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[RAM]

a 5% payload! - is not unexpected if you want fast, long-range ships at early tech.

I suspect that the issue is that you shouldn't have fast long-range ships with early technologies. Speed and range are fundamentally opposed in Aurora 4x so you end up with absurdities if you go for both. If you want a fast ship at a long range then send a slow tanker with it, or better yet, tow it out there. Or if you are desperate then you could put in a trail of tankers and have the swift ship buzz out there when it is built, refuelling along the way. No matter how you look at it, if the ship has long range, then it is not fast...

About the only justification I can see for fast and long-range early on is to chase comets...

[Flying Dice]

That's what I was getting at earlier, though. The physical laws (as such) in Aurora regarding T/N ships design have a lot of pretty clear points where they're objectively more effective or efficient or whatever. Because it's a game. In Aurora if you don't design every missile with a square number WH, you're deliberately reducing the efficiency of your missile fire. But in real life it's not that simple, you don't just say "Oh, X energy discharge is the ideal for a missile in this role, why would you ever use something different?" Modern AAMs don't even all use the same warhead type, never mind functionally identical warheads.

This is what I was talking about when I said that I deliberately avoid overoptimizing (which, again, people seem to ignore). From a storytelling perspective the way that a lot of Aurora's systems can be gamed for optimal design points is dull. Making the same ships according to the same design principles in every campaign is not interesting.

Actually, I figure knowing how much warhead strength blows through how much thickness of armor would be something that your engineers would be aware of. That said, the significance is really just "Can I do damage through a particular thickness armor in one shot?" Beyond that point, the significance of a quantity of warhead significantly above or below this threshold is less based on the square values and more just if your DPM and DPS is doing a good enough job, which are both vague enough thresholds that it can be left up to "gut" and "flavor" design. While, yes, a square-theory warhead will make deeper marks in the armor, it's not that big of a deal due to RNG nature of hitting armor. For instance, against a fast hard to hit enemy that my missiles in the size range can't shart it's way through the armor in a single hit, if i had a quantity of warhead that was just below a square, I'd probably just invest in agility instead rather than refitting everything to use bigger launchers.

Well, yes, obviously. But not to the point that it occurs in game mechanics. There's no magic line where a warhead a hair under penetrates two layers of armor and one a hair under penetrates three, because armor thickness isn't actually divided into arbitrary block layers and a warhead not strong enough to penetrate a given thickness will still do damage beyond penetrating a prior thickness measurement. They're just represented that way because it's an easy and decently accurate simplification.

That's part of why shock damage was implemented, to help offset the extreme efficiency of square WHs (and also to make oversized weapons more impactful).

As mentioned above, square warheads are not extreme-efficiency, in most situations where they help they only provide a point or four of internal damage on initial impact.
And mind you, the threshold for armor-depth penetration isn't some "hairline threshold". 1 WH difference isn't small, functionally: the amount of tonnage you'd have to devote in your missile designs for it is pretty real, and a 1 WH nuclear explosive is still a nuclear explosive.
To further press the point of the availability of knowledge of missile penetration depth: The game has a category of Intelligence called "estimated armor thickness". It is basically, what your empire deduces the thickness of the armor of a vessel based on the deepest penetration weapon that hit it without detecting a contact for the ship's innards spilling out, "Streaming atmosphere".
The game will also make these predictions based on missile warhead penetration depth, meaning that yes, even your own Intelligence officers know exactly how deep your missiles penetrate when they hit armor just by looking at the WH value.
It should also be worth noting that the armor in Aurora should well enough be considered exceptionally tough, considering you don't get shock damage until higher warhead increments are involved.

I'd call it a hairline threshold when the difference between a 8.999... WH and 9 WH is an additional layer of penetration. It's incredibly arbitrary. Everything in the range from WH 4 to WH 8.999... will penetrate two layers. The moment you hit WH 9, you suddenly start penetrating three layers. There's almost no difference in MSP cost, especially at high tech levels, between something that barely falls short of penetrating a given number of layers and something that successfully penetrates the same number of layers.

The entire armor system is an abstraction used to represent actual armor thickness because dealing with the latter would be a hefty dose of micromanagement for little gain over a system that shows Aurora's tabletop wargame roots. Researching better armor doesn't increase the number of layers, but rather reduces tonnage per layer, because the layers aren't a set thickness, but rather an abstraction tied to the amount of energy required to penetrate them. One layer at armor TL4 is equivalent in terms of protection to one layer at armor TL9, but the latter is (presumably) much thinner and more compact.

So yes, armor and damage are highly arbitrary measures, and missile warhead values have very clear efficiency spikes at square number warheads which only begin to taper off at very high damage values when shock damage comes into play. A real measure would be describing warheads in terms of their total effective energy output and armor in terms of type and thickness, but we don't have that, because it would be a needless complication.

And I think that you're severely undervaluing penetrating hits, especially against large targets. Remember, the deeper the initial penetration (even if the first hit doesn't breach the hull), the deeper subsequent hits in the same crater will pierce. Granted, a single point of damage from a barely-penetrating hit won't do much, but it's laughable to say that it would be better to not penetrate at all in exchange for slightly reducing the size of the missiles, especially at higher WH TLs where WH4 or WH9 doesn't even require a serious fraction of a single MSP. 

[iceball3]

{snip}

I'd call it a hairline threshold when the difference between a 8.999... WH and 9 WH is an additional layer of penetration. It's incredibly arbitrary. Everything in the range from WH 4 to WH 8.999... will penetrate two layers. The moment you hit WH 9, you suddenly start penetrating three layers. There's almost no difference in MSP cost, especially at high tech levels, between something that barely falls short of penetrating a given number of layers and something that successfully penetrates the same number of layers.

Wh- using the 8.999 value as an example at all isn't really meaningful anyway? There is literally no reason to build warheads outside of the fractional multiples of MSP they take up because warhead strength is always rounded down. Any design that is not needlessly wasteful would just use 8 value warhead or 9 value warhead by tonnage.
It's a consequence of the granularity of the game, but that's just the breaks. It's like saying that - deliberately making ships with strength 3 particle beams to fight FAC which intel tells you has only 2 layers of armor - is "gamey".
Far as I see it, it's just designing your weapons for the job.

And I think that you're severely undervaluing penetrating hits, especially against large targets. Remember, the deeper the initial penetration (even if the first hit doesn't breach the hull), the deeper subsequent hits in the same crater will pierce. Granted, a single point of damage from a barely-penetrating hit won't do much, but it's laughable to say that it would be better to not penetrate at all in exchange for slightly reducing the size of the missiles, especially at higher WH TLs where WH4 or WH9 doesn't even require a serious fraction of a single MSP.

Well, that's a particular consequence of higher tech levels, but in terms of designing large-shipkillers, it's mainly just a task of choosing your missile size, then packing as much hurt into it that can reliably hit it's target. Hitting square isn't really as important as just "more damage", because shock damage is a consideration, and ships that big is are often decently armored.
I'll concede they can be important against especially large ships if their armor is low enough for single-shot hull breaches, at least. There are diminishing returns on impact depth, though, as you keep incrementing the warhead for further layers.

[Sheb]

It'd be nice if fractional WH number had a chance to destroy a armor block. So 9.7WH would destroy 9 armor space, and have 70% chance to destroy a tenth.

[da_nang]

A lot of things would be nice if the variables were continuous. Especially optimization:

min_x f(x)
s.t.
g(x) <= 0
h(x) = 0

Discrete variables are the devil here, rounding even more so. Every time you round or take the floor/ceiling of something, you add one more discrete variable, two more conditions and more computation time. With a limit of 50 discrete variables on the free version of GAMS, it sometimes becomes a challenge formulating the problem so you don't have to send it off to NEOS.

Thankfully, Aurora hasn't forced me to do something too drastic (except when using MATLAB, because no MINLP solver). The only things my program has problems with are estimating armor size (because I haven't bothered checking where Aurora rounds off, also because Aurora calculates it iteratively), crew size and engineering (needs more information about the ship as well as formulae), and finally cost (lacking formula). Armor is just a fixed size for desired ship size, however. Crew size and engineering is typically not that big of a problem. Cost is... well unless I'm building something really big, it shouldn't be a problem and it's usually spotted in the design phase anyway.

But of course, continuous variables are the devil in UI because your number of decimals is limited and you'll probably need many significant figures lest the user starts screaming about obfuscation of numbers.

[Dorsidwarf]

But of course, continuous variables are the devil in UI because your number of decimals is limited and you'll probably need many significant figures lest the user starts screaming about obfuscation of numbers.

Strategy games solve this sort of UI problem by having hover-overs with full values.

[MarcAFK]

Zero to Neptune in one day, that's a nice scout, Thiugh bigger passives wouldn't be missed.

[RAM]

A penetrating hit is a chance at disability. If it means reducing defensive fire, lowering speed, impeding retaliation, or even just convincing the target to stop for repairs after destroying your fleet, it is all good. Now, granted, actual disability is far from certain, but the difference in potential between armour damage and component damage is huge.

Code: [Select]

9     8     7     6     5
***** ***** ***** ****  ****
 ***   ***   **    **    *
  * Against armour of one, they all do okay. 5 is pretty inefficient as far as mass to actual incapacitation goes, but given the amount of armour removed, it will probably be doing full damage soon regardless...
 Up the armour to two and only 9 penetrates immediately. A repeat hit nearby benefits from the extra point of damage, but basically, only 9 does damage the first time, and any of them can penetrate on a repeat strike.
 At three nothing penetrates initially. Repeat hits favour 9 heavily though. It has a full V points over which it can penetrate with a damage profile of (3,4,5,4,3) damage depending upon how close the repeat is. 8 can also penetrate on V points, but the damage profile drops to (1,2,3,2,1) which means that it is doing about half(probably less*) as much on the early repeats. (*ugh, fine, (2*1/3+2*1/2+1*3/5)/5=.45333... so a little under half the damage of a 9 warhead on the first penetrating hit to an already damaged point, when averaged.) 7 and 6 drop to (1,2,2,1) and 5 is a sorry little (1). Stripping the armour is great and all, but 9 really dominates in its odds of getting an early bonus. Sure, any of them can penetrate on a third repeat, but every required repeat is an affront to the law of averages.
 At four armour everyone else requires a third repeat to penetrate, while 9 still has a quite decent (2,2,2).
 Six armour puts 9 damage into the realm of a third repeat to damage, but it can do up to (3) penetration with a lot of luck, while everything else is doing (0) at that point regardless of how lucky they are and 9 can still do a little penetration with less-than-perfect repetition.

Multiples of the current depth are good, so 2,3,6,8,12,15,20,24... are all valuable, but the difference between the latter and a square number is always precisely 1 damage, and missing out on the square is just not worth it. The cost difference between 8 and 9 is too small to justify choosing 8 and the damage difference between 6 and 8 is too small to justify going up to 8. 7 is just an embarrassment, nobody wants to talk about 7 and 5 is the same.

Now sure, if you are vastly superior to your foes, and thus don't care about weakening their performance early in the battle, then fine, you are probably just going to erode their ship down to nothing regardless so penetration isn't an issue, but squares(and, to a lesser extent, the next multiple of the square root) have a very clear theoretical advantage where the benefit relative to the invested resources is noticeably elevated... Now, by all means, it could well be that there is some vital consideration elsewhere, perhaps the difference between two opportunities to destroy your missiles instead of one, so significant warhead sizes are not always the greatest consideration, but dismissing them just seems like folly.

[LoSboccacc]

are laser pumped warheads a thing again? that was the best way for deep hits if onw is concerned that much with missile squares.

what I use missile for especially half game in where it's really hard to one shot stuff is to remove large chunk of armor so that more laser damage leaks in. at range is common for laser to have few damage point left, better striking on a place where armor was thinned.

as that graph you made shows, a 6 point warhead creates large weak spots for lasers to hit.

[iceball3]

If i recall correctly, laser pumping a warhead just splits it into a number of (still missile shaped) impacts, and the main benefit was that it ignored Final Fire point defense completely.
Idk if i am not totally wrong though.

[RAM]

For starters, the 6 damage warhead is one of the magic numbers(best:i², okay:i²+i, worst:neither of those). It is inferior to the 9 or 4 point values, but is still worthy of consideration.
 The 6 damage warhead is two-thirds of the 9-point warhead. Using it to add damage to POTENTIAL laser strikes works according to the following, depending upon armour depth: 1 to 0 (0), 4 to 2 (1/2), 9 to 6 (2/3). Now, granted, the more numerous missiles will be more successful at overwhelming defences, but you are missing out on a lot of weak-points for your lasers. And really, the hope that you might get a lucky piercing hit with your missiles and disable and engine, thus allowing you to close with your lasers that much more swiftly, shouldn't be ignored.

Really, you are looking at a very narrow band of armour values where one or two points of damage is the difference of a laser penetrating or not. And even then you are pretty much just getting exactly what you paid for as the difference.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

How does a ship go "to a planet"? Does it go to where it currently is, or to where it will intercept it? How about moving TGs?

==========

I've figured out that, at least in the early game, it's always better to assign the maximum labs to one researcher. That way, instead of two half-done projects, you'll have one project completely done and one project completely not worked on, after a year or whatever. Building more labs lets the single task go faster, and eventually lets you do two jobs at once.

[Zangi]

Intercept everything.

[Sheb]

How does a ship go "to a planet"? Does it go to where it currently is, or to where it will intercept it? How about moving TGs?

==========

I've figured out that, at least in the early game, it's always better to assign the maximum labs to one researcher. That way, instead of two half-done projects, you'll have one project completely done and one project completely not worked on, after a year or whatever. Building more labs lets the single task go faster, and eventually lets you do two jobs at once.

Well, having one lab assigned to one scientist let them increase their skill. So, one lab to each scientist, and all the remaining on the main project.

[RAM]

And you want scientists in multiple fields. I actually like to try to have a couple of scientists of each field assigned to jobs, and I try to give them all labs to stave off the guilt...