Gunship

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I wanted to design a fighter that could engage larger ships without missiles as I've heard that it can actually work quite well, so I came up with a new category of fighter I call the 'gunship'.

Its mission is to travel in pairs and engage defenseless ships that do not warrant a proper 'strike package' from a carrier with missiles and escorts and whatnot. With an equally as stealthy tender it can also perform raids on unprotected commercial shipping quite well I think.

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GS-1 class Gunship (P)      500 tons       23 Crew       503.8 BP       TCS 10    TH 8    EM 0
10008 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 6      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 4
Maint Life 2.78 Years     MSP 63    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 12    5YR 177    Max Repair 192 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP100.00 (1)    Power 100.0    Fuel Use 379.47%    Signature 8.0000    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 59,000 Litres    Range 5.6 billion km (6 days at full power)

15.0cm C2 X-Ray Laser (1)    Range 420,000km     TS: 10,008 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 70,000 km    ROF 15       
Beam Fire Control R480-TS4000 (5%) (1)     Max Range: 480,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor R6-PB40 (1)     Total Power Output 6.3    Exp 20%

Active Search Sensor AS16-R20 (5%) (1)     GPS 96     Range 16.4m km    Resolution 20

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction


[Drakale]

These work fairly well, as long as the enemy cannot hit your fighters with AMM or ASM. If you can spare the research, it's possible to miniaturize and spinal mount the laser for a bigger punch. They will fire extremely slowly, but that is not much of a problem if you can outrange or fire and get away.

[serger]

I think it's overpowered against those targets you designated, and in the same time not very efficient againts those targets it can use her weapon's range and armour-piercing.
So, you can exchange this laser and FC with low-tech RG and minimal-range FC to make this raider faster, more autonomous and potent as PD augmentation.

[nuclearslurpee]

It looks workable for what you want the design to do, however there are a couple of oversights: first, you have an R6 reactor mounted, but you only need an R2. This can save you about half the tonnage; second, you can cut your BFC size in half by using a single-weapon fire control, which allows you to also gain back the tracking speed you've cut off and in fact you can go a bit higher to 10,000 km/s with the tonnage saved on the smaller reactor.

The result is a bit pricier but much more capable:

Off-Topic: NS-2 class Gunship • show

NS-2 class Gunship (P)      500 tons       23 Crew       539.2 BP       TCS 10    TH 8    EM 0
10008 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 6      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 4
Maint Life 2.77 Years     MSP 72    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 14    5YR 203    Max Repair 240.0 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP100.00 (1)    Power 100.0    Fuel Use 379.47%    Signature 8.0000    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 59,000 Litres    Range 5.6 billion km (6 days at full power)

15.0cm C2 X-Ray Laser (1)    Range 420,000km     TS: 10,008 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 70,000 km    ROF 15       
Beam Fire Control R480-TS10000 (SW) (5%) (1)     Max Range: 480,000 km   TS: 10,000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor R2-PB40 (1)     Total Power Output 2.1    Exp 20%

Active Search Sensor AS16-R20 (5%) (1)     GPS 96     Range 16.4m km    Resolution 20

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

That said I do agree with others, the design is likely not very capable in beam combat as it is barely faster than a contemporary opponent. Probably the biggest change would be to use 3.0x EP boost and get up to 15,000 km/s speed, possibly using a bit more fuel and cutting the BFC tracking speed back to 8000 km/s or so. This will at least help with dodging enemy fire as the ship closes in. Otherwise for hunting commerce it is over-designed and you could accomplish the same results with a much cheaper ship.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

It looks workable for what you want the design to do, however there are a couple of oversights: first, you have an R6 reactor mounted, but you only need an R2. This can save you about half the tonnage; second, you can cut your BFC size in half by using a single-weapon fire control, which allows you to also gain back the tracking speed you've cut off and in fact you can go a bit higher to 10,000 km/s with the tonnage saved on the smaller reactor.

The result is a bit pricier but much more capable:

Off-Topic: NS-2 class Gunship • show

NS-2 class Gunship (P)      500 tons       23 Crew       539.2 BP       TCS 10    TH 8    EM 0
10008 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 6      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 4
Maint Life 2.77 Years     MSP 72    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 14    5YR 203    Max Repair 240.0 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Magnetic Fusion Drive  EP100.00 (1)    Power 100.0    Fuel Use 379.47%    Signature 8.0000    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 59,000 Litres    Range 5.6 billion km (6 days at full power)

15.0cm C2 X-Ray Laser (1)    Range 420,000km     TS: 10,008 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 70,000 km    ROF 15       
Beam Fire Control R480-TS10000 (SW) (5%) (1)     Max Range: 480,000 km   TS: 10,000 km/s     98 96 94 92 90 88 85 83 81 79
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor R2-PB40 (1)     Total Power Output 2.1    Exp 20%

Active Search Sensor AS16-R20 (5%) (1)     GPS 96     Range 16.4m km    Resolution 20

ECM 20

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

That said I do agree with others, the design is likely not very capable in beam combat as it is barely faster than a contemporary opponent. Probably the biggest change would be to use 3.0x EP boost and get up to 15,000 km/s speed, possibly using a bit more fuel and cutting the BFC tracking speed back to 8000 km/s or so. This will at least help with dodging enemy fire as the ship closes in. Otherwise for hunting commerce it is over-designed and you could accomplish the same results with a much cheaper ship.

Hmmm, I can't seem to figure out how to make a single-weapon fire control....

Also, I was under the impression tracking speed for BFCs didn't matter if the ship moved as fast as you wanted the BFC to track. You see in the description that while the tracking speed for the BFC is 4000 km/s the TS for the laser itself is 10,000k/s.

The reason I had the big R6 power plan was cuz I was misled; I thought having Power 6-2 meant you need at least a R6 plan to power it. I'm assuming its saying the R2 plant is the bare minimum you can get away with; whats the benefit of going over it?

[nuclearslurpee]

Hmmm, I can't seem to figure out how to make a single-weapon fire control....

Are you using 1.13? It was added in 1.13, should be in the last drop-down category in the BFC design screen.

If you're on a version 1.12 or earlier, then you can't design a single-weapon BFC, but you can still save tonnage from the reactor and use that to boost the BFC a bit.

Also, I was under the impression tracking speed for BFCs didn't matter if the ship moved as fast as you wanted the BFC to track. You see in the description that while the tracking speed for the BFC is 4000 km/s the TS for the laser itself is 10,000k/s.

Nope. The tracking speed used to determine weapon accuracy is always the lower of the weapon and BFC tracking speeds, so you want them to be a close match always.

The reason I had the big R6 power plan was cuz I was misled; I thought having Power 6-2 meant you need at least a R6 plan to power it. I'm assuming its saying the R2 plant is the bare minimum you can get away with; whats the benefit of going over it?

There is no benefit for going over. 6-2 means the weapon requires 6 power to fire, and recharges by 2 per 5-second increment (yielding the ROF 15 figure). So you need a R2 to provide that 2 power every 5 seconds. It is not possible to overcharge by building a bigger reactor.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Another issue is the mismatch between deployment time and fuel capacity. You have 6 days of fuel but can only be away from the carrier for 3 days at a time.

There may be times where having more deployment time than fuel is useful (sitting immobile in space waiting). But more fuel than deployment time is rarely helpful, since almost any opportunity you have to reduce deployment clock is ALSO an opportunity to refuel (and refueling is much, much faster).

[Michael Sandy]

I designed a parasite 1,000 ton gunboat with captured Precursor components, for the purpose of dealing with a race with exclusively fast parasite beam ships.  It outranged the enemy, the fire control was rather inaccurate at that range, but since it was faster it would just plink away at the shorter ranged enemy.  A single ship killed over 20 times its mass of the enemy.

I also used it to run down enemy missile ships that had used up their load, as it could easily stay out of range of their point defense lasers.  It was a specialized pursuit ship, and the goal was that every important fleet would have at least one of them.

My fighters tend to be somewhat longer ranged and endurance than is strictly optimal since they evolved out of using fighters as jump scouts.  And my carriers evolved from being long endurance barges that supported survey efforts, so my preferred launch distance was from the Jump Point.

A magnetic fusion beam ship should be a LOT faster than 10,000 km/s, in my opinion.