OK, I ended up starting a new game after losing my whole fleet to some precursor AMM ships. (Seriously, size 1 missiles are silly...)
Anyway, there were some issues with my last game I would like to avoid this time. This time around, I decided to pretty much forego civilian jump ships, and have been building jump gates pretty much everywhere. That's kept things simpler from an exploration standpoint.
I've been aggressively colonizing nearby systems, basically anything less than col cost 3 gets a colony and some infrastructure, and then I let the civilians tend to it from there, until I get around to terraforming it. I've been building construction facilities nonstop at a high rate, and shipping about 150 of them to each colony, and having most of those colonies produce financial centers. This has kept my wealth just about even, although I'll probably need to research expanded economy soon.
I just finished researching internal confinement fusion engines, and developed a 25% power size 50 250EP commercial engine, which my commercial fleets all use. This is to make sure my civilians are using as little as possible of my fuel, as I had a problem with that last game. I've also been shipping a small stream of refineries out to my colonies, as having all my fuel on earth caused me no end of problems with military maneuvers last game.
I've currently got about 700 million people on earth, and a small worker shortage. My population growth is not keeping up with my production of research facilities, meaning I'm probably going to have to create another research planet. Is this something that is commonly necessary? I'm about 25 years into my current game.
I've finally teched up to the point where I feel I should start fielding a military, I've got a few hostiles in nearby systems, and I suspect 1 of them may be star swarm. Actually, 2 races are fitting that profile, but as they were identified as different species, I have to assume one was just a fast beam using NPR.
Now I need to design my warships. Once again, because I'm a dumb jerk, I'm not using missiles. I've developed gauss with vel 1, rof 4, and have twin and quad turrets carrying it with 16000 km/s tracking speed, which matches my 4x speed fire control. I've also got 3 damage lasers with 5 second ROF developed, and also mounted in twin and quad turrets. The fire control for these is 4x range and 4x speed, giving me something like 100,000 km range and 16000 km/s tracking speed. I figure that should give me a decent PD envelope, and also allow me to do damage without having to close to point blank range.
Still, these weapon systems mean I need to be able to close, and the faster the better. To get the kind of speed I will need, I'm probably going to need boosted engines, meaning bad fuel efficiency (I have 60% fuel efficiency tech at the moment). So I believe my fleet doctrine will require large fairly fuel efficient carrier/tankers carrying smaller fast attack ships. But as those fast ships are going to be the ones closing on enemy ships without PD support from the carriers, they need to include enough PD to weather the missile swarm they'll inevitably be flying through.
I'm thinking 40,000 ton carriers, as although I have a 50,000 ton naval shipyard, I won't have enough maintenance capability for that size for a while. My attack ships size is harder to determine. Their size is at least partially determined by the hangar space in the carriers, but the speed requirement will probably be the more restrictive parameter. I want them to go at least 8000 km/s, which I believe should be feasible at my tech level.
I imagine my carriers will need to be jump capable. Since my fast ships need the PD to close, I won't be able to protect my carriers very easily, so they'll probably need to jump back out of system after dropping off the battle fleet. However my fast ships will then need enough range to close to the enemy fleet and destroy them, which may be tricky given the high speed requirement.
So, if you read through that whole wall of text, I have a request of any daring space ship designers. Can you help me design a carrier and some high speed attack/pd ships?
My base engines are 1000 EP at 100% power, with 60% fuel usage. I have up to 25% engine boost tech.
I've got quad and dual gauss and laser turrets, I believe the turret gear is size 4 or so which gets it to 16000 km/s tracking, matching my 4x speed 4x range fire control.
PD ships should use gauss turret(s) and 4X speed, 1X range fire controls. 1 Fire control per ship should be enough.
Laser ships should use laser turret(s), and 4X speed, 4X range fire controls. Again, 1 fire control per ship is enough, unless a single design can carry both gauss and laser turrets, in which case 1 of each fire control should be used (I doubt that's possible at this tech level).
Bonus Challenge: Make the fast laser and pd ships able to be built at the same shipyard. A midway frankenstein ship design to accomplish this is OK, so long as it doesn't cost more than 50% over the cost of the actual ships.
Keep in mind the carriers need a LOT of range, and don't need to go any faster than 3000 km/s. A ship that's all hangar bays, commercial engines, engineering spaces, and fuel storage is acceptable. These things need an AFR of less than 100%, and lots of maint supplies, as they're also maintaining and repairing the fast ships.
The fast ships can have very short deployment times, as I expect they will end up with ranges of about 24-48 hours of travel outside the carrier anyway. A super high AFR is fine on these. The most important thing is speed, as long as they can go 8000 km/s and carry a gun, and still fit in the carrier, they'll fit the bill.
The small ships should fit cleanly into the carriers, but it's also OK if each carrier is sized for 1 pd ship and 1 attack ship, or something like that, if they end up being different sizes. This may simply not be possible, but it would certainly be nice.
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Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games (Read 2811562 times)