HighFleet: Building a raiding party

Let’s start with something easy: Skylark is the foundation of any solid offensive group. It provides in-flight refueling, fuel delivery, and its MP-404 radar is invaluable if you don’t want to unexpectedly encounter a volley of missiles from an enemy strike group.

Unlike most other ships, the Skylark is very well designed and the rebuild will therefore be relatively subtle.

Making Skylark more fuel efficient

First of all, I would recommend removing the two D-30S engines located under the fuel tank. While it will slow the ship down, it will also drop the fuel consumption quite significantly, which is a worthwhile trade-off – Skylark doesn’t need that much speed. Rather the opposite – it will easily escape the Strike Group anyway, and it’s not entirely appropriate for a tanker to outrun the Assault Corvettes when attacking a city anyway.

Improving ballance

The standard Skylark constantly leans to the right during landing. The reason for this is the heavy generator on the right side, while the cabin on the left side is much lighter. So the right side will need to be lightened and the left side will need to be weighted.

By the way, for every vessel you modify, I recommend testing and fine-tuning the balance. It’s very annoying when it pitches and yaws on landing.

First of all, we’ll remove the rescue capsule on the top right. Gerat is a tough place and we don’t want our crew abandoning ship just because it’s on fire and going down, do we? It helps with the balance, however it is not enough.

Next we’ll remove the fire extinguishing pod from the right side as well – Skylark should never get into direct combat, and if it gets hit by a missile or air attack, there’s usually no opportunity for re-extinguishing. One extinguisher module should be sufficient.

The final step to achieve the ideal balance is to move the small fuel tank from the right side to the left – let’s place it directly under the infrared sensor.

Improving sensors

Speaking of the IRST infrared sensor, I would recommend getting rid of it as soon as possible and replacing it with the MR-12 targeting radar. It has several advantages over the IRST. First, it has 100km longer range, which can be the difference between life and death in the event of a sudden aircraft or missile attack. Secondly, it will allow us to launch and guide R9 Sprint anti-missiles, which are extremely useful in defending against aircraft and missiles.

The downside of the MR-12 radar is that if it is on, an enemy strike group can spot it with the ELINT system. This is only a minor problem though. Strike groups are slow so we can easily outrun them, plus Skylark itself can detect them at long range with its own ELINT system.

The last modification is related to the installation of the MR-12 radar. If you have it, you can use R-9 Sprint missiles.

Anti air defense

Of course, these missiles are expensive and usually in short supply. But if you have enough of them, it doesn’t hurt to install a few on every ship that is equipped with a targeting radar.

I wouldn’t go overboard with the Skylark though – it should stay away from combat, aircraft and missiles, so it only has anti-missiles for true emergencies. The MR-12 can target two anti-missiles at once, and I wouldn’t give it more than that.

Lightning is probably the most popular assault corvette. It is fast, agile, has good firepower, relatively well protected fuel tanks and ammo, and can be easily modified. Its engine thrust to weight ratio is 7.1, which is truly outstanding. It allows the Lightning to evade both the enemy’s fire and its missiles, so it needs no defensive armament and only a minimum of passive protection. This allows it to remain light and agile.

To better understand the design of the Lightning, I have included a picture with the engines and landing gear legs removed. Note the small grey squares of reinforced hull under the lower engine nacelles. These are interfering with the planned expansion, so we need to get rid of them.

The problem is that when you do this during a campaign, you can’t just remove the engines – not without losing valuable time. So I recommend learning how to remove this piece of hull without dismantling the engines, which of course can be a bit difficult as you can barely see it under the nozzle.

Removing weakest elements

For our modifications, however, we will need to remove other elements as well. The weakest point of the structure are the two fuel tanks, horizontally placed between the engine nacelles. We’ll get rid of them and replace them with R-5 Zenith missiles later.

In vanilla designs, the R-5 rockets are usually mounted on the outer spars. This is a very bad idea, because that’s the first thing the enemy will hit, often before you get the rocket into a hopeful firing position. It is therefore better to protect the missiles somehow – in this case, hide them in the hull. Surprisingly, rockets do not explode or burn when hit, so they are safer than a fuel tank.

Along with the horizontal fuel tanks, remove the two fuselage squares that covered them. Next, we will get rid of the escape capsules (evacuation of the ship is not in the plan) and remove the fire extinguishing modules from the block to the right of the bridge.

Indeed, we will need the block to the right of the bridge. After removing the horizontal fuel tanks, we don’t have enough fuel. We will compensate for the problem by placing one of the tanks horizontally at the bottom of the block we just vacated. We need to put something more durable in the upper part, which is typically either generators or crew cabins. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Adding static engines

The most important modification will be the addition of two static engines to the bottom of the aircraft.

Combat aircrafts usually prefer turning engines, which allow them to develop maximum speed in any direction. However, the problem with turning engines is the slow response – it takes a relatively long time to turn the engine in the desired direction. This can be deadly in combat and is uncomfortable when landing.

Therefore, adding horizonal static engines to the Lightning will greatly improve its flight characteristics. As a bonus, we get better undercarriage protection and a surface on which we can later install additional armament.

But the new engines need to be manned and the current crew is understaffed. Fortunately we have a vacant position to the right of the bridge, which is perfect for a small cabin. The fire suppression modules that were there before will be placed on a loose structure at the top of the machine, which was freed up by removing the evacuation capsules. They will serve here as additional protection for the top of the aircraft.

Adding extra protection

Now it’s time to install the protective elements. These will also serve as carriers for additional armament.

The Lightning must remain light and agile, so there’s no point in fitting armour to it. A reinforced hull will do just as well to protect it from accidental hits. The picture shows where to place the reinforcements to give the best protection.

However, pieces of reinforced hull are not very useful in tougher fights, so it is advisable to hang the Palash active protection system on them. It is expensive, but it will give you a very solid defense against heavy corvettes.

I also recommend installing two bombs in the suspension. If you can surprise the enemy on the ground, you can take out the most dangerous opponent with well-aimed bombs before the main fight starts. The main advantage, however, is that if the attacking aircraft is equipped with bombs and gets a surprise, the enemies will take off from the ground much slower than if it didn’t have bombs.

The Lightning modified in this way is ready for the toughest battles against corvettes, and with a bit of luck it can even take on a frigate or cruiser. At the same time, it is quite expensive, the price tag has climbed to 30,970 gold coins.

Preparing for the campaign start

When you start a campaign, it’s better to build your fleet from cheaper ships that you will upgrade during the campaign. So we’ll prepare a Lightning variant, which is sufficient for the initial battles and can be easily upgraded later.

For this purpose, we’ll get rid of the Lightning’s R5 missiles and uninstall the Palash system. The NK-25 engines are powerful, but they are also expensive and consume a lot of fuel. The cheaper D-30 will suffice for the beginning. However, I recommend to replace at least two of them back to NK-25 as soon as possible after the campaign starts, the weaker engines are really noticeable.

Armament variants

Now I would like to discuss the Lightning cannon armament. Standard equipment is two 100mm AK-100 cannons. These are the best option to start with, as they are cheap and quite effective.

Of course, the AK-725 Vympel cannons are cheaper, but the Lightning is built for hit and run tactics, while the Vympels are better suited for sustained fire from a distance, and it’s better to have them in larger numbers.

The disadvantage of the AK-100 is that they are inaccurate. This doesn’t matter too much at the beginning of a campaign, but over time it’s better to rearm with a pair of D-80 Molot. These have more penetration, which will come in handy against armored heavy corvettes, and are more accurate so you can shoot at longer range, which is often needed if the opponent has Proximity fuse ammo.

I previously thought it was a good idea to mount one or even two 2A37 machine guns. These allow you to shoot down incoming rockets and high-caliber projectiles. However, I eventually rejected such a configuration – the Lightning is agile enough to avoid these missiles, and machine guns are ineffective against armor.

Each raiding party, as I use them, consists of a minimum of three ships: the Skylark provides fuel and detection of enemy Strike Groups, the Lightning (or rather two) attacks cities and convoys, and the Fenek is an integral part of each such group, providing anti-air and anti-missile defense.

The vanilla version of the Fenka is just about functional, but it is unnecessarily expensive and tragically low on fuel. Since its role is to be in the air and patrol while the other ships refuel, perform rescues or make repairs, the short range is really annoying.

Improving range

The first step to increasing the range will be to remove all the unnecessary stuff. Of course, we’ll get rid of the evacuation capsules, including the structure they’re holding onto. More controversial, however, is the removal of both machine guns and their ammunition. Why rid an anti-aircraft corvette of its anti-aircraft machine guns?

The Fenek comes into direct combat in basically two situations: either by getting in the way of large KH-15 or A-100 type missiles. In that case, two machine guns are of no use, you need to use R-9 anti-missiles. Radar allows you to fire two at once and I recommend actually firing both, it’s better than losing the aircraft.

The second situation is an air raid. There, machine guns could be used, but in such an encounter the first seconds are decisive – the planes are trying to hit the corvette with missiles, bombs and machine guns, everything they have. Fenek has to manoeuvre, because being hit by a volley of missiles or bombs is devastating. Even in this situation, firing the R-9 missile is preferable, as it will head towards the planes before you see them, giving you a valuable hint as to what direction the attack is coming from. Even if the R-9 doesn’t shoot down the planes (and if you’re lucky, it can shoot down an entire formation at once), the attackers will fire their missiles and bombs and return to the mother carrier. Fenek has thus done his duty – he has protected the other ships in the group from the raid. It’s not necessary to shoot down the enemy, just thwart their attack.

So machine guns are not necessary for the Fenk, but fuel tanks are. We can fill the vacated space with fuel, giving us a nice range of 2185 km. That much fuel will allow us to pull speed and patrol for dozens of hours without refueling while the assault corvettes are repaired and rearmed.

Improving speed

What does Fenek need speed for? Most of the time he patrols the lines connecting the cities, and that’s also the most likely direction from which missiles or planes will come. But sometimes an attack comes from an unexpected direction, then he needs to get between the attackers and the group he’s supposed to be covering as quickly as possible. Fenk’s radar has a range of 400 km (don’t forget to turn it on when patrolling) and the attackers are moving at speeds from 750 to 4000 km/h, so speed is sometimes really important.

To increase speed and maintain reasonable fuel consumption, we will install two D-30S static engines. These will also help us dodge aircraft if necessary, and in the event of a missile or bomb hit, they can save the vehicle if one of the engines is destroyed.

I would also recommend replacing the NK-25 engines with D-30s before the campaign starts. The aircraft will be a bit slower, but at the start of the campaign it’s all about fuel and ship cost, so I think it’s worth it.

Four R-9s may not be enough if the Strike Group fires a full salvo at you. It is therefore prudent to retrofit the Fenek corvettes with additional R-9 missiles during the campaign. These missiles are quite expensive and you don’t want to lose them in the first shower of machine gun fire from an incoming aircraft, so I would recommend using steel girders for them.

Jammer

R-9 rockets can also be spared if a salvo of cruise missiles is coming at you and you use following evasive maneuver:
If your formation is flying towards an enemy Strike Group, it’s wise to change direction occasionally to make it harder to target the cruise missiles. At the same time, it is important to keep the Fenek in front of the main group, but not too far away, always between your group and the enemy.
If you detect incoming missiles and the whole formation changes direction abruptly, they can dodge the missiles. To do this, Fenek must be equipped with a jammer. The jammer will reduce the incoming missile’s radar funnel, so the missile may not be able to intercept the group.

This maneuver works better if you keep the Fenek close to the group – after the missile passes the jammer, its detection abilities are restored and it could still turn on the main group.

When installing a jammer, you must leave both the left and right side clear as it is a form of radar. The ideal location seems to be below the main radar. I recommend placing both devices on a steel structure. It may be heavier, but it won’t fall off on the first hit and you won’t lose expensive equipment unnecessarily.

Preparing for the campaign start

The fully equipped Fenek is extremely useful for anti-aircraft protection, but its combination of speed, low fuel consumption and radar means it can also be used for other tasks such as courier service or radar reconnaissance, including searching for hidden bases. At the start of the campaign, however, you can get by with a “stripped down” version that has only four R-9 missiles and no jammer – both of which can be retrofitted later.