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[RadtheCad]

I'm a big fan of specialisation and min-maxing, so I prefer to have dedicated eg. Gauss defence escorts.  Given the strength of Gauss weaponry is its rate of fire rather than its range or accuracy, I crave to take that ROF to its logical extreme.

On the othet hand, I just realised what the scattergun's actual disadvantage is- the tiny guns are really inefficient for turreting, so you'll need a dedicated and very speedy ship to mount them on.  That's not a problem for me, as all my ships are further towards the 'speed' end of the speed-defence-offense triangle, and they're specialised- but if you wanted ships that can actually fight on their own, away from the fleet, or be of any multi-role use...  Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't use it.

[Sheb]

Yeah, my current fleet is made of large-ish cruisers that are supposed to operate in divisions. (Although after a recent war, I had to rush smaller ships to beef up my fleet, and I now have a single large fleet with each cruiser escorted by one missile and one PD ship.

[miauw62]

I'm imagining huge ships being followed by a lone missile

[Bremen]

Say, how do you get a task force to do fleet training?

The wiki says it's a command on the Task Group screen, but I can't find it anywhere.

Also, what do you guys think of an anti-missile area defense ship that uses lots of 1/10 size Gauss cannons?  They're horribly innacurate, but at my current Gauss tech each one will be outputting one shot per second (five in a five-second tick), which is 9x5= 45 shots fired per 5-second tick for the 3,000 ton ship I've built that uses them.  The actual damage of the shots is unimpeded, so only one of the 45 shots actually has to hit a missile to destroy it (unless the missile is armoured).  Of course, the shots are 10x less accurate than they would be if they were fired from 4.5 normal-sized Gauss Cannons, but you get the same average to-hit-ratio, and as I said- all that matters is that ONE of those shots hits per incoming missiles in a salvo, not a significant proportion of them.  The only downside to using the minituarised cannons, as far as I can see, is that they each count as a component- so they each add extra armour colums on to your ships, meaning they're less efficient than bigger cannons, displacement-wise.

Still, I love the idea of what is essentially a flying space-ship mounted area defense shotgun.

If you're not turreting the gauss weapons, use 10cm railguns. They weigh as much as a 50% gauss, but get 4 100% shots and are cheaper as well as longer ranged. They will require a powerplant, but you should still come out ahead. Their big disadvantage is they can't use turrets, but that just makes them excel at the shotgun missile defense role.

[TheBiggerFish]

...Well, I know what I'm doing when I wake up tomorrow.  Well technically today but yeah.

[Sheb]

To be honest, 90% of my reason for laser PD is probably inertia. I might give gauss a shot, since I already have a few levels of Gauss  for CIWS.

[Alastar]

I am a huge fan of railgun: they're just incredibly efficient on a fast ship, and take no research to be good.
Gauss requires a considerable investment to be competitive, and I find the resulting ships far less sexy.

[Sheb]

Well, for PD you need a really fast ship. The railgun may not take a lot of place, but the engines needed to go that fast makes it really inefficient, unless you have PD fighters or something.

[ThtblovesDF]

I'm all missles and sensor tech. I can use missles to kill anything, I can use missles to kill missles, I can use russia-nesting-doll-style missle massacre to overcome any missle defence and I can do it all from a very safe distance.

Then again, a fat pile of armor with guns doing it warhammer40k style is  a beauty for itself.

[se5a]

That gets bloody expensive though. and you need supply ships handy, which is more expense.

[Sheb]

In my game, I've found myself using quite a lot of energy weapons, due to the fact that I chronically underestimated magazine space required. My doctrine has been "throw a couple of salvoes to soften the target, then close in and kill it with PD lasers".

I now have some colliers, but I still tend to stick with that doctrine out of habit.

[Flying Dice]

Railgun PD seems to be a holdover from before the drive overhaul, at least as far as I can tell. Speed was a lot cheaper back then, now you're going to be in the upper reaches of the tech tree before you'll get good unturreted PD (unless you're doing something silly and using overclocked drives strapped to guns as "ships" that'll be crippled by a single hit). Laser PD's good for dealing with plasma torpedoes and as a multirole weapon, Gauss is good for escorts and capital ships, AMMs are always good if your tech is close to or better than the enemy's in that sector and have resources to burn.

[Alastar]

@ Sheb, Flying Dice: For a railgun fleet escort, I typically aim at twice the basic FC speed with reduced-power (0.85 or 0.9) multiplier engines.
Yes, it means the ship consists mostly of engines and has less anti-missile firepower than a Gauss ship of comparable size and cost... but you're paying a small price for the additional speed you're getting.
Better survivability, better anti-ship firepower in a knife fight, additional tactical options, more future proof in case your fleet speed increases... fast *economical* (ammoless, no fuel guzzlers) ships are a gift that keeps on giving.

[Bremen]

For my railgun PD ships, I usually use small ships with boosted engines and minimal support systems or armor; they're there to protect the capital ships, after all, and can rely on them for refueling/long range sensors/etc.

I don't have a current game, but let's see what I can dig up from an old one.

Here's one from an older game; these days I usually call the small railgun PD ships frigates instead of destroyers.

Code: [Select]

Illustrious IV class Destroyer    7,500 tons     245 Crew     2079 BP      TCS 150  TH 1875  EM 0
12500 km/s     Armour 6-34     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 11     PPV 30
Maint Life 4.54 Years     MSP 1906    AFR 40%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 150    5YR 2247    Max Repair 937.5 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   

Large Destroyer Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 1875    Fuel Use 55.11%    Signature 1875    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 43.5 billion km   (40 days at full power)

Light Railgun (10x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 12500 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Railgun Fire Control II (2)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 12500 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Primary Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Backup PD Sensor (1)     GPS 84     Range 11.8m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
And here are some other ships from the same game for comparison:

Code: [Select]

Invincible II class Missile Cruiser    18,000 tons     548 Crew     4098.5 BP      TCS 360  TH 2500  EM 3600
6944 km/s     Armour 6-61     Shields 120-400     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 26     PPV 72
Maint Life 5.48 Years     MSP 3743    AFR 98%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 209    5YR 3137    Max Repair 625 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 672   

Large Military Magnetic Fusion Drive (2)    Power 1250    Fuel Use 20%    Signature 1250    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 50.0 billion km   (83 days at full power)
Theta R400/384 Shields (30)   Total Fuel Cost  480 Litres per hour  (11,520 per day)

ASM Missile Tube II (16)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 75
Missile Fire Control FC638-R120 (2)     Range 638.9m km    Resolution 120
Javelin VI ASM6 (112)  Speed: 50,000 km/s   End: 97m    Range: 291m km   WH: 16    Size: 6    TH: 200/120/60

Active Search Sensor MR638-R120 (1)     GPS 38880     Range 638.9m km    Resolution 120

Code: [Select]

Trafalgar class Heavy Cruiser    24,000 tons     665 Crew     6657.5 BP      TCS 480  TH 3750  EM 7200
7812 km/s     Armour 6-74     Shields 240-400     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 35     PPV 80.64
Maint Life 5.58 Years     MSP 6198    AFR 128%    IFR 1.8%    1YR 336    5YR 5035    Max Repair 625 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 1   

Large Military Magnetic Fusion Drive (3)    Power 1250    Fuel Use 20%    Signature 1250    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 75.0 billion km   (111 days at full power)
Theta R400/384 Shields (60)   Total Fuel Cost  960 Litres per hour  (23,040 per day)

15cm Secondary Laser Cannon (9)    Range 300,000km     TS: 7812 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 5    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 3 3
38cm Spinal Laser Artillery (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 7812 km/s     Power 38-6     RM 5    ROF 35        38 38 38 38 38 31 27 23 21 19
Quad Gauss Turret (2x16)    Range 30,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Point Defense Fire Control (2)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Long Range Fire Control (2)    Max Range: 384,000 km   TS: 7812 km/s     97 95 92 90 87 84 82 79 77 74
Primary Fusion Reactor (2)     Total Power Output 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
The Gauss PD on the Trafalgar gets 32 shots at a tracking speed of 25,000 km/s, compared to the destroyer getting 40 shots at half that. On the other hand, the two gauss turrets are something like 3000 tons between them compared to 1750 tons for the 10 railguns and powerplant on the destroyer, plus larger fire controls, so ton for ton they're about equal; the destroyer is 34% engine while the cruiser is 31%. And the destroyers are great for detaching to chase down and destroy missile armed ships once they've expended their ammo and begun to retreat, while also being able to fend for themselves in a beam engagement due to their speed and gross damage output. They can't really match the cruiser, sure, but that's because the cruiser also has dedicated anti-ship beam weapons.

I wouldn't really say one is better than the other; they both have their advantages. The Gauss turrets, obviously, become more cost effective the slower the ship carrying them is, and the railguns are the opposite. If you want a fast and light beam armed ship (either as an escort or a dedicated raider), I'd definitely recommend it use railguns for it's PD, though in this case the destroyers were designed as PD ships that also doubled as fast attack ships.

For the cost of one cruiser, I could have 3 destroyers, which have nearly twice the anti-missile firepower of the cruiser, nearly twice the speed, and reasonable ability in a beam fight (though they'd probably get slaughtered in a brawl with the cruiser). In the end I used a mix of both, which worked out well since it gave tactical flexibility to have a few extremely fast ships.

[Sheb]

That's a dangerous spinal laser. Did you ever manage to use it?