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[StagnantSoul]

I'll get back to you in two weeks when I'm good at the game. 

[Madman198237]

I think that in order to get the information you want is as follows:

Relative speeds, and the weaponry they're using.

That's it. That's all I or anyone else should need to give you a rough idea of what might result.

Just remember to include a rough estimation/qualitative (A lot versus a little) description of the numbers of weapons on both sides.

[Shooer]

Also your definition of "Average" or "Big".

In 90% of my games my main offensive ship almost never gets bigger than 10k tons, my PD usually sits at 8k and the jump/command ship is 15k.  Others here use ships rarely smaller than 20k for their fleets.

I mentioned that my carrier can get up to 100k tons.  That happens in games where I make a shipyard and leave it on auto expand for years.  A normal carrier for me is 30k and I use it for fighters.  I also use the 100k for fighters, though it is it's own fleet.  The only support it gets is a jump gate builder that carries some extra fuel.  Where the Monolith goes is the lands we claim.

Other thing to consider.  Are your "Battleships", "Destroyers", "Corvettes" and "Cruisers" built to a single combat purpose or are they multi-functional.  Like I mentioned before I make 1 larger ship that carries nothing but offensive weapons, a smaller ship that carries nothing but PD and a larger ship that carries the fleets main sensors and jump drive.  This allows me to tweak offence and defense by just changing fleet comp as opposed to having to make a different ship for each threat or bring more ships that carry wasted tonnage.  But having multi-functional ships means that if you lose 1 you are losing less over all than if you lost a dedicated ship.

[StagnantSoul]

Enlightening. I'll be downloading it tonight, good things to learn beforehand. It's gonna be fun being a noob again, been too long...

[Flying Dice]

It's all a matter of tradeoffs. A design philosophy like that makes it really easy to tailor TG composition to suit different situations, and specialized ships tend to be a bit more efficient.

OTOH, my own design philosophy is that every ship should be capable of operating independently-probably not as effectively as in a fleet, or as a specialized ship in a fleet, but still far better than the "not at all" of a missileboat with no active sensor or a PD escort with nothing to defend.

Basically, the former and latter give you different types of strategic and logistical flexibility, while the latter makes your TGs much less fragile tactically, because losing any given ship is going to marginally reduce the group's effectiveness across a set of factors rather than sharply dropping its effectiveness in one.

Take a simple example: a TG composed of eight 6k ton frigates. One's OOB is eight identical frigates, each with missile launchers, an active sensor, and a basic PD suite. The other's OOB is 5x missileboats with no AS or PD, 2x PD escort with only gauss turrets and an anti-missile AS, and 1x sensorboat with an oversized AS but no offensive or defensive weapons. The first group is going to have some combination of weaker PD envelope, lower tube count on the offensive armament, and weaker/shorter-ranged sensors relative to the second. OTOH, if the first group loses a ship, they are guaranteed to lose 12.5% of their PD and missile capacity and their sensors aren't affected at all. If the second loses a ship, it's a 12.5% chance that they lose 100% of their sensor capability, a 25% chance of 50% of their PD, and a 62.5% chance of losing 20% of their offensive armament.

tl;dr: specialized ships are more effective on paper, against sharply inferior foes, and prior to taking losses; generalized ships are less effective at any one thing but can operate independently and can keep fighting until the last ship is dead without serious impairment to those not yet destroyed.

Personally, I like generalist ships because there's nothing stopping you from supporting them with specialist ships. Make a bunch of multi-role cruisers and back them with PD escorts. Send a system-wide sensor ship to spot for your carrier group. &c.

[StagnantSoul]

Aye, I like both approaches, my fleets will probably be mostly generalist with things like a cruiser that is a huge railgun wall and nothing else backing them up etc. Though I'm definitely going to go and make tons of different things and try them out and be wrong in the next week or so, it's gonna be awesome.

[MCreeper]

Wonders of awkward contraptions. Surveyed all solar system excluding asteroids and "planets" beyond pluto in a year or so, trying to make transport ship to haul mines and mass drivers to respective planets. Thought that transport ships should have more powerful engines (yep). My previous engine has minimum fuel consumption on minimum with size 16. Ship with 2 small cargo holds and 2 engines goes on 800 km\s and have 119 days of fuel. Made other one - 11 size, max speed  . One engine like that hauls my ship with 900 km\s speed and runs out of ful in 7 days. adding more fuel tanks brings it to 30-40 days and same 800 km\s. Welp, i made ultimate gas guzzler.  No way i make it.
Also, why the hell ship like that counts as military?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kongo class Cruiser    12,750 tons     28 Crew     208.46 BP      TCS 255  TH 205  EM 0
803 km/s     Armour 1-48     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.33 Years     MSP 1010    AFR 1300%    IFR 18.1%    1YR 252    5YR 3783    Max Repair 20.48 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 6   
Cargo 10000   

Ariwara-Sano 102,4 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 102.4    Fuel Use 8.5%    Signature 102.4    Exp 4%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 41.5 billion km   (597 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[RAM]

Engines above a certain power ratio are classified as military.

[Rince Wind]

Civilian engines need to be at least size 25 and max power 50% iirc. Imo there is really no point in not giving your transport ships and most other civilian ships anything but the biggest engines (size 50), usually with 50% power, but some can use less. 1 big engine is always better than 2 smaller ones (military ships differ, because two engines mean it can still go if one is damaged).

I would recommend using standard cargoholds as well. 1 of those can hold a mine or most other small buildings, while 2 small ones only carry 40% of a mine. If you are not careful that could lead to 80% of a mine being on one planet and 20 on another, not doing anything on either. It gets a lot worse when you try to bring labs to another place, because those things are huge.
I usually have 1 standard hold and 7 max size engines on transporters, 5 engines on colony ships (which carry 50k people). Both are organized into groups of 5 making repeat orders for things  like 100 mines or 5 labs easier.

The same applies to troop transports. A standard hold gets a full brigade including the HQ. A fleet of five can transport a division. I might also produce some (not more than 2 usually) that have one extra small hold, so they can transport my standard colony defence force of a brigade and one replacement battailon.

[StagnantSoul]

Been playing for an hour, so far just qeued up a better reactor research and made a design for a survey ship. I think I also told my guys to place some auto mines on Earth. Does the game notify me with little popups when things are done, or do I just have to check myself?

[MCreeper]

No popups, check yourself

[Rince Wind]

You can include a message at the End of fleet orders. Can be useful when you have a couple of transport fleets and can't remember which did what.

[StagnantSoul]

Awesome. Liking the music, though constantly losing track of where Earth is is annoying. Hoping to get a survey of Luna and then plop a mine at least on there, also gotta get stocking up on fuel etc. Building more research buildings to get 2-3 guys going at once so whatever xeno sons of bitches out there don't outpace me.

[coleslaw35]

Been playing for an hour, so far just qeued up a better reactor research and made a design for a survey ship. I think I also told my guys to place some auto mines on Earth. Does the game notify me with little popups when things are done, or do I just have to check myself?

There's an option you can check off to have your message log display on the system map.

How to enable it.

1. When you launch Aurora and the small task bar appears, press F3 to bring up the system map.

2. On the left, there should be a small menu with 9 tabs to choose from. Select the Display tab if it is not already selected.

3. On the bottom of that newly visited menu on that tab, there should be a section towards the bottom that says Options. Under that section, there should be something that says Show Events. Check the box next to it.

Now, as you pass time and events happen, they will be displayed at the bottom of the system map window. You may have to go into your Events menu (second from the far right) to disable certain events from ever notifying you. For example, I turn off the Officer Assignment announcement because it doesn't really matter, in my opinion.

[StagnantSoul]

Thanks! Research is so slow... Making more labs for it but still. 15cm railguns are almost done, shipyard is too, gonna work on engines next. Still need to add a fuel refinery. Where can I see how much space is left on my planet? For buildings etc.