Critique required

[joeclark77]

Don't know about your error; it could be anything.  Sometimes it'll go away after a while, other times it'll break the game and you just have to start a new one.

When firing missiles, you have to get through enemy point defenses (either energy weapon turrets, or anti-missile missiles) so the number of missiles per volley is more important than the size of the missile.  I'd consider going with smaller missiles and at least twice as many launchers.  The problem with only two missiles per volley is that if the enemy can shoot down only one of them, he's cut your offensive power in half.

[Zenorefe (OP)]

Thanks, hoping that I haven't lost my game.

To what you said about missiles, wouldn't larger more powerful missiles be better anyway?  Even if half were lost It would mean that the half that get through are able to pack a suffcient punch? It sounds inificient but it seems to me a better idea than more vollies of smaller missiles.  The hits of those packing the same or less firepower than my size sevens.

[Vandermeer]

Use Erik Luken's Aurora Backup Utility, Zenorefe, found here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6121.0.html
Aurora doesn't have a save function, but with this you get some autosaves. I never lost a game again since I use this, because even though such errors did happen in all my games here and there still, I could always just rollback 20 minutes at max. and then avoid the incident that caused the problem.
What would I have lost without it. It should be considered part of the standard installation package, since only that makes Aurora fully playable for as long as you want.

[joeclark77]

Thanks, hoping that I haven't lost my game.

To what you said about missiles, wouldn't larger more powerful missiles be better anyway?  Even if half were lost It would mean that the half that get through are able to pack a suffcient punch? It sounds inificient but it seems to me a better idea than more vollies of smaller missiles.  The hits of those packing the same or less firepower than my size sevens.

Maybe, but your missiles aren't really powerful, and typically the enemy can shoot down more than just one per volley.  I usually start in the Ion tech era, a little beyond yours, and I can generally fit eight size 4 launchers on a ship this size.  Or 10 size 3 launchers.  I use the 75% size reduction which reduces the rate of fire but lets me fire more per volley.  You can generally develop a size 4 missile with WH 9, or size 3 missile with WH 4, even in the early game.  (Squares like 4, 9, 16, 25 are best, because of the way missiles do damage.)  Imagine I've got a fleet with 4 of my 8-launcher ships.  That means I'm firing 32 missiles per volley, and if an enemy can shoot down half of those, I can still get 16 good hits.  You'd need nine of your ships to even do any damage at all.

In the later game when you're using bigger ships, you might also use bigger missiles to carry a WH16 or WH25 payload, but only when you can do it at scale.

[Zenorefe (OP)]

Use Erik Luken's Aurora Backup Utility, Zenorefe, found here: hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php/topic,6121. 0. html
Aurora doesn't have a save function, but with this you get some autosaves.  I never lost a game again since I use this, because even though such errors did happen in all my games here and there still, I could always just rollback 20 minutes at max.  and then avoid the incident that caused the problem.
What would I have lost without it.  It should be considered part of the standard installation package, since only that makes Aurora fully playable for as long as you want.

Thanks man, I'm not totally sure what caused it.  At this point I just want my game back.

[83athom]

To what you said about missiles, wouldn't larger more powerful missiles be better anyway?  Even if half were lost It would mean that the half that get through are able to pack a sufficient punch? It sounds inefficient but it seems to me a better idea than more volleys of smaller missiles.  The hits of those packing the same or less firepower than my size sevens.

Either way would work fine, but your missile design just sucked.... badly. They were inefficient, slow, and didn't pack a punch, and as joeclark said they won't make it through AM fire. Do as I said before, make the missiles mostly warhead, fuel really doesn't matter that much with your sensor/fire control ranges being so little. I mainly focus on short rang combat with my really fast capital ships (each currently go over 5000km/s) so any missiles I use will be small (1-3 for general purpose, 4-6 for "long range" combat) and will have a lot of them per ship (or a few for smaller ships that can be produced quickly). It just comes to what ranges you usually engage at, and until your tech is better, missiles that go that range (your sucky size 7) are mostly ineffective because of their sacrifices of other parts. So I suggest building and using smaller missiles for now, around size 3, a good start would be using 1MSP for engine, 0.5 for fuel, and 1.5 for warhead (adjust slightly as needed).

[hubgbf]

Hi,

About your design

Torpedo Launcher MrkI Size 7 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 7    Rate of Fire 70
Torpedo Missile Control Missile Fire Control FC29-R30 (70%) (1)     Range 29.6m km    Resolution 30
Size 7 Anti-ship Missile (22)  Speed: 14 300 km/s   End: 379.5m    Range: 325.6m km   WH: 2    Size: 7    TH: 57/34/17

Dobson-Gough Active Search Sensor MR38-R60  (1)     GPS 6000     Range 38.7m km    Resolution 60

Your missile fire control is for size 30 and your active search sensor is size 60. So you can shoot at ships you cannot detect. better to have the same resolution and range for both active sensor and fire control. It is nearly the same for the range. It is useless to be able to fire at a range you cannot detect a target, unless your active sensor is only a small backup as you have designed a sensor ship. ABout resolution, is your ship intended to fight against 1500 tons ships, or 3000 tons ships ? or even 5000 tons ships ? A low resolution increase cost and space, better to think a lot about it. A common resolution is 5000 tons, or 800-1000 tons for anti fast attack craft, or 1 for anti missile. In the last case a range of 2 to 5 mkm is enough. The basic for anti-missile range is to ne sure to have 2*max speed * 5 seconds range, in order to be able to target then fire against ennemy missile.

In addition your missile has a range of 325 mkm while you cannot fire at more than  29.6 mkm. Better to have similar range for your firing system and your missile. I think you can make your missile size 4 with a 100 mkm range, and so have enough space to increase your sensor range.

[83athom]

Here are some missile designs for you. All are using a similar base to what I said in my last post. Anti-matter engine era.
Archer Series Size 3 ASM-L;

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Missile Size: 3 MSP  (0.15 HS)     Warhead: 12    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 100000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 15 minutes   Range: 90.6m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.75
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1000%   3k km/s 330%   5k km/s 200%   10k km/s 100%
Materials Required:    3x Tritanium   3.75x Gallicite   Fuel x1250

Development Cost for Project: 675RP
Archer Series Size 3 ASM-M;

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 3 MSP  (0.15 HS)     Warhead: 12    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 100000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 9 minutes   Range: 54.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 7.07
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1500%   3k km/s 495%   5k km/s 300%   10k km/s 150%
Materials Required:    3x Tritanium   4.07x Gallicite   Fuel x750

Development Cost for Project: 707RP
Archer Series Size 3 ASM-C;

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 3 MSP  (0.15 HS)     Warhead: 12    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 18
Speed: 100000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 6 minutes   Range: 36.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 7.23
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1800%   3k km/s 594%   5k km/s 360%   10k km/s 180%
Materials Required:    3x Tritanium   4.23x Gallicite   Fuel x500

Development Cost for Project: 723RP
My focus was more on particle beams, gauss cannons, and railguns yet I was still able to do something like this. No ones going to stop something going about 1/3 the speed of light .

[joeclark77]

Hi,

About your design
Your missile fire control is for size 30 and your active search sensor is size 60. So you can shoot at ships you cannot detect. better to have the same resolution and range for both active sensor and fire control. It is nearly the same for the range. It is useless to be able to fire at a range you cannot detect a target, unless your active sensor is only a small backup as you have designed a sensor ship. ABout resolution, is your ship intended to fight against 1500 tons ships, or 3000 tons ships ? or even 5000 tons ships ? A low resolution increase cost and space, better to think a lot about it. A common resolution is 5000 tons, or 800-1000 tons for anti fast attack craft, or 1 for anti missile. In the last case a range of 2 to 5 mkm is enough. The basic for anti-missile range is to ne sure to have 2*max speed * 5 seconds range, in order to be able to target then fire against ennemy missile.

In addition your missile has a range of 325 mkm while you cannot fire at more than  29.6 mkm. Better to have similar range for your firing system and your missile. I think you can make your missile size 4 with a 100 mkm range, and so have enough space to increase your sensor range.

Typically my all-purpose missile ships will have two sensors, one with resolution 160 (8000T) because I've never seen an NPR build its main combat ships smaller than this except FACs, and one with resolution 15 (750T) because that's the smallest alien FAC I've ever seen.  (Aliens don't use fighters, as far as I know.)  Then two fire controls with similar range and the same resolution.  A missile fire control that's 1/3 the size of the sensor will have equal range, so you can make these 1.5HS and 0.5HS, or 3HS and 1HS, whatever gives you the range you want.  You could have a third sensor with resolution 1 to detect missiles, if you have some kind of anti-missile defenses.  I believe your "final defensive fire" weapons will work without special missile sensors though.

[83athom]

Quick question. This is my first time trying to make a mine, and the question is will it work? Critique is required  .
S15/M6S2 Mine;

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Missile Size: 15 MSP  (0.75 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 1     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s    Engine Endurance: 0 minutes   Range: 0.0m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.4956    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  495 600 km
ECM Level: 1
Cost Per Missile: 24.7806
Second Stage: Size 2 Anti-ship Mine Missile x6
Second Stage Separation Range: 100 000 km
Overall Endurance: 0 minutes   Overall Range: 0.2m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 0%   10k km/s 0%
Materials Required:    13.75x Tritanium   0.945x Boronide   2.0756x Uridium   8.01x Gallicite   Fuel x60

Development Cost for Project: 2478RP
Size 2 Anti-ship Mine Missile;

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 34
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 0 minutes   Range: 0.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.18   Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Resolution: 25    Maximum Range vs 1250 ton object (or larger): 90 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 3.873
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 510%   3k km/s 170%   5k km/s 102%   10k km/s 51%
Materials Required:    2.25x Tritanium   0.108x Boronide   0.18x Uridium   1.335x Gallicite   Fuel x10

Development Cost for Project: 387RP


[joeclark77]

Looks like a potent mine!  Two things stand out to me as possible problems:
1. The mine has different sensors from its sub-munitions.  There's a risk that something might trigger the mine to launch but the sub-munitions might not be able to target it.  Generally it's recommended that you use identical sensors on both components.
2. I don't know if "second stage separation range" is going to have any effect, or what it should ideally be set to.  Maybe somebody else can weigh in.

[83athom]

Looks like a potent mine!  Two things stand out to me as possible problems:
1. The mine has different sensors from its sub-munitions.  There's a risk that something might trigger the mine to launch but the sub-munitions might not be able to target it.  Generally it's recommended that you use identical sensors on both components.
2. I don't know if "second stage separation range" is going to have any effect, or what it should ideally be set to.  Maybe somebody else can weigh in.

1. That's because the mine itself uses passive sensors to be stealth and the missiles themselves have the active sensors they need to target ships that activate after separation (this does work apparently).
2. That is how close that ships need to get for the missiles to fire.

The question I should have specified was how long this mine will last and if I can increase the operational time.

[JacenHan]

Since 6.00, any missiles/buoys/mines without an engine will stay active forever, unless they are destroyed, release submunitions (I think, maybe not), or are self-destructed.

[83athom]

Thank you for clearing that up for me. Now I only have to finish designing my high speed stealth minelayer. 

[joeclark77]

1. That's because the mine itself uses passive sensors to be stealth and the missiles themselves have the active sensors they need to target ships that activate after separation (this does work apparently).

Agreed, but you can also put passives on the missiles and they will still target.  Ships need active sensors to target, but missiles can find targets using only passive sensors.  It could still be a good idea to use the same sensors on both devices.

2. That is how close that ships need to get for the missiles to fire.

My fear would be that the missiles would only fire outside of that range.  Are you sure it works the way you think?