My Newbie AAR

[Brian Neumann]

A couple of notes for you.

A pdc does not need the passive sensors usually.  There is a deep space tracking system that can be built my industry that does this for you, and is a lot harder to put out of action.  If the range is not good enough for you a little reasearch can help, or you can build extra dss units.  They are not completely cumulative, but I think it is the range of the first plus half the range of all the others so it is still worthwhile to do.  If you ever want to see what your sensor reach is you can on the System Map (F3) screen.  Under display there are some options for showing what sensors can see what.

Active sensors are detected by the passive em sensor, not other active sensors.

Brian

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

A couple of notes for you.

A pdc does not need the passive sensors usually.  There is a deep space tracking system that can be built my industry that does this for you, and is a lot harder to put out of action.  If the range is not good enough for you a little reasearch can help, or you can build extra dss units.  They are not completely cumulative, but I think it is the range of the first plus half the range of all the others so it is still worthwhile to do.  If you ever want to see what your sensor reach is you can on the System Map (F3) screen.  Under display there are some options for showing what sensors can see what.

Active sensors are detected by the passive em sensor, not other active sensors.

Brian

Thanks for that you just answered one of my next questions I was wondering what the deep space tracking station did as it upgrades I presume the range improves. Also good to know about the sensors I misunderstood this.

[ZimRathbone]

Gonna stick with 5.02 and continue the campaign I'm enjoying writing it up and starting again would be hard work. Also in the next installment the jump points are going to be explored which should keep me busy.

An entirely valid strategy - many old hands (particularly the fiction writers, like Kurt and Charlie) have a tendancy to resist moving to a new version if they have an interestong campaign on the go.  Back in the days when steve was writing Starfire Assistant, there was an update program (SAUpgrade - created by someone else - not Steve) that could make a fairly good attempt at modifying the database from one version to the next, but it had a tendancy to get somewhat erratic as each new version came along.

I dont believe that anyone has produced a similar utility for Aurora, and I suspect that it would be far harder to develop than the SAUpgrade was due to the added complexity of Aurora

[randal7]

Ganymede is a good find, and Pluto. A good sorium deposit in the home system is handy.( In my current game I've surveyed about 15 systems and only found 1 deposit better than that one, and one about the same.) Did you not find any minerals on Mars, Venus, or Mercury?  In the games I've started (five or six) I've always seen at least one of those have excellent minerals. Overall your minerals are a little thinner than what I usually have seen.

Question for anybody: do PDCs need fuel? I have finally got far enough into a game to need them, and on the ones I designed I deleted the fuel bunkers. Should I fix that?

[ZimRathbone]

Question for anybody: do PDCs need fuel? I have finally got far enough into a game to need them, and on the ones I designed I deleted the fuel bunkers. Should I fix that?

PDCs generally dont need fuel - I have seen some include it for parasite craft stationed there, and by default the design includes 1 fuel storage, which I often leave in from laziness rather than anyrthing else.

Mind you I have a vague memory of being spammed by "out of fuel" messages when I eliminated the 1 fuel bunker  on sheildless missile bases (which should never use fuel) a long while back  - if i get a chance in the next weeks I'll check that

[StratPlayer]

Nice updates, Hyfrydle!  Some excellent discussion and pointers coming out of this, too.  

:thumbs-up:

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Mind you I have a vague memory of being spammed by "out of fuel" messages when I eliminated the 1 fuel bunker  on sheildless missile bases (which should never use fuel) a long while back  - if i get a chance in the next weeks I'll check that

I found I got spammed with out of fuel messages until I removed the fuel tanks.

[Steve Walmsley]

Folks are already finding bugs in the new stuff. 5.02 was pretty stable, so you might want to keep with that, and switch to 5.1x after that campaign. A side benefit of that is not having to figure out the new stuff just yet, since you (and me, and others I think :mrgreen:

Good advice

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Question for anybody: do PDCs need fuel? I have finally got far enough into a game to need them, and on the ones I designed I deleted the fuel bunkers. Should I fix that?

PDCs generally dont need fuel - I have seen some include it for parasite craft stationed there, and by default the design includes 1 fuel storage, which I often leave in from laziness rather than anyrthing else.

Mind you I have a vague memory of being spammed by "out of fuel" messages when I eliminated the 1 fuel bunker  on sheildless missile bases (which should never use fuel) a long while back  - if i get a chance in the next weeks I'll check that

If you do that, select each PDC of that class in the Ship window so the ship records get updated to the class records.

Steve

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Tonight's installment is almost complete but I'm having trouble designing my defensive PDC's. What I'm trying to create is a platform with two size 4 missile launchers for anti-ship duties and dual turreted Meson cannons for point defense against enemy missiles.

Here are my components:

Missile:

Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 2    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 15500 km/s    Endurance: 24 minutes   Range: 22.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.6583
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 232.5%   3k km/s 75%   5k km/s 46.5%   10k km/s 23.2%
Materials Required:    0.5x Tritanium   1.2833x Gallicite   Fuel x1125

Development Cost for Project: 166RP

Missile Fire Control:

Active Sensor Strength: 10   Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 1 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Primary Mode:   Resolution: 140    Maximum Range: 21,000,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 10    Crew: 5
Materials Required: 2.5x Duranium  7.5x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 100RP

Magazine:

Capacity: 300     Internal Armour: 0 HS     Explosion Chance: 30
Magazine Size: 20 HS    Magazine HTK: 1
Cost: 100    Crew: 30
Materials Required: 25x Duranium  0x Neutronium  75x Tritanium

Development Cost for Project: 1000RP

Size 4 Missile Launcher:

Maximum Missile Size: 4     Rate of Fire: 20 seconds
Launcher Size: 4 HS    Launcher HTK: 2
Cost Per Launcher: 24    Crew Per Launcher: 40
PDC Only
Materials Required: 6x Duranium  18x Tritanium

Development Cost for Project: 240RP

Do these designs look okay? If not what do I need to do to improve them?

The problem I'm having with the Meson cannon is the tracking speed which I can't seem to get higher than 5000 km/s which is not fast enough for point defense duties.

Hope someone can help with this.

[Brian Neumann]

What is your base beam weapon tracking speed.  If it is the basic 1250 km/s then 5000km/s is as fast as you are going to go without upgrading your background tech first.  For the Meson's you will also need to put them into a turret.  The turret has a seperate tracking speed tech line that is in with energy weapons.  It is however cheaper than the beam weapons tracking speed to reasearch.  

You will probably never have your fire control able to give you more than about a 50% chance per shot against incomming missiles.  30% is more normal for comparable tech systems.  If you look at the missiles you will be launching, you have about a 30% chance of shooting them down.

Brian

[UnLimiTeD]

I strongly recommend armoring magazines.
Do you expect being attacked soon?
Otherwise, I would wait a few months, research some tracking speed and turret, and then build a PDC, because, this ain't stopping anyone.
Well, atleast not anymore in 2 years.
Keep in mind PDCs can always reload from Planetary stockpiles, so you don't need that big magazines.
Against Missiles, you can also get a tracking speed bonus, though you have to research that aswell.

[Brian Neumann]

With what you have I would suggest building missile only pdc's.  Reasearch the beam fire control up a bit before designing a pdc for that.  If you keep the pdc's more specalized it is cheaper to keep them up to date.  Missile pdc's need refits at different times than beam pdc's do, also if you over design your missile pdc fire control it will still work just fine for several upgrades.  I would suggest making a missile fire control that is at least 4 times the range of your current missiles, or a minimum of 100m km.  While this is a big fire control unit, it will still be a viable defence unit if you upgrade the amunition for 4-5 levels of tech.

Brian

[UnLimiTeD]

Example: with just 1 level in every missile tech and 2 levels in warhead, your missiles will already be a third faster, have a third higher hitrate and 50% higher payload. Those are all still reasonable cheap developments to be available in no more than a year or two.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Thanks for all your help guys lots of food for thought but the main thing coming through was I need to get my tech levels up. Also since I don't have any immediate threats I can afford to wait before designing PDC's. Therefore I'm going to explore and survey all the systems within one jump of Sol and whilst doing this research like mad.

Doing this I will be able to see what if any threats are out there and be better equipped to counter any future attacks. This I feel makes sense so that's my plan.