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Research and Development Board Quest

[X] - Heavy Carrier Project : Doombringer (Hammer Industries)

Seems to fit nicely.
 
[X] - Heavy Carrier Project : Doombringer (Hammer Industries)

It is not going to shine, but all other proposals are equally dubious.
 
Humm. Could we, at some point, when not in urgent need of 'fix this right now!' solutions, request that companies submit an... oh, call it an experimental test bed ship, with an eye toward intergrating the successful/functional bits into all subsiquent designs to which they are applicable? Get them to jam as much experimental tech as possible into a ship that's never really meant to do anything Other than be a testbed for new systems?

Lets us set new baselines for what's acceptable for new ships, too.

I'm expressing this poorly.
 
[X] - Heavy Carrier Project : Doombringer (Hammer Industries)

Best ship name ever!
 
If I recall, the thing our military needs the most right now is large numbers of ships. As such, capital class vessels are not suitable for the current needs of our military. That leaves three options:

[ ] - Defense Cruiser Project : Angel (Peace and Security, Incorporated)
[ ] - High Mobility Cruiser Project : Flashback (X.A.B.)
[ ] - Frigate Project : Beater (Arms Unlimited)

Of those three, the Peace and Security and Arms Unlimited bids strike me as the best investments.
The Angel is exactly what it says in the title: a ship that is everything you could want in a defensive cruiser. The fuel issues and long-term cost effectiveness are worrisome, but the sheer survivability offered by greater than average maneuverability and shields that recharge when hit by ion strikes and decoy drones make up for much of that. Honestly if we need something to hold the line this is it.

The other is the Beater. Considering how desperately we were in need of ships before the Sunbeam failed we must be starved for them right now. Despite the lack of features, I have to grudgingly admit that this is probably the best ship for the job right now. Its simple, its cheap, and above all, its geared for mass production. This is the Sherman tank of the current line up. And it looks like exactly the kind of thing we need now.

[] - Frigate Project : Beater (Arms Unlimited)
Vote changed to the Angel later on.
 
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Happerry said:
One game, but originally I was mirroring it between SB and QQ on account of lag.

When the Great Admin Blow Out happened, I moved all my SB quests over here on account that that kind of behavior needed some sort of response, and now that its over and has been responded to in a way that shows that people are willing to admit they messed up and try to fix things, I'm updating them over on SB again.

But since it was already over here, I figured I might as well update over here too. Besides, things stay on the first page longer over here, so yay extra visibility~
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Glad to see this game updating again, and yes, the low number of quests here on SV is exactly why I saw it and really enjoyed the game when I read through it. It just seems to be a rather original and entertaining concept for a quest.


subsider34 said:
If I recall, the thing our military needs the most right now is large numbers of ships. As such, capital class vessels are not suitable for the current needs of our military. That leaves three options:

[ ] - Defense Cruiser Project : Angel (Peace and Security, Incorporated)
[ ] - High Mobility Cruiser Project : Flashback (X.A.B.)
[ ] - Frigate Project : Beater (Arms Unlimited)

Of those three, the Peace and Security and Arms Unlimited bids strike me as the best investments.
The Angel is exactly what it says in the title: a ship that is everything you could want in a defensive cruiser. The fuel issues and long-term cost effectiveness are worrisome, but the sheer survivability offered by greater than average maneuverability and shields that recharge when hit by ion strikes and decoy drones make up for much of that. Honestly if we need something to hold the line this is it.

The other is the Beater. Considering how desperately we were in need of ships before the Sunbeam failed we must be starved for them right now. Despite the lack of features, I have to grudgingly admit that this is probably the best ship for the job right now. Its simple, its cheap, and above all, its geared for mass production. This is the Sherman tank of the current line up. And it looks like exactly the kind of thing we need now.
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Interesting points, but I'm going to have to go for the Doombringer.

[X] - Heavy Carrier Project : Doombringer (Hammer Industries)

I will say that the Angel is my second choice, but I think offensive firepower is more useful in driving the aliens off kilter and taking back the initiative right now.

As to the Beater, I will say an emphatic no to that, as It seems to be little more than a flying coffin. Much like the Shermans, and unlike the Germans, the Aliens seem to have a far better ship ratio than what the Shermans had to face.
 
Fine
Gear said:
As to the Beater, I will say an emphatic no to that, as It seems to be little more than a flying coffin. Much like the Shermans, and unlike the Germans, the Aliens seem to have a far better ship ratio than what the Shermans had to face.
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Good point about the ratio, but we still need low and mid-range vessels. Besides, carriers are even worse than those frigates without a proper escort and we just don't have the numbers to give them one without opening up holes in our lines.

I guess I'll switch my vote to the Angel.
[] - Defense Cruiser Project : Angel (Peace and Security, Incorporated)
Still much more producible than carriers.
 
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[X] Heavy Carrier Project: Doombringer (Hammer Industries)

Additionally, thank god this quest didn't die. It's much too fun.
 
Would somebody mind explaining why they are voting for a Carrier? I've given explanations for why I think the Angel and the Beater are the best choices, but other than Gear rebutting some of my points on the Beater, I haven't heard anything about any of the ships from anyone else.
 
subsider34 said:
Would somebody mind explaining why they are voting for a Carrier? I've given explanations for why I think the Angel and the Beater are the best choices, but other than Gear rebutting some of my points on the Beater, I haven't heard anything about any of the ships from anyone else.
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What I thought was that the Black Angel was forced to retreat when confronted with three capital ships. Big ships are good, since the enemy can't take them out as easily. Smaller, weaker ships would just be easier targets, even though there would a be a lot of them. And carriers carry numerous attack/recon drones, which provide the numerical superiority and the ability to scout for Black Angels. If worst comes to worst, the carriers can just hang back and act as refueling bays for large amounts of drones, which could act like tiny, more maneuverable, though less shielded Angels/Beaters.
 
subsider34 said:
Would somebody mind explaining why they are voting for a Carrier? I've given explanations for why I think the Angel and the Beater are the best choices, but other than Gear rebutting some of my points on the Beater, I haven't heard anything about any of the ships from anyone else.
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I made some points about the Angel cruiser as well. Mostly that it would be playing to the enemy strategic plan and surrendering the initiative to them next turn. The Carrier will allow us to pile pressure up on the front, moving from the stalemate we're at now, to us breaking the enemies front and disrupting their plans. Maybe we can disrupt their C&C again, cause them to lose another wave of ships to infighting before they take up the offensive again.

Whatever the Alien response is this turn, their vast technological superiority means that we have to keep the pressure on using our superior numbers, and rapidly improving designs to grind them down.
 
theorion said:
What I thought was that the Black Angel was forced to retreat when confronted with three capital ships. Big ships are good, since the enemy can't take them out as easily. Smaller, weaker ships would just be easier targets, even though there would a be a lot of them. And carriers carry numerous attack/recon drones, which provide the numerical superiority and the ability to scout for Black Angels. If worst comes to worst, the carriers can just hang back and act as refueling bays for large amounts of drones, which could act like tiny, more maneuverable, though less shielded Angels/Beaters.
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The ability to scout for the Black Angels is a big point in its favor, I must admit. But I'm not convinced we wouldn't be better served with sensor enhancements from other companies during the second stage of procurement.

Also, single ships are not, in any way, comparable to frigates, much less cruisers. They're designed to go on the offensive. They not intended to shield a carrier from any threat save other single ships. And because the fighters and bombers are their main offensive armament, they'll have to send them off if they want to put pressure on the enemy. Which means that our carriers will be extremely vulnerable to enemy wolfpacks.

Gear said:
Whatever the Alien response is this turn, their vast technological superiority means that we have to keep the pressure on using our superior numbers, and rapidly improving designs to grind them down.
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This is exactly why I think we need to go with smaller, faster, more durable, easier to produce ships. Carriers are not cheap or easy to manufacture. In fact, with the exception of civilian conversions, they have by far the longest production periods of any warship.

Its also weakly armored, weakly shielded, a gigantic target, and slow. There's a reason carriers are always escorted by frigates and cruisers (of which we have neither). Considering that its secondary armament is a "nose mounted light mass driver" agility is also a concern, as it would be the difference between being able to bring the weapon to bear or not. Especially if it had to restrict its movements to land/launch drones.
 
RL carriers are cheaper and faster to buold for their tech level than battleships. Not sure what the difference would be like in space.RL frigates, for the most part, exist to carry specialised gear and, as escorts, ger in the way and take hits so capital ships (much harder to repair and replace) don't. Not that that part really works anymore with the changes in weapons systems. Desrroyers started out explicitly as 'torpedo boat destroyers', another small, specialist role ship, they were built to prevent the even smaller and cheaper torpedo boats (and later submarines) from sinking the capital ships, which couldn't defend against them well, again, in the last, by taking the hit for them if they had to. for whatever reason these were built up to have more of a direct combat capability over time, but they're still on the 'pointlessly small and squishy' end so far as direct fleet combatants go... if... direct fleet combat was still a thing. Not sure how Either of these translate into space born operations beyond probably being less efficient in terms of 'stuff that makes the ship work' to 'ability to kill the enemy', and whatever that does to cost.

Cruisers, IRL, are devided up differntly by different navies, but ultimately are designed to opperate solo or in small groups against just about anything, doing just about any job compitently (with the obvious exception that they're quite blatantly not carriers.) They also tend to make up the bulk of the standard firepower in any fleet designed for direct combat. Translated into space... they would fill pretty much the same job slot by definition.

Battleships, by simple virtue of their size and thus massive amount of structural redundancy, are built to out range anything else, hit harder than anything else, take more hits than anything else, and flat out not sink until everything else on both sides is Dead. That same size does give them some vulnerabilities though. Even with proper countermeasures, torpedoes are still a problem, and for all that Sinking them is an insanely difficult task, disabling and crippling them is well within the capabilities of enemy bombers. They make Excelent commabd and control platforms by way of their durability, and provide pretty much the Best heavy artillery support any costal opperation could want. The only bigger guns are fixed emplacements, or the sillyness that was the german Railway gun (the origionals of which were a ww1 stopgap to allow already existant naval guns to be used as land based artillery). The main reason these things don't go into combat solo is how insanely expensive they are to produce. In space? Well, depends on the design philosophy, but they're basically bigger, bashier, tougher, but somewhat less agile crusiers, with bigger and/or better everything.

Dreadnoughts: IRL, this was simply a change in philosophy for the design of the battleship, and the introduction of new construction techniques. Rather than having a tone of different types of guns crammed in everywhere they'd fit, it just had as many of the biggest ones as it could practically mount, then what amounted to point defence weapons, and maybe some torpedoes. Probably made it more dependant on it's escourts, but superior in every other way. In sci-fi, it's usually treated as being to a battleship what a battleship is to a cruiser, which is odd.

Carriers: IRL, these take advantage of the capabilities of aircraft to allow stand off engagements from outside of detection range of enemy fleets. They're cheaper and a hell of a lot squishier than battleships, still need a full escourt fleet... and the vast majority of the time they'll rip a battleship based fleet to shreads for the same reason horse archers shreaded mideeval and earlier armies: they use superior range and manouverability to flat out refuse to engage you in such a way that you can hit back. If you have your own carrier, the result is a lot of destroyed planes... and decent odds of both sides bombers going through anyway. Or neither. It depends what the commabders do with them. A fencer's duel rather than the battleship's slugging match. Finally, it's planes allow for a dramstic increase in how far away it can detect the enemy from.
In space, everyone can opperate in three dimentions, and there's no curvature of the earth to limit detection range, reducing the carrier's advantages dramatically. It's Still easier to kill than a battleship, a drone's weapon's damage output, unlike a plane's bomb, is Not going to match the damage output of a cruiser or battleship's main gun, and various other similar things that I'm no longer coherant enough to articulate right now. It still has the nice advantage that it (hopefully) doesn't get in the fight itself and drones are a lot easier to replace than ships, drones probably Can still deal with small ships, and depending on the design make great ecm platforms. Whether they actually help detection range compaired to just having bigger, better, more powerful sensors is debateable.

I had a point when i started this. It's now just a giant info dump. Typed up on a tablet in SV's quick reply box.
 
Since you all should know this in universe, I feel no guilt at telling you that comparing a single drone craft of any type to a single frigate in effectiveness is akin to comparing a single frigate to a battleship.

As well, Bombers rarely kill enemy vessels directly, but are very very suited for blowing off important bits of the hull. Like weapon turrets, engine nozzles, sensors, shield emitters... You get the idea. Fighters can try to do so as well, but mainly they're designed to shoot other fighters and the enemy bombers.

Also, I do have a list of 'what ship types mean' in one of the info posts up on the front page...

It isn't explicitly stated there, but in universe Dreadnoughts are a subclass of Battleship with the primary difference being that Dreadnoughts are about 50% bigger, in general.

Meanwhile, Frigates are the smallest, and usually individually irrelevant. They're also the quickest and simplest to build, so you will never ever see one by themselves. If this was a RTS game, Frigates would be a type of unit where, every time you buy one, you get four or six that move as one individual unit. They're very easy to mass produce, and require very small trained crew sizes. Don't underestimate a good sized swarms ability to sandpaper enemy ships to death, especially while they're distracted by your own cruisers.

In average construction difficulty, after Frigates come Cruisers, followed very closely by Destroyers (The extra gun mounts need more maintenance), which are more distantly followed by Battleships and Carriers, both of which usually take the most work. (Though this is kind of fuzzy because you can find, say, small frigate sized escort carriers that are easier to build then most cruisers in exchange for basically only having one wing of drones and barely anything else mounted on them).

Also, choosing carriers because you expect them to be more survivable verses invisible battlecruisers is one of the more... interesting... reasonings I've seen in this game.
 
Happerry said:
Since you all should know this in universe, I feel no guilt at telling you that comparing a single drone craft of any type to a single frigate in effectiveness is akin to comparing a single frigate to a battleship.
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I explained that badly. I didn't mean to imply that one drone equaled a frigate. What I was trying to say was that a squadron of frigates could do the same thing that a few squadrons of drones (I'm assuming that a squadron of frigates is, like you said 4-6 ships, and a squadron of drones is 12-20. Please correct me if I'm wrong) could do.

They're very easy to mass produce, and require very small trained crew sizes no crew. Don't underestimate a good sized swarms ability to sandpaper enemy ships to death, especially while they're distracted by your own cruisers.
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This is more of what I was trying to get across with what drones could do.

subsider34 said:
This is exactly why I think we need to go with smaller, faster, more durable, easier to produce ships. Carriers are not cheap or easy to manufacture. In fact, with the exception of civilian conversions, they have by far the longest production periods of any warship.
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I'll give you that. But drones are smaller, faster, and easier to produce than frigates. Have 3-4 carriers drop all their squadrons in a star system with a refueling tanker, and let them hold the line for us. The Black Angels, if they are used, will not be used to their full potential as ship killers. And if the drones have exhausted all their weapons, they can use themselves as a weapon and ram the enemy ships

There's a reason carriers are always escorted by frigates and cruisers (of which we have neither).
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We're not producing swordfishes any more?
 
Stationing Fighters off Carriers is not currently possible... Defensive Star Bases, where they already exist, often already have drone craft bays, but it requires specialized equipment to refuel and rearm drones, as well as more general maintenance. Civilian Tankers happen to lack said equipment. (Yes, defensive bases exist. I'm just not making you actively research them unless you want to come down with a sudden need for turrets and starbase designs... Besides which fortified star bases are highly expensive while needing to be built on the frontlines to be of use given the fact that they lack FTL, and therefor are quite rare.)

A flight of drones is probably somewhere in the 12-20 area. I was thinking 16ish, actually. Breaks into two wings of eight, each of which break into four pairs.

And using drones as rammers is very very inefficient. They lack the warheads of missiles and the speed of normal mass weaponry.

(Besides which, 3-4 carrier's worth of unsupported drones would not be enough to hold the line verses anything more then the most basic attack... Given the lack of reloading and all that.)

There are good reasons to choose a carrier, just like there is for the other ship options. But expecting Drone Craft to be 'like frigates, but better in all ways' is not one of them.
 
How does an entire flight of drone fighters and/or bombers compare to a frigate then?
 
theorion said:
We're not producing swordfishes any more?
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Huh, I had thought those were destroyers, not cruisers, my mistake.
*ponders this turn of events*
Welp, I guess I'm going back to supporting the frigates.

[X] - Frigate Project : Beater (Arms Unlimited)

Also, I finally found the relevant passage for why we need large numbers of ships:
Happerry on the SB thread said:
In the face of the enemy attack, the military is divided in two directions. One faction is demanding a heavy ship that can take on the enemy mono to mono. The other faction is demanding a specialized raider to continue the raiding tactics which have so far provided the most success. (And quietly, you've received some requests for something to make up the numbers difference from various captains scattered across all relevant groups.)
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While I appreciate the need for numbers, Beaters are not the answer. We need survivable ships with heavy weapons to hold off the enemy, not disposable tin-can ships with disposable crews. The doombringer covers both numbers with replacable drone bombers and fighters, while also providing some measure of defense against those stealth battlecruisers.

But I do support designing Beaters or equivalents to it after this turn to fill out our numbers after filling in critical combat roles.
 
Nobody wants to go out in a flying coffin.

Frigates are largely useless. If we want a numurous escort ship, then we should be building destroyers that can carry out ASW style warfare against the stealth ships.
 
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