design vs AI compared to design vs Players

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sure... but this thread is about human versus human tactics not against the AI. When you play in a multi-human campaign you need to think about serious fleets from day one and fleets, logistics, industry and research need to progress dynamically. You can't really waste anything and it is far better with a crappy ship now than a good one in five to ten years down the line. In these scenarios you will never really be able to have a perfectly homogeneously fleet with the same tech level etc... it is almost impossible.

When you seriously over engineer the engines it will be a strain on your fuel, research and mining economy and no matter what it will spill over into the general economy over time quite allot. In your case you might be able to have twice or three times as many ships if you had the need to have fleets from the start of the campaign if you were a bit more considerate of the total cost of the military equipment and the need you have for them. Do you need to be offensive or generally mainly a defensive military. Also, in a multi-nation (human) campaign you develop things based o what you know about the opponent so are heavily influenced by that, things are not developed in isolation and just by some logical standard.

You are quite likely to run much smaller sensors and spread them out now, this was not really needed before. The same thing with passive sensors... you spread them out with smaller sensors and get a much better coverage. A small sensor scout with some basic thermal and em sensors will be cheap and can be deployed en mass to cover your needs quite well. Small engines are so cheap to develop that using reduced thermal on them is also pretty cheap. Usable on both small ships and fighter/FAC class ships.

You also need to protect all these scouts as well or you effectively become blind when they are engaged and destroyed, this is what I find so interesting in the new dynamic of C# and how I tried to role-play before by limiting the size of sensors in my campaigns.

Given that the range of active and passive sensors will be so much more effective you will likely be able to use them quite well now, at least when the enemy don't know they are targeted or even detected. Look at the formula and you will se that even an active sensors can no scan many million km at 0.25-0.50 MSP size. You can probably get the range up to 5-20m km or so depending on the resolution and tech levels which is quite impressive. Passive are equally useful now at rather low sizes too. A missile with both thermal and active sensors might be difficult to dodge. If you use the engines the thermal passive detects you if you don't run away you get into the envelope of the active sensors. It will be interesting to see how it work in practice.

The amount of research I need to dump into fighter factory production are not that significant since it is mainly a continuous process and you would only spend research there if you feel it is really needed. Keeping a fleet 100% up to standard is not realistic in a multi-faction campaign anyway. To be honest the rate at which you produce stuff is not all that matters it is the cost of that production that matters the most. Advanced construction rate is only important when you need to produce something fast in terms of ships, missiles and fighters that is
The important thing is construction factories, fuel and mines and the logistic to support that. Better construction rate of both ships and fighters are in my opinion a good to have technology only useful if you can't produce things that you need fast enough. This is the same for both ships and fighters... you also need much less fighters than you need ships since they are very specialized to a relatively low cost.
But it is a somewhat expensive endeavor to begin with, but worth it due to the versatility of the platform and even more so in C# Aurora I believe.

[SevenOfCarina]

In a human versus human campaign, running out of population to man your industry is a significantly greater issue than running out of materials. At least, that's what I've found - I've always hit the population crunch first, provided corundium and duranium are locally abundant for me to get exponential growth going. Which is why I tend to focus on having an industry that can support more firepower per million people than one that can do so more cheaply. If you choose not to research production-boosting techs then that's your own choice, but shipyards will end up outproducing your factories by a factor of three or more. That kind of tonnage advantage can't be beat. I don't particularly care about gallicite costs as only engines use that resource - from my perspective, it's free materials that I can't use for anything else anyway. If components are pre-built, especially engines, you'll find that the construction times for ships are sliced by a factor of two or greater. And as for wealth, that's what the economy-improvement techs are for.

I don't require a perfectly homogeneous fleet - I'll build new ships as tech advances, re-purpose the older ones into supporting fleets or colony defences, and retire the oldest ships. I've found that about fifteen million population in military yards is enough to replace an entire fleet in under a decade. And I do build ships to doctrine, it's just that I have little in the way of shooting wars going on till I leave Sol, so there's just no need. It'll obviously be different in a human versus human campaign, especially in a single system start. Another factor to consider is that yards can be transported by tug, and are actually fairly small - a 10,000 ton yard with four slipways shows up as a 80,000 ton contact. Compare that to the mass of fighter factories that'll be manned by five million people - about 2.5 million tons. Yards are far easier to shift around, so shipbuilding is, to an extent, protect-able. And for an Earth start, with sensors on hand, anything manufactured on the planet will get instantly detected and logged, so hiding a ship's existence is impossible and masking it's broad signatures gets difficult.

Also, passive sensor missiles locking at ~20 million km will be within the range of anti-fighter missiles. The platform is definitely getting shot at. There's also the issue that with sensors, your missiles get worse per - 0.5 MSP of sensor could be 0.5 MSP of warhead, or armour, both of which will assist in penetration against well-defended targets while sensors do nothing.

I also fail to see why a fleet with superior speed has a necessity to hide. Once the faster warships are underway, fighters will get two, maybe three strikes before the slower carriers fall behind and lose range. An interesting tactic with this would be rushing a fleet past an enemy force and blockading the jump point on the far side of the system, cutting off access. Any attempt at throwing missiles will be defeated by simply jumping to the next system then jumping back, making the missiles lose lock and self-destruct.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sure... population can become a problem but if you have ship production that surpass your mining and factory output you already have a high discrepancy in your production engine... more or less... that was my point. The important thing is to settle good places to increase your population growth in that case. In most of the campaign I played with lately I had a pretty big neutral population to feed my colonies with so population probably was a much less of an issue in my last couple of campaigns.

The important thing is that the industry you do have can produce 24/7 and never need to be idle. That is why I don't put research into production efficiency of ships/fighters as a super high priority over the civilian industry and general research progression which in turn increase those more military focused part of the economy as the civilian economy increase. This is very important in a multi-faction environment to pay close attention to. Not fall too much behind in military presence while making sure your civilian economy expand faster than the opponents. It is after all the civilian economy that support the military when all things is counted.

The most important thing is to make sure your science and general colonization effort is going so you can afford that fleet in the first place and that usually mean less military or cheaper military in general and then increase it as need rises and your technology level rises. When you need to figure all of these things out at the same time it is way more difficult to max out population and you need to be more focused on balancing all the different things in your economy.

You will need to invest a great deal on military all the time since your opponent does as well, you need to protect your colonies and patrol your trade routes and give a great show of strength so no one dare to attack you in the first place.

I don't think speed is all that important as are the strategic goal of what you want to achieve. If the enemy survive intact after the first strike I don't think it is wise to stand for a second strike. And two or three strike should be all that is needed to force an opponent to run away. The strategic victory is what counts in my book, not destroying the opponent. If my strategic goal is to take and hold a particular planet or system and I destroy a couple of ships from the opponent who then withdraw that is enough.

There is a reason why you never use all your eggs in one basket, you need to have some place to retreat to which are powerful enough the enemy can't follow you.

In a multi-faction campaign you will constantly be forced to do things which are NOT optimal all the time... you will need to have many different ships and you will not have time to upgrade all older ships and will have a fleet consisting of a plethora of quality ships. You can't wait for five years for a shipyard to expand to the optimal tonnage or upgrade your ships to the latest class.... they are needed in the field for many different reasons etc... you simply will not be able to effortlessly without interruption build of the perfect infrastructure before you build an optimized fleet, those things never happen in such a political climate.

You might need to design a new sensor but you need it very fast so you go with a smaller variant and put it on your new FAC scout platform because that is the fastest way to get it operational it good enough quantity when counting everything from research to retooling and production etc...

I can promise you that the new changes to sensors, missile ranges etc.. will favor fighters now more than ever.

[Jorgen_CAB]

One more thing I thought of...

In a multi-faction environment you will progress through the tech race much more slowly because resource must continually be diverted to more pressing matters, researching more components to offset an enemy or build up some defensive post somewhere out of necessity instead if more research labs, try to match an opponent that seem to muster new ships or bring out a new weapon system or class of ship you now need to take into account. A new planet just got detected and there is a race to colonize it, perhaps ground hostilities break out someplace and so forth.

In general the economy you can build in retaliative safety in single player standard game generally progress in lightning speed in comparison (that is my experience), this is why industrial efficiency and sub par ships are more powerful because they mean you actually have something rather than some theoretical thing on the drawing boards.

The problem with fighters is that it will take some time to replace older fighters for newer versions since you can't use construction industry to provide components in a pinch as you can with naval yards and ships. But on the other hand fighters in my experience do pretty well when in the previously tech level as long as you have some spearheading squadrons around for the quality attacks such as on board carriers. Older fighters just get relegated to more defensive operations and eventually scrapped when simply too old. I have also found that even older fighter can suffice for a pretty long time. The new sensor system certainly make older fighters more viable since the step between sensor levels now is smaller in general range terms, as long as their speed advantage is maintained fairly well they will remain viable for a pretty long time, longer than most ships before you want to upgrade them but in a different way. Ships can stay viable for a pretty long time though if designed well for upgrade purposes.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Also, passive sensor missiles locking at ~20 million km will be within the range of anti-fighter missiles. The platform is definitely getting shot at. There's also the issue that with sensors, your missiles get worse per - 0.5 MSP of sensor could be 0.5 MSP of warhead, or armour, both of which will assist in penetration against well-defended targets while sensors do nothing.

Not sure you understand how it work or you just misunderstood me... that would be the range where the missile can track the target on its own... the point in space you target... the launch platform can be way beyond that point and fire the missile from a completely different angle as well.

This is not just a point for fighters though... this is as useful for ships as it is fighters. It means that missile ships can fire their large multi-stage missiles from very far away and then have the missiles track the target themselves thus never having to reveal their true position, the missiles would not have to be fired in an angle that reveal the ships firing position either.

[Garfunkel]

That only works if you are confident that you've predicted the speed and heading of enemy ships correctly, or that they never vary either. Granted, it's a lot of micro for a human player to do, but you don't need much to change over millions of kilometers for it to have a noticeable effect.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes... it used to be that... but the new sensor model give allot more range to play with and so it will be a more viable way to engage someone, especially if the target is not aware of the attack.

Doing the basic calculation is easy to do with some nice application to help you do it. In my opinion the game should just be able to do it for you, you should not need to create a separate app where you enter the vector and speed of missile to know where they intersect if nothing change, this is a simple and straight forward calculation to do and the game could just do it for you.

Select target and missile and the game give the point where they will intersect based on the currently known information. It could also show a area in which the on board sensors should be able to track them if fired. The only thing you need to do is place a point in that area and fire the missiles and hope the target will not change course to early to avoid the missiles.

[alex_brunius]

Indeed. The tyranny of the sensor resolution advantage brought by smaller size is what makes the Fighters + Small ship approach so powerful, and also gives the reason why I agree with Jorgen_CAB that fighters are likely to be superior to multi stage missiles in C# Aurora when it comes to taking out Capital ship targets. Based on experience of missile combat in VB6 Aurora I also would choose twice as big alfa strikes over 5 times as deep magazines for offensive use any day of the week.

Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:

Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader

For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.

The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.

Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.

The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.

I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.

[SevenOfCarina]

Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:

Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader

For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.

The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.

Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.

The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.

I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.

Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter. Given a reasonable 100 ton sensor, you'll 'only' need a 1,200 ton sensor to match range if you're assuming the ship is 10,000 tons. But that certainly won't be the case - it would be inadvisable for larger sips to run without escort, and a 5,000 ton destroyer is not getting caught by those R200 sensors till it's already fired its magazines dry. The only solution would be to reduce the resolution on the fighter sensors, cutting down range, and either splitting the swarm between fighters intended to go after larger targets and smaller targets, or focus entirely on shredding the escort screen first. I also fail to understand why everybody is ignoring the issue of ECM, which is where larger ships have an advantage, and which will mean a 20% degradation in fighter range as compared to ship missile range.

And yeah - there's no reason why a fighter screen wouldn't have missile defences, and I, too, have serious doubt regarding how long missile range will actually be in C# Aurora. While larger missiles may now be a better pick than before, with the new sensor revisions, there's an actual benefit to reducing missile size below 6 MSP. Also, @Jorgen_CAB, for a five million km range against a 1000 EP target, you'll need a 0.455 MSP sensor plus reactors. If it's fired from 50 million, a ship just a tenth as fast would escape the detection bubble before the missile reached the waypoint. I don't see how that's effective.

[Titanian]

Just for comparison a 400t fighter I created had a cost of roughly 100BP and a 10.000 sort of standard Missile Ship did cost around 1700BP with the same tech levels. Each fighter had 4 Size 6 box launchers and the ship had 8 size 6 full size launchers. So the fighter packs roughly 1 launcher per 100 ton, that means a carrier with say 4000t hangar can launch a strike with a 40 size salvo, not too shabby.

Have a look at this nice thing here:

Code: [Select]

Fort class Point Defence Base    10 000 tons     94 Crew     487.4 BP      TCS 200  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 2-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 168
Maint Life 1.21 Years     MSP 30    AFR 800%    IFR 11.1%    1YR 21    5YR 316    Max Repair 14 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.05 months    Spare Berths 1   

TF 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (56x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF BFC (24-3) S00.6 24-3750 (10)    Max Range: 48 000 km   TS: 3750 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 PWR-4.5 (13)     Total Power Output 58.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesFor less than 500 BP I get a base that can with high probability defend against an attack by the fighters you mentioned without taking any major damage, assuming similar tech level. These things also age very well - because the fire controls are overengineered regarding their tracking speed, they are still mostly fine at the next tech level - The railguns upgrade to the next tracking speed level for free, once researched. And another tech level later, only the fire controls need to be replaced, retaining crew experience, while you would need to replace your whole fighter force every time.

Of course, this is a stationary base - so what would it cost to get a mobile version?

Code: [Select]

Mobile Fort class Escort    19 000 tons     650 Crew     923.2 BP      TCS 380  TH 600  EM 0
1578 km/s     Armour 2-63     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 168
Maint Life 0.74 Years     MSP 121    AFR 722%    IFR 10%    1YR 163    5YR 2438    Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   

TF S50 200 (0.5) EP 0.9 L/EPh  NP Engine (3)    Power 200    Fuel Use 7.96%    Signature 200    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres    Range 17.8 billion km   (130 days at full power)

TF 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (56x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF BFC (24-3) S00.6 24-3750 (10)    Max Range: 48 000 km   TS: 3750 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
TF Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 PWR-4.5 (13)     Total Power Output 58.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Double the price - but this is mainly due to the required crew quarters - and those do not get more expensive with better tech. It also has double the HTK (170!). When upgrading, the engines would need to be replaced, but they are cheap commercial ones - so no big deal. And the cost of upgrading the fire controls stays the same compared to the stationary design.
I doubt you can design a carrier force or a force of warships with cycling launchers at comparable tech level within the same price range, including missile cost, that can decisivly win here, exept by using very small missiles, and even then the missiles are going to get rather expensive compared to what thes destroy. The only way to really get enough of an alpha strike is to omit the carrier and directly use box launchers on warships.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Using the numbers from the C# change log and comparing a 250 ton Fighter vs 10000 ton Warships:

Looks like a size 1 res 200 FC from 250 ton Fighter will have 100m km range.
Active coverage can be provided by a size 2 res 200 Sensor on a Fighter leader

For the warships to detect the approaching fighters on Active 100m km out they would need a size 50 res 5 sensor of same tech level, prohibitively expensive if not impossible.

The only hope for the 10000 ton Warship is to have smaller escort, sensor and screen-ships or fighters positioned along the expected threat vector(s). These are VERY likely to carry res 1 sensors as well, which means that they will be able to spot incoming missiles 50+ millions of km out from main force assuming the threat vector to an enemy Taskforce is roughly known. If these missiles are slow long range missile buses any weapon meant to be used against a fighter should be sufficient to engage them effectively.

Fighters unlike Missiles like Jorgen_CAB already wrote can come in from almost any direction, which makes the distant screen approach to defend against it much weaker and diluted.

The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.

I also picked up that missile armor has been removed in the C# change log.

Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter. Given a reasonable 100 ton sensor, you'll 'only' need a 1,200 ton sensor to match range if you're assuming the ship is 10,000 tons. But that certainly won't be the case - it would be inadvisable for larger sips to run without escort, and a 5,000 ton destroyer is not getting caught by those R200 sensors till it's already fired its magazines dry. The only solution would be to reduce the resolution on the fighter sensors, cutting down range, and either splitting the swarm between fighters intended to go after larger targets and smaller targets, or focus entirely on shredding the escort screen first. I also fail to understand why everybody is ignoring the issue of ECM, which is where larger ships have an advantage, and which will mean a 20% degradation in fighter range as compared to ship missile range.

And yeah - there's no reason why a fighter screen wouldn't have missile defences, and I, too, have serious doubt regarding how long missile range will actually be in C# Aurora. While larger missiles may now be a better pick than before, with the new sensor revisions, there's an actual benefit to reducing missile size below 6 MSP. Also, @Jorgen_CAB, for a five million km range against a 1000 EP target, you'll need a 0.455 MSP sensor plus reactors. If it's fired from 50 million, a ship just a tenth as fast would escape the detection bubble before the missile reached the waypoint. I don't see how that's effective.

First of when you fire self guided missiles the enemy don't know that is happening... that is the whole point. You can't really try to evade it before you detect it so it will be viable to use them allot more now than before. Not sure exactly but I think that the sensor now is a complete package with reactor and all to simplify the design but that remains to be seen... missile will include allot more electronics now. This does not mean you will not also be able to strike in a more conventional way, it is an option to do it. Versatility is a strength in and of itself.

It is quite obvious that long range missiles will be much bigger to fit everything and also to manage the range necessary. Exactly how it will be we will find out soon enough.

The exact range sensors will detect thing will obviously depend on tech level and what it tries to detect.

What Alex meant with fire controls is that a fighter housing say a 50 ton res 100 sensor will have such a range advantage over a 5000t ship that they need roughly a 50 ton res 5 sensor to detect that 250t fighter. Also remember that fighters comes in all shapes and sizes so it is pretty difficult to match perfect resolution against them. It is simply not going to be economical to even try matching sensor like that anymore unless you are seriously more advanced with a much stronger economy.
To be honest I don't think you will need a 50t missile fire-control on fighters to get good range in C# Aurora because no sane faction would build such ludicrous large active sensors over having a dispersed scout screen, it just would be too easy to overcome with just over engineer your quite cheap FC and make all that research completely a waste. You are also having those sensors and a very select few ships and they will also become a priority target. This whole thing is just theoretical but in practice with competing fiction of similar strength and capabilities it will just not be feasible, at least not until very late tech... but them you have advanced cloaking devises and fighters are no longer an issue anyway.

You can also launch self guided missiles and that means scouting and finding the enemy is the most important thing now. Rushing strait into enemy controlled space without proper scouting would perhaps be very unwise, this also mean you need to protect the scouts without revealing your main fleet and its logistical arm.

If you can find and strike an opponent without revealing your fleets position you strike from the strongest possible position you can be in, that is just a fact.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The big questionmark remaining about the viability of fighters as an offensive tool is IMO going to be if it's possible to design a competitive missile with 100m km range anymore after the changes to fuel consumption. We know that designing a missile with same consumption as your ships max multiplier is going to be easy, since they have almost the same range as such a design does in VB6 Aurora ( which is more than enough range ), but a max multiplier will consume many many times as much fuel! That is going to require some quite significant redesigning of missiles compromising either speed, range or warhead, even before we can think about adding in the other goodies like sensors or ECM/ECCM. I'm especially curious about how the quality vs quantity approach for Fighter missiles will work. Maybe one or two bigger missiles with higher speed multiplier, ECM+ECCM and sensors + bigger chance of shock damage will actually finally be able to outperform several smaller ones. Minimum size fighters with a single maximum size missiles is another interesting approach to maximize the amount of salvos the target need to handle.

I agree that we don't know the impact of this yet... most likely anti-ship missiles will grow larger and a bit slower than we are used to, especially if you want good range on them too.

I think some of this talk are so theoretical and devoid of how they would actually function in an intelligently applied environment and not against the AI. Obviously every such environment will have extra rules for mechanics you want to avoid exploiting. These rules will also change how you operate in general.

We also need to remember that the general environment is what put in the restraint and possibilities if using different technologies and strategies.

But one thing is crystal clear... small sensors are now clearly superior en mass over a few large powerful sensors no matter how you twist and turn the theoretical numbers. This will favor sprinkling smaller sensors over many platforms and separate your fleet assets more.

[alex_brunius]

Actually, you'll need a 200 ton sensor to match the range of a 50 ton fire control. I don't see that fitting in a 250 ton fighter.

Ah right, due to the new ^2 sensor scaling... Good point.

This makes fighters even more powerful because you can get away with even smaller fire controls compared to the sensors needed to detect them, further reducing the size of the fighters as long as you got some other ship able to paint the target for them.

Smaller fighters can sneak closer allowing higher performance missiles.

[Garfunkel]

Someone should do a scale map/chart or something, that shows fighter MFC range versus warship AS range at low/mid-game AS/EM tech levels. Like, a 50 ton MFC in a fighter will shoot at a 5k ton warship at X range whereas the warship needs a sensor size Y to see the fighter at the same range, or alternatively that the warship, with equal sensor tonnage, can only see the fighter at X-Z range. If I'm making any sense. Would be useful to put to the Wiki and to illustrate this issue to players new and old.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Sure... but this thread is about human versus human tactics not against the AI.

Er... it is about the DIFFERENCES between the tactics and builds vs AI compared to vs players, but I am really enjoying the discussion, so that is a quibble.

I would say that there are at least THREE categories worth discussing here, Player vs AI, PvP arena one-off, and PvP campaign.

In a PvP arena, you generally have equal tech, and equal range.  This is a huge consideration.  Slugger builds where you win with armor are pretty much only possible when both sides have the same cap on beam range.  Now I have a situation in my campaign when I will have an effective cap on my beam fire control and range for a significant period of time, because I am utilizing salvaged Precursor beams and fire controls, and I have a crappy Sensors researcher.  So I will probably end up with a parasite Frigate, probably under 10,000 tons, which has salvaged ECM, ECCM, and counts on out dueling Precursors because of its speed advantage and shields.  As long as my shields can take one round of damage at maximum range, I can count on whittling down an enemy without shields without taking casualties.

Which brings up another difference:  playing versus the AI, one can generally come up with a flawless victory build and fleet strategy.  In Arena, the casualties are certain to be high on both sides because they are equal BP, equal tech, and fighting an all or nothing battle.  In campaigns, most players would scout and avoid a fight if they could where they could not inflict lopsided damage.  At least campaigns where there were a multiplicity of powers.