Author Topic: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship  (Read 4952 times)

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Offline dersavage (OP)

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Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« on: January 10, 2021, 04:51:38 PM »
Not sure should I build this. My shipyard limit is 40,000 tons so because this is the biggest warship it will be battleship-class, but probably this is more like heavy cruiser. I plan to change classification when I get bigger ships. Majestic-class have very little Point-Defence. It will cruise with 2 cruiser and 2 destroyer escort and they will have more PD. I want to use lasers too, so I don't like full missile/torpedo ships.

The question is should I drop JD and use this heavy ship on defence role like camping jump points. Anyway now it's designed beyong jump gates and move closer to enemy.

Quote
Majestic class Battleship      39,990 tons       1,081 Crew       8,087.5 BP       TCS 800    TH 3,240    EM 0
4051 km/s    JR 5-100      Armour 9-104       Shields 0-0       HTK 268      Sensors 110/40/0/0      DCR 39      PPV 99.15
Maint Life 1.26 Years     MSP 7,741    AFR 432%    IFR 6.0%    1YR 5,098    5YR 76,467    Max Repair 3515.8 MSP
Troop Capacity 250 tons     Magazine 280    Cryogenic Berths 200   
Captain    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Morale Check Required   

Mandeville & Ake J40000(5-100) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 40000 tons    Distance 100k km     Squadron Size 5

Randell ID-1080/1.6M 2,7kt (3)    Power 3240.0    Fuel Use 83.61%    Signature 1080.00    Explosion 16%
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres    Range 21.5 billion km (61 days at full power)

Kenmore 2xKE-15 Laser Turret (5x2)    Range 180,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 12-2     RM 30,000 km    ROF 30       
Calvano KE-15 Fire Control (1)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 10,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Koth Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R2 (5)     Total Power Output 10    Exp 5%

Holloman AT-1 Anti-Torpedo Launcher (4)     Missile Size: 1    Rate of Fire 10
Holloman HAST-5 Torpedo Launcher (4)     Missile Size: 5    Rate of Fire 45
Kieser Torpedo Fire Control 85t (1)     Range 82.1m km    Resolution 120
Stricler Anti-Torpedo Fire Control 40t (1)     Range 11.4m km    Resolution 1

Strickler Torpedo Warning TW-16/3 150t (1)     GPS 48     Range 11.1m km    MCR 995k km    Resolution 1
Lamonda Active Search Sensor L-16/120 350t (1)     GPS 13440     Range 83.3m km    Resolution 120
Dumaine EM Sensor DEM-8/40 250t (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Schenkel Thermal Sensor TH10-110 500t (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  82.9m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I have also researched thermal reduction should I use it? I think I will use it with smaller ships less than 15k and make hit-and-run missions.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2021, 04:53:15 PM by dersavage »
 
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Offline kilo

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2021, 05:39:47 PM »
May I ask which of your ship components needs the ungodly amount of 3.5k MSP? Is it the jump drive? If it is, I would remove it and put it on a support ship that can stay behind and carries enough MSP for maintenance. This should free up something like 8000 tons of space as well and it will need a support fleet that carries fuel, ammunition or even MSP after all.
The tonnage you save could be well spent on ammunition storage. At the moment you can only bring 280 missile size points. This is 280 anti missile or 56 anti ship missiles. This is completely insufficient to achieve anything the NPR I am currently fighting sends missile salvos of 100+ over every 30 seconds. Your pretty expensive ship does four, while their about 15000 tons ion ships fire 4 x 5 anti ship missiles each.
Your sensors and fire controls look good and you have sufficient armor to withstand the occasional hit, which is fine. No shields means that you are pretty vulnerable to microwaves, but this a common problem early in the game. Shield generators are pretty crap until later.
What I might switch around it the size of the EM and the thermal sensor. What gets fleets spotted most often is their active sensor and shield emissions. In your case it is 3240 thermal emissions vs 13440 active sensor emissions. Having a larger EM sensor would allow you to spot their active sensor before being on their screen. This would allow you to evade the fight if you chose to.
When it comes to using thermal reduction tech on this ship, it would be a hard no to me. It is easily detected by active sensors due to it's size and will be seen through half the solar system when it activates it's sensors. Unless you are planning on running silent most of the time it is a waste in resources, build time and research points to work on these engines.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2021, 06:02:39 PM »
Not sure should I build this.

Good instinct.

For a battleship this has a quite sad amount of firepower - frankly, I have a hard time believing this is 40,000 tons given what is actually on it, and while the jump drive is probably limiting you I can't believe it's the entire problem as this ship has less firepower than I'd expect from a ship half the size (even from an NPR honestly).

You have 5x2 15-cm lasers and four each of AMM and ASM launchers. In a recent campaign my 20,000-ton cruisers could still mount 4x3 15-cm lasers and six ASM launchers (size 6, so a wash matched against your sizes 1 + 5). At the same time, you're pulling 4000 km/s out of ion engines, which is okay for a missile cruiser but a beam ship needs to be much faster - my aforementioned cruisers pulled 4500 km/s with ion drives and this was a mediocre compromise to meet the tonnage limit (it was an RP design, else I would have had more engines and less weapons).

So you have a 40,000-ton ship that can be outperformed by a 20,000-ton ship fairly easily, and in exchange you get...what? Jump capability, for sure, yes. A few more layers of armor, also. But no command modules, pretty poor maint life, a rather short deployment time that makes it difficult to use this for anything besides sailing from point A to point B, shooting things, and sailing back - for example, this thing will be a pretty poor JP picket which is a lot of firepower to not be available to you in that case.

Aside from the jump drive, it seems to me that maybe this ship is leaking tonnage in different directions without a clear design focus: you have chunks of tonnage going into sensors, troop capacity, cryo modules, etc. that is probably excessive. Additionally, the missile loadout is frankly just useless - 4 ASMs contributes almost nothing to a salvo (unless you're planning to mass these? Really?), and 4 AMMs might hit one incoming ASM out of a salvo. Presumably if you have a 40,000-ton shipyard you have enough other yards to build specialist ships with the jump drives, big sensors, troops, missiles, cryo rescue berthing, etc. and you should delegate those capabilities to those ships and make this thing a lean, mean alien-killing machine.

Pick lasers or missiles as the primary weapon. If lasers, you don't need 10,000 km/s tracking turrets for a weapon designed to kill other large warships - honestly, even if you're using them against fighters or FACs, dropping to 5000 km/s will give you a 50% hit rate and you can mount more guns for your main mission, no reason to go overboard here. In this case missiles are secondary or not at all - use reduced size launchers and magazine space for just a few salvos so you can use missiles to run down fleeing ships before they outrun you - or to kill the fighters/FACs we mentioned. If missiles are primary, use smaller lasers (10 cm) in point defense configurations - ideally get capacitor tech so they can fire every 5 seconds. In either case, your secondary weapons are secondary - you have other ships to be your escorts, missile boats, sensor pickets, and so on, so use them.

I'd recommend dropping the jump drive and using either a specialized variant or a smaller cruiser-size ship to tote the jump drive around for you - this will also help with maintenance life. For a battleship, more dakka is the correct answer...and also more vroom. Get at least 5000 km/s, with a 160% boost frankly you could be pushing 6000 km/s but keep fuel efficiency in mind here and maybe consider a less-boosted engine.
 
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Offline Zap0

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2021, 06:26:35 PM »
Have to agree on the no to thermal reduction, the extra expense on a ship this large alone would be huge.

Your offensive power is very limited, partially caused by lugging that large jump drive around. I can see this ship as a lead ship for jump point assaults, but then you're better off jumping ships of similar size rather than smaller escorts, otherwise the only thing that needs the huge 40k JD is the jump ship itself.

You have 5x twin 15cm laser turrets aboard, but only a cap recharge of 1. Reduced reload lasers, I presume. An RoF of 30 is going to severely cripple your beam dps and may well leave your guns still on recharge between missile volleys.
With just one beam fire control you have no redundancy in case the one gets destroyed. Consider a second one, perhaps limited to a lower tracking speed so it's not as expensive.
The turrets track at 10k, but you should be able to make fire controls for 16k. If you're serious about using them for missile defense, consider upgrading the turrets and bfc. If you're mostly concerned about hitting FACs/fighters that's fine.

4 AMM launcher is... very little. So little that, unless you want them for roleplay reasons, I wouldn't spend the micro on them. Put on some more torpedo tubes instead and downgrade the missile sensor to a short-ranged one for the turrets, perhaps.

The engines are pretty large. Smaller ones aren't as efficient, but have better HTK, are individually cheaper which means longer maintenance life, and are more easily repaired using MSP.

If you plan on using this as a command ship, throw a flag bridge on it. Or make a command variant with some module replaced for one.
 

Offline Froggiest1982

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2021, 07:45:54 PM »
4051 km/s   Perhaps too slow? Still good for an ION era
Armour 9-104       Shields 0-0     No shields? Ouch, I hope you have several PD escorts hidden somewhere near
AFR 432%    IFR 6.0%   A couple of more engineers may be needed
Max Repair 3515.8 MSP Steep for this kind of ship
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    with that AFR and IFR you may not get there
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres    Range 21.5 billion km (61 days at full power) It's good that you won't be able to stay around for 6 months anyway otherwise you would run out of fuel way earlier. You could increase fuel or reduce the operations on a 3 Month scale. With the current setup the latter would be probably better.

It's me or I cannot see any missile here? Did you load the ordnance?

Holloman AT-1 Anti-Torpedo Launcher (4)     Missile Size: 1    Rate of Fire 10 Not effective, better swap with laser turrets, I can see you have the tech. But honestly, displacement wise, better have dedicated ships for PD. Your engine can support another 4 to travel with her if you not willing to get rid of it, which I would.
Holloman HAST-5 Torpedo Launcher (4)     Missile Size: 5    Rate of Fire 45 I would focus on Alpha strikes with box launchers and may fit more of them especially if you also remove the AMM
Kieser Torpedo Fire Control 85t (1)     Range 82.1m km    Resolution 120 Need another at least for redundancy or a lucky strike could cripple your assault
Stricler Anti-Torpedo Fire Control 40t (1)     Range 11.4m km    Resolution 1 If you remove the AMM it's not needed and can be moved on the dedicated ships. This will free space for the other sensor.
Strickler Torpedo Warning TW-16/3 150t (1)     GPS 48     Range 11.1m km    MCR 995k km    Resolution 1 If you remove the AMM it's not needed and can be moved on the dedicated ships. This will free space for the other sensor. You can always add a small anti missile alarm Size 1, Res 1
Lamonda Active Search Sensor L-16/120 350t (1)     GPS 13440     Range 83.3m km    Resolution 120 Need another at least for redundancy or a lucky strike could cripple your detection capabilities
« Last Edit: January 10, 2021, 07:50:38 PM by froggiest1982 »
 

Offline misanthropope

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2021, 09:04:48 PM »
that engine is a white elephant if ever i have seen one.  yikes.

the organic jump capability may be deemed necessary for doctrine-slash-RP reasons, but if you can bring yourself to offload that capability, the slimmed down majestic is going to be much more impressive.

i don't think there is anything meaningful to be gained by losing the AMM capability, a capital ship should have some, if only to ensure the entire fleet's missile defense isn't condensed into a single point of failure.  box AMMs look like a better fit for this ship.  the ASMs want to be reduced size to some degree.  theres never really a situation in aurora where boxes are _obviously wrong_, but you can make a case for reloadable racks too, here.

the 15s are fine weapons, but are far too large a proportion of your total weapons load in my view.  a lot of the hypothetical threats out there are going to out-EW you, and that is just short of a hard counter to lasers, esp if you ship isn't extremely fast.  id reinvest the tonnage into ASM throw weight.

you *have to* be able to scare up the space for a lower-res MFC, fighters FACs and mean ass missile corvettes are just going to treat majestic as a pinata.  at 40k tons you have enough tied up in this ship that you probably shouldn't cheap out on redundant FC and actives, but right at the minute that's not a top priority.

id be tempted to cut a layer or 2 of armor for more weapons.  i mean, *i'd* be tempted to cut 8 layers, but i think maybe *you* might like the ship better with 1 or 2 fewer :)
 

Offline dersavage (OP)

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2021, 02:11:44 AM »
My instict was right. Jump drive is about 8000t and engine about 30% and 160% boost. I,m really pushing the engine  tech to the limit. Thats why I had little space left.

Yeah, I Will Make separate jump support ship. Thats way I can make this 5000 m/s and add much more firepower. I kind of dreamed this ship to have decent anti missile, little long range cabability and Big punch lasers& pd. Space was so Limited so guessed there is something wrong with The design.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2021, 04:18:46 AM by dersavage »
 

Offline tobijon

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2021, 03:27:01 AM »
If you really want a jump capable warship there are some things you can try.
8000t for your jump drive? That means you're at efficiency 5, try researching to jump drive efficiency 8, that would leave 3000t for you to use improving this. This would also help increase maintenance life since your biggest component is much smaller and requires less msp. You can also decrease the armor by 1 to add shields.
I usually also make a non jump version of my warships, and then use one jumpship for every 2 non-jump warships, If you do it like that, you will have a lot more firepower, but you will have to group them in sets of three.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2021, 03:47:20 AM by tobijon »
 

Offline dersavage (OP)

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2021, 06:10:50 AM »
8000t is so much that is it better to design jump ship. It's really hard to make decent warship so is it better to make support ship and keep it out of the fight?

Or I can design jump ship missile cruiser. Anyway still there is huge problem with the size of the jump drive
 

Offline Droll

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2021, 06:16:05 AM »
8000t is so much that is it better to design jump ship. It's really hard to make decent warship so is it better to make support ship and keep it out of the fight?

Or I can design jump ship missile cruiser. Anyway still there is huge problem with the size of the jump drive

I understand the desire to want every ship be able to jump but unfortunately at low jump tech it is unreasonable to make each ship have a jump engine. At max jump efficiency it becomes much more feasible to do so however.
At 8000 tons 20% (!) of your BB is jump engine. If you go for 40% engine then your left with 40% for everything else
I would recommend you go for jump tenders for now. It'll allow you to make better jump engines overall as well as save space.
 
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Offline dersavage (OP)

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2021, 01:12:52 PM »
Second try. I get rid off size 1 AMM, because I will design torpedo/missile cruisers and they will take care of longer range anti-missile defence and also fire 80Mkm ASM/torpedo. Majestic-class main role is to fire alpha torpedo (size 5) with 44 box launchers. Her main weapons are lasers. Then with speed over 5000 km/s close to kill the enemy. It can also defend jump gates. I will design corvettes with spinal 18cm lasers for this duty.

Majestic is never alone and will have half a dozen destroyer and cruiser escorts. So more PD and AMM for sure. Jump tender will be only support ship, also brings MSP for this. High maintenance is THE problem with this class and short deployment time and range.

Quote
Majestic class Battleship      39,995 tons       1,104 Crew       6,794.8 BP       TCS 800    TH 4,025    EM 1,110
5031 km/s      Armour 8-104       Shields 37-370       HTK 273      Sensors 33/40/0/0      DCR 47      PPV 245.56
Maint Life 3.00 Years     MSP 3,928    AFR 346%    IFR 4.8%    1YR 655    5YR 9,827    Max Repair 402.50 MSP
Magazine 220   
Commodore    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   FLG   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Morale Check Required   

Randell Ion Drive R-805M (5)    Power 4025.0    Fuel Use 64.88%    Signature 805.00    Explosion 14%
Fuel Capacity 3,570,000 Litres    Range 24.8 billion km (56 days at full power)
Dehoff Defence Gamma S37 / R370 Shields (1)     Recharge Time 370 seconds (0.1 per second)

Kenmore 4 x KE-15 Laser Turret (6x4)    Range 192,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 24-16     RM 40,000 km    ROF 10       
Ziegenfuss 2 x Z-10C4 PD Laser Turret 16k (8x2)    Range 120,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 6-8     RM 40,000 km    ROF 5       
Calvano KE-15 Beam Fire Control (2)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 5,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Osterman Z-10C4 PD Beam Fire Control (2)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Koth Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R32-PB30 (5)     Total Power Output 160.5    Exp 15%

Holloman HAST-5 Box Torpedo Tube (44)     Missile Size: 5    Hangar Reload 111 minutes    MF Reload 18 hours
Kieser Torpedo Fire Control (1)     Range 84.2m km    Resolution 120
Cress ASM-10 'Grim' (44)    Speed: 17,520 km/s    End: 76.3m     Range: 80.2m km    WH: 4    Size: 5    TH: 122/73/36

Lamonda Active Search Sensor L-16/120 (1)     GPS 11520     Range 90.4m km    Resolution 120
Lamonda Active Search Sensor L-16/20 (1)     GPS 480     Range 24.9m km    Resolution 20
Strickler Torpedo Warning TW-16/1 25t (1)     GPS 8     Range 5.3m km    MCR 476.3k km    Resolution 1
Dumaine EM Sensor DEM-8/40 250t (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Schenkel Thermal Sensor TH3.00-33.00 (1)     Sensitivity 33.00     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

« Last Edit: January 12, 2021, 01:17:24 PM by dersavage »
 

Offline Droll

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #11 on: January 12, 2021, 01:17:11 PM »
This is a very strong ship now - my advice is to add some more MFCs so that you can launch your "alpha strike" against multiple targets at once, though your warhead size probably means overkill isn't a massive problem.

Honestly with missiles that weak I would remove them all together. The quad lasers are already much more formidable than the previous version and you have PD lasers which can be used in a dual purpose setting on top of that.

You've also got a fast ship for its tech level. I think remove missiles and give it armor/deployment.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #12 on: January 12, 2021, 01:37:34 PM »
I would ditch the turrets and just have the anti-ship lasers mounted directly on the ship.  Your turret tracking speed isn't higher than your ship's speed, so the turrets don't do you any good, they just add weight.
 
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Offline TheTalkingMeowth

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #13 on: January 12, 2021, 01:37:54 PM »
This is a very strong ship now - my advice is to add some more MFCs so that you can launch your "alpha strike" against multiple targets at once, though your warhead size probably means overkill isn't a massive problem.

Honestly with missiles that weak I would remove them all together. The quad lasers are already much more formidable than the previous version and you have PD lasers which can be used in a dual purpose setting on top of that.

You've also got a fast ship for its tech level. I think remove missiles and give it armor/deployment.
Second removing the missiles. You'd only need like 6000tons of 10cm railguns on a 5000km/s to stop that so-called alpha strike cold. Those missiles are slow for ion tech and not very dangerous.
 
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Offline misanthropope

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Re: Ion Drive 40,000 battleship
« Reply #14 on: January 12, 2021, 02:06:12 PM »
how sure are you the missiles can't be improved?  even if there isn't any low-hanging fruit, swapping some range for a big of speed or another point of WH might be advantageous.  feel like a 40000 ton ship ought to be broadly capable, and the missiles are if nothing else an out against an enemy that can kite you, and such enemies are plausible.

there are a lot of worthwhile targets that can be engaged with a size-220 missile swarm, that you would have trouble locking onto with only the res120 FC.