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Author Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games  (Read 2840964 times)

Bremen

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15510 on: November 30, 2014, 12:07:52 am »

Is there any way to repair fighters?

If you dock them with a carrier they can be repaired by the mothership using MSP.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15511 on: November 30, 2014, 12:29:53 am »

Likewise, you can dock them for repair and rearm at PDCs with hanger space.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

Metalax

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15512 on: November 30, 2014, 06:57:20 am »

Likewise, you can dock them for repair and rearm at PDCs with hanger space.
Is that actually working? The last time I checked PDC hangars couldn't serve as repair bays due to being unable to mount engineering sections.

You needed to have a repair hangar ship/station and rotate damaged fighters through that for repair.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15513 on: November 30, 2014, 11:38:10 am »

Hm, might not be, it's been a long while since I've had need of it. Usually my planet-based fighters end up staging on carriers farther out from their bases. 'sides, it's somewhat rare for fighters to get hit without dying, hah.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

EuchreJack

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15514 on: November 30, 2014, 05:25:39 pm »

Hm, might not be, it's been a long while since I've had need of it. Usually my planet-based fighters end up staging on carriers farther out from their bases. 'sides, it's somewhat rare for fighters to get hit without dying, hah.

I had roughly a 33% survival rate of my fighters that got hit in my last engagement.

Lord Shonus

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15515 on: November 30, 2014, 05:27:32 pm »

My tech base is improving, and it's time to upgrade my cruiser design. Problem is that I'm not sure how to best address the significant combat deficiencies I've run into, which haven't mattered much in my previous wars, but could be very serious in the event I run into someone with decent weapons and large fleet.

For reference, these are my current missiles, including all known enemy designs. These are also due for some upgrading, but combat has shown very little to complain about so far. (Note: my designs are the ones with a CM (Counter-Missile) SS (Ship to Ship), STO (Surface To Orbit) or SIM (Space Intercept Missile) designation)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My current cruisers are:

Heavy Cruisers

Missile
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Energy
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Light Cruisers

Missile (Fleet)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Missile (Independent)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Energy (Fleet)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Energy (Independent)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Battlecruiser (Conjectural)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(The light cruisers are divided into "Fleet" and "Independent" depending on their role. Fleet ships are primarily a way of adding weapons to a formation at reasonably low costs, so their speed is limited to match the heavier ships, they rely on the bigger ships for a significant portion of their fuel, and they generally don't carry a search sensor (the Star Knight B was built with one by mistake, which will be removed in the next iteration of the class), The Independent cruisers are intended to operate on their own or mixed with other light units, so they carry less firepower to fit in more fuel and better engines, along with search sensors at least on the leader variants.) The battlecruiser hasn't entered production yet because I've only just acquired shipyards that can build them.

The main weaknesses I've encountered so far:

Warlock class

Rate of fire has proven to be a serious handicap. I'm quite happy with the destructive power of the salvos, but smaller ships represent a serious threat with only 4 of the rapid-fire size 5 tubes, as I can generally get off only a single salvo per ship before I close to energy range and the Medusas and Star Knights take care of the problem, risking severe damage. The options I see at present:

1. Switch to a pure size-5 armament.
This gains me in rate of fire, but at a serious loss of per-salvo firepower (going from 200 warhead points per salvo of the 10s and 36 for each salvo of 5s to 118 per salvo) without increasing salvo density

2. Switch to a pure size 10 armament with full-size tubes, resulting in a six-tube broadside.
This would drop both per-salvo damage and salvo density, but would allow for more destructive salvos than the size-5 option at 150

3. Replace the half-size size 10 tubes with quarter-size, using the freed up space to increase the number of size 5 tubes to 8.
This maintains the ability to smash one larger ship with an opening salvo or hurt a pair of ships badly by splitting the salvo (assuming that the lower salvo density is acceptable) while also increasing the number of missiles I can rapid-fire in a sustained engagement. The main downside is the additional strain on the already limited magazine capacity.

4. Replace the half-size tubes to quarter size, double the quantity.
With this option, I could simply not fire salvos of the same size with a second salvo in reserve, creating a greater effective fire rate. The primary downside is strain on the magazine.


Medusa

The turrets don't seem to be very effective against missiles. My options:

1. Replace them with a different "energy" weapon that is more effective against missiles

2. Replace them with more offensive weapons, counting on the other ships for missile defense

3. Replace them with a magazine, fire control, and tubes for countermissiles

4. Eliminate the class in favor of the smaller Star Knight design, modified as per 1, 2, or 3

Additionally, my lasers shoot much further than my fire control can handle. Should I switch to cheaper shorter-range lasers?

Star Knight

Same problems as Medusa

Prince Consort

No complaints. Firepower and defenses are adequate for a light cruiser, and it is a match for anything close to the same tonnage I've encountered so far.

My big worry can be seen in the missile table. I've only encountered 2 actual ASMs so far, and neither were very good. Most of the battles I've fought were against ships that kept sandpapering me with AMMs, which were also fairly poor. I'm concerned that something with better defensive missiles would be a problem if I reduce salvo density, and something that carried a real warhead might get through defenses I currently consider adequate. (I have a dedicated anti-missile destroyer in production, but it isn't combat tested, so I have no idea how it performs.)
« Last Edit: November 30, 2014, 05:29:32 pm by Lord Shonus »
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15516 on: November 30, 2014, 05:30:21 pm »

Hm, might not be, it's been a long while since I've had need of it. Usually my planet-based fighters end up staging on carriers farther out from their bases. 'sides, it's somewhat rare for fighters to get hit without dying, hah.

I had roughly a 33% survival rate of my fighters that got hit in my last engagement.
What were you fighting? I mean, in terms of fleet size, weapon types, tech level, &c.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

EuchreJack

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15517 on: November 30, 2014, 05:35:50 pm »

Lord Shonus, the AI can't build good missiles intentionally, so you'll always outclass the AI unless it produces good missiles by a fluke.

Hm, might not be, it's been a long while since I've had need of it. Usually my planet-based fighters end up staging on carriers farther out from their bases. 'sides, it's somewhat rare for fighters to get hit without dying, hah.

I had roughly a 33% survival rate of my fighters that got hit in my last engagement.
What were you fighting? I mean, in terms of fleet size, weapon types, tech level, &c.

Two missile ships which I believe to be precursors.  Warhead size 13.  I'll try and post the ships if I can figure out which they are.

Fighter-Bomber
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Only one survived, as far as I can tell.

GaussFighter (which I stupidly was not using to shoot down missiles)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

GaussFighter-Scout
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The GaussFighters, by the way, took forever to kill the enemy ships.  Only reason I'm not sure they were precursors is because they didn't ram any of my ships.

Metalax

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15518 on: November 30, 2014, 10:18:59 pm »

Primarily looked at the Medusa, but this likely applies to the other beam ships as well.

Your PD turrets are being extremely hampered by the firecontrol. If you are going for lasers in PD then you want maximum range on your PD firecontrol in order to take advantage of the lasers range to get multiple shots off at an incoming salvo. Also longer firecontrol range leads to higher accuracy at a set range.

It looks like you have too high a capacitor on your PD lasers, 4 instead of the 3 needed, that is increasing the cost for no benefit. Also your PD turrets have a significantly lower tracking speed than your firecontrol allows, 12k verses 16k.

One thing I'm noticing, your beam ships seem to have incredibly thin armour for their role. In combat against another beam ship, even one a couple of tech levels below you, your ships will likely suffer over 50% of incoming damage from each shot as internal damage even prior to armour being stripped. Generally a good rule of thumb for beam brawlers is to have armour sufficient to block a single strike by its own main weapons, in this case your 20 cm lasers.

To me the ship suffers from trying to be both a beam brawler and a PD ship. I'd really suggest splitting it into two ship designs.

 - Strip off the PD turrets and their firecontrol and use the tonnage for increased armour and you will have a good beam brawler.

 - Strip off a good portion of the heavy weapons(eg for the Medusa strip 7 of the 9 20cm lasers) and reduce it to a single firecontrol for the remainder, replace the PD firecontrols with max-range, max-speed variants and add more PD turrets that have been redesigned to use the full tracking speed allowed by the firecontrol along with linked firecontrols as necessary to fill the tonnage, and you will have a decent PD ship.

 - If you really want to maintain a mixed role ship for independent operation, replace the PD firecontrols with max-range, max-speed ones, redesign the turrets to take advantage of the firecontrols tracking speed, reduce the number of main guns somewhat and use the tonnage to increase the armour.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15519 on: November 30, 2014, 10:25:52 pm »

It's only meant as a brawler, with the turrets intended purely to give it some self-defense capability. So you're suggesting something among these lines?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Metalax

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15520 on: November 30, 2014, 11:26:40 pm »

Yeah, that looks far more survivable for brawling. You would want to have PD escorts along, but that tends to be better handled by a dedicated ship design.

One thing I just noticed however, the tracking speed of your firecontrol is quite limited compared to that of your weapons. It may be worth seeing if you can find the space to move from a 50% speed firecontrol to a x1.5 speed firecontrol. That would bring you to a tracking speed of 6k allowing you to make full use of your ships speed for tracking.

One last thing, ideally you want to have each ship carry double the MSP as it's max repair value, as this allows for field repairs of any internal component as long as maintenance supplies can be provided(say from a fleet tender).

I'd actually consider removing one of the 20cm lasers to make room for the improved firecontrols and fill the remaining space made available with a pair of engineering modules.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15521 on: November 30, 2014, 11:49:44 pm »

Right now, I'm not too worried about tracking speed. So far, everything I've been fighting is still using nuclear pulse engines and is thus quite slow (the main reason I've done so well in combat thus far, as they matched or exceeded my other tech). Improving my beam fire control is my current research focus, so that problem will gradually dissapear without the need for a refit.

As for the repair issue, I'm generally satisfied as long as I can fix the engine (which is also why most of my ships have at least two engines, except for the independent cruisers) which will allow me to get to a maintenance tender or to Earth for repairs. Barring that, I have tugs, and will probably be incorporating tractor beams into future cruiser and battlecruiser designs to tow sessile LACs (one LAC can carry a huge number of box launchers, especially if it doesn't have an engine, giving me a potent one-shot attack asset).
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wer6

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15522 on: December 02, 2014, 05:12:25 pm »

Wanna learn how to place this, really do, any tips when I find time?
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Tarran

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15523 on: December 02, 2014, 06:23:33 pm »

Don't expect tutorials to fully teach you. Don't expect to fully divine the correct answers/proportions by yourself without experimentation. The game plays at the rate you want, as long as you pick the correct options. Ask questions here, handle questions one at a time. And even then, there's many ways to play Aurora, so one strategy may not always be the best for every situation.

Finally, if you can't at least barely tolerate near-barebones graphics, you probably don't want to play this.
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palu

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #15524 on: December 04, 2014, 10:22:55 am »

Another question: Do CIWS contain their own active sensor?
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