Swift Class Corvette

[strych90 (OP)]

Idea I got from the forums a while back and decided to give it a try. This ship is basically a small in-system defense corvette meant to be aided by planetary (or other) passive sensors that could be built cheaply and easily with early game shipyards. Essentially designed as a fast hit-and-run to get up close (relatively, for a missile boat) drop its payload (4 very kaboomy torpedoes) and haul ass away to reload. They are meant to work in packs of 3-5 at a minimum and should have enough punch to put most hostiles out of business with their Mjolnir torpedoes... if they hit(Name shamelessly stolen from EVE, but it fits so well...). They have no defenses so they aren't really expected to live all that long. They're just to attempt to hold until a main fleet can be tasked for relief. Haven't used in battle, may have been an exercise in futility.

Swift class Corvette    2,600 tons     41 Crew     489.8 BP      TCS 52  TH 240  EM 0
4615 km/s     Armour 1-16     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 12
Maint Life 2.63 Years     MSP 118    AFR 54%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 24    5YR 362    Max Repair 140 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 80   

AAEC 10ep120 IE (2)    Power 120    Fuel Use 54%    Signature 120    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres    Range 51.3 billion km   (128 days at full power)

Size 20 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 20    Hangar Reload 150 minutes    MF Reload 25 hours
Mjolnir FC 26mkm (1)     Range 26.3m km    Resolution 20
Mjolnir Torpedo (4)  Speed: 21,000 km/s   End: 10.4m    Range: 13.1m km   WH: 38    Size: 20    TH: 77/46/23

Flare MR61m-R500t (1)     GPS 1400     Range 62.0m km    Resolution 10

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

Any thoughts? Critiques? Flames?

[Alfapiomega]

Only thing that comes to mind is a bit too much fuel if it's truly designed to operate inside a system. One fifth would be still quite a lot. You can use the spare space for armor as one good hit will make your ship go *kaboom*

[joeclark77]

I'd increase the power multiplier on those engines.  It'll reduce your range but increase your speed, and honestly you have easily four or five times the range you need for Sol defense.  Your design will fail if the ship is too slow to outrun the enemy back to Earth for reloading, so speed it up!

I would also think about replacing 4x size-20 missiles with 8x size-10 missiles, to increase the chances of getting past point defenses and hitting fast targets.  But that's just me.  You could also go with 20x size-4 missiles, but where's the fun in that?

[Sematary]

I would replace the box launchers with the smallest reduced size launcher. 25 hours loading time in orbit means that each pack of these can really only be used once per attack. Unless you have several carriers in orbit but even then with 150 minute loading time that might give you two uses of each pack.

[SteelChicken]

Depending on your opponents, I dont think this design would be of much use.    You are very unlikely to get past enemy defenses and they won't survive the counter-attack.   

For the purpose you are trying to serve, I would go with fighters.  Fighters are smaller, faster and have smaller thermal/detection signatures to get in closer, you can have more of them and use a higher number of smaller missiles to get past defenses and their speed is helpful in escaping.

If you really want to avoid fighters, the previous suggestions are good ones.
Smaller, more missiles (if you want them to be effective)
Less fuel, more speed
At least 1-2 more points of armor.


Also, whats with the fire control? You only expect to deal with FAC's?

[strych90 (OP)]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Fuel:
I had originally thought of using one squadron to cover a couple of systems but since scrapped the idea (since they were such light combatants and I hadn't moved much beyond Sol at the point of building the ship). Didn't occur to me to drop the excess fuel afterwards. Thanks

Engine:
As far as the multiplier, that was as high as I had at the time of design. I think I was just barely into ion engines at that point.

Fire Control:
Its .5 hs (I had some very good scientists so focused on sensor tech from the very begining of the game) I just adjusted the resolution so it had double the range of my missiles.

Missile size:
It's an experiment more than anything. In a normal ship I would have packed it with size 4 missiles. I just couldn't resist trying out the idea of 'Torpedoes' though. Large, fast, short-range heavy-hitters. Maybe I could drop a couple of warhead and pop on a couple of points of armor? Would that little armor even stop anthing? I will probably roll out a more conventional version of the same ship with my ASMs. Possibly even just group torpedo covettes with some small s1 box launcher corvettes (of the same design) with missiles of a similar speed? may be a way to overwhelm point defense with really cheap missiles allowing the expensive big boys to get through (Considering the torpedo:decoy ratio, it should overwhelm most defenses). Kind of wasteful on missiles but I'm more interested in seeing the outcome than the cost at this point.

I would replace the box launchers with the smallest reduced size launcher. 25 hours loading time in orbit means that each pack of these can really only be used once per attack. Unless you have several carriers in orbit but even then with 150 minute loading time that might give you two uses of each pack.

Hadn't thought of that. Thanks. May do that with the space saved by dropping fuel.

Thanks everyone

[Panopticon]

I love huge torpedoes, so I support this idea wholeheartedly. I do similar things in some of my games and I do put armor on them, if you take advantage of passive defense modes that only allocate 1-4 AMM per missile, then a bit of armor really helps. It is also fun to put a couple on your survey ships, so if they run into isolated enemies they can give them something to think about while running away, also lets them be used as raiders to hit scouts, freighters, or construction ships.

[Charlie Beeler]

I understand the attraction of large warheads.  But they need to be in a missile that has a good chance of getting to the target, these don't.

With a rough reverse engineer it looks like your have:
Ion Engines
60% fuel consumption
max power mod x1.75(x3 for missiles)
Warhead 4xmsp
Missile agility 80xmsp

Missile is roughly:
10x1msp engine for 2.1ep per engine
.25msp agility for maneuver rating 11
9.5msp for warhead 38

Sorry, against your own tech that is just a target.

I tend to use sz4 missiles.  With your apparent tech it would look like this:
1x2.5msp engine for 6ep giving a speed of 30k/kps
1msp warhead for strength 4
.2438msp agility for maneuver rating 15 (150% vs 3k/kps, 90% vs 5k/kps)
.2562msp fuel for range 74m/km

Frankly you sensor suite (MFC and AS) is poorly suited to the mission.
.5hs res20 MFC and 5hs res10 AS.  They neither compliment each other or the missile.

For your existing missile the MFC and AS need a range of roughly 16.2m/km for a meeting engagement.  This assumes that your using planetary passives to guide the ship(s) on target.  Your existing MFC is close but a .4hs MFC would be a better match.  Complement that with a 1.2hs res20 AS for target lock and your good.

Now if you replace the sz20's with the suggested sz4's you of course need a different suite.
If you replace the missiles at a 4x1 ratio you can afford 2x1.6hs MFC's and a 4.8hs AS with a range of 84.8m/km which is only a little short of 87.2m/km max meeting engagement range.  It does mean that you'd be .1hs larger than current (this change does not take into account crew changes)

[Bremen]

If you're going to use large torpedoes, swarms of box launcher ships is the way to do it, so I don't think the missile size is a problem. You'll just need to make sure you have enough corvettes to overwhelm the enemy defenses. Giving the missiles a point or two of armor might also be helpful. IIRC, 36 damage is about max chance of shock damage, and 36 damage is also a square number and therefor has optimized armor penetration, so I'd suggest reducing the warhead to 36. It's sort of the holy grail of missile damage; anything they hit is really going to feel it, and likely take internal damage no matter how much armor it has.

Are your missiles using 10 size 1 engines instead of 1 size 10? A single larger engine is much more fuel efficient.

[Charlie Beeler]

5msp is the largest missile engine allowed.  They increment from 1 to 5 by .01msp in v6.3, by .1msp in v6.0-v6.2.

[Bremen]

Ah, well, 2 Size 5 engines then.

[MarcAFK]

I like it, though I second the opinion that smaller missiles might be more useful, unless you're going to have swarms of these, then it's good. Someone mentioned the reload on the box launchers, can't PDC hangers reload fighters as well as carriers?

[Sematary]

I like it, though I second the opinion that smaller missiles might be more useful, unless you're going to have swarms of these, then it's good. Someone mentioned the reload on the box launchers, can't PDC hangers reload fighters as well as carriers?

I do believe so but even then the needed PDC would be large and it is still a 150 minute reload time plus the amount of time to travel from engagement site to orbit. Most engagements I have are measured in how many five second turns it takes once one or both sides are within range of each other. Assuming the first engagement site is 1 AU from Earth it would take the Swift just under 6 hours to travel from the engagement site to Earth plus another 2 and a half hours to reload making time from disengagement to fully reloaded and able to be deployed again over 8 hours. Now considering OP said that this was suppose to be a delaying tactic I would point out that with a pushing 9 hour turn around time, and that is only if the first engagement is within 100mkm of wherever the PDCs are to reload, the main fleet should arrive in that time period unless they are one or more systems away. In that case then the Swift would most likely have to destroy the enemy taskforce on its own, which four or five squadrons of 4 each could do even assuming a 25% hit rate (which would put enemy speed at ~8k). That still puts the reloading time at way too long for more than one use per enemy force.

Looking through the design again I have to agree with changing the missile, though I think the "make it square for max armor penetration" is way too metagamey. With a 23% chance to hit at 10k you aren't going to be able to hit much that invades you. Also the FC resolution is weird at 20, unless you expect to be deploying against FACs and almost nothing else. On your active sensors you have a very weird resolution and even worse it doesn't match up with your FC. That resolution looks like you are going against Fighters.

[MarcAFK]

I agree about the long turn around, but what if you merely used these to cripple enemy sensor ships, forcing the enemy to come in much closer to earth presumably within range of your PDCs missile batteries, that might be a valid strategy, but you're right the best option would be to design a good carrier, maybe reduce the corvettes down to 2000 tons , use higher multiplier engines , maybe achieve a speed of 5-6k with 10-15 billion kilometer range, then make a carrier with 8000 tons of hanger and half the speed but double the range, cut the missiles down to size 16, install 5 launchers for your new warhead 30 missiles, your reload time will cut down to 2 hours, then deploy in groups of 4. Each group will field a salvo of 20 missiles, then you can time your attack runs 2 hours apart to give your carrier time to reload the ships, or 4 hours apart if you have 3 groups, etc, though I would suggest not having a corvette to carrier ratio higher than 3.