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Author Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games  (Read 2849158 times)

Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18015 on: May 09, 2016, 07:33:41 pm »

It all depends on context, and your sense will develop with experience. Appropriate benchmarks are dictated by your TL in relevant areas, the purpose you're designing the thing for, the threats it is likely to face, and the broader structure of your navy.

The thing that changes the least is missile range, largely because there are only three important thresholds and further expansion beyond the last is pointless from a crunch standpoint. Those are: longer range than enemy E/KW (which should always be true); longer range than typical enemy missiles/missile FC; longer range than typical enemy active sensor range. The first means that the only threats are enemy missile boats and E/KW combatants that are significantly faster than your ships/very well protected from missile attack. The second means that you have a sweet spot where you can continuously attack the enemy without receiving fire-indefinitely, if your ships are faster. The third means that you can attack with impunity if you use independent fast sensor ships to spot for your missile boats.

Everything else varies heavily based on the factors I mentioned. That said, here's the typical qualities I aim for in a ~TL3 missile, a general-purpose 4 MSP ASM:

STR 4 WH
100-140m km range
16,000+km/s speed
CTH of >30-40% vs. targets moving at 10,000km/s.

The exact numbers change based on where my specific techs are (and if there are any threats I'm designing to counter), and obviously if you made your missiles larger or smaller the values would change. Still, that's a decent general baseline for low-tech missiles. WH strength, speed, and CTH scale upward pretty continuously. CTH goes until you've hit 100% vs. 10,000km/s, beyond which there are only fringe cases. Speed goes up for as long as you can increase it, there's little downside. WH caps at fairly low levels for practicality-a bunch of WH 9/16 missiles that basically always hit if not intercepted are better than a relative handful of stronger missiles that might have a chance of missing. WH 4 is perfectly respectable for a long, long time, too.

As per the statement re: missile range, I usually top out at 400-500m km, saving anything beyond that for special-purpose long range fast missile boats that I use to support larger efforts and harass lone targets and small groups.

But yeah. Basically just build shit that seems reasonable (run designs past us here too if you want advice, try to include the TL you're working with), try it out, and adjust based on experience. You'll develop a feel for what's good in a given situation with time.
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Metalax

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18016 on: May 09, 2016, 08:32:00 pm »

Tracking speed is determined by the lower of the weapon's tracking speed or the beam fire control's tracking speed that is linked to it.

Weapon tracking speed is determined depending on if the weapon is turreted or hull-mounted.

For a turreted weapon, the weapon tracking speed is the speed that was specified when the turret was designed.

For hull-mounted weapons, the weapon tracking speed is the greater of the ship's speed or the currently researched tracking speed tech.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18017 on: May 09, 2016, 11:05:29 pm »

Pretty sure turrets can still be capped if the FC's tracking speed is lower than the turret. It's just that that situation almost never comes up, since it's usually more costly to over-engineer the turret than the FC, similar to how you're unlikely to run into a problem with having ships that move so quickly that the FC can't keep up.
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Metalax

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18018 on: May 10, 2016, 12:37:33 am »

Pretty sure turrets can still be capped if the FC's tracking speed is lower than the turret.
Well... yes, that's exactly what I wrote on the first line.

Confusion arises because there are four different things that are all labeled as tracking speed. Tech tracking speed, firecontrol tracking speed, weapon tracking speed and final tracking speed.
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Sheb

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18019 on: May 10, 2016, 09:02:40 am »

What speed can I expect enemy ships to be going at

Why do my plasma carronades say "range 0km" in the ship but "range 160 000 km" in the tech report?

Depend on their tech level, it's hard to say until you bump into them.

As for the carronade... Do you have a beam fire control?
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RAM

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18020 on: May 10, 2016, 04:37:36 pm »

If the ship is faster than the turret, which is used? And is there any conceivable reason to have a turret that is slower than the ship?
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18021 on: May 10, 2016, 04:41:02 pm »

If the ship is faster than the turret, which is used? And is there any conceivable reason to have a turret that is slower than the ship?

Ship speed is irrelevant to turreted weapons. It affects the tracking speed of hull-mounted weapons because the ship has to orient on the line of fire; turrets naturally don't need the entire ship to rotate for them to stay on target.

No reason. Not that you'd have an easy time doing it, given that the default tracking speed for turrets is already markedly faster than anything you'll be building until you start making fighters or get to T6-7 drives. But yes, it would be absolutely pointless, and a waste of space besides, given how much tonnage turrets require.
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18022 on: May 11, 2016, 12:37:37 pm »

How should I design sensors?

What's more important for ASMs - range, accuracy, damage? What ratios should I aim for? I can post my current size five ASM when I get back home, it seems too large for the damage it does.
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18023 on: May 11, 2016, 02:12:50 pm »

The hell do I make a task force?! And assign people to it and stuff.

Is underground infrastructure still a thing? How do I do it?
« Last Edit: May 11, 2016, 02:49:36 pm by Dozebôm Lolumzalìs »
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18024 on: May 11, 2016, 03:25:43 pm »

Sensors: By role. Anti-missile sensors need to be R1 and should have at least 3-4m km range, more if practical. There are two doctrines for anti-ship sensor design. The first is to make two distinct classes of active sensor, one relatively low on the R scale (30-10) designed to pick up fighters, FACs, and other light ships at a decent range, and another which sacrifices granularity for range, being used primarily to detect larger vessels and colonies. The second is to design all sensors in the vein of the first type, simply scaling them up. This eats up much more space for long-range scanners, so it's typically used to give all vessels relatively short-ranged active sensors (10-100m km), leaving the long range detection to capital ships that can spare 2500t for a sensor and dedicated sensor boats.

--

The most important attribute of ASMs is speed. You need speed to catch enemy ships, to minimize the engagement envelope of their PD, to get the first strike when firing at relatively equal ranges, to maximize CTH. A missile that's too slow is irrelevant regardless of what it's warhead, agility, or range are.

WH needs to be decent, but don't go overboard. Keep in mind that as warhead size increases you have to enlarge the whole missile to compensate (unless you want it to be shit), which means your ships carry fewer launchers and fewer missiles in their magazines at any given size. Thus, smaller WHs are actually often better, due to the inherent advantages of large-volume volleys. This was offset somewhat by shock damage being introduced, but that still requires that a large-WH missile slip through and hit. Square-number warhead sizes (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, &c) are optimal because of how armor damage is distributed for missiles--each square number represents a threshold at which another armor belt is penetrated; WH1 is a single block of armor, WH4 does a row of 3 to the outer layer and a single block to the second layer, WH9 does a row of five to the outer layer, a row of three to the second layer, and a single block to the third layer, &c.

Accuracy matters, of course. It's not hard to optimize though. There's always going to be a sweet spot where your gains from increasing agility start reversing. Make a drive, slot in your WH, then start adding MSP to agility and fiddle until you find the peak.

Range is least important, for reasons I noted in a relatively recent post. Try to get a minimum of ~100m-120m km range on your ASMs at ~TL3, and pop it a bit higher whenever your tech improves and you design a new generation of ASMs. Long range = lots of fuel = less tonnage devoted to the things that make missiles effective weapons.

--

Ctrl+F4 is the Task Force window hotkey. Click the "New TF" button on the bottom left to make a new one. Assign it to a colony or flagship with the dropdowns. Now that it's made, open the Commanders window (F4). Select a high-ranking naval officer, select "Staff Officers" from the assignment filtering dropdown. Assign that officer as the commander of the TF. After that you can assign other officers to the billets in the TF.
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Ozyton

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18025 on: May 11, 2016, 03:49:49 pm »

So I haven't been keeping up with the topic at all, but I just happened to take a glance at it and saw that there was a C# version in the works. So, I decided now would be as good a time as any to learn how to play the game.

... Only to find that the wiki is down... and there doesn't seem to be as many good tutorials up on Youtube as Dwarf Fortress had when I started playing that. A lot of stuff I'm seeing are about how missiles work or how sensor resolution works, but I can already understand those. Some of them give you a sort of step by step on what to for certain things but never explain the reasoning behind the steps. Is there an ETA on when the wiki will return?

Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18026 on: May 11, 2016, 03:59:19 pm »

Wiki's crappy anyway. It can be useful, but try the forums/this thread for help.
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Insanegame27

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18027 on: May 11, 2016, 04:15:55 pm »

Ozy, Quill18's playthrough was pretty much my tutorial of the game. Although you have to watch it on a big screen (not an iPod touch) for best learning experience
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18028 on: May 11, 2016, 05:05:00 pm »

So I haven't been keeping up with the topic at all, but I just happened to take a glance at it and saw that there was a C# version in the works. So, I decided now would be as good a time as any to learn how to play the game.

... Only to find that the wiki is down... and there doesn't seem to be as many good tutorials up on Youtube as Dwarf Fortress had when I started playing that. A lot of stuff I'm seeing are about how missiles work or how sensor resolution works, but I can already understand those. Some of them give you a sort of step by step on what to for certain things but never explain the reasoning behind the steps. Is there an ETA on when the wiki will return?
Wiki's always been shit. There are a couple decent tutorials and LPs on YT and at least one on the Paradox AAR forum.

I know it sounds like a pain, but the best way is really to proceed until you're unable to work out what to do, then ask here. A lot of stuff is the sort of thing where you'll have no trouble once you know where to look. It's mostly just that "how do I play the game" isn't really an answerable question, whereas questions about specific systems, mechanics, tasks, &c. are. Just ask.  :)
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18029 on: May 11, 2016, 05:15:16 pm »

How should I design sensors?

What's more important for ASMs - range, accuracy, damage? What ratios should I aim for? I can post my current size five ASM when I get back home, it seems too large for the damage it does.

My preference for ASMs is to give them just about the same range as my AAMs with extremely high speed (up to 75% engine) with a very large warhead, then bolt on a first stage that isn't too fast but has decent range and a minimal warhead. This allows rather long range while making for an extremely difficult target for defensive missiles. Downside is the lower salvo size caused by the larger missile and the fact that the enemy will have a greater amount of time to get their own salvos in space before yours hit. If your missiles have enough range on the carrier bus, you can mitigate the latter by careful kiting.
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