[edit 2] And use your jump stabilisation ships do *destabilize* the JP on your side. Allocate a jump tender to allow your ships to jump through, but if the enemy jumps they'll be trapped. Otherwise, your JP blockade fleet might not be able to hit them: the AI can jump back through without delay.
Whatever you do don't build large ships or expand your military yards, it is way better to build more slipways and keep those yards small (when under pressure that is), you get more build capacity that way. Sure if you already have really large yards you can use them. 1-2000t ships are quite good as missile corvettes to swarm an enemy, should work almost as good as fighters most of the time, especially if you don't have enough fighter factories. A few yards at 2000t with a few slipways and you should be able to produce a fair amount of these ships. You don't need much defensive capacity on them as you would treat them as fighters more or less but with greater reach.
Hi Entaro! You're on the defense, so that's where you should concentrate at the moment. I can say what I'd do in your place.
So, what kind of weaponry have you got, besides missles and carronades?I have very, very, very cool rockets!
Also, do you have any Surface To Orbit ground force units?
Space stations (armed, potentially shielded and with armor - requiring a shipyard to build)?
The other thing you should do is put civilian sensor bases(make it very cheap!) or sensor buoys on every JG that might get attacked. They will let you know when the enemy force is moving towards your assets and allow you to prepare a defense or a retreat even if you are slower than him.
Your first priority should always be to build up a strong defensive fleet so you can beat anyone that tries to encroach on your territory, after this you can consider a space superiority navy and then one that can invade an enemy home world with all the ground forces to take it.
Now.. you happen to have angered those aliens pretty fast which is a bummer, you might just have come across a particularly xenophobic alien species and then it simply can be hard luck.
Whatever you do don't build large ships or expand your military yards, it is way better to build more slipways and keep those yards small (when under pressure that is), you get more build capacity that way. Sure if you already have really large yards you can use them. 1-2000t ships are quite good as missile corvettes to swarm an enemy, should work almost as good as fighters most of the time, especially if you don't have enough fighter factories. A few yards at 2000t with a few slipways and you should be able to produce a fair amount of these ships. You don't need much defensive capacity on them as you would treat them as fighters more or less but with greater reach.
Hi Entaro! You're on the defense, so that's where you should concentrate at the moment. I can say what I'd do in your place.
Thanks a lot!
1. I just recently started researching technologies for carronades. I have (as you can see from the Rader template ship) 30cm carronades, with a reload speed of 3 (soon to be 4), which, it seems to me, is not very much.
I have 1 free shipyard with 5 slipways and the ability to build ships up to 10600t - on it I will produce them, trying to create the necessary components by the industry in advance, but it will take much longer than the enemy to fly to me if they want.
As for the largest ships ... I have a 60,000t shipyard with two slipways. I could convert her to build "carronade battleships." But I'm not sure if it's worth doing it now, given that my carronades are still poorly researched, and the shipyard is being refurbished for a very long time.
2. I don't really understand what is the advantage of such ships ... In fact, I could protect my system with my existing ships, and I can do this when my sensor ships are built, or at least sensor fighters.
I have only 5 fighter factories so far, no aircraft carriers.
3. I do not quickly convert my large ships, and I also like them the way they are. I would somehow gain time before I can use them (when the sensors appear) ... and their only major drawback besides speed is that it will be very inconvenient to storm enemy JPs with them, that's why I'm building carronades.
4. If I lose colonies in other systems, I will actually lose a decade of development, and the entire resource base. But the home system is really more important.
5. I guess I will need to do some reconnaissance to see if the enemy is actually blocking my JPs with a large enough force. If so, you really have to build such "monitors", but it will take about a year ..
The other thing you should do is put civilian sensor bases(make it very cheap!) or sensor buoys on every JG that might get attacked. They will let you know when the enemy force is moving towards your assets and allow you to prepare a defense or a retreat even if you are slower than him.
It is the sensors that I miss in the first place. I’m thinking which is better ?:
- fighters of 250-500 tons, equipped with powerful sensors (at what distance should I keep them so that the enemy does not notice them)?
- touch buoys?
By the way, the question about their placement ... how do I create a "waypoint"? Anywhere on the map ... After all, directly on the JP, a sensor or a fighter will quickly be detected and destroyed. It is logical to place them a little further ...
Is it possible to use off-the-shelf components in the production of fighters?
An amazing thing happened. I don't know how this can be understood - either I "found" a bug, or something broke, or there are some logical reasons why this happened ...
In general, the enemy fleet from the very ships that destroyed my automated colony about a year ago - arrived in the solar system and headed to Mercury (where there is a civilized mining colony).
I sent my fleet towards them.
The enemy fleet arrived at Mercury, stopped, and did NOTHING. Nothing at all! My fleet flew up to the range of fire of my missiles (70 million km.) And just shot the enemy fleet, it was like shooting at targets in a shooting range!
The surprising thing is:
1. The enemy did not begin to move (neither in the direction of my fleet, although it is difficult not to detect it - there are ships measuring 60 tons of tons, and the most powerful active sensors, nor to run away).
2. The enemy did not try to shoot down my missiles (although this is the same class of ships as the one that destroyed my colonies with energy weapons).
3. The enemy did not start attacking my colony (although in response to my hostile actions it was logical for him to show hostility).
Is this a bug and you need to write in "errors and suggestions"?
If you try to find a logical reason for this ... perhaps the enemy ships were not equipped at all with sensors capable of detecting my attacking missiles, and were not able to notice ships measuring 60 thousand tons at a distance of 70 million km.
But even if this is so, they had to do at least something - or immediately fly in the direction where the missiles came from, or at least start to run away ...
An amazing thing happened. I don't know how this can be understood - either I "found" a bug, or something broke, or there are some logical reasons why this happened ...
In general, the enemy fleet from the very ships that destroyed my automated colony about a year ago - arrived in the solar system and headed to Mercury (where there is a civilized mining colony).
I sent my fleet towards them.
The enemy fleet arrived at Mercury, stopped, and did NOTHING. Nothing at all! My fleet flew up to the range of fire of my missiles (70 million km.) And just shot the enemy fleet, it was like shooting at targets in a shooting range!
The surprising thing is:
1. The enemy did not begin to move (neither in the direction of my fleet, although it is difficult not to detect it - there are ships measuring 60 tons of tons, and the most powerful active sensors, nor to run away).
2. The enemy did not try to shoot down my missiles (although this is the same class of ships as the one that destroyed my colonies with energy weapons).
3. The enemy did not start attacking my colony (although in response to my hostile actions it was logical for him to show hostility).
Is this a bug and you need to write in "errors and suggestions"?
If you try to find a logical reason for this ... perhaps the enemy ships were not equipped at all with sensors capable of detecting my attacking missiles, and were not able to notice ships measuring 60 thousand tons at a distance of 70 million km.
But even if this is so, they had to do at least something - or immediately fly in the direction where the missiles came from, or at least start to run away ...
Either a bug or they did not longer consider you an enemy as the diplomcy status had improved enough, then you go and start a new war by attacking them for no good reason... ;)
Well, of course there was a message that they "stopped considering the enemy", despite the fact that the relationship is -2000. But, I thought they would change this status right after my attack :)
P.S. Built carronade ships and found out something interesting. Namely: these enemy ships are rather strange ... and they are not very much. I don’t know what exactly is the matter - but I don’t know how they could design such ineffective ships.
They are armed with something that fires 68 shots every 20 seconds, each shot deals 3 damage, but ... But these shots are terribly inaccurate. At a distance of 25 thousand km, at the speed of my ships - 6500 km / s, they did not hit me AT ALL.
At a distance of 0 km, and a speed (following) of 4500-2500 km / s, they hit about 6-7 times, i.e. chance of hitting 10%! Some very strange weapon :) The only thing they are capable of is to destroy defenseless colonies and transport workers.
Oh, yes, I have Level 4 electronic countermeasures installed on my ships, maybe this is so effective ...
Hmm ... I'm somewhat disappointed with NPR. They fight completely ineffectively and use completely useless ship templates. At least my current opponent ...
It feels like the ships I'm at war with are the very ships that I discovered in his system 30 years ago. Why their accuracy is so bad is not clear, but that's not even the problem.
I have not met any of their ships with missiles, or with anti-missile missiles. Their most popular class of warships has 17 * 4 railguns and 5 armor, with 21,500 tons of tonnage, but they do not use these ships effectively - they split them into many small fleets, which I destroyed one by one. The only thing holding me back from immediately attacking their capital is the fact that I spent most of my missiles on destroying most of their fleet, but they did not even try to combine their fleet and deliver a powerful blow to me.
Why these ships do not fire back with their railguns is also absolutely not clear.
Hopefully the next enemy will be better.
I set the difficulty higher, I think to include the "intruders" ..
And now you know why so many players play with multiple player races. ;)
To be fair to the poor NPRs, Steve is making some changes in 2.0 to help the AI including adding some logic to combine their fleets before giving battle, which should at least help with the whole destroying-them-piecemeal problem that makes them so easy to kill. Still, as long as NPRs lack tactical cleverness or any ability to adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield, they will be easy for a seasoned player to beat - or even a new player in cases like this.
I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.
I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.I wrote in the topic about errors, about all the illogical manifestations of AI that I noticed ...
Regarding the NPRs actions. It sounds like the relationship recovered enough to make them neutral again (the -2000 is your view of them, not their view of you). Some NPRs will not attack populations without STO (usually those with low XEN) and will use ground forces instead. So if they were railgun-armed they couldn't respond to missile attack and their philosophy prevented planetary bombardment. When they engaged, the ECCM bug would reduce their effectiveness against ECM-protected ships.
I wrote in the topic about errors, about all the illogical manifestations of AI that I noticed ...
The main problem, I suppose, is not in ECCM, but in the fact that the AI in my game:
1. Did not replace templates of my ships with new, improved ones.
2. Did not include in fleets with the most massive warships - ships with anti-missile point protection.
3. Did not use railguns as missile defense.
4. After all the battles with me, I am unable to assess the threat posed by my fleet.
I'm not sure how this can be programmed (I guess building the AI in this game is a very difficult task), but something like
1. "If the enemy fleet possesses 3 ships of the Kruiser mk1 type and it destroyed 20 of my ships without loss, then do not send less than 50 ships against fleets with 3 ships of this type" (accordingly, the number depends on the number).
Well, this is the simplest thing.
Perfectly:
2. "If the enemy fleet fires missiles":
A) To add anti-missile ships to the combat fleets.
B) If 1 enemy salvo inflicted 400 damage and destroyed 2 ships:
- calculate the approximate maximum stock of enemy missiles based on the tonnage and the number of rocket launchers (salvo size)
- calculate, taking into account the speed of the AI ships and the speed of the missiles, the time required to approach the player's ships.
- If it is possible to create a fleet that is EITHER large enough to survive all the enemy's volleys, or, taking into account the speed, is able to reach the effective range of fire while retaining ENOUGH ships - create it and attack (ideally, combine all warships).
- If it's impossible, avoid the fight.
At the same time, to activate the program for the construction of anti-missile ships, so that they are able to shoot down the entire maximum salvo of the enemy.
C) In principle, it is possible to simplify the life of the AI, and provide it with information about weapons, stock of missiles, etc. ships that participated with him in battle - directly. This way the AI can adapt more easily.
I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.
This explains so much why ECM dominates massively. I think this fix alone is going to have a large effect on generated NPR difficulty moving forward.
I also found a bug in NPR automated ship design that prevented them from using ECCM. That is fixed for v2.0.
This explains so much why ECM dominates massively. I think this fix alone is going to have a large effect on generated NPR difficulty moving forward.
If you want to do a hot-fix, go into DIM_AutomatedClassDesign and ensure there is a 1 in the ECCM field for every design that has a 1 in the ECM field, except for the military tanker and scout.
select DesignID, ECCM
from DIM_AutomatedClassDesign
where (ECM = 1 and
(not DesignID = "Scout" and
not DesignID = "Military Tanker"));The AI designs and builds ships with newer technology as it progresses. There are other options for missile defence besides railguns and not every AI fleet will have effective AM protection because some have different roles.I understand. Sorry, I didn't want my error message to sound like a rebuke to you personally! I understand perfectly well that Aurora is a very difficult game, and it is almost impossible to make an adequate AI in it that would be comparable to a human in abilities.
The AI looks at every shot you fire and everything your ships do and adjusts accordingly, using same tactical intelligence information that is available to the player. It is a LOT more sophisticated than your suggestion above. However, as with any AI, it is never going to come close to a human player in a tactical situation because a human can weight different factors in a given situation and plan accordingly. Also, the more complex the game, the more difficult to create an AI that can adjust to any situation. If I made Aurora much simpler, the AI would handle it far better.
Consider how basic the rules are for Chess or Go or Poker and consider how much effort and how many years were required to build an effective computer opponent. I suggest playing the game longer until you have encountered a lot more situations and then think about the AI code that would be required to handle all of them given the huge variety of different factors and potential systems involved.
much words
much words
It is worth noting that at least a partial fix may come in v2.0, as per Steve post here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg151545#msg151545) the AI will try to combine its fleets in a system instead of sending piecemeal forces, so offensive ships should be accompanied by anti-missile escorts assuming these are present in the system. Frankly if this change works its impact in making NPRs reasonable opponents cannot be overstated I think although how well it works will remain to be seen.
much words
It is worth noting that at least a partial fix may come in v2.0, as per Steve post here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg151545#msg151545) the AI will try to combine its fleets in a system instead of sending piecemeal forces, so offensive ships should be accompanied by anti-missile escorts assuming these are present in the system. Frankly if this change works its impact in making NPRs reasonable opponents cannot be overstated I think although how well it works will remain to be seen.
The AI also always deploy full size missile launchers which is rather inefficient and relatively easy to defend against with regular beam PD and a small number of AMM.
Aurora is an extremely complex game and the AI actually are pretty decent if you use a few constriction in your games. But there are a few flaws especially with their design templates. Outside of the ECCM bug the NPR never deploy carriers and it is not that good at scouting or defend against human scouting. The AI also always deploy full size missile launchers which is rather inefficient and relatively easy to defend against with regular beam PD and a small number of AMM. The NPR practically is not able to defend against fighter strikes very well either due to lack of scouting and weapons to defend against them.HM. I also don’t use aircraft carriers, I don’t practically use fighters, I deploy full-fledged rocket launchers :) I guess this is fair to AI. To be on the safe side, I increased the difficulty of the game to 120%. Suddenly it will help.
As long as you play into the NPR strategies the NPR are decent obstacles, especially if you start at pre-TN and use slow tech progression.
Aurora is an extremely complex game and the AI actually are pretty decent if you use a few constriction in your games. But there are a few flaws especially with their design templates. Outside of the ECCM bug the NPR never deploy carriers and it is not that good at scouting or defend against human scouting. The AI also always deploy full size missile launchers which is rather inefficient and relatively easy to defend against with regular beam PD and a small number of AMM. The NPR practically is not able to defend against fighter strikes very well either due to lack of scouting and weapons to defend against them.
As long as you play into the NPR strategies the NPR are decent obstacles, especially if you start at pre-TN and use slow tech progression.
I think this is a fair summary. I am currently coding box-launcher FAC flotillas for NPRs, so it won't be a major step from there to carriers when I get around to it. I might also look at reduced-size launchers for major warships. The scouting and anti-scouting role is trickier, although some form of random patrolling or buoy deployment might work.
I've just updated NPR design philosophy to include the option of reduced-size launchers.
I think this is a fair summary. I am currently coding box-launcher FAC flotillas for NPRs, so it won't be a major step from there to carriers when I get around to it. I might also look at reduced-size launchers for major warships. The scouting and anti-scouting role is trickier, although some form of random patrolling or buoy deployment might work.
I think this is a fair summary. I am currently coding box-launcher FAC flotillas for NPRs, so it won't be a major step from there to carriers when I get around to it. I might also look at reduced-size launchers for major warships. The scouting and anti-scouting role is trickier, although some form of random patrolling or buoy deployment might work.
Thank you for your work!
I can add information from my observations:
1. The most long-term is nevertheless for the AI to unite its fleet before the main battle.
2. I noticed one more drawback:
Above the enemy planet was a missile defense destroyer, with a very powerful anti-missile defense. And on the planet STO who, when trying to shoot down these ships with missiles, defended them. In total, they were able to shoot down 300 of my good fast rockets at a speed of 37000 km / s.
I am definitely sure that both destroyers and STOs fired at the missiles.
But after I destroyed these destroyers with beam ships, when attacked with STO missiles, they did not shoot them down at all. What conclusion can I draw ...? Perhaps the problem is either with the orders, or (which is quite likely) - with the absence of an active sensor with a resolution of 1.