Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Advanced Tactical Command Academy => Topic started by: Vynadan on December 23, 2011, 07:06:28 PM
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I've been thinking about how to monitor those reaches of space where you either just can't or don't want to station a full defense squadron. While there's no replacement for proper reaction forces or PDCs, cycling your jump point defenses is both a logistical effort and a (usually minor) strain on resources and combat-ready warships.
The natural alternative for long term, low risk or far away monitoring is the buoy-type missile, whom can fulfil this role good enough, unless you want to monitor something for longer than a couple years, or even permanently. I thought about desining a commercial sensor picket to be rid of the maintenance, but due to their limitations a commercial picket is either prone to be blasted into thousands of tiny bits or a waste of perfectly fine cadets. Since I strife for roleplay consistency, I tried to make it without any crew at all:
Buoy class Prototype Satellite 50 tons 0 Crew 1 BP TCS 1 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
MSP 0 AFR 10% IFR 0.1% Max Repair 45 MSP
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 1 Range 750k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposesWhat you see here is the first attempt on one such design. The active sensor deployed here is a 0.1 size, EM 75 (max), grav 10 sensor with resolution 1. You can easily increase the resolution to 20 and higher and still spot anything that realistically has a jump drive, and even an EM 5 sensor covers the full deviation of standard jump engines around a jump point (50k). The only true limitations for these sensors are their 0.1 HS to negate crew requirements. If you restrain yourself on the grav strength to levels 10 and 12, you'll also face a meager 10 research point and virtually no resource costs.
Aside from this sensor, the design is literally empty.
These 'buoys' should provide you with ample sensor coverage of choke points and sufficient early-warning capabilities to spot any intruder as many systems ahead as you feel comfortable deploying these.
This design offers various advantages over ye olde sensor buoy:
- It doesn't have a maximum reactor lifespan and therefor remains indefinetly or until destroyed
- It requires no overhauls or overhaul schedules like a FAC or other military picket
- For the long run, the costs are significiantly smaller than the high boronide costs for large reactor buoys
- Although the design screen shows them to be 50 tons large, they're actually much smaller (5 tons, or 2 MSP) than maximised sensor buoys with similiar sensor strength (although I don't think this has an impact on calculations)
- Even with grav strength 10 and EM sensitivity 5 they on par or even superior in performance compared to a end-technology buoy of the same size, dependant on how long the buoy is designed to last
- The RP needed for a low-grav and low-size active sensor is a marginal 10, and increases in EM sensitivity neither increase research nor construction costs
- A sufficiently large enough sensor network on choke points could allow sparser warship allocations and lead to less military expenses / larger offensive capabilities for the same defense value
- To make the enemy waste a couple AMMs or stall him, you can patch a couple layers of armour on the design without going over the one hullspace. Depending on your technology level this can range from mere six to a wopping thirty-nine levels of armour for marginal cost!
- This asumes that he even spots the probe (which he will with any AMM sensor, to be fair)
I couldn't help but also see a few negative points:
- They never dissipate unless destroyed
- However: One could handwave their maintenance similiar to how civilian maintenance is, or use them for an alien faction in fiction to symbolise otherwise superior technology
- Since they're not military and can't be classed as fighters, they require a shipyard to be built
- However: Costly enough ships (fleet soucts, capital ships) should be able to build them as side projects in astonishingly quick speeds
- Because only 0.1 sensors (for zero crew) and 10 to 12 grav strength allow for the minimum cost, their sensor range is sort-of compromised
- However: The grav strength can be increased if you're fine with higher RP and construction costs to increase range, and EM sensitivity or resolution are good enough to render them fully able in their field of work. You could put ten sensors with different resolutions on these buoys, without going over the 1 HS designation
- The minimum design (only a 0.1 sensor) to make it a true crewless buoy doesn't include a maintenance storage
- However: I have tested this design in open space and haven't received a single breakdown for five buoys over the course of five years despite the maintenance warning in the design screen
In conclusion, I believe that these buoys are against the game rules as Steve imagined them. Used in small numbers they could be rightfully employed on well-traversed trade routes or highly populated systems where their maintenance can be explained better, but everyone can make up their own mind about whether to ease the logistical strain on oneself a bit and rather focus on other, more interesting (and still logistically challenging) aspects of Aurora.
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Wait, you can just ignore the commercial-designs-need-one-engineering-spaces rule?
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I admit, I've never tried it until now ... But it seems to be that way. All five buoys are now twelve years in space without maintenance, their clocks happily ticking and their annual failure rate well over 100%. No breakdowns so far, although they only have one component, too.
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I have added a check for the necessary engineering space for commercial shipping. Without at least one engineering space, the ship will be military. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the general concept though as maintenance failure rate is based on size and a tiny military ship with no engineering will probably last several years.
In Newtonian Aurora, missiles are automatically built with a reactor for onboard sensors and can last forever.
Steve
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Since there isn't anything that can fail catastrophically on one of these, you could probably just plop them down in pairs and have a tiny ship with a boat bay and some engineering spaces go repair them when they fail.
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I always build a courier vessel (fast, small, one Boat Bay) early in the game, so it's quite useful for laying or recovering these "automated" buoys.
A clever idea, Vynadan.
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Fighter-sized picket-sats actually seem practical even without the minimalist approach. I put this together off the shelf in The Space Race:
Frunze class Recon Satellite 250 tons 18 Crew 46.1 BP TCS 5 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 1.5
Maint Life 90.95 Years MSP 115 AFR 0% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 16 MSP
Magazine 10
B-405A VLS System (2) Missile Size 5 Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes MF Reload 6.2 hours
Phazotron Zhuk-69 Missile Fire Control (1) Range 51.5m km Resolution 180
Voskhod MR-115 (1) GPS 1440 Range 8.6m km Resolution 180
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesOne engineering space is good for 90 years on such a ship! For all intents and purposes maintenance-less. Good for troublemakers!
Unfortunately box launchers seem to be the only practical armament. Between the crew requirements and the fire control, beams drive the cost way up.
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I'm liking this idea a lot!
In a past campaign I spent ages dropping off mines to defend a number of jump points and found I had a lot of micro management to keep them on station. It was also very frustrating when they would launch huge salvos at small individual targets.
Speed of production will be fine as you can pre build a stack of components with your normal industry unlike with fighters and drones.
I'm thinking that moving the active sensor to a separate ship will help as well.
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Fighter-sized picket-sats actually seem practical even without the minimalist approach.
Definately. This is the standard Jump Point Defense I deploy, usually in packs of 5.
JPD2 - Trapdoor Spider class Jump Point Defence Base 200 tons 16 Crew 29.5 BP TCS 4 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 3
Maint Life 81.66 Years MSP 28 AFR 1% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 10 MSP
Magazine 20
ASM s1 Box g1 (20) Missile Size 1 Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes MF Reload 1.2 hours
MFC ASM Res10-MR2.9mkm Spider (2) Range 2.9m km Resolution 10
SBM s1g1 w4 r2kmkm (20) Speed: 27,400 km/s End: 1.3m Range: 2.1m km WH: 4 Size: 1 TH: 201 / 120 / 60
ASS ASM g3 Res10-MR970kkm Spider (1) GPS 28 Range 970k km Resolution 10
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
Normally the spiders sit on or very near the jump point. Cheap, therefor expendable, easily deployed and much easier than a minefield to maintain. Having an enemy fleet transit into the middle of 4 packs was a beautiful thing.
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Ugh, why had I never thought of this myself? Well, I'm going to shamelessly copy your design and utilize it in my current game, thanks!