Roles for 3000-ton Frigates?

[Borealis4x (OP)]

My 3000-ton frigates sit in an awkward position. They are too big to act as mere colonial patrol boats like my 1000 ton Corvettes but are too small to effectively support a battle fleet like my 10,000 ton destroyers can.

Best thing I can think of is giving them commercial engines and making them long-range escorts for commercial shipping, convoy escorts basically. Or as glass-canon beam ships with powerful spinal lasers.

Do you have any ideas? Lets see some designs.

EDIT: Just now I thought 3000 tons might be a good size for an unarmed stealth ship that has variants for use as a stealth dropship to take over enemy outposts and a stealth scout with powerful passives.

[Kristover]

I tend to make Frigates in the 3-6K range and they are my first 'fleet' units.  I find that once that particular role gives way to my 8-12K destroyers, I tend to transition them to sensor pickets. 

[Barkhorn]

3000 tons is pretty small.  It's hard to make an effective beam combatant that size, but it could be good as a missile boat with box launchers.

Or they could still be colonial patrol boats in systems that warrant more coverage than 1k corvettes can provide.  Or one could be the flagship for a corvette squadron.

[SevenOfCarina]

I tend to use 4,000 displacement-ton destroyers in substantial numbers, and they're pretty good at what they do if you design them right. In my observation, NPR sensors tend to use resolution >100, so vessels this size should be able to get much closer than larger vessels without being detected. In a player-versus-player game, building warships this size forces other races to reduce the resolution (and range) on their actives or risk squadrons of these sneaking up on them.

I generally build them as mixed-missile combatants (designated DG), usually with 32x size-4 ASM box launchers and 32x AMM box launchers (enough to tank a salvo or two), and operate them in squadrons of six alongside a pair of 1,000 ton sensor corvettes. 4,000 tons is a nice optimum - small enough that box launchers aren't too risky a proposal, but large enough that you can make them have sufficient endurance and range to keep up with the fleet. They're generally the source of most of my offensive power since they can generate an absurdly large saturation strike and can usually get away without taking return fire, even against higher-tech opponents that are faster than them. Deploy a couple of squadrons of these with a battlegroup and you're golden.

[Bremen]

Seems the right size for a stealthy scoutship to me. It's good enough for largish sensors but not so big it's easy to spot.

[QuakeIV]

Concur on stealth, its about the only thing that fits where you wouldn't simply build a larger craft as soon as you had a big enough slipway.

[liveware]

I designate ships between 1000-5000 tons as corvettes and use them as carrier-based heavy strike craft. They are big enough to mount some armor, shields, and fairly potent beam weapons and can be organized into mini fleets capable of providing their own point defense against missile does as necessary. Combined with the occasional missile barrage from the nearest carrier strike group, I find that ships in this size range are quite useful. Their small sensor signature should not be ignored...

[nuclearslurpee]

Seems the right size for a stealthy scoutship to me. It's good enough for largish sensors but not so big it's easy to spot.

Second this. A size 11 or 12 EM sensor (550 or 600 tons) will counter-detect any enemy active sensor up to two tech levels higher than yours outside of the active sensor range. You can mount an EM sensor of this size and similar-size thermal plus a decent engine on a 3000-ton hull pretty easily, or you can opt for slower and smaller-engined if you want to fit a jump drive in there once you're past rank-beginner jump drive techs.

[misanthropope]

also playing on the sensor footprint:  missile assassins.  kind of a FAC flotilla that doesn't need a mothership.   all the aggro, fewer (*&^ to give, since you don't have that expensive carrier to fret over.

[sadoeconomist]

3000 ton ships are important IMO because the smallest military jump drive you can build that isn't self-jump only starts at 3000 ton capacity, and if you keep getting equal amounts of the different jump techs then the critical number stays around that range through most of the tech tree. So like IRL Age of Sail frigates, they are a navy's smallest practical independent long-range vessels. A flotilla of 3000t frigates can move between systems without needing carriers and divide into single ships to efficiently scout systems using a minimal resource investment. They're needed to patrol systems where you don't have a base that fighters or FACs could operate out of.

But while they don't need hangars to jump, they're still small enough to easily use hangars for support, and that means that they can reload box launchers in deep space beyond unstabilized jump points with far less difficulty than larger ships, which can't reload box launchers without returning to a colony or using a 100,000t ordnance hub module. And they can generally use much larger MFCs than fighters so they can launch from a decent range without being detected by enemy active sensors.

So they're in that sweet spot of 'big enough to use long-range missiles and jump drives but small enough to use hangars to reload box launchers and stay off enemy sensors.' It'd be very easy to keep them permanently maintained in deep space in distant systems as well - even a small commercial ship could be built with the maintenance module capacity to overhaul one 3000t ship at a time. They're easy for almost any shipyard to build, too. They're too small to directly take part in fleet engagements but your fleet can't be everywhere at once, frigates maybe can't be everywhere either but they can be a lot of places for cheap without needing too much support.

[Froggiest1982]

Still respecting everybody's way to play l, but I think you seriously need to rethink the way you see your Navy.

A 1,000 tons ship is the minimum to be produced without a bridge and with a similar composition of a bigger fighter, therefore, I would categorize it as a FAC in any circumstance.

Moving upwards a 3,000 would honestly be not evem a corvette in my navy (up to 8,000 tons).

My Frigates would be between 9,000 and 12,000 tons, Cruisers 12,500 and 14,000 with Destroyers starting at the 15,000 mark.

Still the above would leave a 5,000 tons ship as either a scout or a recon vessel. While it is possible to make your 3,000 tons ship valuable for combat it would still be valuable only due to the composition of your navy (which is fair enough) but might also ending up in a limbo, hence your difficulty in finding a proper use for it.

Tonnage it's not everything, of cpurse, as also payload plays a major role in defining a ship, however, one should still start somewhere and displacement is a good benchmark.

[tobijon]

I think its interesting that your destroyers are the largest since historically destroyers are quite a bit smaller than cruisers. Its your own choice of course.

[Froggiest1982]

I think its interesting that your destroyers are the largest since historically destroyers are quite a bit smaller than cruisers. Its your own choice of course.

Sorry you right, I meant cruisers more than 15,000 and destroyers between 12,500 and 15,000. I swapped steps.

[dersavage]

It seems there are many classifications. I use 2000-3500t corvette,t 4000-6500t frigates and larger destoryer usually 7500-10,000t. 1-15,000t are light cruisers and over 15,000t heavy cruisers. 1000-2000t are small patrol vessels etc.

I mainly use corvettes and frigates to patrol outer colonies and escort commercial ships. They are fast and have decent endurance too. They are not fighting ships and I try to avoid combat if possible. My frigates have larger EM & thermal sensors so use them as Guard Patrol Ship. They all have microway weapons and mainly PD defence. After enemy is seen I can send my fighting ships to engage.

I'm still Aurora-noobie so not sure if this is good tactics. But I like to build lot of these smaller under 5000t ships.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

My rule of thumb is that every class of ship should be at least 3x the size of the preceding class.

So corvettes are 1000 tons, frigates 3000 tons, destroyers 10,000 tons, cruisers 30,000 tons, and capital ships 100,000 tons.

I might add ships classes in-between, like 4500 ton Heavy Frigates or 50,000 ton Battlecruisers.

If I were to replace the corvette classification with Fast Attack Craft, ever class would be boosted by one level.

So a FAC would be 1000 tons, a corvette 3000 tons, a frigate 10,000 tons, a destroyer 30,000 tons, and a cruiser 100,000 tons. Capital ships would be 300,000 tons and theoretical super-capitals would be 1,000,000.

Its not a bad idea, but might be a bit crazy. I don't even know if you can build a military jump engine that can handle 1,000,000 tons.

EDIT: I looked it up and you need Jump Drive Efficiency 21 to build a military Jump Drive that can handle 1,000,000 tons.