Refits

[Kurt (OP)]

I think it's more accurate to say that for any tactic X in Aurora, there is a countermeasure Y which renders it ineffective.  Thus the only strategy that dominates is the old adage, 'Know thy enemy'.

To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships.  One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never).  I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards.  While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.

I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.

This strategy of designating yards for specific construction tasks sounds more efficient than what I am doing now.  Of course, it is hard to coordinate the activities of seven races, each of which has multiple shipyards.  Hmmm...I am going to have to think about this.  

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

-snip-

With regard to the effectiveness of missiles. Just as in real life, they can be very effective In the right circumstances. In deep space against an opponent without effective point defence, they are especially useful. However, they have several major disadvantages as well. The main one is that you have to build the missiles and transport them to the ships who need to use them. There is no magical CFN in Aurora. Missiles are large in terms of magazine storage space and expensive in terms of production capacity. Often in the fiction, a race will use its entire supply of missiles in one battle and then their missile ships are useless until they build more. They can also be intercepted. In the last battle in my current campaign one race fired two waves of two hundred missiles each at a task force that included six 6000 ton escort warships. Not a single attacking missile reached its target. The PDCs that fired the missiles were then completely defenceless. Missiles don't work in nebulas, so again in my current campaign the Commonwealth is faced with an heavily populated alien planet in a nebula system adjacent to Sol. The Commonwealth relies completely on missiles so is unable to fight the aliens in their home system even if they wanted to. Finally, a ship with normal missile launchers cannot generate anything close to the rate of damage that a beam ship can, so in a point blank jump point defence beam ships are much better. You can use box launchers on the missile ships to generate higher rates of fire but they are less effective in terms of the total number of missiles carried and they can only be reloaded at a fleet base or by a carrier. In short, missiles are a very useful weapon in Aurora and as in real life they should be part of a nation's strategy, even if only used for point defence systems. They are not the only winning strategy and could lead to an early demise if relied upon too heavily.

Steve

There is another important limiting factor for missile using races.  At least for my missile using races.  I have found it difficult to maintain high numbers of missiles in my stockpiles, usually for several reasons, some good, some not so good (like not paying attention).  

This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles.  I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity.  Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.  

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Interesting topic. Refits need a lot of thought in Aurora. I have tried to reflect real life as best I can so I hope the most common refits will be upgrading electronic systems, weapon systems or sometimes engines but probably not all at the same time as it would likely be cheaper to build a new ship. You can also, as in real life, refit to a different hull size but take that too far and building new becomes cheaper. The Commonwealth recently researched ion engines so I am refitting the old colony ships as the biggest part of their cost is their cryo modules and the engine upgrade is much cheaper than new ships. The main cost of the older freighters is their engines so a refit is not economically viable. Therefore I am building additional new freighters and keeping the older freighters in service for shorter or less important tasks. For warships, some of the upgrades are OK because I am just updating their engines but for others that also require new launchers and new electronics it just isn't worth it so they are being scrapped. Out of date warships are often just expensive targets. Although another option I sometimes use in Aurora that reflects real life is to upgrade part of an older ship's systems to keep it useful while not upgrading everything as that would too expensive. For example, I might update a fire control system so the ship can fire newer missile types but not bother with the engines and then assign the ship to guard duty for less important colonies.

Steve

Interesting.  Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines.  I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).

I too have only been selectively upgrading systems.  For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor.  While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive.  Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production.  This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.  

Kurt

[Erik L]

I think it's more accurate to say that for any tactic X in Aurora, there is a countermeasure Y which renders it ineffective.  Thus the only strategy that dominates is the old adage, 'Know thy enemy'.

To answer the original post, I generally go the 'no refit' route, though I sell or scrap truly obsolete wrships.  One of the major ways in which I seem to vary from most of the fiction here is the rarity with which I reassign shipyards to a new type of ship (almost never).  I typically have one freighter yard, one passenger (cryo transport) yard, one or two survey yards, one troop transport / terraformer yard (about the ony one that does get reassigned) and a handful of warship yards.  While individual designs get updated regulary - and the yards building them get switched to the 'new' version of the ship - I very rarely change the basic ship type.

I'm also fairly ruthless in enforcing a 'fleet speed' - every military design is forced to meet a certain minimum, and the fleet speed is periodically updated (increased) in response to other races' deployments.

This is basically what I do also. Yard X always builds survey ships. Though I tend to put the slips in multiples of my operating squadrons. I.E. a 5 ship survey group, then the yard building them has 5, 10, etc slips so I can put out a task group at the same time.

[sloanjh]

Interesting topic. Refits need a lot of thought in Aurora. I have tried to reflect real life as best I can so I hope the most common refits will be upgrading electronic systems, weapon systems or sometimes engines but probably not all at the same time as it would likely be cheaper to build a new ship. You can also, as in real life, refit to a different hull size but take that too far and building new becomes cheaper. The Commonwealth recently researched ion engines so I am refitting the old colony ships as the biggest part of their cost is their cryo modules and the engine upgrade is much cheaper than new ships. The main cost of the older freighters is their engines so a refit is not economically viable. Therefore I am building additional new freighters and keeping the older freighters in service for shorter or less important tasks. For warships, some of the upgrades are OK because I am just updating their engines but for others that also require new launchers and new electronics it just isn't worth it so they are being scrapped. Out of date warships are often just expensive targets. Although another option I sometimes use in Aurora that reflects real life is to upgrade part of an older ship's systems to keep it useful while not upgrading everything as that would too expensive. For example, I might update a fire control system so the ship can fire newer missile types but not bother with the engines and then assign the ship to guard duty for less important colonies.

My experience with refits is pretty much spot on with everything Steve says here:

I don't think I've ever found it economical to refit to a new armor type, with the exception of gunboats (where the new armor allows one to squeeze an extra or bigger laser in).

I very rarely find it economical to refit to new engines; I think that of warships, exploration ships, colony ships, and freighters, it's only the colony ships that I'll upgrade the engines on.

I very often upgrade weapons and/or electronics suites for warships.  This seems to be a little different from Steve's observation (that he has more engine refits for warships), but I tend to be very engine-heavy in my designs since, as Kurt says, speed is life.

Practically speaking, this means I usually have several generations of the same type of ship in service at the same time.

John

[sloanjh]

Interesting.  Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines.  I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).

I too have only been selectively upgrading systems.  For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor.  While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive.  Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production.  This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.  

Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too.  Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster.  My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.

The caveat here is that I tend to play exploration games, with a single world government, and low weapons tech (since they haven't encountered aliens yet, why do they need big warships?)  This is analogous to the situation in SF before ISW I, except that the rude awakening usually happens when my civ discovers ruins (I think I got this idea from one of Steve's campaigns - the one with legends of an ancient war between the gods and the demons).

For home planet defense, I tend to use squadrons of beam-armed gunboats, rather than missile-armed PDCs.

The downside here is that, ever since the precursors left, I tend not to encounter alien races with a high enough tech (and big enough economy) to be interesting enemies.  I'm a little curious as to how Steve consistently finds such races - my assumption has been that he's enhancing the automated tech generation with role playing ideas about the race's tech philosophy and then using instant research to get the aliens up to a "challenging" tech level given that design philosophy.  So all my lovely theories about using gunboats for homeworld defense might come crashing down if a hostile race with significant missile capability showed up.

Now that the pre-industrial stuff has been put in (thanks again, Steve!!!!), I think my next campaign will be an "uplift" scenario - I haven't done one of those since ~v0.5, I think.

John

[Erik L]

I tend to operate ships until they blow up, undergoing necessary refits as needed. The only instance where I can think of scrapping is if I completely obsolete the class/design. Though I might relegate them to a border colony and let the work out their days.

[IanD]

The question I have regarding refits is - aren't they faster than building from scratch? Thus if I need to upgrade my fleet to meet a threat, is it not faster to refit than start new construction?
Regards
Ian

[jfelten]

Well, understand that this is just my opinion, so take it for what it is worth.  Having said that, speed is life.  While it is possible to beat a faster enemy, it is much harder to do unless your weapons out range them as well.  The last time I seriously looked at this situation was under a previous version of Aurora, before Steve greatly extended missile ranges, so this equation has changed somewhat, but I believe the basics still hold true.  You can get away with having slower ships if you have longer ranged weapons, but if you have slower ships and shorter ranged weapons, you will likely win battles only under certain special conditions.   If you are slower and have longer ranged weapons then you may still lose is the enemy can avoid or negate your weapons fire long enough to get into range of their weapons.  If you are faster and longer ranged, there is little the enemy can do to you as long as you don't make a mistake.  

That is why I say the side with slower ships is punished.  It is not always true, but good as a rule of thumb.  

Kurt

That certainly makes sense.  If you are slower and have shorter range weapons, the enemy can just pound you from a distance and barring some sort of terrain or ammunition limitation, you can't force the range to close.  Starfire mitigated this somewhat by turn modes, arcs of fire, and maximum speeds.  A ship could not run directly away and still fight effectively.  Plus engines did not take that large a percentage of total space so most ships were built at maximum speed.  If you could survive long enough, you could always close with the enemy eventually if your ships were the same speed.  The biggest ship classes were slower though which is what made the system interesting.  

So I can see in Aurora where there would be a speed "arms race" which if taken to extreme would result in ships that are all engines and one weapon.  Is it possible to extend the range of beam weapons via research?  "Capital Ship Lasers" and such?  I've not gotten that far with the game.

[jfelten]

My experience with refits is pretty much spot on with everything Steve says here:

I don't think I've ever found it economical to refit to a new armor type, with the exception of gunboats (where the new armor allows one to squeeze an extra or bigger laser in).

I very rarely find it economical to refit to new engines; I think that of warships, exploration ships, colony ships, and freighters, it's only the colony ships that I'll upgrade the engines on.

I very often upgrade weapons and/or electronics suites for warships.  This seems to be a little different from Steve's observation (that he has more engine refits for warships), but I tend to be very engine-heavy in my designs since, as Kurt says, speed is life.

Practically speaking, this means I usually have several generations of the same type of ship in service at the same time.

John

How is refit cost calculated?

[jfelten]

Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too.  Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster.  My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.

John

I assume you mean later in the game.  I have trouble designing starting ships much over 2Mm/s.

[jfelten]

This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles.  I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity.  Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.  

Kurt

That first part is key.  If you crush the enemy battle line in the first battle, you don't need that many missiles.  Point taken though about missile logistics.  But I would think that focusing some effort on missile production and following your warfleets with reloads would mostly take care of that.

[Steve Walmsley]

Interesting.  Speed is so important in my mind that I have a hard time not upgrading everything to use new engines.  I usually balk at any refit that is going to cost more than 50% of the ship's basic cost, although the current Reich refits are really close to that (if not over a little).

I too have only been selectively upgrading systems.  For example, the Reich decided not to upgrade old ship designs to newly developed armor.  While it would have either freed up space for something else or allowed extra armor to be installed, the Reich decided it was too expensive.  Instead, an upgraded design of the class was created with the new armor, and this upgraded design was used for new production.  This meant that several different designs of the same basic class were in service at the same time, but it hasn't been a big deal as they all have about the same speed and capabilities.  

Everything Kurt says about speed is my belief too.  Not only in warships (where the ability to run away is very important), but in survey and colonization efforts, high speed makes the game go faster.  My standard speed is about 6000 (forget the units) - a little lower for freighters and a little higher for colony ships.

What I tend to look at is the cost of the freighters/colony ships vs the improvement in journey time. In other words, is it more efficient to build two slow freighters or one fast freighter, taking into account the time spent loading and unloading. With the more expensive engines, the cost of cargo holds, etc is only a small part of the freighter cost.

The downside here is that, ever since the precursors left, I tend not to encounter alien races with a high enough tech (and big enough economy) to be interesting enemies.  I'm a little curious as to how Steve consistently finds such races - my assumption has been that he's enhancing the automated tech generation with role playing ideas about the race's tech philosophy and then using instant research to get the aliens up to a "challenging" tech level given that design philosophy.  So all my lovely theories about using gunboats for homeworld defense might come crashing down if a hostile race with significant missile capability showed up.

The Precursors should be back soon. I currently have a race running in my own campaign that is being completely controlled by the program. It is deciding what installations to build, what to research, which missiles it's ordnance factories should build (based on the total amount of each missile type needed by its forces and the number in service) and what ships to build in its shipyards. It will also build new shipyards and upgrade the existing ones. Survey ships are surveying automatically and exploring new jump points by themselves. Any warships will automatically investigate sensor contacts and attack if they get an active contact. The race is also deciding on suitable colony worlds and its freighters and colony ships are carrying out colonization by themselves. There is a long way to go though before it can truly play itself because it can't make decisions (yet) about what installations to transport between colonies.

I am currently working on automated ship design so an NPR race can create its own ships and update the designs after researching new technology. As part of that I have just completely redone the random tech generation. Instead of being completely random, a race will now research tech in groups based on a table. For example, the engine and missile tech groups are the most likely with about a 6% chance of each. If the program randomly selects engines it will first select the next available power plant tech. If sufficient research points are available it will then choose the next engine and the next level of fuel efficiency. After that it will potentially select additional engine techs. 1/3rd chance of researching the next engine platform (GB or Fighter), 1/3rd chance of the next power efficiency tech, 1/4th chance the next thermal efficiency tech and a 1/5th chance of hyperdrive efficiency. If research points still remain it will choose another tech group. For missiles, it will select warhead strength, then missile speed, launcher reload rate, missile agility and active sensors. It will potentially also research missile ECM (50%), reduced size launchers (50%), enhanced radiation warheads (33%), max tracking vs missiles (25%). In the cases where something has pre-requisites from another tech group (such as missile speed needing engine tech), it will only be researched if the pre-requisite tech has been researched. Otherwise it will skip that option and spend no points. More useful technologies will be selected more often. For example it is ten times more likely the program will select an increase in research rate than an increase in maintenance production and three times more likely than an improvement in planetary sensor tech. I hope this will provide NPRs with more sensible starting tech. I will also be working on code to create some starting tech systems beyond just engines and passive sensors.

With regard to the actual size of any alien races, this is currently (in v3.2) based on the average population of player races. The formula is:

    BellCurve = RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45) + RandomNumber(45)
    Pop = Average Player Race Pop x (BellCurve / 100)

If players are finding this is not sufficiently challenging, I could increase their size. Or perhaps even better I could add an alien pop size modifier to the game window as a difficulty modifier.

In terms of the starting tech points, the forumla is:

    Starting Tech Points = Starting Research Labs * (Game Years + 20) * 300

Perhaps I could base this on average player race tech points instead, regardless of the number of research labs.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

The question I have regarding refits is - aren't they faster than building from scratch? Thus if I need to upgrade my fleet to meet a threat, is it not faster to refit than start new construction?

It depends on the extent of the refit. Somestime a refit can be more expensive than building a new ship, depending on what you need to replace, or so close to the cost of a new ship that you may as well keep the old one and add a new one as well.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

This has very important implications for wars that last longer than one or two battles.  I'm pretty sure that none of my governments in the 6 Powers Campaign has anywhere near enough missile production capacity to keep up with a full scale war, even the Reich which has the highest missile production capacity.  Beam using races will be able to go on using their beams until the ships are destroyed, while it is very possible for missile using races to run out, or be forced to use older, obsolete missiles.  

That first part is key.  If you crush the enemy battle line in the first battle, you don't need that many missiles.  Point taken though about missile logistics.  But I would think that focusing some effort on missile production and following your warfleets with reloads would mostly take care of that.

It would if there weren't so many other things to do

I have just finished upgrading my fleet and building new ships. Unfortunately I don't have enough missiles to fill their magazines even once. This is a long term problem and is exacerbated by the fact I don't have enough population to man the necessary ordnance factories, or the fuel refineries I need because fuel is fast running out, or the construction factories I need to build more ordnance factories and fuel refineries. I may have to shut down my research labs to do that but my research labs are currently researching increased fuel and ordnance production - aargh!

Steve