[Klaustrophobia]

Also don't the logistic class ships have to carry plasma material for the beams? I imagine that would take some volume, even if liquified, didn't is tay kilotons per salvo somewhere? (might be on the Sathanas, but still). if it is gas at all.

Wasn't that talking about the force of the weapon rather than the actual weight of the particles it pours out?

no, one of the tech entries states the beam is made of "kilotons of plasma."  i can't recall what entry, or if it was even a BP entry (i think it was, but i'm not sure).  considering a tempest does kilotons of damage, a beam better be a ****load more than that.

yeah, you can compress a gas to reduce the volume, but not infinitely.  a kiloton cylinder of highly pressurized gas (or even liquid depending on what the plasma is) is still going to be ****ing huge.  and the mass is still the same.  a kiloton is a kiloton.

[General Battuta]

It's the BFRed tech entry and the physics in it are pretty hilarious if you work out the yield.

[headdie]

The Anemoi has exactly the amount of defenses it needs for its role. It's never going to be able to hold its own without escorts.

Ehhh, I really cannot help but wonder if adding at least a few more flaks and blobs wouldn't be too much to ask, it is used in enemy territory, only makes sense.

A couple of anti fighter beams would go a long way towards changing this from a 2.1km bullseye to something you would expect to see operated by a military in a combat zone.

if you want real world examples of how poorly armed the Anemoi is then
Fort Victoria UK replenishment ship
• 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
• 2 × 20 mm Oerlikon / BMARC KAA guns in GAM-B01 mounts
Cimarron US replenishment ship
2 x 20mm Vulcan Phalanx Mk 15 (CIWS)
Berlin German replenishment ship
4 × MLG 27 mm autocannons
Stinger surface to air missile (MANPADS)

All of these weapons are ones which if they hit are expected to kill a anti-ship missile with a small number of rounds and kill a fighter with a short burst (exception to all with the stinger which iirc is a anti plane only weapon).  To my mind FS2 anti fighter beams are the equivalent to Phalanx on modern day ships.  the flak and blobs are useful suppressing an area and taking down bombs, but they are an annoyance at best in many situations, there is nothing like an anti fighter beam to take down a fighter or bomber fast and provide a protective envelope for it's escorting fighters.  Sure the Anemoi will always be lightly armed for it's size but it operates in a very fluid battle space where the enemy can arrive unexpected and without warning and as such should be able to stall an assault by force for a few minutes at least.

[General Battuta]

Pretty much every ship in the game could be improved by the addition of some anti-fighter beams. The Anemoi has nearly the same base HP as an Orion.

[niffiwan]

Fort Victoria UK replenishment ship
• 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
• 2 × 20 mm Oerlikon / BMARC KAA guns in GAM-B01 mounts

Isn't the 20 mm Oerlikon a WW2 era weapon with extremely limited use vs modern military aircraft?  I'm surprised to see it fitted on a modern ship.

[The E]

Depends more on the mount and tracking system, I'd say.

[headdie]

and yet at nearly the same volume as an Orion, with 80% (?) of its hits it is armed with the same kinds of weapons seen on civilian freighters, heck even the Aten is tabled with 2 anti-fighter beams and that explodes if it's CO sneezes too hard.

thing is you cant even compare it to a freighter very well, not only is it bigger but a freighter is expected to arrive in system, dump/collect it's cargo and run as fast as it can back through the nearest safe node.  the Anemoi's role on the other hand is to arrive in the system and stay there until the operation is complete or it is relieved by other logistics assets, even in the middle of a battle group it's potential exposure to combat is vastly greater and while it's hull strength reflects this, its defences just dont, especially given it's target value.

Fort Victoria UK replenishment ship
• 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
• 2 × 20 mm Oerlikon / BMARC KAA guns in GAM-B01 mounts

Isn't the 20 mm Oerlikon a WW2 era weapon with extremely limited use vs modern military aircraft?  I'm surprised to see it fitted on a modern ship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oerlikon_20_mm_cannon

at the end of the day it is just a cannon, what matters against fast moving objects is your targeting and tracking, though I bet even if it is hand operated it would make some nice hole in a Zodiac type craft.

[Sciguy]

Maybe, but if they had used all the material, crew and weapons to build 5 destroyers instead, they would have worked just as well for the Sathanas 1 and the NTF and been more usefull during the Capella battles.
With 5 destroyers you can either concentrate them in one location, giving you pretty much everything the Colossus can do (even more, since you can flank and surround the enemy, ect.) or you can split them up and send them to different locations if needed. On top of that, due to their smaller size, they'll also have better real- and subspace manouverbility.
The main benefit of the Colly was her being a symbol for unity, recovery from the great war and being able to overcome anything... untill the Shivans turned that completely around by blowing her up....

That's pretty much exactly what the modern US military decided with regards to the F-22 Raptor vs. the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  The cheaper, more versatile design ended up winning.

However, there is something to be said for size.  The Colossus operates in a different weight class than an Orion.  You could theoretically put heavier beams, more armor, more powerful engines, etc. on the ship simply because it is physically larger and is not operating under the same set of constraints.  The Sathanas proves this fairly handily.

I am playing devils advocate here, I do agree that given the specifics of Freespace warfare, a ship like the Colossus is a waste of resources (Unless you are like the Shivans and have no observed limit to your resources).  Subspace ambushes are too dangerous to risk building high value ships like the Colossus.

[Luis Dias]

It's laughable that you can even try to say the Solaris' entire volume is filled with missiles.

Using The_E's number, you'll quickly see how ridiculous your comment is.
A km^3 is a thousand million m^3. If we were to propose using the Solaris' "entire volume" with missiles, it could harbor 50 million missiles.

I have proposed no such thing. What I am trying to convey is that the Solaris is *pretty damn big* and that if the plot writers want the Solaris to be self-sustained at least in what comes to missiles, they can, without smashing common sense.

X3N0-Life-Form's calculations (1440 missiles per ten minutes) is still amazingly plausible, given the possibilities here. Even if only 0.1% of the Solaris' volume is dedicated to missiles, it still is able to harbor 50k.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well then, leaving aside the sheer stupidity of trying to apply arguments based on scale to FreeSpace, what if the writers just don't want it to be able to operate independently? You're clutching at straws to create an inconsistency.

[SypheDMar]

On top of that, due to their smaller size, they'll also have better real- and subspace manouverbility.

We have no information on the "subspace maneuverability" of the Colossus. For all we know, we may be comparing a super carrier to a short-ranged carrier, where bigger is better.

[Scotty]

Well, it is a general rule in BP-canon that the larger a ship is the lower its subspace mobility.  Norbert's assumption was not unwarranted.

[SaltyWaffles]

and yet at nearly the same volume as an Orion, with 80% (?) of its hits it is armed with the same kinds of weapons seen on civilian freighters, heck even the Aten is tabled with 2 anti-fighter beams and that explodes if it's CO sneezes too hard.

thing is you cant even compare it to a freighter very well, not only is it bigger but a freighter is expected to arrive in system, dump/collect it's cargo and run as fast as it can back through the nearest safe node.  the Anemoi's role on the other hand is to arrive in the system and stay there until the operation is complete or it is relieved by other logistics assets, even in the middle of a battle group it's potential exposure to combat is vastly greater and while it's hull strength reflects this, its defences just dont, especially given it's target value.

Indeed. To give an example, in a recent playthrough of The Plunder I did, the Agincourt's point defenses were so bad that they were literally a nonfactor when going straight for an engine-kill, by myself. I remember a less recent playthrough of that mission, where the Indus and Yangtze's gauss and mass driver cannons started firing on the Agincourt before it completed the surrender dialogue (even though its engines were already disabled). In a handful of seconds, the Agincourt's health plummeted below 50%. A random test I did a long while back showed that two Durga bombers could bring an Anemoi's hull down to half in around ten seconds, and outright dead in something like under 30. I don't think they even needed to use their torps. And, note, that its point defenses didn't even bother its attackers.

Point is, you can easily disable an Anemoi despite its escort, and against an enemy that is willing to treat cruisers and corvettes as expendable (eg Shivans), then it doesn't even matter if you have a strong escort--the Anemoi will die very quickly, and even against half a dozen wings of bombers the Anemoi's point defenses will just manage to--at best--help out a little bit at close range.

The GTM Hippocrates has better point defenses, and its a civilian medical frigate dating back to FS2, if not earlier.  It's a huge, advanced military logistics ship. Why not have a bunch of missile launchers? It can use some of its own stock of missiles for self-defense if needed, and if it doesn't need them when the time comes to resupply allied craft/ships that heavily, just transfer the munitions. Torpedo launchers could work similarly, perhaps. At the very least, the thing should be bristling with blob turrets so that a dozen wings of expendable bombers can't outright kill the thing in spite of an escort because few of the torpedoes are even shot down (and Shivan heavy bombers laugh at your close-range token defense of a single flak gun). Lets the fighter screen focus more on killing the bombers/fighters and disarming beam turrets, and less on performing most warhead intercept for the ship itself. I mean, how hard could it be to stick a dozen Subach or Mekhu HL-7's around the hull for warhead intercept and light antifighter duty? The power draw for such a setup would be something a Herc I could handle...

[Luis Dias]

Well then, leaving aside the sheer stupidity of trying to apply arguments based on scale to FreeSpace, what if the writers just don't want it to be able to operate independently? You're clutching at straws to create an inconsistency.

What. Do you even bother to read what other people write?

Not only taking into consideration, you know, basic mathematics for the whole thing to make sense, I specifically said that *if* the writers want, *they can* make the Solaris a ship that has sufficient ammo for multiple engagements.

[The E]

A Solaris has as many missiles on board as the plot allows. We don't have definitive numbers, but they are limited.

[General Battuta]

\
*snip*

Oh my god, this is ridiculous. The Anemoi is already so powerful it is literally magic. It is not going to get 'a dozen Subachs'. There is not a single ship in FreeSpace that would not be improved by 'a dozen Subachs', but we're not going to start slapping them on because constraints and flaws are more interesting than maximalism.

This is the line of thought that leads to ships covered in Morning Stars and Maxims.

[headdie]

@SaltyWaffles

I think you are thinking it too far with the torp launchers as ultimately the ship is still a glorified freighter.  the reason I suggested the anti fighter beams was because 1) I dont expect them to take significant additional room on a 2.1 km ship, especially if they are fitted in place of another turret, 2) they would provide the ship with a more rounded defensive screen against fighters and bombers better suiting it's role as a ship designed to operate in a combat theater for prolonged periods.

[The E]

So the Anemoi is underarmed and underarmored for her size.

So what? As we've seen in WiH, the GTVA knows this, and is taking steps to make sure that they won't be in the direct line of fire; steps that until a rather unlikely intelligence coup happened were perfectly adequate to the task of protecting the vessel.

If you're asking the question "How can we make the Anemoi function better when in direct combat?", you're already doing it wrong. None of the real-life navies thinks about their replenishment oilers this way, which is why these rather huge and really important ships never have more than a couple point defense weapons. Sure, you could cover them in guns, but that would be a misuse of space and manpower that is needed for other functions. It's literally like saying "Well, Ticonderoga-class cruisers are nice, but they're really missing 12" guns to be good ships".

[Luis Dias]

I like the Anemoi and the concept behind it quite a lot.

The fragmentation of capabilities and purposes into different classes of vessels is pretty well justified by the strategic and tactical necessities of each warship to be as efficient, light and snappy as it can be, given its own purpose. To that end, compromises are inevitable, and if the Anemoi is amazing to the GTVA in its huge freighter capabilities, maintenance, hospitals and so on, it will obviously lack in power and attack/defense capabilities.

This fragmentation is both the GTVA's strenght and weakness. By "strenght", obviously they learned not to place "all eggs in the same basket" and enter in a tactical fragmentation and modulation. If a Destroyer goes down the logistics are still intact, etc. It is a weakness because you do not have the sufficient resources to build up equal artillery for every ship (now that you are fragmenting the fleet), and so the logistics vessels become the "weakest link". But this should not be a problem since these logistic vessels are to be hidden in the vastness of space, and unless there's some remarkable cunning by the opponent, they are safe.

Also, it's these kinds of dynamics that make a plot interesting. It would be incredibly dull to have every ship like these to harbor ten fighterkillers just because "they can".


EDIT: While this is what I believe, a more apt point could be made that the WiH mission where we disable this ship and so on is "too easy", that with some fighterkillers that we needed to disable first it would become "better" and so on. But that's a whole different conversation, IMHO.

[redsniper]

I want the BP team to keep replacing ship models with new models that break balance so that they can spend all their time rebalancing the already released missions instead of making new missions.