Frankly, today, we have nukes that have radii of many miles.
A Destroyer full of Helios bombs launched at high trajectory would be many times stronger than a Destroyer armed with Beams.
Against fighters, Kaysers or Maxim/Circe combos would be more effective. Before shield technology, kinetic weapons like earlier versions of the Maxim would have been much more effective. Have you tried arming a Deimos with all Maxims? It can swat any fighter or bomber out there, even if they have shields.
An Orion could hold atleast a few hundred Helios bombs and when launched at high trajectory, could take down the Sathanas.
Plus, the Maxims would be much more effective at shooting down enemy missiles.
Why Beams?? So Ineffective!!
CUZ IT LOOKS GEWD!!!!!! :hopping:
Kaysers and Maxims are not more effective than a AAAf, I would think. You must remember that the beam will ignore your shields (and can possibly vaporize your fighter in a single volley). Kaysers and maxims are also avoidable. It is practically impossible to dodge AAA beam fire because they hit instantly.
Helios are not more effective than a beam cannon. With Helios you will run in to several problems:
- Limited Ammo and prohibitively high cost (vs. Infinite Ammo and low cost)
- Ludicrously slow projectile speed (vs. instantaneous hit)
- Interceptable and avoidable projectiles (vs. impossible to dodge or intercept)
- Short range of 1950m (vs. long range of 4000+)
You're not going to crawl right up close, wait for seven seconds to get a lock, then proceed to throw several trillion dollars into space and hope it actually does something.
No, you press the big red button labeled "Fire Beam" and get almost guaranteed results.
Yes, launchign the bombs at "high trajectory" would probably negate the range and speed problem, but the bombs would still be interceptable, and limited by ammo and prohibitively high cost.
And beams are one of the few weapons that actually adheres to the laws of physics, for the most part.
Kaysers and Maxims are not more effective than a AAAf, I would think. You must remember that the beam will ignore your shields (and can possibly vaporize your fighter in a single volley). Kaysers and maxims are also avoidable. It is practically impossible to dodge AAA beam fire because they hit instantly.
Helios are not more effective than a beam cannon. With Helios you will run in to several problems:
- Limited Ammo and prohibitively high cost (vs. Infinite Ammo and low cost)
- Ludicrously slow projectile speed (vs. instantaneous hit)
- Interceptable and avoidable projectiles (vs. impossible to dodge or intercept)
- Short range of 1950m (vs. long range of 4000+)
You're not going to crawl right up close, wait for seven seconds to get a lock, then proceed to throw several trillion dollars into space and hope it actually does something.
No, you press the big red button labeled "Fire Beam" and get almost guaranteed results.
Yes, launchign the bombs at "high trajectory" would probably negate the range and speed problem, but the bombs would still be interceptable, and limited by ammo and prohibitively high cost.
And beams are one of the few weapons that actually adheres to the laws of physics, for the most part.
Like I said, remove propulsion from the Helios, make it lighter, stick it in a torpedo tube, launch it ballistically. It may not work against Cruisers, but Destroyers and Juggernauts would be easily targetable. They would move atleast 10x the speed they do now, making them MUCH harder to target. Intercept problems wont exist. I doubt you could intercept something moving at the speed of a hornet.
The only problem would be cost, which would be worth it if you save 200 million people on Capella, etc.
Edit: If you launch a few hundred Helios missiles at a Sathanas, it would be destroyed. The US Minuteman ICBM Nuclear Missiles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Minuteman-III_.28LGM-30G.29, is $7 million. If the Helios is about $5 million as it only needs to traverse a few miles at most, it would be about $500,000,000 to destroy a Sathanas. In contrast, a Nimitz class Aircraft Carrier is $4.5 billion. Compared to $500 million to destroy a Sathanas. And a Sathanas must be atleast 100x harder and costlier to build than a Nimitz.
...Anyone think of the fact that if one Helios gets intercepted, its blast could conceivably take out all the other Helios warheads within its blast radius? ;7 IDK if anyone pointed that out or not; I only skimmed this thread.
A Helios being only $5 Million?
I don't think so. It uses antimatter. Currently, it costs $300 billion per milligram of antimatter. You're going to need a whole lot more to make a Helios. Even if it does get cheaper to make antimatter, its not going to be THAT much cheaper. Its going to cost a whole lot.
It also takes around 150 Helios to kill a Sathanas...
A Helios might cost more than a Fenris... The only time its actually used is when you have to disarm the first Sath.
Assuming that launching a Helios from a tube won't cause the Helios to explode and take out whatever is trying to launch it, blobs could still intercept it. Every bomb that is intercepted is wasted money.
IMHO, its still so much more efficient to just beam things to death. :P
And if a fusion bomb today is only $7million, im sure it would be cheaper in 300 years. Especially if it is only required to travel a few kilometers.
And if a fusion bomb today is only $7million, im sure it would be cheaper in 300 years. Especially if it is only required to travel a few kilometers.
Why do you assume that things like that get cheaper? :p
Yeah, technology advances as physics does; processes with common materials get cheaper and more effective, and so on. But get this - a car uses essentially same materials as a steam engine that preceded it - mainly, steel (also aluminium and other alloys, plastic, and otherstuffs, but mainly steel). Iron is a relatively abundant resource, and a lot of the availability of technology we take for granted is thanks to this fact... However, only because iron-related things have become a lot more accessible and cheaper in time it's not plausible to assume that all other branches of technology would advance similarly.
There are some materials that will always require a lot of manpower and time and effort to gather in significant quantities. Which means that you need a lot of people or machinery to do the gathering (locating, mining, refining, transportation to production facilities) and that will always cost a lot of money. Even more in FreeSpace context because Earth is out of touch (so to speak) and thus they have lost a significant source of deuterium (Earth's oceans, though undoubtedly other planets have heavy water too), affordable ores (assuming Earth still could support significant amount of mining activity when contact was lost) with relatively friendly conditions for retrieving them - even the worst Chinese coal mines from hell are infinitely easier to manage than mining an asteroid. Other planets may have higher or lower amounts of metals, depending on the star's generation, ie. how many main sequence stars' lifes and supernovas the matter has gone through...
I would point out the distances and necessary energies involved in space travel adding to the cost, if it weren't for the fact that in FreeSpace context people never seem to be very worried about power sources, they have a few odd gas miners in the nebula in one (?) mission, so it doesn't seem to be an issue to them, especially with nodes taking care of any long range intra-system jumps as well as all intersystem jumps.
So... why would making nukes be essentially cheaper in future? They're still going to need same stuffs to make them, unless they change the laws of nature (though in FreeSpace context this is a pretty lulzy argument I must admit) they'll need fissible material, and fusion material (lithium deuteride works, if you can't find tritium...), and all the stuff needed to make an implosion shell (essentially a pretty complex shaped charge composition) for the primary phase of a hydrogen bomb (a fission bomb), and in a correct way that it generates a sufficient x-ray implosion of the secondary (hydrogen) stage of the bomb. If you have wrong kind of stuff between the fission primer and the fusion main stage of the bomb, it can absorb too much of the x-rays and fail to trigger a fusion reaction.
These materials will be all that much more difficult to gather in significant amounts after Earth's resources aren't available. Even after establishing comparative infrastructures at other planets, it's still at best just as costly as now on Earth, or possibly a bit less due to advanced mining processes, but the basic idea is that rare materials will always stay rare, it's just a statistical facts of physics talking.
The problem with launching a swarm of Helios bombs from a destroyer is the distance in between. A bomber can close the gap and deploy the warheads while a destroyer simply cannot and thus large numbers of the launched warheads will be intercepted.
What would take longer to build? A Hecate Destroyer or 150 Nukes? Because the Sathanas ccan take out a Hecate within 30 seconds, with no damage to itself.
The 150 Nukes may cost a lot, but it saves lives, saves ships, is effective, and although costly, prevents extinction. If the first Sathanas was taken out before it jumped to Cappella, The GTVA could have closed all jump points to Epsilon Pegasi and saved Cappella...
Please stop bringing up cost. Nobody has any idea what kind of industrial base or technology is available, and we certainly don't know how the GTVA economy functions.
Foolfromhell, can you please take a breather, read all the points that have been brought up against you, and respond to them, rather than going off on new tangents?
Thanks.
If you need a recap: 1) bombs don't go through Lucifer shields, 2) bombs can be intercepted, and when they do that, they blow up other bombs, 3) destroyers are too slow to get close enough to effectively fire the bombs, 4) bombs run out of ammunition, 5) beams look great.
I know you've suggested that bombs could be fired from a railgun or coilgun. That's certainly a viable alternative to beams. There's nothing to suggest it'd be any more or less powerful, however.
Please stop bringing up cost. Nobody has any idea what kind of industrial base or technology is available, and we certainly don't know how the GTVA economy functions.
1. The Lucifer is also immune to Beams, as far as we know. Also, if the Shivans wanted, they would have used Lucifers and not Sathanii during the Second Incursion. If they did use another Lucifer, the GTVA wouldnt have been able to do anything...
2. When these bombs are going 5-6x the speed of fighters, im pretty sure they cant be hit easily. Fighters have enough trouble hitting me while going on a straight line at 80m/s... These bombs will have been accelerated to atleast 500m/s. Today's missiles go supersonic in an atmosphere. I am sure missiles 300 years in the future could go much faster since there isnt even an atmosphere...
3. At these speeds, even 20km of difference isnt much. If you go at 500m/s, you would reach a target some 6km away in 12 seconds. Barely any time at all.
4. At the sizes of these battleships, they could hold hundreds of bombs. If they do run out, they refuel. Right now, we have seen every Capital ship that gets into a fight come out damaged and requiring much repair. No difference in time really. With 300-400 bombs, you wont exactly run out quickly.
5. Yes, beams do look cool, but efficiency>aesthetics.
6. Yes, I mean railguns/coilguns. Bombers are ineffective. Ursas are damned slow. I suggest Maxims mounted on fast turrets for bomb-defense and railguns or coilguns to accelerate these bombs to uber-high speeds.
1. The Lucifer is also immune to Beams, as far as we know. Also, if the Shivans wanted, they would have used Lucifers and not Sathanii during the Second Incursion. If they did use another Lucifer, the GTVA wouldn't have been able to do anything...
2. When these bombs are going 5-6x the speed of fighters, I'm pretty sure they cant be hit easily. Fighters have enough trouble hitting me while going on a straight line at 80m/s... These bombs will have been accelerated to at least 500m/s. Today's missiles go supersonic in an atmosphere. I am sure missiles 300 years in the future could go much faster since there isnt even an atmosphere...
3. At these speeds, even 20km of difference isnt much. If you go at 500m/s, you would reach a target some 6km away in 12 seconds. Barely any time at all.
4. At the sizes of these battleships, they could hold hundreds of bombs. If they do run out, they refuel. Right now, we have seen every Capital ship that gets into a fight come out damaged and requiring much repair. No difference in time really. With 300-400 bombs, you wont exactly run out quickly.
5. Yes, beams do look cool, but efficiency>aesthetics.
6. Yes, I mean railguns/coilguns. Bombers are ineffective. Ursas are damned slow. I suggest Maxims mounted on fast turrets for bomb-defense and railguns or coilguns to accelerate these bombs to uber-high speeds.
Thank you about the cost. I was answering what other people have said.
1. The Lucifer is also immune to Beams, as far as we know. Also, if the Shivans wanted, they would have used Lucifers and not Sathanii during the Second Incursion. If they did use another Lucifer, the GTVA wouldn't have been able to do anything...
2. When these bombs are going 5-6x the speed of fighters, I'm pretty sure they cant be hit easily. Fighters have enough trouble hitting me while going on a straight line at 80m/s... These bombs will have been accelerated to at least 500m/s. Today's missiles go supersonic in an atmosphere. I am sure missiles 300 years in the future could go much faster since there isnt even an atmosphere...
3. At these speeds, even 20km of difference isnt much. If you go at 500m/s, you would reach a target some 6km away in 12 seconds. Barely any time at all.
4. At the sizes of these battleships, they could hold hundreds of bombs. If they do run out, they refuel. Right now, we have seen every Capital ship that gets into a fight come out damaged and requiring much repair. No difference in time really. With 300-400 bombs, you wont exactly run out quickly.
5. Yes, beams do look cool, but efficiency>aesthetics.
6. Yes, I mean railguns/coilguns. Bombers are ineffective. Ursas are damned slow. I suggest Maxims mounted on fast turrets for bomb-defense and railguns or coilguns to accelerate these bombs to uber-high speeds.
Thank you about the cost. I was answering what other people have said.
1) Lucifer can't really be used as an example, due to aforementioned reasons, and that it only appears once... twice counting... OTHER CAMPAIGNS
2 and 3) You're not talking about freespace with that. bombs go just barely faster that the Ursa/boanerges that holds them.
4) not only are the aforementioned problems true, but what if the enemy happens to hit a turret's ammo storage? It would destroy that part of the ship, along with the fact that it would probably destroy any other nearby turret's ammo, which would spread to destroy the whole ship
5) As herra said
6) I don't know really how to respond to that, but i think we'll never be able to do something like that in-game, due to engine limitations. The railguns used in INFA go about the same speed as blobs.
7) how old are you? :P
here...You need quite a big ship to launch helios sized bombs at 500 m/s. Especially if you plan to launch many at a time.
3. At these speeds, even 20km of difference isnt much. If you go at 500m/s, you would reach a target some 6km away in 12 seconds. Barely any time at all.
7) how old are you? :P
6. Railguns today can go over 13,000mph, which is over 5500m/s. Nothing in the FS universe can defend against that.
6. Railguns today can go over 13,000mph, which is over 5500m/s. Nothing in the FS universe can defend against that.
That's not really relevant because Freespace isn't an accurate representation of real-world weaponry. Nothing in FS Universe could defend against that, but then again, nothing HAS to defend against that because no weapons travel that fast. Even the large ship to ship weapons have very slow moving blobs.
Basically, you're saying "why not do this instead?" But doing that wouldn't fit the universe so that's why it isn't done. The Maxim, is essentially a coilgun or railgun of some kind, but if you check the weapons tables you'll see it doesn't go 5500m/s.
Btw, with regards to real-world weaponry in space. With relativistic speeds, weapons can go really fast. After a point, you don't really need any sort of explosive because with enough kinetic force you'll produce the same result. See this page for some interesting scientific spaceship related stuff: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html)
With regards to the Hecate or something using coilgun-launched Helios bombs instead of Beams, well, it would still loose versus the Sathanas. Even if both sides launched their weapons and hit with the same time the Sathanas' guns would still eat the Hecate alive and the take only a little damage in return. Even if the Hecate launched like some salvo of 10 or so helios bombs from several turrets, it would still die a horrible death because the Sathanas will kill anything the GTVA has in one salvo (with the possible exception of the Colossus).
isnt this discussion kinda futile?Everything said under general discussion is pointless.
isnt this discussion kinda futile?
isnt this discussion kinda futile?
Yeah, since this is a fighter sim game and now he's saying to get rid of all fighters. :wtf:
Nukes are far less effective outside of an atmosphere. Obliterating entire fleets? Not a chance. The reason nukes are so devastating in an atmosphere is that they create a massive shockwave by superheating their surroundings, causing them to expand explosively.
1. The Lucifer is also immune to Beams, as far as we know. Also, if the Shivans wanted, they would have used Lucifers and not Sathanii during the Second Incursion. If they did use another Lucifer, the GTVA wouldn't have been able to do anything...
2. When these bombs are going 5-6x the speed of fighters, I'm pretty sure they cant be hit easily. Fighters have enough trouble hitting me while going on a straight line at 80m/s... These bombs will have been accelerated to at least 500m/s. Today's missiles go supersonic in an atmosphere. I am sure missiles 300 years in the future could go much faster since there isnt even an atmosphere...
3. At these speeds, even 20km of difference isnt much. If you go at 500m/s, you would reach a target some 6km away in 12 seconds. Barely any time at all.
4. At the sizes of these battleships, they could hold hundreds of bombs. If they do run out, they refuel. Right now, we have seen every Capital ship that gets into a fight come out damaged and requiring much repair. No difference in time really. With 300-400 bombs, you wont exactly run out quickly.
5. Yes, beams do look cool, but efficiency>aesthetics.
6. Yes, I mean railguns/coilguns. Bombers are ineffective. Ursas are damned slow. I suggest Maxims mounted on fast turrets for bomb-defense and railguns or coilguns to accelerate these bombs to uber-high speeds.
Thank you about the cost. I was answering what other people have said.
1) Lucifer can't really be used as an example, due to aforementioned reasons, and that it only appears once... twice counting... OTHER CAMPAIGNS
2 and 3) You're not talking about freespace with that. bombs go just barely faster that the Ursa/boanerges that holds them.
4) not only are the aforementioned problems true, but what if the enemy happens to hit a turret's ammo storage? It would destroy that part of the ship, along with the fact that it would probably destroy any other nearby turret's ammo, which would spread to destroy the whole ship
5) As herra said
6) I don't know really how to respond to that, but i think we'll never be able to do something like that in-game, due to engine limitations. The railguns used in INFA go about the same speed as blobs.
7) how old are you? :P
2. and 3, That's because the bombs are powering themselves. If you launch them from a railgun or coilgun, they can go MUCH faster
6. Railguns today can go over 13,000mph, which is over 5500m/s. Nothing in the FS universe can defend against that.
7. I am 16.
Actually, most good analyses of what future space combat will look like feature a lot of wishes for precise and powerful beam weapons, because they move at lightspeed. Can't be dodged and can't be intercepted if only because you can't see them coming.
Does that make sense to you? It doesn't mean kinetic weapons and missiles are useless, by any means, but it does mean that energy beams are tactically valuable.
i like how my post was completely ignored :D
do i have to spell it out for you all?
at 2k a pop theres not much this little corvette cant kill. and should those not be big enough, it can lob a meson torpedo out of one of its coilguns :D
i like how my post was completely ignored :DWell, if you get into deep modding on the attacker ship and leave the defenders as they were, of course it can kill everything. With just as much effort, you could give the defenders more numerous, stronger beams. It wouldn't be such an easy battle then. :nod:
do i have to spell it out for you all?
<snip>
at 2k a pop theres not much this little corvette cant kill. and should those not be big enough, it can lob a meson torpedo out of one of its coilguns :D
Well...
If you have a capital ship, you can have a launching mechanism for the Helios.
Remove the propulsion from the Helios, make it lighter, and make it's propulsion purely ballistic.
Self-propelled bombs don't make much sense in space to be honest. Propulsion system just reduces the portion of payload from the munitions' total weight, it would be better to use some kind of mass accelerator to get the warheads to the target. Then again, if you're going for kinetic energy weapons only, I guess the only thing defining the winner between a large scale KEW and beams in energy output is the energy efficiency of the process. How much of used energy can be converted into kinetic energy or beams energy? and how much damage each GJ of kinetic energy accomplishes versus each GJ poured into beam cannons?Given that it is most likely impossible to create enegy weapons with ability to maintain beam coherence to infinite distances it would probably break down into beams for close range combat and ballistic weapons further out. Also as distances become greater the accuracy of the ballistic weapons (with their muzzle velocity waaaay below that of the energy weapons by any sense) become more and more inaccurate the homing (ie self-powered) bombs become the best option regardless of their drawbacks.
I'm all for beam weapons. Always have, been always will. But regarding resupply to limited ammo heavy ships. We all coped in wws 1 + 2 the big naval battles etc. Assuming that the big ships are operating well out of port, a small dedicated convoy could extend operational life by a week before resupply. <still prefers :beamz: though>
Today, with modern fully-automatic rapid-fire guns, an outfit of less than 150 rounds is very uncommon, and 250 or 300 rounds is much more likely. Ships using 3" main gun battery can have as many as 1000 rounds for their gun. But at maximum firing rate most modern ships can expend their total supply of gun ammunition in as little as ten minutes, and very rarely more than half an hour.
Beams are purely for the effect. Given the military experiments with railgun weaponry now, I would think that by 2355 a railgun launcher for large-scale munitions in space would be a fairly easy proposal. Think of a Helios warhead sans propulsion accelerated to speeds in excess of 3000 meters per second in total vaccum.
Beams deal more damage relative to their size. A beam turret consists, at most, of a firing mechanism, power supply ( the reactor ), amplifying beams and targeting systems. They also guarantee a hit. Nothing stops a beam save a shield, and no capital ship in FS2 has one. 'Cept the Lucifer. And they can be overcharge to deal more damage.
Helios on the other hand, can explode point blank and my fighter isn't even scratched. Anti-warship torpedos do nothing against shields
Helios on the other hand, can explode point blank and my fighter isn't even scratched. Anti-warship torpedos do nothing against shields
Not true. The Helios has a 0.02 shield factor, times 6800 damage means that it does 136 shield damage. I have been killed by a Helios that goes off too close to me. That kind of damage would do nothing to a Lucifer, however.
Another thing that seems to imply shields don't work against beams is the fact the big 'C' was able to stop a Lucy.
Well, it was designed to kill a Lucy, it never actually did.Another thing that seems to imply shields don't work against beams is the fact the big 'C' was able to stop a Lucy.
Uh...when? That never happened.
Well, it was designed to kill a Lucy, it never actually did.Another thing that seems to imply shields don't work against beams is the fact the big 'C' was able to stop a Lucy.
Uh...when? That never happened.
That brings up a new point; beams do pierce shields. Did the Ancients have beam weapons? If they had, maybe they could've prevented their destruction.Shields aren't everything.
Shields aren't everything.
if I were part of the GTVA leadership, I would keep a couple of meson bombs on standby a few hundred meters from every jump node.
Just in case.
Well, they probably wouldn't know that nodes were collapsible. The Terrans only know of it from the destruction of the sol jump node by the Lucifer.
If the ancients could stop the Lucifer, they would have collapsed a node.
Then, they would learn how to collapse nodes when they see 80 saths coming.
Assuming it was the Ancients who turned off the Knossos of course.... :)
The Shivans presumably understand the tech too and might have had their own reasons for turning it off. We know that they can get into GTVA space by some other route anyway.
2) It takes more than a couple of meson bombs to collapse a node (the Bastion contained a log, IIRC).Wow...I'm never running through the woods again.
Well, that idea adheres to my own theory that the Lucifer fleet was trapped on the wrong side of the Knossos when the Ancients deactivated it when they tried to consolidate their losses and isolate themselves from endless tide of Shivans driving them back. But unfortunately for the ancients, they still couldn't stop them. Why else would the Shivans have disappeared for so long? Only to return when the Knossos was reactivated and the figurative gate to hell opened anew.
As such the Lucifer didn't come into GTVA space via another route, it was simply in the neighbourhood having been trapped here for so long. Hence the lack of beams, etcetera on most of the ships save the flagship.
I was playing Procyon Insurgency and in the first mission...with the Aten...it shoots out like a missle type thing, not a blob....but something...what was it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, the Lucy fleet entered from Ross 128, yes ? But the Knossos portal is at Gamma Draconis, or at least in its vicinity. That's quite a distance. And i doubt that deactivating the Knossos portal would've stopped the Lucy fleet from going home. Shivans can navigate unstable warp points after all. I also doubt that the Knossos Portal is precisely at the chokepoint of the universe. Its more likely that the Lucy fleet was a very old fleet that the Shivans thought would be enough to wipe out Earth, seeing as how flux beam weaponry was exclusive to the Lucifer itself.
The Vasudan Flux cannon? That's the Vasudan equivalent of the fusion mortar, IIRC.I was playing Procyon Insurgency and in the first mission...with the Aten...it shoots out like a missle type thing, not a blob....but something...what was it?
I think its the missile launcher. The Aten has one iirc. Its equally hopeless at capital combat. I think the thing is called ... Uh. Flux bomb or something.
It doesn't look like the missiles that the Fenris or Leviathan shoots....it is yellowish and faster than a blob...
Correct me if I'm wrong, the Lucy fleet entered from Ross 128, yes ? But the Knossos portal is at Gamma Draconis, or at least in its vicinity. That's quite a distance. And i doubt that deactivating the Knossos portal would've stopped the Lucy fleet from going home. Shivans can navigate unstable warp points after all. I also doubt that the Knossos Portal is precisely at the chokepoint of the universe. Its more likely that the Lucy fleet was a very old fleet that the Shivans thought would be enough to wipe out Earth, seeing as how flux beam weaponry was exclusive to the Lucifer itself.
Well, the Knossos portals are fairly self-sufficient.
They work after sitting there for over 8000 years, and the other ones (nebula-binary, binary-???) worked continually for 8000 years with apparently no need for power. Its a good investment...
Well, the Knossos portals are fairly self-sufficient.Not that it's an accomplishment that they withstood the test of time. Nothing happens in space. No air, no movement, nothing.
They work after sitting there for over 8000 years, and the other ones (nebula-binary, binary-???) worked continually for 8000 years with apparently no need for power. Its a good investment...
Well, the Knossos portals are fairly self-sufficient.Not that it's an accomplishment that they withstood the test of time. Nothing happens in space. No air, no movement, nothing.
They work after sitting there for over 8000 years, and the other ones (nebula-binary, binary-???) worked continually for 8000 years with apparently no need for power. Its a good investment...
Probably artificial gravity or magnetism.
Or maybe something to do with subspace, like how ships get pulled into the blue when they activate their drives.
Or inertia. Why would they stop working?I was under knowledge that the portal was inactive and shut down (therefore the peices not moving) before the Trinity entered.
Except for radiation and constant micrometeorite bombardment...and the gravitational tug of the elements on each other.
Its possible that the gravitational pull generated by planets and stars will cause the Knossos portal to deviate. If this is the case then the Knossos portal could work by creating an artificial gravitational field that keeps the pieces in place and rotating.As I said, there are no planets in GDrax, and having 2 stars would undoubtedly screw stuff up on Knossos 3 if it was using planetary gravity to stay in motion. Plus having a field of ionized gas can't be great either.
Except for radiation and constant micrometeorite bombardment...and the gravitational tug of the elements on each other.
Gravity tug only present if there's a planetary body present. Iirc there were none where any of the Knossos portals are ...
Or inertia. Why would they stop working?
Or inertia. Why would they stop working?
Well they do move on a circular path, which means there is a centripetal force present keeping the pieces from getting onto trajectories tangential to the circle. Since there's nothing physically keeping the parts together, it can't be mechanical tension force, thus it needs to be some other kind of force. Gravitational pull of the parts themselves would not work, Knossos is a four-body system and it would collapse pretty fast if left to it's own devices.
It could be explained by the Knossos creating an artificial gravitational field that causes an acceleration towards the center of the circle. Of course the ships around don't seem to be affected, but that doesn't happen in FreeSpace anyway (and very clearly FreeSpace tech does have gravity generators and most likely antigravity as well) so it might be the case.
Also, invisible massless wires are a very strong possibility. And of course, ultimately the same things makes Knossos rotate that makes the Faustus sensor system spin... :p
But doesn't the Faustus solar panel array spin because there's some sort of motor where it attaches to the main body?
As I said, there are no planets in GDrax, and having 2 stars would undoubtedly screw stuff up on Knossos 3 if it was using planetary gravity to stay in motion. Plus having a field of ionized gas can't be great either.
I'd say the Knossos uses its own gravity (ormagnetism or something)
..Look at the inside of the subspace vortex. You have to counterrotating fields visible, one inner, one outer. (Looks freaky, yes.) The Knossos is also counterrotating. Hmm. *shrugs*Point. A palpable point.
(Back to the original statement that started this thread) Blueplanet has shown that projectile weapons can be even more effective than beam weaponry. The GTVA uses long range torpedoes that have varying trajectories which cannot be shot down by AAA batteries. Blueplanet: WiH will show earth-ships with railguns and high-speed energy turrets that annihilate GTVA vessels.
Now was there a point to this necrothreadage...?
On the other hand, nukes have their uses.
- use em to mine asteroids, then set em of when the enemy is in range,
- Load a ship with them, then ram it into the target
- Use them in upperatmosphere to trigger EMPs > very devestaing in a computer dependant society
- Infiltrate an enemy ship with one and have it go off, destroying the ship
I take my lessons in interesting uses of nukes from John "Nuke 'em" Sheridan - the man who knows his nukes
Besides, in over 300 years im sure we'd come up with something more powerful that the H-Bomb or Neutron Bomb
"Meson 'em" just doesnt sound right.
Spoiler:READY THE MESON BOMB!
Spoiler:Detonation in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...zero.
Besides, in over 300 years im sure we'd come up with something more powerful that the H-Bomb or Neutron Bomb
Meson bomb.:lol:
On the other hand, nukes have their uses.
- use em to mine asteroids, then set em of when the enemy is in range,
- Load a ship with them, then ram it into the target
- Use them in upperatmosphere to trigger EMPs > very devestaing in a computer dependant society
- Infiltrate an enemy ship with one and have it go off, destroying the ship
I take my lessons in interesting uses of nukes from John "Nuke 'em" Sheridan - the man who knows his nukes
Besides, in over 300 years im sure we'd come up with something more powerful that the H-Bomb or Neutron Bomb
And while a bomb 200 times weaker can blow up whole cities the Helios can't even damage a 16m fighter with shielding . . . :lol:
Well, I am all for seeing a "Missile Cruiser" That is primarily an anti-capship, and has a long barrel in the front, and fires torpedoes. After, what is a Railgun from Blue Planet than a missile? It's still a projectile, and creates a good amount of splash. I would love to make a torpedo custom-made for the Missile Cruiser, and implement it. Or is there already something like that?
FS2 blobs are slow though ... and have less damage potential than beams, even for a stationary target.
FS2 would have been more fun with longer range and faster moving blobs. There's countless times in missions where i'll see a cap ship dish out death dealing blobs non stop (and it looks ****ing cool) to something like a freighter, corvette, or cruiser that was just a couple of meters out of range of the blobs. Also i find that the blobs move a little too slowly. I wish they moved a little bit faster. Is it just me or do the blobs and projectiles in fs1 move faster than those in fs2? I always remembered the laser battles in fs1 to be more cool to watch as it was sort of star wars like.
It was cool in fs1. You just sit back and watch an enemy fighter fly close to good guys, and out of nowhere there's lots of projectiles on screen zipping around and the enemy got swatted very fast.
I still think beams have their place though. Unlike bombs, beams can't be intercepted, and the idea of the anti-fighter beam was notoriously effective. Beams are also instantaneous long range hits on big ships (unless it's terslashers).
I realize that many of these posts are in 08', but I think the best way to take out a Sathanas is this:
Dig a hole a kilometer deep, plant several Helios at the bottom, shoot off and detonate all within seven days
Bruce Willis needs to be on it while it blows