Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: nubbles526 on June 14, 2008, 05:03:47 am
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Well, was just thinking about FreeSpace 1. Probably, the true horror of FS1 is the Lucifer. I mean, we havn't seen such a ship which can destroy planets and capital ships in a few shots. But, what are the purposes of other capital ships inside FreeSpace 1? They are useful to transpot fighters at the early stages of the campaign. But after the invention of Hyperspace Drives on fighters, capital ships have lost their usability.
So, why did they make Capital ships in the first place? They are expensive, they could barely protect themselves without flaks and beams. They can be destroyed WITHOUT other capital ships. Two wings of bombers with fighter escort is enough to destroy an Orion. How embarrassing is that? They areonly good for the moral of the pilots, in my perpective.
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Probably, the true horror of FS1 is the Lucifer. I mean, we havn't seen such a ship which can destroy planets and capital ships in a few shots.
Akshully, the Lucifer (fleet) bombarded Vasuda Prime for 13 hours.
But, what are the purposes of other capital ships inside FreeSpace 1? They are useful to transpot fighters at the early stages of the campaign. But after the invention of Hyperspace Drives on fighters, capital ships have lost their usability.
So, why did they make Capital ships in the first place? They are expensive, they could barely protect themselves without flaks and beams. They can be destroyed WITHOUT other capital ships. Two wings of bombers with fighter escort is enough to destroy an Orion. How embarrassing is that? They areonly good for the moral of the pilots, in my perpective.
If you think back a bit more, you might remember that before the encounter with the Shivans, there was no such thing as "shields". Capital ships were a menace to smaller ships when the smaller ships weren't shielded. And two wings of bombers can take out an Orion? Correct me if I'm incorrect, but Orions and other destroyers are known to be able to launch fighters. Fighters that might have a remote possibility of providing anti-bomber support.
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for keeping lustrous generals under control??? look at what happened with Bosch... crappy ship... "the hell with command! Im making my own solar sistem right here!"
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They're essentially Carriers.
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We can all agree that Fenris are worthless meat, though, as a single Herc can take one down in less than a minute.
They're essentially Carriers.
Yeah. Sure, fighters have subspace drives, but the pilots need somewhere to live.
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If you think back a bit more, you might remember that before the encounter with the Shivans, there was no such thing as "shields". Capital ships were a menace to smaller ships when the smaller ships weren't shielded. And two wings of bombers can take out an Orion? Correct me if I'm incorrect, but Orions and other destroyers are known to be able to launch fighters. Fighters that might have a remote possibility of providing anti-bomber support.
I think Kie99 and Droid803 are correct....since pilot's live support system do run out.
But in terms of combat...an Orion can only survive from an attack is through fighters and bombers. On themselves, they are...in fact...useless.
A FS2 era capital ship could easily defend itself from a kamikaze attack a long with some fighter support. The FS1 mission where HOL suicides are used is such a pain.
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You can not secure a sistem with just fighters and bommber you need something with relly BIG guns to smash through the defences of the enemy .
Also i believe that now during FS2 capital ships are even more important then before .
With the advent of beam cannons and flack capital ships can grind to dust numerous wings of fighters and bombers. Sure we must agree that there are some exceptions such as the Orion for instance a ship which sacrifices aaaf abylaties for its sheer beam cannon firepower.
No matter how much you try you can never ever hope to beat an enemy with just fighters and bombers. I mean the Deimos for example can grind to dust an entire destroyer complement of fighters and bombers should it now be swarmed by all those ships at once.
Also instalatyons and other defended nodes will most defyneteli have the means to defend for a long time against fighter bomber assaults. This means you nead heavy cap ships for smashing through.
We should all remember that capital ships in FS2 suck not because they are not properly armed (well some of them arent) but because they are not used correctly or they do not have the proper escort .
And with the shivans that can jump on a dime not providing proper escort for your capships is THE biggest mistake you can make.
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Well clearly FS2 era ships in FS1 would totally skew the conflict.
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The behaviour of the capital ships in FreeSpace is badly skewed by the need for the player to feel useful. Based on the techroom descriptions and the reactions of characters to their presence, a FreeSpace capship is an awesome weapon.
The reason they're so vulnerable to fighters and bombers is because that's all the player can ever throw at them, and it would be slightly problematic if it took hundreds of bombers to kill a destroyer.
I get the feeling that they're supposed to be truly devastating vessels - even the Fenris - but this was passed over in favour of gameplay.
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The behaviour of the capital ships in FreeSpace is badly skewed by the need for the player to feel useful. Based on the techroom descriptions and the reactions of characters to their presence, a FreeSpace capship is an awesome weapon.
The reason they're so vulnerable to fighters and bombers is because that's all the player can ever throw at them, and it would be slightly problematic if it took hundreds of bombers to kill a destroyer.
I get the feeling that they're supposed to be truly devastating vessels - even the Fenris - but this was passed over in favour of gameplay.
it's true, player role was upholded, it's sad games always turn to be "not realistic"... but it's still a great game j^^
it's been tryed to minimize the dammage inflicted by the players guns??
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Well even think back to the beginning of FS1, the Orff takes out several wings of Anubis fighters while taking very little damage itself. Shields and weapons more powerful than the ML-16 are the Fenris's demise.
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I think the Fenris (the Levy only came in later) could have been useful to keep control over non-frontline systems, where the GTA didn't need a destroyer but did want some warship to be present, just in case.
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Actually, a Leviathan is legitimate threat.
It isn't that easy to kill one in a fighter. In FS1, the blobs can do serious damage even with shields, and in FS2, its 4 AAAfs will tear you to shreds. The Leviathan also has respectable anti-warship firepower in both games due to its Fusion Mortar, which is the most powerful warship-warship weapon in FS1 short of the Shivan Super Laser. (Vasudan Flux Cannon is not used)
Its the Fenris that is worthless due to its paper thin armor. Its "prescence" in the system doesn't do much as most likely, it'll be dead within seconds of a serious firefight. The Aten's no better, nor is the Cain. (The Lilith shall not be spoken of here.) Kamikaze Fenris, though, might me a legitimate tactic :P
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What I mean, is that the Fenris was probably used for counter-insurgency. Like, a whole bunch of stellar miners going on strike? Send in a Fenris and things will be OK. There aren't supposed to be 'serious firefights' in non frontline systems, so you don't need to pin a destroyer there.
Also, for destroyer escort, a Fenris would be nice. An Orion can't properly defend itself so one or two Fenris cruisers would buy it time to launch its fighters. After which, the Fenris is/are fighter-covered and can strike some serious blows to unshielded fighters.
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The FS1 Fenris can take out an Aten most of the time, and piss off a Cain pretty bad.
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Yeah, but the fact that any random loser in a fighter with a bank of hornets can kill it in a pass or two is rather disheartening.
I'd guess a Fenris could be used for destroyer escort, however, they'd probably be dead by the time the fighters were launched.
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Let's take the trinity (a fenris) for example. When it was stuck in the Nebula, it's beam cannons were offline. Notice how badly it could defend itself using only FS1 era weaponary, and the fact that it has bad armour. If I were terran command, I would chose to manufacture 2-5 wings of fighters rather than a fenris.
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Objectives.
You need something to defend/attack, a 'base' or 'flag' or the like, in the case of Freespace, it was a Capship. Make the capships too powerful, and the fighters cease to matter, make the fighters too powerful, and the Capships cease to matter. Considering your main enemy have some really nasty capships, I think it pretty much balances out.
After all, whilst fighters might be able to take out a capship with time (Remember, the Fenris is old compared to a lot of the fighters it is up against), a mission to kill a single enemy fighter, or even a wing of them would be over a heck of a lot faster.
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In FS1, as pointed out, fighters didn't have shields and they didn't have intersystem jump drives. So capital ships were needed, and it follows that you don't want to have several tons of fighter fuel and ordinance sitting defenseless somewhere in the system. With heavy armor plating and gun turrets, they became formidable forces, and portable fortresses. They can also carry large amounts of supplies, run or destroy blockades that would inflict heavy fighter casualties, and most importantly - provide a friendly base. Remember in FS1 that it was a war between two species. On-planet bases may not have been designed with the holding teams' physiology in mind, or they may have just left the ground troops alone so long as they didn't have any anti-capship weapons.
Regardless, there's an important psychological aspect to being on a ship in orbit vs being on a planet surrounded by thousands of aliens. They also serve as a rallying point or morale support (see Colossus).
I'm not sure why capital ships were kept in such great numbers during Freespace 2. It may have to do with the period of chaos after the first Shivan incursion. More police action of poorly-armed civilian ships, where a scary capital ship is more important than the raw force of a squadron of bombers. It also provides a platform for launching marines or holding prisoners.
It may just be that it was so ingrained in the way that GTVA tactics and strategy were laid out, fleet composition, etc. that they were unwilling to take such a radical step as eliminating capital ships entirely. Capships in FS2 are also pretty damn powerful when deployed in supporting groups. But you're right, in general they don't seem to be anywhere near as valuable as fighters, and there's minimal advantages to be had in transporting things (people or prisoners) where the Shivans are involved, at least outside of Capella or SOC capture operations.
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Regardless, there's an important psychological aspect to being on a ship in orbit vs being on a planet surrounded by thousands of aliens. They also serve as a rallying point or morale support (see Colossus).
Ooohhhh...I like this statement.
By the way, have you worked on the TAP build lately?
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The reason they never gave up capital ships is because while they did have intersystem jump drives that fit on fighters after the Great War, they were FRIGHTFULLY expensive. I remember it saying so somewhere in the tech room or something like that. Probably cost far more than the fighter itself. Thus, the Destroyers stuck around.
Also consider that the Tsunami bomb was a brand new tech, not even finished when FS1 started. For the first time, fighters and bombers were capable of actually killing destroyer class vessels, where before the best they had were Stilletos. Bombers like the Athena were probably meant to disarm and disable Typhons so the Orions and smaller ships could engage them at point blank range, not to destroy them alone. They probably tried this against the Shivans and got eaten alive, which likely led to the high losses of capital ships at the onset of the Great War. Hell, the Harbinger was originally designed for planetary bombardment, and only in desperation did they fight it with an engine and send it into the fight. Obviously before this point, they didn't consider it necessary for bombers to be able to kill destroyers by themselves.
The Fenris is horrible because even by FS1 it was an OLD ship. It was serving very early on in the 14 Year War, as early as from day one. The Leviathan was an uparmored version to make up for the fact that the Fenris was generally outclassed in a lot of fire fights. I'm betting they kept using them because they made a ton of them.
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I would note that even now, a single navy vessel, even one as large as a fleet carrier, with all its fighter wings, is highly vulnerable to a few squadrons of fighter/bombers or cruise missiles. In order for capital ships to be truly effective, you need a proper task force or battle group.
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I'd say that facing a Fenris in an unshielded Anubis is suicide.
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In one of them, yes. Several squadrons and the Fenris is the ship in trouble, even if the Anubis wings suffer heavy casualties.
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As has been pointed out a couple of times, the Fenris is probably the worst example to use with for fighter/capship comparisons. It was old at the start of Freespace 1.
Try going nose-nose with an Aeolus or Leviathan using anti-Fenris tactics and you'll be walking home.
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You can't sleep in a fighter wing. You can't move large amounts of ammunition and supplies. You can't carry thousands of troops for an invasion. You can't have your occupying force all sitting still in single seat fightercraft. They need to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, etc. You just can't occupy space with fighters alone.
The relationship between fighters and capital ships is constantly changing and evolving. Before shields capital ships had the edge on fighters. Once shields were developed and more powerful weapons came with them fighters gained an edge. As FS2 comes along, cruisers and corvettes develop better anti-fighter weapons (flak and AAA beams). While the player can easily take down a capital ship by himself, it's a lot harder than in the end of FS1.
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:yes:
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I remember command stating that inter-system subspace drives were very expensive. Outfitting thousands of fighters with them, as well as constructing more with each passing day as more fighters are coming out of mass production, the drain on money would be practically overwhelming. Stocking up a few squadrons of ships into a destroyer and sending that instead of individual fighters loaded with verry expensive drives would probably be more economical in the long run.
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I remember command stating that inter-system subspace drives were very expensive. Outfitting thousands of fighters with them, as well as constructing more with each passing day as more fighters are coming out of mass production, the drain on money would be practically overwhelming.
In FS1, when the dilemma of inter-system subspace drives for fighters was solved, they did start fitting them on all fighters. But that was most likely due to desperation caused by the Shivans and the Lucy in particular. In FS2 it was indeed stated that those drives are ****ing expensive and therefore reserved only for 1337 squadrons.
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Or they were most easily manufactured in Sol, like the Prometheus.
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That is also a valid option.
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During my tennancy of the GTD Galatea, it has been my point of view that we are used to help DEFEND positions, rather than ATTACK new ones. If I need to attack something, then I will send more agile fighters and/or bombers to dispose of any threat posed. After all, an Orion is a an expensive assest for the GTA to risk, as the wages of the combined 10,000 crew for 3 years will pay for one Orion.
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During my tennancy of the GTD Galatea, it has been my point of view that we are used to help DEFEND positions, rather than ATTACK new ones. If I need to attack something, then I will send more agile fighters and/or bombers to dispose of any threat posed. After all, an Orion is a an expensive assest for the GTA to risk, as the wages of the combined 10,000 crew for 3 years will pay for one Orion.
In other words:
The FS1 GTD Orion is an ammo shack, a pimped up one, but still an ammo shack, where bombers and fighters can resupply.
In FS 2 however... :p
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More accurately, an Orion is an moving ammo shack/barracks in FS1. Its more like a mobile base than a warship.
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The Fenris is horrible because even by FS1 it was an OLD ship. It was serving very early on in the 14 Year War, as early as from day one. The Leviathan was an uparmored version to make up for the fact that the Fenris was generally outclassed in a lot of fire fights. I'm betting they kept using them because they made a ton of them.
I think the FS1 Tech room description of the Fenris is revealing of the intended (story) nature of FS1 Capital ship combat: "The Fenris was designed as a strike cruiser, hence the decent speed and decent turning radius," or something to that effect, which implies that manuvering is important when you're fighting with blob turrets. Cruisers are small enough that they can slip in underneath a destroyers blind spots; areas where the cruiser would have greater firepower concentration against the destroyer then the destroyer would have against it. Also, though it isn't as blatantly apparent as it is with the hard-to-miss beam cannons of FS2, FS1 ships do indeed have "primary" batteries- the "Main Turret" of the Cain, the "Large Turrets" of the Orion, and the Fenris has it's fusion mortar. Being able to swiftly bring your primary weapons to bear while avoiding the enemies main batteries is vitally important.
That sounded more insightful and interesting when I though of it a few minutes ago.
As has been said elsewhere, the in-game weakness of capital ships is because of gameplay balance issues. Hornets are so devastating against naked hulls because they were balanced to be used against shielded fighters.
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The Fenris does kick cruiser ass in FS1, pit it against an Aten or even a Cain, for it's armor it does a whole lot of damage.
It'll even kill a wing of unshielded Seths
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Ships like the orion carry the fighters around, ships like the Aeolus escort those destroyers, ships like the deimos destroy those escort cruisers like the Aeolus, and ships like the orion kill the ships like the deimos and carry around fighters which are killed by the aeolus.
You see, it's all a huge, complex, dynamic game of rock-paper-scissors where people can add things like "a-bombs" and "armor piercing 30mm bullets" into the game.
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Is there any way to make blob turrets better? Id love to have what they fire move at about 3x the speed that they do now, firing faster as well. I think it would be cool to see a Typhon vs Orion battle in terms of what capships are supposed to be able to do, not ones that are slowed down for the sake of the player ;7
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OK, hold off and think for a second. Grab an Apollo or a Valkyrie fighter. And some ML-16s. And some Tempests or Rockeyes. Shut down your shields. Now try it. ;)
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Is there any way to make blob turrets better? Id love to have what they fire move at about 3x the speed that they do now, firing faster as well. I think it would be cool to see a Typhon vs Orion battle in terms of what capships are supposed to be able to do, not ones that are slowed down for the sake of the player ;7
Mod the weapons.tbl a bit and you'll have that effect. Also, add more damage to those weapons. Plus, in the ships.tbl trible the capital ship HP. Then have fun trying to survive the crossfire.
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I remember command stating that inter-system subspace drives were very expensive. Outfitting thousands of fighters with them, as well as constructing more with each passing day as more fighters are coming out of mass production, the drain on money would be practically overwhelming. Stocking up a few squadrons of ships into a destroyer and sending that instead of individual fighters loaded with verry expensive drives would probably be more economical in the long run.
Really? Wow....I never knew there was such canon theory about refitting inter-system jumps on fighters.
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Mod the weapons.tbl a bit and you'll have that effect. Also, add more damage to those weapons. Plus, in the ships.tbl trible the capital ship HP. Then have fun trying to survive the crossfire.
Where would I find weapons.tbl? I downloaded all my stuff from Tureys installer (got tired of finding everything seperate with my install disks) and theres nothing in my data/tables folder. I also did a search and it cant find the file anywhere :confused:
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its in root_fs2.vp
open it with a VP viewer.
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I remember command stating that inter-system subspace drives were very expensive. Outfitting thousands of fighters with them, as well as constructing more with each passing day as more fighters are coming out of mass production, the drain on money would be practically overwhelming. Stocking up a few squadrons of ships into a destroyer and sending that instead of individual fighters loaded with verry expensive drives would probably be more economical in the long run.
Really? Wow....I never knew there was such canon theory about refitting inter-system jumps on fighters.
Not theory CBAnim canon. ;) In FS1, not too aweful long after meeting the Shivans.
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-allways knew that remembering the oddest bits-and-pieces of information would help me out one day-
Woo. Thanks Jr, i forgot where exactly i remembered it from...
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its in root_fs2.vp
open it with a VP viewer.
Alright well, I can open and edit the .tbl files just fine, but I cant manage to be able to save any of my changes. Im using vpview32_20 that comes with the FS2 download. Is there some other tool out there that can manage to edit/save changes in VP files? I tried a google search but all I managed to find was stuff relating to getting VP positions online :lol:
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Donno, I'd just extract them and put them into data/tables.
Or, you could use one of these:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Maja
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/VPMage
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/QuickVP
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Thanks for the info. I really encourage everyone to try out increased velocity for the terran huge/regular/weak turrets. 1500 for regular turrets and 1000 for huge turrets was really cool to watch as 2 Orions slugged it out with nothing but blobs. Fire rate was also decreased to .5 seconds for reg turrets and 1 second for huge turrets, and just for looks, I increased the length of each laser by about 10x for each laser. I also tried increasing the damage and just for fun put 4 bomber wings per side assigned to attack the enemy Orion. I might have increased the damage a little too much though, as 2 hits from a huge turret destroyed an Ursa :p Really seemed like what capships should be able to do. Though with the increased damage it wasnt long before everyone was dead, including me :lol: Ill for sure be using these edits to play the campaigns though, hopefully nothing game breaking comes up :nervous:
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In FS1, as has been said, capital ships probably played a large role during the 14-year war since attack craft were incapable of carrying weapons powerful enough to destroy large warships.
For FS2, I think you can actually put it in terms of modern naval warfare. Fighters are the kings (modern jet fighters). But you still have destroyers (Deimos corvettes), frigates (Aeolus cruisers), and carriers (Freespace Destroyers). Remember that mission in FS2 where you had to escort the Bastion to the jump gate while it was defended by 3 Aeolus cruisers? Seriously, heavy flak and AAAf beam concentration makes it very costly to attempt to attack a destroyer without other cap ship support.
Mod the weapons.tbl a bit and you'll have that effect. Also, add more damage to those weapons. Plus, in the ships.tbl trible the capital ship HP. Then have fun trying to survive the crossfire.
Heh, reminded me of X-Wing Alliance a bit. That is one game that pulls off the capship/fighter balance very well. Flying a fighter getting between an MC-80 and a Star Destroyer slugging it out was pretty suicidal. Chances of taking out anything heavier than a corvette in a fighter was very hard, save impossible if you were attacking an ISD. It would be interesting to re-balance FreeSpace to make the primary purpose of fighters to intercept small ships and bombers and all but impossible to destroy capital ships with fighter weaponry.
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I dunno what version of X-Wing Alliance you were playing, but apparently it wasn't the same as me. Damn Capships were pussies in that. Not nearly as pussified as in FreeSpace, but still an X-Wing shouldn't be able to fly around into an ISD'd blindspot and fire at it until it slowly dies.
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I think the biggest problem FS2 had for capship combat was beams. People have a hard time relating numbers to actual lives, even in the real world. 39,000 people were killed (initially) when the first nuclear bomb detonated, according to Wikipedia. Can you really conceive of that? I don't think I can. I don't think any human being can really, truly understand the loss of that many lives.
According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
For comparison, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (according to wikipedia) is the largest aircraft carrier in the world, has a crew of about 5,700, and is just 340 m long.
So destroying a Fenris is the equivalent to destroying a small town's worth of people. Destroying a Hecate is comparable to destroying two aircraft carriers. The destruction of the Colossus is roughly equivalent to the dropping of the first atomic bomb, and roughly 1/5 the death toll of the second. Yet we see all kinds of examples where an Aeolus is destroyed by a surprise beam salvo or a Fenris/Leviathan is destroyed by a runaway group of bombers. The destruction of the Lysander in the nebula occurs in a matter of seconds, yet represents about 3,300 people lost. Escape pods are never launched except as an afterthought when a Destroyer has nothing else to do.
And space is a lot more volatile medium for humans than water is. Not to mention that the explosion that takes out something that's 2km long has got one hell of a punch. Going back to the "Little Boy" example, the second atomic bomb, the force of the blast was 5psi at 1.6km away from the center of the blast. In Freespace 2, the hull of the ship is vaporized even 1km away from the blast. The only thing keeping anything within firing range alive would seem to be the lack of air around the exploding ship. Unfortunately for the crew in the tightly cramped passages of the ship, they have an abundance of air (for a short while anyway). It would be interesting to calculate if an Orion exploding in the atmosphere of a planet would represent an extinction-level event. Not to mention a Meson bomb...
Now you're trying to convey that scale of loss with an explosion sound and voice acting. The Lysander gets vaporized in ten seconds by a surprise shot from a Ravana's beam cannons. Everybody in the battlegroup has just lost dozens or hundreds of people they knew, just gone. It's really not something that you can really conceive of happening in ten seconds on the scale that it happens in Freespace. Without beams, you'd have several minutes of intense fighting, and then one of the ships would keel over and die. It might still lack any of the true impact it would have, but it would still seem more significant. With beams, a Fenris basically becomes a flying tin coffin for a thousand people.
Mackie makes a snide comment about life being cheap in earlier centuries in Derelict; Life actually seems like it's a whole lot cheaper in the Freespace universe.
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It's war. You expect everyone to heroicaly survive there like in our action movies? And ships are hard to build... The GTVA was arrogant in FS2 and built bigger-and-stronger, instead of upgrading the older ships ( in armour terms I mean ).
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Obviously they were expecting a second Lucifer with assorted Cains and Liliths, in which case they certainly would have won.
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*Snip*
Yeah, I`ve thought of that every now and then. Like in the mission where the Repulse is destroyed, the Colossus says "You`re sacrificing tens of thousands of lives for nothing!" Last time I played that, I though "Wow, just think of all the Orions I`ve destroyed over the whole time I played FreeSpace. The deaths of millions are on my hands."
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FreeSpace messed up my conscience, but not as much as Halo...
Seriously, I think that the Vindicator and Uhuru were on a skeleton crew or something... :(
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According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?
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Perhaps the Dashor had more refugees on it... Kind of stupid to do what it did in that case.
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What refugees? From where should they have come?
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I also think that 6'000 is too much for such expendable ship.
About GTVA and Lucifer thread in FS2 there is a saying:
"When new war begin, all sides are perfectly prepared to wage the warfare of the previous war" - Sun Tzu or something like that ?
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What refugees? From where should they have come?
Are you joking? Capella, where else!?! :wtf:
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Perhaps the Dashor had more refugees on it... Kind of stupid to do what it did in that case.
Which Dashor are you talkin' 'bout? This Dahshor (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FreeSpace_2_Vasudan_Ship_Database#GVCv_Dahshor) or some other?
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Oh bloody **** I meant Nebtuu.
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Uh... that was rather too early for evacuation. The Dashor was going INTO the hot zone.
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Yeah I see that now... But the Nebtuu point still stands.
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Wouldn't crews be more likely to scale with the cube of length?
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I was thinking that, but most ships are more or less a cuboid and proportionally scale with the length.
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The Colossus is roughly 3X as long as the Orion and has 3X the crew.
But the population density on the Orion is ridiculously small, so it must be tiny on the Colossus.
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According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?
So do I, actually. What would 10,000 people do in an Orion, anyway? Are there that many jobs/positions to fill?
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According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?
So do I, actually. What would 10,000 people do in an Orion, anyway? Are there that many jobs/positions to fill?
Maybe bureaucratic errors? Like people responsible for the oil-powered boiler room on the ship.
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Freeloaders and stowaways!
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Maybe it`s the GTVA`s solution to overpopulation...
Or maybe that`s where they put their prisoners.
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Well, destroyers are flagships. And the only capital ships that have hangars. They have ground forces, etc. You need engineering, maintenance, soldiers, gunnery, NAV, comms, local command ( if main base is not in system/in contact ), sensors, pilots, etc. I do think that all that people are actually needed. A lot of them can be ground forces, medical, etc.
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For a ship that big, you'd end up with a lot of replication. Damage-control teams would have to number in the thousands, otherwise you could get caught with one section of the ship on fire and nobody to put it out. Or a beam cannon would shut down, and you'd have to send a team to jog clear across the ship to fix it. Further specialization of labor would also require more personnel - does the guy who knows how to fix the beam cannons really know how to safely put a fusion reactor together? Plus you don't want all your engineers who know how the engines to get killed when the ship starts taking damage and the engine compartment gets irradiated in a reactor breach.
(Of course in FS2, if you start taking severe damage besides hull damage you're pretty much dead. However, I get the feeling that crew specs were made without consideration to gameplay constraints and more to sound right.)
Gunners would be more spread out, and the weapons systems on board a Destroyer are undoubtedly more complex/volatile than weapons systems of today. You really don't want the guy who's shooting missiles to also be in charge of checking all of the antimatter rounds' containment is good.
The ship is just bigger. You need more people for the laundry facilities, more cooks, and so on. Without knowing what kind of amenities a typical destroyer provides, you may also have to have a number of civilians to operate those amenities. Also, factor in medical assistance and experts to provide support with any variety of problems a planet may be facing - civil unrest, natural disasters, etc. Marines to patrol the corridors to prevent someone from committing sabotage. Officers to be in charge of all of the additional personnel. Supply officers to handle the hundreds of thousands of missiles, weapons, food, water, waste, ships, and more on board the ship.
Now you get to the flight deck. You need pilots, and people to handle the pilots' and provide some measure of support to them. You need backup pilots. You need crews to service the fighters and backup crews there, as well. You need people in charge of the hangar bays, you need the little guy who waves the wands for fighters and you need the guy who makes sure that the landing lights are on and working.
You need safety officers - people who make sure that procedure is being followed and who account for all radiation in non-safe areas and ensure that it's within acceptable limits.
And you may need support crews for non-fightercraft, although I can't think of a time that we've seen a destroyer launching a shuttle or freighter to provide support to a planet, it's undoubtedly a possibility.
And you need bureaucrats and maybe even lawyers, since a Destroyer would undoubtedly be considered a powerful representative of the GTVA and the Captain of the ship would need legal and representative advice on some matters to ensure that he didn't accidentally start an interstellar war with routine police action. Granted, he could probably outsource this with the advanced subspace computer technology, but the Freespace universe still seems to value person-to-person contact, and in most situations where it's needed the Destroyer itself wouldn't be under threat of destruction.
So overall there's a lot of jobs to fill, and I've skimmed over some of what could be the most numerous - support personnel and civilians to run movie theaters, stores, etc. on board the ships. Some of those jobs, like supply officers, technicians, and medics would scale up dramatically with the ship size in order to ensure an orderly distribution that can provide timely assistance during a crisis. You'd also have to replicate many of the amenities to be within walking distance, in case the turbolifts or equivalent went down - you don't want people dying because the med center is a klick away and a piece of debris is lodged in the turboshafts.
Of course all this seems like a total waste since in the FS2 universe, a beam cannon will cream your craft in a matter of seconds, damage control or no. You might as well fly with a skeleton crew and automated gunnery for all the good it usually seems to do.
EDIT: And might I add that the destructive force required to take down a destroyer must be incredible, since its hull can withstand point-blank detonations from antimatter weaponry without any visible deformation (presumably there are scorch marks).
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According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?
I think a Deimos would have less.
Vasuda Prime had somewhat of an evacuation before it was bombed.
Sol was just cut off. No evacuation. I would expect the Terran population to be less than the Vasudan population.
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Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?
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Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?
Most.
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4 bilion Vasudans. I'd take it that a lot of them survived though, as a homeworld would have much more civies at that year.
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Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?
Well there were the guys Alpha 1 saved in Exodus, for a start.
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4 bilion Vasudans. I'd take it that a lot of them survived though, as a homeworld would have much more civies at that year.
But it is a desert planet which is relatively inhospitable.
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So? Earth will be similar by 2335 ;)
If seriously, there'd still be AT LEAST 8 bilion Vasudans there. Earth would have much more. . .
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So? Earth will be similar by 2335 ;)
Yeah, but it is said that the Vasudans were forced into space prematurely because Vasuda Prime was so inhospitable. This kind of leads me to the conclusion that the Vasudans eagerly left Vasuda Prime to find new life on space stations and stuff.
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So? Earth will be similar by 2335 ;)
Yeah, but it is said that the Vasudans were forced into space prematurely because Vasuda Prime was so inhospitable. This kind of leads me to the conclusion that the Vasudans eagerly left Vasuda Prime to find new life on space stations and stuff.
Imo, the Vasudans are the surviving Ancients.
But that's my theory.
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According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.
According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?
So do I, actually. What would 10,000 people do in an Orion, anyway? Are there that many jobs/positions to fill?
Alright, some current Navy statistics:
USS Nimitz-class carrier: 317 meters long, 3200 crew.
USS Gerald Ford-class carrier: 333 meters long, 4600 crew.
The Charles de Gaulle, fully-loaded, holds a complement of about 2000 in a 260 meter hull.
And those ships are about 15% as long as an Orion, but pack one-third, half, and one-fifth the crew, respectively.
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They're also probably not nearly so automated.
Crew casualities seem to be relatively rare aboard GTVA ships; the only time they're even mentioned is when the GTD Phoenicia takes it on the chin from quad BFReds, which except for ship-guardian ought to blow the Phoenicia away; even then, it's only half or quarter of the crew (I forget which at the moment). That's an impressive achievement.
My guess would be GTVA ships operate on an armored box concept and the majority of the ship we actually see is nothing more than the exterior hull, just like a submarine. It's there for show and extra protection; they probably employ a triple or more hulled design wrapped around a relatively small and heavily armored crew area in the center. There's a lot of space to fill, engineering areas, machining shops; most of these ships probably aren't capable of atmospheric entry and they appear able to conduct operations almost indefinitely, as well as repairing even serious damage in the field. All this is wrapped around the central armored box section as well.
The central armored box houses critical systems such as power, manuvering, and the crew (the last while in combat); crew quarters may be placed outside or inside the box depending on the size of the vessel and other considerations; corvettes I would assume have quarters outside the central box, destroyers inside. In combat, everything outside that armored box is emptied of crew and depressurized. It acts as extra sacrificial armor for the central armored box; if well-compartmented this could actually go long way to explaining the incredible durablity of GTVA craft. Explosions won't transmit through vaccum, so a multiple-hulled design with a lot of sacrificial compartmented space acting as voids could absorb a great deal of raw explosive power, even nuclear and antimatter. A solid-shot armor piercing weapon would be much more effective, but the ability of armor to stop or deflect such a weapon cannot be underestimated. Having once made a study of battleship protective schemes I know just how hard it is to get a round through a well-designed set of defensive armor.
That would also explain the utility of beam cannon; they can't be deflected and a void space won't keep them from transmitting their destructive energy forward to the next bulkhead.
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And besides the armor, one has to make room for the normal/subspace engines and weapons systems. I'd imagine those beam cannon heatsinks are rather sizable, and the engines required to move ships this large have to be enormous. In fact, in the Colossus cutscene from FS2, a set of boxes appears inside the Colossus's hull when its crew complement is mentioned...but the entire rear third or so of the ship is empty, which would suggest that it's taken up by the engines. (The boxes also seem to be set well within the hull, which would back up the multiple-hulls theory.)
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This thread has taken a very interesting turn. :yes:
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:yes: about the multiple hulls.
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And besides the armor, one has to make room for the normal/subspace engines and weapons systems. I'd imagine those beam cannon heatsinks are rather sizable, and the engines required to move ships this large have to be enormous. In fact, in the Colossus cutscene from FS2, a set of boxes appears inside the Colossus's hull when its crew complement is mentioned...but the entire rear third or so of the ship is empty, which would suggest that it's taken up by the engines. (The boxes also seem to be set well within the hull, which would back up the multiple-hulls theory.)
NGTM1R, I just want to second Mongoose's suggestion that the Colossus cutscene provides strong evidence for your armored-box theory.
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Hmmm...this is an interesting revelation.
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I agree with NGTM about the multiple hulls. I do believe this is indeed the case with Freespace 2 capital ships, that they have multiple hulls to afford them better protection. The bridge of the ship could even be lowered in battle, affording yet more protection.
=edit=
The Phoenicia never got away when ever I played Bear Baiting. It always dies.
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It does have ship-guardian on it, but depending on the vagaries of your computer, it may or may not actually survive due to the way beam damage is applied.
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When I played, it would sometimes survive and sometimes die. I always thought that was weird...
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It survives only in retail. SCP has done some c**p that the Ship-Guardian flag doesn't work in the Phoenicia's case, and it dies. So it's the SCP's fault for all those lives lost aboard the Phoenicia !
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It survives only in retail. SCP has done some c**p that the Ship-Guardian flag doesn't work in the Phoenicia's case, and it dies. So it's the SCP's fault for all those lives lost aboard the Phoenicia !
:lol:
I always thought it was meant to die....
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It survives only in retail. SCP has done some c**p that the Ship-Guardian flag doesn't work in the Phoenicia's case, and it dies. So it's the SCP's fault for all those lives lost aboard the Phoenicia !
I've seen in live in 3.6.7 at least.
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It survives only in retail. SCP has done some c**p that the Ship-Guardian flag doesn't work in the Phoenicia's case, and it dies. So it's the SCP's fault for all those lives lost aboard the Phoenicia !
I've seen in live in 3.6.7 at least.
Well, it never died to me on retail. But as soon as I play that mission on SCP- it dies. And I remember reading somewhere that it is really the SCP's fault...
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I do remember my friend telling me that he tried to save the Phoenicia by making it invulnerable, but only succeeded in making it VULNERABLE.
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I agree with NGTM about the multiple hulls. I do believe this is indeed the case with Freespace 2 capital ships, that they have multiple hulls to afford them better protection. The bridge of the ship could even be lowered in battle, affording yet more protection.
I'm pretty sure FS ships, like any sensible warship, have a CIC buried deep inside the hull -- not an external bridge that could be raised or lowered.
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:yes:
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Well, the "bridge" subsystem on the GVD Hatshepsut is where the neck attaches to the body, so, yeah, it probably isn't some prominent structure like on ISDs and such.
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If you ask me, having the bridge on the neck of the ship is possibly the worst possible location. I have a penchant for shooting thin sections of ships.
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In Freespace 2, the hull of the ship is vaporized even 1km away from the blast. The only thing keeping anything within firing range alive would seem to be the lack of air around the exploding ship. Unfortunately for the crew in the tightly cramped passages of the ship, they have an abundance of air (for a short while anyway). It would be interesting to calculate if an Orion exploding in the atmosphere of a planet would represent an extinction-level event. Not to mention a Meson bomb...
...And now we know how the Lucy's planetary bombardment is so effective. ;) ID4, anyone? .. except, I think Lucy = worse... somehow. But there's only one Lucy, and ID4 had many ships. Perhaps the Lucy makes a huge overpressurized wave of air surrounding the planetary beam... its reaction with the atmosphere / ozone would be interesting.
EDIT: And, today's warships employ multiple hulls (forget what they're called ATM.. bulkheads??).
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Bulkhead is a generalized naval term for a wall; the floor is the deck, the ceiling the overhead. The majority of modern warships actually don't employ a double-hull configuration as it's considered superfluous. If 2000 pounds of high explosive detonate under your keel you've had it, end of story. It's much more common on civilian ships, particularly tankers, which are worried about things like grounding and rocks.
Most submarines could be argued to have a double hull, except, simply put, they don't; the exterior isn't designed to do anything more than provide a hydrodynamic shape. The hull is the interior pressure hull, which is what actually keeps water out. A very few have had true double hulls; the Typhoon did, in addition to a number of other measures like placing batteries outboard of the inner pressure hull which made it possibly the only submarine ever designed that could take a heavy torpedo and live to tell. Some of the other Russian monsters like the Oscar had double pressure hulls as well, which might or might not have helped them when faced with common aerial and shipboard ASW weapons...though almost certainly would have availed them nothing if faced with a Mark 48.
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Well, the "bridge" subsystem on the GVD Hatshepsut is where the neck attaches to the body, so, yeah, it probably isn't some prominent structure like on ISDs and such.
Well, the bridge on the ISD is located in roughly the center of the front face of the command tower. That huge structure on top between the shield domes is an array of some sort. Apparently the bridge on the ISD is, especially the SSDs, is very heavily shielded and not likely to be damaged by weapons fire short of anything but a direct hit.
In Battlestar Galactica (the new one), the CIC on the Galactica is much more like a submarine command deck. It's located deep within the hull, which is the smartest place for a CIC.
Some books do it this way too -specifically the ships in the Honor Harrington series all have the bridges located deep within the armoured hull. Though in that universe the goal is to avoid getting hit, since any hit is almost guaranteed to penetrate the hull.
If we went with the double-hull for freespace ships, I would bet the bridge is located deep inside the ship.