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Posted by: Din182
« on: September 14, 2011, 10:16:08 PM »

My personal suggestion is to reduce your anti-ship missile warheads down to 4 and greatly improve the speed and chance to hit, so you get more hits on fast ships.  That way, your missiles don't become outdated as quickly.  But if you plan on getting in lots of battles with slow ships early on, the missiles are pretty good.
Posted by: jRides
« on: September 13, 2011, 01:47:11 PM »

Its probably personal preference but I would probably remove that interceptor class altogether, and add in another escort if you feel your task group would be lacking, the space your freeing up you can spare in bigger fuel tanks for your EWACS and fit a couple tankers to extend your strike range and endurance of your EWACS net. Possibly another squadron or bigger ammo containment. Depending on the role of your carrier of course, but I went with 4 full reloads in my last game.

I always go with carrier groups, rarely have I fought with anything else and I find that the Carrier and the jump tender are generally the first to be targeted so I am 100% behind the CIWS for your carrier. When you come to think about the jump tender a Gauss cannon or two will extend its role (you will have the mass to spare) and give it some needed survivability.

EDIT: I would suggest another class of heavy interceptor too, a squadron leader - dropping a couple missile tubes and adding an active sensor, have one per squadron of fighters so they can work well outside the sensor net provided by your EWACS and Fleet, then your only restraint is fuel but with a tanker class fighter your fighters will have a vast range. I would also suggest on your tanker you give it fuel tanks big enough to refuel an entire squadron and have enough fuel remaining to get home itself.. learned that one the hard way. :)
Posted by: chuckles73
« on: September 13, 2011, 12:48:47 PM »

I'd probably swap some of your interceptors for more heavy fighters.

Also, you should try whipping up an experimental EWACS platform around a FAC engine instead of a fighter engine. It is annoying to need to take up a shipyard to build them, but having a month of on-station time is often more useful than swapping them out every few days. Design the ship and see if you like the tradeoffs.
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: September 13, 2011, 07:44:47 AM »

Yes, regualr final defensive fire works for the entire task group.

That said, I do belive this assumes all ships are in one place. Once you split off your escorts to their escort positions, each escort(group) creates its own task group, and will only protect itself/its own group until it rejoins the main group
The key here is not task group, but the range setting you put on the fire control when you set up the point defense options.  Normally people leave this at 10,000km.  If you stretch this out to 30,000km you will shoot at any missiles that are going to hit within this 5 second movement pulse when they hit 30,000km from the ship with the point defense.  The drawback to this is it has a lower chance to hit because of the greater range.  The benifit is your ships can be somewhat dispersed and still give some cover fire.

Brian
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: September 13, 2011, 07:41:00 AM »

Yes, regular final defensive fire works for the entire task group.

That said, I do believe this assumes all ships are in one place. Once you split off your escorts to their escort positions, each escort(group) creates its own task group, and will only protect itself/its own group until it rejoins the main group

Not exactly.  Final defensive fire will attempt to engage any missile within the range setting that will attack this movement cycle.  This is limited to friendly ships only not just the defenders task group.  Depending of treaty level, allied ships are supposed to be defended as well.  If I recall correctly, you can make a change on the diplomatic screen to exclude a particular allied race from this mutual defense.  Other than that the only limitation is weapons range and having enough fire controls with weapons to engage salvos attacking this cycle.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: September 13, 2011, 06:21:35 AM »

If you up the ammo, remember to also up the fuel tanks. Your 40 Purgatories will suck 800k fuel (assuming they have emptied their tanks) each time, they refuel. So, two loads of ammo looks quite good, as they could also refuel two times and leave some fuel left for the carrier itself.

Of course, the simpler (not easier) sulution would be to have a couple of fleet oilers accompany your colliers (or have a combined oiler/collier design)
Posted by: HaliRyan
« on: September 13, 2011, 05:20:23 AM »

Hmm... You think I should lower the hangar deck for more ammo? I've got a pair of ammo colliers for rendezvousing with reloads, and I figured 2 full reloads for all 40 fighters it means either I've won or more ammo won't help, but it's all just theory for me at the moment unfortunately.

I could always drop a pair of hangar decks and reduce the number of interceptors to 25 from 35 to grab more magazine space. They're 200 tons each so it works out easily. I could also just increase the number of magazines with additional engines to keep the same speed, but the carriers are already a huge investment at 53k tons.
Posted by: chrislocke2000
« on: September 13, 2011, 04:24:07 AM »

That looks like a serious task force!

Personally I don't think I would like to put quite so many eggs in one basket with that huge carrier. I also normally work on the basis that all my ships should be able to be jumped rather than reliant on gates. If you read Steve's NATO v Soviets campaign where he has similarly large carriers, you will see there were a few times where he was unable to use them because of the lack of jump gates or they got stuck for half a year waiting for one to be built so they could jump out.

Given the size of your hanger deck your ammo capacity looks pretty low. Two reloads for your fighters are not that much in my experience.
Posted by: HaliRyan
« on: September 13, 2011, 04:17:36 AM »

Ok, that works then.  The cruisers would be staying in the carrier task group unless there's a gate to assault through or a Hail-Mary distraction needed, the destroyers would be the only ones consistently separating to move to an interception position.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: September 13, 2011, 12:50:28 AM »

Are you sure? There's 2 settings for final defensive fire on my ships and one of them is labeled as self-only, which I assumed means the other must cover the task group as well?

Yes, regualr final defensive fire works for the entire task group.

That said, I do belive this assumes all ships are in one place. Once you split off your escorts to their escort positions, each escort(group) creates its own task group, and will only protect itself/its own group until it rejoins the main group
Posted by: Sloshmonger
« on: September 12, 2011, 07:02:55 PM »

Just be aware that those will not work outside of your jumpgate network, unless you're planning on adding a huge jump tender to the fleet.
Posted by: HaliRyan
« on: September 12, 2011, 06:04:19 PM »

Are you sure? There's 2 settings for final defensive fire on my ships and one of them is labeled as self-only, which I assumed means the other must cover the task group as well?
Posted by: Erik L
« on: September 12, 2011, 04:57:17 PM »

As I understand it, area defense attacks over a wider range-- but I think you're right, final defensive fire only attacks right before collision.

As I understand it.

Final defensive fire is also only per ship. If the carrier is targeted, and your cruiser is arms length away, the cruiser won't interdict the missiles if it is set to final defensive fire.
Posted by: Thiosk
« on: September 12, 2011, 04:14:26 PM »

Hmm. . .  Can I space the cruisers out in front of the carriers as escorts? I learned to do that with my AMM ships in my last game, but I thought I read somewhere on here that with beam-based point defense it was better to leave them in the main group and set them to final defensive fire mode?

As I understand it, area defense attacks over a wider range-- but I think you're right, final defensive fire only attacks right before collision.

As I understand it.
Posted by: HaliRyan
« on: September 12, 2011, 03:53:25 PM »

Hmm. . .  Can I space the cruisers out in front of the carriers as escorts? I learned to do that with my AMM ships in my last game, but I thought I read somewhere on here that with beam-based point defense it was better to leave them in the main group and set them to final defensive fire mode?