Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Bureau of Design => Topic started by: Llamageddon on October 14, 2020, 12:02:24 PM
-
I've been reading that railguns make good early tech weapons. I've not used them before and haven't designed anything with beam control since VB6. Is this any good for my first military offensive ship? It's mostly to build a bunch to look a bit scary to a neighbouring NPR so they don't bully me.
Amphitreite class Fast Attack Craft (P) 1,000 tons 35 Crew 119.1 BP TCS 20 TH 100 EM 0
5001 km/s Armour 4-8 Shields 0-0 HTK 7 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 5
Maint Life 0.58 Years MSP 7 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 12 5YR 180 Max Repair 50.00 MSP
Midshipman Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required
C7 P125 Magneto-P Drive EP100.00 (1) Power 100.0 Fuel Use 172.94% Signature 100.00 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 97,000 Litres Range 10.1 billion km (23 days at full power)
12cm Railgun V20/C1 (1x4) Range 30,000km TS: 5,001 km/s Power 6-1 RM 20,000 km ROF 30
R20 S12 Beam Fire Control R30-TS5000 (1) Max Range: 30,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 67 33 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R1 (1) Total Power Output 1 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Fastest fire control I can get is 5000m/s at 4x size. I only need 10bn engine range to get to my nearest colonies. If I loose the armour it goes down to 862 tons, should I try and put on an active sensor or make a seperate FAC with active sensors to work with these, or field them with a much larger sensor ship?
Edit 2: I edited out my incorrect assumptions about power draw.
Edit: I hope I've understood power draw and rate of fire correctly. How do I increase rate of fire? Does that come with capacitor recharge rate?
I also just realised my Railgun and Fire Control range can get up to 40,000. Is it worth losing one point of armour to get the extra 10,000 firing range?
-
You need an active sensor somewhere in your fleet to be able to fire at all. You can't shoot at something that's not on active sensors.
Personally, I would cut deployment time some; why have 3 months deployment when you only have fuel for less than a month?
Your railgun has power 6-1, which means it needs 6 power to fire, and charges 1 power per 5 second increment. So it can shoot once every 30 seconds. You can improve this with higher capacitor tech, but then you'll also need a bigger, or a boosted power plant.
-
Thanks for the reply and advice. I was thinking of 1 power every second, forgot the game always calculates over 5 second increments. For some reason I thought that going below 3 months made no difference to tonnage, not sure where I got that idea. I'm assuming it's always best to go with maximum range when possible.
-
- I agree with what Barkhorn has said, however I would also like to point out that your MSP is only 7, so you're going to suffer for that. Long-short of it is that when stuff breaks it eats into MSP, your max repair is 50.00 MSP so your going to be in a lot of trouble if that component is your engine because you can't fix it. Also, firing weapons now uses MSP, except for missiles, so your gun will eat into that too.
- I'd suggest losing a layer or two of armor, but that's more a preference thing. I don't really armor my FACs... then again I really don't build FACs and when I do they're usually considered expendable or non-combat so YMMV.
-
It depends what you mean by maximum range. Maximum range on the gun is the distance beyond which it would do less than 1 damage per hit. Maximum range on the fire control is the range beyond which it is no longer possible to hit your target. Firing near your FC's max range, your accuracy will be very poor, so it can be advantageous to have more FC range than weapon range; it will still improve your accuracy.
-
Thanks again, I'm glad I asked here. What do you think is the best MSP solution for a short deployment craft in this situation?
-For 7t I can cover engine repairs with MSP 60 but AFR of 200%
-For 10t I can get MSP 13 but AFR of 40%
I really don't know about armour, I feel the need to use up that extra 100t with some armour and make it a nice round 1000t for the range. I feel like armour might be helpful as I am only going 5000km/s but I don't really know. It's almost 20 BP cheaper without armour, either way I can fit a tiny active search sensor on it and hope something else is doing the main spotting.
How do either of these look
Mk II - Long(er) range with 1 armour and high MSP for likely repairs on longer journeys.
Amphitreite LR class Fast Attack Craft (P) 1,000 tons 38 Crew 96.3 BP TCS 20 TH 100 EM 0
5002 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 HTK 8 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 5
Maint Life 1.68 Years MSP 60 AFR 200% IFR 2.8% 1YR 25 5YR 381 Max Repair 50.00 MSP
Midshipman Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months Morale Check Required
C7 P125 Magneto-P Drive EP100.00 (1) Power 100.0 Fuel Use 172.94% Signature 100.00 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 188,000 Litres Range 19.6 billion km (45 days at full power)
12cm Railgun V20/C1 (1x4) Range 40,000km TS: 5,002 km/s Power 6-1 RM 20,000 km ROF 30
R20 S12 Beam Fire Control R40-TS5000 (1) Max Range: 40,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 75 50 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R1 (1) Total Power Output 1 Exp 5%
S12 E6 Active Search Sensor AS4-R20 (1) GPS 24 Range 4.1m km Resolution 20
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Or shorter range with armour and more engineering space to reduce chance of failure in the first place:
Amphitreite SR class Fast Attack Craft (P) 1,000 tons 40 Crew 111.7 BP TCS 20 TH 100 EM 0
5004 km/s Armour 3-8 Shields 0-0 HTK 6 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 5
Maint Life 1.60 Years MSP 13 AFR 40% IFR 0.6% 1YR 6 5YR 89 Max Repair 50.00 MSP
Midshipman Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months Morale Check Required
C7 P125 Magneto-P Drive EP100.00 (1) Power 100.0 Fuel Use 172.94% Signature 100.00 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 96,000 Litres Range 10 billion km (23 days at full power)
12cm Railgun V20/C1 (1x4) Range 40,000km TS: 5,004 km/s Power 6-1 RM 20,000 km ROF 30
R20 S12 Beam Fire Control R40-TS5000 (1) Max Range: 40,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 75 50 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R1 (1) Total Power Output 1 Exp 5%
S12 E6 Active Search Sensor AS4-R20 (1) GPS 24 Range 4.1m km Resolution 20
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
-
It depends what you mean by maximum range. Maximum range on the gun is the distance beyond which it would do less than 1 damage per hit. Maximum range on the fire control is the range beyond which it is no longer possible to hit your target. Firing near your FC's max range, your accuracy will be very poor, so it can be advantageous to have more FC range than weapon range; it will still improve your accuracy.
Ahh, that is interesting, so it might be worth considering the next step up of 60,000km for for my FC, I could lose some armour, as xenoscepter suggested, to make that happen. Thanks for all the feedback, I'm learning a lot.
-
The second one is dead if the engine breaks down, 13msp can't fix a 50msp engine. Both are dead if the engine is knocked out in battle; battle damage takes double msp to repair.
The active sensor is weird. What good is it to get an active sensor contact 4 million km away, when you can only shoot 60,000km? And at resolution 20, you will never see missiles. The first time you'll hear about missiles is when your ships all explode. I would make a resolution 1 active sensor so you can spot missiles, and I would make a FAC leader with no weapons, but big passive sensors so you can find the enemy.
4 armor may as well be no armor against particle lances. Lasers will also punch right through if you are close enough to shoot back. It's pretty good against similar tech railguns, and not horrible against missiles though.
-
Okay, I think I'm almost ready to start production after all this good advice ;D. Active sensor was me just thinking about ships rather than missiles, though is there much this can do against missiles at only 5000km/s tracking and engine speed? Fac leader and smaller sensors sounds perfect. Just double checking, if my max railgun range is 40,000km then a 60,000km beam control will actually help? I won't be wasting shots sitting at 60,000km and not hitting anything? I've not actually seen combat in Aurora yet since VB6 and have forgotted most of the details.
Edit Re: MSP. I was sort of hoping on just not being deployed long enough to risk low MSP, thinking if an engine was taken out I was probably dead anyway but that might be a better fighter mentality than for use with FAC.
-
If your railgun range is 40,000km and your FC is 60,000km, you still can't fire past 40,000km. But you will have better accuracy than if you used a 40,000km FC.
-
Thanks for all your help
Unfortunately having a slightly higher FC range isn't viable with my current tech, even with no armour or MSP the extra 100 tons is too much for me to get the range to reach my neighbouring colonies. I decided to go with the extra armour rather than range for now but I'm sure there will be many iterations. 100 MSP was viable too so I can repair an engine damaged in battle, in theory... it sounds like firing my weapon will immediately not make that possible, I need to read up on this. I decided to go 1 HS higher with the search sensor as a 20,000 km/s missile could have crossed nearly all of the smaller ASS's range in 5 seconds, I hope this was the correct choice.
You saved me a lot of mistakes and head-scratching, thanks for your time. This is what I am putting into production for now if you are interested in the final prototype:
Barkhorn class Fast Attack Craft (P) 1,000 tons 38 Crew 112 BP TCS 20 TH 100 EM 0
5002 km/s Armour 3-8 Shields 0-0 HTK 6 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 5
Maint Life 2.22 Years MSP 100 AFR 200% IFR 2.8% 1YR 27 5YR 409 Max Repair 50.00 MSP
Midshipman Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months Morale Check Required
Pragmatic C7 P125 Magneto-P Drive EP100.00 (1) Power 100.0 Fuel Use 172.94% Signature 100.00 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 89,000 Litres Range 9.3 billion km (21 days at full power)
12cm Railgun V20/C1 (1x4) Range 40,000km TS: 5,002 km/s Power 6-1 RM 20,000 km ROF 30
Compromise R20 S12 Beam Fire Control R40-TS5000 (1) Max Range: 40,000 km TS: 5,000 km/s 75 50 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R1 (1) Total Power Output 1 Exp 5%
Macroscope S12 E6 Active Search Sensor AS2-R1 (1) GPS 3 Range 2.1m km MCR 192.7k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
When I make a maintenance supply craft I think I will name it xenoscepter ;D.
-
Don't be afraid to go faster than your max fire control speed. For a FAC, speed is armor.
-
Just posting an update, I think the Mk II ticks all the boxes. Traded armour for speed, extended the FC range for better accuracy and added enough MSP to repair engine in combat with some left over for firing (Not sure how big a effect that has on MSP use).
Barkhorn Mk II class Fast Attack Craft (P) 1,000 tons 40 Crew 148.8 BP TCS 20 TH 151 EM 0
7563 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 HTK 7 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0 PPV 5
Maint Life 3.28 Years MSP 169 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 24 5YR 356 Max Repair 75.60 MSP
Midshipman Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months Morale Check Required
C6 P150 Magneto-P Drive EP151.20 (1) Power 151.2 Fuel Use 208.31% Signature 151.20 Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 110,000 Litres Range 9.5 billion km (14 days at full power)
12cm Railgun V20/C3 (1x4) Range 40,000km TS: 7,563 km/s Power 6-3 RM 20,000 km ROF 10
Beam Fire Control R64-TS7000 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 7,000 km/s 84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor R3 (1) Total Power Output 3 Exp 5%
Macroscope S12 E6 Active Search Sensor AS2-R1 (1) GPS 3 Range 2.1m km MCR 192.7k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
-
That's kinda slow for a Magnetoplasma Drive FAC. It's not unusual to have mainline warships moving that fast around that tech level; I tend to opt for around 6,000 km/s. I would aim for >10,000 km/s, but you appear to have range constraints, so that might be problematic. Two layers of armour is also generally a good idea if the hostile forces have missiles, since the AI tends to opt for 5 or 6 strength warheads that manage two layers of penetration. Even if they don't, paper-thin armour is not conducive to getting within railgun range.
Honestly, if I were in your position, I'd opt for missile boats with box-launched ASMs and AMMs. If that's not to your taste, though, I'd recommend splitting the current design into an escort variant with a pair of 10cm railguns and a fast-tracking fire control, and an anti-ship variant with a strength-2 particle beam and a long-range fire control. You'll be able to engage at significantly greater range, and you won't need to sacrifice point-defence capability to do that either.
-
Interesting. I could always just give up on Railgun FAC at my tech level and put them on a bigger ship. There were some discussions that Railguns were a good early tech to use on ships and one of the best non-missile weapons to use on fighters so I thought I'd give it a go. I could vastle drop the range as I am about to get hangars at last. That might let me get them up to a better speed and maybe have some space for armour.
Do you think mounting some railguns on turrets and putting them on a much larger and more resistant vessel might be better use of this tech at my current level? These were originally built in a panic as I had no navy and had bumped into a NPR two systems from my homeworld.
-
You cannot turret railguns.
Honestly, I don't really agree that railguns are a good early game offensive weapon. The range disadvantage versus lasers is just really painful at the low speeds achievable. And low amounts of armor mean you can't afford to take hits on the way in. At absolute minimum tech (this was VB6), I won a 2 to 1 tonnage victory playing against myself because one side had 10cm infrared lasers and the other had 10cm railguns with level 2 range.
FACs exacerbate all of those problems. Smaller ships aren't actually any easier to make fast than bigger ones (for a given range, they are actually HARDER to make fast). And they don't have the space for thick armor (which takes up a smaller fraction of a ship's space as the ship grows) or redundant components. So you have a ship that isn't actually fast and cannot afford to get hit, armed with a weapon that FORCES it to get hit. This...is a bad combination.
Higher tech levels mitigate some of the problems outlined, but don't necessarily solve them. FACs, as has been pointed out in this thread, are better armed with missiles and the like.
Think of it this way: FACs are fragile, so they don't want to sit there and trade shots with the enemy. That means they should be designed for alpha strike, not DPS. Railguns are DPS weapons, not alpha weapons.
-
I see your reasoning. What would you recommend I do with the research I've done into railguns to get the best use out of them? Now I realise they can't be turreted and my FACs are going to be pretty vulnerable I'm scratching my head thinking what they can be used for.
-
The thing about Beam FAC's, and their biggest advantage in my opinion, is that it takes only 1 to destroy a ship with no weapons or ammo left.
I really wouldn't ever give them a range larger than 2 Billion km either cause 1 Billion km seems like more than a reasonable distance to start the engagement with the enemy.
Big railguns on big ships that move fast are more than fine. If your ships move as fast as the enemy ships you will never really have a reason for wanting turrets. Turrets are best for anti-missile duty. I find myself boosting my military ships up to 1.25 engine power a lot, very useful for non-turreted big weapons like railguns and particle beams to hit the target. Also for those spinal mount lasers.
Also you can making boarding party FAC's that work very well. They are pretty much missiles that capture the enemy ships.
-
With capacitor three, a 10cm railgun is an excellent and incredibly cheap antimissile weapon. I forget how much tech you need to invest in gauss cannons and turret tracking before they can compete, but since you already HAVE the railgun tech, that is a nice usage. And if you put higher range mod on the 10cm rails, they are a decent secondary battery for proper energy armed warships. You can also use railgun FACs to escort your missile or laser or particle beam FACs; just don't expect them to kill anything except maybe another FAC.
And as DFNewb said, railguns themselves aren't bad weapons. They are just not great at low tech and are particularly ill-suited to FACs.
-
I see your reasoning. What would you recommend I do with the research I've done into railguns to get the best use out of them? Now I realise they can't be turreted and my FACs are going to be pretty vulnerable I'm scratching my head thinking what they can be used for.
Nerf the range and launch them from carriers. They would make excellent fleet escorts/point defense craft.
-
People have said that 10cm Railguns are great for point defence, should I drop the railguns on these down to 10cm as only 1 damage is needed or keep the 12cm for faster ROF, twice the damage and 1.5x the range, which I assume will be more useful if they get into range of an enemy FAC? Carrier tech is next on my list so I will be dropping the range way down.
-
Early game 10cm rails are kind of great, absolutely go for it. I rarely regret using them.
-
12cm have a WORSE rate of fire than 10cm, not better. The ROF number is how many seconds it takes to fire. ROF 5 can fire every increment. ROF 10 can fire every other increment.
-
Silly me, I misread it. Makes sense for missile defence then. I'm making some corvettes with AMMs I might put the 12cm ones on then, so they can do more damage to FACs that get in close.