Terran Hegonmy Fleet designs

[Xanithas (OP)]

That ship is insanely expensive for transferring ONLY 50k of troops... I would only transfer my elite troops in that thing... not the regular army guys. 

Out of curiosity what do you normally use? I naturally haven't sent out really any military invasions yet so this seemed like it was the bare minimum (minus the jump drive)

When you support with heavy bombardment you should support them from reserve, that does not put them in direct line of fire.

does this also apply to medium bombardment? I will try this when I find someone else to attack

As four ground combat... you need to consider technology differences. If their armour technology is higher than your weapon technology you might have issues penetrating and damaging them. Auto cannons is a great weapons especially if you have a technological edge in weapon tech over their armour technology.

How do I increase the weapon tech any more then just unlocking the specific weapon? I see the racial weapon strength, is this just derived from the highest damage weapon tech or something special in ground combat?

Also how do I reinforce after a battle. I made a second unit of the same brigade type and set them to be "used for reinforcement" but nothing seems to happen. Do I need the specify something on the unit receiving the reinforcements?

[Xanithas (OP)]

Quick update to my current game, my work has kept me away from my home for a bit longer then I expected and I don't want to jump into something completely new until I have stable internet so I plan to play through more of my current game to continue to learn more of the basics and then add the new stuff when I get back. I am planning on declaring war on the "northern" NPR to try and get at some of the rich TN minerals in his space and establish a more defensible front. As such I did a redesign on the Eagle with the lessons learned from the smaller excursions against the precursors and designed some new boat bay sized craft with the same lessons in mind. It became quite obvious that the Eagle didn't have enough range and stay time to remain on station for extended periods and was only really effective as a indirect targeting sensor and not as a scout which it was intended to act as. Additionally everything destroyer sized and up had one Eagle which was far more then was needed, so I designed some other craft to fill the boat bays of my ships to give them some flexibility.

The Eagle MK II reduces the speed to 15000km/s (to allow it to keep up with my fighters)  in exchange received a lot more fuel range and stay time. I am not sure if its just the systems I am operating in but almost universally 1b isn't enough to get from the jump point to a place in the inner system and back again, with the ships needing nearly 1.5b to even reach the outer planets in some cases. The longer say time is to allow it to loiter near a position as a sensor scout and detect enemies coming into a system. I toyed with the idea of adding a passive sensor or giving it passives all together and having 2 models but that seemed more expensive and would be more complicated however I do think a small thermal sensor near a jump point would be a good idea. The plan as of now is every jump capable ship to house one of these with more being bought by the fleet if required.

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Eagle MK II class Scout      250 tons       9 Crew       120.1 BP       TCS 5    TH 75    EM 0
15053 km/s      Armour 1-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 6.47 Years     MSP 30    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 1    5YR 19    Max Repair 72 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Lockheed Martin 250T FIFD MK II  HS 1.6 P2.35 EP75.20 (1)    Power 75.2    Fuel Use 846.58%    Signature 75.2    Explosion 23%
Fuel Capacity 43,000 Litres    Range 3.66 billion km (67 hours at full power)

Raytheon Eagle Eye ASS R200 MR118Mkm (1)     GPS 14400     Range 118.8m km    Resolution 200

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a a for auto-assignment purposes

The Mercy rescue shuttle is designed to allow my fleet to deploy a smaller craft to rescue survivors from a battle to avoid the morale penalty for overcrowding after the battle / while the battle is ongoing especially if I feel its not going well and might want to leave. Each squadron is likely going to have one of these in their ranks to allow for any larger formation to be able to hold 800 Sailors.

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Mercy class Rescue Shuttle      250 tons       5 Crew       57.6 BP       TCS 5    TH 75    EM 0
15053 km/s      Armour 1-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 7.06 Years     MSP 14    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 0    5YR 7    Max Repair 37.6 MSP
Cryogenic Berths 400   
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Lockheed Martin 250T FIFD MK II  HS 1.6 P2.35 EP75.20 (1)    Power 75.2    Fuel Use 846.58%    Signature 75.2    Explosion 23%
Fuel Capacity 48,000 Litres    Range 4.1 billion km (3 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Colony Ship for auto-assignment purposes

The Hoplite point defense shuttle is likely going to be the most common ship in my boat bays, equipped with a GCIWS cannon and a fire control they are built to follow around the ship they are launched from and provide more PD fire. The speed selected was my in the window of my max targeting speed while having room for the gun and its fire control. While I do admit these are not going to add a whole lot of extra fire they will be more useful then having a full formation of 12 ships carrying Eagles and they could be useful approaching a larger missile armed fleet.

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Hoplite class Point Defence Shuttle      250 tons       12 Crew       135 BP       TCS 5    TH 100    EM 0
20073 km/s      Armour 3-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 1.5
Maint Life 7.43 Years     MSP 33    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 1    5YR 16    Max Repair 56.7 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 days    Morale Check Required   

Lockheed Martin FIFD HS1.7 P2.95 EP100.30 (1)    Power 100.3    Fuel Use 1450.08%    Signature 100.3    Explosion 29%
Fuel Capacity 6,000 Litres    Range 0.3 billion km (4 hours at full power)

General Dynamics "Phalanx" GCIWS (1x5)    Range 40,000km     TS: 20,073 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 25.00%     RM 40,000 km    ROF 5       
Lockheed Martin (F)GCIWS FBFC MR108km TS20k (SW) (1)     Max Range: 108,000 km   TS: 21,875 km/s     91 81 72 63 54 44 35 26 17 7

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a e for auto-assignment purposes


[Jorgen_CAB]

That ship is insanely expensive for transferring ONLY 50k of troops... I would only transfer my elite troops in that thing... not the regular army guys. 

Out of curiosity what do you normally use? I naturally haven't sent out really any military invasions yet so this seemed like it was the bare minimum (minus the jump drive)

When you support with heavy bombardment you should support them from reserve, that does not put them in direct line of fire.

does this also apply to medium bombardment? I will try this when I find someone else to attack

As four ground combat... you need to consider technology differences. If their armour technology is higher than your weapon technology you might have issues penetrating and damaging them. Auto cannons is a great weapons especially if you have a technological edge in weapon tech over their armour technology.

How do I increase the weapon tech any more then just unlocking the specific weapon? I see the racial weapon strength, is this just derived from the highest damage weapon tech or something special in ground combat?

Also how do I reinforce after a battle. I made a second unit of the same brigade type and set them to be "used for reinforcement" but nothing seems to happen. Do I need the specify something on the unit receiving the reinforcements?

I misspoke on the bombardment units... medium support from reserve and heavy or long range from rear echelon.

For a normal troop transport I would just make it as minimalistic as possible, if you need to invade a large planet with two million troops you don't want expensive troop carriers. Less speed, little to no defences. Your fleets should take care of any ground to space defences long before your troop ships arrive... I don't even use Drop Bay transports for millions of tons armies.
Expensive assault carriers is only for the elite of the elite forces, your space marine forces, kind of... at least that is how I normally do it. I only need a limited amount of high speed, tough powerful assault carrier transports. For large invasions I need cheap and able to carry troops in large bulk.

As for bombarding planets... regular ships is not really suited for this... you need to build bombardment cruiser kind of ships for this. Use miniaturized lasers or railguns, that is your best options. Miniaturized infrared lasers are great as you can get relatively high damage for little research output. You simply have a relatively slow ships that travel with your troops carriers. As each is loaded with vast arrays of weapons you will get allot of attacks

Example

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Volcano class Bombardment Cruiser      23,687 tons       721 Crew       1,460.3 BP       TCS 474    TH 1,250    EM 0
2638 km/s      Armour 5-73       Shields 0-0       HTK 144      Sensors 11/11/0/0      DCR 10      PPV 175
Maint Life 3.66 Years     MSP 2,885    AFR 449%    IFR 6.2%    1YR 333    5YR 4,998    Max Repair 156.2500 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 2   BRG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Commercial Ion Drive  EP625.00 (2)    Power 1250.0    Fuel Use 3.35%    Signature 625.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 56.6 billion km (248 days at full power)

20cm C0.05 Infrared Laser (25)    Range 100,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 10-0.05     RM 10,000 km    ROF 1000       
15.0cm C0.05 Infrared Laser (50)    Range 60,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 6-0.05     RM 10,000 km    ROF 600       
Beam Fire Control R256-TS4000 (2)     Max Range: 256,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Magnetic Mirror Fusion Reactor R5 (1)     Total Power Output 5    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS8-R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
EM Sensor EM1.0-11.0 (1)     Sensitivity 11.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km
Thermal Sensor TH1.0-11.0 (1)     Sensitivity 11.0     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposesYou should be able to build these in bulk as they are quite cheap, but they are military so will require maintenance and is not that useful outside of bombardment duty. They could add allot of alpha strike power at a jump gate defence or attack though. You also don't need that many FFD as they depend on the number of ships, not the number of guns on the ship. If you also manage to get them in range of a planet they should make short work of any STO as well...


As for reinforcement you need to set the formation as "Use for Replacement" also create a Unite Series and then set that series as the Template... the game need this so it knows which type of units can be replaced and upgraded with what. This way you can even replace older infantry or tanks with new ones quite easy.

[nuclearslurpee]

How do I increase the weapon tech any more then just unlocking the specific weapon? I see the racial weapon strength, is this just derived from the highest damage weapon tech or something special in ground combat?

Ground unit racial attack is based off your highest level of Laser caliber, Railgun caliber, Particle Beam Strength, or Plasma Carronade technology (note: no benefit from HPM, Meson, Gauss, or missile warhead techs). Honestly I think this is silly for a couple of reasons but that is how it works.

As for bombarding planets... regular ships is not really suited for this... you need to build bombardment cruiser kind of ships for this. Use miniaturized lasers or railguns, that is your best options. Miniaturized infrared lasers are great as you can get relatively high damage for little research output. You simply have a relatively slow ships that travel with your troops carriers. As each is loaded with vast arrays of weapons you will get allot of attacks

I've usually found railguns to be the most effective for this in terms of raw damage/DPM output, particularly the multiple shots as hit rates are very low for orbital bombardment so volume of fire accomplishes a lot. Maybe the lasers are cheaper in RP+BP cost if you don't mainline railguns though, but I do find that "regular" ships with railguns are effective enough in a pinch whereas if you use lasers or particle beams as a main weapon you do need the specialized ships much more urgently.

This is useful knowledge when you run a WH40K campaign as every ship has different weapons so force composition is a very flexible variable. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

As for bombarding planets... regular ships is not really suited for this... you need to build bombardment cruiser kind of ships for this. Use miniaturized lasers or railguns, that is your best options. Miniaturized infrared lasers are great as you can get relatively high damage for little research output. You simply have a relatively slow ships that travel with your troops carriers. As each is loaded with vast arrays of weapons you will get allot of attacks

I've usually found railguns to be the most effective for this in terms of raw damage/DPM output, particularly the multiple shots as hit rates are very low for orbital bombardment so volume of fire accomplishes a lot. Maybe the lasers are cheaper in RP+BP cost if you don't mainline railguns though, but I do find that "regular" ships with railguns are effective enough in a pinch whereas if you use lasers or particle beams as a main weapon you do need the specialized ships much more urgently.

This is useful knowledge when you run a WH40K campaign as every ship has different weapons so force composition is a very flexible variable. 

Railguns and lasers are pretty much equal in power... you actually can squeeze in a bit more with the lasers due to how miniatured lasers are rounded down on the size of the weapon, so a 15cm laser becomes only 100t. You need bigger railguns for the same damage effect of the lasers. Small railguns might work when units are low tech, but high tech infantry need more damage to kill them off. 15cm lasers are pretty great at killing most low tier units for a very cheap price.

But railguns and lasers are equally valuable weapons, just use whichever weapon you have available of the two. Bombardment cruisers as the one above actually can have an impact... bombardment also are not affected by certain planetary environments, such as low G for example.

The other benefit with a dedicated bombardment ship is that you don't need to maintain them... you just need to use them for the invasion.. then you can dismantle them, keep the components and build new ones if you need to make any large scale invasions again. You make such invasions so rarely you don't need to keep many of them around unless you actually need them.

[Xanithas (OP)]

Im finally back!

So I have finally gotten back to the states from my trip and decided to give the new update a whirl. I have been surprised by the massive size of raider task forces, it seems they come in with almost 100k void tons of warships per "raid" so those laser FFs have been doing work so thank you all for helping me design a few good ships to help. On the topic of designs I decided to try something new since the new game set me bordering a much larger empire. I am interested in taking their territory at some point (they don't seem to upset that I am routinely moving through their territory so I have held off on any offensive actions as of now) but I want to gather some intel first, and I haven't really used the ELINT module and thanks to my encounters with some of the spoiler races I have tones of stealth tech

Enter the Raven stealth Corvette. If my understanding of this system is correct is has the cross section of a 500 ton vessel and size 80 thermal signature when moving full thrust. This seems like it should be small enough to allow me to sneak up to my neighbors planets and gather some intel without detection. The speed and range was selected to allow for independent operations to what I think is their home world and back and is faster then any of their warships I have encountered as well as the spoilers. I refuse to stabilize any jump point that I don't control both ends of to prevent some behemoth ships from being able to come in without jump shock so they will need one of my jump FFs to get out and into my territory. 

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Raven class Intelligence Corvette      5,000 tons       136 Crew       1,503.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 81    EM 0
5040 km/s      Armour 1-26       Shields 0-0       HTK 31      Sensors 90/90/0/0      DCR 3      PPV 0
Maint Life 2.56 Years     MSP 763    AFR 67%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 163    5YR 2,443    Max Repair 567.0000 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Morale Check Required   

Skunkworks SMPD HS30 P1.05 EP504.00 (1)    Power 504.0    Fuel Use 26.09%    Signature 80.6400    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 448,000 Litres    Range 61.8 billion km (141 days at full power)

Raytheon "Bond" Class Stealth Ship EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km
Raytheon "Bond" Class Stealth Ship Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km
ELINT Module (2)     Sensitivity 22     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  37.1m km
Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 10.0% of normal

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Intelligence Ship for auto-assignment purposes
As always I appreciate the feedback, I feel much more confident now building ships with some of the great feedback I have already gotten so thank you all for making me feel welcome and helping teach me
Some questions tho:

-How do the intelligence points work? I understand i get them based on the amount of time I am there gathering and that I can learn specifics of sensors I am collection intel on but how do I spend them? do I have to encounter a thing to gather "intel" on it or does this just pool together and give me random goody bag of info info after I reach 100?

-For the stealth aspect, do you have a recommended speed to approach a target I think might have a sensor? I was planning on creeping in at like 25% power but I don't know if in any of your experiences this is necessary

Thank you all once again for the help. I am thinking on a more weight efficient anti piracy corvette to allow my dedicated warships to be freed up for combat operations so I might throw my ideas in here.

[Xanithas (OP)]

Hello all,

After looking into it more the weight efficient anti piracy corvette seemed like a unnecessary expense and I have seen a lot of people pushing for carriers armed with FAC to counter these types of threats so I decided to give that a whirl with some pretty good results:

The Watchman escort carrier is deigned to carry 4 Thunderbolt Anti Piracy FAC and one Thunderhead Detection FAC to fry and overcome the stealth tech I am encountering. The Watchman is slightly faster then my fastest merchant ship and is built to follow my government freighter and tanker formations around escorting them as they go about the business I tasked them for. Fuel and maintenance supply values are to allow for the ship to operate as long as possible without resupply or refueling in areas I have seen lots of raider activity and will allow me to leave the carrier on station for extended periods of time in trade lanes protecting civilian merchant traffic as well.

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Watchman class Escort Carrier      40,000 tons       385 Crew       2,138.4 BP       TCS 800    TH 3,200    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 1-104       Shields 0-0       HTK 67      Sensors 1/14/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 13,508    Max Repair 400.0000 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 5,000 tons     
Commander    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   PFC   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 100   
Maintenance Modules: 2 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 5,000 tons

Foster-Wheeler CMFD HS160 P.5 EP1600.00 (2)    Power 3200.0    Fuel Use 1.77%    Signature 1600.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres    Range 763.7 billion km (2209 days at full power)

FURUNO Civilian Grade Navigational Sensor (1)     GPS 2100     Range 39.8m km    Resolution 100
FURUNO Civilian Grade Thermal Navigation Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 1.4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  9.4m km
FURUNO Civilian Grade EM Navigation Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.6m km

Strike Group
1x Thunderhead Early Warning Craft   Speed: 10501 km/s    Size: 20
4x Thunderbolt FLT II Fast Patrol Craft   Speed: 10503 km/s    Size: 19.99

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Carrier for auto-assignment purposes

The Thunderbolt FLT II was a direct upgrade from a earlier craft I was utilizing that was equipped with a 15cm Laser which allowed the ship to attack raiders outside their range to return fire but the damage I was doing was so low that often they would need to resupply before dispatching a entire formation of anything more then 2-3 ships. The FLT II uses particle beams to allow for more damage per shot across the range. While untested as of now I suspect these will be far superior given the low armor values of the enemy ships allowing each shot to penetrate. The range was chosen to allow for these ships to deploy form orbital hangers in some of my more developed star systems to act as a defense force. I might lower the "caliber" of the particle beam if I find I need more maintenance supplies to sustain combat as I just went with the largest "caliber" I could field but 6 I think is overkill against most of their ships.

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Thunderbolt FLT II class Fast Patrol Craft      1,000 tons       31 Crew       329.3 BP       TCS 20    TH 210    EM 0
10503 km/s      Armour 1-8       Shields 0-0       HTK 8      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 8
Maint Life 7.03 Years     MSP 382    AFR 23%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 14    5YR 203    Max Repair 105.00 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Isotta Fraschini SMCD HS6 P1.75  EP210.00 (1)    Power 210.0    Fuel Use 209.21%    Signature 210.00    Explosion 17%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres    Range 5.2 billion km (5 days at full power)

CERN Naval Grade Particle Beam (6) (1)    Range 200,000km     TS: 10,503 km/s     Power 15-5    ROF 15       
Kratos Defnece "Star Burst" Fixed Naval Laser SBFC (1)     Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 10,625 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
General Electric ICFR P5 (1)     Total Power Output 5    Exp 5%

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

The Thunderhead was used as the pusdo FAC leader of each formation with sensors that are designed to target the average tonnage of a raider craft letting me pick them up and hold tracking on them from further away. They can also be deployed alone without the other FACs to let the carrier check its surroundings if it is operating outside my normal sensor web. it was for this reason I gave it a much longer deployment time for when the carrier is operating in a stationary position in a trade lane to give it the chance to use its sensors which are far better then what I can throw on the carrier.

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Thunderhead class Early Warning Craft      1,000 tons       33 Crew       410.6 BP       TCS 20    TH 210    EM 0
10501 km/s      Armour 2-8       Shields 0-0       HTK 5      Sensors 90/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 3.41 Years     MSP 139    AFR 23%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 18    5YR 273    Max Repair 180 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Morale Check Required   

Isotta Fraschini SMCD HS6 P1.75  EP210.00 (1)    Power 210.0    Fuel Use 209.21%    Signature 210.00    Explosion 17%
Fuel Capacity 68,000 Litres    Range 5.9 billion km (6 days at full power)

Lockheed-Martin "Thunderhead" SASS (1)     GPS 1800     Range 69.2m km    Resolution 10
Raytheon "Bond" Class Stealth Ship Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 90     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  75m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Scout for auto-assignment purposes
As always feedback is appreciated. I have declared a war against the larger empire that is my neighbor to allow me to expand a bit so I expect I will be posting some new designs here soon. Thank you for all the help and feedback so far and hopefully someone else can benefit from these designs.