Alpha Centauri Fleet Challenge

[sublight (OP)]

I've had enough fun playing through the Alpha Centauri Battles that I'm planning on running a sequel. Rather than design everything myself I'm challenging my fellow admirals to enter their designs. Anyone will be welcome to challenge an outcome and rerun a battle themselves on the condition that they post their own ARR of the resulting clash. If results differ I or someone else will run the battle a third time to settle the matter with best 2 out of 3.

Rules used for fleet creation:
Build Point Budget
• Fleets start with 7,500 BP worth of ships, fighters, fuel, and ordinance. Reinforcement waves worth 2,500 BP arrive every month until one side is victorious.
• Fuel costs 1BP/5,000 L.
• Any Fighter/Ordinance/Construction/Fuel production techs purchased gives a proportional discount on associated fleet costs up to a maximum of the mining rate tech level. The Construction tech applies toward Ship Building by virtue of component pre-building.
Technology Budget
• 200k RP for both theoretical and applied technologies.
• Jump theory, grav-scanners, gate construction, the first level of each jump drive tech, and fuel harvesters are free.
Ship Design Restrictions
• Ships not carried in hangers must have 6 month deployment times.
• Ships not carried in hangers must have fuel for a 30b km range. Up to 2/3 of this fuel may be carried by oilers.
• Ships not carried in hangers must have at least a 2 year maintenance life. Ships carried in hangers must have at least a 6 month maintenance life, or have an annual failure rate less than 50%.
• Ships not carried in hangers slower than 1,500 km/s must have proportionally greater deployment/maintenance times with a minimum speed no less than 500 km/s.

Terrane, Logistics, Objectives, and other Rules
• The starting fleets and arriving reinforcements are teleported directly to their jump point on the 1st day each month.
• The two entry jump points are 1b km ±5% apart.
• The jump points have gates leading into the system, but no gates leading out.
• Fleets with jump drives may retreat through their jump point to regroup/rearm.
• Fleets with jump drives may not advance through their opponents jump point except to pursue a fleeing combatant and must return once all enemy contacts are lost.
• The home world is 4b km behind the jump points. Fleets may purchase and stockpile extra missiles/fighters to rearm retreating ships on the condition that sufficient fuel is also stockpiled to refuel them.



Fleet Design Theory
Range. Speed. Power. The General consensus is that in any fight the side that is better in two of the three areas will win. With the option of Missiles or Beams as the primary weapon we have eight archetypes.
• Artillery: Missiles, Power, Range.
• Tank: Beams, Power, Range.
• Sniper: Missiles, Speed, Range.
• Kiting: Beams, Speed, Range.
• Missile Rush: Missiles, Speed, Power.
• Beam Rush: Beam, Speed, Power.
• Balanced Missile: Tries to do all three adequately with missiles.
• Balanced Beam: Tries to do all three adequately with beams.


So, Anyone up for the challenge?
I'm looking for 6 fleet submissions to go against two winning concepts from Alpha Centauri One. Anyone planning to submit a fleet should post here and list the design theory they are using, but are free to keep designs to themselves until I finish my fleets sometime next month. For versatility, I'm accepting no more than 2 challenge submissions using the same archetype.

To start out,
Entry #1: Beam Rush by Sublight
Entry #2: Tank by NightStar
Entry #3: Beam, Other by Rolepgeek
Entry #4: Missile Rush by Elouda
Entry #5: Artillery by NightStar
Entry #6: Sniper, by Rolepgeek


EDIT: This challenge is on indefinent hiatus on account of everyone, including myself, fizzling out. I think Rolepgeek is the only person who got all the way to the end and submitted a battle plan.

If/When a second person sends in their battle plan I'll see about reviving the challenge.

[Nightstar]

Cool. A few clarifications on rules:

• Ships arrive on the JP leading into the system, not the one in the system itself, correct?
• If you're tracking fuel costs, what about MSP? (MSP actually cost 0.25 each)
• Is use of small ASMs/MIRVs allowed?
• Reloads of fighters in hangers: These fighters are not allowed to travel under their own power to the JP? (Gets around the minimum range restriction)
• Are instant reloads from colliers allowed? It's a real pain to run, and bypasses fleet training.
• Is fire control hot-swapping allowed? Again, it's a bit of a pain to run.
• Are single ship fleets allowed? Reinforcements completely different from the first fleet? Different reinforcements the first month vs. later months?
  

I'll take a shot at tank at least.

[sublight (OP)]

Good points.

• Yes. At the JP leading into Alpha Centauri. This is a simplification to ensure the fleets and reinforcements arrive at the same time with minimum SM work.
• I think ships start with 'free' MSP loaded as part of their engineering cost, where as new ships draw fuel from the planetary reserves. So the starting MSP is free, and extra stockpiled MSP can be purchased.
• Speaking of fuel, the starting fleet may spend extra fuel on up to 1-year of TF training under a Crew-Train-100 task force commander. Assume each ship not carried in a hanger moves independently.
• ... yes, small ASM/MWM are legal this time since the missile discount was eliminated.
• No ship designated as hanger carried may travel to the entry point under it's own power.
• Good point. Instant collier reloads banned. Lets say the process takes 30 minutes to match box-launcher hanger reload times.
• Hot swapping is at the discretion of whoever runs the battle. Technically it shouldn't be allowed, but the effort of clearing a target, waiting 5 seconds, makes weapon assignment change, and retargeting only imposes a 10-20 second cost for even more SM managing
• Let's set the maximum shipyard size to... 12,000 tons for military designs.
• All reinforcement waves are identical, but may be completely different from the first fleet.

[Charlie Beeler]

I've had enough fun playing through the Alpha Centauri Battles that I'm planning on running a sequel. Rather than design everything myself I'm challenging my fellow admirals to enter their designs. Anyone will be welcome to challenge an outcome and rerun a battle themselves on the condition that they post their own ARR of the resulting clash. If results differ I or someone else will run the battle a third time to settle the matter with best 2 out of 3.

Rules used for fleet creation:
Build Point Budget
• Fleets start with 7,500 BP worth of ships, fighters, fuel, and ordinance. Reinforcement waves worth 2,500 BP arrive every month until one side is victorious.
• Fuel costs 1BP/5,000 L.
• Any Fighter/Ordinance/Construction/Fuel production techs purchased gives a proportional discount on associated fleet costs up to a maximum of the mining rate tech level. The Construction tech applies toward Ship Building by virtue of component pre-building.

I would suggest not allowing these discounts.  There are a few reasons.  First being that the techs influence production rates not cost.  Second being with some ‘creative’ application (assuming all construction/production techs are available for research) this is wide open to abuse.

Technology Budget
• 200k RP for both theoretical and applied technologies.

How do you define theoretical vs applied?    Specifically, is component research applied?

• Jump theory, grav-scanners, gate construction, the first level of each jump drive tech, and fuel harvesters are free.

I presume that grav-sensor and gate-construction modules are limited to first generation techs. (ie “Gravitational Survey Sensors”, “Jump Gate Construction Module 180”)

Ship Design Restrictions
• Ships not carried in hangers must have 6 month deployment times.
• Ships not carried in hangers must have fuel for a 30b km range. Up to 2/3 of this fuel may be carried by oilers.
• Ships not carried in hangers must have at least a 2 year maintenance life. Ships carried in hangers must have at least a 6 month maintenance life, or have an annual failure rate less than 50%.
• Ships not carried in hangers slower than 1,500 km/s must have proportionally greater deployment/maintenance times with a minimum speed no less than 500 km/s.

Terrane, Logistics, Objectives, and other Rules
• The starting fleets and arriving reinforcements are teleported directly to their jump point on the 1st day each month.
• The two entry jump points are 1b km ±5% apart.
• The jump points have gates leading into the system, but no gates leading out.
• Fleets with jump drives may retreat through their jump point to regroup/rearm.
• Fleets with jump drives may not advance through their opponents jump point except to pursue a fleeing combatant and must return once all enemy contacts are lost.
• The home world is 4b km behind the jump points. Fleets may purchase and stockpile extra missiles/fighters to rearm retreating ships on the condition that sufficient fuel is also stockpiled to refuel them.



Fleet Design Theory
Range. Speed. Power. The General consensus is that in any fight the side that is better in two of the three areas will win. With the option of Missiles or Beams as the primary weapon we have eight archetypes.
• Artillery: Missiles, Power, Range.
• Tank: Beams, Power, Range.
• Sniper: Missiles, Speed, Range.
• Kiting: Beams, Speed, Range.
• Missile Rush: Missiles, Speed, Power.
• Beam Rush: Beam, Speed, Power.
• Balanced Missile: Tries to do all three adequately with missiles.
• Balanced Beam: Tries to do all three adequately with beams.

By Power, do you mean weapons damage potential?

So, Anyone up for the challenge?
I'm looking for 6 fleet submissions to go against two winning concepts from Alpha Centauri One. Anyone planning to submit a fleet should post here and list the design theory they are using, but are free to keep designs to themselves until I finish my fleets sometime next month. For versatility, I'm accepting no more than 2 challenge submissions using the same archetype.

To start out,
Entry #1: Beam Rush by Sublight

[sublight (OP)]

I would suggest not allowing these discounts.  There are a few reasons.  First being that the techs influence production rates not cost.

Time is money, and if we neglect wealth cost for a rushed war effort minerals and production are all that matter.

How do you define theoretical vs applied?

To clarify, 200k RP total is available for all research, including component design.

By Power, do you mean weapons damage potential?

Power a combination of defensive survivability, offensive force projection, and magazine depth.

[Charlie Beeler]

Any Fighter/Ordinance/Construction/Fuel production techs

Are these the only allowed techs that influence production?  I'm inferring that all are available since mining is also referenced. 

As an example of "creative" application, a small investment in construction, research, and ship building could net a segnificant increase in available BP's.  Provided that the rate increase percentages are applied 1:1. 

How do you want formula's for multiple techs handled? 

[Nightstar]

If I can read (and I think I can), those four and mining are allowed. We're ignoring research (everyone would get it, no difference), ship construction (excessive discount), and civ econ (working on stockpiled wealth).

That seems less creative, and more of a basic investment strategy. It allows for a trade of RP for effective BP. I should think everyone's going to get at least 14 construction/mining. An interesting bit is that it disadvantages missiles, fighters, and fast ships a little.

Seems pretty simple to me.

[sublight (OP)]

I figure most fleets will either grab at least the first of each production upgrade for +20% build points (or a 16.7% discount depending on accounting style). Ship building is banned in this challenge for being twice as generous as all other equivalent techs. Construction was designated the ship-building replacement. For now I'm ignoring the ways Construction might benefit Fighter production and saying that none of the production techs stack with anything else.

[Bremen]

Interesting. I'd been considering trying to organize some sort of multiplayer arena challenge with similar rules, but never had the time for it. I'm glad to see someone else is giving it a shot

I'll try to put a fleet together as soon as I can. I had an idea for a new fleet doctrine recently that I've been meaning to give a shot.

[Charlie Beeler]

I figure most fleets will either grab at least the first of each production upgrade for +20% build points (or a 16.7% discount depending on accounting style). Ship building is banned in this challenge for being twice as generous as all other equivalent techs. Construction was designated the ship-building replacement. For now I'm ignoring the ways Construction might benefit Fighter production and saying that none of the production techs stack with anything else.

Just to be clear.  Research is also banned from use too to increase available RP's.  Mining is only being used as the limited of the four approved construction techs and is not used a multiplier in anyway.

[Rolepgeek]

I'd like to create a fleet but before I do I must ask.  How will ground troops and combat drop modules be handled? My fleet design is based around boarding parties and engine-killers, after all.

[sublight (OP)]

Just to be clear.  Research is also banned from use too to increase available RP's.  Mining is only being used as the limited of the four approved construction techs and is not used a multiplier in anyway.

Correct

I'd like to create a fleet but before I do I must ask.  How will ground troops and combat drop modules be handled? My fleet design is based around boarding parties and engine-killers, after all.

There is no planetary ground combat. Boarding is as normal? Just write a brief standard operating procedure so the SM knows how to use the fleet.

[Rolepgeek]

Can I assume 1 BP is equal to 4 Training Points then, to be on par with the fuel? Especially since there's no technology to cut the costs down.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, I finished the designs, though I need to decide on my fleet makeup and what each reinforcement wave will consist of. Because I'm new though, and the other fleets will have more than me to worry about, I'll probably put them up in this subforum to see if anyone can give feedback.

Archetype is none of the above. I have defense, close range offense, and assault shuttles. All of the assault shuttles. But I'm slow, for most of my fleet.

[sublight (OP)]

Can I assume 1 BP is equal to 4 Training Points then, to be on par with the fuel? Especially since there's no technology to cut the costs down.

No. First, task force training in the challenge is being build as training time, and second the fuel costs for that training time is likely different for every ship. This challenge is already complicated enough without crew grade points, so for now those aren't available for fleet purchase. Edit: See next page.

I will admit that assault shuttles have broken the archetype mold and will register your fleet as 'unique.'