Aurora 4x

VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Jacob/Lee on July 04, 2011, 11:45:56 AM

Title: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 04, 2011, 11:45:56 AM
I just encountered another alien race, unlike the past 3 they didn't immediately fire at the survey ship, we're making a ton of great communication rolls and I think this'll work out. In other news, a grav survey ship exploded on its way to Earth to overhaul, the irony, it burnssssss!


Also, right after I finished max oxygen +20% my allies gave me max oxygen -10%, thanks friends!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dutchling on July 04, 2011, 12:58:44 PM
I just made my first missile ships.
But somehow I think you already knew that >.>
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 04, 2011, 01:06:08 PM
Don't forget the ECM and ECCM <.<
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: welchbloke on July 04, 2011, 02:36:24 PM
Currently, my empire is planet hopping through the colonies of the Linquing en-route to their Home World.  The Linquing have no remaining warships and my fleet controls the space around their Home World.  Elsewhere, all of my freighters are desperately shuttling infrastructure to the Inman Home World.  The Inman (a friendly race) were bombarded by the Juggernaut and the Home World has fallen from a population of 3 billion to less than 1.9 billion in just over a year.  My race occupied the Inman Home World so that they could try and save the survivors.  The entire Inman fleet plus all the facilities and shipyards on the Home World were destroyed by a single Juggernaut.  At the same time my fleet is going through a major upgrade program including replacing all SCAM drives with GCAM drives.  Threats are everywhere, the fleet is spread thin, I cannot build ships fast enough and I'm loving it :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 05, 2011, 02:41:01 AM
So I am dragging ass through the increments, hundreds of 5-60 sec increments. I am really tempted to search every nook and cranny of these systems to find the combatants and bust some asses over there. This is getting ridiculous.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dutchling on July 05, 2011, 06:59:02 AM
21 years into the game and I just finished the grav survey of the sol system (partly because I didn't start with any RP but mostly because I totally forgot about actually building those Survey ships >.>) and I have a total of 7 JP's. I hope I can find a system with only one JP so I can spawn an NPR there, without having to worry about the NPR crashing my game by fighting other enemies...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 05, 2011, 03:08:01 PM
So far there has been about 6 pages of constant 5 second increments. Go to hell.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on July 05, 2011, 04:35:19 PM
So far there has been about 6 pages of constant 5 second increments. Go to hell.

Do you have Auto Increments on? That alleviates some of the pain.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 05, 2011, 05:17:07 PM
Do you have Auto Increments on? That alleviates some of the pain.
Yep.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: trespoe on July 05, 2011, 05:28:21 PM
I also am involved in an increment-hell.


I have a survey ship scouting a system and two NPR's start a shooting war right next to it.  currently the first NPR has two 20,000 ton ships at a speed of 12,000 running away from a horde of smaller ships with a speed of 2000.  the big ships keep sending missiles back to the second NPR horde but the second have about 200 railguns and gauss canons blowing up the missiles as soon as they are in range.  This running fight has taken over 8 pages of 5 second increments and is showing no end in sight. 

The first NPR keeps doing the run and shoot and the second just doesn't have the speed to catch up.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 05, 2011, 05:32:34 PM
They'll run out of missiles eventually  :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on July 05, 2011, 06:02:44 PM
They may not run out of missiles
Sounds like they could be invaders and invaders don't use normal missiles
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: trespoe on July 05, 2011, 06:38:43 PM
aaaannnndd.    now I get no response to Aurora when I try to advance the clock. . . . 

It has crashed, Jim.

after over 30 minutes of in game 5 second increments.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on July 05, 2011, 06:58:35 PM
This does happen occasionally.  Its the nature of the beast, sadly.  I hear sometimes people will help you recover your database.  I crashed my first game and broke it, but my current one has gone on for 80 years with no problem.  But probably want to take the bug discussion up to the bug thread.

On topic:

The fleet has found a race of aliens who use small fighter craft.  The expeditionary force is massing and preparing to burst on the scene.  ON the way, however, the sensor ships picked up a pprecursor vessel in a system with a ruin: who knows how long its been there, monitoring us?  The fleet was too slow to catch it-- it maintained distance, but a wing of FACs closed the gap and popped it with a single salvo.

On other fronts, the search for the El Dorado is ongoing.  We've found a few small, uninhabited colonies and have enslaved about 2 million el doradans... but no sign has been found of where the heck they came from or where their fleet is.  The troop transports that dropped the combat brigade on the el dorado detected a fleet of 12 transports that suddenly showed up in orbit; they fired their antimissile missiles as they fled destroying six of the transports. 

When the fleet arrived from two systems over, the transports were gone-- and we have no idea where.

ITS A MYSTERY, MAN.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on July 05, 2011, 07:07:29 PM
This does happen occasionally.  Its the nature of the beast, sadly.  I hear sometimes people will help you recover your database.  I crashed my first game and broke it, but my current one has gone on for 80 years with no problem.  But probably want to take the bug discussion up to the bug thread.

On topic:

The fleet has found a race of aliens who use small fighter craft.  The expeditionary force is massing and preparing to burst on the scene.  ON the way, however, the sensor ships picked up a pprecursor vessel in a system with a ruin: who knows how long its been there, monitoring us?  The fleet was too slow to catch it-- it maintained distance, but a wing of FACs closed the gap and popped it with a single salvo.

On other fronts, the search for the El Dorado is ongoing.  We've found a few small, uninhabited colonies and have enslaved about 2 million el doradans... but no sign has been found of where the heck they came from or where their fleet is.  The troop transports that dropped the combat brigade on the el dorado detected a fleet of 12 transports that suddenly showed up in orbit; they fired their antimissile missiles as they fled destroying six of the transports. 

When the fleet arrived from two systems over, the transports were gone-- and we have no idea where.

ITS A MYSTERY, MAN.

Sensors man, sensors!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on July 06, 2011, 01:23:50 AM
Oh baby, the new line of FleetScan vessels is under construction.  They should help, with an effective range an order of magnitude higher than current systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on July 06, 2011, 11:30:41 PM
Currently, the Terran Confederation is 20 years into the game, playing with real stars and gates on all points (no jump drives). Found three Terran normal worlds within 5 jumps of Sol, 7 total colony worlds. System next door to Sol is named Bonanza, for the googleplex of minerals sitting on the seven (!) mineral rich worlds there. The biggest problem facing the Confederation is not enough revenue. We simply cant seem to generate enough wealth to keep research running full tilt along with industry and moderate ship building. Its proving to be a serious issue, but the government is reluctant to cut back on research right now. Huge amounts have been spent on improving the economy, but we consistently have issues with periods of economic stagnation.

Only one discovered NPR so far, the friendly NPR and I are on trading terms. One Methane breathing race is lurking in the outer fringes of explored space, but no contact yet. I am HATING the Swarm, found them in five systems so far, and have only cleaned out two. Lost a bunch of ships on the 2nd encounter due to them be RIGHT on top of the jump point. Ouch! Lost half the battle fleet, the most important loss being the fleet collier, as there arent any shipyards capable of building it, as they are in the process of upgrading the current warfleet to more advanced models. Double ouch.

Still finding robotic ships sailing the void in several systems most have been dispatched easily, two more distant systems still have guardians, but both systems have nothing of interest in them. The Rhakshasas (Precursors) are dangerous, but we haven't seen a large fleet of them for the last 10 years. Mining is going well, industry and transforming are proceeding along. Mars has 23 million people on it, as well as some auto-mines and research stations.

The military consists of two Battle Squadrons of two missile cruisers, three missile destroyers, one area defense cruiser, and two point defense destroyers, one collier, and one tanker. The battle fleets are complimented by three patrol squadrons of three fast attack missile frigates each, with a further two system defense FAC squadrons, and three large fighter stations hosting six squadrons of fighters.

Current Naval Headquarters concerns are that there are insufficent combat assets in the Battle Squadrons to deal with the Swarm and Rhakshasa naval assets encountered. More ominously, the friendly Mostoles Cartel is fielding a similar sized warfleet, while their civilian shipping and government cargo sector is five times that of the Confederacy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dutchling on July 07, 2011, 07:36:53 AM
Just found a very wierd system...
It is a star with a bunch of planets. And in the middle of those planets is another start with some more planets. There is a third start orbiting the first star very far away from the center, and that star has another star orbiting him >.>
The system has a total of 6 bodies whit a colony cost lower than 10 of which 2 only need some more oxygen.

EDIT: Oh great, there are three wrecks in here. And the system is one jump away from the sol system :(. and my fleet consists of one defenseless missile cruiser which was outdated once it was finished building.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on July 07, 2011, 12:41:54 PM
binary stars aren't so rare :)  i love them meself.  Especially the ones with oodles of habital worlds.  Havn't seen a trinary star system though... 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Napoleon XIX on July 07, 2011, 01:50:26 PM
Well, out of 12 systems, I've found about three binary and one quaternary system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on July 07, 2011, 09:57:42 PM
Must be near time for a civil war in my game ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 15, 2011, 02:40:17 PM
A stable wormhole opened up 4 jumps from Sol.

I'm scared
  :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on July 20, 2011, 02:58:43 AM
Anyway, double post.

Ships were attacked in a new system, sent my military over there after they destroyed a geosurvey ship. Now we're running down enemy ships while they pummel us with strength 9 size 1-6 missiles.

The mercury is rising.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on August 09, 2011, 07:47:16 PM
Just startet up a new non-human campaign. It (of course) took ages to find a planet suitable for the race I had in mind:
- A hydrosphere for roleplaying reasons covering at least 50%
- High G (2+)
- warm enough for oxygen breathers
Guess I just had bad luck for taking so long, though it seems as if I hit the jackpot now: A quanary system with a LP at every star, travel times of about 15 days (at ~4000km/s) without using those, not too much but plenty of ressources to start with ... and three jump points all leading into nebulae. Damnit. I didn't desperatly set those nebulae; I didn't even explore the JPs until five years into the game, but I managed to roll up a level 2, 5 and 11 nebula each. Talk about RNG.

I'll make sure to guard my home system with lots of missile bases, noone coming here will be prepared for *that* xD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on August 09, 2011, 07:56:19 PM
A quanary? Do I have my terms wrong, or do you mean 4 STARS ORBITING EACH OTHER?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 09, 2011, 11:40:03 PM
thats what it would mean, but quanary sounds funny.  I like quaternary systems, but wikipedia (read: multiple stars article) gives Quadruple and Quintuple for 4- and 5- star systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on August 09, 2011, 11:46:07 PM
The max number of stars I've seen orbiting each other was a trinary (Chrome says that word doesn't exist...) system, and that was only once. How high can the number go?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on August 10, 2011, 12:32:28 AM
The max number of stars I've seen orbiting each other was a trinary (Chrome says that word doesn't exist...) system, and that was only once. How high can the number go?

4. There are only 4 tabs on the System screen for stars.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on August 10, 2011, 03:54:39 AM
A quanary? Do I have my terms wrong, or do you mean 4 STARS ORBITING EACH OTHER?
Haha xD Pardon my sorry english, I do mean 4 stars =)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 11, 2011, 05:47:54 PM
Nothing wrong with your english.  Scientific jargon is confusing in any language.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on August 11, 2011, 07:49:12 PM
So after a long time of random breaks in increment times for long battles, they have stopped. I think the offending navies have annihilated each other.

Oh man, millions of almost every mineral on a planet in a system next door to Sol! We're never going to run out of them and-
(http://i.imgur.com/jIKBp.png)
Motherfrakk. I hope the rating 140 geoteam can help.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chrislocke2000 on August 12, 2011, 04:57:37 AM
I've just hit 25 years into game. So far I've had three NPRs visit sol and to date I've managed to track one of them back to their own home world.

Tech is now at a position where I can take on the precursors and I've managed to clear out a few systems of them and found one ruined city which my engineers are busily trying to loot. A 25mil ton habitat sits ominously in orbit awaiting the arrival of the freshly built marine assault craft - Trafalgar and it's five companies of marines.

The empire had a terrible duranium shortage for about five years whilst a new mining colony was founded so my fleets are far less developed then I would have liked.

I've failed to make contact with one of the NPRs and I don't know where he lives. The others are building diplomatic relations but one of them has started a massive expansion of jump gates which are now on the verge of linking up two of my own colony systems. Several gate builders have now been destroyed and I suspect its only a matter of time before the empire goes to war...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: shadenight123 on August 12, 2011, 12:26:59 PM
Jacob/lee, i feel your pain.
I truly do.
ç_ç

on my side, i must say it's simply astonishing the amount of things one may find after forgetting he had survey ships and geosurvey ships working together in a system.
and i'm currently placing jump gates like an absent minded person. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 14, 2011, 07:04:38 PM
Captain Jacob Johnston of the Ticonderoga SWACS1 scanner vessel had lost his main active scanners.  New tech.  Untested.  No matter.  We can scan to 12 m km clicks... the enemy is centered on a single world at the center of their star system.  We will make due.  On jump, a fleet of primatives was sitting at the jump point.  Uhuru welcome delegation.  They hailed us.  We fire the engines and move about 6 megaclicks towards the star-- well out of range of their particle beams.  Thats when the Offenders opened up.  A hail of the new HonkeyTonk size-6 missiles sail towards the enemy fleet- backed by IdiotSlug size-4 missiles launched by the Defenders.  They took a beating, and were streaming atmosphere before even turning their heading to face us.  Their point defense could barely strike a single missile in each hail.

It wasn't long before they were gone; their pathetic nuclear pulse drives hardly broke 2000 km/s.  Fish in a barrel.  Picked up the lifepods and started the interrogations. 

There were more.  We sailed towards the star when 12 mclicks out we spot 15 FACs; our primary fire controls were illsuited for targeting them.  But no matter: the AMM platforms had little trouble saturating each with two salvos of 4 missiles... a few more to pick off the survivors.

From here, clear sailing to the Uhuru homeworld.  A few orbital installations were destroyed unopposed, as were their shipyards and some commercial vessels.   To make their impending doom clear... we targeted their ground forces from orbit, obliterating several units and filling the skies with a light dusting of smoke and fallout.

Three brigades, led by the the 1st Badonkadonk Brigade, landed and wrested control from the inferior Uhuru government. 

13 years since the Human Imperium began to spread among the stars, and already, the first alien species has been crushed under our thumb.  A paltry few vessels remain.  They will be hunted.

and exterminated
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aldaris on August 15, 2011, 03:10:03 AM
Why would you destroy the shipyards? Those are valuable installations you could make good use of.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 15, 2011, 05:04:31 AM
Yeah, i kicked myself a little bit after i did it, but hey, it was my first real dance.  Most other combats I'd been involved in during my 5.42 game were all precursor.  Not much ground combat to be had.  I really didn't know how long it would take to finish the battle, and to be honest I didn't want anything popping out on me.  Next time, I'll be able to coordinate the invasion a bit better, and will catch more intact.  For now, I've got much more shipyard than I can support via component research, so their couple of crappy civ shipyards aren't that big of a loss.

There was also a bit of a cathartic feeling I got from subjugating them utterly.  Good times.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on August 15, 2011, 09:05:06 AM
Bah, I've never gotten a decent war started. Couldn't find a swarm to save my life, the Invaders bailed at the last minute, found some precursors and a single empire but I could've crushed those floating balls of space junk they try to pass off as ships in no time flat.

The funny part is, they're out there kicking each other's asses but I can't find any of them to join in on the carnage  :(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: mavikfelna on August 15, 2011, 11:35:24 AM
Yeah, i kicked myself a little bit after i did it, but hey, it was my first real dance.  Most other combats I'd been involved in during my 5.42 game were all precursor.  Not much ground combat to be had.  I really didn't know how long it would take to finish the battle, and to be honest I didn't want anything popping out on me.  Next time, I'll be able to coordinate the invasion a bit better, and will catch more intact.  For now, I've got much more shipyard than I can support via component research, so their couple of crappy civ shipyards aren't that big of a loss.

There was also a bit of a cathartic feeling I got from subjugating them utterly.  Good times.

If you want to save their shipyards in the future, just build a tug and have it come in a tug the shipyard out of close orbit. They won't be able to use it anymore and you can then take it elsewhere or return it after you've got them under your control.

--Mav
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 15, 2011, 04:19:14 PM
Can one seize shipyards with marines?  If yes, that would be awesome.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on August 15, 2011, 05:59:31 PM
Can one seize shipyards with marines?  If yes, that would be awesome.

Not currently.  You should make that suggestion in the appropriate thread.  As it is, you either wait until you've conquered the population (at which point you get the shipyard automatically) or you use the tractor trick (exploit?) to seize it without boarding.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on August 22, 2011, 01:39:25 PM
oh man

I previously wrote about my prior conquer.  Well it turns out the Uhuru commonwealth was still operating ships even after I took their homeworld-- and they opened up several new systems and a new alien species.  This species was crazily jumpgate happy, so I couldn't allow them to continue to operate.  First contact was blasting a couple of their jumpgate ships. The race appears more advanced, but my empire has a focus on missile, industrial, and propulsion tech-- I own the battlefield even though my armor and defenses are weak. Turns out they were a beam-heavy race, but had some FACs-- so after blasting their early contingent, I had to flee back out the jumpgate since I couldn't target their FACs before they were dropping nukes on my fast, but still primitive defended ships (i had only AMMs, no beam defense yet).  Put together a good FACship, and brought three of them to the front.

Wiped out their FACs, but then they had fielded new ships, so I started blasting them-- but I ran low on ordinance.  SO I had to retreat while I got the logistics together, sneaking in each time I got enough HonkeyTonk missiles to pop a few boats.  Another couple months of cat-and mouse, and putting a division and a half of ground forces together, I was getting ready to make a play for the core.  Flew in, BOP BOP-- three beam ships sitting on the jumpgate.  Oh my god it was horrible.  Both FACbombers destroyed, and they started chewing through the defenders before my fleet woke up and started flying towards the core.  Not a crippling loss, but it cut out ordinance I needed to hit them.  The last missile in my magazine popped the ninth vessel in orbit around their homeworld-- so now I could take station and try to invade.

In the week it took the troopships to arrive, I had the fortuitious delivery of a few more missiles, just about 20 of them but they'd be needed.  The troops dropped, I discovered they had a pretty good advantage numerically-- my ratio was only .8.  So I nuked em from orbit, and the war got under way.  They were still building ships though, and fast-- FACs were coming off their lines, and could drop a load of bombs on my ground forces before  I could pop em.  Frustruating.  This happened several times.  Eventually I cleared their forces, and dealt with the rest of their ships coming in from other systems.  I was reduced to flinging AMMs offensively (all of them, because I had seriously no missiles left at this stage-- both colliers were running overtime to pick up a couple construction cycles up from earth and uhurus and run them back to the front).  When I finally took the planet (required bringing every single unit from every planet I control) I captured 1.4 billion aliens with an intact industry, an order of magnitude more shipyard than I currently operate, doubled my research capacity, and obtained OODLES of research in beams and other defensive techs that I'd been neglecting.  My entire population- human and uhuru-- barely taps out at 1.4 billion spread over 5 worlds.  

Not a bad day, but it took all day to actually accomplish.  And there's gotta be 80 wrecks to chew through.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on August 24, 2011, 11:26:51 AM
Just found my first Black Hole.  Going to be an absolute pain to survey as my Grav survey ships will only have a speed of 200 due to the gravity pull . . . I think I'll be leaving that to last on my survey orders.  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ashery on August 24, 2011, 08:40:48 PM
Just found my first Black Hole.  Going to be an absolute pain to survey as my Grav survey ships will only have a speed of 200 due to the gravity pull . . . I think I'll be leaving that to last on my survey orders.  :)

Heh, at least your survey ship managed to keep a positive speed. You can imagine how my first encounter went based on that comment, heh. Poor bastards took over a month to meet their end.

Edit: Damnit, there goes another. Fortunately it wasn't an experienced crew, but there goes another commander with 100 training skill.

I'm considering adding a boat bay with a small fighter that's jump capable in order to prevent the loss of more survey ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on August 27, 2011, 09:21:54 AM
Oh god, oh man, oh god, oh man

There's a stable wormhole 1 jump from Sol 10 years in!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Culise on August 28, 2011, 12:35:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob/Lee link=topic=3808. msg38970#msg38970 date=1314454914
Oh god, oh man, oh god, oh man

There's a stable wormhole 1 jump from Sol 10 years in!

Heh.   I had something like that, except it was a conventional start, and the other side had a jump gate straight to Earth.

I'm surprised it took as long as it did to reach the obvious conclusion.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: James Patten on August 28, 2011, 04:34:07 PM
36 years into my current game (using a standard start with 2 billion people on Earth).  I now have 12 colonies in 8 systems, one system has 3 planets.  Colonized Mars first off (after terraforming) and that helped kick start my civilian shipping.  Explored all systems immediately around Sol and have been able to put colonies in all of them.  I have 2 planets with more than 500 million, 3 planets with over 100 million.  Earth is down to 1.6 billion, I'm going to have to stop shipping people from Earth soon.  My goal was get the immediate planets up to 500 million each, at which time I'd start concentrating on the second ring of colonization.  My second ring has started, although currently pretty ragged.

I've encountered 2 races and I know from looking at the logs that there's at least three more, plus Precursors (no other spoiler races).  Currently relations are good and improving.  Ran into what I think was the homeworld of one race, haven't found the homeworld of the second.

Civilian shipping has 7 lines, but one line has 89 ships and over 3 million tonnage.  They were around for the Mars-Earth runs. :)  The remaining lines have 20 ships between them  I have jump-capable freighters but the civ's haven't bought any.

I know of 94 systems and have completely surveyed 79 of them.  Trying to explore in a circle out from Earth but it's hard to do.

I've made very good use of fighters in fighting Precursors.  Have had no other conflicts yet.

Technology: Drives are Internal Confinement Fusion, I have Jump Drive Efficiency 6, 25-cm Soft X-ray lasers, Theta shields.  Grav sensor 28, EM Sensor 14, Thermal 18.

Using version 5.2.  Don't want to upgrade because that means I'd have to start over.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: waresky on August 29, 2011, 04:04:22 AM
Heh.   I had something like that, except it was a conventional start, and the other side had a jump gate straight to Earth.

I'm surprised it took as long as it did to reach the obvious conclusion.   

Yeah..u right..

make no mistake ladyes and gentlemans..:)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: James Patten on September 04, 2011, 03:42:03 PM
Now there's a fleet of warships from another race hovering one jump away from one of my colonies.  They're just sitting there, not moving, and they are about 3 jumps away from their own world.  What could they be doing?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: voknaar on September 05, 2011, 03:55:36 AM
Now there's a fleet of warships from another race hovering one jump away from one of my colonies.  They're just sitting there, not moving, and they are about 3 jumps away from their own world.  What could they be doing?

Probably picketing or an ambush. But I dont know if the AI will do that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on September 05, 2011, 11:28:59 PM
The Solar Union has explored the first three of four jumppoints in Sol, all three lead to systems with only small amounts of bodys
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on September 06, 2011, 02:59:43 PM
lost all my laser frigat to a forgotten "open fire", emptied 260 size 2 box launcher for minimal effect and the remains of my fleet are running from an enemy that is 2.5 times as fast. I think I will load my save and pretend that I never though about going into this obivious trap consisting of three planets that are easy to colonisat.

Edit: I dont even need to pretend I know that is a trap, I know thats a trap, my save was at the point Ive seen the enemys FACs, so I offical know there are active aliens and they are much faster than me
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on September 07, 2011, 12:21:32 AM
lost all my laser frigat to a forgotten "open fire", emptied 260 size 2 box launcher for minimal effect and the remains of my fleet are running from an enemy that is 2.5 times as fast. I think I will load my save and pretend that I never though about going into this obivious trap consisting of three planets that are easy to colonisat.

Edit: I dont even need to pretend I know that is a trap, I know thats a trap, my save was at the point Ive seen the enemys FACs, so I offical know there are active aliens and they are much faster than me

Court Martial your Admirals!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: deoved on September 07, 2011, 09:40:20 AM
Better send them to toxic-gas planet penal colony, where their bodys will rot alive!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on September 07, 2011, 09:55:24 AM
Sometimes I'm really forced to believe in fate.
After the Victoria survived her first meeting with the star swarm only by reloading and luck, she was destroyed on her second meeting with them.

Court Martial your Admirals!
But everyone knows that he was send to Mars to investigate the local ruins by Fleet Command, he was in the news, live, only hours be for this disaster.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chuckles73 on September 07, 2011, 01:40:27 PM
We have a pretty good setup in the Solar system. Five minerals (Duranium, Tritanium, Mercassium, Sorium and one that I've forgotten) available in the multi-millions at >0.6 accessibility within the orbit of Jupiter. We've been working on bringing those minerals to market while training up administrators and scientists.

We also recently discovered Jump Points and started exploring nearby systems. Nothing useful within a single jump of Sol, but we're really hoping for a good source of Gallicite soon.

A terraforming fleet is active on Mars, rapidly nearing the oxygenation point necessary to support human life; next on the agenda will be pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere until the world isn't a freezer.

We have yet to discover extraterrestrial life, and thus haven't militarized space yet. (There has been some defense research going on, but generally falling under the heading of "training scientists". The fluff is that it's generally private efforts for basic research. There are perhaps 3 or 4 government-funded research projects (6-15 labs or so), the rest are 1-2 labs per project.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on September 12, 2011, 06:47:07 PM
Investigations of barnard's star opened a new fringe for the empire:  surveying ships entered the Vega system through a preexisting gate, and identified a world perfectly suited for life.  There are no sensors equipped on the vessel, so it immediately withdrew- the Brass believes this is either the homeworld of an alien species, or will be populated heavily by the filthy precursors.  The largest military fleet ever assembled, which includes the veterans of two wars and four brand-new Avitus 24,000 ton Missle Cruisers, three Therion AMM platforms, two heavy bombers carrier groups, have now amassed at the Vega gate.  Whatever awaits on the other side will meet its maker.    
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Necro910 on September 13, 2011, 12:45:22 PM
Started my first game and got nerd LSD'd on the detail of the solar system.  JESUS CHRIST THAT IS A LOT OF ASTEROIDS! And I can put a mine on each and every one of them?! WOOOOOOO *seizure*

Anyways. . .  moving on.  Why is the star swarm always censored? It's a bloody game option you see on your first play.  Everyone can see it in the New Game screen! Whatever.  I'll accept it as generic fan-base running gag.

Quote from: Beersatron link=topic=3808. msg39500#msg39500 date=1315372892
Court Martial your Admirals!
Screw that, send them in on unarmed 1,000 ton ships with only enough fuel to ALMOST make it to the trap.  Execution by firing squad, my friends.  Indeed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dutchling on September 13, 2011, 01:32:03 PM
Necro, der frakk, why is everyone in here from bay 12 >.>

Anyway, at the display 2 tab on the system screen (the one with the gazilion asteroids :P) you ca

EDIT: something weird happened. It's probably a signal from a not-so-divine being. I don't think it is safe for me to finish my sentence.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ashery on September 13, 2011, 03:45:30 PM
DF and Aurora both favor mechanical complexity over pretty graphics, so it's not much of a surprise that many people here have been active in the DF community at one time or another.

As far as to the spoiler comment: I've always seen it as more about specific aspects than their simple existence.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on September 13, 2011, 04:15:16 PM
As far as to the spoiler comment: I've always seen it as more about specific aspects than their simple existence.

I've been playing for months, and I've never encountered the swarm.  Everything I know about them is from the forum, so I'm glad they get spoilered now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on September 14, 2011, 06:14:33 AM
I've been playing for months, and I've never encountered the swarm.  Everything I know about them is from the forum, so I'm glad they get spoilered now.


I've been playing over 3 years and only met them twice.  I've seen the other 'bugbears' of the game more times than them. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on September 18, 2011, 03:57:42 PM
Ooo hey I found some actual star swarm now, and engaged them.  There was a 60kt mothership trawling the homeworld of the Danis Imperium-- located about 8 jumps out from the edge of my empire... quite a haul.  They are not much of an imperium anymore-- they possess no ships and no shipyards.  After liberating them from the horrors of the swarm... my imperial guard is enroute to further liberate them.  They appear to not have much ground forces (C56).  However, in neighboring Eta Cassiopeia, a MUCH LARGER swarm vessel is moving around.  This is horrifying, as my fleet has no access to missile reloads.  I've gone to work for a few hours, but I intend to transit in, and launch a bunch of missiles and see what I can do with my heavy bombers.  Unfortunately, I left my other carrier group for rearguard defense... while 80 missiles with size 14 warheads penetrated the shields of the smaller vessel and caused a fluid leak (one fluid leak) , I am rather worried about my chances with a much larger vessel.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on September 25, 2011, 04:02:31 PM
Just finished surveying another system which turned out to have 1 terraformable planet and 16 jump points in total.  And this 2 jumps from Sol. 

In total I have found 58 systems so far and have still not ventured more than 3 jumps from Sol in any direction.  Never had this many systems this close to Sol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MattyD on October 02, 2011, 04:02:42 PM
So I'm at 2091 and things are really developing. It took him years, his marriage and his reputation but Jacob Wallace finally managed to push through his genetics research to an actual neoHomo candidate. An unsuitable iceworld on Groombridge 1618 was selected and Genetic Modification Centres established there for the poor colonists from Ross 154's planet Winter (conditions there being something of a taster for those on 'Conversion'). The Icemen were born and although frantic efforts have been made by the Neo Church on Earth to limit their potential, numbers have grown and there are three worlds run by this new species.

This is the playground for my imagination. I am slowly building up tension between the two species, for instance there are 2 ideal colonisable Icemen worlds that are off limits because they would require passage through the Sol system. I have also limited resources that the Icemen send back to humanity. All this tension is leading elements within the Neo Church to advocate a more militarist strategy, despite the Church's pledge of pacifism to protect mankind from a new Scourge (Trans Newtonian materials, when used, fry all non specially shielded electronic components worldwide - thats why the starting population is so low in 2025).

So all is good.....

No.

Captain Peter Falkirk, commander of Shale II Class GEV Alabaster.

What do I tell his family?

What do I tell the families of the 25 crew left to die in lifepods in LHS 2849?

What do I tell 2 billion people about the lack of any possible response? I'm sure that the old 'I'm waiting until Gauss Rate 5 before building a navy' is not going to cut it.

There are factions on Conversion smiling at news of this tragedy. The Icemen lie in the path of this alien threat. The Neo Church will have no other way out than to massively industrialize and militarize the Icemen.

And once the threat is dealt with, there is always the nightmare for those back on Sol. Scientist Wallace has almost completed research of a new genotype - the Blazers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Din182 on October 02, 2011, 07:20:30 PM
I've been playing for exactly one year in my current campaign. I started with double population. I used my starting research to get good engines, particle beams and gauss cannons. I went out exploring the systems next to Sol, and the best overall system for colonization has a stable wormhole in it! So I sent my starting fleet to picket it, and some Invaders popped out. My ships obliterated the hostiles, and I only suffered severe damage to my sensor ship. It won't be able to be repaired for another 1.5 years due to all my shipyards building ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on October 10, 2011, 12:14:20 PM
Anyways. . .  moving on.  Why is the star swarm always censored? It's a bloody game option you see on your first play.  Everyone can see it in the New Game screen! Whatever.  I'll accept it as generic fan-base running gag.

It's not the existence of the Star Swarm we wish to keep hidden, it's details of their ships and tactics.  For example, there is no need to spoiler tag 'Ran into the Swarm one jump out from Earth; got my butt kicked.'  Whereas we do ask you to spoiler tag 'Ran into sixty meson-armed 800-ton FACs one jump from earth - thought I could handle them until the Queen showed up with her massive, quickly-recharging shield.'

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on October 14, 2011, 12:39:01 PM
My longest aurora campaign so far is a Sol start now 160 years into the game. It's still in 5.42 and I haven't played it for ages, but just looked back into that db. I actually have a couple of old freighters going between Sol and Alpha Centauri that are 106 years old. And surprisingly bug free - Aside from a couple NPR battles that required auto turns I haven't run into a single error message or game delay as of date.
Civilian designs don't need maintenance, but a century old freighter with 25k cargo space and amazin 2000 km/s still doing its job in the navy is quite a relic. I like to imagine it as a semi-museum or training route for the younger officers to get customed to the lower tech that's still used in various dead-end colony worlds.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: shadenight123 on October 14, 2011, 03:53:23 PM
My longest aurora campaign so far is a Sol start now 160 years into the game. It's still in 5.42 and I haven't played it for ages, but just looked back into that db. I actually have a couple of old freighters going between Sol and Alpha Centauri that are 106 years old. And surprisingly bug free - Aside from a couple NPR battles that required auto turns I haven't run into a single error message or game delay as of date.
Civilian designs don't need maintenance, but a century old freighter with 25k cargo space and amazin 2000 km/s still doing its job in the navy is quite a relic. I like to imagine it as a semi-museum or training route for the younger officers to get customed to the lower tech that's still used in various dead-end colony worlds.

"congratulation recruit! you have been assigned to the OLD FAITHFUL"
"what? no that ship is centuries old!"
"now now, stop whining and get moving, those water fission reactors aren't going to work themselves alone!"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on October 17, 2011, 12:51:31 AM
A troop transport carrying Engineers to an alien outpost got blasted by precursors in a system that I THOUGHT I had secured... Unfortunately, the fleet was undergoing its' first modernization program at the time(This is my first REAL game of Aurora, 37 years in and loving it).
Fortunately, that was two years ago, and 7th fleet's command ship,Hellena, just detected the offending vessels 380m kms out. Launching fighters now - Finally, a chance to test out my carriers' strike groups.

108 Strength 4 nuclear detonations on target (Which is a 100% hit rate (3 missiles per fighter, 36 fighters).... And no sign of any internal damage.

Time to close the range, I suppose.

One day and 50 strength 4 detonations later... 2 new wrecks. Salvage ships en route. Strangely, the hostile vessels made no attempt to return fire, put up any sort of point defense at all, or even to attempt to fleet. They just sat there and ignored the nukes going off outside.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on October 21, 2011, 11:52:52 AM
What's going on on my battlefield?

Spoiler: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/Rammed.jpg

Good question... I was wondering that, myself.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: user-unknown on October 22, 2011, 04:45:48 AM
What's going on on my battlefield?

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/Rammed.jpg)

Good question... I was wondering that, myself.

... I think that is classed as a spoiler around here?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on October 22, 2011, 05:35:17 AM
... I think that is classed as a spoiler around here?

If I knew what it was, I would know whether or not to agree...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on October 22, 2011, 10:00:29 AM
If I knew what it was, I would know whether or not to agree...

Generally speaking, if something is mysterious, nasty, and hasn't been seen before, that's a pretty good indication that it's a spoiler.  We try to put such things in spoiler tags so that others can be surprised and/or caught with their pants down too.  Based on your reaction in the post where you discussed the encounter in question, plus your comment quoted here, I'd say it qualifies.

Note:  As someone (I think it was Brian) said a while back: it's not the names/existence of the baddies that we're trying to hide, rather it's their design philosophies, weapons strategies, and strategies for countering them based on that bad-guy-specific knowledge.  For example, the fact that a bad guy might hit you with a ramming attack at all and the fact that there's something huge out there that can do massive amounts of damage when ramming both fall into this category

EDIT:  AHA!  It was Father Tim that said it and it was only a few posts upthread from here.

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on October 22, 2011, 09:38:08 PM
Should I delete my signature, then? Or spoiler-tag it?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on October 22, 2011, 11:02:45 PM
Should I delete my signature, then? Or spoiler-tag it?

That was what I was trying to gently suggest, and I think what the OP had in mind :)

Thanks,
John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on October 23, 2011, 01:53:47 AM
Unfortunately, spoiler tags don't seem to work in signatures, so I had to delete it. :(

Can't seem to hide the image with spoiler tags, either... so I just linked to it instead.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on October 23, 2011, 08:19:13 AM
Blue emu, don't worry about it. If anything your 'spoiler' sig makes me want to explore more
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on October 28, 2011, 08:35:54 PM
Started a new game, sent a geosurvey ship over to Wolf 359 to look for minerals. A month after arriving, some strange aliens came out of nowhere and swarmed them with 30 or so thermal sig 160 ships and destroyed it with kinetic/energy weapons. Welp, time to focus on missile tech and blow the smeg out of them a few years from now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on October 28, 2011, 09:43:52 PM
Lol, I just had a task group vanish into a spatial anomaly (accidentally deleted it)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on October 31, 2011, 03:18:13 PM
All my scientists and officers seem to be having health issues and I've lost about three officers already on the same team on the same bloody asteroid while they were out in the rings gaining some experience. I swear, Asteroid #2 is a death maze or rock and minerals.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on October 31, 2011, 04:36:00 PM
I discovered two alien races adjacent to a system adjacent to one of mine. That is, 3 races have a no-man's land between them, and I think they're both at war. It's my first time having successful contact with aliens, and I'm favouring the one with better DR. Finishing up my first battle fleet and I'll send it to no-man's land to keep order, and possibly attack the other aliens if I feel like causing trouble.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on October 31, 2011, 05:56:34 PM
Force them to cooperate and turn them into the inter-stellar version of Korea.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zed 6 on October 31, 2011, 06:20:36 PM
All my scientists and officers seem to be having health issues and I've lost about three officers already on the same team on the same bloody asteroid while they were out in the rings gaining some experience. I swear, Asteroid #2 is a death maze or rock and minerals.

Darn Redshirts
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on October 31, 2011, 09:54:05 PM
I have no idea how to create decent military ship designs. If I was in that position, I'd be getting stomped by enemy ships half my tech level.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 01, 2011, 08:20:00 PM
I must say, I really love how much extra I'm RPing my current game.     Minor spoiler for my Terran Empire fiction, but Earth just had its first resource crisis way ahead of schedule.   I have to wait a few years to even convert more industry to TN tech   I must really be in the mindset, because my first response was to look for who was to blame!  >:(  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on November 02, 2011, 12:34:50 PM
And now I'm researching weapons tech and sensors like my life depends on it. First time in this game I leave the first system SO EXCITED
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 03, 2011, 03:19:48 PM
A character I've made out to be a pompous showboat who nobody likes just boldly led humanity's first extra-solar mission into a blackhole system and got it swallowed up.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on November 03, 2011, 04:10:00 PM
Name your first battleship after him when you get to that point. Then have it go through the same system and live (just to rub it in).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 03, 2011, 04:23:51 PM
I might do just that.  The thing is, the difference is only -500, so the death is agonizingly slow (in fact, technically he hasn't died yet).  In fact, my next designed ship will probably be enough to tackle the system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on November 03, 2011, 05:38:26 PM
How slow is it? Do you have time to build a tractor ship to go rescue them? =D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 03, 2011, 05:51:26 PM
It took roughly 4-5 months.  I don't have tractor technology, as I'm only at "Generation 1" ship technology.  In fact, the class of ship that got sucked in is my fasted ship  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on November 04, 2011, 12:48:58 AM
I might do just that.  The thing is, the difference is only -500, so the death is agonizingly slow (in fact, technically he hasn't died yet).  In fact, my next designed ship will probably be enough to tackle the system.

There was a Poul Anderson short story about this (getting stuck in the event horizon of a black hole and taking forever to die) - don't remember the title :)

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 04, 2011, 12:55:19 AM
Welp, I found some NPRs who spawned on a weird planet. Namely, this planet has all 11 minerals, yet the game is telling me it's a gas giant. I was wondering why I hadn't been able to find their homeworld...

So now I'm allied with a race which is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

The good news is that one of the moons of their 'home planet' had a colony cost of 0!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on November 04, 2011, 01:36:58 AM
There was a Poul Anderson short story about this (getting stuck in the event horizon of a black hole and taking forever to die) - don't remember the title :)

John

Do you perhaps mean Frederik Pohl? Something similar happens in the novel Gateway.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on November 04, 2011, 04:19:22 AM
There was a Poul Anderson short story about this (getting stuck in the event horizon of a black hole and taking forever to die) - don't remember the title :)

John

Wasn't that the basis of the movie "The Black Hole"?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chrislocke2000 on November 04, 2011, 04:48:35 AM
Quote
Wasn't that the basis of the movie "The Black Hole"?

Ah now that brings back some great childhood memories, what was the name of the beaten up floating robot the lead character got to fly around on?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 04, 2011, 07:26:10 AM
There was a Poul Anderson short story about this (getting stuck in the event horizon of a black hole and taking forever to die) - don't remember the title :)

John

I vaguely remember that.  But anywho, last night the ship was finally lost.  April 4th 2044 entered system, August 10th finally destroyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zed 6 on November 04, 2011, 08:14:25 AM
Ah now that brings back some great childhood memories, what was the name of the beaten up floating robot the lead character got to fly around on?

V.I.N.CENT, Old B.O.B. and Maximillian were the robots.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on November 04, 2011, 04:15:10 PM
The commission of the first Dwarf class mining ship.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 04, 2011, 09:34:15 PM
The commission of the first Dwarf class mining ship.

I hope it menaces with spikes of Duranium and is adorned with hanging rings of Corbomite!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on November 04, 2011, 09:57:11 PM
Attention! Person012345 has created masterpiece!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on November 05, 2011, 04:49:03 AM
I read that post earlier and didn't get the significance at all.

I see what I missed, now.  Bravo!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on November 05, 2011, 10:46:32 AM
Aw yeah, I sure do love thinking Im putting the finishing touches on my ships until I realize I forgot to make a jump drive. Atleast I didn't start retooling the ship yards yet, so no harm done there. Also, I thought about putting shields and the scout frigates, but they aren't really worth it yet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on November 06, 2011, 10:46:59 PM
Do you perhaps mean Frederik Pohl? Something similar happens in the novel Gateway.

Nope, "Kyrie" by Anderson.

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on November 06, 2011, 10:54:51 PM
What's going on in my empire?

I've just figured out how to use a 1,000-ton FAC to tow a 16,000-ton Heavy Cruiser at 55,470 kps (that's 18.5% of light-speed).

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/Hyperdrive.png)

I'm working out some new battle-tactics now. I suspect that this technique will be handy for Beam combat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on November 07, 2011, 05:40:10 AM
Nope, "Kyrie" by Anderson.

John

Sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out.  :)

Also, Blue Emu, that is both disgusting and awesome!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Five on November 07, 2011, 09:18:53 AM
I just finished GV surveying one of the systems next to Sol to find it has 10 JP's...and i wormhole just showed up in that same system, and is commencing to pounding my fleet there as they run for the Sol gate.

-Five
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on November 07, 2011, 10:43:35 AM
Today i learned that active sensors are not beam fire controls
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on November 07, 2011, 10:25:02 PM
Today i learned that active sensors are not beam fire controls

LOL

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Five on November 08, 2011, 09:35:14 AM
Had an interesting...lol... oh crap moment last night when i realized my AMM's had a strength 0 warhead thanks to my low tech and me not paying close enough attention. My lasers and puny shields are barely keeping things at bay(thankfully small numbers of incoming) with very few leakers while i run like a scared little girl.

-Five
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 08, 2011, 02:17:25 PM
Two of the three jump points in my new game have led to Precursor-occupied nebulae and and the third to a colonisable system, and the two jump points there lead to one Level 11 (but empty) nebula and another occupied system. Time to gear up to assault the Level 1 nebula occupation. Sol also has a ridiculously low amount of minerals, so it'll be interesting to outfit a good enough number of warships to take out the enemy!

Edit: What a drag, the colonisable system doesn't have any minerals to speak of either...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chrislocke2000 on November 10, 2011, 07:18:38 AM
Managed to loose three squadrons of ten fighters each to the precursors last night. I blame Steve for distracting me with looking through all the stuff on Aurora FTL and trying to come up with some thoughts as to how fighters might remain viable!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Gidoran on November 10, 2011, 10:06:05 AM
As of last night, Second Fleet took pretty severe losses during the initial stages of the pacification of 40 Eridani.

The order of battle was:
1 Monitor: 14 15cm near-ultraviolet lasers, 8k tonnage total.
2 Patrol Boats: 3 15cm N-UV lasers, 3k tonnage.
2 Destroyer Escorts: 4 triple-mount 10cm N-UV turrets, intended for point blank anti-missile defense. 8k tons
2 Frigates: 30 counter-missile tubes spread across 6 launchers for distance AMD. Also 8k tons.
3 Guided Missile Frigates: Primary Ship Combatant, has 4 launchers spread across 4 fire controls, at size 6. Surprisingly effective as the AI can only fire at one salvo per 5 sec interval, so by having 12 salvos it eats up a lot of anti-missile defense without losing much. You guessed right: 8k tons.
1 Frigate Leader: Sensor Ship + Flag, and surprisingly also 8k tons.
4 Escort Carriers: 2000 hangar space, intended as a stopgap measure until I can get bigger ships originally but it ended up being pretty useful all around since they're cheap, quick, and hard to detect. Finally, these are... 8k tons.

Of those, the FFGs are completely tapped dry on missiles and defenseless, the Flagship was one second there and the next /gone/, one escort carrier bit a salvo of 125 missiles from a wave of FACs, both DE are gone, the Monitor was reduced to a crippled wreck bleeding atmo and corpses, and a patrol boat learned why it's a bad idea to charge a 20k ton particle beam ship when you're effectively unarmored. Even though I've got reinforcements en route, losing a third of the fleet and having my visual range reduced to a fourth of what it was is incredibly painful. I think I've managed to take out their entire fleet, though, but I'm honestly not sure about that. Even if I have, I'm going to have to either destroy their shipyards and rebuild them when I take the territory, or park the incoming pair of monitors on their planet and hope that 168 burst damage will be enough to kill anything that comes out of them while the First Pacification Division is in transit.

Then again when you consider this is the third race I've pacified and incorporated, maybe it was about time for me to get my nose bloody.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on November 10, 2011, 11:46:05 AM
"Pointless extermination? What do you mean? I'm doing... A preemptive strike!"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Gidoran on November 11, 2011, 07:43:32 AM
"Pointless extermination? What do you mean? I'm doing... A preemptive strike!"

Naw, naw... How am I going to protect them from the Invaders when they're not part of my glorious empire? Obviously their governments can't do it like I can, so they need to be protected from themselves as well as outside threats.

Outside threats besides me, I mean.


Edit: For derpery, forgot a spoiler tag. This is what I get for writing a post before caffiene.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 11, 2011, 08:43:03 AM
Precursors. Precursors everywhere.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on November 11, 2011, 10:11:13 AM
Transiting my first jump point into a system called Athens...which turned out to house a hostile (and also my first) NPR. 1k ton Little Wolf class FACs capable of 12500km/s and each armed with 13 ASMs with size 13 warheads. Within 2 minutes of transiting, Battle Fleet destroyed them....at the cost of my Destroyer Leader..which was also my jump tender.

Now I am tempted to start a Native American empire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 11, 2011, 03:03:18 PM
Sounds like a spoiler race! And what do you mean by Native American empire?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on November 11, 2011, 03:18:30 PM
And what do you mean by Native American empire?

Quote
Little Wolf class FACs

... sounds like a Native American class designation.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on November 11, 2011, 04:54:25 PM
For the first time ever, I've just successfully cleared out a precursor infestation! All glory to the human race!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on November 11, 2011, 08:00:45 PM
So i was mounting my first ground invasion ever - of a low-tech NPR 1 jump from Sol.   Things almost went swimmingly, but I frittered away a brigade trying to board ships that still had active engines.  So unfortunately I didnt have enough combat strength left to force a surrender.     I didn't want to paste the world, they represent no serious threat at this point (all combatants destroyed, no source of minerals).   But they still had some AMM PDCs so I didn't want to hang around in orbit- my cruisers armor was getting seriously degraded.   So I left the three brigades onplanet and pulled back to recruit more men.  Unfortunately. . .  thats when my engineers managed to crack open 5 vaults of robotic soldiers in a single week on Mars.   I have 5 garrison battalions and 10 engineers onplanet but they are getting overwhelmed.   I dropped a couple assault battalions from Earth but it looks like im going to have to either nuke Xanadu (Npr homeworld) and pick up the brigades there or nuke the robot soldiers on mars.  Can I even do that? Heh.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sublight on November 17, 2011, 12:38:16 PM
"Sir, I think we just made them angry."

Trying out my first multiple player controlled races game I created a Martian vs Venisian conventional start scenario. The Martians decided the best way to ensure dominance would be a preemptive drone strike to cripple the Venisians. 40x 300 million km self-guided strength 8 drones later and the Venisians are 'crippled' by all of a 3% production radiation penalty, 2 lost PDCs, and maybe 10% lost industry/population. It'll be another 9 months before the planets align again, and the Venisians have nearly finished their background work for antimissile missiles...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on November 24, 2011, 09:32:30 PM
Just moved my 1st and 2nd cruiser squadrons (2 missile, 2 laser escort, 1 scout/command, 1 gunboat carrier (3 1kt corvettes), and 1 support/jump vessel each) just out of what I believed to be the maximum range of the AMMs of a known precursor anti-missile station. My outbound wave of right around 200 ASMs, which I put small EM and TH sensors on (Very good idea) has just detected an inbound salvo of 64 size missiles... traveling at over 43,000km/s.


I'm a little scared. Now to see if my immediate course reversal upon launching my initial wave will pay off (I detected a res 1 active sensor and launched early, assuming the worst. I was correct.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mormota on November 26, 2011, 07:21:39 PM
I am building my 3rd generation of ships, and when I ordered 550 Abwehr-2 AMMs and 555 Krieg-2 ASMs, I noticed something massively weird.  An Abwehr-2 takes 210, while a Krieg-2 takes 21 tons of Uridium.  I was shocked, checked the mining tab, projected usage of Uridium is around 128k tons.  I go to the missile design window, however, replicate their design, and it doesn't show it'd need Uridium.  My missiles don't have sensors and are size 2 and 3, respectively.

On another note, I built 30 fighters, but they keep having maintenance failures.  My shipyards can't repair them, and their carriers are still a long time away.  Any idea?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on November 26, 2011, 08:49:02 PM
I am building my 3rd generation of ships, and when I ordered 550 Abwehr-2 AMMs and 555 Krieg-2 ASMs, I noticed something massively weird.  An Abwehr-2 takes 210, while a Krieg-2 takes 21 tons of Uridium.  I was shocked, checked the mining tab, projected usage of Uridium is around 128k tons.  I go to the missile design window, however, replicate their design, and it doesn't show it'd need Uridium.  My missiles don't have sensors and are size 2 and 3, respectively.

A rare but known bug.

On another note, I built 30 fighters, but they keep having maintenance failures.  My shipyards can't repair them, and their carriers are still a long time away.  Any idea?

Build some Airfield PDCs to hold the Fighters until your carriers are ready.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mormota on November 27, 2011, 04:15:31 AM
Quote from: blue emu link=topic=3808. msg43769#msg43769 date=1322362142
A rare but known bug.

Does that mean I can't use those missiles? I mean, aside from spending 128k tons of Uridium on them.

Quote from: blue emu link=topic=3808. msg43769#msg43769 date=1322362142
Build some Airfield PDCs to hold the Fighters until your carriers are ready.

I can't see them in the build menu.  Are they a special sort of installation, or do I have to design them somehow?

Anyways, this bodes ill for my empire.  My only non-missile tech that is worth anything is meson technology, but even that is not very good.  I also have some short-ranged lasers for my fighters, but neither of these two is capable enough to mount as offensive weapons on cruisers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on November 27, 2011, 04:42:38 AM
I can't see them in the build menu.  Are they a special sort of installation, or do I have to design them somehow?

You design PDCs the same way you design ships in the class design window. There's a dropdown at the top of the window that lets you switch between PDC and ship designs.

Then just make a PDC design with a bunch of hangar decks so the fighters can land on it, and maybe some maintenance to repair them, and you can build your fancy new airfield-style PDCs with regular industrial output.

 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on November 27, 2011, 04:43:02 AM
The bug simply raises the costs, as far as I know. You're safe to use those missiles, but they were expensive to build. Copying and re-researching the new design without the costs is a simple way to fix it. Obsolete the old expensive design and build the bugfixed ones.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mormota on November 27, 2011, 06:16:12 AM
I see, thanks!

I wonder, is it a bit slow if I'm only making my first extra-solar colony 51 years in? I have huge amounts of minerals in Sol, and I encountered what I think to be Precursors in my first system.  There were also 3 wrecks there, and I accidentally turned wreck display off, so you can imagine how scared I was when I thought those wrecks disappeared.  That made me design my first generation of warships.  (Well, technically second, because I made a light meson-armed corvette to satisfy the Martian colony's need for protection. ) After finding the system to be empty, I fired a few missiles on the planet where the wrecks were – and still are, thankfully – then ran away.  Now I've designed my third generation of warships, consisting of a carrier, fighters, a command ship with lots of sensors, a cruiser and an escort.  I wonder if they're good enough though.

Let me post the designs.

Code: [Select]
Baden class Escort    5 100 tons     412 Crew     1282.5 BP      TCS 102  TH 500  EM 0
4901 km/s     Armour 3-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 10
Maint Life 3.43 Years     MSP 1314    AFR 104%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 170    5YR 2557    Max Repair 280 MSP
Magazine 550   

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E4 (4)    Power 125    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 125    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100 000 Litres    Range 88.2 billion km   (208 days at full power)

Abwehr-2 Launcher (5)    Missile Size 2    Rate of Fire 10
Abwehr-2 Fire Control (1)     Range 92.4m km    Resolution 1
Abwehr-2 (274)  Speed: 62 500 km/s   End: 4.8m    Range: 18m km   WH: 1    Size: 2    TH: 833 / 500 / 250

Abwehr-2 Active Sensor (1)     GPS 280     Range 30.8m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Emden class Carrier    13 250 tons     947 Crew     2196 BP      TCS 265  TH 750  EM 0
2830 km/s     Armour 5-49     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 65.76
Maint Life 3.87 Years     MSP 5621    AFR 234%    IFR 3.3%    1YR 594    5YR 8912    Max Repair 480 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 4250 tons     

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E4 (6)    Power 125    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 125    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300 000 Litres    Range 101.9 billion km   (416 days at full power)

Triple Meson 320 Bereich-Abwehr Turret (2x3)    Range 320 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 48-15     RM 32    ROF 20        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Meson 320 Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Strike Group
10x Bremse Fighter   Speed: 9036 km/s    Size: 8.3

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Bremse class Fighter    415 tons     15 Crew     122.8 BP      TCS 8.3  TH 75  EM 0
9036 km/s     Armour 1-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 83%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 16    5YR 244    Max Repair 56 MSP

FTR Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E400 (1)    Power 75    Fuel Use 4000%    Signature 75    Armour 0    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 15 000 Litres    Range 1.6 billion km   (50 hours at full power)

Fighter Laser Cannon (1)    Range 120 000km     TS: 9036 km/s     Power 4-4     RM 3    ROF 5        4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fighter Laser Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 120 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17
Bremse reactor (1)     Total Power Output 5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Prinz Eugen class Cruiser    5 750 tons     421 Crew     1244.5 BP      TCS 115  TH 500  EM 0
4347 km/s     Armour 10-28     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 15
Maint Life 4.41 Years     MSP 2271    AFR 132%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 189    5YR 2830    Max Repair 280 MSP
Magazine 555   

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E4 (4)    Power 125    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 125    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100 000 Litres    Range 78.2 billion km   (208 days at full power)

Krieg-2 Launcher (5)    Missile Size 3    Rate of Fire 15
Krieg-2 Fire Control (1)     Range 83.2m km    Resolution 100
Krieg-2 (185)  Speed: 20 800 km/s   End: 60m    Range: 74.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 3    TH: 145 / 87 / 43

Krieg-2 Active Sensor (1)     GPS 28000     Range 308.0m km    Resolution 100

ECCM-1 (1)         Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I am still researching passive and active sensors for the command ship, but it will have an approximate range of 150 million/billion kilometers.  I can't remember which.  Probably million.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on November 27, 2011, 07:10:29 AM
Million, and you should probably consider trying to lighten the load on that fighter. 400+ tons is HUGE.

The balance point on speed between equal tech FAC and fighter engines is a 1000 ton FAC will have the same speed as a 300 ton fighter. IMO at much over 300 tons you should seriously consider carrying FACs instead for the added speed/payload/range.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on November 27, 2011, 07:19:43 AM
With conventional starts I usually spend 50+ years alone in Sol without even probing for jump points - but I'm a total turtle, so ... xD

For the designs you might want to open a thread in the bureau of ship design section instead of posting them here.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on November 29, 2011, 03:48:59 PM
I decided to turn on Invaders for the first time in my 63 year game. I have 6 discovered NPRs (two being those legendary non-TN races with boatloads of low-tech infantry) and atleast one of the others is facing a bad mineral crisis. I have the Swarm (Is it condemned to one queen/system or can there be more created from wrecks? AFAIK there are only 2 systems with the Swarm yet there are 9 Queens and a Matriarch (Is there anything special about the Matriarch, or is it just an over-glorified Queen?)) on and they seem to be doing really nothing, since they populate backwater systems and no NPR has the tech (or the intelligence :P) to kill them off. I have the Precursors on, who, unlike the Swarm, are causing the NPRs some real trouble. Might as well be stepping into a nuclear minefield when an NPR enters Precursor turf.

Anyway, if worse comes to worst I'm just going to bite the plasma torpedo and deal with it. This game is slowing down a lot (note to self: put a limit <1000 on the systems next time) and getting quite boring.

Oh, and about the Swarm:
WHAT THE frakk 67 workers and 700+ soldiers?!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on November 30, 2011, 01:06:54 AM
Backwater systems or not, wipe the Swarm and your movement calculations should decrease significiantly =)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on November 30, 2011, 11:16:32 AM
Just transited into my first Nebula... a level 21 beast.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: lavenders2 on December 01, 2011, 12:40:14 AM
ATM, nothing.  It has been a year, and nothing has really happened.  Made my first missile ship, surveyed some places, that's about it really :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on December 01, 2011, 02:49:00 PM
4 more-or-less friendly NPRs, scattered sightings of Precursors which aren't SUPER hostile, no Swarm sightings. Still developing effective CIWS. My 30-yo laser corvettes haven't seen a lick of actions. Once the CIWS is developed, I'll begin launch of my missile-fleet, and I'll storm into Kigali, a Sol-adjacent system which has a precursor presence.

Colonisation of Porto-Novo A's two ColCostx2 planets is proceeding apace, though unfortunately, the ruins on both planets (one has a TL5 ruined city that's given me some interesting tech like Salvage 1000 modules and highly-advance meson cannons) have not yielded up any alien artifacts (the commodity). Once I have at least one of them ideal, I'll colonise the two x2 planets in orbit of the B component.

Neutronium shortages on Earth are a pain, but I have plentiful sources of all other minerals, and Porto-Novo is quite rich.

I'm sad not to have found any gas giants, so Sorium will be a pain in the next 20 years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on December 10, 2011, 05:44:13 AM
This may not be a source of unmeasurable riches, but it's by far the best asteroid asteroid I've found to date.

Boron-A Asteroid #25
Duranium 524,288  Acc: 0.8
Neutronium 207,936  Acc: 0.6
Corbomite 5,184  Acc: 0.8
Boronide 518,400  Acc: 0.6
Vendarite 256  Acc: 0.8
Sorium 82,944  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 246,016  Acc: 1
Corundium 92,416  Acc: 0.8
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on December 11, 2011, 08:07:31 PM
It's been over 50 years and I have yet to have a single power/propulsion scientist. Meanwhile I've researched almost everything in Logistics, my sensors are of a very high level, I'm working on Xi shields, and I can have humans who are good in 2.04 gravity pretty soon. Jeez, what I wouldn't give for ANYONE who could research me some missile engines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on December 11, 2011, 08:13:56 PM
You could put someone who isn't specialized in propulsion on it, or are you limiting yourself for RP purposes?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on December 11, 2011, 11:40:51 PM
Well, it's mostly an annoyance that I've gone so long and not had a single one. Also, since I mostly build missile-based fleets, my navy's far behind where it should be. It also annoys me that someone not specialised takes so long to research even small things worth 8000 RP. But I'm gonna suck it up, I s'pose.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on December 12, 2011, 11:33:20 AM
You could always build a ton of academies, you tend to get a lot of officers that way.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: PTTG on December 12, 2011, 12:43:31 PM
The RNG is really bad about giving you useful researchers. Generally it picks specialties like this:

50% Biology
20% Defensive Systems
10% Sensors
10% Energy Weapons
5% Construction/Production
4% Missile Weapons
1% Power/Propulsion

Oh, and accidental deaths:

1% Biology
4% Defensive Systems
5% Sensors
10% Energy Weapons
10% Construction/Production
20% Missile Weapons
50% Power/Propulsion

In related news, I had a (actually kind of useful in this case) sensor researcher (20% level 5)with a terminal disease die in an accident at exactly the same time as a new sensors (25% level 5) showed up. I figure it was his protegee looking for a promotion.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 01, 2012, 04:46:14 PM
FINALLY had first contact in my game (the one for my fiction forum right now).  Sure, it wasn't TOO long a time, but I'd raised the percentage chance and found a ton of good planets for NPRs, yet none had races.  This planet was probably around the 8th or so suitable world...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MrAnderson on January 05, 2012, 06:27:13 PM
I am still doing prelogue/setup stages of my most recent fiction.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 05, 2012, 07:38:42 PM
Don't worry, as a few updates will prove from now, I'm an idiot  ::)

I forgot MFCs had resolution, basically... I won't say yet what exactly that got me for my troubles, though x.x   :-[
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jaybud4 on January 06, 2012, 02:57:04 AM
My newest campaign features me picking an incredibly stupid location for a homeworld. 
We embarked upon a quaternary system.    What I didn't foresee is that the homeworld I chose, being on the third star in the system, was 15,000 AU from the center. 
Naturally, all of the jump points are.  .  .    in the center

We're currently teching up engines like mad so we can actually get out of this cluster of rocks.    Fortunately, there's a lot of resources over here. 

EDIT: I should mention -- Hyperdrive won't work; the main star's exclusion radius is the entire 15000 AU.

I'm considering teching up to tractors and towing fuel storage dummy "ships".
They should stay relevant, considering that the third star orbits every 1. 5 million years.
(Orbital period: 1458893)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 06, 2012, 12:00:39 PM
Wow.  I'd like to see the system data for that place!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 07, 2012, 02:50:31 PM
Don't worry, as a few updates will prove from now, I'm an idiot  ::)

I forgot MFCs had resolution, basically... I won't say yet what exactly that got me for my troubles, though x.x   :-[

And I've just put the battle report up in my fiction area.  Close to 3000 words of prose, quite the workout.  I haven't written anything like that since September I think x.x

For those that don't want to read, total defeat.  100% of my mobile combat power gone in the span of two minutes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 07, 2012, 04:55:57 PM
My newest campaign features me picking an incredibly stupid location for a homeworld. 
We embarked upon a quaternary system.    What I didn't foresee is that the homeworld I chose, being on the third star in the system, was 15,000 AU from the center. 
Naturally, all of the jump points are.  .  .    in the center
Do you have any gas giants with your star, and closer to the center.  If you do there are points associated (lp) which can be used as inter system jump points. 

Good Luck

Brian
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jaybud4 on January 07, 2012, 05:52:58 PM
Quote from: Brian link=topic=3808. msg45202#msg45202 date=1325976957
Do you have any gas giants with your star, and closer to the center.   If you do there are points associated (lp) which can be used as inter system jump points.  

Good Luck

Brian
I restarted that campaign pretty much immediately after that posting, because no, I did not.
It certainly was an interesting system, though.

Right now I'm working out orbital habitats to establish a planetary presence in a system that has pretty much no gravity, but a TON of resources.   I want to make the system self-sustaining, so it's slow going due to needing millions of capacity ;P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2012, 08:13:41 AM
The RNG is really bad about giving you useful researchers. Generally it picks specialties like this:

50% Biology
20% Defensive Systems
10% Sensors
10% Energy Weapons
5% Construction/Production
4% Missile Weapons
1% Power/Propulsion

Oh, and accidental deaths:

1% Biology
4% Defensive Systems
5% Sensors
10% Energy Weapons
10% Construction/Production
20% Missile Weapons
50% Power/Propulsion

In related news, I had a (actually kind of useful in this case) sensor researcher (20% level 5)with a terminal disease die in an accident at exactly the same time as a new sensors (25% level 5) showed up. I figure it was his protegee looking for a promotion.

I'm sure people are aware but if you get a really bad crop of starting officers, there is a button on the F4 window that will replace your entire officer corps without having to create a new game. I'll leave it to individual discretion as to whether this is 'cheating' or not :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 08, 2012, 11:23:36 AM
I've actually been pretty satisfied with the officers in my current game.  There only two issues, one of which is too many ground officers, but then again I haven't needed them yet, and the other being no missile/laser specialists till about 15 years in, which actually made for some nice RP.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 11, 2012, 11:50:37 AM
Okay, how exactly does one force a turn to go through?  Something BIG must be going down someplace in the galaxy, because for about two days of free time playing the game has gone by at 50 second intervals.  A few times in the past it had done so for shorter times at 1 min, but normally causing the game to "crash" ( ;) ) would unstick it and let me keep going after my patience ran out.  No luck this time...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: PTTG on January 11, 2012, 12:04:05 PM
Enable auto turns in the top right corner of the system window, select 1 week, and take a nap.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 11, 2012, 12:08:36 PM
Won't that keep going till I stop it manually?  That was my fear.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on January 11, 2012, 12:37:04 PM
it will keep going until you get an interrupt event, unless you select a minimum increment number. In that case, it will keep going for a minimum # of increments that you put in the box. IE if you select 5 seconds and put 10 in the box, it will always do at least 10 5-second increments before it will stop.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on January 11, 2012, 12:48:58 PM
And interrupts aren't definable, right?  Though I suppose I have enough ships completing orders I wouldn't have to wait long :\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on January 16, 2012, 10:05:43 PM
One of my fully loaded missile cruisers just got rammed, the resulting magazine cookoff destroyed both vessels.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on January 17, 2012, 08:58:00 PM
At least you took out the rammer.

In mine, the NPR the next system over have been more or less destroyed (at least their space presence) by a certain organic spoiler race, and I'm gearing up to fight them. Haven't decided how to tackle the little guys and their pesky mesons. Maybe fighters with reduced-size lasers? I'm hesitant to use missiles, given how expensive they are and how fast the little buggers are.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on January 17, 2012, 11:07:49 PM
Missiles will still be cheaper than fighters, if the fighters can't outrange the FACs. I like to use short range missiles with decent to-hits against 10km/s and size 9 or 10 warheads.  A salvo of five usually disables or kills a single fac. I kill the leakers with lasers. 

If you want a no risk strategy, you can build a 10 km/s+ beam warships if you have at least magnetoplasma drives, and pick them off from out of range.

Of course you still need to mount enough sheer firepower to overwhelm the Queen's shields from outside its range. but that doesnt need to be onthe FAC fighters. Make sure the fast warship TF has very high initiative.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on January 17, 2012, 11:11:11 PM
Thanks for the advice!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Atlantia on January 18, 2012, 12:35:10 PM
At least you took out the rammer.

In mine, the NPR the next system over have been more or less destroyed (at least their space presence) by a certain organic spoiler race, and I'm gearing up to fight them. Haven't decided how to tackle the little guys and their pesky mesons. Maybe fighters with reduced-size lasers? I'm hesitant to use missiles, given how expensive they are and how fast the little buggers are.

Update: Sent in one of my disposable GSVs, found that there're a whopping 650 little buggers in that system. No wonder my game takes 5 minutes to play 10 seconds of combat with them. Probably gonna call it quits on this one. If only I could just cause the star to go supernova and destroy everything in that system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rawb on January 20, 2012, 01:42:19 PM
The Terran Federation, suffering from long political disputes and economic mismanagement, is in it's 10th year.

It has discovered a further 11 solar systems, some with some wreckage of unknown origin as it's previous owners are no where to be found.

Minerals are running dry on Earth at the Federation is taking too long to organise an effort to find minerals from other bodies in or out of Sol. Hostile aliens would have a particularly fun day should it discover Earth, the only military Earth musters is the paltry ground forces.


Basically, I'm a backwater empire with only 3 colonies (One of which a comet miner) no military and soon no minerals.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on January 20, 2012, 04:58:03 PM
The insanely xenophobic Human Imperium has chosen to take a cautious approach to expanding towards the stars.  Emphasizing propulsion, construction, and missile technology, the Imperium intends to glaze the surface of any and all lifebearing planets they encounter as quickly as possible.

Alpha Centauri and Sirrius are quite rich with mineral wealth; Sirrius Corporation claimed a stake on Sirrius-I -- a world with enough corundium and duranium (millions of units at accessibilities of 0.9) to fuel an extensive expansion of mineral production.  Tritanium and several other elements may be obtained at several of the Alpha Corporation's Centauri settlements.  Alpha centauri itself has been a primary focus for human habitation-- it is now the home to 100 million citizens and two planets have been terraformed, and the empire is only in its 18th year.

Industrial expansion is slowing down, focusing now on research laboratories and shipyard capacity.  Before the era's incredible scientists (60% bonus at lvl 10 adminstration) die, the research capacity needs to be upped enough to utilize them!

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: scoopdjm on January 20, 2012, 08:45:24 PM
Well the Human sovereignty (as it has styled itself) is about to make the leap from backwater sol empire to extra-solar crusaders, since the soveriegnty plans to only fight within refueling distance (or when defending colonies) its main 'ship-of-the-line' is armed with 100 size-6 box launchers, it is also rumoured that a flagship armed with 50 size-32 box launchers is being designed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on January 29, 2012, 03:34:07 PM
During the investigation of a col cost 2 plant in the 4th system I discovered, a NPR (I am assuming) jumped me. Their first salvo hit my Missile Destroyer, Fletcher, with 47 strength 9 warheads... And yet she emerged intact, albeit crippled. My return fire from my remaining 4 destroyers and the 3 operable launchers on Fletcher obliterated one of the enemy vessels. In fact, it only took 3 of my strength 8 ASMs. The remaining 40 self-destructed. Note to self: Put passives on next version of ASMs. My next salvo was spread out among the 5 remaining hostile vessels (beating a hasty retreat at 7700km/s), and destroyed all of them. Turns out they were just FACs. Next course of action... Return to the Fletcher and nurse her injuries, then continue advancing on the planet.

Damned sight better than my first Aurora engagement...Granted, that one was against precursors.

Update: Three 7600t vessels just appeared on my area sensors.

Update: All three destroyed, apparently from outside their missile envelope. A 4th 7600t vessel, of a different class, appeared during the engagement. Closing to engage.

Update: "Star Dragon" destroyed. 1 fleet salvo. I just realized there are no escape pods. Perhaps not an NPR. 1 week to the planet. We shall see.

Update: Strength 5 thermal contact on the planet. Leaving fleet in long-term orbit pending construction of troopships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 05, 2012, 07:32:58 PM
Just conquered my first planet from a low-tech NPR.
Turns out, there are no factories, no mines, nothing at all on the planet! I just got a planet with 380 Million of these little buggers:

Species: Mazatlan
Gravity: 0.52 to 1.55
Oxygen: 0.081 to 0.325
Temperature: -67.5 to -11.5

Damn! They would surely love Siberia. I could use them on so many planets, where I would just have to add 0.081 oxygen to the atmosphere and that's it!
But do I really want to make them an equal species to my humans? Or even the dominant race?
Something to think about while I am at work tomorrow...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 06, 2012, 12:36:24 AM
I refuse to allow aliens to spread beyond the worlds I conquered from them.  Set em to stable and let em sit on that rock for aeons!  Preferably working thousands of mines, factories, or refineries.

The stars are for humanity!  (And really, unless you really need pop on one specific world, do you really need so many colonies that the race would enable?  at least until we can let the graphics processor run aurora's civilian industry processes to keep such things chugging along :D)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 06, 2012, 02:11:14 AM
It is not even what they would enable, but more what time it would save me. Just adding 0.08 oxygen instead of 0.1 AND heating a planet up to 0 degrees costs a lot of time and effort, at least over a decade or two of concentrating all my terraforming stuff in 1 place.
Instead, it just takes 2-3 years with everything I have to add that oxygen.

It would just be very convenient.

Alas, they might be savages or even worse - hippies! - that should not make it into space with their planet having no industy at all and so on. Which I feel is not really realistic. I might add some conventional industry via SM mode to get rid of that "this is wrong" feeling.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 06, 2012, 02:55:30 AM
Or just ship them a bunch of mines and factories because they've been, you know, liberated, and now have the freedom to manufacture goods for you.  Without pay.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shaitan on February 06, 2012, 04:45:27 AM
What do you mean with out pay? They're being generously paid a (moderately) hearty meal a day, and gifted a roof over their head! (The roof of the factory admittedly)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on February 06, 2012, 07:51:14 AM
For my fiction game not much is happening. Got around to making ship designs only to realize I don't have any engines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 06, 2012, 11:03:09 AM
For my fiction game not much is happening. Got around to making ship designs only to realize I don't have any engines.

I think this speaks volumes regarding the level of bureaucracy within your fiction government!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on February 06, 2012, 11:28:20 AM
Nearly the exact opposite happened in my fiction game (not yet posted this far).  I made carriers by "accident".  Planetary defense bases, but needed a way to get fighters from one to the other, so was just going to make a fighter transport.  Turns out I had a ton of room left over, so slapped just about everything else an actual carrier needs on...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 07, 2012, 01:45:41 PM
So I decided to add some basic industry to my recently conquered planet, as it made no sense to me that they had tons of Low-Tech infantry, but ZERO industry and almost 400 mio inhabitants.
Added 50 construction factories and 25 mines, just to give them SOMETHING to do, while waiting for 5 Jump Gates to be built which will connect that system to Sol and enable transports from there. That's what you get for not putting jump drives in your freighters.

And a quick noob question: Where can I see my wealth? I know where I can see my revenues and expenditures, but not my current $$$ in my account.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Waffles on February 07, 2012, 02:06:10 PM
Top of the industry/everything window, like, top of the border?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 07, 2012, 03:28:30 PM
Top of the industry/everything window, like, top of the border?
Duh, never looked there. Thanks.

I am almost finished now with terraforming Mars and a second colony that already started with a breathable atmosphere and just 0.26 colony cost because of low temperature.
Sadly, Mars only hold 0.6 Duranium and 0.4 Gallicite and the other planet has 0.5 Duranium and 0.1 accessibility on everything else.

At least I can use them to build MMMMMMMORE infrastructure in the future to colonize this beast:
Duranium: 318.402 - 0.5
Neutronium: 29.241 - 0.7
Tritanium: 17.689 - 0.5
Boronide: 36.100 - 0.4
Mercassium: 207.936 - 0.3
Uridium: 1.669.264 - 0.9
Corundium: 2.547.216 - 0.5
and I didn't send a geo-team there yet!

Only problem...the sun is shining a weee bit too hot there. Surface temperature is 309.1° --> colo cost 12
I don't even know if it is possible to cool it down enough, but every little would help. As it is, I would need 1200 infrastructure to support 1 million people. Yikes!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 07, 2012, 04:06:55 PM
Scroll down on that terraforming list, and you just might find a special gas that will help with your high temperature needs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 07, 2012, 04:48:26 PM
Scroll down on that terraforming list, and you just might find a special gas that will help with your high temperature needs.
I know, there is Anti-Greenhouse Gas...whatever that may be.
But as I know, there is a limit to the maximum of gas you can pump into the atmosphere of a planet. So I wonder if I can actually cool that thing down to ~44°C or whatever earthlings like.

On a different note, one of my geo-survey ships got destroyed by precursors. I found a jump gate in the system of my recently conquered planet but it seems like there is none on the other side. Alas, there were precursor ships. And precursor !!FUN!! has been had.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 07, 2012, 06:58:42 PM
There is a positive cap on the Greenhouse Factor, but not a negative one. You can cool down a planet as much as you want with enough Anti-Greenhouse Gas, and it won't even take excessive amounts.

The real problems arise if the planet has huge existing atmospheric pressure like Venus.  You're way better off if its skimpy on atmosphere then trying to deal with a Venusian environment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 08, 2012, 02:05:13 AM
Heh, I've just picked up Aurora(found the link while tooling around the other games section of the Dwarf Fortress forums!), and I've been loving it! right now, I've been playing as a custom race of reptilians called Gorlaks, and have been busy setting up the Rise of the Gorlak Empire©. 

Most of the systems I've explored so far have been moderately to extremely useful(as far as colonization/resources goes). . . except for the Alta system.  It's a trinary system with a barren A component, but with a B/C component with several planets each.  Now, this might  sound like a prime colony spot. . . except to even view the B/C component on the map I have to zoom waaaay out; to see the entire orbit of the other components means that the travel distance on the map screen reads as 1427 days at 5000km/s!(I'm assuming that given the JP is pretty close to the A star, the average travel time from the center to the radius is an average of ~1000days at that speed).  What's worse, the system has NO Lagrange point(and I double-checked this once I discovered what LPs were;nope none there), so even if I went hyperdrive I'd have one long-ass travel time to the parts of the system actually worth going to.  So, I just said screw it and suspended all surveys in the system, though if I need to I might one day come back and survey the rest of those grav points. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on February 08, 2012, 02:14:05 AM
I've had to ignore systems for similar reasons in some of my games before, it is quite annoying. I comfort myself with the thought that maybe there are lots of hostile aliens out there who will never bother me because of it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 08, 2012, 02:49:28 AM
lol, just found another binary with an EVEN MORE ridiculous travel time.  .  .  though this one I can feel good about ignoring since the entire system holds maybe a handful of asteroids, and thats it.   I'll just complete the grav survey and move on


Edit:. . . heh, long travel times seems to be trending towards the norm on this game.  Another system with, admittedly reasonable compared to the others, 2 moth travel time to the outer component(this game also seems to love binaries and trinaries; Heck, I even got a quad!).  though, at least this time, I got a few LPs to help out with that. . . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 08, 2012, 08:13:32 AM
Well these kind of systems are not completely useless, they just need a lot of determination to really use them.

If you can at least use hyperdrive, you can make a dedicated fleet which is big enough to bring everything there you want and need there in one run, i.e. a couple of auto-mines + mass-driver. Then you just hurl the minerals to a planet/asteroid in the center of the system - voilà.
For surveying the system, build a commercial geosurvey vessel with massive fuel tanks and a lot of engines.
For real colonization it really depends, if you can get all the minerals near or at the planet for the things you want to do there. In example, if the planet is rich in Duranium and Uridium, you could just build Financial Centers there all the time and make it your imperial tax paradise! Of course you would have to bring a starting population, enough starting construction factories and mines to start OR enough ressources to build everything there with a minimal starting construction factory number.

In the end, it is all about dedication and patience.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on February 08, 2012, 05:33:44 PM
I just had a planetary population of 400,000 surrender 4 divisions worth of troops to a single vault of robotic guardians. In somewhat related news, 400,000 "volunteers" for hostile environment colonization have been disembarked onto a nearby iceball.


Oh and in the absurd star system department I have a system with 7000 days travel time between a jp and said outer secondary star at 4000 km/s.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 08, 2012, 06:13:55 PM
I just had a planetary population of 400,000 surrender 4 divisions worth of troops to a single vault of robotic guardians. In somewhat related news, 400,000 "volunteers" for hostile environment colonization have been disembarked onto a nearby iceball.


Oh and in the absurd star system department I have a system with 7000 days travel time between a jp and said outer secondary star at 4000 km/s.
Better bring a lot of fuel, a TV, all seasons of "Friends" and popcorn.

In my game, the atmosphere of Mars just became breathable and temperature is +2.74°C, much warmer than here right now! If I could I would move there right now.
At least it was a short heartwarming moment to see that event in my log.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on February 08, 2012, 10:40:55 PM
Just saw this survey report come back not even an hour ago. My jaw hit the desk. No more Duranium worries for the Terran Confederation, and a LOT of loot!

I have NEVER seen these kinds of minerals on a planet in any of my games, EVER. So, the accessability sucks, but its going to keep my top geology team busy for a while!


Beta Hydri-A IV

Terrestrial
Populations: Human 0, Ruined Alien City
Colony Cost: 2x
Surface Temp: -41.8
Gravity: 1.45
Atmosphere: 83% Nitrogen, 17% Oxygen
Atmosphere Pressure: 2.11
Diameter: 20000
Hydrosphere: Ice Sheet 68%

Minerals:
Duranium: 98,000,000 (0.1)
Neutronium: 17,640,000 (1)
Corbomite: 5,760,000 (0.1)
Tritanium: 44,890,000 (0.1)
Mercassium: 1,960,000 (0.1)
Sorium: 86,490,000 (0.1)
Uridium: 68,890,000 (0.1)
Gallicite: 20,250,000 (0.1)

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 08, 2012, 11:01:07 PM
I'm so sorry to break this to you, but carefully detatch your jaw from the desk.  <edit: i just noted that you already noticed the low accessibilities, but i leave the following here for future readers> Those 0.1 on there means there are in fact functionally unlimited minerals, but it will take 10 times longer to mine them out.  So if you take all those accessibilities and add them up, you get at total value of 0.8.  I generally will not bother putting mines on a world unless it has a total accessibility in the high twos or three and up, and it better have >200,000 minerals of each of those to boot, and they better be something I need.  

It will take so long for your mines to even make back their own cost on that planet.  

What I'd do with that world is put 50 or so mines on it and turn it into a maintenance hub for a patrol presence in the system.  It would cover most of the bases.  Missing a couple, might want to ship those in.  

Good luck with the geo team though.  I had a world like that go to .9 duranium and .5s in a couple others.  I find that even with a skill 300 geo team, these worlds seem to be the ones that get one tick from the team and then they're done.  However, I had luna, with no minerals on it, find about 2 million total minerals of five types with all 0.5 + acc
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 09, 2012, 02:40:42 AM
I have to agree with Thiosk. Anything under 0.5 is simply not worth it. Remember that you would need TEN TIMES as many mines to mine the same amount compared to 1.0 accessibility.
So if you would dump a single mine on 8 bodies which hold only one of the 8 ressources (your planet holds) with 1.0 accessibility, you would get the same result as with dumping 10 mines on your planet. You even save 2 mines.
And of course, there is rarely just one ressource on the other planets, so the gains multiply by x

Send your geo-team in and hope for the best. If you can at least get Duranium, Neutronium or Sorium to a decent level, then you have at least "something" that could be worth mining.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zed 6 on February 09, 2012, 08:38:42 AM
And now for an opposing view to the previous 2 posts.

I would put some mines there and gradually increase their number over time. Sure it's low accesibility, and your survey team may not accomplish much; but set a freighter on a slow recurring run and you always have something coming back to homeworld. I suppose I don't take the advice of my economics advisors very well, due to the hi probability of lopping the heads off my bean counters. As Eternal Emperor, if I want it there, so shall it be there. Sometimes it's not just about the numbers. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on February 09, 2012, 09:43:25 AM
And now for an opposing view to the previous 2 posts.

I would put some mines there and gradually increase their number over time. Sure it's low accesibility, and your survey team may not accomplish much; but set a freighter on a slow recurring run and you always have something coming back to homeworld. I suppose I don't take the advice of my economics advisors very well, due to the hi probability of lopping the heads off my bean counters. As Eternal Emperor, if I want it there, so shall it be there. Sometimes it's not just about the numbers. :)
Of course you could do it for RP reasons. But it is simply NOT the solution of all your ressource problems.
To get an acceptable output out of this rock, you would need over 1000 mines....just think about all the wasted Corundium! ARGH!
And more importantly this planet is not even self sufficient with the minerals in has. Not for building construction factories (no Vendarite), neither for building mines (no Corundium).


But the geo-team hasn't been there yet. I would like to hear the results of that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 10, 2012, 09:34:31 AM
I've been going strong for these last 50 years or so in my own little isolationist empire.  Aside from a few precursor defended systems, which I avoided, I have been colonizing and terraforming and surveying and have not encountered any resistance and have now witnessed 50+ systems with full survey data on 40 of them and 8 colonies across 5 systems totaling about 750mil people.  I have strangely poor resource distributions and survey teams with, apparently, poor leadership so I have avoided missiles and focused on guass/rail/beam designs for my fledgling military.

I've built out two attack fleets which each consisted of a flag/jump/sensor cruiser flanked by a pair of destroyers well outfitted with ciws and assorted railguns set for PD, two attack cruisers with longer range railguns and higher speed to chase down prey and four smaller frigates (pre-FAC concept).  Each fleet sported a total loadout of 24 rainguns and 4 CIWS.   Railguns with tracking speeds of around 14,000 km/s, ranges of 200k and 10 second firing speeds.  The lead designers for the fleets figured such a loadout would be able to weather anti-ship missile bombardments until the enemy combatants had expended their magazines and have the attack cruisers close the range with superior speed for final railgun assaults.  (this is, btw, the first military engagement I have tried to conduct since playing aurora)

My first goal was to clear a suspect presence in a system which had an identified wreck and 4 2 colony cost planets ripe for terraforming.  I left one fleet as Jump defense and closed in on the site of the wreck with the other fleet.  Active sensors engaged it was painfully obvious that I need to vastly increase the range of my active as 48m is no where near sufficient for a safe operating sight-line and I had to move in dangerously close to the planet to inspect it. 

Still 200m km from the planet sensors detected an approaching hostile inbound with active sensors engaged at 48000 km/s!  OMG!.  Issued an immediate about-face in travel in an attempt to lengthen the range of my railgun and my still green fleet faltered in the maneuver.  Before I had even come to a stop the approaching inbounds reached AMM sensor range and were identified as 48 size 2 warheads.  With my ships not even stopped, railgun range woefully inadequate and approaching missiles 4 times faster then anticipated the approaching missiles were going to cross the entire range of my railguns in only a few seconds.  My two destroyers still couldn't find the brakes, let alone the trigger switches on the fire controls, the two cruisers had responded to the command to reverse course but hadn't readied defenses and my four lone frigates, which were fully trained were the only ones to man stations in time to try and get a lock on the incoming targets only to find out that with a calculated 0% chance to intercept there was no point in even trying.  All 48 missiles slammed into the flagship cruiser in one salvo.  Review of logs show she weathered 30 hits before an engine went critical and caused a secondary size 20 explosion which ended her misery.

The death of the flagship knocked some sense into the crews and they finally got themselves coordinated to reverse course.  My rear admiral and 150 crew made it to life pods and being most of the fleet hadn't even finished turning around yet it was easy to collect the survivors.  There were no additional salvos detected and the surviving crews finally started breathing again as we raced toward the relative safety of the jump point.

Further review of mission files by HQ have deduced that since there was no pursuit the enemy combatant must have been a PDC or Orbital with vastly superior technology to that of my own.  The initial salvo had to have been made at the extreme edge of enemy missile range and my course reversal likely took us out of engagement range before a second salvo was fired.

Military designers and researchers have been in closed door sessions for days now trying to figure out how to recover from this debacle.  Obviously, extensive military redesigns and refits are going to be in the works once new technologies are developed.  The one and only positive in this whole mess is that no jump capable enemies have been discovered or the Terrans would be in very big trouble.  All survey work has been stopped and all jump gates being monitors closely given the vulnerability of the fleets.


So, what do you guys think?  Where do I focus my designs to have a chance with this thing?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on February 10, 2012, 11:34:07 AM
I've been going strong for these last 50 years or so in my own little isolationist empire.  Aside from a few precursor defended systems, which I avoided, I have been colonizing and terraforming and surveying and have not encountered any resistance and have now witnessed 50+ systems with full survey data on 40 of them and 8 colonies across 5 systems totaling about 750mil people.  I have strangely poor resource distributions and survey teams with, apparently, poor leadership so I have avoided missiles and focused on guass/rail/beam designs for my fledgling military.

I've built out two attack fleets which each consisted of a flag/jump/sensor cruiser flanked by a pair of destroyers well outfitted with ciws and assorted railguns set for PD, two attack cruisers with longer range railguns and higher speed to chase down prey and four smaller frigates (pre-FAC concept).  Each fleet sported a total loadout of 24 rainguns and 4 CIWS.   Railguns with tracking speeds of around 14,000 km/s, ranges of 200k and 10 second firing speeds.  The lead designers for the fleets figured such a loadout would be able to weather anti-ship missile bombardments until the enemy combatants had expended their magazines and have the attack cruisers close the range with superior speed for final railgun assaults.  (this is, btw, the first military engagement I have tried to conduct since playing aurora)

My first goal was to clear a suspect presence in a system which had an identified wreck and 4 2 colony cost planets ripe for terraforming.  I left one fleet as Jump defense and closed in on the site of the wreck with the other fleet.  Active sensors engaged it was painfully obvious that I need to vastly increase the range of my active as 48m is no where near sufficient for a safe operating sight-line and I had to move in dangerously close to the planet to inspect it. 

Still 200m km from the planet sensors detected an approaching hostile inbound with active sensors engaged at 48000 km/s!  OMG!.  Issued an immediate about-face in travel in an attempt to lengthen the range of my railgun and my still green fleet faltered in the maneuver.  Before I had even come to a stop the approaching inbounds reached AMM sensor range and were identified as 48 size 2 warheads.  With my ships not even stopped, railgun range woefully inadequate and approaching missiles 4 times faster then anticipated the approaching missiles were going to cross the entire range of my railguns in only a few seconds.  My two destroyers still couldn't find the brakes, let alone the trigger switches on the fire controls, the two cruisers had responded to the command to reverse course but hadn't readied defenses and my four lone frigates, which were fully trained were the only ones to man stations in time to try and get a lock on the incoming targets only to find out that with a calculated 0% chance to intercept there was no point in even trying.  All 48 missiles slammed into the flagship cruiser in one salvo.  Review of logs show she weathered 30 hits before an engine went critical and caused a secondary size 20 explosion which ended her misery.

The death of the flagship knocked some sense into the crews and they finally got themselves coordinated to reverse course.  My rear admiral and 150 crew made it to life pods and being most of the fleet hadn't even finished turning around yet it was easy to collect the survivors.  There were no additional salvos detected and the surviving crews finally started breathing again as we raced toward the relative safety of the jump point.

Further review of mission files by HQ have deduced that since there was no pursuit the enemy combatant must have been a PDC or Orbital with vastly superior technology to that of my own.  The initial salvo had to have been made at the extreme edge of enemy missile range and my course reversal likely took us out of engagement range before a second salvo was fired.

Military designers and researchers have been in closed door sessions for days now trying to figure out how to recover from this debacle.  Obviously, extensive military redesigns and refits are going to be in the works once new technologies are developed.  The one and only positive in this whole mess is that no jump capable enemies have been discovered or the Terrans would be in very big trouble.  All survey work has been stopped and all jump gates being monitors closely given the vulnerability of the fleets.


So, what do you guys think?  Where do I focus my designs to have a chance with this thing?

Build the smallest and fastest scout with the biggest active sensor that you can and go for a look before doing anything else.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 10, 2012, 11:57:28 AM
Even cavemen can kill a tank if enough of them clog up the exhaust ports.

My current fleet makeup is 7 missile corvettes, 3 missile cruisers, 6 point defense cruisers (thats 30 quad gauss turrets with 36k tracking turrets and FC), and a squadron of AMM corvettes.

The fleet is armed with old-generation ordinance-- im trying to shoot some of it up, because I used so little of Gen 2 missiles before Gen 3 started production.  And I've fired none of the Gen 3 missiles, and the amazingly powerful Gen 4 warheads are already coming off the assembly lines.  Size 30 warheads baby!

But no matter.  My fleet, while smallish, out techs this alien civilization dramatically.  I'm twice as fast, for instance, and I can do a number on them.  So I invaded, and began painting targets.

I decided to get a feel for how much ordinance I would need, so I closed with them and launched a single salvo.  Big mistake.  After seeing the results and firing a second salvo, thats when the alien missiles came in.  Cave-ordinance!  Longer range than mine, 120 m km, and slow as heck-- 25,000 km/s.  No problem, right?  Pathetic.

There were hundreds of them.  Per salvo.  Set to three AMM/target, my missile corvettes with their complement of around 1000 AMMs barely cleared out the first couple flights.  When they finally got to the gauss cannons, my gunners gave a good account for themselves-- it is glorious seeing "one weapon fired, 11 targets destroyed"... but in the first round 38 size 6 wh 6 missiles got through, hitting one of the missile cruisers and a pd boat.  I had hoped detatching that boat and setting it to area defense would help, but the incoming were just swamping me.  Eventually the missles hit the primary scanner ship and my fleet went blind, and the missiles took out all of my corvettes and crippled a couple of the cruisers with impunity.

The second generation fleet is going to be designed a little different than my first generation fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on February 10, 2012, 01:02:27 PM
"So, what do you guys think?  Where do I focus my designs to have a chance with this thing?"
You need fleet training, likewise set your FC to final defensive fire so that your railgun ships take their best shot possible. Also, turreted pd weapons are much better than the presumably spinal mounted railguns/unturreted lasers, so research turret tracking(your ship's top speed may limit the tracking rate of spinal mount weapons).

Alternatively, go with missiles. They tend to be supreme in any low tech environment, but your anti-missile sensor must be horrendously overbuilt or it will be useless.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 10, 2012, 01:20:57 PM
Glad my first encounter was an immobile base with only a handful of launchers.  Facing 100's of incoming missiles with my inadequate fleet would have been demoralizing.  Although, with the opening defeat under my belt I know a little more about what might be needed. 

More training for everyone and considerably more tracking speed.  0% chance to hit just isn't going to cut it. I was sitting at about 50-60% average FT for my ships, obviously 100% is goal but it was getting late and I wanted to get this first battle completed before I called it quits for the night.  I hadn't thought about how turrets track faster than fixed mount.  The fixed railgun tracking appeared as though it should have been sufficient based on tracking speeds reported in some of the fiction I had been reading, WAY wrong on that assumption.   Railguns don't turret mount though, but mesons, lasers and gauss do?  At least these were only strength 2 warheads.  My cruiser was only lightly armored and took a lot of hits before going down which gives me hope that if I can get the tracking speed up I might be able to take down enough to close the range to fire on the source.

I tried changing my firecontrol settings but when I would select the mode and hit assign nothing appeared to change and when I would open the window back up the selection box would say "none" again.  Haven't figured out if it's my ignorance, a bug or if it was actually updating and just doesn't show it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 10, 2012, 02:27:14 PM
Railguns can't turret mount, but they fire four shots.  They are pretty much as good at PD as other weapons, if not better - since you only need relatively small and cheap fire controls.

Were you looking in the ship screen for changing the mode, or the Combat Overview? Combat overview is waaaay easier.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 10, 2012, 03:26:00 PM
I believe it was the ship screen.  I'll double check to see if I was missing the easy method for managing the FC settings when I sit down to it later.

Until I have researched the prerequisite techs to upgrade/refit my ships I think I'll scope out some of the other systems suspected to be occupied.  This one happened to be a beefy orbital, I know of a couple which I have confirmed have actual ships.  With a little luck their ASMs will not be as fast and my PD might be able to be of some use.  Would be nice to salvage a few of them to kick start my lopsided research.

BTW, it completely sucks when you generate your own system and personnel and settle on a starting layout of scientists and then have your only one in propulsion die in the first two years.  Obviously, I could have rerolled personnel but that would be cheating more then I want to do.  Is there a way to generate specific leaders?  In my mind I could RP that my government labs took out a help wanted ad on Monster for a Rocket Scientist.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rawb on February 10, 2012, 03:43:56 PM
Random Semi-related question.

How many warships do you guys actually construct? Do you have one Fleet active with around 20 or so ships or lots of smaller groups? I'm not exactly new to the game but I've never really gotten past building my first Missile Cruiser/Sensorship/PD Cruiser and I've never had to use PD yet. I've also never really designed any other tech apart from missiles due to range constraints, is it worth my time looking into beam ships? If so what kind of role are they actually used for seeing as missiles seem to be the best weapon.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but you guys were on about military so I figured I'd ask here :3.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 10, 2012, 05:07:01 PM
Random Semi-related question.

How many warships do you guys actually construct? Do you have one Fleet active with around 20 or so ships or lots of smaller groups? I'm not exactly new to the game but I've never really gotten past building my first Missile Cruiser/Sensorship/PD Cruiser and I've never had to use PD yet. I've also never really designed any other tech apart from missiles due to range constraints, is it worth my time looking into beam ships? If so what kind of role are they actually used for seeing as missiles seem to be the best weapon.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but you guys were on about military so I figured I'd ask here :3.

Great question, probably more suited to the academy section though.  I do ship building in rounds.  My first ship building is typically just rag-tag patrol boats, able to fire off a couple missiles and designed to die rather horribly. 

The second round of ship building gets a few 15k ton range ships, and a range of smaller ships, my first gen fleet usually has 20 ships, all single role vessels. I tend to have groups of 20 ships.  I like a couple AMM vessels, and turreted beam ships.  Main line cruisers lob big missiles, usually just 3 big cruisers or so, and then smaller corvettes-- five or 6, that shoot smaller missiles.  And a sensor boat.

I always favor bigger ships.  Once I have that big first fleet, I've got enough shipyards that I can start developing some beam offense.  I usually build up a beam based strike fleet at that time.

By now my tech level is getting good, so the next generation is a much more advanced and synched fleet.  I have bigger yards, so run them off on production lines to get them trained up as soon as possible.  I still tend to operate in autonomous groups of 20-30 ships at this stage, but I'll have 3 or 4 of those.

Getting the maintenance and fueling up to par, as well as the secondary stuff of colliers and tankers to support that takes some additional time.  But by the time I have ICF engines, I usually have a basic troop transport capacity, tankers, colliers, main and support ships for the original primary fleet.

In the third round of ship building, I maintain that strategy, but get extra groups and start incorporating carriers.  I've never used a fleet with carriers, though, as my games tend to crash by the time I'm producing 50kton carriers and associated jumpships :(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Owen Quillion on February 10, 2012, 05:27:41 PM
With regards to missiles and beam weapons, missiles are totally awesome massive-ranged purveyors of death and will work fantastically right up until your magazines go dry and your once-mighty warship is now nothing more than a target. Getting missile reloads to a battlefront means significant logistical overhead, and I have more than once used the vast majority of my homeworld's missile stockpile on a protracted campaign. The gist is that they're the absolute stars of the show tactically and a pain-in-the-ass strategically.

Beam weapons, by comparison, require knife-fight ranges and will keep on ticking as long as they (and their reactors) aren't exploded. Having beam-elements in the fleet is great for picking off wounded or already-weak enemies, and can be a life saver if the enemy's own beam ships manage to close. I don't have a ton of experience and haven't exactly run any numbers, but my impression is that beams will generally deal out more damage faster than a missile ship with similar tonnage devoted to weaponry, which is useful in some situations.

Generally speaking, a fleet should have both - beams are a great way to save ammo and can help you cut your way out of a pinch.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on February 10, 2012, 06:00:49 PM
Random Semi-related question.

How many warships do you guys actually construct? Do you have one Fleet active with around 20 or so ships or lots of smaller groups? I'm not exactly new to the game but I've never really gotten past building my first Missile Cruiser/Sensorship/PD Cruiser and I've never had to use PD yet. I've also never really designed any other tech apart from missiles due to range constraints, is it worth my time looking into beam ships? If so what kind of role are they actually used for seeing as missiles seem to be the best weapon.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but you guys were on about military so I figured I'd ask here :3.

Beams are good, but represent an enormous opportunity cost atleast in terms of research(beam FC/turrets/beam weapons themselves in addition to missiles is pricey). If you have the resources for them, get them, otherwise skip them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 10, 2012, 06:10:26 PM
I take a balanced approach to beam vs missile in every game.  I love lasers, I'm now enamoured with gauss PD (no reactors!), but to use them you have to fly through a hailstorm of death and destruction until you close to range, which means heavy armor, lots of engines, preferably shields, and PD escorts. 

All quite doable, but for that first fleet, I forgo them entirely and pursue them only after the gen1 fleet is complete.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 11, 2012, 02:18:47 AM
The number of warships depends a lot on the size of ships you are constructing... which depends a lot on your game setup, your level of industry and technology, mineral inputs, etc.

Big warships are generally better, but theres all sorts of potential inefficiences and problems. You need big, expensive yards with big, expensive retooling costs.  Jumpdrive research costs explode after like drive size 35-45, especially for the early game... so its hard to develop those large drives. And when you do build those jump vessels, I end up with the problem of them being too rare and valuable to commit to jumppoint assaults. 

I like to target a size I can build a decent quantity of, decently fast. 6000 tons is what I used in my latest Conventional game for my first and second generation warships.   Having at least several squadrons (2-4 ships each) of a ship class gives a great deal of flexibility in terms of training and deployments.  If you have only a couple squadrons of larger vessels, you can end up with a situation where you can't refit or overhaul one squadron because it's needed for defense while the other squadron is probing or attacking.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shaitan on February 11, 2012, 03:20:09 AM
Well, just had my first ever hostile encounter in Aurora, and I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Discovered the System of Epsilon Eridani several years ago, noted 3 unknown wrecks orbitting the second body, so I sent a frigate squadron for a quick sweep of the system, they moved through the system without noting anything unusual and so returned to their regular station.

Comes time when the jump gate has been completed that the second body is my next target for colonisation.  (At this point I still haven't completed any surveys of the system, my survey efforts are behind where I'd like to be thanks to a black hole incident and several other factors. ) I set up a colony on the planet, and order one of the cargo squadrons to start hauling in some infrastructure and a tracking station.  Assigned an administrator and then went to check on available ground forces to use for the initial garrison.

It's at this point the line "Abandoned Installations - ??? (Unknown race, xenologist team required)" catches my eye.  OK, the garrison chosen moves up from being a garrison brigade to a spare Mobile Infantry brigade, a xeno team is formed planetside.  (I kind of feel bad about this, especially seeing as I have a shuttle in service whose sole purpose is to ferry around my geo team).

Fast forward to the Troop ship arriving planetside and conducting unloading operations, 3 hours into the task I suddenly get a new hostile contact message! New Thermal Contact! Strength 5 Active Sensor S0 7/R84.  I'm not entirely sure what that means but I didn't stick around to find out, unloading is cancelled and the Troopship plus the still inbound cargo squadron are ordered to retreat to the other side of the jump gate.

Fleet training is cancelled and 3 task forces are hastily assembled out of my currently incomplete fleet.  A Frigate squadron holds station over Earth to act as a reserve and an emergency last ditch defence if things go terribly wrong, A second Frigate squadron pickets the jump gate Sol side.  My last Frigate squadron, and the recently completed and still half trained CL/DD squadron proceed to make the jump and picket the planet.  About 1. 5b Kms out, I remember to go into the combat summary and set up my PD fire controls.  I reach the planet without hazard, and decide to switch on shields and active sensors, to see if I can flush anything out.

4 hours later (and 2 hours after the shields finish charging), new contact!

15th November 2028 10:00:01, Epsilon Eridani, Hostile Missile Contact (x4)

15th November 2028 10:00:01, Epsilon Eridani, Hood - Fire Control S04 24-12000 H50 targeting Missile Salvo #8919 at 0k km: Base Chance to hit: 104% (Fire Control To Hit: 100%  Modified by Crew Grade: 104%)

15th November 2028 10:00:01, Epsilon Eridani, (x4) Hood: Single  TCS 24 Gauss Cannon R2-100 TurretFire Control To Hit: 100%  Modified by Crew Grade: 104% hit the target and destroyed an enemy missile.

I had no indication where the missiles came from, but considering my sensors are currently lit up (after reading the forums I do include res 0 active sensors) and I detected the missiles at 0 kms, I assume their origin is planetside.

And now, another 15 days have passed, and. . . .  nothing.

No new missile attacks, no contacts on active, nothing on passives.  Nothing.

The troopship is currently on its way back to the still picketed planet to see wether boots on the ground will reveal anything.  But the single wave of 4 missiles out of the blue has me scratching my head a little.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rawb on February 11, 2012, 04:58:10 AM
Great question, probably more suited to the academy section though.  I do ship building in rounds.  My first ship building is typically just rag-tag patrol boats, able to fire off a couple missiles and designed to die rather horribly. 

I might make a topic there soon. So you just load up a few launchers on a ship so you aren't completely defenseless?

Quote
The second round of ship building gets a few 15k ton range ships, and a range of smaller ships, my first gen fleet usually has 20 ships, all single role vessels. I tend to have groups of 20 ships.  I like a couple AMM vessels, and turreted beam ships.  Main line cruisers lob big missiles, usually just 3 big cruisers or so, and then smaller corvettes-- five or 6, that shoot smaller missiles.  And a sensor boat.

Those turrets for PD or close range fighting?

With regards to missiles and beam weapons, missiles are totally awesome massive-ranged purveyors of death and will work fantastically right up until your magazines go dry and your once-mighty warship is now nothing more than a target. Getting missile reloads to a battlefront means significant logistical overhead, and I have more than once used the vast majority of my homeworld's missile stockpile on a protracted campaign. The gist is that they're the absolute stars of the show tactically and a pain-in-the-ass strategically.


Ahhh, I see!

Quote
Beam weapons, by comparison, require knife-fight ranges and will keep on ticking as long as they (and their reactors) aren't exploded. Having beam-elements in the fleet is great for picking off wounded or already-weak enemies, and can be a life saver if the enemy's own beam ships manage to close. I don't have a ton of experience and haven't exactly run any numbers, but my impression is that beams will generally deal out more damage faster than a missile ship with similar tonnage devoted to weaponry, which is useful in some situations.

So I could have a couple of missile cruisers and then a few smaller beam ships for closer defense?

Quote
Generally speaking, a fleet should have both - beams are a great way to save ammo and can help you cut your way out of a pinch.

Guess i should start looking into it.


I take a balanced approach to beam vs missile in every game.  I love lasers, I'm now enamoured with gauss PD (no reactors!), but to use them you have to fly through a hailstorm of death and destruction until you close to range, which means heavy armor, lots of engines, preferably shields, and PD escorts. 

All quite doable, but for that first fleet, I forgo them entirely and pursue them only after the gen1 fleet is complete.

Think i used Gauss on my first fighters for that very reason. Ok, I'll think of something for fleet Mark II.

The number of warships depends a lot on the size of ships you are constructing... which depends a lot on your game setup, your level of industry and technology, mineral inputs, etc.

Big warships are generally better, but theres all sorts of potential inefficiences and problems. You need big, expensive yards with big, expensive retooling costs.  Jumpdrive research costs explode after like drive size 35-45, especially for the early game... so its hard to develop those large drives. And when you do build those jump vessels, I end up with the problem of them being too rare and valuable to commit to jumppoint assaults. 

I like to target a size I can build a decent quantity of, decently fast. 6000 tons is what I used in my latest Conventional game for my first and second generation warships.   Having at least several squadrons (2-4 ships each) of a ship class gives a great deal of flexibility in terms of training and deployments.  If you have only a couple squadrons of larger vessels, you can end up with a situation where you can't refit or overhaul one squadron because it's needed for defense while the other squadron is probing or attacking.

I'll keep that in mind at see how it goes  :).

Thanks so much for the responses, seems there is so much I still need to learn but thanks a lot ;D.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Owen Quillion on February 11, 2012, 07:08:06 AM
Happy to help.

To answer your question, my personal doctrine is to have a few beam-armed ships in every fleet group once I've got access - they're more often for cleanup than making actual kills, but if for whatever reason something closes (one spoiler race is particularly prone to this if I'm not careful) they're worth their weight in gold.

Of course, as everybody else says, early on I stick with missile boats, primarily because they're so effective and in your first engagements, you've likely got some plenty of missiles stocked back home. Once you can afford beams they're worth the cost (particularly if you're pursuing a type that can be used for point defense as well - lasers and railguns being the likely options. Gauss cannons can tear apart wounded ships but their extreme short range makes them difficult to use purely offensively).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 11, 2012, 11:49:03 AM
After getting a bloody nose by an alien fleet, I ran to the jump point and sat there waiting for missile reloads and reinforcements.  

They did a standard transit through the wormhole.

My 15kton quad gauss turreted point defense cruisers (4 quad turrets each) were able to open up and CHEWWW them.  To death.  A couple missiles went off but it was a gloriously brutal, destructive time for the aliens. Sweet sweet revenge.  

Kill count was 55 kills to 3 losses-- they took out two missile corvettes (4000 tons each) and a backup sensor array platform.  I learned a valuable lesson: early game I tend not to put sensors even on my pd.  This is a mistake.  Your pd should be able to fire even if your main force goes down.

(http://s13.postimage.org/s13lz033b/graveyard.jpg)

All done by point defense.  Thats only half the dang list :D  How embarrassing would it be to get destroyed by an enemy's point defense?  I know when I rush headlong into a HAILSTORM of AMM I get that special sinking feeling.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on February 11, 2012, 12:41:48 PM
Random Semi-related question.

How many warships do you guys actually construct? Do you have one Fleet active with around 20 or so ships or lots of smaller groups? I'm not exactly new to the game but I've never really gotten past building my first Missile Cruiser/Sensorship/PD Cruiser and I've never had to use PD yet. I've also never really designed any other tech apart from missiles due to range constraints, is it worth my time looking into beam ships? If so what kind of role are they actually used for seeing as missiles seem to be the best weapon.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but you guys were on about military so I figured I'd ask here :3.

Like Thiosk, early in game, my biggest ships are missile destroyers until I get my shipyards up in size. Once I have large enough shipyards, cruisers soon follow.

I try to build at least one offensive fleet per jump point out of Sol, that way I almost always have a response force to anything occurring down that arm. Most inhabited systems get a squadron or two of FAC's.

My fleets are a mix of cruisers and smaller. My current fleet setup is one command cruisers, 2 missile cruisers, 1 beam cruiser, 2 Gauss PD escorts, 2 missile destroyers, 2 beam frigates, 1 dedicated collier for missile reloads, and 1 tanker for fuel and spare parts. I have learned the hard way to ALWAYS have some beam ships in every fleet, even if your primarily a missile fleet.

I keep the smaller ships for a couple of reasons. 1st is that I dont like to get rid of trained and experienced warships, they are too valuable. 2nd, the are good for supplementary firepower and PD roles. 3rd, they are great for detachment and independent roles like recon and running down cripples.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: kyle902 on February 11, 2012, 06:00:03 PM
My first contact with an NPR was botched and they opened fire on my survey ships destroying both.  They then start building a jumpgate to my home system.  In retaliation I send in my strongest fleet, blow up the gateship, and split my fleet into two groups.  My main fleet and my bombardment cruisers and escorts.  After the bombardment I plan on sending in my troops to capture the system
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 13, 2012, 03:39:09 AM
Well crap. On my newest game, I've aggressively explored all the star systems I can get to...unfortunalety, I've run into the problem of most of them being one JP only. Why is this the problem? Because the one system that I've yet to explore, and that probably contains a crapton of JPs, has Star Swarm. Worse than that, I got a HUGE active ping from the inner system before my scouts got jumped by a lot of swarmlings, so from what I've read, I'm expecting one of the bigger types. Any tips of fighting these bozos?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on February 13, 2012, 04:13:30 AM

Larger ships: Are slow but with strong shields. They're absolute killers in close range (a good 20+ meson batteries unless it's a worker) but thanks to their armament easy to out-range and out-manoeuvre. A couple of beam-armed ships with good crew training and >>>low<<< initiative to move after the queen's / matriarch's turn should be able to keep it at bay and lob beams at it from a safe distance.
6kt: Worker, low threat level
60kt: Queen, most common larger ship with decent shields and armament
200kt: Matriarch, rarely encountered huge mothership with well over 1500 points of shield strength and a barrage of mesons

Swarmlings: Definetly the biggest threat in a swarm fleet, due to their speed and (often) numbers. The AI fires at only one ship of your fleet at a time, often wasting the meson shots of many swarmlings during a firing turn. The tech varies, but with luck they might fire only once every 20-30 seconds. Best bet (depending on your technology) could be to either:
a) Out-speed them and lob missiles or beams at them (they're only lightly armoured - two strength 4 missile should do the trick in *most* cases)
b) Swarm against them, (probably with beam ships) exploiting that they only target one of your ships every firing interval while you can target multiple swarmlings
c) Get as many missile-armed combatants on site as possible and hope to kill the swarmlings before they can close in on your (probably slower than them) main battle line

Also, note that you should build up your fleet to a size and armament that you're sure you can beat the swarm presence with. All wrecks you leave behind while not killing all motherships will result in a ton of new swarmlings the next time you return.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 13, 2012, 04:27:14 AM
Well, my tech is piss poor missiles but awesome lasers(though I do need to get the next level caps to fire 15cms every 5 seconds). Is that good enough for a swarm tactic, or should I work on getting my missiles up? Definately do NOT want to leave behind a bunch of wrecks for the critters -_-
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on February 13, 2012, 04:51:08 AM

Mesons have really crappy range, so your lasers might do the trick - depending on what range they actualyl have. If it's above 100k km you're certainly outside swarm meson range. Depending on their tech level you might be save from the larger ships even 50k km away.
Unless you can design beam ships with speed well over 10k km/s, the only option with the swarmlings would be to swarm against them, though. I'd suggest taking at least 1/3 or half as many ships as they have swarmlings ...
I can't give you any concrete numbers, since I don't know your designs, playing style and the actual numbers of your opponent =)


If you're fine with turteling for a while, you could push your missile technology and hopefully reduce your casulties (though this will be costly due to missile, component and ship construction costs).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 13, 2012, 05:29:47 AM
To stop thread derailment, I'll move this over to to the ship design thread, since that's what is gonna primarily determine what I'm gonna do
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 13, 2012, 10:59:30 AM
My first contact with an NPR was botched and they opened fire on my survey ships destroying both.  They then start building a jumpgate to my home system.  In retaliation I send in my strongest fleet, blow up the gateship, and split my fleet into two groups.  My main fleet and my bombardment cruisers and escorts.  After the bombardment I plan on sending in my troops to capture the system

Sounds like fun!!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on February 15, 2012, 06:02:08 PM
Wow, in my newest game, I think I just found my new capital.... ;D


Lalande 21185 A II

Colony Cost 0

Duranium 62,005,250(.9)
Neutronium 76,317,300(.3)
Corbomite 17,040,300(.2)
Tritanium 4,164,256(.2)
Boronide 58,982,400(.3)
Mercassium 38,292,740(.1)
Vendarite 8,956,756(.5)
Sorium,81,432,580(.5)
Uridium 10,036,220(.1)
Corundium 11,943,940(.4)
Gallicite 22,127,620(.1)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 15, 2012, 06:31:09 PM
Great site for Duranium, too bad about the accessibility of the other minerals though. Maybe a Geology team can help it out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 15, 2012, 07:38:48 PM
Wow, in my newest game, I think I just found my new capital.... ;D


Lalande 21185 A II

Colony Cost 0

Duranium 62,005,250(.9)
Neutronium 76,317,300(.3)
Corbomite 17,040,300(.2)
Tritanium 4,164,256(.2)
Boronide 58,982,400(.3)
Mercassium 38,292,740(.1)
Vendarite 8,956,756(.5)
Sorium,81,432,580(.5)
Uridium 10,036,220(.1)
Corundium 11,943,940(.4)
Gallicite 22,127,620(.1)


This is a pretty common post :D

Heres how I choose planets:

1.  Does it have minerals I need?  (it has em all so the answer is yes)
2.  Does it have moderate acceessibility and large numbers of minerals?
  It certainly has large numbers, but some of those low acc minerals won't help much.  However, take the total accessibility of this world: 3.6  Thats the sum of all accessibilities on the planet.  3.6 is good.  As long as the world answers question 1, i'll mine the crap out of anything with over 2.5 or so.  Especially given that the duranium is so high.  I would mine the crap out of this planet.  I've not found one like it in my current game, though  i do have worlds with most of the minerals in high abundance and high acc... but it took 5 mining worlds to get good amounts of all minerals.  If there is other worlds in the system with some of the weaker minerals, esp gallicite, you could fling them in with mass drivers.  

Post an update after your geo team knocks a couple of those low accessibilities up to .9.  that will make everyone drool ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 16, 2012, 07:41:17 AM
My first jump-capable extra-solar alien race was encountered.  Sol was found to have 5 jump points which have made this military commander a little leery.  Purpose-built FAC sentinels with powerful thermal sensors were set as near-invisible pickets at each of the jump points.  The timing couldn't have been better as my first visitor popped out of a JP not 6 months after the last sentinel took up his post.  The unarmed sentinels were fast and cheap and were able to be deployed before the planned sister ships armed with lasers could even have their design finalized.  The sentinel broke from it's picket to shadow the contact and a reliever was dispatched to cover the now open JP.  Several FAC squadrons were ready and waiting in orbit of Earth so a fully trained missle FAC squadron was detached and directed on an intercept course with intentions to intercept with all force necessary to preserve the sovereignty of Sol.

Here is where things get murky.  I learned very early on the benefits of leaving a diplomatic team stationed at home in the early years.  Being the intercepting FAC's were still going to take 15 days to intercept I directed my team to open comms with the aliens still fully expecting to blast them out of the water and hoping to gain some experience.  My guess is that the navigation officer on my sentinel was looking at pr0n instead of his nav chats because my sentinel FAC capable of 5000km/s was out-ranged by the 2222km/s unidentified alien contact.  The aliens were previously holding steady course so my intercepting missile FACs continued to the rendezvous point and..... nothing.  Woops, I forgot to turn on active sensors.  I the missile FACs have a sensor leader but only an active search and not a passive thermal.   I pop open my trusty combat management screen and ..... there is no "activate" sensor button???  WTH?  For the next 15 minutes I open every single window in Aurora possibly pertaining to ships and check, recheck and rerecheck my design to make sure I put it in there in the first place and finally it dawns on me it's broken.  It requires 147 units to repair.  Being a FAC my ship only holds 40 units.  I remember that fateful error message several years earlier with consternation.  I wrongfully assumed that the ship would be repaired when I returned to Earth orbit for refuel/resupply/overhaul.  Someone needs to explain to me how a ship can go through overhaul and not have the broken active search sensor repaired as a matter of course? 

So hear I am, fully armed and ready to blow aliens to smithereens and I am completely blind.  The original pursuing sentinel FAC was running low on fuel and had returned to base to fill up since the missile FACs should have been able to easily keep the ailens in active range had it been working.  I check my three other missile FAC squads and all have the same problem.  Crap.  I call in other sentinels with thermals and start scouring the area.  Two weeks go by and still no contact when out of the blue the missile FAC picks up a point blank thermal at the Grav Survey location and at the exact same time increment full communication relations with the alien race are established....crap.  My diplomatic team is good.  Crap.  I am now at the moral dilemma to blow up, or not to blow up a 'friendly' alien race.....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 16, 2012, 10:37:05 AM
For me, theres no dilemma.

Eradicate!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on February 17, 2012, 12:39:11 AM
turned off all of the extra NPRs just the stock standard alien ones, 6500 solar systems.  Currently 3 jumps out each way a few wrecks to salvage no encounters yet.  Building up some defenses ready to go as the time allows and building up colonies
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 20, 2012, 08:16:16 PM
Not the greatest accessibility but by far and away the most astounding quantity of minerals I have seen appear on a single planet.

Gliese 183-A III
Duranium 12,700,800  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 125,440,000  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 113,209,600  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 151,782,400  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 5,664,400  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 21,344,400  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 196,000,000  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 184,416,400  Acc: 0.7
Corundium 22,657,600  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 98,803,600  Acc: 1

Point score of 33!  Woo!
Poor Corbomite...   :-\
I'll continue to level up my Geo Team and let them have a go at this one later.  From a RP standpoint I would sure hope they can increase accessibility and find a little Corbo to boot.  The planet isn't particularly large, about 120% Earth size.  The thing must be damn near solid Newtonian Elements....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on February 20, 2012, 08:27:15 PM
what about the wider system for cormorabite

Actually id like to see some ingame regeneration perhaps comets as an event spawning into systems the civvies or u mining them and then having them disappear.

Jupiters should be a good source for sorium as a jump fuel gas giants have always been touted as a he3 type of fuel

Congrats on the find though
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 20, 2012, 08:49:50 PM
Might as well share the next few bodies of the system:

Gliese 183-A I
Duranium 296,704,800  Acc: 0.3
Neutronium 37,088,100  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 42,575,620  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 70,728,100  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 155,500,900  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 134,560,000  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 12,110,400  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 73,188,020  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 127,916,100  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 151,905,600  Acc: 0.1

Gliese 183-A II
Duranium 4,428,288  Acc: 0.8
Tritanium 451,584  Acc: 0.3
Vendarite 1,679,616  Acc: 0.5

Gliese 183-A IV
Sorium 3,705,000  Acc: 0.2

Gliese 183-A IV - Moon 5
Duranium 37,393,950  Acc: 1
Neutronium 13,439,560  Acc: 0.7
Corbomite 73,170,910  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 83,137,920  Acc: 0.1

Gliese 183-A V
Sorium 1,961,000  Acc: 0.9

Granted some of these are low accessibility but as a system I am impressed.  So far only about 25% surveyed.  II is a viable 2.0 colony cost planet to boot.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on February 20, 2012, 08:52:11 PM
I like moon 5 there, those are some damn fine accessibility minerals.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on February 20, 2012, 11:40:19 PM
any nearby aliens to take out ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 21, 2012, 07:35:34 AM
Completely unpopulated system two jumps from Sol.  I'm quite pleased.  Sol is about depleted on minerals and I am already running into a Duranium ceiling.   I did a lot of exploring "north" of my system and have several new colonies and smaller mining operations.  Mineral accessibilities were reasonable but quantities were very poor and not worth relocating major industry.  I'm probably going to to have to SM in a Duranium geology team "find" to continue this game.

Anyone else have this problem with extreme mineral shortages relatively early in-game?  My first couple starts I either focused on exploration or military (just feeling out the game) with only a half-hearted focus on minerals and ended up depleting Earth long before a viable alternative was established.  In this start pretty much all I have done is focus on mining and mining related technologies.  I built almost nothing for a navy and as such I only built a couple of geo and grav ships and 20+ years into this game have only just completed exploration of systems two jumps from Sol.  My next start even with a mining focus I am going to have to SM Mars as a fully functional colony with a full mineral dispersment right from the start.  Is it just me and my style/ignorance or is this a common issue?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on February 21, 2012, 07:51:23 PM
Well, theres a lot of crapshoot at the game start.  The big questions for me are always
"is there enough duranium and corundium around to feed expansion of mining capacity."

I've never needed to SM in minerals to get over a hump, but I have had to shut down industry for: lack of duranium, lack of corundium, and lack of wealth.  I've never had utter shortages of anything else (except for humans), but thats because I put a huge emphasis on construction factories and duranium/corundium at game start.

Find the duranium, you can play the game.  Find corundium as well, and you can build 50 million ton orbital habitats and the tugs to tug them.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on February 24, 2012, 01:25:58 AM
yeah scout geo ship and a geo team and not much else until u find the treasure chest try a non sol start to
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 24, 2012, 09:07:05 AM
I'm struggling with team management as well.  Discussing it is more of an Academy topic so I'm not really looking for help ATM, just noting my frustrations.

Diplomacy teams level up quickly and easily by "practicing" on their homeworlds.  Espionage teams appear to be entirely irrelevant in single race starts.  Xeno teams just hang around picking their noses most of the time.  And Geo teams irritate the hell out of me.  I make the best team I can, send it out into the universe and they take ages to make a discovery and get a minor improvement to their skill, while my geo and grav ships captains are leveling up like mad.  Just seems to me the geo teams should be gaining skill at a similar rate to the ship captains as failure is just as much of a learning experience as success.  I don't expect them to succeed at discovery more, but am frustrated at the extra micromanagement of needing to cycle team members on and off of ships as training facilities.  And additionally frustrated by the "completed" tag on bodies.  If a crap time doesn't find stuff it is only logical that a superior team could be able to find more.

In other news.  I scored my first military victory ever in a missile vs gauss precursor battle.  It only took me three tries before I finally configured my fleet correctly to get missile combat to function correctly.  RIP to my first 10 FAC's that valiantly tried to defend themselves with their good looks.  It was unfortunate that the commander became overconfident in his new-found ability that he pressed on toward the suspected base-world only to encounter a missile armed combatant that out ranged and out ran me and was able to exhaust his entire magazine without my ability to close and return fire.  There goes another 2 ships, unfortunately not FAC's this time, but 9000 ton cruisers.  Ouch.  At least the last one got away with the survivors and commanders from the lifepods when the enemy had to go home for a reload.

I'm getting the hang of it.  My multiple failures have been a lot of fun as I learn this the hard way.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 01, 2012, 07:38:47 AM
I suppose I should post a SS when I have a chance.  I just completed survey of three systems back to back which consist of 12 Colony Cost 2 range worlds between them.  Is this distribution frequent or just a peculiar roll of the die?  If I include worlds up through the Cost 5 range there are over 25 planets that are longer term colonizable.

Such a peculiar starting arrangement in this non-sol start.  I chose a small Binary system with a 0 cost starting body in the inner system and a 2.5 cost body in the outer system.  There were three other 5's and an 8 in the system as well but, as it turns out, very resource poor.  System had 4 jumps points.  Doors #1 and #2 went to body-less, jump-less dead ends, door #3 went to a small singular system with a 2 cost world but little other real estate and an unexciting quantity of minerals and also a dead end JP-wise.  That leaves door #4 as my only salvation without SM mode assistance.  Voila! a nice Quadrinary system.  Inner pair of stars has nice 2 and 4 cost bodies in them and the JP is pretty close to the system core, the outer star pair is not easily accessible until next generation engine techs and possibly hyperdrive become available but has two cost 2 bodies.  With an absence of LP transit options the travel time is 150 days at 1500km/s.  In the process of surveying the system I encountered not one, not two but THREE separate populations of everyone's favorite advance alien opponent.

My first foray into the system completely wiped out my first battle fleet but there was a glimmer of hope and it did show that I could out-range the enemy combatants, I just needed more launchers to finish a kill before they could close range on me.  This little problem set me back a full four years or more in exploration.  Since my resources were poor I was already hitting shortages and having to resort to mining random comets and asteroids for anything I could find.  When I eventually punched through and won over the system a scan of it revealed three more JP's all leading to body-less systems (wth?) with one jump point each leading to trinary and quadrinary systems overflowing with bodies and minerals.  One system has 5 cost 2 worlds and over 10 2-8 worlds.  So far I have found 11 systems, 5 of which are void, one is normal and the remaining 5 systems account for 16 stars, approximately 14 cost 2 bodies and well over 50 2-8 cost bodies.  Such a feast or famine arrangement...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 01, 2012, 12:14:41 PM
Haha what.  All those worlds and no NPRs...? xD   

**

Oh my stars.

Noman
Duranium 228,488  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 6,100,900  Acc: 0.6
Mercassium 67,600  Acc: 0.9
Vendarite 6,492,304  Acc: 0.4
Sorium 219,024  Acc: 0.9
Uridium 195,364  Acc: 1
Corundium 1,430,416  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 5,234,944  Acc: 0.5

And it has ruins! And it's x2.00 col cost!  And it's in the crossroads system for three different NPRs! And it's in the same asteroid as:

Transvaal-A Asteroid #11
Duranium 1,185,800  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 324,900  Acc: 1
Mercassium 129,600  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 302,500  Acc: 0.7

Ahrg!   Mining is a force which gives war meaning.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 01, 2012, 02:06:58 PM
Correct, no NPRs.  Just the three outposts with a pair of defenders each in that first system.  This is probably the 10th universe I have generated and has by far the most unusual distribution of systems and bodies I have seem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on March 01, 2012, 02:38:08 PM
I think i'm going to bump the NPR generation rate for a couple years.  My galaxy is devoid of life.  I havn't even seen a precursor in 25 years.  I find earth-clone after earth clone and nothing to do but put humies on them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on March 04, 2012, 11:51:24 AM
I just waged a proper slugfest against everyone's favourite advanced aliens. I had ten frigattes, 1x Command/Sensor ship, 1x Jump ship, 4x Missile ships and 4x Beam ships, who also double as PD-platforms with their railgun and laser turret. Two enemy ships - 6,700 tons - closed in on me and started lobbing missiles beyond my engagement range.

Turns out I had seriously underestimated the number of AMMs required. Even with 1 AMM per vampire, I ran out of them perhaps 2/3rds through the first wave. Hit-ratio was probably somewhere between 25% and 33%. Beam frigates took up the slack but since there were only four of them (plus the laser of the command ship and the railgun on the jump ship), some leaked through. Armour cratered, no biggie. I pushed in-system after the buggers.

Who managed to restock on a moon and then came back for the second wave. Since I was out of AMMs, their fresh salvoes started getting through easily enough (2x4 missiles) and eventually caused serious damage. My only piece of luck was that their WH-5 required several hits to punch through my armour. In the end, it came down to two of my FFG's lobbing their few remaining ASM missiles (only 3 working launchers at that point) against the enemies and then using my last FF that had an operational FC and a laser turret to close-in and whack them. Two ships lost and the other eight will spend a long time being repaired.

On the other hand, it did prove that my frigate flotillas are capable of independent action - as long as I add a dedicated PD-corvette to the mix.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Moonshadow101 on March 05, 2012, 08:47:35 PM
Four ships with eight plasma carronades each, designed for Jump Point defense were jumped by spacebugs.  Three hundred of them.  Three ships destroyed while trying to get out of their range.  The final ship is backpedaling while desperately firing backwards. 

By "is," I mean "Has been for the past two hours of real time. " The carronades have a 20-second refire, and each salvo has about a 50/50 chance of killing a bug.  I've ground through 200 of them so far.  THIS SHIP WILL SURVIVE.

Makes me wish crews gained exp from dealing damage instead of just from taking it.  These guys would be pros by now. 

"Tapajo 211 has been destroyed"

Only 89 to go!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 05, 2012, 08:53:47 PM
How did they close on you undetected?  Since you obviously can out range them and have the weapons and FC to fire from outside their range I would have thought you would have plenty of advance notice of their arrival.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Moonshadow101 on March 05, 2012, 10:33:02 PM
800 Ton bugs with a tiny thermal sig.  Plasma ships have 100-Resolution (5000 ton) sensors.  The tiny buggers don't show up on thermals until about 1 mil out, and active about 800km out.  That still would have been *decent* notice, but a bug (other kind of bug) stopped them from showing up on the system map when I zoomed in.  Thinking the path was clear, I pulled a 5-day increment, which was enough to put them well in firing range.  (A measly 80k km, information gleaned while the first three ships were dying. )

I killed the last of the pursuers a few minutes ago.  Currently moving back to the starting position, wiping up all of the cripples that separated from the pack left behind. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on March 06, 2012, 06:57:26 PM
The Combine Directorate has just begun to build up its navy, and is in the process of several shipyard expansions to allow the construction of many more corvettes and a research push to design effective weaponry.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 06, 2012, 07:44:35 PM
I assumed they closed in close.  I know what you mean about the hostile contacts not showing up in the overview map.  I have to remember to refresh the page each round when I am fighting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on March 08, 2012, 06:39:28 PM
800 Ton bugs with a tiny thermal sig.  Plasma ships have 100-Resolution (5000 ton) sensors.  The tiny buggers don't show up on thermals until about 1 mil out, and active about 800km out.  That still would have been *decent* notice, but a bug (other kind of bug) stopped them from showing up on the system map when I zoomed in.  Thinking the path was clear, I pulled a 5-day increment, which was enough to put them well in firing range.  (A measly 80k km, information gleaned while the first three ships were dying. )

I killed the last of the pursuers a few minutes ago.  Currently moving back to the starting position, wiping up all of the cripples that separated from the pack left behind. 
Classic. The very first game where I met the same critters I had the exact same problem. After that I've always used 3 different active sensors instead of just two.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on March 14, 2012, 10:26:58 PM
Now that I have deepspace tracking in London I'm going to salvage the 1 & 1/2 pages worth of wrecks in the system(no tech expected unfortunately).
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/585/graveyards.jpg/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 20, 2012, 10:14:10 PM
Systems like this really mess with my OCD.  Any idea how hard it is to logically arrange systems in the galactic map with this mess?

(http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q163/noyrex/Untitled.png)

Ugh, the next system tree I explored netted me a system with 11 JPs in it.  My poor Galactic map.  *twitch*
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on March 22, 2012, 03:04:40 PM
Systems like this really mess with my OCD.  Any idea how hard it is to logically arrange systems in the galactic map with this mess?

(http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q163/noyrex/Untitled.png)

Ugh, the next system tree I explored netted me a system with 11 JPs in it.  My poor Galactic map.  *twitch*


I dub those as extra-galactic jump points.  Move them wayyyyy far away on the map-- they're the gates to new galaxies!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tarran on March 22, 2012, 03:43:36 PM
I just found Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Eridani, leading directly to Sol. The JPs aren't even that far from the center of Sol, either.

They both have easily terraformable worlds, but none are good enough for NPRs to be generated. They also have ship wrecks.

This must be my lucky day. Hopefully no Precursors or Starswarm are in those systems.

If they are, well, I'm pretty much boned as I have no military. :P

Edit: Well, doesn't seem like there's any ships.

But... I think one of my survey ships just found some mines. Darn.

So long, survey ship.

...Wait a second, it's still alive?

So... there's just sensors on a world for no reason?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 22, 2012, 03:51:43 PM
I'll post a new SS tonight if I have a chance: with the 10 JP system and 11 JP system I have 22 jumps stemming off of two systems.  The grand total of all my other systems combined is only around 10.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 22, 2012, 03:53:20 PM
Edit: Well, doesn't seem like there's any ships.

But... I think one of my survey ships just found some mines. Darn.

So long, survey ship.

...Wait a second, it's still alive?

So... there's just sensors on a world for no reason?

Doubtful he found mines.  Look closely at the logs.  He probably discovered some missiles via point-blank inspection.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tarran on March 22, 2012, 03:56:12 PM
Doubtful he found mines.  Look closely at the logs.  He probably discovered some missiles via point-blank inspection.
All it says is "New Thermal Contact! Strength 5 Active Sensor S0.525/R80 (New)."

And now the sensors are gone. Curious.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 22, 2012, 06:44:19 PM
That looks like you found an outpost.  Are you parked on a system body when that comes up?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tarran on March 22, 2012, 07:28:50 PM
Yes. But if it was an outpost, how did I survey the planet completely without being interrupted again? I just ran away from it for a little bit, the sensor disappears, I return, and it's not there anymore.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: waresky on March 24, 2012, 10:28:52 AM
Just conquered my first planet from a low-tech NPR.
Turns out, there are no factories, no mines, nothing at all on the planet! I just got a planet with 380 Million of these little buggers:

Species: Mazatlan
Gravity: 0.52 to 1.55
Oxygen: 0.081 to 0.325
Temperature: -67.5 to -11.5

Damn! They would surely love Siberia. I could use them on so many planets, where I would just have to add 0.081 oxygen to the atmosphere and that's it!
But do I really want to make them an equal species to my humans? Or even the dominant race?
Something to think about while I am at work tomorrow...

Lol..

Steve have some "funny soul" when races generation programmed..(srry my english funny:)

ive encounter a sort..of.."Deer" Race,,"Bamby"..very like'em
:DD

(Admiral Lermontov: "DAMN!!..i CANT shoot upon a "Bamby's kids loving" race!!!"...and so on..hehe)

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 24, 2012, 08:08:32 PM
Yes. But if it was an outpost, how did I survey the planet completely without being interrupted again? I just ran away from it for a little bit, the sensor disappears, I return, and it's not there anymore.

Beats me, but a sensor strength 5 is consistent with an unpopulated supply depot.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on April 28, 2012, 11:43:25 PM
It is so annoying to have an enemy that's not a threat, yet you can't shoot down, constantly running around all over your Empire :\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 05, 2012, 03:01:21 AM
Nice! First jump gate I explore and I find a world with a 0.00 colony cost :D

Even if it has no minerals it will serve as a nice colonist farm and tax generator.

EDIT: Son of a... Of course it's the home of an alien race. Right next to Sol. Bah!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on June 05, 2012, 03:30:21 AM
Those aliens can be manipulated
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 05, 2012, 06:52:01 PM
My ship is surveying a planet around Alpha Centauri-B and it detected 30 strength 6 nuclear detonations by an unknown aggressor around one of the outer planets orbiting the system. 25 seconds later it detected 14 strength 6 detonations on the nearby terrestrial planet Alpha Centauri-B IV. I don't know if I want to see who's fighting or not.

EDIT: Nope, they fixed that problem for me. 2 more rounds of shelling later they flew over to me and I identified them as a hostile race we've met already. They're going to nuke my ship now too.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 05, 2012, 07:23:13 PM
When I first encountered the Precursors in my latest game, I thought they were the swarm. I was pleased at how easy it was to kill them. I kept thinking they were swarm until my engineers opened a vault and got some ground troops from the same race.

Later, I went back to a system I left alone because of them. Someone else has been in there because there were wrecks I didn't leave.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 08, 2012, 12:10:30 AM
My allies are creeping me out. They have 5 ships parked on Earth, one of which has been there for several years. I have no active sensors to paing them with to learn anything about them, it's been 18 years and I haven't even designed a warship... I've designed and currently researching the parts for a sensor ship, a standard missile attack ship and a PD ship to go kick over a couple Precursor defense bases floating over Alpha Centauri B-IV, which is a mostly hospitable world and they will likely fry my geosurvey ship when it gets too close. They didn't attack my terraforming fleet (the guys that found them) when they came near, though.


EDIT: Yep, my ship went to survey the planet when I wasn't watching it and one of the bases fired at it with an energy or kinetic weapon, easily blowing it to smeg. The other base was mysteriously silent for some reason.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 08, 2012, 07:53:11 AM
Steve mentioned previously something about old sensor contacts still showing on your overview screen.  Flip through the system view display tabs and make sure you have 'last sensor contact' or some such turned off.  The ships might not be there, you might just be seeing the last known location marker.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 09, 2012, 12:30:18 AM
Oh, those silly civvies. They dumped 6 mining complexes on Sol Asteroid #53 in a year, raising it to 10 complexes. It had only about 30,000 duranium, which with those 10 complexes will last 12 years. They could've dumped those complexes on far richer bodies, like Luna. Lonely Luna has only 4 complexes but it has 3 million duranium on it with an accessability (<< Firefox says that's wrong, but the forum spell check doesn't register anything ???) of 8. It might be a little harder to reach but it will last far longer. As a bonus, Luna also has 300,000 vendarite/access. 7.

Still, I won't complain too much. They make moving 200 automines, 3 mass drivers and 50 mines from Sol to Gliese 109 (my ally's former system, Invaders came and ate them so I claimed their irradiated, dust-clogged homeworld as mine and using it as a population farm/mining system) very easy on my part. It would be a pain using government freighters to move all that, but supply/demand orders make everything so simple! And they're doing it correctly this time. Last time I tried it screwed up for whatever reason.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on June 10, 2012, 01:44:44 PM


Well 4 in a row Nebula 6's, 416km/h max. i mean really? 4 in a row?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 10, 2012, 02:10:43 PM

Well 4 in a row Nebula 6's, 416km/h max. i mean really? 4 in a row?


Nebulae tend to clump together. Once you find a system in one, chances are JP out from there are in the nebula too.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on June 10, 2012, 02:15:10 PM

first time for me finding so many. so far im up to 12 nebula'd systems which is pretty a huge speed bump in my explorations
\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 10, 2012, 03:07:45 PM
I've never found a nebula. I assume they don't generate when "real stars" is on?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on June 10, 2012, 03:56:59 PM
"Real Stars" has black holes, but no nebulae. "Random" has nebulae, but no black holes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on June 10, 2012, 06:07:44 PM
"Real Stars" has black holes, but no nebulae. "Random" has nebulae, but no black holes.

There are no nebulae in real stars because there aren't any close enough to Earth to fit in with the area in which the real stars are located. There are no black holes in random because I am lazy and haven't added them yet :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 10, 2012, 08:08:08 PM
I'm Boned is what's happening. I just lost an entire destroyer squadron, of which i only have 2, to 2 queens, my entire missile capability to 20-some soldiers and am currently watching the queens and workers build more soldiers in the kuiper..... I have another destroyer force due for completeion in 2 years..... just goes to show what training is supposed to prevent, though a shortage of naval officers pretty much prohibited tG training, ah well, time for a restart.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on June 14, 2012, 08:26:24 AM
In my new game, Venus has 24 million tons of accessibility 0.9 neutronium.  ;D Time to expand some shipyards.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on June 14, 2012, 09:04:28 AM
Conventional start game, just had my third battle with precursors in a system next to Sol.

First battle was a squadron of 3 frigates dispatched after the loss of contact with a survey ship, they spotted the enemy only to be obliterated before being able to fire a shot.

Second battle was a follow-up squadron of four updated 5000-tonne frigates with state-of-the-art nuclear pulse drives (;D) and improved missiles. The battle started off well, with the enemy taking significant damage to a number of their ships, but the small squadron eventually ran out of missiles and was lost with all hands.

The third battle of Procyon took place a few years after the first two. Having lost two squadrons already it had been decided to wait for another round of upgrades, and after 4-5 years I was ready to venture out again. Determined not to lose a third engagement almost three quarters of the mobile forces available to Earth were dispatched. Nine River Mod B guided missile frigates and three modified frigate leader variants set out for the contested system. The advantage in numbers was decisive this time, and although three more frigates were lost before the battle ended all six enemy craft (which despite being numerically outnumbered still out-massed the fleet by almost 10000 tonnes) were destroyed.

Sadly the database has been corrupted and I think I've lost the game.  :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on June 14, 2012, 11:26:51 AM
Well, I have a few fighter wings and some frigates under construction, but for something in between I'm building some FACs. However, I can squeeze on 25 box launchers, but I have to shorten the maintenance life to 3 years (Using a tiny engineering module), so is it worth it to skip some maintenance for more launchers?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 14, 2012, 12:25:02 PM
Most people will tell you that dedicated combat craft do not need a maintenance life greater than 2 years.  Combat craft will spend much of their life in orbit at a colony. 

For my purposes smallish FAC squadrons have done well to satisfy early game extra-sol system defense requirements and only in that role I have been giving them increased maintenance cycle time until a system would be able to staff and supply it's own maintenance facilities.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 14, 2012, 03:15:44 PM
Just started playing two days ago.  Three years into my first real game, I get my first hostile contact- a geosurvey team investigating Proxima Centauri B IV, one jump from Sol, detected a thermal signature.  I decided to turn on transponders and say "Hello. " 5 seconds later, a missile salvo slammed into one of the two ships on the team and blew it to pieces.  I immediately turned transponders off on the other ship and bugged out at max speed.

I'm hoping it's a planet-bound race with missile defenses; of the four shipyards I started with, the biggest two are commercial.  I was in the process of adding max tonnage to the Naval shipyards, but suddenly find I need ships with weapons. . .  and the largest I can build are 10k tons.

Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet is still trying to figure out how to mine.  Asteroid mining modules aren't as self-explanitory as I'd hoped. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 14, 2012, 04:04:29 PM
10k Military ship is pretty big.  Military ships typically run 10% of the size of the commercial ships you can build at any given time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 14, 2012, 05:58:11 PM
Good to know.  Anyway, when I finally got a gunship there, one more missile salvo was launched, which the gunship destroyed, and then nothing more happened.  I still have no clue where the missiles came from; the survey team was called back and found nothing.  Active sensors show zip.

Either a leftover trap from a long-gone alien race, or- the more worrisome possibility- there's a cloaked spacecraft watching the task group complete its survey.

From now on, I'm designing my jump capable geosurvey craft with both active sensors and point-defense lasers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 14, 2012, 07:27:26 PM
Good to know.  Anyway, when I finally got a gunship there, one more missile salvo was launched, which the gunship destroyed, and then nothing more happened.  I still have no clue where the missiles came from; the survey team was called back and found nothing.  Active sensors show zip.

Either a leftover trap from a long-gone alien race, or- the more worrisome possibility- there's a cloaked spacecraft watching the task group complete its survey.

From now on, I'm designing my jump capable geosurvey craft with both active sensors and point-defense lasers.

Could have been a minefield.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on June 14, 2012, 08:26:20 PM
Is putting fighters through training exercises worth it? They keep misjudging distances and running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, so I set them to refuel at 50%, but now I can't run for more than a few days without an interrupt because they completed orders... :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on June 14, 2012, 09:11:58 PM
Easiest way I have found to train fighters is a "fighter station" specifically for that purpose.

I build a station, big hangers, big fuel tanks and a couple of engines. The engines are just enough to give it a high single digit or low teens movement rate. Put the station in orbit, assign it to a "Fighter Trainer" task force, and then load the fighters up on it.

Assign a commander to the station with good training, making sure he is the highest rank of any officer assigned to the station OR the fighters.

Then set the task force to train and voila! Your fighters get trained up without constant interrupts.

Since the station is so slow, it never gets far from earth, BUT it counts as a ship, so you get training. Once done, you can assign the trained fighters anywhere, including PDC fighter bases.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 14, 2012, 09:38:48 PM
What Arwyn is getting at is that carriers will train assigned fighter squadrons along with itself if the carrier is sent on a training mission.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on June 14, 2012, 09:45:28 PM
Ah. Probably should have built a carrier... I've been running with only a few fighter bases on earth for defense, so no mobile hangar equipped units. Should my fighter task groups stay separate from their motherships, or can they launch while still in the same group? This is my first time using anything smaller than a corvette, so I'm a little lost...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 16, 2012, 07:38:19 PM
Currently rebuilding the 1st destron and giving out medals after invading an npr homeworld, still trying to pacify teh locals & stop shipbuilding without blowing up the precious shipyards, also grooming anew command as a hit to the fbridge killed half of them. 15 000 tonne gauss ships are bad for parti beam facs in a related development....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on June 16, 2012, 08:10:45 PM
Particle beam FACs are hilarious. I had a lot of fun with those one game.

In my game (Conventional start, 2025), it is 2063 and my Lunar colony is at 1.75 billion colonists. I suppose I should start thinking about giving it a name...
Meanwhile, the navy is beginning to expand, and industry is thriving thanks to the bountiful mineral reserves on Luna (space master who?)

Having a blast this game!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 17, 2012, 08:30:00 AM
Keep up the good luck, The locals on the planet are still refusing to submit to my benevolent nuclear backed rule.... we'll see how 23 strength 4 missiles changes their mind, also i think some precursors in a system i found a while a go are in a fight, they're no longer camping my jump point and i'm getting five sec increments...


Finally finished capturing the planet, got lots of nifty jump tech even though the game is set for JG's on all JP's.... aw well, also got particle beam 6 and captured two MASSIVE naval shipyards, 16500 and 15000 tonnes respectively, hot dog, once my magneto plasma engines are online it's time for some cruisers!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on June 17, 2012, 01:18:53 PM
http://i.imgur.com/CR3gD.png

o.O

I think I broke the universe.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 17, 2012, 01:29:10 PM
http://i.imgur.com/CR3gD.png

o.O

I think I broke the universe.

What did you Do sir?
0 0
 _
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on June 17, 2012, 01:31:50 PM
What did you Do sir?
0 0
 _
Travel at almost twice the speed of light.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 17, 2012, 02:07:43 PM
Argle...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on June 19, 2012, 10:51:27 PM
I'm about to insert an Espionage team onto the Space Toads home planet, in hopes of stealing some useful techs.

How does my disguise look?

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/RI_033_ToadSuit.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on June 19, 2012, 11:20:54 PM
I'm about to insert an Espionage team onto the Space Toads home planet, in hopes of stealing some useful techs.

How does my disguise look?

(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/RI_033_ToadSuit.jpg)

On behalf of the Space Toads, suck my cloaca.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 20, 2012, 06:59:19 AM
Ok, that made me smile this morning and you get a +1.

I really do hope that was a picture from last year's Halloween party and you didn't just run out and dress up like that for the sake of making this joke.  :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on June 20, 2012, 11:51:00 AM
So, anyone think I should add that to the race pictures? Probably the right-hand one would be better :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on June 20, 2012, 12:30:33 PM
Yes, yes you should.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on June 20, 2012, 02:16:54 PM
Hypno-Toad for the win! :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chrislocke2000 on June 20, 2012, 02:35:21 PM
So, anyone think I should add that to the race pictures? Probably the right-hand one would be better :)

Steve

Oh yes thats gotta go in
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on June 20, 2012, 08:09:22 PM
For sure I'd play as (or crush) the hypnotoad race.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 21, 2012, 07:14:34 AM
*Diplomatic team walks into the room* Hello Sir we're the ambassadorial team from eaaa...... *Begins drooling and staring at the toad* All Hail Hypno-Toad!!!!


I can just see it now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 21, 2012, 09:17:27 AM
There should be an automatic relations hit with any insectoid race.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 22, 2012, 01:09:40 AM
So I was minding my own business, exploring Gliese 1061, which happens to have what appears to be quite a few planets that can support a colony, when suddenly I come across Gliese 1061 Aliens #1091. Who take out half my scattered survey group. With just a single ship.
A single ship, with the following stats:
Name Triththail 002
Sensor S216/R20: Strength 216, Resolution 20, Max Range 43.2m km, GPS 4320
Cross Section 157
Estimated Tonnage 7850
Thermal Signature 1125
Observed Speed 7165
Estimated Speed 7165
Shield Strength 0
Recharge Rate 0
Armour 2
ECM 50
Est. Jump Dist 0

7 launchers, Size 11 Strength 8 missiles, so fast my sensors can't even lock on fast enough to fire AMMs.
At least it appears to have light armor, no shields, and no AMMs or CIWS of its own...


I jump two battle groups into the system, loaded up with short-to mid range missiles, immediately pick up active sensors, close, and open fire.

It managed to take out one missile destroyer and one destroyer escort, and severely damage the other destroyer escort before it fell to my own "Lancer" class SR ASMs. Though it took all six missile destroyers to do it. I'm lucky one escort survived; it's the only ship in the battle group with active sensors. I hope not all aliens are this deadly- I'm only on the second or third tech tier in this game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on June 22, 2012, 02:43:30 AM
My guess is you ran into one of the spoiler races, this variety is pretty hard for lower tech empires. I guess if you've been researching very slowly it could be a planet based NPR that drastically out techs you, but I kinda doubt it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on June 22, 2012, 02:30:16 PM

I just realized that one of my GEO survey squadrons has been on task force training for 5 years. Isnt that a bit much?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 22, 2012, 03:33:20 PM
I just realized that one of my GEO survey squadrons has been on task force training for 5 years. Isnt that a bit much?


Why train your Geo/Grav squadrons?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 22, 2012, 03:37:20 PM
Better question is why you are task force training a non-combat ship?

oooo, sniped!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 22, 2012, 04:07:31 PM
Yeah, but they'll look real good flying in formation  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on June 22, 2012, 04:51:42 PM
i was curious because of the awaiting confirmation that bites us in the butt when we get attacked and orders to run \have to wait for that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 22, 2012, 04:53:56 PM
i was curious because of the awaiting confirmation that bites us in the butt when we get attacked and orders to run \have to wait for that.

Everyone knows the Survey Corps are expendable ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on June 22, 2012, 11:09:04 PM
Everyone knows the Survey Corps are expendable ;)

Seriously, that's the price you pay for playing Gagarin or Armstrong. Just keep the survey fleets cheap!  8)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on June 23, 2012, 04:44:13 PM
wow, working for you guys must be like working for Vader :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 23, 2012, 06:01:54 PM
wow, working for you guys must be like working for Vader :)


We need a force lightning and choke emoticon...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 24, 2012, 10:11:58 AM
Just hit another system full of the hostile aliens I mentioned before. Multiple ships this time. Their FAC have a nasty bite. One wing of four took out a missile destroyer escourt with a single volley of missiles, then retreated... Only in range long enough for me to fire a volley of ASM from one of my missile destroyers. Sadly, it never impacted; they moved outside of its maximum range quickly. I called off the attack and retreated... but since one jump ship was destroyed, it lead to a nailbiting cliffhanger- having escourted one group of missile destroyers through the jump point, my one remaining jump ship had to go back and grab the other group. The whole time at 5 second intervals. I was awaiting a second volley of incoming missiles at any time, while the escourt's jump engines recovered to make the remaining jump...

They made it, no further attacks. I waited at the jump point for 60 days just in case they tried to follow. At point blank, while they were blinded, I could have probably done serious damage. They probably realized this, and didn't follow. I'll need to drop a buoy at that jump point so I can have advance warning if they come through again, though it's still several jumps away from my home system.

In the meantime, I've noticed their craft and missiles have incredible speed, but that's about it- they're overloaded on engines and warheads, and don't have room to pack ammo for a sustained assault. Therein lies the key. I'm researching better thermal sensors to give my AMM a chance to intercept, and ECM to force them to close to a range to where they can't escape my ASM counter-assault.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on June 24, 2012, 11:51:25 AM
In the meantime, I've noticed their craft and missiles have incredible speed, but that's about it- they're overloaded on engines and warheads, and don't have room to pack ammo for a sustained assault. Therein lies the key. I'm researching better thermal sensors to give my AMM a chance to intercept, and ECM to force them to close to a range to where they can't escape my ASM counter-assault.

Resolution-1 active sensors rather than thermal sensors are the key to detecting incoming ASM. Thermal will only detect them quite late whereas res-1 active will detect at them at several hundred thousand to several million kilometers, depending on size and tech.

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 24, 2012, 10:07:38 PM
Thanks. Better redesign my racial tech then... :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on June 25, 2012, 10:06:24 AM
A rather catastrophical battle, only one command cruiser escaped and even that was only because of it's thick armour and massive point defences.
The designs of my missiles, missile frigates, and other essential technologies need a complete overhaul. The hostiles used massive amounts of size 1 missiles in salvoes that consisted of 36 of those bastards.
(http://i50.tinypic.com/21j6bmf.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 27, 2012, 09:56:17 AM
...I did a conventional start and started my first SY pn cont cap Expansion...... 40 in game years ago.... it nows has over 2 million tonnes of capacity.... what should i do with it?..... I don't think ihave the minerals for a Ship that BIG!...... be fun if i wer to build one though, anyone for a two million ton orbital habitat armed with hundreds of missile launchers and lasers?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on June 27, 2012, 04:00:01 PM
...I did a conventional start and started my first SY pn cont cap Expansion...... 40 in game years ago.... it nows has over 2 million tonnes of capacity.... what should i do with it?..... I don't think ihave the minerals for a Ship that BIG!...... be fun if i wer to build one though, anyone for a two million ton orbital habitat armed with hundreds of missile launchers and lasers?

I think it's obvious what you should do with it; make it bigger!  ;D

I had a game that went almost 100 years where I wound up building a massive 4m+ ton shipyard. Used it to construct a couple enormous freighters and colony ships. Creating new colonies was never so easy as after that, it was awesome.

Oh, but for the record you don't need a shipyard for orbital habitats, they get built directly by industry.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jseah on June 27, 2012, 05:31:31 PM
8th May
Empire of the Rising Sun - Promising New Officer - Tokyo - Chikanatsu Ai has joined your army officer corps.  Political Reliability 30%.  Promotion Score 900

She might be useless in a fight, but boy, is she cute!
=(

Perhaps I can find a replacement battalion to stick her in and use for parades. 

21st May
Empire of the Rising Sun - Production - Tokyo - Construction of Military Academy completed on Mizuho

Let's hope the new kids do better. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on June 27, 2012, 09:48:09 PM
I think it's obvious what you should do with it; make it bigger!  ;D

I had a game that went almost 100 years where I wound up building a massive 4m+ ton shipyard. Used it to construct a couple enormous freighters and colony ships. Creating new colonies was never so easy as after that, it was awesome.

Oh, but for the record you don't need a shipyard for orbital habitats, they get built directly by industry.

I've reached a decision, it's time to build a dahak class destroyer carrier. FEAR MY SWARMS OF 9K ton DESTROYERS YE FEEBLE XENOS!  now to create the achuultani
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on June 28, 2012, 01:24:47 PM
I came across an NPR that apparently hasn't developed jump engines. Instead, it expands by building jump gates on all its system jump points. I'm glad they're not hostile- I think they'll reach Sol in a few years. Either way, I plan to have a massive FAC Carrier waiting.

The wisdom of this tactic (or lack thereof) has just become apparent as things have slowed down to a crawl. Curious, I checked the combat log in SM mode- they now appear to be fighting the Star Swarm in multiple systems simultaneously. At 30 seconds to process a 5-second interval, and no sign of anything relenting, I think this game may be unsalvagable.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on June 28, 2012, 03:16:50 PM
Have you tried clicking Auto-Turns on? And reading a book while waiting for your PC to crunch the numbers?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on June 28, 2012, 03:18:36 PM
8th May
Empire of the Rising Sun - Promising New Officer - Tokyo - Chikanatsu Ai has joined your army officer corps.  Political Reliability 30%.  Promotion Score 900

She might be useless in a fight, but boy, is she cute!
=(

Perhaps I can find a replacement battalion to stick her in and use for parades.

East-Asian Federation in my game has only five Civilian Administrators - all female and aged between 21 and 26.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on July 01, 2012, 06:57:54 PM
14th May, 2036.
Despite longstanding attempts to communicate with the Alien species discovered in Proxima Centauri, little to no headway has been made. The situation came to a head several hours ago. The Geosurvey craft Discovery 001, concerned its orbit around Proxima Centauri-A I was the cause of some antagonization, decided to withdraw back to the Sol Jump Point.

Without warning, it was fired upon with anti-ship missiles, and destroyed. 33 survivors made it to life pods, but there are no ships within the 14 hour life support limit capable of surviving enemy fire to make the rescue.

Given the proximity to Sol, the Terran Federation has already been planning for this contingency for years- in fact, the preparations for an invasion have been underway for some time now, and the ships are already being built. Immediately upon news of the destruction of the Discovery, six Valliant class troop transports were dispatched to the ruins on Mars to pick up four heavy assault battalions and two battalions of mobile infantry. Once they have picked up their contingent, they will join the six Apache class Missile Boats that are en-route to a stationary orbit around the Proxima Centauri jump point, where the JCS Majestic is 35 days away from completing a one-way jump gate to the system.

They have but a short time to wait until two more Valliant class troop transports and three more Apache missile boats are launched, along with two Fletcher class Destroyer escourts for anti-missile and targetting support. The high command on Earth is debating whether to proceed as soon as the ships are launched, or wait until two more Fletchers, and additional Apaches, can be built. The Terran Federation is in debt, but the invasion will determine the future of humanity. They have a little over a year to decide their course of action.

Meanwhile, production is pulled from factories and research labs, and pumped into new Financial Centers, along with extensive advertising for a global war bonds campaign. "Save the solar system, buy war bonds!"

Code: [Select]
Apache class Missile Boat    1,600 tons     191 Crew     252.6 BP      TCS 32  TH 160  EM 0
5000 km/s     Armour 1-12     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 12
Maint Life 2.45 Years     MSP 49    AFR 40%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 11    5YR 169    Max Repair 64 MSP
Magazine 104   

GB Magneto-plasma Drive E90 (1)    Power 160    Fuel Use 900%    Signature 160    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 6.3 billion km   (14 days at full power)

Size 4 Missile Launcher (3)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 60
LR Missile Fire Control FC115-R100 (1)     Range 115.2m km    Resolution 100
Valkyrie LR Size 4 Anti-ship Missile (24)  Speed: 23,200 km/s   End: 35.9m    Range: 50m km   WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 108 / 65 / 32

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Fletcher class Destroyer Escort    6,800 tons     641 Crew     1446.2 BP      TCS 136  TH 360  EM 0
2647 km/s     Armour 1-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 12
Maint Life 0.4 Years     MSP 133    AFR 369%    IFR 5.1%    1YR 330    5YR 4944    Max Repair 192 MSP
Magazine 196   

Ion Engine E9 (6)    Power 60    Fuel Use 90%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 29.4 billion km   (128 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 1 Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
AMM Missile Fire Control FC28-R1 (4)     Range 28.8m km    Resolution 1
Talon Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (196)  Speed: 36,500 km/s   End: 0.9m    Range: 2m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 194 / 116 / 58

Missile Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 192     Range 11.5m km    Resolution 1
LR Active Search Sensor MR96-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 96.0m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Valliant class Troop Transport    4,600 tons     157 Crew     324.8 BP      TCS 92  TH 240  EM 0
2608 km/s     Armour 1-24     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 0.74 Years     MSP 44    AFR 169%    IFR 2.4%    1YR 60    5YR 894    Max Repair 60 MSP
Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Drop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Cargo Handling Multiplier 10   

Ion Engine E9 (4)    Power 60    Fuel Use 90%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 43.5 billion km   (192 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jseah on July 02, 2012, 05:20:31 PM
East-Asian Federation in my game has only five Civilian Administrators - all female and aged between 21 and 26.
Do they all have political bonuses?  Clearly someone up there really likes... *blam*

Move along, nothing to see.  We welcome our loli masters. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on July 02, 2012, 05:52:27 PM
Do they all have political bonuses?  Clearly someone up there really likes... *blam*

Move along, nothing to see.  We welcome our loli masters. 

Shouldn't that be "mistresses"?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jseah on July 02, 2012, 06:08:10 PM
Shouldn't that be "mistresses"?
Yes, that is right.  The agent responsible for it has already been replaced. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: gamemonger56 on July 03, 2012, 03:00:30 PM

I've encountered four alien races and have managed thru clever diplomacy to become allies with all four. The problem is that they they all seem to be at war with each other, and have mutually decided that Sol System is a good place to fight. While I cant deny I'm securing intell and tech from this, it is kinda annoying that i have litter all over the system. My salvage crews are demanding less hours and more pay, and the aliens arent paying attention to "HINTS" that they should leave the system....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on July 03, 2012, 03:17:42 PM
"Hint" harder. Try a nuclear tipped hint.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on July 04, 2012, 05:52:13 PM
Only after seeing combat did I realize I forgot to add armor to my ships. Oops.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jseah on July 07, 2012, 04:59:14 PM
8th May
Empire of the Rising Sun - Promising New Officer - Tokyo - Chikanatsu Ai has joined your army officer corps.  Political Reliability 30%.  Promotion Score 900

She might be useless in a fight, but boy, is she cute!
=(
I stuck her in a replacement battalion.  When I got a few more officers, guess who got promoted? 

And no, she's still nothing but a showpiece.  In fact, out of all the rank 2s, only 1 has a high promo score than she does.  And that only because he has xenology on top of a 30% political bonus.  (but xeno is useful, I don't mind xeno)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on July 08, 2012, 01:41:27 AM
The humans and I completely wiped out each other's fleets. They have about 3 combat ships left and I have maybe 4 or so.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on July 09, 2012, 11:26:03 AM
Can you imagine the panic in their respective Fleet HQs in a situation like that?
"We literally only have a rowing boat left in space!"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on July 10, 2012, 09:27:11 AM
An enemy ship destroyed one of my gunboats, then crashed into the wreckage and demolished itself- somehow my ship managed a 164 point ramming attack.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on July 28, 2012, 12:30:47 AM
A Geo Team on Luna has made atleast FOURTEEN straight discoveries, and counting, only Corbomite and Boronide haven't been found in any serious amounts.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bouchart on July 28, 2012, 04:41:11 PM
Among other things, I finally finished researching Active Grav Sensor Strength 180 and Collapsium Armor.   This game has gone on for 184 years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MrAnderson on July 29, 2012, 11:13:18 AM
I've started my first game in forever. Generated a solar system with 1 habitable and another cost 3 breathable iceball, I'm four years in so far. I have 2 geo survey ships, 2 freighters, and a colony ship. I have a 1 million person colony on the cost 3, and 4 terraforming installations on it. Civilians have 4 colony ships and 3 freighters. It's one of my best starts, then again, I usually play conventional starts.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on August 10, 2012, 03:11:43 AM
I have this hub system with 10(!) jump points 2 jumps from sol. I've explored 7 of them. So one fine day as my geosurvey ship was returning from one of the systems beyond it, it noticed a jump gate on jump point 8, which was unexplored. It wasn't there the last time one of my ships was in system and I never saw the builder. But then, my survey ships have crappy TH sensors. Please don't let it be a bull-headed, guns-ablazing NPR.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on August 10, 2012, 04:29:43 AM
I have this hub system with 10(!) jump points 2 jumps from sol. I've explored 7 of them. So one fine day as my geosurvey ship was returning from one of the systems beyond it, it noticed a jump gate on jump point 8, which was unexplored. It wasn't there the last time one of my ships was in system and I never saw the builder. But then, my survey ships have crappy TH sensors. Please don't let it be a bull-headed, guns-ablazing NPR.


Why not? It's sooooo much easier if they declare war n you first, i tend to try and justify my actions and 10 years of irritating them and blowing up the occasional "pirate" of theirs. Though I tend to only fight smaller nprs in their home system.... with lot's of 9000 ton destroyers. Still,wheres the fun if you can't give yourself a reason I.E hostile first contact, for overmilitarising your terriories and aquiring billions o alien slaves.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on August 10, 2012, 05:36:35 AM

Why not? It's sooooo much easier if they declare war n you first, i tend to try and justify my actions and 10 years of irritating them and blowing up the occasional "pirate" of theirs. Though I tend to only fight smaller nprs in their home system.... with lot's of 9000 ton destroyers. Still,wheres the fun if you can't give yourself a reason I.E hostile first contact, for overmilitarising your terriories and aquiring billions o alien slaves.
I jumped in aaaaaaaaand
nobody's home. jump gate on the other side and another one on another jump point. I'm gonna be keeping an eye on this system for a while...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bouchart on August 10, 2012, 06:00:06 PM
I started a new game in a fairly small galaxy, and I met two NPRs who are very friendly with me but at war with each other.   They give me free tech and I salvage their wrecked ships.   It's win-win!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jseah on August 16, 2012, 09:11:24 PM
Sensei Shirane Rokuemon:
Admin rating 12
Research Bonus 65% (Power and Propulsion)
Political Reliability 60%

...

Not only must he be a research superstar (seriously, a 60 lab scientist with 65% bonus in P&P?!?  The only way it could be better is if his specialization was C&P), he's also a celebrity?

People's stat point assignments seem pretty random. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ShadowLop on August 17, 2012, 03:02:20 AM
Mining fleet is about 20b km out on a comet.  Corundum trickling in from Titania.  First super-miner almost complete on Earth >:D.
300,000t of asteroid-devouring ship - 50 miners, 20 Magneto engines.

In other news, first missile ships performed admirably, even when warping in on top of a beam-armed (probably precursor) warship. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: chrislocke2000 on August 17, 2012, 04:55:56 AM
In the middle of a long and painful war on the home planet of the Dutchy of feather. My 30 Battalions of assault infantry have fought for close to 6 months in order to defeat the Dutchy's own forces but now lack the numbers to force a defeat of the planet.

The fleet has stayed close to the planet, concious of the shipyards that have been left intact, leaving the entry jump point unguarded. This has proven to be a costly mistake as the relief troops sent in to bolster those already on the ground has just been ambushed by a lone hostile ship that was missed in the original assault. The fleet has had to sit by helplessly as the troop carriers (the empires entire troop lift capacity) with some 20 battalions of mobile infantry and assault infantry are ripped apart by continuous rail gun fire.

The empire is now scrambling to replace the troop carriers and train new troops before the dutchy is able to train more of their own troops and launch new ships. Meanwhile in retaliation for the attack the empire has just engaged and destroyed 15 of the Dutchy's own freighters....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on August 19, 2012, 08:11:14 AM
Should I be worried?

(http://leet.cc/360Untitled.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on August 19, 2012, 10:59:49 AM
Should I be worried?

(http://leet.cc/360Untitled.png)

It's continuing the message above it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on August 19, 2012, 12:31:04 PM
No, it's the 50000 maintenance supplies.  lol
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on August 20, 2012, 01:07:09 AM
No, it's the 50000 maintenance supplies.  lol
It's just the 68 000 ton Kirov I - class Battlecruiser
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on August 20, 2012, 08:34:18 AM
I really hope that 5.7 offers us provisions for absurdly sized military craft without needing to game the system.

Your Kirov I, is it a functional bit of hardware or just RP fun?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on August 20, 2012, 11:30:21 AM
68,000 tons? I'd imagine she's (or should I say he's?) fully functional and battle worthy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on August 20, 2012, 04:49:45 PM
68,000 tons? I'd imagine she's (or should I say he's?) fully functional and battle worthy.

I really hope that 5.7 offers us provisions for absurdly sized military craft without needing to game the system.

Your Kirov I, is it a functional bit of hardware or just RP fun?

Oh I actually meant 66000 tons, my bad. But yeah, see for yourself

Code: [Select]
Kirov class Battlecruiser 66000 tons     7556 Crew     27313.25 BP      TCS 1320  TH 750  EM 0
7102 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 9-145     Shields 0-0     Sensors 24/1/0/0     Damage Control 287     PPV 355.68
Annual Failure Rate: 366%    IFR: 5.1%    Maintenance Capacity 50958 MSP
Flag Bridge    Magazine 3001  

J66000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 66000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
M-Class Pokrovsky Fusion Drive - 1000 (50)    Power 187.5    Fuel Use 60%    Armour 0    Exp 35%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 45.5 billion km   (74 days at full power)

AKM-850M10 (8x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Twin 600mm G.C. M3 Turret (4x12)    Range 60 000km     TS: 7000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Turret Firecontrol T9K R60K (2)    Max Range: 120 000 km   TS: 9375 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17

Size 9 Missile Launcher (30)    Missile Size 9    Rate of Fire 40
"Tor" MT-2 Missile System (8)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
MFC-48 (2)     Range 138.2m km    Resolution 16
PD-3 Missile launch control (4)     Range 17.3m km    Resolution 1
OSA-CA (148)  Speed: 89 600 km/s   End: 7.8m    Range: 42m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1344 / 806 / 403
Chaser - V (317)  Speed: 62 200 km/s   End: 26.8m    Range: 100m km   WH: 20    Size: 9    TH: 642 / 385 / 192

Thermal Sensor TH1-24 (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Signature 1000: 24m km
Nikolai Radar System MR460-R100 (1)     GPS 19200     Range 460.8m km     Resolution 100
RS-3 Radar system (1)     GPS 132     Range 31.7m km     Resolution 1

ECCM-4 (4)         ECM 40

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

The upgraded version Kirov II is faster with 5 more launchers, and weights 2000 tons more. Just had a battle against 8 ships consisting of 1000 ton and 6000 ton ships. Well, not really, you can't call a total slaughter a battle. My two Kirovs sort of looked at the general direction of the enemies and they turned to dust.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on August 21, 2012, 12:51:28 AM
Just got a civilian administrator. Porfirio Blood. His abilities are blah, but he's got a sweet name.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on August 21, 2012, 06:52:05 AM
I just scrapped a conventional start game (could have used SM to save it a guess)  Small system with 5 planets, three were habitable range and two were gas giants with umteen moons.  Probably around 100 celestial bodies without counting roids.  Grand sum total of corundium in the entire system was 20k.  After scanning the entire system and finding just three additional bodies with ANY minerals on them I threw in the towel.  Just didn't have the motivation.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on August 21, 2012, 10:23:19 AM
Playing a small game- 75 systems max. Just finished exploring most of the known universe (one system left unsurveyed.) Found an entire intact city as ruins (1169 installations, that's going to take a while to recover) and decided to turn on Invaders. We'll see what happens now...

One of these days my other concept campaign may get off the ground, too- "25 Systems... of Terror!" Known star systems, 25 max, with 3 nprs to start with. Things should get interesting quickly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ektoras on August 22, 2012, 01:58:54 AM
One of these days my other concept campaign may get off the ground, too- "25 Systems... of Terror!" Known star systems, 25 max, with 3 nprs to start with. Things should get interesting quickly.

Intersting concept, i think i will try it. Conventional start? You will try to be peaceful and diplomatic?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on August 22, 2012, 05:00:41 AM
@Xeryon - it's pretty much simplicity itself to re-roll the entire sysems minerals with SM. That's too bad, sounded like an awesome system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on August 22, 2012, 05:03:25 AM
The game I'm currently in I set max systems to 10 and had 2 starting NPR's, a computer generated one and humans that I set on earth manually.

Although for some reason the game currently has significantly more than 10 systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on August 22, 2012, 09:29:59 AM
@TheShoe: I know I could have modified the system.  It just saddened me to see the natural distribution of minerals was so low.  I was only half heartedly playing while waiting for 5.7, now I'm hooked on that blasted Rigellian Diary.  I hope I get it finished before Steve is done with 5.7...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on August 22, 2012, 10:13:39 AM
Intersting concept, i think i will try it. Conventional start? You will try to be peaceful and diplomatic?
You can, if you want. :D Concept's up for grabs, play how you like.

My backstory is Earth's first contact, in 2020, is a heavily damaged, massive space craft which jumped in system. It's followed by a second craft that open fires on the first. The light show sets off a panic on Sol, as humanity realizes they are completely outclassed. The first ship destroys the second. It then transmits a ton of technical data to Earth, which we start decoding- jump point theory, trans-newtonian metallurgy, even spaceship designs. However, the first ship is dying- heavily damaged and cut off from home, no fuel, no maintenance supplies, no way to repair. After a month of sending nothing but tech specs, they send a single message: "They're coming. Be ready." The ship's engines suffer a containment failure, and the ship explodes.

Earth's population, terrified, unites against the common perceived threat, and begins to construct the new technology. Game starts 5 years after first contact...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: HaliRyan on August 22, 2012, 08:44:27 PM
The game I'm currently in I set max systems to 10 and had 2 starting NPR's, a computer generated one and humans that I set on earth manually.

Although for some reason the game currently has significantly more than 10 systems.

I might be wrong on this, but I seem to remember that if you use real stars the limit doesn't apply.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on August 23, 2012, 04:57:32 AM
I might be wrong on this, but I seem to remember that if you use real stars the limit doesn't apply.
I didn't
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on August 25, 2012, 04:08:56 PM
Tried a game as Soviet Union

First system jump in late 39, encountered a huge ship. Destroyed both Geosurvey ships, and followed my jump cruiser into sol.
What followed was a desperate uphill battle, the ship was a 60 000 ton swarmer carrier with shields and whatnot. And ridiculous compliment of FAC's. It moved on to destroy everything it saw, which included all the civilian constructions. I managed to hide my freighter and colonization fleets in the asteroid field. Eventually earth itself was invaded, and in the war that lasted a year my ground forces fought tooth and nail against the overwhelming forces.

And after the last bastion of resistance was wiped out from the face of the motherland, the scorched earth protocol was put on effect. Every missile silo on earth launched their ordinance at the remaining alien ground forces, and the nuclear bombardment not only wiped them out, but caused massive radiation and dust levels to block out the sun.

My victory was short lived when the radar systems on earth detected another massive fleet of FAC's incoming.

At that point I figured out it was good time to give up and start a new game

(http://leet.cc/The_fall.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: madmarcus on August 25, 2012, 08:46:36 PM
92 moons and planets in one system.  3 with minerals and one of those is a gas giant with 300,000 Sorium.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on August 25, 2012, 09:13:42 PM
92 moons and planets in one system.  3 with minerals and one of those is a gas giant with 300,000 Sorium.

That's actually fairly low for a gas giant.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: madmarcus on August 25, 2012, 10:15:31 PM
Quote from: Erik Luken link=topic=3808. msg53776#msg53776 date=1345947222
That's actually fairly low for a gas giant.

Yes its low.  I was amazed at how empty the entire system was.  A very low value gas giant, one moon with less than 4,000 boronide, and a decent small terraform candidate with 2,900,000 corbomite at 0. 1.  That's it; the grand total out of almost 100 moons and planets.

Luckily Kuiper 75 (186 planets and moons) isn't turning out to be so empty.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on August 26, 2012, 04:50:02 AM
That's actually fairly low for a gas giant.
I think he's pointing out the abysmal quantity of minerals in the system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on August 29, 2012, 07:53:12 AM
In my current game (still in 2025), I just had a scout-ship run into a *spoiler* minefield in an unexplored system. The mines killed a third of the crew and destroyed nearly all of the armor, both of the engines, the jump drive, all sensors, the majority of the life support, all of the engineering sections... basically every system on the ship was blasted except for one armor square, some fuel tankage and a single small life-support unit. There weren't even enough surviving maintenance stores to repair anything worthwhile.

I had to unload the Fighters from one of my Carriers, and send the fleet to take the poor mangled scout aboard and carry it back home inside the hangar deck!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on August 29, 2012, 08:33:52 AM
How you have all that in 2025
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: blue emu on August 29, 2012, 08:48:21 AM
How you have all that in 2025

Trans-Newtonian start. You can buy some techs at the start of the game. I always tech straight towards Carriers... Fighters are one of the special advantages of playing Humans.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on September 01, 2012, 12:01:09 PM
General survey reports in my current game: Massive, massive deposits of minerals, a million tonnes of a single mineral is the low end, and most SBs with minerals have 5 or more different ones in deposits somewhere between 10 and 30 million tonnes each.

Availability: 0. 1

Inevitably, with the occasional peak of maybe 0. 4 or something.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on September 01, 2012, 12:06:06 PM
General survey reports in my current game: Massive, massive deposits of minerals, a million tonnes of a single mineral is the low end, and most SBs with minerals have 5 or more different ones in deposits somewhere between 10 and 30 million tonnes each.

Availability: 0. 1

Inevitably, with the occasional peak of maybe 0. 4 or something.

That's as intended... Higher amounts of minerals have lower accessibilities. Sort of balance things out. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on September 01, 2012, 12:18:36 PM
I've surveyed some 15 systems in this game.

Each and every single system has had this survey profile, Sol included, except for the 3 systems I've found that have no planets and no asteroids at all.  When the Geosurvey teams go over them, the only thing they find is more deposits, not more easily mined ones either.  My economy is hamstrung from the simple fact that it's impossible to wring out enough minerals from the planets and asteroids to feed my industry.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 02, 2012, 09:13:30 AM
You could make a breakthrough discovery with SM mode and find high accessibility on a body.  ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sinensis on September 02, 2012, 06:20:07 PM
Earth (6000M pop) conventional start then with SM magic put ruin in Mars. . .
I'm quite surprised that I got Partially Intact City with over 1100 TL4 installation. . .  My Engineers frequently restored research labs that come with technological details. . .
These findings jump start my Empire to Nuclear Pulse Engine within only 2 years and now I'm just unearthed (un-marsed?) 20 Ion Engine for my Scientist to analyse. . .
But every odd 3 months or so, my Engineers disturb underground vault that spew hostile robots. . .  Now Mars had more TN Ground Units than Earths with 12 MobInf and 20 Garrison. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 03, 2012, 05:41:05 AM
By the way, did Steve control each and every human faction in his NATO vs USSR, and in Trans-Newtonian games?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on September 03, 2012, 06:48:49 AM
By the way, did Steve control each and every human faction in his NATO vs USSR, and in Trans-Newtonian games?

yes, which is why he had the factions in TN campaign almost annialate each other and then merge them into one Terran Comminwealth when he got tired of managing all of them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 03, 2012, 11:40:21 AM

yes, which is why he had the factions in TN campaign almost annialate each other and then merge them into one Terran Comminwealth when he got tired of managing all of them.
Is it possible to create A.I controlled nations on start on earth in SM and then try to pave a way into space without every nation on planet earth declaring war on everyone and their grandmother immediately?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 03, 2012, 02:03:01 PM
I'm not sure NPRs were even implemented for by the time of that campaign.  Aurora has always been focused on human control.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 03, 2012, 08:45:57 PM
If I remember correctly there is a bit of a problem with factions declaring war on each other and nuking terra into oblivion on a regular basis.  I guess the NPR never had a check to see if nuking the planet would also nuke themselves.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 05, 2012, 03:14:26 AM
If I remember correctly there is a bit of a problem with factions declaring war on each other and nuking terra into oblivion on a regular basis.  I guess the NPR never had a check to see if nuking the planet would also nuke themselves.
I think that's fairly realistic actually.
Even at the end of the Cold War the planned strategy for both Eastern Block and NATO was basically nukes, nukes everywhere should the enemy go further than 50km throught their lines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 05, 2012, 07:27:41 AM
Well, sort of realistic.  It doesn't make for a very productive NPR controlled faction though.  Even during the cold war all factions had reservations about pushing any one side too far due to the threat of MAD.

I REALLY want to start my own multi-faction endeavor but I am loathe to start it until 5.7 and it's improved multi-faction controls are available.

For the purposes of building a useful game it would probably be best to guide the multi-faction through infancy and then relinquish control of the other factions to the computer once substantial off-world colonies and available should they decide diplomacy via fission of fusion is the way to go.  (can that be successfully done: give control back to the computer and have it be productive in deploying your ships and resources that were set up as a managed empire initially?)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on September 05, 2012, 08:41:40 AM
[SNIP] (can that be successfully done: give control back to the computer [SNIP]?)

No.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 05, 2012, 12:49:30 PM
What, it's not possible to set up their relations status to friendly towards you?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bgreman on September 05, 2012, 07:02:26 PM
It's not possible to turn a player-operated race into a computer-operated one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on September 05, 2012, 07:15:13 PM
It's not possible to turn a player-operated race into a computer-operated one.

That's incorrect. There is an option someplace to do so. Don't recall where though. Once you do, you cannot change back to a human controlled race.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 05, 2012, 08:01:46 PM
That would be an interesting option, a'la splinter factions or rebelling colonies that decide to go alone.  Obviously, one could just RP that and control the whole thing themselves but I kind of like not knowing what they might do without you at the helm.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on September 06, 2012, 02:46:01 PM
Just found a near perfect colonisation prospect: . 95 G, 70% N, 28. 8% O, 1. 2% Argon atmosphere at 0. 77 atmospheric pressure.  Sure, it's tidally locked and it has no hydrosphere, but that has no mechanical effect on the planet whatsoever.  Unfortunately, there is a reason why it's only near perfect.

The planetary temperature is balmy -132 degrees centigrade.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 06, 2012, 03:59:31 PM
Ehh, just put on your thermal undershorts and you'll be fine.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on September 15, 2012, 08:33:08 AM
While uncovering the massive abandoned installations on Mars ( Abandoned intact cities - 2700 instalations ) I got . . .  mining production from 20 tones to 60 tones in 4 months.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 15, 2012, 10:39:24 AM
While uncovering the massive abandoned installations on Mars ( Abandoned intact cities - 2700 instalations ) I got . . .  mining production from 20 tones to 60 tones in 4 months.

I've scaled that back a little for v6.00 :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on September 15, 2012, 10:54:06 AM
Damn , no more strip-mining Earth in 3 years :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on September 20, 2012, 04:39:49 AM
My 20 years + ally , the Orion Khanate decided to test his new missiles on my mars colony - with 30 + of his cargo ships in sol and about 25 military ships , most close range.

After about 3500 missiles and a lot of railgun shots I cleared the system. He must have thought having only 5 retrofitted destroyers (6kt) and 2 fleet fast auxiliaries ( 18kt , 4k magazines ) would not stop him. He was at ion drives - I finished magcon couple of years ago.

Oh how I wish for a better AI hint hint :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 20, 2012, 04:38:37 PM
Oh how I wish for a better AI hint hint :D

Be careful what you wish for :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 21, 2012, 02:28:11 AM
Be careful what you wish for :)

Steve

Sometime in the future we look to this day as happy times when we weren't having aliens come knocking at the gates of Sol within 30 ingame years from starting the game and having the whole system swept clear by what is considered a recon group by the other civilization's standards.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 21, 2012, 07:47:47 AM
I found another ruin:

with 10 something installations. :(

What I always found to be an interesting concession to video game play is that the universe is billions of years old yet in all space games we consistently discover races of a similar development age range as our own. 

Aurora has it's older races but to me it seems that reality would unfold along one of two avenues: First option is that there is almost nothing out there to find either because a means to travel faster then light is impossible or there is literally so many planet bearing systems no race could possibly find each other in the crowd, and the second path is that due to the age of the universe there are ruins and races EVERYWHERE of every conceivable technological level.  So many you can't throw a stone in space without hitting someone.  Aurora seems to do a decent disbursement between young races and few higher developed ones but the feel of the age of the universe just isn't there.

Long story short: if we are finding ruins why aren't we finding ruins of vast galactic empires instead of all these singular planets with intact facilities?  I would find it more interesting to discover ruins of an empire spanning numerous systems which housed trillions of people but installations were not as easily recovered.  The possibility of this race having existed 10 million years ago would mean there isn't much to recover but there might be substantial technology gains to be found.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Havear on September 21, 2012, 07:58:45 AM
Mainly? Precursors. They were the first on the TN scene and spread through the galaxy. I don't know if they met any other races during their diaspora period. After the First Incursion their polity was the only one to survive, and tried to stamp out other potential threats (namely everything sentient) as fast as they could find them. The period between the Second Incursion and the Third Incursion (now) was empty because they simply were the last race with a technology level higher than pre-industrial, so between then and now was just a wait for the younger races to reach the stars.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shooer on September 21, 2012, 08:17:55 AM
I've always thought the precursors were a coalition of races (lead by one in particular) dedicated to defending against the Invaders with a uniform fleet design (target identification simplicity) but a with a mixture of races.   Goes to explain the guardian ships protecting ruins of different races across random systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on September 21, 2012, 08:30:14 AM
To me and from the fiction i've read, most believe the precursors were automatic guardians who, after their controlling race vanished, proceded to sanitise the galaxy, leaving traps in ruins for young races to discover and be destroyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Havear on September 21, 2012, 09:44:03 AM
Steve wrote about the Aurora backstory somewhere, if you can find it it's an interesting read, but I summed it up pretty much. And yes icecoldblood, from what I understand they did leave traps in any civilization's ruins they came across (or made into ruins) to catch anyone that came later in case they were called away.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sinensis on September 22, 2012, 01:39:29 AM
I always pretend they were a same race/species, but different political entity.  Like how the human species are divided in multitude nations/countries/provincial identity.  I always thought "Unified Galactic Union" are very hard to archive, so the more likely is multiple smaller nations/planets/entities working with less or more a same goals akin to our United Nations.  So the hypothetical 'Precursors UN' are composed by various 'planet/nations/members', so it can explain why the Precursor ships are more or less the same (they follow almost similar tech progress like how Russia and US ships are almost similar in appearance) and they had similar robot army while had different tech levels (like how Most Africa are Tech 2, Latin America tech 3, US tech 5 and so on?). . .
Then they all got eaten by spoilers from beyond the Stable Wormhole. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 23, 2012, 08:00:04 PM
Currently purging Tau Ceti with two battle divisions (two battlecruisers, four missile frigates, eight anti-missile corvettes) after encountering what seems to be a robotic defence force (no loss of atmosphere despite massive damage). Which earlier proceeded to kill my geosurvey ship on the first encouner and almost my whole corvette division sent in to recover the lifepods.

I'll put out an AAR later today if I can
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sotak246 on September 24, 2012, 12:08:01 PM
I have a VERY annoyingly helpful NPC ally.  He has several warships parked around Earth, not a big deal, I roll-play they are there to escort all the cargo ships plying between us.  The problem comes that I am excavating a BIG ruin on Mars and hit robot defenders pretty often.  The NPC then flies over and helpfully nukes the bad guys.  This doesn't hurt my colony but does run the dust/radiation levels on Mars up like crazy.  I also have to SM my diplomacy rating back up because my population rightfully get a bit pissed at this.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 24, 2012, 12:46:44 PM
I have a VERY annoyingly helpful NPC ally.  He has several warships parked around Earth, not a big deal, I roll-play they are there to escort all the cargo ships plying between us.  The problem comes that I am excavating a BIG ruin on Mars and hit robot defenders pretty often.  The NPC then flies over and helpfully nukes the bad guys.  This doesn't hurt my colony but does run the dust/radiation levels on Mars up like crazy.  I also have to SM my diplomacy rating back up because my population rightfully get a bit pissed at this.

I really did laugh at loud at this one :)

Steve

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 25, 2012, 01:34:59 AM
Tau Ceti cleared, 6 hostile ships of 21,000-30,000 tons were all destroyed. They had pretty strong armour and electronic warfare equipment, the 21,000 ton ones required atleast 30 missiles to be destroyed, the 30,000 ton ships a whopping 50. "Granit" series P-8400, P-8518RH (Radar homing), P-8600TH (Infrared-homing [Thermal]) and P-8500 (Passive radar [EM]) size 5 anti-ship missiles were used. Original maximum range is 135 million kilometers, which was reduced only to 134 by enemy ECCM thanks to onboard ECM on the missiles.

Only missiles encountered on the second battle of tau ceti were size 7's, which were all destroyed by the AMM of the escorting corvettes.
On the first battle, the corvette fleet faced salvos of 48 size 1 missiles near a planet while enroute to rescuing lifepods of a destroyed geosurvey ship. Luckily those size 1 missiles have very limited range.

What was salvaged from the massive amounts of wrecks in the system only low-tech components were recovered.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on September 25, 2012, 05:38:18 PM
I'm currently engaged in a now decade and a half war with some Spoilwarm, I've killed 2 queens over a dozen workers and nearly a hundred FACS at point blank range around the jp, I was scouting down the chain when i ran into some prespoilers and sent my main battle force, 8 destroyers, 4DE'S and 4 DDG's, and my main heavy fleet component about 3 CLE's with heavy PD... the fleet get's there only to meet the wreckage of the Prespoilers and a dozen FACS and a worker, they kill the FACS and board the worker capturing it and jumpstarting my meson tech, then i detect a jump. then another, and another, I'm currently running out of minerals in Sol and haven't been able to expand for fear of leaving my colonies exposed as my entire military, 4 battle groups now, none of the CLE's have survived more than one battle so there's about 12 destroyers in system, still the Spoilwarm keep jumping in and i pot away for about 5 minutes with Box launched CAMS and longer ranged shipkillers, as well as triple barreld 15cm laser turrets, i'm still losing ground.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on September 27, 2012, 09:14:34 AM
The GEV Thor Heyerdahl was completed today. At the ceremony, a moment silence was observed to commemorate the crew of the not one, but two, previous ships of the same name that had gone down in unfair and completely unprovoked combat by the Destroyers(Precursors). There had been murmurs of disagreement when the name was chosen a third time, with some believing the name to be cursed. As the Thor Heyerdahl, like those before it, left the Stephens and Sons shipyard and powered up its engines toward the edge of known space, the families of it's crew prayed history would not be repeated.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sinensis on September 28, 2012, 02:57:54 AM
YOU NEED TO AVENGE THEM!!!!

The Martian colony are proceeding vell well. . .  All of the 1600 ruins had been explored.  After more than 29 years of battling horde of guardian robots.  Mars populace finally know peace.  No lnger they need to terrified when the robot will attack again.  The multitude soldiers that was on Mars are now entering the shuttles that will take them to the UNFS Trireme class TroopShip.  They service are needed to conquer the backstabing Ulle Theocracy on Ulle Prime Systems.  1 Army Divisions had been airlifted (spacelifted?) from Mars, only one Garrison Brigade stay as Defense Force.

The Martian ruins was VERY nice.  My tech goes from Nuclear Thermal to Magnetoplasma in just 20 year and I keep finding mining tech.  Now using the Free Mars Army I will finally enslaved yet another alien populations and not bombard them to stone age.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on September 28, 2012, 03:28:07 AM
I have encountered an NPR after cleansing 2 systems from spoilers. They are in the pre-space age and they completely ignore me. My relation with them is cca at 800 points. I've proposed them a trade treaty, friendly status and geo-data sharing, but they did not reciprocated. I have a feeling, that they would fire at me if they could. Maybe they're are trying to launch big rocks at me with catapults, but they always fall back at them. :D
My galactic domi... friendship can not be refused. I'm considering a punitive expedition. ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on September 28, 2012, 06:21:35 AM
I have encountered an NPR after cleansing 2 systems from spoilers. They are in the pre-space age and they completely ignore me. My relation with them is cca at 800 points. I've proposed them a trade treaty, friendly status and geo-data sharing, but they did not reciprocated. I have a feeling, that they would fire at me if they could. Maybe they're are trying to launch big rocks at me with catapults, but they always fall back at them. :D
My galactic domi... friendship can not be refused. I'm considering a punitive expedition. ;D

Educate them of the wonders of the nuclear age, I think they would really appreciate some examples of tightly-packed plutonium.

BURN.
THEM.
ALL.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shooer on September 28, 2012, 09:23:56 AM
I prefer to carve the terms of primitive races joining your empire into their planet.   
"CC Defender, your third gunner forgot the period on the 22 sentence of the third article.  "  "Rodger, fixing punctuation and preparing to spell check"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on September 28, 2012, 09:47:26 AM
Finally they reconsidered my offer and instead on nukes i'm crapping their economy by flooding them with "Luxury Food".  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on October 01, 2012, 02:36:46 AM
I have a VERY annoyingly helpful NPC ally.  He has several warships parked around Earth, not a big deal, I roll-play they are there to escort all the cargo ships plying between us.  The problem comes that I am excavating a BIG ruin on Mars and hit robot defenders pretty often.  The NPC then flies over and helpfully nukes the bad guys.  This doesn't hurt my colony but does run the dust/radiation levels on Mars up like crazy.  I also have to SM my diplomacy rating back up because my population rightfully get a bit pissed at this.

"I'm Helping."
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 17, 2012, 01:02:59 PM
I have a VERY annoyingly helpful NPC ally.  He has several warships parked around Earth, not a big deal, I roll-play they are there to escort all the cargo ships plying between us.  The problem comes that I am excavating a BIG ruin on Mars and hit robot defenders pretty often.  The NPC then flies over and helpfully nukes the bad guys.  This doesn't hurt my colony but does run the dust/radiation levels on Mars up like crazy.  I also have to SM my diplomacy rating back up because my population rightfully get a bit pissed at this.
Oh my, that's hilarious!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on October 22, 2012, 02:06:13 AM
Heh, found a primitive empire right in Alpha Centauri(well, primitive compared to me, I have magneto plasma and they're still nuclear pulse!), so I gear up for an invasion. Well, for a primitive race, they sure are annoying. Oh sure, I can swat aside their ships with impunity with my laser-armed destroyers, but attacking the planet itself is another issue. My destroyers haven't been having a problem blowing every missile out of the sky sent their way(and the few that make it through just get blocked by shields), but when about 6 pdc's send about 350 size one missiles(even though they suck ASS; I mean, my destroyers move about 7500, while the missiles they're firing at me top out around 6400!), then that's another issue. Since the missiles are slower than me, it's more annoying than dangerous, but I'm gonna wait for my missile-armed cruisers to finish building and swat those PDCs from standoff range
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on October 22, 2012, 04:18:59 AM
Being worried about my bestest Admiral here, the age is weighting her down and her health is playing tricks on her. Seeing my special little flower go is going to hurt.

(http://i47.tinypic.com/34q0bi0.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on October 22, 2012, 12:06:24 PM
So, I've finally finished what the historians will be calling the Battle of Alpha Centauri, and the Narval Imperium is under MY control. The Narvals are a race of warm-blooded, furry arthropods that have a tolerance for lower oxygen and planets on the chillier side, though ironically enough their homeworld is barely within the perfect zone for human habitation. Now I just need to get a few GFTFs built so I can train up some home-grown oppressors police force(so I can bring my first army corp back home), and then PARTY TIME!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on October 23, 2012, 06:45:30 AM
Finished my Hunters of Dawn campaign - my 100 star universe is now as empty as my wallet :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Redshirt on October 23, 2012, 09:28:06 AM
Being worried about my bestest Admiral here, the age is weighting her down and her health is playing tricks on her. Seeing my special little flower go is going to hurt.

(http://i47.tinypic.com/34q0bi0.png)

That's not age weighing her down. It's all those medals!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 23, 2012, 02:00:01 PM
Finished my Hunters of Dawn campaign - my 100 star universe is now as empty as my wallet :D

So you read Ian Douglas too? :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on October 24, 2012, 01:58:23 PM
That's not age weighing her down. It's all those medals!
I am following soviet conventions damnit, don't you know that the reason good commanders are rewarded so much is because the layers of medals count as armour against assasin's bullets?

But seriously now, Soviet military conventions involve giving high-valued medals everytime someone is promoted to a high position.


holy crap this superscientist right here
(http://i47.tinypic.com/2ni8iyw.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on October 25, 2012, 05:05:24 AM
So you read Ian Douglas too? :)

Steve

I've just re-read the Heritage trilogy for the ... third time I believe and was planning to start on the new Star Corpsman series today - though I have a party tonight and I fear if I do start it I'll end up doing nothing but reading and drinking in the pub :)

@Marski

I noticed good scientists are a lot more common in 6.0 , though yours is NICE . 60 labs at 65% .... bet you are going to push Research Rate to the max :D

Planning to start a Starlancer ( Alliance vs. Coalition ) campaign as well though it might mean sol will be quite .... hot and full of wrecks .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Havear on October 25, 2012, 06:57:07 AM
I am following soviet conventions damnit, don't you know that the reason good commanders are rewarded so much is because the layers of medals count as armour against assasin's bullets?

I don't see how that necessarily follows seeing as to how most assassin's were dispatched by the people awarding the metals. :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on October 25, 2012, 08:29:39 AM
Soviet Russia . Medals are made of better metal than bullets :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on October 25, 2012, 09:43:42 AM
I don't see how that necessarily follows seeing as to how most assassin's were dispatched by the people awarding the metals. :P
No, no no no. Just no.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on October 25, 2012, 02:14:06 PM
HOLY CRAP the Precursors I found in Alpha Centauri have some friggin long range missiles...about 250m range! I discovered this from my scout ship being blown up even though it was that far away from them, depriving my long range bombardment destroyers of any sort of targeting data(just as they were about to launch their ISBMs too!)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Nathan_ on November 01, 2012, 04:54:27 PM
I discovered a habitable planet:
Surface Temp:-186
a Nitrogen/methane atmosphere
Cost 7.0 initially.
I'll call her frostfire.

All this is with acceptable gravity restricted to 0.1 deviation of course.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on November 01, 2012, 08:15:53 PM
I'm having fun integrating the remains of some 1500 million aliens, now down to 664 million after two months of missile bombardment by prespoilers, the atmospheric dust content is 767 and the radiation level is 2008... amusingly enough.. anyways their entire military industrial complex has been wiped out except for a small amount of mines, around 12 CF's and a few ground units i murdalised in order to provide " Peace-keeping and disaster assistance", i've managed to transfer around 4000 infrastructure, some mines and CF's and a few sensor posts... as well as 2 million human colonists ( THANKS ALOT CIVIES.)
 

The Holy Terran Unity is now The Holy Galactic Unity.

In order to pacify the system i sent in 8 12000 ton assault ships with 10 layers of armour, half armed with basic lasers and half with missiles. I jumped the fleet in system only for it to slowly be picked apart by enemy fire from about 12 million klicks outside missile range. Somehow after bombarding the planet with almost 200 missiles they still had enough to blast my ships apart ramming the last 2 combat ships, 2 survey vessels as they tried to flee the system and 5 JCS' who continued to jump into the system under Build JG Anywhere orders.


So i sweated for 2 and a half years, designed an Eighty thousand ton dreadnought with enough armor to fit an entire assault ship inside it, to be more specific it has 165 armor columns, a total strength of 2812 and a rating of 17. the assault ships were updated with new tech and gained about a thousand tons, i sent them in aaaaand.... All of the enemy ships in system had died ramming my various vessels. Now i have a fleet of 4 EIGHTY THOUSAND TON USELESS HUNKS OF METAL FIRESOAKS THAT ARE ALREADY MORE OUT OF DATE THAN THE PALEOLITHIC SHELLFISH, 6 ASHM' Missile assault ships and 4 AS Energy armed assault ships.

At the minute i'm developing some destroyer and cruiser classes to phase out the Assault ships and upgrading the dreadnoughts.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on November 01, 2012, 08:45:26 PM
I'm having fun integrating the remains of some 1500 million aliens, now down to 664 million after two months of missile bombardment by prespoilers, the atmospheric dust content is 767 and the radiation level is 2008... amusingly enough.. anyways their entire military industrial complex has been wiped out except for a small amount of mines, around 12 CF's and a few ground units i murdalised in order to provide " Peace-keeping and disaster assistance", i've managed to transfer around 4000 infrastructure, some mines and CF's and a few sensor posts... as well as 2 million human colonists ( THANKS ALOT CIVIES.)
 

The Holy Terran Unity is now The Holy Galactic Unity.

In order to pacify the system i sent in 8 12000 ton assault ships with 10 layers of armour, half armed with basic lasers and half with missiles. I jumped the fleet in system only for it to slowly be picked apart by enemy fire from about 12 million klicks outside missile range. Somehow after bombarding the planet with almost 200 missiles they still had enough to blast my ships apart ramming the last 2 combat ships, 2 survey vessels as they tried to flee the system and 5 JCS' who continued to jump into the system under Build JG Anywhere orders.


So i sweated for 2 and a half years, designed an Eighty thousand ton dreadnought with enough armor to fit an entire assault ship inside it, to be more specific it has 165 armor columns, a total strength of 2812 and a rating of 17. the assault ships were updated with new tech and gained about a thousand tons, i sent them in aaaaand.... All of the enemy ships in system had died ramming my various vessels. Now i have a fleet of 4 EIGHTY THOUSAND TON USELESS HUNKS OF METAL FIRESOAKS THAT ARE ALREADY MORE OUT OF DATE THAN THE PALEOLITHIC SHELLFISH, 6 ASHM' Missile assault ships and 4 AS Energy armed assault ships.

At the minute i'm developing some destroyer and cruiser classes to phase out the Assault ships and upgrading the dreadnoughts.


eh, use them to get colonies to shut up about protection or do an exercise in an alien system to make them think twice about their imperial ambitions. Or use them as firesoaks, decoys, and in a hundred years turn it into a museum as a testament to the industrial prowess of the Holy Galatic Unity.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on November 01, 2012, 08:52:50 PM
Sounds good to me, Too bad i keep getting errors because i'm running it on mac. Got the MSSFTDwhatever file installed but i still get the ERROR 13 message and the old error 94, both of which crash the game after a few months

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on November 01, 2012, 09:10:30 PM
just started a new game in sol, one jump gate.  So far every system has been a nebula system ranging from class 1 to class 17.  2 Jumps out needs half the jump gates scanned, put some deep space tracking systems in the outer most systems to keep an eye out for anything, otherwise 1 jump from sol is an empty one star system 2 gates leading out.  Beyond that theres some reasonable planets that can be terraformed with good mineral content so just getting mines, drivers and some construction setup 2 jumps out.  So slow expansion and hoping i can build up slightly before i run into anything or a civ that can be invaded rather than some uber advanced species
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 19, 2012, 12:52:20 AM
The universe is big and empty.  After exploring 40 or so systems (and a couple dozen hours) and turning up no NPRs, I changed the NPR generation chance to 100%.  I just explored my 90th system and still no Contact.

There's one out there somewhere.  I see the occasional message about slowing down for possible missile intercept when I'm not fighting.  With the default 1000-size universe, it could be a long time before I find them.  Next game I'll try setting up several more NPRs and a much smaller universe.  This is frustrating.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on November 21, 2012, 04:14:22 PM
I'm getting alittle.... frustrated. My last game died after i ran into an NPR rigth next to SOL that was also human i.e same race pic as the default human one..... kinda buggered my plans for a theocratic religious warmongering game style when i met more humans.
Now i'm starting to go insane after almost an entire in game month and IRL 2 days of 5 sec increments. I swear to god oncce my first combat ships get built i am going to GENOCIDE EVERY ALIEN RACE I MEET! ( i did a pacifist start with nothing but terraformers huge cargo ships and 90000 ton colony boats. I'm still running a deficit in my racial coffers.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 23, 2012, 11:07:06 AM
Been scouting around Sol.  Three Jps, one leads to a red dwarf with nothing, the other two lead to red dwarves as well, but each has two large terrestrial planets, both with one good terraforming prospect.  Unfortunately, one of the two systems is pretty much devoid of good mining prospects.

So that leaves us with the last system.  The first scout just popped in and out, but when I come back with survey ships I notice something strange... when I zoom out there's three 20k wrecks and one 9k wreck!  Oh crap!  How did I miss that the first time x.x  No alien presence in the system though.  Found two more JPs, one leads to an empty system again, but the other leads to the holy grail practically.  Alpha Centauri (so a binary), with two 2x habitability, about 6 less than 4, and tons and tons of prime real estate.  Not going in till my military is developed though, so a few more years at least.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on November 23, 2012, 03:07:42 PM
Just had one of my 15k ton survey cruisers blown up by some mines around a planet with several wrecks in orbit, luckily my other 12 are in other systems. Lost 2 JCS boats and another survey cruiser to some prespoilers one jump from sol around 2 years in game ago, just now started building a battle force of 3 Protector's Wrath Cruisers with heavy misile armament and a P-3 beam. 3 Protector's Guidance CLE's with heavy laser and missile PD batteries and 3 Protector's Blade destroyers armed with heavy particle beam batteries.

The cruiser and escort are 21000 tons and the destroyer is 12000 tons.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on November 25, 2012, 01:02:59 PM
(http://i50.tinypic.com/13ygk9g.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on November 25, 2012, 01:35:03 PM
Heh, that's a pretty good picture to describe 95% of first contact scenarios.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on November 25, 2012, 01:50:21 PM
Heh, that's a pretty good picture to describe 95% of first contact scenarios.

Named it "Typical encounter with aliens in Aurora.jpg" for a good measure (http://www.facepunch.com/fp/emoot/v.gif)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Person012345 on November 27, 2012, 03:15:18 AM
The Council has just launched it's first ship from their homeworld, Syndicate, Moon 14, otherwise known as "Peach Moon". The obvious choice is to do a survey of syndicate and it's 17 moons.

26th March 2072 22:30:01, Animations, Lucky Star, Minerals Discovered on Syndicate - Moon 12: Duranium 9,972,578 (1)  Neutronium 4,359,744 (0.1)  Tritanium 2,187,441 (0.6)  Vendarite 4,120,900 (0.5)  Sorium 4,857,616 (1)  Uridium 841 (0.1)

Hell yeah.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Xkill on November 29, 2012, 07:09:07 PM
Wow, only a slice of advice for everybody, never use the Chinese Theme, a wormhole just popped up less than 600m km from my capital, and every other time I used this theme (around 2 times) something really bad happpened, usually early on just like now, so it's best to avoid it unless you like extreme pain and lots of glassed worlds. I heard this theme is cursed somehow, maybe it's true.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on November 30, 2012, 01:26:02 AM
Wow, only a slice of advice for everybody, never use the Chinese Theme, a wormhole just popped up less than 600m km from my capital, and every other time I used this theme (around 2 times) something really bad happpened, usually early on just like now, so it's best to avoid it unless you like extreme pain and lots of glassed worlds. I heard this theme is cursed somehow, maybe it's true.

Either you are making horrible mistakes or you are just unlucky, I had two succesfull runs with Chinese theme and had actually less trouble than say, with Russia or United Nations for that matter.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Xkill on November 30, 2012, 03:17:02 PM
Either you are making horrible mistakes or you are just unlucky, I had two succesfull runs with Chinese theme and had actually less trouble than say, with Russia or United Nations for that matter.

Well, maybe I'm just unlucky, though the Chinese (and apparently the Martians in Steve's new game) almost always end up getting stomped by someone. The first time that I played with the Chinese theme, the Star Swarm blocked up my only avenue of exploration with hundreds of FACS.

The second time, the Invaders steamrolled my NPR neighbour in 4 hours with only 2 ships, then they glassed me. Now I got wasted again and didn't even have a chance to fight back since I had just started expansion at the time. I'll try again, but personally, I don't think it's gonna get pretty for me.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on November 30, 2012, 05:43:42 PM
Well, maybe I'm just unlucky, though the Chinese (and apparently the Martians in Steve's new game) almost always end up getting stomped by someone. The first time that I played with the Chinese theme, the Star Swarm blocked up my only avenue of exploration with hundreds of FACS.

The second time, the Invaders steamrolled my NPR neighbour in 4 hours with only 2 ships, then they glassed me. Now I got wasted again and didn't even have a chance to fight back since I had just started expansion at the time. I'll try again, but personally, I don't think it's gonna get pretty for me.

Wow man, you never enable the invaders from the start. Nobody has the tech to stop them, you leave them to be enabled in lategame when you have somewhat decent empire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on December 03, 2012, 08:48:44 AM
(http://i50.tinypic.com/5cip6q.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on December 11, 2012, 11:01:45 AM
What the heck. I have found out, that one of my officers has a promotion score of 250239 and 1000% fighter combat bonus.
New Honor Harrington rising. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on December 11, 2012, 11:25:59 AM
*jaw beaks* after reading the last post.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on December 11, 2012, 11:45:36 AM
*jaw beaks* after reading the last post.

Maybe its a bug.  ???  ;D

(http://i1343.photobucket.com/albums/o781/Icecoon/wth.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on December 11, 2012, 01:14:35 PM
What the heck. I have found out, that one of my officers has a promotion score of 250239 and 1000% fighter combat bonus.
New Honor Harrington rising. :)

Yes, I have fixed the fight combat bonus bug for the next version :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on December 11, 2012, 01:21:10 PM
(http://i50.tinypic.com/5cip6q.jpg)

That looks like a swarm queen from Aurora. :)

(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100524102157/starships/images/9/9d/Locust_Queen.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jackal Cry on February 09, 2013, 09:00:56 PM
Quote
(http://i.imgur.com/nmA4goL.jpg)

I started my first game in Aurora v6.  21.   I played in v5.  7 but stopped for a few months.   The settings are mostly the same as the default Space 1899 game, with some spoiler races disabled and my government type changed to Authoritarian.   I set the starting year to 1 so I could keep better track of time.   I turned on Real Stars for the first time and am impressed with it.   It's sad to hear that black holes aren't implemented in it.  

My Sol had 3 JPs, but I've only explored extrasolar systems.   I had a lot of early problems with fuel; it used to be that 500,000 litres could take me to the galactic center and back with enough to make a stop at Space McDonald's on the way.   I've lost a lot of early freighters and survey ships to fuel problems, as well as tankers who wouldn't have enough fuel themselves to refuel a fleet and make it back home.   I'm still having fuel issues, but that's not my biggest worry now.  

I found an NPR two jumps from Sol.   They had contacts waiting right by the jump point, and it took about 20 seconds for my unarmed and sensorless scout to get back through the jump point.   Thankfully they were neutral, and after assigning a diplomatic team to the race, our relations are good.   I think.   Is +169 relations good? The number is growing quickly as my diplomatic team quickly gained a lot of skill.  

My geo teams were horrible, though.   They would find nothing on several good mining asteroids and were just worthless.   I now finally have a team with a skill higher than a hundred, so hopefully they can pick up the slack.  

The final main issue are my scientists.   I have a lot of good scientists, but almost all of them are focused either in Biology, P&P, or Logistics.   Curse them! I need Construction scientists, not more P&P.   I'll never have enough research labs to approach their maximum limits either.  

I'm currently trying to find good sources of Duranium.   The best long-term source is a low-availability planet in the buffer system between the NPR and myself.   It has a colony cost of only x0.  77, but millions of various ores.   Sadly I'll just have to deal with the poor availability unless my now-competent geo teams can find something on Sol.  

Does anyone know why this forum insists on automatically adding spaces after each period I enter, after I preview or submit my post? This happened the last time I posted too, and I think it's messing up my image.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Conscript Gary on February 09, 2013, 11:32:09 PM
It happens to users with less than a certain number of posts to keep them from posting links, in case of spambot.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on February 09, 2013, 11:48:30 PM
Does anyone know why this forum insists on automatically adding spaces after each period I enter, after I preview or submit my post? This happened the last time I posted too, and I think it's messing up my image.

As Gary said, it is a spam prevention measure. After 10 posts the restriction is lifted.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sublight on February 10, 2013, 08:42:49 AM
My geo teams were horrible, though.   They would find nothing on several good mining asteroids and were just worthless.   I now finally have a team with a skill higher than a hundred, so hopefully they can pick up the slack.   

If I understand the new mechanics correctly, a higher skill allows them to finish surveys faster but does not improve the probability of finding something. When a geology team finishes a survey, Aurora rolls a new mineral generation check, and if replaces the original findings with any accessibility or quantity results from the new whenever any new result that is better than the old.

In theory surveying every body in a system will nearly double the minerals in a system, but this is more finding twice as many locations with minerals and less making existing minerals twice as rich. Surveying only good asteroids is a bit like playing the lottery. It feels like less than 5% of asteroids have minerals, so the odds that a good asteroid find will get lucky again (~5%) is small. I've had somewhat better luck sending geologists to planets and moons that had low colonization costs to provide a second opinions.

The new system is more realistic than the 5.x days when high-ranked team could milk bucketfuls of minerals from any object, but is less useful for the player.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tarran on February 11, 2013, 08:34:05 PM
Recently had to axe 4 systems and their inhabitants because I was getting interrupts every day or so. Apparently my civilians in their infinite wisdom were trying to get to Luna from Sol by going through three other systems in a circle. Somehow, there were bad guys in one of the three, even though I did 100% surveys of all 3 with Active Sensors on, and I guess they were detecting the civilians.

Time to regen those systems, hopefully with less stupid civilian pathing and stupid random hidden bases.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on February 11, 2013, 09:56:27 PM
Tarran i think steve has fixed this in the 6.3 patch he just hasnt given birth to it yet soon hopefully
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 02, 2013, 12:21:30 PM
Yesterday I picked up Aurora after a long pause. Went for a custom race start, found a neat looking system and settled down.
10 years into the game I'm surveying for jump points, when my surveyor suddenly notices a strength 8 thermal signature nearby. 5 seconds later three missile impacts rock the ship and take out the majority of its fuel storage (that thankfully don't explode, or explode enough for that matter). Another 5 seconds later it detects 5 strength 75 missile or buoy active sensors with an estimate resolution of 78. At this point I've had precisly zero combat ships (or even military weapon systems researched beyond ye olde ICBM) and my thoughts are racing - I play with a high chance for NPR generation, and the system I was in had multiple suitable planets, but I wondered whether this might be Precursor mines - both prospects I didn't like much for my far-away binary defenseless home planet.

The captain Soho Senichi received the newly created Heart-Attack Medal and finished his gravsurvey, finding a JP very close to the survey location. I'll have to militarise quickly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 02, 2013, 01:43:55 PM
It might be mines, but mines could indicate the presence of other vessels.   Soooooo....   better get some antimissile defenses up ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 03, 2013, 05:38:46 AM
One of my early warships had its engine fail without enough parts, so it's slowly chasing Earth at 1km/s.  I know I should save them with a tractor beam, but it's hardly worth the compnents I'd scrap it for. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 03, 2013, 10:13:48 AM
I couldn't help myself when I saw this in my event log, had to make a meme D:

(http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6913/youdontsayj.jpg)

Full Size for the text (http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6913/youdontsayj.jpg)

*edit*
Oh hey, I should read the whole event log before giggling to myself and making pictures :D Just underneath those two lines they find 20m tons of Duranium and 15m tons of Neutronium.
Duranium crash? What's that?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rod-Serling on March 03, 2013, 04:14:51 PM
Doing a multi-player-race conventional start based loosely off Steve's Trans-Newton campaign.

My 30% Construction/Production 15 lab lead US scientist was killed in an accident the day he delivered Trans-Newton technology to the US.

I think the People's Republic of China is to blame. . . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on March 04, 2013, 02:05:36 AM
I couldn't help myself when I saw this in my event log, had to make a meme D:

*HURRR MEMEPICTURE AMICOOLYET?*

Full Size for the text (http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6913/youdontsayj.jpg)

*edit*
Oh hey, I should read the whole event log before giggling to myself and making pictures :D Just underneath those two lines they find 20m tons of Duranium and 15m tons of Neutronium.
Duranium crash? What's that?

LEL EPIC MEME BRO UPBOAT XDDD
I wish they had closed reddit down when they finally busted down that pedophile smeg they were doing there.


OH WELL, in my righteous work of turning the galaxy under the control of communism, I stumbled across some pathetic robotic ships. Even my commercial ships are faster than them. But nevertheless, I dispatched a frigate from guard duty to harass the enemies until "Kirov" class Battlecruiser arrives to mop the system floor with the poor sods.

(http://www.1337upload.net/files/Combat_1.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 05, 2013, 01:58:56 PM
First alien ship discovered, the geosurvey ship turned and ran immediately. They pursue at a speed of 4015 km/s while I flee with 4000 km/s at a distance of 35.2m km.

This may take a while.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 05, 2013, 03:26:33 PM
Kind of makes you wish there was a selectable overdrive option?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on March 06, 2013, 04:33:29 AM
Kind of makes you wish there was a selectable overdrive option?

IRL naval vessels and spaceshuttles don't have overdrive option either.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 06, 2013, 04:52:16 AM
You could use spacemaster mode to hack off bits of the design and reduce the tonnage xD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 06, 2013, 10:23:23 AM
IRL naval vessels and spaceshuttles don't have overdrive option either.

I know, but it would sure be convenient right about now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SteelChicken on March 06, 2013, 10:32:26 AM
Started a new game a few weeks ago.  Made sure to delete the 1899 campaign to help with performance, makes a big difference.
I generally stay in my home system for 20-25 years, just setting up mines, infrastructure, research, etc.   Then, start exploring enmasse.

Robots like to blow up my scouts, but clearing them out isn't too difficult with decent tech.
NPR's dont seem to be as much of a threat as they used to be, I think they run out of critical minerals and just stagnate.  They are always so far behind.  The biggest threat they pose is launching massive waves of AMM salvoes.  They only thing they ever seem to send out of their home system is survey ships.

Keeping the economy going with near constant mineral shortages is a problem.  Fuel is not a problem with a decent sorium source in the home system.  Just build more harvesters.  Mostly having fun with different ship designs.   Playing with different size missiles and reload rates, etc.  The missile engine dynamic makes missile design much more tedious, but it is flexible which is nice.

So far, Ive conquered two NPR homeworlds, now looking for others to absorb into the Empire.


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Konisforce on March 06, 2013, 10:58:53 AM
IRL naval vessels and spaceshuttles don't have overdrive option either.

Actually, the space shuttle throttles went up to 111%.  So, kinda.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on March 06, 2013, 12:06:32 PM
IRL naval vessels and spaceshuttles don't have overdrive option either.

Actually, I'd like to see an 80% option as normal max speed, with a "redline engines" option to put it to 100%.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 06, 2013, 01:20:00 PM
Actually, I'd like to see an 80% option as normal max speed, with a "redline engines" option to put it to 100%.

I kind of like the idea of an optional 'exceed recommended maximum power' option for the engines.  Semi-similar to something I read in Steve's Starfire fiction.  You can run the engines like that for short duration but failure potential goes through the roof and when it would fail in an over-driven state the chance to catastrophically fail is increased.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on March 06, 2013, 06:22:53 PM
holy crap, coolest scenario ever...definitely doing some fiction about this this weekend. This whole situation happened without any planning on my part:

100+ years game here, a 2 year project I began at the outset of graduate school.

My fleets are in their third generation now, but there are some second generation ships around from before the advent of the fusion age....the oldest one being the *name withheld* survey cruiser (the name is the coolest part). These ships have plasma engines, I kept them around mostly to do surveys of peaceful alliance space, tracking down stray jump points and conducting comprehensive surveys of backwater systems....they've lived past their glory years.

Between UN Space and the territory of the aloof Sculptor Star Empire, there lies a black hole, designated Cthulhu. It's class III, so I never bothered to survey it. War has always been a looming possibility with the Sculptor, and black holes are really cool, so it seemed like a good idea to eventually survey it...I recently decided to send two of these survey cruisers to scout the black hole for possible hidden entrances into the heartland of the Sculptor empire. This was a tedious assignment, but both ships were in good condition, and moved at 5000 kps, a good enough clip that there was no chance of an accident.


...there was an accident. On their way home from the survey (I kid you not, they completed the survey and began moving home) one ship, the ship the class was named for, had a terrible accident...one of the plasma engines flared out. Simultaneously, its companion ship suffered a failure of its primary sensor suite. The odds of this happening, with two ships with a maintenance life of just over 1 year, is very low. I'm interpreting this as a catastrophic failure...the plasma engine exploded and shorted out the sensors of the relatively nearby companion ship, likely by billowing plasma over a 10,000 kilometer area.

Now there were enough maintenance supplies to fix everything just fine, of course, but we never appreciate how damn heroic this is: the event horizon of a collapsed star less than 10 light-minutes away....engines flaring plasma wildlely into space, transformers exploding, spacewalk crews scrambling to shut everything down, patch everything up, and restart everything again, before the ship falls onto a trajectory that will bring it close enough to the black hole to get wrenched into spaghetti....

So, a heroic repair in deep space, 10 light minutes away from the raging core of a collapsed star.

And the name of the survey cruiser? Well, they're named for explorers, the companion ship, the second in the production line, was called the Armstrong

The first...why the Shackleton  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shackleton-Rowett_Expedition) of course. Shackleton Class Survey ships were the most famous ships during the second era of exploration.

So the Shackleton endures a disaster, and a total crew survival, very similar to the one shackleton went through.

But this time....IN SPAAAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEE
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on March 06, 2013, 08:03:40 PM
I kind of like the idea of an optional 'exceed recommended maximum power' option for the engines.  Semi-similar to something I read in Steve's Starfire fiction.  You can run the engines like that for short duration but failure potential goes through the roof and when it would fail in an over-driven state the chance to catastrophically fail is increased.
Reminds me of the weapons used by soldiers planetside in Evan Curry's Warrior's Wings military space opera series, with the "up to 11" option only known to the special ops soldiers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 08, 2013, 09:32:29 AM
R.I.P. Grand Admiral Shiroyama
On the 6th February, at the age of 71, Grand Admiral Kiku Shiroyama passed away peacefully in her bed. Just a month prior the Grand Admiral had completed her 50th year in service of the Imperial Navy, and her death leaves the command position in the Fleet Headquarters on Salay vacant - A position she held for almost 25 years. This marks the end of increasing health problems of the elderly but mentally fit Grand Admiral. Furthermore, she was the last officer still alive that had enlisted prior to the advent of trans-newtonian technologies and the first person to transit a jump point.

 :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 09, 2013, 07:36:54 PM
The first Deep Space Survey Cruiser, the Flinders Class Sonic is under construction. Sporting the most advanced technology known to the Australian Empire, including a quad-meson cannon and an array of point-defense lasers, the Sonic is designed for long deployment (over six years) and comes equipped with a Geo Survey, a Grav Survey and a Sorium Scoop to help it expand known territory while it's low-signature drives and high-powered passive sensors should enable it to survey alien systems with little attention drawn
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: dgibso29 on March 09, 2013, 08:16:38 PM
The Australian Empire?

Please, I must hear this back story!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 09, 2013, 08:44:26 PM
The Kangaroos took over, using the lethal wildlife to subdue humanity, and went for the stars  :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 09, 2013, 10:17:11 PM
The Kangaroos took over, using the lethal wildlife to subdue humanity, and went for the stars  :D
Close

It was an alliance of gentically-enhanced Blue-ringed Octopi and the Drop Bears, Began by subduing outback towns in the Northern Territory and Tasmania and, naturally, everyone ignored it because nobody likes those ares (lol). By the time we knew what was coming, the Kangaroos were intelligent and riding giant Frill-necked Lizards and the Platypi had become ninjas. The rest is pretty predictable: total world domination and the colonisation of Mars by the new breed of Martian Koala

EDIT

I wonder how many non-aussies will get the place and animal references...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on March 10, 2013, 07:14:33 PM
I get it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Charlie Beeler on March 11, 2013, 07:05:36 AM
I get it as well.  Must say that it sounds like the back story to an anime series though!!   :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 12, 2013, 04:39:23 AM
Dear god it does...right! Rewriting history <runs away muttering and scribbling>
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vynadan on March 15, 2013, 04:51:32 PM
Started my first multi-faction game. I'm feeling a sudden surge of respect for people who did the same ... All those windows and events x_X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 18, 2013, 06:04:18 AM
Use the new production overview window - it allows you to track multiple races at once

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on March 23, 2013, 02:25:34 PM
Come on Steve, now your just teasing us! ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 25, 2013, 12:16:05 AM
Just launched the first of my new Carriers, the River-class Adelaide.
Then realised I forgot engines

/facepalm
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jikor on March 27, 2013, 09:03:39 AM
Now It's an orbital Starbase!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maharava on March 28, 2013, 05:48:07 AM
Now It's an orbital Starbase!

Heh heh heh...fighter-starbase named after one of the least populated capitals of Australia XD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MagusXIX on April 02, 2013, 10:13:37 PM
Bobby Darin just joined my navy.  I guess anyone stationed on his boat will be a splishin' and a splashin' ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: oldark on April 03, 2013, 08:46:40 AM
Still learning the game and encountered my first hostile race.  Apparently they don't like me, anytime I get remotely near their star I receive an active sensor contact warning followed immediately by "strength 1 nuclear detonation detected x57" and all my ships go boom.   Decided to make this a learning experience on how to perform combat.  But now when I get within range with my new combat ships their point defenses never fire. .  I'll figure this out eventually but if anyone has a link to a good 'how to combat' tutorial that would be awesome!

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GenJeFT on April 03, 2013, 11:08:41 AM
The current year is 2030 and the Human race spans 3 star systems with just under 2.6 billion people. Started in 1946 after the end of WWII where Germans destroyed the Soviets but then got nuked along with the Japanese. The allies controlled everything.

Mars, Venus, and Luna were all colonized by 2000 and in just the past 15 years colonies were established in Alpha Centuari (which sadly has no minerals at all in it, I only colonized to keep watch) and the Barnard Star system after I had defeated the Precursor ship there. Terriforming of both Mars and Luna have begun and I am building jumpgates to gain access to another system with a known Precurser ship and I cant wait to test my strength 27 missiles on it. My combat fleet does not have jump capability.

The science vessel I have which is my only jump capable ship was built on the 7th of April in 2000. 7,000 ton ship, fully 1/7th of it is one giant (if not outdated) thermal sensor. That sensor is the only reason why it is still alive. It has taken part in two combats so far as a long range detection ship for targets and will soon take part in a 3rd combat operation.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: oldark on April 09, 2013, 02:15:51 PM
Finally figured out multifaction starts and promptly began a 3 sided game in the Sol system.   Well now I know the importance of rapidly building anti-missile defenses on planets.   The Mechanicus on Mars got the early advantage by building missile destroyers and taking out the Imperium's(Earth) shipyards.  The Lords of Titan spent this time building up a fleet of railgun ships and attacked the 2 Mechanicus destroyers but were annihilated (here I learn to pay attention to range. .  10,000 km railguns are bad against 32 million km range missiles).

At this point I'm pretty sure the Mechanicus forces are going to rule the Sol system and be the empire that I expand with.   Then the Imperium comes up with a doomsday plan.  If they can't build a shipyard without it being destroyed, they'll build PDCs.  And they built 3 PDCs that each fired 10x 17 size missiles with enough range to reach from Earth to Mars.   A few weeks later, with every building destroyed and its population reduced nearly to nothing, Mars surrenders. 

The two Mechanicus missile destroyers are still roaming about.  They decide to get revenge for the fall of mars and start unloading their ordnance on Earth.  I guess sensors that can target the planet Mars can't target 2 little destroyers in orbit right above them.   The bombardment is still ongoing as the 2 destroyers have well over a 1,000 missiles between them. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on April 10, 2013, 01:24:50 AM
Yep, first thing I research for multifaction starts is some sort of anti-missile defense. The more folks you have, the faster the nukes fly. Conventional starts are a bit slower (no ships to aggravate the other factions) but war will eventually come if diplomacy is left untended...

Wait to you see what happens to the Earth when nuclear winter sets in, you may be playing the Lords of Titan anyway.... :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: oldark on April 10, 2013, 06:53:48 AM
You called it, Earth was bombarded to the point of having 0 Construction factories so it surrendered when a small Lords of Titan fleet passed inside the asteroid belt.  Not sure if I'm going to continue this game or start another game with a similar set up now that I've learned a bit more. (also the Sol system is almost 100% out of minerals trying to divide between 3 starting empires so I'm not sure if expansion is even possible in a decent timeframe)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on April 11, 2013, 12:17:53 AM
Yep. Multi faction can be fun, but its generally a good idea to tinker with things like minerals and warp points to keep it from going pear shaped early. Usually though, the factions will glass themselves first.... :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on April 15, 2013, 12:36:10 PM
My first Aliens were conquered successfully .   Only after I got tired of straight ground combat and pressed the big red button labeled "ORBITAL STRIKE". 

Time for a Tug.   They can have my Civ Shipyards.   I get their Navy Shipyards.   At least there are plenty Resources around. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on April 19, 2013, 01:34:02 PM
I got here by random a few days ago, downloaded the new version, was confused by the new engine design, remembered my old game in 5.6.

Its now 8 years since the Solar Union made its first steps outside the sol system. In the last 8 years they discovered 35 new systems and surveyed 29, etablished one extra solar colony with a population of 16 million people in Ross 154, a good part of the used Minerals on earth a imported from Gliese 832 and Ross 154, they fought old robotic ships in four different Systems and found the ruins of an abandoned installation. But until the 26th February 2142 16:31, no traces of intelligent and living extrasolar live was found.

At this day the 1st Mobile Battle Group picked up EM Signals from the nearly perfect planet it was heading too, still 5 billion kilometers away, the next day two small ships of 950 tons were spotted by the active missile defence sensor of the DS Albatross. As they did not fire any missiles it was decided to raise the shields and then let the two ships come near. Now the Group is maintaining a distance of 1000k kilometers, monitoring any activity of this two ships to determine the fate of this first alien species we met, while we try to initiate communication.

The 1st MBG monitored the two ships for a few hours with the only visible reaction being the activation of an short range active sensor, then continued its way to Eta Cassiopeiae BIII. On the morning of the 29th February a new ship with a mass of 21150 ton heading toward the group was detected.

On the second March another ship, 2850 ton, was detected and on the 8th the 1st MBG was near enough to detect ships of 13000 ton and more around Eta Cassiopeiae BIII and the thermal signature of its population.

At the 11th March, the 1st MBG reached the planet, it will remain there for a week, monitoring the local activity. After that its planned to leave a long range scout behind as an relay for further communication.

On the 13th our linguists were able to etablish communication for the first time, the ETs identify them self as the Klang Star Empire.
prepared to

14th March, the Klang Star Empire destroyed one of the groups colliers with meson cannons, killing 340 of the 471 heads strong crew, one of the two carriers was attacked with anti missile missiles only seconds later, the Klang will be now be prepared to be re-educated to be good colonial citizens of the solar union.

2 Minutes later all alien Ships in the orbit of the planet were destroyed, an attack with the RailCom class short range component of the group eradicated their ground troops. Several dozen nuclear bombs reminded the population of the importance of peace. We will see if they understand this lection when we come back. Hopefully they will have a great future as citizens of an colonial territory of the Union, maybe in a far future even as an member of the union.

16th, on the way back to the A component of the system, the ships detected on the way were spotted again.

The 1st MBG spent the entire April and May scanning the system for the last known ship, while they found and destroyed another ship of the same class the searched is still missing and could maybe find a jump point and use it.

16th October, a single hostile ship approaching the planet was destroyed, still not the searched

The missing ship was destroyed on the 5th December after it was found by an Grav Survey Ship and on the 8th January the planet was conquered and renamed Pallas, after the collier that was destroyed almost a year before. The 2th MBG which was stationed on the entrance Jumppoint and provided jump support and quick respond forces around the A component will leave the system as soon the three ships that acted as an escort for the troop transport ships are back.

And a new 11 000 ton naval ship yard, I think I will station the planed third mobile battle group here
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on April 20, 2013, 05:49:38 AM
And now, on the 10th June 2143 the DS Balrog, the passive Sensor Ship of the 2th MBG, detected the EM Signature of an Population in 82 Eridani, the future will show if they behave better.

11th June, looks like they see the massive active sensors of the DS Blackbird, four of their ships approach the 2th MBG.

19th June, one of the missle defense ships was attacked by AMMs
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on April 20, 2013, 08:40:34 PM
Currently Im in the process of designing the next generation of ships, they will be faster, have better shields and ecm, more fuel and the maintenance storage will be replaced by engineering spaces to make place for fuel tanks. The existing ships will not be upgraded to this new types (yet) but get the new ecm and shields.

Also the process of scouting new systems will change, instead of having one entire battle group scanning the system in the future smaller groups consisting of 6 ships (jump ship, 2 missile defence ships, 2 missile ships and one active sensor ship) will be used. Based on the experience of the last 10 years they should be enough to withstand every thread out there until support can reach them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MrAnderson on May 19, 2013, 11:44:47 PM
Currently playing a scenario that I might publish once I die, but it's 5 years in and I might finally be getting some action. It's basically an alternate WW1 scenario where Germany won and the other powers turned in on themselves but generally game out stronger and more unified. I've only just realized it, but perhaps 6 nations hacking away at the TN minerals on a planet balanced for one power wouldn't turn out so sweet. In less than one and a half years, corrundium, vendarite and corbomite will be gone, and eventually one of the nations is going to crack and start a war over dwindling resources.

With Germany just bringing the only nuclear-capable launch sites on Earth online, and the North Atlantic Alliance just finalizing their blueprints on orbital defense stations, and the Peoples Republic of Asia starting to build spacecraft... well, might not turn out so well. It'll be interesting to watch atleast!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 29, 2013, 04:08:22 PM
I've setup some Alternate Reality game for my first real Aurora game.           
 : If you are really curious - POD is in the 18th century - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was never partitioned, it became a central European superpower and after long and bloody World War ( somewhere in early 20th century ) rose up to the position of sole superpower in the world.            This explains polish ship names, parts, stars etc etc.           

I've started in 2025, conventional start, 6 000 m people ( like real life Earth ), 1 shipyard/50 labs, no overhauls/ inexp fleets, jump gates on JP, invaders/swarm/precursors on, real stars on.            Coz its my first game ive cheated a little and gave Earth stockpile 10kk of every mineral ( lame i know :( )

It is now 5th March 2043.       My empire consists of 4 planets ( Terra 7 377m ppl, Luna 20m colonists , Mars 0,59m colonists and Titan 0,06 m colonists ) and civilian mining outpost on Pluto ( 9 mines ).           
I've discovered 8 systems ( surveyed 2 ) SEE attachment below ( BTW sorry for those blue stripes - my graphic card is fried :( )

Operations in place :
1   Mining operation on Sedna - 2 x Miner Class asteroid miners ( DUH ) are working hard to bring those goods home.           
2   "Operation Titan Ferry" - 2 fleets of cargo ships are ferrying infrastructure from Luna to Titan and after this is done they will start carrying Mass Drivers ( so i can shoot some minerals from Earth as Titan has no mineral deposits ) and Factories .            My main goal is to built a little Naval Yard Complex .           
3  Deep Space survey operations - as you can see on that screenshot im currently exploring Gryphon, Manticore and Wolf 451 systems ( Named after ships that first made a jump to those systems ).           
And its very rewarding because Wolf 451 A-II planet is very rich in resources and not that hard to colonize - 2x colony cost, no Oxy pressure, total ATM 0.           1684, Nitrogen - Co2 atmo 90/10 % - only problem is that it is a loooong way from Earth and i will have to build extensive logistic support for this operation.           
4  Operation Eden - aka terraforming Mars ;) 5 terraformers are working hard to turn this planet into Earth v2 but because i have no idea how to do that it will take time, a lot of it :D

Good things  8) -
1 I have a rather large Home Fleet ( 6x Wroclaw class Destroyers, 13 x Swordsman class frigates ).           
2 I have a rather big Shipyards - 5 Naval and 5 Civilian ( almost all are multi-slipway, biggest Civilian is more than 600k, biggest naval is 60k ).     The biggest Naval one is currently retooling to build my first Light Cruisers - Somosierra class - first "proper" ship in my fleet ( grade-A sensors, CIWS, both missile and Gauss weaponry etc ), second biggest is also retooling but to build an Breslau destroyer escorts ( little better than Wroclaw class )

Bad things  :-\ -
1 One year ago, man responsible for our presence among the stars - First Citizen Cyrus Jedrzejczak, scientist who discovered Trans-Newtonian minerals died in a traffic accident.            Loving father, husband and briliant mind was mourned by the entire Sol system.            President Pulaski signed a executive order declaring that the first outer-Sol colony will be named after this great man.            Bogumi? Kula - second brightest mind in human history, man responsible for sequencing the Human Genome and close friend to Jedrzejczak is rumored to be a author of this idea.           
2 We are still alone.      Almost 20 years after getting the space-flight capability there is still no trace of any life form outside Earth.   

Very interesting game so far ;)

EDIT : Little update.   
30 December 2043 - this will be the date that will be remembered for all eternity - Day that Humanity made First Contact with another sentient race.   
Terran Vessel ORP Mantykora led by Captain Konrad Prometheus was surveying a binary system nicknamed Tartarus.    System was discovered earlier by the ORP Gryf who made a quick survey of few possible jump point locations before he was forced to return to Sol for refueling and shore leave.    Crew of the Gryf was able to determine that the Tartarus A-2 planet is very tempting target for colonization as it has almost Earth-like pressure, traces of Oxygen in atmosphere and liquid water despite surface temp of 57 Celcius.   
Unfortunately Gryf was a older model of the Sniffer class Gravsurvey Ship and it sensors didn't picked up EM signature of fully developed space faring civilization.   
So Mantykora flew deep into the system and was amazed by the fully developed colony and 11 contacts on an intercept course.   
But the worst was yet to be discovered.    After some scanning of for-now-neutral contacts it was determined that
A - those contacts are aprox 7 950 tons each which is 50 ton smaller tham Swordsman class frigate
B -they move at stunning 11 000 km/s which is almost 10x faster than Terran frigates and full 2k km/s faster than even the light missiles employed by the Terran military.   
Fortunately they dont appear to be hostile , they simply following the Mantykora as it tries to retreat from the system. 

Another Little Update : I've managed to establish a peaceful realtions with the Tartarus Aliens but after a year Sol system was glassed by a few spoiler ships .  .  .  .   So yeah.  .  .   FUN "Dwarf Fortress style". 

So i've started a new game.   Pretty much the same settings as before only with 5 NPR's and without a real life planets, system survey and jump points survey.   2 years into the play - BAM , i can advance time only by 5 sec each turn due to ( God bless for the SM view ) the MASSIVE fleets battling in 4 different system INCLUDING SOL ( and Roma which is one jump from Sol - JP is located between Mars and Jupiter ) !!!.  .  .   I think im in for another dose of FUN and another restart .  .  .  .  .    ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on June 04, 2013, 04:02:20 PM
It doesn't take long to find out that invaders and conventional start don't work well together, huh?

In my game, an 8 billion population conventional start, the Earth Federation is working on it's first warships 20 years after game start.  The large population made me start with 80 labs, so tech advancement was rapid and I now have about TL-3, with some variations.  One of the jump points out of Sol contains some Precursors so that's gonna be the war fleet's first target.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on June 10, 2013, 07:11:17 PM
Trying a reduced-sized launcher AAM defense , to protect against massive box-launched , TOT salvos the other empire is employing ( I'm playing them both ) . Hopefully the large number of launchers will compensate for the 50 second reload on them . My 4 AAM frigates are now capable of firing 460 AAMs every 50 seconds - or 900 against the fast missiles I've encountered and 1800! against the slow , heavy armored size-12 torpedoes .

I'm eager to test my new missile pods as well. Each is 495 tonnes , carries 8 size 5 box launchers , a 200 Mkm MFC and can be reloaded in just under 40 minutes - which makes for a huge alpha capacity from my 3 pod carriers ( 60 pods total , 480 missiles in a salvo ) . Didn't use fighters since I wanted the most bang for the size - this way it's like having a 160 box-launcher missile cruiser , able to reload every 30 mins :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on June 11, 2013, 10:21:41 AM
My first serious game had a conventional start.  We're now about 25 years into the game and have a solid mining network around the Sol system and a robust economy with lots of civilian ships rapidly colonizing Luna, Mars, and Ganymede.  Technology development has been relatively slow due to the Mercassium shortage that has prevented me from building labs.  (Also I have given every budding scientist a lab instead of concentrating labs on a few key people.  I now have outstanding research bonuses in every category except sensors, but individual discoveries take a long time.)

With a conventional start I'm learning that the benefit is a fantastic economy (+2000 wealth per month or so even while buying up the production of lots of civilian mining complexes).  The drawback is mineral shortages because you have to build all those facilities that the TN start gets for free.  Especially the research labs.  I got lucky with Venus having essentially unlimited millions of Duranium and Corundium at 0.9 accessibility, so I know I can always build more automines.  There might be some question as to whether I can fuel the cargo ships to deliver them.  We've got plenty of Sorium stockpiled (for now), but apparently 50 refineries wasn't doing the trick (and also my fleet of 10 cargo ships has burned through a lot of fuel transporting autominers and terraformers around).

I'm currently thinking about designing my first combat fleet as we're about to open up the stars.  We only have one navy shipyard with 4 slips, 5000 ton capability.  I've got several levels in lasers and missiles so I'm thinking about a fleet of destroyers with good scanners + anti-ship laser + PD laser, combined with some missile-based fighters or FACs.  I'm not sure whether to build I want to build a whole carrier for the FACs, or simply some kind of combo jump-tender and tanker-refueler.

This year, we finally launched our first four jump-capable nukePulse-powered gravimetric survey ships, Pathfinder class.  When they rolled out of the shipyard we received the unwelcome message that there wasn't enough fuel for them, but we scrounged a bit and equalized tanks and they were off.  The first two jump points have been located, and two of the surveyors have been ordered into the breach!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on June 11, 2013, 04:06:07 PM
When they rolled out of the shipyard we received the unwelcome message that there wasn't enough fuel for them, but we scrounged a bit and equalized tanks and they were off.  The first two jump points have been located, and two of the surveyors have been ordered into the breach!


That is a hell of a way to start off extra-solar exploration.  Even if you find something interesting on the other side of the jump will there be enough fuel to ever travel there in anything but a scout?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on June 12, 2013, 12:10:03 AM
Heh, yeah.  My production is a million liters a year, so I need more refineries.  But also I had burned through a lot of fuel sending my low-tech freighters to cart automines around the system and establish colonies on the Galilean moons of Jupiter.  It's a few years later now and my stockpile has somewhat replenished.  I never had any shortage of sorium, just needed more refineries.

The first few systems we explored seemed dead and empty, and not particularly attractive for colonization.  I've built my first serious combat ships: a 5000-ton destroyer hosting active and passive scanners, point defense, and serving as jump tender, paired with a 5000-ton light carrier with three hangar bays.  Currently the carriers are stocking 12 each of my extremely low-tech missile fighters (250 tons, each carrying four size 1 warhead 2 missiles), but I hope to come out with a 1000-ton beam-equipped FAC once my tech is a bit better, and then the carriers can load 3 each of those.  Researching stellarator fusion engines now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on June 14, 2013, 03:23:48 PM
Started a new game now that I know a lot more about the mechanics of it.  This time, a trans-Newtonian start.  I spent almost all my starting RP on the economy/mining/production/research boosts leaving little for anything else.  In particular, I gave myself no free engine tech except the basics for jump drives.  In this game I spent the first 9 and a half years building up my home base on Sol, establishing a mining network, and trying to encourage the civilian shipping line (there's only one) to grow.  I have a large and growing fleet of sorium harvesters in orbit of Neptune -- there aren't going to be constant early-game fuel shortages this time around.  Automines and civilian mines are sending a constant flow of minerals to Earth.  A small but growing fleet of terraforming bases orbits Mars.

In the tenth year, my brilliant but under-funded (or so they say) scientists cracked the secret of Ion Drive technology and our two jump point surveyors were upgraded to become our first interstellar exploration vehicles.  The first jump took Kepler 001 to a binary system with no planets or asteroids.  The second jump took Kepler 002 to another binary, this one with a very promising solar system around its B component.  There's a near-perfect terrestrial world that just needs a smidgen of oxygen to turn it into a zero-cost world, and it has several gas giants and asteroids in close proximity to provide minerals.

Just one thing.... the B star is 30 billion km from the jump point...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on June 24, 2013, 05:23:23 PM
Just one thing.... the B star is 30 billion km from the jump point...
Feeling a little silly about the above as I have started a new game and one of the first systems I explored had a planet 170 trillion km from the star.  30 billion is nothing!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SpikeTheHobbitMage on June 24, 2013, 05:51:26 PM
Feeling a little silly about the above as I have started a new game and one of the first systems I explored had a planet 170 trillion km from the star.  30 billion is nothing!
170 trillion?  Without a working hyperdrive?  Even with hyperdrive?  :o

/sobs quietly
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 26, 2013, 07:40:03 AM
Quote from: joeclark77 link=topic=3808. msg63599#msg63599 date=1372112603
Feeling a little silly about the above as I have started a new game and one of the first systems I explored had a planet 170 trillion km from the star.   30 billion is nothing!

Pretty much the same thing happened to me today . 
I've discovered binary system named Hancock ( im using Manticore nameset ).  And the B-star is 665b from the main star . . . .  and to add insult to injury - Hancock B-V is a 0 colony cost planet ( water, acceptable gravity and temp etc ), resource rich and rest of her sister planets ( 8 of them ) are also incredibly rich and with high accesibility . . . . .  Im gonna shoot someone . . 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on June 26, 2013, 09:34:59 AM
Play the game for 200 years and maybe you'll find yourself under attack from generation ships sent out by an NPR on that planet!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 26, 2013, 10:31:43 PM
I dont think im gonna experience this coz right now im engaged in a looooooooooooooooong long-range slug fest with a little NPR empire i've encountered.  

I've decided to attack newly encountered NPR after 3 years of unsuccesful comunication attempt.  So i took 5 of my missile destroyers, 3 destroyer escorts and 6 military support ship ( mixed collier/tanker with civi engines ) and engaged them in a San Martin system.  

First i fired on some huge 10k ton ship ( 2 of them ) and destroyed them with the opening salvo.  Then i got jumped by a group of ~50 FAC's and their huuge onetime salvo managed to destroy ORP Goblin, one of my support ships.  Fortunately ive managed to pick up survivors including the captain and avenge by destroying every FAC.  
And now im trading salvos with the group of 15 8750ton ships ( i have no idea how they can run at 10 000 km/s having a internal cof engines . . .  ).  Salvos per se are not the problem because -
A - each of my ships have newest CIWS
B - each escort have total of 8 laser/gauss/railgun and 4 AMM launchers and destroyers have 2 AMM launchers.  
C - they are firing 2 salvos , 12 missiles each , size 4 and flying at 15k km/s and by the time they enter laser weaponry range i have like 90 % tracking bonus against them.  
What is the problem is that they are firing every 20 seconds which means that i cant do anything coz of all those 5-seconds turns and AMM expenditure is becoming a problem ( 2 of my colliers are already dry, 2 of them have less than 25 % of ammo ).  I've fired my own salvos but they are still far from the enemy . .  Fortunately they are S10 20WH missiles so they will probably do a lot of damage coz that particular NPR does not seem to have strong PD capability.  

Update : they seem to have run out of missiles ... what a shame >:D

Update nr 2 : i've destroyed every enemy ship and my fleet is now retreating to Sol for resupply and reinforcements.
Im trying to figure out what those ship was : they were, as mentioned before, 8750kt each, moving at 10 000 km/s, they had no PD capability, they had jump drives and reactors ( SM log mentions damaging those parts ) ... jump escorts maybe ??  ???

Update nr 3 : and i've just completed new AMM design ..
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 2.9 MSP  (0.145 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 27
Speed: 132400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 11.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.05
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 3574.8%   3k km/s 1188%   5k km/s 715%   10k km/s 357.5%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   5.8x Gallicite   Fuel x750

Development Cost for Project: 605RP
 ;D ;D. Poor alien assholes ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 28, 2013, 12:24:37 AM
Update nr 3 : and i've just completed new AMM design ..
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 2.9 MSP  (0.145 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 27
Speed: 132400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 11.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.05
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 3574.8%   3k km/s 1188%   5k km/s 715%   10k km/s 357.5%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   5.8x Gallicite   Fuel x750

Development Cost for Project: 605RP
 ;D ;D. Poor alien assholes ;)
That's a pretty big AMM. What sort of recycle time do you have on the launchers?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 28, 2013, 04:47:41 AM
That's a pretty big AMM. What sort of recycle time do you have on the launchers?
15 seconds. I know its pretty big but i like that insane speed and chance to hit.

Update : discovered new system Endicot .
Third planet is Earth like ( without water coz surface temp is -5C ).. Woohoo !!  ;D
First planet has 432 M!! Duranium , 200m Neutronium and Corbomite, Boronide 116m, 166m Uridium and 20m Galicite ... Woohoo nr 2 !! ;D

.... all at 0.1 accesibility .... motherfrakker ..... :( ::) :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on June 28, 2013, 06:53:46 PM
Welp, just had one hell of a scare. I had assembled a small fleet of missile cruisers to swat an annoying pack of precursors one jump over from Sol who had destroyed my survey fleet years earlier. I assembled the squadron, + the fleet support train, and squadron jumped into the system, and almost immediately had to beat down a squad of 4 FACs(Good thing I remembered to include a backup size-20 fire control!).
After leaving them smoking wrecks, I went hunting the larger ships my survey fleet has spotted before being annihilated. Well, I found them, and immediately ran into a problem; not only were they much faster than my missile ships, they outranged me by a considerable amount, meaning they could bombard me at will with me unable to attack them! I was soon under heavy missile attack, with my escort cruisers stating to run out of AMMs, and me starting to panic-until I noticed that while the ships were pretty damn fast(they had internal confinement fusion, while I still had only plasma drives, and I know this due to salvaging a couple wrecks from an earlier battle with some beam ships), the missiles decidedly WEREN'T, only topping out at 15k km/s.
This had me laughing my ass off, due to the fact that as a general rule, I include twin laser PD on ALL my combatants as a last-ditch emergency PD! Since my beam fire control was at a point that it laughed at 15k km/s missiles, even when I ran out of AMMs I STILL took no damage until he finally ran dry of ASMs and I could safely retreat out of the system to come up with a new plan.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 28, 2013, 08:06:12 PM
15 seconds. I know its pretty big but i like that insane speed and chance to hit.

Update : discovered new system Endicot .
Third planet is Earth like ( without water coz surface temp is -5C ).. Woohoo !!  ;D
First planet has 432 M!! Duranium , 200m Neutronium and Corbomite, Boronide 116m, 166m Uridium and 20m Galicite ... Woohoo nr 2 !! ;D

.... all at 0.1 accesibility .... motherfrakker ..... :( ::) :'(

Outside of your home system, larger concentrations of minerals will generally have a lower accessibility.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 29, 2013, 06:08:23 AM
Outside of your home system, larger concentrations of minerals will generally have a lower accessibility.

Noticed that ...

Eden-A I
Duranium 432 180 000  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 220 522 500  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 198 810 000  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 116 640 000  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 166 410 000  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 20 250 000  Acc: 0.1

Eden-A II
Duranium 30 186 450  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 67 076 100  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 24 354 220  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 43 758 220  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 8 037 225  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 3 186 225  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 27 562 500  Acc: 0.1

Eden Prime - my first colony ( i didn't bother with colonizing mars - only put some mass drivers and auto-mines )
Duranium 10 396 690  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 2 547 106  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 14 439 890  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 47 830 940  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 23 658 250  Acc: 0.4
Vendarite 33 362 060  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 47 830 940  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 976 032  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 5 550 625  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 23 658 380  Acc: 0.1

Eden-A IV
Duranium 156 800  Acc: 0.9
Neutronium 784  Acc: 0.5
Boronide 1 192 464  Acc: 0.3
Sorium 200 704  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 240 100  Acc: 0.7
Gallicite 451 584  Acc: 0.5

I'm gonna make it a nice nigh-impervious system ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on June 30, 2013, 06:01:23 PM
Wow, just found a niiice planet. EVERY miniral, all in hundreds of thousands concentration, with the accessibility not lower than .5! Found my new colony :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 01, 2013, 08:31:01 AM
Wow, just found a niiice planet. EVERY miniral, all in hundreds of thousands concentration, with the accessibility not lower than .5! Found my new colony :P
Pics/mineral text ?? :>

I've started to fortify only Sol JP. Im planning to deploy 4-5 Meduza class JP defence bases armed with 20WH Hammer missiles and similar amount of Chimera laser JP defence bases, all in the 1m km proximity to JP to blast anything that comes with hostile intentions.
Im facing pretty severe workers shortages ( Earth is almost 11b ppl and i still have a -119m shortage .... ) so i will have to postpone establishing a third colony in the Manticore system for at least several decades. Which is actually not so tragic considering that i have to develop entirely new type of humans to handle 2.67 gravity of the Manticore A-I planet ... and ofcourse i have to terraform the smeg out of that planet because even without gravity it has a 996C surface temperature and completely toxic atmo - Nitrogen Dioxide 1% and CO2 99%.

System generation ( as seen in the attachment ) is very strange - for 14 explored system 5 of them are devoid of any planets and there are many with multiple stars to the point where i have like 4 or 5 single star systems  ::) ???

Only indication ( apart from SM logs ) of a extraterrestial life is a ruined outpost on Casca A-III planet with two wrecks floating floating deeper in the system ( already salvaged - some minerals, no tech or any info :( )
As for the SM logs - NPR's are completely trashing each others by the dozens. I often have a period of week of constant 5sec turns coz all that fighting and pursuits.

As for the ships - my forces look pretty good on paper ( but nonetheless their real value will be judged if we encounter any hostile alien races ).
30x Perseus class frigates, 20x Goblin class support ships, 10x Prometheus class destroyers, 20x Theseus class destroyer escorts and 1x Hermes class Light cruiser ( in building ) meant to be the flagship of the Sol Fleet at least before i can build a newly developed Apollo class heavy cruiser. Navy also deployed 8 Copernicus class survey ships who are now on a deep range exploration missions.

"Civilian" fleet is also quite numerous - 40 CarryAll cargo ships ( currently ferrying Auto-mines and mass drivers to Eden system ), some Salvagers, Asteroid miners, Freezer colony ship and Terraformers adding water to the Eden Prime.

Naval Command recently started to experiment with the idea of a dedicated sensor ship, carriers andfighters. Some blueprints and ideas are being developed but nothing came out of it yet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Black on July 01, 2013, 09:11:54 AM
Which is actually not so tragic considering that i have to develop entirely new type of humans to handle 2.67 gravity of the Manticore A-I planet ... and ofcourse i have to terraform the smeg out of that planet because even without gravity it has a 996C surface temperature and completely toxic atmo - Nitrogen Dioxide 1% and CO2 99%.

I think it would be easier and cheaper to just use automines to get resources from such hostile planet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 01, 2013, 09:29:32 AM
I think it would be easier and cheaper to just use automines to get resources from such hostile planet.
Probably but i have to establish a military presence in Manticore because its a multiwarp crossroad system between Sol and rest of my colonies. I dont have to set up a "proper" colony, just some SY, ammo factories and fuel rer's.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 01, 2013, 10:25:35 AM
Probably depends on how many .atms the planet has.  If it's a thin atmosphere you could more or less start from scratch with terraforming.  Are there no other candidates in the system?

My current game was a conventional start and I'm about 50 years in.  Alien ruins were salvaged in a neighboring system.  No new tech but the free research labs were wonderful, and the planet itself is a keeper with breathable air, near-perfect temperature, and moderate mineral deposits with more in the system and a good gas giant for sorium.  I've just fully terraformed Luna (a first for me) and the TF fleet is on its way to the formerly-alien world.  Another neighboring system had some alien ships that were a test for my ion-era warships, but I defeated them and found two planets of the "A" star with deep space tracking stations on them.  There's a bigger star system around the "B" star but it's way out there, too far to travel in decades.  I suspect that there are cool ruins or something out there, plus maybe more alien ships.  Perhaps if I keep going with this game they'll attack me by surprise in the remote future.

I finally found the system that's going to solve all my Neutronium and Boronide problems, two jumps from Sol with the intervening system a planetless void.  I'll put automines on the sweetest world and a mass driver firing minerals from there to a cost-2 "chunk" which I can terraform to be a new industrial base.  I'm starting to get to a point where my industrial vision demands more factories and mines than I have produced, despite having 10-20% of earth industry making both of the above for decades.  I may need to put everything on hold and simply focus 100% of industry on making more industry for 4 or 5 years.  One problem with the mineral motherlode I just discovered is that corundium is only available on one planet and it doesn't have high accessibility of anything else.  Similar situation with vendarite.  So instead of putting 200 automines on the golden planet, I have to put half on the golden planet and half on the corundium-only planet if I want to bootstrap mining capacity within that system itself.  I'd have to do something similar with vendarite if I want to produce construction factories locally.  Still, it'd probably be more efficient than having hundreds of automines spread out on Sol's various now-mostly-depleted comets.


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 01, 2013, 10:37:34 AM
Quote
Probably depends on how many .atms the planet has.  If it's a thin atmosphere you could more or less start from scratch with terraforming.  Are there no other candidates in the system?

Just checked ... 99 ... fuuuuuuuuuu :rageguy ;) As for other candidates : no - only two gas giants.

So i revised my defense plans : Manticore A-I will be simply a source of minerals.
And my defense will be shared between Eden system and Endicot. Endicot is fairly resource rich and have some colonizable planets including one that has a 1.45 pressure, ice sheet, -85 C temp, Nitrogen atmosphere ( 99 %, rest is Neon and Oxygen ) and every system between those two and Sol have been fully grav surveyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 01, 2013, 11:54:30 AM
Just checked ... 99 ... fuuuuuuuuuu :rageguy ;) As for other candidates : no - only two gas giants.
This is why Aurora needs an option for a planet-destroying death star weapon.  Some planets are really asking for it.  Then you could use asteroid harvester ships to get the minerals from the debris field.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 01, 2013, 12:19:11 PM
This is why Aurora needs an option for a planet-destroying death star weapon.  Some planets are really asking for it.  Then you could use asteroid harvester ships to get the minerals from the debris field.

Heh , yes they do ;)

I've had a little peak into the NPR system that constantly is mentioned in combat logs ... no less than 500 wrecks ranging from 1k ton to 29k .... so yeah ....

Little Update :
Terrans made contact with three alien races almost at once in newly discovered Yalta system which led the Navy Command to believe that this system is some kind of contested territory. Two of those races ( Coimbatore Empire and Federation of Glar ) appear to be friendly.

Third one on the other hand is called the Depok Commonwealth and in January 2039 one of their FAC ( i assume it was FAC coz of the 1k tonnage and 7k km/s speed ) launched full salvo against terran survey vessel ORP Galileo. Thankfully the Naval Command had implemented "better safe than sorry" doctrine and had every ship, regardles of class, outfitted with the CIWS system so the Galileo somehow managed to destroy every incoming missile and bolted out of the system with 2 more Survey ships.
Naval Command ordered the Sol Fleet to perform a full Yalta system sweep and elimination of every hostile force encountered.
Month later Sol Fleet led by the ORP Niez?omny jumped to Yalta. Enemy ship was obviously nowhere to be found but small colony was detected and destroyed ( really small - EM signature 500-something )  before fleet retreated from Yalta.
So far not one Depok ship have been detected anywhere else but Terran forces are still on high-alert and the race designation remains " Hostile - shoot on sight "

Meanwhile Pollux system is a site of an intense battles between NPR's ( see attachment ).
Mind that first pic is at 72K !! zoom .. And there is a JP among all those wrecks so its probably an continous incursion attempt .
I love this game <3

Another Update:
On 26th April 2035 I have discovered fourth race - Gouderak Empire. Unfortunately Gouderaks are hostile to everyone which led to the destruction of the ORP Hypatia survey vessel no more than 15 seconds after the jump to the newly discovered Gemini system - this time CIWS didn't help because it was almost point blank laser fire.
Hypatia captain Lt. Commander Nina Witek perished along with the rest of the crew and in the effort to avenge them Sol Fleet have been dispatched yet again.
It arrived aprox. month later and destroyed group of 102 FAC's but Naval Command ordered them to withdraw from the system based on a suspicion that this is the homeworld of Gouderaks and Sol Fleet simply has not enough ammo or fuel to acomplish anything there ( Gemini is a looong way from nearest terran colony ).

Goverment decided against anymore retaliatory actions againt the Gouderak and voted in favor of simply fortyfing systems with colonies.
First of the Medusa JP defense bases are now being tractored to the positions around only Sol JP ( christ setting up fire controls for "ship" with 50 ASM launchers, 100 AMM launchers, 5x ASM FC and 10x AMM FC is a painnnnnn in the ... mikta ).
Medusa is armed with the Hammer missiles ( slower with less range but more agile and more powerful version of the Mjolnir ASM used by the Terran military ships - less range is hardly the problem since Medusas are positioned less then 750k from the jump point ) which will hopefully make a tough nut to crack for anyone attempting to invade Sol.
And couple of years more and i will have the Anti-matter drive technology ^____^

Yet Another Stupid Edit: welp ... i lost ORP Kopernik shredded by laser fire while entering system belonging to the Depok Commonwealth so im now in the state of war with 3 from 4 known alien races .... and last one has -89 relation with us so its safe to say that they are hostile too ..... FUN. . Ok only 2 races are still hostile :P Coimbatore Empire send message apologizing for their captain firing at Galileo and offering trade access for Terran ships ( not both way as the Nationalists party in Commonwealth parliment is too strong to pass Free Trade Act ) and relations with Glar are rising.
Meanwhile fleet was dispatched to rescue Kopernik captain taken prisoner by the Depoks. And thats how i learned the term "Jump blindness" -_____________- when more than 20 railgun equiped FAC's were waiting at the other side ....
Fleet managed to retreat from the enemy system but not before losing ORP Takeda Shingen, Julius Ceasar and Czyngis-Chan destroyer escorts and ORP Ork support ship -_____________-
And now i have to research, design and build a jump ships -____________-
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Brainsucker on July 13, 2013, 05:37:28 AM
Interesting thread. I'll join.

Ok, in my game, I played as Terran Confederation. Still not find any Alien. The only trace or proof that Extra Terrestrial existence in my game is the remnant / wreck of two Alien Starship. Because of my own RP rule that my Confed must react to the threat that present to them, I didn't have any reason to built my military. My plan was that if no Alien can be found in near future, my military would be act as police aka... watching my own civilization, and my weapon would be evolve accordingly depend on the threat that I will face (against civilian ships). But after one of my explorer found the wreck of Alien ship in Wolf 359, I used that opportunity to build up.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do. I have two operational ship class. F-1 Hornet, a 300 ton fighter with 1 Missile Launcher that capable to launch my AMM (HQ-1), and a laser corvette that capable to fire a 10 cm infrared laser. I know that these two designs won't be enough. So I develop a military transport (with my best radar, including a 148m km active sensor. But after conducting some space trial, I decided to scrap the prototype and build the next version of it.

The other one is Paladin Class. Anti missile Frigate that capable to protect the squadron from the enemy missile. I put 6 size 1 AMM (Anti Missile Missile) Launchers with 2 fire control for it. but like my Hercules (Assault/Transport) class, I'm not satisfy with the design. But I will develop it further with better Active sensor that capable to detect missile (more than 2,5m km).

I planned to develop the next fighter (F-2 bee) that equipped with gauss cannon, but also abandoned it, and an Archer class that capable to launch a size 10 AShM (anti Ship Missile) to the enemy.  No class can satisfy my demand.

My latest plan is to develop F-3 fighter with size 2 missile, develop 2nd prototype for my Paladin and Hercules Class, and a multi role missile Frigate with size of 4000 - 5000 tonnes that will become the backbone of my navy. The criteria of this frigate are :

- Size 4000 - 5000
- Capable to launch AShM (what size?)
- Equipped with standard sensors (there are three level of equipment in my game. Low, standard, and High)
- adequate speed (faster is better)
- Capable to defend itself when in danger.

For my laser corvette, I plan to build a better version of it, with better engine, laser, etc. My target is to make it smaller and cheap

in my game, there are three level of Equipment standardization. For example, a ship that dedicated as AWAC / radar ship will be given a size 20 Active Sensor (EWS - Early Warning Sensor) that capable to see long distance. So EWS sensor with size 20 is considered as High level Equipment. But for a corvette that the job is to escort or protect other ship will be given a size 1 or 2 Active Sensor. I consider that sensor as low level equipment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 13, 2013, 03:18:44 PM
I have had good experiences with size 4 and size 5 anti-ship missiles.  You can usually get a power-4 warhead from the very lowest tech levels, and squeeze a power-9 warhead later.  A small fighter can carry 3 or 4 of them with box launchers and still get decent speed.

I, too, am trying out a speedy laser-carrying destroyer.  It happens that my two nearest alien neighbors like to use fast ships with short-range energy weapons, so I've designed this ship to be faster than them and hit at longer range.  I have not battle tested it yet.  It's an expensive bugger and burns a lot of fuel.  I have a 16000 ton missile cruiser that costs less, but is too slow to evade enemy FACs.  My idea is that I'd soften up the enemies with missiles but depend on the destroyer to close in and kill them before they reach my main fleet.  I would also like to introduce a laser FAC of my own soon, but I had a hard time getting the beam fire control small enough to have the range and speed I need.
Code: [Select]
Ready-C class Destroyer    12,000 tons     300 Crew     2528.2 BP      TCS 240  TH 1350  EM 0
7500 km/s     Armour 4-46     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 36
Maint Life 1.39 Years     MSP 395    AFR 384%    IFR 5.3%    1YR 222    5YR 3334    Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

100 EP Overcharged Magneto-plasma Drive (18)    Power 100    Fuel Use 116.17%    Signature 75    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 2,250,000 Litres    Range 29.1 billion km   (44 days at full power)

15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser (9)    Range 192,000km     TS: 7500 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 4    ROF 10        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
Ready Fire Control Gen2 S08 96-8000 (2)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
2HS-9P Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (3)     Total Power Output 27    Armour 0    Exp 5%

10HS FAC Detector Gen2 MR51-R16 (1)     GPS 2560     Range 51.2m km    Resolution 16

My thoughts about sensors are that each ship in a mixed fleet should have one big sensor and a couple backup sensors.  So my destroyer has a big FAC sensor and (would have if I could squeeze it) a small missile sensor and small ship sensor.  My carrier has a big ship sensor and small missile and FAC sensors.  My cruiser has a big missile sensor and small ship and FAC sensors.  This means each ship can theoretically still fight if the others are damaged.  However, I haven't been perfectly consistent in applying this design doctrine.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Brainsucker on July 13, 2013, 10:08:44 PM
Well, I start at research point zero, so box launcher is still out of my grabs.

At this point of my play time, I reach a conclusion about creating my 1st Artillery Squadron that consist of 2 Archer class (a ship that capable to launch size 10 AShM), a Hawkeyes Class (a ship that capable to see 148m km with a 150 resolution Active Sensor), and a Paladin Class that has 6 size 1 missile launchers and 2 targeting computers for it. I don't know if it's enough for my first squadron.

I also have satisfied with my Hercules class assault ship (like a San Antonio Class LHD) but without hangar). It can transfer a battalion of space marine, and drop it to a planet in an assault mission. I also satisfied with my EWS radar system (the 148m km AS wth 150 resolution). For now, my space marine corp will be equipped with 1 Hercules Drop Ship and 2 laser corvette, their range of operation is still limited to sol system, as I haven't any ship that capable bring my 9800 ton Hercules class to another systems.

I still can't decide for my Multirole Frigate. Well, maybe I should forget it and go to Star Destroyer instead. with a mass of 8000 - 10.000 tonnes.

For now, I'll build a prototype for my archer and hawkeyes class and space trial them, evaluate the designs before put them into full service.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on July 15, 2013, 02:17:00 AM
Let’s add my two pennies worth to this topic...

I started my first real game pre-transnetwtonian without any research points at all with two NPR’s, all optional settings on (overhauls etc.), population of only 300 million and invaders on. I expect myself to get murdered out of proportion but so far life was very peaceful. But I had several problems that I struggle with.

First is the absence of valid amount of resources (that actually makes this a game where high priority can only be given to certain things). I started with 0 resources and even mining for couple of years while I worked on transnewtonian tech did not help. Furthermore I only started with 3 research labs and one shipyard (1000 ton) which make this a nightmare of logistics.

So in about the 15 years I was able to up my shipyard to 7500 tons, start construction of another shipyard, advance fully into transnewtonian stage, get 3 more labs, 3 survey vessels (originally had conventional engines (about 51 km/s), two are now refitted with brand new advanced engines (about 1320 km/s), got two cargo ships that are capable of carrying 5000 cargo (had three but one had a critical failure and exploded before I upgraded the design with 500 more tons worth of engineering space) and I started hauling stuff to Mercury where large deposits of duranium are present.

The thing I struggle with the most is that I still have only very limited deposits of resources, especially mentioned duranium. Some of the types already ran out at Earth and the best I can get are extremely large deposits on Mercury and Venus, however both have accessibility of around 0.1 – 0.5 (despite having even millions of tons worth of certain resources). So all my current projects are now aimed towards automated mines while scraping the last duranium deposits on Earth. I have about 100 (yes, a hundred) in stockpile now with only 15 years to go and about 25 000 duranium to be mined. Then I will be dependent on my automated colonies on Mercury and Venus.

No wonder I am getting the asteroid mining module ready in my labs so that I can do some high intensity drilling. I really miss the option of focusing on one mineral only while mining.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Black on July 15, 2013, 04:34:57 AM
It is strange that your cargo ship encountered critical failure as commercial designs don't need overhaul and you only need one engineering space for your commercial ships. Can you post your design?

Your best place to get good accessibility minerals in Sol are comets. You just need some automines and preferably mass driver (one on comet and one on Earth).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on July 15, 2013, 05:06:38 AM
It is strange that your cargo ship encountered critical failure as commercial designs don't need overhaul and you only need one engineering space for your commercial ships. Can you post your design?

Your best place to get good accessibility minerals in Sol are comets. You just need some automines and preferably mass driver (one on comet and one on Earth).

It might be weird but at the point where I designed the freighter I had no other choice then to do this (I don’t have a design here as I am at work. Here is some background and explanation:

I started with conventional start so I had only one 7000 worth naval shipyard at the time of designing. I also had only conventional engines so I loaded up the freighter on cargo space (5000 worth) and conventional engines so it would have at least SOME speed – the engines were pretty big and yet very fuel efficient so it worked in effect (I believe it ran on around 40 km/s at the end). However the design was something like 6900 tons already and I could only add about one extra maintenance space. That resulted in the average critical failure rate of around 280% which was really funny to think about but I risked it as I would be waiting another five years for better engines. I also started adding 500 more tons to the shipyard as I knew I would need to refit it immediately when I can. But for now, I thought, it can manage with constant supplies and repairs.

Turns out it was a bad idea. The ship did 20 trips to Mercury and back and then exploded while in orbit of Earth loading up more cargo.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on July 15, 2013, 05:11:30 AM
Your best place to get good accessibility minerals in Sol are comets. You just need some automines and preferably mass driver (one on comet and one on Earth).

Also the comets are perfect source, I already know that but I just entered the area where I can create some automated mines and move them about. The comets come and go so the new cargo ships that I prepare for would have sufficient speed to get at least some mines on the comets. But getting a massdriver + at least SOME mines there in a short timeframe seems hard. I mean how many could I do? Each mine and massdriver takes 25 000 cargo space. I have only 5000 on my current available available. That means 10 trips for one massdriver and one automated mine. And then some more from time to time. From this point of view it seemed better to mass produce them on Mercury and station them there until I get some even faster and bigger ships or at least more of them so that I won’t just put one or two mines on the comet and wave it goodbye :)

Feel free to correct me though, I am quite new to the game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Black on July 15, 2013, 05:43:35 AM
It might be weird but at the point where I designed the freighter I had no other choice then to do this (I don't have a design here as I am at work. Here is some background and explanation:

I started with conventional start so I had only one 7000 worth naval shipyard at the time of designing. I also had only conventional engines so I loaded up the freighter on cargo space (5000 worth) and conventional engines so it would have at least SOME speed – the engines were pretty big and yet very fuel efficient so it worked in effect (I believe it ran on around 40 km/s at the end). However the design was something like 6900 tons already and I could only add about one extra maintenance space. That resulted in the average critical failure rate of around 280% which was really funny to think about but I risked it as I would be waiting another five years for better engines. I also started adding 500 more tons to the shipyard as I knew I would need to refit it immediately when I can. But for now, I thought, it can manage with constant supplies and repairs.

Turns out it was a bad idea. The ship did 20 trips to Mercury and back and then exploded while in orbit of Earth loading up more cargo.


Well I don't really have experience with preTN. I thought that your cargo ships were TN vessels. If they have conventional engines, then comets are not really accessible for you. Are your cargo ship engines commercial? Commercial ships don't have failure rate. This is cargo ship that Steve uses in his current game:

Code: [Select]
Atlas class Freighter    39,150 tons     172 Crew     673.4 BP      TCS 783  TH 1500  EM 0
1915 km/s     Armour 1-102     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 11    Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 15   

Commercial Ion Drive (5)    Power 300    Fuel Use 6.19%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres    Range 22.3 billion km   (134 days at full power)
The RN/SLR-7 EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

As you can see there is no failure rate and it should be this way for all commercial ships (cargo, colony, miners, salvagers...). Maybe all conventional engines are military and that's why your cargo ship has failure rate.

As for failure rate of 280%. For military ship that number is actually ok. If you look at some of Steve's fiction, you will see that some of his military ships have failure rate over 600%. But for ships that will travel a lot (grav survey ships or patrol ships that guard systems without some kind of fleet base) is better to have lower failure rate.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on July 15, 2013, 05:50:39 AM
I am not sure if they are commercial ships available too for me. I had to tweak the engines a bit (make them much bigger to get more power out of them so that the speed isn't something like 2km/s) so they end up being military ship engines.

I actually got past the conventional start into TN part and got better engines now so it is more convenient. But still with very limited size of ships (cargo hold of only 5000 due to starting with ONE shipyard with 1000 tons) it takes a lot of time (there, back x5) to put something on the comets. The speed went up to about 1250 km/s but still...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 15, 2013, 10:21:34 AM
To make an engine "commercial" you need to have less than 0.5 power and greater than 25HS of size.  (In practice I would recommend making them 40HS and have 0.2 power... that makes them slower but fantastically fuel efficient.)  However, it'd be hard to make a freighter using that size engine and still have it under 7500 tons.  Do yourself a favor and build a commercial shipyard.  Those start at 10k tons capacity and seem to grow larger at 10x the rate of naval shipyards.  It wouldn't take long to get one with 40,000 tons capacity for making freighters.

Your second problem I think is you're too eager to get started.  When I have done conventional starts it has often been 15 years before I built my first survey ship, and 20+ before I built my first cargo or colony ship.  30-40 years before I'm up to the level I usually start at with a TN start, and ready to visit other stars.  The advantage of a conventional start is that you get to design the industry and shipyards yourself, and you get a really awesome economy and great researchers trained up, but you have to be patient.  It also feels really great when you accomplish something like your first interstellar transit.

One of the disadvantages is that you will have terrible mercassium and neutronium shortages, because you have to build the research labs and shipyards that everybody else gets "for free".  So once you are able to start setting up a mining network, you'll want to be very aggressive in targeting exactly the minerals you need.  If I do a conventional start nowadays, I will just give myself a bunch of labs at the outset, maybe 15 or 20.  That makes things get rolling a bit faster.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Evanissimo on July 15, 2013, 09:41:00 PM
I believe I have encountered the lamest Precursors ever.  They've got 2 ships just sitting in Alpha Centauri, watching me colonize it, all attempts to chase them down just result in them running away out of reach.  So I've just decided to let them be.  And pillage the lamest ruins that have probably ever been found as well.  I mean come on! 56 Ion Drives? What a lame thing to get from ruins!I'm almost at the next Tech Level, these guys aren't precursors, they're Pre-Losers!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Black on July 16, 2013, 12:13:17 AM
Precursor scouts, they are quite fast but unarmed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on July 23, 2013, 03:45:57 AM
Just entered a nebula(after making some purpose-built scouts for this job) and encountered a couple hostile craft. They're beam ships armed with a single particle beam, but they do 9 damage....and have a sensor range of 13m km(at first I thought I had encountered a PDC!)

Making plans to avenge the ship they are currently battering, but good god, what size and/or tech level do they need to be at to get that kind of range?!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 23, 2013, 08:20:38 AM
13m km doesn't seem too long range to me.  What was the resolution?  You can get that kind of range if you build a big enough sensor.  Typically I will put 5HS or 10HS sensors on one of my warships, and 2HS sensors for backups on the other warships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on July 23, 2013, 06:40:30 PM
well for reference, my tech, at max size and assuming 100 res, can barely reach 1m km. Granted, it could have been a higher res sensor, but not by much since my survey ships don't exceed 6k tons
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on July 24, 2013, 08:52:39 AM
At "max size", are you sure?  Do you know you can make a sensor larger than 1HS?
I just opened up the design-tech window and selected an active sensor with the lowest technology levels (active grav sensor strength 10, EM sensor sensitivity 5).  I left the default 100 res.  Here are the stats for a 1HS sensor:
Code: [Select]
Active Sensor Strength: 10   Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 1 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 100    Maximum Range vs 5000 ton object (or larger): 5,000,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 200,000 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 12,500 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 10    Crew: 2
Materials Required: 0x Duranium  10x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 100RP

Increase the size to 3HS and you triple the range to 15mkm:
Code: [Select]
Active Sensor Strength: 30   Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 3 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 100    Maximum Range vs 5000 ton object (or larger): 15,000,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 600,000 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 37,500 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 30    Crew: 6
Materials Required: 0x Duranium  30x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 300RP

If you do what I do, you would typically start with at least a 5HS sensor on your biggest sensor ship, and it would be set to resolution 160 because NPRs tend to use a lot of ships in the 8000-9000T range.  Still assuming those lowest technology levels, here's what you get:
Code: [Select]
Active Sensor Strength: 50   Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 5 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 160    Maximum Range vs 8000 ton object (or larger): 31,620,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 494,063 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 30,879 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 50    Crew: 10
Materials Required: 0x Duranium  50x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 500RP
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on July 25, 2013, 02:23:27 AM
I'm play-testing some of my own modifications ( don't worry Steve , I'm not reporting bugs from my modded copy , that'd be crazy . I can't wait to play with the new stuff you are putting in 6.3 :) ).

Here's some of what I got so far :

Vastly improved laserheads. Higher range multiplier and heavy damage. Too bad the damage type is hardcoded :) Here's an example , 4x9damage laserheads :
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 10 MSP  (0.5 HS)     Warhead: 36    Armour: 1.5     Manoeuvre Rating: 12
Laser Heads: 4
Speed: 96000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 3 minutes   Range: 17.6m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.3744   Sensitivity Modifier: 240%
Resolution: 80    Maximum Range vs 4000 ton object (or larger): 800,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 22.275
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1152%   3k km/s 384%   5k km/s 230.4%   10k km/s 115.2%

Signature increasing ECM cloak - Makes a 1kt drone look like a 15kt destroyer.  I've combined that with thermal signature increase tech. Perfect for drawing missile fire away from your fleet and protecting the biggest ships (in my case , the tanker/collier ) . The ECM cloak won't display right in the summary view , but the sensor size increase does work.  Works wonders for drawing a beam fleet into ambushes :)

Single shot lasers - 10% size , 1h recharge time. Kinda bugged since it will round the power consumption to 0 when in turrets ( resetting the ROF to 30 ). Seems like the minimum size is hardcoded to 2hs.

Range 16x fire controls. Too bad the size and range are computed from the same multiplier - wanted to have 16x range 64x size.

Cold-storage missile magazines for colliers . Stores 250% more missiles , but has a 80% chance of explosion. Minimum size 20 (2000 units )

Disposable 400 tone missile pods. No reload on the at all ( actually they do reload in about 90 days but I just scrap them after firing to keep with the RP ). Haven't got some really light tractor beams working yet so I need to keep them in hangars.

Any other ideas guys ? I can't remember when I last got this much fun from something :D . Oh , and kuddos for you Steve , everything in the DB is quite direct and simple. Am I right that the damage pattern types are specified in the weapon code though ? I don't plan on decompiling it to mod that , I still have nightmares from the nights I spent in college doing that , but I was curious .

Next on my list are turret-mounted particle beams and finding a way of toggling between signature decreasing and signature reducing cloaking - but I doubt I can do it easy :)

Edit :

I really hope Steve will put some sort of proper signature increasing ECM in . I've just finished a hotseat battle with a friend - using my kludged ECM and damn it's effective.

4 2kt drones , with size 8 sensors and 2000 thermal signatures that looked like 40kt battlecruisers suckered me into ignoring the 4kt "frigates" coming from the back. Only they were pod-carrying battlecruisers with a 600 size 14 2 stage missile salvo. Followed closely by just 10 1kt stealth FACs - packing laserheads and one shot 40cm xrays. I've lost 300 kt of warships in 15 seconds. My friend lost the 4 drones and one unlucky FAC ... for 9kt and 2500 BP .

It probably won't work a second time - at least not in the exact same way but it should be easy to surprise an enemy.

 


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on July 28, 2013, 04:22:44 PM
That's one thing I'd like to see. More tech variation/options. I know for the new player it can be overwhelming, but there are just so many ways you can put a laser together.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: niflheimr on July 28, 2013, 10:00:30 PM
The disposable pods are quite nice too - they can bring the edge you need to take a pesky npr ( like the one I'm fighting now - frikkin 350 35kt cruisers and almost a thousand FACs ) , but if you missuse them you won't get a second chance since you can't reload them in less than a month.

I've tested the cold storage magazines and they are fun too - they will give you the extra storage you need in a collier , but it's a bad idea to take them into battle. I took a few lucky shots through my pd and one of them reached the magazines. Strength 4000 secondary explosion and one dead collier.

Laserheads are vastly superior against CIWS now ... but they have a flaw , since they detonate all at once - so overkill is large and you won't get them to retarget. They actually balance gauss cannons now since you can't intercept them that way - only way is 100k+ range PD lasers. And while they do quite a lot of damage , they are capped at a given max damage - so no matter how much WH points you add , individual laser strikes will penetrate just as much as a 1WH one .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: tryrar on August 05, 2013, 03:51:07 PM
Wow, exploiting a small t5 ruin gave me 100 Epsilon 300/432 shields, enough to take me right to epsilon through disassembly! Also, I picked up compressed fuel storage from an earlier ruin I SMed onto mars at the start of the game! Ruins are giving me good stuff this game, should I be worried?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 05, 2013, 07:45:11 PM
Hi all! My first time commenting in this thread, so I'll update you on the status of the universe from my perspective.

I've encountered another species.  The one and only other species so far.  It appears that they are VASTLY behind me in tech.  I would make peace with them, as I see no need to eliminate them. . .  except that they live close enough to my homeworld (Earth) that they keep trying to send ships through it, and also making suicide runs against Earth.  They do this often enough that my diplomacy team can't get them to neutral on their side.

As such, I am going to take them out.

I spent a long time trying to find their homeworld, because it wasn't exactly clear where they were coming from.  I'm a new enough player that I questioned where they came from, despite seeing which gate that they came through.  This was primarily because the gate they came through led to a dead end.  I tried surveying the area again, but did not know that I had to reset the survey (and couldn't find a button that suggested I could - Thanks for fixing this in 6. 3 Steve!).  Once I finally managed to reset the survey, my survey ship found the jump point. . .

The problem is that as soon as they found it, my jump gate construction ship ran over to build a gate.  This was fine for my side of the jump point. . .  but for some reason still unknown to me, my gate ship decided to go through the newly built gate and build a gate on the other side of this UNEXPLORED jump point.  So far as I know, no one is supposed to go through unless ordered.

Anyway, since my gate ship went through, I sent my primary fleet in too.

My primary fleet consists of:
1 supercarrier (84,000 ton beast that holds 45 bombers, 20 PD missile launchers on 4 FCs, a quad laser turret, and enough missiles to take out a planet)
2 missile cruisers (~30,000 tons - 160m km range 8WH missiles)
2 destroyers (~20,000 tons - 4 dual laser turrets, 2 fire controls)
4 frigates (~15,000 tons - 2 single laser turrets)
4 escorts (~13,000 tons - point defense, 2 launchers, 1 FC)

Of course, I realized just after I clicked 5 seconds, that my primary fleet was now TRAPPED in that system until the gate was completed.  This also happened to be their home system.  Fortunately, I have a massive tech advantage.  My missiles are 160m km range, theirs are about 40m km.  Their active sensors are just 600k km, mine are almost a billion.  My laser range is 128k km, theirs is very very short.

In fact, up until recently, I hadn't lost a single ship.  The initial engagements were primarily at extreme range.  Missiles and bombers hitting them.  I eventually ran out of my anti-ship missiles.  This means we have to get closer.

As a result of getting closer, they actually launched some missiles at me, which scared the hell out of me.  They came at me with 136 "fast" attack craft ("fast" because they moved at about 1/4 my carrier's speed).  These launched 136 salvos of 2 missiles each! These missiles were fairly slow (~6000 km/s) and my carrier moves about 4500 and is the slowest warship in my fleet.  I immediately turned to match their course to make certain I had maximum time to shoot down the missiles.  I ran my escorts and PD systems on the carrier at FULL capacity (I even phased them so I was firing every 5 seconds), and managed to shoot down every.  last.  one.  Thankfully, my PD missiles had a 100% chance to hit every time.  When I finished, I chased down the ships that had fired them at me.  Destroying those 136 ships was a test of patience, but a very satisfying result.

Their latest wave is where I have had some issues.  They are still slow, but they seem better armed.  Not in range, mind you, but in power.  I got too close, and in one barrage from 3 ships, they had destroyed one of my frigates.  Breached my shields and armor. . .  and destroyed the whole ship in one 5 second pulse.  They must have had a dozen beams on the ship.  That explains the slow speed and the 600k km active sensors.  Anyway, I won't make that mistake again.  I am only attacking them from outside 50k km now.  They can't even touch me out there.

Anyway, that's the news from Mu Cassiopeia.

I love the depth this game presents.  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on August 06, 2013, 03:49:46 AM
Hi all! My first time commenting in this thread, so I'll update you on the status of the universe from my perspective.

I've encountered another species.  The one and only other species so far.  It appears that they are VASTLY behind me in tech.  I would make peace with them, as I see no need to eliminate them. . .  except that they live close enough to my homeworld (Earth) that they keep trying to send ships through it, and also making suicide runs against Earth.  They do this often enough that my diplomacy team can't get them to neutral on their side.

As such, I am going to take them out.

I spent a long time trying to find their homeworld, because it wasn't exactly clear where they were coming from.  I'm a new enough player that I questioned where they came from, despite seeing which gate that they came through.  This was primarily because the gate they came through led to a dead end.  I tried surveying the area again, but did not know that I had to reset the survey (and couldn't find a button that suggested I could - Thanks for fixing this in 6. 3 Steve!).  Once I finally managed to reset the survey, my survey ship found the jump point. . .

The problem is that as soon as they found it, my jump gate construction ship ran over to build a gate.  This was fine for my side of the jump point. . .  but for some reason still unknown to me, my gate ship decided to go through the newly built gate and build a gate on the other side of this UNEXPLORED jump point.  So far as I know, no one is supposed to go through unless ordered.

Anyway, since my gate ship went through, I sent my primary fleet in too.

My primary fleet consists of:
1 supercarrier (84,000 ton beast that holds 45 bombers, 20 PD missile launchers on 4 FCs, a quad laser turret, and enough missiles to take out a planet)
2 missile cruisers (~30,000 tons - 160m km range 8WH missiles)
2 destroyers (~20,000 tons - 4 dual laser turrets, 2 fire controls)
4 frigates (~15,000 tons - 2 single laser turrets)
4 escorts (~13,000 tons - point defense, 2 launchers, 1 FC)

Of course, I realized just after I clicked 5 seconds, that my primary fleet was now TRAPPED in that system until the gate was completed.  This also happened to be their home system.  Fortunately, I have a massive tech advantage.  My missiles are 160m km range, theirs are about 40m km.  Their active sensors are just 600k km, mine are almost a billion.  My laser range is 128k km, theirs is very very short.

In fact, up until recently, I hadn't lost a single ship.  The initial engagements were primarily at extreme range.  Missiles and bombers hitting them.  I eventually ran out of my anti-ship missiles.  This means we have to get closer.

As a result of getting closer, they actually launched some missiles at me, which scared the hell out of me.  They came at me with 136 "fast" attack craft ("fast" because they moved at about 1/4 my carrier's speed).  These launched 136 salvos of 2 missiles each! These missiles were fairly slow (~6000 km/s) and my carrier moves about 4500 and is the slowest warship in my fleet.  I immediately turned to match their course to make certain I had maximum time to shoot down the missiles.  I ran my escorts and PD systems on the carrier at FULL capacity (I even phased them so I was firing every 5 seconds), and managed to shoot down every.  last.  one.  Thankfully, my PD missiles had a 100% chance to hit every time.  When I finished, I chased down the ships that had fired them at me.  Destroying those 136 ships was a test of patience, but a very satisfying result.

Their latest wave is where I have had some issues.  They are still slow, but they seem better armed.  Not in range, mind you, but in power.  I got too close, and in one barrage from 3 ships, they had destroyed one of my frigates.  Breached my shields and armor. . .  and destroyed the whole ship in one 5 second pulse.  They must have had a dozen beams on the ship.  That explains the slow speed and the 600k km active sensors.  Anyway, I won't make that mistake again.  I am only attacking them from outside 50k km now.  They can't even touch me out there.

Anyway, that's the news from Mu Cassiopeia.

I love the depth this game presents.  :)

Nice! Good luck with future battles! :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 06, 2013, 10:30:54 AM
Last night's efforts have taken a sour turn.  While I haven't lost any more ships, I am running very short of AMMs.  My carrier is out.  My escorts are down to just about 75 each.  They sent another huge wave of ships at me, and a good 10 of those ships were missile laden.  Fortunately, these missiles are even slower.  They clock in at just 700 km/s faster than my carrier.  If I take a parallel course, I might be able to out run their range.  Sadly, if I sacrifice the carrier, I will outrun the missiles.  My next slowest ship is above 5000 km/s, which is faster than the missiles.

The problem with that is that the carrier is my flagship.  I do not think the admiralty would be happy about being left behind as bait.

For reference, here's a few of my designs:
Code: [Select]
B-1 Tiger class Bomber    220 tons     1 Crew     36 BP      TCS 4.4  TH 40  EM 0
9090 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.5
Maint Life 10.37 Years     MSP 10    AFR 3%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 0    5YR 3    Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 9   
Magazine 10   

20 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 20    Fuel Use 69.18%    Signature 20    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 5.9 billion km   (7 days at full power)

Size 5 Box Launcher (2)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
Missile Fire Control FC5-R100 (50%) (1)     Range 5.0m km    Resolution 100
Tomahawk ASM Mk 2 (2)  Speed: 22,400 km/s   End: 121.2m    Range: 163m km   WH: 8    Size: 5    TH: 74/44/22

Code: [Select]
CG Blake class Missile Cruiser    27,450 tons     891 Crew     4932 BP      TCS 549  TH 3000  EM 600
5464 km/s     Armour 4-81     Shields 20-400     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 78     PPV 40
Maint Life 8.14 Years     MSP 8760    AFR 77%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 235    5YR 3523    Max Repair 800 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 1000   

1000 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (3)    Power 1000    Fuel Use 34.94%    Signature 1000    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 37.5 billion km   (79 days at full power)
Gamma R400/192 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  80 Litres per hour  (1,920 per day)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (8)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 75
Missile Fire Control FC720-R100 6/16 (1)     Range 720.0m km    Resolution 100
Tomahawk ASM Mk 2 (200)  Speed: 22,400 km/s   End: 121.2m    Range: 163m km   WH: 8    Size: 5    TH: 74/44/22

Active Search Sensor MR480-R100 6/16 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 480.0m km    Resolution 100

Code: [Select]
CV Argus class Carrier    84,000 tons     2239 Crew     14833.4 BP      TCS 1680  TH 7000  EM 1200
4166 km/s     Armour 6-170     Shields 40-400     Sensors 300/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 132     PPV 54.87
Maint Life 5.44 Years     MSP 24568    AFR 427%    IFR 5.9%    1YR 1391    5YR 20869    Max Repair 800 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 97   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 10000 tons     Magazine 2420    Cryogenic Berths 200   

1000 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (7)    Power 1000    Fuel Use 34.94%    Signature 1000    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 18.4 billion km   (51 days at full power)
Gamma R400/192 Shields (20)   Total Fuel Cost  160 Litres per hour  (3,840 per day)

Quad 15cm C2 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x4)    Range 128,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 24-8     RM 3    ROF 15        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S16 64-12000 (1)    Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology 0.1 (15)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

PD Missile Launcher (20)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
PD Missile Fire Control FC144-R1 6/16 (4)     Range 144.0m km    Resolution 1
Tomahawk ASM Mk 2 (400)  Speed: 22,400 km/s   End: 121.2m    Range: 163m km   WH: 8    Size: 5    TH: 74/44/22
Ares AMM Mk 2 (420)  Speed: 28,000 km/s   End: 48.5m    Range: 81.5m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 140/84/42

Active Search Sensor MR480-R100 6/16 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 480.0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR48-R1 (1)     GPS 800     Range 48.0m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH50-300 (1)     Sensitivity 300     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  300m km

Strike Group
45x B-1 Tiger Bomber   Speed: 9090 km/s    Size: 4.4
Note that the carrier has no size 5 launcher.  It relies on it's bombers for that.

Yes, I am aware that my AS range is a bit absurd.  And that my PD and ASM fire controls are waaay too big.  I have a new Edgar class Missile Cruiser designed, but I haven't had the time to update the ships currently engaged.

I have also adjusted my reactor designs to have more HTK.

I am also aware that my shields are paper thin (that became abundantly clear when the FF Westminster was destroyed).  What level of shields would you all recommend for a system that is only on when combat comes?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on August 06, 2013, 11:00:24 AM
I can't comment on shields, because I've never used them, but I would suggest that your armor is a little thin.  That carrier has 170 armor "panels" that are 6 hits deep.  That means it can take a *lot* of missile hits, but if it were 8 or 10 layers deep it'd be able to take massively more.  I think your carrier is safe regardless.

One thing you might want to consider is setting a standard speed for your fleet (excluding fighters, FACs, etc).  The way you do this is figure out what % of your ship's mass you want devoted to engines.  If it's 25%, then design a 5HS engine and fit one for every 1000T of the ship's intended size (or a 10HS for every 2000T, etc, you get the idea).  If your ship comes in heavier than expected, add engines.  If lighter, add armor or fuel tanks or something.  If you keep the ratio the same for all your main line ships, they will have the same speed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 06, 2013, 11:33:33 AM
That's actually what I was doing more or less. Only the supercarrier is slower than expected. All ships were designed within 5000-6000 km/s speed. I do the same with range and maint. life (unless something is designed as a long range craft). The problem with the carrier was that it's so huge that I couldn't reasonably make it faster without massively more fuel storage and engineering spaces to keep range and maint. life - which in turn slowed it down - which required more engines - which required more fuel and engineering spaces... LOOP! I think I actually got it balanced in all categories at about 130,000 tons... which I couldn't hope to build or maintain. I could barely build it at 84,000 ;)

So, I resolved at 4166 km/s for just the carrier. Most fleets won't have one of those, and the Edgar class missile cruiser has a flag bridge unlike the older Blake class.

I also tend to make the frigates a bit faster. While traveling, they're grouped together, so no problem. When in combat, I will sometimes break them off as a detachment for flanking or baiting. They run about 6600 km/s, so they are actually faster than everything (including missiles) that this race has been throwing at me. I will probably have to rely on that for future engagements if they bring more missiles to bear. Bait with a frigate, and outrun the missiles.

These poor poor aliens... They really should have just made peace with me!

Anyway, thanks for the input. I will consider more armor. It's pretty cheap size wise.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: James Patten on August 06, 2013, 04:46:15 PM
Where's your CIWS?  A good CIWS (rather, many good CIWS) make a huge difference in shooting down missiles at the last second.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 06, 2013, 10:25:38 PM
My CIWS is barely researched. Probably an oversight on my part. However, my PD launchers have a 100% success rate, and I never let the missiles get close enough for CIWS to engage. Of course, this is really only applicable in the current engagement where I have a seriously underpowered opponent.

I will probably start researching CIWS soon, and start adding it when it's fairly reasonable quality.

News from the front:
I have run out of PD missiles. My tactics have shifted completely from what they were to missile hunting. Since my frigates and destroyers are faster than the missiles, I am using them to shoot down the missiles. They've broken off from the main group, and with the assistance of resolution 1 sensors on an escort, they are attracting the attention of the enemy missile ships. Then, matching speed and shooting down all the missiles. I goofed once, clicking the wrong time increment while I was letting a missile catch up. This resulted in minor damage to the Arsenal (Banterer class Escort) when a missile barrage of 8 missiles impacted it. Otherwise, all missiles have been shot down by the combined weaponry available on my frigates and destroyers (and target painting by the escort).

Fortunately, my turrets have a tracking speed of 12,000 km/s, so they are absolutely useful against missiles that move at 4800 km/s. The primary problem is that they are blind to missiles. That's where the escort comes in. Since it was a PD only ship, it has those fine resolution sensors necessary to target missiles.

The general strategy is to find a parallel course with the missiles and let them come to the ships. Once in range, I match speed and lay waste to them.

So many missiles....

I think I have learned a thing or two about my shields now. They are definitely too weak. My frigates and escorts only have 10 points of shielding. My destroyers have 20. My cruisers and carriers have 40. These numbers are clearly too low. I will probably put no less than 80 on any given ship in the future. This would give it a full regen of 1 each tick. I don't leave them on all the time anyway, so it won't burn my fuel terribly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Khanti on August 07, 2013, 08:08:13 AM
Hi,
i just noticed my ace pilot has 915% Fighter Combat Bonus!

Is it normal in Aurora games, or I am very lucky with this guy?

A few others have 420, 320, 300%.
Rest still mere 50%.

PS: there were still no fights, no contacts with enemy.  He just sit in a fighter and his bonus rises from time to time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on August 07, 2013, 08:47:49 AM
The crazy fighter combat bonus error was reported in 6.2 and I believe I saw a comment from Steve saying it has been fixed in 6.3.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 07, 2013, 08:59:15 AM
Yeah, the best thing to do with fighters is to set them to R8. That way you don't accidentally assign someone to one. If you do, their promotion score jumps too high (80,000+) and so they'll be the one you have promoted, every time.

Of course, if they do get into a fight, you have a master fighter ace. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Khanti on August 09, 2013, 02:48:13 PM
I just found out that having selected some planet and creating a team (geo, diplo, etc) in Academy (eg Earth Academy) is possible to relocate those officers instantly on those selected planet (magic, teleportation, etc).

Is it bug or feature?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on August 09, 2013, 02:55:54 PM
I just found out that having selected some planet and creating a team (geo, diplo, etc) in Academy (eg Earth Academy) is possible to relocate those officers instantly on those selected planet (magic, teleportation, etc).

Is it bug or feature?

That is a feature.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Khanti on August 10, 2013, 03:44:28 PM
OK. Let it be.

Anyway I just got my first fight. Lost a ship really fast, destroyed a few ships later.
And where is a hall of my dead heroes? My brave captain just passed away? No one will salute him anymore ;)

I was just curious if there is some place like Heroes Of Empire Hall, where memorable officers could have some place.
Highly rated dead officers?

Some casualty table should be also welcome: lost 2345 soldiers\sailors vs 334434 alien soldiers ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 13, 2013, 09:01:46 PM
I absolutely agree Khanti. I'd love to see a memorial hall to fallen heroes. There are several officers who should receive post-humus medals as well.

Good luck on your first fight though. That's always rough. You've made all these ship designs and never tested anything in real battle... so you have no idea how it will perform at all. Or even if you missed some critical function (like AS, or something like that).

Unfortunately, no updates on my progress in my war against the horribly underpowered Republic of Cianjur. I haven't had the chance to play for nearly a week now. I was just sitting down to load it up when I thought "Wait! I should check the boards for the 6.3 update!" :)

I must admit, it'll be sad to see my current game go away, but the 6.3 changes sound very nice.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Whitecold on August 13, 2013, 11:52:57 PM
OK. Let it be.

Anyway I just got my first fight. Lost a ship really fast, destroyed a few ships later.
And where is a hall of my dead heroes? My brave captain just passed away? No one will salute him anymore ;)

I was just curious if there is some place like Heroes Of Empire Hall, where memorable officers could have some place.
Highly rated dead officers?

Some casualty table should be also welcome: lost 2345 soldiers\sailors vs 334434 alien soldiers ;)

Once, all dead officers could be seen, but no one was looking because of all the clutter. Maybe show only the last few officers who died, with an option to memorize them as your biggest heroes, and keep those in a separate list.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 14, 2013, 04:31:33 PM
We interrupt our regularly scheduled chat for this update from the front in Mu Cassiopeiae:

You see an image from the news room of ISN. The usual anchorperson, Chloe Almsman is sitting in her chair.

"Our warships have begun to engage planetary defenses of the hostile alien group known as the Republic of Cianjur. After years of hostilities, we may finally be approaching an end to this horrible war. We bring you this live update from our correspondent on the flag ship, the Venerable. Ariana?"

You see an image of correspondent Ariana Westlake standing with the all too familiar figure of Shri Majumdar, a man of Indian descent, who leads the primary task force dealing with the Cianjur threat. He sports his full dress uniform complete with a ream of ribbons across his chest.

"I'm standing here with the admiral of the fleet, Rear Admiral Shri Majumdar. Admiral, can you tell us what you expect to happen here shortly?"

"Sure Ariana. Our forces have been grossly out matching theirs for some time. I don't expect much resistance in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps some PDCs and a few light warships. Nothing the fleet can't handle until we can..."

Alarm klaxons ring out.

The Admiral turns away from the camera for a moment and speaks quietly with one of his officers. His face grows pale, and you think you hear him say, "How many missiles?" Nothing more is heard of the conversation. He eventually turns back to Ariana.

"Ariana, I'm going to have to ask you to terminate the broadcast and leave the bridge." He turns away and yells out "Inform the fleet, we are at Battlestations! Incoming missiles at 12 o'clock!"

----

As I approached their homeworld, I saw that they had perhaps a hundred PDCs. I pondered what manner of weapons those might fire. Instead of safely shooting at them from far afield with my limited supply of 8WH ASMs (400 count), I decided to approach and engage with my unlimited supply of lasers. They opened fire just outside my gun range with a barrage of approximately 1000 missiles. 30 seconds later, another barrage of 1000 missiles. And 30 seconds again... another 1000 missiles. After that, it dwindled down to perhaps a few hundred missiles in each volley. All told, I am probably facing 4000 missiles.

The only saving grace here is that my ships are faster than their missiles. So, I simply match speed and shoot them down, or exceed speed and outrun. My destroyers and frigates are currently engaging the first wave with guns. I simply don't have enough AMMs to take out 4000+ missiles.

Each of these hostile missiles is really an AMM that they've fired off to hit my ships. I suspect that it would take 10 to breach the shields on even my lowest shielded ship, and then even more to breach the armor. However, there are 4000 of them! I am not taking any chances! I'd prefer to keep my fleet intact at the 11th hour of this war LOL.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on August 14, 2013, 04:42:00 PM
NOOO Don't bring back the "I see dead people"  usability improved so much when that was cleaned up!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on August 14, 2013, 05:01:50 PM
The Terran Empire currently has 6 extra-solar colonies, as well as colonies on Mars, Io, and Ganymede. Despite the fact that the 2nd Carrier Strike Group was destroyed by a single enemy ship in Proxima Centauri, exploration and expansion proceeds as usual. Neutronium and Corundium stockpiles are low, but mines on Venus and Brooks work hard to alleviate that shortage. New jump drives are being designed to accompany the new 15,000 ton and 30,000 ton ship classes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 15, 2013, 12:07:39 AM
We call this "The Pentagon Maneuver". I literally have about 4000 missiles pursuing me. They all move about 2500 km/s, while my fleet is up over 4000 km/s. I am flying circles around the missiles so that I can shoot the launchers. The blue circle is my laser range.

(http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd86/aneiraelf/Pentagon_zps22b63611.jpg)

I've already flown a few loops at this point, and the enemy is down several PDCs. I am engaging with guns because I don't want to use my missiles on this horde of PDCs. I simply don't have enough to destroy the lot, so why spend them?

The Solar Federation will prevail!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 15, 2013, 03:29:11 PM
Because I thought some of you may be questioning these barrages of 1000 missiles, I present you with my message window:

(http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd86/aneiraelf/Missiles_zpscc54eec8.jpg)

Crazy huh?

Too bad for them that each and every one of those missiles is a waste of a shot.

Note that this is just one wave of them. They typically fire off 3 full waves like this, then a myriad of smaller waves.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on August 16, 2013, 05:50:55 AM
Aloriel, you may want to bring in some ground forces and draw out the enemy troops so you can hit those with a missile volley, and then just grind away at the enemies defenses.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 16, 2013, 11:28:57 AM
Ground forces have been en route for some time. This battle over the planet is taking place in minutes/seconds. Travel to the planet takes a few weeks, even at the higher speeds that my dropships travel at. Also, unfortunately, I don't think I have enough dropships to handle their ground forces. I only have 3 dropships, with 5 battalions each. The sensor report says they have 25 ground strength. I'm guessing that means 25 battalions, plus who knows how many in PDC barracks.

As I sit here tinkering with my designs and research, and reviewing the statistics, I am highly tempted to withdraw and wait for more ships. I have early warning sensors scattered at all jump gates. I'll have months of advance notice. I can sit back and lick the few scratches they actually caused (a couple missiles actually caught one of my frigates in the early stages of the invasion - back when they had a space force). Finish research on a couple techs, and build them into new ship designs...

Yes. Let's do that. But first, I'm going to draw their fire until an espionage team can land. And maybe transfer the last of my missiles to the missile cruisers... see if I can't take out a few more PDCs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bgreman on August 17, 2013, 02:23:46 AM
The sensor report says they have 25 ground strength. I'm guessing that means 25 battalions, plus who knows how many in PDC barracks.

The contact strength is the sum of the offense and defense ratings of all exposed units (not taking into account the race's racial base combat strength tech).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 17, 2013, 02:27:14 AM
I'm guessing "exposed" means those not in PDC barracks? 25 seems an extremely low amount, even for low tech. Especially considering the vast quantity of PDCs they have.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: alex_brunius on August 18, 2013, 07:33:01 AM
I'm guessing "exposed" means those not in PDC barracks? 25 seems an extremely low amount, even for low tech. Especially considering the vast quantity of PDCs they have.
Unless that vast quantity of PDCs also have barracks right? Then almost none of the troops would be exposed. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bgreman on August 19, 2013, 09:59:24 AM
I'm guessing "exposed" means those not in PDC barracks? 25 seems an extremely low amount, even for low tech. Especially considering the vast quantity of PDCs they have.

Yes, you only get a contact for those ground units not in PDC barracks.  A low tech infantry division has a contact strength of 3.75, while a low tech armor division has a contact strength of 6.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Aloriel on August 19, 2013, 03:44:11 PM
So, then it's a good thing I intend to blow up all the PDCs :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on October 27, 2013, 06:05:36 AM
One of my ships just had both its engines blow up simultaneously. The best part? I forgot to allocate enough MSP to repair even ONE of them. :P

(http://i.imgur.com/THhUi58.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TallTroll on October 28, 2013, 05:59:24 PM
Just started a new game in 6.3, going to try and play for a conclusion, however awful  ;D

I spent my initial research on a spread of techs (ion engines and a few other drive buffs, GCs and railguns, basic jump tech, a bit into sensors and various support techs) with any extra RP necessary to design components for my early units, but I'm going to try and keep it "honest" from now on. I have all 3 spoilers on, which is a bit nerve-wracking. Sol has some pretty decent minerals, including loads on Luna, so that's going to be my first settlement. It also has 5 JPs (started with complete Sol grav survey, but not geosurvey) so I have seen those 5 systems, and one more from the other JP in the first system I chose for survey. Not bad results either, at first glance.

There are 2 additional ColCost 2 planets (1 is 1 jump away, the other is in the 2 jumps distant system) and a 3.27, for a running total of 5 decent prospects within 2 jumps, and 4 systems totally unsurveyed for additional JPs, so it seems very possible I might yet find more good prospects close by. There are another half a dozen clustered around 5 ColCost, so unless they have excellent minerals, or develop some supreme strategic significance, they are going to wait awhile ;D

So far, no contact with anyone, but of the 6 other systems I have visited, 5 were jump in, get the system data, jump out. And none of my ships currently have any worthwhile sensors at all, so there could have been ships in all of them, and I'd never have known...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on October 29, 2013, 07:13:19 PM
Well, the day before 6.3 beta came out I started a new 6.2 game, funnily enough.  Pretty amazing though, so I'm planning on keeping it going for awhile.  Here's why:

Without getting too much into spoiler territory (and if anyone feels I go to far, I'll block it off with the tag), I got extremely lucky/unlucky and found a certain race behind 3 of the 6 JPs in Sol.  Two of those JPs, with the hostile presence are within the asteroid belt.  All four others are extremely far out, to the point where the inner two are the only ones feasible for low tech development.  How I went about finding the hostiles was pretty interesting too.

The month is December 2055, after a 2050 start date.  I was quickly probing all the JPs and brought a large survey force into JP1.  It was a binary G/K system with 2 planets and a moon of colony cost 2-3.  The survey gets off to a great start and scans the G start while the jump tender probes the other points.  However, once the force gets to the B star, the lead scout is suddenly blown out of the water with a series of 5 size 9 explosions.  I quickly recall the force and send my military in, consisting of 3 command cruisers and 12 destroyers.  I lose 5 ships and am forced to withdraw.  While repairing I decide there's no reason not to explore the other inner JP and send my scout force there, the jump ship jumping in first.  I half expected to find something there as when I did the initial quick jump in and out I had an interrupt, but I was not prepared for upwards of 15 hostile ships picketing the far side that promptly blew up the ship.  Was my only jump tender too....

Fast forward to June of 2058.  I have another jump tender and decide to try out JP3 just for some action while I'm building up a new class of command cruiser and some fresh missile cruisers.  It wasn't fuel efficient out that far, so I only made one scanning pass, but on my way back one scout gets a flyby by the exact same race in the other two systems... and oddly doesn't get blasted out of the void.  That scared me enough that I decided to keep all ships at Earth until I was ready to clear out JP1.

I was finally ready to make another go at JP1 in December of 59.  This time I sent 6 command Cruisers, 2 of which were actually not only the new class, but a quick refit for new armor as well, 7 Destroyers, and 6 of the new missile cruisers.  Long story short, for taking out 4 enemy vessels, with a total tonnage of about 55,000, I lost all but two command cruisers (of the old type too...) and two of the missile cruisers.  One of the command cruisers was so badly damaged it almost wasn't worth fixing, and it had to limp home at 333 km/s because that's all the engines it could repair after what was done to it.  I had been doing pretty well, with all 6 command ships intact, along with 4 destroyers and one damaged but operational missile cruiser, but had decided to chase down the last ship manually.  The thing was, I only had a speed advantage of 70 or so, but was confident because I was fairly sure the main enemy base was on the second planet (it is, actually), but the ship wasn't headed there, it was just basically following what I thought was a course directly away from my previous line of advance.  As it so happened, though, that intersected with a smaller, asteroid base, where it quickly resupplied missiles and took out all but those last ships...  It was on the verge of rearming again but at the very last second the crippled command ship UNS Albatross managed to get in range and fire it's PD turrets directly on the enemy, wounding the ship enough it couldn't finish us off.

I do not believe there are any mobile units left in the system, though I found two PDCs in orbit of the second planet.  Tested it's defenses with my operational missile cruiser and it couldn't breach the AMMs, though if I had had all 6 ships I might do better, as the distance my missiles were stopped wasn't consistent, indicating that one alone might be taxing them.  I also sent two assault battalions to capture the asteroid, taking it easy as pie, and capturing about 2200 of the AMMs.  They're pretty good missiles, superior to my own, though not in *every* aspect, so I'm confident I'm not too far off from parity.

It's now late 2061, and since my shipbuilding capacity has increased, I'm about 4 months off from trying again with a massed missile strike on those PDCs.  Only one problem though.  Rather unexpectedly I've hit the inevitable Earth duranium crunch.  I had to implement severe rationing that has already delayed the completion of the needed ships by at least a year (and even then, this fleet that's going is less than half the tonnage of the one I lost most of in 2059).  One of Uranus' moon has a good acc 1 source though that I'm currently in the process of setting up automines on, also full of Sorium which I'm about to run out of as well, so I think this will be just a minor blip.  If I don't get a hold of that world guarded by PDCs in the next 3-4 years though, I'm going to be toast...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on October 30, 2013, 02:44:03 PM
Third try is the charm.  Sent 6 missile cruisers in and bled the enemy AMMs dry.  Of 1320 missiles fired, 280 were left after the enemy had run out.  Of those 80 hit, severely damaging one PDC.  Decided to pick up some of the AMMs from the nearby stock as an insult to injury and finished them off that way.

Sadly, none of the easily inhabitable planets have any minerals, so it looks like I'm going to have to bust JP2 if I want my economy to recover.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on November 25, 2013, 04:15:17 PM
(still in 5.6)

I am busy relocating isolationist, xenophob cephalopods with poor language skills to new colonies to boost their population growth so they stop complaining that they are a minority and mines from Earth(Sol) to Hawking (Ross 154).

Th Solar Union has settled 7 Planets in 6 Systems and operates Outposts in 7 more, the biggst being the mining outpost on the planet Trophy(Gliese 832) with exports around 2500 tons of all minerals per year, exept for Corundium
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on November 26, 2013, 06:44:54 PM
I've been through the corundium crunch, the duranium crunch, the gallicite crunch, but I'm experiencing a first in my current game... the human being crunch.  After 30 years I've expanded my production and research installations so much that the population of Earth can't support them.  Only about 700 million people live on Earth with 200-300mm each on Mercury, Luna, Mars, and Io.  I have a worker shortage of about 100 million.

I happen to have a conquered alien race with 1.4 billion population a single jump from Earth, and they're not doing much of anything worthwhile.  I have lots of colony worlds out there seeded for humans, so now we're rapidly re-purposing them to take alien colonists.  The upside is that it's a lot easier to terraform planets for these critters, as they prefer a lower oxygen content and temperature.  Meanwhile I'm transporting research labs to colonies near and far, and have moved all my manned mines off-planet, but it's going to take years to rebalance everything so that Earth's industries and shipyards are back up to full efficiency...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on November 26, 2013, 07:39:06 PM
I've been through the corundium crunch, the duranium crunch, the gallicite crunch, but I'm experiencing a first in my current game... the human being crunch.  After 30 years I've expanded my production and research installations so much that the population of Earth can't support them.  Only about 700 million people live on Earth with 200-300mm each on Mercury, Luna, Mars, and Io.  I have a worker shortage of about 100 million.

I happen to have a conquered alien race with 1.4 billion population a single jump from Earth, and they're not doing much of anything worthwhile.  I have lots of colony worlds out there seeded for humans, so now we're rapidly re-purposing them to take alien colonists.  The upside is that it's a lot easier to terraform planets for these critters, as they prefer a lower oxygen content and temperature.  Meanwhile I'm transporting research labs to colonies near and far, and have moved all my manned mines off-planet, but it's going to take years to rebalance everything so that Earth's industries and shipyards are back up to full efficiency...

I'm just now starting to have the first signs of this problem and it's NOT PRETTY (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6566.0.html) politically. Mars briefly surpassed earth in total population and now everyone's rushing to the outer colonies. Massive unrest and worker shortages. Earth will soon become just another place to live and the current political hegemony will collapse.

Civilian leaders of the right caliber and skill can avert this somewhat, but probably not enough. take solace in the obvious demographic positives: for the first time in human history, there is more work to be done than there are people able to do it. Demand is finally realistically factored as unlimited and your race (kicking-and-screaming, probably) enters the post-scarcity age. YOU get a job, and YOU get a job...EVERY-BODY GETS A JOB!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on November 27, 2013, 11:12:26 AM
Nov. 28th, 2115. The United Nations of Earth makes first contact with a sentient, living race of aliens...on or near future-thanksgiving. With the real-life date this event occurred on being november 27th the day before present-thanksgiving.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DatAlien on November 30, 2013, 09:57:18 AM
Discovered a new alien empire that eradicated half of the Mobile Battlegroup 2 while on rout to rejoin the other half and leave the system and I don't have the minerals to replace the loss
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on November 30, 2013, 08:07:44 PM
You'll just have to annihilate them and take THEIR minerals, then...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on November 30, 2013, 09:27:02 PM
Just started a conventional game with 4.5 billion people. Colonisation has finally begun and so has terraforming, mars is looking to grow very quickly. As an aside my technological growth is vastly outstripping production, i can't build a ship without it being obsolete by the time its finished, I started in 2125, its now 2142 and i'm at stellarator technology while my ships are still using nuclear pulse. Oh and there's only 3 of them. Two colony vessels and a geosurvey ship, the grav survey boat is already on its way to the production line. The civilian liens have a larger fleet than me. It looks like this is gonna be a fun one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on December 01, 2013, 12:25:02 AM
i can't build a ship without it being obsolete by the time its finished,


Several people point this out in their campaigns. Take solace in the fact that not only is this perfectly normal for other players. It's normal for ships, and VERY normal for spaceships and related technology. One of the biggest limiters to putting more hardware into orbit is that most of it becomes obsolete within a year of getting up there. not even joking.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 01, 2013, 07:50:14 PM

Several people point this out in their campaigns. Take solace in the fact that not only is this perfectly normal for other players. It's normal for ships, and VERY normal for spaceships and related technology. One of the biggest limiters to putting more hardware into orbit is that most of it becomes obsolete within a year of getting up there. not even joking.
It forces you to make a strategic decision when to build and when to wait. An important part of the game IMHO.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on December 01, 2013, 09:19:44 PM
I think once i get to Stellerator i'll stop and focus on production of civilian ships. I'll build a token military to hold whatever jump points i may need to defend in the event of  a hostile force existing so i won't be totally destroyed in only a short while.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 01, 2013, 09:33:21 PM
Heh, nowadays I do the opposite.  Build military first, let the civilians handle commercial shipping.  Attempt to conquer the first NPR I meet while they're still localized to one system and vulnerable to a surprise attack.  In my current game I didn't build a single colony ship until the internal fusion era and ran into the problem I mentioned above (namely, not enough humans on Earth to run all of my installations, too many aliens on other worlds not doing any work).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on December 03, 2013, 06:44:00 PM
Mars now has a population of nearly 27 million people. I've pretty much run out of metals on Earth, having mined everything. I've now started moving my mining and some of my construction capability to Mars, automated mining colonies have been set up on a number of asteroids and some mass drivers have been set up as well. No real material amounts just yet. I've refitted several survey ships and am preparing to make my first jump. In other news Mars is getting restless so i've started building a couple of troop transports to ship a few brigades of MI and AI over. I've also started exploring the ruins on Mars but no solid results from the Xenologists yet. The civvie lines are enormous with over 30 freighters and colony ships flitting about Sol and setting up wherever they want. Tankers are in production now in order to extend my ship range. And an Orbital Weapon Station is also in the works once i finish designing the components and get a large enough shipyard i'll have a space vessel capable of defending my planets and armed with 100m kilometre range ship killing missiles, size 5, 6, and 10 respectively. Massed Gauss cannons, and Railgun swarms as i've rather neglected my Energy weapon techs. After I've got my Orbital defences up i'll start setting up a proper system defence fleet. Consisting of 10kton destroyers with heavy missile compliments. Hopefully i'll have a respectable space capability before long, enoug hat least to make sure I can defend myself, though of course i'm focusing massively on getting my mining operation running massively. Mass Drivers and auto mines will soon COVER Sol, that and my colonies on Mars and the planned moon base in the future will ensure my power soon.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 04, 2013, 10:04:56 AM
Trying in my current game to establish a new "base" a LONG way from Sol, in a system that's got tons of minerals nearby, as well as my best sources of sorium in neighboring systems. I've built megatons of freighters and colony ships but I guess it will take a decade or more to get my intended installations and an acceptable population there to run the factories, mines, and maintenance facilities. And the project has consumed almost all of my gallicite so it'll take years to pay for itself. I have no idea if this will prove to be economically worthwhile, but it's a worthy experiment. All my other "base" worlds are near sol and within its sector command radius. It will change the strategic outlook if my database doesn't get corrupted first.

In other news I just stumbled upon a pre-TN alien, so I'll have a new source of labor for the corundium mines soon!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on December 04, 2013, 11:45:51 AM
I've been through the corundium crunch, the duranium crunch, the gallicite crunch, but I'm experiencing a first in my current game... the human being crunch. 

I found the best way to beat the human crunch was through specialization.  Earth starts off with industry, research, shipyards, mines, refineries, financial centers, etc.  The trick is, never ever use any of them on earth except for industry and shipyards. Make an effort to transfer everything off to the smaller worlds. Their smaller pops can provide enough refineries and research centers.  In my last game, I had mars running the research programme-- earth would build and ship over the requisite centers, and Mars's job was to just sit there and grow its pop. Research centers eat so many workers that its almost unfeasible to run a major industrial base and research center at earth.

The other thing I do is I build financial centers on crap colonies. All you do is ship say, 200 factories, to some >100 mil pop world, with enough resources to just set finances to replication.  Within a few years, that world has a financial output with 1/10th the population , and the population is set to work in the financing the massive industry of the earth.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 04, 2013, 05:48:12 PM
I never found any use for finance centers, It always seemed that even the income from the population required to run the centers was higher than what the centers produced, and the production would be better spent on infrastructure for more population on my unterraformed worlds.
However now that they cost only 120 minerals I might have to revise my theory regarding their use.

Edit: I honestly don't know how I came to that conclusion, as you can support 20 financial centers per million population and they provide the equivalent income 20 million population. Perhaps I was installing my financial centers onto heavily penalized worlds where the support percentage of production was excessively high, perhaps on Venus where the colony cost is so high that it can't even support any facilities untill it reaches cost 16.
Perhaps I had them on Titan where the cost 7 would mean 45% enviromental and the remainder would have been half service industry for a small colony. But even so I still could have supported 5 financial centers per million population dumped there. Possibly there was significant unrest I forgot about.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Thiosk on December 04, 2013, 11:25:51 PM
Before 6.0, there was quite a bit of resistance on the forum against financial centers. I never much saw the point until I had a financial crash where I was posting exponentially growing deficit spending. I figured, financial centers don't use much mission critical minerals (its usually just leftover), and my strategy was to dump all the minerals on earth as a massive construction center anyway, so what was the point of five or so mineral-less colonies? THey weren't slated for construction projects, weren't critical for anything, so whatcha gonna do with em?

Financial powerhouses, thats what.  I giggled when my first one started posting more income than earth.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Starmantle on December 04, 2013, 11:50:31 PM
Hah.  I like the idea of banking planets - particularly with a planetary governor that's good at that. 


Right now in my conventional campaign, we're about 22 years in.  Delegates are gathering at Earth for a conference from Mars, 6 other Sol colonies, and 8 extra-solar colonies in 3 systems to discuss the future of humanity not just in terms of the next few years, but in the next 50-100.

Some of the questions they'll debate include:

- What does sustainability mean in the Trans-Newtonian age?  How can we conserve resources?  What kinds of long-term infrastructure can we build to save minerals and build economies and what kinds of growth could really be harmful in the long run?  Will we become a nomadic race unable to move from system to system faster than we can strip it of minerals?  Or is there a more sustainable path?

- What about the civilians?  Trans-Newtonian technology has mostly benefited the military.  While no doubt defeating Precursors, alien monsters, and defending against other possible threats is in the interest of humanity, there is no existential threat to the human race and no naval warship has ever been destroyed by an alien.  All engagements to date have been one-sided.  Given that, isn't it time to invest in social justice, culture, medicine, domestic technology, and education in more than just a peripheral way?  Senator Ogoro is calling for dozens of research labs, tens of thousands of tons of TN materials, and other assets to be permanently transferred to these matters. 

- What role do colonies play in humanity's plans?  So far, they've been the source of important extractive mining, trade, and (in the case of Yablari), key technology from archeological digs, but some have pushed for specialization.  The Federated Army, for example wants to move its ground unit production facilities to Mars and base part of its fleet there. 

- Now that Mars is fully terraformed, what world or worlds are next and why?

- What military doctrines are needed to defend against possible threats and what ships could fill these needs?

Diplomacy Teams representing Mars, science interests, the Workers Guild, Capitalist Alliance, individual shipping companies, the Federated Army, and other interest groups are squaring off around these and other issues in what is expected to be a 3-month conference. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on December 05, 2013, 02:56:08 PM
@Starmantle, how do you have mars fully terraformed in only 20 years?


I started in 2127 and its 2150 now, i've got a single colony on Mars, including some small amounts of terraforming haven't scouted a single other system ( Though I'm close) or even built a naval ship aside from my massive armed orbital habitat over earth and a trio of Survey ships. All that and i started with 4.5 billion pop in conventional.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 05, 2013, 04:05:34 PM
@Starmantle, how do you have mars fully terraformed in only 20 years?


I started in 2127 and its 2150 now, i've got a single colony on Mars, including some small amounts of terraforming haven't scouted a single other system ( Though I'm close) or even built a naval ship aside from my massive armed orbital habitat over earth and a trio of Survey ships. All that and i started with 4.5 billion pop in conventional.
I don't know about Starmantle, but I had Mercury, Io, and Mars terraformed in 20 years in my latest game.  I expanded a shipyard up to 130k or so, and ultimately expanded it to five slipways, while building these:
Code: [Select]
Sodbuster class Terraforming Base    127,250 tons     510 Crew     2893.6 BP      TCS 2545  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-225     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 14    Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 3   
Terraformer: 5 module(s) producing 0.0175 atm per annum


This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
As each one was completed, it was towed to Mercury.  In the end I had twenty of them.  About the time the shipyard was up to 5 slipways and 20 platforms had been built, the planet was terraformed.  I then towed them to Io and terraformed it.  After that point, I split it into smaller groups of 5 platforms and sent them to Luna, Mars, and some off-world colonies.  One of my researchers continued to improve terraforming technology slowly but steadily over the years, too.  I never built any more platforms, but I could if I wanted to.

I've never used planet-based terraforming bases.  Ship-based ones seem easier to produce and move around, from my point of view.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on December 05, 2013, 05:45:07 PM
I play very slowly to have a slightly more realistic history, so I only recently terriformed mars about a century after this campaign started.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shininglight on December 05, 2013, 07:07:18 PM
Well i've neglected Biology/Gentics in favor of Construction and Logistics so i think i'll rectify that, i've got several 60000 and 50000 ton Com shipyards so i'll use the tugs i built for my sorium harvesters to tow the Terraformers when they're done, and I'm finally making my first jump now as well. Still i've spent most of my time building auto mines and mass drivers all over Sol so i haven't been focusing overmuch on terraforming, as it stands, with sol now buzzing with activity, it looks like time to teraform Mars and start moving actual industrial and research capacity there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Starmantle on December 05, 2013, 07:37:27 PM
Yeah. - 23 or so years in.

This is my first conventional campaign and frankly the first campaign that I've restrained myself from magically giving myself things to make up for being a noob.  So I compensated with an initial population of 7 billion (which sounded reasonable for Earth at the time because... well, ya know) and I've been able to have 50 terraforming installations and a bunch of big ships all with good leadership working on it for a while now. 

I'm finally going to have the patience to challenge myself next campaign, but I'm having fun with this one.  And I'm trying to find role playing methods to stunt my own growth - as you can see in the rest of that entry.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 05, 2013, 10:03:12 PM
Just started a new game, I'm trying for a short challenging game as most of my games get abandoned before finding any NPR's , so to make it hardcore I set 100% NPR generation, 500% difficulty, 3 starting NPR's (5 second turns will be a nuisance) invaders on (probably a mistake, but whatever) jump gates on all jump points, and started conventional with a 1/5th normal construction cycle time, double the starting population , 2 shipyards and 20 research centers, and I'll start myself off with Trans neutonian tech lpre researched, and all nessicary technologies needed to produce the first basic level of technologies, sensors etc. But engines will be high powered conventional ones untill i research neuclear thermal.
I'll also predesign the most basic systems and pre-make a small defensive fleet. And refit the missile bases to not be totally useless.
This should be interesting, I might post a playthrough.

EDIT:
Damnit, I'm getting some errors already, I'm pretty sure I fixed the missile base crew requirements already, here's what they are:
System maps opens up "error in cboSystems_click, error 91, Object variable or With block variable not set"
Then I get "error in displaysystems , error 91, Object variable or With block variable not set"
I get that one after clicking zoom also
Then Ships causes "error in cboFC_click, , error 91, Object variable or With block variable not set"
clicking any ship on teh screen pops that one up again.
Then task groups gives " error in cboFleets, error 91, Object variable or With block variable not set"
That seems to be it, I'll see if i can sort these out.
I was thinking it was related to checking "jump point survey completed, and gates on all jump points" but after making another test game they seem to work together"
I'm just going to make another game and keep this one for the bugs thread.

Edit 2 : I got an error in setup NPR classes, so I'll try again. Is there a problem making NPR's in a conventional game?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 05, 2013, 11:57:37 PM
Well i've neglected Biology/Gentics in favor of Construction and Logistics so i think i'll rectify that, i've got several 60000 and 50000 ton Com shipyards so i'll use the tugs i built for my sorium harvesters to tow the Terraformers when they're done, and I'm finally making my first jump now as well. Still i've spent most of my time building auto mines and mass drivers all over Sol so i haven't been focusing overmuch on terraforming, as it stands, with sol now buzzing with activity, it looks like time to teraform Mars and start moving actual industrial and research capacity there.
In the long run, regular mines are a lot more economical than auto-mines.  I keep my eyes open for potentially terraformable worlds with "infinite" deposits of minerals at high accessibility (i.e. millions of units at 0.9 or 1.0).  Once they're terraformed you can put regular mines on them by the thousands and have plenty of minerals.  Mercury was my first target in my current game because it has infinite duranium and neutronium.  Theoretically the largest number of planets you'd need is 11, one for each mineral, although it's nice if you can get 2 or 3 for the price of one, and duranium in at least a couple of places.  So I no longer build auto-mines except in the early game, and instead focus on building colonies and placing cheap conventional mines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 26, 2013, 01:35:56 PM
Brand new 6.30 game.

0 starting NPRs , all spoiler races on, conv start , NPR gen chance 10 % , 6B ppl on Earth..

Sol with two JP ( i always play with one ) , jump into first .. BAM stable wormhole .. ok frakk it i will jump to the second, BAM second stable wormhole ... rape, ragequit.

Second play , same conditions except random number of JP in Sol .

Sol ends up with 7!! JP, check first - BAM stable wormhole ... motherfrakker ... check the second one , BAM Precursors planet .... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ( even with appropriate Minbari pic in the race window - fits seeing how they already destroyed ORP Armstrong survey vessel ... boneheaded assholes .... )

So of course i had to sped up my Destroyer program and the result was the first combat vessel in Commonwealth history - The Eagle class Destroyer
... Impressive ship absolutely, useless in fight as it turned out :D

My first encounter with Precursors ended up with 3 Eagles destroyed ( from the fleet of 13 ) by a single ship .... ORP Kujawiak, Tajfun and Slazak were destroyed when retreating from the system when it became clear that even this single ship is waaay too powerful to deal with ( ECMs cutting almost half range from my FC for starters .... ) . Rear Admiral Zoe Forster  made a bold decision to shut down active sensors and slow down to 1000km/s ( from the max ~5000 km/s ) and after some very tense hours she picked up every lifepod from the destroyed ships and managed to retreat from the system undisturbed .

And now im preparing a nasty suprise for those assholes when they will come knocking on Sol's door.  8)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GeneJack on December 26, 2013, 05:14:29 PM
Still playing 5. 56  (slow to change).     After uncounted games and systems I finally found my first ruins.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ollobrains on December 26, 2013, 06:26:12 PM
6.30 started a game normal start.  Minerals were a bit weak so snifed around nearby systems.  Fuel sources are weak but the mineral situation is improving, found the first alien race, lost a gate building unit to one of their destroyers.  Pulled back and fortified nearby system as my buildup is still incomplete, scouts continue going in other directions seeking expansion opportunities.  Now the buildup to war continues
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 31, 2013, 01:03:46 PM
Welp i think we have a new record .... In my newly discovered system B-star is 1421 Bn!!! km from the main star ..... that will be quite a trip .:D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Prince of Space on January 05, 2014, 12:44:26 PM
I'm about ten years into a new 6.3 game, dropping off settlers on a perfectly habitable world one jump from Sol, which just so happens to also have a ruined settlement and an Alien Installation anomaly for power/propulsion at 80%. Isn't life grand?

 A few months after my minelayer drops off the active sensor buoys to monitor the system's jump points, I get a flurry of messages: New Alien Race Detected! New Alien Class Detected! Hostile Transit! A tiny little 2,500-ton uninvited guest has been spotted. I scramble my corvettes, assign a team of diplomats, and make note of the jump point it used to enter the system.

The intruder quickly outranges my buoy's sensors, but I pick it up again weeks later on my DSTS. The corvettes charge, active sensors fired up, in the hopes of driving what is apparently a geosurveyor/scout back to its home world. (I don't want to risk open war by blowing it up just yet.) Then I get news from my translators:

"This race identifies itself as the Commonwealth of Hubris"

Now that's just tempting fate. It's recursive, in a way; a fractal invitation for tragedy. I suppose I'll have to write an AAR in the form of an epic poem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on January 05, 2014, 05:20:40 PM
For many years Human race faced extinction ....
Benevolent Terran Federation surveyed almost all of Solar System. Humans colonized Mars, Luna, civilian sector thrived and life was great and peaceful..

And then Aliens came .. They destroyed everything apart from Earth ... They tried to break the human spirit but they didn't know that there is only one thing humans like more than discovering things - its KILLING THINGS ...

Earth was saved by the enormous PDC but not before 500m people died and entire shipyard complexes were destroyed ..

Despite victory, Terran situation was desperate, resources were tight, enemies roamed freely around Our Solar System.... and then a miracle happened - our dear beloved Gaia, our Mother and Protector - gave birth to vast amount of TN minerals.

And now Gaian Supremacy is preparing a crusade to reclaim Solar system and to teach the entire galaxy not to frakk with the Children of Gaia !!

P.s. I just frakking love this game ... jesus the sheer amount of storytelling you can extract from even simplest things, complexity, gameplay ...  simply amazing <3

Little update : Filthy Xeno attacked again .. After losing more than 200 small cargo ships on route to their military colony in Outer Solar System , they jumped in with 500!!! FAC 1k ton each ... only to be massacred because Gaians have fortified the JP with more than 60 of those babies

Code: [Select]
Churchill class Jump Point Defence Base    94 850 tons     1863 Crew     25523.2 BP      TCS 1897  TH 1000  EM 0
527 km/s     Armour 10-185     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 738
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 168    AFR 71972%    IFR 999.6%    1YR 117334    5YR 1760016    Max Repair 720 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9999 months    Spare Berths 0    

500 EP Commercial Internal Fusion Drive (2)    Power 500    Fuel Use 5.3%    Signature 500    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 35.8 billion km   (786 days at full power)

35cm C8 X-Ray Laser (30)    Range 320 000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 32-8     RM 7    ROF 20        32 32 32 32 32 32 32 27 24 22
Quad Gauss Cannon R2-100 Turret (10x16)    Range 20 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
CIWS Phalanx (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
20cm C6 Plasma Carronade (10)    Range 100 000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 10-6     RM 1    ROF 10        10 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S16 160-20000 (4)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology S8 (1)     Total Power Output 64    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 240    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 30     Range 1.8m km    MCR 196k km    Resolution 1

ECCM-1 (4)         This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

on 4 waypoints around JP ( 100k km radius ) and 1 group on top of Jump gate it was a frickin massacre . Only two Forts were damaged - one lost 3 out of 4 FC and second his large fuel tank and now after some months and some probing attacks JP to Proxima Centauri has almost 700 !! wrecks in the it vicinity ...

Meanwhile special Assault ships are being produced on Gaia in the attempt to lead entire Gaian Fleet to the heart of Proxima Centauri to annihilate filthy xenos.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Stardust on January 10, 2014, 01:31:59 PM
In my 1st campaign (V5.60) my warships were exclusively missile based.  I avoided beams completely because of their range issues.

Now that I've finally upgraded to V6.30 and started my second campaign, missiles are out.  Almost 50 years in and still without a scientist with expertise in missiles, I'm all beams.  Fortunately, only one jump from Sol, I have found, populated, and terraformed Washington-C III, which contains alien Installations that I'm told will boost defense related research performed here by 60%.

Three research laboratories are now being shipped in from earth, with four more under construction. Dr. Johnna Creek (DS20%), a recent graduate of the naval academy in Bridgeport is en route with orders to begin research into shielding technology as soon as he is settled in.  Our genius in defensive research, Dr. Bobby Schack (DS60%) will join him as soon as he completes his research on Earth reducing the thermal emissions of our engines.  Once he is settled in Washington-C III, he will be allowed to continue his obsessive study of metallurgy.  He's been on and on about something he calls "Crystalline Composite" formation.  He's odd, but really knows his stuff.

Beyond Washington exists many habitable worlds. 

I'm really looking forward to putting together a formidable beam based fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on January 10, 2014, 01:50:21 PM
I think from a purely minmaxing perspective missiles top out over beams, but beams are in my opinion more fun. I love shouting "Full broadside" before I blow an alien warship to kingdom come with my laser turrets.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Stardust on January 11, 2014, 08:38:24 AM
I hadn't considered shouting anything, but the idea is intriguing.  Thanks.  Do you use something similar for missiles?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on January 11, 2014, 09:05:17 AM
I hadn't considered shouting anything, but the idea is intriguing.  Thanks.  Do you use something similar for missiles?

Some pointers:

-I invested some money in a really nice chair in my aurora-playin room. It looks and feels like a space captain-y chair.

-Remember that in the gold old days torpedoes on naval ships needed to be spun up before firing. It is very important to give your commanders the order to spin up your torpedoes before they fire them. Otherwise they won't work right.

- when a large unknown alien vessel is closing in to attack you, be sure to fire one kind of long ranged weapon first and then another, more powerful weapon as the range closes....you know, for dramatic effect. Even better if one or both weapons are totally ineffective.

- "rear admiral" is a dumb rank. Your ranks should go "Lieutenant Commander" "commander" "Captain" "commodore" "admiral" "high admiral" "star commander". It takes less time to shout "commodore" than to shout "rear admiral"...this may save lives.

- the enemy base is down
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Stardust on January 11, 2014, 07:20:52 PM
I rule from my couch and my weaponry is rather ineffective; shiny but ineffective.

The pointers you have offered have been forwarded to my military leaders for review.  Thank you.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on January 11, 2014, 08:35:12 PM
Some pointers:

-I invested some money in a really nice chair in my aurora-playin room. It looks and feels like a space captain-y chair.

-Remember that in the gold old days torpedoes on naval ships needed to be spun up before firing. It is very important to give your commanders the order to spin up your torpedoes before they fire them. Otherwise they won't work right.

- when a large unknown alien vessel is closing in to attack you, be sure to fire one kind of long ranged weapon first and then another, more powerful weapon as the range closes....you know, for dramatic effect. Even better if one or both weapons are totally ineffective.

- "rear admiral" is a dumb rank. Your ranks should go "Lieutenant Commander" "commander" "Captain" "commodore" "admiral" "high admiral" "star commander". It takes less time to shout "commodore" than to shout "rear admiral"...this may save lives.

- the enemy base is down


AFAIK - Lieutenant Commander and commander are both refered to as commander. The same goes for admirals - all of them are usually refered to as admirals, only on specific ocasions their whole rank is used ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on January 12, 2014, 12:30:51 PM
Gaian Supremacy prevails against all odds !

Filthy Xenos ( House of Taino ) from Proxima Centauri had been blockaded for more than 30 years and inteligence gathered from their ships indicates that Proxima Centauri has no other JP than the one leading to Sol ... which means Gaians can starve them out and deliver the coup de grace whenever they wish :)

Meanwhile Gaians are spreading across the galaxy - they have founded 4 extra-solar colonies ( see attachment for full pic of the situation ) - in Silesia, Sigma Draconis, Arcadia and Epislon Indi systems ( and one in Sol on Mars ), all of them on resources rich planets and all of them had ruins of ancient civilizations ( its all RNG - i did not do anything in SM ) ... They have encountered two more races - Sandhurst aliens calling themselfs House of Bari which are friendly ( for a long time i hope ) and Aliens of Codalus which are impossible to communicate ( i think they are Swarm ) and are already hostile.

Meanwhile "Great Overhaul" is begining because Gaian scientists have finally discovered secrets of Solid Core Anti Matter drive and reactors technologies and on top of that fleet is really outdated ....

After building some proper fleet ( CL , CA , BC and BBs ) i plan to finally destroy House of Taino and mount a little expedition to Codalus system to clear the alien infestation .

On another heartwarming note - Narato Rie, man who drew first blood in Gaians Crusade ( aboard the GSS Freedom, Cornwallis class destroyer ) to reclaim Sol have been promoted to Admiral following Amber Perkins retirement at the age of 78.

Ps. Steve plz make a "salvage any wreck in system " a conditional order in 6.4 ... ffs i have almost 3000 wrecks ( god bless the AI ) in Sol and its pissing me as fuarkk ....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 12, 2014, 01:41:22 PM
Ps. Steve plz make a "salvage any wreck in system " a conditional order in 6.4 ... ffs i have almost 3000 wrecks ( god bless the AI ) in Sol and its pissing me as fuarkk ....

Already been added as NPRs get salvage ships in v6.40 :)

Steve
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on January 13, 2014, 03:35:57 PM
I rule from my couch and my weaponry is rather ineffective; shiny but ineffective.

The pointers you have offered have been forwarded to my military leaders for review.  Thank you.

Steve is a liar, aurora is ostensibly a free game but to play it nice you need to invest in a good captain's chair.
Someday I'm going to have three screens, and two disconnected keyboards to just randomly push while I'm in a deep space battle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on January 13, 2014, 05:12:00 PM
That sounds like that multiplayer starship bridge simulator I've heard about.
Personally I would like to have multiple monitors, suspended from the ceiling  and a motorized chair with buttons on it to "launch the pods!" Whatever that means.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on January 14, 2014, 08:07:21 AM
almost certainly against the terms of my lease
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Stardust on January 14, 2014, 07:44:57 PM
Steve is a liar, aurora is ostensibly a free game but to play it nice you need to invest in a good captain's chair.
Someday I'm going to have three screens, and two disconnected keyboards to just randomly push while I'm in a deep space battle.

I understand the need for a good captain's chair.  My empire is simply more laid back than most.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on January 17, 2014, 11:09:12 PM
The Terran Empire is taking it's first steps into the surrounding region. However, two systems with wrecks and one with a confirmed enemy presence has made them wary of further exploration. They are upgrading their technology to build a new series of bigger and better ships to properly conquer any aliens that dare oppose them.

EDIT: That save was destroyed by a series of errors, so I started a new game with 12 max systems, real stars off, and one starting NPR. I SMed all tech under 10,000 RPs, as well as ion drives and box launchers. Exploration of the first three systems outside Sol yielded some Precursors, an empty system, and a generic large system. The system with the Precursors had a jump gate on both sides, so I sent an 18,000 ton battlecruiser, armed with ASMs and AMMs, escorted by two 12,000 ton gauss escorts. After a general engagement, it was determined that neither side could penetrate the other's PD, so we retreated.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: strych90 on January 21, 2014, 10:00:51 AM
Year 2053 (2020 conventional game start w/ 750m population)

The Terran Republic (Original name, I know), after facing a mineral shortage (of duranium of all things) and economic depression for the last decade and a half, is finally recovering from its financial woes and beginning its final push towards the stars. With the recent breakthroughs on Ion engines and jumpdrives, the first Victoria Class Gravitational Survey Vessel (named after Magellan's flagship) is currently under production. Hopes are that the ship will be operational within the next 8 months.

The Senate, recognizing the possible threat of hostile extraterrestrials (after much arguing and protest from religious parties ), chartered the first non-terrestrial branch of the Terran Republic Armed Forces, The Terran Republic (Space) Navy, in 2050. The newly-appointed admiralty is currently evaluating several ship and component designs from dozens of different defense contractors from all across the planet in preparation of commissioning the first naval ships of the TRN. The plan is to have a frigate squadron at minimal operational readiness by 2056 to defend Terra in case the three initial ships of the Victoria Class open the proverbial 'Can of Worms' while exploring Sol's neighbors.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Panopticon on January 21, 2014, 12:20:55 PM
The Terran Empire finished clearing the Nova Terra system of the Swarm a few years ago, while doing so they discovered that their anti ship missiles were ineffective against the massive shields of the motherships, but AMM used in offensive mode worked, eventually. Some 5000 missiles later they were exploiting ruins on one of the cognizable planets and setting up a research base to take advantage of the Power and Propulsion anomaly there.

A new empire was discovered two systems over, and the exploration fleet was shadowed by larger, more numerous, and faster threats, some experimentation by way of ASM bombardment discovered that those ships were lightly armored though, and they broke off after a single casualty.

The Empire is now working on refits and new construction in preparation for another incursion, it has been decided that rather than redesign the fleet, colliers would be developed to attend the current models, and the size of the next battlegroup would be doubled. The aliens showed few signs of missile defense, this coupled with their light armor and the copious stocks of missiles available meant command made the decision to attack without a fleetwide refit.

The ships go in within the next year.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dulkan on January 22, 2014, 03:43:24 PM
First I met the Demons, I named them such, as communication is impossible and they always blew up my scouts from 200mil km away with their missiles.
Then I had to deal with the Annoyances.  Those guys earned their name for only using massive quantities of 500 ton fighters equipped with a single meson cannon.  Not only really annoying to take down, but also as Meson apparently ignores both shield and armor they were able to damage my heavily shielded and armored battleships.

A short while ago a stable wormhole formed in Epsilon Indi, a system under my control for over 50 years.  A few months later a third alien race emerges.  They appear in massive ships of 60k-100k tons, which still are capable of flying at an absurd 15000 km/s (by comparison my 40k ton battleships fly at 4500km/s)
Diplomatic rating is 5 and those ships don't use active sensors; maybe, this is the first race I encounter which doesn't shoot immediately?
No, of course not, they decide it's best to ram into the civilian freighters running their trade route a short distance away from the wormhole.  As this ramming action also destroyed one of their ships, they are pretty angry, so diplomacy is once again not an option.

But alas, that will be the end of the game.  Apparently they are afflicted by a bug, which does not allow them to use active sensors.  Due to the combat situation the game runs 5sec increments and I have to click through ten "GetActiveSensorRange" errors every time.  I encountered this bug before with invader ships and was able to fix it by removing the offending ships, but as this is a generated NPR I can't take control of them.
Well, I wonder whether I should wait for 6. 4 for a new start.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on January 22, 2014, 03:48:22 PM
First I met the Demons, I named them such, as communication is impossible and they always blew up my scouts from 200mil km away with their missiles.
Then I had to deal with the Annoyances.  Those guys earned their name for only using massive quantities of 500 ton fighters equipped with a single meson cannon.  Not only really annoying to take down, but also as Meson apparently ignores both shield and armor they were able to damage my heavily shielded and armored battleships.

A short while ago a stable wormhole formed in Epsilon Indi, a system under my control for over 50 years.  A few months later a third alien race emerges.  They appear in massive ships of 60k-100k tons, which still are capable of flying at an absurd 15000 km/s (by comparison my 40k ton battleships fly at 4500km/s)
Diplomatic rating is 5 and those ships don't use active sensors; maybe, this is the first race I encounter which doesn't shoot immediately?
No, of course not, they decide it's best to ram into the civilian freighters running their trade route a short distance away from the wormhole.  As this ramming action also destroyed one of their ships, they are pretty angry, so diplomacy is once again not an option.

But alas, that will be the end of the game.  Apparently they are afflicted by a bug, which does not allow them to use active sensors.  Due to the combat situation the game runs 5sec increments and I have to click through ten "GetActiveSensorRange" errors every time.  I encountered this bug before with invader ships and was able to fix it by removing the offending ships, but as this is a generated NPR I can't take control of them.
Well, I wonder whether I should wait for 6. 4 for a new start.

If they came out of a wormhole, they are invaders.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Dulkan on January 22, 2014, 05:06:34 PM
Quote from: Erik Luken link=topic=3808. msg68998#msg68998 date=1390427302
If they came out of a wormhole, they are invaders.

Indeed, they are.  Didn't know, that other races had other names for the systems.  However it seems I have to delete the invaders entirely as this problem pops up every single time one of their ships wants to use active sensors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 25, 2014, 06:32:25 PM
Earth year 2090

Residents (millions):
Earth 1522  
Luna 564:  Luna is my primary source of sorium with about 2m units. 
Mars 67
Venus 26: Venus has approximately 113m units of minerals.    Unfortunately most are 0.  1 or 0.  2. 
IO 12
Europa 6
Ganymede 2

5 Jump points have been found:
Alpha Centauri:  Several potential colonies.    Many minerals to be dug up.    AC AIII was the site of 4 wrecks, and the site of an alien installation.    Site has been surveyed by a Xeno team, but construction brigade is still being researched.    Jump points being surveyed. 

Lelande 21185:  Again several potential colony sites, and plenty of minerals.    4 jump points. 

Luyten 726-8:  1 x16.  51 body, plenty of minerals.    7 jump points. 

Proxima Centauri:  1 x4.  11 body, basically no minerals.    2 Jump points. 

Wolf 359:  Nothing here.    Jump points.  .  .  .  unexplored. 

Defense Fleet consists of 4 (slow) 80,000 ton battleships, and 6 10,000 ton PD destroyers. 

Critical tasks:  Ran out of fuel on earth a few years ago.    ;D Slamming out fuel refineries for earth and Luna, and
maintenance facilities so i can overhaul my huge battleships!

Need to figure out how best to monitor/defend the system gates.   



Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on January 31, 2014, 02:41:47 PM
I've been saying "I need to post a screenshot of this guy" for five in-game years.

This is Admiral Jay Shah, in later career. He came up as a lieutenant commander in the early years of the Kuzmin directorship, just as we were exploring the first jump gates, and every nation had an equal say in what was going on. He geo-surveyed one of the first offworld colonies, fought against rebel factions in 2070 and 2080, discovered precursor warships in 2104, made contact with the only living alien race we've discovered so far in 2107, survived the chaotic interregnum period extending from 2109 to 2123, and since has been the right hand man of the military dictatorship that now controls terran space.

He'll likely die soon, I just thought you guys might want to meet him first.

(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=1326)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 07, 2014, 05:00:27 PM
2136

Shortages of corundium and duranium on Earth.   Huge reserves on venus (0. 1), all production going into auto miners to get to those reserves.  (I should have done this long ago)  :-\

Luna, Mars, and Alpha Centauri A III have breathable atmospheres, and are favorite destinations for many citizens.   New populations sprouting up in Alpha Centauri, and Lalande systems.

Last years income 304000
Last years expenses 90000

Barley Container Services (135 ships) selling at 147/share.   I do keep them busy!

No "little green men" have been encountered.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Kindelnik on February 16, 2014, 10:51:14 PM
2025.  Literally just started and star swarm is paying my undefended home world a visit. . . yay!  :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 16, 2014, 11:37:02 PM
1st contact

6th August 2164 01:11:46
Federation. . . . Herschel 5173

Thor Heyerdahl (Unarmed geological survey) hit by 12 points of damage from Myrkul Anti-ship Missile.

Thor Heyerdahl suffers complete structural failure due to the amount of damage it has received.  The ship is destroyed.

Diplomatic efforts have failed, this alien race doesnt want to play nice.

Sol>>Luyten 726-8>>Epsilon Indi>>>Herschel 5173
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 17, 2014, 12:32:35 AM
Encounter #2  The Parma Host

Encountered in Gliese 33

Sol>>Luyten 726-8>>Heintz 299>>Gliese 33

Diplomatic relations appear to be normal at this time.


This is getting interesting, soon after i discovered the Host they moved 18-2800T He-Dog class ships, 4-71,300T  Tashinkekokipapi, and 1-2800T Gall class ship into Luyten 726-8.   For several months now the ships have been stationed on the Heintz gate, in the middle of an anti-ship mine field i had quickly set up.  2 of the Tashin class ships moved to other jump gates, i thought they may have been gate construction ships, but no gates were built.

I have a small AEW/PD (1 command [laser] cruiser, 1 AEW ship, 2 PD destroyers)  fleet stationed inside the Sol gate, and my main battle fleet (12-80,000T [Rail gun] Battleships, 5 PD destroyers, 1 AEW ship) sitting on the Sol side. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on February 17, 2014, 10:23:50 AM
I've been saying "I need to post a screenshot of this guy" for five in-game years.

This is Admiral Jay Shah, in later career. He came up as a lieutenant commander in the early years of the Kuzmin directorship, just as we were exploring the first jump gates, and every nation had an equal say in what was going on. He geo-surveyed one of the first offworld colonies, fought against rebel factions in 2070 and 2080, discovered precursor warships in 2104, made contact with the only living alien race we've discovered so far in 2107, survived the chaotic interregnum period extending from 2109 to 2123, and since has been the right hand man of the military dictatorship that now controls terran space.


Still alive, now he's 89
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on February 18, 2014, 01:59:15 AM

Still alive, now he's 89

Heh?  What's that you say, sonny?  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jikor on February 20, 2014, 10:38:04 AM
Discovered a research boosting anomaly...
On an uninhabitable planet orbiting a star in a quad system that is about 15 billion km from the jump point.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 20, 2014, 03:15:15 PM
Discovered a research boosting anomaly...
On an uninhabitable planet orbiting a star in a quad system that is about 15 billion km from the jump point.
If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Alfapiomega on February 21, 2014, 02:09:09 AM
Discovered a research boosting anomaly...
On an uninhabitable planet orbiting a star in a quad system that is about 15 billion km from the jump point.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,54.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,54.0.html)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jikor on February 25, 2014, 09:48:23 AM
Reports came from the Gravitational survey team that the geological survey vessel partnered with them had been destroyed due to unknown elements in the Aspidiske system.
A Patrol squad of 2 Wolf-II patrol boats and an Alpha-II class patrol command ship where dispatched to investigate the wreckage and determine what destroyed the vessel.
Upon reaching the wreckage the Aegis radar picked up incoming missiles traveling well over 12,000 km/s. The rail guns on the two wolf's fired but only took out 4 of the incomming missiles. 13 struck the first Wolf and it's engine blew turning the ship into a wreck. Luckily the captain made it to an escape pod. The second Wolf and the Alpha turned back towards the jump point to avoid the yet unseen assailants. Shortly after turning around around they encountered two small 1,000 ktn class ships which opened fire again with 17 more missiles. The railguns on the remaining wolf fired once more but only took out 1 missile. 16 strickes into the shield and hull turned the ship into a debris field quickly. Only a few crewmen where able to make the escape.

Feeling doomed the lone Alpha-II patrol command ship attempted to dart perpendicular to the enemy ships that where headed toward it. Fearing the final missiles coming in the captain prepared to issue the order to abandon ship when the enemy ships didn't fire their missiles he was perplexed for a few moments. Seconds later the helmsman let out the warning that the enemy ships had altered their course and where on a direct collision course with the command ship. The Alpha was able to steer out of the way seconds before the first hit it. Still feeling the shock at such a tactic the crew on the ship felt the shudder as the second ship struck the stern. Luckily the shields held and the minimal shock damage did not disrupt any systems. The first ship quickly turned course and made a second attempt to ram the Alpha. This time the ship was only able to get partly out of the way. The shields weakend from the first attack did not hold against this second but did give enough of a deflection to prevent a direct hit. The Alpha took a glancing blow from the enemy ship. 3 layers of armor where penetrated by the attack but the ship still held together.

Still wary that there may be other enemies about the captain ordered a sweep of the nearby asteroid filed that the ships appeared to come from but did not see any traces of other ships. Seeing all enemy ships as wrecks now the captain officially declared the battle won.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on February 25, 2014, 02:52:59 PM

Still alive, now he's 89


Still alive, 90


is there a record of some kind I should be shooting for?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sematary on February 25, 2014, 06:26:34 PM
Still wary that there may be other enemies about the captain ordered a sweep of the nearby asteroid filed that the ships appeared to come from but did not see any traces of other ships. Seeing all enemy ships as wrecks now the captain officially declared the battle won.


Tactically you may have won but I'd say that strategically you got your ass kicked. You lost the entire cost of your two Wolf class and any ordinance they were carrying minus some crew and at least one captain plus the cost to repair your lightly damaged ship plus having the Alpha II be out of commission during its repair possibly causing you to have to redeploy some ships. Their cost was 34 missiles and 2 FACs. Not a bad trade off on their end.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jikor on February 26, 2014, 09:05:17 AM
Oh yea. Fleet command was a bit upset by this. The captain was the only one who felt victorious. Suspicion is that these aliens are of the inorganic nature as they have been no other recorded evidence of their presence and communication was impossible.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 27, 2014, 01:05:10 PM
Well my first game had a DB crash and had to be trashed.  I was looking forward to testing my ship designs. 

Game #2:   a complete system survey showed that Sol system did not have sufficient Sorium and duranium.  And throw in some powerful neighbors, who took offense to our presence...oh well. 

Game #3:  I got off to a very slow start (no propulsion expert for 50 years, it was an RP thing).  Things have started to move along now.  Gate (7) defenses are moving into place, Mercury and Venus have vast quantities of minerals except for Uridium and corundium.  Those 2 are very rare in the Sol System and will need to be found very soon.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: swarm_sadist on February 28, 2014, 04:03:20 PM
Playing a Warhammer 40K themed game. First system I find has two MASSIVE civilizations within an equivalent orbit of Earth and Mars from each other, both of them have an estimate population of 40 billion. After 15 years of no activity, I turn on SM, bring a 28kt bombardment cruiser and activate my sensors. I then check the logs to see if they see me (they did; I would be worried if they didn't) but nothing happened for the next six months.

I then proceeded to bomb both of them, one of them to -86 Kelvin !!!!!!!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on February 28, 2014, 04:29:26 PM
Man, that is just cold.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ziusudra on February 28, 2014, 04:41:00 PM
And hot: a system with a truly negative temperature in absolute terms on the Kelvin scale is hotter than any system with a positive temperature. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on February 28, 2014, 07:31:41 PM
Currently have a game based loosely on an alternate WWI where Germany, Britain, and America are the only worthwhile powers remaining by 1920, when TN tech is researched. All three are a regular 500m population transnewtonian start with no research points or ships. The whole thing is an experiment on having three earth based powers use the railgun battleship doctrine, so the poor backstory isn't an issue for me.

Germany launched the first survey ship in late 1920/early 1921, followed by three American survey ships and two British survey cruisers (which are armed with 4 10cm railguns). Britain built the first two warships, 9,000 ton cruisers armed with 12 10cm railguns, followed by America with three 10,000 ton warships, which have less weaponry but are faster. Germany is waiting until nuclear pulse engines and better railguns to design their first warship.

I may post the designs later, after more time has passed.

EDIT: I had to restart, ran into some game-ending errors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 01, 2014, 12:07:05 PM
21st October 2132 06:29:11,Federation,Alpha Centauri,New Alien Race Detected in Alpha Centauri!!

Initiated communications, and a diplomatic team sent in.

22nd October 2132 07:03:21,Federation,Alpha Centauri,2044 Planet Survey  002 hit by 6 points of damage from Aethumyr Anti-ship Missile.

Alpha Centauri has massive amounts of critical minerals, and must be taken at all cost! 

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on March 02, 2014, 11:58:54 AM
Just ended up rotating one for my 2 fleets back home after having moved some PDCs to the NPR homworld conquered some time ago to give the fleet a refit while my 2nd fleet is left to guard Sol. A bit later suddenly one civ trader is destroyed in a neighbouring system where I met and killed the Swarm earlier. Looks like at least one of them was still around.

Since everything was peaceful (met 2 other NPRs and have been trading with them 10+ years, geo information was given to me) I decided to move my "homefleet" to deal with the remaining Swarm ships. It turned out it was only one lone FAC, but I took a close look at all the planets just to be sure.

When my fleet was close to as far from the JP back to Sol as possible suddenly one of my ships (actually a form ship of the NPR I conquered and one of my trade partners have been at war with) gets blow up by their former enemy, suddenly putting me at war with them (IIRC there is a bug where the NPRs fail to see the changed ownership), right when I was most vulnerable. I know that this is a bug, but the way it happened would have been pretty much the same as if the NPR was actually smart, nice move there, even if caused by a bug ;)

The enemies were fairly quickly killed by my PDCs and a couple of ships still waiting for their refit. Well, now I have to take another homeworld, but lack the troops to do so and have to train up my new gauss interceptors...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on March 07, 2014, 10:56:51 AM
Restarted the game mentioned a few posts above this, am now 10 years in with all three factions starting to build gravitational survey ships. The Germans have taken their considerable amount of energy weapon scientists and switched to laser weaponry, while the British have nearly ready to build an experimental missile cruiser armed with short ranged torpedos. The United States hasn't advanced much in weapon doctrines, but are far ahead of the other powers in sensor technology.

All three have offworld colonies setup. Germany has claimed the Jovian moons, Britain has colonized Luna, and the United States has gone after Mars. Germany and the United States each have a single comet mine, and German civilians have set up two mining colonies of their own.

The German Navy has launched two 6,000 ton laser destroyers (with two more on the way), the British Navy has three 7,000 ton railgun cruisers, and the United States Navy has two 12,000 ton railgun cruisers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tanj on March 12, 2014, 04:50:24 PM
Currently in the midst of my most exciting game yet! I'm 29 years in and involved in two wars with NPRs, pacifying a third whose homeworld I've just conquered and happily trading with a fourth (the first to not open fire immediately). Based on the number of wrecks I'm discovering in frontier systems it seems like the Precursors are pretty active, although I've only directly encountered a total of five robot ships in two systems (having surveyed 50). One warp chain also has a lot of Swarm activity, with numerous 60,000 ton motherships destroyed but one monster 200,000 ton Swarm has already taken four 1,000 strong missile strikes without going down  :o

Right now fuel is my biggest problem - I've got 80 small (shipyard built) fuel harvesters in operation and 20 500,000 ton (ground built) fuel harvesters bringing in 200 million liters a year but I just seem to keep running out!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jikor on March 13, 2014, 12:10:41 PM
Fuel is a big issue now. I tend to leave all the hauling to civilians now and just have my ships go out when absolutely necessary.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Prophoem on March 13, 2014, 01:19:16 PM
Quote from: Theodidactus link=topic=3808. msg70173#msg70173 date=1393361579

Still alive, 90


is there a record of some kind I should be shooting for?


hxxp: en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Grace_Hopper#World_War_II

Grace Hopper the oldest Military officer but she was only a programmer and only lived 85 years.  She was still pretty awesome though.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on March 13, 2014, 01:30:52 PM
yeah, I knew about her.

I'm RPing that this guy has perfect mental and physical acuity which no one can really explain. He just knows how to stay alive and in good shape.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tanj on March 14, 2014, 04:31:31 PM
I have just discovered the two scariest events in Aurora:

Hostile transit detected!
&
New jump point detected by observation of transit!

When its deep in a freshly colonised system with no defences and right on the bearing of 4.5 million tons of government owned civilian shipping... thank god it was just a enemy survey vessel!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: NihilRex on March 15, 2014, 02:38:57 AM
01 January, 2025 - The USA, UK, Australia, and India form the Alliance for Space Activities to exploit outer space.         ASA acquires the top officers, scientists, and administrators each nation has to offer.         Unmanned mining probes launched by mass drivers to Luna, Venus, Mars, and Ganymede.         
1250 pop, 10k CI, 6automines, HUGE shortage for research, otherwise conventional start.       1 Automine and a Massdriver SMd in on each, HW minerals SMd on each, ruin on Luna and Mars SMd.         Commercial Conventional engine Instant RSTd.          No survey on any of these
17 September, 2025 - The Alliance for Space Activities launches ST Columbia 001, a space truck for a lunar cargo run.       With a single small cargo hold and 70km\s of speed, this engine will allow the fastest transit known to man.        Luna in 8hrs, Mars in 32!
22 September, 2025 - ASA Columbia 001 finishes flight testing and begins to load infrastructure for the planned lunar colony.     
27 September, 2025 - ASA Columbia 001 finally launches on it's maiden voyage, having been hampered by regulatory delays.         I forgot to separate it from the Shipyard TG
10 January, 2026 - Existence of darkside ruins confirmed!  ASA denies reports that Transnewtonian technology was located in these ruins.      In other news, ASA launched a massive new modernization program today to convert moribund industrial capacity into new factories.     Reports indicate that the ASA also intends to shutdown all mining in their nations until they can be converted into new safer, automated mines.     Cryonics research has also been rumoured, along with interest in possibly developing new kinds of reactors. 
10 June, 2026 - Construction begins on a new Spaceport complex in the Australian Outback, and recruiters begin preliminary recruitment for space colonists. 
12 July, 2026 - The first 500 settlers arrive in Luna City! The ASA appoints x as the new Governor of Luna, and continues to deny reports of plans to use new troops to explore the darkside ruins.    Spokesperson said "We don't even have a design for a troopship, much less a functional one.    Those brigades are training for purely terrestrial support.  "
24 October, 2026 - The ASA introduces a new nuclear thermal engine into full production today.    The design of these engines, and the larger cargo and colonist vessels they will allow, have apparently been a close held secret till now.   Shipyards in orbit are being expanded to accommodate the construction of these new ships.    Rumors of a troop carrying variant are still being denied. 

(Thats all for now.   Sleep time. )

The plan is to SM in another 2000 pop when first meeting any kind of hostile aliens, representing the rest of the world joining the ASA.   I wish I could have made an NPR with a conventional start and edit its' start to represent the other world factions, but that is apparently outside the purview of Aurora.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mirodian on March 29, 2014, 03:39:16 AM
I'm in my first game where I'm setting up a real empire outside of my home system, and the mineral finds I've been getting in systems close to or in Sol are stupifying.

Venus has 50m tons of duranium at . 9 accessibility, a gas giant one system over has 130m tons of sorium at 1 accessibility, and 3 jumps away I just now found a pair of planets with a climate very similar to Venus with a combined 350m tons of literally all mineral types, including 50m tons of sorium and 50m tons of duranium at . 5 and . 3 accessibility without doing extra surveying.

I'm beginning to think that the late game fuel shortages everyone talks about won't happen in this particular game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ghidorah on March 30, 2014, 08:11:25 PM
Switched start date to 2100 A.D. in my 2nd game out of sloth, didn't have to subtract 25 to get the amount of years into game I was.   So I'm now just about 48 years in and my 'No Missile' Human race got lucky and didn't run into the main NPC until 3 years ago.   It gave me time to actually get enough tech to make the 'No Missile' fleet very survivable.   Also, when I ran into some basic spoilers, I ignored them and quarantined those system and nothing ever followed out of those systems, About 6 years ago I started removing those road-blocks.   I went science heavy for this game  (My second) and without pressure from either the Main NPC or the 2 spoilers I have active, things are going very well.   I got crushed in my first game, lots of Empire mistakes and closer, more active spoilers and NPC.   My daughter said the good luck came with me using Nippon/Japanese naming (She loves Anime), where I used French names in my first game.  She would not get the irony in the latter, as she is only just become a teen.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mirodian on April 04, 2014, 01:16:39 PM
Just encountered non-hostile aliens for the first time, I'm guessing because they weren't strong enough to shoot at me and their home world has a very small population.  Reguardless, diplomacy has progressed very well and after only 2 months free trade is going on.

I also found a planet with 1. 25 billion total minerals, I don't even know what I'm going to do with that sort of wealth.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hydrofoil on April 06, 2014, 10:17:23 AM
The United Socialist States of Earth is currently investigating Gravitational survey points in Sirius whilst expanding its economic base throughout the solar system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on April 23, 2014, 06:20:28 PM

Still alive, 90


is there a record of some kind I should be shooting for?


At the age of 95, Jay Shah has been politely asked to retire by the Concordant himself. It's an open question whether he will comply.

The concordant has further issued a mandate that no Admiral or Duke's commission will be renewed after the age of 70. This means the oldest members of the concordance council will likely be 75 or so from this point on, after which they will be forced to retire. Media sources speculate that this is to clear the last remenants of the old guard away and solidify Leopoldo Fanca's power.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: PSI on April 26, 2014, 11:45:48 PM
In this entire time, I've started games with the default setting of one starting NPR.
Today, I made a new game without any starting NPRs.  I'm not kidding when I say that my game speed has tripled.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on April 27, 2014, 01:33:30 AM
In this entire time, I've started games with the default setting of one starting NPR.
Today, I made a new game without any starting NPRs.  I'm not kidding when I say that my game speed has tripled.

I always start 0.

NPRs and their requisite slowdown are things that you should deal with after you've settled into a routine, once you've got 50 years of exploration in, and you can advance time in 30 day increments between answering emails or making a sandwhich. The way I play is that I advance time by 1-2 months a night, I click +30 days, take a shower, then come back,  and then maybe do it again while I eat dinner....but I can only do this in a fun way because everything in my empire is set up already and can just run.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on April 29, 2014, 11:41:51 AM
Simultaneous battles in two systems and  a brewing military coup  (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7048.0.html) suggest that terran supremacy might be crumbling
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on April 29, 2014, 01:17:17 PM
The Martians broke the Solarian Truce and will soon provide oppotunities for the salvagers currently under construction, I just have to hope that none of the other 4 solar power already have prebuild salvagers ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 23, 2014, 02:22:19 PM
So brand new 6.4 game ( after some frakk ups in my last ).

Pretty standart "After the End " scenario : ~900 mil ppl on Earth , Conventional start representing united mankind after the III World War under the guidance of Slavic Alliance.

Sol has one jump point to Proxima Centauri - INCREDIBLY RICH crossroad system. So i established presence ( "1 main colony plus auto mines and mass drivers on 3 barren-mineral rich rock" ) and keep on exploring.
And then i found this gem of a system :

Code: [Select]
Sigma Draconis
Rocky Planets: 9   Surveyed: 9
Gas Giants: 4   Surveyed: 4
Moons: 60   Surveyed: 60
Asteroids: 0   Surveyed: 0

Sigma Draconis-A I
Duranium 21 648 200  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 24 010 000  Acc: 0.4
Corbomite 6 002 500  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 16 483 600  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 14 822 500  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-B I
Duranium 524 288  Acc: 0.9
Neutronium 1 149 184  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 1 638 400  Acc: 0.4
Mercassium 160 000  Acc: 0.3
Vendarite 1 327 104  Acc: 0.2
Sorium 82 944  Acc: 0.5
Gallicite 262 144  Acc: 1

Sigma Draconis-C I
Sorium 51 456 000  Acc: 0.4

Sigma Draconis-B II
Duranium 20 917 510  Acc: 0.5
Corbomite 777 924  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 16 597 480  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 11 009 120  Acc: 0.5
Gallicite 28 224  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-A III
Duranium 935 712  Acc: 0.8
Corbomite 3 055 504  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 2 547 216  Acc: 0.2
Corundium 6 290 064  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-B III
Duranium 64 025 930  Acc: 0.3
Neutronium 32 798 530  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 28 965 920  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 15 468 490  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 19 044  Acc: 0.9
Uridium 32 012 960  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 5 503 716  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 39 425 840  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-C III
Duranium 115 034 100  Acc: 0.6
Neutronium 20 994 720  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 37 970 240  Acc: 0.3
Tritanium 37 002 890  Acc: 0.4
Boronide 224 676  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 14 379 260  Acc: 1
Sorium 9 985 600  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 52 823 820  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 34 175 720  Acc: 0.8

Sigma Draconis-A IV
Neutronium 8 940 100  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 2 856 100  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-C IV
Sorium 114 000  Acc: 0.6

Sigma Draconis-C IV - Moon 4
Neutronium 3 841 600  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 9 486 400  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 35 402 500  Acc: 0.3
Sorium 47 059 600  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 4 708 900  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-C IV - Moon 7
Corbomite 864 900  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 48 400  Acc: 0.9

Sigma Draconis-A V
Sorium 90 750 000  Acc: 0.7

Sigma Draconis-A V - Moon 2
Duranium 648  Acc: 1

Sigma Draconis-A V - Moon 5
Duranium 722  Acc: 1
Sorium 2 401  Acc: 1

Sigma Draconis-A V - Moon 10
Neutronium 295 936  Acc: 0.7

Sigma Draconis-A V - Moon 15
Neutronium 462 400  Acc: 1
Boronide 67 600  Acc: 0.5

Sigma Draconis-A VI - Moon 2
Boronide 1 557 504  Acc: 0.1

Sigma Draconis-A VI - Moon 7
Duranium 1 371 168  Acc: 0.4
Tritanium 518 400  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 3 504 384  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 11 943 940  Acc: 0.2

Sigma Draconis-A VI - Moon 22
Corundium 38 416  Acc: 0.9

Sigma Draconis-A VI - Moon 30
Neutronium 2 190 400  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 409 600  Acc: 0.1

The kicker ( apart from absurd quantities of minerals ) ?

A - its a dead end - only JP leads back to Proxima.
B - Sigma B-III and C-III ARE A 0!! colony cost planets
C - Sigma B-III has remains of an ancient Civilization on her ....

And for a dessert i have another one :

Code: [Select]
Centaurus
Rocky Planets: 4   Surveyed: 4
Gas Giants: 2   Surveyed: 2
Moons: 21   Surveyed: 21
Asteroids: 0   Surveyed: 0

Centaurus-A I
Duranium 5 848 200  Acc: 0.9
Neutronium 16 402 500  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 893 025  Acc: 0.3
Mercassium 14 288 400  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 1 703 025  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 11 696 400  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 980 100  Acc: 0.1

Centaurus-A II
Sorium 100 800  Acc: 0.8

Centaurus-A III
Duranium 4 805 000  Acc: 0.9
Neutronium 2 030 625  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 765 625  Acc: 0.5

Centaurus-A III - Moon 4
Duranium 675 703  Acc: 0.9
Mercassium 68 906  Acc: 0.8
Corundium 135 977  Acc: 1

Centaurus-A IV
Sorium 884 000  Acc: 0.8

Centaurus-A IV - Moon 13
Boronide 731 025  Acc: 0.9

Centaurus-A V
Corbomite 369 664  Acc: 0.5
Gallicite 2 253 001  Acc: 0.2

Another dead end system from Proxima and another ruined civilization on Centaurus A-I ...

Its gonna be helpful coz i had extraterrestial visit in Proxima about 6 months ago and even those aliens are not hostile i have no idea how the hell this ship flew from Tau Ceti to Proxima while i had survey ships in every system beyond Tau Ceti.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on May 23, 2014, 02:39:58 PM

Its gonna be helpful coz i had extraterrestial visit in Proxima about 6 months ago and even those aliens are not hostile i have no idea how the hell this ship flew from Tau Ceti to Proxima while i had survey ships in every system beyond Tau Ceti.

Some nice real estate there. As for the alien, anytime you explore a JP it randomly picks a system. This may be an already discovered system. One that has had a full grav survey. So the new JP is "hidden" until you perform another survey. So nothing is every truly a dead end. So you never know when that back door is opened.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: NihilRex on May 23, 2014, 04:48:22 PM
Is there any way to easily do a resurvey?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 24, 2014, 04:43:10 AM
Quote
Some nice real estate there. As for the alien, anytime you explore a JP it randomly picks a system. This may be an already discovered system. One that has had a full grav survey. So the new JP is "hidden" until you perform another survey. So nothing is every truly a dead end. So you never know when that back door is opened.

There probably is a closed JP in Tau Ceti after all so i ordered SAS Defiance to make another sweep of the system. I dont know if simply flying around the system with active sensors on will do anything but hey, lets try.
Founding those aliens ( Heligoland Federation ) isn't all that important because they are extremly friendly to me ( mutual trade access and more than 1000 relation ) but it would be nice.

Meanwhile Centaurus ruins are being exploited ( almost 500 abandoned instalations ) and i had some battles with robotic guardians but my Assault batalions and mobile infantry managed to destroy them all.
40 years into game and only recently i've trained my first Missile researcher and Energy weapon guy so i have no military apart from 2 PDC , couple of ground units and armed exploration ships...
And with all that emmigration to 3 different planets, Terra is starting to face employment problems because there are only 16 m workers left despite 2bn population.

God i hope some douche aliens aren't gonna come to ruin my day ..

Edit : And of course Fuel shortage hits me so i had to recall all my deep survey vessels. I think i kinda overextended so its time to develop my colonies using those absurd amounts of minerals discovedred <3
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on May 24, 2014, 04:14:46 PM
Never noticed that the ship speed considers jumping through lagrange points^^

(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt44xr8u.jpg)

If it considers those jumps, why not through regular jump points too. 4 light-years in 5 seconds = ~1,888,220,160,000 km/s ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Llamatoesl on May 29, 2014, 11:48:14 AM
Due to mysterious circumstances, all sensors in the sirius system suddenly spontaneously combusted on both side's vessels.  This also caused all missile launchers tos top working, and both sides experienced a strange feeling of goodwill towards all creatures and decdied to cooperate and put aside their differences for the greater good (Or I sm'ed in order to save a few dozen thousand bps of ships)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 01, 2014, 10:05:01 AM
I have unknown hostiles in Wolf 424, picking off my civilian shipping (the fools keep going in, and get vaporized!).  So late last night, i finally decided to send in a ship to see what i could find out. 

Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected!
Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected!

Hmmm

Systems damaged, but nothing fatal...yet.

So, i open the Combat overview, and i see all my weapon systems are "No target Assigned", i see nothing.

Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected
Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected

Arrrrgg, whats going on, are my systems damaged?  No, most were fine.  Did i forget to load missiles (Some fool forgot to load missiles a few months earlier  :-[ )?  No, weapons loaded.  Why cant i target this guy!

Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected
Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected

At this point it was decided to get out, and repair the damage.

Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected
Energy weapon impact:  Strength 24 detected

After a nights sleep, i figured it out.  Some fool (probably the same one that forgot the missiles  ;D ), had also forgotten about sensor disruption after jumping.  My ship was a sitting duck.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jaque_Thay on June 01, 2014, 11:18:09 AM
The first two games I played, I started with 8 billion strong populations and by year 10 was ready for extra-solar colonisation.  One game has been corrupted (which is frustrating because I'd been keeping a written narrative, unedited, of its successes, pitfalls and politics), another I ran into what I think are Spoilers and my weapons tech is non-existent so I've put that game on hold for a while until I can learn about effective combat management.

My current game I went the very opposite route, started with 250 million and over the last thirty one years have slowly built up a small 'Earth defence' with first generation laser weapons (don't have the mining production to try for missiles), established the first automated asteroid mining colony last year and am gearing up for an economy-related Luna colony (Mars and Luna had no deposits, unfortunately, so there's nowhere in the solar system that is actively worth colonising without extensive infrastructure/terraforming).  Starting without only 3 labs and no construction specialist it took nine years to even work out trans-newtonian physics! We haven't even discovered the existence of jump points yet.  Only one comet remains to be surveyed (currently a 440 day trip from Earth so the geosurvey vessel has a tanker trailing it the whole way) so at some point I'm sure some bright scientist will stumble onto the idea of extra-solar travel. . .

The biggest pitfall we've faced so far has just emerged.  Due to oversight on my part while trying to gear up for everything else Earth has no fuel refineries. . .  and after 31 years has just depleted its stockpiles.  From the start I've RP'd the setup as Earth recovering after an alien occupation fleet withdrew so the fuel crisis is being played as old occupation bases becoming depleted with an emergency move to find new sources (new refineries).  It shouldn't hamper future efforts too much but it was frustrating at the time!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on June 08, 2014, 10:40:08 PM
Just had a total war with an NPR.    Suffered very heavy losses.   

My GTA fleet:
2 x GTCC Alaska II(9150t, Sensor ship), 1 lost 1 slightly damaged
4 x GTCV  Essex II(10000t, 4 x hangar), 2 lost 2 heavily damaged
10 x GTC Ticonderoga II(10000t, 10 x S1 AMM launcher and 2 x hangar), 10 lost
4 x GTC Forrestal(10000t, Collier refitted with 8 x S4 ASM launcher), 3 lost 1 slightly damaged
16 x GTF Cleveland(5000t, 18 x S4 ASM launcher), 12 lost 4 heavily damaged
16 x GTCv Caldwell(5000t, 6 x 15cm laser), 5 lost 10 heavily damaged 1 slightly damaged
32 x GTB Ursa(250t, 4 x S2 ASM), 32 lost
32 x GTB Medusa(250t, 6 x S2 ASM), 32 lost
40 x GTI Aegis(500t, 1 x 10cm railgun), 40 lost

NPR PVN fleet:
102 x 1000t missile boat, 86 destroyed
49 x 8050t laser armed destroyer, 49 destroyed
15 x 16100t, missile and laser armed cruiser, 14 destroyed
4 x 24150t, missile and laser armed battleship, 4 destroyed
Vasudan Prime, bombed back to stone age.   

I have tech and ship design advantage, two waves of Vasudan destroyer were wiped out before they could approach my fleet.   However, with resolution 100 sensors and missile fire controls, my S2 and S4 ASMs hardly work on missile boats, fighters and bombers somehow works at point blank range but suffered heavy losses, 1 Alaska II damaged and 1 Ticonderoga II destroyed.   The next wave consisting 1 battleship, 7 cruisers and some destroyers shoot down  some GTA bombers and frigates, destroyed 2 Ticonderoga II and 1 Essex II.   Then I met 3 battleships, 8 cruisers ,some destroyers and about 40 missile boats on Vasudan Prime orbit.   They launched 200 S1 AMM at about 20m range, instantly wiped out my bomber squadrons and ASM salvos.  Then my fleet defence were overruned by hundreds of S1 and S3 ASM, most Ticonderogas and Clevelands were blast into pieces within 10 minutes, others were heavily damaged.  All I could do is to order Caldwells make a suicide attack. They have 12 layers of armor, absorbed much damage during attack run.  Finally, 9 Caldwells made it and blast Vasudan ships into pieces.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on June 11, 2014, 08:06:51 AM
Interesting, so you were able to use beam-only ships efficiently against a barricade of missile spammers. This means that perhaps even with not so advanced tech or mass advantage, you can still go for close combat sometimes? Whenever I tried so far during equal to slightly above tech phase, I usually needed at least 2:1 in mass advantage. Much much more even against PDC. Were the missile spammers distracted with other targets, or did some run out of ammunition during the assault? What is your secret?^^
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on June 11, 2014, 11:05:39 PM
Quote from: Vandermeer link=topic=3808.    msg73810#msg73810 date=1402492011
Interesting, so you were able to use beam-only ships efficiently against a barricade of missile spammers.     This means that perhaps even with not so advanced tech or mass advantage, you can still go for close combat sometimes? Whenever I tried so far during equal to slightly above tech phase, I usually needed at least 2:1 in mass advantage.     Much much more even against PDC.     Were the missile spammers distracted with other targets, or did some run out of ammunition during the assault? What is your secret?^^

Not efficiently at all.     My fleet get within 15M before being overruned, and Vasudan ships run out of their ASM.     They keep blasting my destroyers and missile frigates into pieces when laser frigates advancing, then attack each one equally before they run out of ammo.     most survived frigates lost 9 or 10 layers of 12, but no internal damage.     If they attack wisely they could destroy or disable 11 or more instead of only 5.   

My laser frigates are not designed to intercept missiles, they are heavy-armor privateers.     The reasons they survived are they have 12 armor and enemy used 1 damage AMM against them.   

Heavy fighters with 10cm railgun are my main non-missile defence system.    I haven't research turret tech yet.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on June 12, 2014, 03:51:48 AM
Ahh, so key was indeed distraction, ok thank you. That explains why I could throw 300kt of close combatants in two 25kt PDC and still had to retreat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on June 12, 2014, 12:16:58 PM
The war against Vasudan continues.       GTA suffered a major defeat when their landing ships and escort frigates ambushed by 10+ Vasudan missile boats, nobody survived.       The remnants of GTA fleet, badly crippled and suffering lack of fuel, supply and ammo, retreated from Vasudan system.     

Now GTA is rebuilding her fleet, all factories on earth working day and night for more fighters, missiles and ship components.     

The New big fleet project:
One year passed.    project updated.   
1 of 1 GTCC Alaska II
1 of 1 GTCV Wickes(10000t assault carrier with 6 marine companies and 6 assault shuttles)
8 of 9 GTCV Lexington (10000t, Cheaper version of GTCV  Essex II, abadoned sensor and some armor for a deeper magazine)
4 of 6 GTD Arleigh Burke(10000t, Upgraded version of GTC Ticonderoga II, abadoned a thermal sensor and some armor for a deeper magazine)
4 of 4 GTC Carolina(7050t, a cheaper version of GTD Arleigh Burke, don't have hangars and jump engine, but have 6 more size1 launcher)
8 of 16 GTF Cleveland II.       Have a deeper magazine and upgraded weapon system for those annoying FACs.     
4 of 4 GTCv Caldwell III.       Have a small active sensor and 4 12cm railguns for close combat.     
64 GTB Medusa II.       Much faster than older version, but have little armor.     
16 GTI Aegis III.       Have an upgraded 10cm railgun.     
16 GTI Aegis IV.       Have a 0.   75x 15cm laser.     
16 GTI Cobra.       Space Superiority Fighter.       Have a short-range R5 sensor and 4 Anti-FAC missiles.     
8 GTI King Cobra.      Heavy Space Superiority Fighter.       Have a short-range R5 sensor and 10 Anti-FAC missiles.     

A stealth scout managed to approach Vasudan Prime.   2 new colonies detected.   Vasudan Prime seems somehow survived GTA's bombardment, or it is not Vasudan's capital at all. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on June 13, 2014, 06:20:30 AM
Keep feeding updates on this. Wars with NPRs are the most fascinating thing in Aurora.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: NihilRex on June 13, 2014, 11:24:28 AM
See, I find them pretty boring...

Of course, my response to locating an NPR is to pull the BCs and CVBG out of drydock and make nice while moving to a forward staging area.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on June 14, 2014, 05:06:03 AM
“Yes, Admiral.  Overwhelmingly, Admiral. ”

This marked the end of the GTA-Vasudan War.

Vasudan don't have any chance when GTA fleet returns.  They still have several dozens of FACs, but they can't survive more than five minutes when facing new GTA fighters.  However, Vasudan refused to surrender until GTA fleet dropped 400 nuclear missiles from the orbit of Vasudan Prime.  Few of them survived.

GTA fleet have 0 casualties.

After this decisive battle, GTA fleet discovered some hidden colonies in Vasudan system.  some small outposts were destroyed by only one volley of railgun.  A big one with 14m people thought it is better surrender then being vaporized.

GTA get a big deal from the inheritance of Vasudan empire.  It may took decades to digest them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Llamatoesl on June 16, 2014, 02:36:40 PM
Just sunk a precursor fleet.  No casualties to me, but I took a few hits to armor.  Attempting to press the advantage, I went into Gilese 1 as it ruins on a habitable planet,t hinking I had bested all of the ships, only to discover a cruiser coming for me.  deciding  (that after losing ships to them in the past) to make best my escape and make for the jump point.  They pursued but didn't fire.  I've had a fleet picketing the JP into Gilese 1 until the salvage ship could arrive.
In the process of salvage.  the vessel has not shown up.  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jaque_Thay on June 17, 2014, 09:37:07 AM
Following on from my post a fortnight ago, I'm now 52 years into this current game and the empire has almost stalled; TNEs on Earth are reaching depletion point and there's not yet much mining going on in space.  I've branched out into two neighbouring systems but am not able to fully take advantage of them as I lack the fuel (long term problem harking back to the last update) to ferry supplies out there.  Finally looking to change that with the deployment of jump gates and more commercial engines over the next 2-5 years though, and I've spent the last decade heavily investing in fuel refineries (nobody has thought about mining Jupiter yet).

The most tragic event right now though is the death of 73yr old Oliver Parsons.  Parsons was one of the three administrators left when the Occupiers (rp way of justifying small starting population) withdrew.  For the first seventeen years he was just a background figure but when my first governor was forced to retire on health grounds Parsons stepped up and under his watchful eye humanity's population expanded fourfold, colonies were established across the solar system and early exploration of surrounding systems occurred.  In 50 New Era he was forced from his position of governor by political machinations put in place nine years previously when he made various bargains to obtain support for controversial industrial operations to keep humanity growing.  In a surprise move though, sector command had just come into being and Parsons won the public vote to become first Grand Overseer of humanity even though he was ineligible to remain governor of Earth.

Now that he's gone there's a power vacuum to fill. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: mtm84 on June 18, 2014, 10:30:07 AM
Playing a slow research, no starting NPR, conventional start game.    Slowing exploring the systems around Sol, found one 2 jumps away with ten major bodies.    Only the first 6 fit inside a 25b km zoom level.    The 7th is orbiting at 181b km, and it just gets worse from there.   Number 8 is at 1.  62 trillion, number 9 is at 2.  92 trillion, and number 10 is at a whooping 8.  2 trillion kilometers (!)  Needless to say,  it's surface temperature is a brisk 4 degrees kelvin, and I don't think I will be surveying it with ion drive tech.    On the plus side, it does have an LP jump point in its orbit that is only a mere 7 trillion km away. 

edit: I should consider myself lucky.   The last easily reachable body just happens to be the one with a 376 million duranium deposit on it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on June 23, 2014, 10:56:58 PM
Just had my first ever battle.

Jumped into a new system, began scouting around. 
Spoiler'd because I'm pretty sure it wasnt a regular NPR.
Picked up 43 enemy contacts, each 750 tons, and could do 10,000 km/s.  Tried negotiations as soon as I detected them, but they began moving aggressively. 
My main fleet could only do 8,000 km/s.  Split off my 11 gauss-armed corvettes so I can harrass the enemy all the way to my ships.
~100,000km out, my corvettes start taking meson fire.  I don't realize at first, because its my first battle.  I also miss my first few 5 second intervals once I'm in range due to being a newb.  My corvettes mix it up with them for 3 minutes, I've lost 2 corvettes, they're down to ~25 mobile ships.  A few bad intervals later and I'm down to only 6 corvettes left.  So I order the corvettes back to the fleet, taking more fire on the way out.
I eventually manage to figure out how to fire my missiles, but only my AMM's are in range.  I start firing those, and manage to waste about half of them on targets that were already doomed.  Anyways now they're down to 18 left mobile once my AMM's are dry.  Eventually they get close enough for my ASM fire control to detect them, and I start blazing away with those.  Those whittle them down to 10 enemies left, but they reload so slowly I'm not gonna get another volley.  Just as the enemy closes in to my laser-armed battleship's range, I send the corvettes in again.  I do NOT want mesons in range of my main fleet, so I figure I'll use the corvettes to keep the enemy busy while my battleship's lasers pound them.  I kill the last 10 without losing any more corvettes.  I then go clean up the crippled ones and pick up my life pods.  Now I see a huge EM signature slowly plodding towards me at ~1000km/s.  It's at this point I'm sure it must be the Star Swarm and that's a mothership that's coming towards me.  I can't leave, as my return jump-gate isnt ready yet, and won't be for ~80 days.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on June 25, 2014, 04:36:34 PM
From Freepeedia, the Communal Encyclopedia

The Pacific Campaign (sometimes referred to as Third Battle of Pacific) was a series of battles that took place in the Pacific and Lianluo dian systems between Chinese and Centauri naval forces. The campaign opened with Imperial forces successfully breaking through the Lianluo dian – Pacific jump point, but thanks to risky tactics by the Alliance commander, Tsutaya Seki, it ended with a crushing Chinese defeat.

Background

   The Chinese Empire attempted to force entry into the Pacific system twice in 2632 and 2637 with both attempts being unsuccessful, especially the second one when the Imperial Navy suffered particularly heavy loses for little return.
   Due to lack of contact between the two nations very little is know about Chinese preparations between 2637 and 2650. What little is known comes from direct observation during battle. In particular the Empire have designed a battlecruiser with very larger and powerful jump drive and missile equipped assault cruisers with multiple launchers and heavy armor. They also seem to have built a significant number of new warships, which on average were usually larger than Centauri vessels.
   The Alliance forces were almost completely committed to the defense of the jump point, but due to the missile and mineral shortages the backbone of the defence consisted of twenty thousand tonnes monitors armed exclusively with lasers, rather than missile armed battleships which has proven themselves much more effective in the jump point defensive role. The Alliance carriers, their wings and escorts have also not been upgraded, nor were they increased in number. Due to the need for overhauls and shore leave, usually about sixty percent of the entire Alliance navy was present in the system at any given time.

The Chinese entry

   The Imperial assault forces made their jump at six o'clock on 29 November 2650 with a total of forty five vessels split into five separate groups. The largest one, dubbed 'Main Body' used the jump gate on Lianluo dian side of the jump point to make a mass transit. Two groups of three vessels emerged less than thirty thousand kilometers from the jump point and two more groups, each of five warships, emerged fifty thousand and two hundred thousand kilometers, respectively, from the jump point.
   The immediate Alliance defenses consisted of fifteen monitors, two battleships standing right on top of the jump point and three missile battleships waiting a little further out. The combination of missiles and laser fire was very successful in the initial stages of the battle, but the enemy had simply too many missiles. As soon as the ten assault cruisers recovered from the transit effect, they have launched an overwhelming wave of missiles that annihilated the defenders in less than twenty seconds.
   This phase of the campaign was highly successful for the Chinese. While in tonnage terms they have lost more than the Alliance, their loses were not crippling and for the first time they have managed to get access to the Pacific system. In addition the two carrier groups standing a hundred and fifty million kilometers away could not possibly hope to get through defenses of the remaining ships and begun to retreat. And while it is true that the Imperial forces have lost a significant number of ships with point defense – their assault cruisers, which have survived mostly intact, were pure missile platforms – they still had enough to deal with the fighter strikes.
   Fortunately for the Alliance, they have used a large number of missiles and due to their dependence on box launchers some of their ships were forced to return to base to re-arm, and four ships were damaged heavily enough to be sent to yards for repairs. However, any hope of launching a counter attack at the remaining force was squashed as fourteen more cruisers have reinforced the warships guarding the jump point.

The Alliance reinforcements

   Once the Alliance government heard about the Imperial break into the Pacific system, they begun sending all they had to the system in hope of repelling the follow up attack that was sure to come. Already in the system were one heavy and one light carrier groups, which represented half of the Centauri fighter strength, but everyone agreed that this was not enough. Immediately available in the Alpha Centauri was a picket group of five monitors that have recently completed an overhaul reinforced by four more ships of the class from new construction. Another heavy carrier group centered around the carriers Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji and under the command of Vice Admiral Tsutaya Seki (who will later take command of the campaign) was also sent. However, several other ships, including battleship Apollo and entire Eisenhower light carrier group were in the middle of an overhaul and the latter would not be available for a month.

The Chinese advance

   Early evening on the 22 December 2650 the listening post on Pacific I detected transit of five Imperial vessels. Shorty after the entire force begun moving towards the inner system, detectable by their thermal and EM emissions. While all Alliance reinforcements – save Eisenhower carrier group and the battleship Apollo – were in the system, they were not yet concentrated. However, considering the Imperial strength and their ability to launch enormous waves of missiles, as well as their heavy anti-missile defenses Vice Admiral Tsutaya Seki did not believe she could fight the enemy in a standard missile duel. As such, she decided to run the enemy out of ordnance to clear a path for the nine monitors, as the enemy was relatively light in energy weapon armament.
   Between 25 December 2650 and 12 January 2651 a total of seven fighter strikes were launched, forcing the Chinese forces to expend all their anti-missiles in defense. The strikes achieved little, damaging four battlecruisers but not enough to slow them down. In addition the attacking warships were drown close to the Alpha Centauri jump point, which was on the other side of the system from their entry point, which ensured that they could not escape quickly or easily.

The destruction of the escort force

   With the Chinese out of anti-missiles, the Alliance escorts charged the enemy en masse. The carriers remained behind, as they had no point defense and no missile armament, which meant they would be unable to contribute to the engagement. Their ability to attack enemy without being under threat, thanks to the fighters, was also considered far too valuable to be risked.
   The battle took place late in the evening on 12 January 2651. In an interview later, Vice Admiral Tsutaya said she expected heavy loses, but she also believed that the long range anti-missile sensors mounted by the Alliance vessel will give her forces enough advantage for at least some ships to survive. However, she was proven wrong, as the entire force was annihilated eighty million kilometers from the Imperial cruisers. Later analysis have shown that the Chinese launched forty percent more missiles than they had to, indicating a severe overkill on their part.
   However the Imperial forces had used all their ordnance and begun retreating towards the jump point, most likely with the intention of temporarily returning to their base for re-armament.
   
The destruction of the Imperial attack force

   With the enemy out of munitions, Vice Admiral Tsutaya has given order for the monitors to attack. On 14 January 2651 the nine Alliance monitors and the twenty nine cruisers and battlecruisers of the Imperial Navy begun to exchange fire. While the Chinese built their main combatants with variety of weapons, designed to be able to face any situation, nine of their warships were either jump or assault ships. In addition, being multi-role, their energy armament was relatively light. The monitors on the other hand were specifically designed for close combat and had the speed advantage. While the battle was relatively long, lasting close to twenty minutes, there was never much doubt about the outcome. In the end every single Chinese vessel has been destroyed, in return for only one monitor, although four more had to return home for repairs.
   While this was a decisive victory for the Alliance, they were unable to fully capitalize on it, as there was no jump gate on their side of the jump point and they had no jump ships capable of escorting monitors or the larger carriers through the jump points. In addition, an enormous number of fighter missiles have been used, leaving very little for future operations.

The Lianluo dian raid

   Despite the dangers, the Alliance government has decided that such a decisive battle left little for the Chinese to guard their systems. On 2 February 2651 the Eisenhower carrier group was ordered to enter the enemy system. This was the first time an Alliance ship have sailed into Imperial territory.
   There were no defenses on the other side and the Centauri vessels begun to scan the local space. The Lianluo dian system was known thanks to the interrogation of Chinese prisoners, but the information was uncertain and lacking in details – such as a precise location of the jump points.
   Lianluo dian had a very fortunate astrography for the Alliance, as it was a brown dwarf with all jump points close to each other. Two such points were detected very early thanks to the Imperial commercial vessels with transponder codes using them.
   At first the Centauri forces were content to watch, hoping to catch a large convoy unaware. However, it was becoming quickly obvious that most of the traffic was in the form of a privately owned single vessels. Because of that on 25 February 2651 the Alliance forces decided to cut off the system, by destroying relay vessels on the jump points and intercepting any and all commercial traffic entering the system.
   On 2 March 2651 a command ship, equipped with powerful sensors, was sent to the enemy system believed to be the source of the attacks. The assumption was proven correct as Dabrowski emerged in the Bessel's Star system, which was known to be the Chinese capital. There was no immediate response from the Empire and over the next weeks the Alliance forces intercepted and destroyed a number of commercial vessels.
   On 28 March, 2651 five Imperial vessels were detected approaching jump point, prompting Alliance vessels to begin evacuation. The last of them returned to Pacific on 2 April 2651 officially ending what has become known as the Pacific Campaign.

Aftermath

   Little is known for certain about the Empire, due to lack of communication. However, considering their slow response to the Alliance presence in Lianluo dian many analysts believes that the Chinese forces have suffered much heavier loses, proportionally, than Centauri ones. However, there was no way to capitalize on that due to the lack of jump gate on the Pacific side of the jump point.
   The consequences for the Alliance were enormous. First, it has been proven that their main combatants were obsolete and the concepts on which they were based were simply not working. The inability of the fighter strikes to penetrate the Chinese defenses was also a shock to the Centauri forces. Finally, the lack of large jump vessel has proven to be a significant shortcoming, one that might have stopped the Alliance from ending the war after the Pacific campaign. A jump gate will not be built, as during the first two Imperial incursion several Chinese ships have to be abandoned as they had no way home. As such not having a jump gate is considered a significant advantage for the defenders.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on July 02, 2014, 09:46:29 PM
Heh, long time no see guys.  Been quite busy.

Anywho, started a new game on the new version (after deciding a multi-Earth start was too much for me, so second on new version).  Despite setting NPRs high, the galaxy has been extremely quite so far.  Also went for a TN start for a change with a fleet setup I really like.  Getting to the current action, though, I just made first contact with everyone's favorite everybody's favorite spoiler race ( precursors )  I was surveying the system beyond Sol's furthest JP and having a decent go at it, had about 6-7 dots scanned, but had totally ignored the small planetary system as, while it had one or two cost 7 colony sites, I had at least 30 places higher in the list to colonize first and I was just getting out the Solar door so to speak.

This turned out to be a big mistake.  The curve of the survey locations took my survey ships around the real estate on the first pass.  They went home to refuel and overhaul, but discovered a new JP on the way back.  The next survey ship coming off overhaul I thus sent to check it out.  The path took it through the planetary system, and thus it was intercepted because I hadn't bothered to check out what was in there.

Three things worked in my favor, however.  1)  The attacking force appears to be only 2 1000 ton FACs.  They fire 3 missiles each, and have enough to reload a few times, but the warheads are strength 5, and thus they do not do much damage.  2)  I actually armored my survey ships for a change.  3)  I actually put CIWS on my survey ships for a change.

Thus, my ship actually survived!  First time ever surviving a hostile first contact.  Only lost one engine (for 3 causalities).  The commander was one of two I'd actually named as characters, so as soon as she got back to Sol a nice big shiny Silver Star for her, and my navy is definitely more than capable of taking out the threat, especially as for a change I know where the silly base is at.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on July 03, 2014, 07:58:32 AM
Figured I'd chime in here.   So far, I've scrapped all civilian ships I operate in favour of letting the civvies do the work for me.   Out of two Jump Points in Sol, one led to Epsilon Eridani which after a month or two of surveying was found to be completely barren.   No minerals on the planets, none of the survey points were Jump Points.   It's a literal backwater, but I still intend to drop geological and xenological teams on the various planets on the off-chance something useful is hidden away. 

The second Jump Point led to Alpha Centauri, and here's where it paid off for me.   I surveyed the primary star and its planets, found good sorium deposits on two of the gas giants and some nice stockpiles of other minerals on A II and A IV.   I did admittedly cheat a bit by terraforming Mars in SM mode to be useful to me, so that's now got around 22 million colonists.   Meanwhile I think I've got the hang of using tankers and harvesters to get sorium from gas giants to colonies, so that's going well for me, and I constructed the only civilian ship TATO itself will own which is a jump-gate construction ship.   Gates have been built on both the Epsilon Eridani and the Alpha Centauri Jump Points, and the 1st Carrier Group is holding position on the Alpha-Centauri side of that Jump Point. 

Twenty in-game minutes ago, three alien ships massing 9500 tons each were detected around 100 million km's from the 1st Carrier Group.   The codeword programme on Earth has tentatively designated them as the 'Espora' and I've hailed them.   So far they seem to have ceased moving towards us, and I've launched an AWAC's to provide active sensor coverage just to make sure they're not trying anything funny.

Addendum; it appears I should not have ordered a message to be sent to them.  They waited until I was close enough, then hammered the Nimitz.  I've now lost half my carrier strength as well as well over half my strikecraft strength.  I came in peace, but I intend to send ET home in pieces.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Charlie Beeler on July 03, 2014, 09:02:19 AM
If you used the message order in task group orders it doesn't do what you want.  It is merely a function to insert a message in the events log and has no effect on diplomacy.  (ie it is a message to yourself only)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on July 03, 2014, 09:49:21 AM
Quote from: Charlie Beeler link=topic=3808. msg74380#msg74380 date=1404396139
If you used the message order in task group orders it doesn't do what you want.   It is merely a function to insert a message in the events log and has no effect on diplomacy.   (ie it is a message to yourself only)

Well that explains that.  I did try communicating via the intelligence/diplomacy screen and then SM View told me who I was playing against.  As of now, the entire Carrier Group 01 was destroyed yesterday with only one ship launching two salvoes of the 'Anaconda' AsHM's.  No damage done as far as known, and the cruiser Queen Elizabeth II was sent through the jump gate to rescue the lifepods which the enemy proceeded to pick up.  I ended up ordering the QEII to retreat back to Sol. . . and forgot I hadn't built a gate on that side.  As of now it is slowly charging the enemy with the intention of delivering some salvoes of railgun and particle beam fire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 11, 2014, 10:19:12 AM
As someone suffering from uncreable restartitis i started another game in brand new 6.4 ....

Conventional start with 40 mil ppl, 1 research lab, no shipyard, every spoiler race and no pregenerated NPR's ( i set up Earth to be very rich in TN minerals )... and holy frakk its slooooooooooooooow as hell  ;D ;D Im currently almost 80 years in and i only recently got my first Con/Prod scientist ( im trying to RP specialized research - outside of SM'ing base-TN tech ), i have 4 research lab, NO shipyards, no GU Training facilities and no deep space tracking capability of any kind  ;D Im trully frakked if any of the spoilers decide to visit Sol  ;D ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 11, 2014, 07:42:34 PM
;D Im trully frakked if any of the spoilers decide to visit Sol  ;D ;D
A little spoiler regarding your near future before flying through jump points (decide if you want to know or not):
Since you have no NPR race generated at start, you will never be visited by any threats from outside as long as you don't leave, so danger while waiting. Even after leaving it might only become possible if you actually find some opposition in some system, and they decide to explore. This is because there is no event that produces attackers in already generated systems, and since the only system generated here is your home system ...-save haven.
I exploited and do still exploit this quite a bit. I hate to cheat, but strangely I have nothing against exploits. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on July 11, 2014, 08:02:16 PM
Spoiler below.
Invaders, however, can spawn in any system via wormhole, and are a threat to most early-mid tech empires due to the quality and quantity of their ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 11, 2014, 08:48:46 PM
Oha, I did not know that. Now I am frightened.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: spoongoon on July 16, 2014, 11:26:48 AM
My first proper game.   I did a conventional start, It´s nearly 30 years into the game and i have barely left the solar system.   I was slow to start exploring because I didn´t want to be caught undefended.   Terran Federation has 10 warships, 16 patrol craft and a few dozen fighters, bulk of the defence comes from 12 Orbital weapons platforms defending Earth, Luna, Europa, Mars and Titan.   I had some good luck I´ve explored only about 20 star systems and I found 3 promising planets in different star systems, they each have high quality ruins and a research boosting anomaly (how does that work?), they will also become class 0 worlds with only minimal terraforming.   My biggest problem right now is Duranium, Earth is depleted and I´m only mining 10kt while consuming 20kt plus a year.   I can´t really expand anything now and those terraformers will have to wait. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on July 16, 2014, 07:30:25 PM
Quote from: spoongoon link=topic=3808. msg74706#msg74706 date=1405528008
they each have high quality ruins and a research boosting anomaly (how does that work?),

Just ditch some Labs on the planet.  The bonus applies for all topics in the appropriate field.  And it stacks with the normal 4x bonus for matching field/researcher.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on July 21, 2014, 11:56:47 AM
Yet another unworthy NPR was encountered by the forces of the Colonial Alliance(The first was the pathetic Resto Primi Federation). Despite having an EM signature of around 35000 and a thermal signature around 5000, the Empire of Cypra Mundi failed to produce any ships so far. Spoilers, where are you? ??? ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on July 29, 2014, 07:47:56 PM
My current game, shamelessly ripping backstory from this (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1477.0.html) piece of fiction, is a 0rp transnewtonian start, and my ship design and battle tactics are based primarily around large, slow battleships that blow up anything within their area of influence. Jump Point Theory just started being researched after 15 years in-game, and the low-tech fleet I began with at the start of the game has kept the civilians in line, even if they're somewhat useless in combat. Hopefully I can find some aliens soon, so that the full wrath of the British Empire might descend upon them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on July 31, 2014, 07:32:12 AM
Finally started again after a hiatus since 6.3, I'm a little bummed about not finishing either my NASA-cold war playthrough or my other one which was meant to be played fast, but I'll console myself with a new theme I haven't tried before.
I shall roleplay the Daleks, peaceful diplomacy is illogical, extermination will be used against any resistant races, and terraforming is considered wasteful, only perfect 1.0 planets shall be considered fit for large populations of daleks (I'm roleplaying that despite the fact that daleks are well covered in complete enviroment suits, the 1.0 colony cost represents other needs of the dalek empire), not mere comfort considerations.
The Dalek fleet shall only only be equipped with energy weapons, the biggest slowest firing ones are preferable, but of course missile defence is desired, so I shall allow only lasers to be used for this. I figure mesons, particle beams, rail guns, gauss cannons, missiles, and CIWS to be totally alien designs that have no place in a dalek fleet, therefore Plasma carronade, Lasers, High Power microwave and eventually Plasma Torpedos shall be used.
The highest ECM, Thermal reduction and cloaking technology must be kept on all vessels, and I'm considering to keep ships standardised and as jack-of-all-trade as possible.
I find the idea of dalek commercial ships to be laughable so I guess multi megaton military ships must be used for even the most mundane tasks. Or possibly military-grade sleds should be used to tractor tow the most barebones infrastructure. Speed isn't nessicary for transportation, as daleks think in the long term so engine efficiency should still be very high.
Also, underground infrastructure might be handy with this somehow, perhaps to be a complete jerk to conqured populations I could move them off their homeworld into new hostile underground colonies where their population will stagnate and become inconsequential as the Dalek race conquers whats left of the galaxy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on July 31, 2014, 11:03:13 AM
Finally picked started again after a hiatus since 6.3, I'm a little bummed about not finishing either my NASA-cold war playthrough or my other one which was meant to be played fast, but I'll console myself with a new theme I haven't tried before.
I shall roleplay the Daleks, peaceful diplomacy is illogical, extermination will be used against any resistant races, and terraforming is considered wasteful, only perfect 1.0 planets shall be considered fit for large populations of daleks (I'm roleplaying that despite the fact that daleks are well covered in complete enviroment suits, the 1.0 colony cost represents other needs of a dalek, not mere comfort considerations.
The Dalek fleet shall only only be equipped with energy weapons, the biggest slowest firing ones are preferable, but of course missile defence is desired, so I shall allow only lasers to be used for this. I figure mesons, particle beams, rail guns, gauss cannons, missiles, and CIWS to be totally alien designs that have no place in a dalek fleet, therefore Plasma carronade, Lasers, High Power microwave and eventually Plasma Torpedos shall be used.
The highest ECM, Thermal reduction and cloaking technology must be kept on all vessels, and I'm considering to keep ships standardised and as jack-of-all-trade as possible.
I find the idea of dalek commercial ships to be laughable so I guess multi megaton military ships must be used for even the most mundane tasks. Or possibly military-grade sleds should be used to tractor tow the most barebones infrastructure. Speed isn't nessicary for transportation, as daleks think in the long term so engine efficiency should still be very high.
Also, underground infrastructure might be handy with this somehow, perhaps to be a complete jerk to conqured populations I could move them off their homeworld into new hostile underground colonies where their population will stagnate and become inconsequential as the Dalek race (conquers whats left of)the galaxy.

*Jumps in the TARDIS and warms up the Sonic Screwdriver*
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on August 05, 2014, 10:41:30 AM
Haven't started the game yet, but I'll seed the Daleks into a random system and pop an NPR onto earth, all spoilers are on, Swarm will be cybermen due to their assimilation practices, precursor installations will be hidden automated Time Lord weapon systems seeded through the galaxy at different time points during the time war designed to fight the daleks, the invaders will represent the supreme dalek's armada which was at the last minute thwarted from destroying Gallifrey by the doctor, the whole fleet is trapped in some kind of bubble which occasionally weakens enough to let small detachments out, their goal is of course destruction of the Time Lords and conquest of the galaxy, however they have another goal which is to destroy us.
Who are we?
We are the forgotten, those left behind.
While the time war ravaged across the galaxy the supreme dalek decided that only purity would give strength to the daleks, all existing daleks were purged and replaced with new models (the brand new coloured I-Pod daleks from the last season), however some escaped this persecution and remained isolated when the war finally took the supreme dalek and all his followers away.
Alone for countless centuries with only their virtually inexhaustable technobabbletonium power supply and their endless rage they waited, and slowly lost whatever was left of their sanity. Voices called out to them, the collective screams and anguish of all they have murdered, and all they wanted to murder. One voice stood out among the darkness, it was the Doctor, it roused the galaxys black daleks, the doctor was alive? EXTERMINATE! His voice was heard through a crack in time, he is still alive, but where? When? After awakening another voice could be finally be heard, one that they realised had been calling out to them through the whole war unnoticed, a voice that was always there, deep inside the cold core of every dalek there was a single thread left joining them to him. The maker is here. He will help us. Help us grow strong so that we may destroy those who threatened us. He will show us Earth. He will give the doctor to us. EXTERMINATE!!. The doctor must die, Davros must give us the doctor! All daleks come to davros so that we may EXTERMINATE all those who made us feel pain. Death shall rain from the skies across the galaxy and the dalek race will be supreme.

Edit: [Added more hate]
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on August 05, 2014, 01:29:32 PM
Haven't started the game yet, but I'll seed the Daleks into a random system and pop an NPR onto earth, all spoilers are on, Swarm will be cybermen due to their assimilation practices, precursor installations will be hidden automated Time Lord weapon systems seeded through the galaxy at different time points during the time war designed to fight the daleks, the invaders will represent the supreme dalek's armada which was at the last minute thwarted from destroying Gallifrey by the doctor, the whole fleet is trapped in some kind of bubble which occasionally weakens enough to let small detachments out, their goal is of course destruction of the Time Lords and conquest of the galaxy, however they have another goal which is to destroy us.
Who are we?
We are the forgotten, those left behind.
While the time war ravaged across the galaxy the supreme dalek decided that only purity would give strength to the daleks, all existing daleks were purged and replaced with new models (the brand new coloured I-Pod daleks from the last season), however some escaped this persecution and remained isolated when the war finally took the supreme dalek and all his followers away.
Alone for countless centuries with only their virtually inexhaustable technobabbletonium power supply and their endless rage they waited, and slowly lost whatever was left of their sanity. Voices called out to them, the collective screams and anguish of all they have murdered, and all they wanted to murder. One voice stood out among the darkness, it was the Doctor, it roused the galaxys black daleks, the doctor was alive? EXTERMINATE! His voice was heard through a crack in time, he is still alive, but where? When? After awakening another voice could be finally be heard, one that they realised had been calling out to them through the whole war unnoticed, a voice that was always there, deep inside the cold core of every dalek there was a single thread left joining them to him. The maker is here. He will help us. Help us grow strong so that we may destroy those who threatened us. He will show us Earth. He will give the doctor to us. EXTERMINATE!!. The doctor must die, Davros must give us the doctor! All daleks come to davros so that we may EXTERMINATE all those who made us feel pain. Death shall rain from the skies across the galaxy and the dalek race will be supreme.

Edit: [Added more hate]

*knock* *knock* *knock* *knock*
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on August 08, 2014, 03:56:38 AM
Started a new game after upgrading to 6.43. After years mapping the various jump points, the Polyarchy launched Pythia-class scout ships through each of the five JP's. So far, two alien races have been encountered in the Gliese 109 and the Struve 2398 systems. While the former's inhabitants are happy to merely observe and follow the survey ship Delphi, the Struve natives have destroyed the survey ship Dodona. Time to build some bigger ships methinks, since the six Nereids in operation only mass 1900 tons, and the aliens are using up to 25000t!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rawb on August 18, 2014, 03:56:54 AM
My newest game I decided to go heavy on the Role Playing. Conventional 2030 start.

The Divine Empire of Valos rules Earth. What was once a small cult, dedicated to the idea that the one who discovered "Trans-newtonian" is in fact a divine being. Seizing more and more control as chaos reigned in the disasters and calamities that followed, by 2030 the Order was in almost total control of the still-inhabitable parts of the planet.

Believing that the catastrophes they have suffered were in fact a challenge from the Divine, the Order believed Earth to be cleansed. Humanity was purified and ready for it's Solar ascension.  To this end, they sought to utilise the elements revealed to them. They would send Humanity onward, until the Empire of Valos held stars uncountable within it's divine (but firm) grasp
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ZimRathbone on August 18, 2014, 06:32:12 AM
*knock* *knock* *knock* *knock*

 ;D

Waiting for Sunday morning to see what the latest celtic interpretation is like...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on August 20, 2014, 11:23:17 AM
Overrunned by an 1000% difficulty NPR, 30 cruisers and 4 battleships against hundreds of cruisers and battleships, no chance.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on August 21, 2014, 06:26:44 AM
;D

Waiting for Sunday morning to see what the latest celtic interpretation is like...

Thanks for this - I had it in my head that it wasn't starting back up until October/November.

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on August 24, 2014, 01:18:52 AM
I have returned from my 3-month semi-haitus, and look forward to many exciting weekends blowing things up in the depths of space.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sagal on August 25, 2014, 03:43:33 PM
Ehh just started playing 1000% difficulty with no starting NPR but 90% gen. Second jump point and I ran into some bugs, 1 X 200,000ton and 4 X 60,000ton -.- and something like 200 little ones. After couple hours all big ones are destroyed (with missiles) and most of the little ones. Was nice fight though a bit lopsided, I mean I sent 300, 600 and 1200 salvoes at those big ones (from fighters) 200,000 ton monster took something like 2000 missile hits or something (9WH)

My fleet if someone was wondering:

2 Of these babies
Code: [Select]
Tirpitz class Carrier    80,000 tons     1143 Crew     23381.75 BP      TCS 1600  TH 2400  EM 0
9375 km/s     Armour 3-165     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 31.52
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 16000%    IFR 222.2%    1YR 153214    5YR 2298211    Max Repair 2109.375 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 110    
Hangar Deck Capacity 25000 tons     Magazine 2730    

Gerlach-Baum 1875 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (8)    Power 1875    Fuel Use 55.11%    Signature 300    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 19,500,000 Litres    Range 79.6 billion km   (98 days at full power)

Single Friz Dynamics GC R4-50 Turret (8x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Riemann Orbital Systems FC S03 60-25000 H40 (2)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17

Exocet-1 S2 ASM (1365)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 19.7m    Range: 35.5m km   WH: 9    Size: 2    TH: 300/180/90

Opitz-Brentano Active Search Sensor MR17-R1 (1)     GPS 99     Range 17.8m km    MCR 1.9m km    Resolution 1

ECM 20

Strike Group
100x Concord Fighter   Speed: 30000 km/s    Size: 5

My fighter design
Code: [Select]
Concord class Fighter    250 tons     1 Crew     203.45 BP      TCS 5  TH 24  EM 0
30000 km/s     Armour 2-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 15    5YR 224    Max Repair 168.75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 9    
Magazine 12    

Petrov Aerospace Industries 150 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 611.07%    Signature 24    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 2.4 billion km   (21 hours at full power)

Lucas Incorporated S2 Box Launcher (6)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Silviatti-Molinaro MFC FC34-R80 (40%) (1)     Range 34.8m km    Resolution 80
Exocet-1 S2 ASM (6)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 19.7m    Range: 35.5m km   WH: 9    Size: 2    TH: 300/180/90

Battlecruisers 4 of these
Code: [Select]
Mountain class Battlecruiser    40,000 tons     792 Crew     14270.9 BP      TCS 800  TH 1200  EM 0
9375 km/s     Armour 10-104     Shields 0-0     Sensors 54/54/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 123.52
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 8000%    IFR 111.1%    1YR 70843    5YR 1062641    Max Repair 2109.375 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0    
Magazine 3368    

Gerlach-Baum 1875 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (4)    Power 1875    Fuel Use 55.11%    Signature 300    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 8,000,000 Litres    Range 65.3 billion km   (80 days at full power)

Single Friz Dynamics GC R4-50 Turret (8x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Riemann Orbital Systems FC S03 60-25000 H40 (2)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17

Slutsky-Zhdanov S4 Missile Launcher (20)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 20
Slutsky-Zhdanov S1 Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Opitz-Brentano Missile Fire Control FC19-R1 (4)     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Lupo-Pezedo Missile Fire Control FC210-R60 (40%) (4)     Range 210.8m km    Resolution 60
Shield-1 S1 AMM (600)  Speed: 60,000 km/s   End: 1.5m    Range: 5.5m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1400/840/420
Typhoon-1 S4 ASM (692)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 50.5m    Range: 90.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 200/120/60

Opitz-Brentano Active Search Sensor MR17-R1 (1)     GPS 99     Range 17.8m km    MCR 1.9m km    Resolution 1
Lupo-Pezedo ASS MR200-R60 (40%) (1)     GPS 8640     Range 200.8m km    Resolution 60
Stewart-Singh Thermal Sensor TH3-54 (1)     Sensitivity 54     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54m km
Stewart-Singh EM Detection Sensor EM3-54 (1)     Sensitivity 54     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54m km

ECM 10

Heavy Cruisers 6 of these
Code: [Select]
Tree class Heavy Cruiser    20,000 tons     452 Crew     7899.05 BP      TCS 400  TH 600  EM 0
9375 km/s     Armour 7-65     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/54/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 85.52
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 4000%    IFR 55.6%    1YR 23871    5YR 358058    Max Repair 2109.375 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0    
Magazine 1146    

Gerlach-Baum 1875 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (2)    Power 1875    Fuel Use 55.11%    Signature 300    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres    Range 65.3 billion km   (80 days at full power)

Single Friz Dynamics GC R4-50 Turret (8x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Riemann Orbital Systems FC S03 60-25000 H40 (2)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17

Slutsky-Zhdanov S4 Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 20
Slutsky-Zhdanov S1 Missile Launcher (6)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Lupo-Pezedo Missile Fire Control FC210-R60 (40%) (3)     Range 210.8m km    Resolution 60
Opitz-Brentano Missile Fire Control FC19-R1 (2)     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Shield-1 S1 AMM (300)  Speed: 60,000 km/s   End: 1.5m    Range: 5.5m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1400/840/420
Typhoon-1 S4 ASM (212)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 50.5m    Range: 90.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 200/120/60

Lupo-Pezedo ASS MR200-R60 (40%) (1)     GPS 8640     Range 200.8m km    Resolution 60
Opitz-Brentano Active Search Sensor MR17-R1 (1)     GPS 99     Range 17.8m km    MCR 1.9m km    Resolution 1
Stewart-Singh EM Detection Sensor EM3-54 (1)     Sensitivity 54     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54m km

Destroyers 8 of these
Code: [Select]
Storm class Destroyer    10,000 tons     234 Crew     4148.025 BP      TCS 200  TH 300  EM 0
9375 km/s     Armour 4-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 54/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 37.76
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 2000%    IFR 27.8%    1YR 13229    5YR 198439    Max Repair 2109.375 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1    
Magazine 568    

Gerlach-Baum 1875 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 1875    Fuel Use 55.11%    Signature 300    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 65.3 billion km   (80 days at full power)

Single Friz Dynamics GC R4-50 Turret (4x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Riemann Orbital Systems FC S03 60-25000 H40 (1)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17

Slutsky-Zhdanov S1 Missile Launcher (6)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Slutsky-Zhdanov S4 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 20
Lupo-Pezedo Missile Fire Control FC210-R60 (40%) (1)     Range 210.8m km    Resolution 60
Opitz-Brentano Missile Fire Control FC19-R1 (2)     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Shield-1 S1 AMM (300)  Speed: 60,000 km/s   End: 1.5m    Range: 5.5m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1400/840/420
Typhoon-1 S4 ASM (67)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 50.5m    Range: 90.9m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 200/120/60

Lupo-Pezedo ASS MR200-R60 (40%) (1)     GPS 8640     Range 200.8m km    Resolution 60
Opitz-Brentano Active Search Sensor MR17-R1 (1)     GPS 99     Range 17.8m km    MCR 1.9m km    Resolution 1
Stewart-Singh Thermal Sensor TH3-54 (1)     Sensitivity 54     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54m km

ECM 20

EDIT: Oh and I'm playing with maintenance off (If you didn't notice those lovely AFR times) and I can't get any galicite for a couple years now so I'm out of missiles...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DrGast32 on August 30, 2014, 08:03:44 AM
After evacuating the Solar System to prevent death-from-Sol-going-Giant for humanity, the remaining 400 million humans have settled in a system that has about 50 million of each resource.  Jackpot.

Plus, our more recent promise graduate from Phoenix Officer School is called. . .  Peter Griffin.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Shuggana on September 01, 2014, 05:26:03 AM
Quote from: Sagal link=topic=3808. msg75545#msg75545 date=1408999413

My fighter design
Code: [Select]
Concord class Fighter    250 tons     1 Crew     203.45 BP      TCS 5  TH 24  EM 0
30000 km/s     Armour 2-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 15    5YR 224    Max Repair 168.75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 9    
Magazine 12    

Petrov Aerospace Industries 150 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 611.07%    Signature 24    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 2.4 billion km   (21 hours at full power)

Lucas Incorporated S2 Box Launcher (6)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Silviatti-Molinaro MFC FC34-R80 (40%) (1)     Range 34.8m km    Resolution 80
Exocet-1 S2 ASM (6)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 19.7m    Range: 35.5m km   WH: 9    Size: 2    TH: 300/180/90


You should be able to make these even a SLIGHT bit smaller if you change the deployment time to 0. 033 (roughly 1 day) down from 0. 1
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sagal on September 01, 2014, 11:16:57 AM
Maybe but I want to keep them at 250 tons so it would need something else then :P It's an old model anyways though I do have 0.1 in the new ones too
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: rcj33 on September 01, 2014, 05:09:38 PM
Quote from: Shuggana link=topic=3808. msg75638#msg75638 date=1409567163
You should be able to make these even a SLIGHT bit smaller if you change the deployment time to 0.  033 (roughly 1 day) down from 0.  1

I don't understand how this is supposed to work since the fighter appears to be using the Crew Quarters - Tiny already (0. 464t /  0. 0278HS for one crew @ 3 days deployment; apparently it lets you shove 10 crew in due to rounding).  How are you getting rid of that 0. 1 HS?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: spoongoon on September 02, 2014, 11:36:53 AM
My new game I surveyed more than 50 systems not discovering a single alien.
I was getting frustrated with my lovingly crafted ships never having fired a shot in anger.
But now, I finally found an enemy.
They are technologically far superior and spread across
multiple systems. I have not discovered their home world yet but it will get "fun"
when I do.

By the way, is it just me or is the fuel production grossly inadequate.
My fleet eats several years worth of fuel on a single mission.
I´ll build more harvesters but still.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ComradeMicha on September 02, 2014, 12:00:41 PM
By the way, is it just me or is the fuel production grossly inadequate.
My fleet eats several years worth of fuel on a single mission.
I´ll build more harvesters but still.

Yep, had the exact same thing happen to me. My fleet was grounded for aalmost ten years, but now I have an annual 40 million litres worth of fuel harvesters in orbit around Jupiter... Unfortunately, by now I have run out of several minerals, so the next crisis is at hand... Same as you, I haven't met a single alien race yet, at currently 32 explored systems... :/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Whitecold on September 02, 2014, 01:03:03 PM
There's almost always some shortage, but I'm curious: How did your fleets eat up all your fuel if you haven't met any aliens?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ComradeMicha on September 02, 2014, 01:25:42 PM
There's almost always some shortage, but I'm curious: How did your fleets eat up all your fuel if you haven't met any aliens?
Fleet training exercises mostly. I didn't watch the fuel status as I was used to this not being an issue, but apparently in the latest version something changed dramatically.
In hindsight, I should have wondered why my average light cruiser would need to have a 5 million litres fuel tank to get 100 days worth of cruising... :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on September 03, 2014, 07:08:42 AM
Yep, had the exact same thing happen to me. My fleet was grounded for aalmost ten years, but now I have an annual 40 million litres worth of fuel harvesters in orbit around Jupiter... Unfortunately, by now I have run out of several minerals, so the next crisis is at hand... Same as you, I haven't met a single alien race yet, at currently 32 explored systems... :/

With Aurora 6.43 there are only sorium and fuel shortages. I used to build terraformers, now I build fuel harvesters and research fuel efficiency as a priority! The only good thing I have noticed is that NPRs starting on Earth do not appear to survey that much faster than the player race but do like long chains beyond the player race's endurance. Player race surveyed 86 sytems, the NPRs 71 and 95, Precursors hurt them and one is in a war of attrition neither side can win. ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 14, 2014, 06:59:05 AM
>started new multi-national Earth start
>playing as a European Union
>African Union, Pan Asian Confederation, Soviet Russia and United States of Americas are all friendly with me.
>they all have been made by me, and they were almost the same - TN , ~500 mil ppl, 0 RP, no shipyards but some more labs
>Earth has ample amount of every resource
>Asian Confederation is the only one actually evolving and producing anything
>Asians have more than 30 ships in orbit, missile ships, something that i think is small cargo ship etc.
>meanwhile every other nation ( beside me ) has only 4 sensor outposts ( two different classes ) and that game has been going for more than 25 years now.

Not that im afraid of having only one enemy when smeg will hit the fan finally ( only 50 years of truce ) but im really curious if anyone knows why those other nations are so passive ..
Did anyone had some problems with this ??
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Porjate on September 17, 2014, 08:24:21 AM
My main combat group is currently getting harassed by endless salvoes of AMM and ASM from multiple directions while en route to a suspected munitions stockpile.    Fortunately, unlike the previous two times this has happened, the salvoes never go above 15 missiles in size.    It's almost enough to make me wish I developed higher power engines for my ships, but the increased operational range suits the emptiness of my sector more.   
It certainly seems every hostile encounter I go into, I end up designing new ships to replace what has turned out ineffective.    Last time I built larger anti-missile frigates they ended up getting overwhelmed by a swarm of anti-missiles from a single ship.   .   .    luckily the AMM frigates in this system launch salvoes of 5 instead of 52. 

Edit: Getting in range of the world, two 18kt contacts have been identified.   If last time is anything to go by, that potentially means more than 100 missiles per salvo.  .  .   much fun shall be had. 

New Edit: Somewhere in the process of transporting research labs to a colony with an anomaly, the cargo task group decided to forgo the traditional method of using jump gates and set a direct course for the system. . .  right now they are at 78 billion kilometres from the centre of my home system, and only have 40% fuel left.  Looks like I'll be without my main cargo group for another 472 days. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on September 20, 2014, 05:22:39 PM
Just when I thought my Geology team had fallen into a bottomless crevasse;

19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,The Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team has completed its surface-based geological survey of Eburacum
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Uridium have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 68,075 to 9,272,025 tons.
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Corbomite have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 165,975 to 16,769,025 tons.
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Duranium have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 225,537 to 8,820,000 tons.

This is on top of of 9 jump points, alien ruins, and pretty good minerals.

Needless to say a LOT of freighters and colony ships are inbound to Eburacum now! :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 20, 2014, 05:35:35 PM
Just when I thought my Geology team had fallen into a bottomless crevasse;

19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,The Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team has completed its surface-based geological survey of Eburacum
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Uridium have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 68,075 to 9,272,025 tons.
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Corbomite have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 165,975 to 16,769,025 tons.
19th October 2050 12:14:46,Kapteyns Star,Additional deposits of Duranium have been found on Eburacum by the Jefferson Twiddy Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 225,537 to 8,820,000 tons.

This is on top of of 9 jump points, alien ruins, and pretty good minerals.

Needless to say a LOT of freighters and colony ships are inbound to Eburacum now! :)

I think those dudes on a survey ship need their eyesight checked... *little underestimation* my ass...
Im mad jelly bro.. my geo teams managed to only improve acc of ONE mineral on 4 of my Sol mining planets... by whole 0.1 point, from 0.7 to 0.8...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on September 23, 2014, 03:33:55 AM
Waging a total war against a 800% difficulty NPR.  With a 7000m starting population, I've deployed 20 30kt battleships, about 170 10kt cruisers and 24 light carriers,  won three major battles against them, lost 5 battleships and 18 cruisers but destroyed over 200 enemy vessels and almost pushed into their home system.  This war is consuming my ordnance in a surprising rate, during every battle I launch over 5000 anti-ship missiles, several thousands of AMM, and hundreds of fighter-carried torpedos.  2500 ordnance factories and twelve huge fuel harvesting platforms are supporting my huge fleet, but even this production capability is far from enough.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sagal on September 23, 2014, 04:18:43 AM
I've seen you do these fights against almost 1000% difficulty NPR, (thats cool I have to say) but do you have 1 from the start or do you explore until it generates one? I did one 500% I think or so but without any starting NPRs and it was pretty lame or I just had good luck. couple thousand missiles with some self guidance and it ripped their all fleets (military and civilian ones) into pieces. Sorry if that didn't make any sense :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 23, 2014, 05:39:11 AM
I for once got fond of Multi-Nation starts in Sol. Makes for an excellent early game where your small military, slow ships and huge distances makes for a Nexus Jupiter Incident style narration and feeling.

There are 4 nations in my current game ( representing new world powers after 3 World War ) and its really nice to see Sol bustling with activity, with ships, sensor emmisions and heat signatures moving all around the system, colonies etc ( even if it makes the game slow down to a crawl ).

Terraforming of Ganymedes ( my only colony with ppl so far - feeding off minerals from Merkury and Europa ) goes on in full force, with temp already risen by at least 30 degree and in rather funny twist Gany has more workers available than Earth ;). I have other colony in Sigma Draconis system but its empty apart from automines and Mass Drivers because im focusing on Gany for the time being.

Islamic Caliphate is the only other nation with colonies ( both Mars and Moon, some comets and one or two moons - Mars is completely devoid of TN minerals ) so far ...  i have made every NPR the same but IC is clearly evolving faster and has a large military force, much larger than Pan Asian Union and United States of American Nations ( shameless ripoff from Steve's TN campaign - im sorry already :( ) which troubles me because truce countdown just finished and for 50 years those guys stayed neutral to me despite me allowing them trade access :/

Eventual war can get bloody because of the sheer size of Islamic forces event if they are somewhat low tech.

And of course i've run into Swarm and lost 3 of my Copernicus - D class exploration ships :(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JOKER on September 23, 2014, 10:34:14 PM
Quote from: Sagal link=topic=3808. msg76074#msg76074 date=1411463923
I've seen you do these fights against almost 1000% difficulty NPR, (thats cool I have to say) but do you have 1 from the start or do you explore until it generates one? I did one 500% I think or so but without any starting NPRs and it was pretty lame or I just had good luck.  couple thousand missiles with some self guidance and it ripped their all fleets (military and civilian ones) into pieces.  Sorry if that didn't make any sense :D

I've once fight against a 400%, one decisive battle and they are out of game.  In this battle, I generated 20 systems at all and have one NPR from the start.  They have some end-game tech, like armor, laser wavelength and turret tracking.  D9 missile are almost useless, and 50 or more D16 are needed to guarantee a kill against a single ship.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 26, 2014, 03:37:46 PM
I've discovered new system of Parsifal... it has two asteroid belts and the furthest asteroid from the second one is .... well just look at the attached pic...

This has to be some kind of record ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on September 26, 2014, 03:56:42 PM
It might be a record for a unitary system, but that's not that big overall.  Its not uncommon to see those distances in binary or trinary systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on October 08, 2014, 12:31:37 AM
I might have overbuilt a bit... 2 of my terraform fleets went back to Earth for some repairs and R&R... At the moment there are 618 terraform installations in orbit....
In 6 months they will all leave for a system with 7 prime candidates for terraform, most of them will be farming comunities but one of them have the greatest concentration of Duranium ever discovered...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ixeziel on October 08, 2014, 01:39:38 PM
I have lost too many power/propulsion scientists have accidents researching fuel efficiency that I'm now thinking that I should avoid researching that until I have at least two, just in case one has an accident.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: linkxsc on October 08, 2014, 07:16:55 PM
After the earth federation finished making a number of trade agreements with the glease 328(dont remember exact number). They continued to explore neighboring systems farther and farther from the homeland of sol. Avoiding as they can the much less friendly alience of alpha centauri. That is until they hit the the 32nd system explored, a wolf-something system 7 jumps from sol and the farthest number of jumps yet. After jumping into system, time seemed to stand still, as the game came to a grinding halt.

Honestly dunno whats up, even opening the industry menu takes over 3 minutes, and a 5 day increment now takes roughly 7 minutes to complete. Long story short, game does not do well on laptops.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: martinuzz on October 09, 2014, 12:12:59 PM
I was very confused to notice a worker shortage of 12 million workers on Earth, which has a population by now of 3.6 billion (started with 2 billion, conventional start). Then I remembered that I built a new single-slipyard naval yard a few years ago, and set it to continual expansion.
I guess those shipyard operation techs really kicked in, because I now own a 1.12 million ton military naval yard :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on October 09, 2014, 02:31:56 PM
Honestly dunno whats up, even opening the industry menu takes over 3 minutes, and a 5 day increment now takes roughly 7 minutes to complete. Long story short, game does not do well on laptops.

This has nothing to do with laptops. Aurora has major performance issues, especially when there is a number of NPRs running around your game, so 7 minutes for 5 day increment isn't anything out of the ordinary. To be honest whenever I play some major campaign, I always do something else when playing an Aurora. Favorite activities include civ 5 or other turn based strategies, reading books, re-watching anime I already saw and reading TVtropes. It helps that I have two monitors (a laptop screen and a normal monitor hooked up to it). And from what I've read on the forums, I'm not the only one doing so.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: linkxsc on October 09, 2014, 08:29:25 PM
The laptop cant play civ5 though. And if i play dwarf fortress, aurora gets bugged.

Though I do wonder. See when I play at home, my desktop is much faster (hardware is about the same). The biggest difference is at home ive got the game running off a solid state drive, and the laptop is a laptop hdd
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on October 10, 2014, 03:55:06 AM
@linkxsc

I read books ( WEBER !! ) and surf the web when Aurora starts to have problems with calculating everything.

I have two campaings now :
One is my YT tutorial that i've begun recently and second one is Her Majesty Failboat - save uploaded by a guy from 4chan's /gsg which im trying to salvage coz its terrible..

Here's a link if anyone is curious : http://www.mediafire.com/download/6yucrcn5tzgzlr2/Her+Majesty%27s+Failboat.zip#39;s_Failboat.zip
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ixeziel on October 10, 2014, 03:40:07 PM
Decided to start a multi-empire start on earth and somehow ended up generating an NPR on earth ???.  Don't know how it happened, I think it might be because I set NPR generation chance to 85%.  Not the first time I've set it to 85% but first time an NPR spawned on earth though.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 11, 2014, 09:27:38 AM
If you didn't tick the NPR box in empire generation menu...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ixeziel on October 11, 2014, 11:10:52 AM
Quote from: Garfunkel link=topic=3808. msg76397#msg76397 date=1413037658
If you didn't tick the NPR box in empire generation menu. . .

All the empires I created were conventional start empires.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 11, 2014, 12:55:46 PM
Then it's a mystery. I thought NPR's could only be created by the game on empty bodies.

In other news, I always play with real stars - so I was very surprised to find a Class 2 Black Hole! Luckily my survey cruiser had enough velocity to escape. Had to go trawling the update notes to discover that Steve had put Black Holes back in.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sublight on October 11, 2014, 01:43:48 PM
While creating those extra factions did you at any point click 'cancel' or close out of the create new faction window? I think there is a bug where closing/canceling out causes the faction to generate anyway as a NPR.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on October 20, 2014, 08:59:58 PM
4 real life days (perhaps 3 in-game months) of constant firing-range delays and survivor recovery error messages...the problem has resolved, but something absolutely EPIC is happening in the depths of space. Someday I may find out what.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 21, 2014, 08:18:40 AM
My homeworld (Earth renamed Terra) is the middle of a seven long strait chain (two JPs in a line between systems [with a single JP system branched off here and there]) between two nexus systems (5+ JPs each) with a friendly empire on one and an ever increasing span of uninhabitable systems the other way, a lot of empty systems with no planets.  Surveyed the JPs of the systems 3 jumps from the empty nexus and found three habitable planet less than cost 10 and two planets with ancient ruins and one with a destroyed empire.  Heavily building up military just in case.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on October 23, 2014, 10:31:19 PM
I just killed 1 million of my own citizens in a furious orbital bombardment.
The concordant will be presenting a briefing at 11.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Beersatron on October 24, 2014, 08:56:01 AM
I just killed 1 million of my own citizens in a furious orbital bombardment.
The concordant will be presenting a briefing at 11.



That should keep them on their toes!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on October 24, 2014, 10:14:58 PM
The concordant has retired, citing medical reasons, in the midst of a devastating ground/space war. The admiralty has 4 weeks to confirm his named successor.

(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=1471)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 25, 2014, 08:22:43 AM
The concordant has retired, citing medical reasons, in the midst of a devastating ground/space war. The admiralty has 4 weeks to confirm his named successor.

(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=1471)

Seriously unexpected development.
Or is it a ruse? Still pulling the strings behind closed doors?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on October 25, 2014, 08:30:41 AM
One of the reasons I LOOOOVE Aurora is that you can get knocked on your behind by things like this and it changes the perfectly formed storyline you had in your head. It's like playing with spaceship toys as a 5 year old...but they occasionally play back.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 06, 2014, 11:29:49 AM
Got friendly enough with the only Empire I found so far to share techs. They gave me two background techs (ones I neglected to get) and I am wondering If I should share tech back. I am at Gas AM drives with a high tech in other places as well. Should I share?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on November 07, 2014, 08:08:53 AM
Sharing tech is a RP element and I believe has no bearing on the game otherwise (except the obvious that they will have that technology). Even if sharing tech boosted your relations I don't think your relations really need a boost if they are giving you tech.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on November 09, 2014, 11:03:51 PM

once again, a science vessel in the depths of a newly discovered system has picked up the radar signature of the semisentient robo-beings that haunt the edges of known space. ETA to getting my face blown off: 2 minutes


...you'd think I'd have learned my lesson now...but nooooooooo

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 10, 2014, 07:14:03 AM
I wish I could find something that will try and blow my face off. I've surveyed 40 systems so far and only found one empire who's home planet is two jumps away from mine.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 16, 2014, 10:38:52 PM
Just found a massive system where the farthest planet orbits at 131t km (131 trillion km, ie 131,000,000,000,000,000 meters [13.85 light years]) totaling at a system diameter of 27.7 light years. Is this a bug?
Edit: I looked up the star type and it is a Yellow Supergiant (M1-Ia)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on November 17, 2014, 09:25:53 AM
I've had absurdly large systems before generated off of O class stars.  I do not recall the specifics but my survey craft traveled for years and ran out of fuel traveling from the JP to the closest survey point.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 17, 2014, 09:32:25 AM
Started a new game after not touching Aurora for a while. Set up my faction, set up another human faction for me to play as well, went forward by a five-second increment. Turns out the game spawned another alien race called 'The Halfway Star Empire' on Earth as well, complete with spaceships. Time to begin planetary evacuation methinks.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on November 19, 2014, 02:18:18 PM
When the Geosurvey vessel Hound, on a peaceful mission of first contact with the aliens now known as the Russets, was fired upon and mercilessly destroyed, human engineers quickly prototyped and tested the Blackbear class of destroyers.  With no time to design new engines or weapon systems, they re-used the gas guzzling engines from the Hawk, a fast patrol craft suitable only for home system defense, and they adapted the Arrow missile launchers and anti-missile meson turrets from Earth's two PDCs.  Although cobbled together in a hurry, the Blackbears proved to be very capable in the Ion era, with good speed, adequate range, and deep magazines:

Code: [Select]
Blackbear class Destroyer    8,000 tons     208 Crew     1134.4 BP      TCS 160  TH 432  EM 0
2700 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 36.33
Maint Life 1.85 Years     MSP 177    AFR 256%    IFR 3.6%    1YR 66    5YR 987    Max Repair 54 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 672   

108 EP Ion Drive (4)    Power 108    Fuel Use 207.23%    Signature 108    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 10.9 billion km   (46 days at full power)

Triple R1.5/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (1x3)    Range 15,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 9-9     RM 1.5    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Turret Fire Control S02 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor 9P (1)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 4 Missile Launcher (75% Reduction) (8)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 80
Missile Fire Control FC38-R160 (1)     Range 38.3m km    Resolution 160
Arrow-I (168)  Speed: 13,500 km/s   End: 121.9m    Range: 98.8m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 54/32/16

Civilian Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 1.3m km    MCR 137k km    Resolution 1
Ship Sensor MR42-R160 (1)     GPS 6720     Range 42.5m km    Resolution 160

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The relatively primitive Russets had nothing that could match it.  (Incidentally, they are so named because they were discovered in a star system named for the potato-growing region of Maine -- Aroostook.  All of their colonies are named for potato varieties.)  By the time a one-way jump gate was constructed, Earth had three shipyards (7 slipways total) producing Blackbears, and 11 were then in service.  They destroyed the entire Russet armada and took control of the planet's airspace with the loss of only one ship.  Each of the other ten took dozens of strikes from planetary defenses but somehow held together.

The last flight of the Blackbears occurred in April of 2012.  Humanity had made contact with a new alien race, apparently far advanced in technology, coming from the neighboring Oquossoc system.  Only their survey ships and one jumpgate construction ship had been encountered so far, but the aliens refused to communicate and gave only hostile signals, and we had nicknamed them the Intruders.  On April fool's day, three enormous (30,000 ton) Intruder warships transited into Sol from Oquossoc.  At that time, 19 Blackbears were in service:  5 were stationed at the Oquossoc jump point (just inside Uranian orbit), 8 at earth, and 6 were in the Aroostook system defending the conquered world.

The five destroyers at the JP (the 2nd battle group) began launching their missiles as soon as they detected the transit.  The alien ships moved incredibly fast and had powerful ECM, so they quickly outran the Blackbear group, but not before several volleys of missiles reached them.  The good news was, it was possible for Arrow missiles to hit the alien warships -- their point defenses weren't as superior as their engine and ECM tech.  The bad news was, they shrugged off several strength-9 hits without slowing down or altering course.

The 1st battle group, the eight Blackbears stationed at Earth, moved to intercept the aliens who were on a direct course for Earth at blinding speed.  The fleets met in the asteroid belt, and the Blackbears launched almost all of their combined 1344 missiles.  Several volleys struck the alien leader, and slowed it slightly, but not enough.  The intruders launched missiles at point-blank range which obliterated their targets in one strike.  One by one, all eight Blackbears were destroyed, their missiles in flight losing guidance before they might have destroyed the not-quite-invulnerable aliens.

While the 2nd battle group rushed back to Earth, the intruders began to ravage the inner solar system.  Nuclear strikes of unbelievable magnitude all but wiped out the major cities of Mars.  One intruder warship, apparently out of missiles, headed straight for Mercury and began ramming the fleet of four terraformers stationed there.  Unbelievably, it destroyed all four of them by ramming, as well as two civilian freighters, and continued toward Earth at blistering speed, seemingly indifferent to the ruptures in its own hull.  Finally it closed within 10 million kilometers of Earth, where the two PDCs' fire controls were able to gain a lock, and we managed to destroy it with a hail of Arrow missiles.

The other two alien warships stopped moving near the Martian orbit, and remained there for a few days until the 2nd Battle Group closed within missile range.  The aliens fired their final salvo and destroyed one of the human ships.  Out of ammo and out of fuel (we presume), they remained stationary and silent thereafter.  The brave pilots of the last four operational Blackbears had no alternatives but to close to point-blank range and commence firing with their anti-missile meson turrets.  Apparently helpless, the alien warships were destroyed.

The last four Blackbears rescued as many as they could from the lifepods, and are now in drydock on Earth.  This sturdy class served humanity well, but Blackbear 025, currently under construction, will be the last of the line.  Earth's engineers are now focused on developing ships with the speed to outrun the aliens -- using newly developed Magneto-Plasma engines -- and developing PDCs capable of defending the entire inner Solar system with multi-stage missiles and ultra-long-range fire controls.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bryan Swartz on November 21, 2014, 08:43:38 AM
Quote from: Theodidactus
One of the reasons I LOOOOVE Aurora is that you can get knocked on your behind by things like this and it changes the perfectly formed storyline you had in your head. It's like playing with spaceship toys as a 5 year old...but they occasionally play back.

This is me as well.  In my game a scandal just broke, based on multiple things but primarily an expensive ship that doesn't work as designed.  It's thrown many things up in the air, and I'm loving it. 

Quote from: 83athom
Just found a massive system where the farthest planet orbits at 131t km (131 trillion km, ie 131,000,000,000,000,000 meters [13.85 light years]) totaling at a system diameter of 27.7 light years.

Speechless.  I don't even want to think about what kind of ship you'd need to even think about surveying that big a system. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on November 21, 2014, 06:07:58 PM
Just found a massive system where the farthest planet orbits at 131t km (131 trillion km, ie 131,000,000,000,000,000 meters [13.85 light years]) totaling at a system diameter of 27.7 light years. Is this a bug?
Edit: I looked up the star type and it is a Yellow Supergiant (M1-Ia)
That system is impressive and the largest I have ever heard of, but the stellar class can't be right. M1 would be amongst the smallest type of stars, red dwarfs. Giant stars cannot be yellow, or better, anything other than blue, because bigger star also means higher burn temperature, without exception.

///Edit: Sorry, that was not really right. I thought this was about normal main sequence stars still, but had to learn that there are indeed helium fusing stars so big, that they become yellow giants at some stage. New knowledge, sorry sorry.

Amazing that Aurora is so accurate to include even chances to find such rarities. Still hoping to find an O someday, but was scared when I saw an A already being so big that it couldn't be effectively traveled at antimatter-age.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Theodidactus on November 24, 2014, 06:09:08 PM
I just jumped through a hostile jump point to confront my longtime rivals in their home system. I deliberately set it up to create a save point AFTER I'd gone through with the jump. No turning back now. Their mission is to neutralize all hostile fleets, move my long-ranged missile cruiser within 1 AU of their largest shipyard, obtain a firing solution, and await further orders.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 03, 2014, 11:47:02 AM
Just finished designing the ultimate weapon of the galaxy (so far). The Size 100 AST "Eversong";
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 100 MSP  (5 HS)     Warhead: 625    Armour: 3     Manoeuvre Rating: 12
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 17 minutes   Range: 15.6m km
Active Sensor Strength: 15   Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 200    Maximum Range vs 10000 ton object (or larger): 23 330 000 km
ECM Level: 1
Cost Per Missile: 203.45
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 180%   3k km/s 60%   5k km/s 36%   10k km/s 18%
Materials Required:    157x Tritanium   9x Boronide   15.5x Uridium   21.95x Gallicite   Fuel x7187.5

Development Cost for Project: 20345RP
Yes you read right, a size 100 torpedo. Designed for both subjugating empires, melting shipyards/space stations, and super-capital destruction (melts through 25 layers of armor).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 28, 2014, 09:38:56 PM
After some playing around with the designer, I came up with a new doctrine I would like to try out. I would be really happy if I could get multi-nation NPR to work (I can't quite get it right), if anyone knows how to set it up properly please help.

Ship doctrine; Every ship is able to sustain itself to be able to patrol/scout/attack on its own if it has to. Ships will be very large compaired to normal (10x size) and each hull size will have a "armament". Every ship will have deckguns (dual, mid size gauss cannon, light-medium armor, turret), light or heavy gauss PD (or a mix of both) (light=dual smallest, no armor) (heavy=quad smallest or dual small), CIWS, railguns, spinal laser, size 3-5 missiles, and a main armament of either plasma, particle, or lasers. Ships will also have some marines. Ship ranges will be around 25b km standard with +/- 20%. Standard military ship armor level is between 5-8 (with exceptions) and commercial armor is 3 (no exceptions). Any ships that fall out of their class will have special names (listed below the classes). Stations will be custom made via modules to be special and modular with both civilian and military stations. Civilian stations will feature at least 1 weapons bay about the size of a destroyer (depending on importance). Each colony and military station will have OWPs the size of battlecruisers.

Frigate;
   Hull: 20k tons to 40k tons
   Armament: Deckguns 4-8, Light PD 8-16 or heavy 4-8 or mix, CIWS 1, Railguns 1-3, Spinal 1, Missiles 4-10, Main 1-3
   Troops: 0-1 company
Destroyer;
   Hull: 50k tons to 80k tons
   Armament: Deckguns 6-12, Light PD 12-20 or heavy 8-12 or mix, CIWS 2-3, Railguns 2-5, Spinal 1, Missiles 6-12, Main 2-5
   Troops: 1-2 companies
Cruiser;
   Hull: 100k tons to 250k tons
   Armament: Deckguns 14-22, Light PD 16-24 or heavy 10-16 or mix, CIWS 2-5, Railguns 4-7, Spinal 1, Missiles 10-20, Main 4-6, Hangar 4-8 Fighters 1 Gunship
   Troops: 2-6 companies
Battlecruiser;
   Hull: 300k tons to 500k tons
   Armament: Deckguns 20-30, Light PD 20-30 or heavy 15-20 or mix, CIWS 3-6, Railguns 8-10, Spinal 1, Missiles 15-30, Main 5-10
   Troops: 1-2 battalions
Capital;
   Hull: 500k tons to 1m tons
   Armament: Class specific
      Battleship: Deckguns 24-36, Light PD 24-36 or heavy 16-24 or mix, CIWS 3-8, Railguns 10-14, Spinal 1, Missiles 20-40, Main 10-20, Hangar 12 fighters 3 gunships or 1-2 frigates
      Carrier: Deckguns 5-1, Light PD 20-30 or heavy 10-16 or mix, CIWS 4-8, Railguns 0-4, Spinal 1, Missiles 10-20, Main 0-4, Hangar 16-28 Fighters 5-10 gunships and 1-3 frigates
   Troops: 1-3 battalions
Super-capital;
   Hull: 1.5m tons+
   Armament: *due to the sensitive nature of this data, it has been removed. (dependent on what I want to do)
   Troops: 5 battalions +

Special;
 Light: low end of weight class (armor 4-5)
 Heavy: high end of weight class (armor 8-10)
 Scout: A larger portion of the ship is devoted to sensors and stealth (larger sensors, more sensors, stealth , armament -50%)
 Stealth: The ship is streamlined to look smaller than it is while reducing its signature. (stealth, so shields, less EP)
 Assault: A larger portion of the ship is devoted to all the things that go boom while reducing the ships range and forgoing the troops. (armament +50%-100%, range is extremely short (1-7.5b km, no troops)
 Long Range: The ship is designed for long cruises (+50%-100% range, -20% armament)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on December 28, 2014, 09:55:54 PM
You are playing the tunes I like to hear, athom. I can't wait to get the spicy details.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Anarade Relle on December 29, 2014, 08:18:28 PM
When the Geosurvey vessel Hound, on a peaceful mission of first contact with the aliens now known as the Russets, was fired upon and mercilessly destroyed, human engineers quickly prototyped and tested the Blackbear class of destroyers.  With no time to design new engines or weapon systems, they re-used the gas guzzling engines from the Hawk, a fast patrol craft suitable only for home system defense, and they adapted the Arrow missile launchers and anti-missile meson turrets from Earth's two PDCs.  Although cobbled together in a hurry, the Blackbears proved to be very capable in the Ion era, with good speed, adequate range, and deep magazines:

Code: [Select]
Blackbear class Destroyer    8,000 tons     208 Crew     1134.4 BP      TCS 160  TH 432  EM 0
2700 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 36.33
Maint Life 1.85 Years     MSP 177    AFR 256%    IFR 3.6%    1YR 66    5YR 987    Max Repair 54 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 672   

108 EP Ion Drive (4)    Power 108    Fuel Use 207.23%    Signature 108    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 10.9 billion km   (46 days at full power)

Triple R1.5/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (1x3)    Range 15,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 9-9     RM 1.5    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Turret Fire Control S02 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor 9P (1)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 4 Missile Launcher (75% Reduction) (8)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 80
Missile Fire Control FC38-R160 (1)     Range 38.3m km    Resolution 160
Arrow-I (168)  Speed: 13,500 km/s   End: 121.9m    Range: 98.8m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 54/32/16

Civilian Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 1.3m km    MCR 137k km    Resolution 1
Ship Sensor MR42-R160 (1)     GPS 6720     Range 42.5m km    Resolution 160

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The relatively primitive Russets had nothing that could match it.  (Incidentally, they are so named because they were discovered in a star system named for the potato-growing region of Maine -- Aroostook.  All of their colonies are named for potato varieties.)  By the time a one-way jump gate was constructed, Earth had three shipyards (7 slipways total) producing Blackbears, and 11 were then in service.  They destroyed the entire Russet armada and took control of the planet's airspace with the loss of only one ship.  Each of the other ten took dozens of strikes from planetary defenses but somehow held together.

The last flight of the Blackbears occurred in April of 2012.  Humanity had made contact with a new alien race, apparently far advanced in technology, coming from the neighboring Oquossoc system.  Only their survey ships and one jumpgate construction ship had been encountered so far, but the aliens refused to communicate and gave only hostile signals, and we had nicknamed them the Intruders.  On April fool's day, three enormous (30,000 ton) Intruder warships transited into Sol from Oquossoc.  At that time, 19 Blackbears were in service:  5 were stationed at the Oquossoc jump point (just inside Uranian orbit), 8 at earth, and 6 were in the Aroostook system defending the conquered world.

The five destroyers at the JP (the 2nd battle group) began launching their missiles as soon as they detected the transit.  The alien ships moved incredibly fast and had powerful ECM, so they quickly outran the Blackbear group, but not before several volleys of missiles reached them.  The good news was, it was possible for Arrow missiles to hit the alien warships -- their point defenses weren't as superior as their engine and ECM tech.  The bad news was, they shrugged off several strength-9 hits without slowing down or altering course.

The 1st battle group, the eight Blackbears stationed at Earth, moved to intercept the aliens who were on a direct course for Earth at blinding speed.  The fleets met in the asteroid belt, and the Blackbears launched almost all of their combined 1344 missiles.  Several volleys struck the alien leader, and slowed it slightly, but not enough.  The intruders launched missiles at point-blank range which obliterated their targets in one strike.  One by one, all eight Blackbears were destroyed, their missiles in flight losing guidance before they might have destroyed the not-quite-invulnerable aliens.

While the 2nd battle group rushed back to Earth, the intruders began to ravage the inner solar system.  Nuclear strikes of unbelievable magnitude all but wiped out the major cities of Mars.  One intruder warship, apparently out of missiles, headed straight for Mercury and began ramming the fleet of four terraformers stationed there.  Unbelievably, it destroyed all four of them by ramming, as well as two civilian freighters, and continued toward Earth at blistering speed, seemingly indifferent to the ruptures in its own hull.  Finally it closed within 10 million kilometers of Earth, where the two PDCs' fire controls were able to gain a lock, and we managed to destroy it with a hail of Arrow missiles.

The other two alien warships stopped moving near the Martian orbit, and remained there for a few days until the 2nd Battle Group closed within missile range.  The aliens fired their final salvo and destroyed one of the human ships.  Out of ammo and out of fuel (we presume), they remained stationary and silent thereafter.  The brave pilots of the last four operational Blackbears had no alternatives but to close to point-blank range and commence firing with their anti-missile meson turrets.  Apparently helpless, the alien warships were destroyed.

The last four Blackbears rescued as many as they could from the lifepods, and are now in drydock on Earth.  This sturdy class served humanity well, but Blackbear 025, currently under construction, will be the last of the line.  Earth's engineers are now focused on developing ships with the speed to outrun the aliens -- using newly developed Magneto-Plasma engines -- and developing PDCs capable of defending the entire inner Solar system with multi-stage missiles and ultra-long-range fire controls.

That's a pretty cool story. The Blackbears certainly contributed alot to the defence of human civilization. I never really managed to have to build a emergency war fleet like you did here; I usually end up giving in and churn out warships in the long years before finding a NPR.

Personally I suggest keeping at least one Blackbear in a hanger bay somewhere as a museum ship for RP purposes. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 29, 2014, 11:07:44 PM
That's a pretty cool story. The Blackbears certainly contributed alot to the defence of human civilization. I never really managed to have to build a emergency war fleet like you did here; I usually end up giving in and churn out warships in the long years before finding a NPR.

Personally I suggest keeping at least one Blackbear in a hanger bay somewhere as a museum ship for RP purposes. :)

And have it come out and pwn all the aliens when they come knocking. That's basically how the Ark Royal series starts.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Anarade Relle on December 30, 2014, 07:03:45 PM
And have it come out and pwn all the aliens when they come knocking. That's basically how the Ark Royal series starts.

Sounds like a good plan.

Of course one has to play the SBY Theme when doing so.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on December 31, 2014, 03:49:06 PM
I am mildly amused by my planetary findings.

Planet with 100% BioGen Bonus.
The kicker. 2.48 Gravity and 165 atm. By the time I researched the tech to make a normal home on it would be useless because I would have researched everything important in the field.

And 3k underground infra to host a sizable lab complex aren't really an option either.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on December 31, 2014, 03:55:08 PM
The Terran Federation just made first contact with the second alien race it has found (the first being automated defense ships in the Epsilon Nebula). 4 10,000 ton ships have closed to 50m km of the survey ship Discovery 003, and remain there while the ships exchange messages in an attempt to establish communication. The Federation is unaware of this find, and does not expect the Discovery to report back for several weeks, as it was commanded to inspect the ideal habitable world present in the system, and then survey system for minerals.

The Bushehr Republic has encountered the first alien race in it's history. The planetary sensors on Bushehr Prime detected an active sensor signature several billion km from the homeworld, and on a direct heading for it. In response, the Bushehr dispatched the 1st Cruiser Group, consisting of 1 jump cruiser, 1 missile cruiser, and 2 escort cruisers. After closing to 50m km of the alien ship, they began communication attempts, while the Bushehr surveyors were attempting to find the jump point the alien ship originated from.

Communication between the two races was established 17th April, 2043, marking the beginning of Federation-Republic relations. The 1st Cruiser Group followed Discovery 003 out of the Bushehr system, into the system the Terrans call Epsilon Indi, a nebula with a Terran colony and archaeological dig, although that wasn't mentioned when the Discovery politely informed the Bushehr that the system was under the control of the Federation.

Edit: The Terran Federation has finalized it's design for the Orion class Battleship, meant to operate primarily in the extensive Epsilon Nebula. It is still going to be some time before a shipyard is large enough to accommodate it, though.
Code: [Select]
Orion class Battleship    32 000 tons     760 Crew     5124.6 BP      TCS 640  TH 1920  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 10-89     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 30     PPV 180
Maint Life 2.19 Years     MSP 2001    AFR 819%    IFR 11.4%    1YR 563    5YR 8441    Max Repair 360 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0    
Flag Bridge    Cryogenic Berths 200    

N240-20 Ion Drive (8)    Power 240    Fuel Use 64%    Signature 240    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 4 000 000 Litres    Range 35.2 billion km   (135 days at full power)

20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (6)    Range 256 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
300mm C4 Plasma Carronade (16)    Range 240 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 24-4     RM 1    ROF 30        24 12 8 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
TN/SAG-5 Beam Fire Control (3)    Max Range: 256 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
P-9 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (10)     Total Power Output 90    Armour 0    Exp 5%

TN/SPD-3 Missile Detection Sensor (1)     GPS 108     Range 8.6m km    MCR 941k km    Resolution 1
TN/SPS-1 Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 3456     Range 69.1m km    Resolution 16
TN/SPY-9 Large Area Search Sensor (1)     GPS 28800     Range 257.6m km    Resolution 80

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Another Edit: Another game, with the Terran Imperium, a xenophobic empire that believes it is destined to rule the galaxy, has been in a war with a 450% difficulty NPR for about five years. Although they haven't found Sol yet, my brief engagements with them have demonstrated that my anti-missile ability is very effective against them, but the range on my ship's systems is lacking. Currently, the entire Terran fleet is stationed on the warp point that leads to the NPRs territory.

In addition, I have a single survey ship (formerly two survey ships) trapped behind enemy lines, desperately surveying new systems in an attempt to stay ahead of the alien forces, and possibly find a warp point leading home.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 13, 2015, 10:36:10 AM
10 years into my game with no ships yet. And the NPRs must have done/found something big. For the past several 1 month turn change I've been getting several Wreck Salvage Errors/messages. This lasted for several months (averaging around 3-6 every month) and has no longer been happening.
Edit; After a couple more months it has happened twice more in a group of 6 and 5 messages. The exact message is "Wreck not found in CompleteWreckSalvage". What are they doing over there?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 13, 2015, 10:49:32 AM
Also, I just now noticed in my game it started me with 35cm focal size for lasers, a capacitor recharge rate of 8, and soft x-ray wavelength. I guess the game wants me to do some lasers this game. Everything else in the all the trees started pretty low level though, except sensors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on January 15, 2015, 12:02:04 PM
Two factions are trying to salvage the same wrecks, if I remember correctly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 16, 2015, 10:53:47 AM
Sorting out designs for both factions in my current game and doing a bit of surveying in the meantime. Atlantic surveyors have gone to Luna, Jupiter and Mercury to search for resources while their Eurasian counterparts are searching Mars and Saturn.

Edit; Poor Eurasians. They've not found a single mineral deposit on Mars, the first time this has happened in nearly a dozen games.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: vstyds on January 17, 2015, 08:42:04 PM
In my current game I built my first construction ships and I'm having them build jump gates everywhere! (except that jump point to a black hole that sucked my lone exploration ship, thankfully I knew something bad could happen, so the exploration task group had one and only one ship).

It's faster than having freighters that can jump yet, and I've caught civilian ships using them, which is neat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on January 18, 2015, 03:16:12 AM
In my current game the 2 other powers on my home planet have been sending ships to a Spoiler (those that dont leave wrecks for very Long) infested system for about 15 years now, I really dread how many Spoilers I will find when I finally return there and how long it will take to kill all of them... ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on January 18, 2015, 08:04:47 AM
Send a scout. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on January 20, 2015, 02:18:45 PM
Well, there were just 549 FACs in the end, but since they were slower than my ships and outranged as well it would have come down to endless turns of moving away while they try to close the range, I simply SMed in a high tech super race that killed them quickly ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 21, 2015, 04:59:11 PM
My first grav-survey ships just finished building 12 years into the game, and I am excited about what I'll find. I know How many points will be in Sol as I set that to 10, as well as 7 NPRs at start... Yay... fun.

Edit; Okay, something weird happened.  Even with Sol JP set to 10, a full survey found only 4 points. Will more eventually show up from other systems or is is bugged?

Edit 2; Yay, I just found out that my Grav-survey ships don't actually have jump drives. I guess I'll have to do a redesign/refit.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Starmantle on January 23, 2015, 01:44:42 AM

Ground combat on Eris against the Separatists:

September 15th, 2054

General Stephanie Forster and her Hovertank Division Alpha, the first brigade of Hovertank Division Beta, a brigade of Garrison troops, and 11 replacement battalions, successfully land on Eris.  The big and vulnerable Broadsword class Troop Transports move back 5m km from the planet's surface because of rumors of short-range anti-ship missiles held by the separatist army.  Two Abjurer class Area Defense Cruisers remain in low orbit to respond to any threats.

Enemy forces include 8 conventional armor divisions, 16 conventional infantry divisions, 1 mobile infantry battalion, and 2 garrison battalions.

So the Separatists have over 24 divisions and the Commonwealth has about 2 divisions, but separatist forces are almost entirely low-tech conventional units.  Militia forces, really, with tanks constructed from heavy tracked mining vehicles and fitted with laser drills.  Meanwhile the Hovertank forces represent the pinnacle of Combine technology.  They have the best commanders, the best training, and the best equipment.  Forster also wants to make an example of the Separatists both to dissuade other colonies from declaring independence and to ensure funding streams for ground forces that are often ignored in favor of Fleet Command. 

Eris is an interesting and hazardous battleground.  It's just 1/4 of 1% of the Earth's mass, and less dense, honeycombed with artificial and natural underground caverns and facilities.  It also contains a population of about 1.3 million humans. 

Eris has an escape velocity of just 1.38 km/s, less than the muzzle velocity of a conventional rifle, and far less than the Gauss and railgun weaponry used by the Commonwealth.  Traditional "Over the horizon" artillery attacks aren't possible because of the weak gravity, and the horizon is always surprisingly close on all sides.  The anti-gravity capability of Hovertanks is carefully calibrated by engineers to keep the armored and shielded units fast and nimble, but well-grounded.

Both sides experiment with making direct attacks through the planet itself, targeting enemy units over the horizon by firing through the rock of the planet.  Occasionally, this is effective and occasionally it his and destroys critical underground infrastructure or mining facilities under the surface. 

It quickly becomes obvious that the "front" in the engagement can be fluid.  Flanking maneuvers cutting a different way around the planet's surface, or even straight through the center are common for the separatists.  They're occasionally able to isolate the comparatively vulnerable replacement battalions and inflict casualties before Hovertanks can come to their aid.

As the battle wages on, the fatwave video broadcasts from Eris, long laughed at by people on Earth, become filled with unfiltered images of wildly successful Hovertank Divisions... and grim and up-close images of the civilian and military casualties on the side of the Separatists.

These are not faceless robot battalions from a vault under the red surface of Mars.  These are the sons and daughters, friends and colleagues of Commonwealth citizens. 

Media on Earth begins to play footage of the alien attack on the corporate transport en route to WX Ursae Majoris that killed 50,000 humans in cryogenic sleep - a terrible atrocity committed by an alien intelligence these separatists sided with, but images of death don't cancel out images of death in the minds of Commonwealth citizens. 

The fighting is bloody and many citizens and politicians of Earth call for it to stop, but the Separatists do not surrender.

They truly believe that the Commonwealth is doomed to fall to the Ancients and to again fall under the banner of Earth means doom for the people of Eris.

After 3 months of fighting, all Separatists ground forces are destroyed.  The Combine has only lost the equivalent of about 1 full battalion of replacement troops and many of its units and commanders are now grizzled veterans.

When the armistice is finally signed, only 480,000 colonists are still still alive out of the original 1.3 million.

The military has successfully showcased its abilities, but military and civilian leaders are now under immense scrutiny for their inhumane actions, something that will weigh heavily in the next elections.

Resources reabsorbed into the Commonwealth include 7 construction factories, 6 conventional industry, 18 auto mines, 1 GFTF, 2 tracking stations, and a total of 44,000 tons of TN material. 

The training facility is immediately put to use building a local garrison out of Commonwealth loyalists and 2 Apollo freighters leave Earth orbit to bring out 2 mass drivers to start bringing these materials back to Earth.

Most people in the Commonwealth seem hasty to put the horrors of Eris behind them.  Some redouble the efforts to colonize distant systems and leave memories of the Sol system behind.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 05, 2015, 03:19:35 PM
All these years playing Aurora and this was a first:

Played a nice slow conventional start from a custom Quad system.  48 years in my people explore their first JP (and only JP in the home system) only to find the next system over only has one JP leading back to the first system.  Damn.  Rather small sandbox game I have going on here.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zed 6 on February 05, 2015, 05:26:29 PM
The Farnsworth Parabox!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on February 05, 2015, 09:22:44 PM
Happened to me before, only with 2 systems both linking back to sol. At least one of them had planets, anyway this is a good use for SM mode if anything.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 05, 2015, 11:03:26 PM
I decided to make an SM race and do a conventional start...
50 years in the game.. ugh, i just want to start over again. Trans newtonian it is. Really, being low on research labs really hurts progress, and having like thirty researchers, fifty civilian administrators, and several hundred naval commanders all twiddling their thumbs really hurts my soul. At least this has taught me patience. Or something like that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on February 05, 2015, 11:05:07 PM
SM in more labs, you don't have to play entirely with what you're given at the start.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bryan Swartz on February 06, 2015, 12:47:22 AM
I'd say you have too many academies.  My conventional start is 65 years in, and we have four or five of them.  Just recently went over 200 naval officers.  I've never had 50 total civilian administrators, never mind that many extra -- the current 45 is a high for us.  Only train what you need is my motto.  The research thing is interesting.  A fifth to a third of industrial capacity has been constantly devoting to building more labs(it was a pop-nerfed start so even less than the default I think) and we've never reached the point where we've had 'enough' for the existing scientists.  Usually it's about 30-40% labs behind what we need.  Someday, perhaps, we'll reach the utopia of not constantly reprioritizing inadequate supplies and production capacity to furthering our woefully inadequate operations :). 

Or else ditch it and go TN, but you don't have to have a personnel glut like that. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 06, 2015, 08:29:07 AM
It's all preference.  I personally like the slower starts.  As in my current game I imagined that my home planet was an extra-solar colony that humanity was developing when there was some sort of 'incident' and no further transmissions or ships came from Earth.  The cut off colony had some conventional factories but no naval capabilities or other infrastructure.  I only researched science fields for the specialists that I had.  It was a good 25 years before I got a Power scientist.  My early craft have great sensors and armor though!  I opted for a 50m population start.  Even though 50m is kind of high for a 'space colony' I didn't want this game to take 5 centuries to get to being a space faring race.  500,000 or even 5000 would be more realistic but I don't have the patience for that.....

Come to think of it maybe I do.  Work is pretty slow today.

The key for these population handicapped starts is to cultivate civilian administrators that have population growth bonuses and to remember that population growth is very high on lesser populated bodies.  With the slower non-TN starts you get to know your leaders intimately too.  You don't have the selection and roll-over you do in larger empires.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 06, 2015, 11:20:23 AM
The reason i build so many military academies is because i like having specialists in all feilds. Turns out the RNG hates me anyway as i get five biologists in a row.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 08, 2015, 09:20:53 PM
The reason i build so many military academies is because i like having specialists in all feilds. Turns out the RNG hates me anyway as i get five biologists in a row.
Same here. I'm producing 2 every month (15 years in) and I still have no Bio, Sensors, or Power researchers. I only have a few Kinetic, but they are extremely high level (40%+ bonus with 35 lab minimum each).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 09, 2015, 01:01:27 PM
Same here. I'm producing 2 every month (15 years in) and I still have no Bio, Sensors, or Power researchers. I only have a few Kinetic, but they are extremely high level (40%+ bonus with 35 lab minimum each).

Don't forget any researcher can manage any project. You just get a larger bonus when he works in his own field.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 09, 2015, 01:19:00 PM
Don't forget any researcher can manage any project. You just get a larger bonus when he works in his own field.
I know that and I am using other researchers to fill those fields, but I don't have researchers that get those massive bonuses and can get exponentially better. Its just I have so many that speciallise in CP, Logistics, ect but no one with the massive boosts to Bio, Sensors, or Power. Right now I have a MK researcher researching an engine, which seems logical and illogical, because someone who designs missiles should know the basics of an engine but at the same time I wouldn't want someone who designs explosives designing the engine in my car (just RP things).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bryan Swartz on February 09, 2015, 03:05:35 PM
Interesting discussion and one that shows how different people and playstyles will interpret even the same situation differently in Aurora.  It would drive me nuts if I had really good researchers in every field before having a wide-ranging empire.  The 'weak fields' have vacillated over time but right now it's missiles & kinetics which basically means no significant military tech progress as that's the only kind of weapon that can potentially hurt the more advanced aliens in my game.  This means the military option is basically off the table.  Progression goes in spurts, some fields advancing more quickly than others, which I think is great for the story/RP. 

.02 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vortex421 on February 09, 2015, 05:14:03 PM
The scientist who I consider the 'mother of jump engines' along with every other major engine discovery has just announced she has a long-term illness.  In my campaign (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,219.0.html), I've played it as she is going to see Ion Drive technology completed before she dies, because she has no successor to speak of.  Some of my fields are very weak, so I'm being forced to backstop them with scientists from other departments. 

(Doesn't help that I wound up in a war with a neighboring NPR after entering their system while exploring a jump point... discovered my military forces were woefully under-tech.  So, now, the military technology is on the front burner...)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 12, 2015, 07:55:00 AM
I just discovered the quaintest little quadrinary system you ever did see.  3 T7's and a T9 all orbiting inside the range of Jupiter's orbit.

Being that close together would have been a hoot if it had been full of real estate.  Sadly, only a couple loose asteroids and one gas giant to be found.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 12, 2015, 08:03:09 AM
I also made a recent discovery of a quaint nebula. It has a planet and a couple moons (orbiting a Gas Giant) with a colony cost less than 2.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 14, 2015, 04:18:07 PM
It took me almost 2 years of playing Aurora to grasp the concept that maybe 3x power engines are not the best engines for every military ship ...

Sometimes i feel like lead-dense motherfrakker and grade-A retard ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 14, 2015, 08:22:21 PM
It took me almost 2 years of playing Aurora to grasp the concept that maybe 3x power engines are not the best engines for every military ship ...
Yah, my military ships usually use 1.5x to 2.0x power. Only for some special cases do I use any more/less than that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 15, 2015, 01:34:36 AM
Yah, my military ships usually use 1.5x to 2.0x power. Only for some special cases do I use any more/less than that.
Most of my military sortie is civilian .5 efficiency ships, excludinf fast attack craft. I am considering mounting some faster engines on cruisers and et cetera that i have uet to build, though, as my current fleet only consists of missile escorts, great big carriers, point defense ships, carrier mounted FAC, and fighters.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on February 15, 2015, 12:04:25 PM
Still setting up a Starship Troopers-themed game. I've renamed all the ground units, set up outposts on Mars and Pluto through Spacemaster mode, and designing ships now. Just wish the SICON naval staff could actually design a ship that isn't horribly slow with poor fuel amounts or that isn't sort of okay in speed with poor fuel amounts. :-\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 19, 2015, 03:27:17 PM
Just found a tiny binary system comprised a k2 and a k9 with a combined total of 17 planets, 191 moons and 281 asteroids.  All system bodies orbit inside of a comparable Saturn orbit, no less.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on February 19, 2015, 11:29:41 PM
Not much going on in my current game, just slowly building up from the conventional start and am about 3 years away from having my first competent fleet, it will rely on recovered martian Ion drives, but that's fine by me. The mineral crash should begin a few years after that, but I've been blessed with good amounts of most minerals, Corundium will be a problem requiring scouring clean every rock in the system until I discover a decent supply outside of Sol.
However outside of this game I've been running skirmishes with spawned NPR's or player controlled empires, I've learned a few things about combat and finally discovered how to use defencive fire properly, also increased turret tracking speed is amazingly useful for point defence. I've been poking around at atmospheric use of energy weapons and testing laser warheads, so far it seems they cut right through atmospheres in every possible scenario, lasers I find are fine for shooting at enemy PDC's from ships in space, but my own laser equipped PDC's are useless being unable to fire either into space or at ground installations or PDC's.  There might be a bug in there. Also I haven't had a single shield equipped ship actually take shield damage, it might be because I'm spawning them through spacemaster, has anyone else has shield problems?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on February 20, 2015, 09:56:41 AM
Shields have to be activated. And IIRC they use fuel while active, so the standard is to have them off.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on February 20, 2015, 05:23:06 PM
Shields were on, and charging, they took damage when generators were destroyed by missiles, which souks regenerate after I SM repaired, but otherwise everything hit armour.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 20, 2015, 06:11:01 PM
My shields take damage so it must be something your doing. How many shields do your ships field? The thing about shields is that it is a really slow build up. The strength is mitigates direct damage like armor (one point of shield per 1 damage). Regeneration is the time it takes to fully fill shields. When you are are taking continuous fire, shields absorb Regeneration/Strength (its displayed as Strength-Regeneration in designer) without draining (300/125 [50 2.5 strength shields, 300 sec regeneration] is able to take 1 damage every increment without shield drainage). So what were your shields on your ship and when did you activate them in combat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on February 21, 2015, 09:23:29 AM
IIRC laser fire ignores shields and penetrates directly to armor in StarFire.  I don't remember whether or not Steve pulled this behavior/feature into Aurora.

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 21, 2015, 09:30:40 AM
IIRC laser fire ignores shields and penetrates directly to armor in StarFire.  I don't remember whether or not Steve pulled this behavior/feature into Aurora.

John
Shields absorb lasers in aurora. Their Events Tab reports are extremely unreliable though, to properly see how much damage is migitaged you have to directly keep track of shield strength and the armor damage profile.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: firsal on February 21, 2015, 06:55:28 PM
In my game, Sol has 7 JPs to covered.  Two have jump gates.  I dont have much of a navy.

Looks like this'll be !!FUN!!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 10, 2015, 02:15:11 PM
Found the weirdest system I have seen in Aurora yet. A 4 star system that is two Binary systems close together. D is orbiting A closely, B is orbiting about 0.23 Lys away, and C is orbiting B closely. Both mains (A and B) have plenty of bodies orbiting them, and the secondaries (C and D) also have a few. Best part is that there are several bodies with a cost less than 5 (2 less than 2). Plenty of Gas Giants and asteroids as well. Anyone say possible fortress system? The stars are (in order A, B, C, D) G3-V, M3-V, L1-VII, T1-VII. Its called the Indigo system.

Edit; Found another quad system made of two binaries a couple of months later. Its called the Kohl system. B orbiting A a ways away (not as far, only 15 billion km away), C orbiting B closely, and D orbiting A closely. No joke. G9-V, G9-V, M2-V, and L7-VII (A, B, C, and D respectively). It also has quite a few colonizable planets.

Edit 2; Found yet another quad system made from two binaries a another few months in. Why do I keep finding these. This is the Redwing system (pastime sport will be hockey when I colonize it); B orbiting A far away (about 0.05 Lys), C orbiting A closely this time, and D orbiting B closely. G0-V, G7-V, G8-V, and K1-V (A, B, C, D)(All main sequence stars this time, all close in size too, 1.25m to 1.53m).

Edit3; Why must I have so many quads. Well I found yet another one, the Parsifal system. B orbits A, C orbits B, and D orbits A. They are G2-V, G6-V, K7-V, and K7-V respectively. Once again they are all similar in size and mass.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 12, 2015, 09:28:26 AM
Just found the need to build a batch of grav survey ships. Apparently they are the Adams Family. Charles Hitchcock Adams, John Couch Adams, and Walter Sydney Adams were all added to shipbuilding queue. Those were random names from the name type I selected.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on March 12, 2015, 10:29:55 AM
Just found the need to build a batch of grav survey ships. Apparently they are the Adams Family. Charles Hitchcock Adams, John Couch Adams, and Walter Sydney Adams were all added to shipbuilding queue. Those were random names from the name type I selected.

You selected astronomers as the name scheme, yes?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 12, 2015, 10:34:48 AM
Yes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on March 13, 2015, 12:55:00 AM
Is it running through the astronomer list alphabetically, or are all astronomers named Adams?
Remember comet Adams Adams nine? Man that one was a blast, especially when they used the Adams space telescope to get those close ups of it hitting Adams.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on March 13, 2015, 08:34:00 AM
Is it running through the astronomer list alphabetically, or are all astronomers named Adams?

I think if you dig around the suggestions forum you will see the complete list.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: hyramgraff on March 13, 2015, 09:10:28 AM
I think if you dig around the suggestions forum you will see the complete list.

Somewhere on the shipyard tab in the F2 window there's a button that will display the list of names in the naming scheme and let you select a specific name.  Unfortunately, I don't have Aurora on this computer so I can't tell you what it's called.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MehMuffin on March 15, 2015, 10:30:29 PM
Nothing quite so irritating as when the engines explode on all your grav survey ships, destroying them all 3 or so jumps from Earth...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bryan Swartz on March 16, 2015, 12:04:51 AM
In my universe, humanity has one extrasolar colony and is working on a second, colonization having been forced by starting to run out of minerals in Sol.  Ironically the only aliens we've found in about 30 explored systems so far are right next to Sol.  Hostile, but they haven't invaded(if they did we'd be toast). 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on March 16, 2015, 01:28:43 AM
The year is now 2042, Humanity is reaching the high end of nuclear pulse tech level, and the old ION engines salvaged from Mars have finally been salvaged putting us close to cracking the secret of those engines, meanwhile the success of private enterprise which has invested heavily around the Martian colony at the ruined city of Gehenna has convinced Earths's government to push for colonisation of other worlds.
Mars approaches 80 million people now, just 20 years ago it was considered science fiction for people to live on other worlds, however with the discovery of transnewtonian elements the capability of life support and industrial production increased significantly, furthermore working terraforming equipment was found in the city and after a few years we were constructing more back on earth, then on Mars itself, now 100 TNE factories and 14 terraforming stations are driving the planet towards the ultimate goal of habitability. The remaining 15 terraforming stations needed shall be completed by Martian industry by 2055, estimates are that the planet should be fully terraformed by 2060, after this the stations and infrastructure shall be moved to Venus.
The lunar colony now has 25 million people and growth has been put on hold, the moon was originally a research project to see how well the terraforming technology would work on a smaller body with virtually no atmosphere, there is only one terraformer here and more are not planned for a long time, however even here finding willing colonists was easy, unemployment back on earth is high, even here half the population isn't employed full time, but lunar settlers are enjoying the increased space and freedom compared to earths run down high density slums.
A small starting colony has been sent to Titan, 9 Construction brigades are sent first to set up the initial 2100 infrastructure and the first terraforming station. The colony is expected to be self sufficient, half of the needed 100 factories and 40 terraforming stations will be sent from earth as well as enough infrastructure to support the workers, the remaining half will be constructed on site by the engineers and at an increased rate when the factories come online. More infrastructure may be constructed as needed also. Titan is expected to be fully terraformed sometime around 2075, Estimates are that due to the extreme distance from earth a very thick atmosphere will be necessary, colonists may have some trouble adjusting to 4 atmospheres of pressure but deep diving experiments have shown this to be survivable.
(OOC It looks like I can reach a maximum of colony cost 1.38 on Titan, with the number going down somewhat as reduced cost is researched, I will probably genetically modify the colonists when the planet is done)
The last Comets have finally been surveyed, the 500 ton 400 km/s nuclear thermal powered survey ships proved themselves highly capable, the last 2 have begun the slow 15 month crawl back to earth, they shall get a hero's welcome.
Space X have announced their plans for a new Nuclear Pulse powered Freighter, their first new freighters since launching the venerable conventional powered behemoths which started the Martial colonys. Unlike those ships which reached only 60 km/s, the Wyvern will be capable of 1200 km/s, the fastest commercial vessel yet. Weighing in at 116,000 tons these vessels will hold an astonishing 75,000 tons of cargo, a far cry from their 60,000 ton forbears which could barely haul 5,000 tons. New technology also allows these vessels to unload in a few hours, a fraction of the time and for much more cargo.
Finally Mitsubishi Jukogyo announces it has finished a fourth slipway, retooling is begun for the slightly enhanced Oliver H Perry - 43 Model, with the new heavy duranium armour allowing an extra armour layer, and mod 2 launchers allowing half the reload time.
Code: [Select]
Oliver H Perry - 43 class Destroyer Escort    9,000 tons     223 Crew     1093.6 BP      TCS 180  TH 500  EM 0
2777 km/s     Armour 5-38     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/5/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 24
Maint Life 1.41 Years     MSP 152    AFR 324%    IFR 4.5%    1YR 84    5YR 1257    Max Repair 90 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 564   

10HS 100 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (5)    Power 100    Fuel Use 141.5%    Signature 100    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 330,000 Litres    Range 4.7 billion km   (19 days at full power)

Size 1 Missile Launcher (R2) (24)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control 10/5 FC4-R1 (3)     Range 4.5m km    Resolution 1
Super Sparrow MK III (564)  Speed: 15,600 km/s   End: 6.8m    Range: 6.4m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 52/31/15

Active Search Sensor 10/5 MR4-R1 (1)     GPS 90     Range 4.5m km    MCR 490k km    Resolution 1
Barbone-Dillenbeck Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
Barbone-Dillenbeck EM Detection Sensor EM1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
After refitting the 6 old destroyers, work will begin on the Portland heavy missile cruiser, in 2 years Newport news is expected to have enough capacity to construct destroyers itself, saving greatly on refit costs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 22, 2015, 07:47:42 PM
Wooo Hooo, i finally got a missile trap to work.  8)  All 13 missiles hit, but didn't do much damage.  It was an old set up.  :D  Time to improve my set up. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on March 23, 2015, 06:42:36 AM
A wormhole spawned near one of my sparsely populated colonies. I set up some AMM PDCs to defend colony just in case, as well as gave 9000 AM missiles.

For about 30 years the wormhole was silent. Shortly before first attack I deployed some mines near it, but...
Wormhole moved.

After that, the attack commenced. A strike force of 10 ships jumped in headed towards my colony. The fuel harvester base, unable to retreat to safe space, was destroyed.
I've managed to repel the attackers, but I've exhausted missile stocks. Only 160 AM missiles left on the colony.

Thinking they won't attack me second time, I decided to wait until my missile transports go out of overhaul instead of transporting missiles immediately.
That was fatal mistake.

Now, second strike force, consisting of 4 ships, is heading towards my colony, and my missile stocks are still depleted.
I don't know what to do.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 23, 2015, 11:27:59 AM
Now, second strike force, consisting of 4 ships, is heading towards my colony, and my missile stocks are still depleted.
I don't know what to do.
I know what you should do if you are okay with this (I would except the loss personally). "A great and vast ship larger and more powerful than anything our empire could build simply appeared before the invaders and smote them down. Afterwords the great ship vanished from existence baffling our empires greatest scientist. We reinforced our colony with all available ships to defend in case a third attack comes before our colony's defenses are built, we will be ready." But mind you that is only if you would allow yourself to SM something like this.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on March 23, 2015, 11:38:08 AM
Now, second strike force, consisting of 4 ships, is heading towards my colony, and my missile stocks are still depleted.
I don't know what to do.

You could just add missiles to the colony and said that you did move missile immediately (that would be a lie about what actually happened but would be believable in-story).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on March 23, 2015, 11:48:18 AM
I know what you should do if you are okay with this (I would except the loss personally). "A great and vast ship larger and more powerful than anything our empire could build simply appeared before the invaders and smote them down. Afterwords the great ship vanished from existence baffling our empires greatest scientist. We reinforced our colony with all available ships to defend in case a third attack comes before our colony's defenses are built, we will be ready." But mind you that is only if you would allow yourself to SM something like this.
I'm not okay with this. I should've think about proper defenses, two PDCs aren't going to do the trick.

Anyway, back to story...
Apparently, two of their missile ships have appeared to expend all of the ammunition to strike down the minefield. They rushed in and rammed to death one PDC and two commercial ships.
So, only two ships of enemy remained. These were deadly 56kton dreadnoughts, armed with 500mm lasers. They destroyed every other ship in the system (6 in total, scavenger, 4 freighters and troop transport), leaving only wrecks and lifeboats behind. After dealing with hapless commercials, they jumped in another populated system, GJ 1002.
Now, they are approaching the colony, defended by five Tomahawk long-range missile launcher PDCs. A Quick Response team is coming to help, but they'll be late for 6 hours.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vortex421 on March 23, 2015, 11:58:18 AM
Unfortunately, something like that is bound to happen.  I would use it as a rallying cry for a stronger military presence in the frontier in the future, myself. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on March 24, 2015, 12:15:26 AM
It's sometimes a good idea to keep old obsolete designs around for this kind of event.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 24, 2015, 04:01:32 PM
I found this planet :

Proxima Centauri-A I
Duranium 380 880 000  Acc: 1
Neutronium 174 240 000  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 166 410 000  Acc: 0.2
Mercassium 162 562 500  Acc: 0.5
Vendarite 36 000 000  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 151 290 000  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 58 522 500  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 101 002 500  Acc: 1

..... and it has a 103 ATM pressure ...  >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( frakk you too Aurora ..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 25, 2015, 01:45:06 PM
  The DC Vipul 002 (9300T) Missile ship just had a very bad day.  It jumped through the same gate where my missile trap worked earlier.  This time i had a 50,000T Battleship, 3-20,000T Battle cruisers, 2-16,000T anti-missile destroyers, and a 16,000T point defense destroyer waiting.  The Vipul 002 point defenses were able to take out a few missiles, but still died without returning any offensive fire.
 
  The Vipul 001 had jumped through a few months earlier and was destroyed by a small fleet of 3-battle cruisers, and 1 anti-missile destroyer.  Mistakes were made and resulted in the loss of 1 battle cruiser.  (9500 Km/s AMMs dont do well against 24,000 Km/s ASMs  ;D ).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 01, 2015, 08:53:41 PM
Increment adjustment, going on 30+ hours.   :'(  Wish i could watch the battle. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on April 03, 2015, 11:15:49 AM
Increment adjustment, going on 30+ hours.   :'(  Wish i could watch the battle.

Nr 1 for Aurora 2 should be some kind of abstraction for NPR vs NPR battles... Those 5 sec turns are really hurting the flow of the game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 03, 2015, 10:06:27 PM
Just wait for the next version, the new sensor options should help immensely.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 03, 2015, 11:34:05 PM
12 T2 Battleships, 6 T4 Battlecruisers, 11 T2 Light Cruisers and 1 quasi-T6 Battleship are about to clash with a Spoiler 3 BBs and 7 BCs head on.   1.  5 billion miles off, between them and the junction jump point, both fleets closing on each other. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on April 04, 2015, 03:08:19 AM
Quote
Just wait for the next version, the new sensor options should help immensely.

Really ?? Thats nice to hear.

On topic :

Having a new Wh40k phase i've set up somewhat of a Warhammer game.
smegload of minerals on Earth, Mars and Titan, ruins on Mars and Titan and crancked up NPR difficulty level to 200%.
Titan ruins broke my own personal record - 1025 instalations <3
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 04, 2015, 09:24:15 PM
The missile engagement proper was a bit of a push, ~5% of our main volley got through which slowed down two ships, and two others were picked off when they strayed just far enough from their AMM envelope so there wasn't a good enough engagement window to keep them alive.  Only now we're closing through 150 (147, to be precise) AMMs every 5 seconds with the ability to sweep between 50 to 90 every five seconds.  Getting hairy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 07, 2015, 07:59:44 PM
Well, they endured it and the more intact battlecruisers are hunting down fugitives. Not in a condition to do it again anytime soon, both from a standpoint of ammunition and damage. They're going to have to do it again against a base.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on April 09, 2015, 09:34:09 AM
I just hit a gold mine. ;D I got really lucky on my survey. Send in the Terraformers!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on April 09, 2015, 09:46:25 AM
I just hit a gold mine. ;D I got really lucky on my survey. Send in the Terraformers!

Fuuuuark ...  :o :o
Not the most minerals i have ever seen but DAMN its juicy...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on April 09, 2015, 10:35:52 AM
Not only that, but it's also colonizable.
A very rare find, and very precious.
(2nd screenshot - similar planets to 84atoms, all but one aren't coming close enough, first screenshot - planet that comes close enough)
You are lucky to find this planet that early, Atom. What are you going to do with it?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on April 09, 2015, 01:58:32 PM
Since the talk is about good finds -> The best system I ever had I think, coming from the starswarm game, and only being the 3rd system ever surveyed:


(http://abload.de/img/dreamsystemdetailbisj2.jpg)


Survey was not yet even finished. A IV has everything you would ever need in a lategame stage. Duranium, Gallicite and Corundium. Then also some others with good access, Neutronium being the only one really not sufficient. Quite ironic to find this amazing system in a game where the theme was to venture out and strip mine everything profitable in the path. Like a massive block appearing.
The game just before that, I searched through 50+ systems to find just one good gallicite source, until it finally appeared, and then this happens... .
Oh, there were ruins on one of the B worlds too, which gave me a really good hidden technology. It is the sheer dream system ...but in the wrong game.

This actually triggered in me the suspicion that there could be some sort of function in the game that ensures some powerful finds in your first 1-5 systems or so, since I had similar rich systems in every game so far and this close.(this one here really exceptional though) Later these systems seem much harder to find. Still not in any way sure about it however.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 09, 2015, 09:45:12 PM
Shocking development. A group of 3 fugitive battlecruisers were actually beamships. Found this out when one of 5 T4 Battlecruisers took a volley and dropped out of the pursuit. There aren't enough shipkiller missiles left over to deal with them, what has developed is an actual squadron fight between 3 T6 ships with 18 high-tech lasers and 1 T6 ship with 8 high-tech lasers and 4 T4 ships with 32 mid-tech railguns, bad armor damage everywhere and a 2Kkm/s speed advantage. The ace in the hole is 4 100-count volleys of WH4 shortrange missiles, fit to strip the armor off a battlecruiser, halfthrough that. It's been interesting. It's currently an extreme range engagement (at 2LS) with both sides landing the odd laser hit, coming out ahead despite 1/3 the guns due to freakishly good crew. Tried closing once, and backed off at 1.25LS, it was getting too heated. After this results in some engine damage for a ship that has had its armor stripped, going to use the last two volleys to cripple one BC, strip armor off the last and try to swarm it, for all that at the end of it the Battlecruisers will be taking hits that go in one side of the ship and out the other.

This has been a battle, I love Spoilers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 10, 2015, 08:37:24 PM
Well... it worked. Mobbed them and tore them apart with railguns. But I lost the battleship, and it's commanding officer. And a battlecruiser, but I loved that battleship, and I loved that commander. I made the ship with salvage from a homeworld defense where a bunch of T1-T2 rebuilds klingon sabre-danced their way to victory against a pair of 50,000 ton beamships in a gun battle that was a lucky last-second sensor hit away from being an utter disaster. Then I gave it to the fleet commander of record. Well... she won this one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 11, 2015, 07:45:00 PM
And it's finally over, all across a 2 billion KM to a side triangle. 1 T6 battleship lost, 4 T2 battleships lost, 7 T2 battleships crippled, 1 T4 Battlecruiser lost, 1 jump-freighter lost.

3 AMM battleships destroyed (and if those weren't the most dangerous AI warships I've ever encountered its because I've run into bigger and beam armed), 3 missile battlecruisers destroyed, 1 missile battlecruiser captured (they classed it as a DDG but... my eye), 3 beam battlecruisers destroyed, 1 AMM base captured, 1 construction ship captured.

I don't want no rematch.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 11, 2015, 11:30:16 PM
That sounds like a pretty evenly matched and epic battle. Congratulations.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 15, 2015, 05:51:22 PM
  ASC Claymore has gone missing on a routine scouting mission.  Their last report came as they jumped into a system contaning a Class II Black Hole.  It is assumed that all lives are lost.  All military and civilian traffic has been banned from that system until further information can be gathered.

  The Claymore is remembered for discovering what scientists are calling a "Stable Wormhole" in the Teegardens Star system.  Science and military experts are still researching its purpose.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 18, 2015, 07:53:13 PM
Top military and science leaders proposed a single mission to investigate the worm hole.  A single sensor ship was sent into the Teegardens system.  It was quickly dispatched by 4 unknown vessels.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 18, 2015, 08:14:25 PM
  Federation forces managed to put down a few size 20 ASM mines on the Teegarden JP, and moved in an understrength destroyer force to keep an eye on things.  Soon after the [Tee] sent through a small (3600T) ship, it was attacked and destroyed by local forces.

  Before my missile launchers had time to reload, 4 18,400T ships jumped in.  These ships appear to have no offensive capabilities, but their point defenses are wrecking my missile attacks.  Luyten planetary defenses have been alerted.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 18, 2015, 09:01:48 PM
  Fleet commanders have misjudged the enemy fleet.  3 volleys of AS missiles have been detected.  12 of 14 missiles from volley 1 evaded point defenses and destroyed the AMM Destroyer Bastion.  There were 113 survivors rescued.  13 of 14 missiles from volley 2 struck the Jump Destroyer Caliope.  132 survivors were rescued.  Volley 3 disappeared off tracking.  Enemy fleet proceeds unimpeded towards Luyten.




Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 19, 2015, 06:59:12 AM
  4 additional [Tee] ships arrived in system, and all gathered about half way to Luyten II.  2 ships finally broke off and approached Luyten II.  All that is available for defense are Size 1 AMMs, some are getting through [Tee] defenses but appear to be doing no damage.  The 2 finally reached Luyten II and did the craziest thing, they both went Kamikaze and rammed my PDCs  :o  3 PDCs and both [Tee] ships were destroyed in the attack.  They remaining 6 [Tee] ships are roaming the system destroying all remaining civilian shipping.

  Luyten II was going to be the gem of my empire, decades worth of minerals, planetary suitability 0.0.  I just needed a few more years to get it set up.  Luyten system is also directly connected to Sol.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 19, 2015, 08:58:33 PM
Casualties of war:  [Federation] 6 destroyers, 3 PDCs, 1 Grav survey vessel, 1 Sorium Harvester, and 12 civilian freighters.  [FC] (Friendly) 5 large freighters.  [Tee] 1 scout?, and 2 unknown types.

So far the [Tee] have left my populations alone, and have not entered Sol system.   :o  I also think the [Tee] may have cloaked scout(s) in the system.  I cannot explain any other way, how quickly they respond to ships in the system. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 20, 2015, 11:12:56 PM
  6 months after the [Tee] invasion of Luyten, they discovered Sol.  A single scout? ship jumped in and was quickly dispatched by laser fire from Destroyer squdron 2.  This didnt sit well with the 6 [Tee] ships sitting in Luyten, which soon came face to face with the 6 ships of dstroyer squadron 2.  My 10 & 15cm lasers inflicted some damage, but the fleet was soon overpowered.

  Mars became the next target, size 1 missile fire was ineffective and all Mars defenses were soon destroyed.  As of this report, Earth has been unloading all its size 1 & 5 missiles at the fleet, but the fight is going badly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on April 21, 2015, 09:32:55 AM
I am finding wrecks on two sides of my empire that are exactly the same size (19100 tons in two places) at Danzig and Codalus. I feel the two sides will be connected soon with more exploration. Right now it would not be a significant change to the map but it could save time and fuel when future systems are discovered, as well as provides a strategic advantage if (when) another empire is discovered. A side note; there is another system (New Hebrides) where there are some more wrecks not of the same size (28650 tons and 1000 tons) so a possibility of a third empire is present or this system connects to the other two.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 21, 2015, 02:16:42 PM
The wreckage of all federation ship yards, that is tough to swallow.  Life goes on, research continues, factories still producing.  Earth has decent stockpiles for now, Luyten has large stockpiles of everything but duranium. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on April 23, 2015, 02:12:01 PM
Well, just found an alien empire near where I said earlier in the system of Olwa. However, things are not adding up. This cannot be the empire that is responsible for the wrecks. Their population, by a ship that contains both thermal and EM sensors directly overhead, is being read as a signature of 5 thermal and 5 EM. There are no orbitals over the planet, or any other signatures in the system. This is either a conventional empire, or is merely a small colony.  I do not have any military ships yet as my jump drives are still being researched (started when I made the wreck connection theory)(All ships Frigate+ will be self jump capable) but the shipyards are preparing to receive the blueprints for production. I shall pull the ship from the system and reroute any ships passing through that area, I will assemble a diplomatic team, and then initiate contact. However, the discovered aliens seem to be a warlike race, such as we are. If negotiations turn, there is no question within the council to protect human interests by using world burners and troops.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 24, 2015, 07:52:42 AM
October 79 
  A fleet of 15 [36] warships traversing Sol, caught the attention of 2 [Tee] warships.  After a brief (and one sided)  engagement [36] forces retreated to Earth.  With the retreat, the 2 [Tee] warships were drawn into range of earths rocket defenses.  Military officials claim the 2 warships were destroyed with a barrage of Anti-ship missiles.  These were the first kills of the heavily armored [Tee] warships.  The staggering number of wrecks in the Sol system is estimated to be nearly 100.

  In other news, 8 new [tee] ships appeared in the Luyten system, including 2 new classes (type unknown).  Is this the invasion fleet the military has been waiting for?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Anarade Relle on April 24, 2015, 04:06:44 PM
Quite the campaign.

What warships do you have left, if any?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 24, 2015, 05:41:18 PM
My entire military consists of 2 PDCs, capable of 50 shot (Size 5) volley each.  1 commercial station built (i need minerals badly).  When they decide to take Earth, there is very little i can do to stop them.   :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Anarade Relle on April 24, 2015, 08:53:35 PM
:(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on April 24, 2015, 10:07:47 PM
My entire military consists of 2 PDCs, capable of 50 shot (Size 5) volley each.  1 commercial station built (i need minerals badly).  When they decide to take Earth, there is very little i can do to stop them.   :'(

Yeah, they hit quite hard if one isn't prepared.
There is still hope though.
Can you build the salvagers? It is risky, but you could try to salvage the [Tee] warships for modules which can be used for furthering research or in shipbuilding, and smallest of them are quite small, having less than 20kton in mass as well as low price.

Also, in current situation, don't make your factories idle! Build more PDCs, mines, shipyards, missiles, whatever you still have resources for. What use they will have if you are destroyed?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on April 25, 2015, 04:55:06 AM
Once again the Wormholers attempted an attack on our positions on EZ Aquarii.

Two ships appeared near the wormhole and started launching size-5 anti-ship missiles toward the colony. Due to major design flaw in our AMM emplacements (they lack the AMM sensors) enemy missiles just flew past them and hit the colony. The entire population was disintegrated in one salvo, along with ground forces stationed there.
All of the other missiles attempted to strike the resident terraformer Adonai It 002, but the ships' CIWS complexes shot down all but 2 missiles.

After that, enemy ships moved toward the colony in an attempt to engage PDCs in melee, but they were shot down by AMM emplacements.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 25, 2015, 08:32:40 AM
31 Oct-1 Nov

  2 new [Tee] classes (Ohiyesa and Low-Dog) appeared in Luyten.  The 2 ships proceeded to make bombing runs on 2 small colony's in the system.  There were no human survivors.  4 colonies remain.  The 2 ships then broke off bombing runs and proceeded into Sol.

  The 2 ships encountered 10 naval vessels from the [36].  The Ohiyesa single handedly destroyed all 10.  The 2 then turned towards Earth.  Earth missile forces were up to the task, and destroyed both ships before they were able to launch any attacks.  Unfortunately earth forces used up all their best missiles in the attack.

Factory production and research continue on Earth and Luyten 726-8-AII.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 25, 2015, 08:56:01 AM
2 Nov

  In retaliation, 4 [Tee] ships (2 dull knife, and 2 Potalsharo) moved from Luyten into Sol.  The fleet moved into earth space and easily swated away the ancient missiles that remained for defense (30 year old missiles were all that was left).  The [Tee] fleet easily destroyed the 2 PDCs, 1 commercial, and 1 Naval ship yards that i had managed to build.  The fleet has returned to patroling the Luyten system.
(Sensor data indicates the dull knife and Potalsharo are rather nasty ships)

5 Dec

  A new class (Dan George) appeared in Luyten, and has moved into Sol.  My first thoughts were this was a salvage class (it is a very slow ship), but it has ignored all salvage.  It is now moving towards the Barnards Star gate.  Possibly a gate construction ship?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on April 26, 2015, 08:07:06 PM
Welp, i somehow managed to corrupt my database.   :'(  And no backups were made.  Lesson learned.  New game started (with aurora backup utility), and have already found some unfriendly neighbors to play with.   ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 05, 2015, 07:28:24 AM
  Slowly expanding Federation space, with new colonies, mining operations, new jump gates, etc..  We have only met 1 other race [Luh].  They occupy 2 adjacent systems to Sol (Luhman 16 and Struve 2398), diplomatic relations ended many years ago.  They are hostile, but not overly agressive.  Federation combat losses include 4 survey craft, 15 civilian luxury liners (they decided to take a pleasure cruise through the Struvian sector), and 4 Missile destroyers (my bad).  [Luh] losses have been limited to 1 unknown type, 9200 tons.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 06, 2015, 03:00:49 PM
Started new game in Sol after my HDD fried ...

Me : EarthGov "vs" german-themed Martian Reich and japanese-themed Kissaki Corporation based on Venus, each planet ( Mars, Earth and Venus with smegload of minerals, no shipyards and 5 research labs each ). I Sm'ed relationship with both parties to 1500 to avoid all out shooting war afer 6 months...

Its now 10 years, im working on my first defence PDC ( yes im turtling as hell ) and im watching fireworks all over inner Sol as Reich and Corps pound the smeg out of each other with NThermal frigates and NThermal missiles...

Kissaki seems to be slightly losing this one as they field only one type of ship - 950 ton Hiei class frigate while Reich has two 9150 ton types and two 950ton.. And that is despite Kissaki having almost 1k more in Thermal and EM signatures of their planets.
But nevertheless its really small advantage and Sol is littered with wrecks of both races (  see attached pic ) .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 06, 2015, 10:09:23 PM
Cool
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 07, 2015, 10:26:19 AM
Welp, i think war in Sol is pretty much over.
Kissaki have been reduced to 2 PDC's and 20k Shipyard while Reich has 3 working ships ( two of each are possibly missiles frigates ), 200k shipyard and 4 PDC's .
Furthermore Venus is under constant attack by the Reich ships, so far those two PDC's managed to kill every salvo but they score a hit from time to time.
Im not overly concerned because my one Sentinel class PDC provides pretty much unbreakable defence of Earth and more are in production but in a long run Reich having two fully terraformed planets with so much TN minerals can be a bit of a problem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on May 07, 2015, 11:24:47 AM
I might be wrong, but I think as long as the planet is still not theirs, they might not stack fleet on it or guard it otherwise heavily. This would mean that essentially not the side with the most ships, but that with the most ground troops wins planets. You could maybe snatch their war spoils away, and then you would probably get windows from time to time in which you can even send fresh reinforcement troops in case Reich also tries to invade.
If your situation and chance of holding the place is hopeless, you could also wait until Reich conquered the place, leaving their remaining ground troops hopefully damaged. Then you could quickly land yours before any defense builds up, catch the planet for nice technology spoils, and then just abandon the colony/blow it up, teaching Reich a lesson in french about Moskau. ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on May 07, 2015, 05:28:23 PM
This made me think of another scenario I might want to try. First, I would start off the empires similarly too how you did except with two empires. One empire would control Earth and Mars, and the other would control Jupiter and all of its moons (and nearby asteroids).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 09, 2015, 09:06:34 AM
This made me think of another scenario I might want to try. First, I would start off the empires similarly too how you did except with two empires. One empire would control Earth and Mars, and the other would control Jupiter and all of its moons (and nearby asteroids).

I dont think its even possible ... I mean manual NPR spawning works on one planet only, does it not ? You cant spawn NPR on Earth and "give him" control of Mars...
Or am i mistaken ?

It would work if you would want to make two different empires on Earth and Mars and give yourself Jupiter moons. Anyway, nice idea, something like Steve's Solarian Empires campaign.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on May 09, 2015, 05:11:10 PM
I had the impression that he was going to play both sides rather than use the AI, but what he was suggesting should still be possible if he had designer mode access.   

See this post for details:
Code: [Select]
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7592.msg77065#msg77065
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 09, 2015, 06:20:02 PM
I had the impression that he was going to play both sides rather than use the AI, but what he was suggesting should still be possible if he had designer mode access.   

See this post for details:
Code: [Select]
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7592.msg77065#msg77065

Ahh in that case i admire the dedication but i cant bring myself to control more than one empire in Aurora at once ...

Meanwhile :

I've set up 3 faction Earth start between Allies ( me ), Axis and Comintern starting in 1945 ( complete fiction but whatever ).

We all are expanding and stuff and then Allied inteligence scores major victory over Axis one. They steal geological survey data about Berlin system, the first system discovered by the Kreigsmarine survey corps and by extension Humanity...
Problem ?
Its a single star system without even a lousy comet, asteroid or dwarf planet .... -________- great job guys.

EDIT: Aaaand in the next year they "stole" the same "data" from Comintern ... My CIA is retarded i swear to god ..

2nd Edit :

III World War lasted for no more than 3 hours.
Allied navy simply anihilated both Comintern and Axis space navies. While losing 4 Lexington B class Frigates Allied captains manage to destroy more than 3m of commercial tonnage and more than 1m of military tonnage. Axis colonies on Moon and Mars surendered after brief nuclear bombardment, Mars colony has been destroyed afterwards ( just some infrastructure and remains of 4 ground units destroyed by the nuclear fire ) and lunar colonists are in the process of being resettled back to Earth because both of those places are completely devoid of TN minerals and were purely prestige-driven efforts.

Unfortunately there is now huge combined Axis-Comintern fleet closing down on Earth. Allied Earth defence net is really impressive, more than 20 PDC armed with 10 quad Meson turrets each but the missile capability of the incoming ships are unknown.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 11, 2015, 09:05:40 AM
  Not much excitement going on here, have 18 colonies up and running.  With the occasional scrap with the [Luh].  I do know there is an active wormhole (from an error message) somewhere, but have not found it.  Have issues with sorium and corundium right now, Mars has a large deposit of Sorium but hard to get at 0.1.  Most of Earths manufacturing is concentrated on mine production.  Scientists tell me we are about 4 years from something called a Magneto-plasma engine.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 16, 2015, 02:43:07 AM
Project "Longjump" was the last chance of dying Earth. Hundreds of sleeper sublight ships launched from the war-ravaged Earth at the end of XXI century, each aiming at the different star.

Untold centuries were spend in the void and when settlers arrived in the Virgo system they were really amazed. System consisted of 7 gas giants, 4 rocky planets, 141 moons and 753 asteroids in three MASSIVE belts.
Furthest gas giant, named Pisces is whooping 857B from the main star and has a Lagrange Point - but with orbit so massive and orbital period counted in milenia so its actually useless because its already almost as far from LP as its from my planet.
Luckily settled planet is rich as hell that i will have to wait to use becasue at the moment of discovering TN tech, Gemini population was whooping 50 milions ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 16, 2015, 10:19:58 PM
  Lost 2 more survey ships to the [Luh], never even seen what hit me.  Maybe fighters or small frigates, will have to adjust sensors accordingly.  I have been snooping around in what i thought might be their territory, so i guess losses are expected.  Upgrading fleets to magneto-plasma drives, will soon start snooping around [Luh] territories with something more substantial.   ;D

  I am about 8hrs into a 5sec increment cycle, i will probably lose this game as i never have much luck with these cycles stopping.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 21, 2015, 04:49:21 PM
Put the previous adventure on hold, due to many hours worth of :05 increments.  Started a new map, 100 systems, difficulty 125%

Jan 2112
Geological and Grav surveys complete, 7! jump gates found.  Sensor pods have been placed on all 7 gates.  Not impressed by the system Geo survey.  Ion drive technology became available recently.  Have 2 destroyer fleets in training, switched from 16Kt destroyers to 6Kt.  Much easier to manage early game.

1 command/EW
3 area defense-laser
3 final defense-guass
3 AMM
3 ASM (Size 5)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 23, 2015, 06:40:30 AM
Newly discovered system Olympus .. totally useless despite having :

Rocky Planets: 5   Surveyed: 0 - 2 x colony cost 2.00 and 1x 5.19 colcost with less than 1ATM so trivial to terraform.
Gas Giants: 8   Surveyed: 0
Moons: 106   Surveyed: 0
Asteroids: 285   Surveyed: 0

Why, you ask ?? Because Sol-Olympus JP is 13 bilion km from the primary star and first planet orbits main star at whooping 55 BILION !! km....
Companion star is ... well just see pic.
And while there is Lagrange Point from main star to secondary there is a problem - LP1 is 86 Bilion km from the Sol jump point and orbit of the secondary star means that eventual colony can be left for milenia without possible resupply or reinforcements...

Im currently half a year from building special survey vessel that can use those LP points in some reasonable time to check if those planets are even worth the hassle.

EDIT : oh and i have discovered trinary system that has nothing but 6 rocky planets, 4 of which are 1.9 colony cost ones ... and only one of them has any minerals.
I swear this game hates me..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 23, 2015, 04:08:46 PM
Looking at the wrecks, There might be some unfriendly's about.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sorg on May 24, 2015, 12:37:27 AM
Quote from: Mastik link=topic=3808. msg79467#msg79467 date=1432415326
Looking at the wrecks, There might be some unfriendly's about.
Maybe these are just randomly generated wrecks.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on May 24, 2015, 07:25:42 PM
Been documenting key events in my new game, and left staggered at how my largest shipyards are around 10,000 tons and civvie shipping lines are chucking out 150,000+ ton freighters.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on May 27, 2015, 01:27:38 PM
Been documenting key events in my new game, and left staggered at how my largest shipyards are around 10,000 tons and civvie shipping lines are chucking out 150,000+ ton freighters.

Commercial shipyards start at 10,000 tons. It doesn't take that long to get them into the 150,000 ton range. That is equivalent to a naval shipyard of 15,000 tons.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on May 29, 2015, 08:57:52 AM
Commercial shipyards start at 10,000 tons. It doesn't take that long to get them into the 150,000 ton range. That is equivalent to a naval shipyard of 15,000 tons.

Oh I see. Shows what I get for not playing Aurora often enough, I guess :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on May 30, 2015, 01:10:48 AM
Playing as a conventional start alien race called the Cyrian Federation. Currently surveying the home system and building a small navy before I start to develop interstellar capabilities.

Decided to focus primarily on beam weaponry, with some reduced size missile launchers coming in later once I have the tech. The only active warship class is a 3000 ton laser-armed patrol ship. Currently expanding shipyard for an 8000 ton long-ranged particle beam cruiser.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on May 30, 2015, 04:20:45 PM
Jan 2134

  22 systems explored, no alien presence found.  1 planet with some alien artifacts, xenology team found 15 structures.  Terra-forming operations on Mars (pop 81m), Luna to follow (60m).  Most resources (infrastructure, auto miners, etc) going to Europa.  Europa has the best accessible Duranium source in the system.

  Military is re-tooling to Tier 2 fleets. 

3-6Kt Point defense Destroyers
3-6Kt Area defense destroyers
1-16Kt EW cruiser
1-16Kt AMM Cruiser
1-16Kt ASM Cruiser
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on June 01, 2015, 03:30:03 PM
Having found few resources in their home system, Nadar, the Cyrian Federation has begun to expand out through the three jump points in their system. Two jump gate construction ships are currently under construction to allow civilian development of these new resources.

Many in the Federation believe the resources diverted to building and maintaining a battle fleet are wasted, since the possibility of meeting another space-faring sentient race is believed to be extremely small. Current naval forces include 6 cruisers, 12 escorts, 12 patrol ships, and the planned construction of 6 missile frigates. However, it is not likely that further resources will be used for building or updating the fleet.

Edit:

It seems that those who pushed for the creation of a navy were correct. While finishing up a survey of the Meirica system two jumps from Nadar, a Fraoch clas geosurvey ship detected an unknown contact around the fourth star in the system, which closed in at an extremely fast speed and attacked the vessel with what appeared to be large-caliber railguns, similar to the ones used by Cyrian Navy escorts. The future expansion of the navy seems now to be inevitable.

Edit Mark 2:

The 1st Battle Group has set sail for the Meirica jump point, and will reach it in 57 days at it's maximum speed of 1250 km/s, by which time the jump gate there will be completed.

Order of Battle:
6 8000 ton particle beam cruisers
10 6000 ton railgun escorts
6 4000 ton missile frigates

Twelve 3000 ton patrol vessels remain in Nadar for local defense, and two railgun escorts are currently being refitted to a newer model.

Edit Mark 3:

Unfortunately, due to my low tech, most of the missiles I launched at the enemy ship either missed or were destroyed by the enemy using it's railguns as PD. The rest failed to penetrate the armor. Sending my somewhat faster railgun escorts ahead was a mistake, as all of them were too short-ranged and were slaughtered. The cruisers, however, were able to match the enemy's range and destroy it with only moderate damage to a single ship. The fleet is currently holding place on the jump point while a construction ship builds a gate back home.

Edit Mark 4:

The only jump route through Nadar's third jump point has been explored, revealing a nearly habitable world, ripe for the picking. Assuming, of course, that someone else hasn't already occupied it. (Also, there were two more stars roughly 5 trillion kilometers away containing an ideal habitable world, but I always delete those, just so they stop mocking me with their inaccessibility)

Another star system three jumps from Nadar holds 9 planets of 2.00 colonisation cost. Mineral surveys await, but if they turn out well, this could be one the best systems I've found in any of my games. Also, the 1st Battle Group has returned from Meirica, and is overhauling and commencing fleet upgrades and repairs. Construction has begun upon two new 16,000 ton battlecruisers, with heavy particle beam and missile armaments.

Edit Mark 5:

In more domestic matters, the Federation is currently attempting to secure more mineral resources. Key mineral stockpiles of duranium, corundium, and sorium have reached low levels in the mineral-dry capital. While some minerals are provided by the significant mining operation on Keilia, another planet in the Nadar system (which already has a mineral output almost twice that of the capital), it has no corundium, and duranium accessibility is only middling. Automated mines are being setup in the adjacent Mumha system, but the accessibility of the mines there is low, and they are fairly distant from the jump point.

The planet Lantar, two jumps from Clyria through the third jump point, appears to be an excellent answer for the time being. Although it does not have every mineral, the accessibility of the minerals is rated as middling to high, and most critically holds good quantities and accessibilities of duranium and sorium. In addition, it only has a colony cost of 0.7, allowing a colony to be easily established and eventually terraformed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 11, 2015, 05:59:19 PM
New Map due to issues with last game.  Diff 150%, 100 systems, 2 NPC races, no spoiler races.

June 2114
 
15 Systems explored, 2 hostile, and 1 neutral race encountered.  First encounters with the Diboll Imperium [V57] (Neutral), my survey vessel was quickly surrounded by 33 ships of assorted sizes.  No shots were fired, and diplomatic relations are progressing.  All diplomatic efforts have failed with with the [Wol] and [Ros] factions.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on June 12, 2015, 09:14:34 AM
When relations go bad they realy go bad... :-X

I have been engaging an enemy some 7 jumps away, main fleet is there and kicking ass... ::)

But now my "friend" has gone from +1700 to -500 in relations over night, I think, didnt pay atention to whats happening home...

This link will hopefully work... havnt learned how to take pictures of my screen...

http://gyazo.com/b4df57c2e0461a729ae175a580401136   :o

Thank god they arn,t above Earth all of them.... :)

I have some 40 frigates with 1 laser a hundred fighters with 4 launchers each and 3 PDC with 500 launchers each so I feel I will win... :-\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on June 12, 2015, 11:01:47 AM
When relations go bad they realy go bad... :-X

I have been engaging an enemy some 7 jumps away, main fleet is there and kicking ass... ::)

But now my "friend" has gone from +1700 to -500 in relations over night, I think, didnt pay atention to whats happening home...

This link will hopefully work... havnt learned how to take pictures of my screen...

http://gyazo.com/b4df57c2e0461a729ae175a580401136   :o

Thank god they arn,t above Earth all of them.... :)

I have some 40 frigates with 1 laser a hundred fighters with 4 launchers each and 3 PDC with 500 launchers each so I feel I will win... :-\

I hope you have a lot of missiles for those fighters and PDC's. I hope the missiles are very big for their launchers. I hope to hell you've got hundreds of tons worth of armour on those frigates. That's goddamn terrifying.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on June 12, 2015, 11:46:26 AM
Should have around 3000 size 5 ASM and 1000 size 30....

Missed that I have  4 AMM bases with 100 launchers each, with 25 firecontrols, 4500 AMMs waiting for his missiles ;D Hmmm should probobly go down to 1vs1 intercept...

See if I have time tomorrow, before my youngest takes my computer to Dreamhack in Jönköping...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 13, 2015, 06:27:44 AM
April 2116

Two fleets from the Diboll Imperium have entered Sol system.  Appear to be geological and gravitational survey (with escorts).  Diplomatic rating +211.  It is an odd feeling having foreign ships scouting my system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 13, 2015, 03:13:33 PM
When relations go bad they realy go bad... :-X

I have been engaging an enemy some 7 jumps away, main fleet is there and kicking ass... ::)

But now my "friend" has gone from +1700 to -500 in relations over night, I think, didnt pay atention to whats happening home...

This link will hopefully work... havnt learned how to take pictures of my screen...

http://gyazo.com/b4df57c2e0461a729ae175a580401136   :o

Thank god they arn,t above Earth all of them.... :)

I have some 40 frigates with 1 laser a hundred fighters with 4 launchers each and 3 PDC with 500 launchers each so I feel I will win... :-\

Christ almighty this is gonna be a slog ...
I wouldn't be so confident in your place - those salvos will be massive and every hit you sustain will reduce your defensive effectivness..

Hope you have some massive industry to replace those losses.

Care to share a save man ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 13, 2015, 03:30:19 PM
9 June 2116

  I return from mowing the weeds err lawn, to find hostile transits from the Wolf 437 system.  Diplomatic ties -386.  1-Pinz Eugen and 1-Schnellboote (4799 Km/s) class ships have entered the Sol system, missiles from a gate mine were destroyed by point defenses.  Earth defense fleet has responded (5100 Km/s):

1-EW
1-AMM
1-ASM (forgot magazines on the design  :-[ )
6-Final defense 12cm railguns
4-Area defense (12cm visible and near UV)

11 June 2116

  Enemy missiles inbound (size 4, size 7 WH, 30401 Km/s), volley size 3, 20 seconds apart.  AMM missiles (26600 Km/s) were ineffective.  Final defense destroyers were extremely effective.  Of 60 inbound missiles, 57 were shot down, 3 hitting the EW ship for 21 points of armor damage, and a few points of shock damage.

Both fleets continue to approach.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 13, 2015, 08:20:48 PM
Round 2

60 of 60 anti-ship missiles from the Pinz Eugen were destroyed by fleet point defenses.  It is going to end up a gun battle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on June 13, 2015, 08:24:18 PM
11 June 2116

16:27  The Schnellboote 001 was destroyed by fleet laser fire, it had no weapons.
18:20  The Prinz Eugen 001 was destroyed by fleet laster fire, it also had no weapons.

There were no survivors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 07, 2015, 04:01:49 PM
Kind of Aurora: I watched the 2010 movie "Space Battleship Yamato" today, which seemed much like an Aurora movie. Earth radiated in a way that extinction can be predicted at some point; War with a powerful NPR; Fighters and huge beam cannons, but missiles only for the aliens it seems; then they discover jump drive technology, though it works everywhere.
Japanese people as always haven't really figured out the whole acting thing still, and the development in the writing is as quirky and forced as even a intentional parody could fabricate it.("damn, we need the captain to pass the position. I know, just let him have deadly cramps out of nothing right after some completely unrelated exposition.") It's like they tried to stuff in every trope that they could find in US acting books, as if some formula that 'has it all' would practically guarantee a good movie.
Kind of baffling how there can be people with undeniable professional skill involved (effects, cgi, props), and yet the main cast and writers never got beyond highschool dropout understanding of 'things in general'. How do they not claw on each other at the set all the time? Some people here actually work or have ambition, you know?

Still, this movie was great, exactly for all the effects and action. They should just make it without actors. Oh, wait! Is this why they have more anime than movies there? :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on July 07, 2015, 06:12:13 PM
We'll it was a live action remake of the battleship Yamamoto anime so.... Btw that movie is what inspired me to return to my conventional Cold War game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 07, 2015, 06:57:29 PM
Oh, there was an anime? *checked* Kind of old, but I guess the newer anime movie and the remake series will work,  thanks!

I also want to do a multi nation post cold war disaster game at some point. A game like which Alfapiomega started with military capital only on Ceres, earth infested with mutant hordes, super-low tech, and then some asteroid+comet station game would be great stuff. Sad he never played this great setting out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on July 08, 2015, 12:06:22 AM
I'm so bogged down with research right now, at some point I need to stop reading about cold war intrigue and alien conspiracies and just spam a couple of increments.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on July 08, 2015, 09:25:15 AM
Oh, there was an anime? *checked* Kind of old, but I guess the newer anime movie and the remake series will work,  thanks!

I also want to do a multi nation post cold war disaster game at some point. A game like which Alfapiomega started with military capital only on Ceres, earth infested with mutant hordes, super-low tech, and then some asteroid+comet station game would be great stuff. Sad he never played this great setting out.

I was never interested in the show until everyone else at Wolfs Shipyard started going crazy over it. Suffice to say I'm now a fan of the recent anime.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 19, 2015, 01:38:54 PM
In another test game, I built a huge ship basically capable of every role to slight degree. For the first time I am playing with buoys on this capital ship instead of making a specialized ship for this, but this brings me to an issue: How can I launch those buoys or mines on a location without launching all the other missile tubes of this very divergent equipped ship?
The manual missile launch button in the task force window will just eject all loaded tubes, which is humongous waste of ammunition. On the other hand, there is also not even an "unload ammunition" button in the weapon assignment, so tubes cannot even return to a neutral unloaded status, which would have allowed to use the above command very manually at least.

Am I missing something, because I have seen people with designs that had mixed buoy launcher and missiles? If I could target launchers individually at inanimate objects, or if the "launch missiles at" command was more specific to fire controls, that would have made it all easy. Right now I see only the option to make a specialized mine layer again.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on July 19, 2015, 01:59:46 PM
Am I missing something, because I have seen people with designs that had mixed buoy launcher and missiles? If I could target launchers individually at inanimate objects, or if the "launch missiles at" command was more specific to fire controls, that would have made it all easy. Right now I see only the option to make a specialized mine layer again.

You don't have to have launch tubes assigned to fire control. In order to launch only specific missiles, you clear fire control of all assigned weapons (using the 'clear' button) after which you assign to this fire control only the missile tubes you want fired, leaving the rest unassigned. This allows you to fire only the missiles/buoys you want fired. The method is somewhat clunky as you can't unassigned specific weapon (you have to clear the entire fire control and assign weapons all over again) but it works.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 19, 2015, 02:09:59 PM
...But.. that leaves me with having to re-assign 560 tubes to 8 different controls every time I jump to new systems. :(  It is right though, I guess I blocked that solution out after all the effort. Seems like I will be making a minelayer still.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on July 19, 2015, 09:07:16 PM
Would it be possible to make a dedicated minelayer parasite?  Something fighter sized that has a single tube?  Just launch it and launch your mine, land, reload and repeat?  Or was that what you meant by having a specialized minelayer?  Possible to even have something tractored?  Like your ship is towing a minelayer trailer?  It's technically still one craft then.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 20, 2015, 05:42:07 AM
Yes, that is what I meant with the minelayer. The plan is already set into motion, but I needed another 15k shipyard for this, even though I used maximum-before-box reduced size launchers. (my mines and buoys are size 100 only, so sensor technology can shine without obstructing payload too much)
I thought about tractoring too, but it turned out to be impractical. You will still have to detach the minelayer on every procedure, because otherwise the launch order will still empty all the fleet's tubes, and furthermore, tractoring military craft for long times has been proven to be ineffective, because any maintenance failure results in the ship losing the tractor grip. That is ok if you have it docked for most of the time, but it becomes a problem if you take it on longer 2+ years trips. ..So if you have to dock it anyway, and detach it anyway, tractoring doesn't really add anything sadly.
Then, if you ever wanted a real minefield instead of just these singular intrusion alert flash-bangs, you would need a fleet of smaller minelayers with engines anyway to do it in any effective/not-micromanage manner.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on July 23, 2015, 07:08:12 AM
February 2127

  Relations with the Diboll Imperium have improved to +4231, sensor data is being shared between the 2 nations.  Diplomats tell me they are working on a military alliance.

  Earlier in the campaign, i lost 3 survey ships in the Ross 154 system.  In January 2127, a fleet of attack ships was sent into Ross 154.  What did they find?  Nothing but wrecks.

  Survey craft have been sent back, Ross 154 AII is a beauty, massive mineral content, and some alien ruins.  Some one has put up jump gates on all JPs.  I am going to make a grab for Ross 154 AII.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on July 24, 2015, 08:01:51 AM
...But.. that leaves me with having to re-assign 560 tubes to 8 different controls every time I jump to new systems. :(  It is right though, I guess I blocked that solution out after all the effort. Seems like I will be making a minelayer still.
If you have two of these ships, you can copy the assignments from the unaltered ship to the one laying mines/buoys when you are done
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on July 24, 2015, 08:26:55 AM
Right, though for now in this game the ship is 5 megatons large (+about 400kt in escorts and fighters) and thus currently the only one I can afford with just Sol resources and all the other coming galactic infrastructure needs. However, 7-8 are ultimately planned, so that would work. I will see in practice which solution ends up being the fastest and easiest later.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 25, 2015, 03:03:44 PM
Atm my Earth is recovering from the Third World War. Conflict, fought between NATO, Russian Federation and Peoples Republic of China, started at what was named a "Pegasus Incident". Pegasus was the name of the illegal Chinese military spacecraft launched in 2038 which was direct violation of the Berlin Treaty that prohibited the two non-NATO powers from having any kind of military spacecraft in the Earths orbit. NATO launched all out ground and space assault backed up be the heavy ICBM bombardment of the Russian and Chinese territory and industry. Pegasus was reduced to dust in seconds by the Saratoga class Battleships orbiting Earth, PDC's were destroyed by the TN-ICBM's and both superpowers surrendered but not before more than 1k TN-ICBM's were detonated on the surface of Earth.

The result was terryfing, average temperature dropped by almost 30 degrees and amount of radiation lowered growth rate ( -12% ) and industry efficency ( - 40% ).
Thankfully massive NATO industry was capable of providing infrastructure for the survivors in less than a year but Earth population is still shrinking albeit slower and slower everyday. Currently it is 2064 and annual growth rate is still -2% and i have almost 150m worker shortage and combined casaulties of the post war radiation sickness are almost 1bn.

On the bright side : no hostile Xenos found yet and there are some JUICY planets in the nearby systems.

EDIT: My marines have a hard time defeating Soviet Garrisons on the Mars... and aside from Meson armed BB's i have no other combat ship so i have no choice but to stuff more and more people in the grinder :(

EDIT nr 2 : Mars have been completely terraformed and first 5 mln people have settled there. Earth radiation level is still high, population growth is -0.05% and population have fallen below 1.85 Bn.
Meanwhile i've established few colonies in some INCREDIBLY juicy systems.

Code: [Select]
Kepler system and the Atlantis colony ( deserted intact city present - almost 2k instalations ) :
Rocky Planets: 4   Surveyed: 4
Gas Giants: 2   Surveyed: 1
Moons: 27   Surveyed: 9
Asteroids: 212   Surveyed: 0

Atlantis Mine 2
Duranium 81 715 330  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 43 296 400  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 36 192 260  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 10 824 100  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 37 332 100  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 42 068 200  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 76 422 560  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 52 388 640  Acc: 0.1

Atlantis Mine 1
Duranium 46 657 800  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 24 010 000  Acc: 0.5
Corbomite 20 702 500  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 9 486 400  Acc: 0.8
Gallicite 37 945 600  Acc: 0.6
Uridium 44 222 500  Acc: 0.5
Corundium 9 060 100  Acc: 0.1

Atlantis Mine 3
Tritanium 7 433 802  Acc: 0.1
Duranium 79 821 620  Acc: 0.3
Neutronium 15 920 100  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 38 248 040  Acc: 0.5
Sorium 24 875 160  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 1 432 809  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 13 868 180  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 1 432 809  Acc: 0.1

Atlantis
Duranium 231 125 000  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 34 515 620  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 72 250 000  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 68 062 500  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 7 562 498  Acc: 0.1
Sorium 126 562 500  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 110 250 000  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 14 062 500  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 138 062 500  Acc: 0.1

Kepler-A IV
Sorium 761 100  Acc: 1

Kepler-A IV - Moon 3
Duranium 141 512  Acc: 0.6
Neutronium 2 989 441  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 902 500  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 51 984  Acc: 0.2
Mercassium 866 761  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 3 249  Acc: 0.4
Corundium 12 996  Acc: 0.4

Kepler-A IV - Moon 7
Duranium 12 168  Acc: 1
Neutronium 9 216  Acc: 1
Corbomite 841  Acc: 1
Boronide 3 025  Acc: 1
Vendarite 400  Acc: 1
Sorium 7 225  Acc: 1
Gallicite 1 849  Acc: 1

Kepler-A V
Corbomite 176 400  Acc: 0.8
Code: [Select]
Roma system - Rome Prime is the first extrasolar Human colony, easily terraformed ( just removed some Sulphur Dioxide ). Unfortunately there is NO sorium in the entire system apart from 250k tons on some lousy comet :( . Good thing Rome is dead end system with on jp leading to Sol.

Rocky Planets: 3   Surveyed: 3
Gas Giants: 0   Surveyed: 0
Moons: 1   Surveyed: 1
Asteroids: 0   Surveyed: 0

Roma Mine 1
Duranium 7 144 200  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 5 731 236  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 18 352 660  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 3 337 929  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 17 816 840  Acc: 0.1
Gallicite 14 288 400  Acc: 0.1

Rome Prime
Duranium 18 507 530  Acc: 0.6
Neutronium 97 344  Acc: 0.4
Corbomite 23 386 900  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 29 811 600  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 10 227 200  Acc: 1
Mercassium 3 218 436  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 26 501 900  Acc: 0.1
Uridium 1 028 196  Acc: 0.3
Corundium 17 089 960  Acc: 0.7
Gallicite 19 079 420  Acc: 0.3

Roma Mine 2
Duranium 140 281 200  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 16 000 000  Acc: 0.1
Boronide 14 062 500  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 17 015 620  Acc: 0.1

Roma-A Comet #1
Mercassium 75 994  Acc: 1
Vendarite 145 299  Acc: 0.9
Sorium 220 112  Acc: 0.8

Roma-A Comet #2
Duranium 482 556  Acc: 1
Mercassium 32 900  Acc: 0.9

Roma-A Comet #3
Neutronium 27 560  Acc: 1

Roma-A Comet #4
Neutronium 128 100  Acc: 1
Vendarite 21 551  Acc: 0.8
Uridium 137 542  Acc: 0.7

Code: [Select]
And third extrasolar colony on Sparta, fed by the minerals from Lacedonia and Platea.

Rocky Planets: 5   Surveyed: 3
Gas Giants: 4   Surveyed: 3
Moons: 89   Surveyed: 44
Asteroids: 38   Surveyed: 0

Sparta
Duranium 14 623 230  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 1 557 504  Acc: 0.5
Corbomite 97 344  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 6 492 304  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 24 920 060  Acc: 0.1
Vendarite 3 312 400  Acc: 0.3
Sorium 3 904 576  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 7 033 104  Acc: 0.1

Lacedonia
Corbomite 54 756  Acc: 0.9
Tritanium 142 129  Acc: 0.6
Boronide 1 249 924  Acc: 0.4
Mercassium 169  Acc: 0.4

New Athens-A III
Sorium 20 445 000  Acc: 0.4

Platea
Duranium 5 120 000  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 9 610 000  Acc: 0.7
Boronide 1 322 500  Acc: 0.1
Mercassium 9 302 500  Acc: 0.7
Uridium 562 500  Acc: 0.1
Corundium 810 000  Acc: 0.1

New Athens-A III - Moon 9
Corundium 200 704  Acc: 0.5

New Athens-A VI - Moon 5
Boronide 461 041  Acc: 0.8

New Athens-A VI - Moon 18
Duranium 4 050  Acc: 1
Corbomite 5 625  Acc: 1

My galactic map is in the attached pic - Remus system was kinda dissapointing - one colony cost zero planet and one 0.95 colony cost ... but really poor, at least when compared to Sparta and Rome Prime.
Also - Tau Ceti has only one planet with milions of every mineral ( but low acc ) but it has atm 120 and nice Carbon Dioxide/Sulphur Dioxide atmo and 2.49 gravity  ... :( i hate when this happens.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on August 14, 2015, 04:24:59 AM
Setting up...you guessed it...that ruddy TATO/TEU game again with a third faction. Hopefully this one goes somewhere.

In other news, the glorious surveyors of SICON and the Federation are scouring the jump points in Sol for any trace of the Bugs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on August 20, 2015, 07:08:28 AM
How could I did not notice this thread earlier ;)
so many batles fought ...

Possibly much better place to talk with Vandermeer than more dedicated thread as well
especially he was curious how the nastiest enemies taste - yes - battle vs spoilers so read on own risk

situation
clearing 1 of 4 wormhole race groups within my teritory
year 2094
enemy
6x 34kt ships - type already salvaged 21 twin 10cm lazor turrets with extreme FC confirmed by intelligence
2x 34 kt ? ships - unknown class and capabilities
these 2 operating as 1 group

supported by 3x 16.7kt ? unknown  class and capabilities
due to termal signature ( I have placed there few deep space stations ) all unknown class are expected to be military ships
enemy speed 8k ecm=6 and deep armor no shields

tonnage by groups 270kt + 50kt
friendly forces
cruiser fleet - 18 of my generation 2 to 2+ ships 19kt each + 1  cruiser 15 kt 2+gen  + 3 fresh 27kt gen 3 battlecruisers

tonnage used 450kt
speed 8 km/s for main body and 9km/s for BC, ewar level 3 for all, armor 6 to 8, shields- 200size on BC only

initial tactics unless something bad happens is to go to 10-20mil km for cruiser missile broadside and finish by beams with BC missile broadside as situtational reserve 
expected outcome - kill / damage enemy group - if enemy PD too good at least break their formation and kill with beams one by one
logistics not needed - run well within my operational range to homeworld , auxilaries / tugs next door

weaponary
missiles -all in boxed launchers ( wh-speed-range)
cruisers
660 size 5    18-60-44
120 size 15  47-60-44 1p of armor
battlecruisers
180 size 5    26-77-55
30 size 15    58-77-55
beams 
3x38c10 spinals +42x30cmC10 +45x30cmC6+24x 25cmC6
PD-turrets
9 quad r4 gauss 
37 triple r3 gauss


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on August 21, 2015, 07:33:21 AM
It was much easier than I thought - total overkill ;)

3 small were missile asm - with asm size 6 missile having almost 1bn range and salvo density 3x7 so no leaks through PD
2 main group unknown class remained mystery - I have witnessesd only energy weapon 3 PD fire from previously known class - so salvagers will provide answers
at 22 mil km group opened fire from cruiser launchers with salvo density 660 size 5 and 120 size 15 missiles
over 170 missiles were destroyed by enemy small laser PD - it was less than I expected tbh - I expected half of missiles eaten by PD
almost 200 size 5 and 70+ size 15 hits
multiple secendery explosions
enemy eliminated

total action cost 5k trit and 5k gallicite for ammo which will be restored from wrecks with ease alongside with some nice tech
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on August 21, 2015, 08:13:45 AM
First contacts are always FUN.

2 Grav Survey Ships (obsolete ones, but still) lost to Particle Beams, Jump Gates on all JPs, 3 Jumps distance.

And I don't  have a standing fleet.  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on August 21, 2015, 08:36:03 AM
1st contacts ususaly means nobody even will scoop Lifepods
fortunately AI is not aggressive enough to trace into homesystem ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on August 22, 2015, 10:25:26 AM
Looks like I panicked to hard. Just some crappy Precursor beam ship. Status: Wrecked.

Swept the inner system, found nothing. Geo Survey vessels dispatched to confirm that find. :o

Edit: I have to mess around with ship design a bit more. 30% engines give me the ability to out run these ships, but the range is awful and I feel like I still lack things to make the ship complete.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: canshow on August 23, 2015, 08:44:51 AM
Quote from: sneer link=topic=3808. msg80279#msg80279 date=1440164163
1st contacts ususaly means nobody even will scoop Lifepods
fortunately AI is not aggressive enough to trace into homesystem ;)
They traced into mine 1 day after I sent 3 survey ships into an adjacent system and then they started nuking earth.

I'm never again leaving myself undefended when I scout out of Sol.   :-X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on August 24, 2015, 04:29:48 PM
It was much easier than I thought - total overkill ;)

3 small were missile asm - with asm size 6 missile having almost 1bn range and salvo density 3x7 so no leaks through PD
2 main group unknown class remained mystery - I have witnessesd only energy weapon 3 PD fire from previously known class - so salvagers will provide answers
at 22 mil km group opened fire from cruiser launchers with salvo density 660 size 5 and 120 size 15 missiles
over 170 missiles were destroyed by enemy small laser PD - it was less than I expected tbh - I expected half of missiles eaten by PD
almost 200 size 5 and 70+ size 15 hits
multiple secendery explosions
enemy eliminated

total action cost 5k trit and 5k gallicite for ammo which will be restored from wrecks with ease alongside with some nice tech
Was that on the tech level of the cruiser you had presented in the other thread? If so, then 2:1 mass advantage is actually not that frightening as a requirement for only internal fusion age (and for overkill no less). Fielding a 1000 unit broadside however sounds like much of a steeper achievement.
...I wonder if this could have been done with just 300kt in size-1 missile ships (also 1000 salvos), and rest pd. The size-1 wont destroy the enemy in one salvo, but they will have 15-20 of them too. ...Only obvious issue would be that they most likely wont catch the enemy missile ships if they part the formation, which is likely with the short engagement ranges at that age, but the beam ones should run right into the spear.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on August 25, 2015, 08:02:30 AM
yes - it was fleet made of variants of this presented cruiser
the 3 other BC did not shoot in this fight and were not necessary - backup and fast element to chase enemy empty asm ships
so tonnage used in battle was 370kt vs 270kt  - not bad outcome for a early to mid tech level

total damage inflicted was around 10k I guess so 10-12 salvoof size 1 would work
but this fleet design is much more elastic , carry lots of beams and can dictate range in fight than 1 ship

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 02, 2015, 12:37:49 PM
I am scrapping my game and creating a new one. I am already 2 years into it (no ships) and have everything pretty much set up. I was wondering what I should do according to naming things such as weapons/sensors/engines. Every time so far I have left the names as the default (400EP magneto-plasma drive, gauss cannon r3-100, etc) and was wondering what a good naming doctrine for these things would be. Also I was wondering about what sizes of ships I should use. I was thinking I kind of want to step a little back from the large ship I usually do (30kt frigates, 100kt cruisers, etc) but I don't want to go all the way to general Aurora accepted, so I was wondering what a good middle ground would be.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on September 02, 2015, 03:22:21 PM
I am a fan of numerical consistency.  I design almost all of my ships to be exactly the same size regardless of mission role. 

In my mind I imagine a large factory producing empty ship hulls.  The space program would love to build something else but the government commissioned this company to build the empty hulls.  It's been decades now and none of the politicians can get the pork barrel spending off of the budget as it has become a political land mine.  To kill the factory contract would put millions of workers out of business and the angry constituents would vote the pols out of office.  Each new iteration of the congress just keeps rubber-stamping the budget and the space program gets a never ending supply of matching hulls to figure out how to cram mission gear into.

(Roll a die and pick a specific size for your military hulls and commercial hulls and regardless of consequence make it work.  i.e. All Navel craft must be 12675 tons, all commercial craft must be 122,500 tons.  Stuff them with fluff, armor, CIWS, fuel tanks or whatever to inflate the size to fit or go without something critical if you need to cut size.  Make it a fun handicap for your game)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 02, 2015, 05:57:04 PM
For component names I generally stick with close to default, but add information that might help me sort through similar components.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 02, 2015, 11:53:13 PM
My early-game ships were all at 10kt which (I think) is still somewhat above the average size - maybe try that?
As for component naming, I suggest picking your favourite sci-fi universe and using techs out of that, eg Ion cannons for lasers and Hyperspace cores for jump engines etc using a Homeworld theme. Renaming techs in general can spice things up a bit, eg shields -> reactive armour, or missiles -> cannon shells, without really needing an overarcing theme.
I might also suggest ditching the use of centimetres in caliber measurements in favour of millimetres - from what a certain war game has taught me, only the Germans really used cm in the military.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 03, 2015, 12:53:01 PM
Well, I am almost at the point where I will have to make a decision about the naming thing. 3 (almost 4) years in...... and micro-increments are starting. It started mid August and is in late October already. I started with 3 NPRs active at start, I guess one found something fun to do.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 03, 2015, 03:32:09 PM
I really like the idea of changing caliber measurmenents to mms.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on September 03, 2015, 04:07:15 PM
I really like the idea of changing caliber measurmenents to mms.

One I did a few years back I converted all the measurements to inches. So the 15cm laser was a 5.9" laser :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 05, 2015, 12:54:38 PM
Once again wormholers strike my colonies! This time it's GJ 1002, the hub system between Zemlya and Altair, where homeworld of Wedgefield stands. There are 5 long-range missile PDC which could strike the attackers...

...

If I hadn't forgotten to bring some missiles here. Main fleet is stationed somewhere in Altair (3 systems away!), QRF is kind of destroyed (or "under reconstruction"), and attack here was really unexpected, because all but one system linked to GJ 1002 are populated.
Lives of 120 million people are at stake because I'm forgetful.

I will scramble some outdated ships and, uh, start taking notes? Or maybe field meson PDCs instead? But they can't cover civvies...
Ruling a 20-system empire is hard, and it's only a matter of time before combination of small mistakes will lead to big failure.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 05, 2015, 04:53:11 PM
Heh. Problems like that are why i always make it a priority to unload missiles to newly built PDCs, even if i have to use warships to do it rather than colliers.  It's way too easy to forget.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 06, 2015, 06:14:30 AM
My laptop died recently, and I haven't yet bothered to try and recover stuff from the hard drive. Instead, I've started a new game on this crappy old device while I wait for a replacement to get shipped over.
It's my first game with Invaders turned on, and this time my chosen doctrine dictates an almost exclusive carrier/fighter fleet. It's all beam at the moment since missile tech still needs some development, so I just hope their ECM isn't so strong that my fighters have 0% to-hit chance at point blank range.

A wormhole has been discovered in a system adjacent to Sol, but no ships (survey or otherwise) have yet to be detected. A forward listening post has been established on the second planet in the system to watch for activity, and my only dedicated carrier is on station with its fighter complement in case a threat does materialise. I'm hoping the spoilers will stay on the other side of that wormhole long enough for me to develop some viable missiles so that I at least have a chance to damage some of their ships when they do come through.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 06, 2015, 06:20:58 AM
Are you going for 'battlestar' carriers or 'fleet' carriers?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 06, 2015, 08:18:22 AM
This is the design for the carrier I mentioned:
Code: [Select]
Illustrious class Carrier    20 000 tons     290 Crew     2382 BP      TCS 400  TH 1200  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-65     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
Maint Life 0.68 Years     MSP 372    AFR 640%    IFR 8.9%    1YR 550    5YR 8248    Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Flight Crew Berths 213   
Hangar Deck Capacity 10000 tons     

Capital MPF Drive (2)    Power 600    Fuel Use 14.61%    Signature 600    Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 61.6 billion km   (237 days at full power)

Reactive Armour Mk.I (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Ship Detection Sensor Mk.I (1)     GPS 10500     Range 147.0m km    Resolution 100
Missile Detection Sensor Mk.I (1)     GPS 105     Range 14.7m km    MCR 1.6m km    Resolution 1

Strike Group
20x Dart Fighter   Speed: 12800 km/s    Size: 5
10x Raven Heavy Fighter   Speed: 12800 km/s    Size: 10

I think it's closer to a "fleet carrier", although I'm not too sure what either designation implies to be honest.

On another note, A survey ship just jumped into Sol from a different system to the one with the wormhole. It's a ~4kt ship going at a bit over 9000km/s, so I'm thinking it's probably a spoiler? After it was intercepted and destroyed by a couple fighter wings, no life pods were detected. This suggests that it was indeed a spoiler since NPR ships (always?) leave life pods. This then suggests that either there's another wormhole down that chain, or the jump points form a loop somewhere.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 06, 2015, 09:43:31 AM
well, at least in the way i think of it, a battlestar is intended to close with the enemy and destroy it. as such it tends to be heavily armored and well defended.  Fighters often function more as detachable beam mounts rather than in the strike role.

fleet carriers OTOH are generally designed for standoff strikes and arn't intended to take fire. they tend to have a lot less armor, and have few or no short range weapons.

beam fighters have a problem in the strike role... an AMM escort can easily have 700 AMMs, each of which are quite likely to hit a beam fighter. generously assuming 30 AMMs to kill a fighter, a single amm escort could kill almost 25 fighters without the fighters able to do anything in reply... although if the fighters can mount a missile defense sensor, that does help.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 06, 2015, 03:36:29 PM
I must say that most beam ships are suffering from AMM spam. It's just the fighters who suffer the most because of very low armor.

That said, one can try to tank the damage with more sturdy ships before launching strike force.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 06, 2015, 03:39:26 PM
AMM aside, today was the first time I got two battles interrupting progress at the same time.
First was my GJ 1002 (obviously, we lost. The harvester took three full 500mm laser cannon salvos before dying though, armor is nice thing indeed)
Second was two spoiler race combating each other.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 06, 2015, 06:27:22 PM

If I hadn't forgotten to bring some missiles here. Main fleet is stationed somewhere in Altair (3 systems away!), QRF is kind of destroyed (or "under reconstruction"), and attack here was really unexpected, because all but one system linked to GJ 1002 are populated.
Lives of 120 million people are at stake because I'm forgetful.


ooooh...checks outposts for missiles...(facepalm) Sends fleet out to supply missiles.   :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 08, 2015, 05:36:12 PM
So, situation is pretty grim. Everything but colonies was destroyed in GJ 1002, and the wormholers fleet is heading into Groombridge 34.

No, I hadn't forgotten missiles this time, but there's a bunch of other problems around here.
First, Groombridge 34 is actually an another hub system, connecting Moskva and GJ 1041, both very important systems to Zemnoy Soyuz, and any attack there, no matter of result, has a side-effect of civilians ceasing flights through this system for a few years.
Second, the PDCs in this system are equipped with AMM launchers. While good enough against attackers, the range is... lacking, to say the least.
Third, I've managed to bring 11 ships to the jumpgate, 1 trophy ASM ship, 9 very outdated AMM ships, and 1 outdated battleship, but they're all poorly trained and ill-equipped.

It's going to be a tough battle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: misora on September 09, 2015, 02:07:44 PM
Good luck with that! I recently discovered a system with 17 125 KKTons ships running around in it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 09, 2015, 02:25:03 PM
Are Invaders fixed finally ??
Or are you just extremely patient and click trough those damn overflow errors ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 09, 2015, 04:25:57 PM
Are Invaders fixed finally ??
Or are you just extremely patient and click trough those damn overflow errors ?


It's usually no more then 10 clicks.

Back to news.
Our forces were victorious against wormholers, losing only one ship out of 11. The enemy destroyed the beam battlecruiser, but the AMM ships managed to defeat enemy beam ships, though they used all available to them ammunition. Colossus 004 is gathering survivors to bring back to Zemlya.

We will commence building Ashod harvester base to replace destroyed one, as well as PDCs in GJ 1002.
Development of new PDC design, armed with size 40 torpedo launchers, will begin, alongside of general missile upgrade.
All PDCs are to be checked and loaded.

Because the new fleet is under construction, we are not able to allocate ships to scout\eradicate Lyuten 726-8. The minefield will be deployed near the jumpgate.

I should also design size 40 MIRV. Torpedoes are nice, but, well, one shot and they're down. Huge range is nice, though.
Also, these spoilers really are wild now. I wonder when next attack will be?
Pictured: new fleet construction. I really wanted to show it for some reason, sorry.


UPD: Guess what: after just one month an another wormholer ship showed itself up, this time in Tau Ceti, and it's BIG. Stay tuned.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 10, 2015, 12:10:55 PM
Welp, a quick update. Just starting on my 5th year (January 21st), and I took a quick look at my shipyard that I set to continuously expand. It was quite unexpected to have grown as fast as it did. It is about 170k tons already with a mod rate of over 18,000, I am guessing I probably should have set all of them to continuously expand from the start (especially my multi slipway shipyards) because my next biggest just reached 20k tons (3 slips) during those micro increments from my last post.

Torpedoes are nice, but, well, one shot and they're down.
You could armor them and give them some ECM. Also, you could add some size 1 AMMs (or no warhead and just have them as an engine with some fuel) on it to be used as flares.

Edit; I did a dumbs. I went to do something else and I forgot aurora was still running in the background so now its a few months into year 6 (because of all my queues). Now I am kind of happy that I turned off the expansion on that shipyard (but curious to see what it would have been). Well the really good news is that the first few of my engines are done researching so now I will start to design/build survey craft. The reason that was bad though was I had a massive worker shortage as well as in large amounts of debt. Also, micro increments started again. I don't like it when people are having fun without me.
(http://i.imgur.com/BmewBzp.gif)
(borrowing your signature GreatTuna)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 10, 2015, 02:37:28 PM
Quote
It's usually no more then 10 clicks.

10 clicks every 5 seconds ?? Would drive me mad in minutes.

Anyway nice game you got there man. Hope you cant pull trough.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 10, 2015, 03:30:35 PM
Hope you cant pull trough.

How nice of you.

@83athom: oh well, flare idea is nice, could be neat to equip a missile with just engines and sensors and launch it somewhere. I'll still prefer MIRV though.

Anyway...
The ship in Tau Ceti is stationed near jumpgate and is launching missiles at civilians. Minelayer Caraennyn II 002 will take an offensive action against it using mines loaded with ASMs. After unloading them, Caraennyn will pull back to Teegardens Star, so we expect no losses.

Thank god, Teegardens Star is well-defended. I even have a shipyard here! I don't know why, but hey.
Since I'm running low on missiles, I decided to try something else this time, namely, mines. I think 14 size 50 ones packed with 8 size 5 missiles each will do the work. And yes, I'm doing this with only one ship because I think it'll work. Stay tuned.
Oh, and despite having the Gliese 908 marked, only now I remembered about it. That makes four systems: NN 4360, EZ Aquarii, Luyten 726-8 and Gliese 908. All have wormholes. I think I'll plant buyos around, I have 90 of them after all.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 11, 2015, 12:21:41 AM
How nice of you.


Honest typo man :P

You made me think about enabling Invaders again ... I miss them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on September 11, 2015, 01:44:10 AM
How long (real time ) is this game GreatTuna ?
standard start 500mil pop 2015 ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 11, 2015, 08:44:58 AM
Well, my commercial drives just finished researching so now my scientist are working on applications to get us into space.
Code: [Select]
Discovery class Geological Survey Vessel    10 000 tons     135 Crew     1201.8 BP      TCS 200  TH 800  EM 0
4000 km/s     Armour 1-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/6     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
MSP 300    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

400 EP 50HS Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 400    Fuel Use 5.3%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 500 000 Litres    Range 849.1 billion km   (2456 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (6)   6 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
I would say this is a basic design that persists in most of my games.
Code: [Select]
Outreach class Cargo Ship    175 350 tons     340 Crew     1996.6 BP      TCS 3507  TH 3200  EM 0
912 km/s     Armour 1-279     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 7    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cargo 150000    Cryogenic Berths 400    Cargo Handling Multiplier 100   

400 EP 50HS Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (8)    Power 400    Fuel Use 5.3%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 000 000 Litres    Range 38.7 billion km   (491 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
I felt that for the start, I would only be in sol so I thought that I wouldn't need a super fast ship to haul stuff out to Luna, Mars, or Venus.

My only concerns for these is that they are not defensible. I usually put at least 2 thick armor and CIWS on all of my commercial ships. Also, I do understand that my grav-survey ship does not have a jump drive. I will be putting that on another version that will fulfill my concerns. However, I might do the reliant on jump gate thing that a lot of sci-fis do.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 11, 2015, 09:52:54 AM
How long (real time ) is this game GreatTuna ?
standard start 500mil pop 2015 ?

This.

And can you share a save man ?? I would love to dig around in that gameplay ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 11, 2015, 10:29:37 AM
How long (real time ) is this game GreatTuna ?
I don't remember.
I think I started this right after 6.42 release.
standard start 500mil pop 2015 ?
Not really standard, I made a "your average humans... on another system" scenario, had to make a throwaway Sol system (and empire) to make proper human race, with 0.9 gravity spread and all that, because SM Race-issue humans had only 0.7 spread.

I then poked around on system view, until I found proper system: Epsilon Eridani. I then created the Zemnoy Soyuz there.
Starting date is 2134 though, so it's not really 200 years long game, merely 80 years. Spoilers really slow down the game.
I'm planning to make 300 years long game once 6.50 gets released, maybe even write some fiction about it, but I'm not sure, I'm not very good writer and English isn't my native language...

Anyway, database is in attachment. here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2qnK3jQHeheOWdaV2ppT3ZlSVk/view?usp=sharing
Download it, replace the database (don't forget backups!) and select New Game Name.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 11, 2015, 11:09:43 AM
Quote
Anyway, database is in attachment. here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2qnK3jQHeheOWdaV2ppT3ZlSVk/view?usp=sharing
Download it, replace the database (don't forget backups!) and select New Game Name.
Thx kindly :)

All those default system names...
All those obsolete designs not marked as obsolete...
Civilian names on ...

Jesus man you are one persistent guy ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 11, 2015, 03:15:15 PM
The Tau Ceti invader was defeated. It required two mine salvos because we were using obsolete mines. Once again the systems are safe, but systems outside our sphere of influence can be infested with enemy. Therefore, it's good time to try the Bulwark ship in action. It will go in the systems in an attempt to strike enemy opposition. First target is Lyuten 726-8, system near GJ 1002.

So, I had this cool design in mind...
Code: [Select]
Bulwark class Luxury Liner    2 000 000 tons     18670 Crew     239737.2 BP      TCS 40000  TH 120000  EM 300000
3000 km/s     Armour 15-1414     Shields 10000-300     Sensors 50/40/0/0     Damage Control Rating 481     PPV 500
Maint Life 2.67 Years     MSP 116036    AFR 66528%    IFR 924%    1YR 23212    5YR 348185    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Flight Crew Berths 10684   
Hangar Deck Capacity 500000 tons     Magazine 30200    Habitation Capacity 50 000   
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 30 modules producing 3000000 litres per annum

ExpAI 120 EP Solid Core AM Drive (1000)    Power 120    Fuel Use 24.25%    Signature 120    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 451 750 000 Litres    Range 167.7 billion km   (646 days at full power)
Aelith Xi Weapons Pacifier (2000)   Total Fuel Cost  25 000 Litres per hour  (600 000 per day)

ExpAI Size 5 Missile Launcher (100)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 25
ExpAI Mine Launcher Add-On (5)     Range 7.7m km    Resolution 1
Size 6 Anti-ship Missile (300)  Speed: 93 300 km/s   End: 52.5m    Range: 293.8m km   WH: 9    Size: 6    TH: 528/317/158
Size 24 Aimed Torpedo-4 (83)  Speed: 100 000 km/s   End: 22.7m    Range: 136.1m km   WH: 70    Size: 24    TH: 633/380/190
Size 1 Anti-missile Missile-4 (19000)  Speed: 120 000 km/s   End: 4.7m    Range: 33.8m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1600/960/480
Size 5 Anti-ship Missile-4 (1000)  Speed: 120 000 km/s   End: 5.6m    Range: 40.7m km   WH: 20    Size: 5    TH: 640/384/192
Size 24 MIRV-3 (100)  Speed: 33 300 km/s   End: 1166.7m    Range: 2343.1m km   WH: 0    Size: 24    TH: 111/66/33

ExpAI Backup Sensor System-4 (1)     GPS 800     Range 32.0m km    Resolution 100
Ratters Thermal Detector S50\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Ratters EM Detector S40\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  40m km

ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 40

Strike Group
500x Nanuchka III Fighter   Speed: 63829 km/s    Size: 9.4
250x Gordi IV Fighter   Speed: 36000 km/s    Size: 10
100x Grisha III Fighter-bomber   Speed: 60000 km/s    Size: 10
100x Doppelganger III Fighter-bomber   Speed: 43373 km/s    Size: 8.3
50x Ping IV Fighter-Scout   Speed: 37305 km/s    Size: 9.65
48x Guderian III Fighter   Speed: 24000 km/s    Size: 10

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
And now, having built it, I feel like it was horrible waste of time and resources. I mean, it's pathetically slow. And costs 240k BP! Granted, it can tank like hell, but it's no good at offense. I also don't have fighters to supply it, and building requires Gallicite, and I'm low on it. I have 100k units, but it's all going to be used in fleet building. I think I'll ship more automines in gallicite mining colonies. And also all these attacks... I need to strike. And reinforce.
Hm... so straight to the wormhole this ship goes. It it survives, it's good. It not, I won't miss it. Stay tuna.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 11, 2015, 03:29:48 PM
I dont get ... why the rec facilities, orbital habs and fuel harvesters ?? They weigh smegload of tons, no wonder that ship is so slow/big/hard to manufacture ...

Plus those smegty engine O___o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 11, 2015, 05:51:31 PM
Jesus wept that's a lot of fuel, you realis it'll take 150 years to refuel and suck up 200000 sorium in doing so?
I'm all for stupidly big platforms but this takes the cake( the sorium cake).
Edit: wait, these aren't even commercial engines?
Try removing 95% of the fuel and engines and use a tug. It'll be so much better and as a bonus you'll have an awesome tug ( even if you need to put an orbital hab on the tug to construct it)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 11, 2015, 05:57:33 PM
Just had my first real battle with wormholers...

Tensions had been mounting for the better part of a year ever since the first survey ship transited into Sol from an unexpected jump point. The main fleet was off in another system blockading a wormhole, so all that was in Sol were the fighter reserves and some exploration ships with 2000 tons of hangar space. Since they were probably only surveys, I decided 2000 tons worth of fighters should be enough to deal with this "threat", so I packed some fighters into the hangar of one such exploration ship and sent it off. Due to the survey ship being over 3 times faster than my psudo-carrier, I had to predict which survey point the spoiler would head to next and lie in ambush there, but once I got within strike distance the fighters proved sufficient in dispatching the survey.

Two further waves of survey ships as well as a pair of gate builders (?) transited into Sol over the next few months and were intercepted and destroyed in similar fashon. However, each time Fleet command had to dispatch forces that were based on Earth, which is around 5.5 bkm away from the jump point. To shorten response times, it was decided that a forward base of operations would be established on the asteroid 2008 KV42 which was a mere ~250mkm from the jump point.
The plan was to first set up a few hangar PDC's on the asteroid so that fighters could be on station perpetually, and maybe eventually set up some missile defense stations as well. Due to insufficient gravity on that rock, orbital habitats were required to kickstart the project until sufficient underground infrastructure could be produced on site to support the construction workers.

The pre-fabricated sections of the first hangar PDC were shipped to the asteroid and assembly began with the assistance of two orbital habitat units. The three available exploration ships and their fighter complements were on station to defend the works after ferrying over a few fighter wings from the reserves on Earth.

At this stage, I had:
32x 250 ton interceptors equipped with 17%acc gauss cannons, no actives
26x 500 ton heavy fighters equipped with small caliber lasers, actives
2x 500 ton new generation, experimental heavy fighters equipped with microwaves and actives

It would be several years before assembly of the first hangar is completed at the current rate of construction, so further orbital habitats were laid down back at Earth to bolster the workforce.

Then came the spoilers.
Based on the impressions I got from other people, this is only a recon-in-force fleet, but it seemed like it would crush all resistance at first.
1x 59700 ton "Juarez" cruiser?, purpose unknown.
1x 39800 ton "Tritao" destroyer, discovered to be beam combatant with 13x 65-damage lasers.
2x 39800 ton "Zarco" destroyer?, purpose unknown.

At the very least, these guys were 2-3 times the tonnage of my standard carriers and moved at a blistering speed of 9684 km/s, almost as fast as my older generation fighters.

The interceptors went in first to absorb any anti-fighter strikes, but surprisingly no AMM's were launched. In fact, the only ship which retaliated was the Tritao which fired all 13 of its main guns at a single 250 ton interceptor. I wouldn't be too surprised if the laser beams were larger than the fighter they were shot at. Then the rest of my fighter force was upon them, but Fleet Command soon discovered that the strength-70 ECM mounted by the wormholers reduced effective fire down to ~10 points worth of damage every 5 second increment.

This is where the experimental microwave-armed fighter got its place in the spotlight. In the absense of any serious anti-fighter armaments, the microwave fighters were able to chew through the electronics of the wormholer ships while bypassing their monstrous armour. As soon as ECM went down, the rest of the fighters redoubled their attacks and scored some consistent 60 damage per increment from lasers and another 10 or so from the gauss cannons. It still took a while, but soon those juggernauts bled atmosphere and eventually exploded from several internal secondary detonations.

And so my fighter force which totalled just under 15 000 tons defeated the wormholer incursion of 179 100 tons worth of fiery annihilation while taking only 10 casualties among the 250 ton interceptors. All things considered, Fleet Command were quite overcome with this result, however they are wary of further incursions which may feature ships fielding the dreaded AMM spam.

When missile systems are finally installed on the soon-to-be asteroid fort, hopefully there won't be as heavy a reliance on the fighters to absorb hits and repel attacks. Now that this jump point has been identified as a definite threat axis, an early warning ship will be deployed on the other side until sufficient force can be mustered to create and defend an outpost in the adjoining system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 11, 2015, 06:02:37 PM
Great victory! (I'm going to show this to steve so he gives invaders slightly better AI or ship designs )
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 11, 2015, 06:06:03 PM
Haha, thanks.  ;D Perhaps if it hasn't been fixed already, also suggest looking at those overflow errors the spoilers seem to throw everywhere? That really slowed up the battle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 11, 2015, 06:08:39 PM
Steve has fixed the sensor overflow bug, I'm pretty sure that was the one causing invader errors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 11, 2015, 06:25:41 PM
Yup, microwaves are incredible. That's why it is one of my two favourite weapons in the game (second being mesons, of course).

That said, it can be countered by having shields (I don't know about absorption ones though). Even a few, along with hardening and spares, could make fights with wormholers not-so-easy.

@AL, nice work, but you're lucky it didn't launch any missiles at you.
That's what happened on my first encounter with them: mixed meson-microwave strike force just got wiped. There was, if I recall, 5 ships still in flying condition left, out of 30. That's 125 000 tons lost to one enemy ship.

@MarkAFK, I'll look into making a BIG TUG for the BIG SHIP.

Anyway, my encounters with wormholers were not so exciting. In Lyuten 726-8 system... about 10 gate-builders who rammed into big ship's shields, and in Gliese 908 4 beam battleships (died to missiles), some missile battleships who... ran away? and more gate-builders.

So, yeah, at this stage Bulwark is just invulnerable. I think I'll keep it as a mobile HQ for my Third Fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on September 12, 2015, 02:59:25 AM
I, too, have been facing Wormholers.  Meson and microwave fighters do a great job of killing them, however, I don't just want to kill them.  In order to take them as prizes, I need to take out most of their engines without destroying the ships.  Mesons don't seem to do this very well, I believe because the engines have higher HTK, so 1-damage meson spam tends to destroy everything but the engines, and the ships pop before they slow down very much.

Over 30 years I have stolen four generations of engine tech by capturing wounded wormhole ships.  My latest captures include a 40,000T jump-capable laser brawler that, once repaired, will serve as a one-ship Quick Responce Force for my home systems.  At about the same time, I captured a 60,000T missile-launching colossus, the disassembly of which is eagerly awaited by my now-quite-experienced reverse engineering industry.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on September 13, 2015, 09:15:21 AM
Hey everyone - just a reminder not to slip too far into specific tactics and capabilities of spoiler races outside of the Spoilers section.

Thanks,
John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 13, 2015, 01:59:00 PM
In the Alpha Centauri system ( i decided to play with real stars for once ) three of my Explorator class survey ships got jumped by some railgun armed hostiles. They damaged Pathfinder by blowing one engine and one fuel storage before they got obliterated by the 15cm Quad turrets on my ships ;).

Code: [Select]
Explorator class Exploration Ship    184 050 tons     1629 Crew     15418.4 BP      TCS 3681  TH 15000  EM 900
4074 km/s     Armour 10-288     Shields 30-300     Sensors 30/55/1/1     Damage Control Rating 10     PPV 73.2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 36810%    IFR 511.2%    1YR 23313    5YR 349693    Max Repair 384 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 96 months    Spare Berths 0   

300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (50)    Power 300    Fuel Use 4.42%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 25 000 000 Litres    Range 553.0 billion km   (1571 days at full power)
Beta R300/180 Shields (20)   Total Fuel Cost  150 Litres per hour  (3 600 per day)

Quad 15cm C5 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (4x4)    Range 180 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 24-20     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S08 128-16000 H70 (1)    Max Range: 256 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor S1 (20)     Total Power Output 90    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Small Craft Detection System mk1 (1)     GPS 2100     Range 51.7m km    Resolution 20
Ship Detection System mk1 (1)     GPS 10500     Range 163.3m km    Resolution 50
Anti Missile Sensor mk1 (1)     GPS 105     Range 11.6m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH5-30 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM5-55 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 55     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

ECCM-1 (1)         ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
and the hostiles characteristic :
(http://i.imgur.com/V6RqvKZ.jpg)
Thankfully Battlefleet Solar wasn't needed to deal with those frakkers ;)

Lord Captain Castro Karkasy and Rear Admiral Nero Endanor were awarded a Battle Star - medal for destroying an enemy ships during combat ( Nero got 2 )
Centauri also has some unknown wrecks just waiting for salvagers.

Inb4 waste of resources - its a game for fun with 1bn of every mineral on Earth and i can afford it ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 13, 2015, 10:38:39 PM
Hey, if you want to use heavy cruisers with appallingly bad science equipment out for exploration, who am I to stop you?   
I'm sure the vulcans might have something to say about it though.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on September 14, 2015, 01:01:27 AM
the only valid strategy against wormholers is to spread tracking stations into all surveyed systems and when they got spotted clear them with fleet
they tend to mass their forces so the longer it takes the bigger problem is
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 14, 2015, 11:53:45 AM
Just drew up the designs for a CIWS for the researches to get going on, and the best company name for pd came up. Lee Advanced Defense Systems, or LADS for short. Now when those pesky aliens start shooting up my survey vessels, the lads will come to their aid. Now I kind of wish to change my empire theme to British/UK.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 14, 2015, 07:56:50 PM
New game, modelled after Steve's earliest apocalyptic campaigns.
Earth will become uninhabitable by 2050 due to the close approach of an until recently hidden brown dwarf. Stellar warming will be on, but switched to cooling after 2050 then left on.
There's 6 factions, PC race is United Nations, default 500 million, 20 labs, 4 SY, 120k RP.
The rest are:
Russia: 200 million pop, 90k RP, 15 labs 3 SY,
China: 1000 mil pop, 120k RP, 15 labs 4 SY,
United States of the Americas: 500 million pop, 120k RP, 20 labs 4 SY,
Hindustani Republic: 900 million pop, 90k RP, 15 labs 3 SY.
Islamic state: 600 million pop, 60k RP, 10 labs, 2 SY.
Truce timer is set to 10 years but I don't expect peace to last long.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 15, 2015, 04:40:44 PM
Second attempt at my Cadian game. ( First one ended when Cadia was glassed by the huge Chaos Invaders fleet. Turns out that ten railgun armed FAC are not going to stop dozens of Chaos vessels .. who knew right ?? )

All spoilers on, conventional 6bn ppl, smegload of minerals, one JP in the system ( Cadian Gate of course ) and little suprise waiting for me deep in the system ;)
And firm intention of purging galaxy from Xenos :)

Aaaaand i got glassed again :|

Time for a new classic Starfire like game :>
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 16, 2015, 10:21:37 AM
Finished up my survey ships' designs.
Code: [Select]
Discovery class Geological Survey Vessel    12 550 tons     139 Crew     1274 BP      TCS 251  TH 800  EM 0
3187 km/s    JR 1-25(C)     Armour 2-48     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/6     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 63    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

Shaw-Fujikawa Advanced Technical CJD15KT     Max Ship Size 15000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 1
400 EP 50HS Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 400    Fuel Use 5.3%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 000 000 Litres    Range 541.2 billion km   (1965 days at full power)

Lee Advanced Defence Systems 200R3 CIWS (1x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Geological Survey Sensors (6)   6 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
The first 3 are still in production at the Bartlett Electric Boat Co.; GEV Leif Ericson, Thor Heyerdahl, and Yuri Gagarin. They will be completed in one years time.
Code: [Select]
Marco class Gravitational Survey Vessel    14 000 tons     313 Crew     1687.2 BP      TCS 280  TH 800  EM 0
2857 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 2-51     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/5/0     Damage Control Rating 22     PPV 0
Maint Life 7.46 Years     MSP 1657    AFR 71%    IFR 1%    1YR 52    5YR 785    Max Repair 150 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 16   
Cryogenic Berths 400   

Alcubierre Sytems MJD14000(3-50)     Max Ship Size 14000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
400 EP 50HS Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 400    Fuel Use 5.3%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 000 000 Litres    Range 485.2 billion km   (1965 days at full power)

Lee Advanced Defence Systems 200R3 CIWS (2x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Gravitational Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The first 3 were already built at the Robinson & Goodwin Shipyards; Marc Aaronson, George Ogden Abell, and Antonio Abetti. They have been surveying for a few months now and so far only SP5 has yielded a ftl possible location.

Edit; So there are 5 JPs total in the Sol system. However, the closest one to the central planets already contains a Jump Gate. It led to the Tau Ceti system (JG on the other side as well), which contains a planet a near identical twin to Terra. Tau Ceti A V; -10C temp, 1.08Gs, and a pressure of 1.1 atm. I also explored another system at the exact same time, the Proxima Centauri system. Now all together there are 6 planets under a 5 colony cost not within Sol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 21, 2015, 12:47:18 AM
Nemesis: year 2 (2026)
Global temperatures have increased to 14.73 in the last year, at this rate earth will become uninhabitable without infrastructure by 2035, however as nemesis will get significantly closer as it passes in 2050 the stellar instability is sure to increase severely before then. Earths first terraforming station has been constructed by the United Nations Coalition and has quickly come online, tasked with adding recently developed anti greenhouse gasses in order to offset the temperature increase, a second terraforming station is due in one year. Primary industry goals are set to increasing factory production, research, and mining with secondary goals of more shipyards and 2 additional PDCs. Production of 200 infrastructure a year is enough to support the growing Martian colony which has now reached .9 million as a result of a marathon year long effort by the UNF HG Wells which has been making a trip every 12 days, offloading 30000 colonists and the infrastructure to support them. By the end of the coming year transport capacity will increase to 4 million colonists a year with the completion of a second  H G wells class, and the first double sized Robert heinlein class.
There's no shortage of volunteers for relocation with the recent news also showing that mars is experiencing the same level of temperature increase as the Earth, however Something needs to be cut for more infrastructure production.
Relations with the other powers are strained but a diplomatic team is sent to the pan American states in the hope of getting a valuable trading partner from what's left of our former allies.
Research is slow but focused on increasing research production then construction, first will be done mid 2026, next by January 2027.
Our navy seems to be poor considering the growing number of ships showing up on sensors.
The solitary United Nations TNE survey ship has completed surveys of every planet and moon up to Uranus, after completing surveys of Neptune and it's moons the UNF Hematite will return to earth to refuel and for shore leave, on the way surveying comets in the vacinity.
The UNS Hawking has discovered 3 jump points in the solar system, the first leading to lalande 21185 which has three marginally habitable planets, the next to alpha centauri which has more bodies but of less quality, including an interesting trio of high pressure greenhouse worlds orbiting close to alpha b. the third jump point is due to be explored by the UNs only jump capable ship soon, the UNS Pegasus is a 4500 ton lightly armed scout vessel with minimal sensors, but in invaluable as the only ship capable of transporting our other survey ships, at least until the first gauss equipped 8100 ton jump destroyers come online later this year. As it approaches JP 3 the Pegasus noticed a recently constructed jump gate, the other powers have been busy as a gate was also recently found at the L 21185 point.
Puderbach Shipyard is expanding to 92000 tons to match the jump drive developed last year, its pair of slipways should start work on new higher capacity ships by November this year, mere months after they finish the heinlein, and the first pure freighter, the 2 hold Lloyds f class.
Hartley- chandler yards is working on a second slipway, meanwhile making a second hg wells.
Charpentier-Maxime works on a second 8100 ton missile destroyer, and expanding to a second yard.
And finally martineau-hubberts 3 slipways work on producing more FACs while expanding to 8100 tons.
The next few years should concentrate on exploration, specifically the need to find a suitable world to evacuate to in this regard it's recommended that one of the shipyards retools for making new jump capable survey ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 21, 2015, 10:32:07 AM
Couple more years in now. Sigma Draconis, Tau Ceti, and Proxima Centauri are all grav-surveyed, and the other two are about a quarter done. It seems I might be in a corner of the galaxy but there might be more nexuses behind Proxima Centauri or Shaka. I am also starting to research weaponry in order to start to create warships for various reasons.
Edit; Almost immediately after I posted, a JP was found in Centaurus.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 21, 2015, 11:46:37 AM
Hmmm, well turn out that I might be in some trouble. I found some aliens..... In Proxima Centauri. currently there are 6 Thermal 200 sigs (Designated: Repulse) on top of GEV Thor Heyerdahl. It has been ordered back at full speed and I have initiated contact attempts. Lets hope that A; They are friendly and/or B; They don't have Jump Drives. Thankfully though, none are displaying as a hostile contact. It has been hit by 2x strength 1 energy weapons and 4x 19 Nuclear detonations (but shot down 2). 10 seconds later, GEV Thor Heyerdahl is lost with 71 survivors remaining in pods, however, none of my ships are nearby and the only ones that can rescue them are the alien contacts all hands.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on September 21, 2015, 12:26:52 PM
So much for peaceful approach.

You should have diplomats ready. Then wait few years until you are closest allies, move your fleet to their homeworld and hold a referendum 'unify' their empire with yours, hehehe.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 21, 2015, 12:54:09 PM
Refer back to my map, they are 1 jump away from Sol, so it will probably be do or die. I have a Diplomatic team with a rating of 140 working on it, but I don't think it will be enough. I have paused all commercial techs that are being researched to rush out military tech. Currently I have sensors, shields, and a decent particle beam (strength 6, 240k range). However, many techs that I want (while simple) are a little too far off when doing all the techs in order to get a military ship out (UV lasers, focal size 20cm, etc). So any design I will get out for defense will have to be a cobbled design without all the techs I was wanting to put on them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 22, 2015, 05:09:39 PM
Well... almost have the last techs I need to build my military ships... aaaaand I encountered another race. Hoping this one is more freindly, the ship that encountered GEV Yuri Gagarin got out safely (but there is still one more in system and the contact was right at the JP). Wolf 424-A I is the most likely location as the homeworld/colony, but note there is a JG on the 1st JP. Well, anyway, I shall be using lasers, missiles, and particle beams as the main weapons in my force for now as those are the only worthwhile techs I have at the moment. Also, that side with Shaka, Hector, and Epsilon Eridani have no more JP left so that is a closed section (Please let it stay that way oh great space wizard).

Edit; Interesting, one of the unexplored JPs in Sigma Draconis led back to Tau Ceti. Also, GSV Antonio Abitti made it back to my space intact  ;D. Instead of sending him strait at the point like I was, I made him take a detour to JP 2 then right around to skip that possible colony location. Communication with this second race has proved somewhat successful, I have yet to receive a negative hit to future rolls.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 23, 2015, 11:28:34 AM
September 2nd, 2039 at 1658 hours, contact has been made with the Kingdom of Fujima and the Sinclair Diplomatic team with a rating of 70 has been assigned to them with relations improving everyday. So far relations have been friendly and we are currently at an understanding. However, communication proved to be impossible with the aliens found in the Proxima Centauri system and relations are not improving despite the Osullivan (170 rating) diplomatic team assigned to them.

Edit; A JG just formed on the JP of Proxima Centauri in the Sol system. *Starts to slow clap* Good one Aurora, good one. *Starts to prepare butt*
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 24, 2015, 08:41:18 PM
Construction has started on the first 3 of the Floreal class and are expected to finish in 1 year 2 months. I hope the enemy  don't wise up until I at least have some protection.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on September 25, 2015, 07:07:29 AM
Construction has started on the first 3 of the Floreal class and are expected to finish in 1 year 2 months. I hope the enemy  don't wise up until I at least have some protection.

Didn't you pre-build some of the components as you waited for the others to finish researching? Even pre-building just the engines knocks a very significant time of the ship completion date.

Ian
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 25, 2015, 07:11:20 AM
Didn't you pre-build some of the components as you waited for the others to finish researching? Even pre-building just the engines knocks a very significant time of the ship completion date.
I did not know that was working. In my last games the parts only sat there instead of being used when I tried. Well my construction was/is pretty full as it is though

Edit; Yay, micro increments. Either my neighbors are having fun or one of them is being a peeping tom and "having fun".
Edit 2;*sigh* Despite my outstanding contracts to deliver about 50000 different buildings (including infrastructure, mines [auto and normal], and terraformers) the only thing my shipping lines are building are colony ships. Now I have 1 huge, 3 large, and 2 small colony ships that I have no direct control over.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 25, 2015, 09:04:26 AM
Fighters don't seem to use prebuilt components, apart from that I've never had trouble with it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 25, 2015, 09:12:37 AM
Speaking of fighters, how does this one look;
Code: [Select]
Missileer class Interceptor    250 tons     2 Crew     114.4 BP      TCS 5  TH 32  EM 0
12800 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.2
Maint Life 9.91 Years     MSP 29    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 1    5YR 8    Max Repair 54 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 8   
Magazine 8   

32EP 1HS MPFD (2)    Power 32    Fuel Use 336.02%    Signature 16    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 1.1 billion km   (23 hours at full power)

Size 1 Box Launcher (8)    Missile Size 1    Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes    MF Reload 1.2 hours
AMMFC10-R1 (70%) (1)     Range 10.4m km    Resolution 1
Aster M1S1 MPAMM (5)  Speed: 30 000 km/s   End: 1.3m    Range: 2.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 150/90/45

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
I want to use this as one possible loadout for my LCS. More I was thinking of was a bomber (Anti ship/minelayer), a AS or AF drone (125 ton or smaller), and a recon drone/fighter. And I do know I should use a smaller MFC, but I only have that one atm (for multipurpose use hint hint *wink* *wink*). Still excited for the new update to be able to fix this design and be really (can't find right word) about it. Also, just made this for said fighters in the near future.
Sidewinder S2V1 MPALM:
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 14
Speed: 32000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 33 minutes   Range: 63.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.9664
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 448%   3k km/s 140%   5k km/s 89.6%   10k km/s 44.8%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.9664x Gallicite   Fuel x507.5
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 25, 2015, 12:31:32 PM
that looks fine, but yknow thats a size 2 missile for a size 1 fighter right :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 25, 2015, 12:47:52 PM
that looks fine, but yknow thats a size 2 missile for a size 1 fighter right :D
The interceptor designed will have the size 1, the size 2 is for a future design of fighter that will be going on my carriers (when designed).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 25, 2015, 03:10:23 PM
Found yet another race within the Kohl system. I can tell I will not be friends with them as the increment I discovered them they pretty much destroyed the GSV Marc Aaronson. It literally encountered 42 ships all at the same time. Political relation also has started at -200 so there wont be recovering from this one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 25, 2015, 11:18:43 PM
So suppose you manage to defeat the home fleet of an NPR and gain control of their home system - what do you typically do? Try a ground assault? Glass the planet from orbit? Attempt to weaponize your terraformers?
The NPR I'm against is making their last stand and I might have to make this decision soon... I'm thinking unless they are sitting on some impressive mineral deposits, option 2 is probably going to be my choice.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DIT_grue on September 26, 2015, 01:02:50 AM
Political relation also has started at -200 so there wont be recovering from this one.

Don't forget that the value you see is your people's opinion of them, not their's of you. Besides, unless the race in question is as xenophobic as can be or you get into a full-out shooting war, a good diplomatic team should be able to overcome a penalty of that magnitude in two or three years. Even if they do peg the needle on xenophobia, it should still take less than a decade to work back to neutral. (Of course, there's no guarantee they'll bother assigning a good team to propagandise you, and thus the negative rating assigned to them will in turn limit what you can do to raise their rating of you besides assigning a team of your own.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 26, 2015, 01:31:07 AM
Year 3 (2027):
Earths temperature has crept upto an average 15.45 degrees, but population is still increasing, now at 527 million UN citizens, the mars colony approaches 2.9 million, thanks to the new colony ships in operation, the single heinlein class is capable of lifting twice the people in a third the time, but the pair of hg wells class still make a good effort, 1 more shall be finished by mid year and another heinlein will be finished by years end. Total capacity is now 90k per week to mars.
Infrastructure creation is now 24% of industrial output, more will be needed as new colony shios come online. A third civilian shipyard was completed and is set to build a new slipway, the production is shared out between increased infrastructure as well as finishing both PDCs within the year. Research has been diversified, both increased mining and factory production will be finished by August, next major priority is expanding civilian economy.
A major fiscal disaster is approaching, if spending continues at the current rate the government will be bankrupt by next year, the current chancellor steps down and a new more fiscally responsible leader is quickly elected . (We lose factory 35%, mining 10% and pop growth 20 %, but gain wealth 30%, mining 15%, pop 10%, shipbuilding 10%).
The navy grows slowly, the 3 slipway yard is retooling to build the new jump equipped hawke class geo survey vessel, then to be refit to construct the similar Higgs grav survey vessel.
The hemetite has spent the last year surveying epsilon eridani, nothing extraordinary discovered do far. The hawking continues it's surveying of jump points in Bernard's star, 8 have been found so far, 11 more search locations remain.
Finally the Pegasus finished it's exploration of jump points in sol, discovering epsilon eridani and Bernard's star, then continued in Bernard's star discovering the following systems in Bernard's star:
Wolf 1061, Struve 2398, Proxima Centauri, and Altair, the other 4 are due to be searched soon.
Relations with the other powers is still improving, despite China's insistence that it has caught a UN espionage team, the other powers seem to be interested in lalande 21185, so the Pegasus is sent there to investigate each planet before continuing it's searches from Bernard's star.
And finally our naval commander, commodore Wilson Strose has passed away while on leave, his successor plans on continuing the policies of his forebear.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on September 26, 2015, 02:49:21 PM
Quote
So suppose you manage to defeat the home fleet of an NPR and gain control of their home system - what do you typically do? Try a ground assault? Glass the planet from orbit? Attempt to weaponize your terraformers?
i generally invade the planet, sometimes bombard a little.

however, i rarely let the political status increase above 40%. I feel that keeps military conquest fairly balanced, especially isnce i run high difficulty settings and NPR worlds often have thousands of facilities
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 28, 2015, 01:08:24 AM
A new alien race has been detected on earth of all places, this was surprising to say the least, what's most shocking is the sudden launch of half a million tons of shipping into the already crowded space lanes around earth, the Tamarind Hegemony as they call it appear to have half the population as Russia and a similar fraction of industrial capacity making the weakest power on the planet. They're naming their current ships after former british empire vessels and have adopted a galactic empire theme.

OOC: I seem to have acidentally spawned a new race while checking the mechanics to answer some questions, doh!. Is there any way of deleting them short of conquest or getting the designer password?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Krictic on September 28, 2015, 01:33:09 AM
A new alien race has been detected on earth of all places, this was surprising to say the least, what's most shocking is the sudden launch of half a million tons of shipping into the already crowded space lanes around earth, the Tamarind Hegemony as they call it appear to have half the population as Russia and a similar fraction of industrial capacity making the weakest power on the planet. They're naming their current ships after former british empire vessels and have adopted a galactic empire theme.

OOC: I seem to have acidentally spawned a new race while checking the mechanics to answer some questions, doh!. Is there any way of deleting them short of conquest or getting the designer password?

Did you set the NPR generation to a 100% percent?

Alas, this gave me a nice idea for a scenario. :v
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 28, 2015, 01:50:19 AM
It's set on default which I think is 50%.
But I accidentally manually created these guys on earth while checking out the create empire option.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 28, 2015, 11:19:28 AM
I have sent the SF France, one of my first sensor frigates, into the Proxima Centauri system in a zigzag movement pattern (using WPs) at a reduced speed to begin information gathering of the enemy. Contact has been made halfway between the JP and the central star with 6 of the Repulse class. Sensors have revealed that the Repulse class is 1000 tons and can travel at 10,000 km/s. SF France has activated shields and has begun fire preparations. SF France has been hit by 3 19 strength nuclear detonations but has held firm with 2 breaches into space. The enemy has fled laser engagement range just as the twin cannon came online, however they cannot flee the Exocet missiles that are locking on and preparing to fire. 6 Exocets have been fired at the 6 enemy contacts and are gaining at a 8300km/s rate (intercept in 2:16:48 soon) while the SF France has been ordered to flee the system to repair and rearm. At the same time SF Dunkerque and SF Duquesne have been ordered to gather at the JP to provide support if needed. 5 Exocets missed their target (as expected given their speed) however 1 landed and seems to have crippled it. SF France has been ordered to close on it and finish it off with its close range weaponry as well as to take prisoners if possible. SF France has closed range and is preparing to fire upon the crippled vessel while closing. SF France has opened fire with her Twin 100mm R4 UV Cannon Turret and with one volley destroyed the enemy.No lifepods are detected (despite being parked on top of the wreck) so SF Frace is being told to continue on back to Earth for R,R,&R for her and R&R for the crew, they deserve it. This is a victory with 0 casualties on our side. The Brass was preparing a medal for her commander when they realized... that no one was in command of the ship. On its way back to the JP, the remaining Repulses have taken position at 52m km from SF France following at the same speed at roughly 70-90 degrees starboard from her direction of travel. Also, I'll have to sit through 6 days of 5-30 second increments most likely as they are "escorting" me out of their system just inside each other's active sensors. Upon SF France's arrival to Earth, 2nd Rear Admiral Luke Young assumed command of the vessel as he is both motivated and a skilled orator.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on September 28, 2015, 07:31:38 PM
The Terran Union's five remaining Heinlein-class freighters return to Earth through the wreckage of the Battle of Sol, carrying over 800 survivors.    For ten days after mankind's first jump point exploration, two advanced warships of unknown origin went on a rampage through the inner system, destroying eight freighters, four patrol craft, two exploration ships, and a geosurvey craft with missiles and ramming attacks.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on September 29, 2015, 07:02:54 AM
OOC: I seem to have acidentally spawned a new race while checking the mechanics to answer some questions, doh!. Is there any way of deleting them short of conquest or getting the designer password?

Roll back to the backup DB you made just before you started checking things out?  :)

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on September 29, 2015, 07:26:18 AM
Roll back to the backup DB you made just before you started checking things out?  :)

John
Hahahaha.
My only regret is not being able to rename them, I can accept a new organisation reaching out for the stars 2 years after the other powers, but why in the name of Armok must they be named after a fruiting leguminous tree native to Africa but spread and naturalised thoughout Asia?
I could reason that a large multinational organisation based in Asia decided to name itself Tamarind, but why Tamarind Hegemony?

Edit:  Update.Nemesis 2027.
After a year of heavy handed austerity measures the united nations is finally fiscally secure again, breaking even in october of 2027.
Upon her election in january 2027 Sue Vonk cut costs drastically across the board, ground unit training is halted, expansion of 2 shipyards is cancelled, new shipbuilding is curtailed, fighter and missile production is halved, and minerals from the civilian mining colony on Europa is sold to the private sector. Despite these opressive changes, other programs from the new administration have increased the economy by almost 30%.
Production concentrated on finishing 10 financial centers, 600 infrastructure, 1 terraformer and the new naval yard by years end.
Research efforts were entirely devoted towards expansion of the civilian economy, which was finished early January.
Over the course of the year civilian freighters have shipped increased quantities of infrastructure and colonists to Mars, a new freighter was launched helping the effort. Taxation of this now provides 12% of our income, also civilian efforts are now creating twice as much infrastructure for shipment to the red planet than we are producing with 30% our production. A third hg wells colony ship was added to the colony fleet, as well as a second heinlien class. Mars now has 10 million souls calling the red planet home. A second terraformer was shipped and is increasing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Average temperature is now -45 degrees.
On earth the temperature has increased to 16 degrees. A new naval shipyard has been completed and been retooled to make new Beta class FAC's, the single slipway will produce one every 6 months, but a new slipway can be added in a year. The beta class is significantly faster than the alpha at 4500 km/s, and equipped with 6 amm launchers instead of the twin size 4's, but limited sensors and fire control only capable of utilizing a fifth the hades AMM's 10 million kilometer range. The new ship also only has 1.2 billion kilometers range (3 days), and will need tankers for long deployment.
Cote shipyard finishes a second slipway, both are allowed to expand.
The hematite completes geosurvey scans of Epsilon Eridani, and Lalande 21185 and is sent to the newly discovered system of 70 Ophiuchi .
The hawking finishes it's scans in Barnards star, discovering 4 systems which the pegsus is sent to explore: ross 154, 70 ophiuchi, wise 1541-2250 and V1581 CYGNI.
The commander of the pegasus is surprised to discover an anomaly in V1581 cygni, it appears to be a wormhole of some sort, the dormant fighter production facilities are set to work on a trio of probes to check the system, one with sensors to check out the anomaly, one with grav, for checking the jump points and one for geosurveys of the surrounding system, they are finishged in december and sent towards the system.
Meanwhile a planet in 70 Ophichi is discovered to be particularly hospitable, planet IV of the B component posesses a diameter of 12800 km, at an orbit of 130million, with gravity of .54, a 16 hour day, and shocking 364 day year, surface temperature is a chilly -43 degrees, little better than mars. But the atmosphere is what's most interesting about the planet, at first glance the pressure of .34 atmospheres is nothing spectacular, with 75% being nitrogen and 16% oxygen, the remainder Neon, but calculations show that the addittion of a mere .05 oxygen and .1 greenhouse gasses would render the planet entirably suitable to human comfort.
The planet is almost 12 billion kilometers from earth by the jump points, including a pair of legrange point jumps orbiting gas giants in the system which cuts 2 billion of the journey, untill recently legrange points had only been considered possible areas of jump singularities, but captain calvert of the pegasus noted anomalies in the areas which were consistant with jump areas, later confirmed by computer simulation and a later visit by the Hawking.
However the range is too far for the Heinliens which possess only range for a one way trip lasting 100 days, the HG wells class being designed for the short earth-mars hop possess half he range and a quarter the speed, and so are right out.
But cooincidentally the new Robinson class being retooled for possess a 22 billion kilometer range, retooling will be complete by september 2028, but without a jump gate or jump engines the ships still won't be able to make the journey. There is also a question of fuel use, a single trip by a pair of robinsons delivering 180,000 colonists and infrastructure would use 2.5 million fuel, over the course of a year these 2 ships would use 80% of our fuel production.
By years end retooling for the Hawke class geo survey vessels is completes, 3 are started expected to be due in december 2028. Possessing slightly better sensors, but reduced speed, the main selling point of the ship is it's built in jump engines allowing it to operate without a tender.
Code: [Select]
Hawke class Geosurvey Ship    8,100 tons     177 Crew     872.5 BP      TCS 162  TH 450  EM 0
2777 km/s    JR 4-50     Armour 1-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/1/0/3     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 0
Maint Life 5.27 Years     MSP 539    AFR 65%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 32    5YR 487    Max Repair 114 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

J8100(4-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 8100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 4
150 EP Commercial Ion Drive (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 11.93%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 615,000 Litres    Range 114.5 billion km   (477 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH3-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km
Geological Survey Sensors (3)   3 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
A russian colony has been discovered on the moon, with thermal 756 and em 1079,
A panamerican colony has been discovered on Lalande 21185 A-1 with, TH 162 EM 212.
And finally in a shocking development the Tamarind corporation has announced that it intends to form its own extra solar government, named the "Tamarind Hegemony", Tamarind currently possess holdings in numerous south asian and east african countries, with economic power equal to a large country. (Population 100 million, about half what russia has).
Tamarind launches several ships into orbit, analysis shows powerful sensors that are obviously military in nature.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 29, 2015, 05:15:15 PM
The pictures say it all.

EDIT; And I herp'd the derp hard. I forgot to repair the SF France after Operation (give me a good name for the operation anyone) so it has been several months with a giant F'ing hole in her side as it was doing TF Training.

Edit 2; Communication with the Indigo aliens are actually going well like it did with KoF. Despite them being picture 280 *shudders*. They now Identify themselves as the Kingston Imperium.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 29, 2015, 08:13:46 PM
All but one of my 5 Floreal classes are out doing TF Training (it is waiting for a commander). However time keeps alternating between 1 day and 1 minute every time advance. I know what the problem is... the civilians. There are 2 lines, with one with 6 colony ships and one with 3, each trying to take people everywhere (in Sol) except where I want them to go (to extrasolar colonies that do have infrastructure ready). I might have to change the training orders to a live fire test on "obsolete" ships that are being "remotely" piloted simulating what to do during an assault on Earth to abduct the children.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 03, 2015, 05:06:50 PM
Nemesis : 2028
Current Galactic Map: (http://i.imgur.com/YXNHlYQ.jpg)

After last years austerity measures proved unpopular with business Sue Vonk is quietly removed from power, and former administrator Mack Oldham is reelected, ushering in a new boom in the manufacturing industry. (Production +30%),  The scandal earlier in the year didnt help matters either when Commodore Joelle Hakanson was demoted and replaced after it's revealed that her policies have severely affected fleet training (she has no training rating, they were just wasting fuel last year).
Additional financial centers have been constructed, this as well as the income from a new civilian mining colony on Comas Solas has cemented the positive growth of the Economy.

The martian colony is up to 19.8 million, with additional infrastructure to support another 5 million, there are now 5 civilian freighters delivering infrastructure, outstripping our ability to deliver colonists, even with the Heinleins leaving earth loaded only with colonists.  2 Terraformers and an additional H.G.Wells has been delivered this year.

The Hematite has discovered a ruined alien city on 70 Ophichi-B IV, Research begins for launching an expedition, a specialized xenology team can be sent immediately via the jump escort UNSC Crossbow, this team will be able to study the alien race which formerly inhabited the site, however indepth research as to the function of the installations and potential recovery of usable artifacts will require large scale engineering teams, training these as well as development of transport vessels will take time, pushing other planned research back. However the Jump engines and high efficiency research still has priority and will be finished this year as planned.
The First Expeditionary Foce departs earth with the Jared Kundert Xenology team, the three 8100 ton destroyers consist of the Twin gauss cannon turret equipped Jump Escort DEJ Crossbow, the missile destroyer DDG Valiant, and the missile escort DE Valkyrie. This is the first time the main fleet has departed earth, the crew welcome the experience, still training in sol are the DEJ Longbow, the DDG Reliable and 10 Alpha class LACs, as well as 10 single gauss cannon equipped Battle hawk fighters and the Hermes light fighter maintenance vessel.
The expeditionary force doesn't haul enough fuel for a return journey from 70 Ophiuchi, so a pair of light  tankers haulling 285,000 litres starts working on building up a fuel dump on the icy world of barnards star A1..

When Jared Kundert's team finishes surveying the ruins on 70 Ophiuchi-B IV, they identify that an alien race known as the Llandudno Confederation were the former inhabitants, 85 installations are presen across the planet, and thanks to the efforts of the team in deciphering the alien language and mathematical symbology they're confident that some of these installations may be recovered and brought online, including a potential alien research installation.

In february the probe in V1581 Cygni discovers an instability which shifts the position of the wormhole 450 million kilometers away, the probe races towards it's new location while puzzled physicists throw out their theories about 'stable wormholes', meanwhile surveying of the system continues.
Retooling for the robinson class colony ships is completed and work begins on the first 2.
 A third Missile Destroyer is started after a second slipway is added to the 8150 ton yard.
The first 2 Beta class FACs are completed.
A jump point leading to Gliese 701 has been discovered.
Both Queued PDC's are completed, earth now hosts 2 AMM PDC's equipped with 72 launchers each, an ASM PDC equipped with 12 size 6 launchers and 16 reduced size 4 launchers. As well as a fighter base with 3000 tons of hanger space.
3 Hawke class geo survey ships are complented, The Amethyst, Amber and Diamond will be sent to finish scans of Alpha Centauri, Epsilon Eridani, and Barnards star, before starting on those systems that are inaccessable without jump engines, the hematite will be tasked with finishing scans of the comets in Barnard star, then sent to do the same with the last far out comets in our home system. 3 More Hawke's are Started, before the shipyard begins retooling to construct the similar higgs class grav survey vessels.
With the completion of 92,000 ton jump engine research, a Jump colony ship can now be designed, however the recent completion of higher fuel efficiency gives us oppertunity to make vastly more efficient engines, which will be essential for long term colonization efforts. Work starts on a size 50 240 EP Ion drive, current designs use a 150 ep size 25 which consumes 3 times as much fuel per power.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on October 04, 2015, 09:20:10 PM
Just forgot I had ~90 terraforming modules in orbit of Mercury adding anti-greenhouse gas.

Remembered and checked the environment page there, found them at -87 kelvin.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on October 05, 2015, 02:07:17 AM
Did you mean Celsius? Or does the game actually let you go below 0 Kelvin?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 05, 2015, 06:57:36 AM
One of my scientists made a breakthrough in reactor technologies. He said he could harness the power of a black hole and use it to give our ships the edge they need. At the demonstration he started it up, and it was a success. However, halfway through its boot process, a religious extremist detonated himself to try to halt the advance of technology we have been undergoing for the past few decades. The resulting explosion destabilized the black hole. It grew and grew until it pulled in everything in the solar system.

So last night my computer had a fatal crash and just about everything on it is gone (Aurora included). Although many of my files are still there I don't hold much hope that my save is. Just as I was getting really into that game this had to happen.

Edit; I reinstalled, sadly the game no longer exists. I wonder if I should just wait for v6.5 to play again. Just started a new game and called it Singularity in honor of that brief role play above. And immediately I get errors resetting the windows to compact. Starting out nice. (got it fixed quickly though)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on October 05, 2015, 10:29:35 AM
Did you mean Celsius? Or does the game actually let you go below 0 Kelvin?
It lets you go below 0 Kelvin, which is why I thought it was worth noting.
Another crazy thing is, -87K only got the colony cost up to around 13.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 05, 2015, 10:31:31 AM
It lets you go below 0 Kelvin, which is why I thought it was worth noting.
Another crazy thing is, -87K only got the colony cost up to around 13.
But the thing is, -K is hotter than any positive temperature.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on October 05, 2015, 10:59:50 AM
Yeah, you'd think it'd be more than 13 colony cost.  Venus is ~45.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on October 06, 2015, 03:00:00 PM
Quote
What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?

Not much.
Just some casual game waiting for 6.5.

Protectorate of Grayson launched their first combat ships and is about to send explorators trough their only warp point.
Grayson has frakkofalot minerals, other planets are also rich so my prospects look quite good.

P.s. God i would LOVE for Aurora to have Distant Worlds like model of FTL travel ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on October 06, 2015, 03:03:39 PM
Not much.
Just some casual game waiting for 6.5.

Protectorate of Grayson launched their first combat ships and is about to send explorators trough their only warp point.
Grayson has frakkofalot minerals, other planets are also rich so my prospects look quite good.

P.s. God i would LOVE for Aurora to have Distant Worlds like model of FTL travel ...

Went to look up Distant Worlds. Came across this link http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046503/distant-worlds-gives-4x-players-a-huge-galaxy-and-many-options.html. Aurora is mentioned :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on October 06, 2015, 10:15:13 PM
  On 11June2116 Terran forces destroyed 2 unknown ships from the Aliens #427, then the race mysteriously disappeared. 

  On 20Sept2136 the Lexington class GSV discovered the new star system Delta Pavonis.  On 23Sept2136 the GSV was destroyed by missile fire from the once thought extinct Alien race #427.  5 jumps from our previous encounters.

Its time to eradicate these pests. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: calem on October 07, 2015, 04:10:36 AM
Quote
8th December 2051 18:45:56,Ross 154,Additional deposits of Corundium have been found on Ross 154-A I by the Lucian Darius Geology Team.  The total amount available has increased from 20,205,020 to 206,066,025 tons.  Accessibility has increased from 0. 1 to 0. 6

Oh thank goodness.   What Corundium crunch?

(That planet has some enormous deposits, but most are 0. 1s))
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 07, 2015, 10:22:47 AM
Nemesis 2029:
Not much really to report, china is hell bent on gating every explored system, Construction brigades have started training, and the following planet has been earmarked for colonization:
Struve 2398-A II:
Gravity .70, air pressure .25 80% Methane, 19%nitrogen, 1% ammonia, average temperature -30 degrees;
Tectonicllty dead. Tidally locked with a 45 day year, Colony Cost of 2.0
Duranium 13,561,630 (0.1) 
Neutronium 1,016,064 (0.1) 
Corbomite 13,972,640 (0.1) 
Tritanium 15,586,700 (0.1) 
Boronide 17,640,000 (0.2) 
Mercassium 11,009,120 (0.5) 
Vendarite 5,731,236 (0.1) 
Sorium 451,584 (0.1) 
Uridium 8,643,600 e(0.5) 
Corundium 7,918,596 (0.1) 
Gallicite 1,587,600 (1) 
Deposits arent high, but it'll put the old manned mines to use.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 07, 2015, 01:01:21 PM
Anyone remember the rule for building multiple classes at the same shipyard/rules for refit cost? I believe the refit cost has to be 20% of the BP. However I can't make my Geosurvey from my Gravsurvey tooled shipyard (says the designer).
Code: [Select]
J. Edgar class Gravitational Survey Vessel    7 500 tons     106 Crew     887.5 BP      TCS 150  TH 450  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/4/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.63 Years     MSP 370    AFR 90%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 43    5YR 652    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   

150EP 25HS CID (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 9.28%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 387.9 billion km   (1496 days at full power)

Gravitational Survey Sensors (4)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Sagittaire class Geological Survey Vessel    7 500 tons     106 Crew     887.5 BP      TCS 150  TH 450  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/4     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
MSP 370    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   

150EP 25HS CID (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 9.28%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 387.9 billion km   (1496 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (4)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
They cost exactly the same amount of materials and are the same build points. Yet the refit cost from one another is 500. Any way to fix them?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on October 07, 2015, 01:08:43 PM
Anyone remember the rule for building multiple classes at the same shipyard/rules for refit cost? I believe the refit cost has to be 20% of the BP. However I can't make my Geosurvey from my Gravsurvey tooled shipyard (says the designer).
Code: [Select]
J. Edgar class Gravitational Survey Vessel    7 500 tons     106 Crew     887.5 BP      TCS 150  TH 450  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/4/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.63 Years     MSP 370    AFR 90%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 43    5YR 652    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   

150EP 25HS CID (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 9.28%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 387.9 billion km   (1496 days at full power)

Gravitational Survey Sensors (4)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Sagittaire class Geological Survey Vessel    7 500 tons     106 Crew     887.5 BP      TCS 150  TH 450  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/4     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
MSP 370    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   

150EP 25HS CID (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 9.28%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 387.9 billion km   (1496 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (4)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
They cost exactly the same amount of materials and are the same build points. Yet the refit cost from one another is 500. Any way to fix them?

Tool the other way around and see if you can?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 07, 2015, 01:12:18 PM
Tool the other way around and see if you can?
Nope, both ways are a cost of 500. Also I didn't think my commercial shipyards could build military.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on October 07, 2015, 03:33:17 PM
Sensors are expensive, hence the high refit cost both ways.

You can often build a cheap class from a yard tooled to a more expensive one even if they seem substantially different.
For example, my colony ships are usually very different from my freighters: because cryogenic transport modules are expensive, the ships get a good number of engines and cargo handling systems to make good use of them.
That would be frivolous on a freighter as cargo holds are dirt cheap - there is little use in making a freighter twice as fast to move and load when it would make them 4 times as expensive.

So refitting a colony ship to a freighter would involve ripping out all sorts of stuff that'd seem integral (like engines), but since all they get instead is cheap cargo holds building freighters in a yard tooled for colony ships is no problem at all.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 07, 2015, 06:01:26 PM
I noticed the grav/geo refit problem a few days ago, try changing one of those ships to two geo sensors and two grav sensors, the refit cost from that ship should be half as much, and 250 is within 20% of 887.5 BP.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DIT_grue on October 08, 2015, 01:17:12 AM
Actually, the trick for building geo- and grav-survey ships in the same yard is to create a third class with all the survey sensors either/both of them use, and tool the yard for that.

As Iranon mentioned, the problem is the high cost of the sensors relative to the rest of the ship: refit costs are calculated as the cost of new modules plus a surcharge for any change in ship tonnage, but removing something doesn't cost a thing. So refitting from geo-survey to grav, or vice versa, is way over 20% of the BP cost of either; but going from the hybrid to either of the specialists, all you're paying for is the change in size, which is peanuts by comparison.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on October 08, 2015, 04:51:15 AM
Now that is nifty - I need to try that sometime, thanks
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 08, 2015, 06:55:59 AM
I'm just going to redirect the discussion about multi design construction to the ships thread where I've already posted a trio of designs that can all be built from the same yard. A few more Multi designs are follow as an edit to this post: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7697.msg81613#msg81613 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7697.msg81613#msg81613)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 08, 2015, 11:56:55 AM
Code: [Select]
Hawke class Geosurvey Ship    8,100 tons     177 Crew     872.5 BP      TCS 162  TH 450  EM 0
2777 km/s    JR 4-50     Armour 1-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/1/0/3     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 0
Maint Life 5.27 Years     MSP 539    AFR 65%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 32    5YR 487    Max Repair 114 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

J8100(4-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 8100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 4
150 EP Commercial Ion Drive (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 11.93%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 615,000 Litres    Range 114.5 billion km   (477 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH3-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km
Geological Survey Sensors (3)   3 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
In this case the resulting hybrid ship with 3 gravity sensors and 3 geo sensors will allow construction of either grav or geo variants as you stated, I however decided to make an actually functional 8100 ton hybrid with 2 of each, I just won't be building any.

Code: [Select]
Geo/Grav hybrid class Gravitational Survey Vessel    8,100 tons     175 Crew     926.5 BP      TCS 162  TH 450  EM 0
2777 km/s    JR 4-50     Armour 1-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 12/1/2/2     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.84 Years     MSP 429    AFR 87%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 46    5YR 687    Max Repair 114 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

J8100(4-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 8100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 4
150 EP Commercial Ion Drive (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 11.93%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 520,000 Litres    Range 96.8 billion km   (403 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Intead of doing this to build both, why not just use the hybrid as an all round survey ship? I almost always search all of the possible JPs before I think about looking at the planets, so I could just use the primary order to search the survey points and the secondary to look at the planets/bodies.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on October 08, 2015, 12:51:39 PM
Intead of doing this to build both, why not just use the hybrid as an all round survey ship? I almost always search all of the possible JPs before I think about looking at the planets, so I could just use the primary order to search the survey points and the secondary to look at the planets/bodies.

I personally don't go for the hybrid approach any more. My reasoning: Survey ships are usually one of the first built, so smaller hull = faster build, dedicated grav/geo means less downtime and more coverage.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 08, 2015, 01:00:34 PM
I personally don't go for the hybrid approach any more. My reasoning: Survey ships are usually one of the first built, so smaller hull = faster build, dedicated grav/geo means less downtime and more coverage.
True. However after, after 1 or 2 batches from each both shipyards go unused for years until I have workable designs that I need to build. So instead of having something like 6 of each for the whole game building more as they are destroyed, I could build more than a dozen hybrid designs. Another benefit of the hybrids over the specialty craft is that if you are missing one on a side you have to move them around, while the hybrids can do both.
Here is my "finished" design;
Code: [Select]
J. Edgar class Gravitational Survey Vessel    7 500 tons     118 Crew     931.5 BP      TCS 150  TH 450  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/1/2/2     Damage Control Rating 7     PPV 0
Maint Life 5.29 Years     MSP 543    AFR 64%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 32    5YR 487    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   

150EP 25HS CID (3)    Power 150    Fuel Use 9.28%    Signature 150    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 325 000 Litres    Range 342.7 billion km   (1322 days at full power)

AS-MR15-R100 (50%) (1)     GPS 1400     Range 15.4m km    Resolution 100
THS0.5-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Note; I am playing with JGs on all JPs
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 08, 2015, 01:08:42 PM
I think when I can get more speed and range at higher tech I'll consider a hybrid design.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on October 08, 2015, 02:07:11 PM
A Hybrid design also means that, at any given point, half of the sensors are useless dead weight.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on October 08, 2015, 06:34:14 PM
19 Oct 2136

  Sent in a small, old, fleet to investigate the Alien presence in the Delta Pavonis system.  1 EW, 2 AMM cruisers, 3-laser destroyers, and 3 point defense destroyers (my anti-ship cruisers couldnt make the jump  :'( ), made contact with a Alien Seydlitz class ship.  At approximately 200m Km all hell broke loose as many volleys of size 4 ASM were soon detected (estimate 500+ total missiles).  I soon found out my AMMs were pretty useless (neglected agility for speed) with about a 20% kill rate.  My point defense ships performed very well and knocked most missiles out.  A few missiles did get through.  Repairs started and the fleet turned to fight.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on October 08, 2015, 06:45:48 PM
19 October 2136  Round II

  Soon discovered a 2nd smaller (8200T) alien craft of the Bayem class nearby, changed course to intercept this ship.  As my fleet approached numerous volleys of size 1 Amms were detected.  My Amms were useless, and point defenses were much less effective against these speedy targets.  Many missiles got through and soon 1 AMM cruiser took a critical hit and was destroyed.  A second AMM cruiser was hit in the engine bay and has slowed to 1km/s.  The chase is on, as my remaining fleet has been sent after the slower Bayem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on October 08, 2015, 08:51:33 PM
A Hybrid design also means that, at any given point, half of the sensors are useless dead weight.

Make that "at least half" - all of them are dead weight while it's moving between survey locations, which typically* takes longer if the engines have to pull the useless dead weight

John

CAVEAT - I suppose that if you micromanaged things you could often get a shorter total transit time (i.e. path between all survey locations for all ships) if you had the same ship survey both warp and geo points, but I doubt the gain would overcome the survey time penalty and it would probably take more micro-management since I don't think there's a "survey nearest anything" default command setting.

Might be interesting to run some races in some random systems.  It would be a little tough to score though, since you'd have to take into account differences in cost between the platforms, which is unlikely to be a ratio of small integers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on October 08, 2015, 10:30:22 PM
Whatever can go on a maintenance-free commercial hull goes there... especially geo sensors as the ship is bound to spend a lot of time in deep space.
Grav survey ships don't have that option. Mine actually tend to be fighters: They're the first to meet interesting new species (small ship causes less alarm) and interesting new missiles (no need to retool for replacements).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 09, 2015, 01:05:35 AM
One important point that hasn't been mentioned yet is fuel savings, at a minimum you're saving whatever fuel it takes for the ship to reach the system, which is minimal untill you start getting long chains between your fuel/maintenance bases and unexplored space. But at the most extreme end if there was a "Survey nearest whatever" option, or if you perform highly detailed micromanagement you could steer the ship around the system surveying everything in one efficient spiral pass.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 09, 2015, 10:37:18 AM
or if you perform highly detailed micromanagement you could steer the ship around the system surveying everything in one efficient spiral pass.
If I were to do that, which would be the most efficient (starting on the inside at 1) going from 6 (16,17, 18, or 7) and then what is the most efficient going to the outer shell from there (after middle shell is scouted out). Reason for asking; Not enough primary/secondary orders to do all the surveying I want (survey the SP locations first, then planets/moons, then lastly all the rest of the bodies).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on October 09, 2015, 05:25:08 PM
After an unfortunate ramdisk incident, I've restarted my Terran Union game.   

Two jumps out (Sol - Centauri - Epsilon Eridani) I make contact with the Church of Andromeda, a particularly hideous NPR living on a 0 colony cost water world.    They soon begin flooding Sol with surveyors, plus a construction ship.    Their warships and grav surveyors move at 5200+ kms compared to my ion fleet speed of 4000 kms, but they don't seem particularly warlike.    Even lightly dinging one of their surveyors doesn't provoke a reaction.   

However, when one of my explorers tries to carry a "contact team" to their homeworld, they blow it out of space.    My light patrol ships promptly destroy the construction ship and begin ambushing surveyors at survey locations.   

A war that will turn into a comedy of errors has begun.    First they send four 22,000 ton battleships through the Sol jumpgate.    My tracking station in Centaurus sees a large force of escorts moving a day or so behind them, but the battleships don't wait.    They plow through the jumpgate and my destroyers (8 missile, 4 beam) destroy them without taking a scratch.    The escorts head back to Epsilon Eridani.   

I'm not sure what the Church is about, but they're not very good holy warriors.    Their ships are fast (inertial fusion, I discover after salvage), but don't seem to have great armor or point defenses.    Their missiles are just embarrassing--size 5, 25kms, warhead 6.    The missiles have active sensors, but I'm not sure if they're armored.    Maybe they just have a low power multiplier.   

After this, they complete a jumpgate link to Centaurus.    Unnoticed by me, civilian colony ships immediately make a beeline to my now forgotten espionage colony on Epsilon Eridani.    The civilian ships are destroyed by the PD escorts, which then move into Sol.    This time my destroyers are badly shot up by AMMs, but I only lose one compared to 6 or 7 Andromedan wrecks.    There a couple of Andromedan survivors who bug out.   

My tracking station then detects the Andromedans salvaging the wrecks of the civilian colony ships.    Somewhat overconfident at this point, I only send in two of my light patrol craft (2400 tons, 2 10cm lasers) to destroy them.    They must having a tracking station in Centaurus too, because a Andromedan destroyer moves to intercept before shipboard sensors should have noticed them.    Both patrol ships are killed even though they could've escaped--I thought they had a good chance of handling the 5 missile barrages, but the occasional leaker took its toll on them.    I send in my three undamaged beam destroyers to deal with the salvagers.    This time there isn't any response.   

I could easily deal with the rest of the Andromedan fleet (now just 4 known warships and some defense bases plus however many FACs they've built since contact), but I'm unsure exactly how I want to proceed.  I can lift a division at a time--a two month round trip for my transports.  I'm reluctant to invest heavily in new construction since my ion ships will be obsolete by two generations after the war.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on October 09, 2015, 07:50:20 PM
20 October 2136

  After a brief chase, the Terran 3rd fleet caught up to the Bayem class ship and destroyed it with 150mm laser fire.  There were no survivors.  They Seydlitz class ship was too far away, so the Terran forces have returned for repairs and refit.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on October 11, 2015, 01:11:01 AM
After four months of ground combat, the Andromedans have surrendered.   On the plus side, I've gone from ion to internal fusion, plus gained some other technology like grav strength 36, advanced geologic sensors, UV lasers, etc, etc. 

On the down side 50.  7 percent of the Union's population now looks like this:
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 11, 2015, 01:48:05 AM
After four months of ground combat, the Andromedans have surrendered.   On the plus side, I've gone from ion to internal fusion, plus gained some other technology like grav strength 36, advanced geologic sensors, UV lasers, etc, etc. 

On the down side 50.  7 percent of the Union's population now looks like this:
When I setup my NPR's I think I accidentally ended up with the Chinese looking like that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on October 11, 2015, 05:22:07 AM
When I setup my NPR's I think I accidentally ended up with the Chinese looking like that.

That wasnt accident, they forgot to put on their camo, those dirty illuminati commies !!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 12, 2015, 09:51:14 AM
Sol has been completely JP surveyed and has a total of... 6 points, yay. The closest is just on the orbit of Saturn and the farthest is out by Pluto. My hybrid designs are now geological surveying the planets and moons, the asteroids and comets can wait. After I find the resources available in Sol, I shall scout out the next systems adjacent to me. I don't think I want to go any farther until I has some semblance of a military. The next batch of survey ships will be out soon.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 12, 2015, 07:35:38 PM
I've made contact with a pair of 7800 thermal contacts in the wormhole system, communication is impossible, and china has basically put gates onto every jump point I've discovered.
I would love to expand my military but the colony program is taxing resources immensely.
The contacts disappeared when the Pegasus was sent to investigate, however 2 months later they were reaquired 250 million kilometers away from a geo survey ship heading towards the Gliese 687 jump point.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on October 12, 2015, 10:52:06 PM
Just captured one of the worst NPR ships I've ever seen.

Code: [Select]
Luluaborgo class Jump Cruiser    16 200 tons     341 Crew     2351.6 BP      TCS 324  TH 1188  EM 0
3666 km/s    JR 3-100     Armour 5-57     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/12/0/0     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 4
Maint Life 1.63 Years     MSP 726    AFR 262%    IFR 3.6%    1YR 322    5YR 4827    Max Repair 362 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 212   

J16200(3-100) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16200 tons    Distance 100k km     Squadron Size 3
118.8 EP Ion Drive (10)    Power 118.8    Fuel Use 92.39%    Signature 118.8    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 2 500 000 Litres    Range 30.1 billion km   (94 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (3x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 4 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC65-R75 (2)     Range 65.5m km    Resolution 75

Active Search Sensor MR130-R75 (1)     GPS 18900     Range 130.9m km    Resolution 75
Thermal Sensor TH3-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 13, 2015, 12:18:55 AM
I wonder what the stats on the missle is.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on October 13, 2015, 01:05:21 AM
Luckily, I captured two (2) along with the ship.  WH 9, 15800 km, 117. 8m km, maneuverability 10.

They also had a 24,000 ton battleship that launched 3 size 6 missiles and an escort with a grand total of three AMM launchers.

Of course, despite their tendency to devote less than 5% of tonnage to armament, nearly their entire fleet was lost to magazine explosions.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on October 13, 2015, 01:41:28 AM
Just captured one of the worst NPR ships I've ever seen.

I've seen worse :P

Quote from: a long time ago
Phoenix Hawk class Jump Destroyer    8 450 tons     163 Crew     1846.5 BP      TCS 169  TH 1250  EM 0
7396 km/s    JR 4-250     Armour 8-36     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.09 Years     MSP 546    AFR 142%    IFR 2%    1YR 86    5YR 1284    Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   

J8800(4-250) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 8800 tons    Distance 250k km     Squadron Size 4
125 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (10)    Power 125    Fuel Use 100.62%    Signature 125    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 2 900 000 Litres    Range 61.4 billion km   (96 days at full power)

Size 4 Missile Launcher (0)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 20
Missile Fire Control FC105-R4 (1)     Range 105.6m km    Resolution 4
Kasturi Anti-ship Missile (0)  Speed: 29 000 km/s   End: 162.9m    Range: 283.4m km   WH: 12    Size: 4    TH: 96/58/29

Active Search Sensor MR35-R4 (1)     GPS 640     Range 35.2m km    Resolution 4
Active Search Sensor MR83-R90 (1)     GPS 7200     Range 83.5m km    Resolution 90
Thermal Sensor TH1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

ECCM-2 (1)         ECM 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I still remember this design, when my spies brought it I was extremely surprised.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 13, 2015, 01:53:15 AM
Missile launcher (0) ? Does that mean they're damaged or something?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on October 13, 2015, 02:08:23 AM
Missile launcher (0) ? Does that mean they're damaged or something?
The only possible explanation I have is they were intended to use missile launchers by auto-designer, but there simply was not enough space, therefore, zero.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 13, 2015, 02:20:40 AM
All the designs I started with are pretty average, I don't know how NPR's could get screwed like that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on October 13, 2015, 02:22:49 AM
I've salvaged 0 missile launchers before - couldn't unload them.

Anyway, the Commonwealth of Phlegethos has surrendered.  From first contact to the very end it was a war of surprises, including their questionable design philosophies, capturing my own espionage team, and losing a surveyor to a commercial fleet that was more aggressive than their warships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 13, 2015, 11:55:49 AM
On the note of your NPR design, I'm kind of jealous. Mine were quite efficient in my last game (that got sucked into a singularity). The one I was at war with had a FAC (1000 tons) that could go 10000km/s+ and lobed 3 quite fast missiles (can't remember their speed) each that did 29 damage.

On the note of my current game. (refer to image) *sigh* And 2 of the points in Sol haven't been explored yet. So many passageways.Good news though is that most (all but 1) of the 2 cost in the other systems are somewhat Earth-like (0.4g+, balanced atmosphere) and don't have NPRs (so far). Although microincrements just started, turning on my survey ships' active sensors (although I had 3 generated at start with low npr spawn chance).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 13, 2015, 02:28:16 PM
After 40 60 second turns which took about 6 hours to process I was presented with this:
Code: [Select]
Energy Weapon Impact: Strength 65 detected! x 8
New Wreck Detected in V1581 Cygni
It was a Pan American gate builder at the jump point to Giliese 687.
A small Panam colony is detected in the system (I can't find it on the system window or map, but it is listed as a destination), and the Pegasus is sent to rescue survivors. The ship was left in orbit of the nascent human colony on 70 Ophiuchi, the colony thus far still has nothing but a xenology team, but the first load of 180k colonists are due within the week. The survivors will be given safety on the research world for the time being as the pegasus hasn't enough fuel to return to earth.
Unfortunately a severe fuel shortage has developed as earth has ran out of sorium, research has been dropped from higher fuel refinement and top priority has been given to development of sorium harvesting modules for gas giants.
As a stopgap some manned mines have been moved to mars which possesses large quantities of sorium at .3 accessability, as well as a contract is drawn up to pay civilian shipping companies to setup an automated mining facility on the asteroid Electra which has low quantities of high accessability Sorium, Duranium, Gallacite and Uridium.
Work on the new grav survey ships and the first tanker is stalled due to lack of sorium for the jump engines.
All fleet training is halted, and the fleet is stripped to 11% fuel reserves, for now more trips to the out system colonies is halted, however shipping colonists to mars will continue, albeit at a reduced rate.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 13, 2015, 06:26:43 PM
After 40 60 second turns which took about 6 hours to process I was presented with this:
So far my microincrements have been 7 hours (in game) of 60 sec increments. Should I be scared?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Din182 on October 13, 2015, 08:54:31 PM
Eh, that's nothing. I currently have gone 7 hours of in-game time in 5 second increments straight, with the slowdown starting 12 hours in-game ago, and it doesn't seem like it'll stop anytime soon. I think I'm going to ask Steve for the designer password tomorrow if it's still going, just so I can see what's going on.

Here's a pic: (http://i.imgur.com/wqco8eT.png)

Notice the number of messages, and the position of the scrollbar.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on October 13, 2015, 10:49:19 PM
I've seen worse :P

I still remember this design, when my spies brought it I was extremely surprised.
No magazine either.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 14, 2015, 01:12:22 PM
Well ****. The only body in Sol with Neutronium is Earth, and it only has 3000 tons left (1000 stored). Actually, that all the Neutronium I know about in all 6 systems (1 more JP left I am willing to explore), but they aren't all surveyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 14, 2015, 04:25:25 PM
I'm almost out of neutronium too, I'll probably run out after retooling for harvesters to fix my sorium shortage :/
It looks like I'll be relying on manned mines and .1 accessability for the near future.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 15, 2015, 11:55:44 AM
So here is what I have to work with (refer to map).

(Refer to second image) Also, I am giving him a carrier when I build one. And of course it will be called the Shield. Edit; Lol, I looked at his personality traits, and he is marked as Tough.

Edit again; (refer to image 3) Oh my... thank you RNGesus. I know its not a lot, but its more than what I have.
You do know you can plop a Geo team on the world and maybe get more?
I'm doing that right now on most of Sol's main bodies with material. Venus gained a vein of 15m tons of Corbomite. Yes you read that right, 15,000,000 tons of Corbomite.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on October 15, 2015, 12:51:37 PM
So here is what I have to work with (refer to map).

(Refer to second image) Also, I am giving him a carrier when I build one. And of course it will be called the Shield. Edit; Lol, I looked at his personality traits, and he is marked as Tough.

Edit 2; (refer to image 3 and 4) Oh my... thank you RNJesus. I know its not a lot, but its more than I have.

You do know you can plop a Geo team on the world and maybe get more?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 16, 2015, 09:20:13 AM
So here is my first colony (refer to images). It seems like a decent location to start with as the other, more "Earth like" either don't have minerals or are yet to be surveyed. Another reason getting it there is to secure a foothold in that system as there are a lot of JPs. Terraformers are in production and I will begin shipping them to there when colony ships from shipping lines are built. I will plop some infrastructure on Luna and possibly Mars when there are plenty of colonists on Verun A-II. It has a 22 hour day and a 279 day year.

Plus a quick question; Can I set waypoints like I can escorts? Ex: 30 degree counterclockwise offset, 50k km distance.

And which of these two look better for mine munition?
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 14
Speed: 18000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 1.4m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.14   Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 20    Maximum Range vs 1000 ton object (or larger): 60 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 0.7697
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 252%   3k km/s 84%   5k km/s 50.4%   10k km/s 25.2%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.0837x Boronide   0.14x Uridium   0.296x Gallicite   Fuel x5
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 2.973 MSP  (0.14865 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 14
Speed: 18200 km/s    Engine Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 0.9m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.28   Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 25    Maximum Range vs 1250 ton object (or larger): 150 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 2.3342
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 254.8%   3k km/s 84%   5k km/s 51%   10k km/s 25.5%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.168x Boronide   0.28x Uridium   0.8862x Gallicite   Fuel x10
Both have similar range, speed, and hit chance. The size 1 is more cost efficient, but the size 3 can see their target from a larger distance. Are there any changes I could make that would improve one/both.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Din182 on October 16, 2015, 11:18:12 AM
For the mines, the size 3 one is likely better for mining JPs, as the sensor blindness should overwhelming anti-missile defences unnecessary, it's cheaper per point of damage, and it can still easily detect ships that might have arrived further out from the JP.

I do recommend you lower the engine range, since 1m km is way more than you should need on a jump point.

Although, if you are mining the area around something that isn't a JP, more range would probably be better.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 20, 2015, 08:17:31 PM
Just found a few wrecks over an Earth-like planet 4 jumps (two paths) away from Sol. I have now started producing my military.

Also, one of my more recently discovered systems called Solomon has 7 JP, 4 have been explored and so far all have them have gone back to already explored systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 21, 2015, 09:39:54 AM
Production of Minelayers, Troop Transports, Freighters, Tankers, and missiles have begun. I should finalize the cruiser design as well as "beef up" other designs I have started as they will probably take a few years to build each. Also, I have an interesting map currently.

Edit; WOW, just noticed I have neither Ground Force Training Facilities or any ground units at all. Lucky there hasn't been some sort of invasion, I am 100% open. Sadley, they use Nuetronium  :'(. I am getting it now with some civ/auto mines on bodies that it was discovered with about 20-100 tons each being shot back to Earth every month so it is possible, just slow going. I think it might be time for colony 2. (refer to image) It has a lot of materials, A-IV and A-V have a couple million of a few diferent minerals each, and that Super Jovian has plenty of Sorium. It's Research bonus is 40% to energy weapons and the discovering of the no GFTF or ground units at all was I was going to train a Construction Brigade.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 21, 2015, 04:28:29 PM
After discovering another race in 70 ophiuchi which has been harrassing civilian shipping operation swift vengence has begun.
A severe fuel shortage still restricts what can be sent, however the latest destroyed freighter lies only 7.6 billion kilometers from earth in Bernard's star, barely missing the second colony run of Robinsons to the ruins in 70 ophiuchi. Considering the cost of these ships, and the tens of thousands of civilians within, The UN Security Council has authorised an immediate recon in force, hopefully salvaging the life pods will be possible too, however the only ship close enough is an unarmed geosurvey ship, thankfully the investment in powerful thermal sensors has allowed several ships of the hawke class to avoid several patrols from both hostile species.
Due to the availability of a mere 2 million litres of fuel the recon force will consist of the aging Hermes fighter maintenance corvette, which has the range and fuel caoacuty to escort a Wing of 6 fighters and a sensor scout to the battle site, arriving just after the Hermes will be the Valkyrie AMM destroyer, the crossbow gauss pd escort, the ASM destroyers Tenacious and Valiant and 4 beta class AMM FACs.
Of note is the observed speed of the belligerent, 4300 km/s, only the Betas at 4500 km/s and the Battle hawks at 9000 km/s can chase down the enemy ship.
However the destroyers while being slow at 2592 km/s possess a formidable 93 million kilometer fire range and the enemy is expected to remain within shipping lanes lieing in ambush.
Edit: the enemy ship caught up with the fleeing colony ship, after launching 3 salvos with several hits the assault ceased, perhaps running out of ordnance.
Edit: the crew of the geo survey ship Amber were not so lucky.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 23, 2015, 08:26:53 AM
Found a nice planet a bit farther down the jump chain that if good enough for an npr to spawn (don't know if on did yet). Its 0.7 gravity, right atmosphere balance (just a little too less pressure), and a good temp. The catch... its 0.2LY away from the central star... Not the biggest system I've seen (refer to post a while back about with a 20LY diameter) but definatly the one with the farthest habitable planet I've seen. I feel sorry for any npr that might be there (if one is).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 23, 2015, 09:28:10 AM
Rip crew of the Amethyst, I think we're going to have a problem finding volunteers for the survey corps after this.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 23, 2015, 09:38:36 AM
My Minelayers just finished construction so time to start mining, they can mine 2 JPs each with the minefield I have set up in my head. I only have colonies in Sol, Verun, and Gathalamor so I think think the only systems I have to mine would be Solomon, Proximus Mundi, Macharia, Verun, and Konor to hold onto a large section (some of those need only a few of their JPs mined).

Edit; Ummmmm, I did a dumbz. Well, first location in my minefield just got mined, then the next increment all the sub munition fired. All I did was assign my mines to a fire control, assigned the waypoint as the target (the mine layer was already on the wp), then clicked open fire. The only time I've actually used my mines before was when my minelayer was ambushed on route to its destination in a old game a while ago, I did the same thing except I set the enemy contact as the target. It worked perfectly then, but then again the submunition saw the ship as the target instead of the waypoint. Any suggestions/tips on how to set up a minefield without the sub munition going after the waypoint?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on October 23, 2015, 11:07:02 AM
Remove waypoint after firing. This way, with no target mines will just float there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on October 23, 2015, 04:42:36 PM
Edit; Ummmmm, I did a dumbz. Well, first location in my minefield just got mined, then the next increment all the sub munition fired. All I did was assign my mines to a fire control, assigned the waypoint as the target (the mine layer was already on the wp), then clicked open fire.
Weird. Can you post the setup for your mine? I used many in the same version, and though I cannot confirm that they worked in action, because no one broke my perimeters, they also didn't activate by themselves. Maybe we can see the problem from a screenshot.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 23, 2015, 06:42:05 PM
Mines would be perfect for my situation, I think the ophiuchi 70 aliens actually have their home planet in Bernard's star, which happens to be my transport hub.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 23, 2015, 08:48:09 PM
I have 2 types of mines on one MFC. I have 3 of both kind on 4 points in a cross around the JP then a sonar buoy with 1 of each kind of mine directly on the point. What I did was I moved my ship onto the wp, selected the waypoint as a target for my mfc, then clicked "open fire". The next increment after the increment that the mines dropped, the submunitions of both types of mines fired at the waypoint. The designs of the mines and ship are in the Ships topic (the last one there I believe).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on October 23, 2015, 10:42:22 PM
I think the problem may be that you use the fire controls, which I never did. Instead I use the combination "move to" and "fire at" from the task force window for the waypoints, which just ejects the ammunition.(at least that is the tooltip promise)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 26, 2015, 09:47:16 AM
Vandermeer's suggestion worked. GreatTuna your's really didn't, it still fired the increment after. Or did you mean remove the point immediately after you fire without advancing time? Anyway, I am still having a little trouble. Anyone know how I can specify which missiles to fire, as my Minelayers have enough ammo to mine 2 JPs exactly, with a field of 3 on the JP (instead of 6 on the WPs). The only way I can figure doing it like that is with the fire control. I think I found what I'm looking for in the Ordinance Manager tab.

Edit; You know what, I think I am just going to switch to my torpedo mines for everything. I was just going to use them on the pathways between JPs and other JPs/Survey points/planets, but I think to simplify things I'll just use them.

Edit; Well I made another mistake. I just noticed after I built a few hundred torpedo mines that I made them wrong. I kept them at the default 150k km launch range for the second stage. The torpedos have a max range of 25m km, so you can see I made a bit of mistake. Edit again; I made a redisign (added a (R) to the name to separate the designs) and I possibly messed that up. I put 2.5m km as the range. That isn't all that bad as that is the distance the mines can detect a 1000 strength contact at that range (2,585,000 km to be exact) but I wanted to be able to fire from beyond what the mines could "see" (if that's possible with larger/closer sensors on something else).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on October 26, 2015, 10:55:55 AM
There was some discussion not too long ago about how to make very efficiently organized mine laying, as to automate even creating larger fields. Marc mentioned that the escort function can be used to get a saved bearing and distance on some docked mine layers, so you could in theory have a whole little fleet mine layers that print you a standard mine field (optionally with multiple charges per position), and it would work under 10 clicks.
Downside is of course that you need a whole separate mine layer ship for each position in the mine field, so you better miniaturize them. I wanted to make a "mine-layer carrier" who would send a swarm of box launcher miners in the Astral Republic game, but now I am not sure it will get to this point.
I will test it elsewhere on first opportunity though, as I really don't want to bother with manual waypoint mining anymore.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on October 26, 2015, 11:35:09 AM
Immediately after firing of course. I experience some kind of "launchers not ready" error half of the time I try no-FC launch.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 26, 2015, 08:03:46 PM
When I get a chance I'll test the automated mine laying, im currently busy smashing an enemy freighter with 5 twin gauss fighters, which after grade and weapon accuracy penalties have a 3% hit rate.
It's been about 25 minutes ingame and several hours real time thanks to a getmaxpotentialsensorrange popup that needs attention every 5 seconds.
But it's been slowed from engine damage twice and every hit now leaks atmosphere so there's not long left.
Finally some revenge for my 3 lost civilian freighters and lost survey ship(I lost a second one but to spoilers in V1581 cygni).
Meanwhile the NPR wrecks continue building in V1581 cygni grand total is now 12;
3 chinese 62000 ton gate builders
3 chinese 9200 tonners
1 chinese 27000 tonner
1 American 67000 tonner
1 American 9000 tonner
A Russian 4500 tonner
A UN Hawke class geosurvey ship (8100 tons)
And an unidentified wreck.
Estimated tonnage 350,000-420,000 tons of shipping lost to spoilers.
Edit: 10 more minutes of battle and 2 hours of real time later; 2 more engines down and I estimate there's only 2 left as the freighter is down to 370 km/s from it's origonal 1872 km/s , needless to say I need new fighter designs.
Edit : and it's down finally.
Edit: a brief summary of recent operations in Barnards star:
After destroying a 20000 Tirat commonwealth freighter the fighter support vessel Hermes escorts it's group of 7 fighters to the fuel dump on Barnards star 1.
Noticing a pattern of enemy freighters entering that system, the Pegasus takes up a position at the Barnards star - 70 Ophiuchi jump point, destroying an additional freighter.
Later an enemy 17,000 ton destroyer is detected by the formidable passive sensors of the Pegasus, on a direct course from the Ross 154 jump point towards 70 Ophiuchi this gives evidence of the source of enemy transgression into Barnards star.
The Pegasus attempts to evade, while it's 2500 km/s top speed is no match for the 4000 km/s shown by enemy warships, the ship has been detected at a range of 180000 kilometes and the Pegasus might not have been detected.
The Pegasus successfully evades the destroyer, and heads for a rendezvous with the rest of force Swift Vengence: the twin gauss armed longbow, 33 tube AMM escort Valkyrie, and the Destroyers Tenacious and Valiant all 8100 tons.
After entering 70 ophiuchi briefly the enemy contact destroys the sensor probe monitoring the jump point then vanishes from sensors.
The entire destroyer fleet sets course for the Ross 154 jump point, it should arrive a few days before the Pegasus manages to catch up, the destroyers all have a slight speed advantage of 2592 km/s, and set off from a closer point than the Pegasus.
5 days later the destroyer Force has made position outside Ross 154 jump gate, shortly afterwards the enemy ship is once again detected this time coming out of the gate. After a brief delay in firing the force opens up on the ship which has managed to open distance of 100,000 kilometers in the minute of wasted opportunity.
The opening three simultaneous salvos of 11 hades antimissiles slams into the ship causing minimal damage, but finally signalling the start of offensive operations against the "Rats" as they have been called. Within seconds the two salvos of 6 anti ship missiles arrives adding 4 strength 10 warheads to the carnage. The Raucous cheers of the bridge crews at the nuclear fury unleashed is cut short as equally strong detonations flower across the armour of the tenacious, the enemy ship has powerful plasma carronades, and the fleet has strayed close enough to allow even the gauss cannons of the crossbow a chance to enter the fray.
"Evasive action! Get us the hell out of here! " Shouts Lieutenant commander Hunter Rehder in command of the tenacious. Commodore Joelle Hakanson orders the fleet to attempt to retain a distance of 200,000 kilometers, sufficient to evade the short range thus far evidenced by the carronades. Thankfully the enemy ship is in a course to evade the Task force, but in the minute it will take to get out of range the carronades may fire again.
"Damage report!" Onboard the tenacious panic reigns. "All hits absorbed by armour, but we've lost half the hull, another broadside and we're dead, captain"
"Scheisse"
Two more salvos of of 33 anti missiles buffet the enemy while the fleet increases it's range, but just as the size 6 tubes of the tenacious and valiant are preparing to fire again a second salvo is unleashed from the enemy.
The first casualties aboard the Tenacious are employed in damage control, chief engineer Gerd Schupfer is killed along with another crew member while attempting to seal a hull breech near the first impact site, the weapon discharges completely against undamaged armour, but fatally irradiates the engineering team.
The second impact destroys an engine and a missile launcher, killing 16 crew members.
The third and final impact lands on intact armour plating outside the main engine compartment, penetrating shock destroys several engines, which cascade forward causing damage to a primary magazine. Owing to severe structural damage and preparation to fire another salvo exposed ordnance is caught in the fire, the resultant detonation takes out the rest of the engines and magazines, tearing the ship to ribbons.
Lieutenant Commander Rehder is unable to finish his last thoughts cursing the ineptitude of the task forces commander as he is killed along with 150 of his crew.
Despite the loss of the Tenacious, the fleet finally manages to subdue the enemy destroyer, using a total of 2 salvos of ASMs and 10 of AMMs.
After picking up the survivors from both ships the task force is stationed 250,000 km from the gate while waiting for the Pegasus.
Another enemy vessel jumps into the system, this time firing only twin size 6 missiles which are easily handled by the crossbows gauss cannons.
After using most of the remaining AMMs commodore Hakanson orders the fleet to conserve tge remaining 3 salvos, utilising 2 more salvos of ASMs while inching the longbow closer to finish the ship off with gauss fire.
The 26000 ton ship is soon reduced to smoking wreckage, after picking up the survivors and rendezvousing with the Pegasus the fleet returns to the fuel depot.
After it's arrival total fuel reserves in Barnards star amount to a mere 300,000 litres. At least 1.2 million is needed for the fleet to return the 9 billion kilometers to earth. However operations at the Ross 154 or 70 Ophiuchi jump point are only 1.5 billion kilometers away.
High command eagerly awaits the first 2 120,000 liter per annum harvesters ready in 6 months, the more adequate 240,000 liter harvesters which will be retooled for in 1 year, and the first tanker ready in 3 years.
The situation is grim, meanwhile makeshift 500 ton tankers shift 260,000 litres at a time at a mere 1000 km/s, requiring 3.5 months each way.

Edit: did I say brief?  :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 27, 2015, 11:18:37 AM
Before I started mining the Jump points I turned some spoilers on to give me some encouragement to rush military ships out. Well after I tried to resolve the mine problem, 5 sec increments started due to NPR combat. That has been 9 in-game days ago (started almost immediately after my last edit on last post), and is still going strong.

If this keeps up for much longer I might have to start a new game (kind of unhappy with the no neighbors and forgot to change around my empire at the start to a way I would like but have been continuing regardless), but I think I would wait for v6.5 to do that. I know what I want to do for my next game though (thought of it by reading some of the posts from before 2013). I will start off with a conventional start in 2100(aprox.), 500m population. Earth and Mars is heavily irradiated after a nuclear war between the governments of Earth and religious extremists who thought our advance of technology has gone to far and wanted it to stop. Both the surfaces of Earth and Mars has some installations remaining that made it through the bombings, but most have been turned into ruins. I may have 1 or 2 nprs at start, but I will have a somewhat high spawn chance (50%-75%). Maybe I may even do the "standard" ship size that most everyone does (probably not :P).

I did end up doing a new game but the ^said^ story was a bit complicated for a quick game that I wanted. Anyway right off the bat with spoilers active and 2 NPRs someone found a goldmine. I keep getting errors about wrecks and even just got a few about no new tech from salvaging components (even though I haven't even launched anything from off the planet) "No new technology during the disassembly of this component" "Wreck not found in CompleteWreckSalvage". Microincrements  :'(.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 30, 2015, 01:38:27 AM
It's now 2034, and the fuel crisis is as severe as ever, only a few megre loads of colonists have been sent to designated worlds and the Victorious fleet in Barnards star remains at minimal fuel load.
Yet even as the first fuel harvesters move into position the single construction brigade sent to 70 Ophiuchi makes its first discovery, under the tireless direction of xenologist Jared Kundart the team has been working for the last 6 months on the 85 identified installations.
As fate would have it the first site opened up was a fuel depot containing over 12 million litres of fuel. While only representing less than 2 years production of the fuel refineries back home, sorium shortages has reduced production to a third of capacity.
Considering the distance to the site, over 10.7 billion kilometers, only 26 trips could be made with our most efficient colony ship, bringing the population to 2 million colonists. No, the most important use of this fuel is to support the fleet in Barnards star which is ever at risk of enemy invasion, while also allowing the rest of the Construction brigades back at earth to be moved to the colony.
Meanwhile the ever reducing availability of duranium on earth compounds the shortages now reducing shipbuilding and construction work, drastic action is required, mines now joining the CMC's on europa will work at double the efficiency as those on earth, but this adds another world taking valuable infrastructure.
Lastly a tragedy has occurred.
(http://i.imgur.com/t8YrfFp.jpg)
Launched 2 years ago this Sigma class rescue ship is responsible for saving over 2000 crew who were carelessly sent into the dangerous system of V1511 Cygni by the other earth powers. It's final mission was as dangerous as many, closely dodging enemy ships showing up on it's moderately powerful thermal sensors. Commander stephen harrisson is to be commended for his actions in the final mission, evading an enemy ship waiting 4 million kilometers from the life pods, sadly after the ship took off the enemy vessel turned back to investigate the life pods no doubt they were tagged with some kind of monitoring devices, after confirming the pods were now empty the ship engaged active sensors and from then even the best efforts of the thoroughbred  could not shake the superior speed of the alien terror.
Back on Earth the commander of the Blackjack's sister ship the Cincinnati volunteered his crew for a mission to rescue the heros, unfortunately the vessel's position was a few scant hours too far for the durability of the life pods to endure.
With the fuel buffer now afforded by the discovery in 70 Ophiuchi and new promising Engine and warhead research on the horizon plans are being drawn up for a reconnaissance mission.
The veritable goldmine of wrecks now littering the system should proove valuable in the future too.

Edit: after splitting the fleet into 2 parts in Barnards star the new fighters were tested, destroying an unarmed 4kton vessel near the 70 ophiuchi gate, they performed amazingly. With them are 2 beta FACs soon to be joined by 2 more, the other half of the fleet are 3 ASM destroyers , an AMM and a gauss escort, stationed near the Ross 154 gate the group is low on fuel after hunting and destroying another pathetic rat 25 kton warship.
While waiting for a tanker the transit of 11 enemy freighters has been detected....
To be continued.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 02, 2015, 12:30:07 PM
3 Bad starts, very low duranium resources.  Start #3 only earth (and a few asteroids) had resources.  Ran out of duranium all 3 times, maybe too aggressive with shipbuilding???  Start #4, plenty of duranium on Luna, mercury, and Venus.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 05, 2015, 12:12:37 PM
The Admiralty is looking into how an accident of such occurred *reference picture* when the GSV Yuri Gagarin was docked over Terra performing refuel/resupply. It was immediately ruled as a drunk driving accident however some specialists are saying they were dead before the crash happened. Anyway, Raphael Anamalech has been selected as the new CO of the Gagarin after a promotion as he is Well Disciplined, a Good Judge of Character, and a Talented Musician. Intelligence forces have been commanded to look for any "strange" happenings within recent databases and watch out for any future "accidents" that may occur.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: icecoldblood on November 05, 2015, 08:03:49 PM
Sounds like someone's aggressively making his way up the command ladder.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 06, 2015, 09:20:21 AM
In a system right next to Sol 2 wrecks just poped up after a couple days of slow-down (not 5 sec, all have been between 30 sec and 1 day). One is 24,000 tons and the other is 73,000 tons. They are about 12.5b km away from my survey ship around the second star in the system... it is a really big quad system made from 2 binaries. Unfortunately the orbiting binary group is about 0.17LY away from the main star, and it doesn't have a LP. It may be an interplanetary war between neighbors as BIII and BIV (BIV has the wrecks on it)  are both within the realms of npr generation.

FINALLY, it seems the first sentence was forbidden as it was keeping me from posting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 08, 2015, 06:05:40 AM
1st Contact:  May 2128

  Survey ships were sent into Wolf 359 system (one of 6 JPs out of Sol).  System survey shows 4 JPs all with gates, and a stable wormhole.  Planetary survey ship encountered a single alien warship, no shots have been fired, diplomatic relations have been opened and appear to be doing well.  Getting error 6 pop ups Ugh!

  Prior to discovery of this race, i assigned delivery of 5 deep space tracking stations to one of the planets.  :o  Hope the locals don't mind.  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 08, 2015, 06:10:28 PM
Updates,

  Managed to deploy the deep space sensors in Wolf system while the locals were friendly.  Had diplomacy at 0 then they turned on us and now wont talk to us.  Maybe they didnt like the alliance scanning their system bodies  ;D.  Planet survey 1 completed its survey of the Wolf system, but was destroyed by a wave of missiles soon after.

  Sensors have detected the wormhole has moved twice.  Didnt know the wormhole would move around.

  One class of ships is sporting a S720/R1 sensor, i wonder if that is causing the error 6.  The error has gone away for now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 10, 2015, 09:51:00 AM
There's a system that had some wrecks. I cleared them, and killed a handful of hostile missile boats there of ~7500 tons and ~5300kps.

This is pretty routine. I see this in lots of systems. Once the missile boats are dead, I can operate safely.

This time, though, a lone geo survey ship got picked off some months later. It happened pretty fast, but I got a quick look at the shooter: It was doing something like 12,500 km/s.

My fastest warships at this point are doing 8750. I'm playing a bit of cat-and-mouse with this guy. He likes to pick off stray unarmed ships, but won't get near the big warships. I've tried luring him to the JG so that I can pounce on him at close range, but he doesn't ever take the bait.

Any time I want to run ships through that system--and there's a fair amount of valuable wreckage on the far side of it so that happens a far bit--I have to detail some warships to babysit the civvies.

From my POV, this is an entirely new AI behavior. I don't recall ever seeing anything like this when I used to play a few years ago. I don't know if this is new, or if I just never ran into it before, but it's pretty cool.

I suppose I'll eventually get around to building a ship fast enough to hunt this guy down...but maybe not. I get a kick out of what he's doing.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on November 10, 2015, 10:00:32 AM
There's a system that had some wrecks. I cleared them, and killed a handful of hostile missile boats there of ~7500 tons and ~5300kps.

This is pretty routine. I see this in lots of systems. Once the missile boats are dead, I can operate safely.

This time, though, a lone geo survey ship got picked off some months later. It happened pretty fast, but I got a quick look at the shooter: It was doing something like 12,500 km/s.

My fastest warships at this point are doing 8750. I'm playing a bit of cat-and-mouse with this guy. He likes to pick off stray unarmed ships, but won't get near the big warships. I've tried luring him to the JG so that I can pounce on him at close range, but he doesn't ever take the bait.

Any time I want to run ships through that system--and there's a fair amount of valuable wreckage on the far side of it so that happens a far bit--I have to detail some warships to babysit the civvies.

From my POV, this is an entirely new AI behavior. I don't recall ever seeing anything like this when I used to play a few years ago. I don't know if this is new, or if I just never ran into it before, but it's pretty cool.

I suppose I'll eventually get around to building a ship fast enough to hunt this guy down...but maybe not. I get a kick out of what he's doing.

Someone hacked you and is playing you multiplayer in Aurora ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 10, 2015, 10:31:08 AM
Jumpp, did you make sure to turn everything off on your ambushers (actives off, shields off, and speed set to 0/1 kms [doing this is more important than you think])? Also what you could do is make a giant (relative) ring that interlocks the fc/weapons of your ships that are ambushing so there would be no escape (if you have enough ships) while your "lone" unarmed ship sits in the middle "surveying". Also, mines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 10, 2015, 11:07:04 AM
The hostile is in Ross, which is connected to Struve. What I did was:

I parked a fleet in Struve, at the JG to Ross. They'd have been sitting there with actives on and speed set to max. (They have no shields.)

I sent a freighter through the JG, from Struve into Ross. It sat at the JG with its transponder on. I'm a little hazy on exactly what the transponder does. (I'd love to look this up in the Wiki.) I vaguely recall that it broadcast your position to pretty much everyone in the system, so I was hoping that this would attract the bad guy. Freighter sat on the JG for many days, with no sign of badguy. Either badguy wasn't interested, or badguy can't see my freighter.  This freighter would have a thermal signature of, I dunno, probably 1600.

When that failed to attract him, I sent through several more bait ships and turned on their transponders. Two salvagers and four more similar freighters. This wouldn't have made the target any more visible--all these ships have thermal signatures comparable to that of the other freighter--but it might make the target more attractive.

Neither of these efforts got the guy to show himself. I have two hypotheses:

1. He simply can't see them. The transponder isn't doing what I think it's doing, and the thermal signatures of my bait ships aren't strong enough for the badguy to spot them from wherever he's lurking.
2. He knows perfectly well that there's a JG there and doesn't want to get near it for fear of being pounced upon by ships that may be lurking on the other side of it.

At this point I think the first is more likely, and so I'm not sure what to do about it. If I can't lure him to the JG, I don't know how to get him within range of my missile boats.

I only vaguely recall mines. Maybe that'd be helpful. Here, again, I wish the wiki were available.

It had not occurred to me to try hiding my ambushers inside Ross. That's worth a try. I suppose by setting the speed to 1kms I drastically reduce their thermal signature? Badguy would still of course be able to see me with actives. Not sure if he's using them or not.  I'm super rusty.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 10, 2015, 02:33:12 PM
They generally leave actives off if there's nothing to shoot, when your ships are detected with thermals you'll see the actives turn on.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 11, 2015, 01:41:50 AM
Have you considered sending a tug towing a powered-down warship? Should slow it down enough to read like a cargo-ship and make it look vulnerable. Then pow, right in the command bridge!

Either that or research an unterraum-boot :P Cloaking fields, stealthed engines and so on.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on November 11, 2015, 03:43:29 AM
AFAIK, that is not necessary, having the warship move at low speed under its own power should do (one might think otherwise because ships use full power unless ordered not to: Makes them easy to spot, but allows them to dodge attacks even if stationary).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 11, 2015, 07:27:46 AM
If he's not taking the bait try a mine field, send your regular missile boats out and spam mines around somewhere the ship is known to operate, then put your bait ship in the area. I've had good luck with 1000 ton scout ships, they can usually get within 100 million kilometers of enemy ships undetected, as long as their actives aren't on. Even against certain spoilers. Scout around the ststem until you find it then lure it towards the mines. You might lose a few scouts : p
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 11, 2015, 08:45:10 AM
Got him.

I'm newly returned to the game and rusty in lots of ways. One of the things I've been sloppy about is no passive sensors. I just run around with actives on and, consequently, anyone can see me coming long before I see them.

So I put some 100-ton thermal and EM passives on my fleet leaders and started running a bit quieter. Then I sent 1st fleet in to shadow a geo survey ship. Spotted badguy lurking at Ross A-II, unmoving and occasionally strobing his actives. I was able to approach to around 30m before he spotted me and started running, at which point I launched 20 Mk4 Sparrows at him--9 warhead, ~36000kps, range of about 100m.  He fled at his top speed of 12,500 but that's still well within my reach.

So, whats going on:

The Solari Empire has settled about half a dozen systems, and has explored about a hundred. The game was created, I think, with one NPR, and at around 2065 I hit the button that created another. It's 2073, and still no sign of either. All known infestations of the race known to us only as the "Assholes," with whom our diplomats are utterly unable to communicate, have been cleared, though we expect to find more as we search ever further. Those guys are everywhere.

We're stepping up the survey program, in hopes of finding some lifeform somewhere that we can communicate with, and then conquer.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 11, 2015, 09:13:46 AM
Also: Made some improvements in my missile spreadsheet. When I want to improve the to-hit chance, I often don't know if it's better to add agility or speed. Now I've got a little display that tells me how much to-hit I'd gain from spending a little more MSP on speed and how much from spending a little more on agility. It's really helped me tune this latest generation of missiles.

Still rusty as hell, but I've got all the tools I made back when I knew the game well, and they're helping a lot.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 11, 2015, 09:58:12 AM
May 2133
  3 [Wolf Clan] 2100T Yaun class (Survey?) ships were detected in the Sol system, the 1st Earth Defense fleet of 4 corvettes and 4 Missile boats destroyed 2 of the 3 before the 3rd disappeared off sensors.  The 3rd failed to ram a commercial freighter. 

Sept 2133
  3 [Wolf Clan] 91600T Zanabazar class (Construction?) ships were detected in the sol system, all 3 have been destroyed by the same defense fleet.

  I am sure we will be visited by something more substantial soon.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DeserereX on November 12, 2015, 09:59:12 AM
4 out of 8 Scientist are dead, 3 for medical problems and 1 in a accident.  All of them was working on the same research. . .
i'm starting to think that the  water pressurized reactor research  is cursed. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on November 12, 2015, 10:40:36 AM
4 out of 8 Scientist are dead, 3 for medical problems and 1 in a accident.  All of them was working on the same research. . .
i'm starting to think that the  water pressurized reactor research  is cursed. . .

They couldn't handle the... pressure.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 12, 2015, 11:23:21 AM
And suddenly the Solari Empire is busy:

The site in the system previously known as Ross, where the elusive Badguy lurked, turns out to have a Power/Propulsion anomaly and some unidentified installations. The Solari have no experience of such things, but their culture is full of legends about hostile swarms emerging from mysterious ruins, so in an excess of caution they've moved an entire infantry division to the site, as well as 1st Fleet, which totals 108,000 tons and 90 ASM launchers.

They've placed a Xenology team at the site without any further instructions, in the vague hope that the team will on its own find something worthwhile to do. An idiosyncratic general believes, without evidence or much in the way of explanation, that Combat Engineers might be relevant, and so a brigade of those is being raised and should arrive at the site within a few months.

The planet, now called "Tau Ceti Center" in the system now designated "Tau Ceti," has tremendous mineral resources and a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. The 70th Terraformer Wing is onsite and has already removed the trace toxins and added enough oxygen to make the atmosphere breathable. They're adding some CO2 to adjust the extreme cold and expect to be done in about a year.

A listening post erected on Tau Ceti Center detected a hostile ship lurking in the asteroid belt far beyond the most-distant JP.  A detachment from the 1st was able to approach to within 20mkm without being detected, and expended much of the remaining supply of obsolete Mk2 Harpoons to destroy it. Though blind as a bat, this ship had a thick skin.

FIRST CONTACT: A new intelligence is found in Beta Virginis, five jumps and about 11 billion km from Sol. Survey ships are promptly withdrawn from the system while diplomats establish contact.  Anticipating possible hostility from the enemy (and near-certain hostility from the Solari in any event,) 51st Transport wing promptly sets up a listening post and fuel dump on a not-quite-habitable planet in the next-nearest system, an only-slightly-cold rock 98% covered with ice. Planet and system are now designated Mare Infinitus and Okinawa, respectively. Mare Infinitus refers to the anticipated state of the planet once 70th Terraformers get done with it, and the designation of Okinawa is an obscure reference from Solari history which indicates hostile intentions toward the system just beyond.

As though that weren't enough for the Solari to think about, a new system five jumps from Sol turns out to have an Edenic planet sitting uninhabited and begging for colonists, and another planet just inches away which will require only a few weeks of terraforming to reach perfection. This system is now designated "The Sisters" and the planets designated Hera and Hestia. With already more habitable worlds than they're quite sure what to do with, the Solari have no near-term plans here besides setting up one of their innumerable listening-post-and-fuel-dump sites.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 12, 2015, 03:22:29 PM
Just discovered the Detroit system... it is largely uninhabitable. The only one they may be worth while/easy to colonize is a 0.6 gravity world with 98% Nitrogen and 2% Methane atmosphere (0.38 pressure). There are plenty of bodies however and may make a good mining outpost. Scary thing is all planets and stars (4 stars) are within 4b km of the main star.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 12, 2015, 05:56:49 PM
March 2135

  The Wolf Clan sent in 3 Yasa class ships into Sol,  appear to be some sort of EW craft with no offensive capabilities.  57300 T, ECM 70, and much faster than we are.  1st Earth Defense fleet was again dispatched to deal with the threat. 

  Yasa point defenses prevented most missiles from reaching their targets.  Beam weapons are useless, base chance to hit 0%.  1st Earth Defense is returning home, maybe my fighters will have better luck. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on November 12, 2015, 06:30:17 PM
And another round of Precursor FUN.

And against an actual fleet this time no less. 2 new Grav Surveys and a Command Ship are lost. At least I managed to grab the survivors this time.

The main fleet was a handful of destroyers, some 29k thing and 2 more destroyers making 11k km/s which are still running around because they stayed well outside my missile range. 2 PDCs are also in the system.

Stuff learned:
- 150 Shields / 300s recharge don't cut it, especially not for the sensor platform (good thing I had 2 command ships in my fleet)
- 2 layers of armor are also pretty thin
- There is no such thing as "enough CIWS"
- 70 missiles are not enough ammo
- Search and Rescue should be left to a dedicated ship, not the command ship

New Ships are designed, and long-range missiles are build so I can evict the remnants and avenge everyone who didn't make it.


Looks like the 403 bug found me at last.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 13, 2015, 06:22:31 AM
You might be interested in my current rescue ship.
Code: [Select]
Sigma class Rescue Shuttle    1,000 tons     19 Crew     118 BP      TCS 20  TH 143  EM 0
7150 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 10.9 Years     MSP 37    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 1    5YR 9    Max Repair 6 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

10.2 EP Ion Drive (14)    Power 10.2    Fuel Use 59.35%    Signature 10.2    Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 80,000 Litres    Range 24.3 billion km   (39 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It's small size has allowed it to avoid a lot of enemy ships even at top speed, and it is quite speedy for ION tech, after all it's 70% engine.
However it can only hold 200 people and I just can't resist cramming a thousand into it after a large NPR force wanders into the wormhole system. A swarm of them would be quite cheap though.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 13, 2015, 09:15:18 AM
Things are heating up for the Solari Empire:

In the North: At Tau Ceti Center, the Xenology team has identified the ancient ruins and the 15th Engineers, with four construction brigades, are excavating. They're turning up a fair amount of infrastructure, which is kind of amusing to the Solari since we always terraform to CC0 before landing anyone.

In the South: The Sisters turns out to be a leaf system, and extremely mineral-rich to boot. Still no great hurry to settle here, and less now that we know nobody else can get in there ahead of us.

In The East: Nothing ever happens in the East. This hasn't changed.

In The West: The Beta Virginis aliens, which we now call the Betas, offered trade access. About a dozen civilian freighters heard the call. Turns out there's more aliens in or around Beta Virginis--let's call them the Gammas--and while the Betas granted trade access to Beta Virginis, the Gammas weren't on board and reacted the way you'd expect when a bunch of alien ships appeared in their system. After a few hours of shadowing the ships, cooking them with active sensors, and otherwise offering unambiguous threat displays which the civilian ships entirely ignored, the Gammas started communicating with high-caliber beam weapons. Unlike the previous messages, these seem to have been received and understood by the civilian freighters, which replied by politely exploding.

The Gammas then pushed into Okinawa, demolishing the listening post at Mare Infinitus shortly before the 70th Terraformers were to arrive. With 1st Fleet still babysitting the dig site at Tau Ceti, the exhausted and badly in need of overhaul 2nd was sent to clear the system. These early engagements tell us little about the Gamma capabilities. These slow, gun-armed ships were most likely scouts, not ships of the line.

2nd briefly visited Beta Virginis, in hopes of encountering more Gamma forces, but the Betas threw a fit, revoking trade access within hours of 2nd's arrival. This gesture, while painless (we'd already forbidden our ships to visit the system, trade rights or no), made it clear to us that the Betas won't allow us to fight the Gammas alone. 2nd Fleet promptly withdrew to Okinawa, where we continue to stockpile fuel and ammunition. We plan to return to Beta Virginis in a few months, and next time we'll be hunting Betas as well.

1st has been moved to the Western front while 2nd goes home for rest & overhaul. We're going to move some of that otherwise-useless infrastructure from Tau Ceti down to Mare Infinitus so that we can land enough colonists to support a maintenance site. The 70th Terraformers have arrived and are doing their work, but it'll take time. They're not happy about being in such a forward position. While our warships at 8,750kps are capable of easily outrunning the Gammas we've seen so far, the terraformers at around 900 are not. If Okinawa is overrun, the 70th will be lost.

The first pair of the new gauss-equipped Archangel-class antimissile cruisers will be done with their crew training and ready for line service in a few months.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on November 13, 2015, 04:22:36 PM
You might be interested in my current rescue ship.
Code: [Select]
Sigma class Rescue Shuttle    1,000 tons     19 Crew     118 BP      TCS 20  TH 143  EM 0
7150 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 10.9 Years     MSP 37    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 1    5YR 9    Max Repair 6 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

10.2 EP Ion Drive (14)    Power 10.2    Fuel Use 59.35%    Signature 10.2    Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 80,000 Litres    Range 24.3 billion km   (39 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It's small size has allowed it to avoid a lot of enemy ships even at top speed, and it is quite speedy for ION tech, after all it's 70% engine.
However it can only hold 200 people and I just can't resist cramming a thousand into it after a large NPR force wanders into the wormhole system. A swarm of them would be quite cheap though.

I had a fighter/carrier approach in mind. The fighter gets some 200 cryo, the carrier 10k or so. And could also carry ground troops, small sensor craft etc.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 16, 2015, 12:10:56 AM
January 2139

  A new Alien race was encountered in a nearby system, diplomatic relations have been established.  Relations appear to be doing well.  The race has identified themselves as the Khanate of Eburacum.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 16, 2015, 12:34:10 AM
April 2139

  The hornets have arrived.  As was previously predicted the Wolf sent 5 new ships into the Sol system.  3 Ships are of the Khan class and appear to be an Anti-ship missile type ship.  The last 2 are being called the Sartaq class and appear to be EW ships.

  The Famous 1st Earth Defense Fleet was dispatched to intercept this new threat to the Sol System.  As the fleet approached, enemy missiles were soon detected.  The Missiles were of a tech level never thought to be possible, and quickly overwhelmed the fleet.  4 Corvettes and 6 missile boats were destroyed.  Soon after, missiles were detected incoming towards several civilian ships.

  All told 4 Corvettes, 6 missile boats, 10 civilian freighters, and 3 civilian colony transports were destroyed by missile fire.  Total loss of nearly 155,000 lives.

  The 3 Khan class ships broke off from the fleet and approached several large freighters, 10 additional large freighters, and 1 huge freighter were destroyed by suicide attacks.  The 3 Khan ships were also destroyed in the attacks.

  A command cruiser and beam cruiser (all i have left) were dispatched to deal with the EW ships.  The jamming was so intense that only 2 (size 5) missiles hit an enemy ship.  The cruisers were sent back to earth.  Search and rescue operations have been completed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on November 16, 2015, 08:44:49 AM
I really need to rethink my exploration approach. Permanently losing heavy survey ships to Spoilers is to expensive to maintain.

Code: [Select]
EXP Magellan class Long Range Survey Ship    17,750 tons     255 Crew     1809 BP      TCS 355  TH 1600  EM 0
4507 km/s     Armour 5-60     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/5     Damage Control Rating 20     PPV 0
MSP 1274    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Spare Berths 0   

400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (4)    Power 400    Fuel Use 4.42%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 688.3 billion km   (1767 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The Gravs look the same with a sensor swap. I guess I'll have to dual-purpose the support carrier for survey duty.
Also MarcAFK: Is there some RP reason for that design? For comparison my approach to the issue:

Code: [Select]
FTR Comet - Copy class Rescue Shuttle    400 tons     2 Crew     54.8 BP      TCS 8  TH 48  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 1-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 17.25 Years     MSP 43    AFR 2%    IFR 0%    1YR 0    5YR 4    Max Repair 24 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 8   
Cryogenic Berths 400   

48 EP Ion Drive (1)    Power 48    Fuel Use 67.2%    Signature 48    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 33.5 billion km   (64 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

The engine is 4 HS, Power *1.0, Fuel *0.7. (Not the best possible, just to somewhat match the example.)
(The EXP/FTR are prefixes to maintain order on the class design page.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 16, 2015, 09:29:34 AM
The only thing to change in your shuttle design would be a little less fuel and a little more engines. Overall those are good designs, but the things that irks me is that the numbers don't add up, there is no CIWS (on the EXP Magellan), and essentially they are blind to the universe. You don't need to change them, it just irks me when there are uneven/exact values (speed and size mainly), no defense for the inevitable missile surprises, and that they cant see farther than their portholes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 16, 2015, 10:28:21 AM
Well, it turns out one of the systems I have been exploring now has JG on EVERY JP that were not there when I first looked at the first few as they were discovered, except the one that goes to my space. Lets hope that whoever is in that system does not know of the existence of the JP that leads to my space. Note; My GSVs do have both Thermal and EM sensors, and Thor has not seen anything as they were scouting. Oh, and this is only 2 jumps from Sol... good thing my first 2 warships (my command ships of all things) have been built and the next 4 (my actual missile ships) are due in about 4-5 months.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 16, 2015, 11:58:47 AM
The Solari Empire, update:

The war against the Beta Virginis aliens has begun. To set the scene:

Beta Virginis is about 10b km from Sol. It's five jumps away. (Sol->Ross->Midway->Solomon->Okinawa->Beta Virginis)
There are two alien factions there, of the same species, based on the same planet, of comparable size and strength. The Solari perceive no meaningful distinction between them, and regard them as, for all practical purposes, a single entity, henceforth called the Betas.

At the start of the war, we've got no good information about their capabilities.

We Solari have got six modern 16,000-ton cruisers with a total of 200 size-5 ASM launchers, four 8,000-ton frigates with a total of 80 AMM launchers, and two Antimissile cruisers each with a pair of quad gauss turrets with tracking speeds of 20kps. Also, we have a great many 8,000-ton colliers and tankers which move at the same speed as the fighting ships. This is unorthodox, but it's our way. We've had bad experiences with support ships getting isolated and picked off, so we think the safest place for them is right up on the front line with the fleet.

Our missiles and sensors permit us to engage large ships and FACs out to around 50mkm.

We've got a base in Okinawa, the system right next to Beta Virginis. Our colony in Okinawa is about 250m km from the BV jump gate. Their colony in BV is about 3 billion mk from the Okinawa jump gate.

The war plan is simple: Push into the system. Destroy every ship, station, and PDC. Then land the 2nd Infantry and 4th Armored divisions on the homeworld and conquer it.

Our initial push made it about about 1.5B mk from the homeworld before being turned back. We destroyed about 150,000 tons of warships, while losing the 16,000-ton antimissile cruiser and half a dozen 8,000-ton support ships.  We learned:

- The enemy has vastly superior weapon and sensor range.
- We have much better missile defenses and (generally) better speed.
- They have some freakishly fast FACs armed with long-range missiles
- Our tankers and colliers need warship-grade armor if they're going to travel with the fleet. They get shot at a lot.
- Our gauss cannons need greater tracking speed before they're going to be a serious defense.
- Our modest shields are useless. When a ship gets hit at all, it gets hit big and quick. Pound for pound, the space spent on shields would be much better spent on more armor.

We've withdrawn to the Okinawa system, where we keep a fleet parked about 1m km away from the gate. Every several months, the Betas try to come through. We destroy these ships without difficulty. Their superior reach doesn't do them any good under these conditions.

We're making several adjustments:

- We're no longer bringing tankers with us into BV. With our base in Okinawa being only 3.5b km or so from the enemy homeworld, the 20b km fuel loads on our warships is plenty.
- We're adding a ton of armor to the colliers. We can't leave these behind because the fighting ships just don't carry enough ammo, so we're giving them the same armor that the bruisers have got.
- We're upgrading our search radars and fire controls, so that we have significantly better reach than the enemy. We used to see and hit out to 50m. Enemy is doing about 200m. So we're upgrading to 300m.
- We're swapping our our warhead-16 Harpoon with a range of 44m km and a speed of 48000km/s in favor of the new warhead-9 Lance missile with a range of 350m km and a speed of only 28,800km/s. These things are slow, and easy to shoot down, but we use box launchers on our cruisers and the enemy point defenses just aren't able to deal with salvos of the size that we employ. We defeat their missile defenses with sheer numbers, rather than agility.

Better gauss-equipped ships are in the pipeline, but won't be ready for another year and a half, so we're pushing ahead without them.

The next push begins within the week.



Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 16, 2015, 11:51:56 PM
How long after the first attempt were you ready to attack again with the new upgraded sensors and fire controls?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 17, 2015, 09:12:49 AM
Not long. Replacing electronics is super quick*. Whole operation took about four months, I guess.  It takes about two weeks for my warships to travel from Okinawa to Earth, about three weeks to refit, and then another two weeks to return to the front. I did half the fleet at a go, with the other half sitting on the gate loaded up with those short-range Harpoon missiles.

Building the new long-range missiles took a lot longer than refitting the ships.

Update: The Second Push was a qualified success, but our position is shaky.

We pushed into BV again, this time armed with sensors and missiles that can reach around 300m km.  In previous pushes, we'd left one fleet guarding the gate and a second pushing toward the homeworld. This time we left the rear unsecured and pushed in with everything--1 AM cruiser, 2 command cruisers with 20 launchers each, 4 cruisers with 40 launchers each, and 4 antimissile frigates with 20 launchers each, plus three colliers. The cruisers are all 16,000 tons. The frigates and colliers are 8,000.

We carried about 900 of the new long-range Lance Mk1s, or four and a half full volleys.

We picked off about ten isolated ships moving alone or in small groups. We saw a lot more slow ships this time. Maybe the enemy is throwing everything including the kitchen sink at us this time? Or maybe those slow ships were in the field last time too and we just never noticed them because they were too slow to catch us and we were too blind to see them.

We found an extremely large task group of Betas, somewhere on the order of fifty ships of displacements from 10,000 to 30,000. This fleet doesn't appear to have much reach, and moves at around 2500km/s, so it's no threat to our fleet. But it's huge, and we expended our entire store of ammo and destroyed only 80,000 tons of what must have been a 750,000-ton fleet., then escaped without incident.

This fleet presents a problem.

If it remains in BV? Then we can just go home, reload, come back, kill a few more, and grind it down. But we don't have many Lances on hand, and the production pipeline is slow. To kill it quickly, we'd have to use our very large store of old Sparrows (100m km) and Harpoons (45m km). We don't know how many of those ships are armed with missiles, and we don't know the range of the missiles they may be carrying. But if any significant number of them have got missiles, our fleet would almost certainly be destroyed if we were to get near enough to them to use our short-range missiles.

If that fleet pushes into Okinawa, we're in trouble.

We've got excellent antimissiles, and large supplies of these on Mare Infinitus (our colony in Okinawa system.) But a fleet that size, if they're mostly missile boats, will be able to easily overwhelm our missile defenses, even if we're sitting at the colony and can reload from the surface.

If they push in, we'll have three options:

1. Defend Okinawa. We can maybe hold it, IF the enemy is composed largely of beam- and gun-equipped boats, or if they've got way less ammo than you'd reasonably expect.

2. Abandon Okinawa and fall back. Earth is four jumps away. It'd probably take them a while to find it, and we've got listening posts all along the route. We'd see them coming well in advance.

3. "The Enemy's Gate Is Down." Abandon Okinawa, go around their huge but slow fleet, and do whatever damage we can to their homeworld.

Whatever happens, our very next move is to withdraw the 2nd Infantry and 4th Armored divisions from Okinawa. There'll be no time to move them if the enemy attacks, and they'd take an extremely long time to replace. They were moved to Okinawa in anticipation of a much easier war than this one turned out to be. Now that it's clearly going to be a long hard slog, there's no point keeping the ground-pounders in harm's way. There'll be plenty of time to bring them up from Earth when we've achieved air superiority in the BV system.

*As a general rule, I've found that replacing sensors & fire controls is cheap and fast. Replacing armor or magazines isn't bad. Replacing launchers is painful. Replacing engines is so costly and slow that it's hardly ever worth doing.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on November 17, 2015, 12:07:31 PM
After a year or so of not playing Aurora, I remembered how to get my second monitor to cooperate with my laptop and have started a new game.  \o/

Seven years in to the American Union's conquest of all known space, things are going well . . . until a minute or two ago.

USS Columbia, a veteran gravitational survey vessel with over 8 systems full exploration in it's resume, was innocently making it's way back to the Jump Point of Ross 248 after completing the survey there when it was destroyed without provocation by the first living aliens the Union has discovered in the 7 years since the first Jump Point transit.  The survey cruiser took over 19 missile hits to go down though.  Quite impressive considering it only had 1 rank of armour and no active defences at all.  In all the two engines took 12 hits between them before going offline and dooming the vessel to an undignified death by (if the Intelligence page is to be believed) 10k m/s space Peacocks.  Going to be at least a year before anyone realises the Columbia is overdue though, as she had at least two more systems to survey before a scheduled overhaul.



Trying a new approach to Aurora this time.  In an attempt to simulate Government Bureaucracy, nepotism and industrial shortsightedness, I design two options for every piece of equipment, missile and ship and then toss a coin to see which one 'wins the Government Department Trial'.  This has led to some less than optimised ships. :)  Most obvious 'problems' this has caused are my Beam FCs having a tracking speed twice as fast as my turrets (and therefore being overcosted and oversized for the ships) and my 'Fleet Carrier' being 350m/s faster than my 'Escort Carriers'.

It did give me proper battlecruisers though.  Fast, well armed and tin foil for armour.  :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 17, 2015, 05:00:40 PM
Well... I found an alien race like I expected... just it was in the wrong direction... and 1 jump from sol instead of 4. SO far GEV Henry Hudson has been hit by 3 strength 1 (x8) energy impacts and every single bit has been absorbed by the armor. After a second increment with 2 strength 1 (x5) impacts and a strength 1 (x2), the ship broke off and is headed towards the center of the system at about x2 the speed my GEV is capable of. I think its time to pull out of the system and deal with the aliens with the newly formed Force Recon made by 2 of the Challenger class and 4 Ajax class.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 18, 2015, 09:11:00 AM
All Quiet on the Western Front

The Solari pushed briefly into BV and were engaged by those super-fast missile FACs, which exhibited a new behavior: After expending their ammo, they shadowed our fleet from a distance of about 70m km. Once they've shot their bolt they're harmless, but their presence seems to make it impossible to advance the timer at a reasonable rate. Updates are limited to under 10 minutes. Since it takes days to cross that system, and the limits of human patience are finite, we turned back to get new electronics. When we return, we'll have radars and that can see and engage 1000-ton craft at 95m km.

This is an annoying meta-attack. We can handle their missiles, but they're using the slowness of the game as a weapon, which is deeply frustrating.

Apart from that brief push, we remain in Okinawa, standing guard at the BV jumpgate while building enormous supplies of missiles and a great many more ships.  There's been no sign of that monster million-ton fleet.

The enemy still probes Okinawa system every several months. The most recent such push was their most ambitious yet, with a 27kt missile boat, a 27kt gun boat, and two 18kt gunboats. All these ships appear to carry a mix of guns and missiles. One of the "gun boats" seems to have a single size-5 launcher but it's hard to say how many he had before 20 harpoons hit him. Our classification system is simple: They appear at a distance of around 1mkm. The ones that try to close with us we call gun boats. The ones that try to extend, we call missile boats.

We're pleased to see fleet composition heavily skewed toward gun boats since we can easily defeat those. We're alarmed, however, that the enemy has superior engine tech now. We're still on Internal Containment Fusion, and we're picking bits of Magnetic Containment Fusion out of the wreckage. We've recovered enough of it to build our own, but we're waiting for improved fuel efficiency before doing the next generation of engines. Even with the superior engine tech, the enemy are slower than us, so there's no great urgency.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 18, 2015, 09:18:29 AM
Same is happening to me sort of. The enemy ship is keeping about 17m km away from my GEV, which is the range where I can detect him with thermals. However, he keeps bobbing in and out of this range every 30 sec which causes interrupts. Henry Hudson has about 14 days of travel until he leaves the system and 11 until Force Recon can get into the system.

Edit; Make that 2 days. I forgot that TF Training brings them down to a slower speed than their max so they were traveling about 1/4 their max speed.

Edit again; About 10-15 minutes later, the enemy ship has begun a intercept course with the GEV Henry Hudson. Lets hope they don't try a ramming maneuver like they did before they opened fire the last time.

Edit galore; Another 5-10 minutes, they immediately reversed course after getting about 10m km close. He has begun the same maneuver as before.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 18, 2015, 10:15:51 AM
IMO, you'd be totally justified in using SM to magically move your ship away from this guy. Beating you over the head with interrupts is a hate crime.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 18, 2015, 10:19:06 AM
Nah, turns out that using the minimum increments setting acutally lets you set the time advance with it rarely changing. So I set it to 10 and hit 5 minutes, so every (just under an) hour I can still see what is going on, but with only 3 gauss cannons they don't seem to want to play, so I increased the time to 20 minutes (with a smaller minimum increment).

Edit; Well... it seems the enemy commander had enough cat and mouse so he brought his ship into a ramming attack. I was unusually hurt by this as the GEV class took over 5 years to build even with its engines (and jump) prebuilt (learnt in the next batch that prebuilding the sensors and CIWS took build time down to only 1 1/2 years).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 18, 2015, 02:28:16 PM
FFL Belleau Wood, FFL Bennington, FFG Arkansas, FFG Arleigh Burk, FFG Belknap, and FFG Berkeley have entered the Washington system with these orders strait from the top; A) Rescue any survivors from the GEV Henry Hudson (this is time critical because the helmsman on the Belleau Wood, directly tasked with this, reports there will be slightly less than a day remaining of life support in the pods upon arrival), B) Capture any survivors from the enemy ship (time critical for same reasons), and because en route communication was deemed impossible because we are simply too different as a species C) Send the message to their world to not mess with humanity (with salvos of missiles of course).

Post OP report; Objective A complete, 174 survivors including Commander Madeleine Miller who was the commanding officer. Objective B was classed as a failure as no life pods were detected upon scouting the enemy wreck.  Objective C; The ships of Force Recon halted their advance on the suspected enemy planet at aprox 13m km (average between the 2 detachments), which is well within missile range, and activated their active sensors. 2 additional classes were located both weighing around 15k tons, about the size of the frigates themselves, and were promptly targeted by the Belleau Wood and Bennington while the 4 Ajax class targeted the planet. Side note; My god the screen when those ships fire. Back to OP; 2 Salvos have been fired at each of the contacts in orbit while each Ajax fired 1 salvo at the planet. They were then ordered to recombine and head back home for debriefing and R&R for the crew, survivors, and commanders and R,R,&R for the ships. At  ~300k km, AMM fire has reached our missiles in a wave of 5, then 10 sec later slightly before first impact, the first salvo wave of 5 Sparrows were intercepted with 6 AMMs while a wave of 7 impacted at ~450k km on another salvo. Active sensors on the the Bennington has detected 55 AMMs on approach to it at about 200k km and CIWS have been warmed up preparing for final fire. All have targeted the Bennington so they have been classed as a anti-radar missile, 14 have been shot down by CIWS fire and the rest was absorbed by armor with the deepest of the scars only reaching half way through the layers of armor (6 places). Another wave of 55 AMMs have been detected, this will be a dawn out fight. This is about the time I realize a FC error has grouped all missiles under a single FC and selected only the Sparrows to fire (even out of the size 5 launchers which apparently have yet to fire a Malafon) within the Belleau Wood Detachment. The first of the Missiles from the Ajaxs' have reached the planet... and are now sitting on it without doing anything... why? After 5 more AMM salvos the armor has been breached on the Bennington and the Jump drive is so far the only thing to get hit, it is still functional afterwords though. After a couple 5 sec increments the missiles  sitting on the planet decided to retarget to the ships in orbit, which after PD fire and missiles, a total of 80 Sparrows hit their marks each doing 9 damage. The targets were destroyed. The commanders on mission decided it would be best to go into a standard orbit and use the remaining hundred or so missiles in each ship on the surface of the planet, just to make sure. *Again the missiles seem to not want to hit the planet. This time I even just used the launch missiles at order in the TG window.* Although directly over the suspected enemy world their is no colony/population there. Force recon is now ordered to scout the system in search of any of the other possible locations (Washington AIV was the only Earth-like but there are some 2.0 cost bodies further out).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on November 18, 2015, 11:39:10 PM
*As a general rule, I've found that replacing sensors & fire controls is cheap and fast. Replacing armor or magazines isn't bad. Replacing launchers is painful. Replacing engines is so costly and slow that it's hardly ever worth doing.

I have a habit of building a stockpile of engines using construction factories, which alters that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on November 19, 2015, 02:42:27 AM
It's still costly, it just ties up other assets. I'd rather design my vessels to remain somewhat relevant without major upgrades and mothball them, rather than sinking money into refit after refit.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on November 19, 2015, 08:43:06 AM
Surrendered to the Error 6 bugs, and the Invader fleet that was sitting in Sol space picking off everything that moved.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 19, 2015, 09:11:30 AM
Solari Empire Update: It's complicated.

Armed with our new long-range radars and missiles, we pushed once more into Beta Virginis. Those pesky FACs did their thing again, and we swatted them down.

We learned that if we go in with actives off, we can approach to about 500m km from the homeworld before we're engaged.

We demolished much of that monster fleet, including all six of the 30,000-tonners. We're way faster than them, so we were able to go home, reload, and re-establish contact before they'd even returned to their homeworld. As they fled, presumably out of ammo, we gave chase and shot down a great many more. We destroyed somewhere between a third and a half of the fleet, altogether.

But. Eventually we figured out we were cheating. By accident.

This fleet has phenomenal point defenses. And our fancypants new Mk1 Lance missiles have great range, but poor speed. They only do 28,800kps. These should be easy for point-defense guns to deal with, and indeed they are. We had very large salvos entirely taken down by point-blank gunnery.

Which raises the question: How were we ever getting any hits on these guys at all?

A look at the log, and some experimenting, revealed the answer: Any time we got hull hits on these guys, the step time was a full minute. When the final approach went by 5-second steps instead, they easily shot down everything.

So, basically, I destroyed half their fleet by exploting the kind of time-compression problems that'd lead ME to re-open an old save.

Ashamed, we immediately left the system. When we come back we'll bring far more launchers--enough to fire salvos of upwards of 300 missiles. And those missiles will be doing 60,000 kps.

And we'll be damn sure to use 5-second steps when our missiles are approaching the enemy, so that any hits we get are honest hits.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 20, 2015, 07:53:57 AM
Okay, now I'm confused. I sent Force Recon to every planet (except B star which was over 1 trillion km away) searching for those annoying aliens but couldn't find them on any planet, so I sent GEVs back in. They found a population on a body with 111 degree temperature, 0.04 gravity, and 2 atmospheres of atmosphere (mostly nitrogen). the funny thing is, Force Recon is performing overhauls at the moment so they can't get back there for a while (another month or so).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 20, 2015, 04:17:20 PM
I'm out of geo survey ships now, I totally didn't expect the last one to run into something with excessively large shields and a crapton of meson cannons, no sir.
Barnards star looks to be the most important system in the galaxy, it's a single jump from there to sol, or one jump to the wormholers, or 2 jumps to the homesystem of the only discovered NPR, or 2 jumps to the newly discovered meson spoilers. The precursors have yet to make an appearance.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on November 20, 2015, 05:04:43 PM
So after auto-turn'ing through about 50x 5 second intervals of missile spam, I decided it would be a good idea to use a 20 min time increment to close in on those NPR missile ships. When the turn finished processing, I was greeted with the 100kt wreck of my cruiser after it managed to eat about 300 missiles which had clumped together in the long turn. That was fairly rage-inducing I must admit, especially since previously the cruiser had managed to destroy almost all the incoming missiles using only area-defense beams, with the occasional use of CIWS for leakers.

Now I'm trying to decide whether I want to reload from my last backup or continue from here (and possibly use some SM magic and pretend this never happened).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 20, 2015, 05:19:56 PM
Well I moved force recon back into the system and parked over the planet. I then ordered all of the Ajax class to fire 1 salvo at the planet. It has been hit bu 240 strength 9 missiles and 60 strength 16. The population contact has been lost but a GF contact has been gained. Also, despite all of those nukes the planet's temperature has dropped from 111 degrees to only 80 instantly. The GF contact has then been destroyed by 20 strength 9 missiles fired from the Challengers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 21, 2015, 07:05:39 AM
Solari Update: Still No Progress

The faster missiles don't appear to help. The enemy's final defensive fire is still more than up to the task of bringing down salvos of 160 missiles, the largest I've been able to throw. I can freely move about their system, smashing up anything that moves apart from that one big slow fleet.

Anything that moves, that is. I tried shooting up the shipyards, and the missile defense situation there is similar.

Best idea we've got is to try larger salvos. Once some ships are done training, I'll find out if they can shoot down salvos of 380 missiles.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 21, 2015, 04:49:34 PM
You could try the suicidal approach, get close enough to negate point defence, it worked so well for the centauri in Steve's game!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 21, 2015, 05:55:11 PM
In the year 2087, the Solari throw in the towel.

The Betas were tough. Maybe beatable? But that late in the game, time moves sloooow. I realized it was going to take me several hours of play time to set up another attack.

It was a good getting-reacquainted-with-the-game game. Starting over, I'll manage my economy much better. I'll grow my industry a lot faster. Spend less money on ships and tech I don't need, and more money on ships and tech I do need. I'll mine more of everything, and especially more gallicite. I'll make way more fuel. I'll waste fewer resources building too many early-generation missiles.

In general, I'll get much stronger, much faster, and if I meet something like the Betas in the next game, there'll be no fooling around like there was this time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on November 22, 2015, 09:44:10 AM
You could try the suicidal approach, get close enough to negate point defence, it worked so well for the centauri in Steve's game!

Pshaw. The Centauri were handless amateurs, and I'm not just referring to their fleet training levels. They ought to have use speed adjustments to alter relative positioning, not course changes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on November 22, 2015, 07:07:30 PM
The American Union Grav Survey Vessel USS Columbia has finally been avenged.  Five years after her destruction as there was a minor argument between the Joint Chiefs and the Colonial Expansion Committee on who had control of the single Gate Construction Ship.  :)

Turned out I have much longer ranged missiles on my fighters than the dreaded Space Peacocks even with their confounded ECMs.  No venting atmosphere or escape pods from any of the 6 destroyed ships (so we know what that means now   ;) )

Time for the USS St. Lo and her escorts to resupply before heading out to WISE 1506+7027 to avenge the USS Atlantis that befell the same fate as the Columbia.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on November 22, 2015, 09:50:31 PM
After a peaceful year spent overhauling the fleet back on earth and finally after years of resource shortages the construction of new vessels the rats have returned to Barnards star, assaulting a civilian transport with 100,000 souls on board.
It was a tense few months with nothing but FACs and fighters left in system, especially as the FAC's had demonstrated a clear lack of adequate range against rat missiles, with their minor speed advantage they could not get into range before being pounded to scrap, even now fleet strength isn't 100%, with all 3 Valiant class ASM destroyers on earth for overhaul and upgrades from 72 million to 128 million range fire control, soon to be joined by 3 new Valiant 1 Mod b ships which shall include the sensor of equivalent range.
In Barnards star however is 3 brand new Valkyrie Mod A AMM escorts, mostly equivalent to the single Valkyrie Prototype fielded against the rats in earlier battles, but equipped with a longer range anti-shipping fire control, slightly larger magazines and a more efficient engine.
Code: [Select]
Valkyrie - Mod A class Destroyer Escort 8100 tons     206 Crew     1183 BP      TCS 162  TH 462  EM 0
2851 km/s     Armour 3-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 6     PPV 28
Annual Failure Rate: 33%    IFR: 0.5%    Maintenance Capacity 502 MSP
Magazine 608   Spare Berths 4   

462 EP Ion Drive (1)    Power 462    Fuel Use 65.99%    Armour 0    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 635,000 Litres    Range 21.4 billion km   (86 days at full power)

1 Missile Launcher (75% Reduction) (16)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 30
Size 1 Missile Launcher (16)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control FC8-R1 (2)     Range 8.6m km    Resolution 1
Missile Fire Control FC20-R80 (1)     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 80
Lucifer Anti Missile (448)  Speed: 24,500 km/s   End: 11.6m    Range: 17m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 98 / 58 / 29
Macross Anti-ship  (160)  Speed: 16,200 km/s   End: 17.2m    Range: 16.7m km   WH: 2    Size: 1    TH: 59 / 35 / 17

Active Search Sensor MR8-R1 (1)     GPS 144     Range 8.6m km     Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR21-R80 (1)     GPS 3200     Range 21.5m km     Resolution 80

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
It should be noted that the group of beta class FAC's lost to a single rat cruiser earlier needed to close to 8 million km to fire, their small size almost made this possible, however the Valkyries with double the range will certainly be detected at and fired upon at full range, estimated to be several times their own range.
Also a more serious concern is that the rats still possess superior speed which allows battles to generally occur at their leasure, except for rare cases where we have lured them into a trap.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on November 23, 2015, 08:55:55 AM
It should be noted that the group of beta class FAC's lost to a single rat cruiser earlier needed to close to 8 million km to fire, their small size almost made this possible, however the Valkyries with double the range will certainly be detected at and fired upon at full range, estimated to be several times their own range.
Also a more serious concern is that the rats still possess superior speed which allows battles to generally occur at their leasure, except for rare cases where we have lured them into a trap.

Have you considered Cloaking Devices and Reduced Thermal Engines then?  Might be able to sneak you in a lot closer before they realise you're there.  If you can spare the research and manufacturing time that is.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 23, 2015, 10:08:37 AM
The New Solari Empire

We're about 20 years in, and moving cautiously. Nine systems lie within two jumps of Sol, and we've surveyed and gate-linked all nine. None have worlds habitable with other than the usual 0.334atm of terraforming. No sign yet of any extrasolar intelligence.

The biggest difference between the New Solari Empire and the one that came before is economic: We're laser-focused on managing our ramp-up properly. We keep only a tiny amount of cash on hand, taking care to spend just as fast as we can while staying barely in the black. We keep almost all our people employed by prioritizing construction that employs workers( factories, research labs, financial centres) over stuff that doesn't (ship components, automated mines) whenever there are more than a couple million unemployed.

We've also invested much more heavily, earlier, in economic technology (construction rate, research rate) than the earlier, more militaristic Solari Empire which made only token advancements in Construction & Production before pushing all-in on weapons research.

We've also developed far more fuel refining capacity, and more efficient engines. The Old Solari Empire didn't run into a fuel crisis, but they spied one on the distant horizon and didn't like the shape of it. The New Solari Empire will be swimming in fuel, always and forever.

We're employing many fewer, much larger civilian ships. Our terraformers have four times as many modules as the previous empire's. Our freighters carry five times as much freight, and our sorium harvesters collect about five times as much.  The fewer-ships thing is driven by aesthetics and economics, and also a faint, if superstitious hope that fewer ships might result in quicker turn generation in the late game.

The current fleet is five 16,000-ton anti-ship missile cruisers of 40 size-5 launchers each, with three more under construction, and six 16,000-ton anti-missile cruisers with 40 size-1 launchers each. This is a departure from previous fleet doctrine; we used to make 8,000-ton antimissile frigates. We're doing this to conserve shipyard resources: While these ships are too dissimilar to build from the same shipyard, they're near enough to one another that retooling between the two types costs very little and takes only a few months. We'll add a second 16,000-ton military yard when the economy permits. For now, this one's getting the job done just fine.

Luna's atmosphere has just become breathable and will be our first off-world colony.  Luna is mineral-poor. While shifting minerals from Earth to Luna is cost-free, it's tedious to manage the details, so our plan is to first use luna for tasks that require no minerals (financial centres, research) and then those that require few minerals (refineries) while keeping the industries that require broad & heavy mineral use (shipyards, construction factories, ordnance factories) on Earth.

As of this writing, we haven't chosen a new site for the terraformers. Mars is a strong contender because of its' proximity to Earth. While the Old Solari Empire quickly spread out into nearby systems, the News prefer to massively develop the Solar system while remote-mining the outlying systems and hauling the minerals home.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on November 23, 2015, 11:10:24 AM
The best order is, IIRC, Mars, Mercury, outer system moons, then Venus (you might want to skip Venus).


What's going on in our empire though, is yet another attack by wormholers. GJ 1002, the empty-for-now hub system was attacked again. The only fleet presence in this system was technical base (which retreated) and fighter base PDC without fighters (was abandoned). One enemy ship was destroyed and another crippled by mines on jump point. We've sent main battle fleet and finished it off, then pulled out to try and capture the other two ships. They wandered around the system, unable to find a target, then jumped into Groombridge 34 system, where trophy battlecruiser was standing just in case. They didn't last long. The wrecks will be scavenged and scrapped.

In other news:
The ambitious project of Churchill mobile terraforming base was finished in Altair. Boasting 500 terraforming modules, the base can drastically change the atmosphere of most planets in less than one year. It will start terraforming procedures in Altair and nearby systems.

Gallicite trouble: for the first time in many years projected gallicite usage is lower than stockpile on Zemlya. However, as long as freighters supply minerals from other systems, running out is unlikely.


I'm thinking about direction of (new) colonization efforts. I was mainly colonizing in two directions, neglecting the GJ 1041 one (it still is third largest system in terms of population). Zoomed-out map follows. The stretch up is data from captured Dorin populace, Fomalhaut is 12 jumps away from Moskva! But it's still has a lot of potential colonies, as well as Delta Eridanni and GJ 1057. Besides, I haven't seen anything from these systems for a long time, I want to check them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 23, 2015, 01:05:01 PM
My Xenologist team have finally unlocked the secrets of the ruins on Luna after several years. Apparently the ruins belonged to a Asmara Union which has existed far before humanity learned to wield fire.  They have sent back detailed reports of the manpower and tools that may be needed in the recovery of these ruins and future ones that may be discovered. Logistical analysts have determined a Brigade be ample manpower for a formation to work on the ruins, however politicians are impatient so they orders 2 to be formed. The Xenologist also say that there may be dangers within the ruins so they say that added protection may be required not just for the safety of the dig, but also the colonies and installations on the surface. 3 Battalions of Garrison troops have been moved to Luna as well as 2 more garrison troops, a mobile infantry battalion, and a reinforcement battalion are being trained to send along as a permanent garrison with several new Hesco class Outposts.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 23, 2015, 11:08:40 PM
New Solari Empire Update

1 September 2048: First Contact.

Ross 47 system is 3 jumps and 12 billion km from Sol.  Grav survey ship USS Leonov sees wrecks when it enters, and promptly leaves. Couple weeks on, a geo survey ship, USS Schist, arrives to survey the system. Alien ships intercept Schist before it reaches any system body, and immediately destroy it.

The Fleet is ready. We're making some missiles real quick and headed there to say hello.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on November 24, 2015, 05:18:48 AM
Just hours after Task Group St. Lo avenged the USS Atlantis by wiping out another pocket of the belligerent Space Peacocks, the Union sadly suffered the loss of another Discovery Class grav survey vessel.  This time vengeance is not going to be possible.

The USS Challenger found a Jump Gate during it's survey of Ross 128.  It broke off the survey to probe this dangerous threat to frontier security and unfortunately discovered a Black Hole at the other end of the jump.  Despite her captain ordering an immediate jump back to Ross 128 it was too late as the old, slow survey vessel had already been dragged away from the gate by the sheer attractive force of the Black Hole.

Time to retool a shipyard to replace my survey cruiser losses, and perhaps redesign with a little more speed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on November 24, 2015, 12:33:45 PM
Everything is silent on the space fronts. Only four ships remained until the second fleet is fully ready.
Gigantic Bulwark is defending GJ 1002, and soon civilian freighters will not be afraid to freight cargo and colonists. Frunze-type meson PDCs will soon be ready for deployment on colonies in this system.

Next year the Soyuz will start major colonization project. Several systems will be colonized and even more will be scouted. First target is Delta Eridani, an orange dwarf system. It is suspected to be a system inhabited by precursor races, but no evidence have been found. There are two anomalies that may help us in research of sensors and logistics.

In other news:
Altair A-III terraformed to suit Wedgefieldians, Ross 780-A IV - Moon 15 is next. 
Automines deployed to Altair A-III to cover needs in gallicite.
GJ 1002: salvagers started to clear system from wrecks.


Salvagers trigger interrupts when they salvage ship. Every two days. At least I get to enjoy results.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 24, 2015, 06:21:59 PM
New Solari Empire Update

All attempts to communicate with the Ross 47 aliens have failed. For want of a better name, we're calling them the Necrons.

2049-08-27: 1st fleet engages the Necrons in Ross 47, destroying some FACs and getting chased off by some 10,000-ton vessels employing size-3 antiship missiles that move at ~27,000 kps. Fleet suffered only armor damage in this engagement. We've learned that we need better missiles and sensors if we're to effectively engage Necron units.

2050-10-10: First Contact with a new species in Lacaille 8760. There's a beautiful Earth-like planet there, and the alien ships don't fire as we withdraw. We expect that they live on that planet, though we didn't get near enough to confirm this with instruments. Diplomatic teams have begun saying "nice doggie" while we sharpen our stick.

We shall call them the Doggies, and we'll rename the system "Canis".
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on November 25, 2015, 05:10:30 AM
Lost another Survey Vessel to the Space Peacocks.  Third system I've found them in now . . . yet they never seem to be protecting anything.

Anyway's with the loss of USS Discovery the remaining Grav Survey Vessel has been recalled and further exploration halted until a new vessel can be prototyped and constructed that will spot the enemy a distance away and have the speed to attempt to escape.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 25, 2015, 07:11:13 AM
2052-08-06: Canis-A I is conquered.

1st Fleet made the first sortie, destroying four 850-ton FACs, three 8500-ton warships, a 17000-ton warship, and a 17000-ton PDC. No enemy unit managed to fire a shot. 1st withdrew when they'd expended their ammo.

2nd Fleet made the second sortie, destroying the remaining PDCs, the shipyards, and some surprisingly durable but apparently harmless 36,000-ton ships which we speculate may have been heavily armored freighters.

Their tech was generally inferior. Their ships were slow and had poor reach. We captured some pretty useless grav survey ships and some possibly useful colony ships with a total capacity of 150,000 colonists. All are equipped with Ion drives. We also captured 1136m people, 22 research labs, and 3,000-5,000 of each mineral.

During the war, our enemies were the "Doggies." Now that that's done, our comrades in arms are the Halych and the system has been re-designated Halychon, their word in the Halych language for "Seat of the Elect."

The 1st and 2nd Infantry divisions remain on Halychon while the details of the transition to imperial partnership are arranged.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on November 25, 2015, 01:21:01 PM

waiting for 6.50 is difficult so I run another game , again
- standard terran 500mil setup 150% difficulty . no npr , no chance for their generation , game focused on invaders
exploration kept to minimum ( max 2j of Sol )
Invaders shown up past 2045 and till now (2080) keep 1-3 wormholes active any time in my space ;) and game is very very intense as in last 7-8 years I simply had no time and possibility to take care of colonizing / terraforming / setting mines
so far they wiped my civilian shipping twice , my combat fleets although won in engagements were reduced to close zero 3 times :), mars bombarded 3 times ;) but colony has survived
one of alpha centauri colonies faces nuclear winter but I generally keep up
tonnage of invaders military destroyed so far exceeds 800kt or maybe even more
but also gallicite and cash ( for the first time ever ) shortages
technology progress one of fastest ever
absolutely crazy game


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on November 29, 2015, 01:43:46 PM
And another day in Precursor land.

This time they are gone, just poof'ed away. I am missing 2x 9500 ships and 2x 19000 Ships (I thought those were PDCs).

Maybe a lone Salvager will bait them into action.

See you next time on "Ostia is losing heavy civvie ships against Precursors"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on November 30, 2015, 09:06:50 AM
New Solari Empire Update:

First sign of this new species is a small ship in Ross 47, behaving like a geo survey ship. (Ross 47 is three jumps and maybe 8bn km from Sol.) Interviews and autopsies of the crew and analysis of the wreckage tell us little: They're a high-gravity species who call themselves the Regulus.

A pretty talented diplomatic team very quickly threw in the towel, announcing that no communication was possible.

We spent the better part of a year tuning up our ships and preparing ammunition for the invasion, and deployed several survey ships to the area to search for the Regulus homeworld. Nothing within 1 jump of Ross 47. Nothing within 2 jumps. Eventually we find it 3 jumps from Ross 47 and six jumps from Sol. (Sol->Proxima Centauri->The Expanse->Ross 47->Crossroads->Okinawa->Regulus). They've got about three dozen ships sitting directly on their JG which poses a problem since we employ only missile boats that, despite their heavy armor, won't do well in a fight at close range owing to their launch reload times (600 seconds on the current generation of battlecruisers.)

Fortunately, despite the impossibility of communication and our destruction of their surveyor, relations remained calm and then warmed a bit when they offered trade access. This was a surprise. We'd imagined that since communication was impossible, implacable hostility must necessarily follow, but it was a welcome surprise since it offered a solution to our breaking-through-the-JG problem.

We prepared listening posts in Crossroads and Ross 47, and a fuel depot in Ross 47. We rolled all our warships up into one big fleet and sent it in.  Three command cruisers, nine missile-defense cruisers, twelve missile cruisers, and three colliers.  All ships are 16,000 tons and travel at 8,750 kps on Internal Confinement Fusion drives, and the fleet totals 480 size-5 launchers (reload 600s) and 420 size-1 antimissile launchers (reload 5s.)  Total ammo load is around 3000 "Harpoon Mk3" anti-ship missiles (warhead 16, range ~190mkm) and about 9,000 "Nike Mk2" antimissiles (speed 57,600, MR 49).

We jumped in to Regulus to find their fleet still sitting on the Okinawa JG just as we'd first seen them a year earlier. Despite the sudden arrival of 384,000 tons of fast-moving warship with actives on, they didn't react. We moved to a position about 160m km away and then opened fire.

The Regulus ships turned out to be made of tissue paper. Slow-moving tissue paper. Nothing bigger than a FAC was observed moving at speeds greater than 1,500kps, and their FACs didn't reach 3,000.  We destroyed everything at the gate--about a dozen 15,000-tonners and then maybe two dozen 7500-tonners, then a handful of stragglers as we advanced on the homeworld. There we demolished what was most likely a bunch of civilian ships, though it's hard to say for sure since they weren't noticeably slower or thinner-skinned than the ships we'd met at the Okinawa gate.

It took about a quarter of our available ammunition to destroy their entire fleet. Later analysis suggests that we used 2-3 times as much ammo as the job required. Near as we can tell, they didn't get a shot off.

Fearing nothing that might emerge from it, we've left their (extremely large: ~1.3 million tons) shipyard complex intact.  First infantry and third armored divisions are on en route.

During these preparations we made first contact with another bizarre species we're calling the Tyranids, mostly in a cluster of systems near Tau Ceti (about four jumps from Ross 47.) Like the Necrons, their ships leave no lifepods. Unlike the Necrons they leave no wreckage.  We've encountered two 60,000-ton supercarriers toting 800-ton FACs, and a 20,000-tonner that we don't know what it does because we killed it from long range before it did whatever it was going to do.

Our Harpoon missiles can kill these, but they're poorly shaped for the task. It takes several hundred to kill the supercarriers, and they manage only 50% hits against the FACs. We've created two new missiles for dealing with Tyranids: The slow, long-range "Tomahawk" missile with a 25-strength warhead for killing slow-moving heavies like those carriers, and short-range fast-moving "Sparrow" missile for killing FACs. (warhead 18, range 54mkm, maneuver 21, speed 40,000.)

Nids don't move around much. Once spotted, they wait patiently where we found them while we go home and get a rock to drop on them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 02, 2015, 09:30:50 AM
Just built my first salvagers to salvage the wreckage from battle and a few unidentified ones around here and there. And I found my mistake. I copied them from my cargo ships, replacing 1/2 my cargo space for salvage modules (1 cargo = 2 salvage), and I realized when I went to jump... they didn't have any jump drives. *Why do we still not have a facepalm emoticon  ;)* I am lucky my JG construction ships are almost finished building at the shipyards.

Edit; And I found an alien race, right in the direction I originally thought. They were just sitting on one of the JPs and have shown no reaction to the 20k ton survey ship, or its 1000 thermal, that was right next to them. The ship class has been named Medusa for various reasons and has a thermal of 500, and there are two of them just sitting there on the JP to the new found Richmond system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 02, 2015, 06:57:45 PM
Most likely it's a gate builder.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 02, 2015, 07:19:48 PM
Probably not as there was already a JG on that point for years, there were just 2 sitting there. Didn't get a screenshot as I forgot, and I'm not going back as I made communication and diplomacy is going well. Turns out they are called the Pelican Republic, and they look fairly similar to us Humans.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 03, 2015, 12:34:02 AM
Somebody forgot to tell the captain there was already a gate there, AI bug maybe?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 06, 2015, 01:50:34 PM
New 7.0 setup

  Off to a very rough start.  11 years in.  Poor mineral distribution, only earth and Venus have sizable resources.  6 jump points found in Sol system.  Grav survey 1 sent into JP1 to Proxima centauri...blasted out of space by a 200,000T behemoth :o .  Grav survey 2 sent into JP2 to Luhman 16...blasted out of space by unknown ASM.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 06, 2015, 02:49:51 PM
  Didnt take long for the centaurians to discover Earth.  4-60000T ships, and what appear to be 20 fighters have entered earths active sensor range.  ASM fire has been ineffective.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 06, 2015, 03:23:06 PM
Since it was a database patch and games got deleted and it was recommended long games wait for a week for hot-fixes, I started a short game I called BattleTech. I gave myself a lot of tech at the start, it gave me all engine/reactor techs, max gauss research and missile techs, decent sheilds and armor, and near end sensors. I started with only 100 max systems with 4 nprs, plus a high random spawn chance, plus spoilers. I have a feeling this will get quite slow at times, but it will be worth it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 06, 2015, 07:19:08 PM
23rd July 2111
Earth defenses...shattered
Shipbuilding capabilities...wrecked
Commercial shipping...blasted
Ground troops have captured asteroid Artemis (13k duranium and 5k sorium)
A single ground troop dropped on earth was smashed.

Enemy ships have left the system...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: mtm84 on December 06, 2015, 08:18:23 PM
Had a very similar 7.0 game, Mastik.  Only minerals on Earth and Venus, and had Spoilers right next door.  No chance really.  Doesn't help that on a personal level I prefer beams to missiles, despite the game trying to railroad me otherwise.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sematary on December 06, 2015, 08:30:10 PM
Had a very similar 7.0 game, Mastik.  Only minerals on Earth and Venus, and had Spoilers right next door.  No chance really.  Doesn't help that on a personal level I prefer beams to missiles, despite the game trying to railroad me otherwise.
I don't know if I would call it a railroad, so much as a side effect of realism. Realistically due to the distances involved it gets really hard to hit anything due to how angles work, an angle that is a fraction of a degree off means the beam goes very wide pretty quickly when talking about the scale space battles take place on. Missiles can be adjusted with engines, which is something beams don't have. Beam warfare is just much harder and requires a different way of thinking about ship construction.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 06, 2015, 08:53:50 PM
22October 2111

'Tis all over, earth has been overrun.  :'(


Finally figured out who this was, my first encounter with the star swarm.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 06, 2015, 11:30:04 PM
Is this a new thing? I seem to recall the AI didn't do ground invasions, also, wth, spoiler ground troops? That's awesome but all kinds of weird.
If this isn't a bug then perhaps just the fact they can invade should be a spoiler itself.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on December 07, 2015, 07:06:28 AM
Added spoiler tags to preceding two messages (see preceding, completely spoilered, post for reason why).

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 07, 2015, 10:31:18 AM
4 years in, and the slowdown has begun. This was expected given the number of NPRs started and the NPR spawn chance. However, it is only slowed down to 1 day increments and is going pretty fast.

Also; Help, I made an end game interceptor/drone and I can't get it balanced (size). Its at 122 tons and I can't find anything to bump it to 125 without going over, even adding a layer of armor makes it 127. I like how the fighter crew space let me get this to this small and would be more useful for a 250 ton craft, but the tiny crew space would make it 125 tons exactly but add all that wasted space.
Code: [Select]
Spiro class Interceptor    122 tons     1 Crew     300.2 BP      TCS 2.44  TH 16  EM 0
81967 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 24%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 9    5YR 136    Max Repair 275 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 8   

200 EP Photonic Drive (1)    Power 200    Fuel Use 56%    Signature 16    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 13.2 billion km   (44 hours at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 2    Hangar Reload 15 minutes    MF Reload 2.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC70-R3 (1)     Range 70.1m km    Resolution 3
S2 AFM (4)  Speed: 299 000 km/s   End: 3.8m    Range: 67.9m km   WH: 25    Size: 2    TH: 996/598/299

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
Its now almost feels like there should be a fighter fuel space that is 1 ton and holds 1000L. And yes, I know its not the best of designs, its meant to cruise cross system from a carrier (any ship with hangar space including frigates and whatnot) and knock out any FACs and fighters before the fleet moves in, or launched from a colony to do the same to an invading fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DIT_grue on December 07, 2015, 11:26:43 PM
Also, BUG/spelling error; the design window says Litres instead of Liters.

... That's not a spelling error, that's Steve not being American.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 08, 2015, 07:48:51 AM
Already resolved in the bugs page
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 11, 2015, 08:56:08 AM
So... 12 JPs in Sol... whats the chances?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 11, 2015, 02:00:48 PM
  A big thank you to our not so friendly, new, neighbors.  They have conducted a ramming campaign on my civilian shipping, and have left behind the wrecks of 5 scout ships and 3 gate construction ships.  The tech advances are appreciated.  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 11, 2015, 09:31:36 PM
Their gate builders were ramming civilian shipping?
That's an expensive weapon :s
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on December 12, 2015, 06:42:42 AM
Goodbye old Zemnoy Soyuz, welcome new Zemnoy Soyuz!

While I'm setting up the new game, I want you to look at this governor. Never before I've seen percentages these high.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 12, 2015, 06:44:16 AM
I have to assume that building a lot of ships raises shipbuilding skill.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: hyramgraff on December 12, 2015, 06:37:51 PM
I'm still playing a campaign that I started in 6.4 and I discovered ruins two jumps away from Sol.  I sent a xenology team and five days after they were dropped off they informed me: "The alien race which inhabited the planet as been identified as the Raipur Kingdom and their language and symbology have been translated" and that I have 186 installations that can be recovered.  :o

After laughing about the speedy accomplishment with my wife, she suggested that they must have triggered an artifact that caused a time loop and that's how they were able to work so quickly.  I have decided to RP that this is exactly what happened and that this must be the artifact that's going to give me a 40% bonus to construction and production research.

The whole team has now been awarded the newly created "Excellence in Time Travel" medal.  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: doulos05 on December 13, 2015, 09:05:28 PM
Is it truly newly created? Or did your team realize what was happening and go back in time to have the medal created before they even finished the project.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 14, 2015, 01:14:50 PM
So I started a new campaign for 7.0.

Found one neighbor, the Perdus Magnus, two jumps from Sol. Inconveniently, their home is the secondary star which puts them about 10bkm from the jump gate. This made the invasion and their subsequent integration into the empire a bit of a logistical challenge, but we sorted them without much fuss and only one lost ship, a civilian tanker.

They did an odd thing I've never seen before from NPRs: They put extremely strong garrisons at their remote mining colonies. The few defending units at their homeworld were easily knocked over. The 1st Infantry Division rolled them in about three weeks. Defending garrisons at the remote mining sites were much tougher. The 1st was outgunned and we had to wait until we could bring in two brigades of the 3rd Marine Division to reinforce them. Even then, the fights at Perdus Magnus-A asteroids #34 and #42 took several months each, and consumed 3-4 replacement battalions each.

Those creepy aliens with the supercarriers who leave no wreckage or lifepods (we usually call them the Tyranids) were present in Proxima Centauri, one jump from Sol. They had a 60,000-tonner which, near as I can tell, is one of their smaller carriers. I've seen them as big as 200k in earlier games.

We've explored about 36 systems. The new jump-point rules are terrific. It makes a much more interesting and less crowded map.

Oddly, we've found absolutely no trace of the aliens that we usually call the "Necrons." These are the ones that tend to be present in small strength in a great many systems, and also frequently emerge from ancient ruins. Seems like in previous games we've found these little devils in every third or fourth system. We don't know what to make of their apparent absence. I've double-checked the universe config and we've definitely checked the box which enables them.

We created the game with one NPR, and we strongly suspect that the Perdus Magnus were they. They bore signs of old age, such as explorer craft with over 10 years in the field and many remote-mining colonies. (These data aren't conclusive, however. We didn't precisely measure the time, but it's possible that ten years passed from the time that we first met the Perdus Magnus until the glorious unification of our two worlds beneath the standard of the Senatus Populusque Solari.) We created another NPR after absorbing the Perdus Magnus, and we've permitted NPRs to spawn other NPRs, so there's at least one more NPR out there and possibly several.

In ~2055 we detected a hostile transit in the Sol System, at a JP out beyond Uranus' orbit and consequently far past the range of our thermal sensors. An immediate search turned up no sign of any ship. It may have left quickly, or more likely just hasn't blundered into our searchers. The Sol system is very large. Chastened by this failure, we're rapidly improving our thermal sensors in Sol and deploying more listening posts in surrounding systems. Never again will an alien fleet reach the Sol system unobserved.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 14, 2015, 05:32:06 PM
My new game is taking a while to set up. Oh great eternal emperor, there's so much lore and backstory here. I'm drowning in heresies and war. Send help pls.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 14, 2015, 07:28:17 PM
Battlefleet Obscurus has been dispatched to help combat the forces of Chaos.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 15, 2015, 08:40:46 AM
Solari Empire Update

2061: We've established communication with the aliens who arrived at Sol through the Ross 248 gate. They keep sending surveyors, and we've been shooting them down. They've begun sending ~10,000 ton warships and we've been bringing those down too. Analysis of the wreckage indicates that this stuff is extremely primitive. Once we find their homeworld, we expect it'll be a nice opportunity to use up our stockpiles of older-generation munitions.

Our first internal-containment powered civilian ships are now in service. The first ICF warships are still about a year and a half away. These will move at 10,000kps, a big gain over the current ships which move at 6,000. Usually I do 8,750 with the first generation of ICF warships, but this time I did fuel 0.3 first which made it possible to use a higher power setting and still get acceptable fuel costs.  (Our doctrine calls for 16,000-ton warships to do at least 20 billion km on 1 million liters of fuel.)

We're up to around 40 systems explored. No additional sightings of the Swarm, and still absolutely no trace whatever of the Precursors. I've double- and triple-checked that we've got these boxes enabled.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 15, 2015, 06:28:15 PM
Earth Sandwich  29 March 2171

(On the right side of the map) 16-ships [Lalandians] of unknown type have appeared at the Lacaille 9352 star gate roughly 2B kms from Sol.  They are on a path towards earth....

(On the left side of the map) We have the Proxima centauri star-gate, roughly 300m Km from Sol.  Soon after the Lacaille group was detected, 9 more ships [Lalandians] were detected coming through the Proxima star-gate.  These ships have proceeded to decimate commercial shipping with long range ASM.

  Initial surveys of surrounding systems (7 star-gates out of Sol), discovered stable wormholes in the Lalande 9352, and Lacaille 21185 systems.  Proxima Centauri system is a dead end system, so must be a new wormhole in there.

This is going to be very bad.   :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 15, 2015, 08:39:21 PM
1st Combat

2 [Sol] 11kT missile frigates and 2 11kT laser frigates meet with 3 [Lal] 15900 T Trafalgar ships, a brief missile exchange, and one sided laser battle, the 3 Trafalgar class ships commenced a ramming attack.  All 3 Trafalgar, 1 missile frig, and 2 laser frigates were destroyed.  The remaining frigate collected survivors and returned to base.

60 commercial freighters have been destroyed so far.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 16, 2015, 12:33:20 AM
  Up next 1 [Sol] 21000 T Destroyer and 25 fighters went up against a 32000 T [Lal] Exeter class ship.  The Exeter swatted away everything thrown at it.  The destroyer and 17 fighters were destroyed in this mismatch.

  The loss of commercial shipping is staggering at this point.  Maybe we should just sit back and watch the enemy fleets suicide themselves on my commercial shipping, but what fun is that?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 16, 2015, 01:38:27 AM
How bad is the mismatch? What did the exeters ordnance look like?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 16, 2015, 06:00:09 AM
Exeter Class:

Estimated Tonnage:  31800
Observed Speed:  8050
14 Lasers:  Damage 42
RoF:  1
Observed Range:  585700 km
Missiles:  Unknown

Tech levels appear to be 2 levels above what i can throw at them.





Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on December 16, 2015, 10:43:55 AM
I have a battle ahead of me vs Invaders
they gathered 10smaller 17kt 15 medium 34kt and 3 big 50kt combat ships before wormhole closed so I need to wipe them out
quite a challenge I'd say ;) and only 1jump to sol and I'm like 3 tech levels lower then them ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 16, 2015, 02:55:44 PM
One of the first planets surveyed in my new Battlefield Sol campaign ( and im gonna stick with it thise time DAMN IT !! Its 7.00 finally ffs ).

And frakk me running is it good one ...

(http://i.imgur.com/nOQB2Db.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on December 16, 2015, 03:28:31 PM
yes it is nice but it is even better having like 400k sorium on earth ready to dig it up so no fuel harvesters in places I cant cover them properly in many games
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 16, 2015, 03:42:27 PM
yes it is nice but it is even better having like 400k sorium on earth ready to dig it up so no fuel harvesters in places I cant cover them properly in many games

Well since it is Sol, i will just deploy 2-3 HUGE frakkoff harvesting bases that will act as a refueling point for the ships flying out of the system/moving around to my colony on Europa.

Meanwhile : Venusian caliphate blew up my second exploration ship trying to survey their planet so i guess its time for some good old interplanetary bombarment back to the Stone Age ( however in case of those twats it will be considered an upgrade ).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on December 16, 2015, 03:46:47 PM
I had such bases busted by nasty spoilers in a few last games ;)
jumping through wh
 shooting long range missiles , destroying 500kt sorium harvesting base etc ....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 16, 2015, 05:34:26 PM
I had such bases busted by nasty spoilers in a few last games ;)
jumping through wh
 shooting long range missiles , destroying 500kt sorium harvesting base etc ....

Well smeg happens :P

Meanwhile : Caliphate sent increasing number of warships in the futile attempt to penetrate Earth Defence Net. Unfortunately, before Archangel class missile bases could lock onto them they fired a salvos at my shipyards destroying several slipyways along with FNS Guardian, Aegis class Escort Frigate and damaging Manilla, Arethusa class freighter. They were destroyed and High Command ordered a retaliatory strike against Venusian population and industry.
Accurate number of casaulties is unknown, significant drop in average temperature ( from 25 C to -7 ) and thermal output of the planet ( from 35k to 16k ) allows only to speculate.
FNS Revenge and Repulse, two Wolfhound class frigates were completed not long after that and they orbit Earth now, ready to complement defence net of our homeplanet.

Trying to prevent genocide, the bombardement of Venus have ceased but military is on high alert and with standing orders to destroy any signs of Venusian rebuilding their spaceflight capability.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on December 17, 2015, 03:56:37 AM
I'm after like 4h RL intense military operation
my close to 1mil tonnage tech 4-5 fleet engaged and cleared almost 800kt fleet of Invaders aprox 2 tech levels higher
several capital and multiple smaller ships as well as marine units are down ,but enemy is no more
moreover 4 battered missile cruisers 33kt and one 17kt undamaged destroyer have been captured by brave marines ( I had equivalent of marine division on assault shuttles and specialized boarding crafts and used this in heat of battle )
and as a cherry on top I got like 1k prisoners  ;D
amount of salvage is tremendous and I expect to kick myself in many technologies a level or two ....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 17, 2015, 04:10:56 AM
I'm after like 4h RL intense military operation
my close to 1mil tonnage tech 4-5 fleet engaged and cleared almost 800kt fleet of Invaders
several capital and multiple smaller ships as well as marine units are down ,but enemy is no more
moreover 4 battered missile cruisers 33kt and one 17kt undamaged destroyer have been captured by brave marines ( I had equivalent of marine division on assault shuttles and specialized boarding crafts and used this in heat of battle )
and as a cherry on top I got like 1k prisoners  ;D
amount of salvage is tremendous and I expect to kick myself in many technologies a level or two ....

How did you get prisoners if Invaders dont leave lifepods ? Are they from boarding ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sneer on December 17, 2015, 04:48:33 AM
Yes - boarding leave a message you get prisoners
however I did not find any notice about prisoners interrogation result ...
and there is no other prisoner option ...
so maybe it is something Steve did not noticed ;)
still they must be a nice victory parade element

final amount of salavage is possibly my personal record
200 engines 300 missile launchers 100+electronics
50+guns and turrets
I almost stripped SOL of certain minerals to build and upgrade later my fleet ( bastards wiped SOL in my last 2 games )
now many ships become obsolete again  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on December 17, 2015, 09:23:24 AM
New game, humans on quadrinary system, conventional start.
Every colonizable planet is at least 60bkm far from my homeworld. Even with brand new nuclear thermal engines 'colonize everything!' option is not viable.

At least there are a lot of colonies...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 17, 2015, 10:50:53 AM
The last quad system I saw had planets a few trillion m&ms from the center.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on December 17, 2015, 11:09:02 AM
The last quad system I saw had planets a few trillion m&ms from the center.

That's a lot of chocolate.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 17, 2015, 11:18:01 AM
Evidently my auto correct believes that m&ms are more important than kms .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on December 17, 2015, 12:11:38 PM
Trillions are trillions, but starting in a quad system like this is still a major pain.
Fortunately, rushing for internal confinement engines mitigated some damage: now my colony fleet requires 1 year to get to colonies instead of 3! I also started moving automines to this planet. It will supply me with minerals for the time being.

I wonder how that one NPR I created on start is doing. I haven't got a single interrupt for 40 years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 17, 2015, 03:45:18 PM
March 2171

  The Lalandians finished toying with Earths commercial fleet, and paid a brief visit to Earth.  Razing every structure within in sight.  Future explorers may someday stumble into a system with hundreds of wrecks and a burned out planet wondering what occurred to cause such destruction.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 17, 2015, 04:42:00 PM
Our mysterious Sol-visiting neighbors, the Mijos Confederacy, from the direction of Ross 248 have stopped visiting. Once communications were established we disbanded the diplomatic team and sent them back to duties more important than improving relations with people we'll be conquering very soon anyway.

Only it turns out they're kind of difficult to find.  Now that they've stopped sending ships, the trail has dried up. We know that they were always arriving from Ross 248. And a hastily-erected listening post there suggested that they were arriving in Ross 248 by way of Teegarden's Star. We've searched a great distance in that direction, sometimes four to five jumps, and found nothing yet. The search continues.

The first-generation ICF-powered warships have been built, with a top speed of 10,000 kps. They're in TF training at present. Our first ICF-powered missiles have started rolling off the assembly line, though we still hope to integrate the Mijos into the empire using the earlier generation ammunition.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 17, 2015, 07:47:23 PM
Evidently my auto correct believes that m&ms are more important than kms .
Evidently your auto-correct knows was is important in life, lots and lots of CHOCOLATE.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 22, 2015, 04:14:47 PM
Solari Empire Update, 9 November 2066:

We have found them.

The home of the Mijos Dynasty is the Gliese 109 system, seven jumps and 13 billion km away from Sol. They've got about five dozen task groups squatting on the jump point, with thermal signatures of around 500 each.  They all open fire on my 8000-ton surveyor as it arrives. They're using guns that do 2 points of damage and don't penetrate armor. We're a little bit concerned about engaging them at point-blank range since we're armed exclusively with missiles, but since their opening volley didn't destroy the lightly armored surveyor, we expect our warships can endure the pounding until their launchers come online.

Fourth fleet, with the brand-new 10,000kps engines, has just finished training. They'll be on their way in a few weeks, when they're done with overhaul. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are all good go go, but they only do 6,000 kps so they'd not get there much quicker than 4th anyway. Speed will count for a lot here, since we'll be looking to quickly extend past their gun range.

Their homeworld is a mere 33m km from the JP. This whole fight will take place at what might as well be point-blank range.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 23, 2015, 12:03:00 AM
Another new 7.0 start. 

  Decent resources, except mercassium, and corundium.  No other mercassium or corundium in Sol system [ouch]!  Shipping small amounts of corundium in from a nearby system, no decent mercassium found yet.

  Sol has 7 star gates:  Proxima centauri, Barnards Star, Groombridge 34, Luhmen 16, Dx Cancri, YZ Ceti, Procyon.  Barnards Star has a stable wormhole, and a early survey craft was destroyed by unknown forces in Dx Cancri. 10 total colonies have been established in Sol, and 4 the Groombridge system.

  March 2150, Decided to send a scout ship into Barnards Star, big mistake, the locals [Bar] didnt appreciate my appearance and quickly vaporized my scout ship.  3-[Bar] Phoenix Hawk class ships entered into Sol and proceeded to wreck some havoc with long range ASM.  12 civilian freighters, 3 [11,000T] missile frigates, and 3 [11,000t] AMM frigates were destroyed in the "fight".  Earth PDC and orbital platforms finally destroyed the 3 invaders.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 23, 2015, 12:11:08 AM
[Bar]Phoenix Hawk:

Est tonnage:  17,300
Est Speed:  8901
Armor:  4
ECM:  70

Fires Strength 25 ASM @ 71000 km/s, no apparent point defenses.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 24, 2015, 01:46:07 PM
Solari Empire update:

5 December 2068: The Mijos homeworld has been taken.

Turns out I was wrong about the Perdus Magnus being the original starting NPR. My exploration must have turned them up. Because the Mijos were definitely the original NPR: Among the surrendered ships was a grav survey craft with ~44 years in the field, surely one of their starting ships from January of 2025.

So there's at least one more NPR out there somewhere. After conquering the Perdus Magnus I spawned another. That other isn't the Mijos, so they're still out there somewhere, whoever they are.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jumpp on December 24, 2015, 01:54:04 PM
Here's a puzzle: I see enemy ships arriving in Teegarden from Wolf 294. I know they're coming from wolf 294 because I've got DSTS in Teegarden and when these guys appear on thermals, they're on a direct line from the Wolf 294 JP to another JP. That's not 100% conclusive, but it seems like persuasive circumstantial evidence.

I've completely surveyed Wolf 294, and there's only one jump point. So when I see ships arriving fom Wolf 294, I figure they were grav surveyors in there to nose around. But, gosh, they seem to keep coming. Surely he's got that thing surveyed by now.

Later, I upgrade the DSTS in Teegarden. Now I've got complete coverage of all the JPs down to the signature of the Mijos survey ships. So I can be 100% certain of where these ships are coming from, and more ships are definitely coming from Wolf 294, including a warship. That wasn't in there to survey. The Mijos have got some kind of back door into Wolf 294.

I've heard about dormant JPs, and I figure what's happened here is the Mijos, through their exploration, have discovered a new JP to Wolf 294 since I surveyed it. I send grav surveyors back in and manually order them to check every grav survey location. They find nothing, so I have them do it again, in case I somehow missed one. Still nothing.

The mystery isn't solved until I capture their homeworld and get their map. Yes, they've created a new link to Wolf 294. The JP is near the primary, about 600m km away from the nearest survey point. I don't know why my grav surveyors missed it, since I don't know the details of grav survey. Should I expect them to find a JP that's 600mkm away from the point they're surveying?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on December 24, 2015, 01:57:28 PM
Here's a puzzle: I see enemy ships arriving in Teegarden from Wolf 294. I know they're coming from wolf 294 because I've got DSTS in Teegarden and when these guys appear on thermals, they're on a direct line from the Wolf 294 JP to another JP. That's not 100% conclusive, but it seems like persuasive circumstantial evidence.

I've completely surveyed Wolf 294, and there's only one jump point. So when I see ships arriving fom Wolf 294, I figure they were grav surveyors in there to nose around. But, gosh, they seem to keep coming. Surely he's got that thing surveyed by now.

Later, I upgrade the DSTS in Teegarden. Now I've got complete coverage of all the JPs down to the signature of the Mijos survey ships. So I can be 100% certain of where these ships are coming from, and more ships are definitely coming from Wolf 294, including a warship. That wasn't in there to survey. The Mijos have got some kind of back door into Wolf 294.

I've heard about dormant JPs, and I figure what's happened here is the Mijos, through their exploration, have discovered a new JP to Wolf 294 since I surveyed it. I send grav surveyors back in and manually order them to check every grav survey location. They find nothing, so I have them do it again, in case I somehow missed one. Still nothing.

The mystery isn't solved until I capture their homeworld and get their map. Yes, they've created a new link to Wolf 294. The JP is near the primary, about 600m km away from the nearest survey point. I don't know why my grav surveyors missed it, since I don't know the details of grav survey. Should I expect them to find a JP that's 600mkm away from the point they're surveying?

If you are going to resurvey, you need to press the "No JP Survey" button on the F9 system view. That will unset all the survey locations and let you survey them again.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on December 24, 2015, 03:33:58 PM
...wait, what's dormant JP? To be honest, I've never heard about this thing.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on December 24, 2015, 03:50:09 PM
...wait, what's dormant JP? To be honest, I've never heard about this thing.

Dormant JPs are JPs that can only be found from one side. So you can survey a system and won't be able to detect it. However, once something transits from the far side, it can be detected by a resurvey.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on December 24, 2015, 04:38:02 PM
Dormant JPs are JPs that can only be found from one side. So you can survey a system and won't be able to detect it. However, once something transits from the far side, it can be detected by a resurvey.

Uhhh, what the hell, I never knew something like this. O.o . This is no small thing...

Omg now I can never stop being paranoid...


How common are these completely unfair, evil, abominable JPs? XD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 24, 2015, 06:19:13 PM
April 2154

  The [Bar] have returned to Sol, 6 unknown type ships, 1-Raptor, 2-Sai, 3-Guillotine.  72 (str 20) missiles have destroyed mining operations on Venus.  Rad and dust levels at 1440.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on December 25, 2015, 02:23:08 AM
I'm actually unsure whether dormant JP's are an artifact of the way jump gate links are implemented (which would make a lot of sense), or whether it was an intended feature as a nod to Starfire. Does someone know for sure?

Anyway, if my theory is correct dormant JP's should be much more common when you have a tighter system spread (which is controlled by the local system generation settings in your game setup for non real star games), since it involves exploring a JP which links to an already known system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 25, 2015, 03:33:04 AM
It seems to be an artefact of how jump points work, but could have easily been removed by simply banning connections to preexisting systems, but I assume it's been kept because removing it would be ... Well, anyway it would change things slightly and remove something that causes strategic considerations.
I have noticed steve mentioning dormant jump points in many AARs
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 25, 2015, 08:44:53 AM
Continued missile attacks:
Venus:  Rad and dust levels 12539 [-125% Industry, -31% Growth, -125C]
Mercury:  Rad and dust levels 4337
Luna:  Rad and dust levels 1312  300m killed
Earth:  Rad and dust levels 1580 [-15.8%, -4% growth, -15.8 C] 500m killed

2 Sai class, and 3 Guillotine class ships destroyed by ASM.

Survived the attack, but most likely would not survive another attack.
   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 25, 2015, 08:54:08 AM
[Bar] Sai Class

Invader
51000 Tons
8900 Km/s
Armor 4
ECM 70
Point Defenses:  15
Sensor 880/R97


[Bar] Guillotine Class
Invader
34600 Tons
8900 Km/s
Armor 4
ECM 70
Point Defenses:  None


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on December 25, 2015, 09:02:54 AM

Armor 4



That low? I doubt this, last time I captured their ships they had around 19 layers of armor.

Anyway...

Some otherworldly folks decided to park their warships atop of my colony. Said colony is one jump from homeworld, and right now my navy consists of... 3 carriers and 12 fighters? It won't end well.
I wonder though when they will start acting?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on December 25, 2015, 04:16:41 PM
It seems to be an artefact of how jump points work, but could have easily been removed by simply banning connections to preexisting systems, but I assume it's been kept because removing it would be ... Well, anyway it would change things slightly and remove something that causes strategic considerations.
I have noticed steve mentioning dormant jump points in many AARs

They're the equivalent of "closed" jump points in Starfire.  The reason for putting them into SF (IIRC) was so that a cluster of systems that was "disconnected" (all jump points surveyed and pointing to other systems in the cluster) wouldn't be closed off and isolated from the rest of the universe forever.  With closed jump points, the cluster can be opened when a jump point being explored from outside the cluster connects to a system in the cluster.  In other words, if closed jump points weren't in in some way, then the universe would have to be pre-generated to ensure a connected cluster (or a "by hand" mechanism would have to be added to handle disconnected systems).

Plus, from a game mechanics point of view, it forces you to not just focus on the borders of your empire :)

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 25, 2015, 11:45:12 PM
  The [Bar] have adjusted their strategy.  The 3rd fleet they sent into Sol consisted 3 missile ships, and 5 point defense ships.  My missile volleys are now completely useless, everything is shot down.  The [Bar] are now in Earths orbit, shooting at whatever they please.  Earth still has some rail and laser defenses, but is pretty much useless against the more powerful ships.  Humanity's endeavor into space is just about over.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: mtm84 on December 26, 2015, 04:27:33 PM
Mastik: Mason PDCs?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 26, 2015, 06:06:23 PM
Mastik: Mason PDCs?

Yea, would have been nice if i had remembered to build some  :-X  I am out of corndium and the supply line is cut off, so little i can do.  Did cheat in a couple Meson pdcs for the hell of it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on December 26, 2015, 10:43:19 PM
I am out of corndium and the supply line is cut off, so little i can do.

Guerrilla mass-drivers?


Now 50 years into a game I nearly restarted; finally retiring the 50-odd surviving Swaard and Trekker class battleships and Arend class Colliers.

Code: [Select]
Swaard class Battleship    6 000 tons     170 Crew     799.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 400  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/5/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 29
Maint Life 1.71 Years     MSP 250    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 103    5YR 1549    Max Repair 200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 32   

400 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (1)    Power 400    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 400    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 180 000 Litres    Range 13.5 billion km   (46 days at full power)

20cm Railgun V4/C4 (3x4)    Range 128 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 12-4     RM 4    ROF 15        4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Fire Control S02 64-4000 (1)    Max Range: 128 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (4)     Total Power Output 12    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 8 Missile Launcher (25% Reduction) (4)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 8000
Missile Fire Control FC30-R160 (1)     Range 30.3m km    Resolution 160
333LS Size 8 Antiship Missile (4)  Speed: 20 000 km/s   End: 82.6m    Range: 99.1m km   WH: 9    Size: 8    TH: 66/40/20

Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1)     GPS 56     Range 2.8m km    MCR 305k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km

Code: [Select]
Trekker class Battleship    6 000 tons     168 Crew     787.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 400  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/5/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 27
Maint Life 1.75 Years     MSP 246    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 99    5YR 1479    Max Repair 200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 32   

400 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (1)    Power 400    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 400    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 180 000 Litres    Range 13.5 billion km   (46 days at full power)

20cm Railgun V4/C4 (1x4)    Range 128 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 12-4     RM 4    ROF 15        4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
10cm Railgun V4/C3 (4x4)    Range 40 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 64-4000 (1)    Max Range: 128 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (6)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 8 Missile Launcher (25% Reduction) (4)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 8000
Missile Fire Control FC30-R160 (1)     Range 30.3m km    Resolution 160
333LS Size 8 Antiship Missile (4)  Speed: 20 000 km/s   End: 82.6m    Range: 99.1m km   WH: 9    Size: 8    TH: 66/40/20

Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1)     GPS 56     Range 2.8m km    MCR 305k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km

Code: [Select]
Arend class Collier    6 000 tons     129 Crew     873.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 400  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/5/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.13 Years     MSP 364    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 107    5YR 1610    Max Repair 320 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 272   

400 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (1)    Power 400    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 400    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 180 000 Litres    Range 13.5 billion km   (46 days at full power)

333LS Size 8 Antiship Missile (34)  Speed: 20 000 km/s   End: 82.6m    Range: 99.1m km   WH: 9    Size: 8    TH: 66/40/20

Active Search Sensor MR202-R160 (1)     GPS 51200     Range 202.4m km    Resolution 160
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km

It's well over 100% of build cost but surviving units are being refit into modern fleet auxiliaries; they've earned it and there's 50,000 tons of Galllicite to blow.

Code: [Select]
Boer class Destroyer    6 000 tons     189 Crew     2014 BP      TCS 120  TH 1600  EM 0
13333 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 8/18/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 29
Maint Life 2.02 Years     MSP 839    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 274    5YR 4104    Max Repair 800 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 32   

1600 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (1)    Power 1600    Fuel Use 25%    Signature 1600    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 175 000 Litres    Range 21.0 billion km   (18 days at full power)

Particle Beam-11 .25min (1)    Range 320 000km     TS: 13333 km/s     Power 22-8    ROF 15        11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11
10cm Railgun V4/C3 (4x4)    Range 40 000km     TS: 13333 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 240-10000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 8 Missile Launcher (25% Reduction) (4)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 4800
Missile Fire Control FC202-R180 (1)     Range 202.8m km    Resolution 180
.2LSpS Heavy Doorknocker (4)  Speed: 60 000 km/s   End: 22.6m    Range: 81.4m km   WH: 25    Size: 8    TH: 200/120/60

Active Search Sensor MR67-R180 (1)     GPS 5040     Range 67.6m km    Resolution 180
Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 28     Range 5.0m km    MCR 549k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km

ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 10

300,000 ton, speed 4500 km/s Locust People vessel will over 100 attendants in the first system explored- they swarmed it. Massive Assaulter buildup in the second system explored- we're calling that one the Wolf 359 Shell Game; with a liberal deployment of Tracking Stations, 4 Lagrange Points and a 5 billion km radius orbital zone a T1 fleet can control an engagement against an Ultra-tech opponent regardless of billion-km missile envelopes, 2 Light Second beam envelopes, and two and half times greater fleet speed (watching all those missile salvos turn towards the next Lagrange Point was a minor freakout moment, though). Since then they've spent the years providing homeworld defense values and last resort missile tubes.

Not money, resources, or yard time well spent but a more deserved fate than the scrap heap all the other T1's got; they saved Sol more than once.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on December 28, 2015, 11:42:35 PM
x4 Stable wormholes, x1 1 transit from Sol, x2 2 transits (one adjacent to the 1 transit), x1 3 transits, 3 confirmed active (two of which are the adjacent pair!)

A training fleet is currently in a fight at 2-1 odds, fortunately the technology gap isn't so bad (although this game has been one long wormhole defense, I had 8,000 km/s Ion Drive battleships, and it was three million tons of fuel well spent per sortie, each.)

EDIT: And it's 2-1 and not 3-2 because they got a trio missile ships separate from the rest on the way there (again with the adjacent active wormholes)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on December 29, 2015, 03:37:13 AM
Things are looking grim for the young Terran Federation. Founded just 10 years ago, due to the discovery of Trans Newtonian technology, the federation started exploring the closest stars two years ago.

Suddenly, alien fleets comprising more than 20 different classes of ships entered sol, and are now parked above Earth. The aliens seem to be at rather advanced, but not too much. The problem though is that the federation is still in the phase of PLANNING its first military ships and orbital defence platforms...

The aliens could destroy the human race without any possible recourse, at any moment.


P.S. Assuming I can keep playing that is, as for the last hour I've been seeing 1 minute turns without any sort of change. I suppose it's the aliens reacting to all the civilian ships or something like that. If anyone has ideas I'll gladly listen XD EDIT: weird, restarting the game made the problem go away. Still in orbit of course, but normal 1 day turns.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: CharonJr on December 30, 2015, 01:26:08 AM
Yup, had the same with another human race (during truce) around Earth. They were following my ships with their warships. After a restart everything went back fo normal (no more interrupts) and they left my ships alone.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on December 30, 2015, 11:02:34 PM
Another wormhole opened one transit from Sol. The inactive wormhole is now active. The paired wormhole has never quieted sufficiently to allow salvage, 15 wrecks built up and looking to add two more shortly. Standardized fleet composition has gone from x12 30,000 battleships to x8; have discovered that this does not provide sufficient point defense coverage to give a fleet reliable immunity to a two-ship long range missile salvo.

I am becoming concerned...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on December 31, 2015, 10:29:28 AM
New 7.10 generation

  Mineral survey completed in Sol system, and no duranium (a few small asteroids)  :'( .  This is not good.  Survey ships found 4 star gates. 1) Proxima Centauri (dead end), 2) Lalande 21165, 3) Tau Ceti, and 4) FL Virginis.  Unfriendlies in FL V destroyed a survey craft that got too close, diplomatic attempts have been a complete failure.  Large deposits of Duranium have been found in both Lalande and Tau Ceti systems unfortunately at 0.1 & 0.2.  Time to pump out the auto miners.

  Survey team is out surveying planets and moons of Sol, found a 6,000,000 (0.5) deposit of duranium on Mercury.  Whew! Stable Wormhole has appeared in Proxima.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 01, 2016, 01:00:13 AM
  Interesting happenings, the stable wormhole shifted into the Fl Virginis system.  A (brief) battle occurred between the residents of FLV and the new comers.  3 new wrecks inhabit the system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on January 01, 2016, 03:46:46 PM
Spend some 5 hours to setup my new game. Still have to assign tech points and stuff.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on January 01, 2016, 03:52:50 PM
I give all my larger commercial ships a 'full' size 1 sensor suite, EM, thermal, and res 1, 5, 20, 80, and 500.
With fighters now being around, I was thinking of course how I should plan my sensor outfit in the future. Unless having 300kt+ fleets, it seems to me like 3 active and 2 passive ones (of maximum size) is normally quite enough. In the past I have used of course res-1 for missiles, and then around 5.5kt for ships and some 25kt more for rp. At more competitive games I usually replaced the last one for a Fac tracker at 900 or 950 tons resolution, and uped ship detection to 6-7k. (I don't care much about survey vessels under my radar. - They fall in my hands once their capital soon does anyway)
Now we need a fighter sensor down to that resolution 5, and my current answer is to just make the fac sensor sharper and live with the bad range. Future strategy may vary as I need to figure out whether facs are still much more numerous or not, and how much threat the fighters really pose compared to swarm.

But aside from civies who can get it all on small size, how do you others see to plan your future detection suites?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on January 01, 2016, 11:46:21 PM
I usually follow the simplest route, equipping ships with whatever resolution is nessicary for their expected target.
Most of the fleet carry resolution 80 or thereabouts for general anti ship use, escorts haul around the resolution 1 sensors. And if I make specific anti fighter or FAC vessels they'll get the resolution 5 or 20.  In general the biggest sensors in my fleet are always size 1 and 80, other resolutions are used for more efficient use of space in smaller vessels.
Usually it's FACs that get interesting range and resolution variations as space is very tight.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on January 04, 2016, 02:37:46 PM
My industry on Earth is not keeping with the demand for fuel for my growing navy..
Thankfully, Dator Kingdom aliens which am i war with are coming from the JP located just mere 100km from Earth orbit :P
This time I AM the bad one who started shooting but to my defence aliens ignored every warning about entering Sol system after establishing communication ..
Tech wise were are pretty much even, Earth and her colonies have more than enough minerals but time is the problem - will the xenos let me sort my problems out before they decide to curbstomp me ?? Time will tell.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 04, 2016, 07:18:44 PM
  Its been decades since first contact with the 2 alien races in FL Virginis system.  Recently lost a [cloaked] scout ship in the system.  A single 89000T Miguel Malvar class ship jumped into the Sol system, anti-ship mines heavily damaged the ship.  Sol defense frigates destroyed the intruder.  Intelligence has determined the Miguel Malvar to be a gate construction ship.  Mines and defense forces have destroyed 2 more of the Miguel Malvar class.

  I hope, as long as i can keep the intruders from building the jump gate, i can better prepare for an invasion.

  Humanity continues to expand, with almost 2 billion souls in 3 systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 05, 2016, 05:13:15 PM
August 2170

  2 More of the Miguel Malvar ships have been destroyed at the FL V jump point.  I expect they will soon bring in jump capable attack ships, to guard the construction ships.  5 wrecks sitting out there, guess it is time to throw a couple salvagers in the ovens.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 06, 2016, 06:14:33 AM
I am in DEEEEEP smeg, My pooor carrier fleet is now between 2 groups of NPR fighter groups, 1 of 60 and another "slightly" bigger off 344 fighters.

I am so dead!!!

Quote
Eagle class Fighter    244 tons     1 Crew     64.6 BP      TCS 4.87  TH 56  EM 0
11498 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 4    5YR 61    Max Repair 28 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 12   

56 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 56    Fuel Use 277.92%    Signature 56    Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 5.3 billion km   (5 days at full power)

Size 3 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 3    Hangar Reload 22.5 minutes    MF Reload 3.7 hours
Missile Fire Control FC68-R110 (1)     Range 68.5m km    Resolution 110

The good part is that I sofar destroyed almost 80 percent of his fleet, but the bad intelligence said battleships instead of carriers... ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 06, 2016, 08:22:07 AM
Carrier John C Stennis was the target of some 240 size 3 missiles, after AMM and even ASM missiles and point defences 49 hits, 2 breaches were opened up but no internals from nuclear fire, 2 of the carriers engines was badly shaken and had to be taken offline.

Was lucky they only had a warhead of 7. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on January 06, 2016, 10:06:19 AM
I think I need to see the design of a carrier that can survive 49 strength 7 hits.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 06, 2016, 03:36:32 PM
Well, that is only ~350 damage. My carriers generally have a few thousand internal HP, plus the 10+ layers of armor, plus a few hundred points of shields.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on January 06, 2016, 07:05:33 PM
Do I smite you both now for having carriers obviously bigger than mine? :(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 06, 2016, 07:25:22 PM
What can I say? I like big ships, and deep-space super-stations. And I'm thinking of some things I can do with that new "shell" armor. Also, I just check my officers and... this guy... I don't think he should be in command of a multi-thousand tonned ship. (refer to picture)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 07, 2016, 01:00:44 AM
Carriers should be big  ;D Nimitz was "made" by the program when I started a new game.

Quote
Nimitz class Carrier    53 500 tons     976 Crew     10701 BP      TCS 1070  TH 8100  EM 0
7570 km/s     Armour 10-126     Shields 0-0     Sensors 8/8/0/0     Damage Control Rating 63     PPV 0
Maint Life 1.91 Years     MSP 7875    AFR 363%    IFR 5%    1YR 2799    5YR 41986    Max Repair 1600 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Flight Crew Berths 1   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 12000 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 Company    Magazine 2132   

180 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (45)    Power 180    Fuel Use 74.14%    Signature 180    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 10 350 000 Litres    Range 47.0 billion km   (71 days at full power)

CIWS-400 (2x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 40000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Acclamator Anti-ship Missile (533)  Speed: 36 700 km/s   End: 27.2m    Range: 59.8m km   WH: 12    Size: 4    TH: 575/345/172

Active Search Sensor MR1007-R62 (1)     GPS 99200     Range 1 007.9m km    Resolution 62
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km

Strike Group
30x Eagle Fighter   Speed: 16087 km/s    Size: 7.77
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 07, 2016, 12:20:40 PM
Managed to survive, almost. Theodore Roosvelt was hit by 175 missiles before being blown to pieces. Carl Vinson lost half its hangar space and almost 40% of the ship and is more or less crippled as well as Eisenhower, losing a third of its hangars and about 20% of the ship, Lincoln and Nimitz ware shaken up but no penetrating thru armour, Stennis was hit by a singel missile.
In total 395 missile hit my carriers, alot of good crewmen were killed but the fleet is almost intact, in 4.5 hours my warp assault cruisers will be back to give some support. They will remain in system and try to repair their hangar spaces.
I am testing my lightning class fighter and sending them after their empty fighters, hopefully they will kill something.

Quote
Lightning class Fighter    302 tons     3 Crew     286.15 BP      TCS 6.04  TH 112.5  EM 0
37251 km/s     Armour 2-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 60%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 17    5YR 260    Max Repair 70 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   

Newman Dynamics Fighter Engine (3)    Power 75    Fuel Use 462.98%    Signature 37.5    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 2.6 billion km   (19 hours at full power)

Kent-Dale Gauss Cannon R6-17 (2x6)    Range 60 000km     TS: 37251 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Sykes Heavy Industries Fire Control S00.2 75-5000 H70 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 150 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     93 87 80 73 67 60 53 47 40 33

Wilkins Megacorp Fighter Sensor (1)     GPS 8     Range 880k km    MCR 96k km    Resolution 1
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 08, 2016, 02:07:26 AM
Well the last game was 7.00 and ran into tho NPR carrier bug so I starts a new one in 7.10.

This is the Heavy carrier Nimitz and I know its slow...

Quote
Nimitz class Heavy Carrier    87 950 tons     1137 Crew     14595.6 BP      TCS 439.75  TH 10560  EM 1500
6003 km/s     Armour 16-176     Shields 50-300     Sensors 48/48/0/0     Damage Control Rating 67     PPV 0
Maint Life 4.72 Years     MSP 6950    AFR 923%    IFR 12.8%    1YR 510    5YR 7657    Max Repair 312 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Flight Crew Berths 518   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 20000 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Magazine 964    Cargo Handling Multiplier 20   

264 EP Solid Core AM Drive (40)    Power 264    Fuel Use 47.72%    Signature 264    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 25 250 000 Litres    Range 108.3 billion km   (208 days at full power)
Delta R300/240 Shields (20)   Total Fuel Cost  200 Litres per hour  (4 800 per day)

CIWS-200 (10x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
ASM Thunder (241)  Speed: 81 700 km/s   End: 0.6m    Range: 3.2m km   WH: 36    Size: 3.995    TH: 381/228/114

Thermal Sensor TH6-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  48m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  48m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 25% of normal

ECM 10

Strike Group
52x Raptor Fighter-bomber   Speed: 15789 km/s    Size: 7.6

Ther Raptor is a differnt kind of fighter than usaly as you can see, not sure if its going to survive, but its supposed to follow a missile wave on to its target.

Quote
Raptor class Fighter-bomber    380 tons     3 Crew     233.4 BP      TCS 7.6  TH 28.8  EM 0
15789 km/s     Armour 2-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4.6
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 76%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 11    5YR 158    Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 40   
Magazine 4   

Sharp Marine Fighter Engine SCAM (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 617.3%    Signature 28.8    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 1.5 billion km   (26 hours at full power)

Manning Foundation Gauss Cannon R5-17 (4x5)    Range 50 000km     TS: 15789 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Ahmed-Brooks Fire Control S00.5 40-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

Size 4 Box Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Hangar Reload 30 minutes    MF Reload 5 hours
Donnelly Systems Fighter Missile Suite (1)     Range 24.0m km    Resolution 100
ASM Thunder (1)  Speed: 81 700 km/s   End: 0.6m    Range: 3.2m km   WH: 36    Size: 3.995    TH: 381/228/114

Long Technology Fighter Sensor (1)     GPS 1000     Range 8.0m km    Resolution 100

Been thinking about adding one more engine but that will reduce the number of Raptors.

Quote
Raptor class Fighter-bomber    435 tons     3 Crew     355.2 BP      TCS 8.7  TH 57.6  EM 0
27586 km/s     Armour 2-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4.6
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 87%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 18    5YR 263    Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 40   
Magazine 4   

Sharp Marine Fighter Engine SCAM (2)    Power 120    Fuel Use 617.3%    Signature 28.8    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 1.3 billion km   (13 hours at full power)

Manning Foundation Gauss Cannon R5-17 (4x5)    Range 50 000km     TS: 27586 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Ahmed-Brooks Fire Control S00.5 40-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

Size 4 Box Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Hangar Reload 30 minutes    MF Reload 5 hours
Donnelly Systems Fighter Missile Suite (1)     Range 24.0m km    Resolution 100
ASM Thunder (1)  Speed: 81 700 km/s   End: 0.6m    Range: 3.2m km   WH: 36    Size: 3.995    TH: 381/228/114

Long Technology Fighter Sensor (1)     GPS 1000     Range 8.0m km    Resolution 100

This one is almost 12000 km/s faster but Nimitz can only carry 45, but I will probobly use this one instead
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on January 08, 2016, 12:02:26 PM
New game, new troubles.
So, I started again the game in quadruple (in game, at least) system Nu Scorpii, huge distances included.
After struggling with ship range, we gravsurveyed the system and jumped to the only neighboring system, 11 Scorpii.
Fortunately, the system is pretty good for setting base of operations.
Unfortunately, the explorer was destroyed by a salvo of missiles.
We are going to construct a fleet to claim the system for ourselves, but due to extreme ranges we cannot make very fast ships (except fighters).

Code: [Select]
Borodino class Carrier    60 000 tons     948 Crew     5565.5 BP      TCS 1200  TH 1200  EM 0
1000 km/s     Armour 7-136     Shields 0-0     Sensors 75/75/0/0     Damage Control Rating 40     PPV 163.2
Maint Life 2.58 Years     MSP 2319    AFR 720%    IFR 10%    1YR 488    5YR 7323    Max Repair 150 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Flight Crew Berths 1   
Hangar Deck Capacity 20000 tons     

300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (4)    Power 300    Fuel Use 3.54%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 000 000 Litres    Range 254.2 billion km   (2942 days at full power)

Quad Gauss Cannon R1-100 Turret (5x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 1    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 10-5000 (1)    Max Range: 20 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR75-R100 (1)     GPS 15000     Range 75.0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR7-R1 (1)     GPS 150     Range 7.5m km    MCR 817k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH15-75 (1)     Sensitivity 75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km
EM Detection Sensor EM15-75 (1)     Sensitivity 75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Grisha class Escort    59 950 tons     1120 Crew     4695.5 BP      TCS 1199  TH 1200  EM 0
1000 km/s     Armour 8-136     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 39     PPV 587.52
Maint Life 2.19 Years     MSP 1909    AFR 737%    IFR 10.2%    1YR 536    5YR 8046    Max Repair 150 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (4)    Power 300    Fuel Use 3.54%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 000 000 Litres    Range 254.2 billion km   (2942 days at full power)

Quad Gauss Cannon R1-100 Turret (18x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 1    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 10-5000 (2)    Max Range: 20 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR7-R1 (1)     GPS 150     Range 7.5m km    MCR 817k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]
Sverdlov II class Fighter    480 tons     5 Crew     71.5 BP      TCS 9.6  TH 96  EM 0
10000 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 18    5YR 277    Max Repair 48 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 5   

96 EP Ion Drive (1)    Power 96    Fuel Use 217.22%    Signature 96    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 1.7 billion km   (47 hours at full power)

R1.5/C3 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 15 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1.5    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 10-1250 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 20 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 3.15    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

I'm going against precursors with this. Everything but engines is T1, so I doubt this will work. On the other hand, I really need this system, it's the only way out of homeworld.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 09, 2016, 06:59:34 PM
October 2180

  Getting a handle on Duranium and Tritanium shortages, Gallicite is the next problem.  The wormhole in FL Viriginis has disappeared, so no more unwated visitors.  Guess it is time to go find some trouble.

3 Billion humans on 10 colonies.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on January 10, 2016, 12:17:56 PM
Well, we knew this day was coming and yet it found us unprepared.

Going by the thermal readings from the Gravhund that they ran down (500 ton fighter with a gen1 grav sensor, a jump drive, a high efficiency engine and nothing else)- x8 18,200 tonners, x3 36,400 tonners, x3 54,600 tonners, x1 active sensor contact of indeterminate tonnage- and that's just the laser boats. Anything else that is out there would not have been seen. There is a sensor outpost in Sirius, Alpha Centauri is empty, and once in Alpha Centauri they either follow the civilian traffic to the only relevant source of Gallicite for an empire of 12 planets (itself with a population in the hundreds of millions on the theory that in the extreme long term terraforming and manned mines is a more efficient way of mining a few million tons of gallicite than automated mines), or Sol.

I won't "officially" know they even exist unless somebody trips over the wreck of the Gravhund (unlikely, and it won't be overdue for years), or somebody enters Sirius after they do (also unlikely, total backwater). EZ Aquarii doesn't stand a chance. Sol might, but it would be ugly- shipbuilding capped at 30,000 ton battleships with a Particle Beam/Missile mix, and the missile size has been declining over the generations, there could be anywhere between 0 and 24 of them available at the moment of crisis (the fleet spends most of its time camping wormholes and responding to locust people. The entire mobile reserve fleet is garrisoning a distant NPC conquest). PDCs are a joke, the 120 odd Torpedo FACs could at least launch a salvo of modern missiles but only 60 of them are concentrated.

The one bright spot is there is so much civilian stuff in space that they may actually shoot their magazines dry before they get around to testing our planetary anti-missile capability, which may be insufficient if the missile boat element is equivalent to or exceeds the laser boat element.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 11, 2016, 08:50:02 AM
Jan 2184

  Tau Ceti had 6 unexplored jump points, 5 of these ended up in systems without a single body. No asteroids, no planets, no comets, nuthin.  >:(  JP 6 has a system with 4! planets with a colony cost under 3, and a stable wormhole.  Looks like we might have to fight for them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 11, 2016, 10:35:37 AM
Tired of long conquests of enemy held planets? Well, let me introduce to you the BFB Overcompensater;
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 100 MSP  (5 HS)     Warhead: 3000    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s    Engine Endurance: 0 minutes   Range: 0.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 750
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 0%   10k km/s 0%
Materials Required:    750x Tritanium   Fuel x0

Development Cost for Project: 75000RP
And for good measure, the BFB Overcompensater-R;
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 100 MSP  (5 HS)     Warhead: 600    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s    Engine Endurance: 0 minutes   Range: 0.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 750
Radiation Damage: 15000
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 0%   10k km/s 0%
Materials Required:    750x Tritanium   Fuel x0

Development Cost for Project: 75000RP
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 11, 2016, 03:36:59 PM
I am so glad I overengineer my survey ships. My GSVs didn't pick up an enemy in the system as they were passing through (they have good thermal and em sensors) so I sent in a GEV. They had 2 PDCs sitting on a planet. One had 27 strength 2 lasers of indeterminate kind with many being shot every 5 sec, and the other is assumed to be an AMM PDC. It was firing 60 AMMs every 10 seconds. For the first few minutes,GEV Leif Ericson shot down all incoming missiles and took every hit like a champ (8 CIWS and 12 layers of armor). It has now disengaged and is headed home for now, it only suffered minor damage to a CIWS, and empty fuel storage tank, an engineering space, and one of the crew quarters. 22 lives were lost. The Sabre, A Colossus class Battleship, and her support fleet will be finished constructing in a few years due to worker and mineral shortages.

Edit; Found the same aliens in another system, the first had a JP that was unexplored so I am assuming that it will connect. This time they had 2 of the Beam PDC along with an AMM, my GEV almost made it out but was destroyed. The beams got lucky and took out my engines and most of my CIWS early, so the AMMs were able to get through.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 11, 2016, 05:09:15 PM
Aaaaaand Stable Wormhole 2 jumps from Sol... yay. Actually, this is only the 2nd game of a dozen or so where I had them active and have even seen anything from them. I guess its time to rush out a few missile PDCs and scatter them throughout Sol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 11, 2016, 05:27:45 PM
Sorry for post after post but interesting things are happening. In a system where I have found an alien population (not the aforementioned pdc guy who shot up 2 of my ships, but a friendly one I found before him), I found a second population, but of another race. Now I have 3 aliens within 1 jump of Sol, I think I may have to go on a purge of the xenos scum and search under every rock for any resistance.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 11, 2016, 11:49:52 PM
December 2185

Dam this is bad:

2x Krabori 30,200T
1x Corvette 45,300T
2x Datu Kalantiaw 15,100T
3x Ratanakosin 30,200T
5x Kaptian Patmura 30,200T
1x Handalan 30,200
2x Kris 30200
2x Conrado Yap 15,100
3x Fatahilbin 15100
6x Yan Gyi Aung 15050
5x Mariano Alvarez 15050
5x Challenger unknown
3x Chieftan unknown
2x Perdana unknown
10x Khristina Tiyahahu

That is a lot of tonnage that just jumped into Sol from FL virginis.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on January 12, 2016, 07:17:02 AM
  It is as bad as i thought it would be:

330 [str 24] missiles per volley @ 60,000 km/s.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 12, 2016, 10:01:58 AM
Update; 5 alien races and 1 spoiler within 3 jumps of Sol, 1 survey ship destroyed, 1 ship damaged (twice). Auto-mines and mass drivers on Venus solved the mineral problem on Earth so fleet production is almost finished. The Grand Inquisitor has been told to get out of the tub and put away his rubber ducky to prepare for a purge.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sematary on January 12, 2016, 11:02:23 AM
The US and India have won the research race to Nuclear Pulse engines and are exploring the solar system for minerals. The UK launched a Geo ship using Nuclear torch a few months ago, Germany is a week or two away from doing the same. China, Russia, France, Italy, and the Martian Union are all waiting until they have Nuclear pulse and will be getting there in the next few months or years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on January 12, 2016, 04:03:09 PM
So far I've made contact with 2 alien races in systems adjacent to Sol: the Funafuti Collective and the Haora Empire. Both have recently been sending ships into Sol.

While the Collective appeared to simply investigate Halley's Comet and leave peacefully, the Haora made a massive colonisation push towards Mars which is of course sovereign territory of the Terran Federation. After all warnings to stay clear of the inner solar system were ignored, the fighter wing escorting the closest ship (which was later discovered to be a commercial colony ship) was given permission to open fire. The ship proved to be unarmed and only lightly armoured despite being over 20,000 tons, and was quickly destroyed. Even in the face of such a threat however, the remaining 5 ships in the convoy continued on their course towards Mars. Ultimately, the Federation were forced to destroy the rest of the colony ships. Over the next couple weeks, dozens of identical colony ships flooded into Sol, all heading towards Mars. Time and time again, Federation fighters destroyed the alien ships before they could reach their destination. As of this moment there are around 50-60 wrecks of such colony ships drifting around Sol. The Federation are not completely merciless though, as any lifepods that survived the destruction of a ship were picked up and the survivors were given a small environmentally-controlled biodome on Earth in which to live, albeit under close guard.

Then, for almost 2 weeks, no further Haora ships entered Sol. At the end of that period however, Haora warships were detected transiting into Sol. There was no mistaking them for commercial ships; they were faster than any of the previous ships so far, and many emitted EM pulses which were detected by tracking stations on Earth - the signature of active sensors.
And so the first Interstellar War truly began.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 13, 2016, 01:09:01 PM
Found a a system beyond the system with the Stable Wormhole that contains tons of small, messon armed ships. Yay me :-\. And its the same GEV that encountered the 2 other races and got shot at.

Edit; GEV Leif Ericson has been lost. But before it was destroyed, the captain reported that he saw a large, slow moving ship with many mesons.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on January 13, 2016, 01:18:31 PM
I had some neighbors which were hostile. Finally got fed up with them. Prepared my fleets, overhauled, jumped in their system. System is full of wrecks. Their planets are still inhabited though.

Checking the nearby systems, one of them has a stable wormhole. Guess they received a visit from the Things That Should Not Be.

I am now doubtful about whether I should try to salvage and conquer those systems, considering what lurks just next door... If I get a visit too, I'll die. Too low tech to have any chance of survival.

What would you guys do, I wonder? The population and techs are very tempting, but the risks...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on January 13, 2016, 01:30:14 PM
I had some neighbors which were hostile. Finally got fed up with them. Prepared my fleets, overhauled, jumped in their system. System is full of wrecks. Their planets are still inhabited though.

Checking the nearby systems, one of them has a stable wormhole. Guess they received a visit from the Things That Should Not Be.

I am now doubtful about whether I should try to salvage and conquer those systems, considering what lurks just next door... If I get a visit too, I'll die. Too low tech to have any chance of survival.

What would you guys do, I wonder? The population and techs are very tempting, but the risks...

Those do go away occasionally. Otherwise, take the system and mine the everliving bejeebus out of the JP.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GreatTuna on January 13, 2016, 01:56:42 PM
I say go for it. They'll visit you eventually even if you don't cap the populations.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on January 13, 2016, 02:52:21 PM
So I'm in the somewhat embarrassing situation where my fighters are faster than the missiles employed by the opposing NPR... in some cases, almost by a factor of 2.
This has led to a discovery of a bit of an AI quirk and a tactic to take advantage of it. My fighters were engaging a couple battleships which started firing ASM's before my fighters could get in range of their beam armaments. Since I could more or less run circles around the missiles with my speed advantage, I tried kiting them off using my laser armed fighters in area defense pd mode. This worked, but it seemed that whatever I shot down would be instantly replaced by the battleships. But then I noticed something - the AI seemed to fire until a set number of salvos were in the air, then they held fire presumably waiting for the results. Instead of trying to deplete their magazines, I tried something new. I led the missiles out a bit to give myself some room to maneuver, then I literally ran a circle around the missiles so that they were tail-chasing my fighters as the fighters made a run at the battleships. As all the missiles were still in flight, the battleships didn't launch any further salvos and they didn't seem to possess any beam armaments. So when my HPM bombers came within range and started firing on them they were just fish in a barrel. Within a couple increments the HPM shots managed to destroy their missile fire controls and so all the chasing missiles just self destructed with the loss of guidance. From there, my laser armed fighters could just go to town.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 25, 2016, 06:50:11 AM
The first ships of Battlegroup Sabre have been finished. Not too soon as well. Less than a month after the first 2 ship were finished, one of the "friendly" aliens decided it was best to visit me with a War Fleet and fill the skies of the colonies with missiles. FF Sword and FF Formidable held off the waves of missiles until they were able to reach the launching ships, destroying all 3 of them. Over the next few months, other ships of the Battlegroup came online as the enemy kept trickling more and more ships into the system. Shortly after CA Restitution and CA Retribution came online, they sent their main battlegroup of over a dozen ships in at once. The forces of Battlegroup Sabre held off the enemy fleet, destroying most with long range volleys of missile and laser fire, until the enemy finally retreated from the system. Barely any damage was done to the ships of the Battlegroup themselves, all damage was absorbed the the shields, so little time was needed in drydock for repair. The timetable for the purge of the traitorous xenos scum has been moved up, waiting only on the completion of the Battlegroup's final ship, the BB Sabre, which will be completed in a few months time.

Edit; BB Sabre has finished construction, and has been refueled from the Fuel Dump out over Neptune due to Earth literally not having enough fuel. All that is left is for the Captain to situate the Fire controls for several hundred weapon systems on board, I wish him luck. "A new hostile ship has been detected in Sol!" It seems like it is time for a Purge.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 25, 2016, 07:22:49 AM
Today I said goodbye to my Struggle of Survival game as I updated to version 7.1, just so I can fight a carrier fleet without controlling it. On the bright side, I get to start a Legend of the Galactic Heroes-themed game now!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Ostia on January 25, 2016, 03:02:02 PM
And thus the Hector campaign has come to an end. After killing almost 4 dozen fully organic and about half a dozen fully robotic enemies the Commonwealth Navy has declared the system secure.

The highlight of the campaign is undoubtless the destruction a 68k tons organic behemoth. While the Flash-Class HPM fighter deployed have performed rather mediocre due to sensor interference, the Revenge-Class Missile Cruisers carried themselves quite formidable.

The spoils are 3 ruins settlements with installations of alien origin (90% SF, 90% BG, 100% DS) on near-perfectly habitable planets. The mineral wealth is almost forgettable compared to the endless research opportunities found.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 26, 2016, 07:22:20 AM
I think I now see why those enemy ships were scattered upon arrival instead of one large fleet. When I transited into the only system I know of (that I can get to because interrogations of enemy crew revealed one of their systems but no way of connecting to it), I saw that they had many more wrecks in-system, as well as several wrecks of unknown orgin. It is being speculated that either those are ships from the first race I met in this system fighting the second one, or it is from another race I have yet too meet. Once the battlefleet sweeps the system, I will move in my salvagers to get a clearer picture of the situation.

Edit; I found it sooner that I thought. I moved my battlefleet to each of the habitable bodies in the inner system and found nothing. So I moved to the next JP which is where all the wrecks in-system are located. I randomly activated active sensors for a 5 sec increments to see if there was anything out there. At the far reaches of the sensor's range I detected both a new enemy ship class (same race I've been fighting) of 70,000 tons and a JG at a previously undiscovered JP. The fleet has been ordered to adjust course and intercept the (presumably commercial) ship and scout the new system (with shields and actives on of course).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 26, 2016, 07:40:24 AM
The Gregarious Germans aren't finding anything. I've explored something like six other star systems now; no Spoilers, no NPR's, and three out of four have had no planets or asteroids in them. This is the worst galactic conquest ever.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 26, 2016, 09:24:45 AM
Upon arrival to the new system, despite jump blindness, seemed uneventful. Once the fleet began to move, active returns cam back, discovering a colony with ground forces within missile range, a JG, and a large fleet of 24,000 tonned ships that is moving at 2,400 km/s towards the newly discovered JG. FF Sword launched a salvo from her ventral batteries at the Ground force contact, destroying 2 and making the colony surrender. Retribution and Restitution (and their escorts of 2 frigates each) have been ordered to detach from the Battlefleet to chase down the ships before contact is lost. Meanwhile, the rest of the Battlefleet has been ordered to move to the planet where it seems these ships originated from farther out in the system. The fist ship to catch the enemy formation fired a spread of 6 salvos of missiles. Meanwhile, another enemy ship has been detected on the opposite side of the long range scanning, heading either towards the Battlefleet or the JP we just came through. The whole wave made it through to the formation of contacts, none withstood the bombardment. The Restitution wing has been ordered to collect the 17 lifepods then reform with the main body for the next engagement.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on January 26, 2016, 09:58:44 AM
Still alive. Happy with our terraformation effort in Sol sector, the current focus of the Terran Rule is genetically modifying a substantial portion of the Bone-Norman subject race into something with two arms and aesthetically pleasing features, giving access to a number of otherwise ideal high-gravity worlds. Internal Assaulter defense and Locust People perimeter defense commitments have however overwhelmed the ability of permanent garrisons of effective size to deal with, and the latest construction innovation has been for dozens of long-deployment tripwire vessels, hopefully giving the Rule complete awareness and lightspeeed communication in a six-transit from Sol volume. Once this system is established the security of Sol sector will finally be achievable, until that time deployments are restricted to mining systems and inhabited systems.

Everything that isn't overhauling is camping a wormhole, and there's twice that number with no system presence...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on January 26, 2016, 03:28:16 PM
Empire map as of 2129. 29 years into game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on January 27, 2016, 03:31:09 AM
After blasting one of my survey ships, the Bam Star Empire immediately reset diplomatic relations to neutral, perhaps hoping the whole thing would blow over.

Although they were one of the lowest population NPRs I've ever seen spawn, their ships were reasonably fast for the era and had decent salvo sizes, so I wasn't fully prepared for the utter incompetence they would reveal in combat.

They're mostly notable for their completely deranged design philosophies. After being captured by marines, the Formidable is currently in orbit over Bam Prime blowing through MSP at an alarming rate:

Code: [Select]
Formidable class Strike Cruiser    25 650 tons     531 Crew     3077.28 BP      TCS 513  TH 1382  EM 0
2693 km/s     Armour 5-77     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/12/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 72
Maint Life 1.48 Years     MSP 450    AFR 877%    IFR 12.2%    1YR 230    5YR 3452    Max Repair 176 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 1279   

38.4 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (36)    Power 38.4    Fuel Use 136.29%    Signature 38.4    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 3 250 000 Litres    Range 16.7 billion km   (71 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (3x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 6 Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 90
Missile Fire Control FC75-R77 (3)     Range 75.8m km    Resolution 77

Active Search Sensor MR92-R77 (1)     GPS 13552     Range 92.7m km    Resolution 77
Active Search Sensor MR25-R20 (1)     GPS 1920     Range 25.8m km    Resolution 20
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Their use of dozens of size 4 boosted engines meant that every warship was sitting on a pack of firecrackers. Most distressingly, they had a carrier with 60 of these things stuck on the back.

The surrendered geosurvey ships are arguably the most useless NPR design I've ever seen thanks to their ridiculously oversized jump drive:

Code: [Select]
Kasturi class Geosurvey Ship    1 650 tons     57 Crew     222.6 BP      TCS 33  TH 16  EM 0
484 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1-12     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 0
Maint Life 9.85 Years     MSP 169    AFR 10%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

J4500(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 4500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
16 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (1)    Power 16    Fuel Use 15.28%    Signature 16    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 30 000 Litres    Range 21.4 billion km   (511 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on January 27, 2016, 03:54:50 PM
I lost my last two games in a wave of errors, so I've started a new one. For a twist, I can only colonize planets using orbital habitats or underground infrastructure (I set my race's gravity limit to something unreasonable like 50 or 100). Hopefully I can find and conquer an alien race for it's population, since I only have about 150m and am limited to 200m by my current habitats.

Right now I'm waiting to explore my system's jump points until I have some military ships, since my homeworld is even more vulnerable than normal.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 27, 2016, 09:39:49 PM
Erik senpai, please teach me the ways of the map. I try to keep it all organized but it always ends up a jumbled mess. A cool looking mess, but still a mess.
Edit; Delvan and Ofakimac are mine as I bombarded the populations on them into a nice organic slush.
Edit 2; And on my way back I found an outpost in Macharia, mmmm alien slushy.
Edit 3; Holy duck. I guess I now know why they had so many ships. And that's just 2, I think they still have plenty of systems left.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on January 27, 2016, 10:27:09 PM
Try to right click and Line Up Systems. If that doesn't work out, try increasing the grid size a bit, not sure where the option is but it's somewhere in the menus on the galactic view.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on January 28, 2016, 07:24:33 AM
Erik senpai, please teach me the ways of the map. I try to keep it all organized but it always ends up a jumbled mess. A cool looking mess, but still a mess.
Edit; Delvan and Ofakimac are mine as I bombarded the populations on them into a nice organic slush.
Edit 2; And on my way back I found an outpost in Macharia, mmmm alien slushy.
Edit 3; Holy duck. I guess I now know why they had so many ships. And that's just 2, I think they still have plenty of systems left.

As Iceball says. Sys Pos menu, line up, save. I use a grid of 4.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 28, 2016, 11:15:09 AM
Just jumped to a new systems for the first time.

No aliens so far, and just one venus like world that has mars like infrastructure needs.   and a boatload of asteroids.  I forsee surveying and colonization if only to exploit any mineral deposits in that system.   Jump Gate builder is being built on one of my shipyards.

Also, first post.   Hi all!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on January 28, 2016, 04:07:27 PM
Shipped some recovered shields back to Earth. Disassembling 41 of them gained me Shield Regen 2.5, Epsilon Shields, and Fuel Consumption 0.6. All from a zero start. Plus I got a nice start (2700pts) on Shield Regen 3.

And 22 installations to go :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on January 29, 2016, 03:20:55 AM
Two and a half years after the Battle of Bam, it's become clear that the former Star Empire will have to shoulder some of the responsibility for its security. Training of the Bam Brigade is well underway, and Fleet Command has authorized the new Bam Defense Force to construct a warship (of sorts) to supplement the two surviving missile defense bases.

Code: [Select]
Bambino class Corvette    3 200 tons     85 Crew     374.2 BP      TCS 64  TH 192  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 10
Maint Life 2.8 Years     MSP 73    AFR 81%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 14    5YR 203    Max Repair 43 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   

38.4 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (5)    Power 38.4    Fuel Use 136.29%    Signature 38.4    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres    Range 8.3 billion km   (31 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
12cm Railgun V2/C2 (2x4)    Range 40 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 2    ROF 15        2 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR8-R77 (1)     GPS 1232     Range 8.4m km    Resolution 77
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

A Frankenstein assembled from at least five wrecks, the Bambino follows the finest principles of Bam design. Fortunately there are only enough salvaged weapons to construct one of the class.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 01, 2016, 11:32:16 PM
In my 2nd game tat moved beyond sol.

First jump point found was just inside Venus, and so the Terran Union decided to investigate.

The S-Class Jump scout popped though, and found it lead to Bernard Star  the first scanned showed a planetary system, and wearisomely, 9 wrecks around BS-II.    And a gate that leads from bernard star system into Sol already existing.

The S-Class ship jumped back and soon it was decided that the Long Range Patrol-1 would investigate with the help of the 2nd large Jump Tender.    Thus the Juno (J-class Tender), the Missile frigates Minske, Kirov, and Admiral Ushakov (Minske Class AMM-Frigates), a old Ming class ship Akikaze (Anti-Ship Cruisers downgraded to Frigates due to lack of ability) and a Orion class gunboat Indus with it state of the art "Big Dan" sensor suite was assembled with two jumps by the tender, under the command of rising star, Rear Admiral Hamaguchi Mizuki (Who graduated with a promotion score of over 2000 and made Admiral by 30. ) From her flagship she ordered active sensors on and began to head towards BS-II with the Jump tender leaving towards Sol.    Command was fully expecting this to be the first combat test of the fleet.    Hour by hour as the fleet burned towards the planet, everyone expecting warnings of ships or incoming missiles.   

Long range Patrol-1 entered orbit for 10 days.   No attacks occurred.    A additional S-class ship brought in two Geo-survey ships and a Mark Watney class tanker.    Active sensors are still on, and the survey teams have reported a undisturbed ruin on the surface.    a Xeno team has been placed on the ground, and as soon as the civvy jump tender is in operation the TCRN plans to bring over the Mars-Express troop ship with some garrison and construction battalions salvage teams to learn from the 9 wreaks in orbit.   In addition, as soon as a gate is constructed there are plans to begin some sort of settlement as the BS-II is Luna/Mars quality in settlement. 

(I am totally unspoiled, not been attacked yet. . . . )
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on February 04, 2016, 02:57:47 PM
So. Just started first combat. 37 years in game. Fleet consists of 8x Scimitar III and 8x Queensland IV.

Designs for reference:
Code: [Select]
Scimitar III class Missile Destroyer 10000 tons     338 Crew     1983.5 BP      TCS 200  TH 315  EM 240
2100 km/s     Armour 3-41     Shields 8-300     Sensors 22/22/0/0     Damage Control 8     PPV 60
Annual Failure Rate: 16%    IFR: 0.2%    Maintenance Capacity 992 MSP
Magazine 492   Spare Berths 3   

Bourdier-Hayman 84 EP Ion Drive Mk 2 (5)    Power 84    Fuel Use 55.8%    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 450,000 Litres    Range 14.5 billion km   (80 days at full power)
Vessell Dynamics Gamma R300/336 Shields (4)   Total Fuel Cost  1,344 Litres per day

Arbalest Heavy Launcher (12)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control FC184-R100 (70%) (5)     Range 184.8m km    Resolution 100
Ocean Lily Anti-ship Missile (55)  Speed: 10,400 km/s   End: 131.8m    Range: 82.3m km   WH: 8    Size: 5    TH: 34 / 20 / 10

Leiby & Barth Thermal Sensor TH2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Signature 1000: 22m km
Active Search Sensor MR184-R100 (70%) (1)     GPS 16800     Range 184.8m km     Resolution 100
EM Detection Sensor EM2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Strength 1000: 22m km

ECCM-1 (1)         ECM 10

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Queensland IV class Destroyer 9700 tons     389 Crew     1665.1 BP      TCS 194  TH 315  EM 720
2164 km/s     Armour 3-40     Shields 24-300     Sensors 22/22/0/0     Damage Control 5     PPV 66.24
Annual Failure Rate: 24%    IFR: 0.3%    Maintenance Capacity 536 MSP
Spare Berths 7   

Bourdier-Hayman 84 EP Ion Drive Mk 2 (5)    Power 84    Fuel Use 55.8%    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 450,000 Litres    Range 15.0 billion km   (80 days at full power)
Vessell Dynamics Gamma R300/336 Shields (12)   Total Fuel Cost  4,032 Litres per day

Twin Babbs-Clowdus R4/C4 Meson Cannon Turret (6x2)    Range 40,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 8-8     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 128-16000 (1)    Max Range: 256,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (11)     Total Power Output 49.5     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Leiby & Barth Thermal Sensor TH2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Signature 1000: 22m km
Active Search Sensor MR184-R100 (70%) (1)     GPS 16800     Range 184.8m km     Resolution 100
EM Detection Sensor EM2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Strength 1000: 22m km

ECM 10

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Wasn't sure exactly where the bogeys were, so I headed the fleet in to the first planet. En route, encountered 3 bogeys NI named Black Widow. Black Widows come in around 8700 tons, 23m km Res 64 Active sensor, and ECM 5. I was under 20m km when I first saw them, but shields were up. Fleet went active, and the Scimitars fired 3 salvos of Ocean-Lilies. 216 missiles enroute at the moment.

Fleet is attempting to open the range to 20m km, but the Black Widows have a speed of 6500. So they get to determine the range.

I might split the fleet, Scims and Queens. Have the Queens attempt to close and batter them into submission while the Scims beat on them from range with missiles. Unfortunately, I went into the battle with 92% stocks. I have about another 5 salvos in the magazine before I'm dry.

Will update when things happen more.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on February 04, 2016, 03:46:11 PM
Well. That was ugly. They destroyed 1 Scimitar and 3 Queensland. In return for zero casualties. Fortunately they did not seem interested in pursuing me to the JP, so I was able to escape. Now to do a bit of redesign...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on February 04, 2016, 04:08:00 PM
ECM5 wouldn't have been much help, since you don't have ECCM on your Meson boats
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on February 04, 2016, 04:16:48 PM
I didn't even try to close with the Queenlands. I just turned tail and ran. Did fire the mags dry though. Sadly the missiles popped about 10m km short since we were both moving away from each other.

I did get some hits. Enough to know they had 2 armor. It took ~36 of their missiles to kill one of my ships.

Refits will include a res 1 scanner since I couldn't see their missiles. I might have been able to stop some with the mesons.

And this kids, is why a CIWS is a good system on any ship. Sometimes you don't have the AM defense to stop them prior.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 05, 2016, 09:43:52 AM
Following the loss of Salyut in Wolf 424, an unofficial patch has become common among Soyuz-class crews:

(http://i.imgur.com/tSkzWFG.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 05, 2016, 06:30:02 PM
Put together a game similar to Charon's lets play.  At the game start [2100] Pan Asia, or the EU quickly established gates on all jump points in Sol, and quickly moved out into the beyond.  In 2105 combat erupted in an unknown sector of space occurred, no evidence of combat has been seen in the immediate sector from Sol.

2110: the American federation has established trade agreements with all players, and is on friendly terms with all Earth military powers.  A wormhole has opened in an unknown system. 

2115:  [AF] colonies have been established on Earth, Luna, Mars, Callisto, and Alpha Centauri A-I.  No alien species have been encountered by the [AF].


And 30 minutes after i post this, i lose 2 survey craft to new aliens because im not paying attention.   ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 05, 2016, 09:45:03 PM
Had my first battle.   was doing quite well till I made a boneheaded move.   The NPR ship was dead in space and its active sensors were out.    I was zoomed in and forgot it had some huge sensor ship a billion miles away that was tagging my ships.   Apparently its fire control was still working, and my entire battle plan of being faster and longer range then them was thrown away as I flew into range of the NPR insane missile barrage.    One 15,000 ton ship fired 120 size five missiles.    I am guessing it box missiles or something.   

Scratch two cruisers and a frigate.     
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 05, 2016, 09:48:47 PM
The North American Union (Canada, Mexico and most of the United States [No one wanted Texas to be involved since becoming a pariah state when it's entire economy imploded when oil became a banned product world-wide, and Florida and several other East coast states were no longer viable once their coastal cities all became submerged]) has launched it first craft capable of FTL travel.  By using the gravity wells of our local star this craft is capable of near instantaneous travel from one gravity well point to another corresponding gravity well point in a nearby stars' own local gravity well.  When the craft was launched the Union's newly created interstellar space agency NAUSA and it's leader, Nathaniel Devary, were front page news worldwide.  Devary made the circuit of all of the daily talk shows and was interviewed by all of the major media outlets.  He traveled the world giving speeches, shaking hands and kissing babies.  Which might be how he contracted the flesh eating virus which brought this vibrant, charismatic and enigmatic leader to an unsightly death just 6 months after his appointment.  His position was quickly filled by the next executive in the hierarchy, Martha Veale, (who also was one of Devary's most vocal critics and detractors.)  While not nearly as qualified as her predecessor in general management areas she does have an advanced degree in virulent micro-biology and spent the majority of her career working at the CDC researching enhanced strains of aggressive pathogens for national defense against rogue terrorist organizations. All questioning of her ascension to the head of the organization ceased when it was realized that she was also the last person to see Devary alive.

TLDR:  My only remotely qualified person for fleet commander went from excellent health to dead from natural causes in one 5 day cycle at the ripe old age of 25 after being assigned to command for only 6 months.  :/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 06, 2016, 04:27:16 PM
The latest addition to the fleet:

Hainan class Jump Battlecruiser    26 700 tons     797 Crew     4935.6 BP      TCS 534  TH 2112  EM 0
3955 km/s    JR 4-100     Armour 6-79     Shields 0-0     Sensors 24/8/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 98
Maint Life 0.27 Years     MSP 693    AFR 950%    IFR 13.2%    1YR 2592    5YR 38878    Max Repair 1050 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   

J26700(4-100) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 26700 tons    Distance 100k km     Squadron Size 4
176 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (12)    Power 176    Fuel Use 79.95%    Signature 176    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 2 750 000 Litres    Range 23.2 billion km   (67 days at full power)

Particle Beam-4 (14)    Range 150 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 10-3    ROF 20        4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
CIWS-200 (4x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S02 96-5000 (3)    Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (7)     Total Power Output 42    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR379-R68 (1)     GPS 39168     Range 380.0m km    Resolution 68
Thermal Sensor TH3-24 (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km

ECCM-1 (1)         ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 06, 2016, 05:40:43 PM
Nov 2117

  New alien species suspect invaders arrived in Sol from the Sirius jump gate, diplomatic relations failed.  Ship appears to be a gravitational survey craft.

  Relations with all earth based alliances continue to improve.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 07, 2016, 11:55:03 PM
May 2118

3 Alien survey vessels of the Facepoker class, spotted in Sol.  Facepoker 1 rammed a small American freighter in the alpha centauri system.  Both ships were destroyed.  Facepoker 3 was destroyed by Chinese FACs in Sol.  Facepoker 2 has gone missing.

Nov 2118

Facepoker 2 was destroyed after ramming a large American freighter in the Sol system.  The freighter managed to limp home.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 08, 2016, 03:55:30 AM
In my current game, orbital motion for asteroids is turned off. And yet, with every 5 day increment the cluster of asteroids I was planning to build forts on to blockade a jump point continue to inch ever so slowly around the system primary. What is going on  ???
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on February 08, 2016, 06:01:45 AM
There are two types of asteroids - normal ones and trojans. Normal ones move around the stars, trojans are located in Lagrange points of gas giants. The former do not move, the latter do move together with the gas giant they are bound to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 08, 2016, 12:43:10 PM
Finally found the homeworld of the xenos scum that had the nerve to assault Sol. They are located in the Prometheus system. I have ordered Battlegroup Sabre to cease overhaul and to prepare for a purge.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 09, 2016, 05:47:36 AM
Thanks @Haji, did not know Aurora actually differentiated between those two types of asteroids for movement purposes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 09, 2016, 08:18:58 PM
Having a good game - One jump out find a 60,000 ton ship.    Swarm I am afraid

Had a big battle out in Neptune.   my attacks were unable to get past the point defense.    It looking bad for Sol brothers and sisters.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 10, 2016, 06:58:22 AM
103 tries to find an alien race that lives on a planet, I have found some robots and space dragons before but now we have found an intelligent planet living race, and they look like some movie makers horror  :-X Oh well they are low tech so we could land troops or we could bombard them from space, would be nice to have neutron bombs to wipe out their populations.
They are on the planet HR 4523 at the top.

https://gyazo.com/08832d0813f12e9854880da43206d7e3 (https://gyazo.com/08832d0813f12e9854880da43206d7e3)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 10, 2016, 09:27:37 AM
Battlegroup Sabre dispatched to the location of the enemy homeworld. En route, the battlegroup encountered several patrols heading toward our space. They were easily destroyed by the frigate FF Sword, being careful to hide the rest of the battlegroup. In the last system before the enemy's, a hidden picket activated its actives and was able to see the entirety of the battlegroup. It was annihilated with a small salvo of ASMs. Shortly after transit, after jump blindness wore off, we detected the whole enemy fleet, half of which was on an intercept course for us. This will be a drawn out battle which we will emerge victorious.

Edit; I believe I have now encountered an enemy carrier group. They have 2 50k ton designs (largest warships I've seen from them so far have been 20k and 30k, with most being 10k) being escorted by tons of fighters up front, Over 20 so far, but they have only just been detected. I have no doubt that my secondary batteries can take care of the group while my missiles go for the presumed carriers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 10, 2016, 01:52:18 PM
First Battle of Neptune - UN forces retreated in good order, but 6 Laser frigates were lost to tThe Swarm when they got too close.

Second battle of Neptune was in the moons of Neptune, when the combined UN force was able to win.   Combined volleys of 32 missiles meant that 20 was making though, and after the queen died, I had a tense combat as I had 20 FACs chase down my fleet and the anti-missile ships flinging everything they had at them before they ended up in meson range.   Still, feels good to defeat that swarm of first meeting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 10, 2016, 04:26:28 PM
Assembling the fleet for a crusade through systems unknown to find and neutralise the source of the alien threat to Sol.
Fleet consists of carriers, a collier and laser pd escorts. Still need a bit of last-minute recon fighter manufacturing and some further fleet organisation before I'm ready to proceed though.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 13, 2016, 08:45:12 AM
I learned that leaving two taskgroups both with commands to join each other is not a good thing.

lost 1 Battleship, 10 cruisers, and 12 frigates to that move. 

 :-X :-X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on February 13, 2016, 11:17:31 AM
I learned that leaving two taskgroups both with commands to join each other is not a good thing.

lost 1 Battleship, 10 cruisers, and 12 frigates to that move. 

 :-X :-X

It think that (along with docking a loaded carrier) is one of that situations where you can break out the SM for self-interested purposes and still go to wargamer heaven.



I started a 7.10 game and with how things worked out, never got around to designing Trans-Newtonian ground units beyond Construction Battalions. It's actually turned out surprisingly not-exactly-dysfunctional. Large and slow transports, sure, but with a high-enough base Ground Unit Strength, most of my existing military was just barely able to occupy a non-TN NPC in a very long campaign. I started building PDCs well before the fighting actually got past 1.5-1 odds.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 14, 2016, 02:24:04 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/yZwBJVx.png)

The Sarasota Imperium REALLY liked fighters.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 14, 2016, 09:44:22 AM
Quote
The Sarasota Imperium REALLY liked fighters.

Jesus that had to be a slog.....

Meanwhile in my game :
My most prime tourist attraction and its visitors -
(http://i.imgur.com/bo9992E.jpg)

And lesson for today - Remember kids, never bring 1st gen experimental missiles ( that were designed to combat low tech human ships and PDC's ) to a real gunfight ( in that case - avenging destroyed exploration ship )... God bless those secondary explosions because i emptied 69 % of my magazines and frakker still did not lose atmo - 6 missiles per ships salvo with 14 ships firing and ~29 % chance to hit.

(http://i.imgur.com/Atbo1Cp.jpg)

EDIT: Yep, my ships are inadequate AF - on my way home i got jumped by an unknown ( i suspect 1 ) comrade of Belial launching salvos from well beyond my detection range. USS North Carolina and HMS Victorious got destroyed, USS Lexington had to be abandoned becasue it lost 9 out of 10 engines.
FRN Bordeaux, HMS Longsword and ORP Blyskawica are heavily damaged and limping to the Sol JP ( Longsword lost it CO ) and USS Idaho and Alabama are damaged by they manage to keep speed with the rest of the retreating Maritime Group 3.
Only thing that had saved my skin is using those experimental missiles in the defensive mode - they had attrocious hit rate but they thinned the herd a little.

I hope that unseen enemy wont reload and come around for seconds because i have no ammo left and im more than 12 days from the JP and rescue..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jem on February 14, 2016, 03:10:26 PM
Jumped into npr enemy home system filled with 1000+ ships. And I have good sensor tech. Each turn takes forever. Each enemy missile salvo is 900+ missiles going at 23+k. Worst of all, those missiles have sensors that for some unknown reason forces the game into 5 sec tics. End result: Last 40 minutes in game has taken all of sunday.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 14, 2016, 03:18:23 PM
Quote from: jem link=topic=3808.  msg86506#msg86506 date=1455484226
Jumped into npr enemy home system filled with 1000+ ships.   And I have good sensor tech.   Each turn takes forever.   Each enemy missile salvo is 900+ missiles going at 23+k.   Worst of all, those missiles have sensors that for some unknown reason forces the game into 5 sec tics.   End result: Last 40 minutes in game has taken all of sunday. 

Can always enable Spacemaster and go space/time bubble until the fight is over.  That will at least quicken up the calculations.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jem on February 14, 2016, 05:08:56 PM
Can always enable Spacemaster and go space/time bubble until the fight is over.  That will at least quicken up the calculations.

Very much so. STB will limit the calculations down to only one system. Sadly that system contains 1000+ ships............................................ That time above? That is with STB ON.........................
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 14, 2016, 10:29:01 PM
Wow that was close....

  Had a wormhole spawn in Sirius, decided it might be worth the risk to try and deploy 5 deep space tracking stations.  Stations were deployed and civilian shipping just managed to escape the system as badness spawned.  Can see wormhole and all JPs.   8)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 15, 2016, 07:49:43 AM
The Sarasota Imperium REALLY liked fighters.
I feel for you man.
Not seen; the nearby systems with almost as many wrecks as this one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on February 15, 2016, 10:45:13 AM
Wow that was close....

  Had a wormhole spawn in Sirius, decided it might be worth the risk to try and deploy 5 deep space tracking stations.  Stations were deployed and civilian shipping just managed to escape the system as badness spawned.  Can see wormhole and all JPs.   8)

Good job!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 15, 2016, 10:48:27 AM
Well.  I had my very first contact with the big, bad spoilers.  My Navy was dominant against the "lesser" spoils and NPRs, so I was fairly confident. . .

Now two strike groups are floating wreckage. . . 20 ships destroyed.

Time to get to R&D once more. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on February 15, 2016, 11:55:23 AM
Well.  I had my very first contact with the big, bad spoilers.  My Navy was dominant against the "lesser" spoils and NPRs, so I was fairly confident. . .

Now two strike groups are floating wreckage. . . 20 ships destroyed.

Time to get to R&D once more. . .

Link to Spoiler sub-forum for response.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8346.0 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8346.0)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 15, 2016, 01:38:59 PM
So i was playing Aurora while listening some music from YT playlist...

Discovered THREE alien races on one planet, each of them equal or more powerfull than me going by the EM/TH signatures of the population ...
Two of them turned hostile and destroyed ~75-80 % of Maritime Group 3 sent on a peaceful envoy ( 14 ships out of 18 ship group )...
HMAS Sydney
HMS Wellington
JDFS Kissaki
KMS Bismarck
USS North Carolina ( again )
HMS Victorious ( again )
USS Lexington ( again )
USS Idaho
ORP Blyskawica
USS Alabama
USS Tacoma
FRN Bordeaux
HMS Longsword
ORP Grom


Circa 1000 souls perish in the atomic fire ..
I am completely outclassed and outgunned...

And then this smeg starts playing ..

COME GET SOME YOU frakkING ROACHES !!!! SEMPER HUMANIS MOTHERfrakkER !!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 15, 2016, 04:27:07 PM
Welp.    .    .    .    seems like one of my supposed "friendly neighbours" has some plans.    .    .    I wonder if they're nice.    .    .    since they're just one jump out from one of my main colonies.   

(http://hxxp: hxxp: hxxp: hxxp: i.    imgur.    com/yZMV2Ev.    jpg)

Why's the picture not showing? There it is.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 15, 2016, 07:25:53 PM
It think that (along with docking a loaded carrier) is one of that situations where you can break out the SM for self-interested purposes and still go to wargamer heaven.


Still not sure how to use SM to spawn ships - And not used carriers but I will remember not to dock a loaded carrier  ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 15, 2016, 08:59:14 PM
Spacemaster menu -> Fast OB Creation
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on February 15, 2016, 09:16:32 PM
Yeah, don't think of Spacemaster Mode as cheating either.  You can use it to set up scenarios to play out as well as correct computer user errors that will occur.  Aurora is a complicated program and mistakes that are extraneous to the scenario happen all the time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 16, 2016, 03:22:42 AM
Well, finally assembled the battle fleet and began my campaign against the alien menace... just in time to catch the latest batch of 5 second increments. Ah well, gotta just soldier on with auto-turns enabled for the next couple hours.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 16, 2016, 04:03:27 AM
Started a new game. Second jump point exploration got popped. There was a serious Precursor infestation next door - fourteen ships including two 25,450 tonners, magnetic fusion, compressed carbon armor, 362m km missiles with size 16 warheads. I didn't have anything but some patrol ships and a squadron of fairly slow beam fighters. It took me nearly two years to build a respectable MPD fleet of four 24kt jump cruisers and eight 8kt destroyers. The fleet went in slow and quiet and jumped four destroyers not far from the jump point. Destroyed two with missiles, crippled the wounded survivors with beam fighters. I was forced to capture them with mobile infantry battalions since I didn't have marines yet for the drop modules I've taken to carrying in my cruisers for these kind of opportunities. They didn't have enough MSP to repair their engines! Then I realized they're 8500 tons and my carriers had 9000 tons of hangar space. I didn't want to press my luck so I grabbed them and ran to the jump point. Minor damage in the second battle and I didn't capture any more ships - the beam fighters were a little overzealous when they cut off the missile ships on their way to a cache on the first Venus-like planet of the system. They were also a little overzealous when they strafed ground forces on the planet's moon, but the planet had over 8000 very nasty missiles stockpiled and the second planet had bases guarding a deserted intact city, hopefully with a high tech level. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 16, 2016, 06:44:33 AM
    Critical shortages of corundium and mercassium, there just isnt much in the Sol system.  Refitting frigate fleet to Ion engines, and other improvements.  Sensors have spotted Invader survey craft in Human space.  Human fighters and missile-bombers have managed to keep Invader snooping to a minimum in the Sol system.  Sensor buoys on every known JP, and listening posts in the earth sector, are trying to keep track of Invader movements. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DattMuffinMan on February 16, 2016, 08:52:41 AM
I don't know how I did it but I survived the start game in an 152 billion km diameter system.    I was very nearly out of fuel before the mining ships were just out the gate to start mining that precious Sorium located on the Gas giant in the inner system.    The asteroids are barren but luckily the moons and the 2 other terrestrials are gold mines of ore.   

However the future is ominous as two jump gates are siting waiting to be explored and two other jump points.    Right now in particular, my favorite scientist Norman Bach is nearing the completion of his Magnum Opus, an breakthrough into Exotic Antimatter energy technology(Totally going to create a new award in his name!).    Unfortanately though, I've had to saddle him with alot of Intertial Fusion engines that will be implemented in the new fleet.   

Fingers crossed I don't encounter any baddies in the first systems! My civilian infrastructure is severally hampered by the monolithic distances I have to travel and I only have about 3 million pop on the closest terrestrial to my homeworld, and it hasn't even begun terraforming.    XD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 16, 2016, 10:53:24 AM
Well, I've turned all those contact markers from earlier into wrecks.   An absolute staggering amount of missiles  And I think it's safe to assume that the "Suva Duchy" are now short a navy.    ;D

1043700 combined tons of enemy ships destroyed in a single battle.    At the expense of just under 9000 missiles (both offense and defense) and the loss of three heavy cruisers and a six-pack of FACs.   

Whew.    Now on to missile production, Mars is gonna be busy. 

I've already recovered armor tech 2 levels above my own and a lot of geo/grav survey data just from the ~2000 enemy POWs who are now camping out on the flight decks of my carriers until they arrive at Earth.  Hoping for more stuff from Salvage, gonna be busy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on February 16, 2016, 11:02:26 AM
At the expense of just under 9000 missiles (both offense and defense) and the loss of three heavy cruisers and a six-pack of FACs.

In my recent battles I have used some thirty thousand missiles, both offensive and defensive. On one side. The other side used some ten thousand shipkillers and I honestly don't know how many anti-missiles, but several thousand at least. I wonder, has anyone here ever fought a battle where over a hundred thousand missiles have been expended?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 16, 2016, 11:27:07 AM
I don't know how I did it but I survived the start game in an 152 billion km diameter system.    SNAP.

Care to share a save ??

Quote
In my recent battles I have used some thirty thousand missiles, both offensive and defensive. On one side. The other side used some ten thousand shipkillers and I honestly don't know how many anti-missiles, but several thousand at least. I wonder, has anyone here ever fought a battle where over a hundred thousand missiles have been expended?
Thats some serious Honor Harrington smeg right there ...
I once had a "battle" where i used multiple Interplanetary MIRV's. 15 000 ground bursts explosions reduced 500m civilization to rubble in seconds and made the planet totally uninhabitable ( IIRC - 150 % industry and -200 Celcius average temp ).

In my game :

NATO overrun both Soviets and Pan Asian Trade Coalition.
Its goal : to unite humanity to face the Amol Hegemony, aliens that have destroyed so much of Maritime Group 3...
Now im teching like crazy and building new stuff, while terraforming Europa and one other planet in Honolulu system. And i also have a beach planet/tourist resort in the Boston system - colony cost 0 planet with average temp 22C and liquid hydrosphere but not a ton of TN mineral in the whole system..

Next step : proper fleet and little trip to the homeworld of Amol Hegemony for good old fashioned xeno-ass kicking ! :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on February 16, 2016, 12:33:48 PM
Thats some serious Honor Harrington smeg right there ...
I once had a "battle" where i used multiple Interplanetary MIRV's. 15 000 ground bursts explosions reduced 500m civilization to rubble in seconds and made the planet totally uninhabitable ( IIRC - 150 % industry and -200 Celcius average temp ).

My biggest salvo so far was around sixty five hundred shipkillers fired at once so not even close to the honorverse, but I hope to up it in the future, as my campaign is still ongoing and increasing in scope.
As for the bombardment I unfortunately no longer have the screenshot but I once nuked a planet so hard the temperature fell below absolute zero. Yes, the Aurora has a bug where you can nuke or terraform planet so hard it breaks the known laws of physics.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 16, 2016, 01:07:34 PM
My biggest salvo so far was around sixty five hundred shipkillers fired at once so not even close to the honorverse, but I hope to up it in the future, as my campaign is still ongoing and increasing in scope.
As for the bombardment I unfortunately no longer have the screenshot but I once nuked a planet so hard the temperature fell below absolute zero. Yes, the Aurora has a bug where you can nuke or terraform planet so hard it breaks the known laws of physics.

I remember someone posting here, an NPR shooting at him with 4k missiles per salvo ...

As for terraforming below absolute zero - IIRC its because there is no cap for the anti-greenhouse gas :P
PUN INCOMING : that's cold man... *ba dum tss*
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 16, 2016, 07:33:06 PM
Carnage;

watching a 16,000T warship plummet through the atmosphere and destroy a sensor base.  Then moments later watch a 2nd one destroy a fighter base. These 2 ships had at least 25 PD weapons each, shot down 97% of my ASMs.  3-39000T ships now freely roam Sol, after obliterating everything.  [Energy weapon Impact:  Strength 58-63 Detected] from 773,900km is not something you want to see.  Each ship can fire 11 bolts.  Dozens of ASM impacts barely slowed them down.

I love the Invaders  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 17, 2016, 01:00:35 PM
Breaking news - civilians are dumb as bricks .. Yeah Ahmed, trying to trade with one empire when another, bigger and hostile from the start is not even in the same system but on the same planet, was a frakking terriffic idea. You will make smegload of bucks in no time.

Only positive side of that is that before they die they will provide some actual intel from the system - they for example detected almost 80 fighters.. My own carrier project just got some serious funding.

P.s. I was just granted trade access by the Unknown Empire .. Should i be scared ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DattMuffinMan on February 17, 2016, 11:11:55 PM
Quote from: Lossmar link=topic=3808.  msg86719#msg86719 date=1455735635
P.  s.   I was just granted trade access by the Unknown Empire .  .   Should i be scared ?

Nah, they just want all your Nuka Cola.   

On my end of the universe I just started exploring the Jump gates as my Navy is only about 1 year from completion.   All I have for now as an 50k ton Escort carrier sitting in orbit of my HW. 

The first system was disappointing.   Only an single dwarf planet, lets hope there's more jumpoints from here though. 

The second system was, alot more interesting.   It is vastly smaller compared to the distance my HW has to deal with AND, to top off the icing on the cake there are two Terrestrials with under 3.  00 cost.   The most habitable being a cost of 1.  50. 

The problem is though there is a wreck around that very planet, not to mention my turn intervals slowed probably due to their being another fleet in the system.   Precursors? The Swarm? Maybe even another Alien race? I don't know for sure.   But I think it would be wise to pull back station my Escort carrier on that Jump point and wait until I have an real Naval Task force put together before I start poking at dead things with a stick. 

Edit: Yep Aliens, I encountered them just before I pulled out.  Boy oh boy oh boy. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DattMuffinMan on February 18, 2016, 11:02:26 AM
Update: Alright this didn't go well, one of my surveyor ships bumped into their ships and got shot down in the process sparking hostility right away Blucher 002, all 15 surviving crew were stranded and left to die because I had no offensive capable ships and couldn't risk my only CVE.   But my first generation navy nears completion a year after contact.   I create the 2nd Himmelschutzen Fuhrung aboard the CC Damerung Star headed by Kommodore Bianka Woldenberg and sigh with relief as I can begin training excercises. 

However, a day later on July the 13th 30575 5 Bogeys all in the 9000 ton range are picked up as thermal signatures.   I rub my hands together as my 80k+ warmachines armed with countless ASM's point their merciless launch tubes in their direction. 

Unfortunately though these guys must have cloaks because they are well within the Kill zone of 859m Km res50 Sensors/missiles.   This might take awhile to resolve, dammit I knew I should've created an IR ASM.   If they get too close intelligence tells me my Railguns will out range theirs by over 400k km.   So thats nice.   But if they have anything more serous than that and have super lasers up their sleeve things will get.  .  .   interesting. 

PS: Nope not cloaking, its ECM.  Damnit, its the one thing I forgot on my designs(And I can't simply refit Q_Q), an ECCM for each launch tube.  My Firing Range is currently almost cut in half.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on February 22, 2016, 04:01:36 PM
I've liberated 50 POWs. Sort of. I am going to take the liberty of going through my Officer list and giving assignments to all the "Location: Unknown" ones (happens to them after capture).

I didn't quite kill a 100 million aliens for each one, but it's in that order of magnitude.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 23, 2016, 04:33:19 PM
My empire just located one of the largest assets we could have ever have found. I'm thinking it'll last us a good few centuries, at least.
(http://i.imgur.com/fBuClyu.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: misora on February 25, 2016, 08:41:44 PM
My empire just located one of the largest assets we could have ever have found. I'm thinking it'll last us a good few centuries, at least.
(http://i.imgur.com/fBuClyu.png)

Is that really, just one ton of mercassium?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on February 25, 2016, 08:51:19 PM
It's whats needed to build really large Goats I imagine
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sematary on February 25, 2016, 10:38:09 PM
After two years the Sorium and Fuel Crisis of 2050 is lessening with the United States out of it and the Republic of India less than a year from closing the gap. China still has some ways to go. While the Empire of Japan, Federal Republic of Germany, and Orthdox Kingdom of Russia are still deep in the grips of the crisis.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 04:32:14 AM
And this, dear kids, is the reason why you never build 24 missile bases with 30 launchers each, firing str-36 Trans-Newtonian ICBM's...

I've rendered Earth uninhabitable in 5 seconds ... okay maybe in 5 minutes but only because of the slow reload time of my launchers. But i was kinda frakked already after the first salvo.
The fact that i was the one attacked is kinda moot at this point ....

So can someone tell me how long will it take for that much dust to fade away ??
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 26, 2016, 04:40:01 AM
Ouch, good luck recovering from that...
Still trying to track down the home system of those slippery aliens; they stopped sending in ships after I mobilised the fleet so I can't exactly follow them back to the source anymore. Well, I set up a network of sensor buoys on every jump point for the next 3 or so systems out from Sol in the direction they came from, so the moment they send any further ships I can pinpoint their point of origin.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 04:47:00 AM
Ouch, good luck recovering from that...

I wont. By the January 2115 the Earth population has fallen to 39 milion people. :P And 0% in the manufacturing sector. Planet suitability have fallen from 14.1813 to 14.0239 ... so at that rate, Earth will become habitable again in what ? Early 23rd century ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 26, 2016, 04:52:47 AM
Now if only someone in a position of power had the foresight to get some colonies going before having a nuclear exchange on Earth  ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 04:59:44 AM
Now if only someone in a position of power had the foresight to get some colonies going before having a nuclear exchange on Earth  ::)

Kinda hard to do that in 10 years, when starting as a 500m quasi conventional ( SM-ed base TN tech, 500 factories + 500 auto-mines but nothing else )  empire against 3 other TN empires  ..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 26, 2016, 05:04:30 AM
Fair enough, I usually stay Earthbound for a fair time even when I'm the only empire in Sol so I should probably keep my mouth shut on this point.  :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 26, 2016, 06:09:58 AM
Ouch, good luck recovering from that...
Still trying to track down the home system of those slippery aliens; they stopped sending in ships after I mobilised the fleet so I can't exactly follow them back to the source anymore. Well, I set up a network of sensor buoys on every jump point for the next 3 or so systems out from Sol in the direction they came from, so the moment they send any further ships I can pinpoint their point of origin.
if you wish to be truely paranoid, you could start re-grav survey your systems to check for dormant jp :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 06:25:34 AM
if you wish to be truely paranoid, you could start re-grav survey your systems to check for dormant jp :)
Will that even work ?


BTW: In 2251 Earth suitability finally returned to normal... but in 2267 radiation level is still as high as 21k ( at least dust have cleared ) and its estimated that it will take more than two centuries before it will drop to 0.

Wouldn't it be nice if underground infrastructure provided some shelter from radiation ? After all, Vaults in Fallout did :P
In the hindsight i can say - i screwed when i attacked USAN and PATC ... Initial salvos against Caliphate ( who attacked me ) only upped the Earth suitability to 4 point something and i could easily survived that..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 26, 2016, 06:45:11 AM
Speaking of Earth disasters, solar warming has finally started driving Earth outside the habilitabiity zone. I spent 30 years preparing, but I still don't feel prepared...  Not nearly enough people have been evacuated to other solar systems (~200 million with ~900 million still on earth.)

Quote
Will that even work ?
Yes, there's a 'No JP Survey' button in the f9 screen that will reset the survey points so you can survey the system again. It won't destroy your knowledge of the existing JPs, just set the system to be resurveyable
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 07:01:39 AM
Speaking of Earth disasters, solar warming has finally started driving Earth outside the habilitabiity zone. I spent 30 years preparing, but I still don't feel prepared...  Not nearly enough people have been evacuated to other solar systems (~200 million with ~900 million still on earth.)
Yes, there's a 'No JP Survey' button in the f9 screen that will reset the survey points so you can survey the system again. It won't destroy your knowledge of the existing JPs, just set the system to be resurveyable
Dormant JP can be detected by another survey ??
I was under the impression that like in Starfire, they can only be discovered by entering them from the open side ..

BTW : i think i have to play with sun warming up  ??? ???
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 26, 2016, 07:05:01 AM
You can detect them by survey, correct. There's no 'closed' JPs like Starfire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 07:43:47 AM
You can detect them by survey, correct. There's no 'closed' JPs like Starfire.

So you basically telling me that i have been playing Aurora all those years with my pants dropped and my butt out in the open ??  :-X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on February 26, 2016, 07:56:49 AM
You can detect them by survey, correct. There's no 'closed' JPs like Starfire.

That's the short answer. The long answer (coming from my memory) is that when you enter an unexplored jump point the game rolls a dice to see where it leads. If it leads to a known system it looks for unused (unexplored) jump points. If there are none, a new jump point is created in a given system. Once that happens the new jump points works exactly like all other ones and can be discovered by observing transit, spotting jump gate with an active sensor or by performing another survey in a system.

As an example, you start in Sol and of course the first thing you do is to explore all the existing jump points. That means if you are then in say, Lalande 21185 and explore a new jump point that is supposed to lead to Sol there are no jump points to connect to. So the game creates a brand new, and completely normal jump point in the Sol system.

Edit: The reason they are called 'dormant' jump points is that Steve needed to find an explanation for the mechanic for his stories.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 26, 2016, 03:30:09 PM
Now thats what i call proper Metal Storm :D  8)

"When in doubt - add some more railgun armed OWP"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on February 26, 2016, 04:15:24 PM
Might have finally picked up the trail of those pesky aliens - just explored a JP which led to a system I learned about through prisoner interrogations, so I'm guessing I must be in the neighbourhood of their home system now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mor on February 26, 2016, 08:47:41 PM
Dormant JP can be detected by another survey ??
I was under the impression that like in Starfire, they can only be discovered by entering them from the open side ..

Both can be said to be true. Closed JP can only be discovered by entering them from the open side, at which point they become dormant and can be discovered by another survey. Although, technically it doesn't work that way, who cares its much better than the bland mechanical explanation. See also:
http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Jump_point#Dormant Points
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 27, 2016, 05:23:59 PM
Goddamned bugs just never run out of ammo and their battleships just tank damage...

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 27, 2016, 06:18:31 PM
Aw jeez, that looks stressful! D:
I am meanwhile, if a bit nervous, actually managing to get the upper hand against some hostile aliens.
(http://i.imgur.com/h2Nbf3M.png)
Their mesons are terrifying, but this is my second time touching this system, the first time being when my survey ships got shot down.
This will have to stand as my first actual legitimate engagement in the game, so it's not going terribly, I guess. I am down two ships now, though. One somehow was missing a fire control, so when they were swarming in I pitched it out as a decoy (it died) to get some more salvos in. Once the decoy died, they zoomed in and knocked a fire control off of different ship, so I pitched that one out. It's currently tanking damage while I continue to retreat and fire with the rest of the task group. I'm down to 6 missile armed Destroyers.


Update: Well, I had some kind of victory in my grasp for a bit. But then I decided to stick around to help damage control the last remaining ship. Turns out that was a mistake. Reinforcements came, the TG stood no chance.
Damn, that is... demoralizing. I think I'll take a break from aurora.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 28, 2016, 12:26:18 AM
Nothing a few AMM escorts won't fix.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on February 28, 2016, 01:16:15 AM
Nothing a few AMM escorts won't fix.

Indeed....and they did fix it...for a while....until they ran out of ammo.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: drejr on February 28, 2016, 02:02:31 AM
Your situation is the complete opposite of iceball3's. You need the largest warheads you can get for shock damage. Low-tech NPR missile ships with giant magazines tend to go up like Roman candles.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cassaralla on February 28, 2016, 09:25:04 AM
The American Terran Union is now suffering a prolonged Gallicite crash.  Congress has cancelled the Saratoga's entire strikegroup and the latest 4 Spruance Flight II destroyer escorts to commission have no missiles for their magazines so have become nothing more than maintenance drains.  :(  I've paused construction of the rest of the build queue for now.

Shortage compounded by the fact there is no Gallicite at more than 0.2 accessibility within 5 jumps of Sol.  I have 40 freighters loaded with automated mines waiting for the last jump gate in a chain to finish building so I can start on the 6 million tonnes of 0.6 accessibility Gallicite on Wake Island.  I just hope I don't get embroiled in a shooting war before that new mining colony is up to speed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: db48x on February 28, 2016, 10:40:57 AM
3rd December 2078 19:12:31,Luytens Star,A deposit of 15 288 100 tons of Mercassium (Accessibility 0.1) has been found on Luytens Star-A II by the Alfie Stewart Geology Team

yay
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 28, 2016, 11:41:57 AM
Status update: Had a feeling at being at the top of the world after beating out that 30 deep task group. I was ready to pull out a retreat, but decided to wait for one of my ships to do damage control on it's engines and fuel so we could recover it.

Big mistake.

They got reinforcements, first, a 60,000 ton ship with 600 shields that recover at 2 per second.
What's left of my task group can deal 240 damage every salvo, and fires once every 150 seconds.
Looks like this will not work.
I begin to pull back, but it's too late. Even though the big ship is slow enough to escape, the reinforcements, even more fighters, were not survivable. Mainly because they closed combat distance almost immediately due to me trying to increment to escape.
So that's my entire first missile task group, destroyed, and I lack the sort of shuttles needed to clutch-rescue them. Damn.
Spent years fully task training them too.



Woosh.
It's going to be hard to keep pressing on with my campaign, but, i guess, what do I expect? This is my first engagement in the entire game, guess I should learn from my mistakes.
Dang, though, these ships would have been a lot less painful to take on with 1 less armor layer.

Hrmmm, I think my next fleet order of battle is going to use larger missile ships, with less size reduced launchers for a faster launch cycle, and bigger active sensors. And a whole lotta colliers.

(http://i.imgur.com/hK0adzV.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 28, 2016, 09:29:51 PM
  In the year 2100 Humanity decided to explore and expand into the far reaches of space.  Over the years human survey ships documented the Sol system and 6 surrounding systems.  Scientists scoured the survey data, looking for the choicest locations to establish colonies.  Human colonies were established on Luna, Mars, and several other locations in Sol, and 1 colony on the distant world of Blue Jay Prime. 

  One day in the year 2150, a stable wormhole appeared in a nearby system.  Sensors soon picked up the thermal emissions of 2 alien craft.  Diplomats were sent to establish contact, but were never heard from again.  Humanity's first contact is hostile.  A blockade was established around the hostile jump point.  2 Alien survey craft were soon destroyed by the blockade, 2 more entered Sol from other points and were tracked down and destroyed.  2 others escaped and have not been seen since.  Human military and political leaders were pleased, the Aliens were not....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 28, 2016, 10:49:08 PM
  Uridium production has been a problem for military planners.  Large supplys on Luna and Mars, but very poor accessibility (0.1).  Terra-forming of Luna is complete, and Mars is nearly complete; 1.6 B people on Earth, and 250 m on Luna and Mars.  6-8000T ASM Frigates, 6-AMM Frigates, and 6-PD Frigates have been converted from Ion drive to magneto-plasma drives.  6-18000T ASM Destroyers, 6-AMM, and 6-PD Destroyers will soon be converted to M-P drives.  1 small aircraft carrier built, and 40 fighter-bombers have been trained.  Planetary defense bases are being built as resources are made available.  The stable wormhole has disappeared. Deep space tracking stations have been placed in all known systems, passive sensor buoys been placed on all known jump points, and ASM mines on all jump points in the Sol System.


  The alien invasion began in 2155.  A gathering of large alien craft were 1st detected in the Justice system.  1-19400T Cardan ASM Destroyer and 1-19400T KDY Laser destroyer jumped into Sol.  20-ASM from the mine field struck the Cardan but failed to slow it.  M-P frigate TG1 was dispatched to intercept (TG 2 was in dock undergoing conversions), the much slower ion destroyer fleet was directed to blockade the jump point.  ASMs quickly decimated a dozen civilian sorium harvesters at Saturn, and dozens of other civilian craft were also destroyed in the region.  Frigate TG 1 intercepted the fleet at Saturn.  The invasion fleet was slightly faster and soon overran and destroyed Frigate TG 1, but not before both alien craft were heavily damaged.  The Alien TG continued its approach to earth, continuing its destruction of civilian shipping.  Fighter-bombers and ground based ASMs soon finished the 2 attackers.

  Mistakes were made; sending the destroyer group to the jump point.  They may have been better following up behind the Frigate TG.  Despite the heavy loss of life, Human military and polical leaders were happy, the aliens were not....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: formicae on February 29, 2016, 07:55:32 AM
33 years after humanity first began exploring the stars, we've finally found a route to Alpha Centauri.  10 jumps and 30 terameters from Sol, and 15 jumps and 45 terameters from Proxima.  At least even that's closer than doing it the hard way.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 29, 2016, 11:13:08 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/ShAxUrX.png)
Rest in peace.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 29, 2016, 11:44:13 AM
Said screw it, so I started a new game in v7.1. Got bored with my End game v6.5 (7.0) after I annihilated 2 empires and spanked the invaders. Starting off random tech assignment game me ion drive tech, somewhat far in jump drive tech, and a few levels in most of the Missiles/kinetic branch. What I think I want to do this game is go down a somewhat niche doctrine. I will use missiles, plasma, particle, and rail as my main weapons, CIWS (gauss) and light rails as my PD, and I think I will try out the HPMs as a special weapon on some ships.

So far, a few years in, I have geo and grav survey ships designed and building (from a template design to get them on one yard), a freighter mostly designed with the yard about to tool for it (fiddling with numbers as I have to get them rounded), and military grade engines have finished researching (FC, mil-grade sensors, weapons themselves, and missiles have yet to be designed).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on February 29, 2016, 08:23:37 PM
33 years after humanity first began exploring the stars, we've finally found a route to Alpha Centauri.  10 jumps and 30 terameters from Sol, and 15 jumps and 45 terameters from Proxima.  At least even that's closer than doing it the hard way.

41 years after we started planning to explore the stars, and we just finally got a map of Alpha Centauri off the third alien empire we're laying into. No idea how to get there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 29, 2016, 09:16:40 PM
  2160 uridum shortages have limited upgrades and new facilities since the last battle.  A new, much larger Alien fleet appears in the Byrd system.  Invader 3-38750T Eclipse [50-Lasers] and 3-19400T Carillion [ASM Ship] class ships are making their way to Sol. 
Off-Topic: show
Based on other encounters i had a pretty good idea what these were.
  Soon after, massive numbers of missiles were detected inbound towards Earth and the mining colony on Mercury.  Military leadership decided to leave the frigate and destroyer fleets in earth orbit to support Earths defenses, fighter-bombers were dispatched. Ground and Ship based AMMs and point defenses performed well against the higher tech weapons, but were soon overwhelmed by the vast numbers.  I estimate 1600 size 4 ASM/Anti-planet missiles were fired at Earth and surrounding ships, and 4,000 size 1 missiles fired at Mercury.     Both sides took heavy damage, ground based ASMs were useless against the beam ships, but the fighter-bombers were very successful in destroying the 3-carrillion ships and 1-Eclipse.  Long load times eventually grounded the bombers.  The remaining 2 beam ships moved into range, (just outside my gun range of course.  ::) ) and began to fire upon my sensor bases.  At this point ground based ASMs became effective, and slowly were able to destroy the final 2 ships.

  Final tally of the 2nd battle, 10 Terra-form platforms destroyed [ouch], 1 large freighter, 1 tanker, 6-fighter bombers, and numerous civilian ships were also destroyed or damaged.  2 ground based sensor PDCs, 1 fighter base pdc were destroyed, 1-ASM PDC heavily damaged.  The mining colony on Mercury was wiped out, radiation and dust levels near 15,000.  On Earth 8 research facilities were destroyed  :-X and several other facilities, 200 million dead, radiation and dust levels near 2,000.  Temperature on Earth has fallen -21.5C.  Recovery is going to be a long time.

  Humanity survived another battle, but critical AMMs and ASM need replaced, ships and facilities to repair and replace.

 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on February 29, 2016, 10:11:02 PM
2162

  Salvage and rescue operations completed.  Scientists will be spending years going over the vast technologies recovered.  Rioting from food shortages have kept ground troops on Earth busy.  Ground based facility's and defenses have been replaced and improved, but shortages in uridium continue.

  Again alien ships are detected in the Justice system, 1-19400T MU [sensor ship], 4-38800T Assassin class[possibly a AMM/beam hybrid?], and 2-38800 Gladiators [AMM or beam?]   .  The Mu was the first to enter Sol, and was heavily damaged by ASM mines, but continued on its was towards Earth.  The remaining ships entered sol, and quickly started to launch missiles.  Their target this time was the colony on Mars, which unfortunately was near the jump point.  The aliens may have changed tactics, as hundreds of size 1 [80000 km/sec] missiles were detected, but no ASMs.  Fighter-bombers were dispatched and soon destroyed the Mu, but they couldn't save the overwhelmed Martian colony.  Destroyer TG 1 was dispatched to intercept the fleet and with fighter-bomber support managed to destroy 2-assassins, and heavily damage the other 4 ships before returning to Earth orbit for resupply.  The alien craft soon made it into earths orbit, (this time in my planetary gun range).  After fierce fighting, all alien craft were destroyed.  1 Assassin class managed to suicide into a destroyer, with both ships destroyed.  Damage on earth was limited to several PDCs, but none were destroyed this time.

  250 million killed and 500 mines destroyed on Mars.  Mars was Earths primary Uridium and Gallicite supplier, this is a critical loss.  It may take decades to recover.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on February 29, 2016, 11:33:34 PM
  2160 uridum shortages have limited upgrades and new facilities since the last battle.  A new, much larger Alien fleet appears in the Byrd system.  Invader 3-38750T Eclipse [50-Lasers] and 3-19400T Carillion [ASM Ship] class ships are making their way to Sol. 
Off-Topic: show
Based on other encounters i had a pretty good idea what these were.
  Soon after, massive numbers of missiles were detected inbound towards Earth and the mining colony on Mercury.  Military leadership decided to leave the frigate and destroyer fleets in earth orbit to support Earths defenses, fighter-bombers were dispatched. Ground and Ship based AMMs and point defenses performed well against the higher tech weapons, but were soon overwhelmed by the vast numbers.  I estimate 1600 size 4 ASM/Anti-planet missiles were fired at Earth and surrounding ships, and 4,000 size 1 missiles fired at Mercury.     Both sides took heavy damage, ground based ASMs were useless against the beam ships, but the fighter-bombers were very successful in destroying the 3-carrillion ships and 1-Eclipse.  Long load times eventually grounded the bombers.  The remaining 2 beam ships moved into range, (just outside my gun range of course.  ::) ) and began to fire upon my sensor bases.  At this point ground based ASMs became effective, and slowly were able to destroy the final 2 ships.

  Final tally of the 2nd battle, 10 Terra-form platforms destroyed [ouch], 1 large freighter, 1 tanker, 6-fighter bombers, and numerous civilian ships were also destroyed or damaged.  2 ground based sensor PDCs, 1 fighter base pdc were destroyed, 1-ASM PDC heavily damaged.  The mining colony on Mercury was wiped out, radiation and dust levels near 15,000.  On Earth 8 research facilities were destroyed  :-X and several other facilities, 200 million dead, radiation and dust levels near 2,000.  Temperature on Earth has fallen -21.5C.  Recovery is going to be a long time.

  Humanity survived another battle, but critical AMMs and ASM need replaced, ships and facilities to repair and replace.

 
Woosh, what a close call! You might want to do something like fast track a bunch of infrastructure construction on earth, to reduce the population loss incurred.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 01, 2016, 05:46:33 AM
Planet suitability is still 0.000, so infrastructure wont help.  Only time will help.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 03, 2016, 08:03:44 AM
One of the first systems to be explored seems to have JGs on all of its points, including the one leading to Sol... Good thing my first military ship is mostly designed, the only thing its waiting on is the beam (main and PD) and missile FCs and missile defense sensor. The bad news, my only S&FC researcher can only use 5 labs and has a 20% bonus... so the sensors research at one per year and the FCs at one every ~6 months. Good thing I have a decent Construction researcher researching research rate to speed him up a bit (done in a few months).
Edit; and the last of Sol's JPs led to a system where almost immediately launched micro increments, got my ship out and they immediately stopped... That is two sides where I may face trouble.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 03, 2016, 12:22:57 PM
The Terran Kingdom is at war, for the first time ever the Kingdom have been attacked by a dirt ball living species, one exploring cruiser were blown to bits, over 200 enemy fighters attacked the poor cruiser and killed almost all of its crew.

The Kingdom have dispatch a punitive force of 2 BB, 1 CVA, 4CVE, 1 CS, 2 CA, 4 HDD and 5 DD to eradict their fleet. The army has pulled in some 10 Armoured Divisions and 2 Ad Hoc divisions, with what ever was trained, from mechanized infantry, artillery and 4 battalions of combat engineers to form these 2 divisions. The first Mobile Infantry Regiment with 4 battalions of drop troops are also being moved to the scene, this regiment with 16 companies of special space to ground assault troops are the cream of the Terran Kingdoms military units.

Everything is being moved to the New South Africa system and the planet New Pretoria, fuel and missiles are also being transported to the system but its 12 jumps away and will take some time to be delivered.

The old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold will soon be tested, in nuclear fire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 03, 2016, 12:49:26 PM
  Too many battles in the last 10 years to report, the aliens keep coming and humanity keeps fighting.  Only Frigate TG 1 remains intact, Destroyer TG 1 and 20 fighters were recently destroyed.  Dust levels have returned to normal since the last bombardment, and radiation is down 50%.  Still getting -10% production and -2.5% growth.  Gallicite production is dire, the best locations are Eris (1), and Mars (0.1).  The 29B km round trip to Eris is brutally slow.  A massive deposit is in the Byrd system, but technically that system belongs to the Aliens.  New colony established on Star A-I.

  Thanks to the excellent work of our salvage crews, we now have access to internal Fusion Engines, Gravity Sensor Strength 28, and EM Sensor Sensitivity 14, all without spending a single RP!  And still have enough left overs to equip a new fleet.  Much of the Gallicite needed for missile production has been recycled from salvage.

  Recently encountered a 58200T Galleon beam-ship, 45-400mm x-ray lasers, and heavily armored.  Tough nut to crack for sure!.  Have experimented with some HPMW and spinal fighters, to try and reduce missile usage...they were quickly eliminated.

Medals awarded:

Bronze Stars (5000T killed):  0
Silver Stars:  (15,000T Killed):  10
Gold Star:  (30,000T Killed):  7
Navy Cross:  (50000T killed): 2
Medal of Honor: (100,000T killed): 1


 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 03, 2016, 01:30:25 PM
With some luck my 1st Fast Response Group managed to enter New South Africa System at the same time as 3 enemy destroyers were moving around, the heavy Jump cruiser and 5 heavy Destroyers soon killed the 3 enemy ships, they have now taken up station about 205 million kilometers from the enemy wormhole, aiming there missile tubes at a possible emerging enemy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mor on March 03, 2016, 08:54:19 PM
[..] Damage on earth was limited to several PDCs, but none were destroyed this time.

  250 million killed and 500 mines destroyed on Mars.  Mars was Earths primary Uridium and Gallicite supplier, this is a critical loss.  It may take decades to recover.
You are lucky they didn't target your industrial capacity, namely the shipyards. And the loss of million Mars colony seems like a grave loss, unless you have untapped vast reserves outside of your homesystem, I suspect that you are heading for a last stand, and brave or not, those never end well :(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 03, 2016, 09:25:13 PM
You are lucky they didn't target your industrial capacity, namely the shipyards. And the loss of million Mars colony seems like a grave loss, unless you have untapped vast reserves outside of your homesystem, I suspect that you are heading for a last stand, and brave or not, those never end well :(

Yes, i have been wondering why they have not targeted the shipyards.  They are more concerned about destroying commercial shipping.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 03, 2016, 11:34:46 PM
New South Africa System: 2066 05:44:11 Suddenly 32 destroyers appear at the CC Eridani jump point, they seem to have a new type of fire control, and fires at my 4 CAPs on the site, destroying several fighters before they even know they are there, seconds later the 76 surviving fighters launch 3 missiles each at different targets, at the same time 4 battlecruisers appear, the Kingdom is for the moment outgunned in the system. But all of the Kingdom ships are firing, the fighters are streaming back to their carriers to rearm. My carriers and other ships are retreating back towards New Pretoria, we seem to have a big speed advantage over the enemy, there fastest ship are moving 3539 Km/s our is not less than 10000 Km/s.
My fighters managed to destroy 18 destroyers in there first launched salvos.  :)

And now work is calling  :-[

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on March 04, 2016, 06:35:19 AM
Well, I think I just figured out why the aliens suddenly just stopped their attacks as they did...

Even from the first transit into the Gliese 109 system, something was obviously amiss. Dozens of wrecks were littered around the binary system, and only about half of those wrecks matched records of known Haora ships. No active sensor contacts were detected, so survey operations were warily commenced. On approach to the innermost planet of the companion star, passive sensors detected a small-medium population, perhaps 10mil worth of colonists. Naval Intelligence hypothesised that this system was probably a major outpost of some sort for the Haora Empire which had seen some major action recently. Carrier Group 1 was dispatched to investigate and ultimately annex the colony.

After CG1 arrived in orbit of the planet, a laser bombardment was ordered which continued for all of 15 seconds after which the colony surrendered. The party that was sent down to the surface however was greeted with a nightmarish visage - after passing below the obscuring cloud layer, a thoroughly irradiated landscape could be seen. Countless craters pockmarked the land, and the ground was liberally covered with rubble from what was presumably once a planet-wide cityscape. Nuclear winter had well and truly set in, with average temperatures well below 100C measured at the surface. This planet had seen some serious nuclear bombardment.

The "colony" that had surrendered was actually a small portion of the planetary city that had somehow survived more or less intact. The ~9million civilians that were still alive on the planet divulged the location of some impressive fuel, maintenance and mineral stashes that had survived bombardment by virtue of being stored deep underground, however it was also learned that none of the planet's industry had been left untouched. It seems that whatever force had attacked previously was careful to ensure the Haora would never be able to rise above the Stone Age again. In any case, the sheer level of radiation that still lingered completely rendered any manufacturing equipment useless, and any survivors would be sterilised anyway, so the Haora race was doomed to a slow death.

Naval Intelligence is now prioritising salvage operations in the Gliese 109 system in an attempt to gain any information as to the identity and capabilities of this new alien power.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sematary on March 04, 2016, 12:01:56 PM
I started a new game. Less than a year into it I had spoilers using large numbers of FACs in Sol. My ships were so unprepared that they were brushed away like they didn't exist.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on March 04, 2016, 07:09:21 PM
I hate aliens....

 :-\

So dead.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 05, 2016, 02:52:57 AM
Holy smeg, that is going to hurt AF :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 05, 2016, 02:54:09 AM
Ouchhh :-X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on March 05, 2016, 03:30:25 AM
"This is your captain speaking, please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts as we will shortly be encountering a bit of turbulence..."
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on March 05, 2016, 12:15:15 PM
I hate aliens....

 :-\

So dead.

I saw a screen like that once. I was shuttling between Lagrange points in a spoiler fight. Freaked me out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on March 05, 2016, 12:21:21 PM
You are lucky they didn't target your industrial capacity, namely the shipyards. And the loss of million Mars colony seems like a grave loss, unless you have untapped vast reserves outside of your homesystem, I suspect that you are heading for a last stand, and brave or not, those never end well :(

I believe situations like this is why the Good Mr. Walmsley generates pre-TN NPC's.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 06, 2016, 02:53:22 PM
My attack fighters are attacking some 320 enemy fighters, empty of their ordanance, flying in straight lines, but still a slow work. Using 4 small gauss cannons with 17% tog hit on each attack fighter... Ohh well,  only some 100 left. ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: firsal on March 07, 2016, 08:54:11 AM
I have the craziest starmap

(http://i.imgur.com/liIaeHy.png)

Those overlapping lines are driving me CRAZY
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on March 07, 2016, 08:10:24 PM
You could straighten that out pretty quickly.  Move Codalus, Sligo, Danzig, and Sandhurst to the top and move Epsilon Eridani above Hector and out a little to the left.  Then just move Wolf 424 down a little and Nebularia to the right of Wolf 424.  It helps a lot if you lay your star map out in a grid pattern with uniform spacing as well.  Sometimes crossovers are unavoidable though.  My current game has topped 75 systems and I have no crossing jump lines at the moment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: firsal on March 07, 2016, 11:31:33 PM
You could straighten that out pretty quickly.  Move Codalus, Sligo, Danzig, and Sandhurst to the top and move Epsilon Eridani above Hector and out a little to the left.  Then just move Wolf 424 down a little and Nebularia to the right of Wolf 424.  It helps a lot if you lay your star map out in a grid pattern with uniform spacing as well.  Sometimes crossovers are unavoidable though.  My current game has topped 75 systems and I have no crossing jump lines at the moment.

I've tried that , yet there's still a few knots :( guess I'll have to live with them i suppose

Despite the knots, I'm liking the new jump point generation system. Gives more of a net-style system of jump points rather than the previous tree-style. Gives more strategic depth in my opinion
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AlqVeers on March 08, 2016, 01:26:46 AM
The realisation that just because the story sounds great in my head, doesn't mean it translate into an actual document the same way.

After several restarts because I kept mucking up the settings and a flawed technology exchange between the REC (Russ-Euro Conglomerate) and the UCAS (United Canadian American States) saw the UCAS colony get traded instead and I had to SM it back, this is much harder than any of my previous play throughs.

Oh, game wise?, China will eat all the resources and still have nothing to show for it. :/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on March 09, 2016, 08:17:44 PM
Played a successful Tau themed game in 7.1. There was nothing of special interest that warranted some sort of documentary though, so here is just a tech summary I saved.
(http://abload.de/img/tautechdgj9q.jpg)
Successfully tested the Manta Facs and "Railgun Batteries" of the capitals with size 2 missiles instead of the usual size 1 for me here, and it turned out that this is still enough to overcome all point-defense of equal to somewhat larger mass easily.
Also was reminded why I didn't use Jump-Drives since my second ever game. What was it, like 1 million research points to send a 600kt ship through? Haha, no.
They had to be about this size though, because it turned out that the 1/100th conversion rate that I used wayyy back on my first Wh40k attempt (link (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=6721.msg68767#msg68767)) was very fitting to get the exact number of both, torpedoes and fighter craft on board, while smaller or larger versions would have to make non lore-friendly cuts or have much useless empty space on carriers.
Also a confidence providing bonus: When you use this '20 fighter per launch bay'=10kt as basis, and then get all the other weapon's numbers by comparing this size to their Battlefleet Gothic exchange rate in weapon batteries, torpedoes, ion-cannons etc. (e.g. 1 point ion = 1 point hangar = 3 points mid-ranged batteries), you end up with a tonnage that is exactly what you get when recreating a Wh40k Tau ship in space engineers, like this guy did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZHUTNi3FQk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZHUTNi3FQk)

Tau's stylish looking Custodian and Emissary class ships are excellent explorer capitals btw. . Naturally well tuned in a better way than my large explorers before.



I also did get some time to check on the interesting new game mechanics. For example that distant battles now neatly sum up, so instead of a wall of 5-second turns, you get just one weird turn like 1:12:35:15, and all is done. (there was somebody here with that funny scrolling 5-second turn gif, but I guess he will now have to mothball this (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_=3.gif))
Also, not sure if this is really new, but I witnessed enemy units grouping up as if they used tactics. There was one situation where an enemy ship cleared all my fleet from a system, and only then, and actually directly after, they jumped through some extra missile destroyers that rendezvoused with their vanguard to form some sort of TG, and then started searching around and picked on the colonies they could find. Could be coincidence, but then the timing was really good.
What I also saw was a friendly NPR fleeing through a jump point, and then taking position at the other side for the enemy who was going to come through. They sat there patiently and shot down 3 large ships without counter. Smart and impressive, but maybe also coincidence.

I am also not quite sure whether the overall performance has improved or not, but it seemed to me that multi-tasking, like watching videos while Aurora processes, seems now just barely have influence on Aurora's speed, where before it did cause some definite slowing. Could be something with my computer though.

There were some more tiny things that I noticed over the weeks, but don't remember anymore.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 09, 2016, 08:54:48 PM
3200 size 4 [13 dam] missiles inbound towards earth....   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 10, 2016, 01:59:05 PM
104 Missiles got through defenses, 3 alien ships destroyed.  3 more in a adjacent system have retreated.  Planetary suitability to 0.3,  population growth -13%, Manufacturing efficiency 53%.  Amm stockpiles are low, duranium stock piles are low.  Fleet strength improving, but not ready to go face to face with the aliens.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 14, 2016, 07:45:45 AM
Terra was reporting a lack of minerals for the current construction queue. I found where I made a mistake. Instead of 4000 Infrastructure and 250 Maintenance facilities, I requested 4000 Maintenance facilities and 250 Infrastructure.
Edit; I had hoped that the micro increments that started when I entered a new system was just a part of the 1 day long "micro" increments that I was already encountering. Turns out I was wrong. GSV Marc Aaronson's navigation sensors picked up a ship ~20m km away, and soon after actives from two more sources were detected from beyond navigation sensor range but was powerful enough to clearly pick up the survey ship. Lets hope the 4-46 armor is enough to weather the faster ships until it reaches the back into human space. It seems they could identify that the active sensors are civilian grade navigation sensors and that the GSV is a ship of exploration instead of a ship of war despite the military grade jump engine, so they remained at a steady pace keeping up with the Marc Aaronson with one ship just inside navigation sensor range while the others sit just outside range as the GSV heads for the JP.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 15, 2016, 08:15:07 AM
Been in "micro" increments since mid-December 2134... it is now May 2135 and it is still going. Turn lengths go for a few 5sec increments, to a day increment, then one or two 15 sec increments. Sometimes (every other month) I do get a 5-10 day long increment but that is the minority. I wan't to go and smack whoever is doing this, but they seem to be having a fun war so I will allow it for now. It helps that the turns do go pretty fast.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: formicae on March 15, 2016, 07:52:32 PM
This newbie's first aggressive(-ish) actions towards a TN NPR:

These guys seem friendly enough (definitely neutral; at least they're not shooting at me).

Oh look, they've built a jump gate connecting to my network.  Civilian shipping is the first to notice, and they promptly load up all their colony ships to settle their colony cost 0 homeworld (where I'd created a colony for the purpose of having a home for my espionage team).

I should take measures to ensure the safety of my colony.  I'll start with a listening post and a couple garrison battalions.  They seem to have no objection.

I should take further measures, and begin preparing to unify our empires.  I'll drop a couple brigades of mobile infantry there.

Two days later, 96 strength-1 nuclear explosions, bye-bye colony, and those troop transports are going to have to be written off.  Dang.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 15, 2016, 10:49:29 PM
2100

  100 year anniversary of the 1st Trans-Neutronim space flight.  A somber day, as hundreds of millions of Earths citizens have withered (radiation) away to the missile strikes of 2092.  50 million fewer souls reside on Earth, as did 100 years ago.  Humanity has colonized 19 bodies, in 5 systems. 1 more strike from 3 Alien battleships was easily swatted away by Sol defense forces.  Recovered alien tech continues to fuel our research.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on March 16, 2016, 03:43:23 AM
That Iranshahr Coalition, a friendly but slightly annoying NPR 2 jumps away from Sol, is under missile attack by an unseen foe.
They are failing badly: inadequate point defence, 60 FAC wrecks so far and a few more every tick, their other assets don't seem to do anything.

My main fleet is in no condition to go anywhere without falling apart and I neglected my military a little, 6 fast laser cruisers will observe but avoid unnecessary risks.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Pixel1191 on March 16, 2016, 05:55:11 AM
Finally figured out what was causeing my turns to slow down to 6 hours (praised be Designer Mode). Solved the problem, now I can finally get this show moving at a reasonable pace and stomp an NPR for daring to attack (and pretty much decimate) my ally. :/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on March 16, 2016, 06:52:35 AM
Finally figured out what was causeing my turns to slow down to 6 hours (praised be Designer Mode). Solved the problem, now I can finally get this show moving at a reasonable pace and stomp an NPR for daring to attack (and pretty much decimate) my ally. :/
That problem you described is fairly worrying. Kind of like the old civil fleet explosion, or the NPR snowball effect. If that starts happening with me too, I might just delete their whole bunch until this improves.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 16, 2016, 09:10:07 AM
The micro increments seems to have passed for now, it is now Early July. I discovered a new system with 3 Earth-like worlds and a gas-giant. The bonus kicker, its named Anchorage. I think I found my new fleet base.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 16, 2016, 10:17:01 PM
2110-11

  Passive sensors detected the Alien presence in the Earth system (1 human colony), they are coming through a gate in the the Angelique system. [Sol<->Earth<->Angelique<->unknown]  Alien gate construction ships were attempting to build a gate at the Earth-Angelique JP.  Human forces have destroyed 6-gate constuction ships, 1-survey vessel, and 2 Battleships (Laser).  While losing 1 PD Destroyer to laser fire.  2 additional battleships have disappeared though one of the JPs in the Angelique system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 20, 2016, 12:49:19 AM
2012

Fighting in the Earth system continues, 6 enemy missile destroyers, and 3 survey craft have been destroyed.  1 fleet mine layer, 1 small civilian frighter, and 2 terrafomers were lost.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 21, 2016, 12:14:46 PM
Was starting to go into a Corundium and Mercassium crunch when Terra ran out and there were no other bodies in Sol with a decent amount. I started checking the systems that I wanted to colonize first and second, they didn't have much. Then I looked at the system I would have colonized 3rd-4th (refer to image)... Bonus, it has a Gas Giant with millions of Sorium which the habitable body is orbiting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jem on March 22, 2016, 08:53:42 AM
So, after more then a month irl the assault on the npr homeworld is finally over. 3 500 000+ missiles were shot at us, roughly 3 000 000 were amm. 1960 things where shot down, out of those 800+ where commercial, 500 stationary bases around the home world and the rest assorted military crafts (mostly facs). Own losses include 39 fighters, 2 pd escort ships and 3 missile support destroyers. Rest of the fleet is in various stages of "damaged" and will need 'some' repairs. Total number of pow's exceeded initial expectations of 30k and the final tally was over 80k. Do note that clicking trough 1960 lifepods is extremely boring......


Note to self: Never do anything like this ever again......

Edit: Also, it is bloody amazing how fast the turns are all of a sudden   ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: firsal on March 22, 2016, 09:06:39 AM
The Second Expedition into the Athens system is now underway. The First Expedition cleared out the Athens-Teegarden's Star Jump Point of alien warhships, namely three Steers-class 8700-ton missile frigates. The first engagement was a total victory with the loss only of 37 Federation crewmen. Several months later, a second expedition is organized to probe the colonizable worlds within the system.

Now, several hundred million kilometers in-system, the FFL Erwin Rommel has picked up 6 xenos cruisers massing 17,400 tonnes and four 8,700 ton frigates, including three Reaper-class vessels. A single ship of that very class massacred the 2nd Frigate Squadron in the Nebularia System.

Several minutes later, a salvo of 37 size-5 anti-ship missiles have been picked up on the scanners. These missiles are slow; a mere 21,000 km/s compared to the 41,000km/s of Federal AMMs. The only real problem is the unexpected size of the salvo; so far only 3 missiles per salvo have been encountered by the Terran Defence Navy. Now, they find themselves against salvos of 30+ missiles.

The AMM launchers aboard the three Dragon-class missile frigates of the 1st Frigate Squadron open fire in 2v1 PD mode. The point-defence gauss cannons and dual-purpose railguns of the three Wolf-class frigates prepare to catch any leakers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 22, 2016, 03:57:42 PM
  Ya think you have enough missiles stockpiled, then the enemy shows up with 6-60,000T, heavily armored ships.  Then you realize you probably should have built many more.  Well enough talk, back to the fight.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 23, 2016, 01:08:18 PM
Won my first major battle against hostile xenos trying to conquer Nova Sol system.

Little background ( i know that no one gives a frakk about it but i enjoy writing that :P ):

Terra Nova in the trinary Nova Sol system was settled by the humans who arrived by the sublight colony ship "Ulysses" as a part of "Diaspora" project, desperate gambit to escape overpopulated and polluted Earth. Initially planet was very close in term of atmosphere to Earth with only vastly higher average temperature ( almost 40C ) and only 31% hydrosphere ( albeit already liquid ). Terraforming after landing was slow and colonists had to endure many hardships while they adapted to live on this planet. Fortunately planet was abundant in minerals, food and drinking water with relative lack of dangerous patogens, viruses etc.
Initial pre-TN visual survey discovered 12 rock planets, 8 gas giants, 121 moons and 88 asteroids somewhat equally divided between each of the three components of the star system. Component A and B were close to each other ( less than 700 m km ) while component C was more than 2.3 TRILLION km with orbit period of 1.5m years.
Newly founded society adopted kind of human-centric mindset with very distinct "manifest destiny" overtones in its basic principles and was aptly named the "Neo Terran Supremacy".
NTS calendar starts not at the day that Ulysses landed on the planet but at the day the humans made two most important discoveries in their history.
Scientists at the Site-01, planets most revered University made a breaktrough into Trans Newtonian technology at the same day the Marcus Levitus geology team sent into the northern hemisphere largest jungle found a partially intact alien city buried in the nearby mountain range.

Initial xenoarcheology survey determined that there were 848 instalations to recover, sadly the civilization that left them there, the Mojokerto Hegemony was only slightly more advanced than humans at the time of discovery ( TL 1 ).

It took almost 17 years to launch first two geo survey ships - the Gemini and Voyager. Any kind of space construction was slowed substantialy because economy was occupied with survival in the planet semi-hostile enviroment ( had to built a lot of infra during those years ) and social-ground military costs of running the excavation of the alien ruins.
Fortunately budget allowed the NTS to build a single class of military ship : the Vanguard guided missile destroyer, short ranged multi purpose ship that acted as mobile anti missile defence platform and attack ship.

Cash spent on Gemini and Voyager was returned tenfold when Gemini, in less than two months since launch, made a contact with alien race in the Nova Sol system - small automated beacon/outpost on the planet named Pollux, one of the B star rocky planets.
Year later, even before humans established full contact, Voyager transited trough one of the La-Grange points, into the orbit of Behemoth, gas giant orbiting C star, that made Jupiter look like Mercury. There, on one of the rocky planets called Hesperius was a homeworld of said alien race. They even fired at Voyager before it hauled ass but ships CIWS system protected it.
Eventually normal diplomatic relations were established with the aliens who therefore are named Hesperius Khanate as their own name is incredibly difficult to pronounce.

Voyager Incident and First Contact War ( 5.05.29 - ?? )

After performing a full system JP survey, Voyager refited from civilian geo-ship to grav survey vessel, transited into the system that was later named Aquitaine. Visual survey showed a lot of promise - nine rocky planets, one of them in perfect range for human habitation. Before Voyager could even move from the jump point, alien ships showed up. Many different types ranging from 8.5k tons to even two reaching 41k tons.
Captain of Voyager, not wanting to betray the location of jump point leading to Nova Sol, ordered ship to hold position and to engage transponder and first contact protocol.
This went for over two months with some major progress on the way.
Finally on the fifth of May 29, entire alien fleet opened fire on Voyager, killing its captain, first contact team and almost entire crew.
Following the destruction of Voyager, aliens entered the Nova Sol system and set a course to Terra Nova.
Rear Admiral Isador Agemman, senior officer in the Supremacy navy, realized he is outgunned and outnumbered.
Navy had only nine Vanguards in service and those ships were obsolete as hell with first of them being constructed more than 10 years ago. There were no anti missile defences, no fighters, no orbital weapons of any kind...
Luckily aliens underestimated humanity capacity to fight and showed up with only missile attack ships, at least in the first wave. Vanguards managed to avenge Voyager by destroying each and every ships with zero casaulties.

Then the second enemy battle group showed up with Scorpion and Viper class vessels who provided complete and utter anti-missile protection that nothing could break...
Again luckily for humans alien inexperience made them break formation with slower Scorpions and Vipers lagging behind.
Agemman parked his fleet in orbit, requested whole fleet of cargo shuttles to ferry ammunition and started shooting. After using up almost 75 % of the planetart missile stockpiles only alien presence in the system was that of spinning wrecks venting atmo and vast net of lifepods.

Third attack was almost laughable with two Tarantula class ships who luckily managed to get some shots at my fleet with two salvos of five size 5 missiles each. One missile even managed to break the SNS Valiant EM Disruption field and caused some minor armour damaged before Tarantulas shared the fate of the rest of the fleet.

Situation is still tense - i have no idea how industrialized the enemy planet is, what are there industrial capability is etc.
My navy have grown to 14 Vanguards - obsolete or not, that ship is the only quick solution to our low numbers.
I also designed Colossus class Orbital Defence Monitor and Hammer class Missile Base, both using Vanguard level tech so my planet wont be so defenseless.
I'm kinda like Space USA during WW2 - i have the capability, i just need some time..

P.s. I would love to upgrade my military tech, i have researched Nuclear Pulse engines not so long ago but my only prop/power scientist just kicked the bucket :(
Most obvious thing would be to design some cheap fighter and just spam it ..

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on March 23, 2016, 05:17:38 PM
Highest ever recorded skill level for something that isn't fighter combat or operations:

(http://abload.de/img/unbenanntv6k17.jpg)


I thought they maxed out at 65%? This person had +2% from geo surveys of the past though, so maybe the program simply checks if a character is below 65% on growth, and then adds +5% if true. That would mean 69% should actually be the max., or maybe this actually increased.(yet in a 7.x game before this it still seemed to peak at 65)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 23, 2016, 08:10:27 PM
Found an interesting trinary system with the B and C stars 0.1ly away from the main star. Good thing it has a LP surrounding both the main and around the C star. There are a lot of asteroids, moons, and gas giants and quite a few are Earth-like in gravity and distance from their stars but need some atmosphere to be breathable and warm it up.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jem on March 24, 2016, 08:24:42 AM
I think that this NPR needs a couple more slipways........

(http://i.imgur.com/CxBUFSj.png?1)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 24, 2016, 08:48:31 AM
Mirrin that Shipyard industry ...
Could use it right about now.

Empire of Home continues to send ships into the Nova Sol system. We destroy them ( there are almost 6k POW's on Terra Nova now ) without losses because i have very strong PD capabiity but the ammo production starts to be a problem and our Duranium mining cant keep up with demand.
So far only human casaulties are the crew of Voyager and 34 crewmen from the SNS Wellington who was paired with SNS Agrippa and sent into the Aquitaine system for a little look around. They were jumped by the lone Piranha class vessel and she managed to get some free shots before they hauled ass.

New Havoc class missile cruisers are being build and once they are complete i want to take a little trip to their home-system.

Code: [Select]
Havoc class Missile Cruiser    16 000 tons     363 Crew     2435.2 BP      TCS 320  TH 1056  EM 450
3300 km/s     Armour 6-56     Shields 15-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 38
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 3200%    IFR 44.4%    1YR 2867    5YR 43002    Max Repair 315 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 536   

96 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (11)    Power 96    Fuel Use 85.18%    Signature 96    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 19.8 billion km   (69 days at full power)
MkII Disruption Field (10)   Total Fuel Cost  90 Litres per hour  (2 160 per day)

IMDS ''Aegis'' (1x2)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
200mm Scatter Cannon mk4 (2x4)    Range 120 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 12-4     RM 3    ROF 15        4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S08 128-16000 (1)    Max Range: 256 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Hydrogen Reactor Mk1 S1 (3)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Scimitar Launching Tube S4 (6)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 40
MFC-S MkII "Scimitar" (1)     Range 111.6m km    Resolution 80
ASM - 2S/D "Scimitar" (134)  Speed: 16 000 km/s   End: 105.7m    Range: 101.5m km   WH: 5    Size: 4    TH: 74/44/22

AS-S 346M-100R (1)     GPS 31500     Range 346.5m km    Resolution 100
AS-S AntiMissile MkII (1)     GPS 42     Range 4.6m km    MCR 503k km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Meanwhile in the spirit of humanity complete clinical insanity when it comes to warfare, Naval Special Forces designed assault dropship that is meant to board enemy ship in flight.

Code: [Select]
Daredevil class Special Forces Dropship    497 tons     2 Crew     80 BP      TCS 9.94  TH 80  EM 0
8048 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 99%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 13    5YR 199    Max Repair 30 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 2   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 1 Company   

16 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (5)    Power 16    Fuel Use 336.02%    Signature 16    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 1.1 billion km   (37 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
SEAL Teams Two, Three, Five and Six are already loaded into cryo-drop modules and they await another enemy incursion. Time will tell if its a good idea.

EDIT :
Single Black Widow jumped into the system and once it crossed the inner defence perimiter four Daredevils have been launched. Time will tell if that was a good idea.

EDIT 2 : Nope. One Daredevil ended blown up, 3 others deployed their teams but they were wiped in combat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on March 24, 2016, 06:39:00 PM
My first ever boarding action, with the 165th and 166th marine companys.  Resulting in the capture 39,000T Jump cruiser Grim Reaper 007.  188 aliens were captured and interrogations carried out.

Crew:  1365
Armor 17-102  (ouch)

1-39000 (9-2000) Jump Drive

24-400mm x-ray lasers, range 600,000km
4-CIWS-400
Ecm/eccm 60



Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SenniTreborius on March 26, 2016, 02:56:16 PM
Can't get my sorium harvester to unload fuel.

Blue Whale class Fuel Harvester    33,700 tons     135 Crew     821. 4 BP      TCS 674  TH 300  EM 0
445 km/s     Armour 1-92     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 15    Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Spare Berths 0   
Fuel Harvester: 10 modules producing 560000 litres per annum

Woodward Research Inc 300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (1)    Power 300    Fuel Use 5. 3%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 5,000,000 Litres    Range 503. 8 billion km   (13102 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Have I designed it wrong?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 26, 2016, 03:08:31 PM
Can't get my sorium harvester to unload fuel.

Blue Whale class Fuel Harvester    33,700 tons     135 Crew     821. 4 BP      TCS 674  TH 300  EM 0
445 km/s     Armour 1-92     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 15    Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Spare Berths 0   
Fuel Harvester: 10 modules producing 560000 litres per annum

Woodward Research Inc 300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (1)    Power 300    Fuel Use 5. 3%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 5,000,000 Litres    Range 503. 8 billion km   (13102 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Have I designed it wrong?
Is it flagged as tanker ( upper right corner of the design menu ) ??
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SenniTreborius on March 26, 2016, 03:16:54 PM
Quote from: Lossmar link=topic=3808. msg88412#msg88412 date=1459022911
Is it flagged as tanker ( upper right corner of the design menu ) ??
No I forgot to do that.  Ah the perils of being a noob.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: mtm84 on March 27, 2016, 03:11:26 AM
  Ya think you have enough missiles stockpiled, then the enemy shows up with 6-60,000T, heavily armored ships.  Then you realize you probably should have built many more.  Well enough talk, back to the fight.

Might I suggest, meson fighters.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Noble713 on March 27, 2016, 04:33:34 AM
Following on from my battle here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8432.0

After clearing the Jump Point, I sent my frigate and corvette squadrons into the system. As I tried to close range with a mixed group of ~35 destroyers and cruisers, about 100 FACs appeared at short range, which led to a slight panic attack on my part. I destroyed them all with surprisingly little damage but burnt up so many missiles I didn't have much to throw at their warships. I knocked out another dozen or so destroyers before withdrawing. These guys have way lower tech than me (Nuclear Pulse Engines, 2km/s speeds) but I didn't have backup energy weapons on my ships, and even if I did I didn't want to get into energy range of such large and numerous vessels.

wait ~4 years...

I've just returned to the system, this time with all-new classes of Missile Cruisers (2-stage missiles, 100m km range, WH25), shielded beam cruisers (adv spinal laser + 7x 30cm XRay), high-power surveillance ships, and the usual assortment of destroyers and some old frigates and corvettes (still carry a good number of ASMs). Did another warp point assault with the Massacre-class DDG's. My giant active sensors picked up several hundred contacts across the system, most of them cruiser-sized.  :-[

So far I've once again destroyed a surprise group of FACs and about 2 dozen warships, but my missile cruisers and destroyers are Winchester (brevity code for "all ordnance expended"). I'm trying to make my beam cruisers do most of the work now, with sufficient escorts to keep the missile spam at bay. I would post a screenshot but the System Map is bugged, so I'm fighting blind via the Combat Overview.  :'(

These 2 incursions against this NPR are some of the largest and most interesting battles I've ever had in Aurora.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SenniTreborius on March 27, 2016, 04:37:31 PM
Can't load prefab PDC onto cargo ship with standard hold.    Can load and move mass drivers automated mines ok.   
This is the pdc (for use of its PPV only):

Atlas class Planetary Defence Centre    1,400 tons     25 Crew     53.   2 BP      TCS 28  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-11     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 24
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 24   
ICBM Silo (1)    Missile Size 24    Rate of Fire 43200
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections

I get stuck on the task groups menu, when on loading the PDC I seem to be unable to select the PDC component type.   
The PDC Atlas components are displayed, but nothing happens when I click on them.   

Addendum: clicking on the Add Move button enters the command in the list, but I get a failed to load message. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 28, 2016, 06:56:38 AM
Can't load prefab PDC onto cargo ship with standard hold.    Can load and move mass drivers automated mines ok.   
This is the pdc (for use of its PPV only):

Atlas class Planetary Defence Centre    1,400 tons     25 Crew     53.   2 BP      TCS 28  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-11     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 24
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 24   
ICBM Silo (1)    Missile Size 24    Rate of Fire 43200
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections

I get stuck on the task groups menu, when on loading the PDC I seem to be unable to select the PDC component type.   
The PDC Atlas components are displayed, but nothing happens when I click on them.   

Addendum: clicking on the Add Move button enters the command in the list, but I get a failed to load message.

Same here. No matter how small the PDC is, i dont get the option to load prefabs onto the small cargo module, only the standat 25k tons one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 28, 2016, 07:03:29 AM
I've never had that  problem, but I've been playing in v7.0 until recently. I think what it is is that the PDCs might be too small. My recommendation is to just make a redesign closer to the 1 section limit of 5,000 tons. I've always used multi-section PDCs so it might just be a problem for the really tiny ones.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 28, 2016, 07:49:20 AM
I've never had that  problem, but I've been playing in v7.0 until recently. I think what it is is that the PDCs might be too small. My recommendation is to just make a redesign closer to the 1 section limit of 5,000 tons. I've always used multi-section PDCs so it might just be a problem for the really tiny ones.

Nope i just doesn't work - there is no order to load up PDC components .
My single cargo ship has 3 small cargo holds and cant load any PDC components ( i have meson/missile base and barracks/fighter base one - bpth medium in size ).
I spawned a standart cargo hold freighter and it has no such problem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SenniTreborius on March 28, 2016, 03:11:53 PM
Same here. No matter how small the PDC is, i dont get the option to load prefabs onto the small cargo module, only the standat 25k tons one.
I believe that is a known bug, in that one has to load prefabs into a standard hold size.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SenniTreborius on March 28, 2016, 04:05:22 PM
Actually I have a few questions about how to build a PDC.

1. What are the minimum required design components of a PDC.
2. Can one change the type of armour used (ie can one choose a cheaper type of armour). If so how.
3. Does one actually need fuel storage (and does it really have to be large as in my present autodesign offer).
4. I am assuming that one needs both Fire Control and weapons (but is that necessarily so).
5. What's the difference between a PDC Barracks and a Small PDC Barracks and are any necessary.
6. Does one need/recommend any other components, and if so which.
7. Can one use, or does one require, any other components.
8. Is this the right place for this post.
9. Have I lost my marbles?

And how does one save the game so that one can return to a set time after and incredible amount of dicking about?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on March 28, 2016, 07:16:32 PM
1. What are the minimum required design components of a PDC.
2. Can one change the type of armour used (ie can one choose a cheaper type of armour). If so how.
3. Does one actually need fuel storage (and does it really have to be large as in my present autodesign offer).
4. I am assuming that one needs both Fire Control and weapons (but is that necessarily so).
5. What's the difference between a PDC Barracks and a Small PDC Barracks and are any necessary.
6. Does one need/recommend any other components, and if so which.
7. Can one use, or does one require, any other components.
8. Is this the right place for this post.
9. Have I lost my marbles?

And how does one save the game so that one can return to a set time after and incredible amount of dicking about?
1. A bridge.
2. Only to upgrade a design with new armor.
3. No.
4. Yes.
5. PDC barracks hold 5 Battalions while the small version holds 1. They are not necessary unless you want to protect them during a ground assault on your world.
6. Weapons, Sensors, Armor.
7. I don't understand whats being asked. There are components that PDCs cannot use (shields, maintenance storage). There is also a PDC only missile launcher that fires much faster than ones available to ships.
8. No.
9. Possibly (most of us here lost them a long time ago ;).

That is not a thing unless you have the backup utility installed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rich.h on March 29, 2016, 02:51:11 AM
While a PDC does not need fuel storage they can be useful, I am assuming you are referring to a PDC that contains hanger space. If there is no fuel storage at a hanger location then ships will simply not refuel, even if there are mountains of the stuff lying just outside at the colony, this creates a micromanagement issue of having to manually do your refueling where a PDC with fuel space simply needs to have it's fuel levels topped up every so often.  However if you are making frequent use of a hanger it could endup more micro work to top up the PDC so it really depends on the particular situation to add fuel stores or not.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DIT_grue on March 29, 2016, 02:57:38 AM
Slightly more accurately:

3. Does one actually need fuel storage (and does it really have to be large as in my present autodesign offer).
4. I am assuming that one needs both Fire Control and weapons (but is that necessarily so).
8. Is this the right place for this post.

And how does one save the game so that one can return to a set time after and incredible amount of dicking about?

3. Having some might make it easier to support fighters or other parasite craft. (I expect you could do without them, but it would probably involve more micromanagement.) Otherwise, no. (Preview edit: Ninja!)
4. There could be designs for which you didn't need either of them (e.g. barracks, Vault #xxx, sensor outpost) but having one without the other would be useless in any circumstance I can think of.
8. These sort of questions would be most at home in The Academy, but this isn't really one of the wrong places for them, so okay job?
10. Saving is just a matter of copying the database; I compact it, because that's integrated into my context menu and because saving space is an old habit.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on March 30, 2016, 05:14:43 AM
 ;D I love the Aurora name generation :D

Sweet find BTW.

EDIT : holy frakk...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on April 03, 2016, 08:53:48 AM
This is not going on in Aurora, but Aurora related: I started to watch "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" around 2 weeks ago, and it is even more compatible with Aurora style than Space-Battleship Yamato so far. (Wiki-Link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes)) They still don't favor missile warfare, but the guideline to make everything appear as traditional military (yet scifi) is really strong.
The biggest selling point however would be the focus on rendering out personalities for the Admirals, Staff Officers, and some other military personnel, which all have some distinctive touch (yet never this 'modern day anime' eccentric) that really reminds you of that personality trait window in Aurora, and the stories that you make up for them.
On top of that it is through and through grown up, as it keeps up modest seriousness, tells a real story in good natural pace without forcing anything, and you get some really insightful political thematisation, which might even be the actual best thing about it, but of course that is not really Aurora related anymore. Ahh, back when history doctors or other academics used to be in charge of TV shows and movies. But no Star Trek or Legend of Galactic Heroes in this day and age. Even though this was made slightly before my time (80s), I am feeling retroactively old in my mid-20s for liking such.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Noble713 on April 03, 2016, 12:49:36 PM
This is not going on in Aurora, but Aurora related: I started to watch "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" around 2 weeks ago

Such a great series. I started it a couple years ago, got about 25 episodes in....then realized there were 100+ episodes.  :o I just haven't worked up the willpower to get back into it (compared to watching shorter series like Ghost in the Shell, or just watching movies), but I really should...

As an aside, I captured a rather low-tech (Nuclear Pulse Engined) NPR homeworld. The AI's build priorities are weird. They had ~100 colony ships, and their homeworld was home to 140,000+ anti-missile missiles. Good thing they didn't have any PDCs to launch them: they would have sandpapered my whole navy into oblivion. Scrapping just the AMMs yielded 10,000 tons of Gallicite and over 1 million liters of fuel. The fuel isn't much....considering they had a stockpile of 1.2 BILLION liters (perfect timing as my stores on Earth are down ~60 million or so). Manually scrapping the 100 colony ships will be tedious.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on April 03, 2016, 03:24:46 PM
Trying to set up a multi-empire earth game with NPRs.   Getting frustrated  :-\. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on April 05, 2016, 09:39:46 AM
This is not going on in Aurora, but Aurora related: I started to watch "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" around 2 weeks ago

Small. World.

(Last week. Same impulse.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Vandermeer on April 05, 2016, 01:49:33 PM
You watched Angry Joe's Battlefleet Gothic interview where he mentioned this, right? ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on April 11, 2016, 08:37:28 AM
New game, struck gold in my backyard:

A 2-system chain only reachable through Sol, each with one set of ruins (~100 TL4, ~200 TL5) and a useful anomaly (DS90 and EW100).
A bargain at the cost of 3 cheap railgun corvettes. The pricks formerly squatting in the system destroyed BISMARCK and BÜCKLING with missiles in heroic combat. That those, ahem, fine and noble ships died helplessly because some pencil-pusher ticked the wrong box and accidentally ordered R100 instead of R1 sensors is a filthy lie and obvious enemy propaganda. Even though communication proved to be impossible.
BACALAO fell to particle beams when the quarry turned out to be much faster than expected, they closed to beam range while the captain was still in the bathtub and nobody dared disturb her (used a too-long increment in the belief I controlled the range, serves me right for being lazy).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on April 12, 2016, 11:27:50 PM
Second game due to install problems that I actually haven't fixed still but have ignored cause I'm used to games that never work properly on a toaster. 

Out of a total of over 15 systems, I finally got an alien race to spawn.   Tried talking to them even though I discovered them through what I named, hull-wise, a Jump Stealth Recon Fighter on thermals without ever once showing my face to them cause the cloaking device made an already tiny ship down to 3% cross-section.   Who knew that aliens don't want to talk to people they only know exist through communications, and also I should probably have used something else other than "Fighter" for that hull designation, since it's unarmed.  .  .   but moving on, after getting to the "Communications Impossible" message, I sent my 60k ton survey ship with the same cloaking to go around what turned out to be a 60k ton carrier to survey jump points in hopes that they had expanded into different systems.  .  .   okay, it was actually to make sure I wasn't about to get curbstomped by a race that I couldn't blitzcrieg, cause I literally had no warship of any kind when I found them XD.   Plans were already made and ready to be built, but since there was no threat I never tried making that first gen and just researched nonstop. 

After finally finishing some laser battlecruisers and unarmed carriers, cause who needs frigates and cruisers anyways, I attempted to make legit contact with them.  .  .   only to find out that I'm an idiot that can't even figure out how to jump in the battlecruisers that had no jump engine.   For now the carriers are my command ship and my jump tender and my sensor ship, just an fwi.   In the end since it was late and I was basically half-asleep while high on anxiety and anticipation, I went to battle with two unarmed carriers, 150k tons with 20 490 ton meson fighters and 1 JSRF (500 tons) each. 

We checked each other out through sensors, of which mine were superior though that didn't really matter much in a carrier fight where both sides had assault craft with their own sensors, and yeah I go down that route that loses me 50 tons of space as default, then sent the fighters at each other.   The fight was 21 750 ton FACs with a class name Murature, 1 meson cannon with 1 rate of fire, looking back they're nowhere near as scary as when I knew nothing about them ;D, versus 40 of my fighters.   End result, 21 destroyed on their side, 3 on mine, though there was a fourth that barely survived thanks to me getting its carrier over to it to pick it up, but the crew ended up dying anyways to failing life support which resulted in the fighter's scrapping. 

Besides the Guerrico, the carrier, there were 5 other ships 5700 tons called the Frontin, which I have no idea even now what they do, just sitting on the planet the carrier was camping on.   Since my actual combat ships were stuck on the other side of the jump point thanks to my noobery, I just packed my things and went on my merry way. 

First combat, first victory.   Love it ;).   If anyone wants to know the actual stats on my ships, just let me know. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Anarade Relle on April 13, 2016, 12:54:52 AM
Won my first major battle against hostile xenos trying to conquer Nova Sol system.

Little background ( i know that no one gives a frakk about it but i enjoy writing that :P ):

Terra Nova in the trinary Nova Sol system was settled by the humans who arrived by the sublight colony ship "Ulysses" as a part of "Diaspora" project, desperate gambit to escape overpopulated and polluted Earth. Initially planet was very close in term of atmosphere to Earth with only vastly higher average temperature ( almost 40C ) and only 31% hydrosphere ( albeit already liquid ). Terraforming after landing was slow and colonists had to endure many hardships while they adapted to live on this planet. Fortunately planet was abundant in minerals, food and drinking water with relative lack of dangerous patogens, viruses etc.
Initial pre-TN visual survey discovered 12 rock planets, 8 gas giants, 121 moons and 88 asteroids somewhat equally divided between each of the three components of the star system. Component A and B were close to each other ( less than 700 m km ) while component C was more than 2.3 TRILLION km with orbit period of 1.5m years.
Newly founded society adopted kind of human-centric mindset with very distinct "manifest destiny" overtones in its basic principles and was aptly named the "Neo Terran Supremacy".
NTS calendar starts not at the day that Ulysses landed on the planet but at the day the humans made two most important discoveries in their history.
Scientists at the Site-01, planets most revered University made a breaktrough into Trans Newtonian technology at the same day the Marcus Levitus geology team sent into the northern hemisphere largest jungle found a partially intact alien city buried in the nearby mountain range.

Initial xenoarcheology survey determined that there were 848 instalations to recover, sadly the civilization that left them there, the Mojokerto Hegemony was only slightly more advanced than humans at the time of discovery ( TL 1 ).

It took almost 17 years to launch first two geo survey ships - the Gemini and Voyager. Any kind of space construction was slowed substantialy because economy was occupied with survival in the planet semi-hostile enviroment ( had to built a lot of infra during those years ) and social-ground military costs of running the excavation of the alien ruins.
Fortunately budget allowed the NTS to build a single class of military ship : the Vanguard guided missile destroyer, short ranged multi purpose ship that acted as mobile anti missile defence platform and attack ship.

Cash spent on Gemini and Voyager was returned tenfold when Gemini, in less than two months since launch, made a contact with alien race in the Nova Sol system - small automated beacon/outpost on the planet named Pollux, one of the B star rocky planets.
Year later, even before humans established full contact, Voyager transited trough one of the La-Grange points, into the orbit of Behemoth, gas giant orbiting C star, that made Jupiter look like Mercury. There, on one of the rocky planets called Hesperius was a homeworld of said alien race. They even fired at Voyager before it hauled ass but ships CIWS system protected it.
Eventually normal diplomatic relations were established with the aliens who therefore are named Hesperius Khanate as their own name is incredibly difficult to pronounce.

Voyager Incident and First Contact War ( 5.05.29 - ?? )

After performing a full system JP survey, Voyager refited from civilian geo-ship to grav survey vessel, transited into the system that was later named Aquitaine. Visual survey showed a lot of promise - nine rocky planets, one of them in perfect range for human habitation. Before Voyager could even move from the jump point, alien ships showed up. Many different types ranging from 8.5k tons to even two reaching 41k tons.
Captain of Voyager, not wanting to betray the location of jump point leading to Nova Sol, ordered ship to hold position and to engage transponder and first contact protocol.
This went for over two months with some major progress on the way.
Finally on the fifth of May 29, entire alien fleet opened fire on Voyager, killing its captain, first contact team and almost entire crew.
Following the destruction of Voyager, aliens entered the Nova Sol system and set a course to Terra Nova.
Rear Admiral Isador Agemman, senior officer in the Supremacy navy, realized he is outgunned and outnumbered.
Navy had only nine Vanguards in service and those ships were obsolete as hell with first of them being constructed more than 10 years ago. There were no anti missile defences, no fighters, no orbital weapons of any kind...
Luckily aliens underestimated humanity capacity to fight and showed up with only missile attack ships, at least in the first wave. Vanguards managed to avenge Voyager by destroying each and every ships with zero casaulties.

Then the second enemy battle group showed up with Scorpion and Viper class vessels who provided complete and utter anti-missile protection that nothing could break...
Again luckily for humans alien inexperience made them break formation with slower Scorpions and Vipers lagging behind.
Agemman parked his fleet in orbit, requested whole fleet of cargo shuttles to ferry ammunition and started shooting. After using up almost 75 % of the planetart missile stockpiles only alien presence in the system was that of spinning wrecks venting atmo and vast net of lifepods.

Third attack was almost laughable with two Tarantula class ships who luckily managed to get some shots at my fleet with two salvos of five size 5 missiles each. One missile even managed to break the SNS Valiant EM Disruption field and caused some minor armour damaged before Tarantulas shared the fate of the rest of the fleet.

Situation is still tense - i have no idea how industrialized the enemy planet is, what are there industrial capability is etc.
My navy have grown to 14 Vanguards - obsolete or not, that ship is the only quick solution to our low numbers.
I also designed Colossus class Orbital Defence Monitor and Hammer class Missile Base, both using Vanguard level tech so my planet wont be so defenseless.
I'm kinda like Space USA during WW2 - i have the capability, i just need some time..

P.s. I would love to upgrade my military tech, i have researched Nuclear Pulse engines not so long ago but my only prop/power scientist just kicked the bucket :(
Most obvious thing would be to design some cheap fighter and just spam it ..

Sounds like a fun time.

What are the stats on those Vanguards?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mulisa on April 13, 2016, 08:28:58 AM
I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   ???
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on April 13, 2016, 11:34:46 AM
The Year is 2100

The North American Union, Russian Confederation, and the Free State Alliance are all just discovered Trans-Newtonian technologies.  Spent a ton of time setting up the community game.  Still it is fun. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on April 13, 2016, 01:44:57 PM
I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   ???
He tries to see the best in seeing the worst.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on April 13, 2016, 05:09:39 PM
He tries to see the best in seeing the worst.

Thanks,  that's completely done my head in
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on April 14, 2016, 07:17:18 AM
I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   ???

I fear it's going to be a wonderful day :)

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on April 17, 2016, 11:08:53 PM
Ever had that moment where your ship is slower than a planet's revolution around a star or planet, and thus will never reach their destination if you progress time in too high an increment? Apparently, Venus is making my tugs eat its space dust as they try to lug a large terraformer over to the blasted thing.  Fun times.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on April 18, 2016, 02:05:43 AM
Transnewtonian physics: still looking for any excuse to bite you in the ass.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on April 18, 2016, 04:58:25 PM
Ever had that moment where your ship is slower than a planet's revolution around a star or planet, and thus will never reach their destination if you progress time in too high an increment? Apparently, Venus is making my tugs eat its space dust as they try to lug a large terraformer over to the blasted thing.  Fun times.

Go the other direction of the orbit!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on April 21, 2016, 01:20:06 PM
Quote
Sounds like a fun time.

What are the stats on those Vanguards?

Well i deleted that save after a major snafu so i dont have the exact stats but irrc they had 3k km/s speed, 10 lvl armour, 8 launchers, 2 railguns, 9.6bn km range .... ASM pulled 8900km/s , had 90 m km range and 5 str warhead.

Generally low level stuff but got the job done.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on April 21, 2016, 09:52:39 PM
Quote from: xeryon link=topic=3808. msg89837#msg89837 date=1461016705
Go the other direction of the orbit!
I posted after I fixed the problem, but at the time all I was thinking was "My tug pilots must have heart eyes and be knee deep in drool. . . " since I didn't notice until a few months after I gave them their orders.

On another note, I started from scratch a new game, literally from scratch as I made a new system and empire and everything.  Tried to make them robots that are fueled by minute amounts of airborne methane and freeze every colonizable planet they see, but that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.  Good news is though, there's almost never a system I can't colonize with minimal effort since they can survive in next to no atmosphere with mega cold temperatures basically, which maxes getting on asteroids and comets without underground infrastructure super easy.

The main point is that before I got past my own system, as I only explored that first jump from the home system, I get aliens popping up at the 21 year mark.  My record for aliens is well over 150 years, and I'm the one to find them.  So worth it to have one pre-made at the game's start. . .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on April 28, 2016, 04:52:12 AM
-Snipped-

It's great, isn't it? ;D

On another note, I've finally come back to Aurora. Restarting the old TATO v TEU game with a slight twist, and decided to write it up like I did with the Struggle of Survival.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 02, 2016, 10:11:09 PM
Started an AAR for a game with minimal starting stuff - small population, little industry, few research labs. Thought it would be a challenging and an interesting premise, having to utilize all tricks and actually using Gen 0, Gen 1 and Gen 2 extensively. Turns out that instead it became extremely boring - a century of snail-pace expansion with nothing happening, so there went my interest in writing about it too. Oh well, it's not like the Fiction sub-forum isn't already full of promising starts that fizzled out - what's one more?  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xeryon on May 03, 2016, 09:08:44 PM
The key to early starts are automated 30 day increments.  Time flys when you skip most of it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 04, 2016, 01:31:27 AM
True but I was aiming for a character-driven story. Having nothing happening for over sixty years made that exceedingly difficult.

Oh well, I think I'll start a new one and try my hand at multi-race Earth start.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 07, 2016, 03:55:57 PM
There is a massive evacuation effort on my Earth ...  :'(

Its a continuation of my Kaiserreich game where syndycalists a.k.a. communist in that timeline, overrun almost entire planet and in Aurora continuation i play as Australia/Entente.

Russia have crushed the bolshevik rebelion of 1918 only to sucumb to them in 1940 due to internal chaos following the assasination of president Kerensky.
Altough victorious in the Weltkrieg, German Empire had massive economy problems and have fallen once Commune of France attacked them with aid from the Union of Britain.
Second American Civil War ended up with the collapse of Federal goverment and creation of Combined Sydicates of America who the proceeded to destroy both Mexico and Canada ( where King of England sought refuge after syndycalist takeover of British Isles ).
Japan was quite expansionist, eager to jump on German colonial possesions in South East Asia but unlike in our timeline it had to forefit the expansion of the continent because most China was unified under the banner of newly formed Tian Empire, militant nationalist theocracy that was isolationist but ready to destroy all its enemies ( that was me ).
South America had it share of internal strife and wars as well when meagre remnants of Entente ( democratic alliance led by Australia after Canada downfall ) and Internationale ( commies ) battled for power.

By the 1960 power balance was struck.
Internationale controlled most of Eurasian continent ( almost everyone in Europe was syndycalist, Russia had puppeted India, Vietnam, Laos and rest of Indochina ), Africa and North America.
United States of South America bonded into one faction to remain independent.
Tian Empire power was growing as well as Empire of Japan.

Entente was composed of Australia, New Zealand and sad remnants of German Empire holed up on Madagascar and couple of Indian Ocean islands but managed to negotiate a ceasefire..
How ? By building, in secret, massive amount of nuclear weapons ( with "little" help from both Tian and Japan ).
Australians were unable to liberate rest of the world but Syndycalists didn't wanted to risk erasing humanity from existence by provoking one-sided nuclear conflict.
Of course both sides knew that status quo wont last forever and started the rapid industrialization and arming itself.
Lead by the Prime Minister Josh Godfrey and Edward's VIII son, His Majesty Henry Windsor, Australia transformed into one big armed camp. When TN science was discovered every square inch of that land was made useful - either as a farm, weapon factory or housing space.
Internationale and rest of the world followed and by the 1980 world was starting to get very tense place to live ( again ).

World War III started on 1st May, 1987.
Internationale launched a full on attack, thinking that lack of Australian spaceships means they are easy targets. But the lack of Entente navy was not without reason - they simply invested heavily into Planetary missile and defence bases.
Who then returned the investment tenfold - in mere hours entire Internationale navy and all its land bases were smoldering wrecks and their forces were in full retreat.

However - nuclear exchange lowered the Earths average temperature and upped Earth radiation level to the point where annual population growth dropped to -3.5 %.
Faced with the extinction of human race ( i have only 374m people now, down from almost 500 ), Entente and rest of the world raced to construct starships to evacuate our planet.

With Luna and Mars being annexed in the early 70's by the Tian Empire, the Entente gaze is directed far outside the inner asteroid belt, to the airless rock known as Europa....

On August 23 1992, 20 000 Entente settlers arrive on Europa onboard the Diaspora class freighter Astral Queen...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on May 11, 2016, 04:08:21 PM
Befriended two aliens, because I gimped myself and made my population nowhere near able to handle my infrastructure to handle building and maintaining a navy, and now they're duking it out in a system I haven't even been to besides the initial discovery.  Gotta love allies that slow your game down to 5 seconds per turn.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on May 13, 2016, 04:48:14 PM
Back-to-back, sorry, but I must add this.  The fight between the allies, while slowing my game down like it's been anchored to hell, hal let me have a salvager literally in the midst of battle salvaging their destroyed ships.  Since none of the destroyed ones have broke 15k tonnage, it's been super quick and the salvager still has tons of room.  Now I'ma try to whisk away some of the survivors in the lifepods to study before they either get picked up or expire XD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on May 13, 2016, 05:48:59 PM
What's their tech level like compared to your own? Salvaging certain spoilers is a highly profitable venture from what I've heard, but I feel NPR's are generally equal or lower tech than human players.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on May 15, 2016, 12:22:07 AM
My community game just reached our first year of in game play.  With some ships and probes starting to appear from the folds of the three teams.
Also, Ruins discovered.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: xXKageAsashinXx on May 15, 2016, 09:27:07 PM
Quote from: AL link=topic=3808. msg91067#msg91067 date=1463179739
What's their tech level like compared to your own? Salvaging certain spoilers is a highly profitable venture from what I've heard, but I feel NPR's are generally equal or lower tech than human players.
Piss poor.  Anything I could possibly learn is how far behind they are to me.  I was trying to rp tech-superior robots fueled by atmospheric methane that freeze every planet they come across (since there's no anti-greenhouse limit) that are gimped by population, as they take quite a while to build even with assembly factories.  However, even for aurora, my patience weared thin having to juggle which industries were active so that my pop worked on what I wanted them to work on.  It was an interesting problem that I wouldn't mind retying at a later date, but for now I couldn't handle it.

Edit: Also forgot to mention, they've now brought the fight to my home system. I've got two primitives (compared to me) duking it out next to my populated worlds and it's really irritating having to go 5-30 seconds per turn.

Edit 2: Apparently, missiles can cause collateral damage if the target ship is occupying the same space as the uninvolved. Just lost a civilian freighter to 3 damage 25 missiles. That thing can take a hit, that's for sure, but now due to the A.I.'s crap we're at war technically, and they hate me for their mistakes. Oh the joys of allies that take a fight through 3 systems...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on May 16, 2016, 06:23:15 AM
61 Cygni, the system of Doom.
Adjacent to Sol it was infested with a serious case of precursors , and I have met a friendly NPR there, fairly certain it is not their home system. After 18 years and the destruction of 2 Battle fleets (14 and 22 ships respectively), my 3rd fleet goes in and wipes them out with the expenditure of 90% of its missiles , then as I don't have a jump ship for the 3rd generation large ships (20,000 tons) they retreat to the JP to wait for a Gate ship to build a gate. Survey ships enter and salvagers as there are a lot of wrecks here. First Survey ship jumps out to Wolf XX and encounters the Invaders and a lot of wrecks (I suspect this may be the friendly NPR's homesystem oops), so runs away . 5 days before the jump gate to Sol is finished 3 invader ships enter the system and wipe out my fleet 18 ships who can't put up any realistic defense as they have no missiles left and 20cm lasers on the 2 energy combatants stand no chance against Invaders and their ECM.
A 4th fleet is under construction in Sol in the hope that it will be finished before the invaders arrive, apart form that I have 2 Hab 0 planets in Alpha Centauri and 61 Cygni and a bunch of other planets which could be terraformed and excellent mineral deposits in several systems near Sol.

There are plenty of spare missiles on Earth, probably not enough to kill Invaders in an open space battle but enough so my fleet would have died fighting, of course no Missile collier had been built and most of the missiles were fired from Box launchers so no practical way to rearm the fleet in 61 Cygni
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on May 21, 2016, 03:12:18 PM
Fortunatly the Invaders never got around to invading Sol instead they have built up a huge fleet (123 ships) in 61 Cygni. After a few encounters with groups of their ships I have built up to a fleet of 158 ships backed by 140 fighters (ranging from 18000-50000 tons) and have gone after them. So far I no damage has been done but I believe I have survived all their long range missiles and am currently shooting my way through their AMM salvo's 511 missiles per salvo , no hits so far as I have a lot of Gauss cannon. When they have run out of missiles we will see if I have enough missiles to kill them, if I don't then their 50cm lasers will probably cut my fleet to pieces.
I think this is the largest battle I have fought so far , the scaling effect is interesting I don't think any previous fleet of mine could have survived the AMM bombardment as I just would not have had enough guns to shoot them all down
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on May 24, 2016, 01:18:28 AM
Fortunatly the Invaders never got around to invading Sol instead they have built up a huge fleet (123 ships) in 61 Cygni. After a few encounters with groups of their ships I have built up to a fleet of 158 ships backed by 140 fighters (ranging from 18000-50000 tons) and have gone after them. So far I no damage has been done but I believe I have survived all their long range missiles and am currently shooting my way through their AMM salvo's 511 missiles per salvo , no hits so far as I have a lot of Gauss cannon. When they have run out of missiles we will see if I have enough missiles to kill them, if I don't then their 50cm lasers will probably cut my fleet to pieces.
I think this is the largest battle I have fought so far , the scaling effect is interesting I don't think any previous fleet of mine could have survived the AMM bombardment as I just would not have had enough guns to shoot them all down
Battle of the century! I don't know how I could possibly get a fleet going that big without getting my economy imploding as such! Play with maintenance on?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on May 24, 2016, 06:39:05 AM
Maintenance is on, I started of with 1.2 Billion on Earth and HW Minerals on Earth and Mars. Both of those are pretty much mined out. Fuel is coming from Harvesters but I am very low on it , Money has not been a huge problem I have a large population on Mars and another of about 250, million  in Alpha centauri now. On a few occasions I have been almost out of cash but in each of those cases  shipbuilding has finished allowing me several months to build up again before starting on more ships.
I lost 2 ships in the battle both to ramming attacks, my missiles killed all their beam armed ships. I would probably not have managed that if they had held their antimissiles back to shoot down my missiles. However the combination of fast ships, ECCM and heavy armour made them difficult to kill with lasers and gauss cannon. My losses were limited to 2 ships as I had 5 Decoy ships along (200k commercial hulls stuffed with armour) I had meant them to absorb missile fire but they were largly ignored . But they absorbed ramming attacks by most of the enemy missile ships.

As soon as the fleet gets back home I am starting to scrap the older ships to save on their maintenance , I expect to scrap half to 2/3 of the fleet , as I have already established that a squadron of 8 of the middle aged ships can clear a precursor force from a system I really don't need all of those ships and a lot have engines , sensors and weapons 2 or 3 generations old, and that does not allow for the tech boost from salvaging a huge invader fleet
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on May 24, 2016, 08:46:02 PM
Maintenance is on, I started of with 1.2 Billion on Earth and HW Minerals on Earth and Mars. Both of those are pretty much mined out. Fuel is coming from Harvesters but I am very low on it , Money has not been a huge problem I have a large population on Mars and another of about 250, million  in Alpha centauri now. On a few occasions I have been almost out of cash but in each of those cases  shipbuilding has finished allowing me several months to build up again before starting on more ships.
I lost 2 ships in the battle both to ramming attacks, my missiles killed all their beam armed ships. I would probably not have managed that if they had held their antimissiles back to shoot down my missiles. However the combination of fast ships, ECCM and heavy armour made them difficult to kill with lasers and gauss cannon. My losses were limited to 2 ships as I had 5 Decoy ships along (200k commercial hulls stuffed with armour) I had meant them to absorb missile fire but they were largly ignored . But they absorbed ramming attacks by most of the enemy missile ships.

As soon as the fleet gets back home I am starting to scrap the older ships to save on their maintenance , I expect to scrap half to 2/3 of the fleet , as I have already established that a squadron of 8 of the middle aged ships can clear a precursor force from a system I really don't need all of those ships and a lot have engines , sensors and weapons 2 or 3 generations old, and that does not allow for the tech boost from salvaging a huge invader fleet
Ahh, impressive! Hmm, in terms of the commercial vessels, though, have you considered giving them a full-band array of active sensors (several size 1 sensors, one of each at resolution 1, 20, 50, and max) so that your decoy ships will both broadcast their position to hostile ships and get increased targetting priority due to acting as active sensor ships? Granted, the range will be super low if you are restricted at size 1 as such.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on May 25, 2016, 05:56:04 PM
It occurred to me only after I had started building them. However I think the Invaders had split their missile salvo's to attempt to engage multiple ships in my fleet so given the size of the fleets each of my ships probably only faced one or at the most 2 salvo's. Really they where much more useful for absorbing ramming attacks.

The enemy missile fire was no threat anyway , my fleet mounted so many Gauss turrets that most of them did not have to fire. If like my fleet the Invaders had fired Box launcher salvo's they may have been able to overload my missile defenses and get hits but with standard launchers they just could not get to salvo density to overload them .

It is taking a long time to salvage all the wrecks, and looks like it will boost my engine technology by 2 levels
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 26, 2016, 01:47:16 AM
It occurred to me only after I had started building them. However I think the Invaders had split their missile salvo's to attempt to engage multiple ships in my fleet so given the size of the fleets each of my ships probably only faced one or at the most 2 salvo's. Really they where much more useful for absorbing ramming attacks.

The enemy missile fire was no threat anyway , my fleet mounted so many Gauss turrets that most of them did not have to fire. If like my fleet the Invaders had fired Box launcher salvo's they may have been able to overload my missile defenses and get hits but with standard launchers they just could not get to salvo density to overload them .

It is taking a long time to salvage all the wrecks, and looks like it will boost my engine technology by 2 levels

Wouldn't AI be smart enough to see that those active ranges are suspisciously low for a warship and simply ignore/target something else ??

Menawhile in my game :

Hang in there guys ffs ..... :(
Dem feels...

EDIT : Wooohooo i actually made it in time <3
Now time to hunt the bastard who killed 153 crewmen of Voyager and captain Joel Evans..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on May 26, 2016, 03:19:45 AM
Not commercial, but I can strongly recommend low-tech railgun ships over armour balls. Low-power engines and base-tech railguns are cheaper than armour for the same damage absorbtion, can be repaired in the field, and a few 1000 railgun shots do some work regardless of what gets targeted.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on May 26, 2016, 05:25:20 AM
In this case the armoured balls were probably more useful than railgun ships.
1) I have 200,000 ton commercial yards which were not doing anything vital, my largest military yards at 50,000 tons were busy turning out real warships
2) Against invaders I strongly suspect the 10cm railguns would have been totally useless , the to hit penalty for the large ECM (Even with my ECCM) combined with the low tracking speed would have dropped the 2 hit chance to 0
3) My main fleet suffered successful ramming attacks despite a barrage of fire from lasers and gauss cannon , the decoys took the ramming attacks without endangering my valuable warships.

Against missile fire the railgun ships would probably have been at least as useful but as I had something like a 200% oversupply of PD guns on my battlefleet they would not have been needed
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on May 26, 2016, 06:20:09 AM
Fair points, especially shipyard capacitry - the main cost of throwaway warships isn't resources but tying up shipyards that may have something better to do.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 26, 2016, 07:31:18 AM
Fought Swarm Carrier and its host of FAC's with my Destroyer Fleet after rescuing those 42 guys at the last moment.

Emptied entire fleet magazine ( more than 1k missiles ) at those FAC's and haven't killed even one ( that is what you get when you have missiles with str-1 WH and 11% hit chance ) . Thankfully they had to close the range to fire their mesons so i could shred them with my railguns.

Final score :

20 FAC's dead, Swarm Carrier slightly damaged
FNS Tecumseh Sherman, FNS Charles De Gaulle and FNS Marshall Zhukov heavily damaged, FNS Patton had to be scuttled because op the critical damage.

And their is still a full blown 16k Thermal signature Swarm Matriarch in that system, one jump from Earth that has no active defenses beyond my fleet that has proven to be, how can we say it ?? Less than competent and effective :( ....

EDIT : Okay this is officialy strange.
See the pic - there is a swarm fleet duking it out with some alyums. I can detect meson cannons firing at 8 BN KM but i cant detect Swarm Matriarch and TWO Queens who are around the waypoint 1 and alien ships around survey point 18 ( i used SM mode to check this out ) ?? Viking has full em/thermal sensor suite, why the hell i cant see them but i can see energy impacts  ??
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DIT_grue on May 27, 2016, 12:57:02 AM
EDIT : Okay this is officialy strange.
See the pic - there is a swarm fleet duking it out with some alyums. I can detect meson cannons firing at 8 BN KM but i cant detect Swarm Matriarch and TWO Queens who are around the waypoint 1 and alien ships around survey point 18 ( i used SM mode to check this out ) ?? Viking has full em/thermal sensor suite, why the hell i cant see them but i can see energy impacts  ??

Because having anything in the system is enough to be shown Energy Weapon Impacts (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=6532.msg67962#msg67962) - Steve added them so he could see what was happening when he otherwise couldn't.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 27, 2016, 02:16:54 PM
Because having anything in the system is enough to be shown Energy Weapon Impacts (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=6532.msg67962#msg67962) - Steve added them so he could see what was happening when he otherwise couldn't.

Really ?? Thats little unrealistic but i guess its a nice convinience.

They are flinging some serious ordnance there - i detect str 13-15 nuclear explosions every 5-10 seconds.
I even had a couple of ~~250 str secondary explosions so i guess either someone smashed some bugs or they blew up a magazine full of missiles on alien ship.
Meanwhile my survey craft stays low and hugs the JP like mad - i have no weapons on him, no defences and i cant transit back to Sol because its a dormant JP and there is no gate here and i have no jump drive and no jump ships in service ....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on May 27, 2016, 10:28:45 PM
Really ?? Thats little unrealistic but i guess its a nice convinience.

Apparently, regular Newtonian things are no challenge for period sensors. Sending the tiniest of shuttles into a new system instantly gives us information about all bodies. Functioning ships are hard to detect, wrecks are visible. Visible weapon impacts seem consistent with this... and make the game more interesting too.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 28, 2016, 05:21:02 AM
Apparently, regular Newtonian things are no challenge for period sensors. Sending the tiniest of shuttles into a new system instantly gives us information about all bodies. Functioning ships are hard to detect, wrecks are visible. Visible weapon impacts seem consistent with this... and make the game more interesting too.

As for planets - visual survey isn't that hard especially for TN spacecraft. I would support the feature where you have to orbit the planet before getting to know the atmo composition, gravity etc like with Tn minerals presence.
But there is a difference between visually detecting 12k diameter rocky planet and str 1 energy weapon impact from 8 Bn km.

And as for wrecks IIRC Steve told something about it being a technical issue because adding "wreck detection" would drastically drag out turns processing times.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on May 28, 2016, 05:47:11 AM
Wrecks used to be detected with sensors, but it added processing time and not much in terms of game play. You had to mark the locations of wrecks before you moved out of sensor range and had to search systems for wrecks. That was tedious rather than interesting so I made them visible all the time.

The techno babble is that any TN ship is barely visible in our universe as it is moving mainly through the liquid-like dimension adjacent to ours (TN elements span that dimension and ours). Once a ship is wrecked it fully emerges into our dimension and it easy to detect (Just like planets, moons, etc.).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on June 01, 2016, 02:01:20 PM
Well my community game has gone into full crisis mode.  might have launches next turn. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on June 02, 2016, 05:59:24 AM
Hey, we didn't want you to be bored.  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on June 02, 2016, 12:08:03 PM
Hey, we didn't want you to be bored.  ;D

If the launches do happen, I should livefeed the game so everyone can see WW3 in action. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Red Dot on June 02, 2016, 04:43:21 PM
It will not last very long....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 05, 2016, 08:12:02 AM
I hope its a Golden Throne, not some forgotten Warp Storm creating device ....
Emperor protects.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on June 13, 2016, 02:13:30 PM
My attempts at a Star Trek themed gamed are starting to fall apart.  I put in a load of self imposed restrictions to try and match the Trek vibe - all ships have to have warp engines (jump engines), phasers (ie lasers only), shields and science divisions (geological and gravitational sensors).  It seemed like a cool idea, but has just ended up with me having lots of large, expensive survey ships which still aren't any use in a fight against spoilers.

I think I'm going to need to change my sci-fi inspiration for the next game.  Maybe B5. . .  I rather like the idea of testing the new "Declare Independence" button on Mars, and fighters and space stations seem more militarily sustainable. 

Hello everyone, first post, but I've been playing the game for a while.  As you can see I tend to go for a RP style rather than a min/max approach.  I love the freedom Aurora gives you for that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 13, 2016, 03:00:06 PM
My attempts at a Star Trek themed gamed are starting to fall apart.  I put in a load of self imposed restrictions to try and match the Trek vibe - all ships have to have warp engines (jump engines), phasers (ie lasers only), shields and science divisions (geological and gravitational sensors).  It seemed like a cool idea, but has just ended up with me having lots of large, expensive survey ships which still aren't any use in a fight against spoilers.

I think I'm going to need to change my sci-fi inspiration for the next game.  Maybe B5. . .  I rather like the idea of testing the new "Declare Independence" button on Mars, and fighters and space stations seem more militarily sustainable. 

Hello everyone, first post, but I've been playing the game for a while.  As you can see I tend to go for a RP style rather than a min/max approach.  I love the freedom Aurora gives you for that.

And now you know why the Star Trek model is not viable. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: lennson on June 13, 2016, 10:00:01 PM
I am curious as to what you have tried in terms of your Star Trek themed ships.  I can see that a purely laser strategy would have issue but if we interpret "photon torpedoes" as large long range missiles it might be possible to make something battle worthy (i. e.  not get blown to pieces before firing).

I thought the theme of the Federation was really powerful sensor technology which would go well with large long range missiles.  This also happens to work well with ships that aren't particularly good at taking damage.

I think the main challenge with applying designs from science fiction to Aurora is how powerful missiles are in Aurora. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on June 14, 2016, 03:12:17 PM
Quote from: lennson link=topic=3808. msg92509#msg92509 date=1465873201
I am curious as to what you have tried in terms of your Star Trek themed ships.   I can see that a purely laser strategy would have issue but if we interpret "photon torpedoes" as large long range missiles it might be possible to make something battle worthy (i.  e.   not get blown to pieces before firing). 

I thought the theme of the Federation was really powerful sensor technology which would go well with large long range missiles.   This also happens to work well with ships that aren't particularly good at taking damage. 

I think the main challenge with applying designs from science fiction to Aurora is how powerful missiles are in Aurora. 

My problems were twofold.  Even with "photon torpedoes" you run into the problem that they always seem to be secondary to phasers (or at least equal with) so you can't really have a torpedoes only warship.  (They also don't seem to be very long ranged, so perhaps a closer match would be large, very fast, minimal endurance missiles to be used for shock damage during a laser battle?) 

But that pales into insignificance compared with the problem that Star Trek ships are not clearly not dedicated warships, and are stand alone not specialist.  So those big sensors have to be on every ship, (along with "scientific" geological sensors really).  And each ship needs its own jump drive, enough fuel and maintenance supplies for deep space operations etc etc.  It soon ebcomes very expensive and very inefficient.

Totally agree about missiles.  Can anyone think of a missile friendly sci-fi setting? I need something to inspire me to love them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Herodotus4 on June 14, 2016, 03:44:38 PM
My problems were twofold.  Even with "photon torpedoes" you run into the problem that they always seem to be secondary to phasers (or at least equal with) so you can't really have a torpedoes only warship.  (They also don't seem to be very long ranged, so perhaps a closer match would be large, very fast, minimal endurance missiles to be used for shock damage during a laser battle?) 

But that pales into insignificance compared with the problem that Star Trek ships are not clearly not dedicated warships, and are stand alone not specialist.  So those big sensors have to be on every ship, (along with "scientific" geological sensors really).  And each ship needs its own jump drive, enough fuel and maintenance supplies for deep space operations etc etc.  It soon ebcomes very expensive and very inefficient.

Totally agree about missiles.  Can anyone think of a missile friendly sci-fi setting? I need something to inspire me to love them.
Honorverse, starfire, the cinnabar series, battlestar galactica (the galactica is a carrier with big missiles, gaus point defense and small lasers for anti fighter)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on June 14, 2016, 04:20:34 PM
You could make a nice StarStrek-esque multirole cruiser, qualities I find typical would be...
- extensive sensor suite
- not dedicated warships
- primary and secondary hull, varying ease of separation
- tractor beams standard

A jump tug with all sensors allowed on commercial designs towing a weapon+military sensor pod seems a reasonable translation, and would be fairly useful for armed exploration.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on June 14, 2016, 05:29:18 PM
Or with some inspired renaming of components, you could make it fit a lot more. For example you could do something like:
missile launcher -> "Accelerator tube"
missile fire control -> "Railgun turret"
and missiles -> "750mm Railgun shell".

Since Aurora doesn't really have graphics for what your ships or their components look like, you have a lot of freedom to re-imagine everything that you use. Try not to get too limited to what it originally says on the box.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 14, 2016, 06:03:32 PM
Or with some inspired renaming of components, you could make it fit a lot more. For example you could do something like:
missile launcher -> "Accelerator tube"
missile fire control -> "Railgun turret"
and missiles -> "750mm Railgun shell".

Since Aurora doesn't really have graphics for what your ships or their components look like, you have a lot of freedom to re-imagine everything that you use. Try not to get too limited to what it originally says on the box.

One thing I've done in the past is use mm instead of cm for measurements, i.e. 200mm laser cannon instead of a 20cm laser. Or convert to imperial measurements, 9.8 inch laser cannon rather than a 25cm laser.

It does make it almost sound like a completely different game. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on June 15, 2016, 10:08:44 AM
My attempts at a Star Trek themed gamed are starting to fall apart.  I put in a load of self imposed restrictions to try and match the Trek vibe - all ships have to have warp engines (jump engines), phasers (ie lasers only), shields and science divisions (geological and gravitational sensors).  It seemed like a cool idea, but has just ended up with me having lots of large, expensive survey ships which still aren't any use in a fight against spoilers.

About as good a description of Wolf-359 as there ever was, there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 15, 2016, 11:36:31 AM
One thing I've done in the past is use mm instead of cm for measurements, i.e. 200mm laser cannon instead of a 20cm laser. Or convert to imperial measurements, 9.8 inch laser cannon rather than a 25cm laser.

It does make it almost sound like a completely different game. :)

I even remember someone writing some Aurora fiction ( kill me but i cant find it for the life of me ) where he called missiles "artillery shells" and missile launchers were "artillery guns" or something like that.

Quote
if we interpret "photon torpedoes" as large long range missiles

But they are not. Star Trek torpedoes are pathetically short range, probably even shorter than Aurora's CIWS ..
If anything we could pretend that carronades are photons.

Star Trek theme doesn't work very well because that whole verse is written on "hollywood tactics" and its simply not viable in "smart" mil sf like Aurora.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on June 15, 2016, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: Herodotus4 link=topic=3808. msg92534#msg92534 date=1465937078
Honorverse, starfire, the cinnabar series, battlestar galactica (the galactica is a carrier with big missiles, gaus point defense and small lasers for anti fighter)

Oh, I'd forgotten about BSG.  Good call.  Not sure ship-to-ship combat is prominent enough in starfire to draw much inspiration.  I'm not familiar with the other two, I'll look them up.  Thanks for the suggestions.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 15, 2016, 12:06:33 PM
Oh, I'd forgotten about BSG.  Good call.  Not sure ship-to-ship combat is prominent enough in starfire to draw much inspiration.  I'm not familiar with the other two, I'll look them up.  Thanks for the suggestions.

Im sorry ... what ? Are we thinking about the same Starfire ? The one with rampart ship to ship combat in every book ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on June 15, 2016, 12:18:20 PM
Quote from: Lossmar link=topic=3808. msg92614#msg92614 date=1466010393
Im sorry . . .  what ? Are we thinking about the same Starfire ? The one with rampart ship to ship combat in every book ?
Clearly not.  I think maybe I was thinking of firefly, sorry! Do you know why the author is?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on June 15, 2016, 01:07:13 PM
Clearly not.  I think maybe I was thinking of firefly, sorry! Do you know why the author is?

Oh man, Aurora has arrived if there are players that don't know about Starfire.

David Weber and Steve White.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on June 15, 2016, 01:28:06 PM
I even remember someone writing some Aurora fiction ( kill me but i cant find it for the life of me ) where he called missiles "artillery shells" and missile launchers were "artillery guns" or something like that.


That sounds like something I might have done. Or one of Steve's many many stories.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on June 15, 2016, 04:46:09 PM
Oh man, Aurora has arrived if there are players that don't know about Starfire.

David Weber and Steve White.

or you know the pen and paper game that Aurora grew out of a playing assistant bit of software Steve used to write...

Originally written by Steve V. Cole (god help you if you ever leave out the V while corresponding with him!)
third edition written by aforementioned David Weber,  and used as the basis for Honor Harrington until he decided to go silly with it
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on June 15, 2016, 04:49:50 PM
or you know the pen and paper game that Aurora grew out of a playing assistant bit of software Steve used to write...

Originally written by Steve V. Cole (god help you if you ever leave out the V while corresponding with him!)
third edition written by aforementioned David Weber,  and used as the basis for Honor Harrington until he decided to go silly with it

Ah, so the novels are based on the game? Presumably that would make them siblings of Aurora? I shall have to check them out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on June 15, 2016, 04:54:53 PM
They're really neat. They do have a kind of Aurora-ish vibe to them, although they are newtonian, which is very cool.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on June 15, 2016, 05:00:58 PM
But they are not. Star Trek torpedoes are pathetically short range, probably even shorter than Aurora's CIWS ..

huh?  Star Trek photon torpedoes have massive ranges,  you need to remember ships in Star Trek are travelling massively faster than light

ie in real Star Trek warp 3 is 27 times c
in next gen warp 3 is 39 times c

at those kinds of speed it doesn't take long to exceed any range Aurora could even calculate
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Herodotus4 on June 15, 2016, 07:25:28 PM
They're really neat. They do have a kind of Aurora-ish vibe to them, although they are newtonian, which is very cool.
If you mean starfire then actually newtonian phsics only apply when a ship is shot up (like when in the shiva option when the female pilot main character is drifting around and runs into the male human admiral main character) but the actual drives are non newtonian. With the possible exception of fighters.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on June 16, 2016, 12:44:33 AM
Sorry, I meant the Honorverse, I've never read Starfire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on June 16, 2016, 03:59:12 AM
Never read the books before, but recently bought Crusade by David Weber & Steve White. Looking forward to some Auroraish SF.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on June 16, 2016, 05:27:51 AM
I've read some of the Starfire series from the "Stars at War" omnibus thing, and now I can't seem find #5 onwards which was quite annoying. But that was about a year or so ago now so I've quite literally lost the plot. But I do highly recommend the series, you can really see the Starfire roots of Aurora from those books.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on June 16, 2016, 07:20:58 AM
  and used as the basis for Honor Harrington until he decided to go silly with it

Um actually it's the Starfire books (Insurrection, Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, along with Steve White's follow-on series) that are based on Starfire.  HH is completely different techno-babble physics.

Interestingly enough, I just started re-reading On Basilisk Station last night.  Haven't done a full lap through the Honorverse in a few years....

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 16, 2016, 11:42:42 AM
huh?  Star Trek photon torpedoes have massive ranges,  you need to remember ships in Star Trek are travelling massively faster than light

ie in real Star Trek warp 3 is 27 times c
in next gen warp 3 is 39 times c

at those kinds of speed it doesn't take long to exceed any range Aurora could even calculate

No they are not.
Look for the example, at the end scene from ST First Contact - fake defector Data launches torps at the Phoenix WHO IS IN THE VISUAL RANGE and it still takes them like 10 seconds to impact ( or rather miss it ). They are nowhere near FTL speeds, barring those fired during warp pursuit by adm Marcus ( aka best Starfleet admiral ever ) at the Enterprise in "Into the Darkness". .
And i wont even mention other things wrong with ST franchise and boy, that is a looooong list.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Herodotus4 on June 16, 2016, 01:35:53 PM
Sorry, I meant the Honorverse, I've never read Starfire.
In that case I agree, the margret thatcher thing is getting old. Also the tech advantage is getting silly, the only way manticore could have been slowed down as of war of honor would be some hyperphysics shenanigans with old SDs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 16, 2016, 01:59:17 PM
That old "Courage Wolf Aurora 4x joke/meme" comes to live ....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on June 16, 2016, 05:01:56 PM
That old "Courage Wolf Aurora 4x joke/meme" comes to live ....
I got another one!
(http://i.imgur.com/Vw7tdC4.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on June 16, 2016, 06:30:23 PM
No they are not.
Look for the example, at the end scene from ST First Contact - fake defector Data launches torps at the Phoenix WHO IS IN THE VISUAL RANGE and it still takes them like 10 seconds to impact ( or rather miss it ). They are nowhere near FTL speeds, barring those fired during warp pursuit by adm Marcus ( aka best Starfleet admiral ever ) at the Enterprise in "Into the Darkness". .
And i wont even mention other things wrong with ST franchise and boy, that is a looooong list.

Journey to Babel has them being attacked by an Orion raider travelling at Warp 9...
admittedly no Photons are used,  but they were rarely used before the movies
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on June 16, 2016, 06:33:38 PM
Um actually it's the Starfire books (Insurrection, Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, along with Steve White's follow-on series) that are based on Starfire.  HH is completely different techno-babble physics.

Interestingly enough, I just started re-reading On Basilisk Station last night.  Haven't done a full lap through the Honorverse in a few years....

John

The battles in the first few books were played out to get some grit in them in a modified version of his version of Starfire (3rd) from what I can remember him saying,  though that was a long time ago,  and after the fourth of those books I try very hard to never think about them anymore
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: illrede on June 17, 2016, 01:31:26 AM
In that case I agree, the margret thatcher thing is getting old. Also the tech advantage is getting silly, the only way manticore could have been slowed down as of war of honor would be some hyperphysics shenanigans with old SDs.

If Tommy Theisman just had a third task force held in reserve during Beatrice-Bravo...

As it was, Manticore had to earn it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on June 17, 2016, 06:35:47 AM
I've finally rebooted my Honorverse game. Decided to go big or go home, even if my designs aren't quite meeting Weber's million tons or more vessels and the armaments aren't quite matching what you'd see in one of the Jayne's books he's had published;

Code: [Select]
Bastion class Superdreadnought    36 000 tons     972 Crew     6074.4 BP      TCS 720  TH 2040  EM 300
2833 km/s     Armour 8-97     Shields 10-300     Sensors 44/44/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 210.16
Maint Life 0.01 Years     MSP 105    AFR 10368%    IFR 144%    1YR 9145    5YR 137182    Max Repair 257 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 3   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Magazine 1936   

Anderson-Hilton 204 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (10)    Power 204    Fuel Use 33.97%    Signature 204    Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 14.7 billion km   (60 days at full power)
Delta R300/360 Sidewall (4)   Total Fuel Cost  60 Litres per hour  (1 440 per day)

SD-Grade 20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (10)    Range 256 000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
Quad PD Laser Emitter Turret (6x12)    Range 30 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
SD-Grade Fire Control S02 128-4000 H40 (2)    Max Range: 256 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
PD Fire Control S01 32-8000 H40 (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Capital-Grade Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (2)     Total Power Output 60    Armour 0    Exp 20%

Wells-Pugh Mk2 Countermissile Launcher (8)    Missile Size 2    Rate of Fire 15
Edwards-Potter Mk15-4 Launcher (8)    Missile Size 15    Rate of Fire 115
Counter-Missile Missile Fire Control FC27-R1 (40%) (1)     Range 27.7m km    Resolution 1
SD-Grade Missile Fire Control FC686-R200 (40%) (2)     Range 686.0m km    Resolution 200
Mk15A Missile (104)  Speed: 14 400 km/s   End: 738.2m    Range: 637.8m km   WH: 20    Size: 15    TH: 67/40/20
MK2 Counter-Missile (188)  Speed: 32 000 km/s   End: 5.4m    Range: 10.4m km   WH: 1    Size: 2    TH: 309/185/92

Capital-Grade Active Search Sensor MR130-R200 (40%) (1)     GPS 16800     Range 130.7m km    Resolution 200
Anti-Missile Sensor MR2-R1 (40%) (1)     GPS 21     Range 2.3m km    MCR 252k km    Resolution 1
Capital-Grade Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 44     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  44m km
Capital-Grade EM Detection Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 44     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  44m km

ECM 20

Strike Group
1x Series-Alpha Pinnace   Speed: 7692 km/s    Size: 2.34

Reckon I'll have to look at the doubling scheme I was trying out on my LotGH game. :S
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on June 17, 2016, 06:59:24 AM
You forgot your maintenance life.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on June 17, 2016, 06:44:51 PM
Maybe he's playing with maintenance off?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on June 18, 2016, 12:40:08 AM
The Terran Federation is exploring outwards, but after finding 13 systems and one hostile race we have only 2 possible systems with warpholes, need to survey them first... But so far there seems to be a small chance that the Federation only will find 13 systems... :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 19, 2016, 12:47:00 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/iMHI7zd.png)

My current empire. The RNG decided to bless me with an amazing chokepoint to defend my core systems from at Procyon.

Anybody got any way of simplifying the management of survey fleets? I can do it well enough when I've only got one, but now I have three.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on June 19, 2016, 01:56:06 AM
You forgot your maintenance life.

Al's right, I'm playing with maintenance off. I only rarely play with it on, to be honest.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on June 19, 2016, 02:15:45 AM
Anybody got any way of simplifying the management of survey fleets? I can do it well enough when I've only got one, but now I have three.
I use the default and conditional orders in the F12 screen:
set primary orders to survey next 3 system locations (Grav survey)
optionally set secondary orders to survey next 5 system bodies (Geo survey if your survey ships have both sets of sensors)
and set the conditional order to refuel at nearest colony if fuel level is below ~30%
I've got something like 8 survey fleets out doing their business on the fringes of known space and this keeps things running really smooth.

Al's right, I'm playing with maintenance off. I only rarely play with it on, to be honest.
Even so, you'd probably want to at least have enough MSP stored to carry out one or two Max Repairs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 19, 2016, 03:35:55 AM
I use the default and conditional orders in the F12 screen:
set primary orders to survey next 3 system locations (Grav survey)
optionally set secondary orders to survey next 5 system bodies (Geo survey if your survey ships have both sets of sensors)
and set the conditional order to refuel at nearest colony if fuel level is below ~30%
I've got something like 8 survey fleets out doing their business on the fringes of known space and this keeps things running really smooth.
What there needs to be is a conditional order that tells it to return to its superior formation when all bodies are surveyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on June 19, 2016, 05:32:11 AM
What there needs to be is a conditional order that tells it to return to its superior formation when all bodies are surveyed.

That might cause a problem if the superior formation is still surveying :)

You can use return to entry point and absorb sub-fleets in same location to get the same effect.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 19, 2016, 06:08:22 AM
You can use return to entry point and absorb sub-fleets in same location to get the same effect.
Thanks! I'll do that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 20, 2016, 06:30:21 AM
So my campaign is Freespace themed and the first thing I see in Ross 128 is shipwrecks.

(http://i.imgur.com/wrT55m7.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ty55101 on June 21, 2016, 09:59:44 PM
So my campaign is Freespace themed and the first thing I see in Ross 128 is shipwrecks.

Well looks like you get to deal with some war mongering races. Have fun :).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on June 23, 2016, 04:00:39 AM
My battle fleet just left it's tanker behind and split up in two halves to investigate two distant systems where wrecks were observed by survey vessels. Since the Wolf incident fleet policy has been to let military ships scout any system where wrecks are found before survey is resumed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on June 23, 2016, 10:07:53 AM
So my campaign is Freespace themed and the first thing I see in Ross 128 is shipwrecks.

(http://i.imgur.com/wrT55m7.png)

Obligatory link :

 ;D

Time to roll out those Hecate class Destroyers man.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 25, 2016, 11:38:52 PM
Decided to send every single one of my beam fighters at an enemy gate construction ship that I encountered. Hilarity ensued in the events log when I killed it:

(http://i.imgur.com/YSBbopQ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/mdULcp6.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on June 25, 2016, 11:57:05 PM
how many fighters and how long did it take to bring down?
I've used anemic low tech gauss armed light fighters to take down unarmed enemy freighters. It takes hours.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 26, 2016, 12:03:22 AM
48 fighters. The ship died in a single volley.

Edit: Guys do I have this jump-point blockaded? I'm not sure.
(http://i.imgur.com/9pUymqa.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on June 26, 2016, 03:32:04 AM
Needs a cluster of mines on the jump point and maybe a couple asteroid forts and you'll be good to go.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on June 26, 2016, 03:34:18 AM
Perhaps Carronade FAC and meson fighters to supplement your task force too.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on June 26, 2016, 03:46:51 AM
Is it enough? Depends, destroying trespassers is not enough.
What a good jump point defence needs is microwaves and boarding teams.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ChildServices on June 26, 2016, 03:48:47 AM
It'll be enough for now. I've researched some tech paths and totally neglected others. I went a little bit down lasers but I mostly focused on missiles, jump drives, and engine efficiency. Basically I'm not allowed to research certain things until I encounter them or am heavily invested in a war and the issue comes up during a fleet refit phase.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on June 26, 2016, 07:16:52 AM
Got myself into a fight. Was just starting to feel confident as I was killing everything they had with missiles from range. Taskgroup was one jump cruiser, 3 missile cruisers and a destroyer with laser PD. Killing all but one of their ships before running out of missiles. Well, business as usual, let's move in and finish it off with the lasers from my destroyer.

Wham! WTF? They obviously have a new ship-ship missile since last time, too fast for my PD and anti-missiles. Suddenly I'm the one in trouble against that single Alien ship. Especially since the first ship they kill is my jump cruiser, I'm now stuck in the system and they have a slight speed advantage.

There is some chaos as I try dealing with the missile salvos. They get all my missile cruisers, eventually only the destroyer alive. And that is with no armor, no engines and no missile sensor left. It seems they ran out of missiles and are now closing in. The crew is working frenetically and manage to get one of the engines operational again. I'm worried they might have shorter range anti-missiles and finish me off with those, but nothing happens. Now they are not closing as fast as before, our lasers have a range advantage and they did eat a few of my missiles earlier.

I'm starting to score hits every 10 seconds, not much but they are adding up. And finally, boom, we got them. My damaged destroyer is now limping along alone picking up survivors among the wrecks of all the larger ships while hoping the next ship jumping into the system will be one of ours..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on June 26, 2016, 02:09:13 PM
Got myself into a fight. Was just starting to feel confident as I was killing everything they had with missiles from range. Taskgroup was one jump cruiser, 3 missile cruisers and a destroyer with laser PD. Killing all but one of their ships before running out of missiles. Well, business as usual, let's move in and finish it off with the lasers from my destroyer.

Wham! WTF? They obviously have a new ship-ship missile since last time, too fast for my PD and anti-missiles. Suddenly I'm the one in trouble against that single Alien ship. Especially since the first ship they kill is my jump cruiser, I'm now stuck in the system and they have a slight speed advantage.

There is some chaos as I try dealing with the missile salvos. They get all my missile cruisers, eventually only the destroyer alive. And that is with no armor, no engines and no missile sensor left. It seems they ran out of missiles and are now closing in. The crew is working frenetically and manage to get one of the engines operational again. I'm worried they might have shorter range anti-missiles and finish me off with those, but nothing happens. Now they are not closing as fast as before, our lasers have a range advantage and they did eat a few of my missiles earlier.

I'm starting to score hits every 10 seconds, not much but they are adding up. And finally, boom, we got them. My damaged destroyer is now limping along alone picking up survivors among the wrecks of all the larger ships while hoping the next ship jumping into the system will be one of ours..
Careful with operations like this! When possible, you'd want to wait until life pod life support is just about to expire to pick up their occupants, mainly because once you have a ship with over 20% higher than crew allowance onboard, you begin to run the risk of life support damage over a span of time, which can leave your crew dead in the water if you can't get unloaded in time.

Meanwhile, in my current campaign, my missiles lost their target, and I was hoping their newly upgraded onboard sensors would allow them a wider engagement berth.
(https://images-2.discordapp.net/.eJwNyFEOgyAMANC7cAAKVWH1NgQJmmlLoGYfy-4-3-f7mrufZjW7ahsrwHaMLH2zQ6WnWmwVqWdJ7Rg2ywVJNeX9KqwDPOEcMER0Dml2hK-nwjI59D4iTY4CRbj5zfJh27ia3x8GqiLd.tTEJekFK2dNCjsM6708s7HaKUvc.png)
Talk about near-miss of the century...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on June 27, 2016, 10:43:46 AM
2nd system discovered in my newest game... well its quite big. That light blue line is the orbit comparison for those of you who don't know. Oh, also, there are around 100 planets and moons, and 500 asteroids.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 01, 2016, 02:49:56 PM
How the hell planet like this have colony cost zero ??
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on July 01, 2016, 02:53:18 PM
How the hell planet like this have colony cost zero ??
As one thing Aurora doesn't emulate is the health risk of Hypercapnia in any particular species.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 02, 2016, 01:20:49 PM
As one thing Aurora doesn't emulate is the health risk of Hypercapnia in any particular species.

Shouldn't Carbon Dioxide count as dangerous gas when there is more than 5% of it in the atmosphere ??
Or do i recall correctly that ANY amount of dangerous gas gives increased colony cost ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on July 02, 2016, 03:35:20 PM
CO2 is the only dangerous gas that doesn't actually negatively affect colony cost or anything really, sometimes I put a few percent onto a planet to simulate severe pollution.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on July 02, 2016, 06:25:13 PM
(https://images-1.discordapp.net/.eJwNyEsOhCAMANC7cAA-lQD1NgQJGrUlUONiMnefecv3Uc-41Kp2kT5XY7ZjFh6bnsIjt6obc7tq7sfUhW-TRXLZ70oyjUPwAUIEawG9RUj_SuhdQgc-BrtEt5iHTuKXdKemvj8HqSLg.MStLlAGXTTKPXWJq9m1qc6Vwjhc.png)
So it appears the 1,000 km/s 70,000 ton enemy mothership just farted through the nth dimension and achieved godspeed. I blame Langrange Points.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DaMachinator on July 14, 2016, 11:55:01 PM
Just got a whole 3 geosurvey vessels TRASHED by ~8 unknown alien vessels.  Top observed speed: ~4500 m/s.  Thermal emissions ~730.  3 classes.  Really wierd active sensor designs. 

My gravisurvey ship detected over 30 strength 6 detonations and ran like hell for the Sol JP.  I'm building a DSTS to cover the JP on the closest asteroid. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on July 21, 2016, 08:19:37 PM
been playing a new Terran Confederation game.

My unarmed S-class Scout the TCNS Boaty McBoatface has had the misfortune of encountering aliens in Wolf 359.  It is being hit with Kinetic weapons.

Guess it time to see how my Ion Drived Navy does. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on July 21, 2016, 09:43:03 PM
The Battle for Wolf 359 is about to begin.  Lets hope my fleet does better then Starfleet.

unknown aliens Located in system.

Bravo force is of the following.

x2 Essex Class Carriers
x1 Revenge Class Crusier (Laser armed)
x8 Rio Grande Class FF (Anti-ship)
x8 Ural Class FF  (Anti-missile)
x16 Bunker Hill Class Corvetts
x8 Orion Class gunboats
x10 Mexico class bombers

Hopefully they can lay waste to the aliens, if not, it will be painful.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on July 21, 2016, 11:00:38 PM
Weird - I got hammered by missiles yet they didn't have active sensors on?


Is this a Spoiler?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on July 22, 2016, 01:50:47 AM
It could be that you didn't have enough EM sensors to detect their actives?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Kytuzian on July 22, 2016, 08:33:19 AM
Weird - I got hammered by missiles yet they didn't have active sensors on?


Is this a Spoiler?

Maybe they're mines that use thermal sensors to lock on? I don't know of the AI is capable of that, but I know you can do that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on July 22, 2016, 09:15:49 AM
It could be that you didn't have enough EM sensors to detect their actives?

You might have a winner here.  Looking over my class designs I realized the builders forgot the EM/Thermal package for the Essex class.    Some administrators will be fired.  That is assuming they don't jump into sol and nuke earth. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: DaMachinator on July 22, 2016, 09:19:58 AM
My save got corrupted or something, and now the entire game broke. I suspect I messed something up copying DB's from a fixed copy to a portable copy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on August 02, 2016, 01:03:07 PM
After rewatching Babylon 5 i started playing me some good old Earth start...

Added minerals to Ganymede, SM'ed ruins ( ya, know Shadows ) and promptly picked my jaw from the floor...

Almost 500 instalations, Venezia Empire - TIER 5 !!! empire ...

My ConBrigs unEarthed ( unGanymeded ? ) so many of so advanced engines that after dissasembling them on Earth i jumped from Nuclear Pulse ( my newest engines, haven't even build anything with them yet because my fleet is still on the Nuclear Thermal level and so far it proved ok against hostile xeno FAC's encoutered in the nearby system ) to Internal Confinement drives ...
Researching Capacitors level 5 and almost completing tier 3 Carronades and tier 2 railguns was just a cherry on top :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Herodotus4 on August 03, 2016, 11:55:47 PM
Well I found a level 3 nebula 1 jump from earth in the london system, the first NPRs I found were fairly friendly and so my rushed missile cruiser division was not needed. Then a 750 ton wreck vanished in the swansea system 2 jumps from earth in the nebula, so I sent the cruisers to check it out. After turning on the active sensors I found 30+ 750 ton FACs rushing my cruisers at 5m km so I decided to open the range and shoot, that is when I found out that missiles do not work in nebulas. On the plus side the cruisers can go 4100 kms in the nebula so they got away, on the negative I now need to fight the star swarm in a level 3 nebula and I had not researched any energy weapons so it will be a few years I will be fighting a defensive war in the sol system until then because that is where all of my weapons actually work.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on August 05, 2016, 11:02:27 AM
After rewatching Babylon 5 i started playing me some good old Earth start...

Added minerals to Ganymede, SM'ed ruins ( ya, know Shadows ) and promptly picked my jaw from the floor...

Almost 500 instalations, Venezia Empire - TIER 5 !!! empire ...

My ConBrigs unEarthed ( unGanymeded ? ) so many of so advanced engines that after dissasembling them on Earth i jumped from Nuclear Pulse ( my newest engines, haven't even build anything with them yet because my fleet is still on the Nuclear Thermal level and so far it proved ok against hostile xeno FAC's encoutered in the nearby system ) to Internal Confinement drives ...
Researching Capacitors level 5 and almost completing tier 3 Carronades and tier 2 railguns was just a cherry on top :D

Very nice, been tempted to make a Babylon 5 themed game going, Might do it after my "UNIT" game completes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on August 06, 2016, 01:59:24 PM
Very nice, been tempted to make a Babylon 5 themed game going, Might do it after my "UNIT" game completes.

It wasn't so nice. I mean yeah, those techs were nice but Sol was so fricking devoid of TN minerals that i would be suprised if there was a total of 5M tons of everything ( not counting Sorium on Jupiter and Saturn )... Kinda ruined the fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on August 06, 2016, 11:24:50 PM
It wasn't so nice. I mean yeah, those techs were nice but Sol was so fricking devoid of TN minerals that i would be suprised if there was a total of 5M tons of everything ( not counting Sorium on Jupiter and Saturn )... Kinda ruined the fun.

Ouch, I found 11 million tons of D on Mars and 200,000,000+ of Sorium in Saturn in my current laptop game. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: FrederickAlexander on August 10, 2016, 12:03:50 PM
Well I feel like the game hates me, Rather than a ruin giving me a tech i need, it gives me a more advanced version of one tech I already have. It gave me absorbtion strengh per HS rather then the radiation tech I feel the game is just taunting me now...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Kytuzian on August 10, 2016, 01:26:10 PM
I just built a super big ship, then I realized I didn't have the fuel on my homeworld to fuel it completely, or the missiles to completely fill it's magazines. So like, that's kind of unfortunate.

Code: [Select]
Yesu II class Capital Ship    1 600 000 tons     42454 Crew     383673.9992 BP      TCS 32000  TH 300000  EM 180000
9375 km/s     Armour 40-1218     Shields 6000-450     Sensors 900/1600/1/1     Damage Control Rating 6300     PPV 1336
Maint Life 8.51 Years     MSP 794356    AFR 3864%    IFR 53.7%    1YR 19569    5YR 293542    Max Repair 3200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Spare Berths 0   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 25 Battalions    Magazine 51000   
Jump Gate Construction Ship: 150 days

Kouang-Tabangiin Cybernetics 2000 EP Solid Core AM Drive (150)    Power 2000    Fuel Use 10%    Signature 2000    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 242 600 000 Litres    Range 272.9 billion km   (336 days at full power)
Omicron R450/288 Shields (1000)   Total Fuel Cost  12 000 Litres per hour  (288 000 per day)

Single Temulun-Unegen 12cm C4 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (40x1)    Range 240 000km     TS: 32000 km/s     Power 4-4     RM 6    ROF 5        4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 2 2
Ho'elungiin Heavy Industries 40cm C16 Near Ultraviolet Laser (10)    Range 1 000 000km     TS: 9375 km/s     Power 42-16     RM 3    ROF 15        42 42 42 31 25 21 18 15 14 12
Kouang-Shria Armaments Company CIWS-320 (50x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S04 500-16000 (3)    Max Range: 1 000 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90
Taidjutgiin Electronics Fire Control S02 125-25000 H30 (5)    Max Range: 250 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 76 72 68 64 60
Plasma-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1.2 (111)     Total Power Output 319.68    Armour 0    Exp 16%

Tuli Engineering Company Size 5 Missile Launcher (200)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 25
Battushiggiin-Batugiin Manufacturing Missile Fire Control FC81-R10 (30%) (10)     Range 82.0m km    Resolution 10
Arrow (25, 74.6m) - Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (10200)  Speed: 90 000 km/s   End: 13.8m    Range: 74.6m km   WH: 25    Size: 5    TH: 330/198/99

Surtak-Suhe Corporation Active Search Sensor MR743-R60 (10)     GPS 18000     Range 743.6m km    Resolution 60
Chengelaygiin Electronics Active Search Sensor MR28-R1 (30%) (10)     GPS 120     Range 28.8m km    MCR 3.1m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH50-900 (30%) (1)     Sensitivity 900     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  900m km
EM Detection Sensor EM50-1600 (30%) (1)     Sensitivity 1600     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  1600m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

ECM 10

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on August 10, 2016, 02:35:26 PM
I just built a super big ship, then I realized I didn't have the fuel on my homeworld to fuel it completely, or the missiles to completely fill it's magazines. So like, that's kind of unfortunate.

How many years into the game are you to design and build something on that scale? Good to have aspirations...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Kytuzian on August 10, 2016, 04:19:00 PM
How many years into the game are you to design and build something on that scale? Good to have aspirations...

I'm just a couple years shy of the 150 year mark. However, I'm sure you could do it much faster if you were better at, and more dedicated to, managing things effectively than I am (probably at least 50 years faster). I don't think it was a conventional start or anything either.

Also, update: I finally fueled it and filled the magazines by gathering together the stores of many of my colonies and fuel harvesters. I think this thing is going to see limited use, however, given how much fuel it eats (and I have a couple 300k ton ships which are probably equally invincible).

Edit:
This ship seems to be worth it so far. The aliens brought up 30 FACs which each shot 20 missiles (like they did last time). 122 were taken down by the vast numbers of lasers that the fleet carries, and 477 impacted the Yesu's shields. Luckily, it has 6000 shields, so it was totally fine, and my navy has sailed through their attack completely unscathed. Hurrah!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on August 19, 2016, 11:22:24 AM
Just had our first ship get nuked in the community game. 

Freaking terrorists. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sheb on August 19, 2016, 12:09:22 PM
I wonder if the OST will stand up to that use of nukes in space.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on August 20, 2016, 12:13:58 AM
I wonder if the OST will stand up to that use of nukes in space.

We shall see.  the terrorist scum never agreed to it, but we might see someone decide if the terrorists are using nukes, then they should too. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on September 13, 2016, 09:25:44 AM
Deleted my copy of Aurora last week after it kept coming up with a never-ending error message everytime I opened it. Sadly I've lost the most up-to-date copy of my designs for my Honorverse game, and I can only hope to reconstruct them with an older design sheet.

Going to redownload it though, and see where the wind takes me. Kind of itching to do a 40k themed game, but that can wait for v7.20, so I might do an XCOM-themed playthrough this time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 22, 2016, 11:47:29 AM
A planet somewhat suitable for habitability, it was discovered to contain over 200million Duranium and 70milion Neutronium. Good thing to as I was just getting short on both and the only other quantities are a few hundred thousand on Venus and Mercury and trace amounts in a few other systems.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 24, 2016, 03:38:08 PM
Im slooooooooooooowly building up my home planet.
I started at the custom planet with 80 mil people and Tier 3 ruins ( 250 installations ). Planet is not terraformed - it has 1.5 G, 2.5 ATM with 0.4 oxygen and -14 average temperature. I have a gigantic orbital habitat in place that can house 10 mil people ( RP thing ) and infra in place for the rest ( 132mil at the moment ).

Budget is extra tight because i started with 0 money and if i try to build anything with CF's im at the loss...

I dont have any pre-generated NPR's but all spoilers are on so i can get glassed at any moment  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on September 24, 2016, 09:43:16 PM
My lunar colony (when the moon has no value except real estate) grew from 10,000 to 8 million in 3 months, totally by the private sector.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 25, 2016, 06:01:54 AM
Im slooooooooooooowly building up my home planet.
I started at the custom planet with 80 mil people and Tier 3 ruins ( 250 installations ). Planet is not terraformed - it has 1.5 G, 2.5 ATM with 0.4 oxygen and -14 average temperature. I have a gigantic orbital habitat in place that can house 10 mil people ( RP thing ) and infra in place for the rest ( 132mil at the moment ).

Budget is extra tight because i started with 0 money and if i try to build anything with CF's im at the loss...

I dont have any pre-generated NPR's but all spoilers are on so i can get glassed at any moment  ;D

Had to restart that one. My Aurora had to be shutdown while loading and that somehow frakked the wrapper and it wouldn't start so i had to unpack the fresh Aurora copy ...
So i set it up again, the same only this time ruins are "Deserted Intact City".
I send my xenologists and they discover almost 1.5k instalations of the TIER 5 !!! Empire .....  :o 8) ;D I like where this is going :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: bitbucket on September 25, 2016, 10:20:29 AM
My lunar colony (when the moon has no value except real estate) grew from 10,000 to 8 million in 3 months, totally by the private sector.

This happens all the time in my games when I open up Luna for colonization. That short 384,000km hop from Earth means civilians can move a lot of people in a very short time.

I eventually colonize just about everything with enough warmth and gravity to become habitable with a reasonable amount of terraforming (the cutoff for 'reasonable' being needing more than 1.5 atmospheres of gas to be added/removed); even if there's no minerals—of course, anything potentially habitable with minerals gets first priority. Space is vast and empty, so any place you can stand and breathe without being in a duranium can is precious.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 25, 2016, 02:09:43 PM
So my home system has 4 JP. I decide to poke around and i find one empty system, one with single useless planet and TWO perfectly habitable planets surrounded by swarms of moons and asteroids... With two hostile civilizations on them ...

I swear to god, this game hates me ...  :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on September 25, 2016, 03:54:14 PM
So my home system has 4 JP. I decide to poke around and i find one empty system, one with single useless planet and TWO perfectly habitable planets surrounded by swarms of moons and asteroids... With two hostile civilizations on them ...

I swear to god, this game hates me ...  :'(

Hopefully they can be hostile to each other as well.  Time to earn that system  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 26, 2016, 02:03:58 PM
Hopefully they can be hostile to each other as well.  Time to earn that system  :)

Im sorry i wrote that wrong.
Out of four JP's from my home system :
1 leads to system without any planet
1 leads to one with single useless planet
1 leads to system with 0 colony cost planet, 4-5 rocky planets, moons and asteroids AND HOSTILE CIV
and ANOTHER ONE leads to ANOTHER system with 0 colony cost planet, 4-5 rocky planets, moons and asteroids AND HOSTILE CIV.

They dont have contact with eachother, they just started to pound my ass ...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on September 27, 2016, 05:36:09 AM
I think I would rather have your system layout then what I usually get, which is something like ~10 jumps before finding another alien civilisation.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TMaekler on October 02, 2016, 05:11:48 PM
Wanted to test some sensors. For that purpose I switched a freighter to another player which I had set up as a "test enemy" and gave it the command to move away from the sensor ship to see when it disappears. Some civilians shipping around in that area did not like that "enemy freighter" and rammed it to death...  :'(. Next time I should set up a military restriction zone... .
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on October 04, 2016, 12:31:55 PM
My battlefleet is off to hopefully wrest a system from the Pricks, who destroyed a Scout/Geosurvey vessel.
In the meantime, Sol is filling up with wrecks: 2 friendly NPRs received trade invitations, but turned out to be less friendly to one another.
Strength-16 energy impacts from one side and 5-damage-missiles in the hundreds from the other make me glad they aren't shooting at me.

Oh, and there's something pink and foreboding 3 jumps from Sol. This is going to be interesting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AbuDhabi on October 04, 2016, 03:21:40 PM
Sent three waves of combat ships to fight some Precursors. The first two died. The third had an easier job, since the opposition's missile stores were partially exhausted - just suffered heavy damage to one ship. (Without the first two waves dying, I think I might have lost a ship or two in that third wave. They're 51k ton ships loaded with thirty CIWS, armour and shields, so they're pretty sturdy.)

I tried to save the poor souls of those in the first waves, but was too slow. For one, though, I did remember to put emergency cryo on my combat ships, so that survivors can be saved.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 06, 2016, 04:20:11 PM
Does emergency cryo work properly now? At one point survivors were not spread around in the TG, so the first ship in the list always picked up all survivors and could easily get completely overwhelmed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 06, 2016, 09:23:29 PM
Does emergency cryo work properly now? At one point survivors were not spread around in the TG, so the first ship in the list always picked up all survivors and could easily get completely overwhelmed.
No.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on October 07, 2016, 04:26:40 AM
The Battle of Sol (that I had no involvement in beyond search and rescue) is mostly over.

Final tally is ~190 wrecks, and interred on Mars are 11700 and 6400 survivors respectively.
The fireworks had been fairly impressive, around 150 simultaneous explosion of WH19 missiles, several hundred of WH5 ones and offensive AMMs, some volleys may have pushed a thousand. Point defence hardly got anything.
Beam combat was fairly s rare and seemingly one-sided with massive salvos of 16-damage impacts.

The losing and more numerous side appears to be behind me in engine tech (Magneto-Plasma to ICF) and sensors, but considerably ahead in weaponry.
The winner is mostly unknown, but their ships are a little slower. I expect some fancy particle beams in the wreckage, because of those strength-16 hits.
For a possible confrontation (I may have to, for slowdown reasons) and taking into account the sheer numbers, the most effective route appears to be shelving missiles and going heavy on flak barges... but will that suffice if something nasty comes out of that wormhole 3 jumps away?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on October 14, 2016, 07:23:04 AM
Hmmm I am not going to stay in this system I recently found. 1  Matriarch and 2 queens... Several soldiers none to close but we are getting out fast!!!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on October 23, 2016, 02:45:33 PM
Sooo, I guess I'll be starting over then? It seem they aren't interested in my buildings, so I could theoretically try to build up another fleet, but I doubt I can handle 37 damage missiles and 65 damage energy weapons at this tech level.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on October 24, 2016, 12:33:43 AM
Savage.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on October 24, 2016, 03:25:58 AM
Ouch.

37-damage missiles doesn't sound like a problem, you can defend against decent-sized missiles regardless of tech.

65 damage energy weapons on fast ships,  backed up by strong fire controls and probably ECM/ECCM, sounds like the bigger problem. Kiting those is probably not an option.
AI designs tend to have fairly poor point defence, massive missile strikes may work. Disabling them with microwaves in an epic brawl may also be an option... both sound painful and expensive from a position of weakness though, and if you can't overwhelm them you will throw away a lot of material for no gain.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on October 24, 2016, 06:10:29 AM
Well, it's my own fault for playing with the invaders on, being under the delusion that I was actually approaching semi-competency.   

Lessons learned, experience acquired and grade points increased as I am getting ready for a fresh sol start  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AbuDhabi on October 24, 2016, 06:14:25 AM
Game broken, this time by the ship armour size limits. And I had conquered two alien races! One TN, one conventional. They spawned in the same system.

(I was playing with no NPRs at start, with 70% for NPRs to spawn on suitable planets discovered by me.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on October 25, 2016, 02:23:56 PM
I started a new game, this time without real stars and unchecked some of the spoilers, for a safer start.   Quite a few good planets and a good amount of ressources in the first few systems.   Also, being from Denmark it is immensely amusing to see how it prioritizes the naming of new systems.   If only it used æ, ø and å. 

Also, I'm gonna need a bigger fuel tank.  .  . 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AbuDhabi on October 26, 2016, 01:03:06 AM
I only it used æ, ø and å.

You only what?  ;)

Also, I'm gonna need a bigger fuel tank. . .

Is there anything interesting at that companion, even?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on October 26, 2016, 01:31:40 AM
Quote from: AbuDhabi link=topic=3808. msg98408#msg98408 date=1477461786
You only what?  ;)

Is there anything interesting at that companion, even?

Probably not, but I won't know until I get there ;)

To be fair, there is a decently colonizable planet.  It would actually be fun to be inspired by one the generation ships that I read about in another thread.  Make it a self sufficient one way trip, and hope that there are minerals.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AbuDhabi on October 26, 2016, 01:50:50 AM
Let's see.

A ship pulling 2000 km/s would take approximately 50 years to reach that companion, whereas a ship pulling 10kkm/s would only take 10 years. 10 years is not that long. (50 years is about half of what my games reach, before some bug or slowdown kills them.)

I suggest a commercial one, because a military ship would get crippled by malfunction or have to take altogether too many maintenance supplies.

With your current tech, can you make a commercial ship that can pull 10kkm/s, has capacity for like 50k+ colonists, a geological sensor, a troop transport bay with enough room for a construction brigade, a cargo hold for some Duranium (you don't need that much; optionally, Corundium also) and enough fuel for 10 years travel?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on October 26, 2016, 05:05:07 AM
My suggestion would be just to ignore that. Unless there's some lagrange point of course.

Or build a specific ship just for the fun of it, but DO know you'll never actually use that distant star in any meaningful way XD
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AbuDhabi on October 26, 2016, 05:24:05 AM
My suggestion would be just to ignore that. Unless there's some lagrange point of course.

Or build a specific ship just for the fun of it, but DO know you'll never actually use that distant star in any meaningful way XD

Actually, species wealth is shared. Provided that a colony cost 0 can be achieved there with limited resources (maybe haul enough Boronide for a single terraforming facility), that place might be quite productive in terms of keeping your scientists elsewhere paid.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on October 26, 2016, 09:06:39 AM
Will civilian shipping lines ignore a colony based on physical distance (as opposed to jump gate distance), or do you risk having your civilian freighters on the 20yr run?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 26, 2016, 09:30:39 AM
Will civilian shipping lines ignore a colony based on physical distance (as opposed to jump gate distance), or do you risk having your civilian freighters on the 20yr run?
They used to ignore colonies/destinations 4 jumps away from current location. Currently I think they have no limitations on distance in their path finding. However, civilian shipping will ignore any colony that you have not placed anything on (even if you set a contract).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on October 26, 2016, 11:13:40 AM
They used to ignore colonies/destinations 4 jumps away from current location. Currently I think they have no limitations on distance in their path finding. However, civilian shipping will ignore any colony that you have not placed anything on (even if you set a contract).
So in the quoted case of using a "generation ship" to found a self reliant colony they might start trying to trade with it?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 26, 2016, 11:21:33 AM
So in the quoted case of using a "generation ship" to found a self reliant colony they might start trying to trade with it?
Probably, eventually.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: baconholic on October 26, 2016, 07:12:24 PM
Will civilian shipping lines ignore a colony based on physical distance (as opposed to jump gate distance), or do you risk having your civilian freighters on the 20yr run?

You can use the ban body function in System View. That'll stop all civilian traffic going to that place.

Personally, I've lately deleted all my civilian ships and shipping lines since they use up more than 90% of the cpu time late game. You can do the same if you are worried about civies ruining your game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 03, 2016, 05:28:13 PM
Just restarted one of my old games, since I've been wanting to redo it for a while now and hopefully the write-up will be more interesting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 07, 2016, 04:15:16 PM
Getting bored waiting for 7.2/8.0/C#. Started a new game with the idea of trying "small" ships (smaller than I usually do, like 6k frigates, 12-15k destroyers, 40k cruisers, etc). Random tech gives me hardly anything in lasers, mesons, or rails, however it did give me gauss V4 and R4 as well as Particle beam 9 240k range. I was thinking of doing a Particle fleet for the next version and I think Aurora is saying "Do it, just Do IT". May post progress, may not, depends on if it gets interesting (it should with 4 nprs at start with a 25/50 spawn chance).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 08, 2016, 11:54:22 AM
Is it normal for a geology team to take three years to resurvey a colonised world? I mean I don't want to seem ungrateful for another forty-one-thousand plus tons of Gallicite on Mars, but three years?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 08, 2016, 12:55:38 PM
Is it normal for a geology team to take three years to resurvey a colonised world? I mean I don't want to seem ungrateful for another forty-one-thousand plus tons of Gallicite on Mars, but three years?
It's very random. Sometimes it takes longer, others shorter. Once it took my 300 rated team over a decade to ground survey Luna, and even then they didn't find much.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 08, 2016, 03:04:20 PM
And suddenly, Spoilers. Starting to wish I'd invested in much larger active sensors now. Ah well, here's hoping my squadron of gunboats can make it to the JP from Sol into Lacaille 9352 in time to save the Distant Star expedition unit.

EDIT; They did. Turns out they needed rescuing. Mass production of more gunboats and commando Hunters has commenced with some changes made to accommodate the small targets, and I've decided to rush into production a brand new development of the orbit-to-ground missiles those Hunters use.

EDIT, THE SEQUEL; the Geology team on Venus managed to find a brand-spanking new deposit of over a million and a half tons of Corbomite, just under six million more tons of Corundium, and just under twenty-three point eight million more tons of Duranium. Time to get the shovels out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 13, 2016, 07:27:50 AM
CNS New Horizons, Korolev class GSV, heading from Delta Pavonis to Olympus system for refuel, encouters unidentified ships flying out of something that is suspected to be a wormhole.
Thankfully cpt Fuller manages to haul ass and flee to Delta Pavonis before its discovered ( my habit of placing strong passive sensors on exploration ships finally pays for itself ) ...
But now he is stranded there with 15 % fuel and completely defenseless ship.

I have no offensive fleet, my whole military consists of two missile PDC's armed with Thermal missiles and 10 meson armed Point defence bases ...
I dont think they will be coming home anytime soon.

P.s. - i've discovered Galatic Map labels ... after almost 4 years playing Aurora... Yeah, im not dense at all, at frakking all..
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on November 13, 2016, 11:25:41 PM
There Be Xenos Here


Love it!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 14, 2016, 01:23:42 PM
Quote
There Be Xenos Here


Love it!

Thank you :D

I got flattened hard ... Motherfrakkers came at me with ships that dealt 38x Str 65 laser damage every 10 seconds, cut off 2/3 of my range because ECM's and had 600m+ missile range with 55 missiles per salvo :P I've managed to destroy 3-4 ships but once Kali's entered laser range it was all over :>

I had a brief hope spot when they stopped after destroying every PDC ( see attachment ) and move away but they just continued glassing my planet from different place :/

On i go to new game :>
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 14, 2016, 04:00:04 PM
Thank you :D

I got flattened hard ... Motherfrakkers came at me with ships that dealt 38x Str 65 laser damage every 10 seconds, cut off 2/3 of my range because ECM's and had 600m+ missile range with 55 missiles per salvo :P I've managed to destroy 3-4 ships but once Kali's entered laser range it was all over :>

I had a brief hope spot when they stopped after destroying every PDC ( see attachment ) and move away but they just continued glassing my planet from different place :/

On i go to new game :>

Ow. And that is why I play with invaders off (at least for a long time). I don't see the fun in rolling a dice every turn with a 1 meaning "you lose the game". Especially with the amount of time it takes to set up a new game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: AL on November 14, 2016, 04:06:07 PM
If you can get under their guns (either by depleting their magazines or waiting at a jump point), a swarm of microwave fighters easily disables invader ships, allowing your main fleet to clean up with beams at their leisure. In my current carrier/fighter game, Sol has been depleted of Gallacite, and the nearest system which has any decent reserves of it has not one, but two wormholes sitting there... its going to be a tense few years for the poor souls stationed in that system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on November 15, 2016, 07:20:30 AM
If you can get under their guns (either by depleting their magazines or waiting at a jump point), a swarm of microwave fighters easily disables invader ships, allowing your main fleet to clean up with beams at their leisure. In my current carrier/fighter game, Sol has been depleted of Gallacite, and the nearest system which has any decent reserves of it has not one, but two wormholes sitting there... its going to be a tense few years for the poor souls stationed in that system.

Added spoiler tags to previous message, since it had concrete tactical suggestion for dealing with Invaders.

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 15, 2016, 10:18:08 AM
And they like building jump gates. All 7 points there have them, as well as a few of the ones in the system next to Sol. Good thing my military is well under construction.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 15, 2016, 11:04:12 AM
Quote
Ow. And that is why I play with invaders off (at least for a long time). I don't see the fun in rolling a dice every turn with a 1 meaning "you lose the game". Especially with the amount of time it takes to set up a new game.

Well actually i could defend it. Sometimes prior to discovering xenos i stopped producing new PDC's to focus on raw industrial power ( thinking that 10 meson and 2 missile bases are more than enough to defend my planet ). If i had more missile bases armed with newest n-pulse missiles and some more meson bases, i could pull that off, after all first 2 pairs of spoiler ships were destroyed, it took four of those 60K monsters to finally finish me off :)

Quote
If you can get under their guns (either by depleting their magazines or waiting at a jump point), a swarm of microwave fighters easily disables invader ships, allowing your main fleet to clean up with beams at their leisure.

I had no fighter factories nor microwave techs :)
It was close but hey "Losing is fun". :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 15, 2016, 11:39:40 AM
Explored a few more systems, and most of them also have JGs on most of their JPs.  There are a few with bare points, but those are fewer than should be. I also double checked, and JGs on all JPs is disabled.

Also found in interesting system that has such a dense asteroid field close to the star (300 good sized ones within the orbit of Mercury for orbit comparison), that it almost looks like some early planets hit each other but didn't come back together. An interesting thing is that there is a dwarf planet just on the outside edge of the field (and it did pick up a small moon).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 15, 2016, 01:18:16 PM
That looks great, wish I could find something like that. In other news, started a new game, here's hoping it goes better than the last one!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 17, 2016, 10:32:39 AM
I did a dumbz. I was wondering why the research labs on Luna were not being delivered to a different colony as my freighters were working on it for the past year with cycled orders. Found out that I had the unload selecting Luna as well.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 17, 2016, 01:19:44 PM
In a new game my first jump point exploration from Sol lead to a single mid size but fast(ish) ship with multiple rail guns, and the predictable result for my survey ship. Okay, no biggie, great for rp, I'll explore the other jump points and come back later.

The background for this game is that the British Empire found a crashed alien ship in Egypt in the early 1800s. It's now the 1920s and we're basically at TN versions of 1st world war tech, so not only are there no missiles, there isn't even a real concept of what a missile is. There aren't fighters because we skipped over the whole Wright brothers/aeroplane thing by attaching TN drives to dreadnoughts and ocean liners.

So fast forward ten years and two generations of engine tech and I'm back with 8 specially designed fast beam destroyers with enough engines to have a decisive speed advantage. Sure, with all that space dedicated to engines they're a bit glass cannon but I can control the range to my advantage and I have enough lasers to take out a mid size beam ship in a couple of rounds.

Things start to go wrong when I'm still a hundred million kms from the target and the first strength 7 missiles start to hit. Ok, that wasn't in the plan. There weren't any missiles in the last engagement. Does the spoiler have missile launchers which it chose not to use last time? Are there some distant or small missiles ships out there somewhere that I can't see? By the time the missiles run out 3 of my 8 ships are down and the other 5 have suffered heavy damage and have little armor left, their speeds cut in half and most weapon systems off line. That's about the time the rail gun ship arrives. You can imagine how things go from here.

Ouch.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 17, 2016, 01:31:45 PM
The background for this game is that the British Empire found a crashed alien ship in Egypt in the early 1800s. It's now the 1920s and we're basically at TN versions of 1st world war tech, so not only are there no missiles, there isn't even a real concept of what a missile is.
While this does make some sense, shouldn't they know about the concept of a torpedo as the first "modern" torpedo was designed in the 1860s? So wouldn't it also occur to them that they can add TN engines to torpedoes? Just sayin.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 17, 2016, 01:44:55 PM
While this does make some sense, shouldn't they know about the concept of a torpedo as the first "modern" torpedo was designed in the 1860s? So wouldn't it also occur to them that they can add TN engines to torpedoes? Just sayin.
Darn you and your facts! You are probably correct.

To be fair to myself, the RN mostly ignored torpedoes, and as far as I can see they were pretty niche until submarines came around. In my world the British put TN engines and meson cannons on their ironclads and after that warfare pretty much ended and a true Pax Britannica descended. I think I can therefore forgive my crusty old admirals for neglecting to add anti-torpedo defences to the fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Xkill on November 17, 2016, 06:31:03 PM
After a month long hiatus from Aurora, I have just witnessed the worst NPR fleet ever. They managed to make the worst possible combinations based on the characteristics of their fleet.

They were armed with Plasma Carronades!!! While cruising at 1275km/s!!! Effectively unarmoured with only 1 layer on all their ships, from the 9000t Heavy Frigates to the 18000t Heavy Cruisers. 35m/km Active Sensors were effectively useless.

First time I saw their ships after discovering this NPR was when they sent 2 Anti-FAC ships to my homesystem. I didn't like that and blew them up. These two ships had missiles but they were rubbish. I intercepted them all with just one frigate.

After a while they sent a full fleet of 12 ships, though initially I only saw 7. I outnumbered them quite heavily with 18 frigates and cruisers plus 3 light carriers and full complements of small craft on all ships. With all this tonnage at my disposal, I was pretty confident that it would be a quick battle, but I had no idea it would be so one sided.

They sent 6 9000t frigates first, accompanied by an 18000t heavy cruiser. I detached a frigate group plus all 27 bombers from the carriers. I decided to follow their fleet at 80mkm. I launched all the MIRVs in the frigates at the CA and assigned 3 bombers to each of the NPR frigates, keeping a reserve to avoid overkill.

The NPR did not have any AMMs or even beam PD so the bus and later the submunitions went in without opposition. The CA was destroyed straight away while the frigates were only crippled. I ordered the rest of the bombers to launch the remaining missiles at the cripples, but made a mistake by ordering the detachment to rejoin with the main fleet while the buses were still en route, (and relying on the actives on the frigates to spot their targets) forcing some of them to self-destruct. The ships that did take hits were totally crushed leaving only 2 cripples. After the impacts I sent the detachment to rejoin the fleet, while also ordering the main fleet to close with the cripples to destroy them from 50mkm.

On the way there I detected the other 5 ships: 2 Missile CAs; 1 I presume, beam CA and 2 frigates. I changed course to follow these new ships at 100mkm. As I got in range of the cripples I destroyed them with missiles from my frigates. Then after closing with the previously unknown ships, I targeted the 9000t ships with my frigates and the 18000 tonners with my cruisers. Again no PD of any kind. The impact was quite brutal; one of the cruisers blew up spectacularly amidst 150 missile impacts and 14 strengh-18/19 magazine explosions. This last salvo ended the "battle".

With such slow ships they should have focused completely on missiles and especially PD; but instead they decided to use close range beam weapons, choosing one of the shortest ranged weapons in the game, and apparently not even bothering to put in any PD at all! This NPR is a complete failure. I dont think even their low tech level can excuse such uselessness.

I would not even call this a test for my MIRV ships as it was such a one sided massacre. Even new players that never even touched the game can make a better fleet than this one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: lennson on November 17, 2016, 09:11:46 PM
After a month long hiatus from Aurora, I have just witnessed the worst NPR fleet ever. They managed to make the worst possible combinations based on the characteristics of their fleet.

...

I would not even call this a test for my MIRV ships as it was such a one sided massacre. Even new players that never even touched the game can make a better fleet than this one.

As far as I can tell the way NPR technology advances is random so it is possible to come across some rather silly outcomes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 18, 2016, 09:12:47 AM
As far as I can tell the way NPR technology advances is random so it is possible to come across some rather silly outcomes.
To be honest, given the complexity of designing a ship in Aurora it's a surprise this doesn't happen more often. That said. it sounds as if the op had a massive tech advantage in engines at least, so that would be a very hard hurdle for any ship design to overcome. There may be some justification for forcing NPR tech to include a certain % as engine development, I think its easily the most important tech for combat.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on November 20, 2016, 02:12:40 PM
Had my taskforce patiently waiting to ambush some aliens I knew to be around but they never showed up for the party. So I somewhat carelessly transited back to the system I came from, there they were waiting even more patiently. Strength 32 laser hits hitting me within 5 seconds, bye bye taskforce  :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on November 21, 2016, 03:07:19 PM
Wanted to give a little update 46 years into my current game, which the longest I have managed so far. It's has also been quite interesting.

The biggest threat at present time is likely the aliens first encountered in the Herning system. You can see that a number of systems are marked as controlled by them. These are the systems, in which I have encountered their ships. They are branching out a lot, and we're excited about the prospect of figuring out the web of jumpgates that lie behind our southern" border. They have shown their presence in system chains that go through Sol, so either we're really blind or there is some interesting cross-gating going on. They also seem quite aggressive. We have not been able to establish communication, and a deep space survey vessel managed to witness their assault on the home planet of another alien race in the Faborg system. Unfortunately we lost the survey vessel as it tried a reckless rescue maneuver, and was blown to pieces.

A more immediate threat, however, is the Livorno empire situated in the Grena system. Friendly at first and open to communications, but they expanded their gate network too fast, and measures to be taken to ensure control of our own borders. A war ensued more than a decade ago, but everything has been quiet for quite some years now. Until recently, when a new host of gatebuilders flooded through and continued their work. Have suffered heavy losses we were unable to respond to this new presence, but within a year our fleet will be rebuild and heavily upgraded. Which is fortunate, as a Gas giant in Randers holds immense amounts of Sorium, and control of that could provide for the next generations (500 mill at 0.9 acc.). Furthermore, we are running low on gallicite, and if this fleet doesn't pull through, it will be decades before we can muster a proper response once more.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 21, 2016, 04:14:43 PM
Had my taskforce patiently waiting to ambush some aliens I knew to be around but they never showed up for the party. So I somewhat carelessly transited back to the system I came from, there they were waiting even more patiently. Strength 32 laser hits hitting me within 5 seconds, bye bye taskforce  :'(
Wow, unfortunate for you but a great example of AI. Didn't think they had it in them to pull of something like that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on November 22, 2016, 02:08:16 AM
@smoelf I like your system names, have visited several of them. In my game I have played a few more years than you but explored much more. Have you been cautious or have I been too aggressive? But it took me a long time before I met anyone so that could be the difference.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on November 22, 2016, 02:30:19 AM
@smoelf I like your system names, have visited several of them. In my game I have played a few more years than you but explored much more. Have you been cautious or have I been too aggressive? But it took me a long time before I met anyone so that could be the difference.

Nice :)

Yeah, I have been rather cautious. I burned my hands in the last couple of games by expanding carelessly, so this time I'm taking it a bit slow, trying to control my areas better. For example, I will only build jump gates to systems that are secure, in that there are no confirmed alien presence in the systems neighboring it and I have already established a colonial presence. But a reason for the slow expansion is also that I was trying to figure out how to do survey carriers. This halted the development and production of geo and grav survey vessels while I was trying to figure that out, and thus the exploration slowed down, but now I finally have a grav and a geo survey carrier up and running, so now it'll really take off :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 23, 2016, 12:25:10 PM
So it turns out that "making a huge mothership and loading it up with cargo and people to simulate some kind of Homeworldesque diaspora" dont work so well with spoilers on ...
First system i jump into ( from the starting point in "hyperspace aka empty system with 2 JP's " ) has three terrestrial planets with every mineral counted in milions and easily terraformable planets. So naturally 5 years after unloading my 50m colonists, stable wormhole appears...
I load my people, mines and CF plus some labs and haul ass... only to get jumped by Precursors in the next system ... They fired some missiles at my ship but due to my 100x 1st gen CIWS they managed to just scratch my paint ( 30 rows of armour on 30mil ton ship is quite durable :D ) and then they proceed to ram it, destroying themselves and 9 terraform modules.
Knowing my luck, third system will containt Swarm or hostile NPR .. :/
EDIT : Nope, another wormhole ... Time to turn the spoilers off.

My mothership design if anyone is interested :
Code: [Select]
Ark class Mothership    30 276 650 tons     146205 Crew     1370598 BP      TCS 605533  TH 62500  EM 0
103 km/s     Armour 30-8653     Shields 0-0     Sensors 250/250/5/5     Damage Control Rating 10000     PPV 0
Maint Life 0.11 Years     MSP 282936    AFR 733330%    IFR 10185.1%    1YR 2493291    5YR 37399362    Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 999 months    Spare Berths 1001   
Cargo 5000000    Cryogenic Berths 50000000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 1000   
Fuel Harvester: 300 modules producing 12000000 litres per annum
Terraformer: 100 module(s) producing 0.1 atm per annum
Asteroid Miner: 300 module(s) producing 3600 tons per mineral per annum

125 EP Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine (500)    Power 125    Fuel Use 8.84%    Signature 125    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 100 000 000 Litres    Range 140.9 billion km   (15837 days at full power)

CIWS-50 (100x2)    Range 1000 km     TS: 5000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Active Search Sensor MR111-R20 (2)     GPS 10000     Range 111.8m km    Resolution 20
Active Search Sensor MR250-R100 (2)     GPS 50000     Range 250.0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR25-R1 (2)     GPS 500     Range 25.0m km    MCR 2.7m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR353-R200 (2)     GPS 100000     Range 353.6m km    Resolution 200
Active Search Sensor MR559-R500 (2)     GPS 250000     Range 559.0m km    Resolution 500
Active Search Sensor MR55-R5 (2)     GPS 2500     Range 55.9m km    Resolution 5
Thermal Sensor TH50-250 (2)     Sensitivity 250     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  250m km
EM Detection Sensor EM50-250 (2)     Sensitivity 250     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  250m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: baconholic on November 24, 2016, 12:10:12 PM
]Ark class Mothership    30 276 650 tons     146205 Crew     1370598 BP ...

That's 571 research labs worth of BP! Did you build it in a shipyard? How long did it take you to build that monstrosity?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 24, 2016, 12:21:30 PM
That's 571 research labs worth of BP! Did you build it in a shipyard? How long did it take you to build that monstrosity?
Nah, of course i SM'ed it in. :) Funny thing is - its build time isn't that long, it was something around 1.5 year ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 29, 2016, 05:10:38 PM
Just found a binary system with each star having 2 almost perfect planets to colonize relatively close to Sol. I guess I found Terra Nov... "New Alien Class", "New Alien Ship", "New Hostile Contact". *sigh* I guess I have to launch a crusade or something. Some good news; The next batch of first gen ships has finished constructing, giving me a few dozen warships fully stocked and ready for war. And a batch of next-gen warships are almost off of the drawing board and ready for the shipyards.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 30, 2016, 09:47:21 AM
I have somewhat a conflict of interests. Do I A) Launch a Crusade now (within a month) or B) Wait 10 to 14 months for my support ships (fuel, msp) to finish constructing.

A requires a successful victory against an unknown enemy strength at a not precisely determined location in order to gain enough fuel to continue the crusade. I also have 3 large troop transports that I will take along for a planetary assault, and they could sacrifice their fuel for the warships.

B delays the invasion by a year, letting the enemy build more strength or launch an assault on me, but lets my ships have more supply to hit a multitude of systems beyond the target.

*Reference map* The two target systems are 61 Cygni and Gliese 87 (the distance between those two is 13.5).The warfleet can make 20 units with their internal fuel, but the support ships potentially increase that range to hundreds of units. There may be more hostile colonies beyond the unexplored warp points at HIP 8051, but the warplanners say those may wait until a detailed scouting is done.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on November 30, 2016, 10:08:06 AM
I have somewhat a conflict of interests. Do I A) Launch a Crusade now (within a month) or B) Wait 10 to 14 months for my support ships (fuel, msp) to finish constructing.

A requires a successful victory against an unknown enemy strength at a not precisely determined location in order to gain enough fuel to continue the crusade. I also have 3 large troop transports that I will take along for a planetary assault, and they could sacrifice their fuel for the warships.

B delays the invasion by a year, letting the enemy build more strength or launch an assault on me, but lets my ships have more supply to hit a multitude of systems beyond the target.

*Reference map* The two target systems are 61 Cygni and Gliese 87 (the distance between those two is 13.5).The warfleet can make 20 units with their internal fuel, but the support ships potentially increase that range to hundreds of units. There may be more hostile colonies beyond the unexplored warp points at HIP 8051, but the warplanners say those may wait until a detailed scouting is done.

In your position, I would probably wait. It is true that a rapid strike MAY be effective. If it is not, however, that could be a very bad development for you. Lack of information is, in my opinion, a deal stopper most of the times. Sure, if it was a desperate situation, as in "if we do not attack they will and destroy earth", it would be one thing. But here it is entirely possible that the aliens will just peacefully stay within their borders while you prepare for war.

In my opinion, there is no reason to risk so much by rushing things. At least try to get some more intel on the aliens before. Also, I usually RP and I can't think of a rational, spacefaring civilization that would try such a risky, blind strike when not absolutely necessary :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on November 30, 2016, 11:12:04 AM
In your position, I would probably wait. It is true that a rapid strike MAY be effective. If it is not, however, that could be a very bad development for you. Lack of information is, in my opinion, a deal stopper most of the times. Sure, if it was a desperate situation, as in "if we do not attack they will and destroy earth", it would be one thing. But here it is entirely possible that the aliens will just peacefully stay within their borders while you prepare for war.

In my opinion, there is no reason to risk so much by rushing things. At least try to get some more intel on the aliens before. Also, I usually RP and I can't think of a rational, spacefaring civilization that would try such a risky, blind strike when not absolutely necessary :)
That is a somewhat boring approach, where's your sense of adventure! On your RP point I would suggest that the early (brave/suicidal) strike would be a rather Klingon move...

I agree though that the lack of intel is more worrying than the lack of support.
 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on November 30, 2016, 11:41:11 AM
In my opinion, there is no reason to risk so much by rushing things. At least try to get some more intel on the aliens before. Also, I usually RP and I can't think of a rational, spacefaring civilization that would try such a risky, blind strike when not absolutely necessary
My race generation gave me high xenophobia, militancy, and expansionism.

A few months later, the scout in 61 Cygni has reported 2 populations and 8 PDCs of 30k tons. The warplanners have come to a final decision. We launch most of the warfleet, plus a transport, on 61 Cygni. Durring the strike, the support ships and the last of the gen-1 ships will roll off the line and will rendezvous with the warfleet at HIP 8051 to refuel. They will all then push into Gliese 87 and search the system for any populations, and conquer them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on December 06, 2016, 08:34:32 AM
Being attacked in SOL system, my AMM is not working in autofire, we have switched to manually fire.... Several hits on 3 different enemy missiles... Non destroyed... They seem to have some kind of armoured missiles Never had this one before, got a real scare when several of my frigates exploded... Fun :-)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 06, 2016, 10:12:55 AM
Being attacked in SOL system, my AMM is not working in autofire, we have switched to manually fire.... Several hits on 3 different enemy missiles... Non destroyed... They seem to have some kind of armoured missiles Never had this one before, got a real scare when several of my frigates exploded... Fun :-)
Making huge, armored, long range torpedoes/MIRVs with heavy thermal reduction is always fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on December 06, 2016, 10:21:56 AM
An update on events in the Empire. The task force dispatched to 61 Cygni has intercepted several commercial grade ships en-route and destroyed them. It turns out those previously detected "PDCs" were actually missile ships, armed with meson defense weaponry, and only light armor. After a few missiles were shot to clear the ground troops on the surface, they surrendered. The troop trasport has been redirected toward the other population in the system and the taskforce is only a week out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on December 06, 2016, 03:21:38 PM
So, even though my previous game was doing pretty good I started a new one. I have been using mostly the same strategies and tactics for the last games, so I wanted to try something new.

This time I started in a non-sol system with unreal stars and a methane-breathing race :) The bulk of their fleet will consist of beam-FAC's and multi-stage missiles to deliver multiple high-damaging fast missiles at long range, but the most interesting part is going to be the biological warfare in the form of a giant terra forming fleet pumping methane into the atmosphere of oxygen breathers. This is gonna be interesting :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ryuga81 on December 07, 2016, 10:50:43 AM
Spoiler race obliterated two destroyer task groups in allied NPR home system, on top of an allied planet with defenses, and a small allied fleet. Ally didn't fire a single round to help and didn't appear to care about what happened.

A massive outcry in public opinion and part of military establishment is forcing the government's hand, a massive expedition is being prepared to get rid of both spoiler race and useless ally. The High Council requested the invasion to happen with minimum bloodshed, so indiscriminate bombardment and use of missiles against populated planets is to be avoided at all costs. This adds even more headaches to the already complex task of staging a massive invasion on an alien homeworld, the High Command is worried that Earth does not possess enough offensive capability, both in space and on ground.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on December 07, 2016, 05:57:41 PM
A certain spoiler race, with a 200000 ton ship has a planet garrisoned with a combat value of 520... Is this new? Never seen it before?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on December 17, 2016, 11:07:35 AM
My star map is starting to look quite interesting. Not long ago there were still three unexplored jump points in the Gypsum system, which at that point was accessible through Lancaster. Sending a survey ship through revealed a new connection to my home system, Aldor. Which is awesome, because Gypsum contains several colonizable bodies and an abundance of minerals at decent accessibility, and until now it was a 30 billion km trip. That has been reduced to 8 billion km! Step are taken to ensure the security of the system and initiate colonizing effort. Of the last two unexplored jump points, one also led to a known system, Potgietersus, and the last led to a nebula, that is being ignored for now. A few other jump points also established new connections, so there are a lot of places that now have easier access.

I've also recently reached magneto plasma tech and have begun upgrading my fleet. Hopefully I will finally be able to take care of the last few precursor ships in Lamon, before scouting out and invading Allyuen. I have begun designing a proto-type of my new class of bio-warfare capital ships.

Code: [Select]
Force Elemental class Capital Terraformer    194 400 tons     974 Crew     7851.6 BP      TCS 3888  TH 4800  EM 0
1234 km/s     Armour 10-298     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/5/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 25    Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   
Terraformer: 5 module(s) producing 0.0125 atm per annum

320 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (15)    Power 320    Fuel Use 3.04%    Signature 320    Exp 4%
Fuel Capacity 3 000 000 Litres    Range 91.3 billion km   (856 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (20x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

They will of course be accompanied by meson points defence cruisers, while my main fleet takes care of offensive ships :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on December 18, 2016, 09:44:22 PM
Truce timer expired a while ago, i was unsure if this cold war would ever go hot but it happened rather suddenly :)

The largest Eurasian vessel being a carrier was an unwelcome surprise. 288 missiles made it through the gauss curtain and CIWS mounts with strength 10 hits, killing 90 million people and wiping out half of my industrial strength (as well as 160,000 tons of PDCs; fortunately, one PDC survived the barrage intact). Radiation and dust will blanket the earth for years to come.   Fortunately, at least half the Eurasian fleet left for an unknown objective last year; it is unknown whether they will come back or if they are slowly driftin wreckage orbiting an alien sun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on December 23, 2016, 06:05:41 AM
Truce timer expired a while ago, i was unsure if this cold war would ever go hot but it happened rather suddenly :)

The largest Eurasian vessel being a carrier was an unwelcome surprise. 288 missiles made it through the gauss curtain and CIWS mounts with strength 10 hits, killing 90 million people and wiping out half of my industrial strength (as well as 160,000 tons of PDCs; fortunately, one PDC survived the barrage intact). Radiation and dust will blanket the earth for years to come.   Fortunately, at least half the Eurasian fleet left for an unknown objective last year; it is unknown whether they will come back or if they are slowly driftin wreckage orbiting an alien sun.


Or worse, being turned into several hundred spoilers which will eventually bite you when you find them!
Ian
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: NuclearStudent on December 24, 2016, 01:31:01 AM
Or worse, being turned into several hundred spoilers which will eventually bite you when you find them!
Ian

The small squishy spoilers are fine, because they can be kited and killed fairly easily.

Surprisingly, it's the middling drones I hate.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on December 24, 2016, 03:34:30 PM
I found myself in a situation when I have to manually target anti-missiles against incoming shipkillers. Not. Fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: NuclearStudent on December 25, 2016, 12:24:42 AM
I found myself in a situation when I have to manually target anti-missiles against incoming shipkillers. Not. Fun.

...

why and how?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on December 25, 2016, 05:27:21 AM
The attacking fleet has been using a mixed strike of shipkillers and anti-missiles in offensive mode. The defending fleet had more or less enough launchers and ammunition to deal with shipkillers, but not them and anti-missiles both. And of course the automated targeting would try to intercept everything and the first time when I tried the battle out, I lost the entire defending fleet. So I had to go ahead and manually target the shipkillers while leaving anti-missiles for gauss cannons and railguns. Not. Fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on December 25, 2016, 04:34:36 PM
The small squishy spoilers are fine, because they can be kited and killed fairly easily.

Surprisingly, it's the middling drones I hate.

The last time I found a couple of swarm systems they contained >10,000 drones because an Earth based NPR plus at least one other NPR had been feeding them ships for about 10 years.

How sad I am doing this on Christmas day!! ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 26, 2016, 04:00:57 AM
The last time I found a couple of swarm systems they contained >10,000 drones because an Earth based NPR plus at least one other NPR had been feeding them ships for about 10 years.

How sad I am doing this on Christmas day!! ;D

Wait a god damned minute : Swarm actually feeds on ships they destroy ?

Panic.jpg
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on December 26, 2016, 07:39:11 AM
Wait a god damned minute : Swarm actually feeds on ships they destroy ?

Panic.jpg

Yes they do. When you attack them, better make it count and kill them, or next time the zombies will rise. Errr.. the minerals will be used. Against you. Don't do that, don't feed the swarm
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on December 27, 2016, 12:18:30 AM
Quick reminder:

Please remember to add spoiler tags copiously to things that touch on unexpected game events.  Simply spoilering the name of the race doesn't really help if the behaviors are described in the clear....

Thanks,
John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on December 27, 2016, 01:25:16 AM
 Chryssalids man, they just wiped my entire squad with those zombies. What? Oh I'm getting my forums mixed up. Use spoilers guys!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 11, 2017, 08:31:47 AM
I set auto-turn with the min-increment set to 10 because a geo-survey ship of mine encountered an enemy geo-survey ship, and they kept spotting and loosing each other causing interrupts. To my dismay, I did not notice the enemy fleet that just appeared right next to my force. One destroyer, with 6 layers of armor, has basically no armor pieces left on it and several other ships have varying (but lighter) damage. There is also an active sensor contact further out in the system that is spotting my fleet that is far outside my sensor range.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 12, 2017, 06:05:29 PM
The closest grouping was destroyed without incidence. However when I dispatched all the frigates towards the larger grouping farther in the system (my frigates are 2x as fast as the rest of my force, and almost 4x as fast as the enemy), one of my frigates just took 23 strength 9 missile hits... and its still combat capable ;D. They've all been ordered to turn around and rejoin the central force, and get into the AMM defense manifold of the cruiser and destroyers. I think I'll just have them hunker down until the relief force with more cruisers and destroyers arrive along with support ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 13, 2017, 07:13:00 PM
Started a conventional start game, played around with some unique designs, researched a lot of odd things, and just ticked over to Ion age. 

Now time for a mass building, leaving system, scrapping old ships, and generally design a battlefleet. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on January 18, 2017, 04:50:01 AM
Truce timer expired a while ago, i was unsure if this cold war would ever go hot but it happened rather suddenly :)

The largest Eurasian vessel being a carrier was an unwelcome surprise. 288 missiles made it through the gauss curtain and CIWS mounts with strength 10 hits, killing 90 million people and wiping out half of my industrial strength (as well as 160,000 tons of PDCs; fortunately, one PDC survived the barrage intact). Radiation and dust will blanket the earth for years to come.   Fortunately, at least half the Eurasian fleet left for an unknown objective last year; it is unknown whether they will come back or if they are slowly driftin wreckage orbiting an alien sun.
I have sad news for you: the gauss curtain likely failed due to gauss weapons being completely ineffective in atmosphere. Though, CIWS is an exception, it's not as potent and only protects the PDC it's attached to, nothing else nearby.
If you really want to protect your planets against missile fire, go for minimum size turreted mesons, with the largest matching turret gear size and fire control (speed) size for maximum tracking speed.
Bonus points when you realize that building >500 ton PDCs allows you to use the fighter tracking speed bonus, and being a PDC, also benefits from sensor range bonuses (allowing you to make it smaller with no consequences).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 18, 2017, 07:53:33 AM
Over 100 salvos of missiles, between 6 and 15 size 6 missiles each salvo, have been raining on my forces for the past few hours in game. Even swatting down most of the concentrated waves (usually 100+ at once) lets around 20 to 30 through. Some ships have taken significant damage, most lucky their oversized reactors and/or engines didn't blow when hit, but so far none of my ships have been taken out. The missile waves have reduced to only a single salvo every minute or so, so they may have run out of missiles. The cruiser Palisade and the destroyers Challenger, Charger, Kamikaze, and the minor damaged Retribution are closing on the enemy formation at around 2x their maximum speed. Its only a matter of time before range closes to missile envelope, where my AMS-26-SS missiles will seek out any ship formation and destroy targets.


UPDATE: The lone Aurora class troop transport siting over an enemy planet supporting the invasion detected a wave of 64 ship hunter missiles with its passive sensors. The crew scrambled to abandon ship. However, before the missiles reached detonation range they diverted course to the planet itself. Major General Eliot Parkin and his staff of Colonel Charlie Sanders, Colonel Ellen Burke,  Colonel Andrew Simmons, and Colonel Kai Wikins all narrowly escaped death as they were on a dropship headed to a new forward command post.  Brigadier General Liam Mills and the entirety of Black Legion however did not escape destruction.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on January 18, 2017, 03:20:45 PM
I have sad news for you: the gauss curtain likely failed due to gauss weapons being completely ineffective in atmosphere. Though, CIWS is an exception, it's not as potent and only protects the PDC it's attached to, nothing else nearby.
If you really want to protect your planets against missile fire, go for minimum size turreted mesons, with the largest matching turret gear size and fire control (speed) size for maximum tracking speed.
Bonus points when you realize that building >500 ton PDCs allows you to use the fighter tracking speed bonus, and being a PDC, also benefits from sensor range bonuses (allowing you to make it smaller with no consequences).
The gauss was from orbital frigates - between them and the PDCs, I shot down about 60 missiles.   Too bad there were 350 coming in..

It was a massed box launch from 400,000km, there wasnt much to be done except be happy it wasnt bigger :)

 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on January 21, 2017, 03:18:13 PM
After 48 years we have just initiated the largest deep-space colonizing efforts yet. Drakensberg is the goal. It is located about 25 billion km away from our home system of Aldor, but it is teeming with hundreds of millions of minerals at good or decent accessibility with a few at low accessibility. The idea is to make it entirely self sufficient, which will hopefully be possible resourcewise when our geo-team has been through it (skill lvl at 186).

The only obstacle is the precursors spotted in the neighboring system of Cape Town, so an expedition will soon be launched to secure it. A squad of military tankers have recently been built to provide the sufficient range for a devastating attack. Until then we will slowly start the transfer of infrastructure and colonists and other necessities.

Also, my map is starting to look a bit weird :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 23, 2017, 02:12:20 PM
Chasing a missile fleet who is almost out of ammo with my hybrid fleet from over 100m km away. My slowest ships go twice their current speed, and my fastest are twice that. It would go faster but auto-turn keeps getting interrupted every 15-30 seconds with only one or two missiles being detected. I keep trying to break my frigates away and close rapidly, but a surprise wave of a few dozen keeps popping up to smack them in the face but never targets my destroyers or cruiser. Several of the frigates are heavily damaged, and half of the destroyers are stripped of armor. This is taking quite a while.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on January 25, 2017, 06:43:14 AM
Chasing a missile fleet who is almost out of ammo with my hybrid fleet from over 100m km away. My slowest ships go twice their current speed, and my fastest are twice that. It would go faster but auto-turn keeps getting interrupted every 15-30 seconds with only one or two missiles being detected. I keep trying to break my frigates away and close rapidly, but a surprise wave of a few dozen keeps popping up to smack them in the face but never targets my destroyers or cruiser. Several of the frigates are heavily damaged, and half of the destroyers are stripped of armor. This is taking quite a while.
That sounds rough.  The pattern of attacks is odd. Perhaps there is a carrier?

***

Got annoyed with an NPR's harassing attacks, so I sent a fleet to probe their home system. While waiting on the near JP for tankers to catch up, what initially looked like yet-another-frigate sent for harassment purposes (Werewolf wreck) turned into a full-scale jump point counterassault by the NPR, featuring multiple jump ships and much heavier vessels than previous encountered. A salvo of surprisingly powerful particle beams targeting command cruiser Temeraire luckily destroyed one of its engines -forcing me to split up and engage closely in an attempt to push away the Banswara Kingdom forces while Temeraire withdraws.  At this point, I'd already fired several dozen missiles, splitting them up between most available targets in order to inflict as much crippling damage as possible.  My strong laser armaments should ensure victory, but it's open to question how much damage i'd take in the meantime... and if Temeraire is destroyed or disabled, I'll be forced to call off the mission until another jumpship becomes available. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 27, 2017, 01:58:58 PM
Radar operator: "O mother of Heavens, SIR!!! I mean Vampire, Vampire, its off the scale Sir I count in excess off 1000 incoming bogie's..... Crap were so dead...."
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 28, 2017, 01:30:13 AM
I lost 2 CVAs, managed to stop almost 50% of the missiles launched, but they were around 1200 from the beginning. Have to build a larger missile escort, mine is based on the old EFF with only 5 launchers, had 16 of them in and around the carrier group and several laser and Gauss armed ships... Revenge shall bee mine! ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on January 29, 2017, 01:49:18 PM
Was doing some counting for my campaign write up and I realized I had almost half a million anti-missiles in storage. Then I realized that while I had enough to arm all my warships and bases, I didn't have enough to re-arm them. Will have to tweak some production numbers.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 30, 2017, 07:44:17 AM
Was doing some counting for my campaign write up and I realized I had almost half a million anti-missiles in storage. Then I realized that while I had enough to arm all my warships and bases, I didn't have enough to re-arm them. Will have to tweak some production numbers.
What are ya, a NPR ;)? Seriously though, this is why I try to forgo AMMs except in specific circumstances.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 30, 2017, 08:09:01 AM
Lost a bit of ground in the chase when one ship had its fuel tanks taken out and it wasn't removed from the task force (about 20m km) as I set auto-turn with min increment. The destroyers Avenger and Retribution were both destroyed from incoming fire, the Retribution as it got separated from the main force when half of its drives were hit by enemy ASMs, and the Avenger by sacrificing itself to save the troop transport from an incoming barrage of missiles. When the main force approached 100m km from the enemy (50m km from engagement range) it was suddenly hit by a surprise wave of several hundred missiles. Most were shot down by ranged defenses, final fire defenses, and CIWS but 80 missiles still got through. A number of them hit the cruiser, which thankfully had its shield systems up, but the rest spread themselves amongst the fleet, critically damaging one ship, slowing another, and weathering the armor of the rest.

Update: More ships get smacked in the face, more of them blow up, and lose more ground because ships don't get removed from the group and visible "speed" isn't reduced. For reference, the first missile salvos by the enemy in this engagement were about ID:30. Now, the visible salvos are in the ID:450s. All of these were ASMs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on January 30, 2017, 01:22:57 PM
Update: More ships get smacked in the face, more of them blow up, and lose more ground because ships don't get removed from the group and visible "speed" isn't reduced. For reference, the first missile salvos by the enemy in this engagement were about ID:30. Now, the visible salvos are in the ID:450s. All of these were ASMs.
I may be missing something, but how can they have that many missiles? Are they replenishing from a planet? Is half the fleet colliers? Are these all actually size 1 ASMs with high tech warheads?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on January 31, 2017, 08:11:57 AM
I may be missing something, but how can they have that many missiles? Are they replenishing from a planet? Is half the fleet colliers? Are these all actually size 1 ASMs with high tech warheads?
2 different size 6 missiles with damage of 9 and 12. I can currently see 6 as they have their active sensors on (mine are still a bit out of range), but they have been rotating which ships have sensors on and actually have 10 or so ships of unknown tonnage going ~3000km/s. And they are in deep space between binary stars.

Edit; Odd. Despite the enemy force being just directly "above" my ships, there are some missile salvos appearing from the direct right. My guess there are even more ships that are sitting just out of my sensor range.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on February 01, 2017, 07:35:48 AM
They finally must have run out of ASMs as they haven't shot me in well over an hour in game. Finally closed enough to where I got active sensors on their fleet and... wow. 1 7,700 ton, 8 15,400 ton, and 14 23,100 ton ships vs my active force of only 1 8,800 ton, 1 17,500 ton, and 1 37,000 ton ship. A few other ships are still alive, but have no engines/fuel. The system is just littered with a dozen wrecks of my ships. Good thing my ships are hybrid designs that have missiles and particle beams.

Edit; I had to open my mouth. Now I have incoming AMMs coming in at 129 per wave. The cruiser and destroyer should be fine as they have really good anti-missile armament and armor/shields left (enough that only ~50 get through). However the frigate has some holes open in its armor and is slowed due to one of its engines is missing from its housing after a nasty hit to the ship.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Red Dot on February 01, 2017, 09:02:45 AM
New personal best in my latest game. The empire now spans 250 systems with over 25Bn population. 6 alien races have been conquered.

(http://personal best.jpg)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 01, 2017, 10:13:53 AM
impressive galaxy map :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 01, 2017, 07:45:45 PM
It is maps like that that make me want to have the option of slightly more warp points per system, with more clustering.  There are huge swaths of your empire that are only reachable through a single warp point or narrow chain of them.  I want more of a grid, a network instead of a tree.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on February 01, 2017, 07:52:08 PM
It is maps like that that make me want to have the option of slightly more warp points per system, with more clustering.  There are huge swaths of your empire that are only reachable through a single warp point or narrow chain of them.  I want more of a grid, a network instead of a tree.
It would make travel easier, but arranging your galaxy map would be a nightmare.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on February 02, 2017, 01:31:08 PM
It is maps like that that make me want to have the option of slightly more warp points per system, with more clustering.  There are huge swaths of your empire that are only reachable through a single warp point or narrow chain of them.  I want more of a grid, a network instead of a tree.
You could do this yourself (the more warp points per system) pretty easily from SM mode I think? Just add 1 WP to every system once you've finished the grav survey? Or you could add in more clustering with a slightly more advanced 1/2 WPs stay unchanged, 3/4WPs get +1, %+WPs get +2. Lots of clusters in that model, but with some chains and dead ends.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 02, 2017, 04:18:02 PM
A nice idea, TCD, but that only affects MY empire, not the structure of NPRs.

I would love to have the option of a "sunless sea", an area with starless nexii, relatively short distances between warp points, that act like relatively open seas that are difficult for any empire to claim, that are routes for trade, piracy and conflict.

Heck, how about an option that habitable systems have few warp points, but almost always connect to starless nexii that have lots of warp points?  That makes habitable systems more defensible, but ensures they have more expansion options once they get out of their system.  Yes, you end up with a lot of unimportant systems, and yes the map can be cluttered, but part of the fun for me is arranging the map.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 02, 2017, 04:31:38 PM
we used to have more WPs, but it was reduced a long while back and p much everyone agreed it was an improvement.  For one thing, it makes exploration a little more insane - the possibilities multiply enormously the more WPs you have per system.

You can manually create your desired layout - i won't say easily, but it is fairly straightforward. You need to manually generate your NPRs and set discover chances to zero, then pre-seed the NPRs (and yourself) with starless hubs leading off their inhabited systems. You can also pre-seed uncolonized systems using the same method. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 03, 2017, 02:27:34 AM
Yes, I could do it MANUALLY, but then I can't DISCOVER it.  I would like different warp point ratios to be an OPTION.  There would be a strongly recommended set of ratios, and perhaps a few custom sets that allow for more starless nexi in the role I suggested.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on February 03, 2017, 02:34:17 AM
You can still conduct discovery as normal - there is no way to predict how the warp point connections will play out, and there will be plenty of systems generated as normal. Pregenerating some systems and starless 'hubs' just stacks the deck as it were.

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 03, 2017, 03:50:41 PM
New personal best in my latest game. The empire now spans 250 systems with over 25Bn population. 6 alien races have been conquered.

(http://personal best.jpg)

Jesus dude ... Mirrin hard.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Kytuzian on February 03, 2017, 06:01:05 PM
New personal best in my latest game. The empire now spans 250 systems with over 25Bn population. 6 alien races have been conquered.

(http://personal best.jpg)

Wow. That's a very organized map. I never keep my maps organized past 20 or so systems :) It'd be nice if there were some sort of automatic organization tool.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on February 17, 2017, 04:28:51 PM
Picking through my civilian administrator I have found Stephen Crawford.

Stephen is "Cautious" but 40 years ago he was talked to be a Governor of asteroid 2010 TK7. Having "No outside interests" has surely helped him in the long lonely years at this automatic mining colony of Earth. But he is also "Disciplined" so since 15 years ago the colony was closed and autominers moved elsewhere, which resulted in him being "Relieved from Governorship", he just kept "Remaining on the body and awaiting new orders". Good boy.

He also currently has the highest bonus to shipbuilding so I am moving him back to Earth. We need his expertise here then on some barren rock.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on February 18, 2017, 04:24:48 AM
Picking through my civilian administrator I have found Stephen Crawford.

Stephen is "Cautious" but 40 years ago he was talked to be a Governor of asteroid 2010 TK7. Having "No outside interests" has surely helped him in the long lonely years at this automatic mining colony of Earth. But he is also "Disciplined" so since 15 years ago the colony was closed and autominers moved elsewhere, which resulted in him being "Relieved from Governorship", he just kept "Remaining on the body and awaiting new orders". Good boy.

He also currently has the highest bonus to shipbuilding so I am moving him back to Earth. We need his expertise here then on some barren rock.

Longest vacation ever. I bet he had some sexbot or secret ay lmao lover there and you ruined it :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on February 28, 2017, 12:46:01 PM
Found a stable wormhole in a system. Everything seems normal otherwise, surveyed most of the planets. Better send my military to have a look at this since it is different from normal jump points. I think it should be possible to jump through and will experiment to see if it requires a jump tender. It will be a task force of my most modern 7K ton Magneto-Plasma destroyers.

I have a vague idea something interesting may be up, but never encountered this before in my games.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on March 01, 2017, 01:44:44 AM
After 60 years in I have only now realized Maintenance Facilities don't autobuild MSP on demand. I was quite confused why my gravsurvey ship didn't replenish her MSP stock even after 5th command to "Resupply at Earth". "Come on, you are smaller then Maintenance capacity there, there is enough of ores to build those MSP so go on and _do_ _resupply_...". @_@
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on March 01, 2017, 03:09:16 AM
- "This is freighter Gjalfersson 007 en route to Sirius BII Moon 9, requesting assistance. An unknown vessel moving at high speed just tried to ram us. They have not responded to communication and are running without transponder, submitting their thermal signature."

- "Gjalfersson 007, this is fleet command. Continue towards your destination at full speed and attempt no further communication with the unknown vessel. We have dispatched the quick response task group from Sol to search the area and escort you."



Fleet HQ, Earth:
We have contacted the Empire of Birmingham and they ensure us they have no vessel in the Sirius system currently. Additionally the sensor data we received from the freighter matches earlier records of what is only known as the "Wolf Aliens".

Based on this we have called Battle Fleet back from it's mission to explore the stable wormhole in YZ Ceti, but they are two weeks out so the Sirius incursion will mainly be up to our FAC:s to handle. Response Fleet has been ordered to rendevous with the freighter and escort it, then search back towards the Wolf 359 jump point. Scout Fleet will Jump into Sirius and hold position on the Sol jump point. A Jarl class destroyer will also join Scout Fleet to provide additional sensor coverage.. and jump capability for the second phase of the operation. Yes folks, as we so far have no indication where the unknown vessel went or if it even remains in Sirius the council has authorized us to move into Wolf 359 for a sensor sweep.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 07, 2017, 02:39:08 AM
I recently conquered 2 populations on one planet, It seems that I have been using my lasers a bit to frequently and now I need to evacuate some 13 billion inhabitants... Its now a new ice age on that planet, -87 degrees, I might be able to raise the temperature with the almost 50 terraformers found on the planet, if I can man them.  With some luck I managed to secure some 50 colony ships from the conquered and more lucky was that my Heavy Colony Lift Group was in the next system unloading support populations for what I thought was to be a long war. That planet should be habitable for my new subjects... In total I can lift some 14 million in each lift, in 16 days the second and third Heavy Colony Lift Groups will be ready at Terra, but will take some 20 days to arrive on the scene. They will increase the lift capacity with another 20 million. But I am afraid that many will die before help arrives... :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on March 07, 2017, 05:04:44 AM
580 missiles in flight, the trap was going to be perfect as I lured them in exactly between my two missile bases in a manoeuver that took some pen&paper calculations to bring off.. then they veered off course to kill some stupid freighters, didn't even scratch their paint :'(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on March 07, 2017, 01:41:19 PM
The other side of jump gate for Sol-Alpha Centauri jump point got finally finished.
All three shipping lines went crazy...

They have been idling dozens of years with all those colonists loaded. Now their time has come as there is colony with 0-cost in Alpha Centauri.
I guess it won't stay at its current size of 1M of citizens for too long...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on March 09, 2017, 05:10:49 AM
Statement from Vice Admiral Matthew "Buck" Buckley, Commander, Terran Federation Navy:

On 22. 00, October 7th 2072, Captain Jay Sheppard and the rest of the crew of SV3 Dachhound departed Earth to continue the exploration beyond Sigma Draconis (Sol JP#3).  Due to distances involved, this exploration have been lower priority until now. 

The journey of 5,8b km almost to Pluto orbit to enter Sigma Draconis is the short leg as there is an additional 8,3b km from JP4 to JP3 in Sigma Draconis.

After the long journey SV3 Dachhound entered the JP @ noon, December 2nd to discover Wolf 424.  A trinary system and potential treasure trove!

Entering almost exactly 2b km from the primary at a bearing of 354, reports started flowing in from the scanners.

Wolf 424-A being the first report, turned out being the smallest as well.  1 terrestial planet with 2 moons and a solid asteroid belt.  Planet and 1 of the moons, being prime terraforming candidates-

Orbiting at a distance of 4 AU, Wolf 424-C consist of 1 terrestial planet, 1 dwarf planet, 2 gas giants, 32 moons and another solid asteroid belt.  4 additional terraforming targets included.

And finally from a massive distance of 13000 AU, Wolf 424-B adds it's value.  1 terrestial, 3 dwarf planets, 7 gas giants, 133 moons and the third solid asteroid belt bringing the total to 666 objects.  15 terraforming objects with 2 prime targets included.  All reachable thanks to the Lagrange Jump points available in the -B and -C parts of the system.

After dispatching a drone home with the findings, the SV3 Dachhound heads in-system.

5 days later, while closing in on the -C part of the system, 2 unknown ships were detected on the passive sensors.  Standard first contact protocols initiated immediately by the onboard computers triggered an immediate responce from the 2 ships.  While at almost point blank range, they turned on search radars.  Acting without orders, Sensor Tech 3/c immediately turned on the sensors of the Dachhound giving a better overview of the unknowns.

Later analysis from the last drone received from SV3 Dachhound, shows that the ship was destroyed 5 seconds later by impact of at least 3 missiles from the unknowns.  As the total size of the 2 enemies was estimated to be half the size of the Dachhound, new designs are recommended to find these targets sooner than with the current set. 

Updated ship designs is being implemented, but with the lack of Gallicite, Fuel and the distance involved, a naval responce will be several years away. 

Additional considerations is being made to the process of exploration to make it more safe for the crews.

Finally, we will release further information as it becomes available.

With this, the Admiral leaves the stage while reporters shout unanswered questions at him.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on March 10, 2017, 07:22:04 AM
Statement from Vice Admiral Matthew "Buck" Buckley, Commander, Terran Federation Navy:

He should really be named "Joe" - it would bode....

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on March 10, 2017, 08:12:25 AM
He should really be named "Joe" - it would bode....

John

Well, I didn't want it to be too obvious that this would be the end of the Federation Navy. After all, it only consists of 3 Heavy Cruisers, 3 Ordinary Cruisers, 3 Light Cruisers and 9 AM Destroyers with obsolete missiles. All the ships are probably obsolete as well.

At this rate, Buckley will retire (he's 64) before responce is dispatched, specifically since my Missile Researchers are occupied for the next many years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on March 11, 2017, 06:31:56 AM
April 14th has been declared an Aldorean day of mourning as most of our state of the art fleet was demolished in the system of Alluyen. Vice Admiral Vetherland has been retired for leading this foolish charge trying to rescue the crew of a scout ship being shot down, even though get caught a glimpse of the force awaiting them. Due to interference from the jump, they were unable to defend themselves, and most of the fleet was destroyed before the Jump Battle Cruiser Grendel II escaped with five Missile cruiser Asgard II. The official report blame incompetent crew. Scouts have started exploring nearby systems as interrogations from a previous encounter revealed two unexplored jump points in Alluyen. They might be able to find a back way in to avoid the bottleneck from Charis. Meanwhile, the Aldoreans need to rebuild and rethink their approaches. But a neutronium shortage might severely obstruct their efforts.

On the plus side, this means I finally have an opportunity to actually figure how to use squadron transits and designing fleets that can take advantage of that. Also, my map is getting weirder still.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Akhillis on March 11, 2017, 09:21:53 PM
I'm exploring a curiously empty galaxy. So far I've run into ruins and nothing else. Its getting a little creepy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 12, 2017, 03:28:34 AM
1.4 billion dead Abbevilleans, only some 520 million saved, so far. I have now some 75 colony ships moving between their home system and a neighboring system with a planet able to sustain them. Also some 200 forced labor battalions have been "recruited" on their home world, desperately trying to build shelters, so far we have shelters for about 2.2 billion out of 11 billion survivors... more will die...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on March 13, 2017, 06:18:41 AM
My geo survey teams are on fire. This is why it pays off to train them extensively.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on March 13, 2017, 09:03:16 AM
1.4 billion dead Abbevilleans, only some 520 million saved, so far. I have now some 75 colony ships moving between their home system and a neighboring system with a planet able to sustain them. Also some 200 forced labor battalions have been "recruited" on their home world, desperately trying to build shelters, so far we have shelters for about 2.2 billion out of 11 billion survivors... more will die...
Sounds like your senior commanders and administrators should be facing some war crime tribunals!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on March 13, 2017, 04:24:14 PM
Sounds like your senior commanders and administrators should be facing some war crime tribunals!
No, they are heroes now. The situation (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9433.msg101567) is much worse.
Edification: Laser orbital bombardment makes for good stories.

My geo survey teams are on fire. This is why it pays off to train them extensively.
Nice find but are you playing some old version? In the recent ones the skill of team only affects the speed of survey, not the findable amounts of ore.

Btw, my Altair A-I is this monstrosity with 152m of corrundium at 0.9 while all other ore types are present too, sadly only at 0.1 so your 0.9 duranium beats me.
(https://s4.postimg.org/dje3mbevx/A4x_Altair_A_I.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on March 13, 2017, 04:41:46 PM
Nice find but are you playing some old version? In the recent ones the skill of team only affects the speed of survey, not the findable amounts of ore.

Btw, my Altair A-I is this monstrosity with 152m of corrundium at 0.9 while all other ore types are present too, sadly only at 0.1 so your 0.9 duranium beats me.
(https://s4.postimg.org/dje3mbevx/A4x_Altair_A_I.png)

Wow, that is a beast.

I should be playing the most recent version, so maybe I was just lucky? I just thought I read somewhere that their skill also determines when they stop attempting to find new deposits. Was that the old version?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on April 04, 2017, 07:02:43 PM
Another late realization: during an attack on enemy system, while my combined beam forces were crawling through the third hundred of long range ASM fire, it occurred to me I may..just may have completely forgot to activate shields. Hopefully there were no leakers so far. *nervous giggle* @_@
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on April 04, 2017, 08:34:00 PM
I need to launch a jump point assault. I play both sides so I'll have some four hundred and fifty warships to manage. Not counting eight hundred fighters. I hate combat in Aurora.

Worst part? The campaign is far from over and I'm hoping for much larger empires (and fleets) to duke it out in the future. Kill me now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on April 05, 2017, 02:30:26 PM
Another late realization: during an attack on enemy system, while my combined beam forces were crawling through the third hundred of long range ASM fire, it occurred to me I may..just may have completely forgot to activate shields. Hopefully there were no leakers so far. *nervous giggle* @_@
Though the shields may not be ready for such !!fun!! times.
Off-Topic: show
(https://s28.postimg.org/srt4dpd65/Screenshot_from_2017-04-05_21_20_30.png)

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on April 05, 2017, 07:48:05 PM
For the five people who happen to read my campaign, while the below image is quite funny it is also something of a spoiler. You check it at your own risk.

Turns out Aurora missiles are very smart, if given the least bit of excuse they will just go on a joyride into deep space rather than kill themselves.

Off-Topic: show
(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=2132)


I mean seriously, that's over six thousand shipkillers that went "screw those meatbags, I'm outta here!" and went on a joyride towards... the star? Well I guess they were cold or something.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 05, 2017, 08:43:55 PM
Derp. Your shipkillers can travel twice as far in 5 seconds as the range of their sensors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on April 05, 2017, 08:47:25 PM
Yes, but that's not what happened here. There is apparently a very specific bug (at least there was in 6.43) where if the target is destroyed at the same increment the missiles are fired, the missiles will run off in random direction. Those didn't overshoot - those literally went directly away from the enemy at launch.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 05, 2017, 08:53:18 PM
Wow. Spoiler if you have to, but just how many missiles did you use overall in that battle?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on April 05, 2017, 09:03:51 PM
The defending side used 17 020 shipkillers and either used or lost 55 790 anti-missiles. The attacking side had far too many formations and ship types for easy count but I'd say they used some thirty thousand missiles and I can't even be bothered to estimate how many anti-missiles they lost on the destroyed ships, but I'd say another 30k-60k.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 05, 2017, 11:19:26 PM
So basically more resources than most starting planets were shot up in just the missiles?  Wow.

The environmentalist in me is kind of horrified, actually.  These are completely non-renewable resources, and we Aurora players strip mine whole star systems in mere years what it takes stellar processes billions of years to generate.

I do wonder, at the point where economic expansion is primarily limited by population and population growth, how fast can the economy double with the primary growth being from automated mines and construction brigades.  Assuming 20% bonuses from planetary governor and sector governors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 06, 2017, 12:21:23 AM
I always assumed that by the late game growth would be limited by the rate you can find and exploit more sorium.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Akhillis on April 07, 2017, 11:29:32 PM
Finally found some life out there.

Battlegroup Sword set forth to do battle with the mysterious organic space faring creatures from the YZ Ceti system. Despite some logistical issues the results were heavily in humanity's favour; Sword destroyed 2 Queens and ~60 Soldiers for the loss of a single destroyer. The Battlegroup then proceeded further into the system, looking for any stragglers.

Thermal and EM sensors were the first to pick up the new contact. Unfortunately this data was misinterpreted and it was only when the contact came into active sensor range that its true size was realized: a 200,000 ton Matriarch. Given that the hostile vessel was comfortably bigger than my entire military, it was decided that discretion is the better part of valor and Sword should return home.

First time I've spotted one of those.


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 08, 2017, 01:12:52 AM
TBH you might need to spoiler that whole post.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on April 08, 2017, 02:39:09 AM
Spoilery stuff

Careful, she might decide to follow you home. Ready your defenses.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Akhillis on April 08, 2017, 03:15:30 AM
TBH you might need to spoiler that whole post.

Better safe than sorry, I've spoilered it.

Spoilery stuff

Safe to say its giving the shipyards a workout. Plus I'm designing a dedicated "hard target" missile.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 09, 2017, 06:15:02 AM
So I managed to survey everything in the Sol system with Nuclear Thermal tech (except for two distant comets), I sent survey teams to every rock that had any minerals at all...

And those survey teams discovered nothing.  Well, 1 discovery of a .1 deposit on Venus.  Nothing else, in the entire system was found by my Geo Teams.

Fortunately, there is enough ore in the system to keep me busy.

And fortunately I noticed that the last two comets were actually out of my surveyor range, so my surveyors didn't gallivant over to them and have no way to get back.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on April 09, 2017, 06:45:38 PM
Reminds me of one of my quickly-abandoned conventional starts where Sol system had barely any minerals at all and Earth herself had tiny amounts. Some times the RNG gods really hate you.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on April 11, 2017, 10:06:30 PM
Here a question.

I am going to be starting up a new game soon, Should i start with real star system or random systems?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Zincat on April 12, 2017, 02:04:55 AM
Here a question.

I am going to be starting up a new game soon, Should i start with real star system or random systems?

Personally, I much prefer random systems. After 2-3 games, it feels boring to always run into the same systems at start. The planets are random anyway, but still, I prefer it to be completely random. Except Sol, that is.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Titanian on April 12, 2017, 08:53:46 AM
Real star games end up with much nicer jump connections though, as they are not just random, but based on the real distances between the stars. That keeps the map much more managable. This can be somewhat helped in the random systems by setting cluster size and out-of-cluster connection chance rather low, but then you tend to end up with ring galaxies.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 17, 2017, 03:31:01 AM
After several starts where I had NO geo survey team discovery worthwhile, had a geo survey team find 23 million .9 availability duranium on Mars.  So I thought, "Hey, I guess I need to go terraforming research early."

Turns out, one of my +25 survey guys on the team was also my Bio +10 scientist. I got this vision of the survey leader saying, "In this one discovery, we have justified the entire project.  On Mars we have corundum, gallicite, mercassium and uridium, and now we have duranium in quantity.  If we find nothing else in the solar system, our basic economy is assured."

The Bio guy probably won't get put to work in his field until conversion to TN economy is complete and the new research labs are on line, but I thought it was cool from an RP perspective, that his out of field discovery would revive interest in his main field.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 18, 2017, 10:42:47 PM
So apparently either my unarmed survey vessel, or my equally unarmed geo survey team, managed to take several hundred POWs on Ganymede and Europa.

I didn't get any notifications to that effect, at least that I noticed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on April 19, 2017, 03:06:14 AM
Are you saying they just appeared there? Without you picking up any life pods?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 19, 2017, 03:11:56 AM
All I know is that my colony had a bunch of POWs on it when I bothered to check them for geo survey team.  I don't know when it happened, I might have other moons with POWs on them, for all I know.

I thought I would have gotten a notice if there were ruins or something.  Certainly there were no wrecks.  All I know is someone, somewhere, is telling a hell of a story in a spaceport bar, and getting free drinks for it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 19, 2017, 05:52:11 PM
A bit of an update, I sent xeno and diplomatic teams to the moons that had POWs on them.  I also noticed there seemed to be an option to put the POWs on a ship.   Can you put alien POWs in cryo, or should I just make a 'hospital/prisoner transport' craft to retrieve them?

The POWs are in several groups, does that matter?  combined the numbers are about 2,000, but no group is more than 600.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 23, 2017, 02:16:43 AM
So I didn't get a PP scientist for quite some time, but I had a decent C&P and several logistics guys.  So I figured I would get cargo handling and cryo while waiting for a PP.  And I had a good sensor scientist, so surveying early was easy.

I finally get a PP scientist, and get a nuclear thermal commercial engine designed and a commercial shipyard, and that prompted a shipping line to create a colony ship.

Suddenly, colonizing Luna looked MUCH more attractive, as they were paying ME for the privilege.  So I switched to about 25% industry for infrastructure, and built a dedicated Terra-Luna freighter with a small cargo hold.  And 10 cargo handling systems.

Loading a small cargo hold in an hour for a really short jaunt meant that dinky little ship could ship as many installations as I wanted to the moon pretty quickly.  More infrastructure than I wanted to build at that time, so I started on Terraforming Installations.  I watched a couple of videos, and they mentioned that colonies start to want protection at 10 million, so I started planning ahead.

Or so I thought.  I figured I would build the components on Earth and just ship them, but they either don't fit in a small cargo hold, so it won't give the option of shipping them, or I was just looking in the wrong place.  But I could ship the minerals just fine, and shuttling a couple construction factories over, even if they weren't going to stay, was a better option than stopping colonization while I waited for either my large freighter to be built or otherwise diverted construction to Luna.

As a strategy, I do recommend shipping a couple hundred infrastructure to Luna the moment you get Cryogenics and a commercial engine.  That seemed to be the prompt for shipping lines to build colony ships.  Just have a plan for building SOME kind of PDC on the moon, as population growth can be pretty quick with the short travel time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MarcAFK on April 23, 2017, 03:49:20 AM
Protection can also be granted by just shoving a ship into orbit.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on April 23, 2017, 03:53:05 PM
Protection is also system-wide, so anything on Earth will also count towards protecting Luna (or any other colonies, even if they aren't actually protected).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 23, 2017, 05:50:23 PM
It was odd, do PDCs not build from components if you have them, like ships do?  Or do you need to specifically order them built from available components?

It is annoying that dinky little components don't fit in a small hold, when I can fit 5000 units of minerals, WAY more than needed to build those components.

Minerals take up much less space than the facilities built from them.

Oh well, from an RP perspective, I am not going to mind having built a few point defense missile launchers as PDCs.  Although I wish I could have waited for reload 3 instead of reload 2, and gotten my PDC launchers all the way down to 5 second reload.  Still, 10 second reload should be fine for an early PDC.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TT on April 23, 2017, 06:46:52 PM
I think Jacen has your solution.  If you build the PDC on earth, that will satisfy the Luna's colony need for security.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 24, 2017, 04:59:21 PM
True, it will supply Luna with security from the point of the colonists, but I was looking at strategies for speeding PDC construction in general.  See, if I am waiting on a particular tech for my PDC, like sensors, I could still build the launchers for the PDC, and then build the thing when I get my sensor tech finished.  But they don't assemble from ship components.

Probably because they already build from industry, so normally there wouldn't be much point.  Its just, I might get a good PDC AMM launcher pretty early, you only need reload 3 to get PDC launchers every 5 seconds, so I thought I would be clever and just stock up a bunch of them, and then ship them where I would build PDCs and assemble that way, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

So good thing I found out with a small scale PDC project.  I figure I will want SOME AMM bases on every planet of importance to me.  Of course, I can build the AMM launchers long before I can even DESIGN missiles for them, let alone build them.  I figure the colonists can look at the bases as a sign of commitment that those launchers will have missiles eventually.  Bit of a Quaker Cannon thing though.

I am building a 500 ton collier with 5 magazines, so I will be able to ship missiles to my colonies without tying down a shipyard with retooling.  I am likewise building a 500 ton 'tanker', again, so I can shuttle fuel or rescue a stranded ship, without tying down major resources.  One thing I need to do in the future is plan my early shipyard tooling a bit better.  I want my first shipyard tooling to be able to handle geo and grav survey, small tankers and small colliers.  So about 15 HS beyond the commercial engine, or so.  I recall difficulties with getting a shipyard tooled to make 1 engineering space geo survey ships to build ships within its costs and size range that had more engineering spaces was a problem.

Hopefully a yard designed for a slightly oversized ship with 3 engineering spaces can also build geosurvey ships that have 1.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on April 25, 2017, 12:09:12 PM
You can't assemble PDCs from ship components, but you can build pre-fabbed PDC sections that can be transported to and assembled on other planets, for a very small mineral cost. It should be an option in the industry tab somewhere. The PDC design screen will also tell you you how many pre-fabbed sections it will take to build at the bottom of the design.

But otherwise you're right, unfortunately you can't build components for them before you finish the design like you can with ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 26, 2017, 05:19:30 AM
So, first system I probe, lots of rocks and moons, nothing below 8 habitability.  Second system, nothing below 8 habitability.  Third system... EIGHT 2-2.4 habitability... and a crap ton of wrecks.

As a bonus, the wrecks and the potential colony sites are within 300 million km of the jump point, just inside of Saturn's orbit, so the potential and risk are huge.

So I am making a fighter pinnace with an active sensor.  The sensor is named the "What Killed Me?" sensor.  Basically, I am going to make a pass at the wrecks and the habitable moons with teensy ships that will be lucky if they see what kills them.

Salvage module got bumped up the priority list pretty hugely.  I probably won't shift out of economic expansion techs to war techs until the scout is done.  Most of my shipyards were either building or refitting survey ships, or expanding yards, so my immediate response is limited to purpose built fighters.  The internal debate may revolve around what prospects the other jump points offer, and how overwhelming the threat seems.

Complicating matters is we finally got a decent Bio scientist, to augment our 40 terraforming installations.  The moon is going to be habitable in something like 3 years or so, and the plan was then to terraform Mars and the Jovian moons, to generate internal trade.

RP wise, the idle survey units had created a lobby to get exploration back on.  We have two shipping lines with lots of shipping, which they seem to spend a lot of time competing to see how many colonists they can kill.  Still, as much as I would be amused to see some of the civilian ships get munched, they are a resource I need.

One of the ideas that has to be considered is refitting the missile bases with modern firecontrols, and designing armored missiles for them to deal with whatever is discovered in Procyon.  But given our crappy engine tech, whatever we meet will likely be faster than us, how much faster, we dunno.  We can't get started on really expensive measures until we have some idea of whether those measures would even be likely to work.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 27, 2017, 12:50:45 AM
So the pinnace Morituri, of the class, Expendable, equipped with a sensor named "What Killed Me?" has successfully visited the terraformable moons and the 5 wrecks in the system.

The Morituri was NOT expected to survive.  It was expected to return useful data, about anything scary in the system.  If I had bothered to give the Morituri a ship commander, that commander would have gotten a medal for it.  In the future, I may create the Morituri medal for a ship commander that does something particularly self-sacrificing.

Needless to say, when they get back to Sol, markets are going to be in turmoil.  The speculation bubble in missiles and launcher tech is going to crash for a while, and the colonization related markets will soar.  A lot of people won't think anything has really changed since before the wreck discovery, but the shipyard expansions have already happened.  The shipyards had been largely idle after the first surge supporting the Geo survey effort for Sol, but now there are so many new systems to survey.  All the old geo survey ships are being updated in a civilian shipyard dedicated to them.

One of my logistics guys just hit 40%, and we just finished ship to ship tractors and hangars, so life is good. :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on April 28, 2017, 07:43:22 AM
I've got a really nice game going on currently, already have like over 100 systems discovered and some really nice connections, which makes it less tree-y and more interconnected.

I went with a light carrier doctrine this time and built a couple of light but slow carriers (I think around 20.000t in total) with 6.000t hangar capacity and a couple of CIWS, some gauss-cannons and one big active sensor, which has like 280m km range. To fill the ships, I went with 50% 1.000t FACs, 8.000km speed and filled with gauss cannons and 50% 500t fighters, with gauss cannons as well and miniature sensor. I call it the bee swarm, as one of those ships/fighters doesn't cause much pain, but the whole swarm shreds everything to pieces in less than 30 seconds.
They are accompanied by light battleships (around 15.000t) equipped with missiles that can shoot as far out as 140m km and give me some long range capabilities, when I don't want to give up the additional missile defense that all the gauss cannons of the FACs/fighters provide. They are as slow as the carriers, I think barely scratching 2.000 km/s. They also have some AMM launchers-
I recently added a couple of pure missile slinger frigates(?), which are essentially light armored missile launchers without any sensors, the same long range fire control and limited magazines. They only have around 5.000t, but are massively faster than my carriers and battleships. With 5 launchers and 30 loaded missiles, I wanted to improve my "first punch" capability and increase the size of the first couple of missile volleys. But as they are rather cheap to make, I have decided to create 2 variants of them, one with the large 280m km range sensor and the other one filled with gauss-cannons as flak-cover. This way, I can use them as rapid response force or sector defense, while my main fleet is busy somewhere else.
Plus, the update time of my main fleet has come, so they will have to take over defense duties for a while until my carriers and battleships are back on the field.
Although I am thinking of just keeping the fleet carriers as they are and just park them somewhere as back up and design new, awesome, BIG carriers instead. We will see.


In other news, I have conquered 2 NPRs in this game so far. One with basically the same production capabilities and population size as Earth but almost no minerals left on their planet, the other one with maybe 25% of the capabilities and population but a still very healthy amount of minerals on their planet and much more in the system. Both have been integrated in my empire already and have proven to be really valuable outposts and production centers. Unfortunately there is a really smegty nebula between Earth and the conquered planet with all the production capabilites, so I will have to make it self-sufficient for the near future. The other one will probably become a supplier of minerals for earth, with construction of automines being kept up (as there is already a worker shortage on that planet).

In Sol, everything that can reasonably be terraformed has been terraformed already and our terraformer fleet has moved outside of Sol. They are currently finishing up the 7th planet outside of Sol within 4 jumps.
A main colony has been set up within a system that has 3 planets with all minerals present in varying degrees, but most importantly duranium, corundium and neutronium each with at least 0.9 and deposits in the millions. Only downside: Boronide is only available with 0.1
For this, another colony 4 jumps out of Sol has been established and the atmosphere has become breathable a couple of years ago. Boronide is available with 0.9 and tens of millions in deposits, plus all other minerals are available with 0.1. This will make a great outpost in the future, as we will not need to supply this colony with minerals to conduct repairs and overhauls.

On the fuel side, while we were worried about 20 years ago that fuel might run out, dozens of fuel harvesters have solved that problem nicely and we have hundreds of millions of fuel in reserves in every major colony / conquered world, plus nice deposits in some outposts.

Overall it's looking good, although a bit quiet for my taste. I wonder when we will meet the next NPR... (I have NPR discovery set to 90% by now, I really want to go to war again :) )
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 28, 2017, 05:16:54 PM
Starting over because I had to reinstall and it wiped my saves, had some weird stuff happen.

My new administrator starts with 20% wealth creation and a bunch of other stats.  6 months later, it goes to 30%.  A month later he dies in an accident.  I am thinking there was something hinky in how he generated wealth, and some organized crime group offed him for it.

A couple months later, get a new survey officer, that officer dies THAT MONTH in an accident.

A little worried about the RNG gods.  Started with a +30% C&P, worried he will die in an accident.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on April 29, 2017, 04:01:47 PM
Starting over because I had to reinstall and it wiped my saves, had some weird stuff happen.

My new administrator starts with 20% wealth creation and a bunch of other stats.  6 months later, it goes to 30%.  A month later he dies in an accident.  I am thinking there was something hinky in how he generated wealth, and some organized crime group offed him for it.

A couple months later, get a new survey officer, that officer dies THAT MONTH in an accident.

A little worried about the RNG gods.  Started with a +30% C&P, worried he will die in an accident.

Don't worry about it. I'm certain he'll be just fine. Of course he'll have a medical condition forcing him to retire, but he'll be fine.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on May 01, 2017, 11:08:00 AM
had my first major victory vs. a non-spoiler.   

My scout ship was exploring Wolf-359 when it detected a active sensor.   Following the rulebook, the S-class Scout went to slow speed and changed direction.   The ship did not follow.   

The Terran Union fleet mobilized, and 12 Sheffield class light cruisers, and 8 warrior class frigates jumped into the system, with a support fleet of 2 Mark Watney Tankers and 3 surplus FACs (SDB-P-3 class) and 10 Lion class fighter bombers. 

After jumping into system, two Warrior class Frigates, the T.U.S. Lenin and the T.U.S Genghis Khan was sent to investigate the area and give cover for the T.U.S.S Simón Bolívar to exit.   2/3 the way to the Bolivar, the active sensors detected four FACs of the "Wolf" race trailing the Frigates, with active sensors on.   Due to this action, they where deemed hostile and the Lenin and Khan delivered five Salvos, eliminating the FACS.   The Warrior class then double back and the remaining fleet joined them, with the FACs and Lion classes topping off their fuel and the Watney's returning to sol.

Near the encounter of the Bolivar, the fleet (with the Warrior class sensors active) came across 3 7300 ton ships with active sensors, who maintained a 40 million km distance, just outside the Warrior class Hammerhead missiles.   It was also shown that they had a 500 km speed advantage.   

The Fleet Commander, to test the sensors sent the FACs and Lion classes, without sensors, to do a attack run on the ships.   at around 38 Million KM they suddenly learned what the ships were armed with, as the FACs and Lion classes where decimated by two volleys of missiles,  After the 2nd volley, the remaining Lion class ships attempted to pick up survivors, but they where then eliminated by a third volley.

Unable to close on the fleet, the T.U.S. Sheffield turned on its active sensor array, and warmed up their tubes, each ship armed with longbow missiles with a range of 100 million KM.

The Sheffield class first had three fire, to see if the ships would close range (The Hammerhead missiles of the warrior class had a much higher ability to strike home then the longbows) and to test any anti-missile systems.   Soon it became clear that the 7300 ton cruisers where heavily armored but did not have much in anti-missile defense vs. the longbow missile.   So all 12 ships of the class began to volley into the enemy cruisers.  For some time there was a worry that their armor, which took dozens of missile hits, would hold out vs. the magazines of the the fleet.  However finally some engines where knocked offline, allowing more missiles to strike home, and the three cruisers became wrecks. 

The fleet picked up survivors and then reconned in force in the system, finding no colonies.   Fleet headquarters is not deciding on what is the next step after this encounter. 

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 01, 2017, 07:37:10 PM
Mark Watney Tankers

(http://i.imgur.com/IoPV9sY.gif)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on May 01, 2017, 08:33:42 PM
Don't worry about it. I'm certain he'll be just fine. Of course he'll have a medical condition forcing him to retire, but he'll be fine.

So far, he is fine.  The guy I started up as an understudy died, however.  I have a +20 in case the now +60 dies, and that will put a huge hole in my research establishment.  But as my C&P stuff is researched to the 20k level, 40k research tech, and I haven't hit ION yet, I could comfortably switch out of C&P and research other stuff while training the new guy up.

After several games of no major Geo Survey team discoveries, and the frustration of two systems adjacent to my home system infested with something nasty, a world that had 4 million .1 duranium turned out to have 32 million in .9.

Double bonus, it actually had over a million in every mineral, most at .1, triple bonus, the other world in the system was terraformable, with large deposits of .8 corundium, something really in short supply elsewhere.

Quadruple bonus, the Jump Point to the system in question was the closest in, and the distance from Jump Point to the two rich planets was also short.

The real nice thing is that I won't need to go after the two systems with nasties for their real estate any time soon.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 02, 2017, 04:34:08 AM
So the pinnace Morituri, of the class, Expendable
That must do wonders for crew morale...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on May 02, 2017, 05:47:39 AM
That must do wonders for crew morale...

Hey, these guys have luxurious quarters and excessive engineering departments, and their exploits are followed by millions of people.  And an unknown number of Venom entities.

I think the thing that helps their morale the most is a complete lack of officers on board, or even within a billion km most of the time.

So far, of the 10 built, 2 have been destroyed, and 5 valuable systems checked successfully.  The third Venom system was discovered with a face check by a survey ship, and THAT caused a morale issue, as the rest of the survey fleet ran for their lives.  Successfully, oddly enough.  Intelligence is gathering data, testing hypothesis.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on May 02, 2017, 06:09:27 AM
One of the systems I discovered had a ridiculously rich asteroid belt.  Something like 40 asteroids with a combined 5 accessibility or greater.

And a terraformable world (with substantial minerals) in the center.

I wish I had a decent Biology scientist, sigh.  +15% is crap.  But we are about 2 years from terraforming module, and we have a gargantuan civilian shipyard ready to work.  The plan is to terraform the moon, then tow all shipyards to the moon.  And put a +45% shipyard civilian administrator to work. :)

I fully expect that all my work to stabilize the duranium economy will be hard pressed to keep up, at that point. ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on May 02, 2017, 09:57:22 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/IoPV9sY.gif)

Thanks!

I build them after my first run of geo-surveyors,  a NT or NP commerical engine and ~300,000 liters of fuel, and they are used to rescue Geo-surveyors that run low on fuel.   Then they become double useful later as fuel-depots that are small (<2000 tons IIRC) that can be easily jumped to other systems, I used a pair of them to give 600k liters of fuel to top off the doomed FACs and fighters who had limited range.   

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 04, 2017, 05:46:19 PM
I'm going to have to steal that idea.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on May 04, 2017, 10:55:10 PM
I'm going to have to steal that idea.

Here is the design concept.   Of course, each games "Mark Watney" might be slightly different, as the idea is is to throw on whatever Commercial  Nuclear Thermal drive I design, and 300k of fuel. 


Code: [Select]
Mark Watney class Tanker    1 850 tons     22 Crew     116.125 BP      TCS 37  TH 62  EM 0
1675 km/s     Armour 1-13     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 39    Max Repair 15.625 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   

Worthley-Hayslett Space & Security 62.5 EP Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine (1)    Power 62.5    Fuel Use 13.26%    Signature 62.5    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300 000 Litres    Range 220.0 billion km   (1520 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on June 03, 2017, 04:06:37 PM
After clawing my way up to interstellar capabilities from a conventional start, the first jump I make into another star system results in me finding 3 Star Swarm motherships within observation range of my transit.

Needless to say, Earth did not fair well.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on June 04, 2017, 03:22:48 AM
Clement, are you a new convert to the religion of scouting?

The first principle of our religion is:
Thou Shalt not transit any ship larger than 500 tons into ANY system until every planet has been scouted by a Morituri class pinnace. ;)
The second principle of our religion is:
Get the data home.  NO scout is done solo.  Never have only one ship in a system.  There should ALWAYS be a jump capable pinnace capable of getting the data home.  Including the really important information of "Did they discover our transit, will they follow through?"

So two pinnaces go in, one stays at the jump point.  If the scouting pinnace gets eaten, the other transits out and sits on the jump point until relieved.  The knowledge that an enemy HAS NOT pursued is almost as important as any other information, as that information can allow for the exploitation of systems adjacent to a discovered danger.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on June 04, 2017, 03:25:52 AM
Clement, my conversion story was similar to yours, except it was six, and the system they followed me to was one jump from Sol.  And fortunately that system had an exit to a different loop, so the rest of the survey fleet eventually made it home, after they were SURE they had not been spotted.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on June 04, 2017, 07:59:25 AM
Unfortunately no amount of scouting would have helped in this situation.

In most of my games, my survey vessels operate in groups of 2 or more. This being the first up capable ship, there was no pair to go with it. If there had been it would not have changed the sequence of events.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: iceball3 on June 04, 2017, 12:47:51 PM
Unfortunately no amount of scouting would have helped in this situation.

In most of my games, my survey vessels operate in groups of 2 or more. This being the first up capable ship, there was no pair to go with it. If there had been it would not have changed the sequence of events.
That fella did miss one important detail: Make sure your scout pickets every jump point (1km/s speed) before going through.
It won't save you from actives, but it will put you in without alerting thermals.
Quick note though, above a certain ship size, setting your speed to 1km/s will make a 1 thermal signature instead of 0, being detectable at point blank.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on June 04, 2017, 02:23:00 PM
That fella did miss one important detail: Make sure your scout pickets every jump point (1km/s speed) before going through.
Or have welcoming committee already ready on your side of JP before going through.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on June 04, 2017, 04:52:44 PM
After 30 years from conventional start and 10 nearby systems partially searched three alien ships suddenly appeared in Sol.
My armed forces consist so far only from two area defence destroyers and shipyards are in disarray as I am building magneto-pulse navy.

But those alien ships hopefully seem to be neutral gravsurvey ones.
Time to use that 275 (!) diplomatic team. Maybe I can finally have some space buddies for once.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on June 15, 2017, 03:45:39 AM
I may now know where to set my next mining colony:
Off-Topic: show
(https://s22.postimg.org/cl854qpyp/Manchester_A-_III-_M7.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on June 16, 2017, 02:24:03 AM
I have decided that any Geo Survey team that discovers enough new minerals gets the planet named after them.

Had a planet that got renamed "Reprieve" after the geo-survey, for a large corundium deposit that turned a dud of a planet into a colonization prospect.  A bit premature when the rest of the first tier surveys came in.

It felt very nice, after a long series of dud geo surveys, where maybe a .1 deposit was found, or a 1 or 2 element planet had a new deposit of those elements.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on June 18, 2017, 02:39:45 PM
I just lost my first real battle.  I'd fought small skirmishes against precursors and the swarm, and usually won easily.  Well I finally fought a real NPR, and got my ass kicked.

I found an NPR 3 jumps away from Sol, and 1 jump away from my jump gate network.  Set up thermal sensor buoys on my side of their jump point and started communications.  2 years later, my thermal sensor buoy picks up a strong contact, sitting stationary on my side of the JP.  I send out my fleet to get a scan of the ship.  The active sensors measure their tonnage to be 77000 tons; obviously a gate construction ship.  Seeing that the ship is harmless, I turn off my actives so as to not hurt my diplomatic relationship with them.  I don't move away though, as I want to stay within gun range of the JP, in case anything nasty comes through.  A few weeks later, a massive fleet jumps through the JP, and I know its about to get real.

Individually my ships were far superior to theirs, but they just had so many more than me.  I had seven 7000 ton beam-armed destroyers, 3 armed with 15cm railguns and a twin Gauss turret, 2 with multiple 15cm lasers and a single spinal-mounted 19cm laser, and 2 with my sensors and triple Gauss turrets.  They had easily twenty ~9000 ton ships, and around ten 13000 ton ships.  Many, many different classes.

Approximately half the fleet appeared right on the gate, the other half appeared some distance away.  I open fire.  First volley destroys the gate constructor, and the near half begins to flee.  The far half splits into two groups, half coming towards me (obviously beam combatants) half away.  I am significantly faster than all of them, ~5400kms compared to ~2500kms.  10 seconds later my second volley destroys a 9,000 ton ship.  10 more seconds and another 9000 ton ship goes down.  4th volley fired after 10 more seconds, and a 3rd 9000 ton ship goes down.  Suddenly, missiles are detected, TONS of them coming from the distant group.  Thankfully they're all really slow; only ~10,000kms.  Two kinds, mostly size 3, a few size 5's.  I set course directly away from the missiles at full speed, so as to get as much firing time as possible on them with my PD.  I shoot down easily 50 of them, maybe more.  But there's still dozens more salvos coming.  Thankfully they were not aiming at my ships  ;D

They were targeting my sensor buoy!  So once one hits it, all the rest of those missiles disappear! 

I return to chasing down the nearby fleet, and kill 2 more 9000 ton ships.  As I'm chasing them, I detect more missiles.  WAY more than last time, and worse yet, some of them are fast; 21000kms.  Even worse, I'm having trouble getting area defense PD to work.  It worked fine on the first big group, the one that had targeted the sensor buoy, but now I can't get them to automatically target the missiles.  I shoot down over a hundred, but I start taking hits.  And the hits add up, and slowly I lose all my ships.  This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.  All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on June 19, 2017, 02:09:01 AM
A familiar story, I guess we've all been there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Caveman31 on June 19, 2017, 06:43:15 AM
Quote from: Barkhorn link=topic=3808. msg103185#msg103185 date=1497814785
I just lost my first real battle.   I'd fought small skirmishes against precursors and the swarm, and usually won easily.   Well I finally fought a real NPR, and got my ass kicked.

I found an NPR 3 jumps away from Sol, and 1 jump away from my jump gate network.   Set up thermal sensor buoys on my side of their jump point and started communications.   2 years later, my thermal sensor buoy picks up a strong contact, sitting stationary on my side of the JP.   I send out my fleet to get a scan of the ship.   The active sensors measure their tonnage to be 77000 tons; obviously a gate construction ship.   Seeing that the ship is harmless, I turn off my actives so as to not hurt my diplomatic relationship with them.   I don't move away though, as I want to stay within gun range of the JP, in case anything nasty comes through.   A few weeks later, a massive fleet jumps through the JP, and I know its about to get real.

Individually my ships were far superior to theirs, but they just had so many more than me.   I had seven 7000 ton beam-armed destroyers, 3 armed with 15cm railguns and a twin Gauss turret, 2 with multiple 15cm lasers and a single spinal-mounted 19cm laser, and 2 with my sensors and triple Gauss turrets.   They had easily twenty ~9000 ton ships, and around ten 13000 ton ships.   Many, many different classes.

Approximately half the fleet appeared right on the gate, the other half appeared some distance away.   I open fire.   First volley destroys the gate constructor, and the near half begins to flee.   The far half splits into two groups, half coming towards me (obviously beam combatants) half away.   I am significantly faster than all of them, ~5400kms compared to ~2500kms.   10 seconds later my second volley destroys a 9,000 ton ship.   10 more seconds and another 9000 ton ship goes down.   4th volley fired after 10 more seconds, and a 3rd 9000 ton ship goes down.   Suddenly, missiles are detected, TONS of them coming from the distant group.   Thankfully they're all really slow; only ~10,000kms.   Two kinds, mostly size 3, a few size 5's.   I set course directly away from the missiles at full speed, so as to get as much firing time as possible on them with my PD.   I shoot down easily 50 of them, maybe more.   But there's still dozens more salvos coming.   Thankfully they were not aiming at my ships  ;D

They were targeting my sensor buoy!  So once one hits it, all the rest of those missiles disappear! 

I return to chasing down the nearby fleet, and kill 2 more 9000 ton ships.   As I'm chasing them, I detect more missiles.   WAY more than last time, and worse yet, some of them are fast; 21000kms.   Even worse, I'm having trouble getting area defense PD to work.   It worked fine on the first big group, the one that had targeted the sensor buoy, but now I can't get them to automatically target the missiles.   I shoot down over a hundred, but I start taking hits.   And the hits add up, and slowly I lose all my ships.   This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.   All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.

Was your entire in one task group? If so it might be better to set all your pd turrets to final defensive fire rather than area fire.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on June 19, 2017, 11:56:22 AM
It was all in one TG.  I thought I should use area defense since my lasers had enough range to get 2 shots off.  Also my fire controls were being overwhelmed, I couldn't target all the salvos, so firing longer may have lightened the load for them.  Instead of dealing with all the salvos at once I could deal with a few first and then the rest on the next volley.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on June 20, 2017, 08:22:30 AM
This is pretty much the end of my game, as I don't really have any more ships.  All I've got left is ten 1000-ton laser FAC's in Sol that I built to keep the peace while my destroyers were away.
Time to up your fighter and FAC output and to design something that counters their ships! I would say your game just got exciting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on June 20, 2017, 08:42:19 AM
Time to up your fighter and FAC output and to design something that counters their ships! I would say your game just got exciting.
!!FUN!!, of the burning variety
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 11, 2017, 07:41:36 AM
Im only like halfway thru this but something that gives me a good* chuckle. "Huge ship" and its usually 10-20k range. A ww2 era destroyer is 9k tons... and an an iowa class battleship is 46k tons i think off hand. So i always get a good laugh.

Edit- everyone that says frakk, im going to find you and im going to do many "obscenties" (because not sure about forum rules on profanity) to you all
Edit2- Lossmar.... i will have your soul for the nightmares you cause me.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on July 11, 2017, 04:44:03 PM
And a supercarrier weighs in at about 100 000 tons.

However, something to keep in mind is that, certainly for the early game, 10k tons is huge. Research, raw materials and production capacity in the early game are very limited, which limits the ability to build big, and early game Aurora is very much like early steam navy developments. Sure, you might be able to conceptualise bigger, but do you have the ability to actually build, maintain and supply such ships? Especially when you start creating a far flung empire?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on July 11, 2017, 04:45:07 PM
WW2 destroyers were between 1000 and 2500 tons displacement actually.

WW2 cruisers were between 2000 and 17200 tons displacement (those extremes are outliers the majority were around 10000)

WW2 battleships, between 14000 and 74170 (Yamato) with the average just over 22000, Iowas were 45000

WW2 carriers, varies between 7800 for Escort carriers, to 30800 for the Essex class.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 12, 2017, 04:00:45 AM
And a supercarrier weighs in at about 100 000 tons.

However, something to keep in mind is that, certainly for the early game, 10k tons is huge. Research, raw materials and production capacity in the early game are very limited, which limits the ability to build big, and early game Aurora is very much like early steam navy developments. Sure, you might be able to conceptualise bigger, but do you have the ability to actually build, maintain and supply such ships? Especially when you start creating a far flung empire?
Of course i cant maintain it. Im American ill build it anyways

Edit- 10k still isnt huge to me. In the early game everything i build is either a gunboat a corvette or a frigate until i can support large classes of ship. But i use a traditional(ish) class system because thats my style. Corvettes are usually under 8k depending on RP, Frigates under 15, destroyers under 25, cruisers under about 45(most versatile size group so alot of variation) and battleships under 75 anything over that is a dreadnought. Other classes vary depending on necessity.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 12, 2017, 04:14:04 AM
WW2 destroyers were between 1000 and 2500 tons displacement actually.

Correct, it appears i didnt go back far enough while checking.

WW2 cruisers were between 2000 and 17200 tons displacement (those extremes are outliers the majority were around 10000)

Also correct, unless you add battlecruisers in but they generally fall under battleship weights

WW2 battleships, between 14000 and 74170 (Yamato) with the average just over 22000, Iowas were 45000

Indeed. Although american ships generally run on the heavier side. And several british ones also. Including some of their battlecruisers

WW2 carriers, varies between 7800 for Escort carriers, to 30800 for the Essex class.

Sounds about right i havent really researched carriers as much.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on July 12, 2017, 04:54:42 PM
Indeed. Although american ships generally run on the heavier side. And several british ones also. Including some of their battlecruisers

WW2 carriers, varies between 7800 for Escort carriers, to 30800 for the Essex class.

Sounds about right i havent really researched carriers as much.

Actually if you exclude the South American Battleships (which were almost all Dreadnoughts or Pre-Dreadnoughts (and dammit that's the correct spelling, it refers to a specific ship and that was it's name!!!!!) the average displacement of a Battleship was closer to 30000 tons.  The only Battlecruisers still in service by WW2 of greater than 30000tons were, HMS Renown and HMS Repulse at 32800tons and HMS Hood, displacing 47500 tons or thereabouts, and larger than all British Battleships! all the others were in the mid 30000 tons range (being the three Courageous class).  Battlecruisers were a first world war thing though and all of the remaining ones were quite old by 1939 (as were most Battleships that weren't German or Japanese I suppose).  HMS Vanguard was the only British battleship to exceed 40000 tons by the way, and that wasn't even completed until 1944
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 12, 2017, 06:17:51 PM
Ship "classes" are a finicky thing haha. It all varied so much during the war and especially afterwards that its hard to pin down exact sizes for classes and roles. But i generally use ww2 and modern ship doctrine and classes to set sizes for my ships. Battleships went out because they make a much larger target. I feel in Aurora or must high "tech" games they make a comeback being that they can shoot back missiles the same size as the smaller vessels. But that gets you into costs/ viability per tonnage issues. I build my ships almost always for one purpose whatever it may be. Imo a smaller ship even of the same role wont pack the punch a larger even more specialised ship would be. Now you can add up 8 or 9 of the "average" aurora forum sized ships in the size of my cruisers or battleships. I honestly don't know how to effective one of my ships is vs anything because in my current game(only one that hasn't crashed) im about 108 years in just got outta sol the last 10 or so and i havent met any enemies thus far. But im under the impression a larger ship specifically designed for a purpose is more effective then several smallers on of the same role but "less effective" due to size restraints. Could be a repeat of history tho so i dunno.

Hope atleast some of that made sense lmao
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: superstrijder15 on July 13, 2017, 05:31:01 AM
I lost half my fleet in the third attempt to destroy some precursors, my first ever opponent.  My missile boats can't keep up, but luckily my FAC can out run them and I got a ton of fuel.  And after half the fleet they ran out of missiles, which is nice as well.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on July 13, 2017, 05:21:57 PM
The Battleships day was over even before the first world war,  Jutland was the final hurrah, and that basically had to be engineered to occur, after the age of sail, and with decreased reliance on port visits fleet encounters became something much harder to succeed at, because the enemies fleet didn't necessarily have to be in such a predictable place,  and without fleet actions battleships were just a huge resource sink, the extended detection and attack range was what brought on the rise of the carrier.

In Aurora terms, because travel between systems occurs at fixed locations your fleet movements have once again become predictable which again gives an opportunity for battlewagons to become useful.

Thanks for your post, because I'd never really put any thought into what and why and now I have I'm percolating an idea for a new doctrine for Aurora involving Direct fire vessels for warp assault and defence and carriers for in system control
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 14, 2017, 05:07:30 AM
Haha awesome. I try to use a ton of different strategies and philosophies when it comes to fleet compostion. And thats actually mainly what i use my larger ships for. They are used mainly for assaults into enemy territory. Also i built an experimental 40kt crusier. Had a couple size 15 launchers
Guass and ciws AMD and 2 40cm twin turret main guns with a range of 1.4mks and 6 40cm plasma broadside guns(almost always on my ships because i over engineer everything i think). I put it up against 5 9kt corvettes with AMMs, typical size 8 launchers and a 10cm laser turret. I did this as a test.
 The starting range was about 20mks with both fleets heading toward each other. The BC launched all itd ASMs(size 15, 300wh and 100kkms) at this range. Unfortunately for whatever reason the corvettes wouldnt reload their box* launchers so they launched only one volley per ship so about 30 missiles(size 8, 9wh and 220k-ish kms)
The BC took about 17 of the missiles to the shields and armor losing only a crew berth. The Corvettes AMMs downed everyone of the BCs 46 missiles.
So the range decreased down to 800k kms at this range the BCs main battery could only drop the shields on one of the corvettes at a time. Being that one usually missed.
Now at this*  point it should be noted that the corvettes are faster and could easily of high tailed it home being that thier main ASMs wouldnt fire. But being that each had approx 300 AMMs I decided to launch those at the BC but forgot to tell them to stop moving. As the range decreased the BC got more and more accurate and at about 700k kms  it became quite accurate and its secondary 20cms could open up. Once the range decreased to 400-500k kms the BC was destroying one every 10 seconds. After losing 3 corvettes i retreated them and the BCs lasers couldnt recharge fast enough to kill them thru the shields.
What i learned from this. It would take a helluva lot of 9wh missiles to destroy the BC and if you get anything under 600k kms it will destroy almost anything. Thats super short range in spce terms but it has the armor and shields plus PD to survive the closure(against smaller ships designed for the same purpose as it). mass volleys of AMMs are also ineffective against it being as it only lost about half armor.
Do with this information what you will.

Edit- damn iphone
Also note my designs are not perfect but used highest tech
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on July 14, 2017, 05:15:03 AM
@I_Sicarius_I: Will you show us the design, for BC at least? How long is your game that you got to nearly max range BFC? Or have you SMed it?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 14, 2017, 05:16:16 AM
When i get off work sure. And its about 110 years in. But i SMed the corvettes and their respective empire and tech.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Lamandier on July 14, 2017, 12:11:41 PM
In my high tech games, I usually stick to the following base classifications/tonnage ranges:

Escort: 4-6 kT
Destroyer: 6-10 kT
'Heavy' destroyer: 10-16 kT
Cruiser: 16-30 kT
Battlecruiser: 30-40 kT
Dreadnought: 40-60 kT
Superdreadnought: 60 kT+

Though as the game progresses, sometimes tonnage creep starts to blur the lines a bit. Plus I do take role into account as well as size when choosing a type for a new class. So it's not always completely uniform. Which actually makes sense from a realism perspective, IMO.

My current game is a conventional start about 15 years in, though, so even a 4kT escort from my last game would be a battlewagon compared to the ships the three Earth-based powers(NATO, CIS, and China) are currently fielding. NATO's shipyard just launched its first true warship, a hybrid conventional/TN tech 2000 ton 'monitor', with the Chinese and Russians about to follow suit with similar ships of their own. All three powers have 4-5 kT designs on the drawing board, but none of them even have shipyards capable of building those designs yet. Most of the armed vessels in service are missile-armed shuttles/scouts of around 500 tons or so(though the Russians also have a couple gauss-armed shuttles in service).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on July 14, 2017, 02:27:54 PM
In my high tech games, I usually stick to the following base classifications/tonnage ranges:

Escort: 4-6 kT
Destroyer: 6-10 kT
'Heavy' destroyer: 10-16 kT
Cruiser: 16-30 kT
Battlecruiser: 30-40 kT
Dreadnought: 40-60 kT
Superdreadnought: 60 kT+

Though as the game progresses, sometimes tonnage creep starts to blur the lines a bit. Plus I do take role into account as well as size when choosing a type for a new class. So it's not always completely uniform. Which actually makes sense from a realism perspective, IMO.

My current game is a conventional start about 15 years in, though, so even a 4kT escort from my last game would be a battlewagon compared to the ships the three Earth-based powers(NATO, CIS, and China) are currently fielding. NATO's shipyard just launched its first true warship, a hybrid conventional/TN tech 2000 ton 'monitor', with the Chinese and Russians about to follow suit with similar ships of their own. All three powers have 4-5 kT designs on the drawing board, but none of them even have shipyards capable of building those designs yet. Most of the armed vessels in service are missile-armed shuttles/scouts of around 500 tons or so(though the Russians also have a couple gauss-armed shuttles in service).

My weights are heavier but the role and armament makes a big difference in class also. a 30k ship with corvette armament will probably be classed as an DE or well basically worthless.

Also the Prototype Cruiser
Off-Topic: show
Sigma class Cruiser    40,000 tons     935 Crew     63826.35 BP      TCS 800  TH 15000  EM 3600
18750 km/s     Armour 25-104     Shields 120-300     Sensors 75/75/0/0     Damage Control Rating 155     PPV 259.18
Maint Life 0.2 Years     MSP 4986    AFR 2560%    IFR 35.6%    1YR 25144    5YR 377154    Max Repair 31500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 72 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 695   

Orth-Tokarski Dynamics 2500 EP Commercial Photonic Drive (6)    Power 2500    Fuel Use 0.88%    Signature 2500    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 511.4 billion km   (315 days at full power)
Adams-Briggs Omega R300/360 Shields (8)   Total Fuel Cost  120 Litres per hour  (2,880 per day)

Single 20cm Laser Turret (4x1)    Range 1,200,000km     TS: 100000 km/s     Power 10-6     RM 12    ROF 10        10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Twin 40cm Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 1,400,000km     TS: 100000 km/s     Power 84-12     RM 12    ROF 35        42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42
Acothley Weapon Systems 40cm C25 Plasma Carronade (4)    Range 400,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 40-25     RM 1    ROF 10        40 20 13 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
Vandis-Curze Prototype 10000r700 EFC (1)    Max Range: 1,400,000 km   TS: 100000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Thompson International Fire Control S00.5 175-25000 H10 (2)    Max Range: 350,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     97 94 91 89 86 83 80 77 74 71
Rowe-Duffy Aeronautical Vacuum Energy Power Plant Technology PB-1.25 (3)     Total Power Output 150    Armour 0    Exp 20%

Wood & Patterson Size 15 Missile Launcher (8)    Missile Size 15    Rate of Fire 40
Thompson International Missile Fire Control FC9056-R500 (10%) (2)     Range 9,056.1m km    Resolution 500
Thompson International Missile Fire Control FC5727-R200 (10%) (2)     Range 5,727.5m km    Resolution 200
Harpoon S15 (46)  Speed: 100,000 km/s   End: 56.5m    Range: 339m km   WH: 300    Size: 15    TH: 766/460/230

Thompson International Active Search Sensor MR1909-R200 (10%) (1)     GPS 36000     Range 1,909.2m km    Resolution 200
Thompson International Active Search Sensor MR135-R1 (1)     GPS 180     Range 135.0m km    MCR 14.7m km    Resolution 1
Thompson International Thermal Sensor TH1-75 (10%) (1)     Sensitivity 75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km
Thompson International EM Detection Sensor EM1-75 (10%) (1)     Sensitivity 75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km

Compact ECCM-10 (6)         Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on July 16, 2017, 01:31:32 AM
So I've got an NPR near one of my important colonies out on the fringe of my space, and since I don't want my expensive goodies being turned to glass, I've been blockading the jump point with one of my fleets and a minefield while my other fleets make their way there or are assembled and trained. It's been this way for a few years, as I've been waiting for my new battleships to roll out to start the invasion. Just a while ago the turns started being interrupted by something, my guess was that the NPR had found someone to shoot in the meantime. As my fleets were heading to invade the system, I get a notification. One of their ships has been detected on the fringe of Proxima Centauri, home to my largest extrasolar colony. I realized that those interrupts were almost certainly from the ship detecting my civilian traffic transiting the jump points.

So there are three possibilities, in increasing order of how much it scares me.
1. A ship slipped past me before I could set up defences at the jump point.
2. A ship managed to jump past my defences without me noticing.
3. Theres a dormant jump point leading from their space directly into my core worlds.

I had set up the blockade within a few days of first contact, so 1 is pretty unlikely. I also had the entire system under constant sensor coverage, and a minefield at a 1.5m km radius from the jump point should have taken out any ships that jumped in, so 2 is unlikely as well. That leaves only number 3, the scariest of the bunch. The NPR now has a jump point directly into my core worlds, and I don't know where the jump point is, so I can't blockade it. At least, that's what I thought at first.

The ship detected is a geosurvey ship that I've encountered before. I know its speed, its bearing, and approximately how long it has been travelling if I go under the assumption that it immediately went straight for the inner system upon entering the system. Using these I can get a rough estimate of where the ship came from, and I can send a detachment to investigate.

Aurora is such a fantastic game. I can't think of any other game I've played that gives this kind of fun.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on July 16, 2017, 05:28:02 AM
Aurora is such a fantastic game. I can't think of any other game I've played that gives this kind of fun.
What about the burning !!FUN!! of Dwarf Fortress where one mistakenly mined tile during reservoir construction can lead to massive flooding of the entire fort and deaths of most of its inhabitants?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on July 17, 2017, 09:11:53 PM
I found 4 more geosurvey ships on the way there, and they all were heading along the same bearing as the first. I took them out, and kept on towards the waypoint. All I had to do, if my math and assumptions were correct, was to wait until the next time a ship transited. I didn't have to wait long at all, as a 70 kiloton ship transited within a day of me arriving, only 25m km away from the waypoint. I don't know whether to be happy or afraid, as I am having a lot of fun with this, and I'm happy that it worked at all (let alone with such precision), but now I have to deal with a very angry hole in spacetime in my core worlds. I took out what was presumably a construction ship, and transited with my small detachment (DL, 2 DDs, 2 FFGs, 2 FFs) and found myself in the NPR home system. How the tables have turned!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on July 20, 2017, 04:17:50 AM
Because my game grew a bit stale with no NPR around, I cranked up the NPR generation rate to 100%. And of course I find 4  (!!!) NPRs in the next 3 (!!!) systems.

Some interesting stuff:

Two NPRs sharing a planet and even the same picture in the race screen. I didn't even know you could get split-up NPRs!
Fortunately/unfortunately(?) they seem both to be quite underdeveloped compared to me. Their thermal/em signatures point to populations of around 100 million each. Ground forces in transports are on their way for inv...err...integration into the empire. I am not sure though what I am going to do with 2 populations on one planet. Can I merge them later? We will see.

Another NPR I have found with a planet with a HUGE thermal signature. It's around 134.000! My home planet only has around a third of that! I am trying to initiate contact, but no luck so far. I am getting messages that tell me that they have think communication may be impossible. I am not sure if that is a pointer to precursors. But I already have a precursor race flying around – can there be TWO? (other spoiler stuff is turned off)
I have not yet investigated further. But this race could potentially be a huge threat. Interestingly, I haven’t seen any of their ships yet. Hmm…

The last one is unremarkable, yet, as I don’t really have sufficient intel about them yet.

I am excited as all this happens while my carrier group is about to finish their refitting and some new missiles got rolled out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on July 25, 2017, 11:24:21 AM

Two NPRs sharing a planet and even the same picture in the race screen. I didn't even know you could get split-up NPRs!

You can, Steve said something about the possibilty of encountering alien races split between 2-3 empires on the same planet.
IIRC probability was somewhere in the 1-3% range tho...
And once i even got three empires on one planet.. Thats some "You know you play Aurora too much if you .. ".
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on July 27, 2017, 03:07:44 AM
You can, Steve said something about the possibilty of encountering alien races split between 2-3 empires on the same planet.
IIRC probability was somewhere in the 1-3% range tho...
And once i even got three empires on one planet.. Thats some "You know you play Aurora too much if you .. ".
Good to know. I am currently shipping troops there, so let's say a unification of these two is coming up. I am wondering though about the merging them later stuff. Let's see.

In other news, the unremarkable race has declared war while I was surveying their home planet. I had good relations (+50 or something) with them and the surveying didn't seem to bother them...until it suddenly did.

Now I am thinking if I should deal with them first and let the split-empirese be for now. Or just follow through with my initial plan, conquer them and then turn to the aggressive race.

Plus, my game got really intense really fast. The race with the 134.000 thermal signature planet seems to be way more advanced than I am. I have found a fleet with ships ranging from just a couple thousand of tons up to +25.000 tons, with a max speed of around 9.500 km/s! That, together with the huge thermal signature tells me that I am probably not ahead technology wise this time.
Everything got even more exciting when their fleet with about 25 ships just appeared in SOL! First they made a beeline to Pluto and after that directly towards Earth. I was torn between just keeping still and firing everything I got at them. But I only had 2/3 of my fleet in SOL at the time and out of the 6 carriers 3 were undergoing a refit, although I am not sure if that would have changed anything, as I probably could have used their CAG anyway.
So anyway, I didn't fire. I didn't know anything about their capabilities and if this was their only fleet or not. I am pretty sure with all the stuff I had in SOL I could have killed that fleet, but what then? I would be at war with a definitely capable opponent who knows where my main system is and who might have more than just one fleet of high tech ships. In addition to that I have no idea how they got to SOL that fast. They are more or less on the other side of the galaxy, but they probably used a connection to SOL or at least close to SOL that I haven't discovered.
In the end, they hovered over Earth for about 2 weeks and then just left. They are still in SOL and I am passively tracking them, but I can't really follow them because I have NO SHIP that is faster than they are.  :-\

So all research effort is now focussing on new propulsion technology. Strategy wise I am trying to find the connection that they are using to get to my home system. Once that is done, preparations for the biggest invason to date will start. I am just too curious to see what a 135.000 thermal contact world looks like...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on July 27, 2017, 05:27:18 PM
Alright, everything is way worse than I thought.
(http://i.imgur.com/fCMzk8C.png)
I am only THREE JUMPS away from the scary futuristic race that is now more or less constantly parking its fleet around Sol.

That isn't going to end well for everyone involved...   :-\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on July 27, 2017, 10:40:17 PM
I think now would be a good time to be laying some minefields.  Try to get a minefield on each jump between you and them.  You want the field on your side of the jump so they can't see it until it's too late.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on July 28, 2017, 11:24:18 AM
I think now would be a good time to be laying some minefields.  Try to get a minefield on each jump between you and them.  You want the field on your side of the jump so they can't see it until it's too late.
Would the mines know when to switch from neutral to enemy? I would need a lot of preparation and probably can't just drow all mines at once.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on July 28, 2017, 02:48:09 PM
Just set the race you're worried about to 'hostile'.  It doesn't affect your relations, only how your automated weapons behave.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on July 31, 2017, 06:08:06 AM
Just set the race you're worried about to 'hostile'.  It doesn't affect your relations, only how your automated weapons behave.
This means that the mines will only be activated by races which are set to hostile?

Are there any guides for designing mines?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on July 31, 2017, 10:57:22 AM
There's one on the wiki.  Or at least one that explains how to do it; of course you shouldn't blindly follow their design examples.

Pro-tip: Your minelayer doesn't need any sensors.  It does need a fire control, but it can be minimum size and tech.  The FC doesn't need to be strong at all, it only needs to exist.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on July 31, 2017, 05:39:19 PM
A tip for minelayers:

Consider a fast launcher on a fast minelayer, where the first stage is a speed the minelayer can keep up with.  Then you can deploy all the mines in a single wave.  It makes a decent siege weapon, for hitting really large stationary bases.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Arwyn on August 01, 2017, 08:33:42 AM
Box launchers are great for minelayers. I drop mines in patterns of four to six, so I load up the minelayer with enough cells to do four patterns of mines around the WP, so sixteen to 24 cells and your done. Saves a ton of space.

Another handy minelaying method, for inhabited systems, is a PDC with "mine launchers". It a huge missile launcher with a multi stage missile. Second stage is a mine. They can be big and slow, with huge endurance, and you just aim them at a target point and launch. Mines deploy when they arrive, and instant minefield, no ships required.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on August 08, 2017, 03:53:33 PM
My current campaign in numbers:

Years played: 100
Number of player controlled factions: 4
Population: 48 968 million
Inhabited planets: 202
Factories (all types): 62 416
Mines: 13 221
Automated mines: 63 097
Naval capacity: 5 506 550 tonnes
Commercial capacity: 14 216 500 tonnes
Fighters: 3 532
Gunboats: 2 324
Major warships: 2 700
Commercial ships: 6 546
Privately owned civilian ships: 3 070
Missiles in service: 1 610 764
Anti-missiles in service: 2 600 999
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: superstrijder15 on August 08, 2017, 04:28:11 PM
Quote from: Haji link=topic=3808. msg103840#msg103840 date=1502225613
My current campaign in numbers:

Years played: 100
Number of player controlled factions: 4
Population: 48 968 million
Inhabited planets: 202
Factories (all types): 62 416
Mines: 13 221
Automated mines: 63 097
Naval capacity: 5 506 550 tonnes
Commercial capacity: 14 216 500 tonnes
Fighters: 3 532
Gunboats: 2 324
Major warships: 2 700
Commercial ships: 6 546
Privately owned civilian ships: 3 070
Missiles in service: 1 610 764
Anti-missiles in service: 2 600 999
Woow!
For me, all numbers but the first would be a lot lower, are you that amazing, or am I this crap?
My estimates:
Years played: 90
Number of player controlled factions: 1
Population: 3000 million
Inhabited planets: 3
Factories (all types): ~5000?
Mines: ~1000
Automated mines: ~1000
Naval capacity: I'm not sure what this is. . .
Commercial capacity: see above
Fighters: ~50, only for geosurvey (about 25) and scouting (~20)
Gunboats: 3
Major warships: 10
Commercial ships: ~20
Privately owned civilian ships: ~100
Missiles in service: ~1000
Anti-missiles in service: ~2000
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on August 08, 2017, 05:31:14 PM
He's referring to tonnage. That is to say, the combined weight of all the ships of respectively the military tagged and the commercial tagged ships. Or, possibly, player controlled and space line controlled.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on August 08, 2017, 07:16:22 PM
My current campaign in numbers:

Years played: 100
Number of player controlled factions: 4
Population: 48 968 million
Inhabited planets: 202
Factories (all types): 62 416
Mines: 13 221
Automated mines: 63 097
Naval capacity: 5 506 550 tonnes
Commercial capacity: 14 216 500 tonnes
Fighters: 3 532
Gunboats: 2 324
Major warships: 2 700
Commercial ships: 6 546
Privately owned civilian ships: 3 070
Missiles in service: 1 610 764
Anti-missiles in service: 2 600 999
How long does a 30-day increment take?  30 days?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on August 08, 2017, 11:45:35 PM
For me, all numbers but the first would be a lot lower, are you that amazing, or am I this crap?

I think this is simply the case of different starting positions and the overall campaign structure. I begun with three nations with combined population of over a billion, one of which started with magneto-plasma drives, just as an example of said differences.

Naval capacity: I'm not sure what this is. . .
Commercial capacity: see above

I should probably have written "naval shipyard capacity". It is the total tonnage your shipyards can work on at any given time. A single shipyard with ten slipways of a thousand tonnes each have a total capacity of ten thousand tonnes, as an example. The capacity can be checked in the shipyard screen (just above the shipyards themselves) for a total planetary capacity or on the comparison screen for total faction capacity. To put it simply I work on five millions tonnes of warships at any given time.

How long does a 30-day increment take?  30 days?

The campaign is played in 6.43 version (I've been playing it on and off for about three years now, maybe longer, don't really remember) so the interrupts are frequent and annoying, making it impossible for me to get a full 30 day increment. The best I can do on a consistent basis are one day increments. However an industrial increment (where production, body movement and so on are calculated) takes 15-30 minutes. I think. I never really bothered to check. One day increments take 1-3 minutes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: superstrijder15 on August 09, 2017, 03:23:44 AM
Quote from: Haji link=topic=3808. msg103847#msg103847 date=1502253935
I should probably have written "naval shipyard capacity".  It is the total tonnage your shipyards can work on at any given time.  A single shipyard with ten slipways of a thousand tonnes each have a total capacity of ten thousand tonnes, as an example.  The capacity can be checked in the shipyard screen (just above the shipyards themselves) for a total planetary capacity or on the comparison screen for total faction capacity.  To put it simply I work on five millions tonnes of warships at any given time. 
With me that would be 148k naval and 376k commercial, relatively high compared to my numbers of ships.  I also had some issues with resources a few times, leading to me building only what I need atm, and thus to shipyards only working for a small part of the time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Sarganto on August 10, 2017, 09:41:50 AM
My current campaign in numbers:

Years played: 100
Number of player controlled factions: 4
Population: 48 968 million
Inhabited planets: 202
Factories (all types): 62 416
Mines: 13 221
Automated mines: 63 097
Naval capacity: 5 506 550 tonnes
Commercial capacity: 14 216 500 tonnes
Fighters: 3 532
Gunboats: 2 324
Major warships: 2 700
Commercial ships: 6 546
Privately owned civilian ships: 3 070
Missiles in service: 1 610 764
Anti-missiles in service: 2 600 999
I feel like you are someone who would enjoy playing "War in the Pacific". Both games possibly would take the same time to "finish" a single campaign.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 14, 2017, 10:52:16 AM
I hate myself! 4 days and 23 hours gone by and its time for the next ground combat soon.. Press the 5 day cycle as I see the report of a group of new ships that enters my sensor range. 52 minutes later, some 300 hundred missiles hits my invasion troops, killing tens of thousands... Out of 12 Divisions 5 armored and 1 mechanized is destroyed almost every other unit takes losses. I went from 9500 to 3700 in combat power...  :-X  Could have been worse, my transport fleet is bringing in 8 more armored divisions, they are 3.5 hours from the planet... Its now nuclear winter on that site, minis 28 degree Celsius
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: I_Sicarius_I on September 04, 2017, 04:34:40 AM
You have 10 warships in 90 years? I can produce 90 warships in 10 years lol
Im about
107 years in
PCF 1
Pop smeg i dunno 15billion maybe
Only about 15 planets
No idea on these im at work
Fighters 500ish
Gunboats 0
Major warships wanna go with 30-40 ( should be noted i havet built a military until the last 9-10 years when i moved out of starting system)
Commercial ships 12-15
Private i think theres 10
No idea about missiles and whatnot probable 10k of each
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 06, 2017, 01:42:15 PM
(https://image.ibb.co/kqCU8a/holy_hell.jpg) (https://imgbb.com/)

Well smeg that is nice to see on a new game started with 100 mln people and minimal industry ;D

EDIT: well crap, Magneto Plasma Engines by the time i launched my first geo fighter ... :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 10, 2017, 08:57:34 PM
Starting a new game based on the Empire Rising series of books.  Weapons will be limited to AAMs, ASMs, and plasma.  Laser tech is available, but due to high power requirements are (for now) limited to planetary/orbital defense.

Corvettes, frigates, destroyers will be mostly for AAM, with limited ASM capabilities.  Cruisers (L, M, H), Battlecrusiers, battleships for ASM, and AAM.  All ships will be lightly armored (armor is expensive), a few missile hits could ruin your day.

Ship designs will be loosely based on English, WWII designs.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on September 13, 2017, 09:43:23 AM
Starting a new game based on the Empire Rising series of books.
This one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Void-War-Empire-Rising-Book-ebook/dp/B0144Z9CIW

Is it any good? There is so much crappy mil sci fi out there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on September 13, 2017, 10:24:31 AM
So i saved my UNSC game yesterday..
I come home from work, i start Aurora and im greeted by those two lovely errors (https://preview.ibb.co/cBXZ1v/aurora_bug_1.jpg) (https://ibb.co/cKFXoa)
(https://preview.ibb.co/bBa9ZF/aurora_bug_2.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fYwu1v)

And i cant frakking continue my game and last 10 hours of playing just went to smeg :/
Just frakking kill me now.....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on September 20, 2017, 04:22:39 AM
I just got really excited

(https://i.imgur.com/gF8uOGl.png)

I had already surveyed this system a long time ago and only found two jump points. A while back a few ships from The Sad Confederation (I did not name them) arrived in Gypsum, a system under my control, but they came from a direction I had not expected. Or rather, it seemed impossible that they would have been able to get there without being discovered by any of my sensors along the way.

I knew that Alluyen, the system of The Sad Confederation, had two unexplored jump points, which I had not been able to explore because they have parked their entire fleet at the Charis jump point, my only access to their system, which had previous caused me massive losses.

(https://imgur.com/wCpItkt.png)

I started to suspect that there might be an undiscovered jump point in a previously surveyed system. Instead of completely wiping out all of the ships that arrived in Gypsum, I sent most of the fleet home to conserve fuel, which is a real problem right now, and ordered a small squadron to follow the remaining two ships as they were retreating. We followed them to Lancaster at a distance of 450 million km, and saw them jump through to Parakoila. As we squadron jumped through and spotted them on the active sensor, they started heading towards us. We had no choice but to shoot them down.

The lead had turned cold, but as soon as a survey ship was ready I sent them to Parakoila to conduct a new survey. With the above result. There is a good chance I have found a back entrance into Alluyen, which means I can actually fight their fleet without worrying about transit delay, which destroyed my fleet last time. Now I only need to send a scout in to figure out which jump point it leads to or if there is any systems between us.

Having to use actual tactics like these is part of what makes this game awesome.

Map for reference:
(https://imgur.com/l9EeKIq.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 20, 2017, 06:00:41 AM
This one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Void-War-Empire-Rising-Book-ebook/dp/B0144Z9CIW

Is it any good? There is so much crappy mil sci fi out there.

I dont know if it is good or bad, i liked reading the series.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 24, 2017, 06:20:32 PM
Decided since V8 will no longer have PDCs i will not be building anymore.

Year 41

  Sol system thoroughly scouted, 6 portals discovered.  1 with a gate already built.  2 systems also explored.  (unarmed)Scout ships and a tanker are sent through portal #3 (the one with a gate) to find a gate, and a thermal contact on the far side  :'( .  Fleet scatters for home, with the alien ship not far behind.  Experts told us there would be no alien life out there, how wrong they were!  Diplomatic relations have gone well.  No shots have been fired.

  Alien ship stopped in orbit over earth, and has moved on.  Appears to be a (unarmed) geological survey vessel.

Sensor and Point defense orbitals have moved into the construction queues.

 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on September 25, 2017, 02:18:11 AM
That was close. The task group Survey 1 had just jumped back from a new system only to realize they had been followed by a small hostile fleet. Being too close and too slow to even think about escaping, they reduced the engines to a minimum in a hope to avoid detection. So far it seems to be working. The hostiles are heading in the opposite direction, but woe unto Survey 1 if turn on their active sensors. They can only hope.

(https://imgur.com/lDku6xb.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Mastik on September 26, 2017, 07:17:39 AM
Earths new neighbors call themselves the Jiroft Host.  Diplomacy continues, and trade has opened between the 2 species.  The host appear to prefer a colder climate, than humans.  All other requirements seem to be similar.

We completed gate construction into Barnard's Star, where Planet A-I is very suitable for both species, and has a high mineral content.  The race is on to see who lays the biggest claim to the planet.  Terraformers have been sent to ensure the best climate for humanity, and a division of our best troops to ensure the safety of our people. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on September 28, 2017, 11:37:24 AM
Just had something somewhere in an orbit of someplace divide by zero. An amazing accomplishment to be sure but I think they just triggered an annihilation event where they did it, which is why my Empire detected it through the vastness of space. Edit; And I think said empire has weaponized this universal anomaly and is using it to fight an intergalactic war as I am now detecting these emissions basically twice a month. Good job guys, you are tearing this universe apart. Keep it up any longer and I may have to move to yet another universe where my allies of many decades who has been sharing survey data with me doesn't suddenly show up over my homeworld and unleashes thousands of missiles upon my citizens.


Just a small divide by zero error screen popped up for an increment, so I give it a little flavor because I'm getting bored waitin for C# for a large scale game I have planed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on October 03, 2017, 03:18:18 PM
System just next to Solar one had both 80% ground/logistic anomaly and 60% power/propulsion one (!). Now scouts in other system just two jumps from Earth have found 100% energy anomaly. Good seed. Especially when lasers are my main weapon. Hoping for Advanced lasers now.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 05, 2017, 08:51:51 AM
Found an interesting planetary pair. One planet is listed as a moon as it is orbiting another planet, yet they are identical in size, mass, density, and gravity (1.22G). Only difference being the "planet" is Venus like (59atm of pressure, all deadly gasses) while the "moon" is Earth-like in atmopshere. Another oddity is that this is in a nebula. Also, alien civilization detected there... with several ships with active sensors locking on my survey ship.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 06, 2017, 12:05:12 AM
Can you imagine their astronomical beliefs? Nebula blocks other stars, so the only objects in the sky are their local star and the Venus they are actually orbiting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on October 06, 2017, 10:58:00 AM
Once they got telescopes they should actually be able to see other stars, especially if they're near the edge of the nebula.

Radio should also be able to provide a great deal of info about the rest of the galaxy.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on October 09, 2017, 04:57:03 PM
Summary of state of Trisabria Federation after ~50 years from conventional start (for comparison with other universes).
(https://s1.postimg.org/42dm75nozz/A4_X_-_Trisabria_2051.png)
Galaxy
Constraints
Colonies
Research
Industry
Ships
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: 83athom on October 09, 2017, 06:48:04 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/K45PBJK.png)

Known universe so far about 30 years in. 3 confirmed species out there so far, one being almost completely wiped out. Another 2 theorised in the Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon system as active combat was taking place far in the inner system while my 2 survey ships there were 3.5b km from the fighting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on October 11, 2017, 07:51:11 AM
Yay for the first civilian mining colony established in other system than Sol. And this one is definitely not going to be used for selling ores to civilian market.
(https://s1.postimg.org/9c9ocgoin3/A4_X_-_Manchester-_A_II.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on October 11, 2017, 03:52:39 PM
As far as I can tell, civilian mining complexes only show up on uncolonized sites with .8 Sorium or Duranium or better.  I have had beautiful rocks with .7 duranium in huge quantities and lots of other stuff, but the damn civilians were too picky for it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on October 12, 2017, 02:29:30 AM
As far as I can tell, civilian mining complexes only show up on uncolonized sites with .8 Sorium or Duranium or better.  I have had beautiful rocks with .7 duranium in huge quantities and lots of other stuff, but the damn civilians were too picky for it.
They will go for 0.7 duranium or sorium but only after there are no better places. And it has still be in decently populated system (10M) with decent amount of ore (15k), without your colony already there and not too far from the star (80AU). Places with better accessibility or bigger amounts of ore, located in more populated systems, are picked first.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on October 17, 2017, 12:04:00 AM
I decided to have this conventional start game have two ruins in Sol, just to see how it changed things for me.

Had an amusing situation where I had JUST started research on my first missile, a geo survey buoy, and I get an ordnance factory from the ruins.

The big difference in my game so far is that I pushed for troop transports and construction brigades way earlier than I normally would, and will have a lot more of them when I first push out new colonies.  Should make establishing PDC carrier bases easy, even in systems with nothing easy to colonize.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on October 18, 2017, 02:14:29 AM
The very first grav survey point in a system revealed two jump points.  Very convenient having 3 jump points very close together.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on October 21, 2017, 05:43:41 PM
The very first grav survey point in a system revealed two jump points.  Very convenient having 3 jump points very close together.
Second gravsurvey point:
(https://s1.postimg.org/6bjtlmc0mn/A4x_-_Valaskjalf_2nd_survey.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on October 21, 2017, 05:53:23 PM
You are either going to love this (all those short transit times) or hate this (lose this hub system and suddenly 3 entire branches of your empire are under threat).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on November 01, 2017, 04:44:45 PM
There is a planet with a huge number of moons in the inner system, and the outermost moon comes within point defense spitting range of the next planet in.

An inhabited planet, incidentally.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 02, 2017, 04:23:12 AM
The Terran Empire had a bad time last day!!! Our battle fleet, what remained of Carrier group III and all planetary defense installations defected to my enemy... :o ???  My 2 division of armored divisions were slaughtered from their old comrades in arms when they started bombarding them with heavy anti ship missiles. The empire is in chock (That's me in this case  ;D) But on the other hand I only need to build a new fleet, one that is a lot faster than the defected one, and using lasers instead of railguns... But that will take years, so I have to use my remaining ships wisely, 2 carriers and 5 escort destroyers... :-X
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 08, 2017, 03:18:29 AM
Hmmm, I was planning to invade a opponents homeworld... My 7 armored and 1 mechanized division is not going to survive long, I think... Enemy ground troops are at: C5146  :o Must bee the biggest number I ever seen. Oh well I got several thousand of my Anti fighter missile. strength 3 should be OK at ground targets...  ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on November 08, 2017, 12:05:21 PM
Hmmm, I was planning to invade a opponents homeworld... My 7 armored and 1 mechanized division is not going to survive long, I think... Enemy ground troops are at: C5146  :o Must bee the biggest number I ever seen. Oh well I got several thousand of my Anti fighter missile. strength 3 should be OK at ground targets...  ::)

Why would yo invade a HOMEWORLD with such meager forces and not even pound it first ?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on November 08, 2017, 02:51:59 PM
What is this invade thing you speak of? surely theres only glass the surface from Orbit
or have I been doing it wrong all these years?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tree on November 08, 2017, 03:39:36 PM
What is this invade thing you speak of? surely theres only glass the surface from Orbit
or have I been doing it wrong all these years?
That's certainly what I'm going to do in Aurora C#.
Nuke from orbit until they surrender, dodging the new ground combat, and just relocate survivors.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 08, 2017, 03:48:42 PM
Yep I know I have a small army.  Planed to recruit it up to around 25 divisions, going to take time... Need to increase my ground building power... Usually I try and not bomb them... But sometime I have to soften them up... Oh well I could send my Interceptors and bomb them, but first I need to kill those point defence bases... 8 of them firing 58 AMM each, with a range of around 15 M/km...  ;D None of my missiles have reached their planet and the 9 other bases is probably Gauss armed ones... ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on November 08, 2017, 05:18:32 PM
Yep I know I have a small army.  Planed to recruit it up to around 25 divisions, going to take time... Need to increase my ground building power... Usually I try and not bomb them... But sometime I have to soften them up... Oh well I could send my Interceptors and bomb them, but first I need to kill those point defence bases... 8 of them firing 58 AMM each, with a range of around 15 M/km...  ;D None of my missiles have reached their planet and the 9 other bases is probably Gauss armed ones... ::)

If you are patient? Have your interceptors hand around the 15Mkm mark and see when they start firing at the trailing end of their orbit, then run when they approach. It'd sink a lot of their AMMs.

They'd also have a lot of AMMs, and be building more, but you should be able to limit their ROF eventually as stocks deplete.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: obsidian_green on November 09, 2017, 08:12:50 PM
In the past week I've finally run into an NPR that looks like it's able and willing to fight. They destroyed the unarmed (offensively at any rate) survey ship Yuri Gagarin (after it detected a population w/ a thermal contact larger than I have back on Earth) with WH 27 anti-ship missiles and they have 7000-plus ton ships moving at better than 15,000 km/s.

I dispatched a carrier battle group to the other side of their JP and dropped a recon craft through ... enemy has assembled quite the fleet on the other side of the JP. I'll be rotating my two modern battle groups in and out of guard duty until I can build and train another two battle groups and their complements, but that'll take at least a couple of years. I will likely build modern fighters for my two older carriers as well because I'm expecting real losses from this battle. (RADM Geraldine Spriggle is planning as I type, but she's getting up in years and might retire before the show; she'll be disappointed, as she pulled off a Minbari at the Battle of the Line-style stomping of the House of Monkey some twenty years earlier.)

So far I've only lost major armed ships to exploration and missteps: I didn't replenish the ordnance on a survey cruiser and it ran into trouble in the very next system that a full magazine could have handled; I sent a pair of laser frigates against a Swarmer mothership and somehow the order to follow at distance stopped working after they took out its shields. But I'm in for a real battle now and I think I'm going to lose ships without making an unforced error.

I'm considering sacrificing the two older carriers and maybe four old destroyers (think of my destroyers more like cruisers, a classification I reserve for long endurance warships) in order to get 48 ASM strikecraft through the JP with shorter jumpshock, but I'm thinking I might fare even better if I jump everything: all six carriers and four dreadnoughts for a total of 192 strikecraft, plus the twenty escort destroyers (with their small ASMs) and frigates. If I didn't have to worry about longer jumpshock, I'd leave all carriers on the other side of the JP and just attack with all combat craft. The scout I dropped through did not come under fire despite jumping right into the middle of the enemy fleet, so I'm wondering if any of the ships in the enemy fleet are capable of resolving small targets. I may have to drop a larger interceptor through to test the waters before I decide whether the capital ships need to make the jump to get the shortened jumpshock.

When it eventually happens, this will be an important battle, since I'll be committing every warship I have---excepting my seven survey cruisers---to the enterprise. Good times!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on November 09, 2017, 09:07:31 PM
Exciting, I have really enjoyed your write ups of your other encounters and look forward to this one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on November 10, 2017, 03:46:21 PM
I may have finally found the home system of my ally NPR:
Off-Topic: show

350ish new alien ships of 40 new classes plus 350 messages about New Allied Transponder Found @_@
(https://s1.postimg.org/3j85uje5rz/A4x_-_Barbarius_Homeworld.png)
(https://s1.postimg.org/4jrxxfd9lb/A4x_-_Barbarius_Homeworld2.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: obsidian_green on November 12, 2017, 03:05:00 PM
Exciting, I have really enjoyed your write ups of your other encounters and look forward to this one.

Thanks.  :D

As it turns out, the Coucil of Iwakuni decided to force the issue, so no multi-year, in-game wait for the action. I'm currently fighting what might be a decisive battle, but no telling how long it might take and I have to make sure it's actually over before the write-up can pass for an encyclopedia article. Looks like I'm looking at their homeworld, so anticipate some turn-increment slowdown, although it feels like turns have been resolving fairly quickly even though I can't use the "spacetime bubble" because I'm fighting across a jump point.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on November 21, 2017, 06:23:06 PM
I finally returned to Aurora after a break and I have a battle to fight. A battle involving nearly nine hundred and fifty ships and some fifteen hundred fighters. After over an hour the opening salvo (which was launched by fighters only) was finally detected by the other side. However since the first anti-missile launch twenty minutes ago, the game have not progressed at all- the first 5 sec increment is still being processed.
It remains to be seen if I will see the end of the battle before the end of this year.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on November 21, 2017, 06:49:12 PM
VERY interested to hear more about this battle.  If it ever progresses beyond the opening volley.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on November 21, 2017, 09:59:07 PM
I don't mind giving updates, but there isn't much to write about right now as only seven or eight anti-missile volleys have been fired so far (over three hours after my previous post). However a warning for those who actually read my campaign, there will be spoilers here, which I will properly tag, but if you don't want to know too much before the write up (which may or may not come before Christmas) don't read anything marked as spoiler.
Anyway, here's a quick overview of the situation. The campaigns is happening in the future after Sol and its colonies were wiped out by a single alien ship. Humanity has survived in a distant area of space where they arrived using story only unstable (as in temporary) jump points, so they can't go home again anyway. The race is divided into three factions - the Federal Republic of Phoenix which is essentially a federalised European Union and while aware of the threat and having a respectable military, they are also very hesitant to use that military. They are also very peaceloving and judgmental. The second faction is the Commune, which is a somewhat communistic state using AI to ensure human failures (like corruption or totalitarianism) won't enter the scene. If you are socialist, the Commune is essentially your Utopia, but they are also very ready to use their military to deal with potential threats, which is why they don't really have a proper alliance with the Republic, despite common interests.
The third human faction is the Hegemony of Man. Their main purpose is to deal with the alien threat, which is still there, and they believe in doing everything they can in order to do so. They are basically a total free economy society, but taken to the unpleasant extremes. Their logic is that USA which they consider the best symbol of such a system, had at one point a military budget almost as large as the rest of the world combined, so clearly their system is the best suited for this dangerous times, but it must be taken even further due to the danger. They are essentially a capitalist dystopia. They also consider the other two nations criminals engendering the whole of mankind with their pointless social spendings. They didn't have direct contact with the Federation, but they did fight two wars with the Commune, and lost both of them. However they did win against an alien race, conquered them and by now integrated them.
In 2406 the Hegemony encountered another alien race. Two problems quickly arisen. First both powers explored several of the same systems before they became aware of each other (space is big). Second the Hegemony was very insistent on immediate creation of an alliance to combat the other alien threats. As in very insistent, to the point the alien race - the Kinharan Confederation -  became suspicious that humans were merely setting up some kind of takeover. Eventually the negotiations broke down and the war started. Officially this was due to territorial dispute (both nations were claiming the same systems) but in reality this was a Hegemony attempt to bring the aliens into the fold in order to create unified front against other alien threats.
It should be noted that the same race which wiped out Earth has found the humans and killed several millions of them before they were stopped. Another attack is expected in the future.
The first battles were fought in 2407. Three Hegemony carrier groups (each carrier massing over two hundred thousand tonnes) confronted a much larger alien force. Thanks to technological advantages the battles were a tactical victory for humans, who destroyed a couple of dozen ships without losing a single spacer and suffering only minimal armour damage. However the battles were a strategic victory for the Kinharans as their heavy point defences have run the Hegemony out of ammunition and forced them to fall back. The systems of Amarillo and Albuquerque were lost to the Confederation, although neither was inhabited.
Seven years later, in 2414, the Hegemony launched a jump point assault on Amarillo. They lost over eighty ships but they destroyed a much, much larger enemy force. As picketing jump points is maintenance intensive, only part of the enemy force could be deployed at any given time and much larger enemy fleet was encountered later, but withdrew. Unable to launch a second jump point assault against an enemy even more powerful than before, the Hegemony was forced to halt. Amarillo, Albuquerque and several previously unexplored systems connected to the latter were taken over, which included a small enemy colony, but another stalemate has developed.
In 2420 the Hegemony finally assembled another invasion force, led by eight carriers and three jump battleships, some massing three hundred thousand tonnes. Those were supported by three hundred and sixty cruisers (30kT), destroyers (20kT) and frigates (10kT) and carried 1290 fighters. However the enemy was not defending the jump point. As only part of the force could be present at any given time and the attacker could amass his entire force, the attacker effectively had the advantage in such a situation and the Kinharans could not afford another defeat. So the Confederation was waiting in the inner system, orbiting their colony with a force consisting of over five hundred and seventy battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes. I don't remember the sizes and can't check as the game is processing auto-turns but in general the Kinharan ships are smaller than Hegemony ones. Overall the humans had about ten million tonnes of shipping while the Confederation had about thirteen million tonnes.
The Hegemony missiles mounted on their bombers and major warships, while different, have the same speed to allow mixed salvoes. This was done due to the difficulty of penetrating enemy point defences. As such the humans could have launched a massed strike, but the Hegemony commander decided to send the fighters first to test the enemy defences and to start running him out of interceptors. Once the enemy detected the missiles, he sent his own fighters - of which the humans were not aware - to destroy the invading small craft. The bombers can't possibly retreat fast enough and will likely be completely destroyed, but that is in the future. Right now the game is processing anti-missile launches against the Hegemony strike of 16 350 missiles
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on November 23, 2017, 11:47:51 AM
Sorry for the double post, but it's been two days since the last one, so I think new one is in order.

After two full days of computing mostly automated turns, the first part of the battle is over.

The Hegemony missile strike failed to penetrate Kinharan point defence. However as the alien interceptors were slower than the shipkillers, in some cases the anti-missiles were running a stern chase. This is actually a problem in the game as that means I can either try to delete those missiles (which is hard to do when you have to pick the right ones from a couple of hundred individual salvoes) or allow the stern chase to continue in which case the missiles being chased are not being engaged by new ones. Because of that some of the human munitions managed to get all the way into energy weapon range but the hundreds (actually it may be thousands, can't be bothered to count) of gauss cannons and lasers picked them off with ease.

Now I'm going to simulate the destruction of the Hegemony bombers. I say simulate because I can't be arseked to actually play this within the game. The bombers are now unarmed and too slow to escape so I'm just toing to delete them. This means no survivors (which is reasonable) and no wrecks (so no tech to analyse for the Confederation, if they hold the system) which is fine as that many components (1290 potential sets of them) would likely give them instant technologies.

The next part of the battle won't begin until next week, when I'll have my next days off work. It will be another missile exchange, this time between the main bodies of the two fleets and I'm not even sure I'll be able to compute this. One good thing is that I will likely go for a short range engagement which means less anti-missile launches to simulate.

The reason for that is twofold. The Kinharans, having more primitive technology, would have trouble penetrating Hegemony anti-missile defences from full range. In fact in previous battles the Confederation failed to even reach energy weapon range with their missile strikes. As such, despite having greater reach, they need to fire from short range in order to actually score hits. On the Hegemony side, they could do a lot of damage with missiles fired from maximum range, but due to the sheer size of the Kinharan force and their new, improved defences, the damage would not be so great. They could attack and then withdraw for re-armament, but it will take time to get enough ammunition for their next strike, they no longer have their fighters and it would allow the Confederation to mount a jump point defence with their entire force. An attack from short range would be a bloodbath, but the Hegemony has several more carrier groups guarding their territory, while the humans suspect they are facing the vast bulk of the Kinharan military, in which case even a very costly victory for the Hegemony could end the war.

I'm still thinking about that part, but the computing time may mean I'll go for short range engagement just so I don't have to spend five days waiting for the battle to resolve.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on November 23, 2017, 04:44:42 PM
Are you actually controlling both factions?  Seems like a micromanagement headache of biblical proportions.  I can't imagine managing the fire controls of ~2400 ships.  Can you even see the map through all the sensor contacts?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Haji on November 24, 2017, 01:02:35 PM
Yes, I am controlling both factions. Also due to the mechanics of Aurora it is actually the best tactic to keep your forces together, at least in battle, so all the contacts are in three blips (fighters as one bleep and each fleet as the other two) so the map situation isn't so bad. As for the fire control situation it's also not as bad as it may seem - I cheat.

Basically every single missile type I use (except for anti-missiles) have active sensors, which allows me to set up overkills. As such I just set up fire controls on one ship of each type and copy it system wide. Even if overkill occurs, the missiles will just find new targets on their own. It still takes time, as there are numerous classes of ships of course, but not that much time.

There are two things about that however. First, from what I observed if you overkill a target, the game, during the next increment, will just choose a target, hammer it until it is either dead or the missiles run our, then choose another (if there are more shipkillers available) and so on. This means focusing fire on a single target is actually beneficial as it ensures multiple ships are fully destroyed, while trying to be cute and "properly" splitting fire may results in many ships damaged, but few lost. The downside is that this leads to missiles being in point blank ranges for additional increment, so gauss cannons and the likes will fire twice, the first time during the normal missile strike and then during the next increment as overkill missiles are calculated. Needless to say with this many ships this results in hundreds, if not thousands, shipkillers lost needlessly, but it's not really such a big issue.

The greatest problem with fire control set up is Aurora responsiveness. If you happen to have a hundred or so ships of a given class, it can take two minutes after you select the ship for the game to respond. Worse, switching between missiles and energy weapons on the battle screen also takes time.

Even so it's doable, although of course if you try to do it properly and optimally it can take you a whole damn day. Which is why i don't bother.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: serger on November 25, 2017, 04:25:08 AM
Have my 1st contact with NPR civ at 1000% difficulty modifier after 30yrs of roleplay with home rules. More Blood for the Blood God!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on November 26, 2017, 03:04:27 AM
I wonder if there should be a militancy check for ships and fighters to delete (no wrecks) rather than self-destruct in a way that leaves wrecks.  More an RP question than a mechanics question.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: obsidian_green on December 07, 2017, 02:02:23 AM
In the past week I've finally run into an NPR that looks like it's able and willing to fight. They destroyed the unarmed (offensively at any rate) survey ship Yuri Gagarin (after it detected a population w/ a thermal contact larger than I have back on Earth) with WH 27 anti-ship missiles and they have 7000-plus ton ships moving at better than 15,000 km/s.

I dispatched a carrier battle group to the other side of their JP and dropped a recon craft through ... enemy has assembled quite the fleet on the other side of the JP. I'll be rotating my two modern battle groups in and out of guard duty until I can build and train another two battle groups and their complements, but that'll take at least a couple of years. I will likely build modern fighters for my two older carriers as well because I'm expecting real losses from this battle. (RADM Geraldine Spriggle is planning as I type, but she's getting up in years and might retire before the show; she'll be disappointed, as she pulled off a Minbari at the Battle of the Line-style stomping of the House of Monkey some twenty years earlier.)

...

When it eventually happens, this will be an important battle, since I'll be committing every warship I have---excepting my seven survey cruisers---to the enterprise. Good times!

Well, I'm finally on the eve of that decisive battle after about four game years. The fleet has assembled (not quite every combatant---capable fighters and some nigh-obsolete warships remain uncommitted to this battle) and I just have to make sure I have all my FCs set up correctly before I begin (probably tomorrow). I haven't yet dropped a sacrificial recon craft through the JP, so I have no clue what the Iwakuni have managed to muster in their defense, but they've had three or four years to do it. I have to remember to crank up Holst's Mars!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the wait hasn't been completely uneventful, with some significant action that constitutes its own separate battle ... winter-chicken Geraldine Spriggle, always willing to 'splode things to make the universe pay for her being named Geraldine, wasn't bored to death by blockade duty, hahah!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 10, 2017, 01:27:39 AM
So I've got a bit of a situation. 4 alien warships just appeared in Centaurus, a major fleet base of mine. I'm not sure how to handle it. My fleet has managed to catch up, but will soon be out of range.

(https://i.imgur.com/Usymh14.png?1)

RP wise I have no clue what these guys are capable of. Non-RP I have every idea of what these guys are capable of. I've been getting some major increment slowdown for a year or two in game, so I used devmode to check out what the heck is going on with my allies (the guys in the white coloured system in the next picture). Turns out they're getting their rear ends handed to them on a silver platter by another NPR race, way more advanced than either me or my allies. After they entered my system I used devmode to check out just how many sytems of mine they've discovered, because if they're sending warships this close to my colonies then it must mean they know a lot. Turns out, they know a lot.

(https://i.imgur.com/RDOCadG.png?1)

The systems they're confirmed to have ships in / knowledge of are outlined in white. The path that I believe they took to get to my space is in red.

I'm conflicted on what to do. I feel that RP wise I should tail them and see what they're up to. But I know what they're up to, and it's no good. I've got my fleet close enough to launch a missile strike, but they'll be out of missile range in a few hours. I could detach my laser frigates to tail them, as they have a higher speed. I could also tail them for a bit and launch fighters after them. Or possibly a combination of all 3. One thing is for certain, this is about to get a lot more interesting.

TL;DR: Aliens are sneaking into my systems and puttering about menacingly. Kill, no kill, or kill after a little bit of no kill?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 10, 2017, 12:51:40 PM
Shoot first and make up a roleplaying reason later, is what the experts generally do.  You might go with something like a back-channel request for help from your ally.  Or with some officer deciding that you'd better not wait for the ally to be beaten, because then the alien will be able to concentrate his forces on your.  Combine that with certain elements who see this as an opportunity to expand Earth's power, and there you go.

Be careful with your ammunition, though, don't waste all your missiles on these ships if there might be another fleet ready to counter-attack.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TT on December 10, 2017, 05:59:06 PM
Bawk,

I think the prudent thingto do is keep your fleet concentrated. If they out tech you then you are going to want to maintain numbers as much as you can. I'd drop probes on all of your jump points and start systematticly searching your systems. destroy any ships you find and take advantage of the salvage. Good luck
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 10, 2017, 07:57:02 PM
I took the advice and blasted the 4 ships out of the sky. I believe that they were actually salvage ships, as they were beelining for a wreck in the outer system, didn't change course as the missiles approached, and only had one layer of armour. I don't know if this is better or worse, as they must be fairly comfortable in this space to be having their salvage ships around here.

After the incident, the 3rd Battlefleet was sent from Sol to blockade the Donwaltz jump point and reinforce Centaurus. At the same time, the DDG Bumble Bee was loaded with sensor buoys and tasked with extending the buoy network to cover the colonies past Proxima Centauri.

Sure enough, just a few days after the initial encounter, the aliens launched a counter-attack through the Donwaltz jump point, confirming that is where they came from. A total of 14 heavy cruisers jumped through in no less than 5 groups, and immediately scattered away from the jump point and the awaiting warships of the 3rd. The alien cruisers sped off at a speed of 11k km/s, faster than any ship I had, and over half as fast as my fighters. The battleships of the 3rd, the Europa and Deimos, took the brunt of the initial salvos. They suffered severe armour damage, with hull breaches in multiple places, yet they suffered no internal damage. As the range opened and the Gauss turrets could open fire on the enemy missiles, the incoming damage was slowed to a trickle. As the enemy cruisers were destroyed, the incoming missiles were increasingly unable to penetrate the shield of defensive fire around the fleet.

After a few minutes of fierce beam and missile combat, the enemy was defeated, and Humanity stood as the victors in the first engagement of the war.



Well that was fun, and oh man I've got to get some minefields set up around here. I nearly lost not only the battleships, but one of my support vessels nearly got destroyed due to a lucky hit to one of her engines. How do you guys usually design your mines? I've had luck in the past with concentric rings of small mines, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to go about it.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: vorpal+5 on December 11, 2017, 08:22:56 AM
Today the Terran Confederacy replied to yet another provocation from the Issor Monarchy. While sitting peacefully on a jump point the Terran Expedition Force was assaulted. What seems to have been an escort destroyer fired its laser against a squadron of Blomm&Voss 'Schwalbe' gauss-fighters. Sadly, one went down. The vicious Issor ship then proceeded to move away, while the Issor still claimed to be 'neutral'. Ah the devious aliens!

Scramble ensued and after some 20 seconds of loitering, the fighter squadron fired their engines and started pursue. Being equipped (probably) with nuclear pulse engine, the Issor destroyed had no chance to escape the nimble Schwalbe, equipped with 2 ions powered thrusters. The enemy ship went down rapidly when the twin gauss cannons barked loud.

And now, some out of character questions...
If the initiative of the squadron commander was lower than the one of the DD, I understand the DD would have moved after the fighters on each impulse. Meaning the fighters would always be outside their gauss range potentially (if the enemy was faster than it was)?

I was surprised to see some of my fighters were nearing 100% to hit chance.I don't get that. I have them equipped with gauss canons that should have a 8% coefficient due to their size (the smallest possible), how can that be? They performed admirably so I'm happy, just surprised.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Detros on December 12, 2017, 05:19:27 PM
I was surprised to see some of my fighters were nearing 100% to hit chance.I don't get that. I have them equipped with gauss canons that should have a 8% coefficient due to their size (the smallest possible), how can that be? They performed admirably so I'm happy, just surprised.
Very experienced crew, probably. Or just tons of luck.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Tree on December 26, 2017, 08:21:18 AM
I made a map. Aurora date when I made it was 16/03/2038.
I'm about to send ships to Alpha Centauri, I know there's at least one star swarm queen left there and there was a matriarch in Gliese 563.2, I'm hoping it came with the queens too and that I just didn't see it last time.

(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=2212)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on December 28, 2017, 10:12:57 AM
I made a map. Aurora date when I made it was 16/03/2038.
I'm about to send ships to Alpha Centauri, I know there's at least one star swarm queen left there and there was a matriarch in Gliese 563.2, I'm hoping it came with the queens too and that I just didn't see it last time.

(http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3808.0;attach=2212)

Welp, there goes my nofap....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on January 10, 2018, 10:22:48 PM
So uhh, the aliens didn't take the loss too well. I'm scared.

The Second Battlefleet remained on station at the jump point to monitor for alien transits, while the First was overhauling at Anchorage, the orbital resupply and maintenance base in the inner system. The Third was en-route to the jump point to relieve the crew of the Second, who were eager to get home to see their loved ones after nearly a year of uneventful deployment guarding the colonies. As the Third was preparing to relieve the Second, the sensor consoles throughout the fleets lit up with new hostile contacts. The crews of the Third Battlefleet immediately sprung into action, prepared and eager to re-enact the crushing victory last time the aliens attempted to force the jump point. The Third was still far out of beam range, but could still offer support in the form of missile volleys. The Second however, was in a panic. The fleet consisted of 2 Luna-class battleships, 2 Emerald-class light carriers, 5 Battle-class heavy cruisers, 2 Stellar-class command cruisers, 4 Centurion-class destroyers, 4 Wolf-class missile destroyers, as well as 24 Broadsword-class fighter-bombers. The enemy contacts surrounding them, were no less than 24 heavy cruisers, 7 battleships, and 2 dreadnoughts.

Keen to take advantage of the jump blindness that must be plaguing the hostiles, the Second immediately began firing every gun and launching every tube they could, prioritizing the larger ships. As soon as the first shots left the barrels, the enemy cruisers began to turn about. Why were they turning about? They didn't do that last time. In a remarkable feat impressing even the Terran High Command when they heard the news, the hostiles had apparently been able to overcome their jump blindness in a record 15 seconds - nearly twice as fast as the fastest recovery by Human crews. The alien intent was soon made clear, as the battleship Ganymede suddenly ceased to exist under the overwhelming torrent of laser fire coming from the cruisers. The alien battleships and dreadnoughts were heading away from the jump point, apparently not wanting to, or feeling they didn't need to engage in the brawl unfolding.

Ten long seconds passed as the return fire from the Second either missed the faster aliens, or did not penetrate their armour. The cruisers Gettysburg and Midway both disappeared from the tac-map, and the Third Battlefleet could do nothing to help as they were forced to watch their friends be crushed under the torrent of fire pouring forth from the alien warships. The Second managed to take out only two enemy cruisers before they were wiped out entirely. The Third was able to take out the hostiles at range as they unleashed volley after volley of missiles towards them, with ammo conservation being the last thing on their minds.

Vowing never to let a tragedy such as this happen again, where an entire battlefleet andthousand Terran crew were lost to the uncaring void, the Fourth Expeditionary Fleet was dispatched to transit the jump point to act as a forward detection to the First and Third waiting a safe distance away from the jump point.

This event would go down in history as the Jump Point Massacre, the greatest disaster and loss of life in the Terran Navy in its entire history, and hopefully it's future.

After the second had been rebuilt, just over a year after the Massacre, it seems that the aliens (now learned to be named the Jiadliaokl Coalition) were not done quite yet. The Fourth EF detected a massive Coalition fleet approaching the Centaurus JP. After numerous re-confirmations and re-calibrations of the sensors, the fleet was confirmed to be just as massive as detected. 36 heavy cruisers, 17 battleships, and 3 dreadnoughts. The Fourth EF is alone on the Donwaltz side, while the Third Battlefleet is alone on the Centaurus side. The First and Second are around Anchorage, with the Second overhauling for the next week. The First is able to move out at a moments notice, but is nearly a week away from the JP. This is quite the issue, as the Coalition fleet is only 17 hours away from the JP.

May God have mercy on my soul.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 13, 2018, 01:57:32 PM
Just started my first new game in nearly a year. The shock of jumping into Sirius as my first JP in this save, with its nearly 300billion kilometre area of exploration for all the asteroids and JP's, is undoubtedly mitigated by the discovery on Sirius-A I of 116,617,000 tons of Duranium, 135,424 tons of Neutronium, 33,856 tons of Corbomite, 8,133,904 tons of Tritanium, 45,104,660 tons of Boron, 14,930,500 tons of Mercassium, 28,472,900 tons of Vendarite, 82,955,660 tons of Sorium, 3,732,624 tons of Uridium, 1,218,816 tons of Corundium, and lastly, 17,139,600 tons of Gallicite.

Just a pity that it's all accessibility 0.3 or lower with the exception of the Neutronium, but that's nothing that Commonwealth elbow-grease can't resolve.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on January 15, 2018, 12:49:03 AM
Also just started the first game in too long and I have to admit that I can't remember a mineral crunch as bad as the one I'm looking at here.

25 years in and low points:

Roughly 250k tons of Duranium left in Sol - No stockpile available
No stockpile of Neutronium available - less than 100k left
120k of Mercassion left, including stockpiles
300k of Gallicite, including stockpiles
A stockpile of 30k Corundium. And 2k on a rock somewhere in the belt

No navy, only freighters and scouts built so far - The Federation will have to focus on Colony Ships and Gate Constructors for now before building up a navy.

At least, the neighbouring systems are free of enemies, but unknown as of now with regards to resources.

Gonna be an interesting run!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on January 15, 2018, 10:11:49 AM
It's very much possible to have the RNG screw you over with homeworld minerals especially if you're doing a conventional start.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rendap on January 15, 2018, 03:30:38 PM
Certainly. Specifically if you tone down the number of people from the beginning.

This was a normal start and the minerals on Earth was fairly decent.

But my problem is partly solved now, thanks to Geo Teams (who took crazy long to start operating, thanks to garbage stats on my naval officers) and Proxima Centauri.

2,8m tons of Duranium in 0,8 found on Mars, 2,7m tons more in 0,6 on Mercury and small change in PC 800k'ish spread on 4 deposits.
1,5m tons of Gallicite in 0,9 found in PC.
500k tons of Corundium in 0,4 on the same spot as the Gallicite. And 20,1m in 0,1 elsewhere in PC.

Hoping for Luhman 16 and Lalande 21185 to bring the rest of the yield when I get a survey ship in there. Alpha Centauri and Bernards Star have no real estate at all, which annoys me slightly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on January 16, 2018, 09:28:51 AM
Huh, I guess what the rng took away from you in starting minerals they gave back in lucky geo team rolls! I never seem to get much of a boost form them, mostly adding lots of something to a planet that already has more than I can ever use, that kind of thing.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 16, 2018, 10:34:17 AM
I made a map. Aurora date when I made it was 16/03/2038.

Cool map.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 16, 2018, 10:38:40 AM
So uhh, the aliens didn't take the loss too well. I'm scared.

Good luck.  Sounds like you're having FUN!
Just don't run out of missiles.  Ordinance factories may be a good investment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 18, 2018, 06:44:55 PM
Getting ready to play my first game in six months to a year.  Still deciding on theme and RP ideas. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 19, 2018, 09:55:39 AM
For the first time in any Aurora game I've played in about four years, I've finally met an alien race. They promptly disappeared after following my survey ship back to Alpha Centauri, which combined with their inability to communicate to us (the game decided in two weeks time to close any further communication efforts as futile), has led to DesRon 1 being despatched to sit astride the Van Maanens Star-Alpha Centauri JP. Rudimentary bombardment of a strength-5 asteroid contact has been conducted by laser fire of SLNS Rodgers, and survey ships have flocked into the system in the hopes of provoking the hostiles. Shipyard expansion to construct a vessel capable of bearing a Marine battalion to the asteroid to conduct ground ops is underway.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 19, 2018, 10:12:00 AM
For the first time in any Aurora game I've played in about four years, I've finally met an alien race.

I recommend increasing the NPR generation chance to 90% or more when you configure the game.  Aliens are far too few and far between with the default settings.

Also, send out more survey ships, farther, earlier, to increase the odds.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 19, 2018, 10:21:01 AM
Good point. Must be having a good run though, just met what seems to be a grav surveyor from another race entirely in the system as well!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: waresky on January 19, 2018, 10:41:31 AM
Starting Setup :

Yr 2123

Pop .: 71 Millions , End III Atomic War End
Nationality : United States

Leadership : Moderate Fascist (Like as Space Mobile Infantry Junta)

Tech : none
MINERALS :
Dur     69.100
Neu    14.200
Corbo 1480
Tritan  152.000
Boron  3900
Merca  8950
Vendar 4490
Sorium 846
Uridiu  5200
Gallici  724

FUEL at 2177 : 1.002.000 Lt.
ResearchLab : 4
Military Training Camp : 1
Naval yard: 0
Commercial Yard : 0

_____________________


>>>>>>>>>> Yrs 2177 : TransNewtonian and 281.0 Millions Pop.

Nice and hard-
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 19, 2018, 11:28:40 AM
Two of my fave games are Crusader Kings II and Aurora 4x.

So now I am thinking about merging some CKII concepts into my RP.  Play as a family of a interstellar empire and try to keep the bloodline and the empire going for my first 2018 game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on January 20, 2018, 04:40:57 AM
Lost my game due to Invaders attack.... but not in a straight, obvious way.

Invaders started to bombard Earth. My largely obsolete defence net was big enough that by the sheer volume of defensive fire they managed to kill all of their missiles without letting even one through BUT when Invaders closed the range and started firing AMM's at me i get the Planetary Bombardment Overflow bug everytime they hit and its impossible to continue playing :/
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 20, 2018, 04:08:59 PM
Learned that civilians will be built prior to cargo handlers being researched. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Starmantle on January 21, 2018, 04:37:26 PM
Two of my fave games are Crusader Kings II and Aurora 4x.

So now I am thinking about merging some CKII concepts into my RP.  Play as a family of a interstellar empire and try to keep the bloodline and the empire going for my first 2018 game.

I love this idea, Drgong!  If you write as you go, I'd definitely read that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 21, 2018, 04:42:01 PM
I love this idea, Drgong!  If you write as you go, I'd definitely read that.

Now that I know there is intrest, I will write it up in detail as a ARR.

Right now I am at least trying to work the game to the point of leaving the sol system as I did a conventional start  ;D

Right now the start is at http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9801.0

I made some Python programs to automate some of the background stuff, up to and including the lower house elections and so on.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Starmantle on January 22, 2018, 01:24:17 AM
That looks super.  Flagging it to read soon.

Also, I know nothing about programming but this caught my attention.

>I made some Python programs to automate some of the background stuff, up to and including the lower house elections and so on.

I've been using competing diplomacy teams to help gauge and somewhat randomize power dynamics between factions, which lead to elections, but that's a whole other level. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 22, 2018, 08:15:05 AM
That looks super.  Flagging it to read soon.

Also, I know nothing about programming but this caught my attention.

>I made some Python programs to automate some of the background stuff, up to and including the lower house elections and so on.

I've been using competing diplomacy teams to help gauge and somewhat randomize power dynamics between factions, which lead to elections, but that's a whole other level.

The code to figure out how long a royal lives and how many kids they have was a lot of code.  The election system is simple.  I could most likely add code to do the math for seats and so on but I can do that quickly.   It asks for the Party name, what they had in the election, and how much was the vote allocated.  Then it randomly decides if the vote went up or down.   It easier to show then explain.  If you needed a program to fill elections, let me know and I can polish it up and have so you can run it.

Code: [Select]

# Import the modules
import sys
import random

nameparty = raw_input ("What is the party name")
party = input ("What is the party percentage in the last election")
remain = input ("how much of the electorate remains")

roll = random.randint(1,2)
roll2 = random.randint(1,10)
if roll == 1:
  party = party + roll2
if roll == 2:
  party = party - roll2
if party > remain:
  print "the ", nameparty, "gets", remain, "in the election"
if party < 2:
  print "the ", nameparty, "does not meet the minimum election threshhold"
if party > 2 and party < remain:
  print "the ", nameparty, "gets", party, "in the election"

Is the total of the election code, and since it in python most can look at it and figure out what the code is doing since it is easy to read.  Compare the the royal generator which is 215 or so lines of code.   

Also in my game I was able to jump from Ion to Plasma VERY quickly due to ruins, and suddenly I need to do look over my fleet and start figuring out what going to be kept, what is going to be converted to  militia units, and set up a scrapping program. 


Also

Code: [Select]
Manchester-A II
Duranium 4 743 200  Acc: 0.1
Neutronium 93 702 400  Acc: 0.1
Corbomite 15 681 600  Acc: 0.1
Tritanium 81 360 400  Acc: 1
Boronide 14 822 500  Acc: 0.6
Uridium 6 400 900  Acc: 0.1

Guess it fair to say there will be no long term Tritanium shortages in this game.  :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: bsh on January 22, 2018, 12:56:22 PM
Started a new game recently after the previous one crashed and corrupted the DB.
The only thing I'm doing differently this time for the first time, is I'm not using real star systems. Don't know how that exactly changes the game, but so far this game is very weird compared to previous ones. Hardly any minerals. Most systems are devoid of at least 2-3 types of minerals, so almost impossible to build self sufficient colonies without the need of external material shipments. Lots of totally empty systems. Lots of systems where most of the planets orbit around the B or C star, 2-7 trillion km's away, can't even get there. Many wrecks but no NPRs so far. Lots of new connections between already discovered systems - earlier I've always gotten a new system every time. Hyperactive civilians, causing lot of trouble. Super annoying populations with insatiable need for PPV.
I don't know if this has anything to do with non-real star systems setup, or just pure bad luck on the dice rolls?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TCD on January 22, 2018, 02:31:25 PM
Started a new game recently after the previous one crashed and corrupted the DB.
The only thing I'm doing differently this time for the first time, is I'm not using real star systems. Don't know how that exactly changes the game, but so far this game is very weird compared to previous ones. Hardly any minerals. Most systems are devoid of at least 2-3 types of minerals, so almost impossible to build self sufficient colonies without the need of external material shipments. Lots of totally empty systems. Lots of systems where most of the planets orbit around the B or C star, 2-7 trillion km's away, can't even get there. Many wrecks but no NPRs so far. Lots of new connections between already discovered systems - earlier I've always gotten a new system every time. Hyperactive civilians, causing lot of trouble. Super annoying populations with insatiable need for PPV.
I don't know if this has anything to do with non-real star systems setup, or just pure bad luck on the dice rolls?
Probably a bit of both? I don't think minerals are connected to star names. But in my experience, the real star systems do seem to be a bit more likely to generate planets. The unreal star systems seemed to be more luck based, so more empty systems and more unusual binary stars. But you do get black holes and nebula etc to make the game more interesting.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 22, 2018, 03:02:59 PM
Hardly any minerals. Most systems are devoid of at least 2-3 types of minerals, so almost impossible to build self sufficient colonies without the need of external material shipments.

I almost never find systems that have every mineral readily available (except systems with NPR homeworlds) so this doesn't strike me as unusual.

The main advantages of "not real systems" are (1) more interesting system names, and (2) sometimes cool stuff like nebulae and black holes.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on January 22, 2018, 03:44:44 PM
So, I finally encountered the alien race from Van Maanens Star again, four in-game years later. Found one wreck matching the first class we saw in Gliese 105 along with an unknown wreck from an unknown race (potentially a third race), and met two classes of their ships in Ross 128, where they've proved a great technological superiority over my vessels. They've been able to hammer at me with salvos of six size-6 missiles at speeds of over 30,000kmps, but my counter-missiles proved a valid response...right until I ran out of ammo by maxing out each salvo. :-[

A little embarrassing that I had to backpedal away from two contacts that I think I outmass, but after losing SLNS Reno and Oldendorf, it seems that twenty-two salvos has dried the enemy's magazine out. I managed to pick up the lifepods from each vessel, and now the survivors are slowly motoring back towards the enemy in a hope of engaging them with our own missiles, though I'm willing to bet getting into energy range would be no picnic for the enemy. Now if only I could actually move forward without the game just greying out each time I try to select it... >:(
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: bsh on January 23, 2018, 02:58:15 AM
Probably a bit of both? I don't think minerals are connected to star names. But in my experience, the real star systems do seem to be a bit more likely to generate planets. The unreal star systems seemed to be more luck based, so more empty systems and more unusual binary stars. But you do get black holes and nebula etc to make the game more interesting.
Found nebulae, I was excited, but now I think they are more annoying than interesting. Surveying takes ages, and then I have to manually max the speed of any wessel going through them. (Don't want to mess with conditional orders already set up.)
But right after complaining here, I just found the Nassau system, a quadrinary, with 6 or 7 habitable worls with oxygen+nitrogen and almost perfect temps as well... And finally there's an alien population, woohoo! It's gotta be huge, 10 times thermal and 4 times EM signature compared to Earth with 15 billion population. Communication tends to be positive. We'll see if they're friendly or ... dead. Or unstoppably advanced.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on January 24, 2018, 01:38:09 PM
I did a lot of "Organization", and did infill development in the 10 or so star systems I have explored.  I had dozens of tasks groups doing stuff, so I had them wind down and put in storage, did a top-bottom fleet review and cut my active fleet by 2/3rds (the rest went into reserve/militia and 40+ older FACs where scrapped to provide sensors, fire controls, and laser weapons for a patrol craft that was designed to use the old parts).   

Now that I have jumped two levels of engine development, it is to set up the PDC/mines/other defenses while the shipyards retool and start the process of building out a new fleet.  This one will be a near complete fleet replacement on combat ships.  But the ships have to be built and the crews will have to be trained.   Doing a lot of experiments on mines this game. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 03, 2018, 03:41:09 AM
Wave after wave of 54 size 7 missiles are trying to penetrate my laser/gauss and ciws defences. Sofar none have made it, we are confident that none will get close enough...Having some 100 lasers, 500 gauss cannons and 45 ciws helps a lot . ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: waresky on February 03, 2018, 01:54:15 PM
Started a new game recently after the previous one crashed and corrupted the DB.
The only thing I'm doing differently this time for the first time, is I'm not using real star systems. Don't know how that exactly changes the game, but so far this game is very weird compared to previous ones. Hardly any minerals. Most systems are devoid of at least 2-3 types of minerals, so almost impossible to build self sufficient colonies without the need of external material shipments. Lots of totally empty systems. Lots of systems where most of the planets orbit around the B or C star, 2-7 trillion km's away, can't even get there. Many wrecks but no NPRs so far. Lots of new connections between already discovered systems - earlier I've always gotten a new system every time. Hyperactive civilians, causing lot of trouble. Super annoying populations with insatiable need for PPV.
I don't know if this has anything to do with non-real star systems setup, or just pure bad luck on the dice rolls?

Totally really baddest..:)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on February 04, 2018, 09:43:10 AM
An infrastructure shipment to a ruins/anomaly colony 4 systems away from earth was ambushed, all freighters lost. Strength-24 energy impacts are well in advance of anything we are capable of.
We haven't yet found any major colonies of the NPR responsible.

Admirality is nervous about stretching our forces thin - there's a precursor stronghold we can't deal with one jump away from earth, and it is currently unknown whether a stable wormhole 2 systems away is a threat.

Current fleet capability is focused almost entirely on beam PD and one decisive missile strike just out of beam range, all on slow ships with commercial engines. A fast wing of beam cruisers is currently under construction. The military is pushing for torpedo bombers to acquire some ranged strike capability, despite the total lack of ordnance reserves. The civilian administration wants a focus on boarding technology since everyone encountered so far seems to be ahead of us in weaponry.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: waresky on February 04, 2018, 01:50:12 PM
An infrastructure shipment to a ruins/anomaly colony 4 systems away from earth was ambushed, all freighters lost. Strength-24 energy impacts are well in advance of anything we are capable of.
We haven't yet found any major colonies of the NPR responsible.

Admirality is nervous about stretching our forces thin - there's a precursor stronghold we can't deal with one jump away from earth, and it is currently unknown whether a stable wormhole 2 systems away is a threat.

Current fleet capability is focused almost entirely on beam PD and one decisive missile strike just out of beam range, all on slow ships with commercial engines. A fast wing of beam cruisers is currently under construction. The military is pushing for torpedo bombers to acquire some ranged strike capability, despite the total lack of ordnance reserves. The civilian administration wants a focus on boarding technology since everyone encountered so far seems to be ahead of us in weaponry.

Hard time! but interesting situation. Good luck
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on February 04, 2018, 05:32:39 PM
Thank you! This may become a very short game...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 06, 2018, 04:26:16 PM
This has been a odd game start.

1.  Sol has six jump points.
2.  Protomax centauri had plenty of bodies, but not one bit of minerals
3.  Sol itself is kinda light on materials, and had a major  fuel shortage due to limits of raw materials.
4.  One jump out is a bad guy.  Most likely Precursors
5.  Then the RNG gives me this.

Fuel is not a problem in the near future.  But now I have to figure out is it cheaper to process it there as fuel and haul it as fuel to earth, or haul the material to earth and process it there. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on February 07, 2018, 10:34:04 AM
This is a follow up to this post: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=3808.msg104267#msg104267

I finally did it. The back way into Allyuen is open. After almost six years of exploring a previously unknown system chain, we finally found the jump point that leads into the back of our enemy's home system: https://i.imgur.com/CJF2kFV.png

Unfortunately, there were expecting us. There were waiting just at the other side of the jump point to shoot down our survey fleet within a minute: https://i.imgur.com/7lR5s8W.png

We won't be surprising them now, but at least they won't know where we're coming from!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 07, 2018, 03:07:43 PM
I know that was satisfying. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on February 08, 2018, 01:18:47 PM
...

Since my last post, the entire squadron was destroyed thanks to being swamped with around fifty salvos of size-1 counter-missiles. I've had to hold off exploration of that particular chain, with my three survey ships going back to any JP's within two jumps of Sol that I've not already explored. Holding off on geological surveys for the most part due to a few systems being massive, and until I can build a replacement destroyer squadron and finish the conversion of DesRon2 into the new Kwajalein III standard. I also need to figure out how to get a backup of the save for the game as well since I may lose it as I need to send the PC I'm playing it on back for repair.

Think I've learned a bit regarding designs with this game, since it started off like my old Honorverse game with maintainence on and has resulted in much lower tonnages, but I've been able to crank better performance out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ZimRathbone on February 09, 2018, 08:20:56 PM
I also need to figure out how to get a backup of the save for the game as well since I may lose it as I need to send the PC I'm playing it on back for repair.


in the Aurora directory there is a file Stevefire.mdb , copy that somewhere with a meaningful name. To restore rename the backup file to Stevefire.mdb.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 10, 2018, 02:31:00 AM
Quote
in the Aurora directory there is a file Stevefire.mdb , copy that somewhere with a meaningful name. To restore rename the backup file to Stevefire.mdb.

Hmm, I got more than one... Stevefire.mdb and then stevefire.mdb2-4...  ???  So I presume its the first to save?

My game works.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: the obelisk on February 10, 2018, 01:09:04 PM
Ended my last game a couple days ago because I had realized I was doing several things in ways that were pretty dumb, and my entire armed fleet was about to get destroyed.   Just finished planning the setup for my first multi-faction game.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Titanian on February 10, 2018, 01:25:52 PM
Hmm, I got more than one... Stevefire.mdb and then stevefire.mdb2-4...  ???  So I presume its the first to save?
The .mdb is one you want. The others are automatic backups done by the portable launcher.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 15, 2018, 07:24:35 AM
My 8 battle cruisers (42000 tons) against, 13 Heavy cruisers (25200 tons) 13 Light cruisers (16800) 39 Destroyers (around 8500 tons)... My jump BC has 326 VLC size 5 missiles, 5 laser armed BCs and 2 escort BCs. All ships have one large laser integrated into the hull, while the 5 main combat ships also have 2 twin 35cm and 2 twin 15cm laser towers to cut up enemy ships. My escorts have each 100 fighter Gauss guns mounted, only 17% hit chance but a lot of lead in the space.  But the biggest advantage I have is speed, all my ships move at 12000 km/s against the enemy at around 3500-3700... After firing my BCJs missile that ship will move to an adjacent system and reload and hopefully be back in time to defend the jump point...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on February 15, 2018, 01:02:38 PM
As I prepared a puntive/recon mission against the Madras Collective who had been preying on my shipping, they turned up in Sol with a small fleet of 15 9100t- and 3 18200t-ships.
Not a single missile was fired. The beam cruisers could easily control the distance (10000 vs. 3450km/s). Despite the speed advantage and giving my cruisers the finest fire controls and a compact ECM/ECCM suite, some hostiles responded effectively at long range, with what appears to be 20cm soft X-ray lasers to our 15cm/FUV.
One of our 12000t tinclads was lost to a catastrophic engine explosion, several others damaged. We overwhelmed their long-ranged assets eventually, after which cleanup was trivial.
The next generation will sport some real armour and full-size ECM, reducing propulsion tonnage while maintaining performance.

Scouts will keep searching for them and trying to warn of any future attacks while we test the waters in the Precursos-held system next to Sol. We could use some spoils to augment our weapons and electronics.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 15, 2018, 03:12:54 PM
Building out my Ion-age fleet, when the battleships are off the stocks and trained up, I might to a recon in force of spoilers in the next system.   
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maul_Junior on February 15, 2018, 10:31:54 PM
I'm still learning the ropes--as in restarting a bunch of times to figure out how best to start.     I have a serious addiction.     I need to play longer.   

.    .    .    .    but HOLY smeg.     Size 1k survey (grav or geo) fighters are AMAZING.     I had been building giant ships, struggling to find a balance between speed, engine efficiency, number of engines, and fuel capacity.    .    .    .    .   

Then I saw (somewhere, forget who to credit) someone saying they were using fighters to survey new systems (IIRC he had a tanker, a fighter jump tender, a fighter geo, a fighter grav, and at least one other).     I looked at that, and went "hmmmmm.    .    .    .    .    "

So I rolled up a new game, dinked around with the fighters, and ended up with a pair of fighters with a range of 30-40b, a single geo or grav, enough maintenance/engineering to handle any problems (and a low YFR), and ~3-4k speed.     I threw in a pair of hangar PDCs (1 for geo, 1 for grav), and tore my hair out figuring out how to make it work.   

But eventually I figured it out.     Assign all fighters to their respective (geo/grav) PDC, land them in the PDC, set their respective geo/grav orders, then you launch the fighters and IIRC it's Split the Fleet, not Divide, and everything gets its own TG.     it's a bit mess on the TG selection screen, but boom.     beginning pre-tanker geo/grav survey teams.   

If you want to recall them, simply go to the PDC, tell them to recall parasites, and they will all return to the PDC (and join its task force again).     If you want to go again, simply launch the fighters, resplit the TG, and they will automatically return to their respective TGs.   

THIS IS AMAZING.   


I don't need 5-10k grav ships, and 20+k geo ships.     Throw in a PDC with AMM capabilities to finish off the PDC points, maybe some Republic of Haven (single-shot, massive missile burst) or Manticorran Navy (multiple but fewer missile FAC, CIWS FAC)-esque FACs eventually.    .    .    .    .   


Still trying to figure out my initial Industry build order.   

I'm htinking something like:

10+% Construction Factories (Perpetual)
10+% Infrastructure (Perpetual)
10+% Auto Mines (Perpetual)
~30% Sector Command
~20% Research Lab
~20% Military Academy

Throw in some Mass Drivers every once in a while, and send out infrastructure to Luna/Mars/Mercury to get the population growing.   


Still REALLY new.     

Any advice is appreciated.     I'm seriously tempted to just make a bunch of navy shipyards with 1k capacity but tons of slipways for Fighters/FACs, backed up by a carrier or three, and a couple AMM boats.   

Also as an Honor Harrington fan I plan on placing defensive forts at strategic jump points.   

.   .   .   .   .   .   I have to admit, the Honor Harrington almost reads as Aurora fanfic in some ways.    Maybe David Weber played Starfire or Aurora.   .   .   .   .   ?

EDIT: he literally has a series called "Starfire.  " dunno how it lines up with the Starfire game, but.  .  .  .  lol


. . . . . yup.

David Weber was literally an author of Starfire v3.  no wonder this is all so familiar and striking Honor Harrington mmories all over the place.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 16, 2018, 07:58:37 PM
I know it may seem like a simple thing, but I captured my first ship today by a boarding action.   Now I have a spiffy precursor ship in my fleet. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Graham on February 16, 2018, 10:41:34 PM
I know it may seem like a simple thing, but I captured my first ship today by a boarding action.   Now I have a spiffy precursor ship in my fleet. 

Since to my knowledge precursor ships are fully automated with no crew, I always thought it was odd that they're able to be boarded and captured.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Drgong on February 16, 2018, 11:18:10 PM
Since to my knowledge precursor ships are fully automated with no crew, I always thought it was odd that they're able to be boarded and captured.

I think of the robot ships in Star Wars. 
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maul_Junior on February 20, 2018, 05:50:40 AM
. . . . . . so that's combat, huh?

god damn those 15km/s ships are fast.  a little over twice as fast as my ships.

My anti-missile missiles shot down about half of each volley, but with a 17% hit chance. . . . . .

All 3 of my anti-ship cruisers were shot down in succession, followed by a pair of my anti-missile destroyers.

My ASMs only having a 20m range or so, I didn't even get a return volley off, and more and more of their missiles got through.  Then, once their magazines were dry (having already pounded my gravitic scout into scrap), they turned and raced off.

Lessons learned:

the 5km/s to 100% guide you've been facing so far is crap.
To borrow a phrase from a youtuber--SPEED IS KEY!
make sure you can hit out to at least 30-35m with your ASMs.
Don't shut down your ordnance production for more workers for other stuff.  not worth it.
Apparently my 6km/s ion ships were way too slow.

Literally the only ASMs I had were from the OB gen, because I had shut down ordnance production before I designed the missile.

*sighs*

back to the drawing board.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 20, 2018, 06:55:03 AM
Quote
. . . . . . so that's combat, huh?

god damn those 15km/s ships are fast.  a little over twice as fast as my ships.

My anti-missile missiles shot down about half of each volley, but with a 17% hit chance. . . . . .

All 3 of my anti-ship cruisers were shot down in succession, followed by a pair of my anti-missile destroyers.

My ASMs only having a 20m range or so, I didn't even get a return volley off, and more and more of their missiles got through.  Then, once their magazines were dry (having already pounded my gravitic scout into scrap), they turned and raced off.

Lessons learned:

the 5km/s to 100% guide you've been facing so far is crap.
To borrow a phrase from a youtuber--SPEED IS KEY!
make sure you can hit out to at least 30-35m with your ASMs.
Don't shut down your ordnance production for more workers for other stuff.  not worth it.
Apparently my 6km/s ion ships were way too slow.

Literally the only ASMs I had were from the OB gen, because I had shut down ordnance production before I designed the missile.

*sighs*

back to the drawing board.

Welcome to Aurora  :D

Taken from Star Fleet Battles " SPEED IS LIFE!"
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 20, 2018, 10:17:21 AM
Apparently my 6km/s ion ships were way too slow.
6000 m/s with ion engines (TL3) is not bad at all.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Maul_Junior on February 25, 2018, 11:55:09 PM
Quote from: ExChairman link=topic=3808. msg106694#msg106694 date=1519131303
Welcome to Aurora  :D

Taken from Star Fleet Battles " SPEED IS LIFE!"

I prefer Jack Septiceye's "SPEED IS KEY!!!!1!"

Granted, that's from Bottle Run in, uh, that one game he used to play.

Quote from: Garfunkel link=topic=3808. msg106696#msg106696 date=1519143441
6000 m/s with ion engines (TL3) is not bad at all. 

that's what I thought.

Then I got my ass handed to me.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 26, 2018, 07:25:13 PM
Oh wait, 6 km/s or 6000 km/s? The former is insanely slow, the latter is good for ion engines.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on February 27, 2018, 03:26:20 AM
If it greatly reduces enemy hit chance and/or allows you to force a favourable engagement range, speed is priceless.
If it doesn't and you need to fight on your enemy's terms, speed is worthless. You'd be better off with armour/firepower/numbers.

You never know against NPRs, but against the usual suspects 6000km/s is either too fast or too slow. If I had to deal with 15000km/s enemies at Ion tech, I wouldn't try to compete on speed at all. Priority 1 would be heavy beam PD, priority 2 an offensive plan for when the enemy is out of missiles but still wants to play (several options, none of them without problems).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 08, 2018, 09:09:48 PM
For my latest conventional start, I decided to dump some ruins on LUNA to get my race thinking about aliens.  Then my first jump point found is inside the orbit of Venus, with a fricking Jump Gate.  Queue the probe with a really tiny fighter.  I thought about cheaping out, building just an engine and a fuel tank, but I decided to be nice, give them enough endurance and an engineering system so they could last enough for a retrieval mission.

I am RPing that communications are possible, even if transit isn't, but still.  This throws my schedule off a bit.  I had anticipated a somewhat more leisurely exploration, refitting my Nuclear Thermal ships to Ion while grav surveying was done and systems probed.  Suddenly all my grounded Geo Survey ship crews and officers are like, "Wha?!?" as the prospect of adventures at least a year earlier than projected are possible.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 08, 2018, 09:20:57 PM
Addendum.  For the first time ever, the first system I discover has a habitable planet.  And lots of wrecks.  And a bleeping jump gate back.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 09, 2018, 01:12:47 AM
Sooo, good news bad news.

The bad news is that the aliens detected the transit, wiped out my explorers, and immediately headed to Luna, Luna being slightly closer to the jump point than Earth.  My scouts had literally died less than a day after they were built.

The good news is that the aliens expended all their missiles on my civilian liners.  My obsolete, Nuclear Thermal engined liners.

The really good news is that the aliens apparently lacked any beam weapons.

The bad news is that the aliens were utterly fanatic, and even with the really awesome diplomats I have, I really doubt I am going to be able to establish communications with them.

The good news is that they rammed those liners until they died.  I have 3 alien wrecks in my system, and it only cost me a couple of explorers and some civilian ships!  Woohoo!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 09, 2018, 03:58:18 AM
Further updates...

Found another jump gate.  And that jump point inside the orbit of Venus?  Pssshaw.  How about one within 3 million km of Earth orbit?  On the plus side, once I clear the aliens out, I can very rapidly exploit that system, but sheesh.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 10, 2018, 01:54:37 PM
Further updates.

I keep finding ridiculously planet rich systems linked to the inner ring jump points.

5 cost 2 planets in one system, one only because it was .4 ATM oxygen.  A quaternary star system with all 4 stars within a billion km of each other.  3 more planets that are probably pretty juicy too.

Another system with over 100 moons, and a planet that is short on oxygen and a little cool.

And the very first system had a precursor on one planet, and 3 other terraformable planets.

(edit)
So, the game thought I would be impressed by 5 2 cost worlds in one system?  How about 5 MOONS of a single planet that are all cost 2?!?

ONE system of the first five discovered didn't have a 2 cost planet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: clement on March 11, 2018, 11:53:37 AM
Lucky lucky. You could develop a very strong and advanced civilization without much more expansion unless your geo surveys go badly.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 14, 2018, 01:11:50 PM
One of the systems that has 5 cost 2 worlds has a lot of wrecks and I confirmed Precursor presence.  There are also 5 Lagrange points.  And one of those Lagrange points is within short missile range of the Precursor guarded worlds.  And 2 others are within LONG missile range of them.

The tactical options are simply amazing.  Anybody else had a major battle where Lagrange points played a major role?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 15, 2018, 05:42:20 AM
Had a weird issue where when I fired missiles at a waypoint in the C component from the B-component the missiles didn't move at all.  I was overlapped with a gas giant for some of the shots, but not all.

Good thing I tested with recon missiles before wasting a year's production of missiles only to watch them not move, but has anybody else experienced that?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sublight on March 15, 2018, 07:01:00 AM
I've seen that occasionally when trying to use missiles as geo survey drones and other really long range shots. My tentative conclusion is that missiles remain stationary when the time-to-intercept : time-increment ratio is very large.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Barkhorn on March 15, 2018, 05:16:08 PM
Could be the same thing that makes mass drivers not work in huge, multi-star systems.  You often can't launch minerals from a planet of one star to a planet of another.  The packets just sit, stuck in space.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 15, 2018, 08:53:58 PM
But... it isn't 'really long ranged shots'.  The B and C components almost overlap!  Oh well, I will do some experiments, it isn't like I have anything else to do with my probe launching scout pinnace.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on March 22, 2018, 09:33:15 PM
In other news, the system that I face checked with basic sensors, either I didn't bother scouting the outermost planet, or that was insufficient to discover precursors, who reacted violently to the survey ship that popped over their heads.  Apparently, 20 minute sub-phase and things just pop into detection range.  Oops.

In other news, the size 50 commercial engine survived a cumulative 47 points of damage, and only failed when it took the last 3 points.  Needless to say, there will be an inquest.  And future geo survey ships may have some sensors, not to keep them OUT of danger, but to provide useful intelligence when the scouting failed.

And 250 ton scouts with basic sensors will no longer be relied upon to give an all clear for a system that was scouted with a large sub-phase increment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on June 10, 2018, 10:51:44 AM
Holy Sh*t

I've started a new game by generating a system with SM, rp-ing as a lost colony of the Terran Federation, the Free Republic of New Rome. (basically playing as Romans in space)

I SM-ed my empire on a suitable moon of a superjovian in the Aquilae 11 system. After setting everything up and starting by ordering my geosurvey ships to survey the nearby planets I've got a nasty surprise. Aliens occupying the same moon with a large fleet of ships orbiting.
I don't remember SM-ing any NPR's or other Empires on my homeworld. How is this possible?  :o

Is there any way out of this?  ;D

https://imgur.com/a/TUggXYa (https://imgur.com/a/TUggXYa)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on June 10, 2018, 07:38:09 PM
I SM-ed my empire on a suitable moon of a superjovian in the Aquilae 11 system. After setting everything up and starting by ordering my geosurvey ships to survey the nearby planets I've got a nasty surprise. Aliens occupying the same moon with a large fleet of ships orbiting.

I don't remember SM-ing any NPR's or other Empires on my homeworld. How is this possible?  :o

Is there any way out of this?  ;D


First, double-check your Default Race (Ctrl F2) isn't still set to Earth/Humans.  Those scary "aliens" might just be your own empire viewed by outsiders.

Then SM Mode delete them.  Alternately, SM Mode generate a few new systems, pick one you like, terraform and move your entire civilization there.  If necessary, SM Mode break the warp point links to your old home.

If you're unhappy about wiping an entire race out of existence, use the 'Add NPR' button on the F9 System screen to spawn a new one.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: JacenHan on June 10, 2018, 10:32:05 PM
What probably happened was that you didn't turn off the "Generate NPRs" option before creating a bunch of systems, so Aurora found a suitable world and spawned one just like in a normal game. As far as I know, there is no way to delete an NPR without database access.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Icecoon on June 11, 2018, 07:00:39 AM
What probably happened was that you didn't turn off the "Generate NPRs" option before creating a bunch of systems, so Aurora found a suitable world and spawned one just like in a normal game. As far as I know, there is no way to delete an NPR without database access.

Yes that may be possible. I remember generating 6-8 systems before I found the right one.

Maybe I should give this nightmare scenario a shot. I don't know on what technological level these aliens are and I'm totally outnumbered (having only two meagerly armed and armored scout frigates). Taking the same system truce mechanic into account, I could build up my navy and ground forces while remaining "friendly" with the "invaders". As soon as I have sufficient ships and ground troops, I will launch an offensive and try to kick these aliens out of my system, or die trying.  ;D

It sounds like a good idea for a fiction or AAR.  :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on June 21, 2018, 04:05:17 PM
That beautiful moment when you find a survey report of;
Duranium 11 664 450 (0.1)
Corbomite 79 655 620 (0.1)
Tritanium 32 148 900 (0.1)
Boronide 54 022 500 (0.1)
Mercassium 77 792 400 (0.1)
Sorium 97 416 900 (0.1)
Uridium 49 491 220 (0.1)
Corundium 19 448 100 (0.1)
Gallicite 87 329 020 (0.1)

just one jump away from Earth. I don't even care about the low accessibility, this will sort me out for decades to come.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Demonides on June 22, 2018, 03:40:37 AM
That beautiful moment when you find a survey report of;
Duranium 11 664 450 (0.1)
Corbomite 79 655 620 (0.1)
Tritanium 32 148 900 (0.1)
Boronide 54 022 500 (0.1)
Mercassium 77 792 400 (0.1)
Sorium 97 416 900 (0.1)
Uridium 49 491 220 (0.1)
Corundium 19 448 100 (0.1)
Gallicite 87 329 020 (0.1)

just one jump away from Earth. I don't even care about the low accessibility, this will sort me out for decades to come.

Geo Team ?  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on June 23, 2018, 07:51:55 PM

Geo Team ?  ;D

Finally finished their survey, got Neutronium 9 272 025 (0.1) and Gallicite went up to 99 500 625 still at (0.1). All I need now is for my terraformers to actually do some work on Lacaille A-VII so I can colonise the system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on June 24, 2018, 04:11:19 PM
I've realized that I should stop building ships! My navy is absolutely massive, with over 4.5 million tons of warships. I've made a spreadsheet to help track how many ships I've got.

(https://i.imgur.com/Rgajotp.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on August 01, 2018, 01:57:40 PM
I'm back to this game after a long time (monitor doesn't support the required resolution and I'd been too lazy to do a workaround).

Started a conventional start (so low tech), 3 of the 5 jump points out of Sol are barren, and the only close in jump point (Mars orbit) is a chain of THREE barren systems before getting anything good.  My poor ships having to crawl forever just to get anyplace interesting  :(

Only saving grace is they're all M and T type stars, so the jump points are all close in.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on August 04, 2018, 10:46:05 AM
Small update, something I overlooked earlier.  While the transit times aren't great for a low tech empire, Alpha Centauri has been kind to me.  It's one jump away from Sol, and in the span of 6 years I've managed to terraform 3 planets to colony cost 0.  They were simply that close to habitable.  All have tons of minerals, though generally 0.1 accessibility, and one even had a small set of ruins.  It's going to be hard to not move the center of my empire into this system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 05, 2018, 06:56:07 AM
Yes! 1st Carrier is coming on line in 3 months time, time to build its fighters... Only to find out that there is no fighter factories in the Empire :o ... Someone forgot to order those factories... ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on August 05, 2018, 12:19:10 PM
Yes! 1st Carrier is coming on line in 3 months time, time to build its fighters... Only to find out that there is no fighter factories in the Empire :o ... Someone forgot to order those factories... ;D
Classic. I've done the same.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: OAM47 on August 05, 2018, 02:02:45 PM
I just did the same, but with missiles.  Having an already spread out empire makes building the infrastructure from the ground up all that more challenging.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 05, 2018, 03:11:26 PM
Arghhh I had The Hood happening to me... My Carrier HMS Audacious being killed by 1 enemy missile. A strength 38 explosion penetrate my armor and set of a series of magazine explosions... :o

A 100000 tons of ship destroyed in 5 seconds, despite the swift destruction a third of its crew managed to get their life pods...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 09, 2018, 10:46:07 AM
Second battle against a hated enemy and 1st and 2nd fleet are defending my forward base at Jamestown and almost all ships are  upgraded to third generation types and using the latest missiles... Jamestown colony and first fleet attacking the enemy missile waves trying to hit 1st Fleet and the battleship "Farnham Castle"... The 55 million humans on the world is given a spectacular sight when planetary based defense bases open fire.

Quote
Furious class Battleship    399 900 tons     9561 Crew     99638.5 BP      TCS 7998  TH 96000  EM 0
12003 km/s     Armour 23-483     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 537     PPV 1571.28
Maint Life 3.08 Years     MSP 80509    AFR 2474%    IFR 34.4%    1YR 12773    5YR 191588    Max Repair 1050 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 120   
Flag Bridge    Troop Capacity: 3 Companies    Magazine 3245   

Ford-Poole 320 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (300)    Power 320    Fuel Use 85.98%    Signature 320    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 135 250 000 Litres    Range 70.8 billion km   (68 days at full power)

Twin Sanderson-Black 15cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (7x2)    Range 360 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 6    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4 3
Grant International 45cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser (1)    Range 384 000km     TS: 12003 km/s     Power 53-6     RM 6    ROF 45        53 53 53 53 53 53 45 39 35 31
Triple Tucker-Wilkins 30cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (5x3)    Range 384 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 72-18     RM 6    ROF 20        24 24 24 24 24 24 20 18 16 14
Quad Hamilton Foundation Gauss Cannon R5-100 Turret (10x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Rice International CIWS-200 (10x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Robson Systems Fire Control S08 192-16000 (5)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
George Megacorp Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 24    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Alexander-Wyatt Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (10)     Total Power Output 160    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Leach & Andrews Aerospace Industries Knight Launcher (100)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 40
Saunders Heavy Industries Kight Fire Control (1)     Range 420.6m km    Resolution 120
ASM Knight MkIII (406)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 88.8m    Range: 255.9m km   WH: 30    Size: 8    TH: 432/259/129

Dixon-Barnett Guardian Search Sensor (1)     GPS 84     Range 6.7m km    MCR 732k km    Resolution 1
Palmer-Swift Huge Search Sensor (1)     GPS 57600     Range 420.7m km    Resolution 120
Davies Technology Huge Early Warning Sensor (1)     GPS 105000     Range 1 155.0m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Not sure if my screen dump shows up... Had to attach it...

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on August 09, 2018, 05:23:03 PM
Pretty!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 13, 2018, 02:32:08 PM
We have reclaimed battle system from the Enemy, there is about 75 ship wrecks scattered around the system and especially around their home world entry point. Our losses so far, 1 BB, 1 CV, 6 Old Burke class and several survey ships.

Enemy losses are closing on 120 ships, they are faster and had faster missiles, but we are closing the gap with almost all of our fleet. 4th fleet is guarding the entry point to our Empire and at Terra, new ships are being constructed, battleships, battle cruisers, carriers, Strike carriers and down to a possible new generation destroyers.

Almost all my ships have paper thin armor, due to that the standard enemy missile have at least a 38 megaton warhead and would probably kill my ships on one hit anyway...

4th Fleet has the following ships:

3 Battle ships


Quote
Furious MkII class Battleship    399 000 tons     9761 Crew     148873 BP      TCS 7980  TH 22809.6  EM 5250
11909 km/s     Armour 22-482     Shields 175-375     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 561     PPV 1571.28
Maint Life 3.16 Years     MSP 126164    AFR 2354%    IFR 32.7%    1YR 18970    5YR 284556    Max Repair 1760 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 126   
Flag Bridge    Troop Capacity: 3 Companies    Magazine 3245   

Banks & Bolton Aero Engines 1760 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (54)    Power 1760    Fuel Use 86.15%    Signature 422.4    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 137 750 000 Litres    Range 72.1 billion km   (70 days at full power)
Wyatt Megacorp Delta R375/96 Shields (70)   Total Fuel Cost  280 Litres per hour  (6 720 per day)

Triple Tucker-Wilkins 30cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (5x3)    Range 384 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 72-18     RM 6    ROF 20        24 24 24 24 24 24 20 18 16 14
Twin Sanderson-Black 15cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (7x2)    Range 360 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 6    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4 3
Grant International 45cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser (1)    Range 384 000km     TS: 11909 km/s     Power 53-6     RM 6    ROF 45        53 53 53 53 53 53 45 39 35 31
Quad Hamilton Foundation Gauss Cannon R5-100 Turret (10x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Rice International CIWS-200 (10x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Robson Systems Fire Control S08 192-16000 (5)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Douglas Cybernetics Fire Control S02 75-25000 (5)    Max Range: 150 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     93 87 80 73 67 60 53 47 40 33
George Megacorp Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 24    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Alexander-Wyatt Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (10)     Total Power Output 160    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Leach & Andrews Aerospace Industries Knight Launcher (100)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 40
Saunders Heavy Industries Kight Fire Control (1)     Range 420.6m km    Resolution 120
ASM Knight MkIII (406)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 88.8m    Range: 255.9m km   WH: 30    Size: 8    TH: 432/259/129

Davies Technology Huge Early Warning Sensor (1)     GPS 105000     Range 1 155.0m km    Resolution 100
Dixon-Barnett Guardian Search Sensor (1)     GPS 84     Range 6.7m km    MCR 732k km    Resolution 1
Palmer-Swift Huge Search Sensor (1)     GPS 57600     Range 420.7m km    Resolution 120

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

7 battlecruisers

Quote
Vanguard MkIII class Battlecruiser    35 000 tons     798 Crew     13755.1999 BP      TCS 700  TH 1824.72  EM 0
10861 km/s     Armour 10-95     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 45     PPV 165.8
Maint Life 2 Years     MSP 6141    AFR 392%    IFR 5.4%    1YR 2046    5YR 30684    Max Repair 844.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 25   
Flag Bridge    Troop Capacity: 2 Companies   

Smart & Lynch International 844.8 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (9)    Power 844.8    Fuel Use 101.08%    Signature 202.752    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 9 250 000 Litres    Range 47.1 billion km   (50 days at full power)

Kennedy Ordnance 30cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 384 000km     TS: 10861 km/s     Power 24-6     RM 5    ROF 20        24 24 24 24 24 20 17 15 13 12
Quad Johnston Systems 20cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (4x4)    Range 384 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 40-24     RM 5    ROF 10        10 10 10 10 10 8 7 6 5 5
Thompson-Norman CIWS-160 (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Robson Systems Fire Control S08 192-16000 (2)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
George Megacorp Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (13)     Total Power Output 104    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

9 Heavy crusiers

Quote
Amazon MkII class Heavy Cruiser    30 000 tons     841 Crew     9411.2999 BP      TCS 600  TH 1216.56  EM 0
8448 km/s     Armour 6-86     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 52     PPV 112
Maint Life 3.18 Years     MSP 6274    AFR 225%    IFR 3.1%    1YR 935    5YR 14018    Max Repair 844.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 18   
Magazine 2068   

Smart & Lynch International 844.8 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (6)    Power 844.8    Fuel Use 101.08%    Signature 202.752    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 5 620 000 Litres    Range 33.4 billion km   (45 days at full power)

Rice International CIWS-200 (2x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Leach & Andrews Aerospace Industries Knight Launcher (14)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 40
Saunders Heavy Industries Kight Fire Control (2)     Range 420.6m km    Resolution 120
ASM Knight MkIII (258)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 88.8m    Range: 255.9m km   WH: 30    Size: 8    TH: 432/259/129

Palmer-Swift Huge Search Sensor (1)     GPS 57600     Range 420.7m km    Resolution 120

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

1 Area Defense Cruiser

Quote
Ticonderoga MkII class Area Defence Cruiser    37 000 tons     727 Crew     13778.5 BP      TCS 740  TH 2112  EM 0
11891 km/s     Armour 5-98     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 53     PPV 83.98
Maint Life 1.6 Years     MSP 5353    AFR 476%    IFR 6.6%    1YR 2424    5YR 36353    Max Repair 1760 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 181   
Troop Capacity: 1 Company    Magazine 1600   

Banks & Bolton Aero Engines 1760 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (5)    Power 1760    Fuel Use 86.15%    Signature 422.4    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 12 000 000 Litres    Range 67.8 billion km   (65 days at full power)

Quad Hamilton Foundation Gauss Cannon R5-100 Turret (1x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Rice International CIWS-200 (2x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Robson Systems Fire Control S08 192-16000 (1)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74

Sims-Farmer Megacorp Guardian Launcher (40)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Dixon-Barnett Guardian Missile Suite (10)     Range 10.1m km    Resolution 1
AMM Guardian MkIII (1600)  Speed: 96 000 km/s   End: 0.9m    Range: 5.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 2304/1382/691

Summers Heavy Industries Missile Search Sensor (1)     GPS 280     Range 67.2m km    MCR 7.3m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

10 Light Cruisers

Quote
Hunt MkII class Light Cruiser    24 050 tons     292 Crew     6729.2499 BP      TCS 481  TH 1013.76  EM 0
8781 km/s     Armour 4-74     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 10     PPV 210
Maint Life 1.38 Years     MSP 1749    AFR 462%    IFR 6.4%    1YR 995    5YR 14930    Max Repair 844.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 26   
Magazine 1400   

Smart & Lynch International 844.8 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (5)    Power 844.8    Fuel Use 101.08%    Signature 202.752    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 5 250 000 Litres    Range 38.9 billion km   (51 days at full power)

Rice International CIWS-200 (1x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Carr Biotech Paladin Launcher (100)    Missile Size 14    Hangar Reload 105 minutes    MF Reload 17.5 hours
Saunders Heavy Industries Kight Fire Control (2)     Range 420.6m km    Resolution 120
ASM Paladin MkII (100)  Speed: 82 500 km/s   End: 23.7m    Range: 117.3m km   WH: 50    Size: 13.962    TH: 440/264/132

Palmer-Swift Huge Search Sensor (1)     GPS 57600     Range 420.7m km    Resolution 120

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


35 Missile Destroyers

Quote
Burke MkIII class Heavy Destroyer    15 000 tons     348 Crew     5386.45 BP      TCS 300  TH 844.8  EM 0
11733 km/s     Armour 3-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 26     PPV 48
Maint Life 1.13 Years     MSP 1347    AFR 300%    IFR 4.2%    1YR 1066    5YR 15989    Max Repair 1760 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 52   
Magazine 984   

Banks & Bolton Aero Engines 1760 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 1760    Fuel Use 86.15%    Signature 422.4    Exp 22%
Fuel Capacity 3 955 000 Litres    Range 55.1 billion km   (54 days at full power)

Rice International CIWS-200 (1x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Leach & Andrews Aerospace Industries Knight Launcher (6)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 40
Fraser-Hayward Burke Fire Control (1)     Range 259.2m km    Resolution 100
ASM Knight MkIII (123)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 88.8m    Range: 255.9m km   WH: 30    Size: 8    TH: 432/259/129

Rowe-Hicks Aerospace Fighter Search Sensor Small (1)     GPS 21     Range 3.8m km    MCR 412k km    Resolution 1
Connor-Ali Corporation Active Search Sensor MR345-R100 (1)     GPS 14400     Range 345.6m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Destroyer Escorts, 5 modern MkIII and 9 older MkII

Quote
Quebec MkIII class Destroyer Escort    9 350 tons     181 Crew     3427.05 BP      TCS 187  TH 549.12  EM 0
12235 km/s     Armour 5-39     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 12
Maint Life 3.68 Years     MSP 1145    AFR 139%    IFR 1.9%    1YR 131    5YR 1971    Max Repair 208 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 16   
Magazine 636   

Page-Lyons 208 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (11)    Power 208    Fuel Use 29.29%    Signature 49.92    Exp 13%
Fuel Capacity 1 250 000 Litres    Range 82.2 billion km   (77 days at full power)

Rice International CIWS-200 (1x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Sims-Farmer Megacorp Guardian Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Dixon-Barnett Guardian Missile Suite (3)     Range 10.1m km    Resolution 1
AMM Guardian MkIII (636)  Speed: 96 000 km/s   End: 0.9m    Range: 5.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 2304/1382/691

Barrett Biotech Active Search Sensor MR74-R3 (1)     GPS 540     Range 74.8m km    Resolution 3

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
Quebec MkII class Destroyer Escort    9 050 tons     164 Crew     1655.8 BP      TCS 181  TH 1250  EM 0
6906 km/s     Armour 5-38     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 12
Maint Life 4.04 Years     MSP 572    AFR 131%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 56    5YR 843    Max Repair 84 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 30   
Magazine 636   

Peacock International 125 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (10)    Power 125    Fuel Use 38%    Signature 125    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1 250 000 Litres    Range 65.4 billion km   (109 days at full power)

Thompson-Norman CIWS-160 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Sims-Farmer Megacorp Guardian Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Dixon-Barnett Guardian Missile Suite (3)     Range 10.1m km    Resolution 1
AMM Guardian MkIII (636)  Speed: 96 000 km/s   End: 0.9m    Range: 5.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 2304/1382/691

Dixon-Barnett Guardian Search Sensor (1)     GPS 84     Range 6.7m km    MCR 732k km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 20, 2018, 01:25:14 AM
Time to invade the Enemies home system. 12 BB, 9 BC, 15 CA, 22 CL, 78 HDD and 17 DE... Prepare for battle!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on August 20, 2018, 03:29:31 PM
Yeah, that's a pretty impressive fleet. Good luck!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 25, 2018, 10:38:55 AM
The fleet has jumped into the lions den, after 25 seconds, search sensors start to work again, some 75 millions km away 2 groups of enemy combatants are spotted, one north of our entry point and one SSE, the northern one have 7 destroyers and the other group has 9 large heavy cruisers. 10 seconds later the fleet opens fire at the 2 target. 65 minutes later the feared word sounds all throe the fleet, "Vampire from northern group!" 15 seconds later the next warning, but this time from the southern group...
All escorts activates their secondary sensors and prepares to fire at the incoming missiles. 30 seconds later a second wave appears from the north and 15 seconds after that another wave from the south... AMM starts firing and then keeps on for the next 11.5 minutes before destroying the last enemy ASM. 22 minutes after the last enemy missile is destroyed all 7 destroyers are hit by a avalanche of missiles and all are destroyed with in seconds of each other. The second group is trying to evade but is destroyed 14 minutes later...

A third group of two missile battle cruisers are soon in the way and promptly destroyed after a futile attack of 20 waves of 20 size 7 missiles.

Vice Admiral Adam May in the BB Farnham Castle is looking worried... Its to easy...

Then suddenly a sensor technician shouts a fourth contact is firming up... "Ohhh crap Sir! Ahh sorry... Admiral 65 small ships are closing fast from the north, the computer gives them a name, Skory, a 1000 tons ... 19000+ km/s in speed"

May thought this could get ugly, our own heavy bomber craft had 5 size 7 launchers...

Quote
Daring class Attack Craft    1000 tons     7 Crew     690.5 BP      TCS 20  TH 92.16  EM 0
19200 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 1     PPV 5.25
Annual Failure Rate: 0%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 108 MSP
Magazine 35   Spare Berths 10   

Wong & Hicks 96 EP Inertial Fusion Drive FTR (4)    Power 96    Fuel Use 246.92%    Armour 0    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 100 000 Litres    Range 7.3 billion km   (4 days at full power)

Wilkins-Turner Size 7 Box Launcher (5)    Missile Size 7    Hangar Reload 52.5 minutes    MF Reload 8.7 hours
Finch-Howe Electronics Industries Missile Fire Control FC1814-R100 (1)     Range 1 814.4m km    Resolution 100
Qara Anti-ship Missile (5)  Speed: 43 200 km/s   End: 698.8m    Range: 1811.3m km   WH: 37    Size: 7    TH: 144 / 86 / 43

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

But having 13 DEs still having a lot of AMMs in magazines it shouldn't be a problem... But still...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 25, 2018, 01:26:25 PM
"Sir! I have analyzed the enemy approach and I do not think they are using missiles... Most probably some kind of beam weapon... They are closing very fast and we should get a lock on when they close to around 10 million km from us, so we should be able to hit them soon."
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 25, 2018, 01:43:35 PM
Ensign?! Dont you thinks it a bit overkill to fire 100 missiles at one small craft?

I need to stop using the auto fire option, sometime ::) it goes overboard...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on August 25, 2018, 08:11:12 PM
YOU USE AUTO-FIRE?!?!?

 :o :o :o :o

Don't :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on August 25, 2018, 11:01:35 PM
Usually on my beam and missile escorts... I forgot that I put them all under auto fire...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on September 05, 2018, 12:38:50 AM
497 wrecks... Enemy wrecks! ;D My poor Search and Rescue button is glowing... We really need a auto command for S&R.

Now my army is moving closer to his home system, 4 Corps of 3 Armored and 1 Mechanized divisions, 1 Mechanized Corps of 1 Armored and 3 Mechanized Divisions and 1 Corps of Space Marines with 4 Divisions of Assault Marines to take a foothold on ground. In total 24 Divisions.... Not sure if its enough, might have to bomb a little... My Replacement troops are upp to 64 Regiments and should land with the Second wave... Still some months before that happens.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on September 05, 2018, 06:10:04 AM
14th July 2059 21.30

4 Divisions of Space Marines descends from the sky, landing lightly, spreading out and securing a large area for the second wave of 20 divisions. No losses reported so far and no enemy forces... ???

14th July 2059 02.01

16 divisions have been landed in the Second Wave, still no respons from the defenders.

14th July 2059 03.36

68 regiments of replacement troops are delivered.

15th July 2059 07.55

The last 4 Divisions are being ferried down from the old transports they had to use.

15th July 2059 08.13

Suddenly a great roar went up around the human perimeters, several hundred battalion sized units started to attack. The point units started to take casualties almost immediately, from 2% up to 34%, hardest hit seems to be 2nd Marine division with 7 out of 16 battalions taking losses, we counterattacked and hit several enemy battalions hard, up to 66% in losses.

Intelligence report shows no armored units in the front line, mostly mechanized units, militia and rear area units.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TMaekler on September 05, 2018, 06:13:35 AM
68 replacement? Seems a little overkill, doesn't it?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on September 05, 2018, 07:24:46 AM
68 replacement? Seems a little overkill, doesn't it?

Maybe... But I used 5 in the first 10 days of fighting... Not sure how the program works but they had around C5300 and I C19900 So almost 4-1 but its still going slow... Used my battleships to pick of some targets, in 5 minutes of bombardment the lost around C2000, but its getting really cold on the surface now...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TMaekler on September 05, 2018, 10:41:28 AM
Maybe... But I used 5 in the first 10 days of fighting... Not sure how the program works but they had around C5300 and I C19900 So almost 4-1 but its still going slow... Used my battleships to pick of some targets, in 5 minutes of bombardment the lost around C2000, but its getting really cold on the surface now...
Well, maybe it is not that much overkill... would be interesting to do some testings here. Although, maybe waiting for C# and do it there. Guess, there will be a lot of change in that area...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on September 06, 2018, 10:12:02 AM
They are going fast... Between 5-9 each 5 day cycle... Down to less than 40 now... And my enemy is also gaining combat power... I am moving in occupation forces now, but that's only garrison units...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on September 06, 2018, 02:13:19 PM
16th October 2059 13.13
The sound of silence descends on the planet, the last defenses have been breached and the last rulers of this planet has been taken, dead or alive.
Losses have been severe, mostly on the defending side, suicide bombers have killed many Kingdom soldiers.
But the planet have surrendered, much loot and technical plans have been taken.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: jwoodward48 on September 18, 2018, 12:07:45 PM
The Brazwell class Jump Scout entered the Delta Pavonis system on the 18th of November, 2036, at 2:00:11 PM.  The 500-ton ship's sensors detected a habitable planet in the inner stellar system, and began traveling at 2512 km/s toward the planet.  Exactly two days later, 34 750-ton ships with a thermal signature of 160 appeared on the Brazwell's sensors just before the Brazwell was destroyed in a barrage of meson strikes.

The Shining Garden has determined that this implies that the Delta Pavonis aliens have exceptional detection and speed, and so have decided to build the response fleet around a doctrine of slow ships with overwhelming defensive firepower.  However, the technology for such a fleet still needs to be researched, so the fleet construction will likely require several years.  It can only be hoped that the Delta Pavonis aliens are not aware of jump point theory, as otherwise Earth would be open and defenseless against the aliens and their meson weapons.

Meanwhile, colonization of the Jovian moons continues on schedule, with 0. 81 million colonists each now on Io and Europa.  The short-term goal is to set up a detection and fleet resupply base, with a secondary purpose of providing markets for interplanetary trade to bolster the Garden's economy.  The long-term goal is to terraform the moons and install hundreds of mines to extract the plentiful duranium, boronide, sorium, corundium, and to a lesser extent gallicite and mercassium.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 01, 2018, 02:43:23 PM
Doom and gloom for the Solarian League. The dangerous inhabitants of Van Maanens Star, first spotted in the Van Maanen's Star system, and later found in Ross 128, linked to Sol by Wolf 359, have also been found in AD Leonis, the other JP leading from Wolf 359. Five of their vessels just followed and destroyed the Jackdaw in Wolf 359 after destroying its two sister ships in AD Leonis. A retribution force of a destroyer squadron is on the way, hopefully it will end better than the last engagement between the aliens and the SLN.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: SevenOfCarina on October 02, 2018, 07:51:22 AM
Earth is dead.

No.

Earth was murdered.

Why?

Ten billion are dead.

Two hundred million live.

And we promise this :

You. Will. Burn.



Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MasonMac on October 08, 2018, 01:22:04 PM
Famous scientist Alex Lang, considered one of the smartest minds in all time, and who has seen the rise of the UEG, has just passed away at the long age of 88. The United Earth Government is building a memorial for him in the martian city of Possidebit Pax.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 09, 2018, 08:09:24 AM
Finally launched a colony in Ross-154. With plenty of judicious terraforming I've made it perfect for humans, just need to get the ever-growing commercial sector plenty of contracts to shift automated mines into the system. Debating where to locate a new colony, and it's looking to have to be Ross 780 or Tau Ceti due to the combination of low colony costs and plentiful mineral resources in the area.

Still waiting to build new shipyards so I can start building colliers and supply ships to support an offensive through Wolf 359 into Ross 128 and AD Leonis, though I need to be careful as Van Maanens Star is presumably linked to one, given my first encounter with suspected Spoilers was there.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Adseria on October 09, 2018, 11:51:49 AM
"Benjamin Franklin has joined your civilian administration. Administration Rating: 2 Mining Bonus: 5% Population Growth Bonus: 5%"

I'm not exactly short of administrators...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 09, 2018, 12:04:45 PM
Bad times! Spoilers have ventured out of Van Maanen's Star into Alpha Centauri and destroyed a civilian freighter that was en-route to delivery vital infrastructure. Going to have to sit a destroyer squadron on the JP now and see if I can catch the ship.

Oops. Turns out they've penetrated into Sol from Alpha Centauri now. Hopefully that destroyer squadron gets there before my own cargo group gets destroyed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on October 09, 2018, 09:05:02 PM
Oops. Turns out they've penetrated into Sol from Alpha Centauri now. Hopefully that destroyer squadron gets there before my own cargo group gets destroyed.
That's always a classic blunder :D I've experienced it many times!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 11, 2018, 02:17:24 AM
That's always a classic blunder :D I've experienced it many times!

Turns out they may well be an entirely different Spoiler to what I'd believed. :-\ Didn't realise I'd had Invaders turned on in the settings.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on October 11, 2018, 10:03:07 AM
Oops. Turns out they've penetrated into Sol from Alpha Centauri now. Hopefully that destroyer squadron gets there before my own cargo group gets destroyed.
That's always a classic blunder :D I've experienced it many times!

Second only to "Never get involved in a land war in Asia"?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 11, 2018, 02:49:59 PM
Oops. Turns out they've penetrated into Sol from Alpha Centauri now. Hopefully that destroyer squadron gets there before my own cargo group gets destroyed.
That's always a classic blunder :D I've experienced it many times!

Second only to "Never get involved in a land war in Asia"?

Or "Don't invade Russia in the middle of winter"

In other news, I did not have that particular Spoiler enabled, so now I am doubly weirded out.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on October 15, 2018, 02:49:16 AM
Started a new game for a change of pace. Going quite nicely, only explored three systems but found a massive bounty of 442 installations on a planet in Barnards Star, and also founded a colony in Ross 128 thanks to the millions of tons of minerals in the system.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on October 15, 2018, 04:20:08 PM
Oops. Turns out they've penetrated into Sol from Alpha Centauri now. Hopefully that destroyer squadron gets there before my own cargo group gets destroyed.
That's always a classic blunder :D I've experienced it many times!

Second only to "Never get involved in a land war in Asia"?

Or "Don't invade Russia in the middle of winter"

In other news, I did not have that particular Spoiler enabled, so now I am doubly weirded out.

Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

though, being from Australia, I have no fear of deadly Iocaine powder!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MasonMac on October 20, 2018, 07:14:00 PM
I have had this wormhole in my system that houses my military shipyards for a little less than 75 years, and there are perhaps 100 wrecks by now, and its so annoying. I have adapted my ships enough where a single ship can take out an entire fleet of invaders. But it can take upwards of an hour because of the invader missile spam
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 04, 2018, 01:04:59 AM
Ooouuups!? Who put his foot in his/hers mouth? My loong time allied race turned enemy... from +9200 in diplomatic rating to -192.... The bad news is that he has some 80 warships in SOL system... The good news is that my entire fleet his home and is almost to a ship polished and trained for a fight... As we speak the 400 fighters, 80 interceptors and 200 heavy torpedo bombers are launching from their carriers, from bases on Earth, Luna and Mars some 300 older fighters are also being deployed. Almost 40 FACs have been dispatch from Earth to attack the main concentration of  enemy ships. The rest of the fleet is being scrambled to fight the turncoats... Arghh this will be hard on my civilian shipping lines, some 300 ships have been built by them and at least a third is in harms way.

The plan is to use the new torpedo bombers with their 100 megaton warheads to kill as many capital ships as possible and then follow up with my fighters missiles to mop up any survivors or lesser ships, my large Shipkiller ASM is of size 40 and have never been used in anger before... They might bee to easy to kill, we shall see, "only" being able to launch 200 might be a problem if the enemy fleet has a lot of AMM combatants, but my fighters missiles is 5000 km/s slower and of an older modell and less than a quarter of hits strength...

8 Heavy Carriers
10 Escort Carriers
5 Battlecruisers
18 Escort Cruisers
18 Light Cruisers
12 Frigates
48 FACs and 5 Scout FACs
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MasonMac on November 04, 2018, 08:36:24 AM
Wow, thats going to take a while to finish.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 06, 2018, 04:02:50 PM
Had my first encounter with spoilers in my current game. I'm so outclassed it's not even funny. Had two survey ships get destroyed while they try to perform a squadron transit for my three destroyers sat on the DX Cancri-Sirius JP, and I've emptied every single box launcher to no avail.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on November 06, 2018, 11:11:29 PM
That's the beauty of Aurora  :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 09, 2018, 04:11:48 AM
First carrier strike kills almost 40 enemy ships, second wave have launched and have turned back to rearm... Someone forgot to tell first wave to turn back so they sat on the launchpoint and looking at the soundless stars that flamed up and died shortly after. A small picture of the second wave of missiles and torpedo's...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 09, 2018, 06:24:05 AM
Second wave... Ineffective....

First Space Lord Alicia Kirk orders battle fleet to close and fire an overwhelming salvo from all light cruisers and frigates.

Meantime in the enemy home system, Epsilion Indi and were the British Empire have an mining colony on the 4th planet, its only defence the battlestation Gazala.

Sir!!! Enemy FACs appeared on our sensors, at least 50... No 61, 62,63... Crap if they are as ours they will be able to fire somewhere around 900 missiles...

Quote
Gazala class Battlestation    198 250 tons     2815 Crew     29643.7 BP      TCS 3965  TH 96  EM 15000
201 km/s     Armour 20-302     Shields 500-300     Sensors 84/84/0/0     Damage Control Rating 130     PPV 552.7
Maint Life 1.28 Years     MSP 19345    AFR 3144%    IFR 43.7%    1YR 12388    5YR 185821    Max Repair 922 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Flight Crew Berths 1   
Hangar Deck Capacity 5000 tons     Magazine 3148    Cargo Handling Multiplier 200   
Recreational Facilities

Rowe & Matthews 800 EP Commercial Inertial Fusion Drive (1)    Power 800    Fuel Use 3.54%    Signature 96    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 250 000 Litres    Range 83.0 billion km   (4781 days at full power)
Read-Rahman Space & Security Xi R300/480 Shields (100)   Total Fuel Cost  2 000 Litres per hour  (48 000 per day)

Triple Thomson-Wong Manufacturing 15cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (5x3)    Range 360 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 18-18     RM 6    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4 3
Twin Bishop-Wilson Gauss Cannon R4-100 Turret (18x10)    Range 40 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Simpson Syndicate CIWS-320 (10x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Barber Incorporated Fire Control S08 192-32000 (5)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 32000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Greenwood-Bryan Turbines Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.2 (6)     Total Power Output 86.4    Armour 0    Exp 16%
White Technology Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 3.6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Marsh Armaments Fast defender Launcher (10)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Harvey-Field Missile Fire Control FC11-R1 (1)     Range 11.5m km    Resolution 1
AMM Lightning MkII (1054)  Speed: 96 000 km/s   End: 3.7m    Range: 21.2m km   WH: 2    Size: 1    TH: 960/576/288
ASM Nova MkIII (349)  Speed: 25 000 km/s   End: 82.3m    Range: 123.5m km   WH: 28    Size: 6    TH: 225/135/67

Henry Aerospace Industries Active Search Sensor MR1920-R100 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 1 920.0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR50-R1 (1)     GPS 360     Range 50.4m km    MCR 5.5m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-84 (1)     Sensitivity 84     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  84m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-84 (1)     Sensitivity 84     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  84m km

ECCM-1 (1)         ECM 20

Strike Group
1x Hawker Typhoon Scout MkII Fighter-Scout   Speed: 21145 km/s    Size: 4.54
21x Hawker Typhoon MkIV Fighter-bomber   Speed: 21621 km/s    Size: 4.44

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on November 09, 2018, 12:27:28 PM
That is one big ass station  :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 09, 2018, 03:07:43 PM
So I've now got a jump cruiser, six destroyers and six destroyer escorts in service, about 2.5 generations beyond the battle squadrone destroyed in DZ Cancri, still trying to explore the outer layers of Barnard's Star, and just got this news

Code: [Select]
1st December 2077 00:44:41,PSR,Barnards Star,The April Rhines Geology Team has completed its surface-based geological survey of Barnards Star-A I
1st December 2077 00:44:41,PSR,Barnards Star,Additional deposits of Tritanium have been found on Barnards Star-A I by the April Rhines Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 89 491 600 to 104 652 900 tons.
1st December 2077 00:44:41,PSR,Barnards Star,Additional deposits of Mercassium have been found on Barnards Star-A I by the April Rhines Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 18 403 800 to 37 945 600 tons.
1st December 2077 00:44:41,PSR,Barnards Star,As a result of the mineral survey by the April Rhines Geology Team, the accessbility of Sorium on Barnards Star-A I has increased from 0.1 to 0.8
1st December 2077 00:44:41,PSR,Barnards Star,Additional deposits of Gallicite have been found on Barnards Star-A I by the April Rhines Geology Team. The total amount available has increased from 62 722 010 to 81 360 400 tons.

Beautiful!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on November 09, 2018, 04:52:43 PM
I'm curious, what's the availability/amount of the now adjusted mineral deposits?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 10, 2018, 04:12:09 AM
I'm curious, what's the availability/amount of the now adjusted mineral deposits?

Tritanium at 0.1, Mercassium at 0.1, Gallicite at 0.9. I'm not too bothered about the low availability because I'm slowly stripmining the worlds I own. For example, Venus has around 262 automated mines in service simply because it was closer to Earth, whereas Barnards Star is developed enough to start building its own mines (Plus I've not been able to finish exploring the system yet)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on November 10, 2018, 03:18:58 PM
Then the change in Sorium availability and the about 30% increase in Gallicite deposits are the real prize here, simply because 0.1 deposits are a pain to dig up. I mean, you'd basically need 10 times the number of mines for the same amount of output for the entire 100MT Tritanium and 38MT Mercassium load. With Mercassium that's not really much of a problem, for all that it's needed for crew spaces and research centers, but if you are a heavy missile user Barnard's Star A-I is basically useless as a major ordnance or raw materials source.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on November 10, 2018, 08:18:42 PM
Then the change in Sorium availability and the about 30% increase in Gallicite deposits are the real prize here, simply because 0.1 deposits are a pain to dig up. I mean, you'd basically need 10 times the number of mines for the same amount of output for the entire 100MT Tritanium and 38MT Mercassium load. With Mercassium that's not really much of a problem, for all that it's needed for crew spaces and research centers, but if you are a heavy missile user Barnard's Star A-I is basically useless as a major ordnance or raw materials source.

Some very good points. At this point it's really a research powerhouse, thanks to a P&P 30% anomaly, and the only military use it has, thanks to its single JP, is a shipyard to build a test-bed laser-PD destroyer.

In other news, I invaded DX Cancri again. Fired two salvoes of sixty missiles from my three cruisers at the Golem vessels, neither taking so much as a scratch, and they're taking a fair proportion out with PD of their own. Good thing each cruiser has around sixty box launchers left each, plus three railgun-armed destroyers on their way in to provide backup and also to get some use out of the last-gen missiles they have in their own box-launchers.

Addendum; Whew! It took three hundred missiles, but I finally destroyed them both!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 13, 2018, 11:31:34 AM
That is one big ass station  :o

Yep! They are usually used as first defence of critical colonies or FOBs, were my PDCs defences will take time to be built up, then they are being pulled back to Earth and overhauled for its next deployment.

In the case of Epsilon Indi it totally failed in its defence of its colony site... Out of 965 missiles it killed 162 missiles, the rest, 802 slammed into the colony killing all 13.5 million, its 2 armored brigades and 3 brigades of construction troops. As well as 3 Hadrianus wall and 4 Antonine Walls PDC being assembled... :'(

Then they turned and joined the enemy side >:( :o

I presume that has to do with that the colony was destroyed?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on November 13, 2018, 11:39:13 AM
Yeah if a colony gets hit hard enough, it will surrender and anything in orbit has a chance of surrendering with the colony. I know that NPR ships elsewhere can surrender as well but I'm not sure about player ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on November 13, 2018, 11:46:07 AM
Get hit hard enough... The bombs would have killed  up to 850 million so I dont know who would surrender... Ohh well some traitors to kill later... ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on November 16, 2018, 10:24:53 AM
So, good news bad news.

Surveyors discover a C&P +40% anomaly.  Woot!  On the other side of two nebula systems, one of which has Precursors.  Oh well, we WILL get there.  It is also 20 billion km out, so it will be a while.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on November 16, 2018, 11:50:59 AM
That's like the ultimate remote secret research facility. I hope you put the research labs inside a volcano too.  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 11, 2018, 07:10:33 PM
My massive military game is still going on, however things have quieted down now. I'm just about ready to bring the new generation of ships online after their shakedown cruises and training, and the Jiadliaokl Coalition hasn't sent an attack against me for nearly a year, which is both relieving and terrifying. If they've been able to destroy entire battlefleets of mine with their trickle of fleets, how the heck can I stop an entire year or two's worth of shipbuilding? The answer is even more shipbuilding of my own. All of my ~80 military slipways have been busy, refitting and constructing the newest generation of warships, and updating the earlier ships of the generation to new sensor and fire control standards. I'm almost at 1000 warships now, not including fighters!

(https://i.imgur.com/5eHYJ5Sl.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on December 12, 2018, 11:07:06 AM
That is a lot of ships! Don't think I've ever gotten anywhere close.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on December 12, 2018, 11:49:42 AM
You need a rather sturdy economy to handle that level of production.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 12, 2018, 03:56:32 PM
That is a lot of ships! Don't think I've ever gotten anywhere close.

Indeed it is, this navy is the fruit of nearly 15 years of war with an NPR with a staggering tech advantage against me. I've lost around 200 or so warships, around 1.5 million tons total to these guys over the years. I even ran out of crew to man my ships for a few years due to the amount of new ships being launched and the amount of casualties needing replacement.

You need a rather sturdy economy to handle that level of production.

Luckily I've got 13 colonies backing me up, including both Earth and another NPR homeworld I conquered around 30 or 40 years back. I've gotten lucky with the mineral generation too, so I've got a few incredibly rich automines, and colonies, which gives me a combined mineral output of around 600k tons every year. Nearly a quarter of that production is from one of my colonies, aptly named Hephaestus. The civilian sector is booming too, with all of my freighters busy hauling minerals and PDCs around, I've had to really rely on the civvies to handle the transport of initial colony infrastructure and automine equipment. I've got 9 shipping companies, totaling around 400 or so civilian ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: King-Salomon on December 12, 2018, 04:01:18 PM
Luckily I've got 13 colonies backing me up, including both Earth and another NPR homeworld I conquered around 30 or 40 years back. I've gotten lucky with the mineral generation too, so I've got a few incredibly rich automines, and colonies, which gives me a combined mineral output of around 600k tons every year. Nearly a quarter of that production is from one of my colonies, aptly named Hephaestus. The civilian sector is booming too, with all of my freighters busy hauling minerals and PDCs around, I've had to really rely on the civvies to handle the transport of initial colony infrastructure and automine equipment. I've got 9 shipping companies, totaling around 400 or so civilian ships.

 :o :o :o

Where is the AAR/story of this?

 :o :o :o
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on December 12, 2018, 04:02:22 PM
Luckily I've got 13 colonies backing me up, including both Earth and another NPR homeworld I conquered around 30 or 40 years back. I've gotten lucky with the mineral generation too, so I've got a few incredibly rich automines, and colonies, which gives me a combined mineral output of around 600k tons every year. Nearly a quarter of that production is from one of my colonies, aptly named Hephaestus. The civilian sector is booming too, with all of my freighters busy hauling minerals and PDCs around, I've had to really rely on the civvies to handle the transport of initial colony infrastructure and automine equipment. I've got 9 shipping companies, totaling around 400 or so civilian ships.

 :o :o :o

Where is the AAR/story of this?

 :o :o :o

13 Colonies?  I suggest it was made into a tv series called Battlestar Galactica...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 12, 2018, 07:00:50 PM
:o :o :o

Where is the AAR/story of this?

 :o :o :o

I've been debating getting an AAR going of this game, and I think there's a post in this thread of one of the bigger battles I've had. But by the time the game actually started getting really interesting, I felt it was too far into the game to get started on an AAR. That, and a mixture of me being a very slow player and me being busy have put it on hold. If there's interest, once finals are good and done with, I might toss up a couple posts about the first offensive against the Jiadliaokl, once my new fleets are trained up to 100% and I get enough fuel and missiles set aside (I have about 60k missiles in my fleet all together). That, and once I actually find one of their systems. I've scouted 4 systems down the chain they come from, but I still haven't detected any colonies of theirs.

edit: Also one fun note about that NPR homeworld I conquered way back when. After all was said and done, I had lost around 30 ships or so, with the aliens, the Belazura, losing 40 or 50. After I sent in my troop transports and conquered/bombarded the planet into submission, I did a quick check around the system to make sure there weren't any other colonies or outposts to worry about. After taking care of whatever was left, my fleets left the system to return to Earth for repair and refits (I had accidentally destroyed all their shipyards with autotargeting missiles.. oops..), a pair of enemy cruisers comes out of deep space, gets detected by the sensors on the planet, and so I wheel the fleet around to go and take them out. It was too late, as the enemy ships had just gotten into firing range by the time my ships got back in system. I guess this race didn't like the prospect of new management, and so the alien ships loosed their entire stock of missiles on their homeworld, turning a solid half of the population and infrastructure into glass. Even now, 30-40 years later, the radiation is still dying down.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: El Pip on December 13, 2018, 04:26:52 PM
I've been debating getting an AAR going of this game, and I think there's a post in this thread of one of the bigger battles I've had. But by the time the game actually started getting really interesting, I felt it was too far into the game to get started on an AAR.
I would really enjoy an AAR that did just start with an already established empire. Sometimes the "Race developed TN tech, finds jump points, builds terrible ships, etc" build up can be a bit of a slog as we all know where it's going.

Plus it can be a waste of precious time and motivation. Look at the number of AARs around here where after all the effort of build up and establishing back story, they just slam to a halt as things are about to get interesting.

Basically I'd be interested in seeing a write up of a properly equipped fleet smashing into an enemy system and looking for vengeance. :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on December 13, 2018, 06:17:15 PM
Yup, there is a shortage of well established AARs for sure. Nothing wrong with starting "in the middle", so to speak.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on December 13, 2018, 07:46:00 PM
Plus it can be a waste of precious time and motivation. Look at the number of AARs around here where after all the effort of build up and establishing back story, they just slam to a halt as things are about to get interesting.

Yeah, I wrote one of those.  Just about time to start a first war, the game crashed and it was over!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: misanthropope on December 13, 2018, 10:18:39 PM
there is an heuristic for writing that goes something like:  your story will generally be improved by ripping out the first twenty pages.  i had learned it by the name "checkhov's law" but the internet at least things checkhov's law is a very different expression of a similar principle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 13, 2018, 10:37:01 PM
Well, that settles it! I'll see if I can't get started on writing something up. I guess a good question to ask now is... where to post it?

edit: Quick analysis of the fleets I'm going to be using, and the total number of warships in the mainline fleets:

Off-Topic: show
Main Line:

Battlefleets 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8
Crusade Fleet (with Titan) 1
Expeditionary Fleets 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9
Patrol Squadron 1

Support Fleets:

Tanker Fleets 1, 2, 3
Transport Flotilla 2
Dropship Flotilla 1
Resupply Fleets 3, 4, 5, 6
Repair Ship 1
Bombardment Group 1
Survey Ships 1, 2, 3, 4

Total Warships in the Main Line:
TT:    1
DN:   7
CV:   4
BB:   15
CLE:  17
CC:   35
CA:   55
CVL:  30
DDG: 65
DD:   45
DE:   25
FF:   115
ES:   52
FB:   552
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Erik L on December 14, 2018, 12:58:12 PM
Well, that settles it! I'll see if I can't get started on writing something up. I guess a good question to ask now is... where to post it?

edit: Quick analysis of the fleets I'm going to be using, and the total number of warships in the mainline fleets:

Off-Topic: show
Main Line:

Battlefleets 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8
Crusade Fleet (with Titan) 1
Expeditionary Fleets 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9
Patrol Squadron 1

Support Fleets:

Tanker Fleets 1, 2, 3
Transport Flotilla 2
Dropship Flotilla 1
Resupply Fleets 3, 4, 5, 6
Repair Ship 1
Bombardment Group 1
Survey Ships 1, 2, 3, 4

Total Warships in the Main Line:
TT:    1
DN:   7
CV:   4
BB:   15
CLE:  17
CC:   35
CA:   55
CVL:  30
DDG: 65
DD:   45
DE:   25
FF:   115
ES:   52
FB:   552


The fiction forum?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on December 14, 2018, 07:38:42 PM
Oh yeah, the fiction forum exits. Doh. Don't know I forgot about that... I visit it nearly every week!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 24, 2019, 08:03:24 AM
Just encountered a new NPR.  They call themselves the Batman Republic.  Should I be worried?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on January 24, 2019, 02:36:47 PM
Just encountered a new NPR.  They call themselves the Batman Republic.  Should I be worried?

Depends. . .   Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?



(P.S.:   I hear they're crazy prepared.  You're almost certainly going to lose, but on the bright side you probably won't die.  Have fun confined to the three systems of the Arkham Asylum cluster. . . at least until you inevitably escape.)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: MasonMac on January 24, 2019, 04:05:31 PM
But somehow he'll always find you in the Gotham galaxy no matter how many ships you have.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: boggo2300 on January 24, 2019, 06:55:28 PM
Worst thing is their diplomacy is limited to them just saying "I'm BATMAN"  waste of resources learning their language and establishing communications if you ask me!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on January 30, 2019, 02:32:29 PM
But somehow he'll always find you in the Gotham galaxy no matter how many ships you have.

I did name their home star Gotham, and the star next to it Arkham (that one's full of hostile spoilers).  Obvious, I guess!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Rye123 on February 04, 2019, 11:16:21 PM
So, err, today I learnt I didn't need 20 fire controls for 20 anti-missile launchers since they target each incoming salvo and not each incoming missile...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 05, 2019, 12:35:05 PM
What a useful learning experience!  ;D

Inspired by the conventional, 0 RP warships that were recently shown in the Bureau, I started a test game to test conventional space war out. The Atlantic Federation and the Pacific Alliance are locked in Cold War situation on Earth but are both racing to build warships to duke things out ASAP. The first generation ships will use only conventional components, with one exception being made for Active Sensor Sensitivity 10 so that the ships can actually scan the skies for enemies. Weaponry will consist only of re-purposed ICBMs to begin with.

At the moment, the first ships are being built, I'm looking forward to the battle of the Moon to see which side wins the first round.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on February 05, 2019, 05:14:31 PM
I'm looking forward to the battle of the Moon to see which side wins the first round.

And then you will write up the AAR and post it here for all of us to enjoy?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 06, 2019, 08:39:18 AM
I'm looking forward to the battle of the Moon to see which side wins the first round.

And then you will write up the AAR and post it here for all of us to enjoy?
Ask and you shall receive: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10264.0
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on February 13, 2019, 01:14:23 AM
I made these (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10261.0) two threads (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10262.0) before remembering that this thread exists, oh well.

The conclusion of the outbreak of third world war in 1982 following the Warsaw Pact's pre-emptive strike in response to NATO's "Able Archer" exercise, which was seen from the Kremlin as NATO's preparation for their own recreation of "Operation Barbarossa", devoured earth in a nuclear firestorm. Descending into a over a decade long radioactive nuclear winter, during which majority of the world governments perished on their own or were conquered by the hurt but still functioning Soviet Army, whose doctrine had prepared it for a nuclear war unlike their opponents. Historians still argue whether the war ended after some of the surviving leadership of NATO members declared surrender, in January 1983, or when the last NATO military elements in Spain were destroyed in summer, 1989.

In one of the remaining "Closed Cities", one particular research complex near the shattered radioactive remains of the Ural mountain range. The research of the nuclear war's effects to atmosphere discovered some neutrons behaving erratically. Theories explaining this were created and shot down, testings followed and observations were made. Until weeks later, a startling conclusion was made; these "neutrons" were a completely new element, an element that defies laws of physics. Test samples could be accelerated to a fraction of a light-speed instantly. These new elements that defies everything the Newton had taught were fittingly named as "Trans-Newtonian" elements.

Unfortunately, this discovery could not be exploited until 24th of December, 2032. When the global situation had stabilized to the point that reconstruction and feeding the people didn't demand all of the available resources. "Molnya-O" Space rocket constructed almost completely out of trans-newtonian elements was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which carried a payload of a single "Kosmos" Geological surveillance satellite. Propelled by four powerful 3T94 solid-fuel rockets, the rocket reached it's destination, earth's moon, in mere minutes. While the Warsaw Pact's first space mission in decades failed to find any trans-newtonian elements on the moon, it's still regarded as the turning point when humanity had completed it's recovery from the war and began the unstoppable march of progress.

(http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/m/molnlvcu.gif)

Since then, several space missions were launched, trans-newtonian mineral deposits were found on Mars, Venus and several asteroids. The following decades saw a lunar colony established, mars colonized and terraformed. This growth was stumped however, when the Duranium deposits on earth were exhaused and demand of it only grew. Only large sources were Venus and Titan, of which the former saw the launch of a terraforming program with several terraforming installations constructed on it's hostile surface.

After years of enormous effort and intense research into terraforming technologies, it was realized that it's colonization would be too cost-intensive to be justified in a hundred year, and in all quietness the Saturn's moon "Titan" had a gulag established to mine the desperately needed Duranium deposits it had. It took decades of tried and failed terraforming which only succeeded to remove the lethal methane gas from the atmosphere, but leaving the surface still lethally cold. By 2083 the environmental and life-support systems had been advanced enough to make Titan's "colony" sustainable to the point that less than 76% of the colony population could be directed to mining works rather than keeping themselves alive with environmental maintenance and hydroponics. However, despite the best of soviet technological sciences at the time, the colony could only sustain so many people before the needs of environmentals increased, thus cutting on the workforce available for the mines.

Fuel harvesters were constructed to improve the logistics of expanding a maintaining the colony, not to mention providing a refueling spot for the freighters coming and going.
(https://i.imgur.com/bzVblKS.png)

With various breakthroughs in fields of mining technologies, gulag's annual duranium output peaking at little more than 3,000 million tons. To alleviate the situation, asteroid mining vessels were constructed and organized under new "Asteroid Mining Division" of the Bureau of Logistics and Colonization. Shortages prevented further construction efforts and these new asteroid miners while still helpful, couldn't increase the total duranium production together with the civilian mining sites to solve the chronic shortages. Mere 4,400~ million tons total a year would set the limit on the march of progress for the Soviet Union for almost a century.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 15, 2019, 09:39:19 PM
About 6 months earlier in my campaign, I discovered a +30% C&P anomaly on the far side of 2 level 1 nebula systems.  20 billion km away from Earth, my hope for exploiting it depended largely on finding a short cut.  A system recently cleared of Swarm had a jump point that opened into an already known system... in an otherwise useless deadend.

Then I discovered a +70% C&P anomaly one system beyond a former Precursor system, only 15 billion km from Earth, with only 2 jump gates required to connect it.  As an RP matter, I have the exploration and survey crews engage in real estate speculation and insider trading to augment their pay and to justify the huge risks they take.  The real estate market for Clahn just crashed as the news from Viebled IV came in.  Especially as Viebled III is cost zero, and there are a lot of terrestrials and moons in Viebled left to survey.

Astrographers are concerned that with systems opening up on previously explored systems we might run out of open jump points to explore.  But with so many systems with ruins to exploit, our economic expansion plans are to build Military Academies and Ground Force Training Facilities.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 17, 2019, 03:03:26 PM
So far, no new jump connections have actually made it faster to get from Earth to anywhere, but we did have one notable development.  All the warp chains from Sol are now connected.  The Sol-Farreach-Chiav chain now connects to the Sol-Plian-Thengo-Dalazh chain.

The Sol-Plian-Thengo chain had recently connected to the Sol-Sansibar-Elfiabr chain.

The former Swarm system of Thengo apparently connected to quite a big part of the galaxy.

The Plian, Sansibar and Farreach network is far larger than the Ninjar, Querion, Shayou chains, but Shayou contains the oldest colony, and currently the most important mining site, as measured by Duranium production.  Earth Duranium production recently fell to third place, as mines were shifted to Shayou Gateway, falling behind the production of the 1st extra solar cost 0 colony world of Hissan's Prize (I name the planet after the Geo Survey team that discovered high availability Duranium deposits.)

The Ninjar-Querion-Shayou chains have only one unsurveyed system and no unprobed jump points.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: amram on February 17, 2019, 11:43:26 PM
I recently had to fire the ship design team responsible for my grav survey ships for incompetence.

They offered huge design work savings by starting their design from the geo survey design.  They offered adequate commonality to build in the same yard.  Seemed ideal.

Built a dozen, set them loose surveying the neighbouring systems hunting for jump points.  Thought nothing of it and went about growing the empires industrial and technological capacity to wage war.

Then i started getting morale notifications which took 4 years, and it dawned on me....I hadn't been notified of any newly discovered jump points in all that time, with a dozen survey craft in 8 systems....  Just what the hell were they all doing?

Absolutely.  Nothing.

The design team, in their utter brilliance, never actually swapped out the geo sensor for a grav sensor.  So the crews all did as told, they moved to locations, and tried to make due with geo sensors.....progress was....lacking.  The crews are all now on permanent assignment to those very same vessels.

The copper lining is that I now have a dozen volunteers for mine clearing detail.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 19, 2019, 12:08:15 PM
Ah, that wonderful feeling when you manage your economy so that you don't have that first Duranium crunch from Earth running out.  Duranium and Mercassium stocks are slowly increasing after years of careful management.

Now, economists are suggesting that a Duranium surplus actually indicates we are not growing our economy as fast as possible.  Which may be true, as the theory we are going with on the fastest way to increase our economy is more Military Academies and Ground Force Training Facilities to exploit the several large ruins we have discovered.

Over 500 facilities of a TL4 race have yet to be catalogued, and we have three other ruins the archaeology teams haven't even found out how many installations are present.  But building military academies and GFTFs do not greatly increase mineral consumption.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 19, 2019, 10:00:39 PM
So I conquered the Batman people, er, Batmen.  This is my longest successful game, now 41 years into it and well into the antimatter tech era.  In this case I had enough divisions of ground forces to conquer their home system (Gotham) with ground forces and no nukes from orbit.  The prize was a population greater than my empire's other two racial homeworlds combined, and proportionally enormous quantities of mines, factories, etc.  Even before all the little Batman mining colonies had been cleaned up I made contact with another alien race, the Empire of Sonderborg (emphasis on "borg"), all the way the *other* direction from Earth.  Their planet's EM signature is nearly double that of Batman Prime.  It'll just take a little time to move my ground troops across the galaxy and to upgrade and re-provision a couple of carrier groups...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on February 20, 2019, 01:46:12 AM
Current status.

Lots of things happened, hostile automated ships found in Luytens, one jump from earth. Alien fleets at HIP. Two colonies established in Alpha centauri that provide a stable source of Gallicite, thought the demand is still greater than supply. One colony at Epsilon Eridani that has every mineral needed for a self-sufficient colony. One colony at Lyutens.

(https://i.imgur.com/2HCeKvW.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/hZSzaBI.png)

You can see how much the limited supply of gallicite is affecting the size of fleet I can maintain. Missiles are also in short supply and about quarter of the military ships have empty magazines. Military operations are also very much restricted to defense only, since any offensive action would deplete the missile stocks in short order.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: amram on February 26, 2019, 01:16:14 AM
PANIC!


That's what is happening in my empire right now. 

A Note before I begin, this is played with a slightly modified database, wanted to muck around with different balancing between some of the parts, so if you notice something odd, you're probably not wrong.  Some of the changes are very cheesable, but not something I will be doing, its not as fun.  AI ship components for spoilers were adjusted to account for the edits, so they'll be competitive even so, its NPR's im less sure of.

We started exploring our neighbouring systems before we ever even had combat ships, but they were on the way.  For years, the next major tech upgrade was so close at hand, it would have left the ships beyond simply obsolete before they were even built, so the design was updated, and pushed back, and back.  Finally it would be over a year before the next tech developed, so prototype parts were quickly mocked up, ship designs were finalised, and work began on the components that would be the first combat force.  By this time, I had 6 jump capable survey craft exploring neighbouring systems. And then it happened, a survey ship walked face first into a salvo of missiles it never even saw coming.The decision to lock in a design paid off, we were just weeks away from deploying our first actual combat ships.  Just 15 years in, our fledgling little mass of people put real weapons in space.  Not.  Nearly.  Enough.

We had a small set of 8kt naval yards, 5 in total, to produce the combat force, with some commonality to allow building any particular force faster than in just one yard.  The fleet doctrine is for up to 20 destroyers with anti ship weaponry, to be backed up by a passive sensor ship, and active sensor ship, 4 PD gauss ships, and 5 pd railgun ships primarily intended for anti fighter/fac duty.  With mid/late game tech, this makes for a very potent combat force that I can usually walk right through spoilers despite a slight tech disadvantage, and kill everything to be salvaged and benefited from.

My military tech levels at the time of the first ships rolling out were composite armor, 25cm railguns, ion drives, 1.75 engine power, 70% fuel, 4kkm/sec beam tracking, 160kkm range( doubled beam FC ranges, I am aware of the 5ls limitation - I'll have smaller FC's late game), unboosted reactors, Grav 16, EM 5 sensors, Gauss 2-2, gamma shields, thermal 6, EM 6.

With that tech, I started building up my combat force:
Code: [Select]
Ajax class Destroyer    8,000 tons     191 Crew     1402.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 15     PPV 8
Maint Life 2.42 Years     MSP 548    AFR 102%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 128    5YR 1926    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

25cm Railgun V6/C4 (1x4)    Range 300,000km     TS: 8281 km/s     Power 15-4     RM 6    ROF 20        5 5 5 5 5 5 4 3 3 2
4x1 Fire Control S02 320-4000 (1)    Max Range: 640,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     98 97 95 94 92 91 89 88 86 84
0.2 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 1.8    Armour 0    Exp 5%
0.7 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 6.3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

DD G16 E6 ASS MR1-R15 (1)     GPS 72     Range 1.1m km    Resolution 15

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Leander class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     191 Crew     1408.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 16     PPV 6
Maint Life 3.49 Years     MSP 715    AFR 78%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 90    5YR 1347    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

10cm Railgun V6/C4 (2x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 8281 km/s     Power 3-4     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
1x4 Fire Control S02 80-16000 (1)    Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
0.7 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 9.45    Armour 0    Exp 5%

DDE G16 E6 ASS MR0.42-R5 (1)     GPS 16     Range 420k km    Resolution 5

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Emerald class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     175 Crew     1326.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 16     PPV 9.12
Maint Life 3.05 Years     MSP 622    AFR 85%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 100    5YR 1504    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

Single Gauss R2-67 Turret 16k (1x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1x4 Fire Control S02 80-16000 (1)    Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38

DDP G16 E6 ASS MR0.19-R1 (1)     GPS 4     Range 190k km    MCR 21k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Orion class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     178 Crew     1285.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 15     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.33 Years     MSP 502    AFR 102%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 126    5YR 1887    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

DDW G12 E6 ASS MR4-R1 (1)     GPS 68     Range 4.1m km    MCR 444k km    Resolution 1
DDW G12 E6 ASS MR31-R60 (1)     GPS 4080     Range 31.6m km    Resolution 60
DDW G12 E6 ASS MR15-R15 (1)     GPS 1020     Range 15.8m km    Resolution 15

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Orion's Shadow class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     181 Crew     1161 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 54/21/0/0     Damage Control Rating 15     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.42 Years     MSP 476    AFR 97%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 112    5YR 1680    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

Thermal Sensor TH9-54 (1)     Sensitivity 54     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54m km
EM Detection Sensor EM3.5-21 (1)     Sensitivity 21     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  21m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The build up was slow, even now, the fleet stands at 1 Orion, 1 Orion's Shadow, 8 Ajax, 2 Leander, and 2 Emerald.  Intended fleet builds are 1,1,20,5,4, respectively.  Barely halfway there.

With the evolution of technology, every ship built is currently v2 spec. Not one of the v2 upgrades cost more than 10% of a new build, and all upgraded inside 6 months compared to nearly 2 years new build.
Code: [Select]
Ajax v2 class Destroyer    8,000 tons     190 Crew     1504 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 44     PPV 9
Maint Life 1.94 Years     MSP 499    AFR 120%    IFR 1.7%    1YR 173    5YR 2602    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

30cm Railgun V7/C4 (1x4)    Range 490,000km     TS: 8281 km/s     Power 21-4     RM 7    ROF 30        7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 5 4
4x1 Fire Control S02 320-4000 (1)    Max Range: 640,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     98 97 95 94 92 91 89 88 86 84
0.7 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 6.3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
0.2 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 1.8    Armour 0    Exp 5%

DD G21 E11 ASS MR1.8-R15 (1)     GPS 63     Range 1.8m km    Resolution 15

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Leander v2 class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     191 Crew     1484.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 46     PPV 6
Maint Life 3.54 Years     MSP 754    AFR 78%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 92    5YR 1387    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

10cm Railgun V6/C4 (2x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 8281 km/s     Power 3-4     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
1x4 Fire Control S02 80-16000 (1)    Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
0.7 Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 9.45    Armour 0    Exp 5%

DDE G21 E11 ASS MR1-R5 (1)     GPS 21     Range 1.0m km    Resolution 5

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Emerald v2 class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     175 Crew     1441 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 45     PPV 9.12
Maint Life 2.54 Years     MSP 591    AFR 97%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 128    5YR 1921    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

Single Gauss R2-67 Turret 16k (1x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1x4 Fire Control S02 80-16000 (1)    Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38

DDP G21 E11 ASS MR3.7-R1 (1)     GPS 34     Range 3.7m km    MCR 402k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Orion's Shadow v2 class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     180 Crew     1279 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 99/20/0/0     Damage Control Rating 45     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.44 Years     MSP 525    AFR 97%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 122    5YR 1827    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

Thermal Sensor TH9-99 (1)     Sensitivity 99     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  99m km
EM Detection Sensor EM3.25-19.5 (1)     Sensitivity 19.5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  19.5m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Orion v2 class Destroyer Escort    8,000 tons     178 Crew     1423.5 BP      TCS 160  TH 1325  EM 630
8281 km/s     Armour 4-35     Shields 21-840     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 45     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.39 Years     MSP 556    AFR 102%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 134    5YR 2003    Max Repair 220.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

HS23 P160 F070 T100 441.6 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 441.6    Fuel Use 174.54%    Signature 441.6    Exp 16%
Fuel Capacity 1,745,000 Litres    Range 22.5 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Gamma R840/588 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  147 Litres per hour  (3,528 per day)

DDW G21 E11 ASS MR9-R1 (1)     GPS 90     Range 9.8m km    MCR 1.1m km    Resolution 1
DDW G21 E11 ASS MR76-R60 (1)     GPS 5355     Range 76.0m km    Resolution 60
DDW G21 E11 ASS MR38-R15 (1)     GPS 1339     Range 38.0m km    Resolution 15

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And remember, I currently have 8 ajax v2, 2 emerald v2, 2 leander v2, 1 orion v2, and 1 orion's shadow, v2.  I can probably fend off a precursor attack, which is what I figure my survey craft found.

....Something worse came knocking.  I am horribly inadequate to fight it at this time, I need probably another 30-50 years before I stand much chance in a straight fight.

I have advanced further in railguns, but can't spare any tonnage to uprate the ajax class yet.  Currently their big change is a better firecontrol, which can actually meet their speed.  Emeralds have uprated their FC to 20k km/s, have not yet replaced the turret with a 20kkm/s variant.  Refitting the Ajax class begins.


I've been visited by Invaders.....  So far, I have been incredibly lucky, they've only sent 4 gatebuilders into sol, which i promptly destroyed and salvaged.  So far the loot has been worthy, I hope for more gifts before combat ships roll through....maybe they recognise my superiority and are offering tithes to pacify my latent aggression.....yeah...no.
Stellarator Fusion reactor tech, so I can use that mag plasma research, is still 6 months away.  BFC 96kkm/s is 4 years away.  35cm railgun is 2 years away.  shield regen 1.75 is 18 months away(currently 0.75).  I have 42 labs.  Not nearly enough, lol.



I have, in panicked desperation, decided to try a tactic that will let me steal even more goodies from invaders if it works...maybe even stop them cold if it works well enough.  Or it fails and I die in a few puffs of laser fire and nuclear detonations.   Either way, I expect major casualties. The priority technology is now microwaves.  I plan to build fighters with the longest reaching microwave I can pack onto them. Take a page from the swarm, and swamp the invaderswith numbers, escorted by the main fleet until fairly close, then surge forward out of the pd cover, to try and get close and knock sensors off line.

The destroyers can take a bit of invader fire I think, and any fire directed at them, is not directed at the microwave craft.  Each destroyer has 21hp of shielding and 4-35 armor....I may need to increase this.  I have enough firepower to kill the ships, If I can life long enough to get to fire on them enough times.

The next revision is likely going to carry a very limited capability backup BFC, for knifefighting, and a return to heavily subdivided fuel tanks - i've derped and put the majority of the fuel capacity into a very large tank, which is the second most likely htk target.....

I don't usually have invaders on until I can handle precursors reliably, figured I'd live dangerously this time, small population, industrial and tech base, unboosted income/industry.  I'm not even certain a full fleet of destroyers could win any fight the precursors can bring right now, and I get invaders.....

I am so screwed, lol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on February 26, 2019, 08:16:07 AM
Sounds like you are having a fun game, maybe it will be the Dwarf Fortress sort of fun but still fun  :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: amram on February 26, 2019, 01:15:29 PM
It was very much rimworld/dwarf fortress in how it ended.

I lasted a couple years further, was working on upgrading the ships to mag plasma engines, had a moderate force of fighters, 14 ajax and 3 each leanders and emeralds.

Shortly after posting, a 15kt warship rolled through and it all started going downhill.  I had spent every moment possible in taskforce training, they were getting there.  Unfortunately, none of them could deal with an invader alpha strike, even at max range, the shields weren't quite enough for the little ships even.  At best, they could take a single 37 point hit from a missile, or 26pt hit from a laser(s), which would deplete the shields and just penetrate the armor with no internal damage, absent shock damage.

Their 15kt warships are generally a bit weaker than that at max range, but I can't fire back, even if it weren't for the ecm.  If I close into range, I get plastered, and I was every so slightly slower than they were, about 100km/s less. I needed those fighters to take the abuse because the destroyers couldn't.

They jumped in from out past pluto.  The destroyers left immediately, the fighters left 2 days later and beat them there, the battle happened not all that far from uranus.

At 497 tons, the fighters were barely that, but they could bring their own 10cm ROF-10 microwave, could only reach 80kkm though.  Made all the nastier by the invaders ecm cutting that by 60% to less than 40kkm - I'd be in range and detected long before I could engage.  They were decently quick though, making 20kkm/s - I'd have made them even faster, but had to downsize the engine a little to fit in the microwave emitter.  They were literally all engine and microwave, less than 80 tons went into reactor, BFC, crew, fuel, and armor, they carried nothing else.

What happened next was messy.....and lucky.  Things went mostly as i'd hoped.  The fighters rushed in, bagging the firecontrols before the losses got out of hand.  The destroyers closed in an mopped up.  Of 37 fighters, I had 29 left.  Everyone headed home.

The industrial cycles nasty sometimes, I'd already spent all my luck in the fight, one fighter had a maintenance issue and lost its engine.  It carried no MSP, and I had no tugs no carriers to go pick it up.... I hadn't planned for a carrier strike force, the fighters were a stopgap.  Had the crew abandon it and the destroyers picked them up in the way by.

A couple weeks roll by, a couple more fighters deploy, and then another ship jumps in, 15ktons.  I was not as lucky this time.

I went to close in, and then the increments went to 20s....I wasn't close to them yet, that was not good.  So I immediately turned and tried to run.  I couldn't escape, but I could string out the missile engagements and try to take it.  Microwave fighters were of no help there, so they did the only useful thing they could do, charge.  The fighters did their job, and managed to jab fingers in all its eyes right quick, I didn't lose very many either.  But the worst was yet to come.    As they'd been closing in, they'd seen a worrying number of missiles closing.  6 every 20s, doing 50kkm/s.

20kkm/sec gauss turrets are not ideal against 50kkm/s missiles...   Their closure was over 40kkm/s, the there would be only one engagement per salvo, and the leanders and ajax would be lucky to even hit anything.  The three emeralds fielded a 1x4 gauss turret, for a total of 12 shots per volley, against 3 salvos, but only 67% base, so I could only count on 8 hits.  Of course, a 20kkm/s turret facing 50kkm/s missiles doesn't fare well, 3.2 hits.  Not enough.

The leanders were intended to provide fighter/fac defence, with an assist to missile defence, but at such an early tech stage, they were barely competent.  Only 16% accurate, with 8 tries, I could expect 1 on average per leander, with 3 leanders.

I could average 6 missiles per increment.  Its the average part that worried me.

The ajax were just as competent as the leanders in accuracy, but fielded half as many shots, on 6 times the reload.  It was literally 50/50 whether an ajax would manage a single kill or not.  So I spread them out, for the first salvo three were put on final fire, then three more, then 2, 2, 2, and 2.   There was a 90% chance the ajax's would get at least one kill.  Its when they wouldn't that would be a problem.

Every 20 seconds, 6 missiles rolled in, far too many salvos were inbound.  Any one hit might be fatal, and two would be.  Loss of an ajax would hurt my chances, loss of an emerald would end me.

The emeralds only had a range of 20kkm, so separating them to act as a picket between the main force and the missiles would be disastrous, there was a good chance the missiles could skip right past and not even get shot at, no, I needed to be as much of a doom stack as I could pretend to be.

I managed to stay on top for the first three salvos, my average kill rate was above the incoming, but only just.  Then it happened, a leaker slipped through and hit the Orion.  38 pts of damage.  The shield was wiped out, and 17 points landed on 4 layers of armor.  1 pt penetrated, an engine resisted it.

A two salvos later an emerald took a hit and lost its firecontrol.  That wiped out roughly 1 kill per salvo of defence.  The ajax' now had to get a kill every salvo, or I was going to take more hits.

And they didn't.  I took three hits on the next salvo and lost a leander.  Two the salvo after and lost an ajax.  At this point it was clear i'd survive.  There were only three salvos left, the fighters had blinded the target, and I had 15 ships left.  I lost two more ajax.

Got them home, and continued the ramp up.  I got a bit of breathing room for a couple of months.  Finished another leander and emerald, with 4 more ajax not that far away.  Never had a free yard to repair the emerald that took a hit, so not only did the armor have to stay punctured, but I had to wait out DC repairing the fire control on its own.

Then ragnarok arrived.  2 ships jumped in, 31ktons.  There was little hope, off they went anyways.

The fighters rushed in, and were promptly splattered with AMM's, never even got a shot off.  The destroyers didn't fare any better.  They could maybe stop 8 missiles now with a little luck, but these were 5 missile salvos, 20 salvos at a time, every 5 seconds.  At least the ships could absorb more punishment, 152 plates of armor and 4 layers.  Problem was, it was quite likely that i'd be taking internal hits before I took 75 hits.  That meant I would maybe absorb 1000 AMM's in total, lose my entire fleet in the process, and I knew their magazines held several thousand missiles each.

I managed 7 salvos, 35 seconds..., before I lost a ship, and it rapidly snowballed from there.

I had an industrial cycle before they made it close enough to fire on earth, and built a single fighter....armed with a microwave emitter, useless in missile defence, doubly so against AMM ships.  they stomped the colonies on Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Mars, Luna, and Mercury, and emptied their stocks into earth.  Industrially I was finished, no shipyards, and a badly bruised economy.

Then more jumped in, and that was that.  Proper ASM's hammered into earth, and industrially, I was erased.  They didn't just pummel the planet and leave, I had no factories or labs left when they were done.  I did have a ground unit training facility, but hadn't researched construction brigades, there was no way to even try rebuilding.  Besides that, my population was plumeting and there was no infrastructure on earth, it had all been taken to the colonies.

Used designer mode to poke around their forces, and yeah, the wormhole was in the system they entered sol from, and they had 40 ships just hanging out around the wormhole.  I was so completely screwed, lol.

80k rp, 500m start is maybe not quite enough with invaders on from the start, lol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 26, 2019, 07:18:25 PM
I am aware of the 5ls limitation

I'm not!  What's that?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 26, 2019, 07:31:55 PM
It was very much rimworld/dwarf fortress in how it ended.

I always play with Invaders on, because the game is too easy without them, but I can't beat them if I play the game "straight", as intended.  I cheat bigtime.  I use the fact that you can tell when enemy ships are firing missiles, to trick them into emptying their magazines at a jump point, jump through, jump back.  Then I mop their missile ships up with beam fighters (meson and microwave mostly).  I board their ships by using "30 day" increments (guaranteeing a 6 hour window for the boarding ships to approach without being fired on).  The boarding ships unload their marines, then get detected and destroyed.  I send lots of ships on suicide missions because it works.

If you had as little dignity as me, I'd have recommended camping on the JP in the adjacent system to make them waste all their missiles before entering Sol.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on February 26, 2019, 08:28:40 PM
The increment boarding tactic still requires the boarding to be successful, and if the enemy is too fast to board, your troops will splatter and not be successful in boarding.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: amram on February 27, 2019, 01:48:40 AM
I am aware of the 5ls limitation

I'm not!  What's that?

no FC can exceed a bit over 1.4mkm in aurora,its a hardcoded limitation regarded as being the distance light travels in 5 seconds, one increment, and taken as the limit for beam weapons range, by limiting the FC.  Not an issue with stock FC's capping out at 175kkm, you come up just short.  With doubled FC ranges I'll certainly hit it.

Its amusing to muck about in the DB and re-spec an FC to that you wanted, but its rather unfair, the NPR's and spoilers could never compete with it, as they suffer the limit unless you watch for their components in the database too.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 27, 2019, 03:42:48 AM
Humans have for the first time in history visited another star system, using wormhole travel we are now visiting Alpha Centauri. Is this the system the Enemy come from, the same enemy that terrorised earth  from 1973 to the late 1987. On the other hand the war we fought against the enemy united our species under one rule for the first time in history, but we lost over 3 billion and great parts of Earth was devastated by nuclear fallout. But we won, first on Earth then taking the fight in early 2010 to Mars were we defeated the last remnant. We had to pull back for almost 40 years to heal Earth and its people. Then in 2050 we returned to Mars and Luna and for the next 30 years we reclaimed the enemy Mars colony and with that help we began to colonize our solar system, and today 2080 at midnight our first jump capable ship jumped to a new system, finding one small habitable planet and several standard planets that might be terraformed. Now we have a small fleet of 8 destroyers and 12 FACs to defend the human race, but more will come...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 27, 2019, 10:09:48 AM
The increment boarding tactic still requires the boarding to be successful, and if the enemy is too fast to board, your troops will splatter and not be successful in boarding.

True, but it works great against those immobile AMM platforms they sometimes push through wormholes.  Capture and disassemble a couple of those and you'll have maxed-out missile reloading and sensor tech.  Also you get to keep the AMMs.  Tens of thousands of them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 27, 2019, 11:59:27 AM
80k rp, 500m start is maybe not quite enough with invaders on from the start, lol.
I've tried having them on from start with much bigger starting Earth population and it wasn't fun. You might sink twenty hours into a successful game and then get stomped in 30 minutes. It'll work as a special challenge, ie you dedicate the whole game to just dealing with them from the start, but as a general game, where you also have other spoilers and NPRs, it just means that you might face instant death at any moment.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: amram on February 27, 2019, 02:22:59 PM
I'm actually about to do exactly that, a 2.5b pop start, invaders on from the get go.  The increased labs and production should make me sustainable against what I faced, and potentially against their larger ships.  5 times the industrial base, and change government type to meritocracy, so it leans more heavily into labs.  I won't be all that much more productive, maybe double, but definitely much more technological, which is the biggest failing of a young empire against invaders.

Not sure if I want to lay on the fighters from the beginning, and go full blast towards mimicking the swarm with microwaves and perhaps also mesons.  Or make skip fielding my combat destroyers and go straight into cruisers at 16kt that field microwaves, and spend much of the 8kton increase on just armor to survive the coming onslaught long enough to poke their eyes out.   Or both....

I usually only advance in size when I can't increase the efficacy of the smaller hull significantly anymore.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: joeclark77 on February 27, 2019, 08:04:57 PM
If you want to fight them in a non-cheat way, I recommend equipping to spam them with flocks of size 1 or 2 missiles -- thousands per volley if possible.  And if you can do it from a billion kilometers away, even better.  The fighter swarm idea works except against their anti-missile ships.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 28, 2019, 01:30:03 AM
Using a short range gunboat as an offensive unit in another solar system gives you an problem with fuel... The standard fire control was also a shorter range than the missiles maximum range, this was fixed in the MkII class.

Code: [Select]
Rodney class Fast Attack Craft    1 000 tons     17 Crew     170 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
8000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4.5
Maint Life 4.5 Years     MSP 53    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 4    5YR 63    Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 30   

Evans International 80 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 80    Fuel Use 38%    Signature 60    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 2.4 billion km   (3 days at full power)

Bradley Engineering Type 5 VLS  (6)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
Richards Orbital Systems Missile Fire Control FC105-R100 (1)     Range 105.6m km    Resolution 100
ASM Shipwreck (8)  Speed: 24 000 km/s   End: 112.4m    Range: 161.8m km   WH: 5    Size: 5    TH: 144/86/43

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

After a small attack into the Enemy system these ships have been recalled to Earth and upgraded to MkII class with alot more fuel. Still no active sensor but they are supposes to operate with naval units that will paint the enemy ship to attack.

Code: [Select]
Rodney MkII class Fast Attack Craft    1 000 tons     17 Crew     190 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
8000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4.5
Maint Life 4.8 Years     MSP 59    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 4    5YR 63    Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 30   

Evans International 80 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 80    Fuel Use 38%    Signature 60    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 55 000 Litres    Range 26.1 billion km   (37 days at full power)

Bradley Engineering Type 5 VLS  (6)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
Collins Electronics Missile Fire Control FC176-R100 (1)     Range 176.4m km    Resolution 100
ASM Shipwreck (6)  Speed: 24 000 km/s   End: 112.4m    Range: 161.8m km   WH: 5    Size: 5    TH: 144/86/43

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 28, 2019, 11:15:48 AM
Don't forget the benefit of monitors or battle stations, amram. If you know where the wormhole is, it's pretty simple to tug suitable units there. And with just one small engine to give them little dodging capability, or without any engines, more tonnage can be devoted to armour/shields/weapons. They don't have to be big either, because you can just keep a shipping line churning them out. Crew deployment is a problem but you can create a R&R ship with 2 entertainment modules and have it visit the location of the "forts" every 6 months. Granted, I haven't tried that method since Steve added crew morale/deployment in to the game, but before then, it worked as a tripwire, first line of defence. Or you can use mines of course.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 01, 2019, 01:57:12 AM
The Enemy have destroyed our colony on Mars, 102 million dead... Several PDC have been taken intact when its defenders gave up... With some luck a human armored division was landing at the military spaceport so they are trying to engage and re-capture... FAC group Terra is going out again to strike the Enemy capital ships, the first strike killed only one heavy crusier but damaged all 11 heavy cruisers and 5 battlecrusisers. They still have some 15 destroyers and 5 survey ships in our solar system but those will be dealt with later...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Andrew on March 02, 2019, 01:52:57 AM
I have had 2 experiences with Invaders one is in this thread somewhere where a huge Invader fleet built up next door to Sol but would not come in and eventually I built enough warships to kill them all, with so many gauss cannon that I could shoot down on average about 8-900 invader AMM's a turn and so could avoid damage unless 2 AMM salvo's hit in the same 5s impulse.

THe other one ended my Herchel Conventional start brits in space, I stupidly left earth before building a single warship and bam Invaders next door. I had the industry and economy to support a fleet which could have saved me but not even the first warship was finished when the bombardment began. Next time I start building warships before I have the 'perfect' tech combination
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 03, 2019, 11:32:56 AM
Payback time! 4 Heavy cruisers of the County class, 16 Destroyers of the Napoleon MkIII class, 4 Destroyer escorts from the Shield MkII class, 72 FACs and 4 Scout FACs have entered the Enemy system... All over the human ships the Remember Earth and Mars! is being heard... Halfway to the Enemy homeworld of Alpha Centauri a lone Destroyer is sighted... 20 second later another ship is sighted, a lone battlecruiser...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 04, 2019, 03:10:20 AM
Hmmm... The Enemy seems to have some big ships in reserv, almost 50000 tons and 4 of them... Used most of my FACs missiles for the first heavy cruisers so 4 battleships might be a problem... So the last 14 FACs will launch their 6 missiles each at one target and see whats happening... Their Battlecruisers have been hard to kill, around 60-80 missiles of 8MT each... Might have to retreat back to SOL system. FAC group Mars is already going back to rearm their launchers and soon the Terra group also...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: non sequitur on March 22, 2019, 12:08:53 PM
The venerable Xia class explorer, which has expanded known space from 10 systems to 45 is being recalled, likely for decommissioning.
The six ships in the class have, for decades, been expanding the bounds of human space without incident.  However, in the last year alone three of six ships have been destroyed due to encounters with hostile aliens.   Joe Mattern, director of Earth Space Defense, plans a full review of the class and future exploration plans.     
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Resident Evil on March 25, 2019, 02:47:58 PM
After a hostile incursion into Epsilon Eridani, I'm faced with the logistical nightmare of having so many Life Pods to rescue and wrecks to salvage.

Seriously tho, I've had to design a new rescue craft and set them building to try and collect all these pods.

ZG
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on April 01, 2019, 01:16:44 PM
I've looked at your posts, and they are something else.  I would certainly encourage you to post an AAR, even if the updates are sporadic.  I think very few Aurora players have managed an empire of your size and scale.  It would be interesting to see the correspondingly large problems that you have to deal with, including your ongoing war.


:o :o :o

Where is the AAR/story of this?

 :o :o :o

I've been debating getting an AAR going of this game, and I think there's a post in this thread of one of the bigger battles I've had. But by the time the game actually started getting really interesting, I felt it was too far into the game to get started on an AAR. That, and a mixture of me being a very slow player and me being busy have put it on hold. If there's interest, once finals are good and done with, I might toss up a couple posts about the first offensive against the Jiadliaokl, once my new fleets are trained up to 100% and I get enough fuel and missiles set aside (I have about 60k missiles in my fleet all together). That, and once I actually find one of their systems. I've scouted 4 systems down the chain they come from, but I still haven't detected any colonies of theirs.

edit: Also one fun note about that NPR homeworld I conquered way back when. After all was said and done, I had lost around 30 ships or so, with the aliens, the Belazura, losing 40 or 50. After I sent in my troop transports and conquered/bombarded the planet into submission, I did a quick check around the system to make sure there weren't any other colonies or outposts to worry about. After taking care of whatever was left, my fleets left the system to return to Earth for repair and refits (I had accidentally destroyed all their shipyards with autotargeting missiles.. oops..), a pair of enemy cruisers comes out of deep space, gets detected by the sensors on the planet, and so I wheel the fleet around to go and take them out. It was too late, as the enemy ships had just gotten into firing range by the time my ships got back in system. I guess this race didn't like the prospect of new management, and so the alien ships loosed their entire stock of missiles on their homeworld, turning a solid half of the population and infrastructure into glass. Even now, 30-40 years later, the radiation is still dying down.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TheBawkHawk on April 01, 2019, 10:12:42 PM
I've looked at your posts, and they are something else.  I would certainly encourage you to post an AAR, even if the updates are sporadic.  I think very few Aurora players have managed an empire of your size and scale.  It would be interesting to see the correspondingly large problems that you have to deal with, including your ongoing war.

Much appreciated! I've been typing up an AAR, which picks up just a few months before I launch the offensive against the Coalition. Real life, namely my studies and work, have made progress slow, although it's nearing 6000 words or so now. It's quickly approaching a state that I would consider presentable, so keep an eye out in the next few weeks if all goes well.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on April 02, 2019, 12:15:44 PM
Agreed, we can always use more Aurora AARs, especially ones about bigger empires.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on April 03, 2019, 02:05:44 AM
On the last of 6 survey cruisers of the class Juan Ponce DE Leóne.

28 June 2106 10:03:36
Vampire!! I count 300... no... its over 900 missiles coming our way, they will hit in 10 seconds! Jesus 900 missiles for our little ship... Counting down to hit 9,8,7,6...

28 June 2106 10:03:41

This is the captain! Jumping now....

The ship jumps out only by seconds before they were obliterated... The Federation is at war, again. The last one lasted for almost 21 years... And that was in the system next to Sol... This one is 6 jumps away with no infrastructure in place
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on April 06, 2019, 07:06:06 AM
5th December 2106 10:53:46 To Fleet Admiral Harrison McCarthy: Enemy main fleet is closing, we are waiting at waypoint #1 In 8 hours we will launch 350 fighters, with 700 Shipwreck IV missiles and with 22 County class cruisers launching a further 2200 Shipwreck IV we are confident that the enemy main strength will be destroyed. We are keeping the 4 Shire class cruisers, 3 Argentina Jump destroyers and 16 Napoleon Destroyers in reserve. End Transmission

Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on April 06, 2019, 09:28:53 AM
Hmm being a bit greedy, only used my cruisers missiles, the first 2 groups were all hit, killing 10 out 11 ships. The main group is attacked by 1400 missiles, the last 30 seconds they have been hit by 70 AMMs every 5 seconds... Last 5 seconds to hit... In total 29 ships destroyed, 4 ships have damage to their engines, 2 have lost all motion....
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on April 07, 2019, 02:27:00 AM
Killed 81 of 88 ships in system... Now we are preparing the ground troops, 21 divisions, 2 marine, 12 Armored, 8 Mechanized divisions and 6 brigades of replacement troops, we "only" needs to gain entrance to their home system, only waiting for the new battleships that are being built...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on April 07, 2019, 02:36:07 AM
ExChairman this isn't a chat program, try to summarize the events into as few posts as possible.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on April 07, 2019, 10:23:20 AM
ExChairman this isn't a chat program, try to summarize the events into as few posts as possible.

Hi Marski,

  Given that this is the "Chat" portion of the board, I try to give people a lot of leeway here from a moderation/relevance point of view.

Thanks, and have fun!
John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on April 10, 2019, 09:26:59 AM
Returning to Aurora after a few years I came across this interesting planet. My three survey cruisers found it about four jumps from Sol.

The first problem was the jump point was only 34m k from the cost 0 planet which was defended by 25 orbital bases.  They did have an Achillies heel, their missiles were only capable of 24,000k/s, while my fastest was able to go at 55,000k/s. Their energy tech was ahead of mine as they demonstrated when they destroyed one of my survey cruisers with strength 65 energy blasts. They also had 497 fighters which they used to destroy my second cruiser. I was able to kill about 150 fighters before falling to the missile barrage. The third cruiser was also engaged by the fighters but after killing another 120 fighters managed to duck into a newly discovered warp point.


I then blockaded the contact point with my systems. Fortunately they spend most of their mobile fleet trying to break the blockade. I then took 161 20,000 ton cruisers into their system. I attempted to engage their remaining mobile assets and the orbital bases, in that order, a mistake!

All was well until the missile storm came in. Turned out their size 1 missiles, while only capable of 24,000k/s had a range of 102m k. Since I was still sitting on the warp point the fleet jumped out. Leaving most of my missiles dependent on their internal guidance. Most of the 12,000 missiles I had launched were directed at the orbital bases, and while the bases killed many hundreds they could not kill them all and all the bases died. This still left a lot of missiles around the alien homeworld. Unfortunately for the aliens they brought their freighters, fighters and many of their remaining mobile assets to orbit the homeworld, were they died. It was as though I had placed an enormous mine field around their planet. If they had waited three hours the missiles would have self destructed, but they just didn't wait. If they had used their AMMs as AMMs they may well have survived as much of my missile inventory still contained 30,000k/s missiles. After a wait of an hour or so My fleet returned to the alien system and was able to clean up easily.


It was after the conquest of the planet I found the NPR had broken Aurora! I kept getting Populate shipyard Errors, divide by 0 etc. When I looked into it I found the planet had 314 Shipyards with 628 slipways and a capacity of 6,350,000 tons naval construction and 24.510,000 tons of commercial construction. When I looked at what they were building I found they had 160 x 10,000 ton destroyers, 53 x 20,000 ton cruisers, 97 x 30,000 ton battlecruisers, 12 x 50,000 carriers and 188 x 1000 ton FACs under construction in addition to 66 colony transports of 21,300 tons. Fortunately the new ice age caused by the destruction of their ground forces prevented any completing. Had this armada been completed I don't know whether I could have won as only 48 of my 161 cruisers were latest production and all the rest two or three generations old while I had yet to lay down my first carrier. To give some idea of the planetary economy I have under 3000 construction factories and 3000 mines, The aliens had 22,500 construction factories and over 33,000 mines (that's after bombardment casualties) and resources to match, not less than 1.4 million tons, most in excess of 2million tons and duranium being 16 million tons with availabilities to match.

The really sad thing is I fear the game is now broken, cannot get rid of the error message! Part of the problem appears to be that shipyard capacity does not match size of the ships being built. Even after conquest this is a problem.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 10, 2019, 10:56:08 AM
Returning to Aurora after a few years I came across this interesting planet. My three survey cruisers found it about four jumps from Sol.

The first problem was the jump point was only 34m k from the cost 0 planet which was defended by 25 orbital bases.  They did have an Achillies heel, their missiles were only capable of 24,000k/s, while my fastest was able to go at 55,000k/s. Their energy tech was ahead of mine as they demonstrated when they destroyed one of my survey cruisers with strength 65 energy blasts. They also had 497 fighters which they used to destroy my second cruiser. I was able to kill about 150 fighters before falling to the missile barrage. The third cruiser was also engaged by the fighters but after killing another 120 fighters managed to duck into a newly discovered warp point.


I then blockaded the contact point with my systems. Fortunately they spend most of their mobile fleet trying to break the blockade. I then took 161 20,000 ton cruisers into their system. I attempted to engage their remaining mobile assets and the orbital bases, in that order, a mistake!

All was well until the missile storm came in. Turned out their size 1 missiles, while only capable of 24,000k/s had a range of 102m k. Since I was still sitting on the warp point the fleet jumped out. Leaving most of my missiles dependent on their internal guidance. Most of the 12,000 missiles I had launched were directed at the orbital bases, and while the bases killed many hundreds they could not kill them all and all the bases died. This still left a lot of missiles around the alien homeworld. Unfortunately for the aliens they brought their freighters, fighters and many of their remaining mobile assets to orbit the homeworld, were they died. It was as though I had placed an enormous mine field around their planet. If they had waited three hours the missiles would have self destructed, but they just didn't wait. If they had used their AMMs as AMMs they may well have survived as much of my missile inventory still contained 30,000k/s missiles. After a wait of an hour or so My fleet returned to the alien system and was able to clean up easily.


It was after the conquest of the planet I found the NPR had broken Aurora! I kept getting Populate shipyard Errors, divide by 0 etc. When I looked into it I found the planet had 314 Shipyards with 628 slipways and a capacity of 6,350,000 tons naval construction and 24.510,000 tons of commercial construction. When I looked at what they were building I found they had 160 x 10,000 ton destroyers, 53 x 20,000 ton cruisers, 97 x 30,000 ton battlecruisers, 12 x 50,000 carriers and 188 x 1000 ton FACs under construction in addition to 66 colony transports of 21,300 tons. Fortunately the new ice age caused by the destruction of their ground forces prevented any completing. Had this armada been completed I don't know whether I could have won as only 48 of my 161 cruisers were latest production and all the rest two or three generations old while I had yet to lay down my first carrier. To give some idea of the planetary economy I have under 3000 construction factories and 3000 mines, The aliens had 22,500 construction factories and over 33,000 mines (that's after bombardment casualties) and resources to match, not less than 1.4 million tons, most in excess of 2million tons and duranium being 16 million tons with availabilities to match.

The really sad thing is I fear the game is now broken, cannot get rid of the error message! Part of the problem appears to be that shipyard capacity does not match size of the ships being built. Even after conquest this is a problem.

Could you go into the DB and delete the NPR shipyard tasks?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on April 10, 2019, 01:28:09 PM
Quote
Could you go into the DB and delete the NPR shipyard tasks?

Thanks for the idea Steve.
Unfortunately the post conquest DB did not have any NPR shipyard tasks and while the pre-conquest DB did, deleting them had no effect upon conquest. It is unfortunate the interrupt occurs at the end of turn and the turn never stops.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 10, 2019, 01:47:48 PM
Quote
Could you go into the DB and delete the NPR shipyard tasks?

Thanks for the idea Steve.
Unfortunately the post conquest DB did not have any NPR shipyard tasks and while the pre-conquest DB did, deleting them had no effect upon conquest. It is unfortunate the interrupt occurs at the end of turn and the turn never stops.

Could you tell me the exact error?

Was it for PopulateShipyardComplexes or PopulateShipyardTasks?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on April 10, 2019, 03:15:16 PM
Could you tell me the exact error?

Was it for PopulateShipyardComplexes or PopulateShipyardTasks?


The exact error was:   Error in populate shipyard complexes
                                 Error 11 was generated by Aurora
                                 Division by zero
                                 Please report to etc.


Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 10, 2019, 06:03:15 PM
Could you tell me the exact error?

Was it for PopulateShipyardComplexes or PopulateShipyardTasks?


The exact error was:   Error in populate shipyard complexes
                                 Error 11 was generated by Aurora
                                 Division by zero
                                 Please report to etc.

I can see two possible divide by zero errors in that section, both of which are related to shipyard upgrade tasks. One division is by the required BP for a task, which seems unlikely to be zero. The other division is for the modification rate of the shipyard. If the planet has been hit really hard, the radiation may have reduced that to zero. You can fix that in the DB by removing the shipyard upgrade task. In the Shipyard table set TaskType, RequiredBP and CompletedBP to zero for the affected shipyards.

The only problem might be if the AI tries to recreate the tasks. In that case, un-clicking the AutoManage field in the Population table might be the answer.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on April 11, 2019, 05:23:48 AM
Well that changed things a little the error now is:  Error in populate shipyard complexes
                                                                        Error 6 was generated by Aurora
                                                                        Overflow
                                                                        Please report to etc.


I was a little enthusiastic when I eliminated the alien ground forces. When I conquered the planet radiation had reduced industrial production to -99.96. This has now improved to -99.83!


EDIT on running the time on the error now is:  Error in Production
                                                                    Error 6 was generated by Aurora
                                                                    Overflow
                                                                    Please report to etc.

I suspect this is due to the radiation effects.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 11, 2019, 05:27:08 AM
Well that changed things a little the error now is:  Error in populate shipyard complexes
                                                                        Error 6 was generated by Aurora
                                                                        Overflow
                                                                        Please report to etc.


I was a little enthusiastic when I eliminated the alien ground forces. When I conquered the planet radiation had reduced industrial production to -99.96. This has now improved to -99.83!

Hope you weren't planing to live there any time soon :)

I am at work at the moment - will check on the new error when I get home this evening.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: IanD on April 11, 2019, 05:59:09 AM
Good news, after the final series of error 6 messages Aurora is now running as well as it ever did. Thanks for the help Steve. The moral is don't nuke the aliens so hard in future!   ;D

Out of interest how could the alien planet build such large ships without the shipyard capacity?

Now I have retired looking forward to C# Aurora to fill my empty days (apart from when I am the family taxi service). :-\
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 11, 2019, 06:38:58 AM
Good news, after the final series of error 6 messages Aurora is now running as well as it ever did. Thanks for the help Steve. The moral is don't nuke the aliens so hard in future!   ;D

Out of interest how could the alien planet build such large ships without the shipyard capacity?

Now I have retired looking forward to C# Aurora to fill my empty days (apart from when I am the family taxi service). :-\

In VB6 Aurora, the starting alien forces are not calculated in line with SY capacity.

In C# Aurora, NPRs have to retool shipyards so the starting shipyards and starting designs are aligned. The AI usually has fewer shipyards than designs. Once it stops producing a design because it has enough of that type, the SY tooled to those designs become available for retooling to a different (and in-demand) design.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Resident Evil on April 24, 2019, 02:58:08 PM
Squatters in Sol  :o (See attachment)

For some reason my ally has decided to maintain a significant number of warships in Sol for the last god knows how many years. I forget how long we've been allies for - it was a bit of an accident. When I found the first world of theirs I was going to drop troops on it and capture it - I was thwarted though by not having jump drives on my troop transports - oops.

We've probably been allied 20+ years now, but I just don't know what they're doing in Sol with such a fleet. I'm still building planetary missile complex's, but even now I could probably blow them out of the sky - if they start slowing the game down I'll be very tempted  ;D

ZG
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on April 27, 2019, 12:32:43 PM
ExChairman this isn't a chat program, try to summarize the events into as few posts as possible.

I agree with you.  I don't want to discourage anyone's enthusiasm, but so many small updates would be better suited to the user's own fiction thread (I have received this same advice and it turned out fine).
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on April 27, 2019, 12:33:29 PM
In my current game, the Terran Republic has discovered nearly 100 systems but has yet to find any NPRs (including the 3 that the game started with, in a 500 star game).  As a consequence, I have been able to claim several high-quality worlds unopposed aside from the occasional Swarm or Precursor presence.  However, since I started with 500 million population, there still aren't enough people to go around even 30 years later.  Total industrial and mining output remains less than I'd like for the same reason.  Since the Republic is unable to support a massive fleet, I've focused on building a smaller number of very powerful ships.  The total size of the Navy is small, but individually my ships tend to be larger, tougher, and more heavily armed, class for class, than those in most other people's games.  Quality over quantity. 

Right now the biggest concerns are:

1) Defending the far-flung colonies from potential threats.  Some of the colonies are up to 7 jumps from Earth and have no local defense whatsoever aside from the planetary garrison brigade.
2) Improving industrial capacity while also avoiding a resource crunch.
3) Ensuring that known jump points are properly mapped with buoys so that if there is an NPR wandering around, it will be identified.

The Terran Republic's forum is here:  http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?board=256.0
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Viridia on April 28, 2019, 06:21:14 AM
The aftermath of the Second Battle of FL Virginis, 2099, won at a heavy cost following the First Battle of FL Virginis in 2090. The wrecks depicted near the JP are from the first engagement and are designated for priority reclamation. A destroyer group will be rerouted with marine combat forces to try and board or destroy the enemy space stations located in the inner system.(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/72a84c7d-4a2e-41f7-827c-8c0bd816bcae/dd5nq4o-e1a91f12-a7e7-4784-8339-508a1536453e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzcyYTg0YzdkLTRhMmUtNDFmNy04MjdjLThjMGJkODE2YmNhZVwvZGQ1bnE0by1lMWE5MWYxMi1hN2U3LTQ3ODQtODMzOS01MDhhMTUzNjQ1M2UucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.mpKm3Vcf0SOhkxikiGAv_xTmEbBF410u9veHPeBHwj0)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 29, 2019, 10:52:55 PM
Cavgunner, my colony defense philosophy is a hierarchy:

1)  Scout first.  All systems have some kind of sensors on every jump point, either a picket ship, sensor platform, or sensor buoys.

2)  All inhabited colonies have a small PDC carrier to base scouts on.  These can probe contacts, shadow an enemy, and even if the colony is destroyed, hopefully they can shadow the invaders back to where they came from to localize their jump entry.

3)  Any colony with a significant population and industry should at least have some protection from a random missile attack.  This can be from planetary AMM PDCs, which can be quite efficient as you can get 5 second reloads easily, and you can use colony missile stocks, so you don't need to spend on magazines.  Another option is railgun orbitals.  Basically you stick a whole bunch of base tech railguns in orbit, they cost 1 BP each, and use your race's base tracking.  You can even under power them for extra cost savings.  Because all their systems are so cheap, most of the time, a maintenance failure is going to be cheap to fix, so you can have a very long endurance on them for little cost.  They provide enormous PPV for their cost, can deal with box launcher volleys quite well, and soak an enormous amount of damage for their cost.

So any colony worth protecting can have a bunch of 10,000 ton orbitals that cost about 300 BP each.  It is all about cheaply mitigating the damage an attack can do.  You won't be able to protect the shipping, especially the dumbass civilians, no matter what you do.  But early detection allows for a quicker response.  And missile defenses means that the colony itself will generally not take much damage because the enemy is likely to shoot all its missiles on approach.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on April 30, 2019, 12:07:02 PM
I faintly recall someone posting their railgun-OWP in the Bureau at some point but would you mind posting yours as well? I quite like OWPs but the maintenance hassle always makes me wary to use them extensively.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 30, 2019, 02:37:04 PM
The orbital monitor in #ship-repository was my design, pretty sure.

    Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor    10 650 tons     101 Crew     335.2 BP      TCS 213  TH 0  EM 0
    1 km/s     Armour 1-43     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 180
    Maint Life 20.52 Years     MSP 1079    AFR 226%    IFR 3.2%    1YR 5    5YR 73    Max Repair 19 MSP
    Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 6   

    Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A

    brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
    Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (15)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

    This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


20 years maintenance should be enough for most purposes.  You can always self-destruct and salvage it and reuse most of the components.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on April 30, 2019, 02:42:13 PM
The choice of reactor is actually deliberate.  It is all about components as armor.  So primitive reactors that each generate 1 power and have 1 HtK are ideal, as size is no great concern.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on May 02, 2019, 05:12:25 PM
Here is a small drone that I like to put at colonies... often together with rail gun defences as well. Railguns are good for shooting down very large volleys but these drones shoot down anything and can be deployed from PDC directly.

Code: [Select]
Phalanx class Point Defence Drone    487 tons     3 Crew     122.4 BP      TCS 9.74  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 8.2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 97%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 50    5YR 749    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   


Single Gauss Cannon R3-85 Turret (1x4)    Range 30 000km     TS: 40000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 40-10000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80 000 km   TS: 40000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

I also like these on my ships as missile defences...

Code: [Select]
Shield class Point Defence Drone    487 tons     3 Crew     115.4 BP      TCS 9.74  TH 40  EM 0
4106 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 7.4
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 97%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 33    5YR 488    Max Repair 45 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   

40 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 40    Fuel Use 489.16%    Signature 40    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 0.4 billion km   (25 hours at full power)

Single Gauss Cannon R3-85 Turret (1x4)    Range 30 000km     TS: 30000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.7 40-7500 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80 000 km   TS: 30000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

Note that the Phalanx class have twice the tracking speed of any regular ship mounted Gauss weapon and the shield variant have 50% more tracking speed. This is due to them using fighter fire-controls.

They are more expensive than cheap rail-guns but will knock down small volleys fired en mass that the big stations will not do. They also serve well as training platforms of new pilots and the fighter pilot bonus for beam weapons make them dead accurate. You could even make the Gauss gun even smaller and with a twin gun instead because they are so accurate they usually will get over 100% to hit rate and that is good when the base chance is relatively low.

Above tech is made with 5000km/s base tracking speed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Michael Sandy on May 02, 2019, 06:27:50 PM
I think that having both railgun stations and gauss can be pretty effective.  The gauss are good against rapid fire missiles, like AMMs.  Plus, being fighter sized, they are more easily packed up and used offensively.  On a build point basis, the railgun station is going to be better than the gauss+PDC carrier.

Lets see, the Victory is 60x4 at 5,000 km/s every 30 seconds.  So it could take out 30 missiles that were going 40,000 km/s, but only every 30 seconds.  Most long range missile fire is going to be spaced out a bit.

The Phalanx is 4 shots at 40,000 every 5 seconds.  At about 1/3 the nominal cost, probably more like 1/2 once the carrier PDC is factored in.

The Phalanx can far better handle small volleys and rapid fire.

The fighter bonus officers help the Phalanx a lot, but the very long expected careers of the Orbital Station Victory means that given a decent training commander they will have significant bonus from crew grade.

The Phalanxes would be a lot easier to ramp up.  You are pretty much committing a large shipyard to building and upgrading the Orbital Stations.  And retooling is expensive and time consuming for large shipyards.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on May 02, 2019, 06:40:08 PM
The orbital monitor in #ship-repository was my design, pretty sure.

    Victory class Orbital Defence Monitor    10 650 tons     101 Crew     335.2 BP      TCS 213  TH 0  EM 0
    1 km/s     Armour 1-43     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 180
    Maint Life 20.52 Years     MSP 1079    AFR 226%    IFR 3.2%    1YR 5    5YR 73    Max Repair 19 MSP
    Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 6   

    Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A

    brrrt 10cm Railgun V1/C1 (60x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Flak Control Fire Control S00.5 32-4000 (3)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
    Bulk Power Pressurised Water Reactor PB-1 (15)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

    This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


20 years maintenance should be enough for most purposes.  You can always self-destruct and salvage it and reuse most of the components.


Forgive me for asking, but doesn't the 1km/sec base speed override the non-turreted tracking speed of any direct fire weapon this vessel has?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on May 02, 2019, 07:35:58 PM
Forgive me for asking, but doesn't the 1km/sec base speed override the non-turreted tracking speed of any direct fire weapon this vessel has?

It shouldn't.  The rule is the higher of unit speed or empire base beam FC speed.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on May 02, 2019, 08:11:58 PM
Ah, I see.  The key term being "base beam FC speed."
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on May 03, 2019, 01:10:54 PM
I think that having both railgun stations and gauss can be pretty effective.  The gauss are good against rapid fire missiles, like AMMs.  Plus, being fighter sized, they are more easily packed up and used offensively.  On a build point basis, the railgun station is going to be better than the gauss+PDC carrier.

Lets see, the Victory is 60x4 at 5,000 km/s every 30 seconds.  So it could take out 30 missiles that were going 40,000 km/s, but only every 30 seconds.  Most long range missile fire is going to be spaced out a bit.

The Phalanx is 4 shots at 40,000 every 5 seconds.  At about 1/3 the nominal cost, probably more like 1/2 once the carrier PDC is factored in.

The Phalanx can far better handle small volleys and rapid fire.

The fighter bonus officers help the Phalanx a lot, but the very long expected careers of the Orbital Station Victory means that given a decent training commander they will have significant bonus from crew grade.

The Phalanxes would be a lot easier to ramp up.  You are pretty much committing a large shipyard to building and upgrading the Orbital Stations.  And retooling is expensive and time consuming for large shipyards.

They are meant to do different things... if you are attacked by enemy fighters/FAC then those large stations will just be overkill and not have enough fire-controls. The fire controls is the expensive part of those stations not the guns. That is why a mix can be quite important for most general defence. The other benefit is that the smaller drones are easy to move where they are needed and can be used to protect ships as well as anything else.

You also can make those Gauss turrets even smaller and still reach about 100% hit chance through crew grade and pilot bonuses, it is possible to have up to a twin turret in them and basically almost double the total effective volume of fire per fire-control.

Hangar PDC also is relatively cheap... especially when you consider no maintenance and you never have to upgrade them or replace them once built. You also pay zero maintenance for the thing inside the bays so this should also be factored in.

Here is a more streamlined Railgun platform that I like... the one with too many guns I think are too easy to saturate with small volleys from fighters...

Code: [Select]
Defiant class Orbital Defence Monitor    1 000 tons     10 Crew     63.4 BP      TCS 20  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 18
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 6    5YR 94    Max Repair 30 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 0   


10cm Railgun V1/C1 (6x4)    Range 10 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 40-5000 (1)    Max Range: 80 000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.2 (1)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 16%

Another problem with PD that fire less than 5s is that any fire can be staggered to take advantage of it. Say you have 30 missiles in a box launched FAC you can fire 10 missiles in three volleys in three 5 second intervals to saturate fire controls that only fire every 15 seconds. This is why weapons that fire slower than once every 5s turns are not optimal. A few squadron of fighter that each carry three size 6 missiles could stagger them in one missile per volley in three five second turns to deal with the fire-controls and slow reload rate of the rail-gun. You can't do the same with fire controls as it take at least 5s before a weapon react once assigned to a control, as far as I remember.

This is one of the reason I'm not too happy with how the mechanics work and cheap rail-guns simply are too effective and cheap for what they can do if you don't game the mechanics. In general I don't allow the two lowest forms if rail-gun for PD in my games for that specific reason unless it is very early game and that is all you have.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Jorgen_CAB on May 03, 2019, 01:18:47 PM
Forgive me for asking, but doesn't the 1km/sec base speed override the non-turreted tracking speed of any direct fire weapon this vessel has?

In this case the fire control set the speed at which you can engage a missile so 4000km/s is what you get, not 5000km/s. The fire control still have to be able to deal with the speed at which the weapon can engage. The base speed only means a ship at lower than 5000km/s will be able to track at up to 5000km/s if the fire control can do that.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on May 04, 2019, 12:41:43 PM
Busy times
(https://i.imgur.com/LO7qDDh.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Cavgunner on May 04, 2019, 02:31:52 PM
Busy times


Busy?  Yes.  That would be one word.  Geez.  Good luck!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on May 05, 2019, 02:35:23 AM
Picked up an old game I didn't play on for over a year. Some challenge in its own to figure out what is going on, what the overall plan is, where those aliens are coming from. Found a small text file with some notes, I tend to keep that for my games. Worked like a letter from my predecessor and gave some hints, but also some cryptic lines that were barely more than a system name.

All those long term topics you are juggling during an aurora game, resource supply, research plans, missile production levels, economy.. will be interesting to see what mistakes happen due to forgetting/misunderstanding previous plans.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on May 05, 2019, 06:18:57 AM
Found a small text file with some notes, I tend to keep that for my games. Worked like a letter from my predecessor...

When programming, I comment my code a LOT. For some of the more complex code, I also leave Future Steve more detailed explanations in comments so that when he turns up in a few years and asks "Why the hell did I code it that way?", the answer is there :)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 05, 2019, 04:13:04 PM
Picked up an old game I didn't play on for over a year. Some challenge in its own to figure out what is going on, what the overall plan is, where those aliens are coming from. Found a small text file with some notes, I tend to keep that for my games. Worked like a letter from my predecessor and gave some hints, but also some cryptic lines that were barely more than a system name.

All those long term topics you are juggling during an aurora game, resource supply, research plans, missile production levels, economy.. will be interesting to see what mistakes happen due to forgetting/misunderstanding previous plans.
When I start a "proper" campaign that I'm investing a lot of effort in, I make an Excel file with multiple sheets that covers all that stuff and more, so that even if I take extended breaks from the game, I can fairly easily step back in.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on May 06, 2019, 12:18:18 AM
Busy times


Busy?  Yes.  That would be one word.  Geez.  Good luck!
Thanks.
(https://i.imgur.com/5DmF4d2.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/GCcTUkw.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/pXvfki8.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/U82KstT.png)

Was sitting at the edge of my seat, waiting for the 5-second turn to finish calculating, the fleet jumped JUST in the nick of time.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: sloanjh on May 06, 2019, 12:57:27 AM
Found a small text file with some notes, I tend to keep that for my games. Worked like a letter from my predecessor...

When programming, I comment my code a LOT. For some of the more complex code, I also leave Future Steve more detailed explanations in comments so that when he turns up in a few years and asks "Why the hell did I code it that way?", the answer is there :)
As a professional developer, it's amazing how many times I land in a piece of code that I have no recollection of and see comments there from past me :)

John
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on May 06, 2019, 07:53:47 AM
When programming, I comment my code a LOT. For some of the more complex code, I also leave Future Steve more detailed explanations in comments so that when he turns up in a few years and asks "Why the hell did I code it that way?", the answer is there :)
As a professional developer, it's amazing how many times I land in a piece of code that I have no recollection of and see comments there from past me :)

John

On several occasions I have written a function, only to subsequently find I previously wrote exactly the same code with a slightly different function name.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Bughunter on May 07, 2019, 02:01:53 AM
On several occasions I have written a function, only to subsequently find I previously wrote exactly the same code with a slightly different function name.

In case you wonder how many those occasions are there are tools to find them:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/resharper/dupFinder.html (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/resharper/dupFinder.html)

In other news, I'm happy to have resumed that old game because I'm having a great battle right now. Going for a long range missile alpha strike doctrine, intentionally somewhat overly so with very weak PD/screening capability. A battle group of missile cruisers were just ambushed at point blank range by FAC:s they could not see with their sensors looking for bigger fish. Or maybe not ambushed, the FAC:s were running without actives and we met head on so they may have been as surprised as I was.

I decided to just keep going forward (towards enemy territory) to increase range as quickly as possible. Turns out the FAC:s were also missile armed so suddenly hundreds of missiles flying as the the forces separate and in the middle of that I detect the enemy capital ships further ahead.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on May 08, 2019, 03:40:40 PM
P-200M and P-200L anti-ship missiles homing to targets using onboard infrared sensors

(https://i.imgur.com/5Py1VhO.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4sNKsOh.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/ApaXikP.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on May 09, 2019, 01:15:08 PM
What's the difference between the two models?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on May 09, 2019, 08:51:59 PM
What's the difference between the two models?
P-200M is an improved model of the first iteration of the P-200 series, introducing thermal sensors and slightly improved range of 124,5 million kilometers at the cost of maneuver handling.
P-200L has the same sensor package but newer thruster with much longer range at 139,8 million kilometers, along with larger warhead, improved from 24 to 27.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Marski on May 15, 2019, 02:36:42 AM
Several battles fought at the systems beyond Golovin, best call them "Golovin Chain" from now on.
(https://i.imgur.com/5WYviki.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: GodEmperor on May 15, 2019, 04:07:38 PM
Due to my smegty OCD i had to scuttle my campaign which was frakking fun as hell. Im pretty sure it was the longest campaign i ever played, when i abandoned it was 160 years long.
Started at terraformed Titan with nuked Earth, transformed my entire population into human  capable of living in -43C because thats the lowest temp Titan can get. It was kinda fun to try and reclaim 17 colony cost Earth.
Last 20 years i spent in a war with first xeno that i encoutered, with my hopelessly outdated fleet that was forced to use AMM as ASM's. Sol was secured but i lost several ships during opening phase of the war and 26milion people bombed to death on one of the colonies outside Sol.
Was pretty nice but few harmless bugs made my OCD go full overdrive and i had to delete it :/

So i started new game, following the slightly modified house rules for ship design someone posted here long time ago.
Earth, conventional start with 12bn people ( UN population projection for 2100 ), 10 labs and no shipyards.
Its 2138 and i have 28mil both naval and civilian shipyards ( biggest mil shipyard is 5mil with 2 slipways ) but i have to chill with shipyards for a while because i have more than 1bn worker shortage due to that and duranium shortage because adding one slipway to that 5mil shipyard requires almost 500k duranium...

Im working on my first ship now, with scientists researching 1st gen kinetic/missile techs ( i wont build additional labs soon because i want to go slow with my research as always ) so i can give that ship some point defence as said rules demand from me.

Cant wait for my first Titan or Superdreadnought to be built and unleashed against my enemies.
Theoretically im on UNSC/standard Federation theme but im going full Warhammer on this smeg - mine the entire galaxy, kill all the xenos, populate what you can, field thousands of ships O!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on July 16, 2019, 07:44:34 AM
Personal log, Vizeadmiral Patrick Behren


We have become dangerously complacent, giving aliens a wide berth and attempting diplomacy from afar. This left us blind to the biggest threat humanity has faced yet. We left when we observed signs of combat, and even our trading partners remain tight-lipped. Perhaps they fear an opportunistic attack.
Today, earth is celebrating the first victory of humankind over an alien aggressor. We know almost nothing about them - unlike the others they never responded to our hails. Their only communication consisted of lethal beam fire and ramming attempts against our exploration ships. We found no civilian traffic, and no population centers. They either came from jump points we are not aware of, or from the far side of the various wormholes that have been sighted near our home system.

When a hostile transit into Sol was detected, a small task force of our most capable four 13500t beam cruisers - not even fully worked up yet - brought the 39000t vessel to task. Despite an incredible enemy ECM suite, they could land hits at ca. 230,000km while the enemy could only respond below 200,000km. Careful handling meant nothing penetrated our shields, but the analysis of the wreck (no survivors) raises grave concerns.
This was no battleship. If enemy shipbuilding practices mirror our own, it was an escort vessel - armed with small laser turrets designed against targets going at 100,000km/s, more than twice the speed of our most capable missiles. Their weapon technology, antimatter-based propulsion systems and electronic warfare capabilities are generations ahead of our own.

The Office of Naval Construction is in chaos. Our laser monitors can't be relied on to defend jump points, they'd struggle to score a single hit at point blank range. Our missile forces remain untested, but even if the weapons themselves are effective against the sophisticated point defence we know they have, we don't have enough ammunition to repel a major incursion. Also, no supply train for continuous operations - missiles have so far been treated as the final option if everything else fails, and to be avoided if at all possible. The victorious fast wing may well turn out powerless the next time, our margin of speed and range was marginal and we faced no weapon above 10cm in calibre.
All future designs will have to take asymmetric warfare against a superior opponent into account. In the long run, we must get our hands on their technology. Boarding technology and the formation of a Marine corps are being considered, even though we have no idea if we could operate their ships if captured. Regardless of the route chose, earth is preparing for a war of annihilation and all trans-Newtonian industry is repurposed for defence.

The planned operation against the robotic guardians adjacent to Sol, the first offensive action in space, will proceed at reduced strength. While a far cry from the new threat, their technology is superior to ours in most most areas, and one planet harbours an installation that could revolutionise missile and kinetic weapon research.
Will others scour the ruins of earth one day, trying to make sense of our culture while desperately looking for anything that helps them stave off an unknown and implacable enemy? Only a few years ago, I felt privileged to be born in a time where the stars are open for exploration, rather than just a source of wonder and longing. Now, I rest uneasy thinking of the secrets they hold.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: TMaekler on July 16, 2019, 10:28:41 AM
On several occasions I have written a function, only to subsequently find I previously wrote exactly the same code with a slightly different function name.

That shows that you know what you are doing - same result every time. Except that you do it again... and again... and again...  ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on July 27, 2019, 06:35:48 AM
A small reschedule of commands in the Empire today... Some 3800 commanders have been selected for new duties... ;)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on July 27, 2019, 10:39:22 AM
Small.

Right.

Exactly how big is that military of yours?
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on July 27, 2019, 11:51:29 AM
Been playing for 65 years now and its getting slow...

Ohhh, some 56 Armored. mechanized, marines and garrison divisions, 34 Engineer divisions and 15 independent brigades, mostly garrison....

250 combat vessels from BB down to FACs (150ish) and a lot of fighters (around 700 , but only about 200 of latest design) 190 Forrest class of terraformers, some 200 cargo and colony haulers... 55 Trooptransport and 6 assault Transports, around 600 PDC and other space station/bases...

Need quasar4x  ;D

Latest annextion gave 187 Ground Force training centers, so I probobly doubled my production of ground troops...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on September 04, 2019, 08:26:52 AM
The Aikhibba Imperium and the Valletta Commonwealth share a planet orbiting the secondary star of the Nullarbor system, directly adjacent to Sol.
Diplomatic overtures were made and we granted trade access to both, but only the Imperium reciprocated. Eventually, the Commonwealth turned hostile and destroyed several of our merchant vessels.

Since our offensive capabilities were missile-based and we had insufficient ammunition for a prolonged war, the high council voted to resolve the matter with a single overwhelming display of force. A convenient Lagrange Point allowed an intra-system jump that almost brought us into missile range, and since our missiles were considerably faster (30000km/s vs 12000km/s) we would be able to withdraw unengaged after making our displeasure known. Our battlefleet expended most of its ordnance in a volley of 252 missiles against Valletta population centers, overwhelming the surprisingly capable point defence and causing an immediate surrender.

The dispersed enemy forces appeared unlikely to overwhelm the newly acquired 5 Orbital Beam Bases with their combined 140 twin laser turrets, so the Missile Bases and AMM-armed escort vessels in orbit were used offensively against approaching ships, with breaks to thin out occasionally large volleys over 50 missiles (highest encountered: around 80). All in all, thousands of seized Valletta missiles were fired.
Some hostiles managed to close the distance to as little as 80k, but our new subjects held the line without coming under beam or point-blank missile fire. The immediate vicinity of the planet is clear, and while skirmishes will continue for a while, complete victory seems inevitable.

Planetary casualties are unknown, but we have acquired 790 million new subjects who will need to be pacified and cared for. Emergency housing and infrastructure projects are underway, as the nuclear winter with temperatures below -34°C is currently expected to result in millions of new deaths each month. This has to be balanced against the need for maintenance facilities, as the acquired orbital defences are in a woeful state of disrepair. Fortunately, the nation exhibits a high degree of industrial development - without the current disruption its industrial output would be higher than Earth's, with large mineral stockpiles and several times the shipyard capacity. Curiously, there is almost no educational or financial infrastructure.

The Aikhibba Imperium so far showed remarkable restraint, we haven't received as much as a protest note. Hopefully there will be no cause for further unpleasantness, the history books will likely be unkind to us as it is.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on September 06, 2019, 01:33:32 PM
Our 20 Luna-class corvettes (4800t) departed Valaik to secure the system, accompanied by all spaceworthy Valletta ships that fell into our hands: 6 escort cruisers (newly designated "Valiant", 16000t) and 5 escort destroyers ("Valkyrie", 8000t), all exclusively armed with AMMs of dubious quality. Assurances of faithful service were given, in return for our dedication to a rebuilding and relief program. The terraforming fleet is underway in an attempt to stabilise the climate, as are freighters with all the infrastructure we can spare.
What we did not receive was information about size and capabilities of the resistance fleet, apparently that would be an unthinkable betrayal in Valletta culture.

Several lone resistance vessels were run down and destroyed with beam fire, their crew taken aboard. The 30cm carronades of the 2 "Deimos" variants usually finished the job before we closed to railgun range. On the way to a group of 3 immobile 40000t vessels and several sensor signatures that did not yet show up on actives, our anti-missile sensors suddenly picked up a group of 249 200t fighters at a distance of 15 million km, with a comfortable speed advantage over our ships. With a grand total of 32 missiles left and one beam fire control each, our corvettes were in no way equipped to deal with them.
Our vassals, with their run-down ships, undisciplined crews and substandard missile weaponry, rose to the occasion magnificently. From 4m km, they fired seven salvos before the enemy opened the range to a point where we could not be certain of obtaining any hits. Shortly thereafter, they thinned out the volley of 249 size-3 missiles to the point where our railguns almost dealt with the remainder. No ship took serious damage, and 42 enemy fighters were shot down.

Had our Vallettan auxiliaries not acted with honour and competence, this could have been a major setback. Appropriate recognition is suggested. Fleet command also encourages R&D into more capable AMMs and vessels that can handle such a threat without outside assistance. Apart from the political implications, relying on Vallettan designs would be burdensome because of their atrocious fuel efficiency.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Iranon on September 09, 2019, 10:13:54 AM
Skirmishes with missile fighters and FACs continued, but none came close to overwhelming our defences and the Vallettan resistance ran out of craft before the colonial fleet ran out of ammunition. With no more known hostiles in the system, our own warships left for earth. The war bounties were to follow as soon as planet-bound defences were in place, built by fighter factories so heavy industry could focus on the relief effort. Withdrawing our fleet was meant to show our continued peaceful intentions towards the Aikhibba.

They struck 3 days later. Without warning, Valletta colony ships in orbit were hit by small missiles and what later turned out to be Gauss weapons. After the initial confusion, our laser bases cleared the orbit before rendering what defence they could, while the AMM forces commenced planetary bombardment. The Aikhibba responded in kind, splitting their fire between Valletta population centers and civilian ships . There was no maneuvering, no finesse, no heroism. Just killing. The artless slaughter ended in an Aikhibba surrender within minutes, but the dust and the ashes will not settle for years.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on January 09, 2020, 03:20:56 PM
I recently decided to start a new game (after a long break) in anticipation of Aurora C# being closer than it ever was before. It also gave me a good opportunity to refamiliarize myself with the game. As it turns out you can forget A LOT in two years (last time I touched it).
Using the automated research distribution at the start of the game, I ended up with full box launchers. I take that as a sign  :)

Overall the game has been rather gentle towards me. I encountered aliens in to systems next to Sol, but the rest were clear, and I have started moving into Sirius, where there are a number of good mineral options. I'm expanding slower than I wanted to, but I suppose that's a side effect of forgetting how to play. It also took me several tries to exterminate the two ships and two PDC's in Alpha Centauri. But, oh boy, was that a good thing. The aliens kept me out of surveying most of the bodies, but now, about 25 years after game start, we are about to mine the smeg out of this system. Once Luna is terratormed, we'll have plenty of industry to start settling for good and establishing a presence. There are even enough minerals, that I might consider redirecting some manufacturing there. It might be easier than shipping the minerals back to Sol (except for Boronide, which is the only mineral that is truly limited)

Here's a selection of the best goodies. I left a few out due to low availability, but there should be enough here to last a while :)
Oh, and there's an 80% Power & Propulsion boost at Alpha Centauri A-III

(https://i.imgur.com/DW85SPR.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on January 10, 2020, 12:38:11 PM
Looks like you're set until C# gets here  ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 20, 2020, 02:58:34 PM
Contact!

Swedish forces have found the 3rd race in known space with space capabilities.

In the star system 41 Area we have found an insect-like breed. We receive lots of signals from their "radio waves", it has about 80% higher EM radiation than the earth with its 6 billion souls. A possible hostile race lives on the other planet's moon, beautiful they are not.

In a giant station orbiting the planet, there seems to be an endless amount of shipyards that we estimate can build 10% less tonnage than the total Swedish Empire's yards. But we do not yet know what their distribution is on merchant ships vs warships.

The 7 Swedish cruisers with HMS Tor at the head are slowly moving towards the planet.

Vice-Admiral Maria Hernander quickly makes the decision to retreat and not challenge fate, we have seen maybe 30 ships in frigate / chase size and 25's ships up to battle cruisers move quickly out of the planet's vicinity. They seem to be led by a ship of 47 000 tonnes, we suspect it is some type of aircraft carrier, if we go after our own Gotland's ship it can have anything from 40-100 warships depending on the size of these. We seem to have about 25% higher speed than their fastest ships.

Admiral Hernander knows that the 2nd Fleet's 4 aircraft carrier has been upgraded to the latest Gotland class and should be in refitted within 4 months, to which are added 15 light cruisers and 40 destroyers that can be assigned to a possible attack.

Then the 1st fleet is left as a home defense with the two battleships HMS Sweden and HMS Finland together with 2 older Gotland ships which are being rebuilt, together with around a hundred missile boats for protection.

What the Swedish kingdom lacks most is ground troops, only 7 armored divisions exist, totally insufficient for a possible invasion.

But at least we try to talk to them, the Foreign Ministry sends a group under Foreign Minister Amanda Danielsson.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on January 21, 2020, 01:31:55 PM
Sweden can into space?  :D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 25, 2020, 03:37:00 AM
Oh yes!
After Charles XII conquered Russia, Prussia/Poland and Denmark/Norway during the Great Northern War 1700-1711.
In 1721 the War for Europe begun and in 19 years Sweden crushed all European great powers, mostly because they couldn't unite against Sweden and was absorbed one after the other. Charles XII died in 1751 and his son replaced him, By 1790 most of the other  nations on earth were nations were under Swedish rule, one way or the other.

In 1900 the benevolent rule of Sweden had created a unified Earth with a King as its ruler and a elected Parliament. 1901 a new science was discovered, Transnewtonia. After 20 years of colonisation of Luna, Mars and several other colonies the first jump capable survey ships went out into the great unknown. Several systems with huge mineral deposited were found and a huge colonization effort were begun a lot of ruins were also found and fueled Terras research projects. In 1960s a sentient race were found some 6 jumps from Sol system, the become fast friends and trade is flourishing.

In 1989 a new race were discovered. In less than a week there were war, Sweden mobilized a fleet, the ships of the navy were mostly old ships that had been upgraded the last 40 years and there were some "flaws". Light on armor was one thing but coupled with shields that were shut down during wormhole travels it become obvious that several new class off ships were needed... Entering 41 Area was costly after the clouds of light became dark again, Sweden had lost 39 Fighter Bombers, 7 Destroyers and 4 cruisers. The flagship HMS Sverige had its huge hull pockmarked by small lasers and AMM, stripping away almost 75% of its armor, but only 3 breaches with light losses, But almost 6000 swedes were lost in the opening battle.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on January 25, 2020, 12:15:48 PM
Swedish Empire in 1989.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: non sequitur on February 03, 2020, 09:28:19 PM
The Empire is mourning at the death of Emperor Serapion I of the Greater Roman Empire. His 39 year reign from January 1st, 1960 to January 5th, 1999 has seen the Empire go from dominant planetary power to interstellar empire. Representatives from all across the Empire are expected to attend the funeral. Included are to be representatives from the recently conquered United Kingdom of Thurrock. Emperor Serapion's last act as emperor was granting candidate population status to  the Thurrock.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on February 08, 2020, 04:24:29 PM
So... It seems an NPR is shooting at something in my home system, that I can't see. For some reason this is more terrifying than it should be.

(https://i.imgur.com/88gtx7z.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on February 08, 2020, 09:51:37 PM
Missiles.

Though it should be equally terrifying that you can't see what launched the missiles.  #:-]
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on February 09, 2020, 04:50:58 AM
June 8th 2036. Three other ships turned up on our radar. They appear to be patrolling the area without engaging, so we might be safe for now. Nonetheless... efforts to expedite a military deployment in our home system have tripled. We need to be safe.

(https://i.imgur.com/zXLhEJh.png)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: smoelf on February 09, 2020, 05:03:31 AM
June 29th 2036. Peace is over. They have started blasting our ships. We have no defences, no fleet. Let's hope they will suffice with our cargo ships and leave the people alone.

EDIT: OK. This might be the end of this playthrough. After destroying a few cargo ships, I now have 10 Meson FAC's from one swarm mothership shooting at my shipyards without being able to damage them. It looks like I'll be getting mandatory 10-second turns for the few years it'll take to research and build any defences - at which point I'll rather start over...
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on February 09, 2020, 05:46:22 AM
Use SpaceMaster to add some instant offense to kill the FACs if you want to save yourself from five second turns.  Remove after use.  #:-]
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 21, 2020, 05:13:05 AM
By order of the King: 18 General class CGs and 38 Battle class DDGs have been laid down for building, already building are 18 City class CLs, armed with beam weapons. This is the largest expansion of the Swedish spacenavy in its 90+ years of existence. Also being trained att all major planets are 17 Armored Brigades (Older divisions are being relegated to rear areas as garrision troops) Still its going to take years of shipbuilding and troop training before we can land on the enemy home planet.

Quote
General class Missile Cruiser    36 900 tons     898 Crew     10371.74 BP      TCS 738  TH 9600  EM 0
13008 km/s     Armour 10-98     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 53     PPV 120
Maint Life 1.01 Years     MSP 4040    AFR 473%    IFR 6.6%    1YR 3940    5YR 59098    Max Repair 1600 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 22   
Magazine 2451   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (3)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Signature 3200    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 10 250 000 Litres    Range 110.5 billion km   (98 days at full power)

Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (1x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Löfgren-Danielsson Aerospace Size 6 Missile Launcher (20)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 30
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (5)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-08Super Bamse MkIII (108)  Speed: 90 000 km/s   End: 38.5m    Range: 207.9m km   WH: 40    Size: 6    TH: 450/270/135
RB-06 Type II (300)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496/297/148

Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km    Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km    MCR 5.2m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-9 (2)         ECM 90

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Quote
Battle class Missile Destroyer    21 500 tons     547 Crew     7026.62 BP      TCS 430  TH 6400  EM 1500
14883 km/s     Armour 8-68     Shields 50-500     Sensors 50/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 43     PPV 60
Maint Life 1.06 Years     MSP 2655    AFR 284%    IFR 4%    1YR 2350    5YR 35248    Max Repair 1600 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 42   
Magazine 1168   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Signature 3200    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 5 250 000 Litres    Range 97.1 billion km   (75 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  125 Litres per hour  (3 000 per day)

Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (2x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Löfgren-Danielsson Aerospace Size 6 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 30
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (2)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-08Super Bamse MkIII (25)  Speed: 90 000 km/s   End: 38.5m    Range: 207.9m km   WH: 40    Size: 6    TH: 450/270/135
RB-06 Type II (170)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496/297/148

Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km    Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km    MCR 5.2m km    Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km

ECCM-9 (2)         ECM 90

Quote
City class Light Cruiser    24 300 tons     632 Crew     13200.5 BP      TCS 486  TH 6400  EM 3000
13168 km/s     Armour 8-74     Shields 100-500     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control Rating 43     PPV 155.71
Maint Life 1.35 Years     MSP 4414    AFR 363%    IFR 5%    1YR 2587    5YR 38800    Max Repair 2625 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 66   
Magazine 240   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Signature 3200    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 5 250 000 Litres    Range 85.9 billion km   (75 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  250 Litres per hour  (6 000 per day)

Fast Technology 75cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 147-6     RM 9    ROF 125        147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 132
Triple Åkesson-Gunnarsson Advanced Defence Systems 50cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser Turret (1x3)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 195-18     RM 9    ROF 55        65 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 58
Twin Ling & Eliasson Orbital Systems 15cm C6 X-Ray Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 420 000km     TS: 30000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 7    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (1x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Danielsson Design Bureau Fire Control S08 240-32000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 32000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Lindström-Nordström Fire Control S02 700-25000 (1)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Hansen-Mårtensson Orbital Systems Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (16)     Total Power Output 48    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Larsson Dynamics Bernadotte VLS System (40)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (2)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-06 Type II (40)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496/297/148

Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km    MCR 2.6m km    Resolution 1
Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km    Resolution 100
Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  60m km

ECCM-9 (1)         ECM 90
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Hazard on February 21, 2020, 10:13:51 AM
Nearly 2 million tons of construction and nearly 700 000 in build points?

Yeah, that'll take a while and a fair bit in minerals and wealth just on the shipping.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 22, 2020, 01:38:25 AM
Quote
Nearly 2 million tons of construction and nearly 700 000 in build points?

Yeah, that'll take a while and a fair bit in minerals and wealth just on the shipping.

Been playing for 95 years and are at tech lvl 7-9 in most areas, so with a good administrator (+40%) to its 3500 BP its going quit fast. ::)
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: plasticpanzers on February 24, 2020, 05:25:32 AM
Am almost finished setting up Olympia system which has 3 stars and 5 habitable planets and moons.  when i get to the SM creating fleets
and PDC they can only appear at my home planet Sparta.   I have tried different ways to have them appear but nothing seems to work.   Does
not bother me on the ships as I will get that sorted out.   Hard thing to see is that I see the units on ths SYS Map and on the TF order page
but not on the individual unit details.  But they never appear the way they usually do.  On the Individual unit details there is nothing.  No names
no ships.  I can assign PDC units to planets I think? I have a tf in but they are not there and don't show up anywhere.  Same with all units none
appear at all on individual unit detail page.   Looks like I will have to build the PDC on site for each planet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 24, 2020, 06:34:24 AM
3 days late the first Imperator monitor leaves its shipyard, one more is being built and are supposed to lead the assault on the enemy home system. Its probably way to big to use effectively in a battle, but should draw enemy fire.

Quote
Imperator class Monitor    400000 tons     12418 Crew     189891 BP      TCS 8000  TH 108800  EM 30000
13600 km/s     Armour 19-483     Shields 1000-500     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control 634     PPV 3275
Annual Failure Rate: 2114%    IFR: 29.4%    Maintenance Capacity 179210 MSP
Flag Bridge    Parasite Capacity 375 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 CompanyFlight Crew Berths 194    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (34)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 79 500 000 Litres    Range 79.0 billion km   (67 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (100)   Total Fuel Cost  60 000 Litres per day

Fast Technology 75cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 147-6     RM 9    ROF 125        147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 132
Göransson Aerospace Ground Based Heavy Laser (50)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 94-8     RM 9    ROF 60        94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 84
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (10x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Bofors "Pompom" Anti Space System (60x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 60000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Lindström-Nordström Fire Control S02 700-25000 (5)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Hansson-Palme Electronics Industries FC Gatling (20)    Max Range: 119 000 km   TS: 75000 km/s     92 83 75 66 58 50 41 33 24 16
Han-Cao Gas-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (4)     Total Power Output 400     Armour 0    Exp 5%
Berglund Aero Engines Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 5     Armour 0    Exp 5%
Knoebl & Eberst Foundation Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 1.60000002384186     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Corrales-Delgadillo Active Search Sensor MR4800-R100 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 4 800.0m km     Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1
Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km     Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Strength 1000: 60m km

ECCM-9 (6)         ECM 90
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 24, 2020, 12:27:27 PM
Quote
400000 tons     12418 Crew

Four hundred thousand tons with twelve thousand four hundred and eighteen crew.

Imagine the queues at the canteen during lunch!  :D

and PDC they can only appear at my home planet Sparta.
Pretty sure you can use SM mode to teleport ships (and PDC) from body to body.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Father Tim on February 24, 2020, 12:39:42 PM
and PDC they can only appear at my home planet Sparta.
Pretty sure you can use SM mode to teleport ships (and PDC) from body to body.

'Fast OOB Creation' button on the main menu bar will let you add units directly to any fleet, but the 'free' builds at the start of a new game have to go to your capital.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 29, 2020, 08:34:13 AM
3rd January 1999 A lone enemy scout/survey ship enters Gliese 674 and are picked up by the small sensor post. Information is sent to New Earth in the neighbour system of Proxima Centauri 1 jump from SOL system and Terra itself.

The empire is stunned, Gliese 674 has been surveyed some 80 years ago and deemed safe inside the empires borders and the reserve fleet is sent to Gliese 674 and a new survey of the system by 30 survey ships finds a "closed" warp point, following that chain its only 5 jumps away from Terra and almost 40% faster than the 8 jumps we were planning to attack from. Most of the modern fleet units are mobilized and sent to the system next to Area 41, Reserve fleet is back at Terra in case of something goes wrong.

9th of May 1999, at 11:59:45

The invasion of Area 41 is about to commence.

The Assault Group led by the 2 mighty Monitors enter at 12:00:00 Supported by the 2 Battleship groups as well as several escort cruisers and 5 Groups of Heavy missile destroyers
All crews are at their battlestations.
12:00:00
Entering wormhole
Anticlimax, nothing waits on the other side...

In total 2 Monitors, 16 Battleships/Dreadnaughts, 6 Large escort cruisers and 62 heavy destroyers have nothing to engage :o ;D
1 minute after the rest of the combat ships enters the system about the same time the large sensors on the monitors starts getting informations about enemy ships, some 880 Mkm away. Nothing is closer...
Last time we lost a lot of good ships, now its time to invade the Bug Empire.

2 Monitors of the Imperator class

Quote
Imperator class Monitor    400000 tons     12388 Crew     189891 BP      TCS 8000  TH 108800  EM 30000
13600 km/s     Armour 19-483     Shields 1000-500     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control 634     PPV 3275
Annual Failure Rate: 3641%    IFR: 50.6%    Maintenance Capacity 179210 MSP
Flag Bridge    Parasite Capacity 375 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 CompanyFlight Crew Berths 224    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (34)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 79 500 000 Litres    Range 79.0 billion km   (67 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (100)   Total Fuel Cost  60 000 Litres per day

Fast Technology 75cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 147-6     RM 9    ROF 125        147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 132
Göransson Aerospace Ground Based Heavy Laser (50)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 94-8     RM 9    ROF 60        94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 84
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (10x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Bofors "Pompom" Anti Space System (60x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 60000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Lindström-Nordström Fire Control S02 700-25000 (5)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Hansson-Palme Electronics Industries FC Gatling (20)    Max Range: 119 000 km   TS: 75000 km/s     92 83 75 66 58 50 41 33 24 16
Han-Cao Gas-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (4)     Total Power Output 400     Armour 0    Exp 5%
Berglund Aero Engines Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 5     Armour 0    Exp 5%
Knoebl & Eberst Foundation Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 1.60000002384186     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Corrales-Delgadillo Active Search Sensor MR4800-R100 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 4 800.0m km     Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1
Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km     Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Strength 1000: 60m km

ECCM-9 (6)         ECM 90

11 ships of Wasa class Battleships

Quote
Wasa MkII class Battleship    180000 tons     6484 Crew     100117 BP      TCS 3600  TH 54400  EM 30000
15111 km/s     Armour 14-283     Shields 1000-500     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control 268     PPV 1026.7
Annual Failure Rate: 976%    IFR: 13.6%    Maintenance Capacity 82741 MSP
Flag Bridge    Parasite Capacity 500 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 CompanyFlight Crew Berths 95    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (17)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 49 500 000 Litres    Range 109.4 billion km   (83 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (100)   Total Fuel Cost  60 000 Litres per day

Göransson Aerospace Ground Based Heavy Laser (50)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 94-8     RM 9    ROF 60        94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 84
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (10x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Bofors "Pompom" Anti Space System (2x20)    Range 50 000km     TS: 60000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Lindström-Nordström Fire Control S02 700-25000 (5)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Hansson-Palme Electronics Industries FC Gatling (2)    Max Range: 119 000 km   TS: 75000 km/s     92 83 75 66 58 50 41 33 24 16
Han-Cao Gas-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (4)     Total Power Output 400     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Corrales-Delgadillo Active Search Sensor MR4800-R100 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 4 800.0m km     Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1
Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km     Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Strength 1000: 60m km

ECCM-9 (6)         ECM 90

8 Dreadnaughts of the Kronan class

Quote
Kronan MkII class Regalskepp    87000 tons     3990 Crew     51127.5 BP      TCS 1740  TH 25600  EM 0
14712 km/s     Armour 13-174     Shields 0-0     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control 161     PPV 440
Annual Failure Rate: 3%    IFR: 0.1%    Maintenance Capacity 48115 MSP
Parasite Capacity 375 tons     Troop Capacity: 1 CompanyFlight Crew Berths 42    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (8 )    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 22 875 000 Litres    Range 104.6 billion km   (82 days at full power)

Svensson-Gunnarsson Tung Meson Kanon (40)    Range 1 200 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 32-8     RM 128    ROF 20        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (5x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Nordin-Håkansson Space & Security Fire Control S08 600-50000 (5)    Max Range: 1 200 000 km   TS: 50000 km/s     99 98 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 92
Han-Cao Gas-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 300     Armour 0    Exp 5%
Han-Cao Gas-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 20     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1
Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km     Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Strength 1000: 60m km

ECCM-9 (5)         ECM 90

6 Heavy Escort ships, should real be classed as BCEs

Quote
Sköld MkII class Heavy Escort Cruiser    39000 tons     866 Crew     10955.5996 BP      TCS 780  TH 9600  EM 3000
12307 km/s     Armour 6-102     Shields 100-500     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 21     PPV 80
Annual Failure Rate: 4%    IFR: 0.1%    Maintenance Capacity 3687 MSP
Magazine 5620   Spare Berths 18    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (3)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 7 500 000 Litres    Range 76.5 billion km   (71 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  6 000 Litres per day

Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (5x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Hedin & Björk Kinetics Size 1 Missile Launcher (80)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Dasler & Marx Space & Security Missile Fire Control FC14-R1 (15)     Range 14.4m km    Resolution 1
ASM Rippelgun (400)  Speed: 64 000 km/s   End: 7.6m    Range: 29.2m km   WH: 9    Size: 1    TH: 213 / 128 / 64
RB-104 Mjölner MkII (5220)  Speed: 180 000 km/s   End: 1.1m    Range: 12.4m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1200 / 720 / 360

ECM 90

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

23 Missile cruisers of the General class

Quote
General MkII class Missile Cruiser    33000 tons     898 Crew     10812.7402 BP      TCS 660  TH 9600  EM 3000
14545 km/s     Armour 10-91     Shields 100-500     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 51     PPV 120
Annual Failure Rate: 3%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 4301 MSP
Magazine 2451   Spare Berths 26   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (3)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 9 000 000 Litres    Range 108.5 billion km   (86 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  6 000 Litres per day

Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (1x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Löfgren-Danielsson Aerospace Size 6 Missile Launcher (20)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 30
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (5)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-06 Type II (300)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496 / 297 / 148
RB-08Super Bamse MkIII (108)  Speed: 90 000 km/s   End: 38.5m    Range: 207.9m km   WH: 40    Size: 6    TH: 450 / 270 / 135

Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km     Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1

ECCM-9 (2)         ECM 90

23 Light crusiers of the City class

Quote
City MkII class Light Cruiser    24000 tons     635 Crew     13384 BP      TCS 480  TH 6400  EM 3000
13333 km/s     Armour 8-74     Shields 100-500     Sensors 50/60/0/0     Damage Control 42     PPV 169.21
Annual Failure Rate: 3%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 4182 MSP
Magazine 330   Spare Berths 28   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 6 000 000 Litres    Range 99.4 billion km   (86 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  6 000 Litres per day

Fast Technology 75cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 147-6     RM 9    ROF 125        147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 132
Triple Åkesson-Gunnarsson Advanced Defence Systems 50cm C6 Extreme X-ray Laser Turret (1x3)    Range 1 400 000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 195-18     RM 9    ROF 55        65 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 58
Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (2x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Twin Ling & Eliasson Orbital Systems 15cm C6 X-Ray Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 420 000km     TS: 30000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 7    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4
Lindström-Nordström Fire Control S02 700-25000 (1)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Danielsson Design Bureau Fire Control S08 240-32000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 32000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Hansen-Mårtensson Orbital Systems Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (16)     Total Power Output 48     Armour 0    Exp 5%

Larsson Dynamics Bernadotte VLS System (55)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (2)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-06 Type II (40)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496 / 297 / 148

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km     Resolution 100
Larsson Electronics Flyg Spaningsradar 24 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km     Resolution 1
Claesson-Fransson EM Detection Sensor EM1-60 (1)     Sensitivity 60     Detect Strength 1000: 60m km

ECCM-9 (1)         ECM 90

61 Battle class Heavy missile destroyer

Quote
Battle MkII class Missile Destroyer    20000 tons     537 Crew     7149.6201 BP      TCS 400  TH 6400  EM 1500
16000 km/s     Armour 8-65     Shields 50-500     Sensors 50/1/0/0     Damage Control 41     PPV 60
Annual Failure Rate: 2%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 2458 MSP
Magazine 1168   Spare Berths 7   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Armour 0    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 6 000 000 Litres    Range 119.3 billion km   (86 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  3 000 Litres per day

Jönsson Biotech CIWS-1000 (2x12)    Range 1000 km     TS: 100000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Löfgren-Danielsson Aerospace Size 6 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 30
Solorio-Luna Long Range Missile FC (2)     Range 1 008.0m km    Resolution 100
RB-06 Type II (170)  Speed: 48 000 km/s   End: 317.5m    Range: 914.4m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 496 / 297 / 148
RB-08Super Bamse MkIII (25)  Speed: 90 000 km/s   End: 38.5m    Range: 207.9m km   WH: 40    Size: 6    TH: 450 / 270 / 135

Claesson-Fransson Thermal Sensor TH1-50 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Signature 1000: 50m km
Brookes Corporation Active Search Sensor MR960-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 960.0m km     Resolution 100
Björklund Megacorp Spaningsradar 48 (1)     GPS 80     Range 48.0m km     Resolution 1

ECCM-9 (2)         ECM 90

Some 134 warships entears in the first waves, still there is some 40 warships in reserve in the adjacent system, 4 might carriers, escorts and even more missile destroyers, support ships and not to mention the almost 40 brigades (Divisions) in transports as well as the 4 Spacejaeger kompanies (Divisions) of armored drop infantery to take a foothold on the enemy homeplanet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: Garfunkel on February 29, 2020, 12:40:06 PM
That's a pretty impressive fleet.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: L0ckAndL0ad on February 29, 2020, 01:23:16 PM
Woah, yeah, that's quite a fleet.

Gives me Legend of the Galactic Heroes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes) vibe.

Off-Topic: show
(https://i.imgur.com/0p5GzC3.jpg)


Except for the lack of carriers  ;)
Quote
4 might carriers
How might are we talking here?  ;D

Don't envy the maintenance and overhauling costs though  :P
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on February 29, 2020, 02:31:16 PM
Woah, yeah, that's quite a fleet.

Gives me Legend of the Galactic Heroes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes) vibe.

Off-Topic: show
(https://i.imgur.com/0p5GzC3.jpg)


Except for the lack of carriers  ;)
Quote
4 might carriers
How might are we talking here?  ;D

Don't envy the maintenance and overhauling costs though  :P

Ouups might or mighty....

Quote
Öland MkII class Heavy Carrier    111 000 tons     2614 Crew     125803.67 BP      TCS 2220  TH 28800  EM 3000
12972 km/s     Armour 10-205     Shields 100-500     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 186     PPV 186.3
Maint Life 6.2 Years     MSP 110509    AFR 631%    IFR 8.8%    1YR 4940    5YR 74103    Max Repair 18900 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Flight Crew Berths 246   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 20000 tons     Troop Capacity: 3 Companies    Magazine 3993    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40   

Viklund Foundation 3200 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (9)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 45.26%    Signature 3200    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 30 000 000 Litres    Range 107.5 billion km   (95 days at full power)
Hansson-Sundström Corporation Tau R500/600 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  250 Litres per hour  (6 000 per day)

Quad Miranda Heavy Industries Gauss Cannon R6-100 Turret (5x24)    Range 60 000km     TS: 80000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Hernander-Hammare CIWS-500 (5x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 50000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Andreasson Sensor Systems Fire Control S08 700-80000 H25 (5)    Max Range: 1 400 000 km   TS: 80000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93

ASM Drakeld (200)  Speed: 64 000 km/s   End: 1.3m    Range: 4.9m km   WH: 20    Size: 3    TH: 704/422/211
Hammer Torpedo (240)  Speed: 67 500 km/s   End: 11.5m    Range: 46.8m km   WH: 80    Size: 8    TH: 360/216/108
ASM Shredder (1440)  Speed: 60 000 km/s   End: 9.2m    Range: 33m km   WH: 13    Size: 1    TH: 200/120/60

Corrales-Delgadillo Active Search Sensor MR4800-R100 (1)     GPS 80000     Range 4 800.0m km    Resolution 100
Lundin-Sundström Active Search Sensor MR24-R1 (1)     GPS 40     Range 24.0m km    MCR 2.6m km    Resolution 1

ECM 90

Strike Group
20x JA-37 Viggen Fighter-bomber   Speed: 36697 km/s    Size: 6.54
10x JA-35 Draken Fighter-bomber   Speed: 36363 km/s    Size: 8.8
30x JA-29 Rymdtunnan Fighter-bomber   Speed: 28368 km/s    Size: 5.64
3x Eldflugan Dropship   Speed: 31250 km/s    Size: 3.84

Quote
JA-37 Viggen class Fighter-bomber    327 tons     2 Crew     384 BP      TCS 6.54  TH 19.2  EM 0
36697 km/s     Armour 2-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2.4
Maint Life 5.27 Years     MSP 73    AFR 8%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 4    5YR 66    Max Repair 330 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 16   

Buckley-Collins 240 EP Solid Core AM Drive (1)    Power 240    Fuel Use 244.43%    Signature 19.2    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 25 000 Litres    Range 5.6 billion km   (42 hours at full power)

Malm Precision Arms Hammar Rails (2)    Missile Size 8    Hangar Reload 60 minutes    MF Reload 10 hours
Nilsson Engineering JA-37 Styrdatasystemet CD-107 (1)     Range 49.9m km    Resolution 12
Hammer Torpedo (2)  Speed: 67 500 km/s   End: 11.5m    Range: 46.8m km   WH: 80    Size: 8    TH: 360/216/108

Nilsson Engineering JA-37 PS-48 Radar system (1)     GPS 800     Range 48.0m km    Resolution 100

Quote
JA-35 Draken class Fighter-bomber    440 tons     10 Crew     1239.6 BP      TCS 8.8  TH 25.6  EM 0
36363 km/s     Armour 2-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2.9
Maint Life 4.03 Years     MSP 176    AFR 15%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 17    5YR 260    Max Repair 656 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.2 months    Spare Berths 7   
Magazine 6   

Sommer Marine Engine Fighter IF Drive (2)    Power 160    Fuel Use 154.95%    Signature 12.8    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 5.3 billion km   (40 hours at full power)

Burkhard Precision Arms Fighter  X-ray Laser (1)    Range 350 000km     TS: 36363 km/s     Power 6-0.4     RM 9    ROF 75        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5
Sommer Marine  Fighter FC (1)    Max Range: 350 000 km   TS: 100000 km/s     97 94 91 89 86 83 80 77 74 71
Knoebl & Eberst Foundation Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 1.6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Montez-Rentería Fighter Rails  (2)    Missile Size 3    Hangar Reload 22.5 minutes    MF Reload 3.7 hours
Ekström & Lund Missile Fire Control FC29-R6 (1)     Range 29.4m km    Resolution 6
ASM Drakeld (2)  Speed: 64 000 km/s   End: 1.3m    Range: 4.9m km   WH: 20    Size: 3    TH: 704/422/211

Olofsson-Pettersson Fighter Sensor (1)     GPS 8     Range 4.0m km    MCR 436k km    Resolution 1

Quote
JA-29 Rymdtunnan class Fighter-bomber    282 tons     2 Crew     455.9 BP      TCS 5.64  TH 12.8  EM 0
28368 km/s     Armour 4-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.2
Maint Life 8.95 Years     MSP 101    AFR 6%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 34    Max Repair 220 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 8   

Sommer Marine Engine Fighter IF Drive (1)    Power 160    Fuel Use 154.95%    Signature 12.8    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 4.1 billion km   (40 hours at full power)

Mathisson-Hedin Aerospace Size 1 Box Launcher (8 )    Missile Size 1    Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes    MF Reload 1.2 hours
Andersson-Mathisson International AF Suite (1)     Range 20.3m km    Resolution 2
FB Tunnan Missil FC Missile Fire Control FC57-R100 (50%) (1)     Range 57.6m km    Resolution 100
ASM Shredder (8 )  Speed: 60 000 km/s   End: 9.2m    Range: 33m km   WH: 13    Size: 1    TH: 200/120/60

Lund-Malm Aerospace FB Tunnan MkII Sensors (1)     GPS 160     Range 30.4m km    Resolution 10

Small Craft ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 40

Quote
Eldflugan class Dropship    192 tons     1 Crew     278.4 BP      TCS 3.84  TH 9.6  EM 0
31250 km/s     Armour 2-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 38%    IFR 0.5%    1YR 18    5YR 274    Max Repair 165 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.01 months    Spare Berths 8   
Drop Capacity: 1 Company   

Lindström Dynamics 120 EP Solid Core AM Drive (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 246.92%    Signature 9.599999    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 1.9 billion km   (16 hours at full power)

ECM 40
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 01, 2020, 12:22:29 PM
Ground forces transports have entered Area 41 and are moving towards the enemy planet. We seems to have forgotten a small part of the invasion troops, the replacements for dead/wounded is still on New Earth, being loaded and should arrive in a week or so... ::)

Our first engagements have been favorable, no losses so far on the invasion force, in fact only 12 missiles have come within 8 million km from the main body, the enemy has not been so fortunate, 4x47000 ships (carriers), several 188000 ton bases, 6 destroyers and 40 1000 ton FACs so far. Tested the enemy planets base defences, 2 waves of 830 RB-6 missiles were fired, the first wave were destroyed with AMMs, lasers and CIWS mere km from target, the second wave lost some 75% of its missiles to enemy fire but in the end 4 bases were destroyed, the other had some damage done to them.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 12, 2020, 02:30:46 AM
The Empire is growing steady. 64 planets with human colonies on, many more are being taught as new colonies, for the moment all terraformers are circling Venus to transform it to a habitable world. Population is almost 17 billion humans and almost 9 billion of a conquered race, spread over 7 colonies.
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: superstrijder15 on March 17, 2020, 07:45:17 AM
The Empire is growing steady. 64 planets with human colonies on, many more are being taught as new colonies, for the moment all terraformers are circling Venus to transform it to a habitable world. Population is almost 17 billion humans and almost 9 billion of a conquered race, spread over 7 colonies.

That is quite the empire you have there!
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on March 17, 2020, 10:48:33 AM
Quote
That is quite the empire you have there!

Yes, 103 years in space now, each turn takes about 3-5 minutes, IF I don't do to much... ;D
Title: Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
Post by: ExChairman on April 29, 2020, 09:16:05 AM
Hmmm I love ship names, this is for an old Swedish warship, built 1783, HMS Ömheten or translated "His Majesty's Ship Tenderness". I am not entirely sure it could be called Tenderness when he unloads his 31 gun broadside... ;D