One mineral to rule them all, one mineral to find them

[misanthropope]

i mean, the ship discussion threads largely center around "combat power per unit mass", and by THAT metric missiles are pretty dang good.  so yeah i really do think it comes down to badly calibrated objective functions.   

[Jorgen_CAB]

Obviously Corrundium is by far the most important mineral as that mineral means you get more of the other minerals... period... 

If you get problem with Gallicite then you have two issues... too fast or too much engines on your ships or a mining industry that is not developed enough. Choose the mining sites you need carefully and concentrate mining operation on sites with good quantities of the most important resources you need, whatever that is.

It is possible to know what you need in the future and then build your economy around it.

I also see allot if people that simply build too much too fast in terms of warships when it really is not needed, not all ships need to have great speed either, depends on their role.

One issue I think that many have is "strip mining", this then tend to give huge fluctuation in resource income and by extension produce construction problems and issues with supplies. If you try your best to slowly raise your mineral incomes and spread out mining operations on as many sites as possible you can secure a long term high volume of minerals mined. Start with securing a good source of Corrundium income and then on the other resources that you need.

Be well aware of the need for Gallicite when you research better engines, make sure the speed you use on your ships is really needed versus the enemies that you face. It sometimes is better with more ships but slower to save on Gallicite costs. It also means more space for weapons and defenses on your ships and/or less need of fuel if you use high powered engines as well.

make sure that your industry and logistical chain actually can support the type of fleet you want before you build it, also make sure the fleet you want also is actually needed, otherwise it is a waste of resources much better used elsewhere in your economy.

[kilo]

When it comes to the missiles OP question you have to differentiate.
On a tactical level, they are extremely strong, especially when you fire them from box launchers or with a significant advantage in electronic warfare. Later in the game with hit chances close to 100% these weapons can be completely devastating and in some cases there is no way to defend yourself from them if you are behind.
On a strategic level missiles can be a problem. They require large numbers of workers, as they are relatively expensive and you need quite a few against ships at the similar tech level. For every four points of damage you have to invest one build point. Costs for engines, maneuverability and electronic warfare come as a bonus. These missiles become quite an investment later on in the game. Just look at the cost of your current ASM and think that 240 BP is a factory or an automated mine
The next problem is logistics. You need depots and transports for the ammunition so that your fleet can be rearmed closer to the enemy. Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth, but without a logistics network in place your missile fleets will have to fly hundreds of billions of km to get fresh bullets. This will take them out of battle for months and burn tons of fuel.
A similar beam fleet will only need MSP. These are in universal demand and do not age and every ships with a cargo shuttle bay can resupply your fleet.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth

Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.

Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.

[Vivalas]

Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth

Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.

Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.

I'm honestly more of a fan of mixed or thematic fleets because doing nothing but missile swarms against everything is pretty bland imo and curtails most of the rest of the game, hence why I'm not part of the "missiles op" gang, because even if missiles are OP the AI of the NPRs / spoilers is nowhere near advanced enough to have to minmax in order to beat it. I think also as this discussion has shown, missiles aren't necessarily "op" because, if nothing else, they cost a ton of resources when they finally get to the level that they outclass beam weapons (a statement I think in itself is debatable).

[TMaekler]

I find that with the extra tools (Marvin, Electrons) the management of minerals has become easier because you can forsee in a better way that you steer towards a mineral crisis and can react earlier to it. Other than that I mostly think it depends a lot upon your playstyle and Min/Max if, how, and when you run into mineral/fuel issues....

[Garfunkel]

It's always interesting to see this cycle of new players come to the forum, start learning the game, pose all the WHY!? questions, and eventually accept Aurora for what it is, only for the silence to be broken by the next one(s) 

Aurora is all about averages. Missiles generally beat beams on tactical level, though there are exceptions. Mineral generation is random so regardless of your playstyle, it is possible that you're starved of one/some minerals while showered with something else - then your playstyle can exacerbate that massively. So, in this campaign you're playing, Stormtrooper, Gallicite might be your biggest headache, but you're probably just unlucky with mineral generation. Next planet you survey might give you enough for a decade.

I also see allot if people that simply build too much too fast in terms of warships when it really is not needed

And not just warships but everything. Because Aurora doesn't have many limiters, it's easy to run head first into the crunches. For example, you build installations until you run out of population or you build loads of ships with massive tanks until you run out of fuel.

Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.

Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.

[SevenOfCarina]

Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.

The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.

Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.

The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.

Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.

Missile versus beam actually work just fine in terms of balance if you restrict box launchers and overall weapon coverage to more "realistic" proportions. There have been discussion on this concept before. Aurora allow us too much freedom in construction sometimes that is not realistic in terms of design space and proportion of systems and hulls pace.

I have found out that if you build the ships with a bit more "realistic" proportions then balance become allot better, this is mostly seen if you play multiple factions at the same time. It also reduce the effectiveness of how missiles works as well overall.

I have suggested that Aurora incorporate a bit more "realistic" ship design configurations with different types of hull areas for different systems to be placed at. If you want allot of box launcher then you have basically no armour (the compete for the same space) on the ship for example... and even then you are still relegated to the outer shell of the ship unless the ship is small enough to fit the launchers on a spinal position and have the ship built around the box launchers (as in a fighter or sometimes in a FAC, depending on launcher size).

Anyway, this is sort of off topic...  but it does make missiles and beam allot more balanced. You should not min/max Aurora and instead introduce restrictions so the game become more self balancing. The odd crazy build can be fun now and then but don't go all crazy. I'm not telling anyone how to have fun... I'm just giving a strong suggestion... 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth

Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.

I would agree, you should never focus industry on any one place... you should make sure that minerals are the thing you move the most eventually unless it is a new colony. Most well established colonies should have industry too support themselves so all you have to move in space are minerals. Minerals take up such a small space in comparison to the final product. You will save both minerals, population productivity and fuel this way over time.

Thing you can focus heavily on at Earth would be population growth, Wealth and Research... I would usually offload ship construction for Luna. Earth only retain enough industry to support its own population growth and some extra.

Anything that is a physical thing you should spread out construction off as much as possible, the more population you have on a colony the more self sufficient you should make whatever items they need... so this is anything from facilities, troops, supply, fuel, missiles, fighters etc..

My colonization plan are usually to make any colony self sufficient in terms of industry by the time they hit around 100m people... depends slightly on how mineral rich that colony is. By the time a colony hit about 300m people I want them to be completely self sufficient on pretty much all needed production long term.

Of course you still have some colonies being more concentrated on some things than other, but for me that comes after they are self sufficient. Smaller colonies often are very focused on one or two things. There also are the possibility to have one large production center per system. If distances to colonies are small enough then using freight to move facilities are not too expensive or time consuming.

Cargo ship who transport facilities should mainly be relegated to Auto mines for none colonized worlds and to kick-start new colonies. Your core colonies should only need mineral transportation to do its work, it will save you allot of resources (even when you factor in governor bonuses for specialization).

The most important thing is to make sure you have a balanced income which can sometimes be hard in this game.

[Arwyn]

Resource constraints are a constant with Aurora. Yes, Gallicite can be a killer, but as several folks pointed out, its all about scale.

I dont use missiles early on, except in very limited numbers. My main fleet is railgun based at start, with some missile destroyers. The issue early is that missiles are A) Not great early, and B) require a fair amount of fleet train/colony build out to support. Early on, I dont think its worth the investment vs. getting colonies and industry established. Railguns do double duty (offensive/defensive) early on, and are cheaper to build and maintain.

Especially early tech, I just dont think missiles are worth the investment. I would rather put the investment into engines. Once I get to Ion tech, I start building out the infrastructure to support missile combatants.

Early on, the mineral squeeze for me is Corrundium and the ever present Duranium. I tend to place my early colonies based on mineral richness and habitability, then work to get them built up for local mining and production.

Missiles are just too much of an investment early, for poor return. I think they are a better mid to late game weapon, but I do use them in a secondary role early.

[Demetrious]

One of the largest sinks for Gallicite is missile engines. Single missiles might be cheap, but thousands of them can easily put a dent in your reserves. In the last games I played, I dit not build any missiles and Gallicite has not been a problem ever. I ran into a Corrundium, Neutronium and worker problem later, which stopped my buildup of mines and construction factories at some point. 25% growth of both is not sustainable for more than 50 years.

Actually you pretty much confirmed my experience which is why missile ships play a role of occassional support only in my case. But if this is how things look like, then why the hell is everyone constantly talking how "op" missiles are if they require such huuuuuge resource investment?

Because they've never watched three years of missile production get eaten in about 20 minutes by a very big, angry ball of railgun fighters.

[Nori]

For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

I wonder if it would make sense to have engines require less Gallicite, but require other materials, Mercassium and Boronide possibly. I mean if you think about it, engines are complicated and should require a slew of resources.

[Zap0]

For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.

[Nori]

For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.

Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.

Really? I thought there was a bonus to going under 100% to Gallicite? Must just be misremembering. I haven't fired up the game for a few months while waiting for 1.13.