Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Garfunkel on February 17, 2012, 12:23:03 PM
-
Only 250 tons, so can be built by fighter factories and dragged to a JP by tug/carrier. Having a single full-size engineering space zeroes all the maintenance numbers so I assume it's never going to fail. Hopefully I'm correct. Only four missiles but I'm planning of placing twenty or so of these on each JP - that's 80 missiles, should give a pause to any attacker and of course I can pump them out easily enough. The FC is over-engineered to combat enemy ECM.
Outreach class Jump Point Defence Base 250 tons 15 Crew 48.1 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 2.4
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 120 AFR 0% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 11 MSP
Magazine 16
Size 4 Box Launcher (4) Missile Size 4 Hangar Reload 30 minutes MF Reload 5 hours
APG-10 (1) Range 25.7m km Resolution 30
F/BPS-9 (1) GPS 336 Range 8.6m km Resolution 30
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Except I can't see it in the Fighters construction tab, so what am I doing wrong?
-
It's classed as a military vessel - that means it's neither commercial (hence will have maintenance failures) and is not classed as a fighter (you'll need a fighter engine in the design for that), which means it's not elligible for factory production, either.
I don't think tiny factory-producable defence bases are feasable, really. Maybe something FAC-sized with lots of engineering spaces and cheap production costs. Debates about the up- and downsides of 'bases' already exist in quantities on the forums here.
-
Ah, silly me, of course. Stupid fighter engine. Well, I'll build a few on slipways and see whether they break immediately or what happens.
-
With that size they should build very quickly anyway. Yes it will take up a shipyard but you could easily dedicate a backwater colony with a 2 slip 1000ton yard just to build these if they work well enough.
-
if you're going to build it in a shipyard anyway you could scale up with more box launchers without adding to the crew requirements.
-
I imagine it will have maintenance failures, because the 0% is probably rounded down from the actual value (which will be something like 0.01% or w/e), but they will be few and far between, and it has enough MSP to survive 10 failures of the biggest part (and shouldn't be too hard to re-supply either).
-
if you're going to build it in a shipyard anyway you could scale up with more box launchers without adding to the crew requirements.
That's a negative. I could do it but adding even a single box launcher more drops the Maintenance Life to ~60 years instead of 0. I prefer to build few more "satellites" that I don't have to replace.
-
You'll have to replace it eventually anyway, as components will fail more often as the maint clock increases.
-
Yes but if that happens, on average, after 60+ years of service... :)
-
60 years is 780 turns of the 30 day timer
-
I use a 200 ton version of this design, the Trapdoor Spider class JPD base, and have been quite pleased with them. 20+ size 1 box launchers (warhead strength 3 or 4, depending on tech), decent sensors, deployed in packs of 5 (fills a hanger bay on the small craft tender). The low cost, small crew size and almost excessive time-to-failure perfectly fills the need for a long term low fiddle-factor defense network. I've tried various other options, such as mines, drones, buoys, larger bases, mobile unit, and keep coming back to this solution.
-
The biggest problem I have with mines as they currently are in Aurora, a minefield is one-shot. Any that detects a ship fires off. A couple sacrificial ships can wipe out a JP defense minefield in 10 seconds.
-
At some point perhaps mines could be split into seperate types and tech trees adapated as well as expanding their role in combat and perhaps an anti mine ship to
-
Update: eighteen of these guys have been sitting on JPs in Sol, maintenance clocks with 3.17 - 3.03, when the first malfunction came. With 120 maintenance supplies, this isn't a problem unless I get really, *really*, unlucky with the RNG. They haven't seen any action yet, though I'm moving them all to a new location now that a stable wormhole appeared only 1 jump away from Sol, so they can watch over that.
-
Well, these guys finally had their first combat and it ended in a disaster for them - all 18 were destroyed and their missile armament was far too light to deal sufficient damage. OTOH, judging them fairly is difficult as the enemy was three gigantic Invader ships.
Still, the principle works (very low maintenance requirements) and I'll probably use them in the future as well.
-
I could imagine some interesting role-play options for these as well. Imagine the crew of 15 sat there for years on end, waiting for their one chance to fire their 4 missiles and then probably perish. . . ;D
-
What kind of missiles were you using for these guys? Since this unit would be engaging units at point-blank range I would be inclined to give them box launchers, and then design a missile "torpedo" that sacrificed range (what is the starting range after the enemy jumps in?) in exchange for a bigger warhead.
-
I'd skip the warhead increase and go for faster missles. Two reasons. Anything within 5 seconds flight time of the launcher will never have a chance to even see the missiles, so no point defense can fire at them. Second reason is if they jump in farther than that flight time, then you want to have the missiles arrive before they get their scaners working. Increasing jump radius is a fairly easy thing to reasearch and you can get 500,000km radius very quickly, it is also fairly small addition to the space you need for the jump engine (15%). A quick example using the AGM-1c from The Space Race scenario. It has a speed of 36,000km/s which means that in 5 seconds it can fly at most 180,000km. To reach anything inside the 500,000 km would take 15 seconds. Against a well trained experienced crew that might not be fast enough to reach them before they get their sensors on line. If instead of 36,000km/s they pushed it up to 53,000km/s then they could reach anybody within 10 seconds. The missile would still have 4-6 million km range which is more than enough for jp defense. It would also get better to hit against fast targets (ie gunboats), It would also make a good second stage for really big planetary missles or a primary short range fighter missile for use against other fighters/gunboats ect.
Brian
-
I used Size-4 Box Launchers. Plan was to flush all tubes and if the bases survived, use tugs to haul them back to Earth for overhaul, upgrade and rearm.
Brian, that's a good point. Very difficult to achieve with low tech but definitely something to keep in mind.
-
If they sit all in the same spot couldnt you just place a similar satellite among them that packs just some storage and a small hangar?
-
You could also have a carrier ship to move them from base to the JP and to rearm and repair them without having to return to base, and it would eliminate the need for tugs to transport them.
-
Okay, after being inspired by this post, I whipped up my own, similar version:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heimdall III-C class Jump Point Defence Base 500 tons 5 Crew 79 BP TCS 10 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-5 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 7. 5
Maint Life 47. 57 Years MSP 99 AFR 2% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 1 Max Repair 25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1000 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 50
Size 5 Box Launcher (10) Missile Size 5 Hangar Reload 37. 5 minutes MF Reload 6. 2 hours
Missile Fire Control FC6-R2 (1) Range 6. 1m km Resolution 2
s5 wh30 v48k Rocket (10) Speed: 48,000 km/s End: 1. 6m Range: 4. 5m km WH: 30 Size: 5 TH: 352/211/105
Active Search Sensor MR12-R20 (1) GPS 320 Range 12. 9m km Resolution 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 Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I haven't tested these in combat, and I have effectively zero Aurora combat experience, so I'm just guessing as to what design might work. At any rate, it's a cheap, 79BP lil' bugger who can volley 300 total missile damage, and remain on-station ~45 years.
So, what are the opinions of y'all who actually have Aurora combat experience?
-
The biggest problem I have with mines as they currently are in Aurora, a minefield is one-shot. Any that detects a ship fires off. A couple sacrificial ships can wipe out a JP defense minefield in 10 seconds.
Perhaps one could deploy mines in several smaller fields ranging from the JP to the likly direction of ship travel? (towards other stationary JPs for example).
A line of mines deployed in a transit system that only has two JPs, between these would allow your mines to keep pounding the enemy for several days if you wish.