Author Topic: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser  (Read 2449 times)

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Offline xenoscepter (OP)

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The Confederate-Class Cruiser:
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Code: [Select]
Confederate-Class Cruiser    12,500 tons     359 Crew     2840.75 BP      TCS 250  TH 750  EM 180
6000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 3-47     Shields 6-150     Sensors 55/55/0/0     Damage Control Rating 35     PPV 22.74
Maint Life 5.51 Years     MSP 3130    AFR 83%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 173    5YR 2596    Max Repair 421.875 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 5 months    Spare Berths 15   

Class 12500 Naval Jump Drive [Basic]     Max Ship Size 12500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Stardrive Interstellar Fusion Engine (2)    Power 750    Fuel Use 12.18%    Signature 375    Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 88.7 billion km   (171 days at full power)
Naval Defensive Energy Shield System [Basic] (4)   Total Fuel Cost  30 Litres per hour  (720 per day)

15cm Heavy Naval Laser Cannon [UV] (1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 4    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
15cm Advanced Naval Laser Cannon [UV] (1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 4    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
10cm Standard Naval Laser [UV] Turret - Single Mount (2x1)    Range 120,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Hyper-Velocity Naval Railgun [10cm] (2x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Confederate-Class Beam FCS Unit (3)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Naval Fusion Reactor [Tokamak] (1)     Total Power Output 24    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Naval High-Grade Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 120     Range 13.2m km    MCR 1.4m km    Resolution 1
Naval High-Grade Passive Sensor Suite [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 55     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55m km
Naval High-Grade Passive Sensor Suite [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 55     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55m km

Compact ECCM-1 (1)         ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

 --- The Confederate-Class is the Principality's primary Cruiser, fulfilling the roles of offense, defense as well as being further designed to fulfill any other roles it might find itself pressed into. Grossing a healthy 12,500 Tonnes, there are currently two ships in the Confederate-Class; the Confederate Service Ship (C.S.S.) Confederate and the C.S.S. Pride of Sidon, with several more planned after designs for the Royal Confederate upgrade are finished. As is, the Confederate is a capable warship for general purpose use, as readily defending the Confederacy of the Principality as itself; able to take the fight to the enemy, make them bleed and show them what it means to fear the Wings of Sidon!

 --- In terms of armament, the Confederate-Class is armed to the teeth. A pair of 15cm laser cannons in an advanced twin-spinal mount form the cruiser's primary armament, while a duo of 10cm railguns are backed up by a pair of 10cm lasers which themselves are single-mounted inside their own armoured turrets. This blistering armament is mated to a trio of fire control systems and further enhanced by the inclusion of a compact ECM and ECCM unit. These systems work together to provide and preserve accurate fire out to ranges of up to 240,000 km, and with all of the lasers on a Confederate-Class operating in the Ultra-Violet wavelength this range is put to good use.

 --- Seeing to the questions of power and propulsion, a Confederate-Class Cruiser makes use of two Stardrive Interstellar Fusion Drives with a single naval-grade Tokomak Fusion Reactor serving as the power plant for the ship's weaponry. In the event of a lost engine, a Confederate-Class would be capable of limping home at a reasonable, if not brisk, speed of 3,000 km/s; exactly half of the ship's 6,000 km/s maximum speed. In the event of total engine failure, the turreted 10cm lasers ability to provide accurate dual-purpose fire is unimpeded so long as the vessel is still in possession of a function power plant. A basic, naval-grade Class 12500 Jump Drive enables these cruisers to operate across multiple systems without the use of Jump Gates.

 --- Defensively speaking, a Confederate-Class Cruiser wields a quartet of basic Naval Defensive Energy Shield Systems to serve as a screen to it's three layer thick armouring, composed of a special naval-grade Mercassium-enriched Ceramic Composite which is reinforced with a High-Density Duranium weave; giving it superior protection against thermo-kinetic threats of a wide variety. The 10cm railguns function as effective point-defense by virtue of volume, while the turreted 10cm lasers complement these by virtue of range. Additionally, the active sensor package mounted on a Confederate-Class Cruiser enables early detection of threats posed by missiles, fighters and FACs, while it's large passive sensor suites give it excellent eyes and ears with which to catch the enemy off guard.
 

Iranon

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2019, 04:49:14 AM »
The laser turrets seem off.

First, you don't need turrets to remain effective in case of total engine breakdown. Your tracking speed is capped at the HIGHER of ship speed or basic fire control speed.

Turret armour is rarely attractive, iirc, it's currently heavier than Steve intended for the protection it gives.
If you still want it, you could have specified a tracking speed of 0, in which case it acts like an unturreted weapon and uses the ship's speed. I frequently do this to save on crew requirements (a quad turret needs less manpower than 4 unturreted weapons).

I'd have my BFC speed match my ship speed; if nothing else this will help for point defence. At the same time, I probably wouldn't have 3 of them for so little weaponry. Probably one main and one short-ranged one for PD and as a backup.

ECCM-1 is also not worth the tonnage, you are usually better off with a slightly overengineered fire control.

Damage control rating and MSP supplies are both very high, maintenance life isn't as impressive as I would expect from those values (but still on the long side, good enough for "no overhauls ever, use up and scrap" if they spend most time in orbit of a colony able to service them). I assume you are using both damage control systems and maintenance storage bays? That is usually a wasteful combination.
Storage bays are mostly attractive when your ships are very cheap for their size, as that causes each engineering space to store fewer MSP while it's fixed for storage bays.

Having a jump drive on every mainstay ship seems a little wasteful. Personally, I like to have them on commercial vessels that serve as fast tankers, possibly with a basic sensor suite.  I understand you want this to be a true cruiser capable of independent actions, but you should be aware you're paying dearly for the capability, your ships could have several times the firepower.

Propulsion plant is a little too compact for my tastes, but  the resulting inefficiencies aren't too onerous.

*

My main problem is that the ships seem to devote too much on a safety net and excessive redundancy, sometimes in inefficient ways. So much that any survivable damage may have been prevented entirely if you had spent the tonnage and BP on general capability instead (e.g. shields, weapons, speed). OTOH, for pretty much the same reason these look fun from a roleplay angle - "battered and bloody, but we made it home!".
« Last Edit: May 17, 2019, 04:56:08 AM by Iranon »
 
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Offline Father Tim

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2019, 09:56:38 AM »
I love it.  Much closer to the sorts of ships I like to build.  I am curious as to the difference between a "15cm Heavy Naval Laser Cannon [UV]" and a "15cm Advanced Naval Laser Cannon [UV]" -- the stats I can see are identical.

Cruisers should have jump drives. . .  else they're not 'Cruisers'.  They're 'large patrol ships' or whatever.
 

Offline xenoscepter (OP)

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2019, 01:01:44 PM »
@Iranon

Having Three Beam FCS systems let's my PD weapons engage two salvos while the main weapons engage the enemy, I wonder if you knew that? Thanks for pointing out the turret thing with regard to the engines, I'll be keeping it for role-play reasons, but that's good to know moving forward. Likewise having Maintenance Storage and Damage Control are more for RP than anything else.

EDIT: Also, the ECM 1 and ECCM 1 are there for later; it's not too hard or time consuming to slap a new set in, while the ECCM 1 might not be so good; an ECCM 3 or ECCM 5 is. at this point they're placeholders for later tech, there to make it easier to refit.

@Father Tim

"15cm Advanced Naval Laser Cannon [UV]" Is a 10cm Advanced Spinal Mount Ultra-Violet Laser.

"15cm Heavy Naval Laser Cannon [UV]" is a 12cm Spinal Mount Ultra-Violet Laser.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2019, 01:08:15 PM by xenoscepter »
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2019, 02:23:50 PM »
Iranon, ECM and ECCM are more important for Beam ships because you CAN'T overbuild your fire controls like you can overbuild your missile fire controls.

The shields seem to be more for flavor than effectiveness.  I like shields in my kiting designs, because when facing off against equal beam fire controls I can potentially whittle them down by fighting at maximum range.  They also allow my beam capital ships to close to a nearly disabled ship to board it, hopefully taking all the damage on their shields.  My beam capital ships have a cryo drop module to take advantage of mostly disabled ships.  But to do that you have to have enough shields to take the full firepower of an enemy ship once, or the fire of a fleet at maximum range.

There is a bit of a mismatch in the crew endurance vs fuel endurance.  Basically, your crew starts getting really cranky on the return voyage.  Which isn't horrible, as you can go out to fight, and you will be at full morale at the fight, but you have no ability to stay on station at that range.  Be better to have less fuel, more crew endurance, and bring a commercial tanker or refuel from a forward depot if you need the range.

The mix of beam ranges is a bit awkward.  But I really don't think you have enough beam weapons to really justify that many fire controls. An anti-ship and a PD fire control, sure.  My fire plan for my capitals when I am shooting to disable is to stagger my beams, so the fire control fires a beam every 5 seconds. So if I have beams that fire every 20 seconds, I would have 4 per fire control.
 
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Offline xenoscepter (OP)

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2019, 02:38:30 PM »
@Michael Sandy

Those shields are generally more for flavor, yes, however they do a pretty good job protecting the ship against Fighters and FACs grossing up to 1,000 Tonnes as their complements are typically quite limited. Think of them less as shields and more as "Defensive Screens" that are there to take the edge off of bigger shots.

Also, I was under the impression that linking one 10cm Railgun and one 10cm Laser to each Beam FCS would allow me to use them to engage more than one salvo at a time in the PD Role? Am I mistaken?
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2019, 02:59:05 PM »
The requirements of a PD beam fire control and an anti-ship beam fire control are not identical.

Anti-ship, you want the maximum possible range.  But you only generally need as much tracking as your ship speed, especially if you have spinals.

PD, you do NOT need maximum possible range, but if you have turreted PD, you want the maximum possible tracking.  So if you have 5,000 km/s racial tracking, you will want 20,000 km/s beam fire control and turret tracking.

And 2x4 railguns with 5,000 km/s tracking, that shoots down maybe two missiles at 20,000 km/s, which is slow for magnetic plasma missiles.  The AI only very rarely fires volleys smaller than 3 missiles, but that would be out of character knowledge.  So this is information that you could use to inform your 2nd generation ships, after you see some combat with them.

Given that you have 5,000 km/s tracking, look into getting boosted engines and 10,000 km/s ship speed, and get x2 speed, x4 range beam fire control tech for your main guns.  The railgun FC only needs about x2 speed, x1 range, probably.

I have built commercial engined missile ships and carriers, but I would never do commercial engines for beam ships.  A missile duel, you can win if you have enough bulk slow moving point defense and carry enough missiles to kill the enemy.  Not having the ability to maintain a particular range isn't really fatal for them.  But a beam ship that can't close is nothing but an expensive to maintain target.
 

Offline xenoscepter (OP)

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Re: Ships of 1st Century Sidon, the Confederate-Class Cruiser
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2019, 04:11:40 PM »
@Michael Sandy

That information is about FCS configruation is helpful, thanks for that.

@Everyone

Wow, there are a lot of good suggestions here! Below is a more in-depth breakdown of the design philosophy; perhaps some of you could give me some more insights based on this information? With regards to doctrine, this a generalist cruiser, built for facing an unknown threats that could have any kind of capabilities. Role-Play wise, the Confederate-Class was engineered to counter as many different kinds of threats as could be thought up by the Confederate Intelligence Service within the confines of current Sidonian technology while maintaining the highest possible efficiency in dealing with the threats that it was supposed to counter. So, to put it another way, the ship was made to counter as many threats as possible at the highest efficiency possible to counter them. The vessel's mission profile could be considered, "attack the enemy, protect itself, protect the confederacy."

This class of cruiser isn't equipped with Commercial Engines, they are 2,500 Tonne Internal Confinement Fusion Drives w/ 50% Thermal Reduction, 0.75x Power and 0.5 litres per power hour of consumption. They are meant to be general purpose military engines, not too fast but not too thirsty either while also being modestly stealthy for their size and output. Two of these are equivalent in power to one and a half drives of comparable tonnage, while being more fuel efficient than one engine of comparable tonnage with a 1.50x power boost or two drives with a 1.0x power output. Their combined Thermal Signature is only two thirds of a pair of engines with 1.0x Power Output at the same tonnage, while being half the Thermal Signature of a single drive with 1.50x Power Output of the same tonnage.

They were built from the word go with a "middle of the road" approach, although I'm not sure how the speed stacks up at Internal Confinement Tech being only 6,000 km/s. As to the Beam FCS, I get what you are saying, and I hadn't really thought to arrange it that way. My layout was meant to be robust and multi-purpose; with all three of the ship's Fire Control Systems being able to stand in for one another, while the addition of a third FCS was to compensate for the lack of specialization with the ability to engage two salvos at once if needs be. The ECCM and ECM are there to help mitigate the speed disadvantage of the cruiser by affecting the enemy's range, thereby forcing them to close or else devote tonnage to offset the ECM. The ECCM would likewise help the generalist FCS units mitigate enemy shipboard or missile ECM, furthering the gap and forcing enemies to either close or devote tonnage to countering it.

That's where the shields come in, actually... With the generalist engines, the shields serve to force the enemy to divvy up their mission tonnage between having enough speed to close and enough firepower to overwhelm the cruiser's defenses. This is exasperated by the ECM / ECCM, of which a compact version is only 50 Tonnes or 1/3rd of a standard version as well as the range of the 15cm lasers. At closer ranges, the 10cms in their harder to knock out armored turrets serve to help out-shoot ships that try to close, while the Railguns can be divvied up into their own FCS group to focus on PD only. With the 240,000 km range on the 15cm lasers ands the added damage at 120,000 km, the cruiser can out range what it can't outrun and out shoot what it can't out range all while using the shields to effectively weather leakers in it's PD and the fire of smaller Beam Fighters and FACs. It's a generalist design, not particularly good at anything, but adequate at just about everything.