Author Topic: My First Ship!  (Read 2914 times)

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Offline Irishpolak (OP)

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My First Ship!
« on: December 16, 2016, 01:17:17 PM »
Finally started to figure out some of the civilian mechanics of the game, and made my first actual ship!  It's somewhat general purpose, but since I'm trying to teach myself about sensors and beam weapons I don't need anything specific, and I'm certainly open to any and all critique.  (I do have newer engines that are more powerful coming along, and have been contemplating adding more weapons when they do)

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Scipio class Cruiser    8,250 tons     182 Crew     1140.  6 BP      TCS 165  TH 540  EM 120
3272 km/s     Armour 4-36     Shields 4-400     Sensors 1/10/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 41.  9
Maint Life 0.  28 Years     MSP 86    AFR 544%    IFR 7.  6%    1YR 312    5YR 4684    Max Repair 108 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 1   

Farnum Systems 180 EP Ion Drive (3)    Power 180    Fuel Use 42.  5%    Signature 180    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 51.  3 billion km   (181 days at full power)
Dayan-Zuelke Gamma R400/240 Shields (2)   Total Fuel Cost  20 Litres per hour  (480 per day)

Qián Dynamics 15cm C2 Visible Light Laser (1)    Range 120,000km     TS: 3272 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 2    ROF 15        6 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Quad Qián Dynamics 12cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (1x4)    Range 80,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 16-8     RM 2    ROF 10        4 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0
Twin Vanes-Fague Gauss Cannon R2-33 Turret (2x2)    Range 20,000km     TS: 7500 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Yu Techsystems Fire Control S04 96-6000 H70 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Motta-Duey Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.  05 (1)     Total Power Output 23.  62    Armour 0    Exp 7%

Charbonnet Incorporated Active Search Sensor MR12-R20 (70%) (1)     GPS 960     Range 12.  9m km    Resolution 20
Beckles-Pavey Active Search Sensor MR27-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 27.  9m km    Resolution 60
Motta-Duey Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (70%) (1)     GPS 24     Range 1.  4m km    MCR 157k km    Resolution 1
Borns Techsystems EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
 

Offline lennson

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2016, 04:55:52 PM »
You should consider using 2 beam-weapon fire-controls instead of just 1. Have one fire-control with short range and high tracking speed for turrets that can be put on missile point defense and another for anti-ship beam weapons that has lower tracking speed and long range. Having a single fire-control that has high range and high tracking becomes big and expensive and is a significant vulnerability in the sense that a lucky hit can make the ship unable to fire.

Note that it is also normally a good idea to match the tracking speed of the turrets to the tracking speed of the fire-control that they will be controlled by. The turret will only track as fast as the minimum between its tracking speed and the fire-control's tracking speed.


Unless you are playing with maintenance failures turned off the maintenance life is rather low. Also it is normally a good idea to have the maintenance supplies (MSP) at least as high as the Max Repair. Otherwise if that part fails it can't be fixed without bring the ship to a ship yard.


The power plant produces a lot more power than your beam-weapons need for recharging. You only need 10 power output to charge all of the beam weapons (2 for the 15cm Laser and 8 for the Laser turret) but the power plant produces 23.62 power. Having extra power produced can be useful if it comes from multiple power plants making is so that if one is destroyed the ship's weapons can still be charge but your ship has only 1 power plant that is larger than it needs to be.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 04:59:38 PM by lennson »
 
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Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2016, 08:25:35 AM »
in addition to what lennson has said, I'd say:

- It probably does not need near that quantity of fuel.  It has a round-trip range of over 25 billion kilometers, which is almost certainly way more than you can use. Even an assault on an alien homeworld is likely to use only a portion of that range until much later in the game.  You could eke out a lot of tonnage by reducing the fuel load and using tankers if you need to conduct long range operations.  Note: If you are using larger fuel components (such as Fuel Storage - Large) i'd suggest switching them out for basic Fuel Storage components, as they have much higher redundancy and resistance to damage.

- I would suggest removing your resolution 20 sensor.  This is beam warship, so it can only engage at close ranges - and for the vast majority of targets, your resolution 60 sensor will pick them up at a longer range than the res 20.  If you really want to optimize your tonnage, dump everything except the resolution 1 sensor - you can't do anything about a target at 27mkm anyway...!

 
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Offline Irishpolak (OP)

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2016, 10:21:48 AM »
Thanks for the input! 

I actually have a quick question about fire controls, is it possible to force one to focus solely on one type of target (say, missiles) and attach specific weapons to that?

Ah, got it!  I wasn't sure if additional tracking speed would do anything in regards to speeding up the turrets, looks like I'll have to design some entirely new systems (which is good since I did get some improved active grav sensor technology from salvaging an ancient wreck).

Damn, I'm always forgetting about maintenance on my military ships (I have made great use of small tugs though!).   Appreciate the heads up on that.

I did realize as soon as I designed that reactor that I wouldn't have a ship using that much power and have since redesigned a smaller one with 6 power and newer reactor technology.

Fuel tankers!  I keep forgetting why I built a fleet of the things (aside from ferrying fuel from my various sorium harvesting rigs).   And thanks for the bit on the fuel storage!  I tended to try and condense my fuel storage systems on my commercial vessels, didn't even think about what that could do on a military vessel.   I've also had a hard time figuring out what a good fuel amount on my military vessels would be, and since most of my fleet is comprised of long range geo/grav survey vessels, I tend to err on the side of extra fuel.

I'll keep that in mind for future ships, though I'm probably going to keep a stripped down version of this ship with all these fancy long range sensors to perform the function of long-range scanning in my future fleets.   Eventually I'll start making a lot more specialized ships but I needed at least something to defend my settlements while I'm still getting set up.
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2016, 10:29:35 AM »
One way to get a good idea about fuel is to go to the galactic map, go to the Display tab, and check "Show distance from selected system".  If you have a system selected, this will display a number below all connected systems indicated how many billions of kilometers it takes to reach that system's center (iirc) from the current system.  Thus, you can get a good estimate of just how far your ships can reach on the map without refueling, since this takes into account the exact distance between jump points.
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2016, 11:53:34 AM »
A tune in about FC, you need one per type of weapon. The 15cm, 12cm, and the gauss each need their own fire control.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 

Offline Irishpolak (OP)

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2016, 12:12:08 PM »
Hm, I guess I just keep thinking in 5-day increments as opposed to 5 second, and even though I know how far all my main colonies are I keep thinking that any combat will last for weeks.    That's a useful thing to know though, thanks for that!

And I did not know that about FC, I guess this ship will not be operating that many weapons.    Oops.    Good thing there's the ability to refit!


Unrelated, but would it be acceptable within forum rules to just go ahead and post my other ship designs in here while I fumble about learning things?
« Last Edit: December 17, 2016, 12:20:49 PM by Irishpolak »
 

Offline Andrew

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #7 on: December 17, 2016, 02:40:10 PM »
You do not need 1 FC per type of weapon. I regularly tie multiple different energy weapons to the same FC . You need 1 FC per target you may wish to engage, you may also want
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2016, 06:47:29 PM »
You do not need 1 FC per type of weapon. I regularly tie multiple different energy weapons to the same FC . You need 1 FC per target you may wish to engage, you may also want
Are you sure? I've tried that before and the design was completely broken (didn't want to fire all of its weapons and other strange occurrences). Especially when I tried to mix HPMs, particle beams, and plasma to the same one. Ever since I made sure to never share a fire control with 2 different types of weapons.
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Offline MarcAFK

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #9 on: December 18, 2016, 01:02:59 AM »
Are you sure? I've tried that before and the design was completely broken (didn't want to fire all of its weapons and other strange occurrences). Especially when I tried to mix HPMs, particle beams, and plasma to the same one. Ever since I made sure to never share a fire control with 2 different types of weapons.
If there's a range difference between the weapons then it'll give you problems unless you fire at a range they can all hit at.
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Offline Titanian

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #10 on: December 19, 2016, 11:08:36 AM »
Your Gauss Cannon fire rate tech doesn't really seem high enough to be useful.   For >4 HS space per turret you get 2 shots with a .  33 hit chance modifier (= .  66 hits average) tracking at ~ double the speed of your ship.   One baseline railgun would take <4 HS including the reactor would give 4 shots using the ship's speed as tracking speed (=2 hits average at the same tracking speed as your gauss turret) and as bonus it would be ok with a slower fire control. 

Quote from: MarcAFK link=topic=9203.  msg99643#msg99643 date=1482044579
If there's a range difference between the weapons then it'll give you problems unless you fire at a range they can all hit at. 
But then you can just unassign those weapons which won't reach the target.   That is not much more clicking work than assigning a target to an additional fire control. 

The autofire option has problems with multiple weapon types on a single ship though and would only use the one type it thinks is best.  But since using autofire isn't of much use anyway I wouldn't care about that.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2016, 11:11:19 AM by Titanian »
 

Offline Irishpolak (OP)

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #11 on: December 19, 2016, 11:24:55 PM »
Ok, tried to take some advice and design a new line of cruisers, and as I'm also designing a full fleet (complete with missile sponge frigates) I decided leaving a lot of sensors in place and keeping it more of a support vessel would be better.   I'm throwing around the idea of a heavily armored and somewhat slow maintenance supply ship to hold on to some supplies, but seeing as my empire has no desire for offensive campaigns, I probably won't stray far from my home systems.

Quote
Ironsides class Surveillance Cruiser    7,000 tons     189 Crew     1492.   2 BP      TCS 140  TH 480  EM 120
3428 km/s     Armour 5-32     Shields 4-400     Sensors 16/10/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 43.   96
Maint Life 2.   18 Years     MSP 400    AFR 130%    IFR 1.   8%    1YR 113    5YR 1692    Max Repair 240 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

Reding Design Bureau 480 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 480    Fuel Use 110.   23%    Signature 480    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres    Range 9.   3 billion km   (31 days at full power)
Dayan-Zuelke Gamma R400/240 Shields (2)   Total Fuel Cost  20 Litres per hour  (480 per day)

Twin Qián Dynamics 12cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (1x2)    Range 80,000km     TS: 9000 km/s     Power 8-4     RM 2    ROF 10        4 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0
Qián Dynamics 15cm C2 Visible Light Laser (1)    Range 120,000km     TS: 3428 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 2    ROF 15        6 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Twin Lombera-Colar Small Gauss Cannon Turret (4x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 9000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kulju & Hoag Point Defense Fire Control S03 48-9000 H70 (2)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 9000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Yu Techsystems Fire Control S04 96-6000 H70 (2)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 6000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Bray-Parkin 6 Power Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Hall Electronics Active Search Sensor MR51-R100 (70%) (1)     GPS 6400     Range 51.   2m km    Resolution 100
Hall Electronics Missile Detection System (1)     GPS 48     Range 3.   8m km    MCR 418k km    Resolution 1
Hall Electronics Small Craft Sensor (1)     GPS 960     Range 17.   2m km    Resolution 20
Lu-Chang Thermal Sensor TH2-16 (1)     Sensitivity 16     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  16m km
Borns Techsystems EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1)     Sensitivity 10     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  10m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And the specific systems on board:

hxxp: i.  imgur.  com/37iNpBJ.  png
« Last Edit: December 19, 2016, 11:27:49 PM by Irishpolak »
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #12 on: December 20, 2016, 12:21:49 AM »
Reduce deploy time. It should basically never be longer than maintenance life. 

2 units of shields isn't worth the effort of turning them on. Think of it this way: you've got 160 points of armor, and only 4 points of shielding.  If you really want shields,

The two laser weapons are somewhat redundant. Suggest picking one or the other; either just removing teh 15cm laser or removing the 12cm turret+replace it with some 15cms.
 

Offline Irishpolak (OP)

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #13 on: December 20, 2016, 08:42:16 AM »
Oh, I always thought the armor was a range, 5 to 32 armor, so instead it's actually 5 layers of 32 armor?  That suddenly explains the ship tab that displays armor status better.  Tries not to feel dumb  In that case though, what does that mean for my shields?  It seems in this instance that it would mean I have 1600 shields, but that seems ridiculously high and as you say my shields are really too low to serve a purpose.   Guess I could drop the laser turrets and slap some more shields on it since the ship is basically designed to be support?  The 15cm laser is a spinal laser, so only one can go on the ship.

As for my Gauss cannons, I can see and understand how the railgun at similar tracking speeds would be superior with my current tech, but wouldn't I need to turret it to get a decent tracking speed against enemy missiles?  My new ship with better engines (as it stands) only operates at ~4000 kms, don't missiles tend to range much higher than that?
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: My First Ship!
« Reply #14 on: December 20, 2016, 09:32:26 AM »
In that case though, what does that mean for my shields?  It seems in this instance that it would mean I have 1600 shields, but that seems ridiculously high and as you say my shields are really too low to serve a purpose.
Shields are displayed as maximum strength - time to charge to full strength in seconds. Your current design would have a maximum defense of 4 points of damage every 400 seconds. Shields on smaller ships are pretty much useless until end levels tech, but they are magnificent on larger designs.
Guess I could drop the laser turrets and slap some more shields on it since the ship is basically designed to be support?  The 15cm laser is a spinal laser, so only one can go on the ship.
My stance is the opposite. I like redundancy and multi-purpose designs.
As for my Gauss cannons, I can see and understand how the railgun at similar tracking speeds would be superior with my current tech, but wouldn't I need to turret it to get a decent tracking speed against enemy missiles?  My new ship with better engines (as it stands) only operates at ~4000 kms, don't missiles tend to range much higher than that?
You can't turret railguns in the game at the moment. Steve, if I remember correctly, was on the fence about it. On one hand, all weapons should be turret-able for various reasons. The other, some of the weapons would make others obsolete if they were all able to be turreted. The line of thought was that there isn't much bonus to gauss rof 2 turrets tracking at 9,000km/s than there is to railguns that could track at ~3,500km/s.

My thoughts on the new design;
It seems a bit slow. Your engines should be between 30% and 40% of the mass of the ship, not 15%. 20 to 25% at the very least for specialized ships. Also, you should have matched your FC and turrets better. You should have restricted the laser turret to 6,000km/s, because it seems a lot of tonnage is wasted in turret gear for that single turret to be 23HS itself. Deployment time should be between 1 year and 18 months for military ships as I find you rarely surpass that when on campaign. Also, your fuel levels seem quite low as ships should be reaching 12b km as a very minimum, with 20+ as ideal.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.