Ruin discovery and (exploding) mines

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Hi,

2 unrelated questions please.

Are ruin discovered upon the geosurvey of a body? So far, no luck, I guess they are super rare.

I would like to set up some minefields at the exit of jump points, but I sure don't want to goof on the design. Basically I need to create a missile with huge autonomy and a thermal sensor?
a) what sensor strength, I'm clueless
b) engine or no engine?
c) do I need a reactor to power something?

Second stage is a missile with active homing, right? What do I choose as sensor strength? Which type of sensor?

Thanks for the help. They shall not pass 

[Paul M]

Ruins are found during a geosurvey.  Ruins seem to be fairly rare, in a dozen or so planets I've explored (as in Terrestrial ones which would be lifebearing worlds) I  have found ruins once.

As for your mine, the design is somewhat dependent on your enemy's targeting characteristics.

I would think the 1st stage needs an active sensor system as I don't think it can use a passive one but I'm not sure.
(a) the sensor strength needs to be suffiicient to detect the inbound enemy ships so it depends on how you plan to emplace them.  I put my mines in a ring at 50,000 km from the jump point.  I then chose a sensor strength to allow me to detect a ship jumping in up to 100,000 km from the jump point (so enough sensor strength for 150,000 km).
(b) no engine in stage 1
(c) the reactor is done by the game automatically so you don't have to worry about it specifically.

The second stage missile in my case has a thermal sensor because my targets use 8000+ thermal signature engines so it makes more sense to me.  You chose the sensor strength so that the 2nd stage missile can see the target when it is released from the 1st stage.

I have not field tested my mines so I hope that I have not said anything wrong.  You can look in my AAR for the details of the Mk 1 mine and Venom Assault Stage to see what I have done.

[Erik L]

One thing about mine fields... They tend to all target the same bogey. So if you have 50 mines with 4 missiles each, you've got 200 missiles aiming at one bogey, even if there are another 8 in range. And there is no staggered launch. The only way to accomplish that is mines further out.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

ok thanks for the input!

the problem you describe with mines is serious...

[Brian Neumann]

The best way I found to deal with mines is to both spread them out, and have a short range sensor on the mine with a longer range sensor on the missiles.  While somewhat cumbersome it does work fairly well.  By spacing the mines out you get smaller sets of missiles arriving over time.  With decent sensors on the missiles they will retarget if they don't arrive in the same 5 second interval without to much difficulty.  This works well around a jump point as the ships just arriving usually don't have any working sensors.  If they have sensors and point defense then you end up with lousy results as your missiles dribble in over time and the point defense gets lots of time to deal with them.

Brian

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

ok, sound strategy, thanks.

I never experimented that ships can get dispersed (or more exactly a TG) when arriving from a jump, the TG always arrives spot on. Are the NPR doing that, arriving with xxx kms of the jump exit?

[MarcAFK]

You can research technology that scatters your fleet a random direction from the jumppoint at an increasingly higher range, this tech exists specifically to interfere with beam based (and other short range) jump point defence strategies.

[Paul M]

If you are always bang on the jump point then you used a "standard transit" which leaves your ships blind for 5 min.  It also doesn't check for the proper ratio of non to jump ships in the group.

For a combat jump you use "squadron transit" which scatters your force around the jump point at variable distances given by your technology on the jump engine.  You probably have a 3-25K jump engine which means that 3 ships (including the jump engined ship) maximum may jump with the arrival radius of 0-25K km.  The ships will be sensor blind for around 30 seconds in this case.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

lots of infos, thanks gents!

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

can someone tells me if comets, chunks, dwarf planets can get ruins?

I believe that asteroids can't, right (as comets I would say).

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

hi again,

Back to mine design. I'm forced to put an engine on a mine, so which one I should add? I design one with longest endurance, and this becomes the endurance of the mine? So I need fuel to go with that?

This was clearer back in the old time when there was buoys/drones/missiles 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

There's no such thing as reactor endurance anymore.

You should never have an engine on a mine.

If you want a long-range deployable mine, it should function like this:


(LAUNCH STAGE) --> (MINE) --> (SUBMUNITIONS)

so you could have a size 15 launch stage, containing a size 10 mine, that contains 2 size 4 submunitions.

In this example, the launch stage needs engines and fuel. The Mine needs sensors, so it can trigger on enemies.  And the Submunitions need engines, fuel, and a warhead. 

it's probably wise to have minimal sensors on a submunition though, so they can retarget if their target is destroyed.

P.S. AFAIK only Terrestrial worlds can get auto generated ruins, though you can SM runs on just about anything.  

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

ok, I now get why I had a trouble... I believed I was forced to use an engine because the drop down box always has an engine listed, but I can choose to put 0.

So the question is now, what is the duration of my mine?

And last one, what type of sensor should I use thermal or active?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Active

Don't compromise on the warhead if the submunition is small though

The main reason you want sensors is that mines will all trigger at once on the same target, they are 'dumb'.

So if you lay 20 mines and 5 ships come through they might very well all shoot the same ship

With Sensors your missiles have a chance of  reacquiring other targets after the first ship is destroyed.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

back on ruins, I have nothing to do but land xeno teams, so to explore a dig, right? I dropped 3 teams 6 months ago and I'm not sure they are at work, the lazy bastards!

More teams = speedier excavation, right?