My Newbie AAR

[StratPlayer]

I don't see any active sensors on your ship. That could be the problem.

I had the following command ship providing sensor cover:

Sunstrike class Command Ship 4950 tons 376 Crew 705.4 BP TCS 99 TH 320 EM 0
3232 km/s Armour 6-25 Shields 0-0 Sensors 25/25/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 65% IFR: 0.9% Maint Capacity 267 MSP Max Repair 150 MSP Est Time: 1.86 Years
Flag Bridge

Nuclear Pulse Engine E9 Military ( Power 40 Fuel Use 90% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 40.4 billion km (144 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor MR75-R150 (1) GPS 15000 Range 75.0m km Resolution 150
Thermal Sensor TH5-25 (1) Sensitivity 25 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 25m km
EM Detection Sensor EM5-25 (1) Sensitivity 25 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 25m km

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

The MR75-R150 is geared to sense a ship at a distance, but doesn't have the resolution to see small missles for your Anti-missle defense.  I'm pretty sure you also need a small resolution 0 active sensor to see them.  But I'll have to ask the veteran Aurora players for confirmation.

Also, for a small resolution anti-missle active sensor, I'd put it on each ship that's dedicated to anti-missle defense -- if you only have it on your command ship and it gets knocked out, then all your AM weapons on every ship are blind.  Not a good situation.

[Brian Neumann]

The MR75-R150 is geared to sense a ship at a distance, but doesn't have the resolution to see small missles for your Anti-missle defense.  I'm pretty sure you also need a small resolution 0 active sensor to see them.  But I'll have to ask the veteran Aurora players for confirmation.

Also, for a small resolution anti-missle active sensor, I'd put it on each ship that's dedicated to anti-missle defense -- if you only have it on your command ship and it gets knocked out, then all your AM weapons on every ship are blind.  Not a good situation.

You do need an active sensor with a resolution of 1 to see the missiles.  With a resolution of 2 you will see the missiles at half the range that the resolution 1 will see them.    If your sensor is designed for larger targets it can detect smaller ones than it is designed for.  The problem is that the reduction in range is the square of the ration between the target size and designed resolution  (((Target size/sensor resolution)sqared)x designed range).  So having a resolution 20 sensor will detect missiles at 1/400th of the range it is designed for.  Obviously this will not work well for most sensors desinged to detect ships.

My preference is to have sensors that can see about 1 million km's on the point defense ships and to have a bigger sensor on the scouts to see 2-3 million km's.  This way you can make full use of your anti-missile range in a fleet, but even if the dedicated scout is nocked out all of your point defense ships still are capable of defending the fleet.  It also allows them to be detached more without the scout.

A word of warning this game has the computer oponents of all types fire on the biggest sensor target in range.  Sometimes it is good to build a big ship that is almost nothing but shields and armour.  That way it takes the fire while your armed ships get to shoot back without taking damage.

brian

[UnLimiTeD]

Don't read if you want to find out yourself:
[spoiler:2zs08g04]Precursors are automated Guard ships, the closest to a colony you will find are automated deep space tracking stations and ammunition storages.
However, if you research scavenge tools, you might be able to leech of some of their tech from the wrecks.[/spoiler:2zs08g04]

You saw the missiles because they are reasonable fast, and thus have a high thermal signature.
Your Active sensor will still pick them up, but the range will probably be too short for your weapons to target them, aside from CiWS.
Keep in mind you can research a tracking speed bonus versus missiles the longer they are in target range.
Seeing how your AM range is rather short, and I strongly recommend increasing it as soon as possible, your AM sensors don't need a lot of range, but I'd pack a half million just in case, and as said, increase the range of your firecontrol a little.

The missiles you fought against, with 16 WH strength, will be able to penetrate 4 layers of Armor;

0xxxxxxx0
00xxxxx00
000xxx000
0000x0000
They won't however, deal any damage to the layer below, or the internals, so 4 Layers of armor would protect you from those missiles. A salvo of that size would still obliterate your targets, so that is obviously no solution, but if you have your main fleet scout, with big sensors and armor and stuff (make it the same size as your jump ship), you could possible make it last longer by applying a dozen layers or so.
Also, installing a CIWS on your fleet scouts can quite help.

[Nikolaj]

I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying reading both your blog and this thread. It's both informative and entertaining. Thanks.

Do you play Solium Infernum at all? I played a Email game and I'm sure one player was called Flop.

Yeah, that's it. Was that the game with Vic? Too bad that one kind of vaporized, I was doing pretty well.

[Hawkeye]

As others have said, you need a res-1 sensor to see the missiles.

Also, defending against 20-missile-salvos with point defense only is going to be damn hard. I´d suggest to start researching/building anti-missile missiles

I generaly put a twin meson or gauss turret on any warship (I am a big believer in "fleet defense") with a fleet of 6 to 8+ ships, the turrets add up a lot and provide decent point-defense, even against missiles much faster than their tracking speed (not enough against large salvos, but those are expected to be thinned out by my AMMs)

To counter the enemy ECM, there are two possiblilties
1. research Electronic Warfare --> ECCM
2. design a new Missile-Fire_Control with a larger range. Enemy ECM-3 will reduce your MFC-range by 30%. I usually put a MFC with 150 to 200% the max range of my missiles on (this also allows me to later on use more advanced missiles to their full capacity without a refit)

4 ships (one of which basicly a non-combatant) are not nearly enough to fight 20.000+t enemies (as you have noticed

Another thing I noticed, the ROF for your meson turrest is 10 seconds. This is odd, as with capacitor 3, 10cm mesons fire every 5 seconds. Are you using larger ones? If yes, scale them down. You gain in ROF and at the same time save some space, maybe enough to put some armor on the ships. If you use the turrets in final defense, the shorter range should not make much of a difference.

Oh, and you have one power plant too much. Yes, redundancy is nice, but (in my book at least) with small warships, and lets face it, a 5.000t warship isn´t exactely a dreadnought, once the internal hits start to, well, hit, it´s pretty much all over anyway. Better to put that mass into armor/shields and prevent those hits from damaging the internals in the first place.

[UnLimiTeD]

Tried to replicate his weapons. He's using 12cm Mesons with an R4 and 40k range, but his Firecontrol has only half that range!

Ok, Hy...*whatever*, you NEED better firecontrols for those weapons. Instead, go for 10cm Mesons, the range doesn't make much of a difference in Final Defensive fire.
This will allow you to have 20k range, while fireing every 5 seconds. It also saves space.
As Meson range is rather short, Area Defense isn't going to happen for a while, so no need to go for bigger weapons.

As Hawkeye said, you also need more ships.
Try to atleast equal their tonnage, and Multiply if based on techlevel.
I'd say, 80+k tons would be a reasonable fleet for a start.
12 Layers of Armor on Command ships, and Fleet scouts, the big ships that are important and have to take it, allow you to take three successive hits on the same spot without internal damage, which will allow you to outlast them if your AM Defense is up.

[StratPlayer]

Wow the number of mistakes I make when playing Aurora are so annoying. The other big mistake was not leaving my jump tender by the jump gate!!!!!

Just wanted to make a few comments about this:

First off and most importantly, don't worry too much about making mistakes.  This is a very complicated game to learn all at one go, and your first run-through is going to be a learning experience -- there is no way to be perfect at this the first time out of the gate, so don't judge yourself too harshly or let yourself get annoyed.  You're learning as you go -- that's the main goal.

Secondly, there are added benefits to this beyond simply learning yourself.  Your AAR and this thread is helping many other newbies learn, too!  So for one, I appreciate what you're doing, and I also appreciate the mistakes -- seeing what goes wrong and reading through all the excellent feedback here is really helping me, too.  And thank you for that.

So if a few innocent computer bits get slaughtered mercilessly in some far-away star system, try not to let it annoy you:  Their tragic deaths are for a greater cause!  

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Wow thanks for all this fantastic help guys I'm working on putting all the ideas and info into practice then I'll try again and hopefully this time I can at least do some damage.

What size magazines for anti-ship and anti-missile do you reccomend?

[Elouda]

I tend to work with around 10-15 salvos for Anti-Ship, and 20+ for Anti-Missile. So for a cruiser in the ~5500ton range like yours, I'd suggest maybe 10 launchers (with 2 FCS, so 5 to 1 ratio) and some 250-300 AMMs. More if you can fit them.

You can get away with less if you operate with a dedicated collier (ammo ship), or if you use your command cruisers or other ships (like jump cruisers) to carry spare ammo, but I like to keep my fleets capable of independant action. To that end I often prefer hybrid designs as someone else here noted, with atleast a beam weapon and ASMs on each ship, and possibly also AMMs as tech increases. Admittedly when using this approach I favour box launches as unless you mount 7 or more reloads, box launchers are more space efficient, not to mention capable of awesome alpha strikes.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Would it be a good idea to build a jump gate on the Sol side of Tau Ceti? Is there a risk that the Tau Ceti aliens could invade Sol?

[UnLimiTeD]

Jump Gates only work from the side they are built at, so you could indeed build a jumpgate to accommodate bigger ships than your current jump designs, send your fleet through, and send a jump ship in after the fight to get them all back.
For ASMs, depending on your tactics, you can go for varying sizes, some pack for up to 20 salvos, I generally thing that 5 are enough, but as said ahead, this requires munition carriers.
AMMs should always have enough ammo to protect your fleet from whatever may come, so for 10 AMM launchers firing every 10 seconds, I'd say minimum 200 shots.

If you ever run low on AMMs, a good tactic is probably to set it to one or two AMMs per incoming missile, depending on enemy tech, and let the rest be taken care of by Beam weapons; though this would require Gauss.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Update posted the outcome of the battle in all it's glory  

http://auroranewbieaar.blogspot.com/

[Hawkeye]

Don´t forget to design a Missile-Fire-Control for anti-missile work (res-1) too.

[Hyfrydle (OP)]

Don´t forget to design a Missile-Fire-Control for anti-missile work (res-1) too.

This design is included in the blog is it ok?

Active Sensor Strength: 210 Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 10 HS Sensor HTK: 1
Primary Mode: Resolution: 1 Maximum Range: 1,050,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 210 Crew: 50
Materials Required: 52.5x Duranium 157.5x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 2100RP

[Andrew]

Don´t forget to design a Missile-Fire-Control for anti-missile work (res-1) too.

This design is included in the blog is it ok?

Active Sensor Strength: 210 Sensitivity Modifier: 50%
Sensor Size: 10 HS Sensor HTK: 1
Primary Mode: Resolution: 1 Maximum Range: 1,050,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 210 Crew: 50
Materials Required: 52.5x Duranium 157.5x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 2100RP

Yes it has the right sort of performance, but it is appallingly large for its performance. It looks like you need to research EM Sensitivity as you currently have that at a very low level (5) while you have active sensor strength at a reasonable level of 21 and the effectivness of your sensors is effectively 21*5/10 , so increasing EM Sensitivity will allow you to build smaller sensors for simialr effectiveness . I ususlly get EM Sensitivity to 11 allowing me comparable performance with a Size 5 or 6 sensor.
You will also need resolution 1 FC for any antimissiles with a similar range to the search sensor, if you are not using AMM's then you can manage with a smaller active sensor scaled to the range of the Fire control and defensive beam weapons