First War Ship...

[Dutchling (OP)]

So I created my first war ship.   
Comments are welcome (aka: what is wrong with it?)

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See later post

[Thiosk]

Ok there appears to be a few things i would be doing quite differently.

1:  it can't go very far.  2 months.  i usually deck my ships out to handle about 1.5 years.  needs moar fuels.
2:  Its going to explode.  See the annual failure rate?  stuff goes wrong every year, and if a few of your big ticket items break down, the whole ship could start to crumble and explode.  Add some engineering spaces to get that est time up to, oh, 2 years should be more than plenty for ion ships.
3:  i don't see a reactor-- theres no power for the guns to shoot anything, unless im blind and sleepy.
4:  1 shield unit is not going to help-- I usually do five for a small ship like this.

For a beam ship, the speed is good-- you want more engines on a beam ship to help close gaps while they shoot missiles at you.

My first ships that i designed like this were not very successful.  i'd take the active sensors off and run a dedicated sensor ship-- great big arrays to give some serious range-- 60 m km is not very far at 4km/s.

I make a sensor ship of about 6600 tons that is a huge missle sensor and a huge ship scanner, and put some passives on there.  Deck it out with armor and shields because those active sensors make it a target.  Then, your PD\Beam ships can defend it with incoming missiles.

[Dutchling (OP)]

thx, I'll post an improved version + the sensor ship when I have them finished.     
I actually had no idea how much armour or shield I needed and the reactor was indeed forgotten >.      <

EDIT: Ok, this is my new Ship

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Solomon class Divine Cruiser    14,300 tons     1338 Crew     2123.2 BP      TCS 286  TH 1440  EM 240
5034 km/s     Armour 5-52     Shields 8-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 60
Annual Failure Rate: 408%    IFR: 5.7%    Maint Capacity 2371 MSP    Max Repair 180 MSP    Est Time: 2.07 Years

Ion Engine E6 (24)    Power 60    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 550,000 Litres    Range 115.4 billion km   (265 days at full power)
Beta R300/10.5 Shields (5)   Total Fuel Cost  53 Litres per day

Quad 12cm C4 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (3x4)    Range 192,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 16-16     RM 5    ROF 5        4 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 2
Fire Control S16 96-12000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 49.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Sensor Ship

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Prophet class Sensor Ship    13,950 tons     885 Crew     2476 BP      TCS 279  TH 1140  EM 450
4086 km/s     Armour 10-51     Shields 15-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 259%    IFR: 3.6%    Maint Capacity 3666 MSP    Max Repair 525 MSP    Est Time: 1.85 Years

Ion Engine E6 (19)    Power 60    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 161.3 billion km   (456 days at full power)
Beta R300/10.5 Shields (10)   Total Fuel Cost  105 Litres per day

Active Search Sensor MR31-R1 (1)     GPS 525     Range 31.5m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR315-R100 (1)     GPS 52500     Range 315.0m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Are they okay?

[Thiosk]

toss another 15 cm gun on there to use up all the power and consider that the scout ship is faster than the battleship

[Dutchling (OP)]

Shouldn't they have the same speed? They are useless without the other right?
I don't need another beam fire control if I add another laser right?

[Brian Neumann]

Shouldn't they have the same speed? They are useless without the other right?
I don't need another beam fire control if I add another laser right?

You may want the sensor ship to stay back and spot for you while the combat ships close.  In this case having a little extra speed can come in handy to deal with any suprises that show up.  You can assign any number of weapons to a single fire control.  You might actually want to switch the 12cm for 10cm lasers if this is primarly for point defense and use the saved space for an extra 15cm.  Depending on where your fractional points are you may be able to squeeze two on board and the power for them without slowing down much.

Brian

[Dutchling (OP)]

I updated my second post,
I added the laser and boosted speed to 5000km/s (+engineering space and fuel storage)

The squad turret is indeed designed for point defense but I think it should do fine as attack weapon versus crafts without missiles.  I just took the fastest laser possible which was the 12cm.

[Brian Neumann]

I updated my second post,
I added the laser and boosted speed to 5000km/s (+engineering space and fuel storage)

The squad turret is indeed designed for point defense but I think it should do fine as attack weapon versus crafts without missiles.  I just took the fastest laser possible which was the 12cm.

After looking a little more closely I realized that both the 12 and 15cm lasers have the same range.  In that case you might want to look at replacing the 15's with 2 tripple 12's and get the benifit of more lasers for point defense, and faster firing lasers for offense.  The two points of damage is not enough difference when compared to doubling the cycle time between shots.

Brian

[Dutchling (OP)]

Ok, I think I remove the beam fire control with the lower TS, remove the 12cm lasers and make a total of 3 quad 12cm lasers. 
I just need to design the power plants so won't have that much power left. 

EDIT: Modified the my 2nd post.  Is this good? I guess so, but I don't really know if they amount of shields/armor is okay.

[Brian Neumann]

EDIT: Modified the my 2nd post.  Is this good? I guess so, but I don't really know if they amount of shields/armor is okay.

You have a working design.  The next step is to actually use it in combat and see how it works.  When you see a potentially hostile contact make sure you exit out of aurora entirely and make a copy of the database.  This way if you make mistakes in controlling the ships (ie forgot to set pd up when the missiles are coming in) you can go back and fix those types of mistakes.  If you want a true learning experience, fight the battle out and see what happens.  Then change the designs of your ships around and refight the battle to see how that makes a difference.  As an example for a reworked design you could make the turrets tripple gun turrets and use the extra space saved to up your shields, armour, or both.  Then see what works for you.  If you do not have a decent missile ship for both offensive and defensive purposes then you will probably want the extra defenses.  I would recommend 1 ship with 10 size 1 launchers and lots of magazines.  This is your primary point defense and you want it to thin out the incomming salvo's so that the lasers can take care of the rest.  You will also want at least a couple of long range anti-ship missile ships (60-100 mkm is a good start).  If not then hopefully you are faster than the enemy ships which is problematical given your tech levels.

Brian

[Dutchling (OP)]

Ok, thx for the help.
I think I produce 1 sensor ship and 5 or more laser ships.  I'll start on missile tech now (haven't touched that yet).

[Thiosk]

I wish i had explored a little more before coming here and getting ship design suggestions though-- you ought to take these beam ships out for a tour of duty and see how it goes!!!

[Dutchling (OP)]

Well, I actually started designing the ships when my colony on Titan was demanding protection, but later I realized they just needed a PDC.   I didn't want to stop the designing though, so I basically have some ships now without a real purpose. 

EDIT: my ships are EXPLODING at earth! They weren't doing anything! How do I stop this?

[sloanjh]

EDIT: my ships are EXPLODING at earth! They weren't doing anything! How do I stop this?

Did you give them any engineering spaces?  Did you build maintenance facilities on Earth?  This sounds like maintenance failure.

John

PS - That or they're caught in a Baen book

[Dutchling (OP)]

It are the ships I posted in this thread.   They are both having maint problems every month and a sensor ship just exploded.  .  . 
EDIT: I just added 50 engineering spaces (+more engines and life support) so they both have 50% failure rate.  I hope that will make them explode less often.