Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Metalax]

After 45 years of a conventional start game I finally got a propulsion scientist. Perfect timing too, mineral shortages on Earth are forcing me to expand and consider extra-solar colonies. Unfortunately, I have no military so any exploration is going to be risky.

What should I build for a low-tech starting force? I have no missile scientists, but my best scientist is specialized in energy weapons with a 45% bonus. He's also old and sickly and liable to drop dead at a moments notice.

I'm thinking of using swarms of meson-armed fighters with a few large laser warships. They will be mainly used for jump point defence as I can't see many other ways to engage a reasonably advanced NPR without massive casualty's, given the technology I have to work with.

At low tech it is difficult to design decent beam warships. The primary limiting factor is speed, you need to be able to get into range and then maintain that range. You may need to dedicate as much as 60% of your tonnage to engines to reach a decent speed at low tech levels. If you are going to be using beam weapons then pick one and stick with it rather than branching out. Mesons may be your best bet as they ignore shields and armour. Don't forget to get the first few levels of capacitor tech as well to bring your recharge times down.

If you have to expand beyond sol at your tech level, heres what I'd do in such a situation.

Jump through a cheap scout, just engine and thermal + mid sized active sensor.
Assuming you don't get pounced on immediately, jump through another couple of scouts and send them to each planet/sizeable moon in the system.
Assuming you find no contacts, jump through one or more geosurveyors and start surveying the planets/major moons.
If you find sufficient minerals, start up mining efforts.
If you don't find sufficient reserves then repeat the process with the next system.

If at any point you encounter contacts, If you are a safe distance away flee through the jump point, otherwise sacrifice that ship so that they don't observe you transiting, if they do see you do so they are more likely to follow.

[Alkhemia]

Alright I've been putting it off to long, Time to sit down and learn this game or die trying. To bad the wiki sucks unless it been updated.
Oh I found a tutorial on YouTube time to put it to work.

[Akura]

Might have done something wrong. Stuff from the various windows if getting cut off when I resize it. Plus, I don't think I have the time to figure out the vast complexity of everything, at least not at the moment.

[RedKing]

Is there any way to set a player-controlled empire as an NPR? I'm trying to set up a War of the Worlds scenario and it would be convenient to be able to play a few years and then let the AI take over. I saw something about an option for that mentioned on the Aurora forums but not where the option is located, and my searches haven't turned up anything.

I'm afraid not. For an empire to be computer controlled, it has to be created as such, you can't turn a previously player controlled empire over to the computer. From what I recall when this came up at some point on the aurora forums Steve has said that there is some particular code that gets run on seting up a computer controlled NPR and that it would not work properly trying to run it on a pre-existing empire.

You *could* however, create a new NPR empire, then use SM to transfer all the ships, population, and commanders (and system knowledge and tech) to the NPR empire. Good bit of work, but if that's what you really want...(I've used this method to simulate a civil war by transferring a large portion of assets to the new NPR).

[MarcAFK]

Just wasted over an hour playing around with the new engines, basically taking a ship i had in 5.6 with conventional engines and rebuilding it in 6.0, i learned 3 things.
1) With a ship of the same weight equipped with engines of the exact same power, the new version will travel at the same speed, but burn through fuel like a mofo compared to the old conventional engines, ie: 700 days longevity instead of 50 years
2) Larger engines are very slightly more fuel efficient, but break down more often than multiple smaller ones.
3) It seems that in some cases you get more longevity by making a smaller higher power engine and carrying more fuel.
EDIT, also i think i found a bug, my size 50 engines with double power are considered commercial.

[Man of Paper]

Might have done something wrong. Stuff from the various windows if getting cut off when I resize it. Plus, I don't think I have the time to figure out the vast complexity of everything, at least not at the moment.

I've got some of the fields flopping into areas they shouldn't be and overlapping words onto other words, options onto other options, etc. But I haven't gotten into an issue with it yet. Then again, I just started playing for the first time.

[RedKing]

I like the engine changes myself. Wider range of customizabililty, and it actually makes fuel a strategic concern. I *never* had fuel supply crunches in previous versions. Almost never built sorium harvesters because there just wasn't a need. Now...I'm looking at building orbital refinery stations to go hang out over gas giants.

Although that brings me to a sober realization: Even Orbital Habitats now have a mission duration rating. D: Not a problem if you're over a colony of some kind, but if you're building a gas giant fuel depot type station or a deep space listening post, it's a problem. Wouldn't be so bad if you could rotate crews without having to move the vessel (like, transport ships that could just carry replacement crew and then ferry the old crew home for shore leave...)

[The Scout]

How do I tug things? I have a fleet of tugs, and an orbital habitat I want to move.

[Zeebie]

What is one supposed to do with officers that have no bonuses?

[Karlito]

How do I tug things? I have a fleet of tugs, and an orbital habitat I want to move.

Either give the taskgroup with the tug an order (in F12) to tractor the orbital habitat, or if they're in the same location you can also use an option in the individual ship window (F6) to tractor the habitat. Note that only one tug will be able to pull the orbital habitat.

What is one supposed to do with officers that have no bonuses?

Just let them sit around and not get assigned to anything. After six or seven years they'll get fired.

[Metalax]

EDIT, also i think i found a bug, my size 50 engines with double power are considered commercial.

Yes it seems that any engine of size 25 or larger is being regarded as commecial regardless of the power modifier.

Although that brings me to a sober realization: Even Orbital Habitats now have a mission duration rating. D: Not a problem if you're over a colony of some kind, but if you're building a gas giant fuel depot type station or a deep space listening post, it's a problem. Wouldn't be so bad if you could rotate crews without having to move the vessel (like, transport ships that could just carry replacement crew and then ferry the old crew home for shore leave...)

Yes steve left it in for commercial vessels which most stations will be as there are very few if any checks where the morale penalty for being over deployment time will apply that commercial vessels can do. Almost every check that involves morale also requires components that would make the vessel military and as such will most likely have engines to move itself back to a resupply base for overhaul and crew r&r. The only thing it has really acted against is jumppoint defence bases and pdc's built on unpopulated asteroids/moons.

The suggestion for crew rotation/r&r ships has been made, but Steve decided against it for the moment.

[The Scout]

So, I genetically altered humans to live on Mars. Their preferred temp is -46C and oxy level is .08. Mars is both of these, yet it still lists the planet suitability to be 1.90000.

[Tarran]

Are you perhaps viewing it with the System Information screen?

[The Scout]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What's the system information screen?

[Dutchling]

89% Oxygen doesn't sound very healthy. Shouldn't it be lower than 30%?