What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?

[83athom]

I am scrapping my game and creating a new one. I am already 2 years into it (no ships) and have everything pretty much set up. I was wondering what I should do according to naming things such as weapons/sensors/engines. Every time so far I have left the names as the default (400EP magneto-plasma drive, gauss cannon r3-100, etc) and was wondering what a good naming doctrine for these things would be. Also I was wondering about what sizes of ships I should use. I was thinking I kind of want to step a little back from the large ship I usually do (30kt frigates, 100kt cruisers, etc) but I don't want to go all the way to general Aurora accepted, so I was wondering what a good middle ground would be.

[xeryon]

I am a fan of numerical consistency.  I design almost all of my ships to be exactly the same size regardless of mission role. 

In my mind I imagine a large factory producing empty ship hulls.  The space program would love to build something else but the government commissioned this company to build the empty hulls.  It's been decades now and none of the politicians can get the pork barrel spending off of the budget as it has become a political land mine.  To kill the factory contract would put millions of workers out of business and the angry constituents would vote the pols out of office.  Each new iteration of the congress just keeps rubber-stamping the budget and the space program gets a never ending supply of matching hulls to figure out how to cram mission gear into.

(Roll a die and pick a specific size for your military hulls and commercial hulls and regardless of consequence make it work.  i.e. All Navel craft must be 12675 tons, all commercial craft must be 122,500 tons.  Stuff them with fluff, armor, CIWS, fuel tanks or whatever to inflate the size to fit or go without something critical if you need to cut size.  Make it a fun handicap for your game)

[MarcAFK]

For component names I generally stick with close to default, but add information that might help me sort through similar components.

[AL]

My early-game ships were all at 10kt which (I think) is still somewhat above the average size - maybe try that?
As for component naming, I suggest picking your favourite sci-fi universe and using techs out of that, eg Ion cannons for lasers and Hyperspace cores for jump engines etc using a Homeworld theme. Renaming techs in general can spice things up a bit, eg shields -> reactive armour, or missiles -> cannon shells, without really needing an overarcing theme.
I might also suggest ditching the use of centimetres in caliber measurements in favour of millimetres - from what a certain war game has taught me, only the Germans really used cm in the military.

[83athom]

Well, I am almost at the point where I will have to make a decision about the naming thing. 3 (almost 4) years in...... and micro-increments are starting. It started mid August and is in late October already. I started with 3 NPRs active at start, I guess one found something fun to do.

[Mastik]

I really like the idea of changing caliber measurmenents to mms.

[Erik L]

I really like the idea of changing caliber measurmenents to mms.

One I did a few years back I converted all the measurements to inches. So the 15cm laser was a 5.9" laser

[GreatTuna]

Once again wormholers strike my colonies! This time it's GJ 1002, the hub system between Zemlya and Altair, where homeworld of Wedgefield stands. There are 5 long-range missile PDC which could strike the attackers...

...

If I hadn't forgotten to bring some missiles here. Main fleet is stationed somewhere in Altair (3 systems away!), QRF is kind of destroyed (or "under reconstruction"), and attack here was really unexpected, because all but one system linked to GJ 1002 are populated.
Lives of 120 million people are at stake because I'm forgetful.

I will scramble some outdated ships and, uh, start taking notes? Or maybe field meson PDCs instead? But they can't cover civvies...
Ruling a 20-system empire is hard, and it's only a matter of time before combination of small mistakes will lead to big failure.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Heh. Problems like that are why i always make it a priority to unload missiles to newly built PDCs, even if i have to use warships to do it rather than colliers.  It's way too easy to forget.

[AL]

My laptop died recently, and I haven't yet bothered to try and recover stuff from the hard drive. Instead, I've started a new game on this crappy old device while I wait for a replacement to get shipped over.
It's my first game with Invaders turned on, and this time my chosen doctrine dictates an almost exclusive carrier/fighter fleet. It's all beam at the moment since missile tech still needs some development, so I just hope their ECM isn't so strong that my fighters have 0% to-hit chance at point blank range.

A wormhole has been discovered in a system adjacent to Sol, but no ships (survey or otherwise) have yet to be detected. A forward listening post has been established on the second planet in the system to watch for activity, and my only dedicated carrier is on station with its fighter complement in case a threat does materialise. I'm hoping the spoilers will stay on the other side of that wormhole long enough for me to develop some viable missiles so that I at least have a chance to damage some of their ships when they do come through.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Are you going for 'battlestar' carriers or 'fleet' carriers?

[AL]

This is the design for the carrier I mentioned:

Code: [Select]

Illustrious class Carrier    20 000 tons     290 Crew     2382 BP      TCS 400  TH 1200  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-65     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
Maint Life 0.68 Years     MSP 372    AFR 640%    IFR 8.9%    1YR 550    5YR 8248    Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Flight Crew Berths 213   
Hangar Deck Capacity 10000 tons     

Capital MPF Drive (2)    Power 600    Fuel Use 14.61%    Signature 600    Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 61.6 billion km   (237 days at full power)

Reactive Armour Mk.I (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Ship Detection Sensor Mk.I (1)     GPS 10500     Range 147.0m km    Resolution 100
Missile Detection Sensor Mk.I (1)     GPS 105     Range 14.7m km    MCR 1.6m km    Resolution 1

Strike Group
20x Dart Fighter   Speed: 12800 km/s    Size: 5
10x Raven Heavy Fighter   Speed: 12800 km/s    Size: 10
I think it's closer to a "fleet carrier", although I'm not too sure what either designation implies to be honest.

On another note, A survey ship just jumped into Sol from a different system to the one with the wormhole. It's a ~4kt ship going at a bit over 9000km/s, so I'm thinking it's probably a spoiler? After it was intercepted and destroyed by a couple fighter wings, no life pods were detected. This suggests that it was indeed a spoiler since NPR ships (always?) leave life pods. This then suggests that either there's another wormhole down that chain, or the jump points form a loop somewhere.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

well, at least in the way i think of it, a battlestar is intended to close with the enemy and destroy it. as such it tends to be heavily armored and well defended.  Fighters often function more as detachable beam mounts rather than in the strike role.

fleet carriers OTOH are generally designed for standoff strikes and arn't intended to take fire. they tend to have a lot less armor, and have few or no short range weapons.

beam fighters have a problem in the strike role... an AMM escort can easily have 700 AMMs, each of which are quite likely to hit a beam fighter. generously assuming 30 AMMs to kill a fighter, a single amm escort could kill almost 25 fighters without the fighters able to do anything in reply... although if the fighters can mount a missile defense sensor, that does help.

[GreatTuna]

I must say that most beam ships are suffering from AMM spam. It's just the fighters who suffer the most because of very low armor.

That said, one can try to tank the damage with more sturdy ships before launching strike force.

[GreatTuna]

AMM aside, today was the first time I got two battles interrupting progress at the same time.
First was my GJ 1002 (obviously, we lost. The harvester took three full 500mm laser cannon salvos before dying though, armor is nice thing indeed)
Second was two spoiler race combating each other.