I've been thinking about how to monitor those reaches of space where you either just can't or don't want to station a full defense squadron. While there's no replacement for proper reaction forces or PDCs, cycling your jump point defenses is both a logistical effort and a (usually minor) strain on resources and combat-ready warships.
The natural alternative for long term, low risk or far away monitoring is the buoy-type missile, whom can fulfil this role good enough, unless you want to monitor something for longer than a couple years, or even permanently. I thought about desining a commercial sensor picket to be rid of the maintenance, but due to their limitations a commercial picket is either prone to be blasted into thousands of tiny bits or a waste of perfectly fine cadets. Since I strife for roleplay consistency, I tried to make it without any crew at all:
Buoy class Prototype Satellite 50 tons 0 Crew 1 BP TCS 1 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
MSP 0 AFR 10% IFR 0.1% Max Repair 45 MSP
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 1 Range 750k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposesWhat you see here is the first attempt on one such design. The active sensor deployed here is a 0.1 size, EM 75 (max), grav 10 sensor with resolution 1. You can easily increase the resolution to 20 and higher and still spot anything that realistically has a jump drive, and even an EM 5 sensor covers the full deviation of standard jump engines around a jump point (50k). The only true limitations for these sensors are their 0.1 HS to negate crew requirements. If you restrain yourself on the grav strength to levels 10 and 12, you'll also face a meager 10 research point and virtually no resource costs.
Aside from this sensor, the design is literally empty.
These 'buoys' should provide you with ample sensor coverage of choke points and sufficient early-warning capabilities to spot any intruder as many systems ahead as you feel comfortable deploying these.
This design offers various advantages over ye olde sensor buoy:
- It doesn't have a maximum reactor lifespan and therefor remains indefinetly or until destroyed
- It requires no overhauls or overhaul schedules like a FAC or other military picket
- For the long run, the costs are significiantly smaller than the high boronide costs for large reactor buoys
- Although the design screen shows them to be 50 tons large, they're actually much smaller (5 tons, or 2 MSP) than maximised sensor buoys with similiar sensor strength (although I don't think this has an impact on calculations)
- Even with grav strength 10 and EM sensitivity 5 they on par or even superior in performance compared to a end-technology buoy of the same size, dependant on how long the buoy is designed to last
- The RP needed for a low-grav and low-size active sensor is a marginal 10, and increases in EM sensitivity neither increase research nor construction costs
- A sufficiently large enough sensor network on choke points could allow sparser warship allocations and lead to less military expenses / larger offensive capabilities for the same defense value
- To make the enemy waste a couple AMMs or stall him, you can patch a couple layers of armour on the design without going over the one hullspace. Depending on your technology level this can range from mere six to a wopping thirty-nine levels of armour for marginal cost!
- This asumes that he even spots the probe (which he will with any AMM sensor, to be fair)
I couldn't help but also see a few negative points:
- They never dissipate unless destroyed
- However: One could handwave their maintenance similiar to how civilian maintenance is, or use them for an alien faction in fiction to symbolise otherwise superior technology
- Since they're not military and can't be classed as fighters, they require a shipyard to be built
- However: Costly enough ships (fleet soucts, capital ships) should be able to build them as side projects in astonishingly quick speeds
- Because only 0.1 sensors (for zero crew) and 10 to 12 grav strength allow for the minimum cost, their sensor range is sort-of compromised
- However: The grav strength can be increased if you're fine with higher RP and construction costs to increase range, and EM sensitivity or resolution are good enough to render them fully able in their field of work. You could put ten sensors with different resolutions on these buoys, without going over the 1 HS designation
- The minimum design (only a 0.1 sensor) to make it a true crewless buoy doesn't include a maintenance storage
- However: I have tested this design in open space and haven't received a single breakdown for five buoys over the course of five years despite the maintenance warning in the design screen
In conclusion, I believe that these buoys are against the game rules as Steve imagined them. Used in small numbers they could be rightfully employed on well-traversed trade routes or highly populated systems where their maintenance can be explained better, but everyone can make up their own mind about whether to ease the logistical strain on oneself a bit and rather focus on other, more interesting (and still logistically challenging) aspects of Aurora.
