Not a single survivor made it back home

[Count Sessine (OP)]

Hi guys

I could use a bit of advice. I’m playing my first game of Aurora. Year is 2042 and I’ve run into some aliens who started shooting at me and who are not in the mood for talking. I don’t know if it’s the precursors or not.

I thought I should teach them a lesson so I spent a few years to build a fleet. Five missile cruisers (approx 7000 tons) with missiles that could engage at 60M km. Six fleet defense frigates with respectively gauss, beams, and AMM’s. I sent them on their way, pride of the fleet etc. Unfortunately Earth lost her sons and daughters in the void. Not a single survivor made it back.

Now, since this was my first combat I guess didn’t expect much, but I got obliterated. Utterly ?

My enemy was superior to me in all ways. His speed was 10.000 km/s on all his ships which meant I couldn’t disengage as my fleet speed was about 2500. His fleet numbered 12 * 12500 ton ships and two huge ships of 32000 tons each. His missiles had a somewhat shorter range than mine, but they flew 80.000 km/s which is maybe why my point defense was almost without effect (please advise)?

Of my missile barrages of some 50 missiles each none penetrated his point defense. That’s zero as in 0

I guess my question is how the heck I beat that guy. I even cheated with the space master (in the name of research of course) and spawned an additional 25 cruisers. These did succeed in downing a couple of ships, but all got obliterated in the end.

Any tips? How do you defend against missiles that go 80.000? And what kind of missiles and quantity barrage should I employ? And last but not least, how they heck do those enemies manage to make ships that can go 10.000 + superb point defense + offensive capabilities?

Thanks ?

[Brian Neumann]

To deal with the missiles you are going to need to upgrade your beam weapon fire control speed and turret speed.  This will allow the in close point defense to shoot down the missiles.  Try to get your fire control with a x4 size on the speed up to about 40000 km/s  that way every two shots will probably hit a missile.  

For your anti-missile missiles you are going to need to upgrade your engine tech a bunch.  This will allow you to upgrade the missile engines as well as make your ships faster.  Also upgrade missile maneuverability as this helps in hitting your missile.  For a size one missile I usually put .5 spaces into engine, the minimum warhead strength of 1, .01 spaces into fuel and the rest into agility.  Look at the to hit chances and play with the engine vs agility to get the best result you can.  

It will also help to have a couple of really large heavily armoured ships in your fleet.  They will take the brunt of the initial salvo's and are hard to kill.  Also take a look at the size of warheads that were hitting your ship.  For missiles the penetration is equal to the square root of the damage they do.  For example a size 16 warhead will penetrate 4 levels of armour and a size 25 warhead penetrates 5 levels.  Figure out how many levels they will penetrate and put a minimum of 1 more layer of armour on your ships.  This will prevent any quick blow through action.  If you can manage it put 2x +1 levels of armour so it will take 3 hits on the same area to penetrate your armour.  This will extend the life of your ships dramatically.

Just to put things in perspective you have not come near the top end of the tech spectrum yet.  I have designed a size 2 missile with a 16 point warhead, 266500km/s speed a range of 180m km and agility 50.  This is with maxed out tech which costs several million points just for the  final level of reasearch in each catagory so it will be a long time before you see anything like this.

brian

[Erik L]

Maybe post your designs so that we can provide directed pointers?

[waresky]

Dear friend,ive been change my Naval Doctrine.
Now am use BEAM as primary,and missile only for AMM point def purpouse.

And ive win the last two battle toward an overwhelming missile enemy to me.But my ships are more fastest so am close in and blast'em more fast than her attack.

Invest in DRIVE tech,BEAM and Fire beam capability.
Missile Point def and ARMOR+shield

And probably u survive AND win.

[Count Sessine (OP)]

Thanks, Eric, I'll post my designs then

Warezsky: I'm thinking along the same lines. Missiles are pretty expensive and you need a lot of them.

[Count Sessine (OP)]

To deal with the missiles you are going to need to upgrade your beam weapon fire control speed and turret speed.  This will allow the in close point defense to shoot down the missiles.  Try to get your fire control with a x4 size on the speed up to about 40000 km/s  that way every two shots will probably hit a missile.  

For your anti-missile missiles you are going to need to upgrade your engine tech a bunch.  This will allow you to upgrade the missile engines as well as make your ships faster.  Also upgrade missile maneuverability as this helps in hitting your missile.  For a size one missile I usually put .5 spaces into engine, the minimum warhead strength of 1, .01 spaces into fuel and the rest into agility.  Look at the to hit chances and play with the engine vs agility to get the best result you can.  

It will also help to have a couple of really large heavily armoured ships in your fleet.  They will take the brunt of the initial salvo's and are hard to kill.  Also take a look at the size of warheads that were hitting your ship.  For missiles the penetration is equal to the square root of the damage they do.  For example a size 16 warhead will penetrate 4 levels of armour and a size 25 warhead penetrates 5 levels.  Figure out how many levels they will penetrate and put a minimum of 1 more layer of armour on your ships.  This will prevent any quick blow through action.  If you can manage it put 2x +1 levels of armour so it will take 3 hits on the same area to penetrate your armour.  This will extend the life of your ships dramatically.

Just to put things in perspective you have not come near the top end of the tech spectrum yet.  I have designed a size 2 missile with a 16 point warhead, 266500km/s speed a range of 180m km and agility 50.  This is with maxed out tech which costs several million points just for the  final level of reasearch in each catagory so it will be a long time before you see anything like this.

brian

Thanks for the advice... I didn't realize the tech tree was that extensive  

[Brian Neumann]

In case you have not noticed it the general rule of thumb is that the next generation of tech costs twice what the current generation did to reasearch.  For most tech lines there are 12 levels, with even one level advantage being fairly significant in most places.  Most people just starting out don't realize it but the initial techs are all fairly cheap so you can get into space fairly well.  After that everything tends to slow down.  Also the cost of everything goes up as it is based in part on the reasearch cost for the background tech.  Just don't forget to up your wealth modifier along with all of the rest of your tech or you will have more than enough minerals and be in an economic recession from overspending.

Brian

[Octavian30]

this will sound dumb but I have yet to read how it is done - how do add extra layers of armour to a ship?
I have researched the next type of Duranium and can add that but that isn't what is meant here is it? I'm missing something obviously about adding extra armour... can someone explain?  

[welchbloke]

this will sound dumb but I have yet to read how it is done - how do add extra layers of armour to a ship?
I have researched the next type of Duranium and can add that but that isn't what is meant here is it? I'm missing something obviously about adding extra armour... can someone explain?   On the Class Design window make a copy of the selected class and then press the 'New Armour' button.  The Selected class is changed to have the latest armour (still with the number of levels that the old class had but now they don't take up as much mass).  If you want to add extra armour you need to change the number of levels using the up and down arrows next to 'Armour Rating'.

[waresky]

My Flagship and Battle ship are 35+ armour layer,AND 30+ shields onboard..
DD and CA 25+ armour

Armor are expensive,in speed terms,but are effective to "Close-and-survive" toward a missiles salvoes

[Andrew]

With your existing technology a tactic that may work is to build some ships with reduced size missile launchers (preferably Box Launchers) and a good enougth fire control to fire at the maximum range of your missiles even allowing for precrusor ECM.
Jump these ships into the system and turn on active sensors, the Precursors will probably come after you. Once they reach maximum missile range salvo the huge load of missiles at them, hopefully this will overload their point defense. Then sit on the jump point until you detect their incoming missiles hopefully by this time your missiles will be attacking them if not it would have been a good idea to include guidance systems in the missiles so they can finish the attack on their own. Jump out before the missiles reach you and run away from the jump point so when the precursors follow you through you are far enougth away to be safe. You could try an ambush with beam armed ships as the precursors come through but given my impression of your technology their ECM will render your beam weapons almost useless and their heavy beam weapons will cut your fleet to pieces(at least thats what happened when I tried an ambushwithout good ECCM of my own)
If all else fails doing this several times may exhaust their stock of missiles.

[Andrew]

My Flagship and Battle ship are 35+ armour layer,AND 30+ shields onboard..
DD and CA 25+ armour

Armor are expensive,in speed terms,but are effective to "Close-and-survive" toward a missiles salvoes

That depends on your tech level and the size of ships you can build. The OP seems to have relativly low tech and fairly small ships which means this level of armour won't be practical also given the superior tech of the precrusors he will not be able to catch them which makes closing impossible and if he does without decent ECCM to counter their ECM precursor ships with superior beam weapons (if one of them is a beam armed ship) will slaughter him as their ECM cuts beam to hit chances by a flat 50% .

It seems these precurors are particulary advanced in my last game the precursor missiles where closing at 25,000 and my own AMM's where faster and stopped the attacks cold.

[waresky]

My Flagship and Battle ship are 35+ armour layer,AND 30+ shields onboard..
DD and CA 25+ armour

Armor are expensive,in speed terms,but are effective to "Close-and-survive" toward a missiles salvoes

That depends on your tech level and the size of ships you can build. The OP seems to have relativly low tech and fairly small ships which means this level of armour won't be practical also given the superior tech of the precrusors he will not be able to catch them which makes closing impossible and if he does without decent ECCM to counter their ECM precursor ships with superior beam weapons (if one of them is a beam armed ship) will slaughter him as their ECM cuts beam to hit chances by a flat 50% .

It seems these precurors are particulary advanced in my last game the precursor missiles where closing at 25,000 and my own AMM's where faster and stopped the attacks cold.

u right perfectly..

This precursors seem very rare advanced technogically..(srry my bad english)

So am look at very HARD situation for our mate..

Patient,research and ..good luck  

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi guys

I could use a bit of advice. I’m playing my first game of Aurora. Year is 2042 and I’ve run into some aliens who started shooting at me and who are not in the mood for talking. I don’t know if it’s the precursors or not.

I thought I should teach them a lesson so I spent a few years to build a fleet. Five missile cruisers (approx 7000 tons) with missiles that could engage at 60M km. Six fleet defense frigates with respectively gauss, beams, and AMM’s. I sent them on their way, pride of the fleet etc. Unfortunately Earth lost her sons and daughters in the void. Not a single survivor made it back.

Now, since this was my first combat I guess didn’t expect much, but I got obliterated. Utterly ?

My enemy was superior to me in all ways. His speed was 10.000 km/s on all his ships which meant I couldn’t disengage as my fleet speed was about 2500. His fleet numbered 12 * 12500 ton ships and two huge ships of 32000 tons each. His missiles had a somewhat shorter range than mine, but they flew 80.000 km/s which is maybe why my point defense was almost without effect (please advise)?

Of my missile barrages of some 50 missiles each none penetrated his point defense. That’s zero as in 0

I guess my question is how the heck I beat that guy. I even cheated with the space master (in the name of research of course) and spawned an additional 25 cruisers. These did succeed in downing a couple of ships, but all got obliterated in the end.

Any tips? How do you defend against missiles that go 80.000? And what kind of missiles and quantity barrage should I employ? And last but not least, how they heck do those enemies manage to make ships that can go 10.000 + superb point defense + offensive capabilities?

Thanks ?

Spoiler Alert! [spoiler:spscxxuq]You have run into very advanced aliens that were added in v5.10. At low tech levels the best advice is to avoid them. Eventually you will be able to build superior ships but it is going to take a while. You can prevent more appearing by turning off precursors or you can treat them as a long term challenge[/spoiler:spscxxuq]

Steve

[Count Sessine (OP)]

Thanks for the heads-up, Steve. I'll head in another direction and hope they won't follow me