|
I like the idea of Hera, but I think this is a huge problem Foxfire_ posted:- Component research: 1900RP total, 500RP for EM sensor, 120RP for the launcher, 1280RP for the engine. The engine in particualr is concerning since it will be immediately obsolete (next engine tier is 1665RP away) Unless this is a thing that will always happen due to how the mechanics work, spending only little less research points than it takes to go to next engine tier on a design that will become obsolete fairly quickly seems... bad. So I vote for kobold/wyvern duo to do this colony protection thing on a budget. Who needs operation range 
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 06:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 14:48 |
|
|
It won't always happen, we are very close to the next tier of engine tech. The early tech levels go so quickly that a large engine costs nearly as much as the next tier. You also have to remember that at each tier you have to research at least one reactor tech before you unlock the ability to research the next engine tech. Ideally we would produce nothing new until we hit that tech level in about two years. However, we need something to keep our colonies in line, as well as be able to provide a military presence if we run into anything. In the latest version of Aurora alien's respect of our diplomatic demands can be pretty heavily weighted by how much of a military presence we have in places they can see. Having a powerful home fleet that they've never seen is meaningless when we start trying to make a stable border with them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 15:30
|
|
|
Would it be worth exploring something like a two-fleet model, then? Garrison FACs, long-range general-purpose colonial service cruisers, plus a battle fleet to do what battle fleets do?
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 16:23
|
|
|
Certainly, once we get a bit further along in techs we could also produce viable orbital weapons platforms. The issue will always be maintenance facilities though. They can be expensive to build up and continually supply, so if we pursue two fleets we need that much more maintenance capacity, as half a battle fleet won't be very effective. I personally like FAC garrisons as a supplemental force. A good strike group can do a lot of damage and really punch above their weight.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 16:35
|
|
|
Short-range, heavily-armed, and extremely cost-effective FACs like we're building are, essentially, space PT boats. Space MTBs. Space schnellboots. Back in the days of wet-water navies, platforms like those were why large warships tried not to stray too close to hostile shores; if those little bastards get close enough they will swarm you down.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 17:41
|
|
|
You can fit a lot of gun and speed in 1000tons if you are willing to crank that engine efficiency all the way over to GOTTA GO FAST.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 17:49
|
|
|
More than once I've saved a world with outdated FAC's I should have scrapped or refit. Their utility cannot be underestimated.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 18:04
|
|
|
Little ships are actually exploiting how sensors work, not high speed. For every 1000 ton ship, there's a 10X scaled up version that's better performing in every way except for what happens to sensors. Detection effortpost Aurora has 3 kinds of sensors: thermal, EM, and active Thermal Thermal sensors are the simplest. They detect engine emissions and colonies. Engine emissions for a ship scale with engine power being produced. There is also a tech line to reduce emissions by a percentage that is pretty vital for making quiet ships (the first few tech levels drop down to 35% emissions). Ships that aren't moving are almost invisible to thermal sensors. Small ships get an advantage because thermal emissions don't stack. A fleet of 10 x 1000 ton ships has the same signature as a single one and is just as hard to see. If you glue 10 of them together into a single 10,000 ton ship with 10X engine power, they become 10X easier to spot EM EM sensors detect switched on active sensors, switched on shields, and colonies. A ship with no running shields or active sensors is invisible. Again emissions don't stack, so a fleet of shielded ships is only as detectable as its noisiest individual member. (for active sensors, there's no benefit to having multiple copies of the same sensor turned on, so no benefit there). Active Active sensors are the biggest place where small ships have an advantage. Actives detect based on mass. They have a max range that they can't see past at all (and an equivalent EM sensor can see a switched on active before the active sees it). Importantly, you can only shoot at targets seen by actives. A thermal or EM contact isn't enough. Actives make a range vs resolution tradeoff when they are designed. Higher minimum target size gives a longer range, but detecting anything smaller than that is heavily penalized. For example, we have two equal sized sensors designs, one with a 1000-ton resolution and one with a 2500-ton resolution. The 2500-ton resolution one can see a big target out to 36mKm, but can't see a 1000 ton target until 5.8mKm. The 1000-ton resolution one on the other hand can't see anything past 26mKm, but can see a 1000-ton ship the full distance. Again, ship signatures don't stack, so a fleet of 10 FACs have to be detected like a single one. If they're below the minimum resolution of the opposing sensor, they probably can't be fired upon, even if they show up on thermal sensors
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 19:05
|
|
|
+++++++Voting Results+++++++ Once more Foxfire wins with the Kobold/Wyren Colonial Service Strike Group. The raw utility of this entry cannot be denied. This ships will be put into production immediatly. Foxfire gains and additional vote on a future policy vote. I hope to have the decade finished and an update posted pretty quick.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 20:37
|
|
|
Not wanting to use the old tech for a new engine is perfectly sound thinking. I think we genuinely need an engine in that mid-range class, since going all-in on MAX POWER engines drinks your fuel fast, but it would be better to do it in the next tech level.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 20:40
|
|
|
Virtual Russian posted:More than once I've saved a world with outdated FAC's I should have scrapped or refit. Their utility cannot be underestimated. The scrappy scrap-heap is a tried and true sci-fi trope! (See: Pillar of Autumn, Millennium Falcon) Is there a way to "mothball" ships in this game? Like, not fully scrapping but decommissioning them to the point where they'd need a short startup time before being useful again?
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2020 23:51
|
|
|
 Following much deliberation, the naval doctrine plan put forward by Admiral Mete Polatkan’s task group had been approved by the High Command. The plan, put into legislation under the title The Polatkan Naval Law of 2108 would authorize a massive building program, first in the expansion of the Terran shipyard capacity, and following with a massive production of large battleships. There were many in the Union of Terra that questioned the feasibility of such an undertaking. There are even those who question the need for such a project. The Admiral has been unwavering in promoting the importance of this act. Pointing to evidence of a technologically superior extraterrestrial civilization occuppy this area in the past, as well as reminding everyone of the intercepted transmissions in the 2070’s. Meeting with serious opposition in the High Command, Polatkan made temporary concessions to the budget by authorizing the production of a variant of the existing Wyren/Kobold strike group for colonial service. The use of existing designs saved significant time and resources, and was instrumental in persuading the High Command to support the proposed Naval Law. code:We immediately begin producing Firefox_’s Colonial Strike Group, no retooling or research required. Simultaneously, I begin expanding our naval shipyard capacity.  I also make some room in our industrial production to make Gnoman’s refueling station. Once completed I’ll drag one to Freeshire. The other will eventually go to the colony soon to be created in Accatran. At this point I noticed we have over 120,000 units of spare parts, I order out maintenance facilities to stop producing MSPs. We have enough to last quite a while, and we really need to get some breathing room in the budget. MSP production accounts for 20% of our budget, a temporary pause should give us a nice surplus. February 29th, 2108  Having completed their mission to scan the Aeolus system for jump points, the crew of the DSS Teoberto Maler, commanded by Commander El Spamo, travelled though the sole unexplored jump point in that system before returning to Earth for refueling. They revealed a new system, named Olympia. This single star system contains nine planets, along with 46 moons and 332 asteroids. This system is truly massive in scale, with its furthest most distant planet being approximately 5 light years away from the star. Even the innermost planets are 10’s of billions of kilometres apart. The system contains a single planet with a well-proportioned Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere. There is almost an ideal pressure, though the planet will need a solid amount of water introduced via terraforming before it would be suitable to colonize without infrastructure. For this achievement Commander El Spamo is awarded the New Horizons badge. March 30th, 2108 Our colonists finally make ground fall on Accatran-A IV. Unfortunately, immediately upon waking up they have discovered that the colonial service had made a grave clerical error when supplying them to start their initial colony. The settlement would only have enough space to house and supply 20,000 colonists, half of the 40,000 on site. Riots immediately broke out, people began fighting over what little space, food, and water there was. Casualties immediately began to mount, and chaos reigned. The colonial office quickly procured and dispatched supply vessels to the fledgling colony. Quietly, they also dispatched a brigade of soldiers to enforce stability and oversee the distribution of goods. The reputation of the colonial office was going to suffer immensely over such a blunder, but they could at least prevent outright rebellion.  Oh boy was that an oversight… April 23rd, 2108 We haul one of the Lykourgas tanker stations into orbit of Freeshire, this will greatly extend the operational capabilities of any military vessels we station here.  May 20th, 2108 We have completed the construction of the Colonial Pattern Kobolds, now we must wait for the Wyren to complete.  June 7th, 2108 After two and half months of starvation, riots, and killings a relief force comprised of building materials, supplies, and soldiers arrives. Order is quickly and brutally enforced on what has come to be called Makho’s Folly. Named after the inept Governor Mahkosazana Dlamini, who survived the ordeal by ruthlessly controlling the limited supplies with his small cadre of security officers.  June also sees research into mining capacity increased, we begin research into construction efficiency. November 3rd, 2108 Having refueled at Earth, the crew of the DSS Teoberto Maler, commanded by Commander El Spamo, travelled though the remaining unexplored jump point in . They revealed a new system, named Voss. This single star system contains seven planets, along with 48 moons and 40 asteroids. The system contains a single oceanic planet with a nearly perfectly proportioned Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere. This planet is almost twice the size of Earth, but due to being significantly less dense the gravity is only slightly higher. Just a bit too hot, this planet only requires minimal terraforming to become a cost zero world.  There is also a looming fuel shortage, we aren’t losing very much fuel each month, but it is declining. If we suddenly had to conduct major operations, we’d see a real shortage inside 6 months. For now, I’m dedicating 10% of our industrial capacity on Earth to making fuel refineries. This should help take a bit of the pressure off. The Galaxy as we currently know it.  December 4th, 2108 It was late in the evening on a Tuesday, much of the regular staff at the High Command and Admiralty had gone home when a feverish series of reports came back from the DSS Teoberto Maler. Their electro-magnetic sensors were picking up a massive signature coming off Voss- A III, a signature far larger than that given off by Earth itself. The entire naval staff and high command were immediately recalled. Commander El Spamo reported they were taking the survey vessel in for a closer look. The ship was still days out of orbit and had yet to have seen any reason for concern.  Well, we definitely found someone, that is a decent sized colony too.  December 5th, 2108 Early in the morning a series of panicked transmissions came in, three strength 624 thermal contacts had just blown past the DSS Teoberto Maler at a speed of nearly 4,000 km/s. Commander El Spamo reported still being on course for the planet, but wanted to abort. The High Command and Admiralty held an emergency meeting to determine a course of action. No matter our choice, the era in which we could explore unfettered has ended.  The Contacts  Three of these just did a flyby on our survey ship.  This is sitting on their world.  Our Galaxy I'll run a quick vote, I'll end it tomorrow afternoon. ++++++++++ Emergency Session on First Contact ++++++++++ We have made contact with a spacefaring extra-terrestrial civilization, we know very little about them. The speed of their vessels may indicate a more advanced tech level, we don’t have much to go on. We need to decide what action the DSS Teoberto Maler is to undertake. Should it? A. Continue with the scan, orbit their populated world and attempt to communicate. B. Back off the colony a bit and attempt to communicate. C. Abort mission, get out of the system. We can come back later with a better equipped vessel. Whether diplomatic or military. ++++++++++End of Emergency Session on First Contact ++++++++++ Virtual Russian fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jul 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 00:50
|
|
|
Virtual Russian posted:++++++++++ Emergency Session on First Contact ++++++++++ Seems the most prudent. e: oh yeah, am I stationed among any colony's ground forces yet? Now that orbital nuking is possible I'd like to know which planet to worry a bit more about Zanzibar Ham fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jul 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 01:11
|
|
|
The sensible course is to bail and come back later, so I vote for ORBIT AND HAVE A CHAT
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 01:11
|
|
|
B. Back off and attempt to communicate. We had best demonstrate our lack of hostile intent early, and bugging out in a panic without them making hostile acts makes us look like we're assuming hostility exists.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 01:25
|
|
|
C. These are soldiers, not diplomats, and staying is likely to be considered an aggressive act.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 01:32
|
|
|
B. Back off the colony a bit and attempt to communicate. They buzzed us, so they know we're here. Let's not start any fights if we don't have to. Cut the engines and start up the radio, let's see if we can say hello.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 02:09
|
|
|
Oops, did I get the infrastructure math wrong?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 02:27
|
|
|
LLSix posted:Oops, did I get the infrastructure math wrong? That was hilarious. How many brave colonists did we lose?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 02:31
|
|
|
C Run away!  Then come back with either something expendable crewed with volunteers or something with armor.The ships that buzzed us are probably armed. If their tech is like ours, they're ~8000 tons with ~2 of our current big military engines to get that speed + thermal signature (about a third engines).
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 02:47
|
|
|
C, they're a military survey craft not a diplomatic team prepped for First Contact. Pull back the soldiers to give the neighbors breathing room until we're ready, and then send a delegation of real diplomats. Completely coincidentally this also means the spooks back home get time to analyze all the sensor data the crew of the Maler are remembering to save HD copies of right?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 03:35
|
|
|
Open our gunports as a sign of respect and begin a high-intensity active scan.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 03:40
|
|
|
So everyone knows, in this version of Aurora teams no longer exist. Now that we've made contact we will begin attempting to decode their language. Checks will get made so long as we have a ship in contact with them, contact here meaning we can see them on our sensors, and they can see us. If the ship making contact has a diplomacy module, then we the full value of any progress made towards translation, if not, we only get half the progress achieved. We currently have no diplomacy ships. So if we do want to do that we'll have to design one right away, retool, and produce it. I'm of a mind that we should be making more FACs and nothing else right now. We have most likely discovered their core system, which they will highly value and want to protect. Unfortunately, this means there is also a chance they will claim Accatran as theirs. Unless they are friendly, we likely have a fight on our hands. If they are friendly, sticking around to translate won't bug them too much. If we stick around and they don't like us, we will probably get shot down. If they like us, we'll be fine and hopefully can translate and establish trade. Zanzibar Ham posted:e: oh yeah, am I stationed among any colony's ground forces yet? Now that orbital nuking is possible I'd like to know which planet to worry a bit more about You're on Earth at the moment, where do you want to get posted to? I'm going to shuffle a couple gauss batteries to Makho's Folly, want to hitch a ride? sebmojo posted:That was hilarious. How many brave colonists did we lose? I didn't pay super close attention, not a ton though, not more than 10,000 for sure. I kinda just jammed more colonists on top of that problem along with troops and a truckload of infrastructure. Virtual Russian fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jul 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 04:24
|
|
|
Come back with the navy.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 05:18
|
|
|
B, I fear no Xeno
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 05:49
|
|
|
Left earth to get away from the brutality. Left Europa to get away from the boredom. Get used as a shock trooper to put down rioting civilians on the first extra solar planet I land on. drat life is sweet. Vote A. Let's spice this up a bit
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 06:13
|
|
|
Earth has a Refueling Station and Ordnance Transfer Station on it for some reason. They're redundant with the Spaceport, so they should get shipped out to Makhlo's Folly so we can stockpile fuel and missiles close to the border. There's also a Cargo Transfer Station that should get sent to whatever colony we want to grow the fastest. (Also, if you build any Camel support ships, I forgot to add a shuttle bay to the design so it can actually transfer the supplies its lugging around)
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 06:26
|
|
|
C. but solely so that we can then make a diplomacy ship (also having offensive capabilities) go in and greet the aliens. Also I would like to command this new vessel so in case of failure I may die gloriously against them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 06:38
|
|
|
b. We shouldn't run away - if they were outright hostile, they would be shooting already. A is way too aggro.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 06:50
|
|
|
Good job fyre festivalling our colony. B seems prudent.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 07:52
|
|
|
B Since “prep all ships for possible hostile actions” isn’t feasible right now and we don’t really have any ideas on what their current disposition towards us is other than guarded curiosity, running doesn’t seem like the best choice. Besides, we have no idea on what the timetable for reinforcements (for either side of this equation) would be like should things get interesting. Open a diplomatic channel; let’s see who we’re dealing with. Also, I believe that I mentioned that I wanted to be dorfed into a Naval Commander; has this happened or did you not see my request?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 08:20
|
|
|
B How in-depth is Aurora diplomacy? Can we get defensive alliances, that sort of thing? Or will peace just mean we can trade with them and travel through their systems without getting blown away?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 08:35
|
|
|
Virtual Russian posted:You're on Earth at the moment, where do you want to get posted to? I'm going to shuffle a couple gauss batteries to Makho's Folly, want to hitch a ride? Considering what happened over there it sounds like the perfect place for a Combat Janitor, so feel free to put me on a shuttle at your earliest convenience!
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 09:08
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Open our gunports as a sign of respect and begin a high-intensity active scan. This seems prudent, nothing could possibly go wrong.... Failing that, I think B is the best course of action. There's no reason to assume hostility, but let's keep our distance. Also, we should start on a diplomacy ship ASAP.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 15:04
|
|
|
I vote A, for attack. Conquer them and make them a part of our glorious space empire! 
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 15:07
|
|
|
With how close these guys are, and how we've inadvertently colonized right on their doorstep, there's a good chance this is going to go to violence either way.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 15:15
|
|
|
B. Dead stop, open all comm frequencies. We acknowledge their presence and do not wish to offer a threat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 16:11
|
|
|
I'd go for B. They know we are here and we don't know how paranoid they are. I'd also suggest that capture should be prevented at any cost
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 17:06
|
|
|
Well this better than first contact being a Swarm Matriarch popping in system and dropping swarmlings on earth B: Best option and wont reveal the origin jump point like C would (though they still might know through passives)
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 17:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 14:48 |
|
|
B wait and see, and assemble a taskforce, just to be sure.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2020 18:39
|
|