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Their mining platforms are all behind nasty looking PDC's the Marines aren't going to be dealing with any time soon, the best we can manage is interdicting some shipping. (I think Saros is playing all sides btw)
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Jun 23, 2017 12:34
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Oh there's a goon on the other end, that's very interesting to know. Re: S-T liberation, I think we should stick with the plan. A few corvettes aren't gonna tip the scales in a battle of the size we're looking at, so they might as well be out and about acting useful (and as an emergency reserve if we lose the Battle of Triton)
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Jun 23, 2017 17:34
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Of course not, but we don't need to bite it hook, line, and sinker by dropping everything and rushing every ship we have to it. Never let the enemy dictate the tempo of the battle, stick to the plan. The plan that already has our main fleet heading home to Triton anyways.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:53
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Sending the Marines out on Wolfpack duty is a pretty good idea after S-T is liberated. Not like there's anywhere else to invade, and we might even take some intact. The only problem I see is that the Marine ships have abysmal fuel efficiency, sustaining independent ops might be tough. I guess they can live off pirated sorium....
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Jun 23, 2017 18:13
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S-T is important, though. The locals are gonna love us unconditionally if we ride heroically to their rescue. A friendly S-T lets us plunk a DSTS or two in a prime spot to control the quickest route to Pluto. Yes, the IC can just go around, but they'd have to go way around. Adding a week or two to any trip they make is another week or two those ships aren't defending Saturn or harassing us. It's also decently positioned as a nice little FOB for the short-legged Marines to go commerce raiding from. The only thing the Marines can do in the defense of Triton is eat some missiles well before getting in range and waste valuable ships. The only thing the infantry at Triton can do is stare gormlessly at the flashes in orbit and maybe die to a siege missile. We lose nothing by proceeding with the plan, and potentially lose the Marines for no gain by aborting. I can compromise and leave the assault carrier back at Triton, because it actually stands a chance of being useful (I have mad fever dreams of capturing the Jobs). The corvettes and regular infantry, however, need to go to S-T, if only as self preservation. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 21:40
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It's possible to do two things at once, especially when the assets for one thing would be useless for the other
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Jun 23, 2017 22:55
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I think people are still confused about what the plan to retake S-T is. "The Marines" here refer to the Marine corvettes, not the dudes in power armor with guns on the assault carrier. Yes, those guys on the carrier would have a lot of trouble taking S-T. They're not who we're expecting to. The Marine corvettes that will die like flies in a major engagement will escort a brigade or two of the assault infantry currently on Triton. They'll outnumber the IC forces there by at least ~5:1. It'll be a total walkover, using forces that would be useless in the defense of Triton anyways. After we liberate S-T, the corvettes can commerce raid out of there surviving on pirated fuel (which, as Saros says, is everywhere) The actual Marines (as in dudes with guns) can stay at Triton to board poo poo, they'd be almost useless at S-T anyways. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 24, 2017 02:25
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My thinking is that if the IC are landing troops on Triton, then they've already achieved space superiority - which means our entire fleet and the Triton PDC's are dead. At that point, they can loving have the base, we've failed miserably and are pulling out of the theater no matter what. If they don't just slag it from orbit. Also, yes Saros, that's exactly my plan. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 24, 2017 13:01
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The Marine corvettes, at least, are super stealthy and won't get seen until someone's basically on top of them. We don't have the specs for the transports, so I can't speak to that. There's always the possibility the IC have their own Special Branch-equivalent ships lurking about Triton like we do Saturn, though, so for all we can prove there's a ship sitting tucked away on some Neptunian moon reporting everything that comes and goes regardless of how stealthy it is. [Actually, after this crisis is dealt with, we should probably sweep the area and look for just that - preferably with the SB's help] If I'm eyeballing these distances right, though, the liberation TF should be either most of the way to, or actually at S-T before the IC gets close to Triton. If they want to change targets and chase after the Marines, it'll be a large and obvious course change (we do have someone shadowing that massive death fleet, right?) which we'll have days if not weeks to react to. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 24, 2017 13:36
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Can I add that as an addendum to my plan? Might as well go over the local moon system with a fine-toothed comb before the climactic battle, doesn't cost us anything except a bit of fuel.
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Jun 24, 2017 14:19
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Yes. Though point 1 there is really more the next phase of point 2. The Marine task force are the light escort, and they will then raid with S-T as their base. We should probably leave the Marine assault carrier at Triton to take a shot at boarding and capturing some more IC poo poo, though.
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Jun 24, 2017 15:08
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From the Idiots on Social Media thread:Technocrat posted:Silicon Valley re-invents the wheel, again. This is who we're fighting. I'm so, so sorry I ever voted for them.
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Jun 25, 2017 05:02
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I don't think there's any secret collusion between Earth and the IC. Earth seemed pretty pissed about them trying to build a listening post on Tempel 1, and like Saros said, letting a few eggheads crawl over some worthless iceball nobody cares about isn't indicative of a grand scheme. Even mortal enemies let each other on their territory now and then, I'm sure there's an example or two from the Cold War of American/Soviet scientists getting to come look at some meaningless thing in Siberia/Alaska or bits of Antarctica claimed by the other guy or whatever. We haven't heard Earth's response to us tattling on the IC re: the Pluto invasion force, but I'm sure they won't be happy. However, Earth is definitely up to some bullshit on Mercury, and we should be doing our best to get in good with them. If I had to guess they're probably on the verge of perfecting either gravitational survey sensors or even jump drives. Whatever it is, it's 100% related to interstellar travel, because that was specifically mentioned as the one area they have a tech edge in.
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Jun 25, 2017 14:42
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I asked him once on Discord and the answer was basically "until I get bored", iirc. We're probably gonna be in the solar system for a while yet, but who the hell knows where the final station on this crazy train is. Don't quote me on that, though, I don't wanna come off like I can speak for Saros. It's his LP, I'll let him answer. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jun 25, 2017 |
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Jun 25, 2017 15:08
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At least there's no facehuggers. Yet.
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Jun 26, 2017 14:48
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I loving knew it. Glad we got the bastard before he saw the S-T force leave. We should let the SB boys know that there might be a similar sweep coming for them if the IC decides to copy us. Also, nice to confirm they've got cloaking. Well, not nice, but useful. There could be near-invisible scout ships scattered all over the place, following our fleets, whatever 
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 00:26
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Yeah the way cloaking works is that an active cloaking device lowers what mass the ship registers as on active sensors. One of our missiles hit their cloak at some point, which is why the contact ballooned up to its true size of 2000 tons. The analogy that Coffeehitler made is a good one. Cloaking does nothing to hide thermal or EM signatures, however, so a cloaked ship that wants to stay hidden still has to move slow and keep actives off (unless it's also got assorted gubbins to reduce those as well). The fact that this guy was crawling along implies that, thankfully, they don't have too much thermal baffling on their engines. As long as our fleets move fast, a stealth scout can't keep up and remain hidden, so we at least don't need to worry about them tracking our fleets in real time, just watching them come and go. Should be SOP to sweep for the little buggers now, though, we saw one at Tempel as well.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:59
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Jun 27, 2017 15:52
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Yeah Patroclus is one of the Jovian Trojans. It was a pretty large Martian (or was it just Martian-aligned?) settlement. The IC warcriming all over it is what turned the war hot at the start of this theater. E: If the videos aren't working in other countries I could do transcriptions of them. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 16:20
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Well we've certainly gotten their attention  I admire your optimism, Saros, but I think they're going all-in on Triton. I guess the silver lining is that even though we're all gonna die, at least all those ships are way out here instead of covering against an attack from the inner system.... E: Pash, it's the Marissa Mayers that are the bullshit missile boxes. We're looking at a 250+ missile alpha strike just from those DDG's, to say nothing of the rest of the fleet. This is gonna be "fun". E2: Intel query: why are some of the Mayers designated "M" and some designated "S"? E3 to not double post: 
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 20:12
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Double-posting so I don't add more edits: Does Triton have any missile factories? If we try to take on that deathstack in a straight fight we'll get real bloodied even if we win. If we could fab up some mines to seed along the route between Triton and Saturn, however, we can wear them down before having to fight. We might even get lucky and peg their munitions tender or tanker or something irreplaceable.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:33
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Pash posted:I mean usually you try to lay mines before the enemy is already moving right? Are you suggesting just shooting some missiles in their general path, letting them run out of fuel, and hope they run into them? "Mines" is Aurora terms are a large missile that flies to somewhere in space (or has no first stage engine and is dropped by a ship), goes dark, and then shoots smaller homing missiles at anything that comes near (near being up to millions of kilometers). It's not a stationary object that you pray they run into, that's just incredibly dumb and bad in the vastness of space (as you have surmised). They're very useful for seeding around jump points if we ever get that far, and are situationally useful in other cases. Situations like dropping them behind you to gently caress with pursuers or scattering them in the general direction of an incoming doomstack to whittle away at them. Saros, if it's not too late, we definitely want Triton to crank out and launch as many mines in whatever form we can. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 23:15
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Alright, 10 days. Just eyeballing things, that's about enough for Dumbo to get home and refill their magazines but not perform any meaningful repairs. It is enough time to have some desperate ordnance techs fearing for their lives slap together some makeshift mines and launch them from the PDC silos or something towards the doomstack. We probably won't get many out, but even a single mine that they hit and get scared by is better than doing nothing.
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Jun 27, 2017 23:29
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BG was using a version like 8 updates behind what Saros is, somewhere in between here and there mines got made way more sane and manageable.
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Jun 28, 2017 00:04
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Ok so the ordnance techs have come up with two key designs for the mine project. First up is the main submunition, an emergency battlefield modification of our standard size 2 ASM. code:The second is a design based off of an experimental EWAR drone that never made it into mass production. A few very inventive hours of SpaceCAD fuckery later, and the "Crybaby" has been modified to have an off the shelf engine with a small warhead shoehorned into the space freed up by removing fuel tanks. I'm not sitting in front of Aurora right now, but the basic specs I've got in mind are code:A size 11-12 mine should be able to fit 4 of the ASM submunitions or 2 Crybabies. Deploying mines in clusters, with a ratio of about 3:1 or 4:1 shipkiller mines to Crybaby mines should do the trick, but this is all theorycrafting and we have neither the time nor the facilities to game it out in-depth. Well, nothing's a better simulation than a field test, right? It's not gonna stop them, but if we get lucky maybe something critical gets hit, or at the very least the IC is forced to slow down and sweep for mines in their path. E: Minimum warhead size is 1
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 15:35
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Triton does have limited fighter factories, and fighters can be total bastards. They don't even use the same production lines as mines do, so we can crank out both with no loss. The only problem is whether or not Triton has any hangars for the fighters to launch from. If we do, then hell yeah let's crank out a few more Deimoses, even just one extra plasma cannon on the line is better than zero.
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 15:57
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Please don't blow up the priceless archaeological site 
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Jun 28, 2017 16:14
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Lando131 posted:I haven't dug very deep into this game, but is it possible to set up some 'mines' full of anti-missile missiles to try and blunt the IC's alpha strike? That seems to be our biggest worry and as far as I know AMMs are usually pretty small since they don't need much range. FredMSloniker posted:I may have missed earlier discussion of it, but in general, are there good defenses against these alpha-strike boats? I feel like the IC is Zerg rushing us, and while I understand if our options are limited now (though obviously I hope we have options), I'm going to be disappointed if this is good practice in Aurora overall. Even now in the maximum missile fuckery era, those box launcher ships are only good for blowing their load once and running. If we can survive the initial barrage they're useless for the rest of the battle, which isn't exactly optimal when they make up half your fleet. A lot of how this furball ends is gonna be decided in the first few minutes when that alpha strike comes in. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 03:02
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Oh, 100% let them come to us, we've got the PDC to play with. Combining xthetenth's idea of a missile screen kiting them in with Pash's porcupine is probably the best way to do things. Although on second though, if we try and kite them in during Porcupine our missile ships are gonna have to fly right through the minefield, so we can't really do both. Porcupine is about what I would propose, except with the minefield farther away from Neptune (if there's time to deploy it out farther). If the mines get lucky and cripple something important or they get spooked by a wall of missiles and turn around, that's way better for us than trying to fight this bloodbath. Even if we win it's gonna suck, and if we lose it's game over for the whole theater. I'd rather take a chance at defusing it before it happens, and if the mines are right on the edge of the Neptuinian system that's a little too late. E: Good point about letting them in range of the fleet yard, but I think the PDC is absolutely necessary to have a shot against that many capital ships, and our PD should be good enough to stop (most) leakers. E2:Saros can hiding behind a moon (like Psamathe) help reduce our sensor return in-universe? I remember that the SB ship managed to hide during the attack on S-T by going dark and lurking near the surface - can we do the same? (I know it doesn't do anything in Aurora terms, but maybe you're fluffing sensors as working ever so slightly different in this universe and can just act like the IC don't see us until later than they actually do? This of course works both ways, they can hide from us whenever it's convenient for them, too.) Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 14:28
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. The bonus of the repair ship is that it, like, doubles our capacity if it just chills at Triton, and can follow the fleet around to sustain an offensive without needing to run all the way back home to fix things. I'm fine with deploying the minefield near Neptune if we can dodge it, they're most likely to hit it there. We should also keep in mind that small ships can hide behind celestial bodies now, tucking some destroyers away on Psamathe to wait in ambush/as forward scouts. Re: What are Zuckerbergs, iirc they're CAA's. Probably full of either AMM's or PD guns (or both), suicide for our fighters to go near. Not the kind of thing we need to worry about as a line combatant, though, at least not until it gets really close and can Macross all over us with AMM's. Siege missiles are very worrying, if they have a range greater than our PDC missiles we'll have to get creative. If it turns out our PD can handle them, we can just sit around and let them run their magazines dry, then jump them when they're reloading (or wait even longer and run the tender dry). If we can't PD them, the only option is to sally out and try to snipe the siege ship, which would get bloody. Let's hope that's not the case. E: Putting some fighters out in interplanetary space and having them go dark might be really useful. Hopefully the IC will sail right past them without noticing and they can come in from the flanks/behind if they spot an unguarded support ship or empty box launchers or whatever. Better than trying to frontally assault their CAA's. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 15:52
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It would be loving hilarious if it turns out that deathstack is just gonna chill at Uranus or go to Pluto or something.
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 16:00
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Well maybe they shouldn't have invaded our friends and tried to take our alien ruins  Do we have any idea if the attempted deception worked or not, btw? Anomalous radio chatter, intercepts, anything? Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 16:05
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Yeah we should send something to discourage FAC's along with our scouts/scout hunters.The two CLAA's heading out to rescue that scout right now are a good start, at least.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:34
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Sounds good so far, nothing for it but to get stuck in and see what happens.
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Jun 30, 2017 16:15
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They probably want the colony with its 15 million people at the very least, but they have demonstrated a distinct willingness to warcrime the hell out of civvies at the slightest inconvenience.....
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Jun 30, 2017 16:24
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They're a rag-tag band of everyone from Randian nightmare AnCaps to utopian Space Communists and Transhumanists. The dominant cultural strain is basically Silicon Valley in Space, though.
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Jun 30, 2017 18:48
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You can't do that with mines, once they're placed they're automatically armed and will pop off at whatever comes in range. Shields are nothing particularly special. A ship with shields has one or more shield generator components on-board, each of which provides X max shield capacity and regenerates Y shield points per tick (regen is always active, it doesn't turn off in combat like in some other games). Shields absorb incoming damage (at the cost of shield points) instead of letting it be applied to the ship's armor/interior, and are omnidirectional - as long as you have one single shield point left it will absorb incoming damage no matter what direction it comes from (unlike armor). Shields are off by default, because when they're on they produce a massive EM signature, and when a ship raises their shield it starts at zero and goes up by the regen amount until it reaches max capacity. This creates a tradeoff where cruising around with your shields on means you're visible from halfway across the system, but cruising around with them off means you're vulnerable to being ambushed with your pants down. Microwave weapons do triple damage to shields, and meson weapons bypass both shields and armor completely. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Jul 1, 2017 |
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Jul 1, 2017 11:45
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Yeah mesons are absolute bullshit IF they can get in range. They're balanced by abysmally short ranges and high power/space requirements. If they're on fighters or, say, a massively armored and shielded battleship like the Jobs to get them in range, though.....
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Jul 1, 2017 22:56
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Now what I want to know is who the mystery goon is... can we spell out "WHO ARE YOU" in morse code with active sensor pulses?
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Jul 3, 2017 14:36
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Holy poo poo it's BG isn't it. That would be exactly the kind of twist an Aurora LP would have.
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Jul 3, 2017 14:41
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