Aurora - Dwarf Fortress In Space

LtWarhound wrote:
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.

This is why I shouldn't use pronouns so much. The "them" was the Automated mines (and single mass driver) on the different asteroids. I had had asteroids closing down now and then without a problem, and it was easy to shift the automated factories around to where I needed them. Eventually though I was down to three in the inner Asteroid belt, when those all tapped out at roughly the same time I was left with 200 Automated Mines that needed to go from the Inner Asteroid belt to Neptune, and nowhere near enough freighters to do that in a reasonable time frame.

One more reason that I really like mobile Asteroid Miners, now that I can build Commercial Ships in the 150kton range I think I need to start cranking out Mega-Miners (there are asteroids in the second system with huge amounts of minerals.)

Yonder wrote:

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.

15-20 labs in 5 areas? Wow, the funding for that would empty my bank in no time, how many financial centers do you have?

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!

This will be interesting. Using a hanger deck flags the ship as military for maintenance, are you using that? Trying to build such a ship, I found the Annual Failure Rate was just too high. To bring it down to feasible took way too many Engineering Spaces.

LtWarhound wrote:
Yonder wrote:

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.

15-20 labs in 5 areas? Wow, the funding for that would empty my bank in no time, how many financial centers do you have?

Note to self: Check financial statement to make sure I am not heading towards bankruptcy.

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!

This will be interesting. Using a hanger deck flags the ship as military for maintenance, are you using that? Trying to build such a ship, I found the Annual Failure Rate was just too high. To bring it down to feasible took way too many Engineering Spaces.

I am using maintenance, but I haven't built a large military ship (>7000 tons) yet, so I'm not entirely sure how it will go. The carrier is planned for my next generation though, I want to see if I can miniaturize my stealth systems enough to work for the corvettes first.

LtWarhound wrote:
Yonder wrote:

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!

This will be interesting. Using a hanger deck flags the ship as military for maintenance, are you using that? Trying to build such a ship, I found the Annual Failure Rate was just too high. To bring it down to feasible took way too many Engineering Spaces.

Yeah. Using civilian engines (both propulsion and jump) will give you a HUGE failure rate. It's doable, but somewhat prohibitive. I suppose you could bring along a maintenance ship. Build both a maintenance module and load it up with maintenance storage, and set it into a fleet with your mega carrier.

One thing you may do to lower your failure rate is split the carrier and jump functions. Have a Jump Tender ship big enough to jump the carrier with it. And the maintenance ship.

Warhound, thanks for explaining what the collier is supposed to do. But unfortunately I'm aware of what it's supposed to do. Just not how to do it. Since, as you pointed out, freighters can't carry ammo. So what the hell am I supposed to do? Can you post the spec for your collier ship?

--Edit--

Yonder wrote:

Note to self: Check financial statement to make sure I am not heading towards bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, the financial statement will not tell you that. The window titlebar for your colony view (F2) will tell you how much money you have total, and how much your total changed on the last turn (in parenthesis).

--Edit2--

Just remembered to pass something on, as it was a revelation to me when I read it.

There are two options to interact with a jump point (JP). One is 'Transit', while the other is 'Combat Transit'. Combat transit is the "proper" one. It will use the ship's own jump engines and jump any ships that are in its fleet that it can jump. Ordinary transit option is a bit trickier, and is what I wanted to talk about.

For the sake of simplification, it is assumed that you do not want to micro manage every single minute detail (and if you want, you can use the combat transit option). This means that, if there is a ship with jump capability in the vicinity of a JP, any ships that are capable of being jumped by it, can 'transit' the JP without further considerations. The neat aspect to that is that you can create a Jump Tender, park it by the JP and it basically acts as a jump gate. But only for your ships.

Does it take fuel to jump? When my first ship jumped through I saw that it only had 10% fuel on the other side, but then it jumped back without using any more fuel. After that it acted as a jump gate for awhile as you described and didn't appear to use any more fuel.

I am guessing that I was just out of fuel when I built the ship and didn't notice, but wanted to check with you guys.

Collier. You can make any ship a collier as far as I know. In order to make a work one though it has to have magazines to hold missiles. So just make a huge magazine or put a bunch on small ones on on a ship and mark it as a collier.

Collier 2210 class Collier 10000 tons 512 Crew 1151.4 BP TCS 200 TH 420 EM 0
2100 km/s Armour 1-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 9 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 88% IFR: 1.2% Maint Capacity 1648 MSP Max Repair 30 MSP Est Time: 10.62 Years
Magazine 2210

Ion Engine ME8 (7) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 112.5 billion km (620 days at full power)

ASM S2 Spatha R2 FAC (1105) Speed: 24,000 km/s End: 15.6m Range: 22.5m km WH: 3 Size: 2 TH: 128 / 76 / 38

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

***

Uses magazines, not cargo bays. Failure rate is a bit high, but the max repair size is just 30, so it can just fix itself. Unlike my Cataphracts, if their engine suffers a maintenance breakdown, its 45 to fix, and they carry on 40 in spare parts. Sigh. Now to run all 20 through the shipyard, again, to refit them to cover that design flaw.

How things work in Auroro department: Tractors

Tell the tug to move to the thing to be towed. When it gets there, go to the Individual Ships screen (F6), and then to the Misc tab. Create the tractor link. I'd wait an hour or so, then check, the towed object should now automatically be in the tug's task group. Set orders for the task group, and the tug should tow it away.

Battle Damage: repair it yourself, Scotty!:

After a fight, go to F6, Damage control tab, and start queuing things up. As long as you have spare parts, the crew of the ship will work to repair it. Only thing I haven't been able to fix, yet, is armor. Need to run that back to a maintenance facility, it seems. I'll have to experiment with a maintenance module, see if that will do in field armor repairs.

Is there a size limit on tugs. For example could a 1,000 ton ship pull a 50,000 ton ship?

Yes, but it would go reaaaaaaaaally slow.

It seems to basically add the two masses together, adds the engines on both together, then figures the resulting speed. My 39500 ton tug normally moves 2848 km/s. The damaged 39000 ton star gate constructor was moving 961 km/s normally, when the tug snagged it, they moved about 1700. As the crew repaired the damaged engines on the constructor, the two of them boosted in speed.

So, even if all engines (and fuel, and tractor beam) that 1,000 ton tug isn't going to move that 50,000 ton ship very quickly.

Can only have one tractor link at a time, so you can't have two tugs trying to haul the same ship.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Is there a size limit on tugs. For example could a 1,000 ton ship pull a 50,000 ton ship?

No. Yes. Just make sure it has enough engines on it, or it gets to be a bit slow.

Another note about tugs... If the thing you want to tow is in its own TG (as the only thing in that TG), there is a potential problem with tugging. If you approach a single ship TG and attach a tow to it, it will join the tug's TG, leaving its own TG empty, but still there. Then, when you undo the tow at the destination, and click on 'detach' button to separate the ship from the tug, it will generate a new(!) TG. That can cause you to end up with two TGs of the same name.

Half the stuff I do in the Task Group window seems to generate those 'orphan' empty task groups. I just wait for the system to complain, then track it down and delete it.

And to repair that damaged armor? Shipyards. Ties up a slipway. Doesn't look to be an 'in field' repair option.

I'm guessing if you tell your tug to assimilate the other TG? That should work. Then hook up the tow once they are in the same TG. At the destination, first unhook the tow. Then detach TGs. Should work.

Didn't work for me, tried that and they moved at the slowest speed of the two ships.

Yonder wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:
Yonder wrote:

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.

15-20 labs in 5 areas? Wow, the funding for that would empty my bank in no time, how many financial centers do you have?

Note to self: Check financial statement to make sure I am not heading towards bankruptcy.

Already everything seems to be going pretty stable on the financial side. Here are my numbers:

Income Type -------------------Amount
Tax on Population--------------6769.6
Tax on Exports----------------30
Tax on Trade Goods-----------30
Tax on Passenger Liners-------12
Tax on Shipping Colonists-----10
Financial Centers---------------7.2
Total--------------------------6858.8

Expense Type-------------------Amount
Research------------------------2025.9
Installation Construction---------478.8
Purchase of Civilian Minerals------374.8
Maintenance Facility Operation---15.1
Ground Unit Maintenance---------9.4
Total----------------------------2904

As you can see it's pretty much all tax revenue. I don't know how many times I have researched "Expand Economy" but it costs 20,000 RP now. As far as population goes I have 1.637 billion on Earth, 345 million on Mars, 11 million on Titan, and just under 8 million on Venus.

The population is the difference. I'm not even up to 1b on Earth, and combined my other colonies aren't even 75m.

The second generation of warships:

My Attack Cruiser:

Puma class Cruiser 10750 tons 990 Crew 2545 BP TCS 215 TH 103.68 EM 0
2009 km/s Armour 4-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 11/11/0/0 Damage Control Rating 30 PPV 30
Annual Failure Rate: 46% IFR: 0.6% Maint Capacity 2959 MSP Max Repair 420 MSP Est Time: 5.04 Years
Magazine 682

Magneto-plasma Drive M4 ARM-2 (6) Power 72 Fuel Use 40% Signature 17.28 Armour 2 Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 418.5 billion km (2411 days at full power)

Launcher 3-5 (10) Missile Size 3 Rate of Fire 20
Missile Fire Control 3000T - 201M (2) Range 201.6m km Resolution 60
Lance (220) Speed: 18,700 km/s End: 182.1m Range: 204.4m km WH: 3 Size: 3 TH: 81 / 48 / 24

Search 3000T - 201M (1) GPS 20160 Range 201.6m km Resolution 60
Thermal 1-11 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km
EM Detect 1-11 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km

ECCM-2 (2) ECM 20

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

I am a little unsure about the performance of the Lance, it is taking a lot of fuel to get the 200 million km range, and I have to wonder if building a more capable missile with half the range isn't a better choice, we'll have to see how it goes.

And my anti-missile escort.

Bracer class Cruiser Escort 10750 tons 855 Crew 2784 BP TCS 215 TH 103.68 EM 0
2009 km/s Armour 4-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 11/11/0/0 Damage Control Rating 30 PPV 10
Annual Failure Rate: 46% IFR: 0.6% Maint Capacity 3237 MSP Max Repair 630 MSP Est Time: 4.22 Years
Magazine 825

Magneto-plasma Drive M4 ARM-2 (6) Power 72 Fuel Use 40% Signature 17.28 Armour 2 Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 418.5 billion km (2411 days at full power)

Launcher 1 - 4 (10) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control 0T - 5M (2) Range 5.0m km Resolution 1
Beetle (800) Speed: 44,800 km/s End: 2m Range: 5.4m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 463 / 277 / 138

Search 0T - 5M (1) GPS 504 Range 5.0m km Resolution 1
Thermal 1-11 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km
EM Detect 1-11 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km

ECCM-2 (2) ECM 20

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

My only concern about the Bracer is that I only have 10 launchers. However combined with the fast reload and the long range I think I'll be fine.

The new ships look good, Yonder. You may have them oversupplied through, and short on reloads. I'd cut way back on the fuel supply, cut back on the spare parts, and use fleet supply ships to replenish them in space. You could then use the space saved to improve the armor, or reloads.

Similiar ships are on the way for me, I hope to switch to using the corvettes as clean up if the aliens survive a long range bombardment.

For Snoopy! The other snoopy, that is.

Alpha Centauri, graveyard of the second ship lost to the 'Crabs', as the navy had taken to calling the aliens they had cleared out of EQ Pegasui. This system had been used as a testbed, inconclusive skirmishing here had given us the data that built the FAC Doctrine.

The star gate constructor had arrived ahead of schedule and started work on the exit star gate. This jump point was well away from the planets the aliens here were defending, and had been watched over by Tripwire pickets for years. The constructor captain felt safe enough, and started work while waiting for the fleet.

The jump point went from lonely to crowded as the Cataphract class corvettes came through the portal opened by the star gate in Lacaille 8760. The support element followed closely, with the Hawkeye class AWAC frigate coming in last, its massive search radar already running.

Contact! In one of those incredible coincidences that mark moments in history, the alien fleet was immediately spotted at extreme sensor range by the AWAC (576m km). The gate building must have gotten their attention, or a random patrol pass must have put them at the wrong place, at the wrong time. And of course, if the Hawkeye could see them, they wouldn't be able to miss that sensor hammering them.

The aliens started moving straight toward the Hawkeye at 5672 km/s, far faster than even the nimble fast attack corvettes. The support element jumped right back out, followed by the gate constructor and its jump escort. The scouts broke to the left and right, moving to clear the battefield, their work was over before it was begun. The FAC task group headed straight for the aliens, while the AWAC moved directly away.

The corvettes closed with the alien ships, running silent. With the insane strength of the enemy ECM, they needed to close to 14m km before their fire control could lock. As they were just 25m km from target, the aliens suddenly broke from their normal procedure by lighting up their active sensors.

The original plan had been to move insystem, pinpoint the enemy fleet, sneak the corvettes into range and fire. Simulations based on the previous encounters gave strong odds of being able to kill half the enemy fleet in one pass. If all went as planned, then the corvettes would escape unseen, rearm and go back for a second strike to clean up what remained.

That plan just went out the airlock. The aliens were still hundreds of million km from the only target they should have been able to see, the AWAC, but now they knew the corvettes were dead ahead.

I checked over the tactical intelligence gathered in the previous skirmishes here. The alien fleet consisted of one Aragon class cruiser, and 7 destroyers. Three of the destroyers had active sensors with a range of 58m km, and the cruiser had a 28m km search radar. The other 4 destroyers had very short ranged point defense radar, reaching only 2m km. Based on this, a desperate plan was formed.

760 Spatha missiles fired (more or less) as one, and the corvettes broke into several smaller groups, scattering away from the aliens. If the missiles could take out some of the sensors, or slow down those ships, then some of the corvettes would live. The others would be hunted down, and blown out of space by the aliens' highly advanced railguns.

I'm not sure why the aliens only got off one anti-missile salvo. The small size of the Spatha makes it hard to detect, and its speed combined with that of the targets meant it closed the distance before they had much chance to react.

Once again, I overestimated how much damage the destroyers could take. Alien point defense was poor, only killing 9 Spathas. All three of the targets blew cleanly, with enough damage to spare to have killed a 4th destroyer.

The cruiser was tougher. Fireballs exploded as nuclear warheads hammered its armor. As the final warhead strength 3 missile landed, its blast was dwarfed by the explosion from inside the cruiser - a strength 14 power system explosion ripping the Aragon in half.

Alien active sensor trace vanished immediately. The AWAC frigate shut down its sensor, and the thermal sensors on the Cataphract-C command corvette tracked the 'Crabs' as they came about, running for home.

I went from expecting to lose all my corvettes, to expecting to lose most or hopefully just some, to losing none. Time to recall the colliers and mothership, rearm and go hunting.

Jump Point number three has a dense (level 5) nebula, rendering missiles useless. Luckily the system was uninhabited. Nebula are particularly dangerous to explore, they reduce sensor strength, limit your maximum speed, and, as mentioned, ruin missiles.

Because of this even a lower tech level race can kill you in a nebula, since a race that grew up in a nebula won't have spent any research points towards missiles, and you probably don't have very effective beam weapons, they will have a huge advantage. Because of this, and since Nebulas usually span multiple systems, I won't be exploring through here any more, I'll go on to the next jump point in my home system.

I am also tempted to earmark 10-20 labs back towards turret and meson technology so that I won't be as powerless in a nebula as I am now. Meson beam warships also make great defensive ships. Park them right on a jump point to defend it and it doesn't matter that they have crummy range. When you come into a system you have no active sensors or weapons capabilities for 30-60 seconds. When you're up against a ship firing 8 beams against you every 5 seconds that is a big deal.

Getting back to that system, it looks like I'll be able to get two of the four planets to perfect habitability, which is great. In addition all four of the planets have millions of minerals, albeit at accessibility .1. Between the four of them all eleven minerals are present, so at the very least I will be able to fully maintain any ships here.

I am trying to get through the cloaking tree pretty fast now. The thought of having cloaked FACs fills me with glee. Unfortunately when you start out the smallest cloaking devices are 2500 tons, it will take me awhile before I can get them down to 200 tons or so, if it's even possible.

@Warhound

That was a fantastic story. Keep 'em coming.

@Yonder

Don't forget that masons always do only 1 point of damage. Another thing to consider when picketing JPs is the exit point of the enemy. One of the jump techs you can research gives you distance. This is the maximum random distance the fleet will exit away from the JP. Which means that your short range beams can be ineffective against an enemy with high level jump tech, as they will exit from the JP out of the range of your beams.

Your ships seems a bit... umm... excessive. They are very big. Cost a lot. I suppose they would make for a good fleet center, where you have one of each of those ships surrounded with like 10 missile destroyers and 5-10 anti-missile destroyers. The destroyers should have no sensors and no fuel and no armour. Just missile tubes/beam turrets.

As a general FYI comment...

Missile damage against armour is wedge shaped. Like an inverse pyramid. Something like:

WH 1 XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX WH2 XXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX WH3 XXX XXX XXXXXXXXX WH4 XXX XXX XXXX XXXX ... WH9 XX XX XXX XXX *

Where * is an actual internal damage to the systems. In other words, in order to penetrate level 1 armour in 1 hit, you need warhead strength of at least 4. For level 2 armour in 1 hit, you need warhead strength of at least 9.

I notice that both Warhound and Yonder use missiles of WH 3. Such missiles will punch a hole in armour of size 3, but not actually inflict any internal damage. It will take another missile to do that.

MoonDragon wrote:

@Warhound

That was a fantastic story. Keep 'em coming.

@Yonder

Don't forget that masons always do only 1 point of damage. Another thing to consider when picketing JPs is the exit point of the enemy. One of the jump techs you can research gives you distance. This is the maximum random distance the fleet will exit away from the JP. Which means that your short range beams can be ineffective against an enemy with high level jump tech, as they will exit from the JP out of the range of your beams.

That's true, but since Mesons ignore armor I am hoping that that will make up for the lower damage output compared to the other beam weapons.

Your ships seems a bit... umm... excessive. They are very big. Cost a lot. I suppose they would make for a good fleet center, where you have one of each of those ships surrounded with like 10 missile destroyers and 5-10 anti-missile destroyers. The destroyers should have no sensors and no fuel and no armour. Just missile tubes/beam turrets.

I will have to add Destroyers if I actually run into an enemy soon (other than the precursors which I will continue to avoid) right now the Cruisers are there "just in case" and I am hoping that I will get the tech to make sweet hunter Corvettes and make up a new doctrine entire around them. Large carrier that stays with the Jumpship with a couple of Cruisers for protection. Medium sized Watchship with enormous sensors, reasonable speed, and some sensor buoys, then a dozen 1000 ton corvettes.

As a general FYI comment...

Missile damage against armour is wedge shaped. Like an inverse pyramid. Something like:

WH 1 XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX WH2 XXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX WH3 XXX XXX XXXXXXXXX WH4 XXX XXX XXXX XXXX ... WH9 XX XX XXX XXX *

Where * is an actual internal damage to the systems. In other words, in order to penetrate level 1 armour in 1 hit, you need warhead strength of at least 4. For level 2 armour in 1 hit, you need warhead strength of at least 9.

I notice that both Warhound and Yonder use missiles of WH 3. Such missiles will punch a hole in armour of size 3, but not actually inflict any internal damage. It will take another missile to do that.

Yeah, this is what I mentioned with my range problem. At my tech level (and using size three missiles, which I have arbitrarily chosen) I could either make a fairly weak missing with a range of 200 million km, or a fairly good missile with a range of 100 million km. I decided to do the former and hope that the longer range would make up for the decreased damage, it remains to be seen whether that was a good idea or not. In my next generation I will keep the 200 million km range and improve the other aspects. I'll have a faster, stronger missile, and the smaller Fire Control and Sensors will let me launch more of them at once.

That's the plan anyways. The downside to my slow and methodical approach to this is that I may go a long while before I get to actually test out my doctrine. I am hoping that the extent to which I am developing and mining the territory I have will keep me from falling behind in the tech race in the meantime.

Its a trade off, fewer heavier missiles vs a swarm of smaller missiles. I'm fighting precursors (I think), and they have a nasty tech edge. Earlier test with larger missiles didn't work out, their anti-missile system were just swatting my salvos out of space. So, I went with the sandblaster approach, so many missiles that some have to get through, and just pile the damage on a bit at a time. Seems to be working.

I'm thinking of extending that doctrine for the next generation of warships, and going with larger missiles that MIRV on final approach. A S15 bus (going 15,000 km/s) that brings 8 size 1 sprint mode (35,000 km/s) missiles to a seperation point 4m km from the target. Sure, I'm only doing 8 damage tops, but I'm doing it from 150m to 200m km out. Having a salvo of 10 slow missiles suddenly MIRV into 80 very fast missiles is going to give their point defense system a breakdown

I really wish that the multiplayer in this game was stronger. You have to email the database around, but with simultaneous variable-time turns that just seems like way too much hassle.

Protip: Overhaul the ship, then refit it. If you don't, the ship will be overhauled while sitting in the shipyard. This ties up a slipway longer. If you don't care about that extra time, then skip the overhaul, just refit it.

Alrighty, time for another partial status report.

It is the 79th year of the space age, and we have just finished exploring all six of the Jump Points in the solar system. Here is the breakdown.

Jump Point 1: A pretty sweet system, lots and lots of asteroids and planets, some of them easily terraformable. Unfortunately Bad Things happen to people that go there.

JP 2: A system with good resource availability, but no particularly interesting colonization opportunities. There was a small set of archaeological ruins here, they have been surveyed but I haven't gotten around to getting an Engineering Regiment out there yet.

JP 3: A nebula (lvl 5) system with four planets. Two of which will can be made into ideal worlds. There are a lot of resources here, but the accessibility stinks, overall a sweet find. One of the jump points here has a jumpgate attached to it. There has been no activity here (a survey ship has been sitting over the jumpgate since we found it) and there are no ruins here either. A mystery.

JP 4: An empty solar system, a star with no other bodies whatsoever.

JP 5: A fairly non-descript system. A world that could be made livable, though not ideal. Decent resource availability, but nothing particularly special.

JP6: An annoying system. When you jump in you see what appears to be a completely empty system. However analysis of the brightest star in the sky showed that it was actually in the same system, 3 trillion kilometers away. There are asteroids, planets, and moons around it, close examination of one planet showed that it was even livable. We will need significant redesigns to get our geological survey ships out that far to see if development would be worthwhile. BAH. If there was even the tiniest asteroid around that first star we'd be able to mass driver anything we found there for pickup but NOOoooOOOoo. Part of me hopes there is nothing worthwhile around the star, a greater part wants them to be filled with riches so that I have the challenge of developing them.

So my future plans:

I suppose it's finally time for me to start exploring the second tier of star systems. I haven't decided whether or not I will start with the jump point with the alien gate on it.

As far as stealth tech goes. Right now I can make a Cloaking Device that masses 400 tons. In yr 83 I will be able to shrink it down to 300 tons. I am hoping that in yr 90 or 91 I will finally hit my 200 ton target and I will be able to make 1000 ton stealth corvettes. If I haven't found another enemy by then I may test them out on the Precursors in the first jump point.

I could approach the surveying of JP 6 in a couple different ways. First of all I need new GeoSurvey vessels. I have still been using my very first generation of ships, the first four ships my race ever built. They still run like champs but they are 70 years old and badly out of date. The way I see it I have two choices. I could make new survey vessels with an 8 trillion km range so that they could get the job done, or I could get some experience designing and building carriers/corvettes and make a few 1000 ton survey vessels, then make a carrier large enough to ferry four or so of them 4 trillion km and back.

I'll probably do latter idea. In fact a 4 ship carrier could be a pretty useful design, if it is too difficult to carry around a dozen at once I could build three quad-carriers instead.

What you need for those distances are hyperdrives. I don't know how hyperdrive uses fuel, but you do need the speed for it.

Terrier - Geo class Gravitational Survey Vessel 1000 tons 107 Crew 248.3 BP TCS 20 TH 40 EM 0
4000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 30/1/0/1 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 3% IFR: 0% Maint Capacity 388 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP Est Time: 15.08 Years

Magneto-plasma Drive ME7 (TH50%) (1) Power 80 Fuel Use 70% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 40,000 Litres Range 102.9 billion km (297 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH5-30 (1) Sensitivity 30 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 30m km
Geological Survey Sensors (1) 1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

My current design. Jump tender carries fuel and spare parts, the thermal sensor will hopefully spot the aliens in time to run. And if it dies, its just a corvette. Swap out the geo sensor for a grav sensor, and you have my current gravsurvey ship.

I have a very interesting game going on now. I'm almost 9 years into it, having started with a sizable population (2.5 bil). This gave me lots of research and construction capability. The best part is: I have not met any hostiles yet. I have geo scanned 12 systems by now and have found 3 abandoned/destroyed alien planets.

But this also scares me. Once I do find an alien species, will they be super powerful, and me just not ready for them?

I went far into beam weapon research and very little into missiles. I'm confident that I can defend against reasonable missile attacks. But I'm not confident in my ability to actually kill anything. My sole offensive capability comes from mason mounted fighters. My carriers currently carry 4 mason fighters and 2 active sensor fighters. They also serve as my military jump ships. They are each protected by two escort cruisers mounting 4 quad Gauss turrets.

I've researched lasers into X-Ray wavelength. Which gave me the ability to research x-ray warheads.