Sleepy-time military?

[WCG (OP)]

We all have different interests. I can talk about computer games or science fiction novels until your ears bleed and you beg for release. But when someone keeps talking to me about... oh, sports or guns, for example, my eyes glaze over and I quickly start praying for death (and I'm an atheist!). We're all different, and that's great.

Now, I'm just a beginner here, but Aurora is really something. The exploration, the colonization, the research, the minutia of mining and manufacturing and - again - the research, keep me interested and engaged. But as soon as I start trying to design a military ship - or even a defensive base around the Earth - I get so sleepy, I can't keep my eyes open.

I quit my first game and started over, because I hadn't realized that I was supposed to start with some initial research and a few ships. (Also, I hadn't understood the value of colonies even where there weren't any Trans-Newtonian minerals.) I know I've got some initial points for a Planetary Defense Center, and given that I've discovered aliens in the very first solar system I visited, right next door to us, I know that I should have some kind of defense. But I can't keep my eyes open long enough to build something.

I thought I'd put missiles on the defense center, but I have to design missile engines first, and when I get to the missiles, I have absolutely no idea what range is effective, or what size makes sense, or anything else. There are a million different options I could choose, but I have no idea what's stupid and what isn't. I've been reading the wiki and various posts here, but I get partway through an explanation and I suddenly have to take a nap.

I thought about fighters, too. I like the idea of fighters. But I didn't get far with that, either. I can't seem to start simple and then learn a little more as the game goes on. The military stuff seems like advanced calculus to a poetry major - or vice versa. It's just this mass of detail that I couldn't care less about. (Admittedly, once I learned it, it would probably be great fun. But, in general, I'm not much of a wargamer. I like Aurora for the chance to build and explore, though it wouldn't be fun without the danger, too.)

I'm really enjoying this game, but I keep postponing any kind of defense - even the Planetary Defense Center I was apparently supposed to build before I'd even started playing. And whenever I tell myself I've got to settle down and build something, I study it for about five minutes and then decide that maybe I'll just play Cataclysm for awhile. You know, to take a break. 

So, is there some military technology that's relatively simple? Is there something you'd recommend that I could get built before I fall asleep? (My head keeps hitting the keyboard, and that's not good!) It's impossible to try out anything before I actually get in a war, and although there's a ton of information available from all of you clever people here, I can't seem to keep my eyes open long enough to read all of it.

Well, even when I read it, it's hard to put it all together, and that's not a problem with the game (although it is incredibly complicated), but mostly a problem with what tends to interest me and what doesn't. It's hard to concentrate on what you don't find particularly interesting. I may find it interesting once I get into a battle, but for now, I need something relatively simple.

What would you recommend? Is there one military technology that's maybe a bit simpler than the others?

[misora]

I would recommend lasers, as they're more simple than missiles to fire. They have less range, but they're overall easier to use.

[83athom]

I could have sworn I posted this, but oh well (seems to have failed). I said in my post that apparently didn't post for some reason that the gauss would be the "simplest" tech there is for military use. They only use their base techs (velocity and such) that do direct improvements to the weapon with out giving drawbacks (like others). They also need nothing else except the FC and an active sensor contact to fire. Earlier I had a little bit longer explanation, but I am a little pressed for time atm but I had a moment to give.

[xeryon]

The learning curve of building military craft in Aurora isn't a curve it is a vertical cliff.  Until you are familiar with the terms and values it's close to impossible to explain how to build a combat craft.  There are an infinite number of possibilities and there are a lot of wrong ways to do it but there are also numerous correct ways.

If you want to practice you can create a game, turn on SM (spacemaster) and just give yourself everything for free and can play sandbox mode with building ships.  Likewise you can add in some enemies for target practice the same way.

One of the simplest ships to start with is building a laser ship since you don't need to design missiles in that case.  You need to design a laser, design a firecontrol for that energy weapon, design a power plant for it, a search sensor and place all of the above onto a hull.  If you want it to move you need engines and fuel, if you want it planetside you put it in a PDC, if you want an orbital base just omit the engines and fuel and it becomes a satellite.

The trick is to develop the parts to complement each other.  That is where practice will help.  You want the power plant to be the correct amount of power and not produce too little (which would require multiples to charge your laser [which might be a good thing for redundancy]) or too much in which case you can add in more lasers or power plants in various multiples to get the optimum power usage.  If your laser has a range of 50,000km you want to make sure you have a fire control that reaches that far and so on.

[xeryon]

Oh, and if your first military ship is laser only expect it to die a fiery death in your first combat.  Lasers are powerful in certain configurations and fleet roles but as a standalone a simple laser ship is not optimal.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Basic steps for creating a missile ship

1.) Design & research a size 2.5 missile engine. Use the highest available speed multiplier
2.) Design & research a size 5 missile launcher
3.) Design & research a size 6 engine with a speed multiplier of 0.75x
4.) Design & research a size 9 active search sensor with a resolution of 100
4b.) Design & research a size 3 missile fire control (subtype of active sensor) with a resolution of 100
5.) Design & research a magazine that has a HTK>1 with a capacity that is a multiple of 5 (this will make your life much easier). I suggest a size 1, 2, or 3 magazine.
6.) Design & research a size 3 EM Detection Sensor

Next design & research a missile. Use the new missile engine, devote 2 MSP to the warhead, and 0.5 MSP to fuel. If the missile range is far greater than that of your sensor, then exchange some of the fuel for points into Agility.

Put 6 military engines onto the design, as well as the active sensor, the missile fire control, and the EM detection sensor.  Add 4 engineering spaces, increasing the total to 5. Add 4 fuel storage, increasing the total to 5..  The size 6 engine is 300 tons which gives you a 30% engine ratio if you have 1 per 1000 tons which is pretty servicable.  So the target size for this design is 6000 tons. Set the deployment time to 12 months and increase the armor thickness to 4 or 5.  Fill the remaining space up to 6000 tons (or Size 120) with missile launchers and magazines in a ratio that you find pleasing.  Round off any remaining space by subtracting or adding fuel storage and engineering spaces.  The result should be a basically capable missile ship.  Once you have worked everything out, go to the Ordnance/Fighter tab, change the selector to 100, and add the missile you designed.

Notes:

-The Active Sensor acquires targets at its target resolution and above; it can detect targets smaller than its resolution, but the range at which it does so decreases dramatically as target size decreases.
-The Missile Fire Control lets you target and fire missiles on vessels detected by any ships Active Sensor. They are three times more powerful for their size than Active Sensors are, thus a size 3 fire control has the same range as a size 9 active sensor.
-The EM Detection Sensor lets you detect the emissions from enemy Active Sensors, which is vital to let you know when you are being targeted. While the capability of a size 3 sensor is limited it should be sufficient to detect long-range missile targeting systems.
-Putting the engine power multiplier at 0.75x is conservative in terms of ship speed but will let you field a vessel with decent range that won't destroy your fuel reserves

Here is a sample ship built using this process

Code: [Select]

Brazil class Missile Frigate    6 000 tons     156 Crew     902.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 432  EM 0
3600 km/s     Armour 5-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/33/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 20
Maint Life 6.82 Years     MSP 470    AFR 57%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 18    5YR 263    Max Repair 144 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 200   

72 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (6)    Power 72    Fuel Use 27.47%    Signature 72    Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 27.3 billion km   (87 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC158-R100 (1)     Range 158.4m km    Resolution 100
Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (35)  Speed: 32 000 km/s   End: 60.8m    Range: 116.8m km   WH: 10    Size: 5    TH: 106/64/32

Active Search Sensor MR158-R100 (1)     GPS 14400     Range 158.4m km    Resolution 100
EM Detection Sensor EM3-33 (1)     Sensitivity 33     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  33m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[GreatTuna]

So you want to make a missile?

First off, missile engine. Unless you're going for BIG RANGE, use maximum power modifier allowed, it'll make your missile more capable of hitting targets and avoiding point defences. Size is up to you, though I'd advice making it 50% of total missile mass.

Next up, designing the missile itself. Assign an engine and allocate however much you want in three parts:
1. Warhead - the part that goes boom, the more the better damage you get.
2. Fuel - the more the farther your missile flies.
3. And agility - it is important too, put points here to increase to-hit chances.

Don't put much in the last two, 0.1-0.5 will be fine.
There are also other things, but they're mostly useless: sensors allow to lock on another target if intended is destroyed, ablative armour protects from hits and ECM reduces to-hit chances of PD systems.
Also, try to keep the total size rounded, there are no fractional launchers (5, but no 5.1, getit?)

Okay, now on to the ship. Take a look at example:

Code: [Select]

F-Settembrini III class Raketnyy Kreyser    15 000 tons     301 Crew     4400.5 BP      TCS 300  TH 4800  EM 0
16000 km/s     Armour 6-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 12     PPV 66.25
Maint Life 2.97 Years     MSP 2200    AFR 150%    IFR 2.1%    1YR 372    5YR 5583    Max Repair 800 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 1453   

Izmaylov Foundation 1600 EP Gas Core AM Drive (3)    Power 1600    Fuel Use 13.6%    Signature 1600    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1 250 000 Litres    Range 110.3 billion km   (79 days at full power)

Hit-and-Run ASM System Mk. 3 (53)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 1670
Ratters ASM Launcher Assistant R100\Sz1\T5 (1)     Range 194.4m km    Resolution 100
Ratters AMM Launcher Assistant R1\Sz1\T5 (1)     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Size 5 Anti-ship Missile-4 (290)  Speed: 120 000 km/s   End: 5.6m    Range: 40.7m km   WH: 20    Size: 5    TH: 640/384/192

ExpAI Backup Sensor System-4 (1)     GPS 800     Range 32.0m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Look at it, there are many parts:
1. Armor. Not as important if you're into hit-and-run, but must have otherwise
2. Maintenance. Never forget it, you don't your ship to spontaneously explode on takeoff.
3. Deployment time is important too. If you overdeploy the ship, it'll get penalties, which hurt in combat.
4. Engines and fuel. Your ship won't move without them. I'd recommend to stick either for 1.0x or 0.5x power modifier for starters. If you're looking for proper range, go for 20-30bkm. Enough to cover two-three systems.
5. Weapons.
5.1. If you go beam route, you need BEAM fire control, reactor and the weapon itself. Laser is all-rounder, particle is good for mid-range, railgun is more damaging than lasers, but range and damage profile suffers, mesons  go right through any armor and shield but deal only 1 point of damage, microwaves  destroy shields and electronics, and plasma carronades are... I dunno, they have better damage per shot at the cost of everything else.
5.2. There is also gauss cannon, good for PD, not so good for anti-ship duties, doesn't require reactors. You can even place them on CIWS to deflect missiles from get-go.
5.3. Missile route. You need MISSILE fire control for that, and missile launcher (either bigger or exact size of your missile) and magazines to store reloads. Bigger launchers reload slower, and bigger magazines are more efficient nevermind.
6. Sensors. You can leave resolution alone for now, 100 HS does rather good job at spotting ships. You can put small sensor on every ship, or make platform for big sensor, or both just in case.

^{Oh my god, this post is getting huge.}

There are, of course, more systems, but they aren't that necessary:
7. Shields. Recharge themselves, but take less hits than same tonnage of armour. Awful early on, gets much better later.
8. Jump drives allow for interstellar travel. Not much use in defense though.
9. Passive sensors. Thermal detects engine emissions, and EM detects active sensor emissions. Not necessary, but you might want to use them, as they won't give your position out like active sensors.
10. Cloaking system reduces cross-section of ship, reducing effective range of hi-res active sensors. Terrible early on.

Last things to note:
1. There are A LOT of designs on bureau, use them as reference, they're rather good.
2. Experiment and learn from your mistakes. Your first ships are very likely either to *just* blow up (for example, when I was starting, I didn't know what maintenance is, so my ships flew pretty well, but I didn't know why they were suddenly exploding?) or get horribly destroyed by enemy.
3. Put only mesons or missile or PDCs, or you will get the "atmosphere stopped damage" when you need enemy destroyed.
4. Don't hesitate to ask?

^{My wording is terrible, sorry for that.}

[WCG (OP)]

OK, thanks guys. I'll try.

I had just encountered the aliens next door, which is why I decided I needed to ask. When I went back and started my game again, the aliens immediately blew to hell my poor, defenseless little civilian survey ship. So I guess they're hostile.    And right next door.

And me with no military whatsoever.    Ah, well, I'll see what I can do. Thanks again.

[MarcAFK]

A good idea is to make a new game you can use for testing, I would copy the whole aurora folder just in case, it also stood your event logs from getting screwed up(I think).
Then when you create a new game on that version, set up everything the same way as you did for your current game, but select the option to automatically assign research points and design ship systems. When you load the class design screen you'll see a bunch of ships already designed. They won't be completely optomal but they're a good benchmark for what's possible for the tech level (though the systems you can create might be different depending on what tech you spent your starting research points on)

[WCG (OP)]

My doomed survey ship encountered two different alien ships next door where I'd sent them to explore, but we only got information from one. That ship had a speed of 5684 km/s (compared to my new missile destroyers, which have a speed of 1800 km/s - my survey ship, even slower, didn't have a chance of escaping).

And it shot anti-missile missiles at my ship, before it got close and switched to an anti-ship missile (12 damage in one hit).

But when I look at the description of that same alien ship in the screen about the species, that gives the armament as "3X Particle Beam," with a damage of 6. What's up with that? We were attacked with missiles, not beam weapons.

Note that, if it matters, I don't have a Diplomacy Team, because I don't have five people with diplomacy skill. Well, I'm only a year and a half into the game. I don't have anything much but the research and the handful of ships (now including two missile destroyers, per TheDeadlyShoe's pattern) I started with.

I followed TheDeadlyShoe's pattern exactly (thanks for that!), though in most cases, I have no idea why I'd pick one number rather than another. But it gave me a start. Now, since I know that the enemy use missiles themselves (indeed, have anti-missile defenses), I might attempt to use that pattern - more or less - but change the design into a laser anti-missile ship which can patrol in the same task group to protect the fleet. Assuming I can get it researched and built in time. (I won't 'instant' this one into existence.)

That pattern gave me a start, as did the other recommendations here. As I say, I'm only a year and a half into the game. I didn't expect to be at war so quickly. But a true heart can overcome any obstacle, right? 

Thanks again.

[linkxsc]

Intel screen only gives you "known" info. it can often lack any information about enemy ships at all, even though you as the player might have seen a range of armament. I've even salvaged enemy ships and gotten weapons /sensors off of them that should now be "known" and had intel not update to say that this is what the ship had for an active sensor or such.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

the intel screen is somewhat archaic, it was designed for an earlier ruleset for aurora where having a target in active sensor range would gradually give you information about that ship

[WCG (OP)]

Ah, OK. Thanks.

You know, I encountered those hostile aliens again - the same ones - in another solar system we were exploring through a completely different jump point. Again, their ships blew away my unarmed survey ship before we could get away. (Well, the alien ships are more than three times as fast as my ships - nearly four times as fast as my survey ships.)

I'm still less than two years into the game, and I've got hostile aliens on two fronts. 

What do you guys do, normally? Do you avoid exploring until your economy can support a strong military? Do you stay in Sol system until you feel prepared for war?

I'm watching a video series on YouTube, and he's nearly twenty years into the game without even surveying the jump points around Sol. Of course, he did a conventional start, which makes a big difference. But if I understand correctly, a conventional start puts you even further behind the aliens, since they start the same way regardless of how the player starts, right? Probably not for a beginner, then. Heh, heh.

I'm thinking of restarting (again) and, this time, staying in Sol system until I feel brave. If I ever do.   

PS. I guess I expected aliens to be more widely scattered in the galaxy than they are. I figured I could at least explore the systems right next door without getting into a war. But unless I'm just unlucky, that doesn't seem to be the case.

[AL]

In my previous game I had surveyed over 50 systems without finding any serious NPR's - only a couple scattered spoilers here and there... I think it's fair to say there can be a bit of varience involved.

[linkxsc]

Just a question, what does your survey ship look like stat wise. Before you start a new game, perhaps we could help optimize and speed that thing up so it dies less often?