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[kytuzian]

What settings did you have set? If you could show a screenshot, that would be nice. Also it might be a problem with your ship designs (although from how you've described it, that doesn't seem to be the case), so those might be useful too.

[Rince Wind]

Do you have sensors that can track the missiles? They need to be resolution 1 and as big as is feasible.
Then final defence is usually the best mode for your turrets (you also need fire controls that match the turret speed). I only have offensive lasers fire at greater ranges and they are only meant to kill the odd missile, and if they miss, what they usually do, it is fine.

Remember that you need to slave the weapons to fire controls and then set the controls defensive orders.

[Silverthrone]

I shall see what I can shake out. It is likely that it is either the fault of the design, or the combat settings. I am not going to let the game off the hook regarding the [x8 Absolutely Unreasonable Size 20 Super-Missiles: 8.550.000 km/s] trick, but with the benefit of a somewhat simmered irritation, I do begin to see a few problems. I shall see what screen-shots I can shake out when I have the game handy.

First concern: I very likely forgot to stick in a missile-dedicated active search sensor, to complement the ditto fire control.
Second concern: I have buggered up the combat settings thing. Not hard to do, because while it is rather simple in theory, the blasted thing does not give clear enough feedback.

We will see, but thank you both for putting me on the right track.

[EuchreJack]

I would be interested in playing either the Americans or the Rebels.  Would it be possible for you to create a new thread in the Let's Play section of these forums and share the non-classified info?  You might get more recruits there as well.

I would probably also leave general instructions so that you would be able to resolve some surprise situations without pausing to contact.

Alright, I've created a new thread here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=162598

The rebels have already been taken, so you have the choice of either the Democratic Union of America or Taulandia.

Ok, so I'm the new leader of the Democratic Union of America (President?  Yeah, we'll go with that).

Now, I could use some underlings ministers to do all the actual work assist in leading this space nation to greatness.

Specifically some or all of this:
1) Writing speeches and/or news articles
2) Ship Design
3) Missile Design
4) Overall review of the situation and making suggestions

[Urist McManiac]

So I recently started Aurora again, but I have to admit that I'm completely lost when it comes to scale.

My biggest problem so far is that I don't really have any idea of how much weapon range I should be aiming at for my ships. I understand that it completely depends on factors like technology and what my enemies might be bring to the table, but it would be nice to have at least a rough rule of thumb for how far my ships should be able to shoot.

I've read that AMM don't really need to have a longer range than 1 million km and I guess that ASM and beam weapons should generally have as long a range as possible, but what about more specialized weapons? For example, should my FAC'S also aim to have long range weapons or does their speed make that unnecessary? The same question stands for fighters. What about basic PDC anti-ships missiles that are used to defend a colony?

Speaking of FAC's and fighters - any ideas on how far they should be able to fly? They're either based out of a PDC or a carrier, so I guess they don't need that much range, but I still don't have any idea what 'that much' would be. For example, I used the distance between the Earth and the Moon (400km) as a guideline for my fighters. Any critique on that?

Also, an unrelated question: my scout carrier has found a few wrecks in uninhabited systems. It doesn't seem like there are enemies about, but I'm not sure if I shouldn't approach them with caution...

[RAM]

There are two general rules:
1: Assume that you are fighting yourself(with a large margin for errors...).
2: 5 seconds is the smallest unit of time.

So your long range point defences get one shot for every 5 seconds that missiles stay within their range without hitting anything, so you want at least as much range as your missiles can cover in distance over 5 seconds, and every additional 5 seconds reload cycle is great, and partial amounts are not useless because you don't know precisely how far away the missile will end up on any given turn... A.M.M. cannot, as a rule, shoot further than your ships can target enemy missiles, and the enemy missiles are generally moving towards your launchers...

You might want your large, cheap P.D.C.s to protect a large portion of a system, in which case figure out how far they will get from whatever they are protecting and give them some extreme range multiple stage missiles to lazily drift over the great black and then take of their coats for partytime. But otherwise the rules for P.D.C.s are not much different from ships, the enemy's evasive options haven't changed any as far as the missiles themselves are concerned. Adding a handful of longer-range missiles for pursuing a fleeing opponent is not a terrible idea, in which case assume that they move as swiftly as your own vessels...

F.A.C.s and fighters depend on the role. Missile defence and standard-missile fighters just need to travel with the fleet for long enough to do their business, which can be time enough to launch and return for reloading, move to range, launch, then return for reloading, Escort your fleet for the time it would take your fleet to expend all its missiles and their travel time...
Close combat versions though are going to be similar to missiles. If they take part in the missile exchange then they are completely missiles and need to get in, engage, and have enough to limp back into a hangar, which may be retreating for all it's worth... all at the ranges that missiles operate at.
Or you may even want completely independent fighter/F.A.C. forces and hope that your fleet can stay hidden. At which point we are dealing with extreme-range missiles again.

Also consider that one ship moves and then the other does. This can be a pretty big deal for F.A.C.s. It is kind of nice to have at least twice as much range as the distance that your F.A.C. can travel in 5 seconds so as to account for the possibilities of ships moving away from one another.

There are some dangerous things out there that do not salvage.
There are some ancient things that have long been abandoned.
There are some humble misfortunes that can be exploited before their true owners take action.

There is a good chance that "something" is there and is probably hostile. I would suggest sending something very cheap and something that can haul the wreck somewhere safer while keeping in mind that you may be wanting a fleet in the region to recover those goodies from dark forces.

[coleslaw35]

*inb4 RAM oh wait 2 late*

So I recently started Aurora again, but I have to admit that I'm completely lost when it comes to scale.

My biggest problem so far is that I don't really have any idea of how much weapon range I should be aiming at for my ships. I understand that it completely depends on factors like technology and what my enemies might be bring to the table, but it would be nice to have at least a rough rule of thumb for how far my ships should be able to shoot.

I've read that AMM don't really need to have a longer range than 1 million km and I guess that ASM and beam weapons should generally have as long a range as possible, but what about more specialized weapons? For example, should my FAC'S also aim to have long range weapons or does their speed make that unnecessary? The same question stands for fighters. What about basic PDC anti-ships missiles that are used to defend a colony?

Truth be told, I'm in the same boat as you. I can't tell if any of my ship designs or any good or if I'm using them correctly, though I have hints that I am and aren't at the same time. For example, missile barrages fired at enemies seem to do well and create great amounts of damage if the missiles aren't shot down by CWIS, but in brawling range my ships generally can't 1v1 so I need to use mass assault tactics.

Speaking of FAC's and fighters - any ideas on how far they should be able to fly? They're either based out of a PDC or a carrier, so I guess they don't need that much range, but I still don't have any idea what 'that much' would be. For example, I used the distance between the Earth and the Moon (400km) as a guideline for my fighters. Any critique on that?

I get the impression that this is fairly low. Then again, I always build my fighters with a range of at least 1m, so it could just be personal preference.

Also, an unrelated question: my scout carrier has found a few wrecks in uninhabited systems. It doesn't seem like there are enemies about, but I'm not sure if I shouldn't approach them with caution...

If I remember correctly, wrecked ships sometimes randomly generate in systems just to add flavor to your systems. Do you have any NPRs out and about? Precursors and invaders?

[Rince Wind]

Look at the speed of things for fighter ranges.
At a moderate 10kkm/sec they do the 400kkm in 40secs. That is not much of a deployment time.
My missile fighters usually have 200mil km range at least. I use them to get closer to the enemy and fire heavy missiles (same size as the regular missile boats, but higher yield due to smaller fuel storage). Those missiles usually have around 20mil km range.
Close range fighters are hard to use, as the AI will fire their AMMs at them. So you need to make sure those are depleted or you only attack known energy boats or something else. They are often used (by me at least) to pursue enemies when the enemy formation breaks. So they need the range to chase someone and then make it back.

[EuchreJack]

I'm starting to believe there are only two types of combat ships:
1) Disposable Missile Ships.  They all shoot the same missile type (or speed) from the same range with the same launchers, and missile swarm the enemy.
2) Close Range Assault Ships.  Prioritizing armor, they are slightly faster than the Missile Ships to draw fire and destroy the weakened enemy when the missiles run out.

These types apply to fighters and FACs.  Although fighters can not be refit, so they're more disposable (they overwhelm the enemy's targeting sensors rather than armor up to take the hits).

Generally, fighters have to be missile boats initially because you can't fit all the stuff needed for a beam weapon system until you have slightly better than starting armors, engines, and more dedicated fighter components.

[Flying Dice]

If you pay attention, the doctrine that follows Aurora tech advancement is pretty much spot-on for real-world wet navy history. You start out with slow, inefficient brawlers that have to get up close and slap at each other, then follow a long climb to the point where carrier-based "air"craft ops and extreme-range strikes from missile boats have pretty much totally supplanted direct combat. It was different before the big drive rework, but ever since then you can't even really get stuff moving fast enough to close the gap with a carrier or missile platform before they tear you to shreds, barring a massive tonnage/tech advantage.

Even if there wasn't the 5 light-second hard cap on E/KW range they still would be tools for PD and fringe applications, given that Aurora ships have FTL sensors and can thus reliably avoid anything short of total saturation fire as long as they have a couple seconds to see it coming and shift their vector.

But yeah. The big blob of armor, guns, and drives used to be viable against equal TL and tonnage of carrier/missile boats, but not any more, I think. Slow, shitty new drives make it difficult to close. Shock damage makes super-thick armoring less effective. Shields are still eh, but even more so now that fuel is more precious (again thanks to the drive rework).

[da_nang]

So what is the preferred method of colonization around here? Infrastructure first and then terraform or just terraform immediately?

I've been doing the latter so I don't have to shuffle around infrastructure, but I haven't really expanded past the nearest systems yet. Made a beeline for terraform tech and built a terraform fleet that I tractor around.

[forsaken1111]

I usually do a shotgun approach to colonization where I will drop an initial 10k of infrastructure on a bunch of planets and let the civilian sector handle population transport after I deliver an initial load of people to each. As far as terraforming, I focus that only on bodies that might give a decent return. I rarely terraform mars, takes too long. I might leave one ship on it as a long term project once I am quite well off, but normally I explore and try to find a nice extrasolar planet that is already close. Only if I am extremely unlucky I will focus on taming Sol and colonizing Mars, Venus, etc

[LoSboccacc]

I only drop people, at some point the civilian infrastrucutre delivery catch up and unrest settles

[forsaken1111]

I only drop people, at some point the civilian infrastrucutre delivery catch up and unrest settles

Drop a few marines with them and even the unrest won't matter. Your 'colony' is literally a bunch of people in space suits standing on an empty moon slowly starving while armed guards tell them to GET BACK IN THE CIRCLE.

[Rince Wind]

Your colonists get spacesuits?