Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Garfunkel]

Total number of construction units (modules) matters, how many formations they are in doesn't matter.

For beam sluggers, while alpha strike and range-sniping are both important, DPS is the king. You can't rely on shock damage to take out an enemy, though when it happens it's fantastic. So first figure out which weapon gives you the highest damage over 30 seconds and 1 minute of firing. Use as many of those as you can fit. But do put in a spinal weapon - since you can only have one anyway. Plus, if you do need to kite/snipe, that's the weapon to do it with and if you go for close-range, it'll help punching a hole in enemy armour when you save it until you're close enough.

[Borealis4x]

Total number of construction units (modules) matters, how many formations they are in doesn't matter.

For beam sluggers, while alpha strike and range-sniping are both important, DPS is the king. You can't rely on shock damage to take out an enemy, though when it happens it's fantastic. So first figure out which weapon gives you the highest damage over 30 seconds and 1 minute of firing. Use as many of those as you can fit. But do put in a spinal weapon - since you can only have one anyway. Plus, if you do need to kite/snipe, that's the weapon to do it with and if you go for close-range, it'll help punching a hole in enemy armour when you save it until you're close enough.

So always use spinal weapons even if you can only fit one?

[nuclearslurpee]

Does the size of a construction company (i.e. how many construction modules are in the overall force) influence ruin recover rate/success chance? Per the Wiki it does not, but that was written before C# and the elimination of "Teams" and introduction of construction units.

It is not documented but the Construction capacity of the formation is proportional to the ruin recovery rate. I don't believe there is any success/failure mechanic anymore, this along with the chance to encounter robotic guard troops has been removed in C# for better or worse, AFAIK.

What are rules of thumb for figuring out how big to make the beam weapons on your beam ships?

I try to get the largest I possibly can on a craft, even if it mean I can only mount one as I assume range will make my ships more safe and a bigger gun will make fights end quicker. But if they miss, its devastating.

While I don't disagree with Garfunkel's analysis, I do disagree with the assertion that DPS is king, as Aurora's beam combat is a bit more complex than this provided that one side in a fight does not have a range/speed advantage that renders the battle trivial (if you can outrun and outrange the enemy, nothing else matters besides kiting them except perhaps running out of MSP if your damage at long range is very low on a per-shot basis).

A number of considerations need to be made:

• Alpha striking vs. DPS: This is not a simple consideration. Even if one set of beam weapons has a significant DPS advantage, an alpha striking advantage can be used to knock ships out of the fight before they can leverage their DPS advantage, meaning that the actual DPS brought to bear is not as high as expected. This matters especially in jump point defense scenarios, where you can get one or even multiple massive alpha strikes before the enemy can respond, crippling a lot of ships at the outset without suffering any return fire.
• Penetration: The ability to penetrate the enemy armor and score internal hits with high-damage weapons can outweigh a DPS advantage which will tend to lead to 'sandpapering' the enemy armor. This is more important for Lasers and particle lances as these have sharp penetration profiles and can deal a lot of internal damage against ships without shields or very thick armor.
• Shield: On the flip side, shields can seriously blunt the advantage of a high-penetration weapon, and high-DPS weapons are usually better at lowering shields, speed and range permitting.
• Range: In general, high-DPS weapons have shorter ranges, so lower-DPS weapons can be valuable for their range alone. Even if you don't have a speed advantage, being able to fire one or multiple opening volleys to attrit the enemy is often valuable. In fact, if you don't have a speed advantage you will need the range advantage or at least an advantage in damage at range, otherwise the enemy can beat you by kiting you to death.

I will note that in practice, when playing against NPRs a player will nearly always maintain a speed advantage, so generally you will see a player use either speed+range superiority (kiting) or speed+DPS (full charge with railguns blazing) to easily defeat the NPRs. If you play with multiple player races then the situation can be more complex and interesting.

Because of this it is hard to give general advice as too much depends on the specific enemy, weapon types, and so on. I will say that generally a mix of weapons seems to be the preferred approach, though "best" is hard to claim - for example, it is nearly always a good idea to mount a spinal laser on every ship that can hold one if you use lasers as a primary weapon, for the added range and alpha strike damage. Early in the game I would stick with a mix of small, high-DPS weapons which are useful for point defense mixed with the largest caliber of anti-ship weapon you can build. Later on you can diversify as you will have more options, for example with lasers you might mix 10cm dual-purpose turrets (DPS/PD) with massive lasers that deal high alpha damage at the maximum BFC range, and also mix in medium-caliber lasers which can reach your maximum BFC range but will suffer more damage falloff compared to the massive lasers, but give you a more balanced striking capability in the midrange zone. Really by the time you have such high tech you would be using multiple weapon types though so you don't really need three kinds of lasers as much as three kinds of beam weapon.

[Garfunkel]

So always use spinal weapons even if you can only fit one?

Yes, if you are researching lasers. If you're not researching lasers at all, then it's not worth it, of course. Note that while nuclearslurpee brings up very useful points to consider, a sobering fact is that max-range beam weapons generally suffer from awful accuracy. This tends to degrade the value of alpha strikes, even at JP assaults. While on paper it might look like your battleship can knock out an enemy ship immediately with its alpha strike, unless you save your weapons until you reach point blank range, it's far more likely that your big guns will miss the first time the fire, and then their capacitors will spend 20-40 seconds recharging while your enemy blasts you to smithereens with their 5- / 10-second weapons.

Once you have BFC's with really nice ranges and your crew grades are high, then alpha strikes become lot more viable, but until that it's best to focus on DPS. Note that this doesn't always mean 5-sec weapons, you have to do the math yourself.

I do agree that it's best to have a variety of weapons because you need multiple tools. Big cannons help with making holes in the armour belt and dealing shock damage, while fast cannons bring down shields and quickly wreck internals once armour is gone.

[misanthropope]

there is at every tech level a medium range, where other beams operate but lasers are best.  maximizing your dps advantage *in that band* is a pretty good starting point.  you get most of the edges of a pure kiting build, but youre not fighting against all the game mechanics that exist to make pure kiting difficult. 

the medium-size lasers are also nearly as good as giant ones for softening up armor belts for your PD-range dakka, in the event things get down and dirty.  they also give you a credible if not exactly intimidating long range presence.  since it is undemanding to deploy and can be distributed across a large proportion of your fleet, you gain kind of a "saving throw" against hypothetical enemies designed for pure kiting.

i tend to build missile-primary mixed weaponry glass cannon type ships ("firepower, speed, armor.  choose two" - i choose firepower and firepower).  this is not exactly the formula for success in beam combat, but my lopsided defeats have come from blundering into a grotesque tech mismatch. 

[ChubbyPitbull]

How is Intelligence Point (IP) generation calculated?

I'm playing a max tech game with a MODDED DATABASE where I added in 1 or two additional techs and components, and am using the following Surveillance Cruisers:

Code: [Select]

Trafalgar class Surveillance Cruiser      60,000 tons       2,033 Crew       64,721.1 BP       TCS 6    TH 200    EM 0
16666 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-136       Shields 0-0       HTK 487      Sensors 375/756/0/0      DCR 142      PPV 0
Maint Life 3.19 Years     MSP 96,070    AFR 202%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 14,225    5YR 213,376    Max Repair 40000 MSP
Leftenant Colonel    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Morale Check Required   

Blaydes Kinetics J60000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 60000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

Langeveld Marine Photonic Drive  EP20000.00 (1)    Power 20000    Fuel Use 2.24%    Signature 200.00    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres    Range 201.2 billion km (139 days at full power)

Maslin-Augsburger CIWS-1000 (2x16)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Barbato-Thruman Thermal Sensor TH5-375 (5%) (1)     Sensitivity 375     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  153.1m km
Barbato-Thruman EM Sensor EM10-750 (5%) (1)     Sensitivity 750     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  216.5m km
ELINT Module (54)     Sensitivity 756     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  217.4m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 0.500% of normal

ECM 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Intelligence Ship for auto-assignment purposes
These have worked well with two NPRs I have found so far, generating IP once the cruiser is able to get an EM reading on the target colonies.

However, I recently generated a new, large NPR to serve as a "big bad" in the current game. As part of that, I generated the race with:

Determination: 100
Diplomacy: -100
Expansion: 100
Militancy: 100
Trade: 0
Translation: 25
Xenophobia: 100

I flew over another one of the above surveillance cruisers and got an EM reading of the colony (~1.6m), and advanced time. However, after 10 days, I still had 0 IP on that target colony. Even when I flew my surveillance cruiser right up on top of the capital and advanced time a few days, still no IP are being generated.

Is it related to racial characteristics, or should IP just be generating? I did have some sensor buoys present in the system I created the NPR in that got the initial hits on the colony and ships, could that be blocking it? I also know all bets are off once the database is modded, but trying to see if maybe something I changed in the database may also have caused the IP for this race to screw up. IP generation on the colonies of the first two NPRs has been working fine after modding the database, and continues to work fine even though it isn't for this third new NPR.

[nuclearslurpee]

How is Intelligence Point (IP) generation calculated?
[...]
Is it related to racial characteristics, or should IP just be generating?

Per the wiki page on Alien Contact: "For populations, the intelligence is also multiplied by (100 - Population Species Xenophobia) / 100. In other words, it is much harder to gain intelligence when a population has high xenophobia."

If an alien species has 100 Xenophobia you cannot gain ELINT on populations, full stop.

[ChubbyPitbull]

Is there a way to customize what events interrupt automated turns, and which ones don't? I'm current allied with one NPR and we are both at war with a third one. I have active sensor buoys in both allied and enemy systems. I constantly get my automated turns interrupted because of Allied ships changing their thermal signature, or enemy ships contact "updates" from their home system since they seem to be fine wiht my large active sensor buoys just chilling out watching all their ship traffic.

On the flip side, things like New Combat Contacts (energy weapon impacts, Secondary Power System explosions) in systems where I have sensors do *not* seem to interrupt automated turns, so they fly by before I can see where the fighting is occurring in case I need to re-route fleets to support my ally. Similarly I have active sensor buoys on jump points in my systems, events like "Enemy NPR has been detected in one of your systems for the first time" also does not seem to interrupt automated turns, nor do the contacts get logged in the event log to know what had been seen in that system (when the automate turns progress whatever had jumped in apparently jumped out before I could see what it was).

Is there an easy way besides digging into the database to enable/disable interrupting automated turns for different event types?

[nuclearslurpee]

Is there an easy way

Well, since you're asking, you--

besides digging into the database to enable/disable interrupting automated turns for different event types?

Oh, no then, sorry.

[Edbanger]

Is there a list somewhere here for Youtube (or Elsewhere) gameplay videos for Aurora, not Tutorials, but Lets play or gameplay videos?

[Black]

Is there a list somewhere here for Youtube (or Elsewhere) gameplay videos for Aurora, not Tutorials, but Lets play or gameplay videos?

There is list of various creators: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11116.0

Or this is topic with videos from SpaceMarine, including lets play videos: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11003.0

[nuclearslurpee]

Is there a list somewhere here for Youtube (or Elsewhere) gameplay videos for Aurora, not Tutorials, but Lets play or gameplay videos?

There is list of various creators: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11116.0

Or this is topic with videos from SpaceMarine, including lets play videos: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11003.0

Alternatively, jump up one level and you have the videos subforum, which is not very extensive but it is the place for these things to go: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?board=311.0

[CaiusIuliusCaesar]

How do I bombard an enemy planet? I've got a fleet armed with missiles a few million kms out.   I can't detect ground forces, since they would start hitting me if I moved in closer.   How can I order my fleet to open fire at the planet? Do I use the "launch ready ordnance" command? Many thanks!

Edit: My ELINT ship can see multiple ground targets and STOs. . .  I still can't target any of them in ship combat or via move orders. . .  what do I do? I want to bombard the planet from a safe distance instead of having my troop transports shot out of the sky with STO. . . .

[nuclearslurpee]

How do I bombard an enemy planet? I've got a fleet armed with missiles a few million kms out.   I can't detect ground forces, since they would start hitting me if I moved in closer.   How can I order my fleet to open fire at the planet? Do I use the "launch ready ordnance" command? Many thanks!

Edit: My ELINT ship can see multiple ground targets and STOs. . .  I still can't target any of them in ship combat or via move orders. . .  what do I do? I want to bombard the planet from a safe distance instead of having my troop transports shot out of the sky with STO. . . .

You need an active sensor contact to target ground units. Ground units are modeled as minimum-resolution targets, so a RES-1 active sensor will be the best way to get a target lock (ditto for MFCs) and you should be able to achieve this from well beyond the range of the STO batteries.

[CaiusIuliusCaesar]

How do I replace troops after the combat has ended?
I have already marked a few divisions as "replacement" and have forwarded time, yet the damaged divisions do not draw from the ones marked as "replacement". . .  Or is this only possible in combat (I also haven't tried it out in combat, to be honest).  Also, do I need to use the "Unit Series" tab? I only have one design of each element for now. . .
Many thanks!