I'm planning on building a fleet of beam ships for assaulting a jump point and could use some advice. I've always really concentrated on missile ships before - I have built a few meson frigates in this game, but they were pretty much just engines plus as many fixed mesons as I could fit.
NPR is currently friendly but
I can trivially kill swarm and precursor ships and feel like trying out a homeworld invasion. They have a large fleet (I think 100+ ships) on the single jump point in to their homeworld, which I could currently just fly past as an ally and then obliterate with missiles from extreme range, but that seems somewhat boring so I'm going to kill a few of their ships in Sol first to warn them of my intentions
Anyway, my espionage teams have found a few of their ship designs and they seem to have a max range of about 200k km with their fire controls, in those designs at least. My current plan is to build several groups of 5 of these plus a group leader with a 6-750 jump drive, combat transit in and proceed to murder them from about 300k. I will probably take quite a lot of missile fire at the time, but I'm hopeful my gauss turrets will thin them out enough to let the shields and armor take them. Hopefully.
My current preferred design has a bunch of advanced particle beams which will do 64 damage total. Assuming they actually hit.
Paladin class Destroyer 12,000 tons 1368 Crew 5272.4 BP TCS 240 TH 1920 EM 1500
8000 km/s Armour 9-46 Shields 50-600 Sensors 32/40/0/0 Damage Control Rating 36 PPV 95.68
Maint Life 3.92 Years MSP 1785 AFR 177% IFR 2.5% 1YR 185 5YR 2768 Max Repair 270 MSP
Inertial Confinement Fusion Drive E3 (12) Power 160 Fuel Use 30% Signature 160 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range 125.0 billion km (180 days at full power)
Xi R600/15 Shields (10) Total Fuel Cost 150 Litres per day
Particle Beam-8 (8) Range 320,000km TS: 8000 km/s Power 15-8 ROF 10 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
Single Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (4x5) Range 30,000km TS: 32000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 37.5-32000 (4) Max Range: 75,000 km TS: 32000 km/s 87 73 60 47 33 20 7 0 0 0
Fire Control S03 225-8000 (2) Max Range: 450,000 km TS: 8000 km/s 98 96 93 91 89 87 84 82 80 78
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor (1) Total Power Output 6 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor (5) Total Power Output 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR14-R1 (1) GPS 36 Range 14.4m km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR170-R140 (1) GPS 5040 Range 170.4m km Resolution 140
Active Search Sensor MR57-R16 (1) GPS 576 Range 57.6m km Resolution 16
Thermal Sensor TH1-32 (1) Sensitivity 32 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 32m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-40 (1) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 40m km
Compact ECCM-2 (2) ECM 50
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I haven't really seen many particle beam ships - is there some reason most people don't use them? I can swap the beams 1-1 for a bunch of fixed 25cm X ray lasers which do 16 damage at close range (or turreted variants) and have a max range of somewhere around 900? (max fc is 600k though) The particle beams will probably do more damage at the range I want to stay, but I guess it might be useful to be able to hit at 600, even if it is only for pitiful damage.
Example of possible alternative, not entirely finished:
Swiftsure class Cruiser 12,000 tons 1284 Crew 5439.2 BP TCS 240 TH 1920 EM 1500
8000 km/s Armour 10-46 Shields 50-600 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 35 PPV 101.76
Maint Life 2.06 Years MSP 1416 AFR 230% IFR 3.2% 1YR 447 5YR 6698 Max Repair 450 MSP
Inertial Confinement Fusion Drive E3 (12) Power 160 Fuel Use 30% Signature 160 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range 125.0 billion km (180 days at full power)
Xi R600/15 Shields (10) Total Fuel Cost 150 Litres per day
Twin 25cm C8 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (4x2) Range 600,000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 32-16 RM 6 ROF 10 16 16 16 16 16 16 13 12 10 9
Single Gauss Cannon R3-100 Turret (4x5) Range 30,000km TS: 32000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S05 300-10000 (2) Max Range: 600,000 km TS: 10000 km/s 98 97 95 93 92 90 88 87 85 83
Fire Control S02 37.5-32000 (4) Max Range: 75,000 km TS: 32000 km/s 87 73 60 47 33 20 7 0 0 0
Compact ECCM-2 (2) ECM 50
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design needs more work though, it's lacking sensors, sufficient engineering space and reactors so can't actually fire atm...
Any suggested changes from people here? Or things that I have missed? I have pretty much equal tech for lasers, mesons, particle beams and railguns so am fairly flexible
Currently have fire control range 75, speed 8000, and capacitor recharge 8.