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A) Open Warfare: Shoot them as soon as we can.

15 (48.4%)

B) Cold War: Establish borders, and try to out-grow them.

16 (51.6%)

C) No War: Let's share the solar system.... For now.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 31

[a1s]

I agree with Bremen completely. That's probably the first time I do.

[shadenight123]

so...we must increase production.
what about research in more shipbuilding/production and build off more pdc? pdc's with REALLY REALLY long range. (like the big bessy of artilleries)

[Bremen]

so...we must increase production.
what about research in more shipbuilding/production and build off more pdc? pdc's with REALLY REALLY long range. (like the big bessy of artilleries)

We have more important things to research than increased shipbuilding speed. Plus, seeing as we're producing small ships, more yards is a better strategy than faster yards.

And range in Aurora doesn't work like that, you can't just infinitely increase range by building bigger guns. Range is limited by tech, not expense.

[shadenight123]

so...we must increase production.
what about research in more shipbuilding/production and build off more pdc? pdc's with REALLY REALLY long range. (like the big bessy of artilleries)

We have more important things to research than increased shipbuilding speed. Plus, seeing as we're producing small ships, more yards is a better strategy than faster yards.

And range in Aurora doesn't work like that, you can't just infinitely increase range by building bigger guns. Range is limited by tech, not expense.

oh. then let's research range.

(if it wasn't quite clear, i'm a 98% noob. the 2% being i actually managed after help to install the game and make it run, and to understand at least most of the interface and comands. (and having made already some ship designs!) >.>

[DemonOfWrath]

In order, from easiest to hardest to research, the techs that would (ignoring the options that give no immediate benefit, such as signature reduction/weapon size/shields) improve the FACs are:
better armour tech
better reactors
better meson range/fire control speed/fire control range
reduce engine efficiency for more power

A lot of the options are listed because we can reduce the size of components with those techs, allowing room for more armour, speed and/or numbers, as the whole battle is really a matter of getting a critical number into range, speed and armour are the key things I reckon need to be boosted.

I'd probably suggest either FC range or armour tech first, as while we can boost the range of the mesons it means we have to boost the size of the FCs to allow for the increase in max range, which will reduce speed or protection (or, if we choose to go above 700 tonnes, numbers), so taking into account what I can make of the current research projects, I'd suggest (in order):

finish ion engines
finish composite armour
fire control range
meson range

[Daltesh]

Well that went.. not quite as well as I had hoped. But that's what I get for being quiet so much. I'm glad to see that people are coming around to cutting off the jump point research and focusing on engines, but I still wish we hadn't shown that we were heavily into FACs yet. To be honest I'm sort of disappointed that we fired at the enemy. They know we have Mesons, they know we have FACs, so they sort of know all our capabilities. I suppose we could try designing a fast 20KT attack ship to replace our carriers, since we don't have a huge need of a carrier in a single-system war. It's not like our FACs run out of fuel halfway to Mercury. Sure it'd be useful for extended patrols; but since the bulk of our fleet is FACs I doubt we'll be sending them off too much anyway. Earlier I was a strong proponent of interdiction, but that was mainly to try and deny the enemy the ability to expand. or at least limit their options..

But in terms of actual fights, the enemies range advantage against us is a frightening thing. It doesn't matter if we close on them if they always blast half our forces out of space before we can even start thinking about plinking at their crew quarters. (And causing glorious secondary explosions)  But luckily for my Engines Are Always Awesome campaign, engines are awesome at helping us close even faster and mitigate our losses.

Sooo.. My opinion is as thus: Research engines, maybe even some of that +speed/+explodey modulation, and keep pumping out the FACs. We'll probably want to avoid actually upgrading the FACs once we upgrade them though, and just keep pumping out the newer version.

Also to add to the orders: Once you finish researching Ion engine tech... Research actual ion engine designs and upgrade our ship designs! And if retooling is required, Start retooling immediately after laying down the next series of ships to be built. That way we can keep building one last line of older models while upgrading.

[DemonOfWrath]

Remember, that if get close enough with enough FACs to take out their Werewolf(s), it doesn't really matter if we lose a bunch of Hufufs as each of the enemy are 11k tonnes, as we'd have to lose 16 FACs to lose out in tonnage lost, and any Werepuppy ships escorting those are completely useless against the Hufufs given the observed range of their guns, although, now that they know our capabilities and may phase those out, as a short/medium term goal can I suggest the idea of creating a dummy missile gunboat or something?

Simply, to keep them from phasing those escorts out for something useful due the threat that we possess missile capability. Give it a small amount of large, fast missiles, that would hit like a wet tissue, just to scare them into keeping the escorts around in fear of getting hit by a really powerful missile (thus letting us blast them with the Hufufs at some point)? I can't remember if tricking them like that is possible from the info they get shooting them down though (they'll know the size and speed, but I can't remember if that'd let them see that the missiles would have basically no warhead). The idea would be to fire few enough that they'd shoot them down for sure, but letting them see the size and speed of the missiles, to make them think we have some awesome missile tech.

On thinking about it actually, missiles wouldn't be bad to sporadically complement our mesons with their pathetic range, and keep them from specialising everything to blowing meson FACs as they close in. I realise the disadvantages but I feel its an interesting enough plan to throw out there, depending on how they react to the information they've got now (face it, if they remove the Werepuppies for something to deal with FACs, a surprise missile volley could win an engagement or two).

[Ehndras]

I second adding missile tech to pepper their armor. They may do the same, and we must be prepared for the eventuality.

[RedKing]

Something that just occurred to me that I haven't seen in our orders: we should be using at least some industrial capacity to build ship components. If we're going to build a swarm fleet of Hufufs, then we should dedicate a portion of industry to building a stockpile of engines, meson cannons, fire control, etc. The more components you can produce prior to actually issuing the shipbuilding order, the shorter the production time. In one of my current games, I have a FAC design that takes about 8-9 months to build from scratch at a shipyard. By mass producing most of the components ahead of time, the same FAC takes like 3 months to build.

About the only thing you can't build ahead of time is armor and crew/fuel/maintenance sections. All the avionics/electronics, engines, sensors and weapons can be built ahead of time.

EDIT: Oh, and cargo holds, but that's not military equipment. It can make an equally dramatic difference with larger craft. I have a 100-kiloton asteroid miner design that has a base build time of 1.68 years (20.16 months). By building the engines and mining modules ahead of time, I can drop the build time to about 8.5 months.

[Ehndras]

About the only thing you can't build ahead of time is armor and crew/fuel/maintenance sections. All the avionics/electronics, engines, sensors and weapons can be built ahead of time.

I... Did not know that.

Good to know!

[The13thRonin]

This is an awesome idea. Could the OP please clean the first post up with some links and titles to important events that have happened in the thread? It'd make it a lot easier to follow everything .

[Cerej]

We have more important things to research than increased shipbuilding speed. Plus, seeing as we're producing small ships, more yards is a better strategy than faster yards.

Hugely disagree.  There are two priorities in making the most out of FACs.  The first is maintaining a hefty speed advantage, and the second is maintaining a hefty tonnage advantage.  Once we've upgraded our engine tech to ions, we're either looking at a several years project to increase engine tech again, or a several month project to gain a 40% increase in shipbuilding, slipway building, and refit speed.  Unlike the other industrial techs, shipyard research offers huge, immediate advantages.  Advantages which couple nicely with the inherently fast FAC construction speed.  Ton for ton, FAC designs tend to build every bit as fast as larger ships.  But the shipyards for FACs build much, much faster.

This is a recommendation to the other players, not an order.  Research priorities should be as follows.
1:  Finish Ion Engine technology.
2:  Finish Composite armor technology.
3:  Design and research the new generation of FAC engines.
4:  Research Shipbuilding Rate 560 BP.

Recommending that the new generation of FACs field a 3-layer thick level of armor.

Future considerations:  The enemy knows we have mesons.  They are almost assuredly going to build a generation of lightly skinned warships.  We should look into getting salvage ships so we can use the infidel's weapons against them.  Not necessarily reverse engineering them, simply peeling a few off their wrecks and building some FACs around them.

Recommended industry use:
Do not build more meson PDCs.  They cannot defend our shipyards, and if we lose our shipyards we will have lost long before troops try to land.  Put every industrial complex towards building additional naval shipyards.  These new shipyards should retool to the newest FAC design and begin building slipways.  We have several years worth of minerals already in our stockpiles, and we've still got mines running.  We have plenty of leeway to expand our shipbuilding capability.

Building more shipyards IS a gamble.  It's less effective use of our surface industry compared to building components unless the shipyards survive for at least 3 years.

[Bremen]

I disagree on the building shipyards. Building a shipyard is a very high flat cost, and not really worth it for 1 1k capacity only shipyard; it's far cheaper and faster to just keep adding slipways to our existing yards. Maybe 1 new shipyard for the sensor gunboats. We'd be much better off using the industrial capacity either on ship components, or factories to build more ship components in the future.

[Azkul]

This is a recommendation to the other players, not an order.  Research priorities should be as follows.
1:  Finish Ion Engine technology.
2:  Finish Composite armor technology.
3:  Design and research the new generation of FAC engines and reactors.
4:  Research Shipbuilding Rate 560 BP.

[Cerej]

Building a shipyard isn't about +1 slipway.  It's about +1 slipway per year until the end of the war.  Our two good options for increasing ship production are: building components for short term benefit, or building shipyards for long term benefit.  The 2400 build point cost of the shipyard is reimbursed within 3 years of finishing the yard.  Each factory would take 12 years to reimburse the 120 build point cost.

If our goal is to increase FAC production the strategic decision is whether 2400 build points is better spent on more ships now, or more ships 4 years down the road (1 year to build the shipyard, and then 3 for the shipyard to be profitable).  There's a lot of room in between the two extremes of build a shipyard starting now and never build more shipyards, however.