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[Karlito]

Design some ships, create them with Fast OOB, transfer them to another empire.

[Flying Dice]

As for weapons choices, missiles are essentially the unopposed master of naval combat, barring a few situations dependent on encountering certain things at certain tech levels.

Of course when you encounter Nebula, all those missiles are rendered useless.

Nebulae are few and far between on Real Stars, though. That, and if you do run into one, especially in 6.x, you're probably just going to quarantine it, given the combined decreased range of new version ships and the speed penalties in nebulae, unless it's a very low level one. They do make for good barriers, though.

[RedKing]

As for weapons choices, missiles are essentially the unopposed master of naval combat, barring a few situations dependent on encountering certain things at certain tech levels.

Of course when you encounter Nebula, all those missiles are rendered useless.

Nebulae are few and far between on Real Stars, though. That, and if you do run into one, especially in 6.x, you're probably just going to quarantine it, given the combined decreased range of new version ships and the speed penalties in nebulae, unless it's a very low level one. They do make for good barriers, though.

Actually, I don't think nebulae show up at all in Real Stars, just as black holes don't show up in non-Real Stars. Although come to think of it, I don't think I've encountered any black holes period since going up to 6.x. They'd be a hell of a lot more dangerous with the lower average speeds on vessels.

[Flying Dice]

As for weapons choices, missiles are essentially the unopposed master of naval combat, barring a few situations dependent on encountering certain things at certain tech levels.

Of course when you encounter Nebula, all those missiles are rendered useless.

Nebulae are few and far between on Real Stars, though. That, and if you do run into one, especially in 6.x, you're probably just going to quarantine it, given the combined decreased range of new version ships and the speed penalties in nebulae, unless it's a very low level one. They do make for good barriers, though.

Actually, I don't think nebulae show up at all in Real Stars, just as black holes don't show up in non-Real Stars. Although come to think of it, I don't think I've encountered any black holes period since going up to 6.x. They'd be a hell of a lot more dangerous with the lower average speeds on vessels.

I know for a fact that black holes showed up in non-RS games in pre-6.x.

[RedKing]

That's odd, I never found any. Although admittedly I rarely play non-RS.

[Zangi]

Wow... relearning things... and learning the fancy new morale thing is a doozy.  SM mode to the rescue as I figure out how to make ships not blow up on their own while being as cheap as possible.

[RedKing]

Wow... relearning things... and learning the fancy new morale thing is a doozy.  SM mode to the rescue as I figure out how to make ships not blow up on their own while being as cheap as possible.

Morale's not too big of an issue, I usually just set the crew duration to match the maintenance life. And if you tend to bring ships for overhaul ahead of time, you could set to 75% of maintenance life.

Engine design was the big learning curve addition for me. Cue a lot of "Why are my ships so slooooooow? And why are my scouts running out of fuel before leaving Sol??" D:

Fuel efficiency is SRS BSNS.

[Flying Dice]

At this point it honestly feels better to just go with commercial (often scaled-down for frigates and such) drives instead of getting into the speed/fuel feedback cycle. :|

[RedKing]

At this point it honestly feels better to just go with commercial (often scaled-down for frigates and such) drives instead of getting into the speed/fuel feedback cycle. :|

Nah, I think it works well. I use a standard 5HS, 100% power engine as a "building block" military engine. Then I'll see how many I need to slap on a vessel to get it to the speed I want while still having a satisfactory range. Then take the total HS of engines required and divide it into even portions and research a new engine. So if it took 12 5HS engines, I might redistribute that as 5 12HS engines, or 4 15HS or even 2 30HS engines. Bigger, fewer engines gives you a modest improvement in fuel efficiency and slightly less crew requirement.

For long-range scout/survey ships, I'll make an engine with 0.75 or 0.6 power ratio, sacrificing some speed for much better duration.

For fighters, I'll crank it to the max power ratio, because range isn't really a problem -- they're going to be operating from a carrier or base anyways. I played around with researching a 2HS and 3HS model for fighters (hey, they're really cheap research projects at that size) but since the fuel savings is only 1-2%, it's typically not worth the logistics headaches to deal with anything other than the 1HS base thruster for fighters. And since FACs don't really exist as a hard ship type anymore, I haven't really bothered with designing something along the lines of a FAC engine (say 3-5HS, 1.5 power ratio?)

And for tugs, I typically use an enlarged commercial engine with a 0.3 or 0.4 power ratio, so that fuel is NEVER a problem.


If I have a surplus of Gallicite, then all the military engines get thermal reductions. Civvies never do, unless it's a paramilitary design like a troop transport.

[Bremen]

I use only 50hs engines for capital ships, since the -50% fuel use is huge. Which basically means size classes are built around number of engines; a destroyer would have one engine, for example, and therefor probably be around 6000-8000 tons; two engines would be a light cruiser at around 14000-16000, etc. It means losing an engine can be crippling, sure, but has nice advantages in fuel use. Usually I just use 100% power engines for most capitals, and 50% power commercial engines for long range armed survey ships.

For fighters, it's all about the power ratios. This is the big advantage fighters have over capital ships, particularly beam fighters, and the difference can be enormous; a fighter with equal engine tonnage will likely be double or triple the speed of a conventional ship. In fact I've been experimenting with 400-500 ton heavy beam fighters that are basically just small capital ships with high performance engines and most of the fuel/maintenance/cruise duration tonnage shaved off (or rather, moved to the carrier). On the other hand, fighter engine size isn't such a big deal; the difference between a 50 ton engine and a 200 ton engine is only a 3% fuel savings, so usually I just have a 50 ton fighter engine and assign them as needed.

Overall, I like the change. You could go with commercial engines for military vessels, or you could establish a network of harvesters and/or forward outposts and have ships that move at twice the speed (a major advantage in combat), but need to refuel more. Or something in between. It makes for interesting strategic decisions.

[Sheb]

Or large tankers that goes with the fleet until the last JP. I like having distinct cruise speed and flank speed.

[Flying Dice]

It isn't possible to have tugs haul warships without the warships activating their own drives, is it? You'd need the tugs to be in a separate TG, and I'm fairly certain that wouldn't work, but it would be a nice alternative to building supercarriers, short-ranged warships, or slow warships.

[toomanysecrets]

How do you determine how many fire controls you need?  So far I have just been basing my decision off of other designs I have seen.

On my fleet I am designing now, I have PD ships with 20 Size 1 missile launchers, and I use 4 fire controls.  I have Destroyers with 10-15 larger launchers, I usually do 2 or 3 fire controls respectively.  I don't really even know if these extra fire controls are needed but I have been slapping them on just to be sure.

Now I am designing a supplemental PD ship with laser turrets, and I am thinking 1 fire control per quad turret, or 1 fire control for every 2 double-turrets.  Thoughts?

[Bremen]

How do you determine how many fire controls you need?  So far I have just been basing my decision off of other designs I have seen.

On my fleet I am designing now, I have PD ships with 20 Size 1 missile launchers, and I use 4 fire controls.  I have Destroyers with 10-15 larger launchers, I usually do 2 or 3 fire controls respectively.  I don't really even know if these extra fire controls are needed but I have been slapping them on just to be sure.

Now I am designing a supplemental PD ship with laser turrets, and I am thinking 1 fire control per quad turret, or 1 fire control for every 2 double-turrets.  Thoughts?

For anti-missiles, I usually go with six launchers per firecontrol. This is simply because PD options are 1 AMM per missile, 2, or 3, and 6 is nicely divisible by all of those. For anti-ship missiles, I usually just go with one or two for the entire ship; multiple firecontrols do make a salvo slightly harder to shoot down, but usually I find the advantage of more launchers outweighs it. Having a second (or even a third) can also be useful as backup if the first is damaged, though.

[Mini]

Having multiple FCs on larger missile launchers can be useful if you are attacking things that don't need an entire salvo of missiles to take down.