[Gee1337]

What I wouldn't mind seeing is how UEF ships perform against the Tevs if they were equipped with a form of beam weaponary.

This is something I hope we begin to see the future acts.

[IcemanFreespace]

I find similarities in UEF and Europe, and in GTVA and the rest of the world, namely USA, China, Russia. We don't really have a Japan.

Now, before someone takes this and runs with it. I find the attitude of today's Europe somewhat undecided, soft, yet often cruel and harsh, and all in all useless in today's real world.

The other big players seem to have the flexibility and grit to survive and prosper in these specific and interesting times.

Yes, yes, I know about Cassandra and Fedayeen and the rest, this was just a random thought.

[Mars]

What I wouldn't mind seeing is how UEF ships perform against the Tevs if they were equipped with a form of beam weaponary.

This is something I hope we begin to see the future acts.

So you wouldn't mind seeing how UEF ships would perform if they were more like the Shivan ships that Tev ships are more like.

[Gee1337]

Well.. they could have a Terran twist, like a uni-directional beams... doesn't have to be like the usual beams we have seen.


But how would a UEF frigate armed with beams do against a deimos corvette for instance. Could UEF destroyers armed with beams take on an orion or even the Atreus?

But suppose in essence of what you said.... yeah I wouldn't mind.

[Luis Dias]

Well.. they could have a Terran twist, like a uni-directional beams... doesn't have to be like the usual beams we have seen.

Hey... good idea! They could even be slightly different than "beams", they could behave like cannons to make things a tad different.... hell they could even target subsystems instead of being this crude "killlzstreak" stuff, a tad more civilized, more incisive. And then.... we could name them Gauss Cannons!

(Sorry.... I'm so sorry)

[mr.WHO]

Speaking about potential UEF beam usage it makes me wonder what did the done to their (better) half of Lucifer wreckage? Put it in museum? C'mon no one in entire Sol had any brains to make use of it? Also why does UEF use so much missiles if even their own point defence is capable of shooting down most of their salvos? Granted they would be devastating against anything FS1 grade or dangerous to anything FS2 grade, but in the time of BP they are nearly useless.

[AdmiralRalwood]

The probability of seeing UEF ships with beams (barring a defected Tev warship making an appearance) in War in Heaven is exceedingly low.

[Luis Dias]

That is indeed true. We know the war is growing in a crescendo and that in a few days or a couple of weeks, the Endgame will be reached. There is simply very little time to airdrop a new beam tech.

So what are the chances of this happening? Analytically, we can see that for this to still happen in the chapters that are left, this beam must already be in development. Hell, one could say they started the whole analysis and development of said technology right at the start of the war. But this is very improbable. Let's put this phenomenally euphemistically, it is easier to develop technologies around your strenghts than trying to catch up to your opponents' strenght who are decades ahead of you technologically in just over a year. The inverse would just be too unbelievable, and they didn't have any ship, IIRC, that could even serve as a source of inverse engineering. Yes, the UEF has captured (optionally) a TEV destroyer by the end of Tenebra, but this is already in an impossible timeline.

Much better to focus on further development of your own Gauss Cannons, hacking attacks, stealth technologies and all sorts of real advantages that the UEF has managed to bring, creating an assymetric balance of tactics between the fleets that can still provide hope for creating hits in the enemy.

To even attempt to emulate a shivan technique that the TEVs have prepared so well against for decades is not only a waste of resources, it's a total strategic dead end.

[mr.WHO]

No one expect they magically do the whole beam R&D in months and pull them out of the hat.
My questions is why they didn't used the real gem of front section of Lucifer? If GTVA could make their beams out of nothing then UEF should be capable of reverse engineer beams from Lucifer wreckage. Hell GTI was able to mount them on Hades right at the end of the war, so the majority of the tech should be already in Sol by the time of node collapse.
Cost effectivness and budget cuts is real BS if you have just been near extinct by the murderous space exterminators.

[Gee1337]

That was a bit of harsh sarcasm Luis Dias!

Ok, maybe a bad example to say uni-directional (it was morning and the coffee hand't kicked in when i posted it). But I was certainly not going down the gauss cannon route. But the original idea was to see how a beam armed UEF frigate would fair against something like a Deimos, rather than focussing on the tech side of it.

But okay then... something new to beam tech in the BP verse... what about a gattling beam? Something that fires in bursts for about the same length of time as a standard beam weapon but each individual hit does less damage, and no I am not thinking AAAs, but something with a higher rate of fire to be used against capships.

Following on from what mr.WHO said the tech room could say:-

The UEF developed experimental Gattling beam weaponary by reverse engineering Shivan technology found in the Lucifer debris. Due to a lack of resources needed to generate the power required for a full powered "Lucifer beam", the UEF was not able to employ standard beam weaponary and so decided to take a different approach to the "experimental" tech by employing lower powered shots but many of them (say about 12 shots a burst). With the appearance of the superior GTVA ships and firepower, the development of the technology was accelerated, with the help of captured GTVA ships to inject fresh incentives and inspiration, then jury rigged onto UEF capital ships that were being repaired from a critical status.

Fair enough if this is not likely, but it would be pretty cool!

[Luis Dias]

I know I was, I'm so sorry. Still your reasoning doesn't respond very well to my latter commentary on this particular issue. I think the biggest problem here is one of timing, and a "gattling beam weapon" at this moment would be too visually similar to a gauss cannon and it would be momentarily confusing for any player.

But I'm not dismissing new weaponry tech ideas, they could be very interesting to watch and engage with gameplay-wise!

No one expect they magically do the whole beam R&D in months and pull them out of the hat.
My questions is why they didn't used the real gem of front section of Lucifer? If GTVA could make their beams out of nothing then UEF should be capable of reverse engineer beams from Lucifer wreckage. Hell GTI was able to mount them on Hades right at the end of the war, so the majority of the tech should be already in Sol by the time of node collapse.
Cost effectivness and budget cuts is real BS if you have just been near extinct by the murderous space exterminators.

This does not answer to my strategic commentary on this issue. You are effectively advising for the porsuit of a questionable R&D that will necessarily only get you to a very worse technological status than anything the TEVs can launch at you for merely having decades of experience and research more than you do. It is also a development of a weapon technology that tries to emulate shivan weaponry, and thus will result in the adoption of Shivan-like tactics (weapons always necessitate particular tactics, they come hand in hand), tactics that have been guarded against by the TEVs for decades as well. Again, you'd be developing something to get to a very mediocre technological endpoint, only to face an opponent that has specialized against these very tactics!

Again, I stress it: any UEF victory or advance has come from tactics that are completely orthogonal to these tactics, that come from completely different weapon R&Ds, that have totally different frames of tactical necessities. These caught the TEVs slightly off-hand, for they didn't have decades of experience fighting against this at all. This is the angle you should push, for here you still have a slight advantage and you will still keep an advantage if you keep advancing your particular technology.

[Aesaar]

No one expect they magically do the whole beam R&D in months and pull them out of the hat.
My questions is why they didn't used the real gem of front section of Lucifer? If GTVA could make their beams out of nothing then UEF should be capable of reverse engineer beams from Lucifer wreckage. Hell GTI was able to mount them on Hades right at the end of the war, so the majority of the tech should be already in Sol by the time of node collapse.

What threats in post-Isolation Sol would spur the development of beam weapons? 

The GTVA had the potential return of the Shivans.  The collapsing GTA and the nascent UEF had nothing worse than Gefs to worry them.

[General Battuta]

Plus the UEF inherited and developed a ton of great infrastructure for making antimatter.

In general we are always looking for clever, asymmetrical, interesting weapons and tactics that characterize the philosophies of the combatants.

[Gee1337]

I'm a bit confused as to how they would look visually similar. I thought the gauss cannon looked like a very long laser bolt.

Where as a gattling beam would look something like the gatling laser from Fallout 3. Suppose a better example would be like the weaponary on a Minbari Nial, but on a capship of course!

[Luis Dias]

In general we are always looking for clever, asymmetrical, interesting weapons and tactics that characterize the philosophies of the combatants.

I was trying to base my reasons from canon, but of course that we all know that this is, by far, the most important reason of all!

[Aesaar]

I'm a bit confused as to how they would look visually similar. I thought the gauss cannon looked like a very long laser bolt.

Where as a gattling beam would look something like the gatling laser from Fallout 3. Suppose a better example would be like the weaponary on a Minbari Nial, but on a capship of course!

Sounds like the two anti-subsystem flicker beams on the Erebus.

[qwadtep]

No one expect they magically do the whole beam R&D in months and pull them out of the hat.
My questions is why they didn't used the real gem of front section of Lucifer? If GTVA could make their beams out of nothing then UEF should be capable of reverse engineer beams from Lucifer wreckage. Hell GTI was able to mount them on Hades right at the end of the war, so the majority of the tech should be already in Sol by the time of node collapse.
Cost effectivness and budget cuts is real BS if you have just been near extinct by the murderous space exterminators.

And my question for you is: why would they use reverse-engineered weapons from a ship that just had the snot beaten out of it repeatedly by the GTA Orestes?

[mr.WHO]

By the time of the node collapse Orestes wasn't even on the drawing boards. You can't be worry about threads that don't exist yet. My point is that with Hades finished shortly after the node collapse, I think that whole beams R&D documentation (or most of it) should be already in Sol. Add the Lucifer debris and you have beam starter pack waaaay ahead of the GTVA.

Obviously UEF didn't developed into this path - I really want to know the logic behind that. Not even the AAA beams?

[Aesaar]

Obviously UEF didn't developed into this path - I really want to know the logic behind that. Not even the AAA beams?

Again, what enemies would the collapsing GTA need beams to fight?

And since it took until FS2 for AAA beams to become commonplace on GTVA ships, it seems to me that they're developed from heavier beam systems.  No heavy beams, no AAA.  Sol GTA/UEF never needed heavy beams, so they never laid the groundwork necessary for AAA beams.  Went down more conventional lines instead.

[NGTM-1R]

Again, what enemies would the collapsing GTA need beams to fight?

And since it took until FS2 for AAA beams to become commonplace on GTVA ships, it seems to me that they're developed from heavier beam systems.  No heavy beams, no AAA.  Sol GTA/UEF never needed heavy beams, so they never laid the groundwork necessary for AAA beams.  Went down more conventional lines instead.

Reductive. It took until FS2 for heavier beams to become commonplace on GTVA ships as well, so by that logic they were developed from AAA beams.

We don't particularly see railgun systems, or for that matter heavy torpedo systems comparable to those the UEF uses on its warships, in FS1 at all. The Lucifer at least deployed something beam-like, establishing it was possible. If there are targets that required these weapons systems and drove their development, however, there are targets that could have required beams.

This isn't actually an answer, basically.