Largest Ships You've Used

[Girlinhat]

How do you have missile production in the fleet?  You mean cargo ships that were carrying installations, and you'd stop and build and then start moving again?

[dgibso29]

It also had stealth tech that took up 10% of the ship. 

Brian

How in the world did you stealth that beast?

[LoSboccacc]

you paint it black! 

[ardem]

It was a good challenge that one, I never found a home and ran out of fuel, all those gas giants not one with sorium so unlucky. I did have a 200,000 ton combat vessel it was my fleet carrier.

On second thoughts actually, the guy you made that challenge was stupid. 

[Vynadan]

I wonder how you cloak a thing like that, too. Ships like that are usually always-sensors-on designs for me that don't even bother hiding.
I tend to put all engines for such huge ships on overcharge to get as much speed as possible. Sometimes I pondered about overcharged commercial drives for the fuel efficiency (because even my 300kt ship ended up with ~150+ engines), but abandoned the idea because of their size. Do you actually go down on the power output to dim the thermal exhaust?

The longer my games take, the larger my civilian ships get. After a while I usually add another five cargo holds for freighters. My longest game came to a standard size of freighters, colony ships and that alike of 200kt, built in several 200kt yards with 10 slipways each. I actually often build terraformers or freighters in small numbers ranging in a million tons. I really hate waiting for a terraforming project to complete xD

[Brian Neumann]

How in the world did you stealth that beast?

Max out the stealth.  It was still qiute large after that, but not so huge that anybody would spot it from across the system.  I just double checked some old notes and that version of the ship didn't have stealth.  Can't stealth anything over 60,000 tons.  I have done that and it comes out looking like a 3000 ton scout.  Sorry my bad about the monster being stealthed.

Brian

[Brian Neumann]

How do you have missile production in the fleet?  You mean cargo ships that were carrying installations, and you'd stop and build and then start moving again?

Correct, I also had 12 engineer Brigades and about 20 auto mines.  Enough ships with maintenance modules so the only ship in the fleet with problems was the battlestar.  I also carried about 50 million colonists in cryo freeze.  It was a huge fleet.  The commercial ships were also huge monsters of about 1 million tons.  They had 20 points of armor and 10 ciws moved at 6200km/s and carried 1 million colonists.  I think the only reason I survived was that the civilian ships were all this size and normall missile attacks spread out to much between them.  They had enough ciws to stop a lot of missiles (16 shots at 50% each) so very few missiles would get through, and they rarely landed in overlapping spots (890 columns of armor).

Brian

[Girlinhat]

Those are some big ships...  I've often debated having a population ship, with 5 cryo tanks to every 1 habitat module, though this would get big pretty quickly it would allow you to very effectively move a population into a new colony instantly.  Add some cargo for carrying mines/ordinance production/etc and a tractor for carrying a shipyard, and you've got some economic push that will move on command!

I've debated using this idea to create a nomad empire, that sets temporary (10-15 year) colonies on rich worlds before moving on.  Namely just stopping long enough to perform some research, refitting, resource collection, and repairs.  This would, of course, require some massive civilian ships...  But putting an orbital habitat on a ship should make it produced via industry, right?  That can cut down a bit on the massive shipyard costs and provide some living space.

[ardem]

orbital habitats are a substitute for planet based infrastructure that is about it.

[Girlinhat]

Right, but if you've got a nomadic empire then you can't always rely upon the cost 2 colonies that sometimes show up.  Sometimes you gotta work with the cost 20 and habitats would help!

[blue emu]

orbital habitats are a substitute for planet based infrastructure that is about it.

Orbital Habitat modules have one very useful feature... ANY design that includes one or more OHM can be built in your factories instead of in a shipyard... even a military design... so it doesn't require a slipway. Try to build a million-ton Death Star without including an Orbital Habitat Module in the design... it will probably take you a hundred years to expand a military shipyard that big. Include an Orbital Habitat Module in the design and it takes four years to build one... in your factories.

[Vynadan]

A design can be commercial and an orbital habitat, but never military and a habitat.
Military components remove/overwrite the habitat designation.

[blue emu]

It can still be built in a Factory instead of a slipway, "Military" or no.

Have you tested this?

Death Star class Battlestar 443,350 tons 18267 Crew 30473 BP TCS 8867 TH 4600 EM 7200
518 km/s Armour 15-517 Shields 240-300 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 210 PPV 1273.98
Maint Life 1.73 Years MSP 117021 AFR 7488% IFR 104% 1YR 47403 5YR 711043 Max Repair 800 MSP
Magazine 10000 Habitation Capacity 50,000

Magneto-plasma Drive E9.1 1947 (50) Power 92 Fuel Use 91% Signature 92 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 3,550,000 Litres Range 15.8 billion km (353 days at full power)
Epsilon R300/21 Shields (80) Total Fuel Cost 1,680 Litres per day

Triple 10cm C4 Visible Light Laser Turret (6x3) Range 60,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 9-12 RM 2 ROF 5 3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 64-20000 (3) Max Range: 128,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22

Size 100 Missile Launcher (12) Missile Size 100 Rate of Fire 600
Missile DS Fire Control FC105-R100 (3) Range 105.8m km Resolution 100
Size 100 Anti-ship Missile (100) Speed: 27,500 km/s End: 60.8m Range: 100.4m km WH: 100 Size: 100 TH: 165 / 99 / 49

Active DS Search Sensor MR107-R100 (1) GPS 7700 Range 107.8m km Resolution 100
Active PD Search Sensor MR30-R1 1953 (1) GPS 280 Range 30.8m 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

Including a Habitat module allows it to be built without a slipway, "military" or not. Possibly a bug, but that's how it seems to work.

[Vynadan]

No, I've never tried that.
I just saw the Orbital Habitat designation vanish from the design screen and assmued it would work that way ... xD

[Girlinhat]

I think it's allowed so that you can have self-defending pieces.  Instead of relying upon nearby support, you could make a colony starbase with orbital habitats and weapons, a single massive piece of engineering that handled its own needs.  The equivalent of a Babylon 5, if you will.