Author Topic: Beginner Navy  (Read 1813 times)

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Offline Tanj (OP)

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Beginner Navy
« on: December 15, 2011, 06:12:36 PM »
Hi all.  I've just started a new game and have just run into my first ever NPR - one jump from Sol! Being a tad paranoid I thought now might be a good time to think about some defences :)

Currently my navy consists of 2 each of the following:

Code: [Select]
Victory-class Frigate    6,000 tons     619 Crew     828.02 BP      TCS 120  TH 420  EM 0
3500 km/s     Armour 2-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/30/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 27
Maint Life 5.34 Years     MSP 345    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 20    5YR 303    Max Repair 80 MSP
Magazine 181   

MilSpec Ion Engine E8 (7)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres    Range 131.3 billion km   (434 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
S5-R75 Missile Launcher (5)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 75
S1-R15 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control FC51-R100 (1)     Range 51.8m km    Resolution 100
Missile Fire Control FC1-R1 (1)     Range 1.4m km    Resolution 1

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 26     Range 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR48-R100 (1)     GPS 8000     Range 48.0m km    Resolution 100
EM Detection Sensor EM5-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The Victory-class was intended as a light weight general combat vessel capable of extended deployments, intended to operate in small squadrons of 3-4 ships along with a jump tender (note that the Victory uses the same missiles as they Agincourt below).

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Agincourt-class Destroyer Escort    6,000 tons     418 Crew     800.42 BP      TCS 120  TH 420  EM 0
3500 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 28.75
Maint Life 6.14 Years     MSP 334    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 15    5YR 228    Max Repair 80 MSP
Magazine 289   

MilSpec Ion Engine E8 (7)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres    Range 112.5 billion km   (372 days at full power)

CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 5 Box Launcher (25)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
S1-R15 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control FC51-R100 (1)     Range 51.8m km    Resolution 100
Missile Fire Control FC1-R1 (2)     Range 1.4m km    Resolution 1
ASM-N5-Starburst Anti-ship Missile (25)  Speed: 24,000 km/s   End: 31.2m    Range: 45m km   WH: 5    Size: 5    TH: 96 / 57 / 28
AMM-N1-Sentry Anti-missile Missile (164)  Speed: 39,300 km/s   End: 0.5m    Range: 1.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 131 / 78 / 39

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 26     Range 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR48-R100 (1)     GPS 8000     Range 48.0m km    Resolution 100

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
The Agincourt-class was originally designed as an escort vessel for the above Victory-class and its associated jump tender to be deployed when additional defense was required.  However as I only have a single naval shipyard of 6000 tons I decided to increase the tonnage and add some box launchers to give it the ability to operate independently if required.  This ended up overlapping the design of the Victory-class but I think the increased alpha-strike capability is worth it.

However now that I have an NPR right next door I think I need a larger ship.  I've gone for 7500tons as this is the size of my jump-capable multipurpose science ships, which could act as jump tenders if I need to deploy without jump gates.  The design below is essentially an enlarged Agincourt-class with twice the offensive punch.  As I have four science ships I could technically deploy these in a squadron of 8 maximum right now.
Code: [Select]
Vanguard class Light Cruiser    7,500 tons     483 Crew     962.26 BP      TCS 150  TH 540  EM 0
3600 km/s     Armour 3-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 49.5
Maint Life 3.27 Years     MSP 241    AFR 150%    IFR 2.1%    1YR 34    5YR 509    Max Repair 80 MSP
Magazine 492   

MilSpec Ion Engine E8 (9)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres    Range 120.0 billion km   (385 days at full power)

Size 5 Box Launcher (50)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
S1-R15 Missile Launcher (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 15
Missile Fire Control FC51-R100 (1)     Range 51.8m km    Resolution 100
Missile Fire Control FC1-R1 (2)     Range 1.4m km    Resolution 1
ASM-N5-Starburst Anti-ship Missile (50)  Speed: 24,000 km/s   End: 31.2m    Range: 45m km   WH: 5    Size: 5    TH: 96 / 57 / 28
AMM-N1-Sentry Anti-missile Missile (240)  Speed: 39,300 km/s   End: 0.5m    Range: 1.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 131 / 78 / 39

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 26     Range 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR48-R100 (1)     GPS 8000     Range 48.0m km    Resolution 100

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

So any thoughts or comments? Anything obvious I have missed?
 

Offline Vanigo

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Re: Beginner Navy
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2011, 08:22:52 PM »
These look unusually solid for a first-timer. My complements. That said, there are some issues to be worked out.
Most importantly, thickness 2 armor is a joke. Either go with thickness 1 and expect to lose any ship that gets hit, or get it up to 3 at an absolute minimum. I try to have at least 5 layers of armor on my main-line warships.
A CIWS with only Gauss fire rate 2 is pretty bad. In fact, I generally recommend staying away from CIWS in general on smaller ships. I'd recommend a real turret and a 1x range 4x tracking speed fire control. It won't knock down as many missile, but it has two important advantages: it may double as a respectable beam weapon for knife-range fighting (depending on what kind of turret you use), and, more importantly, it can cover other ships in the fleet. If you're operating in groups of similar ships, beam weapons are always better than CIWS because, while each ship can't shoot down as many missiles, every ship can fire on every incoming volley instead of only the targeted vessel. For a single behemoth CIWS is better, but for fleets of small ships, real beam weapons all the way.
Do you really only have missile fire rate 2? Get that up to 3 ASAP; a 15 second reload time on your countermissile tubes is terrible.
Your PD radar and fire control don't have enough range. They'll detect a size 1 drone at a decent range, but most missiles are smaller. A missile smaller than size 6 (0.3HS) is treated as being size 6 for detection purposes, so you need to design your antimissile sensors accordingly. Your range 1.4mkm radar can only see most missiles at a range of around 150,000km, which is far too short for a decent countermissile envelope. Ditto for your fire control. It's plenty for any PD beams you have, though.
That big EM sensor on the Victory probably isn't doing you much good. As tight as space usually is on a ship this small, I'd use a size 1 sensor at most.

General advice? The Agincourt looks to be a far more capable vessel, both offensively and defensively. It has nearly as many shipkiller missiles as I'd expect the Victory to carry, way more countermissiles, more countermissile tubes, the same sensors, the same speed, more armor, and with box launchers, it can launch as many shipkillers as it wants in one massive salvo. If you want a missile combatant with more staying power, I'd say it needs at least ten salvos of offensive missiles to be worth using normal tubes instead of box launchers. I don't think you're going to be able to fit that in a 6,000 ton hull without making some serious compromises in other areas. In my current game, I've got a destroyer that does offensive missile/countermissile/PD beam triple duty like you're trying to achieve with the Victory. It's 9,000 tons, and it only has four size 4 launchers. (Works great when I've got all nine of them together, though.)
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Beginner Navy
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2011, 08:38:26 PM »
These ship designs look pretty good - very good, compared to a lot of starter navies. Except that your antimissile sensors are far too weak for effective antimissile fire.

When designing a resolution 1 sensor you can see its range against small missiles which is basically its effective antimissile range.  A 1.5m range sensor only has about 160,000 range against size <=6 missiles, which means that against even mediocre technology you will get _at best_ 1 antimissile salvo off.  You'll probably want, at minimum, an antimissile sensor 4x-5x times the size for this to be effective.

The downside of this is that your ships are really too small to mount both that sensor on all of them.  You may have to specialize, at least a little.

Also, your antimissile design itself is a bit weak - what level of Agility research do you have? With ion engines and 48 agility per MSP, you can get above 50% to hit against 10 km/s targets pretty easily. Actually, I think you may have put all your MSP into engine instead of agility?

Finally, your armor is thin. This is not killer for missile combat, but I still prefer at least 5 layers of armor on my main combatants near the start of the game.   This can be prohibitive without at least Composite armor technology.  However, for jump point assaults, that level of armor simply wont work against defending beam vessels. As an example, I lost 30,000 tons of armor-6 cruisers in a jump point assault recently and they barely got to fire back. The defender was a single 12000 ton vessel mounting a large array of strength 6 beam weapons. One combat cruiser never got to fire; the other got one salvo off; but the missiles lost tracking from it dying; the jump cruiser was too lightly armed to carry the day.  Thats even with enough armor to remain combat effective through at least one salvo.   I figure I need at least armor 10 - or two jump squadrons - to assault that jump point effectively.

EDIT - PS. You can get away with a lot less fuel than you're mounting, especially since your concern is for a next door neighbor. I'd suggest a target number of about 50bn km.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2011, 08:45:56 PM by TheDeadlyShoe »