Author Topic: Detecting Missiles?  (Read 2325 times)

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Offline Rokmonkey (OP)

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Detecting Missiles?
« on: March 03, 2012, 03:58:00 PM »
A friend of mine and I have just started playing Aurora again, and while not good at it, we do have the gist of things.   But we both had the same problem recently, after we found our first aliens.   Their missiles were extremely fast, 28,000km/s fast.   I had a ship with similar sensor found int he "beam ship tutorial" and I did not have a chance in hell of seeing those missiles.   At some points I couldn't detect the enemy ships either.   So, over-arching question is, is the detection of missiles by active sensors dependent on the speed of the sensors as well?  To effectively face those aliens, will I just need a very large range active sensor of 0 sensitivity?

-Thanks
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2012, 04:15:47 PM »
What you want is to look at resolution.  Small resolution is what we mean by high resolution.  A sensor that can see ships from a billion kilometers away is not good at spotting missiles close by.  The reverse holds true, that your scanners for finding nearby missiles can't pickup the signatures from ships a billion kilometers away!

You want Resolution 1 scanners for spotting missiles.  Lets look at some designs:

Code: [Select]
Active Sensor Strength: 21   Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Sensor Size: 1 HS  <---this is the size of the sensor, in 50 ton increments.  1HS is too small for a scanner platform, but you should think about putting a small sensor like this on every ship that can shoot-- incase your ship with big sensors gets blown up, you can still shoot!   Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 1    Maximum Range vs 50 ton object (or larger): 2,310,000 km <-- max range of sensor

Range vs Size 6 Missile (or smaller): 251,559 km  <--- this is a good target missile size.  aliens seem to prefer size 3-6 missiles, so you want your range here to be big enough that you can see them


Range vs Size 8 Missile: 369,600 km
Range vs Size 12 Missile: 831,600 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 21    Crew: 5
Materials Required: 5.25x Duranium  15.75x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 210RPp

I build sensor ships usually, with great big (size 20-25) sensors-- a big passive thermal, passive electronic, and then res 1 and res 100.
most of my ships get small res 1 sensors, as i wrote above, which lets them continue shooting even if the large sensor ships get blown up.  That has happened to me before.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2012, 04:40:07 PM by Thiosk »
 

Offline Rokmonkey (OP)

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2012, 05:40:53 PM »
I think what might have been my first problem was that my  1 resolution had a HS of 0. 1, I think I mis understood the tutorial initially and that was the number closest to 0 so I grabbed it, oops!

I will try this new solution and see where it goes.   Im still concerned about how to deal with such a massively high speed missile, though.
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2012, 06:46:40 PM »
There are 4 primary ways to deal with missiles:

1)  Let them hit your armor.  *(generally considered bad)*
2)  Let them hit your shields.  *(better, but not really good)*

3)  Shoot them with guns.  Turretted gauss cannons are (generally) the simplest point defense weapon.  You need those devices to have high tracking speeds, and they need a firecontrol with a high tracking speed and the turret needs to be able to match that speed.

There are many recent threads on gauss point defense, once you figure out what everyone is going on about, it won't be hard.

4)  Shoot them with anti-missile missiles.  This is a great early-game strategy.  It requires:  
  -A sensor to see the missiles at a suitable range (3-6 million KM seems good)
  -A firecontrol that can shoot resolution 1 objects at a similar range
  -A very fast missile that can get to and out-fly the incoming alien missiles.
  -A launcher to launch said missile.
  -Find the combat window and set the launchers up three or 4 to a firecontrol, give them a PD range equal to your missile/firecontrol range, and set to 3 or 4 missiles per incoming.)

I tend to build gen 1 AMMs god, at like 30-50 km/S.  They have a warhead size of 1 and the total size of the missile is 1 MSP.  See the Emu Approximation thread for discussion on what the stuff there means.

Theres lots of numbers and sub menus in aurora, but once you "get it* you can have tons of fun with fleet design.

The more advanced players can talk about this crap for pages.  Theres no wrong way to do anything, so focus on having fun!
« Last Edit: March 03, 2012, 06:49:18 PM by Thiosk »
 

Offline Nathan_

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2012, 02:08:04 PM »
"1)  Let them hit your armor.  *(generally considered bad)*"

I posted a screenshot of plan 1 here in the gallery section. Let us call it Zaph's Manuevre.

In general though you'll want an oversized resolution 1 scanner, both for missiles and for the track time bonus techs.

"I will try this new solution and see where it goes.   Im still concerned about how to deal with such a massively high speed missile, though. "

even lower speed missiles can make a hit, provided they have enough agility, so play around with the missile engine speed vs agility to see what gives you the best to-hit vs objects travelling at 10km/s.
 

Offline Rokmonkey (OP)

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2012, 06:59:39 AM »
Thanks for the suggestions, I'd love to give them a try now, but in my new game I made, I haven't found a single NPR or Precursor!  What a shame.   Until then. . .  thanks.
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2012, 11:12:49 AM »
Thats a pretty common situation to be in.  Sometimes you find them everywhere, sometimes you don't find a thing.  In my current game I have a fantastic fleet-- but nothing to shoot at.  So i don't really know if its fantastic or not.  I have increased the NPR generation rate in the main window to try to force some activity.
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Detecting Missiles?
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2012, 02:02:50 PM »
One thing you can do is go into SM mode, destroy all the useless and boring systems you've found, and explore them anew.

You can also manually create new computer-controlled NPR races on habitable worlds.

If you do this as the SM race, using Create System, then you won't even know where it is or have it explored it all on your main race.  This is also a good means of manually giving the NPR homeworld huge stockpiles of minerals (so they don't stall.)  I find the primary problem with just using the "Add NPR" button// gamestart NPRs is that they run out of minerals way too easily.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2012, 02:05:31 PM by TheDeadlyShoe »