Aurora Tutorial Part 6

We've come through a lot of Aurora's economics/colonization gameplay, and it's finally time to talk about the really cool bit: warfare. This is an extremely complex part of the game, and while there are multiple feasible playstyles, it's also an area where it's easy to get things wrong and end up with a useless fleet. So before we start actually playing with the wonderful shipbuilding system, let's take a look at the broad overview of combat, which we will then flow down into how to build not just ships, but an integrated fleet.¹

There are two types of weapons in Aurora: beam weapons and missiles. Beam weapons come in a number of different varieties. All have essentially infinite ammo (with a few restrictions) and are only useful at short ranges (~100kkm for beams, ~50mkm for missiles), meaning your fleet needs to be able to close with the enemy (this usually means higher speed than a missile fleet) and survive any missiles they can throw your way. Missiles have to be researched, built and transported separately, but offer you the opportunity to avoid beam combat. On the whole, I tend to prefer missiles, although this is as much an aesthetic as a practical choice, and many other options can be made to work.

Normally, this is the point where I'd go into a long discourse about the various roles of a fleet, and the importance of creating a balanced force to address all of these, but Aurora's diplomatic modeling and strategic AI are both primitive enough, particularly when combined with the jump point model, that the game tends to take on a very Mahanian flavor. Two fleets will enter a system and have it out, and the basic objective when building a fleet is to make one that is as effective as possible at dealing damage and surviving the other guy's attacks, on whatever budget you can afford. The exact implementation will depend on a bunch of details, ranging from your available tech and researchers to your long-term strategic plans and aesthetic preferences, but the basics are consistent.

Let's start with the most basic possible example of this. We'll ignore missiles for now (you should not actually do this or your fleet will die) and focus on beam weapons. There are three main types of beam weapons which you can build your fleet around, as well as four specialized types that are used for specific purposes. The three main types are lasers, railguns and particle beams. Lasers are the baseline weapon, with decent damage that falls off with range. Railguns fire four small projectiles, giving increased damage relative to lasers, but at a cost in range and armor penetration. Particle beams deal less damage than either type and have a shorter range than lasers, but suffer no damage falloff at all. The game when auto-assigning tech points seems to pick one of the three at random, and in practical terms, all are reasonably well-matched. Each relies primarily on three techs. One sets the caliber, which determines the size, base damage, and power requirements of the weapon. Another is the range multiplier, while the third determines how quickly the weapon recharges. The ideal weapon size depends on the role in question, but for a basic beam warship, the largest type available is probably the best.

Beam weapons need fire control. These each have a set range and a speed, based on racial technology, with multipliers that change range and tracking speed, along with size and cost. The tracking speed is the fastest target that a weapon can attack without penalty, and it's set to the lower of the weapons tracking speed² and the speed of the fire-control system. Turreted weapons, which we'll come back to later, allow weapons to track faster targets. Weapon accuracy against a target slower than tracking speed varies from 100% at a range of 0 to 0% at the maximum range of the fire control. As a result, it can often be a good idea to build a fire control that outranges the weapons it is linked to, as it will have superior accuracy when a target gets within range. Weapons also need to be powered, and I'd recommend researching a reactor matched to your most common capacitor recharge rate, either for a single weapon or two weapons. This makes it easy to get the right amount of power without wasting space.

Another thing all weapons need is active sensors. If a target isn't being tracked by an active sensor, it can't be attacked, although that sensor doesn't have to be on the ship itself. Active sensors are defined by their resolution, which is the smallest contact they can easily see. It's measured in hull spaces (HS), units of 50 tons. Contacts smaller than the resolution can get closer to the sensor than the maximum range before being detected, while anything larger is picked up at maximum range. However, a smaller resolution means a shorter maximum range. For instance, a sensor with R100 might have a range of 18.5 mkm against anything 5,000 tons or up. However, against a 1,000 ton ship, it will have a range of only 740,700 km, and a 250 ton fighter will get within 46,300 km before being picked up. It's unlikely to pick up any missiles at all. An R20 sensor of the same size will pick up anything of 1000 tons or more at 10.8 mkm, and the fighter at 676,800 km. None of these will work particularly well against missiles, which require R1 sensors. A sensor of the same size as the previous two will pick up anything of 50 tons at about 4 mkm. Most missiles are smaller than that, and the sensor will pick up even the smallest missile at only 359,000 km. The usual result of all of this is to fit the fleet with a variety of sensors of different sizes and resolutions, depending on role. For a beam warship expected to operate with other ships that can provide large-area sensor capabilities, the best option is probably a small R1 sensor to use as a backup in case of emergency. Even the smallest of these sensors will outrange the ship's fire control.

But why bother with a sensor at all, given the emphasis on fleet operations? Two reasons. First, there's a chance you'll end up detaching the ship at some point and sending it off on its own. Second, one of the key components of warship-building in Aurora is redundancy. As ships take damage, systems are knocked offline, and Murphy's Law guarantees that any single point of failure will be the one hit. So every ship having a small active sensor makes it very hard for the fleet as a whole to lose targeting data. Likewise, I would never build a warship³ with a single fire-control, a single engine, or a single fuel storage. Any of those three getting hit takes the vessel out of the fight instantly.⁴

That's really all we need for a basic beam warship. You'll want to add some armor, and make sure to pay attention to maintenance life, fuel and deployment time, which all work pretty much like they do for other kinds of ships. Here's an example from one of my test games:

So far, it's all fairly straightforward. But there are two complications. First, there are the four kinds of specialized beam weapons I mentioned earlier. The one I use the most is the gauss cannon. This is the only weapon other than the railgun capable of firing more than one shot per 5-second increment, with the ROF depending on your tech level. It requires no power and unlike railguns can be fitted in turrets, making it perfect for missile defense. However, each shot deals only 1 damage, and its range is very short. The other two that see reasonable use are high-power microwaves and meson cannons. HPMs are reasonably effective against shields and bypass armor to attack electronics directly, although their range is limited. Mesons bypass shields and some armor, but do only limited damage. Both can be useful as backup to more conventional weapons, but aren't great for main armament. The last beam weapon is the plasma carronade, which does a great deal of damage at close range, but is generally pretty useless.

The second complication is missile defense. Unfortunately, this is a subject that requires extensive discussion, so I'll pick things up there next time.