Author Topic: Oh, the Humanity: Designs 1.13 edition (Read 5651 times)

Jorgen_CAB · « **Reply #15 on:** October 13, 2021, 08:11:14 AM »

Quote from: L0ckAndL0ad on October 13, 2021, 05:16:09 AM

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on October 10, 2021, 07:43:12 AM
The point of them is to never be detected or if they are not be a good target as that will reveal the enemy for a low value target.
Most of my frigates are not super fast either, usually slower than most destroyers, their protection in generally not being detected or being a low value target or protected by other military assets that will be nearby anyway.
What would be your thoughts on armour rating 1 for such a ship then?

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Larger ships just are that much more effective. The only drawback is slower construction and bigger thermal signature. But the efficient use of officers and bridge officers just make larger ships so much more effective. Not to mention efficiency of components. The idea is that if I always deploy a ship types in three or bigger squadrons than three in any mission I might as well combine them into one larger ship. If I need more scouts I just build dedicated scout craft and put them in a hangar on said ship as smaller sensors are way more efficient than large sensors anyway.
But I also understand that not everyone are as patient as me about how to conduct missions, for me that is part of the fun role-play aspect of the game.
I often think that if a ship has multiple FCS, then I should spread them across multiple ships instead. Each ship is a different target and thus more ships allow to distribute the offensive power. Which should be a good strategy dealing with high penetration, low ROF weapons like lances.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on October 10, 2021, 12:53:18 PM
It is important to note when discussing ship sizes and detection that it is very rare to see sensor resolutions larger than 100 to 120 (5,000 to 6,000 tons) at least from NPR designs. Against player races a ship size of 6,000 tons may prove harder to detect but against NPRs it does not make any real difference if a ship is 6,000 or 60,000 tons - unless of course you are using cloaking devices. Usually for a larger ship class, 3,000 to 4,000 tons works well to avoid the largest NPR sensors. NPRs usually deploy a wide range of sensor resolutions so there is not too much reason to go smaller than this as you will not beat the lower-resolution sensors anyways.
Yes, I was mainly talking about thermal signature from the engines of smaller size. But you are absolutely right about sensor resolution! In my older games I frequently used 8Kt sensors, but NPRs in C# seem to be sticking to res 100/120 tops. Thanks for noting that!

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It is worth noting that Gauss cannons in almost all circumstances, other than point defense and some edge cases involving SW fire controls, will have inferior performance to 10cm railguns in terms of DPS (really DPS per ton to be precise). They are really not a good weapon to use for antiship work, they can be effective but rarely if ever as effective as any other option (except mesons, which are even worse).
I found GC is a better light-weight option for small fighters in terms of tonnage, since they do not require a reactor. But I have not tried new reduced shot railguns yet, since my experience with them goes back to VB6 Aurora. Also...I am wondering what is the max researchable range for 10-12cm railgun in C# Aurora 1.13?

Armour levels depend entirely on technology level and the role of the ship.. I would never deploy a ship with only a single level of armor that has a beam weapon meant for at least some form of close combat or any military ship that is not a fighter or missile boat for that matter, that is just a personal preference.

It also make very little sense to split a ship for having multiple fire-controls... keeping it all on one ship is way more efficient even if you have several fire-controls. You get better captains and bridge officers, more efficient components and the ships are way harder to destroy. It also make sense from a backup point of view. The only real drawback is thermal signature and the fact they take longer to build.

If you make a small combat ship make it for the reason it is small, not as a main combat ship because it is effective. You keep the ship small for scouting reasons not combat reasons, for being able to deploy them on singular missions or in smaller numbers. A larger ship with onboard small scouts actually often are stealthier than a bunch of smaller ships, you don't want the ship itself to be the one that contact the enemy, you want the option to decide if you want to engage or not. A larger ship is always more efficient and resilient when you do engage, that is just pure math.

It is just fine to justify any design or ship based on role-play factors, because there can be a reason from a political point of view you deploy ship of a certain size. Similar to the split between light and heavy cruisers and bigger ships during World War II which were a product of treaties.

In terms of Railguns they are way more efficient on a fighter or FAC hull than Gauss cannons even when counting the power generators, that is also just pure math. The Gauss cannon might get better if it fires like six or more shots or, it where some time ago I did the math on that. A quick look is a 10cm Railgun with a Powerplant that fires every five seconds weigh around 190t and cost about 20 production while a similar Gauss cannon weigh 300t and cost about 50 production, both fires four shots. The smaller rail-gun can comfortably be put into a fighter hull of 500t but you would need to make the Gauss a bit smaller which reduce their effectiveness From a research perspective there really is no good argument not to invest in the lower end of Railguns for general point defence.

Gauss weapons do not work well with fighter hulls in my opinion, you are better off with a railgun for PD fighters if you use them. Gauss should always be mounted in a turret to be effective.

nuclearslurpee · « **Reply #16 on:** October 13, 2021, 09:11:02 AM »

Quote from: L0ckAndL0ad on October 13, 2021, 05:16:09 AM

I found GC is a better light-weight option for small fighters in terms of tonnage, since they do not require a reactor. But I have not tried new reduced shot railguns yet, since my experience with them goes back to VB6 Aurora. Also...I am wondering what is the max researchable range for 10-12cm railgun in C# Aurora 1.13?

I've done the math a number of times on this forum and it always comes out that a 10cm railgun is far more tonnage-efficient than a Gauss cannon for fighters until you reach endgame levels of Gauss ROF technology.

Keep in mind, a full-size Gauss cannon is 6 HS (300 tons), and any reduced-size Gauss cannon loses accuracy in proportion to its size so that damage per ton remains a constant. You might think "oh, I can put a 1 HS Gauss cannon on my small fighter but not a 3 HS railgun" but the 1 HS Gauss cannon is only 17% as accurate as the railgun.

A 10cm railgun is always 3 HS, so with the exception of very low tech levels (when you shouldn't be building fighters anyways as they are woefully ineffective) railgun + power plant is always lighter than an equivalent-DPS Gauss cannon until very high tech levels. Gauss cannons really do not break even until ROF 8 tech - in theory ROF 6 tech would work but by the time you are that high in the tech tree you can also build a R3 reactor very small and cheaply so Gauss is still not quite good enough.

It turns out that the 150 ton size of a 10cm railgun is about optimal for fighters as you can build up to the full 500 tons and get a very comfortable design which is the most efficient. With fighters, always keep in mind that bigger is usually better as the size efficiency of various components is most pronounced for smaller sizes. For example, a 500-ton fighter will get better use out of a given BFC than two 250-ton fighters would get out of two BFCs which are half the size each.

I believe the maximum railgun range modifier is 90,000, which gives 90,000 km range for 10cm and 180,000 km range for 12cm at max tech. This is quite short (compared to lasers easily exceeding 1.4m km at max tech) but still longer-ranged than Gauss which I believe caps out at 60,000 km.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #17 on:** October 14, 2021, 03:26:41 AM »

Like I've already said, I first got into Gauss Cannon fighters when playing VB6 Aurora. With low % GCs, I was able to make a fighter that was smaller and faster than the railgun one, and also utilized crew grade and pilot's skills, thus improving the degraded hit-chance and making it better than it was on paper. It was cheaper, smaller, faster and more reliable (because no reactor needed). Yeah, the reduced GC's performance obviously could not compete with railgun 1:1, but it was "good enough" for me, granted the crew grade and skilled pilots were there. I really wanted the smallest possible fighter, to fill as many of them on a carrier.

Also, against missiles, the faster fighter has better chances dealing with them due to tracking speed, but of course it is a matter of how much the difference is. And don't forget about Research investment. In my current playthrough, I researched lasers, GCs and missiles almost exclusively until late 2090s. Railguns is another tech you need to research, if you don't use them for anything else.

Sadly, there's a bug in 1.13 Aurora where commander's bonuses don't apply on craft without a bridge, so you can't utilize the GC fighter potential fully as I envision it.

I did look into reduced size railguns and they seem to be awesome. They become less space efficient with reduced shots, but still, it's a good option to have.

L0ckAndL0ad · « **Reply #18 on:** October 23, 2021, 01:38:38 PM »

2nd Generation major combat vessels

Surigao is the result of previous drafts I made public here but never built. 4 ships of the class were constructed so far, although the initial designs had 500t of hangar space for scouts and size 6 missile cells. Recent combat made me question the potency of size 6 missiles against heavily armored ships, which resulted in size 20 wh 65 missiles, which should allow for occasional internal shock damage, even if they fail to penetrate the armor.

This probably would be the last of the laser weapon armed designs, as I see clearly that str 18 particle lance is far superior choice when you want to kill heavily armored ships. My current enemy uses them on pretty much every ship - DD, CA, BC. I think I'm gonna do the same when I research all the needed tech.

Troop Capacity was probably a bad idea because my experience with boarding so far wasn't that positive. Oh, and the construction of carriers made me shift all the scouting craft there.

Author Topic: Oh, the Humanity: Designs 1.13 edition (Read 5651 times)

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)

L0ckAndL0ad (OP)