Early Military

[Scraphound (OP)]

Hi all.   

I've seen a lot of blueprints for advanced military ships.   I've got a question about the early workhorses of a proper Terran empire.   

First, when do you begin building your military?  How many years into the game?  So far I've been playing for about 20 years and I've yet to touch anything military.   In fact, I'm just now building my first jump capable ship.   Should I be churning out low-tech missile boats now or should I wait until I have superior tech? 

Also, any recommendations for a good early warship build? 

[strych90]

As far as your first jump-capable ship, is it for exploration?
Honestly I wouldn't leave Sol until you have a couple of serviceable warships. The further you explore, the more likely you are to run into something. If you don't have any defenses, those 'somethings' have a straight shot at your capitol.

As for when I start building a military, it depends on my start. I tend to start as soon as I have Ion engines and decent sensor tech. With conventional starts, I start designing once I get ready to begin exploring other systems.

[SteelChicken]

Its a great question.  When I start off by myself in a system, I tend to focus on economy, mining and research and not even bother building ships until I hit MPD. 

My last game had an NPR only 300m km from my homeworld. (I added it.)    Right off the bat they got very aggressive.  I *HAD* to build stuff right away, mostly PDC's with low end mesons for defense and some low-tech missiles.  They hit my homeworld a few times with a few hundred anti missiles, the bastards.

Luckily, another NPR came into the system and distracted my enemy, which gave me time to build some very long range but low tech missiles, which I stuck in a mega PDC and used it to attack their homeworld with.

[Paul M]

Once I had a jump engine, I had started on a military build up.  My original exploration ships on the other hand were unescorted and were un-armed and largely blind.  The expectation was that there were no hostiles to contact.  It took some time for military ships to actualy get built since a lot of technology had to be developed that was not required for exploration/scientific ships.  Once the first science vessel was destroyed the process accelerated.

As for what you need when you start out that is dependent on your start situation.  If it is conventional then you need to build everything, up to and including the military yards to construct the warship.

What will define your starting militaries base line size for their equivelent of a "tin can" is going to be:
1.  Your jump engine.
2.  Your maintenance facilities.
3.  Your primary ship yard size.

Further military ships cost fuel and lots of it.  So ramping up ship building is likely to percipate a major fuel crissis. 

Pretty much the question of what your initial military looks like is answered by "what do I have?"  And it evolves from there.

[MarcAFK]

I always start on my military right away, even on conventional I'll design superior size 24 missiles for my ICBM bases, or even replace them with new size 12-16 launchers. I've yet to actually use any if these proto militaries offensively or defensively but it's nice to have something.
The most important reason to start right away is for the experience, especially if you're new to aurora, you will benefit from the knowledge learned on designing and using your early warships.
It beats waiting until magneto plasma technology then finding your warships are lemons that. Any do what you need from them, work the bugs out early, you'll find out what kind of speed and range is acceptable, learn the logistics, ammo, maintenance supply, fuel etc,