Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Michael Sandy on March 22, 2017, 01:02:28 AM
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So I wanted to try out survey missiles, experimented a bit, designed
Missile Size: 9.995 MSP (0.49975 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 200 km/s Engine Endurance: 1,767.8 hours Range: 1,272.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.7266
Second Stage: Size 2.995 Buoy(small) x1
Second Stage Separation Range: 0 km
Overall Endurance: 1701 days Overall Range: 1272.8m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 0.4% 10k km/s 0.2%
Materials Required: 0.0165x Boronide 0.685x Uridium 0.0251x Gallicite Fuel x5250
Development Cost for Project: 73RP
Missile Size: 2.995 MSP (0.14975 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s Engine Endurance: 39,062.5 hours Range: 0.0m km
Geo Sensor Strength: 0.0274 Maximum points: 1070.3125
Cost Per Missile: 0.7016
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 0% 10k km/s 0%
Materials Required: 0.0165x Boronide 0.685x Uridium 0.0001x Gallicite Fuel x250
Development Cost for Project: 70RP
Yeah, it could take 4 years to survey that 1070 points, but a .1 MSP reduced fuel engine gave that stage all the endurance it needed to survey forever.
But I can't figure out how to get them loaded into the ICBMs I started with, let alone fire them. I keep getting a message that I do not have enough missiles to load them, which concerns me because I also only want to fire one survey drone per target.
I am having mixed feelings about missile based surveying. While the per survey cost is pretty cheap, the costs of shipping the launcher and magazine adds up. For handling a dispersed survey, as distinct from asteroid belts, trojans or large moon systems, it seems economical. And a survey ship design based on a reduced sized launcher and large magazines has a decent conversion to a minelayer. At least it could do duty as a fleet collier.
It is attractive at the start because you already have the launcher and you don't need to ship it anywhere, (if I could get it to work).
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Those are conventional missile engines, btw. I figured that I would research them while I was working on Transnewtonian research in hopes of getting my propulsion scientist some leveling. Didn't happen. There was also an accidental race between building up my shipyard to build commercial surveyors and the development of reactor tech that would allow missile based surveying. I actually timed it so Geosurvey sensors and the reactor tech completed in the same month.
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You say you have designed some missiles but have you actually build any :D ?
Other than that, there should be Load Ordnance command connected to "standard loadout for the type, as defined in the ship design window". "Or you can use the Ordnance tab in the Individual Unit window. " See Missiles#Loading missiles (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Missiles#Loading_missiles) for more.
I guess you are trying to load ICBMs into your starting ICBM launchers, thinking you are loading those survey missiles.
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No, I built a few. I also noticed a bug in the missiles where they separate into their 2nd stage at 150,000, which is contraindicated for Geo probes! I posted the corrected version in the thread above.
At least, I built ordnance factories, and completed making a few missiles. I only made a few, factories and missiles, because the goal was survey on the cheap.
RP-wise, there was this massive shipyard (well, relatively speaking, in terms of employment) gearing up to produce survey ships, and this small ordnance factory was going to get the jump on surveying. Which was all part of a plot to get more resources invested in missile tech and ordnance, of course, or undermining the corrupt status quo.
I wanted to build as small a geoprobe missile as I could that would do the job, because I figured it didn't matter if the survey itself took a long time, as long as it was done before I needed it and had the means to exploit it. So I didn't build sized 24 missiles, but I thought you could fire smaller missiles in large launchers, just at the large missile rate of fire?
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So you have some of those survey missiles stored.
Can you load them via that Individual unit screen when you select those ICBM launcher silos?
Try manually loading few missiles via "Ordnance management" tab. Just select "population" in the middle from the offered options and double-click on those survey missiles that should show up to load them one by one. If you set it properly at Class design screen you can also use Fast reload according to default ordnance setup.
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Sounds like great ideas to try, but aurora is in pop-up death mode right now. I can't start it, and I can't close the pop-ups, not even the task manager helps. I can force quit, and restart, but I am having so many bugs that I might have to uninstall completely, again, and try again. :(
Or wait for 7.2 or something.
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That sucks. Are you sure ICBM launchers are actually capable of launching missiles that aren't ICBMs? I Can't exactly recall having used them before like that. I usually scrap them and make replacements pretty early on.
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Can you scrap ICBMs, or can you only delete them? I didn't see a scrap option for them from my shipyard.
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I saw the refit PDC, but no scrap option. Oh well, an update. So I got Aurora back working, made geosurvey missiles, and still can't load them. I see them on the load from population window, but can't assign them to the launch, it says "select a missile type".
Well, I built it using the missile design tech, so it should be a missile. Somewhere there is a button that does what I want it to...
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Well, I built it using the missile design tech, so it should be a missile. Somewhere there is a button that does what I want it to...
So now you see them? Good.
To move missiles from one area (population) to other one (ship), double click on the name of missiles at the area you want them taken from.
P.S.: Could you please rename the OP so that this thread has less generic name than "a couple of n00b questions"? Something like "How to load missiles" would work.
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When I say scrap I mean delete them after making replacements :/
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if all else fails you can abandon ship in the ships screen
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if all else fails you can abandon ship in the ships screen
If all else fails you can call government of your country and ask them to help you load ICBM to your ICBM launcher :D
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For now, the point is moot because the game hard crashed and I had to delete the save. But RP-wise, I handled it that the military refused access to their base, because they didn't trust the wacky civilians who had designed and built the Geo Probe missiles outside the normal government processes.
Also, I have been trying to build a doctrine for using them.
In the home system, the overhead cost of magazines isn't an issue, but using them in other systems, it really is an issue. A bare bones drone, (size 2 geo drone head, size 1.5 MSP engine, reduced fuel use, .5 msp fuel), in a ship with 10 magazines, (the same cost as a geo survey sensor), means that a survey ship could survey about 40 planets/moons/comets before returning for reload.
But it would also have to be a military ship, so that adds costs for maintenance.
I think they are useful in a conventional start. Then you use them to survey the comets and Mercury, which can be annoying for a slow commercial surveyor. And use them to survey the widely separated rocks in the Ourt cloud.
But if you are building a commercial shipyard early, to get started on colonization, then you are prioritizing logistics techs over drive techs, so the essential ingredient for geo buoys, the reactor, comes later.
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It could be a size issue, in that the ICBM Silo in the conventional missile bases do not accept anything else but Size 24. I'm currently playing a 3-way conventional Earth start campaign and one of the powers created TN missiles to use in them. I had no trouble loading them:
(http://i.imgur.com/IHJZSaf.png)
I haven't tried with smaller sizes. With normal launchers, that isn't a problem but the ICBM Silo might be a special case.
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Aha! I figured out the issue, thanks to Detros. First, I have to double click on the ICBM missile in the base, in order to transfer that missile to the population. THEN there will be room to load it into the ICBM base.
Or I would, but my missile base is now apparently suffering from the effects of transit. Or more likely, ICBMs take a while to load.
(edit) 12 days later, still suffering the effects of 'transit'. Now the 'missile launch' button SAYS that it is what you use when you are launching without using a fire control, but I seem to be missing something to get it to work.
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(edit) 12 days later, still suffering the effects of 'transit'. Now the 'missile launch' button SAYS that it is what you use when you are launching without using a fire control, but I seem to be missing something to get it to work.
IIRC there should be hard wired 5 or 15 min interval for PDC firing at he same body, so that other races there have time to respond to "nuclear war". This simulates the time the ICBM needs to fly through upper atmosphere to any other colony on the same body. Otherwise it would be instant (5s), with target distance of 0 km. Maybe that's also why it is showing you that "transit effect".
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Try using the ordnance transfer window in future to move the ordinance to the pdc.
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Well, I did get the missiles to load in the PDC, that part works. But the sticking point is still firing them.
And the next sticking point is figuring out a good way to make recon drones in general more easy to use. Also, I will want to see if when you use more than one, the points stack. Because then you could just build LOTS of small buoys, and just use multiples on planets and big moons to get the survey done in a reasonable amount of time.
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Okay, I am still stumped. How do you fire missiles from conventional start ICBMs? I am still getting the transit effects warning. I can load the missiles, but I can't fire them. Should I just give up on using them?
If you have managed to fire missiles from conventional ICBMs, please provide a step by step, because obviously I am missing something.
And I mean every step, including how to target a planet, moon or asteroid with the missile bases.
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I swear I have done it in the past. I'll load up my test game and have a poke around.
Edit:
Well this is weird. I Can load and fire missiles from the PDC's fine. However the geo survey points just refuse to go down.
Process was this:
Create new conventional game, spacemaster transnewtonian research, and geo survey sensors, space master a size 1 conventional engine.
Design a missile with 10 MSP of geo survey sensor, 6.8 fuel capacty, and 7 engines (also contains .2 reactor for the sensors). Create the missile then spacemaster the design.
Open the missile base design, change ordnance to the new missiles.
Open up one of the missile bases, click "standard" reload.
Open the system map and create a waypoint at the moon. use the SB waypoint button which puts a waypoint on the body which moves with the body.
Then select and fire at the waypoint, watch the missile slowly crawl at 100km/s towards the moon, eventually it gets there, but the body stays at 173 survey points.
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Okay, something new weird. I got my probe missiles built, and a probe launcher on a scouting pinnace. And I can fire a missile, (I accidentally built the buoys instead of the missiles)... but I can only fire once. Then I get the transit warning.
So... I transit out, transit back, I can use the launch missile option... once.
Yay, I will be able to launch probe missiles and find out more about the (spoilers) without risking ships... but I still can't launch them reliably, I can't launch recon drones from a ship that hasn't just transited. Do I need a fire control? I am just trying to hit a waypoint. Oh well, more experimentation some other time.
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Yes, you absolutely need a fire control to fire missiles at waypoints. Fortunately, a .1 HS fire control is sufficient.
I have to say, using missiles to scout systems is a bit of a mixed bag.
I am experimenting with both single stage missiles and 2-stage ones. The advantage of the 2-stage ones is that the sensor will stay on location indefinitely, but you pay the research cost twice.
So far, EM missiles seem to work better than active sensor missiles in detecting enemies at range. I am waiting on the next level of Thermal Sensors to build thermal sensor probes.
The problem is that scouting a whole system is rather expensive. Both in terms of missiles, and in the fact that my probe ship has to keep flying back to base to get more missiles. So I think I will reserve missile scouting for systems in which I actually detected a hostile ship, in order to localize them, find out how many and what type of ship they have, and information on the range of their AMMs.
My MSP 3 active sensor missile was detected and destroyed at 2.3 times the range of the sensor. That suggests that an MSP 6 missile, (at least once I get better sensors or even power plants) would be able to detect the enemy ships that shoot it down. So if I am trying for real information, as distinct from detecting the mere presence of the enemy, designing a missile that can identity number and class of the enemy before being destroyed might be worth it. Above 6 MSP, the enemy's detection range of my probes is going to increase faster than the range of the sensors on my probes increases.
I wonder if it is worth making a 2-stage missile, where the separation range is greater than the enemy's apparent AMM range, possibly with a very efficient 100 km/s engine on the 2nd stage.
I am trying to figure out what useful information I can get from missiles, and how to make use of it. I am pretty sure I could use them to detect when the enemy moves out, which would give an idea as to what range their planetary or other passive sensors had.