The Long Wait

[El Pip]

Commander Dorris Bertholf, may not be spending valentines day with her Boo, however she did the next best thing aboard the SC Betwsyoced. Discovered a new jump point out of Sigma Phoenicis.

I am genuinely unsure which is more disturbing. Dorris' idea of fun or the name of her ship. Betwsyoced sounds like one of those names the Welsh made up as a joke but are now stuck with.

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Amiens Ib class Frigate      6 915 tons       195 Crew       1 106 BP       TCS 138    TH 208    EM 0
3008 km/s      Armour 3-32       Shields 0-0       HTK 43      Sensors 110/0/0/0      DCR 14      PPV 22.8
Maint Life 3.01 Years     MSP 399    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 66    5YR 988    Max Repair 189 MSP
Magazine 81   
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Tien-Fairchild Magneto-plasma Drive  EP208.00 e65 (2)    Power 416    Fuel Use 14.45%    Signature 104.0    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 285 000 Litres    Range 51.3 billion km (197 days at full power)

Twin Farina Armaments 15.0cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x2)    Range 180 000km     TS: 5500 km/s     Power 12-6     RM 30 000 km    ROF 10       
Echevarria CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12 000 km/s     ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R192-TS9000 (1)     Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 9 000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Improved Pebble Bed Reactor R12-PB20 (1)     Total Power Output 12.1    Exp 10%

Wender Precision Arms Size 1 Box Launcher (12)     Missile Size: 1    Hangar Reload 50 minutes    MF Reload 8 hours
Roberge Armaments Company Size 3.0 Missile Launcher (3)     Missile Size: 3    Rate of Fire 30
Cowans Electronics Missile Fire Control FC17-R1 50 (1)     Range 17.1m km    Resolution 1
Ankrum Aramaments Defender .51 17m AMM (12)    Speed: 28 400 km/s    End: 10.2m     Range: 17.4m km    WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 170/102/51
Ankrum Aramaments Avenger .29 ASM 6 (23)    Speed: 18 333 km/s    End: 45.8m     Range: 50.4m km    WH: 6    Size: 3    TH: 97/58/29

Amacher & Lannigan Active Search Sensor AS8-R1 50 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Amacher & Lannigan Active Search Sensor AS55-R10 450 (1)     GPS 1890     Range 55.4m km    Resolution 10
Weedman Electronics Thermal Sensor TH10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  82.9m km

I have questions about this design. But I'm not sure this is the place for an in-depth discussion on the foibles of Aquarian ship design so I will let them pass.

4054, 30 July                  Finally the first Destroyer Escort rolls off the line the DE Carpathian, these will protect the frigates from inbound missile attacks. It a pity there system are now out of date considering we had upgraded the mahority of the sensors and Fire Controls.

Always the way. And during a Uridium crunch as well.

4057, 6 February            New System Discovered, the third Jump off the Sigma system. The System is tiny, it has 2 Planets and four moons. However one of the planet is Habitable. Average Temperature of -2 , Breathable Atmosphere, gravity of .74 of Earths. Perhaps this place is uninhabited and we can settle a Colony here. The system once again is called Cacun. WHY OH WHY. It now being renamed to the Captain Last name which is Kwiecien

Lucky captain.

4057, 12 March              The Kwiecien planet is occupied. Just my luck. We will need to sen our diplomatic vessel out here.

Unlucky Captain, cursed now to be the name of an alien race.

4057, 4 December       The 1st Fleet has returned, the DIP Alantia is on the way to Kwiecien. Nothing is happening at the Outpost, perhaps it requires more OEA Teams. Any though of Payback with the Mobile Imperium is a pipe dream.  Atleast they have not tried to invade out systems.

I look forward to the brief but exciting life of the DIP Alantia, how long till it gets blown up I wonder?

[ardem (OP)]

The ship builder of the Amien Class is now interested in the public disapproval of the Amiens Frigate class. please feel free to respond here.

The Amiens class was a swiss army knife to a range of issues as it would be a while to produce different variants with the limited Shipyard capacities. Still only have 6 Shipyards 3 Naval, 2 Commercial 1 Repair.

[El Pip]

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Amiens Ib class Frigate      6 915 tons       195 Crew       1 106 BP       TCS 138    TH 208    EM 0
3008 km/s      Armour 3-32       Shields 0-0       HTK 43      Sensors 110/0/0/0      DCR 14      PPV 22.8
Maint Life 3.01 Years     MSP 399    AFR 96%    IFR 1.3%    1YR 66    5YR 988    Max Repair 189 MSP
Magazine 81   
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Tien-Fairchild Magneto-plasma Drive  EP208.00 e65 (2)    Power 416    Fuel Use 14.45%    Signature 104.0    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 285 000 Litres    Range 51.3 billion km (197 days at full power)

Twin Farina Armaments 15.0cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x2)    Range 180 000km     TS: 5500 km/s     Power 12-6     RM 30 000 km    ROF 10       
Echevarria CIWS-120 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 12 000 km/s     ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R192-TS9000 (1)     Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 9 000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Improved Pebble Bed Reactor R12-PB20 (1)     Total Power Output 12.1    Exp 10%

Wender Precision Arms Size 1 Box Launcher (12)     Missile Size: 1    Hangar Reload 50 minutes    MF Reload 8 hours
Roberge Armaments Company Size 3.0 Missile Launcher (3)     Missile Size: 3    Rate of Fire 30
Cowans Electronics Missile Fire Control FC17-R1 50 (1)     Range 17.1m km    Resolution 1
Ankrum Aramaments Defender .51 17m AMM (12)    Speed: 28 400 km/s    End: 10.2m     Range: 17.4m km    WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 170/102/51
Ankrum Aramaments Avenger .29 ASM 6 (23)    Speed: 18 333 km/s    End: 45.8m     Range: 50.4m km    WH: 6    Size: 3    TH: 97/58/29

Amacher & Lannigan Active Search Sensor AS8-R1 50 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Amacher & Lannigan Active Search Sensor AS55-R10 450 (1)     GPS 1890     Range 55.4m km    Resolution 10
Weedman Electronics Thermal Sensor TH10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  82.9m km

As the builders have asked for industry feedback, who am I to deny them?

• Speed / Range. The range looks very long and the speed very slow for MagPla era. Do the Aquarians really need such a long range? Could they trade some range for speed? Say 4000 km/s and 25 billion range would take the same tonnage and seems more attractive, I'd lean towards even lower ranges and more speed unless there is a need.
• Two engines is good for redundancy, but this is a small ship trying to do everything. Single engine would save valuable tonnage.
• Thermal reduction on the engine is a bold (and expensive) choice.
• Why do none of the Tacking Speeds match up? The turret is 5500km/s but the main (only) fire control does 9000km/s.
• Unless the Amiens are operating alone the CIWS looks a waste, drop it and use the saved tonnage to make a faster tracking turret.
• Reactor is twice the size it needs to be (Turret needs 6 power per turn, reactor is producing 12)
• Box launched AMM and standard ASMs is an unusual choice. A dozen AMMs is not going to do much to any incoming attack. But then a "volley" of 3 ASMs 30seconds apart is also not going to do much to the enemy. Box launched ASMs and standard AMMs launchers (and a magazine full of AMMs) would be more conventional, or standard launchers for both if you are trying to not exploit the AI.
• The R1 sensor has a MCR of only 700k, but the AMM and AMM FC have a range of 17.4m km. A shorter range AMM could be faster and more effective. A shorter ranged R1 MFC would be much smaller.
• You could use the tonnage saved to add a separate MFC for the ASMs, they have a 50m km range but would be relying on a 17m km FC
• Does every ship need a 500 tonne thermal sensor? If they are operating alone then (maybe) fine, but if they work in groups then a 'Command' variant with those sensors and a 'standard' variant without but with more launchers seems a good idea. They should both be buildable from the same shipyard so no need to have a dedicated shipyard for the Command variant.

I've no doubt those more experienced can offer better advice, and much of the above may well be wrong or may be deliberate RP choices, but these are the things I noticed.
[/quote]

[ardem (OP)]

Thank you for your enquiries to the Naval Ship Designers. We will try and respond to your questions adequately.

The Amiens was the first warship for the Aquarian Navy. This Frigate was unfortunately designed to be a stop gap until a fleet of ships was possible. The Amiens class has been upgrade 3 times with new engines and sensor technology, not to lose the ability to refit everything in the hull the designs were upgraded with the same tonnage of equipment.

The Amiens is the fastest ship in the Aquarian Fleet, however the new Destroyer Escort Mountain class which has been delayed but will roll of production shortly with increase even faster at 4000km/s, only slightly slower then the Mobile Imperium ships at 5,500km/s

When creating the Amiens class we did not have any recovery vessels or ability to help a vessel that lost one engine, it was designed for redundancy because of the lack of support options. However the Aquarian design philosophy prefers much redundancy in it design.

Thermal reduction does not reduce the capable speed and it is expensive but with out limited naval forces we spare no expensive in saving our crews.

The 15in Gun is an older design and has not been upgraded unlike the sensor equipment. there is no plans in upgrading the gun we feel it is adequate for the role. The new destroyer escort will be the main stay for missile defence.

The reactor is indeed more powerful, we upgraded this over the older reactor, which was the same size. Yes we could gain some weight back however we feel that the reactor is such a small size we did not want to risk too much hull changes.

We have not used the Amiens in combat however we a confident that in it weapons system to be able to deliver on target it desired packages. We have already successfully used the package in a planetary bombardment role.

We build bigger Missile Sensors so it give our team time to work out the action they need to accomplish. Also new missile system will be available that will take advantageous of the new ranges.

Sorry the ASM MFC was added, The PR rep who pushed this to the public has been sacked.
Cowans Electronics  Missile Fire Control FC83-R10 150 (1)     Range 83.4m km    Resolution 10

The Frigate was made to work alone on picket duty, or in squadrons of five or six. However we still limited in numbers.

Thanks you for your concerns on design, I hope you be really happy in our new powerful Destroyer Escort Mountain class, which we provide to the public stunning specification and we planning a partnership with Telecco Model Company is some great construction set you can put together.

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A lot of the design comes from RP, I only want to change things once they learn from their mistakes, so this is somewhat
deliberate to be inefficient. Some of it however is also out of necessity because of the RP decision prior. My starting base design
 was a current US navy frigate style weapons system which is a mix of box launchers, a single gun and sometimes a additional
 magazine  missile launcher. I swapped the ASM and AAM around to see what would happen in a battle if I had one.
P.S. Also forgot Fuel size are huge because the Aquarian System is huge, some jump points are a good distance away, so they got used to build huge fuel capacity

[El Pip]

4058, 19 May                 DIP Alantia, moved to within 22m km of Kwiecien, with the hopes of making contact. Commodore Sammie Patillo, is trying not to make the mistake of past diplomatic ships. However the Diplomatic staff find Patillo, Weak and Unreliable and he look ready to run at any given opportunity.

Given what has happened to past Diplomatic ships can anyone blame him for being prepared to run away?

4060, 18 September       For some reason poor Captain Hank Stops had developed a medical condition, from the last mission. The Survey Command wishes him well and hiope the shipboard doctor is up to the task of looking after the Captain.

It's shame. He has had an attack of Shame at giving that poor system such a terrible name.

4060, 24 November       Dr Bella Whang increased Mining Production Efficiency to 16 tons however that was not good enough and she been make to continue until it is 20 tons.

Another incredible name. Shame she isn't in weapons research, the Whang Missile has potential I feel.

Excellent news about the victory at Kwieien II and some troops actually surviving for once. OK they survived because there was no battle, but that still counts as progress. Doesn't it?

[nuclearslurpee]

Little bit of catching up to do here:

Aquarian ship design seems a bit scattershot to me. There seems to be an emphasis on quite long-ranged vessels at the cost of valuable speed, I'm not sure the tradeoff is a good one under the circumstances. Also rather too much CIWS which to me seems a holdover from the earlier designs for survey, scout, and intelligence ships designed to operate alone. In a fleet setting CIWS quickly loses effectiveness.

Meanwhile the mining crunch is now settling upon Aquaria, how this will be dealt with promises to be an exciting saga.

The system once again is called Cacun. WHY OH WHY. It now being renamed to the Captain Last name which is Kwiecien

I am not sure this is what we would call an improvement.

4062 - 4067

The Aquarians are suffering from Low fuel shortages and the fact even thing take so long to move minerals from 3-4 jumps away is hard to progress.

I have seen some players advocate that factories, shipyards, etc. should be moved to new colonies in parallel with mining facilities, this means your rate of mineral extraction is slower but you do not lose so much time and fuel to mineral shipping activities.

4065, 10 September       Over and over put ships are needing repairs and it taking them atleast 12 months to get to the outer sectors. I think we need to invest into Gates, else we will not be able to produce faster ships.

Or jump tenders, these also do excellent work in many fleets across the galaxy.

There has also been ShipChat™. Regarding the points raised by my estimable colleague previously:

• Agreed on speed/range. For a combat ship two engines are I think necessary, I have seen enough ships lost from having engines shot out that the redundancy is invaluable. No real tonnage need be wasted as the range can simply be reduced.
• Agreed on thermal reduction being luxurious, but as gallicite has shockingly not been a mineral of shortages I think it is working out okay.
• Fire control is indeed mismatched and this is quite egregious. Similarly for the reactor. OOC, I personally think there are more ways to represent "making mistakes" than mismatching numbers in game, certainly it does accomplish the desired result though. Personally I feel like most ship designers are smart enough to make numbers match up, but given the accounts of Aquarian scientists I do not have to suspend very much disbelief.
• The curious missile launcher selection for example is a good "making mistakes" idea and one I am not sure I would be brave enough to steal, so props where props are due.
• While I agree on the thermal sensor, more egregious in my opinion is the lack of a EM sensor to enable counter-detection of enemy active sensors.

Personally, I would more roundly question the choice of CIWS + 10cm laser turrets for PD armament. CIWS struggles in a fleet defense role as it only protects the ship it is mounted on, in any other case Gauss cannon turrets are much more effective. And in this case, why even use laser turrets particularly as these struggle to compete with even 10cm railguns. Future generations are recommended to use Gauss turrets with offensive laser batteries or spinal lasers, according to the experts at my in-house design bureau.

Another incredible name. Shame she isn't in weapons research, the Whang Missile has potential I feel.

Here I must concur.

[nuclearslurpee]

4068, 16 February,               The Athen Class Troop Transport have been handed over to the Ranger Command, and classified as Athen Fleets. Vce Admiral Lonnie Larranaga, pulled off a nice coup from Battle Command.

It is not properly an Aurora AAR without interservice rivalries flaring up. Really, it is not a proper AAR in any game without this.

4069, 11 May                      A New Academy commandant need to be appointed since the last scientist retired due to bad health. Since them aimed at Science we have so many scientist without jobs. It was decided to appoint a Colonel Shaun Busbee to the role, recently back from his Ranger Roles in the occupation force, seen as fast climber and Political Reliable candidate. promoted to Brigadier he was pushed into the role before objections.

An underrated but always wise decision, one can never have too many ground force commanders as only rarely can one have too many ground forces which after all need commanding.

4069, 6 September             Kwiecien II have moved to the acceptance of being occupied, however we on Aquaria prefer the thought we are uplifting them. Creating a better future.

The Aquarii Man's Burden.

4070, 24 November            A New missile was commissioned for the new Missile Destroyer. They wanted a Size 3 AS Missile able to hit a 5KK/s Target at 75mKm at at least 96% accuracy. Ankrum Armament came back with this and a new upgrade to the AA Missile. That fulfilled the 2m range 93% accuracy against 20KK/s Target

Such extremely specific accuracy requirements strongly suggest that someone at Aquaria HQ backdated these numbers after receiving the design submissions.

River class Missile Destroyer

It is okay, I guess. Still rather slow for a MP ship, 5,000 km/s is easily achieved with MP tech especially if a navy has any hope of competing against similar-tech NPRs. Both the active and EM sensors seem very excessive, the actives mainly due to being RES10 which is an order of magnitude too small for anti-ship work, and the EM because why should a destroyer need such a massive EM sensor? Put that on a scout or something, I say. It is also a bit underarmored but I chalk this up to the Aquarians being about to learn a valuable lesson. There are other weaknesses but these I will also chalk up to the Aquarii learning process "from experience" for now. Should these weaknesses prove costly in battle yet be replicated in future designs then I shall raise a very alien stink in the halls of the naval HQ.

Searess class Rescue Shuttle

Not to get too meta here, but what is the point of this ship? It has no sensors to be useful for scouting, and it has no cryo modules to be useful as a, well, rescue shuttle. Perhaps it is meant as ablative armor?

She had faith in her ships and crew, 5 DDG 5 DDE and 8 Frigates left, plus the special surprise to shock and awe the Mobile Imperium.

If the special surprise is not a 100,000-ton battleship armed with 142 meson turrets and a spinal laser, I will be extremely disappointed. 

It sounds like the next post will be full of excitement and action, so I look forward to it eagerly.

[ardem (OP)]

You will see shortly for the little surprise why we have the rescue ship <smile>

[El Pip]

It is not properly an Aurora AAR without interservice rivalries flaring up. Really, it is not a proper AAR in any game without this.

T
At a minimum you need disagreement between the service(s) and the government, but yes ideally you have inter-service rivalry as well.

An underrated but always wise decision, one can never have too many ground force commanders as only rarely can one have too many ground forces which after all need commanding.

Just make the ground units bigger, then you need fewer commanders for the same tonnage of troops. You need troop transports that are big enough, but you needed massive troop transports anyway so this should not be a problem.

Such extremely specific accuracy requirements strongly suggest that someone at Aquaria HQ backdated these numbers after receiving the design submissions.

This is the way.

Searess class Rescue Shuttle
Not to get too meta here, but what is the point of this ship? It has no sensors to be useful for scouting, and it has no cryo modules to be useful as a, well, rescue shuttle. Perhaps it is meant as ablative armor?

Aquilian philosophy holds that ships and commanders that get blown up weren't trying hard enough, so while they are rescued (they remain a valuable resource) they are not provided with cryo modules but are just rammed into an overloaded ship with not enough life support. This ensures the rescue process is miserable and encourages them to try harder next time.

This is my guess, we shall see if it is correct.

Governor  Leona Crumwell,

Another amazing name with which to round off that chapter. Excellent work.

[nuclearslurpee]

1:43:50     The three destroyers now within 50 mkms away, Segars was happy to now launch now and see how the new missiles would handle these fast ships.
[...]
1:44:50     100 Missiles launched at the target Epiphanies 003 from the 5 DDGs, however our electronics are fuzzy they are somehow jamming our locks a little this is new technology we not actually researched or though possible, later to be named ECM which they were giving a rating of 20 when latter analysed.

It is a good life lesson, to only allow happiness after the battle has been fought. And, ideally, won, but let us not be too strict for now.

What the Mobile Imperium did not know was the new developed missile pods, that the DDG added to the rear of there vessels were missile platforms/pods could be detached this is something they did prior to entering the Ceti System. The missile pods were all equipped with the current ASM 3 box launchers and latest Sensor platform that was equal to the DDG in range. The small crew could abandon these platforms if required to be picked up by Searess craft, which was the main reason this crafter was included in the fleet, but already they seem to have had quite a role in pickup enemy survivors. We have now unwrapped the Thunder Pods.

An interesting tactic, not the most original but certainly effective.

I stand by my earlier comments on the Searess-class shuttles. While they are, strictly speaking, capable of performing the rescue mission, without cryo modules to hold recovered survivors there will inevitably be a critical breakdown at some point due to the overloading of life-support systems. I anticipate that this will happen only at the worst possible moment.

4075, 29 April          1st Fleet returns with a fanfare, with medal handed out Commodore Jere Segars. 6 DDG destroyed, 2 Survey vessels and a diplomatic ship on Aquarius System, for the loss of one Searess vessel. joint Chiefs were very happy but concerned with the amount of traffic in the Bootis system, he wanted after a small period of rest to search the Bootis system for a colony and then commit to an operation to take that colony. The opening shots of the war was underway now the ball was in the Mobile Imperium side of things and see what they are about to do.

There may not be a colony, the Mobile commercial ships may simply be fleeing the system due to the high danger rating after suffering combat losses there.

It is a bit of a weakness in the current "diplomatic" AI code, NPR ships will avoid a system that they deem to be dangerous but there doesn't seem to be an exception for their home system or other major colonies, leading to situations where the NPR commercial and civilian ships will flee their home system en masse to avoid "danger" thus abandoning their capital planet to its fate. Usually it isn't a big problem for the NPR because the player promptly destroys them anyways, but it isn't the best way to respond either.