Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[nuclearslurpee]

Maybe it can me done in the next version? Since we make whole templates and it is built in bulk, then i think it would be possible to move a entire battalion of light marines?

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Another thought is, can a transport ship just transfers troops in a contested planet or does it need to have drop abilities?
And if so, does it need to actually land on the planet?

Drop capability is optional, normal troop transport modules work fine if you have cargo shuttle bays to unload with, but drop capability is preferred for a contested landing as otherwise you might land a part of your army and they get annihilated before the rest unload. Also, drop capability is crucial if you are conducting an opposed landing (i.e. enemy STOs remain) as remaining under the guns for several hours will mean death.

Remember in C# every ship larger than 500 tons (in the lore; in practice fighter-size ships often still have these limitations) cannot land on a planet and requires cargo shuttles or a cargo transfer station/spaceport to load and unload.

[Agraelgrimm]

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Well, im not proposing any changes to the game. Im just wondering if i can make a drop ship with lets say, 250 tons capability, then use the formation to make company size elements (all the way to the HQ) and cram them up into various ships so i can load and unload them. (Which is probably how things would happen in RL) And since next version it will be way easier to create such templates and replace their losses too, i was thinking that maybe i could use that for it.
And yes, it would be a extra pain to me. Im just trying to figure out what i can and can't do with the tools provided.

[nuclearslurpee]

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Well, im not proposing any changes to the game. Im just wondering if i can make a drop ship with lets say, 250 tons capability, then use the formation to make company size elements (all the way to the HQ) and cram them up into various ships so i can load and unload them. (Which is probably how things would happen in RL) And since next version it will be way easier to create such templates and replace their losses too, i was thinking that maybe i could use that for it.
And yes, it would be a extra pain to me. Im just trying to figure out what i can and can't do with the tools provided.

In that case, you will be able to in v2.2* with the smallest size(s) of drop module, but as you note it would be extremely tedious micromanagement. Remember that a proper planetary invasion requires millions of tons of troops, so if you break them down into 250-ton platoons (companies are more like 1,000 tons usually) you're talking about manually breaking apart and recreating tens of thousands of formations...it's not worth it.

*Right now we are missing the ability to split a formation, which will be added in the next release version IIRC. Otherwise you would have to be building formations that small, which is a really terrible idea mechanically speaking.

[Borealis4x]

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Well, im not proposing any changes to the game. Im just wondering if i can make a drop ship with lets say, 250 tons capability, then use the formation to make company size elements (all the way to the HQ) and cram them up into various ships so i can load and unload them. (Which is probably how things would happen in RL) And since next version it will be way easier to create such templates and replace their losses too, i was thinking that maybe i could use that for it.
And yes, it would be a extra pain to me. Im just trying to figure out what i can and can't do with the tools provided.

In that case, you will be able to in v2.2* with the smallest size(s) of drop module, but as you note it would be extremely tedious micromanagement. Remember that a proper planetary invasion requires millions of tons of troops, so if you break them down into 250-ton platoons (companies are more like 1,000 tons usually) you're talking about manually breaking apart and recreating tens of thousands of formations...it's not worth it.

*Right now we are missing the ability to split a formation, which will be added in the next release version IIRC. Otherwise you would have to be building formations that small, which is a really terrible idea mechanically speaking.

Glad to hear we'll be able to split formations into multiple ships in the next release. Obviously you want invasion ships for the big battles, but I was always frustrated how you needed a whole ship just to deploy a small marine strike force to enemy installations.

[nuclearslurpee]

Glad to hear we'll be able to split formations into multiple ships in the next release. Obviously you want invasion ships for the big battles, but I was always frustrated how you needed a whole ship just to deploy a small marine strike force to enemy installations.

I think the boarding bays work for this, since troop transports IIRC can load/unload without cargo shuttles very slowly (unlike freighters, etc.) - but I'd have to test this to be sure. Assuming it works, that would make it easy if you already use boarding craft.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

 --- Last I checked, you only need cargo shuttles to deploy without a drop or boarding capable bay, but you also need cargo bays to reload any bay regardless.

[Agraelgrimm]

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Well, im not proposing any changes to the game. Im just wondering if i can make a drop ship with lets say, 250 tons capability, then use the formation to make company size elements (all the way to the HQ) and cram them up into various ships so i can load and unload them. (Which is probably how things would happen in RL) And since next version it will be way easier to create such templates and replace their losses too, i was thinking that maybe i could use that for it.
And yes, it would be a extra pain to me. Im just trying to figure out what i can and can't do with the tools provided.

In that case, you will be able to in v2.2* with the smallest size(s) of drop module, but as you note it would be extremely tedious micromanagement. Remember that a proper planetary invasion requires millions of tons of troops, so if you break them down into 250-ton platoons (companies are more like 1,000 tons usually) you're talking about manually breaking apart and recreating tens of thousands of formations...it's not worth it.

*Right now we are missing the ability to split a formation, which will be added in the next release version IIRC. Otherwise you would have to be building formations that small, which is a really terrible idea mechanically speaking.

I am thinking more of having those formations specific for strike groups, so i can deploy them, secure small instalations, colonies, etc. The bulk of invasion troops, etc i would make them be deployed by big ships, cause im ok with a little extra pain, but im not insane lol
The doctrinal idea is to have a rapid light strike force capable of multi-tasking, so it would be small light battalions to be mixed with boarding marine groups if need be. Then for larger formations, i would just use big Drop Capable Frigates to unload the bulk of the troops. These small troops would be trained for every terrain, etc, making them expensive, but since it would be mostly 20 of those, it doesn't matter that much, plus, if i actually need more numbers than that, then the Drop Troopers come into play.
And thanks for the answers. Next version will be interesting...

[lumporr]

This doesn't make any sense at all... if a battalion of marines is 5,000 tons, and most of that is equipment (say 1 btn = 500 soldiers, average solider is perhaps 100 kg, so 500 soldiers = 50 tons or 1% of total size), what magical technology are we proposing to cram 5,000 tons into 250 tons of carry capacity? It makes no sense.

Well, im not proposing any changes to the game. Im just wondering if i can make a drop ship with lets say, 250 tons capability, then use the formation to make company size elements (all the way to the HQ) and cram them up into various ships so i can load and unload them. (Which is probably how things would happen in RL) And since next version it will be way easier to create such templates and replace their losses too, i was thinking that maybe i could use that for it.
And yes, it would be a extra pain to me. Im just trying to figure out what i can and can't do with the tools provided.

In that case, you will be able to in v2.2* with the smallest size(s) of drop module, but as you note it would be extremely tedious micromanagement. Remember that a proper planetary invasion requires millions of tons of troops, so if you break them down into 250-ton platoons (companies are more like 1,000 tons usually) you're talking about manually breaking apart and recreating tens of thousands of formations...it's not worth it.

*Right now we are missing the ability to split a formation, which will be added in the next release version IIRC. Otherwise you would have to be building formations that small, which is a really terrible idea mechanically speaking.

I am thinking more of having those formations specific for strike groups, so i can deploy them, secure small instalations, colonies, etc. The bulk of invasion troops, etc i would make them be deployed by big ships, cause im ok with a little extra pain, but im not insane lol
The doctrinal idea is to have a rapid light strike force capable of multi-tasking, so it would be small light battalions to be mixed with boarding marine groups if need be. Then for larger formations, i would just use big Drop Capable Frigates to unload the bulk of the troops. These small troops would be trained for every terrain, etc, making them expensive, but since it would be mostly 20 of those, it doesn't matter that much, plus, if i actually need more numbers than that, then the Drop Troopers come into play.
And thanks for the answers. Next version will be interesting...

I actually did this in a playthrough of mine - I built a codex-compliant space marine chapter down to the squad level, where each squad ranged from 60 ton assault sqauds to the dreadnoughts at 384 tons. The entire chapter, with added support and artillery vehicles, came out to around 25kt. They were near MaxTech in armour and weapons, all heavy armour, boarding capable, had advanced genetics, etc.

I tested them in various scenarios - summoned onto an NPR homeworld, against a generated swarm, alongside an allied army, against rakhas, against precursors, and concluded that they simply lacked the volume of fire necessary to be a formidable force on their own. The entire chapter was required to make any substantial difference in the outcome of a given combat, and unless other allied forces were presesnt in large numbers, they suffered substantial casualties even with 60+ points of armour and HP.

I didn't mind this, since it was more for flavour than anything else (long live the Guard), and since I used them mostly as boarding forces anyway, but it would be nice to have some way to make a smaller contigent of forces on par with a larger one somehow, if one had a huge technological advantage and invested as such. An infantry module with an increase to ground unit accuracy would be great, I think, if appropriately expensive - it was cool to see My Space Marines in frontal assault mode chewing through tanks and the like, but the only thing that bothered me was how much of their firepower was wasted every turn on misses. That was the only thing that felt wrong.

[boolybooly]

Is it correct that commander production bonus does not effect fuel harvesters?

I have just run a little test and the harvesting of two identical orbital platforms at the same location is identical, even though one has a commander with 20% production bonus and the other has no commander and they were in separate fleets.

Am I doing something wrong or is that intended?

EDIT nm I get it, its mining bonus not production.

[nuclearslurpee]

but it would be nice to have some way to make a smaller contigent of forces on par with a larger one somehow, if one had a huge technological advantage and invested as such.

If you have the maximum Power Armour + Genetic tech your infantry units will be about 16x harder to kill than standard infantry (a bit less in practice due to heavy weapon overkill on standard infantry), however due to the way Aurora's mechanics work this only allows you to meet an equal-tech enemy with a force about 25% the size and still come out evenly. For those who like math the principle in play is Lanchester's Square Law which is an accurate model of Aurora ground combat up to the limit of uncertainty in formation-averaged kill rates.

If you further complicate things by stacking terrain-specific capabilities, which each grant 2x hit rate in the relevant terrain types (and I think occasionally this stacks to either 3x or 4x in certain compound terrain types, but I've never tested this) then you can drop your force requirement to a factor of 1:8, but that's about the limit unless you start also messing with tech levels - as a rule of thumb, for every three tech levels you advance you can expect another 0.5x multiplier to your force requirement courtesy of the armor tech - the attack tech matters very little in comparison against infantry-heavy enemy armies). If we assume a +3 tech level advantage for the Space Marines, then we can expect a chapter of 25,000 tons with all of the above benefits to match up evenly with about 400,000 tons of enemy troops. "Match up evenly" here means that you can expect both sides to lose nearly all of their troops, although in practice the weapon distribution will give one side or the other an advantage here.

If you really want to push the envelope, you can pretty easily add additional armor and genetics techs to the DB. It might also be possible to add a special capability that gives some bonus on every terrain type (or at least most of them, I think a few might not grant benefits for any capability) with some absurd cost multiplier.

[SpaceMarine]

an easier way to get the desired result is

1. use legions not chapters
2. sm in space marine elements with much much better tech then the current to replicate lost technology and how superior spacemarines are to every thing else in the imperium

[lumporr]

...25k vs 400k...

Hmm - I suppose that's a pretty appropriate gap in power then, though, I checked the DB and I think adding a Terrain capability (or simply a generic To Hit+ capability) is beyond my current paygrade.

...legions vs chapters...

They were definitely several techs ahead, SM'd in. And true about the legion - though this was mostly an experiment to see what a codex-compliant chapter would look like in Aurora. In fact, the more I mull it over, the happier I am with the result honestly. Much better to have to consider where and how many Astartes to deploy alongside Guard forces, rather than just a "deploy the entire chapter to a homeworld and forget about it". I may suggest a tech with a +To Hit under the infantry genetics line, though I'm sure something like that must've been proposed by now.

I houseruled that the only replacement for marines came from one moon with a population (and pop cap) far under the worker requirement for the single research installation and ground force construction complex needed to research and develop new Astartes squads, which was good for making deployments more tense, but felt a little janky. I have a feeling all of this will become much easier and less tedious to experiment with in the upcoming v2.2, where the houserule can simply be "no more than 1-5% of GFCs on Astartes or something like that. I think the next game I try WH40k in, I'll have one player race be a roaming Traitor Chapter, and my main race be my own chapter and guard forces, so that there's

1. Actual challenges/stakes in boarding combat, and

2. Places where Astartes deployments are essentially necessary to counter traitorous forces. Right now, the Astartes just massively overkill everything encountered even starting on 200% difficulty (though, I still haven't seen invaders - maybe things would be different there).

[boolybooly]

Does anyone know what the rules are for auto assignment of missile fire controls?

I am having trouble because if I pair a MFC with Res 18 (900t) with box launchers s1.7, auto assign FC does not work.

If I swap out the launchers for s3 then AAFC works fine.

Converseley, if I swap out the Res 18 MFC for a Res 1 (50t AMM) MFC, AAFC works fine with the s1.7 launchers.

There seems to be a situation where AMM res FCs are required for small launchers and higher res MFCs are only being paired with larger missile launchers.

Is that correct, is it intended and does anyone know the precise rules pls?

My problem is I am trying to use s1.7 ASMs and they work pretty well tbh in 2.1.1. I expect that will all change in 2.2 but for now I am wondering how to minmax my micro ASMs!

[lumporr]

Been planning a corporate multi-player race campaign for a little while with a focus on trch specialization and trade between the races, but I've been looking up different mechanics and I'm not sure what's feasible and what isn't. List of questions incoming!

1. What exactly can you transfer peacefully? Ships, components, ordnance, and ground forces are all on the table, but what about minerals, colonies, and techs (racial or otherwise)?

2. Last time I attempted to load alien ordnance in a game, it didn't show up in the loadouts screen. Is this still true if a race transfers ordnance to another race, or is it only true for captured ordnance? Furthermore, if a ship using alien ordnance was transferred to a race, would that transferred ship still use the alien ordnance (and therefore could that ship load said ordnance, given it would still theoretically have it in the ship loadout)?

3. Are there any known bugs with transferring a ship back and forth between races, if for instance, I wanted to use an engineless barge as a "trading platform" to pass back and forth, being filled with different things each time? Would it create a new class every time it was transferred?

4. Is initial NPR strength based on the FIRST player race generated, or some other metric? Furthermore, is it based only on population? If the first race created was a large neutral race, would NPR strength be based on the large pop (and not the 0 tech and 0 initial BP of a neutral race)?

5. Tangential, but - if a cluster missile was launched at a hostile salvo, with a second stage of AMMs, would the released AMMs all target different missiles in the salvo? Also, if the cluster missile had an on-board thermal sensor and the targeted salvo was destroyed, would it target a different salvo, or does that only work for hostile ships? I've never used AMMs and am curious as to how they work. It seems like they might launch automatically like other PD, but in that case, how do you designate certain missiles as AMMs and certain missiles as not? Could cluster missiles be designated as AMMs? How are targets selected?

I would test some of these if I could, however I'm away from my computer at the moment and will be for some time. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped me from thinking about Aurora. Any chance at a mobile version?

[Garfunkel]

You can't trade anything currently. You CAN use SM mode to "trade" installations & minerals between factions by increasing the amounts in one colony and decreasing in another but that's all. Of course, you can also use SM mode to instant research technology to simulate tech trades.

In the combat tab of a ship, you can set the AMM mode for each MFC yourself. In fact, you must do this. The game does not do it automatically nor does it care about the launcher details or the missile loaded into it. It's purely based on whether the MFC is set to fire AMMs or not and whether it's allowed to fire or not. You can launch them manually as well if you want.