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Author Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games  (Read 2672618 times)

Detros

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18570 on: June 18, 2017, 01:25:12 am »

But if you dock a fighter (or any ship) inside a hangar its maintenance clock will start going down.

I thought that only stopped the maintenance clock from going up? Hold on, let me hop into Aurora.

EDIT: It appears you're right. My bad.
See explanation by Steve the Dev himself,
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Paul

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18571 on: June 18, 2017, 02:04:50 am »

I decided to give a regular conventional start a go and try using nothing but meson weaponry. No missiles.

My first alien encounter happened one jump from Sol, 9 ships of 9050 tons flying nearly 4000 m/s melted my poor survey vessel. And a jumpgate was there leading back to Earth. Thankfully the enemy ships didn't decide to go through looking around because it was right by Earth.

So I spent a bit of time finishing up my FAC and ended up with this design:
Code: [Select]
Essex class Fast Attack Craft    1,000 tons     44 Crew     179 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 4-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6
Maint Life 0.6 Years     MSP 11    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 18    5YR 277    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   

6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 82.1%    Signature 120    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 11.0 billion km   (21 days at full power)

R6/C3 Meson Cannon (2)    Range 60,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Along with these to go along with it:
Code: [Select]
Essex LS class Fast Scout Craft    1,000 tons     30 Crew     206 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 7-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0.58 Years     MSP 13    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 22    5YR 337    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 4   

6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 82.1%    Signature 120    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres    Range 13.2 billion km   (25 days at full power)

R6/C3 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 60,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR12-R100 (1)     GPS 1600     Range 12.8m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Essex MS class Fast Scout Craft    1,000 tons     30 Crew     206 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 7-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0.58 Years     MSP 13    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 22    5YR 337    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 4   

6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 82.1%    Signature 120    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres    Range 13.2 billion km   (25 days at full power)

R6/C3 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 60,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 16     Range 1.3m km    MCR 139k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I gave the sensor ones heavier armor assuming they would be targeted more due to active sensors, which wasn't the case at all, but I built 5 of each of the LS and MS variants, and 30 of the standard. So 40000 tons of ships, going up against 54300 tons of enemy ships. I sent them in and soon found myself facing of againstall 9 of them. It turned out 6 of the enemy ships were packing missiles, and the other 3 were armed with lasers. Setting my 40 ships to final defensive fire for the mesons wound up being an amazingly good PD system - out of the hundreds of missiles fired at me only a handful got through, and only 1 ship died on approach. The hit chance at point blank was only around 25%, but with 70 meson guns firing at them they didn't get far.

Three of the ships were chasing me the whole way, while the other 6 kept their distance - and I soon found out why. They closed and fired a large volley of strength 6 energy weapons, vaporizing three of my attack craft. I had my remaining 26 double meson ships target their first one, and the other 10 keep focusing on the missiles coming at us. Firing every 5 seconds, I took the first ship down in 20 seconds. The second was taking a beating at 30 seconds when they fired again - vaporizing another two FACs. Another 25 seconds later and the other two were destroyed. I lost two ships to missiles while most of my ships were focusing on taking down the enemy, but swapping everyone back to defensive fire held them off again as I approached the other ships - separated into two groups of 3, both fleeing from me now. The ships seemingly had endless missiles, but by the time I was on top of the first group the missile volleys had finally stopped. About a minute and that group was dead, then on to the next - again they all fell to the onslaught in about a minute.

Final losses ended up being 8 ships out of 40, and most of the crew and all officers were recovered from escape pods. I'm impressed with the results of meson FACs vs a fairly high tech missile armed group. The most expensive tech there was the engine tech since I had a great PP scientist and rushed engines, but most of the tech was on the low side of things. Almost every ship needed armor repairs from a missile or two getting through the PD and putting dents in the hull, but they were internally mostly intact.
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Detros

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18572 on: June 18, 2017, 02:41:30 am »

Yes, beam ships can go against missile ones once you get enough of precision or of amount to clear one tick of enemy missile wave.

Now to build a carrier for your FAC wings as they can't get too far themselves.
For fighters and FACs it may be fine but for bigger ships rather go with duplicate systems - engines, fire control, fuel storage.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18573 on: June 18, 2017, 08:54:58 am »

Meson FACs are a good go-to for a reason. Mesons in general, in fact. They're a very good equalizer because of the guaranteed internal damage even when there's a massive tech difference. That said, I'd include at the very least a minimal active sensor on every ship. It hurts when you overspecialize and lose your sensor ships first. I'd also suggest running a couple dedicated unarmed sensor FACs in any such group with longer-ranged lower-resolution actives and decent thermal passives. You can sorta cheese because you'll get slowdown when they're detected or enemy ships are firing missiles at their own range, but it's still much easier to be able to see them directly.

I almost forgot---with the world with all the intercept issues, I had generated 6 NPR and a 10 percent "Spawn new NPR" value.
That would be it.  For your first few games you don't want ANY NPRs at start.  The only way to get through that is to hit the auto turn button at the top and hit 30 days.  Go make your self a sandwich, watch a show, come back and hit the button again after 10-30 minutes.

I usually only start with 2 NPRs but have chance to 100%.  100% because it's not based on each system, but a system with a planet that meets the requirements to support life, which is really rare.  I've played games where I've discovered 70 systems and only 2 spawned a NPR.  Numerous spoilers but NPRs are going to be rare.
Keep in mind that planets which aren't 0.00 col cost for your race can still spawn NPRs with different ideal zones. In my experience habitable worlds are also much more common playing with Real Stars off.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

Paul

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18574 on: June 18, 2017, 01:18:00 pm »

The reason for splitting sensors up between 3 designs was to cram it all into 1000 tons or less and still have armor. If I didn't specialize like that I would either have had to strip all the armor off the ships, which would have resulted in a total loss as every ship had a good chunk of their armor busted, or cut the extra meson cannon off, which would also have resulted in a total loss as I wouldn't have had enough guns to shoot down all the missiles. The sensor ships couldn't even hold the second meson with any degree of armor, as it put me slightly over 1000 tons. I could have gone with ships bigger than FACs, but then I would have had to add bridges and a bigger engine and more engineering spaces and they would have ended up costing a lot more. The funny thing is the enemy beam ships targeted the ones without sensors first, so I didn't actually lose any sensor ships. They caught a few missiles as the missile ships were rotating targets, but the sensor ships had 7 layers of armor so the worst damaged one only had minor internal damage.

I guess I could have put size 0.1 or 0.2 actives on as backup, but that would have required removing some fuel and they're already kind of short ranged and wouldn't have been long range enough to spot the missiles before they hit anyway, the size 1 sensor barely spotted them they were moving so fast. They're not meant to travel with a carrier, they're meant to be based on a planet (only 5 maint facilities required) and do in-system defense or attacks on nearby systems utilizing a jump tender/tanker.

These designs were done only 25 years in on a basic conventional start (500 mil pop, default settings), so they're fairly low tech. I had to upsize the beam fire control to be able to keep up with the speed of the ships. I was kind of surprised I made it with the number of missiles I had coming at me, I only had a 22% chance to hit them at point blank range and the missiles were steadily coming in volleys of 15+. If the 6 missile ships had been flying together they would have got me, they were a bit away from each other so the missile volleys were 5 to 10 seconds apart from each other. 

I was impressed with the results though. If I had specialized missiles instead I doubt I could have beaten them with the same tech level.

I had a sensor FAC that was basically nothing but a big thermal passive flying around too that I spotted them with, it was flying seperately though just as a scout and never saw combat.
« Last Edit: June 18, 2017, 01:19:49 pm by Paul »
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18575 on: June 18, 2017, 03:45:36 pm »

Yeah, when you're that low you do have to make compromises, but they're often the sort of thing you want to eliminate once your tech is good enough. That said, a size 0.1 is all you really need for backups at low tech, since you'll probably make it within range anyways.

Or, as I tend to do, you can run a pure sensor cruiser. Just hit size 50, stuff it in with a bunch of drives and play keep-away. Even at low TLs you still get very good range if you're willing to eat the tonnage on something that won't be fighting. I'd also consider the opportunity cost of low TL armor, it occupies a proportionally large amount of tonnage even on a small ship, and 1-2 points isn't going to make much difference either way, especially against weapons like lasers and missiles which have damage profiles that make for fairly effective penetration.

That said, low TL combat is always a crapshoot, always full of tradeoffs -- if it works, it works. There's a low threshold for optimization so most of it's personal preference. I've been burned too many times losing sensor ships so I tend to go for redundancy and long-ranged platforms.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

Paul

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18576 on: June 18, 2017, 05:37:15 pm »

The 4 layers of armor saved my bacon on my ships. Almost every ship had at least 3 layers of armor penetrated, a quarter of them had 4 layers of penetration. Several lost nonessential internals like crew quarters and engineering sections. Some had their guns destroyed but otherwise survived. A lot of missiles got through the meson screen since the accuracy was so low, but not in enough quantity to kill all the ships since they were rotating targets. Presumably the AI was like OK we have size 1000 ships so a volley of 36 missiles will kill them. But then only 2 or 3 got through and the ship survived, and maybe the next volley meant for them only 1 got through and it still survived.

The sensor ships actually were targeted the same as the rest by the missiles, they just had thicker armor so I didn't lose any. One sensor ship that got targeted a lot lost almost every square of armor, 7 layers thick, along with the meson cannon the engineering space the reactor the fire control and half the crew quarters. About the only internals that survived were the engine fuel tank and active sensor lol.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18577 on: June 18, 2017, 06:51:00 pm »

Say, do you remember how internal hit chances work? Is it BattleTech style where component size dictates how many "crit slots" it occupies (that is, how likely it is for that particular component to have damaged applied to it), or is it an equal chance for every component?

Obviously using lots of small components for stuff like fuel tanks and engineering spaces (even in some cases doing things like using more dual turrets rather than fewer quads) is better from a redundancy outlook so you don't lose all your fuel to a single lucky hit or w/e, but I don't recall whether it also acts as damage padding to make it less likely that you lose important things.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

Paul

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18578 on: June 18, 2017, 08:36:12 pm »

IIRC whatever damage makes it through armor is sent to internal damage as an integer. It randomly selects a component and if the damage is equal or greater than the htk of a component, it subtracts that from the total. If more damage remains it randomly selects another component. If damage is less than the HTK of a component, it has a % chance of destroying it of damage / HTK.

Small fuel tanks have a HTK of 0, so they're basically tissue paper and block nothing. Normal fuel tanks are 1, large are also 1, so for military ships you want normal fuel tanks. If I went back and redid my FAC I could squeeze in another HTK by making a size 1 reactor instead of two size 0.5s, although the trade off would mean if it hits the reactor the ship is done firing whereas a ship with two 0 HTK ones could potentially absorb the 1 point of damage on another device and keep one reactor.                                                                                                                   
« Last Edit: June 18, 2017, 09:31:32 pm by Paul »
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Flying Dice

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18579 on: June 18, 2017, 10:35:25 pm »

Ah, yeah, you're right. Flipped that switch in my brain.
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Aurora on small monitors:
1. Game Parameters -> Reduced Height Windows.
2. Lock taskbar to the right side of your desktop.
3. Run Resize Enable

Detros

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18580 on: June 18, 2017, 11:47:02 pm »

The 4 layers of armor saved my bacon on my ships. Almost every ship had at least 3 layers of armor penetrated, a quarter of them had 4 layers of penetration. Several lost nonessential internals like crew quarters and engineering sections. Some had their guns destroyed but otherwise survived. A lot of missiles got through the meson screen since the accuracy was so low, but not in enough quantity to kill all the ships since they were rotating targets. Presumably the AI was like OK we have size 1000 ships so a volley of 36 missiles will kill them. But then only 2 or 3 got through and the ship survived, and maybe the next volley meant for them only 1 got through and it still survived.
From what I have seen with my laser-only fleet last game NPRs spread their missile fire. I guess that "they go for sensor ships much more" is rather meant for missile-missile combat because there there is chance they see _only _ those sensor ships because of radar emissions and not the rest of your fleet. On the other hand, with beam fleet you need to get close so they eventually see all your ships and spread their fire.

Hmm... or maybe the  spreading may be caused the other way, by NPR seeing all your ships but not radar emissions of your sensor ships so they assign the same priority to all your ships.
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Alastar

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18581 on: June 19, 2017, 03:10:19 am »

Did 4 layers of armour save your bacon... or would you have received no damage at all if you had spent the tonnage/cost in more active defences?
Note that for point defence, low-velocity 10cm railguns will do nicely.
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Madman198237

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18582 on: June 19, 2017, 05:41:52 pm »

So, can anybody share how to work a fuel harvester? I can't get mine to dump fuel properly.
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90908

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18583 on: June 19, 2017, 05:46:32 pm »

So, can anybody share how to work a fuel harvester? I can't get mine to dump fuel properly.
Did you designate it as a tanker?
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Madman198237

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Re: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
« Reply #18584 on: June 19, 2017, 05:58:16 pm »

No, I didn't designate it as a tanker. It's a gas-harvesting vessel only.
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