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[Crustypeanut]

On the Wiki it talks about a Scout Cruiser that can not only do gravitational surveys, but also deploy geosurvey buoys, recon drones, and fire a pair of missiles that split into 4 smaller missiles each.  I find it to be a really neat design.

[Jacob/Lee]

Someone started a game with like 18 empires on earth.  They all immediately started with ships (using starting RP and BP) and proceeded to bomb the crap out of each other within days.  Sounds glorious.

DOING THIS. Time to see how long I survive.

[Girlinhat]

Geo buoys?  You mean tiny ships with geo sensors, or actual buoys?

I've been toying with the idea of super-long-range engagements.  I designed a ship that can deliver 20 damage from 650m km using drones deploying missiles.  2x size 15 drone launchers, each drone packing 10 size 1 missiles.  It'll hit from incredible range and add some fire support.  Against civilian or idle military, enough of these could do some damage on ship armor.  It's cloaked and lessened thermal, and once in a system it can run silent for years.  Once enemy shields are down and active sensors are off, it can pop some shots at them from insane distance and they'll be getting hit out of the blue.  It should be good for harassing a jump point defender.  It's designed to be paired with a similarly sized cloaked sensor platform.

More recently I've been thinking of coupled ships, one engine ship and one platform, using tractor beams to join them and go into the fight.  It's a clusterfuck of infrastructure and logistics, but it basically lets you double your ship size while keeping the same active sensor footprint and shipyard size.

[CT]

I noticed that you can build ship components separately from the ship. What is the point of doing this?

[Jacob/Lee]

I noticed that you can build ship components separately from the ship. What is the point of doing this?

Faster construction.

[Girlinhat]

It allows for quick construction when you assign a new ship (you cannot speed up an existing ship).  Terraforming modules, orbital habitats, cargo, etc, are all useful to have in stock, they never go out of style.  Missiles and lasers and sensors all become obsolete eventually, but the core components are always valid.

Also useful, you can build components, like stock up a dozen lasers and engines and reactors, and ship them to another world to be compiled.  If you've got a forward shipyard (tugs can carry shipyards) you can move your ship production to the front lines by ferrying in components and slapping them together quickly.

[adwarf]

It allows for quick construction when you assign a new ship (you cannot speed up an existing ship).  Terraforming modules, orbital habitats, cargo, etc, are all useful to have in stock, they never go out of style.  Missiles and lasers and sensors all become obsolete eventually, but the core components are always valid.

Also useful, you can build components, like stock up a dozen lasers and engines and reactors, and ship them to another world to be compiled.  If you've got a forward shipyard (tugs can carry shipyards) you can move your ship production to the front lines by ferrying in components and slapping them together quickly.

That makes me want to create a shipyard with hundreds of slipways, and a fleet of ships with massive amounts of cargo space to store components in. Then when we enter battle we load the parts into the shipyard, and build an entire fleet to back you up.

[Flying Dice]

35 systems explored. 3 systems with 2.00 cost worlds. No NPRs. Le sigh. Although the three 2.00 cost worlds in the Alpha Centauri B-component with the abandoned cities will be nice.

Anyone got cheap designs for low-tech fighters? Also I have been working on the Railgun a bit, and was wondering does it use fuel to power it, or is a Power Plant required to fuel it?

Never built fighters before, but railguns don't require any fuel or power plants to fire. Just a target and fire control.

Actually, railguns do require power to fire. The only non-missile weapons that don't need any power are Gauss cannons.

Oh? I didn't know that.

And it is probably only like that so CIWS are feasible defenses. >.>

[Jacob/Lee]

CIWS are not something any sane person would want to use. Feasible or not, they're useless.

[Girlinhat]

They're better in late game, I hear, once missiles get too fast to hit, and...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Invader plasma warheads have too much armor for AMM to really work.

[Metalax]

Anyone got cheap designs for low-tech fighters? Also I have been working on the Railgun a bit, and was wondering does it use fuel to power it, or is a Power Plant required to fuel it?

Fighters really don't work well at low tech levels as anything other than a means to get your missile launch tubes closer to the enemy. Fighters only real protection is speed, and as you are limited to a single engine, the only way to obtain reasonable speeds is to reach at least ion engines before trying to make beam fighters. You also run the problem of your sensor tech being so poor that you need large firecontrols in orger to have an effective range.

For early fighters make sure you have researched the small/tiny size crew quarters/fuel tanks/engeneering sections, as using them will save you 100 tons of space easily. The first couple of armour techs also help save quite a bit of space.

Here's one I quickly knocked up  using techs that have had 2 levels researched above the base TN start.

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Fighter    215 tons     7 Crew     35.7 BP      TCS 4.3  TH 36  EM 0
8372 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1
Maint Life 11.13 Years     MSP 10    AFR 3%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 0    5YR 2    Max Repair 10 MSP
Magazine 17   

FTR Ion Engine E800 (1)    Power 36    Fuel Use 8000%    Signature 36    Armour 0    Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km   (17 hours at full power)

Size 1 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC10-R20 (1)     Range 10.3m km    Resolution 20
Size 1 Missile (17)  Speed: 26,700 km/s   End: 6.3m    Range: 10.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 204 / 122 / 61

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

Even with the bare minimum of systems and relying on active sensors from another vessel, it is still slow enough that it is pretty much going to get hit when shot at by most weaponry at this tech level. Getting the techs to this level also eats up almost all of your starting RP for a standard start, leaving little for any other techs you may be wanting.

I noticed that you can build ship components separately from the ship. What is the point of doing this?

Faster construction.

This, to the extent that for larger ships it practically becomes neccesery if you want a ship to be built before it's tech is outdated.

CIWS are not something any sane person would want to use. Feasible or not, they're useless.

No they are extremely usefull as they let your commercial designs have point defence, as well as allowing you point defence without the need for active sensors if your sensor ship has been taken out, or if your sensors have insufficient range to pick up high speed missiles before they impact.

[Flying Dice]

They're better in late game, I hear, once missiles get too fast to hit, and...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Invader plasma warheads have too much armor for AMM to really work.

They are very useful for both those reasons. Also, I like to make self-reliant ships, and CIWS are much better for that than wasting space on PD EWS. Admittedly, in early and mid game, it is probably better to have squadron coordination for PD.

Of course, the main alternative to CIWS is masses of meson turrets, for very obvious reasons. 

Also RE:CIWS: Troop transports. Fin.

[Girlinhat]

I believe CIWS also give you "final fire" maneuver, which will protect the ship its mounted on just seconds before impact.  If an incoming missile has enough speed to cross your PD range in 5 seconds, then PD won't engage, but final fire will.  For enemies sporting extremely fast missiles, they might be your only defense.

[Jacob/Lee]

Final Defensive Fire is an option available to all PD.

[Girlinhat]

Oh is it?  Nevermind then >.>