Cheap and nasty Meson PDC

[Resident Evil (OP)]

These are cheap to produce and have saved my arse in my current game.

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Paris class Point Defence Base    2,500 tons     73 Crew     343.6 BP      TCS 50  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 11-16     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 17.7
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Spare Berths 2   

Twin Gibbs Dynamics R3/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (2x2)    Range 30,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mckenzie PDC Fire Control S02 36-12000 (1)    Max Range: 72,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0
Andrews Power Gas-Cooled Reactor PB-1 (0.7/3.15) (4)     Total Power Output 12.6    Armour 0    Exp 5%


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections

Don't tell me the fire control doesn't match the turret speed rating - I already know. I had to churn them out quickly, which meant using whatever tech I had at the time. But they have worked well so far as a supplement to my anti-missile bases, with a 60% hit rate against the missiles the hostiles are using to try and turn the Earth into a radioactive slag heap.

Lots of !!fun!!, with another hostile fleet detected 2 systems out on it's way 

RE

[Michael Sandy]

I would have gone with cheaper, TBH.  Go with a single meson turret, minimal armor, and keep it under 500 tons.  You also should save by exploiting the fact that the PDC is based on a populated planet.  Give it a 1 month (or less) deployment time.  With a fighter fire control, (and a fighter PDC fire control at that), you should easily be able to match the turret's tracking speed.

With PDCs, if the goal is 'cheap', consider that when paying for 1 level of armor, you get 4 free.  So if you want to maximize your free armor, you want a lot of level 1 armor.

Also, if you build them fighter sized, the enemy won't find it as easy to target them.

Armor costs Duranium, which is almost always a limiting factor in your economy.

[Resident Evil (OP)]

With a fighter fire control, (and a fighter PDC fire control at that), you should easily be able to match the turret's tracking speed.

I did not know you can do that - you can definitely use a fighter fire control on a PDC??

I generally opt for long deployments so I don't end up with lots of messages about shore leave in the log. But that's just become a habit and in this case I probably should have cut it down and lived with it. nvm.

RE

[Michael Sandy]

Unless your PDC is based on an airless hellhole, you should have at least 10k pop on the body.  Which means that your base is always considered to be on shore leave.

And if your PDC is base on an airless hellhole that you never intend to add an atmosphere to, consider railguns.  Go with base tech railguns, cost 1 BP each, and they are literally cheaper to build than to destroy.  Sure, they can't be turreted, so they use your racial tracking rate at best, but you can get so many so cheaply.

[Resident Evil (OP)]

Damn - I didn't realise it worked that way. That's it, in future it's 0.1 deployment time for them all.

[Father Tim]

Armor costs Duranium, which is almost always a limiting factor in your economy.

Mostly.  Some of the higher tech level armours cost other TNEs.

[misanthropope]

the fighter PDC *also* lets you leverage the fighter combat bonus stat for possibly/ probably a lot of ~15% bonuses, at least if you don't have moral reservations against making the unit subject to command by LCs.

and since they are cheap fighter platforms, in peacetime they can serve a worthwhile function training up those fighter combat bonuses for transfer to your carrier wings.

[Resident Evil (OP)]

Okay. Taking all the advice into consideration, here's the Mk II version

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Paris (S) class Point Defence Base    495 tons     5 Crew     126.6 BP      TCS 9.9  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-5     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 5.4
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 5   

Single Booth Tech. R1.5/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (TS32k) (1x1)    Range 15,000km     TS: 32000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1.5    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
O'Donnell Cybernetics PDC Fire Control S02 72-32000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 144,000 km   TS: 32000 km/s     93 86 79 72 65 58 51 44 37 31
Pearson Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor PB-1 (0.7/3.15) (1)     Total Power Output 3.15    Armour 0    Exp 5%


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections

It is much better. Thanks for all your advice

RE

[Michael Sandy]

Might be slight overkill on the fire control for the Mk II.  How much of the cost of the Mk II is the fire control?  The difference between a 72,000 km FC and a 144,000 FC in the 10,000 km point blank bracket is only going to be about 10%, so if the cost difference is more than that, more cheaper bases would be more effective on a per BP basis.

[Resident Evil (OP)]

Might be slight overkill on the fire control for the Mk II.  How much of the cost of the Mk II is the fire control?  The difference between a 72,000 km FC and a 144,000 FC in the 10,000 km point blank bracket is only going to be about 10%, so if the cost difference is more than that, more cheaper bases would be more effective on a per BP basis.

Ha. Well spotted. I'd be right at home in military contracting - cost doesn't even enter my mind when I'm designing these things.

The Cost of the FC is 86, out of a total of 126.6. And I could have halved it to 43 at 36,000km, which would have been more than enough. 

I could have taken 1/3rd off the overall cost, and halved the research cost too. But hey-ho, never mind - lesson learned; and I do have some other uses I can put that FC to.

RE

[Iranon]

I use small Meson PDCs quite a bit, they are my main defensive asset until I have enough of an obsolete fleet to shove into a hangar until I need it.

Because Meson Cannons are cheap and BFCs are expensive, I prefer twin turrets with rather short-ranged BFCs, at whatever tracking speed makes the turret still fit into 500t.
Most of the time, that's more cost-effective than very fast-tracking singles even against fast missiles. It also gives more PPV per BP spent and is much more effective against slower missiles.

[bankshot]

I played around with the design a bit and after a bit of research on power boosts I came up with a dual turret version.  I had to drop the turret speed down to 14,900 and research 1.15x power boost to cram everything into a 500 ton hull: 

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Audacious class Point Defence Base    500 tons     6 Crew     63 BP      TCS 10  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-5     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 7.7
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 4   

Twin R3/C3 14.9K Meson Turret (1x2)    Range 30,000km     TS: 14900 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
PDC Fire Control S00.5 36-4000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 72,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0
Fast Reactor 0.1  PB-1.15 (1)     Total Power Output 0.52    Armour 0    Exp 12%
Fast Reactor 1.0  PB-1.15 (1)     Total Power Output 5.17    Armour 0    Exp 12%


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections