What's Going On In Your Empire: C# Edition

[captainwolfer]

I've been playing with fast particle beam/gauss PD battleship, and I haven't seen running away from missiles improve hit chance beyond what would be expected of the base missile speeds.

There is only 3 things that affects PD hit chance as far as I've seen
1. Speed of missile vs PD tracking speed
2. Tactical bonus from ship CO or tactical officer
3. The tech line that gives a percentage bonus to tracking speed the longer a missile is tracked, up to a cap determined by tech.

[nakorkren]

You're right that I've never seen it in patch notes or other gospel. I remember coming up with the experiment using a FAC with a speed comparable to that of an NPC missile, and I thought I remembered it working, but I guess I can't swear to it. Note that it should also apply to forward motion, so... if I was right, I'd think folks would've noticed something was up with moving vs stationary to-hit effectiveness being off. Seriously starting to doubt myself on that point, now.

That said, should be an easy experiment to do (or re-do?); I'll check it out this weekend and report back.

[Steve Walmsley]

The hit chance vs missiles is not affected by the relative speed vs the target.

[Steve Zax]

No, the relative speed doesn't matter, BUT!
If you retreat from a missile, it DOES increase your TRACKING time! (up to limits of course)
so that it could APPEAR to be decreasing the missile's hit chances.

[Steve Walmsley]

No, the relative speed doesn't matter, BUT!
If you retreat from a missile, it DOES increase your TRACKING time! (up to limits of course)
so that it could APPEAR to be decreasing the missile's hit chances.

Yes, true. It also increases the time between the arrival of different salvos so you may get more total shots due to weapons recharging. Running away is part of my standard "Wow, I didn't expect that many missiles" strategy

[Droll]

Running away is part of my standard "Wow, I didn't expect that many missiles" strategy

I believe the military term is "Tactical Kiting"

[Ulzgoroth]

Trying to figure out a good way to defend fuel extractors against invasive pests.

In some cases, a heavy STO (or perhaps better simply a large DST setup) on a moon of the gas giant works to cover them, but some Sorium giants don't have moons. Which means my easy-operation sensor and weapon options won't be reliably close by. And I've demonstrated that the travel time of even fighters leans too long to do more than avenge my installation.

I may need to park an anchorage station right out on the gas giant...

[StarshipCactus]

Trying to figure out a good way to defend fuel extractors against invasive pests.

In some cases, a heavy STO (or perhaps better simply a large DST setup) on a moon of the gas giant works to cover them, but some Sorium giants don't have moons. Which means my easy-operation sensor and weapon options won't be reliably close by. And I've demonstrated that the travel time of even fighters leans too long to do more than avenge my installation.

I may need to park an anchorage station right out on the gas giant...

If you have other colonies in the system, you could try stationing a few ships from the local garrison above the gas giant and just cycle them out every 9 months or year or whatever. They can get overhauls, resupply and shore leave from the colony. If there is no colony nearby, it might be worth investing in some kind of maintenance station or even commercial hanger station. I've always liked the idea of a maintenance station, although that won't deal with shore leave.

[Droll]

Trying to figure out a good way to defend fuel extractors against invasive pests.

In some cases, a heavy STO (or perhaps better simply a large DST setup) on a moon of the gas giant works to cover them, but some Sorium giants don't have moons. Which means my easy-operation sensor and weapon options won't be reliably close by. And I've demonstrated that the travel time of even fighters leans too long to do more than avenge my installation.

I may need to park an anchorage station right out on the gas giant...

If you have other colonies in the system, you could try stationing a few ships from the local garrison above the gas giant and just cycle them out every 9 months or year or whatever. They can get overhauls, resupply and shore leave from the colony. If there is no colony nearby, it might be worth investing in some kind of maintenance station or even commercial hanger station. I've always liked the idea of a maintenance station, although that won't deal with shore leave.

You can just build a recreational facility, the station will be somewhat large but you can separate the stations out into "modules" to make tugging them easier.

[Steve Walmsley]

For harvester protection, I usually park a small colony on a moon, or use a DSP with an Ark Module, then add one or more stations with maintenance modules and some MSP. Instant base.

[Ulzgoroth]

I already have a station design with maintenance facilities and 10,000 tons of commercial hangar space which I've been using to deploy small garrisons, I'd probably just lay out another one.


My current warships have too little endurance to make cycling guardships tolerable, though maybe the upcoming class of patrol cruisers will change that when I have enough to consider actually using them for patrols. (I first built an instance of the anchorage bases because there was a spot in deep space that needed to be garrisoned and keeping even a scoutship on station was driving me to distraction.)

[nakorkren]

I'm very, very excited to have just encountered a wild Star Swarm colony for the first time in several years of playing Aurora. I may shortly be much less excited, since this encounter occurred 4 systems from Sol, but TBD. My obsolete survey ship was immediately boarded and the crew was presumably eaten alive/subsumed into the hive mind.

[ExChairman]

Old Aurora game, year 89: 595 civillian ships, never had this much, cant say it slows the game down, but having problems with "to fast" ships so they are jumped lagged at next stop...

[nakorkren]

I'm very, very excited to have just encountered a wild Star Swarm colony for the first time in several years of playing Aurora. I may shortly be much less excited, since this encounter occurred 4 systems from Sol, but TBD. My obsolete survey ship was immediately boarded and the crew was presumably eaten alive/subsumed into the hive mind.

Update: We are merrily kicking each other's teeth in. I destroyed something like 80k-tons of FACs with laser fire while they chewed through the shields of three 50k-ton battleships. Then their (main?) fleet of 14x 20k-ton cruisers showed up to the party, who after one salvo convinced me their tech was superior and I was not going to win that fight. Particularly since one of my battleships was out of commission due to microwave damage destroying both BFCs. Note to self, overhaul with microwave-hardened BFCs and have more of them. Ultimately had to retreat through the unstabilized jump point, but still almost lost one battleship due to continuing acid damage from hull damage taken from the parasite craft in the first half of the battle. I'm trying very hard not to lose any ships in a place I can't prevent the enemy from harvesting the wreck, as I suspect that's how they get resources to... reproduce?.

Now I'm building minelayers to set up minefields, as well as carriers with fast scouts and missile fighters to take the fight to the enemy at speeds they can't keep up with. We'll see if that helps. Meanwhile they just popped up in a new system on the complete other side of my empire, which is... highly concerning. So far still having fun. Hasn't yet graduated to Dwarf Fortress level "FUN", but it's escalated rapidly over the last few months of game time.

[Kurt]

For harvester protection, I usually park a small colony on a moon, or use a DSP with an Ark Module, then add one or more stations with maintenance modules and some MSP. Instant base.

I usually establish a ground base with some DSTS's and STO's on a nearby moon.  If alien ships are detected the harvesters can move to the moon and shelter under the STO's guns.  Also, the moon base can serve as a handy fuel dump where the harvesters can unload when full, rather than have to go all the way to an inhabited planet. 

Kurt