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[Girlinhat]

I just put it onto desktop *shrug*.

[Metalax]

Aurora doesn't need to be kept in the same location it was installed in to run. Just copy the entire folder and move it somewhere outside program files.

If you have a second drive/partition I'd move it there rather than on the system partition, as aurora dumps the event logs into a logs directory off of the root of the drive it is running on when you click to export log, and it is usally easier to find than amongst all the junk that tends to acumulate on your system drive.

[Gamerlord]

Well, I know it's surveyed, it's got 2 minerals that I need to harvest, one is Acc.: 0.4 and the other is 0.8.  At this point there are 38 mines....it's been 4-5 months since I started unloading them.  I feel like I'm missing something totally obvious...I've made it a colony, assigned an administrator, and the mining/maintenance tab tells me I've got 38 mines that should get 456 annual production but the mineral chart is essentially empty.

Are they automated mines or manned mines?

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

How should I use particle beams, plasma carronades, and mesons? They seem to be useless compared to lasers and missiles.

[PTTG??]

I'm pretty sure everything besides missiles are as useless as bringing a chainsaw to a Apache helicopter fight. Sure, if you got up to the helicopters really, really fast and they did something stupid like leaving the door open for you, sure, you could hypothetically do a lot of damage...

Also, you have to spend decades researching chainsaws beforehand.

[Girlinhat]

Gauss make good point defense, laying pure point defense ships along with CIWS on individual ships will help you literally just shrug off enemy missiles, and shields will help deal with anything that leaks through, because shields regen for free (well, for fuel).

Particle Beams have a fixed damage output, but they have fixed damage across their entire range.  While lasers lose damage at higher range, particle beams deal the same damage, making them able to hit further away for more damage, and giving them a beam-artillery role.

Carronades are reloadable bombs, essentially.  High energy drain makes for a slow rate of fire, and their low range combined with damage falloff makes their range very short, but anything that does get within your range will get blasted hard.  They seem best mounted on Fast-Attack Craft that are big enough to mount one and quick enough to get in range.

Mesons deal exactly 1 damage at all range, and somewhat short range.  Their selling point is that they ignore shields and armor completely, and damage internal modules directly.  The trick is, internal modules have only one setting - alive or destroyed.  You cannot damage an internal module, only destroy it.  Default items have 1-hit-to-kill rating, so any damage will destroy them.  Hardened systems might have 5 HTK, so any given shot has a 20% chance to destroy it.  Thus it becomes profitable to mount multiple small mesons to give more dice rolls.

While we're at it, Microwave deals double damage to shields and ignores armor, dealing exactly 1 damage to sensor and engine modules, such as engines, thermal sensors, EM sensors, and fire-control.  They prove valuable for disabling a ship while leaving it un-damaged, either for marines to move in or for a heavier ship to bring in killer guns, like carronades.

Aaaaand might as well cover all the bases.  Lasers deal damage that falls off linearly with their range - the further away the enemy is, the less damage they do.  For equal tech investment, particle beams deal more damage at their max range, but lasers deal more damage at closer range.

Additionally, Missiles deal triangular damage to armor, making it difficult to get a one-shot kill unless you're using a very large missile.  On the other hand, lasers deal direct penetration, allowing a single laser shot to deal damage to internal components most time.  However, missile damage will often overlap with the next shot, letting you beat down the enemy's armor, while laser shots are more likely to hit an un-touched pillar.  Thus, if your laser can hit an enemy, it'll hit them.  If your laser can't get through all the armor in one hit, then you're going to spend a lot of time shooting at the enemy.  Missiles may not penetrate on the first hit, but a second hit is more likely to penetrate.

I want to say that particle beams use the laser damage type, while carronades deal missile triangular damage.

[Metalax]

You have to have decent point defence of some type, whether turret beam weapons or amm's, if you are fighting against NPR's, as they tend to favour missile barrage tactics. However for your offense, beams coupled with engines that let you close and dictate the range are just as effective as missiles in their own way. You also have a much simpler logistics train if you don't need to worrry about resupplying your ships with missiles after every combat.

Particle beams, these tend to be longer ranged than any other beam weapon at the same tech level. So you want to have them coupled with better engines than your opponent so that you can specify a distance to maintain that is within your firing range but outside theirs.

Plasma cannonades, Massive damage, but short range. These are best used for defending a jumppoint against someone jumping through. As there is only one tech line involved rather than the normal two for beam weapons you can either be using the saved research on other areas or have them at a higher tech level. Drawback is that more powerful and longer ranged versions are always larger, so you must use large ships for them.

Mesons, short range and only do 1 damage per hit, but totally ignore armour and shields. These are pretty nice to mount on your fighters and FAC's as they don't need to spend time chewing through the enemies defences before causing damage which helps, as fighters and FAC's typically do not have long lifespans in combat. They have trouble against ships that have multiple high HTK components such as armoured magazines or big engines.

Microwaves, are specialist weapons used to strip shields and disabling targets from firing back at you. You may want to use them if you intend on regularly boarding enemy ships, although the fact that they can't damage the enemies engines to slow them down means you will be taking more casualties in your boarders initial attack.

Gauss guns, very short ranged and only 1 damage per shot. Once you have reached rate of fire 3 to 4, they make for the best final fire point defence weapons. The sheer number of shots also make them able to sandblast through any enemies you manage to close with. The ability to choose a size also means they can be used on everything from fighters to capital ships.

Railguns, multiple shots and reasonable range make for a decent generalist weapon. They don't excel in any area but there only real weakness is that they can't be placed in turrets.

Lasers, long range with high, focused damage at shorter ranges. Generally the best beam weapon for general offensive use, the others only being supperior if being used for their specific abilities.

Typically which weapons you use comes down to personal preferance or if you are running a scenario that prohibits the use of one or more of those you would normally use.

edit: bah ninja'ed by adding the last line.


edit the 2nd: Unless something has changed and I've not spotted it, microwaves do not do damage to engines. You can see what components can be damaged on the DAC tab of the class design where there will be a seperate electronic only section.

[Girlinhat]

I forgot gauss and railguns...

Gauss deal 1 damage each, but they get multiple shots per turn.  This makes them ideal point-defense, since one gun can have 3+ chances to shoot down a missile.  It also makes them good at sandblasting enemy armor or stifling shield regeneration.  Mounted on small fighters, you can keep your fighters in close to the enemy and deal consistent damage for as long as they survive.  I believe gauss does not use energy either, so they make for VERY lightweight weapons.

Railguns are shotguns.  Fires multiple shots, but... I believe they have a reload delay.  I've honestly not used them.  They seem to make a good heavier-hitting fast weapon, perhaps mounted onto FAC in addition to gauss blasters.  Since they hit harder, it's possible to have the gauss removing armor and the railgun trying to penetrate it, and eventually it will since the armor keeps falling off.  I want to say that railguns do not use energy either.

[FritzPL]

As far as I know, you need multiple fire controls to make gauss work, right? Because there are many missiles and all.

[Metalax]

Railguns require power, Gauss do not. Railguns don't have any extra delay in reloading.

As far as I know, you need multiple fire controls to make gauss work, right? Because there are many missiles and all.

You need one firecontrol per salvo you are firing at. Rather than spreading your fire too thin though, you can just have multiple point defence ships which each handle a few of the incoming salvos.

[Girlinhat]

For fire-control, one salvo of rockets counts as one target, so firing 6 gauss at 3x shots at 1 salvo of 4 missiles would get you 18 individual shots at 4 missile using one firecon, it will atuomatically hit the next missile in the salvo if it scores a hit.

PD for gauss is pretty easy - get about 2x turrets per 1 firecon and set it to defense.  If you have several PD ships you can really go 1:1 even.

[andrea]

Railguns require power, but besides that, as metalax said they are a good generalist weapon.
Their range can be fairly decent, but not as good as, for example, particle beams. and their damage gets smaller with distance.
they can deal a fair quantity of damage,even higher than lasers but unlike gauss they require power and therefore reloading and unlike lasers their damage is divided between several projectiles
due to the number of projectiles ( I think... 4 for each railgun?) they are decent at point defense, but can't be turreted unlike most beam weapons.

I am currently running a game where I only use railguns, and I am having moderate success. even without turrets, I seem to be able to shoot down half a salvo of precursor anti missile missiles and all of their anti ship missiles. and then, when I manage to get close I annihilate them.

sure, can't really hit all the fast AMM. but that is why I use massive armor ( and now even CIWS)

[Bremen]

Just weighing in with my opinions on beam weapons.

Lasers: Pretty much "standard" as an anti-ship weapon, lasers have nice range and maintain that damage pretty well. An important note that applies to all beam damage is that twice the damage is more than twice as good; ideally you want a laser powerful enough to penetrate your opponent's armor in one shot (and the inverse, you want armor thick enough to entirely block an incoming shot), so big lasers are not to be underestimated.

Railguns: Probably the main alternative to lasers as a primary armament, Railguns do more total damage up close and less damage at range than lasers, and are worse at armor penetration due to firing four smaller shots instead of one big one. They can't be turreted (or else they'd be the premier point defense weapon with their multiple shots). I view them as an ideal fighter weapon, as fighters are unlikely to have any reasonable armor penetration anyways and the fighter tracking speed makes them fearsome point defense weapons. Also, unlike energy weapons they don't require Corundium so might be useful during a corundium crunch.

Mesons: Useful for two things, penetrating defenses and firing through atmospheres. PDCs with turreted mesons are great for defending planets (and ships/shipyards in orbit) from missile attack or drop ships, but their range really shows. Large caliber mesons can have respectable range but still only do one damage, making them very inefficient. Good for PDCs and a strong possibility for fighters or jump point defenders, but not very practical as a primary weapon.

Gauss Cannons: Common as a point defense weapon thanks to multiple shots, and some people use them on fighters as they require no power. Never use 100% accurate gauss because crew grade can help compensate for the accuracy penalty (the new fighter accuracy bonus might as well). Personally I think they're only good as a point defense weapon, since they're actually quite bulky (4HS for 67% acc) for minor damage and range.

Particle Beams: Kind of an odd duck, Particle Beams have slightly shorter range than heavy lasers or railguns, but don't lose damage due to range. This means that an anti-ship laser would beat a particle beam at very short or very long range, but Particle Beams excel at middle of the road ranges.

Plasma Carronades: I don't care for them. They have massive falloff at any range beyond 10,000km (I think it's half damage at 20,000km, one third at 30, quarter at 40, etc) and take nearly forever to recharge. They have really only one practical use, which is a large caliber carronade at 10,000km which should probably gut anything besides a heavily shielded ship (armor blocks point blank carronades in the same way butter blocks a hot knife). At anything more than 20 or 30kkm though they become less efficient than lasers, and given how big space is your odds of getting a point blank shot are small even when defending a warp point.

High Power Microwaves: Never used them; however despite doing triple damage to shields I think it's an overstatement to say they're good against shields, as they only do one damage and 3 points of shield damage is far less damaging than destroying a sensor or fire control; it would be better to say that shields are a defense against microwaves but armor is not.

[Girlinhat]

Microwaves do provide a cost-efficient way to knock out shields for small ships.  A large ship might mount lasers or missiles, but FAC can mount microwaves more easily than bigger weapons, making them a good puncher in addition to conventional arms, when facing tough shields.

I believe Swarm Queens pack hilariously massive amounts of shields, enough that missile ships will exhaust their supplies.

[Flying Dice]

One of the best ways to deal with Swarm is to special-design a fast, unarmored ship with turreted medium lasers (I'd recommend 15-25cm). The aim there is to 1HKO as many Soldiers as possible before they enter effective range, and once those are dealt with, to lead the Queen(s) on a stern chase at matched velocity, slowly whittling away at the shields.


Mesons are hands-down the most important niche weapon in the game, with only three words needed to explain why: Invaders, Absorption Shields.