Ok, I see now that you still don't have that much combat experience. Especially against superior opponents, where things are different. With that in mind I can answer you better
Since they're built with industry (well, unless one is a masochist with a million-ton commercial shipyard), they build pretty fast, actually. I had a high population, lots of construction industry; I could well afford to make it, and it built quickly - a year at most, I believe.
I agree on the self-mobility. I usually build them just the way you said, but I experimented here with engines on huge things.
Large ships are a perfectly valid strategy, and there is nothing inherently wrong with them. It is a matter of preference. However as said by me and others, they are slow to build. I consider one year quite slow to build. Think of it this way: you lost your terraformers, maybe in a war. Or, you need to terraform more than one place at a time. Or, your industrial capacity on the planet is needed for something else. If you terraformers are smaller you can replace/build them quickly and terraform more than one place at a time. With this monster station, not so much
For example, my standard orbital terraformer has 4 modules. Relatively cheap to build and still significant.
Well, I used it like once, I think. In the home system. Salvaging one of those terraforming habitats after NPR forces shot it to bits. You've got a point about dedicated salvagers. If I put a salvager in a task group with freighters, they'll salvage to their cargo holds, right?
Yes it works. For example, A ship with 3-4 salvage modules paired with a freighter with 2-4 cargo holds work well. If you have to salvage really that much stuff, send a second freighter. It's flexible.
If I recall correctly, I was using those to haul resources from my operation one hop away to my home system. I definitely wanted the best fuel efficiency, and did not need much speed, provided the minerals got there regularly.
I do have freighters with max fuel efficiently, for normal duties. And then, I have one design named "fast cargo" with significantly faster speed, used when I need something delivered fast. Like during wars and such, when time is a luxury
I don't really have a good benchmark for tugs. One thing I did was copy the intended victim for tugging, then add enough engines to make it go decently fast, then removed everything but what the tug needed. But that's cumbersome. Any good benchmarks for tugs?
You can calculate a rough estimate. The speed of a ship depends upon 2 things. The power of the engines (EP) and the size of the ship. The tug is the only one with engines, so total engine power does not change. What change is the total size of ships moved. A numerical example will make it clear.
Let's say a 20000 tons tug, speed when not towing anything -> 10000 km/sec
If it carries a 20000 tons immobile ship, total size moved is 20000+20000 = 40000 tons, or double the tug size. Speed will be half of the original, 5000 km/sec
If it carries a 40000 tons immobile ship, total size moved is 20000+40000 = 60000 tons, or triple the tug size. Speed will be one third of the original, or 3333 km/sec
If it carries a 60000 tons immobile ship, total size moved is 20000+60000 = 80000 tons, or quadruple the tug size. Speed will be 2500 km/sec
And so on. So you can and should make a tug with the size of what you want to tow in mind.
I've found I rarely require to know about minerals in places where civilians can't go.
The point here is, planning. If your geosurvey ship can move to systems far away and prospect them, you can find where substantial mineral deposits are beforehand. Say that you are short on duranium. If you know that the system 2 jumps from home has large duranium deposits, you can start building gate towards that direction. Since you know beforehand, you don't waste time and the results are guaranteed. If you don't, you have to gate a system and then hope there's something useful for you inside it.
Well, they seemed OK for precursors and NPRs. I've not played with superspoilers yet. That said, understood.
Aurora generates new NPR as you play. They tend to be around your tech level if not above. Also, designs tend to be random. If you find something very fast, you have a problem, and that does not count the superspoilers indeed, which are bad.
Even against ships of similar tech, speed is important. If you are as fast as those carriers, they can move away from you and avoid you ever catching them, while sending fighters your way. Or if they are missile ships, use their entire missile cargo against you, then just escape to another system. You can't catch them.
I've not actually figured out how PD is set up. CIWS has the advantage of being fully automatic, where I don't know how to design and configure fleet-level PD.
CIWS is fully automatic, but as said it works only on missiles (not fighters) and is inferior when in fleets.
Say you have 6 ships in a small fleet.
If you have 5 CIWS on each, each incoming missile wave is targeted only by the CIWS on that ship, so 5 CIWS.
If instead you have 3 cheap laser turrets on each ship, each incoming missile wave is targeted by the whole 18 turrets of the entire fleet, no matter which ship is targeted. And also those 18 turrets can shoot at fighters, if there are any. Or, if the enemy comes closer, at the enemy itself (don't discount the damage even cheap lasers can do).
An excellent introductory article is here
http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Point_DefenseI also think there's some threads with many details on the forum
I've always wondered why one would put more than 1 + backup fire controls. Are you saying that if I put more fire controls on a ship, it'll target more targets simultaneously?
A fire control can target exactly one enemy. You can assign any number of weapons to it. If you have multiple fire controls, you can split your weapons on multiple targets. Example:
12 laser turrets
If you have one FC, you can only target one enemy with 12 lasers
With 2 FC, you can target one enemy with 12 turrets, or two with 6, or one enemy with 4 and another with 8, or any combination.
With 3 FC, you can target up to three enemy splitting the 12 turrets between them as you like
and so on.
An example, in my latest game I have a small escort frigate, primary duty is anti missile and anti fighter. It has 12 twin laser turrets and 5 fire controls. That way I can split those 12 turrets amongst up to 5 different missile waves or 5 fighters every round.
Or, if something bigger comes closer, just use all 12 to shoot at it.