Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Bureau of Design => Topic started by: Borealis4x on January 16, 2021, 09:35:49 PM
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My 3000-ton frigates sit in an awkward position. They are too big to act as mere colonial patrol boats like my 1000 ton Corvettes but are too small to effectively support a battle fleet like my 10,000 ton destroyers can.
Best thing I can think of is giving them commercial engines and making them long-range escorts for commercial shipping, convoy escorts basically. Or as glass-canon beam ships with powerful spinal lasers.
Do you have any ideas? Lets see some designs.
EDIT: Just now I thought 3000 tons might be a good size for an unarmed stealth ship that has variants for use as a stealth dropship to take over enemy outposts and a stealth scout with powerful passives.
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I tend to make Frigates in the 3-6K range and they are my first 'fleet' units. I find that once that particular role gives way to my 8-12K destroyers, I tend to transition them to sensor pickets.
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3000 tons is pretty small. It's hard to make an effective beam combatant that size, but it could be good as a missile boat with box launchers.
Or they could still be colonial patrol boats in systems that warrant more coverage than 1k corvettes can provide. Or one could be the flagship for a corvette squadron.
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I tend to use 4,000 displacement-ton destroyers in substantial numbers, and they're pretty good at what they do if you design them right. In my observation, NPR sensors tend to use resolution >100, so vessels this size should be able to get much closer than larger vessels without being detected. In a player-versus-player game, building warships this size forces other races to reduce the resolution (and range) on their actives or risk squadrons of these sneaking up on them.
I generally build them as mixed-missile combatants (designated DG), usually with 32x size-4 ASM box launchers and 32x AMM box launchers (enough to tank a salvo or two), and operate them in squadrons of six alongside a pair of 1,000 ton sensor corvettes. 4,000 tons is a nice optimum - small enough that box launchers aren't too risky a proposal, but large enough that you can make them have sufficient endurance and range to keep up with the fleet. They're generally the source of most of my offensive power since they can generate an absurdly large saturation strike and can usually get away without taking return fire, even against higher-tech opponents that are faster than them. Deploy a couple of squadrons of these with a battlegroup and you're golden.
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Seems the right size for a stealthy scoutship to me. It's good enough for largish sensors but not so big it's easy to spot.
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Concur on stealth, its about the only thing that fits where you wouldn't simply build a larger craft as soon as you had a big enough slipway.
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I designate ships between 1000-5000 tons as corvettes and use them as carrier-based heavy strike craft. They are big enough to mount some armor, shields, and fairly potent beam weapons and can be organized into mini fleets capable of providing their own point defense against missile does as necessary. Combined with the occasional missile barrage from the nearest carrier strike group, I find that ships in this size range are quite useful. Their small sensor signature should not be ignored...
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Seems the right size for a stealthy scoutship to me. It's good enough for largish sensors but not so big it's easy to spot.
Second this. A size 11 or 12 EM sensor (550 or 600 tons) will counter-detect any enemy active sensor up to two tech levels higher than yours outside of the active sensor range. You can mount an EM sensor of this size and similar-size thermal plus a decent engine on a 3000-ton hull pretty easily, or you can opt for slower and smaller-engined if you want to fit a jump drive in there once you're past rank-beginner jump drive techs.
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also playing on the sensor footprint: missile assassins. kind of a FAC flotilla that doesn't need a mothership. all the aggro, fewer (*&^ to give, since you don't have that expensive carrier to fret over.
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3000 ton ships are important IMO because the smallest military jump drive you can build that isn't self-jump only starts at 3000 ton capacity, and if you keep getting equal amounts of the different jump techs then the critical number stays around that range through most of the tech tree. So like IRL Age of Sail frigates, they are a navy's smallest practical independent long-range vessels. A flotilla of 3000t frigates can move between systems without needing carriers and divide into single ships to efficiently scout systems using a minimal resource investment. They're needed to patrol systems where you don't have a base that fighters or FACs could operate out of.
But while they don't need hangars to jump, they're still small enough to easily use hangars for support, and that means that they can reload box launchers in deep space beyond unstabilized jump points with far less difficulty than larger ships, which can't reload box launchers without returning to a colony or using a 100,000t ordnance hub module. And they can generally use much larger MFCs than fighters so they can launch from a decent range without being detected by enemy active sensors.
So they're in that sweet spot of 'big enough to use long-range missiles and jump drives but small enough to use hangars to reload box launchers and stay off enemy sensors.' It'd be very easy to keep them permanently maintained in deep space in distant systems as well - even a small commercial ship could be built with the maintenance module capacity to overhaul one 3000t ship at a time. They're easy for almost any shipyard to build, too. They're too small to directly take part in fleet engagements but your fleet can't be everywhere at once, frigates maybe can't be everywhere either but they can be a lot of places for cheap without needing too much support.
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Still respecting everybody's way to play l, but I think you seriously need to rethink the way you see your Navy.
A 1,000 tons ship is the minimum to be produced without a bridge and with a similar composition of a bigger fighter, therefore, I would categorize it as a FAC in any circumstance.
Moving upwards a 3,000 would honestly be not evem a corvette in my navy (up to 8,000 tons).
My Frigates would be between 9,000 and 12,000 tons, Cruisers 12,500 and 14,000 with Destroyers starting at the 15,000 mark.
Still the above would leave a 5,000 tons ship as either a scout or a recon vessel. While it is possible to make your 3,000 tons ship valuable for combat it would still be valuable only due to the composition of your navy (which is fair enough) but might also ending up in a limbo, hence your difficulty in finding a proper use for it.
Tonnage it's not everything, of cpurse, as also payload plays a major role in defining a ship, however, one should still start somewhere and displacement is a good benchmark.
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I think its interesting that your destroyers are the largest since historically destroyers are quite a bit smaller than cruisers. Its your own choice of course.
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I think its interesting that your destroyers are the largest since historically destroyers are quite a bit smaller than cruisers. Its your own choice of course.
Sorry you right, I meant cruisers more than 15,000 and destroyers between 12,500 and 15,000. I swapped steps.
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It seems there are many classifications. I use 2000-3500t corvette,t 4000-6500t frigates and larger destoryer usually 7500-10,000t. 1-15,000t are light cruisers and over 15,000t heavy cruisers. 1000-2000t are small patrol vessels etc.
I mainly use corvettes and frigates to patrol outer colonies and escort commercial ships. They are fast and have decent endurance too. They are not fighting ships and I try to avoid combat if possible. My frigates have larger EM & thermal sensors so use them as Guard Patrol Ship. They all have microway weapons and mainly PD defence. After enemy is seen I can send my fighting ships to engage.
I'm still Aurora-noobie so not sure if this is good tactics. But I like to build lot of these smaller under 5000t ships.
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My rule of thumb is that every class of ship should be at least 3x the size of the preceding class.
So corvettes are 1000 tons, frigates 3000 tons, destroyers 10,000 tons, cruisers 30,000 tons, and capital ships 100,000 tons.
I might add ships classes in-between, like 4500 ton Heavy Frigates or 50,000 ton Battlecruisers.
If I were to replace the corvette classification with Fast Attack Craft, ever class would be boosted by one level.
So a FAC would be 1000 tons, a corvette 3000 tons, a frigate 10,000 tons, a destroyer 30,000 tons, and a cruiser 100,000 tons. Capital ships would be 300,000 tons and theoretical super-capitals would be 1,000,000.
Its not a bad idea, but might be a bit crazy. I don't even know if you can build a military jump engine that can handle 1,000,000 tons.
EDIT: I looked it up and you need Jump Drive Efficiency 21 to build a military Jump Drive that can handle 1,000,000 tons.
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The size of a ship should have nothing to do with it's classification and almost everything to do with it's role.. .more or less. The size of ships will be more dependant on technology and infrastructure capabilities.
The larger you can make a combat ship the more efficient it will become, especially in terms of survive a specific engagement. An early destroyer type ship might be 6kt while a few decades later you build destroyers at 12-18kt in size performing the same role as the 6kt did earlier. The difference is the capacity to provide good efficient components to support a larger ship who then also will be more effective than the same number of smaller ships at the same tonnage.
If you lock yourself into a specific tonnage for a specific type of ship you do yourself a large disservice as it should be an evolving thing as en empire grows.
The only real benefit a smaller ship have is that they can be in more places at the same time and are stealthier than larger ship, especially in terms of thermal emission and ability to avoid active sensors.
Most WWII cruisers are way smaller than moderns destroyers for example... so it really does not matter what size a ship is depending on what you call it. If a cruisers is just a carbon copy of your destroyer just 100% larger then I don't understand why the smaller destroyer is still being built and develop, makes little sense.
The reason for why I build ships at say 2-5kt are basically for scouting, reconnaissance and surveillance. Ships of this size are quite effective in the types of sensors they can mount and being small enough so you can deploy them in large numbers for a reasonable cost. If you call them corvettes or frigates I don't think matter all that much. I usually name them for their role and I rarely use the corvette type at all and rather just call smaller ships for what they do. A frigate are usually a smaller ship who have defensive capabilities and can act as escort for low value targets such as support ships but also can be used as scouts when needed. In most of my games the frigate usually start out at about 6-8kt and often grow to about 12kt later on.
I rarely use the Destroyer and Cruiser types of ships at the same time other than as a shift in the use of those ships. Once my main capital escort/recon ships grow to sufficient large size they go from being called destroyers to cruisers. The difference in their capabilities are usually deployment and operational range and capabilities. But for the fleet at large they still perform the same role so I don't need the old destroyer designation other than as a name for older ships that still are around and perhaps still upgraded to some degree, but eventually they are replaced for the larger more effective variant type of ships. This way a starting "Destroyer" might be about 8-12kt in size and the later cruiser types might be 30-40kt performing the same type of role in the fleet.
The same thing goes for a carrier... an early carrier might be 16kt and later on several hundred thousand tons. I like to build the carriers with commercial engines so I can make them really big and jump them with commercial jump engines. That way I can afford really large carriers that is almost impossible to destroy and they can stay out on their own steam for very long times as maintenance on them are dirt cheap. The carriers don't need high speed as they are a surgical weapons used mainly for space superiority or besieging planets and providing fighter coverage for ground assaults.
In terms of actual size of ships you need to figure that a 8-10kt Aurora ship are roughly equivalent with a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier in actual size (volume)... ;)
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The size of a ship should have nothing to do with it's classification and almost everything to do with it's role.. .more or less. The size of ships will be more dependant on technology and infrastructure capabilities.
In terms of actual size of ships you need to figure that a 8-10kt aurora ship are roughly equivalent with a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier in actual size... ;)
I hear you and am aware that what constitutes, say, a destroyer has changed as warfare has evolved. But I am very OCD when it comes to properly classifying ship classes and cannot stand ambiguity on this matter. It has to be clear-cut and dramatic what constitutes one class of ship from the other.
Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, etc; these classifications are for denoting size more than anything. But within each broad category there are sub-categories like escort/ (frigate), beam tackle (destroyer), light carrier (cruiser).
While standard sizes might make the designs themselves less flexible, it'll make your production a Hell of a lot more so. In many cases you can even build different variation of the same class from the same yard. The biggest bonus to keeping ships at a standardized size throughout most of the game is that once you get the formula right of which parts to include, you can easily retrofit existing ships with the upgraded model, which would be basically the exact same ship with the exact same components but sporting upgraded tech.
Aurora can be a headache to play at time so I'm willing to sacrifice some efficiency for logistical sanity.
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- I don't always use a standardized tonnage system, but when I do I typically have two methods:
Method A: My 1st warship dictates the size of my 1st "Class", so if that ship is 5 kilotons, then I have a 5 kiloton "class". Anything else will follow this displacement mold until the next big warship type or the next big upgrade. So I might design a 5 kiloton Frigate, a 10 kiloton Cruiser and a 34 kiloton Carrier, and then subsequent ships will be fitted to those molds until I deem it time to upscale them. ...it's a bit weird to explain it, to be honest. ???
Method B: I have a preferred weight doctrine, it goes as such:
3,125 Tons - Corvette, typically operates in a squadron of 4-7 ships, typically uses a dedicated Jump Corvette.
6,250 Tons - Frigate, typically operates in a squadron of 4-7 ships, typically uses a dedicated Jump Frigate.
12,500 Tons - Capital Ships, typically operate in a squadron of 3-5, Jump Capability is typically handled by a Cruiser.
25,000 Tons - Super Capital Ships, typically operate in groups of 4 or less, usually have a dedicated Jump Ship if not outright Jump Capable themselves.
150,000 Tons - Command Ships, typically operate in groups of 4 or less, usually have a dedicated Jump Ship. Often the core of a Battle Group and built in limited numbers.
300,000 Tons - Campaign Ships, operate in groups of wildly varying numbers, almost always have a dedicated Jump Ship. Very rarely built, very powerful.
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Personally, my fleet design is:
6,000 Ton Frigates: Usually only used for colony defense/sensor ships. Typically operate alone or in a squadron of 3 frigates and 1 jump destroyer
12,000 Ton Destroyers: Destroyers are for shooting down missiles, FACs, and Fighters. Operate in squadrons of 3 Destroyers and 1 Jump Destroyer
24,000 Ton Cruisers: Main offensive ships, every squadron of 3 Cruisers and 1 Jump Cruiser is usually escorted by a Destroyer Squadron
48,000 Ton Capital Ships: Carriers or Battleships. Haven't really used combat ships of this size much.
96,000 Ton Super-Capital Ships: Theoretical only, haven't done more than design some just because.
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As I always play with 10-20% research efficiency I usually stay within the same tech much longer than in more "normal" games. This also mean you have more time to expand your yards to sizes you really can't scientifically support. Anyway... as technologies are discovered you can afford to make larger and larger ship components to support more efficient larger capital ships, this goes for engines, shields, weapons, command modules, small efficient support crafts, jump engines etc... After a while it makes little sense to build 8kt destroyers rather than making them 16kt making them more then twice as effective in almost every aspect except stealth. If you never deploy them in singular you might as well just make them bigger.
In most of my games it will usually be decades where the biggest ship I can support with a jump engine would be about 8kt or so... they just are too expensive to research at low tech levels. The same is true with regular engines as well, even getting the tech for larger engines will take allot of effort, then researching really large engines for larger ships is quite expensive, although once you have them you will benefit highly from their higher fuel efficiency.
My main constraint usually are the jump engine and how much research I can put into building a jump engine large enough to support the destroyer type ship I need to have a fast fleet escort, attack and/or patrol ship. Destroyers and cruisers for example are less about attacking and destroying an opponent as it is to scout and defend space. I usually leave the killing to fighters/FAC who are the best at it. Being large means you are more efficient at defending in general so size for me is survivability first. The main job of a destroyer squadron operating in enemy space is to gain knowledge of enemy defences and able to get back intact.
When you attack something you always need to bring overwhelming attacking power to obliterate the opponent, at least that is what you do on paper under the best of circumstances. ;)
I never take my battle fleet and sail it blindly into enemy space and just hoping for the best.
If I need attacking power that most usually are either in the form of slow super large battle carriers or fast escort/light carriers with the same size as my current destroyer/cruiser hull. This has all to do with available jump engine capacity. Smaller ships will usually stick around for a while, but once their dedicated yards have been expanded to the next size of ships they will be phased out or relegated to second line duty for some time until finally scraped. Sometimes part of the destroyer fleet get relegated to frigate duties and somewhat rebuilt to fit that duty or role rather than scraped.
I always find my fleets to fluctuate with allot of different ship types and sizes and never really find this to be an actual problem... but then I don't tend to specialise ships all that much. I rather build several version of the same ships with just slight variations. As long as I can build them in the same shipyard all is fine. That makes the ships more modular and I can easily change them to fit my needs. This means I can easily have more than one yard per class so transition from one size to another can be performed dynamically by upgrading the ship yards in serial so over time the fleet changes character and older ships either is eventually scraped or get new duties.
My general view is that if one type of ship never act in a group smaller than three I better replace that with a single ship three times the size, if able.
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Could be a good JP picket, you leave them on both sides of JPs when you enter hostile systems. Although smaller ships could do this better, you can use the extra tonnage to make sure you can deal with at least minor threats.
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the stealth is not to be sneered at, but there is another significant advantage to small ships: shipyards are not cheap, and small yards areconsiderably more efficient. 3 10kt slips will produce 4.5N BPs of ship per year, where N is your base construction rate (after governor effects). a ten slip 3kt yard, for the same price will produce 8N BPs per year. even if, somehow, getting there firstest isn't a consideration, you still get there with the mostest if you're rocking the rat pack.
it is absolutely true that the *real* gain is in cutting down still further down toward FAC size, but at some point in there you either need a motehrship (which throws the economic advantage out the window) or the inefficiency of very small engines is going to impinge on performance. i would reckon the sweet spot is closer to 2k than 3k tons, but small ships eventually stop making sense only because they are too click-intensive not because they really get out-competed by larger units.
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the stealth is not to be sneered at, but there is another significant advantage to small ships: shipyards are not cheap, and small yards areconsiderably more efficient. 3 10kt slips will produce 4.5N BPs of ship per year, where N is your base construction rate (after governor effects). a ten slip 3kt yard, for the same price will produce 8N BPs per year. even if, somehow, getting there firstest isn't a consideration, you still get there with the mostest if you're rocking the rat pack.
it is absolutely true that the *real* gain is in cutting down still further down toward FAC size, but at some point in there you either need a motehrship (which throws the economic advantage out the window) or the inefficiency of very small engines is going to impinge on performance. i would reckon the sweet spot is closer to 2k than 3k tons, but small ships eventually stop making sense only because they are too click-intensive not because they really get out-competed by larger units.
I think this is a misleading metric to be honest. I never ever found that having the capacity to build more ship than I ever can use over the long term is an issue no matter if I have large or small ships. The major benefit of small yards is that you can build more ships faster if you are being pressed by a superior enemy... if that is so then you really want 1k yards to churn out as many small FAC as possible as range are not really an issue at that point. So the combination of FAC and as large ship as possible is a good combination for both offence and defence.
Larger ships are also so much more efficient in and of them selves when you look at them hogging the best officers and have way more efficient components and needing less number of yards for specialised ship classes which means that construction factories can do other stuff than building more Naval shipyards. It is easier to upgrade and refit larger ship in the future and that also cut down on costs/time as they are not specialised in the same way. You also forget about maintenance, maintenance is cheaper the more effective the ships are that you have per tonnage.
In my opinion the biggest drawback of large ships are the cost of developing the components to really benefit from their size not the production of them as I never find the problem of being able to produce enough ships to ever be a problem over the long term.
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it's easy to notice running out of money, but how would you expect it to look if your economy was 10% smaller than it might have been?
if the way you play aurora means your military actions are neither time-sensitive nor resource-sensitive, then on what basis exactly would you decide between better and worse courses of action, and how could it matter?
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it's easy to notice running out of money, but how would you expect it to look if your economy was 10% smaller than it might have been?
if the way you play aurora means your military actions are neither time-sensitive nor resource-sensitive, then on what basis exactly would you decide between better and worse courses of action, and how could it matter?
Yes... that is the thing... in this case it is not as clear cut a case as you stated in your first post. Yes it takes more time to build larger ships and you can not produce as much tonnage in a short time as you can with smaller ships. But they come with other benefits that only show up long term over time.
It is for the most part easy to overproduce military ships if you constantly produce ships non stop, having some yards (or slipways) on stand by for when you need them is a strategic consideration as are the different types of yards that you have. I'm pretty sure no one really just keep expanding their yards indefinitely either. If you are hard pressed on population you always can tow yards someplace else when not in use and take them online if there are needs for them. This depends more on if you have population shortages or not.
Aside of the production difference the fact that there are other benefits from an efficiency stand point makes a pretty strong case for why larger ships in the long term is more efficient even if the tonnage over time would be lower at full production.
I also think you could compare two identical empires who have the exact same dock workers so there is no difference in their respective economies otherwise, they just distributed their yards differently. Remember that both sides can maintain the same number of tonnage long term, production is not the only metric you need to count.
I also don't think that ONLY building large ships is the better strategy... you want a good selection of different classes for many different reasons with varied sizes. But in general if you field four ships a 5000t in a permanent group you would be better of with one at 20kt instead if you are able to do that. There obviously are many considerations when building larger ships so it is a bit more complicated than that, that is why I state if you are able.
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I play conventional start games almost exclusively, so my first class of combat ships is usually about 3000-4000 tons because that's all I can build. In general though, I think it's a useful size for an escort and fleet scout. As mentioned the AI doesn't really plan around ships of that size so they often fall outside the enemy's sensor radius, while being the smallest ships capable of carrying a useful payload. I usually go with as many railguns or gauss cannons as I can, maybe with some box launchers thrown in, and make them faster than my main battle line with minimal armor and large passive sensors. They're never going to survive in a beam fight so I specialize them for scouting and anti-missile defense.
Most WWII cruisers are way smaller than moderns destroyers for example...
Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.
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Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.
Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II
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Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.
Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II
The only people building small (sub-6000 ton standard displacement) light cruisers were the British, who needed large numbers of cruisers for their empire, and the Italians, who were particularly enamored with the scout cruiser/flotilla leader concept and wanted small cruisers to counter the French contre-torpilleurs. I think you'll find the rest of the small cruisers on that list were immediate post-WWI vintage. That list is also showing standard displacement, not fully loaded displacement. For example, the Dido class displaced 5900 tons standard, but up to 7600 tons fully loaded.
By the London naval treaty, the distinction between heavy and light cruiser was made only by armament (6.1" and below for light cruisers), with both ostensibly limited to 10,000 tons, although this obviously ceased to be a factor once war broke out, which is why you have 14,000-ton light cruisers like the Cleveland class.
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Not really. Your average modern DDG is something like 7,000 to 10,000 tons fully loaded, an average WWII cruiser would be a few thousand tons more.
Heavy cruisers then sure... but not light cruisers which tended to be between 4000-8000t (some even as small as 3000t)... only some late war light cruisers were big and only the US built those who basically were heavy cruisers with smaller guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruisers_of_World_War_II
The only people building small (sub-6000 ton standard displacement) light cruisers were the British, who needed large numbers of cruisers for their empire, and the Italians, who were particularly enamored with the scout cruiser/flotilla leader concept and wanted small cruisers to counter the French contre-torpilleurs. I think you'll find the rest of the small cruisers on that list were immediate post-WWI vintage. That list is also showing standard displacement, not fully loaded displacement. For example, the Dido class displaced 5900 tons standard, but up to 7600 tons fully loaded.
By the London naval treaty, the distinction between heavy and light cruiser was made only by armament (6.1" and below for light cruisers), with both ostensibly limited to 10,000 tons, although this obviously ceased to be a factor once war broke out, which is why you have 14,000-ton light cruisers like the Cleveland class.
Pretty much everyone BUT the US built small cruisers (even the US had a fair amount of smaller light cruisers), Japans light cruisers were pretty small too. Some British CL also were on the 10-11kt at full load though.
Modern destroyers tend to be about 8-10kt in size, suffice to say allot of cruisers in WWII were smaller. Some where equal in size some larger (especially late war ones). Fact is that light cruisers had a huge range between about 3kt to 14kt throughout the war from all the major combatants.
If they fought in WWII they were part of it and should be included... when they were built have nothing to do with anything.
Sure it was likely wrong to say most cruisers was smaller... I was thinking about light cruisers in particular when writing that though and most of them were pretty small even if some where big.
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I typical build 3K PD Escorts either equipped with AMM or Gauss Turrets.
in my current game i have about 40 of each. and attached to a combat group, Troop Landing Groups, Salvage Groups, any group likely to see missile attack, or orbiting the farthest stations of my empire.
in nearly every campaign i make sure it's an attritable design, they don't have jump drives and the lost of one doesn't instantly remove active defense capabilities of the battle group.
now, for actually combat frigates i typical stay in 4K range and recce or SPECWAR corvettes are usually in the 2K range.
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I often build 3000t ships and call them planetary defense or local defense ships. They are basically large fighters. Range is limited and they are armed with one main weapon and one back up weapon that is mainly for PD.
The main weapon is usually a railgun or laser, biggest I can fit in the size requirement, and the backup is rail, laser, or gauss depending on tech and how much missile fire I expect to combat.
I often use the hull designation of corvette. I can build dozens of them and scatter them about the empire for a quick defense. They will make the enemy pay but they can't fend off a large organized attack.
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I typical build 3K PD Escorts either equipped with AMM or Gauss Turrets.
in my current game i have about 40 of each. and attached to a combat group, Troop Landing Groups, Salvage Groups, any group likely to see missile attack, or orbiting the farthest stations of my empire.
in nearly every campaign i make sure it's an attritable design, they don't have jump drives and the lost of one doesn't instantly remove active defense capabilities of the battle group.
now, for actually combat frigates i typical stay in 4K range and recce or SPECWAR corvettes are usually in the 2K range.
Having small PD capable ships can be quite effective, especially against the AI that rarely use low resolution active or missile controls to effectively engage them.
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I often build 3000t ships and call them planetary defense or local defense ships. They are basically large fighters. Range is limited and they are armed with one main weapon and one back up weapon that is mainly for PD.
The main weapon is usually a railgun or laser, biggest I can fit in the size requirement, and the backup is rail, laser, or gauss depending on tech and how much missile fire I expect to combat.
I often use the hull designation of corvette. I can build dozens of them and scatter them about the empire for a quick defense. They will make the enemy pay but they can't fend off a large organized attack.
I usually deploy patrol ships with Railguns as they are a perfect mix of PD and beam defence at the same time... usually they get as many 12-15cm Railguns as I can use. They are scattered around colonies and patrol systems and generally have a range of about 8-10b km and 3 month of deployment. I also distribute smaller FAC who act as missile attack boats to places of special interest.
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I often build 3000t ships and call them planetary defense or local defense ships. They are basically large fighters. Range is limited and they are armed with one main weapon and one back up weapon that is mainly for PD.
The main weapon is usually a railgun or laser, biggest I can fit in the size requirement, and the backup is rail, laser, or gauss depending on tech and how much missile fire I expect to combat.
I often use the hull designation of corvette. I can build dozens of them and scatter them about the empire for a quick defense. They will make the enemy pay but they can't fend off a large organized attack.
I usually deploy patrol ships with Railguns as they are a perfect mix of PD and beam defence at the same time... usually they get as many 12-15cm Railguns as I can use. They are scattered around colonies and patrol systems and generally have a range of about 8-10b km and 3 month of deployment. I also distribute smaller FAC who act as missile attack boats to places of special interest.
This is pretty much exactly what I do. 5-10bkm range. Fast. Many small weapons, sometimes one or two large weapons. Sometimes lots o box launchers (but I tend to stay way from this since it's so OP). Like a costal defense corvette for local security and quick reaction.
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I often build 3000t ships and call them planetary defense or local defense ships. They are basically large fighters. Range is limited and they are armed with one main weapon and one back up weapon that is mainly for PD.
The main weapon is usually a railgun or laser, biggest I can fit in the size requirement, and the backup is rail, laser, or gauss depending on tech and how much missile fire I expect to combat.
I often use the hull designation of corvette. I can build dozens of them and scatter them about the empire for a quick defense. They will make the enemy pay but they can't fend off a large organized attack.
I usually deploy patrol ships with Railguns as they are a perfect mix of PD and beam defence at the same time... usually they get as many 12-15cm Railguns as I can use. They are scattered around colonies and patrol systems and generally have a range of about 8-10b km and 3 month of deployment. I also distribute smaller FAC who act as missile attack boats to places of special interest.
- I typically aim for about a 20~ billion kilometer deployment, but this is pretty much my strategy with corvettes as well. :)
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Could a 100,000 ton ship be able to take on multiple roles effectively without much efficiency lost?
I like the idea of having 100,000 ton cruisers as 'pocket capitals' that can operate effectively alone or with a small escort and be able to deal with most threats so I can save my proper capital ships for decisive battles.
Basically I am envisioning a ship with beam weapons, hangar space for proper fighter squadrons (3000 tons at least) and good PD, perhaps even AMMs. Long-range is also a plus.
Think of ships like Halo's Pillar of Autumn which was massive and had all those capabilities.
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Could a 100,000 ton ship be able to take on multiple roles effectively without much efficiency lost?
I like the idea of having 100,000 ton cruisers as 'pocket capitals' that can operate effectively alone or with a small escort and be able to deal with most threats so I can save my proper capital ships for decisive battles.
Basically I am envisioning a ship with beam weapons, hangar space for proper fighter squadrons (3000 tons at least) and good PD, perhaps even AMMs. Long-range is also a plus.
Think of ships like Halo's Pillar of Autumn which was massive and had all those capabilities.
As long as you don't intend to provide the ship with it's own jump drive (unless you have really high tech) it will be difficult. Otherwise really large ships are much more potent that what ten equal tonnage ship would be. The thing is having all the research necessary to build it and support it properly.
You would need extra hangar for scouting crafts in addition to attacking crafts. The fact the ship is so huge will mean it have a pretty large thermal radiation unless you have an even more expensive engine with high thermal reduction. This means it will usually have to compromise some striking capabilities. A pure carrier at 100kt would be more like a glass cannon with a high striking capability but such a ship usually don't operate on their own as that would leave them vulnerable to any type of attack.
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Could a 100,000 ton ship be able to take on multiple roles effectively without much efficiency lost?
I like the idea of having 100,000 ton cruisers as 'pocket capitals' that can operate effectively alone or with a small escort and be able to deal with most threats so I can save my proper capital ships for decisive battles.
Basically I am envisioning a ship with beam weapons, hangar space for proper fighter squadrons (3000 tons at least) and good PD, perhaps even AMMs. Long-range is also a plus.
Think of ships like Halo's Pillar of Autumn which was massive and had all those capabilities.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it ideal? Really not, although the ship you propose is mostly fine aside from maybe the hangar space is excessive.
As a rule, given similar tonnage a specialized ship will be more efficient than a multi-role ship and is preferable to the latter given the logistics to support it, i.e. the logistics to support a fleet of several specialized classes rather than one multi-role class I should say. If you try to build a ship e.g. for both ASM and beam weapon roles it will be inferior at each role to a dedicated missile or beam warship of the same size.
In the example you propose, a beam warship with beam PD and AMMs is probably okay. It will still lose to a dedicated beam warship (which relies on escorts for PD) but since PD and AMMs are both fleet roles you need anyways it will work okay. The main thing is the fighter bay which will require not only the 3000 tons for a hangar but also additional fuel, magazines, MSP for repairs, flight control, etc. to support the fighters... and for a 100 kT warship to deploy only 3000 tons of fighters, I don't see that as being able to make a difference in a fight against a comparable-size enemy fleet. You're probably better off with escorting it with light carriers or something if you really want fighter capability to get a better mass of fighters. IMO the only thing you really should be putting a hangar on a large warship for is a small group of reconnaissance craft, and fighters should have dedicated carriers that can properly support them.
The idea of an "independent" pocket battleship in Aurora really has to be limited to main armament plus adequate PD/AMM defenses to be effective. Even then it's a bit of a red herring as a concept due to the need for jump drives. For "independent" operation ships I would say it's better to build cruiser squadrons with similar capabilities but one cruiser can be dedicated to a jump drive instead of main armament, so the overall force will have a better payload than a single 100 kT supercruiser.
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As a rule, given similar tonnage a specialized ship will be more efficient than a multi-role ship and is preferable to the latter given the logistics to support it, i.e. the logistics to support a fleet of several specialized classes rather than one multi-role class I should say. If you try to build a ship e.g. for both ASM and beam weapon roles it will be inferior at each role to a dedicated missile or beam warship of the same size.
In the example you propose, a beam warship with beam PD and AMMs is probably okay. It will still lose to a dedicated beam warship (which relies on escorts for PD) but since PD and AMMs are both fleet roles you need anyways it will work okay. The main thing is the fighter bay which will require not only the 3000 tons for a hangar but also additional fuel, magazines, MSP for repairs, flight control, etc. to support the fighters... and for a 100 kT warship to deploy only 3000 tons of fighters, I don't see that as being able to make a difference in a fight against a comparable-size enemy fleet. You're probably better off with escorting it with light carriers or something if you really want fighter capability to get a better mass of fighters. IMO the only thing you really should be putting a hangar on a large warship for is a small group of reconnaissance craft, and fighters should have dedicated carriers that can properly support them.
I would say a big fat NO to this... it is NOT true that specialised ship always are more efficient... that is only true in some situations. Putting beam weapon on all ships is a way to secure your ships for being singled out in a beam fight within a combined arms fleet. Sure, a fleet of 10 ship at a total weight of 200kt who all have beams as secondary weapons will loose big against a similar large fleet all armed with only beam weapons. But that is assuming the beam fleet can reach the combined arms fleet into beam combat without losses which is far from a given.
Specialised ships is good if the ships are small enough but as they grow bigger there really are very little reason to not include a bit of everything on a ship as you will likely need all those capabilities in your task-forces anyway.
If you rely solely on pure PD, AMM ships then single them out in a missile engagement can become catastrophic as for each escort destroyed the fleet looses allot of defensive power... if all ships in a task force have PD, AMM to some degree you have allot more hull and armour to degrade your defences.
The same is true in a beam confrontation... If I have 30 lasers distributed on ten ship versus someone who has 40 lasers on three ships (assuming the other seven ships in that fleet are useless now) and the ships are otherwise roughly equal then the side with less lasers will still win as they have more armour and hull for each weapons destroyed.
Ships being more multi-role or specialised both have their merits... I would say a combination of both in any fleet is the most efficient overall.
I also don't think 3000t hangar space is excessive... I think it is too small. A ship of this type need allot of scout crafts in their hangar and then you need strike crafts as well. This ship likely will want to stay out of harms way as much as possible as it's first line of defence.
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I would say a big fat NO to this... it is NOT true that specialised ship always are more efficient... that is only true in some situations. Putting beam weapon on all ships is a way to secure your ships for being singled out in a beam fight within a combined arms fleet. Sure, a fleet of 10 ship at a total weight of 200kt who all have beams as secondary weapons will loose big against a similar large fleet all armed with only beam weapons. But that is assuming the beam fleet can reach the combined arms fleet into beam combat without losses which is far from a given.
Specialised ships is good if the ships are small enough but as they grow bigger there really are very little reason to not include a bit of everything on a ship as you will likely need all those capabilities in your task-forces anyway.
If you rely solely on pure PD, AMM ships then single them out in a missile engagement can become catastrophic as for each escort destroyed the fleet looses allot of defensive power... if all ships in a task force have PD, AMM to some degree you have allot more hull and armour to degrade your defences.
I think I should clarify: I think having PD, AMM, both in addition to the main weapon are fine and do not make a ship "multi-role". As you say they are always necessary and a warship intended to operate alone simply must have these.
In my mind "multi-role" deals with the main weapon (including fighters) i.e. how is a ship expected to deal damage - a ship which mixes ASM, beam, fighters all together will not excel in any single capability which will render it exploitable by an opponent who does excel all things being roughly equal (admittedly, rarely if ever is this the case). There is a reason even the massive Nimitz class do not mount cruise missiles, and why the Iowas didn't have a flight deck and CSG apiece.
The same is true in a beam confrontation... If I have 30 lasers distributed on ten ship versus someone who has 40 lasers on three ships (assuming the other seven ships in that fleet are useless now) and the ships are otherwise roughly equal then the side with less lasers will still win as they have more armour and hull for each weapons destroyed.
I would argue that this is not a failure of specialization but rather fleet composition and/or tactical and operational execution. If one takes a fleet of ten ships and finds oneself in an action where seven of his ships are functionally useless (and not merely underperforming), something has gone wrong well outside of the actual ship design process. Though again, this is assuming that all vessels have at least rudimentary PD, thus dedicated PD ships are not the bulk of a fleet and even those present should be able to contribute - at least AMMs can provide screening fire although beam PD may not be able to close the range.
Notably an advantage of specialized ships is that fleet composition can be tailored for the mission theater easily. A fleet of multi-role ships requires that every fleet have multiple capabilities in proportions as-built, regardless of what is called for. Again if 70% of the fleet is useless in a battle this is a failure of scouting, mission planning, and/or tactics rather than ship design.
I also don't think 3000t hangar space is excessive... I think it is too small. A ship of this type need allot of scout crafts in their hangar and then you need strike crafts as well. This ship likely will want to stay out of harms way as much as possible as it's first line of defence.
I 100% agree on the need for scouting crafts, however the mix of strike crafts and beam primary armament is what I cannot get behind, and as Borealis did state a desire for fighter squadrons that is the paradigm I'm addressing. I would sooner have a class suited for fighters and another suited for beam brawling than a mixed class that excels at neither, and then mix and match those classes to achieve the fleet composition for the mission at hand. Same if we consider ASM vessels as well.
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I have struggled with the idea of putting a spinal-mounted laser on all combat ships above 10,000 tons regardless of role. While I'd obviously try to keep my ships out of beam weapon range, if it does happen I'd like as many ships as possible to contribute to beam fire as possible. Just like how all ships can contribute to close-range PD since that all have some gauss turrets. Gonna try to keep the laser, FC, and power plant from weighing more than a combined 500 tons, which should be possible with the new dedicated fire controls introduced in 1.13.
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I would say a big fat NO to this... it is NOT true that specialised ship always are more efficient... that is only true in some situations. Putting beam weapon on all ships is a way to secure your ships for being singled out in a beam fight within a combined arms fleet. Sure, a fleet of 10 ship at a total weight of 200kt who all have beams as secondary weapons will loose big against a similar large fleet all armed with only beam weapons. But that is assuming the beam fleet can reach the combined arms fleet into beam combat without losses which is far from a given.
Specialised ships is good if the ships are small enough but as they grow bigger there really are very little reason to not include a bit of everything on a ship as you will likely need all those capabilities in your task-forces anyway.
If you rely solely on pure PD, AMM ships then single them out in a missile engagement can become catastrophic as for each escort destroyed the fleet looses allot of defensive power... if all ships in a task force have PD, AMM to some degree you have allot more hull and armour to degrade your defences.
I think I should clarify: I think having PD, AMM, both in addition to the main weapon are fine and do not make a ship "multi-role". As you say they are always necessary and a warship intended to operate alone simply must have these.
In my mind "multi-role" deals with the main weapon (including fighters) i.e. how is a ship expected to deal damage - a ship which mixes ASM, beam, fighters all together will not excel in any single capability which will render it exploitable by an opponent who does excel all things being roughly equal (admittedly, rarely if ever is this the case). There is a reason even the massive Nimitz class do not mount cruise missiles, and why the Iowas didn't have a flight deck and CSG apiece.
The same is true in a beam confrontation... If I have 30 lasers distributed on ten ship versus someone who has 40 lasers on three ships (assuming the other seven ships in that fleet are useless now) and the ships are otherwise roughly equal then the side with less lasers will still win as they have more armour and hull for each weapons destroyed.
I would argue that this is not a failure of specialization but rather fleet composition and/or tactical and operational execution. If one takes a fleet of ten ships and finds oneself in an action where seven of his ships are functionally useless (and not merely underperforming), something has gone wrong well outside of the actual ship design process. Though again, this is assuming that all vessels have at least rudimentary PD, thus dedicated PD ships are not the bulk of a fleet and even those present should be able to contribute - at least AMMs can provide screening fire although beam PD may not be able to close the range.
Notably an advantage of specialized ships is that fleet composition can be tailored for the mission theater easily. A fleet of multi-role ships requires that every fleet have multiple capabilities in proportions as-built, regardless of what is called for. Again if 70% of the fleet is useless in a battle this is a failure of scouting, mission planning, and/or tactics rather than ship design.
I also don't think 3000t hangar space is excessive... I think it is too small. A ship of this type need allot of scout crafts in their hangar and then you need strike crafts as well. This ship likely will want to stay out of harms way as much as possible as it's first line of defence.
I 100% agree on the need for scouting crafts, however the mix of strike crafts and beam primary armament is what I cannot get behind, and as Borealis did state a desire for fighter squadrons that is the paradigm I'm addressing. I would sooner have a class suited for fighters and another suited for beam brawling than a mixed class that excels at neither, and then mix and match those classes to achieve the fleet composition for the mission at hand. Same if we consider ASM vessels as well.
Ok... then I think we are speaking about the same thing. I do agree that all fleets need to have a primary means of how they plan to attack an opponent. It would not be useful to both consider strike-crafts and beam weapons as the primary way to engage the opponent. I still think it is a good idea to keep some beam weapons on such a cruiser as a secondary weapon and mostly be considered for self defence so it is not completely toothless in such a circumstance it ends up in close quarter combat.
When it comes to beam weapons, for example, I usually have some beam weapons on every capital ship, not because they are suppose to engage the enemy that way as a primary function, but as a fleet they can have that option and every ship in the fleet will be useful if the need is there, such as guarding a jump point or defending a world from invasion or if they can't outrun their opponent.
In this case using beam weapons is not the primary role for the fleet to operate but sometimes you will need that capability regardless.
If you build a ship to be mostly on it's own or in perhaps in pairs or small squadrons then you probably are well of by having some of everything but still specialise on something. In this specific case I would perhaps add a strike-wing of fighters as the primary weapon and keep the beam weapons as a secondary option. The reason is that strike-craft give the ship a much better chance to survive an encounter than having the speed to be sure to win a beam combat. Speed usually are a direct contradiction to endurance for the most part.
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I have struggled with the idea of putting a spinal-mounted laser on all combat ships above 10,000 tons regardless of role. While I'd obviously try to keep my ships out of beam weapon range, if it does happen I'd like as many ships as possible to contribute to beam fire as possible. Just like how all ships can contribute to close-range PD since that all have some gauss turrets. Gonna try to keep the laser, FC, and power plant from weighing more than a combined 500 tons, which should be possible with the new dedicated fire controls introduced in 1.13.
This is a strategical doctrine that actually work... it can actually deter beam oriented ships from closing in on a fleet. There are no single ship in the fleet that can be ignored. It will work even better in 1.13 where you can have a smaller cheaper fire-control for one large weapon.
There is nothing wrong with having some specialised ships as well, but in my opinion if all your ships are super specialised you are putting all your eggs in one basket and that is often not the best solution.
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Could a 100,000 ton ship be able to take on multiple roles effectively without much efficiency lost?
I like the idea of having 100,000 ton cruisers as 'pocket capitals' that can operate effectively alone or with a small escort and be able to deal with most threats so I can save my proper capital ships for decisive battles.
Basically I am envisioning a ship with beam weapons, hangar space for proper fighter squadrons (3000 tons at least) and good PD, perhaps even AMMs. Long-range is also a plus.
Think of ships like Halo's Pillar of Autumn which was massive and had all those capabilities.
A jump drive equipped missile combatant might be useful. I am experimenting with such designs but haven't yet reached any conclusive results. My theory is that a missile cruiser and jump cruiser share an overlapping combat niche in the form of jump point defense/picketing. A jump cruiser will often double as a jump picket (in my fleet doctrines) and in that role benefits from long range weapons, such as missiles, more than other ships. So combining some capabilities, those being jump drive and missile strike capabilities, makes some sense in this role.
For jump point assaults, beam combatants are probably still superior (and that is what I use to date). Instead of my experimental jump missile cruisers, you might find some use from a jump carrier armed with beam fighters and missile bombers. You could jump in, launch fighters, and then retreat until the fighters are almost dead or have defeated the enemy. I am not certain that parasites suffer from jump shock, in which case a jump carrier would be very useful.
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I hear a lot of people say that you should put jump-drives on your ships. Why?
Can't you just use a jump-tender? Seems like a waste of space in all but the biggest ships, and even then its probably better to just use a tender.
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So you can do squadron transits. Jump tenders can only do standard transits, which are suicide if the jump is going to be contested at all. You don't need one on every ship, but you do need them on some ships. Probably 1 jump ship to every 3-5 other ships, depending on your squad jump tech.
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So you can do squadron transits. Jump tenders can only do standard transits, which are suicide if the jump is going to be contested at all. You don't need one on every ship, but you do need them on some ships. Probably 1 jump ship to every 3-5 other ships, depending on your squad jump tech.
A jump tender is usually meant by a ship that is more of a support ship than a combat ship, their role are mainly to jump other ships and then support in a none combat way. That is what we normally refer to as jump tender, at least I do. A jump capable ship of a squadron leader is a ship that is a dedicated part of a specific squadron of ships and manoeuvre with it... at least that is how I use those terms.
A jump tender can be used to squadron jump ships equally well as you can with a jump capable squadron leader. Often, Jump tenders, can even jump a greater number of ships too, depending on how you design them. But I always give my "Jump Tenders" max squadron size jump engines. Also a jump tender don't have to be as big as the ship they are jumping anymore either. So if you have a bunch of 100kt ships and you don't need to build a 100kt ship to jump it... you can have a much smaller less capable ship whose only job is to provide one or more of such ships jump capabilities and then provide some fuel, ammunition, supplies, perhaps a hangar with some sensor scout, rescue shuttles, cryo pods for storing rescued crew, boarding troops and shuttles for transporting them or what have you.
Do you have enough jump tenders to jump all of your ships at once, that is a different question. I usually don't believe that you need the capability to jump your entire fleet of capital ships at the same time, that is probably overkill in terms of jump capability for the most part.
In C# I believe you even can use Jump Tender Stations to jump ships and even they can use squadron jumps. That means you can potentially use commercial support ships to tractor your Jump Gates/Stations and place them on a jump point and help military ships squadron jump. Could be a cheap way to give a large number of ships jump capabilities as you rarely need jump capability for every ship in a fleet usually. These Jump Tender Stations also can be commercial and so is both cheaper and easier to maintain and you can have them sit at jump points indefinitely.
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It's worth noting that the classic jump warship is not a poor choice either. Logically, if you are going to build a jump ship anyways, there is an argument that the ship might as well be useful in combat in which case you can design a jump warship with a reduced weapons loadout or just a pure PD/AMM design without primary weapons. Notably such a ship can have the same speed as the rest of your fleet which is ideal for a rapid reaction force if towing a station or waiting for a slow commercial tender is too slow. It may also be possible, if you're clever with designs and bridging classes, to build these out of the same shipyard as a real warship which can be useful especially early on when you don't have several dozen shipyards available.
On the other hand, a barebones commercial tender (with a military jump drive) is probably cheaper, so if you build a fair amount of them the extra BPs can be used for a couple more real warships and as commercial ships they will save you maintenance and fuel costs. Like all things it is a question of tradeoffs.
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It's worth noting that the classic jump warship is not a poor choice either. Logically, if you are going to build a jump ship anyways, there is an argument that the ship might as well be useful in combat in which case you can design a jump warship with a reduced weapons loadout or just a pure PD/AMM design without primary weapons. Notably such a ship can have the same speed as the rest of your fleet which is ideal for a rapid reaction force if towing a station or waiting for a slow commercial tender is too slow. It may also be possible, if you're clever with designs and bridging classes, to build these out of the same shipyard as a real warship which can be useful especially early on when you don't have several dozen shipyards available.
On the other hand, a barebones commercial tender (with a military jump drive) is probably cheaper, so if you build a fair amount of them the extra BPs can be used for a couple more real warships and as commercial ships they will save you maintenance and fuel costs. Like all things it is a question of tradeoffs.
I completely agree... I would think that in most situation a combination are probably the best choice. But how much you build of either type probably depend entirely on your operational needs more than anything.
It is important to note that as long as a jump is not contested you only need one jump capable ship to make a standard transit of an entire fleet. That is why I think a combination often will suit most of the time.
If you also have allot of stabilised jump points both within and without your empire you will need even less most of the time.
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Missile armed jump point picket ships are an interesting option also. They can swap some engine space for a jump drive and provide long range fire support to the rest of the fleet without needing to really keep pace with them. Keep them near the jump point and flee to the other side if the enemy gets too close and your main fleet isn't nearby.
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3000-4000 tons is fairly consistently the minimum sized cloaked warship if tech advances equally through the cloak techs. So that gives you cloaked scout ships, which MIGHT be detected on passives, but have enough space for an active sensor powerful enough to provide targeting information while staying out of range.
In the early antimatter tech era, that size makes a good successor for fighter strike craft.
3000 tons is about the smallest sized carrier one can make. If your carrier operations theory is to launch strikes from outside of detection range, small size is about the only way to do it. It also potentially makes a good patrol carrier, as it can have a very long endurance while having very high performance scouts on board. If your standard fleet scout complement can fit in 2000 tons of hangar space, you could pair these up and have reliable scout coverage for all of your colonies.
3000-4000 tons is a good size for a parasite beam warship. Theory is that if you outrange the enemy and are faster, you can endlessly plink away. Can't quite endlessly plink in C#, and significant shielding would mean they wouldn't do enough DPS to knock down the shields at the range they can operate with impunity. But still, there is a niche for it.
Small sized warships serve when you want to have a certain capacity in a lot of places, or when detection/stealth is paramount and it is the smallest ship that can mount a particular weapon system.