The Bejing

[Borealis4x (OP)]

So this is my first attempt at a ship of the line. I guess you could say its a bit big but I start out with 6 billion population so I think I can handle it.

Bejing class Cruiser    30,000 tons     567 Crew     10470 BP      TCS 600  TH 576  EM 90
4000 km/s     Armour 40-86     Shields 3-360     Sensors 22/36/0/0     Damage Control Rating 13     PPV 82
Maint Life 0.09 Years     MSP 654    AFR 2400%    IFR 33.3%    1YR 7309    5YR 109635    Max Repair 1008 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 366   

Lockheed-Martin 600 EP Internal Fusion Drive (4)    Power 600    Fuel Use 110.23%    Signature 144    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 10.9 billion km   (31 days at full power)
General Electric Epsilon R360/360 Shields (1)   Total Fuel Cost  15 Litres per hour  (360 per day)

Saeder-Krupp CIWS-200 (12x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Saeder-Krupp 40cm Railgun V6/C8 (6x4)    Range 384,000km     TS: 5000 km/s     Power 36-8     RM 6    ROF 25        12 12 12 12 12 12 10 9 8 7
CACI Systems Fire Control S08 192-20000 H40 (1)    Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Ibsen International Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1.25 (1)     Total Power Output 75    Armour 0    Exp 20%

Bonus points if you can tell what game I am referencing.

[Thanatos]

It is a good first try, but here are some pointers to optimize this design further:

Not enough dakka. You want 1 gun per 2k tons. At least, that's how I like to think of it as a general guideline.

Your ship is too big, because it has too much armor. It's maintenance life is too low, it will break down in less than a month and explode. No, literally, the moment this ship leaves dry-dock, it will start exploding. You see that IFR 33.3%? That means there's a one in three chance that something on board will fail, every 5 days.

It is too slow, and it's range is too low. For an internal fusion drive, you really want better than 4k km/s, especially because you are using beam fire weapons. You want 10k/s AT LEAST. If you cannot close the distance, you are not in the game.

Don't use 50% CIWS on ships of the line. You want 100%.

You do not need magazines for beam weapons, unless you plan for this ship to be a collier, in which case 366 is not enough.

Bottom line is, drop the armor, and your stats should line up neatly. If you can get this ship below 12k tonnage, you will have a mighty fast, durable, and powerful ship. Those 6 40cm railguns are going to quite literally one shot anything anyone can throw at you- but only if you manage to get the speed up to around 12k. If you get it up to 20k, you can say goodbye to missiles hitting you, and you can even drop your CIWS down to 4 instead of 12.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I guess you could say the Bejing was... Made in China 


Anyways, what tonnage would you recommend for frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships and such? I was planning to make them each be 30,000 tons larger than their junior class but I guess that's far too large...

And do you have any critiques on the components I made? I understand many people make dedicated fire control/sensor boats but I didn't want to have my fleet turn blind just cause one lightly defended ship got got.

Also, I intended for the ship to also have anti-capital missiles. Do I still need the magazines?

Finally, what do you think of adding in the cannonades? I just like the idea of having close-in plasma cannon batteries built into the hull Royal Navy style.

[Thanatos]

I don't like Carronades, and your components are fine. The railgun and capacitor are matched fairly well. It's also not worth it to have only one shield.

Size is up to you. As long as you can make the speed guidelines stick, it doesn't matter if you have a 2k ton ships, or a 200k ton ship. If it moves at 7k, at mid level techs, Internal Confinement and up, it's good enough. For missile ships at least.

If you are gonna add missiles, your size is gonna bloat even more. It's railguns or missiles, pick one. Otherwise the role of your ship will be confused.

[SteelChicken]

Very slow for that level of engine tech. 
Range is short.
Need alot more maintenance life.
One shield is kind of pointless.
Armor is a bit ridiculous, but if a slow, ponderous tank is your goal, k.

[83athom]

I like having;
Frigates: 20,000 to 40,000
Destroyers: 50,000 to 70,000
Cruisers: 100,000 to 150,000
Battlecruisers/Battleships/Carriers: 200,000 to 300,000
Special case: really big.

Now for the Beijing. Way to much armor. If you still want an armor ball, drop it to 18 to 24 layers. Shields work in bulk, the more you add the exponentially greater the affect. Few more engines to bring up speed, and more fuel to power (redundant tanks as well). At least double the engineering space. CIWS is really good, but its also wise to add a small laser turret or two for anti-fighter work (unless you have another design to do that). I can tell that you didn't copy and paste the whole design because I can't see your sensors to tell you what to change there.

Yes, you still need magazines if you are adding missile launchers. Carronades are a niche weapon best avoided until they get an overhaul in a future version. Instead, maybe either a meson or HPM.

@Thanatos CIWS systems are always 50%. I think you are confusing it with a gauss cannon (even though they are technically the same thing). And reduced size launchers actually work really well without bloating ships too much.  And 1 gun per 2k tons? Depends on the doctrine, but that is pretty weak compared to most peoples' choice. Unless you mean 1 beam per 2k, with tons of missile launchers as well.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Christ, your more extreme than I am, I was going to make cruisers 30,000 tons...

You must have a lot of patients to keep constantly upgrading those shipyards, though. Is there a way to upgrade them more thant 10,000 tons at a time or to at least que them up? I would use the continuous upgrade thing but I hate those non-rounded numbers.

[AL]

Just leave it on auto-expand for a while and when you want to stop use SM to round it to whatever nice number is closest.

[Thanatos]

@83athom

Yeah, my bad, I just realized now just because I rename gauss cannon turrets to CIWS, instead of creating actual.. you know.. CIWS, don't mean that this is what was going on in that design.

As for 1 gun per 2k, I see nothing wrong with it. If you want to go fast, at low tech levels, if you add too many guns, you'll have to add another engine, and then more fuel, and then oh look, you can fit another gun, damn, need another engine, more fuel again, GUUUUUUUNSSS.

[Rich.h]

As others have already pointed out the speed is very low for this ship, but to go further and offer reasons. For your biggest ships you generally go with 50HS engines for the efficiency savings they give. However this ship is armed with beam weapons only, in addition the weapons are of a fixed format (not turreted), therefore they become limited in tracking by the ship speed. As such for all fixed beam weapons you need to think about having the maximum possible speed you can squeeze for two reasons.

1. It offers you the greatest amount of weapon tracking possible.
2. These ships will be getting up close and so need to offer up as fast a target as possible to reduce hits.

I found for my own campaign working with 44HS & 47HS engines with something like 1.5/1.75/2 as the engine output modifier gives me something that both shifts fast and yet doesn't do away with all of the possible efficiency savings. If you are using support fleets and have plenty of fuel depots layed out then you could get away with upping the range to around 30bkm.

Finally ditch half of that armour, it is just making your ship too slow and short ranged, you could use maybe 25% of that mass to add more weapon systems instead. At 40 levels of armour you will happily be able to soak up massive amounts of damage, but sadly you can fight back very well and so will lose simply down to attrition. Much better to get in fast and hit hard while taking a few hits than try to turn it into a slugging match. Remember you are still in danger of taking shock damage from larger missiles and since your speed makes them almost 100% then it becomes a matter of not if but when will you take shock damage that takes our your reactor or tracking system.

[Iranon]

Things that strike me:

1) Speed. As others have said, the ship is rather slow for something that needs to get in their face to do something. It can defend missile ships, but it won't bring the fight to an enemy of comparable tech level.

2) Populsion plant details. If I read it correctly, you use 4x20Hs engines at 1.5 power multiplier engines and 40HS of fuel. That's very slightly on the side of wasting performance for using too much fuel (theoretical ideal is 40% of your engine tonnage, for a fixed engine size). In practice you would err on the side of "bigger and less stressed engines, less fuel" because it keeps running costs down. So you could make some minor adjustments to keep your propulsion plant as compact as possible with some redundancy (4 engines seems a nice number), or go with something bigger and less stressed. At that tech and size, you could build ships 3 times as fast that are less thirsty.

3) Maintenance life. If you haven't disabled this aspect of the game, it will spontaneously explode in an embarrasing manner. Even if this is the case, you probably want the ability to repair battle damage despite heavy armour - that doesn't protect against shock damage or meson weapons. Damaged systems cost twice as much to repair than maintenance failures, so you may want more than twice your Max Repair value in MSP.

4) Passive defences. The armour seems excessive, half of what you have is still on the heavy side. I don't actually dislike the single shield. Sure it doesn't do much, but it also doesn't cost much and is enough make sure the first hit doesn't deal shock damage.

4) Active defences. CIWS protects the ship if targeted, but not others in the same location. As such, it makes sense on ships meant to operate alone, and possibly sensor vessels (which are high-priority targets). It doesn't seem like these would apply.
Regular Gauss turrets would seem more appropriate. Possibly small railguns depending on yor priorities (much less accurate against missiles on slow ships, but cheaper, stronger offensively, and requires less sophisticated fire controls).

5) Offensive weapons. Big, slow-firing railguns are not the most efficient weapons... but if that's what you want to use, you got the details right there. Size, velocity, capacitor, fire control - it's a consistent and professional-looking package. Well done.
Major probleems: One large reactor that will leave you toothless if it gets taken out, and there's the chance of a nice big explosion to boot. One fire control as another single point of failure... if you switch your point defence over to regular Gauss weapons (which require their own fire controls matched to their speed), that problem solves itself.

6) Sensors. You seem to have some, but I don't seem any.

7) Magazines, but nothing you would need them for.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Can railguns be turreted? I was under the impression they couldn't be, but if they can then I suppose I should do that. What I would really like to do though is make them spinal mounted. 80cm railguns... mmmmmmm....

As for regular gausse cannons being better than CIWIS, why is this the case and how do I make them? How do I make effective turrets (haven't done that yet) and how do I know if I have enough point defense?

I would still really like to put at least one big ship-killing missile on this thing, just as a last resort. I remember how in Halo even the basic frigates would have a nuclear warhead they would use as a last resort.

I guess thats sort of a main theme of my confusion, I just don't know how much of something I need for a ship at 30,000 tons whether it be shields, guns, armor, or sensors.

[Iranon]

They can't be turreted, but 10cm railguns can still be adequate point defence through sheer volume, accuracy be damned.
You have enough Gauss tech that those are usually better on slow ships, but not always. If a known enemy likes to throw many simultaneous small salvos at you, fielding enough fast-tracking fire controls for Gauss turrets to engage them all can become impractical.

CIWS are half-size twin Gauss turrets that automatically engage missiles that target the ship, at point blank range.
They don't require external sensors or fire controls, don't count as military components, and work reliably even after a jump point transit (which scrambles your sensors for some time, meaning your regular weapons won't fire).
On the other hand, they can't be used offensively and can't protect other ships. They are unsuited for your design because
a) if I understood you correctly, they aren't intend to act alone. If you have 10 ships with CIWSs and a missile attack concentrates on one of them, 90% of your point defence equipment will do nothing.
b) your ships will fight at beam range. While closing to Gauss range may not be your original plan, having additional firepower in a knife fight may come in useful.

How much point defence depends on what you expect to face and how much you can tank. Being able to intercept 10 salvos of 10 missiles traveling at 40k is quite if you don't plan to take much damage... 5 of your ships would be able to do that, but in their current incarnation only if the enemy split their fire equally.
Your original design has so much armour that the enemy may run out of missiles before you run out of armour even if you do nothing... but shock damage may still cripple your ships, you don't want to enter beam range already worn down, and you don't want to have to take damage even when you outmatch the enemy.

In the component design window, there's a button for Turret Design at the bottom. Highest fire control speed is 4x your base BeamFireControlSpeed tech, so try to make your turrets match that (more than 40-60k is usually excessive, but that's fairly advanced tech). TurretTrackingSpeed tech isn't actually THAT important and can trail fire control speed a little... it just makes your turrets bulkier.

*

A honking big last-resort missile dealing north of 100 damage is't a common choice, but should be quite practical. Without the numbers to overwhelm point defence, you may want to fire it from close enough range that it hits in the same 5s increment it's fired - no time to be tracked and engaged. You probably want them in box launchers, because reload rate would be terrible anyway.
If you want to use it at range, you probably want to armour it or design it as a multi-stage missile that deploys its own chaff (size-1 missile stages that travel at the same or slightly faster speed to keep point defence busy).

[Mastik]

You will also need 30000T maint. facility max ship size for that cruiser.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Do you need an active sensor if you have a missile fire control? How do these two thing operate differently? Do you want your missile fire control to have a higher resoultuion/shorter range than your active senor?