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[Smitehappy]

Well, if the aim is to defend jump gate, why bother with missiles at all? A smaller warship, or a battle sttion (ship without engine) with a lot of beam weapons can wreck any ships before they can use their sensors, if the TF training is at 100%/

Mostly to get some practice at creating missiles. This is my first game and I've yet to run into anything to shoot so I'm mostly just running on guesses about range and combat effectiveness.

[umiman]

Also, it is really slow. It'll likely never close up enought to use it's particle beam.

In my time playing Aurora, there's one thing I've learned about the non-missile weapons. You don't get them for offensive purposes. You get them in case the enemy likes to get in your face.

Then simply don't get it. You can fit a a lot more missiles if you don't. It's possible to make interesting non missile ships though, they just really need to be able to outrun everything else, have lots of PD and enough armor to shrug a good handful of hits

Have you not fought precursors before? You can't outrun something 15 times your tech level. The swarm loves, loves, loves to send a horde of super fast ships with close range weapons into your face as well. Even a few pages back in this thread there are people talking about alien ships designed exclusively for RAMMING into other ships.

[Sheb]

Well, against Swarm, they are pretty effective since the Soldiers are weak and the mothership slow. And they are useful to finish cripple and guard JP without spending too many ammo.

Missiles beat all weapons tactically, but are a pain in the ass strategically (I'm out of gallicite in Sol and havebarely enough to equip my whole fleet.)

[Smitehappy]

So what's a good size missile to engage targets out of Particle Beam range?

[Felius]

Also, it is really slow. It'll likely never close up enought to use it's particle beam.

In my time playing Aurora, there's one thing I've learned about the non-missile weapons. You don't get them for offensive purposes. You get them in case the enemy likes to get in your face.

Then simply don't get it. You can fit a a lot more missiles if you don't. It's possible to make interesting non missile ships though, they just really need to be able to outrun everything else, have lots of PD and enough armor to shrug a good handful of hits

Have you not fought precursors before? You can't outrun something 15 times your tech level. The swarm loves, loves, loves to send a horde of super fast ships with close range weapons into your face as well. Even a few pages back in this thread there are people talking about alien ships designed exclusively for RAMMING into other ships.

I fought precursors, and quite a lot of their ships have been designed with missiles in mind, and actually had a bit more range than the missiles I had at the time. Still, you don't need to outrun then, as long as you shoot it before it reaches you. If you get a 60M-120M range missile you'll fire lots of salvos before they get even close to range. You're not to outrun them, just kill before they get into their short ranged weapons.

About the Swarm, I find that more a job for the PD missile Launchers than beam weaponry. You'd still get somewhat more range, and they double duty as anti missile missile launchers.  (or be technical, they are anti missile missile launchers that double duty as anti swarm missile launcher ).

Yeah, I guess strategically they can be annoying, as you'd need to have a supply line. Minerals, I'd recommend you'd get a couple extra-solar mining colonies ASAP, specially if your starting Sol is weak in some mineral.

On size, I say that because most starting warships tend to be kinda small. My current basic warship (and actually only), clocks 7500 tons. My next gen ships will be around 12k-15k, with a command ship at 20k (very nice sensors, some PD, and lots and lots of armor. It's also intended to draw missile fire from the rest of the task group). Heck, my cargo ship is at 30k tons (ok, technically to keep it cheap so the civilian sector build loads and loads of them), and my biggest ship (a salvager), is clocking at a little under 70k tons.

I've been using size 12 missiles, but have been finding it far too big. My next generation ship will have the main launchers at size 6, so I can fire more missiles and fire much faster. I might at some point design a Multiple Warhead Vehicles (MWV, becase technically MIRV can only be used for missiles that have reentry ), with size 24-30 (whatever size I use for PDCs to keep compatiblity), using drones (for the ridiculously huge extra range) carrying lots and lots of submissions, to fit the tactical role of long range artillery. Probably going to give them very nice passive sensors, and use missiles with their own sensors, so I don't need ultra powerful active sensors for the ship.

And on a side note, the ramming precursor ships are actually civilian ships. As they're unarmed, but still aggressive as all precursor ships, they go for the ramming speed. If you salvage a few of them that didn't got too damage, you'll probably get quite a few civilian components.

[Earthquake Damage]

Woo!  Conventional start + inefficient early decisions (like building way too many shipyards slipways and not enough tonnage to build anything) + 2 initial NPRs = 18 NPRs + 20-60 minute turns.  I suspected there were too many NPRs, but I didn't realize just how right I was until I checked the DB.  Time to start a new campaign...

I also think I'll try only 100 stars next time.  I can always expand it later or just delete exhausted systems with no colonies, and maybe add some JPs to replace broken connections in my empire.

EDIT:  This was all before I left Sol, though I wasn't exactly in a hurry to do that for HFS reasons.  Also, 100% NPR rate.

[Rask]

Is there a way to define a certain amount of minerals that mass drivers won't touch? To illustrate: what I want is for the massdrivers to automatically shoot any minerals of which I have more than 1000 (example number) in the stockpile to a different colony, until the amount in the stockpile is down to 1000 again.

What I want to do is set up several full-fledged colonies in the same system that keep shooting their raw materials around in a chain. At the end of the chain would be a dump colony, where a freighter would periodically show up to ferry the excess to a different system.

[quintin522]

In the mining/maintanence tab, in the mineral table on the very right is a reserve section

[Rask]

In the mining/maintanence tab, in the mineral table on the very right is a reserve section

Oh, I never noticed that one! Thanks!

[RedKing]

So what's a good size missile to engage targets out of Particle Beam range?

It's not so much the size as the speed and range. I use a mix of size 12 (Molotok), size 6 (Katyusha) and size 3 (Strela).

The Molotok series are large warhead, good speed (about 20-24,000 km/s) with a slight bit of agility added, and about a 50-60mil km range.

The Katyusha series are long-range missiles designed to be fired en masse (like their namesake). Small warhead, decent speed, some agility, and about 120-150mil km range.

The Strela series are fast, short-range missiles. These are used for targeting incoming FAC's, and also the loadout on my fighter-bombers. And they work as last-ditch defense if a wounded warship is still closing with me, or has good PD. Decent warhead, very good speed and agility, but only about 10mil KM range.


Typically, I open up at long range with several salvos of Katyushas, then cease fire and watch. If the target is a civilian or other lightly defended threat, that alone can be enough to kill or cripple it. Otherwise, it'll manage to shoot down a fair number of them, but some will get through. This'll give me an idea of its shields and armor and PD capabilities. At this point it's still far enough away for tactical options as far as retreat or splitting up.

Once it's in range of the Molotoks, I start adding them in with the Katyusha salvos, usually one salvo to every two or three Katyusha salvos. If those hit, they do major damage. Between the constant chipping away of Katyusha salvos and the big punch of the Molotoks, most targets are dead before they get close enough to use the Strelas. Plus, if I have a carrier in the battlegroup, I'm dispatching staggered waves of fighters closing to within 5mil KM or so, firing their missiles, then heading back to refuel and rearm.

It's pretty damn effective, because the AI is relatively stupid, plowing straight down the barrel of your guns. It's also easy to exploit because it heads for the nearest target, regardless of size. So if I really want, I can use figher groups to lead the bad guys away from my main fleet, firing all the while.

[umiman]

Just curious, but how many Katyushas do you fire per volley?

[Bremen]

I like to standardize my missile sizes (usually as small as feasible, there's very little benefit to large missiles), that way they can all be fired out of the same launchers.

So, say, I might have a size 2 long range missile with a small warhead and lots of fuel, a standard size 2 missile with a larger warhead, and a size 2 streak missile with high agility and speed, but sacrificing fuel and possibly warhead size. Then I just give my missile ships dozens of size 2 launchers and load them with a mix of the missiles; even if a particularly customized missile would be slightly more efficient, I make it up on being able to volley from every launcher at once regardless of missile type. It also means less space for launchers, so there's more available space for magazines (I usually don't bother with dedicated colliers and just mass my standardized missile ship with its standardized launchers... I'm lazy). If I use Anti-missiles they'll be size 1, but I wont have special size 1 launchers, just fire them out of the size 2s.

Usually I'll have two missile sizes, a light missile (size 3 early on, size 2 once my tech improves enough that it's practical) and a heavy missile (size 20, and usually a drone with multiple second stage missiles; I use these for my 1 billion km range PDC missiles).

A note on second stage missile: Have them separate at, minimum, 1 million km. You absolutely don't want your size 20 missile taken out by a lucky AMM or long range PD fire before it separates, and the fuel requirement for a range 1.5m km missile is tiny.

As for the individual missile design, it's easier when you're designing for a certain size anyways. With a known size and a planned range, you can easily figure out how much you need to devote to fuel. Then pick a speed (I usually aim for something 3x as fast as the fastest warship I could feasibly build; that way I know even enemies with anything less than a crippling tech advantage wont be able to outrun them). After that it's a matter of juggling warhead and agility (and possibly speed, if you reach the point of diminishing returns on the first two) for the best average damage (damage * chance to hit). Remember that chance to hit is speed x agility, and of those two favor speed (Agility only helps chance to hit, but speed helps in other ways as well). Lastly, agility rounds down; there is no 1.5 agility as far as I can tell, only 1 or 2, so always add it in whole numbers.

[Earthquake Damage]

In the mining/maintanence tab, in the mineral table on the very right is a reserve section

BLARGH!!!

I have never seen that before.  I didn't even realize we could do that.  Why?  Because the damned control is part of a table, which we normally can't manipulate.  Who would even think to double-click that column?

Once again, Aurora's horrible interface delivers.

[Smitehappy]

Anyone try their hand at boarding an enemy vessel? I've been throwing around the idea of just strapping a Company Combat Module on a bare fighter hull but figured I'd see if anyone uses something else.

[Karlito]

Anyone try their hand at boarding an enemy vessel? I've been throwing around the idea of just strapping a Company Combat Module on a bare fighter hull but figured I'd see if anyone uses something else.

That's basically what you need to do. Unless your target is going really slow, you might need to try and slow it with some mesons first.

The percentage of casualties from the boarding attempt is equal to 20xD10, giving a range from 20-200%. However, the amount of D10 rolled is reduced by Interception Speed / Target Speed. For example, if the interception speed is 6000 km/s and the target is moving at 1000 km/s, the number of D10 is reduced by 6. Therefore, if the intercepting ship is at least twenty times faster than the target ship, the attempt is automatically successful and no casualties are suffered during the boarding.

Remember to have troop transport ships in the fleet with the boarding shuttles since troops lose morale quickly while in a drop pod.