My productive little civilians!

[Tyrius (OP)]

  So seeing as I had millions in wealth and that I am still producing more I decided to give 500,000 to the one shipping line in my current game.   Nothing really happened until after I got my first colony set up, but then my civilian industries kicked into overdrive.   In the course of a few months they have set up 2 mining colonies and built two 30,000 ton freighters!  Pretty cool stuff in my opinion.   Does anyone know if the subsidies helped to make the colonies or just the ships?

[Jacob/Lee]

  So seeing as I had millions in wealth and that I am still producing more I decided to give 500,000 to the one shipping line in my current game.   Nothing really happened until after I got my first colony set up, but then my civilian industries kicked into overdrive.   In the course of a few months they have set up 2 mining colonies and built two 30,000 ton freighters!  Pretty cool stuff in my opinion.   Does anyone know if the subsidies helped to make the colonies or just the ships?

I believe wealth is only used to build ships, mining colonies just kind of materialize out of nowhere. Giving them 500,000 in wealth just means they'll have enough plus whatever they make to buy ships, which they do kind of slowly.

[Tyrius (OP)]

Hm weird. . .   And seeing someones on and this is already open, does anyone know if active sensors can pick up missiles?  It says it can pick up their size, but the listening part is supposed to only pick up shields and sensors.   So it's like totally sending me mixed signals. . .

[Jacob/Lee]

Hm weird. . .   And seeing someones on and this is already open, does anyone know if active sensors can pick up missiles?  It says it can pick up their size, but the listening part is supposed to only pick up shields and sensors.   So it's like totally sending me mixed signals. . .

They should, thing is, they need to have a low resolution or else they'll never see a thing.

[Tyrius (OP)]

Alright cool, because I have taken the precaution of arming my anti-missile corvettes with a size 4 active sensor resolution 1, just in case my sensor ships get blow away (to make the retreat less costly ).   One last thing, for the sake of my first warfleet.   If my turrets is capable of tracking speeds up to 50,000 but my fire control is less than that, will it use the turret's speed or the fire controls?  If it's the fire controls, is there like no way to defend against small fast missiles early on?

[Jacob/Lee]

Alright cool, because I have taken the precaution of arming my anti-missile corvettes with a size 4 active sensor resolution 1, just in case my sensor ships get blow away (to make the retreat less costly ).   One last thing, for the sake of my first warfleet.   If my turrets is capable of tracking speeds up to 50,000 but my fire control is less than that, will it use the turret's speed or the fire controls?  If it's the fire controls, is there like no way to defend against small fast missiles early on?

I never really got into combat much, but I'm sure that the tracking speed is capped by the fire control. I'm not sure about the missile part, you could always try anti-missile missiles.

[Ziusudra]

Active sensors are much like radar, broadcasting a EM signal which it's built in EM sensor detects as reflections from targets.

The effective tracking speed for turrets is the lower of the turret tracking speed or the fire control tracking speed.

For fixed, non-turret weapons it's more complex. First the weapon tracking speed is the higher of either 4000 the Fire Control Tracking Speed tech or the speed of the ship. Then the effective tracking speed is the lower of weapon or fire control.

Weapons can still hit targets that are faster than their effective tracking speed, just with a reduced chance. Anti-missile missiles can be more effective, but come with ordinance supply and continuing cost considerations. While defensive turrets have a larger initial cost due to needing to have more systems in play.

A common suggestion is to use both with AMM thinning out salvos and turrets cleaning up.

[Brian Neumann]

For fixed, non-turret weapons it's more complex. First the weapon tracking speed is the higher of either 4000 or the speed of the ship. Then the effective tracking speed is the lower of weapon or fire control.

Not quite right.  The tracking speed that is used is the lower of the tracking speed from the fire control, or the ships speed with a minimum of the base fire control speed that has been researched.  There is no fixed number (4000) in the equation.  If the ship moves slower than the base fire control speed (ie a base) then the minimum is that base fire control speed.  If it moves faster than the base fire control speed then it will be the lower of the fire control speed of the fire control used, or the ship speed.  For turrets it is simpler with the lower of the fire control speed, or the turret speed being the limiter.  If a target is faster than the effective tracking speed then it is a straight linear modification.  Twice as fist means half the to hit chance, ect.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2926.0.html

[Ziusudra]

You are correct, Brian.

For clarity, the relevant tech is "Fire Control Speed Rating" in "Sensors and Fire Control" category. In Hawkeye's post that Charlie linked this is called "Beam Weapons Tracking Speed".

[Thiosk]

High resolution / low resolution semantics makes my brain twinge.

I've built a new line of MegaFreighter (they go about 4k, and can move a research lab).

Civvies havn't built one yet.  I should try dumping in half a mil.

[shireknight]

Woah civilians have just set up a mining colony on Mercury in my game, does this affect me in any way? am I supposed to send infrastructure to Mercury now to support the civilians? what happens to the minerals there, will I still get them or have the civilians effectively stolen this planet from me?

If I put a Mass Driver on there can I steal the minerals from under their noses lol?

[Jacob/Lee]

Woah civilians have just set up a mining colony on Mercury in my game, does this affect me in any way? am I supposed to send infrastructure to Mercury now to support the civilians? what happens to the minerals there, will I still get them or have the civilians effectively stolen this planet from me?

If I put a Mass Driver on there can I steal the minerals from under their noses lol?

There is technically no population there, so no. There is a tab on the economy window that allows you to buy what they produce, for a price which is 250 wealth x mining facilities on the planet, anually I believe. You can build your own stuff there still but they won't fire what you produce and you won't fire what they produce.