What am I doing wrong?

[toes5 (OP)]

I have been slowly climbing the learning cliff but I have hit a roadblock that I can't understand or explain based on the information I have found in other ship build tutorials and examples.    I have built the follow destroyer in game as well as a few other which are somewhat similar. 

Agincourt class Destroyer    25 200 tons     634 Crew     6720.  6 BP      TCS 504  TH 2000  EM 450
3968 km/s     Armour 6-76     Shields 15-450     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 27     PPV 144.  98
Maint Life 3.  19 Years     MSP 4500    AFR 188%    IFR 2.  6%    1YR 665    5YR 9979    Max Repair 1440 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

1000 EP Internal Fusion Drive (2)    Power 1000    Fuel Use 30%    Signature 1000    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 5 350 000 Litres    Range 127.  4 billion km   (371 days at full power)
Epsilon R450/504 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  105 Litres per hour  (2 520 per day)

Twin 30cm C5 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (5x2)    Range 480 000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 48-10     RM 6    ROF 25        24 24 24 24 24 24 20 18 16 14
Quad Gauss Cannon R4-50 Turret (2x20)    Range 40 000km     TS: 50000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 240-40000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 40000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 56    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR15-R1 (1)     GPS 144     Range 15.  8m km    MCR 1.  7m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR552-R60 (1)     GPS 38880     Range 552.  1m km    Resolution 60


 In my current game, I sent a fleet of these to engage some relatively low tonnage enemies ~8k tons @5700 k/s.    Once under about 200kk, I tried to open fire with the twin beam turrets here but I kept getting messages that the weapons were not firing and that the reason was because the chance of hit was below 0%.    Under my current understanding, I am confused about how this can be because the turrets rotate @10k and the range of the beams is at least 250kk.     I advanced time until the range closed to 150kk and still my beams were not firing.    I am convinced there must be an issue with my understand about how these weapons are supposed to work.    There also seems to be a problem where for every ship receiving a 0% hit message there is a "Error 6 Overflow" popup  that appears as well and when I stop firing the message disappears  I would think maybe is a corrupted game file but this same problem has occurred in other playthroughs with beam ships.   


Can anyone tell me if inability of these ships to hit anything is due to an oversight in design or something else happening here?  Let me know if you need more info about the design or anything.    I am really confused. 

[xeryon]

One design element problem right off the top is that you only have one fire control.  One control means you can only target one enemy at a time and as far as I know you cannot have mis-matched weaponry slaved to the same fire control.  You could have 20 lasers all on one FC but add a rail gun to it and it will stop working.  To be fair I have never attempted to operate mixed weapon techs on one FC but isolating those would be my first step in troubleshooting your issue.

[toes5 (OP)]

Thanks! I will try adding a 2nd beam fire control and see if that fixes it.

[toes5 (OP)]

I tried removing all the Gauss assigned to the fire control and only having the beams set to it and I keep having the same issue.   Maybe your ship just needs two beam fire controls for different sets of weapons even if they aren't assigned to it. 

[Mastik]

Fire Control S08 240-40000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 40000 km/s

Twin 30cm C5 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (5x2)    Range 480 000km     TS: 10000 km/s

Try to match up your tracking speeds, faster is better.  The twin 30s with a better TS could also be used in a AMM role.

Fuel Capacity 5 350 000 Litres    Range 127. 4 billion km   (371 days at full power)

No need for that kind of range on a combat ship (IMO).  20-30m Km should be sufficient for most tasks.  Tanker support for longer ranges.

[doulos05]

What range are you engaging at again? You typed 200mk, which would be roughly 199.5 million kilometers out if range. Your weapons have a max range of 400kk. If that's not a typo, you've got a lot of range closing to do.

[toes5 (OP)]

sorry I meant kk.   They are well in range of the weapons, fire control and active sensors.   Also has anyone encountered the Error 6 message before when firing?

[Sematary]

My guess is ECM lowering your range.

[Panopticon]

My guess is your hit percentage simply isn't that good, the target ships are much faster than yours, it is possible point blank range will get you some hits, but that's all I can think of anyway.

[drejr]

200mk? Have you confused thousand with million? Weapons being hugely out of range is usually the source of overflow errors. The most extreme being when the target jumps to another system.

[toes5 (OP)]

They are turrets so they shouldn't be affected by my top speed, also I meant kk not mk, sorry about the confusion.    The enemy ships are very much within range, I advanced time enough so that that are about 50kk away.   I am still getting an overflow error and a 0% chance to hit.

[CharonJr]

Hmm, at 50k you should get a chance to hit (90% unmodified at 50k) even with ECM and vs. high speed evemy ships. So the error seems to be the reason.

Any strange grade ratings/morale on you ship?

[toes5 (OP)]

Not that I can tell.    I did find something interesting though.    I ended up losing that taskforce because they refused to shoot so I designed and built another different beam warship.    In combat, this new beam warship worked.  .  .   until I realized I didnt add emergency cryopods to it.    I always forget to do this, so I added them to the class using SpaceMaster.    The moment that I did this, in the next 5 sec tic, the weapons stopped working and I started getting the overflow error.    It seems that editing your ship in SpaceMaster can cause this screwup.   

I investigated further and clicked copy design on the orginal warship and built some more a year later.   With this renamed identical but different class of warship, the issue continued even though it was a different set of ships and a different class for all intents and purposes.    Then I designed a ship using the New Design button, the error was not carried over into the new class.    I guess I found a bug?  Maybe?

[toes5 (OP)]

Update:  I m not sure what is going on, but it seems that other non-copy, non-SpaceMaster edited version cant fire either.  However, it still seems that adding the cryopods in SpaceMaster initiated the problem.

[Charlie Beeler]

If I'm understanding correctly...  you edited the class design after this engagement started.  At the vary least you've edited the class design to ships that have already been built.  There are a host of issues that can derive from doing this and IIRC you've encountered one. 

Try opening each individual ship in the ship display and then close it.  That should force Aurora to update the individual ships with the class changes.