Re: Another bunch of questions

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Taking the risk to post thrice, I'll post some more questions instead of making new threads.

Now that I got a missile design that can ignore defenses^^

1. Will a Beam weapons accuracy go down by more if both systems have a lower tracking speed instead of just one?
Aka, is there any reason to build a turret with 200k tracking speed if the bfc can only track a 100?

2. Can a ship with two Tractor beams actually transport two "objects" at the same time, or is it just a useless combat save?

3.Are there any ways to augment ablative armor, or is ECM just plain better at high levels?

4. Why the hell are Railguns the only Weapon you can't put in Turrets?

[Shadow]

Taking the risk to post thrice, I'll post some more questions instead of making new threads.

Now that I got a missile design that can ignore defenses^^

1. Will a Beam weapons accuracy go down by more if both systems have a lower tracking speed instead of just one?
Aka, is there any reason to build a turret with 200k tracking speed if the bfc can only track a 100?

2. Can a ship with two Tractor beams actually transport two "objects" at the same time, or is it just a useless combat save?

3.Are there any ways to augment ablative armor, or is ECM just plain better at high levels?

4. Why the hell are Railguns the only Weapon you can't put in Turrets?

1. A weapon's tracking speed is limited by its own or its associated fire control's. Whichever is lower. So no, I don't think there's any reason for that.

2. No, I don't think so. One object per tractor ship. The tractor interface itself doesn't seem to have room for more than one object.

3. I believe armour technology decreases the amount of MSP each missile armour level requires.

4. No clue. What's the problem with that?

[Andrew]

4. Why the hell are Railguns the only Weapon you can't put in Turrets?

They are not I don't think Plasma Carronades can go in turrets, or Torpedo's

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Oh, your right.
I never think of torpedoes as actual beam weapons^^.
Still sad, railguns would make good anti-fighter weapons.
Well, I think one point of Missile MSP always yields one point of armor, so I guess I won't bother with it then.
As ECM appearently makes invulnerable, I'll shift my Jumppoint scouting and the like to buoys and drones.
And I'll save a lot of Resources not making turrets with higher tracking speed than my BFCs.

[Brian Neumann]

Oh, your right.
I never think of torpedoes as actual beam weapons^^.
Still sad, railguns would make good anti-fighter weapons.
Well, I think one point of Missile MSP always yields one point of armor, so I guess I won't bother with it then.
As ECM appearently makes invulnerable, I'll shift my Jumppoint scouting and the like to buoys and drones.
And I'll save a lot of Resources not making turrets with higher tracking speed than my BFCs.

1.)  Torpedo's are treated as beam weapons in this game, but I know what you mean.

2.)  Railguns are actually quite good against fighters/fac that get into range.  The problem is that most fighters are missile armed so you will rarely get the chance to shoot at them with beam weapons.

3.)  Missile ecm can be countered by a ships eccm.  Yes you can put more ecm on the missile, but that would use a lot of the missile space up and generally make it much less effective at hitting your targets or damaging them.

4.)  As for the tracking speed of your turrets.  When you are designing them, see how much faster you can get the turret without adding extra hull spaces.  I find that I can get a turret that is about 1/2 way to the next tracking speed level a lot of the time.  When you upgrade your ships it will give you a choice about only refitting the fire control for a limited upgrade, or upgrading both.  Sometimes it can make the difference of being able to upgrade the ship or not due to the cost of the refit.

Brian

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Just did a test at highest test level and noticed several things:
A) The Maximum range of an 80cm Far Gamma Ray Laser is over 20m, the maximum range of a size 4 BFC is 1.4m.
I thinks thats damn pointless, to say the least.Even an 80cm Infrared Laser will have more range that the best BFC you can build for it.
Am I missing something here?

B)

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 15 MSP  (0.75 HS)     Warhead: 120    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 71
Speed: 90000 km/s    Endurance: 37 minutes   Range: 200.0m km
Active Sensor Strength: 21.0006    Resolution: 15    Maximum Range: 3,150,090 km    
ECM Level: 20
Cost Per Missile: 85.0256
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 6390%   3k km/s 2130%   5k km/s 1278%   10k km/s 639%
Materials Required:    10x Corbomite   30x Tritanium   21.0006x Uridium   45.25x Gallicite   Fuel x4166.5
Seems totally reasonable, good speed, can reliably (always) hit enemy ships moving up to 50k speed, unhitabel with ECCM-10.
Also mounts a powerful Sensor.
-Sure, for that ECM I could mounts 60 more warhead, I most certainly agree, but that would mean to expect the enemy has no missile defenses whatsoever.
Atleast it's better than Armor.

C) It seems at higher techlevels it becomes increasingly difficult to kill missiles without AMMs.

D) Are the missiles that come with a ship really "free"?

thanks for all the answers you've given me so far!

[Hawkeye]

Just did a test at highest test level and noticed several things:
A) The Maximum range of an 80cm Far Gamma Ray Laser is over 20m, the maximum range of a size 4 BFC is 1.4m.
I thinks thats damn pointless, to say the least.Even an 80cm Infrared Laser will have more range that the best BFC you can build for it.
Am I missing something here?

Not realy.

The limit on FC is due to Steve not wanting to have to start tracking beams over several 5-second-increments (speed of light x 5 seconds = 1.5 mio km, basicly).
Also, as mentioned somewhere else before, if you want to go realy realistic, beams would not hit anything beyond, say, 300.000km.
Imagine, you target an enemy ship at 300.000 km. The ship can manouver at 100g. Your beam needs 1 seconds to reach the target. In that second, your target can be at any point of a "circle" with a radius of 500m (100g = aproximately 1000m/s^2). Lets assume the ship is spheric in form and has a diameter of 100m. A 100m ship, anywhere in a 1000m circle gives you a 1% chance to hit the ship anywhere. At longer ranges, the to-hit-chance gets abysimal real fast.
Ad in the fact that in Aurora there is no inertial (due to trans-newton technology), and hitting anything with a laser is bloody much impossible

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Ok, so far, I get that.
But whats the point in getting Far Gamma Rays in that case, PDs don't really need it, huge lasers can't use it.
Also, if we go by speed of light, everything above 1.5m distance should be shown where it was an increment before, and hey, we don't do that, either....
Wouldn't make sense as it would make missile guidance totally impossible.

Another question yet:

Code: [Select]

Damage Per Shot (4): 9     Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 7
Max Range 630,000 km     Railgun Size: 10 HS    Railgun HTK: 5
Power Requirement: 27    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 25
Got a Railgun (max techlevel, still testing) that requires 27 energy, gets only 25, still fires every 5 seconds.
I don't get it, what am I missing?

[Hawkeye]

Ok, so far, I get that.
But whats the point in getting Far Gamma Rays in that case, PDs don't really need it, huge lasers can't use it.
Also, if we go by speed of light, everything above 1.5m distance should be shown where it was an increment before, and hey, we don't do that, either....
Wouldn't make sense as it would make missile guidance totally impossible.

Well,  at max range, your laser deals 1 pt of damage. I don´t know how much your far gamma ray laser will do at 1.4 mkm, but it will be alot more than 1 pt, I assume
So, the range in itself does you no good, but you will deal a lot more damage at max FC-range than with a lower tech laser

As for sensor lag, it is assumed, the sensors are FTL (yes, technobabble, but hey, you have to simplify _some_ things) while a laser is still a laser, even with trans-newton tech.

Another question yet:

Code: [Select]

Damage Per Shot (4): 9     Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 7
Max Range 630,000 km     Railgun Size: 10 HS    Railgun HTK: 5
Power Requirement: 27    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 25
Got a Railgun (max techlevel, still testing) that requires 27 energy, gets only 25, still fires every 5 seconds.
I don't get it, what am I missing?

Seems like a bug to me, might want to post it in the bugs forum.

[Andrew]

Just did a test at highest test level and noticed several things:


D) Are the missiles that come with a ship really "free"?

thanks for all the answers you've given me so far!

No, but
If you press the load ships button they are indeed free , but that is meant for startup so your starting ships have missiles. Otherwise ships will try to fill their magazines to the selected load out from what missiles you have on the planet they are built at.

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Will do, thx.

Edit:

So, I don't quite know if this is a bug or me failing, but I ordered 2 Task Groups of different player races to waypoints close to each other in the asteroid belt behind mars, assigned Fire controls...
Then I noticed I need them in different Task groups to be able to split them and let the Beam Warships Attack.
I made a bunch of new task groups for either side, and moved the ships inside.

Now side A, which I did second, is perfectly fine, everything is in place and awaiting battle.
In side B, however, only the Original Battle Task Group is in place, all new Task Groups have had their new inhabitants teleported back to Titan where the fleet originated.
The Active Sensor Display proofs they were indeed in the asteroid belt before, and now, only a single missile cruiser remains in combat range....

Edit2: Posted too early, side A got teleported back aside the main Missile Cruisers aswell.
I forwarded an hour, 30 seconds actually happened, and all ships back at earth show speeds of 342k+ kms on sensors, like they physically moved back on their own volition.
I believe if I forwarded only 5 seconds, it would show 6x that much.

Any experience with that kind of behavior ?

[Andrew]

It sounds like the newly created task groups where in the location the ships are now in rather than with the fleet you thought they where with and when you moved the ships between TG they teleported to the location of the task group.

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

I wonder what I would do if that happened in an RP campaign....

[sloanjh]

It sounds like the newly created task groups where in the location the ships are now in rather than with the fleet you thought they where with and when you moved the ships between TG they teleported to the location of the task group.

Yep - it sounds from your description like you might be running with SM mode on (which is usually a bad idea, 'cuz it lets you do all sorts of unnatural things).  In SM mode, you can transfer units between non-colocated TG, causing the ships to magically teleport to the new location.  You should usually use the "Split TG" button (on the 2nd tab of F12 screen) if you want to break a TG up into pieces.  I almost never use the "New TG" button, 'cuz it doesn't necessarily put the new TG at the location the ships you're interested in are at (I think it puts it at your home world).  As of recent versions, you can also make new TG using the fleet organization (4th) tab of the F12 screen.

John

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Well, I think for playing with 2 races directly against each other to test something, SM mode helps.
Mesons are quire the Shizzle.

Some ask for advice:
How would you actually fight the following two when used against you?

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 10 MSP  (0.5 HS)     Warhead: 80    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 43
Speed: 43200 km/s    Endurance: 19 minutes   Range: 50.4m km
ECM Level: 20
Cost Per Missile: 38.0171
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1857.6%   3k km/s 602%   5k km/s 371.5%   10k km/s 185.8%
Materials Required:    10x Corbomite   20x Tritanium   15.0673x Gallicite   Fuel x1049.25

Buoy Size: 7.5 MSP  (0.375 HS)     Armour: 0
Reactor Endurance: 24 months
Active Sensor Strength: 20    Resolution: 10    Maximum Range: 2,000,000 km    
ECM Level: 20
Cost Per Buoy: 35.625
Materials Required:    10x Corbomite   4.8x Boronide   20x Uridium

These are NOT at maximum tech level, mind you.