Aurora increments Vs Missle interception

[Kaiser (OP)]

I do not know if this issue has been already addressed, probably yes.

I am in a situation where some precursors will fire me all their missles (see the screenshot).

Mine are already on the road, however they will be shot down by alien anti-ship missles.

I know also that my DD in the battle fleet have 4 laser turret each that will be able to shot down enemy missles, all of them, 100%, using small increments (I have already faced the same aliens and the same missles in other 2 system with the same results.

I know that because I have already seen all the fight, then I messed up with the fire control and Aurora crashed before saving, so I reloaded.

However it happened that instead of pressing a 2 minut or 1 minut or seconds increment as I did before the crash (getting interruption because the incoming enemy missles), I pressed a 5 days increment.
The difference here is that Aurora did not recognize the incoming missles (then pausing the game) with the result that my entire fleet was totally destroyed without firing.

Why? Should the increment be paused regardless the lenght increment?

[Jorgen_CAB]

To be honest not entirely sure what you mean...

Did you change the sub pulse or just hit the 5 day cycle button?

I'm fairly certain that as long as you have any fire-control set to open fire the game should force 5sec turns... but if you turn them all of you can run longer cycles and the game will do that. In that case you can force the game to run a certain amount of sub pulses. You could choose 5sec sub-pulses and then press 5 day cycle. The game would now run 5 second turns until one 5 day cycle have gone.

[QuakeIV]

In the past, pretty careful micromanagement of the time increments has been necessary or you will die.  I haven't had much combat yet in the new version to check that out (i had like a week long game where i found no aliens).

[Polestar]

Confirmed: The game does not behave the same if you choose 1 day+ increments than if you choose 8 hour- increments. In the former case, sub-increment number is drastically reduced, sensing and opportunities to react happen only on rare occasions, and the game runs faster. In the latter case, sub-increment are respected, sensing and other combat-relevant events happen more often, and the game runs (quite a bit) slower.

I'm giving serious consideration to using the text above as my post tag because this feature trips up *every new player to the game, and quite a few veterans*.

This feature has not changed in essence in the transition to C# Aurora, and continues to be a critical part of Steve's toolkit for delivering an acceptably responsive game.

That said, I do have some major issues with how the game continues to fall down on managing automatic transitions between the two and consider them among the most vexing, systemic problems with the Aurora game engine. Forgive my heat, fellow players, but losing entire fleets to the game effectively turning off my sensors when I hit a button right next to the save game button ... is worth getting a tad perturbed about.

[Father Tim]

"If your chosen settings would result in more than 100 sub-pulses, Aurora will ignore your settings and use its defaults."  --  Steve

If you click "5 days" with 1 hour or shorter sub-pulses, Aurora will use 8 hours and your ships will die.

[Bughunter]

Yes, I have also seen this happen in C#.

[Jorgen_CAB]

To be honest I don't understand why there is a separate turn button so the game would show what the main and sub cycles are but highlighting them before you hit end turn. If you select 5 day cycles then the game would grey out the sub pulse option that is not possible. This would make it easier to understand for people in general.

[Kaiser (OP)]

The problem here guys, is that entering in a new system you never know if it is populated with some hostile aliens or not.

Let's say my battle fleet just entered a new system, my active sensor did not spot anything (for whatever reason) everything looks quite, then you give order to go to this nice planet 3 billions far from your JP with a 5 days increment, suddently all your ships are destroyed by incoming missles that your point defence did not recognize because the 5 days increment.

If you had used a 8h increment or less you would avoid this, but you could not know it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The problem here guys, is that entering in a new system you never know if it is populated with some hostile aliens or not.

Let's say my battle fleet just entered a new system, my active sensor did not spot anything (for whatever reason) everything looks quite, then you give order to go to this nice planet 3 billions far from your JP with a 5 days increment, suddently all your ships are destroyed by incoming missles that your point defence did not recognize because the 5 days increment.

If you had used a 8h increment or less you would avoid this, but you could not know it.

That is not hugely likely to happen as the NPR will likely set the pulses to allot lower long before that so you should get a fair warning when something is about to happen.

[Peter Rhodan]

Okay - my problem is that I don't see the enemy missiles at all - on screen or on my combat screen

[Ulzgoroth]

Okay - my problem is that I don't see the enemy missiles at all - on screen or on my combat screen

Possibly stupid question, but...what actual sensors do you have that you're expecting to spot them with?

[xenoscepter]

Yeah, just in case you don't know you need Active Sensors to see enemy missiles.

They need to be Resolution 1, and you need to make sure they are turned on. I can't remember off the top of my head where to do that in C#, but I do know you can tell them to "Turn Active Sensors On" in the window where you give fleet orders. I believe you can also turn them on manually from the same window where you assign Fire Controls, but I can't quite recall.

[Ulzgoroth]

Yeah, just in case you don't know you need Active Sensors to see enemy missiles.

They need to be Resolution 1, and you need to make sure they are turned on. I can't remember off the top of my head where to do that in C#, but I do know you can tell them to "Turn Active Sensors On" in the window where you give fleet orders. I believe you can also turn them on manually from the same window where you assign Fire Controls, but I can't quite recall.

Practically speaking, that's pretty accurate. Strictly speaking, I'm pretty sure it's possible to detect missiles with passive sensors (but not shoot them, that always requires active detection) and to detect missiles with a larger-than-resolution-1 sensor (but the detection range plummets as you crank up the resolution and it's usually shorter than you want at best, so you really want that resolution 1 sensor.)

[davidb86]

I can't remember off the top of my head where to do that in C#, but I do know you can tell them to "Turn Active Sensors On" in the window where you give fleet orders. I believe you can also turn them on manually from the same window where you assign Fire Controls, but I can't quite recall.

In the Naval Organization Window, select the ship (not the fleet) and the active on /active off button is at the bottom of the window

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

The problem here guys, is that entering in a new system you never know if it is populated with some hostile aliens or not.

Let's say my battle fleet just entered a new system, my active sensor did not spot anything (for whatever reason) everything looks quite, then you give order to go to this nice planet 3 billions far from your JP with a 5 days increment, suddently all your ships are destroyed by incoming missles that your point defence did not recognize because the 5 days increment.

If you had used a 8h increment or less you would avoid this, but you could not know it.

That is not hugely likely to happen as the NPR will likely set the pulses to allot lower long before that so you should get a fair warning when something is about to happen.

NPRs do not set pulse times.  Aurora is supposed to override your player selected pulse time while fire controls are active and/or missiles are in flight but it isn't reliable.