[Mars]

I found this rather amusing:



UEF Cruiser size comparison - one Sanctus = ~5 GTVA cruisers
Also note that the Hyperion is nearly twice the size of the Leviathan.



Frigate class comparison. FS2 to BP

It seems that warships of the same class are generally much bigger than they were in FS2, a continuation of the same theme from FS1 to FS2. I hadn't noticed really before.

[General Battuta]

Do an Uriel next to a Loki!

[Mars]

The reason I hate the Uriel = It's HUGE.

The two "fleet bombers" in this picture clearly dwarf everything else however. The Vaj over 50 meters in length - twice as long as most indoor pistol ranges.

[Dragon]

Not that Narayana isn't really much bigger than Karuna.
It's enormous cannons give it such appearance, but actual ship is about 2/3 lenght of the entire frame.

[Mars]

Not that Narayana isn't really much bigger than Karuna.
It's enormous cannons give it such appearance, but actual ship is about 2/3 lenght of the entire frame.

Still a part of the ship. The only things I didn't include were the spires at the bottom. You have a point though.

I get the impression with most of the new GTVA ships that the beam cannons take up a good deal of space. The Hyperion, Chimera, Bellerophon, and Titan all have tubes sticking back most of their length, I think from the beam cannons?

[General Battuta]

Dragon does have something of a point - a lot of the length of the Karunas and Narayanas is pretty hollow.

[Mars]

Wait. . . have I been looking at this wrong?



I always assumed that the tubes on the new Tev ships were cannons. Thus making up a lot of their size.

[General Battuta]

No, I imagine you're right. I didn't say anything to the contrary.

[Dragon]

These indeed seem to be the tunnels cannons are build into (though they have a lot of plating outside, unlike UEF guns).

[PsychoLandlord]

Huh. Seems like in BP Terran Capital ships in general are moving towards that weird Japanese fixation with enormous Spinal Mounted guns.

[General Battuta]

Not the Solaris!

[PsychoLandlord]

Good Point. Though when I first saw it I thought those two auxiliary bays on either side of the main one were stupidly huge railguns.


I will admit I was slightly disappointed when I found out what they actually were. Still the most beautiful Destroyer Class ship currently in Freespace, though. 

[Mars]

Huh. Seems like in BP Terran Capital ships in general are moving towards that weird Japanese fixation with enormous Spinal Mounted guns.

Hmm... it seems like there are broadsiders like the Raynor, Solaris, Orion, Deimos, and Diomedes and there are attack ships like the Karuna, Narayana, Titan, Chimera, Hecate and Bellerophon.

[PsychoLandlord]

You can be capable of Broadsides while still having an enormous Forward Mount that runs the length of the ship. For instance, I'm sure the Raynor's Main Gun up front takes up a good chunk of the ship, if the size of the Beam Cannon...firing shafts, I guess, in the pic above are anything to go by (and also assuming that Battutta's lack of contradiction as actual confirmation in that regard.) Giant Forward mounts don't necessarily indicate head on attack doctrine exclusively, its just a damn big forward facing gun (or set of said guns, in most cases in BP.)

That being said, yeah, you're right. It does seem like, with the smaller vessels at least, they are basically being divided up into two camps. Destroyers seem to remain capable of tackling anything no matter the situation, though. And UEF ships have the advantage of Torp Spam, so even direct Assault ships like the Narayana can engage targets from any angle, if not favorably.  Thats more then the recent GTVA corvette generation can claim.

I was also being semi-facetious, truth be told.

[NGTM-1R]

Huh. Seems like in BP Terran Capital ships in general are moving towards that weird Japanese fixation with enormous Spinal Mounted guns.

Spinal mounts make a great deal of sense in a space setting, to be fair. Although arguably the ranges for FS are still too short.

[esarai]

Back to the idea of hull size inflation, it does seem that there's a definite pattern with the cruisers. I think related to BP, this was for a reason--the UEF wanted all-mission-capable combat ships.  The cruisers got larger so they could be a threat to destroyers. Though, relating to the frigates, in FS2, the only frigate is the Iceni, and it and the Karuna and Narayana have no shared design philosophy, as they developed in complete isolation.  BP-wise, the UEF's frigates are downsized destroyers made so for increased maneuverability.

[Fury]

Out of the capships, the Sanctus is the only one that is borderline ridiculous. It is practically corvette sized, yet packs firepower equivalent to a cruiser. It simply does not carry its weight in combat situations. I tried to fix that a bit in the wartime weapons refit of Sanctus that you will see in R2, but even then I still think it's more equivalent to a heavy cruiser rather than corvette.

I too had suggested putting in a fighterbay, since the Sanctus is large enough to have one. But unfortunately it does not fit anywhere on the model. Which would mean replacing the model with something else that has a fighterbay or at least suitable position for one.

Karuna and Narayana have far less mass than destroyers do, even if length is almost there. It's only Sanctus that's stupidly large. The UEF stealth fighter is stupidly large too, but that is another issue entirely.

[MatthTheGeek]

The Sanctus is one of the earliest UEF ship, dates from the equivalent of early Reconstruction era in the GTVA side. Also, it was obviously built to deal with Gefs threats and not to be part of large capital ships manoeuvres. It does excel at anti-fighter duties and warhead interception, the job you'd expect from a anti-fighter and escort ship. All in all it's not bad for what it was designed and for an old ship, it's just getting outdated and outmatched in the WiH setting.

[-Sara-]

The difference in size between UEF frigates and GTVA destroyers makes a lot of sense to me. The GTVA needs a vessel which can operate as a de-facto headquarters. When sent into a far-away system it doubles as a base of operations, when there's no Arcadia station nearby. It probably houses a lot of crew and various stations and may have even served as a semi-logistical vessel for it's escorts during the second Shivan war, until later the dedicated logistical vessels of the 2380's were put into production. The UEF however only had to deal with handling problems within one solar system, where a few jumps brings you right back home (an emergency jump sent the Indus from Neptune all the way to Sol, the sun). Those frigates thus needed no great amount of crew or stations to operate and in turn were designed to be more maneuverable (and more importantly, to be less expansive on resources!). So in that context, it makes sense as well that the Solaris-class destroyer was a blasphemy. There was absolutely no need for such a large vessel in the eyes of the people and military experts, unless like the Ubuntu council you have the knowledge that such ships would in the long run become necessary for the problems which were to come. You don't give the lone sheriff of a calm backwater town a battle-tank to do his patrols with, unless you have intel that the town is in imminent, hidden danger.

[PsychoLandlord]

I never thought the Sanctus was that bad a ship at all. In fact, the first mission of WiH makes it perfectly clear which job the Sanctus excels at. It simply gets thrown into stupid situations that it's not designed for throughout the rest of the campaign.

I'm looking forward to this Refit Fury is talking about though. It's certainly large enough to have more guns.