Fighting precursors at low tech - because waiting researchers sucks :P

[LoSboccacc (OP)]

So, I had this idea that I should try to turtle less and fight more, because there is no honor in steamrolling the enemy and because late game becomes laggy anyway 

I've done some testing with almost starting tech (something you will need) with the idea of being able to wage war just at the beginning of the game, with the objective of not just getting slaughtered and simply winning by numbers.

My first take was moving the late standard 20kt battlecruisers design to lower tech. This has lots of problems, obviously (and btw they aren't that good from the beginning but meh).

First of all, at starting tech jumpdrives are huge, and the speed becomes comically low at 1500m/s. The added weight means removing lots of defensive and offensive systems. Also reducing sensors size is a must, with all the obvious consequences.

On the field the CIWS were totally ineffective, being essentially dead weight. The missiles aren't that bad, on the 8000m/s ship that I found in alpha centauri they were able to hit consistently and weren't too much easy to stop by the enemy ship defenses. The warhead is still punchy at size 9, but is still not that powerful and wasn't able to penetrate the enemy larger ships armor. The 1000t enemy beam ship were no match, but the 15k and 20k missile ship were just scratched by the attacks and even when all the fire was focused on the flagship only secondary damage was obtained (it slowed for a while, reducing his thermal signature, but got repaired while I was focusing on another ship)

I thought I could go in without beams, and it could had worked, but in the end the overall offence capability was not enough to bring enemy number down and eventually the battle was lost due to ammo depletion.

I think this design would be better off using standard turrets for PD, in place of the ciws, dubbing as offensive weapons in later stages, also I probably had wasted too much space on fuel and maintenance spares.

Given the slow reload rate of the enemy launchers, shield provided to be effective, recharging from one salvo to the other. Anti missile missile instead were to slow and clumsy to hit anything. The 3 depth armor was good enough to protect the ship with the help from the shield, only one of the four ship was breached and got internal damages after the enemy spent all their ammo. Their beams tore everything apart, shortly after, but that could not be resolved nor by adding armor nor by adding speed.

all considered, if one can up this ship offensive making it able to kill the enemy before they can close up, it could work but, in the end, the mining and production is not really able to keep up with the requirement of a 20kt squadron deployment that early in the game, so this design is essentially a dead end.

The best course of action would be to minimize size and optimize each ship for each role. keeping them reasonably sized could mean decent speed using those ion engine in their fast attack craft variant, but carriers would be a problem to design without some research on bays and such. I'll try something later 

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Invincible class Cruiser    20,000 tons     1740 Crew     5439.44 BP      TCS 400  TH 210  EM 90
1500 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 3-65     Shields 3-225     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 22     PPV 22
Maint Life 2.39 Years     MSP 6040    AFR 266%    IFR 3.7%    1YR 1444    5YR 21654    Max Repair 1600 MSP
Magazine 502   

J20000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 20000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Ion Engine E6 (10)    Power 60    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 21    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 112.5 billion km   (868 days at full power)
Beta R225/9 Shields (2)   Total Fuel Cost  18 Litres per day

CIWS-120 (2x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 4 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 60
Size 1 Missile Launcher (6)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control FC113-R1 (3)     Range 113.4m km    Resolution 1
Size 4 Anti-ship Missile (80)  Speed: 22,500 km/s   End: 38.9m    Range: 52.5m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 75 / 45 / 22
Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (182)  Speed: 47,400 km/s   End: 1m    Range: 3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 158 / 94 / 47

Active Search Sensor MR112-R20 (1)     GPS 8400     Range 112.7m km    Resolution 20

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

yes this one lacks the 1 sized anti missile sensor, I've not that one ship design under hand. the first batch was slaughtered on the first salvo, the combat data and performance evaluation was got from the second fleet 

[Charlie Beeler]

In my opinion your trying to cram way to much into a single hull, especially for the tech level.

Jump combat ships with early tech are just targets.  The mass/hs expense of the jump engine means you don't have enough left for offensive systems.

Double the military engines.  1500kps with Ion engines is way too slow.  A good rule for military ships is at least 1 engine per 1000t.  It gives you good speed for the tech and still enough mass for a usable weapons load.

Replace the CIWS with a single GC turret/BFC at 2x range and 4x speed/active res1 that can see sz 6 missiles at least at 1.6m km. 

Armor could go up to 5.

If you going to use shields at least 2 per 1000t or your just pissing into the wind.

Back fuel down to no more that a years worth of cruising.  Add tankers to the fleet train.

Back maintenance down to enough for 2 the points value of the largest repair requirement.  Add supply ships to the fleet train.

At this tech level AMM's should be on a dedicated hull.

A missile reload rate of 2 is way too slow for a fleet with Ion engines.  A rate of 3 gets you a 10sec cycle for sz1 missiles and rate 4 gets you 30sec cycle for sz4.

Cut the warhead on the sz4 to 4 and you'll have around twice the tohit potential. 

Separate MFC for offensive and defensive systems.  Find the required size to intercept the intended target (based on speeds) at max missile range.

Active sensors to match MFC ranges and resolutions.

[LoSboccacc (OP)]

On my second take, I've set up a proper testing environment. I'm starting with the 18000 search point from the meritocracy start unallocated, using them to research only the tech for the ship, and using the research labs to design up components.

After the single ship design I wanted to take a more modular approach; I wanted missile fighters but their engine and the box launcher both take to much point to research, so I've tried an intermediate approach, using gunboats.

As test enemy, I've set up a NPR one system away, giving it 100k technology point.


Design report

Here are the designed system, with their design considerations; the combat performance report follows; overall, this design look promising while some shortcomings became evident in the after action reports, two possible path of enhancement will be then detailed and investigated.

The GB Carrier

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Hindenburg class Light Carrier    15,000 tons     552 Crew     1651.6 BP      TCS 300  TH 150  EM 150
500 km/s    JR 1-25(C)     Armour 3-54     Shields 5-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 29.48
Maint Life 0.62 Years     MSP 1069    AFR 1800%    IFR 25%    1YR 1711    5YR 25659    Max Repair 525 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 3000 tons     Magazine 170   

JC15K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 15000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 1
Ion Engine E1 (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 10%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 180.0 billion km   (4166 days at full power)
Delta R300/25 Shields (2)   Total Fuel Cost  50 Litres per day

Twin Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (2x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S06 24-12000 (2)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

Cerberus AMM (24)  Speed: 14,200 km/s   End: 2.6m    Range: 3.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 4    TH: 47 / 28 / 14
Icarus Two Stage ASM (18)  Speed: 7,500 km/s   End: 150m    Range: 68.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 4    TH: 25 / 15 / 7

Active Search Sensor MR262-R100 (1)     GPS 52500     Range 262.5m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR10-R1 (1)     GPS 210     Range 10.5m km    Resolution 1

ECM 10

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
The carrier design put emphasis on long range sensor as the idea was to keep it far from the operating scenario. That also is the reason for the cheap engine configuration and good ECM capability; it also influenced the decision on putting an active sensor on the gunboats, as those were intended to operate farther than the carrier missile scan range.

Those are the carried gunboats:

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Castor AM class Gunboat    1,000 tons     110 Crew     224 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 4.5 Years     MSP 70    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 6    5YR 84    Max Repair 84 MSP
Magazine 21   

GB Ion Engine E100 (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 1000%    Signature 120    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 9.0 billion km   (17 days at full power)

Size 4 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC12-R1 (1)     Range 12.6m km    Resolution 1
Cerberus AMM (5)  Speed: 14,200 km/s   End: 2.6m    Range: 3.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 4    TH: 47 / 28 / 14

Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1)     GPS 42     Range 2.1m km    Resolution 1

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


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Pollux AS class Gunboat    1,000 tons     110 Crew     224 BP      TCS 20  TH 120  EM 0
6000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 4.5 Years     MSP 70    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 6    5YR 84    Max Repair 84 MSP
Magazine 21   

GB Ion Engine E100 (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 1000%    Signature 120    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 9.0 billion km   (17 days at full power)

Size 4 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC56-R20 (1)     Range 56.3m km    Resolution 20
Icarus Two Stage ASM (5)  Speed: 7,500 km/s   End: 150m    Range: 68.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 4    TH: 25 / 15 / 7

Active Search Sensor MR9-R20 (1)     GPS 840     Range 9.4m km    Resolution 20

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

The gunboat were designed around the FAC Engine, with the 1000t limit in mind to squeeze three of them in the carrier. I’ve done the anti missile and anti ship perfectly identical bar the active sensor and fire control, with the hope of being able of building them both at the same shipyard. Well, it didn’t work, so future design should have dedicated size launchers. They have each a search sensor as were intended of being able of fighting past the carrier range. Still, the small magazine capacity reduces their operations to hit and run tactics. (which is not that bad as they can get in, deliver their load and get out before retaliation from the larger vessels). There was no way to add significant armor to the gunship, but even if I could have a 2 point armor on them it still would be almost useless leaking damage from any anti ship missile design I’ve seen, and without internal armor the damage done would be crippling anyway.

Here are the two missile used: as the missile launcher was sized 4 for both, and due the technological constraints, both missile are multistage design.

The Icarus Anti ship missile:

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 7500 km/s    Endurance: 150 minutes   Range: 67.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.49
Second Stage: Dagger ASM x1
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Overall Endurance: 3 hours   Overall Range: 68.4m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 75%   3k km/s 20%   5k km/s 15%   10k km/s 7.5%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.99x Gallicite   Fuel x3750
with his second stage:

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Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 29700 km/s    Endurance: 0 minutes   Range: 0.9m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.99
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 297%   3k km/s 90%   5k km/s 59.4%   10k km/s 29.7%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.74x Gallicite   Fuel x25
This was the only way to get some range from a size 4 strength 4 warhead at almost starting tech, without loosing to much speed in the final approach. The added benefit is that the aliens tend to shoot a salvo of anti missile missile toward the Icarus, letting the Dagger payload passing almost unscathed.

This is the Cerberus anti missile missile:

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 14200 km/s    Endurance: 3 minutes   Range: 2.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 4.07
Second Stage: Stiletto AMM x3
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Overall Endurance: 4 minutes   Overall Range: 4.0m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 142%   3k km/s 40%   5k km/s 28.4%   10k km/s 14.2%
Materials Required:    0.75x Tritanium   2.29x Gallicite   Fuel x125
it carries three Stiletto, so only one is to be launched by PD for each target:

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 32400 km/s    Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 1.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.04
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 648%   3k km/s 200%   5k km/s 129.6%   10k km/s 64.8%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.53x Gallicite   Fuel x25
This was done mostly to recycle the 4 sized launcher to keep ship differences at minimum. It outreaches the fire control and sensors by far. The Stiletto by itself is quite good as far as starting tech goes, but the size point lost in the first stage means one launch less than a pure non staged configuration.



Combat performances

Given the complexity of the operations available to the fleet as a whole, different tactics were tested and evaluated.

Leaving the carrier far out while the gunboats move back and forth between their target and their colliers was the main intended usage. This highlighted the problem with the anti missile gunboat on-board missile sensor: with that range, it’s essentially useless. Not that it doesn’t permit at least one salvo of anti missile to be shot, but the problem is that the slow recharging size 4 launcher has not time to stop the odd salvos. Couple that with no armor and no point defences, and the hit and run will result in lot of losses if their missiles outrange mine. The not so fast engines and the small magazines mean lot of time is wasted in moving back and forth the operation area, meaning that the enemy have a chance to close by the carrier after three/five missile runs.

When the enemy gets near, the carrier gauss turrets and most importantly the carrier missile search sensor help a lot on keeping those enemy missile at bay. Having the formation near the colliers greatly enhance the damage output per second, and seems a viable strategy if one can keep out the enemy beams. Carrier armor and shield provided to be quite effective together with the other defences and the gauss turrets were exceptionally good at dealing sustained damage to the enemy when ambushed by the jump point. In that occasion, the missile provided ineffective; at close quarters the second stage doesn’t fire, meaning that my missile could not harm them and their missiles could not be intercepted. Detaching all the gunboat as escort resolved the first problem, but left the carriers defenseless from missile onslaught.

Actually, I was so impressed from gauss performance alone in terms of damage output that I want to try a gauss based fighter squadron in one of the future runs, avoiding the cost of missile research to try to increase the gauss range, ditching missiles in favor of bringing gauss cannons to the enemy via fighters (The problem with figthers is that the engine alone uses a good chunk of research points alone, and that's why I should try this way without spending research on missiles and magazines and such)

I think that the overall performance of the fleet could be gratly increased by keeping the gunboat in formation with their carrier, as the jump point ambush had shown. For this to work the carrier speed should be upped to 5000m/s at least, dropping the ecm down a bit and increasing fuel space, with a target size of 20kt. The gunboat could then drop their sensors, get fitted with smaller magazines and be fitted with more armor or a small PD or some ECMs.

I'll try to upgrade to those latter specification, and then have a run with fighters.

[blue emu]

In my Ad Astra forum game on the Paradox forum, I took on a fleet of nine 7150-ton and 14,000-ton Precursor ships (a mixed fleet of AMM ships, ASM ships and Beam ships) with an Ion-tech level fleet of twenty-or-so assorted ships, and crushed them without losing anything larger than a Fighter. Granted, we lost 49 of our 60 Fighters... but wiped out the Precursor fleet with the loss of only three of our forum-member players (all were Fighter pilots).

I had six light 14,000-ton Carriers, two 12,000-ton AWACS ships, one 15,000-ton Heavy Cruiser, five 12,000-ton Light Cruisers and a half-dozen Destroyers. I'm glad that there were only nine Precursor ships instead of ten... we finished the battle with our missile magazines virtually empty.

[Steve Walmsley]

In my Ad Astra forum game on the Paradox forum, I took on a fleet of nine 7150-ton and 14,000-ton Precursor ships (a mixed fleet of AMM ships, ASM ships and Beam ships) with an Ion-tech level fleet of twenty-or-so assorted ships, and crushed them without losing anything larger than a Fighter. Granted, we lost 49 of our 60 Fighters... but wiped out the Precursor fleet with the loss of only three of our forum-member players (all were Fighter pilots).

I had six light 14,000-ton Carriers, two 12,000-ton AWACS ships, one 15,000-ton Heavy Cruiser, five 12,000-ton Light Cruisers and a half-dozen Destroyers. I'm glad that there were only nine Precursor ships instead of ten... we finished the battle with our missile magazines virtually empty.

It was a good read as well. I remember that the outcome was far more in doubt than the above might suggest

Steve

[chrislocke2000]

In my Ad Astra forum game on the Paradox forum, I took on a fleet of nine 7150-ton and 14,000-ton Precursor ships (a mixed fleet of AMM ships,

Any chance you can post a link for that post?

[Elouda]

Any chance you can post a link for that post?

Google is the tool of kings.

Here you go;

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?534008-Ad-Astra

[Lucifer]

It took me weeks to read all of it.
Still wondering who was the most monstrous, the AAR or the Precursors.
This single battle was what. . . 30 pages long?
Nice reading too, it was the reason for me to start playing Aurora. 

[UnLimiTeD]

On your ship designs, as boring as it might be, spending a half year of research to specialize what little tech you have is always worth the wait.
For the current situation:
You still haven't specialized enough; Build a sensor Gunboat, and just omit it on the other FACs, saving weight, thus increasing speed.
With your current low tech, it might be worth a try to use Railguns, or later GCs, on FACs or fighters as your Anti-Missile screen, instead of using turrets that are surely pretty large.

[blue emu]

It was a good read as well. I remember that the outcome was far more in doubt than the above might suggest

Steve

Yes... for most of the battle, we all thought we were doomed. I was making remarks like "Well, let's look on the bright side... losing the Battle Fleet fixes the fuel shortage, anyway."

[Peter Rhodan]

I have taken out lots of Precursor systems with low-tech ships. The key was my 6kT Corvettes with 360 AMM's as a loadout. The original design had 4 Missile Fire Controls &  8 Size 1 Launchers - only with about 3mK range. I ran them in divisions of 6 - I also had a similar design carrying a mix of long range (85mk) 5-6 damage size 9 missiles and short range (16mk initially) heavy hitting size 9 missiles that did 12 damage.
A force of 12 of each is more than enough for most Precursor forces... forget shields and armour - waste of time at low tech as you cannot harden your ships enough to survive if you cannot stop their missiles.
basic tactic with low tech is you wait to they start firing then turn directly away lengthening the time their missiles have to travel to reach you. I normally allocate 2 Launchers per Fire control which means I am launching 48 AMMs per reload from 6 ships. I also normally stagger the firing cycle based on my reload rate - so if 15 seconds with 6 ships I would open up on the two closest salvos with 2 ships - 5 seconds late the next 2 ships would open fire and then 5 seconds later the final 2 - this gives you a staggered pattern which cuts down the missile overlap and wasting missiles.
Once a new salvo appears I start wth the original 2 ships and reassign in the same sequence.
I try and keep one ship out to use as a final defence against any enemy salvo survivors.
this system is pretty effective - I have lost a total of 3 ships in combat versus Precursors and 2 of them were due to getting to close to a missile base without enough AMMs left....
I alos generally refit ships rather than building new ones and scrapping old ones as I like have 100% trained crews....
My empire contains over 200 systems and I have explored over 300 - I currently have 9 operational Archaeological digs still going on former Precursor worlds and maybe 6-8 ones that have been dug out amongst my 50 odd colonies...