Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Pegasus V on August 07, 2002, 10:35:37 pm
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In real life, the largest ships on the sea are cargo vessels and tankers.
(http://www.transport-pf.or.jp/english/sea/cargo/img/container2.jpg)(http://www.transport-pf.or.jp/english/sea/cargo/exploration/img/vlcc.jpg)
I think it would be much better that if anyone was going to make any transport models for Freespace, they should be really big (in the order of 1-2km's). The more stuff you can carry per trip, the more economical it is, that's why it takes place today. In space, the economical aspect will be enhanced, so we really need large transports. The largest transport in FS2 is the Triton at about 300m.
(http://www.transport-pf.or.jp/english/sea/cargo/img/lng.jpg)(http://www.transport-pf.or.jp/english/sea/cargo/img/oil.jpg)(http://www.transport-pf.or.jp/english/sea/cargo/img/container.jpg)
What are your opinions? Is bigger better?
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okok uh
The bigger a ship is in space, the easier it is to detect, the slower it goes, therefor, the more suseptable to attack and raid it is. Therefor, a faster, more manuverable ship can evade such threats. Additionally, cargo depots are different then they are today. They are tightly packed groups of containers that only smaller ships can pick up.
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Perhaps, behind enemy lines, the civilian transport/cargo ships could be like this.
Plus, 600,000 ground troops were deployed on Cygnus Prime to retake the planet from NTF occupation. That would take about 1100 Argos or that poor ole Argo would have to make plenty of trips. Alternatively, the troops could have been deployed from an Orion. Let's say that this Orion could hold 5,000 ground troops, you'd still need 120 destroyers! I don't think the GTVA has that many destroyers... We need some big transports meezathinks.
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Sure now youd need 600,000 troops with our primitive weapons, but they could probably liberate a planet with maybe 200 or so. Maybe 100 per argo, 1 argo devoted to equipment, thats 3 transports. Maybe throw in some decoys, send them on seperate vectors of attack. Hell, they could destroy all the enemy troops with orbital bombardments, then send down a colony ship.
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vadar, that number is ridiculous. No way 200 troops would work..maybe if they were fighting primitive people. Rememvber tech works both way. when the offense goes up so does defense.
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IMO transports are absolutely necessary. This problem willl be taken care of soon. (as in a new model..as long as someone is willing to texture it)
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Originally posted by vadar_1
Sure now youd need 600,000 troops with our primitive weapons, but they could probably liberate a planet with maybe 200 or so. Maybe 100 per argo, 1 argo devoted to equipment, thats 3 transports. Maybe throw in some decoys, send them on seperate vectors of attack. Hell, they could destroy all the enemy troops with orbital bombardments, then send down a colony ship.
I don't quite understand what your saying, but the 600,000 troop figure is canon. It happened in the first mission of the FS2 campaign.
Originally posted by Megadude
...(as in a new model..as long as someone is willing to texture it)
Cool! Can we see some screenshots of it? (even if it's untextured)
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i don't think they used transports at all....i think it was magic.
ok now we shut that voice up and never let it type again.
I have to agree with pegasus and mega, although i can't see a ship that large actually making planetfall, it is a sound idea for civilian use. For heavy combat areas, such as securing a planet, i can see it launching many smaller transports. Kind of like the normandy invasion. It serves two purposes.
1. it will land,
and
2. if small ships get destroyed you have only lost part of the landing force.
However, i doubt that a convoy of argo's and Elysiums were used to move everyone through space. I think that they may have been brought in on a few destroyers, and on some of the larger transports. I realize that this is contradictory. But really......the transport waits in a neighboring system, the argo's depart and make planetfall, the surviving argo's go back for another load.
This makes sense, it keeps the large transport out of harms way, yet gets the maximum troops delivered. I think the reasoning is sound.
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I must agree with ShadowWolf, i don´t think they use huge transport due to the posibility of the lost of all the troops if they receive only one heavy attack. So definitevely many samaller ships are better.
But, i also believe that infantry engagements are suppose to be rare, I believe the attacks might be focused on fighter or bomber rounds, until the resistance is eliminated.
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Cool! Can we see some screenshots of it?
Well...i just thought about doing such a ship only after i saw this thread. So that means it's just an idea in my head.
I agree that shouldn't be a gigantic ship, but it should be a chunky blocky ship about the size of a corvette. A fleet of these with good protection would work. These should be heavily armored and have mediocre firepower.
But, i also believe that infantry engagements are suppose to be rare, I believe the attacks might be focused on fighter or bomber rounds, until the resistance is eliminated.
We're talking about more than just infantry. What about armor and mechs (they're sure to have them)? Besides, bombers and fighters can only do so much; don't forget about intelligent airspace defense. I honestly think the air is more protected than the ground in freespace.
Agree or disagree
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I think big ships are essential. I'd say 2-3km long troop ships each carrying 100,000 ground troops and the essential tools (mechs, tanks, etc). These ships wouldn't need many defenses as they're only deployed when an area/system is secure.
There are a couple of ways to transport the troops to the surface that I've thought up:
- Individual Orbital Sky Dive . This is probably the best, cheapest method of transporting troops to a planet's surface on mass. If you've never heard of orbital sky diving, I suggest you investigate on the net
- Drop Ships . Many drop ships would need to be deployed from the capital ship to deliver the troops. It would have to be done in waves though, which would be time consuming.
- Segmental Planetary Ascent/Landing . The mothership would separate into several small pieces, which are all designed to land on the surface to deliver the troops to the ground. This ship would of course be very expensive to manufacture.
- Capital Ship Landing . This is certainly the optimal method. However, it would be more expensive to create a ship of this size that could land on a habitable planet's surface than the previous suggestion.
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These ships wouldn't need many defenses as they're only deployed when an area/system is secure.
Good point.
People should comment more ont his topic
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Originally posted by Pegasus V
Capital Ship Landing . This is certainly the optimal method. However, it would be more expensive to create a ship of this size that could land on a habitable planet's surface than the previous suggestion.
IIRC, the Victory-class star destroyer can land on planets (at least hold a low orbit, allowing smaller veichles to quickly drop out of the hanger, a drop maybe a hundred feet or so), and the empire has tons of those things. Maybe your frying pans cant handle atmospheric flight, but you never know if current fs2 ships can.
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Originally posted by vadar_1
IIRC, the Victory-class star destroyer can land on planets (at least hold a low orbit, allowing smaller veichles to quickly drop out of the hanger, a drop maybe a hundred feet or so), and the empire has tons of those things. Maybe your frying pans cant handle atmospheric flight, but you never know if current fs2 ships can.
In Star Wars, they've been roaming the galaxy for millenia (8,000 years meezathinks), so they've had plenty and I mean plenty of time to perfect their technology. Terrans have only just flirted with interstellar space for about 100 years, so I would imagine, they have a long way to go before landing a 2km long vessel on a terrestrial world.
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I wouldn`t be so certain of that. I`m guessing that FS2 ships use some sort of gravitational principle to move. If that is the case then probably all the FS2 ships can manouver in an atmosphere. We don`t see them do it in FS2 cause of engine limitations and cause there was no good reason for any of them to do it :)
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I think that the entire idea is a novel concept and one worth pursuing. One large transport which brings the smaller ships to the combat area, then launches them into it. Alot of possibilities here, especially when we consider the size of such ships.
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You would either need a very large hanger or fixed source code that allows multiple ships to be docked though.
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Orbital sky diving? How would the soldiers survive reintry? :rolleyes: Theres a reason why smaller asteriods never hit the surface of the earth.
What you will see in my campaign is the use of assault shuttles, dropships with containers that are dumped upon contact, and your favorite drop pods which will be deployed from destroyers and carriers in orbit.
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I just read the 2 or 3 first posts so if someone already said that, well... I don't care in fact, so anyway:
ok, a transport is a civilian ship, who cares if it can be detected, can't maneuver or anything. Last time I've checked, you don't use a supertanker for war, it's for commercial purposes. Is there only military life in FS2, or have I missed something?
Pegasus V is right, if you want to move a lot of goods, you need a big ship, or you'll waste a lot of money, period.
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In case you haven't noticed all of the freighters (Almost) in fs2 are of Civilian origin. And they get attacked on all the time. If a huge oil tanker gets destroyed, then thats a lot of money lost.
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Originally posted by vadar_1
IIRC, the Victory-class star destroyer can land on planets (at least hold a low orbit, allowing smaller veichles to quickly drop out of the hanger, a drop maybe a hundred feet or so), and the empire has tons of those things. Maybe your frying pans cant handle atmospheric flight, but you never know if current fs2 ships can.
Do you have any idea how fast you would have to be travelling to hold orbit at 30m? Or how many things you'd hit? If that was in SW, shame on the author who didn't check his High school level physics. :(
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What about modified Hippoctrates med ships to move the soldiers? The Hippocrates is designed to carry thousands of people, after all. We know from canon that it's designed to transfer thousands of refugees from system to system.
Assuming a Hippocrates can carry anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 patients, you'd only need about 5 to 10 dozen of these filled with soldiers to deploy an invasion force of 600,000. (And there wouldn't be wounded aboard when the convoy is first deployed, because none of the soldiers would have been wounded yet.)
And the plus side is, once any soldiers get wounded, they can just be transferred back up to the med ships for treatment, then sent back down once they're healed.
The problem would be how to deploy them off the ships and onto the ground. It would take a lot of Argo transports to get them all down.
(I dunno, maybe the FS2 universe has "Star Trek-like" combat transporters and never mentioned it? :rolleyes: )
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Originally posted by vadar_1
IIRC, the Victory-class star destroyer can land on planets (at least hold a low orbit, allowing smaller veichles to quickly drop out of the hanger, a drop maybe a hundred feet or so), and the empire has tons of those things. Maybe your frying pans cant handle atmospheric flight, but you never know if current fs2 ships can.
IIRC, Victory-ships can only "skim" the upper atmosphere, which is going to be an altitude of something like 80 miles up, depending on the planet. Also IIRC, this is done as a sort of unorthodox "escape manuver" to elude capital ship pursuit because of the frictional heat generated by skimming the atmosphere would force all non-Victory ships to break off pursuit (but I might be confusing this for something in Star Trek). The undersides of Victory destroyers have been coated with special heat shielding materials for this manuver.
There's no way a Victory is going to be able to get so close to the ground as to deploy troops from an altitude of 100 feet. If the Victory is at an altitude of 100 feet, it and everything aboard will be a very large crater less than a second later.
God knows, what sort of environmental damage a Victory-class starship would do to a planet if it crashed. Any Star Wars fans here remember Honoghr? :doh:
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It's an idea for a really good mission though - You're the escort of the huge transport about to send waves of dropships, and you need to defend it AND as many of the dropships (Of course command said it was secrue, but as always, things go awry :) ).
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You know, 'supertransports' aren't exactly a good thing from a military standpoint - if you are reliant on a single ship for supplies, the enemy can inflict massive damages by taking it out. And if you landed troops in thousand-carrying craft, you'd be creating a killing zone for any enemy gun emplacements on the ground. not to mention that losing a single one of the large ships would make a sizable dent.
considering the size of the average Terran / Vasudan troop group thingie probably isn't in the thousands or even the hundreds, you;d probably be just as well to land your forces over a wide area in multiple ships
big ships would be neat for civ's though. Maybe a bit expensive for all but the mega-corps, though.
(Most of this has proibably been said... ne'ermind :D)
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Originally posted by Black Wolf
Do you have any idea how fast you would have to be travelling to hold orbit at 30m? Or how many things you'd hit? If that was in SW, shame on the author who didn't check his High school level physics. :(
it could have Repulsorlifts...and SW isnt known for its realistic physics.
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The Victory class does use repulsorlift coils to maintain low altitudes. Starwars is not realistic, deal with it. On a more related matter, large transport containers for moving troops could be used...
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[Commander voice] All right troops! Load up the box! Container deployment in 1 minute![/Commander voice]
In reality, a dropship or a large drop pod would be very similar to a container, but with at least some manuvering capabilities. When I think container, I see the TC-TRI piece, which can be destroyed by shooting at the freighter.
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Well, you could always fall back on the age-old technique of Wolf-Packs and Escorts? Large transport ships would probably be escorted by at least a Cruiser or two, and a wing of fighters. You could even Mod up a brand new kind of Escort Capital Ship, designed around Anti-Bomber operations? And you'd get a full convoy, a string of smaller freighters and transports around the main Heavy Freighter.
Normally a large percentage of a carrier group (or in Freespace's case, Destroyer group) is taken up with escorting logistics ships.
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in as much as the civilian population seldom does what our military arm thinks is a very good idea....i say the ships are absolutely logical. one thing troubles me though....how many people do you figure we could fit on an argo? not nearly enough to stand up against serious planetary defenders you say? A planet is a pretty big place to hide. Even so, i would think that something larger than the argo would be needed for this kind of excursion. which would mean a larger launch bay. Or perhaps two separate launch bays, one for fighter cover (if the corporation is rich enough to employ them) and one for the "shuttles". Also, how many corporations are rich enough to employ a full time escort for these things? or would all of that be handled the GTVA, with certain provisions made for thye use of these craft during a time of war?
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Originally posted by LtNarol
Orbital sky diving? How would the soldiers survive reintry? :rolleyes: Theres a reason why smaller asteriods never hit the surface of the earth.
You obviously don't understand what Orbital Sky Diving is (I said read up on it if you don't know) :rolleyes: . You also don't understand some laws of physics.
The re-entry problem experienced on the Space Shuttle or on meteors, etc is only caused by friction. These objects are travelling extremely fast compared with the atmosphere, so when the particles collide, it creates heat.
The majority of meteors actually impact the surface, but they're travelling so slow that we don't see or hear about them. The main reason we don't see or hear about them is because the majority of this type are the size of dust.
If an orbital sky diver has a controlled slowish entry into the planet's atmosphere (with a space suit on of course), s/he would not experience any friction of re-entry, thus easily surviving 're-entry'.
I think this method of delivering troops to the surface is pretty cool. I was picturing it in my mind on the 30min drive home from work. The big ship enters orbit, the troops are in position in the staging area. The huge space doors open, and the troops start running off the platform into the weightlessness of space. Small manauvers are made with their tiny control thrusters.
They ascend through the first layers of the atmosphere and then start falling through the clouds, where they deploy their parashutes and touch down to the ground all while attacking the various defense turrets on the ground. After touching down, they detach their parashute and quickly remove their space suit revealing their armour (like in the FS1 cutscene on the Shivan freighter). They then start running and kicking some NTF butt!
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Is it just me or wasnt there 30 odd years of peace between the the end of the great war and the NTF rebellion, surly in that time some systems would have been secure enough to move around large ships without the need for escrots etc. (as are the worlds seas today).
Also if you think about it the only places you ever are, are warzones, as such only light transports are deployed. Theres no reason for there not to be HUGE transports really. In the Falklands war the biggest ship was the Queen Elizibeth II a civillian ship modified into a troop carrier (and the taskfroce included 2 carriers).
Also whilst building a heavily armed and amoured destroyer might be hugely expensive, creating the superstructure for a giant transport might not be.
Another point to add, is that if you look at I-War 1+2 the biggest ships are the mega transporters, these operate everywhere even in warzones, and they fit!
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Originally posted by Hades
In case you haven't noticed all of the freighters (Almost) in fs2 are of Civilian origin. And they get attacked on all the time. If a huge oil tanker gets destroyed, then thats a lot of money lost.
they're freighters refitted for combat situation. Armies ( the real ones ) have that too. You don't send a supertanker in hazardous areas, these things aren't done for that, and are not supposed to see combat.
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Fairly large interstellar cargo vessels sound quite plausable to me, but they would be civilian vessels and their existence would be driven by economics. Venom is obviously correct, you wouldn't send such a vessel into combat. It you're travelling a safe route the transportation company will want to build cost effective vessels. Making less trips is going to save you money on overheads, but there will be a point where the vessel becomes so large that the cost of construction begins to outweigh the benefits. That determines the size of your vessel.
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Military transport ships would be small and tough, but civilian ones would be far larger, the more you can move, the more you can sell. And it's even worth losing the odd ship now and again the profits would cover it.
This is exactly the situation that started Piracy in the first place, oversized, undergunned merchantmen, loaded to the bilges, trying to make as much profit as possible.
At the very least I suspect that the GTVA would commission a few super-freighters in order to facilitate the repair and restock of a scattered and depleted fleet after the incident at Capella?
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Originally posted by Flipside
Military transport ships would be small and tough, but civilian ones would be far larger, the more you can move, the more you can sell. And it's even worth losing the odd ship now and again the profits would cover it.
This is exactly the situation that started Piracy in the first place, oversized, undergunned merchantmen, loaded to the bilges, trying to make as much profit as possible.
At the very least I suspect that the GTVA would commission a few super-freighters in order to facilitate the repair and restock of a scattered and depleted fleet after the incident at Capella?
Aldo created a new 3/4 kilometer-long frieghter called the GTFr Vela, complete with a new custom-made container. The thing dwarfs the old FS1 freighters and is carries about twice the cargo of the Triton! And it's armed with four plasma turrets, so it's relatively well-armed for a freighter. It's a damn nice mod. :nod:
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I'm seeing three distinct things being talked about here, and I wanted to point out that each can be totally different in form as well as function.
First, the big, hulking civilian type freighter that's been discussed would be used in secure systems for moving large amounts of goods from one planet or starbase to another. Here, you're looking at minimal construction; no armor plating, minimal crew housing, and lots and lots of cargo space. I'd imagine that "AWACS" model someone made not too long ago with the girders and internal containers, blown up to the scale of 1-2 km, would fit this nicely. These things would have no turrets, and would be utterly defenseless in a firefight.
Second, there is the military version of the freighter mentioned above. Instead of large girders that would simply hold cargo containers in place but leave them open to space, the cargo, along with the crew, would be housed in a reinforced armored hull. The military superfreighter would still have no pressure around the internal containers, but would at least have a protective armor shield to defend vital cargo from minor skirmishes. These freighters would be moderately armed.
Third, there is the large troop ship, which ferries tens or hundreds of thousands of Marines around GTVA space for planetary assaults or ship capture operations. These ships would be moderately armored and armed, and have large pressurized compartments for housing the Marines. Such vessels may also have cryogenic freezers to keep the troops from needing as much food or life support. (Think the marine ship in "Aliens", but bigger). Troop ships would have a hanger to launch dropships and transports, as well as internal bays for holding planetary vehicles.
EDIT: Yeah! 200 posts! :wakka:
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I'm working on one a little similar, a combined gas and cargo transport, though it's not going to be easy, never done a capship before :)
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Methinks a large ship would be required for installation, etc, construction.... the colossus cutscene shows it being built with the aid of Amazons, Posiedons, et al, but you'd still probably require a very large specialist ship to construct the Ganymedes or Arcadias used in shipbuilding.
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Indeed, as would colonization ships, though I think somebody once did a colony ship, with a rather spectacuarly powerful beam cannon at the front :)
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OH, I though every one took this as standard - big tranports and stuff... I do that all the time, its my style of universe!
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Methinks a large ship would be required for installation, etc, construction.... the colossus cutscene shows it being built with the aid of Amazons, Posiedons, et al, but you'd still probably require a very large specialist ship to construct the Ganymedes or Arcadias used in shipbuilding.
Actually, Aldo, The way I wrote my campaign, I have your GTFr Vela freighter designed to carry Ganymede, Lycaeon and Acheron components closer to the front, so as to cut down on repair and travel times. Of course, this requires additional defense of the Ganymede repair installations since they're closer to the front, but that's what the Lycaeon and Acheron installations are for. ;7 :p ;)