Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[superstrijder15]

Thank you! I have found the research now. Also, my only armed ship so far is running circles around the enemy ship staying near. I kind of hope the enemy ship will go back home at some point.

[captainwolfer]

Thank you! I have found the research now. Also, my only armed ship so far is running circles around the enemy ship staying near. I kind of hope the enemy ship will go back home at some point.

Does the enemy ship have stealth systems? If it does I suggest building STO batteries and ground forces, based on my understanding of how certain enemies work

[superstrijder15]

I have engaged the ship, and reached my next question: How do I make my ship actually fire?

My ship is armed with 2 gauss cannon turrets. It has two beam fire controls with 25kkm range. I set the beam fire controls up and clicked "open fire FC" for both. Attachment shows how this looks. I am tracking the enemy ship at a range of 0 km, successfully since I'm faster. He is shooting at me with railgun but my ship is not shooting back. I also tried setting the race to "hostile" in the info tab, but that also did not help. I have been shot a bunch of times now so enough time must have passed.

[mike2R]

I have engaged the ship, and reached my next question: How do I make my ship actually fire?

My ship is armed with 2 gauss cannon turrets. It has two beam fire controls with 25kkm range. I set the beam fire controls up and clicked "open fire FC" for both. Attachment shows how this looks. I am tracking the enemy ship at a range of 0 km, successfully since I'm faster. He is shooting at me with railgun but my ship is not shooting back. I also tried setting the race to "hostile" in the info tab, but that also did not help. I have been shot a bunch of times now so enough time must have passed.

You need to assign the target to a fire control.  You can drag it from the Potential Target list in the right hand column, to the fire control in the left hand column.

You can copy these targets between ships of the same class with the Assign buttons over on the right.  There is also the Auto Assign FC button - this will assign targets to all ships in the fleet (AFAIK all fire controls on a ship will be assigned to the same target, each ship will get a different target if there are enough to go around).

Gauss isn't really the weapon you want in this situation Its max range is 25k km - point blank.  You can use it against ships, but you'll need to be right on top of them.  Gauss is a specialised missile defence weapon.

[captainwolfer]

I have engaged the ship, and reached my next question: How do I make my ship actually fire?

My ship is armed with 2 gauss cannon turrets. It has two beam fire controls with 25kkm range. I set the beam fire controls up and clicked "open fire FC" for both. Attachment shows how this looks. I am tracking the enemy ship at a range of 0 km, successfully since I'm faster. He is shooting at me with railgun but my ship is not shooting back. I also tried setting the race to "hostile" in the info tab, but that also did not help. I have been shot a bunch of times now so enough time must have passed.

On the right, there is the list called "Potential Targets" Drag the name of the enemy ship onto your beam fire control. Alternatively, press either "Fire at will" to make the ship quickly but randomly choose an enemy target, or "Auto Target BFC" to make all ships in the fleet choose an avaliable enemy to target, trying to spread attacks evenly between enemy ships in range

[superstrijder15]

Hmm, I tried that earlier and it didn't seem to do anything but repeating refresh and pulling targets around it works now. Thanks for the help everyone!

[captainwolfer]

Hmm, I tried that earlier and it didn't seem to do anything but repeating refresh and pulling targets around it works now. Thanks for the help everyone!

It can be finicky sometimes.

On a somewhat related note, it looks to me like you did a trans-newtonian start, based on how you have ECCM 3 with so few ships. Did you know that TN starts give you a pool of build points so you can start with a fleet of ships and with ground units? You can instant build ships using those points by going to the misc. tab in the ship editor, which has buttons to instant build ships. You don't even need to be in SM mode

[superstrijder15]

Yup I know that. I actually gave myself a pretty ridiculous amount of starting tech points, but divided automatically, to get a quicker start. The game also gave me a bunch of starting ship designs which is how I ended up with my only ship so far being a ship with ROF6 Gauss guns, ECCM but no ECM

[superstrijder15]

Here I am again!

One of my fleets (my battle fleet from yesterday) seems to not want to stay on Earth. Whenever the planet moves, it just stays behind. This makes it nearly impossible to get it to rest and get the deployment timer down. Is this a known problem and if so what can I do about it?

[Paul M]

I just developed fighter autocannon and I'm trying to sort out how I use this.  I had thought I would get a new ground vehicle type, but instead it seems to have opened up "fighter autocannon pods" and I'm utterly confused how these things are supposed to be used.  It seems to be some sort of hanger, but I am clueless even how big I should make it or what it would do when I do have one developed.  I was trying to develop a helicopter type formation for my armoured divisions but this is looking a bit dubious at the moment.

I built my first engineering battalion but how do these work in terms of digging units in...do they have to be in the organization or will the independent battalion dig in my infantry division without being assigned to it?

[captainwolfer]

I just developed fighter autocannon and I'm trying to sort out how I use this.  I had thought I would get a new ground vehicle type, but instead it seems to have opened up "fighter autocannon pods" and I'm utterly confused how these things are supposed to be used.  It seems to be some sort of hanger, but I am clueless even how big I should make it or what it would do when I do have one developed.  I was trying to develop a helicopter type formation for my armoured divisions but this is looking a bit dubious at the moment.

I built my first engineering battalion but how do these work in terms of digging units in...do they have to be in the organization or will the independent battalion dig in my infantry division without being assigned to it?

Fighter autocannons are for space fighters (IE 500 tons or less). You make an "autocannon pod" by opening the missile editor and checking the autocannon option in the lower left. Then you pick the size of the autocannon pod. You can then build these pods like normal missiles. To use them, you need fighters with either missile box launchers or fighter pod bays that are large enough (fighter pod bays are much smaller for a given size). You load the pods into the box launchers or pod bay, and can then use them to support ground units

See this link for an explanation of how to use ground support fighters: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109886#msg109886

For engineering battalions:

Construction elements will work on any element in their own formation or that formation's subordinate hierarchy that has already reached its max self-fortification level. If the construction element's formation has no subordinate, the Construction elements will work on any element in their own formation's parent formation or in that parent formation's subordinate hierarchy that has already reached its max self-fortification level. This means you can attach a construction-based formation directly to a formation you need fortified, or you can attach to a HQ and it will fortify every formation descending from that HQ. Construction elements can only assist elements that are on the same system body (they can be in different populations on the same body).

[superstrijder15]

Is there a way to see for a class which other classes a shipyard tuned to that class could also build?

[nuclearslurpee]

Is there a way to see for a class which other classes a shipyard tuned to that class could also build?

In the Shipyards view --> Task box at the bottom of the window --> set Task Type to "Construction" --> In the "Class" dropdown, you can see what other classes are interbuildable. However, this does require you to have a shipyard tooled for the base class in question. Otherwise, you will have to calculate it yourself according to the refit rules. It is not hard to do this, just a little bit tedious but you should not have to do it very often. 

For most common interbuild cases it is fairly simple, for example if you have a ~45,000-ton colony ship that costs 1500 BP and a ~45,000-ton freighter that costs 600, the freighter can be built from a yard tooled for the colony ship because the cost of a cargo bay is much less than 20% of the colony ship cost. The reverse is not possible because cryogenic modules are so expensive compared to cargo holds.

A trickier example is survey ships, because the geo and grav sensors are usually the most expensive components on a survey ship it is often difficult to make the survey classes interbuildable. One solution is to use mixed-use survey ships with both grav and geo sensors, which is an entirely viable approach, and in some cases you would be able to create geo-only and grav-only variants that could be built from the same shipyard as the mixed-use variant. Another approach is to build a shipyard-only class which has a full load of both geo and grav sensors, but lacks a cheaper component like engine(s) or jump drive. Due to the cost rules you can often build geo and grav variants from a shipyard tooled for that class. This sounds complicated, so I will give a rough example below:

Geosurvey Ship Class: 5000 tons, ~700 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
1x Jump Drive 5K = 1000 tons, 55 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

Gravsurvey Ship Class: 5000 tons, ~700 BP
4x Gravsurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
1x Jump Drive 5K = 1000 tons, 55 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

Shipyard-Only Class: 5000 tons, ~1040 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

You can see that the two survey ship classes are in no way interbuildable with each other, and even if you had a mixed-use ship with 2x Geo + 2x Grav sensors it still would not work. However, the shipyard-only class allows a single shipyard to build either kind of survey ship since the refit cost is only the cost of the jump drive with a 20% premium (plus some smaller amounts for differences in e.g. crew quarters between the classes).

[Droll]

Is there a way to see for a class which other classes a shipyard tuned to that class could also build?

In the Shipyards view --> Task box at the bottom of the window --> set Task Type to "Construction" --> In the "Class" dropdown, you can see what other classes are interbuildable. However, this does require you to have a shipyard tooled for the base class in question. Otherwise, you will have to calculate it yourself according to the refit rules. It is not hard to do this, just a little bit tedious but you should not have to do it very often. 

For most common interbuild cases it is fairly simple, for example if you have a ~45,000-ton colony ship that costs 1500 BP and a ~45,000-ton freighter that costs 600, the freighter can be built from a yard tooled for the colony ship because the cost of a cargo bay is much less than 20% of the colony ship cost. The reverse is not possible because cryogenic modules are so expensive compared to cargo holds.

A trickier example is survey ships, because the geo and grav sensors are usually the most expensive components on a survey ship it is often difficult to make the survey classes interbuildable. One solution is to use mixed-use survey ships with both grav and geo sensors, which is an entirely viable approach, and in some cases you would be able to create geo-only and grav-only variants that could be built from the same shipyard as the mixed-use variant. Another approach is to build a shipyard-only class which has a full load of both geo and grav sensors, but lacks a cheaper component like engine(s) or jump drive. Due to the cost rules you can often build geo and grav variants from a shipyard tooled for that class. This sounds complicated, so I will give a rough example below:

Geosurvey Ship Class: 5000 tons, ~700 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
1x Jump Drive 5K = 1000 tons, 55 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

Gravsurvey Ship Class: 5000 tons, ~700 BP
4x Gravsurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
1x Jump Drive 5K = 1000 tons, 55 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

Shipyard-Only Class: 5000 tons, ~1040 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
4x Geosurvey Sensors = 1000 tons, 400 BP
2x Medium Ion Drives @ 75% = 2000 tons, 140 BP
Other components = 1000 tons, ~100 BP

You can see that the two survey ship classes are in no way interbuildable with each other, and even if you had a mixed-use ship with 2x Geo + 2x Grav sensors it still would not work. However, the shipyard-only class allows a single shipyard to build either kind of survey ship since the refit cost is only the cost of the jump drive with a 20% premium (plus some smaller amounts for differences in e.g. crew quarters between the classes).

I had never thought of that, it's like overengineering the shipyard to make it more flexible. Interesting...

[nuclearslurpee]

I had never thought of that, it's like overengineering the shipyard to make it more flexible. Interesting...

I usually try to avoid getting too silly with the refits (ProTip: you can in some cases make two classes interbuildable from a third class just by putting a lot of very expensive components like high-boost power reactors to drive up the base cost, so you have more room under that 20% limit), but in the case of GEV/GSV interbuild, I understand it is a limitation of the mechanics but these really should be interbuildable IMO as you're ripping out one sensor suite and slapping another into the hole. That's when having tricks like these comes in handy to support your roleplay even if it is, nominally, a tad exploit-y.