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[Flying Dice]

I guess this really focuses my dislike for the way the maint. system in Aurora is applied to everything: a ship with sufficient staff, mining equipment, resource sources, and industrial capacity should theoretically be able to maintain itself for as long as the crew lives. Replace the crew with automatons that can self-repair, and it should be virtually immortal, barring outside damage. It is reasonable for a small military vessel to need planetary support, but not, say, a 150m ton worldship

[RedKing]

Here's a first draft of my BFS-1 (Big F**king Ship) concept. All tech was bumped up to the 150,000 RP level (except for jump drive efficiency, where I maxed it out, otherwise I'd have been limited to a maximum of 600,000 tons).

BFS-1 class Superdreadnought    614,500 tons     33768 Crew     208831 BP      TCS 12290  TH 79200  EM 7200
6444 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 25-643     Shields 240-300     Sensors 256/256/5/5     Damage Control Rating 1620     PPV 206
Maint Life 2.42 Years     MSP 318631    AFR 2013%    IFR 28%    1YR 74723    5YR 1120843    Max Repair 75625 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 50000 tons     Troop Capacity: 2.4 Battalions    Cargo 250000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 100   
Fuel Harvester: 5 modules producing 100000 litres per annum

Fold Drive     Max Ship Size 687500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Wave Motion Thrusters (330)    Power 240    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 240    Armour 0    Exp 35%    Hyper Capable
Fuel Capacity 11,450,000 Litres    Range 67.1 billion km   (120 days at full power)
Omicron R300/15 Shields (40)   Total Fuel Cost  600 Litres per day

40cm Main Lasers (3)    Range 600,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 40-0.5     RM 8    ROF 400        40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 35 32
Particle Beam-16 (6)    Range 500,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 40-10    ROF 20        16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
CIWS-400 (8x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 40000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
45cm Railgun (6x4)    Range 600,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 48-10     RM 8    ROF 25        16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 14 12
60cm C10 Plasma Carronade (2)    Range 600,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 96-10     RM 1    ROF 50        96 48 32 24 19 16 13 12 10 9
Main Gun FC (3)    Max Range: 600,000 km   TS: 40000 km/s     98 97 95 93 92 90 88 87 85 83
Broadside FC (2)    Max Range: 450,000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     98 96 93 91 89 87 84 82 80 78
Protoculture Core (1)     Total Power Output 144    Armour 0    Exp 1%

Point Defense Sensor (1)     GPS 240     Range 76.8m km    Resolution 1
Overwatch Sensor (1)     GPS 48000     Range 1,536.0m km    Resolution 100
Local Defense Sensor (1)     GPS 4800     Range 485.7m km    Resolution 10
Thermal Sensor 256 (1)     Sensitivity 256     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  256m km
Magna Sensor 256 (1)     Sensitivity 256     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  256m km
Phased Gravitational Sensors (1)   5 Survey Points Per Hour
Phased Geological Sensors (1)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

ECCM-6 (1)         ECM 60

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

One of the driving things would be to find new fuel sources. I could possibly drop the number of engines (6444 km/s seems awfully fast for a BFS) or increase the fuel tanks. it would carry two Marine companies for shipboard security, and two engineering brigades to explore lost alien worlds. Also, left enough hangar space to carry a couple of wings of Earth-designed fighters and subsidiary ships.

I picture Earth turning its industry almost completely towards producing fuel and maintenance supplies. 

EDIT: Well crap. I forgot to include colonist cryopods. Back to the drawing board.

[Hanzoku]

It's... incredibly slow for that level of technology, so I wouldn't sweat it. Most precursors might well be faster then the BFS, which leaves it to be pounded on until it can exhaust their missile stores and force them to retreat to a supply base.

Now, it's biggest problem is falling apart and exploding after five to ten years. I wouldn't try this one unless you plan to cheat yourself ~3100 (I think?) maintenance buildings on Earth or turn off maintenance needs for the game.

engineering brigades require 5 battalions of space per brigade. So you need to up the capacity to 10.4 battalions. It also needs far more fuel harvesters or come with some dedicated harvester drones - at its harvesting rate, it would take it 110 years to refuel from 0% to full.  It can then burn through that amount within three months.

Size-wise, you can reduce the tracking speed of all your fire controls, as the weapons themselves are limited to 10000 km/s, but otherwise it looks heavily under-gunned for the size.

[RedKing]

Thanks, I always forget that engineers take up 5 slots.

Yeah, it's still a rough first draft. I think I want to put missile on it as well (because what is the Yamato or SDF without a billion zillion missiles spiraling through space?), which creates an interesting quandary as well: You start with a full magazine of advanced, powerful missiles. But you have no way to replenish them. As you use them up, you'll wind up restocking with really crappy human-made missiles. Actually makes you consider how to ration your firepower somewhat.

As far as speed, do note that it's also hyper-capable. So in the outer reaches of a system (or even the inner reaches for M-class stars), it can haul ass.

Yeah, I might drop the harvesters off the main ship and house refuelling drones instead (especially since they can be commercial ships and thus maintenance-free).

FC issue: Noted. Won't save that much space, but I guess every little bit helps. I haven't decided what to do about the maintenance issue yet. Part of the whole concept for the scenario was the idea of "you have a super-hi-tech alien dreadnaught. Which you have no idea how half the stuff works, so if something really truly breaks, you can't fix it." Diminishing returns and all that.

Ths BFS is intended to give the human some breathing space to carve out a sphere and then fight a desperate war to push back the alien NPRs before finally succumbing either in battle or to age and entropy. It's not intended to last.

[forsaken1111]

Honestly until the NPC factions are also beholden to fuel and maintenance I just turn the maintenance system off. It becomes an annoyingly micro-intensive handicap on the player.

[RedKing]

I feel like maintenance is an acceptable handicap, given that you don't have to account for food/water/various other supplies you'd need to restock periodically.

I do wish there were research or design options that allowed you to trade off something (cost, space, etc.) for lower maintenance cost, though. So you could design long-endurance explorer that only needed to come in for resupply every 5-10 years, without being a giant engineering space with engines.

[Flying Dice]

Honestly until the NPC factions are also beholden to fuel and maintenance I just turn the maintenance system off. It becomes an annoyingly micro-intensive handicap on the player.

I do the same. However, I still design ships and build colonies working under the assumption that I do need to account for it. So basically I take the logistics of it without the obnoxious levels of micro.


Ed: On the upside in my current game, I've resumed expansion, and my reinforced division of marines is reducing Shengrali resistance rather quickly. On the downside?



-__________________________________-

[darkrider2]

Eject the warp cores to escape?

[Tarran]

Lawl your ship sux.

But I'd imagine that it's far more expendable than my scout ships, at the very least. So I'd imagine that the loss would be barely noticeable.

[Flying Dice]

To be fair, it is two generations (soon to be three) out of date, because I mothballed all my survey ships 8 years ago and never bothered upgrading them or building new ones. But yeah, it's my typical 1kton survey ship, which takes all of a month or two to build.

[MarcAFK]

Blach koles Seem a little underpowered to me, the first time i encountered one (class 4 i think) I wasn't sure how to deal with it so i ramped up research, upgraded reactors, got ion engines, researched plus power - efficiency, researched new engines,higher jump engine efficiency, then new jump engines  and and lighter armour (for small weight saving). Then finally designed new classes of survey ships, retooled shipyards, built them and sent them in........
They streaked through the system at about 6000km/s, it was then i realised that my preexisting survey ships only needed about another 2000 km/s to limp through at an acceptable rate. Oh well, at least i got some fast scouts for those first binaries i discovered.
also

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 :

The whole galaxy is beyond that black hole, i should probably move some kind of refueling and maintenance base into Groombridge 34, the north side of the galaxy will have to wait untill i can deal with those ross 248 aliens.

[Flying Dice]

Well, to be fair, that's only a Class-II. Once you get to the beginnings of medium level engine tech you can generally burn right through those, though you'll have trouble getting colony ships, freighters, and terraformers through. If that is really your only link to the galaxy at large, it could be decades before 'average' commercial ships can pull high enough velocities to get through, so you might want to invest in engine-heavy colony ships and freighters, and test one before you try to make the run with cargo.

[MarcAFK]

I think i'll just make a tug to get my regular cargo ships through.... That should work, right?
I just designed a 60,000 ton cargo ship that does about 3000, i should be able to make a tug that,'ll do that and save on needing to design a new jump engine.

[Flying Dice]

It could work, but again, test it before you start sending convoys through. 


*whew* Just spent about an hour completely reorganizing my galactic map.

Spoiler: Old "Organization" (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Sol (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Alpha Centauri Chain (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Barnards Star Chain (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Eastwatch Chain (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Olympus Chain (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Procyon Chain (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Proxima Centauri Chain (click to show/hide)

[MarcAFK]

Shouldn't proxima centauri and alpha centauri be in the same system?
You should rearrange your map to put them close together
Edit: I'm somewhat frustrated that i can't change the theme of enemy ships, i'll have the do them manually for each ship.
Edit 2: I seem to have forgotten how to reload my ships, i have them at earth, there's 78 missiles in the stockpile, but they're not loading through fast reload, and i'm not sure how else to do it :/
Nvm, the fleet seems to have merely stopped in space at the point earth was orbiting, so it only looked like they were at earth. :/