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[Karlito]

anyways, does earth ALWAYS start of with very few minerals? Because every damned game I've played, most minerals are gone withing about 50 years.

That's pretty typical for earth, and it's actually quite a lot of minerals.

[Metalax]

anyways, does earth ALWAYS start of with very few minerals? Because every damned game I've played, most minerals are gone withing about 50 years.

Earth starts off with the homeworld mineral generation having been run on it, in a similar way any generated NPR homeworld will be. This guarantees the presense of every mineral and a higher average accesability for each but with a lower quantity generated for each. The lower quantity is to encourage you to spread out from earth rather than turtling.

[Canuhearmenow]

Do Railguns require a Beam Fire Control? Or does it just work off good old fashioned active sensor readings? I got a design for some sensors as well that I'd like to shoot at you guys.





After that it's a lot more clean-cut I suppose; design a Missile Fire Control around missile designs and make a combination 25cm Railgun/15cm Railgun system for my combat ships.

[RulerOfNothing]

Technically railguns count as beam weapons (meaning they hit in the same time period as they fire), so they need Beam Fire Controls. The main difference between kinetic and energy weapons in Aurora is that kinetic weapons use up less energy than energy weapons (in fact, gauss cannon do not use up any energy from reactors at all).

[Tarran]

United Nations Space Command?

Railguns?

Sir, are you pretending that you're playing Halo?

[Flying Dice]

Shame Aurora railguns are radically different from MAC cannons. 

[Canuhearmenow]

Wait a minute... A 25cm Railgun has a max range of 250k, but the max range for the best Beam Control I can make without research is 96k, so that's just wasted range!

United Nations Space Command?

Railguns?

Sir, are you pretending that you're playing Halo?

Yeah, stole the name from Halo, simply because I'm just going off of what would be the most likely name for a future "united Earth" space program. The railguns and such are largely because I find lasers and high energy microwaves silly, although I am definitely going to invest in those down the road. That being said, I'd fancy myself more trying to emulate the Systems Alliance then the UNSC.

Hell, I even terraformed a world in the middle of nowhere with the intention of making it a "Science World" due to it's isolation (takes 250 days at 4k burn to get to it) and abundance of Duranium and Mercassium (both in the double digit millions at .9 access) which are the primary minerals needed for making a Research Lab. It's Noveria; Aurora edition, complete with low temperature (barely above 0 C.) I named it Sanctum instead of Noveria though.

[Karlito]

Wait a minute... A 25cm Railgun has a max range of 250k, but the max range for the best Beam Control I can make without research is 96k, so that's just wasted range!

Fire control accuracy drops off as you fire at targets closer to the max range though, so there is a benefit to over-engineering.

[Bremen]

Wait a minute... A 25cm Railgun has a max range of 250k, but the max range for the best Beam Control I can make without research is 96k, so that's just wasted range!

Fire control accuracy drops off as you fire at targets closer to the max range though, so there is a benefit to over-engineering.

Damage from railguns and lasers falls off as well.

It's worth noting that the range given for a fire control is the range at which its 50% accurate; you can theoretically hit targets out to twice that range. But it's true that beyond early game tech your maximum range will be set by firecontrol rather than weapon; this helps prevent one-sided fights where one group both outranges and outruns the other.

[Eagle_eye]

How practical would using microwaves as a main weapon be? I was thinking of having ships armed with long range microwaves take out the sensors of the target ships, and then launching boarding parties.

[Karlito]

Pretty impractical. You'll need a significant speed (i.e. tech) advantage to avoid having your boarding parties be completely destroyed before they even get inside the enemy ship, and you'll need enough point defense to avoid the missile bombardment while you close to microwave range. If you add in some meson cannons to soften up the target ships and try to wreck some engines before launching boarding parties then you might have a viable challenge mode tactic, but otherwise it probably won't work.

[Eagle_eye]

What do the advanced laser techs do exactly? I don't remember them from prior versions

[Tarran]

What do the advanced laser techs do exactly?

More damage, and possibly range, but don't hold that on me.

I don't remember them from prior versions

They've been around for a while.

[Canuhearmenow]

Pretty impractical. You'll need a significant speed (i.e. tech) advantage to avoid having your boarding parties be completely destroyed before they even get inside the enemy ship, and you'll need enough point defense to avoid the missile bombardment while you close to microwave range. If you add in some meson cannons to soften up the target ships and try to wreck some engines before launching boarding parties then you might have a viable challenge mode tactic, but otherwise it probably won't work.

Microwaves strike me as a weapon that'd be incredibly useful against fighters, but since fighters don't exist outside of player ships, then they're practically worthless.

Wait a minute... A 25cm Railgun has a max range of 250k, but the max range for the best Beam Control I can make without research is 96k, so that's just wasted range!

Fire control accuracy drops off as you fire at targets closer to the max range though, so there is a benefit to over-engineering.

So would the two sensor types I selected be good? I just ask because beyond the active/missile sensors, research design gets a LOT more straightforward.

[Karlito]

You'd still have to detect the fighters, and if they're launching missiles then they won't be in range of your microwave.

EDIT: I'd make the resolution 1 sensor larger. You probably want to detect size 6 missiles a couple million kilometers out, and then restrict it to your dedicated PD vessels since it's so large. I'd shrink the resolution 16 sensor down to about 30 million kilometers of range; you won't encounter enemy gunboats too often, and that sensor is really too large and expensive to fit well on most warship designs.

What you do want is an R50 or maybe even an R100 sensor that can see out to at least the max range of your missiles. It'll be small enough that you can easily fit redundant ones on all your warships, and with that resolution you'll still be able to spot the precursor ships, which are the only enemies you're likely to encounter early on.