long-range conquest

[joeclark77 (OP)]

In my current game I have uncovered two NPRs with excellent worlds that are around a trillion kilometers from any jump points.  (One is about 750 billion, the other around 1.2 trillion.)  For lack of other NPRs to conquer, I've decided to annex these ones to my empire.  I'm looking at about a 5 year voyage, at least, to the closer one, so it would be impossible with my ordinary warships -- both in terms of fuel and of maintenance.  How would you solve this problem?

Currently, I'm thinking about giant "commercial" tugboats with ultra-efficient engines dragging engineless carriers across the void, then engaging the enemy with fleets of fighters/FACs from close range.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The built in solution is Hyperdrives, but unfortunately they are broken atm. 

You could transport your conventional fleet in carriers!

Don't forget to bring enough fuel for the round trip, unless you are certain of victory

[amimai]

giant missile barges with very high efficiency engines
external torp mounting have nearly no maintenance cost, and you can load insane amounts of firepower on a boat

then you just nuke everything into oblivion under a single 7000 missile strong barrage
just be sure you dont glass the planet

just for reference:
1 engineering space and the  5 crew needed to keep it staffed for 10 years will support 570 size one box launchers for a 10 year journey (100 HS total)

and

28 volleys of 40 missiles 75%reduce (1140 total) would need 3 engineering spaces and 125 crew for a journey of the same length (110 HS total)
missiles are so epic for long journeys

[83athom]

Amimai, I noticed something; you sure do like your box launcher cheese warships. I do understand the reasoning for it, a multi-hundred alpha-strike or waves of only a few dozen, but that just means that once they fire, they are basically hunks of useless metal waiting to be blasted by the stealth ships that were lying in wait. The only ships I put them on are my smaller ships like my fighters/bombers, FACs/gunships, and on some frigates. And to the original point of this topic page; I would simply design long range warships along with a fleetcarrier/mothership/tender/invasion-ship. A thing I usually do is use slightly more efficient drives (almost to the point of them being commercial) on some of my warships. This lets me have patrol warships that can move to and from worlds without using a lot of fuel, so a modified version of this could get you there. Another thing to keep in mind is that the fuel time for your faster ships is at max power, so them slowing down to keep with the fleet makes them more efficient saving fuel for the journey (thus taking the years to expend the fuel instead of the stated time). I would also make it so those ships really wouldn't be returning (although this is conflicting with my usual nobody left behind mentality I try to keep) so that you then have (subjugation) ships adding the the PDV. A side question as well; are there any LPs in the system that you could use to get there?

[sneer]

alll enemy ships will be concetrated in one place what means high to very high point defence
make a mix of box launching missiles and beams and or fighters
to break main fleet with boxes and finish with rest

[Iranon]

There is much to be said for box launchers, especially when a long deployment/maintenance cycle is desired as amimai pointed out. Total missile density isn't too bad, and the efficiency against anti-missile defences (possibly ignoring it all in an alpha strike) often means you come ahead even if treating the laucnhed ship as semi-disposable.

I often go one step further, and make extensive use of long-deployment (box) missile bases, to be hauled into battle by commercial tugboats when needed.

The OP's hangar pod idea works very well too, better in some ways because you can totally avoid components that can break.

You can even combine the two, hangar-and-magazine pod housing missile pods. Very clumsy, but you get a good combination of salvo size and total missile number while greatly cutting back deployment/maintenance issues.

[Anarade Relle]

Personally, I like the idea of making big battlewagons with commercial engines. Followed by huge tankers and magazine ships.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

I originally thought of a big fleet mothership, but realized it would take years to get my naval shipyards up to size.  On the other hand, I have huge commercial shipyards already, so, why not put all the tonnage of high-efficiency engines and fuel on commercial tugboats?  Then the thing being towed is basically a carrier with no engines but lots of magazines and MSP.  Then one or more "command pods" with sensors and AMM launchers to defend the fleet, while the fighters do the attacking.

Engines and sensors aren't ready, so the only design I have so far is for the carriers:

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Arizona class Base Star    30,200 tons     386 Crew     4633 BP      TCS 604  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 20-86     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 30     PPV 0
Maint Life 19.52 Years     MSP 3877    AFR 243%    IFR 3.4%    1YR 19    5YR 290    Max Repair 15 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 240 months    Flight Crew Berths 177   
Hangar Deck Capacity 12000 tons     Magazine 1584   

Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range N/A

Halberd ASM-4SR (384)  Speed: 50,000 km/s   End: 55.4m    Range: 166.3m km   WH: 9    Size: 4    TH: 166/100/50

ECM 10

Strike Group
10x Desperado-III Fighter   Speed: 28089 km/s    Size: 8.9

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 Desperado-III is a meson fighter (or small FAC).

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Desperado-III class Fighter    445 tons     5 Crew     234 BP      TCS 8.9  TH 125  EM 0
28089 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 89%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 14    5YR 211    Max Repair 46.875 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 5   

62.5 EP Magnetic Fusion Thruster (4)    Power 62.5    Fuel Use 391.33%    Signature 31.25    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 2.1 billion km   (20 hours at full power)

R4.5/C3 Meson Cannon (1)    Range 32,000km     TS: 28089 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4.5    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Desperado Fire Control S00.3 16-6250 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     69 37 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology P3.2 (1)     Total Power Output 3.2    Armour 0    Exp 5%

3gen Fighter Radar MR0-R1 (1)     GPS 3     Range 390k km    MCR 43k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH0.2-1 (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  1m km
Fighter EM Detection Sensor EM0.1-1.4 (1)     Sensitivity 1.4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  1.4m km

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
I'll also have 24 box launcher fighters aboard (as soon as I develop box launchers).  If they carry 4 missiles each, that gives me volleys of 96 missiles per carrier, 384 for my intended fleet of 4 carriers, with four reloads.  Add to that 40 meson fighters and I think I'm in pretty good shape to attack a relatively small enemy.  With the last 1000T of hangar space, I'm thinking about some kind of sensor FAC so I could attack without revealing the location of the carriers.  Alternatively, I may shuffle things around and put a couple of boarding ships.

My latest idea is that the tugboats should also have one cryogenic transport each.  That way I could carry human colonists to the alien worlds, and carry a few aliens back across the void, one time only.  Not that these populations will be big enough to do very much, but for roleplaying purposes I'd like to seed new worlds in both directions.

[Barkhorn]

Amimai, I noticed something; you sure do like your box launcher cheese warships. I do understand the reasoning for it, a multi-hundred alpha-strike or waves of only a few dozen, but that just means that once they fire, they are basically hunks of useless metal waiting to be blasted by the stealth ships that were lying in wait. The only ships I put them on are my smaller ships like my fighters/bombers, FACs/gunships, and on some frigates. And to the original point of this topic page; I would simply design long range warships along with a fleetcarrier/mothership/tender/invasion-ship. A thing I usually do is use slightly more efficient drives (almost to the point of them being commercial) on some of my warships. This lets me have patrol warships that can move to and from worlds without using a lot of fuel, so a modified version of this could get you there. Another thing to keep in mind is that the fuel time for your faster ships is at max power, so them slowing down to keep with the fleet makes them more efficient saving fuel for the journey (thus taking the years to expend the fuel instead of the stated time). I would also make it so those ships really wouldn't be returning (although this is conflicting with my usual nobody left behind mentality I try to keep) so that you then have (subjugation) ships adding the the PDV. A side question as well; are there any LPs in the system that you could use to get there?

Going at less than max speed doesn't make the journey use any less fuel.  It just makes the trip take more time.  So sure, you'll have burnt less fuel 1 year into the journey, but you'll also have made an equally less amount of progress.

[83athom]

Going at less than max speed doesn't make the journey use any less fuel.  It just makes the trip take more time.  So sure, you'll have burnt less fuel 1 year into the journey, but you'll also have made an equally less amount of progress.

That is exactly how I put it. "Another thing to keep in mind is that the fuel time for your faster ships is at max power" "thus taking the years to expend the fuel instead of the stated time"

[linkxsc]

On the note of the "building the "ship" in sections and tugging it out there. Thats actually not unheard of in the forums here. Think there there was 1 guy who was doing "modular" ship designs before.
But getting tractor systems to work can be a bit of an orginizational nightmare.
Basically though there are 2 ways to do this.

1. Civilian engine>Military hardware section.
In this manner you can build abnormally large Civilian engine sections that won't eat up any MSP on the long voyage or need rampant naval yard expansion. Also a bit more efficient than military engines.
Coupled with a few Engine>Fuel tank ships to act as tankers and you can get a pretty long endurance fleet. Nice thing, if 1 of the engine sections does get damaged in combat, you can switch it out with 1 off of a tanker.

2. Also possible is bringing an Engine>hanger. And store a more proper warship in the hanger section (so you don't have to worry as much about maintenance), OR bring a military engine section in the hanger, to be switched out with the civilian one when you get into combat distance of the target.

3. Drop tanks. Rather than building a civilian engine and specialized military sections. Just keep your existing warships, but build some fuel/MSP/tractor sections that can be tractored onto them for the duration of the trip. Added bonus for this method is that when getting into combat range, you just unequip the tanks, and your ships will be right at normal combat speed.
I've actually done this one before with some cruisers (cruiser to me is a ship with long endurance to hang around away from bases for long periods) to moderate degrees of sucess, helpful also that when the tanks were dropped by the ships in question, they ended up being bait for some enemy fire while my ships sped away.



Personally for your particular mission profile, 2 would be my tactic. A hanger section to house any given ship is generally 5-20% bigger as far as the hangers go. A bit of space is wasted in crew quarters, a magazine for reloads if you're using box launchers, and any other extracurriculars. But guessing that to tote around a 30kt ship, you're probably looking at a ~40kt section, which can be hauled by a 120kt engine section (~50% engine, ~50% fuel) probably wouldn't be too far off. Bonus points, when you get there, you'll have hangers for your fleet so you don't have to worry about maintenance for a while longer, because on extremely long deployments, the maint can kill you.
Also a standard hanger section can work for any kind of ship, be it a sensor scout, a battleship, or a few dozen FACs or fighters.
Anything that can be made 100% civilian though should be, because of how fast you can modify civvy shipyards.


But how you do it is up to you.
Couple things I wonder about though. Whats the orbital speed of the target planets, or the stars they are around, around the central star in the system.
You might find that it'd be a lot more efficient, to do some math, figure out how long it would take to get to the target destination. Figure out about how much farther along its orbit it will be, and head towards where the planet will be, rather than just a simple "move to" which you may find spends a lot of extra time and fuel curving along to the area.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Couple things I wonder about though. Whats the orbital speed of the target planets, or the stars they are around, around the central star in the system.
You might find that it'd be a lot more efficient, to do some math, figure out how long it would take to get to the target destination. Figure out about how much farther along its orbit it will be, and head towards where the planet will be, rather than just a simple "move to" which you may find spends a lot of extra time and fuel curving along to the area.

You're right about that.  With my geo survey scout that went to the first target, I planned for more than enough fuel to make the round trip, but it arrived with only 40-something percent of its fuel left.  Because it had actually gone in a big curve toward the remote star...

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Got my tug designed.  When I added 30,000T to the design (a large and small cargo bay) it got 5267 km/s and a range of 3192.1 billion km.  Should take 5 years to haul a 30,000T war pod to my nearer enemy, and up to 10 years for the more distant one.

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Titan class Fleet Tug    84,250 tons     395 Crew     4505 BP      TCS 1685  TH 6000  EM 0
7121 km/s     Armour 1-171     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 33    Max Repair 108 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 0   
Tractor Beam     

Talbot-Saunders 480 EP Cool Fusion Lightyear Drive (25)    Power 480    Fuel Use 0.99%    Signature 240    Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 20,000,000 Litres    Range 4315.8 billion km   (7014 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

[linkxsc]

Screenys down the line if you would please.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Sure.  It'll probably be a few weeks, though.  It'll take 5 to 10 in-game years before I have the first fleet built.  I'll probably send it to the more distant NPR while I complete the second fleet.  Then it'll be another 5 to 10 years before they arrive!