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[foarl]

Yeah ion is really low down on the tech scale. You gain massive EP/tonnage benefits as you push for higher drive types. Solid core antimatter drive (+5 tech steps above your starting ion) puts out twice as much EP/tonne as Internal Confinement Fusion Drive (+2 tech steps above starting).

The other thing to note is engine block size. If you make a 1hs 1:1 engine, you can get ~ the same fuel economy out of a 50hs 1.35:2.05 engine (the -% is applied multiplicatively, so 2.05*0.5). So long as the size is tailored to your needs, that's a free 35% thrust value per tonne of engine for making the engine 2500tons instead of 50tons each. Economy of scale and whatnot.

Probably already thought of that but figured I'd mention the math :3

[Flying Dice]

Of course you then have issues with a single engine hit leaving smaller ships fatally crippled if not dead in the water. I still do it, though I tend to use a smaller, higher-power set of designs for fighters, FACs, corvettes, and frigates (basically anything <10,000t).

[Iosyn]

Iosyn: Since we're talking general tips/tricks for beginners. Have you increased the intended deployment time for the ships (Box on the top left of the ship design window)? It's auto set to 3months, but if you boost it up to 24 months I find I've been getting a lot less problems with maintenance. Small bonus tonnage is more than worth it imo. And the other obvious idea being slapping maintenance bays on.

Doesn't count for fighters, but I've never had issues with my ships with that advice in mind.

Yeah, I make sure all my military vessels have at least a year's worth of intended deployment time depending on tonnage-- if your crew go over the deployment time their morale starts to drop, though I'm not sure how badly that would affect combat. For smaller vessels that can be docked in a hanger it's not that much of an issue since you can move them into a carrier crew quarters.

And for my current engine setup like flying dice said I want a bit of redundancy on anything that isn't designed for a knife-fight, so maybe 2x 25HS engines would be better... hm... my old engines were 0.49 fuel efficiency, but now I've made some smaller and more power efficient engines I'm finally pushing my craft into the 5-6k/kms speeds. I'd be ready for combat now if I hadn't realized my current lasers have over twice the range of my beam FCS.

Oh well, may as well just fill my PD ships with anti-missiles and CIWS instead for now. five vessels of twelve launchers each with four or six fire controls, I think. should allow either two or three missiles against enemy salvos. I'm probably going to have to pad them out with fighter swarms, since I've got some pretty nice fighter bombers now, so while the enemy are pounding on the PD ships my fighters can swarm them and unload with all those delicious size 4 box launchers. maybe I should make a size 9 box launcher actually, I could make some horrendous size 9 missiles... and they wouldn't have to have stupid reload times either.

So last thing: Lots of normal size missile launchers for constant reload, or double the amount of half-sized launchers? Each volley would hurt like hell. Also it would probably be more efficient on the magazines-- if a big volley wipes an enemy ship you won't have missiles still in-flight because they're still reloading...

Edit: Foarl I just noticed you got the Error 94 too-- It's annoying as hell right? Thankfully i realized my gravsurvey ship was the culprit this time around, all survey locations surveyed and I still had the order in. My first few games had like 5 Error 94s per instance.

[Flying Dice]

Reduced size launchers (0.5x or less) for everything except AMM. Volley size is pretty much without exception always more important than number of salvos fired. A trick I like to use is to, after adding my launchers, add an equivalent number of box launchers. This gives a wonderful first-strike capability against more dangerous targets, as well as an option if new ships show up in the middle of a reload cycle. That aside, I've noticed that normal-sized launchers tend to foster missile wastage, as it's incredibly easy to burn through five or six salvos (accidentally or through More Dakka syndrome) against something that might only merit one or two.

[RedKing]

Anyone know a good way to set 90 fighters to a mothership, other then manually?

Put them all in a TG (and the mothership in another group), then select the TG and give them an order of "Land on Selected Ship (+Assign)" and select the carrier TG and then the specific carrier/mothership. That should dock them all *and* make that their new mother hen.

[Hanzoku]

As long as they're on the same location as the mothership, you can use the fighter control panel to assign them to squadrons and then land them on their carrier. This has the advantage that you can use the fighter control panel to also launch your fighters per squadron and they'll show up neatly organized in squadron task groups on the map.

[Flying Dice]

As long as they're on the same location as the mothership, you can use the fighter control panel to assign them to squadrons and then land them on their carrier. This has the advantage that you can use the fighter control panel to also launch your fighters per squadron and they'll show up neatly organized in squadron task groups on the map.

This. That window makes it much easier to manage fighter groups.

[MarcAFK]

I was testing the effect that different reduced size launchers had on my early destroyer designs, and found that .5 size gave the highest advantages, allowing something like 50% more magazine space, and 35% more salvo size in a total of 5 salvos requiring only 20 minutes total for reloads and firing ( size 4 missiles, 5 minutes per reload).
At the missiles 16,000km/s speed they could travel only 20 million kilometers to the target in that 20 minutes, even taking into account the speed of the enemy ship it would still easily allow all salvos to be fired safely before recieving any damage from enemy missiles.

[Rince Wind]

My precursers usually shoot me from about 60mil km. But i still play the old version.

[PTTG??]

I've wanted to see how practical it would be to make very very small rockets with a top speed of about C...

[Bremen]

I've been thinking about a new method of ship design. I got the idea from a discussion on the official forums, where I concluded that two similarly sized fleets, each with a decent amount of armor and point defense, would likely run out of missiles before they could completely destroy the other. At which point it becomes a contest of speed and beam weapon range.

That left me thinking, what about detachable missile sections? Sort of a modification of the modular ships idea, but using the fact that once you're out of missiles all of those tubes and magazines are just dead weight. Say, one hull would be mostly engine and the rest beam weapons/PD/armor/etc, then a second section would have no engines but missiles tubes (ASM and AMM), magazines, a tractor beam, and whatever else you could offload onto it (maybe most of the fuel storage). When combined, it works out as a mostly missile armed vessel with 1/3rd engine (or whatever your standard is), but once you run the magazines dry you split off the missile section and suddenly your beam warship is much faster than it would normally be.

Of course, the normal disadvantages of modular ships apply; each segment is easier to destroy, and taking out one can cripple the others. And while your beam armed warships would be faster, they'd also be lacking the extra armor and damage absorption they'd have had as a larger, multi-purpose ship. Still, it's an idea I might try playing around with.

[Rince Wind]

You put (attack) beams and missiles on one ship?

[Bremen]

You put (attack) beams and missiles on one ship?

Technically two ships in this case . But yes, usually; having missile ships with no beams at all leaves them helpless if they run out of missiles, and I prefer to avoid that at all costs.

Another way of looking at it would be that this way there are seperate missile and beam ships, but the beam ships can "steal" the engines of the missile ships when needed.

[Dutchling]

What if you run out of anti-ship missiles versus a missile ship? You would have to leave you AMM behind.

[Bremen]

What if you run out of anti-ship missiles versus a missile ship? You would have to leave you AMM behind.

You could keep the missile section until you run out of AMMs, then detach it. Unless you need the increased speed to pursue, in which case having a detachable missile section just gives you a choice (detach and pursue at high speed) that you wouldn't have with a normal ship; you can still do whatever you think is best.