I want to kill them all!

[Gru (OP)]

Sorry if this is so basic it's laughable. . .

I just can't seem to figure out how to engage enemies during combat.  In a nutshell, one of my scouts is destroyed, I build a fleet of armed/shielded/angry cruisers, they fly to engage the aggressors, and despite superior (thanks, SM) weapons/sensors/engines/etc.  they are slaughtered without firing a single freaking shot!

Clearly, I'm missing something.

I've searched the Forums, checked the Wiki, and can't seem to find a BASIC "This is how combat works" entry.  Any help or link or tutorial would be really appreciated!

Much thanks in advance.

[andrewas]

Have you found the F8 screen? It should be fairly clear, you link your missiles to launchers, your launchers and beams to fire controls, and ECCM to fire controls.  Finally, assign targets to fire controls, and tell them to open fire. 

Then you tell them to cease fire and get into range before opening fire again. 

[Nathan_]

another thing to consider is crew training, if your ships are at 0.0% TF training it will take them a while to respond to orders. Likewise sync fire can occasionally get you into situations where one ship is preventing all other ships from firing, keep the events log turned on to watch for that. Give us a screenshot of what your combat summary page looks like(F6 button, one of the tabs).

[Gru (OP)]

Thanks, guys.  I'll give these suggestions a try and see what happens!

[Starmantle]

Also, please post the specs of your warships.  That might allow others to find problems and make suggestions.

And welcome to Aurora!

[Gru (OP)]

To tell the truth, I'm a bit ashamed to post the specs you requested.  I'm a real Newbie to this, and just designed a warship with "the best stuff I got right now. " Clearly, Aurora is much deeper than that.  Simply reading the Beam Boat Design entry in the Wiki proves that, and I'm just getting my feet wet.  Still, I look forward to tweeking and experimenting with all the systems and possible combinations.  I'm sure my "designs" are totally flawed, but I look forward to testing to find the best combination to meet my needs.  Now that I know how to shoot!

Thanks to the above posts, I'm not a sitting duck anymore.  One of my guys actually FIRED A SHOT last encounter.  Sweet! Now I just need to discover the Uber combination.  To me, that's the joy of this game.

Still, a basic tutorial to warship design should be out there.  Like, a torpedo boat needs torps (duh), but torpedoes need engines (I think) and firing systems (seems logical) and who the hell knows what else.  The learning curve on this game is gigantic (which is fine); however, signposts along the way would be a blessing.  I'd love to see a freaking Player's Guide. . . it would make the learning journey just that much enjoyable!

[Nibelung44]

Try missiles first, they fire from afar

But yes, there is a kind of pyramid of techs to design and develop before reaching the stage where one of your ship has all it needs to hurl death...

[MarcAFK]

To be honest you can hurl death at the lowest tech levels, you just need your enemies to be stuck at that level too, but higher tiers just make your ships so much more efficient and versatile.