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[gimlet]

I always make em civ to avoid the whole maintenance thing, plus you can build em fast on the generally huge civ shipyards.  I *think* it uses less minerals too - every bit helps    It doesn't REALLY matter though, either way is fine.

[Karlito]

Lose the active sensor, for one thing. You really only need those on ships with weapons that need to target something. If it's just going to survey sol, you don't really lose anything by making it a commercial vessel. I make my later designs military to make them as small as possible so the jump drive is cheap, but you probably don't have to worry about that yet.

Oh, and another thing. See how the Max Repair is 100 MSP? That's the repair cost of the most expensive component. I think in this case, it's probably the active sensor which you shouldn't have on that ship anyway, but as a rule of thumb, if you're going to play with maintenance on, your ship should carry at least twice the maximum repair cost in supplies. This ship only has 136 supplies, so a failure of that sensor followed by an engine failure could leave that ship stranded. Add a few more engineering spaces to increase the carried MSP.

[RedKing]

The 100 MSP is going to be for the geosensor. And I never make a pure geosurvey ship military. There's just no point. The only thing making it military is the choice of engine (and that active sensor).

If I'm going to do a military survey ship, I'll put geosensors and gravsensors (and thermal and EM sensors), a good fuel range, enough engineering spaces to give it a 3-5 year maintenance life, and usually its own jumpdrive. I might uparmor it a bit, but only if my armor tech is good. Otherwise, I just accept that they're expendable and expect to lose several over the years. If I've got good gauss tech, I'll stick a CIWS or two on them, which can sometimes save you from one of those situations where you trigger some long-forgotten Precursor missile salvo on a planet.

If I'm feeling fancy, I'll do three non-jump capable scouts and stick them into a single large jumpcarrier with plenty of armor and point-defense. Pop into a system, deploy the scouts, let them do a full gravsurvey and basic geosurvey (just interesting planets), then load them back up and jump to the next system.

I was bummed to find that my idea of using geosensors on missile/drone-delivered buoys won't work, because you can't target planets from distance.

Hmm to do the geosurvey?  I just read a "lets play" on the goon site where the guy did exactly that - the trick might be to target the missile on a waypoint on the planet?  "Click on the planet, go to the other screen and use 'last'" is the bit I remember.   I meant to give it a try in my next game, which I HOPE I can hold off til 5.70 but reading AARs is making me impatient

Hmmmmmm....I tried that, but the problem is that planets move, WPs don't. Never could get the buoy to deploy on the planet rather than just out in space near the planet. There *is* a "Fire Missile At Planet" command (used for planetary bombardment), but you have to be in orbit to use it, which defeats the purpose.

[gimlet]

This was the quote: "Place a waypoint on the planet by clicking the planet in the system map, then opening the 'Waypoints' tab of the system map controls and hit 'last', which places a waypoint on the last body selected." - I *think* if you do it this way the waypoint moves with the planet...

[Metalax]

For the first geosurvey ships to survey sol I usually go with something like

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Geosurvey Ship    600 tons     59 Crew     144.9 BP      TCS 12  TH 40  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 1-6     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 7.57 Years     MSP 75    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 35    Max Repair 100 MSP

Mil Nuclear Pulse Engine E7 (1)    Power 40    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 85.7 billion km   (297 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
2-3 of these will finish surveying Sol within a couple of years. By the time these hit the end of their initial maintainance life I'll likely have another generation or two of engine tech researched so they can be treated as completely disposable, I'll usually just use the initial BP's to fastbuild these without needing to tool a shipyard for them. They will usually finish surveying the first few systems I run across before falling apart.

I find military geosurvey ships work quite well. Compare the equivilent commercial varient to the previous design.

Code: [Select]

Tribal - Civ Varient class Geosurvey Ship    1,750 tons     69 Crew     171.3 BP      TCS 35  TH 100  EM 0
2857 km/s     Armour 1-12     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 61    Max Repair 100 MSP

Civ Nuclear Pulse Engine E0.7 (1)    Power 100    Fuel Use 7%    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 293.9 billion km   (1190 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

It is more expensive, slower and much more readily detectable to enemy active and thermal sensors that the military varient. Of course it also has a longer operational range, needs to refuel far less frequently and needs no maintainance.

Both have their uses. I find using military geosurvey ships as parasites on a jump-capable gravsurvey ship works quite well, using them to survey the planets/moons before jumping to the next system. The commercial geosurvey ships then follow up to undertake the longer task of surveying asteroid belts/comets/planets around distant companion stars.

[RedKing]

This was the quote: "Place a waypoint on the planet by clicking the planet in the system map, then opening the 'Waypoints' tab of the system map controls and hit 'last', which places a waypoint on the last body selected." - I *think* if you do it this way the waypoint moves with the planet...

Hmm...and then hopefully the buoy would be considered in orbit and move with the planet as well. I'll have to experiment with it later. one of the things I found is that it's really, really impractical until you've gotten up a fair bit in tech level. Otherwise you're having to fire size 60 drones just to have the sensor strength x duration to fully survey a planet *and* the range to do it from several hundred million km out. I think on one of my initial designs (when I was using missiles instead of drones), 95% of my missile was fuel. 

[Felius]

I'd say make them civilian class. Put them on automate, a half decent amount of fuel, and only look at them when you need to refuel them, send them to another system or they get blown up by enemy ships (it also works as a somewhat decent first warning vessel by dying when finding an enemy. If you really want to actually see an enemy, if I remember correctly, passive sensors smaller (or possibly equal as well) than 1 are considered civilian.

[RedKing]

Actually passive sensors of any size (EM sensors and thermal sensors) are considered civilian. I tend to put them on virtually every ship just to act as an emergency backup for military ships and a way of turning merchant traffic into roving eyes. Gets kind of spamtastic sometimes, but it's delightful for my civilian ships to be constantly appraising me of changes in a nearby friendly's naval forces. You won't know cross-section (and thus hull size) without an active sensor, though.

[Johuotar]

Well I got some sort of geosurvery ship done so next up is the mining ship then? It'll take 4 years to get asteroid mining module researched. :/
While waiting that I should probably figure out how to build and move the survey ships.

EDIT:

Nordenskiöld 001 (Nordenskiöld class) built on earth and assigned to Survey Task Group.

Eeexcellent...

[Felius]

Well I got some sort of geosurvery ship done so next up is the mining ship then? It'll take 4 years to get asteroid mining module researched. :/
While waiting that I should probably figure out how to build and move the survey ships.

EDIT:

Nordenskiöld 001 (Nordenskiöld class) built on earth and assigned to Survey Task Group.

Eeexcellent...

You can just ship a load of auto mines to the asteroid instead and it'll work. If you install a mass driver (or two if you put a whole freaking load of mines in that 'roid), you don't even have to occupy a freighter with carrying the minerals back to Earth (or whatever is your production center)

[Sirus]

Personally, I always go the "auto-mines+mass driver" approach, only using freighters for inter-system trade. Mass packets are crazy fast, don't burn fuel, and I don't need to worry about them being intercepted and destroyed by some sort of NPR force that snuck in.

[Person]

How do I actually load some facs into a carrier. I've got these two ships designed, and I can't find the command.

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Mysore class Carrier    8,850 tons     508 Crew     1287.8 BP      TCS 177  TH 270  EM 0
2033 km/s     Armour 4-38     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 6
Maint Life 2.13 Years     MSP 546    AFR 104%    IFR 1.5%    1YR 161    5YR 2417    Max Repair 230 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 4000 tons     

Ion Engine E7 (6)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 45    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 145.2 billion km   (826 days at full power)

20cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 256,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 10-3     RM 3    ROF 20        10 10 10 7 5 5 4 3 3 3
Fire Control S16 128-12000 (1)    Max Range: 256,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61

Active Search Sensor MR20-R100 (1)     GPS 3360     Range 20.2m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Code: [Select]

Victory class Fast Attack Craft    950 tons     104 Crew     192.8 BP      TCS 19  TH 90  EM 0
6315 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 4
Maint Life 11.76 Years     MSP 127    AFR 7%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 25    Max Repair 43 MSP

GB Ion Engine E70 (1)    Power 120    Fuel Use 700%    Signature 90    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 2.7 billion km   (4 days at full power)

10cm C0.75 Near Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 90,000km     TS: 6315 km/s     Power 3-0.75     RM 3    ROF 20        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
Fire Control S03 96-3000 (2)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I've got 4 hangar decks, so I should be able to store 4 victories in the mysore. Also, how many lasers can one beam fire control control. And yes, I do know the designs are pretty awful. There is at least 1 reason for this, I assure you.

[Karlito]

You need to assign them to the mother ship with either the naval organization window in F12 (fast for a bunch of ships) or individually somewhere in the ship commands (F6), and then use the Recover Parasites button at the bottom of the F12 menu. I think there's also something like a "Land and Assign" order that you could give a task group composed of FACs targeted at a task group with carriers.

Oh and there's no limit to the number of weapons/firecontrol.

[Felius]

You need to assign them to the mother ship with either the naval organization window in F12 (fast for a bunch of ships) or individually somewhere in the ship commands (F6), and then use the Recover Parasites button at the bottom of the F12 menu. I think there's also something like a "Land and Assign" order that you could give a task group composed of FACs targeted at a task group with carriers.

Oh and there's no limit to the number of weapons/firecontrol.

The main issue is that each fire control can only target one target. After some point it becomes overkill. Rule 37 aside, it becomes a waste of firepower that could have been used against other targets.

[Metalax]

One trick that you can use to reduce the number of firecontrols you need lies in the fact that while beam weapons/missile launchers need to recharge/reload, firecontrols are ready immediately each 5 sec increment. If your beam weapons or launchers have a reload longer than 5 seconds you can allocate half of them to the firecontrol and fire on one target then on the next increment reassign the firecontrol to the other half of your weapons and fire on a second target. You can adjust the numbers assigned to match your reload speed to keep up a constant stram of fire or pool weapons to unleash alpha strikes on a single target.