[EagleCAP]

- updated 6/18/05 -

One of the things I initially found unique about the FS world is that each ship's type is designated in its prefix (GTD, GVCv, etc), not in a serial number like it is in most navies today (CG-42, FFG-14, etc).  However, because it is not likely that the system of giving a number to ships will disappear anytime soon, I took the liberty of combining the US Navy's system of ship designations and the FS1 & 2 tech database sheets to make FS more "realistic" in a military sense.

So, I have come up with a system for the Terran ships:

CAPITAL SHIPS
GTC Fenris Class Strike Light Cruiser – CLS-186 to CLS-344
GTM Hippocrates Class Hospital Ship – AH-42 to AH-89
GTC Leviathan Class Heavy Cruiser – CA-107 to CA-181
GTSC Faustus Class Science Vessel – ASR-692 to ASR-978
GTA Charybdis Class AWACS Vessel – AER-1 to AER-75
GTG Zephyrus Class Gas Miner – AG-799 to AG-1042
GTD Orion Class Battle Destroyer – DDB-75 to DDB-109
GTD Hecate Class Battle Destroyer – DDB-110 to DDB-116
GTI Arcadia Fixed General Purpose Installation – IFG-442 to IFG-677
GTVA Colossus Joint Superdreadnaught – JSDN-1
GTCv Deimos Class Heavy Corvette – FFB-1 to FFB-38
GTC Aeolus Class Escort Light Cruiser – CLE-345 to CLE-367
GTT Elysium Class Fleet Transport – AP-792 to AP-895
GTT Argo Class Heavy Fleet Transport – APD-896 to APD-1024
GTI Ganymede Fixed Repair Installation – IFR-678 to IFR-795

I theorized that the prefix of the ship would represent the overall type of vessel, yet the registry number would indicate the precise role of the ship.  Since the Fenris was a smaller ship designed for strike missions, she's a strike light cruiser, as compared to the Levy, which is a heavy cruiser.  

There aren't any race identifiers in these, because this system was started by the GTA before contact with the Vasudans.   Since the GTVA fleet still has separate organization with separate Terran and Vasudan fleets, squadronts, etc, the designation system stays the same for the Terrans.

FIGHTERS
SSF-12 Apollo
IF-16 Valkyrie
AF-19 Hercules
AF-19D Herc II
AF-19H Ares
RF-20 Loki
SSF-21 Ulysses
SSF-22 Myrmidon
RF-25 Pegasus
AF-27 Erinyes
IF-29 Perseus

BOMBERS
SB-9 Artemis
SB-14 Zeus
HB-16 Medusa
AB-18 Ursa
HB-20 Boanerges
MB-21 Artemis
MB-21C Artemis D.H.

For fighters, I simply used the role of the fighter as put in the weapon loadout screen and put some letters to them.  I figure the "GTF" prefix is what is commonly used, but they have the design type designation for more technical purposes.



I already changed the ships.tbl to have each ship's data in the techroom to be started with an all-caps line with the designation, ie.
- "IF-29 PERSEUS INTERCEPTOR"
- "SSF-22 MYRMIDON SPACE SUPERIORITY FIGHTER"
- "DDB-81 ORION-CLASS BATTLE DESTROYER"
- "CLS-186 FENRIS-CLASS STRIKE LIGHT CRUISER"

I'm in the middle of FRED'ing all of the missions from FS2 and the FS1 port to change them to have each ship's "name" in the mission be the name and the registry, ie "GTD Bastion DDB-104."  Those and the ships.tbl I'll try to get up as soon as I can.

Questions, comments, criticisms, complaints?

[Kosh]

Whoa. How long did it take you to do this?

[Nuke]

im a nihilist, that means i dont give a rats ass what people call things. it really doesnt matter.

[aldo_14]

Um... to be honest, I couldn't give a monkeys about ships designations.  Particularly as the ships of all nations will have different designation schemes, so I see no reason to apply a specific US-derivative to FS.

However, I'd point out that a GTVA battlegroup is composed of multiple ships with significant firepower; not just destroyers have beams, so the likes of Deimos and Sobeks factor in.  Also, the very word 'battlegroup' is ambigious; the Vasudans seem to use it interchangably with fleet in certain occaisions, it's also not clear if it would necessarily be smaller than a fleet in either case.

Oh, and not all GTVA fleets are equal in power or role, so you can't get an absolute total by multiplication.  The 12th fleet in Wolf 359 is mentioned, IIRC, in a Vasudan debrief as being a 'support' fleet; the apparent meaning being logistics rather than combat.

And you need a species designation for GTVA ships.

[Ghost]

What aldo says has a point, but I think the idea has merit... It looks interesting to me. I'd be willing to download the tbl.

[FireCrack]

An orion definitley servs a carrier role just as much as a hecate. It's hanger bay is just a few fighter wings smaller.

[aldo_14]

The FS (1) Ref Bible describes the Orion as a 'carrier/destroyer'.

[Setekh]

Dude, this is cool. However, there's a deeper problem with regard to military realism. The whole system of designations (cruisers, destroyers, corvettes) is completely backwards in terms of size and such - IIRC, cruisers are meant to be the largest attack class, so from the start the FS universe is not particularly realistic in that respect. So long as you recognise that, and realise (!) that complete realism is impossible to acquire without a total overhaul of the naming conventions, you'll go well.

[Cobra]

awesome. me wants.

[pyro-manic]

I'll be honest - I don't like it one little bit. The type is indicated in the prefix - adding long designations like that simply takes up more space and doesn't add anything to the game. Also, giving capital ships ID codes is pointless - nobody says "We have deployed the DDB-100," - that means nothing to anyone, especially not the player, unless you want to draw up a list of all ships that they can cross-reference whenever a new ship jumps in....

The only time that designation codes or model numbers would be used is with prototypes, ships that are yet to be commissioned (you'll meet the L-460 in my campaign) or ships that are small and not important enough to warrant giving their own names, eg. wings of transport ships.

I wouldn't use it, and campaigns that did use it would annoy me, so I have to say no.

[Lynx]

Wait a minute...you know, it's those little things that make a games atmosphere of a game. You probalby won't use it every time some ship is mentioned, but it'd look good if it's popping up here and there. FS didn't have such a thing to begin with, but if it had used something like that you'd probably notice the absence in mods.

For example, WC had such a thing in the beginning, every carrier had it's unique ID number(for example TCS Coral Sea, CVA-99) and seeing references to those ID's in ship lists and dialogue helped to further authentic feel of the game. Of course, those number were more prominent in WC since they were actually painted on the ships bow and hangar entrance like on todays carriers).

Even though the ship classes are messed up big time, those designation could help to identify the ship type since with the designation GTD Whatever, DDB XX you'd also know the ship type, not just the class. T say go for it. It would be even better if all mods adopt that shema so you could further the feeling of all stuff taking place in the same universe plusthe enhancement of the authenticity feel.

[EagleCAP]

Setekh - What I'm trying to go for is a bit of realism atmosphere within the FS universe.  Don't even get me started about making a corvette(!) bigger than a cruiser.  Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  

I'm not saying that you should refer to the ship by the code letters in the comm chatter, just in the actual name of the ship object in the mission.  Modern day ships have numbers, but they are more used for official designation.  When you're talking about, say, the USS Nimitz, you call it the Nimitz, not the CVN-68.

I guess the next level of this project would be to put in one big list the name and registry of every ship in FS1, 2, ST, and maybe some of the custom camps - good idea, Lynx.

I revised the size of the Terran fleet, and made it a bit smaller.  Since the loss of one Orion destroyer is seen as a "severe loss" in the FS1 database, there can't be THAT many of them (losing one of 59 ships wouldn't really matter.)  So, now there are only 28 Orions that were ever constructed.  The class was produced before and during the T-V war, but discontinued after the GTVA was founded in favor of the Hecate.  So:

28 Orions total
- 4 killed in T-V war
- 3 killed in Great War
- 5 lost to NTF
= 16 Orions in FS2 fleet
- 4 lost in 2nd Shivan incursion
= 12 Orions in post-Capella era

To go along with that, I made the rest of the fleet smaller.  This is the "current" list of how many of each warship class was ever constructed.

Fenris - 158
Levy - 74
Orion - 28
Hecate - 7
Colossus - 1 (duh)
Deimos - 39
Aeolus - 22

[pyro-manic]

Not sure about the other numbers, but I'm sure there's something in the tech room that says only about two dozen (ie. around 25) Aeolus were ever built.

[EagleCAP]

Oops.....

I changed the thing.

[aldo_14]

There's no evidence really as to when Orions were discontinued.  The relatively recent introduction of the Hecate would suggest to me that they would have built some post-Great War, although economic conditions would have limited that number.

Sandwiches list of ships in FS2;
http://www.brainzipper.com/fs2/notes/ship_list.txt

Code: [Select]

Note: For a number of the ships, the *class name* was never mentioned. These are represented by
question marks. However, for those where their designation is GTCv or GVCv it wasn't too
difficult to guess what their class is. :p However, there were a few times where Volition
referred to a Deimos-class corvette in a briefing as a GTC or GTA. What all this means is
that the only thing the numbers are good for is representing the minimum amount of those
ships that are mentioned in the main campaign. And when you consider how many ships there
are in the whole of the GTVA...Oh well. :)


5.1 - Terran
------------

Ship class Total Who Survived Destroyed Unknown
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GTVA Colossus - 1   1 GTVA 0 1 0

GTD  Hecate - 2   2 GTVA 1 0 1

GTD  Orion - 8   4 GTVA 2 2 (self-dstrct) 0
4 NTF 0 4 0

NTF  Iceni - 1   0 GTVA 0 0 0
1 NTF 0 1 0

GTCv Deimos - 18 10 GTVA 9 1 0
8 NTF 1 6 1

GTC  Aeolus - 13 7 GTVA 3 0 4 (supernova)
6 NTF 0 6 0

GTC  Leviathan - 8   3 GTVA 2 0 1 (supernova)
5 NTF 0 5 0

GTC  Fenris - 7   2 GTVA 1 1 0
5 NTF 0 5 0

GTD  ????? - 2 (Hecate or Orion) 1 1 0
GTC  ????? - 3 (Aeolus, Lev. or Fen.) 1 2 0


NTD  ????? - 3 (Hecate or Orion) 0 3 0
NTC  ????? - 8 (Aeolus, Lev. or Fen.) 0 8 0

NB: the phrase over the loss of an Orion doesn't necessarily imply there were few or many; the Orion would have had a major role in projection of power across a system - losing it and its fighter complement would have left many supporting vessels (cruisers and freighters) without escort protection.

[Nuke]

seems to me like the gtva would pull of older ships typhons and orions, out of mothball after the loss of capella. it seems they would want to at least have some military forces to use whilst they construct new warships.

[pyro-manic]

I'd be inclined to agree. The Bastion and Nereid had already been decommissioned when they were reactivated to collapse the Capella nodes - this would indicate that at least some of the older ships had been withdrawn from service, probably to be replaced by the newer types. After (or maybe even during) the incursion, ships such as the Minnow, Hope, maybe even the Orion itself might have been prepared for a return to service as stopgaps. It's not clear how many Hecates had been commissioned, but they were considered very new, so probably not many (perhaps half a dozen?). This would mean only a small number of Orions had been laid up. The Vasudans, however, developed the Hatshepsut soon after the Great War, along with the Sobek. This would mean that more Typhons could have been put into storage - though it seems like only a handful survived the Great War, so perhaps not that many were left.

It's also not known how many would be mothballed, and how many would be broken up - a destroyer would be expensive to maintain even while laid up, and represents an awful lot of material that could be used for new ships.

[Goober5000]

Hey, give EagleCAP a break.  I think this is very well done.

The stated goal is to provide atmosphere... and I agree wholeheartedly with that.  I wouldn't want to see "CLS-192 GTC Orff" in every in-game message, but if I was flying by the Orff and happened to see that on its nameplate, it would add a lot.  As long as it isn't "in-your-face", those who know about the designations can appreciate them, and those who don't know or don't care can ignore them.

How many of you guys noticed the GTF-5 on the Apollo in the FS1 intro cutscene, or the GTVA TX23-01 on the Vesuvius in Inferno R1?  If it's applied consistently, with meaning behind it (i.e. not randomly), that kind of thing can add a lot to a mod.

And EagleCAP:

[EagleCAP]

Hm, didn't think about mothballed ships.  Changed the list to have 35 Orions.  So the new count is:

35 built
- 4 KIA in T-V
- 3 KIA in GW
- 7 of the first ships put into mothballs
- 4 to NTF (they took one of the mothballed ones, and still have 5 total)
= 16 active fleet Orions in FS2.
- 4 active ships KIA in FS2 (not counting Bastion and Nereid, already subtracted in mothballed ships)
= 12 active Orions in post-Capella

Of course, when the Shivans showed up in Gamma Draconis, the GTVA began the process of mobilizing the 6 reserve Orions (minus the one in the NTF), including the Bastion, Nereid, and the over 50-year old(!) Orion herself.

The current ship numbers list:
Fenris - 159
Levy - 75
Orion - 35
Hecate - 7
Colossus - 1 (duh)
Deimos - 39
Aeolus - 23
(They're all 1 bigger - forgot to count the last ship made of each)

Kudos to Goober.  Speaking of the good ol' GTC Orff from FS1, that was the first one I messed with:

(Its 295, not 192. )

And the FS2 Bastion, using the hi-poly Orion model in the media vps.


Speaking of stuff on fighters, I've been working on that too - new squadron insignia.  It wouldn't change any ingame text or anything, but it just adds a little flavor.  A preview:

The two letters are a random tail code, assigned to each squadron.  The rest means "104th Galactic Terran Fighter Squadron, 33rd Embarked Combat Group. "

[kv1at3485]

Personally, I like the large bold destroyer names plates like 'GTD Bastion'.  The one you have seems too timid.

Although I love the fighter identification markings.  Consider changing the random letter code to three letters instead of two.  The GTVA has a lot of squadrons.