Author Topic: Anchovie-Class Monitor  (Read 5423 times)

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Offline xenoscepter (OP)

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Anchovie-Class Monitor
« on: December 08, 2019, 02:25:24 PM »
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Anchovie class Monitor    125 tons     7 Crew     19 BP      TCS 2.5  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 2/2/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 95    Max Repair 5 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 3   


Thermal Sensor TH0.4-2 (1)     Sensitivity 2     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  2m km
EM Detection Sensor EM0.4-2 (1)     Sensitivity 2     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  2m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

 --- Exactly what it says on the tin. [pun intended] It's small and monitors things with it's passive sensors. This one is designed using the lowest possible tech... better EM/TH passive techs will give better performance. I'll design some better ones later.

Inspired by Michael Sandy's reply here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10532.msg117316#new
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2019, 04:47:29 PM »
I like the concept.  I like the fact that it exactly fits into a small boat bay.

However, if you have this right on top of a jump point, its standard sensors will likely be enough to detect the EM and TH of something coming through the jump point.

    Watchtower class Early Warning Craft    125 tons     7 Crew     43 BP      TCS 2.5  TH 0  EM 0
    1 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
    MSP 215    Max Repair 28 MSP
    Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 3   

    Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 28     Range 11.2m km    MCR 1.2m km    Resolution 1

    This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Is the variant from my campaign.  A bit more expensive because it is using a component copied from salvaged (spoilers).  When you have something on top of a jump point, you are going to get the TH and EM readings on the enemy, whatever you are watching with.  But this thing gets you the cross-section as well, and information about whatever missiles they use to kill it.  It is, I suppose, somewhat sensor overkill for just watching a jump point, but it can provide anti-missile sensors for a colony as well.

Note, this is with ceramic composite armor tech.  Interestingly, the crew requirement for active sensors is a lot higher than for thermal and EM, driving up the crew requirement, but it ended up at the exact same size.

While you could also use the Anchovie as a colony sensor platform, a colony is more likely to get a Deep Space Tracking Station for much more sensor capability, albeit somewhat more expensively.  But the key is more the lack of maintenance of each, and therefore that they could be deployed and mostly forgotten about.

Heh.  Pretty sure you could fit a jump engine, and small boat bay on to a fighter, and you could stealthily deploy these listening posts anywhere you wanted.  Later in the game, when you have 50,000+ BP in your warfleet, having 2 per jump point is barely going to make a dent in your expenditures, and they don't cost maintenance.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2019, 11:54:10 AM »
What is the smallest size AS/TH/EM that is still classified as civilian? Was it 1 HS/50 tons?

And did Steve change it for C#?
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2019, 02:16:38 PM »
What is the smallest size AS/TH/EM that is still classified as civilian? Was it 1 HS/50 tons?

And did Steve change it for C#?

It is 50 ton and I'm pretty sure it is the same in C#.

A 50 ton sensor are pretty good in C# and if you also add in that you don't need armour for stations anymore these small commercial sensor station can be used as reusable buoys and be pretty small and yet effective.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2019, 04:04:42 PM »
What is the smallest size AS/TH/EM that is still classified as civilian? Was it 1 HS/50 tons?

And did Steve change it for C#?

You mean, largest sensor that is civilian?  Still 50 tons' displacement.

Last I checked 1 HS or less sensors were civilian systems, and a ship with no sensors received strength-1 passives.

Yes, that's correct for VB6. There are no inherent passive sensors in C#.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2019, 04:56:07 PM »
What is the smallest size AS/TH/EM that is still classified as civilian? Was it 1 HS/50 tons?

And did Steve change it for C#?

You mean, largest sensor that is civilian?  Still 50 tons' displacement.

Last I checked 1 HS or less sensors were civilian systems, and a ship with no sensors received strength-1 passives.

Yes, that's correct for VB6. There are no inherent passive sensors in C#.

Was that not what the question was... ;)

He said smallest but I'm sure he meant what size is the biggest sensor for crafts to be classed as commercial, they can obviously be smaller and there have never been a limit on that other than what you can build.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2019, 05:00:04 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2019, 05:54:38 PM »
So you could have a 1 HS thermal, 1 HS EM and 1 HS active sensor and it would still be commercial (if it otherwise qualified to be commercial).

Normally I am a fan of splitting up the package into separate fighters, but in this case you have the fixed cost of the engineering system, so it would be cheaper to have a 3 sensor early warning satellite than 3 1-sensor satellites.

Something to keep in mind is that you can only turn active sensors on and off on a ship basis.  So if you have multiple active sensors, they are either all on or all off.  So it is often a good idea to have your really noisy anti-ship sensor on a different platform from your always on anti-missile sensor.

It can also be useful to have a deliberately noisy, Res 500 sensor ship, whose job is to be detectable on EM as far as possible, while having a small target profile.  Such can bait out an enemy, kite them, potentially buy time for a response fleet.  And you can always turn it off.  Res 500 sensors are still useful for hunting civilian shipping too.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2019, 06:50:02 PM »
It can also be useful to have a deliberately noisy, Res 500 sensor ship, whose job is to be detectable on EM as far as possible, while having a small target profile.  Such can bait out an enemy, kite them, potentially buy time for a response fleet.  And you can always turn it off.  Res 500 sensors are still useful for hunting civilian shipping too.

Or. . . you can turn on your ship's Transponder.  It won't help you detect civilians, but they should have their own transponders turned on.  And you don't have to build any sort of special ship to do it with, either.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2019, 02:32:06 PM »
Yes, my bad. I meant what is the largest sensor that is still classified as civilian. Thanks for confirming. In C# I will definitely be building these recon satellites with 150 tons of sensors on them and dropping them at JPs, as well as putting them on all/most civilian ships.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2019, 03:09:13 PM »
Yes, my bad. I meant what is the largest sensor that is still classified as civilian. Thanks for confirming. In C# I will definitely be building these recon satellites with 150 tons of sensors on them and dropping them at JPs, as well as putting them on all/most civilian ships.

Just be aware that sensors are really expensive, I intend for most civilian sensors to be much smaller than 50 ton. A 0.5 sensor are not half as bad as a 1 HS sensor in C#.

Full size sensors could end up to be 10% or more of the ships total cost even if they are so small and they use up a really strategically valuable resource in Uridium. I will definitely have at least some sensors on them but not as large as 50 ton per sensors, that seems expensive for a mere transport ship for example.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #10 on: December 11, 2019, 12:47:22 PM »
Good point. I've never had any problems with Uridium shortages, but the cost might be an issue especially as the amount of JPs that need surveillance grows.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2019, 02:19:46 PM »
Not sure how much it will impact the need for Uridium yet but 20% of all supplies now need Uridium as well, so the demand for Uridium probably have increased a bit as you now need it for civilian ships and supplies in a way you did not need to use it before.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #12 on: December 12, 2019, 12:48:35 PM »
I just checked it out in my AS21/EM11/TH11 tech level game and a sensor platform with all 3 combined needs 21 Uridium. Or maybe it was 26. I should've written it down. That's peanuts. Unless the Uridium requirements skyrocket with higher tech levels, the mineral requirement will not be an issue, especially since they won't need maintenance so it's a one off cost.

I am worried though that they will cause a massive flood of "crew morale dropped" messages once they run out of the 3 month deployment time. We will see if that makes them unusable in the long run.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2019, 02:31:43 PM by Garfunkel »
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #13 on: December 12, 2019, 02:05:45 PM »
I don't see Uridium expenditures on sensors ever being something that strains an economy.  Fire controls, maybe, but not sensors.  Because you don't need that many sensors in a fleet, like you do need fire controls.  You need sensors for each Jump Point, and colony world and operational battlefleet, but only the last is ever going to be that expensive.

And as fire controls do get more expensive, a simple way of dealing with a shortage would be to simply have a larger ratio of weapons to fire controls.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Anchovie-Class Monitor
« Reply #14 on: December 12, 2019, 05:19:43 PM »
I don't see Uridium expenditures on sensors ever being something that strains an economy.  Fire controls, maybe, but not sensors.  Because you don't need that many sensors in a fleet, like you do need fire controls.  You need sensors for each Jump Point, and colony world and operational battlefleet, but only the last is ever going to be that expensive.

And as fire controls do get more expensive, a simple way of dealing with a shortage would be to simply have a larger ratio of weapons to fire controls.

In C# you are likely to spread them out a bit more though, but at a smaller scale of course. But Supplies are going to be 20% of the cost in Uridium so it probably will be an increase in general.

We should perhaps also consider Financial Centres as they cost Uridium unless that was changed... they seem to have become more important in C# as well. I can certainly see Uridium be a sensitive resource in the future.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2019, 05:37:48 PM by Jorgen_CAB »