Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Bureau of Design => Topic started by: Iestwyn on December 01, 2020, 02:39:10 PM
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Finally ran into an NPR in my game, but I hadn't invested much in my military. I had to churn out some research and classes pretty quick to make sure I was protected; not sure how they turned out.
I can see two issues already. One, there's actually too much space devoted to fuel. It might be better to use that space for a bigger payload and have some dedicated tankers follow along in the baggage train. Two, I don't have any missiles here. Not that bad, but I'd like them; I just didn't have the ordnance factories necessary to churn out some good missiles quickly in decent numbers.
First, the laser corvette:
Chevalier B class Corvette 5,000 tons 132 Crew 669.6 BP TCS 100 TH 405 EM 0
4050 km/s Armour 5-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 33 Sensors 8/8/0/0 DCR 2 PPV 18
Maint Life 2.97 Years MSP 247 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 42 5YR 627 Max Repair 101.25 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
High-Performance Corvette Sparkdrive (2) Power 405.0 Fuel Use 81.46% Signature 202.5 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,138,000 Litres Range 50.3 billion km (143 days at full power)
Maladon-Numitor Armaments Spinal NUV Lightbeam (3) Range 192,000km TS: 4,050 km/s Power 9-3 RM 30,000 km ROF 15
Corvette Beam Targeting Software v1 (2) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 4,050 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gaseous Power Generator R9 (1) Total Power Output 9.2 Exp 5%
Mk2 Standard Nav Pulse Sensor AS31-R120 (1) GPS 1920 Range 31.5m km Resolution 120
Mk2 Standard EM Sensor EM1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Mk2 Standard Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Intended to be suitable for independent operations if necessary.
Next is the PD escort:
Do You Feel Lucky? class Escort 5,000 tons 123 Crew 727.1 BP TCS 100 TH 405 EM 0
4050 km/s Armour 1-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 31 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 2 PPV 30.48
Maint Life 2.16 Years MSP 181 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 52 5YR 780 Max Repair 101.25 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
High-Performance Corvette Sparkdrive (2) Power 405.0 Fuel Use 81.46% Signature 202.5 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 910,000 Litres Range 40.2 billion km (114 days at full power)
PD Emplacement S12-R20 (4x6) Range 20,000km TS: 12000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 20,000 km ROF 5
High-Performance PD Targeting Software R72-TS12 (1) Max Range: 72,000 km TS: 12,000 km/s 86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0
High-Power HiRes Pulse Sensor AS14-R1 (1) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
High-Power MidRes Pulse Sensor AS30-R10 (1) GPS 800 Range 30.8m km Resolution 10
Definitely NOT suitable for independent operations.
Lastly, a command ship:
All Under Heaven class Command Cruiser 10,000 tons 229 Crew 1,610.1 BP TCS 200 TH 810 EM 0
4050 km/s Armour 5-41 Shields 0-0 HTK 46 Sensors 40/40/0/0 DCR 15 PPV 0
Maint Life 2.91 Years MSP 503 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 88 5YR 1,317 Max Repair 125 MSP
Captain Control Rating 2 BRG FLG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
High-Performance Corvette Sparkdrive (4) Power 810.0 Fuel Use 81.46% Signature 202.5 Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 2,541,000 Litres Range 56.1 billion km (160 days at full power)
High-Power HiRes Pulse Sensor AS14-R1 (2) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
High-Power MidRes Pulse Sensor AS30-R10 (2) GPS 800 Range 30.8m km Resolution 10
High-Power LoRes Pulse Sensor AS70-R120 (2) GPS 9600 Range 70.4m km Resolution 120
High-Power Emissions Sensor TH5-40 (2) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 50m km
High-Power Radio Dish EM5-40 (2) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 50m km
As I look at the ship, I think that it would be a good idea to have some PD on it...
What do you guys think?
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The engine/fuel section is the main problem here. There is a clear mismatch between the intended function of the ships and the engines they have.
It's hard to know what tech level you have because you renamed everything (and I'm too lazy to try to figure it out XD ), but you're obviously relatively early tech. But those engines.... they use too much fuel. They seem to be highly boosted, and/or maybe too small sized too, hence the high fuel consumption.
And that fuel... first, 50 billion km range is insane for a warship. That's like... 20+ average systems range. I don't think I ever used more than 20 billion km range, unless my tech was really high. You use tankers instead. Also, these engines end up using too much fuel anyway, and that's too much wasted space on the ship. The result is that the ships are very lightly armed. These ships will do very little, becuase there's just not enough space for weaponry, and that engines/fuel situation is one of the main culprits for that.
Using very high fuel consumption engines on long range ships is a waste, which then negatively impact your industrial sector. The function of the ship is what should guide you.
For long range ships, to be used extensively over vast distances, you want moderate fuel consumption.
Only high performance low-range warships, or fighters/facs/system defense ships should have high consumption engines.
The key question is: are these ships going to be used in short bursts over "short" distances, or not? If the answer is that they are long range ships, go for a sane fuel consumption. Or your fuel stocks will decrease at an alarming rate....
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The point Zincat made for the speed is good and here are my observations
Command: I personally think having a midresolution size Active sensor is kind of a waste of space. Your 2 main AS will catch mostly everything, and unless you think you will face a large amount of fighters, and even then you will detect them at a decent range. You will want to go after the carrier anyway. I would put a token PD weapon and BFC on the ship in that space instead if it fits.
The laser corvette is mounting multiple spinal weapons apparently unless I am mistaken, that is not intended I think there is a bug around involving that. Up to you if you want to do that anyway of course.
The escort is the one I am the most worried about. 1 armor for a warship is way too low. It can and will get blown up in a single blow. The escort will usually stick with your fleet well into laser engagement range and it will take some lick, it need to be sturdy. Detaching them before will make your main fleet vulnerable to missiles and you will want to avoid that. Here too the midrange AS is taking valuable space.
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This fleet is weak, puny, and terrible, and my fleet will tear it to shreds!!
...and now, I shall stop RPing as Precursors and give actual commentary. ;D
First, quick check: I can reproduce your engine as Ion Drive, 120% boost, Fuel Consumption 0.6, and size 13.5 HS which is 675 tons. Assuming I have this right, this means you have 1,350 tons of engine on the corvettes and twice that on the cruiser, which if we use the derived optimum engine:fuel ratio of 3:1 means you want to have around 450 tons of fuel or 450,000 litres (and twice that for the cruiser). You definitely have room to work with in this case, and should still see a reasonable range of about 20b km so I'd say your engine design is reasonable. On the other hand if you want the 40b km range you have on the Do You Feel Lucky? class then the same engine with 90% boost will be optimal giving ~3,040 km/s speed. I'd say stick with the engine you have and reduce fuel.
On the Chevalier B, I recommend using two reactors of half the size/power, this is not as tonnage-efficient but gives you redundancy in case one is taken out by battle damage. For the same reason I would double up on the active sensors (thermal and EM can be singular as you don't need them to fight). With the space you gain from cutting fuel you should be able to mount another laser as well - though I thought being able to mount multiples of a spinal weapon was a bug? Ah well, use what you got.
For the Do You Feel Lucky? in the same vein I say double up the FC and actives, however you only need the anti-missile sensor - the RES10 sensor gives you no benefits as the RES1 sensor will still detect anything larger than 50 tons at its maximum distance. You can't fire any farther than 20,000 km anyways. As before reduce the fuel load, I don't like how it is so lightly-armored so I would probably see about beefing that up. Remember, every additional layer N of armor prevents you from taking internal damage from a missile hit from an N^2 strength warhead (on undamaged armor). I would ideally like to see N=3 layers of armor (proof against strength-9 missiles), although N=2 is fine against Precursor missiles in my experience. The idea here is not to have an invulnerable ship, just to be able to take a few stray missile hits before internal damage cripples the ship.
Command cruiser looks fine for what it does, again cut the fuel load and mount either extra armor or (my preference) some PD guns. You can make space by removing the redundant passive sensors which again are not critical in combat situations, but since you may want to maintain passive sensor contact in some circumstances this isn't a requirement.
General fleet design: For what it is - a bunch of ships quickly churned out for emergency defense - it's fine aside from individual ship issues above. However for a more permanent fleet I would prefer to see the main combat ships be considerably larger - not battleship-sized monstrosities but 10,000-15,000 ton mainline cruisers which are a lot more capable and durable than small corvettes. The big benefit here is that you can design your main line cruisers to be truly capable of independent operations by putting both anti-ship and PD weapon batteries on the same platform, which means your fleet overall becomes much less vulnerable to losing all of one kind of ship. In one recent battle against a missile-wielding enemy fleet I had to retreat-in-order after the initial missile spam took out all of my plasma-armed ships while my PD capabilities remained mostly intact (this...wasn't my best fleet design). I still had the majority of my fleet but lost the capability to actually win the battle even after closing in.
I would suggest having corvette classes for PD and sensor platforms and main line cruisers carrying the lasers and some PD, along those lines of discussion. All that said, fleet doctrine is ultimately a matter of personal taste and philosophy, and the fleet you have here is certainly capable of succeeding as long as you're not horribly overmatched in tech or numbers.
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I'd push back on the sensor redundancy thing. You only need 1 of a given sensor in the entire fleet to get full functionality, so having multiple instances of the same sensor on every ship is wasted. Just having multiple of a ship gives you plenty of sensor redundancy, without needing to waste space with multiple copies per ship.
Ships need fire control and reactor redundancy because EACH SHIP needs those things; they cannot share. This is not true of sensors.
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I put a small res 1 AS on every armed ship just so it will always be able to shoot back no matter what happens to the rest of the fleet. For an all-beam fleet that's really all you need. Not much point in getting an active sensor lock 20mkm out when you can't shoot until they're at ~200kkm.
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Going to echo mostly what was already said.
* Your ships are on the slow side for ion era beam ships, if it's correct that you have 1350t engines out of a 5k ship I'd recommend putting in at least a third engine.
* About 10b range is enough for warships as a ballpark, but if you want longer-range independent operation or don't have tankers that can support an operation more may well be justified.
* No extra armor on the PD ship! Even if you expect to be shooting down most missiles, I'd at least put 3 layers on that ship - people won't necessarily ignore it over the other vessels, or you may get in a fight on a JP and blasted apart by beam weapons.
* You can only have one spinal weapon per ship D:
* Having a dedicated sensor ship is fine, but the sensors on the fighters seem pretty big. There's an argument to be made for a big-ish anti-missile sensor on every PD boat, but what'll two HS of passives on the laser boat get you that a 0.25HS thermal and EM detection through your actives won't? That said, do have tiny active sensors on each ship for redundancy. Think about how you'll deal with your sensor ship being dead/not being there!
* Your maintenance life is long at over 2 years. I don't know what kind of operation you have in mind, of course, but that's a point I'd try to compromise on if I was trying to free up tonnage. If you just expect these ships to be close to home and act defensively you can probably get away with a lot less, if you expect to sit on JPs for uncertain amounts of time or go on deep-space operations beyond your inherent fuel range it may be justified to have more maintenance.
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The maintenance life looks driven by repair considerations (having enough msp to repair a damaged engine). That said, you'd do better stripping out 1 of the engineering spaces for an extra maintenance storage bay.
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A truly staggering amount of feedback; thanks, guys!
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Okay, here's the hopefully-fixed versions.
Laser corvette:
Chevalier C class Corvette 5,000 tons 145 Crew 754.6 BP TCS 100 TH 499 EM 0
4988 km/s Armour 6-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 34 Sensors 8/8/0/0 DCR 12 PPV 16
Maint Life 2.33 Years MSP 268 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 67 5YR 1,006 Max Repair 118.4555 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
HP Corvette Ion Drive EP250 (2) Power 498.8 Fuel Use 36.42% Signature 249.38 Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 160,000 Litres Range 15.8 billion km (36 days at full power)
Spinal NUV Lightbeam (1) Range 192,000km TS: 4,988 km/s Power 9-3 RM 30,000 km ROF 15
UV Lightbeam (2) Range 192,000km TS: 4,988 km/s Power 6-3 RM 40,000 km ROF 10
Corvette Beam Targeting Software v1 (2) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 4,050 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gaseous Reactor R4.5 (2) Total Power Output 9 Exp 5%
Mk2 Standard Nav Pulse Sensor AS31-R120 (1) GPS 1920 Range 31.5m km Resolution 120
Mk2 Standard EM Sensor EM1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Mk2 Standard Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
PD escort:
Do You Feel Lucky? B class Escort 5,000 tons 110 Crew 747.3 BP TCS 100 TH 499 EM 0
4988 km/s Armour 6-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 27 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 2 PPV 22.86
Maint Life 1.71 Years MSP 186 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 77 5YR 1,154 Max Repair 118.4555 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
HP Corvette Ion Drive EP250 (2) Power 498.8 Fuel Use 36.42% Signature 249.38 Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 170,000 Litres Range 16.8 billion km (38 days at full power)
PD Emplacement S12-R20 (3x6) Range 20,000km TS: 12000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 20,000 km ROF 5
HP PD Targeting Software R72-TS12 (1) Max Range: 72,000 km TS: 12,000 km/s 86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0
High-Power HiRes Pulse Sensor AS14-R1 (1) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
Command cruiser:
All Under Heaven B class Command Cruiser 10,000 tons 259 Crew 1,768.7 BP TCS 200 TH 998 EM 0
4987 km/s Armour 6-41 Shields 0-0 HTK 56 Sensors 40/40/0/0 DCR 15 PPV 15.24
Maint Life 2.41 Years MSP 552 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 130 5YR 1,952 Max Repair 125 MSP
Captain Control Rating 2 BRG FLG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
HP Corvette Ion Drive EP250 (4) Power 997.5 Fuel Use 36.42% Signature 249.38 Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 352,000 Litres Range 17.4 billion km (40 days at full power)
PD Emplacement S12-R20 (2x6) Range 20,000km TS: 12000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 20,000 km ROF 5
HP PD Targeting Software R72-TS12 (1) Max Range: 72,000 km TS: 12,000 km/s 86 72 58 44 31 17 3 0 0 0
High-Power HiRes Pulse Sensor AS14-R1 (2) GPS 80 Range 14.3m km MCR 1.3m km Resolution 1
High-Power MidRes Pulse Sensor AS30-R10 (2) GPS 800 Range 30.8m km Resolution 10
High-Power LoRes Pulse Sensor AS70-R120 (2) GPS 9600 Range 70.4m km Resolution 120
High-Power Emissions Sensor TH5-40 (1) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 50m km
High-Power Radio Dish EM5-40 (1) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 50m km
A'ight, what needs fixing now? XD
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Sounds good to me. It is still a little weird that your biggest warship is the sensor dedicated ship, but I guess this is an interim force and you are working on developing a cruiser force with heavier armament to go with those.
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One thing I see: Your laser boat doesn't have it's fire control speed upgraded, it's still using a 4k one.
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These are much better now.
Faster, more armed and armored. Ther ange is still pretty good. Aside from the tiny thing Zapo said, I'd say they're ok.
They won't do miracles, but they are decent for the tech level. In general, somewhat bigger ships are better at projecting more power. Still acceptable