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[kingfisher1112]

So beam are weaker, and missiles are weaker too? Sound like balance to me. You beam ship may be slower, but he'll have an easier time shooting down the missile volleys.

It just widens the technology gap with other races. Plasma Carronades and High-Power Microwaves may as well not exist anymore, you'll be pushing to get anything above 3000KM/s out of something 2000t or below, missiles are crap due to engines, etcetera etcetera. While you may have an easier time shooting down missiles, good luck catching him! Good luck also not running out of fuel.

[Sheb]

Wait, don't other races use the same engines we do?

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, this new version is REALLY shitting me. Beams are even less powerful than they were before. In fact, anything with an engine is shit now. Good luck trying to make a missile at Ion tech!
Anyways, Flying, whatever happened to First And Last?

It was lost when I transferred everything over to my new computer. :x

[Sheb]

How do I fix damaged fighters in a carrier?

[Culise]

Wait, don't other races use the same engines we do?

They do, but the consequences of reduced acceleration curves and heavily increased logistical restrictions also alters how combat plays out.  Plasma carronades have rather low ranges for their tech level - for a 15cm beam at the fourth focusing/wavelength tech level, lasers can reach 240k km; a high-power microwave, rail gun or meson can hit something at only half that distance; and a 15cm plasma carronade, which has no range enhancements beyond its size, remains stuck at a paltry 60k.  Basically, if all of the speeds are reduced proportionately, you'll still spend longer (and thus, spend longer taking fire) in any pursuit of a fleeing opponent that outranges you because the absolute speeds are still reduced, even if the relative proportions remain the same.  That puts a stronger emphasis on gaining and keeping the range advantage, and further reduces the importance of low-range beams at tech levels before you hit the hard cap on beam weapons.  For instance, this is pure napkin maths rather than in-game engine values, but if you're chasing an opponent traveling at half your speed with a 5000 km/s ship, you're gaining on them at a rate of 2500 km/s.  If you're chasing an hostile ship with the same proportional speed to your own with a ship that can only manage 2500 km/s, you're only gaining at a rate of 1250 km/s, and will take hostile fire for twice as long to get into range of your own weapons if they use lasers and you're using HPMs since the weapons ranges did not change. 

Still, that said, were carronades ever used much even in pre-6.2 games?  Other than fixed jump-point defenses where the opponent is forced to jump in right on top of them, their extremely low ranges and extremely high damage reduction at range always made them a rather poor fit for mobile operations, I thought.  HPMs were also always rather situational, like mesons, though mesons were more likely to end up in a useful situation (e.g., PD for dealing with armoured missiles).  I still think effective early-game missile design is still possible in this as well, though point defense does increase in effectiveness in the early game compared to the older versions.  It's a rather interesting strategic picture that's permitted by the new version, in my opinion. 

[Flying Dice]

How do I fix damaged fighters in a carrier?

IIRC you'll need to repair them like any other ship, but can transfer supplies from the carrier to help with that process. Carriers can only prevent their parasites from incurring maintenance failures, not repair battle damage. To repair armor damage, you'll need a shipyard.

Incidentally, what sort of fighters are you using that are tough and redundant enough to take a damaging hit and still successfully RTB? o.0

[kingfisher1112]

Yeah, this new version is REALLY shitting me. Beams are even less powerful than they were before. In fact, anything with an engine is shit now. Good luck trying to make a missile at Ion tech!
Anyways, Flying, whatever happened to First And Last?

It was lost when I transferred everything over to my new computer. :x

It would be cool if you could do something similar, as it was a good idea.

[Sheb]

Dang, so I need engineering spaces on my figthers? And I'm pretty sure I remember Steve saying something about fixing armor damage in a mothership. I'll have a look in the forums again.

Oh, and FYI, that damaged fighter never contacted the enemy: he suffered from a maintenance failure on the way there. Only one of of his squadron to survive too.

[Flying Dice]

Dang, so I need engineering spaces on my figthers? And I'm pretty sure I remember Steve saying something about fixing armor damage in a mothership. I'll have a look in the forums again.

Oh, and FYI, that damaged fighter never contacted the enemy: he suffered from a maintenance failure on the way there. Only one of of his squadron to survive too.

Um. Yes, yes you do. That's why the fighter engineering space module exists. 

That makes quite a bit more sense than a fighter surviving a hit from anything as well.

Yeah, this new version is REALLY shitting me. Beams are even less powerful than they were before. In fact, anything with an engine is shit now. Good luck trying to make a missile at Ion tech!
Anyways, Flying, whatever happened to First And Last?

It was lost when I transferred everything over to my new computer. :x

It would be cool if you could do something similar, as it was a good idea.

If I ever do start another AAR campaign, it will probably be something like that. And it probably won't get posted until I reach a good stopping point, as I tend to lose steam over the medium term.

[Metalax]

Two new additions for 6.3

Shock Damage

Ships may now suffer Shock Damage as a result of hostile weapon fire (either energy weapons or missile warheads). A percentile roll is made after any non-shield damage. If the roll is less than Damage^1.3 (rounded down), there is the potential for shock damage. The damage inflicted is equal to: (Damage / 3) * Random Percentage. The result is rounded down to the nearest integer, so it may still result in zero damage

So the base chance of inflcting at least 1 point of shock damage for different amounts of non-shield damage is as follows:

1: 0%
2: 0%
3: 0.03%
4: 1.25%
5: 2.8%
6: 4.5%
7: 6.3%
8: 8.1%
9: 10.7%
10: 12.6%
12: 18.0%
16: 28.4%
20: 40.1%
24: 53.4%
30: 73.8%
36: 95.3%

This has a couple of implications. Firstly, it is possible for a ship to lose a key system even when its armour has not been penetrated. This should lead to more interesting combat situations. Secondly, it gives an advantage to larger energy weapons and missile warheads. You may inflict significant damage with a lucky hit from a large missile warhead and that won't be possible with small missiles.

This results in an effective upgrade to larger missiles/large beam weapons, shields become more important and high damage control ratings may now be worthwhile to repair shock damage during a fight.

Order Templates

On the Task Group window, you can save a list of orders as a template and then retrieve them later.

For example, you give a TG a set of orders to pick up automated mines from a colony, travel through several jump points, drop them off at another colony and return to refuel at the start point. You can save that set of orders as a template (giving it a template name) and then select it again for any future TG. Each template is associated with the system in which the first order takes place. A template can only be selected if the currently selected TG is in the system associated with the template and has no orders, or the task group has existing orders that will take it to that system, in which case the template orders will be added to the existing orders.

This is all done from a simple list on the first tab (squeezed in at the side between OOB and default orders) with a list of templates for the current system, a Save button and a Use button.

This addition is something of an experiment, as I am concerned it could lead to unexpected problems. The player will have to use this feature intelligently and not give orders that don't make sense. I don't want to add code to check every possible template for every task group because there are just too many possible factors. So I'll see how it works out and if it does cause problems, I'll remove it for the next version.

This should make it much easier to set up patrol routes/supply routes.

[The13thRonin]

Wait, don't other races use the same engines we do?

They do, but the consequences of reduced acceleration curves and heavily increased logistical restrictions also alters how combat plays out.  Plasma carronades have rather low ranges for their tech level - for a 15cm beam at the fourth focusing/wavelength tech level, lasers can reach 240k km; a high-power microwave, rail gun or meson can hit something at only half that distance; and a 15cm plasma carronade, which has no range enhancements beyond its size, remains stuck at a paltry 60k.  Basically, if all of the speeds are reduced proportionately, you'll still spend longer (and thus, spend longer taking fire) in any pursuit of a fleeing opponent that outranges you because the absolute speeds are still reduced, even if the relative proportions remain the same.  That puts a stronger emphasis on gaining and keeping the range advantage, and further reduces the importance of low-range beams at tech levels before you hit the hard cap on beam weapons.  For instance, this is pure napkin maths rather than in-game engine values, but if you're chasing an opponent traveling at half your speed with a 5000 km/s ship, you're gaining on them at a rate of 2500 km/s.  If you're chasing an hostile ship with the same proportional speed to your own with a ship that can only manage 2500 km/s, you're only gaining at a rate of 1250 km/s, and will take hostile fire for twice as long to get into range of your own weapons if they use lasers and you're using HPMs since the weapons ranges did not change. 

Still, that said, were carronades ever used much even in pre-6.2 games?  Other than fixed jump-point defenses where the opponent is forced to jump in right on top of them, their extremely low ranges and extremely high damage reduction at range always made them a rather poor fit for mobile operations, I thought.  HPMs were also always rather situational, like mesons, though mesons were more likely to end up in a useful situation (e.g., PD for dealing with armoured missiles).  I still think effective early-game missile design is still possible in this as well, though point defense does increase in effectiveness in the early game compared to the older versions.  It's a rather interesting strategic picture that's permitted by the new version, in my opinion.

Any way to remove the caps? I hate limits... One of the reasons I loved Aurora was I thought it was limitless...

[AlStar]

Any way to remove the caps? I hate limits... One of the reasons I loved Aurora was I thought it was limitless...

The speed of light is still a hard cap, sadly.

[Korbac]

Any way to remove the caps? I hate limits... One of the reasons I loved Aurora was I thought it was limitless...

The speed of light is still a hard cap, sadly.

Until physics changes, anyway.

[Metalax]

The cap on weapon range is at just below 5 light seconds. This is because there are no FTL weapons, so that is the maximum distance that can be travelled in a 5 second increment. Coupled with FTL sensors and the fact that even ships without engines can move 5km in a 5sec increment means that hitting a target beyond that range is unlikely as they can simply move out of the way. This resulted in Steve not being willing to code packets of weapon fire persisting over more than one increment, so the weapons range is naturally capped.

[miauw62]

Are there any good, recent, preferably textual guides to this game? I really want to play this.