I'm now on my third actual game of Aurora and wanted to get down in writing my thoughts on how sensors and fire controls work to make sure I've got it right and also to help anyone else unsure about this area of the game.
So when designing a ship the active sensor for detecting other ships needs to be as long range as possible within the constraints of the hull space and ship size. This sensor needs a resolution suitable for the types of ships you may come across. At the start of the game you have no knowledge of alien ships tonnage so what do people use for there first sensor? Also if for example the senor has a resolution to detect ships of 10,000 tons is it also able to detect ships less than or more than this?
At games start, I usually design sensors that are optimized to detect my own ships. This means, if I don´t have FACs, I won´t put res-20 sensors on my ships until I either meet alien FACs or start building some myself. Same for fighters.
An active sensor can detect any ship of its resolution´s size or larger out to its full range.
Smaller ships are detected out to (Max Range) * ((Ship Size) / (resolution)) squared. I.e. a res-100 sensor can detect a size 50 ship (half size) at one quarter max. range.
So in a typical first contact situation the active sensor will hopefully pick up the contact first and from this data regarding the estimated speed and tonnage is acquired. Also if the unkown ship has EM sensors the active sensor will be detected if it's in range. If the ship is hostile then moving within range is the next step.
Not sure what you mean by the EM sensor thing, did you mean if the unknow ship has EM EMISSIONS?.
If YOUR ship has EM sensors, it can detect the unknown/enemies ACTIVE sensor (or its active shilds). EM-sensors (and Thermal, for that matter) are strictly passive, even though your tech-level in EM-sensor now play a role in active sensor design.
Also, even passives (EM or Thermal) can tell you the bogey´s speed. Actives will give you a mass/size of the ship.
With anti-ship and anti-missile weapons the fire control range is the effective range of the weapon which in the case of missiles needs to be at least the max range if possible more to allow for future designs. Once the target enters the weapons fire control and it is within a reolution that allows detection then the target shows up on the combat screen and the weapon linked to that fire control can be fired.
Basicly correct. You can (or should, in the case missiles) only open fire when the target is in range of both, the weapon and the firecontrol.
The above works the same for anti-missile weapons but in this case the range is shorter and the resolution is set to 1 to allow detection of missiles. What is the optimum range for an anti-missile weapon?
Well, the longer the better
. Early game, at least 1 mio km, later on, I try to get 2.5 to 3 mkm of range. Usually, my escorts carry Anti-Missile-Actives with 1.5 to 2 mkm range, to save space and a dedicated fleet scout or two per squadron carry a 2.5 to 3.5 mkm rang actives.
As missile fire controls are a lot smaller than actives, it is easy to put 3 mkm range MFCs on the escorts, but similar ranged actives would realy put a dent in the space, available for weapons/ammo.
Multiple weapons can be linked to the same fire control which means those weapons will fire on the same target. It is a good idea to have more than one fire control on a ship to allow for multiple fleets.
Anti-missile-work: 1 MFC per 4 to 5 AMM-launcher (The ability to engage a lot of small salvos at the same time)
Anti-ship-work: 1 MFC per 10 to 15 ASM-launcher (You don´t want to split your fire bewtween several destroyers or cruisers, but if you have to engage FACs, engaging several of them simultaneously is realy nice)
Beams: 1 FC per 5 to 10 weapons (same reason as above)
This is my understanding of the basics of active sensors and fire controls and how they work in a first contact and hostile situation. One last thing the ranges of the active sensors and fire controls can be toggled on the display tab this makes visualising the combat much easier.
Hope this makes sense and doesn't have too many errors. Please feel free to let me know about any missing details and with a bit of luck we can come up with something for the Wiki and the strategy guide been put together by Lord Thag. Something I would find useful is a step by step example combat with screenshots and descriptions from a game in progress showing actions from first contact to the resolution.
Well that's enough for now.
