First Generation Warships of the United Federation (2140)

[firsal (OP)]

The Federal Defense Navy, after first contact with the Teyvareb Combine in 39 Tauri on July 15, 2119, quickly realized the need to construct a proper space navy in order to defend humanity's fledgling extrasolar colonies. Thus, starting in 2122, the United Federation embarked on an ambitious (at the time) shipbuilding program to greatly expand the Navy from 12 multipurpose frigates to a fleet of 30 frigates of various roles. Below are the designs.

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Falcon-B class Frigate      7,500 tons       195 Crew       1,106.2 BP       TCS 150    TH 600    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 5-34       Shields 0-0       HTK 48      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 13      PPV 45.59
Maint Life 3.06 Years     MSP 676    AFR 150%    IFR 2.1%    1YR 108    5YR 1,622    Max Repair 130.95 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Federal Drive Systems IDE-200 Ion Drive (3)    Power 600    Fuel Use 55.34%    Signature 200    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 503,000 Litres    Range 21.8 billion km (63 days at full power)

Federal Dynamics 300mm C4 Plasma Carronade (1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 24-4     RM 10,000 km    ROF 30       
Federal Kinetics 20cm Railgun V40/C4 (2x4)    Range 160,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 12-4     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 40,000 km    ROF 15       
Triple Federal Kinetics Gauss Cannon R300-100 Turret (1x9)    Range 30,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Federal Astronomics Mark III Main Battery Fire Control (1)     Max Range: 256,000 km   TS: 5,000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Federal Astronomics Mark III PD Fire Control (1)     Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     84 69 53 38 22 6 0 0 0 0
Federal Atomics Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R20 (1)     Total Power Output 19.8    Exp 5%

Federal Astronomics ASS-71 Auxillary Missile Detection Array (1)     GPS 21     Range 7.3m km    MCR 658.1k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The Falcon-class frigates were the original multi-purpose frigates the Navy used to patrol the Solar System. Two refit programs later, these ships are now armed with a main battery of two 20cm railguns and one 300mm plasma carronade intended to devastate hostile ships at short range. In addition, they also have a triple Gauss cannon turret designed to shoot down incoming missiles and provide extra firepower in knife-fight engagements.

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Archer class Missile Frigate      7,500 tons       114 Crew       934.7 BP       TCS 150    TH 600    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 4-34       Shields 0-0       HTK 47      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 13      PPV 42
Maint Life 4.03 Years     MSP 633    AFR 150%    IFR 2.1%    1YR 62    5YR 937    Max Repair 100 MSP
Magazine 471   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Federal Drive Systems IDE-200 Ion Drive (3)    Power 600    Fuel Use 55.34%    Signature 200    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 526,000 Litres    Range 22.8 billion km (66 days at full power)

Size 4.0 Box Launcher (60)     Missile Size: 4    Hangar Reload 100 minutes    MF Reload 16 hours
Federal Ordnance Systems Size 1 AMM Missile Launcher (6)     Missile Size: 1    Rate of Fire 10
Federal Astronomics ASM Fire Control FC60-R70 (3)     Range 60.3m km    Resolution 70
Federal Astronomics AMM Fire Control FC16-R1 (1)     Range 16m km    Resolution 1
S-4 Arrow Anti-Ship Missile (60)    Speed: 24,400 km/s    End: 34.3m     Range: 50.2m km    WH: 4    Size: 4    TH: 97/58/29
S-1 Birdhunter Missile Interceptor (231)    Speed: 24,400 km/s    End: 1.1m     Range: 1.6m km    WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 178/107/53

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
The Archer-class missile frigates are intended to provide missile-based defense and offense to the fleet. 6 AMM launchers provide a missile defense envelope while 60 anti-ship box launchers can provide an alpha strike capable of smashing through hostile point defense.

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Tokyo class Frigate Leader      7,500 tons       194 Crew       1,145.8 BP       TCS 150    TH 600    EM 0
4000 km/s    JR 5-250      Armour 4-34       Shields 0-0       HTK 38      Sensors 40/40/0/0      DCR 13      PPV 0
Maint Life 2.46 Years     MSP 606    AFR 150%    IFR 2.1%    1YR 138    5YR 2,076    Max Repair 210 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Federal Drive Systems J7500(5-250) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 7500 tons    Distance 250k km     Squadron Size 5

Federal Drive Systems IDE-200 Ion Drive (3)    Power 600    Fuel Use 55.34%    Signature 200    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 511,000 Litres    Range 22.2 billion km (64 days at full power)

Federal Astronomics ASS-107100 Fleet Scanning Array (1)     GPS 21000     Range 107.3m km    Resolution 100
Federal Astronomics ASS-161 Missile Detection Array (1)     GPS 105     Range 16.4m km    MCR 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Federal Astronomics TS-540 Thermal Detection Array (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Federal Astronomics EM-540 EM Scanning Array (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The Tokyo-class frigate leaders are the eyes, ears and legs of the fleet on operations. Each frigate leader houses the squadron's jump drive (capable of transiting its entire squadron in a combat jump), active sensor arrays capable of detecting missiles at last 1.5 million km out and frigate-sized ships at 107 million km out, and a passive sensor array composed of a thermal and EM detection array.

Each frigate squadron is comprised of one Tokyo-class FFL, two Archer-class FFGs and two Falcon-class FFs. Currently, the Federal Defense Navy has six frigate squadrons, with 2 stationed at the main extrasolar colonies, two stationed in Sol and two keeping vigil at the Wolf 1061 jump point in case of hostile incursion by what I think are precursors, since they out-tech me and are content to stay in their system .
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So yeah, just posting this here to hear your thoughts on my ship designs. Maintenance life is intendedly longer than deployment time, since I have no idea how quickly combat maintenance failures consume MSP; maybe those with more combat experience can give advice. By 2145 these will have been upgraded to magnetoplasma engines, and larger destroyer-class ships (12500 tons) will roll off the Solar shipyards. Currently, only the massive threat are the nasty aliens in the Wolf 1061 system. I've counted 20 hostile ships so far, for total tonnage of around 230,000 tons; that's about the same tonnage as my entire navy! I've destroyed about 50,000 tons of these ships, though these were only beam ships that foolishly attempted to close the range against my missile frigates, and promptly ate an alpha-strike of 360 ASMs. I shudder at the thought of what their missile ships have in store for my fleet.

[Warer]

More of a noob then even you but this looks absolutely awesome to me, hope you post more.

[Steelpoint]

I'm not going to pretend to at all be competent in military ship design, but I feel your Plasma/Railgun Frigate should be able to move significantly faster considering its a close range engagement ship.  I'd at least make it go double the speed of the baseline speed of your standard ships if you intend on it being able to intercept enemy forces.  Only exception is if you intend it just to defend the fleet if enemy ships get close.

[firsal (OP)]

More of a noob then even you but this looks absolutely awesome to me, hope you post more.

Thanks! I've been thinking about writing some fiction based on this game, I just can't think of a proper backstory to explain why Earth's huge population drop. 

I'm not going to pretend to at all be competent in military ship design, but I feel your Plasma/Railgun Frigate should be able to move significantly faster considering its a close range engagement ship.  I'd at least make it go double the speed of the baseline speed of your standard ships if you intend on it being able to intercept enemy forces.  Only exception is if you intend it just to defend the fleet if enemy ships get close.

Fair point. I'll probably bump up its speed by around 30 to 40% above standard fleet speed using large boosted engines during the refit to magnetoplasma engines. That should be useful in chasing down the nasties in Wolf 1061, which travel at around 5300 km/s

[Exultant]

If your intention is to defeat a known threat, you need to design your ships to be able to counter that threat.

Since you've detected a nearby hostile navy, you should hopefully know their ship speeds and missile speeds.

Beam ships need to be faster than their ship speeds to close the distance, otherwise they can kite you indefinitely, especially if they're laser equipped and out range you.

You also may have seen their missile speeds and salvo sizes if they shot missiles at you. Make sure that BFC Hit Chance @ 10kkm * Tracking Speed/Missile Speed * Number of shots * Number of ships is at least, if not greater than Missiles impacting in 5 seconds * missile speed. If you exceed that number, you have effectively neutralized enemy missiles, with some potential leakage from mismatched PD turret to salvo sizes.

AMMs are not effective vs. AMMs, so you cannot rely on them to defeat AMM spam, which, if you are correct about the identity of your foes, happens quite frequently.

Without knowing specific enemy speeds, I'm pretty sure that your rail/plasma ship is slower than their beam warships if your identification is correct. If you are wanting an all-in-one frigate, drop main guns to boost engines. Try to get to ~6000 if you haven't seen their ship speeds. If you have, you know your target speed. More efficiently, consider splitting the Falcon-B to two ships, one dedicated PD and one dedicated beam. You could boost the beam engines, and keep the PD engines at current sizes. This would allow your beam ships to sit back and weather the missile storm under the envelope of PD defenses, and then once they run out of shots, detach from the fleet and move in for the kill at high speeds. This would also allow you to more specifically tailor the amount of PD you need to effectively defend vs. missiles.

[Shadow]

Judging from all those "federal" hardware manufacturers, the United Federation sounds like a thoroughly socialist power with an all-encompassing State.

[firsal (OP)]

If your intention is to defeat a known threat, you need to design your ships to be able to counter that threat.

Since you've detected a nearby hostile navy, you should hopefully know their ship speeds and missile speeds.

Beam ships need to be faster than their ship speeds to close the distance, otherwise they can kite you indefinitely, especially if they're laser equipped and out range you.

You also may have seen their missile speeds and salvo sizes if they shot missiles at you. Make sure that BFC Hit Chance @ 10kkm * Tracking Speed/Missile Speed * Number of shots * Number of ships is at least, if not greater than Missiles impacting in 5 seconds * missile speed. If you exceed that number, you have effectively neutralized enemy missiles, with some potential leakage from mismatched PD turret to salvo sizes.

AMMs are not effective vs. AMMs, so you cannot rely on them to defeat AMM spam, which, if you are correct about the identity of your foes, happens quite frequently.

Without knowing specific enemy speeds, I'm pretty sure that your rail/plasma ship is slower than their beam warships if your identification is correct. If you are wanting an all-in-one frigate, drop main guns to boost engines. Try to get to ~6000 if you haven't seen their ship speeds. If you have, you know your target speed. More efficiently, consider splitting the Falcon-B to two ships, one dedicated PD and one dedicated beam. You could boost the beam engines, and keep the PD engines at current sizes. This would allow your beam ships to sit back and weather the missile storm under the envelope of PD defenses, and then once they run out of shots, detach from the fleet and move in for the kill at high speeds. This would also allow you to more specifically tailor the amount of PD you need to effectively defend vs. missiles.

Interesting idea to split the Falcon-B into two dedicated beam and PD ships - I might go with this when I start designing my destroyer class ships. And it's true that at current tech AMMs are not effective against AMMs (hell, they're not even that effective against the enemy's ASMs), I decided to keep them around to give my Gauss PD some sort of breathing room against large waves; after all, it's always the leakers that do your fleet in.

Judging from all those "federal" hardware manufacturers, the United Federation sounds like a thoroughly socialist power with an all-encompassing State.

In my headcanon, the United Federation has a monopoly on all TN sensor and weapons technology, thus all components are made by state-owned conglomerates. Though if I ever get around to writing some fiction about it, I *might* have to consider how the Federation is really run