Sensors and Peaceful Coexistence

[WCG (OP)]

Besides roleplaying, when you have an ally with a defensive treaty or commercial treaty you want to see their ships when they are in your systems.

Maybe I've got this backwards, but how would turning on your own transponders help you see an ally's ships? When you turn on a transponder in a ship, doesn't that send out an ID for that ship? I mean, it would help your allies ID you, not you to ID them,... unless I've got this all backwards, which wouldn't surprise me.

Do computer-controlled races ever attack allied ships by mistake, or is it just the player who'd make a mistake like that?

Also, there's another order I'm curious about: "Send Message." What kind of message would you be sending, and to whom would you be sending it?

There's a lot to this game! That's good - very good - but it's quite a job trying to understand everything, as I'm sure everyone here well knows.  

Bill

[sloanjh]

Civilian shipping tends to run with transponders on - both yours and NPRs'.  So you can see the NPR transponders.  There's probably a thread on transponders somewhere in mechanics from a year or two ago - you could probably find it by searching for messages from *Steve* containing "transponder" if you want to see the reasoning that went on.

Send message sends a message to yourself in the event log.  It's useful for reminding yourself to do something after a ship has gotten to a spot in its orders, e.g. you might send "infrastructure landed on Hades, send colonists" from a cargo fleet.  The message would appear in the event log whenever the order executed.

John

[WCG (OP)]

There's probably a thread on transponders somewhere in mechanics from a year or two ago - you could probably find it by searching for messages from *Steve* containing "transponder" if you want to see the reasoning that went on.

Thanks, I found it. I hadn't gone back far enough in my previous search.

Send message sends a message to yourself in the event log.  It's useful for reminding yourself to do something after a ship has gotten to a spot in its orders

That makes sense. Great idea!

Thanks, John.

Bill

[WCG (OP)]

They're pretty useless as they are, but they've got a LOT of heavy missile tubes.  What I usually do is design an upgrade that rips out the old fire control and adds a TN one, but leaves the tubes and armor alone (to lower refit cost).  I also build size-24 TN missiles for them that have a longer range than just sitting on the planet like ICBM do.  I then refit the PDC to the new standard and build the missiles.

OK, I finally got around to doing all this (and yeah, it worked fine going into SpaceMaster mode for that workaround). Before I actually run into aliens, though, I want to be sure I understand something. These missile bases have new, long-range missiles and a fire control to match. Is that all I need?

I don't have an active sensor anywhere in the Sol system yet. In the event of an attack on the Earth by hostile aliens, I realize that an active sensor might work better than my planet-based passive sensors, but is it absolutely essential that I have an active sensor? As long as any sensor anywhere picks up an attacking fleet, these missiles will be able to use their fire control to attack the ships, right?

I understand that they won't be able to attack invisible ships, of course, but planet-based passive sensors have a pretty long range. Can I rely on that, at least at the beginning of the game? So far, these missile bases are my only defense against anything at all. (But then, I haven't started exploring the galaxy yet, either.)

Thanks,

Bill

[Nabobalis]

They're pretty useless as they are, but they've got a LOT of heavy missile tubes.  What I usually do is design an upgrade that rips out the old fire control and adds a TN one, but leaves the tubes and armor alone (to lower refit cost).  I also build size-24 TN missiles for them that have a longer range than just sitting on the planet like ICBM do.  I then refit the PDC to the new standard and build the missiles.

OK, I finally got around to doing all this (and yeah, it worked fine going into SpaceMaster mode for that workaround). Before I actually run into aliens, though, I want to be sure I understand something. These missile bases have new, long-range missiles and a fire control to match. Is that all I need?

I don't have an active sensor anywhere in the Sol system yet. In the event of an attack on the Earth by hostile aliens, I realize that an active sensor might work better than my planet-based passive sensors, but is it absolutely essential that I have an active sensor? As long as any sensor anywhere picks up an attacking fleet, these missiles will be able to use their fire control to attack the ships, right?

I understand that they won't be able to attack invisible ships, of course, but planet-based passive sensors have a pretty long range. Can I rely on that, at least at the beginning of the game? So far, these missile bases are my only defense against anything at all. (But then, I haven't started exploring the galaxy yet, either.)

Thanks,

Bill

I think you NEED an active sensor, a passive sensor doesn't give enough information to target anything. But I'm still new so I can't be sure.

[Brian Neumann]

Normally you do need to have an active sensor contact to fire on a ship.  There is a way around it, but it can be difficult.  If your missiles have their own sensors on board you can set a way point at where the target should be when the missiles get there.  Fire on that point and let the missiles fly to there.  If thier onboard sensors find a target they will home in and attack.

This is obviously not easy if the sensor contact does not continue on a straight, consistant speed path.  Also the missile sensors are probably going to be pretty big early in the game causing your missile to be a large, slow target that is easy for point defense to shoot down.  Put a point of armour on to make it more survivable, and make sure you have lots of endurance on the missile as well.  It will loiter at the initial way point until it spots a target or runs out of fuel.

This is the only way you will be able to fire on a passive sensor contact.  All other weapons require that there be an active sensor detecting the target.  The active sensor does not need to be on the firing ship/base however.  I often will make a pdc that is nothing but a big active sensor and lots of armour.  It is very hard to put out of action, and if the missile bases are small they are often invisable at long range so they are not fired on by an attacker.

It is also a good strategy for designing colony world protection.  Each individual pdc is small and easily transported/assembled in place.  Once they are assembled you can keep sending/building more of them if you need to.  They are also cheap enough to upgrade easily.  This is especially true if all you really need to upgrade is the active sensor unit.

Brian

[Nabobalis]

Normally you do need to have an active sensor contact to fire on a ship.  There is a way around it, but it can be difficult.  If your missiles have their own sensors on board you can set a way point at where the target should be when the missiles get there.  Fire on that point and let the missiles fly to there.  If thier onboard sensors find a target they will home in and attack.

This is obviously not easy if the sensor contact does not continue on a straight, consistant speed path.  Also the missile sensors are probably going to be pretty big early in the game causing your missile to be a large, slow target that is easy for point defense to shoot down.  Put a point of armour on to make it more survivable, and make sure you have lots of endurance on the missile as well.  It will loiter at the initial way point until it spots a target or runs out of fuel.

This is the only way you will be able to fire on a passive sensor contact.  All other weapons require that there be an active sensor detecting the target.  The active sensor does not need to be on the firing ship/base however.  I often will make a pdc that is nothing but a big active sensor and lots of armour.  It is very hard to put out of action, and if the missile bases are small they are often invisable at long range so they are not fired on by an attacker.

It is also a good strategy for designing colony world protection.  Each individual pdc is small and easily transported/assembled in place.  Once they are assembled you can keep sending/building more of them if you need to.  They are also cheap enough to upgrade easily.  This is especially true if all you really need to upgrade is the active sensor unit.

Brian

Do you have the designs of those PDCs by any chance?

[Brian Neumann]

Do you have the designs of those PDCs by any chance?

Not at the moment as I just started a new conventional campaign.  I will make some and post them later today.

Brian

[Nabobalis]

Do you have the designs of those PDCs by any chance?

Not at the moment as I just started a new conventional campaign.  I will make some and post them later today.

Brian

Thanks. I'm still trying to get the hand of missile based designs.

[WCG (OP)]

Normally you do need to have an active sensor contact to fire on a ship.

OK, thanks, Brian. I kept thinking I'd read something like that, but I couldn't find it again. And then I thought, well, I've got fire control aiming every missile, so why would I need anything else?

I'll go ahead and put an active sensor on the Earth.

Thanks again, both of you.

Bill

[sloanjh]

Normally you do need to have an active sensor contact to fire on a ship.

OK, thanks, Brian. I kept thinking I'd read something like that, but I couldn't find it again. And then I thought, well, I've got fire control aiming every missile, so why would I need anything else?

What you may be thinking about is a change in 5.0 for identifying contacts.  Before 5.0, you needed to have an active fix on a contact in order to be able to "fingerprint" it, i.e. identify race and class.  Passive contacts would only result in e.g. "unknown thermal contact".  As of 5.0, it's assumed that passive contacts give you enough information for a fingerprint (in the same way that sonar contacts are assigned by their narrow-band frequency lines).

The questions you're asking about active vs. passive sensors giving a firing solution are good ones, since e.g. submarines can fire at a purely passive contact (although the torpedoes they fire have their own homing heads as Brian described for Aurora).  My summary of the reason for requiring an active contact in order to be able to fire is that it's a mechanics/abstraction issue.  In the real world, active sensors give you more information quickly and precisely than passives.  The problem (for Aurora) is that you can get roughly the same information if you take longer - it's called Target Motion Analysis and it's what commanders have staffs and computers for.  So all the hard work and timescales for localizing passive contacts are abstracted away in Aurora - otherwise the passive tracking part of the game would be unplayable.  So Steve had to find a benefit for active sensors that passives don't have: this is the requirement that you have an active fix on a target you want to fire at.  This works out very well - it forces players to add both active and passive capabilities to their combat fleets without using an arbitrary rule to do so.

John