Sirius Business - a C# Aurora forum game. v2.5

[Flockingbird]

As for HW invasion, there is basically 2 ways to do it, you either commit Exterminatus! Or you go for capture, trying to get as many facilities and as much population (to run those facilities and/or slave labour) as possible. Genocide is easy, just lob as big missiles at the planet as you can until you've completely wrecked it. Only thing surviving will be parts of their army but even that will be decimated so it's not too difficult to take over.

Capturing is massively harder but also massively lucrative. You need to build 3-10 million tons of troops and the ability to combat drop a significant portion of them.

1. Eliminate STO or at least reduce it. Missiles cause too much collateral damage so bring heavily shielded gunships to close range and pop the STOs as they open fire. Do it in 2 stages, first deal with the AS-STO from medium range and then once your shields are recharged, deal with the PD-STO from close range.

2. Create a staging colony as close to the home world as possible and bring your entire invasion force there. This way you don't need to build too many landing ships as you can bring the second wave over quickly - remember ground combat is resolved in 8 hour turns.

As to the composition of your invasion force, several weapons are unnecessary or counter productive due to causing too much collateral damage. AA and SHAV are the former, HB are the latter. Now that you know from captured ships what their armour level is, you can calculate whether CAP is enough to penetrate infantry armour as that is the best weapon to deal with the gigantic horde of infantry they will bring to the field. If not, use HCAP. If that is not enough either, use MAC and LAV in combination. If even that isn't enough, it's better to build supply units and HQs while you research the next tech level as an invasion force using only MAV or HAV is extremely expensive and inefficient.

Currently NPR armies follow very similar patterns, so there are no air threats, majority of their force will be infantry, with small numbers of tanks and artillery. So the most efficient strategy is to first land lot of troops that can soak up hits while cleaning out the infantry as fast as possible, then bring down your expensive heavy hitters to take out their tanks. I'm not going to tell you exactly what to build as there are multiple ways to achieve the stuff I explained above. And sorry for spoiling some of the NPR secret but preparing for a HW invasion takes time and it's super annoying to have to redo the whole thing if you fail.

Oh and don't forget about supply, it's a nightmare to fight without it!

That’s very helpful advice for invading an NPR’s homeworld. But I thought the current plan is to smash their shipyards to keep them from attacking us while we go deal with the Bork. An invasion of the Modron HW isn’t under consideration until after we’ve dealt with the latter.

 

[blue emu]

True.

But this info helps us decide what (and how much) Ground Forces to build, over the next few years.

 

[randakar]

As for HW invasion, there is basically 2 ways to do it, you either commit Exterminatus! Or you go for capture, trying to get as many facilities and as much population (to run those facilities and/or slave labour) as possible. Genocide is easy, just lob as big missiles at the planet as you can until you've completely wrecked it. Only thing surviving will be parts of their army but even that will be decimated so it's not too difficult to take over.

Capturing is massively harder but also massively lucrative. You need to build 3-10 million tons of troops and the ability to combat drop a significant portion of them.

1. Eliminate STO or at least reduce it. Missiles cause too much collateral damage so bring heavily shielded gunships to close range and pop the STOs as they open fire. Do it in 2 stages, first deal with the AS-STO from medium range and then once your shields are recharged, deal with the PD-STO from close range.

2. Create a staging colony as close to the home world as possible and bring your entire invasion force there. This way you don't need to build too many landing ships as you can bring the second wave over quickly - remember ground combat is resolved in 8 hour turns.

As to the composition of your invasion force, several weapons are unnecessary or counter productive due to causing too much collateral damage. AA and SHAV are the former, HB are the latter. Now that you know from captured ships what their armour level is, you can calculate whether CAP is enough to penetrate infantry armour as that is the best weapon to deal with the gigantic horde of infantry they will bring to the field. If not, use HCAP. If that is not enough either, use MAC and LAV in combination. If even that isn't enough, it's better to build supply units and HQs while you research the next tech level as an invasion force using only MAV or HAV is extremely expensive and inefficient.

Currently NPR armies follow very similar patterns, so there are no air threats, majority of their force will be infantry, with small numbers of tanks and artillery. So the most efficient strategy is to first land lot of troops that can soak up hits while cleaning out the infantry as fast as possible, then bring down your expensive heavy hitters to take out their tanks. I'm not going to tell you exactly what to build as there are multiple ways to achieve the stuff I explained above. And sorry for spoiling some of the NPR secret but preparing for a HW invasion takes time and it's super annoying to have to redo the whole thing if you fail.

Oh and don't forget about supply, it's a nightmare to fight without it!

That's really helpful, but it does leave questions.

What do the abbreviations mean? AA sounds like anti-air, but SHAV? HB? CAP? (Probably not Combat Air Patrol..) HCAP? MAC? LAV? HAV?

 

[randakar]

That’s very helpful advice for invading an NPR’s homeworld. But I thought the current plan is to smash their shipyards to keep them from attacking us while we go deal with the Bork. An invasion of the Modron HW isn’t under consideration until after we’ve dealt with the latter.

Given how many troops you need we'd have to start designing the armies pretty soon and then build them up over the next few in-game years. Aurora is a game that rewards planning. Winning wars is about logistics and production.

 

[SteveZAX]

That's really helpful, but it does leave questions.

What do the abbreviations mean? AA sounds like anti-air, but SHAV? HB? CAP? (Probably not Combat Air Patrol..) HCAP? MAC? LAV? HAV?

AA is indeed anti-air. I think (pretty sure) SHAV is Super Heavy Armored Vehicle, LAV is Light Armored Vehicle, HAV is Heavy Armored Vehicle.
CAP may actually be Combat Air Patrol ( but as used here by GarfunkeL I think not )
Just a guess HCAP might be High Capacity Anti-Personnel.
MAC, HB? no clue.

 

[Acheron]

As for HW invasion, there is basically 2 ways to do it, you either commit Exterminatus! Or you go for capture, trying to get as many facilities and as much population (to run those facilities and/or slave labour) as possible. Genocide is easy, just lob as big missiles at the planet as you can until you've completely wrecked it. Only thing surviving will be parts of their army but even that will be decimated so it's not too difficult to take over.

Capturing is massively harder but also massively lucrative. You need to build 3-10 million tons of troops and the ability to combat drop a significant portion of them.

1. Eliminate STO or at least reduce it. Missiles cause too much collateral damage so bring heavily shielded gunships to close range and pop the STOs as they open fire. Do it in 2 stages, first deal with the AS-STO from medium range and then once your shields are recharged, deal with the PD-STO from close range.

2. Create a staging colony as close to the home world as possible and bring your entire invasion force there. This way you don't need to build too many landing ships as you can bring the second wave over quickly - remember ground combat is resolved in 8 hour turns.

As to the composition of your invasion force, several weapons are unnecessary or counter productive due to causing too much collateral damage. AA and SHAV are the former, HB are the latter. Now that you know from captured ships what their armour level is, you can calculate whether CAP is enough to penetrate infantry armour as that is the best weapon to deal with the gigantic horde of infantry they will bring to the field. If not, use HCAP. If that is not enough either, use MAC and LAV in combination. If even that isn't enough, it's better to build supply units and HQs while you research the next tech level as an invasion force using only MAV or HAV is extremely expensive and inefficient.

Currently NPR armies follow very similar patterns, so there are no air threats, majority of their force will be infantry, with small numbers of tanks and artillery. So the most efficient strategy is to first land lot of troops that can soak up hits while cleaning out the infantry as fast as possible, then bring down your expensive heavy hitters to take out their tanks. I'm not going to tell you exactly what to build as there are multiple ways to achieve the stuff I explained above. And sorry for spoiling some of the NPR secret but preparing for a HW invasion takes time and it's super annoying to have to redo the whole thing if you fail.

Oh and don't forget about supply, it's a nightmare to fight without it!

That's really helpful, but it does leave questions.

What do the abbreviations mean? AA sounds like anti-air, but SHAV? HB? CAP? (Probably not Combat Air Patrol..) HCAP? MAC? LAV? HAV?

This site might be helpful:

C-Ground Units - AuroraWiki

aurorawiki.pentarch.org

EDIT: BTW, what production facilities produce ground units an what opportunity or other costs will be incurred there?

 

[randakar]

This site might be helpful:

C-Ground Units - AuroraWiki

aurorawiki.pentarch.org

Ah. Of course there's a wiki entry. Silly me.
Thing is, when people discuss this stuff it's helpful if they explain terms we haven't seen in the thread before.

EDIT: BTW, what production facilities produce ground units an what opportunity or other costs will be incurred there?

Ground units are build by a Ground Forces Construction Complex

C-Installations - AuroraWiki

aurorawiki.pentarch.org

As far as costs goes, the complexes themselves take duranium and neutronium, while ground units use Vendarite which isn't used much outside of ground units.
So you're looking mostly at the opportunity costs of using construction factories to build the GFCC's (or 'training facilities' since that is easier to remember and sets it apart from other types of construction complexes) and those minerals.

But the units themselves have very little opportunity costs because vendarite is more or less inconsequential outside of this purpose. At some point if you have a lot of training facilities you may have to divert mines to get more of that stuff, true, but odds are you won't need to.

Except of course the research. Which is it's own specialty, so we're mostly talking labs.

And finally, you want troop transports capable of dropping enough tonnage of ground units quickly. Those take shipyards and (civilian) ship construction capacity. If your invasion target doesn't have a nearby body that we can use as a staging area you'll need a lot of them. 3 million tons worth of troops (minimum!) takes 3 million tons of troop transport bay and if you need to travel more than 8 hours (a standard ground combat cycle on a planet) you want to be able to drop a very large percentage of that in a single transport cycle.

So we're talking something along the lines of 20-30 100.000 ton drop racks, but it could be as many as 100 vessels.
And if you want those ships to be able to survive through STO firing at them -- thereby making killing them from space with beam weapons unnecessary - it gets more expensive due to the required layers of armor and the need to put some engines on them or create armored tugs.


That said: conquering a NPR homeworld is incredibly good for your empire. Even today, in this game, Earth is by far the most built up planet we have. No other planet even comes close. Imagine capturing a world that is 20% bigger than your original homeworld in every respect joining the empire. It's huge. Hundreds, possibly thousands of installations of more or less every type. Billions of alien pops.

And there is only one way to do that. There is no diplomatic annexation.

 

[Nikolai II]

And how would they know about the Black ho

Certainly through partaking of Terran cultural treasures such as the Blaxploitation hero Shaft?

..oh, wrong ho.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I more or less am.

He MIGHT be armed.

I'm at 100,000 km.

CIWS (which can legally be added to civvie Freighters) has a shorter range.

How dangerous would CIWS be to us?

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View attachment 1279635

Why do they give 1.005 damage?
Is that just rounding, or something else?

CIWS cannot be used offensively so you don't have to worry about getting shot.

We're the offensive party, though, so they'd be opening fire defensively.

HB are the latter. N

What's HB?
Can you research their combat tech faster while fighting them?

Oh and don't forget about supply, it's a nightmare to fight without it!

What is supply in this context?
Like having loads of extra gear ready to ship in?


Also, we'll use the population for a third purpose: Xenoburgers.

 

[Wagonlitz]

That said: conquering a NPR homeworld is incredibly good for your empire. Even today, in this game, Earth is by far the most built up planet we have. No other planet even comes close. Imagine capturing a world that is 20% bigger than your original homeworld in every respect joining the empire. It's huge. Hundreds, possibly thousands of installations of more or less every type. Billions of alien pops.

Will take a while for us to be able to repopulate thr planet, though.

In Germany in the 30s and first half of the 40s they had a reward system rewarding women getting 6 or more children.
Could we institute something similar, as we'll need very high growth to fill out all those empty installations?

Is if possibly to take the planet unharmed by removing the atmosphere with terraformers and then putting down a new one?
Would save the combat, and the meat might not even be spoilt, albeit anaerobic decomposition may still happen.

 

[randakar]

How dangerous would CIWS be to us?

Not at all. It doesn't shoot at anything except automatically at incoming missiles. And there is no control over that.
Pretty sure we've explained that before -- two or three times, in fact.

Why do they give 1.005 damage?

Because it's AMM shooting at us. Size 1 missile, 1 damage warheads.

Is that just rounding, or something else?

The design probably used some whole fraction of a ton for a warhead, and that was rounded upwards.

We're the offensive party, though, so they'd be opening fire defensively.

No, that's not how that works. CIWS can only shoot at incoming missiles.

Can you research their combat tech faster while fighting them?

Fighting or not has no effect on research speed.

What is supply in this context?
Like having loads of extra gear ready to ship in?

Food, water, ammunition, medkits, battery packs for whatever, fuel, you name it. An abstract representation of all the things your soldiers need to fight a war effectively.
And it's represented as supply units that carry that stuff, often grouped with your HQ units and as separate rear formations

Also, we'll use the population for a third purpose: Xenoburgers.

Alas, that's not in the game. You can build work camps though -- we've discussed that before, too.

 

[randakar]

Will take a while for us to be able to repopulate thr planet, though.

Who said anything about needing to repopulate it? If you capture it with armies you'll get a surrender from the existing population. Of course the planet will be damaged to a degree, and that very much includes population and installations, but for reasons NPR planets tend to be huge.

In Germany in the 30s and first half of the 40s they had a reward system rewarding women getting 6 or more children.
Could we institute something similar, as we'll need very high growth to fill out all those empty installations?

No. And we don't need to.

Is if possibly to take the planet unharmed by removing the atmosphere with terraformers and then putting down a new one?

I think it can. Not sure. But that *would* kill all of the population. The 'not sure' bit is about the armies though.
And in that case you definitely need to kill the STO from orbit first, or it shoots down your terraforming stations. So some damage is unavoidable.

Of course with the terraforming system there are variations of that. Removing or adding oxygen is one option, and often easier. It depends on their tolerances and on what they breathe. Some species breathe methane.

Would save the combat, and the meat might not even be spoilt, albeit anaerobic decomposition may still happen.

Yeah, I guess it would.

 

[Wagonlitz]

Not at all. It doesn't shoot at anything except automatically at incoming missiles. And there is no control over that.
Pretty sure we've explained that before -- two or three times, in fact.

Had forgot it then.
So it can't ever target gunboats?

Fighting or not has no effect on research speed.

So we can't learn from the enemy through combat?
A shame.
In reality war always has been the greatest driver of innovation.

Food, water, ammunition, medkits, battery packs for whatever, fuel, you name it. An abstract representation of all the things your soldiers need to fight a war effectively.
And it's represented as supply units that carry that stuff, often grouped with your HQ units and as separate rear formations

So in effect what rhey do is prolonging the time the troops can be in combat before needing recuperation?

Who said anything about needing to repopulate it?

Don't we want to use it after we've turned the modrons into xenoburgers gassed them given how xenoburgers aren't possible.
Like, we wouldn't want to have dangerous aliens just running about freely, would we.

but for reasons NPR planets tend to be huge.

So they're usually bigger than Earth?
Do they usually have lots if minerals?

But that *would* kill all of the population.

Yeah, that was rhe point.

Like how you lower pigs into CO2 baths at slaughterhouses before cutting up the meat.

 

[randakar]

So it can't ever target gunboats?

No. It's a civilian component. Think of it as a gun that has safeguards against being used in that way so that we can safely give it to civilians without risking them turning into pirates.

So we can't learn from the enemy through combat?
A shame.

That's the player's job.

In reality war always has been the greatest driver of innovation.

In the game it drives you to design new things and allocate research accordingly. That's how you get innovation.

So in effect what rhey do is prolonging the time the troops can be in combat before needing recuperation?

It affects their ability to fight on. They don't really recuperate, they just get big combat penalties if they run out of supplies.

Don't we want to use it after we've turned the modrons into xenoburgers gassed them given how xenoburgers aren't possible.

No, you really want that population. I mean, sure, you could play this pure hatred xenofobia style but we already have quite enough of that in the real world, thank you.
Repopulating it is a hassle, and new races also means you have a wider range of planets you can colonize because the aliens will have different environmental tolerances.
In fact, it's possible for their homeworld to *not* even be suitable for colonisation by humans.

So they're usually bigger than Earth?

In terms of population and installations, yes. Has to do with the generation mechanisms: It takes a percentage of your *empire* population as a base for generating the NPR homeworld. So if it's a 100% size NPR opponent it will create a single planet that has the same population as your entire empire put together, and based on that generates installations and such.

Do they usually have lots if minerals?

No, because the generation mechanism for new worlds is designed with the aim of encouraging empires to start colonizing and exploring. Meaning it usually won't have enough minerals to last very long if they don't. Though usually it does have a starting amount that seems reasonable it will run out quick.

 

[Wagonlitz]

That's the player's job.

Yeah, but research stoll ought to go faster.
Like, picking up armo7r of their dead bodies and sending it home for composition analysis, for instance.
And with learning from war I meant research bejng sped up in specific areas.

No, you really want that population. I mean, sure, you could play this pure hatred xenofobia style but we already have quite enough of that in the real world, thank you.
Repopulating it is a hassle, and new races also means you have a wider range of planets you can colonize because the aliens will have different environmental tolerances.
In fact, it's possible for their homeworld to *not* even be suitable for colonisation by humans.

But why would we want to risk introducing malignant elements to our population?
Can we then at least set their citizenship level to slaves?
And only keep them for planetary bodies humans can't live on.

In terms of population and installations, yes. Has to do with the generation mechanisms: It takes a percentage of your *empire* population as a base for generating the NPR homeworld. So if it's a 100% size NPR opponent it will create a single planet that has the same population as your entire empire put together, and based on that generates installations and such.

Ah. So having lots of slave races is a boon then, as it means NPRs are stronger than if you have people do the work the slaves do?

 

[randakar]

Yeah, but research stoll ought to go faster.
Like, picking up armo7r of their dead bodies and sending it home for composition analysis, for instance.

Well, it doesn't work that way. This is not XCOM ;-)

But why would we want to risk introducing malignant elements to our population?
Can we then at least set their citizenship level to slaves?

You can build work camps. That effectively has that effect. And the *colony* does have an integration level attached to it. A legal status, if you will. But that's something I haven't done a lot with. We will need police forces after conquest at any rate, at least until the unrest dies down.

Ah. So having lots of slave races is a boon then, as it means NPRs are stronger than if you have people do the work the slaves do?

Not sure what that sentence means. Population is population, racial stats are almost exclusively about environmental tolerances. I think there are some ground combat modifiers in there as well, but that's about the extend of it.

At any rate: Having lots of highly populated worlds with lots of installations is a boon. If you can find the minerals to support them, at least.
Note that all of the above about the size of their world is what happens at generation time -- so mostly, when that system is explored into. After that it will just follow it's own growth path.

 

[Wagonlitz]

This is not XCOM ;-)

Never played that, so no idea how things are there.
Waa talking from an IRL POV.

You can build work camps. That effectively has that effect. And the *colony* does have an integration level attached to it. A legal status, if you will. But that's something I haven't done a lot with. We will need police forces after conquest at any rate, at least until the unrest dies down.

And will need to ban them from freely settling elsewhere.
We don't want them to mingle with people.

Not sure what that sentence means. Population is population, racial stats are almost exclusively about environmental tolerances. I think there are some ground combat modifiers in there as well, but that's about the extend of it.

At any rate: Having lots of highly populated worlds with lots of installations is a boon. If you can find the minerals to support them, at least.
Note that all of the above about the size of their world is what happens at generation time -- so mostly, when that system is explored into. After that it will just follow it's own growth path.

So you're saying it's generated pop will he based on the amount of people and slaves we have, not just how many people we have?


And if you wipe out the slaves wouldn't you them get a super high growth as there'd be lots of opportunity for the new generations, so high birth rates?

 

[randakar]

Never played that, so no idea how things are there.
Waa talking from an IRL POV.

Well, XCOM is good. The old 1991 version, or the 2014 remake. Both are good.

And will need to ban them from freely settling elsewhere.
We don't want them to mingle with people.

Yeah, well, in Aurora that can't really happen, every 'population' on a body has 1 and exactly 1 race assigned to it. Not the best mechanism, but it is what it is. One of the reasons why we don't do genetic modifications of humans -- it's too annoying for the benefit it brings.

So you're saying it's generated pop will he based on the amount of people and slaves we have, not just how many people we have?

There is no seperate category of population called 'slaves'. No such thing exists.
To be fair the population used to build work camps are no longer population but that's because in game mechanical terms the population is literally consumed as if it's a mineral. Those people are gone for all intents and purposes.

And if you wipe out the slaves wouldn't you them get a super high growth as there'd be lots of opportunity for the new generations, so high birth rates?

If you wipe out the population there will not be any population to run your installations. And since a world like that requires billions of people it will take a long time to repopulate even with the 10% annual growth rate associated with an almost empty world.

So no, it's much better to not do that.

 

[Wagonlitz]

it will take a long time to repopulate even with the 10% annual growth rate associated with an almost empty world.

Why can't we get higher than 10% growth rate?
In real life when encountering virgin lands people have 6, 8, 10 children.
That's a growth rate of 300 to 1000% or more every 20 years.

 

[randakar]

Why can't we get higher than 10% growth rate?
In real life when encountering virgin lands people have 6, 8, 10 children.
That's a growth rate of 300 to 1000% or more every 20 years.

Because that's just not how the game works.