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Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 09, 2012, 03:57:24 PM »

Quote from: Erik Luken on May 09, 2012, 03:52:07 PM
I can see it now...

"Due to your excellent performance and loyalty to the throne, you've been assigned to the ISS ShootMeNow. Good luck in your next performance review if you survive Captain."

Naturally, I have selected an appropriate name for the class of ships.

Here's a slightly more expensive version, with a jump drive and a full suite of sensors:

Quote
Expendible class Exploration Ship    2,750 tons     85 Crew     382 BP      TCS 55  TH 109.2  EM 0
5672 km/s    JR 1-25(C)     Armour 1-17     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/14/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 87    Max Repair 205 MSP

JC3K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 3000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 1
Internal Confinement Fusion HyperDrive E0.6 (1)    Power 312.5    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 109.375    Armour 0    Exp 4%    Hyper Capable
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 545.4 billion km   (1112 days at full power)
Civilian Search Sensor MR3-R1 (1)     GPS 28     Range 3.9m km    Resolution 1
Civilian Search Sensor MR15-R16 (1)     GPS 448     Range 15.7m km    Resolution 16
Civilian Search Sensor MR39-R100 (1)     GPS 2800     Range 39.2m km    Resolution 100
Civilian Thermal Sensor TH1-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
Civilian EM Sensor EM1-14 (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  14m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Posted by: Erik L
« on: May 09, 2012, 03:52:07 PM »

Quote from: blue emu on May 09, 2012, 03:32:39 PM
Lately I've been building a class of super-cheap Civilian ships, classed as "Exploration Vessels". They carry nothing but one high-performance Civilian engine, a one-hull-square active sensor, a one-hull-square EM (or Thermal) sensor, and minimal life support and fuel. No armor, shields or weapons, no Geo- or Grav- sensors.

They can be built (and therefore replaced) in just a few months in any Civilian shipyard, cost next to nothing in credits and minerals, and their job is to be the first ship through any newly-discovered jump point and to quickly visit every signifigant body in the system and then return home to report.

The active sensor is carried simply to give away their position and draw out any hostiles in the system. I lose quite a few of them... but because they flush out any hostiles before I send in my Geo- and Grav- ships, I very rarely lose a more valuable ship.

I can see it now...

"Due to your excellent performance and loyalty to the throne, you've been assigned to the ISS ShootMeNow. Good luck in your next performance review if you survive Captain."
Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 09, 2012, 03:32:39 PM »

Lately I've been building a class of super-cheap Civilian ships, classed as "Exploration Vessels". They carry nothing but one high-performance Civilian engine, a one-hull-square active sensor, a one-hull-square EM (or Thermal) sensor, and minimal life support and fuel. No armor, shields or weapons, no Geo- or Grav- sensors.

They can be built (and therefore replaced) in just a few months in any Civilian shipyard, cost next to nothing in credits and minerals, and their job is to be the first ship through any newly-discovered jump point and to quickly visit every signifigant body in the system and then return home to report.

The active sensor is carried simply to give away their position and draw out any hostiles in the system. I lose quite a few of them... but because they flush out any hostiles before I send in my Geo- and Grav- ships, I very rarely lose a more valuable ship.
Posted by: Panopticon
« on: February 25, 2012, 10:49:38 PM »

I've built my survey ships both ways, cheap and expendable with just a couple engines and sensors. Or full on specialist designs as described above, I often include some purpose built box launchers with some really big missiles too, which can be helpful when confronted at close range by something unexpected.
Posted by: xeryon
« on: February 25, 2012, 09:44:29 PM »

Two points of thought on grav and geo ships, either:

One way make them minimalist, super cheap, small and send them out into the wild to scan everything and anticipate losing them on occasion.
Or make them self sufficient islands.  A current setup I'm using my scan ships run 6000+ tons.  They are jump capable, two scanners, enough fuel and maintenance for 4-5 years of independent operation, several engines pushing my speed to over 5000km/s, several CIWS and three armor layers.  For all but a far superior tech alien I have been able to escape most hostiles and rarely loose one.
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: February 25, 2012, 06:06:00 PM »

For geo survey ships a ship with 1 civilian engine, 1 geo survey and the associated life support is enough for surveying safe systems.  If they are going out of your safe, patrolled inner systems then they need some passive sensors, and a second engine.  They will be fairly fast, cheap, and all civilian. 

A similiar design for the grav survey ship works as well, although you are going to want to put a bunch of maintenance (engineering bay) on them so they don't run into problems with maintenance quickly.

For freighters make sure you have 5 cargo holds and at least 1 cargo handling facility.  A lot of things you are going to want to ship require 5 holds or nothing is moved at all.

If you make your colony ship with twice the number of cryogenic bays as the freighter has cargo holds they will be almost identical in size, and generally shipyards that are configured to build the colony ship can build the freighter as well.

Good Luck
Brian
Posted by: woodenair
« on: February 25, 2012, 04:48:59 PM »

Quote from: Brian link=topic=4669. msg47303#msg47303 date=1330209763
Only 1 major item left that I see that needs changing.   Your fire control is wasting a lot of space.   It looks like you have a x4 range and x3 speed model fire control.   That is using up 12 hull spaces (600 tons)  You are wasting the x3 speed as the limit is going to be the lasers tracking speed (5000 vs 15000).   By downgrading the fire control to just the x4 range you will only be using 4 hull spaces and therefore either have more for something else like armor, or make your ship faster.

Brian

Oh! Right. .  I totally forgot that.  Good thing I didn't start building them yet :d

I might post some more designs as I test things out. .  I still don't have any commercial ships or geo ships. .  I was going to put it off as long as possible. .  But actually could you guys give me some pointers on basic ship designs for the resource gathering and transportation and what not?

I've looked at all the tutorials I could find but them seem outdated now :(
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: February 25, 2012, 04:42:43 PM »

Only 1 major item left that I see that needs changing.  Your fire control is wasting a lot of space.  It looks like you have a x4 range and x3 speed model fire control.  That is using up 12 hull spaces (600 tons)  You are wasting the x3 speed as the limit is going to be the lasers tracking speed (5000 vs 15000).  By downgrading the fire control to just the x4 range you will only be using 4 hull spaces and therefore either have more for something else like armor, or make your ship faster.

Brian
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: February 25, 2012, 10:21:51 AM »

Yeah, I'd definitely add one or two engineering spaces to it - so that Maint Life is above 2 years and that MSP is higher than Max Repair. Then just build plenty of these and they will work.
Posted by: xeryon
« on: February 25, 2012, 07:24:55 AM »

Much better.  Only major flaw is the AFR, MSP and maintenance life.  AFR is your annual failure rate.  Most people would say 147% is kind of high, but there are situations where that really isn't a problem.  The bigger problem is the MSP numbers.  You are only carrying 151 maintenance supplies yet your single largest repair item can require 270 supplies.  If that part breaks in the field your ship is in trouble.  With an AFR at 147% the chance of something breaking and leaving you in a bad spot is pretty high.

The next problem is maintenance life.  This is the usable life span of the ship before it starts having increased failure rates.  This isn't a huge problem because adding a couple extra engineering spaces to your ship will reduce AFR, increase you MSP supplies and add to your maintenance life.

Life and AFR are not a huge issue depending on the ships role.  Say, for example, you have a Grav survey ship.  If you are out scanning systems 6-7-8+ jumps from your home system it might take 6 months to get there.  With a maintenance life of 1.5 years you are going to spend all your time traveling back to base for overhauls.  Load that long duration ship up with supplies and engineering so it can stay out in the field for 10 years without coming home.  If you are building a planetary defense squad that will only leave base in an emergency, life doesnt advance in base and failures don't happen.  I have FAC's that are last ditch reserves that have been in orbit for 20+ years with NO engineering spaces.
Posted by: ollobrains
« on: February 25, 2012, 06:59:28 AM »

reasonable approach seems fair
Posted by: woodenair
« on: February 25, 2012, 04:53:55 AM »

Here's the redesigned ship taking everything into account.   .    I'm pretty sure I covered all of the major flaws.   .    Also had a question about the power efficiency, power reduction/increase modifiers.   .    Seems like it would be wise to have both of them on the same engine yes? Or to just not have either of them on the engines to keep it more balanced?

Quote
Grassraper class Destroyer    4,300 tons     424 Crew     1038.   4 BP      TCS 86  TH 180  EM 0
4186 km/s     Armour 8-23     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 12
Maint Life 1.   25 Years     MSP 151    AFR 147%    IFR 2.   1%    1YR 100    5YR 1500    Max Repair 270 MSP

Ion Engine E5 (6)    Power 60    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 85,000 Litres    Range 71.   2 billion km   (196 days at full power)

20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 240,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4
Fire Control S09 120-15000 (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 15000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR30-R100 (1)     GPS 6000     Range 30.   0m km    Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1)     GPS 42     Range 2.   1m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

As you can see.   .    I downgraded the power output and took off the shields.   .    Upped the armor a fair bit and added some engines (Ion this time).   .    I have two active sensors (One of which as I understand it is for missile defense) and added another laser.   .    I think this ship might be able to hold it's own without much need for support but I'm not entirely sure that's true.   .    I planned to have a few of these to start off with. .  Also I wanted to base my ships around energy weapons and purposely handicap myself by NOT using missiles.  To offset this challenge I made resources more abundant. .  I'm also sharing the space of sol with two other races to start off with. .  They are both on Earth and I'm on Mars.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: February 24, 2012, 03:15:08 PM »

Your biggest problem will be facing a missile-armed opponent. You won't be able to respond to their fire for hours of game time depending on vectors. Your ship has sub-par missile interception capability. You'll want a 5 second RoF weapon, and a Res1 scanner to see the missiles long enough to get a good read on them. Plus enough armor to degrade the effectiveness of any the leak through your screen.

On the upside, if you can force them into wasting all of their ammo, and manage to catch them; they will be slaughtered.
Posted by: sublight
« on: February 24, 2012, 02:23:50 PM »

Yep, the Grassraper might be of some use in jump point defense/assaults, but it is too slow and vulnerable to missiles to do well anywhere else.

Quote from: Beersatron on February 24, 2012, 11:12:40 AM
1. Design a Standard Military Engine instead of the Gunboat one you are using and then stick in about 10 of them - or until you get to at least a minimum speed of 4000.
I disagree. It looks like the propulsion technology is lagging badly. The Grassraper appears to be using 2nd generation technology on the engines, and 3rd or 4th generation technology everywhere else. To improve the design I'd suggest either:

a) Make the ship smaller. Dump the shield unit, dump an armor layer or three, downsize the reactor to match the laser, downgrade the beam fire control unit so it isn't tracking faster than the main weapon. In short, try to shrink the destroyer down to a 1,000 ton FAC built around a laser.
-or-
b) Research Ion propulsion, and then follow Beersatron's advice with military engines. With Ion tech your ships could be moving 4,000 km/s with only 33% engine mass, or they could travel 6,000 km/s with 50% of the ship mass devoted to engines.
-or-
c) Go for a juggernaut fleet. You seem to have the tracking speed and defensive tech for it. The juggernaut theory is that speed doesn't matter if the defenses are strong enough or the attack range long enough. Just drive straight for the objective, crush anything in your way, and ignore anyone faster than you who isn't in the way. Defense is also easy, just sit on the jump points and squash anyone trying to move through you. For this to work you need to put anti-missile defenses on the ships, and add multiple shield units. Also, swap out the Gun Boat engine for military engines to improve fuel efficiency. The Grassraper could become a decent jump point defense craft if you added additional lasers, resized to beam-fire control, and resized the reactor, but a primary jugernaught offensive ship will need to be armed with either long range missiles or multiple point defense weapons such as banks of turreted lasers or rail guns. 
Posted by: xeryon
« on: February 24, 2012, 11:56:25 AM »

Total vehicle speed is a personal preference and depending on the alien races you encounter and the scientists you have the need/outcome will be different each game.

I'm sitting in a game right now with no Power and Propulsion Scientists and my primary Alien enemy has ships traveling 8500km/s.  I am kind of stuck.  Realistically I cannot design an engine which takes me much faster then 6000 km/s even if I install 30 of them so I have no chance of out running them.  I had to go a different tactic:  I have great sensor and missile scientists so I have tweaked my ship design to be able to greatly exceed my enemies weapons range.  I cannot catch them if they run, but if they close in to fire at me it brings them well within my missile ranges.

The biggest problem with this design is with beam weapons you need to be able to approach at ultra close range.  Many missiles have a range of 20-50million km where your lasers reach only 240,000 km.  You need to have superior speed to make a design like this practical.  With adjustments this would be a start to a JP defense ship.  You can camp the back-side of the JP and ambush people that come through.  You don't need speed because they will jump in at near point blank range.