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[EuchreJack]

The design screen does have a box which tells you if your ship lacks reactors or fire control for the weapons installed. It should also warn for lack of magazines too, but doesn't. I believe it also mentions if you have no fuel tanks.

Why should it tell me if I don't have magazines?  I regularly design ships that can only shoot one salvo of missiles (ideally with Box Launchers, but I've been known to resort to using the larger launchers until I've researched Box Launchers).

Yea. The ship design system is very open ended. Ships share sensor contact information. So an AMM battery doesnt need to use its own active sensor to target. Probably not the smartest thing, but valid.

A possibly more helpful thing is to tell you when a fleet thingy doesnt have any active sensors. But even then what if you just want to make support weapon platforms that rely on other ship sensors?

Actually, it is often ideal to not have active sensors on the ships with the Missiles.  Enemies target the sensor-carrying ships, and if those ships are also loaded down with explosive missiles, BOOM.  Especially when unscrupulous designers put the barest minimum of armor and defense on their Missile Boats.

Even for fleets, missiles can easily out range sensors, so the dedicated sensor ships should be ahead of the missile fleet.

Coincidentally, I usually combine the roles of Sensor Ship and Beam-Based Missile Defense Ship.  When I have the patience to play long enough to have space battles.

[Lord Shonus]

I generally make a "scout" class that has nothing but the best sensor suite I can fit into the shipyard, usually on massive active array and an equally massive passive one. I still find it practical to put AMM sensors on most ship classes, since those tend to be fairly small and a critical backup if the SC gets toasted.

[RedKing]

How do you assign governors for planets other than your homeworld? I don't see anything but

Earth
unassigned (which is strange because a governor is assigned on earth!)

edit: nevermind, figured it out. Had to tick the "Assign to any location"... wouldnt it be straight forward to have it on default?

I think that is the default. If it's unticked then you can only assign them to places they are physically located. (i.e. it prevents you from warping them around the galaxy at the click of a button).
I've tried playing with it off before, but it's tedious as hell. Wouldn't mind it so much if you could use civilian transport -- hop a governor candidate on a luxury liner or colony ship and have him auto-disembark when it arrives. But AFAIK, while you can board civvie ships, there's no way to disembark.

[MarcAFK]

I like to put minimal backup sensors on all my ships, decent sensors on escorts, and huge sensors on dedicated surveillance ships.

[AlStar]

***Story Mode***

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the early 2040s, a Terran Federation StarEye class Survey Ship transited through an unknown jump point. As the static cleared from their systems, they saw a system of five planets, two of which were within the habitable band, which they named Honolulu. Of immediate interest was a 9,700 ton unknown wreck in orbit above the third planet. The scientific community was set ablaze; funds and lab space were immediately assigned to perfect the technology of salvage modules. Further investigation of the planet revealed the ruins of an alien civilization, and immediate plans were made to establish a colony on the world.

Sadly, even the best laid plans are not immune to outside forces - shortly after the colony was established, and civilian shipping was heading towards the new colony, an alien race was encountered.

Initially, the aliens seemed benign, but as soon as the enormous civilian freighters arrived in-system, the race, which identified itself as the Nizkal Corporation, opened fire on the helpless ships. Over a dozen freighters died in nuclear fire. After over a year of huddling in fear, a brief distress call was heard from the colonists on Honolulu III as they reported an alien ship in orbit before going permanently quiet.

It would be years before Terra could properly respond to the atrocities of the Nizkal Corporation - weapons research needed to be fast-tracked, and shipyards needed to be switched over to wartime production. Finally, in February 2047, a six-ship division, named the Retribution Fleet, supported by six Ultraviolent-class laser fighters, headed towards the lost system of Honolulu.

Retribution arrived in Honolulu without fanfare, and since no enemy ships were detected, they proceeded to the suspected home world of the Nizkal Corporation - a system that survey ships called Detroit. Initially, Retribution found no ships in Detroit, so headed towards the nearest habitable worlds. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Detroit system was far larger than initially expected - the system included a binary star, and the habitable worlds were anywhere from 10 billion km from the jump point to over 20 billion km. The fleet started to head towards the nearer worlds, but reported low fuel reserves before reaching their destination.

Dejected, the fleet started heading back... but almost immediately two ships appeared on long-range sensors. The ships were significantly faster than the ships (or even the fighters) of the fleet, but they did not appear to be equipped with missile systems. Long-range anti-ship missiles eliminated both ships before they closed within even 10 million kms of the fleet. Encouraged by their victory, the fleet continued back towards the Honolulu jump point.Two more alien ships appeared as the fleet continued back through the system, which were also dispatched without incident.

Their supplies of anti-ship missiles exhausted, Retribution fleet made its way to the jump point, hoping to return to Terran space without further incident. However, upon reaching sensor distance of the jump point, they were just in time to see half a dozen freighters or civilian shipping jump through the point. These ships were significantly slower than the military ships encountered thus far, so the fighters were deployed to take care of them, while Retribution fleet continued towards the jump point.

The fighters raked the helpless shipping with their powerful lasers, finally avenging the losses in Honolulu. However, just as the fighters were finishing their work, three new alien ships appeared on long-range sensors. These were of a never-before seen class, and the alert level was high. However, they appeared to ignore the fighters, so the elimination of the alien shipping was ordered to continue.

Suddenly, missiles - many, many missiles - over one hundred, according to the battle computers on board the Retribution fleet, appeared on long-range sensors. The order was made to transit the jump point as soon as possible.

Caught unaware, the captains of the fleet panicked, their eyes pinned to their screens, as their jump drives slowly charged.

As the missiles closed, anti-missiles shot out from the fleet. The enemy missiles proved to be exceptionally maneuverable, and only a handful were destroyed.

As the missiles relentlessly bore down on the fleet, laser defenses activated, shooting down an additional handful... but leaving dozens still flying towards the fleet.

Sweat rolled down the faces of the fleet captains as they watched the jump countdown slowly count down - a mere 15 seconds remained.

5 seconds remaining before the jump drives engaged, CIWS defense systems opened fire on the incoming missiles. Unfortunately, they proved inadequate, and four of the six ships were writhed in nuclear fire which caused structural failures and led to the total destruction of the ships in question.

Now the two remaining fleet ships and six fighters (of which only four have berths) remain on the Honolulu-Detroit jump point, Earth's last, and best, hope to contain the hostile alien presence from striking against Earth before a new fleet can be created.

[EuchreJack]

Awesome story AlStar!

Now you have to avenge the loss of half your Retribution fleet!  And build Tanker ships...

[mineforce]

How do I load missiles and such onto my ships?

I remember when I sent my whole fleet into battle without seeing the 0% ammo. I cried to myself in the corner of my room thinking of what I have done and how I killed thousands because I learned that gauss cannons have low range.

It was a very emotional moment for me.

[Metalax]

How do I load missiles and such onto my ships?

I remember when I sent my whole fleet into battle without seeing the 0% ammo. I cried to myself in the corner of my room thinking of what I have done and how I killed thousands because I learned that gauss cannons have low range.

It was a very emotional moment for me.

You can either set default missile loadouts for each class on the ship design screen, then use load ordnance order on the taskgroup at a colony that has the missiles in stock, or you can use the individual ship details page to manually transfer missiles from a colony that has them stockpiled to ships in a taskgroup at the colony.

[Flying Dice]

Additionally: Load Ordinance is best for routine operations. Manual transfer of missiles is best for when you want to load something specialized, or when you don't have enough missiles to fill everything to 100% and need to split loads based on need.

[Girlinhat]

So I've got a new computer with a beastly CPU (Intel i5-6600) and, more importantly, a fresh operating system with no bloat hogging it down.

I might start a game with the potential to reach somewhat extreme sizes or with simpler galaxies running quickly.  Does anyone have any suggestions/requests/themes?  Possibly an abridged style LP?

[Girlinhat]

Yes and no.  You can have carronades on strike craft, ready to move close by and unload.  Or you can have spinal lasers.  But higher jump tech gives you a greater radius to enter a system, so you drop out further from the gate, making gate ambushes more difficult.  You can also deploy mines - missiles with sensors that sit and wait - and need no upkeep.

[Bremen]

Out of curiosity, is it feasible to create powerful short-range ships designed to sit on jump points so that if enemies come in they can be shredded before doing anything? I've never managed to get a hang on combat, so I'm rather unsure as to whether that's a good idea or if it's easier to just spam missiles from a distance still.

The answer is yes, but probably not quite like you're thinking.

This isn't Starfire; you can't park a battlestation on a jump point and pound enemies with beams as they come through. Both because, as Girlinhat mentions, jump drives can jump ships in some distance from the jump point, and because jumping doesn't disable a ship's engines and it can immediate start running in a random direction. So either you'll want a ship that's faster than the enemy and can chase them down as they run, or a slow/stationary ship with enough range and damage to kill anything as it comes through the jump point.

For the first, I actually like Meson armed FACs. They don't need to stay in a hanger; you can put enough engineering spaces and crew quarters on a FAC to give it a multi year deployment time. Then they can just sit there waiting for something to come through, and swarm it while punching it with the armor and shield piercing but short range meson cannons. By minimizing fuel and increasing engine power at the cost of efficiency, they should be faster than most enemy ships.

For the second, I like immobile bases with a bunch of box launchers. Using missiles for short range work might seem wasteful, but you can put a huge warhead on a missile if you're only going for a range of a million km or so. Then if something comes through, the bases can launch and the missiles should impact before the enemy vessel can raise its point defense. They only get one shot, but it's *really* going to hurt anything that comes through that jump point.

[Flying Dice]

And to be fair, you could pull the usual Starfire tactic of piling a web of fifty-odd battlestations on every major point if game mechanics didn't prevent the creation of self-sustaining deep-space stations or artificially limit the functional range of non-missile weapons.

[Sheb]

Well, even non-missiles weapons got a max radius on 1m km or so, that's plenty.

[Lossmar]

And to be fair, you could pull the usual Starfire tactic of piling a web of fifty-odd battlestations on every major point if game mechanics didn't prevent the creation of self-sustaining deep-space stations or artificially limit the functional range of non-missile weapons.

You can always make a military "ship" with 999999999 deployment time and no engines to simulate fortress. It only costs shitload of minerals.