Roles for 3000-ton Frigates?

[Jorgen_CAB]

The size of a ship should have nothing to do with it's classification and almost everything to do with it's role.. .more or less. The size of ships will be more dependant on technology and infrastructure capabilities.

The larger you can make a combat ship the more efficient it will become, especially in terms of survive a specific engagement. An early destroyer type ship might be 6kt while a few decades later you build destroyers at 12-18kt in size performing the same role as the 6kt did earlier. The difference is the capacity to provide good efficient components to support a larger ship who then also will be more effective than the same number of smaller ships at the same tonnage.

If you lock yourself into a specific tonnage for a specific type of ship you do yourself a large disservice as it should be an evolving thing as en empire grows.

The only real benefit a smaller ship have is that they can be in more places at the same time and are stealthier than larger ship, especially in terms of thermal emission and ability to avoid active sensors.

Most WWII cruisers are way smaller than moderns destroyers for example... so it really does not matter what size a ship is depending on what you call it. If a cruisers is just a carbon copy of your destroyer just 100% larger then I don't understand why the smaller destroyer is still being built and develop, makes little sense.

The reason for why I build ships at say 2-5kt are basically for scouting, reconnaissance and surveillance. Ships of this size are quite effective in the types of sensors they can mount and being small enough so you can deploy them in large numbers for a reasonable cost. If you call them corvettes or frigates I don't think matter all that much. I usually name them for their role and I rarely use the corvette type at all and rather just call smaller ships for what they do. A frigate are usually a smaller ship who have defensive capabilities and can act as escort for low value targets such as support ships but also can be used as scouts when needed. In most of my games the frigate usually start out at about 6-8kt and often grow to about 12kt later on.

I rarely use the Destroyer and Cruiser types of ships at the same time other than as a shift in the use of those ships. Once my main capital escort/recon ships grow to sufficient large size they go from being called destroyers to cruisers. The difference in their capabilities are usually deployment and operational range and capabilities. But for the fleet at large they still perform the same role so I don't need the old destroyer designation other than as a name for older ships that still are around and perhaps still upgraded to some degree, but eventually they are replaced for the larger more effective variant type of ships. This way a starting "Destroyer" might be about 8-12kt in size and the later cruiser types might be 30-40kt performing the same type of role in the fleet.

The same thing goes for a carrier... an early carrier might be 16kt and later on several hundred thousand tons. I like to build the carriers with commercial engines so I can make them really big and jump them with commercial jump engines. That way I can afford really large carriers that is almost impossible to destroy and they can stay out on their own steam for very long times as maintenance on them are dirt cheap. The carriers don't need high speed as they are a surgical weapons used mainly for space superiority or besieging planets and providing fighter coverage for ground assaults.

In terms of actual size of ships you need to figure that a 8-10kt Aurora ship are roughly equivalent with a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier in actual size (volume)... 

[Borealis4x (OP)]

The size of a ship should have nothing to do with it's classification and almost everything to do with it's role.. .more or less. The size of ships will be more dependant on technology and infrastructure capabilities.

In terms of actual size of ships you need to figure that a 8-10kt aurora ship are roughly equivalent with a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier in actual size... 

I hear you and am aware that what constitutes, say, a destroyer has changed as warfare has evolved. But I am very OCD when it comes to properly classifying ship classes and cannot stand ambiguity on this matter. It has to be clear-cut and dramatic what constitutes one class of ship from the other.

Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, etc; these classifications are for denoting size more than anything. But within each broad category there are sub-categories like escort/ (frigate), beam tackle (destroyer), light carrier (cruiser).

While standard sizes might make the designs themselves less flexible, it'll make your production a Hell of a lot more so. In many cases you can even build different variation of the same class from the same yard. The biggest bonus to keeping ships at a standardized size throughout most of the game is that once you get the formula right of which parts to include, you can easily retrofit existing ships with the upgraded model, which would be basically the exact same ship with the exact same components but sporting upgraded tech.

Aurora can be a headache to play at time so I'm willing to sacrifice some efficiency for logistical sanity.

[xenoscepter]

 - I don't always use a standardized tonnage system, but when I do I typically have two methods:

 Method A: My 1st warship dictates the size of my 1st "Class", so if that ship is 5 kilotons, then I have a 5 kiloton "class". Anything else will follow this displacement mold until the next big warship type or the next big upgrade. So I might design a 5 kiloton Frigate, a 10 kiloton Cruiser and a 34 kiloton Carrier, and then subsequent ships will be fitted to those molds until I deem it time to upscale them. ...it's a bit weird to explain it, to be honest.

 Method B: I have a preferred weight doctrine, it goes as such:

   3,125 Tons - Corvette, typically operates in a squadron of 4-7 ships, typically uses a dedicated Jump Corvette.

   6,250 Tons - Frigate, typically operates in a squadron of 4-7 ships, typically uses a dedicated Jump Frigate.

   12,500 Tons - Capital Ships, typically operate in a squadron of 3-5, Jump Capability is typically handled by a Cruiser.

   25,000 Tons - Super Capital Ships, typically operate in groups of 4 or less, usually have a dedicated Jump Ship if not outright Jump Capable themselves.

   150,000 Tons - Command Ships, typically operate in groups of 4 or less, usually have a dedicated Jump Ship. Often the core of a Battle Group and built in limited numbers.

   300,000 Tons - Campaign Ships, operate in groups of wildly varying numbers, almost always have a dedicated Jump Ship. Very rarely built, very powerful.

[captainwolfer]

Personally, my fleet design is:

6,000 Ton Frigates: Usually only used for colony defense/sensor ships. Typically operate alone or in a squadron of 3 frigates and 1 jump destroyer
12,000 Ton Destroyers: Destroyers are for shooting down missiles, FACs, and Fighters. Operate in squadrons of 3 Destroyers and 1 Jump Destroyer
24,000 Ton Cruisers: Main offensive ships, every squadron of 3 Cruisers and 1 Jump Cruiser is usually escorted by a Destroyer Squadron
48,000 Ton Capital Ships: Carriers or Battleships. Haven't really used combat ships of this size much.
96,000 Ton Super-Capital Ships: Theoretical only, haven't done more than design some just because.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As I always play with 10-20% research efficiency I usually stay within the same tech much longer than in more "normal" games. This also mean you have more time to expand your yards to sizes you really can't scientifically support. Anyway... as technologies are discovered you can afford to make larger and larger ship components to support more efficient larger capital ships, this goes for engines, shields, weapons, command modules, small efficient support crafts, jump engines etc... After a while it makes little sense to build 8kt destroyers rather than making them 16kt making them more then twice as effective in almost every aspect except stealth. If you never deploy them in singular you might as well just make them bigger.

In most of my games it will usually be decades where the biggest ship I can support with a jump engine would be about 8kt or so... they just are too expensive to research at low tech levels. The same is true with regular engines as well, even getting the tech for larger engines will take allot of effort, then researching really large engines for larger ships is quite expensive, although once you have them you will benefit highly from their higher fuel efficiency.

My main constraint usually are the jump engine and how much research I can put into building a jump engine large enough to support the destroyer type ship I need to have a fast fleet escort, attack and/or patrol ship. Destroyers and cruisers for example are less about attacking and destroying an opponent as it is to scout and defend space. I usually leave the killing to fighters/FAC who are the best at it. Being large means you are more efficient at defending in general so size for me is survivability first. The main job of a destroyer squadron operating in enemy space is to gain knowledge of enemy defences and able to get back intact.

When you attack something you always need to bring overwhelming attacking power to obliterate the opponent, at least that is what you do on paper under the best of circumstances. 
I never take my battle fleet and sail it blindly into enemy space and just hoping for the best.

If I need attacking power that most usually are either in the form of slow super large battle carriers or fast escort/light carriers with the same size as my current destroyer/cruiser hull. This has all to do with available jump engine capacity. Smaller ships will usually stick around for a while, but once their dedicated yards have been expanded to the next size of ships they will be phased out or relegated to second line duty for some time until finally scraped. Sometimes part of the destroyer fleet get relegated to frigate duties and somewhat rebuilt to fit that duty or role rather than scraped.

I always find my fleets to fluctuate with allot of different ship types and sizes and never really find this to be an actual problem... but then I don't tend to specialise ships all that much. I rather build several version of the same ships with just slight variations. As long as I can build them in the same shipyard all is fine. That makes the ships more modular and I can easily change them to fit my needs. This means I can easily have more than one yard per class so transition from one size to another can be performed dynamically by upgrading the ship yards in serial so over time the fleet changes character and older ships either is eventually scraped or get new duties.

My general view is that if one type of ship never act in a group smaller than three I better replace that with a single ship three times the size, if able.

[StarshipCactus]

Could be a good JP picket, you leave them on both sides of JPs when you enter hostile systems. Although smaller ships could do this better, you can use the extra tonnage to make sure you can deal with at least minor threats.

[misanthropope]

the stealth is not to be sneered at, but there is another significant advantage to small ships:  shipyards are not cheap, and small yards areconsiderably more efficient.  3 10kt slips will produce 4.5N BPs of ship per year, where N is your base construction rate (after governor effects).  a ten slip 3kt yard, for the same price will produce 8N BPs per year.  even if, somehow, getting there firstest isn't a consideration, you still get there with the mostest if you're rocking the rat pack.

it is absolutely true that the *real* gain is in cutting down still further down toward FAC size, but at some point in there you either need a motehrship (which throws the economic advantage out the window) or the inefficiency of very small engines is going to impinge on performance.  i would reckon the sweet spot is closer to 2k than 3k tons, but small ships eventually stop making sense only because they are too click-intensive not because they really get out-competed by larger units.

[Jorgen_CAB]

the stealth is not to be sneered at, but there is another significant advantage to small ships:  shipyards are not cheap, and small yards areconsiderably more efficient.  3 10kt slips will produce 4.5N BPs of ship per year, where N is your base construction rate (after governor effects).  a ten slip 3kt yard, for the same price will produce 8N BPs per year.  even if, somehow, getting there firstest isn't a consideration, you still get there with the mostest if you're rocking the rat pack.

it is absolutely true that the *real* gain is in cutting down still further down toward FAC size, but at some point in there you either need a motehrship (which throws the economic advantage out the window) or the inefficiency of very small engines is going to impinge on performance.  i would reckon the sweet spot is closer to 2k than 3k tons, but small ships eventually stop making sense only because they are too click-intensive not because they really get out-competed by larger units.

I think this is a misleading metric to be honest. I never ever found that having the capacity to build more ship than I ever can use over the long term is an issue no matter if I have large or small ships. The major benefit of small yards is that you can build more ships faster if you are being pressed by a superior enemy... if that is so then you really want 1k yards to churn out as many small FAC as possible as range are not really an issue at that point. So the combination of FAC and as large ship as possible is a good combination for both offence and defence.

Larger ships are also so much more efficient in and of them selves when you look at them hogging the best officers and have way more efficient components and needing less number of yards for specialised ship classes which means that construction factories can do other stuff than building more Naval shipyards. It is easier to upgrade and refit larger ship in the future and that also cut down on costs/time as they are not specialised in the same way. You also forget about maintenance, maintenance is cheaper the more effective the ships are that you have per tonnage.

In my opinion the biggest drawback of large ships are the cost of developing the components to really benefit from their size not the production of them as I never find the problem of being able to produce enough ships to ever be a problem over the long term.

[misanthropope]

it's easy to notice running out of money, but how would you expect it to look if your economy was 10% smaller than it might have been?

if the way you play aurora means your military actions are neither time-sensitive nor resource-sensitive, then on what basis exactly would you decide between better and worse courses of action, and how could it matter?

[Jorgen_CAB]

it's easy to notice running out of money, but how would you expect it to look if your economy was 10% smaller than it might have been?

if the way you play aurora means your military actions are neither time-sensitive nor resource-sensitive, then on what basis exactly would you decide between better and worse courses of action, and how could it matter?

Yes... that is the thing... in this case it is not as clear cut a case as you stated in your first post. Yes it takes more time to build larger ships and you can not produce as much tonnage in a short time as you can with smaller ships. But they come with other benefits that only show up long term over time.

It is for the most part easy to overproduce military ships if you constantly produce ships non stop, having some yards (or slipways) on stand by for when you need them is a strategic consideration as are the different types of yards that you have. I'm pretty sure no one really just keep expanding their yards indefinitely either. If you are hard pressed on population you always can tow yards someplace else when not in use and take them online if there are needs for them. This depends more on if you have population shortages or not.

Aside of the production difference the fact that there are other benefits from an efficiency stand point makes a pretty strong case for why larger ships in the long term is more efficient even if the tonnage over time would be lower at full production.

I also think you could compare two identical empires who have the exact same dock workers so there is no difference in their respective economies otherwise, they just distributed their yards differently. Remember that both sides can maintain the same number of tonnage long term, production is not the only metric you need to count.

I also don't think that ONLY building large ships is the better strategy... you want a good selection of different classes for many different reasons with varied sizes. But in general if you field four ships a 5000t in a permanent group you would be better of with one at 20kt instead if you are able to do that. There obviously are many considerations when building larger ships so it is a bit more complicated than that, that is why I state if you are able.

[Desdinova]

I play conventional start games almost exclusively, so my first class of combat ships is usually about 3000-4000 tons because that's all I can build. In general though, I think it's a useful size for an escort and fleet scout. As mentioned the AI doesn't really plan around ships of that size so they often fall outside the enemy's sensor radius, while being the smallest ships capable of carrying a useful payload. I usually go with as many railguns or gauss cannons as I can, maybe with some box launchers thrown in, and make them faster than my main battle line with minimal armor and large passive sensors. They're never going to survive in a beam fight so I specialize them for scouting and anti-missile defense.

Most WWII cruisers are way smaller than moderns destroyers for example...

Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.

Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II

[Desdinova]

Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.

Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II

The only people building small  (sub-6000 ton standard displacement) light cruisers were the British, who needed large numbers of cruisers for their empire, and the Italians, who were particularly enamored with the scout cruiser/flotilla leader concept and wanted small cruisers to counter the French contre-torpilleurs. I think you'll find the rest of the small cruisers on that list were immediate post-WWI vintage. That list is also showing standard displacement, not fully loaded displacement. For example, the Dido class displaced 5900 tons standard, but up to 7600 tons fully loaded.

By the London naval treaty, the distinction between heavy and light cruiser was made only by armament (6.1" and below for light cruisers), with both ostensibly limited to 10,000 tons, although this obviously ceased to be a factor once war broke out, which is why you have 14,000-ton light cruisers like the Cleveland class.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.

Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II

The only people building small  (sub-6000 ton standard displacement) light cruisers were the British, who needed large numbers of cruisers for their empire, and the Italians, who were particularly enamored with the scout cruiser/flotilla leader concept and wanted small cruisers to counter the French contre-torpilleurs. I think you'll find the rest of the small cruisers on that list were immediate post-WWI vintage. That list is also showing standard displacement, not fully loaded displacement. For example, the Dido class displaced 5900 tons standard, but up to 7600 tons fully loaded.

By the London naval treaty, the distinction between heavy and light cruiser was made only by armament (6.1" and below for light cruisers), with both ostensibly limited to 10,000 tons, although this obviously ceased to be a factor once war broke out, which is why you have 14,000-ton light cruisers like the Cleveland class.

Pretty much everyone BUT the US built small cruisers (even the US had a fair amount of smaller light cruisers), Japans light cruisers were pretty small too. Some British CL also were on the 10-11kt at full load though.

Modern destroyers tend to be about 8-10kt in size, suffice to say allot of cruisers in WWII were smaller. Some where equal in size some larger (especially late war ones). Fact is that light cruisers had a huge range between about 3kt to 14kt throughout the war from all the major combatants.

If they fought in WWII they were part of it and should be included... when they were built have nothing to do with anything.

Sure it was likely wrong to say most cruisers was smaller... I was thinking about light cruisers in particular when writing that though and most of them were pretty small even if some where big.

[papent]

I typical build 3K PD Escorts either equipped with AMM or Gauss Turrets.
in my current game i have about 40 of each. and attached to a combat group, Troop Landing Groups, Salvage Groups, any group likely to see missile attack, or orbiting the farthest stations of my empire.

in nearly every campaign i make sure it's an attritable design, they don't have jump drives and the lost of one doesn't instantly remove active defense capabilities of the battle group.

now, for actually combat frigates i typical stay in 4K range and recce or SPECWAR corvettes are usually in the 2K range.