Author Topic: Realistic Capital Ships  (Read 5542 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline deathspeed

  • 29
  • i can't think of a good avatar
    • Steam
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
Besides, strikecraft are artificially strong vs. capships in retail FS, as capships' default AA turrets are rather anemic. Just give capships the exact same weapons as strikecraft (never mind various mods' capship weapon buffs), and they'll probably end up curbstomping any strikecraft that comes their way. (Of course, make capship AA TOO powerful, and you mess up game balance, but this is a discussion about the practicality of capships from an in-universe standpoint, so...)

Isn't Rheyah's Ephesus/Shetland mod working toward something like this, so a player cannot take down a cap ship single-handed?  Perhaps not this particular method, but I think he was working on rebalancing.
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
There are lots of mods with buffed up capships.

 

Offline procdrone

  • Formerly TheHound
  • 29
  • Balance breaker! Thats me!
    • Steam
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
Besides, strikecraft are artificially strong vs. capships in retail FS, as capships' default AA turrets are rather anemic. Just give capships the exact same weapons as strikecraft (never mind various mods' capship weapon buffs), and they'll probably end up curbstomping any strikecraft that comes their way. (Of course, make capship AA TOO powerful, and you mess up game balance, but this is a discussion about the practicality of capships from an in-universe standpoint, so...)

Isn't Rheyah's Ephesus/Shetland mod working toward something like this, so a player cannot take down a cap ship single-handed?  Perhaps not this particular method, but I think he was working on rebalancing.

I'd like to point out, that FS was all about fighter dogfights - capships were just an addon to it.
--Did it! It's RELEASED! VeniceMirror Thread--

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
I don't think that's inherently true.

 

Offline Vrets

  • 27
my brain is too small for this thread
I don't think that's inherently true.

Inherently true? What does that even mean in this context?

edit 1: I looked up logical truth on wikipedia in an attempt to understand, but I only became more confused

edit 2: the next post caused me to blow a gasket..."especially not inherently true", oh my gaaaawd
« Last Edit: May 23, 2015, 12:50:36 pm by Vrets »

 
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
It's especially not inherently true in FS2.
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 Mars

  • I have no originality
  • 211
  • Attempting unreasonable levels of reasonable
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
It means that, depending on your play style its not always true that FS was about dog-fighting in a fighter. It wasn't INHERENT (absolutely true, built into the game mechanic true) that FS gameplay was all about fighters. 
« Last Edit: May 23, 2015, 01:00:22 pm by Mars »

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
I don't think FreeSpace inherently, as a core component of its gameplay and mission design without which FreeSpace could not be FreeSpace, requires a fighter-centric battlespace.

I don't think we got a good FreeSpace game until we got a game in which the role and capabilities of warships were enhanced, and they were given abilities which fighters could not access.\

V talked about warships as props in a game about fighters and bombers but I think they were wrong. Or, with a bit more nuance, I think they were actually articulating a principle of good mission design, namely that the player is (as far as they knew) going to be in a fighter or bomber and they need to have something to do.

 

Offline Vrets

  • 27
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
I'm still waiting for an ORION KOMMANDER mod that lets me be a destroyer captain; at full sim-level detail, I want to be managing my fighter complement, morale of my (excessively large?) crew, supplies and logistics, and other minute details.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2015, 09:51:39 pm by Vrets »

 

Offline bigchunk1

  • bigchunk1 = Awesome²
  • 29
  • ...and by awesome I mean Jerk!
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
Well, if you actually put your brains to work in all of this, then the whole of FS2 breaks down. My mind reels like this: First you have to understand this is somewhat like 200 years from now. Everything's really automated. One really good maintenance crew of ten or twenty would probably manage every single one of those crafts. Cleaning and maintenance of the ship? Come on, even in 2010 we had roombas. Seriously, 10000 people? I'd imagine less than a thousand. But the problem is, if you go that mental route, then you will ask yourself, why have pilots? Why not just have a gazillion of AIs? And then you start to ask physics questions and .... yeah, better to just ignore the questions and just pretend this game is just some kind of metaphor for "Battles in the Pacific" regarding gameplay.

I pretty much agree with this. In the future more tasks should be accomplished with less people. FS2 just took WW2 warship crew compliments and used a rough multiplier based on the increased size of the ships. I saw a documentary of how much work it took to load a main gun on an Iowa class (WW2 era) battleship. 10 guys to remove the powder and shell from storage, 10 more guys to take it to the next room 5 loaders 3 gunners a communicator 5 bore cleaners and a commanding officer and more random roles I forgot about... just for one gun. A battery (turret) can easily be crewed by 100 men each doing a small task since almost nothing is automated. Freespace tech should not be so bulky. I mean your fighter weapons are automated right?

On the contrary, to support the dramatic numbers. I get the idea that in the FS verse due to population control issues or the way they conduct warfare that human life is just not as highly regarded as it is now. So that would support the dramatic numbers, because why have machines do it when you have so many damned people on all these planets.

Just some random thoughts. I'm sure it has all crossed our minds when command alarms us with the 10,000 crew aboard the Warspite and how they are in danger. I don't think they gave it that much thought since we spend 2 missions worrying about Kappa wing (4 pilots) and go on a killing spree with NTF capital ships during the bomber arc.
BP Multi
The Antagonist
Zacam: Uh. No, using an effect is okay. But you are literally using the TECHROOM ani as the weapon effect.

 

Offline Vrets

  • 27
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
Just some random thoughts. I'm sure it has all crossed our minds when command alarms us with the 10,000 crew aboard the Warspite and how they are in danger. I don't think they gave it that much thought since we spend 2 missions worrying about Kappa wing (4 pilots) and go on a killing spree with NTF capital ships during the bomber arc.

In war, you don't hold a candlelight vigil for the people aboard the enemy battleships that you must sink. It's war and everyone has a job to do....and then the war ends and we can think things like "oh my god, in retrospect I can't believe the things that we did. Oh my god, I killed like 20,000 people on that one mission."

Although their ships had some of the most suicidal captains in human history, I've always felt sympathy for the 20,000 poor bastards aboard the Vindicator and Uhuru. Did boiler-watcher and/or lightbulb repairman billybob deserve to die? Probably not, but the ship he was aboard needed to explode in order for the war to be won. Well, it probably needed to explode.

 

Offline qwadtep

  • 28
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
So why risk a single gigantic weapons platform when you can have hundreds of smaller ones that can take your enemy's large pieces off the gameboard just as well and across entire systems (FS2 strike craft were jump capable) where your large base of operations/capital ship is never threathened?
Because your capital ship is always threatened. There's no horizon to hide behind, no terrain to shield you, no air resistance or gravity to limit weapon range. A ship so small as the space shuttle is visible from the asteroid field, eight light-minutes away. Bringing fighters, manned or otherwise, simply wastes delta-v that could be better spent on a missile or kinetic buckshot.

The game is based on WWII dogfighting (as is pretty much every other fighter sim), but if we're talking about realism, then we have to recognize that space is not an ocean and the obsolescence of naval battleships does not apply.

Either way we're digressing.

I pretty much agree with this. In the future more tasks should be accomplished with less people. FS2 just took WW2 warship crew compliments and used a rough multiplier based on the increased size of the ships. I saw a documentary of how much work it took to load a main gun on an Iowa class (WW2 era) battleship. 10 guys to remove the powder and shell from storage, 10 more guys to take it to the next room 5 loaders 3 gunners a communicator 5 bore cleaners and a commanding officer and more random roles I forgot about... just for one gun. A battery (turret) can easily be crewed by 100 men each doing a small task since almost nothing is automated. Freespace tech should not be so bulky. I mean your fighter weapons are automated right?

On the contrary, to support the dramatic numbers. I get the idea that in the FS verse due to population control issues or the way they conduct warfare that human life is just not as highly regarded as it is now. So that would support the dramatic numbers, because why have machines do it when you have so many damned people on all these planets.
Capella is stated to be a densely-populated system, with a population of... 250 million. Even if overpopulation were a problem in Sol, I don't think that's why the GTVA starts churning out 10,000-man Hecates. The crew count probably comes from the need for all sorts of specialists to not only keep the ship running, but to come up with solutions on-the-fly to unpredictable battle damage that could cause a fully-automated system to spew more errors than FSO does from a malformed .tbl.

  

Offline procdrone

  • Formerly TheHound
  • 29
  • Balance breaker! Thats me!
    • Steam
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
I'm still waiting for an ORION KOMMANDER mod that lets me be a destroyer captain; at full sim-level detail, I want to be managing my fighter complement, morale of my (excessively large?) crew, supplies and logistics, and other minute details.

Well, there is a MOD that places you in command of Orion destroyer... but without all that crew managment stuff
--Did it! It's RELEASED! VeniceMirror Thread--

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: Realistic Capital Ships
I pretty much agree with this. In the future more tasks should be accomplished with less people. FS2 just took WW2 warship crew compliments and used a rough multiplier based on the increased size of the ships.

This is pretty much completely wrong, or an Orion's crew would probably be something in the range of nearly a hundred thousand people, not ten thousand. The ships are actually fairly undercrewed for their size in most cases; this probably explains their lack of effective damage control in most missions, where we never see weapons or systems come back into action.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story