Noob Questions, formerly titled "Active Sensors"

[linkxsc (OP)]

Next dumb question.
So the moon and venus in my game are now getting whiny about their lack of protection.  Previously I just had a few old ships and fighters that I toyed with making there to provide the necessary defense.  But the colonies are getting bigger (what with minerals flying in from all my asteroid mining fleets) And the moon having spent the last several years turning out metric butt-tons of infrastructure to support the venus colony (my game, mars and mercury had nothing, but the moon has about 4mil durainium, and venus has 1-2mil in durainium, corundium (which earth had only like 150k) vendarite, and mercassium, but that 25 colony cost is a big thing to work around)


So I decided, "I'll just fab up some PDCs to keep them happy", go to prefab PDC, make an ICBM 1 that weights ~14,000t.  Get it built, and . . .  how the hell do I transport the parts? I have a freighter with 10,000t of storage ability, but no matter where I look I can't find an option to load PDC parts.
To get around this, I instead had earth fire off the necessary minerals to the moon (via mass driver) to produce a few locally, and then moved all the ships to Venus for their defense needs.  but really, how the heck do you load PDC components, because that method won't really work so well when I'm trolling around making colonies in other solar systems.

[Barkhorn]

there should be a "Load PDC Components" order or something to that affect for any TG with cargo holds at a world with PDC components.

Once they're all transferred, you have to assemble them on the target planet, using the industry screen.  It also takes a small amount of minerals as well.

[linkxsc (OP)]

not showing up.   Here screenshots. 

Second screen shot, scrolling down in the orders list from there is nothing but mineral orders, no PDC
And the 14000t facility is fabbed out of 6 parts so any 1 part can't possibly be near 10kt.


Guess my screenshots arent working.


But literally, earth has 30 components, and it takes 6 per PDC.  Sitting there at earth is a trasnport fleet with 1 ship thats 10kt of storage (theres also a 25kt storage one, but that one also doesn't show up with PDC orders)

[linkxsc (OP)]

Also how to deal with getting chased?

Started exploring some systems 3 jumps away from earth now (everything 2 layers away was empty of aliens) but I managed to find a nice batch of people who want me dead within a few minutes of that.
Now my survey ship is getting chased by 4. . .  i figure they're probably FACs or such, they're chugging along at 6000km/s, which ironically is also the speed of the survey ship that I sent out to look at all the planets.

Now when I picked them up, I turned away and started heading for the jump point (and the warships/jump tender residing there).  During the turn away (I shifted at a right angle to pull away from them) they were able to get off a volley of 4 missiles at me, which hit and did damage, but nothing penetrated more than 4 layers of the 8 on the survey craft.  Then they turned away at an angle for a short time until I was out of their sensor range (the active sensor they're using is a 27mkm, and I'm probably 10mkm outside of their range), but they're chasing me now.
My combat fleet is hauling ass towards the planet, and once I get within 1bkm I can drop fighters on them (current fighters are 13000km/s and have about a 1. 5bil range for fuel)
But as it stands now.  I get to sit and watch the dots converge on eachother at 5sec intervals. . .  and they're about 3bkm apart. . .
Any way to speed this up?
I'm personally hoping they just get low on fuel and go home. . .  but that isn't likely to happen based on my older games.  And in this game I decided to go with more "pure" designs, so my survey ships aren't packing a 30cm railgun or 2-4GCs for self defense (which if I had 1, I'd be fine with turning right into them and wrecking them all, cause their missiles are slow as hell)

[Barkhorn]

Turn off any FC's that are targeting them.  The 5 second intervals are because you're trying to shoot at someone out of range, I suspect.

Also, AI have infinite fuel.

[linkxsc (OP)]

No active sensors on the survey craft (they're being tracked by its large passive thermal sensor) And are still several billion kms from the combat fleet that could target them, and their sensors are offline also aside from passives. And they can slowboat it, but assuming they chase me all the way till the combat fleet can intercept at the 5sec intervals... yeah I don't think leaving my computer on overnite would be enough to make it there.


NVM, after chasing me for... 4 days of ingame time, they decided to turn back (dunno why, especially odd, but perhaps my main fleet got picked up by their planetary sensors when I did fire up all the active sensor arrays) dunno. I don't know the ins and outs of this games AI

[Porjate]

Try setting the current speed of your survey ship to 1, see if the enemy ships stop as well.  If they do, increase your speed to about 1000 km/s, or whatever you feel is fast enough to get anywhere while giving off a low enough thermal signature that it can't be tracked as easily.

[linkxsc (OP)]

Try setting the current speed of your survey ship to 1, see if the enemy ships stop as well.  If they do, increase your speed to about 1000 km/s, or whatever you feel is fast enough to get anywhere while giving off a low enough thermal signature that it can't be tracked as easily.

After pulling the survey ship out I actually started messing around with them, and doing that does seem to be a perfectly useful tactic against them (been doing it repeatedly with my fighters, just trying to figure out how the ai responds.

[linkxsc (OP)]

Another dumb question. Is there any key shortcuts to getting into the Turret Design, and Missile Design menus?
Away from my home and still want to mess with the game, but its a 768 vertical screen, so bottom buttons are cut off. Much of the game can still be played like this, however I can't click the turret and missile design buttons on the weapons design screen.



Edit. the general info menu (planet info, indstry, research) includes turret and missile design buttons.

[83athom]

I'm not exactly sure what damage control does, but I think it reduces the time it takes to repair a component.  As such they should stack, but don't take my word for it. 

It does stack.  Look at the Damage Control Rating when you add them.  A standard damage control adds 10 with a HS of 3, while engineering spaces add 1 DCR per HS.  It affects speed of battle DC

Another dumb question.  Is there any key shortcuts to getting into the Turret Design, and Missile Design menus?
Away from my home and still want to mess with the game, but its a 768 vertical screen, so bottom buttons are cut off.  Much of the game can still be played like this, however I can't click the turret and missile design buttons on the weapons design screen.
Edit.  the general info menu (planet info, indstry, research) includes turret and missile design buttons.

You can always click in the dark (guess where the button is [both are right bellow annual fuel production in summary view]) if your computer will let you.