Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Flying Dice]

Meh, translating wet-navy ship classes to space is dicey at best, especially because a lot of them are turned from role-based to tonnage-based designations. FWIW this is what I typically use, ordered by tonnage:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fighters (vars. from 250t-500t)
FACs (500t-1000t)
Corvettes/Gunboats (1000t-2500t) - lightest 'true' vessels, patrol/picket/garrison duties
Frigates (2500t-8000t) - the meat of a large fleet; enough damage to hurt, enough defenses to take one or two hits
Light Cruisers (8000t-15000t) - fast, generally lightly armed; sensor vessels, LRM platforms, &c.
Destroyers (10000t-20000t) - glass cannons, heavily armed and poorly defended
Light Carriers (8000t-20000t) - fast, poorly defended, typically holds at most two-three dozen fighters

Capital ships:

Heavy Cruisers (15000t-30000t) - durable and fairly fast mainline combatants, typically exchanging raw firepower for more defense
Carriers (20000t-40000t) - slightly slower, much more durable than light carriers, typically holds at minimum 4-6 dozen fighters
Battlecruisers (25000t-40000t) - mix of cruiser speed and battleship firepower, at the expense of durability
Battleships (35000t-50000t) - high-damage, high-defense, generally slower

Supercapitals:

Fleet Carriers (40000t-1200000t) - slow, extremely well defended, typically holds at least 10 dozen fighters
Dreadnoughts (50000t-80000t) - like battleships, only more so
Superdreadnoughts (80000t-1500000t) - see above
Monitors (1500000t+) - multirole vessels, the heart of a very high-tech high-resource civ's fleet

[Cthulufaic]

Generally, you don't want to do conventional stars, especially not as your first game ever.

Well I chose it because it was more interesting.  Also I think I'm betting on my knowledge of Blue Emu's Aurora AARs on the Paradox Interactive forums.
Pretty sure theres a link to them somewhere in the depths of this thread, but I don't think people will be assed to find it.
Ad Astra!
Aurora III

They're a bit old, so the versions aren't up to date anymore, but they give MANY HELPS TO NEW PLAYERS.

[Flying Dice]

Generally, you don't want to do conventional stars, especially not as your first game ever.

Well I chose it because it was more interesting.  Also I think I'm betting on my knowledge of Blue Emu's Aurora AARs on the Paradox Interactive forums.
Pretty sure theres a link to them somewhere in the depths of this thread, but I don't think people will be assed to find it.
Ad Astra!
Aurora III

They're a bit old, so the versions aren't up to date anymore, but they give MANY HELPS TO NEW PLAYERS.

Those LPs weren't conventional starts, just as an aside. What the peculiarities of conventional starts amount to is essentially that you spend the first 2-6 decades of game time slowly teching up to the point where you'd be from a standard T/N start; if you're going to do that, you really don't want to have any NPRs spawned at start, or you'll basically be chopping a good chunk of the playable time off the campaign -- the starter will have that much longer to grow large enough to start throwing up interrupts constantly.

[gimlet]

I often build cheap "almost nothing but engines+bays" light carriers too but I just about always put at least a couple of layers of armor on 'em, probably for no real benefit.  M thought is to prevent at least some of the cheap stupid kills from leaker missiles, and so they're not free kills for small swarms of AMMs.  But yea if I was seriously short on duranium that'd almost certainly be one of the 1st things I'd trim...

And yea, IMHO conventional starts just make the build up period exxxxxtra long and tedious with no real enjoyment for me, unless maybe I was doing something like multiple factions.  In a normal single-faction game, it's already long enough before I can tech up and then build a non-crap fleet to actually fight something, adding another 20+ years of just managing production in front of that isn't very attractive for me.  If you love those extra hours of tweaking production and research, hey, enjoy.  I'd really rather start exploring and building ships sooner rather than hours later.

I use a modified US Navy hull naming scheme, based mostly on hull size.  Mine are smaller than most, it's a LONG time before I go much above 12-15k tons, usually I start another game by then
It's "hull size code" + "role (blank if it's anti-ship)" + "modifier (usu G for Gun M for missile S for Scout + L for "squadron leader (usu means jump engines and better sensors)" -J for Jump if that's unusual, like a Jump Fighter + X if Stealth) then -"generation number/subgeneration mod letter"
so I have prefixes like DDAAG-1 = destroyer sized hull, anti-missile, armed mainly with guns, 1st Generation, CLML-2c - light cruiser, anti-ship, missile armed, jump engine+sensors, 2nd Gen 3rd mod of the design, etc
F - fighter - up to 500,  FB antiship usu FBM (missile), FI interceptor usu FIG
G - gunboat  - FAC up to 1000
FF - frigate up to about 5000 tons
DD - destroyer 10k or so, sometimes DE for Destroyer Escort - less armored and usually AA
CL - light cruiser 15k
CA - cruiser 20k
sometimes CC for "Command Cruiser"
BC, BB, DN, etc,  that that I almost never use
CVL - light carrier
CV - carrier, sometimes CVA or CVH for heavy.  I usually add the bay size as a code somewhere on the name line.
Logistics:  AO oiler, AM  collier, AT tug,  AOE "tender" - fuel + maint stores, AK troop transport

Within the classes, each generation is almost identical size because it's a common engine vs weight ratio to give a similar speed so the fleet can stay together, + it's easier to organize jumps by hull size + the right number of (L)eaders.

The rest of the name line, I usually put the speed in 00s so I can pick out easily slow or obsolete ships to target for upgrades, and a rooooling class name
So it's  "CLAAGL-4f 72 Cleveland"  light cruiser, AA gun, squadron leader, 4th gen, mod f, speed 7200,  Cleveland Class.  It still gets unwieldy after a few hundred designs but at least I can look at fleets and get a good idea of what's what without looking up each dang design.

[JOKER_G]

Fighting against 1000% 800% difficulty NPR again. This time I began with 7000m population, thus GTA have a good quantity of warships and three major colonized systems. Moreover, there're only one jump gate between my territory and their's, so it will be a good fight.

It start with a contact between Galactic Terran Intelligence mobile operation fleet and unknown race fleet. The contact didn't end in nuclear explosion and ship wrecks, so GTA High Command designated unknown race as "neutral". Further investigation discovered their homeworld and a fearsome huge fleet. When the communication established, unknown race called themselves as "Clan Imperium".

GTA High Command decided to send another unarmed survey fleet in, but all contact lost after 5 minutes.

Alarm bell rang and GTA battlegroups rendezvoused at Hector Naval Base. The big fleet then entered Epsilon Eridani for battle.

GTA Task Fleet order of battle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1st Fleet-Sol
-3rd Battlegroup
--1x Orion Class Destroyer (GTD Galatea)
   4x Fenris Class Crusier
   8x Leviathan Class Crusier
   4x Aeolus Class Light Carrier
   40x Fighters and bombers

-4th Battlegroup
--1x Orion Class Destroyer (GTD Bastion)
   4x Fenris Class Crusier
   8x Leviathan Class Crusier
   4x Aeolus Class Light Carrier
   40x Fighters and bombers

2nd Fleet-Hector
-5th Battlegroup
--2x Orion Class Destroyer (GTD Nereid and GTD Vindicator)
   2x Fenris Class Crusier
   6x Leviathan Class Crusier

-6th Battlegroup
--1x Orion Class Destroyer (GTD Krios)
   2x Fenris Class Crusier
   6x Leviathan Class Crusier

-Fire Support Group
--4x Aeolus Class Light Carrier
   40x bombers

-GTI Mobile Operation Fleet
--2x Orion Class Destroyer (GTD Intrepid and GTD Legion)
   4x Fenris Class Crusier
   6x Leviathan Class Crusier
   4x Aeolus Class Light Carrier
   20x Fighters and bombers, 16x dropships

[Toriad]

Hey guys, new player here. I've recently been experimenting with tractor devices - to no avail.. Can anyone tell me how to use the ship-to-ship tractoring system? How does one go about ordering Tugs to engage their tractoring devices on other ships/platforms?

-Thanks

[Tarran]

I haven't used it much, but I believe you need to put the ships in the same position, then navigate to the ship in the Ships/Individual Unit Details page (F6), Miscellaneous, and on the top right is Tractor Link.

[Flying Dice]

I haven't used it much, but I believe you need to put the ships in the same position, then navigate to the ship in the Ships/Individual Unit Details page (F6), Miscellaneous, and on the top right is Tractor Link.

IIRC there are also contextual orders which pop up when a tug is selected in the TG window.

[Toriad]

I haven't used it much, but I believe you need to put the ships in the same position, then navigate to the ship in the Ships/Individual Unit Details page (F6), Miscellaneous, and on the top right is Tractor Link.

IIRC there are also contextual orders which pop up when a tug is selected in the TG window.

Thanks for the replies, managed to get it to work.

I've now run into a new problem - designed tech (designed engines in this case) with names the game deemed "too long". Ironically, the game still goes and creates the design, albeit with no name.

Under normal circumstances this wouldn't have bothered me but I now get the "Error 94 Invalid use of Null" every time I open the ship design screen. Is there a way to delete these unnamed designs?

[Lord Shonus]

Select them in the list and click the "Obsolete Comp" button (may be abbreviated diffrently).

[JOKER_G]

The Epsilon Eridani engagement ended in a tactical success of GTA Task Fleet. Clan main Fleet had fairly good defence, neither torpedo bomber assault nor battleship missile broadside works well, but two sub fleets and several squads were completely wiped out. GTA fleet scored eleven 30kt battleship kills and twelve 10kt cruiser kills, with the cost of several wings of bombers and about 5500 anti-ship missiles.

However, this engagement emptied the ammunition depot in Hector Base, GTA Task Fleet have to wait for colliers, tankers and fighter transports from earth before any further offensive.

[JOKER_G]

Battle of Hector
As soon as more ordnance and reinforcements arrived in Hector Naval Base, GTA is preparing a large offensive. However, Clan put their cruiser squads forward. six cruisers slip through GTA sensor range and attacked civilian ships, caused high casuaties. The other squad attacked two destroyers on patrol. Torpedo bombers destroyed one squad, but the other one is out of range.

GTA fleet soon caught up, disabled and captured the other six Clan cruisers, then Clan main fleet arrived. GTA fleet have 78 warships, Clan fleet have 98 and most of them were much larger than standard GTA cruiser. It soon appeared to be an extremely hard battle. Clan fleet's point defence appear to be too well for standard SSM to pentrate. High-speed FFAR and AMM works much better against point defence, but Clan ships have end-game armor tech. GTA pilots managed to cripple one or two ships in a single bombing run, cut them off with Clan big fleet, then cruisers would terminate them with SSM. After waves and waves of attack, Clan fleet's point defence firepower finally fell, and SSM broadsides end their resistance.

It could be a decisive victory of GTA, despite the ammo and fuel reserve is below dangerous level.

[Mookzen]

I've wanted to get into this for years, but I keep feeling that this game isn't something one just casually starts getting into, I feel like I need to quit my job or shave my head, or take up riot tourism, have a near-death experience, or something, beforehand... or perhaps it's more akin to not reading that one book you know you will adore, on purpose, waiting for the right time... forever. Does one actually just start, or what ?

[Duuvian]

It took me two tries, and yeah pretty much. It will be a while before you get the hang of it but once you start designing ships with tech you designed and researched it's pretty fun.

There are some tutorials. They are not complete but they might still help you out. I mostly learned it by trial and error and clicking on buttons along with asking for some help in this thread.

[Flying Dice]

One does not simply... actually, yeah, you do. Just start playing and working things out.