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[Crustypeanut]

Ok guys.. well, at my recent slaughter at the hands of the Swarm, I'm going to be starting a new game using a new approach - Designing my ships similar to the Caldari in EVE, meaning missiles, shields, and EWar! 

Now, I am almost a complete newb with missiles - got any tips? I know about the warhead size best being square numbers, and I know with AMMs you need size 1 missiles with tons of agility and engines.. but is there anything else I might need? 

Also, I love working with automated fire.  I'm a lazy bastard.  How would I go about designing missiles that can get a new target if their previous target is destroyed? Thermal sensors on the missiles? How much, if so?

And I'm also not too savvy with Drones and Buoys..

[Jacob/Lee]

I think any sensors on a missile will make the missile steer in that direction and head after it, assuming the sensors are strong enough to get a lock. Not sure what you need, though.

[Flying Dice]

If you put a sensor on a missile, it will automatically target hostile contacts within its radius if the original contact is lost/destroyed. This includes both thermal and active sensors. Keep in mind that this is going to take space that could be going to more important things/making the missile larger, and should generally be saved for higher tech levels when you have absolutely massive WH, AGI and Engine power multipliers. Just learn what are appropriate volley sizes for different targets and fire accordingly by reconfiguring your firing setup.

[Crustypeanut]

Well I'm just starting this game, so I don't *Need* anything just yet.  I just want to know what to design eventually  

Ooh.. just found out I have a Missiles/Kinetics Researcher and a Defensive Systems Researcher both with admin rating 4 and 30% bonus. 

[Jacob/Lee]

Academies are usually the first big construction project I take on. I think Steve might've rigged the RNG to allocate our starting scientists horribly and give us a dozen in 2 fields but none in half of them.

[Flying Dice]

Academies are usually the first big construction project I take on. I think Steve might've rigged the RNG to allocate our starting scientists horribly and give us a dozen in 2 fields but none in half of them.

I don't think so. Most of the time it is a decent balance that covers about half the specialities, sometimes it just gets royally screwed up. I started a game once with 4/5 Biology/Genetics specialists, and I've started games with 5 different useful fields. My current one was 2x C&P, 1x DEF, 1x P&P, and one quickly retired B&G. Just delete the ones you don't want and work with what you have until you get them all. Like pokemon, except that they build weapons.

[RedKing]

The worst are the games where you get no Propulsion or Sensor scientists for like, 20 years. So you can build a giant mother of a cannon...but you can't aim it. Or make it go faster than a couple thousand km/s.

[Flying Dice]

* MaximumZero fires up Aurora for the first time.

* MaximumZero is easily confused.

FUUUUUUUUUUUU-

my reactin was similar.
I checked the first tutorial (setting up games) then tried to self-teach as much as possible.

The thing is, the tutorial skips or skims over at least half of the basic information on the game, including proper missile design. Suppliment it by asking questions on here and reading through Steve's AARs (although those can be a little bit spoileriffic).

NATO V Soviet Union
Trans-Newtonian Campaign

Terraforming guide for Sol system-very useful, especially before you get the hang of it.

The wiki homepage.

[Crustypeanut]

Not only is the Trans-Newtonian Campaign a good tutorial, but its also a great read.  Be warned though, some of it is quite old, and there are plenty of things that are outdated.  Still, helps alot.


Anyways, when it comes to my current campaign of designing my ships like the Caldari in EVE, I think I'm doing quite alright.. In one of my neighboring systems I met our friends the Precursors, and am now preparing to avenge my Heron that was destroyed, although I didn't lose nearly as many people in that particular Heron as I did in my other one that got sucked into a Black Hole.  I lost a Vice Admiral and three Rear Admirals due to that, since that ship was carrying my geology team that I forgot had been there for nearly a decade.. XD

My army against my neighbors consists of 20(Soon to be 30) Kestrel class Missile Frigates each with three size 3 missile launchers with 12 additional rounds per launcher and missiles that have a 120m km range.  Defending them will be 4 Cormorant class Destroyer Escorts that are designed very similar to the Tribal I in the Trans Newtonian Campaign mentioned above.  I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice.  Last up will be four Griffin class Sensor Frigates, who will solely be painting the target at a 256m km range.

All ships are fielding 2.5 strength, 2.5 recharge shields, with the Kestrels having 20 strength shields and the other two class ships each having 10.  The Cormorants are also bringing in 1-strength ECM, which I need to upgrade soon..  Also, all ships have a 34% crew grade bonus due to high levels of academy training and every CO of the ship has some kind of crew training at 150+.

What I love about these Kestrels is that they only take 6.5 months to make.. and my shipyard tooled for them has 5 slipways. 

Wish me luck!

[Flying Dice]

Not only is the Trans-Newtonian Campaign a good tutorial, but its also a great read.  Be warned though, some of it is quite old, and there are plenty of things that are outdated.  Still, helps alot.


Anyways, when it comes to my current campaign of designing my ships like the Caldari in EVE, I think I'm doing quite alright.. In one of my neighboring systems I met our friends the Precursors, and am now preparing to avenge my Heron that was destroyed, although I didn't lose nearly as many people in that particular Heron as I did in my other one that got sucked into a Black Hole.  I lost a Vice Admiral and three Rear Admirals due to that, since that ship was carrying my geology team that I forgot had been there for nearly a decade.. XD

My army against my neighbors consists of 20(Soon to be 30) Kestrel class Missile Frigates each with three size 3 missile launchers with 12 additional rounds per launcher and missiles that have a 120m km range.  Defending them will be 4 Cormorant class Destroyer Escorts that are designed very similar to the Tribal I in the Trans Newtonian Campaign mentioned above.  I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice.  Last up will be four Griffin class Sensor Frigates, who will solely be painting the target at a 256m km range.

All ships are fielding 2.5 strength, 2.5 recharge shields, with the Kestrels having 20 strength shields and the other two class ships each having 10.  The Cormorants are also bringing in 1-strength ECM, which I need to upgrade soon..  Also, all ships have a 34% crew grade bonus due to high levels of academy training and every CO of the ship has some kind of crew training at 150+.

What I love about these Kestrels is that they only take 6.5 months to make.. and my shipyard tooled for them has 5 slipways. 

Wish me luck!

So you're going with large volleys via large numbers of small ships? Probably easier, at least early on.

I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice.

Heh. There are almost certainly more. That, and most of their ships use AMMs to attack, so even with a single ship you're looking at very large volleys. The last time I tangled with precursors, I was facing three ships of that type, and they launched dozens of volleys. My cruisers ended up wading through something on the order of 2,000 missiles, and only survived because I had built them with lots of PD, armor, and 200STR shields, and even then the two that were targeted lost almost all their modules and had massive armor damage, even though I was getting something like a 95% kill rate on their missiles. Even assuming a 100% kill ratio for your AMMs on 1-1 defence firing, you've only got around 1,200 AMMs, so even one or two AMM-armed Precursors will nearly empty your magazines. I'd recommend bolstering your AMMs with laser PD turrets, possibly even a different class of ship with heavy armor and PD that you can keep in front of your main body, either to tank, or to interdict enemy missiles as they pass.


Basically, using AMM against Precursors is only a good idea when the alternative is letting them destroy your ships, because you're going to have to use massive amounts of missiles. Not to mention their AMMs are very fast, usually faster than anything you have when you first encounter them, so you almost certainly won't have high kill ratios, unless you've overengineered your AMMs by quite a bit for your overall tech level.


Unrelated:

This game's cannonfodder system defence frigate that is going to be lost by the dozen when I run into enemies, because I like roleplaying first-contact scenarios rather than prepping for what I know is out there. 

Code: [Select]

Templar class Frigate    5,000 tons     539 Crew     1030.4 BP      TCS 100  TH 240  EM 0
2400 km/s     Armour 3-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 64/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 23.8
Maint Life 5.61 Years     MSP 515    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 28    5YR 414    Max Repair 224 MSP

Ion Engine E8 (4)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 67.5 billion km   (325 days at full power)

Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S08 48-12000 (1)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR98-R30 (1)     GPS 6720     Range 98.2m km    Resolution 30
Active Search Sensor MR8-R1 (1)     GPS 112     Range 9.0m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH8-64 (1)     Sensitivity 64     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  64m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And I've found ruins from a civ called the...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Santana Monarchy.

[Crustypeanut]

--Snip --

So you're going with large volleys via large numbers of small ships? Probably easier, at least early on.

I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice.

Heh. There are almost certainly more. That, and most of their ships use AMMs to attack, so even with a single ship you're looking at very large volleys. The last time I tangled with precursors, I was facing three ships of that type, and they launched dozens of volleys. My cruisers ended up wading through something on the order of 2,000 missiles, and only survived because I had built them with lots of PD, armor, and 200STR shields, and even then the two that were targeted lost almost all their modules and had massive armor damage, even though I was getting something like a 95% kill rate on their missiles. Even assuming a 100% kill ratio for your AMMs on 1-1 defence firing, you've only got around 1,200 AMMs, so even one or two AMM-armed Precursors will nearly empty your magazines. I'd recommend bolstering your AMMs with laser PD turrets, possibly even a different class of ship with heavy armor and PD that you can keep in front of your main body, either to tank, or to interdict enemy missiles as they pass.


Basically, using AMM against Precursors is only a good idea when the alternative is letting them destroy your ships, because you're going to have to use massive amounts of missiles. Not to mention their AMMs are very fast, usually faster than anything you have when you first encounter them, so you almost certainly won't have high kill ratios, unless you've overengineered your AMMs by quite a bit for your overall tech level.

Yea.. I'm finding this out the hard way.  :X  They have only one of the ships I encounted previously, but they have two of another class, 2 of another, and 4 of another, all moving 5900km/s.  Their missiles are going at 33,000 km/s and my missiles are missing by a buttload.. and due to their ECM, they severely out range me.  :\ 

I'm going to lose so many high ranking officials.. vice admirals.. rear admirals.. Hopefully one of my two Herons in the system can get to their lifepods though.  My next Heron upgrade will include cloaking >

I'm terraforming mars (standard human race), and what would you say is the best amount of gasses?
also, can you remove gasses from the planets?

I always go for about .25atm safe greenhouse gas and .1atm oxygen.  And yes, you can get rid of gas, but for Mars you don't need to, just add the ones up there. 
 

[SirAaronIII]

Dumb question, what research category are hangars and boat bays?

[Crustypeanut]

Kinetic/Missiles.  Don't ask me why, you'd think they'd be Logistics.

[Metalax]

I think the justification is that until high levels of tech fighters are really only of use as remote missile launchers, combined with box launchers which many fighters are fitted with only being reloadable inside of hangars(or at maintainance facilities). But yes having them in logistics would make more sense.

[Crustypeanut]

Lol in regards to my encounter with the Precursors.. they ran out of missiles before I ran out of ships However, they're now fleeing and theres no way i'm gonna be able to catch 'em and get into range.  >.>  Plus I only have 3 Kestrels and my 4 sensor ships left.. *sigh*  At least most of my vice admirals and rear admirals survived in life pods.