Author Topic: The viability of Stealth Missile and Energy Attack Craft in Aurora  (Read 4580 times)

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Offline misora (OP)

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So, I have been testing this for a couple of days and have found that specially designed stealth attack craft do work. I have one that I have named after Mass Effect's Normandy which launches relatively large missiles that do not need to have a fire control since they can guide themselves along their entire range. Mostly I have found it to be useful against singular craft than full-fledged battle groups. What do you guys think of the idea of what amounts to space submarines?  [ooc]By the way this design was made in a game with maintenance turned off for testing purposes. [/ooc]


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Normansk class Stealth Scout    14 400 tons     426 Crew     7251.2 BP      TCS 43.2  TH 19.2  EM 0
6666 km/s     Armour 4-52     Shields 0-0     Sensors 500/400/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 72
Maint Life 0.05 Years     MSP 315    AFR 1658%    IFR 23%    1YR 6850    5YR 102755    Max Repair 1920 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 1160   

960 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (2)    Power 960    Fuel Use 120.21%    Signature 9.599999    Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 1 000 000 Litres    Range 10.4 billion km   (18 days at full power)

 Missile Launcher-Normansk (4)    Missile Size 18    Rate of Fire 90
Shcherbakov-Aksyonov Engineering MFC AMM (1)     Range 88.5m km    Resolution 20
Illusion-MK2 (64)  Speed: 42 700 km/s   End: 18.9m    Range: 48.5m km   WH: 32    Size: 18    TH: 142/85/42

Search Sensor Beta (1)     GPS 12000     Range 295.2m km    Resolution 20
Thermal Sensor-Normansk (1)     Sensitivity 500     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  500m km
EM Detection Sensor-Normansk (1)     Sensitivity 400     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  400m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 15% of normal

ECM 60
 

Offline Haji

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Re: The viability of Stealth Missile and Energy Attack Craft in Aurora
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2015, 11:25:01 PM »
What do you guys think of the idea of what amounts to space submarines?

The biggest issue with stealth comes down to who are you fighting against. If you're against NPRs it can be pretty useful, but if you're playing multiple sides it's not so great. In most of my campaigns I end up having a lot of small craft like fighters or gunboats or end up playing against spoilers with a lot of gunboats. This almost always leads up to me developing relatively long range high resolution sensors that can see a one thousand tonne ship from hundreds of millions of kilometers. Heck, in my current campaign, with sensor strength 36 I'm already building a ship that can see fifty tonne craft (ie. anything larger than missiles) from three hundred million kilometers. Against this kind of sensor coverage stealth is a pretty much a waste of resources.
Of course you could in theory use such ships to raid enemy commercial shipping, but those vessels are blind anyway, so it makes little difference. All in all, the only use I can think of for stealth ships is if you're playing multiple sides in a single star systems and want to have strategic deterrence, but I have not tested the viability of this.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: The viability of Stealth Missile and Energy Attack Craft in Aurora
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2015, 07:45:23 PM »
IMO missile senor ranges are far to short for this to work well.

I mean that size 18 missile you got there could probably be replaced by 3 size 6 missiles with the similar size warhead by the tech level your on now.

And most players and NPRs would not have any problems to detect your stealth scout from far beyond 50 million km since it has the same cross section that a smaller escort ship of 2000 ton has.

I think it is quite telling that the active sensor your bringing can easily detect a ship with half your cross section at 6 times the distance you can fire from.


The only use I see for stealth ships is purely as scouts or mine layers.
 

Offline linkxsc

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Re: The viability of Stealth Missile and Energy Attack Craft in Aurora
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2015, 10:27:59 PM »
I've has some success of 4000t> ships armed with a few box launchers and a cloaking device. Carry them into system on a carrier, drop them off somewhere, and let them take a few potshots at some enemy civilian ships.

Size 6 missiles (maybe size 4) are the way to go with them though, and since they're box launcher-ed, you can toss out quite a few of them from even a 4000t ship (mind you, early on, like 1k of that is the ships cloak module itself)
But all in all, they aren't that effective due to the NPR wealth mechanics. And they're not good against enemy warships either (unless the target ship is alone, and not bristling with AMMs)


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I-U class Hunter    4,000 tons     94 Crew     769.6 BP      TCS 16  TH 84  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 1-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 77/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 14.4
Maint Life 3.46 Years     MSP 361    AFR 42%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 46    5YR 690    Max Repair 210 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 2    
Magazine 96    Cryogenic Berths 200    

240 EP Ion Drive (1)    Power 240    Fuel Use 48%    Signature 84    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 345,000 Litres    Range 32.3 billion km   (124 days at full power)

Size 6 Box Launcher (16)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC0-R1 (1)     Range 690k km    Resolution 1
Stealth Launched (16)  Speed: 12,000 km/s   End: 44.1m    Range: 31.8m km   WH: 9    Size: 6    TH: 56/33/16

Thermal Sensor TH7-77 (40%) (1)     Sensitivity 77     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  77m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 20% of normal

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

There whipped 1 up right there. Note that this is EXTREMELY low tech (done with SMing in all tech less than 10001rp. Its a race that I threw into my game for the sole purpose of culling my civilian shipping a bit. Help pull back the reigns of lag and such) The cloak in particular is very large for the ship, and the missile tech is pretty meh.
But a couple important points. While it probably won't be taking much down on its own, a couple of these can reliably take down a few enemy civilian ships. Note the Cryo Berths? Those are so you can rescue the survivors (intel anyone?)
Its not super great at detecting stuff, but most of what it will be going after will have fairly large thermal signatures.
Also the missiles I threw together for these things are rather garbage intentionally (on the accuracy front) to give my "defenders" more of a chance. So you might consider reworking them a little.

Other thoughts are. You CAN do a reduced size launcher version with a magazine (a gang of them is still effective, and a similarly sized and stealthed ship could act as an ammo collier) however the striking power is greatly reduced (this one for example can run with 4-6 min sized launchers, and carry 24 missiles. The collier I threw together can carry 48 more in a ship with the exact same detection characteristics, and I threw in an additional maint storage, cause its just kinda a support ship).


But all in all, not too much is gained. If you're trying to get too close to an enemy homeworld, this is easy pickings for fighters and FACs. And with the thermal output of the ship at top speed, a basic single DST will pick it up at ~30m, and a lot of NPR planets I've come across often have well over 10-20DSTs (so more like 300-600m).

However, other food for thought. with its TCS of 16, a fighter resolution AS of size 10 (quite a bit larger than what most NPRs will be carrying) of equivalent tech will be picking it up from ~30m, and dedicated 16 resolution sensor from 40m. So going by normal NPRs who regularly use 5-10k resolution sensors, of size 2-3. You can actually sneak these in surprisingly close to enemy fleets out on the prowl.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 12:21:27 PM by linkxsc »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: The viability of Stealth Missile and Energy Attack Craft in Aurora
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2015, 04:08:23 AM »
I think that this really depends on how you play the game...

In any of my games this is a perfectly viable tactic. I usually play several factions against each other and the only AI are the special races so no AI NPRs. Building large sensors are not practical in my game for several reasons... research and time is one and inflated cost is a second. My active sensor modules have a house rule that for each size of sensor strength there needs to be an increasing number of power cells to drive them (sort of a realism reasons). When it comes to research it is not possible to just switch research into new projects so they need to gradually build up year by year if needed, that also means that large research heavy sensors will take an inordinate amount of time to research which are another realism option.

This leads to sensor strength generally being shorter and thus Stealth ships very important and powerful.

If you also control both sides it is easier to simulate the possibility of fire missiles with passive rather than active sensors, thus you can use ships more like submarines. I like it that way...

The good thing with Aurora is that you can make it into anything you like, there are no set rules you MUST follow and you may place as many regulations on your actions as you please. There are no real optimum way to build ships before you make up the rule set you are adhering to.

If you play against NPR this tactic also work pretty well since NPR don't really use very long ranged low resolution sensors, not like a player would if it was a multi-player game where you try to utilize the game mechanics as is to its fullest. In a multi-player game you could probably use stealth on smaller crafts to make them smaller than 50t and then launch these missiles from reduced size or box launchers. Larger ships would need very long range missiles to stay undetected.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2015, 04:13:45 AM by Jorgen_CAB »