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.