Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Alfapiomega on September 15, 2013, 07:51:08 PM
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Hello!
I would like to know the opinion of local experts on the design I came up with during my let's play. It's the very first beam ship I even created so all feedback is welcome. I was originally going for a fast, small gunboat but all the things I wanted to put on it turned it to large (I have very limited shipyard size due to conventional start in 2050 and the current year being 2082), extremely slow cruiser that will mainly fill following roles:
*escorting survey vessels through jump points and doing active scans of new systems
*defending planets and jump points
*serving as something that will calm down the civilians because they want protection
Raptor class Cruiser 7,850 tons 219 Crew 927.675 BP TCS 157 TH 31 EM 0
394 km/s Armour 5-35 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 24 PPV 43.52
Maint Life 2.71 Years MSP 295 AFR 123% IFR 1.7% 1YR 57 5YR 862 Max Repair 77 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Military Engine Class I "Comet" (2) Power 31.25 Fuel Use 165.96% Signature 15.625 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres Range 10.3 billion km (303 days at full power)
Quad 12cm C2 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x4) Range 120,000km TS: 8000 km/s Power 16-8 RM 3 ROF 10 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S16 96-5000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 5000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
PWR 4000/100tons (4) Total Power Output 16 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Short Range Sensors Mk. I - 60/5 (1) GPS 60 Range 3.0m km Resolution 1
Medium Range Sensor - 60/5 (1) GPS 2400 Range 19.0m km Resolution 40
Thermal Sensor Array Basic Mk. I (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Array Basic Mk. I (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Now things that bother me:
* extremely low speed (Nuclear technology) - probably no fix for that, only researching better engines (it's already on 125% output)
* lack of long range sensor - I wanted this thing to be very small so it has only short range and medium range sensor. Should I maybe create another with 8000 or 1000 tons as optimal and adding it? It would better fill the role and have the possibility to detect things like shipyards and freighters on a very decent distance
* Armour size is relatively high but as this thing is very slow I think it's appropriate for it to have good armour. I am already researching composite to alleviate some of the stress
Thank you in advance for any comments!
PS: The Turret has a faster tracking speed as I intend to research new targeting speed right after the composite armour which will then have TS of 8000 km/s :)
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Hello.
Nice start, but:
For me, beam weapon must go along with high speed.
Without you cannot choose the time and place of the figth (even in defence).
Maybe it's possible to take out the Res 1 active sensor (as you don't need to detect missil: nothing to destroy them).
Maybe put a bigger activ sensor res 20 or 40.
Try also to put one other engine along with fuel tank.
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Hello.
Nice start, but:
For me, beam weapon must go along with high speed.
Without you cannot choose the time and place of the figth (even in defence).
Maybe it's possible to take out the Res 1 active sensor (as you don't need to detect missil: nothing to destroy them).
Maybe put a bigger activ sensor res 20 or 40.
Try also to put one other engine along with fuel tank.
Hey!
Thank you for the comment! The ship has both resolution 1 and resolution 40 active sensor plus the thermal and EM sensor. I have the 40 for medium range scans and the resolution 1 to see missiles. However I am wondering what you meant by “nothing to destroy them”. I put the quad turrets on the ship so it could target incoming missiles and defend iself or a planet it would be stationed on from them. Did I do something wrong? Lasers are capable of destroying missiles, aren’t they?
Regarding the engines: there is a problem due to the size of the ship. Each additional engine only raises the speed by a small margin (like 40 km/s) due to the size of armor and other equipment so if I had 8 of them the ship was still going only 520 km/s or so. That is why I think there is no solution to it other than maybe completely changing the design. But I am unwilling to do so unless this is completely worthless. I would instead use this as guardian on planet orbits and jump points where it has an advantage. Would that work?
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OK, I understand better your doctrine.
But, it seems to me that only "8000 km/s" tracking speed is low to catch missile.
And even if you use this kind of ship as static defense for planet you can put bigger sensor on PDC on the surface of the planet.
It's for this reason that I think that you don't really need to have a res 1 sensor onboard.
Moreover, if you use it as jump point defence, the ennemy will not have the time to fire missile before you hit it.
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The ship is fine for the technology used in my opinion. The speed of a ship is not all that important if it is mainly for defensive purposes. If it was designed to be an offensive beam ship then speed would be of a much higher concern.
8000km/s in tracking speed is pretty fine at this tech level, we can't really expect too much in this regard. Faster turrets and tracking speed will obviously develop over time.
The sensors on the ship is probably what you can expect as well for this class. If you want to increase the range you could of course increase the resolution but then you degrade the range of detecting smaller ships as well, but at the same time you also increase the chance you are yourself detected with the active scanner.
One change I would do later on would be to use 10cm turreted laser in a quad turret and a few 15-20cm main combat lasers with no turrets. That would make the ship a very good defensive ship able to engage both ships and missiles quite efficiently.
Speed is only important later when and if you want to use beam weapons as a primary offensive weapon. Me personally never do that because it leave you extremely vulnerable if you face an enemy that are faster than you are. I use heavy beam weapons as a means to defend/attack jump points and as a means to defend a fleet from a faster enemy with beam weapons. I would only consider using my beam weapons offensively if I meet a hostile race that are inferior to me.
When I reach about Ion or Plasma drives I usually have three levels of laser defences sometimes I switch the primary laser canons with particle beams. My main PD is 10cm lasers in a twin-quad turret with maximum tracking speed, 15cm lasers in 2x tracking speed and 20-30cm lasers with no turrets for close range beam combat/defence.
There is almost no point in putting beam weapons on a planet with an atmosphere, beam weapons are very bad in that environment. You might want to place heavy beam batteries on the Moon that has no atmosphere, but at this tech level that is pointless since the range and accuracy is just too poor for protecting the earth.
In practical terms going forward I would say that detecting and intelligence gathering of the opponent is way more important than the speed of your ships. That way you know when and where to put your ships in a position to overwhelm the enemy. I rarely construct ships with more than 20-25% of their weight with engines, often even less. Basically the larger the ship the less engines I put on them with lower efficiencies. I rather build more ships with a lower cost and more weapons and more scout/recon vessels with decent speeds.
What you might consider is to add a 250t boat bay and add a small recon ship with a res 100 sensor and a very small EM sensor, this could have a decent speed.
Personally I would scale down my engines to about 100% efficiency and use slightly more engines to weight ratio and add a boat bay with a scout vessel. You could then reduce the fuel tanks to about 500.000 litres and still get an increased range, fuel is probably an issue for you this early in the game. Perhaps increase the ships size to about 8-9000t or so. It is not easy to build efficient ship designs at these tech levels because almost anything you meet out there will outclass you no matter what... ;)
Also... be wary of scale creep. ;)
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OK, I understand better your doctrine.
But, it seems to me that only "8000 km/s" tracking speed is low to catch missile.
And even if you use this kind of ship as static defense for planet you can put bigger sensor on PDC on the surface of the planet.
It's for this reason that I think that you don't really need to have a res 1 sensor onboard.
Moreover, if you use it as jump point defence, the ennemy will not have the time to fire missile before you hit it.
You are right of course! :) But this is the first ship of the navy, very first one that I have ever created and I don't have sufficient technology yet to make it good. I need something to start with which is this :) I am only 30 years into the game so consider this a prototype of what the navy will use and try to improve. Could it work as a basic thing to manufacture?
And yes, again you are right about the PDC's. I want to design a PDC too for each of my colonies but first I wanted to propose a ship design to see if the weapons are ok :)
BTW - if I put laser on a PDC they would have penalty for shooting through the athmosphere, right?
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The ship is fine for the technology used in my opinion. The speed of a ship is not all that important if it is mainly for defensive purposes. If it was designed to be an offensive beam ship then speed would be of a much higher concern.
8000km/s in tracking speed is pretty fine at this tech level, we can't really expect too much in this regard. Faster turrets and tracking speed will obviously develop over time.
The sensors on the ship is probably what you can expect as well for this class. If you want to increase the range you could of course increase the resolution but then you degrade the range of detecting smaller ships as well, but at the same time you also increase the chance you are yourself detected with the active scanner.
One change I would do later on would be to use 10cm turreted laser in a quad turret and a few 15-20cm main combat lasers with no turrets. That would make the ship a very good defensive ship able to engage both ships and missiles quite efficiently.
Speed is only important later when and if you want to use beam weapons as a primary offensive weapon. Me personally never do that because it leave you extremely vulnerable if you face an enemy that are faster than you are. I use heavy beam weapons as a means to defend/attack jump points and as a means to defend a fleet from a faster enemy with beam weapons. I would only consider using my beam weapons offensively if I meet a hostile race that are inferior to me.
When I reach about Ion or Plasma drives I usually have three levels of laser defences sometimes I switch the primary laser canons with particle beams. My main PD is 10cm lasers in a twin-quad turret with maximum tracking speed, 15cm lasers in 2x tracking speed and 20-30cm lasers with no turrets for close range beam combat/defence.
There is almost no point in putting beam weapons on a planet with an atmosphere, beam weapons are very bad in that environment. You might want to place heavy beam batteries on the Moon that has no atmosphere, but at this tech level that is pointless since the range and accuracy is just too poor for protecting the earth.
In practical terms going forward I would say that detecting and intelligence gathering of the opponent is way more important than the speed of your ships. That way you know when and where to put your ships in a position to overwhelm the enemy. I rarely construct ships with more than 20-25% of their weight with engines, often even less. Basically the larger the ship the less engines I put on them with lower efficiencies. I rather build more ships with a lower cost and more weapons and more scout/recon vessels with decent speeds.
What you might consider is to add a 250t boat bay and add a small recon ship with a res 100 sensor and a very small EM sensor, this could have a decent speed.
Personally I would scale down my engines to about 100% efficiency and use slightly more engines to weight ratio and add a boat bay with a scout vessel. You could then reduce the fuel tanks to about 500.000 litres and still get an increased range, fuel is probably an issue for you this early in the game. Perhaps increase the ships size to about 8-9000t or so. It is not easy to build efficient ship designs at these tech levels because almost anything you meet out there will outclass you no matter what... ;)
Also... be wary of scale creep. ;)
Hey Jorgen!
Thank you very much for the message. I somehow entirely missed it when I was writing a response to the other post and just noticed it now during lunch :)
I am so glad that I got the design right, I was afraid that I left out something really obvious and made myself look like a dumbass :)
Regarding your comments – any reason why you would prefer the 10cm to 12cm? Or did you say that because you would add some heavy non-turreted lasers for anti-ship purpose thus having turreted PD and non-turreted offensive weapons?
I went with all in the turret because IMO two larger quad turrets are better than two smaller turrets and beam weapons that would have tracking speed of only 1250 km/s which is truly awful. I don’t think I could hit anything with that; even the turret speed upgrade is my priority.
And regarding the boat bay – in the video I thought about it but this ship doesn’t really seem like a good scout at all. I wanted a scout originally but this heavy thing is way too slow for it. The range and fuel is there so that it could reach the jump points (even the distant ones) where it would escort the Lilian II class ships through into the new system, wait at the jump point and in case need arises defend them. However it won’t venture anywhere in the new systems as it would be quickly overwhelmed. I will create a different, smaller and fast unarmed ship or go with another big overhaul of the Lilian II class ships giving them a small pinnacle that could be used to scout the habitable planets before they conduct a survey there.
Regarding the scare – my largest military shipyard is 6000 tons so conserving space is a priority or this one won’t see the daylight for even more (it will take 2 years just to upgrade the New York Shipbuilding to this size). Would it be really worth adding extra engines and increasing the size?
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BTW - if I put laser on a PDC they would have penalty for shooting through the athmosphere, right?
Yes.
What I say: the PDC is disarmed, only a big active sensor base. The weapons are onboard fleet defence force.
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Regarding your comments – any reason why you would prefer the 10cm to 12cm? Or did you say that because you would add some heavy non-turreted lasers for anti-ship purpose thus having turreted PD and non-turreted offensive weapons?
I went with all in the turret because IMO two larger quad turrets are better than two smaller turrets and beam weapons that would have tracking speed of only 1250 km/s which is truly awful. I don’t think I could hit anything with that; even the turret speed upgrade is my priority.
I was mainly looking into how the future outlook might be.
For now a 12cm cannon can be a good middle ground at this tech level. When you advance further you might want to build more dedicated weapon systems. The 10cm cannon is very good as point defence because it is 25% lighter and require 25% less power. You can also miniaturize it and get good results from it later on. But it will only be a dedicated short range PD system. The 12cm laser does not have good enough range to fire more than once at most inbound missiles, even low tech ones.
Heavier lasers will require very expensive beam fire-controls if placed in fast turrets and also be very expensive with advanced capacitors and power generators if used as dedicated PD. Therefore most restrict heavier lasers to lower tracking speeds and often to the default speed.
I agree that 1250km/s is most likely too slow to hit most ships you are likely to encounter with higher technology, they hit your own ships just fine. I usually go with a mix of x2 and standard depending on known enemy speeds. If I have no clue about an enemy I just go with a speed that could hit my own ships. I can't really prepare for something my society have difficulty even to imagine. ;)
I generally put my 15cm lasers in x2 times my tracking speed technology so they can multi-task as PD and ship killers, including faster FAC crafts and not just standard warships.
My advice was more of a natural development into the future, I see no direct reason to change the design that you presented above. Other might find some smart things in which to improve on it (with regard to the technology at hand), but to me it seems just fine for what it is designed to do.
And regarding the boat bay – in the video I thought about it but this ship doesn’t really seem like a good scout at all. I wanted a scout originally but this heavy thing is way too slow for it. The range and fuel is there so that it could reach the jump points (even the distant ones) where it would escort the Lilian II class ships through into the new system, wait at the jump point and in case need arises defend them. However it won’t venture anywhere in the new systems as it would be quickly overwhelmed. I will create a different, smaller and fast unarmed ship or go with another big overhaul of the Lilian II class ships giving them a small pinnacle that could be used to scout the habitable planets before they conduct a survey there.
I agree that you should perhaps not include a boat bay into this design, not in the way you intend to use it. I would even go so far as to classify the ship as a Monitor and not a Cruiser. Not that this matter, it just feels more like the equivalent of a Monitor than a Cruiser. ;)
Regarding the scare – my largest military shipyard is 6000 tons so conserving space is a priority or this one won’t see the daylight for even more (it will take 2 years just to upgrade the New York Shipbuilding to this size). Would it be really worth adding extra engines and increasing the size?
Just my bad experience of how it generally goes. :)
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Yes.
What I say: the PDC is disarmed, only a big active sensor base. The weapons are onboard fleet defence force.
In my personal experience these PDC tend to be very expensive in both research and production cost, especially this early in the game. Later when the economy is more developed I would certainly consider such PDC at most main worlds. For now I would rely on a smaller 500t shuttle and a hangar PDC. The ship would fit the fastest engines possible and a small active sensor to paint any incoming threat. A good coverage of the tracking stations should pick up enemy ships early enough for you to send out your scouts to support any missile bases you might have.
The ship themselves would actually not need much more than the resolution 1 active sensor system. The larger sensor will not actually do that much good. And if you want to save some space and cost it could probably be remove all together and replaced with a smaller much faster more dedicated scout ship. The larger cruiser is not a good scout anyway and detecting a ship at 3m km is certainly good enough for their weapons and purposes.
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Just to expand on laser sizes.
As far as I can tell, you have researched capacitor 2.
Once you reach cap-3, a 10cm laser will fire every 5 second, doubling the rate of fire in comparison to your 12cm, making it much more efficient in an anti-missile role.
At the same time, the 15cm laser (same mass as the 12cm laser) also reaches a ROF of 10 like your 12cm one, while having better range and dealing more damage.
You will need to research cap-4 to get the 12cm to shoot every 5 seconds and thus getting an advantage in close range combat.
As for the speed of your ship:
If you use it for warp point defense, I agree with Jorgen, that it is all right, given your technology.
If you intend to use it in a mobile defense (like as a defense fleet patroling between Earth and Mars, for example), it will die horribly, however, without ever fireing a single shot at the enemy. Every meeting engagement in deep space with an enemy that has weapons of longer range, that enemy is bound to be staying out of your range while picking your cruiser apart.
Note on laser PDCs and atmosphere:
Yes, lasers in PDCs are pretty much useless in those circumstances.
If I want to use a laser based defense for a habitable planet, I therefore build orbital defense bases. They can be rather small and thus cheap, so I can build a whole bunch of them (usually split between a PD base and an offensive beam base)
Something like this:
Trafalgar class Orbital Weapon Platform 3,500 tons 105 Crew 647.8 BP TCS 70 TH 0 EM 420
1 km/s Armour 4-20 Shields 14-400 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 20.46
Maint Life 1.55 Years MSP 116 AFR 98% IFR 1.4% 1YR 55 5YR 825 Max Repair 154 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 125
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range N/A
Vickers Type Gamma/1.5 Electromagnetic Shield (7) Total Fuel Cost 84 Litres per hour (2,016 per day)
Quad Elswick 4" NUV Laser Cannon Mk. 76 Turret (1x4) Range 90,000km TS: 16000 km/s Power 12-12 RM 3 ROF 5 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
Pollen Fire Control System 64-16000 (1) Max Range: 128,000 km TS: 16000 km/s 92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Brown-Curtiss Type 4.5 GCF-Reactor (3) Total Power Output 13.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Britisch Aerospace Company Sylver VLS (5) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
High Angel Control System 9.6/1 (1) Range 9.6m km Resolution 1
British Aerospace Starflash IV (125) Speed: 38,400 km/s End: 1.9m Range: 4.4m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 243/146/73
Barr & Strout Type 6.4/1 Radar System (1) GPS 80 Range 6.4m km Resolution 1
If you want a pure beam defense base, replace the launchers and magazines with another turret, or if you want an anti-ship beam base, replace all weapons with larger lasers.
This base uses more advanced technology, but the concepts stays the same.
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I was mainly looking into how the future outlook might be.
For now a 12cm cannon can be a good middle ground at this tech level. When you advance further you might want to build more dedicated weapon systems. The 10cm cannon is very good as point defence because it is 25% lighter and require 25% less power. You can also miniaturize it and get good results from it later on. But it will only be a dedicated short range PD system. The 12cm laser does not have good enough range to fire more than once at most inbound missiles, even low tech ones.
Heavier lasers will require very expensive beam fire-controls if placed in fast turrets and also be very expensive with advanced capacitors and power generators if used as dedicated PD. Therefore most restrict heavier lasers to lower tracking speeds and often to the default speed.
I agree that 1250km/s is most likely too slow to hit most ships you are likely to encounter with higher technology, they hit your own ships just fine. I usually go with a mix of x2 and standard depending on known enemy speeds. If I have no clue about an enemy I just go with a speed that could hit my own ships. I can't really prepare for something my society have difficulty even to imagine. ;)
I generally put my 15cm lasers in x2 times my tracking speed technology so they can multi-task as PD and ship killers, including faster FAC crafts and not just standard warships.
My advice was more of a natural development into the future, I see no direct reason to change the design that you presented above. Other might find some smart things in which to improve on it (with regard to the technology at hand), but to me it seems just fine for what it is designed to do.
I agree that you should perhaps not include a boat bay into this design, not in the way you intend to use it. I would even go so far as to classify the ship as a Monitor and not a Cruiser. Not that this matter, it just feels more like the equivalent of a Monitor than a Cruiser. ;)
Just my bad experience of how it generally goes. :)
Thank you! :) And yes, you are right. Monitor seems appropriate now.
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Just to expand on laser sizes.
As far as I can tell, you have researched capacitor 2.
Once you reach cap-3, a 10cm laser will fire every 5 second, doubling the rate of fire in comparison to your 12cm, making it much more efficient in an anti-missile role.
At the same time, the 15cm laser (same mass as the 12cm laser) also reaches a ROF of 10 like your 12cm one, while having better range and dealing more damage.
You will need to research cap-4 to get the 12cm to shoot every 5 seconds and thus getting an advantage in close range combat.
As for the speed of your ship:
If you use it for warp point defense, I agree with Jorgen, that it is all right, given your technology.
If you intend to use it in a mobile defense (like as a defense fleet patroling between Earth and Mars, for example), it will die horribly, however, without ever fireing a single shot at the enemy. Every meeting engagement in deep space with an enemy that has weapons of longer range, that enemy is bound to be staying out of your range while picking your cruiser apart.
Note on laser PDCs and atmosphere:
Yes, lasers in PDCs are pretty much useless in those circumstances.
If I want to use a laser based defense for a habitable planet, I therefore build orbital defense bases. They can be rather small and thus cheap, so I can build a whole bunch of them (usually split between a PD base and an offensive beam base)
Something like this:
If you want a pure beam defense base, replace the launchers and magazines with another turret, or if you want an anti-ship beam base, replace all weapons with larger lasers.
This base uses more advanced technology, but the concepts stays the same.
Thank you, I thought it might have been because of the energy output :)
And regarding the stations - I had exactly the same idea. I will use the turrets to create mounted satellite orbital platforms. Just a question though - say they have a size of 2000 tons and speed of 1km/s. If I create a ship that has boat bay of appropriate size (2000 tons), would I be able to load them in after constructing them on Earth it and deploy them at colony sites?
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Yes it is possible to load any ship into a hangar if it fits. In your case a "ship" with 1km/s movement.
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Turrets are quite heavy. Considering the weight there you may want to swap them for a larger number of lasers and power plants, I don't usually find much use for turrets on frontline combat ships.
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Turrets are quite heavy. Considering the weight there you may want to swap them for a larger number of lasers and power plants, I don't usually find much use for turrets on frontline combat ships.
That depends on what you intend to use them for. Let's say that your basic tracking speed is 2000km/s and the main combatant you fight against move at 4000km/s then a turret will be more efficient than a cannon at the basic 2000km/s. The turret in this instance is about 20% larger than the actual cannon and you obviously need a fire-control able to handle the speed as well.
In this case you get a cannon that hit at 100% efficiency against 50% efficiency for about 25% increase in cost and size. So, in general there are always tradeoffs and benefits in whatever way you go.
Personally, if the slowest speed of my enemy was 5000km/s I would try and match at least that speed with my laser cannons, anything less and I'm just wasting resources.
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So I played today and designed the final shape of the ship. It was re-classed, renamed and edited and this is what we have now:
Monitor class Monitor 8,050 tons 235 Crew 1052.5125 BP TCS 161 TH 47 EM 0
583 km/s Armour 5-35 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 26 PPV 43.52
Maint Life 4.35 Years MSP 490 AFR 86% IFR 1.2% 1YR 42 5YR 627 Max Repair 115 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Spare Berths 0
Military Engine Class I "Comet" (3) Power 31.25 Fuel Use 165.96% Signature 15.625 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres Range 10.1 billion km (200 days at full power)
Quad 12cm C2 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x4) Range 120,000km TS: 8000 km/s Power 16-8 RM 3 ROF 10 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S16 96-8000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 8000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
PWR 4000/100tons (4) Total Power Output 16 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Short Range Sensors Mk. I - 60/5 (1) GPS 60 Range 3.0m km Resolution 1
Medium Range Sensor - 60/5 (1) GPS 2400 Range 19.0m km Resolution 40
Thermal Sensor Array Basic Mk. I (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Array Basic Mk. I (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I think I fixed almost every thing I didn't like. The armor is lighter, ship is faster, has better range, more engineering supplies, correct class. But most of all the tracking system was switched from S16 96-5000 to S16 96-8000 which gives us 3000 km/s of tracking speed more!
Two ships are already in operation, Monitor and Vengeance with two more being build. Any more comments to this design?
For future I intend on switching the size of the turrets to smaller type of lasers + adding long range beams/torpedoes, adding a small boat bay for a pinnacle and adding long range sensors.
Thanks again for all the tips! :)
And btw - I designed the scout ship from scratch and this is what it has:
Raptor - Copy class Corvette 4,600 tons 122 Crew 568.3875 BP TCS 92 TH 78 EM 0
1695 km/s Armour 2-24 Shields 0-0 Sensors 30/30/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 5.6
Maint Life 1.06 Years MSP 77 AFR 169% IFR 2.4% 1YR 68 5YR 1023 Max Repair 115 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 11 months Spare Berths 1
Military Engine Class I "Comet" (5) Power 31.25 Fuel Use 165.96% Signature 15.625 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 11.8 billion km (80 days at full power)
Single 12cm C2 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x1) Range 120,000km TS: 8000 km/s Power 4-2 RM 3 ROF 10 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S16 96-8000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 8000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
PWR 4000/100tons (1) Total Power Output 4 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Short Range Sensors Mk. I - 60/5 (1) GPS 60 Range 3.0m km Resolution 1
Military Thermal Signal Array TH6-30 (1) Sensitivity 30 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 30m km
Military Electromagnetic Detection Array EM6-30 (1) Sensitivity 30 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 30m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Any comments on that one will be much appreciated too!
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My fleets 1.5m/km tracking, 4.2bil km fuel range scout fighter
Tribal - Scout class Fighter 250 tons 2 Crew 43.5 BP TCS 5 TH 6 EM 0
1200 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 34.36 Years MSP 54 AFR 1% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 1 Max Repair 25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 8
6.25x1.25 Fighter Drive V1.1.1 (1) Power 6.25 Fuel Use 172.94% Signature 6.25 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 4.2 billion km (40 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 125 (1) GPS 25 Range 1.5m km MCR 163k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
If you dont have access to tiny parts yet, heres a basic longevity fighter design
Tribal - Recon class Fighter 495 tons 13 Crew 83.5 BP TCS 9.9 TH 10 EM 0
1010 km/s Armour 1-5 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 34.49 Years MSP 105 AFR 1% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 3 Max Repair 30 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 300 months Spare Berths 0
Cyclon 5 v1.1.1 (2) Power 5 Fuel Use 99% Signature 5 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 18.4 billion km (210 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1) GPS 30 Range 1.8m km MCR 196k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
2x5 EP Engines
1xcrew
1xfuel
1xengineering
1x 150 ton scanner to fill in the 500 heavy fighter frame it can go to pluto and back easy and with tanker support it can go anywhere intra system
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dont worry about making scout ships have defensive capabilities, the best defense for scouting vessels is far sight mixed with high speeds. Aim for cheaper replacements and field larger swarms. , slap on the smallest most efficient engines possible and revolve your design around how far you want your scanner to reach. Keep in mind the BP difference 43/83 to your 568. Mind the fuel differences, the 250 frame has less then half your range but I consume 10k liters to your 500k. Also with a boat bay attachment you can extend the range exponentially.
Also another tip would be to construct the largest resolution 1 scanner possible and fit it on a hull, and slap the largest commercial engine on it twice with fuel for range into hundreds of billions, Knowing you possess the largest scanner your race can possess on at least a frame is pretty reassuring, with sensor drones as throwaway range extenders to boot.
Aegis class Intelligence Ship 7,850 tons 200 Crew 1064.25 BP TCS 157 TH 125 EM 0
796 km/s Armour 1-35 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 0
Maint Life 5.73 Years MSP 1186 AFR 35% IFR 0.5% 1YR 61 5YR 917 Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 300 months Spare Berths 0
Commercial Drive 125 v50.25.25 (1) Power 125 Fuel Use 8.84% Signature 125 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 103.7 billion km (1508 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR30-R1 (1) GPS 500 Range 30.0m km MCR 3.3m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
For the price of 2x the BP cost I have a scanner thats 10x as powerful as your scout vessel's. Its cheaper to build designs to radar up your territory in overlapping networks then to custom tailor ships to serve in multiple roles with any effectiveness. Granted I always build larger ships with backup redundants just in case but their cheap proximity scanners compared to these sector scanners. This way your killing machines can pack every ton with fight.
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I have never used full size sensors, basically because the research cost is quite significant. But I imagine they gave their uses.
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dont worry about making scout ships have defensive capabilities, the best defense for scouting vessels is far sight mixed with high speeds. Aim for cheaper replacements and field larger swarms. , slap on the smallest most efficient engines possible and revolve your design around how far you want your scanner to reach. Keep in mind the BP difference 43/83 to your 568. Mind the fuel differences, the 250 frame has less then half your range but I consume 10k liters to your 500k. Also with a boat bay attachment you can extend the range exponentially.
Also another tip would be to construct the largest resolution 1 scanner possible and fit it on a hull, and slap the largest commercial engine on it twice with fuel for range into hundreds of billions, Knowing you possess the largest scanner your race can possess on at least a frame is pretty reassuring, with sensor drones as throwaway range extenders to boot.
Aegis class Intelligence Ship 7,850 tons 200 Crew 1064.25 BP TCS 157 TH 125 EM 0
796 km/s Armour 1-35 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 0
Maint Life 5.73 Years MSP 1186 AFR 35% IFR 0.5% 1YR 61 5YR 917 Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 300 months Spare Berths 0
Commercial Drive 125 v50.25.25 (1) Power 125 Fuel Use 8.84% Signature 125 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 103.7 billion km (1508 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR30-R1 (1) GPS 500 Range 30.0m km MCR 3.3m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
For the price of 2x the BP cost I have a scanner thats 10x as powerful as your scout vessel's. Its cheaper to build designs to radar up your territory in overlapping networks then to custom tailor ships to serve in multiple roles with any effectiveness. Granted I always build larger ships with backup redundants just in case but their cheap proximity scanners compared to these sector scanners. This way your killing machines can pack every ton with fight.
Thank you for the comment! :)
It is an interesting comparison to say the least. Rarely you see fighter/large sensor and a multi-purpose scout ship next to each other.
The reason behind the larger Raptor that I use (I have 3 Raptor II's now in service) was that I intended for them to be at least able to do some minimal point defence and make it easier for myself to increase their capabilities in the future (that future is basically coming in the next two years where Raptor III will enter service with three more ships of it's kind. These will have:
- improved military engine (better efficiency and less signature) which will in effect give them higher speed - this is optional as I have a new line of engines coming soon afterwards so maybe I'll withhold that until later (Raptor IIIe)
- new line of active sensor that will give them better range
- new twin turret (as opposed to single turret now] with both higher fire rate and targeting speed. We should get to 12 000 km/s easily, I will also get a new targeting sensor on
Same way the Monitor will be enhanced - better quad turrets, higher targeting speed, better engines and possibly even more fuel to extend their range. Sensor overhaul might wait.
The logic I am following here is to use a type of ship that will continually be upgraded and improved to adapt to current situation. If such thing is no longer possible there will be a new type of ship created to deal with it. I.e. for almost five decade's now I use Lilian class survey ships. They went from a conventional rocket ships to nuclear, their geosurvey sensors were improved, later they got more fuel, more efficient engines, gravitational sensors, EM and TH sensors and now I am preparing the project for Lilian IV class survey craft (they will carry shuttles and I intend to further increase their capabilities in the area of survey and independent travel).
On the other hand I can easily see your logic behind your design. Shuttles are dirt cheap and can reach as far as 18.4 billion (!!!) km. I could also increase that by more efficient engines and it would serve me well as well. And as for Aegis design, I actually consider making this one down the line. Though as was said the cost for the sensor must be incredible and I would say that size 1 is an overkill. On this range (maximum) even a 200 would be good enough to pick anything of interest at a reasonable range.
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I havent quite figured out the sensors inefficiency ratio. Everything in this game gets better with stacking until you reach that magic point when mass/power ratio gives you less and less returns per increase. A sensor built around that would be the smallest, most powerful, scanner according to effectiveness/efficiency in relation to mass/power. For example you could drop from a 50hs to a 30hs and only loose 100m km of scanning range for a several thousand ton drop. Your scanning range would be 500m km instead of 600m km (using max resolution ranges as a basis), shaving off a ton of space yet keeping overall losses minimal.
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I havent quite figured out the sensors inefficiency ratio. Everything in this game gets better with stacking until you reach that magic point when mass/power ratio gives you less and less returns per increase. A sensor built around that would be the smallest, most powerful, scanner according to effectiveness/efficiency in relation to mass/power. For example you could drop from a 50hs to a 30hs and only loose 100m km of scanning range for a several thousand ton drop. Your scanning range would be 500m km instead of 600m km (using max resolution ranges as a basis), shaving off a ton of space yet keeping overall losses minimal.
Well the problem is elsewhere IMO. They have the resolution that they focus on (1, 50, 5000 etc.) that you chose. This sets what they are balanced to take. Obviously the sensor 1 has shorter range than sensor 5000 on the same size of the sensor. But then they are modified by the actual size of what they looks for. IF it's bigger the range increases, if it's smaller the range sharply decreases.
So i.e. a sensor with resolution 1 will pick a size 1 object (say a missile) on the range of 3 million km. It will also detect any bigger ship on an increased range, say object of a resolution 40 at 8 milion km no problem (just an educated ass-pull).
On the other hand a resolution 40 will pick resolution 40 anywhere near 19 milion km's but it will only pick the size 1 say 600k km away.
So in effect the number only tells you about the one resolution you have but it picks larger and smaller objects as well. And I have hard time imagining why I would need to see missiles so god damn far away when increasing the resolution to say 10x wouldn't really hurt my missile interception capabilities but would also give me a lot of increased range for everything bigger.
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If I might interject, actually the range listed for an active sensor is literally the maximum range it will detect anything equal to or larger than its resolution, but anything smaller is detected at significantly decreasing range as size drops. Passive sensors however do work that way, a sensor that can detect a 1000 thermal contact at 30 million kilometers will detect a 2000 thermal at a higher range. I can think of 2 reasons you might want a seriously long range missile sensor, 1) longer interception time, only useful if your anti missiles are equally long ranged, and 2) to give time for anti missile pickets to redeploy to a different bearing from vulnerable task group members, not particularly useful as most commanders will leave antimissile escorts in the same location as their capital assets, as moving them further from the center of the fleet does increase their interception range, but decreases the number of ships that can actually reach each salvo in a few particular locations. Still I imagine any admiral would prefer as much warning as possible before contact with enemy missiles. Oh, also it would be useful for sweeping minefields.
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If I might interject, actually the range listed for an active sensor is literally the maximum range it will detect anything equal to or larger than its resolution, but anything smaller is detected at significantly decreasing range as size drops.
This is new to me. So the max range is maximum range even for a bigger object?
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Well this us what the wiki says : "Active sensors consist of grav pulse sensors and allow a ship to detect other ships or missiles equal to or above it's stated resolution size within it's stated range. " There is an excellent comparison of different sensors on the wiki "http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Active_Sensor_Design (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Active_Sensor_Design), you see how the detection range becomes a flat line at its max range no matter the size of the contact.
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I have a question in regards to scanning ranges and their relationship to this tracking missile bonus I see. Does this tracking speed modifier apply to the ship in questions active scanner or does it receive tracking bonus's from a Command Ships Sensor Array, which can see alot further.
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The missile tracking bonus starts incrementing when a missile is detected, no matter the friendly tracking source.
It's not a speed modifier though. It's an offset to any to hit penalty incurred if you're beam fire controls tracking speed is lower than the speed of the missile you're attempting to intercept. If memory serves, it increments at 2% per 5 second cycle starting with the first cycle after initial detection.
And MarcAFK is quite correct about the max range of an active sensor. The designed size and resolution determines maximum range for the set resolution and larger. If the target is smaller then the detection range drops.
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And MarcAFK is quite correct about the max range of an active sensor. The designed size and resolution determines maximum range for the set resolution and larger. If the target is smaller then the detection range drops.
Awesome, thank you for the information! :)
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The missile tracking bonus starts incrementing when a missile is detected, no matter the friendly tracking source.
It's not a speed modifier though. It's an offset to any to hit penalty incurred if you're beam fire controls tracking speed is lower than the speed of the missile you're attempting to intercept. If memory serves, it increments at 2% per 5 second cycle starting with the first cycle after initial detection.
And MarcAFK is quite correct about the max range of an active sensor. The designed size and resolution determines maximum range for the set resolution and larger. If the target is smaller then the detection range drops.
I just would like to point out that the "missile tracking bonus" does actually not work as intended. I have tested this about half a dozen times across the few latest versions of the game including 6.30. Unless I'm proven wrong that is my findings.
So don't build a big res 1 sensor for that purpose for the time being.
I would not build any sensor bigger that I actually need to get a lock on something. I personally like small scouts to paint my targets than one giant sensor ship that just is a target. My capital ship just keep low to medium range high/low res sensors as backup. This reserve RP for more pressing issues such as more advances sensor technology and also make upgrading my sensor equipment much cheaper.