Highfleet 1.14 Shipbuilding: The Support Carriers 

It's actually just 'Highfleet Guy' a crazy Russian did most of this on his own!

Good way to bring more equipment into the campaign too. You could take a flightless 'tool' ship and then dissemble it into parts to take with you. Interesting idea...

@@Phrosphor R-3 bulk carrier landed in a field until it's needed

Good point, cost is a very important factor, especially since 1.14 increased the cost of a lot of engines.

This is a really good break down and helped me redesign a bunch of my low cost small carriers. That said, founder argument to the sprints. They're dirt cheap cost of the fire control aside - I always throw 4-6 of them on most my combat ships during the campaign. FCRs are not terribly hard to come buy and aren't the most pricey equipment. I've had too many instances where a strike group has spammed me with 5+ missiles when my main AA corvette hasn't been able to restock.

​@@coreliousc8915 Yeah don't get me wrong, I love sprints, if you're using the default flagships I think you can pull FCR and sprints off of them at the start of the game easily enough for other ships. But the carrier is a perfect place for IRST since it's "always on" and lets you deck fighters to react to threats, and so mounting FCR there isn't my first choice.

This is a great post and needs more attention. I really wish I could make a more handsome carrier. I was going to argue with your LA-29 post but you are totally right. If they were around ~1000 I think they would be a lot more attractive to use, but they really are not worth it for the cost at all. The only thing they have going for them is availability.

That gray strut is there no matter the angle - give it a look. Seconded for close-to right angle landing gear, generally. Otherwise the chassis is prone to buckling, and the ship tilts. Can see it in both crab-legged ships in the vid (and seems like Phrosphor likes crab legs). Issue is, the engines may protrude too much for good clearance. One tip I have, especially for larger ships: feather the thrust as the chassis settles on landing. Can get away with heavier tonnage before damaging the chassis. Would be great to have a throttle mechanic for landing instead, but spamming W is what we get.

@@Muffinut True. Thanks.

I do really like crab legs!

In my head 90 degrees can't be the strongest angle but it looks like it is in game for sure.

You can also use city size (the diameter of the circle reflects population) to get a rough indication at how strong the garrison is going to be!

@@Phrosphor That’s a wild and useful observation. Thank you.

@@Skimmerlit it's not perfect, but it is a good general rule of thumb.

In the deserts of Gerat, money is one of your greatest enemies. I am very worried about the heat/fuel events later in the hard campaign. Good luck on your next run!

Strange, the radioactive ones have no trouble with warcrimes...

Love me some battlefleet logistical planning! Thanks!

It doesn't really have an affect on a non-combat ship and yes you can cheese it.. but I feel like I should try and build to the requirements of the world. Make things 'realistic' in the worlds terms. It's why you don't see me building one giant doom brick to solo the campaign with. Limitation make things interesting. I believe it picks the most expensive ship in your fleet. Which is a weird way of choosing.

@@Phrosphor it's the one that's to the left in the shipworks

P.S.: You can name the aircraft carrier, Crazy Horse and maybe 5 missiles is overkill for the missile carrier especially if you're going for speed.

I always add them as an afterthought and I suffer for it in all my builds. Mechanically I don't have to add them.. but I want my ships to fit in the universe.

I like the name!

Great names! The legs were uneven... oops... It got fixed before the campaign started. Glad you are enjoying it!

If the ship hasn't got and antenna, and it gets split off from other ships you can not longer get information from it. Pretty sure you lose control until you link up again.

@@Phrosphor Thanks that's really helpful

What I tend to do is put everything I want on without any engines, and then compare adding D-30S vs. RD-51, because I can't use data from a ship with a (significantly) different weight.

16:45 - Cool. I see here that you did do a comparison after. I would suggest trying three RD-51 engines, to see if it brings your speed up since you found two do have better fuel efficiency. Or even four. I honestly can't say which is better just from watching this.

Wow, that's interesting. I always thought the game simply used a pyhsics-based approach to things. And even with a physics-based approach it would make a lot of sense that adding RD-51s to small/fast ships doesn't make sense. Sure, a RD-51 has the same thrust as 3 D-30S engines while only using 7/12 as much fuel But the thing is, an RD-51 and the hull part needed to hold it weigh a combined ~800t, whereas the 3 D-30S with hull only weigh ~120t. So let's say you have a ship that has a base weight of 2000t and you want it to be fast. If you add 2 RD-51s you are almost doubling the weight of the ship. Sure, those engines are almost twice as efficient, but that won't help you because your weight doubled. To get the same amount of thrust, you could simply add 6 D-30S. Your fuel efficiency will be approx. the same as with the RD-51s. But since your ship is only half as heavy, it will have twice the thrust/weight ratio, i.e. be much much faster. To get roughly the same speed, you actually only need ~3-4 D-30S. And 3-4 D-30S use the same amount of fuel (and less energy) as a RD-51s. Additionally, once you increased the weight of your ship by adding RD-51s, all your thrusters etc. have a lower effect too, so you kind of need to use RD-59 thrusters, further increasing the weight of your ship which in turn also reduces the effect of you vertical thrusters etc. If you are aiming for high speeds or thrust to weight ratios, don't use RD-51s at all. If you are aiming for low-medium (up to ~250 km/h or t/w ratios up to ~3) speeds, use them if you value fuel efficiency/range (over e.g. a low radar profile and lateral maneuverability). Combinations of e.g. a single RD-51 and a couple of D-30Ss are also valid in this case. If you are a aiming for Sevastapol-level (up to ~150 km/h or t/w ratios up to ~2) speeds, full RD-51s with RD-59 maneuvering-thrusters are 100% the way to go.

@@jannese7392 Yeah. I got 181 speed on the Sevastopol. I could do better if I didn't set it up for fighting.

I looked at the "Engine Details" guide and I think I understand where the whole "weird factor" comes from: The mass of an RD-51 was incorrectly assumed to be 200t, when it's actually closer to 800t, because you have to factor in the hull part for the engine as well. I redid the calculations myself and the math checks out. My results are always slightly off, but I assume that that's due to rounding errors and the factor by which I'm off is always very similar. To minimize rounding errors, I tried adding 2 RD-51s to the Sevastapol and compared the result to 4 D-30S, rather than just a single one. The formulas I used are: (v is speed, c is consumption, 3600 is hours->seconds, tpw is thrust/weight, fps is fuel per second, using the units used in game) speed: v = 90km/h * tpw consumption: c = (1000km / v) * 3600 * fps note that the speed formula used by the game ignores gravity and uses linear air resistance (in reality, air resistance is cubic) If you are interested, here are my calculations: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WutJ9KDCeCVq5FP04IxY32RWO-k8wwwfNNRqA4EmDck/edit?usp=sharing Note: Don't use only these calculations to determine whether you should use RD51s or D-30Ss, as RD51s look better on paper than they are in reality, as they increase your ship weight and therefore, with the same amount of gimballed thrusters, increase your inertia, thus reducing your lateral mobility and increasing your radar profile etc.

Thanks, mine tend to be a bit ugly though I really like my capships in the latest campaign.

Nice names Bill! I have added them into the pot.

Good names! Thanks for the suggestions!

Efficiency is fuel and money. Not combat these ships, missile carrier, flagship and aircraft carrier will never enter direct combat

İ have seem some ridiculous designs for flagships, like a lot of them. All of them fall victim to "trying to do too much" Funny thing is the game doesn't take into account fuel weight. As fuel goes down your ships should go faster but it isn't. This makes shorter jumps and movement more efficient while the latter realistic version makes longer trips more efficient.

I think having a carrier flagship is efficient, but you need to be able to keep it out of danger or it's going to go down fast. Also congrats on completing your campaign! It's quite an achievement!

For efficiency you want to go with RD-51's, but only if your ship is big, like over 8000tons big.

Yeah feature creep is the anathema to good ship design. It's something I really struggle with.

Yeah I like my aesthetic 'Crab Legs' too much and I need to start using 90 degree angles a lot more. Thanks for the write up on the weight to efficiency relationship between engine sizes. It's hard to see the difference when you are near the breakpoint between the two.

Large fuel tanks have always blocked turrets, elevation let you get 'over' them.

@@Phrosphor I know. I loaded Paladin in shipworks and noticed that elevated ammorack in center blocks 37mm. Was that the case in pre 1.14?

@@CounterfeitDuck oh no, that was added in 1.14

@@Phrosphor Sound like it ruined some planned build.

Got them! I will go through all the submissions that missed a video once we kick off.

That's two horse related name suggestions on this one!

That's a good point. When the ship isn't going to be engaged in front-line combat these things are less important. It's all about efficiency - fuel and cost. One thing I would say is thruster, armor and fuel weights have changed since I made these ships, though not dramatically. Smaller ships were affected more (my Audacities suddenly had barely enough fuel for 20 seconds of combat).

One of the issues with this video is the game has changed significantly since I built these ships and the numbers are quite different now. You make some great points, thank you for taking the time to write them up.