Some advice before I go ahead and build this

[Yakface (OP)]

New to Aurora.  Gradually getting a bit less lost!

I designed a light cruiser (at least I think I did, could just be an 18,000 ton brick) - I'm worried about the effectiveness of it's point defense - can't tell if the 1 in the hit chance is a 1% chance of hitting or 100% chance:

Amelia class Light Cruiser (P)      18,000 tons       515 Crew       5,024 BP       TCS 360    TH 2,550    EM 0
7083 km/s      Armour 10-61       Shields 0-0       HTK 110      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 9-5      PPV 78
Maint Life 4.52 Years     MSP 6,570    AFR 288%    IFR 4.0%    1YR 521    5YR 7,816    Max Repair 425 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 39 months    Morale Check Required   

Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP850.00 (3)    Power 2550    Fuel Use 47.37%    Signature 850    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,758,000 Litres    Range 37.1 billion km (60 days at full power)

37.50cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 37-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 40        37 37 37 37 37 30 26 23 20 18
25.0cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (3)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 16-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20        16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8
De Trogue 10cm Railgun V50/C5 (14x4)    Range 50,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 3-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Beam Fire Control R384-TS7000 (30%) (2)     Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 7,000 km/s    ECCM-2     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Tokamak Fusion Reactor R96 (1)     Total Power Output 96.2    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS53-R10 (30%) (1)     GPS 1400     Range 53.8m km    Resolution 10
Active Search Sensor AS15-R1 (30%) (1)     GPS 56     Range 15.8m km    MCR 1.4m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor AS115-R100 (30%) (1)     GPS 14000     Range 115.9m km    Resolution 100

Electronic Warfare Jammers:   Sensor 3    Fire Control 3    Missile 3   

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes

Any advice would be welcomed - on the PD suite or just generally

[Andrew]

The only issue I see is that the deployment time of 39 months is huge and has to be eating a lot of your hull size. For comparison my long range survey ships only have about 36 months. Your ship has only got 60 days fuel, so it will be returning to a base much more often then every 3 years, so cut that down to somethign mildly excessive like 12 months.
Otherwise I would recomend some shields instead of some of the armour, you will almost always get a few missiles leaking  through defenses , if they hit armour that is damage that needs a shipyard to repair , even light shields will mean that missile causes no long term damage

[Yakface (OP)]

thanks for the tips - I wondered about shield, but no idea about designing them effectively

On the issue of PD - is this going to hit any in-coming missiles? Or have I wasted 2100 tons on railguns giving me 14x4 = 56 shots at 1% each chance of hitting per incoming volley?  Do I need to change to turrets with Gauss cannons for a better tracking speed to deal with missiles?

[EclipsedStar]

Personally-- I'd try and get the AFR value down further by swapping out some maintenance bays for engineering spaces that way you burn through less maintenance. As for point-defense, I can't say I have much experience in that regard considering the number of ships I've thrown (and lost) at enemies using missiles before I started not engaging and either ambushing them at jump-points, or using fleets of fighters outfitted with missiles to take out their missile-ships before their missile-ships could get in range to launch their missiles.

[nuclearslurpee]

thanks for the tips - I wondered about shield, but no idea about designing them effectively

Use the biggest shield generators you can (they are substantially more efficient with next to no downsides), and mount at least as much shield capacity as 1-2 layers of armor (1 at minimum, 2 if practical, more is better as your tech level gets high enough to support it).

Shields in general are overall stronger than armor, so once you have enough tech to make efficient shields you want to go shields-heavy with enough armor to back them up.

On the issue of PD - is this going to hit any in-coming missiles? Or have I wasted 2100 tons on railguns giving me 14x4 = 56 shots at 1% each chance of hitting per incoming volley?  Do I need to change to turrets with Gauss cannons for a better tracking speed to deal with missiles?

10cm railguns are okay. Gauss is a lot better tactically, especially with the recent changes in point defense rules, but railguns have strategic benefits as they are cheaper to mount and to research. Mass of fire will be a greater deciding factor than which weapon is "better", plus shields to stop leakers.

As far as the ship design itself, I agree that the maintenance life and deployment time are a bit overdone. I would shoot for maybe 12 months deployment time and 18-24 months useful maintenance life. A good rule of thumb is to reach the desired maintenance life with engineering modules only, then add a few MSP storage bays to add some extra buffer for weapons failures. There are some exceptions but this rule of thumb generally works well for me.

Otherwise, I think for an 18,000-ton cruiser you need more guns in the main battery. NPR cruisers of this size can easily mount around 20 main guns, of course they are specialist designs without much PD but even so I think you can aim for more here. For a mixed-role ship an even split between main guns and PD railguns would probably work okay, maybe weighted a bit towards the railguns (something like 8 main guns, 12 PD railguns would be good). You can probably reduce the armor thickness by a couple of layers to find the tonnage you need.

Consider using several smaller reactors instead of one big one. As it is, you have a single point of failure which is never wise.

Consider mounting small (size-1) passive sensors, they take up very little space for the capability they offer, particularly since a multi-role cruiser like this is likely to be useful for colony defense in which case basic passive detection can be valuable.

[Yakface (OP)]

Taking all the feedback on board - is this a better rounded design?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Amelia class Light Cruiser (P)      18,000 tons       595 Crew       4,979.9 BP       TCS 360    TH 2,550    EM 2,130
7083 km/s      Armour 5-61       Shields 71-426       HTK 117      Sensors 14/14/0/0      DCR 9-5      PPV 96
Maint Life 2.65 Years     MSP 2,556    AFR 288%    IFR 4.0%    1YR 515    5YR 7,723    Max Repair 425 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP850.00 (3)    Power 2550    Fuel Use 47.37%    Signature 850    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,750,000 Litres    Range 36.9 billion km (60 days at full power)
Delta S71 / R426 Shields (1)     Recharge Time 426 seconds (0.2 per second)

37.50cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 37-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 40        37 37 37 37 37 30 26 23 20 18
25.0cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (6)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 16-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20        16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8
De Trogue 10cm Railgun V50/C5 (12x4)    Range 50,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 3-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Beam Fire Control R384-TS7000 (30%) (2)     Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 7,000 km/s    ECCM-2     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Tokamak Fusion Reactor R48 (2)     Total Power Output 95.9    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS53-R10 (30%) (1)     GPS 1400     Range 53.8m km    Resolution 10
Active Search Sensor AS15-R1 (30%) (1)     GPS 56     Range 15.8m km    MCR 1.4m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor AS115-R100 (30%) (1)     GPS 14000     Range 115.9m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-14.0 (30%) (1)     Sensitivity 14.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.6m km
EM Sensor EM1.0-14.0 (30%) (1)     Sensitivity 14.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.6m km

Electronic Warfare Jammers:   Sensor 3    Fire Control 3    Missile 3   

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My shield tech is lagging one or two tech levels behind most others - mainly because I am learning this as I go and haven't got to shields yet

BTW how do people get those nice little boxes around their ship designs?

[Zap0]

Yeah, I think that's good! That's going to be a solid allrounder.

The boxes are usually the code BB tags.

[paolot]

Yakface, are your guns turret-mounted?
It seems to me not. Because of the rather small tracking speed.
Turrets can track targets up to several ten thousands TS, so they can also hope to track missiles for PD role.
I don't know your NPRs, but I have met missiles as fast as 70.000 km/s and more.

Is the active AS53-R10 a back-up for AS115-R100?
If so, OK. Otherwise, I could think to mount only the second larger one. The AS15-R1 is OK to reveal the enemy missiles (and fighters).

Then, I would try to double (or to go near to double) the days at full power.
For operations inside a system, 60 days can be OK. But if you have to go to 3 or 4 jumps from home, without a supporting base at destination, your need tankers and maintenance ships, to sustain your mission.
I would even think about to remove the 37.50cm C5 Far UV Laser to obtain extra fuel, above all if this laser is not in a turret.

[Andrew]

Railguns cannot be turret mounted they rely on volume of fire to bring down missiles (or hit ships), they are a lot smaller than a Gauss turret or laser turrets to get the same volume of fire. Spinal lasers can also not be turret mounted and heavy lasers are not worth turret mounting for anti-missile fire given their slow rate of fire and huge size, I do occassionally mount larger lasers in turrets with a better tracking speed than my ships to deal with fast npr ships but I suspect that the gain in hit chance is less useful than mounting more lasers.

Also just noticed you have C5 technology on your railguns this is counter productive, once they get to C3 thats all they need feeding in extra power just needs a bigger reactor and gives you no benefit at all, likewise for the 20cm laser you will get the same ROF with C4 capacitors and use less power. That would save you about 30 power and allow a smaller reactor

[Yakface (OP)]

Thanks Andrew - every bit of tonnage helps.

Are there any other tips like this for other weapons - Gauss cannon, mesons, particle beam?

[Andrew]

All weapons which need power (so not gauss cannon) have  an amount of power they can use so for a 20cm laser that is 16. With C1 that would take 80 seconds to charge for a shot, C2 40, C3 30, C4 20, also C5 20 so you would never use C5 , C6 Is 15 but so is C5.5 so you can save a bit there, C8 is 10 and C16 would be 5. Just go for the lowest number that is a nice neat divider for the weapon.
Then balance the increased rate of fire of the smaller gun against the higher damage and range of a bigger gun and pick based on their role

[Froggiest1982]

Question: As pointed out in similar  forms, why having these?

37.50cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 37-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 40        37 37 37 37 37 30 26 23 20 18
25.0cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (6)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7,083 km/s     Power 16-5     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20        16 16 16 16 16 13 11 10 8 8

You could just have one calibre or simply change the range with a lower one for smaller calibre and install them on a turret to increase your tracking range to either 7,500 or 10,000 to save power and potentially a few tons.

Also, 12 months it's still too much in my opinion. Is this ship intended to be stand alone or supported by other ships? What is the operational range in sectors? It cannot jump, so I am assuming empire wide operations of 1 maybe 2 jumps. Assuming there are no tankers nearby, a rule of thumb is the double of the operational range, in your case 4 months. I would double to 8 if you have 1 support tanker.

Any savings should be invested in more maintenance/engineering, since your current amount is too low to handle both firing elements and damage control in fight. I would aim for MSP around the 3,500 and AFR below 200%. Should be possible to achieve that since you haven't got that many weapons and as already pointed out you should get rid of 1 of the AS.

I know it is a risky business, but consider to create a prototype of Magnetic Fusion Drive that could have the  tonnage of the 3 EP850.00 combined but divided in 2 engines instead. This may give you more power and even more fuel savings, allowing you to load less fuel at the compromise of a lucky direct hit to the engines. See the effects and if you like them build and install that instead.

[Andrew]

The 37.5cm laser will be a spinal mount so there can only be one, the other lasers give some other punch

[Kiero]

Personally, I would drop the “Active Search Sensor AS53-R10 (30%) (1) GPS 1400 Range 53.8m km Resolution 10”.

You can detect smaller ships with the thermal sensor and target them with AS15-R1. Since you don't use missiles to attack enemy ships of this size, this should be enough to engage them.

You have only one BFC, which has a range equal to the effective range of your guns, except Railguns.
The hit chance is shown next to the BFC as percentages (97 95 92 90 87 84...), in 10,000 km increments (Range Bands on the right) at a target speed of 4,000 km/s.

If you want to check the chance to hit of your Raiguns, enter the speed of the object you want to hit on the right and toggle “Show Bands” (it will update the numbers then).

[Yakface (OP)]

On the engine issue - I am trying to standardize around a single engine for the fleet, mainly so I can build a bunch with my industry and help the bottleneck that is the shipyards.

Hulls will be multiples of 6000 tons and because I want 2 engines at least on a DD......... therefore the engine size and why CL's have 3.

DD's are 12,000 - CL 18K etc (not got further yet).  That way with 2 engines on the DD and 3 on the CL, they will be the same speed. ...........and hopefully the whole fleet will work together.  Being a noob I can see myself designing a whole load of ships that end up having no synergy in a battle.  My approach maybe suboptimal on an individual ship basis, but hopefully less suboptimal than if I didn't have this structure

Back in the day I played a lot of War in the Pacific - I remember the qualifying criteria to enter the Kido Butai was a cruise speed of 15knots and a flank of 30.......because that was the speed of the carriers (alright, 28.......but that's just what you get with a grabag of prewar designs)