Author Topic: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race  (Read 190219 times)

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #690 on: 20 August 2018, 15:39:39 »
Yup. I think you've just explained most of the SLDF's fleet design doctrine.

Makes me wonder about building a ship with integral massive cargo bays, some fighter support, some infantry and combat vehicle carriage with small craft to deliver them to the surface, and enough guns to not be a comedy.  Wouldn't be great in any role, but could be used for anything, and it would be very difficult to anticipate the fleet posture.  I still think dedicated combat ships backed up by transports and colliers is better, but theres something to be said for having the entire fleet be fully multirole.

Maingunnery

  • Lieutenant Colonel
  • *
  • Posts: 7154
  • Pirates and C3 masters are on the hitlist
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #691 on: 20 August 2018, 15:43:24 »

I have been thinking about building ships with factory units, for better local repair and small craft production.

But how to implement it?
Herb: "Well, now I guess we'll HAVE to print it. Sounds almost like the apocalypse I've been working for...."

The Society:Fan XTRO & Field Manual
Nebula California: HyperTube Xtreme
Nebula Confederation Ships

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #692 on: 20 August 2018, 16:23:20 »
I have been thinking about building ships with factory units, for better local repair and small craft production.

But how to implement it?

I think we start off with robotic small craft, capable of in-situ resource utlilization - say like the CASPAR system, only they are miners, able to pull raw materials out of asteroids/the oort cloud.

These would be supported by a large ship, with a much more powerful CASPAR style system, requiring limited to no human input but very carefully designed with a strong, friendly 'AI' expert system, with automated onboard factories capable of building various ship components, including fighters, small craft, naval weapons, KF drives, and, most importantly, capable of building automated factories.

The same ship would carry large, ideally pressurized bays to assemble the products of its onboard factories.  Make sure at least one bay is capable of 'handling' vessels as large as the ship itself.

We would need a designation for such craft.  Perhaps Generic Service Vessel, or 'GSV'.

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #693 on: 20 August 2018, 18:16:57 »
Okay, I think I see what you're getting at (I misunderstood how the Mother works). Simply entering or exiting a bay is fast. But to make things safe in a jump you need to secure them, and securing a 100,000 ton station is substantially more work than merely driving it into a repair bay. Your 12 hour time is probably more accurate there - it's not a full entry into the yard's hands, but it'll be on the same order of magnitude. Un-securing it will also be a major process, but probably somewhat faster overall.
Ok.  I'll assume roughly 12 hours to secure and 6 hours to unsecure, which can potentially be reduced to minutes to disembark if the unsecuring work is done.
The oddity at level 1 is that you can build a complete 250,000 ton shipyard for $5B when the yard space alone is $6.25B. If you look at cumulative costs, that's not an issue at any higher level, but it is at level 1.
I see, thanks.

How should we handle custom designs that are at significant variation in costs from abstracted elements? 
I'd suggest: we treat the Tick and the associated Crestbreaker & David Smallcraft as integral to the Taurus I in a single line item while treating the Mother jumpship as a single line item separate from the generic jumpships.

Alsadius

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 926
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #694 on: 20 August 2018, 18:42:09 »
The Mother should be constructed under the merchant ship rules - standard-core ships are twice as fast to build as compact-core ships(i.e., 4/yard/turn), so your yard space should be more than enough.

The small craft can still be abstracted. Small craft do specialize by role, and boarding vs cargo vs defensive is just fine. The Terrans use a lot of their smaller craft for defence, so it's even got a precedent. Just mention what your usual approach is in your doctrine, and even if the details get hand-waved, I'll keep to the spirit of it.

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #695 on: 20 August 2018, 18:48:31 »
The Mother should be constructed under the merchant ship rules - standard-core ships are twice as fast to build as compact-core ships(i.e., 4/yard/turn), so your yard space should be more than enough.
That helps.
The small craft can still be abstracted. Small craft do specialize by role, and boarding vs cargo vs defensive is just fine. The Terrans use a lot of their smaller craft for defence, so it's even got a precedent. Just mention what your usual approach is in your doctrine, and even if the details get hand-waved, I'll keep to the spirit of it.
Ok.  Should we keep the Tick abstract as well?  Or associate it directly with the Taurus I?

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #696 on: 20 August 2018, 18:51:53 »
Probably include the Tick in the price of the Station, thing can't do it's job without it after all

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #697 on: 20 August 2018, 22:29:24 »
FYI, I made a few more small tweaks to the https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=61764.msg1438684#msg1438684 designs/doctrine.

Probably include the Tick in the price of the Station, thing can't do it's job without it after all
Makes sense to me.

Turn 5: Taurian Concordat Budget 2390-2399

Budget-wise, the plan is to keep 2 Kutai active while mothballing 3 Kutai and selling 1 to the Marian Hegemony for $5B which will be passed through to the Combine (with plans to continue this arrangement in future turns).  The plan is to also mothball the Independence. 

Maintenance Costs
Code: [Select]
Cost/unit #active Maintenance
Kutai 6092 2 1218.4 (3 mothballed)
Marathon 621 7 434.7
Independence 4567 0 0 (1 mothballed)
Fighters 5 975 487.5
Smallcraft 10 92 92
Light DS 300 8 240
Total Maintenance 2472.6

Prototyping costs            
Code: [Select]
Prototype Tick 226.318
Prototype Taurus I 326.105
Prototype Mother 933.477
Prototype costs 1485.9

Construction costs
Code: [Select]
Taurus I+Tick 4 2209.692
Mother 4 3733.908
Fighters 350 1750
Smallcraft 4 40
Research 120
Savings 183

The Kutais are deployed as a pair on the periphery side of TC with missions including escort, pirate hunting, system scouting, and good will visits. 

The Taurus I's are each named after star systems within the TC while Mother's are named after settled planets within the TC.  Even with 4 of them fully loaded, Lena believes they could not compete on the Kentares scale, but they might actually matter to the battle.  Given this, the plan is to keep them concentrated so they can be used to maximal effect where needed.  When incidents occur across the TC, the Kutais can pursue fleet light forces while the Taurus I's can be dispatched in appropriate numbers so as to achieve the requisite force to win against most opponents. 

The remaining 557 ASF are scattered across all the TC planets with each planet hosting at least a squadron from a planet-side base, with significantly more for significant planets.  (I'm sketchy on the details of the TC in this time period.  This http://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Taurian_Concordat_partial_2366.png is what I found and in 2750 http://battletech.rpg.hu/dynmech/planets/ismap_standalone.php?era_id=0&id=1943 it appears there are ~85 systems.)

Kiviar

  • Private
  • *
  • Posts: 46
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #698 on: 20 August 2018, 23:17:21 »
That map is weirdly inaccurate for its time period for example it shows the Pleiades Cluster belonging to the concordat in 2750, but that was annexed by the suns in 2596 which held it until the jihad. But the UHC is merged with the Federated suns which happens around the same time.

As for what is going on in the Concordat during this time period? Not much more than jumping at shadows and blaming the Davions for everything. After doing that for a while you turn the paranoia down from 12 to 9 and start peacefully trading.
« Last Edit: 20 August 2018, 23:30:36 by Kiviar »

Easy

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 591
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #699 on: 20 August 2018, 23:37:40 »
cleanup
« Last Edit: 29 May 2019, 18:46:29 by Easy »

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #700 on: 21 August 2018, 02:21:58 »
OOC: It seems we have 2 miscommunications here...

1) The deal for the 6 Kutais was $25Bil over 5 turns, payments of which started last turn. When I replied to your PM I had assumed you were taking over next turn, by which point the TC would have paid me $10B, essentially paying for 2 of the 6. With your changes to the budget this turn, you've paid for one and the Marians have paid for one, but you've kept 3 between you.

2) Also in my reply, I'm sure I told you that if you didn't want the ships anymore, I wanted them back. While I am not against selling the Kutais to Maid Marian, the price would change because the Marian Hegemony is nowhere near as strategically useful to me as the Concordant, and thus does not get any kind of discount off the ~$6Bil price tag.

OOC, I'm happy to let this slide as a miscommunication, IC however is another story:

Quote
Written:      October 14th, 2399
Received:   February 11th, 2400

Protector Calderon,

My agents have noticed that you have sold one of the Kutai-class ships that was leased to your humble navy to a third party, before you have finished paying for them yourself. This breach of the agreement between our two nations shall not stand and I see only two ways for your modest nation to avoid retribution.

1: Return of the three remaining unpaid for Kutai-class ships in your possession, and a payment of no less then Five Billion Bulls for the Kutai you sold to the Marian Hegemony without permission or approval.

2: A payment in full of no less than Twenty Billion Bulls for those aforementioned four Kutai-class vessels, payment to begin before 1 January 2401, and completed no later than 1 January, 2409.

I await your response.

On behalf of my Coordinator,
Pu Bah,
High Lord Admiral, Defender of the Realm, Chief Editor of the Luthien Gazette.

I'm referring to the TC currency, but I'm assuming a 1:1 exchange rate to avoid headaches all round.
« Last Edit: 21 August 2018, 02:30:39 by Smegish »

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #701 on: 21 August 2018, 09:16:48 »
Presuming Protector Calderon passes the missive on to the Admiralty, Lena will compose the following reply in consultation with cultural experts (if any can be found...) and Protector Calderon.

Luthien <-> Taurus is 29 jumps taking about 212 days by conventional routes and the closest part of the combine is about 18 jumps away.  Hence, sending this letter must have used a command circuit extending into FS territories.   We are impressed.  If the delivery of the letter is by a specific courier, we will respond via that courier to expedite resolution of the misunderstanding.

Quote
Written: February 14th, 2400
Received: ??

Pu Bah, High Lord Admiral, Defender of the Realm, Chief Editor of the Luthien Gazette,
(cc Coordinator Kurita)

We are indebted to the Combine for offering us a significant deterrent in our hour of need with our debt going beyond the mere terms of payment.  I have advised Protector Calderon to consider the Combine's generosity a debt of state.   To repay this, I'm sure your able spies have also reported the construction of a new class of space stations capable of contributing as a carrier to a Kentares scale battle.  Unlike most space stations, the new Taurus I class is capable of functioning as an expeditionary force, and hence provides us the ability to directly repay the Combine.  Call on us when you should need to defend against or retake a world from an aggressor.

We have chosen to honor our original agreement and intend to continue doing so.  Upon careful reading of this agreement, we found no clause stipulating the Kutais are not to be used as we have chosen.  Perhaps the drafters of this agreement were insufficiently exact at capturing our mutual expectations?  In any case, we are happy to renegotiate the terms of our agreement for the Kutai, starting from the terms of our agreement.  For instance, if you should want 3 Kutai returned to the Combine in exchange for a cancellation of payments, we will do so.

More personally, I would be happy to offer you or your chosen designate a tour of the new construction in our yards.  I'm sure you'll find the uses of our free budget quite satisfactory in a strategic sense. 

Admiral Lena Wilhight

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #702 on: 21 August 2018, 10:09:51 »
Also, thanks for both of these.

That map is weirdly inaccurate for its time period for example it shows the Pleiades Cluster belonging to the concordat in 2750, but that was annexed by the suns in 2596 which held it until the jihad. But the UHC is merged with the Federated suns which happens around the same time.

As for what is going on in the Concordat during this time period? Not much more than jumping at shadows and blaming the Davions for everything. After doing that for a while you turn the paranoia down from 12 to 9 and start peacefully trading.

Looks like I'm the dude standing there with the MekHQ map case, again. Here you go:

Kiviar

  • Private
  • *
  • Posts: 46
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #703 on: 21 August 2018, 14:32:28 »
Luthien <-> Taurus is 29 jumps taking about 212 days by conventional routes and the closest part of the combine is about 18 jumps away.

I assume there is a commercial pony express serving the major worlds, so I don't think it is too far out of the realm of possibility for a packet from Luthien to make it to New Syrtis, and then on to the Hades Cluster in 4-5 months.

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #704 on: 21 August 2018, 14:54:31 »
Yannow, I'm falling more and more in love with Small Craft.  For the few things that an aerospace fighter does better, you can even put ASFs in SC bays (at a tonnage penalty).  But seriously.  Boarding.  Point Defense.  Combat Unit Dropping (and the 36 SC that carry down 36 Battlemechs will have WAY more armor and be WAY more crit resistant than a single Overlord!).  Heavy Space Superiority.  Tanker.  Bomber (w/ Cargo and Bomb Bay Quirk).  Cargo Craft.  AWACS/Long Range Patrol.  I may start replacing Fighter bays with Small Craft Bays, just for flexibility (and to recover some of the flexibility I lose by going for a 'no dropships' doctrine).

Side Topic:  By the 3rd SW, a 'big, really big, we bloody well mean it' invasion was IIRC on the order of 5 Regiments.  I see other invasions in the 1SW that seem to be on the order of 3 Regiments, judging by Sarna.

I guess, if my CNO was to ask the General of the Armies exactly how much spacelift, in terms of vehicles and troops and cargo, he wanted... what would he say?  Obvioulsy the answer is 'an infinite amount', but we assume hed be at least quasi-realistic.  And if he could not have what he wanted, what would he NEED?  He'd have to understand that everything that was dedicated to carrying troops would not be dedicated to defending those troops in transit.
« Last Edit: 21 August 2018, 15:13:22 by marcussmythe »

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #705 on: 21 August 2018, 15:09:50 »
The message is coming from New Samarkand, which is a little closer, but I admit I picked two dates out of the air without any calculation of how long it would actually take.

Your Proposal is... acceptable, and I shall send one of my staff members, Nanky Pu, to tour your quaint facilities and oversee the return of the remaining ships.

Kiviar

  • Private
  • *
  • Posts: 46
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #706 on: 21 August 2018, 15:26:02 »
Side Topic:  By the 3rd SW, a 'big, really big, we bloody well mean it' invasion was IIRC on the order of 5 Regiments.  I see other invasions in the 1SW that seem to be on the order of 3 Regiments, judging by Sarna.

Battletech's scale is a hot mess. Through a mix of writers generally being bad at scale, space feudalism and the desire to keep wars small enough to have characters actually be able to influence things on the galactic stage we are left with such a nonsensical setting. In a more realistically thought out universe the entirety of the AFFS might have been enough to garrison New Avalon, and the entire might of the AFFC might have been sufficient to attack a single urban planet.

But, that's Battletech for you, giant stompy robots with a big mess underneath the cover. You might as well try to convince GW that ennui gets boring after a while.

As for on topic: I for one am going to start putting in a lot more effort to design small-craft and ASFs in turns going forward, I think that its a really solid area for creativity which doesn't come at the expense of costing budget. And tbh, as much as I like the fanfiction, this is technically supposed to be a design challenge.
« Last Edit: 21 August 2018, 15:28:31 by Kiviar »

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #707 on: 21 August 2018, 15:40:06 »
Battletech's scale is a hot mess. Through a mix of writers generally being bad at scale, space feudalism and the desire to keep wars small enough to have characters actually be able to influence things on the galactic stage we are left with such a nonsensical setting. In a more realistically thought out universe the entirety of the AFFS might have been enough to garrison New Avalon, and the entire might of the AFFC might have been sufficient to attack a single urban planet.

But, that's Battletech for you, giant stompy robots with a big mess underneath the cover. You might as well try to convince GW that ennui gets boring after a while.

As for on topic: I for one am going to start putting in a lot more effort to design small-craft and ASFs in turns going forward, I think that its a really solid area for creativity which doesn't come at the expense of costing budget. And tbh, as much as I like the fanfiction, this is technically supposed to be a design challenge.

Absolutely!  Even if they are generic in in-game effect (a choice I whole-heartedly endorse), I'm enjoying working out the design paradigms and taking this as my opportunity to fix all the 'YOUR DOING IT WRONG' that I feel in my stomach when I look at some stuff in Battletech.  Like my heavy fighter on my first turn... I firmly believe that a 6/9 85 Ton Heavy Fighter is the 'F-15, F-14, F-22' of the BTech Verse.  Its as fast as you can get while being that large, and it can -use- all 9 overthrust.. making it more usefully agile than anything but the very light fighters - because of course a 6/9 Medium ASF cant use its overthrust without a control roll - and you really, really, really dont want to make control rolls. Similarly with armor - ASFs can have very thick armor, threshold proofing is a thing, and I intentionally wrote the fluff of the fly-off for the Shuu class Heavy Fighter as a 'Take That!' to the madness that is stuff like the Chippewa.

Im going to seriously consider designing suggested battlemechs for the LCAF - Im a fan of quads, and later a HUGE fan of LAMS (waits for raucous laughter to stop - yes, I know LAMS are basically silly, but once you accept they exist, the combined capabilities are so incredible as to IMHO swallow the drawbacks.  Sure, your battlemechs are better than mine.  But I can pick up my entire force and fly it to the other side of the planet in a few hours - nromal battlemechs canonically suffer meaningful losses walking across a small river.  LAMS transform and then land on your logistics base, command post, capital city, wherever it is.  Beat that with a stick.)

Related to above, and to the 'this scale makes no sense' issue (seriously.  My current fleet has about as many fighters as House Davion had MECHS in 3025... so if those were Mech bays instead of fighter bays, my current fleet could basically lift the entire Battlemech weight of the AFFS, all at once.. which is... strange).. I may go for spacelift that feels realistic to ME, no matter what the universe says.  The ability to pull up in orbit over a planet and drop 20 Regiments in Drop Coccons or send them down on Small Craft Dropshuttles... well, if the budget allows, yeah.  "The seat of purpose is on the land"
« Last Edit: 21 August 2018, 15:55:08 by marcussmythe »

Kiviar

  • Private
  • *
  • Posts: 46
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #708 on: 21 August 2018, 16:08:50 »
Modern Battletech tends to take itself too seriously, it is meant to be full of schlocky 1980s anime tropes, and there are few things more iconic than flying space-robots.

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #709 on: 21 August 2018, 16:16:38 »
Heh.  Now I want to design a quadvee with a robotic control system, wheels in its vehicle form, a single large gun in its right hand, and the robotic control system would be hard wired with a high level of ethical idealism.

"You got the touch... you got the poawwaaaAAAHHHHH"

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #710 on: 21 August 2018, 17:51:09 »
Your Proposal is... acceptable, and I shall send one of my staff members, Nanky Pu, to tour your quaint facilities and oversee the return of the remaining ships.
I look forward to Nanky's visit.

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #711 on: 21 August 2018, 18:04:21 »
Guess with this arms race we can try to avoid the worst parts of FASAnomics and build a semi-realistic military

Alsadius

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 926
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #712 on: 21 August 2018, 18:36:40 »
I'm trying for a scale somewhere between canon Battletech and realism.

The modern US has a population of ~330 million, and a fleet with a total of about ~3.4 million tons of ships. Call it one ton per 100 people. The navy:GDP ratio should probably be similar for your realms(similar "peace with occasional small fights" levels of military funding, with a similar army/navy ratio), so you'd expect a fleet of about 40 million tons each at USN rates given the 4B population stats I gave you earlier. The biggest fleet right now is the FWL, with just under 18M tons. Conversely, the canonical FWL fleet in this era was far smaller - I don't have hard stats for 2390 at hand, but according to Sarna the whole FLWN massed just over 31M tons in 2765.

So to answer your question about combat drop potential, I'd aim for something in the same relative range. Planets will be sparsely defended by IRL standards, but even a middle-of-nowhere planet of a few million will probably be able to muster a regiment of professional troops and a brigade of reservists, as long as it's civilized enough to keep a coherent planetary government. That'll be more infantry than vehicles, and a high-quality regiment with all the trappings could probably beat it in practice, but it's still a lot more than "one lance gets lost in a thunderstorm, and Terra falls to the Word of Blake" levels we see in canon. If you want to invade an important planet(e.g., a capital or major industrial hub), expect something on the scale of Normandy - that was five divisions of simultaneous lift, plus heavy fleet support, just for the beachhead. And then all that lift capacity turned into a massive logistical train to keep it going for the next several months. If you intend to take heavily defended worlds, build very heavy by BT standards - the Potemkin isn't a joke in this setting, it's a serious tool of war. The SLDF-Amaris war is actually plausible here, but not much else in canon rings true.

Lagrange

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1375
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #713 on: 21 August 2018, 18:57:16 »
Like my heavy fighter on my first turn... I firmly believe that a 6/9 85 Ton Heavy Fighter is the 'F-15, F-14, F-22' of the BTech Verse.  Its as fast as you can get while being that large, and it can -use- all 9 overthrust.. making it more usefully agile than anything but the very light fighters - because of course a 6/9 Medium ASF cant use its overthrust without a control roll - and you really, really, really dont want to make control rolls.
I believe a 6/9 85 ton ASF has a structural integrity of 8 :( The good news I guess is that a 90 tonner has only one ton less of free space.

DOC_Agren

  • Major
  • *
  • Posts: 4910
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #714 on: 21 August 2018, 20:22:41 »
So to answer your question about combat drop potential, I'd aim for something in the same relative range. Planets will be sparsely defended by IRL standards, but even a middle-of-nowhere planet of a few million will probably be able to muster a regiment of professional troops and a brigade of reservists, as long as it's civilized enough to keep a coherent planetary government. That'll be more infantry than vehicles, and a high-quality regiment with all the trappings could probably beat it in practice, but it's still a lot more than "one lance gets lost in a thunderstorm, and Terra falls to the Word of Blake" levels we see in canon. If you want to invade an important planet(e.g., a capital or major industrial hub), expect something on the scale of Normandy - that was five divisions of simultaneous lift, plus heavy fleet support, just for the beachhead. And then all that lift capacity turned into a massive logistical train to keep it going for the next several months. If you intend to take heavily defended worlds, build very heavy by BT standards - the Potemkin isn't a joke in this setting, it's a serious tool of war. The SLDF-Amaris war is actually plausible here, but not much else in canon rings true.
As someone who following this from the outside the game, here is my 0.02 C-Bills. 

Yep every planet, well besides those damm  8) Peaceniks, is going to planetary defense force.  I look at like to use the real world North Korea 26 millions people give or take, yet in theory has 1 million military and another 6 mil in reserves/paramailitary forces. Now I have to defend a whole planet with this force.  Yep lots of infantry and "light combat" units (think APCs, trucks maybe heavy APC upgunned) maybe so VTOLs (who will be lucky if they rate as Reg forces, mostly Green).   I might have 2 or 3 Good (read) modern forces, at least 1 acts as the Palace Guard Force (might be if I'm lucky rated as Vet).  If it was up to me, every force set up would be combined arms, but given if you give the military force to much you run the risk of a coup.  So I have divided commands structures (IE Army, Air Corps, Naval, Aerospace) which also weakens my forces responding. 
        This more them what your invading army is, but the catch is you can defeat my force because I can't deploy my force as 1 group, you defeat them in detail.

okay back to your normal design
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #715 on: 21 August 2018, 20:24:38 »
Well right now we're talking bollocks while we wait for the turn report from Mr. GM.

marcussmythe

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 1204
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #716 on: 21 August 2018, 20:51:32 »
I believe a 6/9 85 ton ASF has a structural integrity of 8 :( The good news I guess is that a 90 tonner has only one ton less of free space.

Right you are!  Turns out I built an 8 SI 6/9 85 tonner.  I may go edit that post into a 90 tonner, as it has no game effect, or just live with the lost point of safe overthrust.

Kiviar

  • Private
  • *
  • Posts: 46
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #717 on: 21 August 2018, 21:19:39 »
Well right now we're talking bollocks while we wait for the turn report from Mr. GM.

I for one certainly didn't distract Alsadius for hours designing sensible armourd divisions.

Smegish

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 445
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #718 on: 21 August 2018, 21:35:25 »
Curse you Fedrat! I call on our lord, the great Herb the Smiter to unleash his fury upon you!

Alsadius

  • Lieutenant
  • *
  • Posts: 926
Re: Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race
« Reply #719 on: 22 August 2018, 04:07:47 »
Also, I was helping the new guy get a sense for how missile defence worked. I'll actually copy that PM here, because it's a compilation of info from earlier in the thread:

You're right that [the rate of learning about the effectiveness of missile defence is] unrealistically slow, but the truth of the matter is that I don't have hard and fast rules myself. Here's what I do have:

My rule of thumb is that 2 AC/2 is as good at point defence as one MG. When AMS exist, they'll be twice as good as a MG. Other weapons are mostly irrelevant.

We also have battle reports with relatively solid numbers:
1) Turn 2, 2 Galahad and 4 Albion(252 MG) resisted an attack of 80 missiles with only minor damage.
2) Turn 2, one Qinru Zhe(120x AC/2) was crippled, but not destroyed, by a missile strike from 108 fighters.
3) Turn 3, 200 missile tubes plus 300 fighters attacked 1 Galahad and 2 Albion(126 MG), causing heavy damage to the two Albions.
4) Turn 3, 153 fighters attacked one Phalanx(88 MG), and "excellent" defensive work shot down 3/4 of the missiles. (Though the Phalanx did still die to a lucky hit)
5) Turn 4, "over 1000" missiles attacked a Terran fleet(640 AC/2). Roughly 200 were shot down, roughly 500 killed four battlecruisers, and "over 300" were wasted on overkill.

It's important to remember that performance will vary based on rolls. A skilled crew will shoot down more missiles than an unskilled crew, and a poor commander will leave their ships unable to properly support each other. No single one of those results should be taken as typical. Also, the defensive weapon counts include all facings on a ship - in practice, only about 1/3 of those guns will be able to bear on any given attack. Conversely, they don't include defensive fire from supporting craft.

Still, from that we can reach some tentative conclusions. In a really good situation, each mounted MG can knock more than one missile, even with very few targets. In a really bad situation, it takes about 3 mounted AC/2s to knock down a single missile, even with abundant targets. An average of ~125 missiles hitting their target will kill a Black Lion with 480 armour. And the numbers in battles #3 and 5 are really hard to reconcile - I think I went easy on the FedSuns overall, because they either lost less than they should have in #3 or killed more missiles than is really plausible - maybe their support craft were fitted for anti-missile work? I know the Taurians also rolled really poorly in that fight.