Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Vynadan on September 12, 2010, 02:48:12 PM
-
Hi there ;o
In my rather short time of playing Aurora I so far encountered some strange things that confused me quite some. After searching through the forums I couldn't yet find anything fitting so here I go:
The sorium harvesters I'm constructing won't harvest any sorium. I've checked everything in the numerous threads about that, but my problem is that the harvesters won't drop their fuel at Earth. With the conditional orders of
Fuel tanks full
Unload Fuel at Colony and Move to Sorium Gas Giant
my harvesters won't unload. In the event log they first get the order; then execute it and report the succesful execution. However, they stay put at Earth, not moving to Saturn (which has a Sorium) and on checking them they all have 100% of fuel in their tanks. The next increment, they again get the order and execute it (making for a lot of spam in the event log), but still stay put. The ships are classes as 'Tanker' if that matters.
With a large enough (1m) capacity for fuel and no order to refuel at a colony I don't know where my problem lies. (I even tried looking for a manual way to drop fuel on a colony but didn't find any.)
A completly different thing is that I built a Luxury Liner for my civilian sector for roleplaying reasons and once I saw one in action it just took population from Earth to Mars - essentially fulfilling the same role as a colony ship (the liner's order even read transport colonists to Mars). I was surprised to see this and wonder whether it mechanically pays off to use liners instead of colony ships or vice versa if liners, should they only be small colony ships, are even worth the effort?
Again another point is that I was very confused with the missile system and how to design them properly. I haven't found any NPR or vagabond aliens in my current campaign so far (I restarted a couple times, always changing some details XD) and I'd like to ask of opinions about the following designs. Please note that I'm still at a very low tech level. (My engine tech is a little ahead of the rest)
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 34
Speed: 68000 km/s Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 1.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.9833
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2312% 3k km/s 748% 5k km/s 462.4% 10k km/s 231.2%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 1.4753x Gallicite Fuel x12.5
Missile Size: 3 MSP (0.15 HS) Warhead: 5 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 31
Speed: 42700 km/s Endurance: 8 minutes Range: 20.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 3.9083
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1323.7% 3k km/s 434% 5k km/s 264.7% 10k km/s 132.4%
Materials Required: 1.25x Tritanium 3.4833x Gallicite Fuel x500
Missile Size: 3 MSP (0.15 HS) Warhead: 5 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 31
Speed: 52800 km/s Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 1.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 4.415
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1636.8% 3k km/s 527% 5k km/s 327.4% 10k km/s 163.7%
Materials Required: 1.25x Tritanium 3.99x Gallicite Fuel x25
Missile Size: 12 MSP (0.6 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 13300 km/s Endurance: 31 minutes Range: 24.9m km
Cost Per Missile: 16.0367
Second Stage: Penguin Size 3 Ammunition Missile x3
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Overall Endurance: 32 minutes Overall Range: 25.9m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 199.5% 3k km/s 60% 5k km/s 39.9% 10k km/s 19.9%
Materials Required: 3.75x Tritanium 15.9867x Gallicite Fuel x2500
The Carrier packs three Ammunition Missiles and is intended for PDCs. I'm not sure about this design, because I realised the maximum seperation range is 150k km only after designing it, wasting a lot of space for fuel on the Ammunition Missiles (intended for 1m km). Another thought is about the whole long range thing and in worst case, needing half an hour to reach the target.
I'm using v5.20 on WinXP 32 and closely followed the installation instructions (didn't get any errors so far) and set my OS's language to english for the ./, change.
-
I believe, but not sure, that Steve said the "unload/return to gas giant" orders were for NPR AI. Check in the Bug thread for 5.14/5.20.
Those missiles look good. Fast bastards. For the separation range, you can change that. Just remember the value is in 1000s of km.
-
I've tried setting the seperation range. Got three penguin carriers, each tried out with a different value. For "1000" it was set to "100,000"km; "999" and "1500" to "150,000" km.
After that I assumed 150 would be the max (?)
-
I've tried setting the seperation range. Got three penguin carriers, each tried out with a different value. For "1000" it was set to "100,000"km; "999" and "1500" to "150,000" km.
I assumed 150 would be the max after that (?)
I'm pretty certain I've set the separation range higher.
Not a missile, but a mine.
Buoy Size: 30 MSP (1.5 HS) Armour: 0
Reactor Endurance: 58.5 months
Active Sensor Strength: 1.05 Resolution: 100 Maximum Range: 1,050,000 km
Cost Per Buoy: 24.95
Second Stage: "Sling" Light Missile x4
Second Stage Separation Range: 1,000,000 km
Materials Required: 4x Tritanium 11.7x Boronide 5.25x Uridium 2.75x Gallicite
Development Cost for Project: 2495RP
-
Regarding that, try getting an additional tech level in just about anything, preferably fuel, and drop the freed size into range.
20m is not that long for an ASM.
Also, Armor penetration is always a square (pyramid crater), so unless your enemy is quite armored and you want to sandpaper him, WH 4 is probably not worse than 5.
(1, 4, 9, 16...)
-
I believe, but not sure, that Steve said the "unload/return to gas giant" orders were for NPR AI. Check in the Bug thread for 5.14/5.20.
Even if it isn't, the "unload/return" orders are a known bug and on Steve's list of things to fix. Unfortunately, his first attempt at figuring it out was unsuccessful.
-
Continual tries still limit me to a max seperation range of 150k km and I dunno why D: I neither can go above this limit if i design buoys or drones.
In the research tab, I've looked for torpedoes or torpedoe beams. Yet I only found Particle Beams which aren't the same, are they? I've read about the torpedoes on the wiki (when it was still available) and on forum posts - Are they a tech only aquired through exploitation or am I missing something?
On an unrelated note, I've found but one system with active Precursor ships (who promptly wooped my arse), but I've found lots and lots of wrecks of their ships scattered around almost every system I've entered so far. I'm now happily scrapping a lot of 20k tonnage wrecks and exploiting three ruins, but with my settings there shouldn't be any NPR or Invaders around - Makes me wonder how all those wrecks turned up.
Regards,
Vyn
-
As far as I know, you cannot change the separation range on a missile thats already designed and researched.
You will have to research a new missile with the new separation range for that.
-
Continual tries still limit me to a max seperation range of 150k km and I dunno why D: I neither can go above this limit if i design buoys or drones.
As martinuzz said, you have to design a new missile with a different seperation range, as the seperation range is hardcoded into the missile during the design stage
In the research tab, I've looked for torpedoes or torpedoe beams. Yet I only found Particle Beams which aren't the same, are they? I've read about the torpedoes on the wiki (when it was still available) and on forum posts - Are they a tech only aquired through exploitation or am I missing something?
Plasma torpedos (I am assuming you are looking for those) are a unique Invader weapon and can only be researched once you reverse engineere the basic level of them (i.e. you have to either capture some invader ships or salvage a bunch of their wrecks and deconstruct the captured torpedoes)
On an unrelated note, I've found but one system with active Precursor ships (who promptly wooped my arse), but I've found lots and lots of wrecks of their ships scattered around almost every system I've entered so far. I'm now happily scrapping a lot of 20k tonnage wrecks and exploiting three ruins, but with my settings there shouldn't be any NPR or Invaders around - Makes me wonder how all those wrecks turned up.
Regards,
Vyn
Can´t help you there
-
I designed new missiles, essentially copying everything but the seperation range, from the carrier missiles and researching them anew. I now have 6 different types of them to pick from ::) I must overlook something somewhere.
-
You can mark tech as outdated on the components screen when building ships.
The old "Particle Torpedoes" are now just called Particle Beams, likely for the Invader torpedoes not having the same name.
The wrecks could just be spawned, sometimes happens just as precursors.
Can't think of anything else to kill them, Swarm would use them up.
-
A curious thing: You can enter negative values for missile parameters. With a high enough engine technology this allows me to create ASMs with a high enough hit chance that I can sacrifice negative agility in favour of sensors, warheads, ECM, etc. I doubt this is intended, but it's not an issue unless you significiantly research down the engine tree.
Especially against larger targets (since only NPR gunboats come close to or exceed 10km/s as far as I have encountered them) this can come in quite handy for a missile based doctrine.
Has anyone else tried this so far? I only designed the missiles, never fired them. Could this produce errors? Gotta try out these warhead heavy fighter ASMs now ;D
-
A curious thing: You can enter negative values for missile parameters.
This is an bug/exploit - the values are how much of the missile's mass should be devoted to the corresponding system. You should put it into the category of "cheating at solitaire". :-)
John
-
Oooooor I could try to technobabble it down to folding space or something ... XD
-
Wouldn't a negative-size sensor make more sense than negative agility? In terms of making a better cheat-missile, I mean; not making more logical sense.
-
Or negative armor.
Isn't the chance to destroy the missile dmg/armor?
So, 4 dmg/-2 armor is a -50% chance of destruction.
That'll break it, I'm sure.
Hey, back when I discovered ECM was broken, I had a missile with 100 (1 size, max tech) ECM and 150km/s speed, versus a target above 100k tons with a speed of around 300.
The CIWS ALL missed despite eccm 10 because they couldn't hit the missiles, after which the missiles all magically vanished with an error report, which went completely unnoticed and is probably not fixed yet.
Play around with it.
It'll allow you some awesome RP.
You know, technically, a size 100 missile should contain enough explosives in a shaped charge warhead to split a small planet.
Or create a temporary black hole.
But yeah, it is cheating yourself.
Unless it's part of the RP.
-
O.O
Guess balancing out the negative agility with the to hit chance is tricky enough for it not to be 100% cheat, but sensor and armour's too much even for my, um, relaxed view on that kind of thing.
How is ECM broken? The search didn't turn anything up for me :o
-
Or negative armor.
Isn't the chance to destroy the missile dmg/armor?
So, 4 dmg/-2 armor is a -50% chance of destruction.
That'll break it, I'm sure.
The chance to destroy a missile with armour is (dmg/(dmg+armour)) So for 1 point of armour a 1 point weapon has a 50% chance to kill the missile (1/(1+1)). A 2 point damage vs 1 armour is a 66% chance (2/(2+1)), even with 3 points of damage (a 10cm laser at pointblank range) is only giving a 75% kill rate. That is 75% of the shots that hit will kill the missile.
Missile armour is more important vs anti-missiles than it is against most beam weapons. The exception being the 10cm railgun and the gauss cannon which only do 1 point of damage. As only 50% of interceptions actually will destroy the incomming missile this means that for a anti-missile setup to garuntee a kill it will take twice as many missiles as normally would be needed. You can see how this could mess up a missile defense doctrine pretty quickly.
Brian
-
Well, it's also an additional hullsize.
Like back when 2 sizes of ecm would make a missile invincible.
For that space, you could have fitted 30 more warhead.
I actually think this possibility should stay.
Players can only cheat themselves, and it grants some awesome possibilities for RP. (Sad small missiles aren't allowed anymore).
-
(Sad small missiles aren't allowed anymore).
My fault, I'm afraid. I designed a size 1 missile with a hundred tiny, warheadless submissiles to swamp enemy point defense. And there was really no reason it couldn't have been a million.
-
Your only cheating yourself.
Now, to swamp enemy point defense you create a mirv that splits into another mirv and so one, avery single submunition being 0.1 smaller.
More work, but no difference.
Actually allows you to spread it out.
-
That wouldn't work that well. 0.1 fuel and engines isn't enough for the bigger ones. I suppose you could get it working by exponentially reducing the size of the submissiles, though.
-
With the whole retooling and elligible class thingy ... I just designed a PDC with enormous costs (large beam defense PDC) that was just about 50k tons. Due to its costs however, almost all other ship designs I had were elligible classes ... ?
Turning the PDC into a ship design lowered the costs and reduced the amount of elligible classes, but with now tooling to this 38,5k tons 'ship' I can build 10 different ship types without having to retool my shipyard.
This 'ship' now is of course impractical and useless, but this way I could build a large amount of classes in a shipyard? So far I had trouble even designing a geo and a gra survey to be ellible although they were both the same tonnage and costs.
-
With the whole retooling and elligible class thingy ... I just designed a PDC with enormous costs (large beam defense PDC) that was just about 50k tons. Due to its costs however, almost all other ship designs I had were elligible classes ... ?
Turning the PDC into a ship design lowered the costs and reduced the amount of elligible classes, but with now tooling to this 38,5k tons 'ship' I can build 10 different ship types without having to retool my shipyard.
This 'ship' now is of course impractical and useless, but this way I could build a large amount of classes in a shipyard? So far I had trouble even designing a geo and a gra survey to be ellible although they were both the same tonnage and costs.
You tooled a shipyard to build a PDC? I didn't think you could do that... Or were you looking at the box on the class design window?
-
I was looking at the box in the class design menu, then I made a copy of the design and switched its status from PDC to ship. All PDC components were removed, reducing the tonnage by about 12k tons and lowering the BP a bit - It still had most of my other designs as elligible to build.
-
Well yes, that's another way of "cheating yourself".
Or a nice sideeffect.
-
How do Sorium refining ships work? They get Sorium from a gas giant, refine it onboard and then store it as fuel? So they need to have big cargo holds as well? Or do they dump it for a freighter to pick up like roid miners?
-
How do Sorium refining ships work? They get Sorium from a gas giant, refine it onboard and then store it as fuel? So they need to have big cargo holds as well? Or do they dump it for a freighter to pick up like roid miners?
This is covered in several posts that a search for "Sorium Harvester" will reveal.
Short answer: A Sorium Harvester ship must have at least one Sorium Harvester module and at least one fuel tank, not cargo module, to store refined fuel. Park this ship next to a gas giant that has Sorium available and the ship does the rest. Tag the harvester ship as a tanker to make transfers of fuel easier.
-
This is an bug/exploit - the values are how much of the missile's mass should be devoted to the corresponding system. You should put it into the category of "cheating at solitaire". :-)
Yes, it is a bug. I have fixed it for v5.30
Steve
-
My fault, I'm afraid. I designed a size 1 missile with a hundred tiny, warheadless submissiles to swamp enemy point defense. And there was really no reason it couldn't have been a million.
How come this is cheating? Isn't is basically like taking the defensive countermeasures used today (tiny bits of foil to create thousands of radar contacts) and using them in an offensive role?
-
Yes, but NPRs would not ignore them and target every single one of them with an Anti-Missile, despite it being plain obvious they were completely useless.
-
Nor, for that matter, would automatic PD settings used by player-controlled races.
-
Well, as said, you have to do it with Mirvs now.
Requires an awful lot of planning.
-
You mean, like, use a size 1 missile, a size 1.1 missile, a size 1.25 missile, a size 1.45 missile, and so on? That could work, I suppose.
-
It does.
It's just tedious, you have to create the size one missile first, and go on from there.
And redesign and develop them every time you change the tech.
-
Are the NPRs able to change systems and expand? I never saw that right now, and it seems weird that such advanced aliens don't move outside their system eventually. Have you seen NPP empires having colonies over several systems?
-
Are the NPRs able to change systems and expand? I never saw that right now, and it seems weird that such advanced aliens don't move outside their system eventually. Have you seen NPP empires having colonies over several systems?
They do expand. I have seen colonies all over the place after 10-20 years.
-
Are the NPRs able to change systems and expand? I never saw that right now, and it seems weird that such advanced aliens don't move outside their system eventually. Have you seen NPP empires having colonies over several systems?
It does depend on how many suitable planets there are nearby. If there is nothing within 4 jumps that has a colony cost 2.0 or less then the NPR can be stymied.
-
thanks...
totally unrelated ;D
are missiles all worth the same in regard to their resistance to damage? Meaning a big missile can be destroyed by a small size 1 anti missile with a single hit? This would mean that using big missile is risky in the end... better overwhelm the enemy with tons of medium sized missiles??
-
Yes, missiles have one hitpoint.
Armor and ECM can make it more survivable.
Big missiles mostly have an advantage on long range, because they can have that range and still deal damage.
Also, think about Armor penetration. good penetration values are WH strenght 1,4,9,16,25,36,49...
-
Yes, missiles have one hitpoint.
Armor and ECM can make it more survivable.
Big missiles mostly have an advantage on long range, because they can have that range and still deal damage.
Also, think about Armor penetration. good penetration values are WH strenght 1,4,9,16,25,36,49...
Actually, if you don't put armor or terminal homing etc. on the missile, then doubling the size of the missile by doubling all the components (fuel, engine, agility, warhead) results in a missile with the same performance characteristics (range, speed, to-hit probability) but double the warhead size. The other thing to think about is that, for fixed mass devoted to launchers, the rate of fire (in terms of number of missiles) goes down like the square of the missile size. If, for example, you go from size-2 to size-6, then you can fit in 3 times as many launchers and they fire 3 times as fast. This can be important if you're trying to overwhelm anti-missile fire. The trade-off is that you have to sand-paper through enemy armor due to small warhead size.
John
-
ok... as with the rest, there is a lot of subtleties...
So about armor, Armor 2 means HTK 2?
slightly related, do I need a fire control aboard the ship that covers the range of the missile fired every time and until it reaches its target? Same for a drone fired? I would like to create a kind of long range probe, with a chassis (frame) either of missile or drone.
-
ok... as with the rest, there is a lot of subtleties...
So about armor, Armor 2 means HTK 2?
slightly related, do I need a fire control aboard the ship that covers the range of the missile fired every time and until it reaches its target? Same for a drone fired? I would like to create a kind of long range probe, with a chassis (frame) either of missile or drone.
1.) Armour is ablative. You can vissualize it as having as many rows deep as the level of armour. The number of columns is based on the size of the ship and you can find it on the ship design screen (F5) just under the armour level. A 4 point missile warhead will remove 3 boxes of the top row of armour and 1 more from the second row in the middle. This would mean that if you only have 1 point of armour then it would stop the first 3 points of damage and have one do an internal. In addition a gap 3 wide would be left in the armour. The next hit which has any overlap with this would get all of the overlap through causing internals, plus whatever it would normally do. A 12 point laser does roughly 2 rows of damage that is 6 deep. If you have 5 points of armour that would leave you with a hole 2 wide in your armour and 2 internal damage. The next laser hitting 1 column over would get 6 points of damage through on the empty column of armour plus 1 more from the second column it had just blown through, there would also be a gap of 3 columns in the armour now.
2.) As far as the fire control goes for normal combat your missile fire control needs to see what you are shooting at for the entire run, unless thre is a sensor on the missile. For drone use however you can fire at a waypoint without having it in sensor range.
Brian
-
So about armor, Armor 2 means HTK 2?
What Brian described is for ships and PDC. For missiles, armor reduces the probability of a kill. IIRC, the formula is:
KillProb = (HitStrength)/(HitStrength + ArmorLevel).
You might want to search the board on this, though, since I might have the details of the formula wrong.
John
-
KillProb = (HitStrength)/(HitStrength + ArmorLevel).
You might want to search the board on this, though, since I might have the details of the formula wrong.
John
You have the formula correct. A strength 3 laser hitting a missile with 1 point of armour has a 75% kill chance (1/(1+3)). A guass cannon on the other hand only has a 50% kill chance (1/(1+1)).
Brian
-
I think you messed up that example. 1/(1+3) would be 25%, it should be 3/(3+1).
-
In any case, thanks, this is what I wanted to know. That an armored missile could bear the damages of a small anti-missile. Thanks for the rest anyway about armor :)
-
I think you messed up that example. 1/(1+3) would be 25%, it should be 3/(3+1).
You are correct.
A thing to note is that more than a couple of points of armour on a missile is already hitting the point of diminishing returns. Most point defense systems are low damage so that they are small and a ship can mount a lot of them. This means that 1 point of armour is usually going to give you about a 50% survival rate against a lot of the pd weapons. 2 points only makes it 66% and 3 would be 75%. As missile armour is a flat 1 missile space point (msp) per point of armour (currently tech has no effect on this) a missile with 3 points of armour is using a lot of its space for only a 50% increase over the 1 point of armour.
Brian
-
Thats maybe the wrong approach in thinking about it.
3 armor would reduce the enemy chance to kill the missile to 25%, yes, thats less base bonus for the missile, but instead of two, on average he needs 4 shots not to kill that missile.
Which while only double as much than 2, is still two more, so for every point of armor, the enemy needs one more shot with classical point defense weapons.
Sure, 1 point is mostly enough anyways, but still, armor doesn't really get inefficient if you apply more.
The missile, however, does.
For example: A size 6 missile has 2 sizes allocated to WH, being 10 (why anyone would have 10 WH is beyond me, but you never know).
Reducing that by one (5) allows for one point of armor.
If you always penetrate the enemies point defense (or at least more that 50% of the time), armor will probably be detrimental to the results.
If the enemy easily beats you back, you won't have an effect.
If, however, the enemy can barely beat back the great majority of your missiles, for easy of example 100%, and doesn't have time to fire again, one point of armor will make 50% of the missiles survive, thus greatly increasing the results.
As a matter of note, Armor is better than ECm at start, but becomes worse once you get some serious ecm tech.
If the enemy only has a low ecm level, say, 4 levels lower than you, which is indeed a technical advantage, you can reduce the enemies hitrate/missile range by roughly would your armor would do versus point defence, while also working versus stronger weapons.
An ECM advantage, and be it just 20%, will work fine versus mesons, Laser, allround Missiles, and might end up denying the enemy an extra salvo of Anti-Missiles.
Armor on Missiles does never improve with tech.