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SSK-01 - Shinigami

After the success of the Wyvern T2 heavy cruiser, NightJade Inc. took on the design and prototyping of a battleship. Unfortunately, that project turned out to be not only too big for the young company, but also bring it close to bankruptcy. Being forced to downsize and restructure, the company had to take a surprisingly long break from creating new designs and only the orders of its existing line of ships kept it afloat during that period.

With the restructuring done and the first upgrade for the pride of the fleet - the Lancer - having been pushed out NightJade Inc. could once more return to designing new craft.
After considering multiple concepts that employees had come up with during the pause it was decided to open up a new area of ship design - submarines.

A quick brainstorming was enough to get everyone fired up and to establish the key characteristic that submarine designs should be focused on: stealth; the ability to strike the enemy while remaining unseen themselves.

With that in mind, a new prototype was designed then build - the SAX Shinigami. Early combat trials were surprisingly promising and the prototype was quickly pushed to completion.

Now it is my honor to be able to introduce the newest craft of NightJade Inc. - the Shinigami Attack Submarine!
This small and surprisingly affordable submarine can strike just about any enemy from range without them having any hope of spotting her - assuming that the submarine's captain manages to stay at least 600-800m away from their target.



Cost: 25.6k

Type: Submarine
Size: Attack Submarine (40 m long, 9 m wide, 8 m high @1,283 m³)
Speed: 11 m/s

Tier: 1
Difficulty: Easy
Campaign Strength: 6

Range: 2.0 km optimal / 3.0 km max
Spawn Distance: 1.5-2.5 km
Dive Depths: stays roughly 50m above the sea floor

• 1x4 bow torpedo bay (medium; 8m; 3xHE/1xEMP remote guided, 3km range, 43 m/s)
  
• 1x8 VLMS (small; 4m; 2xFrag/1x EMP, radar guided, 1-3km range depending on dive depths, 41m/s submerged, 114m/s airborne)

• stealth (400m sonar signature, 100m IR signature, no active sensors, no wireless transmitters/receivers)
  
• 1x4 sonar decoys (1k sonar signature; 31 m/s; 20s; rear-facing)

• sonar buoy (2x ejected; buoyancy set to -25m)
  
• radar buoy (2x ejected; set to max buoyancy to bounce on the surface)
  
• 400 engine power
  
• 12 ammo processors (ACB: turn on <= 50%; turn off >= 80%; priority tun of if no enemies within 5km)
  
• 2 repair bots
  
• 1 repair tentacle
  
• 4k RP storage
  
• 7k fuel storage
  
• 5.6k ammo storage

The standard tactic of the Shinigami is to stay at range from any enemies (roughly at 2km) and send torpedoes at them while circling around them. Should any aerial or surface target get close enough then the VLMS will also engage them, though depending on the current dive depth those missiles may end up too short-ranged.

The submarine can work just fine under pure AI control vs submerged and naval surface targets as well as against near-surface targets. However, against aerial or terrestrial targets it has to be manually maneuvered close enough for the VLMS to be in range to engage them.

Due to the difficulties of both getting good sensor data while submerged and the comparatively long-range the submarine stays at it is highly recommended to deploy it in a fleet where other craft can help with the targeting information for its torpedoes via Inter-Vehicle Transmitters.

• any good hit to the craft's rear will detonate half the craft since the ammo is only protected by what amounts to 1m of alloy
  
• cannot be detected by most craft if submerged at even just a moderate range (600m+)
  
• best used in conjunction with other craft that can get a better target lock on enemies in the area (inter-vehicle transmitter)
  
• can solo a Thyr if already submerged and at 1km+ range by the time the Thyr activates
  
• all the above assumes 0.00 base detection setting for the world

First a warning:
This craft purely relies on the combination of stealth and being submersed to survive. If either one is broken the craft will die, and quickly.

Next a note on stealth:
The sensor signature of a craft will be multiplied by the detection range of the sensor trying to spot said craft. These multipliers are:

• radar buoys and sonar buoys: x0.4
  
• 360° sensors: x0.5
  
• 90° and passive sensors: x1.0
  
• coincidence range finders: x1.25
  
• gimble sensors: x2.0 (there is no sonar gimble sensor)

Which means that so long as the submarine is out beyond 500m (it got a 350-380m sonar signature from most directions but an almost 450m one from the front and close to 500m from directly above) it becomes almost impossible to spot so long as it is fully submerged.

Unfortunately visual sensor signatures tend to be about 10x to 100x as big as any other type of signature which in turn means that anything within field of view of a camera (aka above surface) will be spotted so long as it is within the battlefield and potentially way beyond that (if the AI could handle that).
Thus stealth surface craft or stealth planes will not work vs visual detection systems. They do however work vs self-guided missiles and help decoys to do their job more easily ...