(there may have been one or two, um, unfortunate incidents in past playthroughs...)
SS Cormyr 001 (Cormyr class Survey Ship) 12 146 tons 197 Crew 1 093.1 BP TCS 243 TH 789 EM 0
3247 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-47 Shields 0-0 HTK 65 Sensors 16/24/1/0 DCR 6 PPV 0
Maint Life 1.55 Years MSP 337 AFR 197% IFR 2.7% 1YR 161 5YR 2 409 Max Repair 200.8 MSP
Commander Control Rating 2 BRG SCI
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Morale Check Required
J12350(3-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 12350 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Magneto-plasma Drive EP394.40 (2) Power 788.8 Fuel Use 39.12% Signature 394.4 Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 5 350 000 Litres Range 202.7 billion km (722 days at full power)
Thermal Sensor TH2-16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 31.6m km
EM Sensor EM3-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 38.7m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1) 1 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
Well, that's not "neutral", isn't it?
Human military ships were slightly refit with new ECM packages (now using ECM 40)
I continue to be confused as to why the Human admirals are not confident in winning this war...
It does seem that the Trif are, for now, happy not to invade Human space, but are very insistent that we stay out of their space. This would be fine, however they seem to have a double standard and think they can do whatever they want in our space. Not sure if we should tolerate this as the Trif seem to be acting like bullies about it.
I continue to be confused as to why the Human admirals are not confident in winning this war...
According to intel, Trif have more than 1.4m tons of combat vessels that we've actually seen:
10 BCs / 7 BCJ
10 CA / 1 CJ
25 CLE
12 DD / 9 JD
24 DE
From what we know, ALL their BC, CA, DD and their jump versions are armed with str-18 lances. Escorts are armed with GCs turrets. We have not seen any missile capability, but there's probably more where that come from.
It was humiliating. Three 36,000 ton battleships approached a small scout, sent their heavy marines in and failed miserably. Sure, of course we did blew up the scout with guns afterwards, but... yeah... The presence of marines on capital ships was a doubtful choice. They were put there for two reasons: 1) additional security of the ship against boarding; 2) allow taking over enemy ships if there's an opportunity.
Clearly, you need more marines to successfully board a ship. Anyway...
(size 20 wh 65 heavy ASM is already in production)
Operation Avalanche
Type: Reconnaissance in force
Human forces
several hundred thousand tons of bloody murder machines
A new plan emerged. What if we assault another jump point? The BIG ONE! Yeah, there are million thousand tons of combat ships there, but they are 11b km away from the JP. We can extend the end destination of this operation to the Trif homeworld!
Kotlin class frigates, fast and deadly with their spinal lasers, were guarding the EC jump point, when at 0054 four enemy ships entered the system. These were inferior, old generation designs: 1x CA, 2x DE, 1x JCS. They were... escorting a jump gate construction ship somewhere?
What is interesting is that, for these ships to get to where they were now at current speed, they had to depart Beta III a while ago. Like, in the early days of September. About when we assaulted the gate camp in DC on Sept 5th. Something like that.
Lothlorien IV class Escort Cruiser
Trif ground forces on the surface were targeted next. But it was quickly realized that at current range, the accuracy was too low to do any meaningful damage to them. Civilian casualties as a result of collateral damage were high and the idea was quickly abandoned.
Operation Avalanche was a success. We did everything we wanted to, and then some. Lots of intel gathered, enemy shipyards and hundreds thousands of tons of military vessels destroyed, combat experience gained. Now, Humanity had to reevaluate their entire navy arsenal and structure. Also, how can we end this war? Sending an invasion force to take over the EC Beta III seemed like a difficult and bloody task. Should we just stop and let the diplomats talk again?
Unless the marines are very out of date, it really should not take so much unless the formation is designed very oddly. I suspect the big problem was that a lot of marines were lost in the boarding attempt. Attempting to board a ship at full speed from a relatively slow ship (e.g., battleships - as opposed to fast assault shuttles commonly used) will cause many boarders to be lost in the attempt, probably in the region of 80% to 90% actually under these conditions.I can't find the logs right now, but I'm pretty sure it's both. Quite a lot of them died before entering, and the Trif technology is most likely higher than mine in some aspects, so... yeah.. Gruesome death that was, for a training exercise.
Am I the only one who find it hilarious that the NPR puts nine Gauss turrets on a 25,000-ton cruiser, and then thinks to itself "you know what this really needs? Yet another Gauss turret, but this time completely useless for actually escorting anything!" and slaps on a CIWS? Which is probably actually heavier thanks to the integrated BFC and sensor...Well, given how easy it is to pick their ships apart one by one after some damage was done to each, CIWS isn't that bad of an idea, IMO. Using missiles would've been much smarter on their part though. IIRC Steve said something like some NPRs may evolve their doctrine over time under some circumstances, or am I imagining things? The fact that this particular NPR does not use missiles at all made this "reconnaissance" mission much much easier than it could've been.
Otherwise it's not a bad ship, but head-scratchers like that are part of why NPRs struggle to look vaguely competitive against player races.
This actually has nothing to do with range, firing at ground forces has no range component to accuracy but is affected only by the base %CTH (20%, reduced by 2/3) and fortification level - the latter is almost surely 6x times any planetary terrain modifier so hit rates in the 1% to 3% range are likely.Oh, I see. I do not think I really want a ground war right now anyway..
It will be better to get into range of the planetary STOs so that you can target them directly instead of shooting at the ground forces indiscriminately, this will reduce the collateral damage you end up dealing before landing troops.
With the NPRs, diplomacy is difficult at best after a shooting war because there is no peace treaty mechanic, so they are at something like -9000 relations and this will take a very long time to reach back to -100 or better. However, if you have completely destroyed their navy and shipbuilding it is not impossible to park a diplo ship nearby and let it work for a decade or two.I wonder if they have another shipbuilding-capable colony out there. Regardless, if they build new ships, they all are going to be quite fast and beefy. Even without missiles, they would be PITA to deal with, compared to the designs we've encountered so far.
Otherwise, for planetary conquest I would probably try to eliminate the STOs from orbit, this will cause collateral damage but it is unavoidable, and Str-18 particle lance STOs will eat alive any assault transports with less than 18 armor making a ground assault very difficult to pull off. Note that to destroy the STOs you do not need maximum-strength weapons, in practice you would find that the minimum caliber of weapon which can outrange the enemy STOs should be sufficient to kill any STO it strikes. Railguns are good as they get multiple shots per firing with low base damage thus less collateral damage, however range may be an issue if you have not invested a lot in railgun tech. Otherwise something like 15cm lasers, maybe 20cm depending on what kind of range tech you have to work with should be sufficient. Once all STOs are eliminated (check for short-range Gauss turrets!) you can start to mass troops on a nearby moon and then conduct landing operations - I hope you have built many transports for this purpose! You will likely need 5-10 million tons of ground troops to take a NPR home world.
Well, given how easy it is to pick their ships apart one by one after some damage was done to each, CIWS isn't that bad of an idea, IMO. Using missiles would've been much smarter on their part though. IIRC Steve said something like some NPRs may evolve their doctrine over time under some circumstances, or am I imagining things? The fact that this particular NPR does not use missiles at all made this "reconnaissance" mission much much easier than it could've been.
Lack of diplomatic options, or not knowing if they are engaged in contact/wars with somebody else, is something that makes me sad, yes. I REALLY love diplomatic relations. It's great to have an opportunity to use all the hardware that I spent countless hours designing, but more intricate diplomatic interplay is much more interesting to me any day of the week.
Another unknown is... would their cocky behavior change even if we can manage to bring new peace? Would they continue to say one thing and do another like it happened before?