C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have a question about fighters in ground combat and that is about defending fighters. Will we be able to station fighters on the planets now for use in defensive ground combat support?

Otherwise are there not a huge risk fighters will more or less always work unopposed. The aggressor are likely to destroy any stations in orbit long before ground combat even occur, or is this a premature thought?

If you have maintenance facilities, you can have fighters based at a population. If you give them a support order, they can't be targeted by normal naval combat. If you want to keep them away from ground combat as well, you can put them on support of a rear-echelon formation. Fighters in active combat can be targeted by AA units, hostile fighters equipped with AA weapons and by orbital bombardment support (more on that when I post the orbital bombardment rules).

I will make it so that fighters with the ground support order are maintained normally. The attacking force can bring in its own maintenance facilities, which will allow them to 'base' fighters on the ground.

That sound like a pretty good solution... this also mean you can launch a surprise attack with fighter from ground to space even during ground invasions. With STO and versatility of fighter crafts we might see some cool new designs of ships in general, especially anti-fighter type weapons on the ships.

Assault carriers will certainly become a much more interesting and IMPORTANT ship type in C#.... that I like very much. Also... you now might need to think more about beam combat in general for your ships if you want to invade enemy planets, as a general concept I mean.

[Hazard]

Spacecraft will still have massive travel ranges even with fighters, so you should be able to station your carriers far enough away that beam attacks are not a threat.

Of course, that does mean you need to pay some more attention when landing, but that was a thing with VB6 Aurora as well.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Spacecraft will still have massive travel ranges even with fighters, so you should be able to station your carriers far enough away that beam attacks are not a threat.

Of course, that does mean you need to pay some more attention when landing, but that was a thing with VB6 Aurora as well.

But that also mean you are out of beam bombardment range of the planet yourself which I think will be a good force multiplier for ground combat. Having your drop ships a long way from the enemy planet also means they will have to face allot more ground fire before they touch ground, not to mention enemy fighters trying to intercept them. Ground fighters can also make high atmosphere attacks and launch missile attack at a fleet in stand off mode, so they might not be safe there and closer to the planet they can target such fighters to whittle them down.

A seriously defended world might need a tough fleet able to get into bombardment range and close enough that the forces actually can land unharmed for the most part.

[Hazard]

Or accept the practical loss of the planet and drown it in nuclear fire.

Seriously, swarms of high yields missiles fired from very long range are a valid answer to a planet that's too heavily fortified to assault. Even if it doesn't kill the enemy forces on planet it will render it sufficiently uninhabitable that if the thousands of points of missile blast damage doesn't kill every civilian the dust and radiation will.

At which point there's really no point to do anything other than keep an eye on the planet so nothing tries escaping and maybe send a heavily armoured bombardment fleet out every once in a while to crack the defenses and whittle them down over time. It's not as if there's an industrial effort left to provide replacements or tech up.

[Steve Walmsley]

Or accept the practical loss of the planet and drown it in nuclear fire.

Seriously, swarms of high yields missiles fired from very long range are a valid answer to a planet that's too heavily fortified to assault. Even if it doesn't kill the enemy forces on planet it will render it sufficiently uninhabitable that if the thousands of points of missile blast damage doesn't kill every civilian the dust and radiation will.

At which point there's really no point to do anything other than keep an eye on the planet so nothing tries escaping and maybe send a heavily armoured bombardment fleet out every once in a while to crack the defenses and whittle them down over time. It's not as if there's an industrial effort left to provide replacements or tech up.

A heavily fortified planet is also likely to have substantial anti-missile defences, including planetary CIWS. It may even come down to a siege, preventing key minerals reaching the planet so that the defenders eventually run out of the materials needed to maintain their ships or build AMMs.

[Hazard]

Planets kind of have the same problem as Japanese occupied islands had in WW2. When you can no longer command the seas or space, your enemy can concentrate far more firepower than you can. The Japanese, late in the war, saw at island after island that their island based aircraft were swatted from the skies by US carrier aircraft flying in considerably larger numbers. Although it won't necessarily be cheap, CIWS should still need maintenance and/or GSP for munitions, and they can't catch every missile. You can swamp them as a result, and all you need is enough of them to ruin the industrial base of the planet.

After that, the planet is effectively neutralized as a threat, as there's no way it can produce new stuff. If you plug up the jump points all you've got is an annoyance that can't do much. And if you've got a bunch of large, heavily shielded and armoured flying bricks with a couple of decent beam weapons you can plink away at the planet at a cost of MSP and fuel while the defender has to choose to risk their STO guns or to let them keep shooting.


There's simply an opportunity cost that renders ships a superior investment when it comes to defenses, so planetary defenses are unlikely to be very heavy compared to a peer's navy. The fortifications aren't there to render a planet unassailable, that's a pipe dream, but to render them too much of a resource sink to bother while the navy's still a factor in the system's defense.

[Whitecold]

A heavily fortified planet is also likely to have substantial anti-missile defences, including planetary CIWS. It may even come down to a siege, preventing key minerals reaching the planet so that the defenders eventually run out of the materials needed to maintain their ships or build AMMs.

How do planetary CIWS and orbital platforms/shipyards/ships in orbit play together? Because we ca't build ground based AMM systems at the moment, and if they are not protected by CIWS, AMM platforms will be a prime target to weaken the defenses

[DocSpit]

Hmm, depending on how ground based beam emplacements work, I have to wonder if we won't see a generation of fast assault landing craft designed to effectively outmaneuver those emplacements by moving faster than they're tracking speed will allow. 

Get in fast, drop pods, get gone, "have fun storming the castle!"

[Hazard]

That's impossible. Tracking speed is a modifier on the accuracy rolls. Even if you go 10 times as fast as the tracking speed you'll still have 1/10th the chance of getting hit compared to something right at the limit of the weapon in question IIRC.

That said, I'd expect that FACs and fighters of 500 tons and less will be common designs for getting troops on the ground, or other, fast moving craft with drop pods, but those have the disadvantage of needing to get back out, while landed ships can stay grounded and hope they aren't overrun.


It'd be nice if we could have some way of performing the sort of special operations mission against planetary defense cannons like there were against coastal defense cannons in previous wars. It doesn't fit the current system design for ground combat though.

[DocSpit]

Well, espionage teams are already in the game.  I haven't heard much about how they'll be affected in C# though.   If they're kept mostly as-is, it could just be a matter of giving them the ability to temporarily disable defensive emplacements, or knock out fire control/sensor stations to make an assault easier. 

[Kytuzian]

Well, espionage teams are already in the game.  I haven't heard much about how they'll be affected in C# though.   If they're kept mostly as-is, it could just be a matter of giving them the ability to temporarily disable defensive emplacements, or knock out fire control/sensor stations to make an assault easier.

Espionage teams have been removed from the game. Not sure how to link to the exact post but you can just search the last page of the change list thread, it's in the post about the new ELINT system.

[Bremen]

That's impossible. Tracking speed is a modifier on the accuracy rolls. Even if you go 10 times as fast as the tracking speed you'll still have 1/10th the chance of getting hit compared to something right at the limit of the weapon in question IIRC.

That said, I'd expect that FACs and fighters of 500 tons and less will be common designs for getting troops on the ground, or other, fast moving craft with drop pods, but those have the disadvantage of needing to get back out, while landed ships can stay grounded and hope they aren't overrun.


It'd be nice if we could have some way of performing the sort of special operations mission against planetary defense cannons like there were against coastal defense cannons in previous wars. It doesn't fit the current system design for ground combat though.

Now I'm wondering how practical a 500ton fighter with both drop pods and weapon pods would be. Drop the troops off and then stick around providing fire support. Sort of like a Mechwarrior dropship.

I wonder if there's any chance fighters will auto-deploy ground units when transitioning from space to ground support.

[Iranon]

That's impossible. Tracking speed is a modifier on the accuracy rolls. Even if you go 10 times as fast as the tracking speed you'll still have 1/10th the chance of getting hit compared to something right at the limit of the weapon in question IIRC.

Speed alone doesn't allow total invincibility, but it may when coupled with ECM.

[Whitecold]

That's impossible. Tracking speed is a modifier on the accuracy rolls. Even if you go 10 times as fast as the tracking speed you'll still have 1/10th the chance of getting hit compared to something right at the limit of the weapon in question IIRC.

Speed alone doesn't allow total invincibility, but it may when coupled with ECM.

This makes a pretty compelling case that you should be allowed to make independent fire control units with fire controls of your own design. A x2 or even x4 speed modifier will likely put an end to any dreams of invincibility, and turreted weapons may also be useful for point defense applications.

[Hazard]

Now I'm wondering how practical a 500ton fighter with both drop pods and weapon pods would be. Drop the troops off and then stick around providing fire support. Sort of like a Mechwarrior dropship.

I wonder if there's any chance fighters will auto-deploy ground units when transitioning from space to ground support.

Such a fighter wouldn't be very practical. You'd be better off with the cheaper troop transport bays, since 500 ton fighters can land and should be able to deploy their troops fast enough. After that you've got basically a gunship/transport hybrid like the Hind. It'd probably be more effective if you used specialized fighters for the roles in question. A big, wallowing 500 ton fighter that has devoted something like a major chunk of its mass towards doing something other than it's doing now is much easier a target than 5 100 tonish fighters with more guns and armour, or a 500 ton transport that has dedicated the mass that would be a gunship's weapons to armour instead.

Speed alone doesn't allow total invincibility, but it may when coupled with ECM.

Nope, just like the speed advantage, IIRC ECM only drops the chances to hit by a percentage. You could still get hit, it's just notably less likely. Having both a speed advantage and an ECM advantage would greatly lower the chances of getting hit and destroyed though.