Aurora - Dwarf Fortress In Space

Well, I got a blue screen in between turns (most likely not Aurora's fault, I get them pretty regularly, sorry to everyone I play L4D with), unfortunately it seems to have corrupted a lot of the going ons that were happening while it processed the turn. I emailed the author the file and I'm hoping he can get it sorted out, and in the meantime I'm not sure what I'll do. I was really, really looking forward to getting my stealth gunships worked out, so I think that I'll give myself a start that's sorta close to the 88 year build up I had going for me, so lets see what I had:

At this point my population is very high, more than 2.2 billion on Earth, a little over 950 million on Mars, I have another 125 million colonists on six different colony worlds. One of them has already been made into perfect habitability, two others would get there very soon. Another would require three years of work. Finally Titan is at 1.6, as close as it could ever get, and Venus remains very much a long term project.

All of these people pay their taxes like true patriots. My monthly income is 10,400 credits, 2000 of which is profit. We have one and a half million saved up for a rainy day.

Other than Terraforming Installations and Automated Mines my entire Industry remains on Earth, I have 1285 Construction Factories (again working at capacity now that my mining practices have increased in scope so much) 100 mines, and an abundance of Maintenance Facilities, Ordnance Factories, and Fuel Refineries. The rest of my mines have been automated and shipped abroad a total of 806. I also have 200 Mobile Mining Modules stripmining the asteroids of other systems. Last (but definitely not least) a very healthy Civilian Industry has developed 46 mining complexes (a total of 460 additional mines) on three different moons in the outer solar system. Speaking of Civilian Industry, two shipping lines have a total of 56 ships, clocking in at more than 3 million in total tonnage. These guys are just completely fantastic, they have done much more work at increasing my population than I have.

The last bit of notable installations I have are the shipyards and research labs. I have a total of 9 civilian slipways in three shipyards, each with a capacity of 150k tons. Then I have 21 slipways in 6 Navy Shipyards, each of which are rated at 20k tons. I have 153 research labs cranking out 400 RP each, and each of them are made 2-3 times more effective by the specialists heading them. I am currently making another 8 labs a year. The only research avenue I've really mentioned recently is cloaking, but only 15 of my labs are actually working on that, the other 90% are making huge strides in all of the other technologies necessary for the navy and their families back home.

So yeah, that's what I'm giving up, and what I hope I can get back to in a couple days. For now I figure if I start with 2 billion people, a little extra productivity, and around 5 million RP I can mimic this and not have to give it another 88 years.

MoonDragon wrote:

My sole offensive capability comes from mason mounted fighters. My carriers currently carry 4 mason fighters and 2 active sensor fighters.

Make sure you have the lids on properly, or the pilots will spoil. Ick.

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

Ah-ha. Now I have motivation to research lasers.

Apparently the x-ray warheads explode (not sure if on impact or on proximity), and a number of x-ray laser like beams shoots in all directions from the explosion. Explode a few of those in a middle of an enemy massive fleet and watch them all burn! Or rather explode from inside. Lasers would have very narrow and deep damage profile against shields. So you'd punch pinholes through their armour, and apply much of the damage to the internal systems. Oh, and I don't think you need to research the laser focal point. Just the wavelength (colour) of the laser.

BTW, another pro-tip: make yourself a Diplomatic team as soon as you can. And just let them sit idle on Earth. They'll slowly train themselves over time. I have not noticed the same for the Espionage team though.

Started a new game because the old one became error ridden with overflows.

Theme: Nations of Earth.
Race: Man
Year: 2010

Started out with basic empire so had to research all the stuff needed to get into space. Basically was thinking what would happen if we started going into space now.

This time around I put 10% of my workforce on the production of 500 factories. 10% on 500 mines. 10% on 50 research labs.

I'm currently in year 2015 with two ships out. One Geo and one Grav. I making plans for a freight and the first military ship. I just finished construction on a new shipyard.

I have most of my research queued up but not correctly. I think I'll have to redo most of it.

Alrighty, it took awhile to get all of my techs set up the way they should be, I gave myself everything that I had finished and everything that I was more than half way through, anything less than halfway through I left out. Turns out that I just needed a little more than three million RP, I wonder if the NPR also got 5 million and if they fully used it.

This means that I am finally able to unveil my Stealth Corvettes! My Doctrine calls for three "Child Snatcher" Corvettes and one "Kobold" class Scout to travel in a squadron. The Kobold's purpose is to use passive sensors to ensure that the squadron doesn't run into any surprises. A "Beacon" class Scout Cruiser will light up any targets with active sensors.

I am very proud of how stealthy these things are. On Radar they show up as a fourth their size, basically a small fighter. Their thermal signature is highly reduced, they show up as being large missiles. If anything does happen to get a lock on them hopefully the ECM will further confuse the opponents.

Child Snatcher class Corvette 1000 tons 79 Crew 338 BP TCS 5 TH 32 EM 0
10000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 6
Annual Failure Rate: 8% IFR: 0.1% Maint Capacity 211 MSP Max Repair 112 MSP Est Time: 6.36 Years
Magazine 40

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive GB18 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 180% Signature 32 Armour 0 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 30,000 Litres Range 30.0 billion km (34 days at full power)

Box Launcher 5 (8) Missile Size 5 Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes MF Reload 6.2 hours
Missile Fire Control 2500T - 72M (1) Range 72.0m km Resolution 50
Hammer (8) Speed: 43,000 km/s End: 27.9m Range: 72m km WH: 20 Size: 5 TH: 344 / 206 / 103

Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 25% of normal
Small Craft ECCM-1 (1)
ECM 30

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

Kobold class Scout 1000 tons 106 Crew 442 BP TCS 5 TH 32 EM 0
10000 km/s Armour 3-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 72/36/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 6% IFR: 0.1% Maint Capacity 345 MSP Max Repair 144 MSP Est Time: 8.16 Years

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive GB18 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 180% Signature 32 Armour 0 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 30,000 Litres Range 30.0 billion km (34 days at full power)

Hammer (8) Speed: 43,000 km/s End: 27.9m Range: 72m km WH: 20 Size: 5 TH: 344 / 206 / 103

Thermal 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km
EM Detection 36 - 2 (1) Sensitivity 36 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 36m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 25% of normal

ECM 30

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

Beacon class Scout Cruiser 9950 tons 900 Crew 8306 BP TCS 199 TH 160 EM 0
5025 km/s Armour 7-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 72/72/0/0 Damage Control Rating 22 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 35% IFR: 0.5% Maint Capacity 11479 MSP Max Repair 3840 MSP Est Time: 3.58 Years

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive M1.8 ARM-2 (10) Power 100 Fuel Use 18% Signature 16 Armour 2 Exp 2%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres Range 753.8 billion km (1736 days at full power)

Search 2000T - 768M (1) GPS 76800 Range 768.0m km Resolution 40
Search 0T - 9.6M (1) GPS 960 Range 9.6m km Resolution 1
Thermal 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km
EM Detection 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km

ECM 40

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Next step is designing my carrier, depending on how that turns out I'll need a jumpship, collier, and maybe a tanker. I'll also need some escort ships to take out the missiles that may find their way to my support fleet, and maybe some destroyers and cruisers to attack from longer range.

Sorry to hear about your technical problems Yonder. That sure is quite an impressive game you've got going there. I've been backing up my saves since I had a crash that corrupted a file early on. Apparently all you have to do is make a copy of the Stevefire.mdb file in your Aurora directory.

I'm 13 years in on my first game. The New Roman Republic lead by Gnaeus Aruccius Roscius has thus far been concentrating on a conservative expansion approach with developing colonies on Mars and Titan along with a few mining colonies in the Solar System. By the numbers, we have a population of about 743m with 36m on Mars, about 1m on Titan, and 706m on Earth. Industry-wise there are 668 construction factories, 24 research labs, 521 mines split between Earth and Mars, and 160 automated mines spread out on various outposts.

Extra-solar exploration began a little over two years ago and two promising systems have been found out of seven explored. Sadly the better of the two is infested by a vicious race known only as the Wolf 359 Aliens #975. First contact was made when two defenseless survey vessels were attacked by a stack of 88 ~800 ton Meson Cannon armed fighters. Due to the sorry state of the armed forces at this time, our primary defense plan consists of hoping that they don't have jump drives equipped yet.

I've been having a great time so far. Long term I'm hoping to field a force based on carriers and fighters because it would just be so cool. That said, I've almost exclusively been researching economic and propulsion techs with the thought that they are the best early investments since it seems like the cost to refit a ship isn't too terrible if you keep the engines the same. Horrible death or not, it should be fun.

Alrighty, After designing both a 12 Hangar Carrier and a Four Hangar carrier I decided that I like the four hangar one much better, so I'll be going with several of those instead of one larger ship, but here are both designs for those that are interested.

12 Hangar: (These engines are commercial engines, so it can use a much cheaper Commercial Jump Drive, the larger size just made maintenance a huge pain though, and it's still a military design, so it still needs to be built at a Navy Shipyard, and it would take awhile for me to get one of those to 50k tons.

Mountain class Carrier 49000 tons 2165 Crew 7042.2 BP TCS 980 TH 600 EM 0
3826 km/s Armour 10-119 Shields 0-0 Sensors 72/72/0/0 Damage Control Rating 125 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 153% IFR: 2.1% Maint Capacity 11228 MSP Max Repair 163 MSP Est Time: 8.98 Years
Hangar Deck Capacity 12000 tons Magazine 900 Cargo Handling Multiplier 20

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive C0.18 ARM-2 (15) Power 250 Fuel Use 1.8% Signature 40 Armour 2 Exp 0%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 1020.3 billion km (3086 days at full power)

Hammer (180) Speed: 43,000 km/s End: 27.9m Range: 72m km WH: 20 Size: 5 TH: 344 / 206 / 103

Thermal 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km
EM Detection 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km

ECM 40

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

Four Hangar:

Burrow class Carrier 14400 tons 905 Crew 3588.88 BP TCS 288 TH 160 EM 0
3472 km/s Armour 10-52 Shields 0-0 Sensors 72/72/0/0 Damage Control Rating 35 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 47% IFR: 0.7% Maint Capacity 5453 MSP Max Repair 148 MSP Est Time: 11.98 Years
Hangar Deck Capacity 4000 tons Magazine 540 Cargo Handling Multiplier 10

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive M1.8 ARM-2 (10) Power 100 Fuel Use 18% Signature 16 Armour 2 Exp 2%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 694.4 billion km (2314 days at full power)

Hammer (108) Speed: 43,000 km/s End: 27.9m Range: 72m km WH: 20 Size: 5 TH: 344 / 206 / 103

Thermal 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km
EM Detection 72 - 4 (1) Sensitivity 72 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 72m km

ECM 40

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

I gave both of these designs cargo handlers, but I have no idea if speeds the loading of box launchers in your hangar, anyone else know?

My Grav and Geo Survey ships are also 1000 tons, so they can each fit in these carriers.
Edit: Although even if they were heavier than 1000 they should be ok. I think that two 2000 ton ships can fit in four hangar bays.

As a last note I'd like to point out my ridiculous armor thickness on these babies. I designed the mountain first, and I figured that the Dwarves wouldn't name anything that unless it was truly impenetrable, after I made the Burrow I was so happy to see a tonnage number less than 15k tons that I just left all the armor on.

@ Yonder

Is your Kobold equipped with missiles on purpose or just a leftover from the class copy operation?

I would also suggest you consider installing a jump engine on your carrier. There are two reasons to my thinking.

Firstly, you might have a hard time building a jump tender with that much mass. Clearly your carrier is supposed to be a supply ship and a tanker. So, either make a supply/tanker jump ship, and keep your carrier light. Or add a jump engine on the carrier to ensure that it can jump any other ship that joins you.

Secondly, if your jump ship gets destroyed by enemy, your carriers are stuck in the enemy territory and vulnerable. If they themselves are the jump ships, then they can help themselves and try to run. Minimizes losses of really expensive platforms.

Oh, and a final advice: make sure that the crews for these mega ships are conscripts, unless you have 15000+ trained crew. And slap high crew training officers on there. There is very little that these ships do, and their crew requirements are HUGE. They'll suck up your trained crew pool after only a couple are built. You want trained crews on things like flak ships. To ensure they hit the incoming missiles.

@ Baron

What you found there are arguably the hardest aliens (I don't think they are Precursors, but they are also not an NPR) in the game. Leave them be for quite a while. I don't think they'll follow you though. I hope.

MoonDragon wrote:

@ Yonder

Is your Kobold equipped with missiles on purpose or just a leftover from the class copy operation?

Whoops, thanks for pointing that out. I'm surprised it let me build them with the missiles still in the ordnance bay. I took out the box launchers so there isn't any room for them.

I would also suggest you consider installing a jump engine on your carrier. There are two reasons to my thinking.

Firstly, you might have a hard time building a jump tender with that much mass. Clearly your carrier is supposed to be a supply ship and a tanker. So, either make a supply/tanker jump ship, and keep your carrier light. Or add a jump engine on the carrier to ensure that it can jump any other ship that joins you.

Secondly, if your jump ship gets destroyed by enemy, your carriers are stuck in the enemy territory and vulnerable. If they themselves are the jump ships, then they can help themselves and try to run. Minimizes losses of really expensive platforms.

That's probably a good idea. I took the jumpdrive out of the Mountain because it dramatically increased maintenance requirements that were already pretty incredible. I didn't consider seeing how the Burrow would look if I put the jumpdrive directly on it.

Oh, and a final advice: make sure that the crews for these mega ships are conscripts, unless you have 15000+ trained crew. And slap high crew training officers on there. There is very little that these ships do, and their crew requirements are HUGE. They'll suck up your trained crew pool after only a couple are built. You want trained crews on things like flak ships. To ensure they hit the incoming missiles.

Can you talk about this a little more in depth? Is there a tutorial somewhere about how to manage crews? Right now I don't know how to transfer skilled crew from some ships to another.

Would it be worthwhile (or possible) to build a ship filled with equipment that required lots of crew to manage? Then you could give it your officer with the highest training ability and let him train large batches of troops in your home system. Then you could reassign them to actual combat assignments after a two year deployment or something like that.

Cargo management systems (CMS) don't move missiles, since those are magazines. Won't help with the reload times on the box launchers, sorry. CMS will help with the load time on ground troops transferring from a transport to a dropship (doesn't matter which ship has the CMS, if both do, then you get the benefit from both sets.) Basically, if you see a load time when designing the class, a CMS will help.

Hanger space is one lump. Toss in 4 1000ton hangers, and you can fit 1 4000t ship in there. Or 8 500t ships.

Conscripts are assigned when you design the class. Upper right corner, in the area with the checkboxes for tanker or collier, there is one for conscript.

I don't know of any way to transfer crew from one ship to another.

LtWarhound wrote:

Conscripts are assigned when you design the class. Upper right corner, in the area with the checkboxes for tanker or collier, there is one for conscript.

I don't know of any way to transfer crew from one ship to another.

So what is the difference between Conscripts and normal crew?

Thanks for the CMS info.

Each crew has a training rating. Conscripts start with a rating of 0, implying an untrained, freshly recruited mob. Your trained personnel, as visible in under the academy tab of your colony screen, has a rating of 100 * racial training level. You adjust the training level under your race options screen. By default, humans will have a racial training level of 1, giving all your trained troops a training rating of 100.

Training rating determines bonuses (or penalties) to your troops' performance. Rating of 100 is baseline and gives 0 bonus/penalty. Rating of 0 (untrained conscripts) gives a penalty of -10%. Higher training rating than 100 gives positive bonuses. They are getting progressively harder to achieve. I think 300 gives around +7% bonus. That's the number you see next to the ship name, when you're trying to assign commanders to ships.

This bonus applies to anything that the ship does. So, a survey ship will survey faster. A mining ship will mine faster. A missile shooting ship should shoot faster, but I'm not certain about that one. That last one may depend on many factors, including fleet training, Task Force communications/operations bonuses, etc.

Your commander's crew training rating, if present, will slowly increase your crew training rating, over time.

--Edit--

Oh, I forgot to mention. If you disassemble a ship in the shipyard, the crew is "dissolved" into the general pool of trained personnel and their collective rating will go up appropriately (by a proportion). There is no way to transfer crew from one ship to another, directly. You can transfer a commander with a high training rating to train the next crew faster.

Good over on conscripts. I had no what that was all about.

On a different note how does Commercial Mining Complex work?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Good over on conscripts. I had no what that was all about.

On a different note how does Commercial Mining Complex work?

A mining complex consists of 10 Automated Mines, a Mass Driver, a Garrison unit, and maybe a Tracking Facility. They can be extended, in which case 10 more mines are added for every additional complex. I don't know if more Mass Drivers are added too, but I've never had a problem with overload, even when I had 14 Mining Complexes on a single moon.

You can go to the "Civilian" tab of the Economics window for that colony in order to choose whether you will buy the mineral output of the complex or not. If you choose to you pay some amount--I think it's 150 credits a year or so--and you will be given all of the materials mined. You can either redirect it with the (attached) Mass Driver or let it build up and pick it up via Freighter.

Your other option is to let the mining complex sell the minerals to the civilian market, in which case you receive 50 credits a year in taxes per mining complex.

My CMCs sell me stuff for 250 credits per complex and earn 125 credits in tax for civ trade.

Several more years into the campaign; have colonies in 3 systems and am working on 2 more; I'm finishing off gravsurveys of the final few 2 jump systems from Sol, where many of the 3 jump systems have already been mapped out.

Yet still no aliens. This is starting to concern me. I know they are out there. They make my game slow down from time to time. But haven't found them yet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I've researched a number of missile techs, but have not yet built anything missile related. My fleet currently consists of two carrier ships fielding 4 mason equipped and two sensor equipped fighters. Each is flanked by two PD escort cruisers (4 independent turrets of 4 gauss cannons each). I'm pretty confident that I can withstand normal missile attacks, but who knows what a developed AI can toss at me.

MoonDragon wrote:

I've researched a number of missile techs, but have not yet built anything missile related. My fleet currently consists of two carrier ships fielding 4 mason equipped and two sensor equipped fighters. Each is flanked by two PD escort cruisers (4 independent turrets of 4 gauss cannons each). I'm pretty confident that I can withstand normal missile attacks, but who knows what a developed AI can toss at me.

Are those carriers each fielding two six ships? Or total?

I assume that your plan is to have the PD escort cruisers intercept the incoming missiles while the fighters loiter closer to the enemy, but hopefully undetected. Once the incoming missiles are depleted the fighters will chase down and intercept the enemy fleet. Do you have another plan in mind?

What is the range and speed of your fighters? Are they going to be able to run down a fleet which is heading home to rearm?

I am also curious as to whether your fighters will be able to stand up to the enemies missile defense system, although if they don't have any, or have only CIWS, you'll be in the clear. Keep us informed!

I am waiting for the 5.0 version (which should be coming out soonish) before I get back into the thick of things. Well, that was my plan anyways, we'll see if I get bored this weekend.

Each carrier has 4 mason + 2 sensor fighters. If they stick together though, I may want to change that to 5+1, as I don't think I need that many sensor craft. 2 are necessary for single fleet ops.

Yonder wrote:

I assume that your plan is to have the PD escort cruisers intercept the incoming missiles while the fighters loiter closer to the enemy, but hopefully undetected. Once the incoming missiles are depleted the fighters will chase down and intercept the enemy fleet. Do you have another plan in mind?

There is no reason to wait for them to deplete their missiles. If they want to shoot their mega missiles at my small fighters, let them. I'm kind of hoping that my mason fighters can demolish the internal systems of a target fleet before they can really come to harm. But we all know about plans and surviving the first contact. My fighters do have an odd feature about them. Instead of going for the smallest fighters possible, they actually have 3 layers of armour on them. So, if the enemy decides to shoot at them, they should be capable of withstanding a small amount of defensive fire. Ultimately, I have no enemy to tailor my strategy against, so all I have for now is theories and good intentions.

In another 3 or 4 years I'll have to replace all these ships anyways. They are just an insurance policy for now. Haven't decided yet what my next doctrine will be. My missile tech is slowly catching up to my beam weapons (had x-ray lasers before researching any missile stuff). I almost wish that I found a Progenitor ship. Just so that I can amuse myself and my military commanders.

I'll probably just sit on my butt for a while though. Explore enough territory around my existing empire to feel safe, then really concentrate on developing a thriving economy. Especially in systems with resources in millions.

Ooh, that's quite a decent amount of armor on the fighters, you are probably right about them being able to handle point-defence fire, although if they have also gone the Meson route it'll be more interesting.

Could you post their stats? I'm interested to see your ships that follow such a different doctrine from my own.

I too have been thinking about a carrier and fighter based force and initially wanted to go with Lasers or Gauss cannons for armament. The great theoretical obstacle I haven't been able to get around though is that fighers are essentially bigger and slower versions of missles -- meaning that almost any PD should be able to swat them out of the sky with ease. Armor could do the trick though. Will be interested to hear how it works out MoonDragon.

I don't know. If the fighter is fast enough it could out fly the PD.

I was thinking about using fighters as PD.

Hmm, if I were to make beam-weapon attack fighters I would make lasers which are as long ranged as possible, with no regards for attack rate. I'd also make them pretty speedy. My hope would be that their weapons would out-range the enemy PDs, and be fast enough to keep the enemy PD from engaging.

This would probably work for a similarly advanced NPR, your lasers would have a big range advantage over mesons, and if they had lasers too... well hopefully they went for fire rate more than range...

A precursor ship would probably have greater range, and speed, and firing rate, but it's all about swamping them with numbers anyways.

Yonder wrote:

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.

Dang. That's a bit over 0.3 light years. Which is awesome.

(The legendary space empire game in my head which I may some day write will start with a healthy period of interstellar colonization using sub-light drives.)

So, I finally came upon a hostile craft. Apparently, it's a single craft, just sitting in the middle of a system. I think he may be teabagging the freighter and survey crafts he destroyed. But that also made it easy to find him on repeated reloads of the game.

First up was my mason fighter doctrine. Never controlled fighters in a fleet setting before, so that was a learning experience all in itself. But anyways, I did manage to find the bugger, paint it with some actives from my sensor fighter, then get my 4 mason fighters to attack. Except nothing happened. Not sure if I did something wrong. The event log kept saying that my targeting is attacking with like 70% hit chance. No error messages. But also no positive feedback either. No damage numbers or anything. Not sure if masons are supposed to advertise the hits they achieve on internal systems. Or if all of his internal systems had high internal armour rating. But nothing was happening. And then, he slowly proceeded to shoot down my fighters with his plasma missiles. I fought them to the last fighter standing, just to see if something would change. No luck. So there goes that doctrine.

Reloaded a saved database from before the attack. Designed some new ships, systems, and missiles. Went with short range size 3 sabots (200k). Basically a size 2 warhead with size 1 engine (I think I took away from the engine for the smallest amount of fuel I could--something like 0.002). A brute force solution. Then, I took 4 of those sabots and slapped them on top of a size 3 first stage carrier missile, for the total size of 15. Then I loaded them up into some box launchers and slapped 4 such launchers onto a 1000 ton ship (normal engines to give me flight endurance and still 8888km/s speed). To support them, I designed a new 10000 ton carrier/collier with jump ability. 2000 ton hangar space, so it can only reload two at the time.

With this new weapon delivery platform joining my previous one, still used for sensor and PD support, I revisited my patient friend. Took me a bit to figure out how best to go about it, but eventually just one of my missile boats loosed its salvo. 4 cruise missiles went slowly on their way. I think their speed is only around 22000km/s. He was undeterred, and determined to chase down my active sensor fighter. At 180k, 4 blips on the radar flowered into 20. 16 of which now screamed at him at 54000km/s and only seconds later his PD kicked in. But at those speeds, he could do no better than take out 2, and no further chances were afforded. 2 missiles missed their target, and then 12 detonations of 12 points of damage each detonated upon his hull. The first may have peeled him opened like a can of sardines. The rest converted him into component sub-particles. Like a fist of an angry god, my Thor cruise missiles delivered Thunder warheads that sent him back to meet his maker and repent for his affronts against my civilian shipping. It was glorious.

And also the first damn battle I ever won in this game. Hooray! I'm so happy.

I can't wait for 5 to drop. Some huge changes to fleets underfoot. And lots of usability changes.

Yeah, I've put my time in Aurora on hold, waiting for 5 (plus a lot of other reasons as well that have to do with Real Life).

It has occurred to me last night, and someone may have mentioned it earlier in the thread, but this game reminds me so much of old school Harpoon game(s). A lot more than Dwarf Fortress.

I got this game on hold a bit also until the next version comes out. Been playing Dwarf Fortress. The only thing they really have in common is they both have a lot of depth.

The new features getting lined up for 5.0 do indeed look enticing. Despite this, I've in what seems to be against all odds continued with my current game!

Things are going pretty well still in 2074 (24 years of game time). Mars recently finished terraforming and is humanity's second fully habitable world after Earth. I've also started a major colony on the planet of Capua in the neighboring system of Campania. Its got good quality deposits of all but two of the TN minerals along with a nice set of alien ruins.

In addition to the previous alien contact made in the Samnium system, also adjacent to Latium (formerly known as Sol), a new race was discovered four jumps out in the Achaea system. These Achaeans have since blown up the initial gravitational survey ship that made first contact with them and a scout ship task force sent to try to gather more intel. Due to the obvious nature of these threats, the Senate lead by by the new consul Manius Ausonius Velius has ordered the creation of a new 'blue water' space fleet that will finally be able to effectively project power beyond the Latium system.

The first military vessel of this new wave is the Gaius Marius class Carrier along with its complement of forty F/A-1 Eagle Assault Fighters. It has primarily been designed to allow the New Roman Republic to finally hit back against the mysterious aliens of the Samnium system, who have since come to be known of as the 'Star Swarm.' The general plan is for the CV-1 Gaius Marius and its sister ship the CV-2 Quintus Sertorius to hold position on the jump point for safety while their fighter wings seek out and destroy in piecemeal the swarms of 800 ton 10,000 km/s meson armed fighters that represent the known military capability of the Star Swarm. If everything works out, the enemy fighters shouldn't be able to touch the Roman fighters or carriers due to the fighters' slight speed advantage and the carriers' ability to jump back to safety.

Gaius Marius class Carrier 28500 tons 1735 Crew 5407.4 BP TCS 570 TH 600 EM 0
1403 km/s JR 4-50 Armour 4-83 Shields 0-0 Sensors 120/60/0/0 Damage Control Rating 35 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 185% IFR: 2.6% Maint Capacity 4151 MSP Max Repair 1722 MSP Est Time: 1.15 Years
Flag Bridge Hangar Deck Capacity 10000 tons Magazine 1200

J30000(4-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 30000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 4
Magneto-plasma Drive E6 (10) Power 80 Fuel Use 60% Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 105.2 billion km (868 days at full power)

'Gladius' Size 3 Assault Fighter Missile (400) Speed: 37,300 km/s End: 2.2m Range: 5m km WH: 5 Size: 3 TH: 161 / 97 / 48

Active Search Sensor S210-R120-252m (1) GPS 25200 Range 252.0m km Resolution 120
Active Search Sensor S210-R1-2.1m (1) GPS 210 Range 2.1m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH15-120 (1) Sensitivity 120 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 120m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-60 (1) Sensitivity 60 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 60m km

Strike Group
40x F/A-1 Eagle Assault Fighter Speed: 10322 km/s Size: 4.65

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

F/A-1 Eagle class Assault Fighter 232.5 tons 15 Crew 41.5 BP TCS 4.65 TH 36 EM 0
10322 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 2.25
Annual Failure Rate: 4% IFR: 0.1% Maint Capacity 11 MSP Max Repair 10 MSP Est Time: 6.63 Years
Magazine 15

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E600 (1) Power 48 Fuel Use 6000% Signature 36 Armour 0 Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 2.6 billion km (69 hours at full power)

Size 3 Box Launcher (5) Missile Size 3 Hangar Reload 22.5 minutes MF Reload 3.7 hours
Assault Fighter MFC10.5-R16-5.04m (1) Range 5.0m km Resolution 16
'Gladius' Size 3 Assault Fighter Missile (5) Speed: 37,300 km/s End: 2.2m Range: 5m km WH: 5 Size: 3 TH: 161 / 97 / 48

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
This design is classed as a fighter for production and combat purposes

Any suggestions? Going forward the carriers will form the backbone of my combined fleets along with point defense ships, missile, and beam cruisers. For now though, I think they should hopefully work quite nicely along with colliers and sensor ships against my Star Swarm nemesis. Will be fun in any case.

Your carrier only has maintenance supplies for 1.15 years, which seems a little low.

Of course everyone keeps telling me that my ships carry way too many supplies and too much fuel, so you should get some other opinions.