Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Shoku on April 25, 2011, 02:31:38 AM
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I think I'm getting to where I've about figured out how many things I need to look at as I watch the seasons pass but I'm taking so long before I can start jumping around systems that it's hard to become very certain about combat. I think I want to be developing one energy weapon and one kinetic weapon- still just trying to make better suited configurations of that type or faster ships if I run into opponents that are hard to shoot apart. Is that about correct?
I've been kind of mystified by the aliens I run into as well. In the first game I ran into ships shooting around at 6000km and with longer range than me when I went through jump points quickly. The second game I built up for another ten years but even with my engine focus they were still much faster than me and massed up a force of like thirty ships at a planet near the jump point. These seemed big but even if I'd been pumping out an armada the whole time it doesn't seem like they would be equipped well enough to dent that. I don't really wanna drop the difficulty % and stomp a bunch of wimps but it seems like I'm outclassed in every field instead of even being on par in a few ways much less the staggered technology levels I get the impression I should be seeing.
If I had twice as many shipyards it would be sort of approachable but. . .
Am I reading these aliens all wrong somehow?
Also: I haven't so much worked out the battalions and marines yet. Do these have the kind of long term skill growth as my administration or do I not lose much by not putting them to some sort of task or producing more of them?
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Fast ships let you control the terms of the engagement (fight or run away). In some cases, they can also increase your tracking speed, but only to a certain point. If you need better tracking speed for direct fire weapons, turrets are the way to go. Early on, most everybody will be faster than you are. As your tech gets better, you start being able to build ships faster than the NPRs. I'm about 70 years into a campaign, and am faster than about 2/3 of the NPRs I have run into. I dont always outrange them - that is a design decision on my missiles.
Just because you are out-teched, it doesnt mean you cant beat the NPR (and capture his tech). If you can mass enough long range missiles, the NPRs are just fast targets.
NPRs do build fairly large battlefleets. However, some of the 30 ships you are seeing might be noncombatant or PDCs. In either case, the solultion is "more misssiles". Ship count is actually not as important as ordenance carried: you need enough missile tubes to saturate the NPRs point defences, but after that you just need more missile salvoes than targets.
Ground units get better with practice, but they need someone to fight with (actual ground combat) to really practice. Good leaders help.
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A key thing to note is construction doubling time.
Starting the game with an engine focus is problematic when you are doing a buildup beforehand. You want a Construction Rate focus, say 25bp. Perhaps a few levels in mining.
7 years in, I have 110 research labs, 2000 construction factories and a fleet of 40 ships (6 ktons and 10ktons) with a total missile output per 50 seconds at 310. Of course, I'm debating the use of building more ships, as currently I build ships faster than I build missiles to fill their magazines.
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In both of the cases I described I didn't have fire controls that could lock on at the range the ships were keeping.
So it's not a choice to try and go something that isn't missiles?
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At 7 years I don't even have enough scientists to use 110 research labs with all the little 5 lab max guys I keep getting. How many academies does that take?
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Jesus. I was 60 years in in my little turtle game before I had 100 research labs. I simply couldn't obtain the necessary corundium and duranium necessary to get the facilities built. I did get 2000 factories sooner, and now have two developed industrial worlds and two research worlds.
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Firstly, I didn't do a Sol start.
Secondly, my campaign was made a little easy by my starting system having a semi-high abundance of minerals. Two of the minor ones are a bit constrained but duranium, mercassium and sorium I don't have to worry about for the foreseeable future.
Not sure if this matters much, but it could be due to the fact that I don't use fighters or PDCs (apart from the starting allocation). My defence is purely ships and I've yet to get into a shooting war. So it's been 7 years pure expansion.
For a 1 billion pop start, Ion engines is a bit slow, but for 4 years, I did not build a single military ship (apart from surveys) and didn't manufacture missiles so wasn't too bothered by it. Essentially, I gambled that the NPR would be non-hostile (and they were) and dumped all my tech into construction/mining rate + research.
In fact, I didn't even start with warp point theory... (although I started it right away)
At 7 years I don't even have enough scientists to use 110 research labs with all the little 5 lab max guys I keep getting. How many academies does that take?
Not many surprisingly, I've had 3 for a while then got 4. I have at least 3 50+lab researchers. I've never had to worry about having too many labs...
Now, I have 11 academies and climbing, since my fleet constraint now is crew... =(
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Actually, I think this might be due to another quirk of the system. What time step do you use? I use a 86 000 construction cycle.
Not sure if that affects officer experience (intuition is saying yes), but I know it affects a load of things, like wasted construction power, as well as civilian sector movement.
Because... tell me, what's your highest governor bonus? I won't bother to check mine, but I do have a 70% construction rate / 55% shipyard rate governor for my homeworld. (and there are three or four around the same range although they're not quite as awesome)
- I also kinda "cheated" on that by creating colonies on system bodies that didn't do anything but train governors.
EDIT:
Jesus. I was 60 years in in my little turtle game before I had 100 research labs. I simply couldn't obtain the necessary corundium and duranium necessary to get the facilities built. I did get 2000 factories sooner, and now have two developed industrial worlds and two research worlds.
Actually that's rather more developed than I am currently. I have a half-baked research world (which is an empty terraformed rock with nothing but labs) and my industrial homeworld.
Made the decision that labs should not take up precious space on a planet that needs to run mines, despite the incredibly painful move (seeing messages to the tune of 19.15 labs sitting idle is >.<). I'm still limited by population.
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I've been using the default 400,000 construction cycle.
After the first few flounder games I decided to make a beeline to sticking a mass driver on several rocks with corundium on them so I have a handful of governors with production/mining bonuses training fairly early. I guess I could just declare garbage colonies before I ever click time forward to squeeze a little more out of it but even so I don't think that would get me anywhere near those bonuses in seven years- I'll assume that's at a much later point.
I think this game I counted myself as fairly lucky to start with a guy that had 25% factory production and 15% mining. At the six year mark the governor of Earth is 25% wealth, 15% factory production, 5% mining, and 25% shipbuilding. I placed the sector governor because he had my highest mining bonus at 30% as well as a 20% bonus to terraforming. (I've probably been wasting time trying to start a Mars colony right away eh?)
I'm already scraping the bottom of the barrel at 8 colonies though as I'm sticking guys with 10% production and 5% mining in charge of asteroids. With triple the academies I could stick better starters on them no doubt but-
The bonus growth on these guys doesn't look like it's really going to take off during the first decade when I feel like I'm lagging so far behind the aliens and things. Shipbuilding bonuses and that definitely help in making a fleet but long range missiles seem like they're flat out my only option for hitting enemy ships. It seems like I won't be able to make decent weapons if I put any time behind electronic hardening but that I won't be able to even lock on the things if I don't.
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Ugh, I might like to point out that my 40 strong fleet is probably nothing more than paper.
At Internal Confinement, 5750 is my fleet speed and my missiles have only 60 mkm range, 6 WH and ~50kkm/s speed. And that's the latest design, which only 2/3 of the ships have equipped. (previous generation was from before I got a working missile design and runs at a fail 16kkm/s and may as well not exist except to suck up enemy AMMs)
As it is, I, as a player, have zero combat experience and can't quite wait to see how I'd do. I suspect I'd do better against the spoilers rather than another NPR as my fleet's weakness is in getting outnumbered. As it is, getting troop transports will probably take me a year or so to retool shipyards and then more years to actually build ground troops (I have 2 divisions, one of which is purely engineers)
I don't really pay attention to governors. I create as many colonies on rocks as I have governors, then simply manually rotate out the governors on important planets every two years or so. (that said, the new rotation should be due in about half a year or so)
My starting governor was to the tune of 20% construction and 5% mining or something like that. Plonk "colonies" on half the system bodies and you get good governors quite easily within three years and the exceptional ones are starting to show up around the time I'm at. Never got higher than a 70% bonus before so I suppose that's lucky.
EDIT:
If you're facing microwave using NPRs... =/ I think my current fleet setup would either smash their fleet before they can get to me (due to the wall of missiles I can throw since I have no weapon other than missiles. A dual role laser frigate is in the works but I haven't got a useful beam firecontrol yet. )
And if they do get to me, I'm a bit screwed since I currently have zero defence against microwave FACs or fighters (I don't expect NPR ships to reach me) without a single level in electronics hardening or useful shields.
Yeah, no shields. =/ I'm going for the cheap spammy fleet strategy.
EDITEDIT:
Realized the spoilers... edited out.
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Internal confinement?
I don't even know what strategies there are.
I don't know any way to tell if a weapon system won't be able to fill some role or have any comprehension of points in the tech where they pass each other in certain kinds of usefulness. Right now I just know that at least some of them will probably be outranged by whatever I was getting shot by the first time (I couldn't figure out where it tells me or if it does,) and that if they have sensor scrambling tech that I couldn't shoot at them more than point blank anyway.
So far they seem to make a beeline for any signature they can pick up and pummel whatever they find if I can't touch them and I haven't been able to touch any of them yet. I'm hoping long range missiles let me snipe them instead but now I'm not confident that will work either.
It feels like I'm supposed to figure out what their ships do and then design something as a specific counter to that but there's such a small window before they have a fleet sitting on some world in my home system I don't get how I could even build ships for that much less research the parts for them.
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Strategy... so far, I'm just talking overall management strategies. I've an idea of how I want my fleet to look but I've no idea if it will work at all. It just happened that my cheapest missile frigates came into production first so I just went ahead and filled all my yard space with them. So I've a lot of ships with missiles, a command ship and not much else. (even in terms of support, my fleet is stuck in my homesystem due to maintenance and fuel transport issues)
Changing the missiles is easy. You change the missile and make sure it fits in the previous launcher and ta-da, instant fleet improvement without too much fuss.
Of course, you still need to build the missiles but you can chuck out about two missiles a day or so?
Also are you not sure it's one of the spoilers? To my experience in the past, I've had a 8 missile salvo not scratch one of the spoiler's gravitational survey ships. Game died shortly afterwards so I never got to fight their shooting ships, but for lone survey craft to mount CWIS that could shoot down an eight missile salvo... =/
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Ok. Missile updating saves a lot of shipyard time. Check.
I didn't think the first type of spoiler ships you might run into just one jump away would blow up my survey ships then jump into my home system and beat up Earth. The numerous ones I thought were small rather than all still being 10k tons plus (at least at the one jump distance.) And those ones with the electric interference equipment came into my system before I had even every jumped out of it so I'm pretty confident they were NPRs.
I guess I've got to turn of fleet training penalties and instant tech and ships n such to throw at aliens -_-;
Trying to make effective ships blind frustrates me too much.
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Oh... designing ships blind. =/
I read a few threads in Ship Design and the NATO vs Soviets campaign first so I kinda knew what a fleet should be able to do.
The other thing was that 40 kkm/s is apparently about par for magneto plasma missile drives. AMM and AS. I thought that AS missiles were pretty slow at first until I posted in the Ship Design forum.
Also, you might want to remember to update the default ordnance loadout on your ships when you update your missiles.
Not sure if they'll load the old missile if you don't but I want them to load only the best missiles first.
EDIT for clarity:
I meant that I am not sure if the ships will load the new missile first unless you update their default loadout.
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I tried reading through some of those but halfway through the trans-newtonian campaign (strangely named for a conventional start) the ships were still a long ways short of what I was running into.
I don't actually know how to load a variety of missiles onto my ships. There's the ordnance/fighters tab in design where I can say what they are supposed to load and I can tell them to pick up ordnance at a colony. Do they just automatically load older stuff in the same series of missiles if you don't have newer ones on hand?
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Do they just automatically load older stuff in the same series of missiles if you don't have newer ones on hand?
That happens to me yes. I presume that happens all the time... ?
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I thought you were saying that you didn't know if they would load old missiles after you updated but you were saying if you didn't update- I think?
Well anyway I was kind of wondering about this conquering other aliens for technology thing people keep bringing up. It would be sweet to hear from someone that's done that fairly early. Like with a mention of what year they do it by and maybe other information they can recall.
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Oh, oops, I meant that I was not sure if they would load new missiles if you did not update ordnance.
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Do they just automatically load older stuff in the same series of missiles if you don't have newer ones on hand?
That happens to me yes. I presume that happens all the time... ?
Yep. Isn't it nifty? :)
It used to be a total pain to load ammo, since if enough of the right kind of missile wasn't available, it would just leave the ship empty (or actually take missiles off, if they weren't in the default loadout). That's what series were introduced for - essentially your loadout is saying "I want 200 Sidewinder, 100 Sparrow, and 20 Harpoon" - Aurora fills it with the most recent missiles (assuming you've updated loadout when you design your new missiles).
There's still a request in to be able to define multiple loadouts for a single class (e.g. mission-based loadouts), but you can't have everything :)
John
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I'd been thinking that once I had it running I'd only want a certain number of sensor buoys* loaded regardless of how many ships were there but I guess I'll just make some specialist class for buoys.
*Speaking of which I don't know how to launch those yet. If I aim at planets will they run into them or play nicer than that?
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I'd been thinking that once I had it running I'd only want a certain number of sensor buoys* loaded regardless of how many ships were there but I guess I'll just make some specialist class for buoys.
*Speaking of which I don't know how to launch those yet. If I aim at planets will they run into them or play nicer than that?
They won't hit the planet, they should stay in orbit around it. I say should as I can't remember if they will stay with the planet or remain where they were deployed. I tend to use my bouys at jump points and stable wormholes.
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They won't hit the planet, they should stay in orbit around it. I say should as I can't remember if they will stay with the planet or remain where they were deployed. I tend to use my bouys at jump points and stable wormholes.
I think your concerns about orbits are correct - I have a vague recollection of having to do some weird incantations in order to get them into orbit - something about setting the waypoint up to follow the planet. IIRC Steve posted an answer about this a year or so ago when someone was having problems getting drones to orbit. A forum search would probably turn this up....
John
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So you give the buoys a waypoint? Where do I assign any of this or otherwise deploy the things?
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So you give the buoys a waypoint? Where do I assign any of this or otherwise deploy the things?
Yes create a waypoint on the system screen (F3). On the task group orders window use the command 'fire missiles at' and select the waypoint (don't forget to make sure waypoints are ticked as a selection option).
Finally, make sure that your missile tubes are loaded with the appropriate bouy. You should now have hours of minelaying fun ;D
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Also don't forget that by using the Last button on the waypoint tab, you can create a waypoint at the last system body on which you clicked. This waypoint will then move with that system body.
Steve
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Also don't forget that by using the Last button on the waypoint tab, you can create a waypoint at the last system body on which you clicked. This waypoint will then move with that system body.
Steve
THAT's the weird trick the existence of which I vaguely remembered - thanks, Steve!!
John
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The options to launch missiles at jump points or whatever system body are available in the list- why would I want to make waypoints and shoot buoys at those instead?
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The options to launch missiles at jump points or whatever system body are available in the list- why would I want to make waypoints and shoot buoys at those instead?
To create a minefield. Putting all of your mines next to the jump point is not an optimum use of resources. To deal with races with good jump drive tech you will need to place mines in a ring around the jump point at a reasonable distance (based upon your assessment of how far from the jump point the ships might appear.
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To create a minefield. Putting all of your mines next to the jump point is not an optimum use of resources. To deal with races with good jump drive tech you will need to place mines in a ring around the jump point at a reasonable distance (based upon your assessment of how far from the jump point the ships might appear.
It's also a good idea to spread out the mines as you would in a real minefield, otherwise they will all fire at the first ship that comes into range.
Steve
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but for just a sensor buoy it wouldn't matter right?
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I haven't done buoys or minefields yet.... hmmm may try that next - right now I have serious financial problems - keep running out of money despite making like 300 Financial centres a year...
For those who are a bit new like me I use a 4 ship combo these days - At present my 'standard' hull is 6,000T (I will explain the 'standard' bit later). I have a dedicated Sensor ship with (newly re-fitted) a 350mk Resolution big sensor and a (memory) 30mk Resolution 1 sensor - the most important distance for the last is the 4.3mk Size 6 or smaller missile range - that is my AMM limit at the moment
I have a dedicated AMM Corvette (6kT) with 3 Fire controls and 6 Size 1 Launchers and 360 odd missile loadout
a Long Range combat Corvette with 1 Fire Control - 3 Launchers - 40 something 85mk range Size 9 missiles that do 4 damage (30k+ speed) and 20 odd Size 9 Missiles that have a 6mk range and do like 15 damage (these last a from when I ran into a Star Swarm mothership - couldn't dent it - need BIG warheads to get into that)
a jump Corvette that does what it says - has like 30 Sheild units as the bad guys seem to go after Jump Ships first if they cane - my normal tactic is simply to move them to the 'safe' side of the jump point and let them jump my combat ships through.
The EWACS have big shields to
I also a new ship that is my close in last gasp defence ship - also 6kT - it has 2 x Dual Guass Cannon turrets with 2 fire controls and is designed to be the final defence against incoming missiles and to double as population re-assurance - I wil base most of this at my 10mill + colonies as they aren't critical combat units.
All my survey ships (dedicated grav- dedicated geo and jump ship normally 1 grav 3 geo and a jump mother in TG) are also 6kT
Using a standard size means I can ship exactly 6kt Maintenance facilities to a colony and know it can maintain grav and combat ships and I kepp a TG in orbit without needing to maintain it.
Not really necessary and imposes artificial challenges to ship design - but adds to the 'flavour' of this campaign....
I also have just finished 2 24,000 T 3rd Rate Line of Battle ships just in case someone comes in my direction ...
I am about to start cleaning Precursor systems out now that I have enough ships (16 AMM and 16 Long Range ships) - Note my missile ships only have the appropriate fire control for their missiles - no Active Sensors of their own - my battleships are not so limited...
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Now that you mention it running out of money seems to have messed up my production emphasized start I was trying. The only option seems to be to stop making things but that's obviously not a good strategy. Preventing it is the "right way" but just trying to pump out financial centers doesn't seem to work like that and then I'm just crippled and destroyed by NPRs jumping into my system to neuter whatever ships I've got.
Though now I should at least be able to fire back, maybe.
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Speaking of empire wealth or lack thereof.
Event Type - Empire in Debt
Event - Racial Wealth is now negative. Production will be reduced accordingly until the debt is repaid.
I am now back in the black but is there anywhere where the actual debt left is shown?
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Speaking of empire wealth or lack thereof.
Event Type - Empire in Debt
Event - Racial Wealth is now negative. Production will be reduced accordingly until the debt is repaid.
I am now back in the black but is there anywhere where the actual debt left is shown?
Title bar of the Economics screen
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I've figured that making financial centers is a poor idea.
Each financial center produces wealth equal to 1 million population.
This is very very small.
My standard game opening policy now is to research 3 or 4 levels of Expand Civilian Economy. (I don't start with any)
- Not only does this give you more free infrastructure (which always runs out), it also gives you, indirectly, a bigger private sector fleet which will mean you can reduce the number of government freighters.
- In fact, RP for RP, the free infrastructure from a 1billion pop planet is worth more in bp per year than the equivalent CF build rate increase.
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Just fought my first battle against ships that shot back.
A perfect victory at that, they didn't even scratch the paint. XD
- Although I had 150ktons to their 81.95ktons (111.4ktons if you count their defensive bases)
Get ECCM and keep getting it. Even if you can't afford ECM, ECCM will save your ships.
They had ECM 40, I had neither.
In fact, I will now put more sensor tech into ECCM than any other sensor tech.
Our missile ranges were similar (~60mkm), but I could only fire at 38mkm. Futhermore, their ships outpace mine by a mere 300km/s, small but enough to keep the range open. I can't approach to shoot them and I can't run away.
For a long while I thought I was going to lose my fleet, until they ran out of missiles and started to close. Which turned out to be fatal for them. (my fleet did out-weigh them by... alot. )
Too bad for them, my AMM frigates had enough ammo. I had a 45% hitrate (AMMs being 25% faster than their missiles) and used 2v1 interception which resulted in 0 getting through (I have no point blank defence). Actually, 1 missile got through out of roughly 200 to 300 shot at me but it somehow just disappeared when it reached my ships, presumably it somehow missed (although I don't know how at 40kkm/s missile can miss a 5750km/s ship).
Observation: You get a number of interception chances for each missile salvo...
First intercept occurs at your AMM launch range * your AMM speed / their missile speed. Following intercepts follow a similar formula except you substitute AMM launch range for the previous intercept position.
This meant that interceptions happened more often as missiles approached my ships. And with a 6mkm AMM launch, with roughly similar missile speeds, this is around 4-5 interception chances.
With 45% hit rate and 2v1, this means with 4 interceptions only 1 missile in 120 gets through. With 5 interceptions, only 1 in 395 gets through.
Therefore, AMM range is actually very very important and is absolutely critical if you're solely relying on AMMs for defence (like I am). Each interception chance drastically decreases the number of leakers and even a 5% increase in hitrate would result in needing far less AMMs as well as even fewer leakers. (+5% hitrate on my missiles would mean in the 4 interception case, only 1 in 256 gets through!)
As for the ratio of missile defence needed, 20 missiles per wave at roughly 20 to 30 seconds between waves was totally blocked, with some additional room.
My setup was 5 ships each with 10 size 1 missile launchers (10s reload) to 2 firecontrols. 6.1mkm range, 45% hitrate.
Ammunition aside, I could have laid down 3v1 AMM fire and my launchers would reload fast enough to cope with the salvoes. Initially I used 3v1, as my calculated hitrate was 28%. Apparently crew grade bonus applies to interception chance! Which then means that you want your highest grade bonuses on your AMM ships.
My AS missiles had hitrates around 110 to 130% or so and needed no help. Massive overkill in every launch, to the point that my "test" salvo meant to gauge their anti-missile defences actually wiped out their fleet.
Summary of conclusions:
1. Get ECCM. I needed it last year.
1b. Get better engines. This is often infeasible, but engine speed = life. Overclocking engines is definitely worth the explosion chance and fuel use. (I suspect their engine tech was actually 1 full level higher than mine, but I have +25% engine power)
2. AMM range and crew grade bonus is critical to maintaining impenetrable AMM defence.
3. Bring a coiller full of AMMs if I can at all manage it. I started with 2150 AMMs, I now have 945. Way too close for comfort. Especially since that is ALL the missile defence I have.
4. I need to bring up my laser frigate design. AMM defence will leak.
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Title bar of the Economics screen
Thanks. Can't see why I never paid any attention past the date.
Example racial wealth 2005 (+28)
So that is my current wealth? And (+28) is my excess that I can use before going negative?
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The (+28) was the last change in your wealth. I don't know if it is for the last increment or the last construction cycle, though I would guess construction cycle.
So, you made more wealth than you spent in that time. When you spend more than you make the number is negative.
And yes, the 2005 is your current wealth.
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1. Get ECCM. I needed it last year.
Or, get longer range MFC. My main ASM has a range of roughly 116m km (two stage, first stage slow with long endurance, submunitions fast with no endurance. ) I pair that up with a MFC with a 200m km range vs 5000 kt sized targets. ECM-4? Woop, my MFC now can't lock until I'm at 160m km to 140m km. I've been banging heads with those same NPRs. They make great salvage.
ECCM is not a priority for me. And when I get it, and improve my missile ranges, my MFC is still good. Future-proofed.
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I'm partway to ECCM 4 already though, due to anticipating needing ECCM 6. (wormhole off to one side of my only expansion route)
Also, doesn't ECM 40 mean without ECCM, you lose 40% of your MFC's range? 160 should end up at 96.
(60 - 0.4 * 60 = 36, which is roughly right, since my MFCs are slightly longer ranged than my missiles and my final range was 38mkm)
Amazingly, shuffling some stuff around on my ship designs means I don't need to retool my yards. They can build and refit the new design so long as I don't change the engines.
EDIT: Not that I won't change the engines anyway. The slightly more souped up engines will make my fleet speed higher than theirs, and with ECCM-40 to offset the range difference I will kick them around the block every time!
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So at 7 years I've got 500 factories, 22 labs, level 3 academy and 600k people on Earth. I don't think starting with twice the population is going to take me from 40 labs to 100+ and probably won't get me to 2k factories either. There's more instant tech points available but still I don't see it happening. I didn't even actually run out of cash before I expanded the economy so there weren't all that many setbacks.
Oh also at the 7 year mark
Sector Governor is 10% welath, 20% factory production, 15% mining, 10% logistics
Earth's governor is Factory production 20%, wealth 10%, mining 15%, xeno 10, logistics 10.
e: so I've lost another fight now. I ran into 3 ships and outnumbered them heavily. It looks like my missiles could have done the job if I wasn't so clueless about combat. They caught me right on the jump point into my own system so I probably didn't have much longer before I'd see them anyway. Being at point blank range they hit me fairly often with some 10 damage energy weapon and launched salvos of 13 AMMs at my ships for 1 damage a piece. The big delays on getting my missiles to fire gave them plenty of time to devastate me. I think only half of my ships even actually fired.
The second group that I just instant teched a few levels further to and wouldn't have realistically have been able to warp into their system fared just as poorly except that they managed to fire about twice as many missiles. This time I didn't actually do any damage though, which is kind of confusing given then significantly beefier warheads. I was trying those two stage ones though so point is obviously not the intention for them.
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I think Sol starts are slower in general since you were probably duranium limited (I am, technically, but due to mining rate, not lack of duranium). And dumping all my points into construction rate 25 helped alot.
I should really try a real stars game sometime.
Although I'm not sure why your governors aren't more skilled. I mean, I'm at 10 years now of the same game and the guy I posted in the chat section is pretty awesome.
I haven't had any problems getting good governors. I just make sure they're all doing something and poof, I get good ones.
EDIT: or actually, it might be due to your 5-day interval? Perhaps skill increase is checked per interval.
- I really should try that. Do a 8 hour construction interval game, compare with 30 day construction interval game. Run for 3 months and check governor skills.
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EDIT: or actually, it might be due to your 5-day interval? Perhaps skill increase is checked per interval.
- I really should try that. Do a 8 hour construction interval game, compare with 30 day construction interval game. Run for 3 months and check governor skills.
This is what I suspect might be happening. The bonuses you seem to be getting are light years ahead of what I get out of similar timeframes - and I try to make sure all the semi-promising officers are doing something, even if it's just babysitting a rock I intend to mine one day.
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This is what I suspect might be happening. The bonuses you seem to be getting are light years ahead of what I get out of similar timeframes - and I try to make sure all the semi-promising officers are doing something, even if it's just babysitting a rock I intend to mine one day.
That could be another one.
I use ALL my officers. Even if I have to post them to rocks which I will never use.
I only ignore ground forces (who cares about them) and naval (never have enough ships until I start my military production, and then not enough officers).
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Oh I definitely assign them all. In that game I had already run out of asteroids I intended to mine any time soon just making seats for them all.
I didn't manage to run out of any minerals anywhere. With the mining emphasis on the governors Earth managed to start running out of stuff to mine but I still have at least 15k of everything sitting in the stockpiles (and it felt like my mining on other rocks was really just beginning.)
But as for combat was I correct about the several minute delays on some of the ships being from not having assigned the missiles and firing controls much earlier? I'm pretty sure they would deal much much more damage firing in sync.
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But as for combat was I correct about the several minute delays on some of the ships being from not having assigned the missiles and firing controls much earlier? I'm pretty sure they would deal much much more damage firing in sync.
You can force them to fire in sync (mostly) by ticking the Sync Fire checkbox in the automated firing options of the combat settings tab of the F6 screen.
Untrained ships can still fire early.
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I've realized why the second group go so beat up though. They were shot at as soon as they jumped into the system. For whatever reason I didn't think about how standard transit would mess the sensors up so badly. It would be nice if things could give more indication of why they are waiting to fire (or do they say that somewhere I just didn't think to look?)
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I have a few random not-quite-capable questions:
1) What's the best way to balance the economy? Three years into a Trans-Newtonian game, I'm about to go into debt. Am I just trying to do too much, too soon? Cut back on Military spending? Unfortunately, I started without tech researchers in two of the important fields, including the one that has the Wealth expansion techs.
2) How do you set up defenses in a system that has no habitable planets? In particular, how do you guard a jump-point that is far from any solid body? Build Orbital Habitats and tow them out there with a Tug? Can PDCs be towed out to a jump point and left there to guard it, or can they only be dropped off at planets?
3) How do you produce and lay anti-warship mines? Will they only attack hostiles, or are friendly and neutral vessels at risk?
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I have a few random not-quite-capable questions:
1) What's the best way to balance the economy? Three years into a Trans-Newtonian game, I'm about to go into debt. Am I just trying to do too much, too soon? Cut back on Military spending? Unfortunately, I started without tech researchers in two of the important fields, including the one that has the Wealth expansion techs.
You can research techs without having a scientist in that specialisation – its just not quite as efficient – if you use a scientist with 30% in another field then they will still carry out the work, they only get the 30% bonus to research points created (if they were researching in their specialisation they would get a 120% bonus). If I have a scientist with a large No of labs, they will quite often be directed towards priority projects outside their specialised area.
You could also try building Finance centres, and I often try cutting back on military & support spending (eg missile production, fuel generation & shipbuilding) unless I’m in (or going to be in) an active war
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I have just shipped a brigade of Engineers to a colony planet that has the components of a pre-fab PDC, as well as nine Alien (Precursor?) dig sites. How do I get the Engineers to assemble the PDC or dig up the Precursor sites? Will they do it automatically?
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I have just shipped a brigade of Engineers to a colony planet that has the components of a pre-fab PDC, as well as nine Alien (Precursor?) dig sites. How do I get the Engineers to assemble the PDC or dig up the Precursor sites? Will they do it automatically?
The digging up goes automaticaly.
To assemble the PDC, go to "industry", select "assemble PDC" and order the PDC assembled. The engineers work as if they were factories.
Note: There was a bug, that engineers would not start producing without at least a single construction factory present. I don´t know if this is still the case, as I am still on 5.20.
If it is, the work around would be to SM-in a single factory and SM-out it after the work has been finished.
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Thanks. I'm guarding that alien dig-site colony planet with four Garrison Battalions, plus four Field Battalions (Hvy Assault x 1, Assault Inf x 1, Mobile Inf x 2) and a Brigade HQ. Should that be enough to repel whatever guardians I might find in the nine Precursor sites on the planet?
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Argh! You peeked and spoiled the suprise!! :)
Two brigades should be enough. Even if the guardians were on the very top end of the scale, those troops would give you plenty of time to ship in some reinforcements.
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Argh! You peeked and spoiled the surprise!!
Yeah, I'm an old Dwarf Fortress player, and the nasty surprise in THAT game was enough to last me a while.
I tried assembling that PDC base, and got a series of error pop-ups. . . and all of my PDC pre-fab components disappeared! >:(
I used Space-Master mode to just slap down the PDC that I had been assembling. . . is this a known bug?