Roles for 3000-ton Frigates?

[Barkhorn]

So you can do squadron transits.  Jump tenders can only do standard transits, which are suicide if the jump is going to be contested at all.  You don't need one on every ship, but you do need them on some ships.  Probably 1 jump ship to every 3-5 other ships, depending on your squad jump tech.

[Jorgen_CAB]

So you can do squadron transits.  Jump tenders can only do standard transits, which are suicide if the jump is going to be contested at all.  You don't need one on every ship, but you do need them on some ships.  Probably 1 jump ship to every 3-5 other ships, depending on your squad jump tech.

A jump tender is usually meant by a ship that is more of a support ship than a combat ship, their role are mainly to jump other ships and then support in a none combat way. That is what we normally refer to as jump tender, at least I do. A jump capable ship of a squadron leader is a ship that is a dedicated part of a specific squadron of ships and manoeuvre with it... at least that is how I use those terms.

A jump tender can be used to squadron jump ships equally well as you can with a jump capable squadron leader. Often, Jump tenders, can even jump a greater number of ships too, depending on how you design them. But I always give my "Jump Tenders" max squadron size jump engines. Also a jump tender don't have to be as big as the ship they are jumping anymore either. So if you have a bunch of 100kt ships and you don't need to build a 100kt ship to jump it... you can have a much smaller less capable ship whose only job is to provide one or more of such ships jump capabilities and then provide some fuel, ammunition, supplies, perhaps a hangar with some sensor scout, rescue shuttles, cryo pods for storing rescued crew, boarding troops and shuttles for transporting them or what have you.

Do you have enough jump tenders to jump all of your ships at once, that is a different question. I usually don't believe that you need the capability to jump your entire fleet of capital ships at the same time, that is probably overkill in terms of jump capability for the most part.

In C# I believe you even can use Jump Tender Stations to jump ships and even they can use squadron jumps. That means you can potentially use commercial support ships to tractor your Jump Gates/Stations and place them on a jump point and help military ships squadron jump. Could be a cheap way to give a large number of ships jump capabilities as you rarely need jump capability for every ship in a fleet usually. These Jump Tender Stations also can be commercial and so is both cheaper and easier to maintain and you can have them sit at jump points indefinitely.

[nuclearslurpee]

It's worth noting that the classic jump warship is not a poor choice either. Logically, if you are going to build a jump ship anyways, there is an argument that the ship might as well be useful in combat in which case you can design a jump warship with a reduced weapons loadout or just a pure PD/AMM design without primary weapons. Notably such a ship can have the same speed as the rest of your fleet which is ideal for a rapid reaction force if towing a station or waiting for a slow commercial tender is too slow. It may also be possible, if you're clever with designs and bridging classes, to build these out of the same shipyard as a real warship which can be useful especially early on when you don't have several dozen shipyards available.

On the other hand, a barebones commercial tender (with a military jump drive) is probably cheaper, so if you build a fair amount of them the extra BPs can be used for a couple more real warships and as commercial ships they will save you maintenance and fuel costs. Like all things it is a question of tradeoffs.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It's worth noting that the classic jump warship is not a poor choice either. Logically, if you are going to build a jump ship anyways, there is an argument that the ship might as well be useful in combat in which case you can design a jump warship with a reduced weapons loadout or just a pure PD/AMM design without primary weapons. Notably such a ship can have the same speed as the rest of your fleet which is ideal for a rapid reaction force if towing a station or waiting for a slow commercial tender is too slow. It may also be possible, if you're clever with designs and bridging classes, to build these out of the same shipyard as a real warship which can be useful especially early on when you don't have several dozen shipyards available.

On the other hand, a barebones commercial tender (with a military jump drive) is probably cheaper, so if you build a fair amount of them the extra BPs can be used for a couple more real warships and as commercial ships they will save you maintenance and fuel costs. Like all things it is a question of tradeoffs.

I completely agree... I would think that in most situation a combination are probably the best choice. But how much you build of either type probably depend entirely on your operational needs more than anything.

It is important to note that as long as a jump is not contested you only need one jump capable ship to make a standard transit of an entire fleet. That is why I think a combination often will suit most of the time.

If you also have allot of stabilised jump points both within and without your empire you will need even less most of the time.

[liveware]

Missile armed jump point picket ships are an interesting option also. They can swap some engine space for a jump drive and provide long range fire support to the rest of the fleet without needing to really keep pace with them. Keep them near the jump point and flee to the other side if the enemy gets too close and your main fleet isn't nearby.

[Michael Sandy]

3000-4000 tons is fairly consistently the minimum sized cloaked warship if tech advances equally through the cloak techs.  So that gives you cloaked scout ships, which MIGHT be detected on passives, but have enough space for an active sensor powerful enough to provide targeting information while staying out of range.

In the early antimatter tech era, that size makes a good successor for fighter strike craft.

3000 tons is about the smallest sized carrier one can make.  If your carrier operations theory is to launch strikes from outside of detection range, small size is about the only way to do it.  It also potentially makes a good patrol carrier, as it can have a very long endurance while having very high performance scouts on board.  If your standard fleet scout complement can fit in 2000 tons of hangar space, you could pair these up and have reliable scout coverage for all of your colonies.

3000-4000 tons is a good size for a parasite beam warship.  Theory is that if you outrange the enemy and are faster, you can endlessly plink away.  Can't quite endlessly plink in C#, and significant shielding would mean they wouldn't do enough DPS to knock down the shields at the range they can operate with impunity.  But still, there is a niche for it.

Small sized warships serve when you want to have a certain capacity in a lot of places, or when detection/stealth is paramount and it is the smallest ship that can mount a particular weapon system.