My first time designing military ships.

[SentientMeatbag (OP)]

I just started playing this game late last year, and have been lurking on the forums for a few months. 
I haven't actually seen combat in my game yet, but I expect to soon as I am just starting to leave sol. 
I have read a few guides/AARs and watched some videos, so I think these ships are decent (maybe?) but I'm sure there are loads of things I could improve, so criticism/advice is super welcome!

The Ethiopia class was originally designed exclusively for PPV, but has been refitted into a (hopefully) competent PD escort.

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Ethiopia class Destroyer Escort      6,000 tons       144 Crew       992.5 BP       TCS 120    TH 600    EM 0
5000 km/s      Armour 4-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 51      Sensors 6/0/0/0      DCR 2-3      PPV 35.36
Maint Life 2.62 Years     MSP 706    AFR 144%    IFR 2.0%    1YR 145    5YR 2,181    Max Repair 300 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Gábor & Szőcs M-ID-600 "Dusker" (1)    Power 600    Fuel Use 77.02%    Signature 600    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 698,000 Litres    Range 27.2 billion km (62 days at full power)

Chit-Nanda  PDC Turret 200-17 'Kessler'  (13x8)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 20,000 km    ROF 5       
Evangrson-Tófison CIWS-120 "Teflon Sheild" (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Suh Systems BFC 80-16000 'Bluefield' (2)     Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s    ECCM-0     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

List-Brøndum Active Missile Warner AS4-R1 "Hause of Holbien" (1)     GPS 12     Range 4.8m km    MCR 430.9k km    Resolution 1
Conta-Pavlenco S-TH1.0-6.0 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  19.4m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes

The Kazakhstan class is designed as a beam warship, it's basically the only ship capable of doing damage in my fleet right now.  (though I only have 2 classes in service as of now)

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Kazakhstan class Frigate      15,000 tons       481 Crew       2,364.8 BP       TCS 300    TH 1,500    EM 0
5000 km/s      Armour 7-54       Shields 0-0       HTK 99      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 16-10      PPV 90
Maint Life 2.40 Years     MSP 1,640    AFR 277%    IFR 3.8%    1YR 391    5YR 5,871    Max Repair 375 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Guyukgiin-Nayangiin M-ID-750 "Sting" (2)    Power 1500    Fuel Use 68.89%    Signature 750    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,531,000 Litres    Range 26.7 billion km (61 days at full power)

Balabanian Armaments Company 26-C3 UV Laser "Archimedes" (1)    Range 320,000km     TS: 5,000 km/s     Power 26-3     RM 40,000 km    ROF 45       
Loughran Ordnance 16-C3 UV Laser "Hi-Beam" (10)    Range 320,000km     TS: 5,000 km/s     Power 16-3     RM 40,000 km    ROF 30       
Evangrson-Tófison CIWS-120 "Teflon Shield" (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Gama Warning & Control Heavy Beam FC 320-5000 "Burst" (2)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 5,000 km/s    ECCM-0     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Abdel Marine MMF-R-34-PB30 "Posidon" (1)     Total Power Output 33.8    Exp 15%

Sayram Electronics Industries Active Ship-Finder Search Sensor AS22-R100 "Eye of Sauron" (1)     GPS 1200     Range 22.2m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes

I am also planning on making a sensor frigate, Missile frigate, and AMM frigate, all based off of the Kazakhstan's hull.  then maybe a carrier of some sort, idk.

[captainwolfer]

They look okay. No obvious mistakes to me, although they will probably be slower than some of the enemies you will encounter. Are the gauss cannon turrets only 1 HS guns? If so, make sure you set the fire control for the Ethiopia class to have "Ranged Defensive Fire" and unlimited shots per target, because by my estimate, you will generally need about 25 shots to kill 1 AMM, or about 40 shots to kill 1 ASM that has 2 decoys

Also, you should update your CIWS, looks like they are 1 generation of fire control speed behind what you currently have

[SentientMeatbag (OP)]

Thanks for the feedback! I am about to get the next engine tech, so when I refit my ships for that, I will update the CIWS, among other things.  The gauss turrets are just 1 HS, so I have set the shots to unlimited, by the way, what gauss cannon size would you recommend? and about what percentage of your fleet tonnage is usually pd-oriented? 

[captainwolfer]

Thanks for the feedback! I am about to get the next engine tech, so when I refit my ships for that, I will update the CIWS, among other things.  The gauss turrets are just 1 HS, so I have set the shots to unlimited, by the way, what gauss cannon size would you recommend? and about what percentage of your fleet tonnage is usually pd-oriented?

- Well, I usually use full size gauss, so that I can generally get about 50% hit chance against missiles. This is because the shots per target setting for PD can't be set higher than 12 without setting it to unlimited, which can be waste MSP when firing on small salvos. (because turrets can break down when firing, firing more turrets than needed means spending more MSP than needed).
-- However, MSP consumption is unlikely to be the determining factor in a battle, so I wouldn't worry about refitting your ships to use bigger gauss cannons. Its not a major factor
- As for what percentage of fleet tonnage to be PD oriented, I would say about 33%-50%, although it depends on the threat and if you outnumber them.
-- In my current game, I use 60,000 ton battlecruisers with 16.7% of their mass allocated to particle beams and particle lances, and 11.2% of their mass allocated to gauss turrets (so about 2/3 as much PD as offensive beams per ship). However, I am also now building dedicated point defense destroyers after I figured out how a nearby NPR really loves its missiles and has almost twice as much population as I do. (My planned fleet comp: 720,000 tons of 60,000 ton battlecruisers in 4 4-ship squadrons, 240,000 tons of 15,000 ton destroyer escorts in 4 4-ship squadrons, with a 1.25:1 tonnage ratio of PD turrets to offensive beams overall)

[Warer]

Yeah these seem like a perfectly good pair of designs to me!

[Ulzgoroth]

Not really a design fault, but if you're going to use big laser cannons I'd highly highly recommend investing in charge speed.

It's expensive, but it's almost a straightforward multiplier to your hitting power per ton. (Reactors are comparatively tiny and scale really well, so increasing power draw has little penalty.)

Also a beam attack warship could definitely use a bit more speed, but your next-generation drives might be enough.

[SentientMeatbag (OP)]

Not really a design fault, but if you're going to use big laser cannons I'd highly highly recommend investing in charge speed.

It's expensive, but it's almost a straightforward multiplier to your hitting power per ton.  (Reactors are comparatively tiny and scale really well, so increasing power draw has little penalty. )

Also a beam attack warship could definitely use a bit more speed, but your next-generation drives might be enough.

I'll make sure to dedicate some labs to recharge capacity.
Just wondering, you said my beam ships may need to be faster, right now I use a 150% boost on my engines, should I increase this, or simply increase how much HS is dedicated to engines on my ships? (right now its about a third)
anyway, Thanks for the advice!

[captainwolfer]

I'll make sure to dedicate some labs to recharge capacity.
Just wondering, you said my beam ships may need to be faster, right now I use a 150% boost on my engines, should I increase this, or simply increase how much HS is dedicated to engines on my ships? (right now its about a third)
anyway, Thanks for the advice!

I usually use 150% boost and 33% of ship size, so that sounds about right. From that I assume your ships are improved nuclear pulse engines. Ion tech engines should make your ships slightly faster than most of what you will encounter.

[StarshipCactus]

For beam ships I hear most people go with something like 40 to 50% engine mass, missiles tend to be closer to 30% most of the time.

[Steve Walmsley]

In recent campaigns, I have had success with 33% engine beam ships, using 1.2x engine boost and 100 HS engines, with ship sizes a multiple of 15,000 tons. So I get 4000 km/s at gas core, 5000 km/s ion and 6400 km/s at magneto-plasma. I generally have their range around 16-18b km. The ships are designed to fight through hostile missile fire.

[nuclearslurpee]

I usually stick to 1.0x modifier for fuel conservation, at least in the early game as it is very easy to run out of fuel by using boosted engines (I also find at least the first level of lower EP modifier, 0.4x, to be essential for reducing fuel consumption by the commercial fleet). My most common engine fractions are 32% (usually for missile and carrier fleets) and 40% (for beam fleets), but I've also used 36% and 3/8 (37.5%) fractions with reasonable results. I have started playing around more with using boosted engines for short-range system patrol craft to defend against certain piratical threats, but I don't generally use boosted engines for mainline warships as I prefer a cruiser-style doctrine where my battle fleets reach the area of operations independently so the fuel efficiency matters.

One thing to be aware of is that you should never have more than 1/3 your engine mass again as fuel mass (so if you have, e.g., 30 HS of engines, no more than 10 HS of fuel - the math on this has been shown elsewhere). Usually you will have less fuel than this but having more is strictly worse in any way, except in rare cases when you need to work with existing technology in an emergency build scenario. The danger is that if you use too much boost, you reach a point where you would have more tonnage and cost-efficient propulsion by using a lower boost and less fuel. If for example you have 90 HS of engines with 1.5x boost and 60 HS (3 million liters) of fuel to achieve whatever range you want, you will save 7 HS (about 5%) tonnage and over 40% of the fuel by using 108 HS of engines with 1.25x boost and about 35 HS (1,750,000 liters) of fuel. Note that the cost of the engines remains the same since it is simply 1/2 the total EP (thus remaining constant with ship speed).

You can go even lower with the boost to save more fuel, but you will use more tonnage to do so so it is a trade-off; my point here is simply that it is very much possible to boost beyond an optimum point and make your ships worse by doing so, so you must be careful. This is why I don't recommend using a lot of boost for new players who are unfamiliar with the mechanics as they will tend to run out of fuel very quickly without knowing what happened.

[Pedroig]

In recent campaigns, I have had success with 33% engine beam ships, using 1.2x engine boost and 100 HS engines, with ship sizes a multiple of 15,000 tons. So I get 4000 km/s at gas core, 5000 km/s ion and 6400 km/s at magneto-plasma. I generally have their range around 16-18b km. The ships are designed to fight through hostile missile fire.

This is my basic premise of building all ships, I more or less build for a percentage of engines to ship mass, and then wanting to hit a certain velocity, and then simply make that work for increments up or down, to a point.  So I will have 10 HS engines for "small" ships and then 100 HS for "medium" and then 250 HS for "large" with military ships always having even number of engines and commercial having odd number of engines.  (I have no problem having a liner with one engine, but the only exception I have to that rule is small fighters with single engines).  I then take the natural progression of speed with tech increases without having to redesign everything.  It also makes it where I am only running 2-4 "engine lines" on any given production planet for ship construction.

[AlStar]

While it's not, strictly speaking, the best idea for your battle fleet, I tend to design the largest engine I can for my ships, such that one or possibly two engines provide all the power needed.

Pros: Gains in fuel efficiency (potentially large ones, especially in tiny things like fighters). If you don't need the extra fuel efficiency, you can overcharge your engines such that the total fuel consumption remains static, but your ships move faster under the same engine tonnage.

Cons: The engine(s) are, by far, the largest target on the ship, so get hit statistically more often. If a hit destroys the engine, you're either stuck in space or down to half speed.

[SentientMeatbag (OP)]

While it's not, strictly speaking, the best idea for your battle fleet, I tend to design the largest engine I can for my ships, such that one or possibly two engines provide all the power needed.

Pros: Gains in fuel efficiency (potentially large ones, especially in tiny things like fighters).  If you don't need the extra fuel efficiency, you can overcharge your engines such that the total fuel consumption remains static, but your ships move faster under the same engine tonnage.

Cons: The engine(s) are, by far, the largest target on the ship, so get hit statistically more often.  If a hit destroys the engine, you're either stuck in space or down to half speed.

I noticed this as well, I tend to aim for two engines for each ship, this could lead to problems in the future as if I have a bunch of diffrent tonnage sizes, I am going to be making a lot of engine designs, but I intend to stick to a few standardized sizes for ships.