Which techlevel are you at? The combination of very quick ships and small lasers seems weird.
My ships usually devote 25 to 40% of their mass to the current best engine tech without a boost. 12 months of deployment time (though they could do with less usually), at least 5 layers of armor.
All line ships have the same percentage of engines, so they go at the and speed.
The big guns get tracking speed as needed, usually 2x, and Max range while PD gets 4x tracking and 1x range. Only pd is turreted.
I'm at mag fusion engines, but it's hard to say I'm really at any given tech level since my research has been pretty specialized.
The reason for the small lasers is so that I can achieve a 5 second refire time with my current capacitor tech. They're going to be an important part of my pd envelope.
The reason for the super fast ships is that I once again have decided to play without using missiles. That means I need a way to close on missile ships, and the faster the better. A nice side effect is there's no need to turret my weapons as my ships are the same speed as my highest tracking bonus fire control.
(Theoretical case as this game hasn't been gotten by me yet)
1:Which planet is closer to the aliens? Move the shipyard to that, and use a slow amount of civilian ships to get to the aliens for trade faster till it evens out to what it was on earth, then use the remains to trickle resources from earth to Mars till Mars is able to survive on its own.
2: Why not have your fleet, instead of being a large unarmed carrier with sub ships, be a larger battleship with some tiny corvettes running sensor duty and a medium sized tug running fuel etc duty, with a few destroyers to back up the battleship?
1. I believe you hit on something there, I would probably at least speed up those traders a bit if I put a spaceport on the planet they're loading trade goods to and from for the aliens. I think you might have misunderstood though, I'm talking about trade goods here, so the issue isn't a problem of resource distribution, but one of all my civilian freighters prioritizing trading with aliens over lucrative government contracts.
2. The reason for the fleet composition is:
a. Range: I need these ships to be able to get anywhere in my territory, preferably without having to send a million ships to refuel them along the way. Also, I don't want these military maneuvers to take a huge toll on my fuel supply (This was a big problem in my last game). So all my travelling between systems will be done by the huge carriers with ultra efficient engines.
b. Speed: I need my fighting ships to be able to close on missile launching enemies, the faster the better. This means:
c. Efficiency of design: To achieve the high speed and good weapon loadout, I need these ships to be very tonnage efficient. The fact that they spend all their time in carriers means I offload most of the fuel storage, maintenance supplies and engineering spaces, and crew quarters to the carriers, freeing up that tonnage on the fighting ships. The fact that they're so fast means I save the tonnage I would have spent on turrets as well.
In my last game, I had a more typical arrangement, with big 3000 km/s battleships, with some small carriers carrying fighters. The problem was the battleships didn't get to do much battling, as the enemy ships would just keep backing out of range and firing missiles. If I wanted to engage, I had to launch my speedy fighters. Now all the missiles are fired at my fighters, so the PD on the battleship and carriers is doing nothing to protect the fighters. In the end, my strategy boiled down to weathering the missile assault until they ran out, although the fighters still worked well to chase down defenseless ships.
I admit, my bizzare decision to not use missiles means I have a different strategic situation than most. I have to build for the reality that most enemies will brutally outrange me, and I will have to weather continuous missile fire until I can close and destroy them. My lasers should be able to keep me just far enough away that my PD will still have a chance to engage missiles fired at close range (this was another problem from my last game, I used carronades and gauss, which do not keep you far away enough).
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Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games (Read 2811782 times)