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[Grendus]

Guess we gotta find a wormhole.


Question - the tutorial has us create two beam fire controllers, one for long range and one for short. I'm about to try to create my first warship, with multiple turrets to intercept missiles and some long distance lasers (haven't gotten around to missile tech, though I can get lasers 400,000 km now with the right target system) for combat and am curious as to why there are two when the long range targeting system would, according to him, be better at targeting missiles at close range anyways. I presume it's because you need a separate firing system for every laser that fires?

Also, if I have three lasers mounted in a turret, will they all fire at the same target or can each laser target a separate missile?

[Tarran]

Well, think of it this way, you can build a BFC with up to X4 tracking speed/range, but that also makes it up to X4 bigger! add both, and you will have to deal with a X16 BFC, (800 tons/16HS!).

And you don't really need a fast targeting weapon for ship to ship combat, I mean, its not like you will be fighting a ship going 10000 km/s right? right... 

Now, range is WORTHLESS if you can't track the missile! you don't really need range if you are likely only going to get one shot, as missiles go really, really fast.

Now, don't forget that its worthless to have a long range fire control and a short range weapon. 

And you don't need one FC per weapon (beam or otherwise), one FC can easily handle all of your weapons, but you need more than one to target multiple targets/salvos, one target/salvo per FC. multiple weapons on one turret only target one target/salvo.

Now onto lasers, they are a horrible PD weapon, I tried, Precursors did a number even though they only had one ship firing 9 missiles per wave (i can't remember the size), even though they ran out they damaged one of my cruisers and nearly destroyed (i abandoned the ship) a battlecruiser. the main reason they failed was, 1:they need to recharge, 2:they had horrible accuracy.

At least I killed the a------. 

I have yet to test my new gauss cannon PD but I have high hopes, because even though they do poor damage they fire 3 (not four)(check my new post.) times in five seconds, quad turret them and you have 12 (not 16)(check my new post.) shots every five seconds, and they use no power, so you can add lots of gauss turrets, try making a ship dedicated to only PD.

Fake-edit; I love when the internet cuts out when I'm about to do something. 

Now, I need to start putting more effort into my colonies, anyone want give me a tip on how to speed up the time it takes to reach my 3-JP-away colony? it takes FOREVER!

Wow I write a LOT.

Also, minimum turn rate of a non turret weapon varies, I remember mine being 3000 km/s, now its 5000 km/s, anyone have an idea why?

Edit; gauss/railgun fail! 

[Greiger]

Yes, in most circumstances a gauss is significantly better than a laser as PD.  Hell I have really really high tech laser weaponry, and my near basic gauss PD outperforms my laser PD all the time.

However the advantage is that laser PD are still LASERS when you don't need to use them for defense.  A large number of PD lasers can tear a target apart, especially lighter armored stuff.  Where each shot will do internal damage.  Against star swarm my PD destroyers with their Quad 10cm turrets performed offensively just as well as my heavier laser corvettes.   Gauss PD would still have trouble even breaking through level 1 armor.

Laser PD also essentially renders missile armor moot.  unless you are willing to use up alot of space on missile armor it's not going to make a difference against lasers.  (Of course mesons outperform lasers in this area)  However I haven't encountered any NPRs using armored missiles yet.

Minimum turn rate is based on the capability of your turret gear technology.  I believe you can't make a turret turn slower than your turn rate tech. Probably to make sure the turret is at least 10% bigger than the weapon alone.

[Grendus]

So you need a controller for each target, but each controller can run multiple weapons. So you would want multiple very short range controllers to take down missile swarms and one long range controller to target ships. Sounds good.

I'm thinking that the balance is between missile and fighter point defense. Laser's higher firepower can cut apart agile close combat ships that try to overwhelm a ships non-turret anti-ship weapons, while Gauss' higher rate of fire takes apart missile swarms. Clever.

Edit:

Now, I need to start putting more effort into my colonies, anyone want give me a tip on how to speed up the time it takes to reach my 3-JP-away colony? it takes FOREVER!

You could try building or transporting the infrastructure closer to your outlying colonies, or invest heavily in new transport technology. You could look for a nearer jump point, though odds are you may have trouble finding one.

Also, minimum turn rate of a non turret weapon varies, I remember mine being 3000 km/s, now its 5000 km/s, anyone have an idea why?

It's based on the lowest number of either the speed of the turret assigned to that laser or the speed of your ship. Think of it like your ship turning to line up the weapon as opposed to the weapons turning to aim themselves. You can't aim the weapon faster than your ship can turn, or faster than your ships computer can target.

[Tarran]

Opps, its RAILGUNS that fire four times, gauss fires three (read spoilers) times.

Also, if anyone want's to know my view on beam/nonbeam weapons, here you go.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ala beam overview

Lasers: base weapon.
Range: Longest of them all
STS: Very nice, but it focuses on range NOT damage.
PD: haha, wow, it really sucks on PD, basically you have to recharge every shot, while missiles are hitting your ships.
Mount:yes

Railgun: I made a mistake, this fires four times in five seconds.
Range: basically the same as lasers? "The damage falls off in the same way as lasers and their range can be extended by researching Railgun Launch Velocity"
STS: if you get lucky, 1/3 higher than laser (all shots hit), otherwise... well.
PD: Kinda useless, you can't mount it on a turret, but if you have nothing else its better than that laser you have to spend a lot of time recharging on.
Mount:no

Torpedoes: meh its a middle point between Plasma and Lasers.
Range: Same as Plasma does not drop off with range.
STS: basically the same as plasma but less damage, does not drop off with range.
PD: you kidding me?
Mount:no

Mason Cannon:nothing can stop it from hitting something, not armor, not shields... unfortunately, it sucks on damage (one damage) Screw that, it is freaking bad-ass.
Range: Bleh, it really does not have good range.
STS: it works nice if your opponent does not have backups, otherwise it does not really do anything (1 damage). it works nice if your opponent can't run away from it's dwarfiness.
PD: meh, mostly useful if you switch to STS, otherwise i would use a gauss.
Mount:yes

Gauss cannon:as me and Greiger said, it works wonders in PD. it fires 3 shots NOT four! Heh, it can go even higher on the amount of shots it can fire, if it had higher range than it does now it would likely replace missiles.
Range: does it need range? because it has the lowest range of them all!
STS: Gwahahaha! its worthless!
PD: on the other hand, it does wonders awesomeness here.
Mount:yes

Plasma Carronade: best damaging weapon.
Range: low, yeah, very low (fixed, its plasma for plasma's sake) checking technogy, it turns out it does not have a fixed range.
STS: if you can get into range, it is a great weapon, otherwise it sucks (annnddd it drops off with range).
PD: haha.
Mount:no

High Power Microwave: if you want to disable your opponent, same as masons but it gets blocked by shields.
Range: See mason cannon.
STS: when you've knocked out their electronics (AS, FC, etc) its worthless. it does magnificent damage to electonics though.
PD: What use is it if it only damages electronics? answer; none!
Mount:no

CWS: its a bunch of gauss on a single turret with its own FC.
Range: read gauss.
STS: 
PD: its built for PD, and nothing else.
Mount:uhh... its already mounted.

Have any questions/arguments just ask/post. 

Edit; fixed a few things, anything else?

[Greenbane]

A few things:

- Torpedoes have the advantage of dealing the same amount of damage throughout their effective range, something plasma doesn't.

- The amount of shots fired by gauss weapons every 5 seconds is affected by the Gauss Cannon Rate of Fire technology.

- Railguns, I think, are the ones limited to certain number of shots per 5-second period (four). And I wouldn't say they suck, since for gauss weapons to reach its ROF, you need four levels of the aforementioned technology. The fourth level costs 25000 RP, so that and getting there is a considerable investment of time and scientific resources. Also, their range is far lower than that of lasers, but still, they're not quite worthless.

- Mesons are overpowered, from my point of view. Yeah, it's just one point of damage, but when you have 50-80 Star Swarm gunboats lancing in, even the mightiest battleship can crap its pants: all its heavy armour and dozens of shields mean squat.

- I've found plasma weapons pretty good for defending jump points while mounted on static platforms. However, I'm not sure how they are balanced with torpedoes, considering similar ranges. Damage decreases the farther the target is, but maybe plasma mounts are lighter than torpedo ones?

[Grendus]

How do you SM away a ship or race? One of the NPR's is engaging a precursor ship and it's pretty much crashed right now. If I wasn't on a dual core machine I'd be restarting right now. Before that it was all 1 minute turns while the precursor and NPR loaded, fired, and missed each other with absurd missiles. God I feels so unprepared.

[Greenbane]

I think there's a Delete Race button in the Diplomacy window, but I don't know if it's an SM option or a standard one that just breaks contact with the aliens in question.

And as far as I know, you can't blow up ships you don't control with SM powers. What you can do is teleport your own vessels around (use waypoints if you need precision), so you could blink a warship(s) into favourable firing range, eliminate the weakest ship (likely the NPR's) and blink out before the other party can fire a shot.

[forsaken1111]

Mason Cannon:nothing can stop it from hitting something, not armor, not shields... unfortunately, it sucks on damage (one damage).

This made me laugh out loud. Of course the damage is low, it's firing dwarven MASONS at them! 

[Greiger]

How do you SM away a ship or race? One of the NPR's is engaging a precursor ship and it's pretty much crashed right now. If I wasn't on a dual core machine I'd be restarting right now. Before that it was all 1 minute turns while the precursor and NPR loaded, fired, and missed each other with absurd missiles. God I feels so unprepared.

Pretty much just gotta sit through it.  Delete race on the diplomacy screen is just "Pretend they don't exist".  I believe the usual solution is set it on automated turns and go do something else for a few minutes.

If this helps with the unprepared feeling, precursors are by design supposed to make you feel unprepared.  If you can manage to switch your view to one of the sides (I think there's a bug or something that lets you but I donno how to do it)  You can destroy the offending ships the same way you could destroy your own.

[Tarran]

Mason Cannon:nothing can stop it from hitting something, not armor, not shields... unfortunately, it sucks on damage (one damage).

This made me laugh out loud. Of course the damage is low, it's firing dwarven MASONS at them! 

Gwahaha! 

A few things:

- Torpedoes have the advantage of dealing the same amount of damage throughout their effective range, something plasma doesn't.

Ah, I need to start Firing crap at my precursors, its just I'm afraid of getting my ass kicked like i did last time.

- The amount of shots fired by gauss weapons every 5 seconds is affected by the Gauss Cannon Rate of Fire technology.

Ah, that makes it even more useful!

- Railguns, I think, are the ones limited to certain number of shots per 5-second period (four). And I wouldn't say they suck, since for gauss weapons to reach its ROF, you need four levels of the aforementioned technology. The fourth level costs 25000 RP, so that and getting there is a considerable investment of time and scientific resources. Also, their range is far lower than that of lasers, but still, they're not quite worthless.

I guess, but why would you base your ships on luck more than you would with lasers?

- Mesons are overpowered, from my point of view. Yeah, it's just one point of damage, but when you have 50-80 Star Swarm gunboats lancing in, even the mightiest battleship can crap its pants: all its heavy armour and dozens of shields mean squat.

I think the reasons I said it was because I had, in my precursor combat, my battlecrusier taking an enormous amount of damage to the engine and not losing it until it got peppered by several more missiles...

- I've found plasma weapons pretty good for defending jump points while mounted on static platforms. However, I'm not sure how they are balanced with torpedoes, considering similar ranges. Damage decreases the farther the target is, but maybe plasma mounts are lighter than torpedo ones?

Yes, a plasma carronade is lighter, AND does more damage if you do hit at close range, so at long range Torp>Plas, at close range Plas>Torp, so its a trade off.

Thanks! criticism is nice. especially if I'm too afraid to send my ships to their likely death, I have no missiles yet, I guess it does not matter if I have no NPR generated, (after 89 systems!) so I'll send them in soon, I wanted revenge for a while!

Let's see, 9 systems with Precursors, 2 systems with some StarSwarm, plenty of target practice!

Now i just need missiles... Grrblarghth.

Updating to THE post now.

[Another]

...

And since the distance is 4900 light years (1ly=10,000,000,000,000 km, therefore 4900ly=49,000,000,000,000,000 km [49 quadrillion km]).

So, let's say we have a 10,000 ton explorer ship named 'explorer' for this instance, the 'explorer' can do a staggering 100,000 km/h and has 100 years of supply.

49,000,000,000,000,000/100,000 = 490,000,000 hours, you see what I'm going with here?
490,000,000/24 = 20416666 days/365 = 55936 years, safe to say even if I got even partially wrong they would be dead, now lets try 100,000 km/s, (I'm not going to bother you with the math) 15537 years, yeah. 

...

You've seen grammar nazis, right? I am going to sound like a math one.

100,000 km/s is 3600 times faster than 100,000 km/h, so it is obvious that in your second case it should be 1/3600 of the time from your first case. 4900 ly/(100,000 km/s)=4900years*300,000km/s/(100,000 km/s)=4900*3 years=14700 years. So - roughly right here.

However as for the first part:
49,000,000,000,000,000/100,000 =/= 490,000,000 hours
49,000,000,000,000,000/100,000 = 490,000,000,000 hours
490,000,000,000/24/365=55,936,073 years. You were 1000 times overly optimistic here.

I don't know why I bother to do this but errors in math just catch my eyes.

[Greenbane]

Thanks! criticism is nice. especially if I'm too afraid to send my ships to their likely death, I have no missiles yet, I guess it does not matter if I have no NPR generated, (after 89 systems!) so I'll send them in soon, I wanted revenge for a while!

Let's see, 9 systems with Precursors, 2 systems with some StarSwarm, plenty of target practice!

Now i just need missiles... Grrblarghth.

No NPRs generated in 89 systems? What percentage of NPR chance have you set? Default is 30%. Also, perhaps you need to do more in-depth scouting in all those systems, as often you can't detect alien populations till you're really close to their planet. Put big thermal and/or EM sensors on a fast scout and start bouncing between planets like it's pinball night!

As for Precursors, I haven't engaged them yet, but you'll need missiles and/or lots of point-defense to stand up to them.

[Earthquake Damage]

Also, minimum turn rate of a non turret weapon varies, I remember mine being 3000 km/s, now its 5000 km/s, anyone have an idea why?

It's based on the lowest number of either the speed of the turret assigned to that laser or the speed of your ship. Think of it like your ship turning to line up the weapon as opposed to the weapons turning to aim themselves. You can't aim the weapon faster than your ship can turn, or faster than your ships computer can target.

Actually, I think it's the faster of turret speed, ship speed, and tracking speed technology (hence the nice, round numbers like 3000, 5000, &c).  Until you tech up, the only way to effectively track fast ships is to either design some good turrets or build your own fast ships (fighters have a purpose, it seems).  This assumes a sufficiently advanced FCS.

Disclaimer:  The above information comes either from the wiki or something I read on the official forum (read it sometime last week).  If it's wrong, go search the forum yourself. 

[Tarran]

...

100,000 km/s is 3600 times faster than 100,000 km/h, so it is obvious that in your second case it should be 1/3600 of the time from your first case. 4900 ly/(100,000 km/s)=4900years*300,000km/s/(100,000 km/s)=4900*3 years=14700 years. So - roughly right here.

Hey, no-one is perfect, heck I'm far from perfect.

However as for the first part:
49,000,000,000,000,000/100,000 =/= 490,000,000 hours
49,000,000,000,000,000/100,000 = 490,000,000,000 hours
490,000,000,000/24/365=55,936,073 years. You were 1000 times overly optimistic here.

I don't know why I bother to do this but errors in math just catch my eyes.

If I had a dollar for every zero I missed so far in my life I would have hundreds of dollars, I did it again it, you are right. and that is why I hate zeros, sooooo easy to miss some. well, at least for me.

Oh, and I'm confused, you guys sound like you are talking about weapons ON turrets, I'm talking about weapons OFF turrets, plasma, torpedoes, railguns. the works, if you are talking about non-turreted weapons than I either; 1:did not understand you 2:you were too confusing. and I DO KNOW that the faster the ship the faster the TS, I'm talking about the minimum TS, as in, on a ship going 1km/s (minimum speed apparently).

Thanks! criticism is nice. especially if I'm too afraid to send my ships to their likely death, I have no missiles yet, I guess it does not matter if I have no NPR generated, (after 89 systems!) so I'll send them in soon, I wanted revenge for a while!

Let's see, 9 systems with Precursors, 2 systems with some StarSwarm, plenty of target practice!

Now i just need missiles... Grrblarghth.

No NPRs generated in 89 systems? What percentage of NPR chance have you set? Default is 30%. Also, perhaps you need to do more in-depth scouting in all those systems, as often you can't detect alien populations till you're really close to their planet. Put big thermal and/or EM sensors on a fast scout and start bouncing between planets like it's pinball night!

As for Precursors, I haven't engaged them yet, but you'll need missiles and/or lots of point-defense to stand up to them.

I started without one, now I regret that.

I had 10% early, 30% for a little bit afterwards 100% now, the RNG is trying its best to screw with me like it does to all of us. its not generating any abandoned ships/cities anymore (without precursors), it did it a lot before!

and YES I explored all nearly every planet I've found! I even went transponders and AS's on! NOTHING. I have since decided to only explore those that are habitable. and guess what I find most of the time? freaking precursors.

Now, onto missiles, in short, I suck at them (I don't like maintenance and stuff like that... because I'm lazy like that). 

Also, I was never welcomed to the forum.

Edit:

Did you know my Starswarm use a french flag?