Exercise in Curiosity

[Erik L (OP)]

I see both of your points. This was mainly an exercise to see if a viable ship could be built that carried large parasites, similar to Dahak. The ships here are a fraction of Dahak's size, and even with max tech, a Shakar is taking 33 years to build.

With more fire control, the swarm would be less effective, but still would end up causing serious damage.

I think though, that any race coming up against one or more of these unexpectedly would not be able to prevail. You cannot kill the elephant without the swarm of ants, but if you don't know you need a swarm of ants, you'll be elephant toejam

[Þórgrímr]

I see both of your points. This was mainly an exercise to see if a viable ship could be built that carried large parasites, similar to Dahak. The ships here are a fraction of Dahak's size, and even with max tech, a Shakar is taking 33 years to build.

With more fire control, the swarm would be less effective, but still would end up causing serious damage.

I think though, that any race coming up against one or more of these unexpectedly would not be able to prevail. You cannot kill the elephant without the swarm of ants, but if you don't know you need a swarm of ants, you'll be elephant toejam  Now think how the crew of that monster would feel knowing they would only kill a handful each turn while they were nibbled to death by the thousands they did not kill.

And as a swarm I would not use missiles, too long of a recharge rate. Torps and Gauss weaponry, with a few hundred missile boats thrown in for good measure. The Gunboats would have MUCH faster reload rate and the missiles would force you to keep some PD ready just in case a salvo was launched.

And like a nest of angry ants would not go away till you killed them.  



Cheers, Thorgrimm

[Erik L (OP)]

I see both of your points. This was mainly an exercise to see if a viable ship could be built that carried large parasites, similar to Dahak. The ships here are a fraction of Dahak's size, and even with max tech, a Shakar is taking 33 years to build.

With more fire control, the swarm would be less effective, but still would end up causing serious damage.

I think though, that any race coming up against one or more of these unexpectedly would not be able to prevail. You cannot kill the elephant without the swarm of ants, but if you don't know you need a swarm of ants, you'll be elephant toejam  Now think how the crew of that monster would feel knowing they would only kill a handful each turn while they were nibbled to death by the thousands they did not kill.

And as a swarm I would not use missiles, too long of a recharge rate. Torps and Gauss weaponry, with a few hundred missile boats thrown in for good measure. The Gunboats would have MUCH faster reload rate and the missiles would force you to keep some PD ready just in case a salvo was launched.

And like a nest of angry ants would not go away till you killed them.  



Cheers, Thorgrimm

Assume you've got a race dedicated to building these and their parasites. Say 1 world with the ability to build 6 of them at once (and the supply of minerals which is ungodly), If they built 6 of the Chase carrier globes, that is 9000 hangar points, or 1800 size 5 fighters.

For for, here are the mineral requirements
Chase Carrier Globe -

Code: [Select]

17342.5 Duranium
6682.5 Neutronium
3125 Corbomite
1550 Tritanium
1125 Boronide
300 Mercassium
8700 Vendarite
2000 Sorium (not counting the 1.1 million liters of fuel)
21517.5 Uridium
22500 GalliciteShakar Battleglobe

Code: [Select]

56984.499 Duranium
16486.5002 Neutronium
4085 Corbomite
1550 Tritanium
37796.999 Boronide
620 Mercassium
1850 Vendarite
2000 Sorium (excluding the 1.6 million liters of fuel)
34117.5 Uridium
87612.002 Corundium
22500 Gallicite
Of course, those totals are not including any parasites or ordnance. The mineral cost alone is prohibitive, let alone the build time. Which is 33.05 years for the Shakar at max tech, and 10.63 years for the Chase.

[Steve Walmsley]

It would be good to see some larger ships in Aurora but I would have to significantly increase the rate of ship construction, which would then mean that smaller ships could be turned out at a much faster rate and could lead to more swarms, as well as increasing the overall number of ships in the game. I need to try and find some technobabble way of allowing huge ships without creating huge swarms.

Perhaps one option is a special, expensive type of shipyard for really huge ships. It has a much increased build rate (perhaps 3x) and starts with a two slipways and a large capacity of say 25,000 tons. It would be too expensive a proposition for building swarm units but it would be a good investment for really large warships. Cost of the ships would be the same as if they were built in regular shipyards, they would just be built faster. Such a mega-shipyard would cost maybe 10,000 BP.

Another idea that just occurred to me and requires less technobabble is that larger shipyards are inherently faster at building large ships. What if the racial shipyard construction rate was only for shipyards of a certain size, say 5000 ton capacity. As shipyards get larger, not only can they build larger ships but they can build them faster. So a 10,000 ton shipyard can build at twice the racial construction rate and a 15,000 ton shipyard can build at 3x the rate. I guess I would have to make this work both ways so a 2500 ton shipyard would only build at half the racial construction rate. I think this may be reflected in reality too as small shipyards probably take a while to build small ships while huge shipyards can turn out much larger ships at a proportionately faster rate in terms of build size vs construction time. Ship build costs would remain the same so a 15,000 ton shipyard is going to be using up wealth and resources at 3x the rate of a 5000 ton shipyard but again that seems reasonable.

Perhaps it would be even better to state that the size of the ship, rather than the shipyard, affects the construction rate. After all, a ship can't be built in a shipyard that isn't large enough so that takes care of the shipyard requirement while it would prevent you turning out vast numbers of swarm units in a 15,000 ton shipyard. That seems logical from a historical perspective. So a 15,000 ton ship would be built at 3x the rate of a 5000 ton ship. You would obviously still need a large enough shipyard to build it

Interested to hear comments on both these ideas. I think the latter would allow larger ships to be built more quickly with a reasonable explanation and would also slow down the construction rate of corvette and gunboat size ships

Steve

[Brian Neumann]

A while ago there was a discussion about combining shipyards to speed up big building projects.  The more shipyards the smaller the increase and the greater the cost overhead.  How about for a shipyard with multiple slipways having the option to combine the building rates of multiple slipways in some fashion so that larger ships could be built faster.  Say each extra slipway adds 30% of it's build points to an existing project.  This would make it difficult to use for swarm tactics, but allow bigger ships to be built.  The investment would be in increasing a shipyard capacity, and the number of slipways it had.  It should also have a retooling cost associated with linking the slipways so it is not a spur of the moment change.

Brian

[Bellerophon06]

Both ideas seem plausible to me, and would feed my own personal desire to see larger ships in Aurora.  It seemed strange to see "capital ships" that don't mass much more than a modern wet navy cruiser.

Perhaps both ideas can be used, so that slipways of the appropriate size can turn out ships more quickly, and give the player an option to use multiple slipways could be used to build one larger ship.  That idea falls in line with the current practice of building aircraft carriers in sections, and then putting them together to form the total ship.

This would give the player an interesting decision to make as to which method would be better suited to their empire.

[Þórgrímr]

All right Eric, I'm pissed now! I had a freakin long post here and the damned message about Arachnids appeared and I lost it! This is the first forum I have ever seen where you need to post in under 2 minutes or you lose your post.  :evil:



 ??rgr?mr

[Charlie Beeler]

All right Eric, I'm pissed now! I had a freakin long post here and the damned message about Arachnids appeared and I lost it! This is the first forum I have ever seen where you need to post in under 2 minutes or you lose your post.  :evil:



 ??rgr?mr

So I'm not the only one this is happening too.

[Charlie Beeler]

Hmm,  now there is an idea,  Modular ship construction.

An ability to combine 2 or more slipways within an individual shipyard to build an oversize ship might be a good idea.  Not as a starting capability though.  I think it should be a researched tech that is then applied to individual yards.  To start with it should only add the ability to build oversize ship, later tech advances would be needed for improved ship construction rates.  Maybe even a veriant of experience for yards that influences construction rates.  

Grub for ponder?n

(cross posting to suggestions)

[Erik L (OP)]

For jump-capable ships the maximum hull size is 125000. I can even imagine the time it'd take to build a shipyard capable of handling something that size. Brian's suggestion about having slips collaborate might be a good idea. If you've got a SY rated for 25000 tons, and 5 slips, they could build one max hull ship.

Of course, using jump gates (and I don't know why any race with max tech wouldn't be crapping out jumpgates left and right) the hull sizes increase, since if I recall, there is no max to a jump gate transfer.

As a suggestion, with large size hangars, on the fighter/parasite tab of the ship creation, show more than just fighters. Show any possible ship that could fit in the hangars.

[Drusus]

I'm all for anything that gives a better capability for larger ships.  Though with the lower ship counts that Aurora brings a Capital line is not as critical as it was in my SA games.  And I do tend to like speed.

Combining slipways has great utility even early on.  Several times I have wanted to build an extra medium size ship in the early game but only had low tonnage slipways available.  This would allow more flexibility for all types of ships not just the dreadnaughts.

[SteveAlt]

All right Eric, I'm pissed now! I had a freakin long post here and the damned message about Arachnids appeared and I lost it! This is the first forum I have ever seen where you need to post in under 2 minutes or you lose your post.  :evil:

I have had the occasional post lost in the ether too so what I usually do is Ctrl-C the whole post before I press submit or preview. If it vanishes I can just paste it into a new message. Fortunately I had just done that with the latest campaign post when I got the Arachnid message

Steve

[Þórgrímr]

I have had the occasional post lost in the ether too so what I usually do is Ctrl-C the whole post before I press submit or preview. If it vanishes I can just paste it into a new message. Fortunately I had just done that with the latest campaign post when I got the Arachnid message



Cheers, ??rgr?mr

[Erik L (OP)]

All right Eric, I'm pissed now! I had a freakin long post here and the damned message about Arachnids appeared and I lost it! This is the first forum I have ever seen where you need to post in under 2 minutes or you lose your post.  :evil:



 ??rgr?mr

So I'm not the only one this is happening too.

I've lost some posts too. It's only supposed to eat the ones that are put in quick, not slow. I'll look into it.

[SteveAlt]

I've lost some posts too. It's only supposed to eat the ones that are put in quick, not slow. I'll look into it.

Thanks Erik.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we really appreciate all the free work you do in hosting and maintaining the site.

Steve