Why did my ships get destroyed before I could reach?

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

Any idea what I did wrong?

Background:  I got this game just after Christmas.  I played one game for a little bit mostly trying to figure out how to do things.   Even basic things seemed to have more of a learning cliff than a learning curve, so I spent most of that game reading and watching videos trying to figure out how, for example, to use a tanker.   Once I felt I had the basics down, I restarted on new year’s eve.   Based on the advice of a tutorial video I watched, I started conventional.   I’m almost 100 years into that game now.   I encountered two “NPR”s fairly early on.   One is quite hostile and the other one has been reasonably friendly.   I’ve worked out using diplomacy ships and I’m well on my way to better relations with the second race.   

Last night, I got attacked again.   I’m leaving out a lot of detail on the actual battles and background here in the interest of brevity.   The enemy had a doom stack (27 ships, 24 of which are military and 9 of those have 7 particle lance 18s on them) in the Sol system blowing up civilian shipping left and right and nothing I had there could do anything about it.   My actual battle fleet was hunting down an enemy fleet on the opposite edge of my territory and was weeks away.   When I actually contacted their fleet, they decided to send the doom stack in the direction of my fleet.   To get there, they had to go out a jump point where I had a defense base on the other side.   What I expected to happen was for them to appear, the game to stop and then I could unload a volley of missiles and get a few shots off before the doom stack recovered from the jump and obliterated my base.   What actually happened was I just got a message that the base had been destroyed.   They then flew across the system to another jump point where I had another base.   On the way, they encountered a convoy with ammunition for my fleet and I just got a message that they had detected the enemy and the whole thing was obliterated in one time interval with no chance to react.   Yes, I had their sensors on.   They then proceeded to the jump point.   I expected to see a message when they reached sensor range (which is over 100m km for those bases), which is what usually happens.   Nope.   I just got another message that I had some contacts and my base was destroyed all in the same time intervals.   No game stopping or anything like that.   In all three cases, the game stopped at the end of a time interval and informed me the bases were destroyed.   

What.  The.  Heck.  Happened? 

The only thing I can think of is that little line of time intervals below the one that I usually click on.   Could that have anything to do with it?  I’ve never used it, but maybe I clicked on it by accident.   

I’ve had some other weird behavior.   Somehow that “auto turn” thing keeps getting turned on somehow and sometimes it does this weird flickering thing where it seems to be rapidly flickering between red and green when I start the game.   It generally goes away after a while.   I’m wondering if that’s related but it could also be a keyboard thing.   I’ve started seeing some keyboard issues and I’m waiting on a new keyboard I’ve ordered).   Is there a key for the auto turn button that I could check if it’s getting broken?

In any case, I’m not sure it matters for this game.   I suspect it’s over.   My fleet probably isn’t a match for theirs.   I’ve got a bunch of slow missile ships with just the ammo onboard because the resupply just got obliterated.   They do have a full load but that’s maybe 6 volleys.   I have a carrier with a bunch of missile fighters.   I have a battlecruiser, two light cruisers and a destroyer.   Those last four are better 1:1 than their ships but there just aren’t enough of them.   I also have one of their heavy cruisers and two escorts from a different fleet that just surrendered after I obliterated some of their companions.  I expect to have my fleet either get obliterated or have to hide while they just run rampant and destroy everything.   My only hope there is that they go to orbit one of my major colonies where I have heavily entrenched SSO lasers.   

Sorry this got so long winded.   

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The row of buttons below the time advance buttons is the "movement subpulse" length. When you queue up a 20 minute turn, for example, the game actually advances time at a step that is a fraction of that. By default it sets that time automatically (I think it's 1/5? Not sure). But you can also set it manually.

If you advance time a day or so, you can completely miss a fleet coming up on you and get blown to hell with no chance to react. This is likely what happened to you. If you are aware of hostile forces, it is best to keep time increments small and to reduce them slowly as the range drops. By the time you are in energy range you should be doing 5 second increments.

[Erik L]

What time increments were you using? It's best to go with short time increments.

As for auto-turns, I very rarely use them. I much prefer to do the increment and then adjust things. If I don't adjust, it's easy enough to click the next increment.

[nuclearslurpee]

The row of buttons below the time advance buttons is the "movement subpulse" length. When you queue up a 20 minute turn, for example, the game actually advances time at a step that is a fraction of that. By default it sets that time automatically (I think it's 1/5? Not sure). But you can also set it manually.

If you advance time a day or so, you can completely miss a fleet coming up on you and get blown to hell with no chance to react. This is likely what happened to you. If you are aware of hostile forces, it is best to keep time increments small and to reduce them slowly as the range drops. By the time you are in energy range you should be doing 5 second increments.

The auto increment is actually much smaller, for example at 5 day turns the sub-pulse is 2 hours or 1/60. I think for 30 days the sub-pulse may be 6 hours which is 1/120 but I never use that increment so I'm not sure. Anyways...it's a pretty small subdivision in most cases.

Anyways, this advice is otherwise spot-on. If you have even a reason to suspect that hostile contacts might be in the vicinity you want to use shorter increments. I wouldn't bother messing with the automatic sub-pulses as it's better to use shorter increments...this gets you in the mindset of being ready to react in a moment and not waiting on the game to take care of things for you.

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

The row of buttons below the time advance buttons is the "movement subpulse" length.  When you queue up a 20 minute turn, for example, the game actually advances time at a step that is a fraction of that.  By default it sets that time automatically (I think it's 1/5? Not sure).  But you can also set it manually.

If you advance time a day or so, you can completely miss a fleet coming up on you and get blown to hell with no chance to react.  This is likely what happened to you.  If you are aware of hostile forces, it is best to keep time increments small and to reduce them slowly as the range drops.  By the time you are in energy range you should be doing 5 second increments.

I know I've clicked on it before and specifically set it back to automatic because I didn't know what it did or why I'd want to change it.   I'm betting maybe I clicked it by accident and that caused my problem.   I know under normal circumstances, if I'm clicking, say, 5 days, it will interrupt me at some point before 5 days are up if there is a new contact.   I was assuming that would happen here because I was dealing with situations where the enemy fleet was out of contact and I didn't know when they'd show up again.   In the case of the second instance, I was quite surprised because their usual tactic is to sit at a jump point and obliterate anything that comes through.   I didn't realize they were even moving to the other jump point until they encountered the resupply fleet and destroyed it so I wouldn't have known to increment time slowly then.

In battles, when I do get in range I'm incrementing by 5 seconds when in beam range or missiles are flying.   I just didn't have contact when this happened.   They came in contact and obliterated me all in the same "tick"

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

What time increments were you using? It's best to go with short time increments.

As for auto-turns, I very rarely use them.  I much prefer to do the increment and then adjust things.  If I don't adjust, it's easy enough to click the next increment.

I never use auto-turns and I was getting quite annoyed last night that they seemed to be getting turned on somehow.

I don't remember what increment I was using specifically but it would have been between 3 hours and 1 day on the top bar.   I was not in contact with the enemy and I was trying to pass time more quickly until they popped up in sensor range.   

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

The row of buttons below the time advance buttons is the "movement subpulse" length.  When you queue up a 20 minute turn, for example, the game actually advances time at a step that is a fraction of that.  By default it sets that time automatically (I think it's 1/5? Not sure).  But you can also set it manually.

If you advance time a day or so, you can completely miss a fleet coming up on you and get blown to hell with no chance to react.  This is likely what happened to you.  If you are aware of hostile forces, it is best to keep time increments small and to reduce them slowly as the range drops.  By the time you are in energy range you should be doing 5 second increments.

Ive never bothered messing with them except to set them back the one or two times I accidentally changed them and I noticed.   

I guess I'm going to need to advance time more slowly even when out of contact to try to avoid getting caught by this problem.   

The auto increment is actually much smaller, for example at 5 day turns the sub-pulse is 2 hours or 1/60.  I think for 30 days the sub-pulse may be 6 hours which is 1/120 but I never use that increment so I'm not sure.  Anyways. . . it's a pretty small subdivision in most cases.

Anyways, this advice is otherwise spot-on.  If you have even a reason to suspect that hostile contacts might be in the vicinity you want to use shorter increments.  I wouldn't bother messing with the automatic sub-pulses as it's better to use shorter increments. . . this gets you in the mindset of being ready to react in a moment and not waiting on the game to take care of things for you.

[Jorgen_CAB]

A very stupid question but can it be that you had no passive sensors on the station and you had not activated its active sensors, if so it would have been completely blind and would not interrupt the game when they jumped through the JP.

In normal cases the game should interrupt immediately when a jump occur and there is some sort of sensors detecting it before anyone can react to anything, that is at least my experience.

Another stupid question is if you turned the enemy into hostile, if they were not turned hostile then it also might happen that they can move past you or shoot you before you have time to react.

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

A very stupid question but can it be that you had no passive sensors on the station and you had not activated its active sensors, if so it would have been completely blind and would not interrupt the game when they jumped through the JP.

In normal cases the game should interrupt immediately when a jump occur and there is some sort of sensors detecting it before anyone can react to anything, that is at least my experience.

Another stupid question is if you turned the enemy into hostile, if they were not turned hostile then it also might happen that they can move past you or shoot you before you have time to react.

I have forgotten to turn on active sensors before but I had a save from a few weeks earlier where I was able to confirm I had active sensors on.   I do have both EM and thermal sensors on the station.   I've also turned them to hostile decades ago.   Right after they flew up to Earth and blew something up in Earth orbit.   

[Jorgen_CAB]

A very stupid question but can it be that you had no passive sensors on the station and you had not activated its active sensors, if so it would have been completely blind and would not interrupt the game when they jumped through the JP.

In normal cases the game should interrupt immediately when a jump occur and there is some sort of sensors detecting it before anyone can react to anything, that is at least my experience.

Another stupid question is if you turned the enemy into hostile, if they were not turned hostile then it also might happen that they can move past you or shoot you before you have time to react.

I have forgotten to turn on active sensors before but I had a save from a few weeks earlier where I was able to confirm I had active sensors on.   I do have both EM and thermal sensors on the station.   I've also turned them to hostile decades ago.   Right after they flew up to Earth and blew something up in Earth orbit.

There also is a chance you simply missed the notice they appeared and then pressed next turn and "bam" dead in space.

But other than that I don't know as the game should stop when there is a squadron or standard transit by a hostile fleet, that is my experience.

[brondi00]

From my recollection of past lessons learned, you had the increment too high and by the time the notice triggered you were already dead.

Happened to me many times until I got more patient at waiting out combat and scouting.

[Jorgen_CAB]

From my recollection of past lessons learned, you had the increment too high and by the time the notice triggered you were already dead.

Happened to me many times until I got more patient at waiting out combat and scouting.

In this specific case though the game should automatically interrupt when both sides detect each other after a jump is done... the time increment should not really matter in this particular instance.

[brondi00]

*shrug*

He himself said he's leaving out the details.  What's more likely?  A bug that somehow didn't give the interrupt of hostile contact or that a new player got impatient and didn't understand how the time increments work and ended up hurting himself in the process?

[MaxKaladin (OP)]

*shrug*

He himself said he's leaving out the details.   What's more likely?  A bug that somehow didn't give the interrupt of hostile contact or that a new player got impatient and didn't understand how the time increments work and ended up hurting himself in the process?

The details I was leaving out were background about how and why ships ended up in those positions and the details of my previous battles with this enemy.   I didn't think it was relevant why I had defense bases in those spots or what led my fleet to be where it was or my struggles to deal with their speed and weaponry.   I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought this was a bug.   I assumed I did something wrong.   That's why I asked right up front if anyone had any idea what *I* did wrong.   From what has been said, it sounds like I was advancing time too fast and I might have accidentally fiddled with that "sub-increment" bar or whatever it's called.   

[brondi00]

No worries man.  Sorry if I came across poorly.  When I was a new player the time increment thing threw me off and I had some mistakes that cost me dearly because I was advancing time too fast not realizing that it meant I might lose my chance to do anything about what was happening before it was too late.

So I assume that's what happened here.

I didn't think you were saying it was a bug but I thought some other commenters were thinking it was a bug.  And since the only time I've seen your problem happen was poor understanding of time in the game I don't think it's likely it was a bug.

Anyway I'm sorry if I gave offense at all.