Posted by: obsidian_green
« on: July 14, 2017, 04:07:34 AM »Update on the carrier battle group: it performed beautifully against an NPR I'm pretty sure I'm comfortably out-teching. The battle (which took about a week in realtime even with the spacetime bubble on, good grief) seemed to pit what looked like the entire enemy fleet against my battle group of four combatants, the carrier wing, and a surveillance ship. Strike groups of missile fighters are pretty effective against poorly defended ships, as are my gauss fighters though I lost one to ASMs when they engaged a flight of 5 FACs. The 15cm quad lasers did much work after I gauged that the enemy didn't have much in the way of close defenses. I have to build something to take out whatever is launching 40+ AMM salvos near what I assume is the homeworld and I'm currently waiting for Earth to crank out more ASMs for my strikefighters so I can kill more of what appear to be enemy battle stations. Hopefully they were launching the AMMs; if not it will mean even more waiting for ASM production back on Earth.
I think I've already mentioned my concerns with these designs---the 12 month deployment is too short to facilitate fleet training, the engines are too greedy (a tradeoff I knew I was making that I'll remedy at the next level of engine tech), and the weapons loadout could be better specialized. I'll add magazine capacity to that---I need more missiles---but that might just mean I need to bring along the ordnance ships I left at home and crank out more missiles before I need to use them.
More generally, this engagement highlights a need to design and bring along some beam FACs, which my next carrier design or new 30,000t cruisers should be able to house---just from a management standpoint, I need more ships with single FCs to chase down defenseless contacts. I'm glad I designed some rescue shuttles to scoop enemy life pods, but the Marine attack shuttles proved more trouble than they were worth, clicking past constant interruptions telling me how many seconds remain until I get a combat report just doesn't seem worth the trouble.
I think I've already mentioned my concerns with these designs---the 12 month deployment is too short to facilitate fleet training, the engines are too greedy (a tradeoff I knew I was making that I'll remedy at the next level of engine tech), and the weapons loadout could be better specialized. I'll add magazine capacity to that---I need more missiles---but that might just mean I need to bring along the ordnance ships I left at home and crank out more missiles before I need to use them.
More generally, this engagement highlights a need to design and bring along some beam FACs, which my next carrier design or new 30,000t cruisers should be able to house---just from a management standpoint, I need more ships with single FCs to chase down defenseless contacts. I'm glad I designed some rescue shuttles to scoop enemy life pods, but the Marine attack shuttles proved more trouble than they were worth, clicking past constant interruptions telling me how many seconds remain until I get a combat report just doesn't seem worth the trouble.