[Spaceships] Is this the ultimate space fighter?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Fair enough, and your SM+6 attack craft could make sense, depending on whether a carrier can stay out of reach of attackers. One advantage of larger fighters is that they can launch bigger missile salvos and have larger point-defence batteries.

Ship size mostly doesn't affect the number of launchers / PD turrets you can have, and it's mostly number that matters. Although small ships may need to keep formation to maximize PD effectiveness, whereas a large ship doesn't have to worry about being in formation with itself.

BTW, one thing I notice is that missiles get comparatively weaker as ships get bigger - their damage scale up more slowly than that of beams and more slowly than DR does. A big ship can become resistant to 'low' velocity missiles, while a small ship can't. This may encourage the building of two sizes of ship - very small, and very large, with not much in the way of mid-sized combat vessels.

Very few ships can withstand a direct hit from a 25 kiloton nuke.

EDIT: Looking over the rocket choices, I assume you wrote off Antimatter Thermal Rockets using water for reaction mass as being too expensive to supply? Two such rockets and six systems of fuel gives 4.32 mps of delta-vee, 0.54 mps more than your design (one more turn of manoeuvring). The choices for reasonable acceleration and decent duration are really limited at TL9 and are no better at TL10. :(

Beyond logistical difficulties, antimatter fuel is volatile, and is going to make you more vulnerable to beam attacks, particularly from UV laser fighters with advantaged status. In the future I may do detailed simulations to quantify how much more vulnerable it makes you, but it's low down on the priority list. Another problem is that if you use the exposed radiators design switch, all but high-thrust antimatter thermal rockets have exposed radiators, which again is a vulnerability vs. beam attacks, especially from that UV laser with advantaged status.

By the way, unless you must have five systems of armour forward, swapping that cargo hold for another missile launcher gives the pilot the option of saving ammo or firing more shots to increase hit chances/number or hits (though it's possibly not very effective doing so given you need to double the number of missile fired to get +1 hit). Actually... spinal or fixed mounts don't seem to improve missile (or gun) hits chances, so there's no need to mount the missile launchers in the forward hull section - they can be turrets in the centre section.

Several things to note: fixed mounts do give a +2 to hit. Second, that first +1 bonus from RoF requires a five-shot salvo. Third, in 3-minute rounds, you can already fire up to ten missiles in one round.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Ship size mostly doesn't affect the number of launchers / PD turrets you can have, and it's mostly number that matters. Although small ships may need to keep formation to maximize PD effectiveness, whereas a large ship doesn't have to worry about being in formation with itself.

It does if you're concerned about beams from small ships, because you need fewer armour systems to protect against them.

Very few ships can withstand a direct hit from a 25 kiloton nuke.

We were talking proximity bursts from conventional missiles a moment ago. It's true that without house rules a very large ship can't mount enough PD to stop a serious attack with nukes from waves of fighters, though.

Beyond logistical difficulties, antimatter fuel is volatile, and is going to make you more vulnerable to beam attacks, particularly from UV laser fighters with advantaged status. In the future I may do detailed simulations to quantify how much more vulnerable it makes you, but it's low down on the priority list.

Antimatter-catalysed fuel doesn't though, and the missile launcher is volatile already, though I'm guessing that's why you're putting it in the front section with all the armour. However, the cargo hold is still vulnerable if you're using it to hold reloads.

Edit: This post wasn't supposed to be posted with the last part still attached and unanswered.

Several things to note: fixed mounts do give a +2 to hit. Second, that first +1 bonus from RoF requires a five-shot salvo. Third, in 3-minute rounds, you can already fire up to ten missiles in one round.

Firstly, for some reason I read the 1-minute RoF as being the 3-minute one, sorry about that.

Secondly, the missile launcher only hold 5 shots, so a higher rate of fire can only be achieved with more launchers.

Thirdly, while the weapon system section mentions a +2 to hit for fixed and spinal mounts, and it's mentioned as a modifier for beam attacks on p58, the list for ballistic attacks on p.60 does not mention it (or the penalty for the attacker being under 0HP, for that matter). I'm not sure it makes sense for missiles.

Upon consideration, I think allowing the -1 for multi-tasking is not something I'd do, as it further advantages small vessels, by reducing one of their disadvantages - having to accept a penalty if the ship tries much, or find room for more crew.

Another thing - I think thinking too hard about all this will lead to madness as inconsistencies drive one round the bend. For example, proximity attacks can only hit with 10 objects, no matter how perfect and easy the attack, yet a +4 to hit implies about 20 projectiles. Also, they do the same damage as the missile hitting whilst intact, which implies one hell of a burster charge. Then there are the oddities, like proximity fragments being no worse vs hardened armour than normal hits, and thus you being better off with the less penetrating attack against a target with expensive high-grade (i.e. hardened) armour, which seems backwards.

[Refplace]

What about external drop tanks for longer range flights or faster intercepts?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Antimatter-catalysed fuel doesn't though, and the missile launcher is volatile already, though I'm guessing that's why you're putting it in the front section with all the armour. However, the cargo hold is still vulnerable if you're using it to hold reloads.

Gah, I totally misread the rule on which systems are volatile.

As for the launcher, it's true, it's a volatile system, but if it's disabled the fighter is mission-killed anyway. Meanwhile, using a cargo holder for extra shots rather than a second launcher lets the cargo hold be placed in a [Core] system, which reduces the risk.

Unrelated, I owe you an apology for dismissing you when you stuck up for the effectiveness of ECM. I had the sign of the penalty for relative velocity reversed in my code, which had the side effect of nerfing ECM (because ECM works best if the probability of a successful attack is already low). The conclusions in the original post will need substantial revisions.

[Michael Thayne]

One other thing: given radiators can be retracted for 30 minutes at a time, exposed radiators really don't matter for rockets with less than 30 minutes burn endurance. So even if an antimatter thermal rocket with water reaction mass (but not high-thrust) needs exposed radiators by the letter of the rules, they'll never actually matter.

[Michael Thayne]

Here's a revised design for a TL9 fighter. In terms of cost-effectiveness, I think it's generally going to be at least slightly better than any beam design, and might be substantially more cost effective if per-ship costs not reflected in the design system are high (e.g. cost of training pilots; cost of boosters and drop tanks, if used; cost of carriers and other craft needed to make fighters function effectively). It's a bit goofy-looking, having only front armor and not being armored from any other direction. This may be realistic, though, for a craft designed to fight exclusively at ranges of hundreds and ideally thousands of miles.

Front Hull
[1-2] Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor (Hardened, total dDR 6)
[3] Major Battery (Fixed-mount 16cm launcher)
[4] Defensive ECM
[5-6] Fuel Tanks (0.5 tons antimatter-catalyzed methane providing 0.77 mps delta-V each)
[core] Control Room (C4 computer, comm/sensor 2, and one control station)

Central Hull
[1] Major Battery (30KJ very rapid fire laser)
[2] Fuel Cell (provides one Power Point)
[3] Tactical Array (comm/sensor 4)
[4] Defensive ECM
[5-6] Fuel Tanks (0.5 tons antimatter-catalyzed methane providing 0.77 mps delta-V each)
[core] Cargo Hold (0.5 tons capacity)

Rear Hull
[1-2] Antimatter Thermal Rockets (Methane; 0.28G each)
[3] Defensive ECM
[4-6] Fuel Tanks (0.5 tons antimatter-catalyzed methane providing 0.77 mps delta-V each)

[AlexanderHowl]

So, something like 0.5g?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, something like 0.5g?

Yup.

Useful note on upgrading the above design to TL 10: TL10 beams do pose something of a challenge to the supremacy of missiles. Consider upgrading the armor to as many as three Nanocomposite systems on the front hull.

[Rupert]

I think there's a copy-paste error in your new version's rear hull - it's showing rockets with fuel in them, and fuel tanks with different fuel from all the others.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I think there's a copy-paste error in your new version's rear hull - it's showing rockets with fuel in them, and fuel tanks with different fuel from all the others.

Thanks, fixed it.