A cheap asset flip

[kilo (OP)]

I have a few aging warships and I consider them to be less and less useful by now. Scrapping those frees a few components which can be reused though and I was thinking about bringing this "beauty" to the table:

asset flip class Light Cruiser (P)      35,053 tons       944 Crew       6,731.4 BP       TCS 701    TH 5,280    EM 8,280
7531 km/s      Armour 7-95       Shields 276-368       HTK 184      Sensors 33/44/0/0      DCR 48      PPV 110.88
Maint Life 3.30 Years     MSP 5,650    AFR 254%    IFR 3.5%    1YR 783    5YR 11,752    Max Repair 660 MSP
Navarch    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Morale Check Required   

Buccleuch & Calveley military MPD  EP1320.00 (4)    Power 5280    Fuel Use 47.60%    Signature 1320    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 32.4 billion km (49 days at full power)
Roos Defence Industries 46/368 Barrier (6)     Recharge Time 368 seconds (0.8 per second)

Quad 10cm C3 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (7x4)    Range 180,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 60,000 km    ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R320-TS20000 (1)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 20,000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
de Willoughby-Bradshaw Main Reactor R46-PB10 (2)     Total Power Output 92.2    Exp 7%

Cavendish-Sutton backup sensor mk2 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Peche Electronics Industries Anti-Frigatte sensor mk2 (1)     GPS 1176     Range 34.7m km    Resolution 40
Hunter-de Somerville military Thermal Sensor mk1 (1)     Sensitivity 33     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km
Atwater Electronics Industries military EM Sensor mk1 (1)     Sensitivity 44     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  52.4m km

ECCM-3 (1)         ECM 30

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes


The weapons and the BFC would have to be developed from scratch, most sensors would have to be build, but all the other components like engines, shields, power supply, electronic warfare, etc would be from the stockpile of spare parts. I would recycle parts which make up 55.6% of the build cost, putting the manufacturing cost at just under 3k BP per unit.

The ships role would be part anti-missile beam escort part commerce raider.


What do you lads think about the design?

[nuclearslurpee]

It looks okay. At 35 kT I'm not sure I'd call a ship a "light" cruiser or a PD escort, but I don't know what your navy's scale is for ship classifications. If this thing is escorting 150,000-ton dreadnoughts it is probably reasonable. Notably I will particularly credit you with effective shield design as your shield strength is the same as about three layers of armor, many people don't even add enough shields to equal one layer of armor which is very inefficient use of shields.

Personally I don't like the use of laser turrets for beam PD, they are definitely inferior to Gauss in the role and I am pretty sure you could fit a reasonable battery of dirt-cheap 10cm railguns on this ship which would put out a much higher volume of fire, easily compensating for the loss of tracking speed while remaining sufficient for a commerce raiding mission. This would also bring the cost of new components down which helps with the whole "asset flip" style of ship.

For an escort ship I don't see a lot of point in having the anti-frigate sensor or the rather oversized passives. I think the tonnage is better spent on a larger (size 6+) anti-missile sensor to gain a better missile tracking bonus. You can keep size-1 passives for warning when operating separately as a commerce raider, but I think it is best to optimize for the beam PD role first and foremost.

[kilo (OP)]

They are pretty large for light cruisers. This is true. I just copied the former class, which was about half the displacement. Using cheap rail guns would be an option, too. I have quite a few in storage, but they are pretty bad. C3/V1. The cheapest good design for anti missile and orbital bombardment use. I bet they make a better anti missile ship as they have 5 times the ROF per displacement at 33% tracking speed. 
I will consider putting a spinal laser on the ship though to stay out of ramming distance of enemy vessels. Time to build it completely Russian style. It just needs to be good enough anyways.

Okay, here is the redesign:

Asset flip mk2 class Light Cruiser      34,838 tons       1,052 Crew       6,165.8 BP       TCS 697    TH 5,280    EM 8,280
7578 km/s      Armour 7-95       Shields 276-368       HTK 201      Sensors 33/44/0/0      DCR 51      PPV 99
Maint Life 3.14 Years     MSP 4,535    AFR 237%    IFR 3.3%    1YR 691    5YR 10,359    Max Repair 660 MSP
Navarch    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months    Morale Check Required   

Buccleuch & Calveley military MPD  EP1320.00 (4)    Power 5280    Fuel Use 47.60%    Signature 1320    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 32.6 billion km (49 days at full power)
Roos Defence Industries 46/368 Barrier (6)     Recharge Time 368 seconds (0.8 per second)

Darras & Felton 18" Laser mk1 (1)    Range 320,000km     TS: 7,578 km/s     Power 53-6     RM 60,000 km    ROF 45       
Norreys-Percy Armaments Company 4" Railgun mk2 (28x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 7,578 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 10,000 km    ROF 5       
Stapleton Electronics Industries ship targeting system mk3 (2)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 8,500 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
de Willoughby-Bradshaw Main Reactor R46-PB10 (2)     Total Power Output 92.2    Exp 7%

Cavendish-Sutton backup sensor mk2 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Peche Electronics Industries Anti-Frigatte sensor mk2 (1)     GPS 1176     Range 34.7m km    Resolution 40
Atwater Electronics Industries military EM Sensor mk1 (1)     Sensitivity 44     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  52.4m km
Hunter-de Somerville military Thermal Sensor mk1 (1)     Sensitivity 33     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km

ECCM-3 (2)         ECM 30

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes


It uses railguns I have in storage for anti missile duty and fields a spinal laser to shoot at armored vessels from range. It is 10% cheaper in total build cost and 62.6% of the build cost is from stored old components. This reduces the build cost to 2.3k BP. Anti missile capabilities should be higher as this ship fires 112 projectiles per tick compared to 28 of the previous design with 37.9% of the hit rate. All in all the design is 1.5 times better vs missiles. The anti ship beam characteristics changed a lot now.
Question: Is it worth to bring two beam fire controlls? I do not mean for redundancy, but combat use. What happens if I have one, which is set to final fire in the anti missile role and have a ship targeted at the same time? Will the spinal be fired at missiles or the railguns at the ship? Will the game notice that the railguns are not in range and fire them at missiles while the spinal laser targets ships? I have no idea to be honest. This is why I bring two BFCs and two ECCMs.

[Carthar]

49 days of fuel.   
1. 5 years intended deployment. 
3. 3 years maintenance.
This combination seems a bit off.   

IFR is also a bit high.

Two BFC for a ship that size isn't an issue in my books.
 

[nuclearslurpee]

Question: Is it worth to bring two beam fire controlls? I do not mean for redundancy, but combat use. What happens if I have one, which is set to final fire in the anti missile role and have a ship targeted at the same time? Will the spinal be fired at missiles or the railguns at the ship? Will the game notice that the railguns are not in range and fire them at missiles while the spinal laser targets ships? I have no idea to be honest. This is why I bring two BFCs and two ECCMs.

I believe what is supposed to happen is that a fire control set to final fire will fire on missiles if any exist, and only fire at an assigned target if no missiles need to be shot at. Since you do not want your big honking spinal laser to fire at piddly missiles, two BFCs are necessary I think.

I still suggest investing into a larger anti-missile sensor if you are building sensors from scratch, the benefits from missile tracking bonus are really substantial.

49 days of fuel.   
1. 5 years intended deployment. 
3. 3 years maintenance.
This combination seems a bit off.

It is a fairly reasonable combination. The only real requirement for deployment time is that it be longer than fuel endurance, beyond that it depends on the mission of the ship. Frankly I don't understand players who set deployment time equal to fuel endurance, as my ships regularly spend a lot of their deployment time "on station" for defense, surveillance, interdiction, preparation, and other operations, not to mention the case of refueling partway along a long journey from A to B... a ship can do a lot of things besides flying at max speed and waiting in a spacedock.

Maint life is a misleading statistic since it does not usually reflect the design of the ship (e.g., considerations for DCR or MSP for firing weapons). The important thing is the IFR which determines how much MSP a ship will consume while deployed, and for a ship this size the IFR is quite reasonable. If anything a higher IFR would be acceptable since it would come with reducing the engineering spaces and overall tonnage, however for such a large ship the tonnage saved is probably not as important as the reduction of MSP usage.

[Carthar]

The stated role was escort or commerce raider.   To me that means doing a mission and then getting back to port.   So the small amount of fuel with a long deployment time seems odd.   

If the role was patrol or system defense it would be normal ratio, for my play style.   

However everyone plays a bit different so everyone holds different opinions on these sort of things.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The stated role was escort or commerce raider.   To me that means doing a mission and then getting back to port.   So the small amount of fuel with a long deployment time seems odd.   

If the role was patrol or system defense it would be normal ratio, for my play style.   

However everyone plays a bit different so everyone holds different opinions on these sort of things.

Range is the key for ship mission role, number of days until you empty the fuel tanks at maximum speed is not really important in many cases.

Most probably also operate ships with fuel tankers or outposts with refuelling capabilities close enough as well.

[kilo (OP)]

Range is not the most important characteristic of my ships, therefore I need to resupply reaction mass to my warships regularly. This is either done by one of my three tanker fleets or preferably by planet based fuel depots. My current naval doctrine is heavily relying on surface infrastructure in the form of either simple and undefended listening posts or defended bases with fuel jetties, cargo handling, tracking stations, ground forces and STOs on worlds with advantageous terrain.
Setting up these bases requires some time and escorting at first, because of all the heavy infrastructure required to build these, but they are quite hard to remove by the enemy at the same time. In the long term they are freeing up a lot of naval units though, as supply fleets and oilers are not required for every long endurance mission.  There is one big negative though, the installations get destroyed during orbital bombardment and ground combat occasionally.