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[Micro102]

Well my fire control range is 32000 max, and the missiles are passing me by in a 5 second interval, so I doubt it's the range as the missiles are still in range, just behind me. And I have no idea what Final Defensive Fire is. Where do I see this option?

[Rince Wind]

Though I have to say I had similar problems in a way. I set up all my Turrets for final defense, but sometimes only the targeted ships would shoot. Next salvo, all would be shooting again. Without any changes in the combat assignments.

[MarcAFK]

What about a massive >commercial< mothership with a tractor link to a rather huge engineless carrier, loaded with gigantic hangar space, loads of maintence storage, and possibly some point defense? The commercial mothership leading part would have a recreational module, a orbital habitat, and quite a lot of fuel and engines.
Unless you reap colonies in your path or settle down every so often though, fuel and maintence supplies can easily run scarce. Otherwise though, it shouldn't be too hard to sustain otherwise.

So, a Ramilies Starfort?  As long as you don't hit the "universe goes kaboom" space limits (1770 holds, give or take), that could work out pretty well. ^_^

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6738.0.html

[Flying Dice]

Well my fire control range is 32000 max, and the missiles are passing me by in a 5 second interval, so I doubt it's the range as the missiles are still in range, just behind me. And I have no idea what Final Defensive Fire is. Where do I see this option?

Battle Control Window (F8) -> the top-right blank box.

It's labelled as 'Change Point Defence Mode for SFC'. Select one of your ships. Once you've done that, a number of options will appear in the box:

None
Area Defence
Final Defensive Fire
Final Defensive Fire (Self Only)

None is selected by default. Area Defence is governed by the smaller box below that one, which allows you to enter your desired max PD range in units of 10k km; this is used for laser PD and similar, which are long ranged enough to engage missiles before they strike. Final Defensive Fire means that the ship will engage all missiles which target it or any other friendly ship it is grouped with in the same turn that they detonate, ordered to take place before they do so, provided that the weapons are ready to fire. Final Defensive Fire (Self Only) does the same thing, except that each ship will only target missiles aimed at it, ignoring those aimed at allies.

On the ship you have selected, set each PD fire control to Final Defensive Fire by selecting it and clicking the 'Set Mode' button, then click the 'Copy Race' button just to the right of it to copy the same assignments over to every other ship of the same class, same as you would for your weapon-to-FC assignments. Regardless of which option you select, it manages PD for you, automatically firing at enemy missiles which fall under the option's parameters (AD = any missile which spends more than one 5-second tick inside your engagement envelope; FDF = any missile which is about to conclude an attack on any friendly vessel in the same group/location/whatever; FDF(SO) = any missile which is about to conclude an attack on the firing ship).

With only 32k km max range on your FC, I'm assuming you're using gauss turrets. The most likely cause for them not firing on the missiles initially is because the weapon range is small enough for the missiles to cross it in a single tick, and if you don't know what the PD FC settings are you won't have them set to FDF, which means that you don't get the benefit of auto-defensive fire. When they went past it was likely the same thing, the missiles either crossed your range or were on a course offset enough to not pass through it and so weren't fired upon.

Remember to tick the Max Fire Control Range and Max Weapon Range boxes on the Display 2 tab of the system view window; it gives you precise circles around all of your ships which show exactly what you'd expect them to show, including their radii

[Dorfs R Fun]

Thanks Flying Dice. That was explained well. I wasn't really sure about area defense, I always just used Final Defense Fire.

Question if anybody can answer, does the tracking speed on your beam fire control matter if you are using turrets?

[Shooer]

Question if anybody can answer, does the tracking speed on your beam fire control matter if you are using turrets?

Yes.  Turrets just set the speed the weapon can track, same as the speed of a ship sets the speed of an turreted weapon.  Having a FC with a track speed faster than your turrets or ship speed is just a waste, or just future proofing I guess.

[MarcAFK]

Question if anybody can answer, does the tracking speed on your beam fire control matter if you are using turrets?

Yes.  Turrets just set the speed the weapon can track, same as the speed of a ship sets the speed of an turreted weapon.  Having a FC with a track speed faster than your turrets or ship speed is just a waste, or just future proofing I guess.

Tracking speed is limited by the lower value of either your fire control, the ships speed, or turret tracking speed if using turrets.

[Carnwennan]

Spoiler: :/ (click to show/hide)

That's frustrating, this game was going fairly well. Ohh well, it happens.

Has anyone had any trouble with Sorium Harvesters, by the way? I can't get them to unload fuel automatically and move to a gas giant afterwards -- it just generates an error message.

[Bremen]

Spoiler: :/ (click to show/hide)

That's frustrating, this game was going fairly well. Ohh well, it happens.

Has anyone had any trouble with Sorium Harvesters, by the way? I can't get them to unload fuel automatically and move to a gas giant afterwards -- it just generates an error message.

Did you hit unassign all in the personnel menu? If so, you can just cancel the projects and recreate them with the proper scientists.

[Carnwennan]

Did you hit unassign all in the personnel menu? If so, you can just cancel the projects and recreate them with the proper scientists.

Would that have worked? D: I didn't even think to try doing that since I was convinced that the game was borked up since it was generating error messages after every turn as well. Man I'm an idiot.

[iceball3]

Perhaps use Sorium Giants as a permanent fuel base? One idea that comes to mind is an orbital habitat with huge fuel capacity and no engines.

[Metalax]

Has anyone had any trouble with Sorium Harvesters, by the way? I can't get them to unload fuel automatically and move to a gas giant afterwards -- it just generates an error message.

If you want your harvesters to deliver fuel when they are finished.

Check that the harvesters are marked as tankers in the class design window.
Open up the taskgroup window for the harvesters.
Set primary default order to "Move to Gas Giant with Sorium"
Set conditional order to Condition:"Fuel Tanks Full" and Order to "Unload 90% Fuel at Colony within 4 Jumps"

However I usually find it more efficient to let the harvesters remain at the gas giant and use a Tanker to ferry the fuel back to a colony, as having the harvester do it means that it is wasting potential fuel production by not being at the gas giant while it is moving the fuel it has on board, potentially for a significant fraction of time as Harvesters are rarely speedy.

[RedKing]

Perhaps use Sorium Giants as a permanent fuel base? One idea that comes to mind is an orbital habitat with huge fuel capacity and no engines.

This is exactly what I do. Orbital hab with about 10,000,000 liters capacity and maybe 1M/yr refining capacity. Use a tug to tow it into position, and then use them for in-flight refueling. I even put a recreation module on them so ships can use them for R&R. If one is in a seldom-traveled region and starts to get near full, I'll send a megatanker out to grab most of the fuel and dump it on a planet.

Makes for some nice color too. I name mine after the Greek equivalents of the Roman gods, so:

Zeus Station (Jupiter)
Kronos Station (Saturn)
Ouranos Station (Uranus)
Poseidon Station (Neptune)

Extra-solar ones, I usually just name the gas giant something appropriate and then name the station after the gas giant.

[Flying Dice]

Yep, that's the easiest way, and it really helps extend the range of your survey ships and fleets.

[Micro102]

I'm trying to build a ship with a tractor beam, and am assuming I will need tons of engine power to lug both the tug and the ship it will be tugging, but so far commercial engines only get me into the high 3000's range until they become useless to add. Is that enough? I've got 2 years worth of fuel space but I'm worried that if I try to pull something big enough it's going to be too slow.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tug class Tug    23,800 tons     515 Crew     709 BP      TCS 476  TH 1800  EM 0
3781 km/s     Armour 1-73     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 19    Max Repair 100 MSP
Tractor Beam     

Nuclear Pulse Engine E0.9 (18)    Power 100    Fuel Use 9%    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 210.1 billion km   (643 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes