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Offline Zincat

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #15 on: December 26, 2015, 03:47:45 AM »
GreatTuna, no need to be confrontational mate :) We've all been new to Aurora.

plasticpanzers, no offense but I think you're using the wrong kind of setups. I saw that you're rather new to the forums, you probably are just not used to the way Aurora works. In Aurora, multi purpose ships are generally not very good combatants. Specialization does pay most of the time, especially if you're not very experienced yet and are trying out things.

Copy and paste one of your designs and we'll give you useful tips :) You can do copy from the class window- > Full summary view. And paste it here.

A few starting tips from me, even without seeing it.
- The first problem I saw was when you said "my 17000 ton multi purpose survey ship". 17000 tons is the size of a cruiser at least, it takes a lot of resources to build such a ship. I'm guessing here, but you probably wanted something that would not die out there on its own? So you added armor, some weapons, big sensors maybe, some anti missile and ended up with  a huge thing that is obviously very slow, uses a ton of fuel... and is just not a proper military ship. A survey ship is realistically something small, fast and cheap. If it dies... well you just build another! or another five. And it will still cost less than your huge cruiser...
Keep in mind, by keeping the design small, it stays fast and uses little fuel. Plus you can build a lot of them and you're not tying up a valuable shipyard which can be used instead for a proper warship.
- As said, 4 launchers is way too few, especially for a ship of this size. You need a lot of firepower to destroy a ship, and even more if it has some anti missile defenses. Consider this, you have volleys of 4 missiles. If the enemy has 4 CIWS or 4 decent beam turrets, they're just going to be shot down.
- Beam weapons can be very good in a number of scenarios. First, they can be good multi purpose weapons if designed correctly, againt missiles, fighters and to mop up survivors of missile fights. They are also good on fighters. They serve very well on ships stationed to jump point defense. And as for proper warship weapons? If you have fast, armored warships with proper Anti-missile defenses or support, they can eat through the entire enemy missile volleys, chase them down, and blow them to bits. Do not underestimate them!
- Unless you completely outclass your enemy technologically (or are using carriers stationed far, far away from the fight), speed is important in military ships, speed is life. You cannot put a "dingy engine" on a ship and think it's a warship...
 

Offline GreatTuna

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #16 on: December 26, 2015, 04:01:22 AM »
Aww, scratch that. I think I'm not in a good mood for advicing. Sorry, I'll leave it to somebody else.

Just, you know, don't tell me speed is not important, because it is. And it is possible to get use of beams without resorting to 'cheating'.
Concentrate on one thing, be it surveys or combat, speed or armor, launchers or magazines. If you make one mess of ship from everything, it won't be useful.

Like this:
Code: [Select]
Slava class Cruiser    5 000 tons     170 Crew     946 BP      TCS 100  TH 1080  EM 0
10800 km/s     Armour 4-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 12
Maint Life 2.03 Years     MSP 473    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 152    5YR 2287    Max Repair 540 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 3   

Korolyov Turbines 1080 EP MilMPD (1)    Power 1080    Fuel Use 52.94%    Signature 1080    Exp 13%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 17.0 billion km   (18 days at full power)

Browning Meson Cannon 90K\12R (4)    Range 48 000km     TS: 12500 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 9    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01.5 24-6000 (1)    Max Range: 48 000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Shaw-Banks Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 12    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Ratters Ship Detector R100\Sz2 (1)     GPS 2400     Range 14.4m km    Resolution 100
Ratters Thermal Detector S6\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
Ratters EM Detector S6\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
No cheating, it's just optimized design tailored against more technologically developed (=faster) opponents.
 

Offline plasticpanzers (OP)

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #17 on: December 26, 2015, 04:07:43 AM »
I will post some ship designs from the new game.   my survey ships are large yes.  and mulitpurpose so i did not require different
ships to do geo and grav surveys yet hopefully still survive.   they use commercial high quality engines (magneto plasma) but are
only about 1400kps because they usually require long times surveying systems i found (at least to me).   my frigates had 4 size
9 launchers and i thought were well armed.   the missles worked quite well and hit continually.   i built purpose built smaller ships
but found the game too boring with many dinky fleets going too and fro.  I built 3/3 naval/commercial yards with up to 4 bays each
and built 4 ship survey/warship squadrons and sent them in 4 ship groups to survey or fight with a tanker/collier in reserve.  my
warships had 3900kps speed which although not 4000k (tongue in cheek) I thought was fast enough looking thru posts.  Remember
I have only been exploring other systems for 3 years.   I built up a powerful economic base for my empire based basically on only
2 mining centers in Sol (that were fantastically good) with up to 100 mines on each and plenty of Civ mines.   built up a steady supply
of labs from a starting 9 (my only cheat over the 5 in a basic game) to 40 in 35 years game time with high research rates and ship
building rates.

My complaint was that in a really basic starting game in Aurora does require a number of years of research to get decent techs and not
simply rush to jump drives and let in the bad guys right away.   I was very careful to build powerful drives/sensors/missiles/beams on
powerful ships.   I thought a 16,000 ton ship is dinky!   If you need 100000 tons for a space station in this game (due to the recreation
center) then 16k ships are small to me.   I imagine i will learn more as i go along but it appears to take about 12 hours of playing to
get to the point where you can start doing decent things in the game.   Most is building an economy that won't collapse because you
forgot to watch your minerals.

I suppose its just me and old sci fi books but a decent crusier should be alot bigger than 16,000 tons.    A corvette system protector
of about 9000 maybe but I will see more later on.   Heck, a decent small carrier is about 28,000 tons by my estimates so far.  Too much
WW2 history for me I suppose!  ;D

Well, started the new game.   Have 2 scientists only.   1 Bio and 1 Sensor specialist.   As Bones would say...oh, joy.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2015, 04:15:43 AM by plasticpanzers »
 

Offline CharonJr

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #18 on: December 26, 2015, 04:41:43 AM »
Just threw up a jump-scout (personally I use jump tenders to send in 3 survey ships which are not able to jump themself) which might be at a similar tech level:

Code: [Select]
Survey class Geosurvey Ship    3 300 tons     88 Crew     732.8 BP      TCS 66  TH 160  EM 0
4848 km/s    JR 1-50     Armour 3-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 56/56/0/2     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 1.71 Years     MSP 139    AFR 87%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 57    5YR 859    Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Spare Berths 1   

J3300(1-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 3300 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 1
160 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 160    Fuel Use 45%    Signature 80    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 270 000 Litres    Range 32.7 billion km   (78 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH4-56 (1)     Sensitivity 56     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  56m km
EM Detection Sensor EM4-56 (1)     Sensitivity 56     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  56m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Without the jump drive you can get better speed, passives, fuel, armor and mission time. And losing one of those will be much cheaper than an all-purpose ship when being send into the unknown.
 

Offline CharonJr

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #19 on: December 26, 2015, 04:46:44 AM »
Dang, too slow with my reply... ;)

Well, the sad truth is that all-purpose ships - especially with a jump drive - are fairly suboptimal.
 

Offline plasticpanzers (OP)

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #20 on: December 26, 2015, 04:54:29 AM »
Of course your ship designs depend on how long you have been playing that particular game or if you use Space Master
to get ahead early.   I started a new thread on my new game for input on how i do it and I am up to 2007 from 2000 start date.
 

Offline Sematary

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #21 on: December 26, 2015, 05:17:28 AM »
I will post some ship designs from the new game.   my survey ships are large yes.  and mulitpurpose so i did not require different
ships to do geo and grav surveys yet hopefully still survive.  they use commercial high quality engines (magneto plasma) but are
only about 1400kps because they usually require long times surveying systems i found (at least to me).
What is the range on your survey ships?
The big problem with your survey ships being that large is the NPRs can see the ship from much farther away so its hard to be stealthy. I will add my voice into the chorus of saying survey ships should be small, fast, and cheap. The smaller they are the smaller their EM and Thermal signatures are going to be and therefore harder for NPRs to find. Fast allows them to be hard to hit, earlier you used the following example "read my lips.  2000kps or 4000kps vs 21300kps missile.   if i have a Barrett 50cal sniper rifle and your driving away in a Lamborghini or a Subaru it will make little difference don't you think?  You may get one more blink in if your in the Lamborghini but its a waste of money." and in real life that is absolutely true. In Aurora, especially with the speeds we are talking about, its simply not true. Keep in mind a ship going 4,000 kilometers per second will go twice as far in a second as a ship going 2,000 kilometers per second and that 2,000 kilometer difference can be enough to cause the missile to miss even though its going over 5 times faster. Going back to your example a Barrett 50 cal doesn't go 5 times faster than a Lamborghini, it goes closer to the order of hundreds or thousands of times faster. Faster ships will stay in a potentially hostile system for less time, have a better chance to escape if found, and the speed WILL up its survivability.

Quote
my frigates had 4 size9 launchers and i thought were well armed. the missles worked quite well and hit continually.
Your missiles are too large. Use sizes 4-6, not only will that give you another missile or two, BUT more importantly as far as sensors go size 6 or smaller is resolution 1 whereas higher than 6 is seen at higher resolutions, which means they will be seen at larger distances.

Quote
   i built purpose built smaller ships but found the game too boring with many dinky fleets going too and fro.  I built 3/3 naval/commercial yards with up to 4 bays each and built 4 ship survey/warship squadrons and sent them in 4 ship groups to survey or fight with a tanker/collier in reserve.  my warships had 3900kps speed which although not 4000k (tongue in cheek) I thought was fast enough looking thru posts.
Please expand on this. I would like to hear more about every part of this, why smaller ships were too boring, what your squadrons actually looked like, etc.


Quote
Remember I have only been exploring other systems for 3 years.
This confuses me greatly. You are 43 years into your game but only exploring for 3? What were you doing for the first 40? Did you do a conventional start? Did you do a TN start and just researched for 40 years?

Quote
   I built up a powerful economic base for my empire based basically on only 2 mining centers in Sol (that were fantastically good) with up to 100 mines on each and plenty of Civ mines.   built up a steady supply of labs from a starting 9 (my only cheat over the 5 in a basic game) to 40 in 35 years game time with high research rates and ship building rates.
You have no other colonies? Just two mining colonies? And are 40 years into the game? I would recommend more, at lot more.


Quote
My complaint was that in a really basic starting game in Aurora does require a number of years of research to get decent techs and not simply rush to jump drives and let in the bad guys right away.   I was very careful to build powerful drives/sensors/missiles/beams on powerful ships.   I thought a 16,000 ton ship is dinky!   If you need 100000 tons for a space station in this game (due to the recreation center) then 16k ships are small to me.
Wait, hold the phone. Did you use any of your starting research points on giving yourself SMed research? That is a pretty basic part of the game. Also recreation centers are a no go. Don't use them. They don't work right.


Quote
I imagine i will learn more as i go along but it appears to take about 12 hours of playing to get to the point where you can start doing decent things in the game.   Most is building an economy that won't collapse because you forgot to watch your minerals.
I have been playing for several (real) years now and that seems glacially slow to me.


Quote
I suppose its just me and old sci fi books but a decent crusier should be alot bigger than 16,000 tons.    A corvette system protector of about 9000 maybe but I will see more later on.   Heck, a decent small carrier is about 28,000 tons by my estimates so far.  Too much WW2 history for me I suppose!  ;D
There are two factions on this forum when it comes to ship size, I lean toward the smaller size camp and my battlecruisers are 8,00-16,000 tons. To me a battleship is 15,000-20,000 tons. What you are calling a corvette is larger than most of my heavy cruisers and bigger than some battlecruisers. 28,000 tons is right in the range of my fleet carriers, my escort or pocket carriers are generally around 10,000-15,000 tons. For the faction of small ship sizes mine are on the large size to boot. The major plus about smaller ships is the cost and time to build is much lower, also the ships have smaller cross sections and are generally harder to find than large ships.

Now there is also a faction on the forum that goes the other way, sometimes all the way up to 100,000+ tons, so be aware that such a philosophy does exist here but most of the people who will talk to you on these things are part of the smaller size faction. (Also side note, faction may be the wrong word because that suggests a more split and dogmatic stance than you will actually find, but it is a differing of opinion)

Quote
Well, started the new game.   Have 2 scientists only.   1 Bio and 1 Sensor specialist.   As Bones would say...oh, joy.
Have fun with that, but if you want to up your chances of getting more soon, build more military academies. That will up the chance of getting officers of any and all kinds.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #22 on: December 26, 2015, 05:29:24 AM »
I'm impressed actually that you splashed one of them with a survey ship. To be honest I do field light attack craft with a similar number of launchers, but they weigh 1000 tons and attack as swarms.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline plasticpanzers (OP)

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #23 on: December 26, 2015, 05:43:58 AM »
I have another post showing my start on a basic game.

My first survey ships were small, just large enough for a jump/engine/fuel/sensor but not enough range so they began getting
bigger and when i researched more weapons i armed them.   the last was 17000 tons with 35% reduction on engines and fitted
with 1 missile launcher (size 6 or 9 depending on game), 1 AMM launcher, 1-2 CIWS, about 15 missiles per weapon as they were
not true warships just meant to keep the bugs off the windshield i hoped.

commercial and very thrifty drives (usually around .5 litre per) but magneo pulse or ion before i ever tried to leave Sol.  Game starts
in 2000 and I spend the first 20-30 years in economics/research.   Build up enough mines to maintain mineral income with minimal
ships.   Research weapons but usually don't start getting arms designed til the research on good effiencent engines are done and
decent missile speeds (and darn good lasers as much good as they have done so far...).

I am used to the usual 4x games where you rush forward to get to at least mid tech before you meet others too dangeous to let live (cough)
This game requires you to remember everything or loose (have forgot to check minerals and run out of something!).

My weapons are good ones but it appears the applications towars a system like Starfire/Weber/White are not correct for this game.  Folks
seem to prefer small, what i consider gunboats or fighters with size issues.   When I think of a cruiser in the above mentioned i think of
something a bit more substantial and aim for that.  I want my ships to fight and live.   I would hate to design and use a ship base around
a singe weapon (just another figher, just bigger).   I look for fleet actions, not fighter duels.

Sorry on my issue on speed.   It seems my real world expierence of it pales with interstellar jump drive and nuclear pulse engines (lol!) but
the lamborgini comparison is valid in my games so far where my speeds from 900kps to 4000kps does not appear (yet) to mean squat when
the bugs are moving 12000kps and shooting holes in my nice shiny new ships (I have issues with that)

I used size 6 missiles for quite a few games and just updated to 9s to see if they hit better.   they appear to do very nicely if the reload rate
is 55 seconds or less for the 9 or 30/45 for the 6s.  I like a bigger boom.

As I mentioned i played a number of games (some up to 12 hours a day). being a disabled ex-mailman give you time.   I found trying to get all
the tiny groups or single ship recon of systems clear was driving me up the wall.   I gleefully discovered the unit split to singles and vice versa.
Makes a nice RP for the White series sending a survey sqn in and having it split up to survey a system and worked real well.  Since my survey
ships were meant to be out for 4 years wandering about a system with 100s of asteoids the big ships worked well without having to bring them
in for rest all the time.   Just when i thought i was safe to turn 4 Pathfinder class survey crusiers loose (I now send in one until the coast is clear)
but even then sometimes all four can get eaten when they get in too far and i discover too late there are bugs in the system.

I had two mining colonies in that one game.   Both Mercury and Pluto were stacked to the gills with 1 or .9 minearls of all types in the 100s of 1000s.
no need for more mines elsewere.   Just more MD as there loads exceeded 5000 tons per year.   It vas nize....
In other games I have to be more conventional and have more mines spread out on different places but that was one nice setup in that game..sigh.

I like big ships and i cannot lie.....dinky ships are sad wee things....

thanks for the advice on the academies.   Will get some started.  Working those two poor guys to death....

 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #24 on: December 26, 2015, 05:58:21 AM »
Large ships are great, but specialisation always helps with efficiency.
 You mention starfire, are you a SF veteran ?
I wonder if maybe long ago you've used Steve's starfire assistant which Aurora was based on. Its a small world. I've never gotten around to reading Steve's epic starfire campaigns, mostly because the slight changes from Aurora's mechanics confuse me greatly. Also the rigellian campaign is massive in scale which is daunting to commit to reading.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Sematary

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #25 on: December 26, 2015, 06:32:54 AM »
I have another post showing my start on a basic game.
I saw, I replied there but I would like to talk with more generalities here. Both for you and future readers of this thread.


Quote
My first survey ships were small, just large enough for a jump/engine/fuel/sensor but not enough range so they began getting
bigger and when i researched more weapons i armed them.   the last was 17000 tons with 35% reduction on engines and fitted
with 1 missile launcher (size 6 or 9 depending on game), 1 AMM launcher, 1-2 CIWS, about 15 missiles per weapon as they were
not true warships just meant to keep the bugs off the windshield i hoped.
I never arm my survey ships. Small lowers their chance to be seen, fast keeps them safer, both keep the cost down and allow for easy replacement if needed. Adding weapons like that will just make them much larger, which makes them more expensive, easier to see, and slows them down without much return on investment. 1 CWIS should be plenty if you want some basic survival of your survey ships. Those magazines take up a lot of space without much return because you only have one launcher of each kind. Your missile launchers take up a bit of space and same with the fire controls you now have to add but with only one missile per volley any anti-missile defense (which NPRs are almost assured to have) will negate your offensive power, and 1 AMM per volley is at best marginally effective as long as their volleys are only 1 missile, which they won't be. So you are using space to have two launchers, two fire controls, at least one active sensor (but more likely two), and a magazine that is holds at least 105-150 MSP of missiles which puts it at fairly large, probably around 10 HS, which is 500 tons. So conservatively you are spending at least 1,000 tons probably more on an offense that will be swept aside very easily and a defense that will almost assuredly be overwhelmed. So that takes you down to at most 1600 tons but your armor belt gets smaller by removing those which takes away more weight and your ship's speed has risen so you can put smaller (and/or less) engine(s) on it which will then allow you to reduce your range making your ship even smaller. Also with the removal of those systems your failure rates goes down which means you can remove some of the engineering bays you probably put in, and all of these reduce your crew requirement meaning less crew quarters.

Quote
commercial and very thrifty drives (usually around .5 litre per) but magneo pulse or ion before i ever tried to leave Sol.  Game starts
in 2000 and I spend the first 20-30 years in economics/research.   Build up enough mines to maintain mineral income with minimal
ships.   Research weapons but usually don't start getting arms designed til the research on good effiencent engines are done and
decent missile speeds (and darn good lasers as much good as they have done so far...).
I almost never go that far up the fuel efficiency tree, let alone have it keep me from exploring.

Quote
I am used to the usual 4x games where you rush forward to get to at least mid tech before you meet others too dangeous to let live (cough)
This game requires you to remember everything or loose (have forgot to check minerals and run out of something!).
Aurora doesn't play like most 4x games. As for remembering, its very daunting at first but as you play the game it gets much easier to remember all of that.

Quote
My weapons are good ones but it appears the applications towars a system like Starfire/Weber/White are not correct for this game.  Folks
seem to prefer small, what i consider gunboats or fighters with size issues.   When I think of a cruiser in the above mentioned i think of
something a bit more substantial and aim for that.  I want my ships to fight and live.   I would hate to design and use a ship base around
a singe weapon (just another figher, just bigger).   I look for fleet actions, not fighter duels.
In this game a fighter is anything below 500 tons, and FAC (fast attack craft formally called gunboats) have a left over size range of 501-1,000 tons. In this game single purpose ships are a lot easier to handle than non.

Quote
Sorry on my issue on speed.   It seems my real world expierence of it pales with interstellar jump drive and nuclear pulse engines (lol!) but
the lamborgini comparison is valid in my games so far where my speeds from 900kps to 4000kps does not appear (yet) to mean squat when
the bugs are moving 12000kps and shooting holes in my nice shiny new ships (I have issues with that)
The thing to keep in mind is missile to-hit chances are inversely proportional to the speed of the ship its trying to hit, and it scales linearly. So a ship that is traveling 4,000kps has half the chance of being hit by a given missile as a ship going 2,000kps. Now, that chance may still be over 100% BUT it is half the chance, a ship going 20,000kps will have 10% of the chance the 2,000kps ship has. In Aurora speed will allow you to dictate range of engagement, allow you more options to do things vs enemies, limit time in hostile systems, and will vastly increase your chance of surviving against any missile. 12,000kps with large volleys of hard hitting missiles sounds like a very specific type of NPR and they are not representative of most of the ones you will find.

Quote
I used size 6 missiles for quite a few games and just updated to 9s to see if they hit better.   they appear to do very nicely if the reload rate
is 55 seconds or less for the 9 or 30/45 for the 6s.  I like a bigger boom.
Size 9 will have a bigger boom sure, but it takes up more space in your magazines and your launchers will be larger so overall you are shooting less missiles and unless your warhead is a large chunk of your total MSP it will be overall less damage, and on top of that the size 9s will be seen sooner giving your foe more time to intercept it and a size 9 missile is shot down after the same amount of damage as a size 1 (assuming you don't armor your missile). So while each one that hits will do more damage it is likely that much less will hit given less missiles in total to fire, smaller volley size, and higher chance of interception, which will lead to less damage total. Though a size 9 is more likely to cause shock damage and to punch through the armor belt so there is that to consider.

Quote
As I mentioned i played a number of games (some up to 12 hours a day). being a disabled ex-mailman give you time.   I found trying to get all
the tiny groups or single ship recon of systems clear was driving me up the wall.   I gleefully discovered the unit split to singles and vice versa.
Makes a nice RP for the White series sending a survey sqn in and having it split up to survey a system and worked real well.  Since my survey
ships were meant to be out for 4 years wandering about a system with 100s of asteoids the big ships worked well without having to bring them
in for rest all the time.   Just when i thought i was safe to turn 4 Pathfinder class survey crusiers loose (I now send in one until the coast is clear)
but even then sometimes all four can get eaten when they get in too far and i discover too late there are bugs in the system.
This is all personal preference and we will disagree here.

Quote
I had two mining colonies in that one game.   Both Mercury and Pluto were stacked to the gills with 1 or .9 minearls of all types in the 100s of 1000s.
no need for more mines elsewere.   Just more MD as there loads exceeded 5000 tons per year.   It vas nize....
In other games I have to be more conventional and have more mines spread out on different places but that was one nice setup in that game..sigh.
To me that is a small amount of resources.

Quote
I like big ships and i cannot lie.....dinky ships are sad wee things....
Again personal preference and we will disagree on that.

Quote
thanks for the advice on the academies.   Will get some started.  Working those two poor guys to death....
No problem.
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #26 on: December 26, 2015, 11:37:21 AM »
Now, obviously, I could learn how to cheat too and start the game with the Space Master and just have all the techs and leaders up front but
I thought i would do it the hard way which is play the game as a type of historical game and have some fun.   Being somewhat old but fairly
smart I know that I am doing the research just as fast as i can but i also know that using a marker to write a 24 on a 2 of clubs does not make
it a fair card game nor much fun.

Others have addressed some of your technical issues, but I wanted to correct a common misconception that seems to be one of the root causes of your sense of unfairness and/or frustration.  The misconception is "Using SM mode is cheating".  This is NOT the kase (although SM mode can be used to cheat, of course).  SM mode is an intrinsic part of the game, and is needed in Aurora because Steve is only one guy, and it's a lot easier not to code up all the nooks and crannies of the interface/rules and instead give the human an interface to apply common sense and/or follow loosely-defined directions.  One important part of this is during game setup - SM mode is intended to be used during setup to give people the power to choose to either set the game up using Steve's rules, or to define their own "house rules".

In particular, the "basic" game is NOT intended to be played from a conventional start, or even from a zero-tech start.  If you go with a trans-Newtonian start, you will see that you are given a certain number of tech points to spend as you'd like, and a certain number of build points to spend on fast-OOB of ships.  The game and the NPRs are balanced upon the assumption that you will use these.  In addition, the starting NPR are given a similar level of tech/ships, and generated NPR are made tougher as game time goes on, so time spent "turtling" in your home system while building up your tech will lead to you meeting tougher NPR when you venture out of your system (either due to starting NPR exploring and researching or due to newly discovered NPR being tougher).  This is not to say that turtling is an invalid strategy - just that it has its own drawbacks.  If you go with a conventional start, then you can assume that you will be an underdog in comparison to any space-going NPR that you run into, i.e. you get the downsides of turtling without the benefits. 

  Another thing to keep in mind:  if you've been reading Steve's fiction you'll see that his empires very often get their ships pounded in their initial NPR encounters, then regroup, adjust to the threat, and expand in other directions until they can build a task force that can challenge the NPR.  In addition, the galaxy is a big place and there might be some "different" NPR out there that are intended to be ultra-tough (these are called spoilers, and we try not to talk about them outside of spoiler tags or the Spoilers forum so as not to spoil the fun for other new players).  As I mentioned above, part of a good Aurora strategy is to assume that you won't be able to beat everything you run into in combat, at least not in a first encounter - this is especially important when playing from a conventional start.  As someone else mentioned, the ultra-fast NPR you ran into might be one of those.

I hope this helps with your enjoyment of the game.  Have fun!!!
John

PS - Had to use "kase" instead of "case" above due to 403 error....
 

Offline AL

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #27 on: December 26, 2015, 04:08:46 PM »
A bit late to the party, but have a wander over to this thread (shameless self-reference) for a few designs of ships more towards the larger end of the spectrum. There's quite the mixed reception there which I suppose does give a good case for use of the word "faction" to describe the big vs small ship groups. The largest design I posted is about a third of the way down page 4.
I would also recommend Vandermeer's Astral Republic game which features some pretty hefty ships too, and is of course a great read if you've got the time.

Hopefully this will give a more balanced view on possible ship design philosophies since the "small ship faction" has already been here  :P
 

Offline CharonJr

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #28 on: December 26, 2015, 05:25:30 PM »
Actually I do like large warships (still smaller than yours, my carriers go up to about 40-50k), but prefer small scouts for the reasons already stated here.
 

Offline plasticpanzers (OP)

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Re: What the heck?
« Reply #29 on: December 26, 2015, 06:15:02 PM »
thanks for the input!  I have not used SM as I do not know how it works and have not yet read thru enough posts on where more
expansive instructions can be found on how to use it.  So far when i try i just manage to crash my game.   Will keep trying tho.

Turtles have lived millions of years by the way.... ;D

Went back and tinkered a bit and started a game with SM but find that having all the 'goodies' available upfront is kinda not historical
RP game wise as all that tech appearing before a single ship even explores Luna?   Would make for a more 'fun' game I suppose having
alot of tech and industries up front but I would rather guide my own destiny thru research and production in my own manner with a game
run off the 'stock' start (just without TN/missile installations) but with a few extra labs.   This way my path is the one I choose rather than
a random one chosen for me.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2015, 07:18:28 PM by plasticpanzers »