Questions related to mechanics

[Victuz (OP)]

A 5k ship could only be reloaded in either a bigger hangar-ship, or through maintenance facilities at a colony. The later, although much slower is the preferred way of doing this for large ships due to obvious reasons relating to the costs of fielding a large carrier.

Ah in that case I guess the best solution if I want lots of launchers going off is just adding 2 or 3 carriers full of boats or fighters with box launchers on them. Good to know that.

Edit: I think there are a few points where a warheads with multiple missiles inside it would be more useful.
Mainly PDC's that for for the reason of being a static target might want to intercept enemies at the highest possible range and that is done better with a multiple stage missile (or a drone) as far as I know.
The other one I can think of is just for the general "hit chance" increase, if you shoot 10 size 10 missiles that turn into 100 or 200 smaller missiles say 0,5m km away from the enemy than that seems to have a much higher chance of connecting.
Than again I'm not entirely sure if a missile below 1 can actually do damage to ship. Probably can, still when you have an option between 2-4 big missiles hitting the target and like 50-80 small missiles hitting even for puny damage it could be good.
Very situational, but good.

AFAIK Aliens mind any active sensor contact they see. So if they see your boy they will probably mind, but not by much given its so small. Roleplaying wise they should care a lot though.

I see, that's why I probably would plop a single buoy that is based entirely on the passive sensors. Plus what I had in mind in terms of deploying it is fooling the ships that are at the gate. I noticed they have a tendency of closely following any military ship that hops in, what I would do than is create a big noticeable, smelly military ship that would hop into the system and go to some remote location. If they followed him than I would just get the buoy dropping ship (cloaked, with reduced emissions and as small as possible) to hop on and go in the other direction, drop off the buoy and get out as soon as possible. Than I would apologize for the whole "big military ship in your home system"  thing blaming it all on a miscomunication in the chain of command.
What I was mainly wondering is will they "know" that there is a buoy transmitting everything they do even if it goes undetected (too used to other 4x games doing that).

Lanchester Laws -> keep them concentrated as much as possible (actually, Lancaster laws only indicate a square-dependency of battle winning ability versus unit number, while in Aurora you can also shoot down incoming missiles indicating a much larger exponential factor, i.e. more of an argument for concentration) . Your people will demand a bit of military presence in their home system though, and its prudent to build someone to watch jumpgates though, just in case they sneak past you.

Yeah I thought so. Guess I'll generally have the forces held out inside the choke point, than a smaller secondary task force in the system just behind it and a tertiary one working as the honorary guard for the homeworld.

As for protecting the gates I was wondering about that. I'm actually designing mines to plant at each one but in case of the vital jump gates I might actually construct PDC's next to them.

By the way how does one go about deploying the buoys? Is there an actual component for it that I missed? Or do I just keep the damn thing on a freighter and drop it off at a waypoint?

AFAIK those are just neutral gases that don’t do anything except increasing the atmospheric pressure and adding a little greenhouse effect through that. Used for roleplaying, but not anything else.

I see, oh well.

[Theokrat]

Ah in that case I guess the best solution if I want lots of launchers going off is just adding 2 or 3 carriers full of boats or fighters with box launchers on them. Good to know that.

Sure that is a valid strategy. Its also perfectly possible to build larger vessels with lots of boxed launchers that return to a colony to reload after battle. Sure it’s a one-shot weapon in any given battle, but the volume of fire gained can mean its decisive at that. Basically you save on the carrier.

Edit: I think there are a few points where a warheads with multiple missiles inside it would be more useful.
Mainly PDC's that for for the reason of being a static target might want to intercept enemies at the highest possible range and that is done better with a multiple stage missile (or a drone) as far as I know.
The other one I can think of is just for the general "hit chance" increase, if you shoot 10 size 10 missiles that turn into 100 or 200 smaller missiles say 0,5m km away from the enemy than that seems to have a much higher chance of connecting.

Oh I am not generally arguing against multi-stage missiles or even multiple submunitions. My point is just that the weight of one “broadside” is independent of the calibre that is used- you can have ten size-10 launchers, or you can have a hundred size-1 launchers for the same tonnage, costs and personnel. The only difference is that the size-1 launches will fire ten times as quickly, providing a significant edge. So if you have a size-10 missile that releases two submunitions, you might be better of using a size-5 missile with one submunition instead – if that is possible due to minimum drone engine size for instance.
Just for the record: Submunition should be released much further away from the target. Normal AMM engagement ranges of certain spoilers range in the ~1.5m km range, and since the first stage of a multi-stage design is poised to be much slower and larger it is likely engaged further out. So personally I would not go below a range of 2.5m km.

Than again I'm not entirely sure if a missile below 1 can actually do damage to ship. Probably can, still when you have an option between 2-4 big missiles hitting the target and like 50-80 small missiles hitting even for puny damage it could be good.

You need at least a strength-1 warhead to do any damage. Also missile sizes below 1 get rounded up to 1 for multiple stage missiles. This is a measure to avoid fooling the AI with thousands of dummy targets.

I see, that's why I probably would plop a single buoy that is based entirely on the passive sensors. Plus what I had in mind in terms of deploying it is fooling the ships that are at the gate. I noticed they have a tendency of closely following any military ship that hops in, what I would do than is create a big noticeable, smelly military ship that would hop into the system and go to some remote location. If they followed him than I would just get the buoy dropping ship (cloaked, with reduced emissions and as small as possible) to hop on and go in the other direction, drop off the buoy and get out as soon as possible. Than I would apologize for the whole "big military ship in your home system"  thing blaming it all on a miscomunication in the chain of command.

Uhm, having a big military ship enter their home system unexpectedly in the age of nuclear weaponry has a certain chance of just maybe not going quite as expected. My guess is they will blow the thing up and ask questions later (unless they have become quite trusting already).

What I was mainly wondering is will they "know" that there is a buoy transmitting everything they do even if it goes undetected (too used to other 4x games doing that).

Well unless they somehow find the boy, they wont know its there…

Yeah I thought so. Guess I'll generally have the forces held out inside the choke point, than a smaller secondary task force in the system just behind it and a tertiary one working as the honorary guard for the homeworld.

As for protecting the gates I was wondering about that. I'm actually designing mines to plant at each one but in case of the vital jump gates I might actually construct PDC's next to them.

If you have celestial body close by a PDC is definitively a good choice. I just use Space Stations.

By the way how does one go about deploying the buoys? Is there an actual component for it that I missed? Or do I just keep the damn thing on a freighter and drop it off at a waypoint?

You need an adequately sized missile launcher to deploy the boy, no dropping from freighters.

[Zook]

About box launchers: a size 6 box launchers weighs only 50 tons, so sticking a few on a destroyer armed with normal launchers doesn't add much weight and gives you an option to launch one "heavy broadside" at a target that is too well defended for your normal salvos.

According to
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5304.0.html
tracking stations are buggy in 5.60 and always use max thermal emissions for determining detection range.

[Steve Walmsley]

About box launchers: a size 6 box launchers weighs only 50 tons, so sticking a few on a destroyer armed with normal launchers doesn't add much weight and gives you an option to launch one "heavy broadside" at a target that is too well defended for your normal salvos.

According to
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5304.0.html
tracking stations are buggy in 5.60 and always use max thermal emissions for determining detection range.

Is this definitely true? I wasn't aware of such a bug.

Steve

[Zook]

There's this thread, which might be related
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5098.0.html

and

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5279.0.html

[Bgreman]

Is this definitely true? I wasn't aware of such a bug.

Steve

I submitted it in the bugs thread after doing extensive verification.  It's easy to verify:  Plop down a DSTS, create a ship for another faction, have it reduce to half its speed, and the DSTS will still detect it as if it is running at full speed.

Here is the bugs thread post.

[sublight]

Odd, my recent experience showed normal behavior. I ran a test stealth missile frigate assault against myself a few days back. Making a slow 1/4 speed approach cut thermal signatures enough for the stealth frigates to sneak undetected into medium missile range to launch their bombardment. Then, after the defenders launched a squad of fast destroyers to backtrack the missile flight path, the stealth fleet increased speed to 1/2 max to sidestep point-blank detection... and the increased signature let the defenders tracking stations detect their thermal signature. The fast destroyers adjusted path and none of the stealth attacks escaped to reload. Opps. Anyway, observational evidence says changing speed to change thermal signature can bring a ship into and out of deep space tracking station detection range.

And that reminds me, with the starting jump efficiency getting bumped from 3 to 4, will starting stealth efficiency get a matching bump from 2 to 3?

[Steve Walmsley]

And that reminds me, with the starting jump efficiency getting bumped from 3 to 4, will starting stealth efficiency get a matching bump from 2 to 3?

Yes, that's a good point. I've bumped the cloaking efficiency up one level so the start is 3 and everything else is half the previous RP cost.

Steve

[Zook]

BTW, the lower limit for missile detection range is capped at size 6, i.e. everything below 6 is spotted as if it were size 6. I just mention it because it's important but easy to miss.

[Dutchling]

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but:
What kind of fire control, if any, do I need for railguns?

[Erik L]

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but:
What kind of fire control, if any, do I need for railguns?

Anything not a missile requires beam fire controls.

[Dutchling]

I thought so, but I wanted to be sure, as there is distinction between kinetic and beam in research type.

[Havear]

Kinetic and *energy*. It's pretty clear on the wiki that anything non-seeking is called a "beam" weapon, regardless of whether it's based on kinetic or directed-energy principles. The only weapons that use missile fire controls are, obviously, missiles, and plasma torpedoes.

[Victuz (OP)]

I'm back. Last time I never got around to actually fighting the slugs cause my hard drive ate itself and I had to buy a new one. I started a new game with conventional empire start.
Thing is I never got to actually taste proper combat, so I'm not entirely sure how good the new designs I made were. In the new game I've actually met a race of rather aggressive aliens who seem to be residing in completely unrelated systems leading me to believe they might be precursors. Seriously I scanned their systems and unless they are somehow connected beyond they seem to be in 3 completely different corners of my space and decided it might be time to bunker up in my corner of space, build up forces and fight. Possibly raid the systems I met them in to either eradicate them or scare them off.

I'm slowly working on designs and this is the first one I made:

Code: [Select]

Royal class Missile Frigate    5 250 tons     488 Crew     1000.6 BP      TCS 105  TH 57.6  EM 1200
2285 km/s     Armour 5-26     Shields 40-300     Sensors 8/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 12     PPV 19
Maint Life 2.44 Years     MSP 238    AFR 110%    IFR 1.5%    1YR 55    5YR 827    Max Repair 160 MSP
Magazine 164   

Military Ion MK.II (4)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 14.4    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres    Range 97.9 billion km   (496 days at full power)
Gamma R300/18 Shields (20)   Total Fuel Cost  360 Litres per day

S4 Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 60
Minerva Launcher (1)    Missile Size 20    Rate of Fire 600
Missile Fire Control FC217-R50 (70%) (1)     Range 217.2m km    Resolution 50
Redeemer MK.1 (6)  Speed: 25 500 km/s   End: 11m    Range: 16.9m km   WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 153 / 91 / 45
Minerva MIRV MK.1 (7)  Speed: 8 000 km/s   End: 535.7m    Range: 272.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 20    TH: 13 / 8 / 4

Active Search Sensor MR10-R65 (70%) (1)     GPS 1040     Range 10.3m km    Resolution 65
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km

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

The general idea is that in a fleet of say 8-10 ships I'm going to have one or maximally two of these. They'll serve as long range interception preferably from an undiscovered position. Just to attack the ships before we come to proper combat. That's why I have Minerva drones on them (might change the single launcher to two or three smaller ones though due to the range of engagement), each drone is armed with 3 Redeemer missiles that are going to be released 15m km away from the target (might knock that down to 10m). I added a regular launcher in case they get surprised at the gate just so they can at least help a bit in the fight.
I probably over engineered the maintenance life again but the alien systems are relatively far away (apart from one that's literally one jump from sol).

Also the active sensor has a tiny range but that's because I'll hold a bigger one on the flagship of the TG.

Additionally the tech is going to get upgraded as time goes seeing as I have 72 research labs on Earth (yeah took my sweet time) and I seem to be getting new tech quite often.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Hmm. it doesn't have enough firepower. Put it in perspective: if every one of its missiles hit, it can only do about 112 points of damage - spaced over a time period of hours.  There's no way a Royal could ever kill another Royal, let alone something with active defenses.  Tickling the enemy only serves to ensure their active defenses are online.   Somewhat related is that the Royal has very heavy passive defenses for its tonnage, yet it's not intended to come anywhere near the enemy.  Pick what you want this unit to do and focus on making it effective at that role.

*scratch head*... I think you have a damage control in there.  I would suggest removing it; there's little advantage to it on a ship this size. 

IMO:  If you want it to plink things at long range with Minervas, I would suggest cutting down the size of the Minerva a little mostly because 8km/s is slower than a lot of ships.  Dump the close range launcher and the shields, and maybe reduce the armor to 4 or 3.   Ideally you have Box launcher tech; see how many size 15-20 (or w/e) Minerva box launchers you can fit.    Finally consider increasing the speed, it's pretty slow. That may not matter much though; you'd have to add a huge number of engines to give it any chance of outrunning things, and it is sort of pointless once it's shot its bolt.