Damage Control Expansion - Attack Ships on Fire

Suggestions
21

If that’s the case I sincerely hope Steve brings that particular feature of components back. It rubs me the wrong way having everything from sensors to turrets just being under the main armor plating of the ship. I understand Steve did this for coding convenience but it’s been several years since the transition to C#, I hope he takes it into consideration.

Mind you, this is probably just my simulator enthusiastic part of me talking. I play a lot of realism-focused games like IL-2 series, Silent Hunter series, UBOAT, Call to Arms: Ostfront and various tank simulators. So any arcade’ish parts of a game just stick out to me like a sore thumb.

22

Silent Hunter is the only one of those I’ve played but even that game makes plenty of concessions for the sake of having the game work and that game is very indepth indeed.

Even ignoring that though, part of the reason why I enjoyed it a lot is because the game allowed you to tweak the realism intensely. I never played with torpedo duds enabled or limited fuel for example, so realism for realism’s sake is probably not the way for Aurora.

With all that said, I question what exterior components would really do to change the way people play. As big as it sounds, I actually don’t think it’d materially change the way people design their ships aside from just putting small sensors on everything like people already do.

The idea of a “lucky” hit that takes out a gun is already modeled by the random nature of how damage is distributed across armor, and the HTK increase for armoured turrets specifically also model the same thing.

2 Likes
23

I want to encourage the focus of future replies onto the ease of defeating NPRs by players. Again, I have no issue with not being able to defeat NPRs. My suggestion is for how to make NPRs harder and costlier to defeat.

At least since the Romans fought the Parthians, and probably even earlier, since the paleolithic invention of the bow and arrow, humans have used kiting/hit-and-run (K/HR) tactics. Any human will instinctively use K/HR, it’s literally fight and/or flight. K/HR should not be considered a “meta” tactic IMO.

Historically, how do you counter mounted enemy archers if you can’t match their speed? You either use cheaper foot archers to outrange/outshoot them, or ignore them and use heavy infantry to take all your military objectives since horse archers can’t actually hold ground. In wet naval combat, K/HR is countered because navies can’t go on land (defenders can do fleet-in-being), and can only threaten coastal areas near deep water.

In Aurora, if a Player has a 5% speed advantage, they will be able to force a confrontation into K/HR in any situation. Even when assaulting a heavily guarded jump point, the jump engine radius tech allows a Player to start K/HR even with a much weaker fleet. Shields further enable K/HR since shields are free to recharge, and recharge very quickly.

In Aurora, the historical analogies for countering K/HR tactics, namely outranging them cheaply, ignoring them to focus on operational objectives, or fleet-in-being, do not work for NPRs. Missiles are more expensive than obtaining a 5% speed advantage, NPR missiles are underpowered (not posing a threat to cheap gauss cannon PD and cheap shields that players can effectively use) and long range beam weapons are expensive. In Aurora, operational objectives are at minimum hours away, while entire battles are over in minutes. And STO/fleet-in-being run into the problem of being really expensive for not being able to move (would you rather a powerful laser be an STO, or invest a little more to put it into a battleship?) Not to mention, fleets under the cover of STO first need to make it there, and then are still subject to Player Missile attacks which may not be as ineffectual as NPR missiles.

The result is, that not only is speed, shields, and K/HR really powerful, all Players will naturally gravitate towards it, and NPRs have no chance in any situation against a Player that is slightly faster than the NPR.

My suggestion to introduce ship fires and the in-combat vs out-of-combat conditions, are an attempt to solve part of the issue by causing K/HR tactics to be costly, or at least, not entirely free. The way I presented my suggestion happen to involve how they would affect the viability of pursuit of fleeing NPRs by Players, but my suggestions should affect much more than just pursuit. These suggested changes still won’t really matter when the Player vastly overpowers the NPRs, but makes it much harder to completely cheese a more powerful NPR when the Player is weaker, at parity, or slightly higher tech than the NPRs.

I encourage other forum members to come up with arguments against my argument that K/HR trivializes NPRs, or alternatively, other Aurora-compatible suggestions to make NPRs able to deal with K/HR.

I actually like the idea of there being some impact of actively shooting. Lore-wise, maybe when you are actively shooting direct fire weapons (i.e. when you have a DFC in open fire mode), you reduce how much you are ducking and weaving to get a better shot, increasing your To-Hit chance for DFC but also increasing the enemy’s To-Hit against you with DFC or MFC. It could be something that happens automatically, or it could be something to can set in the Ship Combat tab (what % balance you want between evasive action and improved To-Hit). That would be an actually interesting tactical choice… do you prioritize dodging incoming missiles or shooting them down? Do you prioritize dodging while advancing toward the enemy, or hitting them better as you advance?

I love this idea. To have a ships focusing on firing be debuffed in other ways might strongly help with the dominance of Player K/HR.

24

Historically (that is, in the history of Aurora development), the way to make NPRs more difficult to defeat has been to improve their AI and ship designs, not to add special mechanics to help the AI.

I think it is helpful to recall that Aurora is primarily a game about the strategic and operational level, not the tactical level. Yes, Aurora has tactical gameplay in the form of ship-to-ship combat. However, I would argue that this gameplay exists largely as a means to create and justify strategic decisions (e.g., doctrine, design choices, technology investments). Therefore, a change to tactical mechanics should only be made when it preserves or enhances the strategic decision-making.

In the present example, achieving a speed advantage against NPRs typically requires one of several things:

  • The NPR is lower-tech, which is sometimes a fact of the game and sometimes a result of dedicated player investment in technology.
  • Ship design decisions that prioritize speed and/or range. It’s worth emphasizing that these decisions should come with corresponding costs or trade-offs. For example, ships that dedicate more hull space to propulsion have less for armor or weapons, and ships that use higher engine power multipliers will have increased fuel consumption.
  • Doctrinal decisions aiming to cultivate imbalances, e.g., carrier fleets with high-speed beam fighters.

Therefore, in my view is is counterproductive to add a mechanic that will limit the rewards players can achieve for making sound strategic decisions just because the NPRs are “too easy”. It would be better to make changes that adjust the strategic or operational balance so the decisions that trivialize NPR encounters have greater strategic costs. For example, if increasing the engine power modifier is too easy of a way to gain a speed advantage (I’m not saying it is, this is just a hypothetical illustration), then some mechanical change should be made to increase the cost of that decision, such as making such engines more expensive. That said, any decision like this would have knock-on effects (e.g., hurting the viability of fighter or missile doctrines)

Some additional points worth noting:

  • If the NPRs are too easy to defeat, the best solution is to increase the game difficulty, either globally in the game settings or by reducing the capabilities of the player race (e.g., reducing race research rate). This will mean NPRs have more strategic advantages in general, forcing the player to invest more to overcome tactical disadvantages.
  • A change limiting the efficacy of “kiting” tactics doesn’t really change the calculus that much. As in ancient warfare, most warfare in Aurora is centered around delivering the siege, and pitched battles are fought to achieve or impede that goal. If the NPR gains a better ability to run away from battle, the player will still win by simply flying on to the objective, where the NPR will have to engage or lose anyways.
  • With the changes (to-date and ongoing) to NPRs, the AI has an increasing number of options to counter player superiority in speed, range, etc., and I expect these improvements to continue. However, weak NPRs are part of the game as well. Often, the challenge in fighting an NPR is not because they are difficult to fight in battle, but because the operational and logistical aspects of managing a large campaign over multiple star systems are challenging (both for players and for the empire itself to sustain). Steve’s most recent campaigns have been very good demonstrations of this.
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What is the Purpose of Aurora Ship Combat?
25

Thanks for directly addressing one of the claims I have made, namely that NPRs are too easy to defeat, and for clarifying the design strategy for justifying the implementation of “tactical” changes.

Could you give an example from my original suggestions document about a mechanic that specifically helps the AI? that wont affect the Player equally, is not realistic, or does not contribute to the immersion of the game? I agree that there may be arbitrary mechanics I suggested that help the AI more than the Player, but I likely won’t be able to identify the mistake myself.

Furthermore, I think that internal HTK and the ability to sustain some internal damage or fires is most certainly a strategic, doctrine, design choice, and technology decision. The “tactical” changes I suggest were curated to try and preserve and, indeed, enhance the strategic and design-level decision making.

I disagree with the argument that achieving a speed advantage is difficult to do or requires a substantial sacrifice. Furthermore, the problem is with minor speed advantages giving massive effectiveness to the Player. A player can simply get lucky, and choose an engine power modifier 5% higher than the NPRs, and become way stronger than them. I don’t think this is a high-effort thing that should be rewarded as heavily as it currently is. And even if engine speed inefficiency and cost scaling is increased through the roof, the Player can always just choose a modifier slightly higher than the NPRs, mitigating the strategic decision.

I do concede that there is already some inherent balance in the range vs speed calculus however. This automatically benefits defenders who stay near logistics hubs and don’t need longer ranges to defend their own colonies. Whether this advantage is enough to entirely offset the K/HR benefits for Players can be discussed further; I also need to think about it more.

To address your additional points:

  • Indeed, those options are always available. You can always gimp yourself as a Player for more of a challenge. So my suggestion can always be rejected on grounds that it does not add enough immersion to justify the work. As mentioned in an earlier reply I made.
  • I agree that an NPR will eventually have to stand and fight, even if they can escape. But that is why I think that there needs to be a stronger defender’s advantage, especially near large defender colonies (see my original suggestions again). If a necessary change requires other changes to also implement, that merely adds to the argument that it’s too much work and not worth it. It does not add to the argument that the change is not good. To say that defenders are gonna get smashed anyway so there is no need to make changes, IMO, actually strengthens my case that there is a need to make changes. Furthermore, to use the siege warfare analogy, fortifications in ancient warfare gave defenders a large and economical advantage, and usually required massive overmatch to defeat. This is not the case right now in Aurora.
  • Can you give some examples of some of the options that the AI has to counter Player superiority in speed, range? I may simply be uninformed and existing features already make my suggestions redundant. I would be surprised if they are adequate to counter how good and cheap K/HR is though, but I am open minded.
  • Edit: forgot to address this. But if the Player has faster K/HR ships, it is even more of an advantage defensively. Meaning a much reduced need for large numbers of defensive ships for the Player. This then means a much reduced logistical burden on the Empire as a whole. And a trivialization of that strategic element, gameplay wise. This is probably also the reason for the “turtle” style being commonplace. It is just way more efficient to tech up at home and then do K/HR.
26

Doesn’t happen in practice. Components, turrets and whatnot start to be taken out only after the armor is pierced and never before.

27

Sorry but turrets were never outside the armour belt.

28

I agree with Spookyfam that the marginal tactical benefit of being just a little bit faster is very low except for that one specific point on the curve where you become faster (or slower) than the enemy. Put differently, there’s a VERY strong binary where you go above/below the speed of the enemy. If you’re faster, you have much bigger opportunity space tactically. If slower, much more limited.

It’s one of the few areas of the game where there’s such a strong “cliff”, the other being in terraforming. In general Steve has done a really good job of making most of the game a gradient without super sharp cliffs, and that makes the gameplay much more satisfying, because you’re making decisions across a gradient, hunting for your personal optiumum.

We’ve talked before about allowing “afterburner” type behavior. We already have the ability to tell our fleet to go slower. I think it would help smooth out the cliff in value of speed advantage if NPC and player could choose to “overdrive” their engines, with an exponentially increasing % change of generating an internal damage application to the engine (failure or repair if MSP available baed on damage control rating). That would present a real decision along a gradient. Are you desperate enough to overdrive your engines to try to escape? Are you desperate enough to overdrive your engines to try to catch up with escaping ships, or will you wait to fight them another day? How much do you dare overdrive them if the risk is your engine(s) failing and putting you dead in the water?

Not saying that’s the best or only implementation, but it would blend out the current cliff that is speed advantage and create meaningful choices tactically and in ship design (lower normal engine speed but higher damage control rating to increase ability to perform deeper overdrive “safely”).

2 Likes
29

In space combat, STO acts as such fortifications. With equal technology, STOs have a 25% longer firing range, and they are very difficult to hit. They are quite capable of supporting the main fleet in planet defense.

But as far as I remember, at the moment the AI is not using STO on the colony moons and is not trying to lure the enemy into the firing range of the STO before attacking? It would help them in defense, I think.

Also, are they not using ships with increased boost to guard the system in which they were constructed? I wonder how difficult it will be for Steve to program this.

2 Likes
30

This, absolutely. It is the main reason some of us (me, and perhaps some others) create games with few or no NPRs. Aurora is a brilliant and fun game, but it is very, very challenging.

2 Likes
31

Actually, it’s probably a bad idea to make fortifications too strong near planets. Since that would also trivilaize the strategic logistics gameplay of Aurora. Some other more moderate solution might need to be thought of.

I like this idea since it would indeed smooth out the gradient. But this might add too much micromanagement. Furthermore, would it actually solve the problem of KHR (Kiting and Hit-and-run) tactics?

If the NPRs can use STO effectively to their advantage, then that would be good. The other problem however, is that STO is expensive. They’re substantial fractions of the cost of a ship. And they can always be bypassed; you cant create a fortress world to properly guard your core worlds ATM. Are we planning to add “FTL inhibitors” to colonies and battlestations like in the arcade game Stellaris? Point is, STO as they currently are do not solve the problem of KHR.

Indeed, Aurora is a very challenging game. And I’m grateful for Steve in balancing it and allowing simplifying options that dont kill the immersion, for players that are new, or looking for a more causal experience. While nerfing KHR would make the game harder for Players, it wouldnt affect the style you are alluding to playing?

32

Ignore my previous reply to you. Didnt see this the first time. This actually is a pretty good idea I think. To allow engines with lower “regular” speeds be able to boost much-more and for longer. All ships might then automatically enter boosted speed for X seconds (depending on their engine design) when first becoming in-combat, removing the micro. This further allows a combat vs travel mode for all engines adding more strategic, doctrinal, and design choices. Highly boosted in-combat engines can then perform KHR for a short while, but will be substantially out-lasted by less boosted engines, with the overall balance tweaked to retain a strategic choice, and to actually have some trade-offs for KHR.

Would this work?

Edit: This probably won’t work on second thought. Since the player can still choose a boosted speed slightly higher than the NPRs, and then they would basically be able to boost for as long as the NPRs can. It wouldn’t solve the problem of KHR.

33

They are very expensive at medium and high tech levels, as each long-range STO must have an x4 (+25% bonus) Range DFC. That’s why I said “supporting” - they’re getting too expensive to be the main firepower.

Perhaps dividing the STO into guns themselves and targeting units could solve this problem, making the STO several times cheaper (depending on ratio of weapon cost to DFC cost)? Simply put, multi-weapon STO (multi-STO?) DFC. But it’s going to be a lot of work for Steve.

1 Like
34

One thing you can do to mitigate that is use large quad turreted lasers for STO. Then you have a lower ratio of DFC cost to total weapon cost, although it makes each STO unit hellaciously expensive.

You can also skimp on cost by using light static armor, although that makes them much squishier when the targets start shooting back.

35

Are you using heavy armor on STO? It always seemed to me that this would be a very bad idea because of their cost, and that it would be more profitable to just create x3 guns - if you can oneshoot an annoying raider from afar, he will can’t shoot at the colony.

I tried using heavy armor at high tech once. Maintaining ground units from one of the smallest quickly became the greatest wealth consumption.

36

Ik will note here that real world air defense units are actually separate mobile systems linked together; With each platform a fire control, sensor, or launcher unit. But there are limits on how many launchers a fire control can support.

So there is some support for the notion of separating those functions.