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Destroid

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Man you use big designs... my fleet composition is 6000ton missile ships with 9000ton command ships (with size 5 ASM and size 1 AMM).

Dart PD-AMM Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (228) Speed: 12,000 km/s End: 3.6m Range: 2.6m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 76 / 45 / 22

Those guys have pretty bad hit chances, you want to up their speed to more like 20,000m/s. Cut the fuel (and some agility if you have to) to get them faster, as it is your ASMs are better interceptors than your AMMs!
 

juggernaut

Educated
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Australia
Pretty interesting stuff Garfunkel, thanks for doing this LP! :salute:

might get around to playing this one day, but for now I'm content to watch ;)
 

Destroid

Arcane
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The UI is actually no-where near as bad as it looks/sounds and is quite quick to navigate when you get the hang of it. Being able to have all the windows open at the same time is also handy (this is one game where having multiple monitors would be good).
 

Cassidy

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
7,922
Location
Vault City
Destroid said:
The UI is actually no-where near as bad as it looks/sounds and is quite quick to navigate when you get the hang of it. Being able to have all the windows open at the same time is also handy (this is one game where having multiple monitors supporting at least 1024 px vertical resolution would be good).

Fixed.
 

Destroid

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Having a proper battle now... the automation is pretty good in this. The ships are able to automatically load the correct missiles, assign the correct launchers to fire controls and when set to autofire in combat they know which launchers are point defence. This might not work so well if you design more crossover type systems, but it's pretty damn good so far.
 

baronjohn

Cipher
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
2,383
Location
USA
You should save your screenshots as pngs not jpgs. pngs are lossless and will be smaller.
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
Seems like your expansion in the solar system is going smoothly. How do you intercept all those tonnes of mineral packages that your mass drivers shoot towards earth though? Freighters automatically do so or something?
 

Zdzisiu

Arcane
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
3,489
Nope, you just build one mass driver on Earth, you need just one to catch as many packets as you like.
 

Topher

Cipher
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
1,860
Quick question, that I didn't see answered on the wiki or on the official forums. How do you set your survey team to actually survey? Planning to survey earth I built a five-man military team like you did in the first update but I don't know how to actually assign them to a task, do I even need to, or will they simply survey on their own, and if so how?
 

Zdzisiu

Arcane
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
3,489
You don't need to do anything, just assign a team and they will work on their own.

And of course they need to be on a given planet to be able to survey it.
 

Topher

Cipher
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Messages
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Zdzisiu said:
You don't need to do anything, just assign a team and they will work on their own.

And of course they need to be on a given planet to be able to survey it.

I don't have the game open right now but how do I assign them a to planet? Should I even be trying to assign my first survey team to Earth during a conventional start?
 

GarfunkeL

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Yes, you should survey everything that has TN minerals. F2, click on planet/moon on the list and the "leaders / teams", select "geology" from the drop-down list, check boxes on the five people you want in the team and click "create team". After that they work independently. The higher their rating, the better the chance they find stuff without ending the survey - so you might want to save surveying Earth until you have a team with a good rating (140+).

If two mineral packets hit a planet at the same time (I think inside an hour) and there is only one mass driver available, the other one will crash and burn - so while the chance for that is extremely minuscule, it's better to keep two mass drivers on Earth. I haven't tested this myself, just read it on their forums.

Destroid, I know the Dart is a bit sucky but the Gen1 ships shouldn't face combat - hopefully! I'm researching Gen2/Gen3 and then designing some better ships.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
I had an identical question when I first trying out the game a week or so ago.

When you create the team, they should be listed as being on the planet where you created them and begin surveying immediately. An alternative to actually shipping the team around to different planets/etc is to simply disband and reform the team where you want them to survey.

As far as when to survey Earth, it depends on your situation in game at the time. As better teams find more minerals and you're only given one chance to survey, it's generally better to wait until you've got a pretty good team going before surveying earth.
 

GarfunkeL

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Year 2023

11th January

I designed our first orbital habitat:

Skylab class OH said:
Skylab class Orbital Habitat 419,500 tons 4026 Crew 7359.2 BP TCS 8390 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-499 Shields 0-0 Sensors 5/6/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 2011 MSP Max Repair 200 MSP
Cargo 10000 Habitation Capacity 50,000
Maintenance Modules: 30 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 6000 tons

Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range N/A

CIWS-80 (6x2) Range 1000 km TS: 8000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 5m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes

So it can be built by construction factories instead of needing a giant shipyard. As you can see, it can carry plenty of supplies, fuel and has the capability of doing maintenance work on military vessels, though only up to 6k tons. It even has sensors so it can be aware of its surroundings and six CIWS-80 systems for last-minute self-defence. I'll only build a single, experimental one and tow it to Jupiter - so the soon-to-be-designed Sorium harvesters can use it as a base.

Ah, a database error that requires a reboot of my laptop to continue. Okay...
 

GarfunkeL

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Year 2023

16th January

UAC expands to 8 complexes.

6th February

Retooling for Galleon class is ready at Marrick & Towne SY, so three hulls are laid down to become our colony ships: Commerce de Marseilles, Imperial and Majesteau.

16th February

Earth now has 5 Military Academies qualified and on-line.

6th April

Begum Shipping Corporation has just gone public, starting a competition with Henry Marine.

29th April

Two more Titans joined Cargo TG #2, doubling its size.

10th May

Two more Corellians joined Cargo TG #1, bringing it to 16 ships.

15th May

Weyland-Yutani expanded to 6 complexes.

25th May

Our first orbital station is finished and up on orbit! OH Skylab class station "Kingcomrade" is sitting above the skies of Earth and watching Codexia:

DeathStarUSA.jpg


11th June

Weyland-Yutani expands to 7! Only one behind UAC!

11th August

And Weyland-Yutani catches up with UAC - both now have 8 mining complexes on their respective asteroids. Boeles SY starts retooling for CG Venators.

26th August

1st Assault Division "The Big Red One" was moved from Earth to Mars.

1st September

Weyland-Yutani expands to 9 complexes.

21st November

Weyland-Yutani expands to 10 complexes.

26th November

The first four FFG Vibre's were built and assigned to FFG TG #1, with orders to fly silent out to Pluto, turn their active sensors on and then fly noisily back to Earth for repair&refit - a shake-down cruise and also an opportunity to gauge their sensor ranges in action.

y3CFy.jpg


And there they go!

And on their way back I once again realized that 1.8m km is a laughable distance. Our technological level sucks.

29th December

Weyland-Yutani expands again!

****
That's it for 2023, thanks for reading!
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
Patron
Joined
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DiNMRK
That stars and stripes Derpstar has to be one of the most frightening things I've seen in a long while.
 

Cassidy

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2007
Messages
7,922
Location
Vault City
If you're willing to invest on 56 terraforming installations and enough infrastructure for 25 million inhabitants, and of course, if you disable all other civilian sectors besides terraforming in Mars, you can make Mars have a pleasant ~15º C surface temperature and breathable atmosphere in around 12-18 years.

Titan and Mercury are tough, but not impossible or too unpractically long to terraform like Venus. Mercury can be done by just filling it with some water(I'm not sure if adding water to the atmosphere of planets lacking in frozen or liquid sources of it works to create a hydrosphere once it gets cool or warm enough for liquid water though), then enough anti-greenhouse gas to lower its temperature*, and at least 0.1 atm of oxygen, obviously.

Titan is trickier because you'll have to replace most of its thick existing atmosphere with greenhouse gasses for obvious reasons instead of just adding more, and of course, remove all the methane in it. But it shouldn't take more than some decades if you want to focus on it.

* I didn't do the math if lowering it far enough before reaching past 4 atm is feasible, but I presume it is from how much Carbon Dioxide Mars took for the opposite.

And if you do a GM'ed offshoot of mankind for much lower gravities, which is a heavy investment in biology research(but in this first game I tried one of the first scientists had a 40% bonus in that field, so why not?), it is possible to even inhabit Luna and other sattelites.

I just like the idea of concentrated, widely developed intrasystem infrastructure and development being prioritized over spreading out too quickly into an interstellar empire. Because that is how it happens in 99% of SciFi and Space Opera fluff.

:M
 

GarfunkeL

Racism Expert
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On one hand I'd like to keep Codexia going, at least until meeting some aliens but on the other hand I'm itching to update to 5.51 which would mean that I lose the current database.

I'm thinking that the LP did it's purpose already - exposing the game and showing the first ropes and writing down notes and taking screenshots is slowing down my playing :D

Cassidy, yeah, terraforming Mars isn't difficult at all - improve the technology once or twice, send 40 installations over and enough people to man them - vóila. There's a good post on their forums which has the math in it for terraforming Mercury, Venus, Mars and Titan - math which one could extrapolate for other systems.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Titan's actually impossible to terraform to the point where standard humans can inhabit it, at least that's what I recall from what I read when I was digging for info about terraforming. The problem is its low base temperature combined with the hard cap on the warming effect of greenhouse gases (3.0 max multiplier and 76.6K base temp combine for a 230K surface temperature when complete, leaving you at -43.1C max). This could be worked around if adding water to the atmosphere could eventually create a hydrosphere and thus add to the albedo multiplier, but that is, sadly, impossible.

I'm also leaning towards relying solely on ship based terraforming as even a moderately high colony cost makes infrastructure a pain in the ass to ship. Titan is currently at 1.25million people and only two of the five terraforming stations are functional (250k workers *each*). Ship based terraforming completely bypasses that demand and allows you to either leave it uninhabited until it gets closer to optimal, or put your colonists to work doing something a bit more productive (Working the old manned mines from your now resourceless homeworld, for instance).

Think I had some other points to make, but I got distracted and began toying around with the idea of fighters as an effective anti-missile tool.
 

GarfunkeL

Racism Expert
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Ok, so I updated the game to 5.52 which meant that I had to start a new game. I'm not going to keep updating this LP month-by-month, year-by-year basis but rather just highlight interesting stuff as it happens.

Current galactic map for humanity

aGYf3.jpg


There are still 2 unexplored jump points in the Sol system. Still, we've found a bunch of worlds that could be terraformed fairly easily, so I have terraforming ships being built. Mars has already been terraformed to ideal - it's little bit colder than Earth but otherwise perfect for humanity. Now all the infrastructure and terraformers are being shipped to Mercury.

Anyway, two interesting things were found already:

This is Gliese 832 system:

E35Pk.jpg


Stable Wormhole!

I am unable to enter it and so far nothing has come through. As soon as my fleet strength allows me, I'll need to picket it. Also, people who know what that really means, please don't spoil it for others.

Then the other thing. This is Lacaille 8760 system:

y4dOj.jpg


I encountered aliens for the first time when my Jumper Alpha squadron jumped into the system. My gravity and geological survey ships were sent on their merry way, while the jump scout remained on the JP, active sensors on. Couple of days later, an unknown alien ship was spotted, coming towards my JSC at the velocity of 8000 km/s - which is much better than what my ships are capable of at the moment. I immediately hailed, put a diplomacy team on to try to crack their language. JSC Tycho Brace, a Copernicus class vessel, was armed with both AMM and a railgun but I didn't want to start a interstellar shooting war. I should have known better when the alien ship kept coming closer and closer - the bastards rammed my ship! Both ships exploded, leaving my survey ships stranded in the system. If we want to find something positive about this, it's that the Lacaille aliens aren't that advanced - their ship crumpled and blew up just like mine, so they don't have hyper-shield or super-armour.

Anyway, I'm building more JSCs but unfortunately they can only create a jump gate for ships up to 7,500 tons - my corvettes and fleet scouts could go through but my missile frigates would be left behind. OTOH, I don't want to build a permanent jump gate since that would give the aliens a quick and easy way back to Sol. So I designed a new warship:

Hood class DD said:
Hood class Destroyer 7,200 tons 561 Crew 780.6 BP TCS 144 TH 400 EM 0
2777 km/s Armour 4-33 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/6/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 16
Maint Life 3.89 Years MSP 271 AFR 103% IFR 1.4% 1YR 28 5YR 425 Max Repair 40 MSP
Magazine 656

Nuclear Pulse Engine E7 Military (10) Power 40 Fuel Use 70% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres Range 53.6 billion km (223 days at full power)

SM-L/8 Missile Launcher (2) Missile Size 8 Rate of Fire 120
Marksman Missile Fire Control FC64-R100 (1) Range 64.8m km Resolution 100
SS-N-2/8 Missile (82) Speed: 11,000 km/s End: 63.3m Range: 41.8m km WH: 9 Size: 8 TH: 84 / 50 / 25

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Hood, coupled with the fleet scouts which have giant sensors and the corvettes for defence, should hopefully be enough to put this alien race back to its place. Two shipyards are retooling for Hood and after that is finished, I can build six of them simultaneously.
 

GarfunkeL

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In this case, the red circle means that the system has not been fully surveyed for jump points. Orange (magenta) means that a survey has been completed but there are unexplored jump points. The percentage tells us how the geological survey is going.
 

GarfunkeL

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25th April 2034 - 13:41

The bastards came to Sol. A single ship, designated Mutsu 003, just jumped through JP2 from Lacaille 8760 into Sol system. RED ALERT! DEFCON 1!

Luckily half of my Fleet was just outside of Mars orbit on training exercise. Unluckily they are low on fuel and will need to visit Earth to refuel - which will take at least 22 hours. Super-duper unluckily, all of my FFGs are at the docks, being overhauled.

Situation at the moment:

yEsKK.jpg


***
20 minutes later - 14:01

Mutsu 003 turned tail, took a heading towards outer system and accelerated up to 7999 km/sec. It won't b able to hide though, I have enough tracking stations on Earth and various other bodies that nothing can hide in Sol.
 

GarfunkeL

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27th April 2034 - 05:30

Mutsu 003 is holding position behind JP2. Apparently the alien craft has no sensors strong enough to see my ships from that distance - as it is 381.1m km from nearest ships. Luckily my passive tracking stations have no problem observing Mutsu 003. FFGs, my primary shipkillers, are still being overhauled so I decided to gamble a risk and send my eight corvettes out, supported by the two fleet scouts with their large active sensors.

****
28th April 2034 - 07:30

Mutsu 003 took a flying leap and accelerated up to 8000km/sec, heading towards... "south-east", maybe aiming for JP3 or JP4 but the course doesn't look good. Its heading is 120, while my corvettes would be on a heading of 75 or so. Curious.

****
11:30

I assign the corvettes to move to Waypoint 1, instead of heading straight to JP2. If Mutsu 003 keeps its current speed and heading, WP1 offers a better possibility of interception. I'm a little wary though - it's 6000 ton ship, with a thermal signature of 960 - in comparison, my corvettes are 5000 tons and their thermal signature is only 240. Of course, it's probably engines. Mutsu 003 moves at 8000km/sec, while my corvettes can only squeeze out 2400km/sec.

****
Situation at 30th April 2034 - 00:30

TFFck.jpg


If Mutsu003 is dedicated on flying outside the system, I won't catch it.
 

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