Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => General Discussion => Topic started by: dersavage on December 31, 2020, 02:06:18 PM
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Still learning this awesome game. I have watched AAR videos and read a ton, but still learning. This is my third game, very little experience about battles and tactics. I'm still early in game about 20 years. No aliens so far, but I'm pretty sure I find something very soon. I've been expanding my Terran Federation fast and already have four colonies in different stars (max range about 10 bkm from Sol). I have no idea how to prepare to defend my colonies. So I'm looking for advice on that. Still lacking good military techs, because I was focusing better engines and colonization stuff. Just started to research missiles, sensors and beam weapons are pretty awful. I have built small navy (8 Ferret-class FAC) just to get some experience for my crew and leaders, basic security and mainly for RPG purposes.
My new design is probably the first decent military ship: the Viper-class fighter for defence of the colonies (just Sol before researching carriers). My missile tech is still limited thought, so I designed smaller size 3 (WH4) shorter range Chaser ASM variant for Viper-class. I have plans to use bigger size 6 Hammer ASM (WH4) and size 1 Firestorm AMM for bigger future ships.
So the the question is how to prepare my colonies for the possible alien attacks? And here's my brand new Viper-class fighter design. Actually my first fighter design in-game.
Viper class Fighter 500 tons 11 Crew 89. 8 BP TCS 10 TH 75 EM 0
7511 km/s Armour 1-5 Shields 0-0 HTK 2 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 3. 6
Maint Life 4. 59 Years MSP 31 AFR 20% IFR 0. 3% 1YR 2 5YR 36 Max Repair 37. 50 MSP
Magazine 24
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 9 days Morale Check Required
Blackburn Ion Drive EP75. 00 FPH542 150t (1) Power 75. 0 Fuel Use 722. 96% Signature 75. 00 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 1 billion km (36 hours at full power)
Charlton Armaments Size 6. 00 Box Launcher 45t (4) Missile Size: 6. 00 Hangar Reload 122 minutes MF Reload 20 hours
McCarthy Electronics Missile Fire Control FC25-R100 S16 R25M 15t (1) Range 25. 7m km Resolution 100
Dodd Electronics Active Search Sensor AS27-R100 S16 R27M 70t (1) GPS 2240 Range 27. 7m km Resolution 100
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
My Chaser ASM missile (size 3) range is 24,53m km wh:4 and Hammer ASM (size 6) is 70m km. For the future there is Firestorm AMM (size 1, wh1) range 1,3M km, speed 21,600 m/s.
Here is Chaser-missile for Viper.
Missile Size: 3. 0000 MSP (7. 50000 Tons) Warhead: 4 Radiation Damage: 4 Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 20,000 km/s Fuel: 1,096 Flight Time: 20 minutes Range: 24. 53m km
Cost Per Missile: 2. 77024 Development Cost: 277
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 300% 3k km/s 100. 0% 5k km/s 60% 10k km/s 30%
Materials Required
Tritanium 1
Gallicite 1. 77024
Fuel: 1096
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Defense in depth is the best approach.
Of course you always have your big battle fleet(s) but tying your big ships to colony defense is not cost-effective, plus you'd rather be using them to attack people.
The lowest level of colony defense is of course ground units. Any frontier colony should have a garrison large enough to at least delay an enemy or force them to commit a lot of ground troops. INF and STA formations work best here due to high fortification levels, for larger garrisons you can mix in a few armored vehicle formations for counter-attacking if you want to.
The next level up to actually keep the enemy from landing on your colony are STO weapons. These are usually difficult for an enemy to target and are cost-effective, but also are slow to train and do require additional research investment as you have to research the weapon, then research the STO with the weapon. Additionally if an STO is destroyed, it's dead - you can't repair it with MSP as it isn't on a ship, so you have to build it all over again. Overall an important investment though. Keep in mind that STOs cannot fire missiles, only beam weapons.
The next level up then would be orbital defenses, which can be a variety of military space stations with beam or missile weapons. The NPRs will usually have AMM and beam PD bases in orbit of their major planets, as a player you could also use ASM or anti-ship beam weapons on your orbital platforms to deter enemy forces more assertively. The big advantage of platforms/stations is that they can be built quite quickly using planetside construction facilities, and that they can be repaired from battle damage (make sure you have engineering modules for this!). Stations can also be tugged around and even deployed at non-body locations such as jump points, so they are quite flexible. The major downside will be maintenance costs.
Finally you can maintain a fleet of fighters/FACs based at the colony which can engage enemy ships on more of their own terms, particularly if you want to defend the outlying mining posts in a system and not just one major colony. For this your actual fighter design looks reasonable and a couple squadrons of these would hopefully help you wear down an enemy fleet on the approach to your colony. The main thing you will need here will be anti-missile defenses, for which you could use a beam fighter/FAC (Gauss or railguns for instance) or rely on your fighters' small size and speed to keep them from being shot at and an orbital defense station to shoot down missiles aimed at the colony itself.
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Thanks for the reply. So it seems I need prioritize to research some ground forces and troop ships for them. This is the easy part. Just researched ground troop transport bay and planning to get some ground forces. Then STO and then orbital defence and finally fighters etc.
STO weapons - I have to look more for designing there weapons.
Planetary defence stations are totally brand new for me. Any advices how big those should be? I have few tugs already, mainly for moving future sorium fuel or terraform stations. Tug size size is 10k.
Last question is should I add fighters/FAC to my outer colonies or just rely (first) on ground troops and later STO defence. Probably good military fleet is more flexible solution, but I kind of like to make solid defence for my outer colonies even without fleet. I do have plans to make cruiser fleet, but need some techs first to make good ships and some info about the possible enemy fleet.
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10K seems too small to me for a sufficiently sized OWP but you are really early on. 10K is likely what would work for early game OWP.
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Along with what said, it seems silly but your best defense it's detection, early detection actually.
While as the offender your strategy is determined by your weapon of choice and or range of attack, as defender you know where your enemy is going to strike so you have to ensure you are prepared to "see" all strategies in advance.
Multiple layers of detection in multiple strategic points will give you a good idea of what is going on.
Enemies rarely attack en masse immediately. Usually you will have a rogue scout (you want to know when these sneaky bas*ards are sniffing around) or a small raiding party.
Ultimately, mobile platforms (stations) are good because as Nuclear said you can tow them around, however, to know where will help you in planning your defenses better, especially when later on you will have to deal with possible dormant jump points.
Again, you need to be able to pin down their location before it's too late.
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Planetary defence stations are totally brand new for me. Any advices how big those should be? I have few tugs already, mainly for moving future sorium fuel or terraform stations. Tug size size is 10k.
The NPR tends to make stations that are about 16k tons in my current game, and I'm seeing 4x AMM and 4x beam PD bases defending home worlds - but of course you don't need to adhere to this. In general, a smaller station will be more modular - you'll need more of them, but you can tailor the amount you build to the specific needs you have. A larger station is a bit more tonnage-efficient due to less overhead for structural shell, bridges and other command modules, etc.
Any defense you build will inevitably not be perfectly matched against the threats you'll face because you don't know the NPR capabilities until you actually fight them, so probably the best guess you can make is to defend against your own fleet and tech. In other words, determine the loadout or size of a defense platform to defend against whatever size and speed of missile salvo your own ships use (or would use, if you're running with beam ships).
A couple examples I whipped up out of spare parts in my current campaign file; these are probably not optimal but give an idea what an orbital defense platform could look like:
Beam Defence class Orbital Defence Platform 13,303 tons 511 Crew 2,314.5 BP TCS 266 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-50 Shields 0-0 HTK 93 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 10 PPV 168
Maint Life 7.08 Years MSP 1,087 AFR 142% IFR 2.0% 1YR 38 5YR 570 Max Repair 80 MSP
Captain Control Rating 3 BRG AUX CIC
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required
Single 4-in Ultraviolet Quick-Firing Laser Turret (40x1) Range 32,000km TS: 16000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 40,000 km ROF 5
AEDAR Point Defence Fire Director Mk II (4) Max Range: 32,000 km TS: 16,000 km/s 69 38 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
English Electric 6 TW Small Modular Reactor Mk II (20) Total Power Output 124 Exp 5%
AEDAR High-Resolution Torpedo Detector Mk II (2) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Missile Defence class Orbital Defence Platform 10,899 tons 365 Crew 1,749.9 BP TCS 218 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-43 Shields 0-0 HTK 105 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 10 PPV 60
Maint Life 11.00 Years MSP 1,003 AFR 95% IFR 1.3% 1YR 15 5YR 228 Max Repair 80 MSP
Magazine 1,260
Captain Control Rating 3 BRG AUX CIC
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required
Size 1 Missile Launcher (60) Missile Size: 1 Rate of Fire 10
AEDAR High-Resolution Rocket Controller Mk II (20) Range 12.8m km Resolution 1
AEDAR High-Resolution Torpedo Detector Mk II (2) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
You could also combine the armaments into a single omnibus platform, and/or build additional types for long-range ASM or larger anti-ship beam weapons if you wanted to. These are just basic examples, and are really intended to be build in groups of 3-6x apiece although just 1-2 is probably okay for a small frontier colony where you just need to delay the enemy or dissuade raiders.
Last question is should I add fighters/FAC to my outer colonies or just rely (first) on ground troops and later STO defence. Probably good military fleet is more flexible solution, but I kind of like to make solid defence for my outer colonies even without fleet. I do have plans to make cruiser fleet, but need some techs first to make good ships and some info about the possible enemy fleet.
Fighter/FAC are great for frontier defense because they are cheap enough to just build a dozen of them and send them to places. However, you do need to have some kind of maintenance facilities at your colonies, otherwise your ships will blow up from maintenance failures. Even 5-10 maintenance facilities and sufficient MSP or minerals will be enough, just a logistical detail to remember. You can also use the maintenance module ship component but that could be more expensive than you want especially since you usually need those modules for deep space fleet bases or jump point defense auxiliary stations.
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These are great help for my game. This forum seems very helpful too. i must say this game is the TRUE GEM, earlier version I tried just did't make the impact. But C++ version and new interface. Just awesome! I have no words how good this game is and how deep it is.
Yes, still early in game for me. And I'm looking forward what NPR can throw against me. Great fun that I will not know it.
I will start building some orbital defence platforms and ground forces. Also tweak my exploration ships for better recon, maybe even make new class for better sneaky recon. I might consider some early warning sensors of somekind for choke points.
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First off, I try to drop a colony (and only one) in every system with a decent planet. These colonies might not do much, but for logistics reasons I like having at least small colonies in as many systems as possible.
Each populated colony gets, at a minimum, 5 deep space tracking stations and a ground unit with both troops and STO weapons. Ground troops were already covered, but they're both cheap and don't require dedicated maintenance - they cost a little bit of wealth to maintain each year, but wealth is plentiful and renewable, and most importantly they don't cost minerals (which will eventually run out) or require special facilities for maintenance (so I can just drop ground troops on a planet and forget them unless I want to upgrade with new tech). They're also enough to keep the population from protesting about the lack of protection.
Then every few systems I'll have a "Navy Base" system that has maintenance facilities, Naval headquarters, and some ordinance factories that support at least a few warships in orbit. In my current game I'm just using my standard warships, though in the past I've experimented with "System Defense Ships" that are basically warships with the deployment, fuel, and engineering cut down to only last a few weeks. Fighters and orbital bases are both options but not ones I use, since I only heavily defend the bases and want the ships there not to be limited to the system/planet.
The way I figure it is if my jump points go like so:
Earth <> Colony <> Colony <> Navy Base <> Colony
Then each colony always has warships a minimum of one jump away.
My rationalization is that if a colony gets attacked by a small force, the STO weapons and troops can hopefully hold out, at least until reinforcements arrive. And if it gets attacked by a large force then a few OWPs or fighters probably wouldn't make a difference anyways.
Of course, if I know there's a possible threat out there, like another race that's been probing my territory, the colonies on the border get heavily reinforced. If I used OWPs and planetary fighters, this is probably where they'd come in. The ground forces alternating with navy bases is just my standard for areas I don't know are under specific threat, because you never know when a dormant jump point or new contact will drop enemies on your lap.
Another possibility is minefields, but I understand they're buggy in the current version.
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The missile launchers on your Vipers are size 6, while the missiles are size 3. You should get some size 3 launchers, or some size 6 missiles.
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My rationalization is that if a colony gets attacked by a small force, the STO weapons and troops can hopefully hold out, at least until reinforcements arrive. And if it gets attacked by a large force then a few OWPs or fighters probably wouldn't make a difference anyways.
You'd actually be surprised how much weight a few ODPs can carry. A 10,000-ton ODP is probably equivalent to about 2 or 3 10,000-ton ships due to not needing propulsion, having shorter deployment times (you only need more than a day to avoid morale problems during tugging, which is a very minor concern and you can neglect that entirely at risk of readiness after transport), and needing much less engineering/MSP to repair components. A few missile platforms in particular can turn the dreaded AMM spam tactic against the AI to good effect, and works well in combination with anti-ship ODPs or STOs that can deal with the heavier ships once the escorts have been thinned out.
Obviously, sufficiently overwhelming force will defeat any fixed defense, but the more force you require your opponent to commit (and lose in the attack to boot), the more effectively you slow them down until your main fleet can counter-attack. Fixed defenses have their limitations, but they're very effective at forcing a disproportionate commitment of the enemy fleet which lets you turn the initiative around on them.
Granted, most of my experience with this is as the enemy here - NPR weapons platforms can be a challenge to take down if your fleet isn't geared to do so.
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The missile launchers on your Vipers are size 6, while the missiles are size 3. You should get some size 3 launchers, or some size 6 missiles.
Changed launcher to size 3. Fighters are still using size 3 because I couldn't fit proper longer range fire control. After research I will upgrade this, but for now I choose to half-the-size of missile and use 21M range not 70M like my proper fleet ASM missile.
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I'm following the advices here and got my first defences ready.
22,219 tons guardian Orbital Defence Platform. This uses ASM and AAM missiles and also PD 10 cm laser and ship killer 15 cm laser.
Also first ground forces are trained. Planetary Defence Regimet uses STO:
Gallagher Systems 18. 750cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser 300t
Range 270,000 km Tracking 4,000 km/s Damage 9 / 1 Shots 1 Rate of Fire 15
Maximum Fire Control Range 320,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 16%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,595,767km Max Range vs Missile 143,619 km
and second PD STO
Quad Gallagher Systems 15. 0cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret 1640t
Range 80,000 km Tracking 10,000 km/s Damage 6 / 2 Shots 4 Rate of Fire 10
Maximum Fire Control Range 80,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 0%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,595,767km Max Range vs Missile 143,619 km
Non-Combat Class
and some infantry plus vehicles.
I also made FIRST CONTACT. Five jumps from Sol there was EQ Pegasi and alien home planet. After few days of trying to communicate they blasted my survey ships. From the intel reports they are using beam weapons:
Antillis-class 12,497t 3x Gauss Cannon DMG 1x8
Levinor-class 18,745t 11x Railgun DMG 4x4
Macharia-class 12,413t 10x Gauss Cannon DMG 1x8
Reported speed was 6,100 km/s so they are fast and this will be a problem. Fortunately I have decent defence built. Now it is time to start building bigger ships and plan how to defeat these ships. So dmg 4 and 8 are the one I should focus? Gauss are PDF and short range so probably need to focus longer range weapons.
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Lasers have range advantage over railguns, so if your lasers are same tech level as their railguns, you just need faster ships. The question is, if they have also missile ships.
If you have trouble matching their speed, maybe go for FACs equipped with lasers and boosted engines. And to get them to the enemy systems, you can transport them in carriers.
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The big advantage of platforms/stations is that they can be built quite quickly using planetside construction facilities, and that they can be repaired from battle damage (make sure you have engineering modules for this!).
Not trying to be pedantic, but since this is for a new player I want to correct this - any military system must be either on a fighter of 500 tons or less built in a fighter factory, or a ship built in a naval (military) shipyard. You can build "space stations" in C# using planetside construction factories, but they cannot have engines, armor, or any system that would make it military (eg weapons, sensors > 50 tons, etc.). When we players refer to "orbital weapon stations" or the like we are referring to armed military ships that don't have engines (which leaves more room for weapons, armor, etc.)
Otherwise pretty much everything everyone has said should cover it. Do note that if you build ground STOs that, like every other ground unit, they won't be upgraded as you research better technology like armor or weapons - you have to build new replacement units. 1.12.0 introduced a Ground Forces Replacement Template that reduces the micromanagement a bit.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11593.msg140370#msg140370
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The big advantage of platforms/stations is that they can be built quite quickly using planetside construction facilities, and that they can be repaired from battle damage (make sure you have engineering modules for this!).
Not trying to be pedantic, but since this is for a new player I want to correct this - any military system must be either on a fighter of 500 tons or less built in a fighter factory, or a ship built in a naval (military) shipyard. You can build "space stations" in C# using planetside construction factories, but they cannot have engines, armor, or any system that would make it military (eg weapons, sensors > 50 tons, etc.). When we players refer to "orbital weapon stations" or the like we are referring to armed military ships that don't have engines (which leaves more room for weapons, armor, etc.)
Good catch, I got this wrong. I always forget that military space stations don't work like PDCs anymore until I start trying to build them (I really should stop reading old VB6 AARs...).
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Because there are no special construction advantages to not having an engine on a military station, you might want to put a small commercial engine on them so they can put themselves in position slowly or take themselves back from a jump point to a colony for refitting, and also so they can use commercial jump tenders, since they might be too large for your military jump drives to handle. Then you have something like a pre-WW2 coastal defense ship, which makes a lot of sense as a pure colony defender. Something like that packed full of weaponry has probably one of the best PPV/tonnage ratios you'll be able to build, too.
There are some other things I recently discovered the hard way about basing fighters on planets - you need to make sure your colony-based fighters have enough onboard MSP capacity to cover a max repair, otherwise they might break their most expensive part (probably the engine) and not be repairable without a ship-based military hangar, which you probably don't want to keep idle at an outlying colony. The fighter design in the OP has that issue - if you're building them before any building carriers, they might break in a way that can't be fixed, especially if you're training them. One fighter maintenance storage bay is probably all you need to avoid that.
If you intend to train colony-based fighters at all, you'll run into serious issues with deployment time, too - their clock will increase at double speed unless they're inside a military hangar, and bad morale will ruin their training speed and cause other problems, so either you need to ratchet up their deployment times and frequently cycle them in and out of your training NAC (don't do this, it's micromanagement hell) or only train them on carriers/fighter bases. Apparently repair facilities and R&R for fighter crews in training are available on warships but not on planetside bases?
Then if you build a fighter training base, make sure it has plenty of deployment time and fuel capacity even if it doesn't have an engine and never leaves orbit, and give it a standing order to refuel when it gets low, since fighters will burn lots of fuel while training even inside of a hangar. I haven't tried it yet but I think it might also potentially make sense to build trainer versions of fighters with super-long deployment times and high efficiency engines, train your fighter crews on those, and then refit them into combat models at a minimum-size military shipyard. It might be impossible to refit the engines on most fighters, though.
After your fighter squadron is done training, you can then use a commercial fighter transport to drop them off at a colony. But first make sure you have enough maintenance facilities for them and also probably stocks of duranium, uridium, and gallicite so those facilities can produce MSP. They'll also need some stocks of fuel and replacement ordnance as well as a cargo shuttle station, ordnance transfer station, and refueling station, if you don't have a spaceport, which you probably shouldn't at a small outlying colony.
Basing fighters directly on colonies requires a lot of infrastructure on the ground compared to having them on bases in orbit above those colonies, which can have long deployment clocks and large onboard stocks of fuel/MSP/ordnance and can be periodically resupplied and overhauled by visiting support ships. But if you have that infrastructure anyway, you can save resources and keep your fighters arguably somewhat safer by cutting out the base and putting the fighters on the planet. It's also good to be able to support fighters directly on a planet because that lets you use ground support fighters as well. You'll probably have ground forces on your colonies before you put any defenses in orbit around them because they don't require the same kind of enormous chains of logistical support, so ground support fighters should always have something to assist.
If you have STOs with PD weapons and long-range beams, fighters with AMMs and ASMs, and adequate ground forces to protect your STOs during an invasion, you can have a pretty tough colony with a complete set of layered defenses and nothing sitting vulnerable in orbit without it costing much in mineral upkeep. An enemy would either have to destroy the planet through mass bombardment through your PD and AMMs or land a large number of troops under fire to seize the planet.
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Because there are no special construction advantages to not having an engine on a military station, you might want to put a small commercial engine on them so they can put themselves in position slowly or take themselves back from a jump point to a colony for refitting, and also so they can use commercial jump tenders, since they might be too large for your military jump drives to handle. Then you have something like a pre-WW2 coastal defense ship, which makes a lot of sense as a pure colony defender. Something like that packed full of weaponry has probably one of the best PPV/tonnage ratios you'll be able to build, too.
While you can do this, an engine + fuel load (and you will need enough fuel to get where you want to put the thing) does take up a good bit of tonnage (minimum ~1,500 tons which is not negligible on a 10,000-20,000 ton orbital platform) and introduces a potential for secondary explosion damage although this is admittedly a rather small (<5%) chance. Additionally, with only one commercial engine you will have speeds in the 100s km/s which may require months or in the worst case over a year to actually get the platform into place. A sizable tug with a tractor beam and more engines than a Formula One race will get you there much faster and has plenty of other utility once built.
Your other points are excellent considerations.
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So what I'm getting from this thread and the other thread on the subject I started is that the best bang for you buck is a hearty garrison with STO weapons. These can stop all but the most determined invasions dead in their tracks unless the NPR chooses to nuke you which would deprive them of the planet's resources due to dust.
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So what I'm getting from this thread and the other thread on the subject I started is that the best bang for you buck is a hearty garrison with STO weapons. These can stop all but the most determined invasions dead in their tracks unless the NPR chooses to nuke you which would deprive them of the planet's resources due to dust.
I don't think you can stop with just a garrison covered by STOs. The problems with only having garrison+STO are
1. the enemy can just fly past your planet and ignore you and you can't reach out and punish them unless they get into beam range
2. they can bombard you with missiles and you can't hit back, if they don't care about seizing your colony intact they can just nuke it back to the stone age without risking a single ship
3. an attacker can concentrate their ground forces to take one planet at a time, a defender has to spread ground forces throughout all their vulnerable planets, so they totally can just get all their dropships together and invade and conquer the defender's colonies one at a time with a massive ground force if they want to, a garrison can at best hope to hold out against an invasion and delay the invader's army from moving on, it can't really win unless it's relieved by friendly forces in space
4. if you have no mobile defenders whatsoever you can lose all your other system infrastructure to even a small enemy attack, a small marine transport could cruise around and board all your mining stations and sorium harvesters or whatever
Not having a garrison at all is a severe problem, because then an attacker can take your whole colony just by getting a dropship into orbit, and not having STOs to support that garrison is a severe problem, because then an attacker can just laser your garrison to death from orbit at their leisure, but that's not where it ends, you need to have some way of striking back at ships beyond STO beam range so you can keep them from bypassing your colony, delay their fleet and army there as long as possible, and make them pay a steep price to take it
You also need some kind of naval presence in your system to provide PPV or your colonists start getting antsy
I suggested using fighters as an initial defense force because fighters assigned to provide ground support at colonies are untargetable in naval combat, so unless the ground invasion has already begun they can be kept completely safe at your colony until you're ready to send them out - specifically fighters with ASMs in box launchers can punch well above their weight, can potentially hit targets without getting hit back, cost relatively little to set up and maintain, can have enough range to cover most of a system, and can contribute to ground combat if you equip them with pods
You can then upgrade by adding defense stations and eventually small system and/or sector defense fleets which can complement fighters and each other, to handle minor threats without needing to call in the main fleet, and delay major threats long enough for the main fleet to arrive
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So what I'm getting from this thread and the other thread on the subject I started is that the best bang for you buck is a hearty garrison with STO weapons. These can stop all but the most determined invasions dead in their tracks unless the NPR chooses to nuke you which would deprive them of the planet's resources due to dust.
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that I'd say. Ground forces are the cheapest and easiest defense (aside from maybe mines if those get fixed), but they're also one of the most limited. Even if you had so many ground forces you could shoot down incoming missiles and withstand a siege, enemies can go after any other ships and mining colonies in the system. Or, as noted, simply fly on to the next system, though I'm unsure if the AI would be smart enough to do that.
But, to quote Winston Churchill, "To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere.” Trying to defend every colony perfectly will be next to impossible, and even if you succeed it means all your military is locked up defending your stuff. Defending most colonies with ground forces risks them being overrun (or simply nuked), but it means your fleet is free to fly around reactively responding to threats, or go out and proactively attack enemies.
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I will make summary here how to defend colonies. I'm still learning, but these advices and tactics here helped a lot to understand what can be done.
1. Ground Forces. You can make beam or missile STO, good against fleets. Also you need some boots on the ground, regular infantry, vehicles and so on. Maybe 3000-5000t not sure how big units have to be. Construction forces can make fortifications and units can dig to terrain better. STO's have +25% range, but not sure what fire control they use or can I upgrade them.
2. Orbital Platforms and stations. These are designed like ships, if 'no armour' is clicked it will make the class station so it can be build by industry. Better make them without engine and tow them. Stations and ODP/ODB need maintenance if military. With hangar and maintenance module these can be military stations and support ships.
3. Fighters & FACs. I tested and these seems very good option in the early game. They are cheap and fast to produce. Few squadrons of these. Maintenance is the problem in colonies, so ships or stations with maintenance module or make sure your planet have refueling and maintenance facilities to support these. Commercial carrier hangar is good for transport these.
4. Fleet. Any defence on planet will only slow the enemy. So make fleet and prepare to attack bigger enemy forces.
It seems there are so many options how to defend your colonies and you can prioritize so ultimatelly make your own strategy and tactics.
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I have one question about ground forces. . .
I'm still trying to make units. Just figured out the HQ-problem. All my HQs are 1,000. So when you make HQ, you need to adjust 'Headquarter Capacity' number when in 'Unit Class Design'. Finally when I figured that I can change this number I can make different size HQ units.
Is this HQ capacity number in tonnage?
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I have one question about ground forces. . .
I'm still trying to make units. Just figured out the HQ-problem. All my HQs are 1,000. So when you make HQ, you need to adjust 'Headquarter Capacity' number when in 'Unit Class Design'. Finally when I figured that I can change this number I can make different size HQ units.
Is this HQ capacity number in tonnage?
HQ capacity is the TOTAL tonnage its hierarchy can have without debuffs. Note that this total includes the formation containing the HQ as well. So a Battalion formation that is 1000 tons and has a 10k HQ can support an additional 9000 tons of other formations under it.
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I start off by considering detection, what does the colony absolutely need to detect.
So I have surveillance satellites on both sides of all known jump points. That isn't going to help vs a newly opened jump point, but it will help contain the threat.
For the colony in question, asking a new colony to have the capacity to get a sensor lock over a large area is also a very expensive proposition. The absolute minimum sensor station is one capable of detecting any missiles before they hit the planet. The first actual defense capability I want for my colonies is missile defense. Because if I can exhaust the enemy missiles, that yields an advantage for my fast response force. If I can merely exhaust enemy missiles, I may force the enemy at least into my active sensor range so I can get more information about them.
So I want to have some independent ship which operates with their active sensors down, until an enemy closes enough so they can get a sensor lock. Since we are talking fighter or LAC sized craft, this isn't a very expensive defense force yet.
When designing a ground force to protect my colony, I want it to either be able to fight for a long time, or to require a significant tonnage of enemy troops, more than would be in a casual scout force, to overwhelm it. The historical purpose of a castle is to hold until relieved. If so much is invested in the castles that there is no relief force, it isn't very effective. My scale goes from tripwire scout forces up to fleet anchorage.
A fleet anchorage colony is going to have MASSIVE passive sensors. I generally research very few large sensors, because the cost for doing so is huge. And because it is so expensive to retool shipsyards for size 50 sensors. But one-offs built with planetary industry don't have that issue. In VB6, you could just build a PDC with your max sized sensor, in C# you just have a spacestation with it. A fleet anchorage is a place your fleet can stay in place for a long period. Not necessarily indefinitely, at least not the whole fleet, but it allows for a higher tempo of offensive operations in the area.
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I would agree with missile defence as my first priority of exposed colonies.
The first priority for defending colonies is some garrison troops, but another problem is the propensity of the AI to use missiles against colonies even when that makes little sense from an escalation perspective most of the time, not to mention the mass murder of another species and the retaliation that would entail realistically.
But, aside of that, putting a good beam PD and some long range beam defences on the colony is priority one. You will also want at least one colony in an important system to hold a decent contingent of FAC so you can protect other resources in that system along with some scouting element.
I would never bother with building large passive sensors and rely only on DSTS to do that for me, they are cheap and easy to build. I also never build large military anchorage in deep space as that is too expensive, only as a temporary supply point would I do that and then I would just put sensor probes in a ring around it to deal with passive observation. More permanent large naval bases I always locate on a system body of some kind.
In terms of stations I always put at least one proper Space Station at the primary populated colony in each system and then a cargo station around the rest of the colonies. The primary colony will then get the system defence force but all colonies need to have basic point defence system in place or they can be nuked to the stone age by the AI.
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I start off by considering detection, what does the colony absolutely need to detect.
So I have surveillance satellites on both sides of all known jump points. That isn't going to help vs a newly opened jump point, but it will help contain the threat.
For the colony in question, asking a new colony to have the capacity to get a sensor lock over a large area is also a very expensive proposition. The absolute minimum sensor station is one capable of detecting any missiles before they hit the planet. The first actual defense capability I want for my colonies is missile defense. Because if I can exhaust the enemy missiles, that yields an advantage for my fast response force. If I can merely exhaust enemy missiles, I may force the enemy at least into my active sensor range so I can get more information about them.
So I want to have some independent ship which operates with their active sensors down, until an enemy closes enough so they can get a sensor lock. Since we are talking fighter or LAC sized craft, this isn't a very expensive defense force yet.
When designing a ground force to protect my colony, I want it to either be able to fight for a long time, or to require a significant tonnage of enemy troops, more than would be in a casual scout force, to overwhelm it. The historical purpose of a castle is to hold until relieved. If so much is invested in the castles that there is no relief force, it isn't very effective. My scale goes from tripwire scout forces up to fleet anchorage.
A fleet anchorage colony is going to have MASSIVE passive sensors. I generally research very few large sensors, because the cost for doing so is huge. And because it is so expensive to retool shipsyards for size 50 sensors. But one-offs built with planetary industry don't have that issue. In VB6, you could just build a PDC with your max sized sensor, in C# you just have a spacestation with it. A fleet anchorage is a place your fleet can stay in place for a long period. Not necessarily indefinitely, at least not the whole fleet, but it allows for a higher tempo of offensive operations in the area.
How are you building space stations with sensors bigger than 50tons? Wouldn't that make them military and prevent using industry to make them?
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Oh, my bad. I guess the trick I used in VB6 is no longer relevant.
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2. Orbital Platforms and stations. These are designed like ships, if 'no armour' is clicked it will make the class station so it can be build by industry. Better make them without engine and tow them. Stations and ODP/ODB need maintenance if military. With hangar and maintenance module these can be military stations and support ships.
You cannot build military stations with industry. If you click "no armor" you are unable to add military components. You'd also want your stations to last for a while and not die to the first salvo, so having more than 1 layer of armor is basically mandatory. Without speed they are easy to hit.
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How do I build ground STO's?
When I look to build them, under ground unit design, construction, static - I can't see that option?
What are the prerequisites?
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How do I build ground STO's?
When I look to build them, under ground unit design, construction, static - I can't see that option?
What are the prerequisites?
Have you designed a weapon you can put on an STO? For example, if you want a railgun STO, you design a railgun in the same way you would for a warship.
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There's an option I haven't seen mentioned yet - what I call "missile pods." In effect, they are 500 ton fighters without an engine, filled with as many box launchers as possible and a single missile fire control.
Their role is very simple - to provide the defended colony with a standoff offensive capability to retaliate against hostile fleets that may attempt to bombard the planet into submission from outside STO range. While I always give my colonies decent CIWS STO weapon capacity to guard against exactly this, a sufficiently large fleet might manage to saturate those defenses and inflict grievous harm on the colony. As CIWS STOs are destroyed, effective hits from follow-on salvos will be bigger, and soon the colony defenses will be defeated.
Missile pods offer a very cheap and easy solution to this. Since they have box launchers, they can expend their ordinance in one massive salvo, drastically increasing their chances of saturating hostile defenses unless they have a massive advantage in numbers, tech or both. Full or even substantial destruction of the hostile fleet isn't needed - just enough damage inflicted to reduce their salvo weight below what the planet's CIWS can reasonably and reliably intercept every 5s tick.
I usually build these early on to quiet my restive home-world populace by providing PPV, even if the launchers aren't loaded. Later on, they can be loaded with older, obsolete missiles I no longer need for frontline service. When I'm setting up defenses on outlying new colonies, I'll typically dispatch a freighter to deliver minerals (if they're not being mined on-site) to build maint. facilities and for MSP production, a troopship to deliver STO weapons (both anti-ship and CIWS batteries) and one of my CVLs loaded with missile pods. If a CVL isn't available, I'll just build a station with sufficient commercial hangar space, load it with missile pods, then have a tug tow it into location. Then I can either tow it home to use for other such transport duties, or leave it on-location if I want my missile pods to be able to reload (in which case I'll provide enough commercial magazine space on the station to hold all intended reloads, obviating the need for planetside infrastructure if I wasn't planning to build it for other reasons.)
Included in this concept is a "sensor pod," another engineless fighter that only mounts an active sensor to spot for missile fire. I typically build two per missile pod defended colony, for redundancies sake.
With enough missile pods, you can get the throw-weight of an orbital defense station (or three) with only a little extra tonnage to maintain. A proper station using magazine-fed launchers will be more tonnage efficient, but you also have to tool a yard for it. I prefer to use my yards to build proper warships, which can also project power throughout the star system. I like building fast, beam-armed FACs for this purpose. Typically I end up liking those designs enough that my third or fourth CVL will end up loaded with FACs instead of fighters (esp. since I already have a 4-slipway, 1,000 ton naval yard tooled for them.)
Strictly speaking, missile pods can be used by carriers in this fashion as well, though I've never had to resort to such desperate measures. Carriers should never get that close to the enemy.
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The above poster is suggesting that you read the Honour Harrington series of books.
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There's an option I haven't seen mentioned yet - what I call "missile pods." In effect, they are 500 ton fighters without an engine, filled with as many box launchers as possible and a single missile fire control.
Their role is very simple - to provide the defended colony with a standoff offensive capability to retaliate against hostile fleets that may attempt to bombard the planet into submission from outside STO range. While I always give my colonies decent CIWS STO weapon capacity to guard against exactly this, a sufficiently large fleet might manage to saturate those defenses and inflict grievous harm on the colony. As CIWS STOs are destroyed, effective hits from follow-on salvos will be bigger, and soon the colony defenses will be defeated.
Missile pods offer a very cheap and easy solution to this. Since they have box launchers, they can expend their ordinance in one massive salvo, drastically increasing their chances of saturating hostile defenses unless they have a massive advantage in numbers, tech or both. Full or even substantial destruction of the hostile fleet isn't needed - just enough damage inflicted to reduce their salvo weight below what the planet's CIWS can reasonably and reliably intercept every 5s tick.
I usually build these early on to quiet my restive home-world populace by providing PPV, even if the launchers aren't loaded. Later on, they can be loaded with older, obsolete missiles I no longer need for frontline service. When I'm setting up defenses on outlying new colonies, I'll typically dispatch a freighter to deliver minerals (if they're not being mined on-site) to build maint. facilities and for MSP production, a troopship to deliver STO weapons (both anti-ship and CIWS batteries) and one of my CVLs loaded with missile pods. If a CVL isn't available, I'll just build a station with sufficient commercial hangar space, load it with missile pods, then have a tug tow it into location. Then I can either tow it home to use for other such transport duties, or leave it on-location if I want my missile pods to be able to reload (in which case I'll provide enough commercial magazine space on the station to hold all intended reloads, obviating the need for planetside infrastructure if I wasn't planning to build it for other reasons.)
Included in this concept is a "sensor pod," another engineless fighter that only mounts an active sensor to spot for missile fire. I typically build two per missile pod defended colony, for redundancies sake.
With enough missile pods, you can get the throw-weight of an orbital defense station (or three) with only a little extra tonnage to maintain. A proper station using magazine-fed launchers will be more tonnage efficient, but you also have to tool a yard for it. I prefer to use my yards to build proper warships, which can also project power throughout the star system. I like building fast, beam-armed FACs for this purpose. Typically I end up liking those designs enough that my third or fourth CVL will end up loaded with FACs instead of fighters (esp. since I already have a 4-slipway, 1,000 ton naval yard tooled for them.)
Strictly speaking, missile pods can be used by carriers in this fashion as well, though I've never had to resort to such desperate measures. Carriers should never get that close to the enemy.
Idk man, i reckon you will be better off with missile defense plataforms (stations) and make it big and build with factories on your homeworld. If you are going with 500 tons missile pods, a 60k Missile Defense Platform will be a better choice. Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust. Maybe put some railguns, energy weapons or something like that. Also, if you have to defend a colony, might as well move factories there and make 7k defense platforms, one at the time. Just leave them hanging on top of the colony, make the deployment time low and make like 10 of those. If you really want fighters, then make box launchers with some torpedoes, something around 4-6 damage missile, made for being thrown at close quarters and with enough agility to evade PD defenses. You then cut down their tonnage by as much as you can and make another defense platform to be used as a hangar (Even tough you dont need that because you have a colony, you can use it to RP if you want).
Couple that with heavy static AA guns, STOs and you have a good mix there. You will at least buy some time till help arrives, if you can.
However enemies will be over 50000k tons worth of troops. So your best changes are to thin them down and to do that you will need an effective defense platform. Those will be able to make a scratch.
(Assuming you will have like 60 fighters at least to back all that up. I would put FACs as well. About a dozen.)
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There's an option I haven't seen mentioned yet - what I call "missile pods." In effect, they are 500 ton fighters without an engine, filled with as many box launchers as possible and a single missile fire control.
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Idk man, i reckon you will be better off with missile defense plataforms (stations) and make it big and build with factories on your homeworld. If you are going with 500 tons missile pods, a 60k Missile Defense Platform will be a better choice. Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust.
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Of course a bigger defense platform is more efficient.
But 500-ton platforms can be cranked out by fighter factories.
That's the big advantage--they don't need a shipyard and they don't tie up your construction factories.
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There's an option I haven't seen mentioned yet - what I call "missile pods." In effect, they are 500 ton fighters without an engine, filled with as many box launchers as possible and a single missile fire control.
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Idk man, i reckon you will be better off with missile defense plataforms (stations) and make it big and build with factories on your homeworld. If you are going with 500 tons missile pods, a 60k Missile Defense Platform will be a better choice. Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust.
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Of course a bigger defense platform is more efficient.
But 500-ton platforms can be cranked out by fighter factories.
That's the big advantage--they don't need a shipyard and they don't tie up your construction factories.
Sure, but they are pretty much a one shot thing. And they will get blown up quite fast, so its a waste of good resources for minimal gain. It could be used to supplement the stations and buy him more time to have those ships getting blown up instead of losing the stations.
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There's an option I haven't seen mentioned yet - what I call "missile pods." In effect, they are 500 ton fighters without an engine, filled with as many box launchers as possible and a single missile fire control.
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Idk man, i reckon you will be better off with missile defense plataforms (stations) and make it big and build with factories on your homeworld. If you are going with 500 tons missile pods, a 60k Missile Defense Platform will be a better choice. Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust.
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Of course a bigger defense platform is more efficient.
But 500-ton platforms can be cranked out by fighter factories.
That's the big advantage--they don't need a shipyard and they don't tie up your construction factories.
Sure, but they are pretty much a one shot thing. And they will get blown up quite fast, so its a waste of good resources for minimal gain. It could be used to supplement the stations and buy him more time to have those ships getting blown up instead of losing the stations.
No, it's not a waste of resources. It is a choice that involves trade offs. Aurora is full of them. It's why the game is so incredible.
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Idk man, i reckon you will be better off with missile defense plataforms (stations) and make it big and build with factories on your homeworld. If you are going with 500 tons missile pods, a 60k Missile Defense Platform will be a better choice. Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust. Maybe put some railguns, energy weapons or something like that. Also, if you have to defend a colony, might as well move factories there and make 7k defense platforms, one at the time. Just leave them hanging on top of the colony, make the deployment time low and make like 10 of those. If you really want fighters, then make box launchers with some torpedoes, something around 4-6 damage missile, made for being thrown at close quarters and with enough agility to evade PD defenses. You then cut down their tonnage by as much as you can and make another defense platform to be used as a hangar (Even tough you dont need that because you have a colony, you can use it to RP if you want).
Couple that with heavy static AA guns, STOs and you have a good mix there. You will at least buy some time till help arrives, if you can.
However enemies will be over 50000k tons worth of troops. So your best changes are to thin them down and to do that you will need an effective defense platform. Those will be able to make a scratch.
(Assuming you will have like 60 fighters at least to back all that up. I would put FACs as well. About a dozen.)
I don't actually disagree! The benefit of the "missile pod" approach is that it lets you build with your fighter factories; which is a production capacity you get for free from game start (on TN starts at least) so you can reserve your shipyards for the various pressing needs you might have (building more survey ships, building an actual military fleet prior to first contact like an intelligent person probably should but I never do, etc.) This is also influenced by the randomness of your starting shipyards; that can really determine your strategy in the first ten years of the game and influence subsequent events for another ten. In my current game (starting with 1 billion pop) I got a plethora of military shipyards, including a 10,000 ton yard with a single slipway that just called out to be used for orbital bases. And they work fine - just like my missile pods, but with less micromanagement required. They're little more than 200+ box launchers stacked atop one another wearing a trenchcoat but that's all I need; I gave them ten years maint/deploy time and parked them on a jump point with some fast, short-ranged missiles. The downside is I have to dedicate a yard to this; the upside is that I can accelerate construction with my factories (as you say) which is a trade-off option for high urgency situations that you just don't have with fighters. (And accelerating fighter production requires investments that are less flexible in their payouts; fighter factories can only build fighters and ditto the research, whereas shipyards can build a much wider variety of military hulls and shipyard construction rate also helps you build commercial hulls.) Not having to tool a yard is a gift from God a lot of the time, but if one commits to orbital bases enough to dedicate a yard to them, they're definitely a good option.
Also, if you have to go with 500ton fighers to defend colonies, you are better off with going full FAC, go slightly behind 1k ton and make it more robust.
I like fighters - and I also like FACs for much the same reasons. Yes, you have to tool a yard for them, but only a 1,000 ton yard. Every game I use carriers I typically end up with a "FAC" yard (1,000 ton shipyard with 4-6 slipways for producing reasonably sized FAC fleets reasonably fast) and a carrier usually ends up loaded with some of them. I also tend to like building beam FACs for initial defense of Earth - fast, well armored FACs with spinal-mounted lasers (or even better, particle beams for kiting) can work very well.
Of course, so can box launcher FACs; especially if you're using missiles anyways as a primary fleet doctrine, ensuring you'll have stockpiles of obsoleted missiles lying around on Earth to load up.
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Can box launchers on fighters/FAC be used as point defence against missiles, and then ships?
Or do you use fighters/FAC as an offensive capability.
Last time I used fighters with BL was in a planetary assault. (My last alien war was in the last patch). They all died quite quickly despite decent tech > aliens
Thank you
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Can box launchers on fighters/FAC be used as point defence against missiles, and then ships?
Or do you use fighters/FAC as an offensive capability.
Last time I used fighters with BL was in a planetary assault. (My last alien war was in the last patch). They all died quite quickly despite decent tech > aliens
Thank you
You can... But you will need a fast enough engine for that. I dont know if gauss gun will get accuracy and/or speed tracking based on the Fighter/FACs speed, but a railgun does. You can put a Railgun on a FAC, build your ship around that and there you go. You can also made crappy size 0.6 gauss gun turrets for it if you want. Accuracy is crap, but i dont think i will be too terrible if you can close the gap distance to fight a big ship.
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Antimissile role of box launchers aren't dependant of ship speed, because there will be missile's speed that is relevant, not ship's speed.
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Beam weapons (Lasers,Rails etc) use as a tracking speed the lower of Fire-control tracking speed AND (ship speed OR Turret Speed) so putting railguns on them can be very useful for anti-missile defense.
Anti-missiles can be fired from fighters but it is a questionable tactic , I can't think of a reason why it would not be better and cheaper to mount them on the ship being protected. Offensive missiles are much more useful on fighters as they can then move closer to the target and fire its missiles at close range