Branching this off from
Plasma carronades - who uses them? as the post was becoming more of a tactical discussion.
2 opposing fleets have been setup in alpha centauri, each one has a single Cornwallis class ship, one carronade variant, one 10cm infra red laser variant, also in each fleet is an observer to allow firing after damage to active sensors in the test vessels, the observer is as follows:
Observer class Fast Scout 2,900 tons 78 Crew 546 BP TCS 58 TH 306 EM 0
5275 km/s Armour 2-18 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/36/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 0
Maint Life 3.72 Years MSP 235 AFR 33% IFR 0.5% 1YR 27 5YR 398 Max Repair 153 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
306 EP Ion Drive x1.5 (1) Power 306 Fuel Use 182.98% Signature 306 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 17.0 billion km (37 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1) GPS 96 Range 5.8m km MCR 627k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR62-R86 (1) GPS 9632 Range 62.3m km Resolution 86
EM Detection Sensor EM6-36 (1) Sensitivity 36 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 36m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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The design is barely useful for scouting, but has been given the best available sensors already in service with my fleet.
After setting up a new empire named "test drone" in alpha centauri III and giving it the laser fleet, the carronade fleet is put into alpha centauri IV 600 million km away, and been given the order to advance to Alpha centauri III, contact is made 340.6 million km away as the strength 36 EM sensor of the observer picks up the resolution 86 active of the opposing observer ship.
Expected behaviour of the enemy is to advance toward our incoming fleet at full speed, after the test drone is observed to do this the fleet is sent to rendezvous with it rather than Alpha centauri III.
Active sensor contact is finally made with the enemy fleet 185 million kilometers out from Alpha centauri III.
As each fleet advances toward each other, thermal contact is finally made at -40 million kilometers.
At -25 million kilometers each cruiser switches it's own active sensors on, as they are now within the range of their own resolution 20 sensors, fleets are now 1 hour away from contact. At their combined speed they will close 30,000 kilometers per 5 second tick. This should have a large bearing on what will finally happen when they reach energy range.
At -5.8 million kilometers to contact fleets are now 14 minutes apart.
At 492,000 kilometers fleets are now 1 minute from contact, at this point i make a backup so I can rerun the scenario as needed.
At -70k kilometers a critical decision must be made, either fire next increment at 35k range, each carronade doing 2 damage at 79% hit chance, then wait a gruelling 25 seconds for recharge, at which point the enemy will reach optimal range for lasers and literally shred the ship to pieces, or wait untill the next increment and suffer one salvo from enemy lasers but produce, full damage, this latter option is decided to be worth the risk.
After movement each ship fires, I'm not particularly sure which ship fired first, it looks like it was the laser variant.
Damage to carronade ship is as follows:
15 armour out of 59
2 Plasma Carronade
1 Active sensor MR25-R20
1 Ion drive
Speed slowed to 2645
Laser Ship:
23 armour of 59
6 reactor
15 laser
7 crew quarters
5 fuel storage
1 thermal sensor
1 fire control S04 24-12000
2 ion drive
1 crew quarters small
1 fire control S04 96-3000
1 Active sensor MR5-R1
Speed slowed to 1763
The remaining firecontrol only has 79% hit chance at 10,000km, and only 58% at 20,000 km, this may be critical.
Sadly initial salvo wasn't enough to completely cripple the laser ship, but the speed difference would allow the carronade ship to stay out of range of the laser one, IF it can survive long enough.
The carronade fleet is ordered back to Alpha Centauri in an attempt to increase range between enemy fleet and itself.
Next increment:
A mistake is made in fire control assignment, and most lasers fail to fire as they wait for reactor power to recharge a few lasers.
Increment 3:
Laser drone still fails to fire:
Increment 4: Still fails to fire: I'm not sure why, all lasers are recharged, assigned to correct fire control, fire control is assigned to the right ship, and the open fire button has been selected.
Increment 5: Carronade ship cleanly finishes off laser ship, laser ship fails to return fire.
Well that was a failure, I'll need to rerun this test when i work out what went wrong.