Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Damage on August 02, 2015, 06:00:06 pm
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This was very briefly touched on in the "Combining UEF and GTVA" thread several days ago, and it got me thinking:
Premise: The UEF fighters and bombers seen during WiH would perform as well as or better than the GTVA's equivalent designs during the Main FS2 Campaign.
Caveats: The UEF's fighter/bomber designs seen during BP:WiH are on a par with the TEI ships in use by the GTVA in Sol, therefore their inclusion in a campaign from thirty years ago is at best a thought exercise that we can test to only a limited degree. (In short, does their inclusion in past events constitute "cheating" in some way?)
A brief search through the forums was inconclusive, though I suspect several people have actually put together the necessary mishmash of files to make it work. The notion seems simple enough at first, though a bit daunting. Consider the following questions:
1 -- Do we replace just the fighters and bombers, or do we include all the capital ships with their UEF equivalents?
2 -- Do we play-test the missions for balance and scripted events?
3 -- Would the early mission adjustments have effects later in the campaign's plot, and if so, is it necessary to model them as well?
These are not remotely all the questions that will come up during a thought exercise like this, but they touch a few of the basics.
My questions are: has anyone else done this already? If so, how did it work out? If not, does anyone else have any interest whatsoever?
Again, this is only a thought exercise, but it's certainly more entertaining than anything else I have going on right now. I'm planning to work on this myself for a couple weeks, though testing will be difficult until I get some hardware replaced. I'm interested in the results of these tests at least. However, if I get a strong negative feedback response on this topic, I'll let it go.
Looking forward to comments!
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I briefly tried this with TEV ships...
replacing the Myrmidon with the Kulas or how it is called and so on.
Trust me, the battle before the Sathanas kills the Colossus is a funny experience :D
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I never tried this with FS2, but I did go through several FSPort missions and replace GTA ships with UEF ones....It was a bloodbath. Vasudans and Shivans never stood a chance. It think it was called "The Great War(in Heaven)" if you want to see it.
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Didn't try it with UEF ships, but TEI fighters dominate pretty hard on the main campaign. Nyx instead of Erynis is pretty funny and the Atalanta is boss.
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I think I did something like this a while ago; modded a mission or two in the FS2 campaign to let me pilot some WiH fighters, with WiH weapons.
Holy **** did it feel good. Well, good and broken, anyway. Kentaurois can completely outmaneuver any Shivan fighter that isn't a Dragon, and have much greater effective firepower than all but Shivan heavy bombers. But most of all--that glorious top speed makes all of those "cover a ridiculously huge area from rapidly appearing wings of Shivan bombers/fighters jumping in everywhere" missions become so much less annoying.
And then you get to pilot a Uriel, Durga, or Vajradhara against a Sathanas, and weep glorious tears of joy at no longer having to deal with 10-second, highly finicky lock-on times, 30-second rearm times, or painfully slow torpedoes.
Of course, it's not just UEF craft that eclipse their FS2 counterparts; the Nyx bulldozes its way through everything, so long as you don't need to get there particularly fast, the Atalanta will dance circles around nearly all Shivan craft, and the Draco makes covering large areas just as much of a breeze as it is with Kents. And of course, all hail the glorious Balor (finally giving the Maxim an effective, versatile, and energy-cheap companion weapon for everything non-anti-ship related). And for nebula missions, you've got the wonderful Aurora.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot the UEF stealth fighter. Load it with the shotgun-type cannon and go to town on some Shivans.
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If the question is merely one of modding, then it's a moot point. It's no contest. If the question is about how the WiH ships are way more effective in GTVA's space when they were designed for Sol, then that would be a far more interesting question. BP's ships are, on the whole, way more advanced than FS2 ships, so it shouldn't even be a surprise. Any world war 2 army would wipe the floor with any world war 1 army.
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If the question is merely one of modding, then it's a moot point. It's no contest. If the question is about how the WiH ships are way more effective in GTVA's space when they were designed for Sol, then that would be a far more interesting question. BP's ships are, on the whole, way more advanced than FS2 ships, so it shouldn't even be a surprise. Any world war 2 army would wipe the floor with any world war 1 army.
This is pretty much where I was going in my initial post. If it was to be truly "fair" we'd need to know what ships/fighters were available to the UEF 30 years previously--some sort of hybrid force of remnant FS1 designs with pre-WIH designs just beginning to show up. And I don't think any of that has been really touched on in BP lore yet.
Seems like WiH ships in FS2 (or TEI ships in same) leads to a foregone conclusion. (Especially the TEI designs, they're specifically designed for the rapid elimination of Shivan threats.) I doubt anything otherwise notable would be learned here.
I would like to see how the UEF ships would operate outside the Sol theater, but this has been discussed in other threads.
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You have seen that, the 14th battlegroup basically fought the war it was ready for in the alternate dimension. And quite successfully in all accounts.
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You have seen that, the 14th battlegroup basically fought the war it was ready for in the alternate dimension. And quite successfully in all accounts.
Their only issue was running out of supply truly. AND, from what we've seen, GTVA still doesn't have any preplanned Sathanas contingency. (they just repeated the bomber disarm, because it worked "the last time", didn't give any impression of beeing prepared and drilled for that)
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The Sathanas engagement was a bit of a tactical mess as the juggernaut ambushed the Orestes immediately after the Lucifer engagement was resolved, at a time when half the battlegroup was unavailable.
The scenarios that GTVA crews have drilled for probably match the final stages of that engagement - multiple capship shock jumps at the flanks once strikecraft waves have taken out the forward beams.
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Truth be told...disable the forward beams of a Sathanas and it's just a big piece of junk...
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Truth be told...disable the forward beams of a Sathanas and it's just a big piece of junk...
Except those forward beams are not easy to disarm. Also, the Sathanas has a large fighter compliment, as well as a powerful rear facing beam cannon. In addition, we don't know what improvements the shivans may have made to the warship in the last 18 years. Oh and there's like 100 of them
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Truth be told...disable the forward beams of a Sathanas and it's just a big piece of junk...
Except those forward beams are not easy to disarm. Also, the Sathanas has a large fighter compliment, as well as a powerful rear facing beam cannon. In addition, we don't know what improvements the shivans may have made to the warship in the last 18 years. Oh and there's like 100 of them
Confirmed shivan sympathizer.
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You can in fact see some improvements in AoA. She's not toothless without the forward beams.
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Sathanas discussion poses an interesting battle proposal. Hollywood ending of FS2 with a bunch of fighters and bombers bombing and Maximing those 400+ Sathanas beams. Too bad no PC can run such a mission.
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Truth be told...disable the forward beams of a Sathanas and it's just a big piece of junk...
That applied to just any ship. Kill their turrets, and they are nuthing.
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You have seen that, the 14th battlegroup basically fought the war it was ready for in the alternate dimension. And quite successfully in all accounts.
Indeed. For all the trouble the events of AoA caused the GTVA, those events DID provide excellent data on how the next generation of GTVA warships, craft, tactics, and technology would fare in a new war with the Shivans. As well as data on what the next tier of Shivan capabilities would look like--namely, the SSJ Dante (whose defeat I could only imagine happening through massive fighter and bomber assault to destroy its main beam cannons, followed by a massive assault by TEI warships...though even then, it'd be hard to prevent the Dante from just fleeing the system. Not sure how tough its engines are, but you'd have to disable those as well to ensure a kill).
Turns out, the TEI succeeded far better than anyone had predicted. Hell, this held true even BEFORE many components of the TEI could be fielded. I mean, imagine if the 14th BG had any of the TEI fighters beyond the Aurora and Kulas, or a Diomedes-class corvette? Being able to pilot a Draco would have made the situation in Forced Entry far easier, for instance, and the Nyx would have made taking out the main beams of Shivan destroyers far easier in that mission where the Temeraire (can't remember the spelling) faced three of them at once (and then another three on top of that).
But the sheer variety and depth of "testing" and experience the 14th got was astounding, in hindsight. You had a cruiser handle some fighters (and a bomber?) on its own, testing its point-defenses, as well as testing of its abilities to provide support to larger ships in major fleet engagements. You had thorough testing of the Aurora, including in nebula conditions. You had thorough testing of the Titan (anti-ship capabilities, mobility, carrier capabilities, shock-jumping, torpedo usage, how effective its secondary armament would be, its point defenses, and how well its armor stood up against Shivan beams) and Raynor (its rapid precision jumping, its speed, its ability to engage multiple Shivan warships simultaneously, how it could use its lesser carrier capacity to both soften enemy warships and launch precision strikes against an enemy's main armament before entering engagement range, how well its pulse turrets worked in an anti-ship role, and how well its point defenses and limited carrier capacity could work on defense) both. Shock-jumping doctrine was tested (the Temeraire, Labuchere, and Bretoniae shock-jumping a Demon and obliterating it in a single salvo, all vectored in by a single Aurora, was a pretty good demonstration of how damn efficient this tactic could be with the new TEI ships). Hell, the 14th even took on a Sathanas and won, with zero losses--using the design strengths of the Raynor-class, shock-jumping capabilities of the Titan, Chimera, and Bellerophon classes, as well as the newly reinforced doctrine of outmaneuvering and outrunning a Sathanas with warships while striking its beam cannons with fighters and bombers, THEN dog-piling the juggernaut with massive firepower. Additionally, you had thorough testing of the logistics ships, two of which keeping an entire battlegroup fully operational despite days (how long was it, exactly? A week? Two?) of intense combat, running and jumping everywhere, taking and repairing damage, etc. More than a battlegroup, actually, when you factor in the Sanctuary: a destroyer-sized, very old, very worn-down ship that sustained significant damage and had long-accumulated maintenance issues.
Really, if the Tev leadership wasn't intent on keeping the events of AoA completely secret, they would serve as a massive morale boost (well, provided you left out the discovery of the SSJ Dante, or seeing dozens of Sathanas juggernauts again). You basically had the complete and utter vindication of the TEI, even when many of its components had yet to be fielded.
Really, the only major role the TEI still leaves unfilled (that even CAN be reasonably filled--I'm looking at you, warship-tank for destroyers/juggernauts) is 'heavy bomber'--important, because of how vital the role is when dealing with juggernauts. Well, that, and perhaps 'gunship', given how potent they've proven to be in the GTA-UEF war. I'm not sure how well the TEI covers the 'artillery ship' role, since we do actually see heavy beam artillery used in Her Finest Hour, but in that case it was mostly done by stationary beam cannon sentries, on defense, supported by two AWACS and three Auroras; I'm not sure whether a dedicated beam-artillery ship is needed to fill this role, or if existing ships can do it if supported by an AWACS or something. Anyway, Uriels can be godsend for de-fanging Shivan destroyers and even juggernauts before sending warships in to engage, and can make Shivan cruisers and corvettes non-threats to ships in short order. They're efficient and effective enough that they're quite practical to have even in small numbers, and the fact that they can also act as quasi-bombers if need be (given that they can carry light torpedoes, their gauss gun's respectable hull damage, good durability, presence of a turret, and the primary firepower's damage output and versatility) just ups their appeal.
Add in how well the Slammer addresses waves of Shivan bombers, how the Scalpel is versatile enough to be a viable supplementary weapon rather than an extremely niche "close-range subsystem killer", and how well the Durga both serves as a heavy bomber and fits the 'high-offense, high-DPS, high-mobility" doctrine the Tevs have going, and integrating those weapons/craft would bolster the TEI significantly. (With the Durga, I'm aware that it's quite expensive to produce and maintain--the idea would be that these are a strategic asset, very limited in quantity, but used carefully and sparingly when either needed or potentially extremely useful without significant risk involved; they'd basically be a vastly more effective Ursa, so there'd only be a few on each destroyer, at most.)
...I really wish the Draco was playable in AoA. Come to think of it, with the exception of Aristeia, every "cover a huge area from waves of fighters/bombers" mission in BP denies you the use of any of the new craft that are designed for this mission profile or capable of handling it well, annoyingly (though in Delenda Est's case, it's more that you have much more to worry about than just said role, so you have to take a slow gunship instead of a fast interceptor). Not sure if the mission in Jupiter's atmosphere counts, though, given how you get to deploy a bunch of turrets and only have to actually defend a single point from big, well-defined waves of attackers coming from a single direction.
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**** yeah
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I love that analysis. Wish I'd thought of it!
TEI doctrine may already have the "heavy bomber" role covered with the subspace missile strikes. Their only requirement is accurate targeting information provided by AWACs spotters or tag-missiles. What they lack in surgical precision they make up for in quantity--though we haven't seen the "minimum reload time" for these. (I also do not want to see what the Shivan adapted response to that tactic would be.)
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I would actually love to see the missile boat for the subspace strikes...
Are they even in Sol?
Does a Titan, Erebus provide it?
Or is it the Diomedes seconded for SOC missions?
Or a brand new multipurpose ship?
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IIRC some fiction names the Erebus as the source. Or at least one source.
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It's my understanding, at least, that the Atreus is the source of the SSM strikes we see.
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I had been under the assumption it was the Atreus--or at least another command destroyer in system. Out of curiosity, is there any information on the interval between SSM volleys? For dramatic storytelling, reloading at the speed of plot is fine, but surely they can't be lobbed off as quickly as direct-fired torpedoes. (And they're probably far more expensive, to boot.)
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**** yeah
I...don't understand. This seems pretty clearly mocking to me, but I can't figure out why any of what I said is deserving of such.
...I guess, if you interpreted that as Tev wank or something, but even then, that'd be incredibly unfair. I'm not some moron who thinks the GTVA would ever stand a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Shivans back through force of arms if the Shivans really got serious (the presence of 81 juggernauts, on top of blowing up a ****ing sun instead of running rampant throughout GTVA space comes to mind), but that doesn't make the ability to resist Shivan might far better than before worthless. The Great War proved that, at the very least, and BP canon has the Shivans deliberately NOT getting serious in most hostilities as part of their greater strategic doctrine.
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IIRC some fiction names the Erebus as the source. Or at least one source.
Erebus...that name sounds really familiar, but I can't remember specifically. Isn't it the name for a type of Tev torpedo? The name for a type of torpedo used by the launchers on TEI destroyers, even.
I had been under the assumption it was the Atreus--or at least another command destroyer in system. Out of curiosity, is there any information on the interval between SSM volleys? For dramatic storytelling, reloading at the speed of plot is fine, but surely they can't be lobbed off as quickly as direct-fired torpedoes. (And they're probably far more expensive, to boot.)
You're right about the source of SSMs--it's the Atreus, and other Raynor-class destroyers equipped with them (though I think the Atreus is the only Raynor-class in Sol). I'm not quite sure why Titan-class destroyers can't carry and use SSMs, given that they also have torpedo launchers and that indirect-strike capabilities--especially ones that are initiated by fighter craft--would be invaluable for carrier-centric capital ships. It's not like you can always guarantee that a Titan-class will have an operational Raynor-class in the same system.
As for the fire rate...that depends on whether or not the SSM's on-board computer does the jump-calculations itself once the TAG signal is received, or if there is some sort of fire-control computer on the Raynor that does the calculations for it, sends them to the loaded SSM, then fires it. Given how short the delay is between hitting a target with a TAG-C and SSMs swarming the target, I imagine the process is extremely fast either way. To be honest, it's a little odd how LITTLE of a delay there is, given how calculating jumps with that level of precision (even with aid) seems to take some time, and subspace transit times even across short distances are not instantaneous, plus the time it takes for the torpedoes to launch. And how adding a few seconds between getting TAGged and the SSMs jumping in hardly helps the target defend against the strike better.
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**** yeah
I...don't understand. This seems pretty clearly mocking to me, but I can't figure out why any of what I said is deserving of such.
No, he probably wasn't mocking you. Battuta likes it when people post analysis like that.
IIRC some fiction names the Erebus as the source. Or at least one source.
Erebus...that name sounds really familiar, but I can't remember specifically. Isn't it the name for a type of Tev torpedo? The name for a type of torpedo used by the launchers on TEI destroyers, even.
The Raynor is being replaced with the Erebus. So the Orestes and the Atreus are Erebus-class destroyers. The SSM torpedoes are called Eos (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Eos_%28torpedo%29).
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**** yeah
I...don't understand. This seems pretty clearly mocking to me, but I can't figure out why any of what I said is deserving of such.
No, he probably wasn't mocking you. Battuta likes it when people post analysis like that.
Oh...well, having a two-word post that lacks punctuation is not a good way to avoid conveying sarcasm. And "**** yeah" is pretty heavily associated with a certain theme song for a certain, highly sarcastic, highly satirical comedy that pokes the **** out of blind patriotism and military-wank. It's a rather strong implication, you have to admit.
Like, the implication is so strong that I'm still having trouble seeing it as anything other than mocking sarcasm.
IIRC some fiction names the Erebus as the source. Or at least one source.
Erebus...that name sounds really familiar, but I can't remember specifically. Isn't it the name for a type of Tev torpedo? The name for a type of torpedo used by the launchers on TEI destroyers, even.
The Raynor is being replaced with the Erebus. So the Orestes and the Atreus are Erebus-class destroyers. The SSM torpedoes are called Eos (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Eos_%28torpedo%29).
:(
But...Raynor is such a cool name...and what do I even call plural-Erebus? Erebi? Erebusses?
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Oh...well, having a two-word post that lacks punctuation is not a good way to avoid conveying sarcasm. And "**** yeah" is pretty heavily associated with a certain theme song for a certain, highly sarcastic, highly satirical comedy that pokes the **** out of blind patriotism and military-wank. It's a rather strong implication, you have to admit.
Like, the implication is so strong that I'm still having trouble seeing it as anything other than mocking sarcasm.
Please do not take this the wrong way, but for most people the phrase "**** yeah" comes with an implicit "that's awesome" appended, not with an implicit "'MURICA" prepended. Batts was very definitively not mocking you, on the contrary. Your analysis is good and you should feel good about it.
:(
But...Raynor is such a cool name...and what do I even call plural-Erebus? Erebi? Erebusses?
Raynor is also a name that doesn't have any resonance outside of being a StarCraft reference. Erebus fits far better into our naming schemes.
Also, the plural is "Erebus-class Destroyers", or "several Erebus-class ships".
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**** yeah
I...don't understand. This seems pretty clearly mocking to me, but I can't figure out why any of what I said is deserving of such.
...I guess, if you interpreted that as Tev wank or something, but even then, that'd be incredibly unfair. I'm not some moron who thinks the GTVA would ever stand a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Shivans back through force of arms if the Shivans really got serious (the presence of 81 juggernauts, on top of blowing up a ****ing sun instead of running rampant throughout GTVA space comes to mind), but that doesn't make the ability to resist Shivan might far better than before worthless. The Great War proved that, at the very least, and BP canon has the Shivans deliberately NOT getting serious in most hostilities as part of their greater strategic doctrine.
No, I loved your post.
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**** yeah
I...don't understand. This seems pretty clearly mocking to me, but I can't figure out why any of what I said is deserving of such.
...I guess, if you interpreted that as Tev wank or something, but even then, that'd be incredibly unfair. I'm not some moron who thinks the GTVA would ever stand a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Shivans back through force of arms if the Shivans really got serious (the presence of 81 juggernauts, on top of blowing up a ****ing sun instead of running rampant throughout GTVA space comes to mind), but that doesn't make the ability to resist Shivan might far better than before worthless. The Great War proved that, at the very least, and BP canon has the Shivans deliberately NOT getting serious in most hostilities as part of their greater strategic doctrine.
No, I loved your post.
Thank you, then. I appreciate it.
The Sathanas engagement was a bit of a tactical mess as the juggernaut ambushed the Orestes immediately after the Lucifer engagement was resolved, at a time when half the battlegroup was unavailable.
The scenarios that GTVA crews have drilled for probably match the final stages of that engagement - multiple capship shock jumps at the flanks once strikecraft waves have taken out the forward beams.
Yeah, which makes it even more impressive, I think. The Orestes had been jumping around the system, trying to evade the Lucifer, until it was forced to fight for a few minutes or so before it could jump away again. The Lucifer gets jumped by the Vishnans, who in turn get jumped by the Sathanas, and the Orestes is able to jump away before the Sathanas can reach the Orestes, too.
(Warning: incoming "wall" of text)
Then the Orestes continues to evade the Sathanas, until the juggernaut finally catches up...whereupon the Orestes turns to run from the Sathanas at sublight speeds for as long as it can, while its fighter/bomber wave takes out the Sathanas beams. Once they do so, the Orestes turns around and engages the Sathanas--but the Sathanas' engines are still fully intact, and Shivan juggernauts are notoriously durable, so chances are it would have managed to jump away before the Orestes could destroy it. Enter the entire rest of the 14th BG shock-jumping the Sathanas and quickly destroying it with their substantial firepower.
So the Orestes ends up outrunning a Lucifer-class superdestroyer for a while, then escaping from a Sathanas, then outrunning said Sathanas for a while, then launching a fighter/bomber wave at it to strike its beam cannons while it uses its sublight speed to buy them as much time as possible before the juggernaut gets in weapons range, then turning and engaging the Sathanas once its beam cannons are down. Even if the rest of the 14th never showed up and the Sathanas got away, it would still have proven the validity and value of the TEI's design principles for this destroyer type. All of the key points of its design worked exactly as envisioned, allowing a single destroyer to outmaneuver and outrun a Sathanas long enough to take out its beam cannons with bombers, then turn and engage the Sathanas and force it to retreat through heavy damage, all with the destroyer taking little damage of its own. (More than anything, the massive increase of cost-efficiency this provides is critical, as the GTVA can't afford to get into a battle of attrition with the Shivans, and the Shivans will always greatly outnumber the GTVA in the long run/big picture.)
Compare that to the last time the GTVA was thrown into a "tactical mess" by a Sathanas, where they lost one destroyer, had a corvette sustain major damage, had another destroyer very nearly destroyed, and the Colossus sustained very heavy damage in the process of directly confronting the Sathanas after bomber strikes managed to take out some of its beam cannons. And they only managed the bomber strike because they delayed the Sathanas' advance long enough for bombers to close in...by using a destroyer-class carrier as bait (by virtue of just sitting in its path, saying "shoot me!"), the ship nearly getting obliterated from taking a single salvo of BFReds.
The Orestes served as its own bait, but it still outmaneuvered the juggernaut by itself. It's a pretty stark contrast to the Second Incursion, where the Sathanas seemed to move and jump more rapidly than anything other than a Deimos or Sobek (and fighter/bomber craft).
And let's not even get into how badly the Hecate fails as a warship design when it comes to anything besides carrier-capacity and point-defense. Getting immediately disabled by a single corvette, let alone a corvette that focuses on versatility rather than anti-ship firepower, and getting badly damaged by said corvette in the time it took for reinforcements to arrive is just plain pathetic. Hell, look at Post-Meridian: no beam jamming in place, a modest warship escort and fighter screen, and a bunch of fighter/bomber wings jumping in to attack the enemy--two Karuna frigates and their own fighter complements, which included just a couple Uriels, IIRC. The Meridian failed to support its own escorts with its firepower, because its beam cannons are huge and fragile as hell, and its anti-ship firepower is meager enough (and its durability weak enough) that it quickly falls apart in direct combat even against single ships well below its own weight class, so it is forced to stay as far away from the enemy as possible for as long as possible. Then, the Meridian's forward beam cannons (including its only heavy beam) were disabled with ease, before it even got a shot off. They probably would have been disabled before doing severe damage even without fighters supporting the Karunas, such is how bad the showing was. Then the two Karunas pounded the Meridian, damaging it severely, before the destroyer could even jump away. Compare that to the Carthage, whose firepower was such that strong beam jamming was needed just to keep its heavy beams suppressed, and even then, four Karunas and two Sanctus's with heavy gunship support still took major damage breaking through and defeating the remainder of its escort/the Carthage itself.
The Hecate clearly showed a lack of any clear idea of what the designers wanted it to be. It had a single BGreen over a Deimos in terms of heavy firepower; even then, its beam cannons are massive and fragile, and three of them have very limited fields of fire. It says a lot that approaching a Hecate from above will prevent ANY of its beam cannons from firing on you, and that if you approach it from anywhere that isn't below or in front, you'll only have to contend with a single TerSlash at most. It's a great carrier, but far too incapable in direct combat and far too easily disabled to safely deploy without an extensive escort and a decent fighter screen. It has a decent amount of heavy firepower, but (aside from being easily disabled) poor fields of fire and distribution of coverage makes it really underwhelming in nearly all situations, and the ship's overall vulnerability means it never gets used except as a last resort.
The Titan and the Raynor, on the other hand, had very clear, cohesive design principles from the start. The Titan is more of a carrier, but it concentrates its heavy firepower in a forward configuration to destroy enemy warships before they can do much damage in turn; it also makes offensive maneuvering viable. Its two TerSlashBlue's have good fields of view and coverage, each providing enough firepower to reasonably deal with smaller, flanking ships, and its torpedoes and heavy pulse turrets supplement this firepower while giving SOME anti-ship capability for the areas without any beam coverage. Thus, on defense, it can orient its forward firepower to act as a deterrent and as fire support, while it has modest firepower elsewhere, and on offense, its forward firepower kills ships dead before they can fire back, leaving its flanks to be easily covered by escorts. And with shock-jumping, the threat of a Titan taking to the field directly is downright terrifying, rather than laughable (like with the Hecate). The Raynor has some concentration of its heavy firepower, but not overly so, and it still has pretty good coverage everywhere except directly behind and below. It has good durability, not great, but that's okay because it outruns and outmaneuvers the things it can't (or doesn't want to) stand against directly. The Hecate is kind of like a big, slow carrier that has a weird assortment of heavy guns with poor distribution and coverage, all in a package that has no armor anywhere (not even on its turrets). Too vulnerable and fragile to engage ships directly and put its guns to use, but still bogged down by the extra weight and bulk of having them at all. At the same time, its firepower is concentrated so bizarrely and positioned poorly enough to have major gaps in coverage that it can't effectively engage threats that DO close in anyway. The Raynor is more like a "fast battleship" or a battlecruiser, and is designed with that role in mind, strengths and weaknesses all. With the Hecate...it's like someone tried to make a ship that fit in two contradictory roles at once without making intelligent or reasonable compromises, leaving a ship that has weaknesses that it can't afford and capabilities it can't effectively use.
If nothing else, TEI is/was really good about laying out clear strengths and weaknesses, as well as roles, for its warship designs, and building those requirements around a doctrine that goes a long way to mitigate many of those weaknesses. It's not just copying shock-jumping from the Shivans, either--the emphasis on mobility and overwhelming concentrations of firepower to avoid taking damage rather than the sheer ability to tank it; largely self-sufficient point-defense coverage so that the most mobile part of Shivan forces--its fighters and bombers--would not be able to seriously threaten the warships by themselves, and so that more fighter/bomber assets could be sent at the Shivans offensively (particularly at their ships, softening them up and allowing their own warships to turn and engage with far less risk) rather than to cover allied warships from Shivan craft; more frequent jumping and with greater precision, allowing for not only shock-jumping, but also for quick-in-quick-out raids and counterattacks and quickly fleeing enemy attacks and shock-jumps; fewer glaring and exploitable vulnerabilities (like the Hecate, or the Tevs' relative lack of suitable answers to heavy, direct combatants that weren't overly concentrated--and thus, avoidable--like the Colossus), especially since the prevalence of the Raynor, Diomedes, and Deimos classes means that there is considerable answer to situations where you have to fight ships from multiple directions at once; much more decentralization of capability--you can send in a couple corvettes to get enough shock-jump power to kill a destroyer in a single salvo, or a single destroyer to achieve the same result, and if you want more generalized/sustained direct combat capability in a fight, there's a couple corvette classes for that, too, and the Raynor can fill the role well enough, and the addition of gunboats (as well as the greater self-sufficiency of warship point-defenses) allows one to concentrate or distribute anti-fighter/bomber coverage far more freely.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the introduction of a TEI-generation battlegroup into the Sol theater immediately and heavily shifted the balance of power in the war. Steele is Steele, of course, but the TEI-gen ships have far fewer tactical and strategic holes to cover/compensate for and allow for far more options/flexibility--they were what let him have such a devastating effect so quickly. If anything, Lopez deserves some major credit for getting so much mileage out of an entirely non-TEI battlegroup. The closest she gets are some experimental retrofits/packages for the Carthage itself, which give it a pale shadow of TEI capabilities in most cases (like her bastardized sprint-drive, for example). But even with that, the limits are apparent. I mean, can you imagine how funny it would be if, instead of a Titan-class destroyer showing up in Delenda Est, it was a Hecate instead?
"Huh. I didn't know there was a 'kill one, get a second one free' special going on. Neat."
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To be fair, the Aquitaine had problems to aquire a target in the nebula.
If you give her the opportunity, she will kill the Moloch I think.
And the Psamtik... well, this was plain bad luck :D
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Jesus Christ, wall of text indeed. Just the thought of going to read that thing is tiresome in itself. I'll probably save the trouble of doing so and just accept that it is probably an excellent analysis and true in its conclusions*.
*Seriously, I'll eventually read it, but jesus F christ.
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Great analysis SaltyWaffles. I'm not a huge fan of the Hecate as a combat ship either (though it is a decent carrier I suppose).
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TL;DR summary: Titan/ Erebus rules, Hecate drools. R.I.P. cell-phone users. :warp:
Not insulting you here SW. I don't think you said anything wrong. Well...
In Post-Meridian, the Meridian was over-exposed by Admiral Severanti trying to not get... supplanted by Steele's quick campaign theater successes. It was a HLP- textbook scalpel strike hitting a Hecate in its most vulnerable position. And no joke, even on medium, you get to close to that flak and it will wack you up.
In Aristeia, the Hood does it's job surprisingly well. It fails canonically, but that mission sure as hell doesn't play itself. All your wingmen are guardianed as well I believe, else that feel-good cabin story wouldn't have been quite so colorful.
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The Hecate is an excellent strategic asset that provides the TEI ships with all kinds of logistical and strike craft support. Hopefully we'll get the chance to show off its tactical prowess in situations more favorable than 'a large and well coordinated strike package lands on it.'
We've had a mission in the pipe for a long time, I think it's been mentioned before, operating on a kind of 'Hecate deathmarch' concept. You're trying to defend a fixed installation from an entire Hecate battle group. The Hecate and friends drive at you down a single axis, and you try to drive back up that axis to get to the Hecate and force it to break off. The Hecate's Auroras are TAGging **** for its main beams, its corvettes are wrangling with your strike bombers, your escorts are trying to hold off waves and waves of Perseus and Kulas as they try to kill your bombers, and it's all pretty metal.
And yeah, in Aristeia in particular there are mission end states in which the Hood wins. You've got to account for that observer effect in weighing its capabilities. You get to retry until you get a good ending.
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The Hecate is an excellent strategic asset that provides the TEI ships with all kinds of logistical and strike craft support. Hopefully we'll get the chance to show off its tactical prowess in situations more favorable than 'a large and well coordinated strike package lands on it.'
We've had a mission in the pipe for a long time, I think it's been mentioned before, operating on a kind of 'Hecate deathmarch' concept. You're trying to defend a fixed installation from an entire Hecate battle group. The Hecate and friends drive at you down a single axis, and you try to drive back up that axis to get to the Hecate and force it to break off. The Hecate's Auroras are TAGging **** for its main beams, its corvettes are wrangling with your strike bombers, your escorts are trying to hold off waves and waves of Perseus and Kulas as they try to kill your bombers, and it's all pretty metal.
And yeah, in Aristeia in particular there are mission end states in which the Hood wins. You've got to account for that observer effect in weighing its capabilities. You get to retry until you get a good ending.
Huh?
How would the Hood EVER win against the Toutatis? It just doesn't have the firepower to pull it off...and it'd require all of the UEF strikecraft present to not do a single thing to help...and the Oculus would need to have been destroyed...and, wait...the Indus and Yangtze would need to just sit back and not help, either. And it'd require the Toutatis not getting in close enough to use its Gattler turrets to disable the beam cannons on the Hood. So...it'd basically require the Toutatis to sit there and do nothing while the Hood pounded away at it, with the AWACS intact, the Oculus destroyed, and all other UEF assets in the field sitting back and doing nothing. Am I missing something?
As for the whole "Auroras Tagging for its main beams"--the Hecate only has *one* main beam--the single BGreen on its front. The rest are just four TerSlash's. Even if they could overdrive them into BGreen status, that still means that a destroyer is damaging itself to overdrive its beams so that it actually poses a threat in direct combat. Furthermore, the beam cannon mounts are so large and fragile that it would be very, very difficult to prevent any UEF fighters from dashing in to take them out--even if you could manage it, you'd still be sticking a huge amount of fighters in one area, defensively, just to cover for one of the Hecate's glaring weaknesses. Plus, if Deimos corvettes can overdrive their beams into BGreens, what's so special about the Hecate doing it? Again, I'm not seeing how the Hecate would work in this tactic better than an Orion would, seeing as it's far more difficult to counter.
And god help the Hecate it a Narayana is on the field--or worse, jumps in on its dorsal side, where the Hecate has zero response. Hell, a Karuna could do that and be a major threat. But a single Narayana would knock out the Hecate's forward beams from extreme range as a matter of course.
Really, the size, weakness, and configuration of the Hecate's beam cannons are just too much of a vulnerability to ignore. Two missions in WiH have you easily exploiting this glaring flaw--once with the Meridian, and once with the Hood. And in the Meridian's case, you do it with an *Uhlan*, which isn't even fast or equipped for the task. How do you stop a wing of Kentaurois from diving in, armed with Scalpels or anti-subsystem missiles, jinking where needed, and taking out the Hecate's forward beams? Only the Draco can keep up with them, and Kents are tough enough and agile enough to survive and evade a single pass from a Nyx (or three). What happens when it's a stealth fighter, or the Kents have a lot of ECM support?
And I know the circumstances behind Post-Meridian. I'm not criticizing the Hecate for losing the engagement, but rather just how pathetic its showing was. A dedicated carrier is fine--but it should be treated as such, and designed as such. It should not be parked in front of a subspace gate while frigates advance towards it, because its strike craft can reach the battlefield just fine on their own (or with AWACS support, which doesn't need a carrier to defend it), and the Hecate's firepower--VERY subpar for a destroyer--is so heavily "glass-cannon" that it needs an extensive escort and screen to utilize it (and even then, it's still vulnerable). How much better of a carrier would the Hecate have been if it had done away with its beam cannons, and had better point-defenses, more armor, better speed, or faster and more precise jumping instead?
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The Hood can win if the Toutatis never gets the opportunity to show up. If both the UEF AWACS get destroyed, the Hood starts throwing LRBGreen shots at the Wargods, and if that beam doesn't get disabled, it can and will destroy both frigates before they get in range to retaliate or the Toutatis arrives.
Yes, the Hecate has only one main beam. But successive upgrades since Capella have made that beam cannon much more receptive to being overcharged, and the LRBGreen is a very good beam cannon.
Some Hecates (including the Hood post-Aristeia) have also been much more heavily upgraded than what we've seen so far. Stuff like next-gen active armor, TerPulse replacing some of those big turrets, torpedo launchers, and some very sophisticated electronic warfare systems. At this point, the Hecate is kinda like the debuff support wizard of the GTVA destroyer family, and it's quite effective in that role. You don't really get to see it shine in Act 1 or 2, but you do in Act 4.
It's still ugly as **** though.
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The Hood could also win if the Toutatis' weapons sub somehow got taken it. It can't fire accurately and the torpedoes are jammed.
Paveways are vulnerable to decoys.
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My personal windmill is the Phoenicia...
We got the Carthage as combat evaluation DD...
The Phoenicia was heavily damaged, so for me the Tevs "could" rebuild and refit" her as a TEI ship...
My personal design put her en par with a Titan, but only with weaponry, the hangar capacity of the Titan remains bigger...
But these are just my two cents...
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This sounds like new information on the Hecate destroyer, and that would change the tactics/strategies discussion on the same. I don't recall seeing anywhere before that the Hecate class ships had been upgraded, but I also don't see any reason why this couldn't be the case. (If the Carthage can be upgraded that much, certainly the Meridian, Hood, or Vengeance could be given a few new goodies as well.)
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Well, the Carthage was upgraded I think ecause of the damage it sustained once.
I always wondered if the Vengeance appeared somewhere...
But the Phoenicia was almost killed by the Sathanas... so I thought if a Hecate was repaired and refitted, then she was a prime candidate...
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That happened 18 years ago, before the TEI was even launched. The Phoenicia's repairs finished long before TEI produced technologies that could have significantly improved her combat capabilities.
Also, it's perfectly possible that the Hood and Meridian were built post-Capella, and a whole new ship allows for much more expansive upgrades than even the most complex of repair jobs. The Phoenicia is probably on par with them, but nowhere close to a Titan.
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I expected as much, but thats my personal windmill :D