[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
LOL..battleships handicapped defensivly?

Arm fighters with maxims and the battleship is f****d without air support. I suppose you're about to tell me that for some WWII related reason that isn't a weakness.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma


Arm fighters with maxims and the battleship is f****d without air support. I suppose you're about to tell me that for some WWII related reason that isn't a weakness.

Falklands could probably be used as an example, too; without air superiority from the Harriers, the British taskforce would have been doomed to failure.

Of course, on the subject of carriers, both of the ones deployed required a great deal of defense from supporting warships; IIRC they used them to form perimiters round the carriers, to provide both longer range radar, AAAf and simply to act as diversionary targets.

It's arguably a perfect model for this, actually.... because the British forces relied upon the Harriers cased on the carriers, but at the same time a succesful attack upon just one of the carriers could have spelled disaster.

Of course, therein lies the reason why the Orion is described as a 'carrier/destroyer' - it serves exactly that role.  It just has the advantage of more places to put weaponry, unlike naval carriers which need stuff like runways and a sea-hull.  So it can fulfill that key role of a fighter platform, yet is able to defend itself rather than rely on escorts.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by StratComm
And while your at it, you may as well count the Bismark.  Not technically sank by them, but aircraft certainly were essential to taking her down.  Battleships are no longer in service precisely because of the overwhelming superiority of airborn offensives.  Never mind that you still can't seem to get past WW2.

You could count Bismarck. Yamato was flodded near the entrane of the harbor to serve as a coastal battery as I recall (and was blown up later).
And I was only naming ships in the pacific theathre. POW was a newer british ship and was far superior to the Repulse, but still it was inferior to later american designes. After Pearl Harbour, they popped every ship with as much best AA guns as they could.

Regardless, in FS2, the greatest weakness of hte battleships is lost (distance to carrier/fighter base)

And if you want to argue about something in a game, use what's in the game for your arguments.  If technical limitations of the engine are what prevented battlegroups from showing up (and I actually agree that they are) then that becomes part of canon anyway, since the story arc was built under those limitations.   Deal with it. [/B]

Yeah, the game was built armoud those limitations, BUT.. Battlegroups ARE mentioned and one is seen which means that batlegroups ARE canon.

Arm fighters with maxims and the battleship is f****d without air support. I suppose you're about to tell me that for some WWII related reason that isn't a weakness.

Really? As far as I recall, Maxim doesn't have a Big Damage flag.
the other thing is - how do you belive a FS2 battleship would look. How long would it be, how well armoured or armed?
Untill you answer such questions than you can't calim the above.

Of course, I can makea UBER battleship, and you can make a UBER bomber and we can continue upping hte HP, damage and range til lthe game chrashes:D

EDIT: 44 Nell and Betty bombers? Strange... Inthe book I'm reading the number is a little higher.
And "Betty" and "Nell"? I guess those are american names for some Jap fighters?

[DIO]

Originally posted by TrashMan


You could count Bismarck. Yamato was flodded near the entrane of the harbor to serve as a coastal battery as I recall (and was blown up later).
And I was only naming ships in the pacific theathre. POW was a newer british ship and was far superior to the Repulse, but still it was inferior to later american designes. After Pearl Harbour, they popped every ship with as much best AA guns as they could.

Regardless, in FS2, the greatest weakness of hte battleships is lost (distance to carrier/fighter base)



Yeah, the game was built armoud those limitations, BUT.. Battlegroups ARE mentioned and one is seen which means that batlegroups ARE canon.



Really? As far as I recall, Maxim doesn't have a Big Damage flag.
the other thing is - how do you belive a FS2 battleship would look. How long would it be, how well armoured or armed?
Untill you answer such questions than you can't calim the above.

Of course, I can makea UBER battleship, and you can make a UBER bomber and we can continue upping hte HP, damage and range til lthe game chrashes:D

EDIT: 44 Nell and Betty bombers? Strange... Inthe book I'm reading the number is a little higher.
And "Betty" and "Nell"? I guess those are american names for some Jap fighters?

Yamato was attacked by nearly 500 American dive and torpedo bomber on it's way to Okinawa, and it was sunk off the coast of Kyushu.
It was NEVER salvaged.

Betty and Nell are 2 engines bomber.

G3M Nell
Japan's first all-metal monoplane bomber.
used extensivley in strategic bombing campaign in China.
Design of late 1920's, it had little defense armament and weak armor.
Initially It attacked Chinese city without fighter escort and it suffered heavy losses to the Chinese fighter defense.

G4M Betty.
All-metal monoplane bomber.
It had a great aerodynamic structure, and heavy defense armament.
It's major drawback was its lack of armor.
It turned into a fireball very quickly.

44 Nell and Bettys armed with torpedo's and bombs attacked PoW and Repulse, 3 was shotdown and more then 20 was damaged by the AA fire.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Really? As far as I recall, Maxim doesn't have a Big Damage flag.
the other thing is - how do you belive a FS2 battleship would look. How long would it be, how well armoured or armed?
Untill you answer such questions than you can't calim the above.

So? Once the fighters have knocked the battleship down to 10% hul then you send the bombers in for one or two massed strikes. End of battleship unless you've put stupidly large amounts of AAA on it.

And don't try giving me the "you don't know what an FS2 battleship would be like" argument. I've had 2 bloody years of you ramming the concept down our throats.

[StratComm]

The "battlegroups" mentioned in Freespace are not a group of ships that clusters itself together, but rather a grouping analogous to a fleet.  The Psamtic was leader of the 13th Vasudan battlegroup, but you never see her deployed with escort.  Rather, these battlegroups move in to a system and disperse to hunt/engage the enemy.  The same is true presumably of the Colossus battlegroup, the only other place that the term is used.  And since the Colossus jumps in alone in the mission where Bosch has the main beam cannons disabled so he can slip the blockade, the only safe assumtpion is that the "battlegroup" wasn't directly supporting the Colossus the whole time.  The only time it is deployed with any sort of escort is in Clash of the Titans II (IIRC), where you are told an entire fleet would be present to draw out the Shivans.  Instead you see three ships.

The only "battlegroup" you actually see is the hodge-podge of ships escorting the colossus in the cutscenes, but since the Orion seen is the Galatea you can't take those seriously, and much less as canon.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by karajorma


So? Once the fighters have knocked the battleship down to 10% hul then you send the bombers in for one or two massed strikes. End of battleship unless you've put stupidly large amounts of AAA on it.

Assumttion. First those fighters have to get to those 10%.
And battleships would have a massive ammount of AA guns, since they have no fightercover.

And don't try giving me the "you don't know what an FS2 battleship would be like" argument. I've had 2 bloody years of you ramming the concept down our throats. [/B]

YEAS! YAES! And I'm gonna keep ramming it!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA :dizzy:

No seriously - what you described was my battleship concept. I askd about yours.


@StratComm - you draw your conclusions howevery ou like, but please don't call them cannon simply becouse you interpret it like that. The normal existence of battlegroups is pefectly valid and open in FS2. Destroyers are tough ships and they can afford to brake off and move alone when needed.
So that, my friend, is open territory...

[Kie99]

Originally posted by StratComm

The only "battlegroup" you actually see is the hodge-podge of ships escorting the colossus in the cutscenes, but since the Orion seen is the Galatea you can't take those seriously, and much less as canon.

THat Orion was the Galatea? THe Galatea was destroyed before the Colossus was even commisioned. DO you have a Screenie showing its nameplate?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Assumttion. First those fighters have to get to those 10%.
And battleships would have a massive ammount of AA guns, since they have no fightercover.

Why do you think I gave the fighters maxims? The range of the maxim is longer than the effective range of any AA gun (even if you gave the battleship maxims too the fighters would still be more effective). They'd just park up 3km away from the battleship and reduce it to scrap metal at long range and there would be f**k all the battleship could do to stop them.

The only assumption in that is that you're not planning to invent new uber weapons for the battleship. Nothing in the FS universe that has been seen on a capship is of any use against a fighter with a maxim parked 3km away.

Originally posted by TrashMan
no seriously - what you described was my battleship concept. I askd about yours

Quite frankly as far as I'm concerned a battleship is just a destroyer with a couple more guns instead of a fighter bay. Basically a scaled up deimos. Like the deimos it would be a danger to anything that got close to it but would be highly vulnerable to long range weapons.

I certainly don't consider it death with an engine like you seem to. Basically it's a destroyer with a couple more beams.

[StratComm]

Trashman, that goes back to the story arc thing I was refering to earlier.  While my arguments are an extrapolation of what we see in the game, the evidense just isn't there to support fleet deployments the way you envision them.  Period.  And if a destroyer is "a tough ship that can afford to go out on its own" as you said, then why would command replace them with less rounded warships?  Why replace their capabilities with ships who can only do, at best, a marginally better job of certain things but which must be escorted at all times by a sizable percentage of the fleet?  It doesn't make any tactical sense.

Originally posted by kietotheworld


THat Orion was the Galatea? THe Galatea was destroyed before the Colossus was even commisioned. DO you have a Screenie showing its nameplate?

I don't have a screen cap, but the Galatea nameplate on that destroyer is one of the myriad inconsistancies and outright stupid blunders of the cutscenes.  They weren't done in-house by due to time constraints, IIRC, and their accuracy is more than a bit lacking.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by karajorma


Why do you think I gave the fighters maxims? The range of the maxim is longer than the effective range of any AA gun (even if you gave the battleship maxims too the fighters would still be more effective). They'd just park up 3km away from the battleship and reduce it to scrap metal at long range and there would be f**k all the battleship could do to stop them.

The only assumption in that is that you're not planning to invent new uber weapons for the battleship. Nothing in the FS universe that has been seen on a capship is of any use against a fighter with a maxim parked 3km away.

Maxim is one of [V]'s flukes... Normally, there's no way a fighter could have a weapon with a longer range than a 2-3km warship.

So basicly, without any new weapons (jut normal Maxim range) fighters would have a VERY tough time.

Quite frankly as far as I'm concerned a battleship is just a destroyer with a couple more guns instead of a fighter bay. Basically a scaled up deimos. Like the deimos it would be a danger to anything that got close to it but would be highly vulnerable to long range weapons.

I certainly don't consider it death with an engine like you seem to. Basically it's a destroyer with a couple more beams.

Death with engines? No.. but very dangerous...yes.

A Deimos is a very difficult opponent.
Now imagine the ship with several times the firepower and a lot's of HPs and tough turrets.
It would take a LOT of fighters/bombers to take it out, but it would be doable, espcially since a carrier would have a ****load of them.
On the other hand, if the BB ever gets in close then it's curtians.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Maxim is one of [V]'s flukes... Normally, there's no way a fighter could have a weapon with a longer range than a 2-3km warship.

So basicly, without any new weapons (jut normal Maxim range) fighters would have a VERY tough time.

Even if you mount maxims (or even a version twice as powerful) on the battleship it still loses. The fighters face a single opponent that is 2km or more in size at a distance of 3km that is hardly moving. The battleship faces a quick moving 20m long multiple target at a distance of 3km with shields that protect it against the maxims effects anyway.

Furthermore the GTVA have never mounted fighter weapons on a destroyer so now you're calling for the introduction of new uber weapons several orders of magnitude better than anything that the GTVA has used previously.

This is ludicrous fanwank. If I were to participate in this kind of lunacy I'd simply claim the fighters have uber shields, move at C fractional and are all flown by relatives of superman. Either get serious and remain within the context of the game or don't even bother attempting to argue your point with me.

Originally posted by TrashMan

Death with engines? No.. but very dangerous...yes.

A Deimos is a very difficult opponent.
Now imagine the ship with several times the firepower and a lot's of HPs and tough turrets.
It would take a LOT of fighters/bombers to take it out, but it would be doable, espcially since a carrier would have a ****load of them.
On the other hand, if the BB ever gets in close then it's curtians.

Sorry but without fighter support a battleship is dead meat. It's not just that I don't believe in your concept of a battleship. I think it goes completely against canon and therefore is as risable as the noob uber destroyers with BFGreens on all the turrets.

[pyro-manic]

The Deimos is the closest thing to a perfect warship in FS, IMO. If it had a fighterbay, then it would be an incredibly dangerous asset. The Iceni is even closer, but as it was a one-off it's hard to say. I'd draw a comparison to ships like the KMS Graf Spee - a smallish ship, but vastly more powerful than anything else it's size, and much faster than anything bigger. I'd prefer to see heavy corvettes/frigates more than "battleships" - they're much more tactically flexible, cheaper, faster and simply better than current destroyers. Add a fighterbay to a Saphah-class frigate (from Derelict) and you've got the perfect capship. 3km-long superdestroyers are simply too vulnerable. Yes, they have a lot of firepower, armour etc., but the problem is it's incredibly easy to outmaneuvre them. All you have to do is jump in a couple of cruisers and bomber wings. The cruisers draw it's fire, while the bombers disable it/destory it's main weapons. It is then entirely ****ed (so to speak;)). It has no means of getting away, and/or no means of driving off attackers while it awaits backup. The KMS Tirpitz was a perfect example.

I myself have a few light destroyer/heavy frigate designs in the pipeline, as they're simply more useful than a Hecate for practically anything...

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by karajorma


Even if you mount maxims (or even a version twice as powerful) on the battleship it still loses. The fighters face a single opponent that is 2km or more in size at a distance of 3km that is hardly moving. The battleship faces a quick moving 20m long multiple target at a distance of 3km with shields that protect it against the maxims effects anyway.

Furthermore the GTVA have never mounted fighter weapons on a destroyer so now you're calling for the introduction of new uber weapons several orders of magnitude better than anything that the GTVA has used previously.

WTF are you taking about? Putting Maxims on a wcapship? where did you get that from?
I said FIGHTERS with NORMAL weapons (maxims too, but with normal range.. that range is a fluke, just like a Myrmodon carring Helios bombs).

Sorry but without fighter support a battleship is dead meat. It's not just that I don't believe in your concept of a battleship. I think it goes completely against canon and therefore is as risable as the noob uber destroyers with BFGreens on all the turrets.

That's just the point. A BB isn't cannon. Neither is a missile corvette, or any other possible ship class that we haven't explicitly seen.
So are you saying that no one should ever make any other ships except cruisers, corvettes and destroyers? That's just bogus.

[NGTM-1R]

The range may be a fluke, but it's there. You can't dismiss it that easily.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
The range may be a fluke, but it's there. You can't dismiss it that easily.

If it's a clear error, I can.

What if they accidently gave the Mekhu laser damage a few extra 0's. The game wouldn't make any sense at all, since you would pund destroyers to oblivion with the weakest laser. Well, this mistake is just as bad, only it's not that obvious.

[NGTM-1R]

Hardly. This isn't an error; the Helios is debateable, but I doubt that's an error either.

It was meant to be this way. The point at which you get access to the Maxim is a pretty good clue; you're flying a Serapis at that point and a capital ship will eat you alive at close range. So they give you the Maxim as a survival tool. Now you don't to get up in the face of every Rakshasa or Cain that comes along.

[Axem]

The tech description for the Maxim is confusing, but it basically says it fires energized uranium slugs. Those slugs would have a very high range, there's nothing to slow them down. The energy part of the weapon might wear out after a kilometer or so, but that slug still has a ton of kinetic energy. If you fire a bullet in space, it will do the same damage from 10 m as it will from 10,000 m, ignoring gravity and all those other forces that would deflect it a micrometer. So Maxims having a high range doesn't seem like much of a fluke.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by TrashMan


If it's a clear error, I can.

What if they accidently gave the Mekhu laser damage a few extra 0's. The game wouldn't make any sense at all, since you would pund destroyers to oblivion with the weakest laser. Well, this mistake is just as bad, only it's not that obvious.

ngtm1r's right, Freespace is pretty extensively balanced and weapons errors would have been the first ones caught.  The Helios in the Myrmidon is an easter egg if anything (the Myrm even has missile bays big enough to accomodate a Helios missile) but there is rarely, if ever, an instance of a professionally developed mission where that combination of ship and ordinance is even possible.  But the Maxim is clearly supposed to be able to outrange capital ship guns; it's shaking of the player ship and the resulting low accuracy only serve to reinforce that.  You can't call something an error just because it violates your vision of how everything should work.

[TrashMan]

Shouldn't a laser have nigh infinite range then too? Shouldn't ALL weapons have nigh infinite range?

And what's up with that "you need the Maxim to survive" thing?
I NEVER used it and I passed FS2 and all difficulties several times.

It really doesn't make any sense for a fighter to have such a long-range weapon, while a capships doesn't.
Hell, even a todays smallest sedstroyer has weaponry with greater range than any FS2 ship!!!LOL