Yep, thats how i imagine battles with Arachnids in Starfire went later in the war...

All them inteligence gathering opportunities <3

Shame you cant utilize POW's somehow in Aurora

Let me put this into context to you, compared to the real world. Your first design you posted, that 5000 tons or so ship. If we were to transfer it to wet-navy equivalent of modern days that's about ... a patrol boat? Maybe a small destroyer?

Ship tonnages in Aurora roughly parallel their real-world equivalents. Take a look at the MEKO 200 class of frigates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEKO_200
My ships are classed as Missile Frigates and Escorts. Lightweight general-purpose warships, so yes, basically small destroyers. I have missile PDCs and some old obsolete Missile Boats (1000-ton FACs) to defend Earth. The frigate squadrons are meant to find and destroy any small forces (survey ships, small combat squadrons) poking their noses in surrounding systems or blowing up my survey vessels (if I'm trying to survey their territory).

I mean, the entire earth is defended by.. 15 patrol boats? That's a bit... puny don't you think?

To give you a comparison, a wet-navy modern cruiser has a displacement of 12000 or so tons. And a volume much bigger than that. If you were to build an aurora ship of comparative volume that would be a hull of at least 20000 tons, maybe more. For a carrier you'd be looking at a military ship of  over 150000 tons.

Of course Aurora is not really the same, but I wanted to put into context how truly small those ships are, especially compared to how far you are in the game. And you could certainly say "I want to use smallish ships", but just 15 of them?

I take a requirements-based approach to my military. I don't build anything bigger than I need, which would be wasteful. Operating a large standing navy would just leave me with a bunch of under-utilized ships that need to be maintained and retrofitted/replaced regularly, especially if my tech is rapidly evolving. My 5kT frigates have proven more than adequate (thanks to good anti-ship missiles) in deep space meeting engagements, so there was no incentive to building bigger or more warships. Because of Earth's R&D and industrial capacity, my weapon's development OODA Loop is something like ~2-2.5 years, from RFP (Request For Proposal, aka "I need a warship with capabilities xyz") to IOC (Initial Operational Capability, aka ships finishing production). In 3+ years of playing Aurora that's usually been "fast enough", as I'm almost always the aggressor in a conflict. And this is still only the 2nd time I've had to do a Warp Point Assault, the 1st time against about ~20 ships which I defeated with strike fighters.

.......

I'm finishing up the combat now. I sent in 5 squadrons of (1x Suez Armored Jump Tender, 4x Massacre Armored Missile Destroyer) via squadron jumps. A rump squadron of 2x Massacre-class conducted a standard jump. Those 2 ships were destroyed almost immediately as they sat right on the warp point. The rest of the fleet suffered almost no internal damage despite eating hundreds of anti-ship and even anti-missile missiles. They were largely out of range from the energy weapons. I targeted each hostile contact with 40 missiles. Some of their 18kT and 27kT laser-armed cruisers needed additional volleys.

All told I've destroyed ~1 million tons of warships for the loss of 2x 9,500-ton armored destroyers (5200BPs including their missiles). A pretty favorable exchange ratio. I'll soon be able to transit my frigates and corvettes to poke around their inhabited planet, and I've started building additional salvage ships because the ONE I have now will never be able to scoop up all this wreckage. Rescuing all the survivors should yield some useful intel. I just need to decide if I want to burn up my maintenance points overloading my life support transporting them back to my POW camp or if I should dump all the survivors out the airlock.

I've also designed an Armored Cruiser with 10x meson cannons, but I haven't built them yet. I think they will complement the box launcher ships well. I need more jump tenders too. They were a production bottleneck because I didn't expand my commercial shipyards, and that delayed my offensive by several years.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone!

I arrive a bit late at this thread, but I'd still like to write my personal thoughts.

Just saying but... why are you building such tiny military ships? I can understand in the beginning, where any kind of ship is a struggle and all,  but... you are quite far ahead in the game, research-wise. You could have surely built bigger ships.

Let me put this into context to you, compared to the real world. Your first design you posted, that 5000 tons or so ship. If we were to transfer it to wet-navy equivalent of modern days that's about ... a patrol boat? Maybe a small destroyer?

I mean, the entire earth is defended by.. 15 patrol boats? That's a bit... puny don't you think?

To give you a comparison, a wet-navy modern cruiser has a displacement of 12000 or so tons. And a volume much bigger than that. If you were to build an aurora ship of comparative volume that would be a hull of at least 20000 tons, maybe more. For a carrier you'd be looking at a military ship of  over 150000 tons.

Of course Aurora is not really the same, but I wanted to put into context how truly small those ships are, especially compared to how far you are in the game. And you could certainly say "I want to use smallish ships", but just 15 of them?


Now that I've said this, some personal considerations on the way you approach this. I want to be perfectly understood, this might not be the most min-maxing way to go about it. I always try to avoid what I consider exploiting the game system. Because many of the "exploits", a human player would immediately recognize and avoid. The AI cannot do that...

Before I plan something in Aurora, I ALWAYS ask myself: would a real nation in the real world build this, do this, trust this to defend its borders?

I am not trying to patronize you, just trying to explain how I would do it, and why I would do it,  because I always try to roleplay my games in order to maximize my personal enjoyment.

1) For a jump point assault of this caliber I'd certainly , surely go for jump capable ships. You don't want to deal with the hassle of the problems jump-tenders would pose. I don't think the hassle is justified, plus you cannot retreat if things don't go well /those ships are not flexible/ etc.

2) Apart from that, you cannot expect to destroy 100 ships with 15 ships when doing a jump point assault, unless your ships are much bigger or you use the "bait ships" exploit. Basically you are faced with a decision: you either build a lot of smallish ships, OR you go with some big ships.

3) About the weapons of choice: I personally don't use box launchers on capital ships. I consider them a fighter/FAC-only weapon.  I also consider them an extreme exploit while facing the AI because the AI simply has NO way to realistically defend against box-launchers spamming. It would be different against human players. That said, the point I want to make is that for jump point assault, energy weapons are a perfectly valid solution. And an extremely effective one, since Steve put in shock damage. I think people who only use missiles tend to underestimate just how... VIOLENT... high tech, large caliber spinal lasers or the like truly are. As in, ONE-HIT-KILL violent.


So all in all, I'd go with either 10-15 25000 tons cruisers with tons or armor (20-25) and bristling with Lasers of Doom, or 25-30 15000 tons or so decently armored (10-12 layers are enough) missile destroyers. Make sure to put enough fire controls as more likely than not you won't have to use the entire firepower of a ship against a single opponent.

In a squadron jump, you can only have one jumpship that works in the TG, and it counts against its own jump limit. So a 4-rating military jump drive will only be able to take 3 other vessels. Otherwise the jump will fail.  (I mean, you can do a squadron jump of all jumpships if you want - as long as its a valid group for one jumpships drive.)

At this point I wouldn't worry about keeping the jumpships intact too much, or training up a military jumpship.  A single tender on the other side will allow your ships to withdraw if need be using standard jumps, and your ships can separate from the jumpship task group in order to make use of their training.  You can establish a better doctrine and dedicated assault jumpships in the future. 

Note that the jump distance tech will place your squadron jumpers further and further out from the JP, buying time to get through jump shock.

@SirBeardian - Sounds like it bugged out again. Oh well~   just know that its unintended. 

You're building jump ships for them too, right?

Right now I have a single Jump Tender, but I think I'm not doing something correctly. When I've tried to execute squadron jumps with my ~5,000  ton frigates, I was getting messages that they couldn't execute the jump. Can a squadron of ships not use a Jump Tender in a different squadron for a squadron jump? I don't want my commercial jumpships going through the warp point, obviously. So how do I get a squadron of combat ships through a warp point with only a 30-second fire delay? They are smaller than the Jump Tender's mass, smaller than the Military Jump Drive's rating, and the warship squadrons are only 4 ships (the Jump Drive's max). I've built 4x 4-ship squadrons and 2x 3-ship squadrons of the Massacre-class. As soon as the last 3 squadrons finish Task Force Exercises I'll be ready to attack. Hopefully tonight, otherwise it will have to wait until early next week.

Panama class Jump Tender    9,850 tons     152 Crew     756.8 BP      TCS 197  TH 800  EM 0
4060 km/s    JR 4-100     Armour 1-40     Shields 0-0     Sensors 14/18/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 0
MSP 144    Max Repair 183 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

CERN JM10(4-100) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 10200 tons    Distance 100k km     Squadron Size 4
Khrunichev C400 Mag-Plasma Drive (2)    Power 400    Fuel Use 4.42%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,750,000 Litres    Range 723.4 billion km   (2062 days at full power)

NRIET Thermal Detector 1-14 (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  14m km
Phazotron EM Detector 1-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

You're building jump ships for them too, right?

So I whipped up the design below given the suggestion of "big armored ships with box launchers". While some of the other suggestions look interesting, I picked this due to ease of introduction/parts commonality. Researching the tiny Missile Directors, Box Launcher, and Radar cost ~150 RPs. Everything else is off-the-shelf.

Earlier in this game I designed (but have yet to combat test) a 2-stage size-6 missile, with 4x size-1 warheads. This ship spams those same "sub-munitions"....400 of them. With 10 fire controls I can spread out the ordnance and reduce overkills. The only reason the maintenance life is so high is because I've already had problems with the Missile Frigate's single expensive Fusion Drive breaking down and not being able to repair it because I included too few maintenance points. I kept the design under 10,000 tons for my existing unused destroyer-class shipyards, and as soon as I pre-fab the engines I should be able to churn out 11 at a time rather quickly. While the squadron trains up I can build the 4000+ BP of missiles needed.

Massacre class Missile Destroyer    9,350 tons     89 Crew     2081.8 BP      TCS 187  TH 153.6  EM 0
3422 km/s     Armour 20-39     Shields 0-0     Sensors 14/18/0/0     Damage Control Rating 25     PPV 60
Maint Life 5.28 Years     MSP 696    AFR 139%    IFR 1.9%    1YR 42    5YR 626    Max Repair 640 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 400   

Shenyang M640 Turbo Fusion Drive (1)    Power 640    Fuel Use 129.53%    Signature 153.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 14.9 billion km   (50 days at full power)

Jiangnan BL-1 (400)    Missile Size 1    Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes    MF Reload 1.2 hours
Phazotron Missile Director FC4-R1 (10)     Range 4.0m km    Resolution 1
ASSM-2 Firestorm (400)  Speed: 29,000 km/s   End: 0.2m    Range: 0.4m km   WH: 4    Size: 1    TH: 222/133/66

NRIET GraDAR MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 28     Range 5.0m km    MCR 549k km    Resolution 1
NRIET Thermal Detector 1-14 (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  14m km
Phazotron EM Detector 1-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km

ECM 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s