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

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The fleet has fought very long engagements though. We expended thousands of missiles taking El Dorado, including multiple rounds of special purpose missiles. Using reduced size, rather than boxes, for non-hangar ships gives us the ability to reload if necessary, or even to pull off tricks like following up a slow round with a fast to have them synchronise arrival.

We could theoretically do what you suggest anyway, but multi purpose ships aren't always great at any one thing. Bombardment in particular requires massively long ranged FCs.
 
Yes, my philosophy for fleet organization is to keep a "core" of multi-role vessels, and add specialized vessels for those roles that are not economic for a multi-role ship to perform... such as intermediate point defense, anti-Fighter and anti-FAC defense, recon, and planetary bombardment.
 
Ohh, any chance one of those PD ships would need a captain?
 
Forgiven said:
Ohh, any chance one of those PD ships would need a captain?
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We've actually got LOTS of armed vessels available now. I built fifteen FACs (Fast Attack Craft), each armed with eight size-4 missile tubes (a Light Cruiser only has four). I will no doubt be building at least ten more. We have four Gauss PD vessels under construction, and at least two more planned, possibly four.
 
Boris ze Spider said:
I would like one of the FACs, if possible.
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Sure. At the moment, they are based in PDCs protecting the colonies... but as soon as we have developed Box Launchers (about a year from now), I will be designing a FAC Carrier to operate with the Fleet. With the Box Launcher tech, I expect to double (!) the number of tubes on the FACs from eight each to sixteen each... that, or move up to a larger missile, such as size-6 or size-8.
 
Mattabesta said:
AM I getting a new scout ship with the overhaul of the fleet?
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You already have one... the ESNS Russel (he was an astro-physicist, of Hertzsprung-Russel fame). You can have a FAC or a Gauss PD vessel instead, if you would prefer something with weapons.
 
It appears that we've reached a turning-point in my campaign to expand our mineral resources. Our stocks of minerals on Earth are rising, despite the fact that I have twelve ships under construction and am building missiles, automated mines and labs as fast as possible.

EDIT: Boris ze Spider is promoted to Captain and placed in command of Wasp-X FAC #3. Captain Count Lake II commands #1, and Captain Stamasd commands #2. Still 12 more to distribute.
 
blue emu said:
It appears that we've reached a turning-point in my campaign to expand our mineral resources. Our stocks of minerals on Earth are rising, despite the fact that I have twelve ships under construction and am building missiles, automated mines and labs as fast as possible.

EDIT: Boris ze Spider is promoted to Captain and placed in command of Wasp-X FAC #3. Captain Count Lake II commands #1, and Captain Stamasd commands #2. Still 12 more to distribute.
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So, can you build more factories, frieghters, and general infrastructure? We have lots and lots of potential colonies popping up, and we should expand them. Which would increase trade, and thus our income. Also take into account the general boost in both resource harvesting and plain resources provided by ElDorado. This one time increase should be seen separatly from our resource base.
 
blue emu said:
It appears that we've reached a turning-point in my campaign to expand our mineral resources. Our stocks of minerals on Earth are rising, despite the fact that I have twelve ships under construction and am building missiles, automated mines and labs as fast as possible.
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All resources? even duranium and corundium?
 
Iche_Bins said:
All resources? even duranium and corundium?
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Duranium and Corundium are my two scarcest resources at the moment, because of all the mines I've been building... but I have more of them now than I did a couple of months ago, despite continued construction.

A major player in our resource campaign is an uninhabitable world in the Procyon system, only one jump from Earth. It has every single mineral, in concentrations ranging up to 90% and in quantities ranging up to 37,000,000 tons. I've been dumping hundreds of automated mines on it, and have devoted one freighter to doing nothing but going to that planet, loading all available minerals, returning to Earth and unloading, refueling, and repeating the cycle endlessly.
 
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blue emu said:
Duranium and Corundium are my two scarcest resources at the moment, because of all the mines I've been building... but I have more of htem now than I did a couple of months ago, despite continued construction.

A major player in our resource campaign is an uninhabitable world in the Procyon system, only one jump from Earth. It has every single mineral, in concentrations ranging up to 90% and in quantities ranging up to 37,000,000 tons. I've been dumping hundreds of automated mines on it, and have devoted one freighter to doing nothing but going to that planet, loading all available minerals, returning to Earth and unloading, refueling, and repeating the cycle endlessly.
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Shoudn't this freighter ship a mine, and return with output? Sounds more efficient. Or am I wrong in assuming that you didn't do this.
 
I read one of Steve's campaigns on the Aurora forum in which he used a FAC with reduced thermal engines very successfully for scouting -- perhaps we should design something like this with decent sensors and a very low thermal signature that we could sneak into a few of those Prix systems to look around without getting popped.
 
Quift said:
Shoudn't this freighter ship a mine, and return with output? Sounds more efficient. Or am I wrong in assuming that you didn't do this.
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I did that at first... but I'm not building just automated mines, I'm building labs and other things as well, and every time Earth runs out of mines to ship, my Freighter would hit a "cannot load automated mine" error and come off auto-repeat, and I wound have to enter all the instructions again. It was simpler (for the player) to seperate the two functions.

trajan said:
I read one of Steve's campaigns on the Aurora forum in which he used a FAC with reduced thermal engines very successfully for scouting -- perhaps we should design something like this with decent sensors and a very low thermal signature that we could sneak into a few of those Prix systems to look around without getting popped.
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We could do that, yes. At our tech level, it would have to be a compromise design between speed, sensor capability and cruising range, though. Perhaps it should wait until we have the next level (-70%) of thermal suppression.
 
:mad: Dang Robots destroyed one of the Maintenance Facilities that I'd dug up on El Dorado. Counter-attacking now.
 
blue emu said:
We could do that, yes. At our tech level, it would have to be a compromise design between speed, sensor capability and cruising range, though. Perhaps it should wait until we have the next level (-70%) of thermal suppression.
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Sounds like a good plan. We don't really need it until we're ready to collect more information prior to fleet action in the system so it doesn't sound like we're in a rush. And FAC don't take long to design/build anyway.
 
blue emu said:
Another Prix spotted, at Kapteyn's Star. Curiously, it is located at a planet and has a Thermal of 1. A PDC, perhaps? Let's see if the scout can escape.
Yes, our scout got away. There was no pursuit. Curious... it must have been a Prix planetary base of some sort, but it never fired on me. An unarmed storehouse for missiles, perhaps?
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I think there's an even more obvious explanation.


blue emu said:
Other minerals are still in short supply, however. The 15,000 tons of Duranium is particularly worrying, since Duranium is used for nearly everything.
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Damned, that's highly worrying. We'd better not lose more ships in battle... And we should find a nice deposit of 0.8 or higher Duranium in the solar system or a neighbouring one :eek: Still, I'd be worried as soon as the Duranium reserves go below 50.000 tons...


blue emu said:
(only 0.08 is needed to make the atmosphere fully breathable, as long as enough other gasses are present to dilute the Oxygen concentration to no more than 25% of the total).
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Did you modify the "habitable" requirements at the start of the game? Usually, Oxygen pressure should be between 0.1 and 0.3.


blue emu said:
Now that we have six (!) deep space tracking stations on El Dorado, I can see a long way past those two Prix ships. I was thinking of sending the fleet, split into two groups, and having one circle around behind them with their active sensors off... then charge them from both sides at once.
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Sounds like a good way. If El Dorado's sensors can spot hundreds of millions of km beyond the Prix, we'll know where they are even if a first attempt fails. And if a 2-sided attack fails, time for a 3-sided one.


trajan said:
I read one of Steve's campaigns on the Aurora forum in which he used a FAC with reduced thermal engines very successfully for scouting -- perhaps we should design something like this with decent sensors and a very low thermal signature that we could sneak into a few of those Prix systems to look around without getting popped.
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Great idea. I should try this in my campaign. I'm tired of finding Precursors and of having my fleets destroyed when I try to take them on because I underestimated their strength :D
 
How survivable are those FAC? If we were to end up in another large scale engagement how much of a beating would they handle before popping?

I think I'd want to go with a Gauss PD vessel if anything. I'm all about purpose built point defense.
 
joebthegreat said:
How survivable are those FAC? If we were to end up in another large scale engagement how much of a beating would they handle before popping?
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FAC pop like soap bubbles. They're only 1000 tons or less... like a heavy Fighter. You really can't put point defense or armor on them (at our tech level) if you want them to be useful for anything else.
 
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