Dreadnought or Mothership (RAR!)

[Simon_Jester]

So, to be clear, that means that the superdupertransturboships can make longer hyperspace jumps, but do not have higher average speed, and will be trapped in sidereal space for longer after making a jump?

Also... what is actually stopping someone from building a gigantic ship as it is? You said that the new innovative FTL drive made gigantic ships more efficient, but you didn't say it made them possible.

[Zor]

So, to be clear, that means that the superdupertransturboships can make longer hyperspace jumps,

Yes.

but do not have higher average speed,

Yes.

and will be trapped in sidereal space for longer after making a jump?

No. It will take as long to recover after a jump as a normal warship. It does mean that there is 50% less dead time in a 10 ly journey.

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

I thought you said "which will take about as long" as the 54 hour hyperspace jump in the context of the supership's performance...

[Zor]

I thought you said "which will take about as long" as the 54 hour hyperspace jump in the context of the supership's performance...

Yeah, should have worded that better. Sorry.

Zor

[Tribble]

IMO the best use of the Dreadnought is to use it as a decoy. Let their intelligence services gather info about the new tech, and let it slip that I intend to shift production over to Dreadnoughts. To make it look like a serious effort, whip up a few fake shipyards and have them "produce" some fake ships. With any luck my enemies will switch over their production to Dreadnoughts while I maintain normal shipbuilding, and I'll launch my attack when they are right in the middle of production. And/or they might try to launch a pre-emptive strike against my "dreadnoughts," and I ambush whatever fleets they send. For added effect, I could fill my fake dreadnoughts with explosives, and when their fleets gets into range I blow the them up and hopefully take a good chunk of their fleet in the process.

Or maybe my fake Dreadnoughts would use the tech and become giant missiles / fireships which I launch at some fleets and/or major installations. Provided they cause more damage than it cost to build them, it'd be a win for me. Plus, I'd make sure the enemy believes that they are fully functioning Dreadnoughts, to hopefully cause some panic and make them shift their strategies in a way that I could exploit.

I certainly wouldn't win the war via that kind of trickery and it'd only likely to be successful at the beginning of a conflict, but I might cause just enough chaos and confusion to win a couple of key early battles to tip the scales in my favour.

[Simon_Jester]

Re: Zor:

In that case, it sounds as though the supership is faster than a conventional fleet over long distances (not sure of exact speed, may have missed some information). On the other hand its speed advantage is limited- it's not like it can magically teleport instantly into the heart of enemy space, compared to normal ships that would take months of flying to get there.

IMO the best use of the Dreadnought is to use it as a decoy. Let their intelligence services gather info about the new tech, and let it slip that I intend to shift production over to Dreadnoughts. To make it look like a serious effort, whip up a few fake shipyards and have them "produce" some fake ships. With any luck my enemies will switch over their production to Dreadnoughts while I maintain normal shipbuilding, and I'll launch my attack when they are right in the middle of production. And/or they might try to launch a pre-emptive strike against my "dreadnoughts," and I ambush whatever fleets they send. For added effect, I could fill my fake dreadnoughts with explosives, and when their fleets gets into range I blow the them up and hopefully take a good chunk of their fleet in the process. Or maybe my fake Dreadnoughts would use the tech and become giant fire ships which I launch at some fleets and/or major installations. Provided they cause more damage than it cost to build them, it'd be a win for me. Plus, I'd make sure the enemy believes that they are fully functioning Dreadnoughts, to hopefully cause some panic and make them shift their strategies in a way that I could exploit...

Note that the enemy does not possess the advanced FTL drive technology that gives you an incentive to build supertransturboships. However, so far I haven't seen any reason to think that you couldn't just build a ship with a normal FTL drive, which just happens to be massively, stupidly big.

[Tribble]

Re: Zor:

In that case, it sounds as though the supership is faster than a conventional fleet over long distances (not sure of exact speed, may have missed some information). On the other hand its speed advantage is limited- it's not like it can magically teleport instantly into the heart of enemy space, compared to normal ships that would take months of flying to get there.

IMO the best use of the Dreadnought is to use it as a decoy. Let their intelligence services gather info about the new tech, and let it slip that I intend to shift production over to Dreadnoughts. To make it look like a serious effort, whip up a few fake shipyards and have them "produce" some fake ships. With any luck my enemies will switch over their production to Dreadnoughts while I maintain normal shipbuilding, and I'll launch my attack when they are right in the middle of production. And/or they might try to launch a pre-emptive strike against my "dreadnoughts," and I ambush whatever fleets they send. For added effect, I could fill my fake dreadnoughts with explosives, and when their fleets gets into range I blow the them up and hopefully take a good chunk of their fleet in the process. Or maybe my fake Dreadnoughts would use the tech and become giant fire ships which I launch at some fleets and/or major installations. Provided they cause more damage than it cost to build them, it'd be a win for me. Plus, I'd make sure the enemy believes that they are fully functioning Dreadnoughts, to hopefully cause some panic and make them shift their strategies in a way that I could exploit...

Note that the enemy does not possess the advanced FTL drive technology that gives you an incentive to build supertransturboships. However, so far I haven't seen any reason to think that you couldn't just build a ship with a normal FTL drive, which just happens to be massively, stupidly big.

Which is why I'd leak the tech - I don't intend to use it (except perhaps for my fake dreadnoughts since that'd help them reach their destination) but hopefully my opponents will, or at least I might be able to trick them into launching a pre-emptive attack which I could take advantage of. Either way it's a win for me.

[Eternal_Freedom]

@Simon: You make good points, but I think you missed the part where I said I would send my Dreadnought out on a pre-emptive strike aimed at their capital world and/or their primary fleet base and/or their largest shipyards. The capital world is probably the most attractive target: it will contain enemy political and military leaders, will be heavily defended (more enemy ships to be destroyed, more psychological shock to the enemy when it falls etc) and it is a world the enemy can't really afford to let me occupy for long, so they will have to bring in reinforcements that the Dreadnought can then immolate.

Thus, when the war proper begins, I have my Dreadnought sitting over their capital world, a reasonable chunk of their fleet and industry in ruins and an intact fleet defending my own worlds.

[Zor]

Re: Zor:

In that case, it sounds as though the supership is faster than a conventional fleet over long distances (not sure of exact speed, may have missed some information).

Correct.

Being completely lazy minimalist:

100 Battleships - 150,000 - 400,000 Crew
1000 Cruisers - 600,000 - 1,500,000 Crew
10000 Frigates - 800,000 - 2,500,000 Crew
10000 Corvettes - 400,000 - 800,000 Crew

Total:

21,100 Ships - 1,950,000 - 5,200,000 Crew

You forgot the Destroyers.

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

@Simon: You make good points, but I think you missed the part where I said I would send my Dreadnought out on a pre-emptive strike aimed at their capital world and/or their primary fleet base and/or their largest shipyards. The capital world is probably the most attractive target: it will contain enemy political and military leaders, will be heavily defended (more enemy ships to be destroyed, more psychological shock to the enemy when it falls etc) and it is a world the enemy can't really afford to let me occupy for long, so they will have to bring in reinforcements that the Dreadnought can then immolate.

Thus, when the war proper begins, I have my Dreadnought sitting over their capital world, a reasonable chunk of their fleet and industry in ruins and an intact fleet defending my own worlds.

Your enemies are a tripartite alliance, and it is... rather unclear how fast interstellar communications are in this setting.

IF your enemy reacts 'correctly' to the loss of one of their three capitals, this works out well for you. If they don't... well, your dreadnought can go on a highly localized rampage deep inside their space, but that may or may not stop them from grinding up your conventional fleets.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmm...I wonder if it is possible to share the new technology and ship designs with my two allies? Convince them to each build a supership, say two Dreadnoughts and a Mothership to support them. Send them off to conquer one of the enemy powers at a time.

[PREDATOR490]

The limiting factor on the either of these things is how sustainable they are.

The Mothership can potentially keep going and produce until resources run out - Unless they are going to be cranking out drones then the crew requirements are going to become an increasing problem since the new ships need to be crewed and logistically organised.

The Dreadnought can potentially decimate anything until it runs out of fuel / ammo etc. Unless it is going to be coming home to rearm then the only way to keep it going is for non-super ships to be running a supply line.

This situation really comes down to Quantity vs. Quality between the two ships. Either one will drastically change the way the fleet operates and how a campaign would be conducted.

I would expect the Mothership to force a redesign of ships to take advantage of improved logistics. Possibly changing ship focus to be based on swarm tactics.
In theory, the Mothership could be geared towards making suicide drones ships or swarm enemies to death with replaceable losses.


One major issue that affects the choice is the political situation.

If after 5 years the enemy will 100% attack without any chance of avoiding it - Going with the Dreadnought makes sense since it will bring the biggest amount of firepower to the table straight out the dock. The mothership will need to be built AND be provided with time to produce new forces.
Every moment after the Dreadnought leaves the dock without a war to fight leaves it being an unused deterrent.
Every moment after the Mothership leaves the dock it can be producing new ships and aiding the logistics of the existing fleet.

If the war is expected to take 5+ years to kick off with potential to use diplomacy to lengthen it - Taking a chance on using the time to build two of these big ships makes sense. Although that just makes this even more amusing debating which should be built first or if two of one is better than one of each.

[Purple]

Honestly what I'd love to see is a Dreadnaught fitted with just a tiny bit of the carriers production facilities. Just enough to extract its own fuel and ammo from the wreckage of its enemies. At that point only food becomes a problem.

[Tribble]

Don't forget the shipyards. You'd need to construct new ones since either ship is far larger than any ship previously constructed, and it's highly unlikely that existing shipyards would be able to build one. Just building the new shipyards to build these new ships could take several years.

[Purple]

I meant from an operational standpoint. An infinite range dreadnaught would pretty much be the ultimate terror weapon.

[Zeropoint]

Going with the Dreadnought makes sense since it will bring the biggest amount of firepower to the table straight out the dock.

Are we sure about that? I strongly suspect that a bunch of more reasonable sized ships would get you more firepower for the same resource and time input.

[Tribble]

Also ships that big wouldn't be manoeuvrable, which would allow me to scale up the size of weapons I could use against them. I doubt the Dreadnought would fare well against ship-sized missiles ramming it en masse. As long as the cost of the missiles needed to take down a Dreadnought is less than the cost of building and operating a Dreadnought, I win. Same with the Mothership, which would be easier to take out. Plus I'd have the advantage of being able to use existing shipyards to build said missiles, since they are basically just ships filled with explosives instead of equipment.

[gigabytelord]

What about the all to human "cold war" or "weapons race" outcome? If the enemy finds out that you're building a new class of super-capital ship they might decide to match you super-capital for super-capital even if they do have a FTL speed disadvantage. As far as we know the new FTL tech doesn't effect weapons or defensive tech which means that they're technically just as effective as they were before the new invention, unless one side has a significant tech advantage over any other. This means that the time between now and the all to eventual war could drag out for decades as both sides build ever larger and more powerful super-capitals, even going so far as to build entire fleets around formal walls of battle that consist of purely super-caps which in the end could lead to a long, bloody, grinding war instead of a quick clean victory for any side in particular.

Or upon hearing that you're building some new weapon the enemy could just decide to cut their possible loses and launch an all out attack as soon as news of the project leaks though.

Historically speaking these two scenarios are far more likely and have detailed historical precedent.

All that being said it's clear that this is a defensive war and so I would build a mothership first while simultaneously constructing new super-cap ships yard and I would make sure to build them deep inside my space. Once the war starts I will wait and see what kind of attack pattern emerges. Will they launch a number of probing attacks first? If so I'll use this time to thicken fixed defenses in frontier systems so that once the first real attack come I can try to inflict superior loses on them even if I lose a few of those systems in the process this will leave me with a, hopefully, eventual tonnage advantage.

If they attack en mass right off the bat then I will simply abandon all of the systems in the enemies' path destroying every last piece of equipment that could be useful to the enemy. Stations, ship yards, refueling facilities everything that could be useful would be destroyed and I would retreat further and further into my territories all the while concentrating my force further and further until their supply lines are near snapping (I'm utilizing the inherent FTL limitations here). Then I would launch a multi pronged attack on the now, again hopefully, over burdened enemy fleet and either destroy them completely or force surrender. The mothership would be used to get basic interstellar services back up and running on my recaptured planets.

I would like to state that "The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle." (I'm a sucker for good quotes)

[Sky Captain]

A lot depends on how stuff scales in this setting. Are there offensive and/or defensive weapon systems that while effective are too large to put on normal battleships For example some kind of xray or gamma ray laser systems or monster particle canon that would give Dreadnought ability to destroy large number of smaller enemy ships while they are out of their effective range. How much offensive power Dreadnought represents compared to offensive power obtainable if resources used to build Dreadnought were used to just churn out more existing ship designs. Dreadnought may require far less crew than hundreds of smaller ships built using the same resources.
Essentially to consider building dreadnought it must be able to provide some new capability that can't be provided by large numbers of smaller ships. If Dreadnought is just huge hull with tons of battleship scale weapons strapped on then hundreds of extra battleships built using the same resources will be more effective.

I think Mothership may not be that useful since it most likely duplicates already existing capability provided by large numbers of smaller ships. With travel times so long some kind of factory and repair ships using local resources are a must have assets otherwise fleets couldn't operate for years away from base.

[Starglider]

The defensive shields make a big difference vs a huge warship in a more hard sci-fi setting. Without sheilds, the dreadnought may wipe the floor with smaller groups of enemies, but it is going to take incremental damage requiring constant repairs. Any lucky hits taking out its engines may render it a sitting duck, particularly if ambushed.

However with defensive shields much stronger than a conventional ship, the dreadnought can take out flotillas of enemy capships while taking no damage at all. If it finds itself in serious trouble, the overpowered shields will buy time to power up the hyperdrive and retreat. The enemy has no hope of wearing it down through attrition and is forced to mass enough ships to overpower it; probably a truly huge force since it has to batter down the dreadnought's sheilds fast enough to prevent it simply escaping the battle.

[Simon_Jester]

Although this depends on how shields work. There may be certain types of munitions that penetrate shields. Or shields may probabilistically fail to stop all attacks- say, they have to 'flicker' on and off. Or shields may exhibit "bleedthrough," slowing and diffusing attacks without blocking them entirely. Or it may be that the energy and momentum deposited on the shields is transferred to the shield generators, which can be knocked off their mountings or overheated under sustained fire.

If shields work like hit points in a video game, of course, such that the shield stops all incoming fire perfectly and without any adverse effect on the shielded object, until it absorbs one hit too many and suddenly stops working altogether...

In that case, your analysis is entirely correct.

Incidentally, if shields are nearly 100% reliable, it greatly reduces the incentive to armor the ship's hull, since armor adds major mass penalties and imposes design challenges when mounting systems on the hull. If so, I might actually design this dreadnought with little or no more armor than a conventional capital ship, or bury the armor inside an ablative outer layer of hull that contains weapons. Basically, each square meter of the hull is precious in such a large ship, while cubic meters of the interior are cheap. Armor plating requires me to make sacrifices in what I can put on the hull (because I can't have too many holes or gaps in the armor belt if it is to be effective), whereas shields are mostly a question of building lots of power plants in the interior of the hull where there is plenty of room.

[Corvus 501]

Mothership. I now have the biggest fleet tender this side of the galactic core. My campaigns are now solely restricted by personal and heavy capital ship numbers, not to mention the inherent advantage that the ability to build forward bases holds.

[Sky Captain]

Incidentally, if shields are nearly 100% reliable, it greatly reduces the incentive to armor the ship's hull, since armor adds major mass penalties and imposes design challenges when mounting systems on the hull. If so, I might actually design this dreadnought with little or no more armor than a conventional capital ship, or bury the armor inside an ablative outer layer of hull that contains weapons. Basically, each square meter of the hull is precious in such a large ship, while cubic meters of the interior are cheap. Armor plating requires me to make sacrifices in what I can put on the hull (because I can't have too many holes or gaps in the armor belt if it is to be effective), whereas shields are mostly a question of building lots of power plants in the interior of the hull where there is plenty of room.

Extreme example would be warship with no armored hull at all, just skeletal frame where power plants, engines, weapons, shield generators and crew modules are bolted on. If shields represent far more stronger defense than any feasible armor then why have any armor at all if in case shields fail from overwhelming attack armor would be destroyed immediately anyway. Use saved mass to add more redundant power plants, shield generators. more powerful weapons and engines. Repairs and upgrades also would be easier when modules containing broken or outdated system can be easily replaced without massive armor getting in the way.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, there are engineering reasons to want a hull of respectable size and strength. The hull needs to enclose the entire volume of the ship, and just making it sturdy enough to withstand the immense forces generated by the ship's engines would mandate that it be pretty darn strong. Even if not intentionally 'armored,' given the sheer size of the superduperturbodreadnought, the hull is probably strong enough that it would take a megaton-range weapon to penetrate and inflict meaningful interior damage.

And that's got advantages, among them that the ship won't always have her shields up.

[Sky Captain]

To be fair, there are engineering reasons to want a hull of respectable size and strength. The hull needs to enclose the entire volume of the ship, and just making it sturdy enough to withstand the immense forces generated by the ship's engines would mandate that it be pretty darn strong. Even if not intentionally 'armored,' given the sheer size of the superduperturbodreadnought, the hull is probably strong enough that it would take a megaton-range weapon to penetrate and inflict meaningful interior damage.

And that's got advantages, among them that the ship won't always have her shields up.

Wouldn't some kind of truss frame structure be stronger ton per ton? At least various real life long range crewed spacecraft designs where every kilogram counts usually have some kind of truss where everything is attached and most stuff that don't have to be within pressurized crew module are just bolted to the truss.

If very strong and reliable shields are invented then it may be tempting to build warships with similar design to achieve maximum performance. if it takes multiple simultaneous hits from high end gigaton range weapons to overload shields then once shields are gone ship would be vaporized instantly armor or not unless ship is moon sized or made from some sci fi materials orders of magnitudes stronger than anything we can even dream of.