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[gimlet]

I had pretty good results with a mix of dedicated Point Defense gunnery ships for close in defense and AMM (Anti Missile Missile) ships controlled carefully for a couple of rounds of longer range interception to thin out the incomings.  The PD gunnery wasn't all that super - maybe 3-4 levels of research into turrets, tracking speed and mesons or gauss, all set to final fire since at that level they wouldn't get much of a shot at anything farther away anyway.  4-6 levels of armor so they could each survive a few leakers, and still small enough to crank out relatively quickly.   

And a separate class of LR sensor ship so they could detect and target the missiles far enough away to get in a couple of rounds of anti-missile fire - it varied by game but I was always trying for at least 800k range on the size 1 sensors - the individual ships had lower range backup systems, but there was no way to fit 800k-1m range active+missile radars into each one.  I called these DDL - a bit more armor and trade some of the guns/missiles for whopping huge sensors...

[PTTG??]

The so-called "tutorial" doesn't even explain how to give orders! How do I tell a ship to orbit and survey the moon, let alone deliver colonists?

[MarcAFK]

The so-called "tutorial" doesn't even explain how to give orders! How do I tell a ship to orbit and survey the moon, let alone deliver colonists?

Oh yes, there is so many things i couldn't find anywhere on the tutorials or wiki,anyway, what you want is the task groups page under Empires (or F12) Look for the drop down bar on the top left side labeled name, click it and you get a list of all your task groups, click the one your survey ship is in, on the right you see a list of all the ships in that group and down the bottom is where uyou give orders, bottom right left has a list of bodies in the system, default is just planets and jump points but there is also options to show asteroids, moons, other task groups etc, to survey the moon click on luna, then under "Actions available" there is a list of things that ship can do, click Geological survey, then click add move,it should show up under the plotted move list, you also have an option to cycle moves, which is useful for doing repeat orders, like dumping colonists etc.
Edit: something to be aware of is that if a ship reaches a planet and cannot complete it's order (like if you tell it to load 5 mines but there's only 4 available) it'll cancel that action, and delete everything from it's move list... which is rather annoying, also when you first construct a ship you choose what task group it'll be in, the default is Shipyard taskgroup i think, anyway if you have a ship still being constructed set to a taskgroup and you tell one ship in that task group to move it'll just sit around waiting for the other one to finish being constructed, so it's usually a good idea to detatch each ship from the shipyard task group when it's finished  building, to attach ships to the same group you need to select the group you want everything in, click on the option to show task groups under "system locations available" select the task group you want to attach, then click attach under "actions available"

And back to the Topic at hand, if the NPR's like to spam you to death with size 1 Anti missiles, would a viable defence against them be to spamm a higher quantity of tiny almost useless missile decoy/drones for them to target and waste ammo on?

[Trorbes]

It would depend on their targetting priority, and the decoys would need a pretty big signature just to draw their attention. Assuming they'll use these missiles for anti-missile missiles in the first place, all you need is a single missile, they'll end up using the whole volley to take it out.

My new missile frigate design has been finished. I've doubled the armor and shields, upgraded the engines, and tuned the active sensors quite a bit. The missile complement is low, but the ship is large enough to almost outweigh my jump tender, so superior numbers will have to do. I should have enough missiles for four volleys per ship with a standard loadout, but my plan is to beat them by attrition; small volleys to waste their anti-missiles, then blast them with the remainder. I should probably design a collier too, but that'll have to wait for tonight.

[Paul]

Small volleys won't waste their anti-missiles any more than large volleys. They'll fire a certain number of anti-missiles per missile and stop, then wait for contact. If all missiles weren't destroyed, they fire more. And repeat. They don't just keep firing a stream of anti-missiles at the one missile.

[Trorbes]

No, what I meant was that, since their ship fires 50-missile volleys - and assuming they are being fired by only one or a couple launchers - they would end up wasting a fair amount of missiles on my small volleys in just one shot. Basically, beating their defense by attrition rather than superior firepower.

[Paul]

They don't have to fire all their launchers at once. They'll fire partial volleys at small missile attacks.

For instance, shooting 8 volleys of 1 missile each, an enemy with one fire control linked to 10 missile launchers set to use 2 AMMs per missile would just fire 2 of their launchers every 5 seconds until all 8 had 2 missiles on it, then repeat if they didn't all hit. If you fired one volley of 8 missiles, they would fire 10 the first 5 seconds then 6 the next to make it 16 (2 per missile).

The best way to get them to waste their ammo would be to make a missile that closes within their detection range and bursts into a bunch of size 1 slow moving armored missiles with no warhead. Something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0.984     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 1000 km/s    Endurance: 125 minutes   Range: 7.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.262
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 10%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 2%   10k km/s 1%
Materials Required:    0.246x Tritanium   Fuel x25

With a carrier something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Missile Size: 10 MSP  (0.5 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0.4735     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 10000 km/s    Endurance: 109 minutes   Range: 65.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 3.8728
Second Stage: Dud x8
Second Stage Separation Range: 7,400,000 km
Overall Endurance: 4 hours   Overall Range: 73.0m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 100%   3k km/s 30%   5k km/s 20%   10k km/s 10%
Materials Required:    2.0864x Tritanium   Fuel x2261.5

That way each one of those fairly cheap missiles would provide 9 separate armored targets for them to destroy. The main body is fast enough to close in at a decent clip, and the secondaries are slow enough for them to be sure and fire enough missiles to destroy every one of them before they make contact. You could make them larger than size 1 with mostly armor for even harder to destroy secondaries if you wanted. They wouldn't actually do anything if they made contact, but the enemy wouldn't know that and their fire controls would shoot them anyway. If they were flying away the secondaries would need to be faster though, otherwise they might fly out of detection range then they wouldn't even try to shoot them because they couldn't see them.


Do note that if it's precursors you're fighting, sometimes they have a LOT of extra ammo laying around on their bases. If you kill them right off you can capture them and either scrap them or use them. I've taken precursor installations with thousands of missiles. I once took one with 6000 AMMs and 700 ASMs. And they may have more than one base in the system.

[Trorbes]

I think I will try some of those decoy missiles, actually.  Out of curiosity, if they launch AMMs at the first stage and it deploys the second stage before they AMMs hit, would it count as a lost contact or would it just adjust to the new volley?  Assuming the missiles are always in their sensor range and the AMMs have no sensors of their own, of course.

I am aware that they're not that stupid about AMM volleys, but I suspect that with the size of their volleys they only have a few large launchers, so unless they could fire partially-loaded launchers it would still have a significant effect on them with just a few missiles I believe.

I don't think they're precursors though, they seem to be more advanced than me (though I rarely focus on military research) but not THAT much more, they only go about 4,700 km/s and precursor ships are usually much faster than that, aren't they?  I think I also saw an EM contact from their planet, but that I'm not so sure of.

[Ehndras]

I've had precursors who go as slow as 3,700 to 4,200 km/h actually. Its not their speed that worries, its their ridiculous missile range... I had well-built anti-missile ships, PD ships, anti-ship missile cruisers, and particle beam ships (PB ships were for a test run), and I had hooked up a nice long range missile control at about 40-45 m-km range, but their missile range was bloody near 100 m-km! I went through every single anti-missile they had, they finally ran out, and then I raced to close the gap and blow their ship to hell. Took two volleys of 6-strength anti-ship missiles, a lot faster than I expected actually.

And that was against one Precursor ship, even though my ship speed was 1.5k higher and I had faster missiles, it bled through my anti-missiles and outranged the hell out of me. Against 2-3+ I'd have been sandpapered to death!

[Paul]

I think I will try some of those decoy missiles, actually.  Out of curiosity, if they launch AMMs at the first stage and it deploys the second stage before they AMMs hit, would it count as a lost contact or would it just adjust to the new volley?  Assuming the missiles are always in their sensor range and the AMMs have no sensors of their own, of course.

I am aware that they're not that stupid about AMM volleys, but I suspect that with the size of their volleys they only have a few large launchers, so unless they could fire partially-loaded launchers it would still have a significant effect on them with just a few missiles I believe.

Just because a missile has a 2nd stage doesn't mean it disappears when the 2nd stage triggers. It will still keep flying on target after it releases the submunitions, so they'll still shoot AMMs at it.

Large launchers don't work that way. Even a size 50 launcher will only fire a single size 1 missile. If they're firing a whole bunch of anti-missiles, they have a whole bunch of size 1 launchers - and they only fire as many of the launchers as they want.

Another option might be sending in one big super heavily armored ship with a large active sensor and a whole bunch of point defense turrets (gauss works well). It wouldn't need to be fast, enemy ships would come to it due to the active sensor and fire away at it. While this one is taking fire, smaller ships (assuming they're smaller than the resolution of the enemy sensors) could approach undetected with actives off. Even if it gets destroyed before your ships get within range, they can then activate their sensors and fight a target with less ammunition.

[Bouchart]

When starting a new game, how many mines and auto-mines should you build?

Also, is there any easy way to automatically assign administrators to colonies?  It gets cumbersome as the game progresses.

[Sirus]

I don't usually build any mines until I know what I'm looking for, and then build only automated mines for export to other planets until Earth runs out and I have off-world populations.

You can auto-assign officers in the Officer menu.

[Bouchart]

Automated assignments don't seem to work for Governor positions, though.

[PTTG??]

I don't usually build any mines until I know what I'm looking for, and then build only automated mines for export to other planets until Earth runs out and I have off-world populations.

You can auto-assign officers in the Officer menu.

Doesn't earth run out in a year or so?

[Bouchart]

I just started a new game and Earth generated with durations of about 4 to 28 years.

I'm always so short on Mercassium.