First FAC, what have I done poorly?

[Eugene]

I'm just getting the hang of this game, and looking to make a fleet that's mostly fighters, FACs, carriers, and point defense.

My first attempt is this FAC (which lives in PDC hangers for now):

FAC Gauss A class Fast Attack Craft    1 000 tons     28 Crew     240. 4 BP      TCS 20  TH 80  EM 0
4000 km/s     Armour 3-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 6
Maint Life 10. 2 Years     MSP 150    AFR 8%    IFR 0. 1%    1YR 3    5YR 39    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 6   

MIL 80 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 80    Fuel Use 66. 5%    Signature 80    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range 13. 5 billion km   (39 days at full power)

2032 Gauss Cannon R3-100 (1x3)    Range 30 000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2032 Fire Control S01 32-10000 (1)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

1000 ton Active Search Sensor MR21-R20 (1)     GPS 1200     Range 21. 5m km    Resolution 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[drejr]

It's far too slow and lightly armed to survive major combat, even in large numbers.  The sensor resolution is too high to be useful against missiles and the fire control is massively overpowered, especially with that in mind.

That being said, I'm quite fond of small ships like this with light armament but high endurance.  Mine are typically around 2000 tons, armed with a couple of railguns or lasers (exactly what doesn't matter, as long as it's something), and 25 to 50% faster than fleet speed.  They can take over a variety of tasks that don't warrant a full warship, like hunting down survey and construction ships, rescue, cheap protection of small colonies, team transport, etc, etc.  Against typical NPR warships they tend to die quickly, and it's best to stick with missiles for FACs, even with a tech advantage. 

[MarcAFK]

The only glaring flaw I see is the excessive maintenance life, by magneto plasma I usually have small engineering spaces researched and like the added space for more important things.
FAC's are pretty good for making very specialized due to how fast you can retool for and build them, so if you can strip out every unnecessary thing to optimize whatever role it plays.
For instance if it's being kept in a hanger you're safe to give it no maintenance life, just make a recovery ship with at least 1,000 tons of hanger space.
If it's for planetary defense cut the range down to maybe 2 billion kilometers, or raise engine powers to the same effect.
Armour isn't needed unless the design is meant for beam duels, in which case 3 is probably a very good protection level.
Also you could reduce the sensor to a small emergency one with just enough range to detect your target in beam distance, relying on powerful passives or actives from the base for detection.
But that said a more generalized design is flexible.
I've just finished this design:

Code: [Select]

Gamma class Scout Frigate    1,000 tons     25 Crew     116.745 BP      TCS 20  TH 55  EM 0
2750 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 5.61 Years     MSP 36    AFR 16%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 2    5YR 29    Max Repair 18 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   

54.6 EP Ion Drive (1)    Power 54.6    Fuel Use 25.34%    Signature 54.6    Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 75,000 Litres    Range 53.3 billion km   (224 days at full power)

Gauss Cannon R2-33 (2x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 33%     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.5 32-1500 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 1500 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 16     Range 960k km    MCR 105k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH3-18 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesNot exceptional in any area, but being a FAC it's available fast to cover holes in my fleets capability.
These points are:
- missile sensor escort for my FAC force,
-Adequate passive sensor to replace the soon to be retired Pegasus( as an interim I had been using survey ships for thermal coverage but they're needed elsewhere, also this uses less fuel.)
-Fuel efficient scout(also replacing the pegasus, this has more efficient engines too)
-stealthy scout  (the 1000 ton rescue vessel proved itself excellent at evading enemy ships as long as their actives were off)
And finally the main use for this ship;sion,
-Commerce raider ; equipped with twice the armament of a fighter, double the accuracy, almost twice the speed of an enemy freighter, low signature for evasion, powerful thermals for detection, and finally significantly more range than any other warship and the same speed as the main destroyer fleet.

[Ninetails]

I would strongly recommend either changing the guass setup (to have higher target speed, and lower resolution on sensors) or changing to railguns.
The with gausscanons is that they are horribly weight/space inefficient compared to railguns when they are not put into turrets. For 6 HS one can get a single 100% guass cannon or 2 railguns, assuming we ignore power and turrenting. A single railgun gives 4 shots, so 2 railguns gives 8 shots. If you have the 3/5sec recharge tech, then they fire equally often too. But that single guasscannon only reaches that total of 8 shots at max tech level, which is serious end game stuff. This means that if you are not planning on setting the targeting speed to be significantly higher than your ships speed, then it is generally best to go with railguns, atleast until very high tech levels.

It might take some tech to get the 3/5sec recharge,  but the other gain railguns has is that they get range upgrades cheaper (only a factor 2 between each level, not the 3 from gauss weapons).
It should also be noted, that the main weakness of railguns is that they cannot be turrented, which is what the main use of guass weapons should be.

I would also recommend considering ways to increase the speed for your FAC's. Your current design looks a lot like a general system defense vessel in FAC size. This makes good sense for what you described their use to be, and honestly, at the lowest tech levels, missiles will be kind of crap, so much so that the simplest counter to them is just sending any ships at them. This ofcause starts to turn around once effective designs becomes available, and when the more exploitable options starts to be used, then missiles becomes almost the only option. Note that the 2 most exploitable things are size 1 missils and reduced size/box launchers, and that they scale to such a rediculess degree that you might need a mass difference on the order of 10:1 to counter it.

[MarcAFK]

I don't get why people always say missiles suck at early tech levels, they really are your only option if tge enemy has higher tech, their beam ships out ranging yours and their ships having more speed.
You may need excessive quantities, and most will miss, but missiles are pretty cheap to replace.

[Vandermeer]

Yupp, fully agree. Missiles are literally your only weapon early on, and are far from useless. You just have to get to power factor 1.5 at least to get x3 with missiles, and then, in great numbers, you can pretty much defeat everything with given resource and some tactics. (tested and confirmed, as I had huge arsenals of nuclear thermal missiles in one game, and successfully beat up different spoilers, essentially on TL1)

Your only other option at this early age is the risky bet of maybe one-shooting higher speed enemies at jump point transits, but that seems far too volatile as a strategy in my opinion.

But I think what most people mean when they say that early missiles are useless, is actually that their life span is just too short when tech is still progressing fast.(unless you artificially expand it for RP) So since you would need a lot of them, -more than on all higher tech levels of course-, you probably don't even have the time to get enough before the ion age is already there, nor the shipyards to get the necessary masses of 'deployment' vessels either.
The jump to magneto plasma takes long with conventional start, so investing in a missile stockpile at ion age does not as quickly result in wasted effort. ..Not to mention that you are normally not encountering anything before that time, simply because developing grav sensor and jump technology costs together so many RP, that it is totally average to get to ion age around the time, and simply focus on exploiting Sol until then.

The multi-nation start is another thing of course. If there is no or a short truce only, or you start conventional, then the enemies' low speed and armor let even the early missiles shine as the clear winner on the battlefields. But that is a very special case.

[sneer]

low tech missiles are ok and too often the only viable weapon vs spoilers
to some extent they may be a bit a waste of resourse as tech progress fast
so try to keep stockpile low ( I ususally try to have 1 reload for my fleet early on and it is enough)
old missiles are also ok for filling early missile pdc as better stuff is used by navy

[Ninetails]

The problem with early game/min tech missiles is their hit rate. This has an effect of serverely lowering their cost/benifit ratio. For minimum tech it is so bad that it is cheaper to build a huge chunk of armor and engines than to pay for the missiles that could destroy it. This means that sending any ship against early/min tech missiles would be a cost effective counter. This in turn means that in early wars between equavalent empires (say same system spawn), then practically any non-missile ship will be an effective counter to missile ships, and ships with anti-missile systems even more so.

While early missiles are indeed quite bad, that does not mean they are without uses as several of you have mentioned. Cost efficiency is not always a concern (it mostly is a concern when the sides are roughly ballanced), and it can be the only real way to destory targets of higher tech level. This does not necessarily make them a good choice, just the only choice, and you can easily have that your only choice is a bad one.

The point where missiles becomes decent is around TL 3-5 (depending on tech priority), where it becomes possible to design missiles that can have 100% hit chance against equal tech level, while still retaining a sizeable warhead. How early this is considered is dependent on who looks at it though, and what scenario one is playing.

The main reason I suggest not using early game missiles is the cost of oppotunity through cost of deployment. The resources you put into the deployment infrastructure, early missile ships, ordenance factories, the missiles themselves and missile tech would benefit you more if they went into your economy and research, and you just deployed defensive military instead, whos goal is not to defeat the enemy ships, but prevent them from harming you, which at that level can be done effectively with point defense/energy weapon ships. Since the growth in the early game is super-exponential, then getting ahead in the economy/research could easily put you significantly ahead, and after the delay tactics, you would be able to bring out a military far more powerfull than theirs.

It should be noted that I usually have a very heavy research focus in my strategy, which means that even TL 5 ships would be considered as early game ships, which would be outdated by a tech level or 2 before they leave the shipyard, and I typically would first construct a real fleet until around TL 7-8 (for main techs like engines, I prioritice some areas very heavily compared to others).