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[Flying Dice]

If you're getting bored after a single year, you might want to consider a different genre of game. 

[bluejello]

yea, I might, but I want to actually get to a place where I have more than one colony, and preferably start exploring some of the galaxy.

[Flying Dice]

Meaningful levels of colonization and exploration can be (depending on your starting tech and OOB) decades down the line. My current campaign has an AH backstory where the US was less isolationist and Stalin never came to power; it was a conventional start in 1980 with limited industry but a few conventional-tech interplanetary ships (due to there never having been a Cold War-driven arms race; in-story the first Moon Landing was a joint US-Soviet mission in 1960). The game is at 2046 currently and I still haven't left Sol, though that admittedly is because I'm RPing an Earth that didn't discover FTL at the normal stage in development. Also, granted, I've got 66 million people on Luna, 30m on Mars, and a total of around 2m on the four useful Jovian moons.

But yeah, from a normal start without changing any settings, you'll usually need 5-10 years to get real interstellar exploration going. And in 6.0x, it's much more difficult as you can't go with the old standby of churning out dozens of tiny little survey ships and keeping them out in space until they run into hostile xenos.

[Sheb]

Id suggest SMing some good tech and ships, as well as more people and industry/labs then.

[Bremen]

Here are my beam fighter doctrine designs in my current game:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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Invincible class Command Ship    16,000 tons     434 Crew     2844 BP      TCS 320  TH 1600  EM 0
5000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-56     Shields 0-0     Sensors 140/140/0/0     Damage Control Rating 13     PPV 30
Maint Life 2.42 Years     MSP 1444    AFR 157%    IFR 2.2%    1YR 338    5YR 5072    Max Repair 400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 2   

J16000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Large Military Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 800    Fuel Use 25%    Signature 800    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 90.0 billion km   (208 days at full power)

10cm Railgun V2/C3 (10x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 40-5000 (2)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Primary Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR463-R140 (1)     GPS 39200     Range 463.8m km    Resolution 140
Active Search Sensor MR39-R1 (1)     GPS 280     Range 39.2m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH10-140 (1)     Sensitivity 140     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-140 (1)     Sensitivity 140     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

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Resolution II class Light Carrier    16,000 tons     260 Crew     2056 BP      TCS 320  TH 1600  EM 0
5000 km/s     Armour 4-56     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 16     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.36 Years     MSP 1285    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 172    5YR 2586    Max Repair 400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 67   
Hangar Deck Capacity 5000 tons     

Large Military Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 800    Fuel Use 25%    Signature 800    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 135.0 billion km   (312 days at full power)

Strike Group
11x Kestrel II Fighter   Speed: 10000 km/s    Size: 8
1x Raptor II Recon Fighter   Speed: 9600 km/s    Size: 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

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Kestrel II class Fighter    400 tons     3 Crew     99.2 BP      TCS 8  TH 80  EM 0
10000 km/s     Armour 4-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 8    5YR 113    Max Repair 20 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 7   

Fighter Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 489.16%    Signature 40    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres    Range 1.4 billion km   (38 hours at full power)

10cm Railgun V2/C3 (1x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 40-2500 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Small Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

Now I just need to find something to fight so I can see how well they work in practice.

[Girlinhat]

Your firecon has 4x the range of your guns, and your fighters and command ship are mounting the same weapon in different numbers.  You don't seem to have any good anti-missile either, and all your ships are paper-thin.  It's fine for fighters to be easy to kill, but your other ships are armored just as much as your fighters!  You've also got more than 100% failure rate, which isn't very polite, and your carrier needs more maintenance storage to support the fighters.

[Bremen]

Your firecon has 4x the range of your guns, and your fighters and command ship are mounting the same weapon in different numbers.  You don't seem to have any good anti-missile either, and all your ships are paper-thin.  It's fine for fighters to be easy to kill, but your other ships are armored just as much as your fighters!  You've also got more than 100% failure rate, which isn't very polite, and your carrier needs more maintenance storage to support the fighters.

The firecon means 75% accuracy at the range of the guns, and 83% at point blank, so it's hardly wasted. Halving the range would only save a quarter of a HS so I think it's worthwhile. The railguns on the command ship were mostly an afterthought because it didn't feel right to have it completely unarmed, and it gives it some minor PD capability (only a slow tracking speed, but 40 shots). I'm not using any anti-missiles, but the fighters should be able to provide a respectable amount of PD. Armor seems fine to me as well, especially this early in the game; the fighters are armored because I've found AMMs to be the bane of beam fighters existence and even a little armor helps a lot there.

AFR means nothing, so I'm not sure why you're focusing on it, and the carrier doesn't need extra maintenance supplies for fighters since they don't suffer maintenance failures.

[Girlinhat]

AFR decides how likely a component is to suddenly shatter without any combat - it can be quite crippling if one ship has its engine fall apart.

[Flying Dice]

With no engineering space, they're guaranteed to break down at some point. Unless you plan on using this as a system defense force, you'll start running low on MSP.

Re: Command ship: That's rather thin armor for something that won't be able to outrun most of what it meets. I would either dump the weapons altogether to allow for higher velocity/more armor or (if you have decent Gauss tech) switch to CIWS. Or, as per the next point, more active sensor. I know I'm something of a freak when it comes to sensors, but for my main sensor I tend to prefer higher resolution at lower range; I almost always use R16 as the base for my AS models. For a dedicated sensor ship, I would recommend dropping the resolution down to a more useful level and pumping up the size; all you need for a sensor ship apart from armor, drives, and the basic stuff is the sensor package.

Re: Carrier: Again, not fast enough to run away combined with light armor and no PD is very bad news. This is a shining example of why I tend to rely on warships up until medium tech: Carriers can't be built well enough to be effective without endangering themselves at low tech.

AFR decides how likely a component is to suddenly shatter without any combat - it can be quite crippling if one ship has its engine fall apart.

Not quite. That's the IFR (incidental failure rate), which checks every tick if a component fails (CBA to check how long that is). The AFR is the annual failure rate, which is the chance of something failing within a 1 year period, and which determines the maintenance life as displayed on the design.

[Metalax]

AFR decides how likely a component is to suddenly shatter without any combat - it can be quite crippling if one ship has its engine fall apart.

True, in that it specifies how many failiures are likely to happen in one year, but AFR really isn't the important number to look at, Maint Life is. As long as your ship is carrying sufficient maintainance supplies to sustain it over the course of it's expected deployment, or a significant portion of that deployment with a supply ship following to refill it's supplies, then the actual number of maintainance failures per year is not really important.

Perhaps your not used to running with big ships on a regular basis, but for my 80k-100k ton battleships getting below 600% AFR is putting far more engineering spaces into the design than needed for their normal deployment and maintainance times of 3 years.

Re: Carrier: Again, not fast enough to run away combined with light armor and no PD is very bad news. This is a shining example of why I tend to rely on warships up until medium tech: Carriers can't be built well enough to be effective without endangering themselves at low tech.

Of course, you can go with having several dedicated PD escorts so that the carrier has no need to carry it's own PD. I'll agree that on a single ship you can have at most two of; appropriate combat speed, hangar capacity, point defence until you reach higher tech levels.

[Girlinhat]

I'm used to running very long-term fleets, so I tend to overpack the maintenance spaces.

[Metalax]

I usually find 3 years deployment/maintainance, 1 year overhaul to work best, particularly if you have maintainance posts set up where ships can be parked and not ticking up their clocks. The only ships that go longer are long duration scout ships, sent to explore at the fringe.

Edit: and my actual comments on the ships never posted, so slot them in here.

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Invincible class Command Ship    16,000 tons     434 Crew     2844 BP      TCS 320  TH 1600  EM 0
5000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-56     Shields 0-0     Sensors 140/140/0/0     Damage Control Rating 13     PPV 30
Maint Life 2.42 Years     MSP 1444    AFR 157%    IFR 2.2%    1YR 338    5YR 5072    Max Repair 400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 2   

J16000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Large Military Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 800    Fuel Use 25%    Signature 800    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 90.0 billion km   (208 days at full power)

10cm Railgun V2/C3 (10x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 40-5000 (2)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Primary Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR463-R140 (1)     GPS 39200     Range 463.8m km    Resolution 140
Active Search Sensor MR39-R1 (1)     GPS 280     Range 39.2m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH10-140 (1)     Sensitivity 140     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-140 (1)     Sensitivity 140     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I'd have some hesitation about making your jump ship also be your primary sensor platform. The NPR's tend to heavily target the ships with the strongest active sensors and if you lose this you not only lose your sensor coverage, you also lose the ability to retreat. I'd suggest stripping this out and putting it on a seperate ship with it's size made up to the jump limit with maintainance storage and fuel tanks, remeber you are going to want additional fuel and supplies along to resupply the fighters. This would then leave room for additional armouring of your sensor ship.

Anti-missile sensor is fine, but I'd drop the resolution on your other active down. 7000 ton is an unusual size to set your sensors for, resolution 60, 3000 ton, would probably be better and allow you to spot the more common smaller NPR ships easier.

Speed is fine for your tech level, you are already putting over a third of the tonnage into engines.

I'd consider using two smaller reactors for your weapons, as it is one lucky hit to the internals can take out your entire offensive capability.

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Resolution II class Light Carrier    16,000 tons     260 Crew     2056 BP      TCS 320  TH 1600  EM 0
5000 km/s     Armour 4-56     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 16     PPV 0
Maint Life 3.36 Years     MSP 1285    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 172    5YR 2586    Max Repair 400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 67   
Hangar Deck Capacity 5000 tons     

Large Military Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 800    Fuel Use 25%    Signature 800    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 135.0 billion km   (312 days at full power)

Strike Group
11x Kestrel II Fighter   Speed: 10000 km/s    Size: 8
1x Raptor II Recon Fighter   Speed: 9600 km/s    Size: 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Pretty decent design for your tech level, speed is fine, lack of point defence isn't a problem as long as it is escorted by some PD ships. A little lightly armoured, but not too much of a problem if it is going to be standing off from the actual combat.

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Kestrel II class Fighter    400 tons     3 Crew     99.2 BP      TCS 8  TH 80  EM 0
10000 km/s     Armour 4-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 8    5YR 113    Max Repair 20 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 7   

Fighter Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 489.16%    Signature 40    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres    Range 1.4 billion km   (38 hours at full power)

10cm Railgun V2/C3 (1x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 40-2500 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Small Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

Add an engineering space - fighter to this, strip off one layer of armour to get the space.

I'd consider designing a fighter engine twice the size of your current one and using it to replace the two you have on the fighter, this would result in lower fuel consumption and an engine with a higher HTK.

Otherwise a pretty good design for a heavy fighter.

[Lightningfalcon]

I'm trying to start playing this game, and I think I need to reinstall it, but I keep getting error 424 and 3420, and each time I exit out those errors, or click ok, the other error message will pop out. 
Also, when trying to follow the tutorial that Steve made, I'm not getting any of the stuff he's describing in the screen.  Is there something else I should do?

[Flying Dice]

For one, don't follow that tutorial because it was maybe 1/3 complete and is multiple versions out of date. 


Actual text from the error messages would help as well.

[Bremen]

I find the odds of a maintenance failure on a fighter with 38 hours worth of fuel so low it's not worth any engineering space. I'm pretty sure it only checks every five days anyways, and the odds are extremely low even if it does; the listed failure rates are only for a ship that has a year on its maintenance clock.