First Battlestar

[Theoatmeal2 (OP)]

Looking for input before committing to building, the purpose of this behemoth is to be able to do (nearly) everything by itself.

Mercury class Battlestar      100,000 tons       2,173 Crew       17,218.4 BP       TCS 2,000    TH 5,400    EM 3,000
5400 km/s      Armour 12-191       Shields 100-300       HTK 418      Sensors 286/286/0/0      DCR 70      PPV 184.6
Maint Life 1.96 Years     MSP 22,456    AFR 1333%    IFR 18.5%    1YR 7,702    5YR 115,535    Max Repair 1165.4 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 7,000 tons     Magazine 3,238    Cryogenic Berths 200   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 140    Morale Check Required   

Ion Drive  EP1350.00 (    Power 10800    Fuel Use 36.81%    Signature 675.0    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 6,840,000 Litres    Range 33.5 billion km (71 days at full power)
Delta S25 / R300 Shields (4)     Recharge Time 300 seconds (0.3 per second)

Twin 20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (4x2)    Range 192,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 20-8     RM 40,000 km    ROF 15       
CIWS-160 (5x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16,000 km/s     ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R192-TS10000 (2)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 10,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R32 (1)     Total Power Output 32    Exp 5%

Size 3.0 Missile Launcher (40)     Missile Size: 3    Rate of Fire 20
Missile Fire Control FC50-R100 (2)     Range 50.3m km    Resolution 100
Nightfall Anti-Ship Missile (1089)    Speed: 14,933 km/s    End: 56.3m     Range: 50.4m km    WH: 4    Size: 3    TH: 89/53/26

Active Search Sensor AS202-R100 (1)     GPS 54600     Range 202.9m km    Resolution 100
EM Sensor EM26-286 (1)     Sensitivity 286     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  133.7m km
Thermal Sensor TH26-286 (1)     Sensitivity 286     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  133.7m km

Strike Group
10x Fury II Fighter   Speed: 10520 km/s    Size: 9.98
2x Fury II-L Fighter   Speed: 10520 km/s    Size: 9.98
1x Viper Assault Shuttle   Speed: 10004 km/s    Size: 19.99

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

[Barkhorn]

I hope you're playing with maintenance off because that AFR is something to behold.  I also think the shields are rather low for the size of the vessel.  Same with the missile launchers.  40 missiles is a pretty small volley.  Last, you really need a CIC, an Auxiliary Command, and if maintenance is on, Main Engineering.  I can't tell if you have this, but if not you need damage control and ECCM.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would agree that the ships lack in engineering sections will probably be quite costly. I would make sure I had at least a three year expected maintenance using engineering components alone, no maintenance storage included in that calculation... you could add maintenance storage as well on top of that if you like. You also need a Main Engineering command module and assign your best engineer to that position. This should reduce the cost of using the ship significantly.

I'm also not fan of those missile... they have a rather low chance to hit a ship of similar speed and with no ECCM capability that chance could be very low if the opponent uses ECM which they probably will. So, you will not do allot of damage with those missiles unless you engage someone with a lower tech level than you have. Also... at less than 15k km/s you will not get many missiles past most point defences either, they are just too slow and they don't have any ECM either because they are so small.

I also would put at least a rudimentary resolution 1 sensor or the ship.

A ship this size should have all the commend modules except survey and perhaps flight controller.

Do you really have the research to build a 100k ton capacity jump-drive for a tender to jump the ship, or you don't intend to use it outside of your stabilised jump point networks?

[nuclearslurpee]

I hope you're playing with maintenance off because that AFR is something to behold.

I would agree that the ships lack in engineering sections will probably be quite costly. I would make sure I had at least a three year expected maintenance using engineering components alone, no maintenance storage included in that calculation... you could add maintenance storage as well on top of that if you like. You also need a Main Engineering command module and assign your best engineer to that position. This should reduce the cost of using the ship significantly.

There is a perfectly valid doctrine for very massive ships which is to not put much engineering on it at all and simply let it fail every increment and repair it with MSP, basically exploiting the fact that you can have at most one maintenance failure per construction increment (5 days, usually). I'm not sure if this ship is quite massive and complex enough to use this doctrine, and it does cost a pretty penny of duranium and gallicite for all those MSPs.

As for the ship itself...candidly, I don't get this apparent fixation many on the forum have with trying to design massive all-in-one ship classes. A good ship should have a clear primary purpose and loadout to match, and while it makes sense to have secondary weapons to cover e.g. PD or recon needs everyone seems to try building a ship that is good at beam combat AND missile combat AND point defence AND by the way also it's a carrier. This design goes even further by ALSO being a huge sensor ship - a baffling design decision as a ship this big has no hope of passing anywhere undetected. I'm just glad there has not also been some attempt to fit a jump drive on this thing.

The use of shields is nonsensical here as the total shields are barely half a layer of armor. With 12 layers of armor you can afford to take a few leakers on the chin, and anything more than that will either not be a threat or will overwhelm the shield shortly anyways.

All command modules are needed although I would not include flight control and reduce hangar size (or include flight control, drastically increase hangar size, and scrap a lot of the armaments - choose one and stick to it). A 100k ton ship wants to have as many commanders attached to it as possible to maximize what you get out of them...where is your Tactical 30 LCDR going to be better used, at the helm of a FAC or as tactical officer on a behemoth?

The laser battery is something I could probably fit onto a 10,000-ton ship. The CIWS is woefully insufficient to protect this ship from any serious missile attacks, and if it is meant to operate in a fleet you should not use CIWS as it does nothing to contribute to fleet-wide PD. The missile launcher loadout is unimpressive and I would have expected considerably more out of a capital ship both in number of missiles and size as size-3 is rather unimpressive.

A res-1 sensor is not needed for this design, but with proper changes it will be necessary for PD. Your passive sensors are much too large, large sensors should really be reserved for smaller scouts that can use stealth to some extent. Even then I wouldn't have more than size 12 except for very specialized ships.

The strike group again is unimpressive for such a large ship...you basically have numerous different unimpressive loadouts when what you should have is one dominant choice of weapon and 1-2 additional secondaries for PD, recon, or other purposes. This ship simply doesn't do anything well except absorb fire.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree with nuclearslurpee that the ship lacks in a primary focus, this makes the ship difficult to use strategically. At 100.000 tons a ship should be a considerable threat but I feel this one have too many weapons system that crosses into each others area to really make much sense.

It is Ok to have beam weapons for self defence and a hangar for scouting crafts if you use missiles as the ships offensive primary form of attack.

I would never ever abuse the mechanic and put no engineering on a ship because you are limited to a single failure per 5 day cycle (no matter the size of the ship)... you should never abuse the game mechanic in the game that is pointless in my opinion. In terms of size of military ships I think that Aurora have a limit due to game mechanic where it should not be bigger, hard to say where that limit is but not far beyond 100kt anyway.

[Barkhorn]

A res-1 sensor is not needed for this design.

I put a 1HS res-1 sensor on every warship I make.  At worst, it's a tiny bit of dead weight, at best it lets every ship defend itself no matter what happens to the rest of the fleet.

[Jorgen_CAB]

A res-1 sensor is not needed for this design.

I put a 1HS res-1 sensor on every warship I make.  At worst, it's a tiny bit of dead weight, at best it lets every ship defend itself no matter what happens to the rest of the fleet.

I agree... even at 5 tons res "1" can usually detect and track missiles 5-10 seconds before they impact.

[misanthropope]

just for starters, when you're build a monster ship, you can either be intending to beat comparable opponents, or to steamroll lesser opponents.  the way you build your ship will differ considerably.  if you're going towards maximizing force, a thin layer of shield over thick armor makes perfect sense.  a shield is never reasonably capable of just bouncing the attack of a "fair" opponent, so having armor enough to buy your shields the opportunity to recharge multiple times is pretty much the only way shields might wind up worth their tonnage.

a high speed carrier is difficult to pull off because you wind up with a small strike group relative to the resource investment.  trying to make a high-speed battle carrier is accordingly more difficult- i would say impossible.  full size ASM launchers are extravagant uses of tonnage in virtually any case, here i think they are the deal-breaker.

if you reduce the speed to no more than 4000 and cut the ASM launchers i think you wind up with an improvement almost no matter what you do with the space you gain.  think since you're screwing with fighters anyway you might as well substantially replace the giant expensive sensors with small inexpensive and highly effective recon fighters. 

[nuclearslurpee]

A res-1 sensor is not needed for this design.

I put a 1HS res-1 sensor on every warship I make.  At worst, it's a tiny bit of dead weight, at best it lets every ship defend itself no matter what happens to the rest of the fleet.

I would almost always do so, but this specific design doesn't need it because it relies on CIWS for PD and everything larger than about 3 HS will still be detected outside of the laser's range.

I.e. the reason this design doesn't need a res-1 active is because of the questionable-at-best PD design, however, and a good rework of this should would need to have a res-1 active for effective PD.

[Froggiest1982]

Maybe it's just me, but 100,000 tons ship at Ion era is a waste of time.

[QuakeIV]

Maybe it's just me, but 100,000 tons ship at Ion era is a waste of time.

Honestly to me it seems like a reasonable size so I am somewhat curious as to the justification for that perspective.

[Barkhorn]

It's not just the difficulty of making a 100,000 ton ship, but also keeping it stocked, fueled, and getting it where it's needed when it's needed.  These are all much easier to do with smaller ships.  I would think, by the time you were ready to build and deploy 100kton monster like this, you would have researched beyond ion tech.

[Froggiest1982]

Maybe it's just me, but 100,000 tons ship at Ion era is a waste of time.

Honestly to me it seems like a reasonable size so I am somewhat curious as to the justification for that perspective.

The engines are not powerful enough so lots of displacement gets used to get the 100,000 moving at a decent pace. Same goes for missiles. It will carry down to the fighters as well etc.
Also when I say Ion era I mean it the way I intend the era. Ion is a 8,000/10,000 tech level at most. Assuming you have been developing linearly too many techs at 8,000 are good individually for neat little specialized ships. Magneto era will bounce it forward to the 20,000 and 15,000 one which is already good to have some decent performances with sensors, Beams, missiles, and obviously engines. At that level you can reach a good balance/compromise to have all round ships.
I still do agree with nuclear and Jorge on the fact that a multirole ship will always suffer a same tech specialized ship and you have an edge only with tech superiority which will amend for the general lack of threat you can pose in any area.

Obviously this is my view and I am sure that others have succesfully played in different ways and this is the beauty of Aurora, isnt it?!

[Black]

I usually do not build such large ships. But if I decide to do it, I would go command carrier route for it. Add all command modules (minus science module) and flag bridge, get rid of the missile launchers and add more hangars and fuel tanks.

You are using 20cm lasers with 15s recharge in turrets, that is imho poor choice. 15s recharge is too slow to use in point defence mode. So I would go with turreted weapon with 5s recharge time.

If you do not want to give up the missile launchers, I would switch to reduced sized ones and add more so you have bigger salvo, that has actually chance to penetrate enemy defences.

As was stated by other, you really need more engineering if you have maintenance on.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Maybe it's just me, but 100,000 tons ship at Ion era is a waste of time.

Honestly to me it seems like a reasonable size so I am somewhat curious as to the justification for that perspective.

The engines are not powerful enough so lots of displacement gets used to get the 100,000 moving at a decent pace. Same goes for missiles. It will carry down to the fighters as well etc.
Also when I say Ion era I mean it the way I intend the era. Ion is a 8,000/10,000 tech level at most. Assuming you have been developing linearly too many techs at 8,000 are good individually for neat little specialized ships. Magneto era will bounce it forward to the 20,000 and 15,000 one which is already good to have some decent performances with sensors, Beams, missiles, and obviously engines. At that level you can reach a good balance/compromise to have all round ships.
I still do agree with nuclear and Jorge on the fact that a multirole ship will always suffer a same tech specialized ship and you have an edge only with tech superiority which will amend for the general lack of threat you can pose in any area.

Obviously this is my view and I am sure that others have succesfully played in different ways and this is the beauty of Aurora, isnt it?!

One of my biggest issues is the Jump-engine you need for the jump tender... at Jump Engine efficiency of 6 it will cost 87234 RP and at efficiency 8 it will cost 51788 RP. A ship of this size and power but no ability to get outside the stabilised jump point infrastructure seem like being a bit misplaced in resources?!?

I don't think the research needed to build the jump drives are warranted at this tech level no matter if you have the industry to build it. If you are playing at low tech progression then having the industry to build it and support it might definitely be possible. If I build a monster carrier at this level of technology they would have to use commercial engines.

I wold probably have my largest capital ships with military engines at this level of technology at around 20k... that would leave research cost of about 4-5000 RP for the jump engine to support them. Which is a more reasonable investment in time and effort.