Aurora 4x
C# Fiction => Steve's Fiction => Imperium of Man => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on July 12, 2020, 06:58:11 PM
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Thread for comments on new campaign
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Ah, Perfidious Necronia, we meet again! Thanks for the new campaign!
A more general AI question: from the battle descriptions it seems the AI like to fire its anti-ship missiles in small rapid waves, but us meatbags generally try to set things up so that we fire in synchronized larger (if slower) salvos to overwhelm PD at the far end. Does the AI not prioritize that? Is that something that can be changed (in a far future version, obviously) without too much effort or computational impact? Does it relate to the difficulty setting?
I'm also just wondering how the AI in general decides to design weapons and how it chooses how to use them in battle, but if that's too broad a question for this thread don't worry about it!
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Ah, Perfidious Necronia, we meet again! Thanks for the new campaign!
A more general AI question: from the battle descriptions it seems the AI like to fire its anti-ship missiles in small rapid waves, but us meatbags generally try to set things up so that we fire in synchronized larger (if slower) salvos to overwhelm PD at the far end. Does the AI not prioritize that? Is that something that can be changed (in a far future version, obviously) without too much effort or computational impact? Does it relate to the difficulty setting?
I'm also just wondering how the AI in general decides to design weapons and how it chooses how to use them in battle, but if that's too broad a question for this thread don't worry about it!
It may be also related to the AI perslonality. Not sure how far we gotten with that at the end but I remember that Steve wanted to create few different AIs to give NPRs more variety.
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Ah, Perfidious Necronia, we meet again! Thanks for the new campaign!
A more general AI question: from the battle descriptions it seems the AI like to fire its anti-ship missiles in small rapid waves, but us meatbags generally try to set things up so that we fire in synchronized larger (if slower) salvos to overwhelm PD at the far end. Does the AI not prioritize that? Is that something that can be changed (in a far future version, obviously) without too much effort or computational impact? Does it relate to the difficulty setting?
I'm also just wondering how the AI in general decides to design weapons and how it chooses how to use them in battle, but if that's too broad a question for this thread don't worry about it!
The AI should build up a view of the point defence capability of alien ships and from that an estimate of the defences of a given alien force within a small area. That estimate will be refined over time with new information. The AI will also test defences of ships where it doesn't have that information without fully committing in order to improve its intelligence. It will use that information to target appropriately and avoid firing entirely where it would be futile, although there are circumstances where other concerns will override that directive.
During the campaign I found a bug that meant the AI wasn't recording the information correctly therefore assumed ships had zero PD, which led to the small waves of missiles. That should not happen in future reports.
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Ah, Perfidious Necronia, we meet again! Thanks for the new campaign!
A more general AI question: from the battle descriptions it seems the AI like to fire its anti-ship missiles in small rapid waves, but us meatbags generally try to set things up so that we fire in synchronized larger (if slower) salvos to overwhelm PD at the far end. Does the AI not prioritize that? Is that something that can be changed (in a far future version, obviously) without too much effort or computational impact? Does it relate to the difficulty setting?
I'm also just wondering how the AI in general decides to design weapons and how it chooses how to use them in battle, but if that's too broad a question for this thread don't worry about it!
The AI should build up a view of the point defence capability of alien ships and from that an estimate of the defences of a given alien force within a small area. That estimate will be refined over time with new information. The AI will also test defences of ships where it doesn't have that information without fully committing in order to improve its intelligence. It will use that information to target appropriately and avoid firing entirely where it would be futile, although there are circumstances where other concerns will override that directive.
During the campaign I found a bug that meant the AI wasn't recording the information correctly therefore assumed ships had zero PD, which led to the small waves of missiles. That should not happen in future reports.
Will the NPR build missile ships with reduce sized launchers to penetrate strong PD shields? My general view is that at some point standard size launchers become almost useless at roughly the same technology level in the face of strong beam PD. So... will NPR to some degree use reduced size launchers to counter that as well by throwing larger salvos rather than saturation salvos?
If this is not the case I think you should consider some reduced launcher missile template ships for the NPR in the future.
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No, don't trust the perfidious Tau!
I'm a bit surprised you have met only one NPC given how far you have explored and their head start, but maybe that is due to slower exploration speed.
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No, don't trust the perfidious Tau!
I'm a bit surprised you have met only one NPC given how far you have explored and their head start, but maybe that is due to slower exploration speed.
It's only five years into the campaign and they I started with the NPRs at 30 - 75 light years, so its not too unlikely.
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I was just searching for Tau-themed WH40K Aurora AAR having read the first entry here, because I'm not a huge Imperium fan but this was still interesting, then I failed to find any, but you still managed to deliver Tau to your AAR :) Wish there were more ways to coordinate allied naval actions, like Federation Fleets in Stellaris or something like that.
Long live diplomacy/politics and powerful navy to enforce it!
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Already this AI is smarter than most mainstream games AIs ...
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Just binged this all in one read. I really like the WH40K flavour even though I Don't know much about it (I'm in book 8 or so of the Horus Heresy but other than that I know nothing about the WH40K world).
Halfway through reading I planned on asking you how you got such a nice galaxy map without too many branches, but it looks like that was just luck and now your map has turned into a mess. Ah well, at least I'm not the one who has to keep track of everything in this game :)!
One question though, I think a few times you said your main fleet was passed by missiles intended for another target. It doesn't look like you actually tried to shoot it down (with the main fleet). Why was this exactly? I'm just wondering if this is a gameplay constraint or if there is something else behind it.
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Just binged this all in one read. I really like the WH40K flavour even though I Don't know much about it (I'm in book 8 or so of the Horus Heresy but other than that I know nothing about the WH40K world).
Halfway through reading I planned on asking you how you got such a nice galaxy map without too many branches, but it looks like that was just luck and now your map has turned into a mess. Ah well, at least I'm not the one who has to keep track of everything in this game :)!
One question though, I think a few times you said your main fleet was passed by missiles intended for another target. It doesn't look like you actually tried to shoot it down (with the main fleet). Why was this exactly? I'm just wondering if this is a gameplay constraint or if there is something else behind it.
Having point defence in Final Fire allows you to shoot missiles during the movement phase in the last few seconds before they attack a ship, but not missiles passing by. You can setup for Area Fire instead, which will attack any missile in range during the combat phase.
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The Tarellians should be conquered and put to work in forced labor mines on Asteroth II.
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The Tarellians should be conquered and put to work in forced labor mines on Asteroth II.
Good suggestion :)
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Really enjoying your writing Steve!
Your ship designs have also really helped me figure out how I should be building my combat ships, I had a hard time deciding how much range I should be trying to give them, what sort of speed I should be aiming for etc.
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1.12 when?
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Yeah, Steve's back! Does that mean that 1.12 is imminent?
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How exactly would an Imperium Ship be designed in Aurora?
Would you use a bunch of plasma cannonades to represent Marco-Cannon broadsides?
I imagine you'd have to dramatically buff industry and resources in order to make the massive ships used in the setting.
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Steve's ships all use railguns.
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In all the games I tried so far (I'm still waiting for 1.12 for the next major one) I had severe gallicite problems, so I can relate.
I might even go so far as saying there's not enough gallicite generated by the game, but maybe I've just been unlucky....
Anwyay, the Lords of Terra should be... less confrontational with the Tarellians for now I'd say ;D
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I hope we will find out what kind of ruins is in Canis Minoris, that Necron fleet is massive. It seems that Artemis is infested with Orks (Rakhas), never encountered them before so I would like to see that battle as well.
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You're encountering a lot of Necrons, I've explored 80 or 90 systems in my game without finding any, what determines if they spawn or not?
Also that's quite a convoluted galactic map, are you thinking of making any changes to the map based on this?
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It would be funny if you could repurpose the captured Necron flotilla as a covert raiding group.
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It would be funny if you could repurpose the captured Necron flotilla as a covert raiding group.
It would be the perfect disguise, then BOOM!
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I like that some brazen civilian colony ships just went out and decided to populate some recovered ruins on their own.
Almost makes me wish that we had an option to turn on civilian colonization efforts - autonomous groups that drop down infrastructure and civilians on various worlds in explored space.
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It's back and with a bang! That was one big battle.
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I like that some brazen civilian colony ships just went out and decided to populate some recovered ruins on their own.
Almost makes me wish that we had an option to turn on civilian colonization efforts - autonomous groups that drop down infrastructure and civilians on various worlds in explored space.
Using civilian contracts to automate infrastructure shipping is a good approximation.
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Cryptek class Fuel Harvester 64,969 tons 318 Crew 1,253 BP TCS 1,299 TH 640 EM 0
492 km/s Armour 1-143 Shields 0-0 HTK 148 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
MSP 12 Max Repair 80 MSP
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months
Fuel Harvester: 23 modules producing 1,288,000 litres per annum
Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive EP320.0 (2) Power 640 Fuel Use 8.84% Signature 320 Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 850,000 Litres Range 26.6 billion km (626 days at full power)
Refuelling Capability: 60,000 litres per hour Complete Refuel 14 hours
CIWS-200 (2x10) Range 1000 km TS: 20,000 km/s ROF 5
The fuel harvester will need a lot of micro management. In my opinion, it would help to make some changes so fuel harvesters always fill up in a year or longer to minimise micro. Awesome campaign Steve! :)
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Those are NPR designs and the AI doesn't care about micromanagement and seem to need unloading every 6 months which isn't too bad. But since they have a refuelling module, NPR combat ships probably just visit them to top up when they need it.
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Eventually, the Lords of Terra decided the tiny colony of 50,000 was not worth a war with the Tarellians. The colonists were ordered to destroy the tracking station on the planet and scatter into the cold, desert-like terrain. There was some resistance to the plan, but it was carried out as ordered once the colonists realised the Imperium would not come to their aid.
Hmmm... does this mean the colonists are still there, or are still there but with no infrastructure so they slowly die off? Because I can see the Imperium doing that too!
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Those are NPR designs and the AI doesn't care about micromanagement and seem to need unloading every 6 months which isn't too bad. But since they have a refuelling module, NPR combat ships probably just visit them to top up when they need it.
The NPR does not care, no. But Steve will and it makes more sense IMO to design things as if they care about micro.
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Those are NPR designs and the AI doesn't care about micromanagement and seem to need unloading every 6 months which isn't too bad. But since they have a refuelling module, NPR combat ships probably just visit them to top up when they need it.
The NPR does not care, no. But Steve will and it makes more sense IMO to design things as if they care about micro.
it is only a short time/micromanagement to players who can skip time in 2 week increments in a few seconds.
6 months isn't micro management in Universe, and maintains verisimilitude
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You're encountering a lot of Necrons, I've explored 80 or 90 systems in my game without finding any, what determines if they spawn or not?
Precursor fleets are often guarding ruins, so increasing the ruin generation chance in the game settings will do the job.
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Out of curiousity Steve, is there any chance of seeing the tech set up for the start of the game? By which I mean which techs were researched from the free tech points and what units/modules were designed for the starting ships/ground forces.
It's one thing to see your ship designs have an 'Astaroth AK-10 Weapons Battery' or some such, but it's another to figure out off the design what that means (though this particular example is one of the easier ones) in terms of parts setup, like your Ravenor Drive Systems RJ-150M Jump Drive, I can only guess is first techs on each needed field, meaning that it's a 75HS, baseline military jump engine, but I don't know whether that's true or whether there's been more efficiency techs researched to make it smaller.
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Out of curiousity Steve, is there any chance of seeing the tech set up for the start of the game? By which I mean which techs were researched from the free tech points and what units/modules were designed for the starting ships/ground forces.
It's one thing to see your ship designs have an 'Astaroth AK-10 Weapons Battery' or some such, but it's another to figure out off the design what that means (though this particular example is one of the easier ones) in terms of parts setup, like your Ravenor Drive Systems RJ-150M Jump Drive, I can only guess is first techs on each needed field, meaning that it's a 75HS, baseline military jump engine, but I don't know whether that's true or whether there's been more efficiency techs researched to make it smaller.
I actually took a stab at recreating these a while ago, as part of a test setup to see what kinds of things were realistic for a start-of-game setup, and I think I got pretty close if not exact matches for the warships. For example:
Endeavour class Light Cruiser 15,000 tons 410 Crew 2,133.9 BP TCS 300 TH 1,500 EM 0
5000 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 6-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 72 Sensors 2/3/0/0 DCR 12 PPV 24
Maint Life 1.96 Years MSP 1,111 AFR 144% IFR 2.0% 1YR 379 5YR 5,689 Max Repair 396.8 MSP
Captain Control Rating 2 BRG AUX
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
Ravenor Drive Systems RJ-150M Jump Drive Max Ship Size 15000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Ravenor Drive Systems RD-750M (2) Power 1500 Fuel Use 32.66% Signature 750 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 536,000 Litres Range 19.7 billion km (45 days at full power)
Astaroth AK-10 Weapons Battery (8x4) Range 30,000km TS: 5,000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 30,000 km ROF 5
MK II Weapons Battery Secondary Fire Control (2) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
R-12 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (2) Total Power Output 24.2 Exp 5%
MK I Small Torpedo Detection Augur Array (1) GPS 6 Range 3.4m km MCR 304.7k km Resolution 1
MK I Light Cruiser Active Augur Array (1) GPS 7200 Range 52.8m km Resolution 120
MK I Small Thermal Augur Array (1) Sensitivity 2.5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12.5m km
MK I Small Electromagnetic Augur Array (1) Sensitivity 3 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 13.7m km
Copied from my test save, not Steve's intro post. My general approach was:
- From a later post where Magneto-Plasma Drive was discovered I determined that Steve probably started with ion drive tech, which seems to have mostly been correct (one of the designs, I think the survey frigate, used INTE tech for some reason)
- Knowing this, the engine is not hard to work out, it's a size-60 ion drive (750 EP) with 0.8 fuel efficiency (play around with the tech until you match the fuel use number) and 100% EP modifier (10% explosion chance).
- Fuel capacity was the hardest part obviously.
- As you noted, the weapons are not too hard to figure out either as each sub-component correlates to a statistic in a simple manner.
- The fire control is a bit tricky; from the larger one for the AK-15 (not shown here, see the Dauntless class for example) you can readily deduce a base range of 64,000 km as this is the minimum needed for the 256,000 km range and higher tech levels are too expensive for a starting setup. The tracking speed is trickier as you can get the same stat line with 2,000 km/s and 4,000 km/s base tracking speeds; I assumed the latter because it's what I would do frankly, FC tech is never a bad investment.
- Reactor can be pinned down based on the explosion chance (to fix the boost level) as well as power output, fairly simple.
- Passive sensors are straightforward due to the 5-6-8-11 early tech level progression and the 0.1-HS mass increment at the smallest sizes, so there's only one design that works assuming no electronic hardening.
- The active sensors are a bit guesswork-y since there's sometimes multiple combinations of strength and HS that will give the same product. Here I assumed strength-12 as more sensor tech is never bad in a starting setup.
- You can set armor, deployment time, and add Engineering Spaces equal to the DCR to fill in most of the remaining mass.
- With only the jump drive left, I found from playing with tech levels that Jump Eff 5 gave one that would fill the remaining ship mass once crew was accounted for. The squadron jump size and distance are on the info card, and with efficiency fixed the mass is easy.
You can do this with most posted ship designs as long as you get a full info card and not just a one-line summary (most of Steve's commercial ships elude me and I suspect he added some techs after building them). The Tempest-class survey frigate for example uses some markedly-different techs and components so may be worth a look for practice.
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I actually took a stab at recreating these a while ago, as part of a test setup to see what kinds of things were realistic for a start-of-game setup, and I think I got pretty close if not exact matches for the warships. For example:
Endeavour class Light Cruiser 15,000 tons 410 Crew 2,133.9 BP TCS 300 TH 1,500 EM 0
5000 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 6-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 72 Sensors 2/3/0/0 DCR 12 PPV 24
Maint Life 1.96 Years MSP 1,111 AFR 144% IFR 2.0% 1YR 379 5YR 5,689 Max Repair 396.8 MSP
Captain Control Rating 2 BRG AUX
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
Ravenor Drive Systems RJ-150M Jump Drive Max Ship Size 15000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Ravenor Drive Systems RD-750M (2) Power 1500 Fuel Use 32.66% Signature 750 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 536,000 Litres Range 19.7 billion km (45 days at full power)
Astaroth AK-10 Weapons Battery (8x4) Range 30,000km TS: 5,000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 30,000 km ROF 5
MK II Weapons Battery Secondary Fire Control (2) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
R-12 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (2) Total Power Output 24.2 Exp 5%
MK I Small Torpedo Detection Augur Array (1) GPS 6 Range 3.4m km MCR 304.7k km Resolution 1
MK I Light Cruiser Active Augur Array (1) GPS 7200 Range 52.8m km Resolution 120
MK I Small Thermal Augur Array (1) Sensitivity 2.5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12.5m km
MK I Small Electromagnetic Augur Array (1) Sensitivity 3 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 13.7m km
Copied from my test save, not Steve's intro post. My general approach was:
- From a later post where Magneto-Plasma Drive was discovered I determined that Steve probably started with ion drive tech, which seems to have mostly been correct (one of the designs, I think the survey frigate, used INTE tech for some reason)
- Knowing this, the engine is not hard to work out, it's a size-60 ion drive (750 EP) with 0. 8 fuel efficiency (play around with the tech until you match the fuel use number) and 100% EP modifier (10% explosion chance).
- Fuel capacity was the hardest part obviously.
- As you noted, the weapons are not too hard to figure out either as each sub-component correlates to a statistic in a simple manner.
- The fire control is a bit tricky; from the larger one for the AK-15 (not shown here, see the Dauntless class for example) you can readily deduce a base range of 64,000 km as this is the minimum needed for the 256,000 km range and higher tech levels are too expensive for a starting setup. The tracking speed is trickier as you can get the same stat line with 2,000 km/s and 4,000 km/s base tracking speeds; I assumed the latter because it's what I would do frankly, FC tech is never a bad investment.
- Reactor can be pinned down based on the explosion chance (to fix the boost level) as well as power output, fairly simple.
- Passive sensors are straightforward due to the 5-6-8-11 early tech level progression and the 0. 1-HS mass increment at the smallest sizes, so there's only one design that works assuming no electronic hardening.
- The active sensors are a bit guesswork-y since there's sometimes multiple combinations of strength and HS that will give the same product. Here I assumed strength-12 as more sensor tech is never bad in a starting setup.
- You can set armor, deployment time, and add Engineering Spaces equal to the DCR to fill in most of the remaining mass.
- With only the jump drive left, I found from playing with tech levels that Jump Eff 5 gave one that would fill the remaining ship mass once crew was accounted for. The squadron jump size and distance are on the info card, and with efficiency fixed the mass is easy.
You can do this with most posted ship designs as long as you get a full info card and not just a one-line summary (most of Steve's commercial ships elude me and I suspect he added some techs after building them). The Tempest-class survey frigate for example uses some markedly-different techs and components so may be worth a look for practice.
All fair enough, though for a newbie like me, it would likely require that we have a game where we have all techs researched to figure out the ships for a new start should we want to 'follow along' to some degree with a let's play/story that someone else has posted. I'd done a bit of playing on my own, and as mentioned in my previous post, you can make a jump drive that matches on efficiency 4, but it's obviously larger than the efficiency 5 variant you built, likewise you can make a size 40 Ion drive with 150 power, but it's nowhere near as fuel efficient given you need a 150% power boost, so it's sometimes figuring out the 'minor' details that really throw a wrench into things for new players trying to follow, and that's obviously when you've got the stat cards and where you can see what components are what, when you haven't ala Steve's civilian ship designs or his ground forces (both units and formations) it can be a lot longer of a period to work things through.