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[gimlet]

Just use Spacemaster mode to replace all the blowed up ships.  SM in some troops and transports if you REALLY must take back your outpost right now instead of using that as a goal to build stuff. 

Also as a tip - I make a copy of the database before starting the game, and sometimes I exit the game and make a copy if I've been playing for a long time.    That way if something gets corrupted, I can recover the game with not much lost time.  Problems like that were more common with older versions though I think - although I really haven't had a lot of time, so all my latest games haven't gotten very far.

[gigaraptor487]

Seems like false positives, had it a day and nothing has changed with regard to background programs and suspected malware from malware bytes. It is annoying I have Mcafee on my laptop, would get something like kaspersky or bulldog but I don't have the money at the moment.

Great game by the way.

[Lord Shonus]

I'm trying to do a multi-empire Sol start, but I forgot to set the races to be NPR when I made them. Is there a way to do it now, or should I just remove and re-add them?

[iceball3]

Actually, save for very specific circumstances (for example, kiting Swarm Queens), you want to get as close as possible with energy weapons. Set your PD weapons to Final Defensive Fire; the missile speed issue only comes up if you're trying to use them as interdiction weapons (which you shouldn't be doing anyways if you're being sensible and using Gauss turrets as PD). Yes, mesons perform well at extreme ranges, but the thing is that outside of the tiny range interval where railguns of a given TL can't reach and lasers are at their minimum damage, they're lackluster against anything without thick armor or good shields. At "closer" ranges any other E/K weapon is going to deliver much higher damage output, and more importantly, will put enemy ships out of commission much more quickly, which in the long term will substantially reduce your repair/replacement costs.

On another point, you actually want a mix of lasers and mesons when dealing with Invaders; mesons to pierce their shields, and lasers because those are the most effective PD weapon against their plasma torpedoes.

I just tested the Point Defense against Missiles again, and even with Final Defensive Fire (which I use anyway), missiles less than 5 seconds away hit without being shot at.
Afaik this is due the detection cycle being after the movement cycle, which means that the missiles (which are shot after the last detection cycle) move and hit before they are being detected, which is a prerequisite for pointdefense working.

I would also disagree on low-range engagements being preferable, because if the enemy has stuff that goes through your pointdefense you're dead before you reach them anyway, and if you can stop all his missiles, staying at a range at which he can't engage (or does so little damage that your shields can catch it) while doing permanent damage (thus mesons) yourself results in taking pretty much no damage at all.

Wait, not even CIWS can hit something that can cross it's range in five seconds? I thought that's what final defensive fire and CIWS was supposed to deal with.

[Flying Dice]

Actually, save for very specific circumstances (for example, kiting Swarm Queens), you want to get as close as possible with energy weapons. Set your PD weapons to Final Defensive Fire; the missile speed issue only comes up if you're trying to use them as interdiction weapons (which you shouldn't be doing anyways if you're being sensible and using Gauss turrets as PD). Yes, mesons perform well at extreme ranges, but the thing is that outside of the tiny range interval where railguns of a given TL can't reach and lasers are at their minimum damage, they're lackluster against anything without thick armor or good shields. At "closer" ranges any other E/K weapon is going to deliver much higher damage output, and more importantly, will put enemy ships out of commission much more quickly, which in the long term will substantially reduce your repair/replacement costs.

On another point, you actually want a mix of lasers and mesons when dealing with Invaders; mesons to pierce their shields, and lasers because those are the most effective PD weapon against their plasma torpedoes.

I just tested the Point Defense against Missiles again, and even with Final Defensive Fire (which I use anyway), missiles less than 5 seconds away hit without being shot at.
Afaik this is due the detection cycle being after the movement cycle, which means that the missiles (which are shot after the last detection cycle) move and hit before they are being detected, which is a prerequisite for pointdefense working.

I would also disagree on low-range engagements being preferable, because if the enemy has stuff that goes through your pointdefense you're dead before you reach them anyway, and if you can stop all his missiles, staying at a range at which he can't engage (or does so little damage that your shields can catch it) while doing permanent damage (thus mesons) yourself results in taking pretty much no damage at all.

Wait, not even CIWS can hit something that can cross it's range in five seconds? I thought that's what final defensive fire and CIWS was supposed to deal with.

Ah, I see what he's getting at. He's flying his ships so close to the enemy missile platform that the missiles can launch and hit in the same 5-second tick. Which is, uh, very easy to avoid. You'll already know the speed of their missiles from taking fire during your initial approach, just set your follow order to be [(missile velocity)*5+n], where n is whatever safe margin you want. Given that (especially with the new drive model) missiles are rarely going to be faster than ~20,000km/s (and markedly less than that for most things), they only fire once every so often (which means that you can predict their firing patterns and close in while they're reloading, then back off to a safe range when they fire), it's not particularly difficult to deal with. That aside, you're using E/KW offensively, so your beam ships are going to have thick armor -- take a few hits, unload your laser of doom, wait for it to recharge its capacitors while your enemy enjoys being a floating pile of scrap. Or, again, play smart instead of hovering inside their insta-hit envelope when they're nearly reloaded.

Of course the real note that this is dancing around is the fact that all E/KW pale in comparison to missiles (except perhaps for anti-missile work) primarily because of the vast gulf between their effective maximum ranges.

[Duuvian]

Auto turns is a checkbox in the f3 map. It's below and to the right of the time increments. You enter a number into the box for the number of consecutive turns you want, for example 12 and then hit 30 days to advance a year.

To stop it's advance you try to close the map window, Windows will tell you it's not responding but allow the program to continue and at the start of the next increment it will stop advancing.

Sometimes increment time takes so long that the above method doesn't work. In that case just allow windows to close the program and then restart aurora.

[iceball3]

Auto turns is a checkbox in the f3 map. It's below and to the right of the time increments. You enter a number into the box for the number of consecutive turns you want, for example 12 and then hit 30 days to advance a year.

To stop it's advance you try to close the map window, Windows will tell you it's not responding but allow the program to continue and at the start of the next increment it will stop advancing.

Sometimes increment time takes so long that the above method doesn't work. In that case just allow windows to close the program and then restart aurora.

Oooh, jebus did i make a mistake then!
I had thought it was minimum increment in seconds, and had set it to 100,000 due to all the annoying interruptions i was getting last night.
And then went to sleep with it on because it was taking a while to respond again...
It's a good thing i don't own a supercomputer! Heh!
However, at this point i'm getting a feeling it may be a good time for early game strategy revision, so i might start a new game even if i'm rather well off as it is. I'm thinking a conventional start with Sol being isolated and loads of NPRs. Wish me luck!

[iceball3]

Ah, I see what he's getting at. He's flying his ships so close to the enemy missile platform that the missiles can launch and hit in the same 5-second tick. Which is, uh, very easy to avoid. You'll already know the speed of their missiles from taking fire during your initial approach, just set your follow order to be [(missile velocity)*5+n], where n is whatever safe margin you want. Given that (especially with the new drive model) missiles are rarely going to be faster than ~20,000km/s (and markedly less than that for most things), they only fire once every so often (which means that you can predict their firing patterns and close in while they're reloading, then back off to a safe range when they fire), it's not particularly difficult to deal with. That aside, you're using E/KW offensively, so your beam ships are going to have thick armor -- take a few hits, unload your laser of doom, wait for it to recharge its capacitors while your enemy enjoys being a floating pile of scrap. Or, again, play smart instead of hovering inside their insta-hit envelope when they're nearly reloaded.

Of course the real note that this is dancing around is the fact that all E/KW pale in comparison to missiles (except perhaps for anti-missile work) primarily because of the vast gulf between their effective maximum ranges.

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

[Ansopedi]

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

Both of them use the current set speed. The way this works can be unintuitive though, for example if you got 10 Fighters at 50000km/s in a Taskgroup and add a slower ship to the Taskgroup, you reduce the current set speed (and thus tracking and dodge speed) of the Fighters. If you instead set the Fighters to follow the very same ship at 0 Range, they'll essentially move exactly the same as in the first scenario, but keep their tracking and dodge speed.

[iceball3]

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

Both of them use the current set speed. The way this works can be unintuitive though, for example if you got 10 Fighters at 50000km/s in a Taskgroup and add a slower ship to the Taskgroup, you reduce the current set speed (and thus tracking and dodge speed) of the Fighters. If you instead set the Fighters to follow the very same ship at 0 Range, they'll essentially move exactly the same as in the first scenario, but keep their tracking and dodge speed.

Would the fighters eat through more fuel as a result, though?

[Ansopedi]

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

Both of them use the current set speed. The way this works can be unintuitive though, for example if you got 10 Fighters at 50000km/s in a Taskgroup and add a slower ship to the Taskgroup, you reduce the current set speed (and thus tracking and dodge speed) of the Fighters. If you instead set the Fighters to follow the very same ship at 0 Range, they'll essentially move exactly the same as in the first scenario, but keep their tracking and dodge speed.

Would the fighters eat through more fuel as a result, though?

Just tested it, and their fuel use is as expected given the speed they're actually moving, so no.

[iceball3]

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

Both of them use the current set speed. The way this works can be unintuitive though, for example if you got 10 Fighters at 50000km/s in a Taskgroup and add a slower ship to the Taskgroup, you reduce the current set speed (and thus tracking and dodge speed) of the Fighters. If you instead set the Fighters to follow the very same ship at 0 Range, they'll essentially move exactly the same as in the first scenario, but keep their tracking and dodge speed.

Would the fighters eat through more fuel as a result, though?

Just tested it, and their fuel use is as expected given the speed they're actually moving, so no.

Speed of the group they're following or their own set speed? If it's their own set speed fuel usage then that is what i meant by more fuel being eaten.

[Ansopedi]

Ahh, thank you for the clarification, yes. Though two things i need to clear up (wow i do ask a lot of questions in this thread...), does missile evasion take into account a vessel' maximum speed or their current set speed? What about the tracking speeds of their non-turreted weapons?

Both of them use the current set speed. The way this works can be unintuitive though, for example if you got 10 Fighters at 50000km/s in a Taskgroup and add a slower ship to the Taskgroup, you reduce the current set speed (and thus tracking and dodge speed) of the Fighters. If you instead set the Fighters to follow the very same ship at 0 Range, they'll essentially move exactly the same as in the first scenario, but keep their tracking and dodge speed.

Would the fighters eat through more fuel as a result, though?

Just tested it, and their fuel use is as expected given the speed they're actually moving, so no.

Speed of the group they're following or their own set speed? If it's their own set speed fuel usage then that is what i meant by more fuel being eaten.

The speed the are actually moving, ergo the speed of the TG they're following.

[iceball3]

Ahh, alright alright. I was afraid that it would've registered high movement speeds (in effect higher fuel usage) due to the incremental nature of turns, but i guess not. Stationary task groups set at their max speeds have the same effects i assume?

[Ansopedi]

yup, as I said it's a pretty unintuitive system.