Solon Class Dreadnought (WIP)

[Mork2]

I never seem to finish one of these behemoths so hopefully a post to update will keep me working on it. It also seems a waste of effort when I don't finish. Either way hopefully some of the systems included will inspire people to add them to their ship designs. I'll add some of the reasoning as I go along.

I have a tendency to focus on systems and worry about how it looks later.

Ship definition: I like the RPG Traveller there has been quite a few versions but I like the definitions of its capital ships.

Battleship: A ship due to its armament and protection, is capable of standing in the line of battle. When a battleship meets any lesser type of ship, its victory is almost guaranteed. When battleships on two sides meet, victory goes to the better armed, better armoured and better directed ship.

Dreadnought: A super battleship designed to be the best possible battleship. The latest, most effective
battleships are designated as dreadnoughts. As their abilities are supplanted by newer construction they get redesignated as battleships.

Solon Class dreadnought meant to be a workhorse. How your systems works defines how the ship is setup. Its not a sleek prototype. Once out of crew area there is large amounts of open space to move around in and fix or update. Approximate length 800m.

Currently, mass of installed systems still under 431k mass hope to be under 500k when finished
Overall view:
Left to right
Engine block (I'm not going to spread the thrusters out I have room but if your trying to take out my engines you can)
Power block / Power Cores (planned hanger area above)
Jump drive
Core area
Shield recharger
Shields
Ion Defence
Forward weapons/systems

Note two bugs are killing full ship functionality at the moment.
1. Wireless connections between entities breaking and needing to be reset. I have put displays saying what each is suppose to be connected to but that doesn't mean you can find it. Also some wireless links are next to each other to make it easy to link.
2. Defensive effects activated by logic. While the controller shows as active with a rightshift the effect doesn't consume power or affect damage inflicted in any way.

Weapons already installed
UNO all slaves and effects on weapons at 100%

Player controlled weapons/support
Planet destroyer Beam/Beam/Punch weapon. 2.52mil damage per tick before punch effect.

Should kill a planet with a single shot. Maybe two if your aim isn't steady.​

Planet destroyer Missile/Beam/Explosive weapon 43.2mil damage.
Main Gun Cannon/Cannon/Explosive x 10 weapon 2400 damage per shot

Array of 10 stacked up behind each other so successive hits impact deeper in.
Combined 240k dps.​

Power supply beam 1.44e/sec
Shield supply beam drains 240k/sec
Salvage array 31 x wide line salvage/cannon

100/100 blocks per beam so each shot will salvage a block
40 shots per second per beam
Minimised lag setup​

all forward major fixed weapons accessible via 4 railed doors

with ion/pierce/punch defence effects controlled wirelessly
two ice crystals near basic rail to dock fixed weapon system makes it easier to spot.​

8 x forward beam/beam/ion AI controlled 90k dps each before ion effect

fully on-board powered​

8 x forward cannon/cannon/stop AI controlled 90k dps each equiv. no actual damage

fully on-board powered
should hopefully stop people from running away on full reverse (might need to change to pull)​

4 x forward cannon/cannon/punch AI controlled 90k dps each

fully on-board powered​

16 x advanced AMS turrets

under max turn speed mass limit
cannon/beam for extra engagement range and a fast long distance shot
cannon/cannon for rapid fire
cannon/missile for a 10 round shotgun to help against massive swarms
advanced armour/shields, small size​

8 x missile/missile/explosive vertical timed launcher pack

missile slave has no linked blocks giving the missile the same speed as normal missiles and only 1 missile per group.
10 separate missiles each timed to fire 0.5 seconds apart, wireless logic 378k damage each
total 80 launchers.
missile doors open/close by firing logic, picture doors open

​

4 x missile/missile/explosive vertical timed launcher pack angled at 45deg 60k damage

with timing and wireless logic trigger 40 launchers total​

Enemy detector to auto fire salvos of missile until turrets reset.

Hotbar control to to start/stop missile salvos.
Hotbar control to disable linked enemy detector.
Entire salvo will fire once started.
If hostiles or hotbar button still active will continue to fire additional salvos every 15seconds.​

forward terrain clearing pulse system 11 focus points

multiple pulse/beam/explosive systems damage
activated by hotbar or area trigger extended out on rail system
area trigger connected via wireless logic can be retracted to allow forward rail docker to work
​

4 x main turrets

almost fully on-board powered
full ion/punch/pierce defenced linked by wireless logic on main assemblies
2 x 405damage vertical missile/beam/explosive main AI
2 x 324k damage vertical offset 45 degrees left/right missile/beam explosive separate AI
2 x cannon/cannon/punch 90k dps each separate AI​

2 x internal traps pulse/beam/explosive 120damage 1 hit kill

hidden, area trigger, armed when player in core room, each end of forward grav tube​

2 x internal defence cannon/overdrive AI controlled

fixed to shoot down core access corridors 1 shot kills
hidden behind armour block so harder to notice​

1 x core room trap pulse/beam/explosive 120damage 1 hit kill

hotbar enabled, default on area trigger
semi hidden light indicator to show its safe to enter green light should be off for safe
1 block area trigger to flip arming system
its setup to let someone enter the core room that arms it
people attempting to enter core room while its being piloted will activate the trap
trap is disarmed when the pilot walks out of core room
if you exit the core and land outside of the core room remember to disable trap before entry
if you have to log out bring ship to stop and log out in core room but not in core so the trap is armed.
tested a lot to get working properly died a lot doing so​

4 x internal defence turrets cannon/overdrive and missile 1 hit kill

Planned weapons
More internal defence weapons

fixed corridor weapons and hanger turret weapons
cannon/overdrive and pulse/beam/explosive systems​

Power and defence systems
100 million shields
1.2million /sec shield recharge
with 60% ion shielding that's equal to 250mil shields and 3.0mil recharge

Main ship power
only 3.4mil e/sec main reactor enough to keep shields up and move with engine.
will overload if the shields are actually recharging as that uses 12million e/sec
main power for combat is supplied by the docked rail power core system
243mil e storage

Power core system
Is made up of 84 individual cores.
Individual core is over 200m in length but only 2 blocks wide.

Due to a bug in power use around 20% of the power supply beam modules aren't currently connected. Which allows the core to function at 80% capacity without draining power.

So I don't have to dock 84 separate cores which is a slow and tedious task I have done many times. I've built a power cell that contain 21 cores each so I just have to spawn 4 of those in and dock those. Comes with wireless logic to link all 21 cores to a common wireless link to activate all of them. Advanced armour and thrusters to move it around. The power supply beams don't hit the power cell but pass through holes to hit the main ship.

Because the wireless logic breaks I have put the wireless links next to each other to make it simple to re-link.

Same thing with the wireless logic from the main ship is next to the power cell link.
All 4 power cells. can be redocked through a planned retractable door.
Here is a picture of the right side bay of two power cells. Top cell is operating and the wireless links on the bottom is broken at the moment but not required.

Designed output is around 60mil e/sec once the power supply beam bug is worked out. Currently only around 40mil e/sec or so.

A lot of the weapons have there own on-board power and most can continue to fire at full rate. Only the player controller weapons really drawn on the main power system.

Defences

The main reason for such a power core is to get the power to weight ratio to make a full ion defence effect at 60% and full perma radar jamming possible.

The radar jammers power use is based on the total mass of the ship including all docked entities. As such I've only used advanced armour over what I consider critical areas. Forward, Rear, sides around core. The rest is basic hull to reduce mass.

The ion defence effect only applies to the entity its on so turrets etc... do not benefit from a ion defence on the main hull. On the other hand you only have to build a system that is big enough for the main hull.
Currently ion defence effect is at 90% max is 60% so I can still add around 50% mass of the main hull and still get full effect.

There is a weakness though with the docked entities a turret not protected by an ion system will be a weak spot to the main ship with an ion system. Hits that hit that turret will take its full damage off the main ship if the hit is transferred. The only way to stop this is to put ion defence on the turret as well. I've tested with 60% ion defence on both the turret and the main ship the hits transferred are reduced by the ion defence.
Assuming both the wireless and defence effect logic activation bugs are sorted I can get around this problem a lot easier.

Core Armour Block
The ship core is surrounded by a docked core armour block made up of atleast 4 layers of advanced hull plus the surrounding corridors are also advanced hull. The entire core armour block also has full pierce and punch through defence activated by wireless logic.

Front defence plate
The front of the ship is covered by another docked armour plate with cut outs for various systems mostly weapons to fire through. The entire plate is a thin full plate of advanced armour including full ion, pierce, punch defence activated by logic. The trick here is that once the main ships shields drop to under 50% no more hits will be transferred to the main ship shields. So most of the 100% ion hits will hit this plate and not have any effect on the main ship shields until the front plate is destroyed. The system blocks are only one deep so it will take many scattered penetrating hits to overheat the front shield plate. Unless an area effect attack hits it.

Auto defence effect activation
When you log in or start the game the defence effects are all turned off. Once the two bugs are fixed this auto system will work. To activate all defensive effects just either start hotbar button or just walk into or out of the core room. Doing either of these things will deactivate the defence effects for less than a second then turn them on.

When taking fire from the front there is a huge mass of docked weapons and the main shield capacitors and rechargers. There is currently a 2.2 system HP damage penalty so only a 1/3 of my system blocks have to be destroyed before overheating. At that point the core area should still be untouched and you can run to either of the two internally docked escape pods. They are deliberately close by. They have a auto-retracting walkway giving 2 block room all around on undock.

Escape Pod features: Black Hull, Perma Radar Jam, Jump Drive, Overdrive, Salvage system, Push and pull cannon (backup tug design), scanner.

Planned defences
Ion defence effect on all large external turrets and large access doors.
Finish outer hull

Other features
Jump drive (May need to adjust size)
Scanner
Core to forward weapons room grav tube
Forward camera display (shields, shieldcap, power, powercap)
Enemy ship detector 3.2x sector range red indicator on forward camera
Enemy missile detector 3.2x sector range orange indicator on forward camera
Wireless logic connections are located next to each other for easy linking
Modular decorative engines

pulse/cannon/push special effect
defensive effects wireless linked
​

Planned other features
Modular docked elevator
Other connecting grav tubes
Living quarters
Salvage sorting system
Automated docking hangers
small salvager, small cloaking runabout, small fighters any other specialist ship that might be useful
Repair system
Drone launcher
Drone design
Multiple drone magazine
A way of removing the power supplied message
Looks like any further pictures will required different posts hit the 10 picture limit.

Bugs required to fix to make this ship better.
T382 so the automatic defence effects can be activated
T340 would allow chained power cores reducing lag
T384 would increase power supply beam efficiency to what its suppose to be
T582 power core lag possibly
T461 planet killer missile won't actually damage a planet

 

[Mork2]

Decided to swap out forward beam/beam volley batteries. I originally wanted to use them to punch lots of hits out at range and not kill my own missiles, if friendly fire on missiles was set. Testing the weapons found that the 120 beam beam weapons on the front was great at producing lag spikes every 15 seconds for 1 second there would be 600 shots. Also beams have horrible armour penetration even with punch. Also due to way those weapons were arranged it was very hard to get to the cores and bobby AIs to fix/reset or check things.

[Obselete]
So I went with 2 replacement modules with 15 cannon/beam/punch each. 24k damage each with punch. Combined between the 2 modules 30 shots every 4 seconds, good range and not so big a lag spike, as well as cutting through armour like butter.
Plus if designed well easier to get to as everything critical can be accessed from the rear as shown below.


Design note for a lot of the bigger modules the rail docker has limited range and the beam aways fires from it. So since I have a lot of long modules with the rail docker on the rear end I place a camera behind it facing backwards to make it easier to aim. You just have to get use to how the thruster controls work while the camera is facing backwards.

Some other bits
[Obselete] Escape pod entry way warning

Grav tube warning (green entry, red exit, grav block to reset gravity off)

Missile/missile pack designed to fit into ship at 45 degree angle

Forward Camera Display (will have to add enemy detectors later)

[Obselete] Point defence turret corner. All 8 corners are done up one forward one side ways.

[Obselete] Terrain pulse system controller

Auto Defence effect on logic


I almost put myself into a constant get killed loop during weapon testing. After spawning in a target I used a hotbar control to wirelessly activate the missile/missile systems which due to one incorrect logic link on each module kept firing continuously with no way to stop it with the logic I had already setup. So I exited the core and the missile got around to killing me. Re-spawned in the trade station nearby only to die by missiles again. I had to type out the god mode command between dying.....Rather than walking 650m being shot by missiles all the way I had to jump into a ship core between shots and move to around the ship. Good thing I could see the logic blocks from outside the ship so I could figure out hot to fix them and then run around in a space suit getting hammered by missiles fixing all 8 modules hoping the main shields didn't go under 50% while doing so.

Added all three hostile detectors: 3.2 sector range hostile, 3.2 sector range missile and 1.6 sector range hostile for missile activation. Was a real pain to build as it depends on collisions so will cause a bit of lag as well so there is individual controls to turn them off separately.
Modular Moddable Enemy Detector

Two successful test firing of automatic hostile detect and salvo launch missiles. Both times fired an extra set of missiles after target overhead and before turret reset. Turned off after reset. So don't exit the core until a bit after the missile on warning light goes off or the missiles will head back for you.... Not tested against hostile spawn yet. Just a spawned block set to hostile.

Also updated forward camera to include hostile indicators and now indication that the enemy detector for the auto missile firing system is on and if it is on and if a single turret is out of alignment warning for the detector after turret reset. Lights all manually turned on to demonstrate.

 

[Mork2]

Modular Engine with rapid pulse push effect, Layout out in an array

And been working on the hull a bit

Trap logic required all traps armed when in core room. Safety switch only disabled core room weapon.

7/05/2015
Fixed turret rotation issues.
You need mass enhancers for the vertical rotation part on the horizontal rotation part or it will not rotate fast.

Was stopped from building by lag when 4 main turrets were docked. Reduced number of anti-missile turrets to 8 and made them not recessed. Also while lagged the anti missile turrets are ineffective. As they rotate past the target then rotate back to much resulting in them being unable to fire. I can see this happening under a high lag situation so I may have to redesign my main turrets to reduce collision calculations.
Tested against missile fire while stationary. Only the antimissile turrets were engaging, so will have to test further some time while all turrets are active on whether lag will make the AMS turrets ineffective. Hopefully perma radar jamming should help while moving as missiles targeted at me shouldn't be turning except maybe FOF missiles which may be slow.

Antimissile turrets updated. Removed housing and mounted on main ship hull. Made it a little less likely to get stuck when exiting turret base ship core.

Main turret information moved to the main post.

Main turret defence effect logic linked up.

Escape pod hangers larger to avoid some collisions when undocking to jump.

Some gravity automation. Entering the forward grav tube to the core section and exiting them results in gravity being auto on when entering and auto off when exiting.

Added fixed rail dock logic for a damage display system later.

 

[Mork2]

FOF missile system automation fully setup.

There is a total of 12 x 10 shot FOF missile launchers.
2 sets of 10 aiming to up, down, left and right.
1 set of 10 aiming at each 45 degree angles in between
Each set is set to fire in 0.5 second intervals. sequenced from front to back
The side facing ones have a 2 part missile hatch covering it that splits in half and rotates.
The angled ones have a 1 part missile hatch covering it that rotates open.
To limit the entities 1 entire set of 10 hatches is actually 1 railed entity. I didn't want to make and dock 200 railed hatch parts I could then open hatches one by one but I think that many movable railed entities should cause quite a bit of lag.
All missile modules are self powered
There is two methods to trigger the firing sequence.
Hot bar control that turns auto fire on and off.
A hostile detector system which also can be disabled.
Both triggers are interlocked so its possible for the manual hotbar to turn off the detector input.

Firing sequence
Once started it is setup so it can't be cancelled or restarted halfway.
Firing hatches will open and wait one second then start firing missiles in sequence.
After 15seconds it will launch another salvo if the fire sequence is still locked in.
If the firing sequence isn't still on will close the hatches.

There is two delays before it starts firing the missiles.
One the delay for the hostile detector to confirm detection.
Two the one second delay to make sure the hatches are open.

The detector during testing will usually fire one extra salvo of missiles after the test target is overheating before turning off.

I recorded a gif animation of the entire sequence close enough to see the doors but its to big to post here.

 

[Mork2]

Been side tracked playing some other games for a while.
Construction stopped due to large amounts of lag in game.
Turret optimisation patch removed a bunch of lag and I got re-interested.

Redone all missile launcher doors as the patches broke them.
Redesigned internal damage pulse traps due to patch changes, increased damage and shifted to put start point in the right spot.
Forward terrain clearing system was in 5 pulse sets all merged so instead of 5 sequenced pulses its just one larger pulse with massive damage considering the new damage pulse system.
Missile damage changes resulted in power increases required.
Main ship energy storage increased to 243mil so I can fire the main missile system.
FOF side missile batteries size decreased due to extra power use. Replaced with shields
AMS turrets replaced with new designs. 8 extra turrets added.
To reduce a lot of lag multiple AIs with cannon/beam weapons were replaced with single AI cannon/cannon systems

4 x 15 fixed cannon/beam/punch weapons now 4 x single cannon/cannon/punch
4 x main turrets with 30 cannon/beam/punch now 4 x main turrets with 2 x cannon/cannon/punch
24 x forward fixed anti-missile weapons removed.​

Features updated, bug list effecting ship added to the end of the first post
Some pictures updated all posts. Some [obsolete] comments put in for out dated information or pictures.

All up so far CPU usage on my computer with just 1 main turret, 8 AMS turrets and all the power cores was 60%. With 4 main turrets, 16 AMS turrets but no power cores my CPU usage is now at 35% and quite playable. I'll have to monitor how my CPU usage is with the redesigned power core system once installed.

I have designed some jump inhibitor modules that I plan to install with remote control activation and tied in with the escape pod logic so that undocking an escape pod will disable the jump inhibitors. I also have to do a major power core re-design done up to reduce lag.