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We have no BS.

But if you are referring to the BC's - Add 2 years + Retooling from the design locked.
 
Ok, after considering the limitation of our beam control, we'll just have to get the best designs at our current tech and then upgrade later. I'll advise as we go along.

But it will not be today - I've had a bad day at work and need to kill something... :)
 
The most obvious solution is more fire controls, and time-on-target salvos with missiles of different speeds... timed so that two or three successive fleet salvos (with the slowest missiles launched first) all enter the opponent's PD zone simultaneously.

The point being: each enemy FC can only target one salvo per five-second impulse.

1) If the enemy's PD range gives him five shots at your missiles before they impact,
2) If he has ten defensive FCs,
3) If you are using ten ships with five offensive FCs each,
4) If you fire three waves of salvos, at different speeds, timed to all enter the enemy PD range simultaneously...

... then he only gets to shoot at 50 of your salvos, and the other 100 salvos will reach the target unopposed.

I wasn't very clear (that's what I get for not sleeping for 30 hours). What I meant was less that the best thing to do is chuck missiles at the enemy, because I'm aware that it's more complicated than that. What I meant to convey was that all else being equal I'd think it better to make a missile with the MSP allocated to ablative armor allocated to speed instead. Just checking now, it seems that 1 MSP of ablative armor = 1 point of armor, regardless of tech. Just quickly, adding 1 MSP of ablative armor to my Pilum III, cutting it in equal parts from agility and speed, reduces speed from 29,300KM/s to 22,700KM/s. To-hit versus 10,000KM/s target decreases from 76.2% to 49.9%. To-hit is already lower, before considering that enemy PD is more likely to intercept a missile moving at 22,700KM/s than 29,300KM/s.

Let's pretend PD lasers work like particle beams, doing only 1 damage for the entire range of the weapon. If they're on area defensive fire and get multiple shots off the enemy might have a 50% chance of hitting your incoming missiles, so let's say they're using 20 beam PD weapons and thus hit half of 20 missiles and do only 1 damage, then fire again and hit half again, then the missiles strike the enemy (let's assume no final defensive fire or CIWS) we don't get only 10 impacts unless by some stroke of luck (or game mechanic) the same 10 missiles are hit. On average this would result in what, 5 missiles being shot down? This would be quite a boost, since if the extra speed made the enemy's to-hit decrease to 40% that still means in two shots the enemy bags a lot more missiles because in the first shot they'd get 8 missiles.

But even in this scenario where lasers do only 1 point of damage, the armor only works against lasers. Thus, CIWS and AMM won't be any less effective... they'll actually be more effective due to the sacrifice in speed. What's more, your own to-hit is compromised, so the number of missiles that actually do damage to the enemy will be lower (unless it's still above 100% to-hit). Thus how much help ablative armor is depends on the target speed, whether they use CIWS, how effective the CIWS is, whether they use AMMs, how effective the AMMs are, and on goes the list. But I think we can safely conclude that unless your opponent is relying solely on laser PD, ablative armor isn't helpful at all.

Even then it's not helpful because laser PD does >1 damage at all tech levels anyway, so you'd need about 3 layers of ablative armor, IE 3 MSPs, to have any point in using it. No matter what you trade off, that's still a less effective missile, by a big margin.

I think the only time it would make sense to use ablative armor is on very large missiles, like bigger than Size 50 missiles, because the MSP required to allocate to armor doesn't scale, thus 3 MSP of armor provides 3 layers of armor, whether the missile is 100 sizes or 6.

What I'm saying is that ablative armor seems virtually useless.

@ Vain - I have no knowledge of this "Mercy" you are referring to. Is it similar to Mystery Meat?

I'd say it's actually closer to Chef's Special.

Generally speaking I agree with the points made on the Beam FC ranges. It does not make sense with the size you have to get in, but if you look at the Missile FC, it is the complete opposite. In the resent designs, we have a 100mio+ km range from a size 1 resolution 120 FC. I don't think I can get 200k km from the largest Beam FC we have.

I don't know how to correct this, but that's just another point to why Missiles are so overpowered... :)

That's also a valid point I hadn't considered. I can fit something like 7 AMM-MFCs on my 5kt DEs, as compared to 1 BFC on my 5kt DDs. A fix would involve either making MFCs have lower resolution per hull square or by having beams have higher resolution per hull square. Another way would be to change the multipliers on BFCs so that 25% larger = 2 the range, 100% larger = 4 times the range, rather than 4x size = 4x range.

And I haven't seen any armored missiles either. All missiles hit by one of my strenght 1 AM's have died - no survivors and I have checked it in the logs.

That makes three of us then. Must be one of those human-only things.

And as stated before. I have no problem with design-, philosophy- or other Aurora-related topics "hi-jacking" the thread, as long as people are behaving themselves and remembering it is only pixels on a screen... :D

But there is a right way to do it, and it's self-evidently MY way!

When will BS finish?

Usually when I am around the BS never stops ;)
 
I suppose one could try making armored 'decoy' missiles so to say, to seed among the actual missiles. IE armor instead of warhead....
But I'm not sure how exactly that would work with the mechanics...
 
This is an old post from Steve:

That sums it up well. The armour on missiles reduces the chance of a beam weapon kill but does not affect missiles. A better name than armour might be more appropriate as well. Does v3.1 have "ablative armour" on the missile design window or have I only added that for v3.2?

The formula for beam kills vs missiles is Weapon Damage / (Missile Armour + Weapon Damage)) * 100. So a 1 point hit on a missile with 1 armour would be 50%. A 3 point hit on a missile with 2 armour would be 60%.

I don´t think anything has changed since then.

Note: CIWS, Gauss, Particle Beams and Plasma Carronades all play by that rules, so it is not only lasers.

Armor sure is a non-starter on smaller missiles, but think about a conventional start. I usually just upgrade the starting ICBM bases with a Trans-Newton Firecon and be done with it. On a size-24 missile, a point of armor or two isn´t all that bad and gives your missiles a better chance to get trough enemy PD (yes I know, sub-munition would probably work even better)

The "missile armor should improve with better armor tech" has been suggested two or three times and I think Steve will come around to implement it some day (I hope)
 
This is an old post from Steve:



I don´t think anything has changed since then.

Note: CIWS, Gauss, Particle Beams and Plasma Carronades all play by that rules, so it is not only lasers.

Armor sure is a non-starter on smaller missiles, but think about a conventional start. I usually just upgrade the starting ICBM bases with a Trans-Newton Firecon and be done with it. On a size-24 missile, a point of armor or two isn´t all that bad and gives your missiles a better chance to get trough enemy PD (yes I know, sub-munition would probably work even better)

The "missile armor should improve with better armor tech" has been suggested two or three times and I think Steve will come around to implement it some day (I hope)

Good to know it works for all beam weapons and not just lasers; I read somewhere it was lasers only. Also that formula makes armor significantly more useful, since no matter how powerful your PD weapon is, there's still a chance of the missile surviving... I'd still prefer not to use it, but I'm inclined to think that it would make a serious difference in some situations; that's a 25% chance to slip through for 1 armor point versus final defensive fire doing 3 points of damage, and that's on top of the chance of not being hit in the first place. If your opponent had >100% chance to-hit and extra speed wouldn't get you below that, then the armor would be a boost, although again we have the complicating factor of being easier to land hits on with AMM as well as beams and harder to hit your targets.
 
Well, my bad day of work turned into some poor'ish health, so I'm taking a break from the federation to recover. I don't know how long I'll be absent, but hopefully I'll get back within a few days. I'll still follow the forum.

Think it was the Mystery Meat of Chef's Special.

@ Onbekende - I know that feeling. I hate damage. Repair takes resources and time - Should not take place if possible.

I'll consider the armor on missiles when I'm more awake, but until then I would rather have Ghost Rider Missiles from the Harrington Universe (For those not familiar, they are primarily ECM missiles).
 
Ok, time for our Fighter Pilots and Carrier Captains to start arguing designs. I've played 7 days since last to get to the Fighter Engines which will be upgraded. My proposed loadout for a Blue Emu II Class Carrier will now be:

1 Squadron of 8 F3 Shardul-A:
------
F3 Shardul-A class Fighter 250 tons 4 Crew 61 BP TCS 5 TH 72 EM 0
14400 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 50% IFR 0.7% 1YR 3 5YR 49 Max Repair 17 MSP
Magazine 12

FTR Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E700 (1) Power 72 Fuel Use 7000% Signature 72 Armour 0 Exp 80%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 1.0 billion km (19 hours at full power)

Size 4 Box Launcher (3) Missile Size 4 Hangar Reload 30 minutes MF Reload 5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC51-R120 (50%) (1) Range 51.5m km Resolution 120

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
------
And 1 Squadron 10 F3 Shardul-B:
------
F3 Shardul class Fighter 200 tons 4 Crew 55.5 BP TCS 4 TH 72 EM 0
18000 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0.9
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 40% IFR 0.6% 1YR 2 5YR 35 Max Repair 17 MSP
Magazine 6

FTR Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E700 (1) Power 72 Fuel Use 7000% Signature 72 Armour 0 Exp 80%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres Range 0.6 billion km (9 hours at full power)

Size 2 Box Launcher (3) Missile Size 2 Hangar Reload 15 minutes MF Reload 2.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC51-R120 (50%) (1) Range 51.5m km Resolution 120

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
------
The Shardul-B will be configured for anti-gunboat duty and will therefore need to have a new Fire Control with Resolution 20 instead of the 120 included in this design. New Size 2 missiles will also be needed, complicating matters slightly, but we'll handle that.

I will also see if I can get a feasible Laser Equipped F3 Shardul-C created as labs becomes available, but it will take a few months.

Any comments from the Carrier Commanders re. this new loadout? Any from the Fighter Community?
 
3 missiles is within the usual limits of what a single PD system can handle, meaning there's little practical difference between having three box launchers and one. How much weight would that save, and what speed increase would it see?

That's less important when dealing with gunboats, though.
 
I'm always in favor of Size 6 missiles, too, although from a fighter, size 1 is probably the way to go. Some people argue that size 1 missiles are actually the most effective anyway.
 
They probably are, once you've reached a certain technology level. In the early game size 6 missiles should only have the downside of cost, with the advantage of having more space to get your speed/range/strength balance right. Once you've got enough tech that you can have a long range size 1 with enough speed to hit something, spamming strength 1 missiles probably is the better approach. If you have, say, five of them instead of 1 size 6, you'll be making the opponent's PD work harder, for a slight loss in damage.
 
That is exactely what I was afraid of, when I asked about the armor and shields. We build well protected carriers which lack striking power. 8 anti-ship fighers and 10 anti FAC fighters are, excuse me saying so, pityful.

What we are looking at is a remake of the british WW2 carriers. Sturdy, but with so small airgroups, to make them next to useless (yes, I am exagerating)

Ok, have to work with what we got.

However, dividing the strikegroup into two parts with different missiles/MFCs is a absolute nono.
How large would a res-20, range 50m MFC be. Could it be put into the F3-As when we droped one of the launchers and put 18 of ´em on a carrier. That would give us 36 birds to put into the air, ahem space, and being able to deal with both, FACs and ships. Yes, they would be slower than the F3-Bs, but still.
Or how about designing a longer ranged or less powerful size-2 missile, for use in both roles and go with a pure F3-B loadout.

Basicly, I am arguing for abandoning the idea of two different strike fighters on one carrier.
 
That is exactely what I was afraid of, when I asked about the armor and shields. We build well protected carriers which lack striking power. 8 anti-ship fighers and 10 anti FAC fighters are, excuse me saying so, pityful.

What we are looking at is a remake of the british WW2 carriers. Sturdy, but with so small airgroups, to make them next to useless (yes, I am exagerating)

Ok, have to work with what we got.

However, dividing the strikegroup into two parts with different missiles/MFCs is a absolute nono.
How large would a res-20, range 50m MFC be. Could it be put into the F3-As when we droped one of the launchers and put 18 of ´em on a carrier. That would give us 36 birds to put into the air, ahem space, and being able to deal with both, FACs and ships. Yes, they would be slower than the F3-Bs, but still.
Or how about designing a longer ranged or less powerful size-2 missile, for use in both roles and go with a pure F3-B loadout.

Basicly, I am arguing for abandoning the idea of two different strike fighters on one carrier.

I agree that for a carrier this small, a single type of fighter makes sense.
 
I also use two types of Fighters, but I don't mix load-outs on the same Carrier.

Each of my two Battle fleets has been using two Strike Carriers, each holding forty Strike Fighters armed with a single size-6 missile (warhead 16), plus one Air Superiority Carrier holding thirty-five A/S Fighters armed with three size-2 missiles (warhead 4). The Air Superiority Carriers also have enough hangar space for two Recce Fighters equipped only with sensors and extra fuel tanks.

... so that's eighty Strike Fighters (size-6/16 x 1 x 40 x 2), thirty-five A/S Fighters (size-2/4 x 3 x 35 x 1) and two Recce Fighters (no armament) per fleet.

I was able to do this on an 18,100-ton displacement... although I've since upgraded to 25,000 tons, which allows room for more armor, more shields and a Hyperdrive Shunt in addition to the Air Groups.
 
@ Kiwi - Dropping 2 size 4 would give a 195 tonnes fighter with a speed just below 19,5k:
------
F3 Shardul class Fighter 185 tons 4 Crew 52.8 BP TCS 3.7 TH 72 EM 0
19459 km/s Armour 1-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0.6
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 37% IFR 0.5% 1YR 3 5YR 41 Max Repair 17 MSP
Magazine 4

FTR Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E700 (1) Power 72 Fuel Use 7000% Signature 72 Armour 0 Exp 80%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres Range 0.7 billion km (9 hours at full power)

Size 4 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 4 Hangar Reload 30 minutes MF Reload 5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC51-R120 (50%) (1) Range 51.5m km Resolution 120

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
------
@ Vain - The initial design of the F1 used size 1 missiles and I would have no problem going back to that. It would give us:
------
F3 Shardul class Fighter 185 tons 4 Crew 52.8 BP TCS 3.7 TH 72 EM 0
19459 km/s Armour 1-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0.6
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 37% IFR 0.5% 1YR 2 5YR 28 Max Repair 17 MSP
Magazine 4

FTR Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E700 (1) Power 72 Fuel Use 7000% Signature 72 Armour 0 Exp 80%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres Range 0.7 billion km (9 hours at full power)

Size 1 Box Launcher (4) Missile Size 1 Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes MF Reload 1.2 hours
Missile Fire Control FC51-R120 (50%) (1) Range 51.5m km Resolution 120

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
------
The speeds are:
No. of Launchers/Speed/Size
1/22.857/158t
2/21.818/165t
3/20.869/173t
4/19.459/185t
And it should be possible to cram in a size 4 missile, but would it give us the endurance to outrange the Kox PDC's?

@ Kiwi - Valid points, but the fighters should be faster than anything else we've met so far - And if we can shoot from outside range as well (30 mio. km should do it), we might as well throw strenght 4 missiles over strenght 1 if we can get it designed. I'll be consulting you on designs as soon as the new missile drives are online.

@ Onbekende - Both points are valid, but I'll want to keep the fighters fairly close to the carriers. And the gunboats will be travelling 400 km/s faster than we are, so there will probably be some time to bleed them. Specifically if we can keep the speed at 18k or above. Knowing that the gunboats are equipped with meson cannons, is another reason I'll be looking at other options as well before locking design. If I can get a faster, longer ranged EW gunboat designed, it would probably be better against these. If not, I will try to get some extremely fast missiles into space, but with short range as well. Range of 500k km or 1 mio. and everything else goes into speed/agil/power.

@ Kai - Your points are well made. I have just re-confirmed my original design and dropping all armor and shields would let us increase the hangar capacity by 25% and add another 4 fighters.

And since I'm a student of British Naval History, I fully understand the problems of the defence/offence problems we face.

Problem is that if we want to increase the no. of fighters significantly, there is only 1 place we can cut and that is the engines, which makes our carriers even more vunerable. However, I will promise you 1 thing: Nautilus.

The argument of keeping 1 type of fighter aboard each carrier makes a lot of sense, also from a logistical point of view. Therefore, I will be working towards including Farnese II Class Escort Carriers which each can carry 10 F3 Shardul-B's in the task force. This will allow the Blue Emu II's to remain the long range strike force.

To simplify our missile logistics I've been trying to stick to fairly few sizes and designs of missiles. Yet, I will have no problems with changing this policy.... :)

What do the councilors request? Start throwing wild ideas around and I'll see what we can design, yet it will probably by a few days since we will need to design a few components as we go along.

Finally a question - Does a fighter need a bridge or would a command module be enough? That damn bridge is taking up 50 tons of the fighter and I would love to reduce the size to speed the boats up or cramming more things into the fighter.. :D

(Expect that the answer will be yes, but want to be certain)

@ Blue Emu - How the hell do you cram that many fighters into your ships? I can barely get 20 in!
 
@ Blue Emu - How the hell do you cram that many fighters into your ships? I can barely get 20 in!

Not only does it carry 40 Fighters, it also has six Armor, 30 points of Shields and enough Magazine stowage for two more full-up strikes... all on an 18,300-ton displacement:

Constellation II class Carrier 18,300 tons 1012 Crew 4402.8 BP TCS 366 TH 1006.25 EM 900
7855 km/s Armour 6-61 Shields 30-300 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 3
Maint Life 3.78 Years MSP 1955 AFR 206% IFR 2.9% 1YR 215 5YR 3219 Max Repair 126 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 7000 tons Magazine 547

Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E5.2 2028 (20) Power 143.75 Fuel Use 52% Signature 50.3125 Armour 0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,045,000 Litres Range 197.7 billion km (291 days at full power)
Epsilon R300/15 Shields 2027 (10) Total Fuel Cost 150 Litres per day

Size 1 Missile Launcher 2013 (3) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 5
Missile PD Fire Control FC30-R1 2027 (1) Range 30.2m km Resolution 1
Size 1 AMM 1-5-2029 (67) Speed: 62,400 km/s End: 1.3m Range: 5m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 1019 / 611 / 305
Size 6 ASM 16-75-2029 (80) Speed: 42,100 km/s End: 29.7m Range: 75m km WH: 16 Size: 6 TH: 463 / 277 / 138

Strike Group
40x Wasp II Fighter Speed: 24571 km/s Size: 3.5

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 Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The trick is to use the smallest viable Fighter:

Wasp II class Fighter 175 tons 3 Crew 77.2 BP TCS 3.5 TH 30.1 EM 0
24571 km/s Armour 1-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0.9
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 35% IFR 0.5% 1YR 4 5YR 59 Max Repair 36 MSP
Magazine 6

FTR Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E520 2028 (1) Power 86.25 Fuel Use 5200% Signature 30.1875 Armour 0 Exp 60%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres Range 3.0 billion km (33 hours at full power)

Size 6 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 6 Hangar Reload 45 minutes MF Reload 7.5 hours
Missile Fire Control FC151-R100 2027 (1) Range 151.2m km Resolution 100
Size 6 ASM 16-75-2029 (1) Speed: 42,100 km/s End: 29.7m Range: 75m km WH: 16 Size: 6 TH: 463 / 277 / 138

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 maintenance purposes

EDIT: Fighter Component List -

FTR_comp.jpg
 
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Bridge needed for ships over 1000t. So you can definitely cut them to save space, and use a command module, as fighters normally have well under 20 crew.

EDIT

Also if you can get a missile with >30M-km range into size 1, then I'd go for that. Particularly if you can also cram a size 4 warhead into the sucker.