Basic PDC?

[fergeh (OP)]

I just want a very basic PDC to sit there and shoot anything that happens to pass by.  99% I've done this wrong but it was infact complete guesswork.  How many cannons would be a good number? Have I missed anything major?

Bristol class Cruiser    3,550 tons     348 Crew     1274 BP      TCS 71  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-20     Sensors 1/800     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3

Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range N/A
R1. 5/C2 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 15,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 1. 5    ROF 10        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
PDC Fire Control S01 36-3000 H70 (10)    Max Range: 72,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR151-R10 (70%) (1)     GPS 8000     Range 151. 8m km    Resolution 10


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 2 sections

[Girlinhat]

Wait, am I reading that right?  You have 1 cannon and 10 fire controls?  Please tell me that I'm going blind...

[Atlantia]

Generally, you'll want more weapons than fire controls.

Furthermore, having a single cannon will do NOTHING to whoever comes by. I don't even think the weak spoiler race ships would be hurt by one. I suggest adding more mesons (though personally I think that missiles are gonna be better).

Furthermore, PDCs are based on planets. Do you want this one to be like that, or a station posted somewhere?

[Girlinhat]

When do you ever want more FC than cannons?  I can't think of any legitimate reason.  Maybe if one gets destroyed it's nice to have another, but if your firecon is destroyed you're already neck deep in trouble anyways.

I'd also use missiles, and take advantage of the planet's deep space tracking capacity.  The large sensor radius lets you fire some longer range missiles more easily.

[Andrew]

Some comments
1) What is it for? The Meson cannon can only engage warships in orbit with a tracking speed of 3000km/s it will not be able to shoot down any missiles ,(Unless you have PreTN missile bases with ICBM's on the same planet)
2) You have shielding against microwave weapons on your sensors, this is probably not worth it on a planet as Microwave weapons will not work through an atmosphere of 1 atmosphere pressure or greater
3) You have the default fuel tank PDC's start with , you may as well take it out it is just a small waste of space unless you have a hanger (I Sometimes find I still have it when I design my PDC's easy to forget to remove it)

If your PDC is for defending your planet against hostile warships you pretty much have to give it missiles as your attackers will have them and the missiles will outrange any beam weapons you can mount. Meson guns with high tracking speeds in turrets can be useful to defend against missile attacks

[Andrew]

I'd also use missiles, and take advantage of the planet's deep space tracking capacity.  The large sensor radius lets you fire some longer range missiles more easily.

You still need to aquire the target with active sensors before shooting at it so deep space tracking is no substitute for active sensors although they do allow you to know about enemy fleets early

[fergeh (OP)]

I'm assuming I meant to have 10 cannons and 1 FC rather than visa-versa 
So most of you would say ditch the meson and just get to grips with missiles straight away?

[Atlantia]

Definitely. And probably a sensor that can track missiles, if you intend for it to operate without support of ships.

[Theeht]

Meson PDCs are useful, as they can fire through any atmosphere unlike other beams, but you would need fast tracking turrets and firecontrols to use them against missiles, and they are not effective against warships outside of orbit.  Also more cannon would be needed.   

[Marc420]

Thanks.   This made me go back and rethink a design I'd just made for a basic PDC.    I was using a design limit of 2500 tons to keep this as a one-section item, that's also hopefully cheap to build, that I can take and dump on a brand new colony or a base somewhere. 

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DC 2x4 -1 Sec class Planetary Defence Centre    2,500 tons     178 Crew     342.08 BP      TCS 50  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 8-16     Sensors 1/16     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 12
Magazine 286    

Size 1 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Size 4 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 60
Missile Fire Control FC2-R1 (1)     Range 2.9m km    Resolution 1
Missile Fire Control FC28-R100 (1)     Range 28.8m km    Resolution 100

Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 16     Range 960k km    Resolution 1


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections
I'd had an earlier design where I was trying to put protected spots under armor for stuff like troops, fuel, supplies, etc.    But, then I realized that since anything shooting up at aliens is going to be the first thing the aliens shoot back at, I decided that was a bad idea that was just making my design too big and too expensive.    Still, I might design a no-weapons PDC to be that sort of armored storage bunker some day.   

This also has no sensors.    Well, not really beyond the short range missile detector array.    I'll either put a tracking station on the base.   Or again, maybe I'll design a couple of other PDCs as a companion to this one.    I'm thinking the big passive sensors I like are best placed in another no-weapons PDC so it doesn't draw fire.    And I wonder if its worthwhile to put the Active Sensors over in a separate bunker as well.    If it's going to draw fire, maybe I want those some place away from my missile sites.    IIRC, that's the most SAM systems are designed since they know missiles will come down on top of anything broadcasting like an active sensor. 

PS . .  this also reminds me that I need to go research special PDC versions of my missile launchers since they get a reload time bonus.

[Hawkeye]

Tracking Stations _are_ huge passive sensors, so if you plug one down on the planet/moon/asteroid, you are fine in that respect.
You are not fine re. active sensor however, as those tracking stations don´t do this.

Personally, I design a sensor PDC with extremely thick armor (30+) and the largest res-1, res-20 and res-100 sensors I have. The huge EM signatur of those sensors will make it a prime target, but the enemy will waste a whole lot of missiles getting through all the armor.
Note: Put two or three of those on a colony and have only one go active at any time, so you have some backup. If the enemy lives long enough to kill all three sensor-OPs, I´m screwed anyway, so no harm in them blinding me.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I used to use 2500ton PDCs, but I find it annoying how they tie up commanders and clutter my list.  So lately i've been building 10000 ton PDCs. Also, I found that transporting PDC components is not nearly as big of a deal as i thought it would be. 

I also prefer to use 0.25xsize 100x reload missile launchers. These have a few advantages.  Civilians do not look at reload times for PPV, so the more tubes you have the more impressive the base is.  Second, you can generate much larger salvos.  Third, missile silos just seem so in character... xD

Fourth, a salvo-based PDC is a lot harder to turn against you if it gets captured, though I've never had an NPR land ground troops on me.

The problem of course is that minaturized launchers require research.

Another consideration is the use of a powerful active sensor. Tonnage isn't really a problem for PDCs, and it is good to have early warning of enemies approaching your planets.  These large active sensors also work better in either a larger PDC, or a dedicated sensor PDC.   For similar reasons, I use a anti-ship design with a 100-res sensor and an anti-missile design with a 1-res sensor. Once you develop these sensors you can also use them for scouts, jumpships or flagships.

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Zulu class Planetary Missile Base    20,950 tons     697 Crew     1439 BP      TCS 419  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-67     Sensors 1/256     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 128
Troop Capacity: 5 Battalions    Magazine 512   

Cellular Launch System (128)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 4000
Goliath-48 (4)     Range 115.2m km    Resolution 100
Shrike-25 (128)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 31.2m    Range: 56.2m km   WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 100 / 60 / 30

SPY-256 (1)     GPS 25600     Range 204.8m km    Resolution 100
If you take out the PDC barracks this design goes down to 8300 tons and 1300 BP. The downside of this design is that bad luck will result in a premature knockout - it only has basic PDC armor. Small PDCs have redundancy advantages.  That is another reason it is designed to salvo all of its missiles at once. 

[Jacob/Lee]

A bit related, what are PDCs supposed to look like? Bunkers in the mountains?

[blue emu]

They are underground installations... that's why they get a few free layers of armor, and why they can't be towed to a new location.

[Deutschbag]

Anyone ever exclusively construct PDCs on moons of inhabited planets instead of the planets themselves? I usually build the components and then ship them off to Luna or Phobos in Earth/Mars defense, for instance. Seems like a better idea to make it so that if an alien race gets it in their head to take out my defenses, they don't hit the population centers...