Assault Shuttle Design

[jiduthie (OP)]

So I want to experiment with boarding. I have two designs, but I'm unsure which is better. Maybe you all can help me out. In regards to doctrine, both of these would be stored within hangars upon otherwise capable warships.

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.DC-40 Hewitt Hermes class Assault Shuttle    1 000 tons     5 Crew     486 BP      TCS 20  TH 96  EM 0
20000 km/s     Armour 2-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 204    5YR 3054    Max Repair 200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 5   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 2 Companies   

IE-200 Cold Magneto-Plasma Drive (2)    Power 200    Fuel Use 469.4%    Signature 48    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 0.8 billion km   (10 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Or...

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.DF-41 Hewitt Mercury class Assault Shuttle    497 tons     3 Crew     242.4 BP      TCS 9.94  TH 48  EM 0
20120 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 99%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 93    5YR 1392    Max Repair 200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 1 Company   

IE-200 Cold Magneto-Plasma Drive (1)    Power 200    Fuel Use 469.4%    Signature 48    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 20 000 Litres    Range 1.5 billion km   (21 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
It seems to me to be a trade off between range, armor, and numbers/logistics. Here are my thoughts: Range is mostly a convenience. If an enemy ship is disabled or otherwise engaged enough for me to launch, I'm probably not worried about range. I could also over-engineer the IE-200 and double the size if range was mission critical. Armor might be useful if I need to take a hit or two of light fire on my way in, but any kind of heavy fire would mission-kill my shuttle at the very least; I'd likely need an independent asset to either draw or intercept fire. Numbers provide redundancy, even if they manage to target and down one shuttle, I still have another coming given the same amount of hangar space; logistics are also made easier because I can build the Mercury with fighter factories rather than using a FAC shipyard.

Given that: Range is mostly inconsequential; armor won't do me much good; and redundancy might: I'm leaning towards the Mercury. Is there something I haven't thought of? Is there a better use of drop ships?

[El Pip]

I normally go with the Mercury type design purely for the advantage of being able to build it with Fighter Factories. But I think it's a bit slow for boarding, speed is king if you want to board relatively intact targets.

If you are prepared to devote a shipyard to it, I would go for the Hermes but swap out one of the Cryro Drop companies and use the space for even more engines.

The other option is got with the Mercury but only board slow moving targets and be prepared to take some large losses during boarding actions.

[jiduthie (OP)]

Both designs use 50% engines with maximum power boost at my current tech level... I suppose I could go with something like this:

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.DC-40b Hewitt Hermes class Assault Shuttle    1 000 tons     6 Crew     643.4 BP      TCS 20  TH 144  EM 0
30000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 65    5YR 982    Max Repair 40 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 4   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 1 Company   

MPD Prototype (15)    Power 40    Fuel Use 391.33%    Signature 9.599999    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km   (4 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Is adding another 10k km/s really worth halving the total number of marines?

[Rich.h]

I would say an extra 10km/s is worth far more than the extra company of marines, it will result in a reduction in the number of dice rolled to determine how many marines make it on board. My personal choice would be go with the high speed version and simply have a larger hanger bay with double the number of shuttles.

[Sematary]

Both designs use 50% engines with maximum power boost at my current tech level... I suppose I could go with something like this:

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.DC-40b Hewitt Hermes class Assault Shuttle    1 000 tons     6 Crew     643.4 BP      TCS 20  TH 144  EM 0
30000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 65    5YR 982    Max Repair 40 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 4   
Cryo Drop Capacity: 1 Company   

MPD Prototype (15)    Power 40    Fuel Use 391.33%    Signature 9.599999    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km   (4 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Is adding another 10k km/s really worth halving the total number of marines?

Yes it is. Here is the relevant section of rules about boarding to show you why speed is the single most important consideration when talking about boarding.

The percentage of casualties from the boarding attempt is equal to 20xD10, giving a range from 20-200%. However, the amount of D10 rolled is reduced by Interception Speed / Target Speed. For example, if the interception speed is 6000 km/s and the target is moving at 1000 km/s, the number of D10 is reduced by 6. Therefore, if the intercepting ship is at least twenty times faster than the target ship, the attempt is automatically successful and no casualties are suffered during the boarding.

So a ship going 30,000 km/s will suffer 0 casualties against ships going 1,500 or slower vs the former design that would suffer 7D10 casualties or 7-70% against a ship going 1,500.

[Anarade Relle]

I would recconmend the Mercury design, just because it's smaller. Which is good when trying to board ships with active beam weapons or even missile.

[Rich.h]

I would recconmend the Mercury design, just because it's smaller. Which is good when trying to board ships with active beam weapons or even missile.

Size will only help in regards to being able to get a good sensor lock, however the difference in the two sizes is too small to make much of an effect in targeting. In addition with boarding being a zero range affair any ship size will always come under fire, in which case speed is once again your friend as a faster very slightly bigger ship will be harder to hit than the smaller slow one.

[bean]

Go for speed.  I tend not to board ships that haven't been thoroughly worked over by HPMs (meaning no defenses), so defenses are largely irrelevant.  (This is different from my shuttles for attacking planets, although frankly those don't generally get used that way, as I pound the PDCs to rubble first.)  The extra speed means you either take less casualties, or can do less damage before the enemy ship is slowed enough for boarding.  (Mesons work well for this, so long as you are willing to be patient.)  The big issue there is that it's possible to blow up the bad guy instead of just laming him, and any reduction in how much you have to hit him is a good thing.
Do you really need the cryo drop modules?  They're a lot heavier than the regular kind, and if you can afford to shake a shipyard loose to build a specialized boarding vessel, it would be very helpful. 
Or build a fighter with a cryo drop module and a cargo handling system, then another that just has a regular drop module.  It's a bit more micromanagement, but pretty cheap and it works well.  People tend to overlook those kind of options for things to put in hangars.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

a good rule of thumb is that you want to be at least 15 times faster than the target you want to board to avoid suffering catastrophic casualties.  therefore, the 'board rating'of the 20kkms shuttle is 1333 kkms, while the 30kkms  is 2000 kkms. Those  are commercial speeds at best, so realistically every boarding attempt is going to be against a target you've carefully crippled.  Unless you are the Imperial Guard.

Oh, and don't worry about armor. The safest way to do this is to close in within 5s travel time of the target then launch.

[Rich.h]

Noting the above comment about the cryo drop pods has made me wonder something with boarding. I also tend to use cryo pods as it allows my assault shuttles to be ready to go at a moments notice without having to get marines into them to begin with, in addition being a cryo pod the marines don't suffer morale losses while hanging around before hand.  Part of this is down to having failed a boarding attempt before it even started as it took so long to actually load the marines that the ship targeted for boarding had to be destroyed as they kept making ramming runs at me.

Now I know that having a handling system reduces load/unload times, but how does that work with carriers and parasites? Assuming that both carrier and parasite craft have handling systems which of the following would be true?

1. The carriers handling system is the rating used to reduce the loading times.
2. The parasite crafts handling system is the rating used to reduce load times.
3. The combined total of carrier and parasite crafts handling rating is used.

[bean]

Noting the above comment about the cryo drop pods has made me wonder something with boarding. I also tend to use cryo pods as it allows my assault shuttles to be ready to go at a moments notice without having to get marines into them to begin with, in addition being a cryo pod the marines don't suffer morale losses while hanging around before hand.  Part of this is down to having failed a boarding attempt before it even started as it took so long to actually load the marines that the ship targeted for boarding had to be destroyed as they kept making ramming runs at me.

Now I know that having a handling system reduces load/unload times, but how does that work with carriers and parasites? Assuming that both carrier and parasite craft have handling systems which of the following would be true?

1. The carriers handling system is the rating used to reduce the loading times.
2. The parasite crafts handling system is the rating used to reduce load times.
3. The combined total of carrier and parasite crafts handling rating is used.

I'm not sure, actually.  It's largely academic anyway, as it's hard to get a cargo handling system aboard a parasite without compromising performance too much, but if I had to guess, I'd say that they add.  The only time I've done it was with my LCU, which was intended to carry a battalion from a staging point to the planet in question.  The idea was that I'd stage the troops to a planet in the outer system, then load them aboard the LCUs and transfer them to the planet.  The space defenses should already be down, so performance wasn't critical, but I needed cargo handling systems to load them in time.  I later moved to using a dedicated platform to tranship them instead. 

[jiduthie (OP)]

The Cryo pods are so that I can stick them on a battlecruiser with a single hangar. I've never actually boarded anything before so the idea was that I could have a few of these guys in a fleet and use them if the opportunity presented itself rather than immediately trying to build a dedicated boarding vessel. I like the idea of larger ships having a small compliment of marines but building them with troop transports, cargo handling, and pods is probably a bridge too far.

[jiduthie (OP)]

Did just capture a spoiler vessel though! The battle was pretty intense. They had high levels of ECM and I had to get within 18mkm of their position with my fighters. I managed to sneak in on lower power to get my missiles away only to find that that was within their AMM range! Lost three quarters of my fighters but still somehow managed to rescue all the life pods and limp back to the carrier.

I closed in with the rest of the fleet as I had a couple of missile cruisers with much longer range, however they weren't able to meaningfully break through their AMM defense before I ran out of my long range missiles. Hoping that their magazines wouldn't last much longer, I brought the fleet even closer to engage with shorter range missiles even though this brought me within their AMM envelope. Unfortunately, my area defense couldn't stand up to the large amounts of AMM's being fired. They slowly sandpapered my carrier while I desperately launched everything I had. Their focus on the carrier, however, proved to be their undoing. With their AMM's occupied I was able to score large numbers of hits with my own much more powerful missiles. For awhile I was extremely concerned about losing my carrier, the armor belt was breached in numerous spots and I was starting to lose internal components, but eventually I was able to take out all but their smallest 10k ton ship before I ran out of missiles.

My beam area defense was enough to drain the magazines of the final vessel, so I launched a few meson interceptors to see if I could cripple it enough to board. Took quite a bit of patience, not to mention dodging a few ramming attempts, but eventually the vessel slowed to 742km/s and the marines did the rest!

So now I'm the proud owner of a missile jump destroyer. The engine tech is actually one level below mine but their ECM and ECCM are two levels higher, although they were both damaged by the mesons. I guess I want to repair him back at a shipyard and then scrap so I can recover the ECM and disassemble it? Also, the class design summary isn't appearing in the intelligence window which is somewhat disappointing. Even copying and pasting from the class design window doesn't seem to get it to stick, I suppose that only gets populated by espionage?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

unfortunately yes, only intel rolls will populate the intel screen