Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Droll]

Do mines work in 1.13?

I'm assuming you mean naval mines and not mineral mines. If so the answer is yes. There is a random targeting system that self-guided missiles without an initial target use now. Similar case for 2-stage missiles.

[skoormit]

...in the long run, you don't really need that much PPV.

This is completely false. PPV requirements will increase exponentially because as populations get larger, their growth will also accelerate. This can become a real problem if you have an extra solar colony with 10bn+ capacity as you'll need tons of military equipment to meet the demand.

I think at a certain point it becomes easier to just use ground forces to counter the PPV unrest.

Do you really ever have a problem providing PPV for large colonies?
A planet with a billion souls on it needs 500 PPV (for militancy 50; double that for the most extreme race).
I can provide that in the form of 500T orbital defense platforms at a cost of ~2800BP (with starting tech) and an annual maintenance cost of 700MSP.
That is an entirely trivial cost compared to the output of a population that size.
And that's with an actual useful ship design. I could get it at less than a third of that cost if I just wanted PPV.

I mean, I guess if you just plop population on a colony with ColCost 0 and you give zero thought whatsoever to developing an economy to support that population, you could end up holding the short end of the stick a few decades later.

[Pury]

When did Steave change the STO's? Before you could get the railgun up to x4 Targeting speed if you checked the Point Defence box.  Now it only apply's to turreted weapons, as only they can achieve enough TS.

[Steve Walmsley]

When did Steave change the STO's? Before you could get the railgun up to x4 Targeting speed if you checked the Point Defence box.  Now it only apply's to turreted weapons, as only they can achieve enough TS.

That was a bug, as railguns cannot be turreted

[Pury]

When did Steave change the STO's? Before you could get the railgun up to x4 Targeting speed if you checked the Point Defence box.   Now it only apply's to turreted weapons, as only they can achieve enough TS.

That was a bug, as railguns cannot be turreted

Doesn't this bug fix diminish STO effectiveness as a plantary defense? Now if you want to create PD STO's you have to invest a lot of tech and create enormous turrets with gauss that still will be more expensive than puting same system on a ship, as every STO has build in Actives and fire control, that kills its cost effectiveness in mass production? With railguns it looked like a good balanced tradeoff, where you can have reasonably efficient PD on a STO, that can be hard to destroy, but requaiers time to entrench,  and a planetary body to function.  Now if you want to guard your colonies efficiently, you have to make some sort of cheap ships filled with PD.  And they require all the needed infrastructure to be kept operational.  For me at least it was important from RP reasons, to have effective PD STO.  Unless I don't see it correctly, and there are good alternatives for railgun PD STO's.

[Droll]

When did Steave change the STO's? Before you could get the railgun up to x4 Targeting speed if you checked the Point Defence box.   Now it only apply's to turreted weapons, as only they can achieve enough TS.

That was a bug, as railguns cannot be turreted

Doesn't this bug fix diminish STO effectiveness as a plantary defense? Now if you want to create PD STO's you have to invest a lot of tech and create enormous turrets with gauss that still will be more expensive than puting same system on a ship, as every STO has build in Actives and fire control, that kills its cost effectiveness in mass production? With railguns it looked like a good balanced tradeoff, where you can have reasonably efficient PD on a STO, that can be hard to destroy, but requaiers time to entrench,  and a planetary body to function.  Now if you want to guard your colonies efficiently, you have to make some sort of cheap ships filled with PD.  And they require all the needed infrastructure to be kept operational.  For me at least it was important from RP reasons, to have effective PD STO.  Unless I don't see it correctly, and there are good alternatives for railgun PD STO's.

My intuition tells me that PD STOs can be more economical/less economical than orbital PD bases depending largely on planetary terrain. If your planet is a jungle mountain, even if your making massive turret STOs their survivability will be so damn high because of fortification bonuses that enemy fleets will have massive trouble initiating a land invasion or destroying the PD defense shooting down the enemy missiles. On the other hand, orbital bases can't take advantage of the planets terrain, although if the terrain is something like desert there is a good chance orbital bases would be cheaper and overall more cost-effective.

The problem I have with PD STOs is that they are unreasonably expensive, since every single gun has a full-price fire control system which is tuned to anti-missile fire. So you can easily have each gun cost 2000k uridium or something because of the fire control. Big turrets help mitigate this since your quad gauss packs 4x the firepower per FC.

I think there needs to be a new static component called "planetary active sensor" which lets you choose which designed active sensor to use from your racial tech. Likewise when designing standard STOs a checkbox to toggle the inclusion of inbuilt FCs should also be added. I'll crosspost this to the suggestion thread.

[Steve Walmsley]

When did Steave change the STO's? Before you could get the railgun up to x4 Targeting speed if you checked the Point Defence box.   Now it only apply's to turreted weapons, as only they can achieve enough TS.

That was a bug, as railguns cannot be turreted

Doesn't this bug fix diminish STO effectiveness as a plantary defense? Now if you want to create PD STO's you have to invest a lot of tech and create enormous turrets with gauss that still will be more expensive than puting same system on a ship, as every STO has build in Actives and fire control, that kills its cost effectiveness in mass production? With railguns it looked like a good balanced tradeoff, where you can have reasonably efficient PD on a STO, that can be hard to destroy, but requaiers time to entrench,  and a planetary body to function.  Now if you want to guard your colonies efficiently, you have to make some sort of cheap ships filled with PD.  And they require all the needed infrastructure to be kept operational.  For me at least it was important from RP reasons, to have effective PD STO.  Unless I don't see it correctly, and there are good alternatives for railgun PD STO's.

If railguns could be turreted, they would be massively overpowered. The bug fix just brings planet-based railguns in line with ship-based railguns. Both are now equally effective for point defence.

[Steve Walmsley]

The problem I have with PD STOs is that they are unreasonably expensive, since every single gun has a full-price fire control system which is tuned to anti-missile fire. So you can easily have each gun cost 2000k uridium or something because of the fire control. Big turrets help mitigate this since your quad gauss packs 4x the firepower per FC.

STOs only have half-sized fire controls (the same as a ship-based single-weapon fire control).

[Garfunkel]

If you want maintenance free, really efficient PD at your colonies, then you have to invest in gauss. If you want cheap PD, go Rail Barges - they provide PPV at the same time. You don't even need to put engines on them and you can tug them to the colonies - your racial minimum BFC speed will work well enough if you have sufficient number of guns.

[Droll]

The problem I have with PD STOs is that they are unreasonably expensive, since every single gun has a full-price fire control system which is tuned to anti-missile fire. So you can easily have each gun cost 2000k uridium or something because of the fire control. Big turrets help mitigate this since your quad gauss packs 4x the firepower per FC.

STOs only have half-sized fire controls (the same as a ship-based single-weapon fire control).

That's great, but even half-sized fire controls can be very bloody expensive, especially if your building enough STOs to protect a homeworld. The other mineral costs for STOs are fine since it's literally the cost of the gun but the uridium requirement gets really prohibitive.

Edit: Point is, ships have the option of having many guns using one active sensor and one fire control. There are advantages and disadvantages for doing this on a ship. I do not understand why STOs do not have the same choice. Because sure, having fewer actives / fire controls than STOs is great for saving uridium but if you get unlucky and the actives are blown away, then you've got a problem. I think allowing planetary FC and Active sensor components for ground units will bring STO combat more in line with ship-to-ship combat.

[Steve Walmsley]

That's great, but even half-sized fire controls can be very bloody expensive, especially if your building enough STOs to protect a homeworld. The other mineral costs for STOs are fine since it's literally the cost of the gun but the uridium requirement gets really prohibitive.

Edit: Point is, ships have the option of having many guns using one active sensor and one fire control. There are advantages and disadvantages for doing this on a ship. I do not understand why STOs do not have the same choice. Because sure, having fewer actives / fire controls than STOs is great for saving uridium but if you get unlucky and the actives are blown away, then you've got a problem. I think allowing planetary FC and Active sensor components for ground units will bring STO combat more in line with ship-to-ship combat.

There is more to it than just the headline cost. Ships require maintenance facilities, which have their own cost to create, plus they consume maintenance supplies that require minerals while STO units are maintained using wealth only. Over a long period, the STO units are much cheaper than the ship-based weapons. Also, ground units are meant to be simpler than ships, which is why STO units are self-contained in the same way as CIWS.

[Demetrious]

Edit: Point is, ships have the option of having many guns using one active sensor and one fire control. There are advantages and disadvantages for doing this on a ship. I do not understand why STOs do not have the same choice.

What is a quad turret STO but four guns slaved to one FC? Dude.

[Droll]

Edit: Point is, ships have the option of having many guns using one active sensor and one fire control. There are advantages and disadvantages for doing this on a ship. I do not understand why STOs do not have the same choice.

What is a quad turret STO but four guns slaved to one FC? Dude.

Brilliant observation... Can I put multiple quad gauss turrets under one FC like I can on a ship?

Way to miss the point.

[nuclearslurpee]

I think Steve has the right of it: compared to ships STOs are logistically easier and less costly to maintain. Not mentioned by Steve, but also relevant, is that STOs are produced by GU training centers rather than shipyards or factories, so the use of industrial capacity is different and potentially more (or less) flexible.

I think the comparison to STOs has to be with orbital platforms, as both of these are basically the two C# branches from the old VB6 PDC concept, in fact one could almost roleplay an orbital station as a PDC if one wanted to. In this case the comparison I think comes out with a good balance: STOs are more complex and perhaps not as efficient per ton or per BP (as noted the uridium costs can be substantial), but are logistically less demanding and in many cases are much more difficult to dislodge. Orbital bases on the other hand are likely to be more efficient and flexible (notably able to mount missiles, but can also be tugged to e.g. defend a JP). However you want to rationalize the gameplay limitations in terms of RP (for example, I could say that STOs are geographically dispersed and not connectable to a single BFC, and gathering them all in a single facility like an old PDC is better modeled with an orbital base - but your headcanon may vary), in terms of gameplay balance and presenting with multiple viable options I think the tradeoffs work well and I cannot find either option to be strictly superior

Comparing to typical warships on the other hand is really apples to oranges, as these have significant "inefficiencies" from a planetary defense perspective due to the need to mount propulsion and other necessities that an orbital base does not worry about.

As for Gauss vs Railguns, Garfunkel has it right as he has stated the age-old wisdom - Gauss is for good PD once teched up, railguns are for cheap PD at all tech levels. The balance is tactical vs strategic benefits.

[Droll]

Comparing to typical warships on the other hand is really apples to oranges, as these have significant "inefficiencies" from a planetary defense perspective due to the need to mount propulsion and other necessities that an orbital base does not worry about.

I guess I should have been more specific that my comparisons were with respect to orbital bases since they are technically "ships".

I think I understand the balancing reasons why STOs each have their own targeting systems but the idea that centralized targeting is impossible does not sit right with me. Especially since a single active sensor is able to do this across astronomical distances with FCs being the only thing that is ship specific (even then for some reason can command more weapons than a stabler ground mounted variant). It feels like an arbitrary constraint, which is why I'd personally still prefer that FC and active sensors still be a ground component that can be mounted on a static, balance be damned.

But I think Steve has been quite clear with its reasoning so I'm not going to beat a dead horse any longer.