Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: jseah on April 12, 2011, 02:04:00 PM
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As suggested from the missile thread in Academy, I have a few ship designs for critique.
Notes:
My engine tech is higher than everything else apart from research rate. Internal Confinement is not representative of the overall tech level I have.
I also have infeasibly low shield tech.
I am using a HTK 2, size 1 magazine. HTK 1 makes them only carry 1 point more.
Design paradigms: (can be changed)
25% of ships are engines. Fuel efficiency is sacrificed for more speed.
Main offensive weaponry will be missiles. A close-in support and final missile defence frigate is awaiting laser tech.
A heavily armoured flagship with sensors will be around to paint targets. The idea is that the flagship will stay ~1 million km behind while the fleets duke it out under it's sensor cover. (MR70-R1, MR211-R16, MR408-R60)
- Auxiliary gunboats with smaller sensors are present. Just in case. Perhaps even act as decoys with their 11kkm/s speed.
- Scout frigate class with passive sensors in awaiting a new shipyard and thermal reduction / cloaking tech.
A dedicated fleet of jumpship, coiller and tanker support will be available. Perhaps even maintenance support on long missions.
The 'Lancelot' missiles have a 50kkm, R30 active sensor.
Missile Frigate:
Chimera class Frigate 6,000 tons 724 Crew 1028.2 BP TCS 120 TH 690 EM 0
5750 km/s Armour 3-29 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 40
Annual Failure Rate: 72% IFR: 1% Maint Capacity 428 MSP Max Repair 60 MSP Est Time: 3.98 Years
Magazine 265
Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (6) Power 115 Fuel Use 78% Signature 115 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres Range 57.7 billion km (116 days at full power)
Size 5 Missile Launcher (8) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC64-R20 (2) Range 64.4m km Resolution 20
'Lancelot' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (53) Speed: 16,000 km/s End: 62.5m Range: 60m km WH: 9 Size: 5 TH: 106 / 64 / 32
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
Missile Destroyer:
Ettin class Destroyer 10,000 tons 1233 Crew 1632.84 BP TCS 200 TH 1150 EM 0
5750 km/s Armour 3-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 17 PPV 75
Annual Failure Rate: 114% IFR: 1.6% Maint Capacity 714 MSP Max Repair 60 MSP Est Time: 4.08 Years
Magazine 570
Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (10) Power 115 Fuel Use 78% Signature 115 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 275,000 Litres Range 63.5 billion km (127 days at full power)
Size 5 Missile Launcher (15) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 50
Missile Fire Control FC64-R20 (1) Range 64.4m km Resolution 20
'Lancelot' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (114) Speed: 16,000 km/s End: 62.5m Range: 60m km WH: 9 Size: 5 TH: 106 / 64 / 32
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
AMM Frigate:
Wyrm class Escort Frigate 6,000 tons 602 Crew 1306.2 BP TCS 120 TH 690 EM 0
5750 km/s Armour 3-29 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 15 PPV 15
Annual Failure Rate: 57% IFR: 0.8% Maint Capacity 680 MSP Max Repair 176 MSP Est Time: 3.18 Years
Magazine 240
Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (6) Power 115 Fuel Use 78% Signature 115 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres Range 76.9 billion km (154 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (15) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC58-R1 (3) Range 58.1m km Resolution 1
'Hedge2' Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (240) Speed: 39,800 km/s End: 2.6m Range: 6.2m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 318 / 191 / 95
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
Current military OOB:
1x Beholder Class Command Ship
1x Gnoll Class Jumpship (tanker, supply)
10x Chimera Class Frigate
4x Ettin Class Destroyer
4x Wyrm Class Escort Frigate
4x Hydra Hunter Class Scout
20x Hydra Head Class Corvette (box launchers)
Observations:
Not including the Hydra Facs, my Wyrms can easily defend against the entire missile output of my fleet until they run out of AMMs (which they will before the fleet runs out of missiles)
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You could do with a dedicated size 1 active search sensor on the AMM ships at the least.
You can rely on the ASS on the Jump/Sensor/Command Ship (presuming you have one?) for the ASM but once it goes down you will be unable to target anything.
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Your Lancelot missile seems pretty slow for ICF drives. Guessing here, you sacrificed a lot of space so you could reach a warhead strenght of 9.
Personally, I´d go with a smaller warhead and increase speed - a lot.
(faster missiles are harder to shoot down, so you will (hopefully) deal more damage to the enemy, even with the smaller warhead in the end).
On the active sensor issue:
Personally, I have a (smallish) backup active of the appropriate resolution (120 for anti-ship work, 1 for anti-missile work) on each combat ship, along with a small (50 to 100 t) thermal. This is, of course, just a personal preference.
Be aware, however, that your command ship might become a very inviting target (even if it hangs back a bit), once it lights up its large active sensor arrays and, as Beersatron says, once it dies, you are screwed.
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Sensors:
I have a fac design (Hydra Hunter) sporting a sensor (MR55-R20), think that'll suffice instead of the backup small ones?
Perhaps I could fit an R1 backup sensor on a similar design (MR17-R1) that'll be my backup AMM sensor.
I don't mind have incredibly specialized ships. I have alot of shipyards, courtesy of investing in construction rate boost and have a peaceful 7 year buildup. Frigates and Destroyers only take around 3-5 months each. With plenty of time for other construction.
Missiles:
Point taken about the Lancelot. Missile drives are 1 tech level behind ICF though.
Reduced warhead to 4. Removed agility.
Proposed "Gawain" Size 5 AS missile:
(0.8 WH, 3.1 engine, 0.85 fuel, 0.25 sensor)
Missile Size: 5 MSP (0.25 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 49600 km/s Endurance: 21 minutes Range: 61.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.2 Resolution: 20 Maximum Range: 40,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 5.3333
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 496% 3k km/s 160% 5k km/s 99.2% 10k km/s 49.6%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.2x Uridium 3.8833x Gallicite Fuel x2125
Development Cost for Project: 533RPA fuel efficiency tech happened, so I could drop a bit of fuel (was 1)
This one appears to have a 40% hit rate increase on the Lancelot, and with a... 3.1 times faster speed, should be bloody hard to intercept.
I dislike only doing 2 layers of armour damage though. I could quite easily afford 3 layers of armour on all my ships, with 4 on the command ship (I know it's a big target)
In fact, the 'Gawain' AS is faster than the 'Hedge2' AMM!
('Hedge' was fail as it had too much range, I wish we could design R0.33 sensors)
Think I should just rush the ICF missile drive then get a super fast Gawain into service?
EDIT:
If I'm going to delay my beam program and get a new missile, I may as well get two-stage nuclear warhead and the agility boost tech as well.
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R1 missile sensors are needed to pick up small missile your large sensor will not detect them until it too late to launch or fire point defences (other thne CIWS), also have an abundance of R1 sensors, if you lose your main R1 sensor then you have no missile defense.
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Yes, I did see that. I was asking if I could substitute a dedicated backup R1 sensor FAC instead of putting R1 sensors on everything.
In fact, I had just built a new shipyard for that very role. (only takes me 11 days to build a shipyard >.>, which is why I like to use FACs for misc. duties. I can spam them non-stop. I suspect in three years, my FAC swarm will rival the Hive ships. )
EDIT:
even if sensor FACs are a bad idea, I can use the yard anyway, an escort destroyer design might be good, it's just missing a shipyard.
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I would second the call for a small r1 sensor on all of your anti-missile ships. As long as it can see a size 6 missile for 600k km it will give you time for 1 anti-missile launch from your escorts. Precursor missiles fly at about 40,000km/s is my memory and to give a good chance to intercept you need them on sensors for 15 seconds (10 seconds for cycle time and 5 seconds as a safety margin), a 40,000 km/s missile covers 200,000 km every 5 second cycle. With your apparent tech this should be about a size 1-2 sensor so it is not to bad a hit.
Brian
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From the limited experience I've had my main concern would be the size of the magazines on your AMM ships. Most of the time you will have well under a one to one hit ratio when using your AMMs and hence need a significant store to make sure you can deal with all incoming waves.
Hostile ships tend to be able to spew out far more waves of missiles then your own ships and if you are thinking of engaging them in their home system or round one of their basis its likely that they will be able to reload before you get a chance to run them down.
My current 8000 ton AMM ships has capacity of just shy of 700 missiles and I have four of these in each combat group. I'm in the process of boosting this as I've had a number of encounters that were too close for comfort.
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Missiles:
Point taken about the Lancelot. Missile drives are 1 tech level behind ICF though.
Reduced warhead to 4. Removed agility.
Proposed "Gawain" Size 5 AS missile:
(0.8 WH, 3.1 engine, 0.85 fuel, 0.25 sensor)
Missile Size: 5 MSP (0.25 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 49600 km/s Endurance: 21 minutes Range: 61.2m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.2 Resolution: 20 Maximum Range: 40,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 5.3333
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 496% 3k km/s 160% 5k km/s 99.2% 10k km/s 49.6%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.2x Uridium 3.8833x Gallicite Fuel x2125
Development Cost for Project: 533RPA fuel efficiency tech happened, so I could drop a bit of fuel (was 1)
Droping warhead down all the way to 4 seems a bit much (the square "rule" is not a hard rule, it just describes penetration, i.e. a strength 4 warhead will make a crater like this:
XXX
X
while a strength 6 warhead, for example, will make a crater like this
XXX
XXX
Yes, penetration is the same, but the chance that another missile will hit the third row of armor is three times a large as with a strength-4 crater.)
I´d play around a bit with engines and agility. 40k-ish is ok for magneto plasma drive missiles (IMO), and upping agility might increase to-hit chance quite a bit, just play around and see if it gives a large boost. If not, just leave it as is. With missiles (and only with them, and perhaps fighters) speed _is_ armor.
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With your apparent tech this should be about a size 1-2 sensor so it is not to bad a hit.
Thanks for the advice! I think I will add an emergency sensor *and* have sensor FACs after all.
I get 670,824 km with a size 3.5 sensor so it seems I will use this.
R1 Sensor FACs have a 1.9 mkm range. But I suppose that if they light up their sensors, they turn into a target too and while they have 3 layers of armour, FACs probably won't take too much of a beating.
Still, better a cheap expendable FAC than my AMM escorts. Anything to delay the slippery slope of losing defence capability.
chrislocke2000:
Good point. Having 16 salvoes of AMMs might not be enough.
I've taken out 1/3 of my missile tubes (and the corresponding fire control) to give the new WyrmB 430 missiles.
Hawkeye:
Since I'm rushing out ICF missile drive (done now) I may as well update the other parts of my missile tech. It's not like I have anything to use the missiles on right now since my only foreign contact is the initial NPR two jumps away who is now allied.
After that, I'll see what I can get away with on the warhead. I'd prefer a higher warhead than agility since my to-hit numbers are pretty good at ship speeds.
I've stopped production of the Lancelot though. No point building missiles that will just become out of date.
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while a strength 6 warhead, for example, will make a crater like this
XXX
XXX
Yes, penetration is the same, but the chance that another missile will hit the third row of armor is three times a large as with a strength-4 crater.)
Um, actually it would be this (missiles need the number of columns affected to drop by at least two for every layer penetrated):
XXXX
XX
But your overall point is a good one - the warhead-6 does twice as much penetration damage for armor-1 vessels on the first hit, and the odds of a follow-on hit striking weakened armor are greatly improved in the case of heavier armor. Especially for such low-strength warheads, you'll probably be in sand-blasting mode most of the time anyway, at which point the rate of erosion is proportional to the warhead strength.
John
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If we're just going to sandblast away, then why not just use small missiles? The launchers scale proportionally, so DPS isn't affected, but you have way more missiles for your enemy to intercept.
eg.
This one has ICF missile drives though.
Missile Size: 2 MSP (0.1 HS) Warhead: 2 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 62200 km/s Endurance: 16 minutes Range: 60.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.5983
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 684.2% 3k km/s 220% 5k km/s 136.8% 10k km/s 68.4%
Materials Required: 0.5x Tritanium 1.8485x Gallicite Fuel x837.5
Development Cost for Project: 260RP
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Actually if you cut the missile size in half the dps can double (depending on tech). You get 2 size 2 launchers for the same hull space as 1 size 4 and they fire up to twice as fast. This imo makes smaller missiles the better option unless you know the enemy has very thin armor or you have very high tech missiles.
Although I suppose large armored and ecm missiles could be effective. Although there is no tech to give you more armor per MSP.
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Random personal missile wisdom...
One point of armour essentially doubles the survivability of a given missile against the most common forms of point-defense (CIWS, Gauss turrets and WH-1 AMMs). However, the smaller the missile, the more significant the investment of that single MSP. It's likely not worth it for a size-6 or size 8-missile, but it's pretty much a no-brainer on, say, a size-24.
I've used missiles that big (see my Bellerophon-class missile frigate), but following the same considerations as my more common, far smaller anti-ship missiles. After I absolutely obliterated a Star Swarm mothership with eight gigatons (8000 total warhead points) of glorious overkill, I realized I could get more out of a successor to my Excaliburs by...
a) adding that single armour point to enhance its survivability, way more than a single point of ECM would
b) adding a single point of active sensors to turn it from an overkill machine into a potential fleet killer
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I do wonder how a large missile (20+ MSP) in box launchers with a few points of armor and some sensors fired in small groups every 5-10 seconds would do at wiping out a fleet. I don't know if you actually need to delay the fire of each group but its my understanding that missile will only pick up and new target if their original target is destroyed at least one increment before they hit.
edit
I just realized that missile of that size would be seen at max range for PD sensors. Although probably not a problem against NPRs it would allow anti-ship missiles to be used against the large missiles and make the armor pointless.
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edit
I just realized that missile of that size would be seen at max range for PD sensors. Although probably not a problem against NPRs it would allow anti-ship missiles to be used against the large missiles and make the armor pointless.
Not really as anti-ship (as) rarely have decent chances to hit something as fast as a missile. While they will probably destroy your missile if they hit, it will take a lot of them to hit in the first place. It might even be worth it if they run out of offensive missiles shooting at your missiles, while still having some of your missiles left.
Brian
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Yeah it will probably never be a problem against NPRs. At least I don't see Steve going through the effort to make them smart enough to not waste AS missiles on large missiles with no warhead. But if you are playing against yourself it would be possible to use AS missiles to buy enough time to make specialized AMMs to counter the large armored missiles.
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Come to think of it, that *might* work.
Super huge drone in box launchers. Tons of armour. It's essentially an armoured engine.
Shoot it at a waypoint and let the enemy waste their AMMs on it.
eg. 'Illusion' Size 20 Drone
Missile Size: 20 MSP (1 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 14 Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 5000 km/s Endurance: 600 minutes Range: 180.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 5.0417
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 25% 3k km/s 5% 5k km/s 5% 10k km/s 2.5%
Materials Required: 3.5x Tritanium 1.4167x Gallicite Fuel x2500
Development Cost for Project: 504RP
Given 100% hit rate for AMMs, it's average 14 AMMs per drone.
AMMs cost something around 2 per missile. Cost wise, you win, by almost 5 times.
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Isn't normal AMM behaviour to fire a number (1-4) AMMs per incoming missile, starting with the closest? Then, if a missile is hit by those 1-4 missiles and not destroyed, you launch another wave against it? So your drone won't actually attract any more AMMs at a time than a normal missile, although it will probably attract more in total because it's unlikely to be destroyed by each wave. At that point it seems more effective to use heavily armoured normal missiles - say size 12, armour 3/warhead 3/engines 5/fuel 1. Lower damage and range than normal but not actually decoys. At least that way if some of them get through they will do something!
What might work, however, if you wanted to mess with the AI, is a decoy fighter or FAC, nothing but engine and armour. As small as you can make it while still keeping 10+ armour. Should be ~5-600t. Get it in close and the AI will start firing AMMs at it. Then hope it soaks more AMMs than it costs! Might be a good idea to give it a conscript crew and no commander. If it arrives just ahead of a missile wave of yours it might even tie up launchers enough to let your missiles through.
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The drone is also continually approaching, and it comes in waves containing one drone each.
The idea is that the drone will serve to lock up AMM firecontrols for an unreasonably long time, and in large numbers suck up a load of AMMs not spent killing the warhead missiles.
Size 20 box launcher is 150 tons. Size 5 launcher is 250 tons.
1 Size 5 missile takes 4 AMMs to kill going by my AMM hit rates.
Each drone launcher ends up locking up a fire control for an average of 14 missiles. Given 3 missiles per AMM wave, each drone present means 3.5 more size 5 AS missiles is getting through.
Assuming combat runs until enemy is out of AMMs, each drone launcher means I save 3.5 size 5 missiles from AMM fire.
A launching system is 1 Size 5 launcher at 250 tons, 2 magazines at 100 tons, giving me 7 salvoes. For a total of 350 tons.
This is just over the 2 drones needed to break even. Therefore the drones are better worth the tonnage provided combat lasts long enough to run the enemy out of AMMs.
A 6 kiloton frigate can pack 20 drone launchers. That's 280 AMMs soaked vs the 212 from a normal missile ship.
And the 20 drones cost me basically nothing. Each drone costs slightly more than 1 size 5 missile.
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Another question.
How big a fleet should I aim for? I've been building ships non-stop for a while and currently I have:
7x Wyrm Class escort frigates (going to retrofit to WyrmB and aim for 10 of them at least)
13x Chimera Class frigates
6x Ettin Class destroyers
20x Hydra Head Class corvette
The total missile output of the fleet is 194 per 50 seconds with 7 salvoes and a bit.
Single shot alpha strike from the Hydra Heads is 160.
AMMs are at 105 per 10 seconds with 16 salvoes exactly.
At the rate of warp point discovery vs ship production, I'll be fielding roughly three times that before the next system gets explored and *maybe* I meet enemies. The Wyrm production might halt for a bit as I refit the Wyrms to WyrmBs.
WyrmB class Escort Frigate 6,000 tons 540 Crew 1225.44 BP TCS 120 TH 690 EM 0
5750 km/s Armour 3-29 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 15 PPV 10
Annual Failure Rate: 57% IFR: 0.8% Maint Capacity 638 MSP Max Repair 176 MSP Est Time: 3.07 Years
Magazine 430
Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.8 (6) Power 115 Fuel Use 78% Signature 115 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 175,000 Litres Range 67.3 billion km (135 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (10) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC58-R1 (2) Range 58.1m km Resolution 1
'Briar' Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (430) Speed: 54,300 km/s End: 1.9m Range: 6.1m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 506 / 304 / 152
Active Search Sensor MR6-R1 (1) GPS 56 Range 6.2m km Resolution 1
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
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Given 100% hit rate for AMMs, it's average 14 AMMs per drone.
Actually, it's an average of 8 AMM per drone, since once the drone is destroyed there's no reason to continue firing at it. About the best you can expect is 10 AMM per drone, if the enemy is using 5v1 targetting.
How big a fleet should I aim for?
Whatever you want, really. One alien ship with the anti-missile defenses to stand up to your fleet and more speed than you can kill a pretty much unlimited number of ships. So 90% of the time your fleet is going to be too big or too small for the fight anyway.
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Actually, it's an average of 8 AMM per drone, since once the drone is destroyed there's no reason to continue firing at it. About the best you can expect is 10 AMM per drone, if the enemy is using 5v1 targetting.
How do you calculate this?
With 14 points of armour, a 1point hit has 1/14 chance of destroying my missile, right? Or am I misunderstanding something here?
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How do you calculate this?
With 14 points of armour, a 1point hit has 1/14 chance of destroying my missile, right? Or am I misunderstanding something here?
This is a binomial probability distribution question. Each new 1-damage hit has a 1/14 chance to destroy the missile, but those chances are all independent of earlier chances. So figuring out what the actual chances are that within 8 hits one of those will be successful requires that annoying formula from high school that nobody remembers. Luckily, we have the internet: http://stattrek.com/Tables/Binomial.aspx (http://stattrek.com/Tables/Binomial.aspx) , for example, lets you enter a chance for an individual hit (0.0714), the number of shots (8) and the number you need to reach (1). Then you look at the P(X>=1) column and see that the actual chance of eight shots producing at least one hit is about 45%.
</maths>
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Ah, right. Forgot about that.
Hmm, that does make it kinda harsh on the drones then. Perhaps I'll not do that.
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One more thing about my command ship.
I was told that the command ship would be a big target due to it's huge sensor signature when the sensors are on.
And I do know that you need an active sensor contact for a ship to be targeted by anything, even if there's a really strong EM contact associated with my command ship.
Therefore, as a strange method of protecting the ship, I have been considering mounting a cloaking device on my command ship.
According to the description of the cloaking tech line, the sensor reduction is the *range* reduction of active sensors needed to detect my ship. Furthermore, I can quite easily achieve efficiency 5 with about half a year's research, the end result being my command ship is only visible to actives at 15% the normal range. 15%! Even my giant size 30 sensor on my command ship will need to close to 60 million km to even see itself, which is the range of my AS missile in the first place!
Of course, I would have to dedicate 1/5 of my ship to the cloak device but the command ship's size is something that can be easily changed since I have only one of them in service at the moment and plan to build at most one more in the forseeable future.
- My calculations place the proposed cloaked design at 14ktons, preserving engine ratios. This would necessitate building a bigger jumpship or simply rushing out jump efficiency 8. Luckily, jumpship size is also something I can afford to change easily.
Considering the various suggestions here involve giving all the ships their own active sensors, I very much doubt ships have the excessive range sensor required to see a cloaked ship at reasonable AS missile ranges.
This would, hopefully, shift the missile fire away from my command ship to the more visible combat ships that are, comparatively, more expendable.
And if the enemy decides to try to close, I can always try to keep my distance giving me time to exchange fire first.
EDIT:
The cloaking research is something I would be doing anyway, since my passive sensor scout will be a stealthy, defenceless jumpship with big passive sensors.
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How do you calculate this?
Sloppily, by using the rule of thumb that one success at a 1-in-X chance requires 1/2 X tries (for values of X <20).
Oh, and fourteen points of armour results in a one in fifteen chance of destruction (0.0666666666...)
Keep in mind that cloaking tech won't make your massive sensor any harder to spot (on EM passives), and that NPRs generally follow a strategy of either 'attack the biggest ships' (as by definitions the jumpship has to be at least tied for the biggest ship in the fleet) or 'attack the strongest sensor' (since blinding a fleet is almost as good as - and frequently a precursor to - a kill).
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Correct, I do not expect the cloak to hide my command ship.
I DO expect it to make anyone who wants to shoot at it have to close the range. Doing so against my retreating ships should give me time to do some shooting.
And of course, I will be shooting any active sensor first, starting with the biggest. Hopefully, they don't have a cloak.
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Unless its changed since 5.14 cloaking reduces the hull size signature of the cloaked ship on active sensors. So given the numbers you posted a 14kton ship would look like a 2.1kton ship to the enemies. I don't remember the formula for how sensors work when it comes to detecting smaller ships but it may be possible for the enemy to still target your ship at a decent range.
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Eh? Reduces cross section? =/
The reduction in range of hostile sensors when trying to detect a ship equipped with this type of cloak
That's the description for the tech... But ok, I'll take your word for it.
Still, that just means I have to rush out 93% reduction and efficiency 6. Might take a year and a half or so, but well, the James Callaghan (the command ship) is already insanely expensive and the sensor suite is definitely worth the price of better protection.
Effiency 6 gives me a total tonnage of 12 ktons, with 0.07 size = 840 tons, being that my command ship now looks slightly smaller than my FACs.
And if it operates that way, I could go the way of a totally cloaked fleet, forcing any enemy to close to less than half range to even shoot at me. I estimate that dropping combat power by 1/3 could get all my ships cloak devices.
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Unless its changed since 5.14 cloaking reduces the hull size signature of the cloaked ship on active sensors. So given the numbers you posted a 14kton ship would look like a 2.1kton ship to the enemies. I don't remember the formula for how sensors work when it comes to detecting smaller ships but it may be possible for the enemy to still target your ship at a decent range.
If the resolution of the sensor is larger than the ship it is trying to pick up then it uses the square of the difference as a modifier. So a res 100 sensor trying to pick up a size 50 ship will only pick it up at 1/4 (1/2 squared) the range. The real answer therefore is it depends on how strong the sensor is and if they have multiple sensors for different sizes. A res 20 sensor will only have 1/5 the range of the res 100 for a given size but it will detect anything from 20 hull sizes on up at that range and can pick up a 10 hs target at 1/4 where the res 100 will pick up the 10hs target at 1% of its range. Having a good scout with large passive sensors and cloaked to appear really small helps a lot in figuring this out before your main ships get shot at when you thought they were invisible.
Brian
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Sloppily, by using the rule of thumb that one success at a 1-in-X chance requires 1/2 X tries (for values of X <20).
Oh, and fourteen points of armour results in a one in fifteen chance of destruction (0.0666666666...)
Keep in mind that cloaking tech won't make your massive sensor any harder to spot (on EM passives), and that NPRs generally follow a strategy of either 'attack the biggest ships' (as by definitions the jumpship has to be at least tied for the biggest ship in the fleet) or 'attack the strongest sensor' (since blinding a fleet is almost as good as - and frequently a precursor to - a kill).
If you assume that the bad guy keeps firing until the drone is destroyed, and that all drones are eventually destroyed (i.e. the bad guy can take arbitrarily many shots so that we can do an infinite sum of a geometric series), then a 1/15 chance of destruction (and yes, it's 1/15 because the formula uses 1+armor in the denominator) using shoot-look-shoot salvos of size 1 results in exactly 15 AMM expended per drone, on average. I was curious about this a few weeks ago, so I sat down and summed up the various series.
If the enemy is shooting bigger salvos, then you have to treat each salvo as a single missile with a higher PKill, then do the same analysis. For example, the Pk of a N-shot salvo in this case would be (1-(14/15)^N), since (14/15)^N is the probability that all N shots will miss. The total shots are then N/(1-(14/15)^N) This will result in average AMM expenditures being higher due to overkill within a salvo. For N/15 small, this will be a small effect (since 1 - (1-1/15)^N = N/15*(1+O(N/15)), as can be seen by doing a binomial expansion of (1-1/15)^N. For N/15 big, you can obviously get big overkill effects. A good rule of thumb is that the percent wastage due to overkill will be proportional to PKill (you can work out the exact factor by looking at the next term in the binomial expansion) - this estimate will be good when PKill is small compared to 1.
Hmmmm it occurs to me (because of the implicit "1" in a missile's armor, resulting in the 14 vs. 15 confusion), that if the bad guy is firing 5v1 salvos and you're just trying to soak up his AMM, then might better off just sending 4 unarmored drones in size-1 salvos (min 20 AMM) than 1 armor-14 drone (expected roughly 15 AMM). You'd have to crank the build vs. cost numbers and see which is cheaper.
John
PS - apologies to everyone who already knows the above....
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Having a good scout with large passive sensors and cloaked to appear really small helps a lot in figuring this out before your main ships get shot at when you thought they were invisible.
Thanks, that was actually the idea behind me doing stealth research. My passive sensor scouts were going to be highly stealthy.
I have just realized that I can easily gun for 15k RP cost tech (takes me only a month and a half) and so will be doing a general round of upgrades.
sloanjh:
Great! That means my decoy drone idea is back in business!
I was a bit too lazy to run the calculation, especially since I'm a biologist now and am forgetting all my math.
A few frigates with drone box launchers would be an awesome addition to my fleet.
Given I'm pushing 30 ships soon and will be exceeding 50 ships within the next two years, plus that it appears I am stuck on a linear warp chain for at least three jumps, I can afford quite a bit of specialization.
And given the continuous stream of sensor FACs coming from my shipyards, the future WyrmC will not be mounting backup active sensors. I think I have enough backups already and the backup sensor is cutting my AMM deployment by 1/3. (4 AM sensor FACs with 4 more in queue, 2 more planned after new jumpships allow FAC carriers to transverse jumppoints. 6 AS sensor FACs with 2 more in queue, no more planned for now)
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Eh? Reduces cross section? =/
That's the description for the tech. . . But ok, I'll take your word for it.
Still, that just means I have to rush out 93% reduction and efficiency 6. Might take a year and a half or so, but well, the James Callaghan (the command ship) is already insanely expensive and the sensor suite is definitely worth the price of better protection.
Effiency 6 gives me a total tonnage of 12 ktons, with 0. 07 size = 840 tons, being that my command ship now looks slightly smaller than my FACs.
And if it operates that way, I could go the way of a totally cloaked fleet, forcing any enemy to close to less than half range to even shoot at me. I estimate that dropping combat power by 1/3 could get all my ships cloak devices.
A possible counter strategy for this kind of thing is to give sensors to the missiles and fire them at a waypoint near the passive contact. I've done it with some success (some becase they freaking out tech and out numbered me by a lot) against a few precursors warships in a system, all of them having a fair amount of ECM, with thermal sensor equipped missiles.
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Well, I ran into a stable wormhole so =/
I can't wait for cloak devices to come up so I shall just have to rush out more ordnance production and ECCM research.
Ship production is already massively outpacing my crew recruitment. I am worried that firing delays will end up costing me my fleet but eh, I have 10 destroyers and 20 frigates as my offensive arm, able to throw upwards of 300 missiles a minute.
Do you think it would be worth it to develop an extremely costly dual-role laser? I could mount a recharge rate 5s 15cm soft-xray laser on a 20kkm tracking mount (turret is already being researched, albeit slowly), which would give me both anti-missile and anti-ship capability. Especially anti-beam fighter capability which ought to come in useful against the Hive ships.
I could put out a laser frigate design, meant as escort to my main fleet.
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I have been pondering the problem of my command ship having to hang back to be safe from enemy fire.
The reason why I cannot hang back more than 1 million km is because the AMM sensor on my command ship is restricting it's movement. That sensor provides the main AMM coverage for my fleet.
Therefore, I ask, would it be worth it to move my AMM sensor to a dedicated sensor frigate class and have the command ship be purely anti-ship sensors? I could mount maximum size sensors in that case, and it can see 50 tons at 88 million km, which means my AMM sensor coverage outranges my anti-ship missile range... (size 6 missiles are at 9 million km though, which is enough I guess)
Of course, I still want my command ship since I do actually need to see stuff beyond 88 mkm. And dedicated 1kton sensors would net 393 mkm range, and the 5kton sensor has a whopping 880 mkm range!
- Meaning that my command ship need not even be in the same combat space as my combat ships. Plus, I calculate some extra space will be available meaning my next-gen command ship can go higher than my fleet speed or have extra armour. And that the AMM sensor frigate would have 6 layers of armour (no point making it go faster than fleet).
- Also means that I won't have to use my command ship in risky warp point assaults.
Cost is incredible but I think I can afford it.
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Do you think it would be worth it to develop an extremely costly dual-role laser? I could mount a recharge rate 5s 15cm soft-xray laser on a 20kkm tracking mount (turret is already being researched, albeit slowly), which would give me both anti-missile and anti-ship capability. Especially anti-beam fighter capability which ought to come in useful against the Hive ships.
I could put out a laser frigate design, meant as escort to my main fleet.
Yes, it will be worth it in the long run. If this laser maxes out your fire control range then it will serve quite well as a primary anti-ship weapon in addition to point defense. The 15cm laser is about the best weapon in terms of cycle time, size and damage. After this the weapons get bigger fairly quickly and while there damage per shot goes up even faster they end up doing about the same total damage over time due to the higher power requirements untill you have significantly bigger capaciters. The one place that the 15cm is lacking is armour penetration so while you end up doing the same total damage most of the time, you are sandblasting the armour rather then deep penetration shots. Against lightly armoured ships this works against you as the big lasers will penetrate and do damage without needing multiple hits. Against heavily armoured ships it doesn't matter as much as you end up taking a lot of the armour off before you get any internals anyway. I don't tend to upgrade my lasers much untill I have capaciter 10 tech so that I can fire my 20cm lasers every 5 seconds. After that it is more a question of style than anything else.
Brian
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I have been pondering the problem of my command ship having to hang back to be safe from enemy fire.
Cost is incredible but I think I can afford it.
The answer here will be very situational, depending on the weapons suite of the rest of your fleet and your prefered operating parameters, but my tuppenceworth is that its ALWAYS a good idea to have more than one sensor of each type throughout the fleet to avoid mission kills due to bad luck.
I usually include command ships with the main body of a fleet so that they gain the benefit of other ships last ditch point defence (excepting CIWS of course) - all too often when I had them hang back they were then ambushed by Gunboats or similar coming from an unexpected direction with insufficient escorts to deal with the threat.
My command ships are rarely the biggest units in a fleet - frequently being 1 size class down to make them less obvious targets once youre within the enemy's active range, and I sometimes have fleet scouts (bigarse sensors, engines and very little else) to perform independant roles which can sometimes be useful in a distraction mode as well.
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Yes, it will be worth it in the long run. If this laser maxes out your fire control range then it will serve quite well as a primary anti-ship weapon in addition to point defense. The 15cm laser is about the best weapon in terms of cycle time, size and damage. After this the weapons get bigger fairly quickly and while there damage per shot goes up even faster they end up doing about the same total damage over time due to the higher power requirements untill you have significantly bigger capaciters. The one place that the 15cm is lacking is armour penetration so while you end up doing the same total damage most of the time, you are sandblasting the armour rather then deep penetration shots. Against lightly armoured ships this works against you as the big lasers will penetrate and do damage without needing multiple hits. Against heavily armoured ships it doesn't matter as much as you end up taking a lot of the armour off before you get any internals anyway. I don't tend to upgrade my lasers much untill I have capaciter 10 tech so that I can fire my 20cm lasers every 5 seconds. After that it is more a question of style than anything else.
If you're interested in DPS, IIRC the best weapon is always the highest caliber with a 5 second cycle time. As your capacitors improve, the caliber will also improve. I think the highest DPS at max tech occurs at 30cm as a result.
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I usually include command ships with the main body of a fleet so that they gain the benefit of other ships last ditch point defence (excepting CIWS of course) - all too often when I had them hang back they were then ambushed by Gunboats or similar coming from an unexpected direction with insufficient escorts to deal with the threat.
I don't think I have to worry about gunboats too much. 393 mkm range for a 1kton sensor means I get to see gunboats with alot of warning, time enough to bring my fleet around.
Fighters would be a bigger problem though. Perhaps I should make a 0.5k ton sensor instead
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I'm about to do a next-generation version of my entire fleet and have an interesting question to ask.
Do you try to pump as many missiles as possible into the sky in as short time as possible? (never mind salvo size)
Or should you favour single large salvoes?
I could take 0.33 size / 20x reload launchers and stuff 24 launchers into my frigates and still have a 10 minute reload time (about the time it takes for one salvo to reach enemies at max range).
So I have 3x the salvo size but salvoes come one at a time, each facing the full might of enemy anti-missile fire instead of leaking in from a prior wave.
Which do you think is better? So far, I have no problems overwhelming enemies, my "test" salvo intended to try out their AMM defence completely wiped their fleet.
(having a fleet big enough to throw a 3x a fighter complement's worth of missiles from normal launchers tends to do that)
I can forsee problems against the swarm if I'm using this strategy. While my fleet will chuck out over 3 years of missile production in a single salvo such that it will be basically impossible to stop it all, hitting alot of small targets who will be overkilled with a 24 missile salvo can be problematic.
I could still have 16 launchers in 0.5x size and have them reload in 2 minutes.
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The "lots of small targets" problem isn´t realy a problem.
Assign, say, 6 tubes to your FC, fire at one target. Assign 6 other tubes to your FC, fire at next target and so on.
Personally, I am now in the "missilestorm" (blot out the stars with your salvo) camp
I have seen salvos of up to 100 missiles being shot down against a group of three NPR CEs, so I go for realy huge salvos.
One drawback is, however, overkill. With many small salvos, any salvo in flight, when the target dies, will look for another target. With one large salvo, all missiles will slam in that target, even if half the missiles would be sufficient to kill it.
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Oh, hmm.
Since my light carriers (the ones that can go with my fleet) can actually fit a frigate in their hangers, would it then be possible to mount box launchers...?
Box launchers on frigates. >.>
0.15x size = 53 missiles per frigate, although half an hour reload per frigate/carrier is stupidly long.
EDIT:
Oh, and because my destroyers won't fit (obviously), they can have the normal size launcher.
That means my frigates become the fleet killers while destroyers are the anti-fighter/FAC fleet escorts.
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Ok, my fleet is going through a major refit.
New engines, new sensors, new firecontrols, new launchers, new armour; the works.
Also, since the previous and only engagement of my fleet resulted in me demolishing the precursors without taking a single point of damage, using only the most trained half of my fleet, I feel I can afford to specialize my ships a bit more.
Therefore, new fleet composition will be:
2 command ships (R16 and R100 sensors, flag bridge)
Jumpships as necessary (3 in service, 3 more planned)
6 FAC carriers for additional reach
4 dedicated sensor frigates (R1 sensors, this sensor is humongous, it's max range is 40mkm beyond the range of my Gawain AS missile)
- Policy is to only ever have one online at any time; during a fleet action, if one starts taking damage, two will go active
- they have 6 layers of armour, which will hopefully provide some defence
2 spy frigates (large passive sensors, thermal reduced engines, cloaking device 95%)
12 missile destroyers
24 missile frigates
10 AMM escort frigates
10 dual role laser frigates
assigned as necessary from assessment of the threat.
In particular, the new design and fleet doctrine is to use 33% reduction missile launchers. This has a reload time of 500 seconds.
Since the previous fleet action, the single salvo of less than half the fleet totally overwhelmed precursor PD, I have decided that large salvoes are the way to go.
Another major decision factor was that 33% launchers take much less than 33% crew (3 vs 50). Currently, I am suffering from a lack of trained crew.
The decision not to use 25% reduction launchers was the 2500 second reload time, which would mean I have only 1 salvo during fleet actions (missile travel time is ~600 seconds)
Partially factoring into decision was that 25% launchers take more crew per launcher than 33% (5 vs 3). And having more launchers means the crew requirement for 25% is much higher than the 33% launcher.
So here's the new ChimeraB Frigate:
Note the massively reduced crew requirement and the higher speed from unstable engines.
Also of note is the 3x larger salvo size. The ChimeraB's salvo size is more than three times larger than the Chimera and is 50% higher than the 1st generation Ettin class Destroyer!
ECCM 4 is awaiting the return of salvagers who have enough points to give me ECCM 4.
Magazine size was not correspondingly increased as 3x launcher number with 10x reload time means my depletion time is actually longer than before.
ChimeraB class Frigate 6,000 tons 385 Crew 1202.78 BP TCS 120 TH 750 EM 0
6250 km/s Armour 4-29 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 42.9
Annual Failure Rate: 72% IFR: 1% Maint Capacity 501 MSP Max Repair 63 MSP Est Time: 4.21 Years
Magazine 370
Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E7.5 (6) Power 125 Fuel Use 75% Signature 125 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 185,000 Litres Range 74.0 billion km (137 days at full power)
Size 5 Missile Launcher (33% Reduction) (26) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 500
Missile Fire Control FC83-R16 (1) Range 83.2m km Resolution 16
'Gawain' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (74) Speed: 55,200 km/s End: 18.2m Range: 60.4m km WH: 6 Size: 5 TH: 202 / 121 / 60
ECCM-3 (1) 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 purposesThe EttinB class destroyer is much the same, only with 46 launchers.
Barring further hiccups, another 24 frigates are planned after the current construction base expansion eats up my available workers, with a proportional increase in other classes, essentially doubling the fleet size. I need an internal battlegroup as I have a wormhole in one of my border systems.
With 24 frigates and 10 destroyers traveling in a pack, a full salvo of missiles will number 1084 which will hopefully demolish any opposition.
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Some more progress. I am now somewhere around mid-way through year 12.
- Side comment: I am not clear how I am progressing so fast. The transition from Internal Confinement Drive to Magnetic Confinement Drive happened so fast that I couldn't even refit my fleet to the power boosted Internal Confinement before Magcons arrived on the scene. Consider that I have arrived at Magcon from Ion Engines in 12 years...
- The transition from ICF to MagCon should be slower given how long Steve's NATO campaign took to do that, but my labs copped it in about year. =/ ? Sure, I have alot of labs and haven't been resource crunched nor nuked. But surely it can't be THAT fast.
- Furthermore, I held back on researching MagCon as I was diverted by the cloaking techtree. If I knew I could do it so fast, I would have gunned straight for it without redesigning ships.
I have been trying to fit a good size thermal sensor into a 6kton cloaked scout frigate and have come to the conclusion that this is impossible. Which means my research has to go into getting a better cloak and this will take *forever*.
I am finishing 93% cloak in 2 months, and will embark on Cloak Efficiency 8, probably finishing late next year. Hopefully this will let me build a 8kton cloaked thermal reduced ship with a decent thermal sensor.
Probably going to embark on a round of missile improvements, armour and general ship stuff with an eye to fuel efficiency (already had to expand fuel production)
Meanwhile:
The Demon class Cruiser is essentially a bigger addition to the fleet. It's not meant for solo operation (in fact I have no solo operation ships) but the impressive launchers should hopefully do a good job at swatting missiles and pesky enemy ships.
New missile generation courtesy of the google-docs missile design spreadsheet.
Demon class Cruiser 16,000 tons 1500 Crew 3524 BP TCS 320 TH 2500 EM 0
7812 km/s Armour 3-56 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 26 PPV 120
Annual Failure Rate: 128% IFR: 1.8% Maint Capacity 2202 MSP Max Repair 189 MSP Est Time: 3.78 Years
Magazine 1004
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E7.5 (16) Power 156.25 Fuel Use 75% Signature 156.25 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 550,000 Litres Range 82.5 billion km (122 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (54) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 5
Size 5 Missile Launcher (33% Reduction) (40) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 500
Missile Fire Control FC62-R1 (1) Range 62.4m km Resolution 1
Missile Fire Control FC83-R16 (1) Range 83.2m km Resolution 16
'Perceval' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (120) Speed: 69,400 km/s End: 14.4m Range: 60.1m km WH: 6 Size: 5 TH: 277 / 166 / 83
'Bramble' Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (404) Speed: 68,500 km/s End: 1.5m Range: 6m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 730 / 438 / 219
Compact ECCM-3 (1) ECCM-4 (1) 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
The Medusa is my dual-role laser frigate, meant for cutting down crippled enemies and final point defence, as well as close in weapons if it comes to that.
Medusa class Escort Frigate 6,000 tons 650 Crew 2023 BP TCS 120 TH 938 EM 0
7816 km/s Armour 4-29 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 18 PPV 36
Annual Failure Rate: 36% IFR: 0.5% Maint Capacity 1686 MSP Max Repair 480 MSP Est Time: 3.94 Years
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E7.5 (6) Power 156.25 Fuel Use 75% Signature 156.25 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 180,000 Litres Range 72.0 billion km (106 days at full power)
Single 15cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (6x1) Range 320,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 6-6 RM 6 ROF 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4 3
Fire Control S16 160-20000 (1) Max Range: 320,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (5) Total Power Output 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
ECCM-4 (1) This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I am trying to design an independent patrol and escort cruiser but am finding it difficult to stick in the required components.
I can make a sensor (active + passive) + jumpdrive ship. But putting weapons on it will be difficult. I estimate it can only carry about the weapon loadout of a frigate! A mere 20 launchers on a 16 kton vessel? Ridiculous! I might need to settle for an escort squadron but that will mean another three or more shipyards or using fleet ships in squadrons instead of in the fleet.
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One fire control for your 54 AMM launchers and one more for your 40 ASM launchers seems inadvisable.
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At your tech level a multirole jump capable solo ship is almost impossible. I generally just put the jump drive and some extra sensors or passive defenses on my jump ship and have a couple of standard ships of the same size for firepower.
For the Demon CA I would drop all but 10-15 of the size 1 launchers and put the space into at least 2 more firecontrols and the rest as magazine space. This will give you a lot more anti-missile firepower as a 54 missile salvo is almost always going to overkill 1 enemy salvo, which is all you can target with 1 firecontrol. By upping the # of firecontrols you will be able to target more incomming salvo'. I usually go with 1 fire control for every 5 launchers in pd mode, and 1 firecontrol for no more than 10 launchers in anti-ship mode. With at least 2 of each so that I have some flexability and redundancy.
Brian
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One fire control for your 54 AMM launchers and one more for your 40 ASM launchers seems inadvisable.
I do have tons of firecons throughout my fleet for smaller targets.
Still...
Demon class Cruiser 16,000 tons 1255 Crew 3579 BP TCS 320 TH 2500 EM 0
7812 km/s Armour 3-56 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 25 PPV 86
Annual Failure Rate: 136% IFR: 1.9% Maint Capacity 2097 MSP Max Repair 189 MSP Est Time: 3.53 Years
Magazine 1345
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E7.5 (16) Power 156.25 Fuel Use 75% Signature 156.25 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 550,000 Litres Range 82.5 billion km (122 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (20) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 5
Size 5 Missile Launcher (33% Reduction) (40) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 500
Missile Fire Control FC62-R1 (2) Range 62.4m km Resolution 1
Missile Fire Control FC83-R16 (1) Range 83.2m km Resolution 16
'Perceval' Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (120) Speed: 69,400 km/s End: 14.4m Range: 60.1m km WH: 6 Size: 5 TH: 277 / 166 / 83
'Bramble' Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (745) Speed: 68,500 km/s End: 1.5m Range: 6m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 730 / 438 / 219
Compact ECCM-3 (2) ECCM-4 (1) 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
At your tech level a multirole jump capable solo ship is almost impossible.
More like, multi-role solo ship in 16 ktons is fundamentally impossible unless you go lower than 25% engines. Sensors are always huge and they eat up tons of space.
For the Demon CA I would drop all but 10-15 of the size 1 launchers and put the space into at least 2 more firecontrols and the rest as magazine space. This will give you a lot more anti-missile firepower as a 54 missile salvo is almost always going to overkill 1 enemy salvo, which is all you can target with 1 firecontrol. By upping the # of firecontrols you will be able to target more incomming salvo'. I usually go with 1 fire control for every 5 launchers in pd mode, and 1 firecontrol for no more than 10 launchers in anti-ship mode. With at least 2 of each so that I have some flexability and redundancy.
In a precursor engagement prior to this, I swatted all their missiles out of the sky taking no damage at all.
What I noticed was that my AMM firecons were cycling between their loading tubes and ready to fire ones.
The same principle can be applied to my AS firecons for targeting tiny targets like FACs and fighters.
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I just realised your AMM firecon has an order of magnitude more range than your AMMs. That seems a little excessive. Having really long-ranged anti-missile sensors in the fleet is one thing, but there's no advantage to having a 60mkm fire control range for 6mkm missiles. Up to 1.5x the range of the missile helps to futureproof and offset the effect of ECM, but you have 10x! :D
Also, against a small precursor squadron you can probably get away with cycling launchers between the firecons, but if you faced an equal-tonnage NPR fleet with an similar missile throw-weight as you, you could not stop it with one fire control.
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Except that "Range 62.4m km" for the FC is for 1HS targets, not size 6 missiles.
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The AMM FC was the smallest that gave a 6m range for size 6 targets.
(6/20)^2 = 0.09
Thus the detection range for a size 6 target is 9% that of the normal.
ECM on missiles is dealt with by attaching a compact ECCM to the AMM firecons. AS firecons receive a full size ECCM.
A similar missile throw weight as my fleet? I use reduced size launchers. The amount of AMMs needed to stop one salvo of my missiles is stupidly high.
Besides, unless the enemy can get their AS launcher cycle time to 10s, they can't saturate my AMM launchers, which will always be lighter and faster firing than their AS launchers.
Nevertheless, I note that my fleet will not survive even one salvo from itself. Thus the destroyer escort class (a bigger version of the Wyrm really) will be designed and enter service.
Guess I found a use for that idle shipyard now.
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Except that "Range 62.4m km" for the FC is for 1HS targets, not size 6 missiles.
This is why I always change the name of my missile fire control to include the range, with both ranges give for R1, e.g.
MFC-C S62 R1 6MKm/62.4MKm.
John
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Ah, of course, my bad there on the ranges. I'd forgotten the difference between 1HS and 0.3HS targets was so pronounced. On the other hand, keeping your 54 launchers because you have "lots of firecons spread through the fleet" is pretty pointless. If you feel you have enough AMM capability in the fleet, don't put 54 AMM launchers on this ship, put maybe 10 or something. 10 launchers to one fire control is significantly more sensible.
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What I noticed was that my AMM firecons were cycling between their loading tubes and ready to fire ones.
The same principle can be applied to my AS firecons for targeting tiny targets like FACs and fighters.
Good catch on this one. The limit on point defense is going to be based on the setting of how many counter missiles(x) per incomming missile. The downside to your setup is against single large swarms of missiles like what you put out. There you can only fire x missiles times the incomming # of missiles in 1 salvo. If it is a small salvo then every 5 seconds you will be firing 10-15 missiles (at 5 counter missiles per incomming) (ie a fighter launched attack) If it is a larger salvo then it matters considerably less. For your offensive launchers you can get away with this as long as you do not mind having to fire on only 1 target per 5 second cycle, and having to manually switch the assigned launchers between firings. This is okay if you have a well trained crew and task force. If they are not so well trained then there will be significant time lags between switching assigned launchers. Having a couple of short ranged fire controls as backup, and to help with shooting at gunboats could make a big difference at that point. It is mostly I guess a matter of design philosophy and what you are trying to do.
Good luck
Brian
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Hmm, that is a good point. Now that I think about it, my size 1 launchers have a 5s cycle time when it was 10s. So I mentally doubled all the launchers per firecon.
Don't exactly need that now do I?
In any case, I experimented a bit with flood your firecon approach and yeah, a fighter wing from carriers with my fleet's tonnage, will box launch a very large number salvoes with 2 or 3 missiles in each only.
In those cases, my AMM launchers will have half sitting around not firing.
Against a reduced size launcher capital ship fleet though, you're looking at 20+ missiles in each salvo so the problem is much less.
Either way though, I did some calculations and my fleet can throw about 700 missiles. 1k+ after the refit schedules complete.
With my obsession with training, I have 100% TF training on about 50% of my fleet. =)
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Against a reduced size launcher capital ship fleet though, you're looking at 20+ missiles in each salvo so the problem is much less.
The training will definitly help alot. Where you can also see a lot of small salvo's is when they use standard size launchers on smaller warships (5-10,000 tons). In that case you will see between 5-10 missiles per salvo and each salvo an average of 30 seconds apart. By the time your amm have actually intercepted the 1st salvo they will have just started to shoot at the second salvo. Then they will switch to the nearest salvo and fire on that. Meantime the second salvo gets to sale in for 10-20 seconds before it is really engaged. The third salvo will do even better. If you have just a couple extra fire controls then this won't happen anywhere as easily. It is just easy for 1 fire control to get swamped by different scenarios. Having 2-3 gives you a lot more flexability, and it won't take up that much space on your ship either.
Brian
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It IS alot of space. Each firecon is size 9. That's alot of tonnage.
And firecon tonnage will have to come out of weapons.
Nevertheless, I fighting wormhole aliens and the swarm at the same time in Free Haven. The wormhole aliens couldn't take down the swarm's 600 strength shields and to settle the interrupt loop, I teleported my fleet into the system.
I'll see how that goes before making any decisions. Although I'm all too likely to simply blow them away, swarm mothership has a 200 missile salvo bearing down on it and I don't see any gunboats.
And from the range they were fighting at, I doubt the wormhole aliens have missiles. There's some kind of energy weapon that generates nuclear detonations however, goodness knows what that is.
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It IS alot of space. Each firecon is size 9. That's alot of tonnage.
And firecon tonnage will have to come out of weapons.
That is a lot of tonnage. Can you get a firecon that is size 1-2 that can shoot at size 6 missiles at 1 mkm? If you can then that may be a decent compromise solution. You have one firecon for longer range, and a couple of small ones in case your primary is getting overloaded when the missiles get in close. If a lucky shot takes out your primary you still have some point defense available.
Brian
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Well, I'm not sure how much lucky shots matter. My fleet operates in one pack of ~50 ships. Lucky shots... aren't likely to happen.
Still, the short range AMM sensor is a good idea. I'll look into designing one for use.
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All it takes is one time at a jump point when they are shooting mesons at you to make you think about that lucky hit. This is especially true when your firecon is so large. It has a decent chance to be hit individually, and it does not have a high htk to give it a chance of surviving.
Brian