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Author Topic: More Carriers and Destroyers  (Read 26386 times)

Aeson

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #15 on: December 13, 2015, 12:58:59 PM »

a new Hegemony-tech carrier.

A stripped out Dominator.
2 flight decks running down the middle from front to back. So it loses it's central engines, two rear small mounts, one forward small mount, and the middle missile mount.
Should probably take the large guns off it as well, and a lower speed because less engines.

A converted Onslaught.
Remove the large mounts from the wings, the smalls immediately aft of them, and the outermost missile mounts from either side.
In thier place have 4 flight decks, two each side.

Two slow tanky carriers made from what are probably the most prevalent ships in Hegemony space.
Given what we know about the Hegemony, I don't think that they'd be all that likely to convert Dominators or Onslaughts to carriers given the choice. It looks to me like the Hegemony's naval doctrine falls more or less into the battleship school of pre-WWII naval thought - battleships and heavy cruisers are the centerpieces of the fleet and provide most of its striking power, and anything else exists to support those vessels, with any carriers being present so as to provide scouting support with their fighter groups. A big, heavy carrier like you'd get from converting a Dominator or especially an Onslaught doesn't really feel appropriate to this, especially since in Starsector you don't really have a lower bound on the size of a ship that has the speed and endurance to operate with the battle group and the lower bound on the size of ship necessary to fit a flight deck is at the destroyer scale whereas Dominators are at the high side of the cruiser scale and Onslaughts are (obviously) capital-scale; something that big with that many flight decks (and the correspondingly large fighter group) is more appropriate to the carrier school of pre-WWII naval thought - carriers are the centerpieces of the fleet and their fighter groups provide most of the fleet's striking power, while the rest of the fleet is there to protect and support the carriers. In short, I feel that the mindset of the Hegemony is that it doesn't need (and certainly doesn't want) heavy carriers with big fighter groups forming a major component of any of its larger fleets and task forces, certainly not at the expense of perfectly good Dominators and Onslaughts when it can afford to outfit them properly, and I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if converting an already-completed Onslaught or Dominator to be a carrier was similarly expensive to and not much faster than just building a new carrier even before including the cost of the base ship.

I could perhaps see a conversion that gave an Onslaught or Dominator the Odyssey treatment - sacrifice a bit of firepower for a flight deck, enabling the ship to provide its own fighter scouts without the added cost of a separate, relatively vulnerable carrier - but overall I really don't see anything wrong with the Hegemony's currently-available carriers or employment thereof, given my understanding of its fleet doctrine. In all honesty, though, I'd tend to expect that carrier conversions of Onslaughts or Dominators, if such exist, come from weaker factions that acquire such a ship but cannot really afford to field it in its original configuration.
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harrumph

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #16 on: December 13, 2015, 02:34:16 PM »

FWIW, high-tech ships aren't exclusively used by Tri-Tachyon; independent fleets and the Sindrian Diktat Lion's Guard use them too (including the Astral and Odyssey). And they do show up in the black market once in a blue moon.

I agree that more carriers and destroyers would be welcome. I think Alex is already planning to add more military destroyers, though.
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Cik

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #17 on: December 13, 2015, 06:17:32 PM »

you're probably right about hegemony doctrine, however the domain probably experimented with heavy carriers at one point in it's probably thousands of years long history. examples of this probably exist somewhere. make the sindrians into the carrier faction and you'd go a long way towards distinguishing them from the hegemony

this already might be the case though, i notice whenever i play a sindrian fleet in nexrelin they usually start with four herons on the military market. it'd be nice however if they had a heavier, less mobile ship. the heron's not a bad ship but it's not my favorite.
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Schwartz

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #18 on: December 13, 2015, 08:23:20 PM »

I fight high-end bounties, Diktat and Hegemony fleets. My fleet has maxed officers but not that many capital ships. A Heron, some Broadswords, Thunders, Daggers and Xyphos evenly split. It was more of a struggle mid-game, and I did notice occasionally that a Wasp or Gladius wing would run out of replacements during combat, but even then no wing was ever removed from a lack of deck space. If your stuff is dying too quickly, maybe you're letting it run into nasty PD? I usually spread fighters out a bit, have them take as many map points as it's feasible. The +Armor skill is also essential as it buffs fighters also.

It's probably gotten a little harder for fighters since officers were introduced, but in various fighter / carrier discussions in the past it was generally the consensus that a flight deck can manage 4-5 wings.

Re: Venture. Yep, the civilian-grade hull and speed have unfortunately made this cruiser even less attractive. And it doesn't have to be that bad. It's certainly a tough nut, and I never thought of it as a civilian craft. So a 'back to the roots' military Venture would be pretty cool.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2015, 08:26:33 PM by Schwartz »
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Plantissue

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #19 on: December 14, 2015, 02:34:54 PM »

I think I have seen Hegemony fleets with herons though I may be mistaken. That said, it really doesn't make sense that factions only sell certain ships from military markets. Aren't they supposed to not be able to decide which ships they can produce, so really they should keep all of their prefered ships and sell the ships they don't want?
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Megas

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #20 on: December 14, 2015, 02:57:51 PM »

Hegemony uses Herons frequently once they start cranking out high-powered fleets.  After wiping out several Hegemony fleets, almost every high-powered Hegemony security fleet or patrol has at least one Heron, often two, and occasionally more!
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #21 on: December 14, 2015, 03:51:31 PM »

I have seen 4 in a fleet. All of them trying to maintain safe distance... the battle took long.
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Pushover

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #22 on: December 14, 2015, 05:54:39 PM »

Another thing that is missing is a Cruiser sized freighter. The Cruiser hulls with the most cargo are the Venture (500), Starliner (500), and then the Apogee (450).

There is a lack of combat destroyers, and a lack of civilian cruisers.
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ChaseBears

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #23 on: December 15, 2015, 01:15:11 AM »

do we really need a cruiser freighter?

The smaller freighters fit the role of small shippers, and any cruiser freighter would be overshadowed by the Atlas, and the aforementioned Cruisers already carry enough cargo for most purposes.
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Megas

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #24 on: December 15, 2015, 06:24:33 AM »

do we really need a cruiser freighter?

The smaller freighters fit the role of small shippers, and any cruiser freighter would be overshadowed by the Atlas, and the aforementioned Cruisers already carry enough cargo for most purposes.
Now that the Venture has been ruined, yes!  Other high-cargo cruisers are either inefficient (Starliner) and/or too rare (Apogee).  There is a big difference between 300 for Buffalo/Tarsus and 2,000 for Atlas.

Atlas maxes at burn 8, which is too slow for comfort.  Most trades do not need that much cargo hauled.  The only use I can see for Atlas now is to store loot from multiple patrol/security fleet kills in hostile systems with no safe place to stash loot (e.g., Eos Exodus).
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #25 on: December 15, 2015, 06:42:21 AM »

Cargo space to (supply/month) rate is 10:1 for Tarsus and Buffalo, and 20:1 for Atlas. Efficiency doubles. Actual cargo space jumps from 300 to 2000 too.
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Weltall

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #26 on: December 15, 2015, 08:09:14 AM »

do we really need a cruiser freighter?

The smaller freighters fit the role of small shippers, and any cruiser freighter would be overshadowed by the Atlas, and the aforementioned Cruisers already carry enough cargo for most purposes.
Now that the Venture has been ruined, yes!  Other high-cargo cruisers are either inefficient (Starliner) and/or too rare (Apogee).  There is a big difference between 300 for Buffalo/Tarsus and 2,000 for Atlas.

Atlas maxes at burn 8, which is too slow for comfort.  Most trades do not need that much cargo hauled.  The only use I can see for Atlas now is to store loot from multiple patrol/security fleet kills in hostile systems with no safe place to stash loot (e.g., Eos Exodus).

Exactly my thoughts. How many times I wished there was a medium freighter something that would be bigger than the small freighters that would have higher speed than Atlas. I like keeping my fleet small without capital ships sometimes, until I reach the point where I feel it is time for an end game. That includes the slow Atlas sadly. I do not per se though agree that this much cargo is not needed. Many times I load up different commodities that I find good prices for to drop them off at my homebase and the other way around, I fill my fleet with different commodities that are needed on the same system.


Cargo space to (supply/month) rate is 10:1 for Tarsus and Buffalo, and 20:1 for Atlas. Efficiency doubles. Actual cargo space jumps from 300 to 2000 too.

Don't forget  also that you need to sacrifice 7 ship slots from you 25 ones in vanilla, compared to the 1 that the Atlas gets.
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Plantissue

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #27 on: December 15, 2015, 08:38:09 AM »

I don't mind not having a pure cruiser class freighter. It feels so artifical to have one, when the reason for its existance is the limited ship slots in the current version of the game. I very much prefer the previous fleet system. The only problem with the previous sytem was the extremely low beginning fleet logistics setting of 20.
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Weltall

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #28 on: December 15, 2015, 08:48:50 AM »

I don't mind not having a pure cruiser class freighter. It feels so artifical to have one, when the reason for its existance is the limited ship slots in the current version of the game. I very much prefer the previous fleet system. The only problem with the previous sytem was the extremely low beginning fleet logistics setting of 20.

The most important reason to have one is burn speed, not ship slots. It will be faster than the Capital Atlas, thus making it more desirable if you have a fast fleet and do not want to be slowed down by the Atlas. I do not really like the vanilla 25 but the SS+ 35 is great. Be it though the old or new system, the vanilla game won't have you managing an enormous fleet.
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Plantissue

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Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« Reply #29 on: December 15, 2015, 09:26:49 AM »

Large or small fleet is just a question of relativity. If vanilla had fleets that didn't exceed your fleet limit, they would feel far better. Anyways talking about mods is fairly pointless as you can always reply to virtually every disatisfaction with modding. Want faster burn speed Atlas's? Why don't you just mod the burn speed? Want a cruiser freighter. Mod one in. Want a larger fleet limit? Why don't you just mod it. Obviously we are talking about the base game, as it is the very thing we want to affect.

As it is in the game, Buffalos are burn speed 9. Is that not fast enough? As it is, the only possible reason for a "medium" size freighter in real life is for a military freighter of a very specific military role. There really isn't a reason for a civilian one.
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