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Posted by: misanthropope
« on: July 21, 2018, 10:22:25 AM »

sure, either the lasers or the mesons could be the tactical driver.  but i think you ought to pick one, i think in a lot of cases if you're kiting around at 210 kkm, your lasers are just keeping the other guy's armor and shields from getting lonely.

the spinal mount is always kind of cool, and one-punch knockout power is certainly nice to have.  but if you're mostly about the mesons, the 35 cms are pretty weak, and IMO better off as point defense (or more mesons, natch).

spinal mount backed by 8 15cm lasers i think matches spinal mount backed by 8 15cm mesons even at the mesons' optimal range.  the laser array gives you catastrophic knife-fighting power when backed by railgun point defense and obviously better range, but the mesons give you the ability to kill PDCs without a specialty class.  if your empire has the resources to build a bunch of mk4s, then youve got too much "niche" and have left too much pure ship-killing ability on the table if you go with the mesons.  if a half-dozen mk4s are going to be the backbone of your navy id probably favor the mesons.
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 20, 2018, 09:42:09 PM »

you need *something* to hit targets on planets, but mesons have such anti-teamwork with your primary suite that you want to keep them to a minimum

conceivably you could make hull-mounted 10cm railguns a fairly heavy component of your weaponry.  your ships are fast and armored enough to be willing and able to knife fight, where the rails make a very good supplement for the big laser gashes you're going to do.   2.5 (ish) railguns at tracking speed 12000 are darn close to an equal substitute for one four-shot gauss turret tracking at 32000 in pure point defense mode. 

i probably owe iranon royalties for this post :)

i am very *very* much in favor of mixing roles as much as practical.  there is no economic case for specialization, and you're just gratuitously adding a point of failure to your entire fleet if you concentrate your missile defenses onto one ship.
Generally so far, with the first iteration, my doctrine has been to sit around at the meson max range and fire from there, instead of really closing in for a knife fight. Wouldn't the damage falloff of the railguns make them much less useful, at least at such mid range?
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: July 20, 2018, 10:36:18 AM »

you need *something* to hit targets on planets, but mesons have such anti-teamwork with your primary suite that you want to keep them to a minimum

conceivably you could make hull-mounted 10cm railguns a fairly heavy component of your weaponry.  your ships are fast and armored enough to be willing and able to knife fight, where the rails make a very good supplement for the big laser gashes you're going to do.   2.5 (ish) railguns at tracking speed 12000 are darn close to an equal substitute for one four-shot gauss turret tracking at 32000 in pure point defense mode. 

i probably owe iranon royalties for this post :)

i am very *very* much in favor of mixing roles as much as practical.  there is no economic case for specialization, and you're just gratuitously adding a point of failure to your entire fleet if you concentrate your missile defenses onto one ship.
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 19, 2018, 10:51:59 PM »

with the faster chassis, the turrets provide less value for the mesons.  off the top of my head beam fighters seem the only target running between 12 and 32 kkps, at your tech level.  and i would think your ECM is going to make life pretty hard on those guys, if you ever even see them.
It can also theoretically handle missiles, but your point is acknowledged. I might drop the mesons and see if I can find the tonnage to add Gauss for pure PD back.
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: July 19, 2018, 02:58:55 PM »

with the faster chassis, the turrets provide less value for the mesons.  off the top of my head beam fighters seem the only target running between 12 and 32 kkps, at your tech level.  and i would think your ECM is going to make life pretty hard on those guys, if you ever even see them.
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 19, 2018, 10:40:36 AM »

Seems I messed up the calculation. 3 Engines at default power would leave 1m for fuel at the same tonnage, not 2.5m... so you'd lose 20% range compared to your setup which consumes 2.76 as much fuel and has 3.5 times the fuel load.
In other words, you'd need to find 5HS for additional fuel if range isn't negotiable... that's not much at all. You can probably cut an engineering space while keeping your maintenance life (Max Repair seems to be your engines). I'd be willing to lose 2-4 shield generators or a tiny bit of endurance for much better economy.
Might be a good idea for when my fleets start becoming much larger, but right now fuel economy is not really a concern. Hell, I've turned the refineries off because I had too much stored fuel given my current usage.
Posted by: Iranon
« on: July 19, 2018, 02:52:33 AM »

Seems I messed up the calculation. 3 Engines at default power would leave 1m for fuel at the same tonnage, not 2.5m... so you'd lose 20% range compared to your setup which consumes 2.76 as much fuel and has 3.5 times the fuel load.
In other words, you'd need to find 5HS for additional fuel if range isn't negotiable... that's not much at all. You can probably cut an engineering space while keeping your maintenance life (Max Repair seems to be your engines). I'd be willing to lose 2-4 shield generators or a tiny bit of endurance for much better economy.
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 18, 2018, 06:50:35 PM »

Still a bit too much overhead on fire controls for my liking.
I don't get the meson weaponry, they don't mix well with lasers. 15cm lasers would match your maximum FC range and work quite well as dual-purpose weapons - turreted or not. They'd probably be my main armament, but big guns and especially the spinal monstrosity have their appeal.

Propulsion plant is overstressed and inefficient. 3 engines with power between 1.0 and 1.3 and 2.5m fuel would achieve considerably better performance (almost twice the range or 30% higher speed or a bit of both) at lower fuel consumption.

Better armoured and less well armed than I like similar ships, but not unreasonably so. With the above caveats, it looks quite functional.
For the Mesons, it's my "to go" weaponry for mid range combat and PD, since I tend to assume armored ships for targets. Also same reason why the I'm using big lasers, including the spinal monstrosity. More armor have a rather exponential effect on how hard a target is to penetrate, since it's not all that likely to consistently hit the same spot, specially against bigger vessels. As such, smaller guns will end having to either sandblaster the enemy or luck out on shock damage. I am considering dropping the mid size lasers for other weaponry, since while they do allow for some extra weight of fire they don't really offer greater penetration, although they help against shields. Might consider plasma cannonades or microwaves for shield depleting, but I need to think about it.

On the engines, I somewhat agree, but having trouble keeping the ship light. If I can find the tonnage I might reduce effiency to 2/3 of what it currently is, and go for 3 1600 engines instead of 2 2400 ones. Still, the ship is already a bit underarmored for my tastes (yes, I do like overly armored ships  :P ), so I'm unsure if I will find the tonnage for this iteration. Maybe next time I accept a general size increase in my fleets.
Posted by: Iranon
« on: July 18, 2018, 05:08:51 PM »

Still a bit too much overhead on fire controls for my liking.
I don't get the meson weaponry, they don't mix well with lasers. 15cm lasers would match your maximum FC range and work quite well as dual-purpose weapons - turreted or not. They'd probably be my main armament, but big guns and especially the spinal monstrosity have their appeal.

Propulsion plant is overstressed and inefficient. 3 engines with power between 1.0 and 1.3 and 2.5m fuel would achieve considerably better performance (almost twice the range or 30% higher speed or a bit of both) at lower fuel consumption.

Better armoured and less well armed than I like similar ships, but not unreasonably so. With the above caveats, it looks quite functional.
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 17, 2018, 06:08:50 PM »

Thinking on the next iteration, was considering dropping the Gauss turrets from the main cruiser and create a dedicated PD vessel, getting something like:

Code: [Select]
Illustrious Mk4 class Cruiser    20 000 tons     621 Crew     8159.6 BP      TCS 400  TH 4800  EM 5400
12000 km/s     Armour 9-65     Shields 180-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 10     PPV 98.22
Maint Life 1.3 Years     MSP 2550    AFR 320%    IFR 4.4%    1YR 1602    5YR 24034    Max Repair 1200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryogenic Berths 400   

Brooks & Heath Research Inc 2400 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 2400    Fuel Use 41.34%    Signature 2400    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 3 500 000 Litres    Range 76.2 billion km   (73 days at full power)
D'Aoust-Villon  Omicron R300/432 Shields (30)   Total Fuel Cost  540 Litres per hour  (12 960 per day)

Cameron & Franklin 75cm C10 Far X-Ray Laser (1)    Range 480 000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 147-10     RM 8    ROF 75        147 147 147 147 147 147 147 147 130 117
Cameron & Franklin 35cm C8 Far X-Ray Laser (3)    Range 480 000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 32-8     RM 8    ROF 20        32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 28 25
Quad Bellemare-Astruc R21/C6 Meson Cannon Turret (2x4)    Range 210 000km     TS: 32000 km/s     Power 24-24     RM 21    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
van Dijck Ordnance CIWS-320 (1x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Bonnaire-Delorit Fire Control S02 240-8000 (1)    Max Range: 480 000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Cardigan -Goodge Fire Control S03 120-24000 (1)    Max Range: 240 000 km   TS: 24000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Boyer-Rivard Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 24    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Levengood Marine Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%

de Witt & van Dijk Active Search Sensor MR57-R1 (1)     GPS 240     Range 57.6m km    MCR 6.3m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-5 (1)     Compact ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 50

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Still only one fire control for each group of guns, but thinking on it, we while it'd mean a loss of range, I could have them use the other weapon fire control. Will probably trade the reactors for multiple size one reactors too, and might increase the tracking speed of the Meson fire control to equal that of the meson turret, although that's also a bit costly for not that much gain when they can already use a different fire control system. An increase in the laser FC speed might be in the books though, to match that of the ship itself. Might drop a few shields for extra engineering spaces too.
Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: July 17, 2018, 01:54:06 PM »

I play beam cruisers a lot more specialized.  I don't build many of them, but I build them fast enough to out speed and outrange enemy beam ship encountered.  But a slugger philosophy, where you expect to meet enemies with similar ranged weapons, and want to beat them by having more weapons or more armor/shields, is workable.
Posted by: Kurt
« on: July 16, 2018, 08:35:06 PM »

The only thing I'd change if I designed it would be multiple smaller power plants, so that you don't lose power all at once, and changing the engines from just one to at least two (half size) smaller engines.  That way you don't lose motive power if your only engine is damaged.  You will lose efficiency, but the resilience should more than make up for it. 

Kurt
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: July 16, 2018, 01:09:11 PM »

fighters are the most dangerous form of attack the AI employs, and you seem uniquely vulnerable, since you engage so few salvos.

6666 kkps isnt fast for the tech level.  there are magneto-plasma fleets to be found on this site where your plan would have to be "absorb every missile in his entire empire and then hope his yards are in the contact system".

extravagant uridium and gallicite costs, and a fast ugly slide from state-of-the-art to total obsolescence are AFAIK unavoidable problems with beam fleet concepts in aurora.  i know of no build trick that helps much;  on the strategic side your main advantage is maximizing your odds of fuel-cost-only victories, so you play to that by expanding in a fashion that lets you bring 100% of your fleet to the attack at the instant of first contact.  its all i got, sorry.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: July 16, 2018, 12:37:50 PM »

I'd double up on the fire controls to provide some shielding against combat damage and to engage more than one target per ship.

I'd probably add another power plant or so, again for combat damage. And another sensor.

Anything you have only 1 of that is a mission-critical item, is a point of failure. :)
Doubling power plants is probably a good idea, but the beams fire controls are rather a bit too expensive already, doubling them is not really an easy choice.

But if you lose the FC, you are sitting on 18k tons of target. :)
Posted by: Felius
« on: July 16, 2018, 10:55:57 AM »

I'd double up on the fire controls to provide some shielding against combat damage and to engage more than one target per ship.

I'd probably add another power plant or so, again for combat damage. And another sensor.

Anything you have only 1 of that is a mission-critical item, is a point of failure. :)
Doubling power plants is probably a good idea, but the beams fire controls are rather a bit too expensive already, doubling them is not really an easy choice.