Author Topic: Newbie questions  (Read 1348 times)

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Offline Oflor (OP)

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Newbie questions
« on: March 05, 2013, 10:39:12 AM »
I recently started playing Aurora and this game is cool.   By this time I understand most of civilian stuff like terraforming but I've got some questions about ships. 
1) What types of military ships should I build? (I didn't encounter any NPR yet and I want to be ready for it)
2) How can I defence my planets? Perhaps PDCs with missile launchers?
3) What is optimal speed and range for long-range and short-range missiles?
4) Should I equip my survey and scout ships with jump-engine or I can build jump-gates everywhere?
« Last Edit: March 08, 2013, 11:11:58 AM by Oflor »
 

Offline Konisforce

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2013, 10:48:49 AM »
General answers, no doubt someone will get more specific on things.

1) Military ships: generally the wisdom is that missile ships are stronger tactically, beam ships are stronger strategically.  Meaning that missiles are great in a fight but it's really tough to carry around a lot of extra missiles.  For your first ships, I'd recommend you go for missile ships.

2) PDCs are a good choice, certainly, and for missile launchers, the PDC versions are quicker to reload.  Really only good for big investment planets.  Ships are a good choice because they can go where the trouble is.

3) That very much depends on tech level, and there's lots (and lots.  And lots) of discussions about missiles.  More than an optimum range for a particular type of missile, you should look at your techs and make sure that you can a) spot a ship, b) fire control reaches that far, and c) missile reaches that far.  Design your sensors, fire control, and missiles to match those ranges (you can add a bit of padding on sensors and fire control to allow for growth in missile designs) and then make your missile as fast as it can be to get as far as you need with the amount of warhead you want.  If you have any room leftover, agility's good.  If your reeeeallly need a number to shoot for, 50m is doable with low tech, 100 is better with just a bit more tech, but don't be surprised to see people talking about missile with much bigger ranges than that.

4) Congrats, I'll give you a definite answer on this one!  Yes, jump drives on scouts and survey.  Those are your friends.  The whole idea of the scout is to see what's on the other side before you commit the resources to something like a gate.  Your scouts will (usually) be a couple of jumps ahead of your construction anyway.  Jump drives for them are good.  Depending on your play style, you can either make an all-in-one ship that does gravitational and geological surveys and has its own jump drive, or you could make one ship (grav survey, say) have a jump drive big enough to carry through the other geo survey ships, or you could make 1 ship as the jump tender and have both grav and geo with no jump drives.  Up to you.  I go with option 1, because a) I'm too lazy to keep track of which is which, and b) it only needs 1 shipyard tooled 1 way.
Come take a look at Victoria Regina, an old-timey AAR
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2013, 10:53:28 AM »
1.) A good starting exercise is to build a basic missile cruiser.  It needs to have decent speed, engineering sufficient for 2-3 years of maintenance life, several layers of armor, missile launchers, appropriate missile fire controls, missile magazines (unless you are using box launchers), and an active scanner sufficiently long ranged to provide targeting data for your missiles.  (Tip: The Missile fire controls get the same range as an active scanner when they are 1/3 the size.)

2.) You probably want a combination of missile PDCs and ship squadrons, if you can swing them.

3.)  That is totally dependent on your technology and on your doctrine.  Generally, you should always be using the highest multiplier possible on your missile engines, and be using between 50-60% of a missiles size for the engine.

You can fill the 'short range missile' role with an Anti-Missile Missile design for now. AMMs are size 1 missiles with strength 1 warheads designed to hit other missiles.  They need strong Resolution 1 sensors and fire controls.  You will only need a minimal amount of fuel, perhaps enough to get it 10-20 million kilometers. For a long range missile, try size 4 or 5, and give it proportionally more fuel  so that it has a much longer range.

4.) That's completely a matter of personal choice. I would suggest doing both :)

Survey ships with jump engines are much easier to shuttle around, and you can always use more jumpgates.
 

Offline SteelChicken

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2013, 10:59:22 AM »

1) this has been answered well already.  early tech, I use missile ships with a few point defense ships, mid-tech, I use combined missile and carrier (which launches fighters with missiles)
2) PDC's with missiles are great.  I also like to use a PDC-fighter base. Orbital platforms have higher maintenance costs.  For PDC's remember that on planets with atmospheres, only mesons work reliably (besides missiles).
3) depends on your tech and your opponents. you will have to experiment and see what works.  Be more concerned with "to hit percentages"
4) either are options.  When I create games, I use the jump gates on all points option, I hate the micromanaging of jump engines or building gates
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2013, 03:36:53 PM »
For me the answers for 1, 2, 3 and 4:

There is no right answer.  Aurora has no win condition.  It's a space themed sandbox.  The type of military craft; the use of pdc, orbital stations or just ships; missile designs and jump gates or jump drives is totally up to the empire you want to craft.  There are options that are more efficient and more successful than other choices but no choice is an incorrect one.

No doubt the first successful military craft most people build tends to be a missile ship.  Expect to lose a lot of ships your first few battles as the learning curve on getting the build correct is more like a shear cliff.  For me the trial and error was kind of written into the storyline in my head on the first game I played.
 

Offline Oflor (OP)

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2013, 01:44:23 AM »
Thanks everyone :)
Today I met first NPR's vessel.   How can I improve relations with it? I've already organized diplomatic team with 145 rating points and pressed "Initiate Communication" button on intelligence screen. 

Nevermind, looks like it's impoving with increments.  That's interesting.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2013, 01:59:07 AM by Oflor »
 

Offline Conscript Gary

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Re: Newbie questions about ship designs
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2013, 03:13:29 AM »
Firstly, make sure to assign the diplomats to the race in the dropdown menu near the bottom of that window.
Secondly, the number you see is your opinion of them. So, they've got their diplomats schmoozing it up