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.