I would still support basically this plan, which is what I proposed last update:
Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Art Quest Sci-Fi
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
It's less a matter of hulls, more a matter of logistics rn. We need to be able to refuel and rearm and maintain a force in the field. So we're gonna need to get stations in place so we can maintain a fleet forward of Home in order to fight effectively and not just be doing large raids.
Also better sensors will let us fight these guys on a more even playing field.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
There's two stars inside that declared boundry - one of them is Lydia, but I don't think we know enough to say if the other one is populated or there's nowt there
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
At least half a dozen stealth ships of equivalent size to our CFAs, of which we've definitely killed one.
However, our CFAs seem to be able to be superior to them in open combat and so they need 2:1 to take out a CFA. We do not know if they have anything heavier. They might and have simply chosen to withdraw from Menorb and wait for us to leave or they might not. It's hard to say.
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I agree that for doctrinal reasons it would be best to keep our embarked FLF forces as a full platoon.
I'm also not a fan of using a buffered planetoid as a warship hull. Fine for stations, but doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.
I can't see any reason to move away from our new Patrol Carrier hull. The next hull could maybe do with some upgrades, but the initial design is solid. Doesn't the Patrol carrier also already have all the required command facilities to be used as a battlegroup / fleet flagship?
I agree it would be good to get our last missing TL10 tech from the Aslan. Presuming this doesn't put our population / culture at risk. Would be good to get a rough idea how the Aslan have been welcomed on Home and how well they are integrating.
I'm also not a fan of using a buffered planetoid as a warship hull. Fine for stations, but doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.
I can't see any reason to move away from our new Patrol Carrier hull. The next hull could maybe do with some upgrades, but the initial design is solid. Doesn't the Patrol carrier also already have all the required command facilities to be used as a battlegroup / fleet flagship?
I agree it would be good to get our last missing TL10 tech from the Aslan. Presuming this doesn't put our population / culture at risk. Would be good to get a rough idea how the Aslan have been welcomed on Home and how well they are integrating.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
I kinda wish instead of this trying to plan for everything approach our captains and commodores were more age of sail esque with them choosing to do things under their own initiative and us dealing with what comes out of it.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
We've generally been giving them more autonomy with broad directives.
Our Menorb group basically did what they wanted and mostly skirmished a lot.
I imagine we could say "use this as your base of operations, go hunt down the enemy and cause trouble."
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Adobayo, notably, just changed his entire mission to go get some more prisoners back.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
My own proposed OPLAN, based partially on @C_Z.
[] OPLAN: Liberty Ship
-[] Attempt to peacefully retrieve the diplomatic team from Menorb. While there, try and deploy stealthed spy sensors to collect information on Menorb, and if possible, embed clandestine intelligence assets. Also attempt to determine more about Menorb's willingness to voluntarily side with the Lydians after the Lydians have been ousted.
-[] Utilize the new surveyors and some moderate escorts to attempt a deep run around known Lydian space to try and get an idea of what's beyond them to the Galactic East and West, as range and logistics allow.
-[] Stations should be designed of standard "cells" that can link together. Fuelling, replenishment, mining, and manufacturing cells should be fully automated. Defence and recreation cells should be semi-automated.
-[] Purchase TL10 weapons and drives from the Aslan, in a repeat of the previous deal. Ask for a discount because we're going to be using it to deal with the Lydians, who they have had negative encounters with in the past.
--[] The MIC should assess the ongoing integration of Aslan immigrants into Home society.
-[] Reduce the number of crew on the CFA through automation. Scale medical bays, armouries, accomodations, assault shuttles, and common areas to the reduced crew in order to free up the necessary tonnage. Inquire with line captains and marines to see if a single shuttle would be appropriate if the second shuttle were replaced with a pair of lighter sensor drones.
-[] If possible, integrate improvements in weapons into the CFA Flt. IIs to further free up tonnage (notably non-prototype beam barbettes on the B design).
-[] Impress upon the Citizen's Council that we want to begin the buildup necessary to defeat the Lydians once and for all. They've been asking for us to fight the war, and this is it. Point out that, while it will take years and much sacrifice, following the liberation of the northern polities, there will be vast new markets for Home's goods to be sold at and we will make lots of money off of our investment.
-[] Clandestinely reach out to the Daughters to gain their support in this war.
-[] In addition to the defensive and logistics/R&R/manufacturing stations, begin drafting construction/design of new and existing warships. Revise the CFA-D into a Flt II design for future construction that takes advantage of new technology to improve capabilities and increase firepower. Begin design of a Cruiser, Large Command that provides command facilities for a formation and mounts LMDCs in turrets (weapons layout should be EITHER 2xsmall LMDCs in large turrets or 1 xLarge LMDC in large turrets, exact number of weapons to be decided during design phase) while providing extensive PD and secondary missile armament; tonnage 10k+. This hull should also form as the basis for an eventual fleet carrier. Revise the patrol carrier design to carry autonomous strike drones (based on the same 10-ton light fighter chassis or similar vessel), using tonnage from pilot living quarters to install improved PD and improved sensor and computer capabilities.
-[] Draw up plans for a large-scale smash and grab raid on the "prison planet" utilizing the MAT and a converted modular conveyor for passenger transport and sufficient number of escorting vessels to deal with a force of stealth ships or potential orbital / ground defenses.
[] OPLAN: Liberty Ship
-[] Attempt to peacefully retrieve the diplomatic team from Menorb. While there, try and deploy stealthed spy sensors to collect information on Menorb, and if possible, embed clandestine intelligence assets. Also attempt to determine more about Menorb's willingness to voluntarily side with the Lydians after the Lydians have been ousted.
-[] Utilize the new surveyors and some moderate escorts to attempt a deep run around known Lydian space to try and get an idea of what's beyond them to the Galactic East and West, as range and logistics allow.
-[] Stations should be designed of standard "cells" that can link together. Fuelling, replenishment, mining, and manufacturing cells should be fully automated. Defence and recreation cells should be semi-automated.
-[] Purchase TL10 weapons and drives from the Aslan, in a repeat of the previous deal. Ask for a discount because we're going to be using it to deal with the Lydians, who they have had negative encounters with in the past.
--[] The MIC should assess the ongoing integration of Aslan immigrants into Home society.
-[] Reduce the number of crew on the CFA through automation. Scale medical bays, armouries, accomodations, assault shuttles, and common areas to the reduced crew in order to free up the necessary tonnage. Inquire with line captains and marines to see if a single shuttle would be appropriate if the second shuttle were replaced with a pair of lighter sensor drones.
-[] If possible, integrate improvements in weapons into the CFA Flt. IIs to further free up tonnage (notably non-prototype beam barbettes on the B design).
-[] Impress upon the Citizen's Council that we want to begin the buildup necessary to defeat the Lydians once and for all. They've been asking for us to fight the war, and this is it. Point out that, while it will take years and much sacrifice, following the liberation of the northern polities, there will be vast new markets for Home's goods to be sold at and we will make lots of money off of our investment.
-[] Clandestinely reach out to the Daughters to gain their support in this war.
-[] In addition to the defensive and logistics/R&R/manufacturing stations, begin drafting construction/design of new and existing warships. Revise the CFA-D into a Flt II design for future construction that takes advantage of new technology to improve capabilities and increase firepower. Begin design of a Cruiser, Large Command that provides command facilities for a formation and mounts LMDCs in turrets (weapons layout should be EITHER 2xsmall LMDCs in large turrets or 1 xLarge LMDC in large turrets, exact number of weapons to be decided during design phase) while providing extensive PD and secondary missile armament; tonnage 10k+. This hull should also form as the basis for an eventual fleet carrier. Revise the patrol carrier design to carry autonomous strike drones (based on the same 10-ton light fighter chassis or similar vessel), using tonnage from pilot living quarters to install improved PD and improved sensor and computer capabilities.
-[] Draw up plans for a large-scale smash and grab raid on the "prison planet" utilizing the MAT and a converted modular conveyor for passenger transport and sufficient number of escorting vessels to deal with a force of stealth ships or potential orbital / ground defenses.
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Yeah, it'd be a CFA optimized for fleet actions. More durability and reduced costs.
From a quick skim on my phone, Reflec and Stealth can be added to buffered planetoids; it's stuff like Reinforced hulls that can't be applied.
Also, from a practical point of view, we probably want to cut the surface of the planetoids into smooth facets so that the starting "hulls" are all the same size and then fuse the surface with what amounts to a big blowtorch to keep it solid and boil off volatiles. A buffered planetoid warship probably looks more like a "concrete gemstone". Alternatively, we could make it out of mining/smelting waste chunks, which would similarly be smooth shapes.
I am hesitant to use the hull of the existing patrol carrier for the cruisers. They lack armour, and the hulls aren't particularly well protected. If we want to reuse the patrol carrier hull, then I think we should design a separate cruiser hull (and possibly make it larger - maybe 12,000 tons so it can use MMDCs).
I'm cutting the platoon because I don't really see a use for it if these are being used primarily as battlefleet screens. If we want a ship to do an independent cruising action, we have the existing cruisers. Honestly, I'd be fine with going to zero marines on the CFEs as part of the savings, and concentrating a larger marine contingent on the flagship - if someone's managed to cut their way into the bridge while we're buttoned up, the marines wouldn't have stopped them.
We're already in a war IMO, but unless you want to YOLO our fleet at the enemy homeworld, win a decisive battle, and then immediately head home, we don't have the ability to actually fight them. We're limited by our logistics, as @Rat King mentions. I'm estimating things will take five years because it's around three years for us to build our first logistics stations, and two years for everything after. We could try and do it in three, but IMO it's better to plan for a longer fight and be pleasantly surprised than to plan for a short fight.
I expect we'll be conducting operations during that period, but they'll not be ones that meaningfully advance the zone of control. I think a raid on the prison planet in a few months would be a good idea; I was toying with a similar idea myself. It gives us practice fighting Lydian defences, it gives an opportunity to examine their technology, and it might let us interrogate prisoners that know something as you mention.
Buffered planetoids, mechanically, are absurdly OP. To start with, they are extremely cheap - a regular hull is 0.5 MCr/ton, while a buffered planetoid is 0.04 MCr/ton. If we're taking options like hardening the hull against ion weapons, then it's 0.75 versus 0.06. A buffered planetoid also provides more hull points (the equivalent of HP); a normal hull gives 0.4 HP/ton, while a Reinforced hull (which increases the hull cost to 0.75 MCr/ton and 1.125 MCr/ton if hardened) increases it to 0.44 HP/ton, yet a buffered planetoid gives 0.6 HP/ton. Buffered planetoids also give 4 points of armour for free, which is a savings of 5% of the hull volume and 0.01 MCr/ton.
The downsides to buffered planetoids is that we lose out on 35% of the hull volume, we cannot combine them with Military Hulls (multiply hull cost by 1.25, but raise the armour cap from 10 to 20), and we cannot combine it with some of the neat zero-G hull costs savings. This means that if we want to apply huge amounts of armour to our ships, buffered planetoids are not a smart choice (although I'm not really sure if going from 10 to 20 armour is going to be as helpful as a 40% increase in HP; I need to check the fleet combat rules).
As for stations, they're a funny case. First of all, there's the question of if a combat station is even viable. Spacecraft have evasion scores that are based on their thrust, applying a negative mod to the enemy's attacks. Also, there's evasion software, which gives +1 to dodging. Meanwhile, a stationary target 1) gives the enemy +4 to hit, which is bad, and 2) means that mass drivers don't take the usual penalty to firing at longer ranges. This means a mass driver parked at the outer edge of a system could take targeting data from a stealth ship and fire a railgun slug that OHK's the station from so far out we don't even know it's there.
For the non-combat case, it's possible to reduce costs dramatically by eschewing all armour and making a lightly built dispersed hull with no artificial gravity plates. Instead, by spinning the habitat sections, we can use the centrifugal force for gravity, which is cheaper and requires less power. However, we can't combine this with a buffered planetoid, so if we're tonnage-limited and building very large stations, they're a good alternative.
TL;DR, here's a summary table of what's the best option, between spherical reinforced hull, buffered planetoid, military hull, and light distributed zero-g hull:
| Unarmoured | <5000 ton combatant | >5000 ton combatant, HP valued more than max armour | >5000 ton combatant, max armour valued more than HP | |
| Excess budget compared to shipyard capacity | LD0G | SphR | BP | MH |
| No excess compared to a "normal" case | LD0G | BP | BP | MH |
| Excess shipyard capacity compared to budget | BP | BP | BP | BP |
Going to steal literally all of this except the name for my plan, although I think the large cruiser should be more heavily armed if it's >10,000 tons; I'd like ~6 MMDCs on it, plus a fairly large hangar and missile battery.
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Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
WRT to the patrol carrier, I meant we should stick with the existing hull design rather than going for an entirely new one at this point for future patrol carriers unless there's some sort of leap in tech that makes another new hull worth investing time/money in.
I guess I'm OK with the buffer planetoid builds but I tend to favor purpose-built hulls in general. I like having the armor - it was noted that having more armor did give us an edge against the stealth Aggressor craft.
I also generally like having the marines so our cruisers can, well, cruise and in peace time we will want to use the CFA or CFE to do that sort of thing. Also handy for expeditionary missions where we can't have the (a) MAT on hand for boarding operations or we don't have said flagship on station.
Yeah, the numbers there was more like "the turrets should be heavy turrets with either 2xLMDC or 1xMMDC." Number of turrets is not specified.
EDIT: I've added a "begin planning for smash and grab raid on prison world" in my plan as well.
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Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
We could definitely go stealth, would make it easier to punch down on lower TLs.
IIRC they aren't using crystaliron armour, so that's one change. If we design around a mostly-unmanned hull, we could also make those areas zero-G, in which case we halve the hull cost for them as well. I need to check how Element-Class Cruisers handles the pods. That said, I'd be fine continuing with the patrol carriers for the time being if we're not using a common hull for the large cruiser and the small carrier.
There'd be a break-even point where having more HP is more important than having more armour (and vice versa), but I'm not sure where it is. We'll have to pester Section about it; I'm a bit busy today though. Since we're unlikely to be able to stop all incoming damage, cases where damage >> armour favours hitpoints, and cases where armour >> damage favours armour. I'll admit that 18 armour (20 is wasteful, since both correspond to 8 points of damage reduction) is really, really appealing, but it requires a >5000 ton hull.
For hulls below 5000 tons (i.e., CFEs), dispersed hulls are almost always better, since we're comparing it to reinforced spherical hulls.
The problem with stealth is that using Extended Arrays give +2 to spotting us. If we can get TL11 sensors (and thus fit our ships with prototype improved sensor suites), a 5000 ton stealth hull with Dispersed Arrays would be quite nice, though.
- Location
- Here, there, everywhere.
The most important thing we've learned from this short conflict is how valuable standardized stealth is, any future ships should be built along stealth streamlined shapes for their hull.
Yeah but the aesthetic as well of going from our primitive hullforms into sleeker war built combat craft. Flying wings in space are my favorite ship design.
Those would be streamlined hulls, which cost a lot more and provide no real benefit. Sure, they look nice, but...
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
True, but we're not alwyas gonna be running extended arrays.
Patrol carrier was one of the first ships we built with crystaliron, IIRC. We got that right as we were building it.
we have 3 modern surveyors. Which means that we cans end one (and escort?) on a diplomatic mission to Menorb, and the other two (plus escort?) to repeat a maneuver with Hermosa and "look what's behind the Lydia". First of all, we would be able to roughly gouge the Lydian depth. Second, if that depth is not that great AND there is some other neighbour of Lydia, we can contact them.
If we want to pester lydian neighbours and look if we can get support from them, then we should contact as many neighours of theirs as possible.
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Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
Eh, the Aslan have indicated they're not that worried / not willing to do much about it. Maybe their neighbors to the west?
I did not mean Aslan, I meant neighbours behind the Lydia. To the North/North-East of it. Or to the West/North-West, yes, also could be useful.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
I've added the mission to my plan. Still interested in getting additional feedback etc.
- Location
- Here, there, everywhere.
I don't like the daughters and thing we could add more cannons to it but otherwise its good.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
How do you mean "more cannons"?
- Location
- Here, there, everywhere.
Your proposal for a new command ship, I'd like more kinetic cannons on it if we're going to put them un turrets. If I read the design right it has only 1 or 2 cannons depending on configuration.
To be honest I'd also like to start moving towards a flying wing hull design for aesthetic and gun layout reasons.