Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on January 26, 2007, 07:51:14 pm
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So, I've been thinking. Everybody knows the GTVA needs a way to kill juggernaughts, Saths and whatever else the Shivans have. Yeah, that's fine and good, there doesn't seem to be much agreement on exactly how, but it's certainly a priority.
There's another tactical concern I see, though. The Shivans have shown considerable aptitude for deploying hordes of bombers. Seraphim, Nephilim, Nahema...you name it. This was a particular concern during the evacuation of Capella, when the convoys were hit by overwhelming numbers of bombers.
What kind of potential is there for a cheap sub-cruiser gunship mounting flak, an anti-fighter beam, and a few turrets? The idea would be to provide a picket screen for larger warships and lightly defended targets. Get as much flak and AAAf fire up as possible - we all know that the Aeolus is quite resilient against bomber attacks, and the idea is to make a smaller version.
I'm not sure I like the idea myself. A wing of Herc IIs can dispatch a cruiser in a few seconds. Gunships would be all the more vulnerable to heavy assault fighters. There's the practical example of the Satis gunships from Derelict, but I seem to recall they weren't particularly survivable and certainly didn't have any armament beyond blob turrets.
Maybe it's a niche not meant to be filled.
Lastly, how do weapon systems like Harpoons work on capital ships? There's not much better at getting me to break off an attack run than a missile launch tone. Seems like a few 'poon launchers would do most cruisers good.
If there are existing user-made mods regarding any of this, I apologize for bringing up redundant topics.
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I had such an ideea a while back altough it adressed a different area.
The Aeoulous class of cruisers were very expensive at the time to build. they were how shall we say this ahead of theyr times and you could say they are still one of the best ships terrans ever produced if not the best.
Restarting the production of the Aeoulous would seem more apropriate then create a whole new class of ships which would take time and money to do. Something the GTVA has little.
However i do believe some smaller ajustement to the Aeoulous could be made altough more in lines of its overall design (aestetics) rather then anithing else. Also putting on some vasudan power cores and reactors and powergrid would be a very good idea since they seem to be more advanced in this area then theyr terran allies.
If you want a gunship then you need something which has the abilaty to take out cruisers very fast without fighter/bommber support and has enough aaaf defences to fend off a few wings of fighters/bommbers.
I mean just put loads of firepower in the front use the rest for aaaf defences give it a small hull high speed an manouverabilaty for its class and you have a gun ship. The same could be done using side facing weaponssistems like the GTVA usualy does .
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(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/htl_goth03.jpg)
There, that ought to take care of it.
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Damn sexy BlackDove... now if I could just play BWO :p
I had such an ideea a while back altough it adressed a different area.
The Aeoulous class of cruisers were very expensive at the time to build. they were how shall we say this ahead of theyr times and you could say they are still one of the best ships terrans ever produced if not the best.
Restarting the production of the Aeoulous would seem more apropriate then create a whole new class of ships which would take time and money to do. Something the GTVA has little.
However i do believe some smaller ajustement to the Aeoulous could be made altough more in lines of its overall design (aestetics) rather then anithing else. Also putting on some vasudan power cores and reactors and powergrid would be a very good idea since they seem to be more advanced in this area then theyr terran allies.
If you want a gunship then you need something which has the abilaty to take out cruisers very fast without fighter/bommber support and has enough aaaf defences to fend off a few wings of fighters/bommbers.
I mean just put loads of firepower in the front use the rest for aaaf defences give it a small hull high speed an manouverabilaty for its class and you have a gun ship. The same could be done using side facing weaponssistems like the GTVA usualy does .
I am Mars... resident canon whore... ph34r |\/|3
There is no canon information on the cost of Aeolus cruisers... all that is known is that production was halted... and in many ways this is not canon, this information wasn't available to normal players, only since the SCP came along and the tables are more commonly read (and the Ctrl+Shift+R "cheat" for the tech room was introduced)
Really though, cruisers in general are just big gun ships, taking up less than half the voleume of a corvette, granted, they're huge for todays standards, but the Fenris is really only twice as long or so compared to a Boeing 747. A culture that can turn out Destroyers like it so obviously does won't blanch too much when it comes to cruisers.
Now non-canonically
Axem's GTC Cretheus cruiser (available at Hades Combine) was a nice little gunship, it was slightly larger than a GVFr Satis, had slightly less hitpoints than a Fenris (although I think it should be about the same or higher personally) and had 5 Flak guns. If wxFred is ever introduced, and I make a campaign, I'm using that *****.
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I'm not sure I like the idea myself. A wing of Herc IIs can dispatch a cruiser in a few seconds. Gunships would be all the more vulnerable to heavy assault fighters. There's the practical example of the Satis gunships from Derelict, but I seem to recall they weren't particularly survivable and certainly didn't have any armament beyond blob turrets.
Well, it depends. The main question isn't whether fighters can dispatch them, since they are meant to dispatch fighters and so that should not be a concern. The Aeolus can hold out against enemy fightercraft impressively well, for example.
The main problem is what happens when a Cain or Lilth jumps in.
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Having a gunship serving as an anti-fighter platform in the midst of a battle would be extremely useful when you're running bomber duty. With a few flaks and a triple-A beam, it would provide a safe haven from the harassment of enemy fighters while you reload, and would be a hell of a lot more useful than allied escort fighters usually are.
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If a Cain or Lilith jumps in?
Send a wing or two of bombers
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Mmm. I hadn't thought of using them in conjunction with bombers. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a safe haven to reload behind, something cruisers are great at.
Might provide an answer to Inferno syndrome, though - unescorted superships. Gunships would make kill-the-big-one missions so much more interesting. I'd rather have the excitement of having to punch a whole through a screen of smaller vessels to deliver warheads, than sit through another rehash of Bearbaiting or High Noon.
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I immediately remembered the Kurgen from Starlancer when I started reading the thread ;). Okay, a gunship with the exclusive goal of taking down fighters and bombers would be really effective against the Shivans, specially if they're deployed in a group of 3 with a wing of bombers for anti-capship duty, IMO.
Making one wouldnt be so hard for the GTVA. The Leviathan has one of the best anti-fighter weaponry and the best coverage with those 4 beams, its only lacking flack turrets, so taking the main anti-capship beam cannon (they have to occupy a big space on it) to add a couple more turrets, changing some turrets to flacks (3 would be fine), getting a bit more armor or speed and thats it, you now have a highly deadly anti-fighter gunship. :nod:
Or you could take the Aelous, replace those two anti-capship beams for a higher powered one (a Vasudan one and destroyer scale if possible), add some more armor, change another turret to AAA-beam and it'll become the Lilith version of the GTVA.
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Here's the Aeolus tech description I wrote for Scroll:
The GTC Aeolus, originally seen as an extravagant peacetime expense when it was designed during the Terran Reconstruction, decisively proved its worth in the Neo-Terran rebellion and the Second Shivan Incursion. Aeolus-class cruisers are used throughout the alliance to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings. They also serve effectively as escort cruisers complementing larger warships such as the Deimos.
This is a fair extrapolation IMHO, since the FS2 tech description says production ended in 2365, before the whole Neo-Terran mess even started.
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Now non-canonically
Axem's GTC Cretheus cruiser (available at Hades Combine) was a nice little gunship, it was slightly larger than a GVFr Satis, had slightly less hitpoints than a Fenris (although I think it should be about the same or higher personally) and had 5 Flak guns. If wxFred is ever introduced, and I make a campaign, I'm using that *****.
I was thinking of that ship myself, but I had thought that it mounted more AAA button-turrets, rather than the all-multi-part-flak-guns layout.
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The GTC Aeolus, originally seen as an extravagant peacetime expense when it was designed during the Terran Reconstruction, decisively proved its worth in the Neo-Terran rebellion and the Second Shivan Incursion. Aeolus-class cruisers are used throughout the alliance to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings. They also serve effectively as escort cruisers complementing larger warships such as the Deimos.
Oddly enough, I wrote something similar, though mine was the Aeolus proving its worth in Capella and ending that credited with over a thousand Shivan fightercraft kills.
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Speaking of flak since flak is mainly the key. Someone should make a primary flak weapon. The maxim was designed and shoots bullets, why not shoot some explosive shells, or even better to create flak, explosive shells with mini proxi sensors. In the least in regards to the maxim, explosive shells, and even possibly equipped with some form of proximity explosives. Proximity explosions can be dealt in two ways, equip the explosive with a proximity sensor, or give the fighter OS an upgrade to detect proximity via radar and target lock to tell the explosive shell when to explode and when not to. This type of feature could be used to distinguish detonating an explosive bullet around a hostile, and not exploding on a friendly.
This kind of an upgrade to the maxim or new weapon completely could turn certain fighters into some wierd ass firepower gunships. Such ships like the erinyes or something, i really wouldn't know what kind of fighter to equip flak onto to make a makeshift gunship. Either way it'd be a neat enthusiast weapon to use.
When making a gunship, and making it smaller and more maneuverable than a cruiser is going to lead you down the road of making something that should be freighter sized most likely, or a new kind of fighter with heavy armor.
Brings about the idea of retrofitting some of the bombers that have turrets like the medusa and ursa. Equip a flak like weapon on the turret, and another flak like weapon on one of the normal firing points, and you'd have something that could rip fighters and bombers apart.
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It's possible that fighter-caliber flak shells might not be strong enough to provide anything more than a nuisance.
Those capital flak turrets are quite big. (Does anyone else beside me think they might be caseless, given their rate of fire? MetalStorm principle, perhaps?)
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They probably are caseless. I mean that's the way of the future. Caseless bullets take up less space, don't require a hammer, and don't leave a mess of bullet shells behind.
Perhaps somebody could design a flak weapon as a secondary, that i would find useful, it'd be like an uber morning star that does serious damage.
After that an upgrade to the maxim having explosive shells instead of the normal ones would be even more effective at taking down cruisers.
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The Maxim was caseless, if I recall, though when I first heard the term I didn't know what it meant.
I had the idea that the bullets were literally 'without casing' and were just big sloppy chunks of metal, or perhaps something like shotgun pellets. Ah, the naivete of youth.
Though if someone did make a fighter-mounted shotgun, it might help me kill Dragons.
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They probably are caseless. I mean that's the way of the future. Caseless bullets take up less space, don't require a hammer, and don't leave a mess of bullet shells behind.
Perhaps somebody could design a flak weapon as a secondary, that i would find useful, it'd be like an uber morning star that does serious damage.
After that an upgrade to the maxim having explosive shells instead of the normal ones would be even more effective at taking down cruisers.
Wouldnt AP bullets be better? Specially against Liliths.
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I'd certainly rather have armor-piercing caseless rounds than explosive ones, yes. Penetration is certainly ideal.
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Well, a maxim with explosive bullets could be like the maxim of preference in actually taking out shields with a maxim like weapon. And a maxim with AP bullet would be ideal for the cruiser sniping.
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You know, I'm not sure what role picket ships would be ideal for. If they're just there to provide extra flak and AAAs for fighter cover on a bigger ship, it occurs to me you'd be better off just building a slightly bigger bigger ship and putting the extra weapons on it?
The thought occurs to me that if a cain or lillith jumps in vs a big ship with extra flak, it does some hull damage and gets blown up. Vs a big ship with pickets, it might concentrate on taking out the picket ships, leaving the big one vulnerable to a follow up bomber attack.
If the picket ship is for extra cover away from big ships, why not just send more fighters instead? Same general effect - extra cover - without the big "SHOOT ME HERE" target that a cruiser represents.
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(http://members.westnet.com.au/iweber/Harpy/HTLHarpy1.jpg)
(http://members.westnet.com.au/iweber/Harpy/HTLHarpy3.jpg)
Harpy class gunship. 100m long, 3 AAf, 2 Flak, 2 Prom R turrets plus a set of shields. They're bastards to attack in a fighter, and can take down cruisers in groups. Corvettes pretty much rape them though.
Will get released with TI.
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And now I want to play TI.
I just want to add that the Kurgen was a papa-oscar-sierra. Seriously, was there ever a better way for the Coalition to throw away crew?
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I just want to add that the Kurgen was a papa-oscar-sierra. Seriously, was there ever a better way for the Coalition to throw away crew?
Yes, there is. But the Kurgen was cool. :P
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Now non-canonically
Axem's GTC Cretheus cruiser (available at Hades Combine) was a nice little gunship, it was slightly larger than a GVFr Satis, had slightly less hitpoints than a Fenris (although I think it should be about the same or higher personally) and had 5 Flak guns. If wxFred is ever introduced, and I make a campaign, I'm using that *****.
I was thinking of that ship myself, but I had thought that it mounted more AAA button-turrets, rather than the all-multi-part-flak-guns layout.
The original scheme was 6 flak and 2 anti fighter beams. I changed it to all flak because I thought the 3 aaaf shots would look sorta weird with two gun barrels. Though nothing prevents anyone from modifying the turret loadout of the ship.
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I was thinking of that ship myself, but I had thought that it mounted more AAA button-turrets, rather than the all-multi-part-flak-guns layout.
The original scheme was 6 flak and 2 anti fighter beams. I changed it to all flak because I thought the 3 aaaf shots would look sorta weird with two gun barrels. Though nothing prevents anyone from modifying the turret loadout of the ship.
Hence, why I mentioned the use of "button turrets" for this purpose, rather than multi-part. Such a change would require some model work and recompilation.
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I also forgot to mention why caseless bullets are caseless in the first place. The bullet itself doesn't have a shell of course, but the bullet is encased in it's own propellant with no bullet shell. So that's also why no more clunky hammer on a caseless bullet gun since a different way to ignite the propellant on the bullet would be required. Guns that fire caseless bullets can very well indeed spit out more bullets a lot faster than guns with normal bullets...just waiting for a minigun that fires caseless bullets (that might be overkill on faster firing rates, but it would lead to a smaller minigun). After that caseless bullets take up less space so you can do more things like fit more bullets into a clip, and have more compact clips while you're at it.
Anyway, good call with the gunship from twisted infinities. That fills the role of picket superbly. How is TI doing these days? It's a big mod with a big margin of time and passion put into it. We'll definitely see it finished some day.
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Caseless rounds are fired with an electrical charge. Though they have all the advantages S-99 enumerated, there's also significantly higher recoil to deal with as compared to a standard round. Not such a concern for a capital ship, fortunately.
S-99, if you think a caseless minigun is impressive, clearly you've never heard of MetalStorm. Look it up.
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Metalstorm has some technical difficulties I don't see getting solved right away.
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As do caseless rounds in general. And railguns, for that matter. And lasers. But they're all so much fun anyway, aren't they?
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Suppose your right...
I wanna railgun.
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If you can muster up a good power supply to get actual railgun velocity which is 99% the speed of light get one, of course with lower power you could get bullet speed with a railgun. Railguns use too much ****ing electricity to actually think of them as a viable weapon these days.
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:wtf:
S-99, do you know any relativistic dynamics? You could get a railgun up to 99% lightspeed, but the Lorentz dilation of its mass would mean it was...very...impractical. We're talking really impractical. I can walk you through the math if you want.
And it would be very stupid in atmosphere.
Today, it's not electrical power that's the problem for railguns, it's the rails themselves. There isn't a material that won't be wrecked by the stress involved.
Other problems too.
EDIT: boosting a railgun round to 99% lightspeed involves a seven-fold increase in the projectile's mass and a corresponding sevenfold increase in power required (over that predicted by Newtonian dynamics). Assuming it's a linear relationship between power and mass.
99.9% is a 22-fold mass increase. It just gets worse from there on up.
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A bit offtopic, but I think they should mount Maxims and Morningstars on cruisers.
Use their speed to keep out of beam range. Morningstars will keep bombers away.
It wouldn't be useful against Destroyers and up, but a cruiser isn't exactly meant to tangle with those. But I'd imagine a cruiser with maxim guns would tear anything else up.
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If you can muster up a good power supply to get actual railgun velocity which is 99% the speed of light get one, of course with lower power you could get bullet speed with a railgun. Railguns use too much ****ing electricity to actually think of them as a viable weapon these days.
Almost anything fired at 99% lightspeed will almost certainly be deadly to whatever you fire it at. If you point it straight at the ground, you will make a huge crater and kill yourself as well as anyone around you. (lol unchecked physics)
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Somewhere I heard that a Marshmallows moving at 99.99999% of the speed of light would have a yeild of 12 Castle Bravo scale explosions.
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I haven't crunched the numbers, but it's definitely believable.
Of course, a handful of neutronium dropped from shoulder height will get you the same thing...
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Good luck getting the neutronium, and holding it at shoulder height...
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Yeah, not much chance of that actually happening.
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Hint: it would approximately take the energy that's released when the said neutronium hits the ground.
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Not to mention a hand made of something comparably dense...otherwise the neutronium would just go right through.
Heck, it'd fall through a 'solid' planet like a brick through water.
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yup, one sugar cube of "neutronium" would weigh approximately 100 million tons.
one (perhaps dumb, slightly pedagogical, but bothersome) question: Since the only place you would find "neutronium" would be in the core of neutron stars, and since the material is kept super-packed by the conservation of angular momentum (L = L' from big star --> neutron star), wouldn't any amount of neutronium disintegrate if it were removed from the star?
i.e. a sugar cube of neutronium isn't spinning any longer, so angular momentum is no longer conserved, plus there's nothing to stop the neutrons from undergoing beta decay. So you would end up holding 100 million tons of "protium."
Or does the strong nuclear force counteract that possibility? blah either way, what i've described is hardly a practical scenario.
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I'm more concerned about the amount of energy it would take to remove said sugar cube of neutronium. It would take some seriously cataclysmic force to do that O_o
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Somewhere I heard that a Marshmallows moving at 99.99999% of the speed of light would have a yeild of 12 Castle Bravo scale explosions.
*tries to find a good enough railgun to fire Marshmallows at Sathanas Juggernaughts* lol
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12 Hydrogen bombs isn't nearly enough to take down a Sathanas, otherwise Helios's would actually scratch it.
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Somewhere I heard that a Marshmallows moving at 99.99999% of the speed of light would have a yeild of 12 Castle Bravo scale explosions.
*tries to find a good enough railgun to fire Marshmallows at Sathanas Juggernaughts* lol
At which point you could fire practically anything and blow up the Sathanas. Oh, and the amount of energy you would need to power that railgun would be probably more than the planet uses in a day. (lol more unchecked math)
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<!--- scares off anti-math types
E=mc²
Assuming a mass of 0.25kg for the marshmallow, and c approximately equal to 3.0 x 10^8 m/s: E = (0.25 kg)(3E8 m/s) = 74948114.5 J of energy
Also assuming that close to 100% of the liberated energy gets schlooped into the railgun (which fires a round approximately every 5 seconds):
P = W/t = 74948114.5 J/5s
-->
Power = 14989622.9 watts.
Energy (not power, lol) in an average H-bomb (20 Mt): 8.368 x 10^16 J.
There, a waste of five minutes
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Assuming a mass of 0.25kg for the marshmallow
That's a big friggen marshmallow.
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Assuming a mass of 0.25kg for the marshmallow
That's a big friggen marshmallow.
Ah, so that was the Shivans plan - they expected to use the supernova to melt railgun-propelled giant marshmallows, only to have to jump away and go to the shops when none came.
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Nah, the Capella supernova was just a gigantic s'more making party.