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[JacenHanLovesLegos]

How do I target planets with missiles?

[Karlito]

How do I target planets with missiles?

You have to put a waypoint on them and then target they waypoint in the combat menu. The easiest way to do this is to look at the body in the system view, click on it so that your view gets recentered, and then click the "Last" button in the waypoints tab.

[revo]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Fox MKII: Maint Life 3.6 Years     MSP 367    AFR 112%    IFR 1.6%    1YR 44    5YR 654    Max Repair 160 MSP

Ion Engine E7 (10)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 85.7 billion km   (248 days at full power)

Twin 10cm PD N.U.V. Turret (2x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 15000 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: 4000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control: anti-missle point defense v1 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 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
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (6)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 10     Range 500k km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR71-R80 (1)     GPS 12800     Range 71.6m km    Resolution 80
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

OK the PD fire control can only go up to 12000 km/s because my fire control tech isn't high enough but i had room in the turret size to make it faster so when i can upgrade my fire control I don't have to upgrade my turrets. Is this design better?

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

I thought that point defense had it's own fire control? At least when you made it in the CIWS menu.

[revo]

I thought that point defense had it's own fire control? At least when you made it in the CIWS menu.

i think that is only for CIWS. if you are making laser only PD it has to have its own targeting

[Girlinhat]

So people don't know how to mount weapons properly.  Let's go through a breakdown of how to set up weapons and sensors!

First, targeting basics:
1: Active sensors are used to fix targets you're going to shoot.  You cannot fire on a target unless you have an active lock.
2: Active sensors are designed to detect a certain tonnage, and anything above or below that specific weight will be detected at a closer range.
3: Thermal sensors have a MUCH further range and can detect a wider range of items, but they cannot be used to fix a firing lock.  Ship engines produce thermal signature equal to their thrust power, unless lowered by stealth tech.   Colonies produce thermal by their population and machines.
4: EM sensors have a range comparable to thermals, but EM is mainly produce by colonies and ships using shields, so it's more useful in the late game when you're looking for large shield signatures.

What this means:
1: Your early warning will come from thermal contacts, having a large thermal sensor will let you detect things further away and give you time to arm up.
2: Active sensors are only really needed to get a firing line.  Having active sensor range equal to your weapon range is ideal, however for many weapons like lasers, the damage drops off with range, so you can actually mount a smaller active sensor because you'll work in your "effective" range of fire.

And a few notes on point defense:
1: Ships shooting down missiles will protect the whole fleet, so it's entirely plausible to have dedicated anti-missile ships and dedicated gunboats.  In fact it's preferred to segregate the roles.
2: Close-In Weapon Systems are the last line of anti-missile defense before shields and armor.  They're assumed to shoot in a range measured in tens of meters.  CIWS will only defend the ship it is mounted on, in case ranged weapons fail.
3: Fire-control will gain a boost to tracking speed against missiles if it's locked the target for longer.  A longer-ranged anti-missile sensor will enable you to get maximum tracking capacity so that your guns hit the missiles more often.
4: Missiles are generally FAST.  This means that they cross distances faster, and are harder to track.  The further range you can track them, the more to-hit bonus, and the faster tracking speed you can muster, the better.
5: Point defense also works very well against fighters, so arming a bit more 'punch' into turrets won't hurt.  CIWS cannot shoot fighters.

And a minor spoiler - certain very alien enemies have missiles with immense armor.  Any possible firepower brought against them will not be wasted.  While most PD can do fine with 1 damage, certain invaders need heavy-hitting PD.

[Karlito]

2: Active sensors are designed to detect a certain tonnage, and anything above or below that specific weight will be detected at a closer range.

Small nitpick. Ships larger than the resolution will be detected at the maximum range of the sensor.

4: EM sensors have a range comparable to thermals, but EM is mainly produce by colonies and ships using shields, so it's more useful in the late game when you're looking for large shield signatures.

EM sensors are also what allow you to detect active sensor contacts, so you'll need them to know if you're being targeted.

[Girlinhat]

Mmm, quite right.  And active sensors light you up like a beacon, so anything in the system that has EM will spot you about instantly.  It's generally prudent to leave your shields and actives turned off until you get into actual combat.

[Metalax]

So I finally got Ion tech engines and I'm about to start producing a cruiser to jump with  my jump ships.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fox class Cruiser    7,450 tons     740 Crew     1036.2 BP      TCS 149  TH 600  EM 0
4026 km/s     Armour 4-33     Shields 0-0     Sensors 10/10/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 31.7
Maint Life 6.68 Years     MSP 522    AFR 74%    IFR 1%    1YR 20    5YR 304    Max Repair 44 MSP

Ion Engine E7 (10)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres    Range 120.8 billion km   (347 days at full power)

Twin 10cm PD N.U.V. Turret (2x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 15000 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: 4026 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
15cm Railgun V2/C3 (1x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 4026 km/s     Power 9-3     RM 2    ROF 15        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control: anti-missle point defense v1 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (2)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (6)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 10     Range 500k km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR7-R20 (1)     GPS 640     Range 7.2m km    Resolution 20
Active Search Sensor MR10-R100 (1)     GPS 2000     Range 10.0m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

critiques?

Decent armour, good maintainance and fuel levels, good speed though a bit more space on engines than I would carry but thats a design policy decision.

You are carrying insufficient reactors than you need to power your weapons. Each of your PD turrets needs 6, each of your lasers needs 3 and your railgun needs 3, for a total of 2*6 + 2*3 + 3 = 21. Your reactors only provide 18.

Go with either the 15 cm railgun or the 15 cm laser, not both. Their capabilities are too different to be a good match on the same ship.

I'd only carry a single anti ship firecontrol on a ship this small. Also it's tracking speed is too low for your weapon, I'd design a new one at 4x range 1.5x speed at your current tech level. The thing to note with tracking speed is that it will use the lower of the tracking speed of the fire control or the tracking speed of the weapon. The weapons tracking speed is the higher of the ships speed or the base tracking speed tech.

Your resolution 1 missile search sensor is far too small. At that size you will only pick up missiles at around 50,000 km, close enough that there is a high probability that they will impact you before you can detect them. Make it ten times the size at least. Also From what I see your EM sensor tech is still at the initial 5. This is crippling your active sensors as they rely on both active sensor strength and EM detection strength.

I wouldn't bother placing the resolution 20 and 100 sensors on this ship design. The way sensors work is that they detect anything of their resolution or larger, so if you increase the size of your resolution 1 sensor, as you need to to be able to pick up missiles at a reasonable distance, your resolution 1 sensor will be able to pick up ship targets at sufficient range for combat. Beam combat ships will usually only need the one sensor, as long as you have a dedicated sensor ship with much larger sensors to pick up contacts at range.

I'm not 100% sure on how sensors and fire control work so those might be wrong. It need to be under 7500 tons so I'm good there. Should I start thinking about making a small jump gate constructor?


oh and my wealth is plummeting like crazy! how do I fix it?

You will usually only want to start building jumpgates to "safe" systems, those you have explored completely, or to those that you need to bring big ships through to that you don't have the jump engines to allow passage.

Wealth is best increased through, increasing population, trade, and researching the improved economy tech.

And civilian mining colonies, I have no idea of how they are created but they will appear with time.

Civilian mining companies have a chance to be created each 5 day interval, with the chance  dependant on your empires financial income.

Guys is anyone else getting an nullstring and other errors (3315 and 3201) when trying to create an NPR? (Or when entering a system and the game tries to make one)

Judging from the bug report section over on the Aurora forums, there seem to be a number of bugs with NPR generation in version 6.0, though I haven't run into it myself yet. Should hopefully be fixed in the 6.1 bugfix patch Steve is working on just released.

edit: and ninja'ed repeatedly while I've been typing all that.

[nogoodnames]

5. You don't need to include an EM sensor on a ship with an active sensor; there's an EM sensor build into the AS as the 'listening' part of it.

I don't think those contribute to your passive scanning ability. A ship with an active sensor but no dedicated EM sensor will still show a 1 for its EM detection ability in the ship design display.

Is there an easy way to get fighters into a separate task group from the carrier once they are launched? I've been assigning squadrons to a carrier, putting them in a new task group and assigning that group as an escort. It's tedious to do that way, and will probably need to be redone every time I change my carrier task groups around.

[Karlito]

Is there an easy way to get fighters into a separate task group from the carrier once they are launched? I've been assigning squadrons to a carrier, putting them in a new task group and assigning that group as an escort. It's tedious to do that way, and will probably need to be redone every time I change my carrier task groups around.

Use the "Launch" button in the fighter squadron window.

[Metalax]

5. You don't need to include an EM sensor on a ship with an active sensor; there's an EM sensor build into the AS as the 'listening' part of it.

I don't think those contribute to your passive scanning ability. A ship with an active sensor but no dedicated EM sensor will still show a 1 for its EM detection ability in the ship design display.

Indeed, Steve has specifically stated that the EM component of active sensors does not provide EM detection.

Is there an easy way to get fighters into a separate task group from the carrier once they are launched? I've been assigning squadrons to a carrier, putting them in a new task group and assigning that group as an escort. It's tedious to do that way, and will probably need to be redone every time I change my carrier task groups around.

Use the naval organisation tab on the taskgroups page. Create a branch that contains the fighters, use the launch parasites button at the bottom to launch them then select the fighter branch and use branch only to create a taskgroup that contains only the fighters. You will still need to assign it as an escort though.

What should work is to create a taskgroup with the fighters, set it up with it's escort orders, then select the taskgroup that is being escorted, hit save escorts button at the bottom, hit recall escorts button, hit land parasites button. To restore them to an escort position, hit launch parasites button then deploy escorts button.

Note: if you have grabbed the 6.1 patch already, steve just updated it again with another bug fix, so you will want to redownload it.

[nogoodnames]

Is there an easy way to get fighters into a separate task group from the carrier once they are launched? I've been assigning squadrons to a carrier, putting them in a new task group and assigning that group as an escort. It's tedious to do that way, and will probably need to be redone every time I change my carrier task groups around.

Use the "Launch" button in the fighter squadron window.

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.

@Metalax: That's basically what I was doing. It works but it's tedious and requires you to repeat the assignments if you move your carriers between task groups.

[Shooer]

I use the taskgroup organization tab.  Allows you to set parasite, mothership, and the individual taskgroup that the parasites will launch into.  I only touch the fighter screen to set squad names for RP reasons.

[Flying Dice]

If active sensors don't contain a passive scanning component, explain the following:

1. When you salvage a higher-tech AS and disassemble it, it gives you RP for EM sensors.
2. My ships, despite never having standalone EM sensors (save for stealthed scouts and commercial vessels) can still detect enemy AS and shields even with their own sensors off.

I'm inclined to guess that it's limited to detecting shields and active sensors, as it doesn't work (IIRC) re: planetary populations. Of course, if you can dig up a post where Steve states otherwise, I'll happily recant. It's a minor thing, anyhow.