Do we need a separate action to design a ketch with fatetwister and one without? I *would* like to keep using our fatetwisters in battle, but where any new ships we make rather than just refit dont get them because of how expensive the guns are.
That's like saying Point Defense is useless because nothing should be getting into close range. The point is that if something gets close to us, like if the Orks manage to roll decently in a fleet battle, then it's entirely possible we'll see them getting close to better use their weapons or just try and board us.
More engines in general makes the ship more manuverable, yes. You can't really "furl" Aethersails, though; they involve big bat-wing spars and masts that are filled with machinery, not just the literal (solar) sails.
I'm... Not sure where you got that from? None of your current ships have very many, true, but there's nothing really stopping you from, say, putting four on a Destroyer or something. If you are willing to spend the slots.
Yes, those would be separate designs. (Because cannons/short range weapons in general are sensibly in turrets (because while turning the whole ship to aim is fine at long range, when a few degrees at most is generally all you need, it's a lot less of an option in a close range brawl), except for Fatetwisters which don't need those. So the physical mount and even position would be radically different.)
I favored PD since strikecraft are a much greater threat to us than enemy ships getting close and staying close to us.
While I acknowledge that we will be facing Eldar ships soon thanks to Biel Tan space battles aren't just a series of 1v1s, each fleet's ships will be coordinating with one another so more likely than not an enemy ship doing all it can to get close to one of ours at the expense of everything else will put it at risk of another ship especially with the wide firing arcs afforded that Fatetwister cannons provide us.
I will bring this up again, we're going to get so many Starcrystals just by removing the Starlance CIWB it's not even funny. We'd be saving over 400 SC per Ketch we refit- plenty for beam spam on our capital ships. The real question should be the Fatetwister. It's ridiculously good, screws other escorts, and plays well with the Heavy Starlance as a long range weapon that can keep people honest without it having to take it's massive main gun off target.
I mean, compared to the Melta weapons we could be having next turn or the plasma macro-cannons we can get... yeah- I'm treating Spike weaponry as our cheapest and lowest performing weapon system. I genuinely don't think we'll ever see a cheaper naval weapon than the humble 3 EP naval spike cannon. I wouldn't bet on a 5 EP lance battery over a 3 EP spike cannon battery in a naval knife fight, but with range and lances' notorious lethality/penetration I'd bet on it at any distance beyond that. Crappy was overly harsh, but I don't think it's a weapon that belongs on an escort designed around our heaviest, longest range, and most lethal weapon our navy fields outside of a battleship's mount.
It's fair to assume we're not going to to fully refit the Assault Ketches soon, but that's basically forcing us to never build a new one and ensuring we have to pay 4 Steward AP some time in the distant future to address this problem. I'm not vehemently against it but it's undoubtedly going to cause us long term annoyance in favor of short term capability. Keep in mind our fleet is small for a Large Craftworld, we're really going to want to expand it rather than just repair and refit it sooner or later to develop force projection in line with our ambitions and status.
The main reason I'm asking is if Biel-Tan is smart about the incoming attack they are probably going to try to get the force as close as possible to the craftworld/fleet as possible to ensure that they can try to stay in the Fatetwisters reduced blind spots as much as possible. But that might be going to much into hypotheticals given we don't know what the Biel-Tan attack is going to be like (stealth strike team with bombs/an attempt at a close range fleet attack/using the engine issues to just set up a bunch of long range attacks to slowboat to the craftworld are just some ideas from the top of my head). It might be a good idea to try to get something set up to gain information on the attempt but unfortunately it also seems like the kind of thing where upon Warhammer would love to have the Seers mess up somehow.
Yeah, making new designs right now when we know of several new weapons techs just sitting there does feel a bit wasteful and a larger navy is a long term concern regardless I just think it's important to note keeping the Fatetwisters further ties our hands in a lot of ways.
We have Bonesinger actions that allow us to expand production of Starcrystals and Psy-Scopes. Considering the fact that we have a total of 108 Ketch's that need refitting we have time to expand SC and PS production before we need to consider building more Ketch's.
Fatetwisers are explicitly noted be be able to shoot extremely off-bore so you'd need to put in a ton of effort to avoid staying in one's firing arcs.
Besides that, as I mentioned before space battles aren't just a bunch of 1v1's between a fleet's ships. It's coordinated chaos where each fleet's ships can support one-another.
Please don't undersell the cost of a single Fatetwister battery. To reach the point of being able to afford ~3 frigates of this requires 35 BAP to add 30 PS production to total out at 150 PS. And our navy is significantly smaller than it should be for the average Large Craftworld, let alone one with our ambitions and enemies like Biel-Tan. The Fatetwister escort is fundamentally unsustainable and this gives me less and less confidence in it. No one is saying no Fatetwisters- but we have plenty of Fatetwisters in service between all the Ketches that won't get refit in time for Biel-Tan and our Battle Carracks which are incredibly optimized around that role with 3 Fatetwisters each.
We have 54 Battle Carracks that each have a Fatesheer Cannon Close-In Weapons Battery that costs 160 Psy-Scopes apiece and 16 Battle Brigs each with a Fatesever Cannon Point Defense Weapon Battery that costs 120 Psy-Scopes each.
Please stop strawmanning me Alectai. Spike weapons are literally cheaper than naval laser weapons. I don't think plasma weapons are hard for Eldar to do in space because canonically the primary Craftworld and Corsair macro batteries tend to be plasma cannons. And yes, I think a close range Eldar ship should be heavily optimizing for close range because the whole point of speed is the ability to dictate range.
Fatesheer CIWB are actually substantially better imo than the the Fatesever PD, but I don't disagree that we can probably refit those away. The point is those are going to be much slower to refit off than the Ketch because we have to spend 1 AP per rather than 1 AP per 3. And even this scenario effectively has us spending at least as much AP refitting Battle Carracks as it it does building new escorts. That's the very definition of AP inefficient.
How are Fatesheer CIWB better for Battle Carracks? CIWB are explicitly not as good against strikecraft or ordinance as PD and our Battle Carracks have 3 unused weapon slots that we can use to further enhance it's firepower. The fact that it already has 3 Fatetwister batteries means that it's all-round firepower is already incredibly good and those Fatesheer's aren't going to be contributing much more to that in comparison.
