C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[Steve Walmsley]

This is a minor suggestion not worth its own post in the suggestions thread.

Could we perhaps change the names of the ground force command bonuses?  Some of the acronyms for them overlap.  Like GCA is for Attack, Artillery, and Anti-Air.

That was a mistake by me in the rules post due to copy-paste syndrome. I've fixed it.

[alex_brunius]

I'd suggest adding an armor multiplier into the breakthrough calculations somewhere. Since cost scales by armor, without it a unit with double the armor is half as likely to get a breakthrough than the same cost in lighter armored units. Plus it kind of makes sense that an elite, highly capable group of vehicles the enemy has trouble damaging would have an advantage in a breakthrough vs the same number of more basic units.

Or perhaps some way to scale the bonus based on enemy weapon effectiveness vs the armor. That way tanks would do well at breakthroughs against infantry if they didn't have any anti-vehicle weapons, but not so well if they had a bunch of bazookas.

Yeah, several good wargames scale breakthrough capability based on if the defenders have sufficient overall AT penetration to get through the armor of the attacking vehicles.

It might also make sense to have some limit on how many times numerical superiority is allowed to focus fire on the same enemy formation, to prevent quantity from always winning over quality ( unless there is one and I missed it ). Realistically somewhere around 4:1 outnumbering on the ground you would probably start to run into problems with getting in each-others way, depending on how crowded the frontlines are. Alot of units concentrating to attack a single one of similar size also would be much more vulnerable to area attacks.

[Adseria]

I'd suggest adding an armor multiplier into the breakthrough calculations somewhere. Since cost scales by armor, without it a unit with double the armor is half as likely to get a breakthrough than the same cost in lighter armored units. Plus it kind of makes sense that an elite, highly capable group of vehicles the enemy has trouble damaging would have an advantage in a breakthrough vs the same number of more basic units.

Or perhaps some way to scale the bonus based on enemy weapon effectiveness vs the armor. That way tanks would do well at breakthroughs against infantry if they didn't have any anti-vehicle weapons, but not so well if they had a bunch of bazookas.

Yeah, several good wargames scale breakthrough capability based on if the defenders have sufficient overall AT penetration to get through the armor of the attacking vehicles.

It might also make sense to have some limit on how many times numerical superiority is allowed to focus fire on the same enemy formation, to prevent quantity from always winning over quality ( unless there is one and I missed it ). Realistically somewhere around 4:1 outnumbering on the ground you would probably start to run into problems with getting in each-others way, depending on how crowded the frontlines are. Alot of units concentrating to attack a single one of similar size also would be much more vulnerable to area attacks.

Maybe this could be affected my the new planet sizes. A larger planet would allow more troops to fight side-by-side.

Oh, and maybe terrain, too; if there's a lot of water or mountains, it would make it more difficult for large bodies of troops to move around.

[space dwarf]

Does the system for commanding a formation too large for their rating allow for negative bonuses? AKA if someone with a limit of 1000 is commanding a 10,000 formation

[Steve Walmsley]

Does the system for commanding a formation too large for their rating allow for negative bonuses? AKA if someone with a limit of 1000 is commanding a 10,000 formation

No, not negative bonus. In the case above, the bonuses would be reduced by 90%.

I didn't want to penalise players for not (micro) managing at this level to the extent that no commander would be preferable.

[Hazard]

Locating enemy AA is not difficult when flying Suppression of Enemy Air Defense missions. They'll be trying to shoot the craft down after all, which is rather noticeable at the energy levels we're talking about in Aurora.

Not getting shot out of the sky is more of a trick. Especially since part of the point is getting right into the teeth of enemy AA so they'll give their position away while you try to hit them back. So... are ECM/ECCM components going to matter in this fight, and perhaps flights flying SEAD missions should have some a greater chance of getting targeted by AA that can engage. Also, it's fairly common in modern warfare for enemy air defense units to be on the list of priority targets for artillery if their position can be identified fast enough and is close to the front lines.

Missile launchers aren't that fond of getting blown up by an artillery strike after all. So perhaps put AA units that have fired in the combat round on the list of potential counter battery targets?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Locating enemy AA is not difficult when flying Suppression of Enemy Air Defense missions. They'll be trying to shoot the craft down after all, which is rather noticeable at the energy levels we're talking about in Aurora.

Not getting shot out of the sky is more of a trick. Especially since part of the point is getting right into the teeth of enemy AA so they'll give their position away while you try to hit them back. So... are ECM/ECCM components going to matter in this fight, and perhaps flights flying SEAD missions should have some a greater chance of getting targeted by AA that can engage. Also, it's fairly common in modern warfare for enemy air defense units to be on the list of priority targets for artillery if their position can be identified fast enough and is close to the front lines.

Missile launchers aren't that fond of getting blown up by an artillery strike after all. So perhaps put AA units that have fired in the combat round on the list of potential counter battery targets?

Isn't this more a fact about the fighters finding the AA before the fighters get into effective fire range of the AA so they can attack them safely. The lower chance for finding and hitting them is the fighters scouting force being extra careful so they don't end up in the effective zone of too much AA. It certainly is allot harder to shoot something that shoots back, especially if it is really dangerous. Some AA might also be quite mobile, especially in Aurora type military, which make matters even harder.

[Hazard]

The thing is?

You can do a bait and strike technique if your sensor equipment is good enough. And Aurora sensor equipment most likely is good enough as long as it's on the same tech level.

What you basically do is let a specialised bait fighter with heavy armour and ECM loiter around the expected edge of the enemy's engagement range, crossing and escaping as needed, while another fighter loaded with ordnance stays at a greater range and monitors the area for launch/attack sites. Any attack can be located and hit within 20 seconds if you do this right. Anything that can survive a bomb that would hit in that time would be big and armoured enough to be targetable for bigger ordnance now you know it's there, anything that can dodge it would need to move fast enough their escape route can be targeted because it's not going to be hidden.


There's a point in weapons, electronics, computer and camera development where it becomes impossible to hide weapons fire, and we're getting to that point in real life.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The thing is?

You can do a bait and strike technique if your sensor equipment is good enough. And Aurora sensor equipment most likely is good enough as long as it's on the same tech level.

What you basically do is let a specialised bait fighter with heavy armour and ECM loiter around the expected edge of the enemy's engagement range, crossing and escaping as needed, while another fighter loaded with ordnance stays at a greater range and monitors the area for launch/attack sites. Any attack can be located and hit within 20 seconds if you do this right. Anything that can survive a bomb that would hit in that time would be big and armoured enough to be targetable for bigger ordnance now you know it's there, anything that can dodge it would need to move fast enough their escape route can be targeted because it's not going to be hidden.

There's a point in weapons, electronics, computer and camera development where it becomes impossible to hide weapons fire, and we're getting to that point in real life.

Sure... that is technical tactical operations and it goes both ways... it is a hide and seek games, sensors and ECM/ECCM systems goes both ways. The mechanics are suppose to be an abstraction of that. In reality it is rather dangerous to use air power against a decently similar equipped opponent air defences. The mechanic is sort of abstracting those problems.

[Hazard]

The thing is that the aircraft has the energy and range advantage. Even in Aurora that's true, as we're not talking about aircraft but about some very heavy aerospace fighters.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The thing is that the aircraft has the energy and range advantage. Even in Aurora that's true, as we're not talking about aircraft but about some very heavy aerospace fighters.

In Aurora anti-gravity hover craft and transport capacity is probably quite advanced so I see no reason why AA are using such transport to displace AA positions quite rapidly. We also need to understand that real life is never that simple. There are probably many ways that ground units can cloak themselves or even their true position by technological means. There are no reason to think that cloaking technologies are very potent and easy to use to mask energy signatures from the ground or to distort enemy sensors from the exact position a given fire is coming from.

All of this is science fiction and even in real life it is not so simple. Air-defences use multiple layers of defence, some are known and can repel fake attacks while more serious threats can be engaged using more mobile or hidden sources when the real attack comes. There are generally not a huge problem of letting an enemy know some of the AA positions as long as you can keep some of the hidden and mobile. Air-defences is also generally used with an air-force of your own which make the AA suppression that much more complicated.

This is all very hypothetical, but in real life air defences is a serious threat to air-power unless you have overwhelming air-power forces. In Aurora with this mechanic you will quite easily suppress enemy AA if you have a significant advantage in air-power, we don't need to make it easier.

[Adseria]

Don't forget that you'd probably be able to have ships in orbit too. Their sensors are going to be much more powerful than anything you can fit on a fighter.

And Jorgen, you don't need to see where the attack starts; if you see where it is and where it's going, you can easily trace it back to the source. And as for missiles, even a ship with no sensors whatsoever (and therefore relying on the default thermal sensors) can detect a missile just before it hits the ship, right? Since the minimum range is 10k km, that presumable means it's detected somewhere between 10k and 0 km. Earth's atmosphere is only 100km thick (approximately). Presumably, most combats will be taking place on similar worlds. So, your ships will always be well within range to spot missiles being fired at aircraft. And atmosphere no longer affects beam weapons, so shipboard point defence can be used to protect fighters against SAMs. Therefore, it seems likely that SAMs in the Aurora universe would be a pretty inefficient way to fight. So, AA beam weapons would probably be the major way of fighting.

Or would they? Again, passive sensors could be used to spot the gunfire, and trace it back to the source. And energy weapons are no longer affected by atmosphere, so why not use targeted orbital bombardment to knock out enemy AA?

Incidentally, Steve, I hope manual targeting of orbital bombardment will be a thing? So you can set each FC to target a different ground formation, exactly like space combat (plus maybe an option for "general targeting, where they just shoot at a random formation)? And, presumably, from that point it works like ground based artillery bombardment?

Just a suggestion.

[chrislocke2000]

The air roles are looking very interesting but this now also has me hankering for mission specific combat pods. Ie a HARM type for the AA suppression, Ground attack and air to air as well as a general purpose pod. GP would be as is then the specific pods would give good bonuses to specific role but significant penalties to being caught out of role. Given travel and reload times on carriers I'd hope this gave some interesting options in how you loaded your fighters and how you might go through different phases of use in any battle.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Don't forget that you'd probably be able to have ships in orbit too. Their sensors are going to be much more powerful than anything you can fit on a fighter.

And Jorgen, you don't need to see where the attack starts; if you see where it is and where it's going, you can easily trace it back to the source. And as for missiles, even a ship with no sensors whatsoever (and therefore relying on the default thermal sensors) can detect a missile just before it hits the ship, right? Since the minimum range is 10k km, that presumable means it's detected somewhere between 10k and 0 km. Earth's atmosphere is only 100km thick (approximately). Presumably, most combats will be taking place on similar worlds. So, your ships will always be well within range to spot missiles being fired at aircraft. And atmosphere no longer affects beam weapons, so shipboard point defence can be used to protect fighters against SAMs. Therefore, it seems likely that SAMs in the Aurora universe would be a pretty inefficient way to fight. So, AA beam weapons would probably be the major way of fighting.

Or would they? Again, passive sensors could be used to spot the gunfire, and trace it back to the source. And energy weapons are no longer affected by atmosphere, so why not use targeted orbital bombardment to knock out enemy AA?

Incidentally, Steve, I hope manual targeting of orbital bombardment will be a thing? So you can set each FC to target a different ground formation, exactly like space combat (plus maybe an option for "general targeting, where they just shoot at a random formation)? And, presumably, from that point it works like ground based artillery bombardment?

Just a suggestion.

I still fail to see why ground based energy sources and ability to fool even ship sensors could not be far superior. Ships sensors would also be tailored for space not the condition to a specific planet which planet wide sensors, cloaking systems etc. would. If you don't want to believe that ground based fire can be cloaked or enemy sensors fooled that is up to you, but I don't see why it could not or that AA installations can be moved with anti-gravity devices rather quickly after use.

If ground base AA system were as impotent and useless no one would use them. Even the US use ground based AA even if they dominate the skies. Weaker countries rely more on it because it is cheaper and from a defence perspective very strong.

[alex_brunius]

I have to agree with the concerns about potential of massed fighters doing Flak suppression and then S&D might be too powerful.

For example let's say Ground AA ends up balanced such that at same tech level it can get a 3:1 ratio kill:loss ratio vs fighters. Then that means that any attacking power that can accumulate 6 times worth of industry more fighters ( 50% hit chance when doing Flak Suppression ) than the defender can accumulate AA can wipe out the defenders more or less completely before any attacking ground forces need to set foot on the planet.

This is unless the changes with accidents and supply somehow make it prohibitively expensive to operate such large amounts of fighters vs the ground forces.


The Flak Suppression mission also seems to assume the defenders AA always will want to engage the fighters. That might not be the case if the AA is vastly inferior or outnumbered and just want to stay hidden for a later invasion or in case they are needed to defend other ground forces.