Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Spoilers => Topic started by: nakorkren on February 10, 2022, 11:08:19 PM
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I was thinking about how best to protect my commercial ships (player built, not the civilian ships) from the new spoilers in 2.0, with a minimum of player drudge work. So far I'm seeing four options:
- Include a typical warship with each commercial fleet. Pros: Doesn't require custom patrol ship design and shipyard tooling. Cons: Ship will consume a lot of fuel, probably require a tanker to go with it or a lot more player micromanagement.
- Include a patrol warship with each commercial fleet that has a commercial or at least more efficient engine. Pros: Better fuel economy than option 1. Cons: Beam weapons will likely need to be turreted due to low ship speed, MPS needs do not drop drastically with the bigger, more efficient engines.
- Have at least one, possibly every commercial ship include a tractor beam, and have one (or more) of them tow a beam-based weapons pod (basically a normal warship without engines). Pros: good fuel efficiency, great MPS efficiency, fairly minimal speed impact to the overall fleet speed as long as the weapons pod is small relative to the commercial ship. Cons: All beam weapons need to be turreted, not sure how well towing works through multiple jump points, load/unload cycles at planets etc (may not be an issue, just don't know). Pod will need armor, weapons, etc to be updated or the pod will need to be replaced as tech advances.
- Have each commercial ship include a commercial hanger, and put a missile pod full of box launchers inside. Pros: Super low MPS consumption and long deployment due to low build cost and manning requirement for box launchers, very cheap in terms of minerals and build points, good fuel efficiency, no need for armor on the pod, only need to update pod when new ECM/ECCM/sensor tech comes out, and can be done via refit vs building new pods. Cons: not sure how effective missiles, particularly early missiles, will be against the new spoiler.
I'm leaning toward option 4, but what are your thoughts?
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I was thinking about escort carrier with commercial engines and military hangar to dock several FACs armed with large caliber oneshot railguns or possibly fighters with small caliber railguns, something like Vipers Steve uses in his current campaign.
This would allow to engage enemy ships before they get too close to commercial ships and also removes risk that enemy will have better weapon range and speed than larger escort ship with commercial engines.
Such carrier can also be used for other duties. For example as mothership for survey crafts, as repair ship for smaller warships, barge to transfer fighters/FACs between stationary fighter stations. So it will be usefull even when there are no convoys to protect.
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I'm thinking more in terms of a dedicated "system defence craft" line, with specialised designs featuring low fuel and endurance, and a single spinal weapon, which spend quite a lot of their time in dock. They wouldn't be very big, so you could haul them around in a commercial carrier (they'd need to be returned to a system with a shipyard for overhaul and repair, as most systems you'd want them in wouldn't have such facilities), but they would also serve as a useful adjunct to regular naval units in the case of an NPR attack
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The correct answer to this question depends on the capabilities of the attacker. Think of Germany in WW2. They most famously used submarines, which were slow and relatively weak. A small corvette with a few hundred tons of displacement could defeat those or at least drive them away. At the same time, there was Battleship Tirpitz in Norway threatening the arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. Against a threat like that, corvettes or destroyers could only do very little. The Allies had to send an escort matching the capabilities of Tirpitz to disencourage the Germans from attacking. This bound significant naval forces.
As far as I know, we have never seen the new spoiler race and for that reason we can only guess, whether they will use fighters, FACs or even bigger ships and in which numbers.
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The new spoilers are active in Steve's current campaign. The Mortis class is the raider ship.
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It is a bit expensive in upfront research, but I would consider commercial auxiliary carriers with Commercial Hangars + Maintenance Modules + a bit of MSP storage. This probably comes out to around 8k to 10k tons per 1,000-ton FAC or whatever else you want to put inside, but could be built out of commercial yards so probably actually easier to field than military escort carriers. 3 or 4 FACs should be enough to escort a typical commercial fleet and drive off any Raider scouts that pop up once you reach a sufficient tech level to deal with their weapons (or use box launchers).
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It's really going to depend on how my empire supply lines are setup. I am leaning toward cheap patrol boats with box missiles designed for long deployment and decent sensor suit strung along critical waypoints. The reasoning is that small raider groups will be poorly defended against missiles strikes as long as I can track and lock into them. Technically I could use small immobile stations but I don't like the lack of flexibility and those are more of a hassle to refit and resupply. Having multiple ships in different locations will also allow me to box them in so they can't easily flee out of sensor range. Sorium mining spots will definitely get their own expensive defense stations now, they are too valuable to take any risk.
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In a pre-C# LP I did that involved some attacks on commercial shipping, I used a variant of escort carriers - poorly armored, freighter sized carriers with commercial engines and lots of maintenance and deployment time, and I thought they worked out well. Surprisingly cheap, too, since they don't need most of the more expensive systems dedicated warships do, like high performance engines and lots of armor. They also have a decent logistics role since they can transport fighters and small defense platforms to colonies while also escorting freighters. I was thinking I'd give them a try with the new version.
Some sort of commercial hangar variant may also be viable; commercial hangars weren't a thing when I did that LP.
That said, I kind of like the idea you had of having a freighter with a tractor beam tugging some sort of escort, though from what we saw in the Twelve Colonies game the raiders seem a bit skittish and while a weapons platform might keep your freighters safe you might need something like fast fighters to actually destroy them.
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--- I already have lots of designs for in-system defense, so the new spoilers don't have me worried too much. I tend to use big, slow ships that are well armed and well defended for attack and fast, short range ships with plenty of firepower for defense purposes. STOs for important worlds, with them being handed down as new stuff is developed, etc.
--- I favor Corvettes of 3,125 tons and Frigates of 6,250 tons for such duties, with the Corvettes operating in one system from a local in-system base and the Frigates operating across a few systems from a regional base maybe one or at most two jumps from their assigned systems. All systems, regardless of size, will have one or more fighter bases if it has anything worth defending in it. Bigger or more important systems might have dedicated Escort Frigates, while empty systems might get an Escort Base for moving supplies through.
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One option might be to keep packs of fighters or FACs stationed near important waypoints as a rapid reaction force. The new small craft refueling systems (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg158379#msg158379) should allow you to extend their range far enough to make a one-way trip to intercept any raider scouts.
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Currently, Im using long-endurance fighters docked into my freighters early and whole warships later on. Gonna see how they fare once update is out, but seems like a nice workaround given fighter deployment time can be made long easily and commercial ships can take the tonnage.
Also my larger freighters can carry whole fleets of warships given I usually build 1-2-5Mt tugs to tug payload of same or double mass around. 300kt isn't that much space lost for the 2+Mt ships that are designed to carry 2+Mt of cargo space around.
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What I would like to know is, whether the new spoilers go for planetary infrastructure as well. Do civilian mining complexes need defenses now. This would probably put a large focus on STOs, as they require just a few clicks to set them up and they can be active for quite some time. Fuel mining bases will be interesting as well, as STOs will not work for them.
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What I would like to know is, whether the new spoilers go for planetary infrastructure as well. Do civilian mining complexes need defenses now. This would probably put a large focus on STOs, as they require just a few clicks to set them up and they can be active for quite some time. Fuel mining bases will be interesting as well, as STOs will not work for them.
If you really do want to know: in Steve's previous AAR showcasing the new spoilers, the Raiders send a large invasion fleet to occupy a colony and then send ships to loot the planet and ship all of the goodies home - including colonists presumably to be used as slave labor. We can't be sure that Steve hasn't made changes since then, unless he gets to show this off in his current AAR, but I don't expect he has changed this aspect of the behavior too much.
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What I would like to know is, whether the new spoilers go for planetary infrastructure as well. Do civilian mining complexes need defenses now. This would probably put a large focus on STOs, as they require just a few clicks to set them up and they can be active for quite some time. Fuel mining bases will be interesting as well, as STOs will not work for them.
If you really do want to know: in Steve's previous AAR showcasing the new spoilers, the Raiders send a large invasion fleet to occupy a colony and then send ships to loot the planet and ship all of the goodies home - including colonists presumably to be used as slave labor. We can't be sure that Steve hasn't made changes since then, unless he gets to show this off in his current AAR, but I don't expect he has changed this aspect of the behavior too much.
If nothing else that probably took a lot of coding work and it would be a shame to throw it away.
I hope something like that sticks around, anyways, there needs to be more reason to station ground forces on colonies.
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This is true. The ability to invade is the only thing making this new species dangerous to empires. The fact that you cannot counterattack makes them invulnerable at the same time, which can be a huge problem depending on the size and frequency of their attacks.
We will see in a couple of month how bad they really are. They could be anywhere on the scale between nuisance and devastating.
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This is true. The ability to invade is the only thing making this new species dangerous to empires. The fact that you cannot counterattack makes them invulnerable at the same time, which can be a huge problem depending on the size and frequency of their attacks.
We will see in a couple of month how bad they really are. They could be anywhere on the scale between nuisance and devastating.
You cannot invade their homeworld, but I believe Steve mentioned somewhere that they still have to replace their lost ships. So if you engage their ships and destroy them, intensity of their attack should be limited for some time.
I wonder, if you let them raid a lot of your ships and colonies, if they will get bigger boost and will be more dangerous.
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This is true. The ability to invade is the only thing making this new species dangerous to empires. The fact that you cannot counterattack makes them invulnerable at the same time, which can be a huge problem depending on the size and frequency of their attacks.
We will see in a couple of month how bad they really are. They could be anywhere on the scale between nuisance and devastating.
You cannot invade their homeworld, but I believe Steve mentioned somewhere that they still have to replace their lost ships. So if you engage their ships and destroy them, intensity of their attack should be limited for some time.
I wonder, if you let them raid a lot of your ships and colonies, if they will get bigger boost and will be more dangerous.
They will. Eventually, they also upgrade their techs which is something that will potentially make them even more dangerous in long and slow campaigns.
I think Spoilers are more interesting than classic NPRs and they allow for nice solo campaigns while controlling multiple Races.