design vs AI compared to design vs Players

[Garfunkel]

That's true. Even in a single human player versus NPR and spoilers, most players would (IMHO) avoid a battle that they are unsure of the outcome of, if they can. Rebuilding your fleet takes a lot of time and resources and leaves you vulnerable.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yeah... sorry if I nitpicked the player versus AI or campaign play... you are right... it will make you play the game differently... I do too.

When I play against the AI I can generally optimize my economy since the AI are relatively predictable, especially the precursors and the like when you encounter them. Even if I role-play allot of restrictions in my games, such as building any kind of military ships outside patrol ships before I meet any hostile aliens.

When I play only against the AI it is rather easy to optimize industry, research and build up a very effective ship construction and fuel producing infrastructure.

It is very different from my multi-human campaigns that can have as many as half a dozen or more factions in them and sometimes even a few AI factions as well. These campaigns evolve completely different from my one human faction versus AI games.

Arena fighting are not something that interest me that much to be honest because they feel too arbitrary and limiting and extremely unrealistic. Things that work well in an arena fight rarely does so in practical terms because that kind of optimization are rarely possible in a dynamic evolving setting. I could talk about that as well of course but not my favorite subject, especially since Aurora are not meant to be a competitive game and have too many mechanical loopholes.

What I find extremely important in multi-faction campaigns are a very sound and realistic long term plan, both when it comes to research, industry and logistics to support the doctrine you intend to pursue. Having too much over production in both shipyards, missile and fighter factories can set back your overall development as well as population resource. I have had some factions investing a bit too much into its military side and sure they could produce ships and missiles fast but they could not sustain that over a long period. Other factions with similar access to resources would expand a bit faster and continually build ships and military equipment at a lower pace. They might probably always have their fleets in perpetual state of flux in terms of upgrade and old versus new equipment but over the decades their fleets was bigger and more modern and their industry more developed as well.

From my experience it usually meant that no faction would really commit to full hostility unless they was very sure they had a superior fleet or military to begin with. This usually meant that most faction build relatively defensive forces until they managed to get some sort of edge or local superiority or could get some beneficial alliance going. This meant they could switch gear on the doctrine and ship types and start thinking about true offensive terms.

In essence the true deciding factor was almost always economy and politics rather than what type of ships they used. Obviously they wanted losses to be as small as possible so aggressive tactics usually was in the form that resulted in the least friendly losses. Some were more interested in preventing resource losses some put more emphasis on crew/soldier losses, this depend highly on the type of government and ethical side of the spectrum that faction is on.

In a campaign you also need to take into consideration how important the lives of the people living in it is in respect to the governments general strategical choices and doctrines. A very territorial empire that function much like a feudal society will be extremely fractured in terms of what areas are important to protect, those with the most political power usually get to decide what is important to protect and what is not. In a democratic society you might not accept any loss of life anywhere unless it is completely unavoidable due to the survival of the many or the means to defend yourself. All of this will lead to different decisions on where to spend resources in such campaigns which is not really optimized from a RESOURCE perspective, but it is from a POLITICAL and/or SOCIAL perspective. We need to understand that this will influence what choices you put on your ships.

When you talk about optimization I generally question what type of optimization you talk about because no intelligent society with free thinking people will be able to optimize for the greater good to 100%, there are too many wills pulling in too many directions and people will never agree which one are the most optimal path to take and often decisions are highly influenced by bias, imperfect information and egotism. You could on the other hand be playing a perfect hive mind race which basically only have one will... which is totally fine.

So... are the discussion only about resource optimization where people and the will of the people does not exist as anything but a number on the screen?   I think that is a valid question to make as well.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I think a key to multifaction games is for them to be on distinct worlds to start with.  Multifactions on one world is just asking for someone to build Meson PDCs and whoever builds them first wins.  If everybody starts with significant defensive PDCs, then it is hard to knock a faction completely out.  So fights over outer system resources don't immediately turn into all-out wars of extermination.  After all, if a faction overcommits its mobile force against somebody's fixed defenses, they could end up with such a trashed fleet that they won't be able to hold on to anything except at their homeworld.

This allows people to choose to focus on economic development at the expense of their navy, with the result they won't be able to claim resources in the moons and belt.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think a key to multifaction games is for them to be on distinct worlds to start with.  Multifactions on one world is just asking for someone to build Meson PDCs and whoever builds them first wins.  If everybody starts with significant defensive PDCs, then it is hard to knock a faction completely out.  So fights over outer system resources don't immediately turn into all-out wars of extermination.  After all, if a faction overcommits its mobile force against somebody's fixed defenses, they could end up with such a trashed fleet that they won't be able to hold on to anything except at their homeworld.

This allows people to choose to focus on economic development at the expense of their navy, with the result they won't be able to claim resources in the moons and belt.

In almost all of my multi-faction games with multiple Earth factions there have been political restrictions on weapons at Earth itself... nobody want's a nuclear war there. This have usually resulted in factions being able to expand in relative safety since Earth and its immediate surrounding have been a neutral zone. In some games there have even been a militarized space UN to make sure factions behave properly in the entire Sol system.

The way you can play and which strategies are viable are obviously completely up to the setting in which they are made.

In C# Aurora ground units will be able to reach out in a way they could not before since retaliating against ground based military will now be less direct. You will need to deal with the entire ground defense system now.

[Jorgen_CAB]

One other thing in favor of the fighter type craft we have not discussed is that it now will become rather important for ground combat and defense of planets. Both at the planet itself and to project power out into space around the planet.

This will almost make it mandatory to now research the fighter technology. So not only for space superiority combat bat also planetary combat as well. Regular missile strike fighters can also substitute as ground support platforms as well even if not optimal for that purpose.

I think this will most likely mean that we can pretty much ignore the cost of researching fighter production technology as a negative but rather a thing you would benefit further from by using fighters for more than just planetary combat. More or less...

We will probably also see a dramatic reduction in range of AMM and anti-fighter/FAC missile types as well. These missiles need extreme speeds and maneuverability to be useful and to combat fighters and FAC you need a decent warhead as well. We might perhaps see fire-controls to be the least of our problem when it comes to such missiles in C# Aurora at similar tech levels. This is all conjecture though based on the information released.

The new sensor model might also see fighter escort being able to reliably actually shoot down incoming anti-fighter missiles. Since smaller active sensors will now pick up missiles at a decent distance this will be easier and cheaper to perform in general.

I think that this will make smaller escort platforms quite viable as AMM/Fighter/FAC defenses or other types of dedicated anti-fighter screen task-forces.

They way I see myself designing my escort type ships is as a combination off AMM and anti-fighter missiles as well as either some box launched or most likely 30% reduced launchers for medium ranged anti-ship missiles. These anti-ship missiles are for "close" missile range combat oriented at either an inferior opponent or as a self defense weapon against an aggressive opponent. Those missiles would act much like Harpoon missiles on current US destroyers. Harpoon missiles is hardly the main defense against other capital or ship task-forces. Such ships in defensive configuration would hold at most one extra rearming of the anti-ship launcher and perhaps only the missiles in the launchers themselves. But the ship could be re-equipped from collier with more anti-ship missiles if the mission require it, usually if engaging a numerically inferior opponent would such a strategy work well.

One thing that I find being a huge constraint in my multi-faction games is having the yards necessary to continual build the different kinds of ships need in the proper numbers. Some rather specialized ships you only need in very few numbers so having a dedicated yard for only them is sometimes wasted and the constant retooling between different classes can also become both time consuming and costly. This generally mean that the stronger faction get access to a few more specialized platforms while those struggling slightly behind rely more on general purpose platforms to carry the day. There is a fine line to walk between quality and quantity and making sure you have what you need when you need it. As I said before... it is better to have decent ships now than optimized ships in the future if the conflict is now. In a multi-faction game the problem is that you can not know when that conflict will occur so you always need to have some ships ready for combat at all times.

In most multi-faction games I rarely manage to get very far into the technology tree either with the current VB6 game before it slow down too much since the economies grow too large and/or there is a new version of the game out that I want to use the new features on. This means that for me the mid game tech level are pretty late game tech levels... more or less. This will obviously color my usage of how industry, production and technology is used in general.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Let's move on to the fuel issue. In C# Aurora, fighters will have considerably reduced range, while larger ships will see increased range. A 250 ton fighter can take a 100 ton drive, which, given C# Aurora's rules, will have a fuel consumption modifier of x2.23. The 5,000 ton escort, mounting a 2,000 ton drive, will have a modifier of x0.50. In my fleet, that'll be a 1,500 ton drive with power modifier of x2.0 and a fuel modifier of x1.41, or a 100 ton drive with a power modifier of x3.0 and a fuel modifier of x34.86. The fighter is only twice as fast, but has maybe one twentieth the range. With a bit of insanity and 50% engine ratios, you can actually get an escort up to fighter speeds with only a x1.55 fuel modifier. I don't see how that can be realistically countered, especially since speed is everything in missile combat. You can also scout effectively with these larger ships.

I prefer to start building a serious fleet only around mid-game, when I start expanding, so I tend to aim for around 10,000 km/s speed and 40 billion km range for the slowest ships at Magnetic Confinement Era. I don't generally have issues with fuel at that point - sorium harvesters are really good. Running the entire fleet of a hundred ships at full throttle nonstop for a year will cost me around a million tons of fuel, but at that point, my production is normally in the low hundreds of thousands of tons per year, with a multi-million ton strategic reserve, and a logistical train of tens of tankers and tugboats. I also fail to see why I'd need my ships to cover 400 billion kilometres per year?

Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...

First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.

With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%,  size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.

I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.

A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.

If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.

I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.

I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I agree that logistics matters a heck of a lot for missile combat in a campaign.

I have won a LOT versus the AI by simply running them out of missiles and then railgunning empty missile ships.  And I have had to withdraw in other games because my missile ships simply didn't have enough missiles to kill all the enemies at long range.

My current fleet concept is capable of very high tempo, as short ranged missiles carry a lot more damage per MSP of magazine space, so I can reliably carry enough kill power to destroy enemy beam weapon ships, and because I only need to kill the beam ships, I don't need that much ammunition to win the fight.

I expect I will develop long ranged missiles at some point, but more for going after enemy scouts and dispersed survey ships efficiently.  Honestly, I am not sure what in game problem would cause me to give up on my heavy railgun point defense fleet concept.  I suppose if I ran into an enemy with laser warheads maybe.  Railguns wouldn't be as effective in Area PD mode.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree that logistics matters a heck of a lot for missile combat in a campaign.

I have won a LOT versus the AI by simply running them out of missiles and then railgunning empty missile ships.  And I have had to withdraw in other games because my missile ships simply didn't have enough missiles to kill all the enemies at long range.

My current fleet concept is capable of very high tempo, as short ranged missiles carry a lot more damage per MSP of magazine space, so I can reliably carry enough kill power to destroy enemy beam weapon ships, and because I only need to kill the beam ships, I don't need that much ammunition to win the fight.

I expect I will develop long ranged missiles at some point, but more for going after enemy scouts and dispersed survey ships efficiently.  Honestly, I am not sure what in game problem would cause me to give up on my heavy railgun point defense fleet concept.  I suppose if I ran into an enemy with laser warheads maybe.  Railguns wouldn't be as effective in Area PD mode.

Yes... this is relatively easy to do in some circumstances and especially against the AI. PD weapons are very effective against missile volleys (rail-guns especially in early and mid games for me), either against inferior technology or same tech missiles fired through full size launchers, especially AI designs.

This is why most multi-faction campaigns usually end up with reduced sized launchers and fast attack crafts with box launchers so that initial volley is as big as possible to overwhelm PD on the enemy. PD still is important as is beam weapons to repel just such attacks as you describe.

This is also why it is important to use a staggered and layered defense against missile attacks. You don't want to over commit with AMM so they last a long time. AMM job is to thin down the incoming volleys so Beams, PD, Shields do the rest to save the strain on the logistical side. It is also really important to know when to fight and when to flee and take that decision as early as possible... in best case before the first shot is fired. This is why scouting and recon will be much more important in C# Aurora with the new sensor rules. If your scouts are overwhelmed then withdraw the fleet before it is even detected as one suggestion.

It also is important to spread out your beam weapons among most of the ships in the fleet so those beam resources can't be sniped and the fleet completely defenseless in close combat. Having some ship who is heavy on Beam is OK and some with no beam weapons, but in general as many ships as possible should have some form of beam weapons for self defense. It is allot better to have 8 beam weapons on 8 ships than 10 beam weapons on two ships for beam combat.

You also should save some offensive missiles for close ranged fighting, AI don't really do that but for the most part that is what happens in most of my games as well... but on all sides.

For the most part close ranged ship combat is usually avoided in my games just because they are so decisive and destructive for both sides. They usually only happen when the fight is loop sided, the risks otherwise is too high. In my multi-faction games captains and admirals need to answer for their actions and this is part of the decision to engage or disengage from any combat situation. This is part of the political role-play in my campaigns and can be important to why a combat will happen or not, how important is the strategic goal either side is attempting to pursue.

[Garfunkel]

I just re-read Steve's Trans-Newtonian Campaign and while it's really old, that point about layered defence saving missiles comes up. It's really easy to want to play it safe and use 5 AMMs per each ASM but that can burn through your AMMs pretty fast. Steve's humans did that on many occasions, despite the fact that they had very capable railgun armed escorts. And the humans were constantly short on missiles. Naturally, there were a lot of complications and other stuff happening, but using fewer AMMs per salvo, relying on the railguns, and thus saving AMMs would probably have been useful.

What I am really interested in, with the sensor and missile changes in C#, is whether the modern air-combat staple of strike groups will become mechanically superior. I'm talking about having a fighter or FAC sized AWACS style vessels, guiding your strike fighters to their target, who is escorted by interceptors who take out enemy scouts and sensor fighters that are targeting your AWACS or your "bombers". Currently, with the advantages of big sensors, it's easier and better to just build a command ship with size 50 active sensor and use that. I presume that in C# Aurora, this will change.

[SevenOfCarina]

Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...

First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.

With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%,  size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.

I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.

A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.

If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.

I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.

I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.

Tech levels vary from person to person and that's fair enough. I'm actually a bit of a turtle, so I don't generally need combat ranges in excess of ~10 bn km till the late Magnetoplasma era, which is when I start serious expansion beyond Sol.

Your drive math is a bit problematic though. I fail to see why you're simply boosting the drive and adding fuel to compensate rather than simply increasing the size of the drive. With engines being large, easily pre-built components, ships will actually build faster this way. You've also failed to specify the sizes of the drives you're mounting.

It's also important to consider that C# Aurora will be halving or even thirding fighter ranges, while at the same time providing a noticeable boost in efficiency to larger drives. I'm assuming you've used VB6 math here?

Another thing to consider is that what you've described as a Destroyer I would classify as a Cruiser, considering that my escorts rarely exceed 5,000 tons and my capitals are capped at 10,000 tons, so they'll actually be going slower than that to save on fuel.

I would also disagree with you over the importance of superior speed in combat. If I have a speed advantage, I can snipe your task group from range without having to worry about return fire, and there's a good chance that  slower missiles will have their ranges against me slashed considerably. If I run out of ammunition, I can retreat without worrying about getting chased back to my auxiliaries. It doesn't matter what logistical advantage you have if I control every engagement.

[chrislocke2000]

This is certainly an interesting discussion!

I have to say it is threads like this that has me hankering for complete galaxies generated on turn 1 with a seed code such that we could all play a game with exactly the same opponents, resources etc and see how these differing strategies actually work out.......

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sorry for a late more detailed reply on this part but it sort of was bypassed by me by accident...

First I must say that this tech level are pretty much end game tech levels for me in general playing in multi-faction games... tech progress are so much slower in those games for me.

With all that said I looked at a normal 15000t multi-purpose destroyer that one faction had in one of my game at Ion Drive tech level. These ships used x1 engines for a .45 fuel efficiency. They used 750.000 liters of fuel for a combat range of 20bkm which tend to be a relatively common combat range for most large capital escorts in these types if games. Just for kicks I inserted a x1.5 engine of the same size and ended up with a fuel efficiency of 1.42 roughly what you have. I had to increase the fuel tanks from 750.000 liters to 2.75m liters to propel the ship 20bkm and forced to increase the size to slightly more than 17.000 ton. This meant that I went from using 750t of fuel to 2750t. This for a total increase in speed of roughly 38%, cost increase of 21%,  size increase of 13% and fuel efficiency reduction of three times.

I probably could have used a slight power multiplier on that ship if I wanted a perfect speed versus total size of engine and fuel ration, but the same engines are used in multiple ships with different speed and range requirements so that is not always that easy to do. General fuel efficiency is also somewhat important overall as well, most of the time.

A fighter might have much lower effective max range but they ride in the hangar of a carrier with much more efficient engines so they only need range to strike the target. In my experience a range of 500-1000mkm is generally enough at the tech levels most of my games revolve around. These ranges will probably be lowered in C# Aurora as will general missile engagement ranges as well.

If you use roughly 40bkm as normal combat operational radius at roughly 1.45 fuel efficiency you need to use 32% of the ship tonnage as fuel, that is ALLOT of fuel or roughly 3.5m liters of fuel for a 10000t ship.

I might have misunderstood the ratio of fuel usage of the engines you used. But this http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0 thread is good for building ships of decent range and what ratio/power multiplier to use on your ships.

I might also disagree that speed is everything in missile combat.. in my opinion it is logistics and intelligence which is what makes or breaks ANY combat.

Tech levels vary from person to person and that's fair enough. I'm actually a bit of a turtle, so I don't generally need combat ranges in excess of ~10 bn km till the late Magnetoplasma era, which is when I start serious expansion beyond Sol.

Your drive math is a bit problematic though. I fail to see why you're simply boosting the drive and adding fuel to compensate rather than simply increasing the size of the drive. With engines being large, easily pre-built components, ships will actually build faster this way. You've also failed to specify the sizes of the drives you're mounting.

It's also important to consider that C# Aurora will be halving or even thirding fighter ranges, while at the same time providing a noticeable boost in efficiency to larger drives. I'm assuming you've used VB6 math here?

Another thing to consider is that what you've described as a Destroyer I would classify as a Cruiser, considering that my escorts rarely exceed 5,000 tons and my capitals are capped at 10,000 tons, so they'll actually be going slower than that to save on fuel.

I would also disagree with you over the importance of superior speed in combat. If I have a speed advantage, I can snipe your task group from range without having to worry about return fire, and there's a good chance that  slower missiles will have their ranges against me slashed considerably. If I run out of ammunition, I can retreat without worrying about getting chased back to my auxiliaries. It doesn't matter what logistical advantage you have if I control every engagement.

My point with the fuel was efficiency not the particular drive... that does not matter one bit. If you have a ship with fuel efficiency of x1.45 and you design it with 40bkm as you stated in that post you will need 32% of the ship to be made up of fuel which is a big chunk.

The speed at which you drive the ships don't matter one bit you burn the same amount of fuel per distance traveled even if you drive the ships 1km/s or 10000km/s.

I just tried to make a point about fuel usage and the cost it brings, especially in a rather tight multi-faction environment.

I don't argue that speed is not useful... I just say it is not as important than logistics and intelligence. If you don't bring the proper amount of force to engagement due to lack of intelligence you are essentially relying on luck.

Speed is good but it matters little if you can't bring enough force in the right place. Speed will not in and of itself find and identify the enemy forces either... scouting does. You don't scout with your core fleet itself that is dangerous unless you know for a fact you are numerically superior to the enemy.

In C# you are not as likely to be able to use speed as efficiently in beam combat either since an opponent with shields will be able to tank long range combat long enough for ships to run out of supplies. There is also the problem of formations... I have had slower ships being able to out maneuver and force of faster but numerically inferior opponent to withdraw with losses. But as I said... beam combat is pretty rare in my campaigns unless they are loop-sided, they simply are too dangerous unless you are certain of victory.

With missiles the point is to make a large strike from an unknown position and never reveal the main strike force. If you have sound logistical strategy then that one strike will cripple the enemy who will turn back and you win a strategic victory. In my opinion the goal is never to destroy the enemy... it is to obtain your strategic goal which rarely is to destroy the enemy fleet... it most often is to take and hold some strategic point in space, a system, installation or planet.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Here is a cheap design to make box launchers somewhat less attractive.  Or at least require the attacker have a LOT more fire controls to manage them.

    Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor    10 350 tons     99 Crew     304 BP      TCS 207  TH 0  EM 0
    1 km/s     Armour 1-42     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 180
    Maint Life 21.56 Years     MSP 1073    AFR 214%    IFR 3%    1YR 4    5YR 66    Max Repair 19 MSP
    Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 8   


    Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A

    brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
    Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (10)     Total Power Output 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%

    This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Yes, it has only 1/3 the power needs to cycle the railguns, so it has an effective cycle time of 45 seconds, but that is just fine if the main threat is reduced sized launchers.  At 304 BP for 180 PPV, it is also a dandy way of keeping the civilians happy.  A major concern if there are battles with lots of casualties to get them demanding protection.

[Jorgen_CAB]

What I am really interested in, with the sensor and missile changes in C#, is whether the modern air-combat staple of strike groups will become mechanically superior. I'm talking about having a fighter or FAC sized AWACS style vessels, guiding your strike fighters to their target, who is escorted by interceptors who take out enemy scouts and sensor fighters that are targeting your AWACS or your "bombers". Currently, with the advantages of big sensors, it's easier and better to just build a command ship with size 50 active sensor and use that. I presume that in C# Aurora, this will change.

It remains to be seen... but it will break up formations into multiple groups... at least in multi-faction games. Against the AI you are probably not have to do that as much. I don't think the AI will be super good at scouting and combat enemy scouts but a human will.

The only thing we can say for sure is that multiple small sensors on smaller platforms will be preferable for scouting purposes. But larger ships will still be better for defensive purposes. There are many new perks for larger ships that will make them more efficient in many ways. Fuel economy, defensive capabilities etc..

My prediction is that ships will become more of a support platform rather than the main offensive platform, depending on technology level of course. Ship launched missiles should be more viable at lower tech levels where fighter technologies are not fully developed yet or the carrier doctrine have not been replacing missile ships yet. Eventually ships will replace fighter sized craft with advancement in cloaking systems. Not very different from before in many respect.

What I find intriguing is the new type of scouting and the different strategies and ship builds to be the best at it. Since you can't just to the lazy thing and slap a size 50 senor on a single ship and see everything it will be allot more interesting. Finding the enemy first and getting first strike will be more important as will the recon in force strategy now be more interesting.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Here is a cheap design to make box launchers somewhat less attractive.  Or at least require the attacker have a LOT more fire controls to manage them.

    Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor    10 350 tons     99 Crew     304 BP      TCS 207  TH 0  EM 0
    1 km/s     Armour 1-42     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 180
    Maint Life 21.56 Years     MSP 1073    AFR 214%    IFR 3%    1YR 4    5YR 66    Max Repair 19 MSP
    Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 8   


    Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A

    brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
    Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (10)     Total Power Output 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%

    This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Yes, it has only 1/3 the power needs to cycle the railguns, so it has an effective cycle time of 45 seconds, but that is just fine if the main threat is reduced sized launchers.  At 304 BP for 180 PPV, it is also a dandy way of keeping the civilians happy.  A major concern if there are battles with lots of casualties to get them demanding protection.

Pretty effective against any type of missile attacks to be honest. I probably would give it a few more fire-controls and make it fire a bit more often to cover all the bases. A clever opponent might be able to take advantage of it otherwise. Box launched missiles can be staggered in many salvos over several 5 second turns if need be, even if that is a bit gamey but so is the design to counter it as well.

Fighters might fire box launched missiles in relatively small volleys for example.

To be honest I'm not too keen on the whole FC, salvo mechanic at all... it really make no real sense. FC should instead be about how many targets or missiles they can track or guide. The current system can easily be abused so I rarely try to do that in my campaigns.

One other key factor is maintenance facilities in C#... they are based on total weight so we will want to use as much quality stuff as possible, cheap will not always be the best thing anymore.

But defensive stations and ground based beam weapons will always be more efficient than regular ship mounted systems... but they are also pretty immobile in comparison.