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[Flying Dice]

If I'm remembering correctly, they travel at 80,000 km/s.

[Metalax]

A copy from my post in the Aurora ship design bureau:

So, I'm playing with a Meson PD PDC design to throw around, and I'd like opinions on the design:

Code: [Select]

Decius class Point Defence Base    45,000 tons     3399 Crew     7819.6 BP      TCS 900  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 20-112     Sensors 1/24     Damage Control Rating 30     PPV 435.2
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons     Troop Capacity: 5 Battalions   

Quad R18/C6 Meson Cannon Turret (20x4)    Range 180,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 24-24     RM 18    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
PDC Fire Control S08 180-25000 H50 (1)    Max Range: 360,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     97 94 92 89 86 83 81 78 75 72
PDC Fire Control S04 90-25000 H50 (2)    Max Range: 180,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     94 89 83 78 72 67 61 56 50 44
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (22)     Total Power Output 528    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (2)     GPS 24     Range 5.8m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-4 (3)         
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 18 sections
A few explanations on the design:
The extra Reactors are in case the enemy manages to get a lucky hit with a meson and destroy one of them, to allow me to keep the same rate of fire. I'm tempted to make them less likely to explode but it's probably best to wait a bit until I have further reactor tech to reduce the chances of running low on power.
I plan to have a basically dedicated sensor pdc with much larger active sensors, but as a backup I gave it a small, size 0.5 active sensor, so it can run by itself if it needs to. It has two of them so I can have a backup if one of them is taken out. (And also because I had the spare space to complete the 45000 tons, and the sensor cost little anyway.

Opinions? Should I have more turrets? Less turrets? The biggest costs in the design are basically the fire controls, should I have less of them? Ignore the costs and get a couple more?

Your size 8 firecontrol is not of much use here as your size 4 firecontrols already match the range of your mesons.
Insufficient firecontrols for the number of turrets. You really want at least one firecontrol per four turrets if not more.
The armour is a little thin for a pdc, by mid-level tech as your design seems to be, I'd be putting 50+ armour on pdc's, particularly as there is no regular way to repair their armour after it is damaged.
Having a full brigade on board is a little excessive unless it is going to be the only pdc on the planet. Similarly there doesn't seem much point to having only a tiny hangar, it would likely be better to build a seperate hangar pdc that can hold a full squadron.
Having one or two extra powerplants is a good idea, but there is no real need for an extra active sensor as it is itself a backup for your sensor pdc and if you have multiple pdc's you will already have one on each while you only need one operational for all pdc's to be capable of firing.

Here is an example of around the same tech level.

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King George V class Planetary Defence Centre    50,000 tons     3490 Crew     13998 BP      TCS 1000  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 57-120     Sensors 24/28     Damage Control Rating 30     PPV 406.4
Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion   

Quad R18/C6 Meson Cannon Turret (20x4)    Range 180,000km     TS: 30000 km/s     Power 24-24     RM 18    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
PDC Fire Control S04.5 90-30000 (10)    Max Range: 180,000 km   TS: 30000 km/s     94 89 83 78 72 67 61 56 50 44
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (22)     Total Power Output 528    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 28     Range 5.0m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-24 (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-24 (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  24m km

This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 20 sections Thermal and EM sensors are purely space fillers to round out the size, as they would be surpassed by tracking stations.

In practice I'd actually build pdc's of around half this size as, has been noted by others, it costs quite a bit and takes a large amount of crew, while not being massively effective against the most likely threats.

[Gamerboy4life]

You know, I still don't think I get how the Active Sensors work.

The lower the number thing, the smaller the objects it can detect, and at the longer range? The higher, the bigger objects/ships, but at a shorter range.

Amirite?

Also, how would I utilize this in shipbuilding, effectively. I am using just one AS for all of my designs, I would like to give them some sensors that work better for their role.





Also, one last thing. My main ship, the Bulldog, is armed with two twin 12cm focal laser turrets, and it requires no power. It has a beam fire control, but needs no power.

[MarcAFK]

Basically the resolution determines the size of ship (or larger) that'll be detected at the sensors maximum range, lower resolution will give you a far greater sensor range, but you'll only be able to easily detect large ships.
Any ship smaller then the resolution of your sensor will pretty much be detected at a far lower range.
And i don't know what to say but your lasers should require power to fire.
As far as making specialised sensors for your different ships, usually you would want your ships to have sensors specialised for the type of ship you're expecting to use your ship against, also taking into account the range of the weapon you have mounted. For greater efficiency you could put the sensors onto a dedicated sensor platform so you could mount extra weapons on your combat ships(though you lose redundancy).
So for instance if your current technology is 180,000km range lasers, and you have 1000 ton FAC's you're expecting to use against 800-2000 ton targets, you could use sensors set to 800 ton resolution and 180,000 range, or you could set them to 2,000 resolution and 180,000 range and have a smaller sensor but which detects the 800 ton vessels only much closer.
Honestly for FAC's i would use dedicated sensor platforms so i could put maximum firepower into the cheap bastards and use multiple resolutions of sensors for maximum detection range(always a good idea to have a few of these in your fleet anyway).

[gimlet]

If by "the number thing" you mean "Resolution", that's the size of object the sensor is tuned to detect.  So it will detect something of that size at roughly the stated range.  As the object size differs from the Resolution the sensor will detect it less and less far away (ie perform worse).  This is why you REALLY want a Resolution 1 sensor on anti-missile ships, Resolution around 10 for anti-FAC/fighter ships, Resolution 100-120 to detect 5000-6000 ton warships, etc...

And one wrinkle for Resolution 1 is that missiles are smaller even than that (ship size 1 = 50 tons, missile size 1 = 2.5 tons iirc) , so that you really need to look at the actual ranges vs missile-sized objects  when designing the sensor in the Component Design panel.  Usually the range of an Active Sensor/Missile Fire Control vs a Size 6 (or smaller) missile is a bit more than 1/10th the range that gets shown on the Class Design screen which is vs SHIP size 1.   This can be an unpleasant surprise when you think you've got a nice longish ranged missile/sensor/fire control combo but end up wasting 90% of the missiles range (been there done that).

And, uhhh, lasers definitely require power.  You better have a reactor on that ship somewhere or you will be pretty disappointed when you try to actually fire those lasers.  Check on the Class Design screen, on the left just above the Life Support/Required Crew.  There should be a summary that says Reactor Power/Power Required.  There are some small wrinkles, but in general if Reactor Power is < Power Required you won't be able to recharge your weapons as fast as their  firing rate would have allowed, which is HUGELY inefficient.

[Another]

I want to share my latest Aurora experience.

This game begun as a Conventional start in year 2025. All default parameters except 500 systems (I should have reduced it farther to 200 or 100). No invaders because my last run with them on was Fun of the first kind (see my previous posts in this thread - not enough minerals in the whole Solar system to build enough missiles to kill everything that simultaneously jumped inside).

Now -

Spoiler: Galactic Map (click to show/hide)

Note the date at the top. I don't think that there is a way to organize it into a planar graph.

Precursors were found in about every 4th system, 16 different ship designs so far. No regular NPRs were encountered but with my empire translation skill at -18 (are my linguists intentionally trying to misunderstand everything?) I would probably not be able to establish peaceful relations with anybody. Starting NPR had most likely experienced Duranium crash and not gone far at exploration. 3 Star swarm Queens and 1 interesting surprise were killed in nebulas where the soldiers could not move faster than 1k km/s. Killing the soldiers involved moving at their exact speed at 135k km from them with auto-fire for around 600 minimum increment 30 second auto-turns away and then 600 increment auto-turns back finishing staggers.

Spoiler: wiping Star Swarm (click to show/hide)

Sniper-4 were highly specialized 5k ton cruisers built for this single purpose and exact design is not worth mentioning. Anything with some armour, speed above 1k km/s and beam range> 120k km would work.

In this game I had not constructed a single jump capable ship and had not fired a single missile. All 3 of my Nuclear Pulse, 360days/gate constructor ships are still operational and had never returned to refuel along with newer faster modifications. About 10-12 2k ton geology survey ships were blown up and easily replaced.

All the precursors were destroyed by a single ship that went through numerous refits and had half its armour blown away 3 times. First design contained a major flaw in assuming that if I would not fire all the weapons at once - reactors would only need to recharge the weapons that do fire. That was wrong but it managed to survive it's first combat encounter after which some nice trophy components were incorporated into next iteration.

Spoiler: old anti-precursor design (click to show/hide)

King George V class Superdreadnought    52 400 tons     3991 Crew     8896 BP      TCS 1048  TH 1800  EM 18000
1717 km/s     Armour 20-124     Shields 600-300     Sensors 110/110/0/0     Damage Control Rating 47     PPV 289.88
Maint Life 5.31 Years     MSP 3926    AFR 593%    IFR 8.2%    1YR 233    5YR 3494    Max Repair 192 MSP

Ion Engine E8 (30)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 42.9 billion km   (289 days at full power)
Epsilon R300/24 Shields (200)   Total Fuel Cost  4 800 Litres per day

Quad R6/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (12x4)    Range 60 000km     TS: 37000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Single R15/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (10x1)    Range 150 000km     TS: 12500 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 15    ROF 10        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S08 128-10000 (1)    Max Range: 256 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Fire Control S08 64-20000 (2)    Max Range: 128 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (16)     Total Power Output 144    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR8-R1 (1)     GPS 80     Range 8.8m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  110m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  110m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I was overly optimistic about my ability to upgrade fire control tracking speeds at that point.

After much evolution this ship in now upgrading to

Spoiler: on its way to a moving Deathstar (click to show/hide)

King George V-5 class Superdreadnought    59 000 tons     5341 Crew     23957.9 BP      TCS 1180  TH 450  EM 36000
3177 km/s     Armour 30-135     Shields 1200-300     Sensors 720/240/0/0     Damage Control Rating 70     PPV 336.8
Maint Life 4.22 Years     MSP 12690    AFR 556%    IFR 7.7%    1YR 1142    5YR 17129    Max Repair 720 MSP
Magazine 1598   

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E4-Stealth (30)    Power 125    Fuel Use 40%    Signature 15    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 76.2 billion km   (277 days at full power)
Omicron R300/24 Shields (200)   Total Fuel Cost  4 800 Litres per day

30cm C8 Soft X-ray Laser (12)    Range 480 000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 24-8     RM 6    ROF 15        24 24 16 12 9 8 6 6 5 4
Quad 10cm C3 X-Ray Laser Turret (12x4)    Range 210 000km     TS: 40000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 7    ROF 5        3 3 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 240-12500 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 12500 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Fire Control S08 96-25000 (2)    Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (2)     Total Power Output 250    Armour 0    Exp 20%

Size 2 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 2    Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC103-R16 (1)     Range 103.7m km    Resolution 16
Size 2 Anti-ship Missile-1 (799)  Speed: 25 000 km/s   End: 15m    Range: 22.5m km   WH: 12    Size: 2    TH: 300 / 180 / 90

Active Search Sensor MR103-R16 (1)     GPS 1728     Range 103.7m km    Resolution 16
Active Search Sensor MR672-R100 (1)     GPS 28000     Range 672.0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR67-R1 (1)     GPS 280     Range 67.2m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH30-720 (1)     Sensitivity 720     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  720m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-240 (1)     Sensitivity 240     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  240m km

ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 50

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

It will quickly replace 2 old PD fire controls for 4 new ones with TS 40000 km/s as soon as it finishes current refitting.
Missiles are already outdated and are expected to be upgraded in 3-4 years without need for a new refit. Their purpose is anti-FAC/fighters reserve (only long range mesons can be dangerous).

To reduce maintenance overheads all my colonies receive 1 of

Spoiler: PDC hangar (click to show/hide)

Rock-4L class Orbital Weapon Platform    79 750 tons     3065 Crew     14141.2 BP      TCS 1595  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 24-165     Sensors 1/280     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 135
Hangar Deck Capacity 60000 tons     

30cm C8 Soft X-ray Laser (15)    Range 480 000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 24-8     RM 6    ROF 15        24 24 16 12 9 8 6 6 5 4
Fire Control S08 240-12500 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 12500 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (1)     Total Power Output 125    Armour 0    Exp 20%

Active Search Sensor MR67-R1 (1)     GPS 280     Range 67.2m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-4 (1)         
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 32 sections

Overhauls to a 60k ton monster can still only be done at Earth maintenance facilities. A separate PD-only PDC is in consideration but even enormous amount of it would at best only achieve stalemate against plasma torpedoes. Keeping good fast offence (gunboats or fighters) inside a hangar ought to be more useful.

I am now turning on the Invaders and will either be able to upgrade all long-range weaponry to torpedoes eventually or will have to retreat to nebulae in a hurry.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, you don't really need to worry about Invaders. They can be beaten at Ion Drive levels of tech, though you'll need a numerical advantage. At your current stage in development, you've got them completely outteched. Really, the only thing that would better prepare you would be refitting to include mesons rather than your light missiles; mesons are essentially the ideal anti-Invader EW because they entirely circumvent both their shields and the armor on their ramming ships.

[Graknorke]

So I'm going to Aurora again. I think I'll wipe my last save because it was going nowhere and pretty terrible in general.
How do I go about avoiding what happened last time? I ended up with a tiny transport industry and very small offworld mining, so only a tiny amount of the minerals even got to Earth, and I couldn't expand because I'd spent all of my resources on factories and research and things.

[Flying Dice]

Remember how NPR mineral burnout is always a problem. Apparently 1000% difficulty modifier solves that.



Yeah.

[Tarran]

Wow, 19.5 billion people on one planet, which is smaller than the earth, and much colder, with only 10% water, and that water is ice? Those must be hardy creatures.

What's the magnetic field on that planet?

[Graknorke]

So higher difficulty gives the NPR planets more resources and lets them cheat more?
Sounds like a bit of a jackpot when you finally take them over then. Though that's probably the point.

[Flying Dice]

Wow, 19.5 billion people on one planet, which is smaller than the earth, and much colder, with only 10% water, and that water is ice? Those must be hardy creatures.

What's the magnetic field on that planet?

0.008; it isn't tidal locked either. And if it wasn't already evident, those people like their planets cold, with fairly thin atmospheres, too. Not as much gravitational wiggle room as humans, either, so there might not be a terrible amount of overlap between our bands of desirable worlds. At least, I'll be able to get a lot more places to 0.00 than they will.

In any case, most of their systems are in the #80-100 band, while most of mine are in the #0-10; #210-270; and #800-900 bands. Only a single system of mine has high odds of contacting one of theirs, and they actually have less territory than I do, so I've got a decent chance of rolling them over if I can get in contact and make my first strike hard and fast.

If anyone was wondering, even though you technically can't control NPRs, you actually can (at least to observe things from their perspective) by double-clicking on one of their entries in the combat part of the Events window while in SM mode, which is incidentally also the best method for deleting ships that are causing constant intercept/combat pauses.

So higher difficulty gives the NPR planets more resources and lets them cheat more?
Sounds like a bit of a jackpot when you finally take them over then. Though that's probably the point.

It doesn't necessarily let them cheat, at least not in the traditional 4X sense of grabassing units from nowhere a la Civilization; what the difficulty modifier actually does is increase their industrial and economic productivity, as well as their starting assets and population. Evidently, as mineral generation on their homeworld is part of NPR generation, it is included as part of the package deal of increases. So yeah. A NPR with high tech, high resources, and high productivity is the closest you'll get to a long-term challenge at the moment.

Edit: Oh bugger.

Only a single system of mine has high odds of contacting one of theirs

Yeah, guess where I just found a suspicious network of alien JGs and then jumped into their home system from. Their home system is three jumps from Sol. Looks like it's time to start working up to full xenocide-scale production and grind for as much of a tech lead as I can get.

[FuzzyZergling]

Hey guys, I've been hearing a lot about this game and decided to give it a go. I don't really know anything about how to play; I decided to learn the same way I did DF (through trial and error).
But I have a problem, when I try to add systems to a new ship class it says that there are errors 381, 3078, and 91 (91 happens several times).
Anybody have any idea what could be wrong? I installed it correctly as the forum says, as far as I can tell.

[Sirus]

Did you actually click the "New Class" button before adding parts?

[FuzzyZergling]

Did you actually click the "New Class" button before adding parts?

Oh man, now I just feel stupid...
Thanks a bunch, I was afraid I botched something and would have to reinstall!