Various Questions

[PandaQ (OP)]

1.  PDC Box launchers.  Is this worthwhile/how does it reload?

2.  Each of the fighters I build get assigned an officer.  Shouldn't I set it so this doesn't happen and save the officers for actual warships? If so, how?

3.  How does one transfer new missiles to PDCs? I can't give a go to-reload ordinance order to them.

4.  I know from what I've read that after ships transit a jump point they cant activate their active sensors for some time.  Are there any weapons then, at all, that can be used during that time? Such as firing missiles with active sensors on them? And does transiting lower shields as well, or do they stay up?

[Ziusudra]

3. Ships (F6) window, Ordinance Management tab

[Hawkeye]

1. Never used them (prefere the 25% sized ones), but I would assume they use the "maintenace facility reload time". If not, use the ammo-management tab and put the missiles in after the appropriate time has passed.

2. Not using auto-assign.
   Seriously, though, you can assign a priority number to each design. Aurora will put officers into spots with the highest priority first. If, however, there are still officers left after putting one on any other ship, well, I don´t think there is a "do not assign any officer" button on the design screen (put forth a suggestion in the suggestion board)

3. Allready answered

4. Not only is there a sensor delay, but also a weapons delay, so no, you can´t shoot a missile with onboard sensor to circumvent the effects of jumping

[sloanjh]

2. Not using auto-assign.
   Seriously, though, you can assign a priority number to each design. Aurora will put officers into spots with the highest priority first. If, however, there are still officers left after putting one on any other ship, well, I don´t think there is a "do not assign any officer" button on the design screen (put forth a suggestion in the suggestion board)

You should be able to kludge this by setting the minimum rank for commanding a fighter to your highest admiral rank (of which you'll almost certainly have none).  Look on the DAC/Rank/Info tab of the Class Design (F5) screen.

John

[PandaQ (OP)]

5.  I have a group of fighter sitting in orbit around my capital waiting for their carrier to be built.  I've noticed that they suffer maintance failures even though i have enough maintanence facilities.  Why is this?

[Rastaman]

5.  I have a group of fighter sitting in orbit around my capital waiting for their carrier to be built.  I've noticed that they suffer maintance failures even though i have enough maintanence facilities.  Why is this?

Fighters are a special case and are maintained in hangar and boat bay modules. So you need something with these modules in order to store your fighters. Or you build them after the carrier is ready.

[Yonder]

2. I generally keep pilots in my smaller craft, but at a lower priority. That way when I have a glut of officers they have something to do, which both trains them and keeps me from losing officers that retire after ten years. It also acts as a nice reserve, if I start running out of officers then hopefully those that are reassigned from small/commercial ships to military vessels will last me until an upgraded academy starts picking up the slack.

5. Like Panda said, you now need Hangars for fighters, to cover the fact that they are small ships that aren't designed to have crew in them 24/7. (Different mechanics from the morale loss of soldiers in drop pods, but same idea.) The best thing to do is make a PDC with a hangar that you can use to service and house fighters while they are in between carriers.