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[Girlinhat]

Yeah, another purpose for these ships will be slow and steady planet killing, without all the muss and fuss of missiles ruining the environment.  One small advantage of this design is that it doesn't actually care what the recharge rate on the lasers is, the power core is going to be the big energy bottleneck.

I'll look more into making this platform a really good stealth item.  One thing that we're all forgetting is Electronic Warfare items.  Once mounted, they can reduce the effective range of enemy sensors.  So, just pulling numbers out of my ass, if you had 50% EW coverage, then the enemy would have to get twice as close to detect you.  ECM and ECCM can make a big deal in surviving at range.

[FritzPL]

Stealthy Deathstar Doomsday weapon? Even more awesome.

What do ECM and ECCM do? Do they, as you wrote up there, decrease the distance from the enemy that is firing missiles at you?

[Girlinhat]

If I recall right, they effectively lower the enemy's sensor power when detecting you.  If the enemy could see you at 20m km, then you pack ECM, then it'd be more like 15m km.  When you're packing on stealth gear to reduce your cross section, and then ECM to reduce the enemy's range, you can become pretty damn invisible.

[Hanzoku]

Hm... I recall ECM as being able to see the enemy at your normal radar range, but it interferes with targetting - say your FC is 60m km out, when you go to target and fire on the enemy at that range, you get an event log message indictating something like 'due to enemy radar interference, missiles could not be launched at 60m km. Missiles have an estimated lock range of 48m km.' ECCM works on its assigned fire control to counter that - if it's strong enough, you'll fire on the enemy despite its ECM jamming.

[Girlinhat]

Either way, my game keeps crashing before year 2028.  I dunno if something's changed, but I get shitty errors like "this fleet has no gate construction" which MUST be because of NPR.

[Shooer]

ECM effects FCs not sensors.  Each level of ECM represents 10%.  So ECM of 4 cuts missile FC lock on range by 40% and beam to hit 40% (Math on beam reduction is probably different and not a straight cut).  I find that when you get into strength 4 ECM you are getting into some of the strongest defenses in the game.  As long as they don't have ECCM (My ECCM tech is usually ahead of my ECM by at least 1 level).

[lastverb]

Yeah, another purpose for these ships will be slow and steady planet killing, without all the muss and fuss of missiles ruining the environment.  One small advantage of this design is that it doesn't actually care what the recharge rate on the lasers is, the power core is going to be the big energy bottleneck.

I'll look more into making this platform a really good stealth item.  One thing that we're all forgetting is Electronic Warfare items.  Once mounted, they can reduce the effective range of enemy sensors.  So, just pulling numbers out of my ass, if you had 50% EW coverage, then the enemy would have to get twice as close to detect you.  ECM and ECCM can make a big deal in surviving at range.

1) Lasers dont work for planet-killing most of the time (at atmosphere of 1 you will do 0dmg, at 0.5 its half or quarter), only non-missile weapon for this is meson (planet killer with 1 dmg? )
2) EW affects targetting computers only. All detection methods works as normal.

And for earlier discussion about EM detection and Active Sensors.
AS can't passivly detect EM signatures
EM sensors in tech design is only a range multiplier
EM detection works mostly for detecting active sensors and bigger populations. Shields em signature is just too small. Its limited usage is a reason for upper line (it got implemented not so many version ago).

[nogoodnames]

To add to the above, beam weapons can't target populations or ground troops. The only way they can engage in planetary assault is by destroying PDCs.

[Flying Dice]

Honestly, the best route to take with what are essentially going to be one-shot EW platforms is (like many things) lifted from Weber: Don't bother with stealth, just build them as small as possible and seeds dozens of them wherever you think the enemy will be. On a related note, it tends to be easier to spam FACs than slow/stationary platforms that need to be transported, especially if you've dumped a lot of RP into mesons. I typically end up with large strike groups composed of scores of FACs in every major system by the time I've reached TL5 (at least, I did in pre-6.00 games; they're going to be decidedly harder to support now), with the bonus that in addition to swarming enemies they can also be used as cheap, throwaway garrison units, which in turn allows you to use your real warships for important things.

That said, the changes to fuel usage and crew morale have caused something of a paradigm shift for FACs; now they pretty much have to be used either as in-system defence forces or with carrier support.


What I really wish we had is bomb-pumped X-ray laser satellites (i.e. stationary laser warheads), akin to those used in the Starfire novelizations. Or, indeed, the ability to produce any sort of crewless non-missile weapon. Actually, that has always been one of the things which bugged me the most: crew for small vessels is completely out of proportion; "fighters" are more like PT boats, while FACs can have easily ten times the crew of a Space Shuttle mission.

[PTTG??]

Maybe "berths" represent less than one whole average person? Perhaps 10 "berths" is sufficient space for someone of expert rank, like a fighter pilot or a modern astronaut, while a low-ranking shipboard gunner might only be granted half the living space or less, at 4 or 5 berths? And when someone gets injured, they are less productive... or something.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Can you examine wrecked ships to figure out their capabilities?

[Girlinhat]

After a sorts.  You generally add intel any time you discover anything, so short answer - yes.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

I found a wrecked ship in a new system, I was just wondering if I could get anything about it's capabilities from the wreckage.  Do I use the salvage module to do this?

[Bremen]

Honestly, the best route to take with what are essentially going to be one-shot EW platforms is (like many things) lifted from Weber: Don't bother with stealth, just build them as small as possible and seeds dozens of them wherever you think the enemy will be. On a related note, it tends to be easier to spam FACs than slow/stationary platforms that need to be transported, especially if you've dumped a lot of RP into mesons. I typically end up with large strike groups composed of scores of FACs in every major system by the time I've reached TL5 (at least, I did in pre-6.00 games; they're going to be decidedly harder to support now), with the bonus that in addition to swarming enemies they can also be used as cheap, throwaway garrison units, which in turn allows you to use your real warships for important things.

That said, the changes to fuel usage and crew morale have caused something of a paradigm shift for FACs; now they pretty much have to be used either as in-system defence forces or with carrier support.


What I really wish we had is bomb-pumped X-ray laser satellites (i.e. stationary laser warheads), akin to those used in the Starfire novelizations. Or, indeed, the ability to produce any sort of crewless non-missile weapon. Actually, that has always been one of the things which bugged me the most: crew for small vessels is completely out of proportion; "fighters" are more like PT boats, while FACs can have easily ten times the crew of a Space Shuttle mission.

The crew of fighters and FACs actually gets addressed in the new version; for ships with deployment times under 15 days the required crew is halved, for ships with deployment time of 3 days or less it gets cut to a third. Overall crew requirements are also lower; my 400 ton fighters had 3 man crews which is actually seems rather on the low side for that size.

[Girlinhat]

I found a wrecked ship in a new system, I was just wondering if I could get anything about it's capabilities from the wreckage.  Do I use the salvage module to do this?

What else would you use?