Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: joeclark77 on July 11, 2013, 08:59:54 PM
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Does a bouy or mine need fuel or something to determine how long it lasts? Or do they last indefinitely?
Can anybody give me a sample design for a sensor bouy? For a mine?
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In 6.0+ bouys last indefinitely. That is, any missile without an engine.
A sensor bouy is just a sensor+reactor of whatever size your bouy launcher is. Larger is of course better, but more expensive (though bouys are generally so cheap it doesn't matter), and requires more space for launcher and magazine. I suggest different designs for EM, thermal, and active. The most use is as an early warning system. A thermal/active sensor on an inbound JP will spot any ships coming through, or it'll die and warn you by absence. A tactic I've used is to stick a size 1 launcher and a few magazines on my gravsurvey ships. They can then drop geosurvey bouys on interesting looking planets, and EWS on JPs, without requiring a dedicated ship.
A mine is a sensor and a bunch of submunitions with the same sensor. Mnes are mostly used for defending JPs. Because the enemy usually won't have any missile defense working when they're shot, the submunitions can have more warhead and less armor tan a typical missile. Both mine and submunitions tend to be large, in order to minimize the space used for the sensors, and again, because they're unlikely to get shot down. The mine sensor should be a bit more than the enemy's squad jump range. The submunitions sensor can be smaller.
The only mine I've really ever used looked like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/B7DIKob.png)
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I've never made mines myself because I've been unsure just how powerful the sensor needs to be,
I'm sure I could probably just check sensor range using the system map.
I should probably go through the wiki, There must be something there.
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Missiles that have sensors will now remain on the map forever, with two exceptions:
a) If a missile has geo sensors and no other type of sensor, it will self-destruct when the geosurvey of its target planet is completed.
b) If a missile has a warhead, it will self-destruct when its fuel runs out.
From the v6 changes thread
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Don't count on the wiki being up to date...it's not. It's a good starting point, but a search of the forum to verify more recent information is always a good idea.
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I'm interested in doing something like what Arwyn did in this thread posted a year ago: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4617.0.html
Arwyn used a multi-stage missile to launch a mine from a PDC-based launcher. The first stage would travel to the waypoint and (apparently) sit there until it detected a target, at which point it would launch the submunition. My question is about the first stage in particular... since it has fuel and an engine, would it not expire once the fuel is out? Or would it sit at the waypoint and stop using fuel once it arrived at its destination? Would I need a three-stage missile in this case?