Railgun Battleship - enough MSP?

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have done several battles and never even come close to having MSP problems at all.

The new rules in C# sort of makes it not worth trying to engage at extreme range where hitting is both hard and do very little damage. If that is the case here the rule is doing exactly what is is suppose to do which is making long range kiting either impossible or very costly.

If it is bombarding planets then it is also doing its job perfectly well.

If you engage en enemy an actually close in to a reasonably close range you should never have problem with MSP before the conclusion of any engagement.

If you add shields to with any decently large ships then long range battles will become nearly impossible due to the shield regenerating most of the damage done over time. Strong shields will force an enemy to either close in or disengage if they are faster or simply waste MSP.

A 1% failure rate means a weapon can shoot 100 times before it fail in general and that should be way more than you should need in almost any situation.

[Zincat]

I have done several battles and never even come close to having MSP problems at all.

The new rules in C# sort of makes it not worth trying to engage at extreme range where hitting is both hard and do very little damage. If that is the case here the rule is doing exactly what is is suppose to do which is making long range kiting either impossible or very costly.

If it is bombarding planets then it is also doing its job perfectly well.

If you engage en enemy an actually close in to a reasonably close range you should never have problem with MSP before the conclusion of any engagement.

If you add shields to with any decently large ships then ling range battles will become nearly impossible due to the shield regenerating most of the damage done over time. Strong shields will force an enemy to either close in or disengage if they are faster or simply waste MSP.

A 1% failure rate means a weapon can shoot 100 times before it fail in general and that should be way more than you should need in almost any situation.

I do see that the combat has shifted to favor a more close combat engagement for beams.
However, I'm unfortunately very busy and so I have limited game time on c#aurora. A question then.

What about Particle lances? Do they have enough DPS to surpass the shields of a comparable tonnage and tech level warship? That seems to be an important consideration, because if the answer is no, then they do lose most of their value. After all, they require expensive tech reserch as it is...

[DFNewb]

I have done several battles and never even come close to having MSP problems at all.

The new rules in C# sort of makes it not worth trying to engage at extreme range where hitting is both hard and do very little damage. If that is the case here the rule is doing exactly what is is suppose to do which is making long range kiting either impossible or very costly.

If it is bombarding planets then it is also doing its job perfectly well.

If you engage en enemy an actually close in to a reasonably close range you should never have problem with MSP before the conclusion of any engagement.

If you add shields to with any decently large ships then ling range battles will become nearly impossible due to the shield regenerating most of the damage done over time. Strong shields will force an enemy to either close in or disengage if they are faster or simply waste MSP.

A 1% failure rate means a weapon can shoot 100 times before it fail in general and that should be way more than you should need in almost any situation.

I do see that the combat has shifted to favor a more close combat engagement for beams.
However, I'm unfortunately very busy and so I have limited game time on c#aurora. A question then.

What about Particle lances? Do they have enough DPS to surpass the shields of a comparable tonnage and tech level warship? That seems to be an important consideration, because if the answer is no, then they do lose most of their value. After all, they require expensive tech reserch as it is...

You could always take down their shields with missiles or fighters and than hit them with the lances. The lances are very strong in my opinion as they can easily penetrate armor at long range.

[skoormit]

A 1% failure rate means a weapon can shoot 100 times before it fail in general and that should be way more than you should need in almost any situation.

Not precisely.
A weapon can expect to fail once for every 100 times it fires, in the long run.
But only about 37% will fire 100 times without encountering the first failure.
50% will fail by the 70th time.

Your point still stands. Engagements should be over well before that, unless your combat doctrine specifically calls for remaining at very long range.

[CharonJr (OP)]

So for 100 shots fired the Bismarck would consume about 4.000 MSP for 100 shots fired from each weapon.
8 x 252 = 2016
12 x 103 = 1236
32 x 21 = 671

I can see 100+ shots from the smaller calibers, but I can not envision  many battles where the 40cm will fire 100 times each with a brawler like the Bismarck. But yeah, going for 150-200% additional MSP feels better than the 100% I am currently using. So something like 10-11k, but 17k does sound excessive to me as well.

7k missiles at 20% to hit / 4 projectiles per shot brings us to about 9k / 100 is about 100 (to keep it simple) divided by 2 or 3 ships => beloew 1k MSP from the missiles (unless Gauss/Turrets use more than the 21 MSP I saw for the 10cm Rails).

Lets say each ship takes down 100 enemies with 3 full salvos from the 12cm and 1 salvo from the 40cm on average for each enemy - and in my fight I needed way less than that. This would add another 7k MSP.

So about 7k-8k in total for a really large battle. Considering that most missiles in my setup are dealt with by the complete fleet and not just 2-3 brawlers even less than that.

Unless I miscalculated somewhere 10-11k still sounds OK for most encounters.

edit: Actually this raises an interesting point, is there any overview about MSP needed for weapon repairs. Maybe this is another paramter to consider when chossing weapons.

[CharonJr (OP)]

And the final member of the big battleship series, the Yamato - AFAIK there was/is no 19inch/50cm naval gun in use, correct?:

Code: [Select]

Yamato class Battleship      88 000 tons       2 381 Crew       25 392.5 BP       TCS 1 760    TH 22 000    EM 36 000
12500 km/s      Armour 12-176       Shields 1200-600       HTK 415      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 74      PPV 310
Maint Life 1.85 Years     MSP 23 975    AFR 1408%    IFR 19.6%    1YR 8 894    5YR 133 406    Max Repair 1000.00 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 500 tons     
Kapitan zur See    Control Rating 5   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   FLG   
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Flight Crew Berths 40    Morale Check Required   

Daimler Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP2000.00 (11)    Power 22000.0    Fuel Use 14.14%    Signature 2000.00    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 2 400 000 Litres    Range 34.7 billion km (32 days at full power)
Mannesmann Xi S400 / R600 Shields (3)     Recharge Time 600 seconds (2 per second)

Krupp 45cm Railgun V80/C8 (9x4)    Range 384 000km     TS: 12 500 km/s     Power 48-8     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 80 000 km    ROF 30        16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 14 12
Rheinmetall 12cm Railgun V80/C6 (14x4)    Range 160 000km     TS: 12 500 km/s     Power 6-6     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 80 000 km    ROF 5        2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
Rheinmetall 10cm Railgun V40/C3 (41x4)    Range 40 000km     TS: 12 500 km/s     Power 3-3     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 40 000 km    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Siemens Beam Fire Control R384-TS12800 (3)     Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 12 800 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Siemens Beam Fire Control R96-TS12800 (2)     Max Range: 96 000 km   TS: 12 800 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
AEG Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor R52 (6)     Total Power Output 312    Exp 5%

Mannesmann Active Search Sensor AS17-R1 (2)     GPS 56     Range 17.9m km    MCR 1.6m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-3 (2)         ECM 30

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[Jorgen_CAB]

A 1% failure rate means a weapon can shoot 100 times before it fail in general and that should be way more than you should need in almost any situation.

Not precisely.
A weapon can expect to fail once for every 100 times it fires, in the long run.
But only about 37% will fire 100 times without encountering the first failure.
50% will fail by the 70th time.

Your point still stands. Engagements should be over well before that, unless your combat doctrine specifically calls for remaining at very long range.

Sure... what I meant to say was that if a weapon fire 100 times you have to expect it to fail on average once... but it is all semantics in my opinion. All you can do it calculate the average loss in cost for every weapon you have on a ship.

In my opinion a battle should never last so long that a ship with a reasonable storage of MSP would run dry unless you are extremely unlucky. Even when a ship have zero MSP if will still shoot with its weapon until it fail the next time.

The point is... if you engage are really long ranges and are not using things like particle weapons you should not expect to walk away without a huge cost, that is the whole point... don't do it. Just stop fire and ignore the enemy and have them shoot their weapons dry at your shields at that point.

[Jorgen_CAB]

So for 100 shots fired the Bismarck would consume about 4.000 MSP for 100 shots fired from each weapon.
8 x 252 = 2016
12 x 103 = 1236
32 x 21 = 671

I can see 100+ shots from the smaller calibers, but I can not envision  many battles where the 40cm will fire 100 times each with a brawler like the Bismarck. But yeah, going for 150-200% additional MSP feels better than the 100% I am currently using. So something like 10-11k, but 17k does sound excessive to me as well.

7k missiles at 20% to hit / 4 projectiles per shot brings us to about 9k / 100 is about 100 (to keep it simple) divided by 2 or 3 ships => beloew 1k MSP from the missiles (unless Gauss/Turrets use more than the 21 MSP I saw for the 10cm Rails).

Lets say each ship takes down 100 enemies with 3 full salvos from the 12cm and 1 salvo from the 40cm on average for each enemy - and in my fight I needed way less than that. This would add another 7k MSP.

So about 7k-8k in total for a really large battle. Considering that most missiles in my setup are dealt with by the complete fleet and not just 2-3 brawlers even less than that.

Unless I miscalculated somewhere 10-11k still sounds OK for most encounters.

edit: Actually this raises an interesting point, is there any overview about MSP needed for weapon repairs. Maybe this is another parameter to consider when chossing weapons.

It is very unlikely it will ever happen that the ship spend that much MSP if the ship gets to use its short range Gauss as a beam fight will be over VERY quickly at such range.

So as you say it is unlikely it will every use that many shots with its heavier weapons before whatever fight they are in is over.

Gauss might cost you some in their PD role though... but it is probably very rare for all your Gauss to fire that much in PD duty... even against most AMM barrages. But it might mount up in a long fight.

In order to have a decent safety margin you should make sure you have some extra spare MSP on your capital ships for when the cold turn hot.

[Father Tim]

Keep researching engine size tech.  The Bismarck only had twelve boilers, so you need to increase engine size to 1.5 times what you have now (EP1200 instead of EP 800).

Does she also disable her main active sensor when she fires her first main battery salvo?

[CharonJr (OP)]

Nah, we improved the design, so no sensor outages from firing the mains. We even removed the weakness at the rudder, but are still looking hard for any approaching old bi-plane torpedo-bombers for added security

Overall I did try to stick close to the original design except for the caliber of the secondary guns. I just couldnt bring myself to lower the ROF down to 10 for the better fitting 15cm guns. Ignoring the 2cm FlaK should be somewhat compensated by using 10cm for the 16 3,7cm FlaKs as well.

Well, in my current slow research game (25%) I will try to see how a laser or maybe particle based battleship will look like - United Earth approach, giving access to additional designs.

[Hungaricus]

(Sry for the late answer I got overwhelmed by work lately)

It was an absolutely huge battle (by my experience). I brought my strike fleet ( 384kT 3 BB and 7 cruiser in 3 different designs) for a quick 20 minute adventure into an enemy system which I assumed was lightly defended by technologically inferior enemy. You can imagine my surprise when they brought their best toys with them which were actually superior to mine. After days of on and of fighting my fleet shot down 35k missiles of different shapes and sizes. I had to use every weapon to defend against their missiles salvos. The problem was there was so many of them! My fleet destroyed roughly 2,1 mT of enemy military ships and around 5 million tons of commercial shipping in that one go. Also I destroyed a 500kT shipyard complex. As I said it was not a normal battle there was some MSP consumed for repairs too.

Also two of my ship got destroyed. One was struck by the concentrated firepower of the enemy STO-s and the in a JP ambush. Some ships also expended big amount of MSPs to repair after said 35k missiles.

I think part of the problem is that my energy armament was turreted so I had to repair the hole thing which is expensive. Also I was never closer to my enemy than 150k the only exception was when I wanted to close in to the shipyard (I couldn't see the STO-s then) and my cruiser was blown into pieces.

[Jorgen_CAB]

(Sry for the late answer I got overwhelmed by work lately)

It was an absolutely huge battle (by my experience). I brought my strike fleet ( 384kT 3 BB and 7 cruiser in 3 different designs) for a quick 20 minute adventure into an enemy system which I assumed was lightly defended by technologically inferior enemy. You can imagine my surprise when they brought their best toys with them which were actually superior to mine. After days of on and of fighting my fleet shot down 35k missiles of different shapes and sizes. I had to use every weapon to defend against their missiles salvos. The problem was there was so many of them! My fleet destroyed roughly 2,1 mT of enemy military ships and around 5 million tons of commercial shipping in that one go. Also I destroyed a 500kT shipyard complex. As I said it was not a normal battle there was some MSP consumed for repairs too.

Also two of my ship got destroyed. One was struck by the concentrated firepower of the enemy STO-s and the in a JP ambush. Some ships also expended big amount of MSPs to repair after said 35k missiles.

I think part of the problem is that my energy armament was turreted so I had to repair the hole thing which is expensive. Also I was never closer to my enemy than 150k the only exception was when I wanted to close in to the shipyard (I couldn't see the STO-s then) and my cruiser was blown into pieces.

That seem like an Epice battle to be sure.

But as far as I understand it was multiple engagements so there should have been time to resupply from a collier/supply ship or something if you had anyone part of the battle group?

In my opinion this sort of show how the new mechanic really is doing what it is suppose to be doing... and it show that even beam weapons will need to be supported or you will run out of steam. If instead you would have relied more on missiles you would have run out of steam allot earlier than what you did.

There will always be a trade off between how much MSP you want onboard your ships and how much you will rely on a collier or supply ship to bring extra MSP with any battle group. It is a question on how much space you are willing to use for military or commercial tonnage overall. This will obviously depend on your doctrines and the missions you want your ships to undertake as their primary role. A ship that is suppose to act far from friendly base and are suppose to bring all the fuel/supplies it needs you will have to sacrifice other stuff, that is just how it is.

In my opinion this is a god demonstration of how it can turn out and what you can learn from that experience. Either you bring more supplies ship next time or you add more space for MSP but less weapons to defend yourself with. You simply have to chose and live with that choice.

One issue that "might" be a bug is the cost of turrets... I think that if you have four lasers in one turret and one fail you have to pay for the whole turret. That means the turret will cost you four times the normal cost plus the extra cost for the turret mechanics as well. This can add considerably to the cost over time if this is the case. I have not investigated this myself, but some people seem to believe that it works that way. So it might be a potential bug. A turret should be counted as ONE chance to fail every time all the weapons fire, that way it would match up in cost with other weapons.