Home of Light Defence Fleet

[jseah (OP)]

As suggested from the missile thread in Academy, I have a few ship designs for critique. 

Notes:
My engine tech is higher than everything else apart from research rate.  Internal Confinement is not representative of the overall tech level I have. 
I also have infeasibly low shield tech. 
I am using a HTK 2, size 1 magazine.  HTK 1 makes them only carry 1 point more. 

Design paradigms: (can be changed)
25% of ships are engines.  Fuel efficiency is sacrificed for more speed. 
Main offensive weaponry will be missiles.  A close-in support and final missile defence frigate is awaiting laser tech. 
A heavily armoured flagship with sensors will be around to paint targets.  The idea is that the flagship will stay ~1 million km behind while the fleets duke it out under it's sensor cover.  (MR70-R1, MR211-R16, MR408-R60)
 - Auxiliary gunboats with smaller sensors are present.  Just in case.  Perhaps even act as decoys with their 11kkm/s speed. 
 - Scout frigate class with passive sensors in awaiting a new shipyard and thermal reduction / cloaking tech. 
A dedicated fleet of jumpship, coiller and tanker support will be available.  Perhaps even maintenance support on long missions. 
The 'Lancelot' missiles have a 50kkm, R30 active sensor. 

Missile Frigate:

Code: [Select]

Chimera class Frigate    6,000 tons     724 Crew     1028.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 690  EM 0
5750 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 14     PPV 40
Annual Failure Rate: 72%    IFR: 1%    Maint Capacity 428 MSP    Max Repair 60 MSP    Est Time: 3.98 Years
Magazine 265   

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (6)    Power 115    Fuel Use 78%    Signature 115    Armour 0    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 57.7 billion km   (116 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (8)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC64-R20 (2)     Range 64.4m km    Resolution 20
'Lancelot' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (53)  Speed: 16,000 km/s   End: 62.5m    Range: 60m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 106 / 64 / 32

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
Missile Destroyer:

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Ettin class Destroyer    10,000 tons     1233 Crew     1632.84 BP      TCS 200  TH 1150  EM 0
5750 km/s     Armour 3-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 17     PPV 75
Annual Failure Rate: 114%    IFR: 1.6%    Maint Capacity 714 MSP    Max Repair 60 MSP    Est Time: 4.08 Years
Magazine 570   

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (10)    Power 115    Fuel Use 78%    Signature 115    Armour 0    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 275,000 Litres    Range 63.5 billion km   (127 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (15)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC64-R20 (1)     Range 64.4m km    Resolution 20
'Lancelot' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (114)  Speed: 16,000 km/s   End: 62.5m    Range: 60m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 106 / 64 / 32

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
AMM Frigate:

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Wyrm class Escort Frigate    6,000 tons     602 Crew     1306.2 BP      TCS 120  TH 690  EM 0
5750 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 15     PPV 15
Annual Failure Rate: 57%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 680 MSP    Max Repair 176 MSP    Est Time: 3.18 Years
Magazine 240   

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (6)    Power 115    Fuel Use 78%    Signature 115    Armour 0    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 76.9 billion km   (154 days at full power)

Size 1 Missile Launcher (15)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC58-R1 (3)     Range 58.1m km    Resolution 1
'Hedge2' Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (240)  Speed: 39,800 km/s   End: 2.6m    Range: 6.2m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 318 / 191 / 95

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
Current military OOB:
1x Beholder Class Command Ship
1x Gnoll Class Jumpship (tanker, supply)
10x Chimera Class Frigate
4x Ettin Class Destroyer
4x Wyrm Class Escort Frigate
4x Hydra Hunter Class Scout
20x Hydra Head Class Corvette  (box launchers)

Observations:
Not including the Hydra Facs, my Wyrms can easily defend against the entire missile output of my fleet until they run out of AMMs (which they will before the fleet runs out of missiles)

[Beersatron]

You could do with a dedicated size 1 active search sensor on the AMM ships at the least.

You can rely on the ASS on the Jump/Sensor/Command Ship (presuming you have one?) for the ASM but once it goes down you will be unable to target anything.

[Hawkeye]

Your Lancelot missile seems pretty slow for ICF drives. Guessing here, you sacrificed a lot of space so you could reach a warhead strenght of 9.
Personally, I´d go with a smaller warhead and increase speed - a lot.
(faster missiles are harder to shoot down, so you will (hopefully) deal more damage to the enemy, even with the smaller warhead in the end).

On the active sensor issue:
Personally, I have a (smallish) backup active of the appropriate resolution (120 for anti-ship work, 1 for anti-missile work) on each combat ship, along with a small (50 to 100 t) thermal. This is, of course, just a personal preference.

Be aware, however, that your command ship might become a very inviting target (even if it hangs back a bit), once it lights up its large active sensor arrays and, as Beersatron says, once it dies, you are screwed.

[jseah (OP)]

Sensors:
I have a fac design (Hydra Hunter) sporting a sensor (MR55-R20), think that'll suffice instead of the backup small ones?
Perhaps I could fit an R1 backup sensor on a similar design (MR17-R1) that'll be my backup AMM sensor. 

I don't mind have incredibly specialized ships.  I have alot of shipyards, courtesy of investing in construction rate boost and have a peaceful 7 year buildup.  Frigates and Destroyers only take around 3-5 months each.  With plenty of time for other construction. 


Missiles:
Point taken about the Lancelot.  Missile drives are 1 tech level behind ICF though. 

Reduced warhead to 4.  Removed agility. 
Proposed "Gawain" Size 5 AS missile:
(0.8 WH, 3.1 engine, 0.85 fuel, 0.25 sensor)

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0.25 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 49600 km/s    Endurance: 21 minutes   Range: 61.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.2    Resolution: 20    Maximum Range: 40,000 km     
Cost Per Missile: 5.3333
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 496%   3k km/s 160%   5k km/s 99.2%   10k km/s 49.6%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.2x Uridium   3.8833x Gallicite   Fuel x2125

Development Cost for Project: 533RPA fuel efficiency tech happened, so I could drop a bit of fuel (was 1)

This one appears to have a 40% hit rate increase on the Lancelot, and with a... 3.1 times faster speed, should be bloody hard to intercept. 
I dislike only doing 2 layers of armour damage though.  I could quite easily afford 3 layers of armour on all my ships, with 4 on the command ship (I know it's a big target)

In fact, the 'Gawain' AS is faster than the 'Hedge2' AMM! 
('Hedge'  was fail as it had too much range, I wish we could design R0.33 sensors)

Think I should just rush the ICF missile drive then get a super fast Gawain into service?

EDIT:
If I'm going to delay my beam program and get a new missile, I may as well get two-stage nuclear warhead and the agility boost tech as well. 

[ardem]

R1 missile sensors are needed to pick up small missile your large sensor will not detect them until it too late to launch or fire point defences (other thne CIWS), also have an abundance of R1 sensors, if you lose your main R1 sensor then you have no missile defense.

[jseah (OP)]

Yes, I did see that.  I was asking if I could substitute a dedicated backup R1 sensor FAC instead of putting R1 sensors on everything. 

In fact, I had just built a new shipyard for that very role.  (only takes me 11 days to build a shipyard >.>, which is why I like to use FACs for misc. duties.  I can spam them non-stop.  I suspect in three years, my FAC swarm will rival the Hive ships.  )

EDIT:
even if sensor FACs are a bad idea, I can use the yard anyway, an escort destroyer design might be good, it's just missing a shipyard. 

[Brian Neumann]

I would second the call for a small r1 sensor on all of your anti-missile ships.  As long as it can see a size 6 missile for 600k km it will give you time for 1 anti-missile launch from your escorts.  Precursor missiles fly at about 40,000km/s is my memory and to give a good chance to intercept you need them on sensors for 15 seconds (10 seconds for cycle time and 5 seconds as a safety margin), a 40,000 km/s missile covers 200,000 km every 5 second cycle.  With your apparent tech this should be about a size 1-2 sensor so it is not to bad a hit.

Brian

[chrislocke2000]

From the limited experience I've had my main concern would be the size of the magazines on your AMM ships. Most of the time you will have well under a one to one hit ratio when using your AMMs and hence need a significant store to make sure you can deal with all incoming waves.

Hostile ships tend to be able to spew out far more waves of missiles then your own ships and if you are thinking of engaging them in their home system or round one of their basis its likely that they will be able to reload before you get a chance to run them down.

My current 8000 ton AMM ships has capacity of just shy of 700 missiles and I have four of these in each combat group. I'm in the process of boosting this as I've had a number of encounters that were too close for comfort.

[Hawkeye]

Missiles:
Point taken about the Lancelot.  Missile drives are 1 tech level behind ICF though. 

Reduced warhead to 4.  Removed agility. 
Proposed "Gawain" Size 5 AS missile:
(0.8 WH, 3.1 engine, 0.85 fuel, 0.25 sensor)

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0.25 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 49600 km/s    Endurance: 21 minutes   Range: 61.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.2    Resolution: 20    Maximum Range: 40,000 km     
Cost Per Missile: 5.3333
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 496%   3k km/s 160%   5k km/s 99.2%   10k km/s 49.6%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.2x Uridium   3.8833x Gallicite   Fuel x2125

Development Cost for Project: 533RPA fuel efficiency tech happened, so I could drop a bit of fuel (was 1)

Droping warhead down all the way to 4 seems a bit much (the square "rule" is not a hard rule, it just describes penetration, i.e. a strength 4 warhead will make a crater like this:

XXX
  X

while a strength 6 warhead, for example, will make a crater like this

XXX
XXX

Yes, penetration is the same, but the chance that another missile will hit the third row of armor is three times a large as with a strength-4 crater.)


I´d play around a bit with engines and agility. 40k-ish is ok for magneto plasma drive missiles (IMO), and upping agility might increase to-hit chance quite a bit, just play around and see if it gives a large boost. If not, just leave it as is. With missiles (and only with them, and perhaps fighters) speed _is_ armor.

[jseah (OP)]

With your apparent tech this should be about a size 1-2 sensor so it is not to bad a hit.

Thanks for the advice!  I think I will add an emergency sensor *and* have sensor FACs after all. 
I get 670,824 km with a size 3.5 sensor so it seems I will use this. 

R1 Sensor FACs have a 1.9 mkm range.  But I suppose that if they light up their sensors, they turn into a target too and while they have 3 layers of armour, FACs probably won't take too much of a beating. 
Still, better a cheap expendable FAC than my AMM escorts.  Anything to delay the slippery slope of losing defence capability. 


chrislocke2000:
Good point.  Having 16 salvoes of AMMs might not be enough. 
I've taken out 1/3 of my missile tubes (and the corresponding fire control) to give the new WyrmB 430 missiles. 


Hawkeye:
Since I'm rushing out ICF missile drive (done now) I may as well update the other parts of my missile tech.  It's not like I have anything to use the missiles on right now since my only foreign contact is the initial NPR two jumps away who is now allied. 
After that, I'll see what I can get away with on the warhead.  I'd prefer a higher warhead than agility since my to-hit numbers are pretty good at ship speeds. 

I've stopped production of the Lancelot though.  No point building missiles that will just become out of date. 

[sloanjh]

while a strength 6 warhead, for example, will make a crater like this

XXX
XXX

Yes, penetration is the same, but the chance that another missile will hit the third row of armor is three times a large as with a strength-4 crater.)

Um, actually it would be this (missiles need the number of columns affected to drop by at least two for every layer penetrated):
XXXX
  XX
But your overall point is a good one - the warhead-6 does twice as much penetration damage for armor-1 vessels on the first hit, and the odds of a follow-on hit striking weakened armor are greatly improved in the case of heavier armor.  Especially for such low-strength warheads, you'll probably be in sand-blasting mode most of the time anyway, at which point the rate of erosion is proportional to the warhead strength.

John

[jseah (OP)]

If we're just going to sandblast away, then why not just use small missiles?  The launchers scale proportionally, so DPS isn't affected, but you have way more missiles for your enemy to intercept. 

eg.
This one has ICF missile drives though. 

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 2    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 62200 km/s    Endurance: 16 minutes   Range: 60.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.5983
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 684.2%   3k km/s 220%   5k km/s 136.8%   10k km/s 68.4%
Materials Required:    0.5x Tritanium   1.8485x Gallicite   Fuel x837.5

Development Cost for Project: 260RP

[dooots]

Actually if you cut the missile size in half the dps can double (depending on tech).  You get 2 size 2 launchers for the same hull space as 1 size 4 and they fire up to twice as fast.  This imo makes smaller missiles the better option unless you know the enemy has very thin armor or you have very high tech missiles. 

Although I suppose large armored and ecm missiles could be effective.  Although there is no tech to give you more armor per MSP.

[Shadow]

Random personal missile wisdom...

One point of armour essentially doubles the survivability of a given missile against the most common forms of point-defense (CIWS, Gauss turrets and WH-1 AMMs). However, the smaller the missile, the more significant the investment of that single MSP. It's likely not worth it for a size-6 or size 8-missile, but it's pretty much a no-brainer on, say, a size-24.

I've used missiles that big (see my Bellerophon-class missile frigate), but following the same considerations as my more common, far smaller anti-ship missiles. After I absolutely obliterated a Star Swarm mothership with eight gigatons (8000 total warhead points) of glorious overkill, I realized I could get more out of a successor to my Excaliburs by...

a) adding that single armour point to enhance its survivability, way more than a single point of ECM would
b) adding a single point of active sensors to turn it from an overkill machine into a potential fleet killer

[dooots]

I do wonder how a large missile (20+ MSP) in box launchers with a few points of armor and some sensors fired in small groups every 5-10 seconds would do at wiping out a fleet.  I don't know if you actually need to delay the fire of each group but its my understanding that missile will only pick up and new target if their original target is destroyed at least one increment before they hit.

edit
I just realized that missile of that size would be seen at max range for PD sensors.  Although probably not a problem against NPRs it would allow anti-ship missiles to be used against the large missiles and make the armor pointless.