Aurora Help

[mikeck]

Ohh, and I have Jump Gate Construction 180 days.  Just need a ship yard big enough to build a ship with one.

Be careful building a jump gate in your home system...aliens can use it too. You have too at early stages because jump drives are ginormous, just make sure you thoroughly scout the neighboring systems and consider building a Beam frigate to picket the gate in case something comes through until you populate the attached system

[OJsDad]

Is a beam frigate best or a base stationed outside of each JG.

[mikeck]

I like beam frigates because I can move them around once I don't need to guard a gate anymore. If something does come through, it's right on top of my ship and beams deal a ton of damage at close range...

[GDS_Starfury]

some excellent opinions for defensive layouts.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5917.0.html

[GDS_Starfury]

the whole thing about missiles centers on range.  for jump gate defence you can build mines and bouys for defence freeing up your mobile units for other tasks.  forts and stations can also be quite formidable because almost no weight goes to engines, fuel and other things.  take another page out of HH and put 10 forts on disputed jump points and rack in the kills.

[mikeck]

Well, I had my first big space battle and got my ass handed to me. I found the aliens and we seemed to be getting along swimmingly, so I created a diplomatic team, put them on a science vessel I. Earth orbit and sent them to Tau ceti to play "mock UN" with the aliens. When they got there and approached the alien planet, the aliens fired a beam and destroyed the ship quickly. WAR!!!!!

So basically, my fleet creation strategy was missile based. My "Portland" class cruisers sported 4 magazines carrying over 100 "long lance" anti ship missiles. The missiles and fire control could track and hit targets out to 35 million kilometers. It's best t specialize ships so for defense I created and stuck on a CIWS system. Fleet defense was handled by my "Ticonderoga" missle destroyers. They could hold 200 "interceptor" anti-missile missiles (original names...I know). Now, here is the rub....to keep sizes within reason, I also created a "Grant" class command ship. This ship had HUGE thermal and gravity passive sensors us the most important thing...a jump drive capable of jumping 5 ships of under 40,000 tons each. My fleet consisted of 3 Portlands, 1 Ticonderoga and 1 Command ship.  Off to battle!!!

I had also developed a fast frigate ("JEB Stuart") loaded with sensors and a beam turret for scouting. The TFS JEB Stuart and TFS Imboden scouted Tau ahead of the fleet and picked up several ships...nothing around the jump point though. So in comes first fleet: TFS Portland, TFS Tampa, TFS Boston, TFS Ticonderoga and the TFCS Grant. Several days later while moving to the home planet, the command ship sensors pick up a huge enemy battle fleet moving towards first fleet at 3065 km/s. now, my fleet can move at 4000 km/s so my plan was to wait until the enemy fleet got within the 35 million km range of my Long Lance missiles and open fire while moving away from them at 3065 km/s. since I believed them to be armed with beam weapons, the enemy would never get close enough.

Initially, everything worked as planned. There were about 15 enemy ships and I released salvo after salvo of Long Lance missiles targeted at various ships. Each Portland had 2 fire controls with each connected to 3 launchers. I got concerned when only about 50% of my missiles hit. Many were reported destroyed by anti missile defense and many others simply missed. The Long Lance moves at about 12,000 km/S and has a sizeable warhead. One by one the enemy ships began falling back and. Bleeding atmosphere. Just as I was preparing to head home (ran out of ASMs) having heavily damaged about 6 enemy ships, Ticonderoga picks up enemy missiles closing fast at close range!!!  Multiple salvos. I'm not sure why the low resolution radar didn't pick them up sooner but my guess is that the enemy had substantial EM capability.

Ticonderoga...engage!!!" Aye aye sir....uh sir....nothing's happening" yep, I forgot to hook the launchers up with the magazines wasting valuable seconds. About 30 missiles screamed at my fleet at 18,000km/SEC. Finally, Ticonderoga engaged but only had 2 missile launchers tied to each of the two fire controls...not enough...not close. Time and time again my 15,000km/s interceptors sailed past the enemy missiles at a combined speed of 33,000 km/s, several hit here and there but not enough. Ticonderoga is equipped with a turret housing 2 10cm beams ties to a seperate fire control. This is designed for close in AMM work. Unfortunately, with only a 4,000 km/s tracking speed , the turret could not rotate fast enough and could not intercept the missiles. I accelerated the fleet to max speed but there was no immediate response as the fleet had insufficient training time to get their shit together.

Missle after missile struck home as I continually tracked new salvoes. Problem was...every enemy missile was tracking the "Grant". Why is this a problem? Well, if destroyed, no remaining ships have a jump drive so they can't leave the system. Slowly, hit after hit, the Grant fell back until finally destroyed. With my fleet of of missiles and only a few beams for close in work, it was a done deal. The enemy fleet slowed to stay out of beam range and pummeled me with missiles as I could t escape. The whole fleet was lost.

Lessons learned:
1.  I need to improve my anti missile detection. Those salvos were picked up much too late.
2.  I need to improve my anti missile missiles...they were not fast enough to hit the on incoming missiles consistently.
3.  I need to equip my ships with more missile launchers. My ASM salvoes were too small to overcome enemy ship defense and my Ticonderoga put out far too few missiles too slowly to be effective.
4.  I need to equip more CIWS systems on all ships..1 each is too few and they are effective.
5. Larger magazines. I ran out of all missiles far to early. Although I had a resupply collier in the next system, it couldn't help me in battle.
6. Ships need more armor. That simple

So...back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, from the time I design a new ship to when it pulls out of dock is about 3 years. Add training time and I can't replace that fleet with a competent force for 4 years. I also lost several top commanders...irreplaceable. 

[OJsDad]

Ouch Mikeck.  Hopefully you can get a new fleet up and running before they come knocking on your door.

In my game, I've colonized Mercury and figured out how to move one Mass Driver and some Automatic Mines there.  Even managed not to do serious damage to Earth with the Mass Drivers. 

I've got my first Terraforming ship designed, and tooling up one of my ship yards ready to start building.  There are three planets that have a Colonization Cost of 2, Luna, Mars, and one in a neighboring star system.  I'm not ready to start colonizating them yet, but I will be soon. 

I have not combat ships designed yet.  I would like to design and build some fortresses to guard the Jump Points.  To do that, do I build them at my military ship yards, then tow them to the jump points using a tug?  Or is there another method, mobile construction ship?  Oh, and if build and deploy them, how do I keep them there without crew morale going down do to deployment time. 

Thanks. 

[panzerde]

I want to play this game.  After spending a few hours at it yesterday, what I'm not so sure of is that I want to learn this game.  I think I'd be more inclined if the tutorials and documentation weren't so horrible.  A few examples of actually doing something versus walls of text discussing theory might help...

This game is clearly the digital implementation of Starfire that never was.  That's a good thing, and so is the detail/complexity...but it sure would be nice if it was a bit more approachable.

If there was one other space combat/4X game that included ship design that dealt with sensors at even half the level of realism that Aurora does, I'd never look at this game a second time.  This is probably my biggest pet peeve about space combat games - it's always way too easy to find the enemy, and way too hard to hide from them.  I realize that game designers want to see all of their pretty art spitting lasers and explosions, but to me the unexpected missile out of the dark is far more appealing.

So, despite my griping I'm going to try and climb the learning cliff here.  I'm just glad there are a couple of you guys who have already started so I can learn from you!

[mikeck]

I will admit, I get more out of the game by cheating. For example, instead of delivering a ton of building and delivering a bunch auto mines, I just turn on SpaceMaster, to the f2 screen, select the colony and give it the automines. I do the same with terraforming...not all the way, but as a boost. I also give new colonies a handful of factories to start.

I have already modified my ships in design, retooled my shipyards for the new versions of the ships and am in the process of refitting.

As for jump gates, I think you are better off building a PDC around the closest colony to the jump gateand putting the biggest sensors you can on it. Build some long range missiles and arm the PDC with it. Then design a few frigates with some beam weapons. Picket the frigates at the jump gate so they can fry any ship entering off the bat. That way, you can move the ships around as needed with a large base in support. Much cheaper than building a base for each jump gate. When you do expand to the neighboring sectors, you can then move your picket ships.

Don't be afraid to use space master to give yourself tech, minerals, population, and even ships. This can make the game more enjoyable because you are not spending hours and hours waiting for things to happen.

[OJsDad]

I don't mind the time it takes to develop and build.  I wish there was some less micro management though.  Instead of having to send a freighter back and forth moving items, I would like to just tell it to move x Auto Mines and let the AI handle the details.  Little things like that would make the game more enjoyable, in my opinion.

[GDS_Starfury]

you can set that up in the ships orders.
fleet 1a goto Earth pick up 5 automines and drop off 5 automines on mars
you can just copy the order so that fleet does that job until there are no more mines to move or the order string stops.
as for terraforming use factories not ships.  they work faster and a lot less expensive.

[Jarhead0331]

Bravo Mikeck...you see...its that kind of crap that reminds me why learning how to play Aurora is one of the few things I really want to do before I die.

[OJsDad]

you can set that up in the ships orders.
fleet 1a goto Earth pick up 5 automines and drop off 5 automines on mars
you can just copy the order so that fleet does that job until there are no more mines to move or the order string stops.
as for terraforming use factories not ships.  they work faster and a lot less expensive.

I figured out the whole repeat orders thing a little bit ago.

I missed the Terraforming Installations.  I'll get those building and transport them to some planets soon.  I take it they are automated.

[GDS_Starfury]

yes.

[jejo68]

uhm no. they each require 250k of civilians. thats why I make ships with 5 terraformer modules each.

A group of 10 ships do the job fairly quickly especially as you research your terraforming rates  :)