Gauss turrets that won't fire (since I doubt it's a bug, I'll ask here first)

[obsidian_green (OP)]

I'm currently engaged in my first missile defense. I took the first enemy volley while retreating from the attack, and my 15cm lasers took out almost every missile before it could test my gauss turrets. The missile defense worked so well that I didn't bother retreating from the second enemy missile attack, figuring my Gauss turrets ought to pay for themselves ... but they have yet to fire. In a design mistake, I equipped missile cruisers with CIWS, which is taking out the missiles now slipping past my lasers, but the Gauss turrets on my area defense cruisers won't fire, despite being set up in a similar manner to the lasers (but matched to their own dedicated FCs) and read as ready to fire (just like the working laser turrets). I'll note that that the System Map does not display the max weapon range for my Gauss turrets (as it does the lasers), but the FC range does display. As I've said, I used the same process to link my gauss cannons to their FCs as I did to link my lasers to theirs. Here's the ship in question:

Salamis class Area Defence Cruiser    15200 tons     461 Crew     3881 BP      TCS 304  TH 1520  EM 540
5000 km/s     Armour 6-54     Shields 18-300     Sensors 28/1/0/0     Damage Control 30     PPV 84.14
Annual Failure Rate: 9%    IFR: 0.1%    Maintenance Capacity 3192 MSP
Spare Berths -2   

760 EP Internal Fusion Drive (2)    Power 760    Fuel Use 18.6%    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 750 000 Litres    Range 47.8 billion km   (110 days at full power)
Delta (2.5) R300/180 Shields (7)   Total Fuel Cost  1 260 Litres per day

Quad 15cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x4)    Range 300 000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 24-24     RM 5    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 3 3
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100/TS16000 Turret (3x8)    Range 40 000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 160-16000 (UL12cmT) (2)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Fire Control S02 R32-TS16000 (GCT) (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Tokamak Fusion Reactor P8-50t (6)     Total Power Output 48     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Thermal Sensor TH2-28 (SR) (1)     Sensitivity 28     Detect Signature 1000: 28m km
Active Search (PD) MR2mk-R50 (1)     GPS 32     Range 2.6m km     Resolution 1

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

I've got the successors to this design ready to build, but I'm now quite hesitant to issue the build orders. Hopefully someone can point out what's going wrong, if anything.

[TheBawkHawk]

If your gauss turrets are on Area Defence, that's why they're not firing.  The missiles need to end the increment inside the range of your Area Defence to be fired upon, and since the gauss turrets have such short range, that'll almost never happen.  Set your gauss turrets to Final Fire, so they'll fire on missiles right before they hit your ships.  Gauss turrets on Final Fire work exactly like CIWS, except that they can also protect other ships in the fleet.

[obsidian_green (OP)]

Thanks The BawkHawk, but my initial setting was final fire and it's still the other ships' CIWS taking out the missiles. I tried setting to 30k area defense (some of the enemy missiles were falling within 30k within the increment---they clocked at ~27000km/s) and still no joy.

I think the biggest indicator of whatever is wrong might be the absence of the weapon's range circle on the System Map, which other weapons display and the fire control ranges also display. It's a head-scratcher for me.

[TT]

TheBawkHawk is right. For area defense to work, the missiles have to fall in the engagement envelope in a 5 second increment.  A 27000km/s missile travels 135000 kms in a 5 sec increment so you can see that it will rarely fall within your area defense engagement range of 40000 kms. If you are having trouble getting final defensive fire to work with your guass turrets, post a screenshot of your weapons screen setup and i'm sure we can sort it out. Your ship looks fine but sometimes the fire control settings can be a bit confusing at first.

[Detros]

I think the biggest indicator of whatever is wrong might be the absence of the weapon's range circle on the System Map, which other weapons display and the fire control ranges also display. It's a head-scratcher for me.

Try zooming in a lot?

Also check in Combat settings if all your ships have properly attached fire controls and weapons. Note just setting it on one ship won't automatically propagate the settings to other ships - use "Copy to race" once you found a properly set ship. And note this step is just for given class and only for given fire controls. I guess you may have copied around only your laser settings, thinking all FC settings would be copied. That may explain not showed weapon range.

[obsidian_green (OP)]

I don't doubt the advice, it's just that my initial setup for the Gauss turrets was final-fire and CIWS took out the missile instead. In a subsequent head-on engagement that gave the enemy missiles a better shot at slipping past my lasers, Gauss still failed to fire, which is when I changed the settings ... the range indicator still won't show, unlike the lasers. This was the last setting I tried, but the volley has already been used up, so I can't immediate test other suggestions.

Fire Control S08 160-16000 (UL12cmT) #1 (Area PD Mode 16):   No Target Assignment
Quad 15cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret #1 (Ready To Fire)

Fire Control S08 160-16000 (UL12cmT) #2 (Area PD Mode 16):   No Target Assignment
Quad 15cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret #2 (Ready To Fire)

Fire Control S02 R32-TS16000 (GCT) #1 (Point Blank PD Mode 3):   No Target Assignment
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100/TS16000 Turret #1 (Ready To Fire)

Fire Control S02 R32-TS16000 (GCT) #2 (Point Blank PD Mode 3):   No Target Assignment
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100/TS16000 Turret #2 (Ready To Fire)

Fire Control S02 R32-TS16000 (GCT) #3 (Point Blank PD Mode 3):   No Target Assignment
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100/TS16000 Turret #3 (Ready To Fire)

I begin to wonder if obsoleting the tech in the tech screen might have something to do with it, but I doubt that because I'm pretty sure I also made the laser turret obsolete when I designed one with a faster tracking speed.

[obsidian_green (OP)]

I've since swapped my laser turrets to the gauss FCs and it doesn't change the max weapon radius on the map. Playing around with the FCs doesn't change the max range indicator and doesn't cause the Gauss weapon radius to display. An earlier design sports a different Gauss cannon, but it's weapon radius also fails to display and I don't remember it firing in its only combat, which might help explain why it was twice knocked out of that fight.

Somehow Aurora doesn't recognize my Gauss cannons. Troubling ... I've got new warships designed and I really should get to building, but not if my Gauss can't work. This is just strange.

Just to clarify, even if I had screwed up on the Combat Assignment screen (tested by both unassigning completely and assigning to inferior FCs my lasers without any change to the max weapon range radius), the max weapon radius of my Gauss cannons should be visible ... but no Gauss weapon radii display at all, nor do they work.

I'll post the two preceding paragraphs as a bug report if a search doesn't turn up the issue.

EDIT: I found this. I'm not sure it solves my problem, but it encourages me to fiddle some more. I'll try setting the PD mode to 1 and see if that makes a difference (though I think I already may have tried that). Perhaps the Gauss max weapon range fails to display in the same manner that planetary orbits sometimes fail to show up and has nothing to do with my problem. Do gauss max weapon ranges (40000km in my case) display for other users? If they don't, then I can more easily rule out the notion Aurora isn't recognizing gauss weapons in my game.

Buggy action:
Using the same turreted Gauss cannons but manually targeting the incoming salvoes (as due to happen-stance the last stop for the torpedoes before hitting is ~20k, doesn't seem to work for Area defence though.  .  .   they never try to fire unless at least one FC on the PD ship is manually targeted.  .  .  ) - even though these only do 1 damage every successful hit detonates the targeted torpedo!

EDIT: OK I got the Area defence to work (must have been doing something wrong) and it seems to correctly act like the final defence PD i. e.  with failed detonations


« Last Edit: February 22, 2011, 04:55:44 PM by Xeno The Morph »

[Titanian]

Did you actually get hit by some missiles or migth it be that the CIWS simply fired first and there were no missiles left?

[obsidian_green (OP)]

No actual missile strikes, all intercepted, but I've now seen the first action from any Gauss cannons! 

Did you actually get hit by some missiles or migth it be that the CIWS simply fired first and there were no missiles left?

Seems you might be spot on here! On the suspicion that the higher initiative of the CIWS-equipped ship gave it firing priority, I briefly split my TG and tried--and failed--to intercept a salvo (enemy was gracious enough to fire more missiles at me) before reforming, but I think they must have targeted a Gauss-equipped ship during the split, so the higher initiative CIWS finally didn't get the chance to fire.

[Caveman31]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. 
CIWS will protect only the ship they are on. 
Gauss Turrets set to Final Fire will protect all ships in the task group. 
CIWS have a higher initiative than the Gauss turrets

So order of events would be
1.  Enemy fires missiles at your ships with CIWS
2.  Any AMM or area defense shoots down incoming missiles
3.  (Right before impact)
3a.  CIWS one ship being attacked (higher initiative) fires at missiles first
3b.  (If any missiles are left) Gauss turrets set to Final Fire from other ships in the task group fire in defense to eliminate missiles attacking friendly ship.

If the missiles are fired at a ship with no CIWS only the Gauss turrets will shoot.

[obsidian_green (OP)]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. 
CIWS will protect only the ship they are on. 
Gauss Turrets set to Final Fire will protect all ships in the task group. 
CIWS have a higher initiative than the Gauss turrets

So order of events would be
1.  Enemy fires missiles at your ships with CIWS
2.  Any AMM or area defense shoots down incoming missiles
3.  (Right before impact)
3a.  CIWS one ship being attacked (higher initiative) fires at missiles first
3b.  (If any missiles are left) Gauss turrets set to Final Fire from other ships in the task group fire in defense to eliminate missiles attacking friendly ship.

If the missiles are fired at a ship with no CIWS only the Gauss turrets will shoot.

I don't know about the particular details (especially the bit about the CIWS having a higher priority to fire---in my case the ship that equipped it had higher initiative than my Gauss-armed ships), but what you've outlined matches the experience from my first missile defense.

[Detros]

I don't know about the particular details (especially the bit about the CIWS having a higher priority to fire---in my case the ship that equipped it had higher initiative than my Gauss-armed ships), but what you've outlined matches the experience from my first missile defense.

Task Group Initiative should work the other way: TGs with lower value of initiative move first.
Also note TG screen notes both Max and Current initiative. Unless you change it yourself the current one stays at 100.

[obsidian_green (OP)]

In my example, the ships were all part of the same TG. Like the poster to whom I responded, I'm speculating about why the CIWS fired first.

Lol, those CIWS managed so well that I started doubting whether my GC turrets even worked after I couldn't find a max weapon range circle for them. My fears were only allayed after I split and reformed the TG, which led to the enemy targeting a ship equipped with only the GCs as final fire defense. As I've closed range, they've since started lobbing fast AMMs at me and both the CIWS and GC turrets are now seeing frequent action.