This will be a rather _long_ review. You have been warned
Aurora:
Hm, if I am not misreading this, your probes do not have any engine. Is the Aurora supposed to enter orbit, drop off a probe and move on to the next planetary body? Personally, I´d go with a two stage system, a carrier and the actual probe, allowing for the Aurora to sit back and launch the probes at interesting targets.
Ichigo:
The X-ray Laser Battery has a _horrible_ rate of fire. 320 seconds between salvos? Any enemy with beam weapons will rip that one appart while the guns recharge after the first salvo (if it survies that first salvo, of course)
Eridani:
Not a lot to critizise there. Personally, I like more armor/shields on my military jumpships, but that is just me, I suppose
Just noticed that this is also your only ship with long-ranged sensors. Ouch! You definitely want to armor up that one. With that bloody huge active, it will appear on enemy passives like a christmas tree, making it a prime target - and once it goes down, so does your sensor coverage!
Honalulu:
I´d scrap one of the gauss turrets in favor of more AMM launchers, otherwise, it looks fine.
Jovian:
Hm, it carries a jump drive, I don´t like that.
I know, flexibility and all that.
Still, personally, I´d have gone for a dedicated jump ship (heavily armored and shielded, lots of fuel/supplies, so it can also work as a fleet support ship and if any space is left, some good sensors and beam weapons for attacking a contested jump point) and leave as much space free on my combat ships as possible.
Of course, the jump ship will _not_ accompany my battle fleet in-system, but stay at the jump point.
It also has a rather substantial armor belt. While I agree with armoring combat ships heavily, with a carrier, my philosophy is different. As the fighters will do the fighting, there is no reason to get the carrier into combat range, and therefore, it does not need heavy armor (and let´s face it, if a Jovian gets into close combat with an enemy, his fighters can´t handle, the Jovian dies. His armor will only prolong the inevitable by 30 seconds or so).
Kircher:
10 survey sensors, holy cow!
For a survey ship that size (and cost), I sure would like a longer ranged active and stronger passive sensor, so it can avoid being blown up buy guys it can´t even see. Perhaps trade in 2 survey sensors for that?
Massachusetts:
A real beast at point blank range.
Of course, once the range opens only a little, you´d be a lot better off with those 30cm laser cannons, not only damage wise (at the 3rd range bracket, it surpasses the plasma carronade already) but with more than 2.5 shots for every shot the PC can get off too.
What´s the Creedance FC supposed to be for? Same tracking speed but less range than either of the guns, wouldn´t a 3rd ULR FC make more sense?
Red Cliff:
Again a "line-of-battle" ship with a jump drive --> see above
If you mount a jump drive in a warship, at least use the jump drive to full capacity, i.e. go for the full 24.000 tons.
Again those X-ray laser batteries with that horrible ROF. Sure, not a lot of enemy ships will survive a full volley, at least not at close range, but what if there are several enemy ships, what happens while your guns are busy to oh-so-slowly recharge?
Prettey much the same goes for your size-10 missile launcher. A rate of fire of 250? You gotta be kidding me!
6 launchers with that ROF will get you no-where. Yes, the Trident is fast and yes, it carries a very strong warhead, but against an enemy with even rudimentary PD, no torpedo will reach an enemy ship.
And 3 AMM launchers? That´s - not a lot
I´d also give it an active with at least 60m range (perhaps res-50, similar to the MFC) as a backup, in case the Eridani buys it.
Transvaal:
I´d concentrate on one size of ASM launcher. Either go with the size-10 or with the size-5 one and try to get a decent salvo size. Also makes logistics a lot easier.
And finally, if the Transvaal is supposed to operate on it´s own, he can´t nearly see as far as he could shoot (active sensor range 11.5mkm, maximum missile range 60mkm)
Vega:
Doesn´t have a standard missile (drone?) loadout.
I think I would turn that one into the standard fleet scout. Rip out the single turret, as that won´t win a fight anyway and put in a decent ranged (say 300mkm) active. Then it can be the standard fleet scout for your task groups and you don´t have to risk your Eridanis in combat.
It can still perform the "surveylance" mission and the lack of a honking big laser cannon will keep any "adventerous" captain from getting ideas of glory-hunting.
General Notes:
Any time, you don´t kill the enemy with your first shot, ROF becomes of tremendous importance. This is the reason I don´t like your size-10 lauchers and your x-ray Laser Batteries. They take way too long to recharge/reload.
This is doubly true for missile launchers, where you have basicly two ways to overwhelm enemy point defense.
1) Launch a huge alpha-strike, so the enemy PD can´t handle all the missiles coming at it at once or
2) Launch a huge number of small(ish) salvos as fast as possible, overwhealming enemy PD with more salvos than it can handle.
Your setup manages none of the above, unfortunately.
CIWS:
Good on your Transvaal, as it is supposed to operate alone. On any combatant supposed to work in a fleet, I would shy away from them.
You can mount (approximately) one gauss turret (twin/half sized) for every two CIWS.
Now lets assume you have three ships in a TG, each mounting two CIWS. Every incoming enemy salvo will be engaged by the two CIWS mounted on the targeted ship.
Now lets assume, you replaced those CIWS with a single gauss turret instead. Now every incoming enemy salvo will be engaged by _three_ gauss turrets.
The larget the TG gets, the more pronounched this effect will be.
--> PD Network is the way to go
