Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

[CptJoker]

We've got a Hercules already... the Tugs are named after legendary strong-men. Hercules, Atlas, Sisyphus...

Ah, gotcha. Theseus, then? Or perhaps Orion?

[blue emu]

Ah, gotcha. Theseus, then? Or perhaps Orion?

Those sound good... we usually build six of a class, so six names should suffice, at least for now.

[hebelecan]

I had an idea, what if you design a ship of about 3.000 tons, place a FC and a single engine and fill the rest with all the box launchers it can carry. How much of these could our current carriers carry ? You could get in to the firing range of these vessels and launch them, unleash fiery hell and go back instantly. I wonder if these would improve our alpha strike.

[Count Lake]

Sarpedon has always been a name I liked for some reason. Rolls off the tongue.

[blue emu]

I had an idea, what if you design a ship of about 3.000 tons, place a FC and a single engine and fill the rest with all the box launchers it can carry. How much of these could our current carriers carry ? You could get in to the firing range of these vessels and launch them, unleash fiery hell and go back instantly. I wonder if these would improve our alpha strike.

Our Mountain class Light Carriers have 4000 tons of Hangar. Our Constellation class Fleet Carriers have 8000 tons of Hangar. Neither one divides well by 3000. Some 800-ton or 1000-ton FAC bombardment vessels might work better.

[von Sachsen]

The administrator with the highest +Mining modifier... +30%. He's an NPC, unfortunately.

A tentative design for our 20,000 ton Battlecruiser:



Seven layers of armor, eight offensive tubes with two long-range fire controls and two ECCM. Good sensors. Jump Capable.

Some tentative names: Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, Bryant.

Hector, to stay with the Trojan War theme?

[blue emu]

Hector, to stay with the Trojan War theme?

Sounds good... although I don't recall Alice Bryant taking part in the Trojan war. I must have missed that part of the saga.

We've got the best on-site Geological Survey team I've ever seen.

As a general rule, typical character skill-livels are about +10%. A skill of +15 to 20% is unusual. Only one character in a hundred will have a skill of +25 to 30%.

Our five-member Geology field team has a total skill of +311. That's an AVERAGE skill of +62.2 per member.

I'm sure you remember our major mining project on Moria in the Procyon system. After the Geology team finished there, they started checking out a few of the local moons before leaving the Procyon system. They just found a deposit of 80% ore on one of the local moons... over 41,000,000 tons of Duranium, which is the particular element that we were most concerned about.

[Calantyr]

Well there goes the resource shortage.

[blue emu]

Well there goes the resource shortage.

Once we develop it, yes. That takes a few years, though.

[GaiusC]

That's quite an impressive team indeed! And excellent job in the Procyon system.
It will take years until Earth is totally flooded by minerals, but once it begins, there's no stopping us for the next century

My best team is my diplo team, which has worked non-stop with aliens for the last 40 years, has a leader who has a +105% bonus (guy must be in his 80s now...), and total is at 285% -either because leader bonus seems to rise faster, or there were hidden replacements of deceased members that were done automatically by the game.

[blue emu]

Our first two Asteroid Mining Stations have been completed, and the Tugs are dragging them off... one to the Epsilon Eridani system, and one to the Wolf 359 system. Freighters will visit them periodically, to scoop up the processed ore.

[blue emu]

Hmmm... just found a crapload of 30-cm Plasma Carronades on El Dorado... 30 of them. We could either take them apart for tech points, or build a kick-ass jump-point defensive station with them.

[Capt. Kiwi]

So we'll have Hero class battlecruisers escorting Constellation class fleet carriers; Battle class heavy cruisers escorting Mountain class escort carriers; Attitude class light cruisers and Star class destroyers providing missile point defence; Storm class frigates providing gauss point defence; and Lizard class minelayers and Culverin(?) class bombardment ships providing special munitions.

My thoughts on that: Do we want to completely remove the jump drives from the Star class when they go into refit? The Attitude class can escort both them and the Storm class when making squadron jumps, and there's always the spare capacity of the Hero and Battle classes. That would reduce the very large overlap in roles between the Stars and Attitudes. We also might look at slightly larger tubes when refitting the Culverins, to try and have a bit more room to play with for different munitions. Size 2 seems to be the smallest useful sub-munition at our tech, and about half of a MIRV needs to be the bus, so size 8 lets us have at most two sub munitions.

Also: How do the various Admirals, Peeping Toms, Spies and Blinks fit together (and did I miss any)? The Blinks provide independent highspeed recon, as long as they don't run into FAC or fighters they can't be touched, so they're fine. But what are the individual roles of the others?

[blue emu]

So we'll have Hero class battlecruisers escorting Constellation class fleet carriers; Battle class heavy cruisers escorting Mountain class escort carriers; Attitude class light cruisers and Star class destroyers providing missile point defence; Storm class frigates providing gauss point defence; and Lizard class minelayers and Culverin(?) class bombardment ships providing special munitions.

My thoughts on that: Do we want to completely remove the jump drives from the Star class when they go into refit? The Attitude class can escort both them and the Storm class when making squadron jumps, and there's always the spare capacity of the Hero and Battle classes. That would reduce the very large overlap in roles between the Stars and Attitudes. We also might look at slightly larger tubes when refitting the Culverins, to try and have a bit more room to play with for different munitions. Size 2 seems to be the smallest useful sub-munition at our tech, and about half of a MIRV needs to be the bus, so size 8 lets us have at most two sub munitions.

Also: How do the various Admirals, Peeping Toms, Spies and Blinks fit together (and did I miss any)? The Blinks provide independent highspeed recon, as long as they don't run into FAC or fighters they can't be touched, so they're fine. But what are the individual roles of the others?

Removing the jump drives from the Stars sounds like a good plan. We could replace the tonnage with either more missiles. more armor, or gauss PD. Your other suggestion regarding upgunning the Monitor also sounds good... it`s a pity we can`t build more of them, but it`s based on a captured FC.

Admirals are for operating with the fleet... they provide backup for our Peeping Tom, which again cannot be replaced since it is built using captured components. The Spies are a bit obsolescent... I use them for flank security, to detect any possible approaching enemy force on our flanks.

[Capt. Kiwi]

Sounds good. I'd personally go with more missiles (or at least more magazine space) for the Stars, and maybe size 12 tubes for the Monitor, depending what reload times are like. The Admirals have large PD missile batteries and magazines, so at least they're doing something while providing backup. The existing Spies are probably fine for fleet flank security, even if other ships have similar capabilities.

[Count Lake]

I just hope we avoid another situation like our first Prix cleansing mission where we only had one ship capable of jumping the heavier ships out. It's your call of course but I would be more comfortable with multiple redundant ships capable of getting the fleet to safety should we require it.

[blue emu]

I just hope we avoid another situation like our first Prix cleansing mission where we only had one ship capable of jumping the heavier ships out. It's your call of course but I would be more comfortable with multiple redundant ships capable of getting the fleet to safety should we require it.

I`m planning to build four to six Heros, to jump our six Constellations.

We just lost another Scout, again in a Prix-controlled system that looked empty at first. We had all four jump points mapped and half the system geo-surveyed before the Prix revealed themselves and blasted our scout.

On the plus side... we did find out exactly which ship fires those 19-missile barrages of size-1 AMMs... it`s the Beki.

[Capt. Kiwi]

I just hope we avoid another situation like our first Prix cleansing mission where we only had one ship capable of jumping the heavier ships out. It's your call of course but I would be more comfortable with multiple redundant ships capable of getting the fleet to safety should we require it.

Even if we stripped out the jump drives from the Stars, we'd be able to lose all six Attitudes and still squadron jump, using the spare capacity of the Heroes and Battles. Squadron jumping isn't even that important, so at the end of the day as long as we have one Hero the whole fleet can flee if necessary.

[blue emu]

Sounds good. I'd personally go with more missiles (or at least more magazine space) for the Stars, and maybe size 12 tubes for the Monitor, depending what reload times are like.

Size-12`s are 90-second reload rate, so size-12 @33% are half-hour reloads. @25% would be two-and-a-half hour reloads... a bit long.

Squadron jumping isn't even that important...

... and squadron jumping OUT isn't important at all. The capability is only useful for ENTERING a hostile system.

EDIT:

Now up to 412 mines on Moria, producing 51,606 minerals per year.

[Capt. Kiwi]

Even a size 8 would be one hour forty @25%, so I suspect we're going for @33% whatever the size. Half an hour seems reasonable.

x/v1 = t
x/v2 +1800 = t
x/v2 = x/v1 - 1800
1/v2 = 1/v1 - 1800/x
v2 = 1/(1/v1 - 1800/x)

So if we're aiming for synchronisation at 90 m-km, and our slowest bus travels at 10,000 kps, the next slowest would travel at 12500 kps, which seems reasonable. The next would be 16667 kps, which might or might not be possible.