Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[nuclearslurpee]

recovering alien ruins. how does that work. i thought if i made some unit with xeno archeology and dropped them on said planet they would do the work. been 2 years, nothing so far.

How big is your Xeno formation? If you only have a handful of units it may take a very long time, the mechanic really works with formations of appreciable size, say 10,000 to 25,000 tons would do it. More is faster, less is cheaper.

[gamemonger56]

30 ground units, 3900 force size. so i need more. okey dokey.

thanks

[Voltbot]

When ship that is fired upon is not moving on the map (has no selected destination) does the game decide for the enemy accuracy calculations that ship speed is 0, or it uses it's selected or max speed?

Also: do any of you know, why space stations have no armour and can only mount civilian components?

[nuclearslurpee]

Also: do any of you know, why space stations have no armour and can only mount civilian components?

I'm actually unclear on the first question, but for the second the idea here is that the "No Armour" checkbox means the space station can be built from planetary industry. Mainly, this is a concession to allow building massive industrial platforms, maintenance stations, or Ark Modules without having to expand a shipyard to 100ks or millions of tons.

It is still possible to build a military space station, it is just a ship class without engines - but you have to build it from a shipyard. Sadly this is less flexible than PDCs from VB6 but it is what it is.

[Jorgen_CAB]

recovering alien ruins. how does that work. i thought if i made some unit with xeno archeology and dropped them on said planet they would do the work. been 2 years, nothing so far.

How big is your Xeno formation? If you only have a handful of units it may take a very long time, the mechanic really works with formations of appreciable size, say 10,000 to 25,000 tons would do it. More is faster, less is cheaper.

Yes... all of my special brigades such as Engineer, Xeno or Geo survey formations are 25k in size. This also usually happen to be the smallest normal Troop transport ship outside special operation ones that I deploy. Mostly because that is also my common small cargo ships that I can build in the same shipyards.

[Garfunkel]

When ship that is fired upon is not moving on the map (has no selected destination) does the game decide for the enemy accuracy calculations that ship speed is 0, or it uses it's selected or max speed?

It used to be always max speed in VB6 but now I can't recall whether it was changed in C# or not.

[Steve Walmsley]

When ship that is fired upon is not moving on the map (has no selected destination) does the game decide for the enemy accuracy calculations that ship speed is 0, or it uses it's selected or max speed?

It used to be always max speed in VB6 but now I can't recall whether it was changed in C# or not.

It is treated as max speed. Even if the ship doesn't have any specific orders, it can still evade hostile fire.

[boolybooly]

What am I doing wrong?

I tried to send Marine Buoy geosurvey plus thermal probes to normal waypoints on planets via a two stage delivery system but they did not stick to the planets, which moved on and left them behind.

I thought that was how you were supposed to do it? What did I miss?

EDIT nm I figured it out, forgot to set 2nd stage separation range to zero!

[db48x]

EDIT nm I figured it out, forgot to set 2nd stage separation range to zero!

This is a very common problem; I would say that one in five of my own such designs have had the same flaw.

[boolybooly]

In Aurora C# 2.1.1 can missiles use on board sensors to retarget? (I read there was a bug with this in 1.13.)

If so can they use a thermal sensor to do that? Just checking.

EDIT OK I found a post from Steve 2012 saying passive sensors are enough. I am going to assume this hasnt changed. So the only question is whether the retargeting bug was fixed.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5025.msg51406#msg51406

FYI This is the reddit thread which states missile retargeting with on board sensors was not working.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora/comments/ofwxr9/missile_thermal_sensors_not_working/

EDIT II since noone has answered I will test this myself and report back.

[Snoman314]

In Aurora C# 2.1.1 can missiles use on board sensors to retarget? (I read there was a bug with this in 1.13.)

If so can they use a thermal sensor to do that? Just checking.

EDIT OK I found a post from Steve 2012 saying passive sensors are enough. I am going to assume this hasnt changed. So the only question is whether the retargeting bug was fixed.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5025.msg51406#msg51406

FYI This is the reddit thread which states missile retargeting with on board sensors was not working.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora/comments/ofwxr9/missile_thermal_sensors_not_working/

EDIT II since noone has answered I will test this myself and report back.

As far as I know, you can do this, but you'd have to use multi-stage missiles. I'll be interested to hear how your testing goes, as I've never tried this myself.

[boolybooly]

As far as I know, you can do this, but you'd have to use multi-stage missiles. I'll be interested to hear how your testing goes, as I've never tried this myself.

Do you have to use multistage? I know that is one way to use it, (i.e. a buoy with sensors and separation range calibrated for the carried missile to intercept without running out of fuel) but I thought that if you put a sensor in a strike missile launched by buoy or by ship, it will retarget a new hostile if the salvo was overkill. This is quite important for massed mines and offers a fire and forget approach to targeting fleets.

I am hoping to test this but in my current game the stack'o'swarm I was expecting after the loss of my scout arrived a little early so I am having to use the missiles I already have in the field which dont have sensors. Still I am sure the swarm will provide more targets once I get my act together. I will report what happens, assuming the empire survives that long!

[Snoman314]

Do you have to use multistage? I know that is one way to use it, (i.e. a buoy with sensors and separation range calibrated for the carried missile to intercept without running out of fuel) but I thought that if you put a sensor in a strike missile launched by buoy or by ship, it will retarget a new hostile if the salvo was overkill. This is quite important for massed mines and offers a fire and forget approach to targeting fleets.

I am hoping to test this but in my current game the stack'o'swarm I was expecting after the loss of my scout arrived a little early so I am having to use the missiles I already have in the field which dont have sensors. Still I am sure the swarm will provide more targets once I get my act together. I will report what happens, assuming the empire survives that long!

Hmm, possibly I mis-read your earlier post. If you're talking about firing missiles at a waypoint near an intermittent contact, then I think it needs to be multi-stage. If you're talking about firing a big volley of missiles at one ship in a fleet and having them spread to other targets once the targeted ship is dead, that won't work, as they all hit simultaneously. Following saloves should re-target in that situation though.

[boolybooly]

Hmm, possibly I mis-read your earlier post. If you're talking about firing missiles at a waypoint near an intermittent contact, then I think it needs to be multi-stage. If you're talking about firing a big volley of missiles at one ship in a fleet and having them spread to other targets once the targeted ship is dead, that won't work, as they all hit simultaneously. Following saloves should re-target in that situation though.

Ah! I see. Thanks for explaining. That's tricky then as I am using short range missiles in box launchers, around the 1m km mark. So the reload mechanics dont come into play for salvos. I can see how that would be useful with a stream of long range missiles approach but it looks like it wont help me with the swarm.

I think its fair gameplay that salvos hit simultaneously. Makes sense from a mechanical perspective.

Thinking out loud, the problem with all missile salvos is PD attrition militates maximising simultaneous missile strike counts. 

There is one situation where this might be discounted and that would be guarding a jump gate, where the enemy fleet has jump shock so you have a finite time to hit them without PD defences from hull or turret mounted beam weapons (not CIWS though which I understand will operate). You could launch kill salvos followed by mop up salvos for any lucky survivors consecutively from a range of about 3 missile flight intervals without having to worry about the targeting of the second salvo. This is less risky than from a closer range of one missile flight interval which you would need to use if you wanted to see the result of the first salvo before targeting the second without wasting time while the jump shock wears off.

One thing I have learned is its more useful for larger missiles as it takes too much warhead space away from smaller ones.

Feels like I have manufactured a not very useful missile design tbh but I will try them out to learn better strats.

Missile Size: 1.6993 MSP  (4.24825 Tons)     Warhead: 4    Radiation Damage: 4    Manoeuvre Rating: 25
Speed: 51,551 km/s     Fuel: 142     Flight Time: 32 seconds     Range: 1,649,619 km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.14    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  2,958,040 km
Cost Per Missile: 3.9068     Development Cost: 312
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1288.8%   3k km/s 429.6%   5k km/s 257.8%   10k km/s 128.9%

PS another 2021 reference saying mines are bugged, still not clear when/if this was fixed, have not been able to find it in the update fixes
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12300.msg146400#msg146400

[Snoman314]

Ah! I see. Thanks for explaining. That's tricky then as I am using short range missiles in box launchers, around the 1m km mark. So the reload mechanics dont come into play for salvos. I can see how that would be useful with a stream of long range missiles approach but it looks like it wont help me with the swarm.

I think its fair gameplay that salvos hit simultaneously. Makes sense from a mechanical perspective.

Thinking out loud, the problem with all missile salvos is PD attrition militates maximising simultaneous missile strike counts. 

You can have multiple salvoes travelling as one group, and each different salvo can be targeted separately. For example when I have a group of fighters launch missiles, I get say, a group of 40 missiles, made up of 10 salvoes of 4 missiles. Each fighter can have targeted a different ship, but for PD purposes it's a blob of 40 missiles. I think you can do the same thing on a single launching platform by using multiple MFCs.

PS another 2021 reference saying mines are bugged, still not clear when/if this was fixed, have not been able to find it in the update fixes
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12300.msg146400#msg146400

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.0

"Fixed bug that caused 2-stage buoys without targets to self-destruct."