Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Rawb on November 03, 2011, 03:56:13 PM
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Ok so I've never even been to another system yet after nearly a week of casual playing but anyway here goes.
If I don't build any jump gates, can other races still discover me? I. E can they build jump gates from their system to mine?
How easy is it to shut down unwanted jump gates in your system?
Is it a good idea to place ships with Plasma Carronade and powerful lasers lurking outside of a jump gate in case of hostile intrusion or would that be better handled by PDCs from a distance away?
And a final question
I'm really unsure what kind of missile is a good missile, do I need to focus on warhead strength or agility or what? What's the advised maximum size for launchers and missiles?
Thank you :).
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Ok so I've never even been to another system yet after nearly a week of casual playing but anyway here goes.
If I don't build any jump gates, can other races still discover me? I. E can they build jump gates from their system to mine?
They can discover you either by building a jump gate on their side of the jump point and entering your system or by sending a jumpship through the jump point, alone or with a group of ships. The latter case is more likely, building a jump gate is reasonably time-intensive task, and more importantly can be used by an enemy to travel back to you, so jump gates usually aren't constructed willy-nilly.
How easy is it to shut down unwanted jump gates in your system?
Impossible, they cannot be destroyed. Think of them as being stabilized wormholes instead of structures, or perhaps as structures that don't exist in our three spatial dimensions, so can't be affected by our weapons.
Is it a good idea to place ships with Plasma Carronade and powerful lasers lurking outside of a jump gate in case of hostile intrusion or would that be better handled by PDCs from a distance away?
Either scenario is a reasonable defense setup, although PDCs will only work if you have turned orbits off on Asteroids, otherwise you won't have any stationary bodies that will keep your PDCs in place.
Because of the sheer number of jump gates you are probably going to come across, and the tedium of either replacing mines or maintaining and resupplying defensive fleets, it may be a better idea to only thoroughly guard jump points when you know that there is danger on the other side. Otherwise you may be better off just putting a bunch of observatories on a body in the system so that you know if any aliens are coming and going, so that you can respond with the fleets based on your colonies.
And a final question
I'm really sure what kind of missile is a good missile, do I need to focus on warhead strength or agility or what? What's the advised maximum size for launchers and missiles?
Thank you :).
There are lots and lots of threads on missile design here, as its one of the main gameplay elements. In short I would say that every facet of the missile design is important, so there are no easy answers. However in almost all cases missiles designed to destroy other missiles are designed to be size 1, with a strength 1 warhead. Missiles designed to take out ships almost always have a damage level equal to a square of an integer (4, 9, 16, etc) as that is when the bowling pin-esque missile damage template reaches another level of armor penetration.
I favor anti-ship missiles at around size 3-4, in order to get a rapid launch capability and hopefully overwhelm missile defenses. I believe that most people on the boards favor larger missiles though, around size 6 or 7.
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Wow, that was great help, thanks very much :)
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No problem, it's a pretty crazy game, everyone needs help with it from time to time.
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There are lots and lots of threads on missile design here...
... such as this one:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4215.0.html
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Do keep in mind that the enemy won't bother building jump gates to your system. They'll just build jump drives on their warships and come at you. Gates allow any ship to pass through, but drives allow any ship with the drive and/or the drive's squadron to pass through. Wiki "interstellar travel" for more precise info.
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Do keep in mind that the enemy won't bother building jump gates to your system. They'll just build jump drives on their warships and come at you. Gates allow any ship to pass through, but drives allow any ship with the drive and/or the drive's squadron to pass through. Wiki "interstellar travel" for more precise info.
I think they do build jump gates. In Steve's latest campaign, one of the races he met was building jump gates all willy-nilly.
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They do build gates, but they will also come at you with drives. Don't think "there's no gate, so I'm safe".
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A lot depends on what settings you use at game creation. At least where your home system and initial exploration is concerned. If you did not enable AI NPR's and/or Invaders you have nothing to worry about before you explore your first jump point, there won't be anyone out there to find your home system.
Once you start exploring then it becomes conditional on the NPR % you set during game creation. The higher the percentage the higher the chance of triggering an NPR when you explore each jump point.
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Ok so basically even though I choose not to explore I can still be found, got it.
I still don't understand missiles at all even after reading that guide. It says allocate remaining MSP but I seem to have unlimited points to spend. . . I don't get what that's all about. I don't know what is or isn't good strengths and ranges while still keeping the missiles within the 6-7 size range.
Thanks for all your help Aurora Community ;D.
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Missiles are like ships, they can be as big or small as you can functionally achieve. The missile size is directly tied to the launcher size, so if you've got 10 HS allocated for missile tubes, then you can fit a size 10 launcher or two size 5's. And by extension, these tubes can fire missiles that are size 10 or size 5. You can easily make a missile bigger than a ship, because (I believe) a missile size is 1/20th a ship's size. So a 20 MSP missile is 1 HS. A 200 MSP missile would be larger than the average fighter, but good luck mounting a launcher that can actually fire it.
In practice, your missile size is only determined by your launcher size, and by extension this tends to rely on your armor, engine, and warp tech, as higher warp/engine power allows for bigger ships and bigger launchers. Most people agree that size 5 is a good starting point for anti-ship missiles and anti-missile missiles should be size 1.
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In practice, your missile size is only determined by your launcher size
And magazine size, you not only need to launch the missile, but have enough reloads ready to continue the combat operation. As far as how many reloads that should be, well it depends on how many salvos it takes to destroy your enemy, and you don't know how much that is :).
Generally I think that 5-6 salvos is the absolute minimum, unless you are confident that your speed is high enough that you will be able to safely disengage if that doesn't do the job. (And you should have an Ammo collier in the area, so you don't have to go all the way back to a colony after the first firefight).
For AMMs you're better off with more missile salvos, because it may take multiple AMM salvos to fully take out one enemy missile salvo. Also the stakes are higher, if you run out of Anti-Ship missiles you are in trouble, but you can attempt to flee, or close the distance to try to attack with other missiles, and your AMM defense will probably let you live long enough to do one of those two things as long as you aren't completely outclassed. On the other hand if you run out of AMMs mid-fight you may not live long enough to change the range on your opponent, either to close or flee.
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I keep forgetting magazine needs because all of my significant warships are built for campaigns, not battles, so a single ship might carry 50 salvo's worth. Understandably, jump engines are one of the first things I sink research into, as these big ships are difficult to move :P
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I still don't understand missiles at all even after reading that guide. It says allocate remaining MSP but I seem to have unlimited points to spend. . . I don't get what that's all about. I don't know what is or isn't good strengths and ranges while still keeping the missiles within the 6-7 size range.
You seem to have unlimited points to spend, because you can make the missiles any size you like.
With missiles, bigger isn't always better, though... it isn't even usually better. Bigger missiles can pack a bigger explosive punch and carry more fuel... but they are easier to spot on RADAR and are usually slower and less agile, which reduces their chance to penetrate the opponent's Point Defense and actually hit anything. A small missile that evades the enemy defenses and hits the target is obviously more effective than a large missile that gets shot down or misses the target. Larger missile tubes also reload and fire more slowly, and larger missiles take up more room in your ship's magazines, so you can't carry as many of them.
I use size-1 missiles for anti-missile Point Defense, and size-4 or size-6 missiles for ship-killers. Anything larger than size-6 is easier to spot, and cycles too slowly for my tastes.
Post your four current missile stats... these ones, marked in red:
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/A_Missile.jpg)
... and I'll show you how to design decent missiles at that tech level. Bear in mind that in the early game, your techs are probably too low to design a really GOOD missile.
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The stats I have are:
Warhead Strength: 5
Engine Power: 3
Agility: 64
Efficiency: 0. 8
Also is this anywhere near decent for my first ever warship outside of the tutorial one?
Volga - Copy class Cruiser 7,400 tons 568 Crew 1378. 6 BP TCS 148 TH 112 EM 240
2162 km/s Armour 8-33 Shields 8-400 Sensors 12/12/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 28. 54
Maint Life 3. 08 Years MSP 466 AFR 109% IFR 1. 5% 1YR 74 5YR 1104 Max Repair 105 MSP
Magneto-plasma Drive E8 (4) Power 80 Fuel Use 80% Signature 28 Armour 0 Exp 5% Hyper Capable
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres Range 60. 8 billion km (325 days at full power)
Gamma R400/16 Shields (4) Total Fuel Cost 64 Litres per day
15cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser (2) Range 192,000km TS: 3000 km/s Power 6-6 RM 4 ROF 5 6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
Twin 10cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2) Range 120,000km TS: 15000 km/s Power 6-12 RM 4 ROF 5 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 3000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (eight) Total Power Output 24 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR12-R100 (1) GPS 2000 Range 12. 0m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 1 Range 50k km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Again, I really appreciate all of the help you guys give me :).
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It is rather slow for a beam ship. Beam ships need to be able to close quickly/be able to close at all with their opponents if the opponent is running from them. I'd usually dedicate at least 25% of the size of the ship to engines.
Armour and shields look good for your level of tech. Same with maintainance.
Firecontrols are ok although I'd pesonally go with size 8 firecontrols so a 4x range, 2x speed and a 2x range, 4x speed.
Don't bother with the thermal and em sensors if this ship is going to be operating as part of a group, have a dedicated sensor ship carry them.
At least double the size of your resolution 1 sensor preferably qadruple it, at the moment you will not pick up fighters/FAC's/small ships until they are well within your anti-ship beam range. You also have a better chance to hit fast missiles the longer that they have been tracked. Of course, you can get away with sensors like these if they are just a backup to the sensors of your dedicated sensor ship.
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The stats I have are:
Warhead Strength: 5
Engine Power: 3
Agility: 64
Efficiency: 0.8
OK, I've set up a dummy game with those techs, and I can walk you through the process of creating a size-1 AMM (anti-missile missile) and a size-6 ASM (anti-ship missile). You may prefer a smaller size for your ASM... many players like to use size-4 instead of size-6, since it reloads faster and takes up less magazine space... but the same method can be used to create effective missiles of any size.
Size-1 AMM
First, set your Warhead Strength MSP to whatever value it takes to get a strength-1 bang. At your current tech level, that's 0.2 MSP = strength-1.
Next, set the Agility MSP to zero temporarily, while we adjust the other stats. We will be returning to set the Agility later, but start it off at zero.
Set the Fuel MSP to whatever it takes to give you the desired range. Early in the game, your PD (Point Defense, res-1) Active Sensors won't be able to spot incoming enemy missiles beyond a million or so kilometers anyway, so twice that figure (about 2 m-km) should be plenty of range for an early-game AMM.
Remember that Fuel/Range figures can be misleading if you haven't yet ballasted your missile up to its final weight... if you've only typed in numbers that total 0.5 instead of totalling 1.0, then your range figure will be misleadingly high. Always ballast your missile up to its design weight before making any major decisions.
Now put all of the remaining points (to bring your missile up to a total weight of 1.0000) into Engine. Check the Fuel/Range again, and make any needed adjustments. It should look something like this, at this point in the process:
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/missile1.jpg)
Notice that the missile mass totals 1.0000 and that the to-Hit vs 10,000 kps targets is only 47.4%. Not very good, since nearly all missiles will be moving faster than that.
Now we transfer some of the points from Engine to Agility, to improve that to-Hit percentage. Recall the formula that I posted in my Kiwi/Emu Missile Design thread:
These MSP should first be distributed as follows:
If S = the missile size,
and M = your current missile agility per MSP (depends on tech),
and T = the total MSP available for Engines plus Agility,
Then E = (T/2)+(5xS/M) is the amount of MSP that should be used for Engines
and A = (T/2)-(5xS/M) is the remaining MSP that should be used for Agility.
These numbers should then be adjusted up or down so that your actual missile agility is a whole number... ideally, a whole number that is an even multiple of your missile size.
Since we've temporarily zeroed-out the Agility, the number in the Engine box is our T variable for that equation. S is the missile size 1, M is your Agility tech, 64.
So E = (T/2)+(5xS/M) = 0.79/2 + (5x1)/64 = 0.4731 (rounded to four decimal places, which is all the game uses)
Put that number in the engine box, and put all the rest of your points... enough to bring the missile mass back up to 1.0000... into Agility. Now your missile design looks like this:
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/missile2.jpg)
Your to-Hit has improved from 47.4% to 85.2%! We're not quite done yet, though. Notice that your Agility MSP (0.3169) gives you an Agility value of 20.2816... this number really should be an Integer multiple of your missile size... with a size-1 missile, any Integer will do. So we slightly adjust the Agility MSP to drop the Agility Value down to the nearest whole number, 20:
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/missile3.jpg)
... and that slightly improves our to-Hit once more, to 85.8. NOW we're done. Name it, save it, research it and build it.
For your size-6 ASM, the same steps apply. I've chosen a strength-4 warhead (it should usually be a perfect square such as 1, 4, 9, 16 etc, for best armor penetration), and a range of 60 m-km.
The process is exactly the same... first set the warhead, then set Agility to zero, then set the fuel and ballast the missile up to its design weight (6.0000), then work out the formula and transfer some points from Engine to Agility, lastly reduce the Agility to a whole-number multiple of the missile size, by moving a few fractions of a point back into Engine.
Screen-shots:
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/missileII1.jpg)
(http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/blueemu/missileII2.jpg)
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You really should get this put into the tutorials, it's an excellent explanation.
--Mav
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You really should get this put into the tutorials, it's an excellent explanation.
--Mav
Agreed. these sorts of annotated screenshots are EXACTLY the sort of thing that helps bring the eyes to one box or another-- until you get a feel for the interface, aurora is just a series of boxes with numbers in them.
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I have a semi-related question. Are the NPR's usually very aggressive? Upon contact, are they more likely to blow you into space debris, or try to say hi?
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Depends heavily on the particular NPR. Some will be perfectly happy waving hello and signing a trade agreement, others will declare you a blight on the galaxy.
One thing to keep in mind if you're looking to have cordial relations is that NPRs regard being lit up by active sensors an aggressive act (although I think this changes if you achieve allied status). So if you spend a month sitting next to one of their ships with your actives on, don't be surprised if they shoot you.
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Blue Emu, that post was ridiculously helpful. I reckon it should be a tutorial sticky. Thank you so much I actually understand it all now :)
Metalax, So basically, remove the Thermal and EM, quadruple sensor size, Mess about with the FC and get more engines. What speed do you recommend?
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Blue Emu, that post was ridiculously helpful. I reckon it should be a tutorial sticky. Thank you so much I actually understand it all now :)
Metalax, So basically, remove the Thermal and EM, quadruple sensor size, Mess about with the FC and get more engines. What speed do you recommend?
I would aim for 4000 to 6000 km/s. You also may want to consider scrapping the shields entirely, as in the early game they really aren't able to compete with armor. That said you are starting to get into the area where they start to be reasonable, depending on your enemy, and of course you may want them from a RP standpoint, which is always the most important consideration.
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Blue Emu, that post was ridiculously helpful. I reckon it should be a tutorial sticky. Thank you so much I actually understand it all now :)
Glad to help. Just post (or PM me) if you need another walk-through on a different topic.
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4000-6000 would be a good speed, yes. I tend to not aim for a particular speed and instead aim for a certain percentage of the ship tonnage to be dedicated to engines. Usually 25% on most ships, 50% on fast beam ships and 75% on very fast/boarding ships. This does result in needing to use fairly big ships to get sufficient mission space for weapons on the faster designs.
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Back to jump points and combat.
How long are ships sensor-blind for, and where can I find this information in-game?
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In my experience, several minutes. Shorter if you Squadron Jump, longer if your Task Force Training is low. Not sure where you would find actual numbers.
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The actual formula is posted in the Mechanics section I think. It's something like 10-30 seconds for a squadron transit, and 30 seconds-2 minutes for a standard transit.
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The psuedo code is as follows:
Bonus = 1 - (Int(Sqr(GradePoints) - 10) / 100)
If Squadron Transit then
Delay = (10 + Random Number(20)) * Bonus
Else
Delay = (120 + Random Number(60)) * Bonus
EndWhich means that a squadron transit will cause blindness for 11-30 seconds and a regular or jump gate transit will cause blindness for 121-180 seconds. This affects both fire control and active sensors. The delay is reduced by the grade bonus of each ship.
Steve
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I made a new game where all the jump points are already found but not yet explored
How do I explore them? I tried sending in survey ships of both kinds but there wasn't an option
I sent a jump destroyer there to see if I could jump but I couldn't...
How do I make this work?
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You need to give the 'standard transit' order to the jump destroyer, on the jump point.
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Thanks, got it
--Woah, attacked by some aliens.
They're close, too close... :s
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Exact same thing happened to me Zazu. Check if they're star swarm or not, I wasted a lot of time trying to be friendly with them until I found it was them :-[.