Author Topic: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?  (Read 263557 times)

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Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1695 on: June 04, 2017, 03:22:48 AM »
Clement, are you a new convert to the religion of scouting?

The first principle of our religion is:
Thou Shalt not transit any ship larger than 500 tons into ANY system until every planet has been scouted by a Morituri class pinnace. ;)
The second principle of our religion is:
Get the data home.  NO scout is done solo.  Never have only one ship in a system.  There should ALWAYS be a jump capable pinnace capable of getting the data home.  Including the really important information of "Did they discover our transit, will they follow through?"

So two pinnaces go in, one stays at the jump point.  If the scouting pinnace gets eaten, the other transits out and sits on the jump point until relieved.  The knowledge that an enemy HAS NOT pursued is almost as important as any other information, as that information can allow for the exploitation of systems adjacent to a discovered danger.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1696 on: June 04, 2017, 03:25:52 AM »
Clement, my conversion story was similar to yours, except it was six, and the system they followed me to was one jump from Sol.  And fortunately that system had an exit to a different loop, so the rest of the survey fleet eventually made it home, after they were SURE they had not been spotted.
 

Offline clement

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1697 on: June 04, 2017, 07:59:25 AM »
Unfortunately no amount of scouting would have helped in this situation.

In most of my games, my survey vessels operate in groups of 2 or more. This being the first up capable ship, there was no pair to go with it. If there had been it would not have changed the sequence of events.
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1698 on: June 04, 2017, 12:47:51 PM »
Unfortunately no amount of scouting would have helped in this situation.

In most of my games, my survey vessels operate in groups of 2 or more. This being the first up capable ship, there was no pair to go with it. If there had been it would not have changed the sequence of events.
That fella did miss one important detail: Make sure your scout pickets every jump point (1km/s speed) before going through.
It won't save you from actives, but it will put you in without alerting thermals.
Quick note though, above a certain ship size, setting your speed to 1km/s will make a 1 thermal signature instead of 0, being detectable at point blank.
 

Offline Detros

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1699 on: June 04, 2017, 02:23:00 PM »
That fella did miss one important detail: Make sure your scout pickets every jump point (1km/s speed) before going through.
Or have welcoming committee already ready on your side of JP before going through.
 

Offline Detros

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1700 on: June 04, 2017, 04:52:44 PM »
After 30 years from conventional start and 10 nearby systems partially searched three alien ships suddenly appeared in Sol.
My armed forces consist so far only from two area defence destroyers and shipyards are in disarray as I am building magneto-pulse navy.

But those alien ships hopefully seem to be neutral gravsurvey ones.
Time to use that 275 (!) diplomatic team. Maybe I can finally have some space buddies for once.
 

Offline Detros

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1701 on: June 15, 2017, 03:45:39 AM »
I may now know where to set my next mining colony:
Off-Topic: show
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1702 on: June 16, 2017, 02:24:03 AM »
I have decided that any Geo Survey team that discovers enough new minerals gets the planet named after them.

Had a planet that got renamed "Reprieve" after the geo-survey, for a large corundium deposit that turned a dud of a planet into a colonization prospect.  A bit premature when the rest of the first tier surveys came in.

It felt very nice, after a long series of dud geo surveys, where maybe a .1 deposit was found, or a 1 or 2 element planet had a new deposit of those elements.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1703 on: June 18, 2017, 02:39:45 PM »
I just lost my first real battle.  I'd fought small skirmishes against precursors and the swarm, and usually won easily.  Well I finally fought a real NPR, and got my ass kicked.

I found an NPR 3 jumps away from Sol, and 1 jump away from my jump gate network.  Set up thermal sensor buoys on my side of their jump point and started communications.  2 years later, my thermal sensor buoy picks up a strong contact, sitting stationary on my side of the JP.  I send out my fleet to get a scan of the ship.  The active sensors measure their tonnage to be 77000 tons; obviously a gate construction ship.  Seeing that the ship is harmless, I turn off my actives so as to not hurt my diplomatic relationship with them.  I don't move away though, as I want to stay within gun range of the JP, in case anything nasty comes through.  A few weeks later, a massive fleet jumps through the JP, and I know its about to get real.

Individually my ships were far superior to theirs, but they just had so many more than me.  I had seven 7000 ton beam-armed destroyers, 3 armed with 15cm railguns and a twin Gauss turret, 2 with multiple 15cm lasers and a single spinal-mounted 19cm laser, and 2 with my sensors and triple Gauss turrets.  They had easily twenty ~9000 ton ships, and around ten 13000 ton ships.  Many, many different classes.

Approximately half the fleet appeared right on the gate, the other half appeared some distance away.  I open fire.  First volley destroys the gate constructor, and the near half begins to flee.  The far half splits into two groups, half coming towards me (obviously beam combatants) half away.  I am significantly faster than all of them, ~5400kms compared to ~2500kms.  10 seconds later my second volley destroys a 9,000 ton ship.  10 more seconds and another 9000 ton ship goes down.  4th volley fired after 10 more seconds, and a 3rd 9000 ton ship goes down.  Suddenly, missiles are detected, TONS of them coming from the distant group.  Thankfully they're all really slow; only ~10,000kms.  Two kinds, mostly size 3, a few size 5's.  I set course directly away from the missiles at full speed, so as to get as much firing time as possible on them with my PD.  I shoot down easily 50 of them, maybe more.  But there's still dozens more salvos coming.  Thankfully they were not aiming at my ships  ;D

They were targeting my sensor buoy!  So once one hits it, all the rest of those missiles disappear! 

I return to chasing down the nearby fleet, and kill 2 more 9000 ton ships.  As I'm chasing them, I detect more missiles.  WAY more than last time, and worse yet, some of them are fast; 21000kms.  Even worse, I'm having trouble getting area defense PD to work.  It worked fine on the first big group, the one that had targeted the sensor buoy, but now I can't get them to automatically target the missiles.  I shoot down over a hundred, but I start taking hits.  And the hits add up, and slowly I lose all my ships.  This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.  All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1704 on: June 19, 2017, 02:09:01 AM »
A familiar story, I guess we've all been there.
 

Offline Caveman31

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1705 on: June 19, 2017, 06:43:15 AM »
Quote from: Barkhorn link=topic=3808. msg103185#msg103185 date=1497814785
I just lost my first real battle.   I'd fought small skirmishes against precursors and the swarm, and usually won easily.   Well I finally fought a real NPR, and got my ass kicked.

I found an NPR 3 jumps away from Sol, and 1 jump away from my jump gate network.   Set up thermal sensor buoys on my side of their jump point and started communications.   2 years later, my thermal sensor buoy picks up a strong contact, sitting stationary on my side of the JP.   I send out my fleet to get a scan of the ship.   The active sensors measure their tonnage to be 77000 tons; obviously a gate construction ship.   Seeing that the ship is harmless, I turn off my actives so as to not hurt my diplomatic relationship with them.   I don't move away though, as I want to stay within gun range of the JP, in case anything nasty comes through.   A few weeks later, a massive fleet jumps through the JP, and I know its about to get real.

Individually my ships were far superior to theirs, but they just had so many more than me.   I had seven 7000 ton beam-armed destroyers, 3 armed with 15cm railguns and a twin Gauss turret, 2 with multiple 15cm lasers and a single spinal-mounted 19cm laser, and 2 with my sensors and triple Gauss turrets.   They had easily twenty ~9000 ton ships, and around ten 13000 ton ships.   Many, many different classes.

Approximately half the fleet appeared right on the gate, the other half appeared some distance away.   I open fire.   First volley destroys the gate constructor, and the near half begins to flee.   The far half splits into two groups, half coming towards me (obviously beam combatants) half away.   I am significantly faster than all of them, ~5400kms compared to ~2500kms.   10 seconds later my second volley destroys a 9,000 ton ship.   10 more seconds and another 9000 ton ship goes down.   4th volley fired after 10 more seconds, and a 3rd 9000 ton ship goes down.   Suddenly, missiles are detected, TONS of them coming from the distant group.   Thankfully they're all really slow; only ~10,000kms.   Two kinds, mostly size 3, a few size 5's.   I set course directly away from the missiles at full speed, so as to get as much firing time as possible on them with my PD.   I shoot down easily 50 of them, maybe more.   But there's still dozens more salvos coming.   Thankfully they were not aiming at my ships  ;D

They were targeting my sensor buoy!  So once one hits it, all the rest of those missiles disappear! 

I return to chasing down the nearby fleet, and kill 2 more 9000 ton ships.   As I'm chasing them, I detect more missiles.   WAY more than last time, and worse yet, some of them are fast; 21000kms.   Even worse, I'm having trouble getting area defense PD to work.   It worked fine on the first big group, the one that had targeted the sensor buoy, but now I can't get them to automatically target the missiles.   I shoot down over a hundred, but I start taking hits.   And the hits add up, and slowly I lose all my ships.   This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.   All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.

Was your entire in one task group? If so it might be better to set all your pd turrets to final defensive fire rather than area fire.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1706 on: June 19, 2017, 11:56:22 AM »
It was all in one TG.  I thought I should use area defense since my lasers had enough range to get 2 shots off.  Also my fire controls were being overwhelmed, I couldn't target all the salvos, so firing longer may have lightened the load for them.  Instead of dealing with all the salvos at once I could deal with a few first and then the rest on the next volley.
 

Offline Sarganto

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1707 on: June 20, 2017, 08:22:30 AM »
This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.  All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.
Time to up your fighter and FAC output and to design something that counters their ships! I would say your game just got exciting.
 

Offline Detros

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1708 on: June 20, 2017, 08:42:19 AM »
Time to up your fighter and FAC output and to design something that counters their ships! I would say your game just got exciting.
!!FUN!!, of the burning variety
 

Offline I_Sicarius_I

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1709 on: July 11, 2017, 07:41:36 AM »
Im only like halfway thru this but something that gives me a good* chuckle. "Huge ship" and its usually 10-20k range. A ww2 era destroyer is 9k tons... and an an iowa class battleship is 46k tons i think off hand. So i always get a good laugh.

Edit- everyone that says frakk, im going to find you and im going to do many "obscenties" (because not sure about forum rules on profanity) to you all
Edit2- Lossmar.... i will have your soul for the nightmares you cause me.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2017, 05:56:24 AM by I_Sicarius_I »