My first combat

[James Patten (OP)]

In all the months I've been playing Aurora, I've yet to fight a battle.  Until last night.

My survey corps ran into Precursors.  Fortunately my survey command ship could out-run them, so I kept them merrily chasing me around the system until I could get my Expeditionary force into place.  

I had a great plan.  Terrible execution, due mostly to misunderstanding on my part.  I emptied my missile racks and gathered the missiles at a waypoint, but it was an hour or so too soon.  The plan was to send a massive wave of missiles at the enemy ships as they were chasing my survey ship.  Alas it didn't work and I lost the ships.

Time to build up another fleet, and hope the Precursors don't follow me through the WP.

[Starkiller]

I think you're safe. I've encountered Precursors five times, fought them twice, and they've never come through a war point. They likely would if there
was a jump gate, but I don't think their ships have jump drives.

Eric

[James Patten (OP)]

Part of the initial plan was to set my attack fleet's speed to 1 which would drop my Thermal signature drop to zero.  I thought at that point the enemy would have no way to detect me, until lasers and missiles started hitting.  Then I realized I'd be hitting them with a small volley of missiles each time, which probably wouldn't work, so I changed the plan.

Is it true that if my speed is zero and thermal sig is zero that detection is much harder?  Or would their active sensors have picked me up long before I was in range?

[Hawkeye]

Once you´re inside his active radar envelope, you´re lighted up lika the proverbial christmastree

You can sneak in, if your ships are smaller than the resolution of his radar

Maximum Sensor Range x (Target Ship Size / Sensor Resolution)^2

Say, your flying 5.000t DDGs (size 100), and your enemy has a radar with a range of 90 mkm which is optimized to spot 10.000t CRs (size 200). He will only spot you at a range of 22.5 million klicks.

This is, what FACs makes actually so much fun. Most of your enemies won´t spot ´em, till the missiles start hitting (of course, this also applies to YOU when the enemy is fielding FACs and against a human/realisticly played NPR should at most work once or twice)

[James Patten (OP)]

I rebuilt the war fleet (took a few years) and have survived the first encounter.  Although the Precursor was sneaky and stationed a ship on the other side of  the warp point to his system from my system.  My survey ships (which don't have good sensors), which were running ahead of the fleet, ran into them and were destroyed.  By the time I was able to get my warships in position, the precursor ship was gone.

However I caught up with one at his planet, and lured it into my fleet's clutches.  Now on to the planet and hit the ships in orbit there.

[waresky]

Never left an WP alone..
in one campaign ive encounter an non-precursors but a NPR race..
ive setup a "normal" (for tech,time and potential) Fleet to become patrolling and even invade...2 years later,and many years BEFORE was am really READY to invade,this race warped out with 47 (FORTYSEVEN)..
tghis huge alien fleet run directly to my Solar colony,Mars fallen under hundreds nuke missiles..then Earth..
My puny squadroon was annihilated around orbit earth..a struggle was shortly....Human race vanguished.

Bewary guys.
Steve had put some random crazy aliens around:)

[IanD]

What’s required to intercept precursor missiles? I have yet to succeed in even opening fire as they approach. All I get is ship did not fire as zero chance to hit.
(I currently have ECCM 2 and if tracking speed is ship speed (no turrets) then I have only a third to half the required tracking speed.)

Regards

[welchbloke]

What’s required to intercept precursor missiles? I have yet to succeed in even opening fire as they approach. All I get is ship did not fire as zero chance to hit.
(I currently have ECCM 2 and if tracking speed is ship speed (no turrets) then I have only a third to half the required tracking speed.)

Regards

The times I have fought presursors, I have intercepted their missiles with anti-missiles (usually speed 25-30K).  I haven't met any for a while, but I think one of my scouts may have just sniffed some out so I'll let you know if the Anti-missile missile tactic still works  

[Sotak246]

It still works, just fought a battle with 1 percurser missle frigate, thing lobed about 20 3missile salvos at me.  I had 1 antimissile missle cruser(7launchers) and 2 DDs armed with a 10cm tribarrel turret with beam tracking of 12500k.  My anti-missile missles had a speed about 20k.  The antimissile cruser had a hit rate of about 1 hit per 14 launches, not so good.  But, my DDs were great and stopped all the leakers(of which there were many ).  Without those DDs in final def. fire mode my fleet would have taken a pounding.  As it was only one missle out of about 60 hit.

[IanD]

It still works, just fought a battle with 1 precursor missile frigate, thing lobed about 20 3missile salvos at me. I had 1 antimissile missile cruiser(7launchers) and 2 DDs armed with a 10cm tribarrel turret with beam tracking of 12500k. My anti-missile missiles had a speed about 20k. The antimissile cruiser had a hit rate of about 1 hit per 14 launches, not so good. But, my DDs were great and stopped all the leakers(of which there were many ). Without those DDs in final def. fire mode my fleet would have taken a pounding. As it was only one missile out of about 60 hit.
It still works, just fought a battle with 1 precursor missile frigate, thing lobed about 20 3missile salvos at me. I had 1 antimissile missile cruiser(7launchers) and 2 DDs armed with a 10cm tribarrel turret with beam tracking of 12500k. My anti-missile missiles had a speed about 20k. The antimissile cruiser had a hit rate of about 1 hit per 14 launches, not so good. But, my DDs were great and stopped all the leakers(of which there were many .

[welchbloke]

It still works, just fought a battle with 1 precursor missile frigate, thing lobed about 20 3missile salvos at me. I had 1 antimissile missile cruiser(7launchers) and 2 DDs armed with a 10cm tribarrel turret with beam tracking of 12500k. My anti-missile missiles had a speed about 20k. The antimissile cruiser had a hit rate of about 1 hit per 14 launches, not so good. But, my DDs were great and stopped all the leakers(of which there were many ). Without those DDs in final def. fire mode my fleet would have taken a pounding. As it was only one missile out of about 60 hit.
It still works, just fought a battle with 1 precursor missile frigate, thing lobed about 20 3missile salvos at me. I had 1 antimissile missile cruiser(7launchers) and 2 DDs armed with a 10cm tribarrel turret with beam tracking of 12500k. My anti-missile missiles had a speed about 20k. The antimissile cruiser had a hit rate of about 1 hit per 14 launches, not so good. But, my DDs were great and stopped all the leakers(of which there were many .

I seem to have been luckier than you.  I ran into a bunch of of presursors (8 ships) and the most I had was some shield damage to one of my 20 000 tonne battleships.  Interestingly I didn't get any missile barrages just some very effective ECM that cut the range of my missile FC down from 210 Mkm to 156 Mkm and a combination of short range PD and AMMs.  I dragged them away from the planet at 4800km/s with them chasing at 7527 km/s.  It was then a case of my 3 CGs (12 launchers size 6 a ship), augmented by my 3 BBs (2 lauchers size 10 a ship) rolling an avalanche of missiles towards them as they pursued.  Normally about a third of each wwave got through; for the size 10 missiles it was about 10% got through (different speed to size 6 missiles and they suffered the full brunt of the defences).  I could have killed them all about 10Mkm short of my fleet but I deliberately let one close to laser range to see if I could get any more intel.  Considering the incredibly light offensive punch of these ships, I can only surmise that they were missile ships with empty magazines or they had battle damage and their FC weren't online.
Points for me to take away:
1. Despite their speed unarmoured missiles are easy to kill  :shock:  (1 fleet on ops, 1 fleet defending the home world and 1 fleet in overhaul)
4. My BBs need to either have more heavy launchers or none at all; 2 launchers per ship is no good.  Hmmm I feel a BBG class coming on  

[IanD]

I ran into a bunch of precursors (8 ships) and the most I had was some shield damage to one of my 20 000 tonne battleships.

That’s one difference, I found precursors early, and I am still using 6000 tonne FG's with 6 size 3 launchers. I have only just started to build 10,000k tonne cruisers.  My latest advance is to put the recently developed box launchers on FAC and sneak in (but see 4.26 bugs). I tried laser armed FAC, but one of the Precursor beam ships killed eight of them before succumbing (and that was after swallowing 300 missiles). I also think you out range the Precursor missiles by about 50mk or more. In my initial engagements I was using missiles with a 60 - 80mk effective range and the Precursors were not opening fire too much before I was.

After I finished off the precursors I found a damaged installation and a bunch of other wrecks near the home world. I had a brief moment of panic and rapidly surveyed the system for WPs (thinking that another race may have already been there. Fortunately I didn't find any other WPs .

Regards

[Steve Walmsley]

I ran into a bunch of precursors (8 ships) and the most I had was some shield damage to one of my 20 000 tonne battleships.

That’s one difference, I found precursors early, and I am still using 6000 tonne FG's with 6 size 3 launchers. I have only just started to build 10,000k tonne cruisers.  My latest advance is to put the recently developed box launchers on FAC and sneak in (but see 4.26 bugs). I tried laser armed FAC, but one of the Precursor beam ships killed eight of them before succumbing (and that was after swallowing 300 missiles). I also think you out range the Precursor missiles by about 50mk or more. In my initial engagements I was using missiles with a 60 - 80mk effective range and the Precursors were not opening fire too much before I was.

The Precursors will be slightly different in each game as their technology and ship designs are generated during the creation of the game.

Steve

[welchbloke]

I ran into a bunch of precursors (8 ships) and the most I had was some shield damage to one of my 20 000 tonne battleships.

That’s one difference, I found precursors early, and I am still using 6000 tonne FG's with 6 size 3 launchers. I have only just started to build 10,000k tonne cruisers.  My latest advance is to put the recently developed box launchers on FAC and sneak in (but see 4.26 bugs). I tried laser armed FAC, but one of the Precursor beam ships killed eight of them before succumbing (and that was after swallowing 300 missiles). I also think you out range the Precursor missiles by about 50mk or more. In my initial engagements I was using missiles with a 60 - 80mk effective range and the Precursors were not opening fire too much before I was.

The Precursors will be slightly different in each game as their technology and ship designs are generated during the creation of the game.

Steve

That's useful to know, I thought you had a preset series of designs.  So no game will be the same even down to the precursors, thanks Steve  

[welchbloke]

I ran into a bunch of precursors (8 ships) and the most I had was some shield damage to one of my 20 000 tonne battleships.

That’s one difference, I found precursors early, and I am still using 6000 tonne FG's with 6 size 3 launchers. I have only just started to build 10,000k tonne cruisers.  My latest advance is to put the recently developed box launchers on FAC and sneak in (but see 4.26 bugs). I tried laser armed FAC, but one of the Precursor beam ships killed eight of them before succumbing (and that was after swallowing 300 missiles). I also think you out range the Precursor missiles by about 50mk or more. In my initial engagements I was using missiles with a 60 - 80mk effective range and the Precursors were not opening fire too much before I was.

After I finished off the precursors I found a damaged installation and a bunch of other wrecks near the home world. I had a brief moment of panic and rapidly surveyed the system for WPs (thinking that another race may have already been there. Fortunately I didn't find any other WPs .

Regards

I have to admit I really like the precursors; they make every new WP explored exciting