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[JWNoctis]

Your reactor is producing more power than your weapons can use, your AMM sensor should be enough for your CIWS, and your search sensor is enough for JP defense role. Be sure to do some taskforce training though, you know the drill.

Got a similar design in my current game, designed to provide some cheap beam-based firepower for my early missile-based fleet, and do JP control duty in near future:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Badger class Frigate    2,000 tons     223 Crew     303.2 BP      TCS 40  TH 80  EM 300
2000 km/s     Armour 2-14     Shields 10-375     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 8
Annual Failure Rate: 32%    IFR: .4%    Maint Capacity 95 MSP    Max Repair 43 MSP    Est Time: 3.23 Years

Nuclear Pulse Engine E8 (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 80,000 Litres    Range 90.0 billion km   (520 days at full power)
Delta R375/20 Shields (4)   Total Fuel Cost  80 Litres per day

15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (2)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR9-R40 (1)     GPS 960     Range 9.1m km    Resolution 40

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[Sirus]

@ JWNoctis: Yeah, not sure what I was thinking with the reactor 
I might have been planning to stick a second carronade on there. Or maybe I just screwed up the calculations 

Oh well, I haven't even found any (living) aliens yet. Hopefully I'll have an enhanced design by the time I actually get into a fight. I know I'll need better capacitors to charge the guns faster, and preferably some turreted rail/gauss guns to deal with smaller and faster threats. Faster engines are definetly a plus.

Unrelated question: I know that energy weapons (except meson) cannot fire into or out of an atmosphere. Since rail and gauss guns are kinetic weapons, can they be used? I like the idea of raining hypervelocity death on enemy planets.

[Tarran]

@ JWNoctis: Yeah, not sure what I was thinking with the reactor 
I might have been planning to stick a second carronade on there. Or maybe I just screwed up the calculations 

Oh well, I haven't even found any (living) aliens yet. Hopefully I'll have an enhanced design by the time I actually get into a fight. I know I'll need better capacitors to charge the guns faster, and preferably some turreted rail/gauss guns to deal with smaller and faster threats. Faster engines are definetly a plus.

Unrelated question: I know that energy weapons (except meson) cannot fire into or out of an atmosphere. Since rail and gauss guns are kinetic weapons, can they be used? I like the idea of raining hypervelocity death on enemy planets.

Nope, they can't get through atmosphere. The only weapons that can are Mesons and missiles.

Think about it this way: A round is traveling through the atmosphere akin to an asteroid. It's going to burn up before it hits the ground.

[Neonivek]

I know that energy weapons (except meson) cannot fire into or out of an atmosphere

Interesting. Though it sounds more life a flaw.

I could understand shooting out of an atmosphere because you could super heat the air and basically melt the gun. Shooting into however is a bit unusual... I could understand it losing energy but outright negation is odd.

[Tarran]

Actually, weapons can fire through atmosphere. It's just that when the atmosphere is nearly as thick as the earth's atmosphere the damage is lessened so much that it becomes worthless.

Lasers (and Particle Beams, for that matter) work for planetary bombardement, but their damage is reduced by the atmosphere (Actual Damage = Weapons Damage x  (1 - Atmosphere Density), rounded down.
Example: A laser dealing 4 pts of damage  will only do 2 pts of damage to a ground target through a 0.5 atmosphere (4 x 0.5 = 2), if the atmosphere would be 0.6, it would only do 1 pt of damage (4 x 0.4 = 1.6, rounded down to 1) This also means, atmospheres of 1.0+ make lasers/Particle Beams useless.

[EuchreJack]

What about non-laser weapons?

[Sirus]

@ Tarran: But asteroids and meteors don't always burn up. Indeed, they can cause catastrophic damage, way more than most nukes. Besides, lots of sci-fi stories use kinetic weapons for orbital bombardment, or at least have the option.

Since I hate dealing with missiles, I guess my only options for effective planetary defense are meson-equiped PDCs or orbital ships.
Earth will be special however. Since I have no plans to terraform Luna, the lack of atmosphere means that I can stick just about any weapon on specially designed PDCs. Luna will be a massive, un-blow-up-able fortress.

[Tarran]

What about non-laser weapons?

Nope, they can't get through atmosphere. The only weapons that can are Mesons and missiles.

Think about it this way: A round is traveling through the atmosphere akin to an asteroid. It's going to burn up before it hits the ground.

@ Tarran: But asteroids and meteors don't always burn up. Indeed, they can cause catastrophic damage, way more than most nukes. Besides, lots of sci-fi stories use kinetic weapons for orbital bombardment, or at least have the option.

Those are the really big ones, though. Small ones burn up in atmosphere. Imagine a double sized battleship firing down towards earth. The round isn't gigantic. It burns up.

[Sirus]

I think it depends on the angle a round enters the atmosphere. While the space shuttle isn't traveling at relativistic speeds, it has to re-enter in the right fashion or get torn apart/bounced into deep space. I'm guessing  a solid hunk of metal would function the same way.

The discussion is moot however, as my dreams of hypervelocity death will have to wait for a different game

[forsaken1111]

I'll check the material total when I get home but it took several years to build and even longer to tow from Earth to Mars with a small fleet of 45 tugs. Now 5 million people happily live in orbit around Mars which is my secondary shipyard and research complex

As promised:

Code: [Select]

Argentina class Orbital Habitat    25,924,700 tons     14345 Crew     50542.2 BP      TCS 518494  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-7802     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 1 MSP    Max Repair 500 MSP
Habitation Capacity 5,000,000   
Terraformer: 25 module(s) producing 0.03 atm per annum
Maintenance Modules: 50 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 10000 tons


Active Search Sensor MR7-R100 (1)     GPS 1200     Range 7.2m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes
As for materials, it uses:

23163.8 Duranium
5975.4 Neutronium
5 Corbomite
11250 Boronide
10130 Mercassium
18 Uridium

I slapped terraformers on there so that once Mars is habitable without infrastructure I can just tow the thing to its next destination, probably venus or titan, and have it start terraforming there while also offering lots of habitable space.

[Karlito]

The discussion is moot however, as my dreams of hypervelocity death will have to wait for a different game

If you want to simulate massive kinetic bombardments, you can get a mass driver and some minerals on a nearby asteroid or something, and then send the minerals to an empty colony on the target planet with the mass driver. If the target doesn't have a mass driver to receive the packet it'll crash into the planet and cause catastrophic damage.

[forsaken1111]

Or just use missiles with 0 endurance (bombs) and pretend they're rocks.

[Neonivek]

Or just use missiles with 0 endurance (bombs) and pretend they're rocks.

Is it possible to have armored missles that do their damage by ramming?

[forsaken1111]

Or just use missiles with 0 endurance (bombs) and pretend they're rocks.

Is it possible to have armored missles that do their damage by ramming?

I don't think so, but there is a tech to decrease explosive damage and increase radiation fallout which could simulate a kinetic strike. Dust and debris in the atmosphere, etc. I agree with you that it would be nice to just strap some engines on an asteroid and ram that sucker into earth uh... alpha centauri III or just fire massive chunks of iron at enemy cities.

[Greenbane]

Those are the really big ones, though. Small ones burn up in atmosphere. Imagine a double sized battleship firing down towards earth. The round isn't gigantic. It burns up.

I can understand energy beams/particles dissipating due to the atmosphere's resistance. However, that makes a lot less sense for kinetic projectiles. There's at least one serious real life concept, and the presence of kinetic bombardment in many hard science fiction stories is enough evidence that it's at least scientifically plausible.

Off the top of my head, a kinetic projectile used in orbital bombardment would be a solid, aerodynamic, dense metal slug coated in a heat-resistant material, and would only take a moment to lance through the atmosphere. The average meteorite, on the other hand, is just a chunk of rock.

Maybe really thick atmospheres (3+ atm) would impair the performance of kinetic ordnance. However, such friction in general should be a lot less of a problem for them than it is for largely immaterial energy.