80kt Battleship and the infernal Maintenance Life

[Pixel1191 (OP)]

After about 90 years ingame of making do with Cruiser and Destroyer sized Vessels and getting plenty of them shot to slag, I've decided to go for something bigger for a change.

With my Escorts being 10kt, Destroyers and Destroyer Leaders 15kt, Cruisers at 30kt and Heavy Command Cruisers (with jump drives) at 50kt, I figured 80kt would make a good size, the same as the brand new fleet carriers. But I'm a little stuck.

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Texas class Battleship      80,000 tons       2,180 Crew       28,790.1 BP       TCS 1,600    TH 8,835    EM 9,090
5521 km/s    JR 10-50      Armour 15-165       Shields 303-378       HTK 507      Sensors 48/36/0/0      DCR 88      PPV 282.95
Maint Life 0.03 Years     MSP 4,599    AFR 6400%    IFR 88.9%    1YR 143,864    5YR 2,157,963    Max Repair 8149.1 MSP
Commodore    Control Rating 5   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   FLG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Morale Check Required   

Battleship Jump Drive Mk1     Max Ship Size 80400 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 10

Battleship Engine Mk1 - MCF (3)    Power 8835    Fuel Use 9.99%    Signature 2945    Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 7,104,000 Litres    Range 159.9 billion km (335 days at full power)
Xi S101 / R378 Shields (3)     Recharge Time 378 seconds (0.8 per second)

Particle Lance-18 (8)    Range 320,000km     TS: 8,000 km/s     Power 55-5    ROF 55       
Twin 25cm XR Laser Turret R/1.1m/T7k/917t (5x2)    Range 480,000km     TS: 7000 km/s     Power 32-10     RM 70,000 km    ROF 20       
Triple Gaus Cannon Turret Mk3 - R50k/200t/67% Turret (3x15)    Range 50,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 50,000 km    ROF 5       
BFC-AS-Laser Mk3 - R480k/T6k/75t (3)     Max Range: 480,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
BFC-AS-Particle Mk3 - R360k/T6k/56t (2)     Max Range: 360,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     97 94 92 89 86 83 81 78 75 72
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor R31-PB10 (40)     Total Power Output 1,244    Exp 7%

Active Sensor-PD Mk3 R1.6m/HS1/50t (2)     GPS 60     Range 18.5m km    MCR 1.7m km    Resolution 1
Active Sensor-CC Mk3 R430m/HS100/1250t (1)     GPS 150000     Range 430.3m km    Resolution 100
EM Sensor EM2-36 (1)     Sensitivity 36     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  47.4m km
Thermal Sensor TH2-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54.8m km

ECCM-4 (3)         ECM 40


As you can see, 0.03 years of maintenance life. Now I have fast supply ships that can keep up with the fleet....but they have to supply the whole fleet, not just big mother here. I'm a bit of a loss and fairly resigned to a complete redesign, including a redesign of the engines and corresponding drop in speed, meaning the rest of the fleet will have to go slower. But I can't really see any other meaningful way to win the space needed for more engineering spaces.

A reduction in armament would make the whole thing moot. My Cruisers carry four of the same Particle Lances and 3 of the same Laser Turrets, so if I take anything away from the BB, I might as well just leave it be entirely. I've already left out the usual Emergency Cryo pods and Boat Bay (for either rescue shuttles or boarding assault craft) that my command ships usually carry.

The jump drive is the big issue, of course, taking 20% of total ship size. But making a Jump Tender of corresponding size would require the generation of MORE yard space for a substantial ship...and I already have a worker shortage.

[unkfester]

Do you really need it to go that distance and travel 335 days on only 90 days maintenance. Just saying

[Squigles]

Just as an FYI, a commercial vessel can carry a military jump drive and still be commercial. If you’re having yard space troubles and want to unload the jump drive shunt it to a civilian design. Just remember you won’t be able to do a squadron transit and will also need a commercial jump drive tender along for the ride, to jump your military tender (commercial ship with a military drive can’t self-jump).

[Caesar]

You have a max repair of 8149.1 MSP with only 4599 MSP of maintenance space, which means you can't afford to repair your most expensive component even once, so you'll have to add more engineering spaces or maintenance storage. Furthermore, how failure rate works is determined by the percentage of your ship that is dedicated to engineering spaces. I don't know how much you dedicated to your cruisers, but you'll want to match it percentually.

[DeMatt]

Hm...

• Cut back on crew endurance?  You've got 24 months of that, but "only" 12 months of fuel.
• I'm not convinced turreting the lasers actually helps you much - they only track 1500km/s faster than the ship itself, and they're 1000km/s faster than their BFCs.  Mounting the lasers individually would save you the space of the turret gear.
• I don't see a point-defense BFC to go with the gauss turrets.

Note that (in C#) a jump tender only needs enough jump engine capacity to jump ships - it doesn't need to be the same size.  So if the jump engine is 16kt in size for 80kt of capacity, the jump tender can be 16kt + shipstuff, not 80kt.

[Pixel1191 (OP)]

Oversights, oversights everywhere!

Some corrections made and comments:
- New Fire Control for the Laser Turrets to match the tracking speed of the turrets, an oversight on my part, got lost in the numbers. 
- Standardization is the name of the game. The turrets are used in my beam Destroyers, all Cruisers, the Battleship as well as STO Units and are manufactured in bulk, by Factories, so they're staying.
- Fire Control was added for the Point Defense, again....oversight.
- I've gone away from my rigid squadron structure for the capital ships. Taking the squadron size down from 10 to 4 (idea now being a carrier, a battleship and two escorts per battle squadron, or two BBs depending) with the smaller units staying in larger formations.
- Fuel endurance is indeed an issue. I'd actually NEED much more, as dictated by the huge systems surrounding me that I have to go through. Tankers are mandatory part of every squadron or fleet going out, so it's not a huge deal.
- Dedicacted jump tenders are too much of a faff for me. I'm using heavily sub-divided fleets and squadron transiting them is already a giant hassle without having to detach and rearrange single non-combat ships.

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Texas Mk2 class Battleship      80,000 tons       2,396 Crew       25,412.8 BP       TCS 1,600    TH 8,835    EM 9,090
5521 km/s    JR 4-50      Armour 15-165       Shields 303-378       HTK 630      Sensors 48/36/0/0      DCR 156      PPV 372.06
Maint Life 2.10 Years     MSP 15,089    AFR 674%    IFR 9.4%    1YR 4,575    5YR 68,632    Max Repair 2000.9 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 500 tons     Cryogenic Berths 2,000   
Commodore    Control Rating 5   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   FLG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Flight Crew Berths 40    Morale Check Required   

Battleship Jump Drive Mk3     Max Ship Size 80400 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 4

Battleship Engine Mk1 - MCF (3)    Power 8835    Fuel Use 9.99%    Signature 2945    Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 6,202,000 Litres    Range 139.6 billion km (292 days at full power)
Xi S101 / R378 Shields (3)     Recharge Time 378 seconds (0.8 per second)

Particle Lance-18 (8)    Range 320,000km     TS: 8,000 km/s     Power 55-5    ROF 55       
Twin 25cm XR Laser Turret R/1.1m/T7k/917t (9x2)    Range 480,000km     TS: 7000 km/s     Power 32-10     RM 70,000 km    ROF 20       
Triple Gaus Cannon Turret Mk3 - R50k/200t/67% Turret (4x15)    Range 50,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 50,000 km    ROF 5       
BFC-AS-Laser Mk4 - R480k/T8.4k/105t (3)     Max Range: 480,000 km   TS: 8,400 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
BFC-AS-Particle Mk3 - R360k/T6k/56t (2)     Max Range: 360,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     97 94 92 89 86 83 81 78 75 72
BFC-AM Mk3 - R60/T28/44t (4)     Max Range: 60,000 km   TS: 28,000 km/s     83 67 50 33 17 0 0 0 0 0
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor R31-PB10 (40)     Total Power Output 1,244    Exp 7%

Active Sensor-PD Mk3 R1.6m/HS1/50t (2)     GPS 60     Range 18.5m km    MCR 1.7m km    Resolution 1
Active Sensor-CC Mk3 R430m/HS100/1250t (1)     GPS 150000     Range 430.3m km    Resolution 100
EM Sensor EM2-36 (1)     Sensitivity 36     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  47.4m km
Thermal Sensor TH2-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  54.8m km

ECCM-4 (3)         ECM 40

Strike Group
2x Rampant Mk2 Assault Shuttle   Speed: 10007 km/s    Size: 5

Cutting back on the jump drive freed up so much damn space, I not only managed to add significant engineering spaces, but also increase the armament even more, add the corrected fire controls AND add my hangar and cryo berths back in.

 I may reconsider my entire order of battle and rearrange the squadron sizes.

[kilo]

I like your battleship, but there are three minor things I would look into. The smaller one is the primary flight control. It does not help you, as it only improves service time of bombers. It might be good for role play reasons, but it is dead weight, when it comes to game play.
The second things is your lasers. My gut tells me that you are using them to solve the one problem that particle lances have, their abysmal damage per minute. Particle lances as well as spinal lasers are great at defeating armor, but shields and their continuous regeneration can be a problem. This is why I would look into high damage per minute anti-shield weapons. Your lasers might simply not be the best choice for that job. My gut tells me you are intending to fight close to your particle lances' maximum range of 320k km. At this range your 18 lasers will hit for 12 damage each and fire 3 times per minute causing 648 damage per minute minus the misses.
Instead of lasers, you could bring about 33 strength 2 particle beams hitting for 33*2*12 = 792 damage. This would improve your anti-shield capabilities by 20% and give you some secondary anti missile system at the same time.
Lastly, I would give your long range BFCs the maximum range you can. They are just a few tons and cheap compared to the guns they are controlling. Overbuilding those will increase your hit rate at longer ranges significantly. Your particle beam BFCs will have a hit chance at 320k km of one in nine shots. If you would use them with your laser BFCs, you would hit one in three.

PS: Now you can stone me for suggesting the removal of your lasers.

PPS: If you have the intention to kill enemies with particle beams at max range, I would consider to reduce the firepower of the ship and add a few shield generators. Shield generators can be very strong when fighting at particle range, as the hit rates and the damage per shot of most weapons is low due to extreme ranges. Sufficient shield generators might be able to tank that.

[DeMatt]

Something else I just noticed:  you have 1244 power (31 power times 40 reactors), but only need 130 (5 power times 8 lances, plus 10 power times 9 turrets).  Remember that you need power to cover the per-increment charge, not the total charge.  Though backups can be helpful given that it's a battleship and expects to get shot at.

[kilo]

Something else I just noticed:  you have 1244 power (31 power times 40 reactors), but only need 130 (5 power times 8 lances, plus 10 power times 9 turrets).  Remember that you need power to cover the per-increment charge, not the total charge.  Though backups can be helpful given that it's a battleship and expects to get shot at.

Nice spot. I did not see that.

By the way, the lasers are over-engineered as well. They require 16 power to fire and have recharge rate 5. Building them with recharge rate 4 would give the same performance @ 80% the cost.

[Pixel1191 (OP)]

I'm not looking to min-max the damage per second, a bit of RP is involved. I decided early on to have a mix of lasers in turrets and particles (mainly because I've never done the latter before and only dabbled in lasers) for my non-missile ships. My main enemy also hasn't yet deployed any shields. Altho their ally may, haven't gotten into any major scraps with them quite yet.

The (massive) over-supply of power stems partly from bad experiences after losing an entire squadron due to them getting their reactors (including the redundancy) holed and being rendered almost helpless. But also partly because I apparently misunderstood how power generation and usage works. I guess flying blind doesn't always work quite perfect, I'll have some reading to do

The point about the fire control for the beams is understood, that's actually fairly helpful, as it means less individual components. I'll just make a single general purpose fire control for all my anti-ship weapons. Same reason as above, just didn't dive deep enough into the mechanics to do it properly.

Where are you getting the flight control, tho? Doesn't have one.

[serger]

FLG? That's Flag Bridge, not Primary Flight Control.

[kilo]

The (massive) over-supply of power stems partly from bad experiences after losing an entire squadron due to them getting their reactors (including the redundancy) holed and being rendered almost helpless. But also partly because I apparently misunderstood how power generation and usage works. I guess flying blind doesn't always work quite perfect, I'll have some reading to do

I am experimenting with internal bulkheads to absorb penetrating damage and secondary explosions. My internal bulkhead is a small magazine, that gets tons of armor added to the point that it cannot carry any missiles. It might be completely inefficient and dumb tonnage-wise, but it increases the internal HTK of my current corvette by a factor of 3. This is how I try to defend my valuable and expensive internal modules.
I would personally not add that many redundant modules, which can explode the ship. But that might be just me, who optimizes his power plant for tonnage efficiency and not safety and such.

FLG? That's Flag Bridge, not Primary Flight Control.

I read that he was having a command ship, which lead me to the conclusion, that the flag bridge was there.

[brondi00]

I'm not looking to min-max the damage per second, a bit of RP is involved. I decided early on to have a mix of lasers in turrets and particles (mainly because I've never done the latter before and only dabbled in lasers) for my non-missile ships. My main enemy also hasn't yet deployed any shields. Altho their ally may, haven't gotten into any major scraps with them quite yet.

The (massive) over-supply of power stems partly from bad experiences after losing an entire squadron due to them getting their reactors (including the redundancy) holed and being rendered almost helpless. But also partly because I apparently misunderstood how power generation and usage works. I guess flying blind doesn't always work quite perfect, I'll have some reading to do

The point about the fire control for the beams is understood, that's actually fairly helpful, as it means less individual components. I'll just make a single general purpose fire control for all my anti-ship weapons. Same reason as above, just didn't dive deep enough into the mechanics to do it properly.

Where are you getting the flight control, tho? Doesn't have one.

I usually just design two main bfc.  Literally "main battery FC" with 1x track speed and 4x range and "point defense fc" with 4x track and 1x range.

There is some deviation from that a little depending on tech and sometimes there'll be a special use one off fc.  But mostly that's it.  If I'm feeling extravagant I'll do a DP fire control that is 4x track and 4x range.  But that's pretty rare.

As for the powerplants id consider cutting back.  The more HS something is the more likely it is to be damaged and in the case of a powerplant they can explode and destroy the ship.  So making that more likely for extreme redundancy doesn't make sense to me.

[serger]

FLG? That's Flag Bridge, not Primary Flight Control.

I read that he was having a command ship, which lead me to the conclusion, that the flag bridge was there.

It was an answer about this note:

The smaller one is the primary flight control. It does not help you, as it only improves service time of bombers. It might be good for role play reasons, but it is dead weight, when it comes to game play.

Pixel1191's Texas class have no primary flight control, so I surmised that you mistook Flag Bridge (FLG tag) with primary flight control (PFC tag).

[Rich.h]

I think you have too many different things going on on that ship to make it fully effective in a battleship role. Of course this is providing we are both viewing battleships as big hulking beasts that can take a pounding and give it back twice as hard. So unless these are for RP reasons I would ditch the following things.

1. Flag bridge - Offload it to a proper command ship
2. Hanger - Again offload it to a dedicated carrier
3. Some of the PD - That is alot of gauss turrets and they are sucking away tonnage you can fill with big guns, give them to PD corvettes or something that travel with you.
4. Fuel - If you already have some support ships in the fleet, let them carry a little more fuel, again it gives space for guns.

My current game I am one tech level ahead of you, when going for a battleship I jumped into the 125kt range, and my design spec was to have the most absurd guns I could manage.

Richellieu class Battleship      124 731 tons       4 094 Crew       66 063.9 BP       TCS 2 495    TH 7 207    EM 12 000
12037 km/s    JR 5-250      Armour 50-222       Shields 400-600       HTK 688      Sensors 280/280/0/0      DCR 382      PPV 311.08
Maint Life 2.23 Years     MSP 86 730    AFR 475%    IFR 6.6%    1YR 23 507    5YR 352 602    Max Repair 15015 MSP
Troop Capacity 2 000 tons     
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 4 months    Morale Check Required   

Zheng Thrust Military Jump Drive Class 8     Max Ship Size 125250 tons    Distance 250k km     Squadron Size 5

Zheng Thrust  Military Class 14 Fusion Drive (2)    Power 30030    Fuel Use 35.85%    Signature 3603.60    Explosion 21%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 000 Litres    Range 40.3 billion km (38 days at full power)
Goyal-Bargi Class 7 Shield Generator (1)     Recharge Time 600 seconds (0.7 per second)

Cole Armaments Class 4 Plasma Carronade (16)    Range 600 000km     TS: 12 037 km/s     Power 96-8     RM 10 000 km    ROF 60       
Twin Baurai-Sungte Class 1 Gauss Cannon Turret (3x10)    Range 50 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 50 000 km    ROF 5       
Han Armaments Gatekeeper (4x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32 000 km/s     ROF 5       
Shroff-Katira Class 5 FireCon (4)     Max Range: 600 000 km   TS: 20 000 km/s     98 97 95 93 92 90 88 87 85 83
Shroff-Katira Class 1 FireCon (3)     Max Range: 60 000 km   TS: 20 000 km/s     83 67 50 33 17 0 0 0 0 0
Fuchs-Alt Class 7 Fusion Reactor (2)     Total Power Output 2 289.8    Exp 5%

Kadni Sensor Systems Search Sensor Class 6 (1)     GPS 24000     Range 198.7m km    Resolution 100
Kadni Sensor Systems Missile Sensor Class 1 (1)     GPS 48     Range 19.1m km    MCR 1.7m km    Resolution 1
Frolov Systems Class 5 TH Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 280     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  132.3m km
Frolov Systems Class 5 EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 280     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  132.3m km

ECCM-5 (10)         ECM 50

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

So for an extra 50% tonnage I am able to blast away two of your ships in a single volley, in addition I can happily absorb plenty of fire from your ships should you maybe hit me with 4-5 of them at once. along with the huge speed avantage this design has, considering with beams speed is everything.

The only things I carry lots of, which you already found out, is MSP. At these sizes you are firing a lot of weapon systems each time, that is alot of chances for things to break onto of the already bad AFR that comes naturally with big military ships. Fuel and spare MSP can be carried by a supply ship 20mkm away. I only need enough to last me maybe 4-5 days at a time plus a small travel budget. Anything more is less boom.