Are PDCs on the surface of a planet or in orbit? When I create some using the Fast OOB at the beginning of a game they seem to be assigned to fleets which confuses me as I assumed they were ground based and immovable once built.
They are immobile once built(aside from a bug that lets them be very,very slowly moved that is fixed in the next version). They are still assigned to a taskgroup, it is usually best to create a new taskgroup at earth and then fast oob your initial PDC's into that one. Don't mix ships into the same taskgroup, as a PDC taskgroup can't be given orders.
Do Gauss turrets get an oppertunity to shoot at fast missiles? The Gauss weaponry I build have low ranges, 30-60kkm. The missiles I build have speeds from 30kkm/s. So in a 5 second turn one of my missiles can go from far outside the Guass turrets range to impact. In this event would the turret get to fire at the missile?
With gauss you want to set them to point defense and final defensive fire, as this will cause them to fire on any incoming missiles at 10,000 km before they can impact, even if they start off out of range, as long as the missiles are already detected by your active sensor.
What are the effects of the tick boxes in the top right corner Class Design screen (Tanker, Collier, Supply Ship). And what the heck is a collier anyway?
Tanker gives the ship access to more orders relating to fuel transfer, Collier for missile stocks and Supply ships for maintainance supplies. They also mark the ship as a valid target for "refuel at nearest tanker" type orders.
A collier carries spare missiles to resupply your missile ships.
What are Orbital Habitats used for?
Orbital habitats provide space for 50,000 colonists on a body with no need for infrastructure to deal with colony cost. Ships/bases designed with them can also be built by industry instead of using a shipyard.
What are Combat Drop Modules for?
How do I perform boarding actions in space combat?
Normal troop transport modules take significant time to load/unload, combat drop modules unload instantaneously. Note that troops suffer penalties if they are left in combat drop modules for significant lengths of time. It is best to carry troops in transport modules then transfer to dropships with combat drop modules just before combat.
Missiles seem vastly more effective than beam weaponry in fleet combat. I reckon if two fleets of eqaul technology engaged one another, one beam armed, one missle armed, the beam fleet would never be able to close the range to return fire. Have beams weapons got anything going for them except the logistics of making sure all ships magazines are fully stocked?
Assuming equal tech and equal resources spent on the ships, then missile ships almost always have the advantage in single battle scenarios. Where they suffer is that missile ships can run out of missiles whereas beam ships keep going until destroyed. As it can take significant time and resources to produce enough missiles for a compete reload of all of your ships, this can be important in extended conflicts.
Is there a formula to calculate the speed a Tug will move when hauling a knowing weight of 'load'
final speed = speed of tug * (mass of tug / (mass of tug + mass of tow))
How can I make multiple saves of the same game, incase I screw up badly and need to roll back?
Make a copy of Stevefire.mdb and stick it into a labeled directory.
