On the pdc's ordnance management tab there's 3 windows, one shows the PDCs magazine contents, the middle by default shows magazine contents of the selected ships "mothership" but you can change this to "population" which shows the planets stockpile, you can also see what's in other ships in the same task group. To transfer from the population just select population then double click on a missile on either window to transfer either way. There is a button to change how many missiles are transferred, x1 x10 x100 or x1000

Thankyou - got it - i would never have found that

Those "free magazines" are missile launchers and it represents the fact that they have one missile preloaded inside.

I actually never used my PDCs in combat so I am not sure, but I believe than manual reload (in Ship Screen Window) should work the same way as for the ships. Unfortunately I dont have Aurora on this PC so I cannot check to be sure.

I use PDCs with normal magazines so in case they have to engage target I dont have to manually reload them after each salvo. PDC launchers have faster reload rates so it would be quite time consuming.

You can manualy load missiles:

Otherwise you have to manual load your ships other the Ships Screen, Ordnance Management Tab.

Or if your PDC has normal missile launchers, then you can use normal magazines.

EDIT : i've been an idiot and you can ignore all this - see reply #15 for details of the stupidity

Do you have maintenance facilities on the planet? You need them to reload box launchers from planet missile stock. And of course you need to have those missiles on the planet. It will also take some time to reload them.

hi Black

The ships are orbiting earth and are 4,500tons and hold 50 missiles.  Earth has a maintenance facility max ship size of 10,000 tones.  I have 221 missiles in stock.

I have been into the class design screen and changed the preferred magazine loadout to size 10 (it was previously 7).  The load ships button is greyed out.  It says Capacity Required 50  / Capacity Available 0  ?  this seems odd as you can see from above i have 221 in stock

When i built the ships the default loadout was 7x Size 5 ASM and the Mg Capacity used showed 35/50 (the new design of ships had 10 box launchers instead of 7)

In the ordnance Management screen it shows 10 box launchers with size 5 ASM assigned

If i try and load anymore (above the 7 that are already loaded i get a message "does not have sufficient magazine capacity to take even one of this type of ordnance"

I'm pretty sure i am missing something blindingly obvious here but for the life of me can't see it.

thanks for your help

EDIT : i've been an idiot and you can ignore all this - see reply #15 for details of the stupidity

On the class design screen there's an ordnance page, you specify what the default load out is. When you give the load ordnance command it will attempt to fill the ships magazines to that default.

A bit of a problem - when i designed an upgraded ship and added more box loaders i forgot to change the default loadout in the class design screen.  I have now built a new ship but it only loads 7 of the 10 box loaders and i don't seem to be able to add the remaining 3.  I have tried going back to the class design screen and changing the default loadout but this doesn't seem to have any effect on the ship i have already built.

So, in this above circumstance is there anyway i can fully load my newly built ships?

thanks


EDIT

Missile Load out is under Class Design, Ordnance/Fighters Tab.

If you have assigned a standard load out there, "Load Ordnance" will work from the ship screen. (You can do that even after Locking the design)

Otherwise you have to manual load your ships other the Ships Screen, Ordnance Management Tab.

The bit in bold does not seem to work for me  - though maybe i am doing something wrong

The launching ship needs a fire control with good resolution and enough range to reach the target ship.
The target must be visible on an active sensor, but this can be on any ship you control, even if it's a PDC on earth with a range of 50 billion kilometers, or even a fighter that's shadowing the target at point blank range.
Additionally , if the target vanishes from active sensors or fire control, then the missile will continue on it's current path towards the last known location of the target, if it shows up on sensors and fire control again it'll reacquire and seek it out again.
If you put sensors onto a missile if will allow the missile to target a ship in range if there's no active sensor and fire control. Missile sensors are pretty short though, but they have an additional use, when a missile makes it's final attack run it has a chance of missing whereby it will be destroyed, but if it has active sensors and detects a target after a miss it will retarget that ship.

Hmm, you've made it a third more expensive, added almost 50% more firepower, 50% more speed, decreased armour but because of it being a matter ship it'll actually be more durable, and added a slight increase to fire control range, but have also matched that with a larger active sensor.
Not too bad.
You still might want more fire control range though, as fire controls take up a lot less space than active sensors you'll find decreasing your sensor range by 1 million will give you 2 million more fire control.
If this ship operates by itself you'll want matched fire control and sensor range, but if it operates in a group with larger ships or dedicated sensor ships you would prefer to maximise fire control range and have minimal backup active sensors.
Also note that as your new ship is larger it's much easier to target.
Find a good balance or specialise each ship, ultimately it's up to you how you want your ships :p.

Marc, I missed that he is using box launches, which indeed makes magazines pointless.

vote, open the missile design screen, select your current missile design under "MSP Allocation of Previous Designs"

What5 I want to know is the MSP allocation under "Enter Component Sizes"

my size 5 anti ship missile is split as follows:

Warhead strength  MSP 2.4 > value 12
Fuel                      MSP 0.1 > 250
Agility                   MSP 0.5 > 32