I'd vote for sail + plasma. It's slower but double sail are very vulnerable to mobility kills, and holo field doesn't fully cover for it. These things are huge and fragile.
A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)
- Location
- Germany
Plasma propulsion cost 2 slots and is slower than a sail.
And speed matters a lot with the Holo-Field.
These are also destroyers they can't really take shots so dodging is the name of the game.
Grav shields need an alternative mode where they give mobility instead of protection.
Should turn heavy infantry into mobile infantry from Starship Troopers.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Plasma is bulky and notably slower. Given that this thing is intended to be really mobile, a plasma thruster+Aethersail is slower and means either: No holo-field or no reinforced hull/point defense. All of these various options; pt+sail, las-cannon pd, and reinforced hulls are all just making different trade offs in terms of defenses and vulnerabilities. I probably would prefer pt+sail over the las-cannon PD because it's going to be substantially cheaper and avoid the same mission kills that the PD would but it's a bit late to see that sort of thing gain traction.
I really just want all the prices so we can start making informed choices. Because as is we're springing for a much more expensive destroyer that's going to be harder to bulk up our navy with.
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A cheapest reasonable refit would be slapping a holo field on our existing cutters. With a heavy lascannons and twin sails they'd become a very good flanking snipers that are very hard to pin down, a true eldar mosquito fleet. And we have about a hundred of them to repair and refit.
The way I see it Plasma Thrusters plus Sail is a fire support ship since it needs PD coverage from someone else.
PD plus Sail is a patrol boat or pirate hunter. Since it's perfectly capable of operating on its own but has worse staying power in slugfests.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Grav weapons are interesting because graviton mauls are a thing and we can surely make some great melee weapons out of grav weapons but the real interesting thing is depending on what edition, a lot of grav weapons are concussive (infantry hit are dropped to 1 initiative) and can potentially immobilize vehicles
There's also the Graviton Ram which is sort of a ranged melee grav weapon that uses a flamer template area of effect. It's a Horus Heresy weapon mounted on a giant robot, but we could maybe develop something similar and smaller scale for the Ithilmar suit.
The thing is our existing las-cutters and sloops are kinda irrelevant in the face of the Almighty Assault Ketch. Doubling up on roles when we have an insane lance escort already doesn't feel like a particularly good use of our time. And Spike Cannon batteries are peanuts.
This is probably accurate. Something in a small and localized skirmish or 1 on 1 fight can probably get away with only sails, but only sails is definitely a liability point defense or no in a major battle.
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- Location
- Germany
The problem is that destroyers can't take a hit and relay on their speed heavily to not get swatted.
Going down to pretty much just the Plasma thrusters means they are easy to pick.
So something like this :
[ ] Purple Void Jelly
-[] Sloop
-[] Heavy Weapon Batteries: Heavy Las-Lance, Weapons Batteries Las-Lance
-[] System: 2 Æthersail, Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull
?
Heavy las-lance is 8 NEP, and Las-Lance is 5NEP, Holo-Field is 3NEP
Unknown cost for Sail and Reinforced hull.
-> 16NEP baseline, potentially 11 if you cut the Las-Lance (bit more if you replace that with something else like plasma thrusters).
Overall refit costs should be pretty damn low considering the Heavy Las-Lance is the weapon of choice for our existing sloops.
Edit:
[ ] Purple Void Jelly v.2
-[] Sloop
-[] Heavy Weapon Batteries: Heavy Las-Lance
-[] System: 2 Æthersail, Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull, Plasma thruster
At the limited of the faster possible ships we can build i think.
And likely dirt cheap and quite hard to actually kill due to speed and reinforced hull.
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But on the other hand sails don't get any protection from armor. So if you get hit by a shrapnel cloud or some other AoE attack you immediately lose most of your mobility AND defenses at the same time.
[X] Plan: Nettle-class Escort Cutter
Made my decision. The purpose of this craft, under the assumptions we operate, is to be reasonably quick, cheap and capable of saturating a given area with fire to strip shields and holoshields. In other words, an aggressive zone denial. I think point defense helps in this regard.
Made my decision. The purpose of this craft, under the assumptions we operate, is to be reasonably quick, cheap and capable of saturating a given area with fire to strip shields and holoshields. In other words, an aggressive zone denial. I think point defense helps in this regard.
- Location
- Germany
Hm a bit late for a new vote but hey:
[X] Mirage Assault Transport, Crew
-[X] VGA for armor x4 24 EP
-[X] 4 Light melee weapon 4 EP
-[X] 4 pistol flamers 4 EP
[X] Razorwind Jetbike, Crew
-[X] VGA for armor 6 EP
-[X] 1 Light melee weapon 1 EP
-[X] 1 pistol flamers 1 EP
[X] Plan: Nettle-class Escort Cutter
Edit: fuck it i like both plans
[X] Bramble-class Escort Cutter
[X] Purple Void Jelly v.2
-[X] Sloop
-[X] Heavy Weapon Batteries: Heavy Las-Lance
-[X] System: 2 Æthersail, Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull, Plasma thruster
This is an easy and likely very cheap refit.
Heavy Las-Lance is already the weapon on pretty much all of our sloops.
Not sure about number of sails, but likely 2.
We are mostly adding in the Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull and Plasma thruster.
Overall price tag for that hopefully stays under 10 NEP total.
Gives a very fast ship, that is likely going to be a relatively hard to actually kill for an destroy.
And doesn't have the problems of oops mobility killed because something shrapnelled your sails.
The plasma thruster should help get the ship off the battlefield at that point for repairs.
Heavy Las-Lance is going to do some damage, and it being a laser weapon should hopefully hit quite often.
[X] Mirage Assault Transport, Crew
-[X] VGA for armor x4 24 EP
-[X] 4 Light melee weapon 4 EP
-[X] 4 pistol flamers 4 EP
[X] Razorwind Jetbike, Crew
-[X] VGA for armor 6 EP
-[X] 1 Light melee weapon 1 EP
-[X] 1 pistol flamers 1 EP
[X] Plan: Nettle-class Escort Cutter
Edit: fuck it i like both plans
[X] Bramble-class Escort Cutter
[X] Purple Void Jelly v.2
-[X] Sloop
-[X] Heavy Weapon Batteries: Heavy Las-Lance
-[X] System: 2 Æthersail, Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull, Plasma thruster
This is an easy and likely very cheap refit.
Heavy Las-Lance is already the weapon on pretty much all of our sloops.
Not sure about number of sails, but likely 2.
We are mostly adding in the Holo-Field, Reinforced Hull and Plasma thruster.
Overall price tag for that hopefully stays under 10 NEP total.
Gives a very fast ship, that is likely going to be a relatively hard to actually kill for an destroy.
And doesn't have the problems of oops mobility killed because something shrapnelled your sails.
The plasma thruster should help get the ship off the battlefield at that point for repairs.
Heavy Las-Lance is going to do some damage, and it being a laser weapon should hopefully hit quite often.
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No problem, though I would argue that strikecraft are significantly more dangerous to us than torpedoes.
Unlike projectiles or torps where if they miss they miss, strikecraft can keep making passes until they get lucky and while against starship hulls that may not be too scary our Aethersails are fragile enough that strafing runs using their built in weapons could cause some serious issues.
To borrow an example from Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 to help visualize this, if you launch a wave of fighters (fighters don't have dedicated anti-ship munitions) towards a ship the fighters will keep harrying that ship until they either die or you call them back. The fighters in that scenario are clearly using their built in weapons to deal damage to the ship and while they take significantly longer to deal any true damage to a ship (they gradually kill PD turrets which cause the ship to take damage each time a turret dies) they are definitely still dealing damage.
Basically, imagine fighters as highly mobile point defense that can also be used to apply a weak DOT affect on an enemy ship while bombers are the sledge hammer you bring in after you chip down most of your opponents PD turrets with the fighters.
I used to play a lot of BFGA2, predominately as Eldar back when multiplayer was still alive and carrier builds were among the best ways to counter Eldar since Eldar were so hard to conventionally hit. The idea is that you used massed strikecraft to incapacitate the PD, sails, and Holofield generators one ship at a time with the crippled ships getting finished by your fleet as your strikecraft swap to a new target.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
Three. Capships get an extra squadron, because they're proportionally larger (even above the greater amount of slots), so several things get bigger on them.
Plasma weapons: these are "at least okay" guns and don't cost Exotics of any sort (even most High Technology won't require Exotic Resources, it's not likely that you will ever have more than five or six types on the outside.)
As far as Seeker dev goes: you do indeed have to make a few turns of investment into Seeker techs, though the exact AP and or time costs can vary; you will also in many cases have the option to focus development into a limited number of things like "fire rate" or "extra accuracy", how the weapon actually operates, and so on.
Construction Time: as mentioned, construction time is directly determined by EP costs- the less expensive stuff you add (and the smaller the ship) the faster they can be built. It's possible to make Destroyers that you can slap out one a year, and possible to make ones that take twenty years to build. Most escorts are probably going to be in the 1-2 per AP-turn rate, though, if only because you just don't have a lot of really expensive stuff that will fit on one.
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- Location
- This miserable sphere of dirt and water
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's RAD. I suspect it's also where custom/hero/champion/relic-tier gear will be designed and potentially even made.
- Location
- his hidden lair
I'll definitely keep that as a higher consideration going forward but these really are intended to be cheap designs- we have *massively* more lethal and expensive frigates we need to keep alive on top of our capital ships. Having just one destroyer we can print out in large numbers does a lot to insulate and keep those other more important ships from being mission killed.
The cost difference genuinely could come amount to 2/3rds of the amount of destroyers with pd vs. destroyers without pd depending on the exact cost of the hull.
Is there any way we could see what the Naval EP costs for sails, reinforced hulls, plasma thrusters, and the base destroyer hulls are? It's hard to gauge just how much more expense a las-cannon point defense battery is adding.
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Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
To a degree. You will typically have a few areas you can focus on (typically in exchange for additional AP and or dev time) and sometimes a few things that you can compromise on to get done faster; in some cases once you work out the basics branching out into variants will be handled by Bonesinger AP instead.
Those are generally going to be either single things found somewhere (the Vaults, various missions, etc), things that get given as rewards/gifts from other factions, or Artifacts, which are the provision of Seer AP (you don't have any yet).
The exact cost of the base hull is determined formulacially from several considerations, and for a lot of the equipment cost can vary depending on what else is on there and the size of the ship. But in general: bigger is more expensive and more is more expensive.
I'm pretty sure it's an overkill on an escort unless it's explicitly a screening escort that mostly clears up fighters and bombers nearing the capital ships.
I don't really get the tactical role of the escorts we are making now tbh. They're using short range macros as main weapon, but are too fragile to survive short range. I guess with a holo field they can be very decent decoy targets - until they fire, you don't know if it's a relatively toothless destroyer or a deadly assault ketch. Especially if we upgrade the ketch with holo field too.
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Just to clarify, if we are going by how it works in BFGA 1/2 PD should be able to overlap if your ships are flying in close formation. If you have a bunch of escorts screening a capital ship or a more high value escort like the Assault Ketch the PD on the screening escorts should be able to help protect that HVT.
Given that this is intended to be a spammable cheap escort it would make sense to give them PD as that would increase your fleets overall ability to deal with strikecraft and ordinance especially since we are in no condition to field additional carriers.
Something else to note is that after going over the descriptions for PD and CIWS, PD seems to be exclusively for engaging strikecraft and ordinance while CIWS can engage those as well as other starships if they get close enough.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan: Riding Leathers
[X] Plan: Nettle-class Escort Cutter
[X] Razorwind Jetbike, Crew
[X] Plan: Nettle-class Escort Cutter
[X] Razorwind Jetbike, Crew
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
Essentially, the difference is that Point Defense batteries are (comparitively) small, fast-firing weapons that are very good at tracking fast moving targets (fighters, ordinance, boarding craft,) but lack the power to do more than maybe some surface damage, in the same way a machine gun or Bofors mount would be effective for engaging most world war era aircraft but won't do much of anything to a battleship's main belt, whilst Close In Weapons are more like dual purpose guns---trading some of their effectiveness against fast movers to also be a threat to other ships, even if, lacking the power of full ship scale Macro-Weapons, they are only effective at short range.
And yes, screening with point defense and or CIW batteries is definitely a thing. Effectiveness may vary--- if you're going for "#AmericanAAscheme" you're talking about probably at least one CIW battery and two or three PD batteries, but given most ships are mounting either one or none of either (and often the latter) even one is better than a lot of ships get.
- Location
- his hidden lair
I'm aware, but these are still vehicle scale las-cannons, I'm not expecting them to be great at coverering the tens to hundreds of kilometers between ships. I'm absolutely planning for the Ketch refit to carry las-cannon pd, and its more suited to be hanging close by with other lance ships and capital ships but any macro-cannon centric escort is going to want to get far closer to the enemy than our lance ships. Saddling this escort with both roles is just splitting it's focus. This would be so much less painful if we could mount CIWB in a standard battery slot.
If we want an AA ship, it probably shouldn't be this one. The real system I'd look at for covering and protecting other ships is a Fatecaster CIWB (probably mounted on a light cruiser hull or a dedicated frigate design).
Holo-fields to actually hide which of our escorts are which is actually a really cool idea I hadn't considered, and the primary goal of these things is to fight other escorts/rake enemy Aethersails. We've got a ton of heavy starlances so we can kill at range for days, so having a cheap and spammable ship that's fast enough to get between our more important ships and the enemy's fastest ships lets our starlances focus on killing.
I really wouldn't underestimate just how much a holo-field is going to do combined with a really agile platform to create decent survivability. Most starship weapons have very limited angles of fire, and if an enemy has to turn about to present weapons to try and kill these escorts rather than close with our real killers then that's a win as far as I'm concerned.
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