Early fleet, carrier heavy, pretty low tech

[RikerPicard (OP)]

Main carrier, I also have an insignificantly modified refit with just extra flight crew space for better fighters

Troi class Carrier    12,800 tons     285 Crew     1890 BP      TCS 256  TH 1000  EM 300
3906 km/s     Armour 4-48     Shields 10-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 46     PPV 13.82
Maint Life 10.99 Years     MSP 3400    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 52    5YR 775    Max Repair 250 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Flight Crew Berths 131   
Hangar Deck Capacity 3000 tons     

500 EP Magneto-plasma Drive Carrier (2)    Power 500    Fuel Use 65.51%    Signature 500    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 2,250,000 Litres    Range 48.3 billion km   (143 days at full power)
Delta R300/300 Shields (4)   Total Fuel Cost  50 Litres per hour  (1,200 per day)

Twin Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (1x6)    Range 30,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Carrier Gauss Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

My first run of fighters, class named after my top fighter ops officer at the time

Peacock class Fighter    500 tons     19 Crew     75.3 BP      TCS 10  TH 21  EM 0
2100 km/s     Armour 3-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 5
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 100%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 10    5YR 149    Max Repair 18 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 1   

21 EP Fighter Ion Drive (1)    Power 21    Fuel Use 280.76%    Signature 21    Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres    Range 1.9 billion km   (10 days at full power)

12cm Railgun V2/C3 (1x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 2    ROF 10        2 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.2 24-2000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

First run of FACs

Arrow class Fast Attack Craft    1,000 tons     26 Crew     258 BP      TCS 20  TH 192  EM 0
9600 km/s     Armour 4-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 46    5YR 684    Max Repair 48 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   

Magneto-plasma FAC Drive 96 EP (2)    Power 96    Fuel Use 274.36%    Signature 96    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 16.4 billion km   (19 days at full power)

10cm Railgun V3/C4 (1x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 9600 km/s     Power 3-4     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 24-10000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 4    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Upgraded fighter design

Caltrop class Fighter    435 tons     23 Crew     122.8 BP      TCS 8.7  TH 48  EM 0
5517 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 5
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 87%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 16    5YR 246    Max Repair 45 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 2   

48 EP Fighter Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 48    Fuel Use 771.63%    Signature 48    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km   (26 hours at full power)

12cm Railgun V3/C4 (1x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 5517 km/s     Power 6-4     RM 3    ROF 10        2 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.9 48-6250 (1)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 6250 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 4    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

Eyes in the sky, named after my top sensor/fire control scientist

Short class Fleet Support Vessel    6,000 tons     136 Crew     1041 BP      TCS 120  TH 672  EM 300
5600 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 10-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 26     PPV 13.82
Maint Life 10.39 Years     MSP 2651    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 45    5YR 671    Max Repair 168 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 2   

336 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 336    Fuel Use 39.5%    Signature 336    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 57.0 billion km   (117 days at full power)
Delta R300/300 Shields (4)   Total Fuel Cost  50 Litres per hour  (1,200 per day)

Twin Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (1x6)    Range 30,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Carrier Gauss Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

Short Class Fleet Sensor(1k ton 37,560,000) (1)     GPS 2100     Range 37.6m km    Resolution 20
Short 365kV6 AMS (1)     GPS 42     Range 3.4m km    MCR 366k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And my heavy hitter, missile launching boat

Bismarck class Missile Destroyer    9,000 tons     233 Crew     1568.8 BP      TCS 180  TH 1000  EM 360
5555 km/s     Armour 5-38     Shields 12-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 33     PPV 20
Maint Life 7.42 Years     MSP 1416    AFR 49%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 45    5YR 678    Max Repair 250 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 520   

500 EP Magneto-plasma Drive Carrier (2)    Power 500    Fuel Use 65.51%    Signature 500    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 30.5 billion km   (63 days at full power)
Delta R300/300 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  63 Litres per hour  (1,500 per day)

Size 4 Missile Launcher RL-3 (5)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC50-R100 (5)     Range 50.4m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Still drawing up the Aegis class area defense ship and Rommel class command vessel with emergency saucer section(FAC with flag bridge and high powered engines).

[Iranon]

General: Very long maintenance lives compared to deployment time.
This can be a good thing depending on how you use them ("they'll go somewhere for shore leave, but I don't plan to put them in overhaul after every mission"), otherwise it may mean too much overhead in engineering spaces.

Troi: If the deployed fighters aren't ludicrously fast (yours aren't), a carrier needs to be fairly fuel-efficient to be worth building imo, otherwise I'd just give the fighters a decent mission life and do away with the carrier.
If you bother to turret something you may as well give it a higher tracking speed. Even then, 2 Gauss barrels on a non-discounted fire control seems too much overhead for the fire control.
In a carrier, I might just not bother and increase hangar space for one more fighter armed with a 10cm railgun.

Peacock: Performance is very bad for a beam fighter, the weapon is too heavy and you aren't really getting anything out of it. I'd use 10cm railguns, and mix in some variants with 10cm lasers if you find you need the range (if I do, i usually don't build fighters). I'd try for at least 8000km/s, probably 12000.
I'd cut deployment time to 0.1 month, that'll reduce crew requirements considerably and will be sufficient if the thing gets faster.

Arrow: Do you really need the range?  It's rather expensive, otherwise you could cram the capability into a fighter and save good money on fire controls.

Caltrop: See Peacock, the oversized weapon is really holding you back. Also, if you were to use a 12cm railgun, capacitor-3 would give you the same fire rate and save on cost and reactor size.

Short: On the verge of wasting fuel due to overstressed engines, you could get similar capability for much lower running costs. Defensive capabilities aren't enough to save it, I'd strip it and give it an escort where necessary. I'd also build separate variants with one sensor type each, to lower its own sensor footprint.

Bismarck: Again, a very fuel-hungry propulsion setup. You'll need a considerable number of them to overwhelm enemy point defence, but otherwise the offensive setup looks fine. 1-missile salvos ensure the enemy is limited by number of fire controls even if you can't throw large numbers of missiles, size 4 is reasonable; fire control range and resolution look like you've been cutting a few corners... but you probably want to with one FC per tube.

[Jorgen_CAB]

There is always issues with doctrine, especially in the early game.

I do have some issues with these designs. I do think that both deployment and maintenance times are a bit on the excessive side unless you have a good reason to keep very long ranges. You should at least consider building more fuel efficient engines and make the engines slightly bigger. This will save fuel and you will save space on the ships. There is a thread here:http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9146.0, this detail the efficiency with fuel and engine ratios.

The Peacock/Caltrop fighters seem a bit redundant design being so slow and all, those rail-guns would probably do better mounted directly on the Carriers or Destroyers themselves.

I think the Arrow class FAC have way to long range, you should never need to send FAC that far, especially in the early game, not with such fuel guzzling engines. It would be far better to have a FAC fuel tanker extending their range about a few billion km if you really need the range.

Using fighters with beam weapons usually mean you need a considerable technology advantage or they will have a very hard time engaging enemy main war vessels without being destroyed before they get a shot of. Beam fighter are good against civilian vessels, other fighters and FAC crafts but for that you need to give them as much speed as you can possibly get, they can also be used as PD for the fleet.

Always consider how your ships are suppose to operate, where, why and how they will complement each other. What type of ships are each element of your fleet suppose to engage and how will you scout and on what  premise will you engage the enemy.

I also see no good active sensors on any ship, I suppose you have that on some other ships. I do think that all ships should have some sensors, at least a minor sensor for self defense.

I would design some scout craft at 400-500t. You would probably be better served with scout craft rather than all the beam fighters and use the destroyers as the main attacking force able to fire missiles from a long distance, perhaps outside enemy missile or detection range. You would use your smaller scout fighters to paint the targets with active sensors. And then redesign some fighters to be super fast with a rail-gun and use them as PD or to attack weak enemies such as FAC/fighers or civilian ships.

[RikerPicard (OP)]

Thanks for the advice, so basically the only semi passable design is my destroyers, and even they could be better? The reason for the slowish tracking speed on the turrets is my low tech level, 4x size/speed FCs come out to 20k. I wasn't going for high maintenance life as much as low failure rate, though they're both tied to engineering sections.

Engine/fuel wise I was going for redundancy, so one good shot would slow rather than paralyze the ship. You think I should use size 50 with <1x modifier?

As for the sensors on the Short, what size/resolution should I go for? And would near identical ships with different sensors be viable for manufacture in the same shipyard?

I've still got my research teams going towards higher techs, working lasers for my Aegis ships, shields/armor/sensor everything, but I'm limited by number of labs. Eventually my existing vessels will be refitted or mothballed in PDC hangars.

[Iranon]

At your tech level, Gauss cannons only make sense if you put them in 4x tracking turrets or do something weird with highly reduced sizes.
Otherwise,  10cm railguns simply do a better job.

I'd definitely field engines <1.0 power multiplier for that level of performance.   
A single size-50 engine will save a good bit of fuel on top of that. It can be problematic to repair and is a single point of mostly-failure, so that's a judgment call.

Sensors are expensive, you may have to jump through a few (possibly rather gamey) hoops to be able to build multiple variants on the same yard.
1 and 20 are perfectly reasonable resolutions if you're worried about FACs. Personally, I rely for my anti-missile sensors quite a bit and have some at R80-100 to detect fleets at range.
Incidentally, splitting the sensor package is also good for emissions control: you may want to switch off coarse-grained ones while keeping your resolution-1 ones active at all time.

[Jorgen_CAB]

There are many ways you can handle sensors and it probably boils down to preference but I will try and explain some of the approaches.

Some like to build command ships that have sensors that use the same range and resolution as the missile fire-controls on the ships in the same task-force. You then also put some backup sensors on your missile ships, perhaps not as strong but at least strong enough to act as a backup.

Some might build a large sensor ship that have very strong sensors but can stay way behind any powerful task-force. Though such sensors are expensive to research, especially in the early game so I would not recommend that right now.

My personal favorite are large numbers of scout ships with weaker sensors that I can scatter around in a starsystem or around a task-force, this will keep my task-force hidden from prying eyes for as long as possible. It also allow me to strike with long range missiles from distances most enemies can't scan or fly in waves of fighters releasing missiles at closer range.

In this tactic I usually employ destroyer groups as offensive scouting. Destroyers are about 2/3 defense and 1/3 offense but can switch mission and be loaded with missiles for heavy offense. Each destroyer have a 500-1000t hangar and keep 2-3 different scout crafts. It is the scout crafts that do the main spotting with active sensors and the destroyers main job is to engage enemy FAC/fighters but can also target larger ships in conjunction with carrier and cruisers that stay in the main task-force. The destroyer have decent active sensors to spot fighters and FAC, so usually resolution 1/5/20 sensors systems... but not gigantic sensors, their scouts are the primary source for spotting enemies and mount 5/20 and 100 resolution sensors and some EM passive. The destroyers also have some IR and good EM passive sensor systems. Each destroyer group usually have a destroyer leader with a slightly better IR/EM suite and a dedicated resolution 1 active system.

I also deploy smaller, slower and shorter ranged frigates who are like destroyers mostly for defense and their job is to escort my support ships and sometimes even protect my carriers (they usually are slower in speed as well). Having low range is not really a great drawback when you escort the one with the fuel in the first place.

I tend to use missile as my main offensive weapon branch but I don't neglect beam weapons for close in defense and PD. You will always need to guard or force yourself through a Jump Point at some point.

In general I like to use smaller less expensive crafts to scout. They are cheaper to replace if caught in a bad spot, harder to detect and usually fast enough to avoid problems if they do occur, but most importantly they keep the more important ships away from any danger.

You should not worry so much about redundancy in the fuel tanks, just mix larger with smaller fuel tanks and you should be fine. You should worry about your ships eating more fuel than you really need and build more fuel efficient engines. In general you should be fine with 15-25 billion km range on most combat ships, just keep some fuelers nearby on missions far away. As Iranon said... compromise some mission tonnage for cheaper engines and better fuel economy can often be more efficient since such ships are cheaper and you can instead have more of them. Better fuel economy also mean you need less tankers and industry to harvest the fuel.

Obviously having limited resources in technology is what decide how complex you can make your fleet. Just realize that putting research into large engines, weapon components and sensors etc.. in the early game is VERY expensive. Keep it simple for now is my advice until you have a stronger economy and more powerful research potential.