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[Bremen]

Yeah, just to clarify you can set PD weapons to final defensive fire, which means they'll always get one shot off. I generally always use it, because missiles are so fast you'll be lucky to get even one shot with all but the longest ranged weapons.

[LoSboccacc]

Range is always going to be useless for gauss PD.

as a side note, you still need to have a sensor able to detect an incoming missile at range.
if the missile cross the entire sensor range within an increment final fire pd won't shoot, so a 10km gauss is fine for PD but you still have to pair it with a 150kkm sensor (for detecting missiles moving at 30kkm/s in 5sec increments)

also, final fire pd won't shoot if in close combat (missiles being shot and hitting before the 5 sec increment)

[Zeebie]

I built some pre-fab PDCs on Earth, shipped them to Mars, and started assembling them there.  But Mars complains that I need corbomite to do the assembly.  Is that right that minerals are needed to assemble pre-fabs?

[Johuotar]

So what should the first kind of battle ready ships be like? How soon can I expect need for them?

[LoSboccacc]

I do extremely long range missile ooor huge point defences and some beam weapon.

I never had any luck with medium range engagement 

[RedKing]

I built some pre-fab PDCs on Earth, shipped them to Mars, and started assembling them there.  But Mars complains that I need corbomite to do the assembly.  Is that right that minerals are needed to assemble pre-fabs?

Yes. What pre-fabbing does is that 90% of the construction cost (both in CPs and minerals) is done by the planet where the pre-fab is being built. The last 10% is done at the assembly site. That way you can build decent PDCs on frontier planets, or even build "listening post" type PDCs on isolated rock with nothing but a few engineer brigades and less than one freighter's load of minerals.

[Another]

Particle torpedoes exactly fill the medium range gap. For beam weapons to be effective at their longest ranges you have to be faster than your enemy and that is usually hard to do.

"Listening post" PDCs are cool because they have exactly zero EM and thermal signature, so are not detectable by any passive sensors. They show up on active sensors, I think, but all AIs activate active sensors almost only when something is already detected by them.

[Zeebie]

I keep getting messages that my PDCs are out of fuel.  Anyone know what that might mean?

[Metalax]

So what should the first kind of battle ready ships be like? How soon can I expect need for them?

How soon you will need them depends on how you set up your game. If you had NPR's generated at the game start then they will start exploring and can come across you, or if you have invaders turned on you could be attacked at any time. If you have no invaders and no starting NPR's you are perfectly safe until you start exploring outside of your home system when you can start triggering new NPR's or other threats.

Most people tend to go with missile ships for their early combat designs as it is relatively easy to make a decent range and speed missile of size 3/4 even at very low tech levels. What design to go for however is very much influenced by what tech you have available if you allowed the game to pick your initial techs, and also on whether you want to go for numerous cheap small fragile ships or larger more heavily armed/protected but fewer in number ships.

You would probably be well served looking back through the thread as there have been many, many designs posted here previously, or look in the ship design section over on the aurora forums.

I keep getting messages that my PDCs are out of fuel.  Anyone know what that might mean?

You shouldn't be getting this if you have no fuel tanks on the PDC. If you do have fuel tanks(eg for a hangar PDC) they can be refilled from the planets stockpiles via the miscellaneous tab of the individual ships screen as you can't give PDC's orders via taskgroups.

[Flying Dice]

Particle torpedoes exactly fill the medium range gap. For beam weapons to be effective at their longest ranges you have to be faster than your enemy and that is usually hard to do.

Only if you've nearly maxed out your fire control range tech, and in that case the same can be said for lasers as well, as both end up with maximum ranges far beyond what you can ever achieve with a FC (at least at equivalent tech levels). If there's a true medium-range weapon, it'd be plasma torpedoes; all types of EW and KW are so absurdly short ranged (in comparison to missiles) that even max-range lasers and particle beams are essentially knife-range weapons. On the other hand, even incredibly short ranged missiles (AMM, heavy-WH fighter missiles, etc.) will usually outrange the farthest-reaching EW fourfold or more. Plasma torps are true hybrid weapons in every part of their behavior, though they are (reasonably) difficult to obtain.

[AutomataKittay]

I keep getting messages that my PDCs are out of fuel.  Anyone know what that might mean?

Exactly as it says, did you build your PDC where there're no fuel? Switching from ship to PDC designing don't removes the fuel tank since it's still technically allowed on it, so you might want to double check that part if you don't means for your PDC to hold/supply fuels. Those warnings shows up when fuel supply runs below 10% of full capacity.

[RedKing]

I keep getting messages that my PDCs are out of fuel.  Anyone know what that might mean?

Pretty much what it says. When building a PDC, remember to strip out the fuel tanks unless it's also a fighter/FAC hanger and/or you want it to double as a fuel depot.

[Another]

Sorry, I meant plasma torpedoes of course. Particle beams go with other beam weapons.

[EuchreJack]

I keep getting messages that my PDCs are out of fuel.  Anyone know what that might mean?

Pretty much what it says. When building a PDC, remember to strip out the fuel tanks unless it's also a fighter/FAC hanger and/or you want it to double as a fuel depot.

Or you want to put shields on the PDC.  Shields use fuel.  Granted, I probably wouldn't recommend shields on PDCs, but its something to know.

[RedKing]

Oh. Yeah, that would make sense. Since I don't have to worry about weight with PDCs, I usually just armor the bejeezus out of them. Actually, I just armor the bejeezus out of everything I want protected, since shields are laughably inefficient for the first ~50 years or so unless you rush them hard.