Posted by: TheDeadlyShoe
« on: December 15, 2011, 08:38:26 PM »These ship designs look pretty good - very good, compared to a lot of starter navies. Except that your antimissile sensors are far too weak for effective antimissile fire.
When designing a resolution 1 sensor you can see its range against small missiles which is basically its effective antimissile range. A 1.5m range sensor only has about 160,000 range against size <=6 missiles, which means that against even mediocre technology you will get _at best_ 1 antimissile salvo off. You'll probably want, at minimum, an antimissile sensor 4x-5x times the size for this to be effective.
The downside of this is that your ships are really too small to mount both that sensor on all of them. You may have to specialize, at least a little.
Also, your antimissile design itself is a bit weak - what level of Agility research do you have? With ion engines and 48 agility per MSP, you can get above 50% to hit against 10 km/s targets pretty easily. Actually, I think you may have put all your MSP into engine instead of agility?
Finally, your armor is thin. This is not killer for missile combat, but I still prefer at least 5 layers of armor on my main combatants near the start of the game. This can be prohibitive without at least Composite armor technology. However, for jump point assaults, that level of armor simply wont work against defending beam vessels. As an example, I lost 30,000 tons of armor-6 cruisers in a jump point assault recently and they barely got to fire back. The defender was a single 12000 ton vessel mounting a large array of strength 6 beam weapons. One combat cruiser never got to fire; the other got one salvo off; but the missiles lost tracking from it dying; the jump cruiser was too lightly armed to carry the day. Thats even with enough armor to remain combat effective through at least one salvo. I figure I need at least armor 10 - or two jump squadrons - to assault that jump point effectively.
EDIT - PS. You can get away with a lot less fuel than you're mounting, especially since your concern is for a next door neighbor. I'd suggest a target number of about 50bn km.
When designing a resolution 1 sensor you can see its range against small missiles which is basically its effective antimissile range. A 1.5m range sensor only has about 160,000 range against size <=6 missiles, which means that against even mediocre technology you will get _at best_ 1 antimissile salvo off. You'll probably want, at minimum, an antimissile sensor 4x-5x times the size for this to be effective.
The downside of this is that your ships are really too small to mount both that sensor on all of them. You may have to specialize, at least a little.
Also, your antimissile design itself is a bit weak - what level of Agility research do you have? With ion engines and 48 agility per MSP, you can get above 50% to hit against 10 km/s targets pretty easily. Actually, I think you may have put all your MSP into engine instead of agility?
Finally, your armor is thin. This is not killer for missile combat, but I still prefer at least 5 layers of armor on my main combatants near the start of the game. This can be prohibitive without at least Composite armor technology. However, for jump point assaults, that level of armor simply wont work against defending beam vessels. As an example, I lost 30,000 tons of armor-6 cruisers in a jump point assault recently and they barely got to fire back. The defender was a single 12000 ton vessel mounting a large array of strength 6 beam weapons. One combat cruiser never got to fire; the other got one salvo off; but the missiles lost tracking from it dying; the jump cruiser was too lightly armed to carry the day. Thats even with enough armor to remain combat effective through at least one salvo. I figure I need at least armor 10 - or two jump squadrons - to assault that jump point effectively.
EDIT - PS. You can get away with a lot less fuel than you're mounting, especially since your concern is for a next door neighbor. I'd suggest a target number of about 50bn km.