Literal Fleet Carriers

[Borealis4x (OP)]

What do you think about building massive carrier ships designed to carry whole fleets in them?

Think of the Mothership from Homeworld. Or the Heighliner from Dune.

They'd be slow and rather vulnerable, only mounting point defenses. Would probably use massive Commercial engines and huge (passive) sensors. Of course jump engines are a must, but they only need to be big enough for the mothership itself.

You might also give it a large amount of storage space for missiles, fuel, and maintence equipment, allowing your parasites to have lower endurance for the benefit of more lethality. Of course, that would take up hangar tonnage on the mothership...

The biggest problem with this design is that you'd be putting all your eggs in one, very fragile, basket. If the enemy finds your mothership and manages to isolate it from its defenders it won't take much to destroy it. Then you've lost a huge investment as well and any way for your ships to refuel, rearm, or even escape the system.

Overall however, I think being able to ignore endurance concerns and focus your warships 100% on combat by having them be carried in by a mothership would be optimal for assault fleets on offensive campaigns.

[xenoscepter]

 --- I tend to build, field and operate navies which could charitably be described as, "megalomaniacal". So I feel rather qualified to weigh in on this matter.

 --- Problem One: No Shields, only Armor and CIWS. This gonna get very, very dead very, very quick.

 --- Problem Two: Jump Ships tend to eat a lot of smeg during a JP Assault. You'll need a dedicated Assault Unit.

 --- Problem Three: Maintenance Modules do not meet nor exceed a 1:1 efficiency until nearly the end of their tech tree. This means either Military Hangars, frakk tons of MSP, or really, really inefficient Mothership.

 --- Problem Four: Your fleet can be stranded by a crack addict with a 25-Ton Gauss Cannon and a murder boner.

[Scandinavian]

The only thing this accomplishes that you couldn't get with ordinary colliers, oilers, supply ships and jump ships is the improved fuel efficiency during the journey to the battle zone. And even that could be accomplished by building individual "wrappers" for your warships.

In return, you trade having to build much larger shipyards, lose the flexibility to scale your support train to your mission, lose the ability to have your fleet supply vessels pull internal logistics duty during peacetime (and vice versa, pull internal logistics support vessels into your fleet when you mobilize), and lose the ability to empty out one or two of your support vessels and detach them to run home for more stuff on an extended campaign, while the rest stay and continue to supply the advance.

Not a trade I'd make.

I have occasionally built individual FAC wrappers with hangars and big commercial engines, as basically an outboard motor for my FACs for long-distance relocation. Because they had high enough engine boost that redeploying them between systems was impractically fuel-intensive. But I don't see any mechanical benefit from building them bigger than big enough to hold the largest ship in your fleet with more than x1.25 or so engine boost.

[Blogaugis]

Well, being able to roleplay a Homeworld style civilisation is nice.

Buut, we kinda need space-borne factories and shipyards, to make it like a nomadic space travellers experience.

Also, are they really that vulnerable, if they carry a whole fleet with them?
And, considering that you kind of need to use military hangars... Or were you planning on commercial hangars?
Right now, the fairly logical option in game is to establish a base near a combat zone for resupply and refuel. And, a simple small asteroid is pretty much enough for that. Mostly.

So, impractical with current gameplay rules, but could be fun...
Homeworld however does not deal with TN materials, just RUs - Resource Units - and storage space... So, even if space-borne factories and shipyards were implemented, we have storage space problems...

[Vandermeer]

I have successfully done it in 3 games in VB Aurora, 2 here, and then way more documented here.

Since I haven't recently been feeling the call of a roleplay setting that requires this, I have yet to confirm its validity in C#, but I advice this: If you want to do it, who cares about efficiency? This is not a game you need to beat, not a game which requires efficient strategy.(..unless that is part of your theme) This is a sandbox in which you simulate some space opera fantasy. If that means big ships and a mothership carrier for you today, I endorse your romantic pursuit.

[Blogaugis]

I have successfully done it in 3 games in VB Aurora, 2 here, and then way more documented here.

Since I haven't recently been feeling the call of a roleplay setting that requires this, I have yet to confirm its validity in C#, but I advice this: If you want to do it, who cares about efficiency? This is not a game you need to beat, not a game which requires efficient strategy.(..unless that is part of your theme) This is a sandbox in which you simulate some space opera fantasy. If that means big ships and a mothership carrier for you today, I endorse your romantic pursuit.

Well, yes, but...

We don' have space-borne factories/shipyards in game yet. And, it is not something you can pull off with SpaceMaster and even DataBase editing either...

[Vandermeer]

If you tow shipyards around or put factories into cargo, you can however fake your way to space-borne manufacturing yards as long as you find any planet or on some scale just asteroid to park.

I am split on whether Aurora should ever have real moving space factories though. The advantage of mobility would make the whole colony game kind of obsolete. Currently it is very costly and only for the dedicated to even consider. I think that is a good situation, since it leaves the Aurora climate intact without restricting imagination.
Maybe mobile fighter manufacturing could be a thing though. Having shipyards being actual stations with modules like the orbital miners would probably also be nice, but hard to figure out how to then dynamically grow them.

[Migi]

In Homeworld (or at least in HW2) all ships larger than corvettes travelled between missions outside the Mothership.
So if you are emulating Homeworld, the Mothership only really needs to be carrying Fighters, FACs (which more or less match corvettes) and resource gatherers.
The resource gatherers could look something like this:

Code: [Select]

Resource Gatherer class Resource Gatherer      8,945 tons       78 Crew       239.9 BP       TCS 179    TH 102    EM 0
572 km/s      Armour 1-38       Shields 0-0       HTK 16      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 16    Max Repair 120 MSP
Cargo 1,000   
Drengr    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   
Orbital Miner: 1 modules producing 10 tons per mineral per annum

Commercial Imp. Nuclear Thermal Engine  EP102.40 (1)    Power 102.4    Fuel Use 4.05%    Signature 102.4    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 124.2 billion km (2513 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
If you maxed out the orbital mining diameter tech (500km) you can extract from small moons and most asteroids to survive, although Aurora is not terribly generous in giving minerals to those sorts of bodies.

[Blogaugis]

Maybe mobile fighter manufacturing could be a thing though. Having shipyards being actual stations with modules like the orbital miners would probably also be nice, but hard to figure out how to then dynamically grow them.

Mobile fighter manufacturing is a nice compromise.
In a way, this allows HW and HW2 style to actually be in play, at least somewhat, while the planetary colonies won't become completely obsolete.

The only slight issue I can see is... resource gathering. But, considering that planets won't become fully obsolete, I guess that is not a big issue.

[Vandermeer]

Maybe there could be a move to have fighter manufacturing done by MSP alone. Although since MSP are now only built with a few select minerals (in comparison to VB where they had been a colorful cocktail of all), this would seem a bit ..unsatisfying, a bit breaking.