Modular Ships

[Elouda (OP)]

After someone keyed me into the fact that you could use tractor beams to simulate modules on ships, I went ahead and did just that - and I have to say its worked out rather well, though I've yet to test these in combat!

Firstly, the 'core', containing the engines and passive sensors.

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Type 28 Modular Combat Vessel class Modular Vessel Core    6000 tons     561 Crew     1087.8 BP      TCS 120  TH 540  EM 0
9000 km/s     Armour 2-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 22/22/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 57%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 567 MSP    Max Repair 45 MSP    Est Time: 6.12 Years

Type 23 M/IE Engine (18)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres    Range 131.3 billion km   (168 days at full power)

Type 13 SQR Passive Thermal (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22m km
Type 13 SDR Passive EM (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22m km

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

In addition to this, I designed 3 different kinds of module to attach to the core;

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Type 28 Mission Module - Laser class Mission Module    4000 tons     385 Crew     783 BP      TCS 80  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 2-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 26
Annual Failure Rate: 42%    IFR: 0.6%    Maint Capacity 367 MSP    Max Repair 240 MSP    Est Time: 2.19 Years
Tractor Beam    


Type 25 Twin Laser Turret (T24 15cm/R10 N-UV) (2x2)    Range 180,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 12-6     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Type 24 SPG/L Laser FCS (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 9000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Type 24 P4.5E5 GCF Reactor (3)     Total Power Output 13.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Type 17 SPY Area Search (1)     GPS 4800     Range 52.8m 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

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Type 28 Mission Module - ASM class Mission Module    4000 tons     349 Crew     677.4 BP      TCS 80  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 2-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 18
Annual Failure Rate: 64%    IFR: 0.9%    Maint Capacity 212 MSP    Max Repair 128 MSP    Est Time: 1.79 Years
Magazine 408    Tractor Beam    


Type 15 S4R Missile Launcher (6)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 80
Type 17 SPG/M Missile FCS (1)     Range 52.8m km    Resolution 20
Type 21 RGM Harpoon (102)  Speed: 18,700 km/s   End: 32.5m    Range: 36.5m km   WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 131 / 78 / 39

Type 17 SPS Active Search (1)     GPS 5120     Range 56.3m km    Resolution 40

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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Type 28 Mission Module - AMM class Mission Module    4000 tons     324 Crew     731.4 BP      TCS 80  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 2-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 12
Annual Failure Rate: 42%    IFR: 0.6%    Maint Capacity 343 MSP    Max Repair 100 MSP    Est Time: 3.51 Years
Magazine 396    Tractor Beam    


Type 20 S1R Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Type 20 SPG/M Missile FCS (3)     Range 2.1m km    Resolution 1
Type 20 RIM Stinger (396)  Speed: 24,000 km/s   End: 1.6m    Range: 2.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 176 / 105 / 52

Type 20 SPD Missile Detection (1)     GPS 96     Range 1.1m 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
These 'latch' onto the core ship, dropping its speed to 5400km/s, still well above the speed of my main fleet units (4000-4500km/s). This probably means I could have gotten away with a smaller tug, or bigger mission section, but its a work in progress.

I built them with the tractor on the module rather than the ship for flexibility - this way if needed, I could stick these onto existing units for extra oomph, move them along with commerical traffic, or as Ill mention later, put several on one ship.

Advantages I can see this having;
-I can drop off modules at planets to act as orbital defences.
-I can swap out modules for overhauls and repairs.
-I can swap out modules as needed for mssion.
-I can transfer maintenance and even fuel, etc. between modules and the core, so in this sense its no worse than a single ship.
-My ships have an smaller TCS than a similar 'one-part' ship.
-I can build these as a joint project in a smaller yard.
-If overwhelmed, I can drop the module and run for it. With 9000km/s speed, this would have saved some of my ships from a bunch of 10000km/s 800ton gunboats a few years back.

Disadvantages include;
-Having to sacrifice 500tons for the tractor
-Shields/armour wont combine
-Have to build various components, and theyre a pain to track on the ship screen.
-As this is 'several' ships, jump drives need to handle larger squadron sizes.

Other ideas for components include a 'hangar module', a 'tanker module' and a 'survey module' with suitable equipment. Another possibility is a 'commercial' variant of the tug, which means that it needs no maintenance.

After I had combined one ship, I had what I thought was the bright idea to stick two of them onto one ship. We'll, it worked, and I found a bug as a result, so I guess I should go report it in the right place. The problem is that the whole combination retains the same speed as before the 'combination', regardless of how many I attach. This might be resolved by allowing only a single device to attach to a ship at a time.

 So in the end I had 30,000tons of ship moving around at 5400kps. The rest of my fleet began to wonder when they would be scrapped.

[The Shadow]

I figured we were going to be seeing this before long.  Great idea!

Since the tugs are multi-purpose anyway, you could just make it a point to put jump drives on them.  Cute part is, the drive only has to be big enough to carry the tug - the module comes along for free!  (Even several modules, if you use more than one.)

I wonder, can a military vessel *with no engines* go through a jump point via a commercial jump drive in the tug?  The technobabble has to do with the high power of military engines, after all.  (Though I suppose the reactors could count too.)  And a tug with enough commercial engines on it to be interestingly fast would be very big, anyway.

[The Shadow]

Out of curiosity, why put the tractor beams on the modules instead of on the tugs?

EDIT:  I'm also curious how NPR's are going to react to these things.  Will they shoot at the weapon module, or the tug?  Once they shoot up the weapon module, does the tug get off scot-free?  Or what?

EDIT:  Have you verified that ships being towed can fight?

[Elouda (OP)]

Out of curiosity, why put the tractor beams on the modules instead of on the tugs?

EDIT:  I'm also curious how NPR's are going to react to these things.  Will they shoot at the weapon module, or the tug?  Once they shoot up the weapon module, does the tug get off scot-free?  Or what?

Flexibility. This way theres less 'dead weight' on the tug, making it better at escaping, and a better courier. This way the modules can also be moved about by commerical traffic by 'hitching' a ride, or brought along as extra payload on normal combat ships. It also meant that it was possible to chain link them, which is not possible with a tractor on just the tug. Probably why it broke.

I've just used these against an NPR, and the tug was the first to go. No idea if it was coincidence or intentional. And yes, they can fight. Or well, the modules can, but theyre technically the ones doing to 'towing' - so no, I havent tried to see if when attached to a normal ship that ship can still fight.

EDIT; I just put a military jump drive on the tug - it works, though with a squadron size of 3 it can only jump itself and two modules. Still useful though. Ill let you know how it goes with the commerical one later. One solution might be a dedicated 'jump module' that gets left behind at the warp point when a fleet enters.

[The Shadow]

Interesting.  Perhaps the tugs get hit first just because they're bigger and have more thermal emission?  But it's kind of rough on the module - stranded, they're probably in trouble.

EDIT:  Also, putting the tractor on the module does make sense.  When you think about it, it's only the equivalent of two engines - so you're saving space, really.

EDIT:  In the long run, if you pursue this doctrine, you'll probably want different varieties of tug - combat models and more "workhouse" ones.

[UnLimiTeD]

Someone suggest a close tractor to let ships actually combine! With shields! Oh wait, I already did that.
Neat designs, and a very interesting choice to have the tractors on the module.
I think NPRs sort of always target the biggest ship, don't they?

[Elouda (OP)]

Someone suggest a close tractor to let ships actually combine! With shields! Oh wait, I already did that.
Neat designs, and a very interesting choice to have the tractors on the module.
I think NPRs sort of always target the biggest ship, don't they?

I dont know about that - this same NPR, when I engaged it with a fleet of destroyers (~5000tons) and light cruisers (~10000tons) earlier, knocked out 3 of my escort anti-missile destroyers first, before moving onto the cruisers. This thinned out my defensive fire enough to result in the destruction of the fleet. This made me think the NPR was just being smart, but if they always target the biggest ship then it was probably just a fluke.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, it depends on sensors and other factors, however, so far in all stories I've read on the boards, the player puts the escort in front of the main fleet, and the NPR still attacks the main fleet.
I didn't test that myself, so far, my combat ships are the same size, and I've yet had only one meaningful battle, which was against a precursor, and I didn't really pay attention in which order he wiped my fleet^^

[ZimRathbone]

Depends very much on the size of ships and/or how much "noise" they make.

I have often had enemy units target my BCS (Battle Control Ships) , as they have big noisy sensor arrays and tend to be amoungst the biggest units in my fleets in prefernce to my missile armed strike units or screen units (which are often much smaller, so may not have been picked up by enemy actives as they are sometimes below the enemy sensor resolutions)

[Kurt]

After someone keyed me into the fact that you could use tractor beams to simulate modules on ships, I went ahead and did just that - and I have to say its worked out rather well, though I've yet to test these in combat!

<snip>

Advantages I can see this having;
-I can drop off modules at planets to act as orbital defences.
-I can swap out modules for overhauls and repairs.
-I can swap out modules as needed for mssion.
-I can transfer maintenance and even fuel, etc. between modules and the core, so in this sense its no worse than a single ship.
-My ships have an smaller TCS than a similar 'one-part' ship.
-I can build these as a joint project in a smaller yard.
-If overwhelmed, I can drop the module and run for it. With 9000km/s speed, this would have saved some of my ships from a bunch of 10000km/s 800ton gunboats a few years back.

Disadvantages include;
-Having to sacrifice 500tons for the tractor
-Shields/armour wont combine
-Have to build various components, and theyre a pain to track on the ship screen.
-As this is 'several' ships, jump drives need to handle larger squadron sizes.

Other ideas for components include a 'hangar module', a 'tanker module' and a 'survey module' with suitable equipment. Another possibility is a 'commercial' variant of the tug, which means that it needs no maintenance.

After I had combined one ship, I had what I thought was the bright idea to stick two of them onto one ship. We'll, it worked, and I found a bug as a result, so I guess I should go report it in the right place. The problem is that the whole combination retains the same speed as before the 'combination', regardless of how many I attach. This might be resolved by allowing only a single device to attach to a ship at a time.

 So in the end I had 30,000tons of ship moving around at 5400kps. The rest of my fleet began to wonder when they would be scrapped.

I'm fairly sure that when Steve implimented the "Tractor" concept within Aurora he looked at it from the point of view of "Tug with tractor tractoring base/slower ship", and not the way which you have implemented it, which is the other way around with the tractor on the towed unit rather than the tug.   Because of that he didn't consider what you did with it, which is to attach multiple towed units to one tug, so that is why Aurora isn't calculating the speed correctly, Steve never considered that someone would attach multiple pods to one tug.  

Having said that, I like your idea.  This may be something I'll play around with in one of my campaigns.  Although, I have to say that your defenses are very light for my tastes.  Level 2 armor and no shields?  Wow, talk about an eggshell!

Hmmm...while you gain flexibility in being able to reconfigure your fleet for different missions (depending on pod availability), you also gain a vulnerability, in that once an enemy learns to target your tugs, your pod force becomes an immobile base guarding nothing (if the encounter takes place in deep space).  While Aurora's AI targeting routines are almost certainly simplistic, probably along the lines of "Target the largest enemy ship" or "Target the closest enemy ship", a real opponent (or a human run NPR) would almost certainly figure this out fairly quickly, based on the differences in emissions between tug and pod.

Once your pods are immobilized the enemy doesn't even have to engage them, as long as the pods aren't within range of something he values and he can keep relief forces away, the pods will eventually fail maintenance checks and fall apart.  

This will take some thought...

Kurt

[UnLimiTeD]

Risk for reward^^
It has the tremendous advantage of allowing you to tech up the weapons and sensors without having to refit your entire force all the time, you just scrap the pods and add new ones.

Also, with higher tech levels, you can grant the Tug Higher armor and shields, and have your fleets functions on weaker pods.
This gives the enemy a tough choice for what to shoot at.
I like the idea, even if it has severe weaknesses, in an emergency situation you could use your commercial Tugs to Tow Battle Stations onto the frontline.
Will definitively find a place in my first RP campaign, though I'm waiting on 5.1 for that, and maybe it's not viable anymore by then.^^

[welchbloke]

This is a very interesting idea; like several of the other respondants I think I may have to try this concept out for myself.  Nice One  
I haven't used tractors for a long time so can someone remind me if a mothership and tractored unit can pass through a JP together?

[Brian Neumann]

This is a very interesting idea; like several of the other respondants I think I may have to try this concept out for myself.  Nice One  
I haven't used tractors for a long time so can someone remind me if a mothership and tractored unit can pass through a JP together?

Yes, but each counts as a seperate ship.  If you are using a jump gate then there is no problem.  If you are using a ship for a combat transit then a tug + module counts as 2 ships toward the limit.

Brian

[welchbloke]

This is a very interesting idea; like several of the other respondants I think I may have to try this concept out for myself.  Nice One  
I haven't used tractors for a long time so can someone remind me if a mothership and tractored unit can pass through a JP together?

Yes, but each counts as a seperate ship.  If you are using a jump gate then there is no problem.  If you are using a ship for a combat transit then a tug + module counts as 2 ships toward the limit.

Brian

Thanks. So far combat assaults I would probably role play it as the tug has a jump drive and the number of modules a tug can take through is limited by the jump squadron size researched.  Do all the ships in a single transit appear in the same spot or do they get randomised positions?

[Father Tim]

Do all the ships in a single transit appear in the same spot or do they get randomised positions?

Yes.  Technically, yes.

That is, your entire squadron will arrive together in a single, random location within the Jump Distance of your jump engine.