Thank you guys for feedback. Some replies below.
You don't have much striking capacity with the bombers because you only have two volleys. This is ok if you plan on keeping a collier with your fleet though.
Yes, definitely need to add more magazine space. My thinking was to support two volleys right now and expand the capability with a refit when new tech is available (new armor and engine tech should free up more space on the carrier with time). How long do the carriers stay engaged in your games usually? The box launchers I think need 2 hours to reload, and you have the trip to/from the target, just curious how much opportunities do you get to strike from a carrier in the same battle?
I'm not sure what your fuel tech is, but 56% fuel usage is really high. Which is fine if you have lots of fuel sitting around. I'm at the same tech engine as you and have 16% usage. My 16kt destroyers have 22b range with 6250km/s speed.
I guess its a trade-off between making a larger engine and sacrificing other capacity on the ship. I have no real experience yet with fuel usage. I seem to have some sorium reserves yet, so have not yet thought too much about it. I did assign the carrier fleet to Training Admin command and was slightly worried about fuel usage tbh
Do you plan on having multiple of the frigate leaders to act has PD or do you have another PD option? Depending on the enemy you face I would argue you are a bit low on PD. I find it most helpful to have dedicated PD ships with either lots of AMM launchers or lots of gauss/railguns.
None of the ships right now are dedicated PD platforms - all of them carry at least one PD gauss turret. In total the fleet has 8 twin normal size gauss turrets and is also supported with AAM missiles. The idea was just to cover each other rather than use CIWS. But those turrets are heavy, I think ~900 tons each with beam fire control.
You mean like not enough MSP to repair itself? Nope. Like forgetting to include active sensors? Nope. Like forgetting missile fire controls on a missile ship? Nope. Like wildly mismatched weapon & fire control range? Nope.
I would really appreciate if you could elaborate. Which ship should have more MSP points? Also what do you mean about missing active sensors (frigate leader has the large sensor right now and the carrier has smaller one as a backup)? And what ship is missing a missle control?
My largest concern is that the Centurion needs a quarter of its tanks to fully refuel its strike group, and its range is only 43 days to start with. Unless the CVBG's ops are in the home system, it's going to need a LOT of tanker support.
Yes, I agree the range could be better. The idea is to get better range with new tech. Curious, what range do you design your carrier military fleets for with similar tech level?
I think you might have a small identity crisis in what is suppose to be the striking arm of this battle group as you have both the Polaris and the fighter strike groups... I would choose one approach.
First though was to use missile frigates to mostly test enemy fleet defenses or deal with small targets I don't want to launch fighters at. But yes, I am not sure they are really useful in this fleet. They can only launch 15 missiles combined and have some fleet defense capabilities (AMM missiles and PD gauss turret),
The strike missiles from the fighters are way too short in my opinion... you are easily within AMM range at that point... a decent striking distance for fighters at this technology level is about 30-60mkm at least.
I see, as a player I would probably never design AAMs with that range, but I guess NPRs do go for such missile designs?
But I could see the usefulness for more than one type of strike missile, one with longer range and one with a shorter range. As the size of the missile is 6 you could even a size 6 that split into two 3 for shorter ranged fights. But your size 6 could also be fitted with ECM rather than an active sensor in my opinion. ECM actually make it harder for enemy AMM to hit them.
I would say I have no space at the moment to have two types of missiles for carrier bombers. Maybe when the tech is there and I can fit more magazines. I have just started researching Electronic Warfare tech tree, so need to get that tech up.
One of the major benefit of carrier warfare is to have the carrier fleet stay hidden. As you have the main sensors on the frigates it will be very difficult to hide the fleet. I would replace the frigate leader large active sensor with sensor scouts to do the active scanning for the fleet... it will be cheap in many way... both economically and from a research perspective.
Does that add a lot of micromanagement to carrier ops? How do you constantly keep your scouts scouting around the fleet. At least with that big sensor I am sure that I will spot and can target the enemy within my striking distance. But yes, I am visible millions of kms away. Also that thermal signature on the carrier engines alone is why I thought it probably is not worth even trying to be stealthy with this fleet.
Some rudimentary sensor on the fighters is alright but they will take up too much space as it is now, especially on the bombers. I suppose you know that the launching platform don't need to provide the active sensor lock, just need a missile fire-control lock and can allow another ship to cover the target with active sensors.
Those are the smallest 0.1 HS sensors - 5 tons each. I know I probably dont need them - I added them just for role-play purposes. I cant imagine someone designing a 500 ton ship and not adding the very basic sensors to the design
