Ah thank you, that's actually what I thought at first but than I noticed that I can design "magazines" that have different reload times and everything and I got very very confused.
You might be confusing two things here:
There are
missile launchers, which are basically tubes out of which missiles are fired. These have a given size (design parameter) (so that a missile of certain size can be launched from these) and a reload mechanism (tech line), which stuffs a new missile into the tube, once the old one has been launched. So these have
reload times. Better tech means you can reload a tube faster.
And then there are
magazines, which are used to store missiles (ond nothing else) that are not currently in a launcher. These do
not have reload times, but there are two tech-lines which determine how efficiently missiles can be stored in these and how likely the magazine is to explode when hit respectively.
It would be great if the game had some sort of built in encyclopedia (or hell maybe even more expanded glossary of terms as the one in class design) that would explain differences between the parts. Because without searching online I have no idea what some of that stuff actually does.
I guess another way of doing things and actually learning more in the process would be starting a game with the "conventional empire" setting so I actually have to learn what things I need and what they do as I research them instead of getting a lot of already done research dumped on my head.
While a conventional start is certainly more intriguing in the sense that you get to build things from scratch, it is also more challenging as NPRs would still start with a lot of techs. For a beginner that disadvantage could seriously hamper things…
Don’t worry though; the feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the myriads of different possibilities is one of the most enjoyable aspects of Aurora. Have a ball while it lasts.
Actually all that made me thing of another thing that's been bugging me. How do I use the commanders? I couldn't figure out how to make them take command of ships in any way, at first I thought they need a flag bridge but that didn't change anything.
Go to the “leader” page (the Commander Ryker symbol). Click on the lowest rank and then on any officer on the left side (or search one with desirable boni from the menu on the right). Then select a ship in the middle part of the screen, and hit “assign”. You might have to change the minimum rank requirements for some of your ship classes (on one of the tabs of the ship-design screen)