Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

With these sorts of carriers and fighters, I foresee that our missile destroyers will most likely never fire a shot at another full size ship again.

Our fleet should consist of the following:
Jump Cruiser / Sensor Ship
Carriers (hanger deck): carriers carry 'fighters' for striking power, and missile or beam armed FAC for ranged point defence against enemy fighters or FAC
Ammunition Tenders
Point Defence Ships (DD or the like)

Other specialized ships can be attached at will obviously...but the combat core should be the above.

blue emu said:

Reasonable, but I also want a multi-role core to the fleet. Much of the time, it won't get a chance to fire... but what happens to a highly specialized fleet when the sensor vessel gets whacked? Or the PD vessels? Or the Ammo Tender? Without a multi-role core, a fleet is very vulnerable to point-failure. I want a fleet that can CONTINUE fighting even if something goes badly wrong.

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If the sensor vessel gets whacked, your point defence vessels can take over of the immediate surroundings. I assume you'd take more than one cruiser / sensor ship into battle with you, if only to prevent being stranded in the system.

You have fighter designs with their own active sensors...

Your point defence would be several vessels (not just one).

The ammo tender is very unlikely to be targeted first by the AI given its sensor and thermal profile.

We are approaching the point where the numbers of specialized warships will cover for loss of system malfunction.

Or would you prefer to waste tonnage (and speed) on weapons that will never be used? "A weapon unused, is a useless weapon."

Can you foresee a scenario in which you would fight a fleet battle and NOT want your alpha strike to come from your fighters?

Now, I can foresee use of balanced designs when sending smaller armed presences around (say escorting ships through a disputed system if our main fleet is elsewhere)...but insisting on all members of our main fleet being 'balanced' designs overlooks the fact that it is the balance of the whole fleet that is the key variable. Not necessarily the balance of the individual ships.

blue emu said:

There are a few other uses for FAC (or even Fighters) that we haven't explored... search and rescue, to pick up "downed" pilots. Air Superiority, armed with PD missiles. Recon. One-unit Drop-Ships, to form the first bridgehead on an enemy world, or to land raiding parties of marines to attack PDCs... or even for use as Boarding Shuttles to attempt to capture badly damaged enemy ships.

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Don't forget the stealthy scout version once we get the thermal reduction tech researched.

blue emu said:

Is this some sort of straw-man? I am not by any means insisting on "all members of our main fleet being 'balanced' designs". Read up a couple of posts, where I defended our unbalanced Constellation class Carrier designs. Or take our Storm class Gauss PD vessels, for instance. Or our Peeping Tom class Battle-Management vessel. Or our reliance on Ammo Tenders.

I said that I want our battle fleet to contain a multi-role core.

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Nope, just probing to see what you meant by 'multi-role core.'

Blue Emu said:

Yes, I can. In our first, very confused battle against the Prix, we ended up at one point facing an enemy vessel that could spot fighters and kill them with massive 19-missile salvos of 68,000 kps size-1 missiles, firing from tens of millions of km away. It killed 49 of our Fighters, all by itself. Suppose we run into three or four of them? Wouldn't it be better to attack them with heavily shielded, armored multi-role warships, led by Rock-class Decoy Vessels with 20 layers of armor... rather than sending a wave of Fighters out to get massacred for no gain?

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That's not really a good example for your cause though. The weapons fired at the fighters were not interceptible by ANY of our fleets point defence at that time. It was a blessing that the Prix shot at the fighters instead of the fleet itself. Not to mention the fact that that fleet HAD heavily armored Rock class decoy vessels in front and shielded, armored multi-role warships. We almost lost the Agincourt (the heaviest armored and shielded vessel of our fleet save the rocks), the only vessel capable of jumping us out...because the AI didn't just shoot at the Rocks.

The benefit of this still hasn't changed. I would ALWAYS much rather have my opponent firing at the fighters, because they are cheap and dispersed. The amount of effort required to destroy a several hundred fighter attack force is much greater in time and ordinance than the effort required to destroy a few fleet units.

In the best world, our fleet ships should never come under direct assault. This not being a best world, we need point defence (I.e. ships capable of shooting down missiles and or fighters/FAC that come our way). If we encounter ships which have the potential to close to beam range AND are capable of surviving our fighter strikes...than even the combined power of the fleet will be unable to save the fleet.

In short, our offensive strike must be optimized to be utilized by our fighters. Our defensive capabilities should be a combination of distance (our flexibility in launching our strike force (speed / range of our fighters)), fleet speed, and combined fleet point defence (missiles, FAC, beams?).

I see no point in attaching anti-bigship missiles to our fleet units, unless those fleet units are designed or expected to be operating independently from a carrier.

Of course, this is all idealized. Given our resource situation, I can see where our point defence fleet units are actually anti-missile and anti-ship armed, since they could potentially be detached from the fleet or attached depending on the needs of our empire.

Ok, I'm going to stop rambling now.

blue emu said:

Is this some sort of straw-man? I am not by any means insisting on "all members of our main fleet being 'balanced' designs". Read up a couple of posts, where I defended our unbalanced Constellation class Carrier designs. Or take our Storm class Gauss PD vessels, for instance. Or our Peeping Tom class Battle-Management vessel. Or our reliance on Ammo Tenders.

I said that I want our battle fleet to contain a multi-role core.



Yes, I can. In our first, very confused battle against the Prix, we ended up at one point facing an enemy vessel that could spot fighters and kill them with massive 19-missile salvos of 68,000 kps size-1 missiles, firing from tens of millions of km away. It killed 49 of our Fighters, all by itself. Suppose we run into three or four of them? Wouldn't it be better to attack them with heavily shielded, armored multi-role warships, led by Rock-class Decoy Vessels with 20 layers of armor... rather than sending a wave of Fighters out to get massacred for no gain?

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Out of curiosity do you know what are our current AM missile hit chance against those 68,000 kps babies (and their estimated ''main'' AS missile armament)

Pfft, carriers and fighters... I want huge dreadnoughts roaming the interstellar space, firing full broadsides on an enemy from point-blank range, sending the crippled foes helplessly floating around, hopefully making them collide with one of their own battle-line! Such is the life of a true Space Captain!

Hear Hear, me and Velko are good old traditionalist who want bigger ships and bigger guns, no pesky fighters can take over the role of proper ship of the line...

stamasd said:

I read on the Aurora forums that in the current version of the game Venus is practically impossible to terraform.

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Not impossible.

I cannot even think of the circumstances in which an atmosphere could get some much Carbon Dioxide....

I would argue in favour of a three-class set of massive ships:

CnC jumpers (jump engine, sensors, some armour)
Warships (jump engine, some weaponry, more heavily armoured)
Carriers (stranded if left alone, bit of a paper shell)

That said, our current fleet goes up to 15k ton displacement. Maybe a jump to 25k would be more useful, rather than setting up an intermediate set of 20k ton ships.
In this vision, in principle the CnC ships are the jumpers, but the warships are there in case the fleet took heavy fire; they'd still be there. Half-blind and not that threatening, but capable of shooting the last crippled enemies and jumping any survivors out. Of course, the CnC doesn't really NEED the jump enging, in this idea.

Could you just build an armoured/shielded jump engine, and if so, how would it look?

Velko said:

Pfft, carriers and fighters... I want huge dreadnoughts roaming the interstellar space, firing full broadsides on an enemy from point-blank range, sending the crippled foes helplessly floating around, hopefully making them collide with one of their own battle-line! Such is the life of a true Space Captain!

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someone has either been watching a lot of Hornblower or Legend of the Galactic Heroes

blue emu said:

Not sure of the exact formula. Our AMMs move at 48,200 kps, for whatever that's worth. 91% chance of hitting a 10,000 kps target.

EDIT: So, I've finally researched all the techs that I would need to build our first Cloaking Device. It turns out that it uses exactly half of a ship's displacement (eg: for a 10,000-ton ship, you would need 5,000 tons of cloaking equipment), and reduces your signature by 75%.

That doesn't leave a lot of room for engines, life support, engineering and fuel... let alone things like sensors, weapons, fire control, armor, shields...

Obviously, we're going to have to miniaturize this equipment before it becomes practical.

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Missile chance to hit is in a simple relationship with speed - double the target speed, half the chance to hit, triple the speed, one third the chance to hit etc. So with a 91% chance of hitting a 10,000 kps target, we can expect about a 13% chance of hitting a 70,000 kps target.

Of course, the GPD frigates have been designed so that six of them should have a near guaranteed chance of destroying all of a 19 PD missile salvo, if they work as predicted. Most of the time they will take out more than 19. I'd want to test them against something a little less critical first, though.

I'm all for specialised ships. We need gauss PD, missile PD, carriers, sensors, specialists like minelayers and bombardment ships, and not a lot else. But it's simple enough to give the missile PD ships some offensive tubes (as we've already done with the Stars and Attitudes) and have them there just in case the enemy gets through our fighter attack, whether it's through ambush or strength in numbers. If the enemy does close, it's much better to have a bunch of 45s reload time tubes than having to rely on 45 minute reload time fighters.