Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Iamwinterborn on June 16, 2011, 07:45:19 AM
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Loving the game, though a successfully expanding empire is still something that is "luck" to me rather than skill. I've read the tutorials, still have questions. Which is to be expected. . . ;D
Here's a couple of my questions:
1. Although I've been using the "Player Race" government in the starts like the guides I've read reccomend, I'd like to RP with a different government for a newbie AAR. Is the changes limited to just the starting factory/lab numbers?
2. Where do scientists come from? Where do Civ Admins come from? I get that naval officers will be influenced by the Academy, but are the scientists/civvies influenced by it as well?
Now, assuming a Trans-Newtonian Sol start, could someone give me an idea of what I should build at first? What should I dedicate my 120000 RP to? (Yes, I am aware that this is probably a question with a million answers. Every time I see a detailed answer though, it furthers my understanding. ) Currently, my plans are usually like this: 20% dedicated to building 1000 infrastructure. 20% dedicated to building 500 Construction Factories. 20% to Research Labs. 20% to an additional 100 CF, and 20% to around 10 Financial Centres. Once I get a bit going, the 100CF/10FC completes and I dedicate that to some automated mines.
Also, sometimes when I start I get just two scientists, other times I have started with 4-5. Now I did notice that the two were both able to control plenty of labs, I just wasn't able to have multiple researches going in different fields taking advantage of different bonuses.
My research is usually like the following: I concentrate in C/P, going for 1 Civilian economy boost, then increasing production, mining and research, usually not more than 2 levels deep though. Then I go over to power and get Nuclear Pulse engines, jump point theory, and go back to CP for the 180 day jump gate mod. Get grav sensors. Then grab some defenses/missile tech. With 20k left, I'll go in, design some tech in the create a ship section. PS: It took me. . . forever. . . to figure out how to build missiles. First I couldn't figure out how to design them. Kept figuring I was missing a tech to do that before noticing that innocuous "missile" button that started mocking me every time I looked at it. . . Then I forgot that I would need to set a research team to discover said tech I made. . . Gosh darn game being all nice and complex. Too bad about the UI. :P
Once I finally get all that settled, I'll usually have the following designs:
(Civvie) Daniel Jackson - Jump Gate Creator - 8x Civvie Engines, 2x Fuel, an ofc the 180 day jump gate creator + the rest of the basics . (PS. . . do two of these stack? Make it 90 days? I've never tried figuring it didn't. )
(Mil) Newton - a Grav point surveyor. 4x Grav sensor thingy, enough engines it goes around 2-4k (depending on what size and how many, and fuel to last at least a year. Then some engineering space to keep it under 20%.
(Mil) Rocky - Geological surveyoy, basically a copy of the Newton but with geological sensors instead of grav point.
(Civvie) Pelican - Cargo ship - Just 50000 cargo space, and engines, and fuel for a year. I usually keep it under 68k size, so the amount of engines depends on that.
(Civvie) Bringer - Colony Ship - 20k colonists. Engines. Fuel for a year. Etc. Not ambitious.
I'll use the Fast OB to make a DJ, then a couple of newtons, a couple of Rockys, a couple of Pelicans, and one bringer.
The basic plan has always been to take the cargo ships, start moving infrastructure onto Mars, then a couple of loads of colonists. Then bring over some mines. (Like. . . 4-10). Usually the Shipping Lines will end up having a cargo ship and colonist ship after a bit, and then start doing this on their own.
The Newtons go off and discover jump points, then the DJ jumps into system and builds a return gate, while I take Newton 002 and Rocky 002 and dedicate them to the new system. Repeat for a couple of the Jump Points in Sol.
If I find a nice colonizable (I consider <=8x to be worth colonizing, but look for 2x or less. . . but I acknowledge I really have no clue when to expand or not :-[ ) planet (especially with good minerals), I'll start moving infrastructure there and some colonists. After getting some colonists down, I'll usually move like 10 factories and mines over, start building more there on their own.
But. . . I really don't have a clue what I'm doing. If I start fleshing out my shipyards, pretty soon I'll be losing money. Research, production, it all adds up. I finally figured out how to set planetary governors (I felt just a little too proud of myself for that accomplishment), but even having a 20% wealth guy on earth doesn't always help. Ofc, some of my early test games I manged to get decent colonies in like 3 sectors with a decently balanced budget so I just have no clue what I am doing. ::)
Anyone got any tips? Or maybe a detailed AAR that explains in detail what they are doing and why they are doing stuff? I like to read, and can't always be on my "main" PC, so AARs I can read on my laptop are very good.
Thanks,
Iamwinterborn
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1. I am not aware that government type changes the amount of labs/factories and so on. The only option to changing that is conventional start/trans-newton start.
What the race-government _does_ change is to give bonus/mali to several racial stats.
Open the "View Race Details" window (CTRL+F2)
In the "Government Modifiers" section (lower half, left side) there are stats for Xenophobia, Determination, Trading, Diplomacy, Expansionism and Militancy. Each type of government provides a bonus or malus to those stats, which are then applied to the random numbers rolled for your race (right side, center)
Xenophobia - malus to your relations to other races, applied each year.
Determination - how hard it is, to make a population of yours to surrender and, I belive, also influences how much garrison the enemy needs to keep your conquered population suppresed.
Tading - Influences the income from trade, I belive
Diplomacy - Bonus to your relations to other races, applied each year (yes counteracts xenophobia)
Expansionism - How fast the race explores and expands (irrelevant for a player race, as you deside those things)
Militancy - How strong a military the race wants/supports (irrelevant for a player race) Note: I am not sure, there isn´t something else where militancy is counted. If anybody knows, let me know too :)
2. All officers (yes, scientists and administrater count as officers for this) are "crated" in the military academy. Which kind of officer is "created" is random with a preferance towards naval officers.
3. Research priorities totaly depend on what race you are playing. Personally, I play the curious explorer and don´t bother with weapons until there is a reason to. If, once in a while, I go the WH40k route "purge the Xenos!" I invest heavily in weapons/warships and go alien-hunting.
What I almost allways do is, keeping 10% of my industry building factories and mines and at least 20% building labs. The remaining 60% build whatever is needed at the moment, automines are something I build very regularly. I also like to have quite a few shipyards, to reduce retooling (If I field, say a CG, CA, CE, JC, then I will aim to have 4 dedicated yards) This also allows for a fast emergency buildup of the fleet
I also keep my top CP-researcher researching "Expand civillian economy" and "Research Rate" all the time.
Money _will_ become scarce, especially with a trans-newton start, so keep researching the economy. Financial Centers might help, but you´d need a whole lot of them, to do you much good (each one generates as much cash as 1 mio colonists would do).
After settling Mars and usually Titan, I am looking for minerals. Look what mineral is going to run out within the next 10 to 20 years, look for planets/moons in other systems, that can provide that mineral. Start looking _NOW_, don´t wait until you have to shut down production because you don´t have any left!
If the mineral goldmine(s) is/are colonizable, so much the better, prepare infrastucture and mines, if not, build automines.
Subsidise the civies, so they build more ships while you have a lot of money, the tax, they will pay might help you later, when cash gets scarce.
Only buy the minerals from civilian mining colonies, where there are a lot of different minerals. You pay PER MINE, no matter how much minerals they recover.
On a moon with 10.000.000 tons of Duranium (1), a single civ-mining-complex recovers 100 tons (basic tech) of minerals.
On a moon with Duranium, Neutronium, Vendarite, Sorium and Uranium at 0.5, the complex recovers 250 tons.
You pay for both the same!
The "sometimes 2 scientists, sometimes 4 to 5" thing:
Thats how the dice fall. Sometimes you luck out, sometimes you don´t. A great thing (IMO) to do is to modify your research priorities towards what you get. If I get a energy weapons genius, but no misisle scientist, my fleet will be mostely beam-armed. If it´s the other way around, it´s all missiles and railguns.
Also remember: Each scientist can research everything. It´s just that he is not receiving the 4x bonus if not working at his specialty.
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(Civvie) Daniel Jackson - Jump Gate Creator - 8x Civvie Engines, 2x Fuel, an ofc the 180 day jump gate creator + the rest of the basics . (PS. . . do two of these stack? Make it 90 days? I've never tried figuring it didn't. )
Great name!
No they don't stack.
John
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With my initial RP, I took some serious engine tech, and dumped some points into research rate. With a fledgling empire, research rate is pretty pricey.
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Regarding research: Speed is Life. The faster you go the easier it is to expand and survive. Research engine tech as much as you dare.
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1. I am not aware that government type changes the amount of labs/factories and so on. The only option to changing that is conventional start/trans-newton start.
What the race-government _does_ change is to give bonus/mali to several racial stats.
Okay, interesting. Yes actually changing gov type does change the "default" starting labs/shipyards, I noticed that when I put down Pax Utopia or Militant Dictatorship and noticed my starting 20 labs went down to like 8, so I figured there might be some stuff hidden further in. . . I'll have to experiment and see what they give myself, thanks.
2. All officers (yes, scientists and administrater count as officers for this) are "crated" in the military academy. Which kind of officer is "created" is random with a preferance towards naval officers.
Okay, got it. Hmmm.
3. Research priorities totaly depend on what race you are playing. Personally, I play the curious explorer and don´t bother with weapons until there is a reason to. If, once in a while, I go the WH40k route "purge the Xenos!" I invest heavily in weapons/warships and go alien-hunting.
What I almost allways do is, keeping 10% of my industry building factories and mines and at least 20% building labs. The remaining 60% build whatever is needed at the moment, automines are something I build very regularly. I also like to have quite a few shipyards, to reduce retooling (If I field, say a CG, CA, CE, JC, then I will aim to have 4 dedicated yards) This also allows for a fast emergency buildup of the fleet
I also keep my top CP-researcher researching "Expand civillian economy" and "Research Rate" all the time.
Money _will_ become scarce, especially with a trans-newton start, so keep researching the economy. Financial Centers might help, but you´d need a whole lot of them, to do you much good (each one generates as much cash as 1 mio colonists would do).
Heh, I always used to devote 20-40k of my starting RP into weapons/shields because the AARs I have read involves running into an Alien race and running around with their head cut off screaming the sky is falling, pull back to Earth and prepare for the the final battle!
Thinking back, I believe the first couple of times I devoted more RP into the civilian Economy - probably why I ended up with profits those first games even though I had no idea what I was doing.
Hmmm. . . Financial Centers seem a bit weak? Are they WAD in regards to how useful they are?
After settling Mars and usually Titan, I am looking for minerals. Look what mineral is going to run out within the next 10 to 20 years, look for planets/moons in other systems, that can provide that mineral. Start looking _NOW_, don´t wait until you have to shut down production because you don´t have any left!
If the mineral goldmine(s) is/are colonizable, so much the better, prepare infrastucture and mines, if not, build automines.
I've been getting better at this! ;D Of course, now I just have to learn how to get the ore to my different planets. Probably not that hard, it's just all the micromanagement might cause me to keel over. . . I'm thinking a freighter with an order to "Pick Up Ore at planet X, drop off Ore Planet Y" and set to "cycle" would do? If I have the "fuel less than 30% -> refuel" option checked, will once it gets low on fuel will it go off to the nearest planet with fuel, refuel, then continue with the cycle? Or will that break the cycle, making me need to include the fueling somewhere in the standard orders? (Say I want minerals from Titan to go to mars: Load Duranthium Titan, Drop Off Duranthium Mars, Refuel Earth" - cycle. Something like that?) Of course, there's "Mass Drivers" which I am reading up on. The wiki article makes them seem both super easy, and also dangerous. *shudders at the idea of tons of ore fired from a mass driver smashing into populated areas*
But my question would still stand firm for planets in two different star systems.
Subsidise the civies, so they build more ships while you have a lot of money, the tax, they will pay might help you later, when cash gets scarce.
Only buy the minerals from civilian mining colonies, where there are a lot of different minerals. You pay PER MINE, no matter how much minerals they recover.
On a moon with 10. 000. 000 tons of Duranium (1), a single civ-mining-complex recovers 100 tons (basic tech) of minerals.
On a moon with Duranium, Neutronium, Vendarite, Sorium and Uranium at 0. 5, the complex recovers 250 tons.
You pay for both the same!
Thanks for the tip! That is indeed good to know. :o
The "sometimes 2 scientists, sometimes 4 to 5" thing:
Thats how the dice fall. Sometimes you luck out, sometimes you don´t. A great thing (IMO) to do is to modify your research priorities towards what you get. If I get a energy weapons genius, but no misisle scientist, my fleet will be mostely beam-armed. If it´s the other way around, it´s all missiles and railguns.
Also remember: Each scientist can research everything. It´s just that he is not receiving the 4x bonus if not working at his specialty.
Yeah, I know they can research everything - Its why I did not immediately quit. But it sorta felt awkward to me. I think I will always restart from now on (at least until I consider myself "not a noob") if I have less than 4 scientists and 3 different areas of expertise. Just feels like I am losing out on a lot of the fun early on.
Sloan: Thanks. =)
Thiosk/James Patten: That's a bit my motto too! I am glad my "strategy" has turned out to be decent. Research + Speed is often my creed in new games. I'm a Cybran Minmatar Scientific Scout. ;D
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Another question: Cloaking.
I've not really done/experienced combat yet so I do not quite get sensors and the like yet, but I am learning. Once you have all the necessary cloaking techs, how does cloaking work?
I mean, are we talking "Thou must uncloak to fire, but one can use it to get in range", or are we talking "*explosion* Sir! It must be the Ninjas! *dies*". And is EVE style, is there luck involved, or is it a math formula that as long as X sensors are not good enough, your Y ship will never be found.
Some of my unknowledgeness (what? It's a word. It's just in a different language. Buffyspeak. I swear. :P) is simply based off a lack of getting how sensors work. Is there a good forum post or anything somewhere that details how this works? I don't mean just math. My brain can do math, it just often can't apply it to stuff.
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Regarding Mass Drivers and multiple systems.
One thing you can do is set a "collection colony" near your JP. Have mass drivers from the mining colonies in system fire to the collection colony. Then have freighters pick up minerals and transit.
In the same system, use mass drivers. You can't take the last one away without triggering a warning from the game, so it's harder to earn your "Bombardment" achievement now.
Regarding cloaks.
Cloaks reduce the signature of the ship. Effectively making it look smaller (and harder to hit). I don't think they make it invisible (a la Star Trek).
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I am fascinated by cloaks, but you sacrifice a LOT for that. I've put enormous research points into it to bring it down to where a sub 1800 ton craft can be 85% cloaked-- my 1500 ton ship should appear about the size of a very small fighter, 225 tons. The nightshade is in my ship design file-- its a nasty little thing that can get close and fling six toothy little size-4 missiles in your face.
The larger cruiser-sized cloaks take up an ENORMOUS amount of space- putting cloaks on all your ships is really similar to putting jump drives on every ship. Once you design the device, they take a ton of RP just to make available, too.
However, I'm considering building a new line of cloaked beam cruisers. A *big* fire control (high range and tracking speed) will give it some PD and range, and then something like two quad laser turrets to just dig in and pop ships while skipping the majority of the missile gauntlet. The problem is, I can get either speed and cloak, or teeth and cloak... I haven't been able to get all three in any of my designs yet.
To note the effectiveness of high-tech cloaks, see this post:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2772.msg27272.html#msg27272
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Cloak only works against active sensors. The basic way that sensors work is that they have a built in resolution that is set when it is designed. Anything of that many hull spaces or larger can be detected out to the full range of the sensor. The actual range of the sensor is to take the reasearched sensor tech and multiply it by the resolution. A resolution of 40 will see size 40 targets at twice the distance of a res 20 would see targets that were size 20 or larger. If the resolution is greater than the target then there is a somewhat complicated formula, but the rule of thumb is that your range will be reduced by the square of the difference in the resolutions. So in this case a res 40 sensor trying to pick up a size 20 ship (gunboat size) would only pick it up at 1/4 the normal range. This is half of where it would be picked up by the res 20 sensor. The way that cloak works is to shrink you effective size for sensor detection. A simple example is a 100hs (hull size) ship (5000 tons) with a 85% effective cloak would have the apparent sensor size of 15hs. As most sensors for detecting warships are going to be set for a much larger sensor target, as well as most anti-ship missile fire controls (same mechanism as sensor to determine range modifier) you will be able to get much closer in to your target. You are still detectable by sensors, especially ones that are designed for detecting small targets. The small target sensors on the other hand do not have the range of a sensor designed to spot ships. Will you get to beam range without being seen? Probably not, but you might get through 3/4 of the missile range before they pick you up. Is it worth the tonnage penalty is a personal question you will need to answer, and it will vary based on the comparative tech levels and your style of playing.
Brian
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Interesting.
On another note, I have fallen even more in love with this game.
I found aliens one jump out from my homeworld, and after some failed diplomatic attempts, I decided to just go ahead and get intel on them as they seemed to confine themselves to the inner planets. As my all sensors frigate with a speed of 2100 got closer, the thermal hits blossomed onto 4, and one charged at me at 4k! Consigning myself to the loss of the frigate, I told him to activate sensors on the charging one, followed by the ones still orbiting the planet.
The icons merged, and I had to open the events to see what happens. (I've seen on some AARs the events layered on the system map, how do you do that?) The ship was massive! I mean. . . 100,000! I thought for sure I'd just ruined my game, that I had run across some horrible death star of doom! And then. . . The ship started doing RAMMING attacks. I mean. . . whut? This game has ramming attacks OH MY GOD. My ship managed to dodge around 20 of them before it finally got hit. But the rammer died as well, so now there's a 100000 ton wreck out there with mine. . .
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Ramming attacks are normally done by an alien vessel without weapons or alien vessel out of ammo.
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I usually save the database just in case things go horribly wrong so I can replay it if necessary to find out and learn from mistakes. i also use Steve's game as a sort of reference: general ship designs, missile designs, (designing missiles/fire controls; which was hard for me to understand at first), Fleet and troop hierarchy and all kind of other items. The forums are full of info, tho it may be buried and might just be an off the cuff one liner in some topic concerning something else. Example, I'm sure others know, but I didn't realize until recently you could use Spacemaster On and a checkbox in Task Groups/misc tab to pick out the next unexplored star system name (real stars game) as I was getting tired of all the Gleise ### etc systems.
As far as scientists, I look at it as I got what I got and need to use them as best I can. It's not a game ender if I don't get the right scientist at first. Eventually I will.
Quick question for anyone. Is there any way to tell when an overhaul of a ship will be done?
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I usually save the database just in case things go horribly wrong so I can replay it if necessary to find out and learn from mistakes. i also use Steve's game as a sort of reference: general ship designs, missile designs, (designing missiles/fire controls; which was hard for me to understand at first), Fleet and troop hierarchy and all kind of other items. The forums are full of info, tho it may be buried and might just be an off the cuff one liner in some topic concerning something else. Example, I'm sure others know, but I didn't realize until recently you could use Spacemaster On and a checkbox in Task Groups/misc tab to pick out the next unexplored star system name (real stars game) as I was getting tired of all the Gleise ### etc systems.
As far as scientists, I look at it as I got what I got and need to use them as best I can. It's not a game ender if I don't get the right scientist at first. Eventually I will.
Quick question for anyone. Is there any way to tell when an overhaul of a ship will be done?
I think that overhaul reduces the clock on the ship by 4 times the increment used.
So, say you had a ship that had a clock of 12months, then it would be overhauled in 3 months.
The reference I found was from 2009 though, so it might be outdated.
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I usually save the database just in case things go horribly wrong so I can replay it if necessary to find out and learn from mistakes. i also use Steve's game as a sort of reference: general ship designs, missile designs, (designing missiles/fire controls; which was hard for me to understand at first), Fleet and troop hierarchy and all kind of other items.
Steve's game?
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Steve's game?
The one that's in the DB when you download it from the site....
John
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Ahhhhh.
One last thing (for the next two hours probably :P ):
If you leave "real stars" checked, what will "stay the same" between games? Will just the names of stars stay the same? Planets/Asteroids/Moons? What about the mineral deposits? Or will all that be randomly generated when you create each game (or more accurately if my forum reading is correct, when you jump through into a new system. )
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Ahhhhh.
One last thing (for the next two hours probably :P ):
If you leave "real stars" checked, what will "stay the same" between games? Will just the names of stars stay the same? Planets/Asteroids/Moons? What about the mineral deposits? Or will all that be randomly generated when you create each game (or more accurately if my forum reading is correct, when you jump through into a new system. )
My understanding is Names, Types, and Galactic Locations (and possibly stellar masses). In real stars, the JP generation code is more likely to connect you to a nearby system than a far system. Minerals, planets, etc. will be randomly generated for each new game.
If you look for a post from Steve about Real Stars (probably in Mechanics, probably somewhere in 4.x) you can confirm or deny all this.
John
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1. What is the bonus of having higher levels of Commercial Spaceports?
2. While I assume it would be good, what would having a second Commercial Spaceport a system over above my growing colony do? Would it make it more likely to spawn a second shipping line?
FAKEEDIT: Ah, found it in the wiki. Good to have to increase turn around times on shipping.
3. What are the ways I can increase my growth rate? I know of: Planetary Governor and Sector Governor. But that's all I know of. Anything else?
4. Is there a tutorial or a thread somewhere that details dealing with fighters? I made what I think is a nice carrier/fighter combo: A Carrier with enough room for 13 of these fighters, each fighter has 3 size 4 launchers with minimal reload (don't have box launchers yet) and no magazines. Just fire, return. Carrier carries the magazines to reload. Of course, since I have yet to fire a shot in battle EVER, this could just be me throwing myself into a volcano OF HORRIBLE FLAMING DEATH or something. . .
5. Actually, can someone point me towards a good thread in the ship designs section dealing with a basic early fleet with perhaps some explanations behind the reasonings? I have hard time getting in my head a vision that will work. This actually truly my first game where I had to think this hard. ;D I quit Dwarf Fotress because the graphics + subject matter + horrible to understand mechanics. Why haven't I quit this one yet? Because ummmmm SPAAAAAACE. There's probably great threads in there, but I don't have my head around the combat mechanics at all yet, though I am trying. I have unhappy reality in which I don't get things, until I finally do, at which point it all makes perfect sense. There's no middle ground or slow learning usually. Sucks for studying, but anyways. . .
Currently my doctrine is based around a slowly expanding line of grav and geo surveyors followed up by dedicated jump gate construction ships - but I haven't come across anything hostile yet, except in one system, and it seems to be a special case, since I have a really hard time believing anything else could go 43km/s only 5 years into the game. . After reading the forums, I have decided that while this has been working decently for me, it is a BAD IDEA. Currently have a shipyard retooling for a 6. 75 ton Jumpship with some Grav sensors on it to slowly expand my knowledge of the universe without leaving cookie crumbs back to my doorstep.
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For early ship design, I was in a similar conundrum-- i understood ships are good, but i didn't know what made a ship good.
Check the various ship design threads-most have something to do with early questions of this nature.
The generally used doctrine is one of single-role ships. Its too hard to have a jack-of-all trades fleet- a cruiser that can sense the ships at range, shoot them down, and brawl up close really can't do any of those things well. So you put big scanners on a scanner ship, big missiles on a missile ship, big beams on beam ships, and lots of little point defense turretted ships to back it up. Make it so all the shiips in the fleet go the same speed.
However, sometimes you jsut have to meet aliens first to know what you need. I was blocked by precursors at every turn, but had plenty of empty worlds to expand into, so I considered them as a natural wall against invaders and just built things up until i could take them.
Now my forces are pretty mean. But learning how ships shoot only really came from fighting three small battles.
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Iamwinterborn: hopefully you won't mind if I add my own newbie related questions of perplexity? :)
I'd like to know what's up with factories and factory production and industry in general. I've been doing the maths, and it adds up - but very slowly! As in, having a planet with x million minerals that you want to mine out, you want to ship over some automated mines in order to do so. Even with various bonuses involved for the governors, the production rate is (literally) astronomically slow. I have ~350 mines, which gives me only ~5000t per year! The consumption for some larger shipbuilding projects would cost me, say, 50k of that same mineral! Ten years worth!
So doing the maths like I said: I would like to have at least 10 times as many mines on that planet. It becomes now a problem of producing those same mines on Earth, and this is a complete bottleneck. I have 1000 factories, but they can only give me 4 automated mines per month! And as for building more factories, er, 8 more a month at 100%?
Is there something I'm missing? Is this the fundamental problem with automated mines versus colonies with 'manual' mines?
edit: I found something I'm missing! I forgot to factor in necessary research. At the moment I'm only upto 'Construction Rate 12bp' and 'Mining Production 20t'. I assume that there are much larger outputs later down the tech tree. . . (speaking of which, one thing the game lacks is a tech tree).
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To get a look at the tech coming up you can see it in the reasearch field of the population and production screen (F2) Down below the tech description there is a row of 4 buttons. If you click on the all projects one this will list all reasearch projects in that field whether they are done or not. It also lists the point cost and groups them by type so all of the construction factory reasearch will be together, all the reasearch rate together, ect.
There are only a couple of places where the tech tree is not linear. For engines you need to reasearch the matching power plant first and fighter engines require (iirc) ion engines to be reasearched first. With ew the compact ecm/eccm requires the next higher full size ecm/eccm except for the last one which requires the ecm/eccm-9. Small craft ecm/eccm require twice the number of compact ecm/eccm so for small craft ecm 2 you would need compact ecm 4 and full sized ecm 5. The best small craft ecm/eccm is 5 which requires compact ecm/eccm-10 which requires compact ecm/eccm-9 which iteslf requires full sized ecm/eccm-10.
Other than this there are a couple of fields that require a precursor tech to unlock. For cloaking you need to reasearch cloaking theory. For jump tech (including gravitational sensors) you need to reasearch jump theory. For ew you need to reasearch electronic warfare first. I think that is all of the standard reasearch items that are not very straight forward. There are also some advanced tech weapons and shields that you can only get from some aliens or ruins but they are pretty straightforward once you unlock them.
Brian
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Iamwinterborn: hopefully you won't mind if I add my own newbie related questions of perplexity? :)
I'd like to know what's up with factories and factory production and industry in general. I've been doing the maths, and it adds up - but very slowly! As in, having a planet with x million minerals that you want to mine out, you want to ship over some automated mines in order to do so. Even with various bonuses involved for the governors, the production rate is (literally) astronomically slow. I have ~350 mines, which gives me only ~5000t per year! The consumption for some larger shipbuilding projects would cost me, say, 50k of that same mineral! Ten years worth!
So doing the maths like I said: I would like to have at least 10 times as many mines on that planet. It becomes now a problem of producing those same mines on Earth, and this is a complete bottleneck. I have 1000 factories, but they can only give me 4 automated mines per month! And as for building more factories, er, 8 more a month at 100%?
Is there something I'm missing? Is this the fundamental problem with automated mines versus colonies with 'manual' mines?
I think the thing you're missing is one of Steve's original goals for Aurora: to have an "epic" game in the sense of capturing the sweep of history of hundreds over years. This means that it takes a looooong time to build up industry.
If you read the Rigellian Diary (you can download it from Steve's Fiction in the Starfire section), you'll see the arc of a big Starfire campaign - it lasted for years in real-world time. In game time, Steve stopped playing it during turn 167; at that point IIRC it was taking him several months just to play a single turn.
Now here's the relevant part - each turn in Starfire is one month. I remember Steve making a comment in the early days of Aurora that the Rigellians went from a single system, tech-level 1 empire to a huge empire with hundreds of systems, trillions of population, and incredibly high tech in the space of 14 years of game time. He thought it should take decades or centuries of game time to do this, not years.
So yeah, it seems like industrial growth rate takes forever, and it seems like it takes forever to move a significant fraction of Earth's industry to the outworlds. But if you look at the numbers, the growth rate is a few percent (if you include research) which is on par with the real world, and it really is realistic that it would take a loooong time to bring a colony world up to Earth's production standards (think about how long it took in America). I personally feel that the growth rate is probably a bit slow (i.e. it might be around 1-2%, so needs to be doubled or even tripled), but that's just me.
John
PS - One of the things you can do to make things go faster is increase your starting population. I usually play with a starting population of 1 Billion; this makes all the production etc. twice as fast.
The other two things are to research your productivity techs - these are important because they affect the growth exponent (they cut the time it takes for a factory+mine to create a new factory+mine, and so cut the doubling time) - and to invest heavily in growing your industrial sector (i.e. devote a large percentage of production to factories and mines).
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Is there a thread about how to make fleets work? And stuff? Yeeeah.
My current issue is that amount of finagling it takes to load fighters into a carrier. I have to put the fighters of the right amount into their own task group. I then have to go to the far right tab, and put them into a new branch, as well as making sure the Carrier is in a different branch. I then "store" the fighter branch, then assign mothership on the carrier. I then tell them all to land. Repeat for each carrier. I'm getting better at it, but I was hoping there was an easier way.
Also. . .
I decided to take my 2 Carriers with 12 Spitfire IIs, along with a couple of armoured cruisers and a couple of destroyers with good sensors. (At least I think they are good. . . ) into Procyon, where two of my survey ships had met their doom to a ship that traveled 43km/s. . . There were also 4 other wrecks from unknown sources. I figured I'd probably lose all of the ships in a ball of fire, but maybe at least I could get a feel for what I would need to make to take on this ship.
I told the fleet to move to the wreck of the Pliny, and started getting really uncomfortable with how little my sensors really were. I had "active on" on all my ships, and inched my way closer in 8 hour increments. I finally got there and CONTACT! A size 24 missile salvo x8! or something like that. But. . . I can't shoot it. I don't know what I am supposed to do with it. It just sits there anyways. I went and investigated a different planet, came back, contact reappeared, again, I put active sensors on it, tried to find a way to shoot it. Can't figure it out.
Err. . . what am I supposed to do? If I can't seem to shoot this apparently stationary target, how am I supposed to shoot the big bad?
I have missile fire controls, I have beam fire controls for the two beam ships. . . I'm just really confused. If I select a planet as the target then I have a "fire missiles at" option. . . ??? ??? ???
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My current issue is that amount of finagling it takes to load fighters into a carrier. I have to put the fighters of the right amount into their own task group. I then have to go to the far right tab, and put them into a new branch, as well as making sure the Carrier is in a different branch. I then "store" the fighter branch, then assign mothership on the carrier. I then tell them all to land. Repeat for each carrier. I'm getting better at it, but I was hoping there was an easier way.
Look on the top of the system map (F3) for a tie-fighter icon (11th from the left). That takes you to a fighter squadron management screen that might help some.
I told the fleet to move to the wreck of the Pliny, and started getting really uncomfortable with how little my sensors really were. I had "active on" on all my ships, and inched my way closer in 8 hour increments. I finally got there and CONTACT! A size 24 missile salvo x8! or something like that. But. . . I can't shoot it. I don't know what I am supposed to do with it. It just sits there anyways. I went and investigated a different planet, came back, contact reappeared, again, I put active sensors on it, tried to find a way to shoot it. Can't figure it out.
Err. . . what am I supposed to do? If I can't seem to shoot this apparently stationary target, how am I supposed to shoot the big bad?
I have missile fire controls, I have beam fire controls for the two beam ships. . . I'm just really confused. If I select a planet as the target then I have a "fire missiles at" option. . . ??? ??? ???
My guess is that your resolution on your fire control is too large or you're not in range. A size-24 missile is roughly a size-1 target, so you want a resolution of R1. If your resolution is too high, the range gets penalized by the square of the ratio, i.e. the range is 100x worse than advertized for an R10 sensor (or fire control) looking for a size-1 target.
You might want to use space-master mode to build a couple of fleets (you can get designs from the Bureau of Ship Design board) and run a couple of battles to get a feel for how the controls, ranges, etc work.
John
PS - I've taken the liberty of adding some spoiler tags to your post - you're running into some of the surprises that Steve has put in the game that some of the new players might not know about.
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I think the thing you're missing is one of Steve's original goals for Aurora: to have an "epic" game in the sense of capturing the sweep of history of hundreds over years. This means that it takes a looooong time to build up industry.
I get that, and it's neat. The majority of turn based/grand stategy games I play are all about games lasting for decades or hundreds of years, and I have those kind of game saves in some games which I've been playing for years IRL. I like building a legacy :)
I was actually thinking whilst playing that in reality everything would probably be slower by a factor of ten or something. I haven't quite got to terraforming and colonizing yet (just found my first nice earth-like planet inside a binary system), but I expect it will take a good long time for it to take root. That's fine because it's a simulation and a spreadsheet game, so it should be about incremental change over long periods.
I'm kind of pleased that (at the start of the thread where I started reading) Steve is considering changing to the real time + pause button style for Aurora II. To sit back and watch as months, years and decades pass would be grand. Just waiting for the screen to refresh only to hit 30 days again is a bit like hard labour at times.
Oh and the 5 second interupts for invisible alien dogfighting or whatever. . yeah. That's not great. (X-COM all over again - except at least you knew what the problem was).
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Is there a thread about how to make fleets work? And stuff? Yeeeah.
My current issue is that amount of finagling it takes to load fighters into a carrier. I have to put the fighters of the right amount into their own task group. I then have to go to the far right tab, and put them into a new branch, as well as making sure the Carrier is in a different branch. I then "store" the fighter branch, then assign mothership on the carrier. I then tell them all to land. Repeat for each carrier. I'm getting better at it, but I was hoping there was an easier way.
Also. . .
I decided to take my 2 Carriers with 12 Spitfire IIs, along with a couple of armoured cruisers and a couple of destroyers with good sensors. (At least I think they are good. . . ) into Procyon, where two of my survey ships had met their doom to a ship that traveled 43km/s. . . There were also 4 other wrecks from unknown sources. I figured I'd probably lose all of the ships in a ball of fire, but maybe at least I could get a feel for what I would need to make to take on this ship.
I told the fleet to move to the wreck of the Pliny, and started getting really uncomfortable with how little my sensors really were. I had "active on" on all my ships, and inched my way closer in 8 hour increments. I finally got there and CONTACT! A size 24 missile salvo x8! or something like that. But. . . I can't shoot it. I don't know what I am supposed to do with it. It just sits there anyways. I went and investigated a different planet, came back, contact reappeared, again, I put active sensors on it, tried to find a way to shoot it. Can't figure it out.
Err. . . what am I supposed to do? If I can't seem to shoot this apparently stationary target, how am I supposed to shoot the big bad?
I have missile fire controls, I have beam fire controls for the two beam ships. . . I'm just really confused. If I select a planet as the target then I have a "fire missiles at" option. . . ??? ??? ???
Fighter Squadrons:
Open the Fighter Squadron window (F 7)
Hit the "New" button (lower left corner) this will creat a new figher squadron. You can change their name and callsign just by overwriting.
select "Show all race fighters"
Select the newly created figher squadron and double click the fighters you want in there.
Once finished, select "Show current squadron" to check if all the fighters you wanted in that squadron are realy there.
Select the carrier, that you want to be mothership in the dropdown (second line, top left)
Make sure the squadron is still selected and hit assign and then recover.
The squadron is now landed on the carrier (assuming carrier and fighers are at the same place) and in the same TG as the carrier
If you hit "Launch", a new TG containing the squadron will be created.
Note: For "Recover" and "Launch" to work, you have to make sure both, the squadron _and_ their carrier are selected
Re. shooting.
those size-24 missiles are very likely precurser made capture mines . If you can see them via active sensor and are in range of your weapons (AMMs or PD) you can shoot them.
Open the battle window (F8)
Select the ship you want to shoot
Select the firecon on that ship
select the weapon you want to assign to that firecon and hit "Assign" (you can use <SHIFT> + Left Click to select several weapons or "Select All" to assign all of the weapons to that firecon
If weapon is a missile launcher, select the type of missile to use and hit assign (or hit "Assign all" to assign this missile type to all launchers)
Select the target, you want to shoot at (lower left window) and hit "Assign" WITH THE FIRECON STILL SELECTED!
Hit "Open Fire" of "Fleet Open Fire"
Notes:
Once you have assigned weapons and ammo to firecons, you can hit "Copy to TG", "Copy to system" or "Copy to Race" so this assignment is copied to every ship of that class (i.e. you only have to do it once)
Same goes for target assignment. Hit "Copy target to TG" and each ship of that type will target the same enemy.
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How do I set a system off limits to my ships?
I ask because i have my Jump Gate Construction ships set to "Build JG at nearest Jump Point", but I'd prefer if they didn't build into a couple of systems for security reasons.
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i wouldnt' use those orders-- i'm fairly sure those kind of orders are mostly there for the AI.
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How do I set a system off limits to my ships?
I ask because i have my Jump Gate Construction ships set to "Build JG at nearest Jump Point", but I'd prefer if they didn't build into a couple of systems for security reasons.
You should be able to "ban" a system on the F9 system information screen.
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No, only a system body.
Don't use the 'build JG at nearest jump point' conditional orders. Choose where you want your jumpgates built and program them manually with regular fleet orders.
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You should be able to "ban" a system on the F9 system information screen.
Isn't that only for the civies?
John
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Isn't that only for the civies?
John
Good point, I believe that is the intent. And as Father Tim points out it is only for system bodies.
I do seem to recall that once you've set a body as 'banned' there are some odd issues with task group orders. That was why I was thinking that default orders would be effected.
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I've been toning down my exploration these days, and have since gotten used to the Jump Drive system, so I won't be making like the Ancients anymore. Hmmm... I wish there was a "do not send any ships into X system" option. That would prevent me from accidentally destroying a survey fleet because I forgot Gilese 36 has the aliens and Gilese 37 has the potential colonies. I mean, I suppose I COULD rename the systems, but I mean, that would be so much work. :P
How do military commanders apply that Factory Construction bonus? Is there some sort of ship that can operate as a mobile factory or something?
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....
How do military commanders apply that Factory Construction bonus? Is there some sort of ship that can operate as a mobile factory or something?
Jump Gate Construction ships.
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I always rename my systems :) helps a lot, actually, in setting paths. Even if you jsut put the letter A out front of them, that means they'll be at the top of the list, generally.
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I rename all my systems into sectors with names that all start with the same letter; so for example the Home System is surrounded by systems with names starting with 'H', whereas Purgatory System is surrounded by Philodendron, Portsmouth, Peru, Patagonia & Persephone.
Of course, I also never use the 'Real Stars' option, so I avoid the 'twenty-one systems named Gliese and sixteen named Wolf' problem.
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Of course, I also never use the 'Real Stars' option, so I avoid the 'twenty-one systems named Gliese and sixteen named Wolf' problem.
I like the Real Stars option, but use SM mode ON and Pick the Name from a list Checkbox in Task groups / Misc before entering an unexplored system to avoid all those Gleise and Luyten and Wolf etc systems.
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To keep from sending fleets into Hive nests and Precursor Bases, I use the galactic map ALOT, and I mark the systems with NPCs with their national flags.
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Is there any point to constructing mining ships? When I started playing last week my idea was to construct the Nostromo, an absolutely huge mining ship, and send it out into space to haul rocks. Since then I've discovered that the world of Alien is slightly different to Aurora, because such a ship wouldn't be able to actually haul the stuff it mined, and you can't have people go into cryogenic sleep in order to complete their operations.
But I still planned to construct a huge mining ship nonetheless - only now, I've run up to the limitations, namely that in order to build a 440,000 ton ship with 90xmining modules, it would take me 3 years to first expand my space port, but in that same time I can construct enough automated mines, and ship them to a colony, and have them produce more per year than the ship.
So my question is, why do asteroid miners exist in the game? They're nowhere near being cost effective - even if you had a 3m ton monster (which would take 30 years to expand a shipyard to fit), with a captain with 100% mining bonus, it would produce less than the same automated mines you could produce, and so on. If the civvie industries built them, then perhaps due to scale they would actually become favourable and useful.
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Asteroid miners are good for supporting a fleet on the move. A Troop transport with a couple of divisions worth of engineers can be dropped on an asteroid with the minerals needed and the miner goes to work. The engineers make maintenance supplies and your maintenance facility ships all cluster around to support the fleet. You have just made a temporary fleet base to keep the fleet from adding time on the clock while they are deployed at any distance. When the minerals are used up go to the next asteroid and repeat. 1 asteroid mining bay is 1/5 the hull space of moving an auto mine into place and if you need to move quickly it does not take time to load the mine back into the ship.
This is primarily where I use the asteroid miners, maintenance facilities, and why I build lots of engineer brigades.
Brian
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That's a good idea, I haven't got that far with big fleets yet (no battles to speak of).
I have also thought since I posted that maybe it's not a question of either-or with automated mines OR ships? Maybe it's better to have mining ships in orbit AND also produce and ship out automated mines? I still can't think of a way that mining ships can compete, though - unless perhaps having a fleet leader with mining bonus AND a ship captain (+ administrator) with mining bonus could work out better than automated mines + administrator?
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That's a good idea, I haven't got that far with big fleets yet (no battles to speak of).
I have also thought since I posted that maybe it's not a question of either-or with automated mines OR ships? Maybe it's better to have mining ships in orbit AND also produce and ship out automated mines? I still can't think of a way that mining ships can compete, though - unless perhaps having a fleet leader with mining bonus AND a ship captain (+ administrator) with mining bonus could work out better than automated mines + administrator?
The ship commander and the colony administrator are the only two officers that would contribute to the mining speed. They also do not stack with the administrator's bonus not applying to ships in orbit for any purpose. The ship commander's appropriate bonus do add to the ship production values. The three primary items that this applies to are the asteroid miners, sorium harvesters (both for mining value) and terraforming modules (terraforming bonus).
The real reason to use both is flexability. It is much easier to order a ship to go to an asteroid, create a colony there and leave it there. when the asteroid is out of minerals you will get a message (one for each mineral as it gets depleted) and you just order it to go to the next asteroid. This works well with asteroids that have a small amount of ore at a high availability. For big deposits the mines work better.
Hope that helps
Brian
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I don't think it would be feasible to use mining ships for maintenance. I've estimated that the number of mining vessels needed to maintain a certain fleet vastly exceeds the tonnage of the military fleet.
The same applies to sorium harvesters.
It would be far easier to attach a few fuel tankers and one or two freighters full of minerals to the maintenance ships. Sure, you don't get an *unlimited* independent movement out of them, but five years of maintenance ought to serve quite well for any normal operation.
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I use the autoturn thingy to get myself through the AIvsAI fights somewhere off in the unknown reaches of space.
I recently hit 30 days with it, and the game was processing it for 45 minutes before it finally unfroze... and it had gone one day ahead. :'( There was around 15-20 15 second increments in the game events.
Is there any tips for faster "turns"? (Turn off X, etc.)
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Check you don't have any squads doing
'move to x
refuel from x'
on a loop. That one got me the other day. Luckily, C-A-D, and reload, and no data lost - can I say how awesome the game is at retaing game data on crashes, because it really is.
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Check you don't have any squads doing
'move to x
refuel from x'
on a loop. That one got me the other day. Luckily, C-A-D, and reload, and no data lost - can I say how awesome the game is at retaing game data on crashes, because it really is.
I'm doing a Conventional start, I currently have TWO ships finally out... and neither one is doing anything spectacular, one is surveying asteroids, the other jump points. I think the NPR has discovered another race or a Precursor group that is actually staying the fight and not running out of missiles...
EDIT: Oh, one cargo ship doing "Load Infra Earth, Unload Infra Mars" on cycle.
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EDIT: Oh, one cargo ship doing "Load Infra Earth, Unload Infra Mars" on cycle.
And there's your problem. Any cycle that can be completed in less time than the increment advance causes chaos.
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And there's your problem. Any cycle that can be completed in less time than the increment advance causes chaos.
:'( :'( :'(
But... but.... I have 5000 pieces of infrastructure to move? What tricks are there then? Hit "6" increments of 5 days instead of 1 increment of 30? Or does that not matter?
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The real trick is letting the civilian community move them for you ;)
moving infrastructure is for suckers! ;D
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Or:
Order the ship to perform one round trip
There is a little box below the order window where you can put in a number
Type 10 or 20 or however often you want the ship to do the jurney there
hit the "repeat" button
This will repeat all orders above x10 or x20 (whatever you typed in)
After the ship has finished those 10 or 20 or whatever round trips, you get a message in the event log.
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Or:
Order the ship to perform one round trip
There is a little box below the order window where you can put in a number
Type 10 or 20 or however often you want the ship to do the jurney there
hit the "repeat" button
This will repeat all orders above x10 or x20 (whatever you typed in)
After the ship has finished those 10 or 20 or whatever round trips, you get a message in the event log.
If you do this don't forget to put in some fuel stops. I will usually double the original order then double that and insert a refuel order, then add as many repeats of the total set as I think I need.
Brian
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I've had another realisation about asteroid miners. The shipbuilding rate can eventually be improved beyond the factory production rate (in many decades). At that point, building mining ships would be much quicker than building hundreds of automated mines (and you wouldn't need any freighters).
Even before you reach that point, though, is it not correct that since the shipbuilding rate does not scale exponentially with the tonnage of ships (even with vast multi-million ton ships), there will be a point where you can build a ship in a year or two that has a greater mining yield than the same amount of automated mines built in that period?
Someone help me out with the maths here ???
For example, in my game I'm on construction rate 14bp, shipbuilding rate 750bp. I can build a mining ship to yield 448 tons per year (per mineral) in 1. 26yrs - and I could build two of them at the same time. In 1. 26yrs I could convert 170 automated mines, which would yield 3404 tons. So this point, the mines are way better. But sooner or later, with a bigger ship, would it tip the other way? (a ship ten times larger wouldn't take much longer to build, but would yield ~5000 tons)
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While this is basicly correct, you have to keep one thing in mind:
Auto-mines can work on any planetary body (except for gas giants), while asteroid miners only work on asteroids (and comets, I belive)
Generally, I prefere automines, simply for the versatility.
Also, you have to expand the shipyard to the size of your giant mining ship, which will cost you quite some minerals. This means, the ships you build will probably work a few years just to recover the minerals spent to get the ´yard to that size.
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Someone help me out with the maths here ???
For example, in my game I'm on construction rate 14bp, shipbuilding rate 750bp. I can build a mining ship to yield 448 tons per year (per mineral) in 1. 26yrs - and I could build two of them at the same time. In 1. 26yrs I could convert 170 automated mines, which would yield 3404 tons. So this point, the mines are way better. But sooner or later, with a bigger ship, would it tip the other way? (a ship ten times larger wouldn't take much longer to build, but would yield ~5000 tons)
You are correct about the way that large ships get faster to build. If you want to see how this would work just create a design, even if it is to big to build currently and keep doubling the number of asteroid miners on the ship. If you look at the far left column of info there is a box which says how long it will take to build the ship using current technology. If you want to speed it up you can use your industry to prebuild some parts of the ship. I am at work and do not have a copy of the game here, but also check on the mineral cost of the asteroid miner bay vs an auto mine to see which is cheaper. I think it is the asteroid miner which means that if you use your industry to build that then the rest of the ship will take a very short time to assemble as it is going to be the bulk of the ship volume.
Brian
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early in the game, asteroid mining is quite helpful because you don't have the mineral production to keep up with industrial output. just haley's comet will help a lot in the early days. in my current game i built a fairly large number of asteroid miners and plopped them in a neighboring system that would never run out of duranium. Was a huge help. They're now obsolete, but I leave them there to strip mine that asteroid (its the only mineral source in the system)
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If you want to speed it up you can use your industry to prebuild some parts of the ship.
What's the process I would use to do this? I think I prebuilt some pieces before but I'm not sure they got used. The only trouble is that it would take up valuable factory production time which I could be building mines or terraformers with. My shipyards are mostly lying dormant or expanding.
Also, I had another thought, if I add extra slipways to my biggest yard, I could build increasing numbers of mining ships at the same time. Although apparently it will take 2 years to add another slipway at this point (does this increase the larger they get?), my shipyard is rated for 164,000 tons.
Also, you have to expand the shipyard to the size of your giant mining ship, which will cost you quite some minerals. This means, the ships you build will probably work a few years just to recover the minerals spent to get the ´yard to that size.
Yeah! It's definitely a factor. It will take about 30 years to expand to the smaller mining ship design, and it will cost 100,000s of minerals to build. ;D
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What's the process I would use to do this? I think I prebuilt some pieces before but I'm not sure they got used.
At the instant you click to add the build task to your shipyard (with the use prebuilt components tickbox checked), Aurora checks for components in your stockpile, and reduces the build time/cost accordingly for what's available. Once ship construction has started, it's irrelevant what new components get added - they won't be used on any existing jobs.
Although apparently it will take 2 years to add another slipway at this point (does this increase the larger they get?)
Yes, it depends on the size of the slipway to be built.
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I guess I might as well use this thread instead of creating a new one, so; a few questions:
-How do I create a player race so I can create a fleet for him to practice fighting? I don't seem to be able to give any fleets to NPR's or precursors during SM mode.
-Why do people use spoiler tags? You have to select whether you want the three spoilers so how could you possibly not know about them? At least people don't give them candy and clown names here...
-If you want to use AMM's, you need one fire control per salvo. Is this correct?
-If I use a conventional start, will my NPR's have a technological lead on me?
-What are Lagrange points?
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In order of your questions.
To create a player race you need to be in SM mode. Go to the system detail screen (F9) and in the bottom right there is a set of commands to use. If you want them in a system you have already explored go to that system, click on the planet you want them on and then click on create empire. On the screen that comes up in the upper left area there is a check box for making the race an NPR or a Player race. If you set it to player race you will be able to control it. You will need to switch back and forth between the two races so keep that in mind.
2.) You need 1 fire control per x launchers. I usually go with 1 for 5 launchers. Each time tick the fire control can fire on a new target without changing the targeting of previous salvo's. If that fire control is destroyed then all salvo's that are still in flight lose their lock-on. If the missiles have their own sensors they will keep flying but otherwise they self-destruct.
3.) When you use a conventional start the NPR that is created will have a normal start set of reasearch points. In effect they will start exploring and growing imediatley so they do have a bit of a tech lead. You will probably catch back up after a while however as most players invest far more heavily into reasearch than the npr's do.
4.) Lagrange points are associated with gas giants. They are form of insystem jump point. From any lagrange point (lp) you can jump to any other lp in the same system without needing a jump engine. You also do not suffer from the jump effect on your sensors/fire control. It is a method to get from 1 star to another usually in multi star systems.
Brian
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and to answer the Spoiler question...peole are not hiding the EXISTENCE of the three "special" NPRs but their behavior. It goes back to when Steve introduced the Invaders as he specifically kept their behavior & capabilities a secret to allow gamers to discover them on their own. The Precursors & Swarm predated them and their habits & weapons etc were discussed to a greater or lesser extent before they actually were avaliable to the rest of us (this was in the old forum so I think most of the posts from then are long gone), but the practise grew to cover them as well.
Its more a courtesy thing - If you want to discover the stuff for yourself just dont move the mouse over the spoilered text - If you cant wait for Christmas then go ahead and look.
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Ok, thanks for the replies.
I have now created a player race on Titan (copied DB ofc) and I gave it some of the predesigned warships, although they kinda out-tech me.
How do change them to an NPR? I hope that is possible.
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Ok, thanks for the replies.
I have now created a player race on Titan (copied DB ofc) and I gave it some of the predesigned warships, although they kinda out-tech me.
How do change them to an NPR? I hope that is possible.
Once created as a player raced they will stay a player race. What I usually do is to make a copy of the database, create the race for testing a specific idea, give the race the tech I want it to have and design the ships. Then I create a fleet using the instant oob (SM menu) for both races try out the different designs and when I am done I reinstall the saved game. This to me is the equivilant of playing wargames to see how a new design ship will work before you finalize the design in the real world.
Brian
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Ok, as there doesn't seem to be a way to give an NPR tech or a fleet. I'll just test my own fleet versus my own fleet :).
EDIT: Combat seems to be working for my ships. Although my designs seems to be very defensive orientated. I have one question though: How do I make the map not move to when I advance in time? I keeps jumping to some other place and I want to watch my missiles...
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Ok, as there doesn't seem to be a way to give an NPR tech or a fleet. I'll just test my own fleet versus my own fleet :).
EDIT: Combat seems to be working for my ships. Although my designs seems to be very defensive orientated. I have one question though: How do I make the map not move to when I advance in time? I keeps jumping to some other place and I want to watch my missiles...
I suspect that the map is not moving (ie its centered on the same co-ordinates) but that everything else is. Unless you select "no orbital motion" options, the only immobile items in a system are likely to be the primary star & the jump points. I just zoom out to run intervals & zoom in to see the action. If you zoom out & then run automatic intervals you can watch you missiles crawl accross the screen (until something happens) You can left clisk to center on a particular thing of interest, but when you run an interval the focus will remain on the old position of the TG or whatever, not wherever it moved to during the inteval
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I suspect that the map is not moving (ie its centered on the same co-ordinates) but that everything else is. Unless you select "no orbital motion" options, the only immobile items in a system are likely to be the primary star & the jump points. I just zoom out to run intervals & zoom in to see the action. If you zoom out & then run automatic intervals you can watch you missiles crawl accross the screen (until something happens) You can left clisk to center on a particular thing of interest, but when you run an interval the focus will remain on the old position of the TG or whatever, not wherever it moved to during the inteval
Beyond a certain zoom level, it centers on the primary.
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Another question: My seconds generation missile/escort cruisers need PD defense, so:
-Do I need beam fire control for gauss canons?
-Is it useful to give the cruisers some PD or is it better to get a dedicated PD ship?
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I'm pretty sure yes, gauss needs it.
I do both. I put a little PD on the cruisers themselves... and then have dedicated PD boats. Mostly for roleplaying purposes.
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Another question: My seconds generation missile/escort cruisers need PD defense, so:
-Do I need beam fire control for gauss canons?
-Is it useful to give the cruisers some PD or is it better to get a dedicated PD ship?
The only weapon system that does not need fire control is CIWS as it is built into the system.
A couple CIWS on each ship is usually a good idea.
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The only weapon system that does not need fire control is CIWS as it is built into the system.
A couple CIWS on each ship is usually a good idea.
The drawback to doing this is that the ciws system only protects the mounting ship. If you have any size fleet then the total point defense of even single gauss turrets and fire control will be higher. Effectivly each ciws is equal to a single gauss turret. With two ciws systems you will take up about as much space as a single turret with fire control would take up. So if you have 4 ships you have the equivilant of 4 ciws systems total, but they all protect all of the ships. Compare that with having two ciws per ship. If you have more ships then the total goes up and more missiles will be shot down. I usually only put ciws on civilian designs that may see combat (troop transports ect) and high priority targets like the big sensor ships that are often the first target or the largest class of warships that I build. Those are the ships that are going to tend to be shot at anyway so not having the extra turrets for general fleet defense doesn't meen as much when they are the target anyway.
Brian
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Also, a commercial ship with a CIWS mounted on it does not become a military ship.