Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: PSI on July 01, 2016, 08:59:34 PM
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After discovering wrecks in Alpha Centauri (one jump away from Sol), I created some plans to produce a task group to protect ships from any threats in the area. These class plans are the Eagle (sensor ship, only one for the task group), the Bulldog (ASM ship, planning on having 2 of them) and the Alligator (AMM ship, also planning on having 2 of them).
Eagle class Surveillance Frigate 9,100 tons 187 Crew 2083.6 BP TCS 182 TH 624 EM 0
3428 km/s Armour 10-38 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 0
Maint Life 1.97 Years MSP 1572 AFR 165% IFR 2.3% 1YR 533 5YR 8001 Max Repair 840 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
312 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 312 Fuel Use 11.92% Signature 312 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 83.0 billion km (280 days at full power)
Active Ship Sensor MR478-R60 (1) GPS 26460 Range 478.2m km Resolution 60
Active Missile Sensor MR117-R1 (1) GPS 840 Range 117.6m km MCR 12.8m km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Bulldog class Missile Frigate 7,750 tons 130 Crew 988.8 BP TCS 155 TH 624 EM 0
4025 km/s Armour 5-34 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 12
Maint Life 1.21 Years MSP 239 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 168 5YR 2515 Max Repair 168 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 692
312 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 312 Fuel Use 11.92% Signature 312 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 97.4 billion km (280 days at full power)
Size 6 Missile Launcher (2) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 45
ASM Fire Control FC446-R40 (1) Range 446.3m km Resolution 40
Poppy Six I (115) Speed: 23,300 km/s End: 237.9m Range: 332.7m km WH: 9 Size: 6 TH: 132/79/39
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Alligator class Escort 7,750 tons 124 Crew 1100.8 BP TCS 155 TH 624 EM 0
4025 km/s Armour 5-34 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 3
Maint Life 1.34 Years MSP 355 AFR 120% IFR 1.7% 1YR 210 5YR 3153 Max Repair 336 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 683
312 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 312 Fuel Use 11.92% Signature 312 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 97.4 billion km (280 days at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (3) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
AMM Fire Control FC141-R1 (1) Range 141.1m km Resolution 1
Earthworm I (683) Speed: 24,000 km/s End: 8.6m Range: 12.5m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 240/144/72
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Although this is only early-game, any advice or criticisms that you have would be greatly appreciated!
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Your ships have extremely powerful sensors and fire controls, but very low firepower considering their size and cost. You could also optimise fire controls and sensors more to make more room for launchers.
For instance while a whopping great missile sensor let's you see what's coming it doesn't help you get out more missiles. But you at least are taking advantage of the fire controls missile detection by having missiles with the same range, the extra 120 million kilometers of the missile firecontrol is rather wasted though.
Also there's a resolution difference between your spotter and your ASM ship.
This means your fire control can target size 40 ships your active sensor can't even see, it's a small blind spot only affective ships under size 60, but making the firecontrol res 60 as well would save weight. In fact if you halved fire control range across the board you would get more launchers, if you did similar weight reduction across the board you could have far more firepower.
Maybe reduce active sensor range to being similar to what's needed to target and fire at ships then fill the extra space with a large thermal sensor. You'll still detect ships at high range but do It without alerting them to your presence.
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Cut the fuel to a third or quarter, you will never go 80,000,000 km in these ships. Also, I would usually go for at least 10 missiles per attack salvo, maybe use the tonnage freed up by removal of the extraneous fuel to up your salvo size per ship to at least 5, same thing with the AMM ships; less fuel more launchers, 10 per ship would work well.
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If it was me, I would cut the range (fleet tankers are easy civilian support craft) and use that size savings to increase the firepower.
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I like the ships, You've overdone the range by quite a bit and your offensive ships need more firepower, but these could be a lot worse. In addition to the already good advice of cutting your fuel tanks and reducing your sensor package a bit, I'd cut your magazine size and include a collier with your fleet. Use reduced size launchers too. Also, include a electronic passive sensor on one of the ships. It doesn't have to be big, just enough to spot the bad guys when they light up their sensors.
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I like the ships, You've overdone the range by quite a bit and your offensive ships need more firepower, but these could be a lot worse. In addition to the already good advice of cutting your fuel tanks and reducing your sensor package a bit, I'd cut your magazine size and include a collier with your fleet. Use reduced size launchers too. Also, include a electronic passive sensor on one of the ships. It doesn't have to be big, just enough to spot the bad guys when they light up their sensors.
Why would you use reduced size launchers? Unless you favor bigger salvos over more salvos, of course.
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Why would you use reduced size launchers? Unless you favor bigger salvos over more salvos, of course.
Stopping 30 missiles every 60 seconds is much harder then stopping 15 missiles every 30 seconds.
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Drgong is correct. There are a couple of ways to win a missle fight. If your opponent is using missles to defend themselves, you can have more ASMs than they have AAMs. That will work but is expensive and isn't my approach. I like a few very big salvos to overwhelm my opponents defenses. If it takes me hours to reload, it doesn't really matter because I like to see the impact of each salvo before firing the next and the missles take awhile to get to the target.
That's my approach at least.
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Drgong is correct. There are a couple of ways to win a missle fight. If your opponent is using missles to defend themselves, you can have more ASMs than they have AAMs. That will work but is expensive and isn't my approach. I like a few very big salvos to overwhelm my opponents defenses. If it takes me hours to reload, it doesn't really matter because I like to see the impact of each salvo before firing the next and the missles take awhile to get to the target.
That's my approach at least.
The only issue I have here is that with a faster offensive RoF, you can have multiple waves incoming close to each other. If the defensive RoF is not high enough, your later waves will have less interception efforts made against them.
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The only issue I have here is that with a faster offensive RoF, you can have multiple waves incoming close to each other. If the defensive RoF is not high enough, your later waves will have less interception efforts made against them.
Does anyone make throwaway missiles that are just 1 MSP of engines and fuel fine-tuned to travel exactly as fast as your standard ASM's to use as decoys?
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Does anyone make throwaway missiles that are just 1 MSP of engines and fuel fine-tuned to travel exactly as fast as your standard ASM's to use as decoys?
Do rely on this as gospel, but I believe the targeting priorities are by size. So if you have a wave of size 6 mixed with size 1, the 6's get targeted first. But I may be wrong.
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I typically use Box launchers , I find I can fit nearly as many missiles in loaded in Box launchers as I would fit with launchers and magazines. My experience is that large salvo's are much better at overloading missile defenses than a series of small ones, this helps a lot against AMM's however even more important is the effect on Beam/CIWS defenses , in general a target will intercept reliably a number of missiles N per turn , if you fire salvo's of N or less then you are wasting minerals , money and magazine space, if you fire more than N you lose N missiles per salvo , so the more missile salvo's you fire the more you waste. The problem is avoiding Overkill but if your missiles have terminal guidance and there are multiple targets that helps.
Shields make the above problem worse by allowing the enemy to regenerate his protection between salvo's , I have yet to find a situation where sustained barrage with standard launchers is more effective than firing the same or often a smaller number of missiles in 1 wave from box launchers. (Unless you plan on overwhelming the number of defensive FC directors with lots of small salvo's )
I am experimenting with carrying AMM's in box launchers to see if that is a good counter for massive offensive salvo's from Box launchers
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Do rely on this as gospel, but I believe the targeting priorities are by size. So if you have a wave of size 6 mixed with size 1, the 6's get targeted first. But I may be wrong.
At this point you might as well just launch more missiles of the same kind.
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I typically use Box launchers , I find I can fit nearly as many missiles in loaded in Box launchers as I would fit with launchers and magazines. My experience is that large salvo's are much better at overloading missile defenses than a series of small ones, this helps a lot against AMM's however even more important is the effect on Beam/CIWS defenses , in general a target will intercept reliably a number of missiles N per turn , if you fire salvo's of N or less then you are wasting minerals , money and magazine space, if you fire more than N you lose N missiles per salvo , so the more missile salvo's you fire the more you waste. The problem is avoiding Overkill but if your missiles have terminal guidance and there are multiple targets that helps.
Shields make the above problem worse by allowing the enemy to regenerate his protection between salvo's , I have yet to find a situation where sustained barrage with standard launchers is more effective than firing the same or often a smaller number of missiles in 1 wave from box launchers. (Unless you plan on overwhelming the number of defensive FC directors with lots of small salvo's )
I am experimenting with carrying AMM's in box launchers to see if that is a good counter for massive offensive salvo's from Box launchers
It's unfortunate that HPM's have such cruddy range, since they get 4x dmg against shields.
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It would be neat if you could fit more single-use energy weapons on missiles.
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The only issue I have here is that with a faster offensive RoF, you can have multiple waves incoming close to each other. If the defensive RoF is not high enough, your later waves will have less interception efforts made against them.
Well, that is true. I have actually been a victim of this. I had a NPR chew up one of my patrol fleets after I had missle defenses for about 85% of their salvos. I had just enough armor for most of my fleet to survive after the NPR kept shifting their target.
I hate to waste missles though and find one big infrequent salvo least offends my irratioal desire to not waste pretend missles. If only I was so careful with my time.
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Does anyone make throwaway missiles that are just 1 MSP of engines and fuel fine-tuned to travel exactly as fast as your standard ASM's to use as decoys?
No, but it can be smart when you know you are attacking a planet with tons of AMMs is to build cheap long range missiles and fire them at the thermals of a planet. Even if they are slow. They will eat up the AMM for the real weapons later.
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Well, that is true. I have actually been a victim of this. I had a NPR chew up one of my patrol fleets after I had missle defenses for about 85% of their salvos. I had just enough armor for most of my fleet to survive after the NPR kept shifting their target.
I hate to waste missles though and find one big infrequent salvo least offends my irratioal desire to not waste pretend missles. If only I was so careful with my time.
You could put small sensors on the missiles so they can seek new targets if the first target is destroyed. Since ships are often on the exact same point, you don't need very powerful sensors.
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I hate to waste missles though and find one big infrequent salvo least offends my irratioal desire to not waste pretend missles. If only I was so careful with my time.
In practice small missile salvo's waste more missiles as you end up having more missiles shot down from many small salvo's. It is a false economy you think you are saving missiles but I suspect my large missile salvo's are more efficient (except when I accidentally link 300 box launchers to 1 FC and salvo 300 missiles at 1 FAC when I meant to fire 3)
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You could put small sensors on the missiles so they can seek new targets if the first target is destroyed. Since ships are often on the exact same point, you don't need very powerful sensors.
I usually do once I get to a high enough tech. I find I don't mind losing individual missles, but I'd hate to have three or four full salvos in the air when their target is destroyed. All those minerals and fuel lost just bothers me.
In practice small missile salvo's waste more missiles as you end up having more missiles shot down from many small salvo's. It is a false economy you think you are saving missiles but I suspect my large missile salvo's are more efficient (except when I accidentally link 300 box launchers to 1 FC and salvo 300 missiles at 1 FAC when I meant to fire 3)
The old, 'I didn't mean to fire those missles issue'. I laugh when I try to imagine the captain writing that report "You see, ensign Smith though I said 300 missles . . . "
I think you misunderstood my approach. I usually go for the largest missile salvos short of box launchers to overwhelm my opponents in one wave for the very reasons you mention above. I also specialize my ships so that I have a small number of Fac/Fighter missles able to fire pretty rapidly if I need to deal with smaller craft and the sensor suite to see them from far enough out to deal with them. I usually depend mostly on guass turrets to deal with enemy missiles and sortie in fleets large enough to handle my opponents. It doesn't always work out that way but that is usually the plan.
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The best thing in the world (resulting in crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their spouses...) is large volleys consisting of single missile salvos.
Examples are fighter (on 8k techs + Ion Drive and Box launcher), but the concepts work for full-size warships too.
Quasimodo class Fighter-bomber 300 tons 5 Crew 51.2 BP TCS 6 TH 14 EM 0
2333 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 1.8
Maint Life 8.89 Years MSP 11 AFR 7% IFR 0.1% 1YR 0 5YR 4 Max Repair 21 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 12
7.2 EP Ion Drive (2) Power 7.2 Fuel Use 16.57% Signature 7.2 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 15 000 Litres Range 54.3 billion km (269 days at full power)
Size 3 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 3 Hangar Reload 22.5 minutes MF Reload 3.7 hours
Size 4 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 4 Hangar Reload 30 minutes MF Reload 5 hours
Size 5 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 5 Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes MF Reload 6.2 hours
Missile Fire Control FC75-R120 (1) Range 75.9m km Resolution 120
ASM-3 (1) Speed: 22 600 km/s End: 57.9m Range: 78.5m km WH: 4 Size: 3 TH: 158/95/47
ASM-4 (1) Speed: 22 600 km/s End: 57.9m Range: 78.5m km WH: 6 Size: 4 TH: 150/90/45
ASM-5 (1) Speed: 22 600 km/s End: 56.6m Range: 76.7m km WH: 9 Size: 5 TH: 128/76/38
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
3 box launchers of different sizes launching missiles of identical speed means that we get 3 single-missile salvos traveling together from a single fire control.
This particular deisgn sacrifices performance for endurance and ability to operate independently of carriers.
Tortoise class Interceptor 400 tons 7 Crew 90.8 BP TCS 8 TH 96 EM 0
12000 km/s Armour 1-4 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 1
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 7 5YR 104 Max Repair 21 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 19
24 EP Ion Drive (4) Power 24 Fuel Use 336.02% Signature 24 Exp 20%
Fuel Capacity 15 000 Litres Range 2.0 billion km (46 hours at full power)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (1) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC75-R120 (1) Range 75.9m km Resolution 120
ASM-1s (19) Speed: 12 000 km/s End: 100.6m Range: 72.4m km WH: 2 Size: 1 TH: 80/48/24
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
This fighter can keep up with the (slow, high-yield) missiles it fires, the result being 19 1-missile salvos traveling in a single clump (on the condition that we fire as we approach the target at top speed). Unlike the design above, this can make us of collier variants to give us a very respectable amount of ordnance on limited tonnage.
This one is hangar-based, the high performance required simply isn't practical on a standalone craft.
With larger ships, we can circumvent the need for extreme ship speed by using two-stage missiles... the firing ship just needs to keep up with the slow cruising stage.
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But that does not work on final fire point defenses (like CIWS).
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That appears to be a persistent myth:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8767.msg93033#msg93033
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The best thing in the world (resulting in crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their spouses...) is large volleys consisting of single missile salvos.
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I may have to borrow some ideas from this, although it's exploity as hell.
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Against the AI you can easily abuse the fact that Box launchers simply overwhelm them. Against the AI I tend not to use Box launcher on main ships because it makes it too easy and it also make point defense weapons pretty worthless as well... at least in the hands of AI designs.
Although a good layered defense can make full size launchers pointless too since you can shoot down each smaller salvos a bit too easy with fewer resources than it takes to fire the missiles.
Box launchers kind of work for fighters because they are inefficient for the space they take up on a ship in favor of flexible attack range and position warfare.
I'm also of the opinion that combining both AMM and ASM missile launchers on one ship is efficient because you can easily tool your ships for either offensive or defensive missions based on the missile load out on the ships. This works best for destroyer/cruiser sized ships and larger at about 9000t or more. It also make upgrades and production logistics easier/cheaper in general.
In one mission the ship are configured with a small number of medium ranged ASM and a heavy AMM load out and in another with a large complement of long range ASM and a smaller load out of AMM.
In general I try to make as few ship designs as I possibly can and rely on smaller ships to carry out my specialized tasks. I never put hugely strong active sensors on larger ships, I always use recon and scout ships who are much faster and smaller and who don't reveal my main ships at any point. These smaller ships can also safely dock and be maintained on the larger ships hangar decks. I never field a larger cruiser without a 1000t hangar deck for miscellaneous craft purposes or at least a 250t hangar on a destroyer sized ship. This makes it very easy to equip a task-force with whatever recon and/or scout craft that it needs. Cruisers can even act as minor carriers with small bomber or interceptor squadrons if that is what is required of the task-force mission.
Main ships only carry shorter ranged low resolution active sensors for self defense purposes, their missiles and fire controls usually out range ship sensors with quite the margins.