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I'm not fully at ease, gameplay-wise, with using small civilian ships with infinite autonomy; it feels abusive. It's acceptable if it's a freighter of 40,000 tons—you can imagine complete recycling of resources and enough spare parts—but here... IDK!

I have the same feeling... I think it is to some degree against the spirit of the game. But... it is up to each and everyone to decide how their world works and it does not interfere someone else's game anyway.

I just use buoy as that is what they are made for rather than using manned stations for such tasks. You can have explorers equipped with a large missile launchers and some buoys and deploy them as you explore or as part of your patrol vessels.
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I'm not fully at ease, gameplay-wise, with using small civilian ships with infinite autonomy; it feels abusive. It's acceptable if it's a freighter of 40,000 tons—you can imagine complete recycling of resources and enough spare parts—but here... IDK!
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I use 500-ton Pinnace that deploys at the jump point. 10 years of deployment time and some amenities for the crew.

I just deploy a station with a single thermal sensor.
Since it is a commercial ship, the deploy time is moot and nothing ever breaks.
I use small commercial tugs to deploy them at each jump point as I discover them.
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I use 500-ton Pinnace that deploys at the jump point. 10 years of deployment time and some amenities for the crew.

Pericles class Shuttle      500 tons       9 Crew       43.7 BP       TCS 10    TH 16    EM 0
1603 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 6      Sensors 5/0/0/0      DCR 1-20      PPV 0
Maint Life 39.31 Years     MSP 54    AFR 2%    IFR 0.0%    1YR 0    5YR 1    Max Repair 10 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Morale Check Required   
● Medium Hydroponics-50    ● Recreation Room-25    ● Fitness Room-10    ● Escape Pod-5   

Honeywell Aero  Nuclear Thermal M16 (1)    Power 16    Fuel Use 180.0%    Signature 16    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 104 000 Litres    Range 20.8 billion km (150 days at full power)

Silas-Nein Small Thermal Sensor 1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  17.7m km

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a None for auto-assignment purposes
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The Academy / Re: Sensor station with no sensors - what am i doing wrong
« Last post by Michael Sandy on Yesterday at 04:48:03 PM »
Most of the cost of a jump point sensor is going to be the cost of running a ship to place it, and the time spent by the player doing so.  Since you just need to be able to detect a ship making transit, if the sensors are close enough they do not need to be very big.  I suppose at high tech you have to worry about stealthed ships jumping as far from the jump point as they can, but most of the time, the detection a jump point sensor is going to give is the notice of their destruction.
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The Academy / Re: AWACS style ships in support
« Last post by Michael Sandy on Yesterday at 04:42:59 PM »
I find it very useful to have parasite scouts.  I have a wide variety of sizes, so something is likely to be able to be able to detect and/or target the enemy without being targeted in turn.

They can be built for high speed and enough range to do their job for the engagement, and can be sent ahead of the fleet and if you misjudge the sensors range it isn't a cataclysmic loss.

You can study how the AI responds to contacts, if they send off a small force to investigate a contact, you can kill that force in detail.  If they send a whole fleet, you can use your scout to draw them away from what they should be defending.
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The Academy / Re: Survey Ship Fleet Organization
« Last post by Jorgen_CAB on Yesterday at 01:27:38 PM »

I'm similar. I play with 10% survey speed.

To maximize deployment time per long-term MSP cost, I build fighter-sized surveyors with no engines, 1x survey sensor, 1x bridge, 1x engineering spaces, and 2.5t of maintenance storage.
With duranium armor, I can get 48 months of deployment time on these, and it is pretty rare to suffer a maintenance failure between overhauls.
As armor tech research reduces the weight of armor, I add deployment time to subsequent design iterations.

The bridge is optional.
Without it, you don't get the Survey bonus from the ship's commander, but you can use that 50t for a much higher deployment time.
For example, you can have 170 months and also add 1x Engineer Spaces - Small, while staying under 500t.

I use tugs to move the surveyors around.
The tugs are my standard small tug design that I'm going to be making a lot of anyway.
They have a single 2kt@40% commercial engine and an unladen range of ~60Bkm with typical starting tech (Nuclear Radioisotope with no Fuel Consumption reduction).
Range with the surveyor in tow is ~51.5bkm, and this is almost always plenty for an entire deployment.

I build commercial jump tender stations and deploy one at every new jump point.
The surveyors almost never have to wait for a tender. (Only in those rare cases where the very last survey location finds a jp, and the surveyor is closer than the waiting tender-mover.)
The tender stations are also tankers; surveyors that do run low on fuel can top up at their next transit.

I also establish a small colony in every system as I explore (assuming some reasonably habitable body), complete with a couple maintenance facilities.
When surveyors are due for overhaul, they don't have far to travel--and since only the surveyor is military, two maintenance facilities can handle four concurrent overhauls with starting tech.


Anyhow, long story short, this approach has greatly reduced the amount of time I spend on surveyor micromanagement.
Ship exceeds maximum deployment? Send to overhaul (after finishing current order).
Event says system survey is done? Move surveyors to next system.

Found new jp? Send tender mover and colony establishment fleet from staging point (previous jp), and create and send new tender mover and colony establishment fleet from home to staging point.

I have done similar setup in my games as well, although when I play campaigns where I have four, five or more human run empires I really need to cut down micro and mouse clicks to a bare minimum while still being reasonable efficient. But I have had similar approach as you do, using tugs especially. But eventually I quit using tugs and tractor beams other than to tractor proper stations around, the tractor beam can be sort of abused a bit much. Like avoiding the military maintenance cost for your explorer fleet for example, or dragging around sensor pods, magazines or other parts with regular ships. At one time my "ships" were mostly huge military hangars that I dragged around with tugs and mini tugs that dragged sensor pods around. Ships were not really ships but a series of modules attached to engines or a core ship part.

When you use tractor beams on ships they also become much smaller and harder to detect, especially with cloaking tech as half the ship is attached through the tractor beam.

At the end it just became a bit weird and I decided to stop using tugs like this. I sometimes wished that if something is tractored it should become completely inert and can't be used until you release it, but in general it does not matter as other probably enjoy it as it is and I can just put the limit on myself anyway so no big deal.
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The Academy / Re: Survey Ship Fleet Organization
« Last post by skoormit on Yesterday at 07:18:04 AM »
I always turn down the exploration speed from 100% to only 5% so I really need massive number of ships to explore and exploration will actually take some effort and finding good planets with good amount of resources will take time.

I make this as simple a process as possible, the exploration ships are built with good range and deployment times in mind. I do make sure that they will handle the deployment time with both fuel and supplies. The condition for each explorer are that if it ever drops below 30% fuel or the deployment time is up it will go back and overhaul. I would not just refuel the ship as they will need overhaul anyway if the fuel is down to 30% it likely is close to the deployment time anyway.

Standing orders are Explore the next three locations or five bodies and then the next standing order to go to a system that need exploration.

This means I need minima interference and I can just occasionally guide the ships when necessary.

I'm similar. I play with 10% survey speed.

To maximize deployment time per long-term MSP cost, I build fighter-sized surveyors with no engines, 1x survey sensor, 1x bridge, 1x engineering spaces, and 2.5t of maintenance storage.
With duranium armor, I can get 48 months of deployment time on these, and it is pretty rare to suffer a maintenance failure between overhauls.
As armor tech research reduces the weight of armor, I add deployment time to subsequent design iterations.

The bridge is optional.
Without it, you don't get the Survey bonus from the ship's commander, but you can use that 50t for a much higher deployment time.
For example, you can have 170 months and also add 1x Engineer Spaces - Small, while staying under 500t.

I use tugs to move the surveyors around.
The tugs are my standard small tug design that I'm going to be making a lot of anyway.
They have a single 2kt@40% commercial engine and an unladen range of ~60Bkm with typical starting tech (Nuclear Radioisotope with no Fuel Consumption reduction).
Range with the surveyor in tow is ~51.5bkm, and this is almost always plenty for an entire deployment.

I build commercial jump tender stations and deploy one at every new jump point.
The surveyors almost never have to wait for a tender. (Only in those rare cases where the very last survey location finds a jp, and the surveyor is closer than the waiting tender-mover.)
The tender stations are also tankers; surveyors that do run low on fuel can top up at their next transit.

I also establish a small colony in every system as I explore (assuming some reasonably habitable body), complete with a couple maintenance facilities.
When surveyors are due for overhaul, they don't have far to travel--and since only the surveyor is military, two maintenance facilities can handle four concurrent overhauls with starting tech.


Anyhow, long story short, this approach has greatly reduced the amount of time I spend on surveyor micromanagement.
Ship exceeds maximum deployment? Send to overhaul (after finishing current order).
Event says system survey is done? Move surveyors to next system.

Found new jp? Send tender mover and colony establishment fleet from staging point (previous jp), and create and send new tender mover and colony establishment fleet from home to staging point.
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The Academy / Re: Survey Ship Fleet Organization
« Last post by Jorgen_CAB on Yesterday at 06:34:55 AM »
I always turn down the exploration speed from 100% to only 5% so I really need massive number of ships to explore and exploration will actually take some effort and finding good planets with good amount of resources will take time.

I make this as simple a process as possible, the exploration ships are built with good range and deployment times in mind. I do make sure that they will handle the deployment time with both fuel and supplies. The condition for each explorer are that if it ever drops below 30% fuel or the deployment time is up it will go back and overhaul. I would not just refuel the ship as they will need overhaul anyway if the fuel is down to 30% it likely is close to the deployment time anyway.

Standing orders are Explore the next three locations or five bodies and then the next standing order to go to a system that need exploration.

This means I need minima interference and I can just occasionally guide the ships when necessary.
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The Academy / Re: Survey Ship Fleet Organization
« Last post by Noriad on May 27, 2024, 11:52:44 AM »
I tend to explore using individual explorers. Given the distances involved, fuel efficiency is key.
Research a bunch of engine techs, plus 8:1 or 10:1 jump engine techs, then make a size 25 commercial engine that is as fuel-efficient as possible (even if it is 50% slower). Slap on 1-2 survey scanners and 1-2 jump point sniffers, enough fuel, supplies, and deployment time to last over a decade, then mass produce those using multiple shipyards/slipways.
Order Automate survey then jumppoint survey.
It has a slow start but as their numbers grow it gets faster and faster as you only occasionally have to go back to refuel.
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