Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[LuuBluum]

Ground support fighters are usually not usable defensively because the attacking side almost always has space superiority, otherwise they would not be able to deliver troops to the objective. Therefore any ground support fighters the defenders might have will be summarily blown up by the attacking space force.

Incidentally, this is something that having an airborne ground unit class would fix, because then defenders could still have an air force even if they have lost control of orbital space.

Actually I made an assumption there that I can't find an answer to at all: do fighters with air-to-air pods equipped work like anti-air units? I would assume so but I can't find any indication as such.

I believe they are intended to function with the combat air patrol mission, which I don't think was ever implemented. Otherwise I think they just work as a bundle of stats like all other ground weapons and fighter pod types. They don't have innate AA fire capability like actual AA components do, AFAIK.

I think the mechanics say that any ground support fighters that are in-place cannot be targeted by normal naval craft, so they should be immune to the attacking space force. Unless that's also broken.

I think if air-to-air pods were to result in the ground support fighter working like an HAA unit instead of just providing bombardment (that is, able to attack any arbitrary enemy ground support fighter), then the system could actually be made to work, but as it stands the thing does seem like a mess. You don't really benefit much at all from having all that customization for ground support fighters as opposed to just... having another ground unit type, that works with all the other rules of ground unit types except is targeted by anti-air weaponry instead of any on-the-ground weaponry. Seems a whole lot simpler to me.

Though if the inability to be targeted by normal naval craft behavior does work, and air-to-air fighter pod-equipped ground support fighters work like HAA, then I think the system would work as it is currently designed.

In fact, if it were to be adjusted in just that little way as I described (assuming the naval immunity bit works), then they'd actually work really well. Defensively, you'd have a ton of fighters with fighter pod bays, with all three fighter pods available in ordinance depending on what an invader brings in (since you can't know whether or not you'll need more damage or AP). The enemy would invade and bring in their own batch of a bunch of air-to-air ground support fighters to take out the defending supporting fighters, which then would be equipped with a bunch of air-to-air pods themselves, leading to a whole other aspect of planetary invasions: the war in the skies. If the defender wins, then they can switch to bombardment/autocannon pods and lay waste to the enemy invading forces. If the invader wins, then... well, they mostly protect themselves against such bombardment, letting what might potentially otherwise be an impossible invasion end up as actually possible.

[Ulzgoroth]

Well, I can't seem to find whatever post I remember reading regarding STOs. It also seems that the discussion I found from back in August regarding someone doing a Flak Suppression mission against an NPR resulting in all of their fighters blowing up without doing anything seems to be functioning correctly? At least, if I'm reading it right, the mission they chose would result in their fighters choosing a random hostile formation and, if it has no AA, proceed to do nothing. In turn, every single AA unit fires back at them. No wonder they just got blown to smithereens without doing anything.

It shouldn't be automatically "every single AA unit".

It should be:
- Every HAA unit on the planet (shooting at somebody, though not necessarily you).
- Every MAA unit in the target unit or direct parent.
- Every LAA unit in the target unit.

So if the enemy uses lots of HAA or has a central planetary HQ formation stuffed with all the MAA that is parent to every other unit, you'll get hit with all of that. I could believe either of those for NPRs but I don't know what their arrangements are like.

Hmm. The AA perspective really favors big flat hierarchies.

[LuuBluum]

Well, I can't seem to find whatever post I remember reading regarding STOs. It also seems that the discussion I found from back in August regarding someone doing a Flak Suppression mission against an NPR resulting in all of their fighters blowing up without doing anything seems to be functioning correctly? At least, if I'm reading it right, the mission they chose would result in their fighters choosing a random hostile formation and, if it has no AA, proceed to do nothing. In turn, every single AA unit fires back at them. No wonder they just got blown to smithereens without doing anything.

It shouldn't be automatically "every single AA unit".

It should be:
- Every HAA unit on the planet (shooting at somebody, though not necessarily you).
- Every MAA unit in the target unit or direct parent.
- Every LAA unit in the target unit.

So if the enemy uses lots of HAA or has a central planetary HQ formation stuffed with all the MAA that is parent to every other unit, you'll get hit with all of that. I could believe either of those for NPRs but I don't know what their arrangements are like.

Hmm. The AA perspective really favors big flat hierarchies.

Ah, you are right; I misread the mechanic page. Still, means that you're gonna get a whole lot of anti-air fire if you bring out any fighters to an invasion in a non-support (and frankly even support) role, since you'll be taking a lot of retaliatory AA fire for doing damn well near anything.

Also HAA I think will fire at you like MAA if it happens to fit those criteria, or otherwise shoot at a random craft if not.

EDIT: Regardless, given the lack of programmed combat air patrols and the fact that NPRs don't even use ground support fighters period, I think it's safe to say that at least for me, it's a feature best avoided for now. Leave it until Steve decides to make it more fully functional.

EDIT EDIT: Actually, I think it can be made the work. You just need large volume for anything other than a supporting role, and the ones put into a supporting role should be... well, as heavily armed as possible. There's nothing stopping you from shoving as many fighter pod bays as can possibly fit on some fighter and making it a monstrosity.

[Kiero]

How much do you allocate to hangar space on your carriers? (%)

[Pury]

Hey, Quick Question. How many years after meeting the requirements (more than 20 systems explored) can I expect a aether rift to spawn? I am 80 years in, roughly 55 years ago I explored my 20th system and still no sign of trouble. I am just wondering if something bugged out or if it is normal now.

[Pury]

How much do you allocate to hangar space on your carriers? (%)

Depends. But usually from 25%-50%.

[Snoman314]

How much do you allocate to hangar space on your carriers? (%)

I generally go with 40%, along with a doctrine of long range missile fighters and sensor FACs, that let the carrier get away with being quite slow, as it's going to be staying well out of sensor range.

[nuclearslurpee]

The way I usually design a carrier is built around the strike group:

• Design the strike group before building the carrier - you must know not only your fighter numbers and sizes but also the number of missiles, fuel load, etc.
• Start designing a carrier by adding the requisite number of hangar bays.
• Add enough magazines to include ammunition for however many follow-up strikes you want to be able to launch (usually 3 or 4 for me).
• Assuming that you use all of your fighters' fuel for each strike, make a note of how much fuel you will need to add to support that number of strikes. You could add the fuel now but I usually wait until later so I can get the carrier's base range (not counting fuel for fighters) correct.
• Add engines to reach the intended fleet speed - this can require prototyping as you find the right size by trial and error.
• Add any other peripherals - point defenses, armor, shields, sensors, engineering, MSP, etc.
• Try to get the base fuel range approximately correct.
• Finish by adding the previously calculated fuel for the fighters.

The last 3-4 steps can take some trial and error, usually it is okay to take off a little bit of fuel since the fighters probably won't actually use all of their fuel for every bombing run.

In my experience, it is not easy to state a particular fraction or percentage because so much can depend on doctrine and the fighter design. A slower fleet speed means a smaller engine section and thus a larger fraction can be hangars. The number of follow-on strikes affects magazine space, and the range of your fighters affects how much fuel is needed. Not to mention that if you use beam fighters, that eliminates the need for magazine space entirely which changes the fraction of hangar tonnage quite a bit!

[captainwolfer]

• Add engines to reach the intended fleet speed - this can require prototyping as you find the right size by trial and error.

I pick a carrier size first. If you decide tonnage first, calculating how much engine you need is easy:
Step 1. Take the engine power rating, and multiply by 1,000 to get the max engine speed in km/s (assuming 1x engine power modifier)
- you can find the power rating in this post:
Step 2. Pick a fleet speed.
Step 3. Divide Fleet speed by (engine max speed X Engine Power Multiplier)
Step 4. The result is the percentage of the ship that has to be Engines to achieve the desired speed.

Example: I want a fleet that can go 6000 km/s with Ion tech.
1. Ion has a power rating of 12.5, so max engine speed is 12,500 km/s.
2. 6,000 / 12,500 = 0.48 AKA 48% of ship mass as engines
3. That's an awkward percentage, so I will round it to 50%, to get a fleet speed of 6,250 km/s
4. I don't want 50% of the ship to be Engines, so lets pick a larger power modifier
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 1.25) = 40% tonnage as engines
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 1.5) = 33.33% tonnage as engines
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 2) = 25% tonnage as engines
5. So if I pick the 1.5x power modifier, that means I can build ships like the following
30,000 tons with 2 5,000 ton engines
15,000 with 1 5,000 ton engine
60,000 tons with 4 5,000 ton engines
And all of these designs will be able to go 6,250 km/s

[nuclearslurpee]

Example: I want a fleet that can go 6000 km/s with Ion tech.
1. Ion has a power rating of 12.5, so max engine speed is 12,500 km/s.
2. 6,000 / 12,500 = 0.48 AKA 48% of ship mass as engines
3. That's an awkward percentage, so I will round it to 50%, to get a fleet speed of 6,250 km/s
4. I don't want 50% of the ship to be Engines, so lets pick a larger power modifier
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 1.25) = 40% tonnage as engines
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 1.5) = 33.33% tonnage as engines
> 6,250 / (12,500 X 2) = 25% tonnage as engines
5. So if I pick the 1.5x power modifier, that means I can build ships like the following
30,000 tons with 2 5,000 ton engines
15,000 with 1 5,000 ton engine
60,000 tons with 4 5,000 ton engines
And all of these designs will be able to go 6,250 km/s

You do need to be careful here, as you can easily end up with a ship design that is extremely inefficient due to excessive fuel consumption (which carriers tend to hide behind the extra fuel they load for their fighter complements). It can be mathematically proven that, for a designed range and speed, a 3:1 ratio of engine to fuel mass gives the lowest combined engine+fuel tonnage to achieve that range and speed. You can go heavier on the engines to conserve fuel and reduce build costs, but if you overboost too much you can end up with excess fuel which is the worst of both worlds - tonnage increases, fuel consumption increases, and build cost increases, there is no good side in this case. In this case, the 1.50x boost modifier will come out pretty close to that 3:1 ratio depending on what range you want, but at 5.5 million liters of fuel per 60,000-ton carrier I'm not sure how sustainable that would be for a fleet. If you used 2.0x boost then you would just be hurting yourself, though. Point is - you need to consider more than just the engine tonnage in your designs, the fuel mass is also important as are considerations like the build and maintenance costs (slower carriers = cheaper carriers = more carriers).

I would note that for carriers especially, speed is not critical as long as you have enough of it to comfortably disengage from most encounters, even if the enemy has a modest speed advantage over your fleet you have a hundreds of millions of km head start if you must retreat, which is often enough to fall back through a jump point which can be defended against counterattack. Therefore it can be a better strategy to build slower carriers that can bring larger strike wings and/or can be built more cheaply to mass more carriers in a single fleet. This way you may not need to retreat in so many cases if your larger bombing force can obliterate the opposition.

By the way, when I said that getting the engines right takes trial and error, this is because if you start with a designed strike wing, you don't know the final size of the carrier automatically. If I need 18,000 tons of hangar bays and 6,000 tons of magazines (making up numbers here), then I don't know if my final carrier size will be 60,000 tons, 65,000 tons, 70,000 tons, etc. until after making a draft design. With experience in eyeballing tonnages you can get a good first estimate but some final tweaking is usually needed as you tune the fuel, engineering, etc. loadouts to get the desired size, speed, range, etc.

[Steve Walmsley]

Just to re-iterate the above post, the tactically-best design is not the same as the strategically-best design. Don't think about fighting one battle and design a carrier for that. You need to consider your fleet composition, build cost, maintenance cost, likely overall fuel consumption vs production, probable refits, etc. over the life of the design. Ideally, you want the most cost-effective design over a long period.

Having said all that, sometimes its more fun to ignore any thoughts of an optimal design and just build according to a given role-play theme. For example, build a slow-moving, armoured, armed carrier and call it a Battlestar or a Star Destroyer.

[AlStar]

If I've got an army unit with a bunch of noncombat units, does my HQ unit need to take them into account?

The reason I ask is for my construction units, which are 100 non-combat construction vehicles, guarded by 30 infantry, a 250 ton HQ, and a supply unit (because that's what fits into my transport.)

If the HQ only needs to direct the troops, then we're good. If the game's also counting the 31,800 tons of construction vehicles... not so much.

Would I be better off splitting the troops, HQ, and supplies into their own separate little squad (even though that would make them much more annoying to transport around)?

[nuclearslurpee]

If I've got an army unit with a bunch of noncombat units, does my HQ unit need to take them into account?

Yes. The total size of a formation relative to the HQ capability is what determines any malus to commander skills. Given that commander skills can include construction, geosurvey, etc. it would also be a little silly for non-combat elements to be excluded. If you have a formation of 25,000 tons of construction vehicles, you want an HQ to command them so a commander can give them their Construction bonus, therefore you need a HQ capable of commanding those 25,000 tons.

Would I be better off splitting the troops, HQ, and supplies into their own separate little squad (even though that would make them much more annoying to transport around)?

No, keeping them in a single formation is fine. You will need a bigger HQ though so probably you'll need to take out a construction unit or two to make enough room, or just dispense with the guard units since they won't accomplish anything in practical terms anyways.

[Garfunkel]

Dude!

Post that question in the Spoiler forum too.

[themousemaster]

Dude!...

its gone