Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Insanegame27]

How do I make a SM empire? I need to rid myself of some civvie ships

[Lord Shonus]

How do I make a SM empire? I need to rid myself of some civvie ships

Hit Ctrl+S, leave the password blank (unless, of course, you defined one in game setup)
Go into the system window (not sure of the key shortcut, it is the big sun next to the TIE fighter)
select a planet you have no use for (in this example, I'm using Ceres)
Select Add Colony to create a zero-pop colony on this planet (You have to have a usable atmosphere on the planet, this will allow you to add one)
Hit F2
Select the new planet and go to the Environment tab
In the "atmospheric terraforming" box, select "methane", set a max pressure of .2, and click the "SM set atmosphere" button. Then add .8 atm Nitrogen in the same manner (this creates an atmosphere breathable by methane breathers, but still mostly useless to you - you can use oxygen instead if you want a useful planet)
Return to the system menu
Select the planet you just terraformed and click "create Empire"
Answer "yes" to the Methane Breathing Race question
In the menu that pops up, set "population" to 0. For the sake of convienence, change the "Empire Name", "Empire Short Name" and "Race Name" to something like Pirates or Raiders
Click the "Create Empire" button

NOw use SM to give them some basic engine and weapon techs, use Fast OOB to create a few ships, and kill your civilian ships with them.

[Salmeuk]

Is there a list somewhere of all the officer traits and what they do? I'm left wondering half the time if these traits have any appreciable affect on my leaders, the other half assuming that they do and wondering why they're all such terrible, terrible people.

On another subject, does anyone have an example sensor station or gate defense outpost they might post? I'm trying to understand how long I should up the maintenance and how I might actually er maintain the things. It seems like a PITA to drag it all the way back home every thirty years.

[Sheb]

AFAIK, traits are only for flavor. As for deep-space outposts, they aren't really doable right now (or you need to move them every 30 years as you said.). If there is an asteroid close to the point of interest, you might considers PDCs and Deep Space Trackins Stations.

[forsaken1111]

Deep space maintenance is going in with the next version. For now there is no good way to do deep space stations

[Metalax]

As has been said, the next version will include several changes that will make deep space bases more viable.

That said, it is quite possible to make a long duration base by giving it sufficient engineering spaces for a listed maintenance life of 30+ years, then refill it's supplies with shipments when they get low. While the time taken for a full storage of supplies to be depleted will drop with each refill, you can pretty easily get 4-5 times the listed life before it starts becoming too expensive to maintain, by which time you would be wanting to retire it anyway due to likely highly outdated tech.

[Lossmar]

I would love to see more automated facilities .. Auto missile factories, auto fuel refs etc.
It would make my autism a little calmer when making a proper military base/outpost - somehow it gets tipped off when i have "military base" with 100m+ civies on the planet ...

[Sheb]

What kind of military base manufacture its own missiles?

[Lossmar]

What kind of military base manufacture its own missiles?

Proper SF one.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

How on earth can you fit enough stuff into only 500 tons? (I'm trying to make a fighter.)

1. What engine stuff do you use? What tech level of engine do you wait to have before making fighters? What engine size (1 or 2) do you use? What trade-offs (explosion vs power vs efficiency etc.) do you use?

2. What lasers/fire control do you put on your fighters?

3. Do you include anti-missile stuff, armor, shields, anything?

4. Do you include engineering spaces? (Fighter-size, of course.)

[Lossmar]

How on earth can you fit enough stuff into only 500 tons? (I'm trying to make a fighter.)

1. What engine stuff do you use? What tech level of engine do you wait to have before making fighters? What engine size (1 or 2) do you use? What trade-offs (explosion vs power vs efficiency etc.) do you use?

2. What lasers/fire control do you put on your fighters?

3. Do you include anti-missile stuff, armor, shields, anything?

4. Do you include engineering spaces? (Fighter-size, of course.)

1. One-two engine, size one, power x3
2. Small fire control flagged as fighter - they get bonus to tracking speed. No laser - 50% sized gauss cannon and box launchers.
3. No, only fighter defense should be speed. Other than that - small, low resolution active sensor in case of Carrier losing the target.
4. Why would you ?? Maintnance should be done on board Carriers/PDC's .

Aurora is kinda different and more realistic in this regard when compared to other space 4x - good efficient fighter requires relatively advanced tech unlike other 4x where fighters are often first and most basic thing you get.

Oh and dont forget to cut deployment time to 0.1 - this will reduce crew to 1-2 people and shave off some tons.

[iceball3]

How on earth can you fit enough stuff into only 500 tons? (I'm trying to make a fighter.)

1. What engine stuff do you use? What tech level of engine do you wait to have before making fighters? What engine size (1 or 2) do you use? What trade-offs (explosion vs power vs efficiency etc.) do you use?

2. What lasers/fire control do you put on your fighters?

3. Do you include anti-missile stuff, armor, shields, anything?

4. Do you include engineering spaces? (Fighter-size, of course.)

3. Usually, no, not at low tech levels. You want the fastest and most mission-compact vessels you can get, for the following reasons:
-Fighters have the defense of redundancy. They are easily replaceable and manufacturable, and can be deployed in really large numbers. A size 300 detonation is almost nothing to a fighter task group, as that is only one fighter going down, for instance.
-Fighters have evasion by speed bypassing tracking speeds, and evasion by remaining under active sensor headers for long ranges (mainly for missile fighters.) This will allow you to fire missiles a lot closer to certain targets without retaliation, as long as you can draw an active sensor bead back on them.
There could be times where you put anti-missile tech on fighters, but only to protect other task groups, not the fighters themselves. Fighter sized engineering space depends on how long you want to deploy them.
1. In terms of asset risk, highest multipliers for power plants are A-OK on fighters, as a destroyed power plant on a fighter is outright crippling anyway, the chance of the power plants being destroyed before the fighter entirely is low, and secondary explosions will only damage the fighter the power plants are on, which are likely to have been crippled anyway.
2.For beam weapons, you got a few options.
-Plasma carronades if you want your fighter to headbutt and explode enemy ships at short range in the early game. Could likewise erase the armor off of normal fighters as well. Haven't tested this though, it's likely that it performs worse than I expect it to.
-Particle beams will allow your fighters to kite other fighters rather well, as you can jack up the range pretty high without any increase to size.
-Mesons are also a good choice for mangling internal components early game onwards.
-Lasers are good for impromptu fighter-mounted point defense, or for alpha strikes, especially considering spinally mounted capacitor-reduced lasers. Will bore an impressive hole in even the thickest armors if you got enough power behind it. Unfortunately, reactor space becomes an issue, as power required no longer scales with capacitor recharge.
-Microwaves are good for blinding commercial designs or otherwise vulnerable designs, allowing you to surgically remove it's engines before boarding it, for instance.
-Railguns, or higher level gauss, are decent enough for sandpapering down armor over time, making an enemy killable eventually if your TG can stick to them.

In terms of fire control, obviously use fighter-only designs for the increased speed efficiency. Make your FCs as fast as your fighter can move (not any faster), and set the range to what's most appropriate for your mission-equipment without crippling your fighter with overweight.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

How do you make a task force train?

Nevermind, found it.

[Metalax]

How on earth can you fit enough stuff into only 500 tons? (I'm trying to make a fighter.)

1. What engine stuff do you use? What tech level of engine do you wait to have before making fighters? What engine size (1 or 2) do you use? What trade-offs (explosion vs power vs efficiency etc.) do you use?

2. What lasers/fire control do you put on your fighters?

3. Do you include anti-missile stuff, armor, shields, anything?

4. Do you include engineering spaces? (Fighter-size, of course.)

One important thing to bear in mind when making a fighter, there are two points in the designed deployment time that give you a reduction in the number of crew required for your design, one at 0.5(15 days) months and a second, cumulative with the first at 0.1 months(3 days). This combined with short deployments requiring less crew quarters per crewman free up an enormous amount of space.

Generally you will want to use the highest power multiplier you have for your engines. Size 1 or 2 is usually sufficient, though I have used size 3 in some designs before. In terms of trade off, explosion risk can pretty much be ignored, if a fighter looses it's engine, it is almost certainly dead anyway, with the same holding true for power plants. Efficiency isn't really an issue either as fighters will generally only be deployed for hours at a time up to occasionally a day or two, for which a tiny fuel tank will usually hold sufficient fuel even for the most inefficient engines. As for tech level, I'll usually start making fighters at Ion with the x2 engine power multiplier tech, but serious designs come after Magneto-Plasma and getting up to x3 engine power. You will also want to research at least a few levels in armour, as your basic armour takes up quite a lot of space for not much benefit.

I generally put a fighter engineering space on each fighter, but it is not in most cases strictly necessary as long as you are willing to accept the occasional fighter randomly exploding on a sortie. Any fighters that you intend to keep around for a while should have one though, as there chance to explode will rapidly increase as they are repeatedly deployed.

Shields are pretty much useless on a fighter, you simply don't have the room to build a sufficiently large shield pool to be effective. Armour is the last thing added, if there is room left in the design and it doesn't drop the fighters speed too badly, still I almost never go over a second layer, if that. A fighters primary defence is simply not getting hit due to it's speed. I will on occasion, if space is available, use fighter ECM if going against beam-heavy opponents whose tracking ability is comparable or worse than my fighters speed, as the ECM gives a flat reduction in chance to hit by beams. If facing missiles however I'll ignore ECM as it only reduces the range at which they can lock on, and my fighters are likely to be within that reduced range anyway.

As for weapons/fire-controls, it depends on if going with missiles or beams. If missiles, research up to box launchers and put a single firecontrol that matches the missile range. Either all tubes are fired at once or it is easy enough to swap which tubes are linked to the fire-control. Active sensors are left to either the main fleet or a specifically designed sensor fighter.

For beams, remember that you can specify a beam fire-control as fighter only which gives it a free x4 multiplier on the tracking speed. As the fighters generally have a high speed you often don't need to use turrets. This also makes 10cm railguns especially effective as you can fit two and get four shots from each, and the fighters high speed negates the no turrets disadvantage. Alternatively Mesons are good as they will ignore the likely significant defences of your target or lasers for a single heavy attack. I don't usually find the reduced size/recharge option on lasers effective for fighters, as they would need to survive the extended time to get another shot off.

[RAM]

How much range do fighter need? I have a really satisfying design up for mesons with 5000 range and 20000 speed, but I worry that they will suffer from their targets leaving the range after the fighter moves...