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Post by jasonvance on Apr 14, 2017 17:25:42 GMT
can't use it against ships much beyond a light minute though Yeah, well you could for a little bit it will be on a known "free fall" trajectory for most of its trip and it won't have any warning that the fire is incoming until it lands to force it to burn delta-v to get out of the beam. Once its new trajectory is known and it stops doing evasion burns you could zap it again. They would need to closely balance how much fuel they can burn to keep their ship from burning up without running out of delta-v and being stranded on a free fall trajectory (and free to be finished off by the beam if they felt like it). I agree though it would be a ridiculous amount of overkill to use it as a normal weapon on single ships I just wanted to point out that 1Mm max range for lasers is really short (even with what we can build in game).
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Post by tortugagreen on Apr 16, 2017 4:21:34 GMT
1. -Escorts: currently the Shield III class. fairly heavily armed w/ 1 heavy railgun, two smaller ones, and 10 point defense railguns, as well as 300 small (~525kg, ~8.2kc) railgun drones -Standard capitals: currently the Spear class. Similarly armed as the Shield class with the addition of a few lasers, yet has thicker armor. Currently awaiting a modernization or replacement that is more capable in battle. -Oversize capitals (Little used, are expensive and usually unnecessary): currently the Halberd class. 8 heavy railguns, 13 smaller railguns, 28 point defense railguns, several lasers, and both 200 nuclear missiles and 400 small drones. General practices are heavy armor optimized for fighting with the enemy ahead of the ship as well as a heavy gun armament, though this is shifting to also use cheap and small drones to help with safety for crew and lower costs in the event of an engagement being won by the enemy fleet. 2. Methane on my capitals, using NTRs. Decane resistojets on my drones, as they seem to be fairly efficient in terms of size of propellant and engine itself, as well as Decane being much easier to procure than previously used fluorine-hydrogen rockets, which are still used on missiles for their lack of need for electricity and high thrust. 3. Generally lots and lots of railguns, though that can be a massive swarm of gun drones or just a very heavily armed ship. NEFP missiles are used for particularly well-armored targets. 4. -My ships tend towards large sizes, though I feel smaller ones are in general more efficient for cost -Mostly frontally engaging. -Little drones. VERY little. usually armed with railguns. 5. Tend to have poor dV, so tanker support is wise for any mission that relies on more difficult maneuvers.
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Post by goduranus on Apr 16, 2017 14:47:06 GMT
10GW laser stars are actually better as drones, since crew cabins seem to increase the cost of the things by 50%, and double the ship's bulk.
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blkcandy
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Post by blkcandy on Apr 17, 2017 3:21:09 GMT
Everything is better as drones. Crews take ridiculously large space and thus make the ship a fatter target. My fleet has only three types of manned ship: supercarrier, forward command ship (laser/missile frigate with reserve defense needle flak railguns), and tanker.
Front-line kinetic fighter? Capital drones. Defense laser and counter laser? Smaller laser drones. Laser star? Capital drones.
Also how does anyone else design their power supply / consumption? My ships and drones has minimal power generation for its weapon. They can only either power their 'long-range weapons' (lasers), 'short-range weapons' (railguns), or thrusters at a time They are incapable of powering all three systems at the same time, not even two systems.
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Post by goduranus on Apr 17, 2017 4:45:54 GMT
Play those Star trek/ Wingcommander games I always wondered why those ships weren't given enough power generation to run all systems at full power.
But now playing CDE I find myself doing the same thing with making under powered ships, since power generation is really expensive, and ships don't really need to be able to accelerate and shoot at the same time.
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Post by dolphustraymond on Apr 17, 2017 9:19:14 GMT
Dear, Admirals. While our space fleet must be flexible, RFP have found that its admirals tend to develop different preferred fleet composition/specialization after being granted authority to develop their own. Many even developed their own modules and spaceship which are tailored to their preference. It has been a logistic hell. But RFP would like to maintain the rights of the admirals to develop their own fleet, as many of their designed ships and modules tend to break physics. And breaking physics is beneficial to RFP. Thus, the department of logistic would like to survey the admirals' preferred fleet composition and doctrine, with the aims to reorganize the logistics for our admirals. RFP fleet composition and doctrine survey.: 1. What is the composition of your fleet? Please list all classes/roles of spacecrafts of your preferred fleet. 2. What are the propellants consumed by your fleet? 3. What are your fleet primary/secondary weapon types, their ammunition types, and their ammo consumption? 4. What are your doctrine in ship design? For example: multiple small ships or few large ships, narrow angled frontal engagement ships or broadsiders, micro drones or capital drones, ETC. 5. Any other special logistic demand. Please answer the survey and submit the survey to the department of logistic at your convenience. 1) Laser Battleships (Mostly PDLs, with housing for ~3000 stinger nuclear missiles), with lots of cheap upgraded Corsairs (flak missiles and 7 4mm railguns) and a massive tanker support ship 2) I play with black box engines to model some form of NTR-Gas Open Cycle engine, so I use all hydrogen for thermal rockets. I also never use deuterium or fluorine as remass, because they seem like they should be more expensive than they are. 3) I've abandoned coilguns and regular cannons to a certain extent, so I go all railguns, lasers, and missiles now. In a normal battle (equal fleets), I can expect to burn of 130,000 rounds per corsair. 4) High acceleration, very maneuverable, and all slanted armor (guns at the front). I design the ship for the weapon, so whatever the smallest ship I can build that has enough delta-v is what I'll go with
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blkcandy
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Post by blkcandy on Apr 17, 2017 11:34:29 GMT
Play those Star trek/ Wingcommander games I always wondered why those ships weren't given enough power generation to run all systems at full power. But now playing CDE I find myself doing the same thing with making under powered ships, since power generation is really expensive, and ships don't really need to be able to accelerate and shoot at the same time. I don't see them as expensive, but the radiators are really heavy giant weakpoints. Less power gen, less radiator, easier to protect them.
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Post by Enderminion on Apr 17, 2017 13:17:54 GMT
if I can't shoot all my guns, why do I have them
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blkcandy
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Post by blkcandy on Apr 17, 2017 14:22:46 GMT
Well, my long range laser cannot survive kinetic combat range with lens open, and my kinetic weapons cannot hit anything but my CPU at laser range. Even if I have enough power, I can't use them anyway.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Apr 18, 2017 3:36:51 GMT
I've had a habit of trying to make a fleet of almost exclusively drone carriers for a long time now. Most recently I've been using a variety of different laser drones, though personally for me, nothing quite beats super high RPM cannon armed drones. One variety shooting 800mm shells, and a few other varieties shooting "conventional caliber" rounds, like a replica 20mm Hispano I made, or a 50 cal M2 machine gun.
My ships themselves are usually armed with very few high power lasers, and exceptionally accurate railguns to snipe missiles with. Including my personal favorite invention, a 20mm railgun.
Most of my ships actually use Nitrous Oxide, including the CapShips, though other NTR based ships tend to use Methane, Amonia, or more recently (modded in) Chlorine.
I tend to armor and use my CapShips as combat vessels themselves, and as a result tend to highly armor them with as much as possible to keep them in one piece. Most of the time my one weakness isn't the armor itself, but the turrets holding the railguns, since we can only do one piece armor, which I vary from Amorphous Carbon to sometimes Vanadium Chromium Steel, depending on whichever secondary weapon I use, which includes some point defense cannons. I really like graphite aerogel, and recently as a result of discovering mods as mentioned, using Aluminium Foam as a middle buffer instead (it eats flak like nothing even happened). I try to avoid using Boron, as it feels cheesy to me for some reason, can't say why...
I've also got an arbitrary, internal rule programed into me, where if a drone costs more than 1 Mc, it's not worth it. As a result, most of my drones cost on average 100 kc.
Edit: Continuing the conversation above, I specifically make it a point of ensuring all my guns/cannons can fire at once. Granted, it's pretty easy as I rarely make a weapon in need of more than 100 MW of energy.
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Post by dwwolf on Apr 18, 2017 8:28:12 GMT
20 cm Boroncarbide is a good start for turrets.
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Post by skitsykitsy on Apr 20, 2017 10:54:16 GMT
This'll be fun!
Would love suggestions to make my fleet more effective, by the way.
1. What is the composition of your fleet? Please list all classes/roles of spacecrafts of your preferred fleet. I have a very small fleet as I'm trying to refine and get a good grasp of things. I don't have a science background beyond high school, so I can't easily dive in and make things perfectly optimized. I prefer medium-sized gunships/frigates (10-16kt) with strong armor specializing in kinetics and missiles. I had several experimental ships that were deleted eventually as superfluous, but I'll mention them anyway for the fun of it.
2. What are the propellants consumed by your fleet? Ships use Decane NTRs, typically have great thrust but result in low delta-V. Missiles and drones primarily use Fluorine/Hydrogen.
3. What are your fleet primary/secondary weapon types, their ammunition types, and their ammo consumption? Railguns are my default and baseline weapons. Every cap-ship has a few railgun (usually 1mm osmium, in some cases heavier) modules. One cap-ship bristles with several of the heavier ones towards the front to drench opponents in high volume fire, punching armor and brushing off radiators/weapons. Railguns carry a lot of ammo since good armor makes it pot-luck whether or not you achieve a kill quickly. A missile destroyer utilizes: absurdly effective flak missiles that frequently slice ships apart; NEFP missile for heavier armor; a hybrid missile with some flak and 5.85kt nuke warheads, covered in 10cm of silica aerogel for breaking through laser CIWS. Better suited to flinging missile fleets at the enemy. I hit a snag with my drone-carrier, and I haven't been able to make an actually USEFUL high-power laserstar.
Experimental thing! Modeled on the railgun frigate, I put together something that used nuclear/flak shells from conventional cannons and mounted about 4 of them. Was horribly ineffective at long range due to slow projectile speed, was not able to make a rail/coilgun for this. At close range, it hit pretty hard. Turned my screen into a strobe. Turned their ship into melty space goo.
4. What are your doctrine in ship design? For example: multiple small ships or few large ships, narrow angled frontal engagement ships or broadsiders, micro drones or capital drones, ETC. Low-profile front-facing angled armor with as much weaponry as possible to attack along that aspect. Tough, fast missiles with good effect that can make it through most CIWS fire (especially lasers at extreme range). Intent is to place low powered lasers on cap-ships and produce drones equipped similarly to take out Mm range lasers. Powerful thrusters to make dodging viable and simpler.
I find that smaller ships with heavy armor can be viable and extremely tough but are limited in their weapon capacity. Looking into cap-drones or small ships that are rock-hard and capable of getting close to punch a cap-ship in half somehow -- but these things don't do well against missile volleys.
Experimental thing! Asymmetrical broadside ship that protects its radiators behind itself. Will need to be tested further.
5. Any other special logistic demand. So far, my ships have poor delta-V and require tankers. That's all so far.
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Post by ash19256 on Apr 20, 2017 11:32:08 GMT
Here's my go at this: - Fleet composition: Mostly built around the ships designed and built by concretedonkey in his Stock ships redesign thread, albeit modified to take into account optimization and modded materials, generally going for a fleet of 1 gunship, 1 laser frigate, and 2 gunskiffs.
- Currently standardizing around icosane for capital ships and drones, with N2O4/UDMH for missiles.
- Fleet primary weapons are a number of variations on the 4 mm Capacitor railgun, all turreted, backed up by point defense lasers and deployments of fragmentation missiles from the gunship. The gunship itself carries 500 dual warhead flak missiles, which are useful for harassing enemy fleets.
- Generally, going for 7-9 km/s delta-V, ~300 mg acceleration for capital ships, and as much angling on the armor as possible.
- Refurbishing fleets after combat will usually require equipment for resurfacing the mostly undamaged armor on the capital ships, along with replacing damaged tiles. Additionally, due to the density and characteristics of icosane, refuelling systems will need to have stronger turbopumps than standard.
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blkcandy
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Post by blkcandy on Apr 20, 2017 12:04:00 GMT
Useful laser star isn't that hard to build. You just need a giant ass reactor strapped on a giant ass laser with giant ass mount and a giant ass radiators. It don't even need much thrust or armor. You are not bringing laser star into kinetic combat range.
It is how to deploy them against AI counter lasers. That can be done by simply deploying you own counter laser drones to disarm enemy lasers before activating your laser star. You should not activate your laser star before ensuring that you are safe from counter lasers.
As for low dV, try resistojets if you are not planning on using much combat maneuvering. That could give you more dV at a sacrifice of thrust and combat maneuverability. I use resistojets. My power generation isn't even enough to power both the resistojets and weapons at the same time, but the resistojets are only for navigation and combat facing. I don't burn in combat. I don't dodge. I just turn.
Also check your armor planning, you could be over armored. I was too. Now my front is sufficiently armored. My side is very fragile though. It could deflect glancing hits, but any direct hit from a real weapon could pierce through it in one shot. But my ships/drones aren't suppose to expose their sides.
But low dV is not too much of a problem iif you manage your tanker support. All of my combat units have low dV of 3~4. Minimal fuel, smaller size.
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Post by apophys on May 25, 2017 21:03:25 GMT
There was a similar (and excellent) thread on doctrines a while ago. Here were my detailed thoughts on the matter; they are still relevant: linkOne change though: currently, point defense is effective enough that I'm moving away from nuke AoE as a counter to missile swarms, since big nukes are expensive. 1. All the ships in my ideal fleet are unarmed and unarmored carriers. The only difference among them is what they carry, and how much: a. Laser drone carrier (~90% of the fleet) The laser drone needs to be effective to as large a range as possible, since it is the main damage dealer. With the current 1 Mm vanilla range limit, this is my laser drone: Barbecue Drone.txt (4.52 KB) b. Kinetic drone carrier (~10% of the fleet) The kinetic drone must have high muzzle velocity to be effective point defense against armored missiles, which lasers may have trouble against. My current drone has a railgun launching tiny flak rounds at 50 km/s: Toothpick Drone.txt (6.07 KB) c. In case changes in CoaDE cause nukes to be cost-effective, I would also have a carrier for high-dV, high-yield nuke missiles to counter enemy missile swarms. (Due to the high specialization of this category, there would be few in the fleet.) 2. Propellants used: hydrogen deuteride (drones) and neon (capitals). I use almost exclusively MPDs for propulsion. Hydrogen deuteride gets excellent exhaust velocity for low power inputs (like the 100 MW on my current drones) and is overall better than pure hydrogen. Capitals don't have the limitation of low power (my carriers range from 1 GW to 100 GW), so they can use the absolute cheapest propellant available (neon). 3. Primary weapon: laser (one per laser drone). Secondary weapon: high velocity flak railgun (one per kinetic drone). The 3mm wide flak ammo masses 150 mg (100 mg nitrocellulose, 50 mg osmium), and I'm playing around with adding a small cap ("radiation shield," heh). The drone fires slightly over 30 shots per second at 50 km/s. 4. Carrier ships are never to enter battle, so they need no armor or weapons, and they don't need acceleration to dodge projectiles either. Carriers need enough dV that they can effectively avoid any encounters (> 100 km/s). High dV allows them to boost drones on interplanetary trajectories for fast long-range attacks. (If this was a strategic wargame, they would then return to dock to pick up more drones, refuel, and repeat.) The drones must have enough dV to control the velocity/range of encounters (~50/kms seems good). Slow encounters are preferred, to maximize the effect of long laser range. There should be enough dV to come back home for repair and reuse if they win (or go for multiple combat encounters). 5. There is no need for tankers, because MPDs provide plenty of dV for orbital maneuvers without much propellant (my drones are only about 1/6 propellant by cost; carriers much less).
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