I think I've worked through all the roles I wanted to cover. Everything else is kinda covered by canon designs or just by different allocations of cargo space. Feel free to comment and test them out.
Since you asked...
General comments:
- Designs often seem low on SI biasing heavily towards offense over defense. For a 5/8 design SI around 75-90 is typically more balanced. For a 4/6 design SI around 120. And for a 3/5 design, SI around 150. Defense isn't as sexy as offense, but the ability to survive, or at least be harder to kill makes a real difference.
- Also on defense, you often don't have enough rounds of ammunition to use all heat sinks for missile defense. Having enough ammunition to use up your heat sinks leaves you prepared for coordinated missile waves, which adversaries should use. And, if you are thinking of warship arms race type settings where AMS are limited to firing 6 times/minute, that means you should have many more AMS to support the same thing.
- I'm somewhat skeptical of dropship collars on warships. The cost is quite substantial, often better spent on more warship instead. If dropships are a part of doctrine (which is easily reasonable given dropship capacity), then I'd be inclined to separate collars from the wall---stick all the collars on carriers and leave mainline battleships cheaper (= more). Carriers should be more survivable by doctrine and design making the investment less likely to be blown apart.
- Designating arcs as either capital or standard is often desirable w.r.t. fire control tonnage since it avoids standard weapons contributing to capital fire control. Typically, you can control your facing to a foe, except at short range.
- It's hard to get excited about designs costing <7B or so, given that you need to amortize the startup cost of a warship.
- There are many designs here that mention independent function but lack a naval comm-scanner. A small one should probably be considered required. I also tend to like satellite imagers routinely for the same reason.
Tumbleweed: Maybe save the cash instead? I'm not seeing the value from this unit. The only really small warships that seem viable are Q-ships / special ops types given the enormous cost and limited capabilities.
Coriolis: A pursuit vessel is interesting. I'd also favor longer ranged attacks since a fast vessel has the opportunity to control the range. Also, the armor is only marginally balanced towards the nose---a real nose fighter should have twice the armor of other facings. Since the armor is light, a nose fighter is iffy---it can come in do some damage, and then evaporate. Side arcs make more sense for keeping fire on target at range.
Freya: NAC/25 and NAC/20 is a logistical miss.
Khepri: A design with real potential, but I'd personally consider dropping the LF-battery and capital weapons in favor of 6 dropcollars and at least doubling the ASF complement. Some of the ASF complement might also be converted to smallcraft.
Granite: NAC/20s are generally quite a bit better than NAC/10s. The LF battery makes it a pretty expensive front-line combatant (=semi-expendable).
Argonaut: A decent design.
Juno: Hideously expensive given the force implied due to LF+drop collar multipliers. You might want to pick one or the other and doubling the number of carriers in the fleet. I'm also skeptical about naval weapons on carriers. Dropping them in favor of a 5/8 move smells like a win to me.
Mythic: This design can't figure out if it's a nose fighter or a broadside fighter. Picking one and arranging weapons to suite will make it stronger.
Admiral Shulte: Weapons as a broadside fighter and a armor more like a nose fighter. Otherwise solid modulo concerns about dropcollars on walls.
Olympus: If there aren't enough qualified pilots, consider drone warfare or robotic craft since 108+36 is actually kind of small. I'd also favor a 5/8 on a carrier. I'm not sure the LF-battery is worth it, but this is less crazy than on the Juno since it's a bigger carrier.
Athos: Another nose-or-broadside fighter which may be stronger if you make a choice. I'm also skeptical about the weapon choice. NL35 is generally dominated by NL45 or NL55 since those go to extreme range and NAC35 doesn't seem worth it rangewise compared to NAC20.
Perdition: I'm skeptical about the all-aspect combat as you can tell. There's no need for that unless your plan is to be in the middle of an enemy fleet.
Valiant: I'd be tempted to get speed up to 5/8 at a minimum. I'm also not sure you should have it in use as a carrier and an assault dropship.
Swift: An interesting design! An all-EO light fighter. You might consider a drone version.
Quillon: Medium fighters have a disadvantage of low SI which makes thrust at 5.5g at substantial risk of structural damage which can cascade towards destruction. Given that, I'd prefer 90 ton 6/9 design or a 100 ton 5/8 design which is cheaper and provides more payload.
Undertaker: You can increase the close range damage by adding a blanket of small lasers and/or machine guns.
Dunkirk: Looks good. It might be better at a 7/11 which would provide lots of overtake for a dynamic mission.
Scarab: Great weapons loadout, but it will work better if concentrated in a nose arc. Personally, ships like this on a 7/11 profile are my go-to as an alternative to assault dropships which are absurdly expensive and tend towards fragility.
Vigilant: A super useful role. I'd quibble with the weapons loadout (see the
Interdictor for a meaner version somewhere between Scarab and Vigilant in role), but the role is a definite win to support even with this weapons loadout.
Vertigo: Only 9 fighters? And only 4/6? At the cost of a Vengeance? I'd suggest upping the speed, stripping cost-sink weapons, and improving the fighter load.
Voodoo: ... I'd be tempted to ditch it in favor of an improved Vertigo loaded with a heavy drone fighter sporting 6 ASMs in an internal bomb bay.
Varg: One Varg or a Vertigo with Smallcraft bays loaded with Scarabs? I'd probably bet on the Scarabs, particularly if their weapons are aligned nose-first.
Virtue: It's hard to argue with cargo capacity, except in that you want more.
Vigor: not much different from Virtue.
Casemate: Very expensive, presumably due to the pressurized repair bay. You could stick the pressurized repair bay on a 100kton jumpship achieving some strategic mobility and save on the cost.
Anchorage: Incredibly expensive. It's better to have a yardship pricewise and benefit from the mobility.
Causeway: To heavily armed and armored for a civilian design, but the cargo load is a significant step up.
Carbide: Quite mean, but for the price you can buy quite a few Scarabs and their carrier.
Carnage: Still looking at ASMs on drone fighters as a better pain delivery mechanism.
Cyclone: Potentially interesting concept, but the standard weapons are perhaps better placed on a fighter by cost and effectiveness.
Broken Arrow: No one complain that you aren't taking full advantage of a drop collar. I'd prefer aft weapons forward to double the damage. I'm also not sure this is worth the price, but it would be an impressive beast to send down a jump circuit.
Clairvoyance: Good---an Anchorage replacement. I'm not sure you need a 4/6 move though---lots of cargo/factory space can be found by reducing it to 1/2 which is fast enough in the sorts of permissive environments where you would want to deploy this. Keep in mind that you can't thrust beyond station keeping while something is in the pressurized repair bay.
Heron: a high capacity freight design with an inexplicably heavy armor/armament. Civilian designs should shave prices more?
Heliios: just a Heron variant.
