[blowfish]

Except that it is the same.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Hmm interesting i cant remember which country used wooden deck's on its battleships but i do now they got a huge shock when they were sunk.

     How many anti-ship missiles come down at a ship like a bomb anyway? They attack from the side. Watch the ship trials of Phalanx defense guns firing down missiles, the anti-ship missiles are always just above the water. They don't do "plunging fire" as far as I know.

[Mars]

I think SM2s do, Harpoons and most hypersonic anti-ship missiles come in from the side.

Gun fire of course comes down ballistically.

[Droid803]

Edit: My bad the lilith appears to have the same HP in both FS1 and FS2 the only difference i could find was the weapons in FS1 the huge armor was balanced by weapons in FS 2 it has speed armor and firepower.(which is unheard of for any shivan or GTVA warship)

I would hardly call 20 m/s "speed". It can move, yes, but not very well. Hell, the Sathanas manages 25 m/s. Its got more speed than a destroyer, uber heavy armor (thanks to supercap flag), and unstoppable firepower (courtesy of 4 BFREDs). It apparently is heard of in the Shivan armada.

Oh, look there's the Iceni: 35m/s, 90,000 HP, 3 BGreens. An Iceni will kill a Moloch with the (almost) same ease a Lilith takes down an Aeolus. Paired BGreens, it'll bring down the Moloch in less than a minute and take trivial damage from its single frontal SRed. Speed, armor and firepower apparently is heard of for Terrans.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Edit: My bad the lilith appears to have the same HP in both FS1 and FS2 the only difference i could find was the weapons in FS1 the huge armor was balanced by weapons in FS 2 it has speed armor and firepower.(which is unheard of for any shivan or GTVA warship)

     Balanced by weapons in what context? You're looking at the FS1 stats in FS2 terms . . the Lilith was well armed by Freespace1 too. While the Cain had fighter-mounted shivan lasers, the Lilith has full turrets. By the wiki the Lilith had 6 Shivan Turrets, 1 Shivan Hvy Laser and 2 Cluster Bomb. Compare this to Orion which had 5 Huge Turrets and 11 Terran Turrets. Only 16 turrets? The Lilith has nearly half the firepower of an Orion and better fighter defences (though I'm sure the Shivan turrets, as per normal, are inferior for whatever reason) plus more than half the number of turrets (total of 9).

     EDIT - oh my bad, according to the wiki the Shivan Turret actually does more damage than the Terran Turret (while the Terran Huge dishes out less damage per second than the Terran Turret). So in actuality the Lilith in FS1 _does_ have around half the firepower of an Orion Destroyer. Some things never change.

[Droid803]

The Shivan Turret Laser is the best blob in terms of average damage per second (or was it the Megafunk?)

However, you do have to remember that the Orion's Terran Huge Turrets are triple mounts. They fire three times as often, meaning an orion in actuality mounts 15 THT's on 5 turrets. 15 THT + 11 TT = 26 turrets.

When you factor in the fact that Shivan Turret Lasers are better than TTs and THTs, then the Lilith ends up with somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the firepower of an Orion, leaning closer to 1/2.

EDIT: Here's the math:
Lilith (FS1)
STL = 50 DPS x 6 = 300
SHL = 30 DPS x 1 = 30
Shivan Cluster = 3 x 2 = 6
Total: 336 DPS

Orion (FS1)
THT = 41.7 DPS x 15 = 625.5
TT = 43.8 DPS x 11 = 481.8
Total: 1107.3 DPS (approx 3.3x Lilith)

Lilith (FS2)
5 STL = 250
2 Shivan Cluster = 6
SAAA = 20
LRED = 1359
Total = 1635 DPS

Orion (FS2)
12 THT = 500.4
3 TT = 131.4
3 AAAf = 72
3 TerSlash = 549
3 BGreen = 2328
Total = 3577.8 = (approx 2.2x Lilith)

The gap narrowed quiet a bit, but it's all in the form of a single turret. A lucky TerSlash or two can remove it.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The Shivan Turret Laser is the best blob in terms of average damage per second (or was it the Megafunk?)

However, you do have to remember that the Orion's Terran Huge Turrets are triple mounts. They fire three times as often, meaning an orion in actuality mounts 15 THT's on 5 turrets. 15 THT + 11 TT = 26 turrets.

      Eh, is that triple mount thing firing three times as often actually true? Or does the ship simply alternate firing points when it fires??

[colecampbell666]

No, they're three separate turrets.

[Killer Whale]

Oh, i thought they fired with three times the strength, like in a fighter. Meh, heres an idea.

A few pages back someone mentioned RTS Games. So, anyone here play or has played Age of Empires II (that's the one i've got). The Elite War Elephant has 600 htps and does 20 damage, a militia has 40 htps and does 4 damage. The elite war elephant has 1500% more htps, and 500% more damage. It's not unbalanced. Can someone tell me why?

Here's a hint. The Elite War Elephant is far more expensive and takes far more time to make than the militia (you have to go through all the ages and that), it is a far more advanced, and far slower.

The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.

       Yeah, I said the a little while back that the Lilith is good because it was expensive and it's rarity is the balance to its firepower but no one bothered to take any notice.

[Mawhrin]

A modern destroyer has the obvious advantage over a WW2 battleship of superior range.

Rocket assisted projectiles are starting to increase cannon range. There's also a warhead design that burns fuel not for propulsion but for better aerodynamics.

I've heard knowledgeable people (military historians) speculate than an Exocet may be able to penetrate a battleship's armour belt. During the first Gulf War, an Iraqi Silkworm (A 1950s Chinese copy of a Russian design, still very common) was heading for an Iowa-class battleship, but was destroyed by a British warship. There is genuine doubt as to what kind of damage it would have done had it hit.

NATO codenames two entirely different weapons Sunburn. One is rocket powered, the other is ramjet powered and has exceptional range.

[Droid803]

No, they're three separate turrets.

Actually, it goes ( "Terran Huge Turret" "Terran Huge Turret" "Terran Huge Turret" ), meaning its one turret, with three barrels and three guns. They don't fire at the same time, but one right after the other. Still, its closer having 15 THTs not 5.

[Killer Whale]

Hmm interesting i cant remember which country used wooden deck's on its battleships but i do now they got a huge shock when they were sunk.

     How many anti-ship missiles come down at a ship like a bomb anyway? They attack from the side. Watch the ship trials of Phalanx defense guns firing down missiles, the anti-ship missiles are always just above the water. They don't do "plunging fire" as far as I know.

A mortar is a muzzle-loading indirect fire weapon that fires shells at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It typically has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber.

A howitzer is a type of artillery piece that is characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at trajectories with a steep angle of descent. In the taxonomies of artillery pieces used by European (and European-style) armies in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the howitzer stood between the "gun" (which was characterized by a longer barrel, larger propelling charges, smaller shells, higher velocities and flatter trajectories) and a "mortar" (which has the ability to fire projectiles at even higher angles of ascent and descent).

High angles of descent.

[Gamma_Draconis]

I'm pretty sure Lilith cruisers are probably made of somekind of rare alloy and a very powerful reactor also made out of rare materials. I would imagine it to have a crack crew as well. It also fits in with the Shivan's mysterious background. No one really knows why there are Lilith class cruisers.

[TrashMan]

Oh, i thought they fired with three times the strength, like in a fighter. Meh, heres an idea.

A few pages back someone mentioned RTS Games. So, anyone here play or has played Age of Empires II (that's the one i've got). The Elite War Elephant has 600 htps and does 20 damage, a militia has 40 htps and does 4 damage. The elite war elephant has 1500% more htps, and 500% more damage. It's not unbalanced. Can someone tell me why?

Here's a hint. The Elite War Elephant is far more expensive and takes far more time to make than the militia (you have to go through all the ages and that), it is a far more advanced, and far slower.

The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.

Milita is a basic human, barely trained soldier, the War Elephant is ...well, and ELEPHANT..not even human. How bigger than a human is the elephant?

If you'd want to compare, a more accurate comparison would be a human footman vs. a super-knight of darkness (TM) where that knight of darkness, despite being just a human itself and wearing similar armor and sword, somehow has 10x more HP and does 10X more damage.
Balanced in game due to the presense of a Paladin? Yes. Balanced by logic...hardly, but then again this is a fantasy example.

[BengalTiger]

My .02:

The weather deck on the Iowa class, as seen, is covered by wood:


Underneath the wood (and it was a nice couple inches thick) was 1.5 inches of special treatment steel (STS, something up to 2x harder to penentrate than normal armor steel). Any shell, bomb or missile (maybe excluding bunker-busters) would detonate on this deck, and probably drill a hole in it. That's why the next deck was armored, and measured 6 inches in thickness, including over an inch of STS (a CD-ROM is about 4.7 inches in diameter, to show the scale). That way the explosion of the projectile that hit the weather deck would have a whole 7-8 feet of air to loose it's shockwave before even touching the armor.

Also- stuff hitting a bunch of wood backed by STS could bounce off or skid across it, and that's why there is only 7.5 inches of steel, configured to create 'spaced armor' protecting the top of the ship. If anything was powerfull enough to cause the armor deck to shatter and throw pieces of metal around, there was the splinter deck, .625 inches thick to stop the debris.

Now for the hard part- low angle projectiles.
These are to be decapped (WW II AP shells had an armor piercing 'cap' on the nose to better drill through battleship belts) or detonated (more modern stuff) on a layer of STS, and then the de-capped shell, or explosion would fly through an outboard room inside the ship. After doing that, it would hit the 12.1 inch thick belt (again with some STS on it), that was inclined 19 degrees to deflect some of the energy that was hitting it.

Protection against torpedoes is another, long story. Whoever wants to find out can go ahead and read about it.

How does modern warship armor look like?

P.S. Comparing the Lilith to a monitor is a good idea. The HMS Abercrombie was 102 meters long, had battleship guns and cruiser armor, at the cost of a 6 knot max speed.

[General Battuta]

Maybe the Shivans are still playtesting the Lilith, and all the bug reports they're sending home to the Great Programmers of Subspace say that it's a seriously broken ship.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

  Wait a minute... How exactly did we get from the Lilith to wooden decks?

I agree with Killer Whale on the War Elephant thingy. And a few pages back someone said that the rarity of the Lilith makes it balanced. In an unconventional way, yes, but balanced nonetheless.

[BengalTiger]

Back in color...
IIRC AlphaOne posted something about BB's having wooden decks and the fact that an anti-ship missile would shoot through the ship and xplode on the bottom...
so I got motivated to write a few things.

Also- maybe we should stick closer to monitors when talking about Liliths. The SC doesn't actually look like an elephant to me....

More like a mouse

[ssmit132]

What's the difference between a bomber taking down a destroyer and a Lilith taking down a destroyer? It makes more sense to me that a cruiser is able to take down a destroyer than a bomber. It is a capital ship, after all. In RL a (lone) bomber can take down a large capital ship in a few shots if it's lucky, but the capital ship is more likely to be taken down by another ship (be it with guns, missiles or torpedoes).

As an aside, just because something's small doesn't mean it has to be weaker. Nuclear bombs seem to stay the same size and they get more and more powerful.