Newbie multi role vessel and fighter

[samargh (OP)]

Hi chaps, just upgraded from 5.54 to 6.21 as well as still learning the game, so have started fresh and this is one of my game start designs.

I'm just double checking to make sure I haven't done dumb mistakes; the design itself is intra system multi role (bit of everything) essentially to ensure I've got the rules right. TN start with freebies used, y2015


Tribal class Cruiser    6,000 tons     145 Crew     824.66 BP      TCS 120  TH 240  EM 60
2000 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 2-450     Sensors 15/15/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 14.99
Maint Life 4.39 Years     MSP 258    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 22    5YR 324    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 14   

40 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (6)    Power 40    Fuel Use 95%    Signature 40    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 550,000 Litres    Range 17.4 billion km   (100 days at full power)
Beta R450/288 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  12 Litres per hour  (288 per day)

Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Fast Track Turret (1x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 21000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
CIWS-120 MK1 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

Size 2 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 2    Rate of Fire 60
Missile Fire Control FC22-R40 (1)     Range 22.7m km    Resolution 40
Size 1 Slingshot Anti-missile Missile (2)  Speed: 3,500 km/s   End: 2.1d    Range: 628.2m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 11/7/3
Size 2 Rapier Anti-ship Missile (6)  Speed: 4,000 km/s   End: 10.8d    Range: 3747.7m km   WH: 1    Size: 2    TH: 13/8/4

Active Search Sensor MR3-R1 (1)     GPS 60     Range 3.0m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR24-R100 (1)     GPS 4800     Range 24.0m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH3-15 (1)     Sensitivity 15     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15m km
EM Detection Sensor EM3-15 (1)     Sensitivity 15     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15m km

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

right, checklist

1. thermal and em sensors to spot things not active.
2. large sensor for spotting ships and r1 to spot missiles
3. defences : shields to stop overall damage, 3 step armour to stop at least 1 X damage 15 (did I get that right?) missile before internals, missile launcher firing 1 x sz1 anti-missile missile at long range, 1 x twin laser turret to give mutual point defence and a CIWS for personal last ditch against missile.
4. offence: swap to size 2 anti ship missiles, medium range laser  and of course the turrets. For this I'm just making sure I've paired up new (ie non walk-through) sensors in a sensible manner. e.g. the missile tracking is around the same as active sensors but geared towards a smaller target so I can target gunboats, fighters or missiles further out.
5. speed is up to an acceptable level (now I've worked out the changes in engines). Fuel isn't brilliant but its not a jump ship so would be traveling with a tanker.
6. size is the same as my second largest military slipway so I can use the largest for jump ships.

apart from the fact that it seems pretty anemic, did I get everything correct?

planetary defence will be done with a number of PDCs using 5 x of the above launchers and squadrons of 6 of these (using planetary sensors to home them in...)

Vampire class Fighter    460 tons     10 Crew     59.8 BP      TCS 9.2  TH 30  EM 0
4347 km/s     Armour 2-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 2
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 92%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 4    5YR 67    Max Repair 11 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 0   

10 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (4)    Power 10    Fuel Use 138.35%    Signature 7.5    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 2.8 billion km   (7 days at full power)

Gauss Cannon R2-17 (2x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 4347 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 24-3000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes


again I'm checking for obvious mistakes.

thanks in advance

Dave

[Zincat]

This is going to be a rather ... harsh... post I fear, but please understand there are a lot of problems with these designs, and I'm just pointing them out so you learn

The fighter first. It's quite.. slow, even considering the tech level. Keep in mind that fighter's only defense is speed. To be honest, I don't think you could use it against anything, slow as it is. At this tech level you're probably better off using your resource on something else. Apart from that, the FC is oversixed.
Note that the tracking speed of the Beam fire control tracking speed is much higher than the one of the gauss cannon. You either use a turret, or you use a smaller Beam fire control. Like this, it's wasted space, space you could maybe use for a second engine...

Regarding the ship, there are problems for the components AND problems for the intended mission. Let's start with the components mistake/misunderstandings
- That shield won't stop anything. It will stop the first 3 damages, period. The recharge times are slow, as it is it's just wasted space. You're much better off taking it away and putting more armor. Keep in mind shields start to be good when you have a lot of them, and fast recharge speed too if possible. This generally means that you need to use a lot of them, and research higher level too. For early tech, stick with armor.
- The engines are different in 6.x. You no longer make a bazillion size 1 engines or so. Fuel consumption is important, so you make a few bigger engines, in order to save fuel. Personally, until I reach at least 10000 tons, I stick with 2 engines. This allows you to carry less fuel, thus having more space for pew pew things.
- There is no power generator. Your energy weapons will shoot ONCE. And then never again. I suggest you read the page on the wiki regarding an example creation of a beam warship.
- The laser turret has a tracking speed far higher than the fire control. It's not useful. The values must match. Since your beam fire control can track up to 12000 km/second, it's useless to make a turret that can track faster than that. 12000km/second is your limit for now.
- You have missiles with range of 628 million kilometers and 3.7 billion kilometers.... but your missile fire control can at most use a range of 22.7 million km. You won't be able to shoot anything farther than 22.7 million km with that fire control, no matter the range of the missiles. At your tech level 60-80 million km is the most a missile should be able to go, but you also need to create  a missile fire control than can shoot that far. Also, for missiles speed is life, you want at LEAST 15000 km/second speed at your tech level. More for the anti missile missile if possible. Research higher engine multipliers, at least 2x. You don't need more than a few hundreds of thousands km of range for AMM anyway.
-And finally, remember that no matter what missile fire controls you have, you need matching active sensors. So, if you make a 80 million kilometers fire control, you need a 80 million km active sensor in the fleet in order to see the targets.

That said, regarding the ship. This ship, I'm afraid to say, won't do anything.
First, in aurora ships are generally specialized, and "generic do it all ships" are generally not very good period. you will want to make missile boats, beam weapons ships, AMM ships and so on. I'm not saying a missile ships can't mount a few CIWS or beam weapons, but it should still have MOSTLY missiles.

That said, this ships is way too little armed. I have not calculated how much space is it, but you need at LEAST 5-6 weapons of the same time on a ship of this size, be it missile launchers or beam weapons or AMM launchers. A part of this problem is due to what I wrote above. Multiple fire controls take up space. This ship I'm afraid will never kill anything like it is. Just one missile launcher is useless because of point defense. You need multiple tubes so that multiple missiles close to an enemy at the same time and he can't shoot them all down. Even if you go beam weapons instead, you need multiple beam weapons to kill enemies fast.

That's the crux of it I think. So apart from the design mistakes, my suggestion would be to stick to mission specific ships (missiles boats, etc), fix up those botched components, and in general arm your ships a LOT more.

Hope this post was not too harsh, if you need clarifications feel free to ask more.

[Paul M]

Ok now you get a different view on a few things...

The concept of specialized ships is a strategic decision that you need to make.  That being said a 6000 tonne ship is too small to be effective at GP work.  My heavy frigates are 4500 tonnes, and my destroyers (which are General Purpose warships) are 9000 tonnes.  You are far closer to a frigate than a cruiser at 6000 tonnes.  That means a quasi-mission specialized ship is what you should be aiming for.

Shields are useful when you know what you want them to do.  I use them, even alpha versions, to deal with leakers.  Armour cannot be repaired, shields regen.  If you think your PD can stop most missiles coming in at you then the shields are effective for dealing with or blunting the effect of the odd leaker.  They aren't going to stop multiple missile strikes, but on the other hand I've seen ships survive essentially with no internal damage due to the "useless" shields.  It is another case of what are your assumptions.

The laser turret as pointed out is too fast for your firecontrol.  So you probably can reduce its size by making it equal to the speed of the fire control or by making it somewhat faster (to allow for easy upgrades).  The real problem is the range...here is where I would not use ultraviolet lasers but visible lasers which match the 48 000 km range of the fire control.  This will reduce the cost of the turret.

There is nothing wrong with the barbette it is long range, hard hitting laser coupled with a good fire control for anti-shipping work.

I don't see a powerplant anywhere in the design so currently your lasers can't fire.

The missile fire control looks ok...a bit shorter ranged than the sensor but that isn't so much an issue.

The missiles...are bad.  I would suggest you optimize your AAM with the typical formula you can find in various places on the boards.  The anti-ship missile has to have a warhead of 2 (minimum) as a warhead of 1 is the worst concievable warhead size for anti-shipping work (the square law of missile size is nice to try for but don't obsess on it width is as valuable).  Cut the fuel way back as was suggest and increase the speed.  I doubt you are going to get to 15000 km/s with a size 2 missile and your apparent technology howerver.  But they are for the moment far too slow.  I would suggest you build a 0.1 MSP size engine and 0.5 MSP size engine and then use them to build the missiles as they give a reasonable flexibility.  Also your missiles can't hit the broad side of a barn, you need agility as well.  Your missiles engaging your own ships would be hitting maybe at 18% that means of the 6 missiles you could fire 1 would hit on average, and it would do 1 point of damage blocked by the shield.

To use size 2 missiles effectively you need fairly high technology at low technology your missiles will need to be larger to mount both a warhead and the engines required to give them a speed that is "acceptably" fast enough.

Also 1 launcher isn't that valuable, but it isn't pointless either; still you can only launch a missile every 60 seconds.  That is a long time when you are being attacked to survive.  You also have 2 AAMs and 6 ASMs...uhm....well...that isn't a lot.   I'd suggest 2xsize 1 launchers and a much smaller firecontrol to allow you to carry 14 AAMs that you can fire out to 2-3 m km. 

But the real question is what are the intended missions this ship is supposed to fulfill?  Based on the answer to that question you can then look at if the ship can accomplish them.  And then decide what you need to change.  It also matters what the rest of your fleet looks like.

The fighter I would redo the fire control and pick a lower tech level for the range/targeting speed to make it cheaper.  I would also included a basic R1 sensor on the thing to allow them to intercept fighters.  Even a PDC might not see a fighter strike inbound at long range to light them up for the fighters to engage.  Having them have a single guass cannon and sensor is better than the 2 guass cannons and no sensors.  I would remove the armour to lighten them up as armour doesn't really help them. 

Keep in mind that the (target size/sensor resolution) comes in as a square so a target half the size of the sensors designed resolution is picked up at a quarter the maximum distance.

[Zincat]

Ok now you get a different view on a few things...

The concept of specialized ships is a strategic decision that you need to make.  That being said a 6000 tonne ship is too small to be effective at GP work.  My heavy frigates are 4500 tonnes, and my destroyers (which are General Purpose warships) are 9000 tonnes.  You are far closer to a frigate than a cruiser at 6000 tonnes.  That means a quasi-mission specialized ship is what you should be aiming for.

Shields are useful when you know what you want them to do.  I use them, even alpha versions, to deal with leakers.  Armour cannot be repaired, shields regen.  If you think your PD can stop most missiles coming in at you then the shields are effective for dealing with or blunting the effect of the odd leaker.  They aren't going to stop multiple missile strikes, but on the other hand I've seen ships survive essentially with no internal damage due to the "useless" shields.  It is another case of what are your assumptions.

Regarding specialized/multi purpose vessels, my point is that the necessary systems to have multiple type of weapons (multiple fire controls, magazines vs power plants etc) tend to eat up weapon space. So, rather than 2 general ships together, you usually have more firepower having one missile ship and one beam ship together. Still yes, multi purpose ships are possible, but not at this tonnage. You need bigger ships...

Regarding the early shields, you are right about them being useful against leakers. My mistake, if you have a solid point defense in place indeed they can have a point as leakage stoppers, provided you don't get hit too often so that they have time to regenerate. But to samargh, be sure not to consider them a primary defense layer. They are something more to be used in that particular situation. You can't really use them as primary damage stoppers until you research them quite a bit, because right now they use too much space compared to armor considering how much damage they can stop.

Oh and for missiles, I'd suggest size 4-5 anti ship missiles for early tech, so you can obtain decent damage and decent speed as well. I wasn't suggesting he makes a size 2 missile at 15000 km/second

[Paul M]

My point wasn't directed at you Zincat or actually at any person in particular.  It is really just that in my view too many people state as absolutes what are infact conclusions tied to assumptions, change those assumptions and you change the conclusions.  Design is a question of determining what mission or missions you wish to fulfill and then designing a ship or ships to fulfill them.  Strategic flexibility, cost of refits, ease of inter-buildability, tactical flexibity, independence of operation, fire power etc are factored into this process.

It isn't "one stat to rule them all" or "min-maxing" it usually a trade off where you accept comprimises that allow you to fulfill your intended mission(s).  And the one thing that being the "guest admiral" though a lot of starfire battles where I had to figure out how to employ ships created by a random process taught me is that pretty much anything works, you just have to figure out how to employ them.

I am not really convinced there is an "optimal design" against which one judges everything.  There are design failures, such as failing to include powersupplies for the lasers, but after that it is simply the questions of what set of factors does the designer consider most important and what is the ship intended to do?  To me what is lacking is what Dave wants to accomplish and what are the "strategic" boundry conditions to the design...without that you can't say if the design is good for what he wants, or if by this or that change you can get a ship that fulfills that mission(s) better.

I hope the above makes sense.

[Zincat]

I am not really convinced there is an "optimal design" against which one judges everything.  There are design failures, such as failing to include powersupplies for the lasers, but after that it is simply the questions of what set of factors does the designer consider most important and what is the ship intended to do?  To me what is lacking is what Dave wants to accomplish and what are the "strategic" boundry conditions to the design...without that you can't say if the design is good for what he wants, or if by this or that change you can get a ship that fulfills that mission(s) better.

I hope the above makes sense.

That makes perfect sense, and I agree with it. And to be honest, I rather dislike minmaxing myself and I'm considering of doing a beam only game sooner or later

I based my considerations on what Dave said: "intra system multi role (bit of everything)"

Which is indeed the problems, because "bit of everything" does not really accomplish anything. He's doing what we probably all did as newbies, that is, sticking this and that in the ships without a clear idea WHY those systems were on that ship.

To Samargh: I tried to point you in a direction of a functioning "generic" warship, but indeed Paul_M is correct. Before starting a design you should have clear in your mind what you want to do with it. What kind of enemies it should fight, whether they are fast or slow, whether it's supposed to be a capital ship killer or a smaller ship killer, whether it should work alone or with other ships, what range you need etc.

Oh, and don't lose heart, Aurora is a nasty beast to learn, but we all passed through this (hey, I am still a newbie )

[Jorgen_CAB]

In most of my campaigns I have build both specialized and multi-role ships. It all depends on economics, military doctrines and logistics. What shipyards do I have, how many slipways etc... How easy will the ships be to upgrade and maintain over the long haul and so forth.

One of the main difficulties in trying to cram a little bit of everything into relatively small ship platforms is that things like fire-controls and sensors are very expensive if you want to have good range on them. So, in the early game you will mostly need to build rather specialized ships on your smaller ships, perhaps below 8-9000 tons. At about 9000 tons and above you can usually start to flesh out your ships some more, depending on what you want them to do.
Cruiser sized ships (perhaps 10000+ tons) can often have many more combat systems and be more or less self sufficient. But even a 15000 ton ship can hardly be expected to fight alone in most combat situations.

In my opinion if you only build purely specialized ships you usually need to have a much better economy than your opponent because the cost of servicing, building, prototyping, researching such a fleet takes more efforts. But if you have the resources, industry and shipyards to do it you might be better of by doing just that.

As was said above I also find as true, there are no such thing as one optimal design philosophy. It will all be based on circumstances and the different needs and capabilities of said faction. I have run a few multi-faction games where I played several sides. Keeping up in the arms race with factions of similar strength will not allow for much leeway in constructing purely specialized ships, those factions were often out-gunned and/or out-teched by those who were more conservative in their military designs.

My comments on the specific ship above (other than obvious error already pointed out) is that at that tech level and ship size you "might" be better off by not adding too many weapon systems unless you have a very limited number of shipyards with which to build ships of different types. If you have two shipyards (which you mentioned) the bigger one should perhaps be more of a multi-role ship and this smaller one more of a patrol/escort ship.

[Hawkeye]

Ok, now for a third opinion , well not really, just some stuff I´d like to add.

Shields:
I sometimes use ´em, even the Alpha ones, but very rarely a single one. When I use them, I intend to later upgrade the ship with Gamma or Delta shields, and upgrading gets a lot cheaper if there were already shields on the ship, than when you add then later.
Very rarely, I add a single or two shields, when I have 50 or 100 tons left to play with and nothing really worthwhile to put in, so I add a shield or two.

Speed:
Decent for Nuclear Pulse.

Armor:   
Ok-ish, can´t expect an Ironclad at that tech-level.

Lasers:
As already said, reduce the turret tracking speed (personally, I would go for 16.000 km/s, which will allow a cheap upgrade later on by only changing the beam fire control, once you research the next tracking speed level)
Also mentioned already: Add some power plants if you want to shoot those lasers at all

Missile Launcher:
Most has been mentioned already.
I would like to point out one additional thing:
If you add the mass of the launcher (100 t) to the mass of the missile fire control (100? t) you see that you have used 200 tons in order to launch a single missile. Let´s assume you put 5 launchers in the ship instead and you have used 600 tons to launch 5 missiles or 120 tons per missile. Just something to think about.
Magazine:
Abysimal, I can´t describe it any other way. You need way, waaaaay more magazine space. My own rule of thumb is to have at least 10 salvos for ASM and 30 salvos for AMMs.

Missiles:
I am sorry to say, but those won´t hit a thing. They are sitting ducks not only for point defense, but for regular, hull-mounted guns. Hell, my grandma could swat them down with her handbag
You need a lot more speed! Look at the to-hit chances! Your AMMs have a 11% chance to hit a target moving at 3,000 km/s. Missiles you encounter will move at 20.000+km/s. Your AMMs have a 1% or 2% chance to hit one of those (and a chance of about 9% to hit one of your own, (pitiful slow) ASMs).   
Same for your ASMs.
   
The standard way to design a missile (if you haven´t encountered an enemy yet) is to design your ordnance as if would fight your own ships. Now think about how one of you Tribals would engage another Tribal and what the outcome would be. Yep, mags empty, no hit achieved.

I suggest going with size-4 to size-6 missiles, about 50% engines, aim for a warhed strength of at least 4, put in enough fuel for some 50 million km and use the rest for agility, so you can actually hit something. (just play around with the numbers, you might be better off increasing speed (i.e. add another engine) than adding agility, especially with ASMs)

Engines:
I agree with Zincat, use two engines (triple in size or even a bit larger, as the savings in fuel will make up for the larger engines) in order to improve fuel efficiency.

Deployment Time:   
It is intended as an intra-system ship, so should never be all that far away from a maintenance facility, which leads me to question the 4 year deployment time and 4 year maintenance life. 1.5 to 2 years should be quite sufficient.

General:
As Paul M said, GP ships can work, but at 6,000 tons this is very, very hard (read: probably impossible) to do. 15,000+ ton GP ship? No problem.

[joeclark77]

Your turrets track at 21000 km/s but the fire control only tracks at 12000 km/s.  Maybe a typo, but it's costing you by making the turrets bigger than they ought to be.

[samargh (OP)]

LOL, thats what I get for trying to post while the wife is hassling me... half of it gets missed.

To answer the question of design intent, lets call it an exam piece... the part I am finding difficult is matching the sensors, fire control, ranges, tracking speeds and weapons together into a cohesive "weapon", hence so many differing systems crammed into one hull. Add in the fact that engines changed drastically and I now have to re-learn that part as well.

We can call it a flat fail because I forgot to put power plants in (DOH!)

Have reduced mission length to 2.5 years, that has freed enough space for 2 reactors, so the guns now work.

The other intention of the design is that it is a starting stop gap; on turn zero yard space is extremely limited so until more yards can be built allowing simultaneous construction of more classes, I need to be frugal with the amount of designs or spend too much time re-tooling. If I go specialised right off the bat then I leave a dangerous gap. Something (even if extremely weak) has to be better than nothing.

I have already had to use SM mode to give myself a 2500 slipway for a GSV that MUST be naval, so, from a 4000, 6000 and 9000 space yard left, I need the 9000 to be for jump ships so I can ferry any military vessel. The 4000 I will use for a scout/missile boat as the sensors needed to get a missile target out to full run may as well be on the ship firing them. The 9000 will possibly be an escort carrier

That makes the multi role in question an escort while in fleet actions adding to overall PD, able to be detached for JP defence where the beams come into play or as a platform to upgrade from (yes, the shields are naff but can be upgraded into something better later). other than that, its at least a platform in place that can be replaced later when I have more yards and resource.

The other intent had indeed been as a basis for upgrade; if its not installed then its more of an effort to add later, yes? The other assumption is that as other components like armour and engines get upgraded, that will free up mass to be able to put large installations in of other types (launcher and magazine for example). Or did i get that wrong too?

Hope that explains the thinking behind it.

Now, to address each item in turn.

Fighter engine is slow... ok, the new engines are causing me trouble and it has a knock on effect to missiles (i'll get to that). saying that, the Tribal is 2000 and the fighter is over twice that speed... I had enough trouble getting engines small and powerfull enough to get it to that speed. saying that, I have sorted smaller FC and dropped armour that has freed enough mass to get me up to just under 5K... is that still to slow?

Fighter sensors... have played about, and have come up with this:

Venom class Fighter    460 tons     12 Crew     66.4 BP      TCS 9.2  TH 30  EM 0
4347 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 92%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 6    5YR 97    Max Repair 22 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Spare Berths 3    

10 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (4)    Power 10    Fuel Use 138.35%    Signature 7.5    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 2.8 billion km   (7 days at full power)

Gauss Cannon R2-17 (1x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 4347 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gauss Fire Control S01 24-1250 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR3-R10 (FTR) (1)     GPS 216     Range 3.4m km    Resolution 10

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

Same speed as the original config Vampire, so could I slot one of those into a squadron of 6 and gain independent search for only a small drop in firepower?


main ship issues.

shields, I knew they were naff, installed as a placeholder for better ones when I research them and to maybe catch a leaker or blunt a beam. I'll call it an investment

engines, will go and re-work. I guess my question is do you now design and research large class specific engines (with all the added time penalties) rather than smaller generic modules? Have done so on this one, but in an initial draft of a new design it seems a good trick to build initially with 10EPs to get the tonnage right then do the big engines.

mismatch of turret tracking, will go and sort... might free up some mass for something else like it did on the fighter?

missiles. I'm happy that I got my FC in line with active search, so that's fine. I could increase the FC to take advantage of active ping from the missile scouts?

as far as actual missile ordnance goes,  I had enough problems getting it go over 2000, which wouldn't be able to overhaul jack in a stern chase. Have gone back (now I know its possible) and have had another go... its getting easier. I even manages to work out how to offset fuel capacity to drop the range in line with FC and give it some wiggle to improve the hit chance.

with regard to a single launcher, if it is eventually destined to become a light DDE then the single launcher will either add to an existing salvo or be used for AMM. I had never envisaged it working solo, so a squadron of 3 is 3 launchers and mutual PD. I accept a size 2 launcher and low ammo is pants, but it was always due for upgrade. Have managed to rejig things, and I'm far happier with the results.

So, exam resit now I've given my expectations and taken some advice.

here goes...

Tribal class Cruiser    6,000 tons     147 Crew     851.48 BP      TCS 120  TH 180  EM 60
2000 km/s     Armour 3-29     Shields 2-450     Sensors 15/15/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 14.71
Maint Life 2.1 Years     MSP 177    AFR 144%    IFR 2%    1YR 54    5YR 806    Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 30 months    Spare Berths 1    
Magazine 31    

120 EP Intercooled Nuclear Pulse Engine (2)    Power 120    Fuel Use 68%    Signature 90    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 22.1 billion km   (127 days at full power)
Beta R450/288 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  12 Litres per hour  (288 per day)

15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Proposed Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 3    ROF 5        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
CIWS-120 MK1 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.05 (2)     Total Power Output 9.45    Armour 0    Exp 7%

Size 3 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 3    Rate of Fire 90
Missile Fire Control FC22-R40 (1)     Range 22.7m km    Resolution 40
Size 3 Mjolnir Anti-ship Missile (9)  Speed: 10,000 km/s   End: 111.2m    Range: 66.7m km   WH: 2    Size: 3    TH: 43/26/13
Size 1 Aegis Anti-missile Missile (4)  Speed: 8,000 km/s   End: 50.7m    Range: 24.3m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 29/17/8

Active Search Sensor MR3-R1 (1)     GPS 60     Range 3.0m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR24-R100 (1)     GPS 4800     Range 24.0m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH3-15 (1)     Sensitivity 15     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15m km
EM Detection Sensor EM3-15 (1)     Sensitivity 15     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15m km

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

how is it now?

[Cripes Amighty]

I understand the issues with engines. It took a bit to get used to. I keep the speed equation in mind when designing ship engines as it is quite handy:

Ship Speed km/s=(Total Engine Power/Ship Size in HS)*1,000 km/s

My personal preference is to keep engines around 25% of the total ship size which gives me an idea of how large I need to make my engines. I then pick a speed that I want the ship to go, figure out how large I want the ship to be and then figure out how much power the engines need to produce. In order to reach the required EP, I fiddle around with the power modifier to get what I need. This is my personal preference, but I think it's a good way to learn how you want to design your engines.

Looking at those missiles, they still look rather slow. When you design the Missile Engine component, are you using the maximum power modifier? There is really no reason not to (as I think others have mentioned) unless you are designing some super long range, multi-staged missile with a smaller and faster secondary. If you are using your maximum available power modifier, I strongly suggest that you focus early research on increasing the modifier and get it up to at least x1.75 (x2.00 would be preferable) before using missiles as a viable weapon choice.

The thing that kinda throws me off is that your anti-ship missiles is faster than your anti-missile missile. AMMs should have roughly 70% of their body dedicated to the engine. However that may not be possible given your warhead tech, in which case you might want to hold off on using AMMs as your main anti-missile system. Also, the AMM has a huge range at ~50m km. I normally aim for around ~2.5m km, but I really don't think it should ever be above 5m km.

Of course, this all depends on your missile tech. At this point, it may be better to rely on your beam weapons until you've thrown some RP into the field of missiles/kinetics.

[Paul M]

Well your concept of using an AAM is running into another issue and that is the lack of a dedicated AAM fire control.  If I do the numbers right your missile firecontrol against a 0.6 HS target (generic missile) is 5000 km.  That is too short to be useful.  I always use a Res 1 missile FC for my countermissile tubes.  {22.7 m km * (0.6/40)^2 = 0.005 m km}

Given what you want this ship to be used for 3xsize 1 tubes with 30 AAM missiles in your magazine would do a darn good job at long range missile defence.  Your current design I don't believe works for LR Anti-missile defence at all due to the above problem.  The size 1 launchers would also cycle faster (30s) so you would put 9 AAMs into space in the time you can launch but a single size 3 missile.

Your missiles are too long ranged at the moment, cut the fuel to bare bones and use the space for agility is my suggestion.  People tend to forget what missiles of this tech level are like but the warhead tech makes it hard to have "fast" missiles.  You need at least 3:1 warhead tech for sufficient space to allow for speed.   There is a formula that optimizes your to-hit chance...it is in my AAR; it is in other threads.  For AAMs it is pretty much the best solution, for ASMs you should start with it and then fiddle to taste.  An AAM doesn't need range much more than 5 m km and only needs that sort of range for taking out fighters...so you can have fuel = 0.001 or something along that line.  Your ASM needs a range of 25 m km or so but longer isn't always bad as it allows you to fire in chase scenarios at long range.  But in all honesty what you write says you want an Anti-missile escort that is capable of knife fighting so ASMs are not mission relevant.   You can also build a Space 3 5 m km range torpedo for the ship to be used with a Res 1 FC.  Carry 3 of those torpedos and use the rest of your magazine for AAMs.

A res 1 missile FC with a range of say 5 m km would enable you to use the missiles for missile defence, for anti-fighter work, and as part of a short range bombardment as you close for a beam engagment. 

As far as upgrades go engines remain the same size but the ship moves faster.  Theoretically you could drop the size of the engine and keep the speed the same but the big point to going to a new gen of engines is that your ships are all faster.  And speed is the "one stat that rules them all" in Aurora.  Faster = better.

You will gain space in a lot of other components, and improved armour frees space.  Magazines will also improve in efficiency.  Reactors are a big gain as they dramatically reduce in size or else provide more power for the same size.

[Zincat]

uhm, from the post in The Academy, Samargh has still the basic, warhead strength 2 technology. He didn't research yet even the strength 3 warhead.

You really can't make a functioning amm missile with that warhead strength, too much of the missile is taken up by the warhead. A functioning anti ship missile is difficult too. If you want to use missile, you need to invest at least a bit in missile research.

Anyway, the 2 posts above me already covered in detail the missile problem.

The fighters are still way too slow. At this tech level you might consider doing without, until you invest in better engine multipliers. Consider this, your own ship, with that twin laser turret, would completely kill them off VERY quickly. Possibly would kill off 6 in less than a minute. Possible enemies would likely do much worse.

For ship engines (fighters are different), this is how I build them. First, I allocate a percentage of the ship, between 25% and 30%, depending on ship profile. For example in this case, let's say 30%, so 1800 tons. As said, let's say to make 2 engines. Each engine will be 900 tons, or size 18. For generic warships, I use mostly engine multiplier 1x, so the engines are done. For particular kind of warships you might want to use higher or lower multipliers. If you wanted to use 25% instead, you would have made 2 size 15 engines.

[Iranon]

ASMs faster than AMMs:

AMMs want a mix of engine and agility that lets them hit challenging targets.
ASMs probably want less agility - their targets are easier to hit, more speed helps overcome active defences.

Usually, the discrepancy in relative warhead weight more than makes up for this.  If it doesn't, your AMM either has an unusually large warhead (very low warhead tech? Expected to defeat armoured missiles?) or your ASM is unusually fast, sacrificing efficiency for the ability to defeat active defences.
Does this reflect your design considerations? If not, back to the drawing board.

[samargh (OP)]

Lads, Lads, calm down

Yes, I skimped on early missile tech because I got one at the start this game.

Once a few of those low hanging fruit have been researched, the ship above will get its first set of refits and the dedicated missile boat will get designed.

In truth, if I had realised that warhead 3 was a game changer then I probably would have researched it at pre-start, but I didn't and it really isn't a huge deal for me because it will be available so quickly.

As for the fighters, for a number of reasons I'd like my forces to be fighter heavy. I'm perfectly happy to do multiple generations of them because they are far easier to produce than having to re-tool every 6 months; I just have to be really on top of fuel production because I know those engines will be gutsy.

Thanks for all the help so far,

Dave