Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Vandermeer on March 30, 2015, 05:33:53 PM
-
It may be worth starting a new thread to discuss ship class sizes. I've tried to work off of Corvettes being about 4,000 tons, Destroyers up to about 9,000, Cruisers up to about 15,000, etc., but those sizes sound mammoth! It'd take fifty of my cruisers to deal with one of yours it sounds like.
There was one thread in the past where I later tried to pull together some of the ship size arguments and also defame some false myths (like them being slower to build etc.). http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7290.msg73989.html#msg73989 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7290.msg73989.html#msg73989)
After thinking my reasons to do it this way through much further, I came to think there is only one real point in the end though. I tend to game very efficiently, so the first thing I noticed when getting Aurora and opting to figure everything out by myself, was that there are maximum component sizes. To get the best out of your current technology, you need to have 2.5kt engines and sensors, so a ship that really brings out your best should be able to fit those on. In theory that could get you started with around 7kt frigates (using one engine and one sensor exactly) if you have high specialization. ..But there are different sensors, and if you want a ship that has it all in one (capital), then you will quickly see to at least need 10kt for 4 sensors alone, and you wouldn't want the sensors to take away more than 1/3rd of a ship that is actually more meant to be combat capable, so that is when you realise you need at least 30-40kt mission tonnage, bringing you to 60-100kt warships, depending on engine spending.
That at least was my train of thought at the start, and my main reason to do it (why waste your technology potential by building smaller?). It is possible and absolutely viable to go smaller and still get your technology utilized if you specialize, but that leads to micromanagement, and inefficiency due to either redundancy (more ships of a mission type to fill eventual shortfalls/destructions), well, or you miss essential parts of your flee once in a while if you don't do the redundancy, which is really bothersome if it happens.
Capitals are never short of anything. They exist or they don't. The fleet of lazy Admirals. (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_seb_zunge.gif)
Building even bigger than that is not really necessary perse. There are some reasons that require it still, like for example if you intend to make really long range semi-independent ships which, amongst other things, would require a 100kt recreation module. ..You wouldn't want that to consume nearly all your mission tonnage again, so you need a ship of over a megaton at least to make it feasible.
The main reason why I improve on the ~100kt base line is again laziness however. When I see I need more fleet tonnage to be a better combatant, I normally try to fit what I would need at minimum in any given star system on one ship alone to save me from micromanaging fleets.(especially carriers) I have a prospect of how many fighters, torpedo valves and beam capacity I want, and then I would model the ship around that. It has the advantage that these larger capitals are of course much harder to destroy than their multi-ship smaller mass counterpart (except against mesons), and given you already have a shipyard of the size, it also saves you on building time and resources.(especially when you think that you likely will never have to replace ship losses -> you either lose it all or nothing, so an enemy who couldn't take out a whole equivalent massed player fleet, will not be able to get down the even sturdier fusion-ed capital version of one)
The disadvantages would be that you are way less flexible in your fleet composition, cannot so dynamically grow and shrink, and you could maybe react much slower to arising needs. I have never found these things to be an issue so far, but that is I assume due to Aurora being pretty easy when you figured it out. If it would be possible somehow to play against other humans, it would probably show to be a much larger problem, as developing counters is important in war, and capitals simply don't "mutate" fast enough to keep up.
-
Well the current loli pirate themed game that I'm running the biggest I have is a 100kt jumpgate builder, vs the handful of warships I've built that top out at 16kt. However with the civilians planting ~20 civvy miners on venus (with 17billion durainium, and 100-200k of a handful other minerals) and an AMAZING planet in Bernards Star (a dead end system with only 1 jump, that leads into sol). I'm plotting to do things a little... intense.
See generally I build ships like this.
500/1k is fighters and FACs
3k-6k for various experiment mess around ships (like ones with cloaking tech)
8k is my destroyer size - Usually all missile boats, or the occasional spinal laser or other single large beam weapon, plus escorts. Rather short ranged in fuel, and used primarily on the defense. 3-4 armor usually
16k is the cruisers - Which are often only slightly heavier armed than destroyers, but have ~50-100% more fuel, and thus the range to go off and do stuff on their own. Also most have some onboard PD, and 7-8 armor
24k is split between Battlecruiser, and Battleship
BC - 7-8 armor, lots of fuel and maintenance, and generally few launchers, but a lot of ammo. (Made for hypothetically hunting transports and such) Speed usually ~25% faster than the rest of the "fleet doctrine" ships.
BB - For assaulting stuff, lots of launchers, small magazines (reload from fleet tenders), small fuel load, 20-30 armor.
This time around though, I think I'm gonna push up a bit. "destroyers" and light ships will be about 20kt (25% of weight in engine would be 2 size 50 engines), cruisers 40, and bb/bc 60. Perhaps though I'll start off with my traditional numbers for the early, ion-fusion tech. then when I get into the mid fusions I'll push up to the 20-40-60, and by AM will be running around in 50-100-150.
My only real problem with this though is how out of hand ships become with maintenance, often having dozens of breakdowns a year, even with hundreds of engineering spaces. If we had a tech that would make your maint rates better with research I'd go with these bigger ships more often. But as it is, I really don't like playing that much, when I can't even have a couple good weeks of fleet training without a dozen breakdowns.
-
That with the increased breakdowns is also a myth about big ships though. In my current game my ships last easily 6 years in the numbers, but have shown to actually last up to 8 at the very least in the field without resupply. You will naturally have more breakdowns per ship, but that is just because you have like 20 ships combined into one. If you had 20 single ships in flight, you would experience about an equal amount of breakdowns I think.
The number in the design window definitely shows some increase in breakdowns the bigger the designs get, but first of all, some of that is just a law of statistics: The chance to get one "6" on a dice is much higher with 3 dices than one, so this makes the displayed chance appear increased. Yet you still only get one 6 per dice on average 6 rolls, so the total didn't increase.
That alone doesn't fully explain the effect though, so there is likely a game function aiding that, which is probably wise, because of issue number 2: Only 1 component can break on any 5-day interval. That leads to big ships having usually more, -and on massive designs-, much more life time than their timer indicates. If you have 100k supplies, and your most expensive component costs 2500, then you last at least 200 days, even if stuff starts to explode from day 1. However, the component which explodes is random, and your average repair cost will be much lower usually (not to mention that you won't see stuff break every time anyway), so the real endurance will be a lot higher.
In my star swarm game I actually exploited this concept and build mobile carrier starbases (500kts) that are meant to break something on every interval, but since I only have cheap components on those, it still comes down to 124 years life time if that always happens.(display still only says 36 years here btw.) Praxis has shown though that even after 80 years breaks only happen around every 2nd-4th time or so, and mostly the less expensive components, which brings real lifetime to over 500 years. Long enough?^^
Anyway, for normal capital ships though, I also tend to make them more about longevity and give them extra engineering, because capitals should feel independent for me, and not just like inflated exhaustible destroyers. I play this way since I got the game, and never had any problem with maintenance so far.
..Oh, wait, i had! Way back in my second game, I still used jump drives on my large ships. Big mistake here, because that gives you a single component that is really really expensive (->actually by far the most expensive stuff in the game), and by the numerical reason above, that really grinds down your life time by several factors. Not good to do. Yeah, if you are not comfortable with using jump gates, then big ships are a problem in Aurora.
My efficiency drive pushes me to jump gates anyway, because I consider it wasteful to have 1/5th of your ships or fleet dedicated to only a drive system that you can make obsolete by just raising some infrastructure in space. Why not solve the problem permanently and make the best of already sparse mission tonnage, to make everyone a better combatant? (except some rarely used ahead flying scouts for me)
But yes, if you don't feel that way, then this might actually be the strongest counter argument for big ships, because jump drive costs become out of this world after 100kt. :o Without them it's fine though.
This time around though, I think I'm gonna push up a bit. "destroyers" and light ships will be about 20kt (25% of weight in engine would be 2 size 50 engines), cruisers 40, and bb/bc 60. Perhaps though I'll start off with my traditional numbers for the early, ion-fusion tech. then when I get into the mid fusions I'll push up to the 20-40-60, and by AM will be running around in 50-100-150.
I would like to see any game with large ships by the way. I have been around for some while by now, scanned the past and other forums, yet I still have to see anyone that really went with it like I do. As long as I don't see proof to the contrary, I am going to assume you all got body snatched by Steve minions and then hard wired to some WWII naval lore books that he likes and Google scanned in a couple years ago.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_candle.gif)
-
I think part of the problem is the time it takes to get shipyards sufficiently large enough to be able to handle massive ships aside from going into SM mode and making the modifications or having a ton of single-slip yards that are beefed up. I'm open to hearing thoughts on ways to do it, of course...
-
Earlier someone mentioned that larger ships aren't less durable, however I'm not sure you're taking into account shock damage, I've run tests against ships with 100 armour layers that were cut short after only a few volleys due to internal ammo explosions, the obvious solution is size 1 magazines with maximum armour which is rather gamey but was suitable for my damage tests.
-
Earlier someone mentioned that larger ships aren't less durable, however I'm not sure you're taking into account shock damage, I've run tests against ships with 100 armour layers that were cut short after only a few volleys due to internal ammo explosions, the obvious solution is size 1 magazines with maximum armour which is rather gamey but was suitable for my damage tests.
Oh, interesting. I was never attacked so strongly that this would do something serious, because the shields always overpowered everything. The only times they got depleted was against intensive amm spam, in which case shock damage again was not the issue, and the armor would last forever.
Shields are really good against big caliber cannons, but if you would make planned attacks and drain them first with small fire, then bring in a "finisher" with large guns for the shock, then it might be as you say. I must test that later too.
Is a very special situation though, and wouldn't really appear in play praxis.(haven't encountered it ever despite only playing like this - in contrast to constant amm and low-mid caliber threats, which you face on every corner)
I think part of the problem is the time it takes to get shipyards sufficiently large enough to be able to handle massive ships aside from going into SM mode and making the modifications or having a ton of single-slip yards that are beefed up. I'm open to hearing thoughts on ways to do it, of course...
Uff, this has been debunked often enough too. What is with the SM mode accusations by the way? "SO big. Must be cheating!"(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_nils_nicht-lachen01.gif)
I can proudly say that I have never cheated in either resources or installation or shipyards, tech, whatever in any of my games. That beats the point of the game for me. I take what I get and make the best of it.
So, getting big shipyards is no problem at all, which is easy to see if you tried it once. This is not about the super early era of ships, but when you are about 40-50 years into a standard game or so, where it is absolutely possible and viable to have a 100k military yard. Instead of doing multiple slip ways, which cost a lot of time and resource (you essentially double size at start for example), you just raise one 1 slipway yard up to that level.
Even later it gets even easier of course. Once you have some well producing extrasolar mining sites, you will see your empire treasury counting into the millions and tens of millions. What can you do with this kind of resource. You could of course raise maybe another 20 8-slipway yards of the small ~7-15kt designs (actually many many more), but you will either never want that many ships, or really be bothered by the serious micromanagement that comes with such a fractionated fleet. ..Or you could invest the resource into some really big yards and maintain the relative ship count and management while still increasing fire power.
I see others with a third option instead who chose to split up their resources and build new shipyards on distant colonies at this point, but that is even more management, and too much for me personally. Can be done though.
What I can tell from playing all my games for a long time and each at least over year 100, is that large shipyards are not only just possible, but rather actually easy to get, as at some later game stage (year 70-100) you end up with so much resource that building a megaton military yard barely cuts into your pocket money. The only way I found to really drain my building potential at this later stage is building equivalently oversized civil ships, which is for example ~20mt civil freighters (with exactly 1000 holds). I had to come up with 150 megaton civil ships to really figure out the maximum though.
Civil designs cost a lot if you prefer doing freighting by hand like me. Military in comparison is barely worth mentioning.
///
I came up with some numbers from my recent game to show something at least. The year of that game is 223, but keep in mind that I started custom here with a random resource home planet, meaning I didn't have all the resources available at start (only around 5k stockpiles I think that I edited in before starting), and those I had turned out to have mostly poor acc. . I think I needed around 100 years only to reach ion technology and have freighters finally be able to cruise through the whole system (severe fuel shortage with that though). Only at around year 170 could I afford to build my first military explorer and go into other star systems, so this is not at all a standard game, but one with extreme artificial scarcity as a challenge.
Here are my current stockpiles:
(http://abload.de/img/stockpileogod4.jpg)
..They are still pretty low because my empire barely counts 3000 auto-mines, which is because I wasted many many years of production time on building large "research stations" as habitats who could each support and freight 5 research labs without needing anything else on the planet.(and then also planetary hangars...) In other games I had 10k auto mines in systems directly adjacent to Sol at around year 70-80 already, giving me the multi-millions I spoke about. At that point you have to get imaginative to find something to spend it on.
Now the point though, the costs of a current ship-of-the-line kind of cruiser (300kt design):
(http://abload.de/img/unbenanntcbrxu.jpg)
..Not even counting further mineral production, you can see that it would be possible to afford around a hundred of those by building. Of course maintaining them is another chapter, so maybe it is more towards 20-40 or so, but it isn't at all a cost issue obviously.
Then, 10k military shipyard cost 720 neutronium and duranium here, which means the corresponding yard costs barely 22k in both. Even a megaton yard would only cost 72k, which is not nothing, but then again also not exactly bleeding you out.
The stockpiles above I consider "low on resource", and it is still easy to do. So it is not a cost problem at all. Only the time to build your first yard(/s) up hinders you in the very beginning. Once that stage is past, shipyard size is not an issue unless you do civil monstrous designs.
Here the current shipyards in that game by the way. (remember: no cheating, and built up by hand, though I reduced the yards with SM after they passed the mark to make the numbers more round - tiny OCD)
(http://abload.de/img/yardsuvrkc.jpg)
-
Rough tonnage:
4000-6000 survey ships
6000-8000 escorts (missile defense/short range beam)
10000-14000 coilers, tankers (armored and fast enough to stay with fleets)
12000-20000 missile cruisers (mix of ASM and AMM)
12000-18000 light cruisers, mix of long range beam and missile defense
18000-30000 light carriers, heavy/battle cruisers (long range beam)
30000+ heavy carriers
30000-50000 frieghters and troop carriers
100000-150000 teraformers, fuel harvesters, salvage ships
-
I should mention I was just testing the large calibre lasers from the rigellian campaign, power 38 I think? Every dozen or so hits would trigger a good shock impact.
-
Ok well now thinking about it a little more and playing on in my game a bit. 16 systems explored, no NPRs (couple ruins though), so a lot of early resources to work with without danger of combat so I'm looking into this more.
1. On the note of "can only be 1 maint failure per 5 day increment" I honestly didn't know about that. And knowing that now, as long as you keep away from jump drives, and keep sensor arrays at a normal size (10-15, not 50, those still eat resources) you can actually keep the max repair down (look at the cost of the sensors, and compare it to say a size 50 engine, and get the numbers close together) to a manageable level. And with the 200kt ship that I'm drawing up in another file (so I don't waste tons of RP designing modules I won't use) it should very easily have a 2.5 year maint life, with a number of additional maint storage bays.
Which leads me to a rather minor annoyance. You can make tankers to work with your military, that are 100% civilian. Same with troop transports. I can understand magazines being flagged as military, so your ammo colliers need to be milspec designs (maint), but additional maintenence storage bays are milspec?
2. Getting the 100-200kt shipyards? Now here what I'm wondering. (cant test this, I'm on my phone and can't play till later today). Given a normal amount of gameplay time, it shouldn't be too difficult getting a couple shipyards in excess of 100k in size. Just keep expanding them.
But would the shipyard expand faster if you check "continual expansion" rather than relying on any incremental upgrade?
Thought behind this is kinda like compound interest. As you build your shipyard bigger, the mod rate goes up and thus, the shipyard can be made bigger fast. With continual expansion, every 5 day increment, there would be minor expansion, possibly adding slowly to the mod rate. Vs using a 10k expansion, where the whole 10k of expansion happens at the same rate.
3. Shields. Shields are fairly mediocre on smaller ships at lower techs due to lack of overall power. Especially since enemies like to focus down single ships. So even though your whole fleet might have a lot of shield modules... only 1 ships shields are really dealing with the incoming damage. On a big ship, shields can be stacked tall allowing for much stronger shields.
4. Stockpiling modules. I know that some of us, like to manufacture stockpiles of components for ships to speed up the general construction of them. And even with small ships this can be surprisingly effective when trying to turn out a fleet. (your civilian construction factories generally can build a HELL of a lot faster than your navy yards can). This is probably an even bigger deal though when trying to build huge ships. I know with smaller ships like 6kt geosurvey ships, having your factories build a few dozen engines, jump drives, and geosurvey modules, can turn a 9-10 month build time into 1-2
-
i'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, i try to keep my ships as small as possible. my ships may have less armor and firepower then the other guys. I like being able to get in close before being detected and launching the first strike, or the luxury of splitting ships off to guard, garrison and patrol without a lost of too much strength from my main fleets.
corvettes : 2500 kt
mostly used to skirmish, scout, and harass the enemy
typical design's consist of a missile corvette a super fac in a way and with a cloaking system if i have the tech, a beam model for hunting of support ships and jumppoint harassment, and finally a battalion drop pod + meson cannon combo LPA.
Frigates : 4500 kt
the main line and my primary fleet combatants they may not be big and mighty, but expendable and divisible are more useful in my vast wars. my survey vessels are normally at this size as well.
carracks/brigs : 5000-7500 kt
specialty and experimental designs sometimes just a one production run class for a abnormal mission like nebula warfare.
destroyers : 8000 kt
i see destroyers as independent from the main fleet in small hunter killer groups of 3-5 (depending on jump tech) used to raid and fight often in concert with the corvettes or used as heavy independent support for the frigates.
cruisers : 1000 kt >
these are multirole and multipurpose ships leading a fleet and generally well armored and well equipped with sensory and weaponry.
the above are my primary sizes and i'm currently attempting to do a campaign with no armed warships above 5000 kt. My warships can be thought of and i typical utilize them tactically in Napoleonic warfare terms
corvettes = skirmishers / light cavalry (to reduce the enemy ASM and AMM before engaging the fleet, and attempt to spread their ships out for defeat in detail)
frigates = line infantry / light artillery (to control the battle-space and destroy the enemy)
destroyers = heavy cavalry / dragoons (to harass and pursue the enemy, while denying their flanking attempts)
cruisers/brigs = artillery / cavalry (destroy and break up concentrations of the enemy firepower)
-
I should mention I was just testing the large calibre lasers from the rigellian campaign, power 38 I think? Every dozen or so hits would trigger a good shock impact.
Oha, that I would normally even only consider medium caliber. You say that was critical? ..I need more battle testing.
Which leads me to a rather minor annoyance. You can make tankers to work with your military, that are 100% civilian. Same with troop transports. I can understand magazines being flagged as military, so your ammo colliers need to be milspec designs (maint), but additional maintenence storage bays are milspec?
Hmm, I guess it makes sense, because as only military designs really use MSP normally, those should be military grade components mostly. And even if not, you could argue that the mixture of civil and military components would flag them as military, just like one violent scene makes even a movie about butterflies teen rated, and not some content percentage.
2. Getting the 100-200kt shipyards? Now here what I'm wondering. (cant test this, I'm on my phone and can't play till later today). Given a normal amount of gameplay time, it shouldn't be too difficult getting a couple shipyards in excess of 100k in size. Just keep expanding them.
But would the shipyard expand faster if you check "continual expansion" rather than relying on any incremental upgrade?
Yes!
Only a bit at first though, because of reduced clipping: If you have a 10kt expansion issued, and 9.6kt are already built while you could expand by 800ts per increment, then obviously 400ts would get wasted without continued expansion.
Later you get much more when your shipyard becomes able to improve by more than 10k on 5 days obviously.
I used to do it all without continual expansion for long time though, because I didn't want to go into SM mode to round the numbers at first (..and couldn't live with uneven ones either.. :P). But somewhere down the line, I think in the swarm game with the multiple shipyards, I finally said screw it, because I was doing these massive 10*x mt civil yards for the 3rd time already. So much click work.
3. Shields. Shields are fairly mediocre on smaller ships at lower techs due to lack of overall power. Especially since enemies like to focus down single ships. So even though your whole fleet might have a lot of shield modules... only 1 ships shields are really dealing with the incoming damage. On a big ship, shields can be stacked tall allowing for much stronger shields.
Yes, that is exactly the thing. Shields are for capitals. They in some sense 'conjoin the shields of a whole fleet' and manage to utilize all the regeneration power, where for example 10 1/10th sized ships would only have, well 1/10th of the regeneration.
4. Stockpiling modules. I know that some of us, like to manufacture stockpiles of components for ships to speed up the general construction of them. And even with small ships this can be surprisingly effective when trying to turn out a fleet. (your civilian construction factories generally can build a HELL of a lot faster than your navy yards can). This is probably an even bigger deal though when trying to build huge ships. I know with smaller ships like 6kt geosurvey ships, having your factories build a few dozen engines, jump drives, and geosurvey modules, can turn a 9-10 month build time into 1-2
I don't know about that. It certainly helps, and I did it for large civil ships in the past, but usually your main production is way too valuable and occupied with either mine, construction, or PDC building later on. It might help, but ship construction isn't all that slow for large designs to begin with. Strangely sometimes even faster for some reason I have not yet understood. For example I could build 150mt civil ships in just 3 months in a yard. ...Repeatedly with different designs. Don't know what happened there.
Military ships however also never take too long either. Current 300kt cruiser for example takes 11 months. Not really needed to boost that any further most of the time.
-
I would probably have a larger ships, were it not for the fact that I don't have the manpower required to expand shipyards (COLONIZE EVERYTHING attitude is not that well when it pulls more people from the capital than capital creates).
So far, the largest military ship the ZemSoy deployed on missions is a "puny" 30kt battlecruiser.
Most of the ships have 5000ton size, and there are few who have 10 or 15kton.
Oh, I did build one 200kton ship in previous game. It was enough.
-
Oh, right. I normally tend to focus on a large capital and either only colonize selected places sparsely, or even not at all like in my current game. If you do that you usually have so much work force overflow that you can easily run any shipyard you like. (1 billion, aka 50% unemployment in my current game with all these big shipyards above)
I remember having shortage on that in my WH40k game though, where I built the first fortress with 150mt yards in year 130 already. I needed more than 20 billion people on the planet to run all the remaining industry together with the shipyard.
It isn't too limiting if you stick to 100-300kts though. 31 million workers to run that at max. (equivalent of 620 factories), so around 150m population needed.
Also, a 7 slipway 15kt yard is one 100kt 'conjoined fleet' capital shipyard, so as long as you have enough people to have this kind of small ship industry, you could have large ones instead too. In that case it is only question of priority and play style, but no game limit.
-
18 years since building this shipyard new, and its already over 200k. Its mod rate is over 8500. to add a slipway to it though would be a 7 year job, and god only knows how long retooling it for a new design would be (its still untouched as far as getting set up for a class)
However It seems to be eating up quite a few of my workforce, which can't support it and regular construction ops. Considering hauling it to the moon to have whatever mammoth ships produced there (cause the moon doesnt make too much. Besides, RP that it can only be built in a lower orbit than earth has to offer or something)
-
Actually, the mod rate of a shipyard doesn't change unless you have it set to continual, so there is a significant difference compared to singular expansion. Here's an example I whipped up:
(http://i.imgur.com/4UEo0iE.png)
All shipyards were created at January 1st in equal pairs, 2 of 1 slipway @ 20k tons, 2 of 1 slipway at 10k tons, and 2 of 2 slipways @ 10k tons.
One of each was set to continuous and one set to add 10k capacity. I then set 24 autoturns and used 5 day increments. The 1 slipway @ 20k tons 10k expansion finished at April 28th, turns finished at May 1st so no production cycles should have been wasted.
You can see that the Continual expansion yard has outpaced the capacity of the other one by 2466 tons, the others we can't be quite sure of without waiting out the rest of the expansion, however it's clear that continual expansion leaves approximately 25% more expansion in any given time period, which obviously compounds.
Edit: After adding additional 10k expansions until reaching the beginning of feburary when the smallest yard will be done leaves us with this: (http://i.imgur.com/4lqRakT.png)
So, the yard which had a single expansion was outpaced by 42%, the next biggest yard was outpaced by 29%, and the largest yard was outpaced by 33% ... I'm not sure what else I can do with these numbers.
-
There are some real advantages to using smaller ships that haven't been discussed yet. It is my understanding that the AI targets ships that it can see the best. Therefore, if you have a fleet with a well armored, well defended ship that is 100,000 tons, a 20,000 ton carrier with ECM, a decent magazine and a little armor, and six 3000 ton missle frigates with box launchers and no armor that rearm at the carrier, you can get a lot more box launchers on those frigates because you know your opponents are going to target that 100,000 ton ship at anything other than close range. I don't really consider this a gamey exploit because I think it mirrors what would be expected targeting behaviour by a real opponent. Also, that opponent is going to be able to see and fire at the largest ship in the fleet much sooner than the frigates.
What's more, you can use box launchers on smaller ships and then support them with hangared colliers. This allows a much larger first strike. I just put together a very unscientific comparison of the firepower of box launchers vs large missle cruisers. The finding were not a surprise. A 24000 ton missle cruiser that uses 75% for its armor, sensors, firecontrol and weapons using an armor value of 6, size 8 50% reduced missle launchers and sensors and fire control designed to target 3000 tons firgates gets 58 missle launchers with a total of 184 size 8 missles. If you give away a 9000 ton collier to support the frigates with reloading their magazine, you can still get 5 3000 ton frigates to face the missle cruiser. Using the same 75% for armor, sensors, weapons and fire control, you can get 30 missle launchers on each frigate for a total of 150 missle launchers.
The first wave will be 58 vs 150 in favor of the frigates, but the frigates will not be able to fire for another hour while the cruiser can fire a wave every 5 minutes.
There are a lot of variables that aren't taken into account. Obviously neither side has any defense other than armor. I only have one fire control on the CG and it would probably need three. Then there is the question of range. In my little setup, I'm assuming a 200 mk missle fight. The little ships have the advantage that they should be able to see the larger ship first.
I get Vandermeer point that large ships have certain economic and efficiency advantages but the little ships also give other advantages that make them competitive. I guess we will have to await for multi player aurora to discover who is right in the big vs little question. Until then it is a question of play style.
24000 ton missle cruiser
Flower class Cruiser 18,000 tons 435 Crew 2721.2 BP TCS 360 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 6-61 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 232
Maint Life 0.14 Years MSP 94 AFR 2592% IFR 36% 1YR 695 5YR 10421 Max Repair 224 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 1472
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range N/A
Size 8 Missile Launcher (50% Reduction) (58) Missile Size 8 Rate of Fire 300
Missile Fire Control FC227-R60 (1) Range 227.7m km Resolution 60
Size 8 Anti-ship Missile MkI (184) Speed: 25,200 km/s End: 24m Range: 36.3m km WH: 9 Size: 8 TH: 100/60/30
Active Search Sensor MR242-R60 (1) GPS 13440 Range 242.9m km Resolution 60
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Frigate
Iron Duke class Cruiser 2,250 tons 17 Crew 286.2 BP TCS 45 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-15 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 36
Maint Life 6.37 Years MSP 80 AFR 40% IFR 0.6% 1YR 3 5YR 51 Max Repair 70 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 240
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range N/A
Size 8 Box Launcher (30) Missile Size 8 Hangar Reload 60 minutes MF Reload 10 hours
Missile Fire Control FC210-R500 (1) Range 210.4m km Resolution 500
Active Search Sensor MR219-R500 (1) GPS 35000 Range 219.1m km Resolution 500
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
-
My ships in my current game go as such;
Fighters/Bombers; 0-500 tons (standard Aurora)
Gunships; 501-1000 (standard Aurora)
Prowlers; 1001-15,000 tons
Frigates; 20,000-40,000 tons
Destroyers; 60,000-80,000 tons
Cruisers; 100,000-250,000 tons
Battlecruisers; 250,000-500,000 tons
Capital; 500,000-1,000,000 tons
Super Capital; 1,000,000+ tons
-
Minor bit of humor.
In my current game, i decided to use a "huge" ship (100kt) as the pirate raider (instead of the usual 10k ships), to go about the culling of the civilian shipping lines fleets (they were getting upwards of 200 ships, most of them smalls, and really grinding the game down).
So I tabbed over to the pirate faction, designed a 100kt monstrosity armed with 50cm railguns at max tech, and a few max tech firecontrols, and necessary active sensor, engines, reactors, all that (sensor engine and reactor are all ion tech ~)..... didn't put any armor on it though.
So there I go, dropping the thing onto Mars, where the largest complement of merchant ships were (well over 200 of them). Actives on, volley down 20 ships in the first barrage. A minute later, fire off a second barrage taking another 16. A minute later... 8? Its then that I actually look at the events log at what happened. While several of the merchant ships scattered. That smeg was not good enough for the captains of Okamura Container Line however. After seeing hundreds of their fellow merchantmen wiped out in an instant, they instead turned towards the monster, and set throttles to ramming speed.
All in all it was a rather successful culling. Over 100 of the merchant ships were destroyed, and with them, a fair amount of lag... but theres an extra wreck there in space. I honestly don't know what to do with it. I KNOW that at least some max tech railguns and FCs should have stayed intact. And the general theme I was going to go for with this nation after I started branching out heavy, was to scavenge and steal as much as possible (hence, loli pirates). But it would seem a little gimped to go and salvage the wreck because that would be kinda like giving myself a crazy advantage. At the same time, theres probably only a couple of the guns on there, and I could either keep them whole and strap them to a ship, or reverse engineer them.
Moral of the story. 50cm railguns hurt quite a bit. 60kt freighters moving at 2500km/s hurt more. Don't forget to armor your stuff.
-
My usual sizes and the names for them:
Military ships:
Fighters: 1 - 500 tons
"Vessel": 501 - 2000 tons (Scout Vessel, Survey Vessel and so on. No combat ships usually have this size)
Corvette: 2001 - 4000 tons (build with fuel efficient civilian engines as in-system patrol ships)
Frigate: 2001 - 4000 tons ("proper" military ship)
Light Cruiser: 4001 - 7000 tons (build with fuel efficient civilian engines as in-system patrol ships)
Heavy Cruiser: 4001 - 7000 tons ("proper" military ship)
Battlecruiser: 7001 - 10000 tons
Battleship: 10001 - infinity
Orbital Stations:
Satellite: 0 - 500 tons (military)
Plattform: 501 - 4000 tons (military)
Fortress: 4001 - 8000 tons (military)
Container: 15000 - 30000 tons (armored civilian cargo boxes, to be transported with tugs)
Station/Habitat: "a lot of" tons (massive single-purpose terraform stations or habitats)
Deep space structures: (build from various parts to form stupidly large superstructures)
Light Module: 501 - 4000 tons (military part, often point defense or sensors)
Heavy Module: 4001 - 8000 tons (military part, mostly anti-ship firepower or hangar space)
Core Module: 50000 tons - 100000 (civilian support part)
I prefer to use vast numbers of smaller ships. My biggest battleships usually top out at 15000t, sometimes I go up as far as 20000 tons but never larger.
10 ships of 15000 tons can just cover much more ground then a single 150000 ton ship.
I can split them up into smaller task forces, I can simply leave damaged ships behind for repairs instead of taking the whole squadron down for repairs, a single lucky hit will cost me much less time to repair/replace.
Also I can keep more officers in circulation.
-
I get Vandermeer point that large ships have certain economic and efficiency advantages but the little ships also give other advantages that make them competitive. I guess we will have to await for multi player aurora to discover who is right in the big vs little question. Until then it is a question of play style.
I have actually no doubt that small ships will be better in matters of raw fire power. That is basically the thing everywhere (and the reason why we build carriers after all). Large ships sacrifice mass designation for longevity in fuel, msp, and other components to support other ships. They save some mass on the armor (unless you increase that ofc.), but that is not enough to bail them out.
There is some offset coming from the shields still, because in a broadside of 1 10*sized ship vs. 10 1*sized ships, the smaller only regenerate at 1/10th of the large one despite having potentially the same maximum shield "hp" altogether. (if they even bothered to have shields that is) I don't think this offset is enough, but definitely rebalances.
Your comparison with the missile cruiser and frigates+colliers is not really fair though. For a real comparison both units should use the same weapon type, otherwise you just prove that amms(+box launchers) do more damage per stored ammunition than real missiles (with normal launchers on top), and that is no surprise. Amm ships are whole type of unit because this is widely recognized to be superior when you can dictate the engagement range. (..and the reason why missiles are still used too, is of course because you can't always chose the range in which case long ranged weapons become important)
10 ships of 15000 tons can just cover much more ground then a single 150000 ton ship.
That would be a point normally, but every really large ships has (at least for me) space for hangars and can control a large area around it with the highest reaction speed that your empire can muster.
It is true if you are talking about capturing points and parking there maybe, but that doesn't happen so often. In my case it becomes obsolete later too, because once the mid-large ship phase is passed (100-300kts), and you get your first megaton ships, then those can have big enough hangars to store escort destroyers.
For example I planned a 1.1mt heavy cruiser in my current game, which will hold 2 20kt destroyers together with its 20 fighters and 20 bombers. Other than for big NPR and Invader wars, that should be enough to cover any space you'd want (often enough even in those cases).
I can split them up into smaller task forces, I can simply leave damaged ships behind for repairs instead of taking the whole squadron down for repairs, a single lucky hit will cost me much less time to repair/replace.
Hmm, that is all true when you really receive a hit. Thing is, your capital ships tend to not get damaged because the shields soak everything up. I have never played different than this large ship style, but MarcAFK above managed to surprise me with his report of critical hitting mid caliber weapons. Why is that? ..Because, despite all the NPR wars and uncountable other little space threats I have been through, I never got damaged by one of those weapons, in all that time.
The only things that can deliver enough "damage per second" to pierce through capital shields are usually AI "pdcs"(/their space base equivalent) with their intensive Amm spam. I had multiple cases where AMMs managed to get the shields down, but yet not a single incident where the AI managed to do this with other means (mostly, because I could react to fire though, whereas it is usually too late when disastrous Amm salvos get spotted). The only other two times I ever received damage on a capital ship was against mesons.
..But it is true that if you receive damage, it takes out virtually "your whole fleet" as a large ship for repairs. Small hits I sometimes chose to ignore though. 'Battle Scars' are cool on capitals.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_saya_froi.gif)
And on a player vs. player basis, this would likely become much much more problematic, because they will know how to damage large ships (outside of mesons). This could become the main counter argument in that case actually. Without some "hull-repair ship" that can patch some thing underway, the only other thing to kind of counter a little is to turtle like the Galactica.
Against the current AI though, you end up needing way less repairs, even in real wars. In the "Astral Republic Showcase" thread, there was recently an NPR war, where I pretty much conquered all with just a single 300kt cruiser against an militarily equally sized, and -as it turned out after looting- even equally teched opponent. ...Shields were drained to around a third sometimes, but in the end: The cruiser didn't even get a scratch. It is an AI problem here because exactly that ability to "spread out and cover more ground" let me take apart their forces one by one, where a concentrated fleet would have defeated me for sure.
Against AI, large ships are superior combatants for this.
Also I can keep more officers in circulation.
I started a new topic for this, because this has bothered me for a while and I had more to mention, which would lead abroad here.
-
There is some offset coming from the shields still, because in a broadside of 1 10*sized ship vs. 10 1*sized ships, the smaller only regenerate at 1/10th of the large one despite having potentially the same maximum shield "hp" altogether. (if they even bothered to have shields that is) I don't think this offset is enough, but definitely rebalances.
I completely left that out of my discussion and that is correct. Large ships benefit from two basic efficiency advantages that I can see. They gain an exponential benefit from shields and their engines are more fuel efficient (up to 50 hull spaces) than smaller engines. The engine advantage isn't very exclusive (I use a size 40 hs engine in my 6000 ton frigates), but the shield advantage is real and fairly substancial.
Your comparison with the missile cruiser and frigates+colliers is not really fair though. For a real comparison both units should use the same weapon type, otherwise you just prove that amms(+box launchers) do more damage per stored ammunition than real missiles (with normal launchers on top), and that is no surprise. Amm ships are whole type of unit because this is widely recognized to be superior when you can dictate the engagement range. (..and the reason why missiles are still used too, is of course because you can't always chose the range in which case long ranged weapons become important)
My comparison is fair and very much to the point. My smaller frigates are able to use box launchers because they are small and hangar supportable. Their size gives them this advantage. In addition to this advantage, their smaller size makes them necessarily more stealthy. As for my comparison being not really fair, It's fair but it certainly isn't scientific. Their are so many components to fighting that no single setup could really do a good job of shedding light on which approach, ie large vs small, is the best. Their are inherent advantages in being large, and inherent advantages in being small. Taking advantage of those differences is what makes this game fun. Without people fighting other people, a real evaluation of which is best isn't really possible.
-
Just to chime in on the multplayer point. That is easily replicated with a kind of pbm setup, all you need are three people running the same version number. One designated as a GM who uses SM to create two playable empires, then each player is told what tech level to SM themselves, from there they design the ships and send the designs to the GM. The GM creates the ships etc and sets up a playing board ready for a confrontation. If you used a chat system you could then even have a live shoot out, with each player telling the GM what they want each ship to do during the battle. The GM just needs to decide how often orders are allowed to be given and decide what time increments get used.
Now granted in reality this is one hell of a lot of micromanaging being done for what is essentially just small fire fights. But then who of us plays Aurora for it's simplicity and quick to use control systems?
-
I completely left that out of my discussion and that is correct. Large ships benefit from two basic efficiency advantages that I can see. They gain an exponential benefit from shields and their engines are more fuel efficient (up to 50 hull spaces) than smaller engines. The engine advantage isn't very exclusive (I use a size 40 hs engine in my 6000 ton frigates), but the shield advantage is real and fairly substancial.
Another two I can add is overall better total armor due to dimensional math, and reduced building time of total fleet mass.(..if the shipyard is already present)
Maybe also that it makes it easy to get your best sensors out, and well protected I might add. :)
My comparison is fair and very much to the point. My smaller frigates are able to use box launchers because they are small and hangar supportable. Their size gives them this advantage. In addition to this advantage, their smaller size makes them necessarily more stealthy. As for my comparison being not really fair, It's fair but it certainly isn't scientific. Their are so many components to fighting that no single setup could really do a good job of shedding light on which approach, ie large vs small, is the best. Their are inherent advantages in being large, and inherent advantages in being small. Taking advantage of those differences is what makes this game fun. Without people fighting other people, a real evaluation of which is best isn't really possible.
Ah, ok, well I didn't see this at first, because a 24kt missile 'cruiser' is also still a somewhat hangar supportable craft to me. It is true that anyone's largest ships will never fit into mobile hangars, and therefore not be able to get the salvo density of box launchers.
But it is to no surprise that a number of smaller ships have higher offensive power than an equal large one, since that is the way everywhere.(after all there are the common and apparently effective anti-capital purpose frigates and in real life)
I currently participate in another game where they understood this mechanic very well too, and ships receive increasingly reduced gains from becoming bigger, so that the small ones are in theory better budget spending. Example:
Fighters have 2 Power, and cost 5 credits (best cost ratio in the game)
Destroyers 8 Power, costing 40 (1/2 the cost ratio of fighters)
Frigates are 12 Power for 80, but can carry 4 fighter squadrons through space, which altogether leads to the same cost ratio as Destroyers when filled.
Then cruisers with 24 Power for 200 (around 1/3rd as effective with the 4 squadrons they can carry)
Heavy cruisers with double the strength and hangar of a cruiser, but for 500.
etc. etc.
So normally the smallest unit would be the most effective, but there is of course another mechanic that rebalances, and kind of like in Aurora: It is shields. :P Large units get continuously better shielded, which at some point enables them to become nearly immune against certain smaller ones. For example the heavy cruiser finally has enough shielding to pretty much ignore any fighters coming at him, and can only be effectively taken out with anything between bomber and cruiser. Other example is the Dreadnought that overcomes everything up to frigates, but can be cost efficiently taken down by ships between cruiser and battleship.
This is quite interesting, as it beats the strange phenomenon of some sci-fi games who haven't understood the degrading cost effectiveness concept, where usually bigger units are stronger, and you end up seeing massive stacks of battleships or even death stars later on, with no other ships being used anymore.(really bothersome to me)
This mechanic here however makes it so that every type of unit stays viable and effective against certain other ones, so you continue to see every type of unit up until the endgame. Fighting is more about making efficient counters on time in comparison to just having the biggest guns.
I applaud them for figuring out something like this as a bare numerical mechanic too. Some games did it so that ships just receive arbitrary percentage bonuses against other classes to make mixture a thing, but here it is just pure shared stats. If your shields are stronger than the power of the small ship, you are effective, and if not, then the smaller ones will eventually take you down in masses.