Belgian desing ship

[Berlit13 (OP)]

Hi everybody,

I'm a noob on Aurora 4X but i love so much this game  :).  I would like share you my designs of ships to increase my comprehension of this game.

I saw on this forum than the best ship are the most specialised ship. 

So for my fleets i designed four specialised ship. 
One for scan, one for launching missiles, one for defence of jump point/low range combat and the last which are more multirole.

Sorry for my English I'm French ^^

[Kamilo]

You gonna run into massive problems because of your low storage of MSP and missing engineering spaces. Your annual failure rate (AFR) for your first ship is at 19458%. This means firstly it will immediately break once you leave the dock and since you are missing MSP (storage of 173 MSP vs. cost of max repair 2070 MSP) you will not be able to repair it.

You can fix that easily. Just put in more maintance storage bays (I like to keep it at a ratio of 4:1, so you would need around 8K MSP) and engineer spaces.

You don't need to have such a high deployment time since your fuels will only get you worth of 114 days far. You can tune that down to 4-5 months.

Change your CIWS to Point Defence Gauss Cannons. It is worth it. Your anti-missile sensor can be way smaller. You don't need a rage of 58,6m km.

Your Anti-ship-missile has range of 103,3m km, but your MFC has a range of 307,9m km. Your missiles don't get to 307,9m km with a range of 103,3m km. Tune your MFC down to match the range of your missiles.

It seems that your anti-missile ship doesn't have a anti-missile sensor. Looks like you want to use the sensor of your first ship, which is okay but be aware that if it gets destroyed you are blind.  Plus the range of the sensor is too far for your missiles.

You could fine tune the speed of your ships to be around equal.

Hope I could help you!

[Jorgen_CAB]

A good rule of thumb for military capital ships is that you add Engineering spaces so the ship have roughly twice the expected deployment time, roughly. After this add some Maintenance storage bay if you feel you need more MSP for weapon failures and combat repair. Make sure you have at least twice the MSP of the most expensive component on the ship as combat repair cost double of the MSP cost.

Regarding fuel... don't bother to match a ships deployment, this is mostly important for ships like surveyors. Military ships only need the fuel for the range at which you expect to operate without access to either a tanker or a refuelling hub/station. Most capital ships are probably OK with a range of 10-30 billion depending on your needs.

[Berlit13 (OP)]

I confess, i play without maintenance failure for the moment   ::)

For the deployment time.  I over sized it to be able to make a long time defence of jump point.  I don't want lose crew morale (for accuracy).

I saw on the forum than Point Defence Gauss Cannons are better than CIWS (because they protect the others ship right ?).  But I'm scary about the Jump blindness.  Maybe I can make a mix of CIWS and Point Defence Gauss Cannons ?

"It seems that your anti-missile ship doesn't have a anti-missile sensor.  Looks like you want to use the sensor of your first ship, which is okay but be aware that if it gets destroyed you are blind.   Plus the range of the sensor is too far for your missiles. " Thermal sensor don't work for missile ? 

For my anti-missile sensor and the MFC it's right.  It's really too big xD

I'm not sure about the power supply for the plasma cannonade ship.  It's 64 power needed for all weapons or only fore one ?

Thank you for your advice  :)

[Jorgen_CAB]

I confess, i play without maintenance failure for the moment   

For the deployment time.  I over sized it to be able to make a long time defence of jump point.  I don't want lose crew morale (for accuracy).

I saw on the forum than Point Defence Gauss Cannons are better than CIWS (because they protect the others ship right ?).  But I'm scary about the Jump blindness.  Maybe I can make a mix of CIWS and Point Defence Gauss Cannons ?

"It seems that your anti-missile ship doesn't have a anti-missile sensor.  Looks like you want to use the sensor of your first ship, which is okay but be aware that if it gets destroyed you are blind.   Plus the range of the sensor is too far for your missiles. " Thermal sensor don't work for missile ? 

For my anti-missile sensor and the MFC it's right.  It's really too big xD

I'm not sure about the power supply for the plasma cannonade ship.  It's 64 power needed for all weapons or only fore one ?

Thank you for your advice 

Not using maintenance is a choice... I would recommend using it as it present a very interesting problem to overcome in ship deployment and overall cost of warships. But as I said... it is a choice.

Anyhow... you need an active sensor for missile fire-controls to be able to fire. So if the sensor ship is damaged or destroyed you are blind. You should always have a back up sensor on every ship so their fire-controls can function, even if it is just a smaller cheaper version.

Regarding PD I would definitely consider regular Gauss turrets as the main defence but keeping some CIWS is fine too.

[kilo]

I confess, i play without maintenance failure for the moment   

For the deployment time.  I over sized it to be able to make a long time defence of jump point.  I don't want lose crew morale (for accuracy).

I saw on the forum than Point Defence Gauss Cannons are better than CIWS (because they protect the others ship right ?).  But I'm scary about the Jump blindness.  Maybe I can make a mix of CIWS and Point Defence Gauss Cannons ?

"It seems that your anti-missile ship doesn't have a anti-missile sensor.  Looks like you want to use the sensor of your first ship, which is okay but be aware that if it gets destroyed you are blind.   Plus the range of the sensor is too far for your missiles. " Thermal sensor don't work for missile ? 

For my anti-missile sensor and the MFC it's right.  It's really too big xD

I'm not sure about the power supply for the plasma cannonade ship.  It's 64 power needed for all weapons or only fore one ?

Thank you for your advice 

1. You should build multiple fleets for that and rotate them around. The ships will need to be overhauled at some point anyway. The time this overhaul takes depends on the time they were deployed.

2. You should try to avoid jumping into contested jump points with your expensive ships. This is why I send a cheap one. Use your fighter factories to build a fighter with 1000 liters of fuel, and .1 HS of both, engine and active sensor. Send one of them through the jump point and see if someone bites. If someone does bite, it is contested and you should not go through it.

3. Weapons need active sensors. EM and thermal sensors are good at detecting ships at very long ranges, but you cannot use them to shoot at ships right now.

4. A plasma carronade of x damage needs x power to be fired. If you install one with 64 damage it will be 64 power.

Personal comment: All your ships have jump drives. This is a total waste of tonnage, as one engine can jump multiple ships. You could bring more guns, armor or whatever instead of the 6th backup jump drive.

[Jorgen_CAB]

4. A plasma carronade of x damage needs x power to be fired. If you install one with 64 damage it will be 64 power.

You need that much power to fire the weapon but you don't need that much power supplied on the ship. The power you need is governed by the capacitor technology the gun is derived from. So a 64 powered Carronade with a capacity 4 tech need only 4 power but it takes 80 seconds to recharge the weapon.

This is the same for all beam weapons (except Gauss).

Just develop a power plant for the capacitor technology you have... I usually have one for the base tech level, one for two weapons and one for four weapons. Then I can just combine them for all my needs. You also can put some extra power as backup as well.

[Berlit13 (OP)]

Thanks all = )

3.  Weapons need active sensors.  EM and thermal sensors are good at detecting ships at very long ranges, but you cannot use them to shoot at ships right now.

So if i understand.  To fire with beam weapons in I need a BFC and a active sensor with the range for the target ?

Personal comment: All your ships have jump drives.  This is a total waste of tonnage, as one engine can jump multiple ships.  You could bring more guns, armor or whatever instead of the 6th backup jump drive.

Yes it's right, I lose many fire power.  Thank us

You need that much power to fire the weapon but you don't need that much power supplied on the ship.  The power you need is governed by the capacitor technology the gun is derived from.  So a 64 powered Carronade with a capacity 4 tech need only 4 power but it takes 80 seconds to recharge the weapon.

So my power plant are over sized too.  Thank us

[serger]

Very large sensors are relatively inefficient, especially active search sensors, because they are not just too large for their range, but also very noisy - any decent enemy EM sensor will hear your See class ship from the far end of the system. It's much more efficient to make several smaller scout ships or even fighter-sized recon crafts with one type of small sensor each (smth like E/F-101AS with 100-res active search sensor, E/F-101AM with 1-res active search sensor, E/F-101T with thermal sensor and E/F-101E with EM sensor).

[kilo]

That is correct. In order to fire any weapon, beams or missiles, you need both, an active sensor which spots the ship and a beam or missile fire control depending on the weapon you are using.

BUT:

You do not have to put an active sensor on every ship. If one of your ships detects the enemy with her active sensors, ALL of your ships can target their weapons. Every ships needs her own fire control though. This means your 'See' ship can be very useful due to the good sensors and allow other ships of your fleet to fire at targets at extreme ranges.
The downside is that the enemy can detect which of your ships is using the large sensor and target it.