Author Topic: Largest Ships You've Used  (Read 11838 times)

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Offline HaliRyan (OP)

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Largest Ships You've Used
« on: October 14, 2011, 09:55:26 AM »
So I'm currently in the process of building the largest military ship I've ever used in Aurora so far and it got me wondering what monster ships other people have used? I don't mean designed but never put into production, I mean actually constructed. Civilian or military.
 

Offline Girlinhat

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2011, 10:29:51 AM »
I almost produced a "colony pusher" that could carry 100 auto mines in one go.  I generally leave one civilian and one military shipyard on constant expansion with one slipway, and tweak other shipyards as needed.  That can produce some massive ships.

I also made 10x terraformers on one ship, that one got pretty big, and no engine left it to be towed.  I produced 2 of those to handle Mars and Luna over the course of about 20 years each.
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2011, 11:41:08 AM »
I played a game based on the idea of battlestar galactica.  The primary combat ship was a 1,000,000 ton monster and I eventually was able to find a new home planet and after much combat/conquest have the population to build some 500,000 ton combat ships.  Those guys were true monsters.  They were built with very high initial tech (1million research point level) and I was never able to upgrade the tech I started with significantly.  I only had about 50 million population on board the ships so getting much beyond survival from them was difficult.  It was a fun game however, and they were definately the biggest ship I ever used.

Brian
 

Offline Girlinhat

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2011, 12:40:29 PM »
Sounds like you SM'd those ships in though...
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2011, 01:10:22 PM »
Sounds like you SM'd those ships in though...

Lookup "Battlestar Challenge" from last Spring.  functionally anyone who played the scenario used the fast order of battle and abandoned the homeworld in search of a new one.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline HaliRyan (OP)

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2011, 04:59:33 PM »
Yeah, I think I remember reading a thread about that scenario. It sounded really interesting.

But I'm actually wondering about design size usage/limitations in a standard game, so using the FOB with SM sort of defeats the purpose for me.
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #6 on: October 15, 2011, 04:59:50 AM »
I did sm in the ships that I started with.  By the end of the game I was building them from scratch.  About the only way to build them quickly was using prefab methods.  I was building the weapons, fire controls, sensors, engines and around 3 years to build.  Given the size of the ships that was fine however.  I also had to build up the shipyard from what it was to start with when I captured it to one capable of building those monsters.  I never got more than two shipyards with a total of 5 slips able to build the biggest ships but it was fun playing once they were built.

Brian
 

Offline Vynadan

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2011, 03:39:26 PM »
Two 300kt ships: a superdreadnought and a "fighter base", only ever built one of each and they both have two 100kt special escorts.

They're both the flagship of their own little armada, but not all that strong by themselves. They both carry jump engines which take up a good 10% of their size to jump with up to six other ships simultanously, dedicated another 20% to engines for a whooping 7002 km/s and they have shields comparable with a star swarm queen plus 30 (carrier) and 50 (dreadnought) layers of armour. Their offensive capabilities aren't as good as when I first thought them up, but they proved to be excellent meat shields (and therefor got their two escorts, one support and one missile platform) and 'normal' fleet ships.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2011, 03:50:04 PM by Vynadan »
 

Offline DFDelta

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2011, 05:27:57 PM »
My biggest one was a massive 540.  000t base that I designed after I forgot to disable constant expansion on a remote shipyard for 30 years or so.   If I have a 550kt military shipyard, then I have to use it for something, right?
I pulled it to Terra as its final defensive line. 
I also constructed a PDC with hangar bays enourmous enough to load this monster, but I never built it, so it does not count. 

Biggest civillian ship would be one of the Superfreighters I usually construct for quick transport of several constructions at once, 200kt usually. 

Biggest actual military ship would be a 150kt ship that acted as combined carrier/flag ship/sensor array. 
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Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2011, 06:35:50 PM »
Someone call waresky....   ::)
I never got above around a 100 k, and that was with a high tech start as I planned a combat simulation, but turned out differently.
Not sure about civs.
 

Offline Din182

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2011, 07:15:57 PM »
I suddenly fell like I'm not that good at this game. Largest ship I ever built was a commercial freighter at 96k tons. Largest military vessel was a 30k ton space station for anti-missile beams.
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Offline Panopticon

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2011, 07:54:22 PM »
I wouldn't say having small ships makes you not good, what takes less skill, winning a fight with a handful of 10k or less ships? Or winning it with some over-engineered monstrosity created via SM?

Proof of concept and stuff like Battlestar challenge aside of course.
 

Offline Anarade Relle

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2011, 08:19:28 PM »
I can't claim any great leviathans. I built a 55,000 ton battlestar (okay, like a demi-battlestar... corvette... compared to that million tonner) in a game once. Worked pretty well. It soaked up a ton of Precursor missiles once quite nicely.
 

Offline Peter Rhodan

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #13 on: October 18, 2011, 09:07:30 PM »
I'd back my fleet of 6kt Corvettes and 12kT Frigates against most forces I have seen detailed here. I do have 6 30kT Battleships that are pretty tough and a new class of 30kT Battleships that have the same armour and shields but half the offense as they carry 5 1kt Gunboats. I found I had a need for a very fast pursuit ships against one alien who has ships that do 14k+ - my gunboats do 16k - the 5 ship squadron has 2 missile defence boats - 2 offense boats with Size 5 launchers and a sensor boat.

With my current tech base a 6 ship division of each of my 2 12kT Frigate designs can take down a 60kT swarm Mothership in 2 salvos.......

I will admit that as soon as my 48k jump Military Jump engine design nears finishing research I will start building a force of 48kT Battleships - my warships don't have internal jump engines -  I have dedicated jump ships that also carry big sensors suites...
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Largest Ships You've Used
« Reply #14 on: October 18, 2011, 09:22:04 PM »
That million ton monster was horrendous to build a companion for.  As it was it had a lot of space that was not directly combat related.  The jump drive was 10% of the total space, it had 2 20 hull space passive sensors and 2 of active sensors (res 16 and 100) and one 50 hull space res 1 active sensor.  It also had stealth tech that took up 10% of the ship.  The maintenance bays were another 10%, engines 4%.  If I remember correctly the non weapons/armor/firecontrols were about 50% of the ship.  It had 30 points of armor and 300 point shields along with lots of 15cm laser turrets for point defense and 50cm lasers for offensive use.  There was also 20 size 1 launchers for point defense and it carried around 2000 missiles.  I tried not using the missiles exept in emergencies as I only had 5 missile factories in the fleet so I couldn't effectivly build new missiles without stopping for several years.  I only did that when I had to and when I finally found a habitable planet (no terraforming required).

The ship did well in combat except against the Invaders who did a lot of damage to it in the late stages of the game.  Against what I ran into to start with it was fine, but only survived because of its shields.  By the time I found a home its armor was almost entirely gone, I even had some patches with no armor left (this was before armor could be repaired by damage control).

Brian