My first real navy - Help?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You're right that long range shots can be worth it, but you need a 5s refire time to pull it off effectively IMO. So you can shoot it again in Final Defensive Fire.

Personally, I find lasers to make the best multirole beam weapons. Railguns have the problem of not really having enough range on the small ones.  10cm and 12cm lasers can get pretty good range while still being small enough to fit large numbers. The problem is you need a size 8-12 firecontrol. 

I hadn't noticed that monster fire control!  Yikes! Being able to get away with low tracking speeds is one of the big pluses of railguns... heh. Plus, 1600 BP is a lot to put in a paper thin ship and with only 2x railguns it's pd capability is limited. Tho its antishipping capability is actually pretty good if it can survive.

Let me draw a comparison with a railgun escort I made recently -

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Hermes class Destroyer    4,500 tons     490 Crew     663 BP      TCS 90  TH 300  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 4-24     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 31.2
Maint Life 7.69 Years     MSP 322    AFR 46%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 10    5YR 144    Max Repair 58 MSP
Magazine 48   

Atlas Thruster (5)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 90,000 Litres    Range 45.0 billion km   (156 days at full power)

GAU-131 (4x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
GAU-333 (2x4)    Range 90,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 9-3     RM 3    ROF 15        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
Boresight 96/4 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
GCF Series 52 (8)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

OLYMPUS Torpedo Rack (3)    Missile Size 16    Hangar Reload 120 minutes    MF Reload 20 hours
Goliath-15 (1)     Range 15.4m km    Resolution 100
HT-18 Whale (3)  Speed: 25,000 km/s   End: 4.7m    Range: 7m km   WH: 18    Size: 16    TH: 116 / 70 / 35

Small Scan System G1 (1)     GPS 32     Range 2.6m km    Resolution 1

ECM 10
This railgun design is low tech and only about 670 BP.  A lot slower, but it actually has more anti-missile capability than the Hamburg - 24x shots at 4k tracking speed compared to 8x shots at 8k tracking speed. And its weapons actually recharge faster.  I did put on the pair of 15cm railguns because I couldn't bear having only the short range of the 10cms. You could try leaving one of the 300mm railguns and fitting the rest with PD.  You might even fit in some armor. 

So I have the new navy designed. I assume that if the TS is lower than the target's speed, accuracy is reduced to TS/target speed. The navy will have a fuel, maintenance and collier ship with a jump engine.

Yes, it's fractional of the target speed, but it uses the lower of the fire control compared to the weapon tracking speed. (The weapon tracking speed is either the base fire control tech speed, or the ships speed, whichever is higher.) Given that you can make a 25 km/s tracking speed fire control, you must have pretty good FC tech. You probably arn't getting a lot of extra tracking speed from all the speed you've piled on the Hamburg.  Incidentally, if you plan on having a collier integral with the fleet, you could probably fit some more fighters on the carrier in exchange for magazine space.  Though then it cant supply as much to your missile warships.

[Mormota (OP)]

A 10 cm Railgun would have a range of 50 000 kms. The Beam fire Control base range is 48 000 kms. How large should I make it, 4x size to get the best accuracy, or smaller and use weight of fire, considering the lower TS is already giving my railguns a lower accuracy?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

In terms of Final Defensive Fire, you start getting diminishing returns pretty quick. The 96km control on my destroyer has 95% accuracy at 10k km, and your 192km control has 97.  IMO in practice once you hit 90% at 10km you're doing fine and that takes basically nothing. 

Basically though you need to decide whether you want to be a dedicated antimissile platform or not. You could get away with a 2x or even 1x range firecontrol if all you want to use it for is 10cm railguns.    Personally I like to squeeze in some multirole capability on my ships.  But at that point you're also looking at armor and a compromise of capability. 

What really kills you on fire controls is stacking multipliers - 4x range is 4 size. 4x tracking is 4 size. But when you do both its 16.  So the difference between 2x range and 4x range is minimal unless you are REALLY squeezed for space (like on a fighter or FAC.)   This is why your high tracking speed is eating up your tonnage so badly.    I'm not sure you quite understand tracking speed though - it doesn't matter if your computer can track targets if your railguns cant.   You are bottlenecked by the railguns - every point of tracking speed above the railguns listed tracking speed is wasted.  If you cut it down to 4x range 2x tracking (mixed armament) it will halve the size of your fire control without affecting your tracking ability.  If you go with pure 10cm railguns you can cut it down to 1x range 2x tracking and your FC is 1/8 the size it is now. 

[Andrew]

I'm using 30cm railguns for their range. If you do the maths, they can fire as many times as a smaller railgun, but an enemy missile could be so fast that a smaller one wouldn't have time to fire.

Missiles are so fast you only get one shot normally certainly with the 15 second reload time. I find this means the area defense setting is worthless so all my antimissile weapons fire in final defense mode  which automatically takes place at 10,000km this makes the extra range you are talking about of no value so more faster firing guns are the best for point defense.
If you play the game you discover this to be true , It works better than faulty maths 

[Yonder]

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Bismarck class Jump Assault Cruiser    23 450 tons     2940 Crew     9895.5 BP      TCS 469  TH 160  EM 0
341 km/s     Armour 20-72     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 25     PPV 225
Maint Life 2.07 Years     MSP 6319    AFR 879%    IFR 12.2%    1YR 1973    5YR 29591    Max Repair 720 MSP

Inertial Confinement Fusion Drive E3 (1)    Power 160    Fuel Use 30%    Signature 160    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 1.3 billion km   (43 days at full power)

300 mm Point Defense Railgun (25x4)    Range 350 000km     TS: 6250 km/s     Power 21-8     RM 5    ROF 15        7 7 7 7 7 5 5 4 3 3
300 mm Railgun Fire Control (3)    Max Range: 384 000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
300 mm Railgun Reactor (23)     Total Power Output 276    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Abwehr-3 Active Sensor (1)     GPS 336     Range 47.0m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-3 (3)         This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


A couple things about this.
1. You have a lot of extra power there, it looks like your guns only need 200 power, while you have 276 power generated. At your reactor level (looks like at least Inertial Confinement) that's probably a pretty trivial tonnage concern though.
2. The big problem is your Fire Control on this ship, I saw several people commenting on your Corvette Fire Control, but none about this one. The formula of your "Weapon Tracking Speed" is as follows Math.Min(Math.Max(BaseFireControl, Math.Max(ShipSpeed, TurretSpeed)), FireControlSpeed).
The main takeaway point in English: Your Fire Control Speed and your Weapon Tracking Speed need to be the same, anything else is wasted. Your weapon tracking speed is either Ship Speed or the Turret Speed, or the Base Fire Control Speed, whatever is higher. So in this case it looks like you Base Fire Control Speed is 6250 km/s, so even though your ship goes way slower than that the TS of your Railgun is still 6250 km/s. You have then created a 4x size, 4x speed FC, but all of that extra tonnage is wasted.

[Vanigo]

A couple things about this.
1. You have a lot of extra power there, it looks like your guns only need 200 power, while you have 276 power generated. At your reactor level (looks like at least Inertial Confinement) that's probably a pretty trivial tonnage concern though.
2. The big problem is your Fire Control on this ship, I saw several people commenting on your Corvette Fire Control, but none about this one. The formula of your "Weapon Tracking Speed" is as follows Math.Min(Math.Max(BaseFireControl, Math.Max(ShipSpeed, TurretSpeed)), FireControlSpeed).
The main takeaway point in English: Your Fire Control Speed and your Weapon Tracking Speed need to be the same, anything else is wasted. Your weapon tracking speed is either Ship Speed or the Turret Speed, or the Base Fire Control Speed, whatever is higher. So in this case it looks like you Base Fire Control Speed is 6250 km/s, so even though your ship goes way slower than that the TS of your Railgun is still 6250 km/s. You have then created a 4x size, 4x speed FC, but all of that extra tonnage is wasted.

Oh, good call. And with the extra space, you could add two extra fire controls - with that many guns, you could really use them, especially if you're planning to shoot down missiles with those suckers as well.
I'd seriously consider a little more speed. This is a good design for forcing ships away from the immediate vicinity of the jump point (unless there are meson ships on guard), but with some more speed and endurance, it'd also make a good jump point defense ship.
Also, where's the jump drive? And the ECM?

[Mormota (OP)]

I take it a ship needs to have engines to be able to jump. Is that true, or can I just park it on the Jump Point then transit with the jump ship?

Also, should I be using passive sensors for long range area coverage, or are those active sensors enough?

[Hawkeye]

No engines needed to jump. This is also the way, you move battlestations/war-sats/starbases (which basicly _are_ engineless ships) from one system to another

This very much depends on your active sensors (and your sensor tech) and your enemy.
If you have very long-ranged active sensors, you are very likely to spot the enemy while far outside engagement range.
That being said, your actives also anounce your presence over a much longer range than your sensor coverage (if the enemy has anything aproaching decent passive sensors) and I don´t consider it wise to run around with your actives on all the time.
An exception are my large colonies or my homeworld. With the huge thermal/EM signature of those, I consider the emisions of my actives negligible, so I put the largest set of actives there permanently to ON.

[Yonder]

Also, should I be using passive sensors for long range area coverage, or are those active sensors enough?

Pretty standard doctrine around here seems to be having purpose-built sensor ship with all sizable fleets, as having large passive sensor coverage is really useful, but you can't do it on general purpose ships without really sacrificing their capabilities elsewhere.

What I do is put anti-missile Active Sensors on all of my escort classes, as those are super small anyways. I also keep one of those on at all times, as they are so small they are unlikely to give your position away to anything that hasn't seen your thermal signature already, and that defends you from being surprised by very small ships or mines. Then in non-combat situations I rely totally on the missile AS and the passive sensors of my watchship.