Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: CT27 on April 17, 2024, 05:53:39 pm
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In Freespace terminology, a frigate is a warship that's between a corvette and destroyer in terms of firepower.
After the GTVA has recovered from Capella a little more (though 'recovering' from an apocalyptic level event is a relative term I suppose), should the GTVA develop a new frigate class of warship to add to its fleets? It could be a Terran one, Vasudan one, or a hybrid design.
Would this be a good idea militarily?
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Between the loss of the Colossus, the anemic firepower of the Hecate, and the aging design of the Orion, the GTVA would need something to fill in the firepower gap in the Terran fleet. Something corvette sized with multiple heavy beams seems like as good a choice as any.
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To be fair, they'd need to work on new cruisers. Let's not forget that only two dozen Aeoli were produced (most of which were destroyed during the NTF rebellion and the second Shivan incursion), and the Fenris/Leviathan duo would be all but obsolete in a Post Capella scenario. I'm not saying a frigate wouldn't help, but cruisers should be a priority.
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This is a question of the development of the combined arms strategy of the GTVA going forward.
Having smaller carriers makes sense in the T-V War era when fighters are far more reliant on carrier because they had no shields and no intersystem drives to scale. If the GTVA were able to layer a better logistics, e.g. modular armor, internals and exchangable mission specific externals, fighter formations might become far more veratile than smaller warships.
Additionally, the development of strategies following the admission that the GTVA cannot match ship capital ships, both in numbers and individual fighting strength, and doing so is a fools errant, it might shift capital ships further into a carrier role/logistics role for fighter units.
The only problem of course with rising profile fighters over warships is the issue of the pilot -- can the GTVA "supply" enough pilots to make that viable?
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To be fair, they'd need to work on new cruisers. Let's not forget that only two dozen Aeoli were produced (most of which were destroyed during the NTF rebellion and the second Shivan incursion), and the Fenris/Leviathan duo would be all but obsolete in a Post Capella scenario. I'm not saying a frigate wouldn't help, but cruisers should be a priority.
Post-Capella, should the GTVA make more cruisers like the Aeolus (either simply more Aeolus cruisers or a new class also geared heavily toward an anti-fighter/bomber role) or something like the Lilith that's geared toward an anti-capship role?
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I don't think that's a niche that really needs filling. The Hecate packs enough of a punch to deal with anything smaller than a destroyer, and its firepower is diffuse enough that it can deal with several ships of that size at once. Where the GTVA is weak is dealing with other capital ships.
If you could build several frigates for the cost of one Hecate, sure, but that's a very difficult question to answer since our information on the engineering and economics of shipbuilding in FreeSpace is extremely limited. Off the top of my head we know that
- The Orion costs more to build that it costs to pay its crew of 10,000 for 3 years
- The Aelous was too expensive
- The Colossus took 20 years to build
- The NTF managed to build the Iceni in 18 months or less
If they could pump out Icenis they'd be very useful, they have as much firepower as a destroyer, are more manoeuvrable, are considerably smaller and therefore easier to defend and have 90% of the armour of the Terran destroyers, but who knows how replicable that design is. Maybe it uses loads of rare materials.
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The GTVA should just build a bunch of maxim and trebuchet wielding gunboats that leave any larger ship drifting helplessly through space.
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I don't think that's a niche that really needs filling. The Hecate packs enough of a punch to deal with anything smaller than a destroyer, and its firepower is diffuse enough that it can deal with several ships of that size at once. Where the GTVA is weak is dealing with other capital ships.
If you could build several frigates for the cost of one Hecate, sure, but that's a very difficult question to answer since our information on the engineering and economics of shipbuilding in FreeSpace is extremely limited. Off the top of my head we know that
- The Orion costs more to build that it costs to pay its crew of 10,000 for 3 years
- The Aelous was too expensive
- The Colossus took 20 years to build
- The NTF managed to build the Iceni in 18 months or less
If they could pump out Icenis they'd be very useful, they have as much firepower as a destroyer, are more manoeuvrable, are considerably smaller and therefore easier to defend and have 90% of the armour of the Terran destroyers, but who knows how replicable that design is. Maybe it uses loads of rare materials.
A couple ships (this is canon, not mods) use the Subach HL-7, so fighter guns do exist in turrets.
If a Deimos was rearmed from THT to Prometheus S, and from the standard Terran Turrets to the HL-7, it would have a great increase in its damage delivery capability, at the cost of some range.
The longer range of the normal turret guns in FS 2 does not really mean much at all. The capital ships get zapped by beams and the small ships avoid the blobs mostly anyways (especially the huge turret).
Thus I postulate to replace the THT's with Prometheus S. The THT's are good in FS 1 era because they have lots of range, but the Prom reaches 1.5 km, so it's going to be better than any non-THT guns. Not to mention high velocity and good accuracy.
Now when it comes to dealing with destroyers and above, the Vasudans are good in the capital ship department.
Those who do not believe, set up a test mission - a duel of a Big Hat vs an Orion. Just make sure the Hat has the Orion above it (as there is no up or down in space, only where the guns can point or can't). The Orion gets spanked.
At close range when secondary guns and fusion mortars can reach, the Orion gets spanked bigly.
The Hat can also use all main guns while orbiting around a large ship, so in theory these can defeat a Sathanas if they are allowed to exit hyperspace and survive till they are in orbit. The Big Hat is a proper battleship.
I don't think that the GTVA fleet really needs frigates. The all around combatants are there - corvettes, and the carriers and battleships are also there.
Maybe a miniature Hatshepsut in the role of a frigate, so it would keep the firepower but lose the big hangar for some small docking bay (so it could have a few fighters for escort and scouting, but not a fleet of bombers). At about 1200-1500 meters this ship would fit in the frigate class, and it would be very dedicated to punching above its own weight...
But wait, there's more...
FS and FS 2 does not really explore much that happens beyond the front lines. Alpha 1 rarely escorts anything - there is the rare science ship, freighter or gas miner, but we just never get to see the behind friendly lines stuff too much.
This is where an Aeolus type B would be nice to have. Again, replace the THT with Prometheus, and up the AAA beams from 2 to 4 (so the belt turrets would be a 2-pack of AAA per side).
Regarding the cost of these ships - I have a strange feeling that a couple things happened.
First - the Aeolus was a testbed for new weapons and technologies. It's a very capable ship for its size.
Second - when the Aeolus entered production the GTVA figured that let's go for bigger ships and it will be worth the cost. Thus the Deimos exists, and as I wrote above it's a good ship.
Third - the Aeolus gets cancelled after a short run due to not being able to compete with Deimos, so the unit cost will be high.
Fourth - the Deimos uses the tech pioneered on the Aeolus, and so the initial R&D is relatively small, and with it becoming the standard combat ship of the fleet, this cost gets distributed over a large quantity produced.
If the Aeolus gets restarted it could come at a lower price tag on its second run, even with some slight upgrades. Then it would be the cheaper of the two compared to the corvette, and would be a very welcome replacement for the FS 1 era cruisers in escort duties.
Now final note - regarding the NTF frigate - that was this one admiral's pet project. We know it was built quick, but who knows, they may have built a flotilla of corvettes for its price instead.
The GTVA should just build a bunch of maxim and trebuchet wielding gunboats that leave any larger ship drifting helplessly through space.
Those were rarely available, so it might be an indicator of the price.
There's also somewhat of a game balance and AI business here, as these weapons were more effective when Alpha 1 was using them than when the other pilots did.