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[Flying Dice]

If you're talking about the certain, spoilery purple ones, you can't.

[Carefulrogue]

If you're talking about the certain, spoilery purple ones, you can't.

Naw, not those.  The jump points, my bad.  I had found out that my missile navy was at a JP where I hadn't built a jump gate yet, which is a little odd for me, but alright.  So I was getting impatient with the length of time it took to get there.  Now I get to wait longer.  Yeah! I was getting concerned with the fact this fleet had begun to drop morale (75% currently) and with no reinforcements carrying ASM, I decided to jump the gun. Backfired I guess. In all of this past time, I likely can send the ships back, rest the crews, begin overhauls, and stock missiles... that we don't have.  I can't seem to win here.

[Bremen]

I just wanted to post this here design to see what everyone thought of it.

Spoiler: Minuteman class FAC (click to show/hide)

Minuteman class Fast Attack Craft    800 tons     18 Crew     457 BP      TCS 16  TH 224  EM 120
14000 km/s     Armour 4-7     Shields 4-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 7
Maint Life 1.17 Years     MSP 36    AFR 51%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 27    5YR 403    Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months    Spare Berths 0   

x1.75EP 0.2FC 224 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (1)    Power 224    Fuel Use 77.78%    Signature 224    Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 25 000 Litres    Range 7.2 billion km   (5 days at full power)
Theta R300/192 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  8 Litres per hour  (192 per day)

13D 10sROF 130kkm 8PPS SPI 22cm C8 Infrared Laser (1)    Range 130 000km     TS: 14000 km/s     Power 13-8     RM 1    ROF 10        13 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
50% 150kkm 10kkm/s Fire Control S01.2 150-10000 (1)    Max Range: 300 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     97 93 90 87 83 80 77 73 70 67
8P Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant (1)     Total Power Output 8    Armour 0    Exp 5%

227kkm-14mkkm Active Search Sensor MR14-R40 (1)     GPS 384     Range 14.6m km    Resolution 40

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

If I may add, it's purposefully small. I wanted a ship bigger than a fighter, yet small enough to not need a bridge, mostly just for flavor/RP.

Now, what stands out to me is that I should probably use two 4 Power reactors rather than one big one so that if one goes, the thing can still shoot (albeit a reduced ROF), but I wasn't quite sure how much damage reactors dealt to the ship when they explode.

That much fuel = intentional.

MSP < Max Repair, but these things'll basically just be sitting in groups on populated asteroid bases as a sort of protection, so they'll just be sitting in maintenance facilities until needed.

Anyways, thoughts?

Looks pretty good, really. Does it have a bridge? One of the bonuses of FAC sized ships (1000 tons or smaller) is that they don't need a bridge, which can save you 50 tons and a few minerals.

You might want to take off the shields in favor of armor. With a ship that small, it's unlikely to gain much from the main benefit of shields (regenerating over time), and any hit big enough to inflict shock damage will blast right through a 4 point shield. Alternately you could do the opposite and take off most of the armor in favor of two or more shields, ending up with 8-12 shields that would basically absorb a single hit from most anti-ship missiles and beam weapons, then leave the ship defenseless, effectively giving it an "extra life" against a single large hit. But in my experience the biggest threat to beam FACs and Fighters is enemy anti-missiles used in offensive mode, and armor will help more against those.

I'd probably switch to a resolution 1 sensor, if you expect to know where the enemy is anyways. A resolution 1 sensor will still detect anything within your actual weapons range, and should be able to detect missiles which will let you shoot at them with the laser. It probably wont hit, but if you have a swarm of these things it might take out a few incoming missiles. You could alternately use two variants, one with resolution 40 sensors and one with resolution 1, which would give you the best of both worlds (since the Res 40 versions could shoot at missiles spotted by the res 1 type), just meaning you might need to retool your shipyards or have two different yards.

The power plant doesn't matter that much; it's true that having two would give you a backup, but you're already looking at a mission kill if something hits the fire control, laser, or engine. So having a backup power plant is not going to help all that often.

[iceball3]

I just wanted to post this here design to see what everyone thought of it.

Spoiler: Minuteman class FAC (click to show/hide)

Minuteman class Fast Attack Craft    800 tons     18 Crew     457 BP      TCS 16  TH 224  EM 120
14000 km/s     Armour 4-7     Shields 4-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 7
Maint Life 1.17 Years     MSP 36    AFR 51%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 27    5YR 403    Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months    Spare Berths 0   

x1.75EP 0.2FC 224 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (1)    Power 224    Fuel Use 77.78%    Signature 224    Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 25 000 Litres    Range 7.2 billion km   (5 days at full power)
Theta R300/192 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  8 Litres per hour  (192 per day)

13D 10sROF 130kkm 8PPS SPI 22cm C8 Infrared Laser (1)    Range 130 000km     TS: 14000 km/s     Power 13-8     RM 1    ROF 10        13 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
50% 150kkm 10kkm/s Fire Control S01.2 150-10000 (1)    Max Range: 300 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     97 93 90 87 83 80 77 73 70 67
8P Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant (1)     Total Power Output 8    Armour 0    Exp 5%

227kkm-14mkkm Active Search Sensor MR14-R40 (1)     GPS 384     Range 14.6m km    Resolution 40

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

If I may add, it's purposefully small. I wanted a ship bigger than a fighter, yet small enough to not need a bridge, mostly just for flavor/RP.

Now, what stands out to me is that I should probably use two 4 Power reactors rather than one big one so that if one goes, the thing can still shoot (albeit a reduced ROF), but I wasn't quite sure how much damage reactors dealt to the ship when they explode.

That much fuel = intentional.

MSP < Max Repair, but these things'll basically just be sitting in groups on populated asteroid bases as a sort of protection, so they'll just be sitting in maintenance facilities until needed.

Anyways, thoughts?

Worth noting, that due to how DAC damage is calculated, that if a stack of identical components with 0 HTK takes any damage, the entire stack is blown to smitheroons. You can mitigate this by either making different types of similar tiny reactors (has the consequence of making the DAC displacement per ton of reactor make them a lot more likely to be shot), or making sure that reactors have at least 1 HTK each on ships that use them. Only really significant in multiples of reactors, anyway.

[Flying Dice]

If you're talking about the certain, spoilery purple ones, you can't.

Naw, not those.  The jump points, my bad.  I had found out that my missile navy was at a JP where I hadn't built a jump gate yet, which is a little odd for me, but alright.  So I was getting impatient with the length of time it took to get there.  Now I get to wait longer.  Yeah! I was getting concerned with the fact this fleet had begun to drop morale (75% currently) and with no reinforcements carrying ASM, I decided to jump the gun. Backfired I guess. In all of this past time, I likely can send the ships back, rest the crews, begin overhauls, and stock missiles... that we don't have.  I can't seem to win here.

The jump is instantaneous. How long has it been in-game since you issued the command to jump out of that system?

[Carefulrogue]

If you're talking about the certain, spoilery purple ones, you can't.

Naw, not those.  The jump points, my bad.  I had found out that my missile navy was at a JP where I hadn't built a jump gate yet, which is a little odd for me, but alright.  So I was getting impatient with the length of time it took to get there.  Now I get to wait longer.  Yeah! I was getting concerned with the fact this fleet had begun to drop morale (75% currently) and with no reinforcements carrying ASM, I decided to jump the gun. Backfired I guess. In all of this past time, I likely can send the ships back, rest the crews, begin overhauls, and stock missiles... that we don't have.  I can't seem to win here.

The jump is instantaneous. How long has it been in-game since you issued the command to jump out of that system?

It had been 6 or 7 days (including travel time, which is why I though it took so long.)  I had found the problem however.  The navy ships that I've produced thus far aren't equipped with jump drives.  They're a hassle I hate having to deal with.  Combine with the fact I forgot to build a jump gate, which has now been built, I didn't have a way to make the jump.  I just decided to recall the ships and await the deployment of some laser and microwave cruisers.  Could take a while, we don't have a serious supply of Uridium anywhere within Sol.

[Flying Dice]

Oh, so you had it gated on one side but not the other?

[coleslaw35]

Worth noting, that due to how DAC damage is calculated, that if a stack of identical components with 0 HTK takes any damage, the entire stack is blown to smitheroons. You can mitigate this by either making different types of similar tiny reactors (has the consequence of making the DAC displacement per ton of reactor make them a lot more likely to be shot), or making sure that reactors have at least 1 HTK each on ships that use them. Only really significant in multiples of reactors, anyway.

Interesting. Thank you.

[Carefulrogue]

Oh, so you had it gated on one side but not the other?

On neither side apparently.  Doesn't really matter now.  The fleet has been recalled to Earth (the closest settled world with facilities for ships of this size, ~15,000 tons.)  And, I don't have the enough missiles for a full fledged campaign to get the aliens out of the system.  Thank you for the help though. 

[Carefulrogue]

I'm having an unusual bug.  On an out of Sol colony, Proxima, I queued up some maintenance facilities for onsite production.  It threw up an overflow error, and it reads the completion date as 1st January, 2035... It's 2nd April, 2145.  I went in and found that I don't have the resources for the production of said facilities, but I still find this to be a bit strange.  This a regular bug for Aurora 7.10?

EDIT: I can't seem to build anything in resonable quantities in this colony. Construction factories were tested at 50, but it threw up the same error, same date.  Could this also be in correlation between an issue with with the political and manufacturing modifiers (00.01% and 58.04%, respectively?)

[Sirus]

This is less a question about Aurora and more a question about Steve.

Is he like...really conservative? I'm going through the Starfire novel series (based on the tabletop game that is the basis of Aurora, in case ya didn't know) and I've noticed something. The Liberal-Progressive (LibProg) members of the government are, to a man, almost cartoonishly inept and self-serving while the noble conservative military are unambiguous heroes of reason. The LibProgs will go from decrying the very existence of the Navy in one chapter to demanding that the Navy commit genocide a few chapters later (and then go straight back to demanding "full investigations" and censures when the Navy suffers the slightest setbacks). They prefer not to teach history and refuse to learn from it. It's the LibProgs who are in bed with the mega-corporations and petition to get their pet (and utterly useless) officers in high-ranking positions. Cowards and hypocrites all.

I know that the first few books are co-written by David Weber, but I'm not convinced that the ridiculous caricatures mentioned above are his influence. Weber may specialize in military sci-fi, and he may have his faults (I can think of at least one regular here who despises his works), but his villains tend to be ultra-conservatives while more progressive mindsets are - if not idealized - at least seen as voices of reason. Thus, I'm wondering if the portrayal of liberals in the Starfire series are down to Steve's own viewpoints.

[Culise]

Two things: First, wrong Steve W.  The Steve (White) behind the Starfire novels is not the Steve (Walmsley) behind Aurora.  It's actually a common mistake to make; I've made it myself.  ^_^

Second, if you want to see Weber's treatment of Liberals on his own, take a look at the early Honor Harrington books.  Liberals are caricatured as bleeding-hearts who couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag and spend their time wringing their hands about "man's inhumanity to man" in an ineffectual sort of way.  At the very best, they mean well but are so naive that they'd be constantly taken advantage of if not for the genius "moderates" (themselves libertarian-wing conservatives) and the military, not that they'll ever be thankful for it.  At the worst, they're corrupt and self-serving, taking advantage of people's better natures to enrich themselves and their power base while mouthing generic platitudes.  Both, if left unchecked, are suggested to drive entire nations into the ground, the People's Republic of Haven being a prime example of this in its backstory.  The Conservatives (really authoritarian, corrupt kleptocrats) at least are self-interested allies of circumstance at the beginning; the Liberals are enemies from the get-go.  It really isn't until Eric Flint (a die-hard and unrepentant Trotskyite, which I might suggest bleeds over into the style of his books as well) gets involved in the Honorverse that the Liberals take a sharp swing towards "good."  I wouldn't be surprised to find White helped it along, but I also would find the Lib-Progs of Starfire entirely in keeping with Weber's traditional works that involve politics.

[Carefulrogue]

I figured out what was wrong.  I think.  I didn't have the man power to run the terraformers, mines, and limited construction.  And they have more or less been in a state of constant upheaval for several years, and I never had a fleet there.  Now I do. (Albeit I really should destroy it since I thought it was my reserve fleet that had gotten destroyed somehow. I SM in some replacements.  %$#& I said.  Dump out the missiles, and send the poor sods to Proxima.) 

[RAM]

Yes, that sounds right. There are a lot of details to getting a colony to work and population is a likely culprit. It shouldn't take too much to keep them happy though, a few rusting old hulks milling about the system or a load of empty missile tubes from the cold war dumped on some rock somewhere will probably reassure the ignorant plebs... You will also want to look through the listing of what the population is actually doing. It is pretty easy to end up with the whole population working full-time just to keep their habitation running on an inhospitable colony, or to have all your workers busy with terraforming or mining or something...

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I'm having an unusual bug.  On an out of Sol colony, Proxima, I queued up some maintenance facilities for onsite production.  It threw up an overflow error, and it reads the completion date as 1st January, 2035... It's 2nd April, 2145.  I went in and found that I don't have the resources for the production of said facilities, but I still find this to be a bit strange.  This a regular bug for Aurora 7.10?

EDIT: I can't seem to build anything in resonable quantities in this colony. Construction factories were tested at 50, but it threw up the same error, same date.  Could this also be in correlation between an issue with with the political and manufacturing modifiers (00.01% and 58.04%, respectively?)

0.01% is going to mean you aren't building anything at all! What's the "political modifier" mean, fellow Aurora experts?

stuff about jumping

There are only two ways for a ship to traverse a jump point:

1. Jump gates, which are permanent stabilizations of one side of a jump gate, which allow jumping from the side they are built, not two-way. If you want two-way, build a jump gate on the other side too. No ship size/task-group size limitations.

2. Be in a task-group which contains a proper jump engine for that group:

a. The jump engine has an inherent limit to how many ships it can jump, including the ship it is installed on, if the jump selected in a squadron jump. Squadron jumps cannot be carried out if the task-group is larger than this number. A "squadron jump" means that ships are faster to recover from jump sickness, which temporarily prevents the use of sensors or weapons. Very small jump engines are "self-only", meaning that they can only jump the ships they are installed on. I'm fairly sure this also applies to non-squadron or "standard" jumps, but I'm not sure. Research is required to increase the number of ships each jump engine can jump, in addition to increasing the squadron size in the jump engine design screen. This will increase the size of the jump engine by a proportion of the jump engine's size, and this number is roughly proportional to how many ships the jump engine can jump. This proportion cannot be lowered by research.

b. Every ship in the task-group must be of equal or smaller size to the jump engine's specified tonnage and the jumpship itself. The jump cannot be carried out if even one of the ships in the task-group is larger than the size the jump engine was designed to jump or the size of the ship which the jump engine is located on. The jump engine's tonnage limit can be increased by increasing the size of the jump engine, but this will also increase the size of the jumpship itself, leading to a rocket equation-like cycle that eventually settles down. The tonnage of ships that a jump engine of given size can jump can be increased via research, leading to more efficient jump engines. The tonnage that a jump engine can handle is per-ship, not total, so a single-jumper 8'000-ton-capable jump engine is not required to jump, and is in fact incapable of jumping, two 4'000 ton ships. Increasing the size of the jump-ship is easy: just add more engines, armour, fuel, whatever.

c. This may be under question Every ship in the task-group must be military if the jump engine itself is military. Commercial jump engines can jump ten times the tonnage per hull space of jump engine, but are incapable of jumping a task-group containing one or more military ships. A ship is considered military if it a. contains a military engine or b. contains a military components. Military components include, but are not limited to, weapons (excluding CIWS), large (more than 1 ton [HS?]) sensors, whether active or passive, and shields. No amount of armour will make a ship military. Military engines are not directly specified as such within the engine design menu, but are rather any engine that is either above 50% efficiency or below 25 HS in size.