I'd note that I got one of my embassy ships blown away apparently by accident. The NPR was fine with my ship being there, but saw another enemy, volleyed missiles at it, and a bunch of them killed my ship too. (Possibly self-guiding missiles.)

Probably not what happened to you if they killed your ship immediately on arrival instead of after a while though.




As for sneaking information, stealthy ELINT ships are possible. I've got small ones with cloaking and stealthy engines. A big one with several ELINT modules might instead be able to read its target from very far out so it doesn't need as much sneak. ELINT that can detect a colony generates intel points on the colony that will eventually give you an idea of what is there. (And on serious colonies give you other information about the owning civilization, like design datasheets or system maps.)

Unless the system is something they consider extremely important, they will leave as long as your claim is serious enough. So, you need ships and a colony and the aliens need to see them. Trading brings in wealth and you might learn about new systems that you have not discovered yet as your civilians go there to trade. I have never gotten the further treaties so I don't know how useful they are.

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on March 20, 2024, 04:25:25 AM

With regard to Diplomatic ships, an NPR will allow them into their home system if that is their only system. Otherwise, they will be upset by Diplomatic ships in any of their 'Core' systems, which is their home system plus any other heavily populated systems.

I'll admit this has always been counterintuitive for me. Usually when you set up an embassy it's supposed to be in the capital on account of the government being seated there.

I guess the idea is to make it a bit harder for players to pull off classic exploits like diplo-ship-with-ELINT-module shenanigans on the NPRs.

With regard to Diplomatic ships, an NPR will allow them into their home system if that is their only system. Otherwise, they will be upset by Diplomatic ships in any of their 'Core' systems, which is their home system plus any other heavily populated systems.

I think the crucial missing information here is the size of the Salvo.

Regardless of whether you choose to allocate 2, 3, 5, or any other number of launchers to Fire Controls, it's imperative to consider the size of the Salvo. Dealing with a 50 missiles Salvo is vastly different from handling just a 5 missiles Salvo.

Expanding the discussion, relying solely on AMMs as a PD strategy is excessively costly.

In my opinion, effective PD demands a layered system incorporating AMMs, decoys, and possibly turreted PD, or CWIS.

Back on topic, if the salvos are arriving simultaneously within the same 5-second interval, then you'll require 1 FC system per salvo. You could also opt to assign 1 escort ship per salvo rather than one ship for multiple salvos, and retain only 1 additional FC for redundancy (or split the barrage into 2) while reallocating the saved tonnage to incorporate more launchers.