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[Shooer]

Most actives and a lot of shields are actually pretty bright when it comes to being detected.  And if you haven't noticed when you are building your actives they include EM when designing, it so it stands to reason to get some points towards that tech when you salvage someone who has better EM in their actives than you do racially.

All ships have a strength 1 passive EM and thermal sensor by default.

[Flying Dice]

A strength-1 EM sensor can detect a strength-1000 source at 1 million kilometers. A small mining colony of around 40 automines and a single mass driver will generate an EM signature of around 1500. Compared to that, a ship is going to be a fairly tiny signal, even with substantial shields. Also note the knife-range limit for that level of detection; you'd need the equivalent of a heavily industrialized colony to detect something at range even with a sensor with ten or twenty times the strength of the basic one.

In other words, the default 1/1 sensors are essentially navigational aids, nothing more.

[Metalax]

Is anyone able to say where the deployment clock is displayed for active ships? I'm sure I saw it before but I'm unable to find it right now and I'd like to know when I'm going to need to bring my ships back for r&r.

edit: Nevermind, found it on the taskgroup screen, on the ship in taskgroup area.

[Girlinhat]

Ok, I've got a few questions.  I've mostly handles one type of weapon before, large swarms of self-guided missiles.  These are very fun because you can fire a salvo at an entire enemy fleet by targeting one ship, and they'll re-tarted once it's destroyed, so you simply fire as much as you can and watch each ship get taken down in turn.

But, I'm planning on a different sort of idea now.  The main idea is "get a big-ass laser and wrap some life support around it" so the main strike craft will be a small ship mounting a single large spinal mount laser, preferably able to dock with a larger support ship.  The support ship will feature a single or maybe just a few reduced size missile launchers, made to fire long-range drones with a small active sensor, mainly to fire off at likely planets or jump points to see what's there LONG before the fleet arrives.

So the questions then:
1: I remember it being very difficult to micromanage all the Firecon in a task force to spread their damage.  Is there a good way to have ships target multiple enemies?
2: How do you fire a missile blind?

[Metalax]

For firing at a target blind.

First you need to create a waypoint at your target. Click on the target planet on the system view, then clcik on the waypoints tab on the left and hit "last". This places a waypoint that will orbit with the target planet.

Open the ship details page, select your launcher ship, select the combat settings tab, make sure that it only has the probe loaded into it's launcher, assign the waypoint as the target for the firecontrol linked to the probe launcher, hit the "Msl Launch" button at the bottom to launch the probe.

For splitting fire.

You can use the "Same Loc" button. You assign the target of the firecontol of your first ship then hit the button and that firecontrol on each ship of that class in the taskgroup will target a different untargeted enemy at the same location as the original target. This works reasonably well for single firecontrol spinalmount ships.

An alternative is to use the "save escorts", "deploy escorts" and "recall escorts" buttons in the taskgroup window to split your total force into groups that you want to fire on the same target, then set up the targets for the first ship in each smaller taskgroup and use the "Class in TG" button under copy targets for each taskgroup under the combat assignments window.

Or alternatively just alpha strike each target and move on to the next.

[Girlinhat]

I'll most likely be alpha-striking, considering the small-salvo/high-damage lasers I'll be using, but when I'm facing fighters or something I want to be able to spread fire reasonably well.  I also have plans to mount stealth laser platforms, with no or tiny engines, massive laser banks of reduced size, and a tiny reactor, they'd only be good for like one shot during a firefight, but they should be able to be placed out of range of enemy ships and be too small to detect, making them capable of delivering safe and massive fire out of nowhere.

[PTTG??]

This game would be really, really fun if it stripped out the long-term simulation and had multiplayer space-based RTS combat.

While I'm wishing, let's give it 3 dimentions and a VR interface.

[Flying Dice]

But everything remotely related to Starfire is firmly rooted in Space Being an Ocean. 

[darkrider2]

I'll most likely be alpha-striking, considering the small-salvo/high-damage lasers I'll be using, but when I'm facing fighters or something I want to be able to spread fire reasonably well.  I also have plans to mount stealth laser platforms, with no or tiny engines, massive laser banks of reduced size, and a tiny reactor, they'd only be good for like one shot during a firefight, but they should be able to be placed out of range of enemy ships and be too small to detect, making them capable of delivering safe and massive fire out of nowhere.

So basically those strike cannons from colony wars? That just uncloak from nothingness and end the mission with one shot.

[Girlinhat]

I have no idea about Colony Wars.  But I'll basically be mounting, probably, 5x turrets of 4x megatonne lasers onto as small a chassis as I can get away with.  To shave size, it'll have ridiculously low energy rate, granting it a powerful single-strike capacity and not much else.

[Metalax]

I'll most likely be alpha-striking, considering the small-salvo/high-damage lasers I'll be using, but when I'm facing fighters or something I want to be able to spread fire reasonably well.

Yes, that's the situation the "Same Loc" option is best for.

I also have plans to mount stealth laser platforms, with no or tiny engines, massive laser banks of reduced size, and a tiny reactor, they'd only be good for like one shot during a firefight, but they should be able to be placed out of range of enemy ships and be too small to detect, making them capable of delivering safe and massive fire out of nowhere.

The problem is that they will be easily detected by the enemies anti-missile sensors if they are in range to be able to fire on the enemy, so they are not going to be able to hide. If you want to do the stealth attack by deployed platforms, they pretty much have to be missile platforms. Still deployed platforms can be effective, as they force the enemy to split their focus. Even better if you equip each of your normal combat ships with a tractor beam, you can have each tow one of them into range, drop them off and accelerate up to full combat speed.

[Sheb]

I wonder how big a single sattelite with 1 big laser would be. And how small you could stealth it.

[Metalax]

I wonder how big a single sattelite with 1 big laser would be. And how small you could stealth it.

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Sattelite    1,000 tons     51 Crew     4609 BP      TCS 0.1  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 12
Maint Life 1.03 Years     MSP 576    AFR 40%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 542    5YR 8131    Max Repair 2625 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3.18 months    Spare Berths 0   

80cm C1.25 Far Gamma Ray Laser (1)    Range 1,400,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 168-1.25     RM 12    ROF 675        168 168 168 168 168 168 168 168 168 168
Fire Control S04 700-25000 (1)    Max Range: 1,400,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     99 99 98 97 96 96 95 94 94 93
Vacuum Energy Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 4    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 0.5% of normal
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Apparent size is missile size 2, so will be detected as missile size 6 as that is the minimum. Assumes that active sensor will be placed on a seperate sattelite.

[Another]

The most practical application of stealth in Aurora is before the enemy realizes that the engagement has already started and turns on his active sensors. Supposing that you have the enemy on your own giant passive sensors - it is possible to get within 30k km stealthily for a single surprise shot. I only ever been able to do this with Precursor transports that hang out in outer parts of systems waiting for signature strength of your colonies to grow.

Spoiler: hint: (click to show/hide)

Manually halve your speed and corresponding thermal emissions for each half of the distance to the enemy covered.

Once the enemy activates his anti-missile scanners no amount of cloaking tech would allow you to remain invisible at beam weapons range. Previous example has effective cross section of 0.1 HS = size 2 missile.

[FritzPL]

I'll basically be mounting, probably, 5x turrets of 4x megatonne lasers onto as small a chassis as I can get away with.  To shave size, it'll have ridiculously low energy rate, granting it a powerful single-strike capacity and not much else.

Doomsday weapon.

Awesome.