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Post by redmars on Nov 4, 2016 18:10:57 GMT
One thing I think drives the size and importance of capital ships is, oddly, their vulnerability. If you're going to have a capital flagship/drone dispenser with oodles of Δv (not to mention sensors, comms equipment, and other stuff that isn't modeled), you don't want it getting popped by stray debris (or a fragmentation cloud) or a gun burst etc. if something makes it through your screening force. So, you need decent whipple shields, plus thermal protections. You may also want a laser with sufficient standoff range to zap troublesome drones before they can hurt you, which means a decent reactor plus radiators. Having done that, you might as well add some other systems to take advantage of all that power... Some railguns, perhaps. Oh, and you'll want some CIWS guns, naturally. Also, it's awkward and inefficient to put large-volume 'cruise' missiles on your drones, so let's find some space for those. No point building another ship just to carry missiles...
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Post by ross128 on Nov 4, 2016 18:56:54 GMT
I think it might depend on what you mean by "capital ships". For example, I do consider capital ships to be viable. Even necessary, if you consider the need to transport ground forces in hostile space. However, the capital ships I have in mind are primarily armed with missiles/drones. Their armor and direct-fire weapons are to protect the ship against accidents, such as mopping up after a partial intercept, they aren't intended to hold up against a sustained attack because scaling does not favor the defender.
I definitely don't see "superdreadnoughts" as being cost-effective. The rocket equation will see to that, especially in a setting where a relatively small, cheap missile can penetrate an absolutely unreasonable amount of armor.
A fleet of small-to-medium capital ships has numerous advantages over a single superdreadnought. They have the flexibility to scale by combining and splitting fleets. They can mutually support each other with point defense, combine their missile volleys to attack as a group, and have natural redundancy at the fleet level. If their fire control systems can network, they can form arbitrarily large laser arrays by concentrating fire. A ship that is merely mission-killed or mobility-killed can launch the remainder of its missiles, then be towed away while the rest of the fleet fights on. Their dV can be extended relatively cheaply using tankers or boost stages.
Overall, unless a special case of favorable scaling shows up (like for some reason you absolutely need a gun too large to be reasonably carried by a typical ship), I would expect a well-composed fleet of small to medium capital ships to outperform any superdreadnought of equivalent cost.
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Post by redparadize on Nov 4, 2016 19:24:45 GMT
Overall, unless a special case of favorable scaling shows up (like for some reason you absolutely need a gun too large to be reasonably carried by a typical ship), I would expect a well-composed fleet of small to medium capital ships to outperform any superdreadnought of equivalent cost. On two aspect it is false, because volume vs surface give a advantage to large vessel, and the bare minimum crew is only applied once for larger ship vs multiple times for smaller. Thats why I embraced the concept of single mothership+drones. I retain the minimum crew and have the flexibility of a large fleet. My pocket battleship act as cruiser (and major target) and are supplemented by drone wave for further force projection.
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Post by ross128 on Nov 4, 2016 19:41:47 GMT
That's only an artefact of how the game's crew system works though, so it isn't representative of a real fleet.
In a real fleet structured around capital-drones, the command ship would not actually have to carry the drones because those drones are large enough to fly under their own power the whole way. The command ship in that case would be a small AWACS rather than a mothership.
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Post by redparadize on Nov 4, 2016 19:46:11 GMT
A drone that doesn't fly does not reaquire maintenance. But I was talking about the game, the area vs volume is still valid in both case trough.
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Post by redmars on Nov 4, 2016 19:58:26 GMT
A drone that doesn't fly does not reaquire maintenance. But I was talking about the game, the area vs volume is still valid in both case trough. Yeah, I think it's worth remembering that any long-endurace craft needs people onboard, at least in this setting. Of course, interceptors based on moons, stations etc. might be very attractive for defenders. (actually, I wonder if I can build an airbase station...) Also, I do tend to find that smaller ships are more survivable due to better angling (i.e. lower chance of a dead-on hit), but I think the difference is moot.
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Post by jonen on Nov 4, 2016 21:17:05 GMT
You'd think defense of significant bodies could be handled by satellites (read: Drones) controlled from the ground.
Stations, and drones pretending to be stations.
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 4, 2016 22:59:26 GMT
You'd think defense of significant bodies could be handled by satellites (read: Drones) controlled from the ground. Stations, and drones pretending to be stations. Yeah id agree, realistically it would be pretty easy to swap out an actual cargo container on a station for a (shush secret) drone pod that could pop out and launch multiple s swarmers pretty fast.
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Post by bigbombr on Nov 4, 2016 23:12:42 GMT
You'd think defense of significant bodies could be handled by satellites (read: Drones) controlled from the ground. Stations, and drones pretending to be stations. Yeah id agree, realistically it would be pretty easy to swap out an actual cargo container on a station for a (shush secret) drone pod that could pop out and launch multiple s swarmers pretty fast. Imagine some commsats containing a hidden cassaba howitzer. Enemy forces are thus forced to destroy ALL orbital assets or risk having their fleet vaporized.
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 4, 2016 23:20:18 GMT
Just goes to show how viable defences are when you can convert ACTUALLY EVERYTHING into a a weapon in space.
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Post by ross128 on Nov 4, 2016 23:23:24 GMT
I suppose I can think of one benefit of building ships at the "that's no moon" scale though: you can intimidate your opponents by parking the ship in orbit, so they can see it from the ground. With normal ships they'd need telescopes to get the message.
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Post by tophattingson on Nov 5, 2016 0:09:13 GMT
I do like the idea of coming up with our own factions. We could even have component manufacturers.
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reviire
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Post by reviire on Nov 5, 2016 0:50:38 GMT
I do like the idea of coming up with our own factions. We could even have component manufacturers. Hey, that would be a pretty cool idea, I think. Add faction specific alloys/technologies, that are for one reason or another super sekrit and the other faction(s) don't know about it. Give them some flavour, give them strengths and weaknesses to add variety. Maybe certain factions don't have access to a lot of alloys or lasing crystals, because for one reason or another, they lost all that info because the Earth kinda got blown up. If/when we get custom ship designs, capital ships would become incredibly strong, IMO. The worst part about capital ships, is that they're very vulnerable, because the shape of the armor isn't designed to take fire. A shot to the center of your cylinder is pretty much a flat surface. A wedge wouldn't have this issue.
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Post by redparadize on Nov 5, 2016 4:41:37 GMT
Ok, I made a direct ship/drone equivalent, to clearly demonstrate what I am trying to say: These two ship are almost equal, only trust and heat signature are different. Note that my flare missile would not work with the main engine on for the manned version. Both have equal Dv, thats also mean the dead mass fraction is identical for both platform (look at the graph) However, because of the extra 137 tons of the crew module plus its radiation shield it result in 991 tons instand of 78t for the drone. Yes, the drone is in fact lighter than the crew module alone! Now if we look at the cost, armor cost fraction is higher for the crewed variant, but more importantly it is 8 times more expensive, for the same playload. If I put a single drone into a carrier ship, cost and mass will be slightly better for the drone carrier, but not much better. 42 crew instead of 48 for the manned. I will still benefit a massive gain in Dv for the carrier as it would normaly drop the drone at the start of the battle, sometimes as high as 30Dv. So doesn't absolutely need to be armored. But some flare missile is still a inexpensive and good defense. It get interesting when you try to scale up the fleet. For the manned variant, its simple, 4.36Mc for each additional ship. But for the drone, I had a additional or larger drone container. No extra crew, not even much larger engine or fuel tank, as I still can drop all the drone at the start of the battle. So basically its 4mc to start, plus about 514kc to 600kc for each additional drone, depending of how much extra fuel you want to carry. For 25mc you would get: 5,73 manned version, vs 30 drone version. (My Gaia III mothership have that for that cost) Yes, Its that much better. Now, these design are equal, but you don't have to go for pocket battleship. I just picked that design because its representative of most ship posted on forum. Drone don't have to survive battle. They can be much lighter and less armored if you wish. Did I made my point?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 5, 2016 5:03:41 GMT
Yeah, sub-capital drones are REALLY powerful and quite overpowered.
I do wonder how did you decrease the weight by that much without compromising anything because a 92% decrease in weight and 88% decrease in price is seriously ridiculous.
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