Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mars on May 16, 2006, 09:07:11 pm
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Somthing occured to me, why do Hecate destroyers, who desperately need additional firepower, never travel with corvette / cruiser escorts. The Bastion had a Fenris cruiser (can't remember the name and I'm too lazy to look it up right now), the Carthage had the Dashor, and the modified kamikaze Bastion had three Aeolus cruisers, the Malta, the Templar, and the Ertenax (spelling :sigh:) and they were actually the only survivers of an apperently much larger task force). All this and the Aquitaine has only a gutted Fenris cruiser called the Oberon, which Delta wing was shooting up previously.
The Hecate is a powerful warship, and is among my favorites in the game, but really, just a Deimos would make them so much more capable.
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Engine limitations.
That and the GTVA doesn't have a cruiser/corvette with broadside firepower to keep the Hecate's flanks clear.
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Difficulty balancing!
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Gas prices!
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It does but when did it need it? The Aquitane is the center of a large fleet of Terran ships inside of a Terran fleet structure. That doesn't mean they cruise together all the time. The Aquitane is quite capable on its own. Usually whenever we saw the Aquitane in a battle situation it had been surprised by the attack.
If the Aquitane we're in the same situation as the Carthage it probably would have deployed with a corvette or a pair of cruisers too.
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Okay, that makes sense at least. Still, I can't get over how much a Moloch damages the Aquitaine every time it's ambushed (that is, if Alpha 1 doesn't disarm the Moloch in question)
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It does seem the Destroyers are a little too easy to kill.
For one thing why dont they have a decent point defense system...our ships have it now so obviously it's something the Terran mind can concieve and it quite possible within the structure of the game.
I mean it would reasonable to have one. Small turrets mounting a Flail, Morningstar or Maxim. Wouldn't really stop bombers, just annoy them, but very good for stopping torps/bombs. IT would force attacking bombers to do a large simultaneous attack to overwelm these systems.
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That would require more from the game engine (more stuff flying). And would make the battles more complex, which in turn would be way too much for the average player who gets scared of anything remotely challencing. And for obvious reasons he AI would be unable to use bombers to any effect.
But the standard Freespace bomb would be a huge source for comedy for modern day military. If capships had better defences (compareable to modern day navy), then the bombers, and their ordanance, should also be brought up to the new standard. And so on. And it would not be Freespace anymore, it would be something totally new.
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True.
and a pity.
It does sometimes detract from the fun, seeing how STUPID some of the stuff is. I wish there was a way of making it less so without losing the balance and "playability"
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Of course, the Aquitane could have been escorted by a small fleet at all times, but simply had said fleet spread out beyond visual range to form a long defensive perimeter.
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True.
and a pity.
It does sometimes detract from the fun, seeing how STUPID some of the stuff is. I wish there was a way of making it less so without losing the balance and "playability"
I disagree, the ridiculousness of Freespace is a great part of the fun. The fact that [V] managed to end up with this and still manage to take itself seriously is just a testament to thier brilliance and the awesomeness of the universe. (Although I can't stop laughing whenever a certain someone says a certain something about changing some shorts, oh, best line ever. :lol:)
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The hecate have great firepower in all sides... try to put two deimos for defense on the sides and a few warships coming from the sides... there is a great chance of the Hecate kill both deimos... and FLAKs... well is a close formation flaks do more damage to warships in the formation than to enemy itselft...
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I've long messed about with an attempt to create a suitable corvette-sized escort for the Hecate; you can find it probably if you search for the Akula. Alas it will not convert properly. I need to get a copy of Max.
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Gas prices!
by then the gas would cost more then the ship.
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I wonder how much Nebula Gas actually costs....
:D
That is, if that stuff is available on the civilian market....
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well destroyers in fs universe do tend to be under escorted. I mean when u have such a large ship u dont jut leave it alone u would normali have at least a cruiser around it in close range to provide adtitional support just in case.
But then again they are part of a much larger fleet streched across the sistem. or multiple sistems. Also one thing i've noticed is that the average CAP is quite small . I mean no matter where you are you would have at least 4 wings of fighters/interceptors at any given time aaround the ship coveringit. But instead we tend to see one or 2 wings flyng CAP.
Also i dont know if u've noticed but GTVA warships tend to be caought with theyr pants down most of the time and thus get blown away. You would imagine that they would take better care to be readdy for batlle just in case.
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But the standard Freespace bomb would be a huge source for comedy for modern day military.
I think this is the whole point behind the Freespace universe. Having modern-esque weapons (such as the Phalanx gatling guns on the aircraft carrier or cruise missiles) would ruin the World War II feeling that Freespace manages to deliver so well. The fighters in the universe travel at about the same speed as the average WWII-era fighter aircraft, and not to the extremely high speeds of jet-propelled aircraft of the modern day. Fleet battles in Freespace are a tribute essentially to World War II and older naval battles; see the Galatea/Legion "sinking" down to the planet in the FS2 intro.
Essentially, giving a Freespace destroyer weapons with the effectiveness of modern gatling guns or other point-defense systems ruins the balance and fun: gatling guns on modern warships tear up missiles and aircraft rapidly, not allowing any hostile aircraft to approach to any close range. Flak, on the other hand, is a powerful deterrent, though it gives the player the rush to get out of the field of flak before it tears him up. The only thing close enough to resemble modern warfare is the AAAf beam cannon, which is a less rapid version of the gatling gun in terms of cutting up space/aircraft.
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So why do Terran warships have the best point defense? You'd think they'd want to keep it WWIIish
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If they really want it WWII-ish then they should beef up armor and tone down Beam Cannons.
@nuclear1: Legion :)
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If they really want it WWII-ish then they should beef up armor and tone down Beam Cannons.
@nuclear1: Legion :)
Noooo! You can't take my beautiful beams! :shaking:
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You just need to beef up the capships HP...and hte explosion shockwave damage.
Compare the size of the destroyer with a fighter and compare their hit points.
Hell, a destroyer should have a minimum of 2000000 hp.
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You just need to beef up the capships HP...and hte explosion shockwave damage.
Compare the size of the destroyer with a fighter and compare their hit points.
Hell, a destroyer should have a minimum of 2000000 hp.
Yes, because the hull of an aircraft carrier is about 1500 times the strength and thickness of a tanks' armour in real life.
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It's not just about armor - it's allso about size. Teh Fs2 destroyers are over 2000 meters long. 2000 meters!!!!
that's friggin huge. Granted, we havo no idea of the destroyer armor thickness, but armor isn't really simulated in fs2 anyway.
They just go down too fast and too easily for something that big. They lack the "omph!" of most large sci-fi warships...
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What, like the HMS Sheffield being hit by an exocet?.....
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Yup. It should be way harder to destroy something as big and tough as an Orion or Hecate.
And unless you hit the weapons storage or reactors they should not really blow up.
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Yup. It should be way harder to destroy something as big and tough as an Orion or Hecate.
In theory, a modern day battleship can be sunk by a single missile/torpedo (depends on bazillion circumstances). In theory, Hecate/Orion can be destroyed (pronounced disabled/made inoperable) by a single large missile/torpedo/bomb. If three modern day cruise missiles hit Hecate on the same spot each after another, there will be a hole. Then again, during WW2 ships sometimes endured incredible amounts of punishment while still being able to fight back. I imagine that could also happen in Freespace, at least to a some degree. Space is somewhat more hostile as an enviroment than water and air...
It all depends on lots of things and has lots of variables, in real life I mean. But in Freespace it's all predictable, when that last tempest hits it's all over (something that could be improved).
Personally, I prefer long battles where capships hammer each others until the otherone gives. But some like destructive firepower presented in Freespace 2. Its very entertaining, I admit. But it somehow should be more difficult to destroy a couple of thousand lives.
Anyway, things are as they are in Freespace universe. And it works in its own way.
And unless you hit the weapons storage or reactors they should not really blow up.
This is where the ages old explolsion effect issue comes to haunt us.
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What, like the HMS Sheffield being hit by an exocet?.....
Faulty metaphor; FS capships actually have armor. Because, let's face it now, if the Exocet had hit the WW2 light cruiser incarnation of the Sheffield it would have been more like "Sweepers man your brooms."
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What, like the HMS Sheffield being hit by an exocet?.....
Faulty metaphor; FS capships actually have armor. Because, let's face it now, if the Exocet had hit the WW2 light cruiser incarnation of the Sheffield it would have been more like "Sweepers man your brooms."
And FS warheads are in the megatonne range.
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Well, to mee it's kind of easy to see, both times we seen them is with Orion class destroyers, well they have bad anti-fighter guns, so sticking a Diemos or a few Aeolus cruisers whitch have very good anti-fighter support is a good option. The Hecate class has good anti-fighter support anyways so there is no use in bringing in more ships to cover.
And besides, just guess what a Ravana would do to a Diemos. Flying blind in a nebula with ships that could take out a Diemos with one shot, and traveling in big battlegroups when one warship could fry them all, seams kind of dumb, don't ya think?
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And FS warheads are in the megatonne range.
And armor has advanced too. :p
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So we're back to the Sheffield and one Exocet again then. :p
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No, because the basic fact remains FS capships are armored to take that kind of punishment. Sheffield was not armored period.
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Destroyers won't need any kind of escort as long as they have Alpha 1. :D
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I suppose that's the point... no wonder the Ravana destroyed the Delecroix... Alpha 1 wasn't there.
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No, because the basic fact remains FS capships are armored to take that kind of punishment. Sheffield was not armored period.
And warheads are setup to take account of the armour upon the target vessel.
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Is it even possible to make a capital ship in FS2 have point defense systems capable of defending the ship against warheads? Like an equivalent of the Point Defense Systems (PDS) Mod for Homeworld 2 (that game suffered from the same problem FS2 has: no way to defend a capship from bombs without a fighter)?
I'm always one to like realism mods ;)
Who cares if it breaks mission balance? Rebalance the missions ;7 I mean seriously, the sheer amount of missions with THIS is sickening:
Allied Command/Volition: WE GOT BOMBS! ALPHA 1 GO GET EM CUZ OUR DESTROYERS WERE DESIGNED TO BE COMPLETELY HELPLESS SO WE COULD ADD A GAMEPLAY ELEMENT OF CATCHING BOMBS TO THE GAME!
Boooooooorinnnnggggg.
It'd be fun to give capital ships "realistic capabilities" and then make missions where one is fully capable of just sitting back and WATCHING the capital ships fight it out, and get a slightly different battle each and every time. Just set oneself cloaked or whatever, sit back, grab some popcorn and watch the GTVA and Shivans fight.
What I'm getting at is that the reason Destroyers suck right now is because FreeSpace 2 was deliberately designed so that Alpha 1 was the savior of the universe in all situations. If some of us don't like that then I think it's time we armed our destroyers realistically, so that Alpha One becomes more of a spectator in the crossfire rather than God Almighty.
Many a time I wanted to scream at the Aquitaine: IS IT NOT TOO HARD TO SET YOUR DAMN CANNONS TO ANGLE AT THE TRAJECTORIES OF INCOMING BOMBS AND BLOW THEM UP YOURSELF? GO DIE! IM NOT FLYING AROUND YOU CATCHING UR STUPID BOMBS! *lets the Aquitaine die* SCREW YOU COMMAND!
"I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense" --- sounds a lot funnier when read in the context of bomb-catching for capships, eh?
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Gregster2k has good points there. But Freespace is Freespace and we have no right to make such drastic changes. No one is ofcourse stopping you from creating something yourself. Go and complete Ferrium. I dare you.
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What I'm getting at is that the reason Destroyers suck right now is because FreeSpace 2 was deliberately designed so that Alpha 1 was the savior of the universe in all situations.
That's not an armament problem at all actually. It's simply that capship AI effectively = No AI. If they actually used the weapons they have in any remotely intelligent way, they'd be far more capable of dealing with bombers (and other threats) than we see at the moment.
But of course that can't be allowed, because the first order of business would then be to nail Alpha 1 with a heavy beam before he could cause too much trouble :p
Anyway, it's not like ships of today are immune to airstrikes either. Indeed CIWS systems like the Vulcan have a pretty hard time dealing with newer, armoured missiles as the shells simply don't penetrate. Or they can be overwhelmed, missiles move fast and if you lob 10 of them at a target it's going to have a hard time getting them all no matter how good its defenses are. Also, keep in mind that for bombs to stand any chance in FS2, they need to be launched close up and at speed, or in large numbers, or they WILL be taken out by flak. Launch a missile at 500m from a carrier and I'm pretty sure that will hit too...
On that note, why hasn't anyone made a stealth missile yet? One needs to track them to hit them, after all, and it would be a lot easier to stealthify something of that size. Would instantly turn most existing naval air defense systems into expensive ballast.
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This is just my take, but... afaik modern anti-shipping missiles are generally sea-skimming missiles that use active radar as terminal guidance system...
IMO stealthing a sea-skimming missile with (usually) active terminal guidance system is not very cost-effective. First no stealth is 'unpenetrable' at close range so missile is most likely detected, second missile moves very fast and moves directly towards the ship making its doppler shift relatively large so picking it up and recognicing it from even a faint signal is possible, third sea skimmers are detected at last moment anyway.. And finally active terminal guidace will give away the missile no matter what stealth it utilizes.
So stealthing it is most likely possible but it might achieve very little.. so not very cost effective.
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That's why we need CLOAKING missiles! ;)
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Invisible death?
*bad guys see a bomb trail* OH SHI--- *BOOOOM*
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*cough cough* freelancer
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I dodnt remember freelancer having such stealth bombs..or am i wrong?
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Comon logic dictates - weapon and armor technolgoy both advance - but weapon tech is ALLWAYS one step ahead.
You'll never be able to make something so heaviyl armored that you can't take it out. The best you can do is to make something so heaviyl armored, that only a few select weapons can take it out... And if your enemy doesn't hapen to have them around at the time - hehehe :D
In WW2 most guns/bombs couldn't hurt a battleship. You needed really big ones to deliver the hurt (example - the Japanese super torpedo - 600mm). A Bismarck would laugh at anything a destroyer thros at him (except for heavy torps..if he has them). A Iowa/Yamato would laugh at Bismarck. But they all can be hurt by heavy weapons...hell think of nukes if everything else fails.
Design allso comes in question..and element of surprise.. Triple-layerd hulls, closed bulkheads, flooded ammo chambers - they all ensure a ship will remain aflot and shooting.
The HMS sheffiled didn't have much in terms of armor (today ships generally don't...120mm is the biggest armor on a modern warship) nad t didn't really expect the missiile.
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Since when is the Bismark to be laughd at? sure it was smaller then the Iowa/Yamato but it had very good powerfull cannons. Also it had a decent speed and a very good arnour plating. Oh and because of its radar gided cannon fire it would of probably creamed Iowa/Yamato. Acuraci it the name of the game. It's no use having huge guns if u cant hit the enemy with them.
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*cough cough* freelancer
Actually Wing Commander.... Skipper Missile anyone?
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ohh yea the missile that kept cloaking itself and was almost imposible to take down. Oh well thats why we have CAP patrols and Alpha1
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Yea, but shoot 50 of those missiles and no CAP patrol will save you.
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I dont think they had that many cloaking missiles around in the first place. they must be very expensive and used as well a sort of secret weapon.
Oh and if the cap patrols dont save me then alpha1 will save cuz....well hes the best!
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It'd be kinda amusing if someone coded FS2 to have an alternate "SimFreeSpace" mode, where ALL capital ships can have their own processing AIs that think, adapt, and learn on the fly in a mission (yes, make their OWN waypoints, launch fighters at whim, etc) without even being given SEXP instructions... --- would allow people to just dump a bunch of capships and fighters into a mission and play it and whomp, you got a playable mission. And you could save the AI between missions, so that what a ship has learned from one mission will carry over to the next. People could "train" default profiles for the capships (intercepting bombs, etc) to give as templates.
*drools at the impossibility* I don't even want to think about what kind of CPU overhead that would take, though. >_>
Still, it would be scary as hell to be flying a mission where the enemy is completely unpredictable in the sense that its AI will adapt and learn just like a real battlefield commander...all the SEXPs in the world could not possibly defeat a single Lucifer class if it had this kind of brain in it. Cept maybe self-destruct.
Yeah, I'm nuts. >_>
Of course, given such an AI, all hostiles would jump out the moment the mission starts. 8)
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You can make it so they can't jump out...
Reminds me of when LotR was coming out as a movie, they were building the AI for the big battles (forgot what it's called), and when they told a small group of orcs to attack a huge group of good guys, the orcs just turned around and ran away. They had to code them not to run away then :lol:
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Since when is the Bismark to be laughd at? sure it was smaller then the Iowa/Yamato but it had very good powerfull cannons. Also it had a decent speed and a very good arnour plating. Oh and because of its radar gided cannon fire it would of probably creamed Iowa/Yamato. Acuraci it the name of the game. It's no use having huge guns if u cant hit the enemy with them.
The Iowa had 406 mm guns (alltough it's penetration power equaled a 460mm shell), the Yamato had 460mm ones.
A armor on a battlehips mirrors it's cannon caliber (so between 406 and 460mm on the heavies armed parts of it)
the Bismarck had 360mm guns and armor. Thus, ANY shot from either hte Iowa or Yamato would breach his armor. Shots from the Bismarck would be mostly harmless, as al lthe areas where the armor is thinner are not critical ones.
Oh - did I mention that the gun range allso equals it's caliber (around 40km for the Iowa) and that the Iowa had the best targeting system ever?
By Gregster2k
*snip
I fully agree with you. that's why I made some of my ship (and htl version of fs2 capships tougher. With more turrets (optional) nad hte turrets themselves are more deadlier :D It's fun)
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I dodnt remember freelancer having such stealth bombs..or am i wrong?
Well they had cloaking fighters, gunboats, and battleships so I thought they could have cloaking missiles. :nervous:
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well how should i put this in wwII german battleships had the mos sophisticated aiming/targeting sistem of any existnt warships. Also i doubght that a 360mm shell wouldnt penetrate the armour of the yowa. I serously doubt that!
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That's total BS, the Germans still depended on human done calculations to fire off of shells, just like everyone else in WWII, plus they didn't have things like Harpoon anti-ship missiles (or any other guided missiles for that matter) basically, no, they really, really didn't. The 360mm shell might penetrate, but probably not to badly, whereas the nine 406mm cannons would oblitherate the Bismark very, vey quickly.
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are you even listening to what you are sayng??? human done calculation's? And wtf is this about Harpoon anti-ship missile?? Hello they barely had jet fighters..and radar....wake up dude you are definatl;y out there. were talking about WWII.In wwII the germans had the most advanced surface fleet of the war..well till it was sunk but not before they wrecked havoc in the allied shiping lanes and suck several famous warships on theyr own.
The germans had radar guided tageting and firing sistems. they had a far greater acuraci then anithing else the allies could throw at them.
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The German navy was quite competitive at the start of WWII, but failed to evolve effectively, near the middle of the war, the Japanese and US Pacific fleets were much more advanced than that of Germany (although it could still easily harm convoys, usually with U-boats. Very few battleships had computers, the ones that eventually did were Pacific Fleet US Battleships. Although the Bismark may well have had radar (can't find any proof of this) the ballistic trajectories of the shells would still have to be calculated, usually by hand.
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actualy there is no actual battleship or warshipp for that matter that had computers on them! You are making a huge confusion around thip point. This is wwII they did not have computers on warships. Also because they could track a ships movements in detalil so to speak they used the same radar sistem to actualy target the guns. by very crude sistem some might call it a precursor of the actual computer that was invented several years later.
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Okay, misconception on my part, I thought they crammed a unibac type computer into a BB at some point, obviously I was wrong, but that's not my point. I think this whole argument is a misunderstanding on my part, when you said:
"well how should i put this in wwII german battleships had the mos sophisticated aiming/targeting sistem of any existnt warships. Also i doubght that a 360mm shell wouldnt penetrate the armour of the yowa. I serously doubt that!"
I thought you where saying
"WWII German battleships had more sophisticated aiming/targeting systems of any existing warships."
I think now that this wasn't what you were trying to say; sorry.
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actualy that was also a because of mi bad enlghis pelling ! I should of been more precise in mi arguement. no harm done!
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...all the SEXPs in the world could not possibly defeat a single Lucifer class if it had this kind of brain in it. Cept maybe self-destruct.
Fire-beam, loop, 9999.