Post by: Kurt on January 06, 2009, 06:07:14 PM
Anyone who has run a campaign with multiple races for any length of time probably recognizes my problem, which is to ensure that my different races remain different, instead of merging into mirror images of each other. My experience is that if I don’t watch this very carefully, my races will start becoming more and more alike in their ship designs and strategies, which perhaps makes sense given that the same person is playing all of them. The remedy is to develop different but viable (hopefully) strategies for each race and then try to stick to those strategies, modifying for experience and various internal pressures. Still, in the pressure of actually moving the game forward, it becomes too easy to lose focus and with the loss of focus comes a drifting of strategies towards one theoretical ideal.
One of the areas I had hoped to differentiate my governments was refit strategies. Aurora allows for several different strategies, IMO, and I had hoped to explore some of these. I have noticed, though, that it is very easy to go overboard on refits, and unless you are careful you can easily spend more than the ship originally cost on a single refit. Additionally, a series of refits can easily add up to far more than the ship originally cost, or the cost of a newer ship, without any one refit exceeding that cost.
What got me thinking about this was the fact that as the fleets in the 6 Powers Campaign have grown over time they seem to reach an equilibrium state periodically, because of the need for a series of refits to keep up with advancing technology. These refits take up more and more of the nation’s slipways, and until the # of slipways is expanded, or the efficiency is improved, no new ships can be produced because the yards are busy with constant refits. I realized that a power that either didn’t do refits, or one which did only limited and occasional refits, would be able to build a lot of ships, albeit most of those ships would be outdated.
Over time all of my nations have fallen into the same basic refit strategy, which is as follows: New technology judged to be critical, such as engine speed improvements, will necessitate fleet-wide refits to include the new tech, while tech of lesser importance or higher cost might be reserved for new builds only. This strategy results in several different versions of the same basic design being active at once, which doesn’t seem to be a problem as long as fleet speeds are maintained and salvo timing capabilities remain the same.
This strategy has led to a situation that I think is reflected somewhat in real life. The bigger nations have continuously upgraded their ships with more modern technology, although the upgrades have been somewhat selective and not all ships got the newest technology. However, as time has passed the shipyard capacity of the major powers has increased, the technology has increased, and the requirements for their ships has increased, which has led to a lot of pressure to increase the size of the ships. Refits can only do so much, so there is a trend to design newer, larger ships that incorporate all of the latest tech, so that capabilities that just can’t be included in the smaller ships can be realized in the larger ships.
The thing is, as I said above, this strategy has led to all nations performing a series of refits to remain current, with the total cost of the refits in shipyard time and resources costing far more than the original cost of the ship, or its replacement by a newer version, in spite of the fact that no one refit exceeded that cost. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and I am not advocating for a change here. I am just wondering what strategy other people use. What refit cost do you think is within reason? Has anyone tried a “no refit” strategy of building a large fleet without upgrading and scrapping the oldest ships? Is this strategy even viable within Aurora, where slower ships are punished grievously?
Kurt
Post by: ZimRathbone on January 06, 2009, 07:59:41 PM
It did tend to result in 4-5 different classes per role, but ususally only 1-2 would be in the "Active" battlefleets, older designs would get farmed out to colonies as local defence, and occasionally I had a queue of ships waiting to get scrapped (which somtimes gave rather odd results). On one occasion I even sold a small fleet to a (lower tech) ally.
It did help that this particular race was also trying a no missile/no fighter tech scheme (although THAT decision was fatal as it turned out).
I may try it again when I upgrade to 3.2 ( I think the current campaign has gone as far as it can go).
Post by: jfelten on January 07, 2009, 04:39:39 AM
I saw somewhere else that the only winning strategy was missile ships with a large percentage of tonnage dedicated to engines. I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. Given the wealth of beam weapons in this game, it would be a damn shame if fast missile ships were the only way to play.
Post by: dammrebel on January 07, 2009, 06:52:38 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. /quote]
Well i wouldn't go that far, sometimes the advent of new tech compltely makes the old status quo obsolete. Take for example the invention of the airplane. There is a reason no one builds battleships anymore. To argue that any tech build strat should be viable is to argue that a battleship heavy naval strategy sholud have been just as effective as a carrier group strat in WW2.
Post by: jfelten on January 07, 2009, 09:14:13 AM
I don't want to get in to a big wet navy discussion/debate here, but actually BB's are still viable today. It is just that no navy currently goes to the expense. The U.S. fielded two refitted WWII BB's until the early 90's and probably would have kept them going longer if the USSR hadn't collapsed then. They were covered in launchers and their WWII belt armor would likely bounce most modern anti ship missiles. The guns of course were extremely unlikely to range on an enemy ship today (but if they did, they would blow a modern essentially unarmored ship away) but were extremely effective shore bombardment weapons. Nothing short of nuclear (which they could also fire) has that impact. Interesting information on the debate here.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ort_debate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Gunfire_Support_debate)
Post by: Erik L on January 07, 2009, 10:05:32 AM
Post by: Father Tim on January 07, 2009, 10:26:10 AM
To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships. One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never). I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards. While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.
I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 07, 2009, 10:43:04 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Not being experienced with the combat system yet, would you mind explaining why "slower ships are punished grievously"? Couldn't an old missile ship be reloaded with modern missiles and at least have the same offensive punch as newer designs? Where does the speed come in to play? Getting in to favorable position? Running away from enemy missiles in flight?Faster ships have a better chance to dodge incoming fire, be it missiles or beams. Faster missiles are harder to shoot down. When firing missiles or turreted beam weapons, the speed of the firing ship is irrelevant. When firing non-turreted beam weapons, a ship firing at a faster-moving target is at a disadvantage because it is harder for the ship to get a shot.
Quote
I saw somewhere else that the only winning strategy was missile ships with a large percentage of tonnage dedicated to engines. I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. Given the wealth of beam weapons in this game, it would be a damn shame if fast missile ships were the only way to play.I am not sure where you saw that. It isn't true within the game and as far as I know it isn't reflected in the after-action reports either. Speed of the firing ship is irrelevant for missiles, which is why stationary planet-based missile launchers can be so effective. Speed is more important for beam-equipped ships who want to close with their targets.
With regard to the effectiveness of missiles. Just as in real life, they can be very effective In the right circumstances. In deep space against an opponent without effective point defence, they are especially useful. However, they have several major disadvantages as well. The main one is that you have to build the missiles and transport them to the ships who need to use them. There is no magical CFN in Aurora. Missiles are large in terms of magazine storage space and expensive in terms of production capacity. Often in the fiction, a race will use its entire supply of missiles in one battle and then their missile ships are useless until they build more. They can also be intercepted. In the last battle in my current campaign one race fired two waves of two hundred missiles each at a task force that included six 6000 ton escort warships. Not a single attacking missile reached its target. The PDCs that fired the missiles were then completely defenceless. Missiles don't work in nebulas, so again in my current campaign the Commonwealth is faced with an heavily populated alien planet in a nebula system adjacent to Sol. The Commonwealth relies completely on missiles so is unable to fight the aliens in their home system even if they wanted to. Finally, a ship with normal missile launchers cannot generate anything close to the rate of damage that a beam ship can, so in a point blank jump point defence beam ships are much better. You can use box launchers on the missile ships to generate higher rates of fire but they are less effective in terms of the total number of missiles carried and they can only be reloaded at a fleet base or by a carrier. In short, missiles are a very useful weapon in Aurora and as in real life they should be part of a nation's strategy, even if only used for point defence systems. They are not the only winning strategy and could lead to an early demise if relied upon too heavily.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 07, 2009, 10:57:57 AM
Steve
Post by: jfelten on January 07, 2009, 11:09:01 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "jfelten"I saw somewhere else that the only winning strategy was missile ships with a large percentage of tonnage dedicated to engines. I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. Given the wealth of beam weapons in this game, it would be a damn shame if fast missile ships were the only way to play.I am not sure where you saw that. It isn't true within the game and as far as I know it isn't reflected in the after-action reports either. Speed of the firing ship is irrelevant for missiles, which is why stationary planet-based missile launchers can be so effective. Speed is more important for beam-equipped ships who want to close with their targets.
Steve
Hey Steve, it's been awhile.
I'm glad to hear that. I was getting the impression there was only one viable tactic. I am pleased that that impression was false.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 07, 2009, 11:30:32 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Hi - good to see you here on the forums. Missiles do look impressive at first glance. The ability to smite your foes at long range with decent damage is very useful but using missile ships in a campaign reveals their weaknesses, which are often logistical rather than directly related to combat. Good point defence is essential and relatively easy to create even if you decide to go down a route that concentrates on beam weapons. To overcome good point defence, the attacker is forced to use a lot of missiles and that only exacerbates the logistical problems. Fire control and sensors are very important in Aurora too, both for attack and defence.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"Hey Steve, it's been awhile.Quote from: "jfelten"I saw somewhere else that the only winning strategy was missile ships with a large percentage of tonnage dedicated to engines. I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. Given the wealth of beam weapons in this game, it would be a damn shame if fast missile ships were the only way to play.I am not sure where you saw that. It isn't true within the game and as far as I know it isn't reflected in the after-action reports either. Speed of the firing ship is irrelevant for missiles, which is why stationary planet-based missile launchers can be so effective. Speed is more important for beam-equipped ships who want to close with their targets.
I'm glad to hear that. I was getting the impression there was only one viable tactic. I am pleased that that impression was false.
Steve
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 12:48:55 PM
Quote from: "ZimRathbone"
I tried the "No Refit" strategy a few versions back, and found that it had some distinct benefits, particularly in ensuring slipways remained (relatively) free for new construction.
It did tend to result in 4-5 different classes per role, but ususally only 1-2 would be in the "Active" battlefleets, older designs would get farmed out to colonies as local defence, and occasionally I had a queue of ships waiting to get scrapped (which somtimes gave rather odd results). On one occasion I even sold a small fleet to a (lower tech) ally.
It did help that this particular race was also trying a no missile/no fighter tech scheme (although THAT decision was fatal as it turned out).
I may try it again when I upgrade to 3.2 ( I think the current campaign has gone as far as it can go).
Ver interesting. I was thinking about adopting this strategy for one of my governments, and I think I'll go ahead and do it. Now which one...
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 12:54:30 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Not being experienced with the combat system yet, would you mind explaining why "slower ships are punished grievously"? Couldn't an old missile ship be reloaded with modern missiles and at least have the same offensive punch as newer designs? Where does the speed come in to play? Getting in to favorable position? Running away from enemy missiles in flight?
I saw somewhere else that the only winning strategy was missile ships with a large percentage of tonnage dedicated to engines. I kind of consider a game system broken when there is only a single winning strategy. Given the wealth of beam weapons in this game, it would be a damn shame if fast missile ships were the only way to play.
Well, understand that this is just my opinion, so take it for what it is worth. Having said that, speed is life. While it is possible to beat a faster enemy, it is much harder to do unless your weapons out range them as well. The last time I seriously looked at this situation was under a previous version of Aurora, before Steve greatly extended missile ranges, so this equation has changed somewhat, but I believe the basics still hold true. You can get away with having slower ships if you have longer ranged weapons, but if you have slower ships and shorter ranged weapons, you will likely win battles only under certain special conditions. If you are slower and have longer ranged weapons then you may still lose is the enemy can avoid or negate your weapons fire long enough to get into range of their weapons. If you are faster and longer ranged, there is little the enemy can do to you as long as you don't make a mistake.
That is why I say the side with slower ships is punished. It is not always true, but good as a rule of thumb.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 01:02:04 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
But if missiles are the only winning strategy, why research anything else other than for PD? Just research missile tech from day one. It sounds like research points put in any of the beam weapons is wasted, except what is needed for PD. I think it would make for a more interesting game if a beam only race was viable. But again, I've not actually played beam vs missile battles yet so I'm as much asking the vets as anything here.
I don't want to get in to a big wet navy discussion/debate here, but actually BB's are still viable today. It is just that no navy currently goes to the expense. The U.S. fielded two refitted WWII BB's until the early 90's and probably would have kept them going longer if the USSR hadn't collapsed then. They were covered in launchers and their WWII belt armor would likely bounce most modern anti ship missiles. The guns of course were extremely unlikely to range on an enemy ship today (but if they did, they would blow a modern essentially unarmored ship away) but were extremely effective shore bombardment weapons. Nothing short of nuclear (which they could also fire) has that impact. Interesting information on the debate here.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ort_debate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Gunfire_Support_debate)
Beams can come in handy in certain situations. In ambushes, nebulas, or where everyone starts at close range (earth orbit?), or when one side has expended their missiles, for example. Having said that, I think missiles are clearly the dominant weapon in Aurora. They are not the only strategy, IMO, but it would take more than a little effort to build a non-missile using fleet that could succeed against a missile dominant fleet.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 01:13:19 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
If you read some of Kurt's fiction, especially the Six Powers, you'll see that in the face of "modern" PD, missiles are ineffective. So the only alternative in that case is beams, which PD cannot stop.
I don't know about "ineffective", but good, layered point defense can certainly reduce the effectiveness of incoming missile salvoes. Such a defense needs a lot of thought, though. You have to have anti-missile sensors with a decent range, anti-missiles with a good to-hit percentage and good range, deep magazines, and last-ditch point defense beam weapons.
Such defenses can be overwhelmed, though, but large enough salvoes. Large salvoes can be generated by using "box" launchers, which can be achieved at a relatively low tech level, complicating point defense greatly. But the problem for the missile launching fleet is then that they have expended their missiles and are then toothless. If a non-missile race survives the alpha-strike, the missile using race is in trouble if they are slower. If the missile race uses up its missiles but destroys the non-missile race in the alpha strike then it is okay, but might have a problem for the next battle.
This is a very complex situation.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 06:13:33 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
I think it's more accurate to say that for any tactic X in Aurora, there is a countermeasure Y which renders it ineffective. Thus the only strategy that dominates is the old adage, 'Know thy enemy'.
To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships. One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never). I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards. While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.
I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.
This strategy of designating yards for specific construction tasks sounds more efficient than what I am doing now. Of course, it is hard to coordinate the activities of seven races, each of which has multiple shipyards. Hmmm...I am going to have to think about this.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 06:18:51 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
-snip-
With regard to the effectiveness of missiles. Just as in real life, they can be very effective In the right circumstances. In deep space against an opponent without effective point defence, they are especially useful. However, they have several major disadvantages as well. The main one is that you have to build the missiles and transport them to the ships who need to use them. There is no magical CFN in Aurora. Missiles are large in terms of magazine storage space and expensive in terms of production capacity. Often in the fiction, a race will use its entire supply of missiles in one battle and then their missile ships are useless until they build more. They can also be intercepted. In the last battle in my current campaign one race fired two waves of two hundred missiles each at a task force that included six 6000 ton escort warships. Not a single attacking missile reached its target. The PDCs that fired the missiles were then completely defenceless. Missiles don't work in nebulas, so again in my current campaign the Commonwealth is faced with an heavily populated alien planet in a nebula system adjacent to Sol. The Commonwealth relies completely on missiles so is unable to fight the aliens in their home system even if they wanted to. Finally, a ship with normal missile launchers cannot generate anything close to the rate of damage that a beam ship can, so in a point blank jump point defence beam ships are much better. You can use box launchers on the missile ships to generate higher rates of fire but they are less effective in terms of the total number of missiles carried and they can only be reloaded at a fleet base or by a carrier. In short, missiles are a very useful weapon in Aurora and as in real life they should be part of a nation's strategy, even if only used for point defence systems. They are not the only winning strategy and could lead to an early demise if relied upon too heavily.
Steve
There is another important limiting factor for missile using races. At least for my missile using races. I have found it difficult to maintain high numbers of missiles in my stockpiles, usually for several reasons, some good, some not so good (like not paying attention).
This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles. I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity. Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.
Kurt
Post by: Kurt on January 07, 2009, 06:24:39 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Interesting topic. Refits need a lot of thought in Aurora. I have tried to reflect real life as best I can so I hope the most common refits will be upgrading electronic systems, weapon systems or sometimes engines but probably not all at the same time as it would likely be cheaper to build a new ship. You can also, as in real life, refit to a different hull size but take that too far and building new becomes cheaper. The Commonwealth recently researched ion engines so I am refitting the old colony ships as the biggest part of their cost is their cryo modules and the engine upgrade is much cheaper than new ships. The main cost of the older freighters is their engines so a refit is not economically viable. Therefore I am building additional new freighters and keeping the older freighters in service for shorter or less important tasks. For warships, some of the upgrades are OK because I am just updating their engines but for others that also require new launchers and new electronics it just isn't worth it so they are being scrapped. Out of date warships are often just expensive targets. Although another option I sometimes use in Aurora that reflects real life is to upgrade part of an older ship's systems to keep it useful while not upgrading everything as that would too expensive. For example, I might update a fire control system so the ship can fire newer missile types but not bother with the engines and then assign the ship to guard duty for less important colonies.
Steve
Interesting. Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines. I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).
I too have only been selectively upgrading systems. For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor. While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive. Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production. This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.
Kurt
Post by: Erik L on January 07, 2009, 06:55:27 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
I think it's more accurate to say that for any tactic X in Aurora, there is a countermeasure Y which renders it ineffective. Thus the only strategy that dominates is the old adage, 'Know thy enemy'.
To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships. One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never). I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards. While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.
I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.
This is basically what I do also. Yard X always builds survey ships. Though I tend to put the slips in multiples of my operating squadrons. I.E. a 5 ship survey group, then the yard building them has 5, 10, etc slips so I can put out a task group at the same time.
Post by: sloanjh on January 07, 2009, 10:24:13 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Interesting topic. Refits need a lot of thought in Aurora. I have tried to reflect real life as best I can so I hope the most common refits will be upgrading electronic systems, weapon systems or sometimes engines but probably not all at the same time as it would likely be cheaper to build a new ship. You can also, as in real life, refit to a different hull size but take that too far and building new becomes cheaper. The Commonwealth recently researched ion engines so I am refitting the old colony ships as the biggest part of their cost is their cryo modules and the engine upgrade is much cheaper than new ships. The main cost of the older freighters is their engines so a refit is not economically viable. Therefore I am building additional new freighters and keeping the older freighters in service for shorter or less important tasks. For warships, some of the upgrades are OK because I am just updating their engines but for others that also require new launchers and new electronics it just isn't worth it so they are being scrapped. Out of date warships are often just expensive targets. Although another option I sometimes use in Aurora that reflects real life is to upgrade part of an older ship's systems to keep it useful while not upgrading everything as that would too expensive. For example, I might update a fire control system so the ship can fire newer missile types but not bother with the engines and then assign the ship to guard duty for less important colonies.
My experience with refits is pretty much spot on with everything Steve says here:
- I don't think I've ever found it economical to refit to a new armor type, with the exception of gunboats (where the new armor allows one to squeeze an extra or bigger laser in).
I very rarely find it economical to refit to new engines; I think that of warships, exploration ships, colony ships, and freighters, it's only the colony ships that I'll upgrade the engines on.
I very often upgrade weapons and/or electronics suites for warships. This seems to be a little different from Steve's observation (that he has more engine refits for warships), but I tend to be very engine-heavy in my designs since, as Kurt says, speed is life.
Practically speaking, this means I usually have several generations of the same type of ship in service at the same time.
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 07, 2009, 10:40:33 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Interesting. Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines. I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).
I too have only been selectively upgrading systems. For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor. While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive. Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production. This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.
Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too. Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster. My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.
The caveat here is that I tend to play exploration games, with a single world government, and low weapons tech (since they haven't encountered aliens yet, why do they need big warships?) This is analogous to the situation in SF before ISW I, except that the rude awakening usually happens when my civ discovers ruins (I think I got this idea from one of Steve's campaigns - the one with legends of an ancient war between the gods and the demons).
For home planet defense, I tend to use squadrons of beam-armed gunboats, rather than missile-armed PDCs.
The downside here is that, ever since the precursors left, I tend not to encounter alien races with a high enough tech (and big enough economy) to be interesting enemies. I'm a little curious as to how Steve consistently finds such races - my assumption has been that he's enhancing the automated tech generation with role playing ideas about the race's tech philosophy and then using instant research to get the aliens up to a "challenging" tech level given that design philosophy. So all my lovely theories about using gunboats for homeworld defense might come crashing down if a hostile race with significant missile capability showed up.
Now that the pre-industrial stuff has been put in (thanks again, Steve!!!!), I think my next campaign will be an "uplift" scenario - I haven't done one of those since ~v0.5, I think.
John
Post by: Erik L on January 08, 2009, 12:33:32 AM
Post by: IanD on January 08, 2009, 02:24:32 AM
Regards
Ian
Post by: jfelten on January 08, 2009, 04:02:10 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Well, understand that this is just my opinion, so take it for what it is worth. Having said that, speed is life. While it is possible to beat a faster enemy, it is much harder to do unless your weapons out range them as well. The last time I seriously looked at this situation was under a previous version of Aurora, before Steve greatly extended missile ranges, so this equation has changed somewhat, but I believe the basics still hold true. You can get away with having slower ships if you have longer ranged weapons, but if you have slower ships and shorter ranged weapons, you will likely win battles only under certain special conditions. If you are slower and have longer ranged weapons then you may still lose is the enemy can avoid or negate your weapons fire long enough to get into range of their weapons. If you are faster and longer ranged, there is little the enemy can do to you as long as you don't make a mistake.
That is why I say the side with slower ships is punished. It is not always true, but good as a rule of thumb.
Kurt
That certainly makes sense. If you are slower and have shorter range weapons, the enemy can just pound you from a distance and barring some sort of terrain or ammunition limitation, you can't force the range to close. Starfire mitigated this somewhat by turn modes, arcs of fire, and maximum speeds. A ship could not run directly away and still fight effectively. Plus engines did not take that large a percentage of total space so most ships were built at maximum speed. If you could survive long enough, you could always close with the enemy eventually if your ships were the same speed. The biggest ship classes were slower though which is what made the system interesting.
So I can see in Aurora where there would be a speed "arms race" which if taken to extreme would result in ships that are all engines and one weapon. Is it possible to extend the range of beam weapons via research? "Capital Ship Lasers" and such? I've not gotten that far with the game.
Post by: jfelten on January 08, 2009, 04:09:50 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
My experience with refits is pretty much spot on with everything Steve says here:I don't think I've ever found it economical to refit to a new armor type, with the exception of gunboats (where the new armor allows one to squeeze an extra or bigger laser in).
I very rarely find it economical to refit to new engines; I think that of warships, exploration ships, colony ships, and freighters, it's only the colony ships that I'll upgrade the engines on.
I very often upgrade weapons and/or electronics suites for warships. This seems to be a little different from Steve's observation (that he has more engine refits for warships), but I tend to be very engine-heavy in my designs since, as Kurt says, speed is life.
Practically speaking, this means I usually have several generations of the same type of ship in service at the same time.
John
How is refit cost calculated?
Post by: jfelten on January 08, 2009, 04:15:26 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too. Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster. My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.
John
I assume you mean later in the game. I have trouble designing starting ships much over 2Mm/s.
Post by: jfelten on January 08, 2009, 04:31:19 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles. I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity. Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.
Kurt
That first part is key. If you crush the enemy battle line in the first battle, you don't need that many missiles. Point taken though about missile logistics. But I would think that focusing some effort on missile production and following your warfleets with reloads would mostly take care of that.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2009, 10:13:35 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
What I tend to look at is the cost of the freighters/colony ships vs the improvement in journey time. In other words, is it more efficient to build two slow freighters or one fast freighter, taking into account the time spent loading and unloading. With the more expensive engines, the cost of cargo holds, etc is only a small part of the freighter cost.Quote from: "Kurt"Interesting. Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines. I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).
I too have only been selectively upgrading systems. For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor. While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive. Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production. This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.
Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too. Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster. My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.
Quote
The downside here is that, ever since the precursors left, I tend not to encounter alien races with a high enough tech (and big enough economy) to be interesting enemies. I'm a little curious as to how Steve consistently finds such races - my assumption has been that he's enhancing the automated tech generation with role playing ideas about the race's tech philosophy and then using instant research to get the aliens up to a "challenging" tech level given that design philosophy. So all my lovely theories about using gunboats for homeworld defense might come crashing down if a hostile race with significant missile capability showed up.The Precursors should be back soon. I currently have a race running in my own campaign that is being completely controlled by the program. It is deciding what installations to build, what to research, which missiles it's ordnance factories should build (based on the total amount of each missile type needed by its forces and the number in service) and what ships to build in its shipyards. It will also build new shipyards and upgrade the existing ones. Survey ships are surveying automatically and exploring new jump points by themselves. Any warships will automatically investigate sensor contacts and attack if they get an active contact. The race is also deciding on suitable colony worlds and its freighters and colony ships are carrying out colonization by themselves. There is a long way to go though before it can truly play itself because it can't make decisions (yet) about what installations to transport between colonies.
I am currently working on automated ship design so an NPR race can create its own ships and update the designs after researching new technology. As part of that I have just completely redone the random tech generation. Instead of being completely random, a race will now research tech in groups based on a table. For example, the engine and missile tech groups are the most likely with about a 6% chance of each. If the program randomly selects engines it will first select the next available power plant tech. If sufficient research points are available it will then choose the next engine and the next level of fuel efficiency. After that it will potentially select additional engine techs. 1/3rd chance of researching the next engine platform (GB or Fighter), 1/3rd chance of the next power efficiency tech, 1/4th chance the next thermal efficiency tech and a 1/5th chance of hyperdrive efficiency. If research points still remain it will choose another tech group. For missiles, it will select warhead strength, then missile speed, launcher reload rate, missile agility and active sensors. It will potentially also research missile ECM (50%), reduced size launchers (50%), enhanced radiation warheads (33%), max tracking vs missiles (25%). In the cases where something has pre-requisites from another tech group (such as missile speed needing engine tech), it will only be researched if the pre-requisite tech has been researched. Otherwise it will skip that option and spend no points. More useful technologies will be selected more often. For example it is ten times more likely the program will select an increase in research rate than an increase in maintenance production and three times more likely than an improvement in planetary sensor tech. I hope this will provide NPRs with more sensible starting tech. I will also be working on code to create some starting tech systems beyond just engines and passive sensors.
With regard to the actual size of any alien races, this is currently (in v3.2) based on the average population of player races. The formula is:
BellCurve = RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45)
Pop = Average Player Race Pop x (BellCurve / 100)
If players are finding this is not sufficiently challenging, I could increase their size. Or perhaps even better I could add an alien pop size modifier to the game window as a difficulty modifier.
In terms of the starting tech points, the forumla is:
Starting Tech Points = Starting Research Labs * (Game Years + 20) * 300
Perhaps I could base this on average player race tech points instead, regardless of the number of research labs.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2009, 10:16:17 AM
Quote from: "IanD"
The question I have regarding refits is - aren't they faster than building from scratch? Thus if I need to upgrade my fleet to meet a threat, is it not faster to refit than start new construction?It depends on the extent of the refit. Somestime a refit can be more expensive than building a new ship, depending on what you need to replace, or so close to the cost of a new ship that you may as well keep the old one and add a new one as well.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2009, 10:19:52 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
It would if there weren't so many other things to doQuote from: "Kurt"This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles. I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity. Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.That first part is key. If you crush the enemy battle line in the first battle, you don't need that many missiles. Point taken though about missile logistics. But I would think that focusing some effort on missile production and following your warfleets with reloads would mostly take care of that.
I have just finished upgrading my fleet and building new ships. Unfortunately I don't have enough missiles to fill their magazines even once. This is a long term problem and is exacerbated by the fact I don't have enough population to man the necessary ordnance factories, or the fuel refineries I need because fuel is fast running out, or the construction factories I need to build more ordnance factories and fuel refineries. I may have to shut down my research labs to do that but my research labs are currently researching increased fuel and ordnance production - aargh!
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2009, 10:36:42 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
If players are finding this is not sufficiently challenging, I could increase their size. Or perhaps even better I could add an alien pop size modifier to the game window as a difficulty modifier.I have added this for v3.3. On the Game window, you can now select a percentage of normal size for NPR populations. 100% is the default.
Steve
Post by: Sotak246 on January 08, 2009, 05:47:43 PM
If players are finding this is not sufficiently challenging, I could increase their size. Or perhaps even better I could add an alien pop size modifier to the game window as a difficulty modifier.[/quote]
I would prefer the size modifer option, myself. Sometimes I play a game just for the challenge, and the ability to increase the size from the start would be great. But being wishy-washy, I also play the occasional game to relax and like the lower pop sizes.
Mark
Post by: sloanjh on January 08, 2009, 11:41:08 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
How is refit cost calculated?
IIRC, it's related (or equal) to the cost of the new components. I don't remember how hull size changes are costed out - they might have an additional penalty. I don't actually calculate it, though, I simply look at what the SY tells me the refit cost will be.
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 08, 2009, 11:50:41 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Quote from: "sloanjh"Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too. Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster. My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.
John
I assume you mean later in the game. I have trouble designing starting ships much over 2Mm/s.
Nope - right from the start. I usually do a 10^9 population start (to speed things up), and in starting tech I concentrate on economic efficiency (construction, mining, etc.), engine tech, and armor tech (because armor also has a big effect on the engine/payload ratio, which in turn greatly reduces the size of the ship). I typically leave enough points for rudimentary lasers and/or missiles. On the stuff I'm concentrating on, this generally puts me at the tech level one below the 20K cost, which corresponds to Magneto-something-or-other engines. Cramming 10 MHD engines into a 6K-ton hull gives you a speed of 6K, IIRC, with room to spare for a jump drive, two grav sensors, a decent amount of fuel and some sensors.
But you're right, ships with low-tech engines are sloooooooooow.
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 09, 2009, 12:21:17 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
What I tend to look at is the cost of the freighters/colony ships vs the improvement in journey time. In other words, is it more efficient to build two slow freighters or one fast freighter, taking into account the time spent loading and unloading. With the more expensive engines, the cost of cargo holds, etc is only a small part of the freighter cost.
I do the same thing ("maximize hold-size*speed" when deciding how many engines and holds to stick into freighters and colony ships). I find the colony ship sweet spot is faster than the one for freighters (which makes sense, since cryo-modules are so expensive - the return on investment is lower if they're in a ship that crawls along than is the case for freighters, where the cost of the holds is essentially zero). One interesting point - the granularity of crew quarters makes "bands" of efficiency; if you can add an engine without crossing a crew quarters threshold, you tend to be more efficient (I'm not sure if I've tried this since GB quarters were put in, however).
BTW- I first thought you meant using lower-tech engines instead of high-tech engines, but I don't think this is ever economical.
Quote
The Precursors should be back soon.
[SNIP]
All this stuff sounds really great. One of the things I hope for in one of my standard starts some day is to encounter an NPR race that catches my civ with its "weapons-tech pants" down. The closest I've come so far was more than a year ago when my peaceful exploration ship USS Fluffy Bunny attempted to make friends with a precursor ship, with predicable results. Building up an emergency fleet to deal with the threat was great fun. I think I remember something similar in one of your campaigns, where your first fleet was crushed but the second got the precursor(s). None of the NPR races I've hit so far have posed a similar threat. It sounds like the "focussed research" changes you're making to NPR generation are spot-on for addressing this issue.
Question - how hard would it be to allow players to manually generate the NPR's tech, in the same way you can choose to manually choose tech for a player race? A nice interface (both for NPR and player race) might be a dialog that puts up the possible random choices, and lets one push buttons to direct the research (rather than using the random number generator).
John
Post by: jfelten on January 09, 2009, 03:59:39 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "jfelten"Quote from: "sloanjh"Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too. Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster. My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.
John
I assume you mean later in the game. I have trouble designing starting ships much over 2Mm/s.
Nope - right from the start. I usually do a 10^9 population start (to speed things up), and in starting tech I concentrate on economic efficiency (construction, mining, etc.), engine tech, and armor tech (because armor also has a big effect on the engine/payload ratio, which in turn greatly reduces the size of the ship). I typically leave enough points for rudimentary lasers and/or missiles. On the stuff I'm concentrating on, this generally puts me at the tech level one below the 20K cost, which corresponds to Magneto-something-or-other engines. Cramming 10 MHD engines into a 6K-ton hull gives you a speed of 6K, IIRC, with room to spare for a jump drive, two grav sensors, a decent amount of fuel and some sensors.
But you're right, ships with low-tech engines are sloooooooooow.
John
Ah, so far I've just used random starting tech which usually means pretty basic engines.
Post by: Father Tim on January 09, 2009, 07:12:49 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Question - how hard would it be to allow players to manually generate the NPR's tech, in the same way you can choose to manually choose tech for a player race? A nice interface (both for NPR and player race) might be a dialog that puts up the possible random choices, and lets one push buttons to direct the research (rather than using the random number generator).
John
Absurdly easy. When Aurora asks if you would like it to design the race automatically say no, then say yes to all the suggestions except 'Assign tech randomly?' and after NPR generation go choose the tech you want. Aurora tracks the recommended amount of starting tech points and deducts the cost of each tech you instant research. Alternately, randomly generate teh race as usual and then ad a few choice technologies.
Either way, after the tech increases you will need to update the auto-designed ships to use the new tech.
Post by: jfelten on January 09, 2009, 07:56:33 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 08:20:11 AM
Quote
jfelten wrote:
The build points it shows on the "Fast OOB" window. Do you know how much production that equates to? Obviously you can use more or less as you like when creating a race, but is that basically the recommended amount that most people stick with?
IIRC it is race slipwaysx1000BP. I haven't played enough games to say whether I would stick to the suggested BPs (I have so far BTW).
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 09, 2009, 09:43:52 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
The build points it shows on the "Fast OOB" window. Do you know how much production that equates to? Obviously you can use more or less as you like when creating a race, but is that basically the recommended amount that most people stick with?
IIRC that is 2x the total shipyard bp capacity for ships and equal for PDC's.
Post by: Father Tim on January 09, 2009, 04:22:38 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
The build points it shows on the "Fast OOB" window. Do you know how much production that equates to? Obviously you can use more or less as you like when creating a race, but is that basically the recommended amount that most people stick with?
It is two years' worth of production, at curent rates (though goverment type can affect the ship/PDC split). That's the default for pretty much everything (fuel, maintenance supplies, etc.) except Research, so I recommend using the two-year rule for ground units, ordnance & fighter production and anything else that Aurora doesn't automatically handle (yet).
Post by: Kurt on January 09, 2009, 04:46:01 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Quote from: "Father Tim"I think it's more accurate to say that for any tactic X in Aurora, there is a countermeasure Y which renders it ineffective. Thus the only strategy that dominates is the old adage, 'Know thy enemy'.
To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships. One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never). I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards. While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.
I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.
This strategy of designating yards for specific construction tasks sounds more efficient than what I am doing now. Of course, it is hard to coordinate the activities of seven races, each of which has multiple shipyards. Hmmm...I am going to have to think about this.
Kurt
I have been thinking about your strategy of limited reassignment of shipyards, Father Tim. I have long suspected that I do reassignments too much, partially because I have so much going on that planning ahead on a consistent basis for any one race is difficult. However, after pondering this a while, it seems to me that you must have a lot of shipyards. Perhaps more than most of my races have.
Take the Alliance for example. Before the latest round of tech advances and redesigns, they had the following classes in common use:
Large: BC
Medium: CA, Geo Survey, Grav Survey, colony ship, freighter, terraformer
Small: DD, assorted support ships (limited numbers)
I have found that a yard set to produce a colony ship will also be able to build a freighter (but not the other way around), so those combine to one yard. To regularly build everything that they'd need, they'd then need at least seven different shipyards. Hmmm...that's not too bad. Still, shipyards take so long to build up. To build a new shipyard, expand its capacity, and build it up to a reasonable number of slipways it could take a decade or more.
Maybe that's the answer, instead of building more slipways, I need to build more yards. I have to think about this.
Kurt
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 09, 2009, 05:22:51 PM
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on January 09, 2009, 07:49:27 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "sloanjh"Question - how hard would it be to allow players to manually generate the NPR's tech, in the same way you can choose to manually choose tech for a player race? A nice interface (both for NPR and player race) might be a dialog that puts up the possible random choices, and lets one push buttons to direct the research (rather than using the random number generator).
John
Absurdly easy. When Aurora asks if you would like it to design the race automatically say no, then say yes to all the suggestions except 'Assign tech randomly?' and after NPR generation go choose the tech you want. Aurora tracks the recommended amount of starting tech points and deducts the cost of each tech you instant research. Alternately, randomly generate teh race as usual and then ad a few choice technologies.
Either way, after the tech increases you will need to update the auto-designed ships to use the new tech.
I think I didn't make the question clear - I was asking if this was an opportunity to get a coarser-grained interface for non-random tech generation. Your workflow:
1) Assign tech randomly - "no"
2) Go to tech screen and pick individual techs
My thought:
1) Assign tech randomly - "no"
2) Go to new screen that has categories of tech, e.g. "engines", "missiles", "mining", etc. and select one of these. Aurora then figures out the next exact tech to select (possible with some randomization, e.g. whether to work focal length or wavelength when selecting "lasers"). This would make directed tech generation much quicker, especially for e.g. engines and armor (since the name changes at each TL, they jump around on the tech list and are a pain to find). In other words, one would never touch the "instant tech" button - instead one would click buttons on the "directed tech" page, which is more coarse-grained. Note that I'm not advocating taking the "instant" button away, just adding a new screen to allow more coarse-grained selections.
My expectation is that this should be easy, since the the screen in #2 could just be used to replace the RNG that selects among the categories.
If it is as easy as I think it is, then this could also be used in "regular" research. Instead of the player assigning a specific project (e.g. 2cm focal) to a planet's research, the player would assign a category, then Aurora would silently pick a particular project within that category and remember (but not display) it. When the research was done, an event would be generated. The player would only know how many research points had been accumulated, not how close to completion the next tech was. I'm pretty sure I've played other games that work this way - the idea is that what comes out of basic research shouldn't be too predictable. The granularity of the categories could even be one-to-one with the governor bonuses.
I was going to say that this idea would probably be too much work for Steve to do (mainly in prioritizing so that one tends to be at uniform levels within a category, e.g. aperture TL4 and focal length TL 4 rather than aperture TL6 and focal length TL1) for it to be worth it, but I suspect he's going to have to do something very similar any way for the NPR AI he discussed.
STEVE - in your prioritization weights within a category, you might want to give a higher priority to low-TL (i.e. cheap) projects than to high-TL projects (i.e. expensive). Something like a weight that was proportional to the ratio of the cost of the TL being researched to the first TL cost would probably work. In other words, if I were at TL1 in mining and TL4 in construction, I'd rather spend 18Kpts to bring mining up to TL4 than spend 20Kpts to bring construction to TL5; assuming TL1-->TL2 costs 3Kpts, then the weight for selecting construction would be (3kpts/20kpts) = 0.15 and the weight for selecting mining would be (3kpts/3kpts) = 1.0. If you don't do something like this, then the odds are high of having research on one high-tech project lock up a research facility for years. OTOH, from the point of view of variation there should be a bias towards a civ working on things it's already good at, so maybe you should use the sqrt of the ratio, e.g. sqrt(3kpts/20kpts) ~ 0.4.
Note that I would only do this for basic research. Component design (e.g. 20cm UV laser) should be explicitly scheduled, since you know what it is you're trying to design.
John
Post by: Father Tim on January 10, 2009, 09:37:21 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Maybe that's the answer, instead of building more slipways, I need to build more yards. I have to think about this.
Kurt
Certianly my empires have significantly fewer slipways than any single power in Steve or your Earth-based campaigns. I find that one or two slipways building non-stop is sufficient, as opposed to four or five at a time but switching back and forth between ship types. I also miss the 'first in class' 10% extra cost of Starfire, and therefore whenever I do start building a new or updated design I only build one at first. I wait at least a month before beginning construction on any additional units to represent the 'learning curve', and usually wait about a month between keel-layings for a more realistic feel.