however, my BC's got too close and fell prey to what I assume are plasma carronade STO's. I had some monitors, which were more heavily shielded and armored, and equipped with more beam weapons, but they had just been launched and weren't ready when the fleet left. I think the BC's or monitors could have stood off of the planet beyond the range of the heavy STO's and picked them apart, but it would have taken a long time. It complicates the situation that the only way to find STO's appears to be to get close enough for them to open fire on you.
3. I'm at a lost at how to deal with the remaining ground forces short of nuking them from orbit (it's the only way to be safe!). I don't think my entire existing ground force would be enough to deal with them. I could build some heavy armor divisions with heavy tanks equipped with the heaviest weapons I can make, but, hmmmm...now that I say that it might be interesting. Heavy or superheavy tanks supported by troopers with heavy power armor. Hmmm...
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Wild stuff, the terrain and fortification of the planet means that what you see from orbit is almost certainly not all they have. As a rule of thumb I generally see people anticipating 3-4x the visible tonnage of defenders on the ground. And then of course you seem to be out-teched on the ground too. You might be able to find a bit of an advantage with more, cheaper, infantry screening heavier tanks and artillery. But yeah, the numbers are gonna be a problem for sure.
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Yeah, my solution to problem two usually ends up being some kind of orbital ground support vessel that is armed with lots of long range low powered (for fast firing) beam weapons (usually particle beams at lowest strength and maximum range). Takes a minute to wear down the STO's but it works. My solution to the third problem is usually having multiple all battle tank divisions/brigades.
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Yeah, my solution to problem two usually ends up being some kind of orbital ground support vessel that is armed with lots of long range low powered (for fast firing) beam weapons (usually particle beams at lowest strength and maximum range). Takes a minute to wear down the STO's but it works. My solution to the third problem is usually having multiple all battle tank divisions/brigades.
You don't want them to be too low powered otherwise armored targets/STOs are going to be a problem. In an industrialized mountainous jungle world especially you will need to be able to destroy STOs faster than they are built and you'll be bombing them for so long that if you have maintenance on you'll need to have regular supply convoys and depending on how secure the space around is their escorts. Either way your siege could last years in a situation like that.
I haven't played Aurora in a while now but that could be a problem if STO bombardment events throw interrupts.
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In this particular instance i don't think replacements are an issue, this being spoiler territory. But as a general rule you aren't terribly wrong.
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This is the stuff Aurora is made of! ;D Thanks for sharing, Kurt.
A few little details that might be useful in future endeavors:
- Per Steve's dev posts (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg110310#msg110310), Shipboard weapons deal point-blank damage to ground units regardless of range, although I'm not sure why and I admittedly haven't tested this in a while to be sure. This should mean you can fire from your maximum range, as I believe range also doesn't matter for accuracy in orbital bombardment cases.
- The ground force signature you detect is reduced by the fortification level, so usually the signature you detect from orbit is 1/3 to 1/6 of the actual amount on the planet surface. Basically, if you detected 50,000 tons, prepare for something closer to 200,000 tons and be pleasantly surprised if you over-prepared.
- Furthermore, on top of this you will need at least a 3:1 advantage and probably more, especially if the terrain is very favorable to defenders. I have an overly wordy EffortPost (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12587.msg152235#msg152235)™ that explores some of these aspects in a very simplified manner if you're curious, but basically plan on a 4:1 or 5:1 numbers advantage after accounting for the effect of fortification on the sensor signature. So in your case, at least 600,000 tons of troops and perhaps even a million tons or more if you want to be sure. Checking an old campaign notes file, to defeat a 17,000-ton signature of spoiler ground troops I used something like 250,000 tons of ground forces and lost about 40,000 tons in the battle - so scale that up by a factor of three and you get the sense of the challenge here.
- On top of everything else, the spoiler races will usually have you beat on armor and attack tech until you're well into the midgame, especially with a Conventional start. So plan accordingly with even more troops.
- A reasonably effective way to deal with STOs is to use heavily-armored drop transports, 100,000 or 200,000 tons each with numerous armor layers, to deliver an invasion army and pull back. This can get tricky since slow transports might get shot at several times on the approach, but is probably in the long run less costly than getting your navy blown to pieces repeatedly and with great vigor. Unfortunately, the old VB6 method of fast, small dropships is not really useful anymore since we can't fit 5,000 tons of main battle tanks into a 250-ton drop module. One way to help yourself out here is to use heavy armor for your drop assault wave, since you get a lot more punch per ton at the cost of...well, cost, armor isn't cheap you know.
In general, if you start as a pacifist race it will be an uphill battle to construct enough ground units to credibly win planetary invasions, it just takes so long to build the multiple millions of tons you need... this ain't VB6 anymore!