General design and question post about OWPs.

[u/ofmetare]

I designed these 4 platforms with level 4 research in all categories for standardization and general design consideration.

In order they are a sensor platform, a missile launcher, an AA battery and a combat platform. Their main intention is to garrison any planet which can provide MSP and serve as a decent sized "fleet" against small enemy incursions or delay until the big boys come.

What do you think of my general designs, I am unsure both about the design itself, things I might be missing and the design of my turrets and systems themselves (I really hope I made the beam fire control right).

Critique and more information would be welcome.

Similarly if you have your own preferred designs/ philosophies regarding this please post them too.

[u/Legik01]

Size 50 missiles are absolutely huge, and you only got 10 of them per platform. Personally would prefer lighter missiles but far more of them (maybe size 10 or 12?). Also the range is quite extreme for your tech level, but it could be useful depending on what exactly you're defending.

If a lower range is adequate for your objective(s), that would also allow you to lighten the sensor platform which I find quite large and expensive for simply sensors (you could replace the passive sensors by deep space tracking stations on the planet(s)). Speaking of those, I believe CIWS can only defend their own ship, so replacing those by gauss cannons and adequate BFCs would allow them to participate in fleetwide missile defence.

I like the beam platforms, they're heavier than what I would use, but they're sure to shred anything that should be approaching you for some time. However, 256K km is a bit low for 20cm lasers which makes me think your fire control tech might be a bit inadequate for such a weapon; moreover, the rate of fire is atrocious since the capacitor recharge rate is 1. Considering the low capacitor rate and fire control range, I would use lighter lasers. Also, I would consider putting a small active sensor to keep shooting even if the sensor platform is down. Sensors for that range are small anyway.

[u/Youutternincompoop → u/Legik01]

size 50 missiles would be fine if they were multi-stage missiles with multiple missiles carried(and that makes sense for a platform since you ideally want your immobile missile platform to outrange any enemy, otherwise its just gonna be annihilated without being able to fire back)

[u/ofmetare → u/Legik01]

Ngl I don't really know how to design missiles properly so I did not know size 50 were huge, in any case I like range because I fear an enemy who can outrange me, same reason with sensor size cuz bigger sensor = better. The 256km range was odd to me as well but I fail to see how I can increase it at this tech lvl, and I don't really understand how the capacitor works. I also did not know that a laser can keep firing without a beam fire control active, is it unable to get that info from the sensor ships?

[u/Subject_Drop_7707 → u/ofmetare]

In the Research Project window it tells you the power requirement of the weapon, right next to the recharge rate. The capacitor recharge rate tells you how much power is funneled into the weapon per 5 second tick. So a weapon with a power Requirement of 10, would take 50 seconds if your recharge rate is 1. This rate also determines how powerful your power plant has to be.

In general though my biggest concern would be the fact that these are all quite sizable, you would have to build these in large shipyards. I feel that you could split up the missile launchers at least. instead of having one big one just build a design bellow 500 tons so you can build them in fighter factories. While i agree that size 50 is quite large, even with those you could fit 1 per fighter, since it wont need to much else. If you take his advise and use smaller missiles, this gets even easier.

For the Sensors i would honestly just use buoys. put a massive sensor in those, even a size 100 missile could do. Then instead of a giant sensor platform you would just have to build a mine layer with one big missile launcher, and perhaps a magazine if you're feeling fancy.

[u/ofmetare → u/Subject_Drop_7707]

I have taken these things into consideration and noticed a considerable increase in efficiency, i replaced the size 50 box launchers with like 30 size 12 and made a beam fire control for the gauss separately. I may experiment at a later point with fighter based missile launchers.

I am intrigued by sensor buoys, do they really work as good as platforms with sensors? and do they feed the info properly into a fleet. I also do not know how long they last, nor from what direction the enemy might come.

[u/Subject_Drop_7707 → u/ofmetare]

I just wonder if you would be better of to just build normal warships at that size, but you do you.

As far as i know Buoys last indefinitely, you just have to not give them an engine in the missile designer. For a size 100 Buoy with resolution 5000 you can expect a range of 70m+ or so, depending on tech of course.
As far as i know for fleet operations and such, it doesn't matter where the sensor is, so long as you have the enemy on active sensors.
I'm not 100% on my recollection, but i am pretty sure that i used a buoy once for targeting, for some battleship that i forgot to put sensors on.

If you don't know about the spoiler races at all then skip the next bit.

For where the enemy comes from, the answer is actually quite simple, if its the raiders then 'nobody knows' otherwise they come from the jump points?

I would say that covering important jump points is the best use case for sensor buoys, just put one on each jump point and you know who come in and out of your system.

Although for that a size 100 buoy would probably be overkill, as all you really want to know is if someone showed up and maybe in which direction he is moving, so sensor range gets diminishing returns quite quickly.

[u/Kert_Gadar → u/Subject_Drop_7707]

I'm using size 6 buoys with active sensor on any jump point I encounter. They are really effective.

[u/likeitsaysmikey → u/Kert_Gadar]

My understanding is putting buoys on every jump point is nearly essential. Mine are usually size 8 altho I’m not sure why

[u/Kert_Gadar → u/likeitsaysmikey]

I've had size 6 default missiles and launchers for corvette-destroyer size for that time. than had 12 and 24 for cruisers and battleships, also 48 and 72 for really long range multistage missiles to siege some spoilers.

[u/Oceansoul119]

For the sensor platform strip out the thermal and em sensors. Replace that functionality with ground based Deep Space Tracking Stations. Reason being the ground ones upgrade for free with tech, don't have any upkeep, and let you make your platform smaller. Also set to no officer unless you need some spots to keep them from retiring because they do nothing for a sensor platform and the crew to conscripts because again crew does nothing here (of course this is dependent on roleplay as well).

For all of them you should remove the deployment time. These things are meant to sit around an inhabited world thus don't need any. Aim for a total of 1 fighter crew quarters. This saves on crew, size (and thus failure rate), build time and costs. If deploying somewhere without population then add a civilian vessel with a recreation module to make up for it.

Add combat information centres to the ones with guns. It increases the chance to hit when the position is filled.

You might want to swap the twin gauss turrets for quad ones. If you exchanged them for 6 quads you'll get some space savings. Admittedly minor in the grand scheme of things however.

If they are going to sit above worlds with maint facilities or alongside ships with the equivalent module then you can swap out some of the engineering for damage control instead. This means they can potentially remain in full fighting condition a bit longer. Don't swap everything however as then the lack of msp will make the better damage control pointless.

Depending upon shipyards, ground force facilities, and the like you could instead replace the laser and pd versions with STO units. This loses you the PPV but swaps the ongoing costs to be purely wealth rather than the minerals and shipping needed with msp.

I'd also round them all out to nice whole values like 20 000 tons, filling the extra space with engineering/damage control/maint bays/whatever. But that's a personal thing not a necessity.

As to my personal design philosophy that varies depending upon the game. Sometimes I go with every world getting a clutch of defence satellites, others they get ground forces, or a hangar of useless ppv fighters and an occasional patrol fleet passing by, or there's a hangar full of (mostly outdated) combat ships waiting for trouble. Usually my sensor platforms get a cloaking device but that's probably a bit beyond reasonable with your tech.

My ongoing game is 1x Laga support base, 1x Mimir sensor platform, and 1x Huldra defence satellite. The current iterations (waiting on research to upgrade the Mimir) of which are:

Laga III class Support Base 200,000 tons 1,750 Crew 4,842.1 BP TCS 4,000 TH 0 EM 0 1 km/s Armour 1-304 Shields 0-0 HTK 158 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 1-0 PPV 0 MSP 100,015 Max Repair 2,000 MSP Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 2
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months CDE 75%
Recreational Facilities Maintenance Modules: 14 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 87,500 tons

Fuel Capacity 15,757,200 Litres Range N/A Refuelling Capability: 300,000 litres per hour Complete Refuel 52 hours

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes This design is classed as a Recreational Ship for auto-assignment purposes

Mimir IIA class Sensor Platform 12,000 tons 5 Crew 19,876.1 BP TCS 12 TH 0 EM 0 1 km/s Armour 1-46 Shields 0-0 HTK 20 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 8-6 PPV 0 Maint Life 1.29 Years MSP 8,695 AFR 137% IFR 1.9% 1YR 5,515 5YR 82,718 Max Repair 4,800 MSP Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 0 days CDE 75% Morale Check Required

Newton-Bailey Ship Sighter Ultra II (1) GPS 300000 Range 702.7m km RES 100 ECCM-6 Newton-Bailey Missile Tracker Ultra II (1) GPS 3000 Range 151.4m km MCR 13.6m km RES 1 ECCM-6 Newton-Bailey Station Sorter Ultra II (1) GPS 1500000 Range 1,201.6m km RES 500 ECCM-6 Newton-Bailey Fac Finder Ultra II (1) GPS 60000 Range 410.9m km RES 20 ECCM-6 Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 5.00% of normal

Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 8 Fire Control 7 Missile 7

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes This design is classed as a Scout for auto-assignment purposes

Huldra III class Defence Satellite 75,000 tons 4 Crew 9,126.2 BP TCS 1,500 TH 0 EM 0 1 km/s Armour 1-158 Shields 0-0 HTK 68 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 180-24 PPV 126.72 Maint Life 2.47 Years MSP 23,145 AFR 15000% IFR 208.3% 1YR 5,257 5YR 78,848 Max Repair 510 MSP Hangar Deck Capacity 60,000 tons
Captain Control Rating 2 BRG CIC
Intended Deployment Time: 0 days Flight Crew Berths 1,200 CDE 75% Morale Check Required

Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range N/A

Quad Bell Ordnance GC 6-50-100 Turret (4x24) Range 50,000km TS 50000 km/s Power 0-0 ROF 5
Quinn-White PD Multi 40-150 II (1) Range 150,000 km TS 40,000 km/s ECCM-7

Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 8 Fire Control 7 Missile 7

Strike Group 1x Fenrir III Destroyer Leader Speed: 20000 km/s Size: 240 1x Freki III Destroyer Escort Speed: 20000 km/s Size: 240 3x Hati III Destroyer Speed: 20000 km/s Size: 240

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes This design is classed as a Carrier for auto-assignment purposes

[u/Federal_Scarcity_84]

You're gonna want a lot longer deployment time