Author Topic: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?  (Read 21488 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
If you shoot an anti-ship missile at a modern Nimitz carrier it's probably going to kill it, if you ignore literally everything else about the situation. But literally everything else is important!

 

Offline Torchwood

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
The thing with missiles is that they can be countered. They can be shot down by point defense fire, spoofed or intercepted with counter-munitions. But beams are nearly perfect - they travel at 3E8 m/s and deliver effect with zero chance of avoidance. Beam guidance jamming and artillery at standoff range is basically the only thing that can keep them at bay, without it, Tevs have a massive advantage in ship-to-ship combat.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Well... there is the matter of the beam-emitters being quite vulnerable to anti-subsystem strikes.

That means that TEVs do have far more alpha-strike potential, but when it comes to prolonged battles, I think the UEF is better. Not to mention that most TEV ships are really screwed if you manage to catch them from outside their rather narrow main-beam arc.

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
'Beam jamming' is not, as I think people tend to fall into assuming, a single tactical capability that results in a magic beam off switch. While not directly represented in game there is a large component of beam countermeasures that significantly reduces the effective damage of an on-target beam.
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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Torpedo launchers and railguns are just as vulnerable to weapon supression strikes as beam emitters are.

And you seriously underestimate how potent TEI warships are even without their main beams. You've got secondary slasher and medium beams, torpedo launchers, and pulse turrets to even the playing field.

Look at "The Plunder", the Siren can seriously mess up the Indus and Yangtze even with its main beams disabled before they even fire a single salvo. TT2s and Pulses are no joke.
[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Actually, the tech room makes a point out of how easily destroyed BBlue emitters are (conversely, they're equally easy to replace). Secondary beams are nowhere near as effective as a shock-jump weapon.

IIRC, partial beam jamming actually is represented in gameplay by special armor types, but I could be mistaken. Either way, PH has a good point. Remember that, lore-wise, both sides have advanced targeting systems that look for weaknesses in enemy active armor, so even messing up beam targeting by a few degrees would result in effect below the tabled values, even if gameplay doesn't consistently represent that.

"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.

You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.

On a side note, allowing the Carthage to be destroyed highlights the strategic thinking that Steele has. He understands that the Carthage is less valuable than more modern destroyers because of its aging spaceframe. He understood that for all intents and purposes, that the Carthage no longer had strategic value as it was on route to leave the Sol Theater anyways. By letting the Federation destroy/capture the Carthage, he is accepting a small loss in political capital in-exchange for keeping his plans on schedule, and to a certain extent, wearing down the Federation by having them expend further resources on what was already an irrelevant asset for his plans.

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Steele did not 'allow' the Carthage to be destroyed; he gave Lopez a direct order to retreat and she disobeyed. It was a fairly minor loss to him by that point but it was unquestionably a loss he did not want.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Steele did not 'allow' the Carthage to be destroyed; he gave Lopez a direct order to retreat and she disobeyed. It was a fairly minor loss to him by that point but it was unquestionably a loss he did not want.

I'm not saying Steele wanted the Carthage to be destroyed, but he definitely could have saved it, at the cost of delaying his next attack. My post was highlighting the difference between Steele and Severanti. If Severanti was incharge in that situation, he definitely would have committed forces to saving the Carthage.

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
If you shoot an anti-ship missile at a modern Nimitz carrier it's probably going to kill it, if you ignore literally everything else about the situation. But literally everything else is important!

Assuming it's Nuclear-tipped of course. I read an article on how DURABLE the Nimitz is against conventional warheads. For all intents and purposes, I gathered from it if you want that one hit kill, you need nukes. Also yes, it does put into context the rest of the operation of a CVBG as why these groups are the most defensible units on the planet today.

If interested, you can look here: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/five-reasons-us-aircraft-carriers-are-nearly-impossible-sink-17318?page=sho

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.

You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.

Well, the Feds have the same doctrine, which is why the question of why they can effectively counter a Chimera pack's alpha strike is so important in the first place. I maintain (as does the relevant Library fiction) that Calder and Severanti were both very careful with their attacks for just this reason, drawing out the war and giving the Feds time to leverage their long-term advantages. The UEF doesn't need to destroy the Tev foothold, just keep it contained until the GTVA gives up/the UEF can mass-produce IWAR ships[1]/Shambhala happens/the Fedayeen go nuke the portal/whatever. The Tevs under Severanti, meanwhile, need to grind their way past not only Calder, but also Severanti, who has been left to build up his forces, and probably even Byrne, who doesn't seem to mind committing assets to defend things. Like, okay, I get it, the GTVA has a massive pool of ships to draw upon as reinforcements, but there's only so many times they can do that before morale and political support start becoming a problem. Meanwhile, the UEF gets to play defensive, which is what they're best at, but they certainly can go on the offensive when they have to - well, 2 Fleet and Calder can, at least.



[1] Yeah, okay, the Oculus isn't going to win the war on its own, but once the Feds figure out how to refit Demeters and Kadmoses into beam jammers, the Tevs are going to have a much harder time using their main guns. Case in point, the Siren and two cruisers are a legitimate threat to a Karuna pair in "The Plunder", but in the very next mission, those same two Karunae[2] plus an Oculus force Serkr Team to withdraw.

[2] I know this isn't the correct plural, but it amuses me.

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
The reason the Karunas win in Aristeia is because the main beams of the Serkr were jammed and they got beat up too badly before they got into pulse range. And even then they usually retreat at 50-30% hull integrity while doing serious damage to the Karunas. By the time the Medea jumps in the Indus will usually be on its last legs.

The GTVA was probably taken off guard and didn't have TAG-equipped ships ready to jump and no time to load up some Pegasi or Rheas with them.

And in the very next op(Pawns on a Board of Bone and Delenda Est) they have TAG-equipped fighters ready and once the Wargods overcommit they get absolutely annihilated.

I really don't think full beam denial is going to work anymore. All sorts beam disruption techniques that reduce damage are still important but you're unlikely to see them completely nullified. Look at HFH for example, the Carthage and her Mjolnirs will miss some shots presumably due to heavy interference but most of them will still connect(and do serious damage to your frigates) which makes those beams primary targets to take out ASAP. Also in the case that you lose too many of your battlefield assets Steele isn't afraid to call in the Serkr to wreck the Toutatis(if the player decides to call it in).

Despite the Toutatis presumably having a complex EWAR suite and active armour it still gets taken out rather quickly by the corvette hunter-killer team.

So in the future the alpha-strike instakill potential of GTVA reinforcements is a massive nightmare for the UEF while the slower increase in DPS UEF reinforcements provide is more of a tactical setback. A GTVA ship in reserve is much scarier than a UEF ship in reserve, especially if its a Titan or a Bellerophon.

[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Also in the case that you lose too many of your battlefield assets Steele isn't afraid to call in the Serkr to wreck the Toutatis(if the player decides to call it in).

Despite the Toutatis presumably having a complex EWAR suite and active armour it still gets taken out rather quickly by the corvette hunter-killer team.


Wait, that's an event that can happen?

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
If you lose most (all?) of the air wing (I think telling them to depart counts for this), you can call in the Toutatis directly. If some other condition is met (both artillery frigates driven off, I think?), Serkr jumps in and nails the Big T.
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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
I was convinced that calling in the Toutatis was tied into how long it takes you to kill the Carthage but I've never actually looked at the mission file. If you lose all your Durgas that fight can drag on for like 15 minutes. Though I'm pretty sure you can get the Toutatis without losing your whole air wing. I've called it in with only ~20ish losses out of possible 50ish.
And yes, if you also lost both your arty frigs then Serkr jumps in with heavily uparmoured beams and wrecks the Toutatis.
[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.

You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.
Well, the Feds have the same doctrine, which is why the question of why they can effectively counter a Chimera pack's alpha strike is so important in the first place.

Also, probable historic point, both inherited at least some portions of the same fleet doctrine from the now defunct Galactic Terran Alliance League of Defense. A possible explanation of roughly similar operation.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Sure the torpedo tubes and mass drivers can also be taken out, but they are much smaller and the UEF generally has more of them than the GTVA ships have beams.

And I think you are underestimating the UEF ships far more than I am underestimating the GTVA ships. Keep in mind that the Imperieuse has to basically cheat to make sure it wins against the Wargods all the time.

That three buffed up elite corvettes with a lot of strike-craft support can badly damage two Karunas with far fewer strike craft is hardly a good example to showcase how great the GTVA ships are without main beams.

Besides the blob turrets won't be doing much damage to hull when they are busy with countering torpedo spams, especially if the UEF ships switch to the torpedoes that split into 4 submunitions for point defense saturation.

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
The Serkr corvettes don't actually have any extra pulses so their damage output without beams is the same as any other Chimera or Bellerophon.
The Karuna has 2 mass drivers which are pretty big and pretty easy to disable, just like the Chimera's front beams. It also has 5 Gauss cannons which aren't very hard to hit and don't do that much hull damage. And size really doesn't matter, it's not like smaller turrets are all that hard to hit.
Finally, it has 3 Apocalypse launchers which isn't really enough to overwhelm a corvette group.

The reason UEF frigates win against GTVA corvettes without their beams is that they're a size class above them. Of course they're gonna have more armament, they just have more hull to work with. A 1300m Karuna and an 800m Chimera aren't in the same class and the GTVA currently has way more corvettes in sol than the UEF has frigates. Directly comparing a Kurana and Chimera 1:1 is just as pointless as directly comparing a Karuna and a Hecate 1:1. The Corvettes have greater numbers and greater subspace manoeuvrability even if you ignore their beams. With their beams a Chimera pack is superior to any UEF warship, even a Solaris(as HFH demonstrates) .

And you can't just pretend like those beams don't exist. The corvettes can jump in and immediately fire which gives the defenders no time to disarm the beams and we know from Collateral Damage that a Narayana or Karuna simply can't survive a Chimera pack beaming. If there's an Occulus jammer in the battlespace you either send in maxim-armed hercs or connect with a TAG missile. If you have an Erebus in reserve you can also SSM it before sending in your kill pack.


GTVA Corvettes are enough of a threat without their beams considering their size class that they don't have to immediately retreat and the GTVA has enough corvettes that they'll never be without that potential jump-in alpha strike kill potential.


The Imperiuse only needs to overdrive on the 2nd shot to clean up the Katana and Atlan Orde before they can damage her beam emmiters. Beam overdrives are common in BP and it's reasonable to assume that ships can overdrive the damage or the firerate with practised crews. That's not really 'cheating', that's just the basic capability of the ship.

If the Carthage can overdrive the firerate of her old BGreens then a Titan can probably get her BBLues to fire every 10 seconds(maybe sacrificing some damage). Even with reduced damage 3 BBlues and 3 MBlues from the supporting Chimera is more than enough to OHK a Karuna.
[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
Quote from: -Norbert-
Keep in mind that the Imperieuse has to basically cheat to make sure it wins against the Wargods all the time.
Quote from: FrikgFeek
The Imperiuse only needs to overdrive on the 2nd shot to clean up the Katana and Atlan Orde before they can damage her beam emmiters. Beam overdrives are common in BP and it's reasonable to assume that ships can overdrive the damage or the firerate with practised crews. That's not really 'cheating', that's just the basic capability of the ship.

This is very important and I can't believe I forgot it. Somewhere in the developer's commentary, there's an anecdote about Delenda Est actually being "winnable" due to 3JRF's frigates sometimes nailing the Imperiuse's beams - and it's the much-maligned Gauss Cannon#Karuna that did it. This was resolved by making the beam emitters indestructible, but the point remains - without plot armor, those beams can go down quite quickly, and I somehow doubt that ship-subsys-guardian-threshold is within the capabilities of a Titan-class destroyer.

Actually, let me do the math here... As a first-order approximation, I'm going to model this as Chimeras vs. Karunae.

A Chimera corvette has 80,000 HP, and its MBlue emitters have 5% HP, aka 4000 HP, according to bp-shp.tbm.  The Gauss Cannon#Karuna deals 1200 subsystem damage per shot, and a Karuna has five of them. (I know I'm assuming Chimeras vs. Karunae, but as an aside... If Narayanas are in play, the Gauss Cannon#Narayana deals 2400 damage per shot and fires in bursts of two, so a single Narayana-grade gauss cannon can snipe an MBlue.) This is assuming perfect-or-close-to-it accuracy, which is less fair if we're trying to leverage the Narayana's range or ROF advantage.

On the defensive, a Karuna has 85,000 HP, and an MBlue deals 19800 damage per pulse. It takes roughly 4.3 MBlue pulses to sink a Karuna. If a single Chimera tries to shock-jump a single Karuna, it will leave the Karuna with 25600 HP, just barely enough to survive another MBlue pulse. If the Chimera emerged in TerPulse range, the Karuna is probably toast. If not, the Karuna has 35(!) seconds to strip the Chimera's beams before the lethargic MBlue has recharged... or, if the orientation of the ships doesn't suit that, it can just go be somewhere else, since the Karuna's got nearly twice the speed of the Chimera (and, another aside, fully twice the speed of the Bellerophon), all the while getting in some incidental damage with its Apocalypse launchers. Hypothetically speaking, if the Chimera's jump is particularly lackluster, it can even have an emitter taken out before it can fire (or before firing a full pulse), due to the Gauss Cannon#Karuna's range advantage[1]. Against paired Karunae, we see a similar situation, with the Chimeras inflicting moderate-to-severe damage but, depending on their insertion range, not necessarily taking out the Karunae unless they have numeric superiority. You can do the math on this one.

But that's going off the tables, and those don't paint a full picture. First off, beam jamming. I'm not talking about full-scale, the-Anjaneya-pwns-Serkr-Team-in-their-noob-asses sorta beam jamming here, though. It's been well-established in fluff that warships on both sides need extremely precise targeting is needed to get maximum effect from their main weapons in the face of enemy active armor[2]. Therefore, even slight degradation of beam targeting matters. I can't think of this being made explicit in canon, but it certainly seems to be the narrative justification for the special armor types used by Buntu ships in some missions. There aren't any canonical numbers here, but going off Delenda Est, a 20% degradation in damage seems plausible, in which case it takes a little over five full MBlue pulses to sink a Karuna with an ECM ship[3] escorting it. At 30% degradation, you'd need six, and at 40%, you'd need seven. In other words, depending on the ECM environment, a single Karuna may be able to escape even a paired Chimera strike!

What if we have multiple Karunae? Well, that's when this approach starts running into geometrical problems. How close together Chimera corvettes can safely jump in together starts to play a bigger and bigger role, but above a certain point, they're going to start having trouble emerging in a good shock-jump formation. I think there's some sort of diminishing return here, where at a certain point the corvettes start getting in each other's way. Another question would be whether ECM can mess up an incoming jump by interfering with whatever's relaying coordinates, which I don't think has ever been addressed. My guess would be that four Chimeras can almost always sink two Karunae, possibly with losses of their own depending on the Feds ECM, but that six can't reliably sink three since they'll get in each other's way.

Okay, so, why don't the Tevs just kill the AWACS? Well, if we're adding Tev fighters to the equation, we need to add Federal fighters as well. In "Aristeia", a pair of Kents or Uriels is sufficient to defend the Anjaneya more or less indefinitely, while Torpedo 2's AWACS is killed by SEXP fiat (which I discovered on one playthrough when I tried to save it to see if the Medea fight went differently). Karunae excel in the point defense department, and the AWACS would be nearby, so it seems plausible in-universe, too. Furthermore, the time spent fighting the AWACS gives the Feds time to Gauss Cannon the beams.

Okay, what about TAG missiles? Yes, it worked against the Hanuman, but I'd argue that that's not actually representative. It's been confirmed (and you'd have to find this yourself, I'm not searching through the entire BP discussion thread for it) that beam jamming is a combination of throwing off enemy targeting and physically messing with the beam magnetic bottle. At shorter ranges, it can be physically impossible to fire a direct-fire beam. If you send along a Deimos or Diomedes to TerSlash/TerSlashBlue the AWACS, you're still giving the Feds time to return fire.

Another issue is SUTRAC. Sol is the UEF's home turf. They've got listening posts, they've got recon elements, they've got whole installations devoted to computing enemy jump vectors. Conversely, the Tevs, erm, don't. The Feds also have their gate network, which, according to the tech room entry, helps them keep their own positions hidden by activating the gates at random intervals whether or not something's actually using them. Now, let's look at the times when we actually see a Tev shock-jump in practice:

  • In "Collateral Damage", the player gets a warning quite some time in advance of Serkr's arrival. I can't remember what prevented the Ranvir from jumping out, but under ordinary circumstances, it would have had a wide window to do so.
  • In "Aristeia", Calder warns you a full 30 seconds before the Medea arrives. If the Feds hadn't been escorting the crippled Agincourt, they could have jumped out right then and there. The Auxerre's CO, incidentally, describes the [/i]Medea's jump as unusually good, even though all she did was arrive in the correct orientation to fire her beams.
  • In "Delenda Est", the Imperiuse had to jump all the way from the Kuiper belt to avoid detection.

All of this hints that shock-jumps are harder to start than they sound, between the long lead time and the difficulty of actually finding the friggin UEF ship in the first place. Even if successfully launched, executing it successfully requires good navigational data to deploy correctly, and for the Feds not to have sufficient ECM cover. For the record, I'm not suggesting that Severanti launched many (any?) failed shock-jump attacks, especially given how cautious he is; I am, however, suggesting that Calder knows how to answer them, and that Severanti can't just throw corvettes at the enemy without careful preparations. ("Subspace speed chess" and all...) All three of these attacks were Steele's, not Severanti's, and one can still fail miserably, depending on the player's skill.

Lastly, we can apply a variation of the anthropic principle: if shock-jumps really were so impossible to counter as has been suggested, then either Severanti's severely underutilizing them[4], or the war would already be over.




Wow, that ended up being longer than I expected.




[1] The Karuna's main guns do slightly outrange the Chimera's, and it's enough to disrupt an MBlue if the Chimera comes in from too far away and within the gauss cannon's firing arc. The tech room explicitly states that this is a considerable deterrent for Tev strikes.

[2] For example, the Toutatis certainly could lob torpedoes at the Hood through the Hoover's ECM, and the Vikrant and Toreador actually do so against the Shrievality and Beholder. In both cases, it's a matter of reduced effect, not being completely unable to target. (Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure the Toutatis doesn't actually do so.) Ships will sometimes hold off on firing into heavy ECM to preserve ammo (UEF) or to avoid needless heat/recharge cycles (Tev).

[3] I've already said that I think, had Severanti continued to fight the long war he was fighting, the Feds would figure out how to mass-produce Oculi and/or retrofit existing spaceframes into jamming ships. Imagine an ECM block upgrade to the Custos - or, hell, maybe the Demeter or the friggin Puruyasha.

[4] Which I can totally believe. Steele shock-jumps a planet, after all - but we're talking about Severanti, not Steele[5].

[5] Incidentally, the Carthage, Imperiuse, and Serkr Team are all Steele's assets. I think it's relevant that the most feared shock-jumpers were customized and trained by Severanti's replacement.



EDIT:

Quote
If the Carthage can overdrive the firerate of her old BGreens then a Titan can probably get her BBLues to fire every 10 seconds(maybe sacrificing some damage). Even with reduced damage 3 BBlues and 3 MBlues from the supporting Chimera is more than enough to OHK a Karuna.

A Titan probably could, but the Chimera's tech room entry is quite explicit that it has heat issues as it is - it's got plenty of energy, but risks blowing itself up if it routes any more to the main guns.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2017, 09:44:47 am by xenocartographer »

 
Re: Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?
I think in a more coordinated shock jump you wouldn't have all the ships emerging from the same location with the same vector. I think it would look more like A time for Heroes where the entire battlegroup coordinates to burn through the Sath's 1 million health pool in about a minute and a half. That can reasonably happen to a stranded Solaris that doesn't have time to recharge its jump drives when it overcommits to an engagement.

By splitting up and coming in from different angles Tevs can both bring more firepower and split up the UEF torpedo swarms which makes them easier for fighters to shoot down.

The Serkr team jumping in side-by-side looks impressive and terrifying but with more assets you'd want to do a 90 degree or 180 degree split.

Overall beams do have less utility and are more demanding to use compared to long range mass drivers but they make up for that with their massive damage. Over the course of the war the UEF scores very few important kills on-screen. Mostly cruisers and 2 Diomedes, and some Deimoses depending on whether the player disables them. The GTVA on the other hand scores 6 frigate kills(and remember, frigates are a size class above corvettes) alongside some Sancti (Sanctuses?). A big reason for this is due to the UEF's lower subspace manoeuvrability and much more even damage with no real options for finishing off ships before they can jump out.

There's a good win in Her Finest Hour, scoring quite a few corvette kills and getting a destroyer but it might be too little too late. It was also an operation where the GTVA battlegroup refused to retreat when ordered to and could've retreated safely otherwise with no losses.

Most GTVA kills that we get to see come from shock jumps. GTVA jump drive tech is simply years ahead of what the UEF has which allows them to set up precise jumps and pick up kills with much less setup required. UEF kills on the other hand come from well-planned ops that utilise their infrastructure advantage but this also means that they're much less flexible once committed. Severanti never really exploits that, preferring to play it safely. Steele on the other hand doesn't play by your rules and uses that subspace manoeuvrability and shock-jump potential to great effect to exploit weaknesses as he sees them. Shock jumps aren't all that easy to pull off but they are extremely rewarding when pulled off correctly. On the other hand long-range artillery is much easier to set up but is less likely to pick up kills without very complicated setup that leaves GTVA ships stranded.

The jammer in Aristea is scripted to die, sure, but it's really not very hard to kill an AWACS ship from long-range with maxim-armed fighters and bombers. A wing of 4 Ares or Artemi with maxims in their 4-bank can burn through its 30k HP in just over 10 seconds. Even with active armour it shouldn't take much longer. Deploy 2 wings jumping at opposite sides of the Oculus, preferably from above and below(since that gives them a larger target profile to work with) at 4000 kilometres and fighter assets will have a very hard time responding before it goes down.

All of the scripting is supposed to have a diegetic explanation in-universe. The Imperiuse might have an ECM advantage which throws off the Wargods targetting and causes their shots to deal much less damage or it might have advanced new active armour that the UEF wasn't prepared for yet. The railguns on the frigates might have taken battle damage which causes them to be much less effective.

The Oculus dies before enough damage is dealt because of a lucky maxim hit that tore through the hull and hit the reactor. Or maybe something went wrong with its active armour, making it take way more damage than it should. Or a previous glancing hit ****ed up its cooling which caused the reactor to overheat and the ship to suddenly explode. There are plenty of factors not represented by game mechanics that explain away the "cheating".

And speaking of fighter assets, the wave 2 TEI fighters outclass anything the UEF has. The canonical reason UEF fighter corps have been able to pick up wins is that GTVA pilots are fresher but slowly improving with experience, sending their best pilots away from combat to train new pilots while the UEF keeps their best pilots on the front lines to "rack up ridiculous kill numbers". The UEF won't find it all that easy to keep picking up wins against superior fighters as the GTVA pilots catch up.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2017, 11:16:09 am by FrikgFeek »
[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded