Author Topic: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?  (Read 263794 times)

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Offline tryrar

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #180 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. . .
 

Offline Panopticon

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #181 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.
 

Offline tryrar

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #182 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. . . .
« Last Edit: February 08, 2012, 03:15:13 AM by tryrar »
 

Offline Sarganto

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #183 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.
 

Offline Nathan_

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #184 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.
 

Offline Sarganto

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #185 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.
 

Offline Arwyn

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #186 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)

 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #187 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
« Last Edit: February 08, 2012, 11:05:14 PM by Thiosk »
 

Offline Sarganto

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #188 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.
 

Offline Zed 6

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #189 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. :)
 

Offline Sarganto

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #190 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.
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #191 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?
 

Offline Beersatron

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #192 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.
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #193 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.
 

Offline Nathan_

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #194 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.