Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Thiosk on April 10, 2011, 07:39:15 PM
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The fleet of Terra is being constructed. First, deep scan early warning system:
AWACS class Early Warning Craft 3,700 tons 277 Crew 779.8 BP TCS 74 TH 375 EM 360
5067 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 7-21 Shields 12-300 Sensors 20/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 54% IFR: 0.8% Maint Capacity 1263 MSP Max Repair 112 MSP Est Time: 5.93 Years
Military Jump Drive (Small, Squad 3) Max Ship Size 3750 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E6 (3) Power 125 Fuel Use 60% Signature 125 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres Range 162.1 billion km (370 days at full power)
Delta R300/15 Shields (5) Total Fuel Cost 75 Litres per day
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1) Total Power Output 20 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR16-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 16.0m km Resolution 100
AWACS Array Active Search Sensor MR103-R70 (1) GPS 7840 Range 103.1m km Resolution 70
DeepScan Thermal Sensor TH4-20 1 (1) Sensitivity 20 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 20m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It is supposed to keep a few extra maint supplies.
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That's quite heavily armoured and shielded for a small non-combatant class. Are you sure you wouldn't be better served putting that extra tonnage into bigger sensors or more engines? I think they'll be more useful for keeping it alive.
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What's the power plant for?
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That's quite heavily armoured and shielded for a small non-combatant class. Are you sure you wouldn't be better served putting that extra tonnage into bigger sensors or more engines? I think they'll be more useful for keeping it alive.
If it's the largest sensor signature in the battle group, it'll likely be the main missile magnet as well.
And yes, the reactor's pointless.
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And here all this time I thought reactors were needed for shields. If not, why the heck not?
I considered sticking a PD laser turret on board originally.
*removed the useless reactor and tweaked a few other things* and then put the ship into production.
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They run on fuel, hence the fuel cost call out.
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Meet the Firestorm. The firestorm is a light cruiser, designed around Laser beam weapons. Terra's forces have not yet developed strong kinetic weapons, so her ships must be well-armored and shielded to survive a withering fire from range, and close rapidly until her laser batteries can be unleashed.
This craft has limited detection capability, and thus is meant to work only in task groups with the early warning AWACS detection vessels.
Firestorm class Cruiser 6,000 tons 772 Crew 1466.6 BP TCS 120 TH 500 EM 750
4166 km/s Armour 4-29 Shields 25-300 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 52
Annual Failure Rate: 72% IFR: 1% Maint Capacity 611 MSP Max Repair 110 MSP Est Time: 3.43 Years
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E6 (4) Power 125 Fuel Use 60% Signature 125 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres Range 100.0 billion km (277 days at full power)
Delta R300/15 Shields (10) Total Fuel Cost 150 Litres per day
25cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (4) Range 192,000km TS: 4166 km/s Power 16-5 RM 5 ROF 20 16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8
Twin 12cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2) Range 192,000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 8-10 RM 5 ROF 5 4 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 2
Turret Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Beam Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 3000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (2) Total Power Output 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Our fire control specialists are still wrangling with the specifics of targeting and tracking. It appears that our turret fire controls are superior to our physical turrets, and some engineers question whether the reactor cores are sufficient to power the weapon batteries in a close fight.
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This is just personal choice, but I would devote a higher percentage of both ships to engines, as 4k/s is quite sluggish for MagConf drives, and that could easily get you humiliatingly destroyed by a faster missile-using opponent that refuses to close to your range.
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Thats an interesting point. I think i'll put a less-armored and shielded version up with a 50% speed increase.
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If I am reading this right, your 12cm lasers are a little bit overengineered, having capacitor 5. They only need 4 power to fully charge, so capacitor 4 is sufficient for maximum ROF. This would also lower the power requirement by 4.
The same goes for the 25cm. With capacitor 4 it will recharge in 20 seconds, same as with capacitor 5.
Another 4 power saved.
Currently you need 40 Power (which you have)
Each 12cm laser needs 5 power per 5-second-tic
Each 25cm laser needs 5 power per 5-second-tic.
As I said, each laser could be build with capacitor 4 for the same ROF, which would reduce your power requirement to 32 (and make the lasers a bit cheaper)
And yes, your main beam firecontrol should get a faster tracking speed. Assuming you have researched 3.000km/s beam tracking speed, a 1.25x size, 1.25 x speed would be sufficient, but if you increase the ships speed, you´ll need an even faster (Weapon tracking speed is either
The basic beam tracking speed you researched
or
The speed of the ship, the weapon is mounted on.
whichever is FASTER!
Oh, and I agree on the speed thing. My personal rule of thumb is one engine per 1.000t (i.e. 25% of total mass) for everything except for Brawlers (i.e. Beam armed ships), which get a couple of additional engines up to 35% of total mass.
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Great notes from everyone. I reengineered the firestorm and made a beefier version with some more bristles, matching their speed. Interesting note on the capacitors. I'll probably include that and some updated sensor designs in the next version, but I need to start the training and launch an attack on a neighboring star, so we'll see how they fare.
One question: Jump drives! Is the military jump drives on the AWACS enough to jump the whole fleet, or do I need a larger so-called "jump-tender" to move the fleet?
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<snip>One question: Jump drives! Is the military jump drives on the AWACS enough to jump the whole fleet, or do I need a larger so-called "jump-tender" to move the fleet?
The short answer is no. To jump other ships the jumpship is the largest ship and the jump engine must be large enough for that ship.
By "jump the whole fleet" if mean combat jump the answer is also no. If you mean standard jump then yes. Squadron size dictates maximum number of ships that may be in a task group for a combat jump, this includes the jumpship.
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By the way, the first A in AWACS stands for "Airborne". Change that to "Spaceborne" (for SWACS), like I do. :P
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It turns out that a squadron of 6250 km/s beam warships are inadequate for combating precursors. I assume those aliens are precursors, as their slow ships run at about 9kms and their big ships moved at about 12,000 km/s.
I've ordered the construction of FIFTY new research labs on the ice world Histia to develop new propulsion and offensive missile systems.
One thing I noticed: none of my dual 12cm laser turrets appeared to fire anything at any incoming precursor missiles. I set the turrets to the high-track speed fire control and clicked auto fire, but nothing appeared to happen and pop went the flagship, then popopop went the fleet.
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It turns out that a squadron of 6250 km/s beam warships are inadequate for combating precursors. I assume those aliens are precursors, as their slow ships run at about 9kms and their big ships moved at about 12,000 km/s.
I've ordered the construction of FIFTY new research labs on the ice world Histia to develop new propulsion and offensive missile systems.
One thing I noticed: none of my dual 12cm laser turrets appeared to fire anything at any incoming precursor missiles. I set the turrets to the high-track speed fire control and clicked auto fire, but nothing appeared to happen and pop went the flagship, then popopop went the fleet.
Auto Fire does not do defense, it only does offense.
In order to do defense you need to uncheck the autofire option and then setup the PD mode for a ship, you can then copy that setup to other ships of the same class in your TG or in you whole Empire.
Checking autofire again will undo this and turn it into offense mode.
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my turrets STILL don't appear to be shooting at missiles. I've set PD modes...
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2r7byu8.jpg)
But I don't appear to be firing at any of the AMMs that are gradually picking my force apart.
Full size image: http://i54.tinypic.com/2r7byu8.jpg
Weird.
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my turrets STILL don't appear to be shooting at missiles. I've set PD modes...
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2r7byu8.jpg)
But I don't appear to be firing at any of the AMMs that are gradually picking my force apart.
Full size image: http://i54.tinypic.com/2r7byu8.jpg
Weird.
It may be that the incoming missiles are too fast and are covering your PD range before you get a chance to fire. Try extending the range out to 15k or 20k and see how that works.
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I don't recognise that defense mode, so its not one i use, I only use final defensive with the range set to 1 as that always works unless the attacker is so close that the missiles are launched and hit in the same 5 sec impulse
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Aren't "Point Blank" mode and "Final Fire" mode the same thing? If you select Final Fire on the ship's combat setup panel it displays as Point Blank on the combat overview.
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Do you have a active sensor that can see the missiles? I see the AWACS has a short range sensor but its resolution 100 not 1.
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I thought everyone had missile tracking ,but that would certainly explain it.
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I thought everyone had missile tracking ,but that would certainly explain it.
Unless you have someone in the system that can see the missiles you can't engage them. Any ship with a PD system should have a minimal res 1 active sensor that can see missiles at 5 seconds (40k/kps would be 200k, plus whatever you ship can cover in the same 5 seconds), that way it's not dependent on another ship for self defense.
If you don't have the fleet dispursed, dial the PD mode to final defense range 1.
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Yeah, that must be my problem. I was confused over AMM firecontrols versus missile tracking when I developed the ships. My sensor technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, so it is high time for a refit. The precursors in this system seem "broken." There are two ships that don't move from orbit around a planet, and a lone ship that is hanging out near the star-- my larger fleet, should I be able to shoot their missiles and close-- will be able to pick them apart rather easily.
Hopefully.
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Yeah, that must be my problem. I was confused over AMM firecontrols versus missile tracking when I developed the ships. My sensor technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, so it is high time for a refit. The precursors in this system seem "broken." There are two ships that don't move from orbit around a planet, and a lone ship that is hanging out near the star-- my larger fleet, should I be able to shoot their missiles and close-- will be able to pick them apart rather easily.
Hopefully.
It doesn't appear to be an FC issue, instead it's a search sensor issue.
Something else to consider is that PDC's will look like ships that don't leave orbit.
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NPR's and Precursors don't use PDC's as far as I can tell instead they build orbital defense bases instead, I suspect this is becasue fitting them into the AI shipbuilding logic was much easier than adding them to the industry queue. This is important because it means some of them can mount none meson beam weapons even if the planet has a thick atomosphere the rest carry antimissiles
Breif description of AI defense base building
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The Crossbow:
I simply don't have the engine oomph to brawl a precursor. The precursors I'm surrounded by on three sides. I must begin punching through them, or I'll never expand further.
I have a new design that I've loaded up and started producing; my first missile launching ship.
These ships are designed to act in concert with the flagship, several beam vessels (which will likely be there to absorb missiles and point defense) and awacs scanner ships (which have been refitted to identify missiles at 100 million km. maybe an overreaction to being unable to see incoming missiles until detonation last time I ventured into enemy space). I have eight crossbow vessels nearing completion of training, at which time they will link up with the fleet and punch into precursor space.
What do the desktop generals think about this?
Crossbow 3 class Missile Destroyer 15350 tons 1874 Crew 3393.8 BP TCS 307 TH 1875 EM 600
6107 km/s Armour 3-55 Shields 20-300 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 12 PPV 118
Annual Failure Rate: 170% IFR: 2.4% Maintenance Capacity 2658 MSP
Magazine 616
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E6 (15) Power 125 Fuel Use 60% Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 78.2 billion km (148 days at full power)
Theta R300/20 Shields (5) Total Fuel Cost 100 Litres per day
Quad 12cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x4) Range 48,000km TS: 15000 km/s Power 16-20 RM 5 ROF 5 4 4 4 4 0 0 0 0 0 0
Turret Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1) Total Power Output 20 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Antiship Launcher (size 6) (12) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 40
Ship AMM Launcher 1 (4) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
AMM Fire Control 1 (1) Range 18.5m km Resolution 1
Ship Based Missile Fire Control FC189-R80 (70%) (2) Range 189.3m km Resolution 80
Fury-1 AMM (200) Speed: 45,000 km/s End: 1.1m Range: 3m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 480 / 288 / 144
Tusk 2 (69) Speed: 35,000 km/s End: 54.8m Range: 115m km WH: 3 Size: 6 TH: 268 / 161 / 80
Small Ship Search Sensor (1) GPS 12960 Range 202.9m km Resolution 80
ECCM-3 (4) Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
When I ran the first models off the assembly line and started training them, I noticed they blew through their maintenance points in under a month. I forgot to put engineering spaces on there. Then after refitting them and getting the next four out, I realized they were actually burning fuel fast too. Oh, I forgot to put fuel storage on them. I may have overcompensated in both areas for what is now the crossbow mk 4. Lol. Still haven't seen contact with the precursors.
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Some little remark.
You still have a little fuel capacity, but maybe your doctrine is like that (use in fleet with tanker).
But more important
It seems to me that your active sensor is a little bit weak for the detection of incoming missile.
Except this, it is a decent design.
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I think you need more armor, if you're going up against precursors. You have to survive long enough to get in range, usually.
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The brawler beam variant is unable to close the gap to precursors. These will operate on PD duty. They have nearly triple the armor and shielding of the missile cruiser, and the main line cruisers are substantially larger. So far, the precursors have first shredded the 20k main line cruisers before turning on the sensor vessels even. We'll see if this holds while I lob missiles.
The jump capable flagship is mostly beam PD as well, and is typically targeted first. All beam weapons have substantially more scanning, and as I mentioned, the surveillance ship has obnoxious missile tracking coverage that extends about 100 million km. Future crossbow variants will include dedicated scanner coverage at a range of about 10 mkm in case the sensor ships go down, despite their thick plating and PD coverage.
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Submitted for your approval, the Dominus Astra
The existing 20,000 ton jump-capable flagship, Great Victory, are no longer sufficient for general duties, with the construction of new military transports, and the plans for substantial carrier craft. The Dominus Astra is designed as a generally defensive craft set to lay down point defense, protecting the rest of the fleet and sopping up hits. It must fly with the surveillance craft. The current first fleet is a series of missile cruisers and beam brawlers, with a score of frigates, headed by this flagship. It has only a small missile scanner for covering retreat in case of disaster.
It is armed with a battery of 8 lasers, a few forward missile tubes for firing at range, but it is the 8 quad laser turrets and the missile defense that is of most importance.
It will be tweaked in design to bring it up to 50k tons.
My important question comes in maitenence. The jump drive on this monster is enormous. If that fails, thats a lot of maintenence points. But I realized that I wasn't getting much improvement by adding storage. Am I right in thinking its probably just number skew by the size of the jump drive. If the drive fails 4 times in a year, thats the end of its maintenance points. But thats unlikely, right? Or do I really just have a bucket of bolts that can only be expected to fly for one year?
Secondarily, I threw two damage control units on there, but I'm not really sure what they're actually doing or how that rating is measured.
Dominus Astra class Superdreadnought 49,250 tons 5642 Crew 16618 BP TCS 985 TH 4320 EM 2400
8771 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 10-119 Shields 80-300 Sensors 5/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 95 PPV 288
[b]Annual Failure Rate: 431% IFR: 6% Maint Capacity 9489 MSP Max Repair 2500 MSP Est Time: 0.88 Years[/b]
Flag Bridge Magazine 506
Flagship jump drive 1 Max Ship Size 50000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
IC Fusion Drive Standard (54) Power 160 Fuel Use 50% Signature 80 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres Range 146.2 billion km (192 days at full power)
Theta R300/20 Shields (20) Total Fuel Cost 400 Litres per day
25cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (8) Range 192,000km TS: 8771 km/s Power 16-5 RM 5 ROF 20 16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8
Quad 12cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser Turret (8x4) Range 192,000km TS: 15000 km/s Power 16-20 RM 5 ROF 5 4 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 2
Beam Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 3000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Turret Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (10) Total Power Output 200 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Ship AMM Launcher 1 (20) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Antiship Launcher (size 6) (6) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 40
Ship Based Missile Fire Control FC189-R80 (70%) (1) Range 189.3m km Resolution 80
AMM Fire Control 1 (5) Range 18.5m km Resolution 1
AMM Scanner (Small) (1) GPS 72 Range 10.1m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-5 (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 5m km
ECCM-3 (8) ECM 20
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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Submitted for your approval, the Dominus Astra
My important question comes in maitenence. The jump drive on this monster is enormous. If that fails, thats a lot of maintenence points. But I realized that I wasn't getting much improvement by adding storage. Am I right in thinking its probably just number skew by the size of the jump drive. If the drive fails 4 times in a year, thats the end of its maintenance points. But thats unlikely, right? Or do I really just have a bucket of bolts that can only be expected to fly for one year?
Secondarily, I threw two damage control units on there, but I'm not really sure what they're actually doing or how that rating is measured.
The current method that Steve used for figuring the estimate time for running out of maintenance is to assume that any failure will be of the most expensive system. In your case this is partially true. Look at the damage allocation table (tab in F5 screen) and see what the chance is that your jump drive will be what fails. As it is a big part of the ship it has a high failure chance. Use that as a modifier on the number shown to get a better idea of how long your maintenance supplies will last. Second part is that the maintanence storage bays (3 hs 1000 points of maint.) only add the extra maintenance points they do not reduce the chance of failure that the standard engineering spaces do. In most cases I find 3 engineering spaces will give me more endurance than 1 maintenance storage bay will. Maintenance storage bays are most usefull on carriers where they will be reparing their parisite ships. The damage control units each add 10 points to the damage control rating. The higher the damage control rating the faster the ship will fix battle damage. I do not remember the actual code but I have a recolection that larger items take longer to repair in general. Also when repairing damage after the fact and not a maintenance failure you will use up twice as many maintenance points as normal. So for your huge jump engine remember to have more than 4 times as much mainenance on hand so you can do a battlefield repair and still have some left over for other repairs. Improved damage control adds 20 to your damage control rating, Advanced 30 ect.
Brian
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So looking at that damage breakdown, I see the jumpdrive has a 1/20 value while the turrets, for example, has a 8/8. The secondary numbers all add up to more than 100, so its not percentage, So to estimate the damage, what would I do-- add up all the secondary values times the first value and take ratios? (ie considering these two components, 20/20+64)
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So looking at that damage breakdown, I see the jumpdrive has a 1/20 value while the turrets, for example, has a 8/8. The secondary numbers all add up to more than 100, so its not percentage, So to estimate the damage, what would I do-- add up all the secondary values times the first value and take ratios? (ie considering these two components, 20/20+64)
I suspect that that should be read as "1 at 20" and "8 at 8". If you look at the range of numbers, I expect you'll see jump drive taking up 20 numbers and lasers 64 (8x8).
John
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Yes, thats certainly how i read it, but I still can't work out what the actual likelyhood my ship is going to last merely 1 year in the field without resupply. Thats pretty bad. Each engineering space adds approximately 3 days to the expected endurance, and I think thats grossly skewed.
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To eyeball the failure chance of everything else on the ship, remove the jump drive and see what happens to the maintenance numbers. It'll be off somewhat because of the overall size change, but it will give you an idea.
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I learned today that you can do commercial military jump ships. I already payed the god-awful like 22500 RP to get this one built though, but whatever. Sheesh!
Without further ado, I give you the Nightshade
The fledgling terran fleet is finally developing long-range punch, but there is no specific strike force in service. Additionally, terran scientists are getting quite adept at mastering cloaking technology, but the military brass has had to accept that no cloaked fighter is reasonable to field.
However, the absolute smallest cloaking device yet devised can shroud an 1800 ton ship, and this device forms the core of the first FAC of the Imperium. With 35% thermal reduction and 85% size reduction, the nightshade is small, reasonably fast, and able to deliver its complement of photon torpedoes. The craft will then immediately return to base. There are plans to pair it with a cloaked scout variant and early plans are underway to use a cloaked tanker as well, for any longer sorties.
Photon class torpedoes are currently loaded, though the brass suspect the cloaking could allow these ships to get quite close to their quarry with little fear of retaliation.
Nightshade class Fast Attack Craft 1,400 tons 124 Crew 391.3 BP TCS 4.2 TH 128.8 EM 0
13142 km/s Armour 2-11 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 3.6
Annual Failure Rate: 15% IFR: 0.2% Maint Capacity 175 MSP Max Repair 161 MSP Est Time: 3.23 Years
Magazine 24
Stealth FAC Drive (1) Power 368 Fuel Use 650% Signature 128.8 Armour 0 Exp 36%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 19.8 billion km (17 days at full power)
Size 4 Box Launcher (6) Missile Size 4 Hangar Reload 30 minutes MF Reload 5 hours
FAC Torpedo Launcher (1) Range 67.6m km Resolution 20
Photon Torpedo (6) Speed: 45,000 km/s End: 20m Range: 54m km WH: 9 Size: 4 TH: 270 / 162 / 81
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 15% of normal
ECCM-4 (1) ECM 20
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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Carrier operations!
The Tiger's Claw is designed to carry a full squadron of cloaked fast attack craft (can anyone tell me why they have to be cloaked? hm?)
It is the hanger-strapped-to-engines design, and carries its squadron of 15 Nightshades (see above) and one boomer (not shown) that is designed to sneak in, and in case target locks are needed, can paint with active sensors, give the shades time to release, then go quiet and allow the whole squadron to fly back to the carrier with impunity.
Tiger's Claw class Carrier 50,000 tons 2592 Crew 10734 BP TCS 1000 TH 4160 EM 0
8320 km/s Armour 4-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 30 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 666% IFR: 9.3% Maint Capacity 6025 MSP Max Repair 120 MSP Est Time: 3.38 Years
Hangar Deck Capacity 23000 tons Magazine 1800
IC Fusion Drive Standard (52) Power 160 Fuel Use 50% Signature 80 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,450,000 Litres Range 176.4 billion km (245 days at full power)
ECM 20
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The claw can't take a beating, and isn't cloaked, so I intend to keep them a little behind everyone else.
And heres a cute little PDC-- 1 boomer and 5 nightshades. They can pull ordinance\fuel directly from the planet, or, should I load the magazines and fuel on the PDC itself? Suggestions?
PDC Fighter Base class Planetary Defence Centre 9,300 tons 265 Crew 939 BP TCS 186 TH 0 EM 0
Armour 5-39 Sensors 1/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Hangar Deck Capacity 8500 tons
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Photon class torpedoes are currently loaded, though the brass suspect the cloaking could allow these ships to get quite close to their quarry with little fear of retaliation.
I wouldn't push this to far. The last change Steve made to sensors mean that smaller targets can be dectect a lot further out than they used to be. A point defense sensor that can see a size 6 missile at 2mkm will probably be able to see anything that is a full hull size or more out to around 20mkm. As I have seen some npr's shoot at incomming missiles at 5-6mkm this would put your nightshades in their normal detection range. The up side is that your nightshades are fast enough that a lot of anti-ship missiles are going to miss when fired on you. Because of this I would actually recomend switching the ecm/eccm around as you are going to need the range reduction for people shooting at you if at all possible while your target range is going to be a lot less important. At worst you will probably see a 20-30% reduction in range. You want to hit them with at least as much of a range reduction. Especially as fairly few ships are going to have fire control with the resolution to shoot at you guys. Mostly just the point defense ships, and thier missiles are going to tend to be a much shorter range than the anti-ship missiles. If you are doing any playing against somebody else this wouldn't work because they will probably put in a small fire control for size 20 targets to prevent just this from happening.
Brian
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Considering the missile and fire control ranges (54m km+) on the Niteshade the cloak is wasted space. If they were intended to engage from sub-20m km then the cloak would start to be of use.
NPR's are not going to engage a TSC of 20 or less at half that range. Drop the cloak and bridge and add more launchers. Cut the missile range to around 25m km and the fire control to around 32-33m km. Keep the hull space to 20 or less and you'll have a much more combat effective FAC.
Keep in mind my opinion of the cloak is that it is best used on scouting platforms not combat hulls. Your mileage may very. ;)
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Cut the missile range to around 25m km and the fire control to around 32-33m km. Keep the hull space to 20 or less and you'll have a much more combat effective FAC.
I don't agree. I used to use 25m km ranged missiles. Lets just say there is a reason I keep my FAC missiles designed with a minimum range of 50m km, and MFC of 75m km. I do agree with the hull size, I tend to run a 900 ton FAC design as fleet standard.
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Keep the hull space to 20 or less and you'll have a much more combat effective FAC.
In case some new players are wondering where the 20HS number came from: Ships of size 20 or less do NOT require a bridge. This saves you 1HS (5%) that can be used for payload. This is true both for FAC and for "normal" ships. So 1000 ton corvettes are often a good design decision - with 2 engines they're the same speed as a FAC and still have 6-7 HS that can be devoted to payload.
John
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Drop the cloak and bridge and add more launchers. Cut the missile range to around 25m km and the fire control to around 32-33m km. Keep the hull space to 20 or less and you'll have a much more combat effective FAC.
Keep in mind my opinion of the cloak is that it is best used on scouting platforms not combat hulls. Your mileage may very. ;)
Fourthing dropping the cloak and adding more box launchers. That fac is painfully slow for something that tech level. Also swap out that eccm-4 for a compact eccm-2. that's another two HS there. Disagreeing with cutting firecontrol range though. keeping the range significantly above your current missile range futureproofs the design (missile ships are only as obsolete as the ordnance in the tubes), and is a good way of getting around high precursor and invader ECM without a lot of expensive and time-consuming eccm research. precursors have 40% ecm? no problem, my stock firecon has 90mkm range with missiles of 52mkm.
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At least it would probably get within range of my ships and so get to fire me - without the cloak it has no hope
I am actually looking at a similar concept for my fleet..
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In case some new players are wondering where the 20HS number came from: Ships of size 20 or less do NOT require a bridge. This saves you 1HS (5%) that can be used for payload. This is true both for FAC and for "normal" ships. So 1000 ton corvettes are often a good design decision - with 2 engines they're the same speed as a FAC and still have 6-7 HS that can be devoted to payload.
John
+1
A nasty Fleet doctrine:)