Kind of new to this

[woodenair (OP)]

So I went ahead and used SM and messed around with some different things.  .   Trying to get a feel for ship design.   I'm not entirely sure if what I came up with is good.  .   What I was originally intending to do was create a big armored ship that had decent speed and fairly long range lasers but I'm not sure I fully understand what I'm doing :p

So if you'd like to give me some pointers on this initial design I'd appreciate it. .  I'd also like to note that I didn't find a way to manually alter the size of the ship. .  So I'm a bit confused as I've seen people who have HUGE ships.

Grassraper class Destroyer    2,650 tons     269 Crew     684.  2 BP      TCS 53  TH 80  EM 60
1509 km/s     Armour 5-17     Shields 2-200     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 6
Maint Life 2.  04 Years     MSP 161    AFR 56%    IFR 0.  8%    1YR 52    5YR 776    Max Repair 270 MSP

GB Nuclear Pulse Engine E50 (1)    Power 80    Fuel Use 500%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 85,000 Litres    Range 11.  5 billion km   (88 days at full power)
Gamma R200/10 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  10 Litres per day

20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
Fire Control S09 120-15000 (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 15000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 36    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR30-R100 (1)     GPS 6000     Range 30.  0m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[xeryon]

Ship size is a factor of the modules and armor you put on it.  You do not set the size, the size is just the total of the parts you use.

I am no expert but here are some initial issues.  You have a FAC/fighter engine on this (500% fuel consumption), unless your ship is less then 1000 tons this doesn't work so well.  Your ship's top speed is only 1500km/s, which is absurdly slow for a military ship.

Your reactor power needs to better match your laser power consumption.  You have a laser that fires every 15 seconds and (if i'm reading this right) needs 10 power with a recharge rate of 4 per 5 seconds and a reactor that provides 36 power every 5 seconds.  So your laser charges 4+4+4 then fires, then 4+4+4 then fires but you are producing enough power every 5 seconds to charge 9 lasers.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Your ship's top speed is only 1500km/s, which is absurdly slow for a military ship.

It's not _that_ slow for Nuclear Pulse Engines ^^

*There's no point to the strength 2 shields.
*The armament is far too light, particularly - as noted - in relation to your reactor. 
*You don't need all that tracking speed on your fire control unless you put your laser(s) into turrets.

[Beersatron]

Couple of things I would do, all personal preference.

1. Design a Standard Military Engine instead of the Gunboat one you are using and then stick in about 10 of them - or until you get to at least a minimum speed of 4000.
2. Remove the shields or add more shield generators, 2 shields means that you only stop 2 points of damage which isn't that much. If you get a shield power of 20 you should be sitting better.
3. The armor level is nice.
4. Try a Resolution 1 Active Search Sensor that has a range of say 2million instead of your current one, or as well as your current one.
5. Reduce the size and power generation of the reactor to 4, then add a second laser with another reactor. You can get away with the one Beam Fire Control for two (or more) lasers.

Of course, practice makes perfect and learning from your mistakes can be fun too

[xeryon]

Total vehicle speed is a personal preference and depending on the alien races you encounter and the scientists you have the need/outcome will be different each game.

I'm sitting in a game right now with no Power and Propulsion Scientists and my primary Alien enemy has ships traveling 8500km/s.  I am kind of stuck.  Realistically I cannot design an engine which takes me much faster then 6000 km/s even if I install 30 of them so I have no chance of out running them.  I had to go a different tactic:  I have great sensor and missile scientists so I have tweaked my ship design to be able to greatly exceed my enemies weapons range.  I cannot catch them if they run, but if they close in to fire at me it brings them well within my missile ranges.

The biggest problem with this design is with beam weapons you need to be able to approach at ultra close range.  Many missiles have a range of 20-50million km where your lasers reach only 240,000 km.  You need to have superior speed to make a design like this practical.  With adjustments this would be a start to a JP defense ship.  You can camp the back-side of the JP and ambush people that come through.  You don't need speed because they will jump in at near point blank range.

[sublight]

Yep, the Grassraper might be of some use in jump point defense/assaults, but it is too slow and vulnerable to missiles to do well anywhere else.

1. Design a Standard Military Engine instead of the Gunboat one you are using and then stick in about 10 of them - or until you get to at least a minimum speed of 4000.

I disagree. It looks like the propulsion technology is lagging badly. The Grassraper appears to be using 2nd generation technology on the engines, and 3rd or 4th generation technology everywhere else. To improve the design I'd suggest either:

a) Make the ship smaller. Dump the shield unit, dump an armor layer or three, downsize the reactor to match the laser, downgrade the beam fire control unit so it isn't tracking faster than the main weapon. In short, try to shrink the destroyer down to a 1,000 ton FAC built around a laser.
-or-
b) Research Ion propulsion, and then follow Beersatron's advice with military engines. With Ion tech your ships could be moving 4,000 km/s with only 33% engine mass, or they could travel 6,000 km/s with 50% of the ship mass devoted to engines.
-or-
c) Go for a juggernaut fleet. You seem to have the tracking speed and defensive tech for it. The juggernaut theory is that speed doesn't matter if the defenses are strong enough or the attack range long enough. Just drive straight for the objective, crush anything in your way, and ignore anyone faster than you who isn't in the way. Defense is also easy, just sit on the jump points and squash anyone trying to move through you. For this to work you need to put anti-missile defenses on the ships, and add multiple shield units. Also, swap out the Gun Boat engine for military engines to improve fuel efficiency. The Grassraper could become a decent jump point defense craft if you added additional lasers, resized to beam-fire control, and resized the reactor, but a primary jugernaught offensive ship will need to be armed with either long range missiles or multiple point defense weapons such as banks of turreted lasers or rail guns. 

[Erik L]

Your biggest problem will be facing a missile-armed opponent. You won't be able to respond to their fire for hours of game time depending on vectors. Your ship has sub-par missile interception capability. You'll want a 5 second RoF weapon, and a Res1 scanner to see the missiles long enough to get a good read on them. Plus enough armor to degrade the effectiveness of any the leak through your screen.

On the upside, if you can force them into wasting all of their ammo, and manage to catch them; they will be slaughtered.

[woodenair (OP)]

Here's the redesigned ship taking everything into account.   .    I'm pretty sure I covered all of the major flaws.   .    Also had a question about the power efficiency, power reduction/increase modifiers.   .    Seems like it would be wise to have both of them on the same engine yes? Or to just not have either of them on the engines to keep it more balanced?

Grassraper class Destroyer    4,300 tons     424 Crew     1038.   4 BP      TCS 86  TH 180  EM 0
4186 km/s     Armour 8-23     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 12
Maint Life 1.   25 Years     MSP 151    AFR 147%    IFR 2.   1%    1YR 100    5YR 1500    Max Repair 270 MSP

Ion Engine E5 (6)    Power 60    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 85,000 Litres    Range 71.   2 billion km   (196 days at full power)

20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 240,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
Fire Control S09 120-15000 (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 15000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR30-R100 (1)     GPS 6000     Range 30.   0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1)     GPS 42     Range 2.   1m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

As you can see.   .    I downgraded the power output and took off the shields.   .    Upped the armor a fair bit and added some engines (Ion this time).   .    I have two active sensors (One of which as I understand it is for missile defense) and added another laser.   .    I think this ship might be able to hold it's own without much need for support but I'm not entirely sure that's true.   .    I planned to have a few of these to start off with. .  Also I wanted to base my ships around energy weapons and purposely handicap myself by NOT using missiles.  To offset this challenge I made resources more abundant. .  I'm also sharing the space of sol with two other races to start off with. .  They are both on Earth and I'm on Mars.

[ollobrains]

reasonable approach seems fair

[xeryon]

Much better.  Only major flaw is the AFR, MSP and maintenance life.  AFR is your annual failure rate.  Most people would say 147% is kind of high, but there are situations where that really isn't a problem.  The bigger problem is the MSP numbers.  You are only carrying 151 maintenance supplies yet your single largest repair item can require 270 supplies.  If that part breaks in the field your ship is in trouble.  With an AFR at 147% the chance of something breaking and leaving you in a bad spot is pretty high.

The next problem is maintenance life.  This is the usable life span of the ship before it starts having increased failure rates.  This isn't a huge problem because adding a couple extra engineering spaces to your ship will reduce AFR, increase you MSP supplies and add to your maintenance life.

Life and AFR are not a huge issue depending on the ships role.  Say, for example, you have a Grav survey ship.  If you are out scanning systems 6-7-8+ jumps from your home system it might take 6 months to get there.  With a maintenance life of 1.5 years you are going to spend all your time traveling back to base for overhauls.  Load that long duration ship up with supplies and engineering so it can stay out in the field for 10 years without coming home.  If you are building a planetary defense squad that will only leave base in an emergency, life doesnt advance in base and failures don't happen.  I have FAC's that are last ditch reserves that have been in orbit for 20+ years with NO engineering spaces.

[Garfunkel]

Yeah, I'd definitely add one or two engineering spaces to it - so that Maint Life is above 2 years and that MSP is higher than Max Repair. Then just build plenty of these and they will work.

[Brian Neumann]

Only 1 major item left that I see that needs changing.  Your fire control is wasting a lot of space.  It looks like you have a x4 range and x3 speed model fire control.  That is using up 12 hull spaces (600 tons)  You are wasting the x3 speed as the limit is going to be the lasers tracking speed (5000 vs 15000).  By downgrading the fire control to just the x4 range you will only be using 4 hull spaces and therefore either have more for something else like armor, or make your ship faster.

Brian

[woodenair (OP)]

Only 1 major item left that I see that needs changing.   Your fire control is wasting a lot of space.   It looks like you have a x4 range and x3 speed model fire control.   That is using up 12 hull spaces (600 tons)  You are wasting the x3 speed as the limit is going to be the lasers tracking speed (5000 vs 15000).   By downgrading the fire control to just the x4 range you will only be using 4 hull spaces and therefore either have more for something else like armor, or make your ship faster.

Brian

Oh! Right. .  I totally forgot that.  Good thing I didn't start building them yet :d

I might post some more designs as I test things out. .  I still don't have any commercial ships or geo ships. .  I was going to put it off as long as possible. .  But actually could you guys give me some pointers on basic ship designs for the resource gathering and transportation and what not?

I've looked at all the tutorials I could find but them seem outdated now

[Brian Neumann]

For geo survey ships a ship with 1 civilian engine, 1 geo survey and the associated life support is enough for surveying safe systems.  If they are going out of your safe, patrolled inner systems then they need some passive sensors, and a second engine.  They will be fairly fast, cheap, and all civilian. 

A similiar design for the grav survey ship works as well, although you are going to want to put a bunch of maintenance (engineering bay) on them so they don't run into problems with maintenance quickly.

For freighters make sure you have 5 cargo holds and at least 1 cargo handling facility.  A lot of things you are going to want to ship require 5 holds or nothing is moved at all.

If you make your colony ship with twice the number of cryogenic bays as the freighter has cargo holds they will be almost identical in size, and generally shipyards that are configured to build the colony ship can build the freighter as well.

Good Luck
Brian

[xeryon]

Two points of thought on grav and geo ships, either:

One way make them minimalist, super cheap, small and send them out into the wild to scan everything and anticipate losing them on occasion.
Or make them self sufficient islands.  A current setup I'm using my scan ships run 6000+ tons.  They are jump capable, two scanners, enough fuel and maintenance for 4-5 years of independent operation, several engines pushing my speed to over 5000km/s, several CIWS and three armor layers.  For all but a far superior tech alien I have been able to escape most hostiles and rarely loose one.