NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm trying to build a FT fleet. what kind of ships should I have?

Depends, are you looking for a warships, a scienceships, explorationships or a combination of the three?

all three

Pretty much the same as MT vessels: patrol boats, cruisers, capital ships, etc. And make sure you have the standard assortment of fighters, too. If you don't want to bother with designing your own ships, you can try a storefront, such as my own Pale Rider Arms. (http://s6.invisionfree.com/International_Mall/index.php?showforum=128)

The way I do my navy, at least my miltary navy, is this. For every one big ship, I have three of the next smaller class under it. Ie: one Battleship, has frigates escort, they in turn have three cruisers, who have 3 corvettes.
The classes of Warships I use are in order from big to small are
SuperDreadnaught
Dreadnaught
Battleship
Frigate
Cruiser
Corvette

For exploration, I use reams of scoutships, one man, moderately armed, high sensor ships that operate out of the battleships and above.

For science, I've taken ships hull and retrofitted them to be full of sciencey stuff, like chemical testing labs, bioscience facilties and similar.

I usually avoid larger ships, using mostly large numbers of medium sized ships.
My FT puppet fleets are arrayed like this

4 Battleships (Medium to heavy ship mostly missiles with a goodly number of beam and exotic weapons, equivalent to a modernized Iowa Battleship in a comparison between FT and MT ships)
8-16 Destroyers (equivalent to modern destroyers, again mostly missiles, less
16-32 Carriers (Equivalent to a light carrier, probably carries only about forty fighters
32-64 cruisers (equivalent to modern light cruisers, armed with mostly exotic/beam weapons, scattering of missiles)

all of my ships larger than a carrier also carry 12 fighters and my smaller ships usually carry about 4 fighters

My ship size (warships) is this, from largest to smallest:

Supermonitor
Monitor/Supercarrier
Superdreadnaught/Fleet Carrier
Supertransport
Dreadnaght/Carrier
Battlecruiser/Assault Carrier
Supercruiser/Light Carrier
Troop Transport
Light Cruiser
Destroyer


The carriers are built off of those respective hulls (IE a fleet carrier is a Dreadnaught hull).

I have one supermonitor, six Monitors, and three Supercarriers. Anything larger than a Superdreadnaught (which is usualy around 1-3 kilometers long) should be used sparringly.

Let's put it this way, There are so many uber large, and oh so uber powerful dreadnoughts of death, that making smaller ships might even be more advisable than making an uber ship of your own.

My fleets typically rely on the fewest and most advanced types of ships as possible. However, these ships are multi-purpose to the extreme, so I don't suffer as much as one might think from this scheme. Recently, I've been set on making some more specialized ships, but those aren't slated to be released for a little while.

EDIT: I feel that I should note, if you're just starting out, don't expect to be able to take on everybody from the start. I recommend that you design your own ships as you have the best idea on what kind of ship will best suit your purposes. It doesn't have to be perfect, and like everything else that gets released here, if you're willing to change things around, then you'll have plenty of help with the design of your ship.

I use preconceived technology -- Star Wars Imperial stuff. Looks nice, clean and uniform, and has plenty of specs already written up for you.

Korgarein is one of the nations that prefers to use their own technology designs. And I would recommend doing the same, but there are many others out there that would sell you currently designed vessels such as; Star wars, Star trek, Homeworld, Warhammer 40K, etc... etc.. and they work quite well too. As many have stated, it is up to you, what you like, and what you think would best suit your perposes as well as how you wish to RP your nation on NS.

Here is a link to my technology and factbook if you would like to see and example.

Korgarein Factbook and Technology Website (http://webpages.charter.net/durst95/korgarein%20main%20page.htm)

Most importantly have fun, and good luck
Korgarein

Also you might want to see if you can develop a (pseudo-)scientific explaination for how things work. For example, I repeatedly see people claiming teraton yields for simple fusion bombs, even teraton-per-second output for fusion reactors. On the other hand, they tend to put small numbers of fighters on their ships, when they could realistically hold hundreds of thousands.

On the other hand, the wildly varying claims of capabilities, along with the need for equanimity, means that it pays to ignore technical readouts, and simply do something along the lines of "it's a small, fast, cheap fighter". And don't squabble about what technology does what. If your Proton Beam does a lot of damage, but doesn't penetrate shields, don't bother complaining when someone comes along and says that his proton beams penetrate shields. You could say that the technical execution was different for a different effect, but this is plain balderdash because a proton beam is a proton beam. The point is that it works like it's claimed to work, so long as the claim isn't overly extravagant.

[/rant]

watch out when using SW Imperial tech, and don't use the official stats because they either could never work, contadict each other, or contradict the comparitive sizes seen in the movies, it can be very frustreating, although the ships are very cool, just get fan stats because the fans put more thought and research in while the LucasFilm people just started throwing numbers around.

Yes, but humorously, the fan stats are wrong, while everything Lucas says is automatically canon truth.

Bump

What kind of weapons are realistic for a FT ship?

If you want near future, as in only been in deep space for a short while, stick to missles and lasers, if you want old future, you can have missles, lasers, plasma cannons, gravity weapons, nova bombs(from Andromeda), basically anything you can imagine.

You don't have to got to either extreme (wholly self-designed or wholly TV-tech). For my Toreador colony vessel (currently unknown specifications -- to everyone save for them, anyway) I'm going off an image of a Peacekeeper Command Carrier from Farscape. That's mainly because A) It's of a similar design to what I had in my head anyway, so there's no point re-inventing the wheel, and B) Because I can't draw to save my life, and I can't 3D-model to save anybody's life, so stealing an image is the only option.

But the technology contained within is not Farscape technology. It is of my own invention, designed specifically to suit the moods and mannerisms of the Toreador more than anything else. This way I get the ship design I want (roughly), and yet still have creative licence rather than being bound to the TV statistics (I don't actually think there are any...).

I was think mostly railguns. what kind of speed is good for FT ships?

Rail guns are acceptable, as to speed again, if your near future, you shouldn't have more than .05c for sublight and maybe a lightyear a minute for FTL, thought if you are having a race that has been in space a time, than maybe up to .9c for sublight and hundreds or more, lightyears a minute.

Realize this though, that what you fire out of a railgun continues to go in that direction until it hits something. A laser dissipates, same with plasma. Also, invest in electromagnetic weapons insetead of gravity weapons... electromagnetism is 42 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, but it's 36 orders of magnitude weaker than strong nuclear force(nukes).

Another thing NEVER accidently deorbit a space station onto Earth ;)

I was going to use magnetic based weapons

What kind of powersource is better fusion, AM or possible ZPE

Out of the AM/fusion it's dependent on old future or new future, as I'm not sure what SPE stands for I can't say,
If new future, Fusion
If old future, AM

I prefer Matter-Antimatter Annihilation reactors myself, as they don't rely on pulling energy out of your ass (a la Zero Point Energy) and have a 100% conversion rate for matter-to-energy. That and you can jettison the reactor and use it as a big-ass bomb.

yeah it should have be ZPE and it stands for Zero Point Energy like Otagia said

The problem with matter/antimatter is that if you can't eject it when your ship is damaged it turns into a "big-ass bomb" inside your ship. This is especially bad when a single shit does this as there is no time to eject the core, this would be frequent in ships that sustain moderate battle damage in the core area and then receive a crippling blow in th same area. While this won't degrade combat performance that much if you build the ships well it will cause a very low survival rate for damaged ships and crews.

thats true