Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Borealis4x on May 08, 2016, 05:17:58 PM
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So this is my first attempt at a ship of the line. I guess you could say its a bit big but I start out with 6 billion population so I think I can handle it.
Bejing class Cruiser 30,000 tons 567 Crew 10470 BP TCS 600 TH 576 EM 90
4000 km/s Armour 40-86 Shields 3-360 Sensors 22/36/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 82
Maint Life 0.09 Years MSP 654 AFR 2400% IFR 33.3% 1YR 7309 5YR 109635 Max Repair 1008 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 366
Lockheed-Martin 600 EP Internal Fusion Drive (4) Power 600 Fuel Use 110.23% Signature 144 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres Range 10.9 billion km (31 days at full power)
General Electric Epsilon R360/360 Shields (1) Total Fuel Cost 15 Litres per hour (360 per day)
Saeder-Krupp CIWS-200 (12x8) Range 1000 km TS: 20000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Saeder-Krupp 40cm Railgun V6/C8 (6x4) Range 384,000km TS: 5000 km/s Power 36-8 RM 6 ROF 25 12 12 12 12 12 12 10 9 8 7
CACI Systems Fire Control S08 192-20000 H40 (1) Max Range: 384,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Ibsen International Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (1) Total Power Output 75 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Bonus points if you can tell what game I am referencing.
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It is a good first try, but here are some pointers to optimize this design further:
Not enough dakka. You want 1 gun per 2k tons. At least, that's how I like to think of it as a general guideline.
Your ship is too big, because it has too much armor. It's maintenance life is too low, it will break down in less than a month and explode. No, literally, the moment this ship leaves dry-dock, it will start exploding. You see that IFR 33.3%? That means there's a one in three chance that something on board will fail, every 5 days.
It is too slow, and it's range is too low. For an internal fusion drive, you really want better than 4k km/s, especially because you are using beam fire weapons. You want 10k/s AT LEAST. If you cannot close the distance, you are not in the game.
Don't use 50% CIWS on ships of the line. You want 100%.
You do not need magazines for beam weapons, unless you plan for this ship to be a collier, in which case 366 is not enough.
Bottom line is, drop the armor, and your stats should line up neatly. If you can get this ship below 12k tonnage, you will have a mighty fast, durable, and powerful ship. Those 6 40cm railguns are going to quite literally one shot anything anyone can throw at you- but only if you manage to get the speed up to around 12k. If you get it up to 20k, you can say goodbye to missiles hitting you, and you can even drop your CIWS down to 4 instead of 12.
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I guess you could say the Bejing was... Made in China 8)
Anyways, what tonnage would you recommend for frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships and such? I was planning to make them each be 30,000 tons larger than their junior class but I guess that's far too large...
And do you have any critiques on the components I made? I understand many people make dedicated fire control/sensor boats but I didn't want to have my fleet turn blind just cause one lightly defended ship got got.
Also, I intended for the ship to also have anti-capital missiles. Do I still need the magazines?
Finally, what do you think of adding in the cannonades? I just like the idea of having close-in plasma cannon batteries built into the hull Royal Navy style.
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I don't like Carronades, and your components are fine. The railgun and capacitor are matched fairly well. It's also not worth it to have only one shield.
Size is up to you. As long as you can make the speed guidelines stick, it doesn't matter if you have a 2k ton ships, or a 200k ton ship. If it moves at 7k, at mid level techs, Internal Confinement and up, it's good enough. For missile ships at least.
If you are gonna add missiles, your size is gonna bloat even more. It's railguns or missiles, pick one. Otherwise the role of your ship will be confused.
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Very slow for that level of engine tech.
Range is short.
Need alot more maintenance life.
One shield is kind of pointless.
Armor is a bit ridiculous, but if a slow, ponderous tank is your goal, k.
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I like having;
Frigates: 20,000 to 40,000
Destroyers: 50,000 to 70,000
Cruisers: 100,000 to 150,000
Battlecruisers/Battleships/Carriers: 200,000 to 300,000
Special case: really big.
Now for the Beijing. Way to much armor. If you still want an armor ball, drop it to 18 to 24 layers. Shields work in bulk, the more you add the exponentially greater the affect. Few more engines to bring up speed, and more fuel to power (redundant tanks as well). At least double the engineering space. CIWS is really good, but its also wise to add a small laser turret or two for anti-fighter work (unless you have another design to do that). I can tell that you didn't copy and paste the whole design because I can't see your sensors to tell you what to change there.
Yes, you still need magazines if you are adding missile launchers. Carronades are a niche weapon best avoided until they get an overhaul in a future version. Instead, maybe either a meson or HPM.
@Thanatos CIWS systems are always 50%. I think you are confusing it with a gauss cannon (even though they are technically the same thing). And reduced size launchers actually work really well without bloating ships too much. And 1 gun per 2k tons? Depends on the doctrine, but that is pretty weak compared to most peoples' choice. Unless you mean 1 beam per 2k, with tons of missile launchers as well.
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Christ, your more extreme than I am, I was going to make cruisers 30,000 tons...
You must have a lot of patients to keep constantly upgrading those shipyards, though. Is there a way to upgrade them more thant 10,000 tons at a time or to at least que them up? I would use the continuous upgrade thing but I hate those non-rounded numbers.
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Just leave it on auto-expand for a while and when you want to stop use SM to round it to whatever nice number is closest.
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@83athom
Yeah, my bad, I just realized now just because I rename gauss cannon turrets to CIWS, instead of creating actual.. you know.. CIWS, don't mean that this is what was going on in that design.
As for 1 gun per 2k, I see nothing wrong with it. If you want to go fast, at low tech levels, if you add too many guns, you'll have to add another engine, and then more fuel, and then oh look, you can fit another gun, damn, need another engine, more fuel again, GUUUUUUUNSSS.
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As others have already pointed out the speed is very low for this ship, but to go further and offer reasons. For your biggest ships you generally go with 50HS engines for the efficiency savings they give. However this ship is armed with beam weapons only, in addition the weapons are of a fixed format (not turreted), therefore they become limited in tracking by the ship speed. As such for all fixed beam weapons you need to think about having the maximum possible speed you can squeeze for two reasons.
1. It offers you the greatest amount of weapon tracking possible.
2. These ships will be getting up close and so need to offer up as fast a target as possible to reduce hits.
I found for my own campaign working with 44HS & 47HS engines with something like 1.5/1.75/2 as the engine output modifier gives me something that both shifts fast and yet doesn't do away with all of the possible efficiency savings. If you are using support fleets and have plenty of fuel depots layed out then you could get away with upping the range to around 30bkm.
Finally ditch half of that armour, it is just making your ship too slow and short ranged, you could use maybe 25% of that mass to add more weapon systems instead. At 40 levels of armour you will happily be able to soak up massive amounts of damage, but sadly you can fight back very well and so will lose simply down to attrition. Much better to get in fast and hit hard while taking a few hits than try to turn it into a slugging match. Remember you are still in danger of taking shock damage from larger missiles and since your speed makes them almost 100% then it becomes a matter of not if but when will you take shock damage that takes our your reactor or tracking system.
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Things that strike me:
1) Speed. As others have said, the ship is rather slow for something that needs to get in their face to do something. It can defend missile ships, but it won't bring the fight to an enemy of comparable tech level.
2) Populsion plant details. If I read it correctly, you use 4x20Hs engines at 1.5 power multiplier engines and 40HS of fuel. That's very slightly on the side of wasting performance for using too much fuel (theoretical ideal is 40% of your engine tonnage, for a fixed engine size). In practice you would err on the side of "bigger and less stressed engines, less fuel" because it keeps running costs down. So you could make some minor adjustments to keep your propulsion plant as compact as possible with some redundancy (4 engines seems a nice number), or go with something bigger and less stressed. At that tech and size, you could build ships 3 times as fast that are less thirsty.
3) Maintenance life. If you haven't disabled this aspect of the game, it will spontaneously explode in an embarrasing manner. Even if this is the case, you probably want the ability to repair battle damage despite heavy armour - that doesn't protect against shock damage or meson weapons. Damaged systems cost twice as much to repair than maintenance failures, so you may want more than twice your Max Repair value in MSP.
4) Passive defences. The armour seems excessive, half of what you have is still on the heavy side. I don't actually dislike the single shield. Sure it doesn't do much, but it also doesn't cost much and is enough make sure the first hit doesn't deal shock damage.
4) Active defences. CIWS protects the ship if targeted, but not others in the same location. As such, it makes sense on ships meant to operate alone, and possibly sensor vessels (which are high-priority targets). It doesn't seem like these would apply.
Regular Gauss turrets would seem more appropriate. Possibly small railguns depending on yor priorities (much less accurate against missiles on slow ships, but cheaper, stronger offensively, and requires less sophisticated fire controls).
5) Offensive weapons. Big, slow-firing railguns are not the most efficient weapons... but if that's what you want to use, you got the details right there. Size, velocity, capacitor, fire control - it's a consistent and professional-looking package. Well done.
Major probleems: One large reactor that will leave you toothless if it gets taken out, and there's the chance of a nice big explosion to boot. One fire control as another single point of failure... if you switch your point defence over to regular Gauss weapons (which require their own fire controls matched to their speed), that problem solves itself.
6) Sensors. You seem to have some, but I don't seem any.
7) Magazines, but nothing you would need them for.
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Can railguns be turreted? I was under the impression they couldn't be, but if they can then I suppose I should do that. What I would really like to do though is make them spinal mounted. 80cm railguns... mmmmmmm....
As for regular gausse cannons being better than CIWIS, why is this the case and how do I make them? How do I make effective turrets (haven't done that yet) and how do I know if I have enough point defense?
I would still really like to put at least one big ship-killing missile on this thing, just as a last resort. I remember how in Halo even the basic frigates would have a nuclear warhead they would use as a last resort.
I guess thats sort of a main theme of my confusion, I just don't know how much of something I need for a ship at 30,000 tons whether it be shields, guns, armor, or sensors.
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They can't be turreted, but 10cm railguns can still be adequate point defence through sheer volume, accuracy be damned.
You have enough Gauss tech that those are usually better on slow ships, but not always. If a known enemy likes to throw many simultaneous small salvos at you, fielding enough fast-tracking fire controls for Gauss turrets to engage them all can become impractical.
CIWS are half-size twin Gauss turrets that automatically engage missiles that target the ship, at point blank range.
They don't require external sensors or fire controls, don't count as military components, and work reliably even after a jump point transit (which scrambles your sensors for some time, meaning your regular weapons won't fire).
On the other hand, they can't be used offensively and can't protect other ships. They are unsuited for your design because
a) if I understood you correctly, they aren't intend to act alone. If you have 10 ships with CIWSs and a missile attack concentrates on one of them, 90% of your point defence equipment will do nothing.
b) your ships will fight at beam range. While closing to Gauss range may not be your original plan, having additional firepower in a knife fight may come in useful.
How much point defence depends on what you expect to face and how much you can tank. Being able to intercept 10 salvos of 10 missiles traveling at 40k is quite if you don't plan to take much damage... 5 of your ships would be able to do that, but in their current incarnation only if the enemy split their fire equally.
Your original design has so much armour that the enemy may run out of missiles before you run out of armour even if you do nothing... but shock damage may still cripple your ships, you don't want to enter beam range already worn down, and you don't want to have to take damage even when you outmatch the enemy.
In the component design window, there's a button for Turret Design at the bottom. Highest fire control speed is 4x your base BeamFireControlSpeed tech, so try to make your turrets match that (more than 40-60k is usually excessive, but that's fairly advanced tech). TurretTrackingSpeed tech isn't actually THAT important and can trail fire control speed a little... it just makes your turrets bulkier.
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A honking big last-resort missile dealing north of 100 damage is't a common choice, but should be quite practical. Without the numbers to overwhelm point defence, you may want to fire it from close enough range that it hits in the same 5s increment it's fired - no time to be tracked and engaged. You probably want them in box launchers, because reload rate would be terrible anyway.
If you want to use it at range, you probably want to armour it or design it as a multi-stage missile that deploys its own chaff (size-1 missile stages that travel at the same or slightly faster speed to keep point defence busy).
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You will also need 30000T maint. facility max ship size for that cruiser.
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Do you need an active sensor if you have a missile fire control? How do these two thing operate differently? Do you want your missile fire control to have a higher resoultuion/shorter range than your active senor?
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You need both an active sensor lock and a missile fire control lock on the target, so you may want to match the systems for a given range and resolution.
There is one key difference though: The firing ship needs to have the fire control, while any ship can paint the target with an active search sensor. Passive sensors (EM, thermal) do not count for this.
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Thanks for the advise so far. I really wish there was a way to just instantly test out designs and fight enemies outside all the setup of a normal game.
So what are the speeds you should shoot for on commercial and military ships at each engine tier?
Is there ever a point at using smaller lasers/railguns/lower-yield warheads for smaller ships? When does quantity of guns outweigh quality?
How do you judge you have enough of, well, anything? In particular shields, point defense, fuel and main weapons.
How long should I stock up my ship for? I have 120 months here, and I make it 120 months for my commercial ships, but I'm guessing anything bar a deep scout will need that much for military missions.
I want to give all my line ships frigate and up boat bays or small boat bays. What exactly do they do and what can I put in them?
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Speeds: Not fixed for me. Most of my commercial ships use 0.3 power engines, freighters possibly even less. Survey ships won't be that slow because engines may take above 50% of their mass.
Military can be any speed really. At Magneto-Plasma I've fielded some 2.5k ships (extreme penny pinching beam fleet, mostly base-tech railguns for missile defence) and some 12k ships (armed with particle beams or long-range lasers, hoping to control the range to enemy beam ships and pick them offunopposed).
There are good reasons to use small guns, but weapon size does not necessarily scale with ships.
Usually I prefer rate of fire over damage per shot. Big ships may also be expected to handle missiles when deployed alone, this favours standardising on something large enough to be effective at our main combat range but small enough to be effective area defence.
If we want big guns and devastating single salvos over continuous output, the logical extreme is strapping a huge spinal laser to an engine, which is still a fairly small ship.
You have enough when you have enough to make your doctrine work. You can build a combat ship with a year deployment time and fuel for 50b km (reasonable if you don't want to depend too heavily on the logistics train). Or you could build a similarly-equipped ship with a deployment time of 3 days and matching endurance, and put it in a carrier. If you intend to destroy your enemies with missiles before they can even see you (extreme range missiles, or very small missile fighters that you hope they won't have the right sensors for), you don't need any defences. If you rely exclusively on beams, you need either the speed to force an engagement or enough defenses to deal with repeated missile attacks even if your enemies get to retreat and reload until they run out of ordnance... little room for half measures. If you build a mixed fleet, what role do your missiles play? Major source of damage, one big strike before your beam ships clean up, or just an ace in the hole when things don't plan out?
Aurora is very open-ended, many things are possible and some even work.
10 years of deployment/maintenance life is quite a bit. Fine for survey ships. For combat ships, it depends on how you approach the logistics side.
If your ships get periodic overhauls or are intended to be refitted eventually, it's excessive. 6-12 months will usually do, you may want a little more leeway.
I will happily build armed vessels with 10+ years of maintenance life, but I probably intend to use them without overhauls until they're fit for scrapping.
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It seems like everyone has their own rules of thumb for ship speeds, so take my advice woth a grain of salt and go with whatever you think is best. In fact do that for most of the advice on these forums. Anyway, for warships, I take the current engine tech's power per HS value and multiply it by 375. That is the target speed for my warships, unless some other concern warrants increasing or decreasing speed.
For capacitor-driven guns, smaller guns probably fire faster. Same with smaller missile launchers based on launcher reload tech. More but smaller hits grind off armor, and once it's gone they pound the vulnerable parts of the ship. Bigger guns tend to shoot farther and hit harder, possibly ending the fight in one hit but taking longer to recover and take a second swing. For missiles, it's not the lower warhead, it's the smaller missile size that helps: more launchers in the same amount of space means more missiles in a volley, which can make it more likely that warheads will end up on their targets.
Enough fuel is when the ship has enough range, plus a little extra wiggle room. The ship needs to get from the last place it can refuel (a colony or a tanker) to the place where it does it's job (enemy fleet, enemy homeworld, survey points) and back again.
Ten years is a long deployment, but for a surveyor or for a picket ship that is meant to keep an eye on a jump point, it might be called for. If the ship is only meant to leave port when something needs killin', then I go with 9 months.
Boat bays and small boat bays are smaller hangars. If you don't know what you would put in them, then use the tonnage for something more useful. But if you're looking for ideas, you could have fighter-weight utility craft in them that scout around with active or passive sensors, or recover life pods, or scout through jump points before the mothership risks a transit. It's a neat creative space for designing specialist ships.
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Can someone post the basic beam ship tutorial that was lost when the forums moved and the wiki went down?
Also a somewhat unrelated question, is it safe to put conscripts on my gas/asteroid rigs, cargo haulers, construction ships and other government owned commercial ships? Also, can a single small tug with a single tractor beam pull a huge gas mining station itself? How much slower will it go?
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A ship's speed is determined by the followin formula:
Speed = (Total Engine Output / Class Size in HS) * 1000
For a tug and its tractored ship, use the total size in HS and the total engine output to determine their speed while conjoined. Only one tractor beam is needed, regardless of the towed ship's size.
I routinely use conscripts on my asteroid miners, Sorium miners, and jump gate constructors. As long as they never end up near anything hostile, it shouldn't make a difference. My geosurveyors and my jump tankers, though? They get trained crews.
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Alright, I have made another masterpiece.
Greece class Cruiser 30,000 tons 730 Crew 3964 BP TCS 600 TH 1620 EM 270
3600 km/s Armour 10-86 Shields 9-300 Sensors 18/24/0/0 Damage Control Rating 32 PPV 102
Maint Life 2.98 Years MSP 1858 AFR 320% IFR 4.4% 1YR 313 5YR 4699 Max Repair 173 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Spare Berths 1
Northrop-Grumann 240 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (9) Power 240 Fuel Use 49% Signature 180 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres Range 18.4 billion km (59 days at full power)
Evo Corporation Beta R300/252 Shields (6) Total Fuel Cost 63 Litres per hour (1,512 per day)
Intergrated Weapon Systems PLC Variable Gauss Cannon R3-100 (10x3) Range 30,000km TS: 3600 km/s Accuracy Modifier 100% RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Saeder-Krupp 20cm Railgun V3/C3 (6x4) Range 120,000km TS: 3600 km/s Power 12-3 RM 3 ROF 20 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Raytheon Fire Control S08 96-12000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Shiawase Corporation Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.05 (3) Total Power Output 56.7 Armour 0 Exp 7%
Mitsuhama Computer Technologies Active Search Sensor MR64-R100 (1) GPS 8000 Range 64.0m km Resolution 100
Raytheon Thermal Sensor TH3-18 (1) Sensitivity 18 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 18m km
Raytheon EM Detection Sensor EM3-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I want to try and make a version that also has 2-4 big "frakk you" missile but I
a. Don't know what constitutes a "frakk you" missile
b. I don't know how to put missiles in my ship
c. I don't know how many missiles 1 magazine capacity can carry
d. I'm guessing if I want to launch 4 missiles at once I need 4 missile launchers, yes?
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Your fire control is off - 12k tracking speed while the weapons are limited by the ship at 3.6k.
It has more range than it strictly needs to, but that's justifiable... expensive, but improves accuracy particularly at long range.
If you wanted to turret your Gauss cannon, it'd probably be better to make a long-ranged 1x tracking speed fire control for anti-ship weapons and some fast-tracking short-ranged fire controls for your Gauss cannons.
The propulsion plant is good this time.
Maintenance life 5 times as long as the deployment time is peculiar. Not necessarily wrong, but you probably want the values closer.
Unturreted Gauss cannons are almost strictly inferior to 10cm railguns - 3 shots on 6HS vs. 4 shots on 3HS+power.
You have an adequate sensor to detect ships, but nothing to see missiles.
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a) Design a missile engine, don't forget to give the the highest available power multiplier. Then design the missile (button at the bottom of the design tech window). My guideline for a general purpose missile is 40% engine, 30% warhead, 20% agility, 10% fuel You may need almost no fuel if it's meant to be a point blank torpedo, that can go towards warhead.
b) Design a missile launcher. Put launcher, missile fire control and possibly magazine (if you want reloads, every launcher already fits 1 missile of its size) on ship. Specify loadout in the ordnance/fighters tab.
c) Depends on tech, between 15 and 20 MSP per HS. You don't need to worry about it, what you want is best done with box launchers. That's the last in the line of reduced-size launcher tech. These can only be reloaded in a hangar or at a colony, but take only 15% of the size of full-size launchers. If that's beyond your tech budget, use the smallest practical one.
d) Yes, another reason to go for reduced-size launchers.
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Damn, I thought gauss turrets were automatically turreted...
You talk about having two different types of fire control, one focusing on range for the rails and another on tracking speed for the gauss. Why not just make one big fire control system that allows the maximum range for the rails and maximum speed for the turrets?
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Turrets confuse me. How is this?
Damage Output 1x6 Rate of Fire: 5 seconds Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km Turret Size: 14.28 SPW: 7.14 Turret HTK: 4
Cost: 83 Crew: 23
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s
Materials Required: 11.4x Duranium 72x Vendarite
Development Cost for Project: 830RP
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Here is my frakk off missile.
Missile Size: 50 MSP (2.5 HS) Warhead: 100 Armour: 5 Manoeuvre Rating: 16
Speed: 1300 km/s Engine Endurance: 23.9 hours Range: 111.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 32.81
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 20.8% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 4.2% 10k km/s 2.1%
Materials Required: 26.25x Tritanium 6.56x Gallicite Fuel x25000
Development Cost for Project: 3281RP
I mean, it seems like its rather fast and long ranged, but then again I was told going 4km/h in a 30 ton warship was a snails pace...
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One quad-speed (default range) fire control and one quad-range fire control (default speed) is smaller and cheaper than one fire control with both, and gives you some redundancy in case of battle damage.
Each fire control can engage a single salvo. One huge fire control that has both range and tracking speed will perform well against one massive salvo, but against 10 salvos of 5 missiles each it will only shoot down 5 missiles even if your weapons are good for 20.
If you want multiple fire controls to handle multiple salvos, overengineering them for long range gets expensive.
If I bother with turrets, I usually set them to the maximum speed my fire control can handle (4x base, probably 12000km/s in your case).
Your missile will cause a lot of damage if it hits, but it's unlikely to hit anything because it is very slow. You probably want a higher power multiplier, which will cost you some range.
5 armour is a reasonable hedge. If you use it a range against lightly defended targets a 4-missile salvo will be as difficult to destroy as a 24-missile salvo, which isn't too bad.
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Think I'm going to actually build this.
Alexandria class Cruiser 30,000 tons 611 Crew 4176 BP TCS 600 TH 1440 EM 240
3200 km/s Armour 12-86 Shields 8-300 Sensors 32/32/0/0 Damage Control Rating 30 PPV 115.12
Maint Life 2.28 Years MSP 1740 AFR 360% IFR 5% 1YR 453 5YR 6800 Max Repair 262 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2
Magazine 200
Aegis Dynamics 320 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (6) Power 320 Fuel Use 48% Signature 240 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,700,000 Litres Range 21.3 billion km (76 days at full power)
Evo Corporation Gamma R300/384 Shields (4) Total Fuel Cost 64 Litres per hour (1,536 per day)
Twin Integrated Weapon Systems PLC Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (4x6) Range 30,000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Saeder-Krupp 20cm Railgun V3/C3 (4x4) Range 120,000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 12-3 RM 3 ROF 20 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Renraku Computer Systems Fire Control S02.5 128-5000 H70 (1) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 5000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Oshkosh Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.05 (3) Total Power Output 56.7 Armour 0 Exp 7%
Ares Macrotechnology Size 50 Box Launcher (4) Missile Size 50 Hangar Reload 375 minutes MF Reload 62.5 hours
Raytheon Missile Fire Control FC94-R70 (70%) (1) Range 94.9m km Resolution 70
Raytheon Active Search Sensor MR105-R70 (70%) (1) GPS 14700 Range 105.4m km Resolution 70
Rockwell Collins Thermal Sensor TH4-32 (70%) (1) Sensitivity 32 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 32m km
Rockwell Collins EM Detection Sensor EM4-32 (1) Sensitivity 32 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 32m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I'll try the duel targeting computer next time.
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Here is my frakk off missile.
Missile Size: 50 MSP (2.5 HS) Warhead: 100 Armour: 5 Manoeuvre Rating: 16
Speed: 1300 km/s Engine Endurance: 23.9 hours Range: 111.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 32.81
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 20.8% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 4.2% 10k km/s 2.1%
Materials Required: 26.25x Tritanium 6.56x Gallicite Fuel x25000
Development Cost for Project: 3281RP
I mean, it seems like its rather fast and long ranged, but then again I was told going 4km/h in a 30 ton warship was a snails pace...
Frankly, that missile is BAD. To large and to slow. That thing is going to show up on any missile sensor long before it is in range, which makes it easy lunch for AMMs. And as Iranon pointed out: Even if gets into range, it isn't going to hit anything.
If your target is going at 1k km/s (Thats a Freighter for me), 1 out of 5 missiles is going to hit. Early combat ships start at 3k km/s at least. and to add insult to injury: Those ships can simply outrun that missile. So it's literally only good to kill Space Stations without PD or severely crippled ships.
Suggestion:
-Bring the size down. The smallest missile detection range is up to Size 6. (You can see this when you design an Active search sensor with Resolution 1)
-Get the Speed up. you should aim for at least 15k km/s, but better 20k km/s.
-The missile control should be a bit oversized, to counter ECM.
And for the Alexandria:
-you need a Resolution 1 Active Search Sensor to pick up missiles. That Res 70 Sensor is only good for ships.
-8 Shield Strength is not going to save you from anything. You might as well save the weight and go with a pure Armour design. Proper shield strength starts around 150 points.
-Personally i wouldn't mix Beams and missiles at all, since missiles have no reason to be used close and personal, but that is personal doctrine.
-The Turrets and the Railguns need their own Fire Controls. One for all won't work.
-The one you have is good enough Tracking Speed wise for the Railgun, but you can also reduce the range on it to save space.
-The turrets need a Fire Control that matches their range and Tracking Speed. As their are for PD work, each turret getting its own Fire Control would be the best option imo.
-Overbuilding Range a bit is also an good idea, because of ECM again.
That's all i can think up right now. Or at least it's the most glaring issues.
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Frankly, that missile is BAD. To large and to slow. That thing is going to show up on any missile sensor long before it is in range, which makes it easy lunch for AMMs. And as Iranon pointed out: Even if gets into range, it isn't going to hit anything.
If your target is going at 1k km/s (Thats a Freighter for me), 1 out of 5 missiles is going to hit. Early combat ships start at 3k km/s at least. and to add insult to injury: Those ships can simply outrun that missile. So it's literally only good to kill Space Stations without PD or severely crippled ships.
Suggestion:
-Bring the size down. The smallest missile detection range is up to Size 6. (You can see this when you design an Active search sensor with Resolution 1)
-Get the Speed up. you should aim for at least 15k km/s, but better 20k km/s.
-The missile control should be a bit oversized, to counter ECM.
1) If he wants a big, last resort, "fy" missile, size his fine. It's not efficient, but that's up to personnal choice.
2) The speed IS waaaaaay to low. It cannot even keep up with your ship. Use the highest power multiplier. Also, I don't see what's inside, but generally you want a single engine per missile for efficiency purpose.
3) It's not true that the fire control should be longer than the range. If an enemy is moving away from you, your missiles will have to go further to overhaul and hit it. If an enemy is going at half the speed of your missile for exemple, your missile will have to travel twice the distance between your ships to hit it. So it make sense to have a missile ranging further than your sensor.
4) If your goal is a "frakk you" missile to use as last resort, you might want to shorten the range. Your ship is mostly an energy fighter, so will have to close to short range anyway. Less fuel means more speed and agility.
Also, does someone have an idea of why this missile has a 4% chance to hit targets going at 5k km/s, but 0% at 3k km/s?
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One step forward...
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I don't understand how targeting computer range is calculated. I made one that had 40,000km range times 4 so 160,000km. With my railgun velocity tech, my max sized railguns of 30cm outranged that by quite a bit, so I decided instead of invest more research in extremely expensive tech I would make a 20cm gun that had a range of exactly 160,000km. However, when I actually put it on a ship the computer says....
Alexandria class Cruiser 3,600 tons 182 Crew 780.8 BP TCS 72 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-20 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 56
Maint Life 1.43 Years MSP 136 AFR 103% IFR 1.4% 1YR 73 5YR 1099 Max Repair 105 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range N/A
Saeder-Krupp 20cm Railgun V4/C5 (8x4) Range 160,000km TS: 5000 km/s Power 12-5 RM 4 ROF 15 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Renraku Computer Systems 20 cm RG Fire Control S01 160-2500 H40 (1) Max Range: 320,000 km TS: 2500 km/s 97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
That's twice as far as the design window told me it would be. Now it looks like I wasted my time developing that 20cm railgun when I could have made a 30cm one and I also have an inaccurately named fire control. Wish I could rename it. But anyways, why did my range double? Why didn't it show this in the design window?
Also, I took peoples advise and halfed the size of my targeting computer and tracking speed ability but it seems that now I have a gun that can out track it, limiting its potential. Why wasn't the tracking speed shown when I was making the gun in the first place?
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Also, how do I know how many power plants I need? The power draw of my various components do not make themselves terribly clear.
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The range in the design windows is tha range at which your firecon got 50% accuracy. Accuracy correlate linearly with distance, so it'll have 100% accuracy at 0km, 50% accuracy at 160,000 km, 25% accuracy at 240,000km and so on. At 320,000km, it hits 0% accuracy, so that's the max range at which you can fire, since over that you won't ever hit anything.
There is a "power needed" field in the class design window. Otherwise, your weapons will be able to use as much power as your capacitor tech can provide. In this case, your railgun needs 12 power to fire, and can get 5 power each turn due to capacitor tech. That's why you can fire once every 3 5-seconds increment (ROF 15). It also mean that each railgun need 5 reactor power per 5 second increment.
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Okay, at this point I feel the only way I will make any progress is actually building something and getting into a fight. So here is the final model that I am definitely now building.
Alexandria class Cruiser 30,000 tons 737 Crew 5354.6 BP TCS 600 TH 1080 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 12-86 Shields 0-0 Sensors 44/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 28 PPV 192
Maint Life 2.08 Years MSP 2008 AFR 399% IFR 5.6% 1YR 621 5YR 9321 Max Repair 405 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 2 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 72
Mitsubishi-Honda Consortium 540 EP Ion Drive (4) Power 540 Fuel Use 115.74% Signature 270 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres Range 20.7 billion km (66 days at full power)
Twin Integrated Weapon Systems PLC Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (8x6) Range 30,000km TS: 16000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Saeder-Krupp 20cm Railgun V4/C4 (8x4) Range 160,000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 12-4 RM 4 ROF 15 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Renraku Computer Systems Point-Defense Fire Control S02 32-16000 H50 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 16000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Renraku Computer Systems 20cm RG Fire Control S02 128-4000 H50 (1) Max Range: 256,000 km TS: 4000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Oshkosh Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (1) Total Power Output 45 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Aegis Dynamics Size 6 Box Launcher (12) Missile Size 6 Hangar Reload 45 minutes MF Reload 7.5 hours
CACI International Missile Fire Control FC138-R100 (50%) (1) Range 138.6m km Resolution 100
CACI International Point Defense Search Sensor MR4-R1 (50%) (1) GPS 42 Range 4.6m km MCR 503k km Resolution 1
CACI International Active Search Sensor MR138-R100 (50%) (1) GPS 12600 Range 138.6m km Resolution 100
Rockwell Collins Thermal Sensor TH4-44 (50%) (1) Sensitivity 44 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 44m km
ECM 10
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
And the missile cruisers
Kyoto class Missile Cruiser 30,000 tons 781 Crew 5235 BP TCS 600 TH 1080 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 12-86 Shields 0-0 Sensors 44/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 36 PPV 185.2
Maint Life 3.14 Years MSP 2836 AFR 276% IFR 3.8% 1YR 434 5YR 6504 Max Repair 405 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 2 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 60
Mitsubishi-Honda Consortium 540 EP Ion Drive (4) Power 540 Fuel Use 115.74% Signature 270 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 4,000,000 Litres Range 20.7 billion km (66 days at full power)
Twin Integrated Weapon Systems PLC Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (8x6) Range 30,000km TS: 16000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Renraku Computer Systems Point-Defense Fire Control S02 32-16000 H50 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 16000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Oshkosh Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (1) Total Power Output 45 Armour 0 Exp 20%
Aegis Dynamics Size 10 Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 10 Rate of Fire 75
CACI International Missile Fire Control FC138-R100 (50%) (1) Range 138.6m km Resolution 100
CACI International Active Search Sensor MR138-R100 (50%) (1) GPS 12600 Range 138.6m km Resolution 100
CACI International Point Defense Search Sensor MR4-R1 (50%) (1) GPS 42 Range 4.6m km MCR 503k km Resolution 1
Rockwell Collins Thermal Sensor TH4-44 (50%) (1) Sensitivity 44 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 44m km
ECM 10
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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Your missile cruiser could use more magazine, one salvo of 10 missiles isn't exactly impressive. Your railgun cruiser look much better now, no glaring mistake that I can see.
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Your missile cruiser has less magazine space than the other one. Go big or go home!
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Does the missile detection radar have to only have as much range as the point defense turret or is it better that its a little bit bigger?
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Silly me, I forgot to add an em sensor. DO I need one if I have an active search one?
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Does the missile detection radar have to only have as much range as the point defense turret or is it better that its a little bit bigger?
You do get a bonus against missiles the longer you track them. Plus you want to seem them from further out so they don't go from beyond sensor range to hitting your ship in the same increment (that can happen, especially against higher tech enemies).
Another suggestion I have (which you don't have to implement until your next gen ships) is to increase the resolution of your ship detection sensor to 200-300, then create another sensor with a resolution of about 10-20. Despite having a smaller max range, the res 10-20 will see small ships (1000 tons and less) farther out than your current 100 res sensor can because of how detection works.
And you don't need an EM sensor, it just allows you to detect enemy active sensors and colonies with a high EM signature. Active sensors have a built in EM sensor that can only detect its own pulse.
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Putting missiles in the ships isn't going to make it heavier and slower, is it? And the game will know to use the point defense computer for the gauss turrets and the other for the railguns, right? Do I have to set the gauss turrets to behave as point defense or will they know to do it on their own? Can I make it so they will prioritize missiles but also fire on ships when they get close enough?
Also, how much sense does putting in a boat bay and a marine company barracks make? Modern day capital ships all have some form of small craft either to scout or to ferry important people and supplies, and while a single marine company might not be significant an entire fleet-full would be a good sort of landing party to secure a beachhead before the main army can arrive. Will have to create a captain army rank, though...
By emergency cryogenic pods does the game mean escape pods? How useful are those?
What is the feasibility of making a sort of Q-ship, that is a freighter that can protect itself? I want to make it so instead of relying on state owned craft that I have to maintain and upgrade constantly to do menial task like delivering automated mines, colonists, and infrastructure to planets I can contract that out to civilians, leaving the logistics corps with the single mission of ferrying troops and ammo and maintenance and such. Am I right to assume these items are small enough that cargo space can be sacrificed for protection? Should this type of vessel have a military engine?
And finally, what are the types of ships a typical navy should have (ones which would be classified as a military vessel by the game's standards)? I have my line cruiser already, but I suppose i should now work on a proper missile cruiser and a sensor flagship of some sorts.
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Only the mass of the magazines will be added.
You have to set the weapons to the fire controls yourself in the combat overview window. And you have to set a point defense mode for the fire controls. If you target a ship with a fire control set to point defense, it will engage the ship unless there is a missile in range.
I like to put a small barracks on almost all of my ships at least. It does add some benefits like protecting against borders and such. And a boat bay does add some strike craft capability. But I prefer to leave those for either escort vessels or carriers.
Emergency cryo doesn't behave like a escape pod (while I believe it was talked about that it will in the future), its for picking up survivors in an emergency from an escape pod (lore is they are built in to life support mass for calculation).
Q-ships are currently not possible unless you want to make the freighters military (which is a pretty bad idea). You can, however, make an escort ship of some kind and make it follow a fleet/group of civilian ships.
Escorts/scouts, anti-ship, anti-missile/anti-smallship, stand-off ships, carriers, strike craft, and support ships (fuel, maintenance supply, ammunition).
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What is a "stand off" ship?
And for anti-missile/small ship do you think just having the gauss turrets will be sufficient for the small ships or should they have a main weapon of some sort?
As for strikecrafts, why use them when you can use missiles? What are some guidelines for building them? What are the different types I should make?
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If you use strikecraft launched missiles then you can redistribute more of the missile's mass towards things like more engine power or warhead, rather than fuel just to get a decent range. The strikecraft would usually be able to get in close before enemy fire control can lock onto them effectively, so you can drop range to just a couple million km instead of having it in the hundreds of millions.
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What is a "stand off" ship?
Like the Beijing. Able to take hard hits while giving it back at close range.
And for anti-missile/small ship do you think just having the gauss turrets will be sufficient for the small ships or should they have a main weapon of some sort?
Gauss are good, but they would need a main weapon, like a pair of fast firing rails, a laser turret, or some small missile batteries.
As for strikecrafts, why use them when you can use missiles? What are some guidelines for building them? What are the different types I should make?
Extend the range of missiles, stealth attacks, etc. No armor, max power engines, as little cost as possible. You want 3 main types. Small missile armament (size 1-2), large missile armament (size 6+), and beam.