Print

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

[StagnantSoul]

Might just work with the 4's then, 2:1 of missiles to gauss for the hangar spaces, so 10:5 for my escort carriers and 20:10 for the carriers proper.

[RAM]

I would tend to regard missiles more as what they will be used against than what they will be used by. Of course, obviously, for fighters every bit of size is a significant factor, smaller is generally better if it gets the job done.

[StagnantSoul]

Well, so far, they will not be used against much as we have only met one NPR, who we're happily trading with and bringing in... 2.7% of Mars' wealth a year. I've gotten into the mid tier tech (I think) without a single fight, usually I have at least one angry head bonk with someone by now while still using Ion or Magneto and visible lights. Against myself they hit rather well, at least 100% chance on all my ships except the little 8k missile spammer, it fires a single large volley of size 6 missiles and it's done.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

Urk... First true contact with an alien race...

Two types of contact, 7 contacts going 6486m/s. 8 strength 14 nuclear detonations detected. 3 hit the survey ship that found them, it was more than enough.

And guess how close they are to Sol... Might end up abandoning this start, 4 years in and very fast hostiles are literally 1 jump away. Hope the diplo team can find out more (and get them to stop shooting us).

Edit: So the diplo team says communication is impossible. Anyone got any advice? Alien contacts were 1200 thermal sig with two active sensors, an R79 sensor with 174m km range and an R20 with I think 35m km range. The missiles were described as Ilithid ASM. No idea how fast the missiles were, think it was point blank when they fired, not that a civilian ship has anything beyond 1/1 sensors anyway.

Precursors perhaps? Doubt an NPR would be that powerful so early, Pretty sure those were large ships with that kind of heat signature.

[Rince Wind]

Advice: Ignore them until you've got a fleet running.

Attack them while you are still slower and generally worse off, it is more fun then just dominating them.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

Pretty certain they are precursors. Didn't find a colony on any of the bodies with atmosphere (at the cost of another 4300t survey ship) and they are sitting around a planet and guarding it.

I guess the only way to know for sure is to blast them to pieces. They are 100% not friendly.
Well if they are precursors then I have plenty of time to prepare, need to rescue the last survey ship but that just needs a jump tender, not going to build a jump gate without knowing for sure that I can melt those xenos.

[Descan]

Plenty of fuel and plenty of maintenance supplies (though oddly enough, this one didn't say anything about how long the maintenance supplies would last like the geosurvey ship did...?)

Ships with only civilian components are maintenance-exempt.

Aye, I recalled that soon after writing that. Guess they're wasted build points, then.

[Rince Wind]

Pretty certain they are precursors. Didn't find a colony on any of the bodies with atmosphere (at the cost of another 4300t survey ship) and they are sitting around a planet and guarding it.

I guess the only way to know for sure is to blast them to pieces. They are 100% not friendly.
Well if they are precursors then I have plenty of time to prepare, need to rescue the last survey ship but that just needs a jump tender, not going to build a jump gate without knowing for sure that I can melt those xenos.

The tender does not need to jump into the system, but it might be better if they don't see you jump out. Can't remember if precursors follow you.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

JP is on the other side of the system. Pretty sure they don't know about the survey ship, its not a wreck after all, and its near the JP, they didn't intercept it as it skirted the outer edge nor did they react when it went near the star.

[Flying Dice]

I would tend to regard missiles more as what they will be used against than what they will be used by. Of course, obviously, for fighters every bit of size is a significant factor, smaller is generally better if it gets the job done.

Though it is worth noting that if you're able to field fighters in large enough wings, you can drop down to just ~2 X/O racks per fighter and pack some really nasty warheads in, since you're going to be launching 16-24+ per flight. Better to have a solid knockout punch so that you don't have to kite around for weeks sending your fighters back and forth. This tends to scale upward in effectiveness as your tech improves, obviously.

[Ehndras]

StagnantSoul: Re-Fighters: Perhaps an even balance between the S-4 and S-8 would be size-6 missiles. Same detection range as S-4's but can pack more punch. As someone else mentioned, cutting your range down to around 10mil would do you better, as that extra range, at your speed, makes little difference. If you can cut down on size and increase speed further, maximum engagement range becomes more of a non-issue.

It might be useful to consider adding a few AMM-box-fighters to your wings. Size-1 box launchers are ridiculously compact so you can fit a ton of them on smaller, faster fighters that can either join the wing or form their own hyper-fast wing to test enemy AMM/PD before you risk wrecking your main bombers. Get enough of those pesky Gnats (What I call mine) and you can pepper enemies to death.

[Ehndras]

Maintenance is annoying

play with it off but still design ships and give orders as if it were on. Basically the same effect, you're just cutting out annoyances.

But then you don't have the option to push it too far and play the odds. Do you let the fleet get underpowered or go over maintenance and wait for the next shift to arrive? If you do, will they get back to dock in one piece or will an engine explode? What of the lone ship that survived its battle, but lost an engine and now struggles home as its clock steadily rises... I can't help but feel that you are keeping the tedius design impediment and mission spam while losing all the substantive resource expenditure and all the glorious tales of crews struggling home as their ship crumbles around them.

But meh, to each their own.

...Now I want to play with maintenance on again. Definitely not in my NPR-cosystem start. I'm already at enough of a disadvantage.

[Alastar]

I like small fighters carrying a single missile each, maximising salvo dispersion and minimising sensor footprint. Size 7 is about the smallest I use for this. Size-7 box launchers have 1HTK where size-6 ones have 0, on missile cruisers this can make the difference between an unusually fragile and an unusually tough ship. Less relevant on fighters, but I prefer to standardise. Going much smaller also makes fuel efficiency relevant even for modest-ranged missiles.

Larger missiles gain some fuel efficiency, higher shock damage, and make better use of sensors to avoid overkill... but point defence will be somewhat more effective and larger fighters are somewhat easier to detect. Size 10-13 is the high end for my fighters, as that's a good fit for a maximum-size missile engine. Whatever the missile size, I typically don't bother with extreme performance for the launching fighters - they rely on not being seen.

[Ehndras]

Interesting. Isn't that inefficient as hell, fuel and production-wise?

[Flying Dice]

Maintenance is annoying

play with it off but still design ships and give orders as if it were on. Basically the same effect, you're just cutting out annoyances.

But then you don't have the option to push it too far and play the odds. Do you let the fleet get underpowered or go over maintenance and wait for the next shift to arrive? If you do, will they get back to dock in one piece or will an engine explode? What of the lone ship that survived its battle, but lost an engine and now struggles home as its clock steadily rises... I can't help but feel that you are keeping the tedius design impediment and mission spam while losing all the substantive resource expenditure and all the glorious tales of crews struggling home as their ship crumbles around them.

But meh, to each their own.

Eh. In my experience you get one of those moments for every three dozen or so "Oh. A drive/active sensor/whatever just exploded for no apparent reason. Again. And now you're totally dry on supplies fifteen seconds after your warranty expired recommended deployment time ran over.