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Posted by: 83athom

« on: December 14, 2020, 02:09:33 AM »

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Honestly the route I'd go is something a lot of countries are starting to do IRL as a counter to Carriers; relatively large missiles that are all about speed and range. For designing a missile against that carrier I'd abuse the fact it only has an armor layer of 2, meaning any missile that does 5 damage or more will do internal damage to it. I'd design it with like 50% engine and 10% fuel, ECCM (if you can), a small thermal sensor (smallest you can go is 0.25 IIRC, and that is plenty), and filling the rest of it with warhead. My recommendation would be like a size 7 to 8 (decimals in between work just fine, and for some reason I have a soft spot of missiles of size 7.5 for my heavy ASMs). Fired from a warship with a *couple* dozen 0.4 or box launchers (I generally don't bother with 0.3 launchers) among it's other defensive weapons you can pretty much punch through the limited AMM defenses and cripple the carrier outright. Or you could fit them to small defensive satellites or mines if intended for a more defensive posture.

Alternatively you would stack defensive systems (CIWS, mass railgun batteries, and shields) to weather the barrage of missiles then close in afterword. It's more than feasable if you make sure to well armor the ship (6 or 8 ) as realistically the shields are going to take the brunt of the damage and by the time the next wave arrives it will have recharged, the guns will thin out the remnants, and the armor can soak up a lot of hits thanks to damage 4 missiles having very little damage depth.

Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on December 01, 2020, 05:28:34 PM

I'm not sure how the third option would translate in Aurora. I guess it's arguably what Earth is doing, except the missiles are mounted on destroyers?

How it would translate based on your designs; Take the Ark Royal and uparmor it to 4 or 5, give it 12 reduced size missile launchers (with 3-4 reloads each, they don't need deep magazines for their role), give it some close range defenses (AMMs and/or a couple guns), give it its own sensors, and reduce the hangar down to like 7,000 or so. Preferably your ship mounted missiles aren't the same as the ones you use on any strike fighters, as otherwise it would be better to just fit more missiles onto a ship instead of inefficiently using space for hangars.

Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth

« on: December 02, 2020, 07:18:29 PM »

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I like this idea! Unfortunately, all the powers are aware of this and have lots of railgun PD on their planets...too bad Mars doesn't have ECM.

That said, it's probably workable if Mars dedicates a significant portion of of its tonnage to this. Here's what I'm thinking.

Mars accepts that they cannot win an all out fleet engagement against Earth. So, they maintain only enough of a conventional force to handle a single carrier battle group (Earth has 3, so they wouldn't expect to see much more than that in a "skirmish level" force). Doable, with the AMM+AMM combo discussed earlier. The rest of their tonnage goes into long endurance box launcher ships. They can handle skirmishes with the main force, and if Earth forces the issue Luna or Terra get nuked.

I should probably have posted Earth's actual forces at some point. Would have made some of the discussion more grounded.

EDIT: Giant pile of ship designs incoming! These are Earth's military vessels. I left the tankers and colliers out. Cruisers and carrier are VERY long legged so they can get to Minerva, where a ruin is located. Destroyers are envisioned as local defense forces and so don't need the same range. Redundancy is fairly lacking b/c Earth is overconfident.

Missile Fighter

Off-Topic: show

Sensor fighter

Off-Topic: show

Carrier

Off-Topic: show

Cruiser

Off-Topic: show

Guided Missile Destroyer

Off-Topic: show

Posted by: Vasious

« on: December 02, 2020, 06:44:25 PM »

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Just my 2 cents

Not sure if this would work but for Mars, thinking on the SSBNs someone mentioned.

Mars could have a number of Long range Long Deployment time ships armed with large 2 stage MIRV missiles.
They are not that fast, and don't have much in the way of fire control and actives

They hang out in deep space hiding from Earth and in the event of hostilities would launch the missiles at a way point :Earth.

The first stage being a long range transit stage that then releases a heap of small missiles in the hopes some would hit Earth

The premise being that anyone who to allow Earth to be nuked under their would be political suicide, thus limited the eagerness for Earth to enter into conflict with Mars even if it was a walk over, unless they could first take out all the SSBN equivalents.

Throw in a few more such ships armed with similar two stages, but perhaps with thermal passives, that would be aimed at Earths Fuel refineries at Saturn, to add another strategic aspect.

Now investing in these ships might limit Mars' ability to field other ships but might provide enough of an RP political deterrent whilst Mars seeks her own advantage (perhaps being the first to go for jump point theory).

Maybe then just defense platforms, fighters, and boarding pods, and STOS to make any fight against Mars bloody and again politically costly knowing the SSBNs will have fired by that point.

The SSBNs need not be that heavy an investment compared to a proper warships

They might have efficient engines that you run at low power to cut the thermal signature.
Fuel, Deployment time, and passive sensors enough to see a patrol out far enough to know to begin moving away.
The rest could be Box Launchers and a MFC that allows the aiming at way points.

A RP counter strike options rather than a head to head counter to Carriers.

Posted by: Norm49

« on: December 02, 2020, 05:32:41 PM »

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If you want to role play it what i would do is a defensive doctrine. Build station and/or satellite using small laser but tonne of them. It is mostly stationary so no need of mass fuel as you requested, longer weapon range that the Terran cruiser and since you are using small laser you can put a lot of them it should be sufficient as a point defence. Mars fleet wont be able to attack earth, the Terran fleet can probably make a successful attack but the cost would be to high. It is a similar tactic that Vietnam/middle-est country have use again the USA. They know they can't win so they make plan to not lose until the political cost an money cost become to high for the USA.

In that doctrine I didn't use missile since apparently you don't want Mars fleet to use them but I guest you can build some launch platform with only one HUGE missile like size 50 or more with interplanetary range. Practically useless but it would be a deterrent the same ways nuclear missile were "use" during the cold wars. Mars can probably hide those launch platform in sol deep space so the Terran fleet wont know were they are and how many there out are. If the tension go high the Terran fleet will be force to keep fleet with point defence on all of it colony in sol, harvester and other civilian ship can also be targeted. Also note that the Terran fleet doctrine is not good to deal with this. Even if the Terran fleet is bigger it will have to devote so much resource to protect the civilian that the amount of ship available for a assault on Mars will not be sufficient or it will have to live target undefended and assume the lost. If you roll play it the population will want the head to the president after the incident.

Last thing I see that Mars can do in respect with the doctrine will be fast long range laser frigate (missile will be better but I am trying to respect your apparent desire to not use missile) to do hit and run on fuel Harvester and tanker. The fuel it will require won't allow to make lot of attack but it will force the Terran fleet do devote lot of resource and fuel to protect it operation.

T.L.D.R
Mars would make a wars with them so costly that there adversary just wont consider a attack because it would be to much trouble and the gain compare to the lost/cost, by making use of heavy point defence and Terror weapon. Tactic is base on Vietnam/middle-est country tactic of we can't win so we focus on not losing. Also base on cold wars tactic.

Posted by: Michael Sandy

« on: December 02, 2020, 02:25:06 PM »

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As a means of getting Earth to leave you alone, a doctrine of having a core of slow, cheap, PD ships, if an Earth carrier group runs out or even low on missiles, they can to either return home or resupply. And ultralong range 2-stage missiles that can only target large ships would make it harder for the Earth force to resupply without escorting the resupply ships.

I would argue that actually killing their carriers might be a mistake, as that makes you an existential threat, as distinct from merely expensive to bully. A mistake that somebody is likely to actually make, of course.

Posted by: Michael Sandy

« on: December 02, 2020, 02:11:52 PM »

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A lot depends on the fire controls of the fighters in question. If they are anti-ship missiles fire controls, say, res 80 or so, you can have 1000 ton antifighter screen with fire controls tweaked to match that of the size of the Earth fighters. That screen can forward deploy, ensuring that they can launch before the enemy fighters can, or at least ensure those fighters can't make it home to rearm.

One of the tricks for dealing with box launchers was base tech rail gun barges. Build a slow ship that literally costs more to destroy than it costs to build. Then slowly advance to the enemy. If the fighters launch their missiles, you sic some way over engined parasite beam ships to hunt them down. Otherwise you slowly plod in range of the objective. You can't get the enemy carrier that way, because the carrier will stay out of range, but if your goals are policy rather than destruction you can achieve it.

A lot of tricks can work IF Earth doesn't know they are coming. Which means they wouldn't be useful for the border skirmishing, minor conflicts, demonstrations of force because revealing your secret strategy for a minor conflict would be devastating. Which yields the question, do the other powers want to defeat and displace Earth, or just be able to resist Earth's bullying and be able to use Earth as a counter to their other rivals.

Posted by: liveware

« on: December 02, 2020, 01:40:40 AM »

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Boarding could definitely be an interesting option. Boarding craft can be built small and fast and thus hard to detect and evade. Carriers tend to be slow which makes them good boarding targets, however they also tend to be large so you will need lots of boarders. Boarders also make for an interesting first-strike option as you will gain substantial information about the captured ship and relevant empire technology with each successful capture. In fact, I equip my scout carriers with boarding craft specifically so that I can capture ships during first contact scenarios. It's very useful to know what you are up against.

Boarding also goes well with the use of ground troops and STO weapons. STOs are hard to hit from orbit and can make use of, for example, powerful spinal lasers (or whatever you like). Luring the carrier fleet into range of a STO occupied comet or asteroid could be an interesting scenario, and heavy STO use might help diversify your factions if that is your goal.

EDIT: After re-reading your original post, I think a heavy ground troop component (with boarding and STO formations) would be really interesting for your Mars faction. You could use STO railguns for planetary PD and stealthy boarding craft for offensive operations. With sneaky troop transports, Mars could set up STO platforms throughout the solar system and make transportation a real headache for the other factions.

Posted by: Froggiest1982

« on: December 02, 2020, 12:51:19 AM »

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Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on December 01, 2020, 04:35:12 PM

I'm setting up a multi-faction game that will pivot around Earth as the Sol system superpower. Earth uses carrier launched missile fighters, backed by large railgun cruisers (plus high rate of fire missile destroyers to try and kill enemy fighters).

Since Earth is the dominant power, the other factions need to shape their doctrines to counter it. There are two factions I'm still working out, and I'd like some advice. Note that the doctrines chosen don't ACTUALLY need to work; they just need to make sense and be distinctive.

The first faction is the Jovian Alliance, claiming the four large moons of Jupiter along with Jupiter's sorium reserves. Since they have such good fuel access, they are going with small fast ships using heavy engine boost. ECM on FACs and corvettes to ruin the fighters engagement range; their plan, such as it is, is to avoid the fighters and try to snipe the carrier with ECM cruise missiles launched from FACs. Then run in with microwave+plasma carronades to melt the railgun cruisers. I think this doctrine is ok, and certainly thematic, but I'd welcome some feedback.

The second faction, which I am less sure about, is Mars. They have a larger population and more industry than the Alliance, but poor access to fuel. So I'm thinking they should go with big ships so they can use efficient engines. The issue is that with the allotted tech level (INPE, but pretty much everything else is <4000RP), it is really hard to stop mass missile strikes. They can barely make a worthwhile AMM (and I had to give them more missile tech than I really wanted...missiles are supposed to be Earth's thing), so they are pretty much stuck with railguns which are really inefficient. I'm thinking they might try to use their large ships to mount big actives and try to shoot down the fighters before they can launch, but I'm not sure what they should do in terms of offense. I already have another faction running big shielded ships with particle beams, so the only remaining offensive option seems to be lasers. But that doesn't feel all that different from the particle beam doctrine, TBH.

Carriers have 2 big weak points and 2 strong points. In my opinion, when you are trying to defeat an enemy you don't need to exploit the weaknesses but use their strength at your advantage.

One of the advantages of the Carriers is range: they can attack you before you can attack them. The second advantage is detection. Due to long-range capability, they usually have long-range sensors.

Just to complete the topic I reckon that the weaknesses are Limited Defensive Capabilities and Fighters that due to rearm from time to time leave the Carrier exposed to counter-attack.

To turn the advantage of the Carrier in your favour you must invest in electronic countermeasures and cloaking. Finally, you must have fast ships. Your mark is not the fighters but the big slow beast. Limiting their range of detection and attack will expose the carrier to close range operations which could be deadly for it. Your ships must be able to act individually if required because losses are to be expected when the first wave hits, but if you survive that then it's pretty much game over for your Earth faction. An open formation with groups of 2 or 3 ships in classic wolf packs style.

Of course, then the weaknesses will turn the fight at your advantage but your enemy knows his weaknesses so he can plan around it.

An interesting strategy could be boarding...the Cylons tried that with the Galactica and based on the information in the episode "Valley of Darkness" the situation was already faced in the first Cylon war, making it look like an actual strategy against heavily-armed carriers.

Posted by: SevenOfCarina

« on: December 01, 2020, 10:25:15 PM »

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I screw around a lot at the tech levels under discussion here, so IMO a carrier doctrine is workable but it's not particularly good.

The problem is that hangars (5 BP/HS) end up being one of the more cost-dense components comparatively, so carriers actually end up costing just as much as a missile cruiser of equal tonnage (~1,100 BP for 12,000 tons around INPE). This is a very bad position to be in, because a carrier needs fighters too, and those end up being twice or thrice as expensive per displacement ton. Additionally, reduced size launchers are only twice as large as box launchers and reload much faster - assuming eual magazine size, if 20 HS of x0.30 launchers are swapped out for a 20 HS hangar with fighters, each fighter would need to be 50% box launcher by volume just to break even, and you'd also need to stuff in sensor scouts. While carriers do have some extra free space since they can be slower and less-armoured than a missile cruisers, this doesn't really change the calculus significantly.

The end result is that a missile cruiser ends up costing less than a carrier and its parasites, while having almost as much throw weight and magazine depth, and being significantly faster and better-armoured. The only advantage that a carrier possesses is that it doesn't need to get into missile range to attack a target, and fighters are usually too small to detect effectively at typical missile ranges. This, incidentally, makes carriers really good for attritive warfare. I build carriers with smaller hangars and larger magazines, then fly multiple sorties using nigh-undetectable fighters to deplete as much of the hostile AMM defences as I can. Even if they end up doing almost no damage, they're still pretty good at softening up a target for eventual attack by a squadron of missile combatants.

Now, regarding your second question : there're two things that are essential for any good anti-fighter doctrine : robust defences against saturation strikes, and excellent long-range detection and targeting. The former more-or-less mandates AMMs, while the latter isn't as simple as 'biggest sensor possible'.

Regarding AMM defences, reduced-sized AMM launchers are a terrible idea and get outperformed by full-size launchers by a very larger margin. At this tech level, there are two options that make sense - long-range AMM fire with full-size launchers, and short-range AMM fire with box launchers. I tend to use both, typically with 12,000 ton mixed-missile cruisers and 4,000 ton missile destroyers .

Do note that it makes a lot of sense to invest in large resolution-1 sensors [~800 tons] if you're dealing with fighters, since you don't have to worry about the enemy cheesing detection by halving the size of their fighters or something. This has the added bonus of increasing your AMM range (I manage ~6-8 launches), which is great for dealing with saturation strikes. Additionally, scouts and sensor pickets are critical. I usually avoid having actives with a resolution exceeding 1 HS on any mainline combatants because of how noisy they are, and offload detection to fast 1,000 ton pickets that have the endurance and range to keep up with the fleet.

Since fighters are tiny, they don't usually have the space to have redundant MFCs to target ships and FACs - a 1,000 ton missile craft outfitted specifically for anti-fighter work does pretty well. Additionally, it's a good idea to keep scouts around that can shadow a fighter squadron back to its mothership - things tend to go really badly for a carrier fleet after this point.

To summarise, my general doctrine in this situation would be to use structure fleets around cruiser battlegroups, with 1-2 command cruisers with jump capability and large res-1 active sensors and oversized passive sensors, 4-6 mixed missile cruisers with large res-1 MFCs, deep magazines, and as many AMM and ASM/AFM launchers can be stuffed in, and 4-6 destroyers with AMM box launchers. This would be surrounded by an inner ring of six squadrons at the limit of the res-1 sensor's detection range, each containing an active sensor picket, a passive sensor scout, and a pair of anti-fighter missile attack craft. Beyond this, there would be an outer ring of passive sensor scouts, and independent free-ranging active/passive scouts used for reconnaissance. In general it's also a good idea to keep squadrons of box-launcher missile-frigates around to overwhelm the railgun cruisers, but you don't need many here since the enemy appears to lack robust AMM defences.

Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth

« on: December 01, 2020, 09:53:31 PM »

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Quote from: Migi on December 01, 2020, 09:37:44 PM

I think part of the problem is you've given Earth both the carriers and cruisers. That means the other factions need to counter both of them rather than just one.
And if faction weapon/doctrine exclusivity is a thing, maybe you can merge Mars and the unnamed shield users? There are many ways to explode things in Aurora but they definitely aren't all balanced.

I quite want to design a large shielded ship now.

I disagree, actually. Railgun cruisers are just about the least interesting, most manageable possible ship design. They can't kite anything, they can't alpha anything...all they are is solid DPS. Dealing with them is not hard part for any faction, except in that they have to have some tonnage dedicated to doing so. Since Earth is also dedicating tonnage to this, that's a wash.

Faction doctrine exclusivity is something I'm striving for to keep things interesting, but it's not totally mandatory. I AM interested in seeing all the ways people can come up with to counter carriers.

So far, we have:

1. Tank the low frequency launches with shields and heavy armor (Particle beam people are doing this...Federation of Marathon, just to put a name to them. They are in a neighboring star system and jump point theory will be introduced to all factions when I decide I want to make a mess.)
2. Missile wave to kill the carriers, with a variety of wrinkles. Can look like submarines, or more like a fighter strike of your own (Alliance is probably gonna do this)
3. Target the fighters with AFMs from small ships that the fighters have to get close to
4. Target the fighters with AFMs from big ships that can afford big fire controls and actives (Martians may do this)
5. Mix AMMs and railgun PD on large vessels to try to survive the missile storm (Martians may do this)
6. Variations on: Be where the carriers aren't (everyone will likely need to use this)

Big shielded ships are cool. Good for fighting swarm if you need to assault a jump point.

Posted by: Migi

« on: December 01, 2020, 09:37:44 PM »

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I think part of the problem is you've given Earth both the carriers and cruisers. That means the other factions need to counter both of them rather than just one.
And if faction weapon/doctrine exclusivity is a thing, maybe you can merge Mars and the unnamed shield users? There are many ways to explode things in Aurora but they definitely aren't all balanced.

I quite want to design a large shielded ship now.

Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth

« on: December 01, 2020, 07:55:14 PM »

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Quote from: xenoscepter on December 01, 2020, 07:46:15 PM

- What if you used shields? Put enough of them on to survive one hit, so the enemy fighters launch their salvo, it's stopped by your shields, then you engage them with return fire. Run away to rearm / recharge if need be. Rinse and repeat.

That's what the particle beam people I haven't really talked about are trying. I don't think it's gonna work as well as they'd like

Posted by: xenoscepter

« on: December 01, 2020, 07:46:15 PM »

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- What if you used shields? Put enough of them on to survive one hit, so the enemy fighters launch their salvo, it's stopped by your shields, then you engage them with return fire. Run away to rearm / recharge if need be. Rinse and repeat.

Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth

« on: December 01, 2020, 07:31:20 PM »

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Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 01, 2020, 06:57:54 PM

Generally speaking, part of this is going to be giving Earth some actual problems that she needs to solve, which provide the other powers the ability to exploit. Thinking purely in terms of fleet engagements is going to mean that no matter the doctrine Earth will win by sheer weight of having a superpower economy that can support equal or sub-equal trading and still end up winning a war. However, if you give Earth some serious problems in terms of economics that will provide the basis for asymmetric warfare that can even up the odds a bit.

This is a good point. Earth's going to be reliant on Saturn based fuel harvesters, which forces her to split her forces in a way the Alliance, at least, won't have to. Other economic weaknesses are...hard to impose, in Aurora. Some of her population advantage is going to go into ordnance and fighter factories that the other powers don't need, I guess. Over the mid term, she'll need colonies for minerals, which will impose the same issue as the fuel harvesters. But that will affect everyone. I've been giving the secondary powers upgraded wealth tech, which should hopefully give them an edge on utilizing the production they do possess. May force Earth to rely on trade to keep up, which would create targets.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 01, 2020, 06:57:54 PM

This means any doctrines the weaker powers have must be based on exploiting those weaknesses, not on winning a Mahanian fleet engagement. In fact, both weaker powers should be explicitly planning on never fighting the main Earth fleet, even in self-defense - if Earth actually concentrates her fleet against one of the lesser powers, the strategy is to do as much crippling economic damage as possible so that Earth is vulnerable to the remaining undamaged power sweeping up the mess. This threat is what stops Earth from launching an all-out assault, not the threat of losing a fleet engagement.

I've been trying more for what Garfunkel described as the Soviet approach, where they try to hardcounter the superpower's doctrine rather than avoiding a confrontation. I get that that's hard, but it's more interesting IMO b/c I like fleet design. The economic imbalance is intentionally not THAT extreme; Alliance+Mars can almost match Earth in industry, so a counter-build fleet can potentially win a straight up fight.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 01, 2020, 06:57:54 PM

If you're going to run with a capital ship doctrine, the name of the game is PD plain and simple, and given your proposed starting conditions I think Gauss turrets are the way to go here. Beyond that, again, you have to ask what are you using these capital ships for? A fleet engagement is not winnable, and long-range commerce hunting is probably not a good fit here. However you are pretty close to Earth compared to Jupiter, so you have the option of playing a fleet-in-being card and looking for opportunities to actualize the threat. One thing that comes to my mind here is to equip large capital ships with 1-2 small stealth scouts (fighter-size) which can reconnoiter important Earthling installations/zones and identify when the fleet presence defending those areas is small enough to launch an assault. If you go really heavy on Gauss PD you can fly in, blow up a spaceport or something, and use the PD to survive a late-arriving wave of fighters while you run away. Here you are making up for low speed with recon ability and anti-missile capabilities to launch limited strikes.

A potential complementary weapon here would be laser turrets as these would have the fast tracking speeds needed to shoot down fighters or FACs that close in. However if Earth relies on missile fighters the use here is rather limited.

At first brush I'd agree that PD is an absolute necessity, but the math suggests it's just not that feasible. PD vs box launchers is an industry game, no matter what approach you take, and Mars WILL lose that fight. Also at this tech level GC are terrible.

They can achieve a ~20% AMM hit chance, and Earth uses size 4 missiles. Meaning they need MORE tonnage in AMMs than Earth spends in missiles to fully stop the attacks. Hull weapons have a similar or slightly worse hit chance, so the amount of railgun tonnage would be...a lot. Very cheap though.

Hmmm....a 500 ton fighter is delivering 6 missiles. 3 railguns (450 tons) can stop about 2, but costs almost nothing. But that's at ~50% mission tonnage, so it's effectively 900 tons of ship.

We can put 3 AMMs on target with 50 tons of launcher. So 450 tons of launchers would give us 27 AMMs and stop 5-6. So that MIGHT work, but building enough AMMs would be rough. Again, effectively 900 tons of ship which isn't a great trade.

Targeting Earth's fighters seems like a better approach for them. It would take something like 6 missiles to guarantee a fighter kill (Str 4 warhead, 50% hit chance at best, 3 hits to be absolutely sure). That can use full reload rate launchers, which are more tonnage efficient if they get multiple launches. Which they would. Even if we went for size 6 missiles (if we did, could probably get away with 4 per target to kill), if we can manage to kill 1 fighter per launcher, we'd come out ahead in terms of allocated tonnage. Could also make AMM canisters to use the big launchers.

They can't survive multiple fighter strikes...but they CAN try to make sure that doesn't happen.

Posted by: nuclearslurpee

« on: December 01, 2020, 06:57:54 PM »

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Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on December 01, 2020, 04:35:12 PM

I'm setting up a multi-faction game that will pivot around Earth as the Sol system superpower. Earth uses carrier launched missile fighters, backed by large railgun cruisers (plus high rate of fire missile destroyers to try and kill enemy fighters).

Since Earth is the dominant power, the other factions need to shape their doctrines to counter it. There are two factions I'm still working out, and I'd like some advice. Note that the doctrines chosen don't ACTUALLY need to work; they just need to make sense and be distinctive.

Generally speaking, part of this is going to be giving Earth some actual problems that she needs to solve, which provide the other powers the ability to exploit. Thinking purely in terms of fleet engagements is going to mean that no matter the doctrine Earth will win by sheer weight of having a superpower economy that can support equal or sub-equal trading and still end up winning a war. However, if you give Earth some serious problems in terms of economics that will provide the basis for asymmetric warfare that can even up the odds a bit.

This means any doctrines the weaker powers have must be based on exploiting those weaknesses, not on winning a Mahanian fleet engagement. In fact, both weaker powers should be explicitly planning on never fighting the main Earth fleet, even in self-defense - if Earth actually concentrates her fleet against one of the lesser powers, the strategy is to do as much crippling economic damage as possible so that Earth is vulnerable to the remaining undamaged power sweeping up the mess. This threat is what stops Earth from launching an all-out assault, not the threat of losing a fleet engagement.

Quote

The first faction is the Jovian Alliance, claiming the four large moons of Jupiter along with Jupiter's sorium reserves. Since they have such good fuel access, they are going with small fast ships using heavy engine boost. ECM on FACs and corvettes to ruin the fighters engagement range; their plan, such as it is, is to avoid the fighters and try to snipe the carrier with ECM cruise missiles launched from FACs. Then run in with microwave+plasma carronades to melt the railgun cruisers. I think this doctrine is ok, and certainly thematic, but I'd welcome some feedback.

The microwave/plasma strategy makes a lot of sense for commerce raiders - microwaves to disable military escort targeting and plasma to shred freighters quickly before hightailing it back to base. However, this setup has an extreme weakness in terms of a complete lack of PD ability, which is fine if (as stated above) you intend to never fight the enemy fleet. However, if you get ambushed by missile fighters your fleet is dead. I would consider the possibility of mesons as an alternative to microwaves, as thematically they are similar (cripple military escorts by destroying internal systems and disabling the ships) but they can be turreted and so would be passable in a PD role particularly with decent capacitor technology.

Quote

Second faction, which I am less sure about, is Mars. They have a larger population and more industry than the Alliance, but poor access to fuel. So I'm thinking they should go with big ships so they can use efficient engines. The issue is that with the allotted tech level (INPE, but pretty much everything else is <4000RP), it is really hard to stop mass missile strikes. They can barely make a worthwhile AMM (and I had to give them more missile tech than I really wanted...missiles are supposed to be Earth's thing), so they are pretty much stuck with railguns which are really inefficient. I'm thinking they might try to use their large ships to mount big actives and try to shoot down the fighters before they can launch, but I'm not sure what they should do in terms of offense. I already have another faction running big shielded ships with particle beams, so the only remaining offensive option seems to be lasers. But that doesn't feel all that different from the particle beam doctrine, TBH.

If you're going to run with a capital ship doctrine, the name of the game is PD plain and simple, and given your proposed starting conditions I think Gauss turrets are the way to go here. Beyond that, again, you have to ask what are you using these capital ships for? A fleet engagement is not winnable, and long-range commerce hunting is probably not a good fit here. However you are pretty close to Earth compared to Jupiter, so you have the option of playing a fleet-in-being card and looking for opportunities to actualize the threat. One thing that comes to my mind here is to equip large capital ships with 1-2 small stealth scouts (fighter-size) which can reconnoiter important Earthling installations/zones and identify when the fleet presence defending those areas is small enough to launch an assault. If you go really heavy on Gauss PD you can fly in, blow up a spaceport or something, and use the PD to survive a late-arriving wave of fighters while you run away. Here you are making up for low speed with recon ability and anti-missile capabilities to launch limited strikes.

A potential complementary weapon here would be laser turrets as these would have the fast tracking speeds needed to shoot down fighters or FACs that close in. However if Earth relies on missile fighters the use here is rather limited.