Not only is the Trans-Newtonian Campaign a good tutorial, but its also a great read. Be warned though, some of it is quite old, and there are plenty of things that are outdated. Still, helps alot.
Anyways, when it comes to my current campaign of designing my ships like the Caldari in EVE, I think I'm doing quite alright.. In one of my neighboring systems I met our friends the Precursors, and am now preparing to avenge my Heron that was destroyed, although I didn't lose nearly as many people in that particular Heron as I did in my other one that got sucked into a Black Hole. I lost a Vice Admiral and three Rear Admirals due to that, since that ship was carrying my geology team that I forgot had been there for nearly a decade.. XD
My army against my neighbors consists of 20(Soon to be 30) Kestrel class Missile Frigates each with three size 3 missile launchers with 12 additional rounds per launcher and missiles that have a 120m km range. Defending them will be 4 Cormorant class Destroyer Escorts that are designed very similar to the Tribal I in the Trans Newtonian Campaign mentioned above. I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice. Last up will be four Griffin class Sensor Frigates, who will solely be painting the target at a 256m km range.
All ships are fielding 2.5 strength, 2.5 recharge shields, with the Kestrels having 20 strength shields and the other two class ships each having 10. The Cormorants are also bringing in 1-strength ECM, which I need to upgrade soon.. Also, all ships have a 34% crew grade bonus due to high levels of academy training and every CO of the ship has some kind of crew training at 150+.
What I love about these Kestrels is that they only take 6.5 months to make.. and my shipyard tooled for them has 5 slipways.
Wish me luck!
So you're going with large volleys via large numbers of small ships? Probably easier, at least early on.
I only saw one enemy ship, so having ~300 defender missiles per ship should suffice.
Heh. There are almost certainly more. That, and most of their ships use AMMs to attack, so even with a single ship you're looking at very large volleys. The last time I tangled with precursors, I was facing three ships of that type, and they launched dozens of volleys. My cruisers ended up wading through something on the order of 2,000 missiles, and only survived because I had built them with lots of PD, armor, and 200STR shields, and even then the two that were targeted lost almost all their modules and had massive armor damage, even though I was getting something like a 95% kill rate on their missiles. Even assuming a 100% kill ratio for your AMMs on 1-1 defence firing, you've only got around 1,200 AMMs, so even one or two AMM-armed Precursors will nearly empty your magazines. I'd recommend bolstering your AMMs with laser PD turrets, possibly even a different class of ship with heavy armor and PD that you can keep in front of your main body, either to tank, or to interdict enemy missiles as they pass.
Basically, using AMM against Precursors is only a good idea when the alternative is letting them destroy your ships, because you're going to have to use massive amounts of missiles. Not to mention their AMMs are very fast, usually faster than anything you have when you first encounter them, so you almost certainly won't have high kill ratios, unless you've overengineered your AMMs by quite a bit for your overall tech level.
Unrelated:
This game's cannonfodder system defence frigate that is going to be lost by the dozen when I run into enemies, because I like roleplaying first-contact scenarios rather than prepping for what I know is out there.
Templar class Frigate 5,000 tons 539 Crew 1030.4 BP TCS 100 TH 240 EM 0
2400 km/s Armour 3-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 64/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 23.8
Maint Life 5.61 Years MSP 515 AFR 50% IFR 0.7% 1YR 28 5YR 414 Max Repair 224 MSP
Ion Engine E8 (4) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres Range 67.5 billion km (325 days at full power)
Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2) Range 90,000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 6-6 RM 3 ROF 5 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
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 S08 48-12000 (1) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
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
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 18 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR98-R30 (1) GPS 6720 Range 98.2m km Resolution 30
Active Search Sensor MR8-R1 (1) GPS 112 Range 9.0m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH8-64 (1) Sensitivity 64 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 64m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
And I've found ruins from a civ called the...
Santana Monarchy.