Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

[blue emu]

Hmm, ok, so, how much speed/carrier deck space would it cost to fit a res-1 FC on the Gnat mk2?

A size-1 FC (weighing 50 tons) could lock onto a missile at 139,000 km. For reference, the whole Gnat including life support, engine, fuel, weapons, the works, weighs 191 tons... so that FC would increase its mass by 25%.

Note that 139,000 km is NOT a long distance... it is a very short distance indeed. Those enemy size-1 missiles would cover that distance in two seconds, and the game turns are each five seconds long. Since a missile doesn't move on the turn it is launched, you need at least ten seconds lead-time in order to hit an opponent with a missile.

 

[Bjering]

If it were completely dedicated to intercepting, probably none. But that would leave it near useless for strike roles.

If we went with 2 missile launcher designs, we'd have enough space to sacrifice a missile launcher for a second FC. I'm not sure it would be worth it, to be honest.

I understand, and agree, bulking down the fighter with two FC seems like a waste then. Still would like to see if the homing AMM has any merit.

Another idea, given the "unlikely" outcome of our last engagment where the glory went to the 1-size warhead decoys, would a fighter with a size-1 launcher instead of size-4 make any sense?

 

[fnt]

Based on your fleet composition i would suggest beam based pd ships.

1. Gauss Cannon PD Destroyer
size <= Star Class Destroyer
no jump drive
2+x dual or tripple gauss cannon turrets with TS as high as possible
FC for every turret with TS matching the turrets. Range large enough to given 75%+ to hit chances at gauss cannon range

If empty space is left add more gauss turrets, armor, shields or pd missles tubes with storage and fc.

2. Laser Multi Purpose Cruiser
size <= Battle Class (with no jump drive) or size <= shipyard size (with jump drive)
1-2 FC with max range and TS
Turreted single or dual lasers with TS matching FC and range and ROF large enough to have a chance to fire twice at incomming ASM. (dependend on tech 12cm or 15cm with ROF 5).
Armor and shields comparable to Battle class (these ships are likely to be attacked)

IF space is left add some 15 cm turretless laser if ship speed or beam FC TS tech>6000km/s

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

Is there an advantage to multi-barrelling PD turrets? Except against armoured missiles, it would only make a difference if each barrel calculates hit/miss seperately.

 

[BwenGun]

If I might say something, surely we should be moving our fighters towards a design that is capable of launching it's missile before it gets in range of the enemies PD? And once we have the ability, after adjusting for ECM, to do so surely the survivability of the fighters as decoys becomes largely irrelevant compared to a need for a missile strike large enough to get through the PD network that the fighters themselves have avoided?

I suppose that being the case the question has to be what is the distance of our fighter FC, and the missiles our fighters are carrying? And also whether through the new tech points we can move to either improve that range to the point where it becomes effective.

Oh and on the ship design front, I'm tempted to say that leaving one shipyard empty and upgrading it to 30,000 tons might well be a good idea, simply so that if we intend to continue building carriers we can field ones as large as possible.

 

[GaiusC]

The Geo-scout ESN Hutton has completed its scan of the captured world Wolf 294 A-II...

Intact. Wow, I thought we hit them with 400 nuclear warheads
And citieS. As in, there's more than one there.
Damned, I've never seen this before, it is pure awesome.

Unless of course our xeno team finds out it's cities from the Lunatic Hillbillies, Tech Level 0...

Now, what I wonder is, if these are intact, doesn't it mean that there should be plenty of live robots roaming their streets?

we hit the jackpot when we started dismantling that PD PDC that we destroyed. We got a FC that can fire on res-1 targets at 38 m-km.

Arguably, the most important part of this isn't that we have such an insane FC to put on Earth, but that we now know the range of their anti-missile missiles. Therefore, we should now stay beyond the 38m range from any suspected Prix world, to be safe and avoid being annihilated by hundreds of size-1 salvos.

Salvage of the Khan wreck has given us a second 38 m-km range PD Fire Control, and another 10 PD launchers (now a total of 38),.

Another useful info. It's this Khan that butchered our fighter squadron then. We now know that Khan has something like 2'000 size-1 missiles and can launch them at 38m km.

At present, we have no real ability to detect or engage small vessels such as Fighters or Fast Attack Craft (no sensors with intermediate resolutions, in between 1 and 100)

Having res-5 works for FAC detection, I think. Having res-20 sensors would also be interesting. Both should be put on Earth's PCDs of course, and on command warships, assuming we have ships that are mostly there for detection.

I'm inclined to keep the two PD Fire Controls, and pull everything else to bits for tech info.
Opinions?

When you have several similar alien items, you can see usually after the first one if it's useful tech-wise, or if you can just keep it for future uses - or for scrap.


Now, about PD, it's clear that the Prix missiles are so fast our FC and sensors will not allow us to efficiently use anti-missile missiles. Beam weapons are basically the only way we have to intercept Prix missile salvos.

 

[fnt]

Is there an advantage to multi-barrelling PD turrets? Except against armoured missiles, it would only make a difference if each barrel calculates hit/miss seperately.

1. Multi-barrel turrets need less space.
2. If i understand the game mechanic correctly missle salvos are targeted not single missles.

 

[Galleblære]

If I might say something, surely we should be moving our fighters towards a design that is capable of launching it's missile before it gets in range of the enemies PD? And once we have the ability, after adjusting for ECM, to do so surely the survivability of the fighters as decoys becomes largely irrelevant compared to a need for a missile strike large enough to get through the PD network that the fighters themselves have avoided?

I suppose that being the case the question has to be what is the distance of our fighter FC, and the missiles our fighters are carrying? And also whether through the new tech points we can move to either improve that range to the point where it becomes effective.

Oh and on the ship design front, I'm tempted to say that leaving one shipyard empty and upgrading it to 30,000 tons might well be a good idea, simply so that if we intend to continue building carriers we can field ones as large as possible.

Agreed, specially now that we are designing PD ships. Perhaps if the gnats could be equipped with beam weapons.. then they could serve to take out the threats Blue Emu mentioned (opposing fighters, fast attack craft etc) should they get close. In addition, in a fight where both sides might be running low on missiles or whatever, they could swarm enemies and finish them off. But then I am imagining a true swarm of gnats... like 400+

 

[unmerged(15623)]

Did we actually touch down the troops on El Dorado yet? Just beware that high tech precursor ruins need quite a bit of troops to contain.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

1. Multi-barrel turrets need less space.
2. If i understand the game mechanic correctly missle salvos are targeted not single missles.

I'm not really seeing how that works. Are you saying if an incoming salvo has three missiles, a single barrel turret will shoot at one, a twin at two, and a triple at all three in a single reload period? But a triple turret facing a two or one missile salvo would offer no advantage over a twin barrel turret, assuming one point of damage is sufficient?

 

[Darkrenown]

Shouldn't you wait to see what bounty of techs you can recover from El Dorado before designing any new ships/fleets, or will it take too long to harvest the alien cities? Would be a shame to lay down a new series of ships only to to see them outdated before they're built.

 

[Cromelex]

Shouldn't you wait to see what bounty of techs you can recover from El Dorado before designing any new ships/fleets, or will it take too long to harvest the alien cities? Would be a shame to lay down a new series of ships only to to see them outdated before they're built.

Agreed.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

There's a lot on that planet, but there'll be a lot in the other Prix systems too. We should definitely wait till the quick stuff is recovered and returned to Earth, but anything that could years or months to recover can carry on in the background while we move on to the next target, in my opinion. Most of what we're upgrading, like fighters and missiles are quick to replace and tend to get used up anyway - all those thousands of missiles we expended taking this planet were already obsolete, as it turned out.

 

[fnt]

I'm not really seeing how that works. Are you saying if an incoming salvo has three missiles, a single barrel turret will shoot at one, a twin at two, and a triple at all three in a single reload period? But a triple turret facing a two or one missile salvo would offer no advantage over a twin barrel turret, assuming one point of damage is sufficient?

As i understand this thread the game handle a missle salvo of three Missles as one target with 3 hitpoints . (see post 3 list point 2.) )
First the game calculates the to hit chance for the turret+FC against the missle salvo. Then every shot of the turret is probed against that to hit chance. If succesfull the shot will produce damage. If the damage is high enough the shot kills one missle. An unarmoured missle will need 1 point of damage.

A triple barrel gauss turret will produce 6-9 shots every 5 seconds at the current tech
level. I doubt we will have more than 30-50% to hit chance against incomming prix ASM. So one turret will have a good chance to destroy a 3 missle salvo every 5 seconds.

 

[Nabobalis]

There's a lot on that planet, but there'll be a lot in the other Prix systems too. We should definitely wait till the quick stuff is recovered and returned to Earth, but anything that could years or months to recover can carry on in the background while we move on to the next target, in my opinion. Most of what we're upgrading, like fighters and missiles are quick to replace and tend to get used up anyway - all those thousands of missiles we expended taking this planet were already obsolete, as it turned out.

Well are we going to find much anyway? I mean we found this but isn't the loot still random to a certain degree? So we could discover nothing useful (i.e genetics techs).

Why doesn't Paradox try to make a game similar to this? *wink*

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

As i understand this thread the game handle a missle salvo of three Missles as one target with 3 hitpoints . (see post 3 list point 2.) )
First the game calculates the to hit chance for the turret+FC against the missle salvo. Then every shot of the turret is probed against that to hit chance. If succesfull the shot will produce damage. If the damage is high enough the shot kills one missle. An unarmoured missle will need 1 point of damage.

A triple barrel gauss turret will produce 6-9 shots every 5 seconds at the current tech
level. I doubt we will have more than 30-50% to hit chance against incomming prix ASM. So one turret will have a good chance to destroy a 3 missle salvo every 5 seconds.

That's exactly the info I was looking for in the help thread a day or two ago, thanks So not only will a twin turret fire at twice as many missiles in a salvo, the rate of fire also matters. That makes a decent tech gauss cannon a very attractive option.

Well are we going to find much anyway? I mean we found this but isn't the loot still random to a certain degree? So we could discover nothing useful (i.e genetics techs).

Why doesn't Paradox try to make a game similar to this? *wink*

You never know, do you? We might get a new engine tech, or we might only get a couple of fighter factories and a bunch of angry robots.

And Paradox already publish a good 4X with a sequel upcoming, so it might be a bit much to hope for...

 

[TheExecuter]

Don't forget that the rearming time of a fighter with only one missile tube is significantly faster than the rearm time for a more heavily armed fighter.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the fighters are destroyers.

Fighter doctrine is that our fighters can deliver blows from a dispersed platform, at a range away from our capital ships (high speed), can return, reload, and launch ANOTHER strike.

If we want more heavily armed light units, it would be best to develop fast attack craft with their own doctrinal use, apart from the fighters.

Speaking of FACs, we currently have no (zero, zilch, nada) defense against them...or enemy fighters. We need to look into building ships dedicated to intercepting smaller attack craft that can penetrate our sensor gaps or swamp our fire controls. IMO, this should be the role of a new FAC design. Capable of being held in a mothership carrier and being launched against any swarm of fighters or attack craft that threaten to swamp our defences. Ideally the FACs would be armed with beams (meson, probably), but I don't know the feasibility of this, as it is heavily tech dependent...in an area where we may not have much tech.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

The reload times are long enough that either case is only likely to get one repeat strike. This repeat is only likely to be useful for chasing down fleeing ships, in which case speed has its merits. However, depending on just what the difference in speeds is I think the only important difference you mention is dispersion. If salvos do work in the way described in the link above, two missile salvos only offer an advantage over one missile salvos if point defence is neutralised, in which case more individual missiles is good however they arrive. In any other case, 119 salvos x 2 missiles will actually be less effective than 120 salvos x 1 missile, since the enemy is going to have more than one shot per fire control and will handle a two missile salvo just as easily as one.

 

[Lord Strange]

Hooray for the Xeno team!

 

[GaiusC]

Well, we'd have to wait until the Xeno team can report how many installations are on the planet, and their tech-level. If we get TL-2, we've just found a lot of new infrastructure for a new colony, and not much else. If it's TL-5 and there are 200+ installations, then we're gonna find whole new techs in it. And probably a couple of vaults of pissed off robots