Swarms

[rotor911]

How would/did you fit your horde of screen ships : transwarp drives or good old jump ones? When you begin to count in thousands of ships, it makes a lot of difference. Since I'm not an aggressive player and I don't intend to blitz through enemy territory, I don't think that I'll need the extra mobility. But maybe I just balk unconsciously from the extra expense and transwarp drive are unavoidable, even for light screen ships. What do you think?

[Octus Imperium]

How would/did you fit your horde of screen ships : transwarp drives or good old jump ones? When you begin to count in thousands of ships, it makes a lot of difference. Since I'm not an aggressive player and I don't intend to blitz through enemy territory, I don't think that I'll need the extra mobility. But maybe I just balk unconsciously from the extra expense and transwarp drive are unavoidable, even for light screen ships. What do you think?

 

From a broad perspective, these ships are supposed to be small and cheap. Adding NTWD does not keep them either. So I would suggest jump drives. However, if they are only defensive, then why even put jump drives on them? Of course, you can't move them out system then. decisions, decisions.

 

Octus

[ShadowKitsune]

If you are using the "swarm" in the typical manner (mobile, ablative shield of expendable vessels), I'd stick with plain old Mk I Nuclear Jump Drives. They are as hardy as any jump drive gets, cheap to build and get you (slowly) from Point A to Point B. I agree with Octus. Putting a Transwarp Drive on a ship takes it out of the "small and cheap" category.

 

FWIW,

-SK

[sir smeg]

The current perceived stategey for Swarms is to have thousands of 1000t ships and a few multi megaton vessels to do the damage. The way a swarm is suppose to work is that all your opponents fleets pulses of fire will be directed into the swarm ships, since a 1000t ships wont be able to survive the level of firepower that tends to get thrown around, most of your opponets fire power is wasted. The downside to this approach is that a swarm fleet is very slow from a stategic point of view, your swarm ships are also effectivly dead mass, plus there is that minor problem of having sufficent shipyard slips.

 

By adding transwarp drives to your swarm ships your entire fleet concept changes. A transwarp swarm ship can still be classified as expendable only be redefining the concept of expendable. At the moment no one has shown a desire to build something like this, though it might be possible for one or two of them to do it if they thought it was desirable.

 

Sir Smeg

[Sakarissa]

Another way to look at the swarm option is for static defenses. This means orbital defenses and warp point defenses. As long as you can build a weapon that is 1000 tons or better, you can build a ship that is nothing but the weapon. They are easy to build and you just need a tug (ship with towing capacity) to drag them to the warp point. It may only be 1000 tons, but until you kill it off it's doing damage to the enemy fleet. An orbital defense setup is even easier. Go ahead and make it a ground installation to get the spiffy x9 Integrity multiplier. It will soak up that much more damage and make the enemy feel better about himself. Setting up XSHIP orders will help put those ships into the Q and get them into your fleet. Another idea is to put a single weapon on the DefSat/Ground Base and one or more Fire Control devices onto it to make it an even 1000 tons. That way you can spread the damage around a little better.

 

The drawback of DefSats is that it will tell whomever encounters them that you have a pop group in that system with at least one shipyard and slip. Always be mindful of what your ships/fleets will tell your enemy.

 

Sakarissa

The Circle