Conventional Start Tech choices

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

A lot of people talk about waiting to explore or build a military until Ion drives or MP.  Which makes sense, because you probably want at least the 10k Construction techs researched before going for the approx 15k worth of techs needed to get jump drives and surveying.

But I like to get geo survey done early, so the civilians can start popping mines for me.

I made a mistake in my last start.  Get cargo handling before you get the civilian economy going.  As a result of not doing that, I have a lot of civilian ships without cargo handling.  They are fine for longer haul, I suppose, but it is still a bit inconvenient.

My theory is to be as cheap as possible in terms of the necessary techs to get started on surveying.  Boat bays instead of going all the way to hangars.  I would feel differently if I had a decent Logistics scientist.

So small engineering bay, which is vital to my scouting pinnace strategy.  Efficiency 5 jump engines, so I can have a 250 ton pinnace design, and a 500 ton EM sensor equipped longer endurance version.

Then I shift almost completely to construction techs, (and improved command and control), to improve my economy.  So I will be exploring on a shoestring, scouting carefully, dropping 15 ton Long Watch satellites (50 year endurance) at all jump points, because my Grav survey ships are actually carriers.  Theory is I want a cheap jump point watch that doesn't take much room to store.  And microfighters compare well to sensor missiles, and don't require launcher overhead in terms of how many you can carry.

Theory is to build somewhat more carriers than I have grav sensor pods to put in them, and just cycle the carriers in for maintenance and shore leave when a new carrier comes available to take the survey pods.

While I am researching construction techs up to the 20k or 40k level, I have scientists in all the major categories with 1 research lab, to try and get their skills up.

My long term plans is have a continually expanding civilian ship yard to get to very large size, to eventually build Terraforming Module ships, either making them engineless and also build a large tug design, or cheese it with two small tugs in a tractor chain.  Once I have a large enough Terraforming fleet, I can switch it over to making asteroid mining ships, I suppose.  Because there will be extrasolar high availability rocks that won't ever become civilian mining complexes.

Last game, I wanted to have missile sensor buoys at all jump points, but the tech available for that was so much after my survey techs that I had 40 systems scouted before I started.  This way, I can put the long endurance 'fighters' in the leftover space in the boat bays and later hangars.  And I know the grav survey ships are going to be going through every jump point I encounter eventually, so they make a great candidate.

This also meant that I could build a couple fighter factories early, and pre-build a large number of Long Watch satellites, keeping them employed until I got the techs to build grav survey pods and pinnaces with my fighter factories.

So that is my conventional start tech theory, what are your approaches?

[vorpal+5]

A question first, can you post the Long Watch design and necessary techs

[MarcAFK]

Generally when i start conventional my philosophy is to roleplay the situation, I'll delay researching or developing military stuff that would be a really god idea simply because I haven't discovered any NPR's and it's just stupid to militarize space that much.
However I always prioritize construction, and engine tech.
My current game however I'm turtling significantly, delaying research above the first tech level while mass building very low tech military forces.
I'm researching jump drives before nuclear thermal, I have modded conventional engines that are giving my warships about 300-500 Km/s and I really want to see how badly these early warships get defeated.

[Garfunkel]

I'm in the same boat as MarcAFK - I always play conventional starts and the details depend on the kind of RP scenario/start I went with. Militarization only happens if there is a reason for it. In my current game, there are asteroid defence platforms (OWP) protecting Earth, Luna and Mars, but nothing else. I agree with you Michael that getting the civilians moving as quickly as possible is tantamount, so I get geosurvey and Luna/Mars colonies going on with Gen-1 tech.

However, I don't explore outside of Sol until at least Ion technology. NT and NP are just too inefficient for interstellar distances. Plus, I like to RP some special event happening before Jump Theory is researched. In my current game, the Russians are falling behind the other factions and have thus turned to "esoteric" science, hoping for some groundbreaking breakthrough that would give them an edge - so they will be the first extra-Solar explorers and the other factions will eventually play catch-up.

I do want to get all the basic building blocks researched before expanding as well, meaning all of the one-off techs and the first or even second tier of chain techs.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

'''JPM Long Watch class Sensor Platform    15 tons     1 Crew     2.6 BP      TCS 0.3  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-0     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 3%    IFR 0%    Max Repair 6 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 600 months    Spare Berths 0   


This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes'''

Hope that formats right.  High density duranium is the only tech needed to build, and Boat Bay is the only tech needed to get them deployed.  You can build them with just duranium, but it will be bigger.

15 tons corresponds to 6 MSP in size, so it should be as hard to see as a missile.  I also had a 10 year endurance design at 10 tons.

[MarcAFK]

I never thought of not installing sensors in my sensor platforms. I should perhaps use something like that as backups for my bigger ones.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I figure with a Long Watch on either side of all jump points, I will at least see someone with active sensors approaching the Jump Point on the passive EM.  I might miss it if the subpulses are too long.

I may also back them up with active sensor buoys, on the theory that if my gates are crashed, I want to get information about the size of the enemy ships.

The biggest cost to any sensor network is the cost in time for the deploying ship, and the time the player has to spend on it.  Long Watches take very little research, or refitting, and I generally rename the Long Watch task groups into the name of the specific Jump Point they are set to.  Makes it easy when checking a system to see if I have watches on all jump points.

[littleWolf]

1 man crew and 600 month (50 year) deployment time.    Its a crazy kamikaze..

[Paul M]

Blame it on my "purest roleplayer" tendencies but I see no reason to have a conventional start if you are going to do things that basically replicate the conditions of the normal start.  That doesn't make that much in the way of sense to me.   I started exploring sol with the NCC with conventional engined ships and my first extrasolar explorations had ships only with NP or NT whichever is more primative.

The first combat ships were only fielded after the Wolvers were encountered, though admittedly Earth at that time had completely refit their PDCs.

Why bother with those jump gate whatevers?  Just make a bouy with passive EM sensors and launch it on both sides of the jump point.  It will have a higher value of detection then 1.  And that base detection value is a game artifact that should not be abused in this way in my opinion.

As for time it takes to do things, so what?  This is a game where it takes years for things to happen game time wise.  So voyages to Alpha C used to be over a year and are now down to 3 months with the newest ships.  Admittedly with some of the latest colonies the trip times are going back up again.

But at the end of the day it is up to the player what they want to do.  I just see even less point to a conventional start when you just stay at home, you may as well just start normally.  It is actually taking advantage of certain things to do a conventional start in this case...mainly while you are researching TN tech and while you are transitioning to a TN economy you basically can't spend money on anything and so your income gets stored up.   And this amounts to a huge cash surplus that is completely illogical.   No government in existance "saves" money like a person does.   If they have excess money they spend it on new programs or else if they are in debt from past they use the surplus to pay off part of the debt but they don't "bank" it.  And even if they did have a "warchest" that would be limited to some months of income. 

Also dependent on what you get for starter scientists and how many labs you have will make a huge difference in your technologica development.  Which technologies you end up taking and in which order...that depends entirely on the situation at hand. 

Also, civillian production isn't likely to be an issue before you have a substantial amount of development unless you have a huge starting population based on the income necessary to trigger civillian investment.  I've yet to see the civillians invest out of Sol for the NCC as a good example regardless of the existance of good prospects in 4 extra solar systems.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Littlewolf, I RP it as an automated station that is deployed from a Boat Bay/Hangar.  Since life support and research centers both use Mercassium, I RP it that it is a material that is also used in computers somehow.

Or a brain in a box scenario, where a dying person transfers their consciousness.  I figure there are some people who wouldn't mind living in a box if they had a good enough Internet connection/library and the time to use it.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

By having the jump point monitors carried by the Grav Survey Carrier, it is often a very short trip for the surveying carrier to go to the newly discovered jump point and place a Long Watch.  It is a very nice synergy, in my opinion.

My fleet doctrine is going to have a hangar on every ship.  That way, I won't need separate variants for sensors or point defense.  I will have sensor pod 'fighters'.  Until I am several tiers up in sensors, I do not expect to build any sensor system larger than 9 HS.  I don't see the point until the cost for researching the system would be less than researching a new tier.

If something eats a survey ship, I like the idea of his fellow survey ships coming back loaded with the most recently developed tech in their fighters.

I have also revised my scouting doctrine.  Because my scout pinnaces rely on close range and basic sensors to spot sensors, populations, they can often miss small pops (like Precursors) if the subpulse is too high.  So either I have to send the scouting orders one planet at a time, or more likely, when doing moon flybys, set the subpulse very low.

[Paul M]

Speaking from practical experience when doing flybyes of potentional trouble spots even with good sensors you have to bring the time down to at a maximum 30s and do a couple of turns at that speeed as you near closest approach.   Bad things may happen if you try and do this with too high a step...again speaking from experience.  You have to do this manually there is no way to automate it.  Most of the time these sorts of flybyes have me at the edge of my seat cause at some point the ship is committed to a close in run where if it has missed something going in it won't be in any position to dodge.

And I'd still overall go with a buoy since it is what you have only without taking advantage of game artifacts.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

One of the things I do in a conventional start is create a whole bunch of dummy task forces.  I put officers with ranks in Diplomacy in the Communications slots, and officers with Communications in Public affairs, so that I can get a Diplomacy team which has combined Communications/Diplomacy about 60, to make a good first contact team.

This also helps train up good survey officers before they are needed.

Discovered something amusing.  My carrier survey ships, with 3 grav survey fighters on board, each with officers, sometimes results in those officers gaining 1/3 of a point in survey. I will probably not bother with giving them survey officers after a while, but while I have enough I will use them.

Having good logistics officers can greatly speed the development of the Luna colony, as most of the time in shipping for that is loading and unloading.  A 50% task force logistics officer and a 50% ship officer reduces load time a lot.