Various small questions

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Hi there!  

1. I feel like a parasite when I see that my civilian ships are dropping population on a perfect (0 col cost) alien friendly world... Is it normal and expected? Anything I can do, if I wanted to stop that... What will happen in the end? The aliens will tell me to stop colonizing their homeworld?

2. Once you failed to communicate with an alien, you are stuck in an endless war, right? And you'll never know their true name?

3. The wiki seems to imply that a 300 tons or less ships don't require a SY, is it true?

4. What is the interest of a marine battalion compared to an HVA, except for roleplaying purpose? Same costs everywhere, except the HVA is slightly stronger.

5. Space stations... Aurora is not fit for them, right? Sure you can designate a military vessel without engine that get tractor beamed at the right spot, but then, how do you handle the regular overhaul time? Can it overhaul itself by adding a ton of maintenance bays?

6. Speaking of overhaul time, how do you interrupt it when started? Says I have a military ship in overhaul that must intercept or fire at an approaching enemy, is it in 'sitting duck' mode until finished (both meaning in the wording!)


Thanks for your answers.

[Peter Rhodan]

1. They will fight I imagine - never had that problem
2. Yes - I think
3. No - except Fighters can be built in fighter factories not shipyards
4. good question - I think it is a terminology thingy - got to call them something
5. There are orbital habitats too
6. Hit the 'abort overhaul' button and pray...

[Soralin]

There actually is a big difference for marines, they get a huge bonus in ship boarding combat (2x, if it hasn't changed since that patch):  http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1680.0.html

So anything involving capturing enemy ships (or defending from capture), marines are the way to go, but HVA are better at ground assaults and defense.

[Ziusudra]

Space Stations that are in orbit of a body with sufficient maintenance facilities and minerals will not increase their clock.

They can not overhaul them selves. Adding maintenance storage and engineering will increase the time they can go between overhauls.

To have a station at a jump point, for example, you would have to tow it to a maintenance facility periodically. You could have two or more, with one always in overhaul or transit.


Do you have a colony on the alien world?

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Thanks...

Yes there is a colony at the Alien HW as there is a spy team... this led the civilians believe they could dump colonists there...


7.  I don't have in the contact list an enemy ship which is 500.000 kms from my tracking station and is quite well in its range, so I can't target it with my FAC, even if I see it clearly on my system view. I can only target the alien HW, some 300 m kms away (detected because of his huge thermal sig)... Weird, no? For the record, I'm doing some combat tests and I switched to hostile the alien race, but then processed several time segment to have Aurora up to date. The ship is shown in red anyway, and has his scanner ON, so is clearly identified, but nay, the F8 window only propose me the alien world, not this ship... why?

Same question I guess with all the alien ships orbiting the alien HW which are seen on the system screen but are not proposed to my FACs. I'm confused.

[Brian Neumann]

If your tracking station is the planetary installation then part of the problem is that they do not have an active sensor, they are strictly passives.  To actually target something you need an active sensor to reveal it.  Planets are an exeption to this, but you can only target the planet and not specific installations on it like the pdc's.  If you do have an active sensor that should be in range then this would not apply.

Brian

[randal7]

4. What is the interest of a marine battalion compared to an HVA, except for roleplaying purpose? Same costs everywhere, except the HVA is slightly stronger.

Seems like I remember reading somewhere that marines do not suffer a morale penalty (or have a smaller penalty) from being loaded in and dropped from dropships.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

If your tracking station is the planetary installation then part of the problem is that they do not have an active sensor, they are strictly passives.  To actually target something you need an active sensor to reveal it.  Planets are an exeption to this, but you can only target the planet and not specific installations on it like the pdc's.  If you do have an active sensor that should be in range then this would not apply.

Brian

Wow!! Never knew that, this would explain...

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

8. I stole with my spying team the design of a buoy which is a mine. I have the description of the buoy itself in my tech list, but the 4 second stages missiles are just cited by name... How can I know what they do?

9. Flag bridge is used for in situ TF officers, according to the wiki... Can someone explain me in more details what are the benefits of that?

10. Fleet Initiative has a use for ships when you don't play with fleet training?

11. Command Module, what is its usage?

TIA.

[Erik L]

8. I stole with my spying team the design of a buoy which is a mine. I have the description of the buoy itself in my tech list, but the 4 second stages missiles are just cited by name... How can I know what they do?

Not unless you steal them too.

9. Flag bridge is used for in situ TF officers, according to the wiki... Can someone explain me in more details what are the benefits of that?

You can put a task force HQ (officers and staff) on a ship. Their bonuses apply to the fleet then. Suppose you have a survey TF, if the TF HQ is on a ship with the survey fleet, the survey bonus applies to the fleet, since the fleet is in the same system with the HQ.

10. Fleet Initiative has a use for ships when you don't play with fleet training?

11. Command Module, what is its usage?

Replaces bridges on ships smaller than 1k tons.

TIA.

You're welcome

[sloanjh]

Replaces bridges on ships smaller than 1k tons.

That might have been the original intent, but from a functionality point of view it simply acts as a "tiny" crew quarters.  It costs 0.1 HS and can house 20 crew, vs. 0.2HS and 50 crew for small crew quarters.

In other words, they aren't manditory for ships smaller than 1kton; they simply let you tune the crew quarters size.

John

[ZimRathbone]

10. Fleet Initiative has a use for ships when you don't play with fleet training?

TIA.

As others have dealt with the other questions, I'll just address this one

Fleet Initiative can determine the order that Task Groups (TG) get to move in a turn, lower initatives go first.  Its an attribute of the senior TG offficer (SO). 

It is not affected by Fleet Training orders, and has a chance to increment occasionally in the same manner as other commander skillls.

By default, TG are not set up to use their commanders initiative, but are set to 100.  This can be changed on the TG screen (F12)> There are two boxes, one Max shows the maximum possible value (based on the current SO of the task Group) and the other marked current which shows the initiative thats being used at the moment, which you can change manually.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Thanks much everybody! Everything almost cleared out  

So if I have initiative, are the missiles I fired using this initiative to move first too? Say they are just 3 seconds from hitting the enemy... this is important to know if they move and hit first, or the PD get to fire before they move, right... ?

In situ TF commanders, they provide 1/4 of their bonus (boni) as sector commanders do for planets?


I think I solved my issue of me colonizing the allied alien HW. In the first place, this was because as I had a spy team, there was de facto a colony, and so the civies moved pops. I did not wanted that, so I switched the planet to 'source of colonists' and manually emptied it... Now I'm back to 0 pop and no more migrants... Make more sense for me.

12. How can you spy on an enemy world? As they fire on you, you can't, unless you send tons of decoys while at the same time moving a FAC with the team onboard I believe... No possibility to sneak the team I guess?

13. Related to that, do I have same chances of spying if on a 3rd rate alien colony compared to HW? Do spy teams stacks, as geo teams (i.e they can both act in parallel, I don't mean the stats are stacked in a single roll)

14. No possibility to move in small parts things like shipyard or ground unit training facility? I know they are massive installations, so this make sense, on the other hand, for gameplay interest, moving a GU facility to a distant colony, so that you can assign an administrator which is excellent in GU training would make sense and give a nice extra gameplay decision to make. Imagine 'Titan bootcamp' where marines have to train in full protective armors  

15. minefields - 3 stages question: (a) If they are laid right on a jump point, do they trigger as soon as an enemy ship appears, or are we back to the fleet initiative sequence (and what is their FI? 100, or the one of the minelayer originally used to drop them?). (b) strategy: do you lay 6, 20 or 100 at the same spot? (c) do you use them often, or they are not worth the cost and effort to lay them?

[ZimRathbone]

Thanks much everybody! Everything almost cleared out  

So if I have initiative, are the missiles I fired using this initiative to move first too? Say they are just 3 seconds from hitting the enemy... this is important to know if they move and hit first, or the PD get to fire before they move, right... ?

IIRC missiled dont use initiative to determine order of movement, but use the missile speed.

Whether PD gets a chance to fire rather depends on the PD setting of the defending ship BUT if the defending ship is set to Final Defensive Fire (either option) then they will ALWAYS get a chance to fire at incomming missiles  - note that all NPRs in my experience use this option ( Could be wrong here but I dont think so).  I have also seen AMMs fire in the last pulse and take out missiles I was sure would hit (in every case I recall, the AMM was faster than the inbound)

[Ziusudra]

14. No possibility to move in small parts things like shipyard or ground unit training facility?

Shipyards can be towed by a ship with a tractor beam. Just make sure that there is already a colony at the destination.

I think Steve may be expanding the list of installations/facilities that can be transported in the next version. Until then you can use SM mode to remove them from one place and add them to another.