Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: plasticpanzers on December 30, 2015, 07:47:01 PM
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Has anyone modded the abilty to make mines for mining jump points and can you construct working missile buoys
that can be set on jump points to fire automatically on hostile ships coming thru?
whoops, sorry in wrong place...
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Yes, yes you can.
You will need to layer the defenses because the first ship through will trigger the entire minefield.
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great! can anybody point me in the direction of how to do so for either? thanks!
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Mines are designed like missiles. You'll want sensors so they can actually see what they are attempting to blow up. Add missiles or beam weapons. Add a reactor for a beam setup. Build a mine layer. Deploy. Then move out 5-10m km and deploy another shell. Repeat as needed.
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Once oyu have a ship it can be a little annoying deploying a field (due to the the way it works)
My advice, if you are doing a mine launcher. Use a reduced size launcher, and trawl your ship in a direction (perhaps towards another jump point, or in an orbit around the current jump point). If done right and the reload rate is slow enough, you'll end up spreading out the field well enough that you don't have to worry so much about the whole thing going at once.
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A mine is just a multi-stage missile with on-board guidance that is launched without a target. The mine will then quietly wait while for a target to enter sensor range at which point the 2nd stage missiles activate and home in on the Mine target's location.
Basic design:
1) Design your 2nd stage. (Short range, high-accuracy, small sensor for terminal guidance and re-targeting)
2) Design an engine-less multi-stage missile as your mine. (Large target acquisition sensor, multiple 2nd stage payload missiles, proper separation range)
Your mine doesn't have to be engine-less, but the mine will immediately burn all available on-board fuel so unless you plan on dual-use with self-guided offensive launches you might as well skip the engine and fuel to save space.
Technically you don't have to use a layered defense. If the mines were laid as multiple salvos then the 2nd stage missiles can re-target with onboard sensors. The problem with not using a layered defense is that a lost NPR gravsurvey craft wandering through first will triggers everything without any supplemental targets in sight. That might not be a problem if your mines are only an early-warning/survey-extermination system, could be a big problem if are trying to stop an anticipated invasion fleet.
As an example here is the last mine I designed (Magneto-Plasma drive era)
S2 Door Prize
Missile Size: 2 MSP (0.1 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 12
Speed: 26600 km/s Engine Endurance: 2 minutes Range: 2.8m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.0768 Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 55 Maximum Range vs 2750 ton object (or larger): 60 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 1.8479
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 319.2% 3k km/s 96% 5k km/s 63.8% 10k km/s 31.9%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.0459x Boronide 0.0768x Uridium 0.6713x Gallicite Fuel x22.5
Development Cost for Project: 185RP
S7 Static Mine
Missile Size: 7 MSP (0.35 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s Engine Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 0.0m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.5216 Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 20 Maximum Range vs 1000 ton object (or larger): 250 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 6.3785
Second Stage: S2 Door Prize x3
Second Stage Separation Range: 250 000 km
Overall Endurance: 2 minutes Overall Range: 2.9m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 0% 10k km/s 0%
Materials Required: 3x Tritanium 0.4509x Boronide 0.752x Uridium 2.0139x Gallicite Fuel x66
Development Cost for Project: 638RP
My usual mine deployment procedure is to use the 'move to' order followed by multiple 'launch missiles at' orders with only mines assigned to launch tubes.
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Thank you Sublight, I have had trouble figuring mines out too and your explanation helped me out.
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I am having trouble deploying mines. If i launch them with the Combat overview they will immediately deploy the secondary payload at nothing. I have tried deleting the way point both before and after launch as suggested but they still do this. I have also tried using the "Launch missiles at" order but they do not deploy. If i try and use the missile launch button I get a popup about recent transits. I have gotten it to work by jumping the minelayer across the JP and back again resetting the jump shock flag(?) but the error returns on the next salvo. What am I doing wrong?
Missile Size: 12 Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s Engine Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 0.0m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.808 Sensitivity Modifier: 80%
Resolution: 50 Maximum Range vs 2500 ton object (or larger): 450 000 km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.4584 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 458 400 km
Cost Per Missile: 10.8232
Second Stage: SMM-1 "Barracuda" x3
Second Stage Separation Range: 150 000 km
Overall Endurance: 2 minutes Overall Range: 1.9m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 0% 10k km/s 0%
Materials Required: 6.75x Tritanium 0.7596x Boronide 1.2664x Uridium 2.0472x Gallicite Fuel x75
Development Cost for Project: 1082RP
Vanguard class Minelayer 14 650 tons 515 Crew 2489.5 BP TCS 293 TH 276 EM 0
1255 km/s Armour 7-53 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 28 PPV 120
Maint Life 7 Years MSP 1912 AFR 95% IFR 1.3% 1YR 68 5YR 1024 Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 552
General Electric MPD-184M (2) Power 184 Fuel Use 102.11% Signature 138 Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 500 000 Litres Range 6.0 billion km (55 days at full power)
Oliver Weapon Systems S12 Launcher (10) Missile Size 12 Rate of Fire 75
Raytheon AMFC23-Z1 (1) Range 23.0m km Resolution 1
CM-1 "Doberman" (46) Speed: 0 km/s End: 0m Range: 0.1m km WH: 0 Size: 12 TH: 0/0/0
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
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Once oyu have a ship it can be a little annoying deploying a field (due to the the way it works)
My advice, if you are doing a mine launcher. Use a reduced size launcher, and trawl your ship in a direction (perhaps towards another jump point, or in an orbit around the current jump point). If done right and the reload rate is slow enough, you'll end up spreading out the field well enough that you don't have to worry so much about the whole thing going at once.
How would this look in the command window? Just transit to point, and set missiles to auto fire from another window?
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You have to set up waypoints around the warp point, last few minefields I made I had up to 12+ waypoints set up. Then you load the mines into the missile launchers and give the ship(s) the orders:
Move to WPx
Launch Missiles at WPx
Move to WPy
(delay by your launch recycle time) Launch Missiles at WPy
Move to WPz
(delay by your launch recyle time) Launch Missiles at WPz
I had 4 ships involved in the operation and while it took a bit of time to set up each ships orders and the way points the field was deployed "automatically" without any further intervention when I advanced the turn by 30 min.
If you have two sets of missile launchers unload the unused one, I wasted some counter missiles while learning this.
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Has anybody had success with mines in deep space encounters? If you have a slower fleet that is running away from a faster one, it seems to be an exploit of the AI, but won't they generally head straight in on a predictable path?
Can missiles launched by mines home in directed by a missile that has a dedicated sensor head? Might require a 3-stage process, a missile to get the mines in position, the mine itself that has the submunitions, and some of the bases have larger sensors to get the missiles close to their target while the submunition wave includes some missiles with sensor heads.
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Has anybody had success with mines in deep space encounters? If you have a slower fleet that is running away from a faster one, it seems to be an exploit of the AI, but won't they generally head straight in on a predictable path?
Yes. In one of my games just before a DB update, the only kills were from my scout-frigates and minelayers dropping mines in front of a big battlegroup that were chasing them.
Can missiles launched by mines home in directed by a missile that has a dedicated sensor head? Might require a 3-stage process, a missile to get the mines in position, the mine itself that has the submunitions, and some of the bases have larger sensors to get the missiles close to their target while the submunition wave includes some missiles with sensor heads.
Possibly. If you create a missile that drops a mine 1m km from the target and the sub-munitions don't fire until 600k km, then it may work. Although it is equally as likely that the mine will not retarget when enemies come into range and make it a failure.
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I am having trouble deploying mines. If i launch them with the Combat overview they will immediately deploy the secondary payload at nothing. I have tried deleting the way point both before and after launch as suggested but they still do this. I have also tried using the "Launch missiles at" order but they do not deploy. If i try and use the missile launch button I get a popup about recent transits. I have gotten it to work by jumping the minelayer across the JP and back again resetting the jump shock flag(?) but the error returns on the next salvo. What am I doing wrong?
I'm curious about this, as I think I've seen the same thing.
If I drop one of my bouys, either on a JP or on a WP, and then advance 5 sec at a time, I see the secondary payload appear to launch. Those short range missiles last a few 5 sec impulses then die off. However, the mine does remain and stay deployed. I may be mistaken, but I think that if the payload had actually fired, then the mine itself would disappear, right? So, while I see the payload appear to fire off, it then proceeds as if this has not happened. Haven't played for enough for any enemies to stumble along and see what happens next.
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Post your mine design here.
If your first stage has no engine and fuel then it's considered a buoy, it will be dropped exactly where the launching ship is and will wait around with it's sensors on looking around, if it detects something it will launch the second stage at it. That second stage should have a sensor on it too but I don't think that's actually required, but I could be wrong, the first stage might vanish the second it launches it's payload. (which makes no sense as it should stick around long enough to light it's target to destruction).
If your first stage has engines and fuel then it's not a bouy, it will travel to a waypoint it's aimed at, or any other target, when it reaches that target or runs out of fuel it will fire it's secondary. Which means if your secondary payload is the warhead it'll be wasted.
If you want to long range launch mines you'll need 3 stages, a Payload missile to hit the target, a secondary bouy with sensors to look for targets, and a tertiary stage which carrys the bouy to the waypoint.
That stage will probably be quite large unless you make the mines very small, In my opinion since mines don't require fuel or an engine, and you can lay carefully with large slow reloading launchers then it makes sense to make them quite large, potentially able to mission kill a ship with a single hit. Or at least carry enough standard missiles to cause a decent alpha strike.
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I think the most efficient way to lay mines is to use fighters or LACs with box launchers.
You can either use 3-stage mines, or deploy them as buoys. And you can make fairly big mines that you can nonetheless deploy relatively rapidly.
I am a bit torn about the best size for mines. The larger the mine, the better sensors you can have, the longer the range it can engage at. But the larger it is, the more easily it can be detected in turn, and potentially taken out before it can launch.
So what range do mines need? Their most notable use is as warp point interdiction. So they need enough range to cover against the enemy jump engine range, and possibly a TL up from that.
But if you are using fighters to deploy or 3-stage mines, you can deploy them in unexpected places, in the path of an expected enemy movement. And for that you need a much larger range.
I could see mines being used as a forward defense of a warp point, where they are used to thicken the medium ranged firepower of the defense, before beam range. The theory being that the defense will use point defense against long ranged bombardment, will duck out through the warp point if there is a truly large missile wave, trusting to fighters staying behind on the warp point to whittle through the loitering missiles, while the mines make it hazardous for the attackers to move in while the defending fleet is on the other side of the warp point.
Actually, if defenders continually cycle part of their fleet through the warp point, they are likely to cause long range missile bombardments to lose lock outside of the range of their onboard sensors. They still go to their target's last location, but if that was offset from the warp point, the myopic sensors on the missiles might not be able to reacquire.
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I am a bit torn about the best size for mines. The larger the mine, the better sensors you can have, the longer the range it can engage at. But the larger it is, the more easily it can be detected in turn, and potentially taken out before it can launch.
20 is a good size for a light mine. 50 or so is the better for more standard mines. You can get way with having a small mine only firing one missile, like the CAPTOR mine. Even the largest missile you could make is still the size of a very small fighter.
So what range do mines need? Their most notable use is as warp point interdiction. So they need enough range to cover against the enemy jump engine range, and possibly a TL up from that.
Warp point defense, you only need a couple million or so as the best way to use them is to seed a ring around the point instead of all directly on it. For a general purpose mine you can use anywhere, 30 million to 50 million. For system defense (where you want to mine a whole system for whatever reason) you would really want 120 million+.
I could see mines being used as a forward defense of a warp point, where they are used to thicken the medium ranged firepower of the defense, before beam range. The theory being that the defense will use point defense against long ranged bombardment, will duck out through the warp point if there is a truly large missile wave, trusting to fighters staying behind on the warp point to whittle through the loitering missiles, while the mines make it hazardous for the attackers to move in while the defending fleet is on the other side of the warp point.
I use them in a few ways. 1) To detect enemies and defend warp points so I don't have to keep ships out by the point. 2) Seed a contested or owned system to protect against mass invasion fleets. 3) A defensive system for my scout ships. 4) Infiltrate an enemy system or travel route and lay mines to mess with them.
Actually, if defenders continually cycle part of their fleet through the warp point, they are likely to cause long range missile bombardments to lose lock outside of the range of their onboard sensors. They still go to their target's last location, but if that was offset from the warp point, the myopic sensors on the missiles might not be able to reacquire.
My dedicated mine missiles/torpedoes usually have a sensor range of 1 million or so. But the enemies I usually find use 15k ton ships as a standard so I can afford to increase the sensor resolution to 200-300 to keep the sensor small. Remember that mines are meant to fire without the aid of support, so they need to be designed to handle those scenarios.
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Do you know of any campaign write ups where mines were used? I am interested to see accounts of how they were used in practice, and what it takes to get them to be effective.
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Do you know of any campaign write ups where mines were used? I am interested to see accounts of how they were used in practice, and what it takes to get them to be effective.
I might have one circa version 4 or 5ish. I know I've used them before.
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I looked, but I didn't see any accounts of the mines being deployed or used, Erik. Which story has them being used?
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I looked, but I didn't see any accounts of the mines being deployed or used, Erik. Which story has them being used?
I might not have written it up. From what I recall, the mines all detonated on the first ship to come through.
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So now I am wondering about good ways to use mines that won't have them all get used up on a single probe ship.
I wonder if EM sensor equipped mines are the route. Not thermal, but something designed to home in on active sensors. Which means they would be quiescent the first 30 seconds of an enemy transit, because they won't have active sensors up.
Have enough mines to kill a probe ship, or active defenders, and a bunch of decoy drones that are nothing but active sensors and armor to soak point defense missiles.
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I once used mines with thermal sensors, because I thought they would be less likely to be shot down before they could fire. The problem was, they were triggered by friendly aliens, starting a war I didn't want. I think active sensors are the way to go, because they only fire at enemies.
There was a thread a few years ago by somebody who used a 3-stage system to deploy mines in the middle of system-wide combats. The mine with its submunitions was deployed by a large first stage from PDCs on Earth. He'd launch from Earth at waypoints on the enemy fleet's route, and the mines would do their work. I've never tried it. The only drawback I think would be the research cost -- you'd have to re-research all three stages for any upgrade in any stage.
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Putting thermal sensors on the warheads is a good way of avoiding overkill, you might still get every mine launching at one ship, but once that's destroyed the remainders will retarget anything in range. If you don't put thermals on the sensor stage then you shouldn't get friendly fire incidents. Unless some unlucky NPR wanders into a warp point assault or something.
Theres some other ways to avoid mine overkill. Laying mines with alternating sensor range, or missile speed is one idea, or maybe having each mine launch different submunitions.
You could even make multistage mines where after being triggered half the mine jumps out as warhead stages following the enemy, and the other half of the mine is an entirely new mine.
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Putting thermal sensors on the warheads is a good way of avoiding overkill, you might still get every mine launching at one ship, but once that's destroyed the remainders will retarget anything in range.
Yes, but the same applies to active sensors, so that would be my choice.
Also, I would think you always want the same sensor on the submunition that you have on the mine itself. If the mine's sensor is more powerful, it might launch submunitions that cannot see the target and are wasted.
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I'm no expert, but just spreading them out a bit should work I think. Especially if you have some idea about likely destinations like towards another jump point.
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If you have active sensor buoys, can they pick up technology info from ships that transit? Is the chance of getting information proportional to time spent under active sensors, or number of active sensors?
Cause that would be a huge reason to have a bunch of sensor buoys near an unpleasant neighbor. It would probably be worth more, long term, than a bunch of mines killing a random ship.