Exploration Fleet

[martinuzz (OP)]

After 35 years of isolation in the Sol system, one of my 3 (rather paranoid) nations finally thinks it is ready to start exploring other systems
These are my gravsurvey designs. I tried to build them for survivability, as well as limited strike-while-fleeing-home capability.

My jump-capable exploration vessel

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Pathfinder MkI class Gravsurvey Ship    10,000 tons     877 Crew     2884.4 BP      TCS 200  TH 350  EM 0
5000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 55/90/2/0     Damage Control Rating 9     PPV 32
Annual Failure Rate: 88%    IFR: 1.2%    Maint Capacity 1622 MSP    Max Repair 400 MSP    Est Time: 2.52 Years
Magazine 96    

J10000(3-50) Military Jump Drive E5     Max Ship Size 10000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Naval Engine MkIV (TH35%) (10)    Power 100    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 35    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 410,000 Litres    Range 123.0 billion km   (284 days at full power)

Twin Gauss Cannon R2-67 Turret (2x8)    Range 20,000km     TS: 40000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
AMBFC S04 32-25000 (2)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

Size 8 Missile Launcher (25%/x100) (4)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 4000
Missile Fire Control FC192-R50 (1)     Range 192.4m km    Resolution 50
S8 MIRV MkI (4)  Speed: 3,100 km/s   End: 500m    Range: 101.6m km   WH: 0    Size: 8    TH: 10 / 6 / 3
Geoscan MkI (4)  Speed: 0 km/s   End: 360d    Range: 0m km   WH: 0    Size: 8    TH: 0 / 0 / 0
Scout Drone MkI (4)  Speed: 50,000 km/s   End: 147.7m    Range: 443.1m km   WH: 0    Size: 8    TH: 83 / 50 / 25

Missile Sensor MkIII (1)     GPS 108     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Ship Sensor MkIII (1)     GPS 7200     Range 183.3m km    Resolution 50
Thermal Sensor TH5-55 (1)     Sensitivity 55     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  55m km
EM Detection Sensor EM5-90 (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  90m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (1)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

ECM 40

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
I hope it's MIRV missiles, with 3 strenght 4 submunitions each, pack enough of a surprise punch.

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Lucky Shot MkI
Missile Size: 8 MSP  (0.4 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 3100 km/s    Endurance: 500 minutes   Range: 93.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.5667
Second Stage: Size 1.75 Submunition MkI x3
Second Stage Separation Range: 8,500,000 km
Overall Endurance: 8 hours   Overall Range: 101.5m km

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Submunition MkI
Missile Size: 1.75 MSP  (0.0875 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 12
Speed: 34300 km/s    Endurance: 4 minutes   Range: 8.6m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.05
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 411.6%   3k km/s 132%   5k km/s 82.3%   10k km/s 41.2%
It will be accompanied by 2 of those on it's gravsurvey missions:

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Boyscout MkI class Gravitational Survey Vessel    5,000 tons     419 Crew     1548.1 BP      TCS 100  TH 175  EM 0
5000 km/s     Armour 2-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/2/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 36
Annual Failure Rate: 53%    IFR: 0.7%    Maint Capacity 726 MSP    Max Repair 150 MSP    Est Time: 3.77 Years

Naval Engine MkIV (TH35%) (5)    Power 100    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 35    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 235,000 Litres    Range 141.0 billion km   (326 days at full power)

Twin Gauss Cannon R2-67 Turret (3x8)    Range 20,000km     TS: 40000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
AMBFC S04 32-25000 (3)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

Missile Sensor MkIII (1)     GPS 108     Range 19.4m km    Resolution 1
Improved Gravitational Sensors (1)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

ECM 40

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesThey carry some extra supplies and fuel for their Pathfinder, as good boyscouts should.
I wonder if 1 turret per FC is enough to have a decent enough defense to give me time to flee..
Any obvious design flaws I have overlooked?

[Vanigo]

For starters, you overengineered those turrets; the tracking speed is much higher than the tracking speed of your fire control, and the excess does you no good.
Are you planning on splitting these guys up and surveying multiple points at once? If you are, you should be using CIWS instead of separate turrets and fire controls; the only disadvantage is their inability to cover other ships in the fleet, which is a nonissue in a fleet of one.
36 missile damage isn't going to do any real damage to a serious warship. You could knock off a star swarm soldier, maybe, but what's the point in that? The drones and buoys are nice to be able to launch, but you only need one launcher for that.
It doesn't much matter if you're going to ditch the missiles anyway, but you should reduce the separation range. If you fire at a ship moving away from you, the submunitions will run out of fuel before they hit.

Personally, I go for small, mostly-expendable gravsurvey ships, with civilian drives to save fuel. My current design costs me something like a third as much as your little guys, and has 50% more survey ability and a slightly higher speed, despite my significantly lower tech level. Of course, if it runs into trouble it's even more screwed than your ships, but I don't see your guys surviving any meaningful threat, anyway. Actually... maybe a squad of precursor missile destroyers would run out of ammo before it killed a fleet; that's some substantial missile defense if they're all together. But anything with any kind of energy weapons will demolish these things.

[Brian Neumann]

The extra tracking speed is not all bad, if you are planning to upgrade your beam fire control speed in the next few years.  In that case the cost of the upgrade is fairly low as you are only replacing the beam fire control and not all of the turrets as well.  Kurt does have a good point however as to the survivability of your ships.  If they stay together then you are wasting most of the survey potential of the fleet.  Personnally I like to put a few points of armour and a ciws or two on my geo survey ships.  Along with civilian engines this keeps them a civilian design that has a chance of surviving a single ship missile attack.  The grav survey ships tend to be a little larger and slower as I need to put some decent amount of engineering spaces so they can stay out for a few years before returning to get overhauled.

Brian

[martinuzz (OP)]

You have good points.
A lot of it is on purpose though.
The extra tracking speed on the turrets will soon be matched by new firecontrols. I just wanted to have a design ready to build now, instead of wait for the research to finish. I'll refit them when it's done.

The fleet is not intended to split up in a system, they will work on surveying it as a group, at least until all planets have been visited and scanned for signs of life.

The missiles are not really intended to harm a serious warship.
Having read Steve's TN campaing, where an armed design is developed to deal with the frustration of not being able to shoot in situations of opportunity, I thought I'd add them to shoot at a threat while fleeing (with them in pursuit, the missiles won't run out of fuel), or to attack a target of opportunity when I find one. It's only one shot anyways, 12 strenght 4 warheads.

I did set the separation rate a bit too high maybe, but i want the carrier missile to stay well out of interception range.
I did realize that the submunitions might have a bit too little fuel in the case of fleeing opponents (although it's main use is against enemies in pursuit), so my next design will have some more fuel surplus, and a somewhat shorter separation range.

I did also read the thread 'my gravsurvey ships are too big', which argues that smaller, faster gravsurvey ships are more efficient than larger slower ones.
However, that whole comparison does not take into account the survivability factor against hostiles. That's why I tried to put a decent Gauss defense on it.
It might not be enough though. When I research larger jump drive squadron size, I'm thinking about adding an AMM version of the Boyscout to the group. That would also be able to use it's AM missiles against beam-armed ships.
Because you're right, if I encounter any beam-armed ships that are faster than me, I'm toast. Unless my ECM hurts their FC that badly that they have to close into my Gauss Turrets' range (at 20k km, unlikely)

[martinuzz (OP)]

With research on jump squadron size 5 underway, my exploration fleet will soon be expanded by two of these:

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Girlscout MkI class Gravitational Survey Vessel    5,000 tons     512 Crew     1654.5 BP      TCS 100  TH 175  EM 0
5000 km/s     Armour 3-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/2/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 16
Annual Failure Rate: 53%    IFR: 0.7%    Maint Capacity 776 MSP    Max Repair 150 MSP    Est Time: 3.92 Years
Magazine 272    

Naval Engine MkIV (TH35%) (5)    Power 100    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 35    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 235,000 Litres    Range 141.0 billion km   (326 days at full power)

AMM Launcher MkI (R6) (16)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
AMM FC38-R1 (8)     Range 38.9m km    Resolution 1
Scout Drone MkI (2)  Speed: 50,000 km/s   End: 147.7m    Range: 443.1m km   WH: 0    Size: 8    TH: 83 / 50 / 25
AMM MkI (256)  Speed: 44,000 km/s   End: 1.1m    Range: 3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 293 / 176 / 88

Improved Gravitational Sensors (1)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

ECM 40Their AMM have a 3m km range, which will be sufficient to be able to shoot at enemy beam ships in case of emergency.
Their AMFC is pretty oversized, to compensate for any enemy ECM, at least, until I research decent ECCM.
They are also designated as collier, and will each carry 2 additional scout drones for the Pathfinder as, for I think 4 is a bit on the low side in comparison to the fleet's action radius.

With the addition of these 2 ladies to the fleet, the boyscout model will be revised, to lose it's gravitational sensor in favour of more armor (up to thickness 5).
By then, research into fire control tracking speed 10000km/s will be finished as well, so I will upgrade the Boyscout's FC to match their turrets.
Somehow, I have a feeling that the fleet has a quite decent chance of surviving hostile first contacts, and be able to reports back.

[UnLimiTeD]

Entirely depends on the contact.
If you encounter a [spoiler:3srbkf2b]Starswarm Mothership or Invaders[/spoiler:3srbkf2b], you might need more.

[Vanigo]

Sure, that fleet could survive a minor attack, but it costs as much as a half-dozen destroyers. And it still doesn't have the firepower to deal with more than one or two enemy ships. And it's pretty bad at gravsurveys, all things considered. By keeping your fleet together, you'll slow your survey down a lot - it's fastest to split your fleet up into individual ships, because that way they spend more time surveying and less moving between points, proportionally. If you're that determined not to lose any survey ships, sweep the system with an actual fleet before you survey.

If you're just dead-set on this overbuilt underpowered fleet of frigates, the girlscout could be improved. You've got way too many fire controls; it's very strange to see a salvo with two or fewer missiles. You should have, at most, one fire control for every four launchers, and even that's probably too many. They don't really have enough magazine space - even planning to save countermissiles by letting some incoming missiles through to be swallowed by your gauss cannons (which you definitely should), that's not enough countermissiles for an extended engagement - and with no offensive missiles to speak of, the only way to survive a battle against ships with missiles is to run them out of ammo in an extended engagement. Adding more countermissiles would also increase the damage you can do to enemy beam ships. As things stand, you could take down something like 15 star swarm before you ran out of ammo, which is a drop in the bucket. Fighting precursor beam ships isn't much better; you could knock out one, maybe two, but they have a tendency to come in threes. You might actually consider designing (still size 1) dual-purpose missiles with a strength 2 warhead; you'd sacrifice a bit of point defense, of course, but it'd double the damage you can do to enemy ships. And raise the range while you're at it, I'd say; most ships worth worrying about can close through a 3mkm missile envelope pretty quickly.

[UnLimiTeD]

Yeh, more magazines.
I'd recommend having a dedicated Gravsurvey, guarded by a dedicated Guard ship.
You can always fill a few backup ASMs in the magazines aswell.

[Hawkeye]

Some time ago, I too tried to arm my survey ships but soon come over to the view that arming them is a forlorn hope. Now my approach is quite different.

I use a rather large Survey command ship that will provide jump-capability and also has a flag bridge, so I can form specialised survey task forces. This one also has biiiig eyes

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Long Beach class Survey Command Ship    12,000 tons     1165 Crew     3571 BP      TCS 240  TH 253.44  EM 0
4400 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-46     Shields 0-0     Sensors 132/132/0/0     Damage Control Rating 20     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 57%    IFR: 0.8%    Maint Capacity 3720 MSP    Max Repair 900 MSP    Est Time: 3.29 Years
Flag Bridge    

J12000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 12000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
General Dynamics Class 88/25 MPD Engine (12)    Power 88    Fuel Use 96%    Signature 21.12    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 156.3 billion km   (411 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor MR110-R16 (1)     GPS 4032     Range 110.9m km    Resolution 16
Active Search Sensor MR253-R120 (1)     GPS 25200     Range 253.0m km    Resolution 120
Thermal Sensor TH12-132 (1)     Sensitivity 132     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  132m km
EM Detection Sensor EM12-132 (1)     Sensitivity 132     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  132m km

ECM 20
Each Survey Command Ship is accompanied by two Survey Cruisers (actually Survey Carrier)

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Brooklyn class Survey Support    10,000 tons     652 Crew     1984.6 BP      TCS 200  TH 211.2  EM 0
4400 km/s     Armour 3-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 22/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 15     PPV 10
Annual Failure Rate: 53%    IFR: 0.7%    Maint Capacity 3861 MSP    Max Repair 88 MSP    Est Time: 12.33 Years
Hangar Deck Capacity 3000 tons    

General Dynamics Class 88/25 MPD Engine (10)    Power 88    Fuel Use 96%    Signature 21.12    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,550,000 Litres    Range 290.6 billion km   (764 days at full power)

Twin 30mm/L20/R2 Gauss Cannon Turret (1x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 16-16000 (1)    Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     69 37 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Short Range Anti-Missile Sensor Mk. II (1)     GPS 21     Range 2.3m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
Each of those carries two Survey Craft like the one below.

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Mosquito class Survey Craft    1,000 tons     95 Crew     343.4 BP      TCS 20  TH 21.12  EM 0
4400 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/11/1/1     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 16%    IFR: 0.2%    Maint Capacity 107 MSP    Max Repair 100 MSP    Est Time: 3.17 Years

General Dynamics Class 88/25 MPD Engine (1)    Power 88    Fuel Use 96%    Signature 21.12    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 93.8 billion km   (246 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour
and one scout craft to look at planets that might have an alien population or take a peek at an unknown contackt (thats what the active sensor is for) and are fast enough to outrun most enemy ships after contact has been established.

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Bug Eye class Scout    1,000 tons     93 Crew     326 BP      TCS 20  TH 42.24  EM 0
8800 km/s     Armour 2-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 22/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 16%    IFR: 0.2%    Maint Capacity 102 MSP    Max Repair 88 MSP    Est Time: 3.31 Years

General Dynamics Class 88/25 MPD Engine (2)    Power 88    Fuel Use 96%    Signature 21.12    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 93.8 billion km   (123 days at full power)

Medium Range Anti-Ship Sensor Mk. II (1)     GPS 7350     Range 80.9m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-22 (1)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
This gives me 4 Survey Craft and 2 Scout Craft per Task Force

[Vanigo]

You don't specialize your survey ships?

Another thing I might as well point out is that, in my experience, survey points are usually far enough from the inner system that gravsurvey ships hardly ever get attacked. It's the geosurvey ships that are in real danger.

[Hawkeye]

You don't specialize your survey ships?

Another thing I might as well point out is that, in my experience, survey points are usually far enough from the inner system that gravsurvey ships hardly ever get attacked. It's the geosurvey ships that are in real danger.

Nope no specialisation (in that case, larger survey ships DO get specialized).
In my experience, one part or the other would sit a great deal of time inside the hanger, so I figured, keeping them all busy might be more efficient. Also, keeping the crew doing something useful is allways better than having them picking their noses for half a year . It´s bad enough with the big ships!
Another point is, loosing one will not cripple the survey capability of such a squadron by loosing 50% of either their Geo or Grav survey capability.

I had some grav survey ships attacked, but yeah mostly its the Geos that draw unwanted attention upon themself.

[Steve Walmsley]

I have used large armed survey ships, medium fast survey ships and small carrier-based survey ships in different campaigns. They are all useful in different ways in in different situations. Also, Aurora is partly a role-playing game so one of my design critieria is usually what would be most fun or interesting to try, regardless of whether it might be ideal.

Steve

[waresky]

I have used large armed survey ships, medium fast survey ships and small carrier-based survey ships in different campaigns. They are all useful in different ways in in different situations. Also, Aurora is partly a role-playing game so one of my design critieria is usually what would be most fun or interesting to try, regardless of whether it might be ideal.

Steve

+1

[martinuzz (OP)]

My races paranoia proved realistic.
Soon after discovering the first alien civilization, the Mirabar Empire, as they call themselves, only 2 jumps from Sol, my 1st Exploration fleet was intercepted by 3 alien vessels. all 3 ships were 6200 tons, although one ship got a different classification than the other 2. They moved at around 3800km/s, giving my fleet an advantage of speed, at 5000km/s
At first, they seemed harmless enough, albeit annoyingly curious.
They stalked my fleet, as it went from one survey point to the next, coming to a halt a uncomfortable 20k km from my fleet as it stopped to survey a location.
20 or so days passed, with my fleet doing nothing wrong, except being in their system, and using active sensors, when suddenly the alien fleet moved away from my fleet, to come to a halt at 3m km, and started firing salvos of 1x3 + 2x6 size 4 missiles at my fleet. My ECM 6 must have really hurt their FC, for them to fire anti-ship missiles from that close.
The first wave of missiles caught me unprepared, for I had forgot to set them to autofire.
However, my gauss cannons did respond, and managed to take out all of the 15 missiles from the salvo.
I immediatly set the aliens to hostile, and my AMM launchers started spitting out their missiles.
It was complete overkill on the incoming enemy missiles, so I soon shut down most of the AMM missile launchers, keeping only 2 launchers active.
I figured my gauss cannons would take care of any missiles that came through, and this way I would save on ammo.
Some minutes into the battle, my MIRV missile separated from it's second stage, and 12 strenght 4 missiles proceeded to the enemy ship that had an active sensor.
Not much later, it was hit by 12 missiles, taking out it's FC or 3 missile launchers, and reducing it's speed to 2000km/s.
The alien ships seemed to have no anti-missile capability whatsoever.
Having 3 less incoming missiles to worry about, I ordered my fleet to advance to the enemy.
Not soon after that, the alien ships ran out of missiles. It proved wise, to have shut down most launchers, as I was almost out of ammo myself.
I fired the remaining AMM missiles at one of the other enemy ships, and proceeded full speed towards the wounded sensor ship.
I finished it at point blank range, using my Gauss cannons.
A second alien ship met the same fate some 10 minutes later, as I caught up with it.
The last alien ship was kind enough to save me some fuel, by moving into my point blank range, as it tried to pick up survivors from the other ship.

Performace of my exploration fleet in it's first encounter was admirable. However, lack of AMM ammo would be a problem in larger engagements. My new design already has double the ammo capacity as the original Girlscout, but it seems it still is not quite enough.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, flying through an NPR system with Active sensors on is indeed considered a hostile act.
However, it seems to me you vastly outteched them.