Odd fighter ideas

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

So I have been having difficulties with retooling and refitting issues, and I wonder how much savings I could get just by having a hangar on every major ship.

So then, I develop a new sensor?  Build a 500 ton fighter with a 450 ton sensor and nothing else.  Want a new flagship, but don't want to redesign or refit anybody?  Build a 300 ton fighter with a flag bridge.  Maybe even leave it at the jump point.

It would be more expensive on the ship, paying for the hangar and the hull for the fighter extra, but if I can make up for that with being able to upgrade more easily and save retooling, it might be worth it.  Not sure if it would be worth the management headaches though.

Part of my notion is that I want to develop fighters organically, I want to be able to make use of my fighter factories as I build them, and not have them sitting idle while I wait to develop tech.  I have been getting great use out of building pinnaces for scouting new systems.  I have lost about half of the ones I have built to various hazards, but they got me sensor data on what killed them, and have allowed me to explore lots of systems without fear that there was something there waiting to eat an expensive ship.

[baconholic]

The biggest problem with fighters is that once you go above few hundred fighters, the game tends to have problem with assigning leaders to the ship. Even if you have more than enough leaders, the game just won't assign them automatically. It tends to make the micromanagement of fighters very tedious.

Another problem with fighters is that you can't put big guns or big sensors on it.

Finally, there's a bug with the PD fire command that PD fighters inside a hanger will try to fire at incoming missiles, even when they are multiple systems away. This will generate a lot of errors.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I really doubt I would stick with fighters when they are in the 100s.  I just want to use them early, as I transition out of a conventional start.

I like fighters in the early start because it is so easy to build custom fighters for whatever you need.  You can build a tanker, or a collier, or a ship with 5 extra damage control to share maintenance supplies.

Plus, fighters with miniaturized gauss and a good fighter bonus commander can have fire controls to hit the fastest missiles you are likely to see in the early game.

[iceball3]

So I have been having difficulties with retooling and refitting issues, and I wonder how much savings I could get just by having a hangar on every major ship.

So then, I develop a new sensor?  Build a 500 ton fighter with a 450 ton sensor and nothing else.  Want a new flagship, but don't want to redesign or refit anybody?  Build a 300 ton fighter with a flag bridge.  Maybe even leave it at the jump point.

It would be more expensive on the ship, paying for the hangar and the hull for the fighter extra, but if I can make up for that with being able to upgrade more easily and save retooling, it might be worth it.  Not sure if it would be worth the management headaches though.

Part of my notion is that I want to develop fighters organically, I want to be able to make use of my fighter factories as I build them, and not have them sitting idle while I wait to develop tech.  I have been getting great use out of building pinnaces for scouting new systems.  I have lost about half of the ones I have built to various hazards, but they got me sensor data on what killed them, and have allowed me to explore lots of systems without fear that there was something there waiting to eat an expensive ship.

Try this one on for size:

Code: [Select]

Belknap class Point Defence Base    430 tons     19 Crew     54.8 BP      TCS 8.6  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-5     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   

(Meson Cannon) van den Bergh-Uys Single R1.5/C2 DHM-PPC Turret (1x1)    Range 15 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 1.5    ROF 10        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.6 24-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 48 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
GCFR Technology "Sedan Engine"  PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 2.7    Armour 0    Exp 5%


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections
Take note, my BFC base tracking speed is still as low as 4,000 km/s.
As it turns out, sub-500-ton PDCs can be built in fighter factories, and can mount any fighter-only system, including fighter fire control. Extremely useful in early game base defense setup, as you can devote your fighter factories to increasing your planetary point defense, with beam mounts that'll track quite a bit higher than your tech level would normally suggest.
The firepower is a bit low for platform, and strictly final-fire, however, you can build a whole lot of them, and at 54 build points apiece, they're very cheap.
Just make sure you build an active sensor rated for missiles on a separate platform, mainly because building 30 of them with active sensors might bite into uridium just a bit.

That aside, though, Michael Sandy, I do like your cut of the jib when it comes to fighters. Modular pods for ships can be pretty handy, and while the initial investment is higher in terms of vendarite and duranium, for the time being, you won't have to pay maintenance on these sort of stored modules, plus, you save a whole lot of resources on refitting/making more shipyards.
I'd like to know just how much fighters can do while they aren't launched. Do weapons fire? Do sensors sense? Etc.

Though, if i recall correctly, survey sensors are on a task group basis. You could actually make some really useful modular survey ships by giving it a hangar deck, good commercial engines, and packing the hangar space with 300 ton gravsurvey/geosurvey fighters. They will actually foot cheaper maintenance, overall, because while hangars are 100 bp (75 vendarite, 25 duranium) of minerals per 21 HS, the survey sensors are just as expensive (100 uridium) for their small 5 HS size.


Another idea could be a multipurpose repair-ship/collier.
Give the ship point defense, hangar space enough to carry some of your larger small ships, damage control, maintence storage, etc.
Give the ship some cryo spaces, and make the stock hangar spaces be filled with fighters which only have magazines in them, with no internal armor at all.
When you need to take in ships for repair, you can temporarily launch the magazine fighters to make space, or you can launch and scuttle the empty magazines, and pick up the crew.


Anyway, for general purposes, unless skill is needed (point defense shiplet or what have you), it might be best to make these fighters conscript only.
As another note, It may be possible that the task force training of fighters might drag down the average task force training of groups. Be wary.

[MarcAFK]

Once you have high density duranium armour you can make 500 ton fighter pods with 375 tons of hanger space. Sure they have 100% failure rate, deployment time of 2 weeks, insufficient flight crew berths, and no speed or range, but I'm pretty sure that with only hangers in them you won't actually get any maintenance failures.

[iceball3]

Once you have high density duranium armour you can make 500 ton fighter pods with 375 tons of hanger space. Sure they have 100% failure rate, deployment time of 2 weeks, insufficient flight crew berths, and no speed or range, but I'm pretty sure that with only hangers in them you won't actually get any maintenance failures.

Won't the crew die with no berths?

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I have gone for meson fighter sized PDCs before.  But I think the more significant use would be miniaturized gauss. I only have fire rate 2 so far, but a quad turret with 36000 km/s tracking for slightly over 3 HS, elite crews and a fighter combat officer allows for effective PD with the fleet, even against higher tech missiles.

In my last game, I did not have a good logistics scientist before I developed grav survey sensors, so I didn't get hangars before grav survey sensors.  So I had a conventional, commercial engined grav survey ship, with a yard tooled for it, and so it was easier to stick with that design and upgrade it than to go for carriers early.

Given the choice, I would much prefer to have survey ships that could transport high performance point defense fighters, or at least help relay them across a jump point.

One thing, because I started with fighters w/o carriers, I have a series of high fuel efficiency engines for my pinnaces.  The aim is a range of about 30 billion, so they can visit every planet in a system, substituting close range examination for sensor range.  So I will have a force of point defense fighters that are NOT high performance, that can get anywhere in the jump gate network by themselves, and refuel at my jump stations (commercial engine jump ships that mostly stay near frontier jump points), which can thicken the point defense of my fleet, if I am willing to hold the fleet speed down to them until they have drawn the teeth of the enemy missile barrage.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

In further retrospect, it would have been difficult to upgrade efficiency .4 Nuclear Thermal engined grav survey ships to .5 efficiency MP drives.  I was able to upgrade them to .3 efficiency MP drives because the costs were close.

So I could have really slow carriers, that can't keep up with offensive fleet speeds.  But I suppose point defense fighters could keep up with the fleet with boosted engines, with relatively long deployment times and maintenance times, if I have a fast armored tanker with the fleet.

I can build a commercial tanker at the limit of my jump engine tech, with sufficient armor that most of the system damage it would expect to take would be from shock damage.  If it serves as a target because of its large size and thermal footprint, all the better.

I may not be able to have carriers able to keep up with the fleet, fuel is the easiest need to meet.  It would allow commercial yards to help thicken the offensive fleet.

Battle Tug class Tug    22 500 tons     210 Crew     2373 BP      TCS 450  TH 2000  EM 0
4444 km/s     Armour 14-70     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 0
MSP 395    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 71   
Tractor Beam     

MP Swift Commercial 400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (5)    Power 400    Fuel Use 6.19%    Signature 400    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 500 000 Litres    Range 193.8 billion km   (504 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

(It should have CIWS at some point, hence the actual concern about deployment time and crew grade)

This armored tanker also has extra crew berths and engineering spaces, so it can provide maintenance to other ships, can take on crew from lifepods, and of course, the tractor beam helps keep damaged ships up with the fleet.

This was a completely accidental evolution.  The original intent I had had been to build bare bones carriers with no engines, that were simply towed by commercial tugs.  But it couldn't keep up with the fleet.  So that provoked thought about an armored tug/tanker, and I realized that if the goal is to have PD fighters keep up with the fleet, the performance requirements aren't that demanding.  You can have fighter barge carriers or even just use carriers to shuttle fighters across a jump point and have refueling stations in a relay, it is strategically expensive in terms of fuel, but if you have a lot of fuel, why not use it?

So I am really interested in the idea of having a fast tug/tanker with the main battlefleet, to draw fire and extend the endurance of PD fighters, and because it is so durable, why not add extra crew quarters (no emergency sized cryo tech yet, btw) to rescue life pods?

I wonder if I should go with a somewhat thinner armor belt, and more engineering spaces, as I expect shock damage to systems would be more of an issue, and the ability to equalize maintenance supplies would be a useful support option.

(edit)
The fleet speed was chosen for a reason.  I wanted my commercial engined missile ships to have a decent volume, with 2 engines and 9,000 tons, they come out at the same speed.  I will also make a 3 engine class at 13,500 tons, which will comfortably fit through my 15,000 ton jump stations that I built quite a few of during my early surveying.

[Iranon]

This was a completely accidental evolution.  The original intent I had had been to build bare bones carriers with no engines, that were simply towed by commercial tugs.  But it couldn't keep up with the fleet.

What was your requirement for fleet speed, and what was the tonnage ratio of tug to pod?
There is nothing wrong with having the tug be 3 times as big; that probably feels like it would be inefficient, but it's actually quite economical if your designs are otherwise lean.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

What was your requirement for fleet speed, and what was the tonnage ratio of tug to pod?
There is nothing wrong with having the tug be 3 times as big; that probably feels like it would be inefficient, but it's actually quite economical if your designs are otherwise lean.

The fleet speed is about 5% faster than the hostile ships encountered.

The ship's primary purpose is as a tanker.  But my philosophy is that any large commercial ship should have a ship-to-ship tractor.

The size of the tug is primarily related to the size of the available shipyard, and the jump engine technology in use.

For commercial use, I try to have my tugs around 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the tugged ships.  But what is efficient for commercial purposes is different from what is militarily effective.

My race is somewhat handicapped because we simply do not have the maintenance facilities to deal with large ships, nor do we have naval shipyards capable of building really large ships.  So the idea is to use commercial ships to draw fire, while serving several important missions.

I simply can't build and maintain a real capital ship.  But I have lots of commercial shipyards, and I could press one into building a support ship that flies in with the main fleet, and might draw fire away from the teeth of my fleet.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

My fleet theory for the early game is fighters for point defense, which means they need enough endurance to keep up with the fleet.  This means that they are not high performance fighters.  But with a tanker they have a really significant range.  So the carrier is for getting them into the system.  I am building up for clearing out 4 systems within two jumps of Sol.

I will probably build some very specialized boosted fighters for taking out enemy scouts.

The tanker/tug is also an RP thing, there is an internal debate about whether to build real capital ships, so the trial run is to test out an armor/engineering space ratio, and the captain of the tug will be on the short list for commanding a real battleship.

The theory is not to have to spend a lot on the carriers themselves, or on tugs for them, and basically splitting off the role of carriers into the fighter barge for transporting and overhauling fighters, and tankers which can be up in the battleline, without requiring maintenance.  I figure on making about three times as many fighters as the mobile carriers can transport, with PDC carriers for storage and overhaul on every colony.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

So my starting fleet is going to have the most primitive magazines.  But especially once I get better magazines, I can put 9 HS worth of magazines on a fighter.  And with no systems that break down, it won't matter where I stow it.

I am actually not very happy with my 180 HS missile ship/carrier.  100 HS for engines, 20 HS for hanger, 4 ranks of armor, crew quarters, engineering space... by the time it gets to weapons, there was space for a 3 HS fire control, and 9 MSP half sized launchers and 9 magazines.  22.5 HS of teeth on 180 HS of ship.  My idea for doctrine is to have 4 sensor fighter classes, 1 HS resolution active, 160 HS resolution active, EM and thermal, with 2 of each sensor class in a fleet. Some scout fighters and the rest point defense fighters.

But I made a decision early to build extra slipways for my main naval yard, and as a result it takes a LONG time to make it bigger.