Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Mor on January 15, 2016, 11:23:14 AM
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I have looked through the bureau of ship design forum it has a lot of nice specific examples. But what I am looking for is run down of ship roles (military and civilian) and general design principles for said roles. Any thoughts ?
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Before I answer, let me point out that there is an entire thread dedicated to Odd Duck Designs, highlighting unusual but useful ship designs that people have come up with. That thread is evidence for the great flexibility you have as a designer in addressing your empire's need. So any answers you get will probably be more reflective of the designers posting them than of the principles underlying the game itself.
And also, when I was a new player, I benefitted from the advice of veteran players. Now that I'm a veteran player, I benefit from the creativity of new players. So don't go shortchanging me on new ideas. If I can't pilfer your designs for new strategies, where will I find them?
Rules of thumb:
For missile warships, large, infrequent salvos beats small, rapid fire salvos every time. Your enemies have a limited time to engage incoming missiles, so throw enough at them that some missiles will get to their targets without being engaged at all.
For civilian (and some military) designs, I try to get multiple designs built out of one shipyard, especially if I don't need many of one of the designs. How many jump gate constructors do I need? A dozen over the course of my empire's lifetime? I'll build them on a tanker chassis instead. Do I need a dedicated freighter shipyard? I'll just base it around my salvager.
Tugs need big fuel tanks, since they run many engines full throttle over an extended period. I mark mine as tankers as well, so they can zip out to thirsty ships and refuel them.
If a design does its work sitting in orbit (asteroid miners, orbital terraformers, sorium harvesters) they don't need many engines, if any. they spend most of their lives stationary, so I move them with tugs instead of under their own power.
Gravitational surveys compel the survey ships to take a tour of the star system, visiting a series of evenly spaced points in the system. I throw on some passive sensors to get a rough sense for whether or not the system has any activity in it.
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I agree with Prince of Space. I thought a little yesterday about how I would answer this question, and soon realized that I couldn't give much more than my particular approach.
Missile ships are a good example; large salvos are indeed best but there can be RP reasons for not doing it that way. I think most players use 25%-35% of space for engines on military ships and several layers of armor, but then there are those who depart from this. There's very little that you can find where there aren't reasons to do it differently, depending on playstyle and so on.
Really the most important thing I think is to understand the basic rules of how things work/interact. This would be things like:
** Speed kills, since it increases your chances to dodge enemy fire
** Energy weapons need sufficient power via power plants
** Weapon and fire control ranges need to match up, no point in a laser than can shoot only a third as far as your overdesigned FC can guide it.
** Energy weapons can only track as fast as the turret or ship on which they are mounted can turn, so that has to be matched to the FC as well.
** Know what components are military and what ones are commercial to fit the ship properly.
Once you have a handle on that kind of stuff, there are very few universals. Some types of ships I make, like shuttles for example, a lot of players don't even use due to the micromanaging necessary to shuttle VIPs around all over the place and the 'assign anywhere' option is on. Some players make sensor ships; some put small sensors/CIWS on all commercial ships while others don't; etc. Jump drives on every ship or just on 'jump tenders' once you get a sprawling set of systems, and even if you use tenders design of those will vary greatly -- there's just too much variance between players to really say much useful other than basic general principles such as what's above.
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There's something to be said for standardisation of parts/components for your ships, so that the same engines or whatever can be used across multiple designs without having to research a new set of components every time you design a new ship.
Don't just work with the tonnage displayed in the class summary, use the exact class size along the left side of the window as it has better precision. If you're building to a set size, eg 10 000 tons because that's what your jump engines can handle, check that exact class size readout when you finish designing. Often times the brief class summary will claim your ship is 10 000 tons while in the exact size you will see it is only 9 970 tons or something like that. I usually just fill the remaining space will small fuel tanks to squeeze out as much as possible in my size target.
I disagree somewhat with the statement "no point in an overengineered FC if your weapons can only shoot a third as far" - you get improved accuracy at max weapon range which can give a surprising boost to your damage output if you tend to try and kite enemies outside their own range like I do.
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Point taken, AL. Another good example of how there is really very little that is universally applicable :).
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When designing a ship, I have a pretty simple process. First I ask myself what the primary role of the ship should be. Something specific. "Warship" isn't specific enough. "Missile cruiser" is better. "Point Defence Ship" is better. Once I've got the primary role sorted out, then, before I design even a single component, I decide how much of the total size I want to dedicate to engines. As a rule of thumb, I've found 20-25% is a good standard for reasonable speed. So, for example, a 10,000 ton military ship would then have 2,500 (25%) tons to dedicate to engines. Since redundancy is good for military ships, I'd probably break that down into either 2 size 25 engines (1,250 tonnes each) or 5 size 10 engines (500 tonnes each.) You could do 3 size 16 or 4 size 12, but you wouldn't come out to exactly 25% engines that way (which could be fine, as long as you're close enough to your goal.)
Once engines are sorted out, then I tack on the one-off systems that I know I'll want on just about every ship. Damage control and emergency cryo transports are the only "must-haves" on that list, anything else is up in the air.
Then I pack as many systems onto the ship as possible which fulfill its primary purpose. For missile boats, that means launchers + magazines. For point defence, that usually means turrets or AMM launchers + magazines. Just pack as much on as you can without going over your target size.
Then, with whatever is left, I'll add defenses. Armor and shields, until I get as close to the target size (without going over) as I possibly can.
Once all that's done, it's time to tweak. The big things you'll be looking to tweak are maintenance (via engineering spaces), deployment time, and range (via adjusting fuel tanks.) Remove whatever you think you can spare in order to ensure you've got the desired maintenance, deployment time, and range.
Once all that's done you should have a ship that has a clear purpose and everything it needs to accomplish its purpose.
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I think it's also worth pointing out that since engines max out at size 50, and having multiple engines gives diminishing returns on speed, there comes a tipping point with ship sizes. For instance, a 50,000 tonne ship could have 5 size 50 engines in order to get 25% of its total size as engines. That's already plenty of redundancy. If you wanted to double the ship size to 100,000, that'd now require 10 size 50 engines to have the same 25% size/engine ratio! Since each additional engine add less than the previous one, you'll notice that as ship size goes up, speed goes down. The theme here being that extremely large ships wind up either getting slower and slower or else needing to dedicate more and more of their total tonnage to engines.
If we could develop engines larger than size 50, this wouldn't be a thing. Engine maximum size is ultimately the biggest factor on the effectiveness of extremely large ship designs. So if you're planning on building supermassive ships, this is something to keep in mind. Personally, I've found that supermassive ships can be great against the AI. But against other players (or myself) an equivalent tonnage in multiple smaller ships will tear supermassive ships to pieces.
Personally, I try not to go much larger than 100,000 tonnes - and that's for only my biggest most unwieldy of battleships/carriers/flagships. Average warship size for me is typically around 30,000 (3 size 50 engines.) That's for my "cruisers." I'll supplement with smaller frigates/destroyers/corvettes and fighters/FACs, too. Anything approaching 50k is where I start to call things Battleships/Battlecruisers, because that's generally the tipping point where engine efficiency starts becoming problematic.
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Sorry for triple-posting on this, but one more afterthought on ship sizes.
I've also found that larger ships are actually *better* in defensive roles, particularly for picketing jump points. Speed doesn't matter as much when you're a 60,000 tonne monstrosity brimming with plasma carronades sitting just off a jump point, and your only targets are temporarily disoriented. This also tends to mean that the largest of ships are good in force-projection roles. They can double as ammo-colliers and extra maintenance/fuel supply for their smaller, faster, more combat-capable comrades. They're also good for planting gigantic size 50 sensors. The capital ships can lag behind in a supporting role while the meaner, leaner ones go out and take care of business.
I've designed more than one capital ship that has basically just been giant sensors, extra supplies, hangars, and layer upon layer of armor/shielding. Slow as hell, basically a giant carrier, but great to have in a defensive role. Can also be supplemented by aforementioned close-range battleship for picket duty. Forces can leap-frog from the capital ship's picket deeper into enemy territory.
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For civilian (and some military) designs, I try to get multiple designs built out of one shipyard, especially if I don't need many of one of the designs. How many jump gate constructors do I need? A dozen over the course of my empire's lifetime? I'll build them on a tanker chassis instead. Do I need a dedicated freighter shipyard? I'll just base it around my salvager.
Tugs need big fuel tanks, since they run many engines full throttle over an extended period. I mark mine as tankers as well, so they can zip out to thirsty ships and refuel them.
Indeed standardization makes a lot of sense, considering that a lot of the commercial and logistical support vessels differ only in a single dedicated module. Like:
* Asteroid miners\Sorium harvesters
* Freighters\Tankers\colony\Medical ships\Salvager
* Survey\Exploration\terraformer
Indeed, the focus should be on deployment time\length, ships that are constantly on the move (like tankers) require big fuel tanks and as efficient engines as possible.
[..]There's very little that you can find where there aren't reasons to do it differently, depending on playstyle and so on.[..]There's just too much variance between players to really say much useful other than basic general principles such as what's above.
Not necessarily, take real-world designations for example. Most countries has different ideas what Destroyers\Cruisers\Battleship\Carriers specs entails, with dedicated Odd Duck Designs of their own, but we still use those general designation which everyone understand.
Also to that effect, I recently encountered this post on Reddit:
Interstingly, traditionally classes are not so much size-based, but role-based.
* Frigates are generally small scout ships, and sometimes carry specialised weaponry like torpedoes. Speed and stealth are their primary roles, often more patrol ships for early warning than for within combat.
* Destroyers usually carry specialised weaponry to combat specific threats that are not main warships. (submarine-destroyers carry depth charges and torpedoes, aircraft-destroyers would have heavy AA, missile-destroyers would have lots of CIWS, etc.)
* Cruisers are long-range, often self-sustainable ships. Usually capable of conducting operations on their own.
* Battleships and Battlecruisers are main warships, usually the ones with the most guns and the most armor. The word Battleship comes from "Ship of the Battle-Line", back in ye-olde days when warships used to line up in straight lines and shoot cannonballs at each other.
* Battlecruiser is a relatively newer term and usually defines a heavily armed and armored (though not quite as much as a battleship) that's a bit more self-sustainable.
* Carriers are pretty straightforward, but for anyone who grew up in a hole, they carry fighters.
How would you say its applicable to Aurora's navies in space approach, or would you say that size-based designation make more sense per game mechanics?
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I would say there is much more 'commonality' or 'standardization' among real-world navies than there is in Aurora. YMMV.
How would you say its applicable to Aurora's navies in space approach, or would you say that size-based designation make more sense per game mechanics?
This has been much-discussed and at times debated round these here parts in the past. My .02 is that role-based designation makes more sense than size, but both sides of the coin have their merits.
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I find that size and role tend to go hand-in-hand. Frigates, as scouts and early warning craft, are generally meant to be disposable which also typically means quite small. Destroyers are built to destroy specific things which means that they really only need to be big enough for their weapons and the speed/range necessary to split off from a main force and make their catch. This makes your typical DD a little bigger than a frigate, but because they don't generally need the range/self-reliance of a cruiser they're rarely as large. Cruisers are just that - meant to cruise. They're the patrol craft, meant to operate far, far away and generally be able to take care of any threats they may find. Battleships are also pretty self explanatory - these are the guys you want to do the heavy lifting in any major battle. Not to be confused with cruisers - battleships typically only need enough range to reach the battle, they're not meant to do much patrolling or operate far away from supporting ships/bases. Carriers tend to have longer ranges, but that's more a side-effect of their use as a mobile base for fighters.
In old WW2 doctrines, navies would often pair Battleships with Destroyers and Carriers with Cruisers. For important shipping/troop transportation, cruisers would often be used to escort due to having the range necessary to cross oceans but also break off from the transports if necessary in order to pursue fleeing enemies. It was also common to bring destroyers that were specifically built to counter submarines on convoy escort duties, since convoys were the submariners prey of choice.
Speaking of submarines, if you haven't tried to build an Aurora equivalent of a WW2 attack sub, I highly recommend it. Great fun, and you can *devastate* enemy shipping/static defenses, even with hostile fleets in system, without even being discovered. Cloaking/thermal reduction ship with minimal engine power + lots of range and lots of hard-hitting self-guided missiles that you can launch at thermal signatures. Don't even need active sensors. Just lob the missiles which have their own sensors at choice thermal signatures. And be careful when moving through jump points, the only time a "submarine" is in danger is if it jumps into an enemy picket.
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Aurora subtly encourages extreme designs far from any reasonable "rule of thumb".
Unlike wet navies, doubling engine power on the same hull size doubles speed, meaning you run into diminishing returns much later.
At balanced research, beam ships faster than the "standard speed" get a bonus to their tracking speed, slower ships don't get a penalty.
1.0 power engines are discouraged: faster ones increase linearly in cost, slower ones get a quadratic discount.
Missile interception can be hard limited by the defending ships ability to handle simultaneous "number of missiles" or "number of salvos"; design for one offensively.
Half-assing optional systems is somewhat discouraged: For example, unless you sink a lot of RP into ECCM, it's better to simply overengineer your fire controls.
My most successful designs are far from "respectable and balanced". Disposable weapon pods hauled around by commercial tugboats, FACS that can keep up with their own missiles to break number of simultaneous salvos, very fast long-ranged beam combatatns (flaweless victories if we outrange and outrun the opposition), low-tech bulky installations (cap1 range1 beams are dirt cheap), torpedo bombers firing a single oversized missile...
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Every ship is defined by its offensive\defensive capabilities, as well as its speed\maneuverability and its supply situation. So even though some people favor extreme designs\sizes, I think the common Escorts vs Capital ships designation still applies here.
Capital ships are capable of long range independent operations, usually heavily armed\defended but not always. Escorts are their smaller and cheaper counter parts that are geared toward a specific role sacrificing armor\sensors\speed and or supplies.
I find that size and role tend to go hand-in-hand. Frigates, as scouts and early warning craft, are generally meant to be disposable which also typically means quite small. Destroyers are built to destroy specific things which means that they really only need to be big enough for their weapons and the speed/range necessary to split off from a main force and make their catch. This makes your typical DD a little bigger than a frigate, but because they don't generally need the range/self-reliance of a cruiser they're rarely as large. Cruisers are just that - meant to cruise. They're the patrol craft, meant to operate far, far away and generally be able to take care of any threats they may find. Battleships are also pretty self explanatory - these are the guys you want to do the heavy lifting in any major battle. Not to be confused with cruisers - battleships typically only need enough range to reach the battle, they're not meant to do much patrolling or operate far away from supporting ships/bases. Carriers tend to have longer ranges, but that's more a side-effect of their use as a mobile base for fighters.
1. What ship type do you use for reconnaissance operations into enemy systems?
2. Would you say that destroyers(or fighters) are more capable of dealing with multiple fast enemies or a missile swarm. And how common AMM or point defense ships?
Concerning Cruiser range. With TN tech, in the vastness of space our visibility isn't hampered by topography and far less path of ingress. IMO speed and fast response fleets would be the most important factor.
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1. What ship type do you use for reconnaissance operations into enemy systems?
2. Would you say that destroyers(or fighters) are more capable of dealing with multiple fast enemies or a missile swarm. And how common AMM or point defense ships?
Concerning Cruiser range. With TN tech, in the vastness of space our visibility isn't hampered by topography and far less path of ingress. IMO speed and fast response fleets would be the most important factor.
1. Frigates. Cheap and disposable, usually I'll have a frigate launch from the nearest colony/base/capital ship for a foray through a few known hostile systems. For this sort of scouting, I design a type of frigate that's expressly for this purpose. Extra small, extra fast, with a little more range than usual. Cloaks are optional.
2a. I tend to fight fighters with fighters, though it's also helpful to design some anti-fighter missiles if you plan on having combat task forces without carriers (which I often do!) If I find myself up against a bunch of speedy frigate/destroyer sized ships, I find that they're usually no match for my cruisers/battleships. I'll usually design my missiles and missile fire controls/sensors around the concept of needing to hit ships that are faster than my own if possible. Same with beam fire controls. At some point, no matter how good your designs are, it does come down to numbers though.
2b. I never have a main battlegroup without some sort of point defense. Usually I'll have about 1/4 of the ships in the group be dedicated point defense platforms (AMMs or gauss turrets are my preference.) My point defense ships come in three general flavors. The most common is the Destroyer type, which are part of main battleship task groups. The second are a cruiser variant - essentially the same thing as the destroyer type but with enough range to be part of cruiser patrols. And the third are orbital platforms, for colony defense, since gauss turrets don't really work from PDCs and you can more easily tug them to new colonies than building/transporting entire PDCs.
Regarding the use of cruiser/carrier task groups for patrolling purposes - I absolutely agree that local defense fleets (typically destroyer/battleship combinations, with fighter support from local PDCs) are much more important. Especially when you're playing primarily against NPCs. In multiplayer games, or games where you're playing against yourself, cruiser/carrier patrols become more important though still not as vital as short ranger, higher firepower fleets.
I use my patrol fleets to keep long-distance shipping lines safe, to escort troop transports or other vital shipping, and to patrol areas where I feel enemy traffic is likely. In my experience this sort of thing isn't very important against the AI, but it is vital against human intelligence.
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Any objections with fleet roles added here (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Fleet). Those should be both generic and familiar enough.
Edit: moved to Ships (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=ship)
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Escorts
These are the smallest type of combatants in the fleet. Commonly used for reconnaissance, incursions and escort missions. Although individually weak when compared to capital ships, they are inexpensive to build and can become quite potent in large numbers, and can use their speed to harass the heavier capital ships while protecting their own from enemy escorts attempting to do the same.
- Fighters, Bombers - Small, fast, short-range craft that cannot operate independently. Their main roles include space superiority and anti-ship bombing, in the defence of stations and the large capital ships that they are deployed from.
- Frigates - Light multi-role warships capable as scouts, skirmishers and anti-fighter escorts. As Scouts, they are designed extra small, extra fast, with more range than usual, cloaking capabilities can be of use. Skirmishers designed to counter enemy fighters and bombers and escorts, they require speed/range advantage to split off from a main force and make their catch.
- Destroyers - usually carry specialised weaponry to combat specific threats, relatively heavily armed warships for their size, but commensurately ill-defended and with poor independent range. The actual vessels vary greatly between navies, but are all designed to engage multiple small, fast enemies (typically fighters and missile swarms) and or are loaded with point defense batteries. They will also have some anti-ship capability, but are not designed to go up against capital ships.
Capital
These are among the largest warships in the fleet, and are the focus of naval combat. Whether due to their heavy armament and heavy armour, or by carrying aircraft, capital ships allow you to bring the most firepower and durability to a fight. Also usually independent and long ranged, they are capable of controlling entire systems.
- Cruisers - Cruisers make up the backbone of any military fleet. These capital ships have the firepower and speed to be used for almost any sort of duty, including patrols, blockades, raids, and straight-up firefights. Cruisers are divided into many sub-types depending on their role e.g. combat, fast response, provide fleet support.
- Battleship - Battleships are the heaviest vessels, with colossal amounts of armament, heavy armour and or shields. Battleships are the pride of most naval fleets and usually serve as the flagship for the Task Force Commander of the Fleet, though this is not always necessarily the case.
- Carriers - Dedicated ship, capable of deploying large fighter and bomber squadrons, and provide shipyard facility for the fleet on the move. Usually helpless on their own, their aircraft can strike targets from far outside of the range of gun ships.
My only beef with that is that my destroyers are geared toward anti-capital duties instead of anti-fighter/anti-missile.
[/list]
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My problem with it is the escort/capital breakdown. I think that's too simplistic. Either that or Cruisers should be moved into the escort category. In real naval terms, the term "capital ship" is used to designate the lead ship(s) in any given fleet. The primary idea behind a capital ship is that it's meant to serve as the mainstay or anchor of a fleet. They're the sort of ships that the command staff would ride around on. The other ships in the fleet serve in various support roles (yes, extra damage is a support role - very relevant in the case of ship-to-ship destroyers and heavy cruisers.) A capital ship should be able to operate on its own, even if the rest of its fleet is destroyed. The other ships in a fleet would need to stay close to a base without a capital ship to provide force projection (extra supplies, extra fuel, extra ammo, extra crew, etc.) Here's the wikipedia page, for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship)
I would probably just move Cruisers under the escort category. They have long range, sure, but (in real naval terms) they aren't capital ships by any means. They are (or were, in WW2) the default escorts! :D The main difference between a cruiser and any kind of capital ship is in force projection. While cruisers tended to be very fuel efficient and carry extra fuel, they didn't have the extra crew, ammo, or other supplies necessary to supply or maintain anyone but themselves, generally speaking. That capital ships tended to also have more turrets/fighters and armor is an important detail, but doesn't describe the main functional difference between the two.
Of course, this is a little bit of a gray area as naval doctrines are quite different between navies, but I can't think of any navy that has ever called cruisers capital ships. They'll be quite inconsistent when it comes to differentiating between, say, frigates and destroyers, sure. But there's a general consensus on what makes a capital ship: capital ships are the ships around which entire fleets are centered.
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Basically, a good rule of thumb that I like to use when designing my capital ships is: is this ship large and important enough to warrant adding extra space for a security detail of Marines? A lot of capital ships in real navies (at least in the USA) will have Marines aboard. Smaller ships will not. In the Corps we used to call this sort of deployment "going on a float." In Aurora, this really only applies vs other humans (or yourself) as the AI doesn't really try any boarding shenanigans. If a human opponent spots a vulnerable capital ship that's ripe for boarding, though, and they're clever/prepared ...
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I usually go with the following:
Escorts - FG, DD, CL
Capital - BB, DN, Heavy Cruiser, Carrier
Self-Sufficient - Cruiser, BC, Light Carrier.
Fighters are their own category because they can be anti-shipping, anti-fighter, and anti-missile.
By self-sufficient, I mean a squadron can operate without need of escorts. These ships have offensive and defensive capabilities.
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I usually have a much more WWII breakdown;
Escorts: Corvettes, Sloops, Frigates, Destroyers, Light Cruisers
Independent: Destroyers, Light Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers
Capital: Battlecruisers, Battleships
Other escorted: Carriers, Tenders (for Torpedo and Gunboats)
Fighters I break down into Fighters, Scouts and Bombers
I also have Torpedo Boats, and Gunboats (for diplomacy ;) )
I've never really found a solution for Jumpships I'm happy with, for the smaller ones I usually do a Flotilla Leader variant with less weapons and FTL (up to Destroyers, Light Cruisers I usually give a Heavy Cruiser squadron Leader to cover the Jump support) Heavy Cruisers, Capital, Carriers and Tenders I usually give FTL drives of their own.
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Biggest issue with jump ships is the jump engines. If they are a subset of another class, they are losing defenses/arms to carry the JE. This makes them that much easier to kill.
On topic: Don't put your flag bridge on the ship with the biggest sensors.
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I usually have one of my smaller classes (often a Sloop, or Destroyer) as a sensor platform, in fleet formations I often attach one per division, though usually only have one with it's actives on at a time, since its a big red shoot at me sign!
That's part of the reason I've not come to a solution for Jumpships that I'm happy with, the last few games I've built dedicated Jumpships all the way up the ship size scale, and a few times I basically only operate my war fleets inside my jump gate network, though that only works for turtles.
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Why not have your jump ship double as a supply/hospital vessel? That's what I tend to do. Extra fuel, supplies, or ammo as space warrants. No real weapons to speak of, and tons of armor/shielding and/or a cloak if technology is sufficient. It doesn't even have to travel into battle with its fleet unless the battle is right on a jump point. You can jump through, detach, and hide it somewhere (or jump it back through.) Reattach to the fleet when its time to refuel, resupply, dole out MSP, or pick up survivors/POWs. That way it stays generally safeish and you don't have to worry about losing it during a battle as much. Essentially, it's a sort of Support Cruiser. Very much in the Cruiser category because Battleships and most types of destroyers typically won't have the range to go jumping a ton of systems away from a base anyway.
Getting a Battleship/Destroyer task force outfitted with a jump ship is a bit trickier. I haven't yet come up with a solution for these shorter range fleets that I'm entirely happy with. So far I've just been using my support cruisers for it. Works out okay, but I'd like something a bit more tailored to the battleship style than a cruiser.
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My problem with it is the escort/capital breakdown. I think that's too simplistic.
Well yes, the prelude to that section is: "In aurora you have great flexibility as a designer in addressing your empire's need. Ships roles\size and fleet composition varies depending on the nature of each navy and its primary mission. overall ships can be categorized in many ways, this section cover the most basic methods".
And bellow I intentionally included a link to the design forum.
[..]I can't think of any navy that has ever called cruisers capital ships. [..]
How about BattleCruisers? there is very little to distinguish them from battleships. Other than that I pretty much agree with you. However, if I move it down i'll need to either add BattleCruisers or some sort of super heavy BS with name like Dreadnought.
Overall what I was aiming at simple template with distinct, though not necessarily correct, roles. That most people can easily understand and use in creating their version of "dream" feet. I used simple concepts:
Escorts - Small/inexpensive:
* Frigate, quick and maneuverable. For reckon, patrol, escort. (Small)
* Destroyers, heavily armed, mostly act as fleet escorts. (bigger)
Capital - Large/expensive: (unlike escorts, loosing one of those will hurt you a lot)
* Main combatant big guns\decks depending on your doctrine, or big support.
* Bigger main combatant generally used as flagship.
Unfortunately, this is the best I am able to produce with my English. If you can improve upon or have a better idea. Please go ahead!
Edit:
I can easily change to:
Escorts - Small/mostly inexpensive:
* Frigate, quick and maneuverable. For reckon, patrol, escort. (Small)
* Destroyers, heavily armed, mostly act as fleet escorts. (bigger)
* Cruiser - able to operate independently for extended periods. Fast response and fleet support. (biggest)
Capital
* Battleship most heavily armed, armored and or shielded type of ship.
* Dedicated carriers.
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Fighters are their own category because they can be anti-shipping, anti-fighter, and anti-missile.
Definitely. Btw has anyone done the math, on using "Fighters" (under 500 tons) craft to deploy marine boarding squads?
I've never really found a solution for Jumpships I'm happy with, for the smaller ones I usually do a Flotilla Leader.
Since any ship can be designated as jump tender, I put them in the Auxiliary support section. Any sugestions there?
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Well, I may not be the most expert or efficient designer, but I've always found a good rule to be; make sure you know what you want your design to do. Don't create a fleet carrier and then go, 'hmm, maybe this needs three or four quad laser turrets'. It's wasting tonnage that could be put to furthering the design aspects you need, or even just saved altogether.
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I have updated the ship roles (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=ship). Separated fighters from escorts, added shuttles, moved cruisers to escort role and adding dreadnoughts (after all what self respecting scifi game don't not have one) Also mentioned force projection and navy detachments. - Bare in mind that I just donated blood and then like an idiots run across the whole city and I am soo tired but can go to sleep ... so don't blame me for any smeg.
Anyway while its fun researching the various roles for my next game, honestly, I created that entry because I needed a main fleet article to tigh all other fleet relate topics into and I was hopping that someone else going to take the lead on the roles and design concepts. If anyone want to further improve that entry please go ahead.
Also bear in mind we also need more specific design rules of thumbs For:
* Beam Warships
* Missile warships
* Fast attack craft
* Stealth ships
* etc ,,,
If anyone can write a complete topic than great, but don't hold your breath, you can already start by dropping barebone info and tips and see how it shapes out.
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I don't really think anyone "needs" rules of thumb for ship designs. This is because you first have to determine what you want the ship to do. After you decide what missions it is to perform, you determine your races strategic view point on things like: shields, armour, weapon mix, point defence, and any other topic that strikes you as "big picture." This is the minor part of any "strategy game" and can be done while the game boots. Then you take into account your specific racial limitations: shipyard capacity, research capacity, mineral state, known opponents, astro-graphy. You further that with the degree you wish to RP any particular point.
Then you sit down and look at all that and the ship is designed.
The only "rule of thumb" that applies that I can think of is that 10% of the hull volume will be wasted, and you should not worry about it.
Of course you then have to come up with a fleet doctrine that allows that ship to be used to its maximum potential and hope that you don't encounter a combat situation that invalidates any of the assumptions that you based your strategic thinking on.
I play starfire, I've seen the crazy for ship designs, they all can be made to work. They most certainly aren't all "optimal" but I think people worry about optimal far too much since optimal implies assumptions on how they will be deployed, and that is only possible in Aurora because the AI is relatively brain dead and the spoiler NPRs are relatively static. This allows the player to game the game to a high degree but I find such a design process unappealing (I doubt I am the only one)...and besides possibly Steve will improve the AI then you are stuck.
Also Steve's rigillian diaries in Starfire had him start with the "optimal" "optimized" ship designs...which lasted until his first WP assault where several of the underlying assumptions were violated...if he had not been higher tech level he would have had his ass handed to him. I saw this everytime the discussion came up on the starfire board...people make assumptions that feed directly into the design only most of the time they never mention the assumptions. So plucking the design out of the ether and employing it will result in the occasion "ooops" situation simply because the underlying assumption is violated.
Way back in this thread Erik said it best, there is a different dsigns for every player. Even when you take ship classes into consideration why is an escort a DD or CL? Why can't you have a BBE or a SDE? They exist in Starfire and exist for good reason...the TFN used BBA and SDA for escorting their CVs as an example. There was SDEs in ISW4 and in the Theban War...basically minesweepers...also there were Escort bases, often quite large. It is entirely possible you have a race with monitors that used battleships as "escorts" ... economically I'd say this is painful but why not if it fulfilles your mission requirements.
My view is there is no rules of thumb there is only mission requirements, stragetic choices and limitations. They determine the design. And when you have settled on those three things the design is straight forward to the last 10-20% of the ship. I fully understand why people like rules of thumb for this question but I think that leads to cookie cutter designs based on unmentioned assumptions and that results in people being dumped in hot water more often then not. Just my €0.02 anyway.
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I disagree, mainly because I think that we aren't talking about the same thing. You seem to speak about "optimal" "optimized" designs, if I wanted that I'd just copy pasted something from the design thread. Meanwhile, what is commonly requested is the WHY, only not all at once. If you explain how to design ____ ship, people can use that knowledge to adapt to their mission requirements, strategic choices and limitations. So unless you are volunteering to write tutorials, asking for "rule of thumb", tips or whatever you want to call information gathering is next best things, IMO.
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There are few rules of thumb.
"How much protection does my command ship need?" Heavily protected flagship works, but so does something too small to be targeted at likely battle ranges (more closely resembles a scout plane).
"How much range do my anti-ship missiles need?" Depends on what you want to outrange (sensors, ASMs, AMMs, beams), whether you are prepared to bet your fleet on your ability to do so, on the size of the deploying vessels, your preferred split of offensive/defensive vessels, how much space you like to devote to passive protection, how much you are willing to sink into capable sensor ships, how you evaluate enemy PD capabilities...
The rule of thumb is usually "do something that fits into your doctrine". Something less specific that gives you a "respectably average" design is likely to be weaker than the oddball designs made by people with a plan.
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Definitely. Btw has anyone done the math, on using "Fighters" (under 500 tons) craft to deploy marine boarding squads?
Pelican class Dropship 497 tons 3 Crew 3046.9 BP TCS 9.94 TH 15 EM 0
150905 km/s Armour 1-5 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 99% IFR 1.4% 1YR 1069 5YR 16037 Max Repair 3000 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 1
Drop Capacity: 2 Companies
1500 EP Photonic Drive (1) Power 1500 Fuel Use 148.09% Signature 15 Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 40 000 Litres Range 9.8 billion km (18 hours at full power)
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
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The ship classifications are meant to be used in a descriptive way, as opposed to a prescriptive way. Any ship that's designed to destroy a specific type of thing is a destroyer. Any ship that's meant to go very far away from support is a cruiser. And so on. The purpose of this is the same as any system of categorization - not to decide how things should be, but rather to describe how things are in a way that makes communication of ideas and strategies clear, concise, and easy.
You don't *need* to make any of these types of ships. This thread is more about creating a guideline for what is a (stereo)typical, proven fleet composition and doctrine to help (new) players understand some of the things they should be thinking about when designing ships. The general design types and philosophies we've discussed so far are the most common, with real-world equivalents. Really, I think what we're talking about here is more along the lines of "Fleet Composition and Strategy 101" which could then segue into specific design rules of thumb if given certain design goals for any given specific hull within the context of a larger fleet doctrine.
You can come up with any doctrine you want. No one's saying otherwise. All we're talking about here is a good starting place for players who might be confused about the hows and whys of ship design - which of course starts with an overall fleet doctrine before delving into specific ship designs and components.
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Your fleet doctrine will be influenced by your available starting tech. For example, I always start with the game randomly assigning my tech points. So it's always a surprise what I'll get. "25cm UV lasers? Capacitor 1? Score!" But that initial tech will decide if I build missiles or go with lasers or rails. Once I know what kind of ships I can build, I can form a fleet doctrine.
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I usually don't even consider building a proper navy until I have the techs I want. Getting the first few levels of any tech is super quick, while building a navy right at the start of a typical earth-based game consumes valuable resources and construction capacity. Usually I focus on building up my economy/colonization and researching tech for the first decade or so. Getting a proper PDC set up (and some orbital point defense if I decide to use beams instead of AMMs) is priority 1 after surveying/colonization is complete. That alone takes a while.
By the time I'm set up and feeling comfortable to poke my head into other systems, I've already got all the tech I need to build whatever sort of navy I want.
The only time I'd say it's pressing to build a navy right away is if you're in a game where you've started with hostiles in your home system, or a multiplayer (or vs. yourself) game where you started your human-intelligence opponents in nearby systems. EDIT: And yeah, if you've got to build naval ships right away, of course they're gonna be janky. And of course you're probably just gonna have to retrofit them as soon as they're out of the oven, because by the time they're done being built you'll have already researched more desirable tech.
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I disagree, mainly because I think that we aren't talking about the same thing. You seem to speak about "optimal" "optimized" designs, if I wanted that I'd just copy pasted something from the design thread. Meanwhile, what is commonly requested is the WHY, only not all at once. If you explain how to design ____ ship, people can use that knowledge to adapt to their mission requirements, strategic choices and limitations. So unless you are volunteering to write tutorials, asking for "rule of thumb", tips or whatever you want to call information gathering is next best things, IMO.
The Why is because you have a mission you want to accomplish within some contraints. The mission varies and the constraints vary which makes it hard to put down a general rule of thumb. I can give you a rule of thumb for designing "a ship" in starfire because I've designed hundreds of them and there are design parameters I favor but...when I really design a ships it may differe wildly from my favored design parameters because I want it to do a mission.
Using some Aurora examples:
The NCN wants to deal with the Super Salvo of Magic Missiles. Their standard doctrine is Active defences, backed by shields and limited armour belts. They can't make (due to game rules) a Counter Missile that can intercept a Magic, they haven't got a way to see them far enough out to enable an intercept with a slower missile and their missile technology and propulsion technology both need to advance. So what they have now that is "effective" is point defence. So they wanted to make a point defence escort based on their DD hull with a minimum of 5 double laser DPPAs. Well when I started plugging in stuff to the design it became obvious the DD hull was too small...so now they have a CLE with 6 double turrets. This then caused a minor burp in the whole BuPlanning as well it means the deployment structure has to change. So doctrine changes are coming up.
The NCN wants to deploy the new Armed Pinnace. Skipping the process which arrived at the Armed Pinnace being 700 tonnes they started with the idea that they would first deploy an Escort Carrier. The decision was made they would carry 3 armed pinnaces on the Escort Carrier and deploy them in groups of 4 CVEs. The hope was to use the Heavy Frigate hull. Well stuffing a few things on that sized hull quickly made it clear it was a no-go, the DD hull wasn't even large enough to accomadate the mission required volume and the CVE ended up being about the size of a CL and carries 3 armed pinnaces...this was not met with glee by anyone in the NCN. So there is some back and forth and humming and hawing about actually deploying them...especially since the Armed Pinnaces will be less effective in an anti-missile role (due to being 700 tonnes) then hoped. Still to gain experience and more dakka ...
But as both these examples indicate the WHY comes down to the interaction of the mission requirement and the limitations. For me, at any rate, it always comes down to that in the end. I don't see how or even why that needs to be explained in a tutorial. This is the "strategy" part in Strategy games...99% of the game is purely management but the 1% that isn't is exactly this. You decide what weapons your navy uses, what missions they will perform and what doctrines they follow and then when you go to design a ship to do fulfill those you have to account for your limitations and fundamentally at that point the ship design falls out of the design window. Give or take 10% that is selected to taste.
I am possibly also not fully understanding what you really want. I explain in my AAR why ships look the way they do...or it is obvious why a design change was made (the previous design being blown to scrap metal). But as far as I can recall I usually say what the mission(s) of the ship is (are)...and explain my reasoning there. But I am dubious you can get rules of thumb from this sort of thing as most people have different mission parameters and assumptions that underline their doctrine in their heads...and those assumptions are almost always never mentioned. Even in my case not always do I state an underlying assumption I may have...in some cases it can be as simple as "to be different" or "to try something oddball and see if it can be made to work."
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On fleet terminology via "escorts" and "capital ships" due the game mechanics I don't use that. I use something closer to the old sailing ships description. I break it down into combatents and escorts. Combatents are designed to destroy the enemy. Escorts protect the combatents and let them get on with their job.
In the NCN the Wounded Knee (Frigate), the Tribal (Destroyer) and the Fallen (L. Cruiser) are combatents. The Tribals and Fallen class are "capital" ships but really it is better to say that the Wounded Knee is a 3rd Rate SoL (Ship of the Line) while the Fallen is a 1st Rate. The Gargoyle, Lake and London class (all frigates) are escorts. The new heavy cruiser class of ship will be the first class which doesn't require a dedicated jump tender and hence the first "independent" class....or true cruiser.
The use of ablative armour sorta wipes out the "capital ship" distinction for me, I'd classify a "battleship" as a heavy combattent or a 1st rate SoL rather than a capital ship. Ablative defenses just remove the real meaning of a capital ship...a BB required you meet it with a similar sized gun armed ship...sending CAs after it would be ineffective as their guns would not penetrate the BBs armour. Put in armour and penetration rating and then you can talk about capital ships is my view.
But for me the distinction is not by size of ship but by mission. The Wounded Knee's are the same size as the Lake and Gargolye classes but they have radically different missions.
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I am possibly also not fully understanding what you really want. I explain in my AAR why ships look the way they do...or it is obvious why a design change was made (the previous design being blown to scrap metal). But as far as I can recall I usually say what the mission(s) of the ship is (are)...and explain my reasoning there. But I am dubious you can get rules of thumb from this sort of thing as most people have different mission parameters and assumptions that underline their doctrine in their heads...and those assumptions are almost always never mentioned. Even in my case not always do I state an underlying assumption I may have...in some cases it can be as simple as "to be different" or "to try something oddball and see if it can be made to work."
Here's the question from the original post, for convenience:
I have looked through the bureau of ship design forum it has a lot of nice specific examples. But what I am looking for is run down of ship roles (military and civilian) and general design principles for said roles. Any thoughts ?
Like it or not, aware of it or not, ship classifications do have well-known structure and definition, even if some of them are just a bit fluid. The entire purpose of having ship classifications is to describe roles in a way that makes communication of ideas between people easier. If everyone knows what is meant when I say "the ship is a Cruiser" it makes discussion of ship design, fleet doctrine, strategy, etc. much easier for everyone. Again, these classifications are meant to be *descriptive*, not *prescriptive.* Using them, we can prevent confusion and conflation of ideas among ourselves. The system of categorization in use in the real world may not be perfect, but that's okay so long as it gets the job done well enough. That job being to provide a run down of ship roles and general design principles for said roles in a way that makes communication clearer and more concise. It's when we all start to have different definitions of what these things are that communication breaks down and even discussing the simplest of ideas becomes next to impossible.
Does that help clear up what this thread is about? Mor is basically asking, "WTF do people mean when they say, "a Cruiser", and what exactly does that entail from a ship design point of view?" People can come up with their own definitions and ideas, sure, but that causes some pretty serious communication problems, as mentioned earlier.
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I'd like to also reiterate and clarify that nothing is stopping anyone from coming up with entirely new classifications. The only problems arise when people take already well-defined classifications and try to redefine them. If I create a ship that's a giant mass of guns and shields and has no hangars, but then start trying to call it a carrier ... well, that's just going to confuse the hell out of everyone even if *I* know what I mean. Same with conflating battleships and cruisers, etc.
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I'd like to also reiterate and clarify that nothing is stopping anyone from coming up with entirely new classifications. The only problems arise when people take already well-defined classifications and try to redefine them. If I create a ship that's a giant mass of guns and shields and has no hangars, but then start trying to call it a carrier ... well, that's just going to confuse the hell out of everyone even if *I* know what I mean. Same with conflating battleships and cruisers, etc.
Why? George Lucas called his major capital warships (with 72 fighters on board even) Destroyers, it didn't cause much confusion.
My personal peeve is designating type by mass, damn Steve V Cole!
and Mark Miller!
I've been experimenting with purely role based ship types, ignoring the Naval aspect entirely
things like; Patrol Craft, Escort, Warship, Bombardment Vessel, and Mothership, with Light, Heavy and no weight descriptor to differentiate inside that.
for example the Christchurch class light escort, and the Balaclava class Heavy Bombardment vessel (first being a pd laser equipped Frigate, the second a Missile Battleship)
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Large ship often carry fighters, that not what defines a carrier. Also many try to invent sexier more descriptive names for the same roles, those who go with size tend to use 1.99 super upgrade(super heavy, super-carrier, super whatever) and end up with titans with colossal names, those who want to reflect military might go with thing like star destroyer.
Anyway, I found this nice article on the topic that other might find an interesting read.
http://geeksnewengland.org/2015/05/15/on-the-taxonomy-of-spaceships/
Also I love that intro image. Simple but inspiring.
EDIT: In case you are not stuck at work with a low res laptop (likely most of you), my pov was:
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carrying fighters pretty much is the definition of a carrier though
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Thanks for that link Mor, I'm finding it quite an interesting and entertaining read.
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carrying fighters pretty much is the definition of a carrier though
In that case, since quite a lot of ships carried float-planes in ww2, all those ships were carriers?
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Technically any ship that carried a plane *could* accurately be called a carrier, yes. Remember, the roles are descriptive, not prescriptive. That's why when carrier doctrine was brand new, people originally called the ships we all think of as carriers "dedicated carriers." Meaning the ship was mostly or entirely dedicated to the role of carrying fighters/bombers. Over time, as the doctrine proved superior to battleship doctrine, it became easier to drop the "dedicated" part because most noteworthy carriers were dedicated carriers.
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Like it or not, aware of it or not, ship classifications do have well-known structure and definition, even if some of them are just a bit fluid. The entire purpose of having ship classifications is to describe roles in a way that makes communication of ideas between people easier. If everyone knows what is meant when I say "the ship is a Cruiser" it makes discussion of ship design, fleet doctrine, strategy, etc. much easier for everyone. Again, these classifications are meant to be *descriptive*, not *prescriptive.* Using them, we can prevent confusion and conflation of ideas among ourselves. The system of categorization in use in the real world may not be perfect, but that's okay so long as it gets the job done well enough. That job being to provide a run down of ship roles and general design principles for said roles in a way that makes communication clearer and more concise. It's when we all start to have different definitions of what these things are that communication breaks down and even discussing the simplest of ideas becomes next to impossible.
Does that help clear up what this thread is about? Mor is basically asking, "WTF do people mean when they say, "a Cruiser", and what exactly does that entail from a ship design point of view?" People can come up with their own definitions and ideas, sure, but that causes some pretty serious communication problems, as mentioned earlier.
That works if the game mechanics supports it. In Starfire if you say heavy cruiser you mean a ship between 50 and 60 Hull Spaces. That is a fixed clear definition.
The NCN will have a heavy cruiser that masses 18 000 tonnes. Heavy cruiser is their designation for that ship. You might have a heavy cruiser that masses 180 000 tonnes and uses magical technology (compared the NCN). How can you have classification that is a "well known structure and definition" in this case?
A modern Destroyer is called a destroyer to sneak it by congressional oversight committees that would bauk at building a "cruiser." The same was done by the British on their carriers for a while. Destroyers used to mean "torpedo boat destroyers" but now doesn't mean that (see above).
Also using a definition from a wet navy for a star navy is prone to approximations. Do Cruisers have all the time self jump capability? Is there some difference between a cruiser and jump capable cruiser? Is that a part of "independent operation" or not?
It is the same with "capital" ... the game mechanics remove that distinction since a large number of smaller ships can destroy that capital vessel...in much the same way "heavy mechs" in battletech are not the same thing as a heavy tank in reality. A capital ship was one which mandated the enemy show up with their own capital ships or else there was no contest. Carriers became defacto capital ships when the american battleline ended up at the bottom of pearl harbor. Capital now means "big, expensive, hard to replace ship." In Aurora it basically means the biggest warships you can produce.
I don't see how you can have a discussion in the abstract anyway you are proposing or what the value of it is. Depending on your style of play it is pointless in the extreme. At the end of the day even if you and I have the same concept for what a cruiser is: "capable of independent action"; but, your ship is 10x larger than mine it isn't going to be possible to discuss missions or roles since their capabilites will be extremely different. I'm unsure where the fact we both have the same view of what a cruiser is or what a design for a crusier might be means compared to the detail you have 10x the hull space to work with.
You can discuss the navy's doctrines only within the context of the navy itself and if you do that you have well defined ship catagories and the question of "what do you mean by a cruiser" is answered. There is no "arbitary potatoe shaped" fleet doctrine discussions possible in Aurora since the size scale of the ships is utterly arbitary, and the size scale of the fleet determines mission capabilities...and that feeds back into the design process and then into how they are utilized...
The discussion you are proposing is possible in Starfire, or Leviathan or High Guard or other space games where the size of the ship for a specific hull catagory is fixed, but in Aurora it is meaningful only in the context of discussing a specific and defined races fleet, or when comparing to roughly equivelent fleet. Say in Steve's 2300 campaign where you could talk about the Japanese vrs German fleets.
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The size scale of ships isn't utterly arbitrary, as I pointed out in an earlier post. While you can make 1,000,000 ton behemoths, sure, they're either going to be made almost entirely of engines or else be excruciatingly slow. When talking about feasible designs and doctrines that work against human intelligence, there is an upper limit to reasonably effective ship sizes that's somewhere around 100k-150k ton extremes, give or take depending on the doctrines involved. Again, this is due to engine maximum size being 2,500 tons and engine redundancy giving diminishing returns. That 20th engine hardly adds anything of value to your ship, yet costs an extra 2,500 tons of space. Of course there are always exceptions, but they're exceptions and not rules for a reason. That 1,000,000 ton behemoth might actually be a serviceable jump point defense ship if it's brimming with the right weaponry, since speed doesn't matter so much on jump point defense.
This is what makes discussions of modern naval roles in Aurora worthwhile. Especially in terms of making it easier to help new players understand ship design and fleet doctrine. No one is saying you have to play a bog standard fleet that mirrors IRL fleets. What we (I?) are saying is that it's worthwhile to consider them and incorporate some standard terminology from real life in order to avoid confusion among ourselves when talking about these things, especially with newer players or when making a guide.
Also, regarding cruisers, they're called cruisers because they cruise. From Dutch kruisen, "to cross, sail to and fro." Back when a ship's travel range was a necessary consideration, the cruiser classification made a lot of sense. These days, any respectable warship can cross oceans and so the classification has become somewhat obsolete. In the vast majority of aurora games, however, range is a primary concern of ship design - and so the cruiser classification sees a lot of prominence and use. The cruiser classification doesn't really have anything to do with "independent operations" (that's actually more the purview of capital ships, give or take, see the wikipedia article I linked earlier). If a ship has the range to "cross oceans", it's a cruiser. In Aurora terms, this means that a ship that is capable of traveling through many systems without refueling would be, by description, a type of cruiser. They're the sort of ship that can go from one end of a massive colonial empire to the other without needing to stop for fuel. They don't have to have weapons - you could have all sorts of support cruisers. You could have a point defense cruiser. Any type of <adjective> cruiser is a possibility!
It's also just common sense that unless a word has an agreed upon meaning, the word is pretty much useless as a means of communication. There's nothing stopping us from making ships with no hangars and then calling them carriers except the need to have other human beings understand us. I could make a ship with no engines or fuel and call it a cruiser, even though by common understanding of the word it isn't one. The same could be said of any words. I could call my dog a cat.
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Maybe a better tack would be to define roles.
As I see it, there are the following roles for ships:
- Scout/Picket - Sensor ships. Scouts would be with a fleet, pickets would be stationed in a system.
- Escort - dedicated fleet defense ship. This is the ship that defends the anti-shipping from the enemy's anti-shipping.
- Carrier/Tender - carries fighters (carrier) or FACs (tender).
- Capital - The ships that do the blowing of bad-guys up.
I've started defining ships by those broad strokes in my games. I usually further break down to the following
- Destroyer - capital ship that is not jump capable.
- Frigate - non-jump capable escort.
- Cruiser/Battlecruiser/Battleship - jump capable capital ship. Actual designation relies on amount of armor.
- Light Carrier/Heavy Carrier/Assault Carrier - Jump capable carriers. Actual designation relies on the number of fighter wings, which is defined as 10 fighters (or bombers)
- Light Tender/Heavy Tender/Assault Tender - As above, but for FACs. A flight of FACs is 5 FACs.
I define a fighter as a fighter-class ship geared towards interdiction or anti-missile. A bomber is a fighter-class ship geared for anti-shipping.
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Those designations are pretty off compared to the commonly understood meanings of the words, which would be okay if we could get everyone on the same page with them. Honestly, though, why reinvent or the wheel? The work has already been done for us, and anyone with a working knowledge of military/naval history/current affairs will understand the bulk of these terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_naval_vessels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_naval_vessels)
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carrying fighters pretty much is the definition of a carrier though
Carrying fuel pretty much is the definition of a tanker. It doesn't mean that any ship that carry fuel is a tanker. Carrier is a ship that its primary role is carrying/deploying small craft.
Edit: You can have dedicated fleet carriers that just carry large wings of craft or they can sacrifice some of that capacity to have more armor/shields and Point Defense batteries, or maybe its a commercial survey carrier. But its not any ship that you define as "and it can also carry craft".
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Those designations are pretty off compared to the commonly understood meanings of the words, which would be okay if we could get everyone on the same page with them. Honestly, though, why reinvent or the wheel? The work has already been done for us, and anyone with a working knowledge of military/naval history/current affairs will understand the bulk of these terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_naval_vessels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_naval_vessels)
That's the beauty of Aurora. Anyone can design a ship and call it what they feel best describes it. :) Of course, without some form of reference beforehand, it might be confusing. Just look at the blind men and the elephant.
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Apologies if someone has addressed this already, but I saw this posted earlier on in the thread;
I think it's also worth pointing out that since engines max out at size 50, and having multiple engines gives diminishing returns on speed, there comes a tipping point with ship sizes. For instance, a 50,000 tonne ship could have 5 size 50 engines in order to get 25% of its total size as engines. That's already plenty of redundancy. If you wanted to double the ship size to 100,000, that'd now require 10 size 50 engines to have the same 25% size/engine ratio! Since each additional engine add less than the previous one, you'll notice that as ship size goes up, speed goes down. The theme here being that extremely large ships wind up either getting slower and slower or else needing to dedicate more and more of their total tonnage to engines.
Sorry, but this is utterly and completely wrong.
A 10,000 ton ship that dedicates 2,500 tons to engine space, will have exactly the same speed as a 1,000,000 ton ship that dedicates 250,000 tons to engines. In both cases the engines amount to 25% of total tonnage.
If you use size 50 engines on both of those (1 for the 10kton ship, and 100 for the 1mton ship), then fuel efficiency is also the same per ton moved.
In fact, its smaller ships that loose out, as to get any kind of redundancy in engines, you have to reduce engine size. The smallest practical ship (using 25% of space for engines) with redundant size 50 engines is 20,000 tons.
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Apologies if someone has addressed this already, but I saw this posted earlier on in the thread;
Sorry, but this is utterly and completely wrong.
If so, this could change my mind about a few things. I could've sworn that diminishing returns from engines was a thing. I'll have to test it again. It's entirely possible I'm either misremembering or that the first tests I did years ago were flawed somehow.
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Well, engines need to push their own weight so you get diminishing returns in the way that twice as many engines won't make the design twice as fast.
Some time ago, I did the maths for how things scale if we can play around with power multipliers to achieve a set design speed.
If there were just engine and mission tonnage (disregarding additional armour, crew accomodation and possibly engineering spaces for the bulkier ship, additional fuel for the thirstier one), 60% engines would be the most fuel-efficent setup, 50% engines would minimise build cost for reduced-power engines. With boosted engines, the highest power multiplier we can achieve results in the lowest build cost..
When bulk is no issue but fuel consumption is, I like to go for 1/2 or 5/9 engine tonnage... but huge supercapitals that require considerable upfront investment in shipyards are a reason to go for something more compact. As are considerations of stealth or being used as a parasite craft.
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Well, engines need to push their own weight so you get diminishing returns in the way that twice as many engines won't make the design twice as fast.
I am not sure. This only effects max speed, but if you take ship with x tonnage and speed y, and double the total tonnage and engines components, you'll still get speed y. No?
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I am not sure. This only effects max speed, but if you take ship with x tonnage and speed y, and double the total tonnage and engines components, you'll still get speed y. No?
Yes. And if you keep the total tonnage the same and double the amount of engines, you will get 2y.
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No, he is right, there are more consideration than just tonnage. To achieve the same operation parameters you'l need much more than just double engines. The larger the ship the less free percentage you will have to play with.
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No, he is right, there are more consideration than just tonnage. To achieve the same operation parameters you'l need much more than just double engines. The larger the ship the less free percentage you will have to play with.
Cite, please.
Not only do I seem to recall Steve saying the opposite - using that as an example in explaining the system, even - the formulas given are linear: a ship twice as large but with twice the engines will have the same speed, twice the size with the same engines is half the speed, the same size but twice (or half) the engines gives twice (or half) the speed. And yes, I just pulled out a test game to make sure I wasn't talking through my hat.
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Its common sense. Because double the size =/= double the tonnage, due to armor calculations (power 2). So if you just double the engines number, crew, fuel etc. You are going to need more armor plating for the bigger hull surface, thus heavier and slower ship. This would be most notifiable on heavily armored BS.
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But wrong. For a ship with twice the payload and the same speed/range, you need less than twice the armour to get the same thickness. You can also lose some deadweight (the bridge, maybe something else like duplicate sensors).
Your argument only makes sense if you demand your twice-as-capable ship be armoured at twice the thickness... which is a red herring.
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The larger the ship, the more armor will be required to maintain the same armor rating. Hence double the size >> double the tonnage. Since you need to compensate by either adding more engines or removing something from the original design, this will increase engine % of total tonnage...
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Please stop repeating the same falsehood (that's trivially easy to check) over and over.
Double internal components for twice the capability and twice the component weight -> you need more armour to cover the whole thing at the same thickness but LESS THAN TWICE AS MUCH.
So for the scaled-up design instead of two of the originals, you need LESS ARMOUR.
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Should TWICE mean anything to me? @DIT_grue suggested that all the formulas given are linear, i showed at least one that it isn't. If you want something more specific you are going to need the rest (Cite, please). Also you might want to consider that engine components are limited by size 50.
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Yes it should. The scaled-up ship has twice as many components under armour, but less than twice the armour to achieve the same protection.
If you build two smaller ships, your armour thickness doesn't magically double, so having the same protection requires less armour on the larger ship. Double the size -> twice the capability and thicker armour, or twice the capability, same armour and weight savings.
This shouldn't need examples because it's so straightforward, but here two tiny but armoured fighters:
Gnat class Fighter 167 tons 2 Crew 37.4 BP TCS 3.34 TH 32 EM 0
9580 km/s Armour 4-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 1
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 33% IFR 0.5% 1YR 2 5YR 26 Max Repair 16 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 months Spare Berths 0
32 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 32 Fuel Use 336.02% Signature 32 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres Range 1.6 billion km (46 hours at full power)
Gauss Cannon R3-17 (1x3) Range 16 000km TS: 9580 km/s Accuracy Modifier 17% RM 3 ROF 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.1 8-2000 (FTR) (1) Max Range: 16 000 km TS: 8000 km/s 37 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
Doubling all internal components gives me
Gnat - Copy class Fighter 329 tons 4 Crew 73.8 BP TCS 6.58 TH 64 EM 0
9726 km/s Armour 5-4 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 2
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 65% IFR 0.9% 1YR 3 5YR 51 Max Repair 16 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 months Spare Berths 1
32 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 32 Fuel Use 336.02% Signature 32 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres Range 1.6 billion km (46 hours at full power)
Gauss Cannon R3-17 (2x3) Range 16 000km TS: 9726 km/s Accuracy Modifier 17% RM 3 ROF 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.1 8-2000 (FTR) (2) Max Range: 16 000 km TS: 8000 km/s 37 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
Exact doubling of all internal components... but a total of 2.1 armour for 5 layers instead of 1.2 for 4.
If we replace two of the smaller fighters with one larger one, we use the same internal components but less armour for a cheaper, faster, longer-ranged, better-armoured package.
The advantages are more pronounced the larger ship can adjust internal components (in ths case, eliminating the second fire control).
While there are reasons for smaller vessels (sensor footprint, shipyard investment, tactical flexibility, maintenance concerns), armour efficiency isn't one of them; quite the contrary.
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Now, I don't know the math, but it would seem that doubling everything shouldn't change any ratios (armor aside). Think of strapping two identical rockets together: The acceleration doesn't change; you have twice the thrust and twice the mass. The armor doesn't change; you've just strapped them together.
Now, let's actually make a singular ship with twice the systems (and thrust). Acceleration will change, because certain systems (such as the bridge) have not been duplicated. Also, assuming the armor is based on surface area (and ships are similar in shape), armor should obey the square-cube law. This means that a larger ship should have less surface area than a pair of smaller ones. And, because we assume the same armor thickness, surface area is equivalent to mass.
So, larger ships are more efficient than conglomerations of smaller ships because:
They don't need redundant systems, such as bridges.
They don't need as much armor to cover the same volume
Again, I don't have the math, but I'm sure Dev-Man has thought through this just as much.
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@Iranon I am not saying you are wrong, only that that I know two things
1. On the lower end of ship size, there should be an increase in performance (tied to engine size\fuel consumption)
2. That armor requirements grow exponentially (surface of a sphere is power 2) which means that with a sufficiently large x it will exceed linear growth.
You make the assumption that double the size components will maintain operational parameters (compared to using 2 ships of a kind) will be 1:2 or 1:1. While i am saying that I without the formulas that govern everything I can't go beyond the general principle above. Its great that you want to experiment but i'd suggest using more extreme case than 167ton fighter.
EDIT:
Also, assuming the armor is based on surface area (and ships are similar in shape), armor should obey the square-cube law. This means that a larger ship should have less surface area than a pair of smaller ones.
Good argument, since their radius is effect by tonnage(volume), then it should be something like 1 to 1/n sqrt 3 (unless I am having a brain fart)
as for the missile example its not necessarily true because e have crew, fuel, maintenance, power morale etc consideration and I can't say for sure that they all scale and non are derived.
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Yes the model for the required armor is based the surface of a sphere. But volume will always grow faster than the surface. To complicate things a row of armor is actually 1/4 of the result of calculating the surface area.
Example 1: 5k/ton ship (100 hull spaces) has a radius of 3 for a surface of 104. The resulting columns are 26.
Example 2: 25k/ton ship (500 hull spaces) has a radius of 5 for a surface of 304. The resulting columns are 76.
(these are not pure results because rounding)
Note that total 'volume' increased by a factor of 5 the surface area increased by a little less than a factor of 3.
This is the relevant code for Standard Aurora
Radius = ((ClassSize * 0.75) / PI) ^ (1 / 3)
SurfaceArea = (Radius ^ 2) * 4 * PI
ReqArmStrength = ArmourThickness * (SurfaceArea / 4)
As far as engine performance in Aurora is concerned it is a straight linear calculate for speed. (hull spaces / total engine power) * 1000. All factors being equal for power production the same percentage of hull devoted to engines will produce the same maximum speed regardless of ship size. Note that for purposes of speed fuel consumption is not relevant in Aurora.
Fuel efficiency/consumption is also straight forward. The baseline is 1liter per EPH. There are only 3 modifiers: 1) Fuel Consumption tech and 2) Engine Size 3) MIN/MAX Engine Power Modifier.
Fuel Consumption Tech is the most basic modifier. Liter Per Power Hour (LPH) * tech.
Engine Size is also basic. Engine Size equates to reduction percentage. i.e. 10hs engine reduces fuel consumption by 10%.
MIN/MAX Engine Power Modifier is not as obvious. it is Consumption Modifier = Engine Power Modifier ^ 2.5.
All of this information is available in various posts within the Mechanics section of the forum. Some of it does take some digging. The engine performance formulae are found in the v5.4/v6 changes.
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@Iranon I am not saying you are wrong, only that that I know two things
1. On the lower end of ship size, there should be an increase in performance (tied to engine size\fuel consumption)
2. That armor requirements grow exponentially (surface of a sphere is power 2) which means that with a sufficiently large x it will exceed linear growth.
You make the assumption that double the size components will maintain operational parameters (compared to using 2 ships of a kind) will be 1:2 or 1:1. While i am saying that I without the formulas that govern everything I can't go beyond the general principle above. Its great that you want to experiment but i'd suggest using more extreme case than 167ton fighter.
EDIT:Good argument, since their radius is effect by tonnage(volume), then it should be something like 1 to 1/n sqrt 3 (unless I am having a brain fart)
as for the missile example its not necessarily true because e have crew, fuel, maintenance, power morale etc consideration and I can't say for sure that they all scale and non are derived.
You wanted an example, I gave you one. Small fighters don't change anything, something simple with a decent armour percentage to make the things in question noticable seemed appropriate. Of the things you know: I'm not even considering engine efficiency - very obvious whether it applies or not, in my design practice it usually doesn't (most engines I design are size 1 or size 50).
We don't need to be given formulas when things obviously behave perfectly linearly.
"That armor requirements grow exponentially (surface of a sphere is power 2) which means that with a sufficiently large x it will exceed linear growth."
This is where the real problem lies. The quadratic growth you describe is relative to the radius, not the mass. The increase in mass relative to the radius is cubic, so the increase in surface relative to mass is (which is what we're looking at when considering armour weight at a given thickness relative to ship size) is logarithmic.
You seem to assume that the ship with doubled components would be twice as long. And possibly confuse the implications of the square-cube-law in Aurora or in real life.
IRL, you can't just double something in all dimensions for 4x the surface area and 8x the volume and weight... structural strength increases at a lesser rate than load, so things will fail eventually (there are other considerations depending on what you are looking at, but this seems the most applicable one). In Aurora, you can... and save tons of armour.
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Yes the model for the required armor is based the surface of a sphere. But volume will always grow faster than the surface. To complicate things a row of armor is actually 1/4 of the result of calculating the surface area.
Yes,@0111narwhalz already reminded of that. n small craft with similar volume(power 3) to a big one will have a 1:n sqrt 3. So when you calculate surface (power 2) the relation of n small crafts with r compared to big craft with r*nsqrt3 will be the formula I already given above (that is if I din't messed it up in my head). Which support that idea regardless of the coefficient. Anyway thanks for digging up the formulas for the engines, I can make use of them! If someone can dig up the rest for derived stats we can even put this to rest with a pretty graphic.
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Its great that you want to experiment but i'd suggest using more extreme case than 167ton fighter.
Then here I come. FOr this I will double every component and let Aurora auto-set crew spaces.
test class Cruiser 48 250 tons 1408 Crew 70215 BP TCS 965 TH 5000 EM 45000
5181 km/s Armour 10-118 Shields 1500-300 Sensors 150/150/0/0 Damage Control Rating 50 PPV 468.4
Maint Life 3.85 Years MSP 46476 AFR 372% IFR 5.2% 1YR 4953 5YR 74293 Max Repair 7875 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Flight Crew Berths 0
Hangar Deck Capacity 2000 tons Magazine 1880
5000 EP Photonic Drive (1) Power 5000 Fuel Use 5% Signature 5000 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres Range 74.6 billion km (166 days at full power)
Omega R300/360 Shields (100) Total Fuel Cost 1 500 Litres per hour (36 000 per day)
Triple 40cm C6.25 FGR Laser Turret (5x3) Range 1 400 000km TS: 25000 km/s Power 126-19 RM 12 ROF 35 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42
Twin 15cm C6.25 FGR Laser Turret (10x2) Range 720 000km TS: 100000 km/s Power 12-12 RM 12 ROF 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
CIWS-1000 (5x16) Range 1000 km TS: 100000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S02 175-100000 H10 (1) Max Range: 350 000 km TS: 100000 km/s 97 94 91 89 86 83 80 77 74 71
Fire Control S02 700-25000 H10 (1) Max Range: 1 400 000 km TS: 25000 km/s 99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Vacuum Energy Power Plant Technology PO-40 (6) Total Power Output 240 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Size 4 Missile Launcher (50% Reduction) (100) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC405-R1 (10%) (1) Range 405.0m km Resolution 1
S4 ASM A (470) Speed: 180 000 km/s End: 20.3m Range: 219.8m km WH: 49 Size: 4 TH: 600/360/180
Active Search Sensor MR270-R1 (10%) (1) GPS 360 Range 270.0m km MCR 29.4m km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR2700-R100 (10%) (1) GPS 36000 Range 2 700.0m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-150 (10%) (1) Sensitivity 150 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-150 (10%) (1) Sensitivity 150 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150m km
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 purposestest 2 class Cruiser 95 900 tons 2816 Crew 139939.5 BP TCS 1918 TH 10000 EM 90000
5213 km/s Armour 10-186 Shields 3000-300 Sensors 150/150/0/0 Damage Control Rating 100 PPV 936.8
Maint Life 4.05 Years MSP 93201 AFR 735% IFR 10.2% 1YR 9089 5YR 136339 Max Repair 7875 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Flight Crew Berths 1
Hangar Deck Capacity 4000 tons Magazine 3760
5000 EP Photonic Drive (2) Power 5000 Fuel Use 5% Signature 5000 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2 000 000 Litres Range 75.1 billion km (166 days at full power)
Omega R300/360 Shields (200) Total Fuel Cost 3 000 Litres per hour (72 000 per day)
Triple 40cm C6.25 FGR Laser Turret (10x3) Range 1 400 000km TS: 25000 km/s Power 126-19 RM 12 ROF 35 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42
Twin 15cm C6.25 FGR Laser Turret (20x2) Range 720 000km TS: 100000 km/s Power 12-12 RM 12 ROF 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
CIWS-1000 (10x16) Range 1000 km TS: 100000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S02 700-25000 H10 (2) Max Range: 1 400 000 km TS: 25000 km/s 99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Fire Control S02 175-100000 H10 (2) Max Range: 350 000 km TS: 100000 km/s 97 94 91 89 86 83 80 77 74 71
Vacuum Energy Power Plant Technology PO-40 (12) Total Power Output 480 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Size 4 Missile Launcher (50% Reduction) (200) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC405-R1 (10%) (2) Range 405.0m km Resolution 1
S4 ASM A (940) Speed: 180 000 km/s End: 20.3m Range: 219.8m km WH: 49 Size: 4 TH: 600/360/180
Active Search Sensor MR2700-R100 (10%) (2) GPS 36000 Range 2 700.0m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR270-R1 (10%) (2) GPS 360 Range 270.0m km MCR 29.4m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH2-150 (10%) (2) Sensitivity 150 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-150 (10%) (2) Sensitivity 150 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150m km
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 purposesLooking at these two, you will see not much is different. What you can't see from this however is that there were more efficiencies when I doubled the components. The first required 26.2 pieces of armor while the second only 41.5. The second one had less than double crew spaces for the same deployment length. I actually needed less than double the reactors to power the weapons, but I kept those doubled anyway (was most likely due to the sheer power output than any efficiencies though). And finally, build cost (and amount of resources) did not double, they increased yes but didn't double. Also, the second design is actually likely to build faster than the first due to the shipyard's largeness efficiency.
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Yes,@0111narwhalz already reminded of that. n small craft with similar volume(power 3) to a big one will have a 1:n sqrt 3. So when you calculate surface (power 2) the relation of n small crafts with r compared to big craft with r*nsqrt3 will be the formula I already given above (that is if I din't messed it up in my head). Which support that idea regardless of the coefficient. Anyway thanks for digging up the formulas for the engines, I can make use of them! If someone can dig up the rest for derived stats we can even put this to rest with a pretty graphic.
The formulae that I posted are what Steve is using in Aurora currently, not theory or assumption. I've either gathered them from Steve's change posts or direct correspondence with him. They are presented here because it is better to discuss what the game code is actually doing vs what someone assumes it might do.
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I agree 100%, its much easier to identify all the extreme cases with all formulas in hand, but the engine stats alone does't provide a complete picture e.g. you require additional crew.
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2. That armor requirements grow exponentially (surface of a sphere is power 2) which means that with a sufficiently large x it will exceed linear growth.
Two things:
First, a mathematics nit to pick: Armor requirements grow exponentially as a function of size " (added implied function dependency) is a mathematically incorrect statement. Growing exponentially means that the variable that is changing is in the exponent, e.g. e^x. Total armor mass to get the same depth of armor grows like radius^2 = volume^2/3 = mass^2/3 (since volume is proportional to mass in Aurora). This is polynomial growth, which means the exponent is a constant as a function of the variable. Linear growth is mass^1. Since 1 is bigger than 2/3, this means that the percentage of the ship's mass required to get the same depth of armor goes like mass^(-1/3), which decreases as mass grows (a ship that is 8 times as big in volume/mass (radius twice as big) only needs 4 times as much mass to get the same depth of armor (1/2 as much as linear growth), so it can devote more internal mass to mission systems. Or it can apply the same bonus mass to extra armor, resulting in 8 times as much armor (same percentage) but more rows deep.
Second, the reason I'm making a big deal of this (besides lobbying for correct usage of the concept of exponential growth) is that this (bigger ships are more capable than an equal mass of smaller ships) has been a primary design goal by Steve since Day 1 of Aurora. The reason goes back to swarm fleets in StarFire. In StarFire, a common tactic was to design hordes of small ships (corvettes) that would overwhelm an equal mass/cost of large ships. Steve wanted to design the game mechanics to counteract this tendency, so he consciously set things up so that large ship's armor scaled slower than linearly, while pretty much every thing else scaled linearly. The only thing that I can recollect where small ships had an advantage has already been mentioned upthread; that very small ships didn't require a bridge so you got a mass savings there. For everything else, I'm pretty sure that if you glue two identical ships together (including armor mass), you end up with one ship that goes at the same speed and has twice as much as everything. You can then get savings around the margins - only need one bridge, plus with the new engine rules you can replace e.g. 2x25 engines with 1x50.
So the "complete" picture is that the game mechanics are explicitly set up 1) to mostly be linear and 2) to make large ships (in the limit of large ships) more efficient than small ships - this can be seen in Charlie's numbers. The major effect of the size-50 limit is that this efficiency growth is less pronounced (because you can no longer make bigger, more efficient engines), which takes you back to the old days where engine efficiency didn't depend on size. (Note that I wrote a ton of doctrine posts in those days talking about how this effect of everything being linear heavily favored single-role ships for things like survey and jump engines.)
John
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You shouldn't say that's the only advantage, when detection rules are a thing.
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this means that the percentage of the ship's mass required to get the same depth of armor goes like mass^(-1/3), which decreases as mass grows
yes. You are the third(?) person to point it out after I already corrected it.
this (bigger ships are more capable than an equal mass of smaller ships) has been a primary design goal by Steve since Day 1 of Aurora. The reason goes back to swarm fleets in StarFire. In StarFire, a common tactic was to design hordes of small ships (corvettes) that would overwhelm an equal mass/cost of large ships. Steve wanted to design the game mechanics to counteract this tendency, so he consciously set things up so that large ship's armor scaled slower than linearly, while pretty much every thing else scaled linearly.
Offering meaningful yet balanced choices has been part of game design even before the AI took over the job of GM. The issue of quality vs quantity is something that that every strategy game had to address. A basic example in Aurora would be the choice between more crew or higher grade crew.
This is usually addressed by giving each play-style a specific advantage\disadvantage, or adding diminishing returns in more sandboxy games. Besides keeping things interesting its much easier to keep the AI competitive this way.
Anyway since that post, I have reviewed other mechanics and I agree with you. That other than the connivance/performance factor of handling huge fleets, most things scale linearly, except armor that scaled slower than linearly. Which is why made this suggestion (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8320.msg86229#msg86229), that boils down to refit cost scaling up higher than linearly.
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Offering meaningful yet balanced choices has been part of game design before the AI took over the job of GM. The issue of quality vs quantity is something that that every strategy game had to address. A basic example in Aurora would be the choice between more crew or higher grade crew.
I go back to my example of SC FAF, by the time one team has a small army (a dozen or so) of bots and defenses up (possibly T2), the other usually has a tsunami of hundreds of T1 bots that roll right over the first team and can somehow build 10 every second or so.
This is usually addressed by giving each play-style a specific advantage\disadvantage, or adding diminishing returns in more sandbox games. Besides keeping things interesting its much easier to keep the AI competitive this way.
I quite like this idea. Maybe at the game start (or races screen) you can set your own races affinity that give slight buffs/nerfs to various things like research (specific branches), crew efficiency/automation (ships would need +/- a % of total requirements), building, etc. And NPRs would have it randomly generated for them.