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Posted by: Victuz
« on: October 26, 2012, 01:48:25 PM »

Quote from: Conscript Gary on October 26, 2012, 01:22:24 PM
That's why engines as a percentage of total tonnage is a good strategy. All technology and power modifiers being equal, a 6,000 ton ship that has 1,500 tons of engines will move just as fast as a 12,000 ton ship with 3,000 tons of engine. Both of those being 25%

Yes but that's assuming the same engines are used, now that designing them works somewhat differently, different specialisations of ship might benefit from different engines (be it size or power to tonnage ratio). That's why I wanted to point it out. :)
Posted by: Conscript Gary
« on: October 26, 2012, 01:22:24 PM »

That's why engines as a percentage of total tonnage is a good strategy. All technology and power modifiers being equal, a 6,000 ton ship that has 1,500 tons of engines will move just as fast as a 12,000 ton ship with 3,000 tons of engine. Both of those being 25%
Posted by: Victuz
« on: October 26, 2012, 10:28:18 AM »

One thing that has not been mentioned so far, that I find kind of important.

While I agree with the sentiment that it's better to aim for % when adding engines to a ship rather than a set speed it's worth mentioning that it's a good idea to keep all of your ship that will actually be engaging an enemy at a similar speed levels.

If your escorts move at 4k km/s and your missile boats move at 6k km/s than they'll loose them and be useless. If it's the reverse than your ships are wasting quite a lot of engine power for nothing.
Posted by: Icecoon
« on: October 26, 2012, 06:21:04 AM »

It seems ok, nothing wrong with it. Maybe try to design the ship again.
Posted by: starshard0
« on: October 26, 2012, 03:07:28 AM »

Code: [Select]
Active Sensor Strength: 16   Sensitivity Modifier: 80%
Sensor Size: 1 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 60    Maximum Range vs 3000 ton object (or larger): 29,730,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 3,303,333 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 206,458 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 16    Crew: 2
Materials Required: 8.2x Duranium  16x Uridium

Development Cost for Project: 160RP
This is the design I used for the fire control module.

It seems to me that I should have a range of 29.7m km.
Posted by: Icecoon
« on: October 26, 2012, 02:14:07 AM »

1. Maybe you made a mistake at component creation. Try to design a new component.

2. Upgrade the armor of the ship. 1 layer of armor will not help you much. Maybe against some space debris.
I'd go with minimally 3 layers of armor on a combat ship, 2 layers on survey ships.
Posted by: starshard0
« on: October 26, 2012, 12:22:27 AM »

Code: [Select]
Revenge class Cruiser    3,500 tons     103 Crew     547.4 BP      TCS 70  TH 320  EM 0
4571 km/s     Armour 1-20     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 20
Maint Life 1.53 Years     MSP 98    AFR 98%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 48    5YR 715    Max Repair 80 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 8 months    Spare Berths 2    
Magazine 105    

160 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 160    Fuel Use 54%    Signature 160    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 47.6 billion km   (120 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 40
AS Missile Fire Control FC29-R60 (2)     Range 0k km    Resolution 60

AS Active Search Sensor MR29-R60 (1)     GPS 2880     Range 29.7m km    Resolution 60

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Any idea why I have 0 range on my Fire Control?
Posted by: Nathan_
« on: October 25, 2012, 11:48:49 PM »

You'll have to experiment for yourself, but my warships have 40-50% engine tonnage(with power mods being 100-150%), up until 11000 km/s, at which point I slack off on engine total.  Faster ships have initiative, and are harder to hit with various weapons. So speed is a component of ship defense,as well as offense since it allows you to dictate where and how engagements occur,and the AI does know how to exploit this.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: October 25, 2012, 10:55:29 PM »

Active sensor data are shared, so a single active in a fleet wold be sufficient. Of course, if you realy only have a single ship with an active sensor and that ship buys it, you´ll be blind and can´t keep shooting.
Personally, I have two dedicated sensor ships with huge actives (res-120 for anti-ship work and res-1 for anti-missile work and big passives) and mount small backup actives on all combat ships. Except for the sensors, the sensor ships only mount defensive armament but have strong armor/shields, as those huge sensors have massive EM emissions which make them a prime target for any enemy.
Posted by: starshard0
« on: October 25, 2012, 10:24:20 PM »

How many active sensors do I need on each ship?
Posted by: metalax
« on: October 25, 2012, 08:26:10 PM »

Dependant on the size of your ship, you may want to go with more than 1 fire control on the ship for ASM's to provide some protection against the ship being rendered harmless due to the first internal damage taking out the firecontrol. Also keep in mind that you will want to fire your ASM's in salvos of 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, ..., 3n+1 missiles. As the usual salvo size of AMM's is 3, this forces an additional salvo to be used to take out each of your ASM salvos, draining their missile supplies faster.

For the AMM's yes, though keep an eye on the size of your firecontrols/sensors. These tend to be significantly larger than those for your ASM ships which can often lead to your AMM escorts being bigger than the ships they are escorting.
Posted by: starshard0
« on: October 25, 2012, 08:01:04 PM »

So to recap, assuming I'm using missiles:

Attack ship with ASM
1 fire control for alpha strikes, with as many launchers as I want

Escort with AMM
1 fire control per ~3 launchers, designed to spot size ~6 missiles as far out as I can.
Posted by: metalax
« on: October 25, 2012, 07:46:25 PM »

The range to use really depends on your tech level. For example, at active sensor 21 and EM sensor 11 techs, a size 2, resolution 1 firecontrol will pick up size 6 missiles at about 2 million km's. The active sensor to match that range will be size 6. As going much larger will end up eating a lot of space in firecontrols and sensors this would limit your AMM's to 2 million km at this tech level.

ASM's tend to have their range limited more by engine tech and fuel efficiency instead. At similar tech level (ion drives and 0.6 effiency) I'd aim for between 60 - 100 million km's.

Also note, if you are willing to perform some micromanagment you can get away with less firecontrols on your ship by swapping which launchers are assigned to a firecontrol while some are reloading. eg 8 launchers with a RoF of 10 seconds, can keep up a salvo of 4 missiles every 5 second increment with one firecontrol by swapping half the launchers each increment. If neccesary you can also just link everything up for an alpha strike as well.

To answer your earlier question about speed, because it is so dependant on your engine tech level, instead of aiming for a set speed I tend to instead dedicate a certain percentage of the tonnage to engines, usually 25%. With around 25% taken up by fuel storage/crew quarters/engineering/armour that leaves 50% for weapons, firecontrols and sensors.
Posted by: starshard0
« on: October 25, 2012, 07:05:01 PM »

That makes a lot of sense.  I've been trying to understand the whole anti-missile missile vs.  anti-ship missile thing.  What is generally a good range to use for AMMs and ASMs? I get pretty confused when it comes to the enormous distances I have to cover, so I have no idea what to expect from the average engagement, other than a pretty quick death most of the time.
Posted by: tryrar
« on: October 25, 2012, 07:00:07 PM »

Correct. Any launcher on a ship requires at least one fire control(so no ships with a launcher and a separate ship with fire control), though there ARE exceptions, such as when you're launching mines for example. As for number of fire controls, depends on the role. If the ship in question is an AMM(Anti-Missile Missile) escort, you'd generally want at LEAST 1 fire control for every three launchers as a good rule of thumb. For shipkillers, you can generally get away with having all the launchers on one fire control, but for me, I find that when I have more than 10 launchers on a ship, I'll put in a second fire control to break up my salvos into to(and it lets me target more than one ship if I happen to be attacking multiple weak ships). As well, having at least 2 fire controls is good for redundancy against battle damage.