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[Flying Dice]

Well, remember that missiles have a designated HS associated with their size, which in turn converts to tons. But I seem to recall Steve posting on the Aurora forums that the tonnage isn't necessarily a direct representation of how massive the ships are, or of the volume they displace. But I could be wrong.

Anyway, I almost certainly recall him saying that the default ICBMs were based off of the Minuteman II model of ICBM. The ingame ICBMs are Size-24. In real life, the Minuteman II had a warhead with a yield of 1.2 megatons of TNT; the Minuteman I, which is essentially the same missile with worse electronics (at least for our purposes) weighed 78,000 lb/ 35,300 kg at Earth-normal gravity, was 18.2 meters long, and the first stage was 1.7m in diameter. It had an in-flight velocity of 7km/s and an operational range of 13,000 km.

So essentially that is the same as the Size-24 Conventional ICBM. Keep in mind, however, that the data are skewed because the Minuteman series was, by Aurora standards, laughably slow and short ranged, as it was meant for in-atmosphere strikes only. So an ASM of comparable warhead strength would be much larger, as it would carry the engines, fuel and likely onboard sensors to engage enemies from hundreds of kilometers away.

Of course, this is largely speculation and shouldn't be taken as fact.

[Paul]

Pretty big, 1 HS is 50 tons, and each size of missile is .05HS. So thats 2.5 tons for the smallest missile.

Check out my freighter:

Spoiler:  Freighter (click to show/hide)

Behemoth class Cargo Ship    372,300 tons     2970 Crew     16278.5 BP      TCS 7446  TH 55200  EM 0
7413 km/s     Armour 1-461     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 27    Max Repair 150 MSP
Cargo 250000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 200   

InC Fusion Drive C600 (92)    Power 600    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 600    Armour 0    Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres    Range 322.3 billion km   (503 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The beautiful thing is my two shipping lines have already built 5 of them between them. They fulfill contracts to haul things to distant planets in a flash. I don't even use my transport ships anymore, I just give a transport order to haul 100 automated mines and wait a week or two. I also have a colony ship of the same design, just replace the 50 cargo bays with 100 cryo transports. So far they've only built one of them, but it's been steadily hauling colonists 1 million at a time.

[Jacob/Lee]

That's pretty big. Mine only has 10 holds, but my civvies have like 10.

Also, since lasers are affected by atmosphere, I *should* be able to place this untouchable gun platform of death covered in lasers (or: PDC) on some asteroid in the middle of nowhere and it can still attack things?

[Tarran]

Yes, I believe so.

[forsaken1111]

That's pretty big. Mine only has 10 holds, but my civvies have like 10.

Also, since lasers are affected by atmosphere, I *should* be able to place this untouchable gun platform of death covered in lasers (or: PDC) on some asteroid in the middle of nowhere and it can still attack things?

sure, and then hope that someone comes within range of it...

[Jacob/Lee]

I'd use it more as a thing enemies wander by then run out of ammo shooting all their missiles at it.

[Flying Dice]

Add a few launchers and design extreme-range missiles and FC to draw enemies in. Or drop them on moons near moon colonies/sorium harvesting stations.

[Paul]

No point having laser PDCs unless you happen to have a asteroid right on top of a jump point that needs protecting or something.

Meson PDCs can be useful on planets though, both as a point defense platform and a last line of defense if ships come in close.

I'm thinking of doing fighter base PDCs. Put a big active sensor on it and some fighters with double that range in fuel (so they can get there and back) and you have a PDC that can protect a very big area. With a big enough active sensor you can detect ships from every jump point in the system and have fighters ready to fly out and intercept anything that shows up. The fighters themselves could be size 400 or 500 and have thermal shielded engines, box launchers, and no sensors (they can use the active of the PDC) so they would be very hard to detect and could carry shorter range missiles with a big punch.

You could even do beam based fighters, although they'd be detected before they got within beam range so would suffer losses on the approach. Fighters are fairly cheap though (my missile fighter costs less than the missiles it carries, lol) so you could just treat them as expendable (poor fighter pilots).

[Jacob/Lee]

The NPR's are really reckless with their ammo -- They'll pick a target then unload whole magazines on it. Constant barrages of missiles. It would make more sense if the AI had some sense of self-preservation.

[Flying Dice]

On the other hand, it is very easy to exploit that. Make a cheap ship design, and always have one escorting your fleet a few million km ahead of it. Bonus points for making it a ball of armor and shields with a few engines strapped to it.

[Jacob/Lee]

What is with the planet numbering in systems anyway?

Looking at a system now, it has: planets A I, A III, A VI. What happened to II, IV, and V? Did the Death Star come by when I wasn't looking?

That happens, I think, in the event that there are multiple stars in the system. Those orbiting the first star get A slapped on, the second B, and so forth.

I haven't seen it in action yet, but that's probably it.

Yeah, it is.

[Flying Dice]

What is with the planet numbering in systems anyway?

Looking at a system now, it has: planets A I, A III, A VI. What happened to II, IV, and V? Did the Death Star come by when I wasn't looking?

That happens, I think, in the event that there are multiple stars in the system. Those orbiting the first star get A slapped on, the second B, and so forth.

I haven't seen it in action yet, but that's probably it.

Yeah, it is.

^

Also, is there any good reason to play with Real Stars off? You get far more 3 and 4 star systems, which tend to be useless and planetless, you get black holes, which without the ability to tap them for power are useless as anything but a static defence which also happens to block expansion, and you don't get an appreciably higher number of habitable planets. You also run into the system creation bug when Real Stars is off, where if you ever, EVER delete a system or artificially create a system, that system and every discovered or created system after it will have the same name. Is there any benefit to it at all?

[Chattox]

What is with the planet numbering in systems anyway?

Looking at a system now, it has: planets A I, A III, A VI. What happened to II, IV, and V? Did the Death Star come by when I wasn't looking?

That happens, I think, in the event that there are multiple stars in the system. Those orbiting the first star get A slapped on, the second B, and so forth.

I haven't seen it in action yet, but that's probably it.

I don't believe this is the case. I just made my first ever jump ship, went through a JP and the system had 6 planets, however the names went I, III, IV, V, VI, VII with only one star and no sign of the second planet. Is the galaxy generation system anything like Dwarf Fortress worldgen? If so, it could've been destroyed/gone rogue during generation, perhaps?

[Jacob/Lee]

Naw, stars don't destroy themselves/go rogue. In the system view, the other star and anything orbiting it has its own tab.

[forsaken1111]

^

Also, is there any good reason to play with Real Stars off? You get far more 3 and 4 star systems, which tend to be useless and planetless, you get black holes, which without the ability to tap them for power are useless as anything but a static defence which also happens to block expansion, and you don't get an appreciably higher number of habitable planets. You also run into the system creation bug when Real Stars is off, where if you ever, EVER delete a system or artificially create a system, that system and every discovered or created system after it will have the same name. Is there any benefit to it at all?

I do it because I hate the default names for the 'real stars' systems and I can't be arsed to rename every one.