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Our first round of Survey Ship upgrades is done, and ESNS Charles Darwin (Happycat), ESNS Christiaan Huygens (Culise) and ESNS Aristarchus (Blue Emu) have all been upgraded with more powerful engines and more sensitive avionics and sensors.
From this:
Scientist class Survey Vessel 4,970 tons 108 Crew 755.5 BP TCS 99 TH 160 EM 0
1609 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-25 Shields 0-0 HTK 28 Sensors 6/6/2/2 DCR 2-4 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.30 Years MSP 390 AFR 99% IFR 1.4% 1YR 54 5YR 810 Max Repair 100 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
J5000(3-50) Military Jump Drive 1962 Max Ship Size 5000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Pulse Engine EP160.00 1963 (1) Power 160 Fuel Use 49.50% Signature 160 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,450,000 Litres Range 106.1 billion km (762 days at full power)
CIV Search Sensor AS20-R100 1955 (1) GPS 1000 Range 20.3m km Resolution 100
CIV EM Sensor EM1.0-6.0 1955 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
CIV Thermal Sensor TH1.0-6.0 1955 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
To this:
Scientist II class Survey Vessel 4,966 tons 108 Crew 782.5 BP TCS 99 TH 200 EM 0
2013 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-25 Shields 0-0 HTK 25 Sensors 8/8/2/2 DCR 2-4 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.22 Years MSP 396 AFR 99% IFR 1.4% 1YR 58 5YR 865 Max Repair 100 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
J5000(3-50) Military Jump Drive 1962 Max Ship Size 5000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Gas-Core Engine HS20 EP200.00 1967 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 49.50% Signature 200 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres Range 109.8 billion km (631 days at full power)
CIV Search Sensor AS29-R100 1967 (1) GPS 1600 Range 29.6m km Resolution 100
CIV EM Sensor EM1.0-8.0 1967 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-8.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
The other Survey Ships (Blaaat, Yvanoff) are now entering drydock to receive the same upgrades.
From this:
Scientist class Survey Vessel 4,970 tons 108 Crew 755.5 BP TCS 99 TH 160 EM 0
1609 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-25 Shields 0-0 HTK 28 Sensors 6/6/2/2 DCR 2-4 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.30 Years MSP 390 AFR 99% IFR 1.4% 1YR 54 5YR 810 Max Repair 100 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
J5000(3-50) Military Jump Drive 1962 Max Ship Size 5000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Pulse Engine EP160.00 1963 (1) Power 160 Fuel Use 49.50% Signature 160 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,450,000 Litres Range 106.1 billion km (762 days at full power)
CIV Search Sensor AS20-R100 1955 (1) GPS 1000 Range 20.3m km Resolution 100
CIV EM Sensor EM1.0-6.0 1955 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
CIV Thermal Sensor TH1.0-6.0 1955 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
To this:
Scientist II class Survey Vessel 4,966 tons 108 Crew 782.5 BP TCS 99 TH 200 EM 0
2013 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-25 Shields 0-0 HTK 25 Sensors 8/8/2/2 DCR 2-4 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.22 Years MSP 396 AFR 99% IFR 1.4% 1YR 58 5YR 865 Max Repair 100 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
J5000(3-50) Military Jump Drive 1962 Max Ship Size 5000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Gas-Core Engine HS20 EP200.00 1967 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 49.50% Signature 200 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres Range 109.8 billion km (631 days at full power)
CIV Search Sensor AS29-R100 1967 (1) GPS 1600 Range 29.6m km Resolution 100
CIV EM Sensor EM1.0-8.0 1967 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-8.0 1969 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
The other Survey Ships (Blaaat, Yvanoff) are now entering drydock to receive the same upgrades.
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There are both passive sensors and active sensors.
The bad news is that you can't "hear" anyone who is tracking you only on passives. You just have to guess.
The good news is that passive sensors cannot give you (or the opponent) a firing solution. You need to send out a RADAR "ping" with active sensors in order to lock your weapons onto a target. And people CAN hear that "ping". So we'll know JUST before they open fire.
At high tech levels, of course, you could just dump a bunch of smart ordnance into the opponent's vicinity, and let them choose targets for themselves.
We are much too low level for that sort of thing. We'll be lucky to design a weapon that works, at our tech level.
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Commander Happycat has discovered a nearly-habitable planet in Struve 2398.
A world much larger than Earth, with a surface gravity of nearly 1.8g... but it has a breathable Nitrogen / Oxygen atmosphere!
A temperature of -48 degreed C, and 85% of the planet is covered by a frozen ocean... so we might consider removing some of that water while we are warming the place up.
Commander Yvanoff in ESNS Richard Feynmann has found the new system of Ross 128... a bare red dwarf with a scattering of comets.
A world much larger than Earth, with a surface gravity of nearly 1.8g... but it has a breathable Nitrogen / Oxygen atmosphere!
A temperature of -48 degreed C, and 85% of the planet is covered by a frozen ocean... so we might consider removing some of that water while we are warming the place up.
Commander Yvanoff in ESNS Richard Feynmann has found the new system of Ross 128... a bare red dwarf with a scattering of comets.
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So essentially if they are able to pick us up without us noticing on their passives we'll have no warning until right before they decide to kill us at which point we'll have no options but a few momentary seconds to grapple with our imminent end. I'll, uh, I'll not be sharing that report with the crew. Also if we keep successfully finding things the celebratory bubble tea will just kind of be the bubble tea that we always have.
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To add on, there are two kinds of passive sensors, as well as the active sensors:
Thermal passive sensors detect heat, which in game translates specifically to the output of active engines. These let you detect ships flying around in the system, and the strength of the thermal signature is directly proportional to how powerful the engine is. However, there are some caveats to this. Engines can be designed with reduced thermal emissions outputs, making them look weaker than they are - which is of somewhat limited utility as you can see how fast the ship as a whole is moving regardless just by seeing how fast the bright hot spot moves - and more importantly, harder to detect.Unfortunately, for game design reasons, thermal passive sensors are not fine enough to parse the natural operating thermal heat of a ship against cosmic background radiation - things one would expect like onboard reactors or keeping the interior temperature nice and cozy for any living crew, assuming it isn't a Precursor unmanned robot ship or a Swarm living ship. As such, if a ship is not currently moving, it cannot be seen on thermals unless and until it fires up its engine and starts moving.
(EDIT: Correction to the above. C# Aurora does scale thermal signature to ship speed (current/max) as above, but it also models a baseline thermal output for ships. As such, even a completely stationary ship can be seen on thermal passives if it's large enough and the passive sensor is powerful enough.)
EM passive sensors detect electromagnetic radiation. In game, this translates to two primary things. The first is active sensors: if a ship turns on its active sensors, these will let you spot the incoming energy pulse before it returns to the enemy ship to be detected by their own active sensor's detectors. You'll immediately see where the ship is by how powerful its sensors are, which can give you a feel for what kind of weapons system its built around. Based on the incoming information, you can typically make an educated guess what kind of enemies the ship might have been meant to fight and how. You can also make an educated guess that they're about to shoot at you, though, so it's a bit of a "win-some-lose-some" situation. The second is shields: advanced electromagnetic fields intended to absorb incoming weaponry tend to be rather leaky on the EM spectrum by virtue of their design, so an active shield will show up on EM passives.
As an aside, both of these are useful for detecting not only ships, but planetary populations. Planetary populations give off both heat and EM radiation depending on population size and technological level - specifically, conventional (pre-Transnewtonian) versus FTL-capable/Trans-Newtonian planetary facilities. As such, while ships may be able to go silent by keeping still and keeping their active sensors and shields switched off until they're ready to fire, heavily-inhabited planets are always highly radiant.
By contrast to all of this blindly feeling your way through the dark and hoping you don't stick your hand on a sharp, rusty nail, active sensors let you just flick on a flashlight and see everything close enough for your flashlight to light up. It doesn't matter if a ship is lying doggo with its engines and sensors off, just waiting to ambush you; one flash of light will let you spot it in an instant as long as it's close enough. This lets you see just how big the other ship is, and by inference how much armament it can carry. Moreover, it gives you enough information that you can - as noted - feed the data into your firing computers and fire your own weapons. However, as you can guess from the above entry on EM passives, if you turn on a flashlight in the middle of a dark room, you might be able to see what's around you, but everything around you can see you as well. This can result in what we shall euphemistically term "very briefly entertaining" situations, in the sense of walking into a dark room and turning on that flashlight only to find the entire room is completely covered in (very startled) rats.
As well, the major failing in the flashlight analogy is that active sensors, unlike flashlights, are heavily tuned. They are designed to a specific resolution measured in tonnage, which determines how far away they can see ships (and missiles) of a specific size. If you want to see very small missiles, your active sensor cannot reach very far, but it will see anything of missile size or large through that entire range. On the flip side, designing an active sensor to see large batleships of hundreds of kilotonnes can let you spot these very far out for the same hull displacement, but will render you completely blind to anything much smaller. This trade-off means you'll typically want several designs of active sensors, designed specifically for missiles and ships close to the expected sizes you believe you might encounter - an active sensor designed to detect battleships is worse than worthless if you end up facing fighters and missiles, as it's nothing but dead weight to slow you down.
Thermal passive sensors detect heat, which in game translates specifically to the output of active engines. These let you detect ships flying around in the system, and the strength of the thermal signature is directly proportional to how powerful the engine is. However, there are some caveats to this. Engines can be designed with reduced thermal emissions outputs, making them look weaker than they are - which is of somewhat limited utility as you can see how fast the ship as a whole is moving regardless just by seeing how fast the bright hot spot moves - and more importantly, harder to detect.
(EDIT: Correction to the above. C# Aurora does scale thermal signature to ship speed (current/max) as above, but it also models a baseline thermal output for ships. As such, even a completely stationary ship can be seen on thermal passives if it's large enough and the passive sensor is powerful enough.)
EM passive sensors detect electromagnetic radiation. In game, this translates to two primary things. The first is active sensors: if a ship turns on its active sensors, these will let you spot the incoming energy pulse before it returns to the enemy ship to be detected by their own active sensor's detectors. You'll immediately see where the ship is by how powerful its sensors are, which can give you a feel for what kind of weapons system its built around. Based on the incoming information, you can typically make an educated guess what kind of enemies the ship might have been meant to fight and how. You can also make an educated guess that they're about to shoot at you, though, so it's a bit of a "win-some-lose-some" situation. The second is shields: advanced electromagnetic fields intended to absorb incoming weaponry tend to be rather leaky on the EM spectrum by virtue of their design, so an active shield will show up on EM passives.
As an aside, both of these are useful for detecting not only ships, but planetary populations. Planetary populations give off both heat and EM radiation depending on population size and technological level - specifically, conventional (pre-Transnewtonian) versus FTL-capable/Trans-Newtonian planetary facilities. As such, while ships may be able to go silent by keeping still and keeping their active sensors and shields switched off until they're ready to fire, heavily-inhabited planets are always highly radiant.
By contrast to all of this blindly feeling your way through the dark and hoping you don't stick your hand on a sharp, rusty nail, active sensors let you just flick on a flashlight and see everything close enough for your flashlight to light up. It doesn't matter if a ship is lying doggo with its engines and sensors off, just waiting to ambush you; one flash of light will let you spot it in an instant as long as it's close enough. This lets you see just how big the other ship is, and by inference how much armament it can carry. Moreover, it gives you enough information that you can - as noted - feed the data into your firing computers and fire your own weapons. However, as you can guess from the above entry on EM passives, if you turn on a flashlight in the middle of a dark room, you might be able to see what's around you, but everything around you can see you as well. This can result in what we shall euphemistically term "very briefly entertaining" situations, in the sense of walking into a dark room and turning on that flashlight only to find the entire room is completely covered in (very startled) rats.
As well, the major failing in the flashlight analogy is that active sensors, unlike flashlights, are heavily tuned. They are designed to a specific resolution measured in tonnage, which determines how far away they can see ships (and missiles) of a specific size. If you want to see very small missiles, your active sensor cannot reach very far, but it will see anything of missile size or large through that entire range. On the flip side, designing an active sensor to see large batleships of hundreds of kilotonnes can let you spot these very far out for the same hull displacement, but will render you completely blind to anything much smaller. This trade-off means you'll typically want several designs of active sensors, designed specifically for missiles and ships close to the expected sizes you believe you might encounter - an active sensor designed to detect battleships is worse than worthless if you end up facing fighters and missiles, as it's nothing but dead weight to slow you down.
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So let me get this straight. Let's say we are flying through a star system and there's a ship from another race there sitting with their engines off, no active sensors on, no shields. We fly right by them (in a cosmic scale) so they pick us up on their thermal sensors, but not their EM sensors since we aren't running our active sensors either nor do we have shields on. We don't pick them up on our passive thermal as they are sitting still. At this point they decide to follow us and turn their engines on. Once they enter our thermal sensor range, we would pick up their thermal signature and from the size of that signature and the speed of the craft, we could make some assumptions about it. As it closes, it turns on its active sensors. At this point our EM passive sensors light up when the active sensor pings us. From the EM signature we might be able to tell that the active sensors are tuned to look for smaller objects like fighters or missiles suggesting this is some sort of point defense craft. Finally we turn on our own active sensors. Their EM passive sensors light up when we ping them and we can see how big their ship actually is assuming our active sensors are tuned to detect that size of ship or smaller. From there, if we had weapons, we could get a firing solution and open fire on them if we thought they were going to attack and they could do the same as they pinged us with their active sensor. Is that all right?
Edit: okay just saw the edit about thermals, so we could maybe see the stationary ship if it was big enough, but if this was just some small scout or patrol boat sitting still then we could fly right by it and not notice.
Edit: okay just saw the edit about thermals, so we could maybe see the stationary ship if it was big enough, but if this was just some small scout or patrol boat sitting still then we could fly right by it and not notice.
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Correct!
This is why even our un-armed Civilian ships like freighters still carry some EM, some Thermal and some Active Sensors. just weak ones, because powerful sensors are Military components (and you can't put them on a Civilian ship).
So what do you think of Aurora? For a one-man basement project, it's pretty well developed.
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That all makes sense. Just two follow ups if you don't mind.
The first is military related. Can ships share active sensor information? For example, could we theoretically have a command ship just loaded with very powerful active sensors along with a bunch of missile cruisers it feeds those firing solutions to so that they could launch their missiles at targets further away? I get that there might be reasons that isn't a great strategy but I'm just curious if something like it is possible.
Second is related to us maybe being watched. So if another race is watching one of our survey ships it means it either has a passive thermal sensor powerful enough to watch us move to multiple different places as it sits in one spot or it has a passive thermal with a long enough range that even if it has to move to watch us it can stay far enough away that our passive thermals will never pick it up? I'm assuming turning on our actives without provocation would be a bad idea if someone was actually following us as the AI would interpret it as threatening.
It's a very impressive game. It seems like they put quite a bit of effort in making it reasonably realistic. Maybe one day I'll put aside the time to fully learn it.
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Yes, exactly.
Both detection information and targeting information can be shared between friendly ships in the same system. You still need an appropriate fire control computer on each ship that wants to fire. Ie: you need a detection, a hard RADAR lock on your target (both of which can be supplied by a friendly ship, yes) AND each ship that wants to fire needs an on-board fire control computer that can hit a target of that size, at that distance.
In my own games (including later on in THIS game) I always design a line of AWACS vessels... Battle Management Vessels... whose job it is to carry only over-sized sensor suites of all types, EM, Thermal, Active, including two or three seperate active sensors, each tuned to a different band (ie: one sensitive to missiles, one to Fighters, and one to ship-sized targets). Since it also carries large Passive arrays, it can spot the opponents at long range. With an AWACS in the force, my other ships only need to carry small sensors, for backup in case we lose our AWACS.
My own theory was that if those turn-interrupts are indeed caused by aliens tracking our movements, it is probably just a DSTS (Deep Space Tracking System) watching us from a planet. DSTS are big Passives, both EM and Thermal sensitive.
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Oooops.
Commander Happycat is the first person to encounter Aliens!
I suggest a rapid withdrawal. We should leave (if they allow it).
If this is the Precursors, then it won't matter what we decide to do... Commander Happycat is doomed.
If this is NOT the Precursors, then this is likely to be their home system, given the habitable planet. So we should LEAVE as quickly as possible, and send a Diplomatic vessel instead. Diplomatic vessels do not raise inter-species tension by being in your star system. Other vessels (including Scouts) do raise the tension.
Commander Happycat is the first person to encounter Aliens!
I suggest a rapid withdrawal. We should leave (if they allow it).
If this is the Precursors, then it won't matter what we decide to do... Commander Happycat is doomed.
If this is NOT the Precursors, then this is likely to be their home system, given the habitable planet. So we should LEAVE as quickly as possible, and send a Diplomatic vessel instead. Diplomatic vessels do not raise inter-species tension by being in your star system. Other vessels (including Scouts) do raise the tension.
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Well I feel like I foreshadowed this a while ago with saying hopefully I can name the species before it kills me. I suggest an orderly but expeditious retreat.
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This is my own feeling, yes.
Look at it as if it were a real-life situation:
On first contact with a previously unknown race, your first and most important task is to get the word out... to alert Earth to their presence. In-game, of course, we already know... but role-play almost demands that you head back to a Sol jump point, where you can transmit your recording to Fleet HQ.
Sure, it would be nice to buzz their home-world before you leave... you carry a full scout's sensor suite, and we could learn a lot in one pass.
... but it might piss them off, and you might get shot at.
It's not the thought of losing a Scout ship that deters me... Scouts are attrition units. You lose some. I'm deterred by the rationale that we are currently AT PEACE with these guys, and if we do something dumb we might end up AT WAR. That's far more significant than the loss of a Scout ship.
Especially when we have no warships built, or even designed.
So... what would you like to name them?
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I feel it only appropriate to pay homage to my scientific luminary and call them the Galapagoans after Darwin's experiences with the isolated animals of the Galapagos. Hopefully they like the name and don't start shooting.
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Also am I reading things right that their ship can move at least 7754 km/s while we can only move 2013 km/s per the stat block of our new science ships?
Galapogoans it is.
Uh-oh... They didn't like it.
Everybody has flipped on their active sensors (that's the GPS line).
These dudes are really starting to look like Precursors.
Uh-oh... They didn't like it.
Everybody has flipped on their active sensors (that's the GPS line).
These dudes are really starting to look like Precursors.
Correct. These guys are way, way ahead of us in tech.
Commander Happycat is running for the jump point, but the nearest ship is only 20-odd m-km behind him, and moving nearly four times as fast.
They will easily run him down before he reaches the jump point out.
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Hmmm... they are headed away from Commander Happycat's ship.
I see two possibilities:
1) They are Precursors or hostile aliens, and have fired missiles at us and are now standing off while the missiles run in to hit us. Our civilian-grade sensors don't have a hope of seeing missiles from 20 m-km away. They would be invisible to us at this range.
2) They are friendly aliens and have only turned on their sensors in order to keep track of us... we ARE in their home system, after all. The ship is retreating because it doesn't want to appear threatening.
It's not possible to decide which one is true. We just keep withdrawing and wait to see if they let us go or if missiles are already en route.
I see two possibilities:
1) They are Precursors or hostile aliens, and have fired missiles at us and are now standing off while the missiles run in to hit us. Our civilian-grade sensors don't have a hope of seeing missiles from 20 m-km away. They would be invisible to us at this range.
2) They are friendly aliens and have only turned on their sensors in order to keep track of us... we ARE in their home system, after all. The ship is retreating because it doesn't want to appear threatening.
It's not possible to decide which one is true. We just keep withdrawing and wait to see if they let us go or if missiles are already en route.
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(27 minutes later)
Still alive. If missiles are on the way, they're taking their time about it.
25 million km (being generous) in 27 minutes is about a million km per minute, which is 16-to-17 thousand km per second.
I would expect Precursor anti-ship missiles to be significantly faster than that. Their AMMs (anti-missiles) are about 65,000 kps.
Still alive. If missiles are on the way, they're taking their time about it.
25 million km (being generous) in 27 minutes is about a million km per minute, which is 16-to-17 thousand km per second.
I would expect Precursor anti-ship missiles to be significantly faster than that. Their AMMs (anti-missiles) are about 65,000 kps.
It's been about an hour. There's no way that their missiles are this slow to run out to range. Apparently, they haven't fired yet.
Hopefully... they won't.
Hopefully... they won't.