Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: XxoriginxX on December 09, 2012, 05:59:23 PM
-
Well, that basically is my question- I've been registered on this forum for a while, but I have yet to really get "into" Aurora. I'm trying to now with an Earth start with a pop of 10 billion, and. . . I have no idea where to start. I tried before, but my military ships usually end up being complete and utter crap, so. . . A little guidance would be appreciated.
EDIT: I mean, I know how to assign officers and things like that. . . I just don't know anything about ship design, whatsoever. My first actual combat (a while back) was simply me entering a system and having my jump gate building ship blown up since I didn't know how combat worked. I thought you just flew close and that it was all automatic.
-
I'll let others get into the ship design and combat but the main thing I would suggest is starting with a much smaller population - maybe 500 million.
Steve
-
Well, the problem with that is that I end up stuck with 3 shipyards and 20 research labs, and it just doesn't feel. . . right.
-
Well, the problem with that is that I end up stuck with 3 shipyards and 20 research labs, and it just doesn't feel. . . right.
Believe me, less to worry about while learning is a good thing :)
Combat and ship design are very detailed. There are some tutorials in the Tutorial sub-forum but they are several versions out of date. Even so they should you give you an idea of what's involved. It would also be a good idea to read through the change logs in the Mechanics forum to see what has changed since the tutorials were written. There is information on the Wiki and there a LOT of forum posts in the Academy forum about combat and ship design.
Steve
-
Any ship design? or combat specific ship design?
-
Combat specific. Designing things like geological survey vessels is not too hard. Designing a sensor ship for combat. . . well, I hardly even know what sensor size and ranges and resolutions are decent.
-
The only way to learn that is experience, but Res 1, Res 20, and Res 100 are the basics for anti-missile/fighter, anti-fac, and anti-ship respectively.
-
I usually go with Res 60 as my general anti ship sensor, it gives up some max range but picks up the small guys sooner, and even gets FAC before they get to energy range. Though I usually run a Res 20 for those as well, Res 1 is of course required for missile defense.
-
mmm I duno so much, I'm noob as well and I've not come across any... intelegent life yet but I'm bumming around with sensors that will detect ships of about 6,000ton out to a range of about 500mkm.
I'm not yet actively searching for life so much as searching for exploitable resources so the ships that I have these sensors on do not yet have jump drives of their own, they're mostly just sensor frigates for the rest of my non jump capable fleet designed to keep my homeworld and immediate systems safe.
I did have these ships stationed at jump points, but that was before I learned fully about maintenance. I now also have a tug so I'm considering designing a base with a sensor and some basic close in defence that I can stick at the jump points.
I've been savescumming and sending the fleet to wreak havoc on a not so intelligent life when I want to test/getboard (and get owned)
-
Well, since it's going to be a while before I find sentinent life, the least I could do is start without military and save those Fast OB points.
-
For building ships the absolutely easiest thing is to look at the various threads in the the "Bureau of Ship Design" section of the forum. There you should be able to find many examples of ship designs and their general uses. Why not post a few of your own designs and people will tell you your most glaring problem or flaws so you can correct them.
When it comes to building sensors for your ships there are probably as many answers as thee are players playing this game since their designs depends on your play stile as much as efficiency. Personally I like to economise all my designs as much as I can, much depending on the current game I play. For me this means that I try to use many small sensors and make extensive use of smaller scout crafts. The benefit of this is that you can get away with building smaller sensors that are quite easy to research. On a 250 ton fighter scout you can usually fit a size three sensor while a 500 ton fighter I usually fit a size 5 sensor and a size 1.5 EM sensor.
Also remember that it is easier for the enemy to pick up your EM signature the higher the resolution on your scanners you use. As an example, if you use a resolution 100 scanner then a size one EM sensor of the same tech level as you will detect the EM signature at the same time you detect a 5000 ton object and bigger. While if you use a resolution 50 scanner you can detect a size 2500 ton object and the enemy would need an a passive EM of size two using the same tech level to detect you at the same range. Therefore it can be beneficial to use very low resolutions on smaller scout crafts, but it also mean they have to get closer to scan their intended objects.
I would say that resolution 20 scanner on scout crafts are generally a good idea. Anything from 60-120 resolution on regular ships are what you want. Just pick one and try to stick with the choice to standardize or pick one based on the size of your enemies ships when you find them.
Bigger resolutions scanner will turn your ships into EM magnets but they can be useful anyway. If you want to be aggressive then bigger resolutions means bigger active range and if you know that the enemy has larger ships that you can detect then why not. Put them on ships that you only turn on the sensor once you are detected anyway.
My regular sizes for scanner are 1,5,20,80 and 240. But I usually redesign them once I meet an enemy and tailer them after their ships.
You also need to remember to the put the right resolution on your MFC "Missile Fire Controls". In general it is easiest to have an active sensor and an MFC that uses the same resolution and distance, not necessarily on the same ship but in the same task-group at least. There are, in general, only reason to include more than one sensor in a group for backup if one of them is damaged if the ship carrying it is destroyed.
When it comes to designing the ships themselves you need to think in terms of efficiency versus versatility and economy overall. Do you have plenty of fuel reserves, if so, do you want high powered engines (with a higher risk of exploding) or do you need fuel efficient drive to conserve your overall fuel reserves?
What economy do you have in building naval yards?
In general I have found out that it is cheaper to actually build bigger ships in the long run. They are cheaper to (in both minerals and time) refit after built and they build much faster per tonnage as well and so they will keep up with your tech progression much faster than smaller ships. The reason they are cheaper is that they need much less retooling done since they usually change much less tonnage per retooling between versions.
The drawback with big ships though are that they present much bigger thermal images to an enemy and so can be hard to sneak up on enemies with. Smaller escort ships can also be good if they have tonnage that are less than the normal resolution of your enemy. If an enemy run with resolution 100 active scanners for the most part then building escorts in sizes of 4000 tons means that they most often will target your bigger ships first and leave your frail escorts alone to do their job.
Lets say that you want to build a task-group of destroyers that should be self sufficient and able to both attack and defend adequately. Let's say they will be standardised around 9000 tons and you will produce five ships for each task-group. You would like to have one designated as the leader, this ship could be fitted with a jump engine and carry most of the battle groups sensors. Although, you should keep some backups on your other ships as well, smaller but sufficient to at least make the group survive if the leader is lost.
You then either design one or two other ships. You either go with the principle that every ship should do one thing and do it well or make them dual purpose and keep your production much simpler. If you go with the first choice you might build one destroyer that primarily mount anti-ship missiles and launchers and one ship that primarily carry anti-missile launchers and gauss cannons for point defence.
I hope I have given you some ideas to try and experiment with.
-
Read everything in the forums. Practice, and prepare to start over a lot. The learning curve is very high and the UI is...unintuitive. Don't get frustrated, just learn from your experiences.
-
The fiction forums are also good places to learn about shipbuilding.
-
Here's a few simple things I wish I'd understood as I got started:
- Keep an eye on your wealth/income tab. Aim to spend somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of your income on research. If it's less than that, build more labs.
- If you find alien colonies, immediately leave the system. They get really crabby about ships in their inhabited systems. If you stick around to scout and learn more they'll most likely start shooting within a few months, even if they were originally disposed to be peaceful. Leave, chat them up remotely, and wait to be invited back in.
- Don't go schlepping minerals around in freighters. Put mass drivers on your industrial colonies and your mining colonies, and use those to shift your minerals.
- Don't spend big piles of Duranium building infrastructure. That stuff is precious. Terraform to colony cost 0.0 before you send people. That's kind of a radical view, but it's been working well for me.
- Be aware that the civilian hauling sector will (mostly) only haul stuff from high-population worlds to destinations within a jump or two. They'll happily haul auto miners and mass drivers out to Hale-Bopp for you, but you're on your own when it comes time to go recover the gear.
- Your fighting ships must either be faster than the enemy or have greater reach than the enemy. Get both if you can manage it. If you can only manage one, speed is better.
- Don't put too much fuel on your fighting ships. 30 billion km range is plenty. If you find that it's painless to add tons more range, this is a sign that your drives are way too fuel-efficient and, consequently, your ships are too slow. Aim to have about 1/3 of your warship displacement taken up by engine and fuel, with maybe 4 tons of engine for 1 ton of fuel. That's just for war ships. Civilian ships and surveyors will have a much different profile.
- If you chose to allocate your own starting research points, you use SpaceMaster mode to do it. You also use SpaceMaster mode to buy your starting ships & PDCs.
-
I know about all the SM stuff. It's not so much the mechanics at is is combat-related ship design and. . . well, anything combat-related, including ground troops and PDCs. Though I did have an idea. . . would it be foolish to make a craft with a lot of high resulution/low size sensors, cloaking, and a bunch of plasma cannonades in order to shoot enemies to death without them even knowing that I am there until it is too late?
-
I don't know if that'll work or not. I suspect it'd give you a lot of trouble.
A simpler and more conventional start would be to just go for missiles as your offense and defense. I'll tell you what I do.
Tech-wise I like to start with:
- the active-grav and EM sensitivity upgrades costing 4000 and 8000
- fuel consumption at 0.7
- magneto-plasma drive tech (Expensive, but worth it.)
- max engine power 1.5x
- research rate 240 (so painful to research this, but super nice to have right out the gate)
- duranium armor
- NO thermal reduction - it's a luxury item in the early game, and these starting RP are precious. Gotta make each point count.
- warheads 5xMSP
- missile agility 48x MSP
- launcher size 0.33, 20x Reload (big salvos are more important than high ROF on anti-ship missiles)
- launcher reload rate 3
With that starting tech, you'll be able to make these missiles:
- A size-1 antimissile with a maneuver rating of 20 and a speed of 28,800. (Engine is x3 power, size 0.6)
- A size-5 anti-ship missile with a maneuver rating of 18, a speed of 21,120, and a warhead of 9 (Engine is x3 power, size 2.2)
I suggest using a 25HS engine at 1.20 power mod for your main warship drive. That's a 960-EP engine, and one of those will push an 8,000 ton hull at 6,000 kps, a perfectly respectable speed. That's a 2500-ton engine, and with 610 tons of fuel it'll have a range of around 25 billion km, which doesn't sound like a lot but turns out to be easy to live with once you try it. Spending 3110 tons of an 8,000-ton ship on fuel and engine isn't bad.
Just throwing some things together I was able to come up with this:
Indianapolis class Cruiser 16,000 tons 241 Crew 2640.6 BP TCS 320 TH 1920 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 6-56 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 6 PPV 82.5
Maint Life 1.02 Years MSP 619 AFR 341% IFR 4.7% 1YR 600 5YR 9003 Max Repair 480 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 755
960 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 960 Fuel Use 55.21% Signature 960 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,200,000 Litres Range 24.5 billion km (47 days at full power)
Size 5 Missile Launcher (33% Reduction) (50) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 1000
Missile Fire Control FC48-R160 (1) Range 48.6m km Resolution 160
Missile Fire Control FC15-R16 (1) Range 15.4m km Resolution 16
Active Search Sensor MR48-R160 (1) GPS 7680 Range 48.6m km Resolution 160
Active Search Sensor MR15-R16 (1) GPS 768 Range 15.4m km Resolution 16
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
That's about typical of my usual starting cruiser. An AMM ship of similar tech might look like this:
Antietam class Frigate 8,000 tons 184 Crew 1375.84 BP TCS 160 TH 960 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 4-35 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 20
Maint Life 1.76 Years MSP 537 AFR 102% IFR 1.4% 1YR 212 5YR 3187 Max Repair 480 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 323
960 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 960 Fuel Use 55.21% Signature 960 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 650,000 Litres Range 26.5 billion km (51 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (20) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC10-R1 (1) Range 10.6m km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR10-R1 (1) GPS 128 Range 10.2m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I'm sure other readers will be able to point out flaws in these designs, but I think they're a reasonable starting point.
As you improve your tech you'll want to upgrade your ships and missiles to stay current. Here's what I do:
- Replace electronics (sensors, ECM, ECCM) with newer models every chance you get.
- Replace armor any time it becomes available. You'll generally be able to trade the space savings for a few more layers of armor.
- Avoid replacing launchers on your ship-killers or drives on any warship. These are a huge fraction of the cost of the ship. Instead, just make newer-generation models and let the old generation limp along at somewhat slower speeds. Totally obsolete ships make an ideal binky for frontier worlds that crave more protection.
- Try to get improvements in several areas (engine power, warhead/MSP, agility/MSP) before doing up a new generation of missiles. Big coherent salvos are nice, and it's hard to do that when each ship of the line is carrying a rainbow of missile variants.
-
Well, due to me starting with that 10 billion population. . . I tend to start with a lot of tech points. . . Probably way too many. I might just have to scale things back a bit. . .
-
10 billion is excessive. This game offers you the tools to break it, should you choose to use them. It's more of a sandbox in a lot of ways. You've sort of got to define your own challenges, and then enforce those rules yourself. If you don't understand the game really well, it's easy to tweak the starting settings in a way that'll take much of the challenge out of the game.
-
Yes, even at 3-4 billion your wealth income is huge at the start and the population growth are so high that you don't really need to build any colonies anywhere except mining colonies. Sure the trading income is nice but I have ended up with millions upon millions in wealth in my reserve.
-
Think of the population not as your actual number of people on the planet but as the number of 'educated, contributing citizens'. Sure there are a few billion more people, but most of them live in Africa and other horribly backward places, doing nothing but eating maize and popping babies. Not really useful for a TN society.
-
Yes... I usually view my populations as the part that are educated enough to matter. They would not include children or the old either, just the able bodied and working class. So, any population such as on Earth would perhaps be 1/3 to 1/4 of the total population at most.
-
I like to envisage them as the entitled upper class (service guarantees citicenship).
-
- launcher size 0.33, 20x Reload (big salvos are more important than high ROF on anti-ship missiles)
This is a something that I strongly disagree with. The reason being that it works ok against some NPR's because they have fleets that are small in number. But once you face one that using small ships in quantity the lack of ROF can be a killer. The extremely slow ROF takes away too much tactical flexibility.
Don't get me wrong. Having something in your fleet(s) that has this kind of a hammer is not a bad idea. Having the fleet depending on it is.
This is just my opinion based on experience, YMMV.
-
Going for the alpha strike very much puts your eggs all in one basket. Either you lob enough ordinance in that first strike to annihilate your foes and can celebrate your one sided victory, or the strike wasn't large enough and your commanding officers now have a lot of letters to write to grieving families before handing in their resignations.
Very effective when it works, but it has to work, otherwise you're boned.
-
In a game where you have a human brain on both sides you need both. Both are easily defeated if you deploy them exclusively. The same goes with fast versus armoured and slower missiles etc.
You can, for example, design missiles to waste the opponents AMM stock. Once he is depleted you engage with large volleys of high yield missiles in order to overwhelm gauss and laser point defences.
Smaller volleys of fire can easily be countered with good point defences which saves your stock of AMM, while alpha strikes are effectively stopped by good shields.
In general I tend to miniaturize bigger launchers (5+) and keep the smaller as standard launchers if not fitted on FAC or Fighter crafts.
To be franc, against AI NPR both tactics work equally well as long as you can throw enough missiles against them so they can't shoot them all down.
-
Going for the alpha strike very much puts your eggs all in one basket. Either you lob enough ordinance in that first strike to annihilate your foes and can celebrate your one sided victory, or the strike wasn't large enough and your commanding officers now have a lot of letters to write to grieving families before handing in their resignations.
Very effective when it works, but it has to work, otherwise you're boned.
That is only true if you go for box launchers. You can miniaturize your launchers and fire many salvoes and restock from colliers in the same way you otherwise do. I would never fit a ship with box launcher that do not have a hangar to reload them in. That is like giving yourself a huge disadvantage that a smart enemy could exploit pretty easily.
I have had ships equipped with size 8 launchers miniaturized into size 2 (0.25) in big battle cruisers. About 30-50 in one salvo and magazines for perhaps two to three salvoes and colliers for more will ensure heavy strikes on big capital ships. They are not really meant for a swarm of destroyers, that is what you use your smaller cruisers equipped with smaller shorter ranged missiles. Smaller ships are really not powerful enough to deal with really large ships on a tonnage for tonnage basis. That is at least my experience so far when I play with no AI.
-
That is only true if you go for box launchers.
Aye, you are correct, in action I tend to view it as a sliding scale, with box launchers at one end, representing the full alpha, come home with your shield or on it approach, and at the other, you have the more cautious full reload tactically flexible approach.
What works best for you is probably always going to be very situational, depending on the interaction between the current tactical, logistical, intelligence and strategic situation. Personally I think sacrificing rate of fire for throw weight leaves you critically vulnerable to the unknown and the unexpected, but if you modify your approach to account for this, or cover it in other areas, then it might never be a problem.
That might though, that's the bit I don't like. I'm a bloodbowl player, that next 1 is just a dice throw away. :P