Fighters and how to make them?

[Hydrofoil (OP)]

Hi, i'm currently playing a game and i'm wanting to mess around with fighters however i'm failing miserably to get anything to fit within the 500 tons. Im trying to make a Survey craft that i can fit within a carrier vessel for long term and distance survey missions. I'm currently working in Improved Nuclear Pulse Engines and when i add the geo and grav survey equipment it brings the craft above 500 tons. Im also struggling to get the class to use the fighter components. What am i doing wrong?

Code: [Select]

Rodney class Survey Craft      757 tons       30 Crew       248.4 BP       TCS 15    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      Armour 1-7       Shields 0-0       HTK 5      Sensors 0/0/1/1      DCR 1      PPV 0
Maint Life 10.90 Years     MSP 205    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 100 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Morale Check Required   

Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range N/A

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[Droll]

I notice that you have a bridge - any craft under 1000 tons does not need a bridge so take it out.

You need to make space for an engine, start with 5000 liters of fuel, 50k is probably overkill for a fighter, even a survey one like this.

I understand that you want to have your survey fighters do all sorts of survey but at such small sizes I recommend you specialize, drop either the gravsurvey or the geosurvey and make a second class. So you'd have two survey designs - one for geo, the other for grav.

If you really are running out of space you might also consider dropping deployment time - the lowest a ships morale can go is 25%, which means that if your ok with surveys taking 4 times as long you might drop it to 0.1 and save space that way.

Do you have a fighter sized engineering bay? If not, replace the one you have with the fighter variant, if yes don't remove it to save space since unlike combat fighters, survey fighters will spend extended periods of time outside a hangar.

Thats all I could think of without seeing the actual component list

[d.rodin]

for example:

An-50-Geo G9 class Geological Survey Craft      500 tons       17 Crew       400.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 4    EM 0
9612 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/0/5      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 13.54 Years     MSP 350    AFR 3%    IFR 0.0%    1YR 4    5YR 53    Max Repair 300 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Plasma Core AM Drive 50% EP96.00 (1)    Power 96    Fuel Use 4.03%    Signature 3.84    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 15 000 Litres    Range 134 billion km (161 days at full power)

Phased Geological Sensors (1)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

150 tons 50% EP engine.
2x Engineering Fighter
1x Engineering Small
5x Fuel storage Fighter
1x Fuel storage Small

[Ulzgoroth]

I'm dubious of dual-role survey ships of any size, but dual-role survey fighters are just egregiously wasteful.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I'm dubious of dual-role survey ships of any size, but dual-role survey fighters are just egregiously wastefulphysically impossible.

FTFY.  Geo and grav sensors are 250 tons apiece, and fighters are limited to 500 tons.  That doesn't exactly leave much room for armour, crew, or fuel, let alone engines.  Dual role survey never made sense to me either.

[Vastrat]

I agree with the others you should make two types of fighters, one for grav and one for geo.

[skoormit]

I'm dubious of dual-role survey ships of any size, but dual-role survey fighters are just egregiously wastefulphysically impossible.

FTFY.  Geo and grav sensors are 250 tons apiece, and fighters are limited to 500 tons.  That doesn't exactly leave much room for armour, crew, or fuel, let alone engines.  Dual role survey never made sense to me either.

I use dual-surveyors just to make logistics easier.
Making two designs is more cost effective, but not having to manage the ratio of types to send to each system saves quite a bit of micro.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I'm dubious of dual-role survey ships of any size, but dual-role survey fighters are just egregiously wastefulphysically impossible.

FTFY.  Geo and grav sensors are 250 tons apiece, and fighters are limited to 500 tons.  That doesn't exactly leave much room for armour, crew, or fuel, let alone engines.  Dual role survey never made sense to me either.

I use dual-surveyors just to make logistics easier.
Making two designs is more cost effective, but not having to manage the ratio of types to send to each system saves quite a bit of micro.

Fair enough.

[Hydrofoil (OP)]

Thanks guys for the help, ill take this into advisement and see what i can come up with.

[vorpal+5]

Are geosurvey missiles working or they are not ? I did not quite follow where C# stands here.

[serger]

I have used them in some of 1.9.x version without any bugs.

[Zincat]

I use dual-surveyors just to make logistics easier.
Making two designs is more cost effective, but not having to manage the ratio of types to send to each system saves quite a bit of micro.

This is especially useful if one uses reduced research and survey rate like me. Since survey ships use a precious naval shipyad, and it's hard to know beforehand how many you will need...
If we talk about ships (not fighters), it's just better to make survey ships that are 1000 or so tons larger, but are capable of performing both tasks. That way you do not have to juggle them in complicated way, and allocating more to important systems dscovered is smoother.

Also, I question the fact that single task ships are more efficient. Sure they are on paper, from a design point of view.... but you never know what you're going to find. Your more efficient ships will be useless if you are in a situation where half of them can't be used. Maybe you made 5 geosurvey ships... and then you find 2-3 systems with a ton of planets and want to survey those asap. With 5% survey speed, that takes a LONG time.
All your grav survey ships will not help in that situation.

I'm just saying, since dual-task survey ships are only marginally larger, but are a lot more flexible, I think that in c aurora they are definitely a more sensible options in a lot of cases.

[skoormit]

Also, I question the fact that single task ships are more efficient. Sure they are on paper, from a design point of view.... but you never know what you're going to find. Your more efficient ships will be useless if you are in a situation where half of them can't be used. Maybe you made 5 geosurvey ships... and then you find 2-3 systems with a ton of planets and want to survey those asap. With 5% survey speed, that takes a LONG time.
All your grav survey ships will not help in that situation.

I'm just saying, since dual-task survey ships are only marginally larger, but are a lot more flexible, I think that in c aurora they are definitely a more sensible options in a lot of cases.

If you build a lot of survey ships before you have revealed the systems you are going to survey, then yes, you may end up with a suboptimal ratio.
To build specialized surveyors efficiently, just build enough grav surveyors so that your revealed frontier stays ahead of your geo surveying capacity.
When in doubt, add more grav surveyors.
If you overbuild geo surveyors, they can run out of work before your grav surveyors find new jump points to explore.
If you overbuild grav surveyors, they will find new jump points faster than your geo ships can keep up, which just means that the gravs can move on and explore the next system, which is fine.
The gravs should always be ahead of the geos, so that you have a backlog of systems that need geo surveying.

[Droll]

I use dual-surveyors just to make logistics easier.
Making two designs is more cost effective, but not having to manage the ratio of types to send to each system saves quite a bit of micro.

This is especially useful if one uses reduced research and survey rate like me. Since survey ships use a precious naval shipyad, and it's hard to know beforehand how many you will need...
If we talk about ships (not fighters), it's just better to make survey ships that are 1000 or so tons larger, but are capable of performing both tasks. That way you do not have to juggle them in complicated way, and allocating more to important systems dscovered is smoother.

Also, I question the fact that single task ships are more efficient. Sure they are on paper, from a design point of view.... but you never know what you're going to find. Your more efficient ships will be useless if you are in a situation where half of them can't be used. Maybe you made 5 geosurvey ships... and then you find 2-3 systems with a ton of planets and want to survey those asap. With 5% survey speed, that takes a LONG time.
All your grav survey ships will not help in that situation.

I'm just saying, since dual-task survey ships are only marginally larger, but are a lot more flexible, I think that in c aurora they are definitely a more sensible options in a lot of cases.

IMO the biggest argument against dual-purpose survey ships is automation.

If my geo and grav survey ships are separate I can use standard orders to fully automate them - this is especially true if your like me and take in the 25% morale penalty into account when designing them. The only time I take control of my survey fleet is when a system has precursors/NPRs and I have to designate it as alien controlled.

Edit: The only issue is grav survey ships , they won't explore unexplored JPs without explicit orders, which I think is fine as it prevents me from blundering into a system I might not be ready to handle

[skoormit]

I use dual-surveyors just to make logistics easier.
Making two designs is more cost effective, but not having to manage the ratio of types to send to each system saves quite a bit of micro.

This is especially useful if one uses reduced research and survey rate like me. Since survey ships use a precious naval shipyad, and it's hard to know beforehand how many you will need...
If we talk about ships (not fighters), it's just better to make survey ships that are 1000 or so tons larger, but are capable of performing both tasks. That way you do not have to juggle them in complicated way, and allocating more to important systems dscovered is smoother.

Also, I question the fact that single task ships are more efficient. Sure they are on paper, from a design point of view.... but you never know what you're going to find. Your more efficient ships will be useless if you are in a situation where half of them can't be used. Maybe you made 5 geosurvey ships... and then you find 2-3 systems with a ton of planets and want to survey those asap. With 5% survey speed, that takes a LONG time.
All your grav survey ships will not help in that situation.

I'm just saying, since dual-task survey ships are only marginally larger, but are a lot more flexible, I think that in c aurora they are definitely a more sensible options in a lot of cases.

IMO the biggest argument against dual-purpose survey ships is automation.

If my geo and grav survey ships are separate I can use standard orders to fully automate them - this is especially true if your like me and take in the 25% morale penalty into account when designing them. The only time I take control of my survey fleet is when a system has precursors/NPRs and I have to designate it as alien controlled

It takes almost zero micro to automate dual surveyors.

Time to survey some systems?
Give one surveyor standing orders
1) survey nearest body (or nearest five if you like)
2) move to system requiring geo survey.

Give the rest of your surveyors standing orders to
1) survey nearest survey location (or nearest three if you like)
2) move to system requiring grav survey.

Give them all whatever conditional orders you prefer for refueling/overhauling/etc.

If your gravs get too far ahead of your geos, switch a grav to geo.
If a geo runs out of work to do, switch it to grav.
If your gravs run out of work, you aren't exploring new JPs fast enough.