Ship design preferences

[nuarbnellaffej]

So hello everyone, I just wanted to start a thread discussing what sort of designs the community likes to create, and bounce around some ideas. I for one like to equip my star bases and space ports with fighter bays for defensive armament. The fighters have nice long ranges, and they just seem more flexible than other weapon systems.

Another thing I like to do is format my fleets with light, missle armed destroyers, and heavily armored rail gun equipped cruisers. Both of these weapon techs are fairly strong early mid game, and I believe they use pretty common resources for construction. I name the destroyer design as the crossbow class destroyer, and the cruiser as the phalanx class cruiser.( I love these names)

Also in game I manually update my main designs and usually do so after a few new techs, the key to that is the use a pen and note pad to keep track of what new components I've researched. For my non essential ship designs, I shift click them all in the list, then hit the auto update.

For hyperdrives, I always go for the equinox hyper drive since speed is more important than efficiency imo. For reactors I usually go for quantum, since it uses Caslon as fuel same as my earlier reactors, anyone go for the others? I know some players like to have multiple fuel types to ensure the most supply, but I like to keep things clean.

How do you guys usually design your Capitol ships? Because I usually end up using carriers along with my older destroyer and cruisers in most games. Area weapons are usually a given I think, and I know some players use hyperspace denial tech to hold enemies in place so you can finish them off.

Please let me know how you more experienced players like to configure things.

[icedude94]

Missiles and phasers for me.

Missiles do good damage at range for taking out shields and phasers just rip through armor and components. The missiles are also a good weapon for boarding actions as they cause reduced damage against armor.

Torpedoes and blasters are really good for close range also. Just don't bother using long range lasers. They do too little damage. I start having hyperdeny on all my fleet vs fleet combat ships. It's crucial in defense to ensure you completely destroy the enemy fleet so they don't warp out and attack another location.

Escorts are specialist ships, usually I use them to kill space monsters like silvermists and the like. Frigates are my normal colony defense ships(automated defense fleet of them in orbit around every colony I own). Destroyers are used in place of frigates on border worlds or around high value targets. Cruisers are my workhorse fleet ships followed by capitals, and carriers. I started using resupply ships as super capitals and fitting super weapons and fleet boosting modules on them.

I put hydrogen reactors on the civilian ships when in the tier 2 phase of the game. If I don't, then the mass purchase orders of freighters that occur in cycles completely rob my main spaceports of all the caslon, leaving my fleets dry.

All exploration ships and stations, private and state, have deep space sensors. I also tend to build a ring of monitering stations in deep space around my territory one sector out, crucial for defending against tougher opponents like the Shakturi with their world destroyers.

Troop transports are also configured for large scale boarding actions.

[railgunlovebites]

I use a missile-railgun setup with fully upgraded fission reactors and fast-jump hyperdrives.

I design my escorts to be super cheap and short-ranged in return for having relativley high firepower usually with rapid-firing railguns only.

My frigates take up a support role and sport tons of point-defence, scanners, and a couple missile batteries. They're fairly well armored but have small amounts of ship-to-ship weapons. They carry alot of point-defence though.

My destroyers are the mainstay of the fleet. They lack point-defence but carry alot of heavy railguns and missiles. They have more armor and shields than my frigates. These are my ship-killing vessels and lack any support equipment like scanners and point-defence.

My cruisers and just upsized versions of my destroyers with support equipment. They have boarding pods, scanners, and point-defence along with a little bit more armor and shields than the destroyers.

I have two designs of capitol ships. The Battlecruiser and the Battleship. Both carry tons of weapons and support equipment. The main difference being the battlecruisers have tons more engines and slightly less armor and shields and are made to keep up with the fleet. The Battleships have tons of shields and armor but move like turtles.

My carriers are pretty similar to cruisers in setup just with fighterbays and less weapons.

Starbases and ports have deep-space scanners. Although I've never tried Iceman's monitoring station idea. I do have "Fleet Anchorages" where I have pretty big stations out in deep-space with tons of gas reserves as back-ups for my fleet.

I design huge well armored troop transports also with bombarding weapons.

Lastly I have my special marine ships. My Spec-Ops units are dubbed "Marines" and put on my Marine ships. These are tricked out destroyers capable of carrying a unit of Marines. I use these as raiding vessels and to soften up planetary defenders. They are really fast and well armed. Although expensive.

So thats how my fleet works. I have a quantity based fleet and have minimal maintenece costs on each since I like to field huge fleets. Then my navies are supplemented with tricked-out special operation ships.

[Ripnstein]

I'm playing with the Unleashed Extended II mod, so components may be different or non-existent in your game.


Escort - Vigil, All Weap, All Weap
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
15 Armour 1 Dmg control 3 Shields
40 Speed 25 Turning
4 Resonant Graviton Beams, 4 Annihilator AutoCannons, 2Sub Space Ion Cannons
1 Target Tracker, 1 ECM

Fleet screener, gets in closes and gets focused while destroying fighters with point defence and screwing with the enemy via ion and grav weapons.

I did have a 2nd escort class that would be on solo patrol at important gas/mineral stations, it kited the enemy around with long range missiles and a hyper deny to keep them there until reinforcements arrived.
I retired it once my hyperdrives/response speed on defence were reliable enough protect them. Also its a pain retrofitting multiple designs of the same class.

Destroyer - Predator, All Weap, All Weap
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 9 Cells
25 Armour, 1 Dmg Control, 5 Shields
45 Speed, 35 Turning
8 Tachyon Torpedo
1 Target Tracker, 1 ECM
1 Stealth Cloak, 1 LR Scanner

Sits in deep space next to a montoring station and attacks tagets of opportunity like gas/mineral stations and undefended spaceports.

Light Cruiser - Sentinel, Standoff, All Weap
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
25 Armour, 2 Dmg control, 5 Shield
38 Speed, 25 Turning
6 Light Mass Driver, 8 Sub Space Missiles,
1 Tractor, 1 Annihilator AutoCannons
1 Target Tracker, 1 ECM

Main fleet ship, majority of my armada is this ship type, does good damage and can take a hit.

Heavy Cruiser - Mandate, Standoff, Standoff
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
40 Armour, 2 Dmg Control, 8 Shield
34 Speed, 25 Turning
8 Heavy Mass Driver, 16 Sub Space Missiles
1 Hyper Deny, 1 Annihilator AutoCannon, 2 Tractor
1 Fleet Targeting, 1 Fleet ECM
1 Area Shield Recharge

Fleet Commanders, my ship captains/fleet admirals sit here, provides shield/tracking/ECM fleet buffs and a bit more firepower and defence than the Sentinel class. Also makes the switch to heavy mass drivers which have better range/speed/efficiency but 1/3 the fire rate.
Stops fleeing enemies with the hyper deny.

Battleship - Ultimatum, Standoff, Standoff
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
60 Armour, 3 Dmg Control, 15 Shield
20 Speed, 15Turn
10 BFG Mass Driver, 25 Gravitic Missiles
1 Gravity Well, 4 Tractor, 3 Annihilator AutoCannons,
1 Target Tracker, 1 ECM

This Behemoth barely sees combat, only built when I have a very tough nut to crack, but crack it does, expensive, slow, FUN.
Weapons change to the BFG mass driver which adds bombard damage and packs a punch, and the Gravitic missiles, 10 second cooldown 133 damage per missile :D
The gravity well projector is a massive version of the hyper deny.
Ship Captains/Admirals also go here

Carrier - Rook, Standoff, Standoff
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
40 Armour, 2 Dmg Control, 10 Shield
20 Speed, 20 Turn
1 Sub Space Missile, 2 Annihilator AutoCannons
7 Fighter Bays - Omega StarBombers (Torpedo)
1 ECM
1 Area Shield Recharge

Standard Carrier, Went torpedos just to have a bit of everything.

Troop - Legion, Point Blank, Point Blank, Invade
Helium Reactor, Torrent Drive, 5 Cells
40 Armour, 1 Dmg Control, 7 Shields
40 Speed, 25 Turn
1 Resonant Graviton Beams, 1 Annihilator AutoCannons
6 Troop Transport, 1 Medbay
1 ECM

Quick, Tanky, give me your colony.

Resupply - Reservoir, Evade, Evade
Fusion Reactor, Torrent Drive, 10 Cells
40Armour, 1 Dmg Control, 10 Shield
18 Speed, 18 Turn
25K Cargo
15 Docking
1ECM

Often Escorted by a small fleet.

Civilian ships (Quantum Reactor - Caslon) equip an area damage weapon.
Explorers(Fusion Reactor - Hydrogen) change into LR scanner ships once the galaxy is explored.
Construction ships (Fusion Reactor) equip the standard stuff along with extractors and a resource scanner.
All bases use Fusion Reactors.

Every colony and some important mining stations get a Flotilla consisting of 3 light cruisers and 1 escort, set to defend system.
Regional capitals get the Flotilla along with a Response Fleet consisting of 1 heavy cruiser, 6 light cruisers and 2 escorts, set to defend system and nearby systems.
Each sector I have interests in get a Response Armada consisting of 1 carrier, 3 heavy cruisers, 12 light carriers and 5 escorts, set to defend sector.
There is also 2 response fleets on standby if a fleet refuels at an inopportune time or that replace a fleet while i'm doing retrofits.
Invasion Fleets consist of 5 troop transports and 2 escorts on manual.
Strike Squadrons consist of 6 Destroyers on manual.
Assault Fleets consist of 2 heavy cruisers, 10 light cruisers and 4 escorts on manual/auto.
War Fleets get some cool name instead like Decisive Judgement and consist of 1-2 Battleships, 4 carriers, 5 heavy cruisers, 15 light cruisers and 10 escorts on manual.

Havn't played around with wormholes yet, they maybe a replacement for hyperdrives or just an addition :)

[nuarbnellaffej]

Awesome overview guys, the only thing that keeps me from making to many class variants is the annoyance with managing different classes of the same hull type. You know the situations where your ships upgrade to the "wrong" variety type etc..

I think for now on I'm gonna put hydrogen reactors for my civilian ships/bases and ports. I have had my fuel stocks disappear in critical war times because of civilian new ship construction and general use.