Look at how the Soviet Union was planning to counter American carriers during the Cold War and utilize that.
1) Submarines with nuclear torpedoes.
2) Massive sea-skimmer missile waves launched from long-range bombers.
3) Carrier-cruiser hybrid armed with extended range missiles and strike fighters to finish off the survivors.
Thoughts on targeting the fighters instead of the missiles? Either with AFMs, or maybe they try to build carriers of their own.
Hopefully the fact that they need to depend on fuel runs out to Saturn will give the other powers opportunities to seize the initiative;
For a while I was actually thinking of having the Alliance try this. Small ships+ECM means the fighters have to get closer tho them than against capital ships, making it easier to spot the fighters before they fire. But I think for them it makes sense to try to kill the carrier, and they don't have the resources to try both I think.Thoughts on targeting the fighters instead of the missiles? Either with AFMs, or maybe they try to build carriers of their own.
They should prove quite vulnerable if they're away from their carrier (can't just redock) and are outside of their own AMM envelope. The question is, can you detect them before they fire? A race in sensor tech might be fun. You'd still have a home advantage on your own worlds as DSTS can detect fighter engines at quite a distance.
Hopefully the fact that they need to depend on fuel runs out to Saturn will give the other powers opportunities to seize the initiative;
You could make a doctrine around that. If not for the Martians, then for some Asteroid Belt-dwellers or someone: The Earthers can't be everywhere at once. If they're coming to you, they're leaving their Saturn refineries or their shipyards on Earth without cover. Don't try to counter the fleet, try to counter whatever static defenses they have at either location.
I'm setting up a multi-faction game that will pivot around Earth as the Sol system superpower. Earth uses carrier launched missile fighters, backed by large railgun cruisers (plus high rate of fire missile destroyers to try and kill enemy fighters).
Since Earth is the dominant power, the other factions need to shape their doctrines to counter it. There are two factions I'm still working out, and I'd like some advice. Note that the doctrines chosen don't ACTUALLY need to work; they just need to make sense and be distinctive.
The first faction is the Jovian Alliance, claiming the four large moons of Jupiter along with Jupiter's sorium reserves. Since they have such good fuel access, they are going with small fast ships using heavy engine boost. ECM on FACs and corvettes to ruin the fighters engagement range; their plan, such as it is, is to avoid the fighters and try to snipe the carrier with ECM cruise missiles launched from FACs. Then run in with microwave+plasma carronades to melt the railgun cruisers. I think this doctrine is ok, and certainly thematic, but I'd welcome some feedback.
Second faction, which I am less sure about, is Mars. They have a larger population and more industry than the Alliance, but poor access to fuel. So I'm thinking they should go with big ships so they can use efficient engines. The issue is that with the allotted tech level (INPE, but pretty much everything else is <4000RP), it is really hard to stop mass missile strikes. They can barely make a worthwhile AMM (and I had to give them more missile tech than I really wanted...missiles are supposed to be Earth's thing), so they are pretty much stuck with railguns which are really inefficient. I'm thinking they might try to use their large ships to mount big actives and try to shoot down the fighters before they can launch, but I'm not sure what they should do in terms of offense. I already have another faction running big shielded ships with particle beams, so the only remaining offensive option seems to be lasers. But that doesn't feel all that different from the particle beam doctrine, TBH.
Generally speaking, part of this is going to be giving Earth some actual problems that she needs to solve, which provide the other powers the ability to exploit. Thinking purely in terms of fleet engagements is going to mean that no matter the doctrine Earth will win by sheer weight of having a superpower economy that can support equal or sub-equal trading and still end up winning a war. However, if you give Earth some serious problems in terms of economics that will provide the basis for asymmetric warfare that can even up the odds a bit.
This means any doctrines the weaker powers have must be based on exploiting those weaknesses, not on winning a Mahanian fleet engagement. In fact, both weaker powers should be explicitly planning on never fighting the main Earth fleet, even in self-defense - if Earth actually concentrates her fleet against one of the lesser powers, the strategy is to do as much crippling economic damage as possible so that Earth is vulnerable to the remaining undamaged power sweeping up the mess. This threat is what stops Earth from launching an all-out assault, not the threat of losing a fleet engagement.
If you're going to run with a capital ship doctrine, the name of the game is PD plain and simple, and given your proposed starting conditions I think Gauss turrets are the way to go here. Beyond that, again, you have to ask what are you using these capital ships for? A fleet engagement is not winnable, and long-range commerce hunting is probably not a good fit here. However you are pretty close to Earth compared to Jupiter, so you have the option of playing a fleet-in-being card and looking for opportunities to actualize the threat. One thing that comes to my mind here is to equip large capital ships with 1-2 small stealth scouts (fighter-size) which can reconnoiter important Earthling installations/zones and identify when the fleet presence defending those areas is small enough to launch an assault. If you go really heavy on Gauss PD you can fly in, blow up a spaceport or something, and use the PD to survive a late-arriving wave of fighters while you run away. Here you are making up for low speed with recon ability and anti-missile capabilities to launch limited strikes.
A potential complementary weapon here would be laser turrets as these would have the fast tracking speeds needed to shoot down fighters or FACs that close in. However if Earth relies on missile fighters the use here is rather limited.
- What if you used shields? Put enough of them on to survive one hit, so the enemy fighters launch their salvo, it's stopped by your shields, then you engage them with return fire. Run away to rearm / recharge if need be. Rinse and repeat.
I think part of the problem is you've given Earth both the carriers and cruisers. That means the other factions need to counter both of them rather than just one.
And if faction weapon/doctrine exclusivity is a thing, maybe you can merge Mars and the unnamed shield users? There are many ways to explode things in Aurora but they definitely aren't all balanced.
I quite want to design a large shielded ship now.
I'm setting up a multi-faction game that will pivot around Earth as the Sol system superpower. Earth uses carrier launched missile fighters, backed by large railgun cruisers (plus high rate of fire missile destroyers to try and kill enemy fighters).
Since Earth is the dominant power, the other factions need to shape their doctrines to counter it. There are two factions I'm still working out, and I'd like some advice. Note that the doctrines chosen don't ACTUALLY need to work; they just need to make sense and be distinctive.
The first faction is the Jovian Alliance, claiming the four large moons of Jupiter along with Jupiter's sorium reserves. Since they have such good fuel access, they are going with small fast ships using heavy engine boost. ECM on FACs and corvettes to ruin the fighters engagement range; their plan, such as it is, is to avoid the fighters and try to snipe the carrier with ECM cruise missiles launched from FACs. Then run in with microwave+plasma carronades to melt the railgun cruisers. I think this doctrine is ok, and certainly thematic, but I'd welcome some feedback.
The second faction, which I am less sure about, is Mars. They have a larger population and more industry than the Alliance, but poor access to fuel. So I'm thinking they should go with big ships so they can use efficient engines. The issue is that with the allotted tech level (INPE, but pretty much everything else is <4000RP), it is really hard to stop mass missile strikes. They can barely make a worthwhile AMM (and I had to give them more missile tech than I really wanted...missiles are supposed to be Earth's thing), so they are pretty much stuck with railguns which are really inefficient. I'm thinking they might try to use their large ships to mount big actives and try to shoot down the fighters before they can launch, but I'm not sure what they should do in terms of offense. I already have another faction running big shielded ships with particle beams, so the only remaining offensive option seems to be lasers. But that doesn't feel all that different from the particle beam doctrine, TBH.
I'm not sure how the third option would translate in Aurora. I guess it's arguably what Earth is doing, except the missiles are mounted on destroyers?How it would translate based on your designs; Take the Ark Royal and uparmor it to 4 or 5, give it 12 reduced size missile launchers (with 3-4 reloads each, they don't need deep magazines for their role), give it some close range defenses (AMMs and/or a couple guns), give it its own sensors, and reduce the hangar down to like 7,000 or so. Preferably your ship mounted missiles aren't the same as the ones you use on any strike fighters, as otherwise it would be better to just fit more missiles onto a ship instead of inefficiently using space for hangars.