Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TrashMan on December 10, 2003, 08:05:28 am
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Are FS2 capships vastly undergunned?
I just read a book called "Warships and their applications".
A big thick book with everything you wanted and didn't want to know.
I'll give you a few examples:
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WW2 warship - USA - Iowa class
57000 tonns
276m length
2700 crew
30knts
ARMAMENTS:
9x 406mm
20X 127mm
80x 40mm
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WW2 warship - Great Britain - King George V class
35000 tonns
225m
1500 crew
28 knts
ARMAMENTS:
10x 356mm
16x132mm
110x40mm
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COUNT THOSE GUNS!!!!!:eek2: A 276m ship has over 100 guns, and a 2km FS2 Destroyer has barely 40 (and pathetic ones that cant hurt a fly!)
On a side note: - Do you know how the tearm Dreadnought came to existance?
It was the name of the first battleship ever built, one of the old ones with cylindrical turrets on it's sides, the crappy design that was later scrapped!
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FS2 ships are designed for a balanced game and a fast frame rate. More turrets and stuff mean slower gaming :nod:
And have some more respect for the Dreadnought. It was the first battleship that you'd recognise as such. I don't know what you mean about the turrets as the Dreadnought set a new standard in ship building, so I assume you're thinking of the Monitor (and even that deserves your respect)
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No..I don't mean the monitor. I mean the first battleship (the Deadnought) had cylindrical shaped turrets and it's sides (above the water line). That design was a bandoned.
And FS2 engine can handle far more turrets (90% of them are boxes for crying out loud). I want to be so scared of a capship when it jumps in that I drop dead on the spot!
Warships are supposed to be big motherf******!
Bah..every capship in DOTA will have a killer anti-fighter armamnet. No more solo-capship hunt!
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was it this
(http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h61000/h61005.jpg)
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*me looks closer*
*me sees portholes*
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WW2 warship - USA - Iowa class
57000 tonns
276m length
2700 crew
30knts
ARMAMENTS:
9x 406mm
20X 127mm
80x 40mm Anti-fighter turrets
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WW2 warship - Great Britain - King George V class
35000 tonns
225m
1500 crew
28 knts
ARMAMENTS:
10x 356mm
16x132mm
110x40mmAnti-fighter turrets
w/o those there would be only 40 weapon turrets and battle ships need's very good fire power
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The Dreadnought was the first all metal warship if I remember correctly, and it's name was derived from exactly what the name suggest... Dreads Nought.
I think the Monitor was an Ironclad, which is a wooden ship with whopping great big steel plates on the side, used during the American Civil War, they were pretty ineffective till the Dreadnought came along :)
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FS2 capships suck- anything you, flying a vessel maybe a thousanth the size, could take on and beat easily just plain sucks.The Aeolus and maybe the Lilith were the only capships in the game that even presented a challenge. Ravana came close, I got pegged by an anti-fighter beam more than once, but it had too many weak points in the end.
The real problem isn't really turrets- in the original game, capital vessels were down right scary to face off against, and you didn't want to be doing a bomber run. Particularly in an interceptor (which is actually the ideal way to do it now, pretty much). The problem is, as with so many things in the game, they were balanced for FS1. I recall in original FreeSpace, before the shields came around, taking on a friggin' Mentu was a tricky proposition. Shields upped the disposable ship HPs almost tenfold, especially counting their regeneration and localization properties, and fighter weapons were boosted accordingly so it wouldn't take an hour to down a Dragon, but since capships don't get shields they stayed the same.
Forty capship guns ain't so bad if any one of 'em can do serious damage to you with one hit. Forty guns sucks if they're at best about the same as the weakest fighter gun.
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i would like to see some campaigns with either shielded caps, or unshielded fighters. TVWP is on my list, certainly.
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Originally posted by kasperl
i would like to see some campaigns with either shielded caps, or unshielded fighters. TVWP is on my list, certainly.
Oh yes. You will be afraid of capital ships. Yezzz... ;7
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FS2 ships ARE undergunned......a fenris can get owned by a single fighter given time.....so why the hell do you need a fenris at all?!
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given time?
gimme a maxim and i'll own it in 30 seconds or something.
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Since there are no decent AA missile systems in FS, attacking heavy vessels will always be pretty easy. Like Stryke said, unless a hit from a weapon can seriously hurt you, it might as well not be there. To make a Fenris even half-way viable, you'd have to replace all it's turrets with Trebuchets and Ultra AAA beams.
Useless fact time: The Dreadnought is the only battleship ever to sink a submarine with a ramming attack.
Trashman: you're thinking of "casemated" guns, which are mounted in sort of cupola-type things on the sides of ships, giving them the ability to fire their broadside guns forward (for pursuits). The RN didn't use them once they switched to heavy deck turrets - you'd be better off looking at early C20th American warships, as they didn't stop using them until the late 20s/early 30s.
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FS2 capships suck- anything you, flying a vessel maybe a thousanth the size, could take on and beat easily just plain sucks.The Aeolus and maybe the Lilith were the only capships in the game that even presented a challenge. Ravana came close, I got pegged by an anti-fighter beam more than once, but it had too many weak points in the end.
Ever attacked the Colossus in a Boanerges or Ursa? The C is a pain in the ass.
Besides, part of the reason for the weak anti-cap power is so that the game can revolve around Alpha 1 and not fleets of Orions and Ravanas.
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but the C is supposed to be the single, most powerfull ship in the fleet.
it's like saying "ever attacked NORAD with an uzi? that's hard dude"
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Well, now look at it this way: it is not the ships that suck... its the weapons (or the difficulty level...)!!!
I'm sure that the Hecate hasn't got as many turrets as the Iwoa class because the Iwoa hasn't got jump drives, or a big reactor to power them, or a big hangar, or those Huge engines... oh, not to mention a good fighter support :D
Also, the Iwoa has 80 40mm machine guns, that are small, and don't scratch a fighter, where the Hecate has what? 6 AAAf? THese last are much bigger, for they require something to juice them up, and that something isn't small bullets, but a reactor and whatshowever high tech imaginary mecanical complexes to make it fire...
The anti fighter weapons should be more powerful though...
So lets not compare reality to a game, nor the 1900s with the 2300s, ok?? :D
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The Swarm War will (hopefully) make you crap yourself at the very appearance of a ship larger than 200m! :D
Oh, and TrashMan: Without HMS Dreadnought the ships you quote statistics from wouldn't have existed.
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Bassically what Raven said, just in a tone of voice that would reflect me.
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Actually, Killfrenzy, that's not true.
At the time the Dreadnaught was conceived, similar ideas were also floating around in US and Japanese naval circles. Indeed, the Japanese actually started construction of the first 'all big guns' warship, named Satsuma, five months before the Dreadnaught was laid down. However, the Dreadnaught was completed first, so all warships of the type were called 'Dreadnaughts', and not 'Satsumas.'
So the age of the 'Dreadnaughts' (or 'Satsumas') would have started, one way or another.
History is filled with little bits of trivia like this. :) ;)
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Wasn't the first metal ship the Monitor??? I didn't think that it was the dreadnought....
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FS warships can take multi-gigaton bomb hits and can rapidly destroy warships that can take the same. I wouldn't call that undergunned. ;)
Besides, look at how many discrete weapon systems modern combatants have. Say 2 gun systems, 2 SAM units, a SSM cluster, a couple PD mounts. That'd be a typical modern warship.
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@ adwight
I believe you are correct. Monitor (or a close relative) was the first all-metal warship, but she can hardly be described as the ancestor of the 'modern' battleship as we know them.
In retrospect, the Dreadnaught was a linear descendent, not of the Monitor, but of the HMS Warrior, the first ironclad warship. (Note, this is not the same as iron hulled, merely that she had iron armour plating over certain areas of her wooden hull.)
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Starforce ships have a bit more anti-fighter firepower than FS2. The beams and fighter weapons are a lot more powerful in relation to shields and hull than in FS2 and the blob turrets are pretty much gone, replaced by versions of the fighter weapons. They aren't all that accurate per shot due to the faster speeds of everything (an interceptor can do around 120 without AB and 200 with AB and a pulse cannon blast, fighter-mounted or turreted, travels at 650) but they lay down a great deal of fire and can chew up your ship pretty quickly (a heavy pulse cannon has a fire wait of 0.45 and can take you out in four hits or so on higer difficulty levels). The AAA beams on the more powerful ships are pretty scary, and can take you out in a single blast if you absorb the entire shot. And the swarm missile turrets are really nasty.:shaking: So in Starforce, even cruisers aren't easy for a fighter to take out.
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The most important thing to remember about the Dreadnoughts (British, anyway) was that they had two key strengths: they were very fast and that they could place a weapons barrage anywhere within 20 miles of their position.
FS2 destroyers aren't meant for this: they're slow and, without unique weapons, relatively short ranged, and I like them that way.
Any ships I mod are bristling with rapid fire turrets and AAA beams, so you can't even get close without finding something very nasty pointing at you. It's better that way.
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Originally posted by Raven2001
Well, now look at it this way: it is not the ships that suck... its the weapons (or the difficulty level...)!!!
I'm sure that the Hecate hasn't got as many turrets as the Iwoa class because the Iwoa hasn't got jump drives, or a big reactor to power them, or a big hangar, or those Huge engines... oh, not to mention a good fighter support :D
Also, the Iwoa has 80 40mm machine guns, that are small, and don't scratch a fighter, where the Hecate has what? 6 AAAf? THese last are much bigger, for they require something to juice them up, and that something isn't small bullets, but a reactor and whatshowever high tech imaginary mecanical complexes to make it fire...
The anti fighter weapons should be more powerful though...
So lets not compare reality to a game, nor the 1900s with the 2300s, ok?? :D
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!:lol:
40mm guns can't scratch a fighter? Dude, you better check your facts! They'll rip it apart in 0.05 seconds flat!!
Iowa allso carried 2 hidroplanes (later replaced by 3 choppers). As you can see it had LOTS of crew for it's size.
And we're talking about someting more than 2km long - belive me, you have lot's of space in something that big! A aircraft carrier is only 334m long and it can carry 90 airplanes.
Anyway, I edited all the standard weaponry. The standard Terran Turrets now own (they fire much faster) and I allso made a anti-bomber turret (very slow shot speed so you can dodge shots with a fighter, but packs a terrible punch). And I set the Teran Huge Turret to do 1200 damage. Belive me, capships now own (alltough they could still use more turrets)
You know what a battleship really is?
I tested my Iowa a while ago - sent 6x4 shivan bomber/heavy fighter wings at it (10 wawes each).
End result - all shivans dead, the Iowa at 98% hull.....:devil:
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Well, that's kinda the thing, though. You could pretty much throw a rock at a fighter and down it. Especially these days, when the rock'd impact at Mach 2 and probably tear something useful like a wing off. FS fighters are considerably slower and beefier than that- they're more equivalent to modern helicopters, which can take some brutal damage but move like a flying cow. Still not nearly a match for a well-kitted battleship or anything of the sort, but it strikes me that 240 fighters should be able to do pretty grievous damage to a capship.
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Let Trashman continue with his uber modifications. When no one plays his campaign because it's no fun maybe then he'll realise why [V] made a gameplay decision to give capships less powerful guns.
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UPS...my bad....The Shivans were armed with poor weapons..and there was less fighters...around 120-160.....a typo!
And the Iowa has about 40 flak/aaf turets (will replace half of them with terran turrets)
And the campaign will be fun..Just coause a battleship is uber-armed (like it should be) that doesn't mean that every other ship will be..
Besides, I upped all Shivan fighter weapons have been (to double their normal damage)
My point is - I don't want to make a nearly impenetrable fortress out of all capships (maby only out of1-2 of the biggest ones). I want to make them a serious challenge - nt something that you would go at solo! (With the AI improvement, maby it will even turn up good)
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I still maintain that Capships are supposed to be deadly to anything a fraction of their size. My biggest gripe in any space combat game is that somehow a piddly little one-man fighter can take down a warship without much of a problem. Bombers have a chance, but that's what they're designed to do.
My design philosophy for The Swarm War is to make sure that fighters don't knock down warships. The bombers making attack runs need to be protected by drawing the fire from the ship they're attacking. That's why Swarm War fighters are fast and agile - capships have a ***** of a time hitting you but choose to shoot at you rather than the bombers.
A fighter is a fighter, designed for engaging ships its own size.
Bombers are designed to strike large targets, but you'd need a LOT of them to take down anything bigger than a Light Cruiser.
Warships are designed as assault and defense units designed to attack and hold strategic objectives such as star systems. As a result they're big and nasty. A fighter shouldn't be a threat to them. If it is, then it's been very poorly designed.
Believe me, if I ever get this bloody TC finished you won't be going within three klicks of anything bigger than a Heavy Cruiser (if it's hostile of course). :D
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Originally posted by karajorma
Let Trashman continue with his uber modifications. When no one plays his campaign because it's no fun maybe then he'll realise why [V] made a gameplay decision to give capships less powerful guns.
Yeah, I use a lot of AAA firepower on Starforce ships, but not too much. Attacking a cap will be tough (unless it's a Border Systems Coalition cruiser because they suck), but Alpha 1 (or Beta 1 in certain cases) has to be the person who is the deciding factor. A mission is no fun unless your actions decide the outcome of the mission.
Enough fighters will take a cruiser down (two to four fighters will be all that is sufficient to bring down a BSC Dainishi cruiser because of its poor armament but some cruisers like the Savaran Imperial Alliance SIC Eurus will be hellish targets for fighters to attack), but something more potent will be needed to take down anything bigger.
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The problem with that philosophy is can the AI handle it?
If the AI bombers get slaughtered every time they appear the campaign can become boring really fast because intercept missions are completely pointless.
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I balanced this by making bombers really tough. A capship generally won't take down bombers quickly enough. However, a capship's anti-fighter turrets working in concert with light fighters are quite formidable, so bombers often have medium or heavy fighters as escort.
So basically interceptors go after the bombers while corvettes or heavy cruisers mop up the escort fighters.
Also, not all destroyers are the same. Most factions have one "Swiss army knife" destroyer, but the SIA has three destroyer classes. The Tereus has good anticap firepower and has armament on all sides, but its anti-fighter defenses are wimpy. The Thanatos has deadly anticap and anti-fighter weaponry, but all but one of its turrets point forward, so the Thanatos is mainly used in frontal assaults with other caps covering its rear. The Icelus is a nightmare for fighters, but its anti-cap firepower is lacking.
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That was meant for killfrenzy actually but you managed to sneak in a reply :)
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Originally posted by karajorma
Let Trashman continue with his uber modifications. When no one plays his campaign because it's no fun maybe then he'll realise why [V] made a gameplay decision to give capships less powerful guns.
call me strange, but the best patr of the whole FS deal was the begining of FS1, when you had crappy guns and no shields, when you were at least worried when you saw a capship or a new fighter wing jumping in. Later, it was just " damn, I need to get those down fast so I can keep on with scaning those stupid subsystems - what for, btw? we never get to use any information from those, nothing comes from those scans, not even some crappy technobabbling during briefings.
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FS1 worked because it only kept the player weak for a few missions. Had the campaign been like that all the way through I doubt as many people would have enjoyed it. You'd die about twice as often and many missions which involved capships would have been impossible.
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Yeah, even a Ma'at could be a ***** to take on if you weren't very good. Those blob turrets are pretty nasty against an unshielded fighter. Typhons would have been a major pain (fortunately, Volition didn't throw in a Typhon until AFTER you had acquired shield tech) because a Terran Huge Turret or FighterKiller could destroy you in one or two hits.
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Originally posted by kv1at3485
@ adwight
I believe you are correct. Monitor (or a close relative) was the first all-metal warship, but she can hardly be described as the ancestor of the 'modern' battleship as we know them.
to correct everyone, the CSS Virginia was the first ironclad ship to be used in battle. It was orignaly sunk by the North but the South raised it and transformed it into the Merrimac. The Monitor was launch cuz the Merrimac was pwning the North's fleet. The Monitor's rotating turret was another tech. marvel...
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Yes, but if I remember rightly the Virginia was a wooden ship with Iron 'Cladding' hence the name. The monitor was the first all metal ship, oh yes, and those guns were the first guns in the civil war whih could actually pentrate the cladding on the Merrimac.
They also made some kind of 'suicidals only' submarine, but I can't remember the name.
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This is the issue why I belive in a Damage Treshold/Damage Resistance system borrowed from the SPECIAL RPG system.
Just give a high treshold for warships, while bombers could recieve a high resistance.
What it means is the treshold is first substracted from any damage, then it is rounded down by the resistance factor.
IMHO the system tries to simulate how hard (treshold - it ignores low caliber weaponry) and how thick the armor is (resistance - this is how much damage it can absorb).
Of course it can be more complicated (in a computer game you can let the PC handle it after all, that's the difference between a board game and the comp.), by lowering both factors as the battering goes on - of course it would need area sensitive armor handling which is too complicated right now (needs a lot of empty subsystems - that was the last easiest solution I heard of).
This somewhat resembles the current flag system of FS but IMHO it could be a broader more handy system than having just a couple of flags to do a rough selection.
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The Monitor was not the original ironclad built from the keel up. The British actually had ironclads first. The distinguishing factor of the Monitor is it was the first to see actual combat, and to prove the concept worked.
Another ship that did the same thing was the Hunley, which was the first submarine that sunk a ship. Admittedly it didn't survive the attempt, but it was the first.
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Originally posted by Woolie Wool
Yeah, I use a lot of AAA firepower on Starforce ships, but not too much. Attacking a cap will be tough (unless it's a Border Systems Coalition cruiser because they suck), but Alpha 1 (or Beta 1 in certain cases) has to be the person who is the deciding factor. A mission is no fun unless your actions decide the outcome of the mission.
Tragicly, a single pilot doesn't decide the outcome of EVERY mission he's in. And that'ds how I plan to make it.
You are one among many. Your action will have a huge effect on the battlefield, but you're still just one fighter.
FLASER - I like the idea of armour theshold. WW2 battleships had different armoour thickness on different areas (alltough in space, it can be the same hickness everywhere).
The armour was thick enough on the most critical positions(fuel, ammo, fire contol, bridge, main guns) to withstand a direct hit from the main battery (i.e. - a battleship with the 365mm main guns would have a 365mm armour, a battleship with 406mm guns would have 406mm armour on the most sensitive spots - alltough the armour was thinner on other, not so importnat spots.) That's why naval battles lasted for hours.
A 500kg bomb falls on a turret and the crew inside says: "Did you hear something?".
The Prince of Wales was hit by 28 torpedos and 300 bombs. Even after that it took him 3 hours to sink. So yes, battleships are a damn tough nut to crack.
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The player doesn't have to decide the outcome of every battle but if he doesn't have any effect on the out come of any of them then there isn't really much point in playing at all.
Basically from the description of your super ships it sounds like any escort mission with them in is completely pointless.
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That's one of the things that I liked about Starlancer. Everyone complained about torpedo-intercept missions, but I consider them to be the proper use of fighters in a capship confrontation. Torp intercept and subsystem destruction are exactly the right place for fighters.
Look at it this way: if capships were so thoroughly vulnerable to fighters, no one would build anything but carriers. There wouldn't be any need for capship battles.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Look at it this way: if capships were so thoroughly vulnerable to fighters, no one would build anything but carriers. There wouldn't be any need for capship battles.
I wasn't saying the player should be able to take down capships. I was saying that if the capship can defend itself against enemy bombers and fighters the complete reverse becomes true.
If a capship can defend itself against enemy bombers who'd bother to build fighters?
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Originally posted by karajorma
The problem with that philosophy is can the AI handle it?
If the AI bombers get slaughtered every time they appear the campaign can become boring really fast because intercept missions are completely pointless.
Sorry for the late reply! :D
I plan to make TSW's bombers somewhat tougher than their FS2 counterparts. The way it works will be thus:
Bombers tend to have strong hulls and powerful shields to deflect the amount of weaponry fire coming at them. They carry Fusion Torpedoes which actually move at a fair old lick, giving anyone a hard time trying to shoot them down.
They're designed to take down anything up to and including Light Cruiser size (though they can take certain Heavy Cruisers too). Anything bigger than that (Battlecruisers/Battleships) would be a suicide run. They can engage a large warship in a support role to aid another in the destruction of the target.
The other factor to weigh in is that Fusion Torpedoes are very much a standoff weapon. I'm planning for the bombers to be able to target something from about 5k away, so intercept missions still work. They'll work very much like traditional intercept missions where you have to hit the bomber formation BEFORE they can start unloading on their target.
I've cooked up a couple of bomber ideas to go with various attack plans. The Gencore Rage class bomber is VERY fast for its type, attaining a combat speed equivalent to the Harpy class fighter. It's also quite agile and can defend itself without fighter support. The tradeoff is a very small payload, but the Rage is designed to get in close, unleash hell when they're certain of a hit, and then bug out again.
The other design is the Harbinger. I think 'gunship' might be a better description - three turrets, a few forward laser mounts and a payload that'll make a B-52 feel inadequate! The Harbinger is designed to pulverise capital ships of Heavy Cruiser size and up. You get a squadron of these monsters coming at you unloading their Fusion Torps, and you'll be cursing to high heaven! :D
At least, that's the plan! :D I'm just sick of the ease in which small strike craft can take down massive ships kilometres in size! Also it'll allow for more capship vs capship action.
Oh yes, one more thing: Don't expect to be the be all and end all of the campaign. You're a cog in a bloody great big wheel! :D
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But being just another pilot is no fun.:p
If you don't think little bitty ships should be able to destroy massive caps, you'll be glad to know that most Starforce bombers are huge, at 50-75 meters in length.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I wasn't saying the player should be able to take down capships. I was saying that if the capship can defend itself against enemy bombers and fighters the complete reverse becomes true.
If a capship can defend itself against enemy bombers who'd bother to build fighters?
But not everything is black and white. You can have ships that can defend themselves against bombers to some degree, but a large assault will be too much for the bombers.
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Originally posted by mikhael
That's one of the things that I liked about Starlancer. Everyone complained about torpedo-intercept missions, but I consider them to be the proper use of fighters in a capship confrontation. Torp intercept and subsystem destruction are exactly the right place for fighters.
Yea, its kinda like playing HW2. You send in your fighters to take out the anti-hyperspace thing and the ion beam thing and then you jump in you battle cruiser to finish off the job.
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The Merrimac (AKA CSS Virgina): A sunken Confederate wooden-hulled ship, raised by the confeds and the upper half was built up out of metal. It did, however, still have standard fixed cannons.
The Monitor: The Union's response to the Merrimac. An all-metal, built-from-the-ground-up ship, it sat so low to the water that it was almost completely submerged (it met it's fate in windy seas, when it was caused to capsize). Not only was it the first ship to be competely built out of metal, but it was ALSO the first ship to have a rotating turret, built into the center of the ship and carrying two cannons.
The Hunley: A Confederate (I think) submerine, the first military sub in the world, was used to try and break the Union blockade of a certain town (forgot the name, think it was in Maryland). It was hand-powered via a large crankshaft, and it's weaponry was a single explosive charge on the end of a long spear. The spear was rammed into a ship, the Hunley was backed off, and the explosive was detonated via a cord. The Hunley succeeded in sinking a ship, however, it was sunk later on the same mission. It is debatable as to why this happened, although the two leading theories are that it was A) Sunk by a Union warship, or B) the explosive charge wounded it's owner fataly.
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Originally posted by Woolie Wool
But not everything is black and white. You can have ships that can defend themselves against bombers to some degree, but a large assault will be too much for the bombers.
Jeez everyone stop taking everything I say so bloody literally. I didn't say that capships have to be defenseless against bombers! Just that they shouldn't be able to take on hundreds and win.
READ BETWEEN THE LINES PEOPLE! :hopping:
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Eerrmmm....who said 40mm cannons were weak against fighters? Right... a single 40mm cannon shell (heck a 37, 32, or HE 30mm would do it) can rip virtually any WWII fighter out of the sky and modern day fighters are just as vulnerable.
The average American fighter in WWII had 6 .50 calibre machine guns which ripped enemy aircraft, even fairly well armored ones, to pieces relatively quickly if the right areas were hit. The average British, German, and Soviet aircraft of the time typically used 20mm cannons and most fighters needed but a few hits to fall apart. One American fighter and one Soviet fighter mounted a 37mm and 45mm cannon respectively (the P-39 and the Yak-9K). Most bombers fell apart on a hit of those a few times.
Virtually every weapon in the battleships arsenal was a death dealer for aircraft.
WWII battleships like the Tirpitz and Yamato are virtual fortresses...any aircraft that attacked a WWII battleship did so in massive numbers and usually sustained equally massive losses. However, as we know in the case of the Bismarck, a single torpedo hit can spell doom for the ship by crippling critical components.
FreeSpace capital ships are in general undergunned in terms of anti-fighter defense but not in the anti-capital ship department. Laser turrets after the initial part of FS1 were used for warhead interception....they are pretty good at that. Largely everything was balanced for gameplay reasons. Many MOD's have gone the opposite route and made the game much less fun to play.
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i say crank up the capships ... but make them fewer..... not 30 caps in 1 battle more like 3 or 4 and if one is lost oh my thats a LOT of credits hehe
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Originally posted by IceFire
However, as we know in the case of the Bismarck, a single torpedo hit can spell doom for the ship by crippling critical components.
Nope. Haven't seen that documentary by James cameron? He's done the same thing ghe did with the Titanic, with the Bismark. Very impressive shots. Anyway, the thing proves fairly well that this famous torpedo hit near the propelers did not sunk the Bismark. Nothing the brits throw at it sunk it, actually. When they destroyed the left fan, the Bismarck could not escape anymore, it could only do large circles, so the Brits went at it, but they came to close to sink it. According to the ballistic specialists who were with James Cameron, , the only way to sink the Bismark was to shoot it under the... her... what's the name in english? well, in the hull UNDER the water. but the brits came too close, forced to shoot almost horizonatlly, and the shells were deflected by the surface of the sea, no critical hit was dealt. And yet the ship was shot at more than 2800 times, I remember something around 400 40cm shells, stuff like that. It was some kind of hell onboard, so in the end the germans decided to sink their own ship, so they put destruction charges and, well, sunk it.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I wasn't saying the player should be able to take down capships. I was saying that if the capship can defend itself against enemy bombers and fighters the complete reverse becomes true.
If a capship can defend itself against enemy bombers who'd bother to build fighters?
I think you and I are approaching the same concept from two different directions.
I'm totally with you. Bombers are the anti-capship fighter and always should be. This is a classic, venerable, utterly important part of the space sim genre.
Fighters (interceptors and superiority) should protect bombers, take down other fighters, intercept enemy munitions and bombers, and harass capships.
Bombers should attack capships.
Capships should deploy turrets and fighters against fighters/bombers and torpedos and big guns against other capships. Capships should never be trivial to kill.
Originally posted by Nico
According to the ballistic specialists who were with James Cameron, , the only way to sink the Bismark was to shoot it under the... her... what's the name in english? well, in the hull UNDER the water. but the brits came too close, forced to shoot almost horizonatlly, and the shells were deflected by the surface of the sea, no critical hit was dealt.
I think you're looking for "under the waterline".
It was some kind of hell onboard, so in the end the germans decided to sink their own ship, so they put destruction charges and, well, sunk it.
The word for that is "scuttle". ;)
Regardless, I didn't know that. That's pretty damned impressive engineering.
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That's right Nico.
Bismarck wasn't critically hit, it was sunked by Germans...
I agree with some people, FS ships lack serious AAA...
Yes, it makes gameplay balanced, but it can be undone. Put more stronger turrets and Fenris won't be so easy to destroy....
That's when the bomber has something to do.......
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Originally posted by mikhael
I think you and I are approaching the same concept from two different directions.
I'm totally with you. Bombers are the anti-capship fighter and always should be. This is a classic, venerable, utterly important part of the space sim genre.
Fighters (interceptors and superiority) should protect bombers, take down other fighters, intercept enemy munitions and bombers, and harass capships.
Bombers should attack capships.
Capships should deploy turrets and fighters against fighters/bombers and torpedos and big guns against other capships. Capships should never be trivial to kill.
Yep. Basically that was what I was on about. Lots of people complain about the stuck at 10% hull thing introduced in FS2 and while I agree that it was a bad way of solving the problem it was ridiculous if fighters could kill even ships of superjuggernaut size.
What I like to see is a nice balance between the power of capships and bombers. Both should be able to take down the other if the conditions are in their favour.
Making uber ships that can cill the other class quickly is very boring for the player. An uber bomber that can kill ships too quickly obviously makes for boring missions but making the capships too uber is equally boring because the player is mostly left wondering why he's there in the first place since the ship can look after itself without any need for him to be there.
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Originally posted by Nico
Nope. Haven't seen that documentary by James cameron? He's done the same thing ghe did with the Titanic, with the Bismark. Very impressive shots. Anyway, the thing proves fairly well that this famous torpedo hit near the propelers did not sunk the Bismark. Nothing the brits throw at it sunk it, actually. When they destroyed the left fan, the Bismarck could not escape anymore, it could only do large circles, so the Brits went at it, but they came to close to sink it. According to the ballistic specialists who were with James Cameron, , the only way to sink the Bismark was to shoot it under the... her... what's the name in english? well, in the hull UNDER the water. but the brits came too close, forced to shoot almost horizonatlly, and the shells were deflected by the surface of the sea, no critical hit was dealt. And yet the ship was shot at more than 2800 times, I remember something around 400 40cm shells, stuff like that. It was some kind of hell onboard, so in the end the germans decided to sink their own ship, so they put destruction charges and, well, sunk it.
I think the point is that the Bismark was tactically and strategically crippled by loosing her ability to maneuver effectively, not that it sunk her.
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As far as I know, the Bismarck was screwed as soon as it took the torpedo in the steering gear. That meant it couldn't escape. The King George V (battleship), the Rodney (battleship) and the Ark Royal (carrier) reduced it to a floating hulk, but they couldn't sink it with shellfire or air-dropped torpedoes. According to the RN, it was finally sunk by being torpedoed at point blank range by the HMS Devonshire (medium cruiser). I haven't seen the Cameron film, but if it's been proved otherwise, then I'm wrong.
But she couldn't exactly do much if there's no superstructure left, let alone any guns or power.
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HMS Dorsetshire. :D
Her torpedoes did naff all to the Bismarck's hull. As for the Tirpitz, it took a Lancaster bomber with a 11,000lb Tallboy bomb to sink her!
Technically it took two. :D
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O.k. - Time for some facts.
I don't want to make uber capships.
In DOTA we have a 95m bomber with 6 turrets, 5000 shields, carrying bombs that do around 25000 damage each. So as you can see, that's a whole lot of firepower. Alltough it can barley outrun a cruiser and handles like a brick.
I want to make warship classes act like they should. You can still destroy them, only it will take more effort.
Battleship were designed to stand alone and survive. That's why they had thick armour, and loads of guns. They weren't unsinkable.
Every ship should have his role and act acordingly.
Carriers ar weak, but they carry lot's of fighters/bombers to conpensate that.
Cruisers are even weaker, but they have great AF weaponry.
Battleships are fortresses that require lot of effort to take down.
Fighters engage other fighters and intercept bombs/bombers
Bombers take out heavy warships, but they can't do it on their own (someone needs to draw the fire away)
That's how I want to make it in the DOTA. And the player would have a effect on the outcome. The only difference is he wouldn't be the centre of the universe, and in most cases, he won't be able to do it alone.
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As far for the Bismarck. The British did pound him good, but they weren't abe to sink him.
The armour around the waterline was too thick. Alltough the armour drops to around 100mm near the front, no critical areas are there and if all the water-tight compatments (bulkheads) are sealed, t's practicly unsinkable. You can turn it into a burning wreck, but it would still float and would probably still be a ble to shoot back.
Like I said, the main turrets, command tower, ammo & fuel storage and the center waterline were so heavily armoured that only a battleship with bigger guns that Bismarck could punch trough the armour.
Even torpedos aren't too effective, since a battleship has triple-layered hull, and torpedo shields (extra extrusions to stop the torpedos).
I do belive the Germans scuttled him, alltough I can't rightly remember!
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the capships are fine....just that the fighter weapons are too over-powered. Try taking down a leviathan with anything other than Maxims, Trebuchets and bombs.
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Why only to 10%?
"Sorry pilot because you are in a fighter you canonly destroy 90% of the hull, the remaining 10% - though made of the same materials- becomes immune to your weaponry. This is for play balance otherwise we won't have bombers in the game!"
:wtf:
Look people wqe need to get rid of that condition to the capship tag, or better yet in future mod tables do we need teh capship tag? what other tags can we use right now other than fightr or bomber for a big ship? BIG SHIP tag? Better lets clarify, what tags have that 10% restriction???
Look I am all for fighters not being able to destroy big ships (though I disagree, I grew up that 1 X-wing fighter with the right weapon at the right location can win the day - thanks Lucas!) BUT in tha case you need to make the ships totally immune to fighter weapons not this 90% vulnerable crap!!!
"OMG! I just did a strafing run against that alien ship and my bullets have absolutely NO EFFECT! better get the bombers over here stat!"
Plus I also state that while teh main hull should be immune maybe turrets or special systems that be vulnerable to fighter weapons due to fragile nature, instability, or fact that a special condition occurs in game play could be sexp'ed or fredded in the mission...
Thoughts from you coders???
Bombers are relevant and needed and deserve thier place in gaming, BUT I'd rather do it in a fighter even if I can only carry like 1/4 or less of the same bomb payload and have weaker shields (bombers should always have the strongest shields!)
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Try shooting a rifle at an APC on some odd occasion when you have both materials on hand and it won't shoot back too much. You'll horribly **** up the paint job, even give it a few dents, but nothing's getting through there. That'd be your ten percent.
Anyway. All this talk about making the game "too hard" is lame. There's a quite simple solution- get better. And don't script your damn missions around blowing up 20 Ravanas. On a reasonable mission, I can get around without luxuries like shields just fine, and I'm far from a good player- it's a rare mission where I don't crash into something at least twice. It's sorta like, you know, every last fighter sim ever made over the entirety of human history, and a good while before. Somehow, they manage. If you really need training wheels to play the game, I advise you stick to first-person shooters, or maybe put the invulnerability cheat in. If you really think there's no way to prevent the player being just useless that doesn't involve him personally taking on half the ****ing enemy fleet at once and winning remind me to never ever download any missions or campaigns you make, or even touch them with a longish pole.
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Who (apart from the voices in your head) ever said anything about having to make it so that the player blew up capship after capship so that the mission wouldn't be too hard?
I agree that capships which were harder to kill would be a good idea. Just don't take it to the other extreme where the player exists only to take on fighters who couldn't have any effect on the battle anyway.
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Fighters can cripple non heavy-armored components of a ship - so it mean antennas, sensor-arrays, lights, exposed turrets, heat sikns ect.
Anything other needs firepower that is either:
-A big bomb designed to penetrate the armor -->you need a bomber
-A high-caliber/high-power gun -->you need a bigger ship or a ship built around the weapon: a gunboat is the only think I can think of that's player control able
-Special high-penetration weapon --> it won't do too much damage, good for crippling equipment with medium armor - so heavly armored stuff can't be damged with a fighter.
The Tr/Rs system I keep babbling about can have a nice addition, but needs a hell a lot of SCP development or just general table tweaking and massive additions to current pof-files (mostly empty subsystems you have to attach to the surface and group the exiting ones along with turrest into sections).
A note for SCP: This is not a request, this is not critism. It's just a thought up damage model, that may or may not be possible to implement with a reasonable ammount of work.
I know a bit about the code and the way FS works, but I'm not a coder just an amatuer programmer.
I tried to think of solutions with minimal coding.
I also feel the need to note that IIRC Randow Tiger suggested this solution earlier in another form, I confess that I looted a lot from his general idea.
It doesn't require the change of the bounding box code or geomod or tweaking the graphic engine (if you don't count collision detection for bullets that, I don't know if this has anything to do with the bounding box).
The hit detection code needs to be completly revamped, although it can be cirvumvented with using a lot of untargetable susbsystems - however the limits of the engine can kill this solution.
Things needed:
-Implemented hull-plate management:
A)The ship's surface is littered with armor plates. They are either an SCP trick that divides the surface and handles their strengs, or empty intargetable subsystems, that cover the ship preventing shots from reaching the subsystems below.
B) These plates have to handle the bulk of the damage model:
I) they have their own hp
II) they reduce the damage with a treshold, then round it down by their resistance
III) a further fraction of the reduced damage is substracted from the plate's hp
IV) the treshold and resistance values are funtions that follow the plates's hp (so if a bomb, devastated the armor, even a fighter can cause massive damage)
A per/poly solution was suggested before - it can lead to too big armor plates.
Using empty susystems has another problem IIRC: the engine can't handle to many of them.
A hackish solution could be using an damae-table/ship that hold all the data for them, but I don't know how feasible this idea is.
The biggest problem is still the detection of hits on the plates and defining the arrangement of the plates.
This may actually be an addition to the common pof standard - I don't know how the community would react to that.
-Section management:
A) Subsystems and turrets are grouped into sections - they could be empty untargetable (or targetable?) susbsysems too. They simulate the bulkheads of ships. Big anti-cap. turrets may be a section on their own
B) The statistics of susbsystems are influenced by section's status - their actual hp won't change buttheir performance will. If enough damage is aplied to a section of the ship there simply won't be power and/or lifesupport in the area pulverising guns and any manned/unmanned equipment
This addition may be abandoned, but IMHO it could be a nice plus.
-Improoved ship damage model:
A) Certain subsystems' damage controls the entire power of the ship (reactor, engine, bridge...it actually has to have an effect!)
B) Hull damage will later change to internal damage: it damages the frame of the ship, an internal model has to be made as a backbone - damage to the backbone kills the ship:
I) - if it's engines are online or an explosion does the damage it tears itself apart
II) -otherwise it becomes a derelict. (This is the point where a Geo-mod could fit in in the very far future) (This feautre can be abandoned, once again it can be too much work for too little gain), or at least no explosion is played when the ship breaks up
C) Certain subsystems can explode - they will be handled as a bomb exploding inside the area - they damage the frame, other subsystems and the hull like any weapon
IMHO this is less of a graphical/model tweak and more of a complete revamp of the current systems.
The best way I can summarise the whole idea is this:
Sections of the ship act as idependently as possible
To simulate their interaction, the 'existing' damage model is used to show what the destruction of one thing does to the others.
Furthermore, an actual chain of power needs to be created - so the energy will go through a "net". An algorythm will check if it can reach a system from a power source (that's why including backup sources will be smg. additional in future designs) (the algorythm could work by checking the neighbours of the system - if any of them is online, so is the system, the mentioned SECTION system can be a skeleton for a simplier system, where power and simulation of internal engineering happens only between sections, lessening the drain).
The critical part I spoke of is the frame: instead the armor, this will be the vital component of the ship. Building them is IMHO up to the model designers.
However I though of a couple of things:
A) They consist of a single or multiple subsystems (the first acts pretty much like the current hull, the later can simulate that only a part of the frame is damaged).
B) Destruction of any frame subsystem will kill the ship.
C) They can be eiher internal or close to the armor (more like a hull)
This is not as easy a kill as it sounds, unlike the older hull, this time, you have to puch through the armor, then take out all the systems that covered the frame, and only then can you actually kill the ship.
That won't be necessary in every scenario, just shooting a cruiser to resemble a cheese more than a warship will have crippled it so much it won't be more than a floating hunk.
Moreover heavy bombs will eat through ship internal like a knife through heated butter. (Although the double "armor" can be finally given a new meaning - just include another set of armor susbsytems inside the mode).
Before anyone stats to recite a dozen reasons why not to use the system let me do it beforehand:
-It need work - from SCP - and quite a bit of it
-It will definitly won't be backwards compatible with the old stuff
-If implemeted, it will make a tons of work for modders.
The later needs a little more insight IMHO after all this is smg. that will interfere with their work the most:
-Armoring a ship can be a real pain, though some algoryth can be made to equally cut the surface of the model into roughly equal portions (a further feature for the FSDev Studio?)
-Placing all these subsystems can be pain (?) - well you already have to place a couple of them, if it gets implemented it can be lowered to actually creating sections only - then all you'd have to do is place the subs into the sections. (MORE WORK :sad: )
-It's useless unless it makes any visually apparant difference for the player (...erh....well it is a though think):
If we used the bombs' code to simulte subs going of we could get coud result - some new particle effect will have to be created though to show - however the code for that is already there, so it's an artist's job.
All these subs (including the plates - IMPLEMENTING THEM in the first place is the REAL PROBLEM) can be already blown off - of course this mean more WORK for modellers since they have to do a model for the destroyed sub too :sad: (....until Geomod comes along in the infinitly distant future :sob:)
-What about all those section events, how will you control them?
Okey, I don't know, but I assume this can be achieved, after all fighters have similar effects when damaged.
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The armour was thick enough on the most critical positions(fuel, ammo, fire contol, bridge, main guns) to withstand a direct hit from the main battery (i.e. - a battleship with the 365mm main guns would have a 365mm armour, a battleship with 406mm guns would have 406mm armour on the most sensitive spots - alltough the
armour was thinner on other, not so importnat spots.) That's why naval battles lasted for hours.
A 500kg bomb falls on a turret and the crew inside says: "Did you hear something?".
The Prince of Wales was hit by 28 torpedos and 300 bombs. Even after that it took him 3 hours to sink. So yes, battleships are a damn tough nut to crack.
Does anyone here know why big armoured warships and the like fell out of favour with the navies? (other than expense of course). Because the planes owned them that's why. Look at the Arizona, sunk by one or two bombs in Pearl Harbour. There's also other ships, like a sistership to the HMS Hood I think that spent months sailing around and gets pegged by a couple of torpedoes and goes down. Or even look at modern warships, we have planes that can carry missiles which sink a whole ship by themselves. Like that British ship hit by an Exocet during the Falklands war, of course that missile wouldn't have sunken a battleship because they don't have aluminum armor that melts and catches fire but that's besides the point.
Basically, what I'm in effect saying is that yes fighters can take down ships in FS2, but its no different than what happened in WW2 if they have the right equipment. And many of the missions in FS2 are actually geared towards the player surviving. Remember the mission where they try to lure an NTF Destroyer so they can destroy the Colossus. Your first objective is to engage some fighters and draw them from their Fenris Cruisers. Well if you go too close to those Fenris, their AAAf beams WILL rip you apart. But in an early mission like the 6th Wonder there's a Deimos and a Leviathan attacking a base. Well the Leviathan is pretty easy to take down, but all four of its AAAf beams are locked. If those were free-beamed the player would be in a world of hurt.
Basically if you take a fighter, and use non-standard weapons like Trebuchets which are meant for killing bombers and wouldn't normally be used in a Space Superiority role than yes, a Fenris would be easy to kill. But if you actually have to get close to it, then it can be a challenge.
If you want more realistic cap ships, here's a simple suggestion. Give them all the Big Damage flag. Problem solved. Fighter guns shouldn't be able to breach thier armour anyway. Not without bombs or other munitions. You don't need to mimic a bunch of ships to the number of barrels on their guns to get a good depiction. Because if you do that, you should also have the player able to cripple the ship with a single bomb and that wouldn't be too exciting would it?
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You are wrong. They fell out becoause Carriers could launch attacks at greater distances and becoause missiles with long ranges made the main cannons allmost obsolete (their range is 40km.)
The main mission of a battleship was to lock the strongest enemy into combat and pulverize him at long range. Since carriers had far greater ranges, the battleship lost it's position as the centere of a battlegroup. But it's a pilot's nightmare to assault.
As for Pearl Harbour - it was a sneak attack. The crew was asleep, the bulkheads were open, the AA gunns unmanned. Even then the Japs didn't find it that easy to sink them all.
The sistership of the HMS Hood (if that's the one I think it is) was sunk by Bismark. It was hit by it's main cannon directly in the Ammo storage. It was a older design that lacked plating from above the ammo department, and Bismarck had big guns. And it was a lucky hit.
The Iowa was retrofitted with missile launchers and with Phlanax Point-Defense cannons and it fought in the Gulf War. It used it's cannons to bombard the shore.
To tell the truth it IS superior to any modern ship - since they have no armour at all. (and since it now carries misiles to spare)
To be exact:
8x4 Tomakawk
4x4 Harpoon
9x406mm
12x127mm
6x phlanax
The whole point is - the cruisers are done right. Bigger ships are not!
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Originally posted by Nico
Nope. Haven't seen that documentary by James cameron? He's done the same thing ghe did with the Titanic, with the Bismark. Very impressive shots. Anyway, the thing proves fairly well that this famous torpedo hit near the propelers did not sunk the Bismark. Nothing the brits throw at it sunk it, actually. When they destroyed the left fan, the Bismarck could not escape anymore, it could only do large circles, so the Brits went at it, but they came to close to sink it. According to the ballistic specialists who were with James Cameron, , the only way to sink the Bismark was to shoot it under the... her... what's the name in english? well, in the hull UNDER the water. but the brits came too close, forced to shoot almost horizonatlly, and the shells were deflected by the surface of the sea, no critical hit was dealt. And yet the ship was shot at more than 2800 times, I remember something around 400 40cm shells, stuff like that. It was some kind of hell onboard, so in the end the germans decided to sink their own ship, so they put destruction charges and, well, sunk it.
You misunderstood my point. The single torpedo crippled the Bismarck's ability to manuver thus rendering the battleship virtually helpless against the King George V and the other Royal Navy ships. I watched the full documentary on the work done finding the Bismarck and the analysis done.
The King George was too close and as you said, her shots were generally richoeting off the water and blasting into the super structure (the result of an order from the Admiral who wanted to be able to see the destruction firsthand - remember that the Bismarck had sunk the HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy). The Torpedo's went through the first hull, exploded, and did nothing to the overall integrity of the ship. Its armor plating was that tough.
The ship was never critically hit by British weapons but it was definately the end of the vessel either way. My ultimate point was simply that a single Fairely Swordfish's torpedo doomed a massive well armed, well defended battleship.
In FS2 gameterms that means that, as we sort of have now, a small group of fighters can cripple a destroyer (our version of the battleship) with no problems by eliminating critical components. As it should be.
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As for Pearl Harbour - it was a sneak attack. The crew was asleep, the bulkheads were open, the AA gunns unmanned. Even then the Japs didn't find it that easy to sink them all.
All of that information is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a bomb or two (the movies suggest one bomb) destroyed the entire ship. It didn't take hundreds of Kate torpedo planes and japanese bombers to destroy the ship, only one or two hits.
Furthermore, on a larger scale one could ask if the American battleship fleet was ravaged at Pearl Harbour how did they manage to win the war? If Battleships are so important? The answer probably is because the American Carriers, and more importantly the fightercraft were not destroyed because they were on manoeuvers or whatever.
The sistership of the HMS Hood (if that's the one I think it is) was sunk by Bismark. It was hit by it's main cannon directly in the Ammo storage. It was a older design that lacked plating from above the ammo department, and Bismarck had big guns. And it was a lucky hit.
The Hood was the destroyed by the Bismark.
The ship I was thinking about was the Queen Elizabeth, or the Prince of Wales or something that sailed over to near japan and got spotted by a couple of planes and was sunk. It wasn't a battleship, but still a large battlecruiser or heavy cruiser, something akin to that.
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It's better to cripple your enemy than kill them... both for machinery (ships, etc) and troops.
Think of this - if you cripple a destroyer, puncture it's hull with a thousand small leaks, destroy its generators and weapons - what does the enemy do? either they leave it as dead (and then your job is done), or they send salvage / S & R crews. And when they do that, you both open up an ambush opportunity and force the enemy to divert resources from other fronts.
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One bomb can't destroy a battleship. I don't know which movie you watched, but it must be some hollywood crap.
Japs didn't have lot's of battleships. Don't forget that USA built new battleships and even raised some of those sunk in Pearl Harbour and re-fitter them and they joined the fight . They were used for shore bombardment before the asault on islands and in some battles.
It definatly wasnt the Prince of Whales. It must have been the Repulse. Both ships were on the pacific together and were sunk by japs. The Repulse was a heavy cruiser (32000t), and old ship and sunk after.....
*opens the book "The Hell on Pacific" by the famous historian Boris Prikrill and searches.....*
..after reciving 10 torpedos (if I counted right) and unknown number of bombs. The Prince of Wales was hit by 28 torpedos and around 300 bombsand was still operational. The crew abandoned ship and 3 hours later it sunk.
FS2 Destroyers could hardly be called battleships (battleships don't carry swarms of fighters/bombers - alltough they DID carry 2 hidroplanes for riconasance/later they carried 3 SH-60 Sea Hawk)
BATTLESHIPS ARE DESIGNED TO STAND ALONE AND THEY HAVE THE GREATEST FIREPOWER AND ARMOUR OF ALL SHIPS!!!
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Originally posted by aldo_14
It's better to cripple your enemy than kill them... both for machinery (ships, etc) and troops.
Think of this - if you cripple a destroyer, puncture it's hull with a thousand small leaks, destroy its generators and weapons - what does the enemy do? either they leave it as dead (and then your job is done), or they send salvage / S & R crews. And when they do that, you both open up an ambush opportunity and force the enemy to divert resources from other fronts.
True, but it's not a sound battle plan. You can't very well order troops under fire to "be careful" when attacking - if they can go in and eradicate the place in one simple move, by all means they should do so to avoid losses and thus increase the chance that they will win future encounters. Crippling is more of a sabotage jobbie.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
... the famous historian Boris Prikrill and searches.....*
Who?
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I think aldo is right Odyssey, but not for the reason you may think: it's a lot easier to damage critical components on a ship and bug out than to actually bring it down.
BTW any opinions about the damage management I posted a while ago?
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Originally posted by Flaser
I think aldo is right Odyssey, but not for the reason you may think: it's a lot easier to damage critical components on a ship and bug out than to actually bring it down.
[color=cc9900]Again, yes, but you're not going to purposefully aim to take out those components without damaging a single bit of the rest of the ship, are you? The more that blows up the better, especially if it's firing at you.[/color]
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Originally posted by IceFire
You misunderstood my point. The single torpedo crippled the Bismarck's ability to manuver thus rendering the battleship virtually helpless against the King George V and the other Royal Navy ships. I watched the full documentary on the work done finding the Bismarck and the analysis done.
The King George was too close and as you said, her shots were generally richoeting off the water and blasting into the super structure (the result of an order from the Admiral who wanted to be able to see the destruction firsthand - remember that the Bismarck had sunk the HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy). The Torpedo's went through the first hull, exploded, and did nothing to the overall integrity of the ship. Its armor plating was that tough.
The ship was never critically hit by British weapons but it was definately the end of the vessel either way. My ultimate point was simply that a single Fairely Swordfish's torpedo doomed a massive well armed, well defended battleship.
In FS2 gameterms that means that, as we sort of have now, a small group of fighters can cripple a destroyer (our version of the battleship) with no problems by eliminating critical components. As it should be.
There was also the fact that the Bismarck was alone against 5 odds enemy ships. The torpedo alone can't explain the destruction of the Bismarck. The Bismarck wasn't runing away or anything when it sunk the Hood, it was on it's own again 2 or 3 ships, if I remember correctly. If it had it's fan damaged at this point, the Bismarck would still have owned the Brits. You can't put aside the biggest fact, the 5/1 odds againts the german ship.
Just did a small search:
During the Operation Rheinübung, set up to destroy the Bismark, almost 100 (!) ships were deployed against ONE.
And during the final battle, there was at least 8 battleships against it.
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Rather than re-doing all the cap ships in FS2, I think it's easier just to reduce all the fighter + bomber HPs.
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Rather than re-doing all the cap ships in FS2, I think it's easier just to reduce all the fighter + bomber HPs.
Actually, it'd be easier to just change the damage values for the Turrets (Terran Turret (Huge), Shivan Turret, etcetera). In a way it doesn't make sense that they haven't been upgraded since the Great War. Newer ships should have some better guns I would think. And if each pulse does enough damage it'll breach the shields of fighters and smoke 'em.
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Perhaps add another 0 or two to the hitpoints of warships and up the beam damage accordingly. have the helios do about 3% to an Orion, but you can also will want to up the subsystem damage for all bombs and stuff (especially the stilletto) this way bombers have use in disabling critical components. Normal turrets should fire faster and do more damage as additional fighter defense. If you want some SCP fun, use $FOF and $Shots to make flak lay down a blanket of lead.
do that and see how fun it is
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The hit points of capships are o.k.. Their Ani-fighter weaponry sucks.
Since I edited the capship weapons, Destroyers are far more dangerous to assault. Still could use a few more guns.
EDIT: Boris Prikrill is a famous Croatian historian (he wrote many books in english also)
NICO: That's true...the operation was massive. The fleet spread out and searched for Bismarck, then converged on him.
I wonder how would the battle have gone if their enemy was a Iowa or Yamato? (seeing that anyone of hem could sink Bismarck easily)
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Originally posted by Odyssey
[color=cc9900]Again, yes, but you're not going to purposefully aim to take out those components without damaging a single bit of the rest of the ship, are you? The more that blows up the better, especially if it's firing at you.[/color]
i never suggested leaving the rest of the ship untouched...... crippling implies massive damage, I'm talking about not administering the coupe de grace. With a major target (in FS terms), it's often necessarry to take out vital compnents (key turrets, weapons & engine control) in order to take it down with minimal losses anyways.
A smaller scale analogy is with soldiers - kill a soldier and he's dead (needs replaced). Paralyse or badly wound him and the enemy needs to recover him, treat him (over a long term, diverting medical resources), and still has to replace him.
I'm not talking about a general rule - just a strategy that, when possible, it's better to cripple than kill. Obviously it won't apply in all cases - no tactic does.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
I wonder how would the battle have gone if their enemy was a Iowa or Yamato? (seeing that anyone of hem could sink Bismarck easily)
would be the same, I suppose:
from what I know, the skills of the Bismark crew were excellent ( freaky accuracy rate ). Don't quote me on that, but the Bismarck and Yamato had really heavy hulls, more than the Iowa, I believe. Then you have that whole math for range+penetration+caliber stuff that made the iowa's guns more effective. On a one on one, it's hard to tell, but on the case of the Bismarck slaughtering party, well, that would make no difference. One ship against a fleet, as good as this ship is, will just be no good. I gather that any nowadays' frigate would do better, in fact, being fast, smaller, with cruise missiles and stuff (but that's irelevant and completly subjective, one lucky shot would be the end of a frigate, so... ).
Oh, btw, what is not true ( to me ) about the torpedo/bismarck deal, seems true for the yamato, tho. But I don't know much about the yamato save for the fact it looked ( as in visual, I mean ), like the most powerful warmachine mankind has ever made, to me :p ( look at those guns :D )
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Originally posted by Nico
Oh, btw, what is not true ( to me ) about the torpedo/bismarck deal, seems true for the yamato, tho. But I don't know much about the yamato save for the fact it looked ( as in visual, I mean ), like the most powerful warmachine mankind has ever made, to me :p ( look at those guns :D )
According to http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/yamato_class.htm#Yamato , the Yamatos 'sister' ship, the Musashi(or something) was sunk by 4 torpedos. It was, though, converted into a carrier midway through construction, but I'd assum that they would have used the same hull.
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the thing is..... FS2 ships ARE undergunned....easy solution....kick up the hull values and ammount of guns so they compensate :D
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Actually a torpedo can kill even the heaviest ships easly if used the best way: blowing up below the ship's backbone.
That way the very weight of the ship will kill it. The torpedo just blasts out the water underneath.
Of course it was impossible to use torpedos with that precision during WWII, but I guess there must have been lucky shots.
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Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
As for Pearl Harbour - it was a sneak attack. The crew was asleep, the bulkheads were open, the AA gunns unmanned. Even then the Japs didn't find it that easy to sink them all.
All of that information is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a bomb or two (the movies suggest one bomb) destroyed the entire ship. It didn't take hundreds of Kate torpedo planes and japanese bombers to destroy the ship, only one or two hits.
Furthermore, on a larger scale one could ask if the American battleship fleet was ravaged at Pearl Harbour how did they manage to win the war? If Battleships are so important? The answer probably is because the American Carriers, and more importantly the fightercraft were not destroyed because they were on manoeuvers or whatever.
The Arizona sank because of improperly stored munitions and gunpowder onboard the ship that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Essentially it was a lucky single bomb that hit that area, should have caused the average amount of damage, and instead had its force multiplied by the entire ships magazine. The hull burst, buckled, and blew up from the inside out and the ship sank.
Infact I think that is the only battleship unrecoverable from Pearl Harbor. Many ships from that attack were back in action by 1944.
You are right however that it was indeed the aircraft carrier that was the deciding force. The Battleship was obsolete the moment the aircraft carrier arrived on the seas. Battleships are now only relevant for essentially artillery purposes which was what they used them for most of the time.
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Originally posted by Nico
would be the same, I suppose:
from what I know, the skills of the Bismark crew were excellent ( freaky accuracy rate ). Don't quote me on that, but the Bismarck and Yamato had really heavy hulls, more than the Iowa, I believe. Then you have that whole math for range+penetration+caliber stuff that made the iowa's guns more effective. On a one on one, it's hard to tell, but on the case of the Bismarck slaughtering party, well, that would make no difference. One ship against a fleet, as good as this ship is, will just be no good. I gather that any nowadays' frigate would do better, in fact, being fast, smaller, with cruise missiles and stuff (but that's irelevant and completly subjective, one lucky shot would be the end of a frigate, so... ).
Oh, btw, what is not true ( to me ) about the torpedo/bismarck deal, seems true for the yamato, tho. But I don't know much about the yamato save for the fact it looked ( as in visual, I mean ), like the most powerful warmachine mankind has ever made, to me :p ( look at those guns :D )
The Bismarck really is highly overrated. It was actually a rather poor design.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm (http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm)
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Originally posted by IceFire
You are right however that it was indeed the aircraft carrier that was the deciding force. The Battleship was obsolete the moment the aircraft carrier arrived on the seas. Battleships are now only relevant for essentially artillery purposes which was what they used them for most of the time.
Absolutely.
The key is force projection. A battleship can only project military power in a well defined ellipse around the ship. The power it can project is pretty much limited to what you can pack into a shell and launch from deck gun. Once the deck gun is fired, there is no changing your decisions. A carrier on the other hand is the perfect incarnation of force projection. Through its air wings, a carrier can project power past the horizon, how to a radius determined only by the availability of in-air refueling. Those same airwings are flexible, able to deliver ordinance of every description in an intelligent and reasoned manner.
Mind you, and Iowa can turn a map grid into an earthly representation of hell itself in about the same time it takes for a marine to call for a shore bombardment, but that's really all they're good for these days.
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Originally posted by Shrike
The Bismarck really is highly overrated. It was actually a rather poor design.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm (http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm)
The thing with the Bismark is that it had quite a big killboard ( mostly unarmed ships, tho, I believe ). What was wrong: it sunk the Hood, that hurt the Brits pride, it seems :p
The german made a bigger ship than the Bismark: the Tirpiz ( or something ), but seems it wasn't as famous.
Anyway, yeah, battleships re pretty useless now, I believe.
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IIRC the Tirpitz never left dock - it was hidden in a fjord in Norway, and survived repeated heavy bombings;
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/tirpitz/history/tiropercatechism.html
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I still think it's daft that a 20m single-seat fighter can take down a 2km warship.....
Incidentally, HMS Hood had no sister ships - she was a one of a kind Battlecruiser.
Trashman, HMS Repulse was a Battlecruiser of WWI era, like her sister HMS Renown. Both had a top speed of 28 knots and a main armament of 6x15" guns (3x2). Repulse was sunk by the Japanese (as stated) whilst the only major incident involving Renown was when she jumped on the Battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway and the pair of them ran away even though they could have sunk the British capital ship. :D
Incidentally a Heavy Cruiser carries 8" guns, a Light Cruiser 6". :)
Nico: Only 2 Battleships engaged the Bismarck in her final battle on May 27th 1941. HMS King George V (12x14") and HMS Rodney (9x16"). Other ships in the vicinity included five Tribal-class Destroyers, the Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal, the Battlecruiser Renown, the Heavy Cruiser HMS Dorsetshire and the Light Cruiser HMS Sheffield. Out of those other ships the Destroyers had harassed the Bismarck all night and HMS Dorsetshire fired three torpedoes to finish the battle after King George V and Rodney reduced Bismarck to a burning hulk on the water. Although the torpedoes didn't sink her, they hit around the time that the scuttle charges went off so it looked like the torpedoes sunk her.
Shrike, Bismarck was a superior warship to her immediate rivals of the Royal Navy. She was fast, powerfully armed and well protected. The Royal Navy had nothing that could really catch her and yet match her firepower. HMS Hood was as fast and as well armed, but no where near as well protected. The only other ships that could match Bismarck firepower for firepower were the Queen Elizabeth class, the 'R' class (ships such as HMS Revenge) and The Nelson class (although the guns were bigger at 16"). Sadly though none of these ships had a hope of catching the German warship.
The website you quote badly compares the warships, particularly when it comes to fire control and 'conducting a naval campaign.' Rarely, if at all, does the website take into account actual historical events. It just throws lots of figures at you!
Personally, I'd love to see the Iowa survive being chased by an entire navy when they know where she is. I'd also like to see a warship equal the performance of the Bismarck at the Battle of the Denmark Straight. Okay, so the hit that sank HMS Hood was pure damned luck, but they'd already hit her at least twice! Prinz Eugen started the fire on Hood's upper deck from quite a long range.
Incidentally, Scharnhorst landed an 11" shell on HMS Ardent from a range of over 26,000 yards. That's quite incredible gunnery! The Germans were VERY good at optical rangefinding.
Of course the Iowa 'comes out on top' - she was specifically designed to counter the threat posed by ships such as Tirpitz whilst at the same time being able to piss about in the Pacific. If the Iowa and Yamato met at sea in a traditional gunnery engagement, you'd have a lot of drowned Americans. 18" guns do tend to hurt a lot!
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Originally posted by Shrike
The Bismarck really is highly overrated. It was actually a rather poor design.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm (http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm)
Iowa wins!!!!!!! (loo kat the ani-aircraft armament ratings!!)
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Shooting down a fast flying aircraft from a rolling warship is somewhat tricky. The only hope that any warship had was to saturate the area with tracer.
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Originally posted by Killfrenzy
Nico: Only 2 Battleships engaged the Bismarck in her final battle on May 27th 1941. HMS King George V (12x14") and HMS Rodney (9x16"). Other ships in the vicinity included five Tribal-class Destroyers, the Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal, the Battlecruiser Renown, the Heavy Cruiser HMS Dorsetshire and the Light Cruiser HMS Sheffield. Out of those other ships the Destroyers had harassed the Bismarck all night and HMS Dorsetshire fired three torpedoes to finish the battle after King George V and Rodney reduced Bismarck to a burning hulk on the water. Although the torpedoes didn't sink her, they hit around the time that the scuttle charges went off so it looked like the torpedoes sunk her.
Well, I'm not good at ships terminology. But that makes even more ships than I thought :p
Yeah, I remember the other torps hit deal, that's the first thing Cameron checked out in his mission, iirc. The shots dealt superficial damage to the outer layer of the hull, and water didn't get through the second... her, don't know the name, never mind.
The fact is, wether the brits sunk or not the Bismarck has been a big deal for years, so the truth has finally been unveild. To me, it doesn't change much things, the Bismarck DID sink because of the brits attack, and that's it. torpedoes or scuttle charges, the result is the same, no?
What I'd love, now, is to have Cameron do the same thing with the Yamato ( but there's nothing to prove there, so it's unlikely :( ). After all, Titanic DID have a good reason to exist, it started the whole " cameron goes underwater" thing :D
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Originally posted by Shrike
The Bismarck really is highly overrated. It was actually a rather poor design.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm (http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm)
btw, that website is kind of idiotic, I quote:
"Underwater Protection
You're probably asking yourself, who cares about underwater protection when you're slinging big shells at each other? Answer, sometimes those shells miss, and if they miss short of their intended target, they still stand a very good chance of diving into the side of the target below her waterline."
Underwater protection is kind the most important of them all, shooting there is how you sink a ship nice and clean. That said this site is all about big guns, they kind of forgot torpedoes and submarines.
On a side note, I'm astonished, the Richelieu scores way better than I would have believed :cool:
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If only he'd do a movie based on the Bismarck.....or better yet, the Scharnhorst!! :D
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[edit] Im an idiot. Ignore me[/edit]
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Originally posted by Killfrenzy
Shrike, Bismarck was a superior warship to her immediate rivals of the Royal Navy. She was fast, powerfully armed and well protected. The Royal Navy had nothing that could really catch her and yet match her firepower. HMS Hood was as fast and as well armed, but no where near as well protected. The only other ships that could match Bismarck firepower for firepower were the Queen Elizabeth class, the 'R' class (ships such as HMS Revenge) and The Nelson class (although the guns were bigger at 16"). Sadly though none of these ships had a hope of catching the German warship.
Of course the Bismarck individually outclassed the British vessel, she had a good 6-8000 tons on any British battleship of the time. However, she was by no means a superb warship and was built on rather outdated naval principles and lacked many of the refinements that the allied powers had, such as effective fire control radar.
The website you quote badly compares the warships, particularly when it comes to fire control and 'conducting a naval campaign.' Rarely, if at all, does the website take into account actual historical events. It just throws lots of figures at you! [/B]
How would you compare them then? What are your issues with the way these were presented? Most of the battleships never engaged one another so historical events are not particularly useful in terms of comparing them. There are always chances of upsets and lucky hits, like the Hood.
Personally, I'd love to see the Iowa survive being chased by an entire navy when they know where she is. I'd also like to see a warship equal the performance of the Bismarck at the Battle of the Denmark Straight. Okay, so the hit that sank HMS Hood was pure damned luck, but they'd already hit her at least twice! Prinz Eugen started the fire on Hood's upper deck from quite a long range.[/B]
Well, putting an Iowa in the Bismarck's place would mean that the Royal Navy would be rather more hard-pressed to defeat her. Higher speed, significantly better weapons, blindfire radar, grossly superior AA defense, better armoring... One battleship against a fleet is pretty much a foregone conclusion no matter what your contestants are, but I have never seen a well laid out case for why the Bismarck is truly one of the best battleships of WWII.
Incidentally, Scharnhorst landed an 11" shell on HMS Ardent from a range of over 26,000 yards. That's quite incredible gunnery! The Germans were VERY good at optical rangefinding.[/B]
However, by comparison the British had superior radar fire control. Yes, the Bismarck had quality optics, it had a rating of 9 for them, only loosing out because the nightfighting optics were inferior to the Yamato, who was designed with the Japanese obsession with nightfighting in mind. However, the German optics, while excellent, were very un-ergodynamic - they were unsuited for long engagements and their effectiveness would drop off markedly. Plus of course by the middle of WWII, optics had become the poor cousin to radar, and German radar was nowhere near comparable to allied radar.
Of course the Iowa 'comes out on top' - she was specifically designed to counter the threat posed by ships such as Tirpitz whilst at the same time being able to piss about in the Pacific. If the Iowa and Yamato met at sea in a traditional gunnery engagement, you'd have a lot of drowned Americans. 18" guns do tend to hurt a lot! [/B]
Yes, 18" guns hurt a lot... so do the best 16" guns ever made firing super-heavy projectiles. Furthermore, the Iowas had vastly superior fire control and at long range would have been far more accurate than the Yamato. The Iowas can target over the horizon, the Yamato can't.
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So who's battleships are the best?
On FS2 the ships have less guns because the guns are alot (I mean alot) bigger. The flak shells are probably 1m thick and the beams are about 5 meters thick (plus beams need alot more space for power)
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How many Fusion Reactors are on a Orion Class Destroyer?
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About the damage threshold/resistance: The simplest solution (and quite effective) is to apply it setting different values for subsystem, which means that non subsystem parts will be thougher while different subsystems will have different "armor"...
This way it would also be easier to set within the table files... You won't appreciate much more complexity in game anyways...
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I think the point is simple...
no fighter in theory should have enough firepower to completely take down (and I mean to reduce in pieces) a capship of almost any class, even a (single) bomber shouldn't be able to.
You would need wings and wings of bombers to seriously damage/destroy a capship.
This should be true unless you hit (by luck or purpose) a critical spot, if there is any. Even in this case you shouldn't be able to destroy a capship, and if it is possible, then it is the capship that suffer of a very bad design.
A battle between fleets should be a battle from distance between capships, using their huge firepower against each other.
With interceptors to attack enemy bombers and torpedos, and maybe to attack the weapons of enemy capships, to reduce their firepower, and their critical subsystems, to be deployed as fast as possible as reserves when/where needed.
With bombers, making torpedoes runs from safe distances, to project and increase the firepower of their own capships, to destroy critical subsystems.
With tactical ships, like ultra fast/light bombers to make sneak attacks, stealth bombers/fighters, etc etc for alternative stragies.
With fighters, to cover the bombers, to gain flight supremacy and to destroy enemy interceptors.
With antifighter weapons on capships to destroy enemy interceptors before they reduce the firepower or they cause too damages, and with antitorpedoes weapons to intercept enemy bombs.
You still should be able to destroy a capship with your alone fighter, but it would be almost impossible, you will have to be both a god between the pilots and an extremely lucky man. And still you would die 9 times on 10
But, on the other hand, this will require a real AI for all the computer controlled ships, starting from the capships.
Without a decent AI, the bombers are ineffective (look at the ravan mission), and the capships just sit there, firing at whatever comes in range. In this situation, if you really want to see capships going down, you just need to give more chanches to destroy a capship to the player.
Not to mention that it is fun to destory enemy big ships, it makes you feel better, althought it makes a game more arcade than a semirealistic simulator.
Btw there are worse situations than those in FS2.
I remember in xwa I took down in the same mission, alone, at max level of difficulty, something like 5 Stardestroyers with all their fighter complement, using a ship that should be just a transport:/
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On a slightly divergent note, I wonder if FS2's Lucifer accurately represents FS1's - did ships like the Orion receive technology upgrades in other areas (i.e. armour)? The destroyer's BGreens can cause a shedload of damage to a Lucifer while the Shivan's SReds do practically bugger-all.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
You are wrong. They fell out becoause Carriers could launch attacks at greater distances and becoause missiles with long ranges made the main cannons allmost obsolete (their range is 40km.)
are you forgetting nuclear weapons made large naval fleets virtually obsolete overnight? I would consider SSBNs the battleship of the cold-war era. They could deliver nukes a hell of a distance and not even be seen until launch.
Some of the conventional stand off munitions of today can cause damage the battleships. There's no way an Exocet or Harpoon would damage a battleship (unless it hit the superstructure), but a bunker buster or MOAB would do the trick.
And lastly, the theory that battleships could stand alone without protection is crap because of the Prince of Wales/Repulse. No air cover == dead meat. Hell Billy Mitchell demostrated that in the '20s
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"Btw there are worse situations than those in FS2.
I remember in xwa I took down in the same mission, alone, at max level of difficulty, something like 5 Stardestroyers with all their fighter complement, using a ship that should be just a transport:/"
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Just circle around their bridge! I know...those tards will take themselvs out eventually!
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"And lastly, the theory that battleships could stand alone without protection is crap because of the Prince of Wales/Repulse. No air cover == dead meat. Hell Billy Mitchell demostrated that in the '20s"
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The Japs sent everything the got at them. Half of their airforce was concetrated only on those tow warships. They were designed to stand alone(against a typical enemy), but no one can stand alone against a whole army. It's not the same thing if you are attacked by 80 fighters and if you're attacked by 300!!!
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It's not really about the number of Guns that make Destroyers (and Battleships) so dangerous, it's how many inches of steel between outside and in. In this case, Destroyers tend to do a pretty good job, they can stand and fight, like the Bismark, for an extended duration. If you have enough Steel to withstand a 14" Shell, and 85% of the fleet have less than 14" guns, then unless someone gets lucky, 85% of the fleet can only effectively watch.
Flipside :)
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On a slightly divergent note, I wonder if FS2's Lucifer accurately represents FS1's - did ships like the Orion receive technology upgrades in other areas (i.e. armour)? The destroyer's BGreens can cause a shedload of damage to a Lucifer while the Shivan's SReds do practically bugger-all.
No, they don't represent it at all. The damage of the SRed is much less than that of an Shivan Super Laser in FS1. SReds will do a max damage of about 4000 every 25 seconds (plus warmup, cooldown times) whereas the Super Laser does 15000 set damage every 10 seconds. In the amount of time it takes to fire 8500 or so worth of SRed damage (50 seconds) the Super Laser will have fired for 45000 damage, which coupled with a fellow weapon do 90000 damage which is just shy of destroying an Orion.
At the same time, the Lucifer is no where near as powerful as the Nyarlathotep (spl?) from Derelict which uses 2x BFRed, 2x LRed and some other smaller guns. But basically the Lucifer could hold its own in FS2 if its weapons were accurately represented.
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And the fact that only beams can threaten it, and not bombers, too :)
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27
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There defently needs to be a more realistic campaign.
If you take on a destroyer on your own You WILL Die
If you Take on a Cruiser (Aeolus) You MIGHT Live
If You take on a Fighter or bomber about even
If you take on a Transport Or Freighter takes longer to kill but the chances are you will kill it with out sustaining to much damage.
I like this idea :)
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Originally posted by Nico
And the fact that only beams can threaten it, and not bombers, too :)
Just wondering, is that how it is set up on the Port?
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Bah....you can make your ships anway you want, but mine will be a tougher nut to crack. Period!
EDIT: A bunker buster or a MOAB...Maby...but the Iowa has point-defense weapons you know...gatling guns...and air-to-air missiles.
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Weren't the Repulse and Prince of Mammels cursed with ****-for-brains AA fire-control systems?
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Bah....you can make your ships anway you want, but mine will be a tougher nut to crack. Period!
What I was trying to say is that you can obviously do that, just remember that fs2 has not be designed for this, and you risk to have an unbalanced gameplay, with no fun for the players.
If you make it harder for the players to hunt down capships, increasing their weaponary and hitpoints, and considering the fighter's AI, you risk that the only way to take down big ships will be to place other capships in the mission designing, with the players just sitting there looking an annoying beam battle, and the only thing you will be able to do in your camp will be scrambles, scrambles, scrambles.
Just be careful...;)
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Aren't you forgetting the one thing that fighters are very good at?
Scouting!:D
That reason alone justifies the existence of small craft launched from a large warship. I mean, why risk a 150m long destroyer with her entire crew when all you really need to risk is a 20m fighter (which is less likely to be noticed) and one pilot!
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Sees that Karma has spotted the same pitfall I was on about :)
It's an easy mistake to make too and can easily results in a game which is no fun or a massive round of upgrades which results in everything doing more damage and having more hitpoints but the situation basically being the same as before.
Killfrenzy : Scouting might be fun for a bit but a 40 mission campaign that was almost completely scouting would be boring as hell. Thowing in a few missions where the player watches capships kill each other wouldn't help that much.
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You know, as Icefire said, battleships are tough as hell, but with some lucky shot, lone planes could manage to destroy them.
Is it so difficult to reproduce that? :p
No, of course not, that's how they did in wing commander actually ( WC prophecy and secret ops, the ones before didn't manage all that well with subsystems ):
you need some SERIOUS firepower to destroy a capship head on in wing commander, so serious there's about no way you can do it, only other capships can ( and only those with big guns, like the plunkett or the vesuvius ). But you can go the smart way: you destroy the shield generator first, making the subsystems unprotected. Then you go for the bridge and the engines. No power, no command, the ship is as good as dead and, so, to simplify, it dies, in the game. Looks like the best way to me, and it works damn great. You won't be able to crack its shell, so go for the weak point. If those are tricky to reach, there's the fun to hunt capships: tough as hell to chew, but still at bombers reach if you manage to reach the right spots.
how's that?
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Any sane person would put the bridge deep into the hull itself.
Beside those systems would be the most armored.
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Following that idea, the fighters wouldn't have glass cockpits, you'd make spherical ships for maximum coverage, you wouldn't bother with fighters, you'd go with nukes and that's it.
I hope you hate startrek designs for your own good. Mmh, and Star Wars. And Starship Troopers, too. Heck, even the Fenris has a bridge ( tho no subsystem to give it any importance ingame ). To sum up, about anything from any SF show/book/game.
you'd make a boring game.
But I'm curious to see your explanation on how you'd make the engines the most armored part of a ship :rolleyes:.
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nico I agree with you obviously, I loved wing commander, and asked sometimes ago for a more realistic damage system to be implemented, and I'd like in fs2 something like the battles I described above.
Nonetheless, with the actual damage system, if you don't modify the AI of fighters, you will receive almost no help at all from your wings, this means that if you increase hitpoints, AAA weapons and the like, the only fighter capable of somehow hitting capships will be the player's ship, and since it will be already incredibly hard for you too, you risk to have missions with capships that can be destroyed only by other capships.
Upgraded apships would be cool, but only if you could perform some advanced strategies in game, with the aid of the wings: you will not destroy capships alone, you will do that with your squadron, and you will have to guide your squadron in the best way possible to make a succesful strike against the best objective. But again this means in my opinion to have more effective fighter's AI.
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That's indeed the biggest problem: the computer's AI. But can't that be fixed with Sexps? Granted, I know nothing about fredding, but isn't the following possible? You have a mission where you need to destroy a capship ( aka going after bridge+engines ):
-Beta wing is the bomber wing charged of taking of the capship
-Their mission order would be, in fred, to destroy the bridge and engine subsystems, and not to destroy the ship
- sexp: if engine and bridge subsystems are destroyed, the capship will go "boom"
Then you have the possibility to target said subsystems and order your wingmen to destroy those.
As for antifighter defenses, I think they shouldn't be that important on capships ( unless you have an antifighter cruiser, for exemple, of course ), coz that's what fighter covers are for, and bombers only would be a danger to them anyway ( only large bombs can damage the subsystems -bare turrets- quickly enough in wing commander ). So that should make bomber runs pretty balanced if your own fighter cover does its job.
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actually I have almost no idea about fredding:p
btw I think that to have fighters attacking specific subsystems, you will need paths, the autopath system of aurora is cool, ok, but...
and more important, how does the AI work? I mean:
what if the wings of bomber are under fighter attack? IIRC from the main campaign the bombers just go straight even if under fire. And how effective is the AI in covering other ships from fighter's attaccks?
What's the distance used by AI to fire bombs? If they fire too far, the bombs will be destroyed by the defensive turretts, if they fire too close the bombers get cutted in pieces by the same turretts.
And what will they do after launching bombs? I SW games, bombers fire all their wareheads in rapid succession, but here there is a big delay between shots: what does the AI between the two shots? what does to re-lock to the target? You risk to have your wings destroyed after launching just one or two wareheads out of their whole loadout.
What if they have to destroy a subsystem on the other side of the ship? will they just try to go through the hull, like in tachyon :/; will they fly close to the hull, being an easy target for flaks, will they get enough space to have the time to lock on target? etc etc
What I'm saying is that all the algorythms defining the AI behaviour under certain circumstances will have to be tweaked a lot, if you want to change the game balance.
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and with game balance I'm mostly meaning the parameters, like making ships just stronger; in SW mod, for example, we will have to look for a new balance, and not to make a distorted version of the existing one, wich I don't know if it will be easyer or harder:)
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Originally posted by KARMA
actually I have almost no idea about fredding:p
btw I think that to have fighters attacking specific subsystems, you will need paths, the autopath system of aurora is cool, ok, but...
and more important, how does the AI work? I mean:
what if the wings of bomber are under fighter attack? IIRC from the main campaign the bombers just go straight even if under fire. And how effective is the AI in covering other ships from fighter's attaccks?
What's the distance used by AI to fire bombs? If they fire too far, the bombs will be destroyed by the defensive turretts, if they fire too close the bombers get cutted in pieces by the same turretts.
And what will they do after launching bombs? I SW games, bombers fire all their wareheads in rapid succession, but here there is a big delay between shots: what does the AI between the two shots? what does to re-lock to the target? You risk to have your wings destroyed after launching just one or two wareheads out of their whole loadout.
What if they have to destroy a subsystem on the other side of the ship? will they just try to go through the hull, like in tachyon :/; will they fly close to the hull, being an easy target for flaks, will they get enough space to have the time to lock on target? etc etc
What I'm saying is that all the algorythms defining the AI behaviour under certain circumstances will have to be tweaked a lot, if you want to change the game balance.
Well, all that is already true, isn't it? only difference would be the "fly through" to get to another subsystem.
As for the warhead launch pb, well, I'll take the exemple of WC:P again: it's much more difficult to get to the said subsystems, so one torpedo is enough to kill it ( well, there's two kinds of torpedoes, the big one that kills large ship subsystems in one direct hit, and the small one who does the same on smaller ships, but requires 2 or 3 direct hits on a larger ship. In any case, a single successful bomber wing strike will be enough. And in WC, you rarely have 2 bomber wins like you'd have in FS2 ).
As for paths, I completly disregarded them while making OTT, that didn't lead to much collision pbs ( OTT ships were not really fatso anyway ), but now I think they're utterly important, I wouldn't dismiss them anymore.
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just to say I forgot "?" on those statements like the fly through thing.
My point is that there are many things, many fixed patterns, many behaviours that the AI perform if some cirumstances are present.
Now, what I was reporting are possible behaviours that could cause problems with stronger capships, with the result of bombers/fighters being non effective, unuseful in missions except for scrambles.
I really don't remember what the AI EXACTLY does in those situations, but I remember I noticed that the AI in fs2 was pretty stupid and the wings were already often unuseful.
Those "fixed reactions" of the AI should be analyzed, modifyed, improoved anyway, but it will be absolutely necessary if you want to change some parameters of the game balance, like resiliance/weaponary of capships, or if we want the AI to do things (like seeking/hitting critical subsystems with some % of success) when wasn't designed specifically for this purpose.
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I think, first, that would should had some kind of bounding box around capships that fighters/bombers would try to go out from as soon as they reach it. That would already fix a lot of problems.
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Originally posted by KARMA
What I was trying to say is that you can obviously do that, just remember that fs2 has not be designed for this, and you risk to have an unbalanced gameplay, with no fun for the players.
If you make it harder for the players to hunt down capships, increasing their weaponary and hitpoints, and considering the fighter's AI, you risk that the only way to take down big ships will be to place other capships in the mission designing, with the players just sitting there looking an annoying beam battle, and the only thing you will be able to do in your camp will be scrambles, scrambles, scrambles.
Just be careful...;)
I'm not crazy...I'll try to avid that.
And better AI would be a blessing.
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I know I'm late, and I don't care. :p
Originally posted by TrashMan
Are FS2 capships vastly undergunned?
Not anymore. *points to CapShip Turret Upgrade link in siggy*
:thepimp: