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[Micro102]

Are ships with say....4 fighters efficient? Or does a ship need to vomit fighters to make them useful?

[darkrider2]

Are ships with say....4 fighters efficient? Or does a ship need to vomit fighters to make them useful?

I don't know. I tried to use them once but they were practically useless compared to just building a frigate with the same weapons capabilities.

Also I encountered something weird recently. I was in a nebula fighting the precursors when the game registers my fleet as having 0km/s movement speed, when they were in fact moving.

Since my ships were using the unturretable particle beam weapon, they all refused to fire due to "zero percent chance to hit". Then I tried firing my AMM missiles in a last ditch effort, turns out missiles can't fire in nebulae (another reason I'm going to live in it). I lost my entire defense fleet, you. precursor. fuckers.

[Felius]

From what I understand, it all depends on what you want to use the fighters for. That said, as a self contained force, 4 fighters aren't going to be of much use unless you severe out-tech your opponent, or use missiles, with them being good enough to not need numbers to pass through the enemy's PD.

[Sirus]

Couldn't you equip them with gauss cannons and use them (in the initial tech stages) as a sort of impromptu/extended AM force? Turrets are out of the question, but fighters would be able to use their fairly significant speed to have a better chance than non-turreted weapons on larger ships.

[Felius]

Couldn't you equip them with gauss cannons and use them (in the initial tech stages) as a sort of impromptu/extended AM force? Turrets are out of the question, but fighters would be able to use their fairly significant speed to have a better chance than non-turreted weapons on larger ships.

In theory yes, but from what I heard there are some technical issues with this due to in what order the movement/shooting goes at each increment.

[LoSboccacc]

No technical issues per se: just this is a turn based game and if your training/initiative is low your fighter will never be able to catchup wih the enemy even if the enemy is slower

It's space achilles and the turtle. But in the standard five second turn the turtle does some hundred thousand kilometers, so keeps getting out of the range of your average low tech gaus cannon

[FritzPL]

Quick question, out of contex and repeated:

Is there a way to keep colonists on a planet without terraforming it? As in, give them enough life support, and I mean ON the planet, not in the orbit.

[Tarran]

Infrastructure. Unless the planet is inhabitable by gravity, Infrastructure can keep colonists alive. However, do note that the more inhospitable the planet, the less people the population can spare from keeping themselves alive for actually manning any installations.

[Dutchling]

Yeah, a higher colony cost both makes the colonists require more infrastructure per million inhabitants, but it also makes it so that more of the inhabitants have to work in the agriculture sector, and not in the industrial one (which is the only one you need, ignoring taxes). 

[adwarf]

Well I'm getting back into this, and want to know can you still stay in contact and communicate with a mining colony on a comet if it goes out of system? Also any tips for a new player to Aurora (Which I am since I've barely played in the past) besides reading the tutorial?

[Hanzoku]

I believe all comets are in an orbit in the system, however the orbit might end up taking ~5 years travel time to reach at the far end. So yes, you can keep in contact, but don't expect those mass driver packets this decade...

[FritzPL]

Gotcha. Delivered 300 infrastructure to mars with my clumsy Tortoise class ships, enough for me right now.

Speaking of ships - I come up with a few designs, and while I know they suck, I don't really know how to improve them. Here:

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Tortoise class Cargo Ship    34,000 tons     244 Crew     476.6 BP      TCS 680  TH 900  EM 0
1323 km/s     Armour 1-93     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 9    Max Repair 38 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 20   

Ion Engine E0.8 (6)    Power 150    Fuel Use 8%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 99.2 billion km   (868 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

My cargo ship. Slow, doesn't carry much and is a pain to build. I added fuel tanks, thinking that I will use them later, in extrasolar cargo deliveries, but they don't seem that useful now.

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Terra Nova class Colony Ship    31,350 tons     264 Crew     1330.8 BP      TCS 627  TH 600  EM 0
956 km/s     Armour 1-88     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 27    Max Repair 38 MSP
Colonists 100000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 20   

Ion Engine E0.8 (4)    Power 150    Fuel Use 8%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 35.9 billion km   (434 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Colony ship. Even slower than Tortoise, this bitch is 3,000 tons lighter than the former, but still a pain to build. I don't even have a way to build it right now - I have 4 shipyards, one of which is commercial and it'll take almost 2 years to retool to a Terra Nova.

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Space Bus class Colony Ship    10,600 tons     143 Crew     440.2 BP      TCS 212  TH 600  EM 0
2830 km/s     Armour 1-42     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 26    Max Repair 38 MSP
Colonists 20000   

Ion Engine E0.8 (4)    Power 150    Fuel Use 8%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 106.1 billion km   (434 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

An alternative colony ship design. Significantly faster than both of his commercial cousins, it's also 20,000 tonnes lighter. 7 months of retooling on this one. I am kind of skeptical about this one, but if it works, then I'll be delighted.

Currently, my navy consists of:

2 CS Tortoise class ships
2 GE Discovery II class ships(geosurvey ships w/jump drives)
GE Newton II class ship(grav survey ship w/jump drive)

Also, a civilian company built a Tortoise. Can I buy it off them, ask them to build me a Colony Ship or something?


Do keep in mind that I am not an advanced Aurora player, and this is 5 years in, started in 2000.

[RedKing]

Here's a nice trick: Use the same basic chassis for your freighters and colony ships. If all that's different is the cargo holds (5) or cryo units (10), you'll actually be able to tool a yard for the colony ship design and still build the cargo ships at the same yard.

So in other words, up the Terra Nova to 6 engines and make that the primary design at the yard. You'll be able to build Tortoises there as well without retooling.


As far as fighters, I've had good success with a single tiny gauss cannon and a pair of rail-mounted short-range missiles. The fighters exist primarily to dart out towards the enemy, fire off a synchronized volley, then dart back to their carrier to reload. The gauss cannon is a significant weight investment (because you also need the FC for it) but it can come in handy, especially in the mop-up phase. Once the missiles from your big ships have killed or heavily damaged the main threats, your fighters can zoom in and dispatch the wounded with mass volleys of gauss fire. Even when it's horribly innaccurate, if you've got a 10-fighter squadron firing 3-4 times every 5 second increment, that's going to be at least a few points of damage every increment. Once the enemy is crippled and slow, the accuracy problem becomes less an issue and your fighters will rapidly chew through armor.

I once had a fighter squadron kill a Precursor missile boat that had completely exhausted its ammo supply. They hounded it for over 5 minutes of continuous fire before finally killing it.

[FritzPL]

So what you are saying is that I should retool to Terra Nova with 6 engines instead of 4, and I will be still able to build Tortoises?


As for fighters, yeah. I noticed that having a buncha carriers with about 4-5 fighters that use beam weapons/missiles in them pays off.

[Metalax]

You can "aquire" the civilian built ships by using a tractor beam equiped ship to take it in tow, which moves it into your taskgroups and renders it yours. Note that this trick may be dissappearing in the next couple of versions as Steve finishes fixing up the civilian shipping.

If you design your ships correctly you can tool your shipyard to build your colony ships and it will have the option to build your freighters there as well. The easiest way to do this is to design your freighter, copy the design and then swap the cargo holds with cryo transport modules to the same tonnage.

I'd personally add another two engines to your Tortoise class as 1 engine per 5000 tons for commercial designs I've found gives the best balance between speed and mission space. I'd also suggest putting some armour on your freighters and colony ships. When you run across nebulas you will find your ships and civilian ships will be crawling along otherwise.

As an example these would be two designs I would use fairly early on.

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Ark Royal class Freighter    40,000 tons     327 Crew     1155.8 BP      TCS 800  TH 1200  EM 0
1500 km/s     Armour 6-104     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 18    Max Repair 38 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 25   

Civ Ion Engine E0.7 (8)    Power 150    Fuel Use 7%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 128.6 billion km   (992 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor MR23-R100 (1)     GPS 2100     Range 23.1m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

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Resolution class Colony Ship    40,000 tons     402 Crew     2105.8 BP      TCS 800  TH 1200  EM 0
1500 km/s     Armour 6-104     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 33    Max Repair 38 MSP
Colonists 100000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 25   

Civ Ion Engine E0.7 (8)    Power 150    Fuel Use 7%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 128.6 billion km   (992 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor MR23-R100 (1)     GPS 2100     Range 23.1m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes