Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[nuclearslurpee]

I think I have a decent handle on ship design now, making efficient engines, and so on. But I wanted to ask what would be the best "range" of ship sizes.

I have 4 fleets in my current game so far, that range from 15k tons to 70k, Ranging from Carriers and Battlecruisers to Anti Missile Destroyers (Full of AMM's).

I have been trying to test out larger ship designs in the 200k range, though, both for Carriers and "Dreadnaughts" in particular. Ive done some calculations and it seems that in terms of firepower the smaller ship designs (with their numbers) and the singular vessels are equal in potential firepower, but the larger vessels also require rather extreme amounts of engineering spaces.

I wanted to ask if anyone has any know-how in this, and what their advice would be.

Thanks.

Any size works, ships of different sizes have different advantages and disadvantages, but as long as you have a good doctrine almost anything will work.

Regarding maintenance, the failure rate is proportional to ship size, so a ship that is 2x the size will have 2x the failure rate. However, it is perhaps more helpful to think that a ship 2x the size has the same failure rate as two ships half its size. The catch is that larger ships usually need a bit more MSP since they'll use some larger, more expensive components - usually engines, reactors, jump drives, perhaps also shield generators in some cases.

[Nappy]

I think I have a decent handle on ship design now, making efficient engines, and so on. But I wanted to ask what would be the best "range" of ship sizes.

I have 4 fleets in my current game so far, that range from 15k tons to 70k, Ranging from Carriers and Battlecruisers to Anti Missile Destroyers (Full of AMM's).

I have been trying to test out larger ship designs in the 200k range, though, both for Carriers and "Dreadnaughts" in particular. Ive done some calculations and it seems that in terms of firepower the smaller ship designs (with their numbers) and the singular vessels are equal in potential firepower, but the larger vessels also require rather extreme amounts of engineering spaces.

I wanted to ask if anyone has any know-how in this, and what their advice would be.

Thanks.

Any size works, ships of different sizes have different advantages and disadvantages, but as long as you have a good doctrine almost anything will work.

Regarding maintenance, the failure rate is proportional to ship size, so a ship that is 2x the size will have 2x the failure rate. However, it is perhaps more helpful to think that a ship 2x the size has the same failure rate as two ships half its size. The catch is that larger ships usually need a bit more MSP since they'll use some larger, more expensive components - usually engines, reactors, jump drives, perhaps also shield generators in some cases.

Thank you, I will try to keep that in mind (I have seen that Larger engines require much more MSP, while multiple engines that yield the same net output require less so, but chug up much more fuel, Im going to have to mess around with it and see which system is ideal in a test design)

[misanthropope]

it is possible to have the best of both worlds.  hyperfast glass pea-shooter designs use a great deal of fuel AND maintenance supplies!

[nakorkren]

I think I have a decent handle on ship design now, making efficient engines, and so on. But I wanted to ask what would be the best "range" of ship sizes.

I have 4 fleets in my current game so far, that range from 15k tons to 70k, Ranging from Carriers and Battlecruisers to Anti Missile Destroyers (Full of AMM's).

I have been trying to test out larger ship designs in the 200k range, though, both for Carriers and "Dreadnaughts" in particular. Ive done some calculations and it seems that in terms of firepower the smaller ship designs (with their numbers) and the singular vessels are equal in potential firepower, but the larger vessels also require rather extreme amounts of engineering spaces.

I wanted to ask if anyone has any know-how in this, and what their advice would be.

Bigger ships are better in almost every way, but the one way they're not better in is pretty important.

Pros
-Bigger ships are more efficient because they reduce the "overhead" cost of components that you don't need more of as your ship gets bigger. These are things like bridge, ECM modules, sensors, etc. You need one on any ship, and you only need one, so the bigger your ship, the less % of space you spend on these one-off components.
-Bigger ships absorb more damage before starting to take internal damage. This is really important in a fight! A single ship fighting the same tonnage of smaller ships can destroy a smaller ship before it starts taking internal damage, and that smaller ship being destroyed reduces the damage the larger ship takes for the rest of the fight. The big ship's effectiveness doesn't start to degrade until it's shields/armor have been degraded, delaying that onset, which means the fight starts to snowball in favor of the bigger ship.
-Bigger ships are built faster per ton than smaller ships. This is a function of how shipyards calculate build time, but in summary a ship that is 2x larger will take less than 2x as long to build.
-Big ships are easier to upgrade without needing to retool the shipyard because individual components form a smaller portion of their cost (excluding the usual suspects like armor, shields, and engines, which scale with size)

Cons
-Because big ships take longer to build, they will be more out of date from a tech standpoint than smaller ships. Granted ALL ships are typically somewhat out of date by the time they're launched (in Aurora as in the real world).
-MOST IMPORTANTLY, big ships can't be in more than one place at a time, whereas two ships half the size can go deal with two different problems. This is a very significant downside, and if you only use big ships, you WILL eventually get caught with your pants down because your ships aren't in the right place at the right time.

If you want to use big ships, and I think they're awesome for the reasons listed above, I highly recommend using big ships as the core of your offensive fleets but having a mix of medium to small ships for local defense and roving troubleshooters.

I'll also point you to a thread https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12810.msg156774#msg156774, where I analyze how the benefit from armor efficiency (armor is calculated as being on a sphere, so surface area vs volume type calculation) start to flatten out as ship size increases. It led me to conclude that ~60ktons is a good minimum size for your big ships. Above that you're getting benefits from "my ship is gigantic and yours are just ants to me" vs the surface area/volume effect.

and highlight from that as well this excellent quote from misanthropope:
"im increasingly a fan of the "24 ship doctrine".  the total battle line meat of starfleet is 24 ships, however large that requires them to be.  often... charmingly large. the granularity is sufficient to allocate force among fronts, and by golly you don't waste precious naming effort on a ship that won't be significant to the plot.  "player" is as scarce a resource as any other...."

[nuclearslurpee]

One extremely important con (or at least factor to consider) for big ships is that shipyard space for them is a premium resource. Building up a really big naval shipyard takes a lot of time and resources, plus population to work it.

In practice, this is an issue of practice rather than theory. In theory, you'll get the shipyards to that size eventually, and once you do then you can build big ships. In practice, as you expand and build new shipyards you will find yourself with shipyards that either cannot be used for a very long time (as new ones come out of the factories at 1,000 tons) or can be used to build smaller ships. Similarly, if you want to place a shipyard at a new colony or base, the population requirements for big shipyards may be impractical, whereas a smaller shipyard could be worked by the available population.

Overall, I think the best approach is variety. Large ships for your main battle line are a given, I think. There are many roles for midsize ships, for example a 15,000-ton cruiser or light carrier class is adequate for system patrol and trade route protection. And smaller ships can fill various specialized roles - FACs, fleet scouts, and so on.

[skoormit]

Is the ToHit bonus provided by Crew Grade rounded to the nearest percent?

I just pored over the details of a recent missile combat and tried to reconcile my calculations with the reported Estimated Chance to Hit in the event log.
I used the CrewGradePoints from the database for each ship to calculate the crew bonus ( sqrt(CrewGradePoints) - 10  gives the crew grade, then divide by 100 to get the bonus).
The only way I could get my calculations to match in every case was to round the crew grade bonus to the nearest percent.

Of note: two of the three target ships are traveling at a speed slightly slower than their max speed. The calculations of Estimated Chance to Hit appear to be using their current speed rather than their max speed.

[Kurt]

Quick question - I want to include sensor drones on my survey ships, to probe planets with oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres before getting too close.  Do I need a fire control to launch the drones?  I looked at my current missile ships, and it seems I can target waypoints but without a fire control I'm not sure how that would work. 

I designed a sensor drone with a range of 1.4 billion kilometers, which seemed plenty, but if I have to design a fire control capable of targeting even the largest target to get that kind of range it'd have to be 2.500 tons, which is a bit prohibitive on a 10,000 ton survey ship.  I'm sure I'm missing something. 

In reviewing Steve's latest campaign it seems that a survey ship equipped with sensor drones needs a fire control, but that that fire control doesn't need to have the same range as the sensor drone, indicating that it can launch the drone either at planets or waypoints beyond the fire control's range.  Is this correct?

[db48x]

Correct, a missile fire control with minimum range can fire at planets or waypoints any distance away.

[nakorkren]

What does the "Picket (Speed 1km/s)" Movement Order do?

[Kurt]

What does the "Picket (Speed 1km/s)" Movement Order do?

If you give that order to a fleet, it will reduce its speed to 1 km/s.  I usually use it for ships that are hiding as it lowers their emissions. 

[nakorkren]

How/why would you use that instead of just... clearing all present orders? Wouldn't that do the same thing, without needing a dedicated command for it?

[db48x]

How/why would you use that instead of just... clearing all present orders? Wouldn't that do the same thing, without needing a dedicated command for it?

A ship with no orders is still considered to be moving at full speed, even though its position isn’t changing. Even if it is just in orbit around a planet or moon, it still counts as moving at full speed.

[nuclearslurpee]

How/why would you use that instead of just... clearing all present orders? Wouldn't that do the same thing, without needing a dedicated command for it?

A ship with no orders is still considered to be moving at full speed, even though its position isn’t changing. Even if it is just in orbit around a planet or moon, it still counts as moving at full speed.

I thought this was true in VB6, but was changed in C# so that we don't have to micromanage ship speeds with Picket orders?

[Kurt]

Minor problem:



These error messages keep recurring.  Not a big issue, but do sometimes obscure other important happenings.  I think the problem is that the civilian lines built fuel harvester ships, but then can't follow the stated order, because of the horrible exploration luck in my game.  There are no gas giants with sorium and a planet with 10+ million population. 

How can I solve this?

[skoormit]

A ship with no orders is still considered to be moving at full speed, even though its position isn’t changing. Even if it is just in orbit around a planet or moon, it still counts as moving at full speed.

Not true in C#.