I largely approve of seeing some larger ships for a change of course.
If some people do it here and there sometimes, that makes up for a healthy sci-fi culture injection I think.
This was the original design I came up with. As you might notice, and I freely admit, the missile doctrine was ripped off heavily inspired by Vandermeer's Astral Republic game.
Good, good. When looking on how you renamed shields to reactive armor, and CIWS to Aegis Shields (typo btw.), I can see you have internalized this "all is symbolic - everything is permitted" sandboxy interpretation understanding.
This is the road to free fiction.
I will be adapting something from you too , which is the conversion to mm measurement for guns etc. . Can't believe I haven't thought about that yet and left it with game given centimeters. So un-naval.
..Uhm, I have just quickly calculated how long these 150mm "shells" would have to be to weight the 2.5 tons they do btw. .(was curious if that would be a good measure for head kino purposes). The result was somewhat over 15 meters... . I looked up an 155mm howitzer shell (
link) which is only 43 kg, so it seems it should be even over 25m. ...I guess that means it should be a higher caliber.
Howitzer equivalent would be pretty lame for ship cannons too.(Yamato had 460mm) Then again, having 100 massive cannons isn't really thematic style either.
I guess there is an issue with the data realism of Aurora here then. Launchers seem too small, and the "missiles" seem not to have enough punch for the massive caliber that even the smallest one would have.
Iowa Main Turret weights about 120 tons with 3 barrels and firing about 1.2 ton projectiles (406mm caliber here), so the launcher to ammunition weight ration is 33:1. Aurora is just 20:1 without any launcher reduction, so launchers are indeed somewhat easier to get.
It could be because we are dealing with missile launchers here after all though and not cannons, hmm. Here is one real naval launcher:
link 5777kg as 21 box launchers, and 73.5 kg of the ammunition make for about 25:1 ratio in form of standard (no mini.) launcher. If that is a representable sample, then Aurora launchers come actually pretty close.
...Weird. I know one has to consider layout and all that support tonnage that has to come on top of just the weight of something like the 120t turret, so the real ratio should be higher. However, Aurora is not really devoid of that too, with all the crew quarters, engineering, armor and engines being considered and taking up a lot of hull. Maybe crew quarters are still too small though, because I hear the crew space takes up the most of ships, which isn't really the case in Aurora. ..I think that is worth an investigation sometime in another thread. If it is true, then the deadliness of all weapons would have to scale up as a follow-up to compensate for reduced weapon tonnage.
Well, for now I guess I can accept that Iowa measurement, where one barrel is about 40t when you cut the turret up, so close enough to 50t of Aurora. That makes shells maybe 500mm, and we consider them to be about 66% heavier because of future, space and TN-material and whatnot. To avoid picturing ships with literally 100 main battleship cannon barrels sticking out, I also before in the Astral Republic thread considered the extra tonnage merely to be part of some sort of fast firing mechanism, so you could maybe restrict it to 10-20 barrels in mind, but firing 5-10 times in 5 seconds.(not optimal for the battleship feeling, but something. It was ok for the ships that I made in there, where every 'turret'-fire-control actually represented a real turret on the models that I used as inspiration, but the excess barrels would become part of the reloading mechanism)
Lost in theoretics. Back to the designs: You did designate quite a lot to shields. I know that is the core strength of large ships and you reduced it in the revision already, but it is still about 15% of the hull, so maybe 30% or more of the available mission tonnage. As center ship of a larger fleet I would say it is great, but for a ship of the line combatant I think it is too wasteful. Even the 300kt cruiser which managed to survive that whole big NPR war in my thread unscratched, despite close combat and such, had only 900 shields at the time.(though it should have been a bit more here)
Though I have to agree that no matter if you rebalance or not, the first current layout will most likely be able to conquer all but heavily fortified NPR worlds.(and Invaders ofc.) My first 120kt and partially 180kt ships couldn't shield wise stand against spoiler amm PDCs alone, but I guess that was because of the heavy cuts that maintenance takes when activated.
1. How good of a range is 70-80 bkm? Is it necessary to sacrifice some of the combat capabilities to improve the range? I've had some recent engagements that were 4 or so jumps out from Sol if that gives enough of an indication of what I am after.
You wanted it to be a long-ranged capital ship, but I consider this too little range for that here. Around 80 billion range only gives it an activity radius of around 40 billion kilometers, which is not too much on some maps.(though enough in most cases in early game I guess) Some connections and furthest research or fuel harvest outposts in my still relatively narrow Astral game map already require me to travel 40 billion kilometers out for example. Currently even my response craft destroyers of 1.35 engine power still manage to have more than 80 billion range, even though they are literally just there for out-and-back type mission. If I can manage, I try to give a capital ship a two year constant flight time provision, though I agree it goes a bit overboard, and I rarely use it all in actual exploration.(only fighter operations drain heavy on supplies)
That all falls of course if you seriously play with fuel tankers at the side of your fleet, or just behind the lines. Or maybe you use well placed refueling bases.(just occasional gas giants are too random and therefore not enough for this btw.)
I personally disliked the style in my big ship games, but I have recently made a little test game where I had fleets of smaller ships that really benefit from tanker management. It is just such a diminishment of capital ships, if you have to escort it with an even bigger tanker all the time. It should be the sight that towers it surroundings, thus must have its own fuel that gets it around.(or well organized fuel stations)
2. Is 2400 km/s too slow? I recently made it into magneto-plasma in engine tech, and my fleet speed for smaller ships is around 4000 km/s which I think is more acceptable.
Capital ships are never really fast, because of the range requirement. My swarm game had capital ships with speed of 120km/s, and I still washed two of the spoiler types in my way easily. Usually though I give the capitals 40% engine designation to kind of rebalance at least a bit, but in the end, you will only directly fight beam targets foolish enough to engage you head on (of which there are surprisingly many
), which means you must have big weaponry that definitely outranges them.(one of the strengths of big ships anyway, and then you adapted that ultimate ship-vs-ship weapon artillery shell thing, so you are good)
If the enemy consists of missile ships and still somehow has enough PD to block your torpedoes, the plan of choice is always the fighter complement, which you must have noticed in real world operation already. (maybe reduce their thermal btw.? they get spotted before firing range, which was one of my mistakes in the Astral game, yet it is fine for first strikes after fixing it - nothing against active sensors of course)
If the enemy can locate your fighters and counter them with missiles before they do anything, and you don't have escort fighters to shield them from small to medium salvos, then the only tiring thing to do for you is to wait for him to expend all ammunition on your capital ship instead, which should be immune against all natural non-beam
ship threats at this stage.
I myself never had problems with the limited speed on capitals in all my games so far. In the Astral one of course I had already TL6 and with the 40% designation thus were faster often enough nonetheless, but even when I was not(against all those remnants), the different options in the arsenal always provided me with an appropriate counter.
This is the true boon of sheer mass dominance. Even while split up in all these multi-role capacities, you're still having enough for any particular job in any case and situation. Only larger fleets of highly specialized composition could crack such a nut in the field, but that doesn't happen in normal Aurora. (otherwise: a
really large fleet of
any composition can ofc. always be a threat, but I only saw such once and long ago)
One tip for the fighters: You should maybe include at least one fighter with beam weapons. You don't need to consider the escort thing if you don't like it, but just one beam fighter is technically enough to fulfill that desirable civil ship hunting role, where you can just lock the auto-target option and then see the AI shoot them down automatically. Spares a lot of click work.
1. only 6 armor on 100kt beast ? seems a bit small 1.5kt shield is nice but you may face opponents that will tear it fast and later all hits will be critical
The only ones that are able to tear such a shield are Amm PDCs, no other. Well, if you fight invaders with beam maybe, or do really suicidal decisions like taking on a focused beam NPR fleet. I have never seen anything other than Amm break a shield of 800+ though, and this despite playing only big ships since I got the game.
2. by the time you hit 100kt naval slipway you should have far better engines for the ship - 2.4 for magneto era is small / 4-6km/s is better for this era
This is actually accurate timing. In the Astral game I could put out that first 100kt Gemini frigate also exactly at magneto plasma age. I have often read how it takes soo long to build up large yards. ...You people aren't pushing it enough I say!
3. B-type has 10 tubes per 100kt tonnage . In many cases you will not harm anybody as PD will stop this easily. I doubt you will have many of such ships so increasing salvo will be difficult.
I would personaly never go this way. Ships seem damn expensive for a broadside
It is only a tactical asset. You can't count in classical ways like tube/mass ratio. Of course a multitasker will never be cut well in anything here. But since it is so dominating in mass, it will still be powerful enough to engage 1-3 smaller targets successfully nonetheless, which is probably about 90% of the fights in the game. It is a situational weapon for whenever a missile attacker is faster than you. From personal experience I can say that it works out in praxis very well.(the 300kt cruiser of the Astral thread even just had 6 tubes, and it was still enough for said purpose)
20k is also not really expensive. What else would you do with your resources? By the time I had full TL6 in the astral game, I had acquired enough resource to build pretty much exactly 100 of these 300kt cruisers (there was picture proof in another thread to that), and just artificially restricted myself to build not more than two at that time, because I wouldn't like to manage too much. Ship lists become crazily long if you would invest that type of resource fully in just small ships, but I guess most people just stop way before as me too.
The only things that I have really found to be costly in Aurora are massive civil ships, massive pdcs, or constant auto-mine spam.(but the last only through mismanagement of the corundium income)
Meanwhile, 2 heavy railguns is just not enough firepower - even with all that shielding and armor. The captured NPR "Penetrator"-class Battlecruiser from Steve's Solarian Empires Campaign mounted 36 15-cm lasers, capable of dealing 216 damage per 10 seconds. You don't need that much firepower, but you should at least be able to put up a good fight against a ship like that in beam range. It would suck to have a warship this size be reduced to just those 2 guns if magazines should run dry!
You overlooked that the main "beam" weaponry of the ship is actually the unblockable amm-sized(/mini-asm) "shell" spam. These weapons outrange every classical beam ship by far, and manage to get through beam specialist defenses easily still while doing medium damage. They are the superior beam fight weapon.
The new world order goes as this (assuming both sides would know all these ship types):
PD-Beam ships ->counter-> Missile Ships
Artillery(mini-asm) ships ->counter-> All Beam Ships
Missile ships ->counter-> Nothing, they are pathetic against PD and obsolete unless you have mass advantage or box launching ones as 1-hit wonder. Oh, of course they can engage enemy missile ships, which you would do if you can't get the PD-Beams up to speed.
?? ->counter-> Artillery ships. There is nothing effective against these, only other artillery ships will at least fight fair. AMM or Mini-ASMs seem to be the most powerful concentration of firing power and range in the game. The reason that they aren't even weak against Missile ships despite having no beam defense on their own is of course that their ammunition can double as PD too. It is not as good as a PD-Beam ship, and Mini-ASM is less accurate as AMM, but functions well enough to survive an equal enemies' magazines just fine, so if a missile ship isn't faster, it will still end up being the one to fall.
Computer AMM ships can in theory still be reasonably countered by heavily armored tanking hulks, but you won't be able to survive that against the Mini-ASMs who do more than 1 damage per unit.
To be honest, I forgot about the salvo density issue towards the end of the design process. I'm thinking I might try out 50% reduced size launchers for all the size 1's. They were never really intended for anti-missile duties anyway, and the increased salvo density should make up for the ~25s reload time they get instead.
Don't do that. Serious lack of combat experience here. 50 salvo density is far enough to deal with everything out there that isn't a (strong) PDC base, un-dispersed NPR fleet hub or maybe invader. I had 24 on the 300kt cruiser only, and it worked on every spoiler and NPR ship formation I came across, which happened to be lots. Even small groups of ships rarely block more than 8 missiles top. Hmm, maybe at your current missile speed it will be more though. You aren't using x6 power engines? That is one of the requirements of qualifying as a shell!
(of course you can do what you want)Anyway, 50 is still really powerful, and it will get through without having to resort to miniaturization.
I do have some 1kt shuttle designs with cyro space for picking up pods, but I guess I'll have to wait for the other design revisions before checking if I have the hangar space available to pack some of those.
If you are not afraid of exploiting game weaknesses, a tip: Docked craft doesn't lose moral below that of the capital ship it is docked on under any circumstances, meaning you can load a single most miniature rescue shuttle (~120t) full with survivors until it should explode, and it will still be fine while docked.
I still have more, but that is what I found out.
for me 100 kt ship should be able to have at least 80-120 4-6 size missiles broadsiede otherwise I'm not happy
some nasty creatures out there in space simply demends huge broadsides , especialy in early and mid game
What are you thinking of? Invaders maybe
Otherwise I have not seen any threat that demanded 80-120 sizable missiles focused onto one at all, except PDC which still will be able to block all of them though.
---back to AL---
The newer, faster, easily exhaustible(both in fuel and ammunition), basically one-trick equipped, and only 2% strike craft capable Anatus-A class cruiser is a treachery to the capital ship concept.
Seriously though, it is a dreadnought at this point. Nearly all one big gun type and then rush the enemy with it. Independent capital ships who are literally able to stand on their own and make something of it in any situation, must be a center of many options and possibilities, or the day will come where you don't have the right tool for a job, and have to call for back-up. That is fine if you play a big fleet game, as jobs are shared in those, but it is no capital ship game.
Hmm, I notice though that you never directly said you wanted that other than the note about
possible independent operation. Athom was about to make some bigger ships too as he said, but he seemed to be willing to still separate the roles, so I guess people might see a sized up fleet game up there.
Yeah, to be honest the size has quite a lot to do with flavour and the sheer "cause-I-can" factor than actual combat effectiveness, [...]
...You have not understood a thing.
