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Posted by: pedter
« on: March 19, 2024, 04:25:00 PM »

it's great you're getting 4k speeds out of NTE engines, but with both of mine, literally 40% of the ship's mass is in the engine block alone

The Apollo sits just above 60% engine at 175% power; I like to use the old %power-by-mass metric, which paints it at about 106.24% power by mass. My own ships aim for 37.5% power by mass, typically either 150% power at 25% mass or 75% power at 50% mass; I'm not sure what military procurement was thinking with this one! My own military would be running around at 2,400km/s with nuclear thermal engines but I never actually build those because engine tech is moving so fast at that era; my first military ship are typically ion drives, give or take (+/-5th generation rather than 2nd!)
Posted by: Gyrfalcon
« on: March 19, 2024, 04:41:36 AM »

Excellent optimization, pedter!

Honestly, the design is a boondoggle from the get-go. I mean, it's great you're getting 4k speeds out of NTE engines, but with both of mine, literally 40% of the ship's mass is in the engine block alone, so there's precious little space to shoot back at things. The ships are going to die instantly when anything with missiles engages them, as only one design had even a nod towards point defense capability.

But hey, when military procurement demands what amounts to a laser cannon attached to an engine block and isn't satisfied with a fighter design, they get a laser cannon attached to an engine block.
Posted by: pedter
« on: March 16, 2024, 09:28:55 PM »

Righto, the previously-promised design thoughts plus the DB so you can check it out if that's your thing. This is probably going to sprawl into a rather long post (ending update: yes, yes it has!)

TL;DR: spreadsheets were unsurprisingly used to optimize the design and I had to cheese the MSP calculations to make it fit in the 6,800km/s band; the DB is attached at the bottom.

Assuming some familiarity with the given ten design categories, let's first break the list down into groups.

Starting with the mandatory grouping:
- 6,000t or less
- 4,000km/s or more
- 1 layer of armour or more
- 6 months deployment time or more
- 2x max repair MSP or more
- 4 PPV or more, plus necessary crew, BFC, and power plant
- 96kkm BFC or more
- 9bkm endurance or more
- 192.5t of sensor dead mass across two sensors, plus necessary crew

Following up with the finite grouping: (we can get points here, but only a finite amount per category)
- up to 2 additional armour layers at +2 DP each
- up to 3 additional months deployment time at +1 DP each
- up to 2 additional max repair at +1 DP each
- up to 32kkm additional BFC range at +2 DP per 16kkm
- up to 1bkm additional endurance at +1 DP per 250mkm

Lastly the infinite grouping: (we can add as many as we can fit in 6kt)
- +1 DP per 200km/s above the minimum
- +0.5 DP per 1 PPV above the minimum

Next up, a couple of notes on the above groups. First, some of the negative DP categories have been flipped around to gain points starting from the low design value rather than lose points starting from the high design value; this is for simplicity of comparison but will not change the final DP value of the design when submitted. Second, the groupings omit yearly MSP usage (it's difficult to group but we'll extract points from it) and BFC tracking speed below hull speed (don't do this; adding BFC tracking mass is very cheap compared to the DP penalty).

With the categories grouped so they can be compared to one another we can start breaking down how much each is worth in DP (or, more specifically, how much tonnage it will cost to gain +1 DP from any category). As the mandatory and finite groupings can't fill the ship on their own (we could leave the ship small but the DP total is poor) we'll want to figure out which category in the infinite group will be used to fill the ship. This will also allow discarding of any finite group member that's worse than the preferred infinite group filler. For that, we look to speed and PPV and brute-force some calculations in a spreadsheet. I won't include the spreadsheet or the calculations here but I will include the final values.

For our two infinite grouping categories we can calculate their mass per DP efficiency:
- on a full-size 6kt hull, it costs roughly 90t in engine+fuel mass to add 200km/s (+1 DP) for the required fuel endurance; engine count, size, and %power optimization is even taken care of
- PPV is a fixed value per HS: 1 PPV per 1 HS, rounded down, for +0.5 DP; this means +1 DP is 100t of weapon mass (UNE-provided lasers are an even 200t for +2 DP)

Notably these values omit a few things. Crew mass is omitted for speed while crew, reactor, and fire control mass are omitted for PPV. Additionally, on a ship smaller than the full 6kt design limit, it takes roughly proportionately less mass to add 200km/s. However as engine+fuel mass per DP are already superior to PPV mass per DP we can safely ignore the extra mass sources of PPV and the chance of building a smaller ship for speed and choose to build solely for speed regardless. For verification purposes, testing designs that try to use PPV instead of speed as filler mass do end up with fewer overall DP but the analysis provides additional confidence; the same can be said about using a smaller ship with less available payload mass.

With our 90t per DP engine+fuel filler mass locked in we'll next want to to take a look at the categories from the finite grouping; any categories here that are cheaper to include than engine+fuel we'll want to make room for in our total payload mass while any categories that are more expensive than engine+fuel can be discarded from the ship and left at their minimum required values.

Calculating mass per DP efficiency for the five finite grouping categories: (no spreadsheets were needed for these thankfully, just tinkering in the Class Design window)
- armour layers on a 6kt ship are 370-375t for+2 DP, or 185t for +1 DP, nearly twice that of engine+fuel; instead of +4 DP for +2 armour, we can swap to +8 DP for engine+fuel
- one month of deploy time for a fully crewed 6kt vessel that's likely to be all engines and one gun is 15-20t; we absolutely want to include a full 9 months of deployment for +3 DP
- our max repair will be about 200 MSP, which fits in 20t of maintenance storage (with no crew) for +1 DP; it's a no-brainer to include a full 4x max repair in the design for +2 DP
- using a 6,800km/s (3.4x) single-weapon fire control, 16kkm range steps change the mass by 21.25t for +2 DP or 10.625t for +1 DP; also a no-brainer to run max 4x range for +4 DP
- using those same 6,800km/s 175% engines, 250mkm of fuel for +1 DP is a little less than 20t of fuel, so we'll add the 80t of fuel to hit the full 10bkm range for the full +4 DP

The above analysis does allude to the engines that will power the final ship design but before we walk through the different engine design options let's go back to the design categories and list off the complete features list that those engines will need to move:
- still 6,000t or less
- as much speed as possible
- only 1 layer of armour
- full 9 months of deployment time
- full 4x max repair of MSP
- only 4 PPV from a single UNE-provided laser, plus a 2.04 power reactor because I'm not sure the 0.5t-lighter 2.00 power reactor is legally enough (it's technically 1.99588 power!)
- max 128kkm BFC, tuned to track at the ship's speed (6,800km/s in the final design)
- full 10bkm endurance
- still 192.5t of sensor dead mass

Notably the yearly MSP is still absent from the above list; there are only nine bullet points here while the initial design categories listed ten. Due to the discrete nature of engine size we're going to have "spare" tonnage for each ship design that leverages a given engine design; engineering space goes into that tonnage and is used to both bring the MSP capacity up to 4x max repair but also to bring the yearly MSP down. Largely, we'll trade engineering space out for maintenance storage in to hit our 4x max repair capacity while keeping yearly MSP use as low as possible.

Starting up with engine designs by returning to the spreadsheets, mass-optimized engine+fuel tonnage for each 200km/s speed band (4,000km/s, 4,200km/s, etc) almost exclusively prefers the max 175% power. The exceptions to this lie on the very low end of the spectrum: 4,000km/s engine+fuel is lightest at 165% power, while 4,200km/s and 4,400km/s prefer 170% power. Any discrete speed bands starting at 4,600km/s (or higher) use the least mass possible while running the maximum 175% power tech with the extra fuel necessary to feed them to obtain the chosen 10bkm endurance.

With engine %power determined we can start prototyping engine designs and building the rest of the ship around them. Due to the engine size tech we'll exclusively be using twin engines; a single max-size 40HS engine can't even push a 6kt ship at the required 4,000km/s, while exceeding twin 40HS and rolling over to triple 27HS engine is so large that we can't fit the features list into 6kt of ship any more. A note on unit size, we'll stick with fewer, larger engine units to save fuel rather than many smaller engine units to save on max repair as fuel greatly out-masses MSP.

Iterating with engine prototypes, we'll find that twin engines smaller than the "ideal" leave too much ship size on the table (and therefore move slower and deliver fewer DP than simply adding a larger engine), while twin engines larger than the "ideal" eat up too much ship size and actually cost us DP in the design because we can't get enough engineering space on board any longer. I've found the sweet spot is twin 34-36 HS 175% power engines; smaller engines run slower while larger engines burn more MSP.

Discussing those three engine options then:
- twin 34HS engines leave us with a significant amount of "spare" tonnage and allow engineering space to lower yearly MSP to 50 and move at 6,400km/s for a total of 24 DP
- twin 35HS engines leave us with less "spare" tonnage and require backing off the engineering space; this design runs faster at 6,600km/s but loses yearly MSP to 75 for the same 24 DP
- twin 36HS engines typically use too much of the "spare" tonnage and back off yearly MSP to 125 at 6,800km/s for a lower total of 23 DP. However, it's very close to working

Due to the discrete nature of designed DP it's not out of the question that other entrants find one of the 24 DP designs and it becomes a race for optimizing that design, in order of the tie-breaking criteria. The first criteria, and the only one we'll care about, is speed. This is where that not-quite-there 6,800km/s twin 36HS designs comes back: squeezing this design to work and get it up to 24 DP by saving mass and getting the yearly MSP back down to 100 was the goal. For this we'll turn to a better understanding of failure rate mechanics that I've been unable to find but that I could iterate on in the Class Design window.

To that end, a few design options that allow movement within a metric's tonnage while changing values other than that specific metric:
- I prefer to using 50t Standard fuel tanks. They're the smallest fuel tank that retains HTK and have the highest HTK-to-mass ratio as a result; doubly useful given we have no armour
- v2.5.1 still has crew requirements for 50t and 250t maintenance storage while only the 250t version has HTK; as a result, I fill with 10t maintenance storage to lower crew tonnage
- yearly MSP usage has some manner of correlation with component size and unique component count; we'll want to bloat the vessel with many smaller components to lower yearly MSP

The final above bullet point is of particular interest for squeezing the twin 36HS design. While engineering spaces use more crew per unit mass when broken down into smaller components and are therefore disqualified from lowering yearly MSP by splitting them, neither fuel tanks nor maintenance storage have any crew requirements and are therefore ripe for abuse. Even better, maintenance storage modules have a fixed cost per ton so we can split them into smaller components for free; fuel tanks do not have this trait and are a large part of the somewhat extreme cost of the final ship design.

Starting with MSP: 175% power 36HS engines have a repair cost of 201.6 MSP and our target is 4x max repair; unsurprisingly the engines are the most costly component so we'll need at least 806.4 MSP on board. As the final design utilizes three engineering spaces and one small engineering space, we'll need another 550 MSP to hit 807 total, or 55t of maintenance storage. Discarding the idea of a 50t maintenance storage bay because of the crew requirement, we could aim for 5x 10t small storage and 2x 2.5t tiny storage; however, the ship gains a new unique component by splitting one of the two 2.5t tiny storage bays into 5x 0.5t fighter storage bays. Swapping any 10t small storage out for smaller components doesn't seem to change anything however.

And now for the real MSP abuse: fuel tanks. The final design leverages 699.9t of fuel to deliver 10bkm of range using twin 36HS 175% power engines pushing 5,930t of ship; this fuel tonnage is very specific. Any less reports 9.9bkm range and any more is wasted tonnage that lowers the final speed and removes an entire 200km/s band for a -1 DP result. We could do this using 14x 50t Standard fuel tanks and pick up 14 internal HTK while doing so; this is exactly what the suggested design does. However, due to yearly MSP usage dropping as components get smaller and more unique components are introduced, we won't be doing that.

Instead, using 6,999x 0.1t Minimal fuel tanks is almost the ideal despite the absolutely revolting BP, wealth, duranium, and boronide costs. We will, however, reintroduce a 1t Fighter fuel tank and a 5t Tiny fuel tank to increase unique component count and continue to drag the yearly MSP usage down, but trying to reintroduce a 10t Small fuel tank increases the yearly MSP usage so we won't be doing that; instead, 1 Tiny, 1 Fighter, and 6,939 Minimal tanks are left to store the fuel in some sort of cruel joke against the shipyard workers that would need to weld them all into the hull.

The final result is a twin 36HS 175% power engine design that hits 24 DP: the yearly MSP usage has been brought down to 100 while maintaining the remainder of the design criteria that were laid out when we went through design optimization. The final ship design, laid out in Class Design window order, is then as follows:
- 1x UNE-provided 55t Active Search Sensor
- 7.3x 50t Duranium Armour, automatically added for 1-29 layer-column configuration
- 1x 170t Single-Weapon Beam Fire Control, providing 128kkm range and 6,800km/s tracking
- 1x 50t Bridge, automatically added because we're heavier than 1,000t
- 385t of Crew Quarters, automatically added for 9 months deployment time
- 2x 1,800t (36HS) 175% power Engines
- 175t of Engineering, laid out in 3x 50t + 1x 25t configuration
- 699.9t of Fuel Storage, laid out in 1x 5t + 1x 1t + 6,939x 0.1t configuration
- 1x UNE-provided 200t H&C LL-12 Laser Gun
- 55t of Maintenance Storage, laid out in 5x 10t + 1x 2.5t + 5x 0.5t configuration
- 1x 37t (0.74HS) Power Plant, delivering ~2.04 power instead of 1.99588 power
- 1x UNE-provided 137.5t Thermal Sensor

For what it's worth, a twin 35HS 175% engined ship pushes well into the 6,600km/s band at 24 DP without the obnoxious MSP and fuel reworks, while backing off from those reworks leaves the twin 36HS 175% engined ship either slightly below 6,800km/s, slightly below 4x max repair, and/or slightly above 100 MSP per year. Those ship designs are probably the ones to deploy if there's need for a hull north of 6,500km/s in the Nuclear Thermal era!

Class Design screenshot and DB are attached below. This post became significantly longer than I expected but I enjoy teaching so hopefully at least one person has learned a new ship design trick rather than being all for naught!
Posted by: pedter
« on: March 16, 2024, 08:46:03 PM »

Agreed on the questionable usability of the final design. It's expensive and fragile for something that just lugs a single laser around :P I can see some edge use cases, such as a commerce raider, or to hunt commerce raiders if they are even smaller.

I can only offer two mitigating ideas for these, though one of them can (and should!) be done by all of the proposed designs (and/or all military ships in general; mine certainly do), not just the Apollo:
- both expense and durability can be walked back by swapping to 14x 50t Standard fuel tanks; this drops almost 10% of the BP cost and adds 14 internal HTK for a minimal (but DP-costly!) hit to stats
- it's one of few proposed designs that can successfully chase raiders, as it's one of the few designs that can keep up. One gun on target is technically better than zero? But let's be honest, it's still ugly

That said, for anyone thinking of trying to build it, please don't actually send the final design out into combat; the design categories would have benefited from some DP-falloff to encourage a more balanced "ideal" design. 3 or even 4 DP per armour layer instead of 2 DP would have leveled the playing field, while a 10% reduction in DP per 200km/s or 2 PPV added (+1, +0.9, +0.81, +0.729, etc) would have balanced the two out. It also wouldn't have been unreasonable to use prorated DP for the speed bonus and tracking penalties; if the ship delivers 4,163km/s, making that +163km/s worth +0.815 DP (and the same for the tracking penalty) means the ship no longer needs to be perfectly matching. A single 1km/s being the full -1 DP for either of the two categories is brutal and doesn't encourage the sorts of optimization trades that could build a better ship. Just ideas for next time though!
Posted by: Zap0
« on: March 16, 2024, 07:56:06 PM »

Nicely done!

I've been too focused on trying to increase engine count to max reduce repair cost and deployment cost, when the answer was to go with bigger engines and use the fuel savings to stack more engineering.

Didn't do a numerical analysis, but armor was of course out of the question, and the penalties for reduced fuel/tracking could be avoided with only small tonnage investments. Then it was just a question of speed with some optimization potential with the maintenance stats.

Agreed on the questionable usability of the final design. It's expensive and fragile for something that just lugs a single laser around :P I can see some edge use cases, such as a commerce raider, or to hunt commerce raiders if they are even smaller.
Posted by: Warer
« on: March 16, 2024, 04:14:15 PM »

not the smeg on the Apollo but one 12cm laser on a near unarmored 6kt hull is just bad

Oh, just wait until you see how I did it... The mass cost analysis was very much not in favor of some of the available design options and it showed in the final design of the Apollo. Speed mass (engine+fuel) was mildly superior to PPV mass (weapon+BFC+reactor) and stayed that way forever but armour mass was quite horrible and I'd have used zero layers of armour if I could. You'll notice that the top two designs only use one layer of armour, that they're the only designs to do so, and that they're significantly ahead by DP; that's how bad armour mass was for the DP criteria. Deployment time, MSP capacity, yearly MSP, BFC range, and fuel range were all excellent mass but were hard-capped on how many points could be extracted.

I do agree that BP cost should have been one of the DP criteria; 700 BP just to squeeze a tiny bit more velocity out of the hull isn't reasonable (and I'll be including a mildly more reasonable design in the DB) but such is the nature of optimization for a given set of rules. I think a large part of the trouble came from the nature of the extremely discrete DP brackets; whole DP start coming off the design of the Apollo if the hull slipped by even 1km/s speed, 1km/s tracking, 1 MSP capacity, 1 yearly MSP, or 0.1t of fuel (yes, 100kg of fuel, that's how tight the Apollo design is wound). I'll cook up a design post for the Apollo when I get the DB posted to share my thoughts and analysis but ultimately it came down to optimizing for the DP criteria and that made my final design quite ugly.
Yeah fair and I really respect you for pulling it off, it is an amazingly well-designed terrible idea. Just checked how fast you can get a 6kt hull to move with x1.75 NTEs and holy hell I think you got it up to just about the edge while painting a 10bkm range xD It's a really really cool example of how you can hyper optimize for speed.
Posted by: pedter
« on: March 16, 2024, 03:45:16 PM »

not the smeg on the Apollo but one 12cm laser on a near unarmored 6kt hull is just bad

Oh, just wait until you see how I did it... The mass cost analysis was very much not in favor of some of the available design options and it showed in the final design of the Apollo. Speed mass (engine+fuel) was mildly superior to PPV mass (weapon+BFC+reactor) and stayed that way forever but armour mass was quite horrible and I'd have used zero layers of armour if I could. You'll notice that the top two designs only use one layer of armour, that they're the only designs to do so, and that they're significantly ahead by DP; that's how bad armour mass was for the DP criteria. Deployment time, MSP capacity, yearly MSP, BFC range, and fuel range were all excellent mass but were hard-capped on how many points could be extracted.

I do agree that BP cost should have been one of the DP criteria; 700 BP just to squeeze a tiny bit more velocity out of the hull isn't reasonable (and I'll be including a mildly more reasonable design in the DB) but such is the nature of optimization for a given set of rules. I think a large part of the trouble came from the nature of the extremely discrete DP brackets; whole DP start coming off the design of the Apollo if the hull slipped by even 1km/s speed, 1km/s tracking, 1 MSP capacity, 1 yearly MSP, or 0.1t of fuel (yes, 100kg of fuel, that's how tight the Apollo design is wound). I'll cook up a design post for the Apollo when I get the DB posted to share my thoughts and analysis but ultimately it came down to optimizing for the DP criteria and that made my final design quite ugly.
Posted by: Warer
« on: March 16, 2024, 07:13:37 AM »

Personally I quite enjoyed it, made me think about the design process and come to a few revelations (Like recalling that after a certain point your making the engine bigger to push the engine forward). I do think BP and size could have been made a DP bearing part of the design but overall it felt quite realistic, not the smeg on the Apollo but one 12cm laser on a
 near unarmored 6kt hull is just bad even if the speed is excellent for the engine tech. Still that's pretty realistic for a 1st Gen experimental design and a doctrine of Speed is King makes sense.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 16, 2024, 06:43:46 AM »

Tender Results:

PC-6 v1 "ARGO" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "ARGO" class Corvette      5,996 tons       154 Crew       564.5 BP       TCS 120    TH 576    EM 0
4803 km/s      Armour 3-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 27      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 1-1      PPV 8
Maint Life 1.93 Years     MSP 573    AFR 230%    IFR 3.2%    1YR 200    5YR 3,000    Max Repair 144 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

X-30 Nuclear Thermal Engine  EP288.00 (2)    Power 576    Fuel Use 159.10%    Signature 288    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 530,000 Litres    Range 10 billion km (24 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (2)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,803 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
BFC-35/24M Beam Fire Control R112-TS4800 (1)     Max Range: 112,000 km   TS: 4,800 km/s    ECCM-0     91 82 73 64 55 46 38 29 20 11
HP-200 Pebble Bed Reactor R2 (2)     Total Power Output 4    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km


PC-6 v1 "ARGO" by Madzak Review:
1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +800 km/s (+4DP)
3. Armor: +2 layers (+4DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP:  x 3,979 (+1DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 200 (0DP)
7. PPV: 4+4 (+2DP)
8. Beam Fire control: 112 000 (+2 DP) penalty for TS, ship speed: 4803 km/s > BFC TS:4800 km/s (-2DP)
9. Range: 10 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 11 DP

PC-6 v1 "Greyhound" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "Greyhound" class Corvette (P)      3,750 tons       96 Crew       379.9 BP       TCS 75    TH 336    EM 0
4480 km/s      Armour 3-21       Shields 0-0       HTK 18      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 4
Maint Life 2.25 Years     MSP 681    AFR 225%    IFR 3.1%    1YR 181    5YR 2,713    Max Repair 168 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Hephaestus Arms NTE336 Supercharged Pursuit Engine (1)    Power 336.0    Fuel Use 233.90%    Signature 336.00    Explosion 17%
Fuel Capacity 509,000 Litres    Range 10.4 billion km (26 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (1)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,480 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
Hephaestus Arms HA/MGB-1-S Fire Control System (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,600 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Hephaestus Arms PBR-2GW (1)     Total Power Output 2    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

PC-6 v1 "Greyhound" by Gyrfalcon Review:
1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +480 km/s (+2DP)
3. Armor: +2 layers (+4DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP:  x 4,05 (+2DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 181 (0DP)
7. PPV: 4 (0DP)
8. Beam Fire control: 128 000 (+4 DP)
9. Range: 10 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 12 DP

PC-6 v1 "Bloodhound" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "Bloodhound" class Corvette (P)      6,000 tons       164 Crew       584.1 BP       TCS 120    TH 538    EM 0
4480 km/s      Armour 3-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 32      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 12
Maint Life 1.36 Years     MSP 551    AFR 480%    IFR 6.7%    1YR 321    5YR 4,820    Max Repair 134.4 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Hephaestus Arms NTE268.8 Supercharged Pursuit Engine (2)    Power 537.6    Fuel Use 261.51%    Signature 268.80    Explosion 17%
Fuel Capacity 870,000 Litres    Range 10 billion km (25 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (3)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,480 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
Hephaestus Arms HA/MGB-2 Fire Control System (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,600 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Hephaestus Arms PBR-6GW (1)     Total Power Output 6.2    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

PC-6 v1 "Bloodhound" Review:

1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +480 km/s (+2DP)
3. Armor: +2 layers (+4DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP: x4 (+2DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 321 (-3DP)
7. PPV: 4+8 (+4DP)
8. Beam Fire control: 128 000 (+4 DP) no penalty for TS.
9. Range: 10.2 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 13 DP

PC-6 v1 "Alaska" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "Alaska" class Corvette (P)      6,000 tons       165 Crew       577.1 BP       TCS 120    TH 480    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 3-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 41      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 2-3      PPV 14
Maint Life 2.19 Years     MSP 320    AFR 144%    IFR 2.0%    1YR 90    5YR 1,346    Max Repair 120 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Karmazov & Jonas 1.25kt/240gN NTE M1110 (2)    Power 480.0    Fuel Use 174.28%    Signature 240.00    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 626,900 Litres    Range 10.8 billion km (31 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (2)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
Liberty Arms 105mm Railcannon (2x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 10,000 km    ROF 10     
Beam Fire Control R128-TS4000 (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Beam Fire Control R32-TS4000 (1)     Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s    ECCM-0     69 38 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor R11 (1)     Total Power Output 10.8    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

PC-6 v1 "Alaska" by Warer Review:

1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +0 km/s (0DP)
3. Armor: +2 layers (+4DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP: x2 (0DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 90 (+4DP)
7. PPV: 4+4 (+2DP)*
8. Beam Fire control: 128 000 (+4 DP) no penalty for TS.
9. Range: 10.2 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 14 DP

PC-6 v1 "Darchlight" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "Darchlight" class Corvette (P)      6 000 tons       172 Crew       610.8 BP       TCS 120    TH 792    EM 0
6600 km/s      Armour 1-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 33      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 1-1      PPV 4
Maint Life 2.21 Years     MSP 533    AFR 169%    IFR 2.4%    1YR 147    5YR 2 209    Max Repair 132 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Bladestar NTE 165-25 EP264 (3)    Power 792    Fuel Use 221.18%    Signature 264    Explosion 16%
Fuel Capacity 750 000 Litres    Range 10.2 billion km (17 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (1)    Range 80 000km     TS: 6 600 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20 000 km    ROF 10     
Target Computer "Jenkel" R128-TS6600 (SW) (1)     Max Range: 128 000 km   TS: 6 600 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Tyluric Energy Unit R2 (1)     Total Power Output 2    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes

PC-6 v1 "Darchlight" by Bladestar Labs Review:
1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +2600 km/s (+13DP)
3. Armor: +0 layers (0DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP: x4 (+2DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 147 (+2DP)
7. PPV: 4 (0DP)
8. Beam Fire control: 128 000 (+4 DP) no penalty for TS.
9. Range: 10.2 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 21 DP

And the winner is:

PC-6 v1 "Apollo" class Corvette
Code: [Select]
PC-6 v1 "Apollo" - Engine class Corvette (P)      5,930 tons       184 Crew       696.7 BP       TCS 119    TH 806    EM 0
6800 km/s      Armour 1-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 29      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 3-5      PPV 4
Maint Life 3.52 Years     MSP 807    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 100    5YR 1,501    Max Repair 201.6 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Prototype Nuclear Thermal Engine EP403.20 - 36HS @ 175% (2)    Power 806.4    Fuel Use 213.52%    Signature 403.20    Explosion 17%
Fuel Capacity 699,900 Litres    Range 10 billion km (16 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (1)    Range 80,000km     TS: 6,800 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
Prototype Beam Fire Control R128-TS6800 (SW) - 128kkm @ 6.8kkm/s (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 6,800 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Prototype Pebble Bed Reactor R2 @ 2.04 Power (1)     Total Power Output 2    Exp 5%

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

PC-6 v1 "Apollo" by pedter Review:

1. Size: (0DP)
2. Speed: +2800 km/s (+14DP)
3. Armor: +0 layers (0DP)
4. Deployment Time: 9 m (0DP)
5. MSP: x4,0 (+2DP)
6. 1YR MSP usage: 100 (+4DP)
7. PPV: 4 (0DP)
8. Beam Fire control: 128 000 (+4 DP) no penalty for TS.
9. Range: 10 b no penalty (0DP)
10. Sensors: Provided (0DP)

Total: 24 DP

Two honorable mention by Warer
Off-Topic: show

PC-6 v1 "Alaska Ranger T1" class Corvette (P)      6,000 tons       126 Crew       584.1 BP       TCS 120    TH 480    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 2-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 36      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 2-3      PPV 25.5
Maint Life 3.01 Years     MSP 481    AFR 144%    IFR 2.0%    1YR 80    5YR 1,198    Max Repair 120 MSP
Magazine 130 / 0   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 16 months    Morale Check Required   

Karmazov & Jonas 1.25kt/240gN NTE M1110 (2)    Power 480    Fuel Use 174.28%    Signature 240    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 603,400 Litres    Range 10.4 billion km (30 days at full power)

Liberty Arms 105mm Railcannon Battery (2x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 10,000 km    ROF 10     
Beam Fire Control R32-TS4000 (1)     Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s    ECCM-0     69 38 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor R11 (1)     Total Power Output 10.8    Exp 5%

R5M1 Missile Launch Cell (26)     Missile Size: 5    Hangar Reload 111 minutes    MF Reload 18 hours
Missile Fire Control FC24-R120 (1)     Range 24.9m km    Resolution 120
Missile Fire Control FC2-R1 (1)     Range 2.5m km    Resolution 1
S-5 "Pulsar" (3)-19 (26)    Speed: 13,440 km/s    End: 23.9m     Range: 19.2m km    WH: 3    Size: 5    TH: 44/26/13

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km

-------------------------

PC-6 v1 "Alaska Ranger T2" class Corvette (P)      6,000 tons       132 Crew       595 BP       TCS 120    TH 480    EM 0
4000 km/s      Armour 2-29       Shields 0-0       HTK 35      Sensors 13/0/0/0      DCR 2-3      PPV 23.5
Maint Life 2.99 Years     MSP 483    AFR 144%    IFR 2.0%    1YR 81    5YR 1,216    Max Repair 120 MSP
Magazine 130 / 0   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG 
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Karmazov & Jonas 1.25kt/240gN NTE M1110 (2)    Power 480    Fuel Use 174.28%    Signature 240    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 598,000 Litres    Range 10.3 billion km (29 days at full power)

H&C LL-12 Laser Gun (1)    Range 80,000km     TS: 4,000 km/s     Power 4-2     RM 20,000 km    ROF 10     
Beam Fire Control R128-TS4000 (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s    ECCM-0     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Pebble Bed Reactor R11 (1)     Total Power Output 10.8    Exp 5%

R5M1 Missile Launch Cell (26)     Missile Size: 5    Hangar Reload 111 minutes    MF Reload 18 hours
Missile Fire Control FC24-R120 (1)     Range 24.9m km    Resolution 120
Missile Fire Control FC2-R1 (1)     Range 2.5m km    Resolution 1

Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Sonar A-20 R120 (1)     GPS 1320     Range 20.6m km    Resolution 120
Optotherm, Inc. TC-13.75/2.75 (1)     Sensitivity 13.75     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  29.3m km


PC-6 v1 "Apollo" by pedter - 24DP
PC-6 v1 "Darchlight" Bladestar Labs by Zap0 - 21PD
PC-6 v1 "Alaska" by Warer - 14DP
PC-6 v1 "Bloodhound" - 13DP
PC-6 v1 "Greyhound" by Gyrfalcon - 12DP
PC-6 v1 "ARGO" by Madzak - 11DP


Congratulations to the winner!

All the designs are different and I appreciate every one of them. Thank you all for your participation.

If you want to discuss this challenge more, please do. I'm interested in your opinions about this form of challenge.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 14, 2024, 02:52:14 AM »

A little more than one day left for new submissions!!

Yesterday a new design was provided, PC-6 v1 "ARGO" - by Madzak.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 11, 2024, 03:40:48 AM »

Last week of project submission opportunities.

The ones submitted so far are very interesting and I can't wait to show them all.

So if anyone else would like to try their design skills I strongly encourage you to do so.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 07, 2024, 04:53:07 AM »

More than four submissions are in.

Accepted submissions list (second post):
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13501.msg168956#msg168956
Posted by: Gyrfalcon
« on: March 07, 2024, 03:15:21 AM »

Thanks for all the advice - resetting the window locations solved the issue for me. I'll send you a PM with my design submission.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 07, 2024, 02:41:51 AM »

...
Re Topic: Nice challenge! My submission is in. It appears I sent it to you as an email instead of a PM. Didn't realize that there were two different options on the profile page.

Hi, I'm not getting emails from Aurora Forum (don't know why, and no they are not in spam).

So please resubmitt your design via PM.
Posted by: Kiero
« on: March 07, 2024, 01:58:46 AM »

While I'd love to submit a design, the attached DB is borked for me - I can't open half the screens, including the critical ship design screen. Windows displays a gray window when I try to alt-tab to it. I've reinstalled 2.5.1, and my own DB works fine still. Do you use any mods or anything?

Fixed. you can download DB from the first post again.