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Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: August 21, 2020, 11:28:08 PM »

In VB6, it was very common to have fighters with very minimal fuel tanks, and simply pair them with fighter tankers on missions that you needed additional range.  That is not doable in C#, and I worry that design habits have carried over.

Range vs performance is a very tricky balancing act.  If you can get a huge amount more range by sacrificing a small amount of firepower or a small amount of flexibility by not having an onboard full range sensor on most strike craft, do so.  Because slightly less bang per BP has to be balanced against not being able to do the mission at all if you lack sufficient range.  I suggest having at least as much fuel as your deployment time in your strike craft.  Your sensor fighters will probably need more loiter capacity as they will likely also be deployed for independent picket duty as well as escorting the strike force.

Good speed for the engine tech on the typhoons, and the missile range is good too, they should be able to launch from outside enemy anti-fighter fire control range at that tech level.
Posted by: kenlon
« on: August 06, 2020, 05:45:58 PM »

Quote from: Silverkeeper on July 25, 2020, 12:23:58 AM
So about fighters can I have fighters with no active sensor if I have one or more dedicated fighters with active in the same squadron?

The Battlestar Galactica-style Viper/Raptor combo works really well in Aurora - have your fighters loaded down with all the combat punch they can pack on, with no wasted space on things like search radar, and then have some slightly larger (with the best stealth tech you can pack on) fighters/FAC to give them sensor coverage from a decent distance away. Both thematically cool and pretty darn effective. Even if you pretty much have to go with missile-armed fighters because direct fire just doesn't cut it for them. (Fighters being able to act as PD for any ship they are close to, and having them have a good chance of being effective, would be a really cool way to buff them, IMO.)
Posted by: Froggiest1982
« on: July 26, 2020, 07:48:12 PM »

All MSP are too low in each design, I know it's a low deployment fleet but in some I wouldn't really be comfortable, especially when you have an 800% or 400% AFR.

I can't seen the whole design but I can guess you running only 1 engineering space? If so I would add at least another 1 for redundancy and also to lower the AFR a bit.
Posted by: liveware
« on: July 25, 2020, 01:52:02 PM »

I've been messing around with various carrier and cruiser concepts lately at the same engine tech as you. Here is the missile cruiser I came up with as 'ideal' for my current empire:

Code: [Select]
Havana class Missile Cruiser (P)      10,000 tons       185 Crew       1,228.9 BP       TCS 200    TH 250    EM 450
1250 km/s      Armour 3-41       Shields 15-450       HTK 64      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 10      PPV 52.42
Maint Life 8.16 Years     MSP 1,168    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 31    5YR 467    Max Repair 96.6 MSP
Magazine 352   
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Morale Check Required   

TMG P125.00-50C High Efficiency Nuclear Drive (2)    Power 250    Fuel Use 8.94%    Signature 125    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 226,000 Litres    Range 45.5 billion km (421 days at full power)
TMG Beta S15 / R450 Force Shield Generator (1)     Recharge Time 450 seconds (0 per second)

Twin TMG R200-67.00 Magnetic Accelerator Cannon Turret (1x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 20,000 km    ROF 5       
TMG R22-TS16000 (70%) MAC Turret Targeting Computer (1)     Max Range: 21,760 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     54 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

TMG Size 24 SLGM Cannister (8)     Missile Size: 24    Hangar Reload 245 minutes    MF Reload 40 hours
TMG Size 12 SLGM Cannister (8)     Missile Size: 12    Hangar Reload 173 minutes    MF Reload 28 hours
TMG Size 6 SLGM Cannister (8)     Missile Size: 6    Hangar Reload 122 minutes    MF Reload 20 hours
TMG Size 1 SLGM Cannister (16)     Missile Size: 1    Hangar Reload 50 minutes    MF Reload 8 hours
TMG FC23-R1 (70%) SLGM Targeting Computer (1)     Range 23.1m km    Resolution 1
TMG FC107-R100 (70%) SLGM Targeting Computer (1)     Range 107.3m km    Resolution 100
TMG FC49-R10 (70%) SLGM Targeting Computer (1)     Range 49.8m km    Resolution 10

TMG AS10-R1 (70%) DRADIS (1)     GPS 72     Range 10.7m km    MCR 963.4k km    Resolution 1
TMG AS23-R10 (70%) DRADIS (1)     GPS 720     Range 23.1m km    Resolution 10
TMG AS49-R100 (70%) DRADIS (1)     GPS 7200     Range 49.7m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Missiles are intentionally not yet designed (they will be designed and built once an enemy appears). I decided that a missile cruiser does not require an abundance of speed, and past experience tells me that 3k km/s is not fast enough to guarantee escape, and thus does not warrant the high fuel expense of military engines (10k km/s is my personal threshold for escape speed). So instead I went with slower, high fuel efficiency commercial engines, which gives me a significant range extension.

Now, the cruiser above is intentionally lacking in some areas. For example, it only has active sensors which can see out to half it's missile fire control range. This is because it generally operates with a dedicated scout ship to assist with targeting at long range. It's point defense capability is also rather poor. This is because in a 'major' battle these cruisers would be supported by carrier task groups which have significantly better anti-missile capability. It also utilizes box launchers exclusively as I have not yet researched any magazines. This requires my cruisers to be used for alpha-strike purposes only. If the alpha-strike fails, the cruisers must retreat.

Personally, I think the Typhoons are too slow... I would try to optimize a design at 250 ton or less. The smaller size generally improves speed quite a bit for fighter-sized craft. I like the Meteor missiles however, and I would try to cram as many box launchers onto a smaller-sized Typhoon as possible, while still keeping speed above 8k - 10k km/s.

YMMV
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 25, 2020, 01:08:46 PM »

I also think that it can be a rounding issue as well as some specific grace period. If the maintenance chance it low enough it effectively becomes zero. As fighters have very small chance to fail you will have to wait for a while until the chance increase somewhat after the deployment clock have run up for a few days or a week or two, in my case about a month.

The above fighter were 236t in size... when I did a test of a 500t fighter they started to receive failures after about 17 days instead which seems to fit my theory quite well.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 25, 2020, 07:54:51 AM »

Quote from: skoormit on July 25, 2020, 07:16:21 AM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on July 25, 2020, 06:48:51 AM
...
Most fighters could operate for a very long time without any failures and as long as they don't deploy for longer than 5 days they will never roll for any failures at all since you do that every five days. ...

Clarify this for me.
Rolling for failures happens as part of the construction cycle, yes?
Which means that a fighter could roll for failures right after launching, if that happens to be when the next construction cycle occurs.
Are you saying that a 5-day timer is kept independently for each fleet?

Yes... they will receive maintenance failure every cycle but they receive them so rarely that it does not really matter... I just ran a test with 1000 fighters in a fleet and it took 30 days (1 day construction cycles) for the first fighter to receive its first maintenance failure. After another 20 days another five fighters received a maintenance failure. In my opinion you really don't need to care about this for small fighters unless you intend to have them out there for a month or more, even that can be questionable many times. But I would use a small fighter engineering bay for anything I intended to deploy for at least a month or more just for RP if nothing else.

There might even be a graze period where ships can't get any failures at all no matter what... I guess this would be at least 5 days but it can be more... I don't know. I have never done any test for this.

**EDIT**

I did a test with 10000 fighters in one fleet and I received the first maintenance failure after 30 days, after this I had one or several each days. So the grace period might be 30 days before maintenance failures start to actually occur no matter what. It might need further study... but that seems likely as I would statistically have gotten at least some failures before 30 days otherwise with 10k fighters.

I was running daily construction cycles.
Posted by: skoormit
« on: July 25, 2020, 07:16:21 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on July 25, 2020, 06:48:51 AM
...
Most fighters could operate for a very long time without any failures and as long as they don't deploy for longer than 5 days they will never roll for any failures at all since you do that every five days. ...

Clarify this for me.
Rolling for failures happens as part of the construction cycle, yes?
Which means that a fighter could roll for failures right after launching, if that happens to be when the next construction cycle occurs.
Are you saying that a 5-day timer is kept independently for each fleet?
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 25, 2020, 06:48:51 AM »

Quote from: Dfuzzed on July 25, 2020, 05:51:09 AM
If the fighters are going to operate outside of the TF's active sensor range then yes you'd want to have active sensors on them or just one of the fighters, just got to keep in mind if it gets shot down the rest are going to be blind.

Yes fighters need mainenance life or they'll break down the moment they leave the launch tube or go 'poof'  ;D fighter engineering bay usually gives me around 12y worth if maintenance life.

No... fighters don't need maintenance or engineering at all... they need some MSP for covering launch failures but that is all. Most fighters could operate for a very long time without any failures and as long as they don't deploy for longer than 5 days they will never roll for any failures at all since you do that every five days. It certainly is wasteful to give any engineering to fighters that you don't expect to deploy more than a few days or up to maybe a week or so. A 3t fighter maintenance storage is enough for almost all missile fighters.

In terms of sensor scouts I don't even think you should run them with the fighters at all. I always deploy my sensor scouts separately and spread out, that way they are allot harder for an enemy to knock out. You can also alternate using active sensor between say three sensor scouts in different places and then move them around so the enemy never can know exactly where they are... all while the strike group silently launches their missiles from another direction as to not reveal where they are or where the carrier strike force might be hiding.
Posted by: Dfuzzed
« on: July 25, 2020, 05:51:09 AM »

If the fighters are going to operate outside of the TF's active sensor range then yes you'd want to have active sensors on them or just one of the fighters, just got to keep in mind if it gets shot down the rest are going to be blind.

Yes fighters need mainenance life or they'll break down the moment they leave the launch tube or go 'poof'  ;D fighter engineering bay usually gives me around 12y worth if maintenance life.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 25, 2020, 05:05:51 AM »

For fighters you always want to have some dedicated sensor scouts, either in the squadron or even better placed somewhere else so you don't reveal where the actual bombing group is.

I also always stick a size 0.1 or 5t secondary active sensor on most fighters as well, they are small enough and can be useful once in a while. I never put passive sensors on regular fighters, passive sensors need to be relatively big to be all that useful. You need at least a 150t EM sensor to detect an Anti-fighter at roughly the same range it will detect your fighters if you have the same tech level.

I also like to make sure the fire-control have better range than the missile, it works to counter ECM and also so that a fighter can fly in release the missile and then start retreating immediately.

In your case I would put a really small 5t active secondary sensor on the fighter and put a bigger fire control for more options during engagements.
Posted by: Silverkeeper
« on: July 25, 2020, 12:23:58 AM »

Thank you for the replies ;D
So about fighters can I have fighters with no active sensor if I have one or more dedicated fighters with active in the same squadron?
Otherwise it seems I have to shorten the active`s range and or have fewer missile launchers.
And do fighters really need maintenance life since they are only out for few hours? It seems impossible to have enough MSP so you might just not bother.

Here is the new fighter

Typhoon class Fighter (P)      500 tons       9 Crew       94.2 BP       TCS 10    TH 30    EM 0
6011 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 4.5
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 99%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 15    5YR 224    Max Repair 45.000 MSP
Magazine 30   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Improved Nuclear Pulse Engine  EP60.00 (1)    Power 60.0    Fuel Use 722.96%    Signature 30.000    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 10 000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km (23 hours at full power)

Size 5 Box Launcher (6)     Missile Size: 5    Hangar Reload 111 minutes    MF Reload 18 hours
Missile Fire Control FC32-R100 (1)     Range 32.5m km    Resolution 100
Meteor II Anti-Ship Missile (6)    Speed: 19 360 km/s    End: 43.3m     Range: 50.3m km    WH: 4    Size: 5    TH: 77/46/23

Active Search Sensor AS32-R100 (1)     GPS 1920     Range 32.5m km    Resolution 100

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 Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: July 24, 2020, 04:55:53 PM »

Once I have true carriers and fighters is the main arm for delivering offensive missiles I rarely add ASM missiles to my escort ships at all, that is mixing my general doctrines. My escort will concentrate on AMM and Anti-Craft missiles not missiles targeted at capital ships. If I need more offensive capability I need more hangar space on my ships.

I will probably still have system defence crafts and vessels using ASM, but most likely in box launched format as that is needed to do anything after a while unless you can massively outnumber an enemy.

There is nothing wrong with mixing the doctrines but in general I find that it makes very little sense in the long run.

Obviously as pointed out above, you need box launchers on the fighters and not fighter pod bays, these are only for ground fighters.

The deployment rate of capital ships probably need to be a bit more than 3 months. It is not unusual for a military operation needing one or more refuel along the way or ships needing to be on station for several months without moving much at all. As said above i would deem 6 month to be minimum for any capital warship. System defence ship can usually get away with a lot less though, depending on how far out you have designed them to operate. Certain defensive ship can sometimes operate in more than one system and might need at least 3 months deployment.
Posted by: d.rodin
« on: July 24, 2020, 04:30:22 PM »

Typhoon fighter has fighter pod bay instead of box launchers, it has 0 maintenance live
dump 1 launcher and add some engeneering bays
as example (it is easily downscalable to your tech level - 150 tonns 300% EP engine, 50 tonns fuel, other 300 tonns - lauchers, engeneering, sensors, MFC)

Quote
Tu-160-M6 G8 class Fighter-bomber      500 tons       19 Crew       927.3 BP       TCS 10    TH 18    EM 0
45059 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 3.6
Maint Life 23.76 Years     MSP 1 160    AFR 2%    IFR 0.0%    1YR 4    5YR 59    Max Repair 731.25 MSP
Magazine 24   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 2 days    Morale Check Required   

Gas Core AM Drive 300% EP450.00 (1)    Power 450    Fuel Use 355.76%    Signature 18.00    Explosion 30%
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres    Range 5.1 billion km (31 hours at full power)

Size 6.00 Box Launcher (4)     Missile Size: 6    Hangar Reload 122 minutes    MF Reload 20 hours
Missile Fire Control FC209-R100 (5%) (1)     Range 209.5m km    Resolution 100
Medium ASM G8 (4)    Speed: 105 000 km/s    End: 2.7m     Range: 16.7m km    WH: 16    Size: 6    TH: 2450/1470/735

Active Search Sensor AS104-R100 (5%) (1)     GPS 4000     Range 104.7m km    Resolution 100

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 Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

Carrier don't need refueling system and ordinance transfer system to reload/refuel fighters, dump them and add engineering / deployment time

Missle Cruiser has 100% reload rate lauchers, use 30%-40% you need maximum salvo size to overwhelm enemy missle defence.
My missle cruisers/destroyers have multiple MFC's, because sometimes i had to engage multiple (sometimes more than 100) small-sized targets - sub 5000 tonns ships and FACs
as example (downscalable to your tech level):

Quote
Kirov G9 class Missile Cruiser      19 991 tons       540 Crew       17 823.3 BP       TCS 400    TH 320    EM 3 000
20009 km/s      Armour 15-65       Shields 100-300       HTK 151      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 87      PPV 115.2
Maint Life 4.80 Years     MSP 15 045    AFR 118%    IFR 1.6%    1YR 1 075    5YR 16 125    Max Repair 3250 MSP
Magazine 864   
Captain    Control Rating 3   BRG   AUX   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Plasma Core AM Drive 125% EP2000.00 (4)    Power 8000    Fuel Use 13.81%    Signature 80.00    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 2 000 000 Litres    Range 130.4 billion km (75 days at full power)
Tau S100 / R300 Shields (1)     Recharge Time 300 seconds (0.3 per second)

Size 6.00 Missile Launcher (40.0% Reduction) (48)     Missile Size: 6    Rate of Fire 150
Missile Fire Control FC153-R20 (5%) (4)     Range 153.1m km    Resolution 20
Medium ASM G9 (144)    Speed: 134 400 km/s    End: 2.4m     Range: 19.2m km    WH: 25    Size: 6.0000    TH: 3315/1989/994

Active Search Sensor AS108-R20 (5%) (1)     GPS 2000     Range 108.3m km    Resolution 20
Active Search Sensor AS185-R100 (5%) (1)     GPS 10000     Range 185.2m km    Resolution 100

Small Craft ECCM-3 (4)         ECM 70

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

PS. i use at least 6 months deployment time at all "open ocean" military ships.
Posted by: Black
« on: July 24, 2020, 02:02:20 PM »

The Typhoon has Fighter Pod Bays and those should be for ground support and unable to load missiles. You want box launchers for missiles.
Posted by: non sequitur
« on: July 24, 2020, 01:49:48 PM »

Major thing I would change is your deployment time on the ships. The fighter is probably fine, but the ships need longer than three months. Might take you two months just to get to your destination and find the enemy. I usually put a year of deployment time on mine.