Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Suggestions => Topic started by: Malorn on June 11, 2020, 07:08:08 AM
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So, I ended up doing a lot of ground combat in my most recent game, and I do mean a LOT of ground combat. And as a result I have learned many things, mostly about how I was wrong about something. But it also gave me a chance to figure out some of the 'rough spots' involved with ground combat currently. I figured I'd share a few observations, and see if any of the rest of you have similar thoughts.
- The first and most obvious thing, which many have already mentioned, is that it would be very helpful to have a 'rebuild to template' build option, so it is not necessary to manually rebuild ground formations after they have been mauled horribly by the enemy. This could be as simple as just calculating the build cost of the current formation, and then the build cost of the formation you have selected, and cost the difference. This would also allow you to 'refit' divisions with new technology, if you so chose.
- Supply...oh my, supply. Right now there is little purpose to have any integrated supply into your troop formations, simply because in any large or long scale battle, those supplies will not be consumed unless everything has gone wrong. And, odds are, those supply elements will be destroyed by enemy action by the point they are needed. Supply is also quite frustrating in general, since it requires the constant building of new formations and the integration of those formations into an existing OoB. Lots of clicking, moving, micromanagement, etc. This can be somewhat justified in the case of an invasion, since that has the players full attention, but in the case of constant border skirmishing...it becomes a bit tiresome quickly.
- Still on supply, perhaps a system where supply elements become 'exhausted' rather then deleted, and then renew themselves with maintenance supplies? Or since that would do weird things to the minerals involved, perhaps just with vendarite? They could use construction factories (or the attached construction units which already count as 0.05 factories) to renew supply elements. It would add a really cool element to extended operations, and makes sense as they are manufacturing their own equipment according to all the rules. A 'exhaust/renew' supply logic also has all the other existing advantages of the system: having things consumed in units, being a little random, etc.
- STO setup: I love STOs, the idea is awesome, the concept is fun, they are great for defending planets. However setting up their targeting is a bit less great, especially when you have a couple hundred of them scattered across a dozen planets. First it's hard to find the proper ones and then you do huge amounts of clicking until your hand dies. It'd be great to have a planet view option, that only had the STOs on the planet. But the really important thing is it would be VERY nice if we could select multiple STOs at once to change their targeting. It would also be great if we could specify a 'default' targeting option for each STO, meaning that we don't have to manually set all the PD to missile interception. Thank god they choose their own targets...
- Also with STOs, there's a minor design problem which means that turrets are a really bad idea for STOs, but logically shouldn't be. Either turrets shouldn't be an option, because they are universally a bad plan, or that should be corrected. Basically, putting a turret on an STO means it costs more then the number of weapons on it, and is just as easily destroyed, so it effectively has less hp. Four single-weapon STOs cost less, and are four times harder to destroy then one Quad-turret STO. They also are just as powerful and accurate. Ideally this could be corrected, since I like turrets.
- Finally...unrest control. There is really no indication of which units are better at controlling unrest, or the 'capacity' each unit has to control a certain amount of population. Might be cool to have displayed somewhere, and equally, to have specialized military police elements for those troublesome rebellious colonies.
In short, I love the detail, the flexibility, and the potential lore implications. There are only a few problems that I found even with extensive use, but those rough patches are pretty rough, and make it very tempting to just nuke everything and move on. That removes a LOT of cool gameplay, but clicking is brutal past a certain point. C# aurora can actually allow massive games, so the UI problems are magnified.
Edit:
Speaking of things I didn't know, I just now discovered that supply formations which are subordinate to an HQ, cannot provide supply to other formations attached to the same HQ. This is not a good idea. Having dedicated supply formations was the only thing keeping me sane...why would having a dedicated supply formation mean it couldn't supply other units, that's what dedicated logistics is like in the real world? :'(
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I too, would like some dedicated MPs, perhaps an option like Boarding Capability and Mountain Terrain etc.
As for STOs with turrets, you can make a turret with 0 km/s tracking speed that weighs only as much as the sum total of it's weapons, so long as it is also unarmored. STOs do not benefit from turrets that have a higher than 0 tracking speed, but turrets with a zero tracking speed can be stacked within turrets, allowing quad laser STOs, or quad-quad laser STOs and other such silliness.
Not sure if STOs benefit from armored turrets... they really should though...
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I think in terms of cost effectiveness light armor, light weapons 3t infantry is the best Occupation unit class you can design. Policing strength is based on unit quantity and the square-root of unit size. So the number of units you can have is more important than their total size.
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I too, would like some dedicated MPs, perhaps an option like Boarding Capability and Mountain Terrain etc.
As for STOs with turrets, you can make a turret with 0 km/s tracking speed that weighs only as much as the sum total of it's weapons, so long as it is also unarmored. STOs do not benefit from turrets that have a higher than 0 tracking speed, but turrets with a zero tracking speed can be stacked within turrets, allowing quad laser STOs, or quad-quad laser STOs and other such silliness.
Not sure if STOs benefit from armored turrets... they really should though...
Right...but why spend the research to gain nothing? There is no advantage to having a turret. Sure, you can avoid a disadvantage, but there's still no point and it wastes research time. Though..it would mean less targeting adjustments, so that's a plus I suppose.
I think in terms of cost effectiveness light armor, light weapons 3t infantry is the best Occupation unit class you can design. Policing strength is based on unit quantity and the square-root of unit size. So the number of units you can have is more important than their total size.
That's interesting, but that still gives no idea how much unrest they might be able to control, or what size populations they might be able to manage. My point is not that I personally don't know the answers to this, but rather that such information should be integrated into the UI.
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Steve has addressed the occupation mechanics in the post quoted below
Occupation Strength and Police Modifiers
As a result of my current campaign, I've found two problems in the occupation and police code.
The first is that the Resistance Modifier of a population used for occupation or reducing unrest should be (Determination + Militancy + Xenophobia) / 300, but was actually Determination + Militancy + (Xenophobia / 300). Assuming all stats were 50, that meant the result would be 100.6 rather than the correct 0.5, creating a resistance modifier 200x higher than intended.
The second bug is that the occupation strength of ground units was far higher than intended. A ground element should have occupation strength of SQRT(Size) * Units * (Morale/100) * 0.01. However, I forgot the 0.01, so the actual occupation strength was 100x higher than intended. So the occupation strength bug countered half the effect of the resistance bug :)
For v1.12.0 the following formulae are used for occupation and police:
Occupation
- Required Occupation Strength = ((Determination + Militancy + Xenophobia) / 300) * Population Amount * Political Status Occupation Modifier.
- Political Status Occupation Modifier = Slave Colony 1.5, Conquered 1.0, Occupied 0.75, Subjugated 0.25, All Others 0
- Actual Occupation Strength is the sum of the individual element occupations strengths.
- Element Occupation Strength = (SQRT(Size) * Units * Morale) / 10000
Reduction in Unrest
- Police Strength = Actual Occupation Strength - Required Occupation Strength
- Effective Population Size = ((Determination + Militancy + Xenophobia) / 300) * Population Amount
- Police Modifier = Police Strength / Effective Population Size
- Unrest points are reduced by 100 * Police Modifier per year
As stated above the most effective occupation would be by large formation of the cheapest infantry unit you can get with a high morale. If you want to call this unit Military Police you can, I call mine Militia and station a battalion or two to deal with occasional unrest issues. Given the formulas above you would need a very large force to occupy and police a large hostile population.
For example the typical 1500 unit infantry formation could occupy approximately 15,000 population (using averages here, your mileage may vary) meaning I think you would need 100,000 formations to occupy a 1.5 billion pop world, at least until you could bring the political modifiers down. High morale troops are more effective, but I know we talked with Steve about implementing a drag on occupying unit morale. I do not know if he ever intends to implement that.
I kind of like that you can't always see the exact numbers, but are forced to try something and then see how it works (kind of like in the real world where we are currently discussing the correct number and use of police forces for a given City size)
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As stated above the most effective occupation would be by large formation of the cheapest infantry unit you can get with a high morale. If you want to call this unit Military Police you can, I call mine Militia and station a battalion or two to deal with occasional unrest issues. Given the formulas above you would need a very large force to occupy and police a large hostile population.
For example the typical 1500 unit infantry formation could occupy approximately 15,000 population (using averages here, your mileage may vary) meaning I think you would need 100,000 formations to occupy a 1.5 billion pop world, at least until you could bring the political modifiers down. High morale troops are more effective, but I know we talked with Steve about implementing a drag on occupying unit morale. I do not know if he ever intends to implement that.
I kind of like that you can't always see the exact numbers, but are forced to try something and then see how it works (kind of like in the real world where we are currently discussing the correct number and use of police forces for a given City size)
Yes, as I said, it's not that I personally am unaware that is the relevant point. The point is that information is useful, rather then having to pull out a calculator and do it by hand. Clearly you may not feel the same way, but that information exists, as you just quoted, therefore one has access to it. 'Experimentation' is not a good gameplay mechanic, that would be like experimenting with how much military protection is needed. Obviously a bad idea, there's a reason we have that listed in colonies.
It's like MMO logic where you get items that have 'a chance' of doing something. Could be 60%, could be 1%, just 'a chance'. Sure, you can read patch notes obsessively to find the actual answer, but it's silly not to give information where information exists. Respectfully, this was a suggestion, clearly one you disagree with, but I don't see how that information existing changes the suggestion that it should be listed in-game, or that military policing options might be useful?
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So you are suggesting a combat specialization (Military Police Capability) similar to boarding capability or low grav capability that increases police effectiveness, reduces combat power and increases unit cost?
It would be less expensive to simply create an infantry unit with light armor and light personal weapons and call them MP's, Militia, or the Brute Squad.
It could be useful to add Occupation Required/Actual to the ground forces summary in the third column of the Colony summary tab similar to the Protection Required/Actual.
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Is occupation required/actual not there? Because I'm pretty sure I've seen it when I was dealing with unrest on my in-system colonies due to the total absence of any naval forces.
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I just tried with one of my colonies. I drove the stability modifier to 1% by SM ing a huge population with no naval presence. the occupy Required/Actual never came up. maybe you have to actually occupy an alien colony
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So you are suggesting a combat specialization (Military Police Capability) similar to boarding capability or low grav capability that increases police effectiveness, reduces combat power and increases unit cost?
It would be less expensive to simply create an infantry unit with light armor and light personal weapons and call them MP's, Militia, or the Brute Squad.
It could be useful to add Occupation Required/Actual to the ground forces summary in the third column of the Colony summary tab similar to the Protection Required/Actual.
Honestly, that is very low on the priority list of my suggestions, more an idle thought. 1, 2, & 4 are the actual important points for making it less of a misery to handle ground combat on larger scales.
Is occupation required/actual not there? Because I'm pretty sure I've seen it when I was dealing with unrest on my in-system colonies due to the total absence of any naval forces.
It might be there on hostile worlds, but I'm aiming more at policing elements, i.e. to contain unrest on your own worlds. Troops do that, make no mistake, but it's rather hard to tell how much you need without a lot of trial and error.
I just tried with one of my colonies. I drove the stability modifier to 1% by SM ing a huge population with no naval presence. the occupy Required/Actual never came up. maybe you have to actually occupy an alien colony
Yep, I'd suspect so.
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I too, would like some dedicated MPs, perhaps an option like Boarding Capability and Mountain Terrain etc.
As for STOs with turrets, you can make a turret with 0 km/s tracking speed that weighs only as much as the sum total of it's weapons, so long as it is also unarmored. STOs do not benefit from turrets that have a higher than 0 tracking speed, but turrets with a zero tracking speed can be stacked within turrets, allowing quad laser STOs, or quad-quad laser STOs and other such silliness.
Not sure if STOs benefit from armored turrets... they really should though...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a turret with 0 tracking speed have a 0% CTH against all targets? STOs ignoring tracking speed smells like a bug.
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I just tried with one of my colonies. I drove the stability modifier to 1% by SM ing a huge population with no naval presence. the occupy Required/Actual never came up. maybe you have to actually occupy an alien colony
Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
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There is a post by Steve somewhere that explains the policing and how it will be changed in the next patch.
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My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
Right, sure, but you are saying you saw something which gave you an idea of how many troops you needed, and not on a conquered population? I've been below 90% many times on various colonies, never seen anything like that.
There is a post by Steve somewhere that explains the policing and how it will be changed in the next patch.
Yes, it's quoted above. This is really not about the 'math' of policing. It's about UI displays, quirks with supply and ground unit woes in general. Basically, it's not about the way the game calculates anything, but rather about how players are able to interact with those calculations. And really, the policing is NOT the important part. Supply and rebuilding ground forces is far more of a problem currently.
For some reason everyone seems to think it's a question about how policing works, it's kinda driving me nuts... :'(
Just for clarity, I think the following are the 'vital' parts of what I originally said:
The first and most obvious thing, which many have already mentioned, is that it would be very helpful to have a 'rebuild to template' build option, so it is not necessary to manually rebuild ground formations after they have been mauled horribly by the enemy. This could be as simple as just calculating the build cost of the current formation, and then the build cost of the formation you have selected, and cost the difference. This would also allow you to 'refit' divisions with new technology, if you so chose.
Supply...oh my, supply. Right now there is little purpose to have any integrated supply into your troop formations, simply because in any large or long scale battle, those supplies will not be consumed unless everything has gone wrong. And, odds are, those supply elements will be destroyed by enemy action by the point they are needed. Supply is also quite frustrating in general, since it requires the constant building of new formations and the integration of those formations into an existing OoB. Lots of clicking, moving, micromanagement, etc. This can be somewhat justified in the case of an invasion, since that has the players full attention, but in the case of constant border skirmishing...it becomes a bit tiresome quickly.
STO setup: I love STOs, the idea is awesome, the concept is fun, they are great for defending planets. However setting up their targeting is a bit less great, especially when you have a couple hundred of them scattered across a dozen planets. First it's hard to find the proper ones and then you do huge amounts of clicking until your hand dies. It'd be great to have a planet view option, that only had the STOs on the planet. But the really important thing is it would be VERY nice if we could select multiple STOs at once to change their targeting. It would also be great if we could specify a 'default' targeting option for each STO, meaning that we don't have to manually set all the PD to missile interception. Thank god they choose their own targets...
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My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
Right, sure, but you are saying you saw something which gave you an idea of how many troops you needed, and not on a conquered population? I've been below 90% many times on various colonies, never seen anything like that.
Well, I was saying that there were numbers (in the population summary) for occupation present and needed.
Possibly only after I actually had an occupation force on site. I didn't use those numbers to calibrate the force, I just built a general-purpose basic garrison company and shipped it over and saw that the unrest increasing events switched to events about unrest being suppressed.
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Well, I was saying that there were numbers (in the population summary) for occupation present and needed.
Possibly only after I actually had an occupation force on site. I didn't use those numbers to calibrate the force, I just built a general-purpose basic garrison company and shipped it over and saw that the unrest increasing events switched to events about unrest being suppressed.
Well...not sure what you saw then. The summary has a lovely display for 'protection required/actual', but that has nothing to do with policing or ground troops. I've got ground troops on a colony that is hovering around 87% stability, and I still can see nothing about occupation forces. Are you sure this was a colony that you founded, not one you conquered?
Yes, you get messages about policing reducing the loss of stability, and with enough troops you can prevent loss entirely. BUT...again, nothing on the summary screen about it.
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A turret with 0 km/s tracking speed just operates like a normal un-turreted weapon, it does not have 0% CTH.
As for waste of research.... waaahhh? You can only put one laser per STO. If you want more firepower per STO you would need more guns and turrets let you do that. It is also lighter than four single STOs. Four of the Single Laser examples given below would need 1,188 Tons. The Quad Turret only needs 867. Also, HORRY SHET that range... I only have Active Strength 10 and Conventional-Tech Fire Controls :o
These were thrown to together as an example, so they don't have Capacitor 3 and probably aren't terribly effective given that they are 10cm Infrared Lasers. As an aside, these should have been made Non-Combat classes, since the Non-Combat makes them harder to hit but doesn't reduce their effectiveness. The more you know. :)
STO, Single Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 297 Cost 7.94 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 0.99 Resupply Cost 0
10cm C1 Infrared Laser
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 1 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 0.3 Boronide 3.3 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 1
Development Cost 79
STO, Quad Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 867 Cost 22.04 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 2.8 Resupply Cost 0
Quad 10cm C1 Infrared Laser Turret
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 4 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 1.2 Boronide 13.2 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 4
Development Cost 220
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As of 1.9.5 there is no way to see Ground Unit Police Needed/Actual...
PPV is related only to ships, and only ships can raise or lower it or indeed affect it in any way. Military Police doesn't affect PPV and never did, nor is it intended to. It's meant to offset the unrest that comes from a lack of PPV, aka not meeting the PPV value requested. MPs only reduce unrest, they do not actually prevent it.
Mind you, they can prevent unrest in a roundabout fashion. If you have enough Police Strength the unrest will go down faster than it can rise, thus being effectively "prevented". It is important to note, however, that the unrest is generate first, then it is reduced afterwards. So if you cannot maintain enough Police Strength, it will eventually begin to creep upwards and increase over time.
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A turret with 0 km/s tracking speed just operates like a normal un-turreted weapon, it does not have 0% CTH.
As for waste of research.... waaahhh? You can only put one laser per STO. If you want more firepower per STO you would need more guns and turrets let you do that. It is also lighter than four single STOs. Four of the Single Laser examples given below would need 1,188 Tons. The Quad Turret only needs 867. Also, HORRY SHET that range... I only have Active Strength 10 and Conventional-Tech Fire Controls :o
These were thrown to together as an example, so they don't have Capacitor 3 and probably aren't terribly effective given that they are 10cm Infrared Lasers. As an aside, these should have been made Non-Combat classes, since the Non-Combat makes them harder to hit but doesn't reduce their effectiveness. The more you know. :)
STO, Single Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 297 Cost 7.94 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 0.99 Resupply Cost 0
10cm C1 Infrared Laser
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 1 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 0.3 Boronide 3.3 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 1
Development Cost 79
STO, Quad Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 867 Cost 22.04 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 2.8 Resupply Cost 0
Quad 10cm C1 Infrared Laser Turret
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 4 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 1.2 Boronide 13.2 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 4
Development Cost 220
Wow, that is a huge savings...I didn't think it would do that, I thought it would just cost 4x the base price.
As of 1.9.5 there is no way to see Ground Unit Police Needed/Actual...
PPV is related only to ships, and only ships can raise or lower it or indeed affect it in any way. Military Police doesn't affect PPV and never did, nor is it intended to. It's meant to offset the unrest that comes from a lack of PPV, aka not meeting the PPV value requested. MPs only reduce unrest, they do not actually prevent it.
Mind you, they can prevent unrest in a roundabout fashion. If you have enough Police Strength the unrest will go down faster than it can rise, thus being effectively "prevented". It is important to note, however, that the unrest is generate first, then it is reduced afterwards. So if you cannot maintain enough Police Strength, it will eventually begin to creep upwards and increase over time.
Well..yes? I never said that ground troops ought to effect PPV? Though, I admit, I do wonder why STOs don't, but eh, I get the point of having ships have a purpose.
But yeah, I do think ground troops prevent unrest. As you pointed out, enough of them cause stability to rise faster then it is falling. That is, in the end, 'preventing' unrest. I mean, if you can't maintain enough PPV unrest will creep upward as well, same basic logic. The only point, and a minor one at that, was that it would be nice to know how many troops were necessary.
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@Malorn
You didn't say it, but some of those who replied did. VB6 has a Police Strength on the Ground Units summary. C# currently has no equivalent. Some of those replying to this thread seem to me to be conflating that with the PPV. I was hoping to clarify for them if that ended up being the case.
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@Malorn
You didn't say it, but some of those who replied did. VB6 has a Police Strength on the Ground Units summary. C# currently has no equivalent. Some of those replying to this thread seem to me to be conflating that with the PPV. I was hoping to clarify for them if that ended up being the case.
Slight alteration - police strength is only shown on planets that aren't of imperial population however I believe that you will always be able to see police strength in 1.12.0
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So, intensive click fest for setting up STOs? Did Steve not spoke of a dedicated STO management screen at some point?
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Wow, that is a huge savings...I didn't think it would do that, I thought it would just cost 4x the base price.
Well, each STO unit has its own fire control, active sensor, and reactor. Saving three copies each of the fire control and sensor, and using a single larger and more efficient reactor, should save a bit.
And 10cm lasers are very small weapons, so all those fixed overhead costs are a much bigger share of the per-unit price than they would be if you were building a 30cm heavy antiship laser or a full-scale Gauss point defense emplacement.
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If I understand correctly the formula, that was quoted above - the most effective police strength force will be not one big formation, but on the contrary a stack of small formations:
4t = 2*2t
SQRT(4) = 2 < ~2.8 = 2*SQRT(2)
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A turret with 0 km/s tracking speed just operates like a normal un-turreted weapon, it does not have 0% CTH.
As for waste of research.... waaahhh? You can only put one laser per STO. If you want more firepower per STO you would need more guns and turrets let you do that. It is also lighter than four single STOs. Four of the Single Laser examples given below would need 1,188 Tons. The Quad Turret only needs 867. Also, HORRY SHET that range... I only have Active Strength 10 and Conventional-Tech Fire Controls :o
These were thrown to together as an example, so they don't have Capacitor 3 and probably aren't terribly effective given that they are 10cm Infrared Lasers. As an aside, these should have been made Non-Combat classes, since the Non-Combat makes them harder to hit but doesn't reduce their effectiveness. The more you know. :)
STO, Single Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 297 Cost 7.94 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 0.99 Resupply Cost 0
10cm C1 Infrared Laser
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 1 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 0.3 Boronide 3.3 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 1
Development Cost 79
STO, Quad Laser (10cm)
Transport Size (tons) 867 Cost 22.04 Armour 3 Hit Points 9
Annual Maintenance Cost 2.8 Resupply Cost 0
Quad 10cm C1 Infrared Laser Turret
Range 30,000 km Tracking 1,250 km/s Damage 3 / 1 Shots 4 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Duranium 1.2 Boronide 13.2 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 3 Corundium 4
Development Cost 220
I misremembered. Tracking speed 1 turrets are the useless ones. Thank you for the correction.
Let me see if I'm reading this right:
In the example there is a 321 ton savings for the quad system vs 4 of the single. Dividing by three gives us 107 tons per weapon in savings.
STOs always use a 100 ton FC*. The example indicates a starting tech FC. That leaves us with 7 tons for a sensor and a reactor.
Magnetic Confinement Fusion with 100% boost gives us 1 Power in exactly 7 tons. Without boost requires a Gas-core Anti-matter reactor. Neither of these options leave room for the sensor, so the reactor must be higher tech than this. A Vacuum Energy Power Plant with 100% boost gives us 1.2 power in exactly 3 tons. Reducing it to 2.5 tons would only give 0.9 power.
The active is an almost** perfect match for a 5 ton starting tech sensor, but that would only leave 2 tons for the reactor which isn't enough. If the active sensor is reduced to 4 tons and then given a 25% effective size bonus like the FC, that would leave exactly 3 tons for a legal reactor.
*1x range/4x speed for PD and 4x range/1x speed for anti-ship, with a (IIRC) 25% range bonus.
**There is an unexplained 1 km discrepancy in the displayed maximum sensor range, suggesting that it isn't quite the same sensor.
If I understand correctly the formula, that was quoted above - the most effective police strength force will be not one big formation, but on the contrary a stack of small formations:
4t = 2*2t
SQRT(4) = 2 < ~2.8 = 2*SQRT(2)
I understood it to mean the size of the individual elements, meaning that infantry are more effective than tanks on a ton-for-ton basis.
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If I understand correctly the formula, that was quoted above - the most effective police strength force will be not one big formation, but on the contrary a stack of small formations:
4t = 2*2t
SQRT(4) = 2 < ~2.8 = 2*SQRT(2)
Close, the size refers to the total size in terms of tonnage. So if all ground forces have 100000 tons of weight that is the value that is used for size.
Most effective policing formation is going to be one that can fit the most number of units inside any given size. Unit quantity is a bigger factor than that of size which is why further up this thread people suggest using the 3t infantryman, the smollest unit you can get.
To that effect, you can have formations be as big as you need. Just use the optimal type of unit in them for maximum policing power.
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STOs always use a 100 ton FC*. The example indicates a starting tech FC. That leaves us with 7 tons for a sensor and a reactor.
I believe you're in error here.
STOs use a FC based on either 4x range/1x speed or 1x range/4x speed, but one of the bonuses they get from there is that the FC is half-sized. Which would make it 50 tons I believe. (The other is that they get 1.25x range either way.)
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STOs always use a 100 ton FC*. The example indicates a starting tech FC. That leaves us with 7 tons for a sensor and a reactor.
I believe you're in error here.
STOs use a FC based on either 4x range/1x speed or 1x range/4x speed, but one of the bonuses they get from there is that the FC is half-sized. Which would make it 50 tons I believe. (The other is that they get 1.25x range either way.)
You are correct and that makes all the difference. Pricing both units out using a standard 0.1HS active sensor and Conventional Reactor tech gives us:
| Name | Tons | Duranium | Boronide | Vendarite | Uridium | Corundium |
| Single: |
| Static | 12 | | | 0.24 | | |
| 10cm Laser | 150 | 0.3 | 0.3 | | | 1.0 |
| 1/2 size BFC | 50 | | | | 2.0 | |
| Search Sensor | 5 | | | | 1 | |
| R1 Reactor | 80 | | 3 | | | |
| Total | 297 | 0.3 | 3.3 | 0.24 | 3 | 1 |
|
| Quad: |
| Static | 12 | | | 0.24 | | |
| 4x 10cm Laser | 600 | 1.2 | 1.2 | | | 4.0 |
| 1/2 size BFC | 50 | | | | 2.0 | |
| Search Sensor | 5 | | | | 1 | |
| R4 Reactor | 200 | | 12 | | | |
| Total | 867 | 1.2 | 13.2 | 0.24 | 3 | 4 |
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If I understand correctly the formula, that was quoted above - the most effective police strength force will be not one big formation, but on the contrary a stack of small formations:
4t = 2*2t
SQRT(4) = 2 < ~2.8 = 2*SQRT(2)
Close, the size refers to the total size in terms of tonnage. So if all ground forces have 100000 tons of weight that is the value that is used for size.
Most effective policing formation is going to be one that can fit the most number of units inside any given size. Unit quantity is a bigger factor than that of size which is why further up this thread people suggest using the 3t infantryman, the smollest unit you can get.
To that effect, you can have formations be as big as you need. Just use the optimal type of unit in them for maximum policing power.
Occupation value is based on the square root of the size in tons of the designed elements regardless of how they are placed in formations.
For example:
- infantry element with light armor and light personal weapons weighs 3 tons and has an occupation value of sqrt(3)=1.732 * the number of elements*morale/10000
- infantry HQ (10,000) has a weight of 100 tons so an occupation value of 10 the number of elements*morale/10000
A formation of 100 morale Military Police with 3200 MP's and 2-HQ would have a police value of 55.624 not sqrt(9800)*100/10000= 0.99.
Having two 100 morale MP formations of 1600 MP's and 1 HQ each would have a police value of 55.624 not 2*sqrt(4900)*100/1000= 2*70*100/10000=1.40.
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I think the amount of discussion on the topic makes it obvious that an in-game UI display would be quite helpful. ;)
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.
For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.
For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.
I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.
Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.
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Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.
Not so. Or rather, half true, but the other half makes it completely misleading.
Yes, units generate 100 times as much police strength as they should. But populations usually generate more than 100 times as much unrest as they should. So on balance fixing both bugs will normally make military suppression of unrest moderately stronger.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11593.msg136342#msg136342
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.
For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.
I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.
Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.
Oh I completely agree with you, Mars should have left the empire long ago. I was surprised that it didn't. In fact I at one point had built almost 100 colonial guard battalions (basically 5k ton police formations) to try and control the unrest there. But eventually I gave up since it was getting resource constraining to field that many garrison troops.
Mars is slooooowly being terraformed into a less watery world, but it seems it is much slower a process to dehydrate a planet than to hydrate it.
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Did you occupy the colony at all? Because, again, I've seen those lines, and not on an alien colony.
Question...how low did the unrest need to go for that to show up? I've had mine at 80% with nothing.
My stability didn't go below 90% before I sent in the troops, at which point they kept things stable.
I am fairly certain that it is actually unnecessary to use garrison/police forces to reduce unrest because even if unrest causes political stability to drop to 1% (which seems to be the minimum) the population doesn't rebel or succeed from the empire or anything like that. I believe there is a penalty to manufacturing however.
For example, I once accidentally flooded Mars (book of Genesis style) and reduced the population capacity from about 2 billion down to about 200 million. The population was rather upset about this and I gave up trying to reduce unrest so political stability eventually dropped to 1%. However, Mars still has about 1.4 billion citizens present from the pre-flood population.
I think a rebellion or secession scenario needs to happen at stability that low. But I imagine mars isn't very good at contributing to the economy right now.
Also it is worth remembering that in 1.11.0 there is a bug that makes policing 100x more effective than steve intended - so when an update arrives and this is rectified you are going to find that you will need a lot more police officers on the prowl than before.
Oh I completely agree with you, Mars should have left the empire long ago. I was surprised that it didn't. In fact I at one point had built almost 100 colonial guard battalions (basically 5k ton police formations) to try and control the unrest there. But eventually I gave up since it was getting resource constraining to field that many garrison troops.
Mars is slooooowly being terraformed into a less watery world, but it seems it is much slower a process to dehydrate a planet than to hydrate it.
The problem with dehydration is that at fast terraforming rates if you do 30 day increments you end up completely removing water vapour - ofc a trace amount returns as there is still water but what this does is that the game sets your terraforming state to "none". So either you do 5 day increments or like me you get mad and SM mode the hydrosphere down after waiting an arbitrary amount of time.
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I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).
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I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).
Are we still talking about terraforming? That terraforming happens every production cycle.
I don't know if theres anything special that happens during combat terraforming but either way you'd have to be passing 5 days through 5 second increments which I find hard to believe.
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I'm setting production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.
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I usually run with 1 or 5 day increments (or 5 seconds for combat situations).
Are we still talking about terraforming? That terraforming happens every production cycle.
I don't know if theres anything special that happens during combat terraforming but either way you'd have to be passing 5 days through 5 second increments which I find hard to believe.
I was talking in general terms. I usually run the game at 1-5 day increments, other considerations notwithstanding.
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I'm setting production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.
6 hour cycles are not standard? I assume you have access to source code and are able to recompile with non-standard options?
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I'm setting production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.
6 hour cycles are not standard? I assume you have access to source code and are able to recompile with non-standard options?
In the game settings you can change the value for production cycles - by default its 430000 or something which corresponds to 5 days in seconds. Idk why he did 6 specifically but it is almost certainly possible to reduce it to that.
If you really hate yourself you could make the production cycle 5 sec increments.
So no there is no need for decompiling the code for this - I think you misunderstood him as having 6 hour increments available as explicit increments like 3 and 8 hours.
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Idk why he did 6 specifically
Have tried 8 hours to match standart 8h inc, but it appeared there is ~1/2 chance that exactly matched cycle will not be done (some rounding issue?), so now it's 6 hours as it's plausibe production shift too.
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Idk why he did 6 specifically
Have tried 8 hours to match standart 8h inc, but it appeared there is ~1/2 chance that exactly matched cycle will not be done (some rounding issue?), so now it's 6 hours as it's plausibe production shift too.
Change it to 5 secs or no balls ;D
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I'm setting production cycle to 6 hours at every game start just to have less strange problems like that.
6 hour cycles are not standard? I assume you have access to source code and are able to recompile with non-standard options?
In the game settings you can change the value for production cycles - by default its 430000 or something which corresponds to 5 days in seconds. Idk why he did 6 specifically but it is almost certainly possible to reduce it to that.
If you really hate yourself you could make the production cycle 5 sec increments.
So no there is no need for decompiling the code for this - I think you misunderstood him as having 6 hour increments available as explicit increments like 3 and 8 hours.
You are right, I forgot about the production cycles setting.
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It happens quite often that the discussion gets away from the topic at hand, Malorn.
I definitely agree with you on all points. The supply system especially needs some loving.
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I am having a small battle against some strange robots... ::)
My 2 Tank regiments are firing like maniacs, I mean a lot, probobly over 1000 shots... Very few hits and only 17 enemy units destroyed... :o ???
Cant be right?
One thing I noticed is that they (The enemy) targets officers, I meen they REALY TARGET my officers! >:( Losses in command staffs are a lot more than any other... Between 40-50% losses in my mobile infantery units, after a few days fighting...
Are staffs supposed to b e set in (Avoid combat)
I cant se any supporting artillery fire (Set as Support) or any Orbital bombardments, some 20 CLs with lasers and Railguns...
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For orbital bombardment you need to set the ship as support for ground formation with FFD equiped unit. Then the ships will fire on enemy ground units. Give the fleet command - Provide Orbital Bombardment Support they will show in the same window as ground units.
Command formations (and supply trucks) should be set as Rear Echelon and HQ units should definitely be set as avoid combat to decrease chance of them beiing hit.
If your unit are not hitting then you may have penalties for fighting in hostile enviroment. Enemy is most likely dug in and maybe in difficult terrain like mountains or jungle.
Tech difference has also effect on how good the performance of your units is.
My setup for Corps:
(https://i.ibb.co/FK23CBR/Corps.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
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If you actually want to perform serious bombardment of planets you should consider using something like this for that purpose. You could add another engine and additional armour and shields if you want to use it during the assaulting phase to get rid of enemy STO as well. But it is mainly built for supporting ground troops for as cheap a price as you can get it, this cruiser should be able to fire it's weapons for a very long time.
Devastator class Bombardment Cruiser 20,829 tons 891 Crew 1,836.3 BP TCS 417 TH 1,250 EM 0
3000 km/s Armour 4-67 Shields 0-0 HTK 185 Sensors 8/8/0/0 DCR 10 PPV 230
Maint Life 2.90 Years MSP 1,351 AFR 347% IFR 4.8% 1YR 237 5YR 3,556 Max Repair 312.50 MSP
Captain Control Rating 4 BRG AUX ENG CIC
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
Ion Drive EP625.00 (2) Power 1250.0 Fuel Use 52.41% Signature 625.00 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 640,000 Litres Range 10.6 billion km (40 days at full power)
25.0cm C0.05 Infrared Laser (40) Range 80,000km TS: 5,000 km/s Power 16-0.05 RM 10,000 km ROF 1600
20cm Railgun V10/C1 (10x4) Range 40,000km TS: 5,000 km/s Power 12-1 RM 10,000 km ROF 60
Beam Fire Control R80-TS5000 (2) Max Range: 80,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R6 (2) Total Power Output 12.8 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor AS6-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 6.4m km MCR 574.5k km Resolution 1
EM Sensor EM1.0-8.0 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-8.0 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
You also could add/replace some smaller rail-guns for engaging regular infantry, the 20cm rail-gun will have a damage of 20/40 a 10cm railgun will have damage profile of 10/20... this is AP/Damage. The lasers are more against heavier vehicles with damage profile of about 31/63.
In general I prefer my orbital bombardment cruisers to deal with static and vehicles while my troops can deal with enemy infantry more economically.
The 25cm laser only cost 2 MSP when it fails and the 20cm railgun cost 3.5 MSP when it fails, so you can shoot a long time with these. Recharge times is of no concern for bombardment purposes.
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The 25cm laser only cost 2 MSP when it fails and the 20cm railgun cost 3.5 MSP when it fails, so you can shoot a long time with these. Recharge times is of no concern for bombardment purposes.
Really sorry to hijack, but can you elaborate? Is there a different cost for space-to-ground firing failure MSP cost than the normal?
I remember building triple 20cm turrets and they failed requiring ~350 MSP to repair them, back in version...~1.5? Were there any changes on that front or something?
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The 25cm laser only cost 2 MSP when it fails and the 20cm railgun cost 3.5 MSP when it fails, so you can shoot a long time with these. Recharge times is of no concern for bombardment purposes.
Really sorry to hijack, but can you elaborate? Is there a different cost for space-to-ground firing failure MSP cost than the normal?
I remember building triple 20cm turrets and they failed requiring ~350 MSP to repair them, back in version...~1.5? Were there any changes on that front or something?
This is built specifically for bombarding planets, thus being very cheap. As you don't need range or care about fire rate you can use the lowest tech possible and reduce the size to half...
25.0cm C0.05 Infrared Laser
Damage Output 16 Rate of Fire 1600 seconds Range Modifier 10,000
Max Range 160,000 km Laser Size 4 HS (200 tons) Laser HTK 2
Power Requirement 16 Recharge Rate 0.05
Cost 2.0 Crew 12
Development Cost 825 RP
Materials Required
Duranium 0.4
Boronide 0.4
Corundium 1.2
versus say...
25.0cm C4 Far Ultraviolet Laser
Damage Output 16 Rate of Fire 20 seconds Range Modifier 50,000
Max Range 800,000 km Laser Size 8 HS (400 tons) Laser HTK 4
Power Requirement 16 Recharge Rate 4
Cost 80 Crew 24
Development Cost 1950 RP
Materials Required
Duranium 16.0
Boronide 16.0
Corundium 48.0
Railguns are still more space efficient for the same damage but lasers damage profile is higher for the same tech level so having both can often be usable if you have both technologies. The difference in effectiveness is not huge though.