Author Topic: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs  (Read 3455 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« on: June 02, 2013, 06:33:56 AM »
I want to build AWACS sensor command ships for my fleets and E2C Hawkeye "fighters" for my fighter squadrons. Are there any good designs for early mig-game craft around? My offensive power is mainly missile based. I do use beam weapons for a defensive role.

Also, how do I use the sensor ships to control the missiles fired by other ships and my fighters?
 

Offline metalax

  • Commander
  • *********
  • m
  • Posts: 356
  • Thanked: 4 times
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2013, 06:39:47 AM »
You can't transfer control of missiles away from the ship that fired them. The closest you can get is to use missiles with on board sensors.

As for Awacs designs, I usually just take my current standard heavy ship and replace it's weaponry with sensors and some additional armour/shields as it will usually become the primary target for incoming fire.
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2013, 06:44:31 AM »
You can't transfer control of missiles away from the ship that fired them.

Wow, I can't believe we don't have that functionality. The military already does that now, you would think a space borne empire would retain the capability. Is it a programming problem? or just a capability that was overlooked?
 

Offline sloanjh

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • *****
  • Posts: 2805
  • Thanked: 112 times
  • 2020 Supporter 2020 Supporter : Donate for 2020
    2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2013, 02:35:47 PM »
You can't transfer control of missiles away from the ship that fired them.

Wow, I can't believe we don't have that functionality. The military already does that now, you would think a space borne empire would retain the capability. Is it a programming problem? or just a capability that was overlooked?

I don't remember it ever being explicitly discussed by Steve when he was putting this stuff in, but I'm pretty sure it's a game balance issue.  He made a conscious decision to require a fire control on every ship that will fire missiles, while contacts from search sensors can be shared among the ships in the system.  The gameplay idea is to make the cost to a ship for the capability to fire missiles to be not just the cost of a launcher.  At that point, one can insert whatever technobabble one wants to justify the decision.

Note that there were balance issues earlier when players were able to "stack" volleys of missiles and change the target of a missile in flight to make huge missile waves that were very difficult to defend against.  This led to the current targeting rules.  The fire control rules address a similar issue: the play balance for missiles is that they're powerful tactically but expensive strategically (logistically).  Making the change you suggest would push the balance in the wrong direction: they'd become more tactically powerful and logistically cheaper.  Many players already believe that a "beams only" empire has a tough time competing with a missile-based empire - this would make it worse.

John

PS - For the "beams only" advocates out there:  I didn't say it couldn't be done, I just said a lot of people thing it's a big challenge :)
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2013, 03:29:18 PM »
LOL, I wish I had known it couldn't be done 200 fighters ago. Now I need to scrap and rebuild every single one of them.  :-[
 

Offline Starfyre

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • S
  • Posts: 26
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #5 on: June 02, 2013, 09:00:07 PM »
There's still some major advantages to sensor fighters.   if you're using long-range missiles, it gives you a fast, disposable platform that lets you light up enemy fleets without letting them know where your ships are for pursuit and return fire.   a missile firing ship doesn't need to light off active sensors to target something with it's MFCs, the target just needs to be in range of something with actives on.   They're also a good way of poking your nose into something potentially dangerous without risking a full-sized ship or fleet.   seconding metalax for awacs ships.   nothing like being able to see everything for 2000mkm in all directions.

As for beam fleets vs missile fleets, I've found they're really dependent on tech level and design choices wrt your opponent.   if you don't have faster ships then your opponents you might as well pack it in and go home, unless you're *absolutely certain* your beam weapons outrange your enemy's beam weapons, either due to particle beams, huge lasers, and/or ECM/ECCM, because the enemy will just hang back at maximum range and nibble your fleet to death, if you do have the speed and range advantage, a bare handful of beam ships can annihilate entire fleets by themselves.   I'm kinda torn on the vs.  missiles thing, though.   with good shields and a focus on gauss-based PD and tracking buffs, I've seen beam ships absorb immense numbers of missiles and still close through to the kill.   They're the only things I've seen that can survive the antimissile avalanches that happen sometimes.   my general experience is that beam fleets end up being a lot cheaper in the long run as long as you're willing to accept inevitable losses due to RNG wrath and the occasional missile storm, just due to not flinging thousands of minerals at your foes every time you click the task group open fire button.   Even a terrible beam weapon will never run out of ammo.
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2013, 05:16:29 AM »
Well, at this point I have to completely redesign my fighters. Should I just go with light very very fast beam or Gauss fighters instead of missiles and box launchers? 

I already have an AWACS ship, so I don't think I need the Hawkeye under current guidelines. If I do, that is a much easier fix than what I am facing now.
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

  • Registered
  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1381
  • Thanked: 3 times
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2013, 08:07:53 AM »
It's been about 4 years since the last discussion that involved missile guidance hand-off.  Not sure is Steve is ready yet to consider it since it will be a significant rewrite of the missile handling code.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1563.0.html
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline Starfyre

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • S
  • Posts: 26
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #8 on: June 03, 2013, 04:47:25 PM »
Quote from: sonofliberty link=topic=6187. msg63220#msg63220 date=1370254589
Should I just go with light very very fast beam or Gauss fighters instead of missiles and box launchers? 

Probably box launchers for fighters.   I've found fighters are a bit small for a beam fit unless you've got fairly good tech.   not for the guns, but for the mass associated with ECM/ECCM, and firecons.   I've had a lot of luck running FACs with beam armaments, though.   for a thousand ton fac, you can generally get a couple weapons, decent ewarfare equipment, and often enough spare tonnage to put 2-3 layers of armor on while being *almost* as fast as a fighter and generally better ranged.   I know the general consensus is against putting armor on light craft, but I've had fac designs where adding 4 layers of armor takes me up a whole fifty tons, and that makes you a helluva lot more durable in combat.   the FAC is still gonna die when the enemy decides to unload on it, but if that fac dies in two or three salvos instead of one, or takes 2-3x groups of missiles instead of one, that means your fac group dies slower, and groups that die slower can kill more during that.   I've also had a lot of luck building 800 ton FACs as well, if I need to pour on more speed.   you can also prefab FAC parts in construction factories, which means that with a decently sized FACyard (6-10x1000ton slipways) you can pump out FACs in absurd numbers as long as your minerals hold out.   Certain spoilers are a lot easier when you can drown them under 300 dual meson FACs a year.
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2013, 07:03:47 PM »
I have designed a couple of new fighters, my problem now seems to be designing missiles to work with the missile armed fighter. Is there a good missile design thread around? I can't seem to get the balance between size-speed-damage-agility that I want. I may want too much for my tech though.

Here is the fighter platform I will likely go with:

F15Eagle class Fighter    405 tons     3 Crew     95.4 BP      TCS 8.1  TH 100  EM 0
12345 km/s     Armour 1-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 81%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 6    5YR 97    Max Repair 25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months    Spare Berths 3   
Magazine 12   

20 EP Internal Fusion Drive (5)    Power 20    Fuel Use 59.4%    Signature 20    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 3.7 billion km   (3 days at full power)

Size 4 Box Launcher (3)    Missile Size 4    Hangar Reload 30 minutes    MF Reload 5 hours
F15BMissile Fire Control FC18-R5 (1)     Range 18.6m km    Resolution 5
Churchill Anti-ship Missile (4)  Speed: 21,600 km/s   End: 15.1m    Range: 19.5m km   WH: 5    Size: 3    TH: 72/43/21

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 Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes


Ignore the missile, I have not finalized a design yet. Though I do like the speed for it. I am ok with the range. The to hit numbers really suck. I really need a good missile design tutorial. My old missiles did fine against the precursors, but they are not suitable for fighter use.
 

Offline Starfyre

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • S
  • Posts: 26
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #10 on: June 03, 2013, 09:13:32 PM »
The missiles are going to be pretty short ranged either way because of your fire control, yeah?  pump up your missile engine fuel use.   for 18mkm max range, you want an engine that's basically as powerful as you can make it, which puts you in the PD missile design regime.   sure, you'll burn through fuel fast, but at those ranges it's the difference between . 1 fuel storage and . 2 fuel storage.   anything you lose in space for more fuel you more than gain in increased accuracy and effectiveness at penetrating hostile point defense.   Depending on how much missile space you have devoted to engines, you might be able to upscale the warhead on that thing as well.   21kkm/s is pretty slow for a fusion-era shipkiller.   I'd recommend doing the same thing for your fighter engines, but I dunno.   maybe you need a really long-ranged fighter.
 

Offline metalax

  • Commander
  • *********
  • m
  • Posts: 356
  • Thanked: 4 times
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #11 on: June 04, 2013, 05:58:00 AM »
Assuming you have kept your missile techs in line with your engine tech(so WH:8 Agility:100 Fuel:0.5 Max power:x3) then you should be able to design something like the following for the short-ranged anti-ship role.

WH 1.125 Fuel 0.175 Agility 1.1 size 1.6 x6 power fusion engine
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 38
Speed: 48000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 6 minutes   Range: 16.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.85
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1824%   3k km/s 608%   5k km/s 364.8%   10k km/s 182.4%
Materials Required:    2.25x Tritanium   4.6x Gallicite   Fuel x437.5

Development Cost for Project: 685RP

For your fighter I'd recommend using max power engines and adding some more small fuel tanks to bring the range back up a bit. I'd also put a fighter engineering space on the design as it should almost entirely remove the chance of breakdowns over the fighters expected lifetime.
 

Offline alex_brunius

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1240
  • Thanked: 153 times
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #12 on: June 04, 2013, 06:12:12 AM »
Assuming you have kept your missile techs in line with your engine tech(so WH:8 Agility:100 Fuel:0.5 Max power:x3) then you should be able to design something like the following for the short-ranged anti-ship role.

WH 1.125 Fuel 0.175 Agility 1.1 size 1.6 x6 power fusion engine
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 38
Speed: 48000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 6 minutes   Range: 16.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.85
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1824%   3k km/s 608%   5k km/s 364.8%   10k km/s 182.4%
Materials Required:    2.25x Tritanium   4.6x Gallicite   Fuel x437.5

Development Cost for Project: 685RP
That's quite a huge bit of agility, are these missiles really required to reliably hit targets way faster then 10k km/s? Wouldn't most of those MSPs be better spent on WH instead considering Size 1 AMMs normally work fine against FTRs and FACs?
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #13 on: June 04, 2013, 06:19:15 AM »
My thoughts on fighter doctrine are to use them well in advance of the fleet. My standard fleet speed is 6 kkps. The fleet pops in through the wormhole, AWACS detects enemy ships at extreme range (2-3 billion kilometers), the decoy fleet(heavily armored and shielded BIG ships loosely based on Blue Emu's "Rocks") heads directly for the hostiles with their active sensors lit up, ~6 hours later the fleet heads in the same direction, at 500 million to 1 billion km the fighters are deployed, at 200 million km the CAs launch an alpha strike by which time the fighters should have already closed to their combat ranges and they launch a TOT(Time on Target) strike to coincide with the CA missile arrival. Beam armed CLs and Gauss armed FFs clean up stragglers. The CVs and the CC(command cruiser, my AWACS) stay farthest back covered by Gauss PD DDs and FFs. I do still have some AMM armed PD DDs and FFs, but they are being phased out in favor of Gauss CIWS and PD.

Anyway, here is a slightly revamped F-15:

F15Eagle class Fighter    455 tons     4 Crew     117.4 BP      TCS 9.1  TH 144  EM 0
15824 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 91%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 8    5YR 125    Max Repair 25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months    Spare Berths 2    
Magazine 12    

24 EP Internal Fusion Drive (6)    Power 24    Fuel Use 93.7%    Signature 24    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 2.1 billion km   (37 hours at full power)

Size 4 Box Launcher (3)    Missile Size 4    Hangar Reload 30 minutes    MF Reload 5 hours
F15BMissile Fire Control FC18-R5 (1)     Range 18.6m km    Resolution 5
Churchill Anti-ship Missile (4)  Speed: 21,600 km/s   End: 15.1m    Range: 19.5m km   WH: 5    Size: 3    TH: 72/43/21

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 Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes


Here is my Air Superiority Fighter F-16A

F16A-Falcon  class Fighter    455 tons     6 Crew     235.8 BP      TCS 9.1  TH 120  EM 0
13186 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 91%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 21    5YR 314    Max Repair 131 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months    Spare Berths 0    

24 EP Internal Fusion Drive (5)    Power 24    Fuel Use 93.7%    Signature 24    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 2.1 billion km   (44 hours at full power)

F1610cm C0.3 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 150,000km     TS: 13186 km/s     Power 3-0.3     RM 5    ROF 50        3 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1
F16Fire Control S01 175-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 350,000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     97 94 91 89 86 83 80 77 74 71
F16Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 4    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
 

Offline sonofliberty (OP)

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • s
  • Posts: 109
Re: Sensor and AWACS/Hawkeye designs
« Reply #14 on: June 04, 2013, 06:28:42 AM »
I had ignored engineering spaces thinking that if a fighter gets hit, it is dead. It will not likely get "damaged". Are engineering spaces necessary for maintenance? Shouldn't the CV or PDC provide the maintenance? That is how we did it in the USN.