My very first combat ship.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

This is my very first ship capable of combat.  I did a conventional start so my tech level is still REALLY low.

County class Corvette    3000 tons     88 Crew     368 BP      TCS 60  TH 60  EM 0
1000 km/s     Armour 2-18     Shields 0-0     Sensors 12/12/0/0     Damage Control 3     PPV 14
Annual Failure Rate: 0%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 230 MSP
Spare Berths 0   

10 EP Nuclear Thermal Engine (6)    Power 10    Fuel Use 88. 2%    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 13. 6 billion km   (157 days at full power)

Single Gauss Cannon R1-100 Turret (2x1)    Range 10,000km     TS: 3350 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 1    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 16-2000 (1)    Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 2000 km/s     69 37 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Signature 1000: 12m km
Active Search Sensor MR43-R100 (1)     GPS 7200     Range 43. 2m km     Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR13-R40 (1)     GPS 1440     Range 13. 7m km     Resolution 40
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1)     GPS 24     Range 1. 4m km     Resolution 1
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Strength 1000: 12m km

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

I am well aware the ship is a joke.  Its my first test of scanners and turrets.  I have a faster turret tracking speed then fire control tracking speed because I wanted some buffer for future fire control systems.  The sensors turned out a bit underwhelming but oh well.  The main purpose of this ship is to provide targeting data for its escorting gunships and as a result has minimal armament.  I am also aware that the Fire Controls range is much farther then the guns range.  I have some built in buffers for future weapons upgrades and so on.

In retrospect I think that the fast turret is kinda bad because I will have to redesign it for longer range guns.  It is also a rather slow ship.

[icecoldblood]

I wouldn't use it as a main-line combatant. It seems to be more of a dedicated sensor ship. Those Gauss Cannons aren't going to save the ship from anything, since even low tech missiles can hit 6000km/s.

[Hawkeye]

Looks pretty good overall.

Personally, I´d drop the res-40 to a res-20 active, as that is the maximum size of FACs and your sensors could see one of those only out to some 3.5 mkm.

You don´t seem to be using a 4 x tracking speed firecon for your turret, which you should, if it is supposed to intercept incomming missiles.

You could get a bit more speed out of it with fewer but larger engines and keepint them at the same fuel-efficiency, but overall, the speed looks ok for a nuclear thermal ship (this is, of course, a matter of personal preferances)

[Marski]

Looks pretty good overall.

Personally, I´d drop the res-40 to a res-20 active, as that is the maximum size of FACs and your sensors could see one of those only out to some 3.5 mkm.

You don´t seem to be using a 4 x tracking speed firecon for your turret, which you should, if it is supposed to intercept incomming missiles.

You could get a bit more speed out of it with fewer but larger engines and keepint them at the same fuel-efficiency, but overall, the speed looks ok for a nuclear thermal ship (this is, of course, a matter of personal preferances)

I'm seconding this, it is otherwise a solid design with good speed for it's tech and enough range to defend Sol.

[metalax]

It looks like you are running a version prior to 6.0 as I don't see anything for deployment time. Actually looking at it again something weird seems to be up as it is not displaying maintenance life either.

Overall it looks like a reasonable design for a primary sensor ship. Engines and fuel are fine for this tech level. Armour is a little weak but at your tech level each layer takes up considerable space so that is something to fix as you tech up.

I wouldn't worry too much about putting the turret tracking speed higher than that of your fire-control as you will want to refit the turrets as soon as you research an increased rate of fire for your gauss cannons and you can increase the tracking speed then. I'd also make it a dual turret rather than two single ones as that gives a small space saving. I've also noticed you are using full size gauss cannons in your turrets, I'd suggest dropping down to size 4 cannons and allow crew training to make up the reduced accuracy.

Use a 4x tracking speed fire-control, that will give you an 8000 tracking speed at your tech level, giving a much better chance of shooting down any incoming missiles. Don't worry much about range, gauss cannon never really get effective ranges beyond point-blank. Once you research a couple of levels of beam fire-control range start using the reduced range multipliers to make smaller fire-controls.

Your resolution 1 active sensor needs to be increased in size, as it stands it will only pick up size 6 or smaller missiles(the most likely sizes for you to meet) at around 155,000 km. This is small enough that it is possible for a missile to cross all or most of that range in a single 5 second increment removing or reducing your ability to fire on it and removing your ability to benefit from the missile tracking over time tech. I'd suggest doubling or tripling it's size.

I'd suggest going slightly further than Hawkeye suggested with your resolution 40 sensor and drop it down to resolution 16. There is a particular type of ship you can run into in large numbers at that size.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

I wouldn't use it as a main-line combatant.  It seems to be more of a dedicated sensor ship.  Those Gauss Cannons aren't going to save the ship from anything, since even low tech missiles can hit 6000km/s.

It is a dedicated sensor ship.  Its meant to work with 3 to 5 other ships of a similar size to this one and it feeds targeting data to the other ships.  The guns are so it can defend itself to a limited extent.  Also, I did not know missiles get that fast this quick (I have not designed any missiles).

Personally, I´d drop the res-40 to a res-20 active, as that is the maximum size of FACs and your sensors could see one of those only out to some 3. 5 mkm.

You don´t seem to be using a 4 x tracking speed firecon for your turret, which you should, if it is supposed to intercept incomming missiles.

You could get a bit more speed out of it with fewer but larger engines and keepint them at the same fuel-efficiency, but overall, the speed looks ok for a nuclear thermal ship (this is, of course, a matter of personal preferances)

I am now going to redesign the 40 res to a 16 as Metalax suggested.  How do I make a 4 x tracking speed firecon for the turrets? I am also going to try your engine idea for later on, after all, I can just refit the ship.

It looks like you are running a version prior to 6. 0 as I don't see anything for deployment time.  Actually looking at it again something weird seems to be up as it is not displaying maintenance life either.

Overall it looks like a reasonable design for a primary sensor ship.  Engines and fuel are fine for this tech level.  Armour is a little weak but at your tech level each layer takes up considerable space so that is something to fix as you tech up.

I wouldn't worry too much about putting the turret tracking speed higher than that of your fire-control as you will want to refit the turrets as soon as you research an increased rate of fire for your gauss cannons and you can increase the tracking speed then.  I'd also make it a dual turret rather than two single ones as that gives a small space saving.  I've also noticed you are using full size gauss cannons in your turrets, I'd suggest dropping down to size 4 cannons and allow crew training to make up the reduced accuracy.

Use a 4x tracking speed fire-control, that will give you an 8000 tracking speed at your tech level, giving a much better chance of shooting down any incoming missiles.  Don't worry much about range, gauss cannon never really get effective ranges beyond point-blank.  Once you research a couple of levels of beam fire-control range start using the reduced range multipliers to make smaller fire-controls.

Your resolution 1 active sensor needs to be increased in size, as it stands it will only pick up size 6 or smaller missiles(the most likely sizes for you to meet) at around 155,000 km.  This is small enough that it is possible for a missile to cross all or most of that range in a single 5 second increment removing or reducing your ability to fire on it and removing your ability to benefit from the missile tracking over time tech.  I'd suggest doubling or tripling it's size.

I'd suggest going slightly further than Hawkeye suggested with your resolution 40 sensor and drop it down to resolution 16.  There is a particular type of ship you can run into in large numbers at that size.

I noticed the turret speed issue in retrospect, I will have to quickly redesign that turret in the near future because of the short range gun.  I also have two single turrets instead of one dual turrets for redundency.  Less likely for the ships weapons to be taken out completely.  I like redundancy in weapons, it has saved me many times in other games.  At the moment I am not worried about the resolution 1 active sensor, even if the missile is not detected till around 155,000km my fire control can only lock on to it at 16,000km and weapons cant fire until 10,000km.  I to an extent expect the missiles to cross the fire zone before anything shoots anyway due to the missile speed of 6,000km/s.  That's less then 1. 5 seconds in the fire zone for the guns.  I need to redesign that.  Lets see what I can do while keeping it within the less then 3k ton range for Corvettes.

Also, it does have a deployment time of 3. 2 months and a maintenance life of 10 years with an annual failure rate of 24%.  I do not know why that did not show.  The information I copied and choppied is from the ship design display and not the class design display.  I do not know why they are different.

[Konisforce]

One reason to pick out the missiles early even if you can't shoot them is the tracking time bonus.  The longer you have them on scopes, the higher bonus you get (also dependent on the tech level in missile tracking time bonus, of course).  Might not be much at low tech, but every little bit can help in the numbers game against missiles.

And there's a button somewhere on the class design sheet to dump all your designs to a text file in the Aurora folder.  Can be easier for exporting designs, depending on your preference.

Otherwise, I second (and third, and fourth) other folks: totally respectable low-tech surveillance and targeting ship.  I'll be interested to see what the accompanying ships in its task group will be.

Edit: Oh, and for the 4x fire-con: on the research page, the (I think) 3rd and 4th dropdowns allow you to go up to 4x for range and up to 4x for speed.  So if your base tech level Fire Control speed is 2,000 km/s, you can quad the size and get it to 8,000 km/s.  That's a hard limit for fire control, is 4x your tech level.  Turret tracking speed can (theoretically) go much higher than the turret tracking tech level, but it becomes unworkable pretty quick.

[Charlie Beeler]

At the tech level your at the sensor suite mostly works, as others have stated.  What is going to hurt though is that res 1.  It is reasonable to expect NPR's to have missiles with at least a speed of 15k/kps which will travel 75k/km in 5 seconds(minimum game cycle).  Because of the programmed sequence of play you have to be able to detect them at greater than 5 seconds for point defense final fire too have a chance to engage.  For now your res 1 can handle that, with the assumption of missile speed being in the 15k/kps range. 

If you invested in tracking bonus you'll need a much greater ranged res 1 though.  The bonus accumulates at a rate of 2% per 5 second cycle you've detected a given salvo.

Personally I'd replace the entire weapons suite based on your available tech with 10cm railguns.  Match this with a single 4x (range not speed) beam fire control and you have a much more flexible and redundant weapons mix.

At this ship size your not really getting much useful redundancy with 6 2hs engines.  I'd go with 3 size 5 engines (25% of ship vs current 20%) for a speed of 1,250kps and a slightly better operating range.

[Paul M]

Just to point out something.  "Sensor Ship" fails at this tech level.  If it is the only thing active in your task group, then it will die, and this ship will last ohh 3 volleys or about 1 minute under fire.  At higher tech levels you may be able to protect your sensor ship but at the moment your ships had better be able to see what they are planning on targetting by themselves.  It might also die in the first volley as well if you get hit with 60 or so size 1 missiles.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Just to point out something.   "Sensor Ship" fails at this tech level.   If it is the only thing active in your task group, then it will die, and this ship will last ohh 3 volleys or about 1 minute under fire.   At higher tech levels you may be able to protect your sensor ship but at the moment your ships had better be able to see what they are planning on targetting by themselves.   It might also die in the first volley as well if you get hit with 60 or so size 1 missiles.

This ship is not meant to have active search scanners on all the time.  The idea is for earth to identify a contact of some sort, at which point this ship and its escorts move out to identify, scanners stay off until they are within range.  This ship and its escorts "should" be able to get very close before being detected because of the small size of the ships.  At which point when the target is identified they may engage if the target is hostile.  The other ships will have their own scanners, just not as good.

[Charlie Beeler]

This ship is not meant to have active search scanners on all the time.  The idea is for earth to identify a contact of some sort, at which point this ship and its escorts move out to identify, scanners stay off until they are within range.  This ship and its escorts "should" be able to get very close before being detected because of the small size of the ships.  At which point when the target is identified they may engage if the target is hostile.  The other ships will have their own scanners, just not as good.

In that case you can completely drop both passives.  Even before that, they are of relatively little use. 

[GenJeFT (OP)]

In that case you can completely drop both passives.   Even before that, they are of relatively little use.  

Yea.  I built one and looked at the sensor ranges.  The passive scanners are utterly useless.  The second version of the ship, in addition to better engines, no longer has passive scanners.  Design work is still ongoing.

[metalax]

Dropping the passives can be a good idea if the class is going to be limited to strictly system defence duties and you have good passive coverage via ground facilities. For ships that are going to be jumping into unexplored or unsettled systems however you will want at least good passive thermal sensors, although it may be better to build dedicated passive detection ships if you are going to stick to such tiny class sizes.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Looks like I need to rush development now.

I just started exploring other systems and there are wreaked ships EVERYWHERE! Fleets of them floating in space.

On the other hand salvage will be good.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

The replacement for the County.

Deuchland I class Destroyer    7,000 tons     180 Crew     993.8 BP      TCS 140  TH 240  EM 0
2285 km/s     Armour 3-32     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 41.71
Maint Life 6.97 Years     MSP 710    AFR 49%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 26    5YR 383    Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 0   

80 EP NP Engine (4)    Power 80    Fuel Use 63%    Signature 60    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 260,000 Litres    Range 10.6 billion km   (53 days at full power)

Twin Gauss Cannon R2-50 Turret (2x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Twin Gauss Cannon R2-50 Turret (No Armor) (1x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15cm Railgun V3/C3 Destroyer MAC Cannon (1x4)    Range 90,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 9-3     RM 3    ROF 15        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
Fire Control S02 32-6000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S03 96-3000 H70 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

Active Search Sensor MR12-R10 (1)     GPS 480     Range 12.1m km    Resolution 10
Active Search Sensor MR151-R140 (1)     GPS 22400     Range 151.5m km    Resolution 140
Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 64     Range 5.1m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And the ship that stays near it.

Cutter class Destroyer Escort    5,000 tons     126 Crew     719 BP      TCS 100  TH 180  EM 0
2400 km/s     Armour 3-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 23.13
Maint Life 4.99 Years     MSP 360    AFR 50%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 24    5YR 361    Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   

80 EP NP Engine (3)    Power 80    Fuel Use 63%    Signature 60    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres    Range 17.1 billion km   (82 days at full power)

Twin Gauss Cannon R2-50 Turret (No Armor) (3x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 32-6000 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR151-R140 (1)     GPS 22400     Range 151.5m km    Resolution 140
Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 64     Range 5.1m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR12-R10 (1)     GPS 480     Range 12.1m km    Resolution 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes