Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Petrarch of the VBB on November 01, 2002, 01:24:02 pm
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It occured to me today that for planetary invasions and such, the GTVA would need ground forces. I know they have the marines, but what sort of ground vehicles would they use, what sort of weapons, and would they have atmospheric fighters and such?
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Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
It occured to me today that for planetary invasions and such, the GTVA would need ground forces. I know they have the marines, but what sort of ground vehicles would they use, what sort of weapons, and would they have atmospheric fighters and such?
IIRC it siad in Fs1 that the Harbinger was origanal a planetary assult weapon. My guess is that the GTA would bomb the crap outa the planet\base and then send in the marines for clean up and to complete other objectives where the Harbingers couldnt reach.
Shouldnt this be in the Genral Freespace forum?
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Originally posted by quadinhonic_II
Shouldnt this be in the Genral Freespace forum?
I suppose it should, but it is my experience that more people look here, than in GenFS.
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Well, the 158th starts up on Earth long before the Great War. Its got a few aerospace fighters, one ground unit (the TG-Truck!) and some atmospheric capships. I'd like, one day, to do a full scale aerospace fleet and army units, but that's not happening until someone in the SCP writes proper terrain handling and gravity stuff into the engine. *heh*
http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/the158th/dev/
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I am sure that GTA and PVA (=GTVA) does have ground forces.
Most likely it represents more advanced look of modern ground forces. That includes marines, tanks, artillery and so on.
And what FS physics gives out, most likely FS fighters are capable of atmospheric flight.
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I wonder, would they have beam cannon artillery?
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Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
I wonder, would they have beam cannon artillery?
Oribit-surface beam bombardment is likely--if it wouldn't make everyone think "LUCIFER!"
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Yes, but would FS ships be able to get close enough to bombard the planet with beams. Remeeber they only have a range of a few KM.
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Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
Yes, but would FS ships be able to get close enough to bombard the planet with beams. Remeeber they only have a range of a few KM.
You would probably use something other than the standard capship beams for that. You could orbit an Mjolnir much lower than a capship, for example. You're certainly not going to put a beam on the ground. You'd have to elevate it to get any sort of decent targetting or range. Its LOS, not parabolic, like proper artillery.
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Well, the 50 Caliber of the day is probably something like an ML-16 or Avenger.
I can see most of the fs1 ships dogfighting on a planet, but I just can't imagine anything except the Perseus on the ground. Myrmidon looks like it was designed for space only. Ulysses maybe would work on a planet.
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Off the top of my head, I can't see any of the FS2/FS1 ships being used as atmospheric/trans-atmospheric fighters. I am sure that they would have planetary defence forces that would include such things as infantry, tanks, atmospheric fighters, trans-atmospheric fighters, naval ships, subs, and a slew of support related vehicles. Much like we have here, but with a bit more variety and ships capable of ground to orbit flight/combat. I can also imagine anti-aircraft/anti-landing craft tanks equipped with some sort of beam weapon designed for use in the atmosphere.
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Beams might scatter in the atmosphere, making them highly ineffecient. The Lucifer was a special case... because they are shivans... they can do anything, but the Terran beams probably are less efficient. In Darkspace the only way you could assault a planet was with bombs and dropping troops (your ship was equipped with all sorts of wonderous weapons including CL type beams - expecially the dreadnauts with their CL2000), but those weapons were useless against planets. We already know Argos are designed for shock landings on planets, The Ursa couldn't, but the Medusa might be able to manuver through atmosphere to drop cyclops, or at least some sort of thermal-detonator like weapon. Theres no reason why they couldn't use artillary that arcs shots, pherhaps plasma-based or warhead-based rounds that would be quite devastating. Blob turrets might work from high-orbit, but not very effectivly.
Remember that in star wars alot of vessels were designed for atmospheric flight, including all the fighters, and even the victory-class star destroyer (im pretty sure, at least medium-orbit).
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Victory class star destroyers were seen at the end of AOTC on Coruscant.
I think a Terran Huge Turret could be devastating.
Okay, an Apollo is like 20 meters long or something. So, to put it to scale, the Terran Huge Turret is two or three meters wide.
And then it goes something like 15 meters per second. Or 45 feet per second. Well, take an Orion. It has tons of two yard wide lasers, going EXTREMELY fast. And think, those warship hulls can withstand an anti-matter reaction. So the turrets don't do much damage. But a civilian city, one Helios, and it is gone. One fs2 battlefield would be a few miles wide.
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Victory class star destroyers were seen at the end of AOTC on Coruscant
UN CLEAN!!! UNCLEAN!!!
those were not Victories.. victories weren't around till' the middle/ending of the clone wars and were the Biggest bad boys around. If you go to starwars.com i beleive they called them something like Conqueror class landing cruisers or something. IIRC they were round' 600 meters long and chock full of stormtroopers.
Yes Victories are capable of sub automospheric flight like Vadar said. (i have numerous books saying that they are feared because they are alot more capable planeary bombarders than the Impstars and Impstar Deuce's because they could "bring the fight to the enemy directly")
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Okay, I stand corrected.
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:)
:Note this is purely for refrence, i'm not carrying out a "smack" on him or anything (It wouldn't let me edit my last post for some reason)
Straight out of Esssential Guide to Vehicals and Vessels
"The Victory Star Destroyer is an older star cruiser that proved to be an importtant part of the imperial space fleet even though it was over three decades old. When first launched, The Victory-Class was considered the ultimate combat starship design and even as the Empire waned it was overshadowed only by the Imperial Star Destroyer. The Victory was designed near the end of The CLone Wars, adn these ships formed the core of the space fleet after that turbulent era."
what else good do we have.. Victory's are 900 meters long, Carry a crew of over 5,000. Rmament: 10 Quad turbolasers, Forty Double Turbo Lasers, Eighty Concussion missle launchers, and ten Tractor Beams. They can carry up to 2 squadrons of Ties, and can carry up to 2,000 ground troops as well as planetary drop ships, troops transports and wide range of planetary assault vehicles, including AT-AT Walkers, juggernaugts and Ubrikkian HAVr A9 floating Fortresses.
Intresting note, these ships are 100 meters longer than our Deimos and hold that many Ground vehicles and Starfighters.. Than i guess i could see the deimos having sround 6,000 crew or whatever it is supposed to have. Although i think that the Victory is alot wider than than the deimos and probably taller. Thats the thing about FS ships, they arent that extravegant (at least the terrans). They are like basic blocks kinda. It makes sense though for their weaponry. Just look at the design of SW ships, they don't really have the geometry for Beams, at least not in my mind. They look like they are designed to carry numerous smaller guns (Note that Turbolasers are still quite powerful)
The Only Imp ship that looks like it could hold beam weaponry to me is the Eclipse. Most the other ships, such as the Imp Star Destroyer, Super , and Victory's is that they are dagger shaped, and they don't rise much above the dagger, at least not at a steep enough angle IMO to hold Capship beam batteries with correct arcs. They could fit them in the equatoral (sp) trenches though, that might work if they got rid of the over hangs.
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Well, turbolasers were extremely powerful. They could take out a fighter in one hit. Somebody said a while back that a Star Destroyer melted a planet's crust with its turbolasers.
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If I remember correctly (and I should as I just played the mission), in the command brief movie in Freespace one where they are bombarding the planet with the Lucifer, you see fightercraft fly past the camera just before the beams hit. Pretty sure they were Shivan fighters too. That indicates that the Shivans at least can use their fighters in a trans-atmosphereic way. However, it's noted that the Shivans never seem to land on a planet so it would be assumed that for them, all attacks would be orbital/strafing runs with fighters and bombers, not ground units of any kind.
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umi think they are horus's actually.. didn't Steak make a render of it? i have it somewhere.
one sec
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(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/fsport/images/goodies/vasuda.jpg)
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Thank you.. its not from setekh though is it? I thought he had one like it but i suppose not.
That'sa horus, right?
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Ah my mistake. Bad eyes.
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That'sa horus, right?
Yes it is.
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In the CBAnim I think thats some sort of vasudan evacuation craft, or heavy transport. Why would they have fighters flying around the city? The thing shot into space after clearing orbit, it didn't challange the lucifer. But it was clearly Vasudan.
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look at it.. it looks damn like a horus. Maybe it didn't challenge the lucifer because he's not a suicidal idiot. If the entire Vasudan Fleet protecting Vasuda was wiped clean.. do you think a horus would do anything? He may be cowardly, but he may live.
as for the Evac ship, i think that was supposed to be a different ship altogether.
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(http://fc.olaki.net/frame168of374.jpg)
Its hard to see, thanks to motion blur, but its got a rounded body with wings suitable for atmospheric flight. Not any PVN Fighter.
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Ground units, eh? Chig T-77, anyone?
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The reason I started this off is because a while back someone mentioned an FS mod for Total Annihilation, this would need ground untis of various kinds, would it not? I still maintain that they would have some sort of vehicle mounted beam cannon, like the Doomsday machine from TA.
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Originally posted by vadar_1
(http://fc.olaki.net/frame168of374.jpg)
Its hard to see, thanks to motion blur, but its got a rounded body with wings suitable for atmospheric flight. Not any PVN Fighter.
It's an..er..um...freighter04.pof ( :) ). you can make out the profile as it comes into shot, but the motion blur distorts the shape as it gets close to the camera (about frame 164, where the profile is visible)... but it's the same ship and escort group as in the 'outtro' of the animation.
Anywayts, surely the fact that a Herc survived to crash land on the ground in the FS2 intro shows they have some atmospheric capability... look at the 'groove' - it implies a bit of controlled flight, rather than an uncontrolled plummet to it's death. I'd think FS1-era (and obv FS2) ships must have some form of anti-grav, albeit possibly a fairly innefficent one. Or a hell of a lot of directional thrust.....
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(http://fc.olaki.net/frame168of374.jpg)
What are those thing fly away/around the city? Birds, escaping ships? Or even shivan fighters?
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that picture looks different than the other one though. The other one is diffenitly a horus. Besides, the horus looks like it could be autmospheric anyways.
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
that picture looks different than the other one though. The other one is diffenitly a horus. Besides, the horus looks like it could be autmospheric anyways.
Mine sure is.
http://www.planethardwar.com/~hwcomic/FS_mods/bug.html :wink:
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niice :yes:
that's actually pretty good.
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Originally posted by Mr. Fury
And what FS physics gives out, most likely FS fighters are capable of atmospheric flight.
well the Herc seems to be, judging by FS2 intro, and by the looks of it Uly and maybe even Myrmidon, and most certainly Pegasus could be atmospheric.
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What are those thing fly away/around the city? Birds, escaping ships? Or even shivan fighters?
I'm guessing they're other escaping ships. Did Vasuda Prime even have birds? The 'fact' that Satis is seen doing atmospheric flight indicates that there is at least some 'anti-grav' technology going about. So ground forces will probably have a few fighters or bombers backing them up.
What about planetary defence guns? You know a few on the surface which can fire up at orbiting ships? Good idea or too slow over to long a distance to acually do any good. I'm guessing the second (for myself) since FS weapons (esp the capship ones) done not have that greater range. 'Course this is for gameplay issues.
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well in a mission of mine I was tossing around the idea of doing planetary bombardment and having either orbital or Surface to Orbit Beam Emplacements.
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If you did it wouldn't particulary matter (at least to me) that capship weapons have short range but bombard weopens have a larger range.
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:p
I'll write it in. LRBGreans sound great. They can do anything!
Besides i like to think of it as they don't "target" accuratlly outside of 4 km ( :wtf: that is pretty ghey for weapons of their power) Because they obviously go quite a distance when they miss.
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One problem I thought of in planetary incursions would be that shields don't work. Shields (are supposed to) convert matter or energy that impacts them into diffused photongs (light), which is what causes the nice flash every time you hit something with a shield. Think that in the atmosphere, a shield would constantly be draning it's energy on the molecules in the air that are impacting it, which would make shields ineffecitve.
Of course, in FS, shields are selective - they stop weapons, yet ignore other ships, asteroids, and beams, but who said FS was realistic?
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Maybe they stop energy, not matter? That would make the most sense, and would correlate to why they fail in subspace (surrounded by a high-energy state) After all, besides missiles, all weapons in FS are energy-based. And missiles could be excused in that the shield triggers the warhead before it reaches the hull.
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Why don't they stop beam cannons?
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good point - overloads the shields maybe? Or can't be tracked before impact to activate the shield?
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aren't the shield on "full time" ?
Besides if beams didn't go through shields.. they'd suck.
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[DeeDee] ARRGGHGHGH[DeeDee/]
Sorry to backtrack but that ship in the command ANI was a vasudan transport (the same class that you disable in 5th/6th mission of FS1) and it shows it fleeing in high orbit with two horus escort plus various freighters nipping about like lunatics, then in the next mission the PVC (hmm latex) Hope is trying to hole the triad of nodes alone..
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Maybe they stop energy, not matter?
That's nonsense. In that case missiles and the Maxim cannon would go straight through shields
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Originally posted by Fry_Day
That's nonsense. In that case missiles and the Maxim cannon would go straight through shields
The maxim is still energy, it only acts like a mass driver. And it's not nonsense, it's Freespace. No one said that any of the tech in this game is based on common sense.
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I thought the Maxim was a mass driver that fired charged rounds...
meh, i'm too tired to look it up.
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Originally posted by Fry_Day
One problem I thought of in planetary incursions would be that shields don't work. Shields (are supposed to) convert matter or energy that impacts them into diffused photongs (light), which is what causes the nice flash every time you hit something with a shield. Think that in the atmosphere, a shield would constantly be draning it's energy on the molecules in the air that are impacting it, which would make shields ineffecitve.
Of course, in FS, shields are selective - they stop weapons, yet ignore other ships, asteroids, and beams, but who said FS was realistic?
Nice idea but I doubt very much that FS shields work by total conversion of matter to energy. If they did you wouldn`t have bombers. The energy release from being shot would more than that of a nuclear weapon. You`d just fly close to an enemy cruiser and get a friendly ship to shoot you once with a maxim. The resultant blast would blow away any ship you wanted it to.
More likely shields work by bouncing whatever hits them away from the protected ship. I also doubt that would work in an atmosphere though.
As for why other ships etc go through a shield perhaps a shield works only if the hit is on only one face at a time. Other ships are large enough to disrupt the shield allowing a direct collission
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Has anyone noticed that the original MX-50 missiles are a couple of kilotonne yield? Now thats ridiculous....
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how so?
Tsunamis if i remember correctly have some in the Megatons
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Cos the mx-50 is the pissant of the missile world and it takes minisule amounts of damge off, (Even before TV nicked shivan shield tech) If you apply the common standards of innovation the rockeye should be a gigatonne nuke or at least after 32 years capable of not needing surpassment. :devil:
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The United States Air Force used nuclear air-to-air rockets for a short period in the 50s, so why is it ridiculous that a missile a couple of hundred years in the future has such a yield?