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[Flying Dice]

Is there any way to STOP morale from dropping on smaller ships? I assume the entertainment system or whatever it's called is there for stopping your morale from dropping.

Yes and yes. Though it serves more as a way to make a "colony" in places that wouldn't support a surface population and where orbitals aren't viable for whatever reason, like a forward military base.

[Sirus]

So the entertainment system goes on a ship, and if you leave the ship in orbit around something (say, an asteroid) that location counts as a colony for the purposes of restoring morale for other ships?

[Culise]

Yep.  Combine it with the maintenance systems, and you essentially have a colony in a can.  If I recall, since they're both commercial facilities as well, they play a huge role in mega-ship/mega-station constructions that utilize tractor beams, second only to ship-scale hangers.

[Ninetails]

It has finally become the time for me to design my first warship, after meeting an alien race for the first time (through all my games).

Background: My current game is based on a very bare-bones conventional start with only 6m population on earth (RP wise, it is the evelution of homo sapience into homo-superior, which only happaned in a single small contry), so it took me around 50-100 years to reach a point comparable to trans-newtonian start. To prevent being stoomped by an AI, I play with reduced NPR - difficulty and no NPR at start. Since this game was intented to learn mechanics through, I have taking my sweet time before doing different things, since another few years are not that important when you have already spend so many just to get up to the starting point. Anyway, about 120 years into the game I have contact with the first alien race in a system 1 jump away from sol. Imagene my supprise when the information from the sensors of my goesurvey vessel shows they are employing several 1000 ton (FAC) vessels going at the amazing speed of 12,500 km/s. They quickly bombard my survey ship with waves of 6 damage missiles, destoying it. At this point I have absolutely no military ships, partly for the RP reason that it would be hypocritical to employ such ships against imaginary threats. After some checkup, I realise they are the infamys precursers, and they probably would not jump into sol and destory my fledling empire. I therefor start actual military reseach and send my survey ships to other sectors. I run into mostly dead ends and a another precurser ship of unknown size going around 5000 km/s, which shoots my last geosurvey ship with 7 damage warheads. I then come to the conclussion that I will have to deal with those precursers to continue my exploration, so I then start planning my first military warship, which is constructed about 130 years into the game.


My choice of warship fell on the experimetal 4000 ton Delfin class Light Cruiser, designed as a all-round ship deployed alone. It has the duel porpuse of testing war-capabilities and hunting pesky 12,500 km/s FACs

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Delfin class Light Cruiser    4,000 tons     117 Crew     2321.08 BP      TCS 80  TH 345.6  EM 0
18000 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 6-22     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 11
Maint Life 0.49 Years     MSP 363    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 734    5YR 11017    Max Repair 1440 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 7 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 38   

Delfin Splash J4000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 4000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Limited 1440 EP Inertial Fusion Drive (1)    Power 1440    Fuel Use 57.87%    Signature 345.6    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 38.9 billion km   (25 days at full power)

TurboLaser - 240km 15cm C6 Ultraviolet Laser (2)    Range 240,000km     TS: 18000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 4    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
Wallis-Barker Fire Control S02 120-16000 (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Dong Solid-core Anti-matter Power Plant Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 16    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Alpha Strike Size 1 Missile Launcher (25% Reduction) (4)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 500
Rapid Fire Size 1 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Hobble Missile Fire Control FC28-R1 (2)     Range 28.8m km    Resolution 1
"Watchdog" Mk I  - 1/1 AMM (20)  Speed: 96,000 km/s   End: 2.4m    Range: 14.1m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 1600/960/480
"Arrow" Mk I - 9/1 ASM (18)  Speed: 67,200 km/s   End: 5.5m    Range: 22.1m km   WH: 9    Size: 1    TH: 448/268/134

Hobble Active Search Sensor MR19-R1 (1)     GPS 60     Range 19.2m km    MCR 2.1m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

I had quite a few problems designing this ship. It was quite had to get the ship up to sufficient speed, and in the end around 50% of the ship is dedicated to the boosted engine and fuel. Since it also had to carry a jump drive to even get to its target, and sufficient armor to suvive the missiles getting through the anti-missle systems + crew and so on, it was left with quite little space for the actual military payload. I had wanted to put some cloaking on it and more/larger sensors on it, but there were simply not enough room.

You are free to shoot at it/review it, and I will gladly admidt that I expected the design to utterly fail.


AAR/Summery: In pratice it worked out acceptably, even through my own incompetence at fleet battles. I sent the prototype to where I had last seen the FACs, they spotted me and shot a bunch of missiles at me. I had a lot of problems launching the Watchdog AMMs, so I only got 2 out of the tubes, but the TurboLasers and armor somehow managed to weather the storm. I headed in the direction the missiles had come from, and found the FAC. I think they were using box launchers or something, since they never fired again. I managed to throw most of my Arrow ASM away to bad missile management though 2 connected and instantly destroyed one of six FACs. Since I had a speed advantage I closed in and shoot them down with the TurboLasers.
Later I tried to employ it against the other craft in the other system. The first wave of 26 missiles managed to take me by supprise, since I happend to have moved to a planet, which reduced my sensors to around 260 000 km mark. I did not get much done before they hit, but the armor absorbed all the damage. I again headed in the dirrection of the missiles, but I did not find anything, so I tried to go in another dirrection. An hour or 2 later I have a secondary wave of missiles coming in again, which I could not handle either, and they happened to destroy the engine, so the ship was stuck in space waiting for more missiles to destory it, which ofcause happened.

The Delfin class is now up for review, and I am trying to figure out where to go now military wise.

If you are wondering about the amount of tech on it compared to how early it is (compared to the approximately 50 year disadvantage on a normal conventional start), then it comes from me focusing heavily on the super-exponential growth of the ecoomy/research in terms of the CP tree together with heavy expansion of the industry. This ofcause was couple with lucky good amounts of the important minerals on earth, so I had around 200 research labs at the dawn of my military.

[Lord Shonus]

Does this game have a "mothball" mechanic other than shoving your ships into a massive hanger PDC? I've designed and built a two-ship class of self-only jumpships with very limited fuel and deploy time (to keep the ship as small and chjeap as possible) for exploring jump points (the idea being that, in case there's a hostile fleet or minefield camping the other side, or there's some other threat, I don't lose much) before sending in more substantial geo and grav survey ships, my battle fleet (to sweep for threats), or colony ships. Problem is, when I don't have any unexplored jps at the moment, they're constantly whining about exceeding maximum deployment time, or they keep breaking down, etc.

[EuchreJack]

Does this game have a "mothball" mechanic other than shoving your ships into a massive hanger PDC? I've designed and built a two-ship class of self-only jumpships with very limited fuel and deploy time (to keep the ship as small and chjeap as possible) for exploring jump points (the idea being that, in case there's a hostile fleet or minefield camping the other side, or there's some other threat, I don't lose much) before sending in more substantial geo and grav survey ships, my battle fleet (to sweep for threats), or colony ships. Problem is, when I don't have any unexplored jps at the moment, they're constantly whining about exceeding maximum deployment time, or they keep breaking down, etc.

I'm not sure, but I think if you send the ship to Earth, then maximum deployment time won't accrue.  Otherwise, just constantly overhaul the things.

...Have you considered a civilian design?  You can make everything you need with civilian tech, and then you won't have maintenance.  Crew deployment times won't increase if you're stationed at a colony.

[Lord Shonus]

In the early stages of the game, my civilian yards tend to be overloaded with freighters, jump tenders, and freighter variants (such as colony ships), while my smaller naval shipyards are idle until I get box launchers or good beam tech. That's part of why I tried to make the ships really small.

[Shooer]

Civilian ships can still be made out of a naval yard.

[Lord Shonus]

They're also much, much bigger, and thus I wouldn't be able to use my fallow 5000 ton yards.

[Shooer]

... That's not small, that's not small at all.  My geo survey ships never break 2.5k tons, and my grav are always 6k.

[Flying Dice]

Do keep in mind that commercial jump drives consume more volume than their military counterparts; the low end of the spectrum for them is 500 tons. Granted, you could still probably manage to make a 1kton ship with that. There's no need to build big unless your tech is so terrible that you are forced to.

[Karlito]

Does this game have a "mothball" mechanic other than shoving your ships into a massive hanger PDC? I've designed and built a two-ship class of self-only jumpships with very limited fuel and deploy time (to keep the ship as small and chjeap as possible) for exploring jump points (the idea being that, in case there's a hostile fleet or minefield camping the other side, or there's some other threat, I don't lose much) before sending in more substantial geo and grav survey ships, my battle fleet (to sweep for threats), or colony ships. Problem is, when I don't have any unexplored jps at the moment, they're constantly whining about exceeding maximum deployment time, or they keep breaking down, etc.

I'm not sure, but I think if you send the ship to Earth, then maximum deployment time won't accrue. 

This is true for any colony where you have sufficient maintenance facilities. I think every facility adds 500 tons to the limit for that colony. Ships larger than the limit won't be maintained.

[Lord Shonus]

... That's not small, that's not small at all.  My geo survey ships never break 2.5k tons, and my grav are always 6k.

It's small for an early tech jumpship. The jump drive takes up something like 60% of the hull.

[Shooer]

It was just a compare on how a small ship can be small.  Grav survey components have always been naval, and I put my low end jump drives on them because I might as well and I make fewer of them than I would of my geo surveys.

Also it does not take long before jump drives take up only 1/3 of your ships space, as in at the minimum tech level civilian jump is only 1/3 the ships size and military are 1/4th.  I have no idea where you got 60% from....

Edit: also military JE count as civ equipment, so if you want a smaller more efficient engine on your ship you can.  Just cost more to go with the compact size.

[JOKER_G]

Getting extremly angry with NPR AMM spam, then designed this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

GTFB Athena class Fighter-bomber    330 tons     1 Crew     92.9 BP      TCS 6.6  TH 120  EM 0
18181 km/s     Armour 1-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3.6
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 66%    IFR .9%    1YR 2    5YR 27    Max Repair 30 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: .1 months    Spare Berths 9   
Magazine 24   

60 EP ICF Fighter Drive (2)    Power 60    Fuel Use 462.98%    Signature 60    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres    Range 2.4 billion km   (35 hours at full power)

Missile Rail S1 (24)    Missile Size 1    Hangar Reload 7.5 minutes    MF Reload 1.2 hours
Peel&Merkle MFC45-R140 (1)     Range 46.0m km    Resolution 140
FFAR (24)  Speed: 60,000 km/s   End: 6.2m    Range: 22.3m km   WH: 3    Size: 1    TH: 200/120/60

May they burnt in firestorm.