More questions but it is starting to make sense

[Father Tim]

Hi Shadow yes this is very helpful do all ships require active sensors?

No.  No ship requires active sensors.  However, no ship or PDC may fire at an enemy* unless at least one unit on the same side has the enemy on active sensors.

*Missiles and drones can be fired at waypoints (or system bodies) without an active sensor lock, and may (also) mount their own sensors.

[AndonSage]

Is there a list of how many pop are required per installation so I can plan my building

This was mostly answered but they left out one thing:

Shipyards: 1,000,000 + (100 x total tonnage) (1/10 of total tonnage if a commercial shipyard)

So if you have two shipyards, one naval shipyard with two 5000 ton slipways, and one commercial shipyard with three 72,000 ton slipways, the amount of population required would be:

(1,000,000 x 2 shipyards) + (100 x (2 x 5000)) + (100 x (3 x 7200)) = 5,160,000 population

Hope this helps

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

After reading the replies to my sensor queries the following is my understanding please let me know if this is correct:

Thermal sensors are used to detect ships and industry on planets and are passive linked to this how do you know if the sensors detect something do you get a message?

EM sensors detect shields, active sensors and industry these are also passive.

The research upgrades for the above increase the range.

Active sensors have two criteria range and resolution the range is a circular range around the ship or installation that can detect ships etc. The resolution is the size of the object that can be detected the lower the resolution the shorter the range of detection and the smaller the object. The higher the resolution the longer the range of detection and the larger the object but at high resolutions smaller objects are not detected.

Is this correct?

Also can anyone list what designs are required to develop the different weapon systems. Missiles are especially confusing.

Sorry for  all the questions but I'm slowly getting the hang of things so hopefully less questions will come to mind.

[AndonSage]

Is this correct?

As far as I can tell, yes.

Missiles are especially confusing.

I agree. However, I found this OpenOffice spreadsheet for easy missile design thread to help me understand the Missile Design screen at least, after I started playing around with the spreadsheet. Maybe it will help you also. There are other threads on missiles if you search, but it would be nice if we got a Tutorial from Steve, Erik, or one of the other long-time players. Hint, hint

I posted an "Understanding sensors" thread while you were posting your message above, and it's also asking questions.

[AndonSage]

Thanks for the link to the missile design spreadsheet it made missile design much clearer. The only problem I have now is once a missile is designed and constructed what tech is required to design a launcher and how on earth do fire controls work.

I've found some good threads, and although the information is scattered, these threads should help. Date of first post is also listed.
- Mar 22, 2010: Interesting info about Guided Missiles
- Mar 18, 2010: Just don't get battles at all... (this one has some great annotated screens)
- Feb 3, 2010: Missile Design Guide Desired
- Nov 1, 2009: Missile Series
- Jan 19, 2009: Missile and Bouy designs
- Nov 3, 2008: Sensor Buoys and Mines

I really think this academy thread needs some organisation maybe a thread for each area of the game where questions and answers can be posted. Then overtime each thread can be condensed into a tutorial or maybe even an ongoing manual. Not sure how to implement this but what do you think of this kind of idea. It will help newbies and cut down on the same questions in multiple threads.

Yeah, I've seen other game forums do this. The problem is that it requires someone knowledgeable putting all the information together. I'd think that expanding the AuroraWiki would be better, but the information needs to be kept current. There's really two problems... 1) the game is so complex, that there's not many people who really understand how everything works, and 2) Steve keeps making changes to the game, so information becomes outdated quickly. I think Steve also prefers programming over writing articles/tutorials, so it would need to be someone else.

Anyway, I've been keeping notes as I stumble along. Hopefully I can add what I put together to an FAQ sometime in the future.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Had my first contact with aliens tonight. Everything started off fairly civil then after quite a few days they became hostile and destroyed my scout ship. The aliens had ten ships ranging from size 2000 to 4000 tons with sensors at my tech level.

The weapons used in the attack are unknown.

Now I guess I need to start getting together a military with some basic intel I hope to design some effective weapon systems.

One quick question is it possible to scrap outdated designs and gain minerals?

[UnLimiTeD]

Yes, you can scrap components and ships for 30% of their value.
Just slightly outdated ships can also be refitted with newer components (to a newer class) in a shipyard that could also build that new ship.
It might take longer, but you save material and maybe even experienced crews.

[Octavian30]

I refit my ships all the time - currently refitting my PD corvette escorts to version 3 having (Ion Drives) as they come through Sol... I can't see the point of having a fleet composed of a miss-mash of old and new designs all moving in different speed brackets - the above Archer Class did 2300 odd km in version 1 and nearly 4000 now... and are bigger (3750 ton as opposed to 3200) due to jump Tech improvement and carry 3 missile control vs 2 and 6 size 2 launchers as opposed to 4 and 3 times as many missiles... and so on - fleet homogony is important I feel......

[welchbloke]

I refit my ships all the time - currently refitting my PD corvette escorts to version 3 having (Ion Drives) as they come through Sol... I can't see the point of having a fleet composed of a miss-mash of old and new designs all moving in different speed brackets - the above Archer Class did 2300 odd km in version 1 and nearly 4000 now... and are bigger (3750 ton as opposed to 3200) due to jump Tech improvement and carry 3 missile control vs 2 and 6 size 2 launchers as opposed to 4 and 3 times as many missiles... and so on - fleet homogony is important I feel......

This is pretty much the philosophy I used to follow; however, recently, I have drifted towards using outdated designs for local system defence. I have moved to only refitting the designs that I feel are cost effective.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

For a refit do you need to design a new ship the same with upgraded parts or will the game automatically upgrade the existing design to the latest tech level?

[AndonSage]

For a refit do you need to design a new ship the same with upgraded parts or will the game automatically upgrade the existing design to the latest tech level?

Refit to is one of the "Task Type" options for your shipyards. You need to design a new ship class, and retool a shipyard to build the new design. In the "Refit From" dropdown choose the old class design, and the "Ship Name" dropdown will have a list of any ships of that class at the planet. Choose one to refit. Choose the new class in the "New Class" dropdown. Then click Add Task. I'm pretty sure that there is a maximum difference between old and new class in build points beyond which you can't refit a design, but I don't know what the percentage is offhand.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

So the refit cost will depend on how big the changes are which makes sense.

Right it's question time again!!!

In my current game I'm starting to amass a fair few ships and the survey ships as noted in the tutorials work well alone not in a fleet so I now have ships all over the place. Is there anyway to organise things better and what methods do other people use? I know you can see what the ships are up to in the Tactical display but this doesn't allow you to select and go straight to the the ship which would be a good feature.

Now finally is this a fair description as to how missiles work.

Missiles are designed with various different components which are tech based these affect the damage done on impact the speed, range and maneauvrability. These are the main components but sensors can also be added to make the missiles able to track targets. Each component in a missile takes up space which governs the size of the missile and the size of the launcher.

The next required component is the launcher which governs the reload speed linked to this is the magazine which is the number of missiles that are available to fire.

Missiles are manufactured in ordnance factories and can then be loaded onto ships. I presume the ships need to be docked to load missiles.

The final requirement is fire control and this is the part I don't understand so any help would be appreciated.

Each area can be improved by research.

So in a combat situation the sensors detect a craft and the range is given on the system map the trick then is to get within range to fire. The missiles can fire on any target as long as it is on sensors of a craft in the same fleet. So the best case scenario is to have sensors that have a range at least as far as the range of the misiles.

Missiles come in two main varieties anti-ship and point defense with the only difference been the way the fire controls are setup.

Well that's my understanding so far please enlighten me if it's incorrect.

[AndonSage]

In my current game I'm starting to amass a fair few ships and the survey ships as noted in the tutorials work well alone not in a fleet so I now have ships all over the place. Is there anyway to organise things better and what methods do other people use? I know you can see what the ships are up to in the Tactical display but this doesn't allow you to select and go straight to the the ship which would be a good feature.

If you go to the F12 Task Groups screen you can pick the ship you want from the Name dropdown box. If you have the "Centre Map on Fleet" box checked, the F3 System Map will center on that ship. If you have so many ships that you're scrolling the dropdown box list a lot, then try using the Ctrl-Y Class Deployments screen (Main Menu Bar -> Empires -> Military Organization -> Class Deployments). Ships are grouped by class, and within class by Task Group, and within Task Group by individual ship. Double click a Task Group and it will bring the TG up in the F12 Task Groups screen. Double click an individual ship and it will bring up the ship on the F6 Individual Unit Details screen.

Someone else with better understanding of missiles should answer those questions

[Father Tim]

I'm pretty sure that there is a maximum difference between old and new class in build points beyond which you can't refit a design, but I don't know what the percentage is offhand.

There is no maximum difference between what you can refit from and refit to - which has led to a few people accidentally refitting 36,000 ton battleships into 1000 ton gunboats.  There's now a pop-up message to help prevent you from doing that.

The more systems you change the more expensive the refit - particularly if you're increasing the displacement.  You can easily end up with a refit that costs more than a brand new ship.

Perhaps what you're thinking of is that a shipyard can build any design whose 'refit current design to' cost is within 20% of its tooled class - which is why most cryo transport yards can build equivalent freighters (cryo hold --> cargo hold = cheap refit) but freighter yards can't build equivalent cryo ships (remove cheap cargo holds, add expensive cryo holds = expensive refit).

[Deutschbag]

Hi, I've got a question. If I have a colony producing surplus minerals, and Earth is running a mineral deficit, do I need to manually tell my freighters to ferry the minerals, or will civilian freighters transport minerals from surplus to deficit colonies automatically? Or do I perhaps have to tell them to do it, with a contract or something?