Warfleet of Terra

[Thiosk (OP)]

The fleet of Terra is being constructed.  First, deep scan early warning system:

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AWACS class Early Warning Craft    3,700 tons     277 Crew     779.8 BP      TCS 74  TH 375  EM 360
5067 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 7-21     Shields 12-300     Sensors 20/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 54%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 1263 MSP    Max Repair 112 MSP    Est Time: 5.93 Years

Military Jump Drive (Small, Squad 3)     Max Ship Size 3750 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E6 (3)    Power 125    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 125    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 162.1 billion km   (370 days at full power)
Delta R300/15 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  75 Litres per day

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR16-R100 (1)     GPS 3200     Range 16.0m km    Resolution 100
AWACS Array Active Search Sensor MR103-R70 (1)     GPS 7840     Range 103.1m km    Resolution 70
DeepScan Thermal Sensor TH4-20 1 (1)     Sensitivity 20     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  20m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

It is supposed to keep a few extra maint supplies.

[Narmio]

That's quite heavily armoured and shielded for a small non-combatant class. Are you sure you wouldn't be better served putting that extra tonnage into bigger sensors or more engines? I think they'll be more useful for keeping it alive.

[Ziusudra]

What's the power plant for?

[Shadow]

That's quite heavily armoured and shielded for a small non-combatant class. Are you sure you wouldn't be better served putting that extra tonnage into bigger sensors or more engines? I think they'll be more useful for keeping it alive.

If it's the largest sensor signature in the battle group, it'll likely be the main missile magnet as well.

And yes, the reactor's pointless.

[Thiosk (OP)]

And here all this time I thought reactors were needed for shields.  If not, why the heck not?

I considered sticking a PD laser turret on board originally.

*removed the useless reactor and tweaked a few other things* and then put the ship into production. 

[Ziusudra]

They run on fuel, hence the fuel cost call out.

[Thiosk (OP)]

Meet the Firestorm.  The firestorm is a light cruiser, designed around Laser beam weapons.  Terra's forces have not yet developed strong kinetic weapons, so her ships must be well-armored and shielded to survive a withering fire from range, and close rapidly until her laser batteries can be unleashed.  

This craft has limited detection capability, and thus is meant to work only in task groups with the early warning AWACS detection vessels.

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Firestorm class Cruiser    6,000 tons     772 Crew     1466.6 BP      TCS 120  TH 500  EM 750
4166 km/s     Armour 4-29     Shields 25-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 14     PPV 52
Annual Failure Rate: 72%    IFR: 1%    Maint Capacity 611 MSP    Max Repair 110 MSP    Est Time: 3.43 Years

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E6 (4)    Power 125    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 125    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 100.0 billion km   (277 days at full power)
Delta R300/15 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  150 Litres per day

25cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (4)    Range 192,000km     TS: 4166 km/s     Power 16-5     RM 5    ROF 20        16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8
Twin 12cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 192,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 8-10     RM 5    ROF 5        4 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 2
Turret Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Beam Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (2)     Total Power Output 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Our fire control specialists are still wrangling with the specifics of targeting and tracking.  It appears that our turret fire controls are superior to our physical turrets, and some engineers question whether the reactor cores are sufficient to power the weapon batteries in a close fight.

[Narmio]

This is just personal choice, but I would devote a higher percentage of both ships to engines, as 4k/s is quite sluggish for MagConf drives, and that could easily get you humiliatingly destroyed by a faster missile-using opponent that refuses to close to your range.

[Thiosk (OP)]

Thats an interesting point.  I think i'll put a less-armored and shielded version up with a 50% speed increase.

[Hawkeye]

If I am reading this right, your 12cm lasers are a little bit overengineered, having capacitor 5. They only need 4 power to fully charge, so capacitor 4 is sufficient for maximum ROF. This would also lower the power requirement by 4.

The same goes for the 25cm. With capacitor 4 it will recharge in 20 seconds, same as with capacitor 5.
Another 4 power saved.

Currently you need 40 Power (which you have)

Each 12cm laser needs 5 power per 5-second-tic
Each 25cm laser needs 5 power per 5-second-tic.

As I said, each laser could be build with capacitor 4 for the same ROF, which would reduce your power requirement to 32 (and make the lasers a bit cheaper)

And yes, your main beam firecontrol should get a faster tracking speed. Assuming you have researched 3.000km/s beam tracking speed, a 1.25x size, 1.25 x speed would be sufficient, but if you increase the ships speed, you´ll need an even faster (Weapon tracking speed is either

The basic beam tracking speed you researched
or
The speed of the ship, the weapon is mounted on.
whichever is FASTER!

Oh, and I agree on the speed thing. My personal rule of thumb is one engine per 1.000t (i.e. 25% of total mass) for everything except for Brawlers (i.e. Beam armed ships), which get a couple of additional engines up to 35% of total mass.

[Thiosk (OP)]

Great notes from everyone.  I reengineered the firestorm and made a beefier version with some more bristles, matching their speed.  Interesting note on the capacitors.  I'll probably include that and some updated sensor designs in the next version, but I need to start the training and launch an attack on a neighboring star, so we'll see how they fare.

One question:  Jump drives!  Is the military jump drives on the AWACS enough to jump the whole fleet, or do I need a larger so-called "jump-tender" to move the fleet?

[Charlie Beeler]

<snip>One question:  Jump drives!  Is the military jump drives on the AWACS enough to jump the whole fleet, or do I need a larger so-called "jump-tender" to move the fleet?

The short answer is no.  To jump other ships the jumpship is the largest ship and the jump engine must be large enough for that ship. 

By "jump the whole fleet" if mean combat jump the answer is also no.  If you mean standard jump then yes.  Squadron size dictates maximum number of ships that may be in a task group for a combat jump, this includes the jumpship.

[Shadow]

By the way, the first A in AWACS stands for "Airborne". Change that to "Spaceborne" (for SWACS), like I do.

[Thiosk (OP)]

It turns out that a squadron of 6250 km/s beam warships are inadequate for combating precursors.  I assume those aliens are precursors, as their slow ships run at about 9kms and their big ships moved at about 12,000 km/s.

I've ordered the construction of FIFTY new research labs on the ice world Histia to develop new propulsion and offensive missile systems. 

One thing I noticed: none of my dual 12cm laser turrets appeared to fire anything at any incoming precursor missiles.  I set the turrets to the high-track speed fire control and clicked auto fire, but nothing appeared to happen and pop went the flagship, then popopop went the fleet.

[Beersatron]

It turns out that a squadron of 6250 km/s beam warships are inadequate for combating precursors.  I assume those aliens are precursors, as their slow ships run at about 9kms and their big ships moved at about 12,000 km/s.

I've ordered the construction of FIFTY new research labs on the ice world Histia to develop new propulsion and offensive missile systems. 

One thing I noticed: none of my dual 12cm laser turrets appeared to fire anything at any incoming precursor missiles.  I set the turrets to the high-track speed fire control and clicked auto fire, but nothing appeared to happen and pop went the flagship, then popopop went the fleet.

Auto Fire does not do defense, it only does offense.

In order to do defense you need to uncheck the autofire option and then setup the PD mode for a ship, you can then copy that setup to other ships of the same class in your TG or in you whole Empire.

Checking autofire again will undo this and turn it into offense mode.