Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Victuz on September 19, 2012, 04:31:44 AM
-
Ok so first things first, literally found Aurora a day ago. Got enthralled as soon as I heard about it and I love the way it works.
Specifically the fact that you don't meet the aliens outright which always bugged me in 4x games because it completely killed the feeling of being alone in a massive empty vacuum, with the way the game seems to be designed you meet aliens as you establish dominance in your region and that for me is fantastic.
But onto the actual questions.
First things first, the coma issue. I understand the basic issue so I'm just asking for clarification in terms of fixing it. I'm Polish and I use Polish version of windows XP, do I just have to change the registry parameter for language from polish to english to fix it? Even if so should I reinstall the game afterwards?
EDIT: Oh completely forgot, I'll probably have to install service pack 3 in English for that to work completely right? Otherwise the system will "think" it's in English but it will still be in Polish with the wrong comas and all.
Now to the actual gameplay questions.
Terraformer ships, how do I use them? should I just send them to a planet I want terraformed (say mars) change the proper attributes through economy->environment/gmc and wait? I thought I'll have to give the terraformer a specific order through the fleet screen. I figured most of the stuff out using the wiki and through the general magic of "guessing and clicking randomly"
Making ammo/rockets/etc - It seems very convoluted. At first I thought I have it figured out and than I noticed there is a whole different tab (that I missed) used to create different series of missiles and turrets. How do I manage that? And do rail guns need their ammo produced (I have not seen an option for that) or do they just magically pop it into existence? I have not even gotten around to laser weaponry but it also seems. . . complex.
Mass drivers
I've seen the genocide entry in the wiki and I just have to ask, can I weaponize that against someone other than me?
On a side note since I installed the game my scrollbars (like the ones you get when you right click) turned into the classic windows style, despite the fact that I'm using the xp look for everything else. I did not overwrite any of the win32 files (as far as I know anyway) so I'm not entirely sure what is causing that.
Hope for a quick answer! I'm really anxious to dig into this game, but since I'm getting the coma problem almost constantly I need to fix it first.
-
Now to the actual gameplay questions.
Terraformer ships, how do I use them? should I just send them to a planet I want terraformed (say mars) change the proper attributes through economy->environment/gmc and wait? I thought I'll have to give the terraformer a specific order through the fleet screen. I figured most of the stuff out using the wiki and through the general magic of "guessing and clicking randomly"
Yes, just park them in orbit. Transforming orders are given through the environment screen as you say.
Making ammo/rockets/etc - It seems very convoluted. At first I thought I have it figured out and than I noticed there is a whole different tab (that I missed) used to create different series of missiles and turrets. How do I manage that? And do rail guns need their ammo produced (I have not seen an option for that) or do they just magically pop it into existence? I have not even gotten around to laser weaponry but it also seems. . . complex.
You first have to research the technologies to out into the missile (R&D screen on population interface), then you have to create a missile "blueprint" i.e. an application of the technology into a workable product (confusingly through the "missile" window that is accessible from the population interface). Then you have to "research" this blueprint (back on the R&D screen). When all that is done you can build missiles through the production tab on the population window.
Any weapon other than missiles does not require ammo, though most require a power plant. I.e. its assumed that the railgun pallets themselves are so small that you can practically store more than you are likely to need anyway.
Mass drivers
I've seen the genocide entry in the wiki and I just have to ask, can I weaponize that against someone other than me?
AFAIK: No.
-
Any weapon other than missiles does not require ammo, though most require a power plant. I. e. its assumed that the railgun pallets themselves are so small that you can practically store more than you are likely to need anyway.
Ah thank you, that's actually what I thought at first but than I noticed that I can design "magazines" that have different reload times and everything and I got very very confused.
It would be great if the game had some sort of built in encyclopedia (or hell maybe even more expanded glossary of terms as the one in class design) that would explain differences between the parts. Because without searching online I have no idea what some of that stuff actually does.
I guess another way of doing things and actually learning more in the process would be starting a game with the "conventional empire" setting so I actually have to learn what things I need and what they do as I research them instead of getting a lot of already done research dumped on my head.
Actually all that made me thing of another thing that's been bugging me. How do I use the commanders? I couldn't figure out how to make them take command of ships in any way, at first I thought they need a flag bridge but that didn't change anything.
EDIT: OK at this point I have to mention that I have in fact changed the registry entry for windows xp so that it's now in English, furthermore I installed English version of the service pack 3 for XP. I still get error 3075 followed by error 91. changed keyboard layout to English (US), but still no effect. Can anyone please help me on that matter? I can't actually play the game this way.
-
With some quick googling since I don't have access to a Windows XP system any longer:
In Windows XP you go to
Start/Control Panel/Date, Time, Language and Regional Options/Regional and Language Options
There click the CUSTOMIZE tab and select the decimal point as the Decimal Symbol.
-
Thank you. I derped out on this horribly and had no idea I can do it like that >_<.
It works fine now :)
-
Ah thank you, that's actually what I thought at first but than I noticed that I can design "magazines" that have different reload times and everything and I got very very confused.
You might be confusing two things here:
There are missile launchers, which are basically tubes out of which missiles are fired. These have a given size (design parameter) (so that a missile of certain size can be launched from these) and a reload mechanism (tech line), which stuffs a new missile into the tube, once the old one has been launched. So these have reload times. Better tech means you can reload a tube faster.
And then there are magazines, which are used to store missiles (ond nothing else) that are not currently in a launcher. These do not have reload times, but there are two tech-lines which determine how efficiently missiles can be stored in these and how likely the magazine is to explode when hit respectively.
It would be great if the game had some sort of built in encyclopedia (or hell maybe even more expanded glossary of terms as the one in class design) that would explain differences between the parts. Because without searching online I have no idea what some of that stuff actually does.
I guess another way of doing things and actually learning more in the process would be starting a game with the "conventional empire" setting so I actually have to learn what things I need and what they do as I research them instead of getting a lot of already done research dumped on my head.
While a conventional start is certainly more intriguing in the sense that you get to build things from scratch, it is also more challenging as NPRs would still start with a lot of techs. For a beginner that disadvantage could seriously hamper things…
Don’t worry though; the feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the myriads of different possibilities is one of the most enjoyable aspects of Aurora. Have a ball while it lasts.
Actually all that made me thing of another thing that's been bugging me. How do I use the commanders? I couldn't figure out how to make them take command of ships in any way, at first I thought they need a flag bridge but that didn't change anything.
Go to the “leader” page (the Commander Ryker symbol). Click on the lowest rank and then on any officer on the left side (or search one with desirable boni from the menu on the right). Then select a ship in the middle part of the screen, and hit “assign”. You might have to change the minimum rank requirements for some of your ship classes (on one of the tabs of the ship-design screen)
-
Actually all that made me thing of another thing that's been bugging me. How do I use the commanders? I couldn't figure out how to make them take command of ships in any way, at first I thought they need a flag bridge but that didn't change anything.
Open the Commander page (F4)
Select the rank of commander, you want to assign (upper left)
Select the comander you want to assign (lower left)
Select the ship you want the commander assigned to (center left, bottom half) here you also select the type of job, the commander should get (military ship, commercial ship, staff,...)
Hit the "Assign" button --- THIS IS IMPORTANT --- your selection will not stick if you do not do this.
You can use the "Search by Ability or Location" drop down on the lower right to sort your commanders to your liking. You can also select the commander you want to assign in the list there (makes getting that 200 Crew Training Rating guy to your flagship a whole lot easier)
-
Thank you all for the answers, I now understand (mostly) how to do things and actually started playing a game with the conventional empire start, I have to say that it's vastly more enjoyable for me to start from scratch. I'm actually kind of proud of those conventional engine geo scanners floating around sol that I built myself (prior to that I didn't actually know how to use the shipyard I only popped ships into existance using ). I do realize that playing like this might mean that when I finally encounter an alien he will probably blast me into oblivion but hey, loosing is fun too.
. . .
Ok one last question (promise), I made two teams of surveyors and simply transported them to the geo scanning ships. Does that mean they give them the bonus or is there some button that I should have pressed and missed? I'm asking because when I look at the guys in the team through the leaders tab it only says that they are in that team and that they're located on the specific ships.
-
Ok one last question (promise), I made two teams of surveyors and simply transported them to the geo scanning ships. Does that mean they give them the bonus or is there some button that I should have pressed and missed? I'm asking because when I look at the guys in the team through the leaders tab it only says that they are in that team and that they're located on the specific ships.
No need to stop asking...
Orbital survey and survey teams have nothing to do with each other, except that a team can only get to work after the survey ships have done their work. By the way, it helps if your survey ships have captains with a survey bonus, but it's not required, it only speeds things up. Auto-assignment for officers works well.
To get a survey team to work on a planet, just select the planet in the economy window and then create a team. They will be "teleported" to the planet automatically. You don't have to manually ship them there.
-
No need to stop asking. . .
Well than ;).
Does that mean that survey teams work directly on planets? And does it also mean that an orbital survey can actually miss things? In my game Mars doesn't have any minerals on it (quite a bummer. . . ) but if I colonized it anyway the survey team could possibly find something
And while on the matter. I got better engines and would like my ships to start using them, I made new designs that fit the bigger shipyards and use new engines. However I'm not sure if I can actually retrofit ships or only build new ones and scrap the old ones.
-
Does that mean that survey teams work directly on planets?
Yes.
And does it also mean that an orbital survey can actually miss things? In my game Mars doesn't have any minerals on it (quite a bummer. . . ) but if I colonized it anyway the survey team could possibly find something
Yes. But it's unlikely that they'll find enough to turn the planet into an El Dorado.
And while on the matter. I got better engines and would like my ships to start using them, I made new designs that fit the bigger shipyards and use new engines. However I'm not sure if I can actually retrofit ships or only build new ones and scrap the old ones.
The shipyard has to be retooled for the new class, then you can refit ships. On the DAC/Rank/Info tab you can see how much a refit from an existing class would cost. The price tag can be higher than for a new ship, so beware.
-
Yes. But it's unlikely that they'll find enough to turn the planet into an El Dorado.
That's quite the understatement I'm afraid. Did the survey (didn't find a way to automagically transfer the whole team to the planet so I just moved them via ship) and found 1100 units of uridium with 0. 6 accessibility. Oh well at least now I know that I can do this.
Is there any point in colonizing a planet that doesn't have it's own mineral base? Any other than hoping that after terraforming and sending fleets of freighters in their direction they'll turn into productive planets that are just very dependent on constant supply that is.
When I think about it it seems safer to establish these kinds of outposts in my home system where they'll probably be quite far from the danger of combat in some other sector even if that means they have to still be supplied from asteroids in the system and freighters from a different one.
But hey Venus has over 30 million units of pretty much everything (with acc 0. 1) so I can always tap that.
-
(didn't find a way to automagically transfer the whole team to the planet so I just moved them via ship)
Disband the team and re-create it on the planet where you want them to work.
Is there any point in colonizing a planet that doesn't have it's own mineral base?
If you can get minerals somewhere else in the system, that's OK in my book. Mass drivers are cheap. But consider that automines cost 50%(?) more than normal mines.
But hey Venus has over 30 million units of pretty much everything (with acc 0. 1) so I can always tap that.
If you build ten times as many automines as you would for Acc 1.0, yes. Unfortunately you'd probably run out of corundium long before Venus produces meaningful amounts of anything.
-
Is there any point in colonizing a planet that doesn't have it's own mineral base?
Yes, for several reasons.
First is that sometimes the colonizable planet may not have minerals itself, but other bodies in the system have a good availability of minerals you want. So you plop a colony down on the planet and use mass drivers to direct the output from all mining operations in the system to that planet for use and/or transport elsewhere in the empire.
Second case is when you want a forward outpost for your military or as a staging point for exploration. Make a colony with some rudimentary defenses, a few maintenance facilities with a population base to run them, and ship in munitions and fuel and minerals and any other goodies you need to keep your local fleet running. Currently you could do this without a population by using ship-based maintenance facilities, but in the upcoming version you'll need a population for morale purposes I think (shore leave).
The last and most important reason though, is that populations give you cash! And who doesn't like money?
-
The classic empire start is hard O_o.
I mean I established some basic tech, working on gravity scanners right now but only now I realise how easy it is to simply hit a wall in terms of resources, I'm running out of Duranium (in fifteen years my homeworld will run out) and the income I get from asteroid miners alone is pathetic.
I'm wondering if it might be more valid if I stopped expansion for a longer while (a period of few years maybe) changed like 70% of my homeworld mines into automated ones, while i'm doing that building 3-4 freighters with with 5x Cargo Holds (but that would require adding another 10k slipway capacity onto the civilian shipyards) and than transporting all that either to the asteroid near earth or a comet that has more resources but is much further away.
I'm not entirely sure if that would be valid at all. maybe I should just construct a load of asteroid miners with 5 asteroid mining components each instead?
Also while I was toying around with construction I noticed that I can create separate parts for ships (engines, survey components etc), does this effect anything else other than the possible speed of construction? It seems pretty obvious that having 30 premade engines to strap onto ships would accelerate the process of construction (not to mention the output of planetary industry seems much bigger than that of a single shipyard) but does it actually affect the cost in any way?
And the last two questions:
1). Since I moved my first mass driver off world with a freighter I noticed how tedious the process can be, I manually told the freighter to pick up and drop off the mass driver one by one. Is there any way to just tell the damn thing to move the mass driver as one order so that it will pick it up in parts automatically? I was trying to play around with the cycle moves and repeat (5) options but got nowhere so I just did it all manually.
2). If I have 2 mass drivers on one world sending material to another one that only has 1 mass driver on in will that cause a catastrophic event? In other words does the receiver need equal amount of mass drivers to all the senders or does it only need 1(or 2 for safety if I accidentally tell someone to move it off world)?
EDIT: Every time I post the forum adds another space after every dot. . . It makes things weird.
-
That's quite the understatement I'm afraid. Did the survey (didn't find a way to automagically transfer the whole team to the planet so I just moved them via ship) and found 1100 units of uridium with 0. 6 accessibility. Oh well at least now I know that I can do this.
Is there any point in colonizing a planet that doesn't have it's own mineral base? Any other than hoping that after terraforming and sending fleets of freighters in their direction they'll turn into productive planets that are just very dependent on constant supply that is.
When I think about it it seems safer to establish these kinds of outposts in my home system where they'll probably be quite far from the danger of combat in some other sector even if that means they have to still be supplied from asteroids in the system and freighters from a different one.
But hey Venus has over 30 million units of pretty much everything (with acc 0. 1) so I can always tap that.
Note that the team has a chance to repeat the survey, as long the body is not marked as "geosurvey completed". The way this works is that they will always find one deposit at a time until at some point they declare that is it and no more can be found. Also note that the chance of ending the survey depends on the skill of the team, so a less skilled team is more likely to close the body to all future surveys, even by more capable teams. For this reason some players will train their geosurvey teams on less important bodies (asteroids) before sending them to earth/mars etc when they hit 140 points.
Another reason to establish colonies even on barren pieces of rock is that small populations grow faster (~10%/year instead of ~2%/year), and less population is used in the (inaccessible) "service" sector. It also helps your civilian shipping lines if they have some destinations to service (brings in cash). Lastly, governer boni can be a good reason to create some specialized financial-capital world or shipbuilding centre.
Also dont ignore comets. They often have very large deposits of high-accessibility minerals across the band - and can be worked by asteroid miners.
-
The classic empire start is hard O_o.
I mean I established some basic tech, working on gravity scanners right now but only now I realise how easy it is to simply hit a wall in terms of resources, I'm running out of Duranium (in fifteen years my homeworld will run out) and the income I get from asteroid miners alone is pathetic.
I'm wondering if it might be more valid if I stopped expansion for a longer while (a period of few years maybe) changed like 70% of my homeworld mines into automated ones, while i'm doing that building 3-4 freighters with with 5x Cargo Holds (but that would require adding another 10k slipway capacity onto the civilian shipyards) and than transporting all that either to the asteroid near earth or a comet that has more resources but is much further away.
Just to avoid a misunderstanding: The number of slipways of a shipyard and the maximum tonnage of the shipyard are not connected- you can have a singe slipway- mass 100,000t shipyard, just as well as a 6-slipway, mass 1000t shipyard. Both mass and the number of slipways has an influence on the build costs and worker requirements, but if you want to build a ship of a given size you will want to expand the mass, adding slipways is not going to help if you do not have the mass.
But yes, a standard freighter has 5 cargo holds and some cargo handling. Often they are build in groups of 5 as well, so to transport large installations in one go. Converting a lot of mines to automines is completely viable and is efficient if you do not have a decent colony where normal mines could be operated. That being said, 15 years worth of supply is still quite a long time to expand and maybe find a decent source in a neighbor system.
I'm not entirely sure if that would be valid at all. maybe I should just construct a load of asteroid miners with 5 asteroid mining components each instead?
Why instead, you can do that as well... Basically: If you have good use for your mines, dont convert them yet and build asteroid miners instead. If the mines are not getting you anywhere, convert them.
Also while I was toying around with construction I noticed that I can create separate parts for ships (engines, survey components etc), does this effect anything else other than the possible speed of construction? It seems pretty obvious that having 30 premade engines to strap onto ships would accelerate the process of construction (not to mention the output of planetary industry seems much bigger than that of a single shipyard) but does it actually affect the cost in any way?
Its cost-neutral and simply a way in which you can use your industry to pump up the output of your shipyards.
1). Since I moved my first mass driver off world with a freighter I noticed how tedious the process can be, I manually told the freighter to pick up and drop off the mass driver one by one. Is there any way to just tell the damn thing to move the mass driver as one order so that it will pick it up in parts automatically? I was trying to play around with the cycle moves and repeat (5) options but got nowhere so I just did it all manually.
Repeat works fine for me, just keep in mind that the number you enter is how often it will add the process. So if you have a 1-cargohold freighter and you want ot move one installation, then you will want to:
- Manually enter the process once (Pickup from Source, Drop at destination, (refuel)). Keep in mind that the last point of this trip must be in the same system as the first, so maybe you will need a jump
- Then enter "4" and hit the "repeat" button, so that it will do it five times in total
The "cycle" move really is more advisable for things that you would like to be done until perpetuity. I currently have a freighter that hauls minerals from Alpha Centauri to earth with cycle moves, and a tanker that fetches fuel from a harvester fleet in Bernards Star. These two guys can be on continuous orders. Most installations-moves should not. Especially mass drivers should not be moved with this command, as you most certainly want to make sure that one remains on earth.
Also, if you have civies you can of course use a civilian contract to move things.
2). If I have 2 mass drivers on one world sending material to another one that only has 1 mass driver on in will that cause a catastrophic event? In other words does the receiver need equal amount of mass drivers to all the senders or does it only need 1(or 2 for safety if I accidentally tell someone to move it off world)?
You one need 1 mass driver to receive mineral packets safely, regardless of how many drivers had send the minerals.
-
Just to avoid a misunderstanding: The number of slipways of a shipyard and the maximum tonnage of the shipyard are not connected- you can have a singe slipway- mass 100,000t shipyard, just as well as a 6-slipway, mass 1000t shipyard. Both mass and the number of slipways has an influence on the build costs and worker requirements, but if you want to build a ship of a given size you will want to expand the mass, adding slipways is not going to help if you do not have the mass.
Yeah I formed the sentence wrong. I know that the actual number of slipways represents just how many ships of the same type you can build at once. What I thought was of the tonnage capacity of the shipyard.
But yes, a standard freighter has 5 cargo holds and some cargo handling. Often they are build in groups of 5 as well, so to transport large installations in one go. Converting a lot of mines to automines is completely viable and is efficient if you do not have a decent colony where normal mines could be operated. That being said, 15 years worth of supply is still quite a long time to expand and maybe find a decent source in a neighbor system.
I am getting around to building gates and getting jump engines so I might just do that. I also prepared my civilian shipyards for 10x asteroid miners that should do a pretty nice job with that comet I mentioned. All in all despite the slight panic I felt at one point I'm starting to get ahead in understanding how to bend the game economics to my need. Hopefully behind one of the 5 jump gates in my system is going to be an uninhabited Eden full of duranium right there on the surface. A man can dream
Its cost-neutral and simply a way in which you can use your industry to pump up the output of your shipyards.
So about as I expected. Good to know, might use that in the future if I get in trouble. Could always have some low quality engines, weapons, etc. lying around if I suddenly need to mass an emergency fleet, because that precious hiperexpensive fleet I had flying around just got blown to bits.
Repeat works fine for me, just keep in mind that the number you enter is how often it will add the process. So if you have a 1-cargohold freighter and you want ot move one installation, then you will want to:
- Manually enter the process once (Pickup from Source, Drop at destination, (refuel)). Keep in mind that the last point of this trip must be in the same system as the first, so maybe you will need a jump
- Then enter "4" and hit the "repeat" button, so that it will do it five times in total
The "cycle" move really is more advisable for things that you would like to be done until perpetuity. I currently have a freighter that hauls minerals from Alpha Centauri to earth with cycle moves, and a tanker that fetches fuel from a harvester fleet in Bernards Star. These two guys can be on continuous orders. Most installations-moves should not. Especially mass drivers should not be moved with this command, as you most certainly want to make sure that one remains on earth.
I actually got the hang of it now that I had a bit of practice with it. I just misunderstood the way it works previously. I thought I have to select an order than click on cycle moves and than add the order. While in fact what I was supposed to do is make the whole order chain and than press cycle moves at the very end, I over complicated it for no good reason. This way one of my freighters is going to transport infrastructure 2 at a time from earth to mars till the end of time.
As for repeating orders thank you again I myself was over complicating it. I think while I'm going to use this mainly for transporting mass drivers I might actually use this in the future for setting patrol paths (if I eventually get to that point).
I would first sent a group through the path once to determine how long is the run and how much fuel they burn on it, than I would calculate the same parameters from the beginning point of the patrol to a resupply point (a colony or a gas giant Sorium harvester). After doing that it would all be a matter of setting the fleet in position, pathing the patrol route x ammount of times, (based on the previous calculation on the amount of fuel burned to get to the station it would be that value plus say 8-10%) than add the parameter to go to the station, refuel, and go back to the beginning patrol position. From that point I'd just cycle moves.
Might seem a tad convoluted but from what I've seen so far the behavior of ships that automatically commit to the "refuel at colony or tanker within 4 jumps if fuel is below x%" it's kind of weird. I'm talking about mainly the geo scanners but an asteroid miner did it once too, where they return to earth to refuel despite being way over the limit (say it's set to 30% and they have 75%) and they have not finished their orders yet (scan nearest objects in that case, the miner just decided to go back to earth for no valid reason), and on the other side of the coin is the fact that sometimes they return with barely any fuel so they run the risk of being stranded till I check the event log 5 months later and notice they've been stuck in space this whole time.
Also, if you have civies you can of course use a civilian contract to move things.
Actually I don't have civies. It might just because I only have one inhabited colony so far and that's earth. Not entirely sure how it is they work. Do they just build ships on their own or do I have to construct civilian ships and somehow "sell" them?
I do have a shipping company (had one since pretty much the beginning) but they're doing absolutely nothing. I actually subsidized 10k to them thinking it would do something but nothing changed.
While I'm on the subject, what the heck is money used for? Paying off the civies when they eventually show up? Diplomacy with aliens?
-
I would first sent a group through the path once to determine how long is the run and how much fuel they burn on it, than I would calculate the same parameters from the beginning point of the patrol to a resupply point (a colony or a gas giant Sorium harvester).
You do not have to manually track that, if you set the path up, there is a field in the task group window that will tell you the total time required for all orders, which works at least for pure movement. Given this time you can easily calculate the fuel usage.
Actually I don't have civies. It might just because I only have one inhabited colony so far and that's earth. Not entirely sure how it is they work. Do they just build ships on their own or do I have to construct civilian ships and somehow "sell" them?
I do have a shipping company (had one since pretty much the beginning) but they're doing absolutely nothing. I actually subsidized 10k to them thinking it would do something but nothing changed.
Well shipping lines transport stuff between different colonies to make a profit. Seeing you only have one colony that leaves a bit to be desired in the business chances of moving stuff from A to … nowhere else, which goes a long way to explain the reluctance of investors to jump at the prospects. In other words: Civilians will spring into active existence when you establish a second colony.
You do not need to build a ship yourself for them to use, you just need to design a suitable class (and even that wont be necessarily in the upcoming 6.0 version). Just design sensible basic freighters, colony ships and maybe luxury liners.
While I'm on the subject, what the heck is money used for? Paying off the civies when they eventually show up? Diplomacy with aliens?
You pay money for everything you build and research. If you run out of it you get negative modifiers to production/research. Just look at the overview and it will break you income/costs down for you.
-
You pay money for everything you build and research. If you run out of it you get negative modifiers to production/research. Just look at the overview and it will break you income/costs down for you.
Oh so that's what racial wealth is used for. That explains the sudden dips in income it sometimes got.
But oh well I'm at a 177 thousand and climbing so it shouldn't be an issue for a while.
-
I'm wondering if it might be more valid if I stopped expansion for a longer while (a period of few years maybe) changed like 70% of my homeworld mines into automated ones, while i'm doing that building 3-4 freighters with with 5x Cargo Holds (but that would require adding another 10k slipway capacity onto the civilian shipyards) and than transporting all that either to the asteroid near earth or a comet that has more resources but is much further away.
I'm not entirely sure if that would be valid at all. maybe I should just construct a load of asteroid miners with 5 asteroid mining components each instead?
Opinions differ one that, but IMO the existing mines can be put to better use on a new inhabited colony. I'd go for new asteroid mines and mass drivers. My low-tech mining ships were expensive and so slow they took many months to reach the outer asteroid belt. On top of that, manually shipping minerals costs fuel, freighters and is generally a pain in the neck.
Also while I was toying around with construction I noticed that I can create separate parts for ships (engines, survey components etc), does this effect anything else other than the possible speed of construction? It seems pretty obvious that having 30 premade engines to strap onto ships would accelerate the process of construction (not to mention the output of planetary industry seems much bigger than that of a single shipyard) but does it actually affect the cost in any way?
I've never checked the actual effect on wealth, but it definitely affects build time.
1). Since I moved my first mass driver off world with a freighter I noticed how tedious the process can be, I manually told the freighter to pick up and drop off the mass driver one by one. Is there any way to just tell the damn thing to move the mass driver as one order so that it will pick it up in parts automatically? I was trying to play around with the cycle moves and repeat (5) options but got nowhere so I just did it all manually.
If you have freighters with one cargo hold, "Repeat x4" should move five parts, i.e. one installation (except the big ones like Research or Ground Training). If you enable "Cycle Orders" it will load as many parts as possible.
does the receiver need equal amount of mass drivers to all the senders or does it only need 1(or 2 for safety if I accidentally tell someone to move it off world)?
One driver can receive an unlimited amount.
EDIT: Every time I post the forum adds another space after every dot. . . It makes things weird.
It doesn't do that for me. Strange.
BTW, keep an eye on fuel reserves as well. You'll build up your fleet over time and 10 or 20 million liters can be gone before you notice it.
-
EDIT: Every time I post the forum adds another space after every dot. . . It makes things weird.
It's a spam prevention measure to break up links for people with under 10 posts.
-
It's a spam prevention measure to break up links for people with under 10 posts.
Ah sensible. Since I'm past that I guess I can now actually press space after a dot :).
-
Another question. I've noticed that civilian engines apart from their size and more noticeable emissions are generally superior to the military ones as examples.
- They have vastly superior range, with only slightly smaller speed because they gurgle up much smaller amounts of fuel. My geological survey ships equipped with military engines can go 176,4b km at the speed of 1900km/s while the same ship equipped with a civilian engine can go 647b km at just slightly smaller speed of 1798km/s
- Civilian Shipyards are much cheaper to upgrade, increasing the capacity and adding additional slipways is if I'm not wrong 10 times cheaper than in case of military shipyards
- They don't require maintenance. At all
I have of course noticed that they are much bigger (the example geological survey is 3 times bigger as a civilian ship) and have stronger heat and electrical emissions. They also seem to behave weirdly with elements that DO require maintenance like the geological survey parts (the AFR hops up from 6% to 104%), and you can't put them in a fleet with a jump engine because they require a jump engine of their own (meaning a ship with a civilian model jump engine).
But other than all that, if you don't really care about being detected, what's the advantage in using military engines?
-
The whole ship will require maintenance if there is any military component (engine or other) on board. You can only build such military ships in military yards.
Hence military designs with civilian engines will require maintaince and will require big military yards.
But as you say, the basic tradeoff is between fuel economy and vastly reduced emissions. Also military designs allow for higher overall speeds.
-
I'm going to repeat the points you made just for thoroughness.
Ton for ton, civilian drives are half the power of military drives with ten times the efficiency. Military drives make your ships much faster but eat more fuel. It's possible to match speeds with civilian drives, but then you run into simply how huge they are (and don't forget to take extra armor into account!) which makes your ships really, really easy to spot by hostile forces. A big ship is a dead ship.
Just because you have commercial engines on your ship doesn't make it commercial -- you've still got to build a military ship at a military 'yard.
I've heard the third point, but I can't actually prove it one way or the other. A quick test with a ship design laying around has the commercial engines reducing maintenance life, though that could simply be their size pushing the ship larger.
Essentially, you're going to sacrifice performance (extremely important in a warship) for greater cruising range and less flexible design scheme. (It's harder to cram things around 25HS objects than 5HS objects.)
Actually, that kind of reminds me of a discussion back for 6.0. I want to be able to select which engines are being used.
-
Ah I didn't know you still have to build it in military shipyard. That makes my question useless than :).
On another note. I met aliens. They are being creepy and hovering around my gate building ship in Proxima Centauri. They've been doing it for 2 months. At first I thought that it's just civilian ships hovering around so that the military ones can come around and murder me. Than ships came and they are still doing absolutely nothing.
I am attempting to communicate with the aliens and I sent a diplomatic team to them. Current relations are -0.650 and going up. They are refusing to communicate but I'm pretty sure some of the ships hovering are armed. And yet they have still not done anything.
Is that normal?
-
Keep an eye on the diplomatic score. If it's still negative, they might not like your being there. The last time I saw this, it lasted for a few weeks, then my ship exploded, then Earth was blown to bits a few weeks later. Better tiptoe out of there for the time being.
-
Keep an eye on the diplomatic score. If it's still negative, they might not like your being there. The last time I saw this, it lasted for a few weeks, then my ship exploded, then Earth was blown to bits a few weeks later. Better tiptoe out of there for the time being.
Well that might be an issue... I used a gate ship to get there, it built a gate and than hopped on the other side to build it from that one. And than aliens showed up and I freaked out a bit.
Do you think they'll mind if I'll just set a waypoint like 100b km away from the star and hang around there? :P.
there is like 16 ships hanging around my poor gate maker now.
Ok does the game have any kind of a measuring tool for the system view? I know there is a scale in the upper left corner but it's hard to measure distance from one object to another.
I'm asking because it seems my gate maker is close to an internal system jump point that leads a beyond the internal asteroid belt. If I can use that and not get followed by aliens than I might be able to make my gate ship go to a waypoint way away from the central star where they shouldn't be looking for me.
-
From der wiki:
"Note that until you are listed as friendly the NPR will quickly lose DR(start disliking you) for any ships of yours they see inside one of their own populated systems. This is based on the actual Tonnage of ships in their system, so the smaller the first contact vessel is the better.
If they have a population in the system, they don't want you there. If you have a trade agreement with them they make an exception for all commercial classed ships. "
Shift-left click activates a ruler function. But I guess they'll follow you.
-
Hold shift and left-drag on the system map to get a range and bearing line. If you let go of shift before letting go of the left mouse button, the line will stay on the screen.
-
Yeah they ended up blowing the ship up. It was 31k tonnes and there was also an exploratory geoscanner that was bout 3 tonnes there. They blew them both up, jumped to sol, blew the only civ I had so far (NUUU!), looked at the 20 missile PDC's orbiting earth and left.
That was interesting. I guess I'm not going to go to that system and hopefully they'll stop hating me.
EDIT: Oh nevermind! They came back with a bigger force. Blew my PDC's up before I even noticed them and than beat the snot out of earth. Hey mars is still populated! It has 0,02m population! I have the technology! Can rebuild the civilization!
No I don't now that I have the basic idea of what I'm doing I'm going to play a neo-newtonian start :).
-
Hold shift and left-drag on the system map to get a range and bearing line. If you let go of shift before letting go of the left mouse button, the line will stay on the screen.
Wow I never knew that. Quite handy.
-
I have a small issue. I made a few actual combat ships (I'm sure I messed the targeting systems up completely but bah), I wanted to get them to jump to another system to check it out but for some reason all the fleet can only move at the speed of 1. I don't understand it, at first it seemed to be due to the fact that the two new ships had 0% fuel but I equalized it all and there is still a problem.
Previously it was just these two ships:
Tiamat MK. I (GFRIG) class Frigate 4 000 tons 288 Crew 418 BP TCS 80 TH 160 EM 0
2000 km/s Armour 3-22 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 15
Maint Life 7.01 Years MSP 196 AFR 42% IFR 0.6% 1YR 7 5YR 105 Max Repair 40 MSP
Military NP-Tech (4) Power 40 Fuel Use 100% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres Range 67.5 billion km (390 days at full power)
FastF Gaus Cannon (5x2) Range 20 000km TS: 2000 km/s Accuracy Modifier 50% RM 2 ROF 5 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Miss. PD (base) (1x4) Range 1000 km TS: 5000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Gunnery Stations (MK. I) (1) Max Range: 40 000 km TS: 1875 km/s 75 50 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Small PBR Plant (1) Total Power Output 1.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Missile Detection Array (1) GPS 20 Range 1 000k km Resolution 1
Military Sensor Array (1) GPS 2400 Range 15.5m km Resolution 60
Standardised TS (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Standardised EM Detection (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Victory MK. I (MFRIG) class Missile Frigate 4 000 tons 318 Crew 434.2 BP TCS 80 TH 160 EM 0
2000 km/s Armour 3-22 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 10
Maint Life 4.44 Years MSP 136 AFR 64% IFR 0.9% 1YR 11 5YR 167 Max Repair 40 MSP
Magazine 110
Military NP-Tech (4) Power 40 Fuel Use 100% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres Range 67.5 billion km (390 days at full power)
Miss. PD (base) (1x4) Range 1000 km TS: 5000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
The Fish MK. I (2) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 150
Missile Control (20HS)1 (1) Range 6.7m km Resolution 20
The Redeemer (22) Speed: 10 000 km/s End: 30m Range: 18m km WH: 3 Size: 5 TH: 40 / 24 / 12
Missile Detection Array (1) GPS 20 Range 1 000k km Resolution 1
Military Sensor Array (1) GPS 2400 Range 15.5m km Resolution 60
Standardised TS (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Standardised EM Detection (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
They both worked perfectly fine than I added one of these:
The Hump MK. I class Collier 3 950 tons 233 Crew 444.4 BP TCS 79 TH 160 EM 0
2025 km/s Armour 3-22 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 0
Maint Life 17.22 Years MSP 2141 AFR 62% IFR 0.9% 1YR 14 5YR 205 Max Repair 50 MSP
Magazine 200
Military NP-Tech (4) Power 40 Fuel Use 100% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres Range 68.3 billion km (390 days at full power)
The Redeemer (50) Speed: 10 000 km/s End: 30m Range: 18m km WH: 3 Size: 5 TH: 40 / 24 / 12
Missile Detection Array (1) GPS 20 Range 1 000k km Resolution 1
Standardised Sensor Array (1) GPS 1200 Range 5.5m km Resolution 120
Hiper Sensor Array (150 rez)S5 (1) GPS 7500 Range 30.6m km Resolution 150
Standardised TS (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Standardised EM Detection (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
And two of these.
The Fleet Commander class Command Ship 5 000 tons 409 Crew 650 BP TCS 100 TH 200 EM 0
2000 km/s JR 4-50 Armour 4-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.48 Years MSP 325 AFR 50% IFR 0.7% 1YR 41 5YR 616 Max Repair 196 MSP
Military JD. Max Ship Size 5000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 4
Military NP-Tech (5) Power 40 Fuel Use 100% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150 000 Litres Range 54.0 billion km (312 days at full power)
Standardised Sensor Array (1) GPS 1200 Range 5.5m km Resolution 120
Missile Detection Array (1) GPS 20 Range 1 000k km Resolution 1
Military Sensor Array (1) GPS 2400 Range 15.5m km Resolution 60
Hiper Sensor Array (150 rez)S5 (1) GPS 7500 Range 30.6m km Resolution 150
Standardised TS (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Standardised EM Detection (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
-
On the Task Force screen (F12), near the top left you should see Speed. Click the button that says "Max Speed". That will put the ships at their max fleet speed. If that doesn't work, check the ships for damaged engines.
-
On the Task Force screen (F12), near the top left you should see Speed. Click the button that says "Max Speed". That will put the ships at their max fleet speed.
Already did that. They're still only at speed 1. Fleet Support Ships seem to be slowing everything down to speed 1 for no good reason.
Edit:
I found out what's wrong. At some point I was making a ship with a similar name, than I got distracted closed the page and walked away from the computer. After that I couldn't find the ship on the list again so I just made a new one that for some reason wouldn't show up on the retooling page for the shipyard. What I actually built was that
Fleet Support class Cruiser 250 tons 23 Crew 48.5 BP TCS 5 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 121 Max Repair 5 MSP
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres Range N/A
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
/facepalm
Edit2: While we're on the subject. Can I get some constructive criticism of my ship designs? I already know I messed up the missile command (the missiles have the range of 18m but the missile command serves for only 4,5m) and quite possibly the missiles themselves.
But what do you think about the ships in general? they are my first ever ACTUAL military vessels.
-
Tiamat:
Maint Life is _very_ long. Reduce it by 2/3.
Gauss cannons as main weapons seem to be a strange choice. Their very, and I mean _very_, short range will probably bite you in the behind, but if you insist on using them, I´d put them in turrets with x4 tracking firecons, so they are good for PD as their main mission and for offensive use as a secondary mission.
Gauss cannons don´t need no power plant, so you can scrap that.
I see you have a CIWS. The thing to know about them is, that they only protect the ship they are mounted on. Personally, I prefere another turret mounted gauss, that will protect the entire task group, but to each his own.
Victory:
Half the maint life.
A salvo of two slow missiles will get you nowhere. Even the most basic PD setup will be able to deal with that.
You´d want your sensors to see further than the range of your missiles, preferably a _lot_ further. If you use a dedicated sensor ship or put those actives on each combatant is up to you.
If you do the former, I´d suggest keeping the ones you have as a backup, in case the sensor boat buys it.
With no PD weapons (except for the CIWS, which has its own sensors), you don´t need the res-1 active.
Your missiles seem very weak for a size 5. I´d suggest investing heavily in missile tech and designing a new one.
As it is, they have a rather short range, their warhead is pretty weak and the chance to hit a moving target is abysimal (yes, they realy are not good :) )
Edit: Ok forget what I said about a sensor ship, as I just saw that your Hump fills that role.
Hump:
You can loose the res-120 active, as it can´t see anything, your res-150 can´t. You might use the saved mass to up the res-1 active a bit. Yes, it has a 1 million km range and you only have gauss cannons to shoot at enemy missiles, but that range is against a 50 ton target (i.e. size-20 missile). Against size 6 or smaller missiles, that range is a lot less.
Fleet Commander:
Personally, I only put basic actives on my jumpships. They will stay at the jump point while the fleet goes in-system to look for trouble and I do _not_ want to draw attention to my ride home by activating a huge homing beacon.
Large passives are the way to go in my book.
Aside from that, more armor is always good on your only means of getting home again.
-
Thank you I used the Gauss Cannons as main because the ships were supposed to serve as sort of a short range brawlers. If the bad guys got too close to the missile boats they would hop on to get a piece of the action.
As for the missiles yes they are abysmal mostly because I created them as I started playing xD. they are pretty damn bad, I'm only year 2,5 into the game so I mainly focused on getting construction and research up more so than weapon technology.
Maintenance life... I'm kind of crazy about that. I see something have a life span of 2 years or a yearly failure chance higher than zero and my brain goes "Oh god that's too low!/too high!" and than I kind of go insane with engineering bays :p.
On another note I completely forgot that turrets can even be designed O_o...
Anyway I'm going to take all that into account later in the game, when I get some more tech I'm going to probably post what designs I have for the newer ships.
-
Sorry for double post but last one was made yesterday and bumping like that should not be this terrible (if I'm wrong please tell me).
In my new game Mercury has literally everything. And tonnes of it, all of it above 0,7 . I sent some automatic mines there but it's not enough, I want to create an outpost there that will create more automatic mines on the spot (duranium and corundium are the most common things there) so I can get the 11 million duranium. After a while I decided getting so much infrastructure there is pointless in the long run and I'll just try to terraform it since I have 10 terraforming installations waiting on earth.
Now thing is, Mercury doesn't have any atmospheric pressure and I don't know if I can increase that. I thought that simply spouting out some gas (probably nitrogen or water) into the atmosphere will increase the atmospheric pressure but again I'm not sure if it will.
Can I have a confirmation on this?
Just to clarify I'm not trying to turn Mercury into a paradise because that will take forever, I'm just trying to make it slightly less expensive to colonize.
-
Sorry for double post but last one was made yesterday and bumping like that should not be this terrible (if I'm wrong please tell me).
In my new game Mercury has literally everything. And tonnes of it, all of it above 0,7 . I sent some automatic mines there but it's not enough, I want to create an outpost there that will create more automatic mines on the spot (duranium and corundium are the most common things there) so I can get the 11 million duranium. After a while I decided getting so much infrastructure there is pointless in the long run and I'll just try to terraform it since I have 10 terraforming installations waiting on earth.
Now thing is, Mercury doesn't have any atmospheric pressure and I don't know if I can increase that. I thought that simply spouting out some gas (probably nitrogen or water) into the atmosphere will increase the atmospheric pressure but again I'm not sure if it will.
Can I have a confirmation on this?
Just to clarify I'm not trying to turn Mercury into a paradise because that will take forever, I'm just trying to make it slightly less expensive to colonize.
Yes, its perfectly possible to terraform Mercury. Its not even too difficult. Your main problem is the heat, so I suggest starting with anti-greenhouse gas. You will need around 0.68 atm anti-greenhouse gas and 0.1 atm oxygen to make it a perfect world for a normal-parameter human start. Aint htat much.
-
Yes, its perfectly possible to terraform Mercury. Its not even too difficult. Your main problem is the heat, so I suggest starting with anti-greenhouse gas. You will need around 0.68 atm anti-greenhouse gas and 0.1 atm oxygen to make it a perfect world for a normal-parameter human start. Aint htat much.
Thank you. By the way what's the use of filling an atmosphere with water? Just adding a neutral gas or something more specific?
-
If it says "Unsuitable" instead of giving a colony cost in the first tab, you can forget about it. At least until you get Orbital habitat tech. But IMO it's not worth it. You have to consider the huge cost and time for building factories, too.
About maintenance life: you can live with the occasional failure, as long as you have maintenance supplies ready. I use to build jump tenders with some extra fuel and 1,000 extra MSP. The thing to watch out for is that a ship's MSP storage should be higher than Max. Repair, or a failure will result in a damaged component that cannot be repaired.
And here's a PD ship I'm very satisfied with:
Genua class Corvette 3,000 tons 242 Crew 658.8 BP TCS 60 TH 207 EM 0
4600 km/s Armour 2-18 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 16.56
Maint Life 1.62 Years MSP 137 AFR 72% IFR 1% 1YR 61 5YR 918 Max Repair 144 MSP
Magneto-plasma Drive 92 kW Cooled (3) Power 92 Fuel Use 91% Signature 69 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 65.9 billion km (165 days at full power)
Twin Gauss Cannon R2-100 Turret (1x6) Range 20,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 2 ROF 5 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S06 48-20000 (1) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1) GPS 144 Range 11.5m km Resolution 1
ECM 10
Hmmm. Please ignore that it violates the rule about MSP being higher than max. repair, I never noticed that myself.
-
Yeah I know about the unsuitable thing. It can be caused by lackluster (or too strong) gravitation and such. But Mercury is 17x so I decided "ah hell why not!".
I was actually surprised to find out that the orbital habitats can only be built on ships. That creates a potential for some cool migration fleets kind of thing.
-
Hello again. I've been exploring around my little piece of space, actually established some proper mining colonies, terraformed mercury with 40 orbital terraformers (all equipped with 2 terraforming units) and in general established myself in that little corner I call home.
Now I have some questions relating to warfare since while the slug people are nice and friendly I don't trust these slimy bastards!
So:
1. Missile Launchers. Can a launcher only shoot one missile at a time? I know that a launcher of size 5 can shoot missiles <=5 (so it can shoot a size 1,3,0.5 and so on), but if I have a size 5 launcher can it shoot 2 size 2,5 missiles at the same time? or do I need separate 2,5 missile launchers for that?
Also box launchers. I get the general idea, they are preloaded and can't be reloaded mid flight, commonly used on fighters because they're small and can provide massive firepower in a very tiny package. That's fighters, what if I use them on a bigger ship, say 5k tonnes? Will it still have to dock on an even bigger ship to reload or will it be able to do it itself just 15x times slower than it usually would?
If I have to dock than do you think there is a point in using them on a big ship? maybe just stick to regular launchers and go for extended fights or hope for the best and fire a salvo of 20 missiles per ship and than basically stand there twiddling my thumbs if they shoot them down.
2. Sensor buoys. Will aliens mind if I casually plop a sensor buoy (probably passive and not active one so it won't be as detectable) somewhere in their home system so I have some more info about their movements?
3. Cloaking. Does it just reduce EM emissions like the thermal reduction for engines or is it something else entirely?
4. Thermal Emissions. Does moving at a slower speed reduce TE? It seems like it should since my engines wouldn't be producing as much heat (a fleet sneaking by at 500km/s should be less noticeable than one zooming past at 3200km/s) but I'd like a confirmation on that.
5. Fleet size and order of battle. In general, would it be better for a small civ like mine (colonies only in 3 sectors including sol and the systems right next to it) to have one super massive fleet hovering around a choke system (in my case such system exists 3 jumps away from sol where it seems to has only one jump point to it unless there is a dormant jump point somewhere around) or multiple smaller task forces in each system?
I know a tactics and strategy can be heavily related to personal preference, but I'm on the fence in terms of both options (maybe there is a third?)
6. Terraforming. I got the basics, greenhouse and anti-greenhouse to regulate temperature, make sure atmosphere stays in acceptable level, add oxygen, voila. Your very own eden right there on the surface of an alien world.
What I'm not entirely sure about are some of the things you can add to the atmosphere, I know some of them (carbon monoxide, amonia) are poison there to ether kill a population of the planet if you want it to be so, or to be pumped out.
What I don't entirely get are things like water. Is it just supposed as a neutral "filler" gas to get to 1 atmosphere? Or does pumping it in actually create a hydrosphere on a planet that might have not had it prior to that? What about other "non poisonous" gasses?
-
Hello again. I've been exploring around my little piece of space, actually established some proper mining colonies, terraformed mercury with 40 orbital terraformers (all equipped with 2 terraforming units) and in general established myself in that little corner I call home.
Now I have some questions relating to warfare since while the slug people are nice and friendly I don't trust these slimy bastards!
Nice to hear you are doing well.
1. Missile Launchers. Can a launcher only shoot one missile at a time? I know that a launcher of size 5 can shoot missiles <=5 (so it can shoot a size 1,3,0.5 and so on), but if I have a size 5 launcher can it shoot 2 size 2,5 missiles at the same time? or do I need separate 2,5 missile launchers for that?
One launcher can launch one missile at a time. Generally if you stuffed two missiles in the same tube their exhaust plumes would likely destroy both missiles. So you would need two size-3 missile launchers (only integer numbers!)
You could design a “multi-stage missile” that contains a number of submunitions though. If the first stage was essentially nothing, and the “missile” released the submunition directly upon launch, then you would essentially achieve what you ask for – a size 5 launcher could launch two size 2.5 missiles. Not any missile though, just those that are “buddled” together in this role from factory on.
There is no good reason to do that though. A size 2 launcher is exactly half as large as a size 4 launcher, and launches twice as frequently. So normally you would strive for smaller launchers, rather than larger ones. You only use large launchers because the missiles dictate it. If the missile you wish to launch is small, use a small launcher.
Also box launchers. I get the general idea, they are preloaded and can't be reloaded mid flight, commonly used on fighters because they're small and can provide massive firepower in a very tiny package. That's fighters, what if I use them on a bigger ship, say 5k tonnes? Will it still have to dock on an even bigger ship to reload or will it be able to do it itself just 15x times slower than it usually would?
A 5k ship could only be reloaded in either a bigger hangar-ship, or through maintenance facilities at a colony. The later, although much slower is the preferred way of doing this for large ships due to obvious reasons relating to the costs of fielding a large carrier.
2. Sensor buoys. Will aliens mind if I casually plop a sensor buoy (probably passive and not active one so it won't be as detectable) somewhere in their home system so I have some more info about their movements?
AFAIK Aliens mind any active sensor contact they see. So if they see your boy they will probably mind, but not by much given its so small. Roleplaying wise they should care a lot though.
3. Cloaking. Does it just reduce EM emissions like the thermal reduction for engines or is it something else entirely?
They reduce the “radar profile”, i.e. your susceptibility to active sensors of the other guy. So a large ship would have the same characteristics of a small ship when it comes to being detected by enemy active sensors.
What cloaking does not do is reducing your active emissions when you turn your sensors on. It only counters enemy active sensors, not passive EM sensors.
4. Thermal Emissions. Does moving at a slower speed reduce TE? It seems like it should since my engines wouldn't be producing as much heat (a fleet sneaking by at 500km/s should be less noticeable than one zooming past at 3200km/s) but I'd like a confirmation on that.
Yes. EDIT: Also you, can see the thermal emissions of your ships in the task-group window.
5. Fleet size and order of battle. In general, would it be better for a small civ like mine (colonies only in 3 sectors including sol and the systems right next to it) to have one super massive fleet hovering around a choke system (in my case such system exists 3 jumps away from sol where it seems to has only one jump point to it unless there is a dormant jump point somewhere around) or multiple smaller task forces in each system?
Lanchester Laws -> keep them concentrated as much as possible (actually, Lancaster laws only indicate a square-dependency of battle winning ability versus unit number, while in Aurora you can also shoot down incoming missiles indicating a much larger exponential factor, i.e. more of an argument for concentration) . Your people will demand a bit of military presence in their home system though, and its prudent to build someone to watch jumpgates though, just in case they sneak past you.
6. Terraforming. I got the basics, greenhouse and anti-greenhouse to regulate temperature, make sure atmosphere stays in acceptable level, add oxygen, voila. Your very own eden right there on the surface of an alien world.
What I'm not entirely sure about are some of the things you can add to the atmosphere, I know some of them (carbon monoxide, amonia) are poison there to ether kill a population of the planet if you want it to be so, or to be pumped out.
What I don't entirely get are things like water. Is it just supposed as a neutral "filler" gas to get to 1 atmosphere? Or does pumping it in actually create a hydrosphere on a planet that might have not had it prior to that? What about other "non poisonous" gasses?
AFAIK those are just neutral gases that don’t do anything except increasing the atmospheric pressure and adding a little greenhouse effect through that. Used for roleplaying, but not anything else.
-
A 5k ship could only be reloaded in either a bigger hangar-ship, or through maintenance facilities at a colony. The later, although much slower is the preferred way of doing this for large ships due to obvious reasons relating to the costs of fielding a large carrier.
Ah in that case I guess the best solution if I want lots of launchers going off is just adding 2 or 3 carriers full of boats or fighters with box launchers on them. Good to know that.
Edit: I think there are a few points where a warheads with multiple missiles inside it would be more useful.
Mainly PDC's that for for the reason of being a static target might want to intercept enemies at the highest possible range and that is done better with a multiple stage missile (or a drone) as far as I know.
The other one I can think of is just for the general "hit chance" increase, if you shoot 10 size 10 missiles that turn into 100 or 200 smaller missiles say 0,5m km away from the enemy than that seems to have a much higher chance of connecting.
Than again I'm not entirely sure if a missile below 1 can actually do damage to ship. Probably can, still when you have an option between 2-4 big missiles hitting the target and like 50-80 small missiles hitting even for puny damage it could be good.
Very situational, but good.
AFAIK Aliens mind any active sensor contact they see. So if they see your boy they will probably mind, but not by much given its so small. Roleplaying wise they should care a lot though.
I see, that's why I probably would plop a single buoy that is based entirely on the passive sensors. Plus what I had in mind in terms of deploying it is fooling the ships that are at the gate. I noticed they have a tendency of closely following any military ship that hops in, what I would do than is create a big noticeable, smelly military ship that would hop into the system and go to some remote location. If they followed him than I would just get the buoy dropping ship (cloaked, with reduced emissions and as small as possible) to hop on and go in the other direction, drop off the buoy and get out as soon as possible. Than I would apologize for the whole "big military ship in your home system" thing blaming it all on a miscomunication in the chain of command.
What I was mainly wondering is will they "know" that there is a buoy transmitting everything they do even if it goes undetected (too used to other 4x games doing that).
Lanchester Laws -> keep them concentrated as much as possible (actually, Lancaster laws only indicate a square-dependency of battle winning ability versus unit number, while in Aurora you can also shoot down incoming missiles indicating a much larger exponential factor, i.e. more of an argument for concentration) . Your people will demand a bit of military presence in their home system though, and its prudent to build someone to watch jumpgates though, just in case they sneak past you.
Yeah I thought so. Guess I'll generally have the forces held out inside the choke point, than a smaller secondary task force in the system just behind it and a tertiary one working as the honorary guard for the homeworld.
As for protecting the gates I was wondering about that. I'm actually designing mines to plant at each one but in case of the vital jump gates I might actually construct PDC's next to them.
By the way how does one go about deploying the buoys? Is there an actual component for it that I missed? Or do I just keep the damn thing on a freighter and drop it off at a waypoint?
AFAIK those are just neutral gases that don’t do anything except increasing the atmospheric pressure and adding a little greenhouse effect through that. Used for roleplaying, but not anything else.
I see, oh well.
-
Ah in that case I guess the best solution if I want lots of launchers going off is just adding 2 or 3 carriers full of boats or fighters with box launchers on them. Good to know that.
Sure that is a valid strategy. Its also perfectly possible to build larger vessels with lots of boxed launchers that return to a colony to reload after battle. Sure it’s a one-shot weapon in any given battle, but the volume of fire gained can mean its decisive at that. Basically you save on the carrier.
Edit: I think there are a few points where a warheads with multiple missiles inside it would be more useful.
Mainly PDC's that for for the reason of being a static target might want to intercept enemies at the highest possible range and that is done better with a multiple stage missile (or a drone) as far as I know.
The other one I can think of is just for the general "hit chance" increase, if you shoot 10 size 10 missiles that turn into 100 or 200 smaller missiles say 0,5m km away from the enemy than that seems to have a much higher chance of connecting.
Oh I am not generally arguing against multi-stage missiles or even multiple submunitions. My point is just that the weight of one “broadside” is independent of the calibre that is used- you can have ten size-10 launchers, or you can have a hundred size-1 launchers for the same tonnage, costs and personnel. The only difference is that the size-1 launches will fire ten times as quickly, providing a significant edge. So if you have a size-10 missile that releases two submunitions, you might be better of using a size-5 missile with one submunition instead – if that is possible due to minimum drone engine size for instance.
Just for the record: Submunition should be released much further away from the target. Normal AMM engagement ranges of certain spoilers range in the ~1.5m km range, and since the first stage of a multi-stage design is poised to be much slower and larger it is likely engaged further out. So personally I would not go below a range of 2.5m km.
Than again I'm not entirely sure if a missile below 1 can actually do damage to ship. Probably can, still when you have an option between 2-4 big missiles hitting the target and like 50-80 small missiles hitting even for puny damage it could be good.
You need at least a strength-1 warhead to do any damage. Also missile sizes below 1 get rounded up to 1 for multiple stage missiles. This is a measure to avoid fooling the AI with thousands of dummy targets.
I see, that's why I probably would plop a single buoy that is based entirely on the passive sensors. Plus what I had in mind in terms of deploying it is fooling the ships that are at the gate. I noticed they have a tendency of closely following any military ship that hops in, what I would do than is create a big noticeable, smelly military ship that would hop into the system and go to some remote location. If they followed him than I would just get the buoy dropping ship (cloaked, with reduced emissions and as small as possible) to hop on and go in the other direction, drop off the buoy and get out as soon as possible. Than I would apologize for the whole "big military ship in your home system" thing blaming it all on a miscomunication in the chain of command.
Uhm, having a big military ship enter their home system unexpectedly in the age of nuclear weaponry has a certain chance of just maybe not going quite as expected. My guess is they will blow the thing up and ask questions later (unless they have become quite trusting already).
What I was mainly wondering is will they "know" that there is a buoy transmitting everything they do even if it goes undetected (too used to other 4x games doing that).
Well unless they somehow find the boy, they wont know its there…
Yeah I thought so. Guess I'll generally have the forces held out inside the choke point, than a smaller secondary task force in the system just behind it and a tertiary one working as the honorary guard for the homeworld.
As for protecting the gates I was wondering about that. I'm actually designing mines to plant at each one but in case of the vital jump gates I might actually construct PDC's next to them.
If you have celestial body close by a PDC is definitively a good choice. I just use Space Stations.
By the way how does one go about deploying the buoys? Is there an actual component for it that I missed? Or do I just keep the damn thing on a freighter and drop it off at a waypoint?
You need an adequately sized missile launcher to deploy the boy, no dropping from freighters.
-
About box launchers: a size 6 box launchers weighs only 50 tons, so sticking a few on a destroyer armed with normal launchers doesn't add much weight and gives you an option to launch one "heavy broadside" at a target that is too well defended for your normal salvos.
According to
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5304.0.html
tracking stations are buggy in 5.60 and always use max thermal emissions for determining detection range.
-
About box launchers: a size 6 box launchers weighs only 50 tons, so sticking a few on a destroyer armed with normal launchers doesn't add much weight and gives you an option to launch one "heavy broadside" at a target that is too well defended for your normal salvos.
According to
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5304.0.html
tracking stations are buggy in 5.60 and always use max thermal emissions for determining detection range.
Is this definitely true? I wasn't aware of such a bug.
Steve
-
There's this thread, which might be related
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5098.0.html
and
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5279.0.html
-
Is this definitely true? I wasn't aware of such a bug.
Steve
I submitted it in the bugs thread after doing extensive verification. It's easy to verify: Plop down a DSTS, create a ship for another faction, have it reduce to half its speed, and the DSTS will still detect it as if it is running at full speed.
Here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4487.msg51964.html#msg51964) is the bugs thread post.
-
Odd, my recent experience showed normal behavior. I ran a test stealth missile frigate assault against myself a few days back. Making a slow 1/4 speed approach cut thermal signatures enough for the stealth frigates to sneak undetected into medium missile range to launch their bombardment. Then, after the defenders launched a squad of fast destroyers to backtrack the missile flight path, the stealth fleet increased speed to 1/2 max to sidestep point-blank detection... and the increased signature let the defenders tracking stations detect their thermal signature. The fast destroyers adjusted path and none of the stealth attacks escaped to reload. Opps. Anyway, observational evidence says changing speed to change thermal signature can bring a ship into and out of deep space tracking station detection range.
And that reminds me, with the starting jump efficiency getting bumped from 3 to 4, will starting stealth efficiency get a matching bump from 2 to 3?
-
And that reminds me, with the starting jump efficiency getting bumped from 3 to 4, will starting stealth efficiency get a matching bump from 2 to 3?
Yes, that's a good point. I've bumped the cloaking efficiency up one level so the start is 3 and everything else is half the previous RP cost.
Steve
-
BTW, the lower limit for missile detection range is capped at size 6, i.e. everything below 6 is spotted as if it were size 6. I just mention it because it's important but easy to miss.
-
I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but:
What kind of fire control, if any, do I need for railguns?
-
I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but:
What kind of fire control, if any, do I need for railguns?
Anything not a missile requires beam fire controls.
-
I thought so, but I wanted to be sure, as there is distinction between kinetic and beam in research type.
-
Kinetic and *energy*. It's pretty clear on the wiki that anything non-seeking is called a "beam" weapon, regardless of whether it's based on kinetic or directed-energy principles. The only weapons that use missile fire controls are, obviously, missiles, and plasma torpedoes.
-
I'm back. Last time I never got around to actually fighting the slugs cause my hard drive ate itself and I had to buy a new one. I started a new game with conventional empire start.
Thing is I never got to actually taste proper combat, so I'm not entirely sure how good the new designs I made were. In the new game I've actually met a race of rather aggressive aliens who seem to be residing in completely unrelated systems leading me to believe they might be precursors. Seriously I scanned their systems and unless they are somehow connected beyond they seem to be in 3 completely different corners of my space and decided it might be time to bunker up in my corner of space, build up forces and fight. Possibly raid the systems I met them in to either eradicate them or scare them off.
I'm slowly working on designs and this is the first one I made:
Royal class Missile Frigate 5 250 tons 488 Crew 1000.6 BP TCS 105 TH 57.6 EM 1200
2285 km/s Armour 5-26 Shields 40-300 Sensors 8/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 12 PPV 19
Maint Life 2.44 Years MSP 238 AFR 110% IFR 1.5% 1YR 55 5YR 827 Max Repair 160 MSP
Magazine 164
Military Ion MK.II (4) Power 60 Fuel Use 70% Signature 14.4 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range 97.9 billion km (496 days at full power)
Gamma R300/18 Shields (20) Total Fuel Cost 360 Litres per day
S4 Launcher (1) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 60
Minerva Launcher (1) Missile Size 20 Rate of Fire 600
Missile Fire Control FC217-R50 (70%) (1) Range 217.2m km Resolution 50
Redeemer MK.1 (6) Speed: 25 500 km/s End: 11m Range: 16.9m km WH: 4 Size: 4 TH: 153 / 91 / 45
Minerva MIRV MK.1 (7) Speed: 8 000 km/s End: 535.7m Range: 272.2m km WH: 0 Size: 20 TH: 13 / 8 / 4
Active Search Sensor MR10-R65 (70%) (1) GPS 1040 Range 10.3m km Resolution 65
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The general idea is that in a fleet of say 8-10 ships I'm going to have one or maximally two of these. They'll serve as long range interception preferably from an undiscovered position. Just to attack the ships before we come to proper combat. That's why I have Minerva drones on them (might change the single launcher to two or three smaller ones though due to the range of engagement), each drone is armed with 3 Redeemer missiles that are going to be released 15m km away from the target (might knock that down to 10m). I added a regular launcher in case they get surprised at the gate just so they can at least help a bit in the fight.
I probably over engineered the maintenance life again but the alien systems are relatively far away (apart from one that's literally one jump from sol).
Also the active sensor has a tiny range but that's because I'll hold a bigger one on the flagship of the TG.
Additionally the tech is going to get upgraded as time goes seeing as I have 72 research labs on Earth (yeah took my sweet time) and I seem to be getting new tech quite often.
-
Hmm. it doesn't have enough firepower. Put it in perspective: if every one of its missiles hit, it can only do about 112 points of damage - spaced over a time period of hours. There's no way a Royal could ever kill another Royal, let alone something with active defenses. Tickling the enemy only serves to ensure their active defenses are online. Somewhat related is that the Royal has very heavy passive defenses for its tonnage, yet it's not intended to come anywhere near the enemy. Pick what you want this unit to do and focus on making it effective at that role.
*scratch head*... I think you have a damage control in there. I would suggest removing it; there's little advantage to it on a ship this size.
IMO: If you want it to plink things at long range with Minervas, I would suggest cutting down the size of the Minerva a little mostly because 8km/s is slower than a lot of ships. Dump the close range launcher and the shields, and maybe reduce the armor to 4 or 3. Ideally you have Box launcher tech; see how many size 15-20 (or w/e) Minerva box launchers you can fit. Finally consider increasing the speed, it's pretty slow. That may not matter much though; you'd have to add a huge number of engines to give it any chance of outrunning things, and it is sort of pointless once it's shot its bolt.
-
Yeah I'll definitely make sure I have more launchers than that therefore increasing the damage potential. So far I simply couldn't do that because the tech is not ready yet and as I mentioned this thing is mainly a blueprint for a proper ship later on.
As for the speed of the drone it's designed specifically with the aliens who I've been fighting so far, their fastest ships were moving at 3k/s, and every year or so I send a sensor ship giving signals on all frequencies so the buggers attack it. This way I've noticed that they have actually gone through one speed increase (from 2k/s to 3k/s). I'm working on ion drone engines right now so that will help the speed too. Additionally after I've got better tech I decided to redesign the redeemer missiles into size 2's:
The Archangel MK.1
Missile Size: 2 MSP (0.1 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 21000 km/s Endurance: 20 minutes Range: 25.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.825
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 315% 3k km/s 105% 5k km/s 63% 10k km/s 31.5%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.69x Gallicite Fuel x500
It's slightly slower than the redeemers but the CtH is comparatively higher. And if it turns out they're too slow I can always change the 0.2 in fuel into 0.1 and put that extra point in engines (that bumps the speed up to 24k/s with the range falling to 12.7m), it's main advantage though is the fact that it has the same punch (even if tiny only 2 layers) but one Minerva drone can carry twice as many missiles now.
As for the close combat I pretty much ditched the idea right after I wrote the post. A jack of all trades is a master of none, I'll just have to design some specialized close range brawlers that if something goes really wrong will protect the Royals so they can retreat. But I don't know about that thermal. It's only size 1 and not having something like that makes me feel a tad blind.
Damage control has just been removed as per your suggestion. Never actually got around to researching it before so I don't even fully know how it works, I'll think about getting the armor down as well but since I have ceramic composite it doesn't really make that much of a difference tonnage/speed wise... actually scratch that after ditching 15 out of the 20 shields (that I have to remake as well now since I just got the better tech) 4 armor is the difference between being below or above 3k/s
OK so that's the state of the ship after a very quick redesign (without the new tech yet)
Royal class Missile Frigate 3 900 tons 378 Crew 788.6 BP TCS 78 TH 57.6 EM 300
3076 km/s Armour 4-22 Shields 10-300 Sensors 8/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 15
Maint Life 3.18 Years MSP 253 AFR 60% IFR 0.8% 1YR 38 5YR 565 Max Repair 160 MSP
Magazine 160
Military Ion MK.II (4) Power 60 Fuel Use 70% Signature 14.4 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range 131.8 billion km (496 days at full power)
Gamma R300/18 Shields (5) Total Fuel Cost 90 Litres per day
Minerva Launcher (1) Missile Size 20 Rate of Fire 600
Missile Fire Control FC217-R50 (70%) (1) Range 217.2m km Resolution 50
Redeemer MK.1 (6) Speed: 25 500 km/s End: 11m Range: 16.9m km WH: 4 Size: 4 TH: 153 / 91 / 45
Minerva MIRV MK.1 (7) Speed: 8 000 km/s End: 535.7m Range: 272.2m km WH: 0 Size: 20 TH: 13 / 8 / 4
Active Search Sensor MR10-R65 (70%) (1) GPS 1040 Range 10.3m km Resolution 65
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Now that I look at it I might actually want to look into the power increase path for engines. Since they're not supposed to be engaging in direct combat if they're the fastest thing around that would certainly help avoid it.
EDIT:
Yep getting the ion engines for drones got the speed up to 12k/s while filled with Archangel missiles
Missile Size: 20 MSP (1 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 1 Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 12000 km/s Endurance: 357 minutes Range: 257.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 15.075
Second Stage: Archangel MK.1 x6
Second Stage Separation Range: 15 000 000 km
Overall Endurance: 6 hours Overall Range: 282.8m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 60% 3k km/s 20% 5k km/s 12% 10k km/s 6%
Materials Required: 6.25x Tritanium 7.89x Gallicite Fuel x5000
Btw the armor is there because... well I'm kind of obsessive compulsive and I couldn't leave it at 19 -_-
-
The problem is that these aliens will out-tech you for a looong time. They spot you at ridiculous ranges, they shoot at you from ridiculous ranges and they are much faster than any ship you can build (fighters notwithstanding). Most fleets they field will also shrug off a salvo of three (or ten or twenty) missiles without breaking a sweat, shooting them down with point-defense guns.
That means your fleet must be able to:
1) survive anything they can throw at you, and that implies shooting down thirty or forty missiles every 10 seconds. Numbers vary, but if your fleet isn't comfortable with that number of missiles coming its way at 30k km/s, you'd better wait a few more years, and
2) fire enough missiles per 5-sec turn to overcome massive PD or anti-missile-missile fire itself *and* do enough damage to kill what's behind that wall of fire.
2b) Optionally you can hope that particular fleet relies mostly on AMMs instead of guns for defense. Then you can try to exhaust their missile magazines.
Fighters might do the trick, but you *need* reduced-size launchers (that branch of the tech tree finally leads to box launchers). Four size-6 launchers on a 300-ton fighter and three 8000-ton carriers full of these should give you about 150 missiles. Don't forget to click "synchronize fire" before you launch. If your fighters can get close enough before getting spotted, you can enjoy the fireworks. If not, all you've risked is 70 or 80 fighters, hopefully flown by volunteers who had no navy life insurance.
-
The problem is that these aliens will out-tech you for a looong time. They spot you at ridiculous ranges, they shoot at you from ridiculous ranges and they are much faster than any ship you can build (fighters notwithstanding). Most fleets they field will also shrug off a salvo of three (or ten or twenty) missiles without breaking a sweat, shooting them down with point-defense guns.
Thing is though that to my surprise they don't seem that much superior to me in tech. I mean I don't know if perhaps their civilian tech is far ahead but navy wise they seem to be only slightly ahead and that's only in terms of their weaponry (they are actually slower than most my ships), they don't shoot at me from ridiculous ranges (at least the sensor ships I've sent them so far) but instead opt in to get close and blast me with gauss guns (I've seen missiles from them but in general they only tickled), and those are quite definitely more advanced than mine since I don't HAVE gauss cannons and I'm instead working on the laser tech.
I don't know about their point defense but it most probably is capable, since they're focused on the gun tech. That's one of the reasons I'm intending to rely on the element of surprise, attack from stealth possibly beyond their sensor range. Additionally in a perfect world where I have all the tech Minervas would be filled with size 1 missiles that would have the highest chance of hitting and would probably get there fastest.
And if it turns out that I was being harassed by their ships from 20 years ago and now they have better stuff than I'll just lock myself up behind a wall of mines and sensors and hope for the best while the tech gets to where it needs to be.
That means your fleet must be able to:
1) survive anything they can throw at you, and that implies shooting down thirty or forty missiles every 10 seconds. Numbers vary, but if your fleet isn't comfortable with that number of missiles coming its way at 30k km/s, you'd better wait a few more years, and
2) fire enough missiles per 5-sec turn to overcome massive PD or anti-missile-missile fire itself *and* do enough damage to kill what's behind that wall of fire.
I'm working on both these, Again the ship I made is merely a blueprint for a more advanced unit that will basically fill the same role but with "slightly" more punch. As for avoiding the 30k km/s the missiles since my laser and turret tech is kind of in the barn right now I'll probably have to rely on AMM's, and that might not be so bad since the fleet is supposed to be the one surprising people with missiles, not the other way around.
2b) Optionally you can hope that particular fleet relies mostly on AMMs instead of guns for defense. Then you can try to exhaust their missile magazines.
I would probably loose at that but we'll see.
Fighters might do the trick, but you *need* reduced-size launchers (that branch of the tech tree finally leads to box launchers). Four size-6 launchers on a 300-ton fighter and three 8000-ton carriers full of these should give you about 150 missiles. Don't forget to click "synchronize fire" before you launch. If your fighters can get close enough before getting spotted, you can enjoy the fireworks. If not, all you've risked is 70 or 80 fighters, hopefully flown by volunteers who had no navy life insurance.
Yeah I did get box launchers the last time and seeing them on fighters was fantastic. I was planning to make a carrier in the fleet anyway, but mostly as a prevention measure for when the bad guys are actually trying to intercept us.
EDIT:
OK I got some tech and made some changes to the ship.
Royal class Missile Frigate 5 000 tons 397 Crew 974 BP TCS 100 TH 72 EM 300
3000 km/s Armour 4-26 Shields 10-300 Sensors 8/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 40
Maint Life 2.79 Years MSP 244 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 46 5YR 683 Max Repair 160 MSP
Magazine 160
Military Ion MK.II (5) Power 60 Fuel Use 70% Signature 14.4 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range 102.9 billion km (396 days at full power)
Gamma R300/18 Shields (5) Total Fuel Cost 90 Litres per day
Minerva Launcher MK.2 (8) Missile Size 20 Rate of Fire 20000
Missile Fire Control FC217-R50 (70%) (1) Range 217.2m km Resolution 50
Minerva MK.2 (8) Speed: 12 000 km/s End: 416.6m Range: 300.1m km WH: 0 Size: 20 TH: 20 / 12 / 6
Active Search Sensor MR10-R65 (70%) (1) GPS 1040 Range 10.3m km Resolution 65
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Before I proceed I have a question. Initially I had a magazine able to fit 8 more Minervas in the ship but I noticed the launchers also provide magazine capacity. Is that capacity for the second salvo or does it count as the missiles actually IN the launchers from the start?
Anyway, while this is still not entirely finished I'm rather happy (gotta get new engines and missile fire control on it) with how it's turning out. So the main change is I got the box launcher tech, and right before it I got the 0.25 size tech and decided to use it instead. This way with the lvl 3 reload tech for launchers I can actually fire a second salvo before the original drone gets to it's target (reload time is about 5 and a half hours and the drone can go for about 7 assuming target at max range).
Additionally because of the now smaller size I decided to have 8 of the damn things on the ship meaning that one simultaneous salvo shoots out 8 Minerva drones carrying 6 Archangel Missiles each.
Each archangel does 4 damage (enough to damage 2 layers of armor if the wiki is correct) so assuming all of them hit that's 8x6x4=192 damage. A reasonable increase from the original 1x3x4=12 damage.
All I'm going to do now is get all the tech on it up to date and start producing these things. Originally I planned to have only a few of them in a fleet but I think for proper offensive operations I might actually mass produce them to do the bulk of the damage. (They would ofc have to be covered because they're useless if ambushed).
I don't have many plans in terms of upgrading them. Eventually I might put some cloaking on them and reduce the thermal emissions so they can serve as proper hidden hit and run ships, not to mention upgrading the tech in general.
EDIT2:
Allright I'm not sure about the magazine thing so I opted out to just add one anyway. The final build is something like that:
The ship
Royal MK.2 class Missile Frigate 5 500 tons 415 Crew 1245.8 BP TCS 110 TH 64 EM 300
3636 km/s Armour 3-27 Shields 10-300 Sensors 33/11/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 40
Maint Life 2.19 Years MSP 283 AFR 121% IFR 1.7% 1YR 79 5YR 1190 Max Repair 175 MSP
Magazine 321
Military Magneto-Plasma (5) Power 80 Fuel Use 60% Signature 12.8 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range 109.1 billion km (347 days at full power)
Gamma R300/18 Shields (5) Total Fuel Cost 90 Litres per day
Minerva Launcher MK.2 (8) Missile Size 20 Rate of Fire 20000
Missile Fire Control FC326-R50 (70%) (1) Range 326.7m km Resolution 50
Minerva MIRV MK.3 (16) Speed: 16 000 km/s End: 312.5m Range: 320m km WH: 0 Size: 20 TH: 26 / 16 / 8
Active Search Sensor MR10-R65 (70%) (1) GPS 1040 Range 10.3m km Resolution 65
Thermal Sensor TH3-33 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 33 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 33m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The drone
Missile Size: 20 MSP (1 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 1 Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 16000 km/s Endurance: 312 minutes Range: 300.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 18.9085
Second Stage: Archangel MK.2 x6
Second Stage Separation Range: 20 000 000 km
Overall Endurance: 5 hours Overall Range: 330.0m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 80% 3k km/s 25% 5k km/s 16% 10k km/s 8%
Materials Required: 6.25x Tritanium 12.1435x Gallicite Fuel x5000
The missiles
Missile Size: 2 MSP (0.1 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 17
Speed: 32000 km/s Endurance: 16 minutes Range: 30.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.2417
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 544% 3k km/s 170% 5k km/s 108.8% 10k km/s 54.4%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 1.1767x Gallicite Fuel x500
Development Cost for Project: 224RP
That's about it for this ship. Now what I mainly have to do is design a sensor boat that's powerful enough to detect ships at the range of 200-300m km which is the operating range I've decided upon. Than I'll make about 3 of these + a sensor + a jump ship get them to the nearest system where the aliens are at and raid them to see if it was all worth anything.
-
This was a triumph, I'm making a note here huge success.
I managed to blow up a few of the enemy ships from the range of 250m km's and get away unscathed. In the process I found one of their planets in the system next to sol and I'm planning to invade it.
Now I'm planning to make more ships and start an invasion of this planet (after destroying the remaining ships prior to that ofc). However there is one thing I'm not entirely sure about.
I have 3 brigades, two of them are mobile infantry brigades and one of them is an assault infantry brigade. So far all understandable. What I'm not entirely sure on is the troop module capacity.
I know one module can hold a battalion (and 5 of them are needed for engineer battalions). Now do brigade headquarters count? What I mean is, if I want to carry a whole brigade on one ship (however dangerous this may be) do I need 4 troop carrying modules or 5 because of the HQ?
Additionally how many company drop modules would I need for that? Can the HQ stay on the ship and still serve or does it need to make the drop with the rest of the soldiers?
-
HQ's (both Brigade and Division) are battalion sized thus need a single troop module.
Drop Modules are vary different from Troop Transport Modules. IIRC they are adiquitely discribed in the wiki. But a quick answer is that company drop modules are only useful to Marine Companies.
For subunits to recieve the HQ bonus the assigned HQ must be on the same colony.
-
Time-on-target is the one proven way to break any AAM or PD defense . Design 5 missiles with slightly different speed (around 1k difference for size 5 works) and do the math.
It doesn't matter if they are spoilers or NPRs , 500 missiles in 10 or 20 salvoes will blow them to smithereens.
-
Ok while this is going on (slightly worse now as the aliens got kind of annoyed with me blowing up their ships) I have a few more questions.
1. Thermal signature, is it counted on a ship by ship basis or does it sum up the signature for a whole TG? so 10 ships with a signature of 69 are still only showing as 69 or do they show up as 690?
2. PDC's. I've built a pretty hefty PDC on Earth and one around my colony cause they were demanding protection. The issue is I didn't have missiles at the colony when I built it (I have them now) and I accidentally left a fuel tank on the pdc while I was constructing it. This means that I constantly get the "out of fuel" message for both of them and additionally none of them want to load up on missiles.
I can't figure out how to fix that since they can't take orders and I don't notice any orders. I tried refitting them into their exact design but as the cost of that is 0 I constantly got the "dividing by 0" message.
Any help with that?
-
Ok while this is going on (slightly worse now as the aliens got kind of annoyed with me blowing up their ships) I have a few more questions.
1. Thermal signature, is it counted on a ship by ship basis or does it sum up the signature for a whole TG? so 10 ships with a signature of 69 are still only showing as 69 or do they show up as 690?
2. PDC's. I've built a pretty hefty PDC on Earth and one around my colony cause they were demanding protection. The issue is I didn't have missiles at the colony when I built it (I have them now) and I accidentally left a fuel tank on the pdc while I was constructing it. This means that I constantly get the "out of fuel" message for both of them and additionally none of them want to load up on missiles.
I can't figure out how to fix that since they can't take orders and I don't notice any orders. I tried refitting them into their exact design but as the cost of that is 0 I constantly got the "dividing by 0" message.
Any help with that?
Change the design of the PDC by unlocking it and removing the fuel tanks then locking the design again.
Then go to the ship/pdc listing screen and click on each PDC one at a time - this forces the new design onto the existing PDC.
-
Ok while this is going on (slightly worse now as the aliens got kind of annoyed with me blowing up their ships) I have a few more questions.
1. Thermal signature, is it counted on a ship by ship basis or does it sum up the signature for a whole TG? so 10 ships with a signature of 69 are still only showing as 69 or do they show up as 690?
It's per-ship, so they would see ten strength 69 contacts.
Also for the PDCs, I'm pretty sure you could use the individual ships window to transfer fuel and ordnance to them manually without unlocking the design in SM mode
-
Thanks for the answers I'll check out the way without using SM first and than if that doesn't work I'll try the SM way.
On a more spoilery note:
It turns out the first aliens I met were in fact NOT precursors. This explains the fact they were not so far ahead of me and now I'm actually kicking their ass wherever I meet them. Still not entirely sure why they're in completely unrelated systems but hey, their colonies have a lot of minerals on them.
I know that mainly because now I have in fact met precursors. And they're scary, ships going 8,5k km/s despite being over 12k tonnes big and size 4 missiles going 35k km/s are no joke. I managed to win only because of the overwhelming numbers of AMM ships and Royal's that I had. Still had to use AMM missiles to blow the last ship out from the sky, it was a fun fight.
Since my encounter with spoilers I had an idea roaming around my head and since I didn't have a chance to check it out yet I've decided to ask you. You see my ships have relatively low thermal emissions compared to everything I've met so far and they seem to go relatively undetected having a big advantage on the front of passive sensors. The only time I get detected is when I use active sensors to lock onto targets.
Because of that I started thinking of ways to lock onto targets without the use of active sensors, the most obvious way seemed to be to set up a waypoint on an enemy and than sending Minervas there. All seems fine up until the missiles actually get there, than they just kind of hang around until their fuel runs out and self destruct.
So I thought of something else. What if I used a drone to carry two mines to the spot, one with an active sensor on board and one (or multiple) with missiles on. Would they automatically lock onto targets in the range of the sensor or would they still just hang around doing nothing?
It seems like a good way to blow up ships without turning on the active sensors. I actually have proper mines prepped up and launchers too, however I can't seem to find any targets to test the theory on...
-
Missiles require onboard sensors or a fire control to lock onto targets.
So, as neat as the idea of dropping an active sensor buoy to direct a neighbor mine's submunitions is, it wouldn't work.
-
So in this situation having thermal sensors on your missiles would have caused them to see the targets and lock on.
-
So no active sensor buoy but instead a buoy with missiles equipped with thermal sensors would work?
Gotta test that out tomorrow.
-
Or you can put a thermal sensor on the missile itself. This also helps missiles re-target in an overkill situation which reduces wasted missiles.