gravsurvey sensors and civilian jumpdrive (+ other questions)

[mikelovskij (OP)]

Hi, I noticed that I'm able to use commercial jumpdrives for my gravsurvey ships, even if they count as military vessels, is it a bug or is there some rule that allows comm.  jumpdrive to jump military ships under certain conditions?

Question 2: squadron jump: if i have a military fleet with enough jumpships and squadron size (i. e.  30 ships in total and 5 jumpships with max squadron size 6), is there some quick way to do a squadron transit without having to split manually the group in 5 taskgroups?

Question 3: multiple jumpdrives on a ship: I wanted to try to build a "towable temporary gate" ship, to be positioned on strategic portals in order for other ships to pass.  I tried to put both a military and commercial j. d.  on it, but it seems that once i added the second, the first disappeared from the class summary.  Is there some way to make a ships with both jumpdrives working?

Last question (a bit out of topic): A strange enemy: in a system  two jumps far from Sol, one of my survey taskgroups encountered a group of about 20 very fast enemy ships armed with meson cannons.  I did not have any active sensors on that ship but they had a speed of 10k Km/s so I hope they were small ships.  I went in that sector with my military fleet and instead noticed only a single big ship.  As soon as she saw me, she activated its shields.  After the estimated shield strenght reached almost 12 (per shield) , I ran away in panic from that system.  By looking at the tactical intelligence windows not only the shields were at least strength 12, but the smaller crafts had meson focusing technology 12, and I'm like 50 years into the game.  How is this possible? All the npr I met until now were technologically inferior to me.   Furthermore I was not able to estabilish communication with them.   How much worried should I be?

[Ostia]

In order:

The only limitation for Jump drives  I am aware of is that JDs must be identical to the engine. Military JDs can only jump military engines, comm. JDs can only jump comm. engines.

Dunno, I normally run a "a JD on every ship" scheme so i don't use squadron jump.

Sorry, no ships with 2 JDs. If you want to establish a jump bridge you either have to build 2 ships with a separate mil and com JD or build a jump gate.

Spoilered due to forum policy: Very. Sounds like the star swarm. If you can, avoid the system until you have geared up. And destroy them in one go, or else the queen will salvage the wrecks of your destroyed ships to make more swarm ships.

Also keep in mind that mesons ignore shields and armor, so out-ranging them is a good idea.

[mikelovskij (OP)]

Dunno, I normally run a "a JD on every ship" scheme so i don't use squadron jump. 

Thanks for the answers.   Does this mean that you use the "standard transit" instead? Aren't the penalities (active sensors and weapons not working for some seconds) longer in this case?

Also for the meson guys, I'm using missiles as offensive weapons so probably won't have issues in outranging them, rather I will have issues in keeping the distance since they are so fast.   

[Ostia]

I haven't seen much JP combat yet. So it hasn't bitten me in the ass so far.

[MarcAFK]

You should be able to squadron jump large groups like that, I seem to recall having no problems.
Commercial jump drives can I seen jump military ships, but you don't get squadron jumps, only standard ones which makes the group vulnerable.
Also standard transit gives significantly long sensor blindness, more than enough to lose a fleet to JP defenders.
And lastly the spoilers, discussion of those needs to be kept in the spoiler forum.
I promise you'll have quite a bit of 'fun' with them though. :p

[sloanjh]

Hi, I noticed that I'm able to use commercial jumpdrives for my gravsurvey ships, even if they count as military vessels, is it a bug or is there some rule that allows comm.  jumpdrive to jump military ships under certain conditions?

It's the drive type that matters, NOT the maintenance type.  So sticking a missile launcher on a freighter doesn't forbid it from using a commercial wormhole.  Also note that commercial drive ships should be able to use a wormhole generated by a military drive.

Question 2: squadron jump: if i have a military fleet with enough jumpships and squadron size (i. e.  30 ships in total and 5 jumpships with max squadron size 6), is there some quick way to do a squadron transit without having to split manually the group in 5 taskgroups?

You have to split the groups, since each jump ship generates its own wormhole (rather than the 5 ships generating a combined wormhole).  For standard transit, of course, you only need one jump ship that's got a big enough drive to handle any ship in the squadron.

If your question instead was focused on "manually", I don't know of a way to do this other than by hand.  There are split/join TG automatic commands that I never use, but I don't think you can cluster ships into jump groups with them.

Last question (a bit out of topic): ] A strange enemy: in a system  two jumps far from Sol, one of my survey taskgroups encountered a group of about 20 very fast enemy ships armed with meson cannons.  I did not have any active sensors on that ship but they had a speed of 10k Km/s so I hope they were small ships.  I went in that sector with my military fleet and instead noticed only a single big ship.  As soon as she saw me, she activated its shields.  After the estimated shield strenght reached almost 12 (per shield) , I ran away in panic from that system.  By looking at the tactical intelligence windows not only the shields were at least strength 12, but the smaller crafts had meson focusing technology 12, and I'm like 50 years into the game.  How is this possible? All the npr I met until now were technologically inferior to me.   Furthermore I was not able to estabilish communication with them.   How much worried should I be?

I've added spoiler tags to your original post for you.

John

[Rich.h]

Just to address number 3 you should be able to make a ship like that with just a huge military JD. They can escort any type of ship, the wiki states.

To escort a ship without a jump engine through a jump point, simply station the jump ship at the point and create a transit order for the second fleet.

Remember:

    Ships with military engines can only be escorted by a ship with a military jump drive.
    Ships with commercial engines can be escorted by ships with either military or commercial jump drives.
    The maximum size of ship that can be escorted through has to be less than the jump ship and the jump drive rating. For example, if you have a 28 000 tons jump ship, you will only be able to open a wormhole for ships of 28 000 tons or less, regardless of your jump drive efficiency.
    It doesn't matter which side the jump ship is on, other ships can jump either way.

[MarcAFK]

It doesn't matter which side the jump ship is on....
Well I just learned something new today, also my earlier post was completely off anyway.

[Paul M]

I can confirm that commerical drive grav survey ships can use military jump drives to transit.  The opposite is not the case so no military drive equipped ship can use a comercial jump engine wormhole.  I don't even think you can do that with a standard transit order as it does check for the presence of a jump drive.

There is no reason you can't have the jump groups as squadrons, then assign them to be under the control of the 1st squardon and use the pass on orders button to give them all identical orders.  This is the only way I can think of to have what you want done automatically.