1. What are magazines for?
Storage room for your missiles. You realy don´t want to run out of ammo in the middle of a battle
2. I keep hearing about anti-ship missiles. How do I build them, and how do I use them?
F2 screen, hit "Missiles". After designing, research them, then built them (F2, Industry)
Design a launcher for the missiles (preferably same size)
Put launcher and magazins and missile targeting system and active sensor on ship or PDC --> blast your enemy
3. CIWS? What are they exactly?
Close In Weapon System. Defends ship mounting it against enemy missiles. Uses Gauss Cannon Launch Velocity, Gauss Cannon Rate of Fire, Beam Fire Control Range and Fire Control Speed Rating. Does not need any Sensors/Targeting Systems/Power Plants
4. Do shipyards really only build one kind of ship? Heard something somewhere about it being able to build any ship of a class, is that true?
Yes, but you can retool a shipyard for another class (F2, Manage Shipyards, Retool for selected Class)
5. Do I have to make a new class for each ship I design, or can I make ones that are of an existing class? How?
Yes, hit the "New" button on the class design screen (F5)
6. Whats the exact process of building PDC's, OWP's ? Of moving them where you want them and putting them together?
Just design them, like any other ship. (For PDCs, select PDC instead of Ship) OWPs are simply ships without engines.
PDCs are build by your industry, OWPs in your shipyards.
PDCs are not moveable, once build. You can build prefabed PDCs (F2, Industry) which can be shiped out and assemled where needed. Once assembled, they too ar no longer moveable.
7. Sensors. Active, thermal, em. What do I need to know about their sizes? Have seen talk about needing different sizes, as some can only detect large ships far away and some small ships up close.
Well, the bigger the better, but also the more resources and space required.
Thermal and EM are passives, Actives are, well, active (think radar)
Actives have a sensor strength (depends on your techlevel and size) and a resolution.
Resolution means, what size a sensor is optimized to detect. A sensor optimized to see 30.000t battleships (resolution 600) will have a very _very_ hard time seeing a tiny missile (size 1)
An active can see a target the size of its resolution or larger out to its maximum range, but smaller ones only at significantly shorter ranges. The formula goes something like this:
(Target size / resolution) ^2 x max range, so a res 100 sensor, optimized for 5.000t ships with a range of 100 million km, can see a 1.000t FAC (size 20) only at ((20 / 100) ^2) x 100 mkm = (0.2 ^2) x 100 mkm = 4 mkm
8. How useful are tractor beams?
Used to move
a) OWPs around
b) wrecks/cripples/Terraformer Platforms/Fuel Harvesting Platforms around
9. What exactly is a jump-tender?
Jumpships can carry additional ships through a jumppoint. Put a few in a fleet and the fleet has jump capability. Of course, loos those jump-tender and your fleet is suddenly stranded out in no-mans-land
Main travelrouts can also have a jumpship parked on the jumppoints, acting as a sort of "poor mans jumpgate"
10. Lasers, Mesons, Carrodes, Torpedoes, what does each one do?
Shoot at the enemy
Look here:
viewtopic.php?f=101&t=1962#p18706PS: You realy should work through the tutorials
viewforum.php?f=101
