Right. Things were going well. I made a battle fleet; small missile ships and a cruiser for company. It had laser turrets for medium-range defence, each ship had a swarm of counter-missiles. I thought it was a relatively decent design, and that I would have more of a chance with it than previous ones. I thought I had learned a lesson and were getting somewhere.
Did not matter one little bit. The fleet still got turned into scrap by the NPR super-duper ships the game doled out.
[Here follows a brief, irritated rant over the engagement, somewhat edited.]
In battle with approaching enemy vessels and trying to reach engagement range. As often, EMC lowers my targeting range.
Their long-range missile swarms begins to appear. "No matter", thought I, "because I have learned, and I have not only four dual-laser turrets and CIWS, I have anti-missiles ready to go."
Nothing happens, no lasers, no missiles. The fleet gets to tank the first salvo. Only the CIWS does what it should, and limits the pain.
"Right", says I, fiddling with the combat settings; the most obscure and unhelpful panel in the game. It, and its cousin on the individual ship page, is vague, unclear and no amount of re-shuffling can convince my so-called brave voidsmen on the Point Defence systems to fire.
Targeting the missile salvoes manually is not an option, for the bloody buggery things do not show up in the contact box.
Fiddle -> Increment Time -> Bugger-all happens -> Time -> Boom-boom-boom -> Fiddle -> Time -> Nothing but boom-boom-boom...
"Right. Very well." Give up, quit and feel miffed and faintly cheated.
I am quite irritated with the game now. Quite irritated, indeed. I shall have to trouble-shoot what went wrong and why at some point, when I feel like it. Right now, I am too irritated to do that since it would feel like it is my fault (which it is). That is, I suppose, the backside of such a complex game. Things goes wrong even when they seemingly ought not to, and sometimes, it can feel like the game is not giving you a chance, shitting out superior designs for the aliens, while all those designs you yourself sunk care and calculation into simply will not work, for reasons that the game is not eager to tell. It it just not always being very reasonable.
Now, possibilities for why it did not work:
Did I do something wrong during the weapon assignment and setting the Point Defence systems? Perhaps, but I cannot see what it would be. The combat settings are such an obscure mess that it is impossible to see if what you change and assign and fiddle with had for effect, let alone if something is wrong.
Did the aliens have some sort of Super-Duper ECM system on their missiles, making them immune from being targeted and fired upon by more advanced PD? (Yes, probably a realistic possibility when it comes to ship combat, but it does not really give you much of a chance, does it?)
I wish there was a concrete way to limit the NPR tech somewhat... It could be me simply not being fit for Aurora, but it just does not feel very fun when ridiculously superior ships just seems to pop in and destroy everything you send at them. Getting good at making ships and missiles just does not seem to be leading anywhere, not when it can just spawn in immensly better ships and torpedoes as it likes. But as always in this lovely/bloody game, it is difficult to tell if it is my lack of skill or the game being unreasonable due to its complex nature.