Author Topic: Contact recognition 101  (Read 3163 times)

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Offline samargh (OP)

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Contact recognition 101
« on: January 29, 2014, 09:35:24 PM »
opinions please, I'm trying to work out what just shot me! ???

here is the relevant portion of the logs. . .

7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,A new ship class of the DX Cancri Aliens #1075 has been detected in DX Cancri.  Our intelligence service has designated the new class as the Foxtrot.
7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,A new ship of the Foxtrot class from the DX Cancri Aliens #1075 has been detected in DX Cancri.  Our intelligence service has designated the new ship as the Foxtrot 003.
7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,New Thermal Contact!  Contact ID: Foxtrot 002 (New), Class ID: Foxtrot (New), Race ID: DX Cancri Aliens #1075 (New), Strength 200
7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,A new ship of the Foxtrot class from the DX Cancri Aliens #1075 has been detected in DX Cancri.  Our intelligence service has designated the new ship as the Foxtrot 002.
7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,New Thermal Contact!  Contact ID: Foxtrot 003 (New), Class ID: Foxtrot (New), Race ID: DX Cancri Aliens #1075 (New), Strength 200
7th June 2039 23:47:41,DX Cancri,New Alien Race Detected in DX Cancri!!
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,The ship has no shields
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Captain Thomas Cross has made it to a lifepod before the destruction of Galileo 003
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Strength 10 Nuclear Detonation x19 detected!
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Galileo 003 suffers complete structural failure due to the amount of damage it has received.  The ship is destroyed.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Engineering Spaces destroyed on Galileo 003 after receiving 1 points of damage.  4 Casualties.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,J2250(3-50) Military Jump Drive destroyed on Galileo 003 after receiving 3 points of damage.  56 Casualties.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,A strength-200 thermal contact associated with Foxtrot 003 has been lost
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,2 damage absorbed by armour. 
7th June 2039 23:47:46,Unknown,As a result of combat, the crew grade bonus of Galileo 003 has increased to 0. 01%
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Galileo 003 hit by 10 points of damage from Jamaran Anti-ship Missile
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,JS Galileo 003 slowed to 1 km/s due to damage to Galileo 003.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 destroyed on Galileo 003 after receiving 2 points of damage.  11 Casualties.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Fuel Storage destroyed on Galileo 003 after receiving 1 points of damage.  1 Casualties.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Geological Survey Sensors destroyed on Galileo 003 after receiving 1 points of damage.  13 Casualties.
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,6 damage absorbed by armour. 
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,Galileo 003 hit by 10 points of damage from Jamaran Anti-ship Missile
7th June 2039 23:47:46,Unknown,As a result of combat, the crew grade bonus of Galileo 003 has increased to 0. 01%
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,A strength-200 thermal contact associated with Foxtrot 002 has been lost
7th June 2039 23:47:46,DX Cancri,The ship has no shields

result, dead ship. . .

now, SM mode shows no other races

a 200 thermal ping seems to be around the size of my beam armed cruisers and larger than any of my survey vessels, so I'm suspecting its a small missile thrower rather than a very large missile, would that sound right?

and with the lack of another race showing, are these the infamous "precursors"?

cheers

Dave
(ex 2nd ed Starfire guy)

 

Offline samargh (OP)

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2014, 05:17:26 AM »
and now frustration with the game is really setting in. . .

14 days play, 14 years game time and way too much time out of my life spent searching tutorials and wiki articles (at a guess 20 hours so far?)

after finding my mystery contacts are in another system as well, I've deduced it must be an NPR.

I came back to the initial contact system with a fleet of 7 x derivatives of the beam armed cruiser from the tutorials.

the enemy is 10 times faster then me, I can't detect it with active sensors (and there's nowhere I can find in the tutorials to show how to turn them on. . .  found that after half an hours faffing when I lost my first cruiser to missiles I couldn't target).

neither can I detect incoming missiles before i get hit.  Point defence doesn't exist, even though the twin turrets are supposed to do at least something.

as its stands, there doesn't seem to be any point in continuing this particular game because I've obviously made really useless research choices, or have gotten very unlucky with a random NPR generation.

any suggestions before I give up in complete frustration?
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2014, 06:02:45 AM »
Basically point defence doesn't work without your sensors being able to detect incoming missiles, maybe if al defensive fire is different but I don't think so.
The button to turn on active sensors is on the individual ship page, I think it's the page showing missile fire control.
Do yourself a favor, SM yourself a replacement fleet, turn those actives on, and try again, you'll probably lose, but you'll learn in doing so.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline samargh (OP)

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2014, 06:09:17 AM »
thanks for the reply, I managed to work out how to turn actives on while I still had six ships.

no difference, I can track nothing until I get an event saying it hit me.
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2014, 06:26:19 AM »
Odds are that your actives are either the wrong resolution to detect the missiles or have insufficient range.  Post your class design and the known data points of OPFOR.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2014, 07:27:40 AM »
I'm not sure what tutorial you're following so here's a mini tutorial, you need resolution 1 sensors to detect missiles, there's a few ranges listed when you design a resolution 1 sensor, range vs 50 ton object or larger, Range vs size 6 missile or smaller, range vs size 8 missile, and range vs size 12 missile.
Generally you want the range vs size 6 missile to at least match the range of your antimissile beam weapons, or the range of your Anti-Missile Missiles, however in practice you want at least one ship in your fleet to mount a sensor capable of detecting missiles at a much longer range. Also note that theres a 10,000 kilometer minimum range for sensors to detect anything at all, and also a more practical minimum is 6 times the speed of the missile you're trying to intercept, which is the distance it will cover in a single 5 second increment plus one additional second , if your sensors don't have at least that range you won't pick anything up until it's hit your armour.
Note that any ship you control can use it's sensors for lighting up targets, what your defencive ship needs to have itself is a fire control of the right resolution and range to actually fire it's weapons at the incoming missile.
I believe for final defencive fire a 10,000 km fire control is all that's needed. I'll go through the procedure for final defencive fire in a minute.
Edit: Thx Charlie.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2014, 08:10:20 AM by MarcAFK »
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2014, 07:48:18 AM »
Actually because of game mechanics you need a minimum of 6 seconds detection.  Why?  The missile must be detected on the previous game cycle before PD can engage.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline Paul M

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2014, 08:44:01 AM »
A couple of other points. 
You aren't picking up the missiles at all since you got no intellegence information on the size of the missile.  Two targets also threw a salvo of 19 scale 10 warhead missiles at you.  That is probably 10 missiles from each ship (1 missed).  If the missiles are moving fast (something you can figure out by the range to the ship and the time between salvo impacts) this can suggest the tech difference you are facing.

200 for a thermal rating is pretty low when you talk about military drives unless they are using thermal reduction technology.  You might be facing gunboats with box launchers.

Your beam armed ships need to have their weapons assigned to beam fire controls.  The beam fire controls need to be in one or another of the point defence modes.  I would suggest the ship being shot uses final fire mode while the others go into area defence mode.  Others will suggest alternatives but unless the fire is spread out between your ships let them try to support each other.

As has alread been stated you need a ship with a sensor that can pick the missiles up far enough out to give you a chance to engage.  My guess is that you started conventionally and that your technology is only barely TN.  That means that you are going to loose lots of ships to things you can't see.  Even if you can see them though, your fire control has to be able track the missile sufficiently well to engage it.  The ratio of the your tracking speed to the missile's speed will modifiy your chance to hit.  So if the missile is coming in at 24000 km/s and your tracking speed on your firecontrol is 2000 km/s your chance to hit is divided by 12.  Even a point blank range last ditch defensive shot (~80-90% chance to hit) will be reduced to around 5-7%.
 

Offline samargh (OP)

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2014, 05:17:52 PM »

Thanks for the responses guys.

these are the vessels I took into combat; they are a slightly up-specced version of the sample beam cruiser from the wiki, just so you know what I was trying to use.

Reliant class Cruiser    6,600 tons     655 Crew     927. 2 BP      TCS 132  TH 200  EM 0
1515 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 3-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 10/10/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 25. 7
Maint Life 1. 54 Years     MSP 263    AFR 116%    IFR 1. 6%    1YR 127    5YR 1902    Max Repair 306 MSP

J7000(3-50) Enhanced Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 7000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Pulse Engine E10 (5)    Power 40    Fuel Use 100%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 27. 3 billion km   (208 days at full power)

Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 15000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (6)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR10-R100 (1)     GPS 2000     Range 10. 0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 10     Range 500k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Have had a nights sleep and am still feeling frustrated, so am going to try to walk away from aurora for a few days.

it may seem a bit childish, but if I put it in terms like this, maybe the old timers will understand.

remember starfire? Imagine you were new to the game, you took on as much advice as you could, got the equivalent of 15? turns into the campaign and suddenly find that you are dumped into combat (without having been allowed to play the first contact introductory scenario!) using a fleet of tac speed 1 corvettes with lasers and point defence. 

and the enemy is invisible, has tac speed 10 and sprint mode missiles that can't be intercepted.

Having had a read of some of the answers in this thread, cross referencing with other threads and understanding that you chaps perhaps don't want to give away spoilers, I have a fair idea that I've stumbled across perhaps up to 3 "set piece" encounters early game within 2 jumps of the capitol.  Perhaps I should have ignored the advice of the walk-throughs and not checked certain boxes in the initial game setup until later in the game once I had a handle on what I was doing.

If that's the case, truthfully should I be looking at rolling back (or starting over) with those check boxes unselected?

cheers

Dave
 

Offline davidb86

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2014, 05:45:58 PM »
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 10     Range 500k km    Resolution 1
Your anti-missile sensor has a range of 500k km against a size 1 target (20 space missile).  For a 6 msp missile the range would be ~56,000 km which means the fastest missile you can see with this sensor is ~9,200 km/s  which is rather slow.  I would look at updating your sensor to a range of 2m km which would give you a minimum detection range of 220,000 km which would detect up to 37,000 km/s missiles. 

It appears that since you are still using nuclear pulse engines after 14 years game time that you started conventional or with very limited research.  The NPR players do not have this handicap, they start with TN techs and good research ability, at least until they overbuild and cut research in favor of maintenance.  If you are going to start with such a great handicap, you should wait to explore out of your home system until you have researched some advanced technology. 

The Wiki ships are not great designs or even adequate designs they are tutorials on how design works.  The Bureau of Ship design or the Aurora fiction sections are a much better location to get sample ship designs for a variety of tech levels.  Steve's fiction is particularly good in showing multiple design philosophies and he does a test campaign for each version of Aurora so that you can see the effect of the specific rules each version is using.   

To use your Starfire example, what you have done is like starting a campaign at industrial while all of the NPR's are starting at TL 3 and then complaining that the game is rigged against you.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2014, 05:51:50 PM »
Having had a read of some of the answers in this thread, cross referencing with other threads and understanding that you chaps perhaps don't want to give away spoilers, I have a fair idea that I've stumbled across perhaps up to 3 "set piece" encounters early game within 2 jumps of the capitol.  Perhaps I should have ignored the advice of the walk-throughs and not checked certain boxes in the initial game setup until later in the game once I had a handle on what I was doing.

If that's the case, truthfully should I be looking at rolling back (or starting over) with those check boxes unselected?

cheers

Dave


In all honesty, yes. :) And when you start to feel comfortable, add them in one at a time. Leave the Invaders for last as they are the most obnoxious. Leave the Swarm as second to last.

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2014, 06:01:35 PM »
Honestly early game tech isn't too crippling against vastly more powerful foes, you just need massive tonnage Advantage, and ships that are pure sensor platforms in order to spot anything. Of course researching size 20 sensors would take some time.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Panopticon

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2014, 11:53:30 PM »
So long as you know how to identify your enemies abilities it should be possible to defeat them at a lower tech level, massively overengineering sensors and specialization are the way to go here.
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2014, 12:57:07 AM »
Yes, your problem are the sensors which are way, way too weak. You can't see the missiles because they are too fast and they hit you before you see them. I would keep playing if I were you, but only if you accept that it is a learning game that you might very well lose. If not, better restart, maybe with the spoilers races unticked.

Hey, I kind of lost a few games already. Remember, Losing is fun :)

That said, I strongly recommend you to browse the bureau of ship designs forum, and maybe even post there what you'd build before actually committing to that. It sucks to discover in the field that your designs are crap. Like I did :)

Ahh, the failures I was able to accomplish :)
 

Offline samargh (OP)

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Re: Contact recognition 101
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2014, 01:02:46 AM »
Quote from: davidb86 link=topic=6758. msg69276#msg69276 date=1391125558
To use your Starfire example, what you have done is like starting a campaign at industrial while all of the NPR's are starting at TL 3 and then complaining that the game is rigged against you. 

Ouch. . .  came across a bit harsh at the newbie there old bean ;)

I'm only guilty of following the advice of others given specifically to beginners; the walk-throughs give advice on starting tech and I have gone from there.  I take it from what you are saying that I have done precisely the wrong thing?

And to point out the flaw in your argument, Ind vs TL3 can at least see and engage the enemy, unlike my current situation.  Going into an uneven fight is a learning curve because at least you can see potential strengths along with all the weaknesses.

What I went through didn't even allow that because there was nothing to see apart from exploding ships.  Ah well.

But enough of all that, I can see the thread heading off topic so I will go start another called "rollback advice" so I can back on the horse and see where I started making my mistakes.

Thanks to all for the comments so far,

cheers

Dave
(things were far easier in 2nd ed. . .  :-*)