Big cost items here: Sensors - the big radar and the double ELINT. Double IRST makes sense as it's the cheapest, but maybe try an upside-down mount (usually radar but in this case you could do IRST to save the double sensor) to save ~2k, and consider the utility of your big radar. Guns - 12k in CWIS plus 2k in ammo as you said might be completely useless. Planes - the purpose of the ship so probably fine. I think you can save something like 15k by taking out the guns and their ammo, and redoing the sensors.
This is a popular post and I definitely have some doubts on the build. I am wondering if I want to fix these issues before we start, or go in with the ship we have built and try and overcome they uh... military procurement fiasco which has resulted in this 'warship'.
@@Phrosphor Nothing wrong with making a ship for style points, even in hard mode. Overall 15-20k saved is only half a ship or about 1/3 the cost of an attack group.
@@arcvasti9542 HAH. They even say 'yeah this ship was procured in a hurry and isn't finished'. 'Bloated vanity projected unexpectedly launched into an existential war' is pretty appropriate.
In theory you can put your big ELINT dome on the bottom of the centre of the flagship, and you won't need two ELINT domes. Additionally, if you want to make the ship a bit more stable on the landing pads, you can put "feet" on your legs so that the weight of the ship is more evenly distributed. It might save you some money on repairs if you ever need to land them. Looking forward to the campaign, Phosphor!
ELINT is the one sensor that can't be mounted upside down. He could mount his IRST on the bottom instead of double, or mount the big radar on the bottom with a rework to the landing gear.
There is actually a bunch in there, but only one needed attribution. I think I will make sure they are all attributed going forward. Finding royalty free stuff is tricky - I don't want any copyright strikes but I also can't afford to pay for licensing.
Since you have 2 aircraft carriers, I'd probably stick to 10-12 planes on this one (at the beginning, keep the ammo). IMHO, 10 planes is usually enough to strike down 5 missiles, and since you're fast, with a jammer you probably will avoid some of them. I'd recommend trying to get to 3000km range if possible, toss at least 2 sprint AA missiles for good measure. Also why not just remove the overpriced radar, you'll definitely have a chance to buy it later. Overall - scrapping 4 planes and the radar will already put you in the desired starting budget. Also, props for the nice chill beat in video :D
This is good advice, this ship really needs a second pass but I am wavering on whether I want to do it or go into the campaign with the flaws (Damn military procurement!) and see how we do.
There seems to be an easy way to keep within the flagship budget... as you've said, you wanted the radar for late game. Just removing it would make the ship cost 91k, and you could always buy it back when you're more comfortable. This would also let you move an ELINT sensor up, saving an additional 2k and giving you the full 1500km range (which I like to feel ever more secure with calculations). Finally, I worry that having 2 airplane carriers might be a little redundant, at least from how I play.
More planes are never redundant. Destroying a strike group and a tactical group at the same time with it is so much worth it. İ like cruise missiles but once you fire them they are gone. While planes can sunk enemy fleets repeatetly.
Two lightnings, two modified skylarks (extra large fuel tank added to the bottom and adjusted Landing gear), two pocket carriers with 5 t7s and about 8-10 sprints. Group has radar, thermal, and elint. Around 70k for each strike group, plus stevestopol a courier (light scout ship with absurd range for running around late game), and two Akulas with 4 r3s each. Leaves about 20-30k for spending. Fuel efficient strike groups with enough fighter support to take out or severely damage enemy strike groups. And enough fire power to intercept missiles and fighters. A lightning with prox ammo can take out an entire strike group if they're armor has been stripped by air strikes. Turns out, a single Salvo is enough to finish their cruisers if properly aimed. The akulas with the R3s split off with the courrier and hit strike groups that are refilling. All ships but the lightnings have over 5k range and 200 speed for easy repositioning.
@@TheReaper569 yep. Planes are kind of OP in the current version of the game. They can destroy anything in the game, they're essential to defend against missiles, and they're by far the easiest way to scout. They're also extremely cost/fuel efficient. The only drawback to an over-reliance on planes is that they do take a long time to ready after returning to the carrier. Still, you really can't have too many. If you have 12 planes you'd be better off having 24. If you have 24 you'd be better off with 48.
The algorithm shortchanged me by not recommending this series sooner! Really love your presentation style and how you explain your design choices. Looking forward to seeing how things turned out!
Your flagship carrier made me think of Robotech and wish for a community mod that could scratch that itch. Thanks for sharing your designs and thoughts, and everyone in the comments as well. Good luck, have fun and stay safe.
@@Phrosphor Robotech was an anime then an rpg, more anime and board games and stuff. The original series is very old now :) but still fun to see its start. I hope it gets a new lease on life but who knows what its ip holders will do next. The last i heard a while back was they were suing a lot of Battletech ip's over some stuff. Sry for the long answer, tried to make it short.
Build a very minimalistic ship with extra missiles and aircraft and then disassemble it immediately so you start the game with reloads and replacement airframes.
I love your fleet comp so far, but have you thought of making a AEW / AWACS craft of some kind? The basic idea could be to keep it ahead of the fleet, have its radar on, and if anything goes after it it can turn its radar off and run behind your main fleets. Using it to collect intel and the like may be useful, but then again it depends on how you actually want to plan. What normally happens though, is with an AEW, you can use it to find accurate locations of enemy fleets so you can take them out with your plane spam.
I want to fit at least one of these in, I mentioned it in the AAR, but I need to make sure I can afford my 'Core' fleet ships first. As long as I have a decent budget left over for the start of the game I will make a little barnacle screamer ship.
You should move more comms equipment to the bottom on both side, that way you have 3 clear mounts with full range for ELINT, Radar and IRST. For a flagship, it also lack quite a bit of fuel, so you will have to build some cheap tanker (mine have 5 big tanks, >300 speed and cost bellow 6000). If you really want to save cost to field more custom ships, a good idea is to remove some aircraft and ammo, and get them on the way.
I have some tanker support ships for this role, their objectives are to stick with the flagship and detach for short strikes and to pick up fuel and then return. It's not my favorite build but we will see how she goes.
Maybe if you had that tower in the center you would have more room to work and it would also made it look better (for me at least). Can't wait to see it all in action.
It is better to install 1 infrared detector upside down on the bottom of the ship instead of 2 on the sides of it. Wide ship is harder to land properly. Fuel tanks are vulnerable. So make it higher, give the ability to shoot past fuell for the guns, and set them in two pair on the sides of the bridge for more effective aiming and combat stability. Set radar tower in the middle of the ship this will give some protection to it plus will make runways more stable, reducing the risk of losing all the upper deck planes at once from a single hit. it is also a good idea to place some armor on top of ILS and at least couple of fire extinguisher somewere near the center of the ship. At the sides of radar tower basement maybe. A pair of anti-rockets on the sides will not hurt either.
Just finished the game on normal yesterday. I am gonna try hard, with some shipdesigns of my own. What is the differance between normal and hard? Is the AI 'better' or do you just face better ships. Also, on a note: I also build myself a aircraftcarrier. My humble advice is that you start with fewer planes. By removing four of yours, it will move you within your pricerange of the flagship. By the time you need that amount of aircraft (mid/late), you will have earned the cash and the oppurtunities to fill up the flight deck long ago. With my brawler, i use one bigtank fuel, that i encase within the ship. It gives amasing protection by not exposing any small fuel containers spread around, also sufficient range with fueltanker. But i dont armor my brawlers heavily. I like them somewhat dodgy. I am not familiar with where to share pictures. Anyways, learnt alot about this game from your vids! Great content. Thank you.
Also, I tend to go with the lightning for my brawler early game. I mod the stock one with a couple pieces of reinforced hull over the weaker parts. Then I buy 100-200 rounds of prox ammo at start. Rips through everything except heavy armor.... which can be stripped by switching to HE or hitting from top/bottom. Super mobile and allows me to shoot missiles without investing in flairs or spending fuel to dodge. Finally, mid/late game I upgrade those two into baby gladiators, or if I got lucky with a Tarkhen (and buy one) I get two paladins and mod them with 2 extra molots for a total of 5 guns. Scary good.
You may have already started at this point but I wanted to cover your points and questions. Hard Mode is Much Harder Garrisons, that's really the main thing. You can run into late game and high pop ships in much smaller settlements. It's why I mention the Gladiator a lot as running into one with an Audacity is a GG situation. I like your suggestions regarding the carrier. It's a little bit over armed, sensored and equipped. Building to the plan of upscaling as we go is a really cool idea and I am leaning towards a 'Admiralty Oversight Board' refit video before we launch to address some of these issues. I have my Audacity design as my dodgy ship, but I need something more like my Paladin 2 refit for taking on bigger ships.
Double fuel costs, double repair times. So it's much easier to get stuck in a repair death spiral, and much harder to commit to any flight that doesn't end in looting the money to refuel. Garrisons don't feel that different to me.
@@Phrosphor Yes, I made a slightly more armored dodgy ship, and a slightly more agile brawler. In my second (!) city i met two gladiators(prox) and two smaller ships. My smaller one got torn to bits, and the brawler made it, but with expensive damages to hull. I will move away from the concept of trying to have it all on one ship- this was my mistake. But yes, i truly enjoy fitting my ships with bigger guns and more equipment as i go along. Ads to the roleplay of a fleet in disarray. Thanks, looking very much forward to your playthrough.
Strictly speaking, you don’t need a flagship. You can remove the Sevastopol from the fleet, and go on just fine. But the flagship is typically the most expensive ship in a fleet, and typically, the most powerful (I occasionally use the Sevastopol to bully lighter garrisons when I’m feeling vindictive).
Honestly man, just bite the bullet and ditch those CIWS. I have never managed to shoot down a missile with just the miniguns. You would do better to replace those with sprints and save the weight.
Absolutely agreed. Sometimes I'd have 5, 6 intercepts with fighters on the missile, each with 1-2 hits, then absolutely shower it with 37mm fire on approach to the fleet and it would still get through. It's easier (and cheaper on repairs post failed missile/fighter intercepts) to just be stocking up on sprints for AA whenever you see them.
CIWS can't reliably damage a missile unless it's taken 2 sprints already. And even then hitting the damn thing is too hard. Replace with AK 100s and proximity ammo - use those to shoot down missiles that are aiming for your controlled ship and the sprints to cover allies. No use wasting sprints on a missile you can pop with good aim.
@@coreliousc8915 This! My experience is also that prox fuse AK-100s are the most reliable way to shoot down a missile (assuming that dodging/plane interceptions failed). But I will still fire 2 sprints at it in addition, not gonna take any chances...
A lot of comments on CIWS and Sprints, it's a really important factor. The one thing I will say is that the intention of missile defense is to launch T-7's mounted with AA missiles and the CIWS is to deal with incoming aircraft rather than missiles. If a missile makes it on screen, if its a nuke it's kinda already too late even if it gets shot down. Even so, there are massive costs savings to be made by removing the CIWS and ammo. I just need to decide if I want to do a 'before campaign' refit or not.
With 14 T7s no enemy aircraft will be able to get close enough to do this though. Unless you get stuck between two aircraft carriers with no air-to-air missiles.
This is the fear, but this ship will never operate at anything but the absolute maximum of aircraft range and will always have an escort. However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so this could be a prophetic post.
ok, i've made this but a bit lighter. Basically 2 less planes and the stuff you need for that ~94.5 k. I've tried to do stuff with the sensors but it just didn't work out...
i've picked up some of the changes in the refit video and niw it's 76345 without the radar, although i left that actually on the ship. Got a bit more range and speed too.
@@Phrosphor went reasonably well for me on normal difficulty but i probably didn't use the aircraft as much as i should have bc i'm not good at the game and for fear to lose the T7's. Won that campaign. My first "real" try bc all of the previous attempts were with vanilla ships only. In hindsight, the less planes modification was not a good idea. i wanted to save money but somtimes just 2 more T7's would have been really useful. I also, ripped the audacity, the auxiliary carrier, the brawler and the tanker from your videos, lol.
Why not put some of your electronic systems on the bottom of the ship? It looks like you have room, especially if you place another hull piece underneath each of the landing leg anchor points.
Sadly you can't, you need to edit a game file. If you open the .sera file for your ship in the [game dir]\Ships folder you need to edit in the line m_flagship=true under the line m_classname=Creature in something like notepad.
Did you test the planes taking off? I dont think you have the lower deck clearance and if you ever have to launch them in a battle it might go pretty bad
@@Phrosphor pretty awesome. I changed up the strike group a little bit. Not looking at making the ships pretty. I'm sitting at 800 kph with my strike ship and 6000 range with the fuel ship. That's definitely the strongest part of it all. I'm excited to see what you come up with for the brawlers.
Why do you need landing gear and guns on your flagship? I managed to make a radar, elint and ir flagship with 48 T7s for under 200k and all I needed for the majority of the campaign was a skylark and modified fennec with 6 miniguns. Unless I'm missing something your flagship shouldn't need to land or ever see combat if you Operate your planes and strike groups effectively.
Honestly I just have a weird thing with putting limitations on my builds. "All ships must fit the universe" which means all ships must have a landing gear. It's not super efficient, but I like flaws and 'requirements' because I find it keeps things interesting.
I always thought that you have to take the Sevastopol. Afaik, if you make any modifications at all to the Sevastopol and save it, it will lose the flagship tag, i.e. you won't be able to start the campaign without it. I know, you can cheat (i.e. manually edit files) to circumvent that, but I strongly believe that the game is balanced around the fact that you have to take the Sevastopol - a deeply flawed ship - with you. Am I mistaken?
Correct: You cannot have any other ship that isn't the Sevastopol without editing ship files, which could be considered cheating, depending on how you see that. I'll personally just keep taking the vanilla Sev, as it is what came through lore-wise, and then modify it to my needs. Imo modifying the Sev mid campaign does add some fun and challenge to the run.
@@Chicopajiso Agreed. I believe the description of the ship or the intro even mentions that they didn't have time yet to fully outfit/refit the ship for this mission
Actually there are (were) two other ships in the game files that you can unlock. If you watched my other playthrough I unlocked the Varyag Heavy Cruiser by having the Lord Governor of Gerat join me on my religious journey. The Varyag had the Flagship tag (although 1.14 removed it) so you could take it as a Flagship instead of the Sevastapol. There is also a carrier flagship in the game files that I don't believe has a way to be unlocked at the moment, but if you do it is selectable as well.
@@Phrosphor Awesome, I didn't know that! Unfortunately, in one campaign I completely missed the Lord Governor and in the other he didn't want to join me, so I always had to blow the Varyag up xD The Varyag was the big heavy ship you meet shortly before Khiva, right?
Ooof... guns instead of R9 sprints on your carrier? Enjoy letting a cruise missile accidentally slip by and watch as half of your planes dissapoof Seriously, someone mentioned here already - remove the guns and ammo, add the ELINT upside down, and add a 3rd deck. There's really no drawback to having multidecked carriers, even 4. As long as the deck is not too long to off balance the ship or make a repair landing impossible (or makes you shine like a bright light with the radar signature) If your carrier is in combat - you already failed the game. But just in case - add 2 zenith missiles for stragglers, the planes should do the rest
CIWS is for aircraft, the plan for cruise missiles is 1: Don't get caught 2: Intercept with planes armed with AA missiles (hence the IRST to detect incoming heat signatures). Having to mount a FCS Radar in addition to sprints would push the budget too far. This ship will never see combat and the CIWS is really just a nod in the direction of support. If I can get the Sevestapol to Khiva without it getting hit by planes or missiles I can get a faster ship there just as easily. If I don't, then enjoy me roasting in my Hubris!
@@Phrosphor Inevitably one of the cruise missiles will get through, sometimes it's just up to bad spawn luck when it comes to intercepting them with planes (planes have a tendency to come from above, which sometimes means the missiles are not agile/fast enough to hit them) This is especially the case on hard, where the missile carriers shoot you with 8 cruise missiles at a time. Even if that happens - they tend to get hit by a few missiles and still survive, dunno if it's up to difficulty, playing on hard as we speak, but if it's not - having a couple of R-9 sprints on every ship is invaluable for these rare circumstances. Well, at least it's deffo better than having guns on a carrier that size, since R9 sprints take up minimal space and don't require anything above a simple FCR anyway. + the ammo you use for the guns could be used on more jets
@@Phrosphor Yeah, that was a critical lesson I learned after failing too many times; once the alarm goes off, get moving or you'll be ass deep in missiles and they HURT. And I figured in my own designs that having an extra few guns would help in those situations where something slipped through and all ships needed to throw some lead skyward. Although I was amazed at how effective AA missiles are at just obliterating aircraft waves.
@@Summersong2262 Yep, there's no need to send jets to intercept enemy aircraft (unless you're protecting a lone interceptor/frigate that you sent to secure a convoy) Besides the risk that the enemy aircraft are accompanied by their own fighters with AA missiles - R9 sprints can down 3 aircraft clumped up and diving towards your ships in 1 hit And reserving the AA missiles and jets for cruise missiles if you don't want to activate ECM and light up like a christmas tree for every strike group in the vicinity around you is also important
Big cost items here: Sensors - the big radar and the double ELINT. Double IRST makes sense as it's the cheapest, but maybe try an upside-down mount (usually radar but in this case you could do IRST to save the double sensor) to save ~2k, and consider the utility of your big radar. Guns - 12k in CWIS plus 2k in ammo as you said might be completely useless. Planes - the purpose of the ship so probably fine. I think you can save something like 15k by taking out the guns and their ammo, and redoing the sensors.
This is a popular post and I definitely have some doubts on the build. I am wondering if I want to fix these issues before we start, or go in with the ship we have built and try and overcome they uh... military procurement fiasco which has resulted in this 'warship'.
Having your flagship be an enormous boondoggle juggernaut is an important part of the highfleet experience so go for it imo
@@Phrosphor Nothing wrong with making a ship for style points, even in hard mode. Overall 15-20k saved is only half a ship or about 1/3 the cost of an attack group.
@@arcvasti9542 HAH. They even say 'yeah this ship was procured in a hurry and isn't finished'. 'Bloated vanity projected unexpectedly launched into an existential war' is pretty appropriate.
In theory you can put your big ELINT dome on the bottom of the centre of the flagship, and you won't need two ELINT domes. Additionally, if you want to make the ship a bit more stable on the landing pads, you can put "feet" on your legs so that the weight of the ship is more evenly distributed. It might save you some money on repairs if you ever need to land them.
Looking forward to the campaign, Phosphor!
ELINT is the one sensor that can't be mounted upside down. He could mount his IRST on the bottom instead of double, or mount the big radar on the bottom with a rework to the landing gear.
@@swb5816 Oh I see, darn. That's an annoying limitation.
Got a lot of comments 'bout the design here, I think I might have a quick refit before we launch!
*smooth flagship building beats*
Any idea what the track is? :)
@@ДмитроНечай-с9о it's in the description
@@kwdblade4683 I got it, thanks!
There is actually a bunch in there, but only one needed attribution. I think I will make sure they are all attributed going forward. Finding royalty free stuff is tricky - I don't want any copyright strikes but I also can't afford to pay for licensing.
@@Phrosphor It's absolutely fine :)
All these ship designs are great, but I hope you've been grinding out a cheese for the Tarkhan requirement minigame.
Dumn luck and quiting to desktop and hoping you get the random preferences right this time.
@@coreliousc8915 that's the only 100% reliable way.
I'm feeling lucky.
Since you have 2 aircraft carriers, I'd probably stick to 10-12 planes on this one (at the beginning, keep the ammo). IMHO, 10 planes is usually enough to strike down 5 missiles, and since you're fast, with a jammer you probably will avoid some of them. I'd recommend trying to get to 3000km range if possible, toss at least 2 sprint AA missiles for good measure. Also why not just remove the overpriced radar, you'll definitely have a chance to buy it later.
Overall - scrapping 4 planes and the radar will already put you in the desired starting budget.
Also, props for the nice chill beat in video :D
Wait, but really, what's the second music?
This is good advice, this ship really needs a second pass but I am wavering on whether I want to do it or go into the campaign with the flaws (Damn military procurement!) and see how we do.
I will have to check and let you know :)
There seems to be an easy way to keep within the flagship budget... as you've said, you wanted the radar for late game. Just removing it would make the ship cost 91k, and you could always buy it back when you're more comfortable.
This would also let you move an ELINT sensor up, saving an additional 2k and giving you the full 1500km range (which I like to feel ever more secure with calculations).
Finally, I worry that having 2 airplane carriers might be a little redundant, at least from how I play.
More planes are never redundant.
Destroying a strike group and a tactical group at the same time with it is so much worth it.
İ like cruise missiles but once you fire them they are gone. While planes can sunk enemy fleets repeatetly.
I take 3 pocket carriers in and then buy every single one I come across
Two lightnings, two modified skylarks (extra large fuel tank added to the bottom and adjusted Landing gear), two pocket carriers with 5 t7s and about 8-10 sprints. Group has radar, thermal, and elint. Around 70k for each strike group, plus stevestopol a courier (light scout ship with absurd range for running around late game), and two Akulas with 4 r3s each. Leaves about 20-30k for spending.
Fuel efficient strike groups with enough fighter support to take out or severely damage enemy strike groups. And enough fire power to intercept missiles and fighters. A lightning with prox ammo can take out an entire strike group if they're armor has been stripped by air strikes. Turns out, a single Salvo is enough to finish their cruisers if properly aimed. The akulas with the R3s split off with the courrier and hit strike groups that are refilling. All ships but the lightnings have over 5k range and 200 speed for easy repositioning.
@@TheReaper569 yep. Planes are kind of OP in the current version of the game. They can destroy anything in the game, they're essential to defend against missiles, and they're by far the easiest way to scout. They're also extremely cost/fuel efficient. The only drawback to an over-reliance on planes is that they do take a long time to ready after returning to the carrier. Still, you really can't have too many. If you have 12 planes you'd be better off having 24. If you have 24 you'd be better off with 48.
@@rossvolkmann1161 Yeah, but you can usually make a 3 story deck Longbow, no need for 2 carriers
The algorithm shortchanged me by not recommending this series sooner! Really love your presentation style and how you explain your design choices. Looking forward to seeing how things turned out!
Glad to have you here at last!
With the black and orange color scheme on PowerPoint slides you're channeling Perun. 😂
This g might be grams of gold
Your flagship carrier made me think of Robotech and wish for a community mod that could scratch that itch.
Thanks for sharing your designs and thoughts, and everyone in the comments as well.
Good luck, have fun and stay safe.
I have played a ton of Battletech but never really seen Robotech are they related? Thanks for watching the video! Stay safe!
@@Phrosphor Robotech was an anime then an rpg, more anime and board games and stuff.
The original series is very old now :) but still fun to see its start. I hope it gets a new lease on life but who knows what its ip holders will do next.
The last i heard a while back was they were suing a lot of Battletech ip's over some stuff.
Sry for the long answer, tried to make it short.
@@Diarmuhnd ah of course, that's why the name is familiar! Thank you for the info! And don't worry about comment length, I read them all!
@@Phrosphor Cheers, glhf when you start your series.
Build a very minimalistic ship with extra missiles and aircraft and then disassemble it immediately so you start the game with reloads and replacement airframes.
I love your fleet comp so far, but have you thought of making a AEW / AWACS craft of some kind? The basic idea could be to keep it ahead of the fleet, have its radar on, and if anything goes after it it can turn its radar off and run behind your main fleets. Using it to collect intel and the like may be useful, but then again it depends on how you actually want to plan. What normally happens though, is with an AEW, you can use it to find accurate locations of enemy fleets so you can take them out with your plane spam.
A decoy scout is very useful to cheaply scout ahead, search hidden cities and lure enemies into ambushes
I want to fit at least one of these in, I mentioned it in the AAR, but I need to make sure I can afford my 'Core' fleet ships first. As long as I have a decent budget left over for the start of the game I will make a little barnacle screamer ship.
You should move more comms equipment to the bottom on both side, that way you have 3 clear mounts with full range for ELINT, Radar and IRST. For a flagship, it also lack quite a bit of fuel, so you will have to build some cheap tanker (mine have 5 big tanks, >300 speed and cost bellow 6000). If you really want to save cost to field more custom ships, a good idea is to remove some aircraft and ammo, and get them on the way.
I have some tanker support ships for this role, their objectives are to stick with the flagship and detach for short strikes and to pick up fuel and then return. It's not my favorite build but we will see how she goes.
Maybe if you had that tower in the center you would have more room to work and it would also made it look better (for me at least). Can't wait to see it all in action.
Yeah its an ugly beast isn't it? We will see how it does, the tower is a little awkward as is the price and the speed.
It is better to install 1 infrared detector upside down on the bottom of the ship instead of 2 on the sides of it.
Wide ship is harder to land properly. Fuel tanks are vulnerable. So make it higher, give the ability to shoot past fuell for the guns, and set them in two pair on the sides of the bridge for more effective aiming and combat stability.
Set radar tower in the middle of the ship this will give some protection to it plus will make runways more stable, reducing the risk of losing all the upper deck planes at once from a single hit.
it is also a good idea to place some armor on top of ILS and at least couple of fire extinguisher somewere near the center of the ship. At the sides of radar tower basement maybe. A pair of anti-rockets on the sides will not hurt either.
Great tips, at the time I wanted to constrain my build and was designing these ships to never see combat. So far, it's paid off.
@@Phrosphor It is almost impossible to constantly predict where and when anti-ship missiles will fly at you.
Better safe than sorry.
Just finished the game on normal yesterday. I am gonna try hard, with some shipdesigns of my own. What is the differance between normal and hard? Is the AI 'better' or do you just face better ships.
Also, on a note: I also build myself a aircraftcarrier. My humble advice is that you start with fewer planes. By removing four of yours, it will move you within your pricerange of the flagship. By the time you need that amount of aircraft (mid/late), you will have earned the cash and the oppurtunities to fill up the flight deck long ago.
With my brawler, i use one bigtank fuel, that i encase within the ship. It gives amasing protection by not exposing any small fuel containers spread around, also sufficient range with fueltanker. But i dont armor my brawlers heavily. I like them somewhat dodgy. I am not familiar with where to share pictures.
Anyways, learnt alot about this game from your vids! Great content. Thank you.
Oooooh I hadn't thought of that. Seriously, scavenge one mini gun or the molot 80 and you then turn around and buy a plane. Smart thinking 🤔
Also, I tend to go with the lightning for my brawler early game. I mod the stock one with a couple pieces of reinforced hull over the weaker parts. Then I buy 100-200 rounds of prox ammo at start. Rips through everything except heavy armor.... which can be stripped by switching to HE or hitting from top/bottom.
Super mobile and allows me to shoot missiles without investing in flairs or spending fuel to dodge.
Finally, mid/late game I upgrade those two into baby gladiators, or if I got lucky with a Tarkhen (and buy one) I get two paladins and mod them with 2 extra molots for a total of 5 guns. Scary good.
You may have already started at this point but I wanted to cover your points and questions.
Hard Mode is Much Harder Garrisons, that's really the main thing. You can run into late game and high pop ships in much smaller settlements. It's why I mention the Gladiator a lot as running into one with an Audacity is a GG situation.
I like your suggestions regarding the carrier. It's a little bit over armed, sensored and equipped. Building to the plan of upscaling as we go is a really cool idea and I am leaning towards a 'Admiralty Oversight Board' refit video before we launch to address some of these issues.
I have my Audacity design as my dodgy ship, but I need something more like my Paladin 2 refit for taking on bigger ships.
Double fuel costs, double repair times. So it's much easier to get stuck in a repair death spiral, and much harder to commit to any flight that doesn't end in looting the money to refuel. Garrisons don't feel that different to me.
@@Phrosphor Yes, I made a slightly more armored dodgy ship, and a slightly more agile brawler. In my second (!) city i met two gladiators(prox) and two smaller ships. My smaller one got torn to bits, and the brawler made it, but with expensive damages to hull.
I will move away from the concept of trying to have it all on one ship- this was my mistake.
But yes, i truly enjoy fitting my ships with bigger guns and more equipment as i go along. Ads to the roleplay of a fleet in disarray.
Thanks, looking very much forward to your playthrough.
would love to see a no limit super carrier focusing on max number of planes
Loving this series.
Two questions.
What makes a flagship a flagship?
Do you have your ships some where we can download them?
Strictly speaking, you don’t need a flagship. You can remove the Sevastopol from the fleet, and go on just fine.
But the flagship is typically the most expensive ship in a fleet, and typically, the most powerful (I occasionally use the Sevastopol to bully lighter garrisons when I’m feeling vindictive).
I don't understand this Game at all, but I LOVE watching your videos to relax, is It weird?
Thank you! Is it the ship building videos in particular?
Honestly man, just bite the bullet and ditch those CIWS. I have never managed to shoot down a missile with just the miniguns. You would do better to replace those with sprints and save the weight.
Absolutely agreed. Sometimes I'd have 5, 6 intercepts with fighters on the missile, each with 1-2 hits, then absolutely shower it with 37mm fire on approach to the fleet and it would still get through. It's easier (and cheaper on repairs post failed missile/fighter intercepts) to just be stocking up on sprints for AA whenever you see them.
CIWS can't reliably damage a missile unless it's taken 2 sprints already. And even then hitting the damn thing is too hard. Replace with AK 100s and proximity ammo - use those to shoot down missiles that are aiming for your controlled ship and the sprints to cover allies. No use wasting sprints on a missile you can pop with good aim.
@@coreliousc8915 This! My experience is also that prox fuse AK-100s are the most reliable way to shoot down a missile (assuming that dodging/plane interceptions failed). But I will still fire 2 sprints at it in addition, not gonna take any chances...
@@jannese7392 2 sprints always. One tells you where the missile is coming from and two you might get lucky and save on prox
A lot of comments on CIWS and Sprints, it's a really important factor. The one thing I will say is that the intention of missile defense is to launch T-7's mounted with AA missiles and the CIWS is to deal with incoming aircraft rather than missiles. If a missile makes it on screen, if its a nuke it's kinda already too late even if it gets shot down.
Even so, there are massive costs savings to be made by removing the CIWS and ammo. I just need to decide if I want to do a 'before campaign' refit or not.
A single missile or bomb gets through and that whole upper deck falls off with all those precious planes.
With 14 T7s no enemy aircraft will be able to get close enough to do this though. Unless you get stuck between two aircraft carriers with no air-to-air missiles.
This is the fear, but this ship will never operate at anything but the absolute maximum of aircraft range and will always have an escort. However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so this could be a prophetic post.
ok, i've made this but a bit lighter. Basically 2 less planes and the stuff you need for that ~94.5 k. I've tried to do stuff with the sensors but it just didn't work out...
i've picked up some of the changes in the refit video and niw it's 76345 without the radar, although i left that actually on the ship. Got a bit more range and speed too.
compared to your version i mean
Nice, I am keen to hear how it goes for you? I just used it for the first time in the campaign for a massive air strike. Very satisfying.
@@Phrosphor went reasonably well for me on normal difficulty but i probably didn't use the aircraft as much as i should have bc i'm not good at the game and for fear to lose the T7's. Won that campaign. My first "real" try bc all of the previous attempts were with vanilla ships only. In hindsight, the less planes modification was not a good idea. i wanted to save money but somtimes just 2 more T7's would have been really useful. I also, ripped the audacity, the auxiliary carrier, the brawler and the tanker from your videos, lol.
Why not put some of your electronic systems on the bottom of the ship? It looks like you have room, especially if you place another hull piece underneath each of the landing leg anchor points.
This is valid, I got it in my head I wanted a bridge/sensor tower like the vanilla cruisers do, though it didn't come out very well.
how do you make a custom flagship in the editor?
Sadly you can't, you need to edit a game file. If you open the .sera file for your ship in the [game dir]\Ships folder you need to edit in the line m_flagship=true under the line m_classname=Creature in something like notepad.
Did you test the planes taking off? I dont think you have the lower deck clearance and if you ever have to launch them in a battle it might go pretty bad
It's never ever going to fight on the tactical level so I am not toooo worried.
Would it not be better to have the IRST on the bottom so you only need one of them, like is some of the ship builds you showed in previous videos
The problem with mounting on the bottom is that the ship is so wide I would need a weird upside down tower that would make the ship look extra ugly.
Well, try everything with the default 100K.
I did that already, that's why I have the cash to build this fleet :)
Ummm... I rebuilt a few of these and it ended up being too expensive with the normal Sevastopol. I hope you're accounting for that.
Nevermind. Disregard what I said. Lol I posted this before I watched.
Gave me a heart attack!
How did they perform?
@@Phrosphor pretty awesome. I changed up the strike group a little bit. Not looking at making the ships pretty. I'm sitting at 800 kph with my strike ship and 6000 range with the fuel ship. That's definitely the strongest part of it all. I'm excited to see what you come up with for the brawlers.
@@awesomeguy1346 Awesome! That sounds like a nasty and capable strike force!
Why do you need landing gear and guns on your flagship? I managed to make a radar, elint and ir flagship with 48 T7s for under 200k and all I needed for the majority of the campaign was a skylark and modified fennec with 6 miniguns. Unless I'm missing something your flagship shouldn't need to land or ever see combat if you Operate your planes and strike groups effectively.
Honestly I just have a weird thing with putting limitations on my builds. "All ships must fit the universe" which means all ships must have a landing gear. It's not super efficient, but I like flaws and 'requirements' because I find it keeps things interesting.
How do you move entire picks like that instead of each part
Drag select the section and right click. It has to be unattached however. You can't highlight a group blocks and just move them.
I always thought that you have to take the Sevastopol. Afaik, if you make any modifications at all to the Sevastopol and save it, it will lose the flagship tag, i.e. you won't be able to start the campaign without it. I know, you can cheat (i.e. manually edit files) to circumvent that, but I strongly believe that the game is balanced around the fact that you have to take the Sevastopol - a deeply flawed ship - with you.
Am I mistaken?
Correct: You cannot have any other ship that isn't the Sevastopol without editing ship files, which could be considered cheating, depending on how you see that. I'll personally just keep taking the vanilla Sev, as it is what came through lore-wise, and then modify it to my needs. Imo modifying the Sev mid campaign does add some fun and challenge to the run.
@@Chicopajiso Agreed. I believe the description of the ship or the intro even mentions that they didn't have time yet to fully outfit/refit the ship for this mission
Actually there are (were) two other ships in the game files that you can unlock. If you watched my other playthrough I unlocked the Varyag Heavy Cruiser by having the Lord Governor of Gerat join me on my religious journey. The Varyag had the Flagship tag (although 1.14 removed it) so you could take it as a Flagship instead of the Sevastapol. There is also a carrier flagship in the game files that I don't believe has a way to be unlocked at the moment, but if you do it is selectable as well.
@@Phrosphor Awesome, I didn't know that! Unfortunately, in one campaign I completely missed the Lord Governor and in the other he didn't want to join me, so I always had to blow the Varyag up xD
The Varyag was the big heavy ship you meet shortly before Khiva, right?
put radar at bottom and only 1 elint at top where radar is
Good idea, that stops the coverage issues.
@@Phrosphor only have to make the landing gear a bit longer to compensate
How did you go from 138k to 175k when adding another ship. Shouldn't you be at 103k
I assume you are referring to when I put the fleet together? I get a refund for the Sevastapol first. Is that where you are seeing this?
@@Phrosphor i figured out what you were doing. Your good sorry.
Is design still relevant? If so can I have the save?
Sadly the game has updated several times since and this design is no longer applicable. I should do an updated one.
👏🙂
Ooof... guns instead of R9 sprints on your carrier? Enjoy letting a cruise missile accidentally slip by and watch as half of your planes dissapoof
Seriously, someone mentioned here already - remove the guns and ammo, add the ELINT upside down, and add a 3rd deck. There's really no drawback to having multidecked carriers, even 4. As long as the deck is not too long to off balance the ship or make a repair landing impossible (or makes you shine like a bright light with the radar signature)
If your carrier is in combat - you already failed the game. But just in case - add 2 zenith missiles for stragglers, the planes should do the rest
CIWS guns aren't bad against missiles. And missiles are also very easy to strap on later on, so I think this is how it has to be, budget wise.
CIWS is for aircraft, the plan for cruise missiles is
1: Don't get caught
2: Intercept with planes armed with AA missiles (hence the IRST to detect incoming heat signatures).
Having to mount a FCS Radar in addition to sprints would push the budget too far. This ship will never see combat and the CIWS is really just a nod in the direction of support.
If I can get the Sevestapol to Khiva without it getting hit by planes or missiles I can get a faster ship there just as easily. If I don't, then enjoy me roasting in my Hubris!
@@Phrosphor Inevitably one of the cruise missiles will get through, sometimes it's just up to bad spawn luck when it comes to intercepting them with planes (planes have a tendency to come from above, which sometimes means the missiles are not agile/fast enough to hit them) This is especially the case on hard, where the missile carriers shoot you with 8 cruise missiles at a time.
Even if that happens - they tend to get hit by a few missiles and still survive, dunno if it's up to difficulty, playing on hard as we speak, but if it's not - having a couple of R-9 sprints on every ship is invaluable for these rare circumstances.
Well, at least it's deffo better than having guns on a carrier that size, since R9 sprints take up minimal space and don't require anything above a simple FCR anyway. + the ammo you use for the guns could be used on more jets
@@Phrosphor Yeah, that was a critical lesson I learned after failing too many times; once the alarm goes off, get moving or you'll be ass deep in missiles and they HURT.
And I figured in my own designs that having an extra few guns would help in those situations where something slipped through and all ships needed to throw some lead skyward. Although I was amazed at how effective AA missiles are at just obliterating aircraft waves.
@@Summersong2262 Yep, there's no need to send jets to intercept enemy aircraft (unless you're protecting a lone interceptor/frigate that you sent to secure a convoy)
Besides the risk that the enemy aircraft are accompanied by their own fighters with AA missiles - R9 sprints can down 3 aircraft clumped up and diving towards your ships in 1 hit
And reserving the AA missiles and jets for cruise missiles if you don't want to activate ECM and light up like a christmas tree for every strike group in the vicinity around you is also important