Capital negligence. Tug of war. Pod people. Will this work?

[Iranon]

New player here.  I'm still getting a little overwhelmed, but having a great time regardless.  Maybe some of the veterans around could tell me if this has any merit.
No self-powered warships above 500t.  Instead:

1.  Long-endurance fighters, with deployment times above 6 months.  High percentage of unarmed variants to let them operate independent of larger ships: Various sensors, Refuelling, possibly Maintenance and Boarding.
These won't try to be performance wonders, but to replace a small number of much larger ships. . .  with advantages in redundancy and sensor footprint.

2.  Tugboats.  Mostly commercial, maybe the occasional high-power variant.  The former will include basic sensors.

3.  Bases/Pods.  No engines, generous deployment times, doing one thing and one thing well.

Command: enough active sensors to light up a system.
Recon: largest amount of passive sensors crammed into the smallest hull, with no engine to give it away.  Sneaky.
Weapons: in both missile and gun versions, with supporting equipment.
Fuel, Arsenal, Maintenance pods.  The boring stuff.
Hangar: To support the otherwise independent fighter swarms, maybe also to field more stressed fighter designs.

Sizes will be standardised for the most part, with exceptions where practical -  e. g.  combined Hangar/Magazine pods to rearm box launchers.
The idea: A cumbersome but efficient way to get some big stuff where I need it, hopefully one that reduces support issues too.  The pods should work as solo bases at key locations.  The thing that worries me: If I slap a laser pod on a tugboat, and attempt to use it like an area defence cruiser. . .  is there something that is bound to go hilariously wrong?

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If this is the wrong place without example ship designs, I could provide some. . .  but for now I'm more concerned with concept than implementation.  Once I get there, I will have plenty of questions too.

[SteelChicken]

Your biggest issue is going to be fuel and range.  Any fighter with decent engine performance is going to have terrible range, which means carriers or tug boats with hanger modules, repair modules, rearming modules, missile storage etc...but then you might as well have a carrier.

If you dont want to have all the other support ships that go with a carrier, then don't, just keep it well away from likely danger.

You could have a big carrier with real good passive sensors and no actives, maybe even reduced thermal engines and then all your fighters.  Include some tanker fighters to increase range and some sensor fighters for target acquisition.

All that tug stuff with modules just sounds like a bunch of headaches and a lot of trouble...

[Erik L]

Your recon idea is problematic. If the system is empty, putting it in place is no problem. If there is someone there, there is a decent chance they will see the ship used to emplace the recon unit. Remember, there is no inertia in Aurora.

[MarcAFK]

Theres only 2 problems i have with this idea, 1 is the huge amount of micromanagement needed to have every ship fighter sized or unpowered, I even slap engines on my smaller asteroid miners, terraformers and fuel harvesters just to reduce the micromanagement.
The second problem is that fighters need to be put into hangers to overhaul, which adds significantly more micromanagement, and as I recall planetary hangers don't work for it either.
However one of my current games over in the fiction forum has a few examples of interesting long deployment fighter designs, I generally put enough engineering spaces to keep a fighter running for 10-20 years then scrap it when it breaks down.
I have colony ship fighters delivering to mars 1,000 pop at a time, the new variant fits 1,400 thanks to a smaller engine and engineering spaces, the reduced speed doesn't matter as Mars is only 10 days away to 500 km/s, with 10 of the old faster ones I've gotten mars population up to 600,000 in a bit less than 2 years, with the 10 newer ones I should reach 5 million population 5 more years, of course by then my proper colony ships will be ready, but hell I hate having unused fighter factories.
Another design is a 500 ton tanker which holds 320,000 fuel, It's actually too fast and has too much capacity for my first 6 harvesters, so I had to reduce it's speed down to 200 km/s so that it doesn't waste fuel on half loads. The small tankers can also be a lifesaver for fleets that have run out of fuel before you build dedicated tankers.
I also use single sensor geo ships to survey earth, 4 of them with 1,600 km/s basically finished the survey in about 6 years.
Lastly I like to produce vast swarms of 10cm laser or 75% reduced size 1 AMM Orbital defence platforms, they're so cheap but sadly they've never been tested in combat. They usually have 500 km/s engine power just to haul themself to where I want them stationed, and maintenance for 20 years or so.

[bean]

I wouldn't recommend it.  There are significant economies of scale in building bigger ships.  That said, I have made extensive use of pods for logistic support in some of my games.

[Iranon]

For the record, I didn't really intend to keep the big things stationary.  The idea was that instead of a light carrier, 2 destroyers and a command ship, I'd have 4 tugboats lugging around different pods - 1 hangar, 2 weapon packs, 1 active sensor pack.

Projected disadvantages: Bigger and noiser ships for the same capability.  Restrictions on achievable fleet speed (hence a desire for independently operable fighters although I suppose regular ships may be preferable).  Possibly issues with tug+pod combinations in combat situations (readiness, which speed is used for hit calculations, that sort of thing. . .  my understanding there is very incomplete).  Less efficient passive protection if we need to armour both.  Possibly increased micromanagement.  Additional concerns when jumping into a hostile system.

Projected advantages: Dramatically reduced supply issues because fuel, commercial-grade engines and basic sensors will be in maintenance-free hulls, only the role-specific equipment needs servicing.  Competitive build costs.  Otherwise stationary assets (defense bases near planets or jump points) can be pressed into frontline service and fit in neatly.  Cheap training.  Better use of obsolescent equipment (tugs too slow for fleet work can be used for civilian jobs, bases are low enough on maintenance and long enough on endurance that they can still be useful for defence or peacekeeping).

Hmm.  It still looks attractive to me, but perhaps it's not something to base my fleet on.  At any rate, thanks for the comments and pointers!

[bean]

Where pods really help is in logistics, particularly shipping missiles and supplies.  This is because those things make the ship count as military, but they in and of themselves don't fail for lack of maintainence.

Code: [Select]

FLB-AE-2 class Logistics Barge    4,000 tons     47 Crew     466.2 BP      TCS 80  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 3-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 73    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 0    5YR 0    Max Repair 21 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 1430   


This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This is an example from my current game.

[DTF]

Where pods really help is in logistics, particularly shipping missiles and supplies.  This is because those things make the ship count as military, but they in and of themselves don't fail for lack of maintainence.

Code: [Select]

FLB-AE-2 class Logistics Barge    4,000 tons     47 Crew     466.2 BP      TCS 80  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 3-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 73    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 0    5YR 0    Max Repair 21 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 1430   


This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This is an example from my current game.

Now add a tractor beam and it can latch onto warships. Or are you planning to use dedicated tugs to haul those to the battlezone?
Not adding engines to a collier for maintenance sake is kind of silly. Colliers move out with the fleet, they come back with the fleet. They don't need more than 1 year worth of supplies. Yes, you can squeeze in quite a few more magazines without engines, but you need a tug ready 24/7 to move the collier. Might as well just build a second collier instead.

[bean]

Now add a tractor beam and it can latch onto warships. Or are you planning to use dedicated tugs to haul those to the battlezone?
Not adding engines to a collier for maintenance sake is kind of silly. Colliers move out with the fleet, they come back with the fleet. They don't need more than 1 year worth of supplies. Yes, you can squeeze in quite a few more magazines without engines, but you need a tug ready 24/7 to move the collier. Might as well just build a second collier instead.

I have dedicated battle ammunition ships.  This is intended for moving missiles around behind the battle fleet (which is rather large).  I actually have a bunch of different logistics barges of various sizes and payloads.  (The largest number are teraforming barges, which don't need to be moved in wartime.)  The problem with fitting it with a tractor beam is that tractor beams can break, which sort of defeats the purpose.