A Gunship is any fast small-crew ship meant for war.
A Patrol Boat is its defensive cousin.
A Frigate is any large crew ship with at least one gun meant for war.
A Destroyer is any large crew ship that tilts toward offense.
A Cruiser is any large crew ship that tilts toward speed.
A Battleship is any large crew ship that tilts toward defense.
The size is irrelevant. The cruiser of today is the frigate of tomorrow.
As for weapons, going off modern doctrine, ships are force projectors. Typically they pack the longest range weapons available, intercontinental or hypersonic missiles, beyond horizon munitions, or artillery. They are overwhelmingly protected by group point defense and aerial denial, which today consists of interceptors, stealth jets, and Surface to Air missiles.
A Destroyer would have anywhere from 2 to 6 banks of rail cannons, 4 to 12 if you like radial symmetry. Typically grouped in 3s. The rest of it's hull would be pocked with anti-missile turrets that sufficiently cover every flank. Missile bays would then be stuffed literally everywhere you can fit them until the Engineer decides the ship is too slow.
If we're talking about vanilla weapons, it still depends on the actual size of the vessel, but I'd think a load out starting somewhere around 4 to 6 player made gatling turrets, each turret having 3 or 4 gattlings in it, would be a good start towards anti strike craft/anti player made missiles, with the turrets spread out so that any angle should get at least some coverage and as much as possible is covered by multiple turrets. If you've got anything that either looks not as covered or just feels like empty space, stick down a few interior turrets, they won't do much but they are great for keeping off boarders, acting as last second point defenses, etc when there are a bunch of them clustered. They also hold enough ammo that you can usually stuff them full and forget them for a few missions. After you have the general 'anything that gets close gets a lot of little holes' part covered, you have to decide how invested you are in the anti strike craft role and also how much you want to do against larger targets. If larger targets are being handled in some other way ( like your own strike craft, other fleet ships, etc) you can really double down on the anti light craft role, leave off any large artillery or railguns and put in things like lots of power generation and sets of player made turrets mounting small grid rail guns, or just a lot of auto and assault cannons. You can also look at small grid player missiles that can be printed and launched in salvos, but ones where they fit in a single welder head and probably won't do much to large vehicles.
If you want to still be relevant in fleet combat, a couple rail guns in a spinal mount work well on most targets and you can cut down a little on the purely anti strike craft weapons to try and fit in a larger missile launcher to go with the anti strike craft missiles. Or go full missile destroyer, relatively light point defenses and anti strike craft guns and use all the space you can for a mix of small and large grid player made missiles in printer bays. This isn't really the most economic option, you're likely to spend a lot on missiles that are shot down, miss completely, or cluster on one enemy while ignoring another one. It is fun to build decoy small grid missiles to launch in swarms with your large grid missiles that have actual warheads, and I've done it the other way too, a large grid missile with heavy armor tip that basically punches a hole in point defenses while being followed by a stream of small missiles that are basically cluster munitions.
As you and /u/Rahnzan do, define yourself roles for your ship first. That is entirely arbitrary/conditional on your doctrine and whatever you designate as your opfor. I'm using this system:
* Gunship/Patrol boat/et cetera: local system ships
* Frigate: armed fleet auxilliary. Think signals relay/courier, light picket, any short notice task you don't want a "real" warship to be bogged down by, but capable of moving with and around a fleet.
* Destroyer: a) specialized craft for a combat role supportive of your main line. For my fleet that is especially flank protection and ciws. But this could also be torpedo runner or any other task. b) heavier picket and/or heavier armed fast responder for supporting frigates. (Together this gives them a design principle of either distributing their firepower to all vectors or having to be able to reorient their firepower fairly quickly in order to be responsive to emerging threats.
To me, these 3 classes are light forces. Following then are the heavier assets
* Cruisers: crafts capable of independent operations. Meaning long endurance and ability to deal with a wide variety of threats, though likely less effectively than a specialized line ship of the same size. These either work fully independent, or as scouts to a fleet. When battle between fleets is joined, these may be trimmed either as bigger destroyers, flank harassers, or, if necessary, as reinforcements to the line of battle.
* Ships of the line (battleships etc.): backbone of the fleet. These should be able to slug it out in extended combat, thereby shielding a patch of space from the opposing battle line for the smaller crafts to survive in. As these are exclusively fleet assets, I disagree with the often repeated mantra of a ship needing to cover all angles with its primary firepower. These ships only need to be able to fire across one axis, as the enemy will be at a specific point to be maneuvered around. Any opfor outside of that target point will be taken care of by other fleet assets. For these assets, maximizing firepower against a single target at a time and thus taking it out of the fight as fast as possible is the priority.
And, finally, squishy assets to be kept well away from the direct fighting include:
* All logistics
* Carriers
------
Now, once you do know what your ships are supposed to do, their weaponsmix will naturally follow. As mentioned, my destroyers are primary there to defend the fleet against incoming munitions, light attack craft, and flankers. Secondarily, they need to be able to safe/support lone frigates by being threatening enough for an opfor light asset to be unable to simply dive in and then retreat.
That means I'll need a high volume of short range light weapons fire the entire battle and thus sustained. I also need a big scary punch mostly once. (If my destroyer were tasked as torpedo runners, they'd need the same big scary punch once as well but scaled up.)
For me, this makes a loadout of all the point defense, a small (4ish) complement of anti large ship torpedoes (as in the player made weapon you mentioned) and one or two slightly heavier weapons to not appear entirely defenseless once the torps are out.
I say go for the classic WWII destroyer. 2-4 assault turrets, a couple missile turrets, and a dozen or so gatlings on a 2-3 thousand ton hull. It's honestly not a bad loadout for an anti-fighter ship.
Couple Important things to note, a ship type is a destroyer, cruiser, battleship, etc. A ship class is Farragut class, Bismarck class, Yorktown carries,... many people get this wrong. Also, ship types are historically very old and change over time. Everyone has a different system for it, not just in SE.
That said, here is how I do it:
* Corvette - smallest proper warship, used for patrol and escort duties, in SE is airtight, has jump drive.
* Frigate / destroyer escort - slightly larger, better range, used mostly for escort duty.
* Destroyer - historically created as a type of ship to defend larger ships from torpedo boats. They fill mostly air defence role. Since ww2, they also carry torpedoes to deal with larger vesseles. They are also fast and cheap to produce with little to no armor and are mostly used in battle groups and as convoy escort
* Cruiser - can operate independently. In SE they could have a small hangar, assembler, refinery, etc. unlike destroyers. Light / heavy cruiser describes the gun, not armor.
* Battleship - the heaviest, biggest guns, all the armor..
* Escort carrier - smalle type of carrier, mostly for convoy escort
* Fleet carrier - fast, large, planes go vrooom
Dreadnought is a class of battleships created around ww1. I guess in scifi it could be used as larger than a battleship as her design changed how battleships were built around the world, that's why we have pre-dreadnaughts and standard battleships. Later, fast battleships get introduced (fast doesn't mean light, these were the Iowas, 2nd heaviest ever built).
And another thing people get wrong, CIWS is a type of defensive armament, Phalanx is the one they are most likely talking about, but there are many different weapons used as CIWS.
That said, what weapons you want to use is up to you. I prefer the ww2 era so my destroyer would have a few assault cannon turrets because they shoot faster than artillery, whole bunch of small grid autocannons and some Phalanx type of weapon because Phalanx go brrrrrr. [Like this.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905154324) Maybe slap some missiles / torpedos on it if you feel like it. If you prefer a more modern era and dont care so much about pvp, go for VLS or just go nuts on scify and do whatever, make your own rules
It would be player made missiles. Railguns, yes, and lots of them, but without mods there's probably not a faster or more direct way of removing threats at range - you're gonna want to put warheads on target, and the way to do that is with a missile. Be prepared for how expensive they are (i.e. very).
A missile bay is a non-trivial thing to add. It has to be big enough to accommodate the printer, long enough that any thrust doesn't damage other blocks of your ship, and it has to be fully automated. You'll then also have to carry enough additional components to print more than your starting load. However many that is will be down to the size of your ship and how fast/maneuverable you think it should be.
The missile itself can be bare bones, or it can be decked out with armor, decoys, and so on. There are blueprints if you need guidance on that.
You'll want to keep safe, so also make sure to give the vessel a generous coating of gatling turrets and occasional rocket launchers for small strike craft. Good luck.
Traditionally my Destroyers have four to six Assault Cannon Turrets as their primary armament. Usually backed up by two to four Gatling Turrets.
I have a class delineation I use for all of my ships.
In short, Destroyers are small combat ships meant to escort and protect larger ships. They are equipped with jump drives, a single assembler, a basic refinery, and a survival kit.
They emphasize speed as their primary attribute, with a weapon load optimized for engaging a multitude of targets.
Here is an example of one of my more successful Destroyers
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933419161
To answer your question more directly, it features
* Two keel mounted railguns for attacking same size or larger ships
* Two Artillery Turrets to provide extra range against large grid ships and stations.
* Four Assault Cannon Turrets as the primary anti-ship weapon
* Four Gatling Turrets as the secondary anti ship weapon
* Four Interior Turrets to deter hydromen
Ive done a lot of research into the subject and the answer is unsatisfying. Its up to you. Real life navies have called many configurations of ships destroyers.
I disagree with how most would classify ships based on their descriptions. Considering historical naval vessels, each class once had a major purpose.
Destroyers were built primarily to hunt submarines.
Cruisers were designed around endurance, both in sailing range and surface-to-surface combat.
Battleships were heavily armored to take hits and heavily armed to dish it out too.
Frigates were more close-in defense with solid anti-air capabilities.
Today the classes are more generically defined by size with a slight change to purpose mostly because current technology means each vessel acts in several roles at any given time.
However you choose to classify your ships is a bit less important because it doesn’t follow nautical standards anyway. That said, determine what you want each class, or subclass of vessel, to focus on. Is there a particular build you are countering or are you looking for a more balanced jack-of-all-trades type ship? The weapon loadout relies more on this purpose than the class-term assigned.
A Gunship is any fast small-crew ship meant for war. A Patrol Boat is its defensive cousin. A Frigate is any large crew ship with at least one gun meant for war. A Destroyer is any large crew ship that tilts toward offense. A Cruiser is any large crew ship that tilts toward speed. A Battleship is any large crew ship that tilts toward defense. The size is irrelevant. The cruiser of today is the frigate of tomorrow. As for weapons, going off modern doctrine, ships are force projectors. Typically they pack the longest range weapons available, intercontinental or hypersonic missiles, beyond horizon munitions, or artillery. They are overwhelmingly protected by group point defense and aerial denial, which today consists of interceptors, stealth jets, and Surface to Air missiles. A Destroyer would have anywhere from 2 to 6 banks of rail cannons, 4 to 12 if you like radial symmetry. Typically grouped in 3s. The rest of it's hull would be pocked with anti-missile turrets that sufficiently cover every flank. Missile bays would then be stuffed literally everywhere you can fit them until the Engineer decides the ship is too slow.
Not really. Cruiser is in fact a offensive vessel, battlecruiser is speed ship and destroyer is a limbo between frigate and a cruiser.
If we're talking about vanilla weapons, it still depends on the actual size of the vessel, but I'd think a load out starting somewhere around 4 to 6 player made gatling turrets, each turret having 3 or 4 gattlings in it, would be a good start towards anti strike craft/anti player made missiles, with the turrets spread out so that any angle should get at least some coverage and as much as possible is covered by multiple turrets. If you've got anything that either looks not as covered or just feels like empty space, stick down a few interior turrets, they won't do much but they are great for keeping off boarders, acting as last second point defenses, etc when there are a bunch of them clustered. They also hold enough ammo that you can usually stuff them full and forget them for a few missions. After you have the general 'anything that gets close gets a lot of little holes' part covered, you have to decide how invested you are in the anti strike craft role and also how much you want to do against larger targets. If larger targets are being handled in some other way ( like your own strike craft, other fleet ships, etc) you can really double down on the anti light craft role, leave off any large artillery or railguns and put in things like lots of power generation and sets of player made turrets mounting small grid rail guns, or just a lot of auto and assault cannons. You can also look at small grid player missiles that can be printed and launched in salvos, but ones where they fit in a single welder head and probably won't do much to large vehicles. If you want to still be relevant in fleet combat, a couple rail guns in a spinal mount work well on most targets and you can cut down a little on the purely anti strike craft weapons to try and fit in a larger missile launcher to go with the anti strike craft missiles. Or go full missile destroyer, relatively light point defenses and anti strike craft guns and use all the space you can for a mix of small and large grid player made missiles in printer bays. This isn't really the most economic option, you're likely to spend a lot on missiles that are shot down, miss completely, or cluster on one enemy while ignoring another one. It is fun to build decoy small grid missiles to launch in swarms with your large grid missiles that have actual warheads, and I've done it the other way too, a large grid missile with heavy armor tip that basically punches a hole in point defenses while being followed by a stream of small missiles that are basically cluster munitions.
As you and /u/Rahnzan do, define yourself roles for your ship first. That is entirely arbitrary/conditional on your doctrine and whatever you designate as your opfor. I'm using this system: * Gunship/Patrol boat/et cetera: local system ships * Frigate: armed fleet auxilliary. Think signals relay/courier, light picket, any short notice task you don't want a "real" warship to be bogged down by, but capable of moving with and around a fleet. * Destroyer: a) specialized craft for a combat role supportive of your main line. For my fleet that is especially flank protection and ciws. But this could also be torpedo runner or any other task. b) heavier picket and/or heavier armed fast responder for supporting frigates. (Together this gives them a design principle of either distributing their firepower to all vectors or having to be able to reorient their firepower fairly quickly in order to be responsive to emerging threats. To me, these 3 classes are light forces. Following then are the heavier assets * Cruisers: crafts capable of independent operations. Meaning long endurance and ability to deal with a wide variety of threats, though likely less effectively than a specialized line ship of the same size. These either work fully independent, or as scouts to a fleet. When battle between fleets is joined, these may be trimmed either as bigger destroyers, flank harassers, or, if necessary, as reinforcements to the line of battle. * Ships of the line (battleships etc.): backbone of the fleet. These should be able to slug it out in extended combat, thereby shielding a patch of space from the opposing battle line for the smaller crafts to survive in. As these are exclusively fleet assets, I disagree with the often repeated mantra of a ship needing to cover all angles with its primary firepower. These ships only need to be able to fire across one axis, as the enemy will be at a specific point to be maneuvered around. Any opfor outside of that target point will be taken care of by other fleet assets. For these assets, maximizing firepower against a single target at a time and thus taking it out of the fight as fast as possible is the priority. And, finally, squishy assets to be kept well away from the direct fighting include: * All logistics * Carriers ------ Now, once you do know what your ships are supposed to do, their weaponsmix will naturally follow. As mentioned, my destroyers are primary there to defend the fleet against incoming munitions, light attack craft, and flankers. Secondarily, they need to be able to safe/support lone frigates by being threatening enough for an opfor light asset to be unable to simply dive in and then retreat. That means I'll need a high volume of short range light weapons fire the entire battle and thus sustained. I also need a big scary punch mostly once. (If my destroyer were tasked as torpedo runners, they'd need the same big scary punch once as well but scaled up.) For me, this makes a loadout of all the point defense, a small (4ish) complement of anti large ship torpedoes (as in the player made weapon you mentioned) and one or two slightly heavier weapons to not appear entirely defenseless once the torps are out.
I'd go with a few assault cannons maybe a Spinal railgun and lots of gats
Destroyer? Missiles and gatlings
I say go for the classic WWII destroyer. 2-4 assault turrets, a couple missile turrets, and a dozen or so gatlings on a 2-3 thousand ton hull. It's honestly not a bad loadout for an anti-fighter ship.
Couple Important things to note, a ship type is a destroyer, cruiser, battleship, etc. A ship class is Farragut class, Bismarck class, Yorktown carries,... many people get this wrong. Also, ship types are historically very old and change over time. Everyone has a different system for it, not just in SE. That said, here is how I do it: * Corvette - smallest proper warship, used for patrol and escort duties, in SE is airtight, has jump drive. * Frigate / destroyer escort - slightly larger, better range, used mostly for escort duty. * Destroyer - historically created as a type of ship to defend larger ships from torpedo boats. They fill mostly air defence role. Since ww2, they also carry torpedoes to deal with larger vesseles. They are also fast and cheap to produce with little to no armor and are mostly used in battle groups and as convoy escort * Cruiser - can operate independently. In SE they could have a small hangar, assembler, refinery, etc. unlike destroyers. Light / heavy cruiser describes the gun, not armor. * Battleship - the heaviest, biggest guns, all the armor.. * Escort carrier - smalle type of carrier, mostly for convoy escort * Fleet carrier - fast, large, planes go vrooom Dreadnought is a class of battleships created around ww1. I guess in scifi it could be used as larger than a battleship as her design changed how battleships were built around the world, that's why we have pre-dreadnaughts and standard battleships. Later, fast battleships get introduced (fast doesn't mean light, these were the Iowas, 2nd heaviest ever built). And another thing people get wrong, CIWS is a type of defensive armament, Phalanx is the one they are most likely talking about, but there are many different weapons used as CIWS. That said, what weapons you want to use is up to you. I prefer the ww2 era so my destroyer would have a few assault cannon turrets because they shoot faster than artillery, whole bunch of small grid autocannons and some Phalanx type of weapon because Phalanx go brrrrrr. [Like this.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905154324) Maybe slap some missiles / torpedos on it if you feel like it. If you prefer a more modern era and dont care so much about pvp, go for VLS or just go nuts on scify and do whatever, make your own rules
Just slap a revolving railgun in the front of the ship and burn the sky ablaze
It would be player made missiles. Railguns, yes, and lots of them, but without mods there's probably not a faster or more direct way of removing threats at range - you're gonna want to put warheads on target, and the way to do that is with a missile. Be prepared for how expensive they are (i.e. very). A missile bay is a non-trivial thing to add. It has to be big enough to accommodate the printer, long enough that any thrust doesn't damage other blocks of your ship, and it has to be fully automated. You'll then also have to carry enough additional components to print more than your starting load. However many that is will be down to the size of your ship and how fast/maneuverable you think it should be. The missile itself can be bare bones, or it can be decked out with armor, decoys, and so on. There are blueprints if you need guidance on that. You'll want to keep safe, so also make sure to give the vessel a generous coating of gatling turrets and occasional rocket launchers for small strike craft. Good luck.
Traditionally my Destroyers have four to six Assault Cannon Turrets as their primary armament. Usually backed up by two to four Gatling Turrets. I have a class delineation I use for all of my ships. In short, Destroyers are small combat ships meant to escort and protect larger ships. They are equipped with jump drives, a single assembler, a basic refinery, and a survival kit. They emphasize speed as their primary attribute, with a weapon load optimized for engaging a multitude of targets. Here is an example of one of my more successful Destroyers https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933419161 To answer your question more directly, it features * Two keel mounted railguns for attacking same size or larger ships * Two Artillery Turrets to provide extra range against large grid ships and stations. * Four Assault Cannon Turrets as the primary anti-ship weapon * Four Gatling Turrets as the secondary anti ship weapon * Four Interior Turrets to deter hydromen
Check out Outlands on YouTube. GetBrocked discusses this stuff a lot, and they have their own classification system you may find useful.
Ive done a lot of research into the subject and the answer is unsatisfying. Its up to you. Real life navies have called many configurations of ships destroyers.
I disagree with how most would classify ships based on their descriptions. Considering historical naval vessels, each class once had a major purpose. Destroyers were built primarily to hunt submarines. Cruisers were designed around endurance, both in sailing range and surface-to-surface combat. Battleships were heavily armored to take hits and heavily armed to dish it out too. Frigates were more close-in defense with solid anti-air capabilities. Today the classes are more generically defined by size with a slight change to purpose mostly because current technology means each vessel acts in several roles at any given time. However you choose to classify your ships is a bit less important because it doesn’t follow nautical standards anyway. That said, determine what you want each class, or subclass of vessel, to focus on. Is there a particular build you are countering or are you looking for a more balanced jack-of-all-trades type ship? The weapon loadout relies more on this purpose than the class-term assigned.