Idris Compliment

[Shadow Reaper]

So now that we have the tiny Fury, how does it affect the ideal combat complement of ships you’d want aboard an Idris for a generic strike force?

By last count, the Idris can hold a crew from 28 to 81, so let’s say for the sake of discussion, max 53 players for carried ships. The flight deck is about 25 x 200 meters.

Given unlimited ship and human resources, what would you choose for your strike group to be carried into battle against Vanduul or human opponents?

I would certainly favor Eclipse and Furys with a few specialty ships like Ravens. I would also like a handful of MIS, but those don’t need to go on the Idris so let’s not count them unless you’re including them to raise the number of bunks/players above that of the Idris alone. Let’s also not include support ships like the Star G, which we could suppose would be supporting more than one Idris in a system. Just what would you choose to do with 51 players flying off your Idris, parking space not to meet nor exceed 5,000 square meters?

For instance, the Fury is ~6m long and 3m wide parked. You could fit about 30 parallel parked along one side of the hanger, about 6 Eclipse and a couple Ravens tucked in. Bunks don’t seem to be an issue. What might be a more effective mix than that? This basically gives you 2 attacking forces of 3 Eclipse, 12 Furies, whatever MIS and 1 Raven, with a wing of 6 Furys in reserve. That’s a pretty potent force, especially if you add the Idris itself.

One problem with this solution is, if you lose the battle there is no way to retreat, since Fury’s have no Q drive. Is this a deal breaker? Seems to me it is flying off a Lib. Libs want their forces attacking through Q jumps and back so they’re not in theater, but the Idris is made to tough it out so I’d feel better planning to jump the Idris right into a system I want to attack or defend.

What do you think?

 

[Talonsbane]

I might seem stupid, but for a carrier group against a legion of Vanduul fighters only, I'd consider filling the Idris with Furies while having 3 fully crewed Hammerheads that would take up 3 sides around the length of the Idris so that their turrets can mostly cover focus outwards & allow the Idris to put the majority of its power into its shields. That would be a hell of a lot of little stingers to deal with the Vanduul fighters within their range while those that choose to attack the Idris will have to deal with the cover fire of the Hammerheads & Idris turrets.

 

[Daak Gelrin]

Would actually be comfortable too. Would be able to launch fairly fast, but recovery would be slow. Have the tractor rifles standing by to tuck them in fast once in the hangar.

Giggle...

 

[Talonsbane]

Would actually be comfortable too. Would be able to launch fairly fast, but recovery would be slow. Have the tractor rifles standing by to tuck them in fast once in the hangar.

Giggle...
View attachment 25171

This image works out to 31 x 4 S3 weapons causing 124 S3 pains in Vanduul backsides. Cheers!

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Hammerheads seem an obvious choice to me but that’s a decision for fleet level management. Certainly you’d want Star Gs too, and even a fleet of Reclaimers to pay the bills after a dust up.

I’m asking though about what the Idris should carry because my guess is, the vast majority of conflicts we’ll see will be a strike group based around a single ship: Liberator, Polaris, Idris, and if its modularity permits a hanger, the Javelin. More ships than this I don’t think the servers will permit anytime soon. Not at Beta to be sure. (Leave room for opponents.) Also, the smaller a group the more likely to get in the fight. A Lib with 3 Eclipse, 3 MIS and 12 Arrows needs about 20 players. A Polaris with a dozen spotting craft needs about 40. An Idris with 6 Eclipse, 30 Fury, 6 MIS And 2 Ravens needs about 71. Note the firepower per player goes up as the force gets larger. That’s exactly as it should be. But note too, to get 20 players for any particular operation, you probably need 25 aboard. Not every player can show up every time. So these numbers are actually less than what’s necessary for a single Captain to gather and lead.

And then there’s the Javelin. We still don’t know if it’s modularity will permit a hanger. If so, one suspects it will require well over 100 players. That is a very high bar to meet.

My guess is we’ll see more Libs than Polaris, and more Polaris than Idris, and that in General, the Idris will rule over conflicts. If you take the Sons of Orion storyline and attacks on Vanduul as the baseline fleet conflict, and the thing experienced teams train with regularly, it looks and feels like the Idris is the thing to aspire to. Players who love this kind of game could pick up some Vanduul slaughter 7 nights a week given they commit to a serious team/crew.

Also note, for maximum efficiency Captains running any of these ships will need to manage logistics where part of their crew delivers fuel, ordinance and recruits to the front. This adds several more players. One can imagine fighting ships scooping their own fuel daily during off hours, just to keep their logistics manageable. It’s a lot!

 

[Shadow Reaper]

This image works out to 31 x 4 S3 weapons causing 124 S3 pains in Vanduul backsides. Cheers!

What are the shapes at the bottom of the image and what are the dimensions here? This doesn’t appear to be 25 x 200. I think this is a much smaller area.

 

[AccidentProne8]

Hammerheads seem an obvious choice to me but that’s a decision for fleet level management. Certainly you’d want Star Gs too, and even a fleet of Reclaimers to pay the bills after a dust up.

I’m asking though about what the Idris should carry because my guess is, the vast majority of conflicts we’ll see will be a strike group based around a single ship: Liberator, Polaris, Idris, and if its modularity permits a hanger, the Javelin. More ships than this I don’t think the servers will permit anytime soon. Not at Beta to be sure. (Leave room for opponents.) Also, the smaller a group the more likely to get in the fight. A Lib with 3 Eclipse, 3 MIS and 12 Arrows needs about 20 players. A Polaris with a dozen spotting craft needs about 40. An Idris with 6 Eclipse, 30 Fury, 6 MIS And 2 Ravens needs about 71. Note the firepower per player goes up as the force gets larger. That’s exactly as it should be. But note too, to get 20 players for any particular operation, you probably need 25 aboard. Not every player can show up every time. So these numbers are actually less than what’s necessary for a single Captain to gather and lead.

And then there’s the Javelin. We still don’t know if it’s modularity will permit a hanger. If so, one suspects it will require well over 100 players. That is a very high bar to meet.

My guess is we’ll see more Libs than Polaris, and more Polaris than Idris, and that in General, the Idris will rule over conflicts. If you take the Sons of Orion storyline and attacks on Vanduul as the baseline fleet conflict, and the thing experienced teams train with regularly, it looks and feels like the Idris is the thing to aspire to. Players who love this kind of game could pick up some Vanduul slaughter 7 nights a week given they commit to a serious team/crew.

Also note, for maximum efficiency Captains running any of these ships will need to manage logistics where part of their crew delivers fuel, ordinance and recruits to the front. This adds several more players. One can imagine fighting ships scooping their own fuel daily during off hours, just to keep their logistics manageable. It’s a lot!

I'm kind of peeved the liberator is so expensive, in part because I believe this will be realistic operating groups.

That being said, I'm betting server meshing will be a all or nothing deal rather quickly but coordinating more than 20 people is tricky at best regardless.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I'm kind of peeved the liberator is so expensive, in part because I believe this will be realistic operating groups.

I’m partial to starting with the Lib when Vanduul caps ships open up as targets in the Sons of Orion storyline, and as the targets get harder, moving up to bigger and better ships. This way you’re building your group organically.

Probably the first Cap class targets will be Void Bombers which usually appear in pairs (according to Lore, and especially their attack on Leir). I think if you can fit 3 Eclipse outside and 12 Arrows inside, and use 4 MIS for their bunks and missile over watch, you might kill 2 Void Bombers with a Lib.

As others have noted though, the Liberator isn’t planned to have beds, so you do need some solution there unless CIG replaces the seemingly useless grav seats with bunks.

And yeah, $500 is expensive but you can earn the aUEC in game quicker than you can assemble the players needed. So there’s that.

The more you look at the details you see the Polaris is a nice step up, and the Idris a nice step up from that.

I do not personally think swarms of Fury have sufficient DPS to attack cap ships effectively. They have to get in range of big turrets to attack and they only do 9k dps. You could lose a lot of fighters given all the big turrets on Vanduul ships. Even though they’ll respawn, they’ll be a long way from Vanduul space and need to be transported. If however you can launch torps from behind Void Bombers, I think they’re not so hard to kill.

Polaris have more at risk. Void Bombers each have three big S10 guns. If one hits a Polaris it will open it like a can of tuna struck by an axe.

Mauler Destroyers, that’s a big team effort—multiple Polaris or Idris.

 

[AccidentProne8]

I’m partial to starting with the Lib when Vanduul caps ships open up as targets in the Sons of Orion storyline, and as the targets get harder, moving up to bigger and better ships. This way you’re building your group organically.

Probably the first Cap class targets will be Void Bombers which usually appear in pairs (according to Lore, and especially their attack on Leir). I think if you can fit 3 Eclipse outside and 12 Arrows inside, and use 4 MIS for their bunks and missile over watch, you might kill 2 Void Bombers with a Lib.

As others have noted though, the Liberator isn’t planned to have beds, so you do need some solution there unless CIG replaces the seemingly useless grav seats with bunks.

And yeah, $500 is expensive but you can earn the aUEC in game quicker than you can assemble the players needed. So there’s that.

The more you look at the details you see the Polaris is a nice step up, and the Idris a nice step up from that.

I do not personally think swarms of Fury have sufficient DPS to attack cap ships effectively. They have to get in range of big turrets to attack and they only do 9k dps. You could lose a lot of fighters given all the big turrets on Vanduul ships. Even though they’ll respawn, they’ll be a long way from Vanduul space and need to be transported. If however you can launch torps from behind Void Bombers, I think they’re not so hard to kill.

Polaris have more at risk. Void Bombers each have three big S10 guns. If one hits a Polaris it will open it like a can of tuna struck by an axe.

Mauler Destroyers, that’s a big team effort—multiple Polaris or Idris.

If I remember correctly once armor is in light fighters may not even dent capital class ships. I think there will be a shift in cap/org battle thinking once people realize that having bombers to escort will not be optional to dent a honest to goodness fleet. It would be extremely funny to me if Idris on Idris two fleets just unloaded Furies and no gladiators or eclipses - and then have one side win the fighter battle and the other the cap battle, one side being unable to dent the other and the other being unable to catch the other.

I did think about beds - but in my personal imagined use case for the liberator as a personal FOB I was thinking about just parking my harbringer on it.

I've got a Perseus for Vanduul cap ships - I look forward to those types of missions.

 

[Talonsbane]

I'm kind of peeved the liberator is so expensive, in part because I believe this will be realistic operating groups.

That being said, I'm betting server meshing will be a all or nothing deal rather quickly but coordinating more than 20 people is tricky at best regardless.

True, Liberators are not cheap by any means, but they also have the potential to be a force multiplier by the ships they transport.

I do not personally think swarms of Fury have sufficient DPS to attack cap ships effectively. They have to get in range of big turrets to attack and they only do 9k dps. You could lose a lot of fighters given all the big turrets on Vanduul ships. Even though they’ll respawn, they’ll be a long way from Vanduul space and need to be transported. If however you can launch torps from behind Void Bombers, I think they’re not so hard to kill.

My thought on the Idris full of Furies was simply to use them to deal with the Vanduul fighters to help protect the ships like the Idris as well as the Eclipse & Retaliators as they make their torp strikes & get away.

 

[BUTUZ]

I'll be happy if I can fit 4 furies in my Perseus! That's as capital as I can get! :D

Hopefully 4xS7 ballistic cannons and a smattering of S5 torpedoes' will be enough to do some damage to many things.

As mentioned above, there's little point in theory crafting until we get proper armour in and see what difference it makes.

 

[AccidentProne8]

True, Liberators are not cheap by any means, but they also have the potential to be a force multiplier by the ships they transport.



My thought on the Idris full of Furies was simply to use them to deal with the Vanduul fighters to help protect the ships like the Idris as well as the Eclipse & Retaliators as they make their torp strikes & get away.

Mmhm....torpedo strikes. I can't wait.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

My thought on the Idris full of Furies was simply to use them to deal with the Vanduul fighters to help protect the ships like the Idris as well as the Eclipse & Retaliators as they make their torp strikes & get away.

I think you can use Furies to draw away Vanduul fighters. Even Void Bombers carry a pair of fighters so anytime you find a Vanduul cap ship, you should expect to find fighters. (I’m agreeing with you.)

Perhaps more importantly though, Furies can fly in front of a Vanduul ship and successfully evade their big S10 guns. CIG deliberately designed the Vanduul with more firepower per ship, and the UEE with better armor and damage control. The Idris will be able to take hits from Vanduul S10 guns, but I doubt that’s true of Polaris and the Lib. What that means is different for these two. I highly recommend not taking the Lib into any system where you expect to find Vanduul. Hence my suggestion to choose Arrows over Furys. The Polaris needs to be in the same system, so the entire trick is to take successful torp shots using your greater range, without coming in range of the Vanduul S10 guns. Furies can help with this as well as shepherd the S10 torps in onto their targets.

S10 torps move half as fast as fighters. I think they’re gonna need babysitting. That’s rough work for the Furys.

The Eclipse will be able to launch its S9 torps from much closer range, so probably a much simpler task than the Polaris has. Eclipse is really hard to beat.

And I should note, the Vanduul appear not to use stealth at all, so you can use speed and quantum as a defense from them. The problem for the Fury is I believe, it is slower than the Vanduul fighters, so with no Q drive, it is completely unable to retreat. Once committed , they’re committed. So send more than you expect to need.

There are a lot more details we’ll have when we get to actual fleet combat like this. For instance, it appears (but we do not know) that Vanduul ships habitually include more turrets than UEE ships, and that these are pretty devistating, and at least on the Void Bomber are all able to fire forward on the same target. Means you can’t get in front of a Void Bomber and expect to survive in either fighter or Cap ship unless you have this game breaking damage control supposedly on the Idris and Javelin. OTOH, it looks like the Void Bomber turrets cannot fire astern. It that’s true, the game is to get the Vanduul ships to point away from where your stealth incursion is coming. You can then see why an Idris splitting its Eclipse attack force into two groups is likely key. No Cap ship can point in two directions at once.

It looks like really fun gameplay ahead, if we can trust our intel.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I've got a Perseus for Vanduul cap ships - I look forward to those types of missions.

IIUC, the smallest Vanduul cap ship is the Void Bomber. It’s intended to compete with the Polaris and is really a corvette. It has 3 S10 guns and 7 S6 turrets. I don’t think a Perseus is going to fare well against them, especially since lore is they always appear in pairs, and each carry two fighters.

They are lightly armored and probably move about the speed of a Perseus, but again; you’d be facing 6 S10 guns and unlikely to survive a single salvo. 1 hit maybe okay. 2 hits, maybe surviving. Not sure you should expect to survive a third hit.

Are you aware if the Perseus is supposed to include the “advanced damage control” systems supposedly found on the Polaris and Idris? I think CIG intends this to make a serious difference in combat. Needs both PCs and NPCs to make it work though. There’s no undercrewing your ship and getting damage control benefits.

I think the Perseus is intended to kill the HH and Redeemer. There is no Vanduul gunship that class that I’m aware of. There is a Vanduul heavy fighter, the Stinger; that comes close to a gunship, but it hasn’t been revealed yet. It may be slow enough for the Perseus’ big guns to hit.

 

[Richard Bong]

I might seem stupid, but for a carrier group against a legion of Vanduul fighters only, I'd consider filling the Idris with Furies while having 3 fully crewed Hammerheads that would take up 3 sides around the length of the Idris so that their turrets can mostly cover focus outwards & allow the Idris to put the majority of its power into its shields. That would be a hell of a lot of little stingers to deal with the Vanduul fighters within their range while those that choose to attack the Idris will have to deal with the cover fire of the Hammerheads & Idris turrets.

With CIG's ideal weapon ranges the Hammerhead is pretty useless. It basically has to be docked to what it is defending.

 

[Richard Bong]

Regarding carrying more fighters than pads, according to the rule "If it sits, it fits," there is a problem. Life support isn't likely to ba capable of handling the pilots, much less the ground crew for each of the fighters. With what they have shown us of Fighters on the Idris, it looks like a ground crew of 4 or more per craft.

There just isn't room or life support for that many people.

 

[AccidentProne8]

Regarding carrying more fighters than pads, according to the rule "If it sits, it fits," there is a problem. Life support isn't likely to ba capable of handling the pilots, much less the ground crew for each of the fighters. With what they have shown us of Fighters on the Idris, it looks like a ground crew of 4 or more per craft.

There just isn't room or life support for that many people.

I kind of figured people would just stay in their ships.

 

[AccidentProne8]

IIUC, the smallest Vanduul cap ship is the Void Bomber. It’s intended to compete with the Polaris and is really a corvette. It has 3 S10 guns and 7 S6 turrets. I don’t think a Perseus is going to fare well against them, especially since lore is they always appear in pairs, and each carry two fighters.

They are lightly armored and probably move about the speed of a Perseus, but again; you’d be facing 6 S10 guns and unlikely to survive a single salvo. 1 hit maybe okay. 2 hits, maybe surviving. Not sure you should expect to survive a third hit.

Are you aware if the Perseus is supposed to include the “advanced damage control” systems supposedly found on the Polaris and Idris? I think CIG intends this to make a serious difference in combat. Needs both PCs and NPCs to make it work though. There’s no undercrewing your ship and getting damage control benefits.

I think the Perseus is intended to kill the HH and Redeemer. There is no Vanduul gunship that class that I’m aware of. There is a Vanduul heavy fighter, the Stinger; that comes close to a gunship, but it hasn’t been revealed yet. It may be slow enough for the Perseus’ big guns to hit.
View attachment 25173

Idts regarding the damage control systems.

But I didn't mean "go after solo" Perseus is just what I would be bringing to the table. That being said, the lore seems to indicate it will definitely be able to damage much larger ships.

"Though it was damaged beyond repair, the Achilles managed to down two Vanduul destroyers. This impressive feat helped turn the battle in favor of the Empire and did not go unnoticed by Admiral Bishop, who personally lobbied RSI to start producing the Perseus model again for use against the Vanduul. Now, RSI is proud to present the civilian-model Perseus gunship. Capable of successfully engaging a broad spectrum of ship classes, the mere presence of a Perseus is enough to make your most aggressive enemies think twice before engaging… just like its vintage namesake."

To borrow a common RSI sales phrase...I was looking to punch above my weight class.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Regarding carrying more fighters than pads, according to the rule "If it sits, it fits," there is a problem. Life support isn't likely to ba capable of handling the pilots, much less the ground crew for each of the fighters. With what they have shown us of Fighters on the Idris, it looks like a ground crew of 4 or more per craft.

There just isn't room or life support for that many people.

I did the math in the first post above. The Idris min crew is 28, and max crew is 81. Given that, my guess is crew for carried ships has to max at 53. I recommended 38. That’s all pretty fast and loose but reasonable, I think.

Yes, absolutely everyone needs a bed. Odds are decent though, at least with medium sized ships; that you’ll be able to install life support significantly past your number of bunks. We’ll see what is the trade off there. Odds are good there will be significant demands on your power supply. It will probably be hard to install huge life support on stealth ships.

I recently saw walkthrough vids of the A1 and C1 that had removable battery, gravity and life support component slots. The reviewer treated it as a done deal that all SC ships are going to include these new features. BTW so I’m on the record, placing the cargo hold so you have to walk through it to get to the components was a bad choice. The components are aft of the cargo hold, so all the cargo needs to transit the component space. Bad design, IMHO.

 

[Richard Bong]

I kind of figured people would just stay in their ships.

Ground crew doesn't fit in the ships.