Commercial Engined Jump Assault Ships?

[TheTalkingMeowth (OP)]

So, big military jump drives are really freaking expensive. Like. Crazy expensive. And jump point assault ships don't really need to be fast, since everything starts at super close range and if the enemy runs away then congrats, you cleared the jump point for the rest of the fleet.

So I was thinking about making dedicated jump point assault ships that are commercial engined, so that I can use commercial jump drives to bring them in. I'll need more jump ships per combat ship of course, but consider this: to jump 3x28000 tons military, I need a 5600 ton drive costing 1220 BP (and a monster 12,200 RP just to develop) The equivalent commercial drive is 8,250 tons, but only costs 39BP.
However, I'm under the impression that jump shock is longer for commercial transits than for military ones for some reason. That would make this whole plan a nonstarter. Am I out to lunch here?

[Ulzgoroth]

I don't see anything in documentation indicating that commercial transits have different impact from military ones, FWIW.

[Zincat]

I'm not very convinced of this approach, although I don't think there's a difference in jump shock time.

I mean, it can certainly work. Depending on what you're using and on what you're facing you might still need speed though.
However, if you are so rich that you can build new ships specifically for a jump point assault, then I guess you can afford the military jump drive as well and have better ships?

These ships would be SO slow, they would be a lot less useful for any other sort of situation. It seems a bit... wasteful to me? I'd rather pay some more but also be able to use these ships in ANY situation, compared to have x tons of ships that are useless just about all the time. Unless, as said, you are so rich that it does not even matter.

Incidentally, I try to make sure  most of my military is jump capable. After all, I won't always operate inside my stabilized network...
Just my opinion, of course. I simply prefer the flexibility.

[skoormit]

It's the transit type that matters: standard transit gives longer jump shock than squadron transit.

Commercial jump drives do not give longer jump shock than military jump drives.
But commercial drives are usually used for standard transits, and commercial jump drives have their squadron size reduced by 1, so we have the impression that commercial drives themselves are less suitable for low-shock jumps.

If you are planning a jump assault with 28kt ships, might I make a suggestion?
Split your 28kt design into two designs.
Put the engines and the fuel into one design, and add a tractor beam.
Put everything else into the other design.
You can jump the engineless portions with a commercial jump drive, have your battle, and then jump the engine portions.
You get to use a much smaller military jump drive, since the engines and fuel are probably about 1/3 of the overall size
And since you won't jump the engines in until the battle is over, you can jump them via standard transit, and use a separate tender for the military jump drive

Of course, your engineless portion has a speed of 1, which means it is easy to hit, will need energy weapons to be turreted, etc.
A design dedicated to jump point assaults probably doesn't need to rely on speed anyway, but it depends. If your design needs to stay at the closest possible range, this approach is not viable.

[TheTalkingMeowth (OP)]

Not a huge fan of no engines at all, since the jumpers are then stranded on the other side of the jump point (squadron transit would leave them at non-zero distance).

The cost argument is actually reversed in my opinion. Heavily armored and shielded energy weapon vessels (i.e. the kinds of ship you use in a jump point assault) are ALREADY "useless" most of the time, at least as I tend to play. Missiles are just almost always better, to the point where (outside of RP games where I play both sides) I have NEVER killed a ship with energy weapons outside of a jump assault. Thus, committing to the JPA ships being truly specialized (i.e. commercial engine) isn't a huge loss, and the resulting ships are far, far cheaper than a military engined equivalent. They also don't have to be all that slow; I'm looking at a bit over 3000km/s for the commercial ships with Ion engines, as opposed to 6400 km/s with my main fleet. I think of them as the space-going equivalent of siege engines.

[Ulzgoroth]

Incidentally, I try to make sure  most of my military is jump capable. After all, I won't always operate inside my stabilized network...
Just my opinion, of course. I simply prefer the flexibility.

Making your fleets jump capable, making your fleets squadron-jump capable, and making your ships jump capable are all very different propositions.

Personally I usually stop short of even the first one because separately maneuvering jump tender fleets are much cheaper and safer in controlled circumstances, but having organic jump tenders is an understandable tradeoff.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Not a huge fan of no engines at all, since the jumpers are then stranded on the other side of the jump point (squadron transit would leave them at non-zero distance).

The cost argument is actually reversed in my opinion. Heavily armored and shielded energy weapon vessels (i.e. the kinds of ship you use in a jump point assault) are ALREADY "useless" most of the time, at least as I tend to play. Missiles are just almost always better, to the point where (outside of RP games where I play both sides) I have NEVER killed a ship with energy weapons outside of a jump assault. Thus, committing to the JPA ships being truly specialized (i.e. commercial engine) isn't a huge loss, and the resulting ships are far, far cheaper than a military engined equivalent. They also don't have to be all that slow; I'm looking at a bit over 3000km/s for the commercial ships with Ion engines, as opposed to 6400 km/s with my main fleet. I think of them as the space-going equivalent of siege engines.

I think it is a bit odd to say that energy equipped ships is useless when that us very far from true. Using missiles is extremely costly and can sometimes cost you more than what you actually destroy unless you can completely overwhelm the enemy, but if you can do that you probably could have done so with even less cost using energy weapons.

The use of energy weapons is extremely useful against Jump Points and enemy colonies because they can't escape no matter how fast the enemy is. If you can overwhelm an enemy planets defences with missiles you could also just as likely run in shooting down all ASM with PD and then lay waste to everything using beam weapons. As colonies are the most important targets I say energy weapons is very effective. Killing an enemy fleet is just a bonus in my opinion when and if that happens, claiming the objective is the price.

In my opinion this is why a balanced fleet is so much more effective as it give you the best possible economical option to any potential problem. It also make sure you balance the use of mineral expenditure and income allot more efficient making each mine worth allot more.

On the issue of jump point assault against NPR you can easily just use standard jump tenders. If you jump in a squadron of five ships with jump tenders the NPR will likely target your assault ships first as they are bigger than the jump tender, at least you should keep the jump tender smaller then the biggest ship they can jump. This way the tender can jump back and forth transferring in more and more ships during a jump point assault for little to no overhead cost, no need to build a specific jump point assault ship at all. You can just pool most of the regular tenders for some important jump assault.

[liveware]

Another variation on the commercial jump drive equipped jump tender is to add commercial hangars to the jump tender. This allows you to design faster, shorter range military ships that can launch from the tender when needed. Since speed is so important in combat situations, I use this type of jump ship setup quite often. I usually also park a small scout with a military jump drive in the larger jump ship's hangar so that I can check for hostiles on the far side of the jump point before I send the big ship through.

[Ulzgoroth]

On the issue of jump point assault against NPR you can easily just use standard jump tenders. If you jump in a squadron of five ships with jump tenders the NPR will likely target your assault ships first as they are bigger than the jump tender, at least you should keep the jump tender smaller then the biggest ship they can jump. This way the tender can jump back and forth transferring in more and more ships during a jump point assault for little to no overhead cost, no need to build a specific jump point assault ship at all. You can just pool most of the regular tenders for some important jump assault.

My standard jump tenders don't support a squadron of 5 ships. Making them do so would be specifically paying extra to make them more useful in jump point assaults...

[TheTalkingMeowth (OP)]

I think it is a bit odd to say that energy equipped ships is useless when that us very far from true. Using missiles is extremely costly and can sometimes cost you more than what you actually destroy unless you can completely overwhelm the enemy, but if you can do that you probably could have done so with even less cost using energy weapons.

Missiles are expensive, but so is trying to fly a fleet through hundreds of 70,000km/s missiles coming every 5 seconds when you only have ion tech. What missiles allow you to do is substitute quantity for quality in a really direct way; 100 half speed missiles are almost exactly as effective as 50 full speed missiles. In my experience industry builds up faster than research, and particularly against the industry free spoilers, allows you to take the fight to them much sooner than if you waited until you could match them head on.

The use of energy weapons is extremely useful against Jump Points and enemy colonies because they can't escape no matter how fast the enemy is. If you can overwhelm an enemy planets defences with missiles you could also just as likely run in shooting down all ASM with PD and then lay waste to everything using beam weapons. As colonies are the most important targets I say energy weapons is very effective. Killing an enemy fleet is just a bonus in my opinion when and if that happens, claiming the objective is the price.

Energy weapons are definitely the correct tool in jump assaults; I'm just not convinced of their role outside of that. The amount of PD guns you need to close with a base and not take horrible losses to the AMMs is sobering, and then once you get there you still have to deal with the fact that they have strength 37 lasers and you have strength 10. Much better to park at 20 million klicks and snipe their AMM ships with missiles. EW for cleanup is an option though.

On the issue of jump point assault against NPR you can easily just use standard jump tenders. If you jump in a squadron of five ships with jump tenders the NPR will likely target your assault ships first as they are bigger than the jump tender, at least you should keep the jump tender smaller then the biggest ship they can jump. This way the tender can jump back and forth transferring in more and more ships during a jump point assault for little to no overhead cost, no need to build a specific jump point assault ship at all. You can just pool most of the regular tenders for some important jump assault.
[\quote]

That's a risky strategy and there is little guarantee that they will leave your jump tenders alone. The last assault I did, I lost as many jump tenders as warships even though there were 3x as many warships. The tenders were the smallest thing I sent though and I lost two in the first 5 seconds. Also, to achieve high fleet speed relatively little of a ship's hull is devoted to weapons; this means that jump tenders have to sacrifice passive defenses as well as weapons and so are "very" fragile compared to the combat ships. The idea of not including enough jump tenders to bring the entire fleet through in one go is not something I'd considered, but I don't think it's a reliable plan.

A middle ground between commercial jump assault vessels and this strategy would be to build cheaper, slower, but still military drive jump tenders that can maintain the same passives as the warships because they have less engine. This would hurt strategic mobility, but so would using commercial assault ships. And you could have a small number of full-speed tenders to let the fleet move in secure territory. This still doesn't address the obscene cost of large military jump drives, but that is the price of using big capital ships.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Missiles are expensive, but so is trying to fly a fleet through hundreds of 70,000km/s missiles coming every 5 seconds when you only have ion tech. What missiles allow you to do is substitute quantity for quality in a really direct way; 100 half speed missiles are almost exactly as effective as 50 full speed missiles. In my experience industry builds up faster than research, and particularly against the industry free spoilers, allows you to take the fight to them much sooner than if you waited until you could match them head on.

Energy weapons are definitely the correct tool in jump assaults; I'm just not convinced of their role outside of that. The amount of PD guns you need to close with a base and not take horrible losses to the AMMs is sobering, and then once you get there you still have to deal with the fact that they have strength 37 lasers and you have strength 10. Much better to park at 20 million klicks and snipe their AMM ships with missiles. EW for cleanup is an option though.

That's a risky strategy and there is little guarantee that they will leave your jump tenders alone. The last assault I did, I lost as many jump tenders as warships even though there were 3x as many warships. The tenders were the smallest thing I sent though and I lost two in the first 5 seconds. Also, to achieve high fleet speed relatively little of a ship's hull is devoted to weapons; this means that jump tenders have to sacrifice passive defenses as well as weapons and so are "very" fragile compared to the combat ships. The idea of not including enough jump tenders to bring the entire fleet through in one go is not something I'd considered, but I don't think it's a reliable plan.

A middle ground between commercial jump assault vessels and this strategy would be to build cheaper, slower, but still military drive jump tenders that can maintain the same passives as the warships because they have less engine. This would hurt strategic mobility, but so would using commercial assault ships. And you could have a small number of full-speed tenders to let the fleet move in secure territory. This still doesn't address the obscene cost of large military jump drives, but that is the price of using big capital ships.

You don't need to kill all AMM every 5 second turn and even doing that take relatively little effort anyway in comparison with box launched ASM missiles, especially in a long term perspective. AMMs do like 1 point of damage so a ship with just a decent amount of shields could tank them very well and then retreat and recharge the shield. A decently big ship can have hundreds of points of shield strength with not too high a technology. Combine that with strong PD and you will weather the most devastating AMM storm. If your ships are already designed to defend against large box launched ASM hordes you should be just fine. If you can already take down 100+ box launched missiles swarms with PD alone then those AMM should not really be much of a problem, most effective PD can shoot every 5 second increments already.

You also can fire your own close range very fast ASM as you approach close to the enemy who then will soak most of the fire in the process. I usually also have some escorts with rapid firing anti-craft missiles and then you have your own AMM missiles too.

It is the combination of these tactics that makes it so effective. You don't have just ONE tool to fix every situation you have many.

Personally I would not even try attacking the AMM missile bases with ASM before I'm close enough to start receiving their AMM against my ship, that is the point you release the ASM specifically designed for that purpose.

There is nothing wrong with using missiles but just saying beam is not worth it is so not true as they are way more effective from a resource perspective as you can generally have a bigger fleet if you use the mined resource more efficiently by spreading the costs better. It also might be that you are not using very effective PD designs or mostly small ships with very little durability.

I also presume that any attack against a stationary object such as JP and planet will be done with sufficient force... we are never going to do this with with equal forces. Then beam weapons and shields are the most efficient as they will cost less resources to use, especially long term.