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Posted by: Arwyn
« on: April 25, 2021, 02:31:05 AM »

Quote from: SevenOfCarina on April 23, 2021, 03:09:02 PM
The logistics problems that most people usually associate with missile fleets apply equally to beam fleets too. Beam ships are strictly superior to missiles only when they can achieve a perfect victory without taking losses, which is very very unlikely unless you're at a substantial tech advantage. Refilling the magazines of a fleet is significantly cheaper than needing to outright replace 20-30% of the fleet after each engagement, especially considering the loss of experienced crew. Plus, beam ships need to be faster so they're going to need more gallicite anyway, and they're usually a bigger burden on fuel and MSP. Worse, they pretty much need to be replaced every engine generation, unlike missile ships, which have no issues with using obsolete engines or shooting obsolete missiles.

I agree, sort of. The thing is, even if your running pure missile fleets, you have some other classes present for AM duties, or you have really big expensive ships. Missiles eat lots of mass on ships with launchers and magazines, add anything else and you get very expensive (and big) ships. Even if thats AMM boats.

So, if your talking about refit/replacement, I have yet to have an equal fight were I didnt take damage/casualties. Now, unequal fights, sure. I have had missile fleets walk away scot-free after barfing a literal wall of missiles at an enemy and obliterating them before they got in range. Fun when it happens. I have also creamed enemy fleets with fighter strikes they couldnt detect. Also fun when it works.The majority of the time though, (assuming your not gaming the system) your going to have damage no matter the fleet composition. So your going to being investing in replacements, no matter what.

Where there is some trade off is that obsolete beams are useful longer, at least IMO. If you have a beam ship, they are still of some use even as obsolete platforms. Missiles are a lot harder, as you get more than a generation back, or worse, your hit rate effectiveness drop and the enemy counter outpace them. So, if you invest in upgrading engines and fire controls, while expensive, is still cheaper than building a net new ship, most of the time. Obviously at some point it is counter productive to upgrade and its better to scrap and recover minerals. Those beam ships arent great for front line service, but make decent pickets and patrol vessels. Thats as true in Aurora as it is in the real world. There are still WW2 vintage vessels in active service as patrol craft including minesweepers, corvettes, and tank landing craft.

Fun fact, the Russian Navy has the longest continuously serving naval vessel. Originally commissioned in 1915 (World War 1!) as the salvage ship Volkov, the ship was renamed after the Revolution as the Kommuna. She is still in service as a sub tender today.

So, those (smaller) obsolete beam ships can get shuffled off as patrol craft and military strength to backwater systems. More importantly, they dont need a fleet train to support them or dedicated ammo depots, just maint facilities.

I do tend to disagree with missile replenishment being cheaper all the time. I have absolutely run into issues with minerals in sustained wars due to the missile replenishment eating me alive. This is actually one of the reasons I dont use box launchers as primary missile systems. They are Godawful expensive to feed, and they do tend to either A) Overkill the hell out of stuff, wasting missiles or B) Shoot their bolt and have to run away from the battle. There is also they annoying tendency for box launchers to blow up when struck, and I have had that happen enough to find them not worth it on bigger ships, especially early game. I use them all the time on fighters and small craft though.

In particular, AMM ships EAT missiles by the fistful. I have had them consistently be one of the biggest replenishment issues. That was one thing that has caught me a couple of times.

Tactically, I agree with your assessment. Missile boats are more efficient cost wise. Strategically, they are more expensive in sustainment, infrastructure support, and logistics chain. Particularly the longer the shooting war goes, beams just tend to be a better investment over longer periods.
Posted by: smoelf
« on: April 24, 2021, 04:46:12 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on April 04, 2021, 08:16:19 PM
It is possible to know what you need in the future and then build your economy around it.

I think this is key. As I have progressed in the game, each iteration has taught something different about what to keep an eye on. I had one game with a severe gallicite crunch and ever since, I have watched my gallicite levels very closely, even before I need it to massproduce warships. In my latest save I was instead close to getting a corundium crisis, since I hadn't really expanded my mining operations to those levels in previous games.

Of course luck plays a role in which minerals you have access to at various accessibilities, but knowing what to plan ahead for, means that you can prevent the disaster by expanding accordingly.
Posted by: Zap0
« on: April 23, 2021, 08:29:23 PM »

Quote from: Nori on April 23, 2021, 03:06:31 PM
Quote from: Zap0 on April 23, 2021, 03:02:31 PM
Quote from: Nori on April 23, 2021, 01:34:39 PM
For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
Really? I thought there was a bonus to going under 100% to Gallicite? Must just be misremembering. I haven't fired up the game for a few months while waiting for 1.13.  :P

Ah, that there is, but that's the fuel consumption modifier. Different knob to turn :D
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 23, 2021, 03:09:02 PM »

Quote from: Demetrious on April 22, 2021, 05:19:25 PM
Because they've never watched three years of missile production get eaten in about 20 minutes by a very big, angry ball of railgun fighters.
Yes, because constructing a ball of railgun fighters that big would require twenty years' worth of gallicite production! A 10cm railgun is 150dT - add in the reactors and fire controls, and a useful point-defence railgun fighter is going to displace at least 400dT, more likely 500dT. A big size-six missile will only displace 15dT, in contrast. Let's take 450dT and assume the fighter has a maximum speed one-third that of the missile, and neglecting range penalties and officer bonuses, a single fighter will shoot down 4/3 missiles, on average - the gallicite cost to shoot down one missile per 5s increment using these railgun fighters is 3/4 * 450dt/15dt/3 = 7.5 times the cost of a single missile! To break even, you'd need to shoot down a total of eight missiles per railgun fighter over their lifetime, which is only ever happening if the enemy is nice enough to use full-size launchers. A railgun fighter might take down two equal-tech missiles per fighter per increment on a good day, which is pretty trash considering that a single size-six box launcher is 45dT and packing enough on an equal-tonnage missile fighter to overwhelm its point-defence is utterly trivial. It'll cost the enemy perhaps half the cost of your fighters in ordnance to destroy them, which is still quite bad in a war of attrition.

The logistics problems that most people usually associate with missile fleets apply equally to beam fleets too. Beam ships are strictly superior to missiles only when they can achieve a perfect victory without taking losses, which is very very unlikely unless you're at a substantial tech advantage. Refilling the magazines of a fleet is significantly cheaper than needing to outright replace 20-30% of the fleet after each engagement, especially considering the loss of experienced crew. Plus, beam ships need to be faster so they're going to need more gallicite anyway, and they're usually a bigger burden on fuel and MSP. Worse, they pretty much need to be replaced every engine generation, unlike missile ships, which have no issues with using obsolete engines or shooting obsolete missiles.
Posted by: Nori
« on: April 23, 2021, 03:06:31 PM »

Quote from: Zap0 on April 23, 2021, 03:02:31 PM
Quote from: Nori on April 23, 2021, 01:34:39 PM
For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
Really? I thought there was a bonus to going under 100% to Gallicite? Must just be misremembering. I haven't fired up the game for a few months while waiting for 1.13.  :P
Posted by: Zap0
« on: April 23, 2021, 03:02:31 PM »

Quote from: Nori on April 23, 2021, 01:34:39 PM
For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
Posted by: Nori
« on: April 23, 2021, 01:34:39 PM »

For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

I wonder if it would make sense to have engines require less Gallicite, but require other materials, Mercassium and Boronide possibly. I mean if you think about it, engines are complicated and should require a slew of resources.
Posted by: Demetrious
« on: April 22, 2021, 05:19:25 PM »

Quote from: Stormtrooper on April 04, 2021, 03:18:05 PM
Quote from: kilo on April 04, 2021, 02:32:07 PM
One of the largest sinks for Gallicite is missile engines. Single missiles might be cheap, but thousands of them can easily put a dent in your reserves. In the last games I played, I dit not build any missiles and Gallicite has not been a problem ever. I ran into a Corrundium, Neutronium and worker problem later, which stopped my buildup of mines and construction factories at some point. 25% growth of both is not sustainable for more than 50 years.

Actually you pretty much confirmed my experience which is why missile ships play a role of occassional support only in my case. But if this is how things look like, then why the hell is everyone constantly talking how "op" missiles are if they require such huuuuuge resource investment?

Because they've never watched three years of missile production get eaten in about 20 minutes by a very big, angry ball of railgun fighters.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: April 06, 2021, 11:37:50 AM »

Resource constraints are a constant with Aurora. Yes, Gallicite can be a killer, but as several folks pointed out, its all about scale.

I dont use missiles early on, except in very limited numbers. My main fleet is railgun based at start, with some missile destroyers. The issue early is that missiles are A) Not great early, and B) require a fair amount of fleet train/colony build out to support. Early on, I dont think its worth the investment vs. getting colonies and industry established. Railguns do double duty (offensive/defensive) early on, and are cheaper to build and maintain.

Especially early tech, I just dont think missiles are worth the investment. I would rather put the investment into engines. Once I get to Ion tech, I start building out the infrastructure to support missile combatants.

Early on, the mineral squeeze for me is Corrundium and the ever present Duranium. I tend to place my early colonies based on mineral richness and habitability, then work to get them built up for local mining and production.

Missiles are just too much of an investment early, for poor return. I think they are a better mid to late game weapon, but I do use them in a secondary role early.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: April 06, 2021, 05:02:59 AM »

Quote from: Stormtrooper on April 05, 2021, 06:57:09 AM
Quote
Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth

Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.


I would agree, you should never focus industry on any one place... you should make sure that minerals are the thing you move the most eventually unless it is a new colony. Most well established colonies should have industry too support themselves so all you have to move in space are minerals. Minerals take up such a small space in comparison to the final product. You will save both minerals, population productivity and fuel this way over time.

Thing you can focus heavily on at Earth would be population growth, Wealth and Research... I would usually offload ship construction for Luna. Earth only retain enough industry to support its own population growth and some extra.

Anything that is a physical thing you should spread out construction off as much as possible, the more population you have on a colony the more self sufficient you should make whatever items they need... so this is anything from facilities, troops, supply, fuel, missiles, fighters etc..

My colonization plan are usually to make any colony self sufficient in terms of industry by the time they hit around 100m people... depends slightly on how mineral rich that colony is. By the time a colony hit about 300m people I want them to be completely self sufficient on pretty much all needed production long term.

Of course you still have some colonies being more concentrated on some things than other, but for me that comes after they are self sufficient. Smaller colonies often are very focused on one or two things. There also are the possibility to have one large production center per system. If distances to colonies are small enough then using freight to move facilities are not too expensive or time consuming.

Cargo ship who transport facilities should mainly be relegated to Auto mines for none colonized worlds and to kick-start new colonies. Your core colonies should only need mineral transportation to do its work, it will save you allot of resources (even when you factor in governor bonuses for specialization).

The most important thing is to make sure you have a balanced income which can sometimes be hard in this game.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: April 06, 2021, 04:39:48 AM »

Quote from: SevenOfCarina on April 06, 2021, 12:30:59 AM
Quote from: Garfunkel on April 05, 2021, 04:32:12 PM
Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.

The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.

Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.

Missile versus beam actually work just fine in terms of balance if you restrict box launchers and overall weapon coverage to more "realistic" proportions. There have been discussion on this concept before. Aurora allow us too much freedom in construction sometimes that is not realistic in terms of design space and proportion of systems and hulls pace.

I have found out that if you build the ships with a bit more "realistic" proportions then balance become allot better, this is mostly seen if you play multiple factions at the same time. It also reduce the effectiveness of how missiles works as well overall.

I have suggested that Aurora incorporate a bit more "realistic" ship design configurations with different types of hull areas for different systems to be placed at. If you want allot of box launcher then you have basically no armour (the compete for the same space) on the ship for example... and even then you are still relegated to the outer shell of the ship unless the ship is small enough to fit the launchers on a spinal position and have the ship built around the box launchers (as in a fighter or sometimes in a FAC, depending on launcher size).

Anyway, this is sort of off topic...  but it does make missiles and beam allot more balanced. You should not min/max Aurora and instead introduce restrictions so the game become more self balancing. The odd crazy build can be fun now and then but don't go all crazy. I'm not telling anyone how to have fun... I'm just giving a strong suggestion...  ;)
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 06, 2021, 12:30:59 AM »

Quote from: Garfunkel on April 05, 2021, 04:32:12 PM
Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.

The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.

Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: April 05, 2021, 04:32:12 PM »

It's always interesting to see this cycle of new players come to the forum, start learning the game, pose all the WHY!? questions, and eventually accept Aurora for what it is, only for the silence to be broken by the next one(s)  ;D

Aurora is all about averages. Missiles generally beat beams on tactical level, though there are exceptions. Mineral generation is random so regardless of your playstyle, it is possible that you're starved of one/some minerals while showered with something else - then your playstyle can exacerbate that massively. So, in this campaign you're playing, Stormtrooper, Gallicite might be your biggest headache, but you're probably just unlucky with mineral generation. Next planet you survey might give you enough for a decade.

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on April 04, 2021, 08:16:19 PM
I also see allot if people that simply build too much too fast in terms of warships when it really is not needed
And not just warships but everything. Because Aurora doesn't have many limiters, it's easy to run head first into the crunches. For example, you build installations until you run out of population or you build loads of ships with massive tanks until you run out of fuel.

Quote from: Stormtrooper on April 05, 2021, 06:57:09 AM
Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.
Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.
Posted by: TMaekler
« on: April 05, 2021, 02:25:27 PM »

I find that with the extra tools (Marvin, Electrons) the management of minerals has become easier because you can forsee in a better way that you steer towards a mineral crisis and can react earlier to it. Other than that I mostly think it depends a lot upon your playstyle and Min/Max if, how, and when you run into mineral/fuel issues....
Posted by: Vivalas
« on: April 05, 2021, 10:33:00 AM »

Quote from: Stormtrooper on April 05, 2021, 06:57:09 AM
Quote
Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth

Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.

Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.

I'm honestly more of a fan of mixed or thematic fleets because doing nothing but missile swarms against everything is pretty bland imo and curtails most of the rest of the game, hence why I'm not part of the "missiles op" gang, because even if missiles are OP the AI of the NPRs / spoilers is nowhere near advanced enough to have to minmax in order to beat it. I think also as this discussion has shown, missiles aren't necessarily "op" because, if nothing else, they cost a ton of resources when they finally get to the level that they outclass beam weapons (a statement I think in itself is debatable).