Author Topic: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)  (Read 3566 times)

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Offline smoelf (OP)

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It's been a few years since I started playing Aurora 4x, but for some reason I have never actually encountered the swarm ... until now. My regular design seemed unable to handle the specific challenge that the swarm presented, so I decided to build an entirely new fleet after researching ICF engine tech, while still allowing it to be re-equipped to handle other enemy types.

I am aware of 31x ships with 160 thermal signature, each equipped with a single meson cannon with 50.000 km range observed and a max sensor range of 300.000 km, with a speed of 10666 km/s and a single mothership (presumably) with 1440 thermal signature, max sensor range of 336m km, shield strength of 600, and a speed of 1200 km/s.

The fleet is mostly designed to handle the fighters/FAC's and then re-equip if needed to deal with the mothership. I following a hybrid design, built around independent missile cruiser squads and a carrier base with laser FAC's for hunting. I have no idea if this is overkill or underpowered, but it'll be fun to find out :)

Carrier base
The core of the fleet is the carrier flagship with a jump engine and sensors that allow for the FAC operations. A single Kingston brings the fleet command, while the core can be supplemented with any number of Defiance classes. Only one for now.

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Kingston class Carrier    30 000 tons     661 Crew     5314.3 BP      TCS 600  TH 3520  EM 3750
5866 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 4-86     Shields 125-300     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 56     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.57 Years     MSP 5866    AFR 427%    IFR 5.9%    1YR 1244    5YR 18654    Max Repair 593 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 77   
Flag Bridge    Hangar Deck Capacity 7000 tons     

J30000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 30000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
880 EP Internal Fusion Drive (4)    Power 880    Fuel Use 38.07%    Signature 880    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 2 500 000 Litres    Range 39.4 billion km   (77 days at full power)
Delta R300/300 Shields (50)   Total Fuel Cost  625 Litres per hour  (15 000 per day)

Active Search Sensor MR611-R300 (1)     GPS 75600     Range 611.1m km    Resolution 300
Active Search Sensor MR74-R20 (1)     GPS 2380     Range 74.5m km    Resolution 20

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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Defiance class Carrier    30 000 tons     534 Crew     4608.8 BP      TCS 600  TH 3520  EM 0
5866 km/s     Armour 4-86     Shields 0-0     Sensors 210/210/0/0     Damage Control Rating 55     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.53 Years     MSP 5440    AFR 480%    IFR 6.7%    1YR 1182    5YR 17730    Max Repair 440 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 132   
Hangar Deck Capacity 12000 tons     

880 EP Internal Fusion Drive (4)    Power 880    Fuel Use 38.07%    Signature 880    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 3 150 000 Litres    Range 49.6 billion km   (97 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH15-210 (1)     Sensitivity 210     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  210m km
EM Detection Sensor EM15-210 (1)     Sensitivity 210     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  210m km

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Hunting party
Currently, each carrier is stacked full with Hounds, which can work independently as long as there is a thermal/EM signature, but there is a possibility for more utility based carriers. The Hound is designed specifically to counter the enemy swarm, both in speed and range.

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Hound class Fast Attack Craft    1 000 tons     9 Crew     498.5 BP      TCS 20  TH 288  EM 0
14400 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6
Maint Life 1.96 Years     MSP 78    AFR 32%    IFR 0.4%    1YR 27    5YR 401    Max Repair 270 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   

288 EP Internal Fusion Drive (1)    Power 288    Fuel Use 199.96%    Signature 288    Exp 18%
Fuel Capacity 70 000 Litres    Range 6.3 billion km   (5 days at full power)

19cm C3 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 384 000km     TS: 14400 km/s     Power 9-3     RM 5    ROF 15        9 9 9 9 9 7 6 5 5 4
Fire Control S03 192-9375 (1)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 9375 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (4)     Total Power Output 3.2    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR1-R10 (FAC) (1)     GPS 28     Range 1.2m km    Resolution 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Missile cruiser strike force
As the main offensive weapon, the fleet contains three squadrons of missile cruisers. They can operate independent of each other as each squadron contains sensors, point defence, and a jump engine for squad transit. A single Bloodhawk takes lead of the squadron, while accompanied by a single Paladin for point defence and three Wargs for offensive capability. Once the swarm is defeated, the missile loadout can be changed to longer ranged and more damaging warheads.

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Bloodhawk class Jump Cruiser    15 000 tons     397 Crew     3132 BP      TCS 300  TH 2640  EM 0
8800 km/s    JR 5-500     Armour 4-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 110/110/0/0     Damage Control Rating 28     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.67 Years     MSP 3044    AFR 225%    IFR 3.1%    1YR 607    5YR 9104    Max Repair 440 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Cryogenic Berths 200   

J15200(5-500) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 15200 tons    Distance 500k km     Squadron Size 5
880 EP Internal Fusion Drive (3)    Power 880    Fuel Use 38.07%    Signature 880    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 950 000 Litres    Range 29.9 billion km   (39 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (2x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Active Search Sensor MR611-R300 (1)     GPS 75600     Range 611.1m km    Resolution 300
Active Search Sensor MR74-R20 (1)     GPS 2380     Range 74.5m km    Resolution 20
Active Search Sensor MR18-R1 (1)     GPS 133     Range 18.6m km    MCR 2.0m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  110m km
EM Detection Sensor EM10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  110m km

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Code: [Select]
Paladin class Escort Cruiser    15 000 tons     381 Crew     3285 BP      TCS 300  TH 2640  EM 0
8800 km/s     Armour 3-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 28     PPV 54.98
Maint Life 2 Years     MSP 2095    AFR 225%    IFR 3.1%    1YR 696    5YR 10439    Max Repair 576 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 920   

880 EP Internal Fusion Drive (3)    Power 880    Fuel Use 38.07%    Signature 880    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 650 000 Litres    Range 20.5 billion km   (26 days at full power)

Triple Gauss Cannon R3-50 Turret (3x9)    Range 30 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 192-20000 (1)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74

Size 1 Missile Launcher (20)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC41-R1 (2)     Range 41.2m km    Resolution 1
Size 1 AMM II (920)  Speed: 40 000 km/s   End: 1.9m    Range: 4.7m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 613/368/184

ECM 20

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
Code: [Select]
Warg class Missile Cruiser    15 000 tons     378 Crew     2639 BP      TCS 300  TH 2640  EM 0
8800 km/s     Armour 3-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 25     PPV 45
Maint Life 2.24 Years     MSP 2550    AFR 360%    IFR 5%    1YR 688    5YR 10315    Max Repair 440 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 1140   

880 EP Internal Fusion Drive (3)    Power 880    Fuel Use 38.07%    Signature 880    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 750 000 Litres    Range 23.6 billion km   (31 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (75% Reduction) (12)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 100
Missile Fire Control FC520-R160 (1)     Range 520.6m km    Resolution 160
Missile Fire Control FC84-R20 (1)     Range 84.1m km    Resolution 20
Size 5 Anti-Fighter Missile (228)  Speed: 41 600 km/s   End: 23.1m    Range: 57.6m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 332/199/99

ECCM-1 (2)         ECM 20

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
 
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Offline smoelf (OP)

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2020, 06:27:17 AM »
Okay ... it turns out it was severely overkill. After entering the system, the three squadrons split off and took position ahead of the carrier core. When the 31x Hessen 750t FAC's were detected, only one squadron had the range to hit them, but easily devastated half of the group, at which point the Hounds entered range and took out the rest. With a high enough initiative, they were able to keep out of range and take them out one by one.

Now on to test the mothership's defences.
 

Offline Alsadius

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2020, 09:18:03 AM »
Okay ... it turns out it was severely overkill.

There is no kill like overkill.

Well done.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2020, 12:51:57 PM »
Nice looking ships. The only thing I would change is to put at least backup active sensors on the other cruisers, especially the escort cruiser. Losing your Res1 sensor on the Bloodhawk would be a disaster.
 
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Offline smoelf (OP)

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2020, 01:23:16 PM »
Nice looking ships. The only thing I would change is to put at least backup active sensors on the other cruisers, especially the escort cruiser. Losing your Res1 sensor on the Bloodhawk would be a disaster.
That's a good point. I've never gotten used to building for redundancy, so it's a good reminder.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2020, 04:02:29 PM »
I would have suggested that you use some sacrificial cheap scouts (80 ton fighters with a 1 HS max boosted engine, for ex), to find out the EXACT range of their mesons.  Because if you are going to try to pound through the mothership's shields, you will want to do the most dps possible without risking getting splatted.

A cheapish way to deal with the mothership is to exploit the fact that it is very slow, and have missiles that are almost all warhead, designed to be fired from outside of beam range (5 million km or so, just to be safe).

An even cheaper, that should be available at your tech level, is research mesons to the 8,000 RP level, and simply have a single ship outrange the mommy and humiliate it by killing it with mesons.

The Swarm is a threat at low level, because of the speed and because of the weight of fire needed to batter down the shields.  Once you have beam weapons that outrange it, that do enough damage to overpower the shield regen, the Swarm are more of a nuisance, perhaps a contest to see how you can defeat them most cheaply.

Boarding is only semi doable, because a lot of the times the boarding will glitch and won't resolve, because of the issue of zero or negative crew.  I was able to board and capture 1/3 or so of disabled Swarm soldiers, but the other 2/3 I had to destroy the ship and my intact boarding party because it wouldn't resolve.
 
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Offline xenoscepter

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2020, 07:37:14 PM »
@Michael Sandy

 --- Aha! A volunteer! Finally! I can't tell you the devil of a time I've had finding pilots for my scouts. Glad to see there still people willing to die for the glory of the Empire!

@Thread

 - However, in all seriousness Michael Sandy is making a damn fine point. My counter point would be to think of the pilot who is inside of that 80-Ton scout. What kind of empire are you running? Suicide scouts are cool and all mechanically, hell they're damn near OP, but from a Role-Playing perspective... why are people being sent to die? And why are they cool with it? Or are they not cool with and being forced at gun point (or an equivalent alternative)? Part of the fun I've found in Aurora 4X was the sheer joy of running my empire. How will we deal with the, "Squids :3"? (we murdered them, btw.) What is our current priority? (Implementing the Kuiper Defense Initiative... it's the Maginot Line, but with nukes and in SPACE.) What do we focus on with our ships? (Currently military buildup to fight the "Squids :3")

 - I'm not saying don't build suicide scouts. Just consider the role-play element. Michael Sandy's ideas are typically top-grade, and you should definitely listen to what he has to say. Him, Iranon, Father Tim, Garfunkel, and of course Steve himself are great people to ask as they seem to have the best grasp of the mechanics as far as I know. These ships look solid. btw. I like me some carriers, but I prefer them with guns and I like to offload the Jump Drives to other ships to free up tonnage or just result in a lower weight... carriers are tonnage hogs.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2020, 04:21:47 AM »
It is also feasible to "role-play" that the 80t scout have no live crew at all and is just an autonomous large remote controlled sensor drone. Just because a ship has a crew mechanically speaking does not mean that your role-play necessarily have to assume that is does. So you can go ahead and send that 80t scout to its death and not think of it again if you choose to do so.

I often role-play very minimum service crew on small PD stations modules over planets for example. They are stationed in orbit over a planet and is basically remote controlled from a ground facility and the crew are basically the maintenance personnel that occasionally go to the station for maintaining the system.

That is how I then usually would defend them only having a 0.1 deployment and minimal engineering modules. As they are orbiting a populated world with maintenance facilities they are mainly completely automated facilities or rather drones. The officer in charge is not really located on the bridge but in a bunker down at the planet with a holographic representation of being in control of the stations systems.

There is also nothing wrong with assuming the same with a swarm of beam fighters... you can just assume they are all robots with no human crew... just don't attach any officers to them in such cases.

I think this is all perfectly viable role-play assumptions.

I would not mind if we mechanically could produce autonomous small craft in the game. They would have no crew grade and you could attach no officers to them and would have no deployment limitations and limited capabilities to fix maintenance failures. Would be nice for role-playing purposes where you actually care for people.

In all of history the greatest cost to any army have always been skilled labour or mostly soldiers for the army. Even today the greatest cost is the manpower servicing the equipment they are on. The more advanced the technology gets the more able people servicing have to be and that also mean even more expensive crew, although automation usually mean less crew overall and less cost in the long run.

So even of we leave the moral or ethical aspect out of the equation then retaining crew skill is and have always been very important. The ones that did not understand that and wasted experienced soldiers or crew in wars usually had to pay for that in the end. You could for example look at the general differences between US and Japanese engineering and usage of pilots in WW2. The US put allot of emphasis on the pilots even when designing the plane as much as they could. Retaining the skill of the pilots was very important, Japanese planes were not really built for pilot safety in the same way, they prioritised other things such as operational reach and firepower but they also paid the price for this over time.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2020, 04:36:32 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2020, 12:24:09 PM »
Speaking of RP, I've designed, built and deployed R&R ships (each with 2 entertainment modules to fix the bug) with terraforming bases and fuel harvesting bases in couple of games, because that's what IMHO humans would do if their location was too far from civilization. I've put a single Orbital Habit above Venus as a research base for scientists studying it even though it has absolutely zero game play function and is actually a waste of minerals and wealth.

Point is, it's your game and you can RP it any way you want. I'd echo xenoscepter here that doing some sort of RP, even if it's just a light flavour for general gameplay, can help you immensely to enjoy the game. Otherwise you can easily get bored because you've "mastered" the mechanics.
 

Offline xenoscepter

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2020, 04:01:42 PM »
@Garfunkel

 --- And that was the point of my reply, to highlight that. :)
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Terran Federation Navy heading out into the unknown (Spoilers)
« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2020, 12:24:15 AM »
@xenoscepter  I either RP it that the scout is a drone with no crew, (and therefore shouldn't be able to conduct negotiations with AI civs, but hey), or there are really outsized rewards for the families of the heroic scout pilots.

One of the draws of my empire's survey corps is that while the missions are certainly risky, the crew also gets the inside scoop on all the valuable real estate.  Even a 1% cut on the exploitable resources of a discovered world would put the crew or their family into the billionaire class, potentially.

I figure they are also the stars of reality shows, as they have a greater number of adventures than anybody else in the service is likely to.  So until they actually get sent on a mission, the "I am a T-95 scout pilot" trumps most bad-ass boasts in the spaceport bar scene.

There is also the fact that most of the time they get to ride around in the literally fastest ships in known space.  In a fleet that isn't going to mind almost anything they do, as long as they are fit for duty when they are needed, which might not be for a long time.