Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: se5a on December 04, 2012, 05:27:17 PM
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first game here,
I've got mass drivers on a couple of high mineral comets and one on earth, I've set the mass drivers to target earth.
when I enabled show packets on the system map they're there next to where I'm sending from, one for example says 42tons distance 4. 07b ETA: 4:19:59 9738km/s
another is at 35ton 597m eta 0:14:09 11751
the eta of one of these appears to be increasing too. . .
I did have a third, but I stopped the mass driver from sending by selecting nothing for the target, and the packet disappeared completely
the destination (earth) shows nothing in the massdriver column in mining/maintenance, yet the sending bodes do show a neg number, with nothing in the stockpile, yet I only see the one packet after several months.
is this normal?
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Those velocities sound normal.
Increasing ETA does not seem normal.
Do you see the packets move across the solar system?
I do know that the mass driver column of the receiving point zeros out from time to time. Check it out right after a packet arrives. I would really like to see a running tally of packets received for the year rather than to have it zero out.
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ok now I feel a little silly, I'm guessing they send the packets every 30 days, which is what I was hitting each time. . . so the new packet was always in the same place as the old one. . . incrementing in 5 day increments I see them moving.
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ok some more noob questions:
is there a way to automate picking up and delivering minerals to where you want with ships, other than shipping mass drivers around?
ditto mass drivers themselves and auto-mines.
all these little orders are getting rather tedious, I did find the pickup and deliver default orders for automated mines, however these don't seem to work, my cargo ships have enough space for exactly one mine each currently, with these orders set they will load an auto-mine, then sit there complaining that they can no longer load auto-mines without the deliver order getting triggered.
mass drivers are a pain too if you've got a ship or task group which can take more than one, since you have to specify it to only load one, also I'm scared I'm going to accidentally take the last one of my homeworld.
is there a way to encourage more scientists? I've got four now, and though I've not yet hit the limit on research labs I've had one die on me and one that came in had bonuses in an area I'm not yet interested in.
is there a way to reduce the amount of accidents my administrators/scientists/offices seem to keep having?
how long before I really need to start worrying about arming myself? I've finally got jump tech and am exploring immediate neighboring systems, but I've not yet got any warships, or missiles.
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If you set reserve levels at your colonies, you can use the load/unload orders and cycle them.
I'm pretty sure there's a warning if you try to take the last mass driver, but I'm not sure.
Scientists come like all other officers from the academy, so building more academies is the only direct control you have over it.
Accidents and health are beyond your control.
Luck of the draw, though I would at least set up some missile defense for your homeworld at the bare minimum.
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I can confirm there is a warning when you try to take the last mass driver off of a planet set to receive packets from other planets. I had an enterprising civvie captain try to make a profit on moving mass drivers by taking the last one from one of my planets that had incoming packets. Thankfully, facility security became suspicious of his contract for the mass driver, which he had apparently forged in crayon, and the colony was saved.
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I can confirm there is a warning when you try to take the last mass driver off of a planet set to receive packets from other planets. I had an enterprising civvie captain try to make a profit on moving mass drivers by taking the last one from one of my planets that had incoming packets. Thankfully, facility security became suspicious of his contract for the mass driver, which he had apparently forged in crayon, and the colony was saved.
You have not truly played Aurora to its fullest until you've dropped a mineral packet on your homeworld.
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cool thanks guys.
so I had a survey ship with servey next 5 bodys as default order, but because all the inner bodies had been surveyed it often ran out of fuel before it got back, I stuck a refuling ship on refuel target, move earth load fuel, then checked the cycle orders box.
nekminit I'm getting
"Error in CycleOrders
Error 3421 was generated by DAO. field" when I incremented time.
had to kill the process as the error just keeped popping up nomatter how many times I clicked ok.
so I killed it, ran again and went straight to task groups and to the refuel tg to see if I can kill the order.
but I'm now getting
"Error in populate moves
error 381 was generated by Aurora
Invalid property array index.
the orders box is filled up with the three orders over and over.
it's looking liek this game is fubur, am I going to have to start over?
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cool thanks guys.
so I had a survey ship with servey next 5 bodys as default order, but because all the inner bodies had been surveyed it often ran out of fuel before it got back, I stuck a refuling ship on refuel target, move earth load fuel, then checked the cycle orders box.
nekminit I'm getting
"Error in CycleOrders
Error 3421 was generated by DAO. field" when I incremented time.
had to kill the process as the error just keeped popping up nomatter how many times I clicked ok.
so I killed it, ran again and went straight to task groups and to the refuel tg to see if I can kill the order.
but I'm now getting
"Error in populate moves
error 381 was generated by Aurora
Invalid property array index.
the orders box is filled up with the three orders over and over.
it's looking liek this game is fubur, am I going to have to start over?
Try using Remove All to get rid of the orders.
Steve
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That's the thing, I can't.
As soon as I open that task group in the task group window the error pops up. (and stops me doing *anything* in the TG window).
another question that came to mind:
is it worth sending geo teams to planets that geo ships don't find anything on?
I sent a team to Mars which my geo ships said had no minerals, the team seems to be happily upskilling, but not finding anything.
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That's the thing, I can't.
As soon as I open that task group in the task group window the error pops up. (and stops me doing *anything* in the TG window).
another question that came to mind:
is it worth sending geo teams to planets that geo ships don't find anything on?
I sent a team to Mars which my geo ships said had no minerals, the team seems to be happily upskilling, but not finding anything.
I don't believe so. I think the survey team just refines or augments the geo ship's survey.
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another question that came to mind:
is it worth sending geo teams to planets that geo ships don't find anything on?
I sent a team to Mars which my geo ships said had no minerals, the team seems to be happily upskilling, but not finding anything.
On the Economic Summary tab, left column, bottom. There is an indicator whether or not a geo-survey has been done. This is the survey by a team, not ship. If that says "Completed" then there are no more minerals to find. Otherwise, drop a team and let them work.
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On the Economic Summary tab, left column, bottom. There is an indicator whether or not a geo-survey has been done. This is the survey by a team, not ship. If that says "Completed" then there are no more minerals to find. Otherwise, drop a team and let them work.
Ah! Seen!
thanks.
I managed to *fix my broken TG by opening the ships window, and deleting the ships in the task group.
ok so now some questions on missiles, there's some stuff on the wiki and I've read posts and stuff on the forum, but what speeds and ranges should I be aiming for at this point in the game?
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but what speeds and ranges should I be aiming for at this point in the game?/quote]
I try and get around 100 million Km range with speeds in the 20,000 kms range for both early ASMs and AMMs. Gives you a bit of redundancy with your ordinance- throwing AMMs at the target as a last ditch or FC overwhelming tactic. Maybe some savings on sensors too? Anyway, keep ramping your AMMs to as fast as you can get them using Max engine multiplier techs. Oh and don't forget a bit of agility for both kinds of ordinance.
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himn ok, my initial designs might be slow and a tad over ranged.
is there a way to see details on a component that you've designed and researched?
also, the civis do not seem to be building ships, here's a cargo design I've had floating around for a while now I can't see anything there that would stop them building it, it's 678 BP and the one and only freightline has 20000 wealth:
Rhiddry - II class Cargo Ship 47,600 tons 235 Crew 678 BP TCS 952 TH 1000 EM 0
1050 km/s Armour 1-116 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 9 Max Repair 31. 25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 5 months Spare Berths 1
Cargo 25000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 10
125 EP Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine (8) Power 125 Fuel Use 8. 84% Signature 125 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 700,000 Litres Range 29. 9 billion km (329 days at full power)
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
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I think as of the most recent versions, civilian shipping uses vessels of their own design, seperate from any freighters or what not that you might design, I've also seen them vary between different shipping companies.
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civilians design their own ships now, but you still have to have something for them to ship (eg. colonists to an infrastructure'd colony or infrastructure to some poor dying civilians). If you do, then it's just a matter of waiting.
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I've had contracts for auto-mines to go to comets for a couple of years now, but as yet still nothing.
I've also set Mars and Luna as colony too, though neither of them have anything useful on them. (they're the only two bodies in the system that I can colonise)
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I've had contracts for auto-mines to go to comets for a couple of years now, but as yet still nothing.
I've also set Mars and Luna as colony too, though neither of them have anything useful on them. (they're the only two bodies in the system that I can colonise)
To get the civilians started, you have to give em a kick in the butt. Drop a bit of infrastructure on the target planets and the civvy lines will start producing ships and moving goods. As far as contracting them, I've never been able to get that working. I always move my own drivers/mines/factorys/what-have-yous -- its good to keep at least a small cargo line for yourself and not completely rely on the civs.
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Ok, how do I un-picket ie get a ship moving at its normal speed after giving it a picket order.
Nevermind, found it, right under my nose.
yeah once I put some industry on mars, Dale freight started launching ships.
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Keep in mind that your increment length affects civilian performance. They only do at most one trade run per increment. I've found civilian shipping is essentially worthless when running in 30-day increments, as they don't make enough money to replace ships, and don't contribute much to my economy. They make lots of profit on 1-day increments, and can expand quickly, but more ships slows turn processing, and running 30 1-day increments is already slower than running 1 30-day increment. And with civvie's not giving equal weight to all contracts (or even prioritizing contracts over trade location run), some contracts never get filled. Because of these, I've been kind of turned off civilian shipping and have been handling it myself. Honestly, I don't see a point in making the mechanism explicit. It seems like something that could be abstracted, where it could be more effective without impacting game performance.
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I think to best get civs involved, 8 hour turns are best.That's the minimum turn length in which they will calculate trade runs, IIRC. So running 8 hr increments will let the civs impact your economy to the fullest.
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To get the civilians started, you have to give em a kick in the butt. Drop a bit of infrastructure on the target planets and the civvy lines will start producing ships and moving goods. As far as contracting them, I've never been able to get that working. I always move my own drivers/mines/factorys/what-have-yous -- its good to keep at least a small cargo line for yourself and not completely rely on the civs.
It's worth getting the hang of Strych. Not much to it. Just make sure you set the supply check box for where the mines, mass drivers, whatever will be coming from and the demand check box for where you want it delivered and the civvies will start moving it.
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Mine seem to be carrying out contracts.
it's a shame the interface is so unresponsive while running the turns.
is there a reason they can't do minerals? that might help them by not doing so many empty return trips.
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Ok, slowly getting the hang of designing missiles.
from my experiments, here's what I've found so far:
more speed = better hit chance
for any speed/weight ratio, increasing the agility and decreasing the fuel to stay at the same weight gains you better hit chance [bold]up to a specific point[\bold].
playing around with that fuel/ag rating to find this CTH ceiling will get you the best range for a given speed/weight.
I need to design and research a few more engines so I can mess with the speed vs weight ratio and see how that affects things.
so far I've had a geo ship attacked and destroyed by what I suspect was a fighter. it had a beam weapon and had a speed of 10,000 so it was damn fast. had a thermal sig of 160 iirc.
is there somewhere to see this info again?
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The intelligence window will show you everything you know about alien ship classes, including encountered weaponry.
Though, with what you've said I have a hunch, hehe
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himnn, meson with a range of 60,000
nasty.
if it's only giving me info on thermal, does that mean that it was not detected on the grav sensors?
I have got a little bit of thermal sensor research up my sleeve, but not yet designed a sensor for it.
wish I had a slightly more even team of scientists. ah well.
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Yup, I know exactly what that is.
Did your geosurvey ship even have an active sensor?
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actually good point. no no it didn't have an active. got confused between my geo survey and grav survey ships for a bit. I put some active sensors on my grav survey ships since they're bumming around potential JPs and classed as mil anyway.
is there somewhere to re-name missile designs after you've designed them?
or would I have to re-design the same missile and re-research it.
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actually good point. no no it didn't have an active. got confused between my geo survey and grav survey ships for a bit. I put some active sensors on my grav survey ships since they're bumming around potential JPs and classed as mil anyway.
is there somewhere to re-name missile designs after you've designed them?
or would I have to re-design the same missile and re-research it.
You can rename component designs on the technology overview screen. (The one that lists all of your previously researched racial components)
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You can rename component designs on the technology overview screen. (The one that lists all of your previously researched racial components)
Ctrl-F7.
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ah cool/me gets OCD on his missile and sensor naming scheme
is there a hotkey to disable auto turns?
it can get a pain to un-click it once it starts grunting a bit on the turns.
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Ctrl-F8
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Ah brilliant.
thanks.
had my first battle with a swarm of these nasty buggers.
I think I managed to hit one of them.
my 4 missile PD corvettes and two missile & Sensor Frigates got blown to smithereens.
I'm not going to be able to rescue the survivors.
despite my active sensor frigates looking, the buggers got in close and opened fire before I knew what was happening (I think I didn't have the ships set to autofire either, and it didn't pause in time for me turn stuff on)
I did detect them before I got hit, but I don't know what range.
managed to get a cross section on them of 16, est. tonnage 800
I think the one hit I did get was from one of my PD corvettes with it's single size 1 launcher loaded with an S1 Needle class LR PD Missile which has a speed of 21600 km/s and a range of 15.7m km
chance to hit was 48%
it did 1 damage, but shortly thereafter there was a strength 1 neuclear detonation. not sure what that was from, it was in the location of the little buggers but other than the previous hit, which was a single point of damage and a couple of lines of notices back, I'm not sure. I got no notice of having killed one, and there was no wreck afterwards.
a handful of my medium range S1 Sliver class PD missiles were fired but I never even got a "Chance to hit" intercept notice for any of them. it seems none of my short range Pin class were ever fired.
I might try design a stage to hold seven PD missiles for my regular size 7 AS missile launchers to fire.
see how those hold out.
With such a pod, if it's got 0 range, will it get fired? or do I need to put an engine on it so it will get out the door?
my little corvettes did ok I guess, till the sensor frigates went down, then they were blind.
might try a laser turret next time too. see how that holds up.
also maybe some training.
they attacked further out which makes me think they saw me because of my active sensors. humn...
maybe if I sneek a ship in with sensors off they won't see it and I'll manage to get the survivors.
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OMG I just found out how much more complicated maintenance and repair is than I previously thought.
can somone explain tracking-speed and what it does for turrets and FC as far as hitting things go?
I tried to design a turret with a half size laser, bug got a divide by zero error, do fighters need turrets?
in a fit of boredom I savescummed and sent my fleet in to attack(or rather get attacked) by the swarm.
I had some beam escorts mixed in with the missile escorts as well as two PD cruisers.
as before, my smaller ships seemed to do much better. most beam weapons were single 10mm lasers on turrets. I didn't see the handfull 20mm lasers firing at all. the little beam escorts have 1x20mm and 3x10mm laser turrets tied to a single fire control. but like I said, I never saw the 20mm fire. the 10mms fired and hit fairly often though.
here's another question: does having a duel, tri or quad laser just increase the damage or do you get that many more chances at hitting the target?
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How tracking speed works: Take the highest speed between your ship's speed, a turret's tracking speed if any, and the beam fire control speed technology(I think). That's the final tracking speed of the weapon.
Fighters are usually really fast, so giving them turrets does nothing for them.
As far as how tracking speed works for hitting things, you take the lowest of that weapon tracking speed you found above, and the tracking speed of your fire control. Anything moving faster than that speed will be harder and harder to hit until it's downright impossible.
Did the event log have anything to say about the 20mm lasers? If the target's speed is much higher than the final tracking speed it can become impossible to hit, so your crew don't bother firing. What were the stats on those?
Multi-gun turrets get discounts on size, with the tradeoff that they still get pretty honking big. And it's been a while since I've done beam combat but I think the weapons on a turret share the same to-hit roll. Might be wrong.
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I think I follow that...
is the ships speed added to the tracking speed of the weapon/turret to get the weapon tracking speed?
does the ship speed only affect it if it's un-turreted?
is the tohit worked out the same way in combat as missiles? ie (tracking speed/targetspeed) * crew bonus
is there a way to see the tracking speed of a turret once it's designed? the tech report window does not have this info.
I thought the 20cm lasers had the same tracking speed as the 10s but.... where can I find it?
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If a weapon is turreted, it's tracking speed is that of the turret and totally ignores the speed of the ship.
If a weapon is unturreted it's tracking speed is the higher of the ships speed or the racial tracking speed tech you have researched.
The tracking speed actually used when firing is then the lower of the weapon's tracking speed and the beam firecontrol's tracking speed.
For the hit chance, tracking speed is used only to give a penalty to hit if it is less than the targets speed. There is no bonus to hit if it is higher than the targets speed. If the target is a missile that you have tracked via active sensors for some time, any penalty can be reduced up to the limit of the 'Max tracking time Vs Missiles' tech.
To see the tracking speed of a turret, the easiest way is to just add one to a class design, the tracking speed is listed on the weapons line in the summary.
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In reference to putting turrets on fighters, it depends on how fast the fighter is. For most fighters they will be fast enough and space at enough of a premium that putting a turret on won't help much. Also please note when designing the fire control you want for your fighter there is a pull down menu on the bottom of the beam fire control design screen. You can switch between standard fire control and one for fighters specifically. Fighter beam fire control gives a base x4 tracking speed bonus without increasing the size of the fire control.
Best advice I can give is to compare how big the fighter will be with and without the turret. In general if my fighters speed is at least 1/2 as fast as the turret tracking speed then putting a turret on isn't worth the speed penalty. ie turret tracking speed 20,000km/s fighter is going 12,000km/s with the turret or 14,000km/s without. I would probably skip the turret and get the extra speed. (note numbers are just for illustration.)
Good luck on your fighters.
Brian
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If a weapon is unturreted it's tracking speed is the higher of the ships speed or the racial tracking speed tech you have researched.
Is this the 'Fire Control Speed Rating' tech?
is the number it uses here dependent on the attached FC, the tech level at ship design/locked date, or build date, or the level at the date of battle?
Yeah I found the fighter restriction for the fire control Brian, thanks for that.
I've not yet managed to design a turret for a fighter due to the divide by zero error. I read somewhere that it's been around since forever but no fix on it yet...
the event log did not say anything on the 20cm lasers that I could see. they have the exact same tracking speed as the 10cm lasers so I'm still stumped as to why they never fired.
anyone know the missile CtH algorithm? I've realised it's a little more complicated than I thought.
previously I was under the impression that CtH increased linearly with target speed,
I've since realised that this is only if you max out the agility...
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Is this the 'Fire Control Speed Rating' tech?
Yes.
Is the number it uses here dependent on the attached FC, the tech level at ship design/locked date, or build date, or the level at the date of battle?
The weapons tracking speed is not dependant on the attached FC. The FC tracking speed is only ever used if it is lower than the weapons tracking speed when actually taking a shot.
I haven't actually checked if it keeps the tracking speed at the time the design is locked or if it improves for locked designs when you research a higher base tracking speed. I've always worked on the assumption the the former was the case.
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cool, thanks.
I've noticed that the fighter designs I've been building don't actually get locked...
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ick... I accedentaly somehow gave my fleet orders to train while half of them were being overhauled, hten couldn't turn off the training.
read that ships will disable fleet training if they got a conditional order. so used that to cancel the training.
also, gah! is there a way to get it to stop auto turns on specific events? ie. combat?
looks like I've met somone else now.