It's December 1962, and much progress has been made. We have a colony in Wolf 1061, millions on Luna, and have just had first contact with an alien species. They appear friendly, as they're transmitting instead of shooting.
Database can be found here.
Comments
Sorry I missed today's meetup. But some general thoughts from looking at the download:
Annoying that we made first contact with a ship that has no sensors whatsoever, so that we don't have any signature data on who we are talking to. Definitely keep talking, and do we want to have some sort of first-contact optimized exploratory vessel that we can send in to take over for situations like this? I'm thinking decent passive EM and thermal sensors and maybe a diplomacy module.
In hindsight, I should have asked fro at least a minimal EM sensor on all the survey ships so we'd be able to see the planetary civilization when we enter the system.
In case talking doesn't work, might be time to beef up the fleet. Perhaps a couple of Epees to provide long-range sensor support for the Poignards. If we want a beam-fighting option, the combination of a Clemenceau and a Jeanne d'Arc looks pretty good.
We'll probably also want to start missile production; we have I think only one full load for each of our ships.
And looking at defense strategy with our existing fleet, consider this little toy:
Narval class Replenishment Ship 8,000 tons 173 Crew 699.2 BP TCS 160 TH 200 EM 0 1250 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-35 Shields 0-0 HTK 37 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 3 PPV 0 Maint Life 1.25 Years MSP 163 AFR 171% FR 2.4% 1YR 109 5YR 1,640 Max Repair 128 MSP Magazine 816
Capitaine de frégate Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Morale Check Required
J8000(3-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 8000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Pulse Engine EP200.00 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 63.25% Signature 200 Explosion 10% Fuel Capacity 753,000 Litres Range 26.8 billion km Refuelling Capability: 50,000 litres per hour
Ordnance Transfer Rate: 40 MSP per hour
A jump-capable tender that can sit at e.g. the Sol-Groombridge jump point, sized for one full refuel/rearm of four Poignard missile frigates. Presuming our Poignards are at least a little bit faster than the enemy, this should allow us to respond to an intrusion into e.g the L145-141 system by sortieing Poignards for a quick dash to the Groombridge-L145 jump point, being shepherded through to Groombridge by the Narwhal's jump drive if we have't stabilized the jump points yet. This gives an ambush as the enemy enters Groombridge system, followed by retreat to Sol, refueling and rearming from the tender at the jump point, second ambush as the enemy jumps into Sol, then retreat to the homeworld for the final defense.
Expands our defense perimeter by one system using our existing short-ranged ships, and allows semi-expendible missile frigates to get in two jump point ambushes before they have to deal with a fair fight.
Economic thoughts: The Wolf 1061 colony should retire any concerns we have regarding Corundium access. The next minerals on the worry list are Boronide and Mercassium, and I don't see any good planetary sources for those. Might be worth investing in orbital mining so we can suck small moons, asteroids, and comets dry while looking for something better.
On the other hand, there is that habitable planet in Gliese 892. I see you've already got a geo survey ship headed that way; will be interesting to see what it finds.
There's one problem with that plan. The Poignards are fitted with box launchers, which have to be reloaded at a planet. But otherwise that makes a lot of sense. Might be worth splitting the scout role into a diplomacy-module carrier (those are pretty big) and a regular passive scout for fleet work.
Crap, I'd forgotten about that restriction on box launchers. Good catch. I think you can also rearm box launchers in hangars, but that would make for a much bigger and more expensive tender. And without being able to rearm, the forward-tender strategy doesn't make nearly as much sense. And there's no good place to put a fleet base in Groombridge 34 or L 145-41. So, if the aliens go from talking to shooting, the plan will have to be to ambush them at the jump point into Sol system, then run home to reload for the open-space fight.
Here's a minimal jump-capable scout; good for a quick dash out to systems 3-4 jumps from Sol to look over any potential threats, good for shadowing any threats that decide to move Earthward, and capable of providing long-range sensor support to the Poignards in a fight. And hopefully fast enough to avoid being forced into a fight.
Saphir class Scout (P) 3,000 tons 73 Crew 261.7 BP TCS 60 TH 200 EM 0 3334 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-18 Shields 0-0 HTK 23 Sensors 5/5/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0 Maint Life 2.91 Years MSP 214 AFR 72% IFR 1.0% 1YR 37 5YR 561 Max Repair 100 MSP Capitaine de frégate Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
J3000(3-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 3000 tons
Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Nuclear Pulse Engine EP200.00 (1) Power 200 Fuel Use 63.25% Signature 200 Explosion 10% Fuel Capacity 355,000 Litres Range 33.7 billion km (116 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor AS26-R100 (1) GPS 2000 Range 26.2m km Resolution 100 Thermal Sensor TH1.0-5.0 (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 17.7m km EM Sensor EM1.0-5.0 (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 00: 17.7m km
Scout makes sense, and I'll order up a few. Unfortunately, I did a quick sketch, and the diplomacy module is big enough to make the design rather difficult. Of course, commercial jump drives are cheap, so it's not the end of the world.
Well either the latest version of WINE or Aurora 1.12 has broken something, because it's stopped working out-of-the-box on my machine.
Maybe try the Aurora forums. They're usually pretty helpful, although I run Windows and don't have this problem.
You could try Proton, especially the Golden Eggroll builds, too. I haven't tried it with Aurora specifically but it's working quite well for me with a number of other games.