v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Black]

Yeah the last post from Steve's campaign was quite a surprise. I put the rest of the post in spoiler tag:

I was planing some patrol ships with dual-purpose weapons or mix of smaller lasers and gauss cannons, with commercial engines to have endurance to accompany my commercial fleets. But in my current game only my battlecruisers and some heavy cruisers would be able to engage the Raiders and none of my warships have enough speed to catch them (5485km/s for my warships with Magneto-plasma tech).

I roleplay quite a bit and I cannot imagine that I would be able to roleplay the creation of a design that would be able to successfully repel Raider attack from the start of the game. I can imagine to deploy my destroyers or light cruisers to protect important convoys, but they would get slaughtered by single Raider frigate.

We will see how often the Raiders appear in Steve's campaign, maybe they will not be that common, hard to say if I decide to turn them off at the end...

[Droll]

From what I understand the corsair is a bit of a glass cannon, insanely well armed but 3 armor. If you can design a missile with 10-16 warhead you'll basically wipe the floor with them.

Idk if they have some sort of missile variant which could cause problems but the fact that they operate in singles kind of makes it easy to overwhelm them with missiles.

I would definitely not want to engage them with beam ships though (maybe reduced 20cm railgun fighters?) which is annoying cuz it's yet another example of beam ships being sub-par to their missile counterparts.

I suppose particle beams/lances would be the beam weapon of choice if you wanted to fight them with beams though.

[Polestar]

From what I understand the corsair is a bit of a glass cannon, insanely well armed but 3 armor. If you can design a missile with 10-16 warhead you'll basically wipe the floor with them.

Depends on if they field precursor-level AAMs, or decent CIWS, or just a fast-tracking BFC plus turreted railguns. Any of these could wipe out low-tech missile salvos. Can't beam it, might not be able to missile it ... maybe can't do anything but kiss your ass goodbye?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

There seems to be some concerns about the Raiders   Here is more information in spoiler tags.

While they can be a local problem, they are limited in number and do not pose an existential threat to an Empire. The Imperium is struggling at the moment, because they are not geared up to fight this particular enemy and the raiders have been lucky enough to find a meaningful target. I am already taking steps to correct the lack of options to combat the Eldar. The Eldar don't have missiles, so you don't need a lot of range. You need high speed and perhaps Agility or ECCM on the missiles. For beams only, you probably need fast attack craft.

I currently have fast-short-ranged missiles, fast attack craft and Electronic warfare in development.

While the Eldar can cause some havoc in a given system, they can't use jump points. If the system isn't critical, you can ignore them and they will get bored and leave. They are raiders and are looking for something to raid. They also aren't looking to fight warships, unless they can assemble a reasonable force, and will generally run away from threats. They may have 1 or possibly 2 larger raiding groups such as the one in Damocles, but they can only be in one place at once, and that includes NPR space. When Raider ships return home, they have to spend at least three months there, so they can't easily jump around all over.

Every Raider ship is tracked, not generated when needed, so if you destroy a ship it is no longer available. New ships are randomly added to their home system over time and then become available for raiding.

Finally, although they are raiding you, you can raid them too. If you take out their support ships they will be less dangerous.

So far, I am reasonably comfortable with them in the campaign. They cause a lot of uncertainty and can be a local problem, but they are not an existential threat like the Swarm

[Bremen]

Since the raiders are based on the dark eldar, maybe it would help to give them a more stealth/sneaky design? Make the ships slower, maybe even a bit lower tech at least when it comes to engines, but give them reduced thermal engines and cloaking devices?

That's not purely a flavor suggestion - if the ships are lower tech and spend tonnage on cloaking devices and less on engines, then they'd be less of a standup fight threat - one of the concerns I saw was that escorting your freighters doesn't help if they can easily smash aside an escort. Stealthy but weaker ships means they're still a threat to soft targets but less likely to overwhelm your actual military.

It's probably late in the cycle to make major changes, but if Steve wanted to I can't help but think they'd also be a great use for a new weapon I suggested awhile back - a shield/armor penetrating missile that destroys/disables engines in the same way microwaves target electronics. They're supposed to be pirates so this would work towards the idea of disabling and boarding ships while being less likely to vaporize a battlefleet.

The 186 torpedoes all missing also makes me think it might be worth considering a change to how ECM/ECCM works. IIRC, currently if you have a 30% chance to hit, 20% worth of ECM reduces that to a 10% chance; when the ECM % exceeds the base hit chance you get situations like the Imperium is facing. I wonder if wouldn't be better to make it multiplicative, so a 20% reduction to a 30% hit chance would be 30% * (1-.2) = 24%. To make up for the reduction it might be good to increase the effect of each ECM tier to 20% and make them cumulative, so a two tier difference would be (1-.2)^2 = .64, so a 36% reduction.

[Borealis4x]

Hmmm, the raiders are cool as an alien faction, but given their advanced tech from the start I worry they can't act as the 'combat tutorial' I thought pirates could double as.

The lack of missiles is certainly a big nerf, but I fear new players will still be overwhelmed due to the tech advantage. I also worry about the raiders being able to advance their tech on top of starting at Precursor-tier.

Could you share with us some Raider designs to analyze?

[nuclearslurpee]

The 186 torpedoes all missing also makes me think it might be worth considering a change to how ECM/ECCM works. IIRC, currently if you have a 30% chance to hit, 20% worth of ECM reduces that to a 10% chance; I wonder if wouldn't be better to make it multiplicative, so a 20% reduction to a 30% hit chance would be 30% * (1-.2) = 24%. To make up for the reduction it might be good to increase the effect of each ECM tier to 20% and make them cumulative, so a two tier difference would be (1-.2)^2 = .64, so a 36% reduction.

I think this is a reasonable change, ECM as it is right now is a bit extreme as a have-it-or-not effect that aggressively pushes a tech lead, which is a bit out of sync with much of the other design aspects of Aurora ship combat. A 20% reduction of all damage received (in the form of causing 20% misses) is still very strong but allows a lower-tech opponent to still stand a chance with numbers or tactics.

The lack of missiles is certainly a big nerf, but I fear new players will still be overwhelmed due to the tech advantage. I also worry about the raiders being able to advance their tech on top of starting at Precursor-tier.

I agree that it seems extreme for new players, the combat power does seem rather high for a NPR not expected to be an existential threat. Precursors and Rakhas are similarly strong tech-wise but are also purely defensive NPRs, while Swarm and Invaders are intended to be very dangerous and most players will know this going in.

Personally I wouldn't consider it a problem for myself as I am fine with enabling or disabling spoilers as the game proceeds, but new players not used to that idea may experience a bit of a shock.

[Bremen]

I agree that it seems extreme for new players, the combat power does seem rather high for a NPR not expected to be an existential threat. Precursors and Rakhas are similarly strong tech-wise but are also purely defensive NPRs, while Swarm and Invaders are intended to be very dangerous and most players will know this going in.

Personally I wouldn't consider it a problem for myself as I am fine with enabling or disabling spoilers as the game proceeds, but new players not used to that idea may experience a bit of a shock.

I'm less concerned about new players - at most the raiders option could be less disabled by default, like (IIRC) invaders. What I do worry about is that they'll be either be impossible to deal with early on or requiring gaming the AI to do so - note that in the example campaign they only managed to take out a single raider with a small fleet because the AI obliviously wandered into close range of the STO weapons - which would make them a real chore to deal with.

[Black]

It seems that from min/max perspective, smaller ship with commercial engines and lot of box launchers with fast, short ranged missiles would be best counter for Raiders. My current campaign is beam only, so FAC squadron with heavy railgun, transported in escort carrier would be most likely best option to deal with Raiders.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I could just remove the ECM advantage, or lower the tech generally. However, as most of the raiders are single ships, I don't want the 'solution' to simply be a basic design with box launchers that guards each colony and escorts every convoy. That isn't adding anything meaningful to the game. They need to present a challenge, or there is no point in having them.

The Raiders don't present an existential threat because of the serious limitations on their numbers and movement. You can present a serious tactical or operational threat due to powerful ships, without being an existential threat to the whole Empire.

[Drakale]

I like the fact they have high ECM actually because that make them uniquely different from other threats and demand a special consideration from the player. The suggestion to tweak the ECM math a bit makes sense to me too, abrupt cutoff of missile chance to hit with insufficient ECCM and speed is harsh. It should still be very small chance to hit of course with a big tech disadvantage. I really like the suggestion to give them some of that stealth tech that reduce active sensor profile.

If they will truly not engage a superior force despite the fact they could technically wipe them out that does alleviate a bit my concern as they won't do crippling damage, just potentially large economic damage that the empire can recover from.

It should be interesting to have them pop up during a stand off with one of the NPR. Observing the conflict will yield very valuable intel.

[nuclearslurpee]

I could just remove the ECM advantage, or lower the tech generally. However, as most of the raiders are single ships, I don't want the 'solution' to simply be a basic design with box launchers that guards each colony and escorts every convoy. That isn't adding anything meaningful to the game. They need to present a challenge, or there is no point in having them.

The Raiders don't present an existential threat because of the serious limitations on their numbers and movement. You can present a serious tactical or operational threat due to powerful ships, without being an existential threat to the whole Empire.

Broadly I agree, I think the flavor of the new encounter type is unique and poses interesting challenges as the Gothic AAR shows. Turning the raiders into a puzzle which has a known solution is not exciting gameplay as stated.

That said, I think the major concern is not that the raiders do present a threat, but more whether such a threat can be countered effectively early in the game. Mainly I would worry about standard starts at lower populations such as the default 500m, when a reasonable starting tech setup (80k RP) likely struggles to catch the raiders, is outranged by the raiders allowing a fleet to be kited, and would struggle to hit the raiders with even the most accurate possible missiles. As noted it is possible to overcome this, e.g. with well-designed specialized missiles or boosted FACs, but the set of options is limited and I suspect that many players may find these constrained options do not always match the RP setting they wish to play. Which is not necessarily a problem, as the raiders can simply be turned off for that campaign, but I suppose the question is whether so many players will turn them off in favor of their preferred RP leaving relatively few who actually play with the new spoilers? I do wonder if delaying their first appearances depending on the starting population is possible, this might be a reasonable compromise for lower-pop starts.

All this being said, I keep thinking that the comparison to the Swarm is interesting, as they are a very dangerous race but are generally well-liked as game content despite the existential threat and horror stories of campaigns being aborted early on due to a Swarm invading the home system. So while the new raiders seem difficult I am optimistic that they can work out equally well.

[Bremen]

I like the fact they have high ECM actually because that make them uniquely different from other threats and demand a special consideration from the player. The suggestion to tweak the ECM math a bit makes sense to me too, abrupt cutoff of missile chance to hit with insufficient ECCM and speed is harsh. It should still be very small chance to hit of course with a big tech disadvantage. I really like the suggestion to give them some of that stealth tech that reduce active sensor profile.

If they will truly not engage a superior force despite the fact they could technically wipe them out that does alleviate a bit my concern as they won't do crippling damage, just potentially large economic damage that the empire can recover from.

It should be interesting to have them pop up during a stand off with one of the NPR. Observing the conflict will yield very valuable intel.

In the test campaign a Raider ship attacked a world with around 3x (I think) its tonnage in military ships in orbit, and a sizeable number of STO units on the ground, so it's not like they turn and run at any opposition. It did lose, but really only because the AI allowed itself to be drawn into close range of the STO weapons.

[Borealis4x]

I could just remove the ECM advantage, or lower the tech generally. However, as most of the raiders are single ships, I don't want the 'solution' to simply be a basic design with box launchers that guards each colony and escorts every convoy. That isn't adding anything meaningful to the game. They need to present a challenge, or there is no point in having them.

The Raiders don't present an existential threat because of the serious limitations on their numbers and movement. You can present a serious tactical or operational threat due to powerful ships, without being an existential threat to the whole Empire.

Having to conscientiously design, build and deploy dedicated light patrol forces all throughout our empire in order to get good enough coverage to deal with any raiders that pop up is already enough of an addition without making the raiders themselves very strong. The challenge isn't in actually fighting raiders, its in catching them before they can catch your unarmed transports.

The Battle of the Atlantic was 'fought' with largely second-hand ships compared to the Pacific since they didn't expect to fight pitched naval battles there. The challenge for Allied planners was to organize a system where they could efficiently safeguard their commercial vessels. Raiders should force players to think along the same lines; where am I most vulnerable to raids, how can I efficiently respond to them, and what sorts of designs can fill this role without infringing too much on the budget of my proper front-line fleet?

The actual quality of the Raiders doesn't matter as long as they can consistently threaten undefended commercial ships and lone escorts.

[Droll]

The 186 torpedoes all missing also makes me think it might be worth considering a change to how ECM/ECCM works. IIRC, currently if you have a 30% chance to hit, 20% worth of ECM reduces that to a 10% chance; when the ECM % exceeds the base hit chance you get situations like the Imperium is facing. I wonder if wouldn't be better to make it multiplicative, so a 20% reduction to a 30% hit chance would be 30% * (1-.2) = 24%. To make up for the reduction it might be good to increase the effect of each ECM tier to 20% and make them cumulative, so a two tier difference would be (1-.2)^2 = .64, so a 36% reduction.

I think the changes to ECM suggested here are good, otherwise I really like the power level that our new spoiler friends are at. Honestly though, if you want to make them less powerful - Tone down raider weapons a bit, and instead make the invaders much more powerful. From my experience the invaders are quite disappointing compared to what they were in VB6.

ECM is just too all or nothing, having ECM 10, even against ECCM 3 seems to give fleets virtual immunity, you can test this out really well on heavily fortified STO worlds like NPR homeworlds, where you can get attacked by 100s of shots every 5s and not have a single one hit over periods of days. ECM should give a major advantage but I don't think the all-or-nothing state its currently in is really good.