Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stormtrooper on April 04, 2021, 02:06:29 PM
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So... Aurora has 11 types of resources (plus fuel, msp and population), right?... Well... Except from my personal experience there's only one that matters. Gallicite. As you start building warfleets, you need a lot of ships with a lot of good engines, and each engine consumes a lot of gallicite, especially at higher tech. As if this wasn't bad enough, gallicite is also very important resource in missile production, and in case you somehow still had a tiny bit left after all this expenses, brace yourself, maintenance supplies incoming.
I'm fine with not every resource being equally important as having to care about all 11 of them all the time would be tiring, but I feel like the game currently is so damn heavily skewed towards gallicite and I can't stop wondering about it.
You can say that another very important resources that are consumed a lot are duranium and corundium, and that is technically right, but duranium and corundium have far better spawnrate and accessibility, so while you consume a lot, you also can get a lot easily, meanwhile gallicite has same spawnrates as the rest of minerals it seems.
After doing nothing but looking for more sources of gallicite and spamming more mines at the ones already discovered, with great sadness I turned maintenance off, but even then I was still looking pretty much exclusively at gallicite sources when colonising stuff.
I kinda don't know what I want to achieve with this post, I feel like the most interesting thing for me would be to just as you how are you all doing with it. Do you also keep looking at nothing but gallicite once you're past initial crisis that might happen depending on your homeworld minerals roll? Do you play with maintenance on or off and how do you manage having to build ships, maintain ships and on top of that build all the missiles those of you who claim "missiles op" probably need to feed mostly missile-based fleets?
I'm just wondering if it's me doing something wrong, me being unlucky with my current galaxy somehow or is it really just "gallicite is the only mineral in game"?
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One of the largest sinks for Gallicite is missile engines. Single missiles might be cheap, but thousands of them can easily put a dent in your reserves. In the last games I played, I dit not build any missiles and Gallicite has not been a problem ever. I ran into a Corrundium, Neutronium and worker problem later, which stopped my buildup of mines and construction factories at some point. 25% growth of both is not sustainable for more than 50 years.
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You play a very high-tech game, and (part of) the problem is that Gallicite requirements are proportional to engine power. This makes Gallicite more important as one advances along the tech tree, as advances in engine tech allow you to cram more and more Gallicite (= engine power) in the same amount of ship. The same may also be true for other components, but it's vey noticable with engines.
A Nuclear Pulse warship that goes 3k km/s will always require exactly half the Gallicite of a Magneto-Plasma warship of the same size and engine proportions that goes 6k km/s.
It is my proposal to make the Gallicite cost of engines not directly proportional to engine power. One could make them directly proportional to component size, but then Gallicite costs would not rise between ship generations. Currently each engine tech gives around 25% more power and therefore raises costs by 25%, we could decouple Gallicite costs from engine power and make them dependent on component size instead and add a 10% premium for each engine generation instead.
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because peacetime tends to go on for decades, the drag you get from duranium mismanagement adds up to a major crisis by the time action rolls around. but the other nine are pretty redundant.
speaking to kilo's point: with default research speed, keeping a fleet board-meta-fast is extravagant in gallicite, and lots of missile scows work pretty well. with low research speeds and consequently not needing to replace engines every couple years going all-beam can be highly gallicite efficient.
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I actually like the current scaling of gallicite, because it provides a way to shift costs to other minerals. If your fleet speed is 5000 km/s and you're short on gallicite, you could design your next generation of ships with a fleet speed of 3500 km/s, use the rest of the tonnage on other stuff like armor or guns, and you'll save on the gallicite. Or invest more heavily in defense platforms/stations that can be towed into place. Currently the "meta"/perceived best designs in Aurora are pretty engine/speed focused, so obviously gallicite tends to be a crunch point, especially when it comes to rapid military expansion.
I usually run into shortages of three minerals: Gallicite, as above, Corundium for mines, and Duranium for everything. Corundium can be somewhat worked around similar to gallicite - it's also used in energy weapons, so I tend to go railguns and gauss instead of lasers/other energy weapons, which lets me divert almost all my Corundium to building mines. Duranium, though, there's really no alternatives to duranium and it can't be worked around, which makes a duranium crunch much less fun.
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One of the largest sinks for Gallicite is missile engines. Single missiles might be cheap, but thousands of them can easily put a dent in your reserves. In the last games I played, I dit not build any missiles and Gallicite has not been a problem ever. I ran into a Corrundium, Neutronium and worker problem later, which stopped my buildup of mines and construction factories at some point. 25% growth of both is not sustainable for more than 50 years.
Actually you pretty much confirmed my experience which is why missile ships play a role of occassional support only in my case. But if this is how things look like, then why the hell is everyone constantly talking how "op" missiles are if they require such huuuuuge resource investment?
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You play a very high-tech game, and (part of) the problem is that Gallicite requirements are proportional to engine power. This makes Gallicite more important as one advances along the tech tree, as advances in engine tech allow you to cram more and more Gallicite (= engine power) in the same amount of ship. The same may also be true for other components, but it's vey noticable with engines.
A Nuclear Pulse warship that goes 3k km/s will always require exactly half the Gallicite of a Magneto-Plasma warship of the same size and engine proportions that goes 6k km/s.
It is my proposal to make the Gallicite cost of engines not directly proportional to engine power. One could make them directly proportional to component size, but then Gallicite costs would not rise between ship generations. Currently each engine tech gives around 25% more power and therefore raises costs by 25%, we could decouple Gallicite costs from engine power and make them dependent on component size instead and add a 10% premium for each engine generation instead.
How do you know I play high-tech game? :D I started conventional, I swear! :o
But yeah, I also noticed gallicite costs grow with propulsion tech, but gallicite problem existed for me ever since I designed my first combat ship and it's been foreshadowing my entire campaign, suddenly reminding about itself every once in a while, even when I thought I had a lot of it.
Sure, at lower levels I needed less of it because cheaper engines, but also had lower mining capabilities so I was getting less of it - different scale, but same old problem...
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all the missiles those of you who claim "missiles op" probably need to feed mostly missile-based fleets?
I like that you point this out and I think it's important to consider that heavy gallicite costs is perhaps a very import aspect of balancing missiles.
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With low research speeds and consequently not needing to replace engines every couple years going all-beam can be highly gallicite efficient.
Honestly haven't thought about low research playing a role here before, but given how many players love those 20% for whatever reason, then how the hell can they say "missiles op", when in their cases good beam fleet is even cheaper? I'm even more confused than I was before about this.
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all the missiles those of you who claim "missiles op" probably need to feed mostly missile-based fleets?
I like that you point this out and I think it's important to consider that heavy gallicite costs is perhaps a very import aspect of balancing missiles.
Yeah, but what am I missing here with seemingly every veteran player claiming "missiles op"? What do they know that I don't that makes them say so while for me basing main bulk of firepower on missiles would get me killed quickly due to gallicite costs?
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With low research speeds and consequently not needing to replace engines every couple years going all-beam can be highly gallicite efficient.
Honestly haven't thought about low research playing a role here before, but given how many players love those 20% for whatever reason, then how the hell can they say "missiles op", when in their cases good beam fleet is even cheaper? I'm even more confused than I was before about this.
I'm in the "missiles OP" camp because I usually play high tech games. Missile damage and in particular hit rate against faster and better PD defended targets really goes up later on, because of this you end up not needing the 1000s of missiles which really reduces the amount of gallicite being used. People also seem to be ignoring the fact that the engines on missile ships are usually cheaper since they don't really need to be boosted (exception being missile fighter-bombers). In my experience the gallicite cost skyrockets if you rely on AMMs more and not on gauss for PD defense, since you will literally shoot 10s of thousands of really fast missiles as PD.
In the early game missile power seems to be quite limited, as your agility tech is low and even most of the missiles that get through PD will be misses. Also the armor penetration of early missiles against NPRs is terrible since a large warhead is going to compromise hit chance whereas in the late game you can downsize the overall warhead space and still do tons of damage.
However it isn't as bad as I make it sound through text, it's literally that missiles scale better than their equivalent defenses in a high-tech game. The reason why a lot of people say that missiles are OP is because of the offensive potential that spoiler/NPR AMMs have which outlast fleet reserves and shut down any beam attack. A spoiler can literally have 100s of thousands of AMMs that they can fire in salvos that can easily reach multiple 100s in size. Of course there are ways to defeat this with shields or just tons of armor but it can frustrate people who don't like to over-specialize ships for RP reasons.
And I think thats the crux of the issue, sometimes people want to build specific ships that they want to use because aurora lets them but find that they get wrecked because of one specific thing that is supposed to be a defensive tool and get frustrated.
However max-tech missiles are absolute monsters that the AI can't really deal with, not even invaders (20-30 years active in a 100 year game and 200m diameter rift) can intercept them. One of the reasons is missile ECM-10, which completely nullifies PD in my experience. I have designed missiles that never get intercepted by the aforementioned spoiler. Combine that with good warhead tech and you'll consistently be overkilling enemy ships at ranges of 100-200m. This is further exasperated by the fact that any additional gallicite cost isn't a problem because if your at max tech, chances are you've got plenty resources in general so you'll find yourself obsoleting beam fleets unless your RPing.
I should also add that I have not yet encountered an NPR with more than ECCM-4 and have never encountered swarm.
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Well, it seems you focused mostly about end-end-game missiles, but I still can't wrap my head about them being "op" in general use cases.
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i mean, there is a tendency to view everything through the lens of pvp, even a game which supports pvp in only the most marginal way, and "missile OP" is in my view coming from that pvp perspective. equal-bp, equal-tech bring-a-battle kind of thing, you got missile fleets and you got mono-focused missile-soaking fleets. otoh, castle-defense scenarios with endless waves of bots favor sustain over alpha strike, and that's your situation.
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That'd explain something, but given the state of "pvp" in aurora it'd argue it can be misleading if someone says "missiles op" thinking about pvp, because that doesn't take into accounts factors not appearing in pvp, but appearing in regular playthrough.
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I agree with the general consensus that duranium, gallicite, and corundium are the minerals I have the most trouble with at various points in a campaign.
I do suspect, however, that a lot of players (myself included) tend to under-specialize their economies with respect to these minerals, because intuitively it's difficult to accept that mining an asteroid with 100,000 tons of 1.0 gallicite, for instance, is better for your economy than mining an asteroid with 100,000 tons each of 0.8 accessibility gallicite, uridium, tritanium, and boronide. The latter asteroid is more resources per mine, but if you're running a deficit of gallicite and a surplus of the other three that indicates that you don't need the other three, but you definitely need the gallicite. Unintuitively, when it comes to mining often less is more.
I for example tend to experience a crunch relatively early in a game because I am reluctant to move infrastructure away from Earth while it's still producing 5.0 or 6.0 of total mineral accessibility, even though duranium might be down to 0.6 and gallicite down to 0.5 while my stocks of the "other TNEs" are sky-high and don't need the help.
That said, for gallicite particularly I think there are more creative ways to solve the problem. If the main consumption of gallicite comes from engines, one approach is to not build engines - often it will be fine to refit a ship with older engine tech with new weapons, armor, etc. and it will still have sufficient speed to do its job (particularly if one plays mainly against NPRs which tend to have atrociously slow builds). One can also use lower-cost engines or even commercial engines for many warships, for example large missile battleships or carriers do not need to have high speed in a battle, while PD escorts or fighters may need more speed but are small enough not to be too expensive to put fast engines on. I think it is good that the game economy incentivized creative fleet design and forces players to make decision between an optimized fleet or an affordable fleet, this keeps things interesting as the game goes on.
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i mean, the ship discussion threads largely center around "combat power per unit mass", and by THAT metric missiles are pretty dang good. so yeah i really do think it comes down to badly calibrated objective functions.
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Obviously Corrundium is by far the most important mineral as that mineral means you get more of the other minerals... period... ;)
If you get problem with Gallicite then you have two issues... too fast or too much engines on your ships or a mining industry that is not developed enough. Choose the mining sites you need carefully and concentrate mining operation on sites with good quantities of the most important resources you need, whatever that is.
It is possible to know what you need in the future and then build your economy around it.
I also see allot if people that simply build too much too fast in terms of warships when it really is not needed, not all ships need to have great speed either, depends on their role.
One issue I think that many have is "strip mining", this then tend to give huge fluctuation in resource income and by extension produce construction problems and issues with supplies. If you try your best to slowly raise your mineral incomes and spread out mining operations on as many sites as possible you can secure a long term high volume of minerals mined. Start with securing a good source of Corrundium income and then on the other resources that you need.
Be well aware of the need for Gallicite when you research better engines, make sure the speed you use on your ships is really needed versus the enemies that you face. It sometimes is better with more ships but slower to save on Gallicite costs. It also means more space for weapons and defenses on your ships and/or less need of fuel if you use high powered engines as well.
make sure that your industry and logistical chain actually can support the type of fleet you want before you build it, also make sure the fleet you want also is actually needed, otherwise it is a waste of resources much better used elsewhere in your economy.
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When it comes to the missiles OP question you have to differentiate.
On a tactical level, they are extremely strong, especially when you fire them from box launchers or with a significant advantage in electronic warfare. Later in the game with hit chances close to 100% these weapons can be completely devastating and in some cases there is no way to defend yourself from them if you are behind.
On a strategic level missiles can be a problem. They require large numbers of workers, as they are relatively expensive and you need quite a few against ships at the similar tech level. For every four points of damage you have to invest one build point. Costs for engines, maneuverability and electronic warfare come as a bonus. These missiles become quite an investment later on in the game. Just look at the cost of your current ASM and think that 240 BP is a factory or an automated mine ;)
The next problem is logistics. You need depots and transports for the ammunition so that your fleet can be rearmed closer to the enemy. Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth, but without a logistics network in place your missile fleets will have to fly hundreds of billions of km to get fresh bullets. This will take them out of battle for months and burn tons of fuel.
A similar beam fleet will only need MSP. These are in universal demand and do not age and every ships with a cargo shuttle bay can resupply your fleet.
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Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth
Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.
Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.
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Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth
Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.
Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.
I'm honestly more of a fan of mixed or thematic fleets because doing nothing but missile swarms against everything is pretty bland imo and curtails most of the rest of the game, hence why I'm not part of the "missiles op" gang, because even if missiles are OP the AI of the NPRs / spoilers is nowhere near advanced enough to have to minmax in order to beat it. I think also as this discussion has shown, missiles aren't necessarily "op" because, if nothing else, they cost a ton of resources when they finally get to the level that they outclass beam weapons (a statement I think in itself is debatable).
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I find that with the extra tools (Marvin, Electrons) the management of minerals has become easier because you can forsee in a better way that you steer towards a mineral crisis and can react earlier to it. Other than that I mostly think it depends a lot upon your playstyle and Min/Max if, how, and when you run into mineral/fuel issues....
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It's always interesting to see this cycle of new players come to the forum, start learning the game, pose all the WHY!? questions, and eventually accept Aurora for what it is, only for the silence to be broken by the next one(s) ;D
Aurora is all about averages. Missiles generally beat beams on tactical level, though there are exceptions. Mineral generation is random so regardless of your playstyle, it is possible that you're starved of one/some minerals while showered with something else - then your playstyle can exacerbate that massively. So, in this campaign you're playing, Stormtrooper, Gallicite might be your biggest headache, but you're probably just unlucky with mineral generation. Next planet you survey might give you enough for a decade.
I also see allot if people that simply build too much too fast in terms of warships when it really is not needed
And not just warships but everything. Because Aurora doesn't have many limiters, it's easy to run head first into the crunches. For example, you build installations until you run out of population or you build loads of ships with massive tanks until you run out of fuel.
Anyways, even if decent in a single battle, on a strategic level missiles feel horrible to me, yet so many people still insist in going mainly with missiles. I guess how they manage to do that will forever be beyond me.
Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.
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Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.
The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.
Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.
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Well, in a single battle, missiles beat beams unless the beam fleet has been built to defeat missiles because they can dictate engagement range and fire with impunity until they run out of ammo. And the 'managing to do that forever' is the great equaliser - keeping your missile ships full with high-tech missiles is a real challenge, just the way Steve intended.
The problem is that beam fleets do not generally survive engagements with missile fleets; warhead strength exceeds armour and shield durability by a considerable margin and beam-based point-defence isn't particularly effective till high-tech. Keeping missile ships loaded with high-tech missiles is significantly cheaper than rebuilding a beam fleet every time it gets wrecked. Worse, a missile ship tends to be ~20% cheaper than a beam ship of the same tonnage, and this difference usually buys enough equal-tech missiles to mission-kill or outright destroy the latter.
Of course, none of this really applies when fighting NPRs since their ship designs are so horrifically bad that an oversized freighter hull with basic railguns strapped on would still win on a BP-basis.
Missile versus beam actually work just fine in terms of balance if you restrict box launchers and overall weapon coverage to more "realistic" proportions. There have been discussion on this concept before. Aurora allow us too much freedom in construction sometimes that is not realistic in terms of design space and proportion of systems and hulls pace.
I have found out that if you build the ships with a bit more "realistic" proportions then balance become allot better, this is mostly seen if you play multiple factions at the same time. It also reduce the effectiveness of how missiles works as well overall.
I have suggested that Aurora incorporate a bit more "realistic" ship design configurations with different types of hull areas for different systems to be placed at. If you want allot of box launcher then you have basically no armour (the compete for the same space) on the ship for example... and even then you are still relegated to the outer shell of the ship unless the ship is small enough to fit the launchers on a spinal position and have the ship built around the box launchers (as in a fighter or sometimes in a FAC, depending on launcher size).
Anyway, this is sort of off topic... but it does make missiles and beam allot more balanced. You should not min/max Aurora and instead introduce restrictions so the game become more self balancing. The odd crazy build can be fun now and then but don't go all crazy. I'm not telling anyone how to have fun... I'm just giving a strong suggestion... ;)
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Your main manufacturing hub will always be Earth
Whoah, slow down there... You'd be surprised if you saw my playthrough.
I would agree, you should never focus industry on any one place... you should make sure that minerals are the thing you move the most eventually unless it is a new colony. Most well established colonies should have industry too support themselves so all you have to move in space are minerals. Minerals take up such a small space in comparison to the final product. You will save both minerals, population productivity and fuel this way over time.
Thing you can focus heavily on at Earth would be population growth, Wealth and Research... I would usually offload ship construction for Luna. Earth only retain enough industry to support its own population growth and some extra.
Anything that is a physical thing you should spread out construction off as much as possible, the more population you have on a colony the more self sufficient you should make whatever items they need... so this is anything from facilities, troops, supply, fuel, missiles, fighters etc..
My colonization plan are usually to make any colony self sufficient in terms of industry by the time they hit around 100m people... depends slightly on how mineral rich that colony is. By the time a colony hit about 300m people I want them to be completely self sufficient on pretty much all needed production long term.
Of course you still have some colonies being more concentrated on some things than other, but for me that comes after they are self sufficient. Smaller colonies often are very focused on one or two things. There also are the possibility to have one large production center per system. If distances to colonies are small enough then using freight to move facilities are not too expensive or time consuming.
Cargo ship who transport facilities should mainly be relegated to Auto mines for none colonized worlds and to kick-start new colonies. Your core colonies should only need mineral transportation to do its work, it will save you allot of resources (even when you factor in governor bonuses for specialization).
The most important thing is to make sure you have a balanced income which can sometimes be hard in this game.
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Resource constraints are a constant with Aurora. Yes, Gallicite can be a killer, but as several folks pointed out, its all about scale.
I dont use missiles early on, except in very limited numbers. My main fleet is railgun based at start, with some missile destroyers. The issue early is that missiles are A) Not great early, and B) require a fair amount of fleet train/colony build out to support. Early on, I dont think its worth the investment vs. getting colonies and industry established. Railguns do double duty (offensive/defensive) early on, and are cheaper to build and maintain.
Especially early tech, I just dont think missiles are worth the investment. I would rather put the investment into engines. Once I get to Ion tech, I start building out the infrastructure to support missile combatants.
Early on, the mineral squeeze for me is Corrundium and the ever present Duranium. I tend to place my early colonies based on mineral richness and habitability, then work to get them built up for local mining and production.
Missiles are just too much of an investment early, for poor return. I think they are a better mid to late game weapon, but I do use them in a secondary role early.
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One of the largest sinks for Gallicite is missile engines. Single missiles might be cheap, but thousands of them can easily put a dent in your reserves. In the last games I played, I dit not build any missiles and Gallicite has not been a problem ever. I ran into a Corrundium, Neutronium and worker problem later, which stopped my buildup of mines and construction factories at some point. 25% growth of both is not sustainable for more than 50 years.
Actually you pretty much confirmed my experience which is why missile ships play a role of occassional support only in my case. But if this is how things look like, then why the hell is everyone constantly talking how "op" missiles are if they require such huuuuuge resource investment?
Because they've never watched three years of missile production get eaten in about 20 minutes by a very big, angry ball of railgun fighters.
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For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.
I wonder if it would make sense to have engines require less Gallicite, but require other materials, Mercassium and Boronide possibly. I mean if you think about it, engines are complicated and should require a slew of resources.
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For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.
Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
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For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.
Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
Really? I thought there was a bonus to going under 100% to Gallicite? Must just be misremembering. I haven't fired up the game for a few months while waiting for 1.13. :P
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Because they've never watched three years of missile production get eaten in about 20 minutes by a very big, angry ball of railgun fighters.
Yes, because constructing a ball of railgun fighters that big would require twenty years' worth of gallicite production! A 10cm railgun is 150dT - add in the reactors and fire controls, and a useful point-defence railgun fighter is going to displace at least 400dT, more likely 500dT. A big size-six missile will only displace 15dT, in contrast. Let's take 450dT and assume the fighter has a maximum speed one-third that of the missile, and neglecting range penalties and officer bonuses, a single fighter will shoot down 4/3 missiles, on average - the gallicite cost to shoot down one missile per 5s increment using these railgun fighters is 3/4 * 450dt/15dt/3 = 7.5 times the cost of a single missile! To break even, you'd need to shoot down a total of eight missiles per railgun fighter over their lifetime, which is only ever happening if the enemy is nice enough to use full-size launchers. A railgun fighter might take down two equal-tech missiles per fighter per increment on a good day, which is pretty trash considering that a single size-six box launcher is 45dT and packing enough on an equal-tonnage missile fighter to overwhelm its point-defence is utterly trivial. It'll cost the enemy perhaps half the cost of your fighters in ordnance to destroy them, which is still quite bad in a war of attrition.
The logistics problems that most people usually associate with missile fleets apply equally to beam fleets too. Beam ships are strictly superior to missiles only when they can achieve a perfect victory without taking losses, which is very very unlikely unless you're at a substantial tech advantage. Refilling the magazines of a fleet is significantly cheaper than needing to outright replace 20-30% of the fleet after each engagement, especially considering the loss of experienced crew. Plus, beam ships need to be faster so they're going to need more gallicite anyway, and they're usually a bigger burden on fuel and MSP. Worse, they pretty much need to be replaced every engine generation, unlike missile ships, which have no issues with using obsolete engines or shooting obsolete missiles.
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For better or worse, this is spot on. Gallicite and to a extent, Corundium, are what I'm always prospecting for and while Corundium may drop off a bit, Gallicite is always a problem. If you go beam ships only it is far less of a issue, but still a constant problem. I tend to make larger engines but at 90% power to save Gallicite.
Larger engines don't actually help with Gallicite, just with fuel efficiency.
Really? I thought there was a bonus to going under 100% to Gallicite? Must just be misremembering. I haven't fired up the game for a few months while waiting for 1.13. :P
Ah, that there is, but that's the fuel consumption modifier. Different knob to turn :D
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It is possible to know what you need in the future and then build your economy around it.
I think this is key. As I have progressed in the game, each iteration has taught something different about what to keep an eye on. I had one game with a severe gallicite crunch and ever since, I have watched my gallicite levels very closely, even before I need it to massproduce warships. In my latest save I was instead close to getting a corundium crisis, since I hadn't really expanded my mining operations to those levels in previous games.
Of course luck plays a role in which minerals you have access to at various accessibilities, but knowing what to plan ahead for, means that you can prevent the disaster by expanding accordingly.
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The logistics problems that most people usually associate with missile fleets apply equally to beam fleets too. Beam ships are strictly superior to missiles only when they can achieve a perfect victory without taking losses, which is very very unlikely unless you're at a substantial tech advantage. Refilling the magazines of a fleet is significantly cheaper than needing to outright replace 20-30% of the fleet after each engagement, especially considering the loss of experienced crew. Plus, beam ships need to be faster so they're going to need more gallicite anyway, and they're usually a bigger burden on fuel and MSP. Worse, they pretty much need to be replaced every engine generation, unlike missile ships, which have no issues with using obsolete engines or shooting obsolete missiles.
I agree, sort of. The thing is, even if your running pure missile fleets, you have some other classes present for AM duties, or you have really big expensive ships. Missiles eat lots of mass on ships with launchers and magazines, add anything else and you get very expensive (and big) ships. Even if thats AMM boats.
So, if your talking about refit/replacement, I have yet to have an equal fight were I didnt take damage/casualties. Now, unequal fights, sure. I have had missile fleets walk away scot-free after barfing a literal wall of missiles at an enemy and obliterating them before they got in range. Fun when it happens. I have also creamed enemy fleets with fighter strikes they couldnt detect. Also fun when it works.The majority of the time though, (assuming your not gaming the system) your going to have damage no matter the fleet composition. So your going to being investing in replacements, no matter what.
Where there is some trade off is that obsolete beams are useful longer, at least IMO. If you have a beam ship, they are still of some use even as obsolete platforms. Missiles are a lot harder, as you get more than a generation back, or worse, your hit rate effectiveness drop and the enemy counter outpace them. So, if you invest in upgrading engines and fire controls, while expensive, is still cheaper than building a net new ship, most of the time. Obviously at some point it is counter productive to upgrade and its better to scrap and recover minerals. Those beam ships arent great for front line service, but make decent pickets and patrol vessels. Thats as true in Aurora as it is in the real world. There are still WW2 vintage vessels in active service as patrol craft including minesweepers, corvettes, and tank landing craft.
Fun fact, the Russian Navy has the longest continuously serving naval vessel. Originally commissioned in 1915 (World War 1!) as the salvage ship Volkov, the ship was renamed after the Revolution as the Kommuna. She is still in service as a sub tender today.
So, those (smaller) obsolete beam ships can get shuffled off as patrol craft and military strength to backwater systems. More importantly, they dont need a fleet train to support them or dedicated ammo depots, just maint facilities.
I do tend to disagree with missile replenishment being cheaper all the time. I have absolutely run into issues with minerals in sustained wars due to the missile replenishment eating me alive. This is actually one of the reasons I dont use box launchers as primary missile systems. They are Godawful expensive to feed, and they do tend to either A) Overkill the hell out of stuff, wasting missiles or B) Shoot their bolt and have to run away from the battle. There is also they annoying tendency for box launchers to blow up when struck, and I have had that happen enough to find them not worth it on bigger ships, especially early game. I use them all the time on fighters and small craft though.
In particular, AMM ships EAT missiles by the fistful. I have had them consistently be one of the biggest replenishment issues. That was one thing that has caught me a couple of times.
Tactically, I agree with your assessment. Missile boats are more efficient cost wise. Strategically, they are more expensive in sustainment, infrastructure support, and logistics chain. Particularly the longer the shooting war goes, beams just tend to be a better investment over longer periods.