[AlphaOne]

WEll here is a thought that came into mi head. I mean could the GTVA actualy convert some of its warships i mean the basic design into something else.
For example could u corvert the basic frame or shape of the Deimos from a corvette into a small carrier fo example.

Also I believe that with the Orion beeing phased out of production as a warship which in mi belief is a grave mistake could u actualy use the hull, shape or wghatever u want to call it of an Orion and convert it into a carrier. I mean stripped out of all the beams and extra raectors to power its beam cannons you could actualy obtain a raesonable area which to convert into a fighterbay or something like that.

Also the viceversa is wanted i mean taking a Hecate strppit of its fighterbay or rather reducing it to say 50 fighter or something like that and make it as deadly against capships as the Orion.

I don mean create an uber ship but rather use existing desins to create new classes of warships. Its like with cars you have the same technichal platform used on 2,3 or even 4 cars. Which although are totaly different and some even have diferent uses they actualy use the same platform.

Would that be fesible could that actualy be done and if so what would actualy be the tradeoffs. Wouldnt it be cheaper then designing testing and building a new class of warships???

[aldo_14]

Sooo.... you want to convert the Orion to a Hecate and convert the Hecate to an Orion?

[AlphaOne]

nope thats not what i said! I wanted to know if it is fesable to convert an Orion into a dedicated carrer. And convert for example a hecate so that it still carryes some fighters etc but is as deadly as an Orion. Also how many fighters could you fit into a corvette for example ! There would be tradeoffs in weapons capacity and perhaps even in armour but i just wanted to know if it would be ralistic to do so from a Fs point of view.

[aldo_14]

nope thats not what i said! I wanted to know if it is fesable to convert an Orion into a dedicated carrer. And convert for example a hecate so that it still carryes some fighters etc but is as deadly as an Orion.

So you want to convert the Orion to a Hecate and convert the Hecate to an Orion.

[IPAndrews]

Convert the amazon into a Collossus.

Yes I realise that's not even funny but I'm bored so I'm saying it anyway.

[Herra Tohtori]

Orion is full of stuff needed to power the huge amount of weapons it got.

Hecate is bigger and got less weapons so it has more space in it to host more fighters and bombers than Orion.

Of course you can dope a Hecate almost full of stuff to power up additional weapons, or strip an Orion of its weapons to get some empty space inside it to host additional fighters/bombers.

It just doesn't make any sense. GTVA has moved towards smaller, faster ships with fearsome firepower (effectively, corvettes and to smaller extent, cruisers) that divide the firepower into smaller units, so if one unit gets destroyed the others can keep on fighting, whereas if a single Orion/Hecate gets blown the battle is over. Kinda the same trend as with Navy tactical development in real world (tm).

The two destroyers have their own roles, diverting them from one another would be time-and resource-consuming operation and the results would be an Orion with probably less armament than a Hecate and with a fighter complement perhaps rivalling one of Hecate's, and a Hecate with armaments perhaps some amount over Orion and with a fighter compliment of perhaps a little over an Orion. Not really worth all the money, time and resources for the GTVA but if you want to do that in a campaign and manage to invent a believable reason, go ahead.   On the other hand, when did the GTVA High Command become known of their ability to think logically and make smart decisions?

[Dark Knight]

Well its feasable certainly but why bother? They're phasing out the Orion yes but they'll only be going to moffballs, they're not going to be torn up or anything (it'd cost more than it'd be worth) and'll still be there if the GTVA needs them so why bother putting your existing ships through an expensive refit program to improve their armaments when you've already have their bruisers in reserve?

The reason the Orion is being slowly phased out isn't becuase it's old, its becuase untill the start of the NTF rebellion its peace time. You dont need bruisers in peacetime, you need your faster fighter packed patrol ships like the Hecate that can blancket the important points in a star system with its fighters and happilly sit there and interdict a jumpnode while it waits. So you put your bruisers into storage (which is more cost effective than first paying to scrap them, then paying to build new ones later) and wait for the next war.

[aldo_14]

The Orion is being phased out because bombers own the battlefield now, and whoever has the best ability to deliver and survive bomber attacks will win wars, rather than who has the biggest guns on their capital ships.  Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.

[karajorma]

What's the point in converting an Orion into a carrier? By the time you'd done it you'd end with a ship less powerful than one custom designed for the task and probably pay a significant portion of the cost.

And that's ignoring the whole Destroyer IS a carrier attitude that seems to be prevailent in the FS2 universe.

[aldo_14]

What's the point in converting an Orion into a carrier? By the time you'd done it you'd end with a ship less powerful than one custom designed for the task and probably pay a significant portion of the cost.

And that's ignoring the whole Destroyer IS a carrier attitude that seems to be prevailent in the FS2 universe.

To the extent that the FS1 reference bible calls the Orion explicitly a "carrier/destroyer", may I add

[AlphaOne]

Well the arguments are sound but i cant but fell missunderstood. I nevre wanted to change the roles of the 2 ships just wanted to create spinoffs. Some of the Orions that were moftballed i thought could be onverted to carry some 200 fighters perhaps? Oh and about the weaponry i thought i said it gets stripped of its weaponry well most of it.
While the hecate would get stripped of most of its fighterbay in exchange fo some more powerfull weaponry not necesaryli more.

But then again youre probably right ! It would be cheaper to build a new ship for the specific task.

Also while the arguement regarding smaller more mobile ships with powerfull beams does hold some ground when i think of the Iceni it makes me tremble. Perhaps that is what the GTVa should concentrate in the future better corvettes and frigates while the destroyers are brought up for fighter support and if the situation requires it some more firepower.

Thanx for the replies they managed to point me in a reasonable good direction!

[Nuclear1]

Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.

Don't you mean either the Ravana taken out by a wing of Boanerges, or the Sathanas tactically taken out by a wing of Bakhas?

I agree with you on the bombers owning the field idea. The Orion dominated in the days when fighters were unshielded or when shield systems had just been integrated into Allied tactics during the Great War or Reconstruction era. Of course, now that strikecraft have a much higher survival ability, large offensive ships aren't necessary where a wing or two of heavily-shielded bombers will suffice.

Refitting the Orion and Hecate for the roles you described would just be what aldo mentioned: switching the roles. Strip an Orion's firepower to give it more fighters, it's more of a carrier. Give a Hecate more firepower with less firepower, it loses its carrier role.

[aldo_14]

Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.

Don't you mean either the Ravana taken out by a wing of Boanerges, or the Sathanas tactically taken out by a wing of Bakhas?

Bakhas?  *nips off*  Ah, so it was.  Strange; I always thought it was the Boanerges (interesting how having a common HUD blurs the mind).

[Mars]

The Hecate can carry 12.5 squadrons of fighters to the Orions 8, effectivly giving it 156% the capacity of the Orion, it presumably also features enhanced C&C capability, and still posesses considerable frontal firepower. Granted, the Orion was a far better warship by itself, that extra 4.5 squadrons could make quite a difference in battle (if the Orion doesn't have Alpha 1 on board, that is.) Also realize that the squadron numbers don't nessesarially include stored fighter parts. (for all we know a destroyer can have an extra two squadrons if parts.)

[AlphaOne]

Woo niow that u've mentioned it that did not ome to mind! I alwais presumed that they received theyr spare parts and stuff like that via transports. but it does make sense to keep that mani spare parts around just in case u get into the heat of battle for too long and no resuply route available!

Also I have come to suspect that the GTVA high-command are actualy drones put there by the shivans ! I mean theyr brains were taken out and replace by some artificial controle thing..! It would explain theyr stupidity!

[aldo_14]

Woo niow that u've mentioned it that did not ome to mind! I alwais presumed that they received theyr spare parts and stuff like that via transports. but it does make sense to keep that mani spare parts around just in case u get into the heat of battle for too long and no resuply route available!

Hmm.  Or, perchance, if the enemy was attacking you logistics........nah, could never happen.

[Mars]

No I think the player is supposed to get the impression GTVA command is covering somthing up, but that they're not incompetent.

[Herra Tohtori]

Yeah, well, they did clearly give that impression in Romans' Blunder with all that "I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense" -thing going on. Sadly, that plot line seems to have been forgotten in , and you actually never find out was there something more behind the NTF and ETAK than a rampaging admiral and medieval painter, Aken Bosch. You also don't find out what actually happened to said admiral after all. You have your hands full of stopping the second Shivan incursion and other random stuff like that.

Anyway, when I first time played through the campaign and got pwned by Capella star (of course I did, I was about ten clicks from it when I got the first warning, battling some dragons and trying to destroy bombers) and watched through that sentimental end cinematics and heard the speech of admiral Petrarch, the first impression was "wait a second... did I miss something, or did someone forget something out of this game?" Actually I've always thought that when Alpha 1 perishes at Capella, it's a much more fitting end to the story than surviving the supernova in a nick of time - and it also adds up to "conspiracy"-impression. It's like this: maybe the command did try to cover something up. What it was, we can only guess. My guess is obviously that admiral Bosch's NTF and ETAK were originally a GTVA covert operation related to investigating shivans and perhaps even to try and contact them. Or something related, there's so many plot lines without clear close-up when you take a closer look on what happens.

Anywa, what the secret was is really not important. The point is, when Alpha 1 became the prominent fighter pilot of the GTVA, he practically went through every important things in the war and saw a *lot* of things: Iceni being let escape, Arthur Roemig's ship in the nebula, all alone
in the fog... covert operations inside NTF, triumph of Colossus over the Sathanas (which was of course completely teethless because of Alpha 1's tedious Helios hammering), and the fall of Colossus for practically nothing. How fitting that even though the science probes detected increasing subspace distortions around Capella, they put Alpha 1 in... and yet they found out about Capella going supernova only about a minute before the radiation and following shockwave reached the battlezone. Of course it was necessary to try and protect the civilian craft, but it also offered the command to get rid of a war  hero who also happened to be "a man who knew too much".

This all would of course have been pursued and found out in a sequel, FS3. That's quite obvious at least to me. Unfortunately, never had a chance to really make another sequel... so the open plot lines actually can come very useful as a subject of community campaigns.

[Mars]

Is it worth it to kill 10,000 people in transports to kill one person who you could just prick with a poisined medal while your pinning it on him?

[Herra Tohtori]

 

No... It's more like command thinks like this: "Oh crap, we have to get rid of this guy who knows too much. Oh, Capella might go supernova and we still have thousands of civvies on there, being attacked by bombers. We're screwed.

...wait...

We can hit two flies with ones stroke: let's put Alpha 1 there to harass the bombers so a bit more Civvies might get away from there, and Alpha 1 might die too..."

It's not like they would've let Capella blow if they could've prevented it, but honestly, I can't believe they wouldn't have at least suspected of something like that happening, what with strange subspace distortions increasing and about 80 Sathanasi around the star. The could have hinted their pilots to keep close to the node in case something like that happened... but they didn't. Granted it might just be that they did suspect but decided not to tell the pilots until it became reality, because if the fighters had kept that close to the node, they wouldn't have been able to protect civilians. Anyway, that's just pure speculation and it might just be that they just didn't see it coming (though they would have ben quite stupid not to at least suspect it.