Aurora - Dwarf Fortress In Space

Does anyone know the difference in the "Area Defense" and "Final Defensive Fire" modes you can choose for a beam fire control for missile defense? Also, where is the button to copy one ship's fire control assignments to all the others of that class?

Robear wrote:

Ah. I have exactly 25,000 capacity in my freighter, so it picked up one mine and then gave me the failure message for the others. I need a bigger freighter class, clearly.

You don't need to give multiple load orders. One load order will have all ships in the task group loading as many of that item as they can, unless you set the "Load Maximum Number" option on the order. So if you have two ships with 10 cargo holds in a task group, and put them on a repeating order to "load mines" and "unload mines" (only one order each), in each trip they would carry a total of 4 mines.

Yonder, I'm seeing two problems, one major, one minor, and two doctrine problems.

Major: You can't hit what you can't see. Your only ASS doesn't look like it can spot incoming missiles. You need a second ASS, with a resolution 1 (Minimum Resolution: Resolution Zero Mode when designing the sensor).

Minor: The range on the anti-missile is short, really. 1m to 3m will work better. But, that assumes you can see the missiles in time to react. Spotting them at 50km, having a 3m range won't be any benefit. Try to tie your ranges together (missile AND fire control AND sensors), unless you are 'future proofing' the missile. Also, a purpose built anti-missile system needs to be as small as possible, if you can get a size 1 missile and launcher, then the launcher will be able to reload and refire faster than the size 3 anti-ship launcher. Look at what would happen if you were fighting your own tech: The Sparrow would have less than a 50% hit chance against a Bolt, and so you need more salvos to ensure coverage. Which means seeing it farther away, and having more chances to launch.

Doctrine 1: Slow beam weapon ships will have problems closing to weapons range, if under fire from missile ships.

Doctrine 2: Split weapon tech means slower tech research advancement.

Drop the Meson beams for now. Move the AMM function to the escort, give it the smallest & fastest launchers you can make. Put your initial research focus on the missile tech: Engines, warhead strength, launcher size and reload speed. Follow that with agility and magazine techs. Then once you have solid missile tech, go back and get the beam tech researched (beam fire control, better powerplants, turrets, gearing, etc).

I suggest the missile tech first, since you need the beam tech AND speed to get the beam ships into range. Or steath and a lot of patience setting up the fight. Once the fight begins, the enemy will light up its active sensors, and being sneaky becomes a lot harder.

You also might want to go with less fuel on the warships, and make a dedicated supply ship to escort them, one carrying fuel and missile reloads and maintenance parts.

Oh, and start stockpiling missiles now. You can always scrap them later, it really sucks to have a missile boat with no missiles.

You realise, of course, that there are people at NASA copying all of this down and attempting to decipher it, right ?

This is what I'm seeing in the fights I'm having. I'll admit I'm pessimistic, but I've been fighting precursors, who are running on godmode (you name it, they have it, at insane levels.) These examples are not using precursor tech levels. For them? Take the worst case presented here and crank it up to 11.

***

Missiles detected, incoming! My active sensor anti-missile range, lets put it at 1m km. Missiles will start outside that, and move into it. Minimum is 5 seconds per 'tick' or turn.

These incoming Anti-Ship Missiles have a speed of just 20,000 km/s, and so they might have penetrated 99,999km inside my detection range before I (the player) spots them, so call it 900,000 km out and closing, worst case. Best case, they ended their 'tick' at my max spotting range, so 1m km out.

No problem, fire AMMs!

Waiting....

Waiting....

What do you mean my weapons aren't ready to fire yet? Oh. Crew training, they need a few seconds to get the weapons ready. And to lock onto the missiles. And to fire.

Worst case, I've seen 30 seconds between when I decided to fire, and the AMMs went out. So, after those 30 seconds, the enemy ASMs are at 400,000 km , right? Wellllll, I was probably moving (fast target = harder to hit, stationary target = every incoming missile that gets survives, hits), and probably moving toward the enemy missiles (I probably didn't see them coming). So, speed 1500 to 4000 km/s for me, that's another 45,000 to 120,000 km off the range, worst case, ASMs are 280,000 km to impact.

5 seconds later, the AMMs (moving at 20,000 km/s to 40,000 km/s (yes, I have very fast AMMs, I made them a priority). They close 100,000 km if slow, 200,000 km if fast. Enemy missiles are closing at 20,000 km/s, so for the slow AMM, still 80,000 km/s until the AMMs engage the ASMs (worst case), or for the fast AMM example, they already hit. With the 40,000 km/s AMM (faster missiles have better accuracy) against a 20,000 km/s ASM. Assuming similiar agility levels (more on that later), I'm probably looking at a 50% hit ratio. Which means on the average, if I don't have 2x the launchers, some will get through.

Okay, the surviving ASMs keep closing. Fire second AMM Salvo... what do you mean we have a 15 second reload time, and that's _good_? ASM launchers will have much longer than that, btw, which means they do even poorer when pressed into emergency AMM roles.

The next enemy ASM wave won't be for another 30 seconds to upwards of minutes behind this first wave.

Bang!

So, worst case, I got _one_ salvo of AMMs off. Half of which hit. For the slower AMMs, that hit ratio plummented, btw.

Best case? Call it 4 or 5 salvos of AMMs off against each wave of ASMs. Might be more, but if I need more than that, I better have staggering amounts of magazine space dedicated to them.

So, applying lessons learned to my current AMM doctrine:

* See them as far out as you can. Anti-Missile active sensor range is life, if its short, so is yours.

* If sensor range is king, reload speed is queen.

* With missile accuracy being the jack. Faster missiles are more accurate, and harder to shoot down. Agility is nice, but speed is better. And for AMMs, endurance should be no more than needed, any more is a waste, and you have nothing to waste.

* Smaller the AMM, the faster the reload speed, the smaller the launcher needed, which means more launchers and more reloads. You can compensate for poor accuracy (to a degree) with more launchers/salvos.

davet010 wrote:

You realise, of course, that there are people at NASA copying all of this down and attempting to decipher it, right ?

Your tax dollars at work!

Current test in progress: *Sneaks some Hydra class Minelaying Corvettes into a precursor system, and lays some mines in the orbital path of the precursor planet. The Tripwire class Jump Point Picket has been watching the precursor ships sitting in orbit around the planet, so come back in 4 months to see what happens when orbital mechanics meet devious-minds-R-us.*

*

Tripwire class Jump Point Picket 1000 tons 78 Crew 141 BP TCS 20 TH 30 EM 0
3000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 30/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 5% IFR: 0.1% Maint Capacity 1132 MSP Max Repair 45 MSP Est Time: 30.22 Years

Ion Engine ME8 TH50% (1) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres Range 135.0 billion km (520 days at full power)

ASS S3.96-R1 PD (1) GPS 3.96 Range 40k km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH5-30 (1) Sensitivity 30 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 30m km

Thermal signature when motionless? 1. Hole in space. The ASS is to be used at point blank range, when I'm gonna die anyways, might get some intel that way.
**

Hydra class Minelayer Corvette 1000 tons 56 Crew 131.8 BP TCS 20 TH 30 EM 0
3000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 4.95
Annual Failure Rate: 16% IFR: 0.2% Maint Capacity 41 MSP Max Repair 45 MSP Est Time: 2.9 Years
Magazine 105

Ion Engine ME8 TH50% (1) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 22.5 billion km (86 days at full power)

Size 15 Missile Launcher (33% Reduction) (1) Missile Size 15 Rate of Fire 9000
SMS S15 3xS4 SMA Th W4 (7) Speed: 0 km/s End: 135d Range: 0.1m km WH: 0 Size: 15 TH: 0 / 0 / 0

**

Buoy: SMS S15 'Pinata' 3xS4 SMA Th W4 (7) Speed: 0 km/s End: 135d Range: 0.1m km WH: 0 Size: 15 TH: 0 / 0 / 0

It has a 135 day endurance (then the power plant runs out of fuel, and it self-destructs) and a thermal sensor. When targets get inside 100k km, it releases the 3 submunitions, short ranged very high speed missiles with their own thermal sensor to do target acquisition and terminal guidance - this is the only case I know of where a passive sensor should work. That's why this is a test.

Submunition:

SMA S4 'Surprise!' Th W4 (1) Speed: 30,900 km/s End: 0.1m Range: 0.2m km WH: 4 Size: 4 TH: 144 / 86 / 43

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s. My FACs move at 4,000 km/s to 6,000 km/s. My warships currently move around 2,000 to 3,000 km/s., and I have nothing bigger than a destroyer, yet. The precursors I'm hoping to ambush here? I have clocked them at 5400 km/s for their cruisers. This is not my AMM, btw. My AMM only has a warhead damage of 1 (Surprise! has a damage 4), but is faster with better endurance for longer range.

LtWarhound wrote:

Yonder, I'm seeing two problems, one major, one minor, and two doctrine problems.

Major: You can't hit what you can't see. Your only ASS doesn't look like it can spot incoming missiles. You need a second ASS, with a resolution 1 (Minimum Resolution: Resolution Zero Mode when designing the sensor).

I have a small ASS for the Missile Variant that matches the 700 km range. I had thought that Missile Fire Controls needed an Active Sensor, but that Beam Fire Controls didn't need a separate one, but now that I think about it I have no idea why I thought that. I'll make a small sensor for the Beam Buckler.

Minor: The range on the anti-missile is short, really. 1m to 3m will work better. But, that assumes you can see the missiles in time to react. Spotting them at 50km, having a 3m range won't be any benefit. Try to tie your ranges together (missile AND fire control AND sensors), unless you are 'future proofing' the missile. Also, a purpose built anti-missile system needs to be as small as possible, if you can get a size 1 missile and launcher, then the launcher will be able to reload and refire faster than the size 3 anti-ship launcher. Look at what would happen if you were fighting your own tech: The Sparrow would have less than a 50% hit chance against a Bolt, and so you need more salvos to ensure coverage. Which means seeing it farther away, and having more chances to launch.

Those were both actually things I considered. I tried a size 1 missile but at my earlier tech levels 3 of those were barely more effective than 1 size 3, and I figured that the flexibility of using only size three missiles may be nice. As far as the range, making 2 million range missiles isn't a problem at all, but an ASS and Fire Control to get a Res 0 sensor out that far were both really huge, I figured that until I had better grav sensitivity way too much of my ship would be allocated to sensors. Do you think that I should put at least the Res 0 ASS on another ship to free up space. A Two million range one for me is 750 tons, which is pretty significant. I guess I'll try making one and see if it works out better in the long run. Especially now that I have the tech for a good size 1 Anti-Missile.

Doctrine 1: Slow beam weapon ships will have problems closing to weapons range, if under fire from missile ships.

The Beam Buckler wouldn't ever get into range to attack the enemy (hopefully) they are purely in an Anti-Missile role escorting the missile destroyers.

Doctrine 2: Split weapon tech means slower tech research advancement.

Yeah, I knew that this was a big downside, but thought that a pure missile spamming fleet was a bit... I dunno. Not exactly, but I was hoping to develop a more rounded force.

LtWarhound wrote:

This is what I'm seeing in the fights I'm having.

You aren't making a good case for Missiles over Beams! Although to be fair if Beam Crews aren't trained they'd probably miss their only chance at shooting down the enemy missile.

I am really looking forward to playing around with sub-munitions. Eventually I hope to make something like a Size 12 missile holding a bunch of size 1 Anti Ship missiles. The First stage won't have to worry about speed or agility, the second stage won't have to worry about range.

Yonder wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:

This is what I'm seeing in the fights I'm having.

You aren't making a good case for Missiles over Beams! Although to be fair if Beam Crews aren't trained they'd probably miss their only chance at shooting down the enemy missile.

Heh, and that's the better of the two options, AMM vs Point Defense direct fire weapons. Sure, your AMM might have a .5m km to 3m km range, what's the range on your beam weapon? And refire rate?

My CIWS-80 have had 10% chances to hit, with a single salvo at those damn precursor missiles, btw, needless to say my beam weapon tech trails waaaay behind my missile tech.

Answers to these questions are why the people responsible for naval doctrine analysis and design have grey hairs. Or would if they had any hair left.

Actually, some of them are extremely young, given to a sort of twitchy nervousness and drink waaaaay too much.

Well I tried to talk to my neighbors but they hate me. They really hate me. I tried scanning their area but they found me each time and destroyed my ships. The good thing my people were able to scan a few ships before dying for the cause. I appear to have Crab People from planet 9 as my neighbors. After learning this I set up a team diplomats to learn all they can and to try to communicate.

Back home on Galafrey the news of the Crab People sent the people in to a panic. Some wanted to build time machines and go back in time to destroy the Crab People. Others just wanted to stay far away from them and mark off their space as no fly zone. The leaders of Galafrey decided playing with time was to risky and turning our backs on our dead was setting us up for a invasion. Galafrey would go to war with these Crab People.

The first ships sent in were just survey ships with out weapons. Having those destroyed was little test of the Crabs power. Galfrey sent in its greatest war ship that unfortunately had never seen true war. The ship was destroyed in minutes. 1000 men and women killed without ever shooting a shot.

The problem with the first war ship was it had no active search sensors or ASS. Passive sensors just wouldn't cut it against moving targets.

Galafrey built the Sword, its newest war ship. This time with ASS, Lasers, and Missiles.

The Sword lasted 5 minutes below being destroyed by the crabs.

The problem was eventhough the ship could now target enemies, the weapons could reach them. Also the ship was much to slow at 2000 km/s. The enemy was using ships going nearly 5000 km/s and had long range missiles. All they did was sit out of range of our weapons and blast up.

The next ship to be built was The Sword J. The war effort was put on hold for years in order to build it. And yes it to was destroyed by the Crabs. Fear ran out of control in the streets. People were heading to remote colonies to hide from the Crabs. And when the people learned that the Crabs had built a jump gate that connected their space to ours all hell broke loose.

The problem this time was math. You see when we got the data from our scans of the Crabs. We notice that sat at a range of 60k as they bombed our ships. This was actually 60m so are range numbers were horribly off. Yes, a thousand people died due to poor math. It might be good to note that the first Probe Missile was on board this ship. 10 probes were launched without a problem. The Crab empire was now painted from our probes. So it wasn't a total lost.

Systems were redesigned. More research was done. Then finally years later The Sword Missile was created. Everything was designed with exact numbers in my. We created a new type of missile that would be only to take down the Crabs Missiles. We created a special launcher just for this Anti-Missile missile. We also created the long bow missile. With it we would destroy the Crabs from a safe distance. The added bonus is the long bow also has self guidance so if it should lose it target it can find another. When then created a The Long Bow Missile Launcher made to specs for the long bow missile. We then created MFCs for both launchers. One for long range detection and the other for short anti missile detection. And finally we created new magazines to hold our missiles and new engines to move the ship at just above 5000 km/s which is faster than any ship we scanned of the Crabs.

A fleet of 3 Sword Missiles were created and all were destroyed due to sabotage (computer error that prevented me from giving the ships orders.) This was kept silent though and spare fleet was put into. Lucky for us one ship with a hot head captain was already complete. Instead of waiting for the other two ships to be completed he went out to rescue the survivors from the first fleet. The Crabs sent in the Long Boy one of its Missile Ships to engage us. It never got off a shot. We sat out of range while raining was reprimanded.

Yonder wrote:

I am really looking forward to playing around with sub-munitions. Eventually I hope to make something like a Size 12 missile holding a bunch of size 1 Anti Ship missiles. The First stage won't have to worry about speed or agility, the second stage won't have to worry about range.

I made a Missile Prob. The first part is just the rocket. No warheads or fancy stuff just fuel and a engine. The Second part is the Buoy which has sensors on it. I used it to scan hot areas and to distract enemy ships. It might have painted a ship or two for my lasers also.

LtWarhound wrote:

Major: You can't hit what you can't see. Your only ASS doesn't look like it can spot incoming missiles. You need a second ASS

Yonder wrote:

I have a small ASS

Yonder wrote:

I should put at least the ... ASS on another ship

LtWarhound wrote:

The ASS is to be used at point blank range

Baron of Hell wrote:

The problem with the first war ship was it had no ... ASS.

*snicker*

The more I play, the more annoyed I get at some of my earlier tech. And ship design decisions. And naming standards.

Lessons learned time again:

* Always clearly name your tech. If you have to use a key, write it down, update it as you go. SMA S4 Th.3 W4 means....? (SubMunition Active, Size 4, Thermal sensor strength 1000 range 300k, Warhead strength 4, for the curious).

* Always label what your sensors and fire control is for. See above.

* 6000 tons max is an annoying military jump drive size. Ick. Get at least an 8k drive next time, first.

* Anyone know where it says if a ship is a tanker or not? Put that in the class name. Tanker, Collier, Supply Ship, Fighter bay, Hanger Deck, Jump drive. Label them all. Kiev-TCSFHJ, so it looks stupid, I'll still be able to eyeball the right ship off the list.

* Short and stupid names for the civilian ships, and have them start with a Z, so they are at the bottom of the class design list.

* If you make a jack of all trades ship design that does nothing well except shuttle science teams around at high speed, the NPC civilian shipping lines will buy them instead of single purpose ships like colonizers or freights or luxury liners. Go figure. Just make a fast freighter next time. Oh, and make sure the standard freighter has 5 cargo bays. Or some factor of 5.

On the 'I'm not sure if this is cooler than the Fonz or too stupid for words' list:

A Size 5 two stage recon probe. Stage one goes 3000 km/s (a stroll for a missile), range 124m km. Puts it in the mid-long range for a missile, sorta.

Stage two goes 100 km/s (freighters run circles around it). Range just 94m (214m total with the first stage, pretty useful.) Endurance? 10.3 hours with passive EM and Thermal sensors, 225k km range on them. A buoy would last longer, but as a recon item, those seem to get shot down. And, they don't move. Sure, this probe doesn't move fast, but it does move. Fire it at a waypoint and have the separation ... ah frik.

* Separation range of second stage, include that in the missile name.

And have the separation set to 2m km out, the NPRs may have forgotten about it by the time it arrives to take a peek. Note to self: Make a short (150k km) and long (2m km) seperation version.

Have to test this out, see how useful it is. If nothing else, they are cheap, can always scrap them.

LtWarhound wrote:

* Anyone know where it says if a ship is a tanker or not?

Those checkmarks are in the far upper right of the class design screen.

Mommy why are there five missiles traveling towards my scout at 52,811 km/sec?

Edit: Whoops, that was five separate volleys of 15 missiles, I think, I'm not really sure. There are 142 survivors but there is no way we can get to them in time. Also no way we could get to them without sending more men to their deaths.

Lets go through what happened one step at a time so that I can get a grip on what sort of tech I was just up against.

I jumped in with my jumpship and scout, it's a very nice system, trinary star system, lots of comets on short trajectories, several habitable moons and planets, vicious and highly advanced aliens... Ok, so it's a fixer upper. The Scout went poking around, turning his active sensors on for 30 seconds every 3-5 days. When we went out to the second star we saw eight contacts with a thermal strength of 200. Thermal strength is really just a function of engines, my scout is at 150 thermal output itself, although it would be 200 if I hadn't developed cooler engines. These guys are moving at 10,000 km/s when my scout can only peter around at 3,500. So these guys are either pretty small or they have great engines. I know that they are decently small, because they are only 7 million kilometers away, and I can't see them with my active sensors. My active sensors are designed to spot a 5000 ton object 72 million km away, so these guys are probably pretty small.

Around this time I see their own active sensors. They have a strength of 2880 with a resolution of 80, that is pretty ludicrously good. Finally their missiles move at 52,811 km/sec and have a warhead strength of 14!

So, um... yeah... Time to try Jumppoint #2! I will leave these guys alone for another 50 years. I am assuming they are precursors and not about to attack my system, because if they do attack my system I'm boned anyways.

When it comes to beams for purpose of area defense, I cannot recommend Gauss cannons enough. First, they do not require power plants. Second, they fire a lot.

With two point defense destroyers, each fielding two turrets of 4 level 3 (in both techs) gauss cannons each, on separate beam FC's, and protecting two missile destroyers, each fielding a CIWS composed of those same gauss cannons, I depleted a full missile complement of a small Precursor fleet, with only a single missile hitting my ships. Unfortunately, this was before I knew about the necessity of having an ASS, and proceeded to watch the precursors close the distance to my fleet and obliterate it with mean beam weapons in only a handful of 5s turns.

My gauss turrets shot at missiles due to a bug. They shouldn't have.

Are you positive that your Gauss Turrets were also firing? It's possible that it was just your CIWS system doing all the work, they don't need separate firing control or ASS, the downside being that they only have the range to defend the ship they are mounted on, none of the others in the fleet.

Everything I wrote is/was exactly how I wrote it.

Doctrine: nailed down. Fleet: constructed. Colliers: loaded. We jump insystem, for honor, for vengence, for Snoopy!

Erh, yes, the Snoopy class geosurvey ship that died in EQ Pegasuii. Precursors. The Beagle class gravsurvey ships made it back to the support ship, and jumped out. Years go by, and the debris slowly scatters across the cold depths of this alien held system.

The jump point opens up, a jump gate on the far side tears open a portal in time&space that sends through a fleet. Scouts slowly spread out, passive sensors straining for any threats. None found, none expected, the location of the attack had been on the far side of this binary star system. Whatever the ancient robots were guarding, it would be found over there.

Tripwire class pickets move out slowly, low signature coupled with a massive thermal sensor array. The 20 Cataphract class fast attack corvettes spread out around the jump point, and a massive star gate constructor jumps in to begin setting up the gate on this side. Cataphract support vessels take up station, crammed with sprint mode Spatha class missiles and two stage recon probes.

The plan is straightfoward. Move out the passive sensors until contact is made, then move up the Cataphracts, slowly, silent running. When they are standing 15m kms from the targets, the AWAC fires up its massive active sensor array. It will paint them from a safe 400m km to 600m km range (depending on the enemy ECM), and let the Cataphracts fire without having to turn on their active sensors. If all goes as planned, the first sign of trouble the precursors robotic guardians will have is roughly 400 Spathas crashing in on them.

5 hours later contact is made.

Not on the far side of the system.

Not in the nearby cluster of planets and moons the scouts haven't reached yet.

At the jump point.

10k km from the jump point, to be exact.

Missile systems that can hit blazing fast targets millions of kilometers away. Frikking sensors big enough to hide small moons behind, resolutions fine enough to spot the smallest missile (1/100ths to 1/1000th the size of these precursor ships), and I didn't see the enemy until it was frikking 10,000 km from the fleet.

Gah.

The star gate constructor has a massive thermal signature. Soooo, of course instead of firing on the horde of cheap disposable corvettes, all the alien missiles plowed into the constructor.

Which surprisingly survived. The SG constructor module was destroyed, of course, and most of the rest of the ship was damaged.

The rest of the fleet finally fired back. Hundreds of missiles swarmed forward....as the aliens fled. No, wait, they decide they can't outrun the missilestorm (these missiles were designed with precursor ships in mind). And they are either out of missiles themselves, or won't reload before my missiles catch up. So, they come about on ramming courses.

A few hundred nuclear explosions later, and the alien ships died before they could close the 10km gap.

Now to bring the salvager ship in from the other system, and see if I can find anything of interest in the wreckage.

There is a stealth research tree, though I haven't explored it at all, I wonder what it entails, and if these Precursors had it.

Yonder wrote:

There is a stealth research tree, though I haven't explored it at all, I wonder what it entails, and if these Precursors had it.

Probably, because that's exactly what it does. Makes your signatures significantly smaller. So that you can sneak up significantly closer.

BTW, can someone explain the basics of a collier ship to me please. Is it just a transport with a 'collier' flag? And then it can pick up ordinance from the planet?

MoonDragon wrote:
Yonder wrote:

There is a stealth research tree, though I haven't explored it at all, I wonder what it entails, and if these Precursors had it.

Probably, because that's exactly what it does. Makes your signatures significantly smaller. So that you can sneak up significantly closer.

BTW, can someone explain the basics of a collier ship to me please. Is it just a transport with a 'collier' flag? And then it can pick up ordinance from the planet?

Some of the ships also have a "refuel at own tanker" and "resupply at own Collier" order available, so I am thinking that that flag is used to make Maintenance Supplies and Ammo Reloads more straightforward, haven't used it myself though.

The Cloaking device in this game reduces your 'radar' cross section, so you appear to be a smaller object. So you are harder to detect at range and have to be closer to be spotted. Much like modern stealth aircraft.

These guys had to have had a cross section of 0.0, they appeared at 10k km! That's the shortest range in this game, basically.

There is something called a hyperdrive in this game, not exactly sure what it does, makes you go faster if you are outside the hyper-limit (gravity well of the system, it seems).

And here come two more precursor ships. Look like destroyers - thermal signature of 800., the first 4 were gunboats. I've seen cruiser sized ships, thermal signature was 1600 on those.

And after 380 Spathas to each destroyer (overkill, what overkill?), two more wrecks to salvage, no damage to anything except my ammo supply. And at 760 missiles a salvo, man, those colliers are emptying fast.

Cataphract R2 class Fast Attack Corvette 1000 tons 37 Crew 127.6 BP TCS 20 TH 30 EM 0
3000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 11.4
Annual Failure Rate: 16% IFR: 0.2% Maint Capacity 40 MSP Max Repair 45 MSP Est Time: 2.85 Years
Magazine 76

Ion Engine ME8 TH50% (1) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 45.0 billion km (173 days at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (38) Missile Size 2 Hangar Reload 15 minutes MF Reload 2.5 hours
MFC R 24m - MR 5kT (1) Range 24.0m km Resolution 100
ASM S2 Spatha R2 FAC (38) Speed: 24,000 km/s End: 15.6m Range: 22.5m km WH: 3 Size: 2 TH: 128 / 76 / 38

ASS S3.96-R1 PD (1) GPS 3.96 Range 40k km Resolution 1

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 box launchers are a pain after the fight, my mothership only has enough hanger space for one corvette at a time. Land, 15 minutes to reload the 38 box launchers, then launch and let the next one in line land. But the throw-weight is sweet.

Note that these are not gunboats. I have that tech, but while the speed would be twice as fast, the fuel use is insane. Great for basing off planets, I don't yet have a carrier that could move a useful number of gunboats in internal hangers.

Cataphract-S has no missiles, but a 160m km range ASS. Cataphract-T has no weapons or sensors, but does mount a recon probe launcher and 500,000 litres of fuel. And Cataphract-C has nice passive thermal and EM sensors, and a flag bridge. At the moment, fleet support includes 3 10k ton ships, the mothership, a collier, and a jump drive equipped collier. And the AWAC frigate, with its 576m km range ASS.

Doctrine as defined two posts ago, worked perfectly for overkilling the two destroyers. I'm happy with them. Next up is some long range bombardment cruisers, I think I can set them up to throw reasonable salvos out to 120m to 180m range.

LtWarhound wrote:

There is something called a hyperdrive in this game, not exactly sure what it does, makes you go faster if you are outside the hyper-limit (gravity well of the system, it seems).

Think of it as warp speed. But it only works outside of the star's gravitational field. You have to enter and exit hyper speed. This can be usually achieved with waypoints. Set two waypoints (WPs) down. Give the order to enter hyper speed at the first WP, then give order to exit hyper speed at the second WP. Your ship should get between the two points much, much faster than if it used its regular engines. But as you mentioned, it only works outside the star's hyper limit. This limit can be seen under display options of the system view (F3). You may have to zoom out until the whole planetary system is visible before the hyper limit becomes apparent.

Waypoints are also set in the system view (F3). One of the tabs on the left side pane should be called Waypoints. Add/Delete should be obvious. Last button allows you to attach a WP to a moving object.

Oh, and Warhound, can you explain how colliers work please.

Jump Point Number 2 is much, much more friendly. It doesn't have the 3 easily terraformable planets that the Solar System of Death had, but it had plenty of the minerals that I needed.

When I fully explored that system I breathed a sigh of relief and scrapped my warships. In my lack of foresight I had forgotten that I didn't have nearly enough Maintenance Facilities to maintain 7000 ton vessels, and my Neutronium Shortage meant I couldn't quickly build more.

This started a 15 year period of consolidation, no need to rush into a third system when I had most of what I needed already. Since there weren't any easily habitable planets in the second system either I started converting my Homeworld's mines to Automated versions, I also continued to enlarge my research capabilities. As the Neutronium continued to trickle in I built the necessary Maintenance Facilities.

Another lack of foresight hit when 3-4 of my Asteroids ran out of material in a 3 year period. My ten freighters couldn't keep up with the demand of moving them quickly towards the richer moons, especially since Triton is a heck of a trip. Luckily at this point my Neutronium stockpiles had stabilized, so I was able to refit my commercial yards and get out the new "Ox" class, each of them had the capability to carry five Automated Mines. Unfortunately after three of them were completed I emptied my Homeworld of fuel reserves. Got that sorted out soon enough though. Right now I have six Oxen and ten of the smaller Mules, which is quite enough lifting capacity for now.

On the research side things have been progressing very nicely. I have highly qualified Scientists in my five main fields of research: "Construction/Production," "Missiles / Kinetic Weapons," "Power and Propulsion," "Sensors / Fire Control," and "Defensive Systems." each category has from 15-20 research labs churning away.

All in all I am ready to design my next class of warships and get back to exploration. Soon I will experiment with building a large carrier for a Corvette class of ship (I figure hangar space for twelve 1000 ton vehicles, with Commercial Engines so it can use a commercial jumpdrive), but for now I will go with a standard setup of larger vessels. I am really looking forward to laying down the schematics. Just 7 hours to go!

Yonder wrote:

Another lack of foresight hit when 3-4 of my Asteroids ran out of material in a 3 year period. My ten freighters couldn't keep up with the demand of moving them quickly towards the richer moons, especially since Triton is a heck of a trip.

Don't use freighters for this, use mass drivers. Park a mass driver on your collection point (say, Earth) and then a mass driver at each asteroid or comet or moon with the automated mines. The mining camp will throw the ore as a free falling rock toward where you want it, where the waiting mass driver will catch it. Just always remember to keep a mass driver there to catch it, or you will end up bombarding the collection point back into the stone age. At any given day, there are many thousands of tons of ore sailing through the Solar System, from my automated mines all across the system to the waiting, hungry construction factories on Earth. I even have a few small mining camps tossing their ore to Mars, where the colonists made infrastructure with it. Comet #5 is 20.55bn km away from Earth now, and still heading out. There are roughly 25 ore shipments sailing in from it alone, the newest will take 193 days to finally arrive at Earth.

Colliers? Ships used to transport ammo, in Aurora, they are 'fuel tankers' for missiles. Put a collier in your fleet. When the ships in that fleet need more ammo, there are various fleet orders you can give to tell them restock using the collier in the fleet. Or on the F6 page, Individual Ships, on the Parasite/Missiles tab, Magazine Reload section, click the 'Collier' button to have it automatically restock the normal missile loadout from the collier in the fleet. You can adjust that loadout using the 'Ammo Mgmt' button on that tab.

Without colliers, you have to travel to a population site (planet or moon, for example, where you have a colony of some kind) and transfer the loadout there, from a stockpile of missiles you manufactured or brought in previously using a collier. I haven't found a way to transfer missiles using a freighter, either between colonies or between ships in a task group.

This is an awesome thread! Can't wait to get back home and play tonight.