Author Topic: Will this beam thingy be useful?  (Read 2074 times)

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Offline 381654729 (OP)

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Will this beam thingy be useful?
« on: April 23, 2014, 12:15:46 AM »
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Scrapper class Gunboat    2 000 tons     68 Crew     567 BP      TCS 40  TH 420  EM 0
10500 km/s     Armour 3-14     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 8
Maint Life 1.13 Years     MSP 89    AFR 64%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 70    5YR 1056    Max Repair 210 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   

420EP 15HS Engine (1)    Power 420    Fuel Use 241.05%    Signature 420    Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 170 000 Litres    Range 6.3 billion km   (6 days at full power)

Particle Beam-6 (1)    Range 200 000km     TS: 10500 km/s     Power 15-4    ROF 20        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
BFC 160kkm 6250km/s (1)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 6250 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Power Plant 3P 0.5HS (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Power Plant 1.2P 0.2HS (1)     Total Power Output 1.2    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

A single big gun on a small hull, thus the designation "gunboat".

Intended to operate as part of a fleet with passive and active sensors. The active sensors are in the form of small active sensors strapped to fighter engines, while the passives are mounted on the big ships. This ship is the only non-missile ship in the fleet. Will it be able to help out the fleet at all? My worry is that if the enemies actually get close enough to my mostly-missile fleet, I'm screwed anyway and this thing won't help me much. On the other hand, I can field 3 of these guys for the cost of 1 missile ship, not even counting the cost of the missiles, so if they would work, they would do the job cheaply, too.
 

Offline Sematary

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2014, 12:23:24 AM »
Its range is so tiny that it would have to have tanker support at all times if you want it to be a fleet support ship but it would make a good interceptor operating from planets. Other than that it looks good. Its as fast as laser ships need to be, its got good range. One thing is its max repair vs its MSP, MSP should be higher than Max Repair but right now MR is 210 MSP while the ship only has 89 MSP.
 

Offline 381654729 (OP)

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2014, 12:29:08 AM »
The fleet does have tankers in service. The tankers in fact double as jump-tenders, due to me not wanting to waste tonnage on jump engines on any of the actual combatants, but that's another story.

The fleet has carriers with substantial MSP capacity. If this ship breaks down in battle, can I repair it by having it dock in a carrier (launching a few fighters if necessary)? That was my intention when I designed the ship.
 

Offline Sematary

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2014, 12:30:50 AM »
I am not sure if you can do that, I think so though. I will let other people on here answer that.
 

Offline NihilRex

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2014, 01:08:26 AM »
As far as I know, you can only repair something above max MSP in a shipyard.

I tried something similar.
 

Offline 381654729 (OP)

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2014, 01:16:44 AM »
Steve's reply to http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,3201.0.html seems to mean that my idea is workable. But then again, that reply was from 2011, and things might have changed since then.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2014, 04:18:45 AM »
In my opinion you are trying to build a ship that has a function that its ill suited for. Ships like these should have extremely high powered engines to get as much speed as possible, this is for both defence and able to intercept an enemy. They should also operate from a base or carrier, I would prefer from a hangar since this will reduce your maintenance costs (ships like these tend to be quite expensive for their size).

The main problem is their very high fuel usage overall. Include a couple of these and you will burn fuel like crazy, even if they are small. They are not well suited for Jump Point attack and defence either, having weak armour.

From a role-play perspective I would not allow a 2000t ship to dock and be repaired in a carrier designed to carry and service ships at 200-500t, I really would need a dedicated tender for that. I would just build a Tender with a 2000-3000t hangar. Big enough to take one of these and also able to store some other utility crafts. The tender cold also have jump engines, extra fuel, MSP and all the things you need to tend to these ships for a reasonable price. Let's say you need one tender for every 3-5 of those ships. But this is me role-playing what I deem reasonable.

Overall I tend to use heavy beam weapons on my main ships mainly as a deterrent weapon and means to defend and attack Jump Points and other fixed locations such as planets and bases. I rarely want to waste expensive missiles to take on fixed installations, I rather wither the enemy missile defences with my point defences and engage them at close range. Easy enough when you can assess the mass needed for such an operation.
For close range fleet defence I use dedicated destroyers that have a reasonable speed and whose fuel consumption is not too ridiculous. These ships main role is heavy beam combat and their secondary role is point defence. They usually have some beam PD and a few anti-missile launchers, but their main armament will be heavy anti-ship beams.

All in all my advice would be to make the ships into a short range short deployment type or simply make it bigger and slower, perhaps have both. Build a dedicated gunboat carrier that can take two or three of these. I personally don't see a point in having a deployment time of 12 month for a ships like this, it is just a waste of resources overall. Having ships with a lower overall cost per tonnage means you can build more (and faster) and support more of them. Then also build a bigger Destroyer class ship dedicated for close combat fleet defence. Depending on how big your ships are overall I would suggest that most ships carry at least some beams to protect themselves with. This also make any and every capital ship viable for Jump Point defence and attack when you need it.

I might also end with a role-play reason for not building a ship like this. My main reason would be that in an environment where enemy military ships are very likely to carry missiles ships like these are extremely vulnerable. Low armour, no point-defence systems. They have zero chance against a ship with just a rudimentary missile capability, especially anti-missile missile system or even worse, missiles dedicated for defending and engaging fighter targets. If you also add escort ships with the same speed you are just using your resource even worse.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2014, 04:35:24 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Iranon

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2014, 05:51:40 AM »
I usually get good use out of this type of ships:
- flawless victories against slower/shorter-ranged beam ships in independent operations. Assuming you can paint the targets safely.
- fills a  gap in my main battle line, which usually focuses on missile and anti-missile weaponry.
- somewhat specialised use means the inevitable fuel and maintenance concerns aren't too bothersome.

My preferred implementation differs in detail:
- I don't like particle beam technology. This ship type is pretty much its ideal application, lasers are still not appreciably worse and much more flexible elsewhere.
- If these fast beam ships are to be fielded in numbers (rather than as a hard counter to specific threats) I give them some anti-missile capability in the form of small railguns (basically: I only put things that require ludicrous speed on stressed ships, everything else is more conservative).
It looks like my considerations are irrelevant to you if you: if you don't want to expand the role of these ships and prefer to rely on missiles for your other needs, the current setup should be fine.
 

Offline 381654729 (OP)

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2014, 10:15:28 AM »
Thank you for the replies. Unfortunately I updated to 6.4 without reading the fine print, therefore losing the entire save. Yay. I prefer lasers too, the reason I designed this ship with particle beams was because the random-tech I started with had particle beams and not lasers.

EDIT: forgot to mention that I have "small railguns" in the form of fighters. My idea is that my whole fleet is rarely under missile fire all at once, so I can choose where to deploy those "small railguns", instead of having them fixed on only a few ships.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2014, 10:27:04 AM by Montecchio »
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2014, 10:28:49 AM »
These small ships will probably be even more viable in 6.4 with the beam fire-controls size now halved... ;)

The cost is still the same but you might perhaps squeeze another beam in there for just a slightly bigger ship or more armour.
 

Offline CharonJr

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2014, 01:12:30 PM »
I use a similar design myself, so I like the basic setup ;) But I tend to make these ships carrier based, allowing for even less fuel and engineering/crew quarters and using the saved weigth for extra armor. The added armor helps vs AMMs used against them and ASMs should be taken out by the fighter escorts you mentioned (personally I prefer 2k gauss ships for that role).
 

Offline Beersatron

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Re: Will this beam thingy be useful?
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2014, 01:45:07 PM »
I love using these types of designs on frontier worlds that are too far from main Fleet Bases but need some type of military presence to calm the civvies.

Put down enough maintenance facilities to cater for 2000 ton ships and ensure the planet has a mineral supply for the upkeep either by locally sourced mines or a freighter every 6 months.

I would then using a carrier/tender to shuttle the gunboats to the planet, and role play that it is the Navy's rejects getting banished to the edge of civilisation :)