[Shade]

My take is that if you've planned for it and set up the drive just right, you can do it, likely with a risk of some damage to the drives if unlucky (so not something you want to do as standard). So being prepared, the Iceni could do it, but in your average mission with everything running according to factory specs, you need to let them recharge/cool down/whatever.

[Edit]There has also got to be a difference between intersystem and local jumps, so chain jumping locally wouldn't be anywhere near as big a feat as what the Iceni pulled. After all, we know that intersystem jumps require vastly more energy, so it seems reasonable that a capship capable of those would have spare energy after a local jump, and just need to let drives cool down or risk damaging them.

Finally, the delay in jumping likely also has something to do with calculating the jump (think the millenium falcon running from the 3 ISDs in starwars). So if you know where you want to jump in advance, you can precalculate the jump and save time there.

[wgemini]

I think an intra-system jump, while easier, is even more time consuming since you will need to make all the calculations whereas inter-system jump is more or less deterministic given the jump node as a road. I would think it will take at least 30 minutes to recalibrate the machine, recharge the jump drive and calculate the coordinate. An emergency jump can be achieved in 10 minutes. However, the ship will not know where it would end up and the jump drive will be severely damaged, thus need a day or two to repair. A fleet jump would take even longer.

[karajorma]

Finally, the delay in jumping likely also has something to do with calculating the jump (think the millenium falcon running from the 3 ISDs in starwars). So if you know where you want to jump in advance, you can precalculate the jump and save time there.

Considering that fighters can jump almost instantly after recieving orders I find that unlikely.

[Shade]

True, didn't think about that. Guess it's just an energy/heat buildup issue then... but as mentioned, energy shouldn't be too big an issue for capships when dealing with local jumps, making it pretty much a matter of how much you are willing to risk the integrity of your jump drives if you don't let them cool down for long enough.

I can definitely see how a ship (for the SOC, for instance, or some other entity that might need to get in and out in a hurry) might be modified to make chain jumping more feasible by fitting extra massive heatsinks or by overengineering the subspace drive to make it more forgiving.

A bit like overclocking really Fit a bigger cooler and use a heavier-duty equipment and the risks of frying the system are greatly reduced

[aldo_14]

It's possible that intra-system drives are in some way affected by the energy that passes through them during a jump, and that they need to wait for some sort of static discharge (or something analogous) before they can reactivate.

I suspect, though, that ships' drives recharge at the speed of plot.

[FireCrack]

Their jump drives need time to recharge, it was stated in the breifing for "the kings gambit"

[karajorma]

Thing is that was from an intersystem jump. It's presumable that intrasystem jumps also require recharging too but I don't remember any canon evidence for that.

[Shade]

King's Gambit isn't conclusive as far as local jumps go, though, as the ships have just performed an intersystem jump which is a whole different ballgame as far as energy goes. And even then, the recharge period wasn't too terribly long in that mission despite it being an intersystem jump, and for a local jump it would be an order of magnitude less. Still, I do agree that *some* time is needed for cooldown even if the energy is there... I simply think this period can be shortened considerably with the right preparations, hardware, or willingness to risk breakdown.


But regardless of any argument I may make,  I suspect Aldo hit the nail on the head... the speed of plot sounds about right

[TrashMan]

Didn't we already have this argument? Didn't it result in you making up **** to counter the fact that a battleship is ****ed when dealing with ships armed with the maxim cannon?

Why are you back for more?

You silly little rabbit.

And what if I armed my battleship with 50 Trebuchet launchers?
Or some other long-range weapons?

[karajorma]

What if I just had a ship come in and seed the area with countermeasures first?

This is exactly the kind of crap we went through last time with you completely failing to realise why the battleship became largely obsolete both in wet navies and in the FS2 universe.

[Shade]

It's still a waste of resources. I'd take 25 Ares fighters decked out with double trebs any day at a hundredth of the cost and 10 times the flexibility. The reason battleships don't work is that you can do the same, far cheaper, with other ship classes.

It might be a good ship, hell, it might even be a great ship, but what good does that do if you only have the resources to build one of them while your enemy can attack in 5 different places at once using a number of smaller ships?

You need flexibility and the ability to cover several places at once when the battlefield is as immense as the infinity of space, and pouring resources into just a few behemoths does not give you that.

[TrashMan]

Indeed. One would be much better off simply building another carrier/destroyer instead of a massive dedicated battleship. If you really need long range support, I'd rather go with the Homeworld solution and take one massive cruiser sized beam cannon/missile launcher, then slap a few engines on the back end and call it a frigate. Gets you long range firepower, cheap, with more flexibility as you can deploy each weapon seperately.

Not flexible. Fixed weaponry is allways bad for your health. fire coverage is the way to go.

The one thing that a battleship might be useful for would be surprise strikes. Jump in, lay waste to everything nearby with massive beam salvos, and jump out 20 seconds later before anyone has a clue what happened. But really, this one option isn't worth the cost, not to mention destroyers (well, orion class destroyers) can already do it to a degree while carrying a ton of fighters at the same time.

True. From the moment the BB jumps in t the time the enmy jumps out - that would take time.
First for the sensor officer to report a contact and class.
Then for the captain to relise that they are screwed and order to run.
the nfor hte engine officer to actualyl engage the drive.
The nfor hte drive to warmp up and speed up (as ships don't just *pof* vanish, they stop, pick up speed and then jump out)

Best case scenario - 10 seconds. Which is enough for  BB to ring your bell. (assuming he's slightly larger than an Orion but carrier little to no fighters (2 squads max.))

It might as first glance seem like they'd be great for blockade busting, but I disagree. Mass bombers will own them in short order if they can't launch a fighter screen shortly after entering.

They won't go in alone ya know. And their armor iws the key factor.

Immagine a BB and two destroyers jump in. What will you attack?

If you attack a BB first, it will take time to destroy it becouse of his superior armor. And focusing on him gives the destroyers time to launch fighters and dish out damage on their own.
If you attack the destroyers first you're even more scr*** as you'll have the BB blasting your capships apart.

Eitehr way, the advantage of BB's is that they are hard to disarm (heavily armed turrets), thus there's no simple and easy way to kill them fast.

[Shade]

Fixed weaponry is not a problem when it's a standoff weapon, in effect artillery, as was the case here. You don't need to turn more than a few seconds of arc to track a slow moving target 8 kilometres away. You could still put a few flak guns on it just to give the crew a good feeling though, even if the actual effect would be minimal.

Also, if battleships can't breach a blockade alone, then what is the point of using them in the first place? If the enemy can kill, say, 3 destroyers and their fighter complements assaulting the blockade, they can sure as hell kill 2 destroyers with fighter complements and a battleship without any. And assuming both these makeups can actually win, then after it's all done the 3rd destroyer would be far more useful for in-system operations than a battleship.

[TrashMan]

What if I just had a ship come in and seed the area with countermeasures first?

This is exactly the kind of crap we went through last time with you completely failing to realise why the battleship became largely obsolete both in wet navies and in the FS2 universe.

Ahem? When I said other long-range weapons I didn't mean misiles only.

What about long-range AAAf's? Or ultra-long-rane flak? Or jsurt lasers with maxim range?

What? they're not in FS2? Neither are 90% of ships and weapons made so far but I don't recall ever stoping anyone from making them.

[TrashMan]

Fixed weaponry is not a problem when it's a standoff weapon, in effect artillery, as was the case here. You don't need to turn more than a few seconds of arc to track a slow moving target 8 kilometres away. You could still put a few flak guns on it just to give the crew a good feeling though, even if the actual effect would be minimal.

Also, if battleships can't breach a blockade alone, then what is the point of using them in the first place? If the enemy can kill, say, 3 destroyers and their fighter complements assaulting the blockade, they can sure as hell kill 2 destroyers with fighter complements and a battleship without any. And assuming both these makeups can actually win, then after it's all done the 3rd destroyer would be far more useful for in-system operations than a battleship.

It's not hte problem if you're the attacker. but if someone jumps you from behind?
Better to have several weaker weapons but with a wide area coverage, than a single powerfull one.

A battleship can simply unleash far more damage against enemy capships than any other ship. Don't forget only selected craft have system-system jumps in FS2. So when your destroyer jump in to break the blockade tehy either have only a few escort fighter in the air or none. And a good enemy blockade can destroy your destroyer really fast (and al lthe fighters in it to boot), before he can launch many fighters. Assuming it survives, by that time  it will be damaged and probably disarmed.
It doesn't have the armor or firepower to fight off multiple enemies without ample fightercover.

The battleship has heavy armor, heavy weapons and most importatnly it can't be disabled/disarmed easily. And they usualyl have a formidable point defense too. It is designed to keep fireing from the main batteries till the end...and to stall that end as long as possible. Thus when you deploy it you KNOW you're gonna do damage to the enemy - and lots of it, weather its destroyed or not.
And of course, a batlteship has less crew than a destroyer/carrier so if it gets destroyed, les human lives are lost.

[karajorma]

It appears that you want to have this argument again Very well. Kindly remember that we're dealing with the real FS2 universe not your own one where you're allowed to claim that the maxim was a mistake in order to dig yourself out of a hole.

Ahem? When I said other long-range weapons I didn't mean misiles only.

What about long-range AAAf's? Or ultra-long-rane flak? Or jsurt lasers with maxim range?

What? they're not in FS2? Neither are 90% of ships and weapons made so far but I don't recall ever stoping anyone from making them.

Cause they aren't in FS2 which means I can invent counterweapons to cancel them out. This is exactly what I mean by you making up ****. None of that stuff either exists in FS2 or is even hinted at. Look at your long range lasers for instance. There are no lasers in FS2 that don't disappate by around 1km. Yet you're increasing their range threefold. Fine if you're pulling weapons out of your arse so will I. What the **** are any of those weapons going to do when I start having a Maxim Mark II with a range of 9km?

See! Anyone can invent crap to win the argument. Stick to what's in FS2 or you've already lost the battle.



Anyway quite frankly you're wasting your time. I don't think that the battleship you assume to be so useful even logical within the FS2 universe.

1) Between FS1 and FS2 the Orion, Leviathan, Fenris and Typhon were all upgraded to use beam cannons instead of the blob turrets they used to have.

Difference in speed. - None.
Difference in fighter complement - None
Difference in hitpoints (and therefore armour) - None (Tell a lie. The Fenris improved

So in other words the GTVA managed to upgrade these ships to use beam cannons at absolutely no cost to the internal or external space used on them. So given that we can see that beam cannons don't take up a vastly larger amount of space than blob turrets the question that has to be asked is why didn't they simply stick beam turrets all over the damn ships?

Well the obvious answer is that the limiting factor is not internal space but something else like Reactor power, heat sink effectiveness or plain and simple cost. Whichever of those reasons is responsible it's not something that a BB will necessarily have a lot more of than a destroyer has. The fighter bay on a destroyer probably doesn't take up a huge amount of reactor power. And it almost certainly costs a shedload of money and resources to fill with fighters and weapons.

2) The Colossus represents the best that the GTVA can do in making a super ship. Took them twenty years to build. Hardly bristling with turrets is it? The Colossus has 63 turrets and is 6km long. It was the pinnicle of GTVA design. Their flagship and yet it had a relatively tiny number. Why? Yet again it looks like the beam cannons are using up a huge amount of whatever resource it is that places a limit on the number of turrets you can have. But that can't be space. Or otherwise they could have covered the ship in blob turrets. Or missile turrets! The Colossus has a pitiful number of those for its size. Even the version mentioned in the cutscene has very few. What is all that space inside the Colossus being used for? Again maybe the limit isn't size. Maybe it's money. Maybe putting 50 extra missile launchers on the Colossus would have quite simply cost too much. Or maybe it's not the weapons themselves that are expensive but the reactors to power them.

3) The Hecate is the GTVA's most recent, most advanced ship. Yet the Hecate is actually a poorer combatant than the Orion. If there is such a large gap in the amount of firepower between a BB and a destroyer why the hell didn't the GTVA build one instead of the Hecate? They'd already got the Deimos. You seriously think no one in the GTVA thought let's make a bigger version of the Deimos? Cause that's all a BB is after all.

4) Look at the Iceni. It was built as the flagship for Admiral Bosch. No expense spared no doubt. What armament does it have? ****loads. The Iceni carries as many BGreens as the Orion does. (Yet another argument that space isn't the limiting factor). Why didn't the GTVA do that with the Deimos then? Again maybe it costs too damn much to put so much expensive weaponary into one ship.

5) How much better armoured would a battleship be? Not much. Certainly not to the degree you're claiming. Firstly armour cost money. So yet again we're pushing up the cost of the battleship with every inch of armour you put on it. Armour costs you speed too so that counts against it but most importantly of all why is there an assumption that the destroyer has weak armour just cause it carrys ships? That's wet navy thinking. The destroyer is designed to go toe to toe with the enemy. At least in the case of the Hatshepsut it is. Same with the Orion.
 Why is there an assumption that the extra mass of fighters on a destroyer means it must be lightly armoured but yet the extra mass of guns, reactors and heatsinks on a battleship is ignored? I don't think the difference is going to be anywhere near as large as your assumption. Especially considering that you rejected my theory that beam cannons are small last time. Maybe a battleship might have enough armour to get another salvo in but it's certainly not the monster that shrugs off enemy fire that we're hearing about.

So lets sum up. The BB isn't a viable class. Either it costs too damn much to put all those weapons on it. Or it would melt cause the heatsinks are too close together or there would be no way to power all those weapons and they'd have to take turns using them. Even if you reject that there's no real reason to think that it's any more heavily armoured than a standard destroyer. At best it's a little heavier.

Quite frankly I'm of the opinion that the GTVA considered the idea of battleships but rejected them because they realised that at best they might be able to bolt on a beam cannon or two in return for losing the massive offensive and defensive capabilities of carrying fighters. The FS2 destroyer class IS a battleship. Close to the best battleship the GTVA can build. Its just that they've bolted on fighter launching capabilities at virtually no cost.

[aldo_14]

Artillery & long range weapons are rather useless, of course, against an agile enemy bomber force that comes in at close range. 

What if I just had a ship come in and seed the area with countermeasures first?

This is exactly the kind of crap we went through last time with you completely failing to realise why the battleship became largely obsolete both in wet navies and in the FS2 universe.

Ahem? When I said other long-range weapons I didn't mean misiles only.

What about long-range AAAf's? Or ultra-long-rane flak? Or jsurt lasers with maxim range?

What? they're not in FS2? Neither are 90% of ships and weapons made so far but I don't recall ever stoping anyone from making them.

So you're randomly inventing weapons to justify a ship class?  Well, why not just build a cruiser armed with a single 360 firing arch SFMBHBFGreen that can incenerate a Sathanas in one blow?

[Polpolion]

wow.

[Shade]

Fine, I'll play...

It's not hte problem if you're the attacker. but if someone jumps you from behind?

If something jumps in that is so powerful you don't have time to jump out before you're dead, it doesn't really matter where the guns are located anyway now does it? And with a big front weapon at least you managed to do some damage to other enemy ships first.

A battleship can simply unleash far more damage against enemy capships than any other ship.

Just how big is this imaginary battleship, anyway? It's got 50 treb launchers, long range AAA and flak, and can unleash more anti-capship firepower than any other ship. Are we talking 2, 3 times a Sathanas here? If so, then yes, I'll concede it'll be far better at blockade busting than 3 destroyers, but I think I'd rather have the 3 destroyers in 2 years from now than the battleship in 75-100 or however long it takes to build a ship with those specs. If you keep to the FS universe at least, as I am trying to. and if you don't, well, then it's all academic isn't it?

The battleship has heavy armor, heavy weapons and most importatnly it can't be disabled/disarmed easily. And they usualyl have a formidable point defense too. It is designed to keep fireing from the main batteries till the end...and to stall that end as long as possible. Thus when you deploy it you KNOW you're gonna do damage to the enemy - and lots of it, weather its destroyed or not.

It only takes a double helios to take out a main beam on a Sathanas. Anything can be disarmed. And keep in mind that the bigger and more powerful a ship is, the more hull area there is for your point defense to cover, so formidable point defense becomes harder to achieve.

And of course, a batlteship has less crew than a destroyer/carrier so if it gets destroyed, les human lives are lost.

Why would it have less crew? Given the armament you've mentioned so far, it is obviously a far bigger ship, and weapon systems need maintenance and crew just as fighters do. You're just carrying engineers and gunners instead of pilots.

A bit more on the size issue. Ok, maybe a destroyer doesn't make a good size comparison since it's also a carrier, but take a Deimos: They are pure warships, no fighters or anything, just guns and armor. They clock in at about 30% the size of a destroyer, with less than half the firepower and 80% the armor of an Orion. So, going by that, an Orion sized battleship with no fighterbay would have about 30% greater firepower and 2.5 times the armor. So assuming we're talking a ship in about the same size range, it is nowhere near what you're claiming it should be.

Even at 2.5 times the armor of an Orion, a single bomber squadron can kill it in 5 minutes, and that's even without using Helios bombs since those are just unfair against anything but juggernaughts. And it certainly isn't that much bigger an offensive threat than an Orion, with only 30% more firepower not to mention it's point defense systems are likely crap just as on the Orion. Of course, you could improve them, but then you'd lose some offensive firepower in exchange since there's only a finite amount of space for powerplants, heatsinks etc. So really, a supership it is not.

[aldo_14]

The cynic in me would suggest the ship is more valuable than the crew....