Experimental 20 kiloton Missile Ship Concept, Ion / Ceramic Composite

[nuclearslurpee]

I agree that 6,000 km/s is a decent speed for a spotter, but 8,000 km/s is not what I would call blazing even for ion tech. It is not difficult to reach a speed of 10,000 km/s at ion tech simply by using a large overboost which is a very cheap tech line to research if you plan to use a lot of fighters.

 - I'd like to see those 10,000 km/s designs, I think I could learn something from them.

Quickly thrown together in a test game. Ion drives, composite armour (OP used ceramic but I consider composite to be ion tech), max 2.0x EP modifier. Probably not a perfectly optimal design (I will not be taking comments on what I'm sure is a horrible missile design ) but it gets the idea across. Note that this also relies on a separate active sensor like most squadron bomber designs.

Example class Torpedo Bomber (P)      250 tons       6 Crew       43.7 BP       TCS 5    TH 50    EM 0
10038 km/s      Armour 1-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 1.8
Maint Life 7.16 Years     MSP 10    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 0    5YR 5    Max Repair 25.00 MSP
Magazine 12   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Ion Drive  EP50.00 (1)    Power 50.0    Fuel Use 1011.93%    Signature 50.00    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 13,000 Litres    Range 0.93 billion km (25 hours at full power)

Size 4.0 Box Launcher (3)     Missile Size: 4.0    Hangar Reload 100 minutes    MF Reload 16 hours
Missile Fire Control FC32-R100 (1)     Range 32.5m km    Resolution 100
Barracuda Anti-Ship Missile (3)    Speed: 27,500 km/s    End: 16.9m     Range: 27.9m km    WH: 4    Size: 4.0000    TH: 100/60/30

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction


The engine is size 2.0. You can keep basically the same design, drop it to size 1.5 to get 4x box launchers and 7500 km/s which is a more average speed. With a high-speed bomber like this one you're obviously relying more on speed and small size as your defense.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

Quickly thrown together in a test game. Ion drives, composite armour (OP used ceramic but I consider composite to be ion tech), max 2.0x EP modifier. Probably not a perfectly optimal design (I will not be taking comments on what I'm sure is a horrible missile design ) but it gets the idea across. Note that this also relies on a separate active sensor like most squadron bomber designs.

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Example class Torpedo Bomber (P)      250 tons       6 Crew       43.7 BP       TCS 5    TH 50    EM 0
10038 km/s      Armour 1-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 1.8
Maint Life 7.16 Years     MSP 10    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 0    5YR 5    Max Repair 25.00 MSP
Magazine 12   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days    Morale Check Required   

Ion Drive  EP50.00 (1)    Power 50.0    Fuel Use 1011.93%    Signature 50.00    Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 13,000 Litres    Range 0.93 billion km (25 hours at full power)

Size 4.0 Box Launcher (3)     Missile Size: 4.0    Hangar Reload 100 minutes    MF Reload 16 hours
Missile Fire Control FC32-R100 (1)     Range 32.5m km    Resolution 100
Barracuda Anti-Ship Missile (3)    Speed: 27,500 km/s    End: 16.9m     Range: 27.9m km    WH: 4    Size: 4.0000    TH: 100/60/30

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
The engine is size 2.0. You can keep basically the same design, drop it to size 1.5 to get 4x box launchers and 7500 km/s which is a more average speed. With a high-speed bomber like this one you're obviously relying more on speed and small size as your defense.

 --- 0.465 Billion Kilometers if you want to return to the carrier on the same tank of gas; that's 465 million kilometers, which is a damn good range if we consider this to be a glorified (and re-usable) missile stage. It's not to my taste, but I can see how this would be very a very effective strike craft. I like to sortie my strike craft out to extreme ranges, the better to keep the carrier safe. I think I should mention at this point that while the Striker is intended to fall back for a re-loaded, that both it and the Seeker carry a full tours worth of fuel. In other words, the Seeker isn't meant to ever be re-fueled in the field.

[nuclearslurpee]

--- 0.465 Billion Kilometers if you want to return to the carrier on the same tank of gas; that's 465 million kilometers, which is a damn good range if we consider this to be a glorified (and re-usable) missile stage. It's not to my taste, but I can see how this would be very a very effective strike craft. I like to sortie my strike craft out to extreme ranges, the better to keep the carrier safe. I think I should mention at this point that while the Striker is intended to fall back for a re-loaded, that both it and the Seeker carry a full tours worth of fuel. In other words, the Seeker isn't meant to ever be re-fueled in the field.

It's definitely to taste - I don't really use ships like this either to be honest although that's more because I tend to avoid missile bombers in general. I just wanted to make the point that getting up to this kind of speed is not difficult even with ion tech, it just means you're building a very particular kind of ship.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As long as we understand that speed almost always comes at a price... be it range or payload. You always have to make some sacrifice to gain something else. In this above case you can gain a 33% increase in weapon load-out for reduced speed, can be important too.

This is why I most of the time don't like comment such as this is too slow or this has too little or too much of this or that. Sure... there probably are designs that are really bad as they have no clear role or are just missing something like too low maintenance or something.

But speed is a relative thing and if 3500km/s is good enough for the environment the ship finds itself in then you can fit more mission tonnage instead and you might also get a cheaper ship both in build cost and MSP usage over time. Gallicite can also in some situations be a resource you don't have enough of to be too casual of its use.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

As long as we understand that speed almost always comes at a price... be it range or payload. You always have to make some sacrifice to gain something else. In this above case you can gain a 33% increase in weapon load-out for reduced speed, can be important too.

This is why I most of the time don't like comment such as this is too slow or this has too little or too much of this or that. Sure... there probably are designs that are really bad as they have no clear role or are just missing something like too low maintenance or something.

But speed is a relative thing and if 3500km/s is good enough for the environment the ship finds itself in then you can fit more mission tonnage instead and you might also get a cheaper ship both in build cost and MSP usage over time. Gallicite can also in some situations be a resource you don't have enough of to be too casual of its use.

 - Or as I like to say, who needs speed if you can make the enemy come to you?