The Truth Is Out There... an Aurora 4X C# Forum game, version 1.13

[nuclearslurpee]

The Fire Controls are only two hull squares (100 tons) each. I could have used three instead of six for the 25 cm secondary armament, but what would I use the freed-up 300 tons for? More fuel? More maintenance stowage?

Actually looking at the design, AUX and CIC modules would not be bad additions, although I don't know if we have enough junior officers sitting around pushing space pencils to actually fill the secondary command modules if we deploy them widely.

 

[blue emu]

Yeah... I haven't retooled for them yet, so the design is still flexible.

I'm also considering more maintenance stowage, since in C# Aurora, every time you fire a weapon it checks for breakdown.

 

[nuclearslurpee]

Yeah... I haven't retooled for them yet, so the design is still flexible.

I'm also considering more maintenance stowage, since in C# Aurora, every time you fire a weapon it checks for breakdown.

This is also a good idea as expensive weapons can run you out of MSP, I've had this issue in past battles.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

The thing to bear in mind is that the granularity of the game is five-second impulses.

If the game allowed Laser fire at any range greater than five light-seconds (~1,500,000 km) then the light beam would need to be tracked across the map in movement impulses, and would... in effect... be treated as a Missile, not as a Beam weapon. In order to be resolved in the same time increment that they fire, they must be limited to five light-seconds.

So Beam weapons must be capped at 1,500,000 km when at maximum tech (both maximum Beam tech and maximum Fire Control tech). Since we are still quite a bit short of maximum tech, our beam weapons only reach a fraction (about 1/6th) of that theoretical maximum.

A second point is that warships in this game are travelling at several thousands of km per second, which means that they travel their own length dozens of times each millisecond (each one-thousandth of a second). In that same time frame (one millisecond) the Laser pulse only moves 300 km. With targets over 1,500,000 km apart, the enemy ship will have time to move tens of thousands of kilometers between the time you fire the Laser and the time the Laser pulse reaches the target.

What are your odds of hitting, at that range?

While I think the accuracy and attenuation issues for unguided weapons are excellent fluff reasons and all that are needed, it's been stated the primary reason is balance. If beam weapon ranges get too long then whoever shoots further wins. Ideally balance would allow you to run the guns at a cost.

A 5000 km/s speed difference allows a fast ship to close through the fire zone to point blank in 5 minutes. That's already a lot of time under fire, but it gives a bit of scope to play with. Especially given other factors like ECM and whatever range your weapons have.

Obviously I don't know if it's actually balanced, but that's the intention.

 

[hyme]

The Fire Controls are only two hull squares (100 tons) each. I could have used three instead of six for the 25 cm secondary armament, but what would I use the freed-up 300 tons for? More fuel? More maintenance stowage?

How about some missiles incase we run into some tanks?

 

[blue emu]

ECM and ECCM are also good uses for the displacement freed up by reducing the number of Fire Controls in the Knight class.

That would contribute to its survivability.

 

[Blaaat]

There's a couple of reasons, actually.

...

There is also the ever-present handwavium that is the Aether and Trans-Newtonian Technology but that is not as fun.

The thing to bear in mind is that the granularity of the game is five-second impulses.

...

What are your odds of hitting, at that range?

Did I just witness Emu getting Emu'd.

 

[blue emu]

Did I just witness Emu getting Emu'd.

I'll blame it on time-zone differences. Damn this round planet!

 

[thegrinner]

Just caught up and this is amazing!

Bombardment vessels equipped with large-calibre Lasers (something with better armor penetration than the 120mm Lasers we've been using).

So I'm coming in a little late with this question, but if there's a need for more armor piercing would particle beams/lances work for bombardment? IIRC their damage pattern is narrower than lasers. Or is it purely damage based for figuring armor penetration for ground bombardment?

 

[blue emu]

I'm pretty sure it's just damage-based.

The Ground Combat mechanics are here, mostly under 'G':

C# Aurora Changes List 1.0 -> 2.5.0 / Table of Contents / Alphabetically

C# Aurora Changes List 1.0 -> 2.5.0 / Table of Contents / Alphabetically

aurora2.pentarch.org

Also... we've been researching Lasers since the 1960s, while Particle Beams have only received a small amount of our research effort. So our Lasers are several tech levels ahead of our Particle Beams.

 

[nuclearslurpee]

Did I just witness Emu getting Emu'd.

Maybe. Maybe not. Have you ever seen Emu and me in the same room, at the same time?

Just caught up and this is amazing!

So I'm coming in a little late with this question, but if there's a need for more armor piercing would particle beams/lances work for bombardment? IIRC their damage pattern is narrower than lasers. Or is it purely damage based for figuring armor penetration for ground bombardment?

This is a fair question and the answer is a little bit complicated.

The basic principle here is that a beam (or kinetic) weapon firing at ground units delivers 20*SQRT(damage) damage and half that in armor penetration. So a 10cm railgun (base damage 1) will deal 20 damage and 10 penetration, while a 15cm laser will deliver 48.99 damage and 24.49 penetration. Note that beam weapons firing at ground targets always use their base (point-blank) damage for this calculation, so lasers, etc. do not need to worry about damage falloff at range (which gives them a bit of an advantage against STOs to help balance out the many advantages STOs get).

Ground units have both hit point/HP and armor stats which depend on the base unit type, the armor level used to design the unit, and the racial armor technology which is the same as your ship armor tech (Duranium, High Density Duranium, Composite, etc.). Using an armor level of 12 (lamellar composite), selected completely arbitrarily and in no way whatsoever relevant to recent events in the campaign, a basic Infantry unit with basic armor would have 12 HP and 12 Armor. A medium tank based on the Vehicle type with Medium Vehicle Armour would have 48 HP and 48 armor. A typical STO with only light armor (level 1) would have 36 HP and only 12 armor.

Damage dealt to a ground unit when a hit is scored, in any form of ground combat including orbital bombardment, is an all-or-nothing prospect, as the unit struck will be either destroyed or survive undamaged. The probability to destroy a ground unit on a hit is P = (attacker damage / defender HP) ^ 2 * (attacker penetration / defender armor) ^ 2. In our examples above, this means that our 15cm laser will always kill any infantry or lightly-armored STO it hits, but will only kill a medium tank about one-quarter of the time when a hit is scored.

Since damage/penetration and HP/armor are both proportional to the same respective tech levels, this means that the effectiveness of bombardment (and really ground combat in general) scales with the fourth power of the difference in tech levels between the two forces. You can, in theory, use this scaling law to do some rough estimates of how many ground forces you need to take a world from a given alien force if you know something about their tech levels, but that is a bit beyond the scope of your question so I will leave that for another time.

To address the actual question: the damage pattern for lasers doesn't matter, only the point-blank damage which is generally higher than that of same-tech-level particle beams. Particle beams also suffer from a lower rate of fire but that is not as important once the STOs have been eliminated, the low base damage is the major limitation. What is really effective for the cost are plasma cannons, which suffer from an even lower rate of fire but once the STOs are eliminated there is nothing that puts out more raw bombardment damage per mineral spent to build them.

 

[blue emu]

I'm retooling now for the Knight and Shield classes. I made a few small adjustments to the design, to increase the number of maintenance stores carried.

---

Shield class Destroyer Escort 7,500 tons 161 Crew 1,443.4 BP TCS 150 TH 1,200 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 2-34 Shields 0-0 HTK 48 Sensors 6/11/0/0 DCR 3 PPV 34.71
Maint Life 2.71 Years MSP 1,860 AFR 150% IFR 2.1% 1YR 362 5YR 5,424 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Morale Check Required

Boosted Internal Fusion Drive EP1200.00 B-40 1996 (1) Power 1200 Fuel Use 68.89% Signature 1200 Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,105,000 Litres Range 73.3 billion km (106 days at full power)

Quad Gauss Cannon R300-100 1991 Turret (1x16) Range 30,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 30,000 km ROF 5
Beam Fire Control R256-TS20000 1991 (1) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 20,000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61

Active PD Search Sensor AS15-R1 1983 (1) GPS 56 Range 15.8m km MCR 1.4m km Resolution 1
EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-6.0 1950 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes

---

Knight class Armoured Cruiser 15,000 tons 394 Crew 3,234 BP TCS 300 TH 2,400 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 7-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 94 Sensors 11/11/0/0 DCR 5 PPV 60
Maint Life 3.57 Years MSP 6,173 AFR 360% IFR 5.0% 1YR 744 5YR 11,164 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Morale Check Required

Boosted Internal Fusion Drive EP1200.00 B-40 1996 (2) Power 2400 Fuel Use 68.89% Signature 1200 Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 3,594,000 Litres Range 62.6 billion km (90 days at full power)

37.50cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser 1999 (1) Range 256,000km TS: 8,000 km/s Power 37-6 RM 40,000 km ROF 35
25.0cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser 1999 (6) Range 256,000km TS: 8,000 km/s Power 16-6 RM 40,000 km ROF 15
Beam Fire Control R256-TS10000 (SW) 1999 (4) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 10,000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Tokamak Fusion Reactor R16 (3) Total Power Output 48.6 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS73-R100 1983 (1) GPS 5600 Range 73.3m km Resolution 100
Active PD Search Sensor AS15-R1 1983 (1) GPS 56 Range 15.8m km MCR 1.4m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-11.0 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km
EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes

 

[blue emu]

From the Aurora website:

Ancient Constructs

In v1.10, anomalies will become Ancient Constructs.

For the most part they will continue to function in the same way, adding a bonus to research projects of a specific research field that takes place on the system body. However, there are three new functions:

1) Ancient Constructs will be 'dormant' until surveyed by a Xenoarchaeological formation. This will be the same process as for ruins. Ruins and Ancient Constructs on the same system body will be surveyed simultaneously but independently. When an Ancient Construct is surveyed, its research field and bonus will be revealed. It will not add any bonus while dormant.

2) Active Ancient Constructs on system bodies where a race has a population of at least one million will add 10% of their bonus to all research projects in their field for that race, even if that project is conducted somewhere else in the empire. For example, an Ancient Construct with a propulsion bonus of 60% will add 60% to research projects on the same body and 6% to all propulsion research projects at any location (which means it will actually add 66% to projects on the same body). This is known as the racial bonus. A new tab on the economics window will summarise the benefits.

3) If Invaders are active, the total % racial bonus provided by all active Ancient Constructs in the galaxy, regardless of which race has the qualifying population, will be used as a negative modifier to the growth of Aether Rifts (see later rules post). For example, if Race A has an Ancient Construct with with 50% Defensive Systems and an Ancient Construct with with 70% Propulsion, while Race B has an Ancient Construct with with 40% Biology, the growth rate of any Aether Rifts will be reduced by 16%. If the total modifier is greater than 100%, Aether Rifts will begin to decrease in size. If two races both have a qualifying population for an Ancient Construct, the bonus for the construct will only apply once for the purposes of Aether Rifts.

 

[blue emu]

Just caught up and this is amazing!

@thegrinner

Did you want a character?

 

[blue emu]

Sixty-four million tons of Gallicite at 100% concentration...

 

[nuclearslurpee]

View attachment 772343

Sixty-four million tons of Gallicite at 100% concentration...

Yeah okay I am back to hating you now.

 

[thegrinner]

@thegrinner

Did you want a character?

Sure! A laser ship if one is available please.

 

[blue emu]

Sure! A laser ship if one is available please.

Three of them are currently under construction.

 

[blue emu]

Yeah okay I am back to hating you now.

My boys can find minerals!

 

[hyme]

I'm retooling now for the Knight and Shield classes. I made a few small adjustments to the design, to increase the number of maintenance stores carried.

---

Shield class Destroyer Escort 7,500 tons 161 Crew 1,443.4 BP TCS 150 TH 1,200 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 2-34 Shields 0-0 HTK 48 Sensors 6/11/0/0 DCR 3 PPV 34.71
Maint Life 2.71 Years MSP 1,860 AFR 150% IFR 2.1% 1YR 362 5YR 5,424 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Morale Check Required

Boosted Internal Fusion Drive EP1200.00 B-40 1996 (1) Power 1200 Fuel Use 68.89% Signature 1200 Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,105,000 Litres Range 73.3 billion km (106 days at full power)

Quad Gauss Cannon R300-100 1991 Turret (1x16) Range 30,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 30,000 km ROF 5
Beam Fire Control R256-TS20000 1991 (1) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 20,000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61

Active PD Search Sensor AS15-R1 1983 (1) GPS 56 Range 15.8m km MCR 1.4m km Resolution 1
EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-6.0 1950 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes

---

Knight class Armoured Cruiser 15,000 tons 394 Crew 3,234 BP TCS 300 TH 2,400 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 7-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 94 Sensors 11/11/0/0 DCR 5 PPV 60
Maint Life 3.57 Years MSP 6,173 AFR 360% IFR 5.0% 1YR 744 5YR 11,164 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Morale Check Required

Boosted Internal Fusion Drive EP1200.00 B-40 1996 (2) Power 2400 Fuel Use 68.89% Signature 1200 Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 3,594,000 Litres Range 62.6 billion km (90 days at full power)

37.50cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser 1999 (1) Range 256,000km TS: 8,000 km/s Power 37-6 RM 40,000 km ROF 35
25.0cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser 1999 (6) Range 256,000km TS: 8,000 km/s Power 16-6 RM 40,000 km ROF 15
Beam Fire Control R256-TS10000 (SW) 1999 (4) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 10,000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Tokamak Fusion Reactor R16 (3) Total Power Output 48.6 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS73-R100 1983 (1) GPS 5600 Range 73.3m km Resolution 100
Active PD Search Sensor AS15-R1 1983 (1) GPS 56 Range 15.8m km MCR 1.4m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-11.0 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km
EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 26.2m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes

Those ships are nice and everything but I think you need some cargo holds added to them. Mission creep.