[Taristin]

In response to knn:

Err. No.

There was one shielded capship. The Lucifer. What else was shielded?
30 years isn't an aweful lot of time. And it's rather annoying that people think that by bumping back the time line, they can argue that the weapons have become exponentially more powerful. That's not necessarily how it works. That ship would have to be 90% reactor for the kind of firepower you want, and even then, the remaning 10% sould need to be split up between crew habitations, heatsinks, vital subsystems, and the weapon array.


Go ahead. Tell me how there were major breakthroughs in reactor technology in the 30 years since FS2 ended.
Because it doesn't work that way, either, or we'd all be living in a super efficient nuclear-powered society right now.

[dan87uk]

touche' i think knn, i think the ship is fine but Raa has a point, the ship is a great design but it just wouldnt really be possible, also u cud think about after it fires then its offline for a while (like the Victory and Excalibur on Babylon 5) and then cant fire agen until major energy replacement (so practically making it a tactical fire once only ship)

[vyper]

It's cute.

[T-Man]

Nuclear power was first concieved in 1938 and by 1945 Nuclear power and nuclear bombs has been invented and were being deploed. Therefore Raa, if nuclear power can be developed in 6 years, its possible the GTVA could develop some advanced power source for the Aurora in 30.

My best guess would be a fusion-fission reactor, which can do both nuclear fusion and fission at the same time, creating masses of power with very little fuel usage.

If not that, it could very well be a subspace-powered reactor like the Romulan Warbirds in Star Trek.

Still, i agree with you, even with the best technology, half the ship would need to be pure reactor

[Ashrak]

jesus h christ .... id prefer pulse weapons on the ship though not beams

[Taristin]

Originally posted by T-Man
Nuclear power was first concieved in 1938 and by 1945 Nuclear power and nuclear bombs has been invented and were being deploed. Therefore Raa, if nuclear power can be developed in 6 years, its possible the GTVA could develop some advanced power source for the Aurora in 30.

My best guess would be a fusion-fission reactor, which can do both nuclear fusion and fission at the same time, creating masses of power with very little fuel usage.

If not that, it could very well be a subspace-powered reactor like the Romulan Warbirds in Star Trek.

Still, i agree with you, even with the best technology, half the ship would need to be pure reactor

My point wasn't how long it's took to get a rudimentary implementation, but how long it took to make it smaller and at peak efficiency.

Sure we've had nuclear power for this long, but the technology is iffy at best. We're not harnessing but a fraction of it's power, we're killing our environment withthe waste, and the plants themselves are huuuuge.

The FS reactors have been around sine before the TV-war. And even still, 60 years later, the Colossus had to be colossal to have the cannons it had, and still blew all the heatsinks.

[knn]

There's one important thing I forgot to stress: the test version has 10 BFRed-equivalents + a superheavy cannon.

!!The final version will not have such firepower!!
 
I cannot tell you exact numbers, as I haven't tested this yet, but the combined firepower of the front cannons will be enough to take down a Sathanas in a reasonable amount of time (somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes). The key is not pure firepower, but lower refire rate, which was a problem with first generation beams.

Shields: It seems illogical to me that the Shivans did not equip their most powerful ship (at least what we know of), the Sathanas with a shielding similar to the Lucifer's. It's also quite strange that GTVA adaptation of shield technology halted at fighters. Now that FS2_open supports capship shields, why not implement them?
The Shivans have at least 80 juggs which can pulverize destroyers in a matter of seconds. The GTVA doesn't even have 80 destroyers! If we don't want the FS story to end with the annihilation of the Terrans and Vasudans (and I, personally, don't), we have the following options:
a) build 80 Collossus-size superdestroyers. They'll be ready in a few centuries
b)build 800 destroyers and swarm Shivan juggs 10:1 (possibly from the rear), same as above
c)develop new armor which is 10-20 times more powerful than current armor, including the Shivans' (which is not better than GTVA armor). How much did armor technology advance in the past 30 years? Almost nothing. Okay, we've got CC Molybdenum, which is thinner but just as strong as the older armor types, and the Hatshepsut is 25% more powerful than any other destroyer, but that's it.
d)develop capship shields. I don't know what the average shield power/hitpoints ratio is in case of fighters, but for destroyers, it would have to be much higher, shields would have to be 5 times the Colossus's hitpoints in power. Otherwise shields are down after the second or third shot and the ship is toast after the next. Because the FS2 ai doesn't use the shield equalizing function too often, I mutiplied this by 4 in case of the aurora (it was 6.25*4 =25 million). Once again: this is still just the test version!
The base problem is that beams in FS2, especially Shivan ones, are too powerful compared to the hull of the ships, which reduces combat with shivan capships to something like this:
"GTD destroyer>Command, a Ravana class destroyers has jumped in. They're firing at us
Command>Engage the destroyer, we'll send in reinforcements as soon as possible
GTD destroyer>Hull breach on multiple decks, I don't know how much longer we can...
Command>Oh well, send in Alpha 1"
This is ok for FS2, in which the GTVA gets their butts kicked by the Shivans, but in the future, the GTVA should improve and make ships which can compete with Shivan designs.
Another reason for using shields is that they can recharge in a few hours. To fully repair the hull of a destroyer would probably take weeks. Also, shields distribute damage around their entire surface and protect the entire crew even if they're about to fail. Armor doesn't, and a well aimed shot should kill a few hundred people even if it's the first shot (windows, e.g., cannot possibly resist that firepower).

Power source: experts predict we'll be able to build working fusion reactors in about 50 years. Nuclear technology will be more than 100 years old by then. In 2367, GTVA ships still use fusion reactors, but the alliance already has anti-matter bombs. Therefore, I think that a suitable successor to the 300 year old fusion technology would be anti-matter. The Aurora is an experimental heavy beam destroyer. It's fighter capacity is minimal, it has a crew of only 1000-2000 (why do we need 10000?). It's equipped with a matter-antimatter reactor and an auxiliary fusion reactor. The fusion reactor is enough to power life support, engines and the warp drive, but shields and weaponry won't be of much use without the main reactor.

This is just my idea of the future. But if you want to stick with FS2 technology, then I'd say a hull of about 150000 (to show some minimal advancement), 10 SgreeenIIs with a lower recharge rate (15 sec or so), and an LRBGreen as the main cannon (maybe with a slightly increased recharge rate). The remaining cannons all around the ship should be similar to vasudan slashers. It'll beat a Ravana. If a Sath comes by, we'll send in Alpha 1 in a Boanerges.

[Unknown Target]

I love everything about your ships except for those ribs spike things that you always put on the top, and the big blocky torp-tube like things in the front. Otherwise, they're all great.

[Corsair]

It still looks chill, even if it is too powerful.

[knn]

Latest version, I've removed the torpedo tubes, they are unneeded, instead I've moved the docking port down there, added nameplates and escape pods:


Those should have been windows, but they were too big, and I wanted to add escape pods anyway.

[Corsair]

Oooh la la!

[Ulala]

Originally posted by Corsair
Oooh la la!

Heyyy, shouldn't that be my line?

The model is hot.
However, I agree with Raa. I know it's not final, so it's cool. My feeling on the whole thing is "oh, I wonder if the GTVA uber-kill-everything-in-one-big-beamfest is going to win this time." It's like watching a TV show that redundantly does the same thing every episode, and after a short time, I'm tired of watching. Someone could argue the Colossus is a "beamfest" ship, and that might be true if the Colossus didn't suck. Just my $.02.

[knn]

It would do that only once, destroying a Sathanas (The GTVA strikes back), and then a new Shivan ship would jump in and blast the GTVD Invincible to pieces a few missions later. (The name is very important in this case).

[aldo_14]

and then some supership blows up the Shivans, and then the Shivans deploy some new supership, and then......... etc.  It strikes me as completely pointless; all you really do is to replace the Sathanas with what?  An equally indestructable warship?

If you want to come with a 'GTVA wins scenario', all you need is a) a creative solution to removing the Shivan threat, or b) asymettric warfare.  IMO it's a lot better than a pissing match about who can build the most warships.

[knn]

but there would be only ONE new shivan supership instead of 80!

The GTVA will still need a creative solution to destroy all of the 80+ juggs. (Or just prevent the Shivans from attacking again)

[aldo_14]

So it's the Lucifer reprised, then.

[knn]

I've done some tests today. Here are some specs of the new version:
Hitpoints: not decided yet, ( set to 250000), probably 150000-250000
Shields: 5 000 000. This means that each quadrant is 1 250 000. If the ai equalized shields, I'd set this to 1 500 000-2 000 000
Weaponry:
1 GTVA heavy beam, comparable to the BFRed. Stats (BFReds' in brackets):
Damage: 2900 (2100)
Life: 4 (7)
Refire: 8 (10)
As you can see, this is actually weaker than the BFRed, because its life is lower (altough the refire rate is better)
10 medium beams, comparable to the LRed:
Damage: 1100 (600)
Life: 4 (7)
Refire: 12 (10)

The Sathanas delivers a total damage of 58800 (asuming #Damage is dealt every second, whih is not true, but this is irrelevant), or 2100x7x4 with one shot from every beam, while the Aurora can deliver 2900x4+10x1100x4=55600. Asuming that all the damage dealt to the Aurora is absorbed by the front shield quadrant, the Aurora has 1 250 000 hitpoints, the Sathanas 1 000 000.

In a battle with the Sathanas, most of the damage was done to the front shield quadrant. When it failed, the Sathanas had 2% hits left. When the game crashed (probably because there's a problem with shockwaves), the Aurora had 59% hits left and the Sath was still firing.
This is still not final, that depends on the campaign it's put into.

Of course Ulala is right, there'd be no point in making an invincible superdestroyer and using it to destroy each and every enemy destroyer the GTVA encounters. How many times did we sit back and watch the Colossus destroy enemies? Once, in High Noon.
The Ravana in Their Finest Hour does not count, as the Colossus is destroyed soon after. The Repulse in Feint!Parry!Riposte! does not count too. I actually thought it was part of the mission to quickly disable the destroyer before it hits the Colossus. And you are right too aldo, there is no point in continuously adding new superships. But we have to do it once. Why didn't the Shivans just attack with another Lucy and a few Demons in 2367? Isn't the Sathanas an ubership?
And lets not event try to compare the firepower of the FS1 Orion, equiped with a few ML-16 and Avenger-derivative turrets, with the FS2 Orion, equipped with 3 BGreens, 3 TerSlashers and numerous AAA, flak and laser turrets.

Oh, and did I mention the Colossus, the largest and most powerful GTVA warship ever constructed, almost untouchable by anything but a Sathanas? Even the Ravana can hardly scratch it before it is destroyed by the many BGReens.

BTW, the GTVA wins scenarion should look stg like this: we build better ships instead of trying to build more ships than the shivans (which is almost impossible). Then, we use these ships to
1) protect ourselves before we find a solution
2) execute our plan to end the shivan threat forever.
The Shivan Manifesto states that either the terrans-vasudans or the shivans must be destroyed completely to end the FS story. I don't think this is necessary. All we need is to find a way of travel that does not damage subspace. (Other solutions are possible, of course, this is just what I could think of right now) Until we do that, we need to prevent the shivans from exterminating us.

[Sandwich]

*ahem* Allow me to point out that this thread is mainly for the submissions of designs for destroyers; the final armament and stats for the ship(s) chosen for the FSU will ultimately remain in the hands of the campaign leader.

We now return to your regular TV schedule.

[Carl]

knn, that looks like the result of a joint project between Sienar Fleet Systems and the Vulcans.

[knn]

Sandwich is right. Let's drop the subject.