Aurora 4x

VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Borealis4x on June 11, 2016, 09:14:36 PM

Title: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 11, 2016, 09:14:36 PM
So I decided I want to now try my hand at building PDCs and I want some advise.

1. What type of PDCs do you use? I can think of two, small PDC outposts meant to be easy to transport to a colony and veritable citadels built by self sustaining planets that can build things for themselves that are massive.
2. How specialized should a PDC be? Should you have dedicated missile bases and dedicated hangars and dedicated fortresses to garrison or should a PDC be able to serve as all three
3. How many hangars are too many hangars
4. Is using any weapon other than missiles worth it? Is it possible to give PDCs anti-fighter capability?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: iceball3 on June 11, 2016, 09:51:57 PM
So I decided I want to now try my hand at building PDCs and I want some advise.

1. What type of PDCs do you use? I can think of two, small PDC outposts meant to be easy to transport to a colony and veritable citadels built by self sustaining planets that can build things for themselves that are massive.
2. How specialized should a PDC be? Should you have dedicated missile bases and dedicated hangars and dedicated fortresses to garrison or should a PDC be able to serve as all three
3. How many hangars are too many hangars
4. Is using any weapon other than missiles worth it? Is it possible to give PDCs anti-fighter capability?
1. One cool idea I have is to make sub-500 ton single turreted meson point defense PDCs. The reason for this being that I can mount a beam fire control onto it with the fighter restriction, vastly increasing it's targeting speed, allowing it to engage missiles much faster than your tech level would otherwise permit. Just make sure you design the turret to go as fast as the BFC, and the combined sizes for your set speed don't put the turret over 500 tons.
2. The previous design I just mentioned is probably one of the only PDC designs I can currently think of that helps in particular where specialization is of importance. Otherwise, dumping a bunch of the same stuff in the PDC helps you defend it more easily against invasions using PDC barracks, as you'll have less PDCs to defend.
There might be potential use in specializing in allowing you to construct defenses on a further out outpost more quickly, yeah.
3. Look at the mineral cost of hangars, how much of that mineral you have, and how much building time it'll take to reach any particular amount. Beyond that: As many as you feel like.
4. As mentioned earlier, mesons are the only PDC weapons which fire through atmosphere, but PDC anti-missile defense should stand to be a rather decent means of protecting your planet and the ships stationed there against missile bombardment. You could probably make larger PDCs more prevalent against fighters using slightly larger longer range mesons, and more range-improved BFC.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 11, 2016, 09:59:11 PM
So missiles aren't able to be fire from the planet?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Prince of Space on June 11, 2016, 10:27:01 PM
Mesons are the only beam weapon whose damage isn't reduced by the presence of an atmosphere. A body with a thin or nonexistent atmosphere can effectively mount lasers, in theory. And missiles on PDCs can be used just fine.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 11, 2016, 11:01:43 PM
Do PDCs benefit from having their own active or passive sensors or do the planetary ones fulfill it just fine?

Can PDCs exist without any other infrastructure so I could put a missile/fighter base on a desolate asteroid?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Drgong on June 11, 2016, 11:39:13 PM
I personally like small PDCs instead of one bit one.  But that just me.

You can put them on small bodies, just have to also drop a construction troops to put the pre-built sections together.

Just like any other weapon system, they can use another sensor to use to lock on.

Missiles and Mesons work in places that have atmosphere,   Other systems work fine no matter what.

Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: DIT_grue on June 12, 2016, 01:06:50 AM
Do PDCs benefit from having their own active or passive sensors or do the planetary ones fulfill it just fine?
If you're referring to Deep Space Tracking Stations, remember that those serve as thermal and EM sensors, but NOT actives. So you still need an active sensor somewhere to achieve a target lock.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 12, 2016, 01:37:53 AM
I don't understand deep space tracking systems. All it tells me is what "level" it is, saying nothing about the range it covers.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: iceball3 on June 12, 2016, 02:14:19 AM
I don't understand deep space tracking systems. All it tells me is what "level" it is, saying nothing about the range it covers.
The "Level" is flatly the amount of Deep Space Tracking Stations on a planetary body. What you want to look at is the "Strength" number next to the title of the Deep Space Tracking Station, which says how strongly your DSTS acts as a passive sensor for thermals and EM, equivalent to ship-based systems. Considering that it stacks, and increments in the hundreds, DSTSs are actually extremely powerful compared to shipboard sensors, and can be much better for monitoring points and systems than scoutships if a system body is in the right spot.
Now, for how far a particular "strength" can see sensor contacts, for every single point of sensetivity, the sensor can see a strength 1,000 contact out to 1 million kilometers, with everything being linear, I think.
So a Sensitivity 20 sensor will see a 1,000 strength contact out to 20 million kilometers, a sensitivity 250 sensor would see said contact out to 250 million kilometers instead, etc.
I'm 99% sure that a contact half as large (so 500) will be seen at half the range, and a contact twice the size (2,000) would be seen at double the range, but don't quote me on that one.

If you want an actual view of how far your sensors see things, check out this tab on the system map...
(http://i.imgur.com/Jy7QEfG.png)
When checked off, it traces circles on the map, such that the circles represent the range your sensor see a particular strength signature out to, the strength in particular being the one you've set with the sliders in the Passive Sensor Ranges tab. Do note that such circles may often be bigger or smaller than visible at your current zoom level.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Prince of Space on June 12, 2016, 06:48:29 AM
Regarding infrastructure to support PDCs, they are subject to the morale rules just like ships are. So you may want to put at least a small population on the asteroid with Underground Infrastructure, or arrange for a recreation module to be available, either as part of the PDC itself or on a visiting Circus & Brothel ship that makes the rounds to all the remote PDCs.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 13, 2016, 06:58:26 PM
You think its worhtwhile to put in a max sized launcher so that the PDC can always fire any missile? Granted, the targeting computer would quickly turn obsolete but if its max size as well it'll still serve a good function.

How do box launchers work on PDCs? Do they reload immediately like they are in a hangar?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Herodotus4 on June 13, 2016, 08:55:31 PM
Size 100 launchers reload slowly, unless you want a massive swarm of MIRV warheadsit would be pretty useless.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 13, 2016, 09:13:00 PM
Do they reload slowly even when loaded with smaller missiles? The reason I want them max size is so they can be flexible.

What are peoples opinions on putting bases and sensors in the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt to form a ring of defense? I wish we had range/sensor templates that are going into Aurora C# but oh well.

And people are sure that having a population on these asteroids will make it so they never run out of moral, right? Garrison included or do you need to let them out once and awhile?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: AL on June 13, 2016, 09:44:19 PM
From my memory PDC's don't need a population to sustain their morale. And yeah, missile launchers always take the same amount of time to reload, regardless of whether you fired smaller missiles or the largest that can fit in the tube.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Sheb on June 14, 2016, 03:26:36 AM
As for sensors on the belt, at least for passive, it's probably much easier to have a big, fat stack of deep space tracking stations on Earth.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: MarcAFK on June 14, 2016, 07:45:26 AM
I set up a few in a ring around Jupiters orbit for redundancy, it's mostly an RP thing since tracking stations add power linearly so it's usually better to cram heaps on one body.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on June 14, 2016, 08:19:33 PM
I don't just want tracking stations, I want missile launchers and hangars.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: MarcAFK on June 14, 2016, 09:56:34 PM
My standard tracking base has 1000 tons of maintenance bays, at least 1000 ton hanger for reloading, at least one tracking station, and a few missile launchers.  Generally it's added piecemeal rather than one giant PDC being put down.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Borealis4x on July 06, 2016, 08:57:34 PM
So PDC still need actives as well as deep space tracking devices, yes? And hangars need maintenance storage and fuel tanks?

And could you share some of your own builds and general rules of thumb? I really want to get it right the first time so I don't have to go replacing all the PDCs throughout my empire.

On that note, can yo replace things like the missile fire control and actives without leveling the entire base?
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: iceball3 on July 06, 2016, 10:01:15 PM
So PDC still need actives as well as deep space tracking devices, yes? And hangars need maintenance storage and fuel tanks?

And could you share some of your own builds and general rules of thumb? I really want to get it right the first time so I don't have to go replacing all the PDCs throughout my empire.

On that note, can yo replace things like the missile fire control and actives without leveling the entire base?
-PDCs do need an active sensor bead on a target to engage. However, any active sensor contact on them from your empire will do. So you can have a PDC fleet with only one or two dedicated active sensor PDCs, with no sensors to speak of on the others, if you want. Deep space tracking stations are much more stronger than any particular sensor you'd stick on a PDC, however the sensors on your PDCs won't get destroyed by indirect planetary bombardment, so you could stick a few sensors on one as an emergency backup, if you so please.
-Hangars on PDCs are currently only good for flight reloads, refueling, and storage.  They cannot repair ships that do not have their own internal maintenance storage, because the inability to put engineering spaces automagically sets the maintenance supply capacity of PDCs to 0, even if you use maintenance storage bays. So if you want to fix your fighters, you'll either need to stick them in a ship-based hangar, or scrap and replace them.
-There is a dropbox in the Industry tab of the Population and Production window that lends to the refitting of PDCs, but checking it now, I'm not so sure if it works.

In terms of rules of thumb, I haven't really set many yet, but it's worth noting that you have a bit more design freedom on PDCs, and if you (ab)use PDC specific bonuses and the fact they never need maintenance, you can probably make some pretty unique designs. In fact, I'll post the Final Fire Point Defense PDCs I've designed.

Code: [Select]
Ark-Zetu Mark I "Aurora" class Point Defence Base    475 tons     22 Crew     95 BP      TCS 9.5  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-5     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6.6
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   

Single R1.5/C1 HVS Meson Field Generator Mount (1x1)    Range 15 000km     TS: 48000 km/s     Power 3-1     RM 1.5    ROF 15        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
CIWS-HV Fire Control S01.5 32-48000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 48000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
STR Micro-Fusion Reactor Plant PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 1.2    Armour 0    Exp 5%


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections
Something to note:
-This was at roughly Ion Drive tech, without specializing Fire Control or Turret Gear techs.
-Speaking of which, look at the tracking speed.
Title: Re: PDC Building
Post by: Sheb on July 07, 2016, 03:22:51 AM
Just to make things clear, DSTS only provide passive sensor coverage, you'll need an active somewhere to paint the target for the PDC to fire.