My First Ship

[Bandus (OP)]

So, after reading some of the posts in this forum as well as looking on the wiki for example ships, I became a bit concerned about the first ship I designed that was oriented towards combat.  I would like to post the design here and hopefully get some constructive criticism on it so I can better understand what would make for an effective warship for a starting empire.  So without further ado, my first ship design:

McKinley class Destroyer    25000 tons     544 Crew     2613. 2 BP      TCS 500  TH 600  EM 0
1600 km/s     Armour 1-76     Shields 0-0     Sensors 90/90/0/0     Damage Control 27     PPV 130. 24
Annual Failure Rate: 52%    IFR: 0. 7%    Maintenance Capacity 1764 MSP
Spare Berths -11   

P&W-NPE-001-Mil (5)    Power 160    Fuel Use 34. 34%    Armour 0    Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 5,000,000 Litres    Range 104. 8 billion km   (758 days at full power)

Twin MD-AS-VLL-001 (4x2)    Range 80,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 8-4     RM 2    ROF 10        4 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0
Twin MD-A/M-VLL-001 Turret (4x2)    Range 60,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 6-4     RM 2    ROF 10        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
GE-BFC-001 (1)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
GE-A/M-BFC-001 (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
MD-GCFR-001c (1)     Total Power Output 33. 0750007629395     Armour 0    Exp 7%

GE-PTS-002 (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Signature 1000: 90m km
GE-MRS-001 (1)     GPS 28800     Range 93. 0m km     Resolution 240
GE-SRS-001 (1)     GPS 2400     Range 26. 8m km     Resolution 20
GE-PEMS-002 (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Strength 1000: 90m km

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Generally speaking, passive sensors should not be on mainline battleships. You get little benefit from having more than one.

Your turrets have a tracking speed of 10000 km/s, but your firecontrols only track at 6000 km/s. You can only use the lower of the two, so beef up your fire controls. The range on your beam weapons is very short as well.   Given that it is a pure beam platform, you also don't actually need anything more than very short ranged active sensors.

You have no passive defences, either. You need at least four layers of armor, ideally more

[tryrar]

First thing off the bat: For a beam ship, that is pathetically slow. I can't tell from the design what tech engines you're using, but in any case engines should generally be a good percentage of the ship's total size; even more so with beam ships, which have to close really fast to get into firing range without being blown up by missiles first. If you can tell me what the engine design is, I can give you pointers on basic engine design(though one general tip is that engine power for warships is typically 1.25 to 1.5x power for standard warsips, with higher power mod for short range ships).


Next, that is a LOT of fuel for a warship, which typically spends most of its time parked orbiting fleet bases and not moving. Let me put it this way; in 6.0, a warship with 100 days fuel is considered a long rage ship for extended deployment. You'll typically have a fleet train with huge tankers behind your fleet.

[Erik L]

You are short a few berths too. This might cause immediate crew morale losses.

[Gyrfalcon]

Engine looks to be a Nuclear Pulse Engine if he used the same sort of naming scheme I do.

Without knowing the size of those turrets, I find the size absolutely massive for an initial ship. If you're in the Tier 2 era, I'd expect ship types of 6,000-15,000 at the outside.

The code box is a bit wonky - it doesn't seem to have the listing for how long the ship can be deployed for nor it's maintenance life. My advice is budget for 90 days deployment and 1 year maintenance lifespan at this point. Also agreed that the fuel can be drawn back to 90 days - simply return to base after each sortie or bring a tanker in the convoy to top off the warships.

Armor: For a beam combatant, you probably want at least 5 layers of armor. One layer is going to leave your ship broken and burning well before engaging the enemy.

Sensors: Strip out the massive thermal and EM sensors - those belong better on a scout craft. For RP purposes, I keep a size-1 sensor of those types on all my ships, but you can strip them out for full min-maxing.

GE-SRS-001 (1)     GPS 2400     Range 26. 8m km     Resolution 20 - This one must be Resolution 1 for anti-missile work.
GE-MRS-001 (1)     GPS 28800     Range 93. 0m km     Resolution 240 - this one can do better as Resolution 100. You might even want the sensor at Resolution 20 to handle detecting 1,000t fast attack craft.

[Bandus (OP)]

Thank you all, this was exactly the information I was looking for.  I appreciate it!