What's Going On In Your Empire: C# Edition

[Garfunkel]

Use the RP traits of leaders as guidance and then roll a dice to decide. Remember, a defeated power can always make a comeback a decade down the line if an opportunity presents itself.

[StarshipCactus]

Yeah, you could do some rng type stuff to decide between any good options.

[Vandermeer]

In classic Aurora I always saved big on maintenance costs by storing garrison fleets and also my main big ships in planetary hangars when not using them, since there was no maintenance costs for military hangars on ground installations.

Since I seem to always struggle with building up enough maintenance capacity and supplies in C# now, I finally came around to testing today whether this could still be a viable strategy if I replaced those ground-hangars with orbital stations. ...After all, in VB Aurora, carriers were super efficient with maintenance by themselves already ('cause hangars don't break), so there might be saving in having expensive ships stored in other, cheaper "ships".

Using this as a station:

Code: [Select]

Philadelphia DY class Dockyard      500,000 tons       6,028 Crew       50,337.5 BP       TCS 10,000    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      Armour 3-561       Shields 0-0       HTK 2302      Sensors 8/8/0/0      DCR 185      PPV 0
Maint Life 1.08 Years     MSP 11,640    AFR 10811%    IFR 150.1%    1YR 10,120    5YR 151,806    Max Repair 250 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 420,000 tons     Magazine 1,600   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 8,400    Morale Check Required   

Fuel Capacity 15,272,000 Litres    Range N/A

Pleiades Program Gradar r.24m-res6.5k-1 (1)     GPS 1560     Range 24.3m km    Resolution 130
Pleiades Program Navigation Sensor r.430k/4.7m-1 (1)     GPS 12     Range 4.8m km    MCR 430.9k km    Resolution 1
Civil Aviation Computer EM8-1 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Civil Webb Spectroscope TH8-1 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m kmAnd 8 of those as parasites:

Code: [Select]

Kodiak EW class Destroyer      40,000 tons       967 Crew       4,732.1 BP       TCS 800    TH 1,920    EM 450
2400 km/s      Armour 6-104       Shields 15-300       HTK 252      Sensors 32/32/0/0      DCR 25      PPV 208.96
Maint Life 2.06 Years     MSP 1,848    AFR 512%    IFR 7.1%    1YR 581    5YR 8,711    Max Repair 240 MSP
Magazine 2,000   
Commander    Control Rating 3   BRG   AUX   ENG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

EP480 Kodiak P2 Ion Thruster (4)    Power 1920    Fuel Use 28.58%    Signature 480    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,961,000 Litres    Range 30.9 billion km (148 days at full power)
Magnetic Burst Shield (s15-300r-500t) (1)     Recharge Time 300 seconds (0.1 per second)

Twin Flak Cannon Turret (6x-20k) (3x6)    Range 20,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 20,000 km    ROF 5       
Bridge Tactical Control r.192k-12kps (1)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 12,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

600mm Barrel Repetier (4/0.4-600r) (100)     Missile Size: 4    Rate of Fire 600
600mm Kodiak Artillery Cannon r.158m-res6.5k-400t (2)     Range 158.4m km    Resolution 130
600mm "Hvy Thumper" Cannon Shell (500)    Speed: 9,600 km/s    End: 273.9m     Range: 157.8m km    WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 44/26/13

Two-Point LR Gradar System r.151m-res16k-16 (1)     GPS 61440     Range 151.2m km    Resolution 320
Kodiak Project Perimeter Net r.1.4m/15.6m-8 (1)     GPS 96     Range 15.6m km    MCR 1.4m km    Resolution 1
TH32-4 Destroyer Telescope Sights (1)     Sensitivity 32     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  44.7m km
EM32-4 Destroyer Intelligence Suite (1)     Sensitivity 32     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  44.7m km

ECCM-1 (2)         ECM 10There are also some strikecraft around, which cost maintenance, but I should now be able to see whether this works by looking at differences in MSP consumption. The numbers came out as this:
1) Dockyard and 8 Destroyers around Earth: very exactly 400MSP per 5day
2) Dockyard around Earth, 8 Destroyers docked on it: 270MSP per 5day (yay, so docking does confirmed save costs of things inside)
however:
3) Dockyard somewhere else, 8 Destroyers around Earth: 220MSP per 5day

...So the dockyard costs 180MSP per 5day, while the destroyers cost 130. I could store 2.5 more, but even then I would at best save 170MSP, so still a negative.
The overhauls and repairs are free in this thing of course, which is nice, but sadly it doesn't seem to alleviate the huge investment.(large shipyard+build costs+extra MSP upkeep+80kt more tonnage to maintain)

Maybe it would fare better with only high consuming parasites, but that was not what I came to test. I wanted a fleet harbor, but it seems not even plausible with these relatively high cost/maintenance 0-1 system range defender ships.


The cause for that might be of course that hangar decks now seem to have significant maintenance upkeep. Other than 2 magazines and 4 size-1 sensors, there is after all nothing else on these dockyards, yet even 185 engineering sections give it barely 1 year expected lifetime.
All is not lost however. The magazines are a flaw, and if I have learned anything in VB Aurora, then that the moon is made of cheese, so next I will test this:
1 Strip the expensive magazine components, so that max-repair comes down to 16MSP.
2 Then the Dockyard will sit at the moon without support, so it will deteriorate.
3 Since there can't be more components breaking than 1 at once, there will never be a higher MSP order than 16 per 5days.
4 Whatever the life clock says is irrelevant at that point. If it still says 1 year, good sir, I must correct you, for 11640MSP/16 = 727 '5days', also known under his snazzy artist's name '10years'.
5 Hangars still operate normally, thus 400k fleet support + repair and overhaul for the low low price of ~20MSP a week.


Well, I will test it. I confirmed this worked in VB Aurora, because my Star Swarm/Caravan race game was built on this strategy where the huge 10mt mothership could last 70 or perhaps over 100 years without refill or something. It all depended on whether saving MSP through docking was possible at all. I already confirmed it wasn't working using civil hangars, so my morale was low. ..But since savings appear for military hangars now, chances are high this goes through after all.
Let's see if there is a god out there that will stop me.

[Laurence]

Let's see if there is a god out there that will stop me.

If there is, I suspect his name is Steve. 

[misanthropope]

it's like the vb6 "death star" cheese, only you're using it to make an abusive... warehouse?

[Vandermeer]

If there is, I suspect his name is Steve. 

Ahh, the man in the moon that takes all the cheese away. But if that happens, I don't mind. Aurora gets better, and there will always be another quirk to test.

it's like the vb6 "death star" cheese, only you're using it to make an abusive... warehouse?

Good one. But well, you know, in war, amateurs think strategy, while professionals cudgel you with their beefed up megaton warehouse logistics.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Cost saving for storing ships in a hangar is basically the difference in cost of the hangar and what you store in it. This means that with early game ships hangars is more expensive and with really advance technology you will save quite allot of MSP storing them inside a hangar.

The caveat is then ofcourse that you need more production capacity as you will need to basically have twice the tonnage of "ships"... at the end it will be very difficult to make this strategy very effective in the current version of Aurora.

You are probably better off dismantling ships and store the components and re-build them if you need them later, that probably save you more logistically in the long run but you lack strategic flexibility for a read fleet, but economically over time you will likely benefit from this. You don't need to build a gigantic fleet but rather store components to quickly asseble ships when a war is near or is forced upon you. In my campaign even older components is stored for some time as they can be used later on if there is a need for them rather than scrap them.

[Vandermeer]

I found this interesting Gas Giant, which also happens to be my current best (albeit still bad) fuel source:



The dot display doesn't really capture the true size of the planetary body, so I drew the blue circle to show it practically scrape-surfs the sun for a couple minutes on its grand 2.8 hour year. I could make a calculation with the data available, but even without I am pretty sure that this lays way within the Roche-limit of the planet, and surely causes some disastrous tides on the star itself as well.
With this knowledge I am tempted to rename it into something that makes its relationship with the star clearer, because to me it just appears like perhaps a gigantic solar flare that formed into a temporary moon-like amorphous shapeshifting blob/starchild, soon to be reabsorbed. Coincidentally this also matches with the observed stellar class temper of red dwarf stars, who are prone to violent outbursts and power fluctuations. ..Maybe it just coughed too hard one time, and now there is this aberration.

How we have the tech to actually maintain a mining platform there, hui. I'd like to think they actually wait some distance away and simply catch Sorium that the star expels from its innards on every scraping near-merger. I could imagine some hefty rich solar winds focused into scoop-able rings from the satellites gravity just behind.

[Garfunkel]

Whoa 

[StarshipCactus]

You could SM the gas giant a bit further away to make it less weird. Even just another 100K KM.

[Vandermeer]

You could SM the gas giant a bit further away to make it less weird. Even just another 100K KM.

I would never do that! Space's curiosities is what we came for in the first place. This is like a Star Trek episode.

[sneer]

returning to aurora after a while
6bn pop and 2bn industry Earth with death spiral disaster current year 2104
Some time ago I got rolled an NPR with higher tech ( propulsion and missiles) with fleet heavily into missiles and with something like 1.5 mil tonnage in warships
620 size 4 and 300+ size 1 missiles per salvo earned them some respect and as their homeworld was close to JP they were always ready to fight my entering
I have lost in some attempts few 50k cruisers and decided to let them be. they were 6 transits from earth and I have put heavy minefields on JPs
Quite recently I went into long short intervals periods which made game far from fun. I decided to finish problem ( other fleets than mine roaming in space)
It took 2 years of preperations. I have build some 80k heavily tanked ships for spearhead and jumped with rest of my beam mostly fleet ( above  1mil total tonnage)
Battle took me something like 3 hours to complete and system is cleared of enemy in space. troops are packing into transports and this chapter of my Empire history will be soon closed
epic moment

[sneer]

long story short
My 450k sized assault army did have a long life
I must say planetary assault may be a higher challenge than space domination in aurora

[Vandermeer]

I think I can finally conclude this one:

[...]
All is not lost however. The magazines are a flaw, and if I have learned anything in VB Aurora, then that the moon is made of cheese, so next I will test this:
1 Strip the expensive magazine components, so that max-repair comes down to 16MSP.
2 Then the Dockyard will sit at the moon without support, so it will deteriorate.
3 Since there can't be more components breaking than 1 at once, there will never be a higher MSP order than 16 per 5days.
4 Whatever the life clock says is irrelevant at that point. If it still says 1 year, good sir, I must correct you, for 11640MSP/16 = 727 '5days', also known under his snazzy artist's name '10years'.
5 Hangars still operate normally, thus 400k fleet support + repair and overhaul for the low low price of ~20MSP a week.


Well, I will test it. I confirmed this worked in VB Aurora, because my Star Swarm/Caravan race game was built on this strategy where the huge 10mt mothership could last 70 or perhaps over 100 years without refill or something. It all depended on whether saving MSP through docking was possible at all. I already confirmed it wasn't working using civil hangars, so my morale was low. ..But since savings appear for military hangars now, chances are high this goes through after all.
Let's see if there is a god out there that will stop me.

I built a different version of those dockyards, and even though there is a component failure on each of them every construction interval, the numbers are as such:


That is around 20% of MSP storage lost after 25 years without any refill. Given that there is some initial fairweather period, that makes these dockyards last for around 120 years instead of the 5.5 that their design letter promotes.
This is also interesting because I could not suppress the max-repair below 100 as I initially planned, and what I did in VB-Aurora. It was some time ago, but I think the military hangars are now 100MSP to repair, so there is no way past this. Yet, interestingly the 5 day cost actually still come as the ~17MSP that were planned.

So the test is a positive. The old cheese tactic still works in C#, although you have to use off-base military hangars instead of planetary ones now. That makes the setup more difficult to achieve, because firstly, only planets with moons can really deploy this. (or perhaps you are fine with having your fleet harbor/base at some distance location to begin with, in which case this is fine)
Secondly, of course, building such a large military shipyard is quite difficult and more of a mid-game thing unless you push it strongly like I did here. You can start with smaller ones, but of course, the more you have, the more MSP are consumed, because maintenance is per unit for this setup, not per mass.
Even with only a simple one that can store the costly parasite garrison however, one can already save a lot without needing too large a hangar and subsequent shipyard, so that would be a compromise.

All in all, it is still easy enough to do to become my standard tactic, because otherwise maintenance costs are killing the usual 'large ship'(tm) playstyle that I followed in VB. On top, C# makes organizing the hangars much easier. Easy to launch and land, and very sightly:

[Jorgen_CAB]

To be honest this is a complete abuse of the machanic and you would be just easier to SM in orbital maintenance facilities and dump a few million MSP on a moon and call is a mothball station. Much simpler and you would not go insane from the maintenance failure messages.

Hangars does not have maintenance failures the same as a few other components, so in this instance only the magazines do... You could probably get away with an armoured 50t magazine and get even less MSP cost. This magazine have the 1 HTK needed so maintenance failures does not cascade through the station as that is the only module that get failures... more or less.

I don't see abusing the mechanic is any better than just using SM and produce the same results in a different way just simpler. You could build those orbital maintenance facilities on the moon and just spawn all the MSP you would ever need to station ships there.... or build the hangar base and then spawn the maintenance needed to remove the failures... the MSP would be free anyway in this case. You then just role play that the station is free of maintenance.