First combat fail, need help

[AncientSion (OP)]

So im exploring some systems when i find one that is a protostar with a single planet in the middle. Send a pair of recon vessels in, i encounter my very first hostile ship, apparently a 7500k Destroyer. He kills my 2 scouts easily.
I quickly design a 5k vessel with early game tech and SM a taskforce of 3. I send them into the system from before. What happens is that one of my guys is destroyed before i realize my ships dont fire their weapons back.
So i basicly manually assign them targets and hit the red FIRE button (do i need to do that?).
Unfortunally, even though im at good range (just below 50k), i have 0 % hitchance and get my ass whiped.

What did i do wrong ?

[Haji]

I don't know the exact math but at a guess at the range your ship has 38% chance to hit, but that is modified by the ratio of your tracking speed to the speed of the enemy. Depending on how fast the enemy was the hit chance may have been reduced to 0%, which simply means you need to get closer.

[hubgbf]

Hi,

The hostile ship has an ECM which prevents you from firing at 50k as it is the ennemy EW (electronic warfare) which drops your hit chance to 0%.
The message log said it has à 40% ECM (electronic counter measure) while you have no ECCM.
80K is your max firing distance, 80k*60%=48k, so at 50k your are slightly out of range.
Try to go at less than 48k.

good hunting

[AncientSion (OP)]

I have to say im kind of depressed.
NOWHERE can i find a tutorial on combat.
Not on youtube, not on this forum.
Why is that. Its really depressing.

My taskforces wont travel closer to the enemy. Im at a loss for words here. Am i wasting my time trying to learn this game, when you have to ask and ask again, because tutorials are either outdated or not available ?
Sorry. I appreciate when people answer my questions, but i dont believe i can ask for every single thing that is burrowed in the 6th sub-menu.

[Barkhorn]

Look up Alfapiomega on youtube.  He's got a fantastic tutorial/lets play for 6.4.

What are you doing to try to get your ships to move towards the enemy?

It should be
1) go to task group screen
2) toggle "contacts" on in the list of possible order targets
3) give move order at appropriate contact

[AncientSion (OP)]

Though you might not believe it, i watched his videos up to #21 about 3 weeks ago.
Just right now, before posting, i searched his videos for a potential combat, but found NONE in 120 episodes (no smeg, quick skimming though videos that appeared to have the right topic).

Basicly, i want my frickin ships to move in closer to the enemy. But they appear to stop moving once at 50k distance (weapons setup ?) and i cant get them to move closer. I dont see a way to order them to "move closer to target" anywhere.
In addition, im wondering if i need to manually set up my ships one by one, cant i give a task-group wide "attack" or "engage" command ?

[Barkhorn]

At the bottom of the task group screen, there should be a minimum distance setting.  That might explain why you cannot get within 50k kilometers.  You also need to consider the speed of your ships and your opponents'.  If they're faster than you, you'll never be able to get within 50k kilometers.

You cannot give a task-group wide attack command, nor would you want to.  There is an auto-fire option, which has poor target prioritization.  It very often picks terrible targets though.  For instance, if you're trying to maintain a set distance from your foes, you use a follow command based on one of the contacts, with a minimum distance set such that you can stay at your desired range.  But then the auto-targeter targets and kills the one you're set to follow, your ships stop, and suddenly they're right on top of you.

To set your ships up, and perform combat, you want to go to the combat menu.  Its the orange crosshairs button on the main screen.  I think everything in there is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.

[AncientSion (OP)]

Okay, i found a bunch of errors on how i engaged this. 2 things were happening. One, indeed the enemy was able to fly faster than my ships, so i was basicly unable to get closer than 50k (obviously he had a higher max speed and higher optimal firing range). Then, he had the ECM which blanked all my targetting (kinda weird that a single system can make so vast of a difference tbh). Thirdly, im accidently playing with "inexperienced" fleets which apparently brings about a considerable delay in order execution.

thank you.

[hubgbf]

To learn how to fight in Aurora, I read the AAR of the creator, in this forum in steve's fiction.
Then, juste before having to fight, I stop the game and manually copy the stevefire.mdb and rename it, using it as a saved game, to restore a game just stop the game and replace stevefire.mdb with the old copy.
This way you can test lot of tactics and orders to understand how it works, I did it trying to reproduce what I've read.

In your case, there is a problem of initiative. The higher initiative moves last, so he chooses the range. If the enemy try to have a 50K range and has better initiative than you, the you stay at 50k.

I use very often this tactic against some spoiler enemy: just stay in your range of laser weapon and do not enter their range of weapon.

see http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Task_Group_Initiative

hope it helps

[Griswel]

Then, juste before having to fight, I stop the game and manually copy the stevefire.mdb and rename it, using it as a saved game, to restore a game just stop the game and replace stevefire.mdb with the old copy.
This way you can test lot of tactics and orders to understand how it works, I did it trying to reproduce what I've read.

This is great advice.  Treat your first combat as a tutorial.  Save the game (i.e. copy the Stevefire database as is to, say, your desktop or a flash drive), then swap in that save for the original DB to reset.  Design a few ships, use SpaceMaster Fast OOB Creation to insta build ships *in the fleet you have right near the enemy* and see what happens.  Then reload and try new designs.  If you're having issues with range, try using missile boats or carriers with fighters.  It's tough to outrange a fighter with a box launcher full of missiles.

As for tutorials and ease of play, remember that this is not a commercial project.  Just when most games get exciting, if a bit quick and dirty, Aurora gets very precise.  This can be frustrating (I'm building a 180-day jump gate back out of an enemy system, usually under fire, it's gonna take hours, they might destroy my JumpGate construction ship, I might run out of missiles, my main offense, especially if they hit my colliers).  On the other hand, successful combat is very satisfying, at least in part because there is so much to learn, and because combat is so detailed.

It's not for everyone, I certainly get why people would walk away.  On the other hand, there's nothing else like it, and I certainly get why people play for hundreds of hours.  The real downside to Aurora is that other strategy games feel like 2-D platformers in comparison.

[Icecoon]

Learning how to fight in Aurora is easy, mastering the tactics and strategy is hard. Victory will come with the latter.
And other strategy games feel like 2D platformers indeed.

There are general advices though:

1. Be faster than your enemy

2. Outrange/outgun your enemy

If you have at least one advantage over your enemy, you could win. If you have them both and if you don't make mistakes, you will win.

In your case, your enemy had both advantages.

And yes, Steve's fiction is a good place to learn. 

[Triato]

A work around (exploit?) initiative is to detach part of your task group and set it as an escort to your original task group with a distance of 50 k km towards your enemy (second tab in the task force window) that way they can not use their initiative to keep away from you. Personally, I don´t like the initiative feature so I use the exploit without remorse. The disavantage (serious) is that you break your fleet in two and thus your missile defence is split too, hopefully you can predict which ship they are going to launch anainst and put it in your forward fleet (where most of your firepower should be).

This only works if they have more initiative but not more speed.

Initiative is really weird, if the sub increment is an hour a slower ship can run very far away from you, but at 5 sec sub inc, they can only be a few k km every turn wich only matter if you focus on short ranged weapons (as I do currently).

I would sugest an alternative where manouvering helps you in other ways and thus there is a place for initiative, but can´t think of anything that would work.