[Jetmech Jr.]

Does anyone know how the FS shields are supposed to work?

[NGTM-1R]

Speed is more important then manuverablity in a gun fight. That's a lesson that dates back to the 1930s and the first real monoplane fighters. It's a lesson that was learned repeatedly by all sides during the Second World War.

Add missiles to the equation, though, and dogfighting gets more important. Still, given a choice most pilots prefer speed. Few things are quite so comforting as the ability to run away if you need to.

[Eishtmo]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
Add missiles to the equation, though, and dogfighting gets more important. Still, given a choice most pilots prefer speed. Few things are quite so comforting as the ability to run away if you need to.

This is probably one of the reasons that the fighters are allowed to be slower:  Subspace is the best way to run away.  A couple of keystrokes, and you're on the otherside of the system.  Still doesn't explain why they're slower in the first place, but it could go a long way into why they left them slower.

[Flipside]

Actually, you take the average TurboLaser from Star Wars and the official ratings for them, they are god-awful powerful as well, unfeasibly so in fact.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Jetmech Jr.
Does anyone know how the FS shields are supposed to work?

The actual theory behind shields is not hinted in the game, but the fact that they can't be used in subspace suggest that they might be a different aplication of the field of the subspace drive.

[übermetroid]

interesting...  do continue.  

[Flipside]

hehehehe

Possibly they generate a mild subspace 'field' around the ship, and because the weapons can't make the jump between the different energyl levels, it impacts on the shield at the cost of some power drain? They don't work in Subspace because you are already in a Subspace field, and it's impossible for one to form inside another?

[Alan Bolte]

Yeah, just forget it. I'm going to have to base the relative speeds and ranges off the lasers assumption whether it makes sense or not (and it seems not to in this case), so there's little sense in continuing the arguement. In relation to that, I'd like to thank Kosh for keeping the cutscenes available online in avi format.

Some of you guys who were suggesting that the little glowy green blobs were plasma might enjoy this piece of writing:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/PlasmaWeapons.html

Alright, some other issues: shields, beams, and subspace.
FS beams (to distinguish them from beam weapons of other scifi) skip FS shields, unlike any other weaponry. FS shields seem to have something to do with FS subspace, but otherwise are poorly defined. They are effective against EM radiation, particle weapons, and projectiles. Higher-frequency radiation seems to be more damaging, as are kinetic impactors.

SW shields use a variety of forcefield effects, and they start at roughly hull level and decrease in intensity as they extend outward. They are useful against EM radiation, particle beams, projectiles, and SW 'lasers'. SW does reference tech they call subspace, and it may have been used for FTL travel before hyperdrives were invented. It is still used for short-range FTL communications.

ST shields aren't terribly consistent about their definition, but may be a suspension of charged particles in a forcefield. They are generally much more effective against EM radiation than against charged particles and unusual forces. ST uses something they call subspace for communications, sensors, and FTL travel, but getting a really consistant definition of this is far worse than anything I've tried to do previously in this thread. FTL travel works looks nothing like that in Freespace.

Some B5 shields are said to be electromagnetic in nature, others are said to be gravitic. Generally they are secondary to armor and only used in any large capacity by the older races. They are most likely based on forcefield effects. Only the Thirdspace aliens were seen to have highly-visible bubble shields like those of FreeSpace and Star Trek.

Since I'm doing a crossover mod, I'm curious what the general Freespace community thinks: can FS beams penetrate the shields of all of these universes? None of them? Some but not others? One big issue is, should we consider the subspace of each of these universes to be the same thing, or are there multiple different things that are coincidentally called subspace? Is B5 hyperspace related to any of these? I'm going to hold my current views back for the moment.

[NGTM-1R]

Kinetic weapons are poor against shields: IE, Maxim and ultimately the Avenger too have poor shield-damage ratings. FS1 missile effectiveness against shields is poor-to-fair. This is rather different in FS2, presumably because they have had time to develop missiles that are more effective against shielding.

Standard krypton-argon chemical laser technology is useless against FS shielding: reference the ML-16. The Disruptor, a slightly unfocused ML-16, is slightly effective. The Prometheus, Banshee, and Flail appear to have a larger "bore" diameter then the ML-16, and all are considerably more effective against shielding. Beam cannon, which are mounted on larger craft, presumably have an even larger "bore" diameter then that.

This leads me to believe that FS shielding is at its best against point energy blasts, does well against kinetic impact, fair against blast effects, and deals much less effectively with "high-calibur" energy blasts.

[Bobboau]

I'd say, figure out what would make a fun game and try to make the details fit that.

I've always thought of FS 'lasers' as being laser induced plasma dicharges (ie the projectile is plasma created by fireing a laser at/into some source material)
FS shields being some sort of suspended lepton feild charged in such a way that the particles are super atracted to anything that penetrates it.
combat manuvering is relitive, you are in a combat zone that is flying about the system at potentialy relotivistic velocities within this combat zone you are moveing realy slowly relitive to the other ships. I've figured that there is some sort of energy conserving subspace/gravity drive in play were you dump a certan amount of energy in and it pushes your momentum along your z axis. this is why there is fairly strong accelleration but realy low top speeds, when you slow down you get energy back,  it consumes little total energy but you need to have a lot avalable, meh technobable. you can consiter capships quasi-stationary bricks, they can't move hardly at all but they are tough as **** and can deal out some major damage, easy to run away from tacticly, hard to atack other than at range, and if you continue to atack them from a distance they jump right on top of you, you get beamed. beam weapons are near/at c, in game they have an unlimited range but there is a limit due to the targeting computers on the ships (find a good range for the universe(s) your dealing with use that). as for damage I'd say they have about 30 times the power of a star trek phaser, this is based on the relitive size (ST beams are somewere around 5-10 meters wide, FS beams can be 200 meters wide) and the fact that they'r based on similar technology, however this is fairly unbalenced (though FS beams need a lot longer recharge after fireing than ST beams).
so I guess a good tactic for FS ships to use against the absurdly fast other universe ships would be suprise atacks disableing them as fast as posable. destroying them quickly.
oh, and the average FS bomb would leave a big 'ole crack in an average planet's tectoic plate, and the fighter shields sluff this damage off like it's spit balls.

[Alan Bolte]

My reference to kinetic weaponry was quite horribly worded, and it seems to have caught your attention so I'll respond to that now. I'll get to the rest later. What I was thinking of was something I didn't post here about the missiles in FS1. Each has a stated yield in kT, and of course in damage to shields and armor. Given that the simplest way to come up with yield numbers short of typing something entirely random is to base it off of the ingame damage, I find it notable that they do not correspond. Specifically, the 16.5 kT MX-50 does less damage to both shields and hull than the 3 kT Fury, but is much slower. The only explanation that comes to mind is that FS defenses have a lot of trouble with a fast-moving missile in comparison to a fission warhead.

[FireCrack]

I'd say the beams peirce sheilds, although this is a fallacy to assume true for all universes it's even worst o make up things totaly unfounded.

As for the furry i'd say it's a somwhat kenetik weapon and derives of damage from the missiles forward momentum.



By the way, sorry if i'm derailing the thread, but does anyone have any idea what type of explosives are used in freespace?

[Pnakotus]

Why would beam cannons... essentially lasers... pierce shields?  We know it does in FS (although I and everyone I know play with -nobeampierce) but that doesn't really mean anything without knowing how their shield technology works.  Its worth noting that it DOES perform work on the shield as well as penetrating; the most likely explanation is it simply overloads the shield system inputs and gets bleed-through.  Hardly likely to happen to SW shields, and ST shields seem to have this characteristic anyway.

Alan, if you work from the fluff numbers, then the cannons must be substantially less than the low-kT levels for standard missiles.  I would seriously go the Conquest road and fudge FS by elevating its power; going by the fluff the numbers are low, ingame stuff makes it even lower.  There are many FS vs x threads on SDN, and their lack of a) long range weapons and b) sublight performance means they are going to be difficult to have a fun story with.

Some things worth noting - the games feature 'convoy escort missions', sometimes in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps this can be used to rationalise high transit speeds across systems?  Capital ships are absurdly slow (given the engine-to-volume ratio), perhaps that is a fuel- or structural-limitation?

[Alan Bolte]

Wait, I'm not terribly familiar with the more detailed game mechanics. In what way do beams normally interact with shields? I just read that they pass straight through in various forum discussions and worked from there.

In case somehow it wasn't clear I am indeed planning on fudging range, speeds, etc to a large degree.

Judging by the fluff, FireCrack, they use fission missiles similar in power to present-day fission weapons and huge fusion or antimatter bombs.

That whole bit with the realspace convoys was one of my considerations earlier, but nothing has come of it so far. Why would such convoys exist at all? Perhaps this points to limitations of jump drives, or other completely unknown concerns.

As to the idea that their laser weapons are contained in some kind of particle pulse, could someone please explain to me how that could ever possibly make sense? If they can lunch these laser containers, then surely they could create a defensive system based on using the same particles and such to deflect lasers. I suppose it's possible that they developed this form of shielding in order to defend against normal lasers, thus making their ships impervious to fighter-scale lasers. Then for some technobabble reason these particle pulses can penetrate the shields and deliver the laser, so they start employing those as weapons. Frankly, though, this is horribly contrived and the complete lack of any basis in Freespace fluff makes this a highly unlikely explanation. I don't suppose anyone has a batter idea?

They certainly aren't plasma, see the link.

Bobbau, two things here. One, why on Earth are you assuming FS beams and phasers work on the same principles? What do you mean they're based on similar technology?

Two, about fighters and bombs, I'm going to have to blame basic gameplay mechanics, because it isn't just shield damage. That 5 GT bomb does way less damage in armor HP than the other missile yield to hitpoint ratios would imply. Really, massively less. My only conjecture on the matter so far is that fighter weapons and armor are on an entirely different scale from capship weapons and armor, so as to make this a more fighter-centric game than would be reasonable with this kind of firepower disparity. Essentially the idea is that it isn't fun unless you can strafe a cruiser until it explodes.

[Carl]

but even the huge bombs aren't top scale with each other. according to the tech database the tsunami does 10.7 teratons of damage (500 tonne mass->energy), 2000+ times more powerful than a harbinger, and enough to cause a mass extinction. this is not parelleled in the .tbl files.

[NGTM-1R]

I think they meant it could convert roughly that amount of mass into energy, counting secondary damage and assuming the full force is directed into the target. The intial explosion converst matter to energy, which converts more matter to energy, and so on. It's an unfocused explosion, though, so a lot of the intial energy, maybe 3/4s, is wasted. The actual intial damage is probably on a rather smaller scale.

The Harbinger, by contrast, is the nuclear equivalent of a shaped charge. Most if not all of the force is directed into the target's hull.

[FireCrack]

Speaking of the harbinger, slated bombs? what's the point in space.

And yeah, i think the 500 tonne mass>energy is a theoretical maximum if there was of mass to convert (no way does the bomb itself have a 500 tonne mass)

[Carl]

that's not how antimatter works. it doesn't just convert wahtever mass is lying around into energy. there has to be 250 tonnes of antimatter in there to annailate 250 tonnes of matter.

[NGTM-1R]

Note the description of "counting secondary damage".

[Pnakotus]

LOL of course, that assumes 100% M/AM reaction, in other words, exactly one matter particle per AM particle, reacting at the same time.  Can we say pipe dream?

The weapons just don't make sense.  Like any game that jumps on the 'plasma weapon' bandwagon, all those 1km/s projectiles cause a few problems  All Alan can do is work out rough yields and move from there... although it'd be like having a HW2 crossover; game physics tends to cripple the universe, and FS doesn't have any other source.