Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Colonol Dekker on September 28, 2008, 03:45:57 pm
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Fleets, Fleets and Fleets.
The GT(v)A was(is) full of them, for the purposes of giving fans something to refer to and for the sake of FreeSpace related fun. I want to ask for everyone to contiribute every bit of CANON info pertaining to wjhat constitutes a battlegroup, in turn any glimmers of to how many battlegroups there are to a Fleet. (at least 13 in the Vasudan Context?)
The Colossus cutcsene shows how many fighters there are to a wing and upwards iirc. So fighter contingent chat is best left for another topic.
First (rhetorical) question, was the Aquitaine Flagship?if so, why didn't it have any dedicated escort craft :confused:
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First (rhetorical) question, was the Aquitaine Flagship?
The GTD Aquitaine is a superb example of this new ship class, serving as the flagship of the Capella-based 3rd Fleet.
if so, why didn't it have any dedicated escort craft :confused:
Because it was a tough guy.
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(rhetorical)
Well ;) at least we can work out that at least two Deimos corvettes were bossed about by Petrarch. Any other craft seen around Fleet HQ i assume were part of the third Fleet. Any views regarding that?
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If the Collossus is anything to go by, it has at least 240 space fighers ready seeing as it can house 60 wings so I would roughly estimate 280 to account for losses in combat/operations . I cannot imagine any other destroyer linking up with it, but possibly a Corvette/couple of cruisers.
So in my opinion, a battle group should be made of the following (Great War, 2335)
Scenario A, High Risk, High Conflict System
Two Destroyers
3 Cruisers
Scenario B, Moderate Risk, Low Conflict System
1 Destroyer
4 Cruisers
Scenario C, Low Risk, No Conflict System
3 Cruisers
2 Science Cruisers
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I like the layout,
I'd use a layout more like:
FLEET>
Flagship Battlegroup (+1 escort destroyer)
4+ regular Battlegroups
BATTLEGROUP>
1 Destroyer
3 Cruisers
1 Science Cruiser
5+ Logistical craft
For FS2 Era, add a few corvettes and an AWACS ;)
(But i've no canon info :( )
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I've always figured, given the amount of ships and ship losses, that figures were like so:
Fleet/Battlegroup size:
4-6 Destroyers with full fighter complement
6-10 Corvettes
15-20 Cruisers
10-15 logistics
further subdivided into smaller half fleets of:
2 Destroyers
3-5 Corvettes
7-10 Cruisers
5-7 logistics
further into flotillas of:
1 destroyer
1 Corvettes (extra firepower to prevent too much tactical outmaneuvering)
1-3 Cruisers (close in escort, mainly Levis, possibly with one Aeolus in the larger groups)
2-3 Logistics
AND flotillas of:
2-3 Corvettes
4-5 Cruisers (typically newer Aeoluses to compensate for lack of fighter craft)
2-3 Logistics
The flotillas without destroyers would function mostly as reinforcements or as assaults, applying force specifically where needed, whereas the ones with destroyers would be providing fire support and recon with patrols, etc.
Each kind of flotilla would work closely with each other, often working together in half/quarter-fleet ops, with one providing fighters, recon, heavy anti-cap (via destroyer), and the other would provide anti-fighter (via aeolus), and standard engagement ships (the corvettes).
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I was trying to take into account the manpower needed to handle the ships, the stations, the senate, the infrastructre, recruiting and training (aside from tsms of course) all the science wings comm management, the new GTI, SOC and specialist squadrons and still have people left to be civilians in need of defending in the first place ;)
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100000 people in a fleet, as canon states in several briefings.
destroyer = 10000
corvette = 3000
cruiser = 500
3 destroyers, 15 corvettes, 50 cruisers.
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Corvettes have 6000.
The debrief for A Lion at the Door states so if you lose the Sobek.
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Is that if you lose one or both though?
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Corvettes have 6000.
The debrief for A Lion at the Door states so if you lose the Sobek.
I'd assume that there's a reasonable difference in crew size between zod and terran ships.
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100000 people in a fleet, as canon states in several briefings.
lol no.
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lol.... yeah
The Enif station mission cbanim I think
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The Enif station mission cbanim I think
Nope.
"Sixth Fleet has been decimated, with total GTVA casualities in the system exceeding..."
It does not specify a literal fleet size. Sixth Fleet has taken serious losses but it is not wiped out to give you a fleet size. It leaves the possiblity of other units in the system open (indeed, the wording almost demands it). Finally, if decimated in the literal sense, then the total casualities mean that is about a tenth of fleet size, but decimated is almost never used in the literal sense.
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I forget, is it reduced to, or reduced by, a tenth. Too much use of it in other context i agree.
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Reduced by a tenth - the meaning not used in the game.
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"36 hours ago, the NTF launched a full-scale offensive in Epsilon Pegasi, taking the GTVA 6th Fleet by surprise. Commanding his forces from the NTD Repulse, Rear Admiral Koth leads the rebel advance. With 75 percent of our forces in this system decimated, the regional death toll since the incursion now exceeds 80,000."
Which means 6th fleet had 100,000
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"36 hours ago, the NTF launched a full-scale offensive in Epsilon Pegasi, taking the GTVA 6th Fleet by surprise. Commanding his forces from the NTD Repulse, Rear Admiral Koth leads the rebel advance. With 75 percent of our forces in this system decimated, the regional death toll since the incursion now exceeds 80,000."
Which means 6th fleet had 100,000
"With 75 percent of our forces in this system decimated"
Which means that 6th Fleet can only be confirmed to have been the unit on the blockade if anything. It does NOT say 6th Fleet took 75% losses. It says the forces in the system did. This almost certainly means 6th Fleet is not alone.
Regional death toll could also well include civilian casualities. Probably does, at that. (And exceeds is inspecific, could be 84000.)
Then there's that literal decimated again, which would be 75% of the forces have lost one man in 10.
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Then there's that literal decimated again, which would be 75% of the forces have lost one man in 10.
Although you definitely have valid points in the rest of your statements, I doubt very much this particular statement is what :v: intended.
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4 destroyers, 4 corvettes per destroyer, 4 cruisers per corvette, 4 bomber wings per cruiser, 4 fighter wings per bomber wing. Or you can go by the number of 3 per ship. At least in my opinion.
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I was thinking of a fleet like this:
1 flagship
1 to 2 destroyers
3 or 4 corvettes
3 to 5 cruisers
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People can keep drawing TOEs as much as they like but in reality those were only 'true' in peacetime and even then it is doubtful they would have used such direct 'by fours' (or threes) method like commonly used in infantry. Fleets were/are (also historically) most often location bound regardless of their designations (like US 3rd Fleet ~ US East Pacific Fleet, US 4th Fleet ~ US South Atlantic Fleet etc etc). And their actual strengths were/are not in any way equal. Basically the amount of ships in a fleet varies greatly both due losses and also due reassignments of ships from one fleet to another.
In short.. There is no way to tell how many ships are part of a fleet. Reserve fleet in peacuful area is more of organizational entity than anything else.. perhaps consisting only of couple of cruisers and whole lot of support ships while stocked front line fleets just before the shooting war could have several destroyers and several dozens of cruisers.
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Well i just wanted to establish a standard for fans. Authors and my little bro :)
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"With 75 percent of our forces in this system decimated"
Which means that 6th Fleet can only be confirmed to have been the unit on the blockade if anything. It does NOT say 6th Fleet took 75% losses. It says the forces in the system did. This almost certainly means 6th Fleet is not alone.
Could also mean that much of 6th fleet is deployed elsewhere though and they are referring to 75% of whatever was left.
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Colonel, it's a bit difficult to establish a standard fleet size. I don't think the Colossus usually operates with a fleet of ships escorting it.
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Actually they do refer to the Colossus having a battlegroup.
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The Colossus has a battlegroup, but in all in-game appearances, it's always by itself.
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Although you definitely have valid points in the rest of your statements, I doubt very much this particular statement is what :v: intended.
Truth be told, neither do I, but until I learn to read the minds at :v: or hear otherwise from them I can't really rule it out.
My own take on it is that the GTVA operates "mobile" fleets lead by a single frontline destroyer. The destroyer is backed up by a number of cruiser-corvette striking forces (three or four) each lead by a corvette or two and having two to four cruisers (sometimes more). Vasudans do things their own way and their battlegroups are lead by a single frontline destroyer which counts one to three corvettes and three to seven cruisers in escorts. These reflect the peacetime TO&E. Wartime obviously can cause these numbers to change as they lose ships or are reinforced.
Older destroyers, and many other ships, are assigned to the "fixed" defense forces of individual systems where they and the other ships so assigned operate more or less independently, because that is a more efficent arrangement for their usual job of guarding widely dispersed civilian assets and traffic. In time of war, they can be called on and moved up to the front lines where they are seconded to an existing fleet structure on an as-needed basis. In this way a fleet in a combat zone may have multiple destroyers in its command structure, but usually they try to add on more of the striking force units rather than overstrength the ones they have. The Vasudans don't even bother. They just let the battlegroup get as big as needs to be, since it's intended to be more or less a blunt instrument while Terran fleet organization is designed for tactical and grand tactical flexiblity.
(It's based on my idea of a sort of lessons learned from the T-V War; Terran fleets had most success with a blunt force trauma approach since they tended to have superior ships and weapons, so a straight-up confrontation worked well for them. The Vasudans usually had to do things the opposite way to be successful, though blunt force came through for them at a couple of key points with the Typhon. Rather then construct their post-Great War fleet units to do what they already knew how to do, both chose to construct them to do what they had not done well in the T-V War, to put armor over their weaknesses rather than build on strengths that didn't serve them very well against the Shivans. The hope is that a more balanced approach will result in fewer casualities at least.)
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Actualy the GTVA has very decent ships to combat the shivans.
The Vasudans lead the way with more durable ships and more powerfull weapons (Hattie vs Hecate)
however the major downfall for the GTVA is atempting to fight the shivans on their own terms. that is with massive concentration of firepower against a single target which has proven to be less then succesfull duw to the fact that shivan warships cat take out ANY GTVA counterpart in less then 2 shots (Colossus is the exception here) .
Howeve back to the question at hand.
GTVA fleets are not that small as people may imagine them to be. However due to the HUGE amount of space they have to protect pattrol and supervise you almost NEVER get to see 2 GTVA destroyers and their escort in one place.
As we have seen in the main FS1 and most notably the FS2 campaign a typical GTVA fleet has :
1 Destroyer (minimum , this figure is probably most common in the backwater remote regions of the GTVA)
2-3 Cv-s per destroyer (standard complement i would assume)
1-2 Cr per Cv (this is the case because the GTVA has not yet replaced ALL of its cruiser with corvettes as is states in the tech room. )
However this is the bare minimum i would assume for a GTVA fleet .
For Fleet such as Aquitane's fleet i would assume you would have :
2-4 Destroyers per fleet
2 -3 Cv's per destroyer with at least double the number of cruisers .
However people must not be fooled that there is a maximum and a minimum of ships in a fleet. You could easely see up to 10 destroyers per fleet if the situation calls for a massive presence in the sistem.
or as low as 4 corvettes with 8 to 10 cruisers as part of the fleet.
also i would assume there are about equal numbers of terran fleets as there are vasudan battlegroups.
Also the number 13 is not the maximum number of fleets by a long shot.
You could easaly have at least 10 more fleets in reserve . sure they probably wont be as strong as the front line ones but they will be powerfull nevertheless.
so my take is there are at least :
26 fleets/battlegroups
Each fleet has an average of 2 destroyers per fleet.
Also as backup i would imagine they have at least half as many fleets (10 to 13 ) in reserve guarding the GTVA when the front line fleets are out gooing to war in another sistem or they culd act as reinforcements casualty replacements.
So the GTVA has quite a whoping number of warships.
However the drawback is the fact that the nwer warships fail to live up to the standards set by the old generation. The Hecate is one example. While is excels at aaaf protection and force projection when compared to the much much much more older Orion class when push comes to showe they have no real bite to them. And a destroyers fighter/bommber complement can be depleted really fast these days.
The exception from the rule is of course the Hattie with the Deimos coming in a close second alongside the Sobek. Both of them achieve what they are suposed to do in a very admirable fashion. And the Hattie while it may not be as heavely armed as its older counterpart form the GTA the Orion is still more powerfull then the Hecate by a large margin more durable and fields the same amount of fightercraft as the Hecate class.
So yeah the Zods got it right with their Cv's and D's and managed to frack thingsup with theyr cruisers .
The terrans got it good with the Aeoulous and the Deimos with the Leviathan coming in right behind thatx to its 4 AAAF beams.
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The Hatshepsut's only dangerous to warships if they approach from above. If they approach from below, the Hatshepsut's in trouble.
The Hecate has a serious problem that should only exist on Shivan warships.
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The Hatshepsut's only dangerous to warships if they approach from above. If they approach from below, the Hatshepsut's in trouble.
The Hecate has a serious problem that should only exist on Shivan warships.
Agreed to the below thing of the Hattie but then again most GTVA warships dont have even adequate firepower to cover they underside. But a valid point nevertheless.
As for the Hecate well it field just on BG in its forward firing ark. So the Hecate is desperately in need of some big guns upgrades.
The hecate is al all-round almost adequate warships but manages the incredible to be taken out by a corvette or a cruiser if attacked from the sides below or the rear.
so IMO the really fracked up that ships. they wanted to be able to do everithing with it and ended up dooing less then they anticipated and were forced to fall back to the good old trusti powerfull as hell Orion with less then adequate aaaf capabilaties.
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To make it simple :
78-100+ Destroyers TOTAL
160-200+ Corevettes TOTAL
300-500+ Cruisers TOTAL
Considering the staggering losses suffered during the NTF rebellion and the Second shivan war i would estimate the GRAND TOTAL to drop by about 30-40% . I'm basing this on the fact that the player is not informed of everithing that happenes during the war. So he does not know all the losses.
I expect not even ship captains know the grand total in losses as it would be a huge blow to moralle and may cause riots and all sorts of problems.
Also this is based on what we do get from the debriefings and briefings.
30-40% losses is a HUGE blow if you stop to think about it. However that does not mean the GTVA has lost ALL of its fighting force. It just means that what remains of the GTVA armada is now even more stretched towards covering all the ground GTVA controlls.
If the GTVA had comitted even more during the war towards fighting the shivans with losses exceding 50% gooing towrds 60 or more then that would of been disatrous and would of efectively meant the destruction of the GTVA fighting capabilaties .
basicly they would not of had enough replacements or even warships to mount an effective campaign.
It would of meant having massive holes in the front lines and calling up ships from guard duties all over the GTVA leaving them without protection should anithing get through the front lines.
Considering how easy the GTVA looses destroyers cruisers and corvettes dont even tip the scale .
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Pretty valid points, I think. All the evidence that the GTVA is short on ships is shown in Exodus, Their Finest Hour and Clash of the Titans II.
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AlphaOne, I know what you've been through in the Second Shivan Incursion, and that you got your analytical skills from there, and since you don't talk in missions, you have a lot to say, but do your posts really have to be larger than the page is?
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Uh, Shadow, his post isn't very long, you know...
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As for my analitical skill's they have nothing to do with FS2 main or any other user made mod.
I'm just making educated guesses based on what was provided to us in game.
Based on those informations (and im sure most of the people here would agree) one can draw up a pretty good picture regarding GTVA ship strenght losses and various effects it has overall.
If you desire any more proof i will divert your attention to say a 100k strong army loosing 40k of its veteran soldiers. While it may not look so bad in fact it is a disaster since that army's fighting potential has been reduced in half if not even lower depending on the detailed losses. Sure you may have replacement of up to 500k troops but those are all green out of the training camp or even worse reservists called up to action not even fresh out of the training facilaties.
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I believe it was a joke about your username
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Sorry im off my game today. I REALLY need some more coffee and women. .....damn what a shame im at work.
Anyway anyone else care to speculate make an educated guess on the overall size of the GTVA ship's inventory?
I would really like to see what others have to say.
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I can only guess so many:
100 GTF Ares
4000 GTF Hercules Mark II
1500 GTF Hercules
2 000 000+ GTM-4 Hornets
100 000 GTM-4a Tornados
100 GTM-13 Helios
500 000 GTW Subach HL-7
500 000 GTW Mekhu HL-7
:nervous:
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alphaone that is way too many ships and personnel for the GTVA to even remotely have.
As far as I can tell there is probably 1-3 destroyers per fleet, then 2-5 cruisers, 4-8 corvettes with there being maybe 10-16 fleets in all (not counting the Vasudan battlegroups). I came up with these numbers by looking at the ntf fleet losses and the amount of resources that the gtva used to combat them.
The NTF is all but destroyed with the deployment of the colossus, but before that it seems that the deployment of the Psamtik and the Aquitaine had already turned the tide of the war. If the GTVA had those kind of numbers at its disposal it would anialated the NTF long before the colossus even came around.
Those numbers are even smaller in FS 1. I would guess that during the great war there were only about 12-18 Orions in service and each one had its own accompanying fleet of cruisers.
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well if you count just the GTA at about 13 fleets you would stii get at 2 destroyers per fleet 26 destroyers about 40 cruisers (which i believe is an understantement , im putting 3 cruisers per fleet here) and an average of 78 corvettes.
Now considering the fact that 24 Aeolous class crusiers are considered very few i would imagine the GTA to have at least 3-5 times that amount of Fenris and Levis. sure they are beeing phased out but they are still around .
And we are not even counting here the Vasudan navy which seems to have a lot more corvettes then crusers.
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And we are not even counting here the Vasudan navy which seems to have a lot more corvettes then crusers.
Oh yeah...now that you bring that up, I realised that I hardly see the Mentu being used. :D
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You can't blame them, it's like expecting a playstation 3 for xmas, and getting a Coleco (sp?)
Mentu = :no:
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The GTVA should just switch to an all Orion, Deimos, and Aeolus fleet.
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You base that on in-game assumptions. In the Universe the Hecate is far better than the Orion.
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...Coleco (sp?)
ColecoVision? :drevil:
The GTVA should just switch to an all Orion, Deimos, and Aeolus fleet.
Perhaps, but keep in mind that Aeolus cruisers are expensive to build and maintain. That's why only twenty-four of them were built.
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That is never stated in the game. All that is said in game about the Aeolus is they're excellent at taking down fighters and that that there were 24 of them made, no reason was given why only 24 of them were made.
You base that on in-game assumptions. In the Universe the Hecate is far better than the Orion.
The new GTD Hecate class of destroyers is replacing the Orion class as the flagship of Terran battle groups. More heavily armed than the Orion, the Hecate also carries over 150 combat spacecraft and a crew of 10,000. The GTD Aquitaine is a superb example of this new ship class, serving as the flagship of the Capella-based 3rd Fleet.
It says it's more heavily armed, that's it. Far better isn't included in there, only replacing and better armed.
There are several examples of ships being replaced by newer, inferior models in history. The Kirov for example, was a highly impressive but difficult to maintain ship, and only one was ever made.
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There are several examples of ships being replaced by newer, inferior models in history. The Kirov for example, was a highly impressive but difficult to maintain ship, and only one was ever made.
Actually, there were at least four of the class, but they were built with significant alterations in weapons fit and sensors between ships so they are generally considered seperate classes though all use the same hull.
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Oh :doubt:
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You base that on in-game assumptions. In the Universe the Hecate is far better than the Orion.
What else will you base your opinions on, in a universe which is made up almost entirely of in game action?
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Hecates rock at killing fighters, Orions rock at destroying cap-ships.
But then we have to argue about the role of fighters that are stored in the destroyers' hangar bays in a battle and so forth.
But I fear the Hecate more than an Orion - being a fighter pilot.
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The Hecate has a messed up turret layout, like the Iceni. As a result, I can't tell where the AAAfs are most of the time. If I have to attack one, I'd be dead before I knew what hit me.
An Orion's AAAfs are concentrated on the top and bottom. You can fly around the ship and destroy all its beam turrets without coming under AAAf fire once.
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If I want a ship to protect me and fend off the fighters attacking it, I'll choose a Hecate.
If I want a ship to actually kill other capital ships, I'll choose an Orion. :p
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The Iceni is terrible because its loadout is not symmetrical. :blah:
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And because it has a different loadout every time it appears?
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And because it has a different loadout every time it appears?
Well, not really, but I'm irked that it has two BGreens on one side ONLY.
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Well, at least they're place where the Iceni can use them both in Rebels and Renegades.
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Well, at least they're place where the Iceni can use them both in Rebels and Renegades.
Yeah, otherwise it'll be dead. Were they pointing at the Mentu or the Sobek?
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Sobek IIRC. The Mentu's no threat to the Iceni anyway. No beams.
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Both ships appear on the same side of it.
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Both ships appear on the same side of it.
:confused:
I saw the Mentu appear port-side before, then the Sobek jumped in on starboard.
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I think the Iceni does an about-face when it heads for the node. Not sure.
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It looked more like a thirty-degree swerve if you ask me... :confused: :nervous:
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:confused:
I saw the Mentu appear port-side before, then the Sobek jumped in on starboard.
I'm pretty sure they both appear to the same side, or at least remember them doing so, althought the Mentu's course might have taken it beneath the Iceni to the other side...or I'm just remembering wrong, having not played that mission in some time.
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I haven't played it for a long time either.
...you see, this is the problem with most FS2 user campaigns. ;)
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User campaigns? I thought "Rebels and Renegades" was canon?
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User campaigns? I thought "Rebels and Renegades" was canon?
It is, but because of all the mods and campaigns made by players, I haven't touched the main campaign for a while now. :blah:
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Ah. I just misinterpreted your statement.