Author Topic: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR (Read 27236 times)

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #30 on:** September 26, 2019, 01:44:58 PM »

August 24, Year 61

TG 1.1 Ranger heading home

I decided to use older ASM-41s against Echo 4. Newer missiles are more precious.

1st salvo of VA-51... failed to connect with the target. Being launched from 45m km away, it ran out of fuel before reaching the enemy. 50m km max range + target moves in the opposite direction = wasted missile salvo. Ughh....

Next salvo destroyed two ships immediately. Successful re-targeting allowed ASMs to blow up a third vessel.

Third and the last salvo... Mmm... Well, let's say it went better than expected. Remaining 4 ships of Echo 4 group had only 1 layer of armor and no AMM capability. I came up with an idea to spread the damage around (8 missiles per target), to be able to finish any remaining stragglers with R-fighters. Third salvo destroyed two ships and heavily damaged the last two. Both survivors stopped emitting active sensors and slowed down to 700-1000 km/s. VF-51 closed in and finished them off quickly and efficiently.

After that, CVL Ranger and its escorts set course to JP, heading home.

Results of TG 1.1 raid: 12 enemy ships destroyed (9600t each), 298 POWs captured. No friendly casualties.

I got a bit of useful intel out of this sortie. HIP 21932 must have some sort of colony that civilians travel to. I'm yet to find it though. Overall, I'm not sure if this whole conflict is worth anything to me other than combat experience and entertainment. Maybe I should allow diplomats to try and smooth it all out....

Garfunkel · « **Reply #31 on:** October 01, 2019, 11:53:58 AM »

Nice going.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #32 on:** October 05, 2019, 03:22:25 PM »

As I was busy, I had time to think...

Political statements

United Systems recognizes MAJ's right to defend its borders and colonies, even in such an uncivilized way.
United Systems should not resort to any sorts of blockages against neutral or friendly nations, even if this policy is enacted and enforced unilaterally.
Military options, both offensive and defensive, should only be used against nations/entities that show hostile intent or act aggressively against United Systems, its allies or neutral third parties, as deemed necessary, according to the scale of the threat.
United Systems will cease offensive acts in MAJ space and will assume defensive posture to allow diplomats resolve the conflict.
United Systems reserves the right to monitor activities in MAJ space and around MAJ borders in a civilized manner, even under threat of violence, to ensure safety of its citizens.
United Systems would not, under any circumstances, seek to harm civilian population and shipping of MAJ or any other nation/entity and will make its best effort to identify them as such.

Therefore:

United Systems diplomats should seek making peace with MAJ.
As long as the relations between our nations remains hostile, USN should back away from MAJ's borders and not attack any ships unless fired upon (or shown intent to do so), to allow peaceful resolution of the conflict, but still continue monitoring the activities on the border to prevent any offensive action that can be undertaken by MAJ.
"The red line" of the defensive blockade should be moved away from MAJ's borders as far as USN would consider comfortable while ensuring safety of United Systems ships and colonies.
If this conflict can be resolved peacefully, trade treaties between nations (and construction of jump gate networks) will be considered.

ps: If only I could trade minerals....

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #33 on:** October 13, 2019, 01:50:34 PM »

June 17, Year 62

Not much to write about. Enterprise received its last batch of new generation fighters and began TF training. However, due to mineral shortage none of the 4th Gen warships are complete yet. All stuck between 49-79% completion. Gallicite supply starts growing into positive numbers, but it's gonna take years for the ships to finish construction, let alone building a decent mineral reserve.

In other news, 2nd Grav Survey Squadron found a new entry into MAJ system HIP 21932 (the one I recently visited with CVL Ranger). Fortunately, the jump point leads into the same system I came from, so it changes little in strategic sense. Well, not exactly... It can be used for a quick assault on HIP 21932 planetary system, because it comes out @ 182m km away from HIP 21932's sun. I'll keep looking for other ways MAJ can get into Union space, but it's now trickier due to unfortunate demise of the entire 1st Grav Survey Squadron.

Oh, also, a great thing happened. First civilian Union colony outside of Sol was established on Bernards Star A-III. Total mineral count there is 357 mil, but only Duranium and Boronide are decently accessible (1 and 0.4 acc respectively). I love civilian colonies! I will gladly keep paying civilians to mine. Capitalism at its finest.

ADDED:

Right... I conveniently forgot to report you that I accidentally spaced 30 MAJ POWs, while trying to relocate their hibernation capsules. It is totally not a war crime. Well, I do have ample supply of study material for autopsies now...

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #34 on:** November 06, 2019, 01:36:01 PM »

August 27, Year 64

Gallicite is at 2000 units on Earth, and slowly growing. Uridium and Tritanium are at 15 and 30 thousand respectively, and doing somewhat better. All the construction of new generation of ships was stopped and still never continued due to this shortage. There's not that much I can do about it for a while.

CV Enterprise stopped training its fighter group and is pretty much ready to sortie out at moment's notice.

Our spies have stolen two MAJ ship blueprints. Both ship classes I already encountered. Tromp (now called Gathis) was a Jump Destroyer Escort, of which I destroyed 3 ships. Beastjuggler (Milamber now) is indeed a civilian freighter.

Gathis looks really underwhelming.

Off-Topic: show

Current diplo rating with MAJ on my side: -716. There's been no contacts with them. They still don't know where the Earth is. And that's good.

misanthropope · « **Reply #35 on:** November 07, 2019, 10:19:45 AM »

at the speeds you've specced, you can shave about 25% off your gallicite expenditure (at the same aggregate "mission tonnage") by going with commercial engines. there are lots of secondary trade-offs, though i regard them as on balance favoring low-power engines.

maybe i've eyeballed your ships wrong (not so much time for aurora these days) but i think they're 25% (by volume) made of 1.0 power engines?

for sheer gallicite minimization (ignoring all the secondary effects) your optimal power ratio is a nice simple 2F, where F is (speed spec)/(engine tech "nominal" speed); 5000 kkps using internal fusion (nominal speed = 20000 kkps) gets you a target power of .5. you can improve with a little twiddling but i personally don't find the extra tinkering to be fun or very profitable, so "50% of weight= engine DONE". nb my formula breaks down if F isn't below .4 or so; for fast but not extravagantly fast ships usually there is another local max around mult 1.25.

gallicite crunch is just about the easiest crisis to inflict on yourself, and they LINGER, are existential threats, and worst of all are *boring* because you just sit there for years unable to build your ships (ahem). after about the second time a campaign died that way i got really obsessive about gallicite as the end-all be-all of fleet management.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #36 on:** November 07, 2019, 11:50:03 AM »

Uhm, yeah, I'm going to need to watch out for mineral spending better now. Thank you for optimization the tips.

The biggest problem right now for me is figuring out the mineral balance for all the sources. The way Aurora tracks and displays minerals separately for each colony makes me simply ignore it for the most part and keep an eye on the overall balance on Earth, where the maintenance bases and shipyards are. Well, this is how I got into this situation really. And that's considering that I only have a few mining colonies, compared to what I've seen others manage...

Another thing to think about is what ships I keep in active fleet. They also require minerals to maintain, and that may not be the most cost effective things due to change in technologies.

Actually, I find the tech jumps to be so significant between the tech levels that all the older stuff becomes obsolete every 5-10 years. Obviously, the further I advance the slower it gets, but still, the difference between tech levels is just too big to ignore it.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #37 on:** November 15, 2019, 01:41:06 PM »

May 27, Year 65

As time goes by and new tech gets researched, ships under construction that were put on hold get outdated. Moreover, the cost of new engines makes me think if I should go with some sort of standard fleet speed for all my ships and not go any further. Like, 3300? Something akin to 33 knots RL standard.

I seem to be far beyond both GUN and MAJ in terms of research. But they have so many ships that I cannot afford to counter. They seem to be producing them endlessly (and why wouldn't they, if they don't have to deal with maintenance and fuel). So making more ships that are good enough to counter possible enemy seems like a smart move.

At the same time, I don't feel like it's fair in the first place. I can barely sustain a small Navy. NPRs have hundreds of ships. Ugh..

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #38 on:** January 06, 2020, 08:28:17 AM »

August 17, Year 70

Kinda big news. The war with MAJ is over. It's been nine years since I took all USN warships away from the front-line and allowed the diplomats to slowly build up our relationships with Commonwealth of Majlesi, and the long awaited official letter confirming the cessation of hostilities just came in.

I think it's great that MAJ did not find out where my colonies are, which allowed the cease fire to take effect. USN, however advanced tech it has, is still VERY small compared to MAJ numbers. And our mineral shortage crisis did not help either. It is also good that I now know that having small amount of super duper ships may not be the smartest way of building a navy. Future ship designs should be more cost effective.

At this point I have met both starting NPRs that are present in this Campaign. I do not plan to have war with any of them in the future. Actually, I'd rather build up Jump Gates between us to allow proper trading commence.

Precursors & Star Swarm are enabled, however. Of 150 star systems in the Campaign, I found only 62, exploring just 46. So in the future I may either keep exploring to try and find some more SPOILERs. Or try and spawn another NPR. Not sure which is better. Or both?

ps: Ha-ha! My intelligence services still work behind the lines. Here's a blueprint they've just revealed to me. A tiny little fighter. Cute. Haven't seen them around at all. Slow, yeah. But 1 reloadable launcher, really?

Off-Topic: show

pps: Ha-ha-ha! Even managed to steal MAJ's PDC plans! That's quite pathetic.

Off-Topic: show

Garfunkel · « **Reply #39 on:** January 06, 2020, 10:15:00 AM »

Are you using Real Stars? If you are, then the number of systems doesn't matter as Real Stars overrides it. Also, if your NPR spawn chance is higher than 0%, you can't be sure that you've met the initial NPRs unless you're using Designer Mode to monitor the DB.

Don't think I've ever seen someone achieve a diplomatic peace like you've done here so that's one for the records

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #40 on:** January 06, 2020, 11:30:40 AM »

Quote from: Garfunkel on January 06, 2020, 10:15:00 AM

Are you using Real Stars? If you are, then the number of systems doesn't matter as Real Stars overrides it. Also, if your NPR spawn chance is higher than 0%, you can't be sure that you've met the initial NPRs unless you're using Designer Mode to monitor the DB.

Don't think I've ever seen someone achieve a diplomatic peace like you've done here so that's one for the records

Yeah, I used Real Stars, I guess. And 0% NPR spawn. So there won't be any new ones unless I change the settings again or spawn a new NPR. You can do that, can't you?

My intel boys are hitting it hard. Another blueprint sent to me. And it's that damn 0cm laser bug again. Ugh.. I dunno, maybe I should just wait till the C# Aurora...

Off-Topic: show

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #41 on:** March 03, 2020, 01:03:17 PM »

May, Y73

As C Sharp hype intensifies, I keep thinking about optimizing my fleet builds. I was hoping I could get away with making less expensive engines by making them less fuel efficient. But unfortunately, they cost as much as they produce power, unless the power modifier goes below x1.0, which makes the engines even heavier than I used before. And that's not acceptable to me, I want the engines to be of no more than 20% of the ship's mass.

Also, there's a problem of the unknown enemy. Defending against an ordinary NPR is one thing, my current neighbors have warships with 1-2k km/s speeds. The Nails (spoilers) I've encountered were much faster. Unlike in real life, there's no water resistance to keep most big warships at 30-33 knot practical limit. So, there's always a chance I'll encounter some enemy that is faster than me.

The answer is better tactics. Screening High Value Units (like carriers) of the fleet with spaced layers of radar pickets is a way to get a warning earlier, allowing big ships to stay undetected for longer and thus have more chance to evade. That's a job for destroyers. The usual scout searches by smaller craft only reinforce situational awareness, and don't cure the problem completely.

Another part of the solution is to have some heavier ships within the formation that could be detached to keep the enemy busy while HVU retreats. That would be cruiser's job.

Overall, I estimate needing 8-12 destroyers and 2-3 cruisers per Carrier Group. As my first carrier is rated for 3200 km/s speed, I think I'll stick with ~3300 km/s speed for a fleet standard for a while. Kinda similar to the real ocean navy's 33 knots. Destroyers will be faster though.

Here's a new generation destroyer I came up with. No name yet.

Off-Topic: show

It needs to fulfill the following duties:
- radar picket destroyer, going alone or in small groups with other destroyers to screen the formation of bigger ships, 20-100 m km away;
- escort that provides anti-missile, anti-fighter and anti-ship capability (in that order of priority);
- picking up life pods.

I've stopped using shields in favor of relying on active defenses instead. Level 4 armor and CIWS are very cheap and provide good bonus to survivability. 4 engines are cheap to maintain and also allow to take more hits and still be able to move. The cost in minerals is very good for capabilities present, and compared to my previous generation of ships (especially the last generation that was never actually built).

Also, I selected two planets, both within 3 jumps away from Sol, with great 0.9 deposits of Uridium and Gallicite. They'd require some auto mines, but should help with mineral shortage extensively. I should've done that long ago. I thought that mining very close and very big but lower accessibility deposits would be cheaper (because mines cover more deposits on a single planet). But this strategy obviously failed me somewhat.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #42 on:** March 04, 2020, 12:41:18 PM »

Here's the updated YDDG-73.

I got rid of thermal sensor (it was kinda pointless) and downgraded AMM capability to 2m km to save on minerals, but I made the missile FCS assignment much more straightforward and permanent: 2x AMM FCS per 2x4 size 1 launchers and 1x general purpose ASM FCS for 8 size 6 tubes to target 250t sized targets up to 30m km and everything bigger up to 100m km plus. Not sure about the 200t target range, though, I guess it should be decent as well.

Earlier I used the setup where AMM-rated FCS had to be reassigned to ASM launchers to be able to engage small targets. Now, general purpose ASM FCS deals with everything from 200t size fighter to full size enemy warships.

I started looking into cruiser designs, but got stuck on specifics. With layered screening tactics, do I actually need to have cruisers? Can I get by using multiple destroyers instead? Well, I already did, cuz there are only destroyers and carriers in my current fleet. Do I need gunnery-heavy medium sized warships? I feel like sending ships into gun range would potentially cost me more in minerals compared to supplying them with more missiles. If you need a ship to save HVU from being overrun by a faster and heavier force, a couple of gun armed cruisers are not likely to make much difference, probably.

Having a ship with better radars/FCS and weapons that sits near HVU seems like a waste, because the outer circle of screening vessels will most likely be targeted first and would negate the performance of more far reaching radar/FCS (which also should be even less effective in C Sharp Aurora with new active sensor model where the effectiveness goes down with range). On the other hand, it could permit stationing radar picket ships further out for a smaller cost in number of escorting ships. That could be an advantage.

Hmm....

Off-Topic: show

Garfunkel · « **Reply #43 on:** March 04, 2020, 01:24:47 PM »

When things are teetering on the edge, that single cruiser might make all the difference. Plenty of such cases in the AARs over here.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #44 on:** March 10, 2020, 04:46:58 AM »

Here are the production blueprints. No new generation of missiles or fighters yet though. Budgetary constraints.

Kinkaid class DDG

Off-Topic: show

California class CG

Off-Topic: show

Okinawa class APA

Off-Topic: show

Only Okinawa class attack transports are currently being built. Why? It is finally time to paid a visit to Nails. I'd rather stockpile the minerals for a bit.

January 14, Y74

Four old DDGs of Mahan class were converted to fast transports (APD). Each lost four of its SM6 launchers, but gained new Dual Gauss Canon turret and FCS for Orbital Fire Support. Each APD can carry and combat drop a Marine Company.

Four Marine Companies of 1st Marine Raider Battalion were trained. As soon as Mahan APDs were ready, 1st Marine Raider Bn have made a series of thirty eight combat drops, simulated, and one actual combat drop on Luna.

Task Force Ranger was reformed into an ad hoc Amphibious Force Recon force:

1x CVL Ranger (5 fighters, 8 strike fighters, 4 scouts, 1 rescue shuttle)
6x DDG
4x APD (4x Marine Companies)
2x AO
1x AKE

Their task:
- travel to NIN 3517 system;
- scan it for anything we might have missed previously;
- land Marines where Nails are present;
- asses enemy strength.

Author Topic: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR (Read 27236 times)

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

Garfunkel

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

misanthropope

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

Garfunkel

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

Garfunkel

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

Re: L0ckAndL0ad's United Systems AAR