The Paradoxian Federation – Aurora Forum Game II, run by Rendap.

[Rendap]

Ok, in the 2½ years since we started we have been mining Earths resources and therefore the current mineral report looks at follows:

Earth
Duranium 57,047 Acc: 1
Neutronium 11,409 Acc: 0.2
Corbomite 11,409 Acc: 0.2
Tritanium 11,409 Acc: 0.2
Boronide 72,123 Acc: 0.5
Mercassium 131,828 Acc: 0.6
Vendarite 11,409 Acc: 0.2
Sorium 46,077 Acc: 0.8
Uridium 43,834 Acc: 0.3
Corundium 44,849 Acc: 0.2
Gallicite 29,114 Acc: 0.3

This is excluding the stockpiled ore.

In Ad Astra The Avian Overlord struck gold on Mars. I am pleased to announce the finding of the other Bird's survey of our Red neighbour:



Moving on the survey Mercury Culise was about as lucky, or unlucky, as Kiwi.

The interesting part falls to Venus and Boris who struck a bit gold:

Venus
Duranium 5,743,067 Acc: 0.5
Tritanium 527,425 Acc: 0.1
Boronide 1,465,068 Acc: 0.7
Uridium 19,518,370 Acc: 0.1
Corundium 1,058,512 Acc: 0.1

There's Boronide and Duranium in high numbers and decent quality. Tritanium and Corundium, being 2 of the main priorities are also there in crap access. Maybe some geologists can improve this, but let us instead proceed to Jupiter and it's moons.

Here OY found a total of 16k tons of minerals on Amalthea. At some point we should drop some automines here just to put it out of it's misery! Ok, what's happening at Saturn then.

Here Culise redeemed himself with 2 hits:

Rhea
Duranium 5,720 Acc: 0.8
Corbomite 11,440 Acc: 0.8
Mercassium 3,736 Acc: 0.7
Uridium 210,131 Acc: 0.8
Corundium 572,080 Acc: 0.8
Gallicite 233 Acc: 0.7

572k Corundium @ 0,8 - Where did I put those Freighters. I think I know where they should be hea... wait... what did you say??

Titan
Duranium 10,981,640 Acc: 0.9
Neutronium 2,387,025 Acc: 0.8
Corbomite 3,829,849 Acc: 0.2
Boronide 1,060,900 Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 6,630,625 Acc: 0.2
Vendarite 3,630,930 Acc: 0.3

Duranium & Neutronium in 0,8+ and multi million finds??? - I think I will reveal all ready now that Culise gets the award for best find in Sol. That's 2 of the 3 critical minerals in 0,8+ access around Saturn. Only Tritanium to go then. Oh Booooris.......

Triton
Tritanium 533,017 Acc: 0.9
Vendarite 263,949 Acc: 0.6
Corundium 1,645 Acc: 0.4

Good Little Spider! And sorry Kiwi - You only scratched dirt this time.

So to sum up our home system:

Duranium: 11 mio tons in 0,9+
Neutronium: 2,8 mio in 0,8+
Corbomite: Will become critical. Less than 30k in 0,8+, but 3,8 mio in 0,2 - Potential problem
Tritanium: 500k+ in 0,9+
Boronide: 1,4mio+ in 0,7+
Mercassium: Still 130k on earth in 0,6, but that's it except for 6,6mio+ in 0,2 - Potential problem
Vendarite: Well, in 0,8+ we have less than 30k. In 0,6 we have 260k and we have 3,6mio in 0,3 - Potential problem
Sorium: We have 50k tons we can mine (0,8+). We have 85k we can harvest (0,2-0,7) from gas giants. When that is done - we're out. And that means no more fuel - CRITICAL!
Uridium: 280k+ in 0,8 and a large 19,5mio+ find in 0,1. Can become a problem at a later date.
Corundium: Almost 600k in 0,8+. Additional 1mio in 0,1.
Gallicite: Less than 100k in system. CRITICAL!

Now we need to decide upon our next focus. We need to leave Sol and find Sorium and Gallicite in fair volumes to improve. Gallicite goes into a lot of missiles, so will become critical as we will expand our fleet. Except for update of personal, this will be the last update tonight and therefore I have the following topics for the Councils discussion:

1: Ship construction - Once we have the Engine/Jump Engine researched we need to lay down new constructions. The size of the new scouts will be 5.000 tons. Should we go for a general design with both Geo and Grav survey or 2 specialized designs with either improved defences, mission sensors or normal sensors?

2: Colonization - Would it be worth it to colonize Mars? Or should we do a beeline straight for terraforming Titan (2,18 vs. 8,09 colony cost) - If we go for the terraforming, we will need to build terraforming stations with a lot of infrastructure or Terraforming ships, which is my usual route.

3: Mining expansion - We will soon have 150 automated mines. Where should be place them? I would argue that the first 50 should go to Rhea to improve on Corundium and Duranium production, speeding up on mines. I might even argue for 100 mines, but we have the shortages of Tritanium and Neutronium so we could send 50 to Rhea, Titan and Triton for each of the critics. - Discuss

4: Should we build jump gates or not? If not, we need to include research in jump engine designs for all ship sizes - Even though we can jump squadrons. Building jumpgates improves the logistics, but opens up for all races to use them.

The council is now in session and will remain so for 12 hours (0900 GMT). At that time, I will reach decisions based on your input.

[Kingepyon]

I learned from my game experience that jump gates are nice, if you get a few safe systems next door that are good for mines and bad for colonies, you can send freighters back and forth with large capacities that don't cost a small fortune.

[blue emu]

1: Ship construction - Once we have the Engine/Jump Engine researched we need to lay down new constructions. The size of the new scouts will be 5.000 tons. Should we go for a general design with both Geo and Grav survey or 2 specialized designs with either improved defences, mission sensors or normal sensors?

I vote for the General Purpose Scout design, with two Geo- and two Grav- scanners mounted on each, along with one other weak scanner (either Thermal or EM).

2: Colonization - Would it be worth it to colonize Mars? Or should we do a beeline straight for terraforming Titan (2,18 vs. 8,09 colony cost) - If we go for the terraforming, we will need to build terraforming stations with a lot of infrastructure or Terraforming ships, which is my usual route.

Yes. It's worth it even with zero minerals there. Colonies have a population growth rate of 10%, compared with about 2% for Earth. More colonists means more income... [EDIT: and you collect shipping taxes from the civilian freight lines that service the colony]... and we can have them run Financial Centers for additional income or Terraforming Stations.

Naturally, we could terraform Titan as well... although I'm under the impression that it can never reach class-0.

3: Mining expansion - We will soon have 150 automated mines. Where should be place them? I would argue that the first 50 should go to Rhea to improve on Corundium and Duranium production, speeding up on mines. I might even argue for 100 mines, but we have the shortages of Tritanium and Neutronium so we could send 50 to Rhea, Titan and Triton for each of the critics. - Discuss

100 to Rhea. More Corundium allows us to build more mines. The other 50 to Titan.

4: Should we build jump gates or not? If not, we need to include research in jump engine designs for all ship sizes - Even though we can jump squadrons. Building jumpgates improves the logistics, but opens up for all races to use them.

Any alien race that's left it's home system already has Jump Drives of their own. I would say we should research the Jump Constructor techs, but make sure that our Scouts and our military Flotilla Leaders carry their own Jump Drives.

[Polar Mongoose]

Shame there is no mineral wealth on either Mercury or Mars, the two most easily colonisable planets. Still we should colonise them, starting with Mars. Assuming that nothing has changed in recent patches a rather strong trade in privately built infrastructure should develop after the initial colony is set up, which allows the colonies to continue growing and brings in income at the same time.

[blue emu]

This thread has inspired me to start up another conventional-start home-game of my own. Were you aware that even with the most primitive engine tech, it's possible to build a marginally functional Geo-Survey vessel that masses only 850 tons?

[Culise]

1. I usually use specialized designs at that tonnage, but I'm curious to see how well generalized designs will work. It'll also help split the threat to GE and GV ships. Vote Generalized.

2. Recommend colonization of Mars and Titan. Unfortunately, what blue emu says is, as always, correct - the game doesn't model the atmospheric methane diffraction of Titan's atmosphere which boosts its albedo, so Steve adopted the expedient of dropping its base temperature. This makes the thermal and atmospheric parameters accurate, but also makes terraforming it to cost 0 impossible without genetic alteration.

3. Agree on Rhea first to ensure continuing development, then expansion to Titan.

4. I would suggest building jump gates eventually, after we've expanded significantly and are ready to set up out-system colonies in safe systems. The tonnage improvement in dropping jump drives is significant enough that it outweighs the risks, and by making civilian models of freighters, liners, and colony ships all lack jump drives, you can also control where they can go so they don't get into too much trouble.

[joebthegreat]

Figures randakar poisoned me...

[Capt. Kiwi]

Oh well, last time I hit not a lot in Sol and then hit the jackpot in my first assignment out of the system. We'll see if the same happens this time.

[Vainglory]

Can I be in as a naval officer, with a view to missile warships? Right now I expect you'd stick me on a survey vessel because it's all you've got.

On the topic of survey vessels, personally I prefer separate designs. In my current game I'm using 10,000t Geo survey ships that have commercial engines and massive fuel tanks. Because they're commercial vessels they never need to overhaul, and I can send my tankers to top them up when need be, so their endurance is effectively unlimited. It's impossible to do that for gravs, however, because the grav sensor makes it a military vessel, so I just use ~5,000t ships for that, loaded to the gunnels with maintenance supplies and fuel tanks.

It might be information overload, but I'm curious about weapons and doctrine.

Personally I have found that my four 31,700t heavy cruisers are doing most of the work (forgive the bizarre tonnage, they began as 25,000t and I added 6,700t in refits, somehow without that being more costly than a new ship). They mount 14 size-6 missile launchers under 2 fire controls and 1 beam fire control managing 6 10cm lasers in turrets for PD. With their massive shield arrays and thick armor I've had them engage vastly larger numbers of ships without ever suffering internal damage (although I think Behemoth once got down to her last two rows of armor in some columns). Once the shields are hammered down after huge numbers of hits the armor soaks up damage like a sponge. Offensively on synchronous fire they're putting out 7x8 size-6 missile salvos for a total of 54 missiles. A full salvo of impacts will kill most things and PD usually knocks out 1/3 of the missiles at most.

However they've been pretty badly blindsided when jumping into systems with a fleet squatting over the JP. In future I'd always send beam warships in first. Beam-wise I stuck to lasers and use them for PD, rather than head down two or more separate techs. That may not be sensible, however, because the friend who got me into Aurora told me how his Gauss-based PD systems are virtually impenetrable. Nonetheless my destroyers mounting 12cm lasers can earn their feed by swatting down missiles as well as cutting it up in knife fights.

I've never used fighters, essentially because they seemed intense micro and I was having enough trouble wrapping my head around everything else without adding that. Consequently in my first long term game, which I'm still playing, I only just recently bothered researching fighter engines for a lark. As such my combat dropships are FACs, not fighters, carrying battalions, not companies. My first attempt at this went horribly wrong as the PDCs obliterated my FACs one-by-one in the last seconds before touchdown when they showed up on sensors. In my second attempt I just bombarded the PDCs first and then sent in the troops to pacify the planet. All my other landings have been unopposed, but when I get the chance I'll try using FACs that tote 3 advanced 10cm railguns in PD mode to see if they can swat enough missiles to get most of the dropships through.

As far as PDCs go, I'm inclined toward trialing FAC/FTR bases and no missile or PD bases. Once the balloon goes up I'd launch the FAC/FTR to be the PD and striking arms. Maybe even use SWACS instead of ground-based units. My thinking here is that my last PDC was 12 components for prefab, and took rather a lot of time to assemble once shipped. At my current tech a PDC with 5,000t of hangar space, a bridge, and crew quarters can have 12 layers of armor and take 3 components to prefab. The beauty is that when the FAC/FTR are obsolete I can just use my carriers to bring out updated models, and take the old ones home for scrapping, whereas upgrading a base would be more awkward.

My only final thoughts are that I have only ever encountered the swarm in nebulae. Nebula engagements have been more common than I'd have thought. This means reduced sensor effectiveness, reduced speed, no missiles, and no shields. It is well worth having ships optimized for this situation if you're encountering as many nebulae as I am. Meson Cannon are ideal for nebula fighters because you can close to minimum range and Meson Cannon ignore shields (off in a nebula anyway) and armor.

That about sums up my thoughts, I'm keen to hear how others operate.

[Rendap]

Ok, Thanks for the input. The Administration have therefore devised the following strategies for the expansion:

1: General Scout design in size 5.000 tons will be added to the fleet. They will be operating independently or in groups and the first 4 built will be assigned to the current Grav scout commanders, should they survive.
2: Commercial ships will not be equipped with jump drives, but 1 JCS ship will be constructed to enable extra-sol colonization. This will only be linked to systems that are cleared by the military.
3: Military ships will be grouped into squadrons, each consisting of 1 jump ship and X combat ship. The jump ship will be vulnerable, so extra large sensors will be added as well as increased defences. Possible at the cost of all offensive armament. Military ship sizes will be increased by 5k for non-capital ships and 10k for capital ships.
4: Colonization of Mars will take place first and several non-resource activities will be transferred. Research, Financial systems springs to mind. Mercury and Venus will be terraformed by ship before colonization takes place. Titan, being the dark horse here will probably be a combination of these 2 routes. Still considering.
5: 100 mines will be transferred to Rhea as well as Mass Drivers as soon as they become available. The remaining 50 will be transferred to Titan and the next 50 to be build to Triton.
6: Scouts will remain within 4 jumps of maintenance facilities and military ships within 3 jumps. This to avoid overextension at first.

The Administration therefore plans the following ship classes to be added - Sometime in the future:

Commercial:
Freighters
Colony Ships
Terraforming Ships
Fuel Harvesters
Asteroid Mining Ships
Troop Transports
Tankers

Military:
Explorers (5k)
Destroyers (PD, AMM - 5k)
Light Cruisers (AMM or Offensive - 10k)
Cruisers (Offensive - 15k)
Heavy Cruises (Offensive - 20k)
Tankers
Colliers
Maintenance Ships
Tugs
Carriers
Fighters

PDC:
Fighter Base
Barracks
Radar Base
Missile Base

[reis91]

You will terraform Venus? Isn't it like incredibly hostile to humans?

[Rendap]

Can I be in as a naval officer, with a view to missile warships? Right now I expect you'd stick me on a survey vessel because it's all you've got.

On the topic of survey vessels, personally I prefer separate designs. In my current game I'm using 10,000t Geo survey ships that have commercial engines and massive fuel tanks. Because they're commercial vessels they never need to overhaul, and I can send my tankers to top them up when need be, so their endurance is effectively unlimited. It's impossible to do that for gravs, however, because the grav sensor makes it a military vessel, so I just use ~5,000t ships for that, loaded to the gunnels with maintenance supplies and fuel tanks.

It might be information overload, but I'm curious about weapons and doctrine.

Personally I have found that my four 31,700t heavy cruisers are doing most of the work (forgive the bizarre tonnage, they began as 25,000t and I added 6,700t in refits, somehow without that being more costly than a new ship). They mount 14 size-6 missile launchers under 2 fire controls and 1 beam fire control managing 6 10cm lasers in turrets for PD. With their massive shield arrays and thick armor I've had them engage vastly larger numbers of ships without ever suffering internal damage (although I think Behemoth once got down to her last two rows of armor in some columns). Once the shields are hammered down after huge numbers of hits the armor soaks up damage like a sponge. Offensively on synchronous fire they're putting out 7x8 size-6 missile salvos for a total of 54 missiles. A full salvo of impacts will kill most things and PD usually knocks out 1/3 of the missiles at most.

However they've been pretty badly blindsided when jumping into systems with a fleet squatting over the JP. In future I'd always send beam warships in first. Beam-wise I stuck to lasers and use them for PD, rather than head down two or more separate techs. That may not be sensible, however, because the friend who got me into Aurora told me how his Gauss-based PD systems are virtually impenetrable. Nonetheless my destroyers mounting 12cm lasers can earn their feed by swatting down missiles as well as cutting it up in knife fights.

I've never used fighters, essentially because they seemed intense micro and I was having enough trouble wrapping my head around everything else without adding that. Consequently in my first long term game, which I'm still playing, I only just recently bothered researching fighter engines for a lark. As such my combat dropships are FACs, not fighters, carrying battalions, not companies. My first attempt at this went horribly wrong as the PDCs obliterated my FACs one-by-one in the last seconds before touchdown when they showed up on sensors. In my second attempt I just bombarded the PDCs first and then sent in the troops to pacify the planet. All my other landings have been unopposed, but when I get the chance I'll try using FACs that tote 3 advanced 10cm railguns in PD mode to see if they can swat enough missiles to get most of the dropships through.

As far as PDCs go, I'm inclined toward trialing FAC/FTR bases and no missile or PD bases. Once the balloon goes up I'd launch the FAC/FTR to be the PD and striking arms. Maybe even use SWACS instead of ground-based units. My thinking here is that my last PDC was 12 components for prefab, and took rather a lot of time to assemble once shipped. At my current tech a PDC with 5,000t of hangar space, a bridge, and crew quarters can have 12 layers of armor and take 3 components to prefab. The beauty is that when the FAC/FTR are obsolete I can just use my carriers to bring out updated models, and take the old ones home for scrapping, whereas upgrading a base would be more awkward.

My only final thoughts are that I have only ever encountered the swarm in nebulae. Nebula engagements have been more common than I'd have thought. This means reduced sensor effectiveness, reduced speed, no missiles, and no shields. It is well worth having ships optimized for this situation if you're encountering as many nebulae as I am. Meson Cannon are ideal for nebula fighters because you can close to minimum range and Meson Cannon ignore shields (off in a nebula anyway) and armor.

That about sums up my thoughts, I'm keen to hear how others operate.

Captain Vainglory (Fleet Movement 282, Survey 10%, Political Reliability 15%, Xenology 15%, Communications 10%) have been assigned FT Callisto, currently part of Cargo Task Group. Future reassignment to combat ships will be considered favorably.

I normally operate with groups of ships which are specialized. In my resent game I had 6 Cruisers who were half the size of your ships, but could put 48 missiles salvos out every 30 seconds. PD falls to the 6 light cruisers who could put 72 AMM into space every 10 soconds and 6 destroyers with a total of 36 lasers. This was with Ion Tech and I stopped missile attacks from precursors without more than a few missiles coming through. Yes - It takes more ships than your approach, but it is just as effective, if not more, since the armor/shields can actually be a bit lighter.

The Swarm can also exist in non-nebula systems. For those, I have a specific type of design in mind when we start meeting them.

[Rendap]

You will terraform Venus? Isn't it like incredibly hostile to humans?

Yes. Colony Cost 25, Temperature 462, Atmp 25 - Didn't say it would be easy and there will likely pop up more likely candidates for terraforming, but I might just park a few terraformers there to at least reduce the cost and make a colony more feasible.

[Vainglory]

Captain Vainglory (Fleet Movement 282, Survey 10%, Political Reliability 15%, Xenology 15%, Communications 10%) have been assigned FT Callisto, currently part of Cargo Task Group. Future reassignment to combat ships will be considered favorably.

Good-oh. Any chance of some screenshots?

I normally operate with groups of ships which are specialized. In my resent game I had 6 Cruisers who were half the size of your ships, but could put 48 missiles salvos out every 30 seconds. PD falls to the 6 light cruisers who could put 72 AMM into space every 10 soconds and 6 destroyers with a total of 36 lasers. This was with Ion Tech and I stopped missile attacks from precursors without more than a few missiles coming through. Yes - It takes more ships than your approach, but it is just as effective, if not more, since the armor/shields can actually be a bit lighter.

I originally intended to escort the heavies with laser armed destroyers, maybe some missile frigates, and always PD frigates. As such I could probably afford to dispense with the laser batteries on the heavies in favor of smaller ships or bigger salvo (probably by adding a third FC and four more launchers for 3x6). It just worked out that they always operated independently due to my newbie mistakes (too slow making maintenance supplies, and then too slow building sorium harvesters; a whole fleet operation was too expensive). From a ground-up design I'd split the functions exactly as you have.

The Swarm can also exist in non-nebula systems. For those, I have a specific type of design in mind when we start meeting them.

Outside of a nebula they'd be far less problematic, surely? Inside the nebula I had no option but to engage in a knife fight, in which their meson cannon ignored through the armor of my ships and caused serious damage. Outside of a nebula that wouldn't be possible.

[Lord Strange]

Forward Paradox!

I would like to become a Missile researcher then.

[reis91]

Have been trying to run a game but some windows are too big for my screen... and can't be scrolled

[Vainglory]

I see that my character has Survey bonus, and that both Fleet Commander and Survey Officer in the Fleet Headquarters are vacant. I'll volunteer for either position, as both will help the Federation by boosting survey efficiency.

Have been trying to run a game but some windows are too big for my screen... and can't be scrolled

Have you tried selecting Reduced Height Windows under Game Parameters?

[reis91]

Have you tried selecting Reduced Height Windows under Game Parameters?

That appears to work on my 17", so far. I suppose nothing can be done about having to turn on English in the Control Panel...

[Capt. Kiwi]

@Vainglory: Gauss PD is, at least theoretically, frighteningly difficult to penetrate. As for reduced height windows, you still need 800 vertical resolution and modern laptops are often less than that. I tink I mentioned that to you somewhere else.

Are you up to joining the Big game I'm GMing?

[Rendap]

Lord Isaac Strange assigned Missile Researcher - +30% MK, Admin 7
Captain Vainglory assigned Survey Officer, Fleet HQ

And since no objections have been raised since my original question:

Vice Admiral Reis91 assigned Fleet HQ as commander. He's disciplined and friendly. Stats are: Crew Training 200, Fleet Maneuver 183, Factory Production 20%, Espionage 10%, Intelligence 10%, Operations 25%

With regards to the swarm, I see it as a double edged sword and it would be up to the fleet setup whether I would prefer to meet them in a nebula or outside. But with the normal mix I'm promoting, I would probably have to say outside so missiles and fighters can play as well as the speed.