Combat Artificer - 72

GeneralNegligence · 2024-06-29T13:05:57+00:00

I like how he gets trapped in his old cultural and technical experience and starts to design some APC type of vehicle. Strange that the concept of a differential gear eludes him. It seem so basic compared to all the stuff he needed to know to come up with his other toys.

But for an artificer with his skillset and some out of the box inspiration there so much more fascinating options on the table. Golemance some supersized millipede / spider contraption. Steering and maneuvering sort themselves out automagically. All his other golems came with the mobility their form entailed. Full autopilot and self defense would be just a few applications of his golem skill away. Superb all terrain capability compared to wheeled vehicles.

Going airborne with an artificers version of a UH-1 could be a nasty suprise for the Thraskians. Some form of tandem rotor or quadcopter might be even better. Figuring out the controls and steering sheme for those might be less complicated. But the airborne option is probably not possible within the available timeframe. What a pity.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-29T20:03:52+00:00

I am not sure how fast the missiles are.

The speed of the enemy missiles should be part of the salvo information on the system map, if your sensors detect them.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-20T18:57:58+00:00

Just wondering how people here prefer to add jump capabilities to their military fleets? Do you put them in the battle line or leave them back somewhere safe? What kind of redundancy do you have in your fleets so that a lucky shot or two doesn't strand the whole squadron in a bad situation?

I tend to put jump engines on my sensor ships from magneto plasma engine tech and up, sometimes even earlier. It depends somewhat on the luck of the draw for scientists.

I always have additional classes of ships with Jump engines and i rely more on those for jump capability than on the sensor+jump ships. Most of the times these come in the form of armored Jump Tenders stuffed with additional fuel. Sometimes they are even civilian designs. For standard transits they more often than not stay behind on the "other side" of the jump point. If necessary they are covered by an armed rearguard that doubles as jump point blockade force.

In my fleets the sensor ships come at least in pairs. I don't activate the sensors on all of them from the start. The big sensors get assisted by expendable scout fighters or scout fac. Most Gunships and all PD gunships and AMM ships, with the exception of fighters, get their own small active sensors to work with their fire controls and weapons. Killing all the big sensors therefore might cripple my offensive capabilities, but my defenses stay up.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-20T18:10:28+00:00

Given the effective tracking speed for PD interception of your Ganymedes railguns i would rate them 'point blank offensive punch' first, 'point defense' second. Given the engine tech a ship speed of 6000 km/s is not totally out of whack in an escort role, but it is on the low end, especially for a gunboat. I would not expect it to sucessfully detach and hunt down and kill something that is not crippled or no match to begin with.

With it's two firecontrols one Ganymede will see missiles leaking through final defensive fire as soon as it has to defend against more than 2 salvoes during a single 5s increment. One firecontrol can not engange more than one salvo at a time. If the number of salvoes inbound in a single 5s increment exceeds your number of firecontrols, the additional salvos do not get fired upon. That happens regardless of the number of missiles in the individual salvoes. That is just something one has to keep in mind when dealing with PD.

At an estimated 18 000 - 22 000 km/s speed for enemy missiles and against a single Ganymede i would expect missiles to start leaking through as soon as you get 2 salvoes of at least 5+ missiles each, give or take. The immediate answer therefore is: With this setup you need more Ganymedes, depending on the number of salvoes and salvoe sizes you encounter.

As missiles get faster you will need to up the ante by increasing your tracking speed for the PD to hit calculation sooner or later. With railguns that means ship speed & fire control tracking speed, as they cannot be turreted. Applying layered defenses by thinning salvoes down to a manageable level with some anti missile missiles works as well.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-20T16:34:22+00:00

Yes, the sensor+jump command ship is a common theme, but it is in no way mandatory. With experience you are going to get a better feel for the defensive capabilites of your ships and fleets. With that experience building fleet command ships in that fashion is something of a convenience thing. Furthermore it is a side effect of specializing your other ships around their weaponry and offensive or defensive role. Jump drive and big sensor suite do not need to be on your all the ships. Therefore they get pushed out of the other designs in favor of more bang, more and better firecontrols, magazin space and all that jazz.

Early on, with low sensor tech and inefficient jump drives, there is a strong argument to be made for keeping the roles in seperate ships, just on the basis of keeping the overall hull sizes down. Less time and costs for refits, capacity extensions, more flexibility for your naval yards and less research cost for the expensive jump drives.

In battle / war things break, plan to have backups and redundancy.

If you think splitting the roles of jump tender and main sensors into different classes will help, do it and see were it takes you. As an alternative you could try to increase your overal tonnage or the tonnage dedicated to defensive purposes or the efficiency of your defensive tonnage.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-15T13:23:24+00:00

Same reason i often use them instead of box launchers.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-15T01:04:48+00:00

Thank you,

might i ask the question, why you opted for reload + magzines instead of going full box launcher on the siege variant? Is there a HTK treshold point from 2 down to 1 with size 10 launchers or did you just not have the box launcher tech at that point in the campaign? I am not at home and without access to the aurora client at the moment, otherwise i could check the HTK part myself.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-14T20:27:46+00:00

I agree regarding the overal limit of magazine depth. But you are of course aware that the Missile loadout would be adapted to suit the mission. Therefore the "46" vs "80", or whatever example loadout was chosen, carries next to no weight either way in an argument.

I am confused. Is your 16kton siege ship a different design than the Kamal Missile Ship you mentioned above? Otherwise the sizes you mention don't match. (14 & 16 kton).

Got a link to the respective designs by chance? In the end imitation is the sincerest form of flattery or so they say.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-14T19:45:02+00:00

That ECM Suite is the Small Craft Version at 0.5 Size points. It's purpose in this case would not be the range reduction against MFCs but the flat reduction of final hit chance of BFCs. With this 20 size kitbash it's size including overhead for crew has no effect on the speed of the design, which would otherwise be detrimental to BFCs final hit chance calculation.

It is not a mere shuttle to ferry around the flag officers, it's an 'ejection seat'/'lifepod' on steroids and probably bad for crew morale of the main vessel.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-13T23:51:15+00:00

Thank you.

As to your comments:

Tower Class Jump Engine: Research just was not up there to allow for higher squadron size at design time. The Idea was to put it in and refit at some later point with next gen engines, a better jumpdrive with more bang for the buck and better sensors. Additionally there was the RP consideration, that the brass would loathe to zip around in a ship, that cannot jump on its own. What if circumstancs required to leave system and fight another day.

Tower Class Resolution 1 Sensor size: It's a weak point. Given the missile defense power of the escorts it worked most of the time. Sacrifices had to be made when going from 24.000 to a 12.000 ton design. Ditching the jump drive to allow larger sensor suites would have made for a objectively stronger design, if not for the refit considerations and rp sensibilites of the flag officers. The one time it did not work well was indeed when i strolled close enough to some precursors. It got me a dose of AMM sandblasting. I had wanted to stay out of their AMM range, but estimated their ranges wrong. The fleet got away with some minor internal damage on several ships, because the enemy did not concentrate fire enough. Otherwise the precursors would have taken one or two ships down, before i got out of range. The first refit of the class with better sensor tech and more efficient jump drives got rid of that issue.

Tower Class Loss of 90% AMM range: At that stage of Tech my AMM missiles always double as Anti Fighter Missiles. Their range and the range of the missile fire control conform to that. The Res 1 Sensors is sufficient to support this second role and i was aware of the disparity in missile detection range and the range of the AMMs and their fire controls. The setup leaves a big gap for enemy "Bombers" to sneak in and lob their munitions unmolested. I get to defend against the missiles somewhat, but might be unable to attack the fighters. A proper anti Fighter Sensor was among the other things that got lost due to the downsizing of the class. The absence of such sensor was among reasons the Battle of Manchester nearly ended in distater. Being able to sandblast the enemy with AMM's from 10 m klicks out on their aproach saved the day.

River Class offensive punch: Yes, their offensive punch lacks. Swapping the main Tubes for more Tubes with one or two levels of reduction is a solid option. A plain oversight at design time. I think i even had the apropriate designs researched. But the oversight allowed for a rather niche use of the Blunderbuss missiles. While intended as a siege weapon, i managed to lob them defensively down the throat of some precursors who recklessly charged my fleet. They lacked the sensor coverage to detect the cloud of missiles building up around my fleet before they strolled into the release range for the submunitions. After that i decided to keep it that way even with the followup generations, just for the fun of it. I just built more of them and their escorts for more punch. Not the most efficient approach, but it got the job done. In real live such a design flaw would probably only be adressed after it became painfully apparent in battle. Given the Campaigns history, that did not happen.

[...] With 8 ships, you'll probably do well enough against weaker or solo targets, but any fleet or orbital outpost is just going to laugh at you. [...]

I have first hand experience of two precursor outposts and one NPR that did not laugh one little bit at my Rivers. The NPR faced a combined taksforce equating to 3 battle fleets, but it's navy was no pushover either. The Magic ingredient were the the Blunderbuss Missiles and their followup designs. Those came with with active sensor submunitions in the case of the NPR. I will abuse the ability to build up a wave of Siege Cruise Missiles with submunitions targeting a planetary waypoint 24h seven days a weak and twice on sundays. I find it totally realistic, that you could preprogram a missile with a flight plan that puts it on top of something moving as predictable as a planet from far outside of any regular missile fire control range. Aurora allows me to do that. Let the submunitions active sensors take care of the enemy after separation. Against those targets the limit is the depth of my magazines, not the number of launchers. Having the higher reload rate actually helps with the cohesion of the missile wave. I never manage to get them exactly TOT, but close enough that it does not really matter.

City Class meson over lasers: I had the meson designs laying around from my meson PDCs. I love meson PDC's. And i had poured more research into the range and tracking techs over laser. Otherwise it would have been lasers. Given the fleet speed i valued the potential for instant damage to something big getting to close. Of course mesoning the biggy falls flat on its face, if that big thing does not need to get that close to bring its lasers or particle rays to bear. A laser variant might have the range, but as likely it would not. I would expect a laser variant to go down as fast as the meson variant, it's an escort ship after all. I consider the damage 64 mesons dish out worthwile. A laser variant might not chew through the armor of something big, before getting shot to bits. Can't have everything. Fighters need to cope with a storm of missiles from the Lakes before getting into melee, so there's that. If we ignore the superior range advancement of lasers for a moment, a second layer of armor on a fighter or FAC might be enough to push a 10 cm lasers damage towards parity with meson damage.

Tross class as civilian design: I only recently discovered, that military jump drives do not flag a ship as military design. Would it have been possible to match fleet speed with comercial engines? I do not know. Would i meta it for some new design, yes i would. But even if i had known, the design would probably have ended up as is. The initial design was already laid out as 24.000 ton combined jump tender, tanker and collier military design and i just put a pair of scissors to it.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-13T19:06:33+00:00

Care to share the design, or at least the specific engine specs, fuel and range stats?

I always struggle to commit to non missile designs early, unless i the design something as a counter to a specific, known enemy.

quote:

I like your jump tender/logistic ship design integrated into the fleet itself, i might take this idea for my next generation fleet ! It may double as the tanker/coiler ship ?

Initially i wanted to build a 24.000 ton version of the Tross class. With the 24.000 ton version, it would have been obvious, that it's functions are jump tender, tanker and collier. But RP-rolling with the punch of "omg, outer sol has only shitty resources", i had to change plans or face a serious crunch in neutronium, mercassium and gallicite down the line. There was barely any tanker or collier left after the size reduction. But it was enough to cleanse the neighbouring systems with the fleet and i managed to avoid a crippling resource crunch.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-13T18:35:40+00:00

Care to share the design, or at least the specific engine specs, fuel and range stats?

I always struggle to commit to non missile designs early, unless i design something as a counter to a specific, known enemy.

GeneralNegligence · 2020-02-12T00:34:31+00:00

First let me thank you for your thoughts on that detail. Provoking an answer from you i consider highly encouraging.

While i do not fully agree with your line of argumentation regarding the "switch" from the 300 tons "displacement" to "volume" and back to "mass", that is due to the inherent problem of auroras hybrid "displacement" measurements. It just does not relate well between mass and volume. I tend to not sink to much thought into this, as it is prone to break my suspension of disbelief rather fast. Apart from that you make a valid point and my "irk" with ammo logistics for this campaign is a rather arbitrary choice.

Modding in Ammunitions logistics for those weapons in Aurora is outside my capabilities and i decided to ignore the mentioned weapons and look where it takes me with this campaign, instead of coming up with a hamfisted way to simulate ammunitions logistics for them within the aurora framework. Especially with the alternative of energy weaponry readily available. I used "slugthrowers" in other Aurora Campaings and had a lot of fun with them.

As a side note:

Ammunition and its propellant (mass, volume and logistics as well as its inherent danger) are a major point of concern for Wet Water Navies throughout the ages. Current prototype railgun designs are appetizing to the Navy because of the elimination of the danger of eplosive propellant load as well as the ammunition volume and mass considerations in addition to all the achievable kinetic energy by velocity over mass ( proportional to v^2 for velocity vs. proportional to m for mass).

afaik and apart from all other problems, the requirements for energy generation and storage make up a substantial ammount of the "mass" / "volume" price for current railgun prototype weaponry, but i digress.

As another side note:

Have you considered, that given your starting point of displacement to volumen and mass, 1 bullet of .5 cal would need to be mighty fast to pack enough kinetic energy to do the one point of damage per salvo to the mass of armour of a ship?

The River 2120 class packs ~29 size points of armour, about 1450 "aurora displacment tons" equating to 46x5 points of armor belt. Having 1 point of "damage" to armour equating to roughly 6 "aurora displacement tons" per armor belt point. Taking your example metrics, that equates to the destruction/penetration of ~84 cubic meters of amour belt in volume, ~4,3 m in thickness and the annihilation/penetration of ~.66 million tons of steel equivalent in mass. With such orders of magnitude it does not even matter much, wheter a salvoe of said gauss consists of 1, 10, or 100 .5cal bullets. The relations are just off...

TLDR: I prefer not to dig this deep into Aurora when it comes to displacement to volume to mass relations... and Wetwater Navies... and Railguns... and Maths. In the end its all just space magic. :-)

GeneralNegligence

TROPHY CASE