Author Topic: PDC Building  (Read 4125 times)

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Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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PDC Building
« on: June 11, 2016, 09:14:36 PM »
So I decided I want to now try my hand at building PDCs and I want some advise.

1. What type of PDCs do you use? I can think of two, small PDC outposts meant to be easy to transport to a colony and veritable citadels built by self sustaining planets that can build things for themselves that are massive.
2. How specialized should a PDC be? Should you have dedicated missile bases and dedicated hangars and dedicated fortresses to garrison or should a PDC be able to serve as all three
3. How many hangars are too many hangars
4. Is using any weapon other than missiles worth it? Is it possible to give PDCs anti-fighter capability?
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2016, 09:51:57 PM »
So I decided I want to now try my hand at building PDCs and I want some advise.

1. What type of PDCs do you use? I can think of two, small PDC outposts meant to be easy to transport to a colony and veritable citadels built by self sustaining planets that can build things for themselves that are massive.
2. How specialized should a PDC be? Should you have dedicated missile bases and dedicated hangars and dedicated fortresses to garrison or should a PDC be able to serve as all three
3. How many hangars are too many hangars
4. Is using any weapon other than missiles worth it? Is it possible to give PDCs anti-fighter capability?
1. One cool idea I have is to make sub-500 ton single turreted meson point defense PDCs. The reason for this being that I can mount a beam fire control onto it with the fighter restriction, vastly increasing it's targeting speed, allowing it to engage missiles much faster than your tech level would otherwise permit. Just make sure you design the turret to go as fast as the BFC, and the combined sizes for your set speed don't put the turret over 500 tons.
2. The previous design I just mentioned is probably one of the only PDC designs I can currently think of that helps in particular where specialization is of importance. Otherwise, dumping a bunch of the same stuff in the PDC helps you defend it more easily against invasions using PDC barracks, as you'll have less PDCs to defend.
There might be potential use in specializing in allowing you to construct defenses on a further out outpost more quickly, yeah.
3. Look at the mineral cost of hangars, how much of that mineral you have, and how much building time it'll take to reach any particular amount. Beyond that: As many as you feel like.
4. As mentioned earlier, mesons are the only PDC weapons which fire through atmosphere, but PDC anti-missile defense should stand to be a rather decent means of protecting your planet and the ships stationed there against missile bombardment. You could probably make larger PDCs more prevalent against fighters using slightly larger longer range mesons, and more range-improved BFC.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2016, 09:59:11 PM »
So missiles aren't able to be fire from the planet?
 

Offline Prince of Space

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2016, 10:27:01 PM »
Mesons are the only beam weapon whose damage isn't reduced by the presence of an atmosphere. A body with a thin or nonexistent atmosphere can effectively mount lasers, in theory. And missiles on PDCs can be used just fine.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2016, 11:01:43 PM »
Do PDCs benefit from having their own active or passive sensors or do the planetary ones fulfill it just fine?

Can PDCs exist without any other infrastructure so I could put a missile/fighter base on a desolate asteroid?
 

Offline Drgong

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2016, 11:39:13 PM »
I personally like small PDCs instead of one bit one.  But that just me.

You can put them on small bodies, just have to also drop a construction troops to put the pre-built sections together.

Just like any other weapon system, they can use another sensor to use to lock on.

Missiles and Mesons work in places that have atmosphere,   Other systems work fine no matter what.

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Offline DIT_grue

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2016, 01:06:50 AM »
Do PDCs benefit from having their own active or passive sensors or do the planetary ones fulfill it just fine?
If you're referring to Deep Space Tracking Stations, remember that those serve as thermal and EM sensors, but NOT actives. So you still need an active sensor somewhere to achieve a target lock.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2016, 01:37:53 AM »
I don't understand deep space tracking systems. All it tells me is what "level" it is, saying nothing about the range it covers.
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2016, 02:14:19 AM »
I don't understand deep space tracking systems. All it tells me is what "level" it is, saying nothing about the range it covers.
The "Level" is flatly the amount of Deep Space Tracking Stations on a planetary body. What you want to look at is the "Strength" number next to the title of the Deep Space Tracking Station, which says how strongly your DSTS acts as a passive sensor for thermals and EM, equivalent to ship-based systems. Considering that it stacks, and increments in the hundreds, DSTSs are actually extremely powerful compared to shipboard sensors, and can be much better for monitoring points and systems than scoutships if a system body is in the right spot.
Now, for how far a particular "strength" can see sensor contacts, for every single point of sensetivity, the sensor can see a strength 1,000 contact out to 1 million kilometers, with everything being linear, I think.
So a Sensitivity 20 sensor will see a 1,000 strength contact out to 20 million kilometers, a sensitivity 250 sensor would see said contact out to 250 million kilometers instead, etc.
I'm 99% sure that a contact half as large (so 500) will be seen at half the range, and a contact twice the size (2,000) would be seen at double the range, but don't quote me on that one.

If you want an actual view of how far your sensors see things, check out this tab on the system map...

When checked off, it traces circles on the map, such that the circles represent the range your sensor see a particular strength signature out to, the strength in particular being the one you've set with the sliders in the Passive Sensor Ranges tab. Do note that such circles may often be bigger or smaller than visible at your current zoom level.
 

Offline Prince of Space

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2016, 06:48:29 AM »
Regarding infrastructure to support PDCs, they are subject to the morale rules just like ships are. So you may want to put at least a small population on the asteroid with Underground Infrastructure, or arrange for a recreation module to be available, either as part of the PDC itself or on a visiting Circus & Brothel ship that makes the rounds to all the remote PDCs.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2016, 06:58:26 PM »
You think its worhtwhile to put in a max sized launcher so that the PDC can always fire any missile? Granted, the targeting computer would quickly turn obsolete but if its max size as well it'll still serve a good function.

How do box launchers work on PDCs? Do they reload immediately like they are in a hangar?
 

Offline Herodotus4

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2016, 08:55:31 PM »
Size 100 launchers reload slowly, unless you want a massive swarm of MIRV warheadsit would be pretty useless.
 

Offline Borealis4x (OP)

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #12 on: June 13, 2016, 09:13:00 PM »
Do they reload slowly even when loaded with smaller missiles? The reason I want them max size is so they can be flexible.

What are peoples opinions on putting bases and sensors in the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt to form a ring of defense? I wish we had range/sensor templates that are going into Aurora C# but oh well.

And people are sure that having a population on these asteroids will make it so they never run out of moral, right? Garrison included or do you need to let them out once and awhile?
 

Offline AL

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #13 on: June 13, 2016, 09:44:19 PM »
From my memory PDC's don't need a population to sustain their morale. And yeah, missile launchers always take the same amount of time to reload, regardless of whether you fired smaller missiles or the largest that can fit in the tube.
 

Offline Sheb

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Re: PDC Building
« Reply #14 on: June 14, 2016, 03:26:36 AM »
As for sensors on the belt, at least for passive, it's probably much easier to have a big, fat stack of deep space tracking stations on Earth.