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[Ehndras]

Playing Aurora for the first time in two years, just re-installed. Have there been any updates in said timespan?

I'm playing on Windows 8 and really hoping Aurora will run.

[Metalax]

Yep, several. Current version is 6.2. This thread covers the major changes made.

Big changes are, new engine design; greatly increased fuel useage in general; changes to civilian shipping ship designs and automated retirement/replacement of ships; introduction of crew morale and new accommodation system system; redone Sol system with more accurate asteroids/trojans/comets/dwarf planets; orders for loading/unloading minerals to reserve levels allowing for automated freighter runs; geological survey team survey system has changed.

[Carnwennan]

Genned an NPR on Mars in my new game. Peaceful for a while. We even had a trade agreement (at least, I did). They just opened fire on one of my geosurvey ships. Enslavement time.

They..... appear to be relatively low tech? However, my navy at the moment is abysmal. How do you think this would fare?:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Broadsword class Light Cruiser    9 000 tons     295 Crew     1466.95 BP      TCS 180  TH 742.5  EM 60
5500 km/s     Armour 3-38     Shields 2-300     Sensors 6/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 52
Maint Life 4.25 Years     MSP 509    AFR 129%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 45    5YR 679    Max Repair 90 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 142   

Zeus R&D: Overcharged Ion Drive (11)    Power 90    Fuel Use 209.43%    Signature 67.5    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 550 000 Litres    Range 5.3 billion km   (11 days at full power)
Betamax Shielding Subsystem (1)   Total Fuel Cost  12 Litres per hour  (288 per day)

Longinus Laser Systems: 10cm IR (10)    Range 30 000km     TS: 5500 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1    ROF 5        3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 BFC (1)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 6 Missile Launcher (3)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 60
Size 1 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 ASMFC (1)     Range 37.8m km    Resolution 100
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 AMMFC (2)     Range 3.8m km    Resolution 1
Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (22)  Speed: 18 000 km/s   End: 2.8m    Range: 3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 156/93/46
Size 6 Anti-ship Missile (20)  Speed: 12 000 km/s   End: 56.8m    Range: 40.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 6    TH: 96/57/28

Oculus Active Sensor Suite (2)     GPS 2100     Range 12.6m km    Resolution 100
Oculus Thermal Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
Oculus EM Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I also have two of these:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Essex class Beam Defence Base    9 900 tons     425 Crew     1175 BP      TCS 198  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 7-41     Sensors 6/21     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 120
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A
Longinus Laser Systems: 10cm IR (40)    Range 30 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1    ROF 5        3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 PDCBFC (4)    Max Range: 96 000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor (4)     Total Power Output 120    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Oculus Active Sensor Suite (2)     GPS 2100     Range 12.6m km    Resolution 100
Oculus Thermal Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
Oculus EM Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 4 sections

and like 6 of these:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Drusus class Missile Defence Satellite    2 500 tons     66 Crew     380.8 BP      TCS 50  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 9-16     Sensors 1/21     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 15
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 195   

Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A
PDC Size 6 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 30
PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher (3)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 AMMFC (2)     Range 3.8m km    Resolution 1
Vajra Military Supplies: Mk1 ASMFC (2)     Range 37.8m km    Resolution 100
Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (45)  Speed: 18 000 km/s   End: 2.8m    Range: 3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 156/93/46
Size 6 Anti-ship Missile (25)  Speed: 12 000 km/s   End: 56.8m    Range: 40.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 6    TH: 96/57/28

Oculus Active Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 2100     Range 12.6m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections

In terms of what sort of naval power they have:
They have a battleship of 16k tons of which I have only ever seen one, and that was at the very start- when I genned them;
Three cargo ships;
Three laser PDCs with 27x lasers each, 10cm since they do 3 points of damage;
Two PDCs which do something else, not sure. Never saw them fire;
One ship which has the same thermal signature as the battleship.
Another ship that goes 2.5k km/s and has a larger thermal signature than anything else.

Fakeedit: Looks like they were all FACs. I was worrying when I saw a thermal of 360. Then I realized mine was 2k. Haven't run into that 'battleship'. Might well have been a cargo ship for all I know.

Edit: (changed some wording and added stuff to make more sense). Completely smashed that last ship -the one going 2.5k km/s- out of the sky. Turns out, you can't to jack when an attacking ship can travel twice as fast as you can, and can launch missiles that travel almost four times faster than they in turn can. I considered capturing it, since I got it dead in the water with the second volley, but I didn't really know how to so whatever.

Planetary bombardment time?

[Rez]

Why not blockade the planet until you have troop transports?

[Carnwennan]

Why not blockade the planet until you have troop transports?

I don't think I have enough ships to do that. My navy consists of literally just that ship design I posted, as well as, you know, freighters and stuff. I tried to do something similar, cutting them off from a colony (I think they have one in the Oort cloud for whatever reason) by terrorizing their shipping lines. I would have to keep pulling my ship out to reload ordinance, since I don't have so much as a collier.

[Flying Dice]

Just a few minor notes:

That CL design doesn't have near enough AMMs or Size 1 launchers to be an effective missile defense, though the missiles themselves aren't terrible for your TL. You might want to consider splitting the next generation into missile ships and anti-missile ships, especially if you're going to build them that small. As a general rule of thumb for low-mid TL design you should usually avoid Jack-of-all-trades designs. Medium-sized and larger ships (>30k tons by my norms) and high tech ships can fill multiple roles effectively; the smaller and lower-tech you go, the less efficient it becomes.

Also, 2 points of shield is completely pointless. Just about anything in the game apart from a single low-tech AMM or a low-tech 10cm laser at extreme range will pop that with a single shot, and it's taking up tonnage that could go into pretty much anything else. On the flip side, it could use more armor (unless everything you're fighting is slower than you and doesn't use missiles).

Why does the active sensor have a third of the range of the ASM fire control and a bit more than a fourth of the range of the missiles themselves? Why are there two active sensors? Your ships should always have an AS range at least equal to the effective range of their fire controls (barring special cases such as fighters and FACs that rely on spotter ships for sensor coverage), and having a bit extra helps reduce the effects of enemy ECM. Also, such a high resolution is only really useful if you take advantage of the fact that it gives you a higher maximum range. I mean, shit, a lowest-possible-tech 100res 50 ton active sensor has nearly half the range of that one.


On an unrelated note, you don't need fuel on your defense satellites.


Re: Blockading: Do you know how many shipyards they have? If you've already killed their mobile fleet you should ignore their commercial shipping; if/when you conquer them on the ground those ships (along with their other assets) will fall under your control, which is useful even if you just scrap them.

[Carnwennan]

That CL design doesn't have near enough AMMs or Size 1 launchers to be an effective missile defense...

This is the first time I have ever had to use military, and have managed to actually hit something with a missile. I honestly didn't know how much to use and I guess I underestimated, huh. Mocked up an anti-ship design and an anti-missile one, for deployment together. I have done the same with the orbiting missile defense bases.

Medium-sized and larger ships (>30k tons by my norms) and high tech ships can fill multiple roles effectively; the smaller and lower-tech you go, the less efficient it becomes.

Haaaah, and here I was thinking 10k was huge . Gonna need to seriously up the number and size of my shipyards...

Also, 2 points of shield is completely pointless...

Huh, I thought it meant adding two layers to my hull depth when active. Good to know, I wondered why they were so light.

Why does the active sensor have a third of the range of the ASM fire control and a bit more than a fourth of the range of the missiles themselves?

My active sensors are literal crap. Trying to boost them up now. I figured that they needed a little fiddling when I had to get within 10m km to fire the missiles, when they whould be able to fire 3x as far, as you said. I was thinking that AS missiles should have longer ranges to deal with fleeing ships, hence the higher range.

Why are there two active sensors?

For redundancy, in the event one gets broken?

Also, such a high resolution is only really useful if you take advantage of the fact that it gives you a higher maximum range.I mean, shit...

It nearly is a minimum tech, 50ton active sensor. My research in that field is dreadful. Fixing!

I left it at 5000 res because that is what the game defaults the size to when you open the screen, so I presumed it was an average size  (I also based the sizes of my ships off of this).

On an unrelated note, you don't need fuel on your defense satellites.

Huh, didn't notice that. Fixed! Thanks.

Do you know how many shipyards...

I saw one when I was testing their AMM coverage (which doesn't seem to exist). Didn't know that you took over hostile ships... if I killed the home settlement would the colony flip too?

E: tfw game interrupts when you find a new jump point, but not on combat (RIP CL-Vanquisher)

[gimlet]

Also your Missile Defense Base and Cruiser don't have a Resolution 1 sensor - and just for yuks I personally would put at least a tiny/cheap Resolution 1 sensor on the Beam Base, so it could at least do final fire.  (Or are non-meson beam weapons useless firing from planets because of the atmosphere?  It's been a long time since I built any non-meson PDCs so I don't remember).

On your ship, it's a BIT risky to only have 1 reactor and 1 beam fire control - a lucky meson hit or penetrating hit can render that whole expensive weapons suite combat ineffective.  Same tip for fuel and magazines.  And a bit more missile stowage - it's amazing how fast they run out.  Consider using smaller missiles so you can get more per volley, you really need to overwhelm their point defense with big volleys otherwise none will get through.

[Flying Dice]

-snip-

Do you know how many shipyards...

I saw one when I was testing their AMM coverage (which doesn't seem to exist). Didn't know that you took over hostile ships... if I killed the home settlement would the colony flip too?

E: tfw game interrupts when you find a new jump point, but not on combat (RIP CL-Vanquisher)

In rough order:
-No worries about ship size (heh); I usually stick to <10k ton ships until TL4ish. Big ships are painfully inefficient at low tech.

-Well, roughly speaking, that is how shields work. It's just that they absorb all damage taken rather than having a damage model akin to the armor belt. For example, if a strength 10 shield is hit by a laser that does 15 damage, the shield takes 10 damage and pops (I can't remember if spare damage filters over in the current version, though I'm pretty sure it does). If a ship takes a hit from that same 15 damage laser, it will lose a single tile wide vertical column out of its armor belt. If it has 15 layers or more of armor, it won't take internal damage. If it has fewer, every point of damage left over after the armor penetration will be applied to internal modules.

In other words, if you fire two 12 damage lasers at a ship with 10 points of shield, the shield will absorb one of the hits, pop, and allow the other through. If a ship with a 10-layer armor belt takes the same two hits it will only take 4 points of internal damage unless by some coincidence the lasers both hit the same armor column. You can get a look at the armor belt of any of your ships in the Ships window by selecting one of them and clicking the Armor Status tab. The number of layers is the armor rating you set when designing the ship while the number of columns is dictated by the ship's tonnage.

Basically, because of this, normal shields are only useful as a buffer against weak strikes and to absorb some of the enemy's first attack, even if you've got decent tech. They don't start being a strong defense in their own right until you're nearing 100 points of shield; certain spoilers have several hundred points of fast-charging shields and can still be taken out by a handful of TL4ish ships if you know how to build them. There is also another type of shield, but I'll leave you to encounter that in your own time.

 

-I take the redundancy point, just remember that the active sensor is almost always going to be one of the most expensive (and most costly to repair) parts of any ship. Once you start using ones good enough to see 1k ton FACs from hundreds of kilometers away they're also pretty darned big. But yeah, this is a great lesson in fiddling around with the settings on all of your modules. 100res isn't necessarily bad so long as you recognize the limitations. Do note, though, that you want a resolution-1 active sensor if you plan on using AMMs; otherwise you won't be able to target them for interception before they're close enough to hit within a 5-second tick.

-RE: Enemy surrender: If you have ground forces on a hostile world and have inflicted enough damage to them (one way or another; for enemies with large armies I tend to just launch orbital strikes on their ground forces and send in a few brigades to clean up) the world will eventually surrender, flipping to your control with lowered productivity, giving you their credits and installations, as well as some of their ships, information on tech they have but you don't, and occasionally starmap data.

[Metalax]

As flying dice has pointed out your ship lacks protection. My standard rule of thumb for non-beam slugging ships is 10% of tonnage into armour and 5% into shields, particularly with the upcoming shock damage rules in 6.3 giving more reason to have enough shielding to handle a few leaking asm's.

Your magazines are woefully insufficient. As an example, a typical early ship of mine of that size would carry around 100 size 6 ASM's or around 600 AMM's.

Your ship lacks a resolution 1 active sensor. This means that your AMM's are unlikely to ever get a chance to fire as incoming missiles will simply not be picked up by your res 100 sensor outside of touching range.

You may also want to consider designing a larger engine for the increased fuel efficiency to replace the many small engines you are using.

You really need to pick one role for the ship. At low tech and such tiny size, it is simply not possible to effectively pull off a multi role ship. There are essentially five combat roles at your tech level. Ships should focus on only one, possibly two as tech improves or size starts reaching a mid size at 60k+ tons.

Anti-Ship Missile ship
Anti-Missile Missile ship
Point Defence Beam ship
Beam Attack ship
Fleet Sensor ship

(Or are non-meson beam weapons useless firing from planets because of the atmosphere?  It's been a long time since I built any non-meson PDCs so I don't remember).

Non-meson beams are completely ineffective at firing from or at a colony if the atmospheric pressure is at least equal to Earth's. If the atmosphere is below that the weapons are degraded proportionally to the level of the atmosphere, rounding weapon damage down. This leads to Gauss cannons being totally ineffective if there is any atmosphere at all(but not CIWS, which ignore atmosphere entirely despite being based on gauss tech) but lasers can still be effective on planets with thin atmospheres.

[gimlet]

Another point on the "active sensor" redundancy - your ship/base can use sensor info from the active sensors on *other* ships/bases, so as long as you have multiple sensor-containing ships/bases in the combat, that will provide the sensor redundancy for your fleet.  And if you have smaller/specialized "escort" ships, they don't *all* need the biggest sensors, that's a pretty big cost and tonnage savings.  Although I generally put at least a tiny sensor of the appropriate type on each ship so it's not completely helpless if it's alone for some reason...

[Carnwennan]

Little question, since I couldn't find it when I searched the thread.... how do I repair armour?
Got a bit too close to Mars on a trip to blow up more of their PDCs and some awful martian anti-missile missiles managed to score a few hits.

Seriously, I told the task group to picket at 1000k km, 2k km inside that active sensor range, and they go straight for a bloody landing.

E: and literally as I post, I remember shipyard repairs. Brilliant.

[Rolepgeek]

Actually, to point something out real fast, lasers don't take out full columns. If a strength 6 laser hits, it only penetrates four rows, but has an extra damage points on either side.

[Carnwennan]

Better than the designs I had before? I still need to work on ECM, ECCM etc etc. Maybe add a laser ship to the group:

Spoiler: Light Missile Cruiser (click to show/hide)

Furious class Light Cruiser    13 000 tons     343 Crew     2041.35 BP      TCS 260  TH 742.5  EM 0
3807 km/s     Armour 8-49     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 60
Maint Life 6.17 Years     MSP 1080    AFR 122%    IFR 1.7%    1YR 49    5YR 729    Max Repair 84 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 460   

Zeus R&D: Overcharged Ion Drive (11)    Power 90    Fuel Use 209.43%    Signature 67.5    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 980 000 Litres    Range 6.5 billion km   (19 days at full power)

Size 6 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 60
Vajra Subsystems: Mk2 ASMFC (1)     Range 127.5m km    Resolution 40
Mustang Anti-ship Missile (76)  Speed: 17 500 km/s   End: 116.4m    Range: 122.2m km   WH: 4    Size: 6    TH: 116/70/35

Oculus Active Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 2100     Range 12.6m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Spoiler: Missile Defense (click to show/hide)

Reliant class Missile Defense Ship    10 000 tons     278 Crew     1886.4 BP      TCS 200  TH 675  EM 0
4500 km/s     Armour 5-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 40
Maint Life 3.77 Years     MSP 590    AFR 160%    IFR 2.2%    1YR 65    5YR 974    Max Repair 84 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 300   

Zeus R&D: Overcharged Ion Drive (10)    Power 90    Fuel Use 209.43%    Signature 67.5    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 800 000 Litres    Range 6.9 billion km   (17 days at full power)

Size 1 Missile Launcher (40)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Vajra Subsystems: Mk2 AMMFC (10)     Range 10.1m km    Resolution 1
Hornet Anti-missile Missile (300)  Speed: 21 000 km/s   End: 14.5m    Range: 18.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 182/109/54

Oculus Technologies: AMM Target Painter (1)     GPS 84     Range 6.7m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Spoiler: Sensor Ship (click to show/hide)

Sheffield class Sensor Ship    5 000 tons     108 Crew     1115.65 BP      TCS 100  TH 337.5  EM 0
4500 km/s     Armour 7-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 16/16/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
Maint Life 4.72 Years     MSP 558    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 41    5YR 616    Max Repair 210 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   

Zeus R&D: Overcharged Ion Drive (5)    Power 90    Fuel Use 209.43%    Signature 67.5    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 550 000 Litres    Range 9.5 billion km   (24 days at full power)

Watchdog Weapons Systems: AS AMM Painter (1)     GPS 210     Range 16.8m km    Resolution 1
Watchdog Weapons Systems: Advanced AS Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 8400     Range 106.3m km    Resolution 40
Oculus Advanced Thermal Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 16     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  16m km
Oculus Advanced EM Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 16     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  16m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

No shields either. The ones I have at the moment are bad, space wise. I have colliers and maintenance ships so maybe I will decrease the number of engineering space.
Gonna be a while until I can build any of it though, since I have only two or three shipyards.

[gimlet]

That's more like it, but still a couple of comments:

1) There's a gotcha in the listed detection range of a size 1 Active Sensor.  There's an easy confusion between "ship size" ("HS (Hull Size)": 1HS = 50tons) and "missile size" ("MSP(Missile Size Points)" - 1HS = 20MSP)- the listed range is for a "HS1", and because of the way sensors scale the actual detection range for a MSP1 thru MSP6 sized missile is about 1/10th the listed detection range.  I think the only place the actual ranges vs the various MSP sizes shows up is on the design screen for the sensor, so it's easy to miss.

1a) Partly because of that, the ranges of your Anti-Missiles is a bit high, you really don't have detection out to 18M km.  Also 18M is a bit high anyway, that's almost 1000 seconds of flight time - you could reallocate some of the space used for that to faster speed/more maneuverability/whatever, because generally you'll only want to fire anti-missiles at incoming missiles quite a lot closer than 18M km.  It's not a bad idea to have maybe SOME long ranged size 1 missiles, you can use them in volley with your anti-ship missiles to help overload enemy point defense, but for anti-missile work that's quite a lot more range than you really need.  Or fire some of the long range AMM 1-1 vs incoming missile volleys at longish range, whittling them down to allow less wasteful targeting by your shorter range anti-missiles.

2) IMHO Resolution 40 fire controls/sensors are a bad compromise unless you're actually facing HS40 ships (2000 tons), their actual ranges against the more formidable 5000+ ton ships will be MUCH less than the listed range, so you'll be wasting a lot of the potential range of your missiles.

3) On the cruiser, that still seems to be relatively few launchers for such an expensive ship, but if that's really all you can fit then that's that.  I'd try to see what could be done with maybe size 4 missiles, that's about 50% more launchers.  And maybe try increasing the reload time, see if the next step or 2 gives a better compromise between more launchers without making the time between volleys too long.  Again, even at 18M km that's about 1000 seconds of missile flight time, in general you fire a couple of volleys and wait to see the effects.  Again you might want to have SOME long range missiles, but imho most missiles will be fired at quite a bit less than 100M km...