My First Diplomatic Ship

[xenoscepter (OP)]

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Outreach class Diplomatic Ship      11,000 tons       222 Crew       1,188 BP       TCS 220    TH 450    EM 0
2045 km/s    JR 1-25(C)      Armour 2-44       Shields 0-0       HTK 69      Sensors 11/22/0/0      DCR 20      PPV 0
Maint Life 8.93 Years     MSP 1,566    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 35    5YR 530    Max Repair 300 MSP
Cryogenic Berths 400   
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   DIP   
Intended Deployment Time: 48.2 months    Morale Check Required   

Leinonen JC11K Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 11000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 1

Getsinger T2000-100T Ion Drive, Class 225/0-45C (2)    Power 450    Fuel Use 6.11%    Signature 225    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 955,000 Litres    Range 255.6 billion km (1446 days at full power)

T15/10-5R500 Active Sensor Suite, Commercial Grade (1)     GPS 1500     Range 17.3m km    Resolution 500
T15/10-5R1 Active Sensor Suite, Commercial Grade (1)     GPS 3     Range 2.2m km    MCR 196.7k km    Resolution 1
T50/11TH Passive Sensor Suite, Naval Grade (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km
T100/22EM Passive Sensor Suite, Naval Grade (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  37.1m km
ELINT Module (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
 --- Title says it all, feedback is welcome.

[Zap0]

Looks fine - a diplomatic ship doesn't need to do much but be somewhere and see the enemy alien friends - hence why sensors may be needed. I think NPRs don't like seeing ships with active sensors, however, and passive detection might be enough for communication.

The diplomatic module is commercial, so you can even make a ship that doesn't need maintenance at all.

[sadoeconomist]

It certainly seems like it can do the job.  I'll try to help give feedback but I'm still a little confused about the exact rules for diplomatic ships though.  Is it necessary to have literally no weapons or just for that ship class to not have fired them in the presence of the particular aliens you're talking to? I would think that having some limited PD/self-defense capability might save the ship if negotiations collapsed and they needed to run for the JP, or if they got attacked by a third party on the way to or from their station.  It might be thematic and even useful at times for a diplomatic ship to have a marine detachment on board as embassy guards as well.  But if you're going to assume the ship will die if attacked, maybe instead of making it less fragile, it should just be smaller and more expendable? You could build cheap diplo stations and tow them into orbit around alien colonies with a commercial tug, or maybe ferry around small-ish diplomatic shuttles with a commercial hangar transport, without giving much offense to the locals, and then you'd lose less of an investment if they turned on you.

If for threat determination purposes aliens subtract 10,000t from the class of one diplomatic ship whose class has never fired weapons, and then they also treat any ship without military engines that hasn't demonstrated weapons capability as 10% of its tonnage, do those things stack somehow? How does the math work here? If you subtract 10kt first and don't multiply tonnage by 10% because diplo ships are a special case then 11,000t is the magic number, but if you subtract 10000t first and then multiply by 10%, a diplomatic station or commercial-engined ship can be 20,000t without causing additional concern, which could let you build a significantly larger and more capable ship or outpost.  If you multiplied by 10% first and then subtracted the 10kt then the magic number would be 110,000 tons - there's no way it works that way, though, right?

[Elvin]

There's a few things to say here:

First, a diplomatic ship will usually need to be basically permanently parked somewhere in order to build and maintain diplomatic relations. This means that having it as a military vessel is somewhat troublesome, as it'll eventually need to have its crew rested and, more importantly, stock up on MSPs. For that reason, it's usually best to make them commercial vessels.

Second, it's better if possible to have the ship weigh 10k tons or less. I believe if a ship has a diplomacy module, aliens effectively count it as being 10K less in size for calculations regarding diplomatic penalty introduced by the ship potentially being in a system they'll claim. I can't find the exact place where this is stated, but check out the "Diplomacy" section of the index: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10666.0

Third, from a purely mechanical perspective, there's no point having the resolution 1 active sensor as the ship has no defenses against missiles. For similar reasons, there's no point having two layers of armour. If this ship gets in to a firefight of ANY kind it WILL die. There's no point even putting CIWS on the ship, as you'd have to put so much on to give it a chance that you've basically created a point defense warship that happens to have a diplomacy module. Of course, you are welcome to add these things from an RP perspective - who'd want to be in a defenseless tin can going to talk to potentially xenophobic aliens?

Lastly, it looks like you have an order of magnitude too much fuel on the ship? I don't know how big your galaxy is, but 250 billion kilometers is a HUGE distance, one that I've never even got close to needing.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

There's a few things to say here:

First, a diplomatic ship will usually need to be basically permanently parked somewhere in order to build and maintain diplomatic relations. This means that having it as a military vessel is somewhat troublesome, as it'll eventually need to have its crew rested and, more importantly, stock up on MSPs. For that reason, it's usually best to make them commercial vessels.

Second, it's better if possible to have the ship weigh 10k tons or less. I believe if a ship has a diplomacy module, aliens effectively count it as being 10K less in size for calculations regarding diplomatic penalty introduced by the ship potentially being in a system they'll claim. I can't find the exact place where this is stated, but check out the "Diplomacy" section of the index: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10666.0

Third, from a purely mechanical perspective, there's no point having the resolution 1 active sensor as the ship has no defenses against missiles. For similar reasons, there's no point having two layers of armour. If this ship gets in to a firefight of ANY kind it WILL die. There's no point even putting CIWS on the ship, as you'd have to put so much on to give it a chance that you've basically created a point defense warship that happens to have a diplomacy module. Of course, you are welcome to add these things from an RP perspective - who'd want to be in a defenseless tin can going to talk to potentially xenophobic aliens?

Lastly, it looks like you have an order of magnitude too much fuel on the ship? I don't know how big your galaxy is, but 250 billion kilometers is a HUGE distance, one that I've never even got close to needing.

 - To the first item: The ship has 4 years of fuel, four years of deployment time and almost nine years of Maintenance Life... a quick jaunt home every ~4 years isn't all that much and if I really have to these things aren't terribly expensive so I'll just build another 1 or 2 to fill in on rotation.

 - To the second item, the minimum is 1,000 tons, so anything below that is wasted. See the quote and message below.

 === http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg118318#msg118318

Shipping Line vessels will be ignored for this purpose if a trade treaty is in force. NPRs will treat ships without military engines that have not demonstrated any weapon capability as 10% of their normal tonnage. If at least one ship is detected, the minimum rating for Detected Ship Tonnage will be 1000 tons. If at least one population is detected, the minimum rating for Population EM Signature will be 100. NPRs deduct 10,000 tons from the tonnage of one Diplomatic Ship (see Part per system for threat purposes if that class type has never fired weapons and the Diplomatic Ship is in a non-Core system. If the NPR only has one system, it is not treated as core for this purpose.

 - To the third item: Role-Playing them as navigational sensors. It's the ELINT which makes it military, and removal of such could free up room for a Marine Complement. As of now though my empire is searching for life, so having our diplomacy ship set up for intelligence gathering too makes sense... to us at least. This is primarily for 1st contact, hopefully bugs don't eat it.

 - To the final item: lolwut? 250 billion km is roughly the distance to 2017 MB7, never mind the return trip... and that's in Sol alone. I've been in plenty of systems that are mind-boggling-ly huge. If anything I'd wish to double the range on such a ship.

[captainwolfer]

- To the second item, the minimum is 1,000 tons, so anything below that is wasted.  See the quote and message below.

 === hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=8495. msg118318#msg118318

Shipping Line vessels will be ignored for this purpose if a trade treaty is in force.  NPRs will treat ships without military engines that have not demonstrated any weapon capability as 10% of their normal tonnage.  If at least one ship is detected, the minimum rating for Detected Ship Tonnage will be 1000 tons.  If at least one population is detected, the minimum rating for Population EM Signature will be 100.  NPRs deduct 10,000 tons from the tonnage of one Diplomatic Ship (see Part per system for threat purposes if that class type has never fired weapons and the Diplomatic Ship is in a non-Core system.  If the NPR only has one system, it is not treated as core for this purpose.

I suppose it depends on if the reduction applies after or before determining the minimum rating.

[nuclearslurpee]

- To the final item: lolwut? 250 billion km is roughly the distance to 2017 MB7, never mind the return trip... and that's in Sol alone. I've been in plenty of systems that are mind-boggling-ly huge. If anything I'd wish to double the range on such a ship.

Very often in practice, the diplomacy ships will end up stationed on jump points. NPRs will usually place theirs there if they believe there is a high probability of diplomatic contact in a system, so rarely if ever will you need to send a ship e.g. to an alien homeworld 100b km from a jump point.

That said it seems like you intend this as a dual diplo/ELINT ship which does change things quite a bit.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

 - Ya know, I think I might have a different idea of what a diplomatic ship is. For me, they don't just sit there and do the diplo stuff, they actively go in search of contact. I use them for this because the NPRs are less likely to shot at a diplo ship (on paper anyways...) and as such I want that, the ship of peace, to be the first thing they see.

 - The armada will always be the last thing they see, however.

[nuclearslurpee]

In my mind, a diplo module is a bunch of tonnage I don't want to lug around unless I have to, so I'll build dedicated diplo ships (commercial) and just send them off to meet my new punching bags friends whenever I run into them, assuming I'm playing as a diplomatic race and not a domineering empire with no interest in silly things like "diplomacy" and "friends".