One fire control per weapon, or group weapons in batches? (Also PD)

[captainwolfer]

That's the thing though. The events screen did not show any reports of my ship's weapons firing on missiles and mentioned nothing about how many had been shot down. They 'did' fire on enemy ships that had been designated. Is there some esoteric button somewhere that needs to be pushed to 'tell' your ships to fire defensively? I DID drag the final defence and area defence tags onto each of my fire controls, in which were also my weapons and ECCM.

The only thing I can think of, is in the top right of the event page, click the "Show All events" checkbox.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I did NOT have "show all events" flagged. Never noticed it before. That could well explain everything.

[captainwolfer]

I did NOT have "show all events" flagged. Never noticed it before. That could well explain everything.

They should be showing up even with "Show all events" off, so if they do show up now then you must have accidentally hidden the PD firing reports.

The only other two possibilities I can think of that would cause it are:
1. Bugs
2. Not having the middle drop-down option on the top of the events screen set to "All event Categories".

[CowboyRonin]

One thing I have noticed in my past playthroughs - I have seen combat reports for Final Fire and related orders, but not Area Defense.  I would see the flashes and the number of incoming missiles reduced if I had weapons on Area Defense, but I did not see the combat events like I did for weapons on Final Fire or Final Defensive Fire.

[Droll]

One thing I have noticed in my past playthroughs - I have seen combat reports for Final Fire and related orders, but not Area Defense.  I would see the flashes and the number of incoming missiles reduced if I had weapons on Area Defense, but I did not see the combat events like I did for weapons on Final Fire or Final Defensive Fire.

Same here, area defense only shows energy impacts. It also doesn't update the ships missile kill counts

[brondi00]

You have to have them in active sensors.  You have to have a fire control that can target them.  You can have as many weapons on a fire control as you wish.  There is no limit.

And finally.  If you are manually setting up PD fire controls to have to have weapons assigned.  You have to have a point defense mode assigned.

You do not have to have it set to open fire.

It should show in your event log when missiles impact and if they are intercepted.  But it's possible you inadvertently hid the PD messages.

[serger]

it is useful to have even your massive 50 cm lasers assigned to final fire just to give a little bit more defense while you close the range.

It will be rather costly in the sense of maintenance in current version.

[serger]

I think it will be good, if someone of you do bug report (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11945.400) with appropriate save file.

[Jorgen_CAB]

it is useful to have even your massive 50 cm lasers assigned to final fire just to give a little bit more defense while you close the range.

It will be rather costly in the sense of maintenance in current version.

Unless you are desperate then yes I agree that leaving your spinal weapon off PD is probably a good thing. If you roll the "1" on a D100 dice it will cost you dearly and the effect on those weapons for PD are not going to be that high anyway.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I spent hours last night (sure seemed like it anyway) micromanaging a really long fight. I had three battlecruisers versus something like one hundred smaller, disparate ships. I was both faster than them and my weapons outranged them and I was able to kite them, slowly whittling them down while they could not fire back. (Maintenance was my undoing, I ran out of maintenance before the enemy ran out of ships, and I had to retreat.)

I did notice however that having more beam fire controls than absolutely necessary proved to be a handicap, as I had to manually designate a target for each fire control. If I had grouped my similar weapons under single fire control, I could have significantly reduced my micromanagement time. My battlecruisers are now in refit to 'remove' fire control systems (and add some maintenance stores). More battlecruisers coming off the line soon. Hopefully, my 48 FACs will be enough if my enemy counter-attacks.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I spent hours last night (sure seemed like it anyway) micromanaging a really long fight. I had three battlecruisers versus something like one hundred smaller, disparate ships. I was both faster than them and my weapons outranged them and I was able to kite them, slowly whittling them down while they could not fire back. (Maintenance was my undoing, I ran out of maintenance before the enemy ran out of ships, and I had to retreat.)

I did notice however that having more beam fire controls than absolutely necessary proved to be a handicap, as I had to manually designate a target for each fire control. If I had grouped my similar weapons under single fire control, I could have significantly reduced my micromanagement time. My battlecruisers are now in refit to 'remove' fire control systems (and add some maintenance stores). More battlecruisers coming off the line soon. Hopefully, my 48 FACs will be enough if my enemy counter-attacks.

The number of fire controls should be rather dependent on the size of the ship and the number of beams that you use. As I tend to have beam weapons on almost all of my ships I don't need to have allot of backup fire-controls (in case they are damaged). You also can leave a fire-control with no weapons and just have it as a backup, nothing prevent you from doing that.

Also... kiting and attack from a distance is also allot easier against the AI than against multiple controlled factions. In a multi-faction then the side being slower can always rotate ships in and out of distance by alternating the speed of their ships to replenish their shields. This will either force the opponent to get closer or just simply empty their MSP stores from weapons failure for no good reason.

Also... if you spread your weapons out on more ships you also have more maintenance stores to draw on for weapons failure in case you do get into the situation of a long range fire duel.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

I spent hours last night (sure seemed like it anyway) micromanaging a really long fight. I had three battlecruisers versus something like one hundred smaller, disparate ships. I was both faster than them and my weapons outranged them and I was able to kite them, slowly whittling them down while they could not fire back. (Maintenance was my undoing, I ran out of maintenance before the enemy ran out of ships, and I had to retreat.)

I did notice however that having more beam fire controls than absolutely necessary proved to be a handicap, as I had to manually designate a target for each fire control. If I had grouped my similar weapons under single fire control, I could have significantly reduced my micromanagement time. My battlecruisers are now in refit to 'remove' fire control systems (and add some maintenance stores). More battlecruisers coming off the line soon. Hopefully, my 48 FACs will be enough if my enemy counter-attacks.

Don't do this.

In cases where you have more fire controls than you need, you can always just temporarily group similar weapons under a single control. You are free to reassign weapons on the fly!

Unless you mean you had 1 fire control per weapon, which is absurd.

[Sebmono]

One last question regarding your point defence firing or not firing - can you send a screenshot of your ship design?

I'm curious if you're using very short range gauss cannons, one last "rule" to remember is that point defence firing happens at 10,000km, so if you're gauss range is shorter than that, they won't fire