Range finding Question (Or how do i increase the range on my Beam firing control

[Pixel1191]

Is 5 or so better? What is the optimal missile saturation?

Hard to say just like that, always depends what the enemy fields in terms of anti-missile systems.

Myself, I go for salvos of 10 per Fire Control, usually two "broadsides" per ship, so 20 launchers total. However, my ships are bigger. Five is better than two, at the very least, but you're gonna have to make up with more ships firing simultaneously, one of them alone has no chance against any meaningful point defense.

[Catman115 (OP)]

Hard to say just like that, always depends what the enemy fields in terms of anti-missile systems.

Myself, I go for salvos of 10 per Fire Control, usually two "broadsides" per ship, so 20 launchers total. However, my ships are bigger. Five is better than two, at the very least, but you're gonna have to make up with more ships firing simultaneously, one of them alone has no chance against any meaningful point defense.

TBH this ship and the other one im designing are the smallest class im probably gonna build, escorts/skirmishers. Im gonna design a purely AMM Frigate next then probably a Missile Destroyer.

EDIT here is the current Laser Frigate im playing around with.

Okhotsk class Scout Frigate    4 800 tons     137 Crew     868 BP      TCS 96  TH 396  EM 0
4125 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-25     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 9
Maint Life 3.4 Years     MSP 339    AFR 61%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 45    5YR 668    Max Repair 189 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months    Spare Berths 0   

State Engineering Commune Escort Class Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 5100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
State Engineering Commune Escort Class Ion Drive (2)    Power 198    Fuel Use 64.72%    Signature 198    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 14.5 billion km   (40 days at full power)

State Engineering Commune Ultraviolet Laser Spinal Mount (1)    Range 64 000km     TS: 4125 km/s     Power 24-4     RM 4    ROF 30        24 24 24 24 19 16 0 0 0 0
State Engineering Commune Ship Beam Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
State Engineering Commune Escort Class Power Plant (1)     Total Power Output 22.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

State Engineering Commune Basic Ship Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 7560     Range 107.4m km    Resolution 60

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[iceball3]

TBH this ship and the other one im designing are the smallest class im probably gonna build, escorts/skirmishers. Im gonna design a purely AMM Frigate next then probably a Missile Destroyer.

EDIT here is the current Laser Frigate im playing around with.

Okhotsk class Scout Frigate    4 800 tons     137 Crew     868 BP      TCS 96  TH 396  EM 0
4125 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 5-25     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 9
Maint Life 3.4 Years     MSP 339    AFR 61%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 45    5YR 668    Max Repair 189 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months    Spare Berths 0   

State Engineering Commune Escort Class Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 5100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
State Engineering Commune Escort Class Ion Drive (2)    Power 198    Fuel Use 64.72%    Signature 198    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 14.5 billion km   (40 days at full power)

State Engineering Commune Ultraviolet Laser Spinal Mount (1)    Range 64 000km     TS: 4125 km/s     Power 24-4     RM 4    ROF 30        24 24 24 24 19 16 0 0 0 0
State Engineering Commune Ship Beam Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 64 000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
State Engineering Commune Escort Class Power Plant (1)     Total Power Output 22.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

State Engineering Commune Basic Ship Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 7560     Range 107.4m km    Resolution 60

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Well, it significantly mess up any ship that it hits, if it manages to get a hit off that is. If you aren't already, it's probably a good idea to turn the range multiplier to the highest value available, unless that's already the case.
A big weirdness about beam to beam engagements in aurora, is that there are two big players to victories, speed and range. If your target has you solidly beat on both, then you simply won't be able to engage them while they shoot away at you.

So the big importance on whether this design will do well or not depends on how fast your hostiles move and how far they shoot. Luckily, refitting with better BFC should be rather cheap, meaning you can build a bunch of ships like this and retool their yard for identical designs with only the BFC upgraded as your tech does.

ECM can, in some cases, help with engagements against higher tech level beam ships, as it forces their range down a bit (and thus, their accuracy at range as well), meaning you can still potentially engage a ship that is otherwise just barely kiting you.

[Catman115 (OP)]

Well then i will amend the design. But first here is the Anti Missile Frigate i am currently monkeying around with.

Tomsk class Frigate    4 850 tons     165 Crew     1232 BP      TCS 97  TH 198  EM 0
2041 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1-25     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 10
Maint Life 0.81 Years     MSP 159    AFR 188%    IFR 2.6%    1YR 196    5YR 2942    Max Repair 315 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 100   

State Engineering Commune Escort Class Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 5100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
State Engineering Commune Escort Class Ion Drive (1)    Power 198    Fuel Use 64.72%    Signature 198    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 14.3 billion km   (81 days at full power)

State Engineering Commune Anti-Missile Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
State Engineering Commune Ship Missile Fire Control (2)     Range 693.0m km    Resolution 100

State Engineering Commune Basic Ship Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 7560     Range 107.4m km    Resolution 60

ECCM-1 (2)         This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

What did i screw up here?

[drejr]

The resolution of the sensor and fire controls should be 1. The magazine is quite small as well. You don't need ECCM, much less two.

I'm not sure 1200+ BP on a 4850 ton ship with 1 point of armor is a wise investment. For the same BPs my ion era AMM ships are twice the size, twice as fast, have 16 tubes and three times the magazine plus a quadruple gauss turret with 6 points of armor.

[Catman115 (OP)]

The resolution of the sensor and fire controls should be 1. The magazine is quite small as well. You don't need ECCM, much less two.

I'm not sure 1200+ BP on a 4850 ton ship with 1 point of armor is a wise investment. For the same BPs my ion era AMM ships are twice the size, twice as fast, have 16 tubes and three times the magazine plus a quadruple gauss turret with 6 points of armor.

So small AMM ships and small missile ships are a waste of time in general then? Well then where should my AMM batteries and Gauss/Meson batteries be situated at on the size scale?

[iceball3]

So small AMM ships and small missile ships are a waste of time in general then? Well then where should my AMM batteries and Gauss/Meson batteries be situated at on the size scale?

The main problem is that your ship has no personal level of defense. There is no armor, meaning that warhead of 4 or larger hitting it at any point is going to fry the heck out of internal systems, and significantly larger means the entire ship can be gutted in one hit. They have no defense in speed, as they are within the targeting band of pretty much any threat you can expect to face. They have almost no defense in redundancy, because they're so darned expensive.

Due to their low deployment time, they make very poor escorts, as well. Probably a good idea to use more engineering spaces, as they're just big enough to be very inconvenient for carrying around in medium-small size carriers.

Now I see why they're so inefficient for their size even in spite of all the prior statements, they use jump drives.
I suggest building an isolated commercial design ship, with the military jump drive on board (military jump drives can be mounted on ships and still be considered commercial ships, yes, and military jump drives jump both commercial and military ships within their size). Make sure the commercial vessel is equal to size in it's jump rating, you can easily do this by filling in all the empty space in the design with fuel storage. Check it off as a tanker, and give it the Hull designation "Jump Tender", and have it accompany any naval task groups you're thinking of taking on invasion journeys, leaving it behind at the jump point for any risky situations.

Now that the jump drive has been removed from your military design, you now have a lot more tonnage space freedom to design your missile ship, at which point you can now add layers of armor, engineering spaces, a somewhat bigger and lower multiplier engine for fuel efficiency, etc. Especially now that you realize that it's probably efficient to make this ship bigger, up to 5,100 tons (if you don't know what else to add: more engineering spaces is usually the best default option to go with.)

Conclusion: Not burdening your military designs with jump drives makes assembling a large army much cheaper, and much more tonnage efficient.

Other than that,

The resolution of the sensor and fire controls should be 1. The magazine is quite small as well. You don't need ECCM, much less two.

is very important as well.

[drejr]

They're not necessarily a waste of time, but if I were to build a ship of this size and capability it would be roughly half the cost. I suspect your sensors are far larger than they should be unless the jump drive is very low tech. As it stands your ship is unable to engage missiles because the sensor resolution is too low, and even if it could it would have a very short life expectancy if it ever came under attack - it could deal with 10 smallish salvos then it would last about 5 seconds thanks to the armor. That's not a good use of so many BPs.

[Paul M]

No ship is a "waste of time" if it useful to you and fits into your fleet structure in a sensible way...or put another way it can fulfill its mission objectives.  I can say that fitting lasers and counter missiles on a 4500 tonne ship proved to be problematic so I made two classes of heavy frigate sized "escorts" one with 6 counter missile tubes (Gargoyle class) and one with 2 laser turrets (Lake class).  I don't consider them a "waste of time" but they are substantially cheaper than your designs which cost closer to my CLs.

The Gargoyles are in general use all over the place as they are added to any squadron or group that needs area anti-missile support.  The Lakes are only used with heavy frigate squadrons at the moment but as the effectiveness of the DPPD array has increased I may start using them more and more.  As well, there is both the London class that is armed with anti-ship lasers and is intended for jump point defence, they are also the fastest ships in the NCN and the Virtue class monitors which are also for jump point defence but are basicaly barely mobile forts with a combination of anti-shipping lasers and DPPD arrays.

Designing a ship is more about determining its mission than what systems it has.  Once you have its mission clearly defined then what weapons and defences and speed and endurance and sensors etc falls into place.  Aurora complicates that by forcing you to build those systems as well, and you can only do a good job of that by essentially trial and error (experience playing the game) or reading what mistakes other people make. 

Believe me or not the design view populates itself once you have clear mission goals, a clear "strategic plan" and a good understanding of your constraints.  "Strategic Plan" is those decision you as a player have to make from time to time..."my ships will use this weapon and that weapon", "my ships will have an endurance of x months", "my ships will have so much armour", etc  These decisions influence strongly the design in a sense by setting up your boundry conditions.   Constraints are things like your tech level, your developed technology, your ship yard capacity, your current mineral state or any other consideration that impacts the design in a negative sense based on the current state of your empire.

[drejr]

Here's a quick example using fairly basic technology - the jump drive is efficiency 8, but a lower tech version could be accommodated for by dropping the speed.

Code: [Select]

Example class Escort    4 800 tons     127 Crew     728.6 BP      TCS 96  TH 384  EM 0
4000 km/s    JR 1-50     Armour 3-25     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 10
Maint Life 3.08 Years     MSP 237    AFR 73%    IFR 1%    1YR 37    5YR 561    Max Repair 105 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 2   
Magazine 170   

J4800(1-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 4800 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 1
Farrell & Barlow 192 EP Ion Drive (2)    Power 192    Fuel Use 50.4%    Signature 192    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 18.6 billion km   (53 days at full power)

Traeger Techsystems Size 1 Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Joyce Research Missile Fire Control FC13-R1 (2)     Range 13.9m km    Resolution 1

Joyce Research Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 105     Range 11.6m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The magazine is still a little too small (I would drop some launchers for more magazines, actually), and there's no redundancy, but it's a workable design. I really suspect your problem is the sensors/FC.

[Catman115 (OP)]

Aight redesigned the missile frigate and escort frigate.

Tomsk class Escort    4 700 tons     107 Crew     732.5 BP      TCS 94  TH 396  EM 0
4212 km/s     Armour 5-24     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 10
Maint Life 3.61 Years     MSP 292    AFR 58%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 35    5YR 518    Max Repair 99 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 280   

State Engineering Commune Escort Class Ion Drive (2)    Power 198    Fuel Use 64.72%    Signature 198    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 14.8 billion km   (40 days at full power)

State Engineering Commune CIWS-160 (1x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
State Engineering Commune Anti-Missile Missile Launcher (10)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
State Engineering Commune PD Missile Fire Control (2)     Range 6.9m km    Resolution 1

State Engineering Commune Ship PD Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 42     Range 4.6m km    MCR 503k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Baku class Missile Frigate    4 700 tons     140 Crew     861 BP      TCS 94  TH 396  EM 0
4212 km/s     Armour 5-24     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 24
Maint Life 3.68 Years     MSP 343    AFR 58%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 39    5YR 589    Max Repair 189 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 114   

State Engineering Commune Escort Class Ion Drive (2)    Power 198    Fuel Use 64.72%    Signature 198    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 14.8 billion km   (40 days at full power)

State Engineering Commune Size 6 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 45
State Engineering Commune Ship Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 34.7m km    Resolution 100
Standard Missile Mk1 (33)  Speed: 24 000 km/s   End: 76.5m    Range: 110.2m km   WH: 9    Size: 6    TH: 128/76/38

State Engineering Commune Basic Ship Sensor Suite (1)     GPS 7560     Range 107.4m km    Resolution 60

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


What did i break by refitting their doctrines to defensive/needing a jump tender?

EDIT: Adjusted some stuff to reduce BP costs.

[Pixel1191]

The escort is a bit light on maintenance life for what it is and I still think the fire control for the ASMs is vastly oversized for the missiles it's controlling and its sensor range.

Also, altho it is a valid design choice, I can't help but cringe at the paper-thin armor of the frigate, maybe consider scaling down the fire control a wee bit and add as much armor as possible?

[Catman115 (OP)]

The escort is a bit light on maintenance life for what it is

smeg i forgot extra engineering spaces...alright fix'd.

and I still think the fire control for the ASMs is vastly oversized for the missiles it's controlling and its sensor range.

Right downsized.

Also, altho it is a valid design choice, I can't help but cringe at the paper-thin armor of the frigate, maybe consider scaling down the fire control a wee bit and add as much armor as possible?

Updated in the previous post.

[Pixel1191]

 

Now you went a bit too far the other way. The ideal situation would be, if the range of the fire control and the missile range match. Where before, your fire control could steer missiles with 6 times the range of the ones you have, you now have a missile that can fly 3 times further than the fire control can "see".

Try to match them. 34m km for an ASM is mighty short, in my opinion. The way to go is usually to design the missile first, and then follow up with the fire control in order to match the range. What you can do, is make a fire control with a bit more range than the missile (altho not 6 times as much  ) to account for advances in missile and engine technology without refitting a new fire control later.

So if your current missile is flying 110m klicks, you should either create a fire control with 110m km range, or go for one of about 150-200km for some margin of missile improvements. If your fire control is shorter ranged than the missile it's firing, you're giving away missile potential...and the further you can hold the range open, the better.

[83athom]

Personally, I think the ships' ranges are too short. I believe that you will have a tanker with them but I usually design my ships so they can operate by themselves, when traveling from system to system, for at least 40b km.
For the AMM launchers, you probably want to hold off on them until you can fire them every 5 seconds. For the ASM, it may be worthwhile to do a reduced size launcher so you can fit more on the ship to get a denier salvo. For the numbers you could add to that size ship however, it wouldn't be a great improvement. But every missile counts as that one extra missile may be the one and only missile that makes it through in a salvo to hit an enemy ship.