[-Norbert-]

But more seriously, unless i missed something, shouldn't the FED/UEF have beam weapon aswell? since several GTVA ship defected to join them, they must have acuired thetechnology to produce those right?
I would also like to see again the "Labouchère"  and the sanctuary, or at least know what they've been doing during all those months. btw aren't ther more soldiers defecting?

Yes, they have access to beams from the defected ships, but you can't just take one look and immediately start mass-producing a formerly unknown weapon and just slap them onto your ships.
You have to take them apart, learn how they work, build a few prototypes to learn how to make them effective.
In addition beams need far more energy and produce far more heat than the weapons currently installed on UEF ships, so it's unlikely any UEF ship will be upgraded with beams. Though since it's been almost two years since the defections, MAYBE they already have a ship or two in production that will be equiped with beams once they are finished. Maybe.

And well, even though WiH had a very good plot, (i'm being picky, don't worry), i thought the charaters/ commanders wer maybe a little naive. They got plenty of pilots and fightrs sabotaged when they stole the Agincourt, and with the last missions, they were simply overconfident/over relying on their intel and report. They had a back up plan in case the carthage would run away, but not in the case of wrong intel/ traps. I think most good generals would be like "it's too good to be true".

The problem is that the UEF didn't fight a serious battle ever since the nodes collapsed. They thought themselfs save from the outside universe, untill the GTVA stormed in.
Now there was the Gaian effort, but those guys aren't even a united faction, but rather a group of loosly affiliated tribes with far inferious technology, not a well coordinated, experianced army like the GTVA.
So they have little to no experiance in large scale wars. Also the Wargods were sure they were in controll of the situation and that they manipulated the GTVA troops, when it really was the other way around.

I'd like to know roughly how many ships each side has, since several ships get destroyed, yet it's hard to see how bad it is to lose a frigate if you dont know how muh are left. (50?) Maybe put some more cruiser too, i can't eally say i they're effective or not, since the Vilnius is meant to be pwnt and I'm too busy to look at what the Vatican is doing.

There is this thread among the stickies: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72393.0

[Kamfrenchie]

well thanks for the answer, and yes i meant that maybe a few of the UEF ship could be refitted with  some beam canon, maybe a destroyer...


but so from what i see in tht link, the overall casualty record doesn't seem that bad for the wargods and the UEF in general, given the circumstances, and despite what happened in the end to the wargods?

[General Battuta]

It's pretty bad. Most of Third Fleet and a chunk of Second Fleet are gone. And there were earlier casualties that have been replaced by wartime production.

[Rodo]

Never mind that, the Shivans will do the rest for the UEF 

[NGTM-1R]

It's pretty bad. Most of Third Fleet and a chunk of Second Fleet are gone. And there were earlier casualties that have been replaced by wartime production.

Wait. The UEF has the shipyards set up to replace capital hulls rapidly? Given their low normal loss rate and the lack of an apparent need to be ready until now, this seems...unlikely.

[General Battuta]

There were definitely hulls in build before the outbreak of hostilities and matters have only accelerated since then. There are specific reasons and general reasons, and the general reasons are bipartite: the first being that infrastructure technology in the FSverse is excellent, particularly in Sol, and the second that your latter assumption isn't entirely correct on a policy level.

Remember the scale at work here; there are multiple populated worlds with good infrastructure in a system with an excellent economy and a government very much in favor of constant industry and production. Between ships in build, ships held near ready state at the time of the outbreak of hostilities, and maybe - there's no clear picture yet - ships kicked together from scratch, they've been able to do something to bring new hulls into action, as well as some pretty major overhauls of their existing ships.

[Delta_V]

I suppose it's also sort of related to how the U.S. navy always has another carrier under construction destined to replace the oldest carrier in service at the time.  The special construction yards they need for the carriers aren't needed for anything else, so they build carriers at a rate where, once one is completed, it's already time to start another one to replace the next oldest carrier in service.  It's not practical to shut down those yards and their vast supporting industries, start them up when you need them again, and shut them down again.  It's more cost-efficient to keep them building ships continously, albeit at a lower rate.  This would probably apply even moreso to the massive shipyards needed to build capital ships in Freespace.  Shipyards aren't something you just turn on and off.

[Mars]

It's pretty bad. Most of Third Fleet and a chunk of Second Fleet are gone. And there were earlier casualties that have been replaced by wartime production.

Wait. The UEF has the shipyards set up to replace capital hulls rapidly? Given their low normal loss rate and the lack of an apparent need to be ready until now, this seems...unlikely.

Plus the losses during the Imperiuse's blitz

[NGTM-1R]

Remember the scale at work here; there are multiple populated worlds with good infrastructure in a system with an excellent economy and a government very much in favor of constant industry and production. Between ships in build, ships held near ready state at the time of the outbreak of hostilities, and maybe - there's no clear picture yet - ships kicked together from scratch, they've been able to do something to bring new hulls into action, as well as some pretty major overhauls of their existing ships.

This is true, but production facilities still don't appear overnight. The great industrial miracles of the real world were possible not because of well-developed infrastructure (thought it helped), but because there was unused capacity; this is not the case here, unless Sol just went through a depression. Most industry is probably already tasked to capacity and will require time to retask to speed up the production of warships. The first replacement new-built ships would just be joining the fleet at the time WiH ends, and by then in a lot of ways it's too late.

The problem is also probably compounded by the fact that the people with the best infrastructure and industry are the ones least disposed towards maintaining stocks of warships in mothballs or tying up ways with warships in build. (And the ones who were most disposed towards this were the ones who went under first. Which raises the possibility some of Third Fleet's ships were never activated in time to participate and might reappear in GTVA colors for hilarity.)

[Archaic]

I suspect most of the new ships are karunas or narayanas as the techroom states they were in the process of converting the fleet to mostly generalized frigates at the outbreak of hostilities.

[General Battuta]

Most industry is probably already tasked to capacity and will require time to retask to speed up the production of warships.

This incorrectly assumes that warships were not already in production, or that no capacity existed to build warships. The military had in general not been in a period of growth but this doesn't imply no production - quite the contrary, in fact. Since old hulls are retired or retasked, or replaced by more modern upgrades, production had to remain active just to keep the fleet static (or even shrinking slightly). There was industry already tasked to building warships as well as ships nearing completion. Then you've got ships that were on their way out that just needed some touching up to be useful shooters.

We're not talking a vast number of new ships here, but several new frigates and many more cruisers came into action during the hostilities. These ships were probably for the most part already under construction before the 14th made its transit.

The problem is also probably compounded by the fact that the people with the best infrastructure and industry are the ones least disposed towards maintaining stocks of warships in mothballs or tying up ways with warships in build.

Again, given the numbers cited above you don't need large stocks of warships in mothballs; given that the total frigate strength in the entire navy at the beginning of R1 is something on the order of 40 hulls, just two or three frigates in mothballs per fleet (which is very conservative given UEF policy; mothballing a spacecraft is pretty easy) would have added sizably to their forces and can practically account for all the wartime additions alone!

Lastly bear in mind that the Federation has excellent management tools. With their setup they get the strengths of both an indirect command economy and a neorationalist market. They can make stuff happen on the industrial level with pretty shocking efficiency.

[General Battuta]

edited

In short I don't think it should be particularly astonishing that the UEF managed to partially replace a few frigate and cruiser losses in 18 months given that there were clearly already ships in build.

[crizza]

Well, thats another thing...The GTVA is modernizing their fleets...do they recycle their old ship or what?
What about a reserve fleet like the nowaday U.S.Navy?
Nothing better than ships, which only need a crew...

[General Battuta]

They definitely don't toss them away. You can get a sense of how older ships are used in the tech entries.

[crizza]

A and theirs another thing...
I would love to see capital ship giving each other covering fire...like Narayana A fires on Deimos b surronded by several Aeolus...and not only the Deimos, but also the Aeolus fire on incoming torpedos...

[General Battuta]

That I can guarantee you'll see.

[crizza]

Made my day...
What about the Iceni-class?
Althogh their was only one ship, it kicked ass.
The plans should be floating around some, so why not build some of them?
They should be quit destructive.

[Mars]

I believe the Iceni was the frigate equivalent of a super-destroyer. A one of a kind ship that was supposed to kick ass and cost a ton.

[Flak]

At least we don't know what Admiral Byrne is doing there, maybe more new ships or 'improvised' ships with hillbilly armor and the like, or civilian ships rigged with military grade weapons.

[Qent]

Could we shoot down SSMs before they jump to another engagement?