Ship design: Ship role's/specializations

[TheFlemishDuck]

This thread is to discuss various ideas or uses of spcialized ship models that players might use and like and for myself to ask a few questions to especially in regard to stealth ships.

Basicly the idea here is to list ship models that you wouldn't define as a "all round" model. In fleet design a player counld theoreticly build a 100 ships all of the same type thingking that it's all roudn enough in that sense or maybe he might have 5 different designs each with their own role on the battlefleet within that fleet. Personally i think that a specialized fleet with various designs and shiprole's will tend to win from an all roudn fleet. As to define a few obvious role's and ther peculiarity's:

Tank: the typical kind of ship that can receive a lot of dammage and thereby can spearhead an attack while under heavy fire. Obviously these kind of ships will favour armour and shields over speed and will prefferably high quality weaponry that packs a high punch while having enough PD on board to stop a bunch of missile's too.

Carriers: Probably used a lot by players and obvious in role, i might note that carriers neither need to be fast or have lots of armor rather than reserve space for planes. If i would design a speedy carrier i'd quickly loose on space for hangers, a carrier can technicly stay behind the lines though on the battlefield in which case enemy planes becomes more of a threat. Therefore many of my carriers tend to be slow and lightly armoured but packed with weaponry to deal with fighters.

Long range weapon Skirmischers: These would be typicly ships that have a high speed and longe range weaponry allowing them to shoot at enemy ships withought fearing to be shot back at unless by the same weaponry or by a faster ship or fighters. i have had great success with fast IR corvette's in this regard. Ships like this are maximized for speed and so don't carry any unnessecary weight, they don't need to be too highly armoured because the intention is that the enemy wouldn't be able to shoot back at them withtheir bigger ships. To deal with faster fighters obviously such ships need some PD weapons like lazers (which IR lasers are too).

I could propose a sort of AA ship too for fleet support but IR corvette's tend to take that role already.

Stealth Torpedo ships: i wonder if this is an option, i'm not sure if stealth works like that on the battlefield that such a ship would be unseen. If so then i think this would be a good specialization. A ship like this would use stealth and long range torpedo's to torpedo enemy ships from out the darkness. If they would be detected they would need to flee so they would need speed and also weaponry to deal with chasing fighters thus mainly rmed with torpedo's and some shorter range lasers.
My suspicion (if anyone can answer this feel free to do so) is that any ship using a standard gun or laser weapon would give up its stealth by opening with such guns so therefore i don't think stealt would work with lon grange weapon skirmischers that use beam or projectile weapons.

Stopgap ships: Very cheap ships that you can always build as you'd unlikely ever lack the resources for it. Low quality, possible rather obsolete from the start, but say you lack the resources to build better ships then such ships might be usefull in bulk for defensive duty's.

Ramming speed/bomb ketch: More like a suggestion i guess than something that would work in game: I do wonder if it is possible to ram an enemy ship and deal damage like that. Another thing that should be possible imho is to fill up a ship with high explosive's (i gues that would be a ship full of nukes in space) and send it in between thick packs of enemy ships. Ramming speed is just fun, i guess the tactic could work in space.

Support ships:Here specialization can be good too. I usued to have support ships each having a reair and refuel module, now i tend to have pure repair ships and pure refuel ships. Don't think i need to cover such basics like colonizers or poppulation/component transports, i havn't made use too much of spy designs myself but i think you can get most relevant module's there in one ship.

Fighters: Whereas it's easy to make specializations like torpedo gighter against larger ships or laser/missle fighter to shoot down other fighters, i must note that fighters can easily be very expensive ships to build in numbers and that in time certain weaponry can be really murder on them like that weapon with it's growing ball thingy which can take out whole packs of them in no time. Fighters for me tend serve more a reconnaisance and support role rather than to be used in the attack.

Everyone afcourse is welcome to add his own idea's towards specialization, i'm quite interrested in how other people design their ships and for what potential specialized role.

[freifrei]

Interdictor - shielded freighter with jump prohibition module, can double as an additional anti-fighter support and tanker for small fleets
A pair of cheap weakly armed longrange+antifighter+interdiction satellite with 5-10 gunships (ideally only 9 heavy ion guns, MFE engines, chromoplasma reactors inside) to kill weak stealth fleets and transports.

[buglepong]

Generally pointless due to weapon slot and hull shape limitations.