[NGTM-1R]

Though i had to say, i never thaught you could just "leave" ships in subspace.

AFAIK...or anyone else...you can't. Derelict posited you can, but there's no real support for it.

[karajorma]

There's no evidence in either direction.

[TrashMan]

@ TrashMan: Fine, you love battleships. Now stop trying to force everyone else to see what a golden jewels of heaven they are.

@ Everyone else: Fine, TrashMan loves battleships. Now stop trying to force him see what a piece of crap they are.

Jesus christ! What the **** is wrong with you people?

Very neutral reply
We're jsut having a civic discussion for hte sake of discussion. I doubt any one of us will change thier minds here, but it's fun
Chill out.

I wouldn't be pressing this point if you hadn't (rather insultingly) told me to check my facts when it was in fact you who was in error but you did, so now you now owe me two apologies.

My Bad.. In all the haste I cofused the posts. I apologize.

The Colossus and Sathanas have their own fighter cover. Without it, yes they are pushovers. Bearbaiting is good proof of exactly how big a pushover they in fact are. The largest ship in the Shivan armada was taken down largely by a couple of sqadrons of fighters and bombers precisely due to it's abysmal lack of fighter cover. The Colossus may have laid the final smackdown on the Sathanas but once its beam cannons were gone it was just a case of doing the same thing to its engines and then hull.

Well, the Sath was poorly design too. It really din't have well-armored main guns and not enouhg AF defense around them either.

And don't bother bringing up the point of the Saths poor AAA. The mission also limited the player to ships without the maxim. Same mission with good AAA but 50 maxim enabled fighters would have had largely the same effect.

the Maxim issue is hte thing that bugs me the most.. It doesn't make sense..
If it's such a uber-weapon for fighters against capships (and it is9, why isn't it used anywere except in ONE mission, against shivan gas freighters??? You'd think it would be mandatory when you're assaulting large targets. And you had ample stock of it too. not to mention the fact that it's grossly unbalancing...parking 3 klicks aways from a ship and shooting at it isn't what space-fighter gameplay should be all about.. and I doubt [V] wanted it that way.
That's why I think it was a mistake.. I played FS2 several times, and only after several play-troughs have I found out about the Maxims range. If I can miss it, so could [V]'s testers.

anyway, this has realyl no significant relavance to our discussion, so let's carry on, shall we?

Why the hell are you giving this kind of advantage to the BB? You always do this. You stack every single situation in the BBs favour and then hold it up as proof that you're correct.  Any sensible commander of a blockade would have ships in subspace guarding the corridor. When the BB is spotted coming they'd simply move out of range of the BBs guns take out all the beam cannons they could with maxims and then move in to finish it off.

Ships in subspace guarding a corridor? Waiting in subspace? Well, that's the first I've heard of that. Certanly not cannon.
The blockade is on the other side of the node, they don't know when an enemy is coming or what kind of enemy it is.
The attacking force would have a small fleet securing the other side, so that no recon wings can come trough and report back.

Given that it takes about 10 minutes to travel through a node the destroyer(s) in the blockade would have ample time to get a fair few of their fighters in the air before hand. And that's not forgetting that any self respecting blocade should have at least a couple of maxim enabled fighters on patrol constantly anyway.

Yes, a blockading force would have more fighters out, since they don't trave trough nodes. This is a advantage the defending force allways has, regardless if it's up against a BB or destroyer. What's your point?

I would still give a BB better damage or survival chances than a destroyer + fighter wing (exiting the node, so other fighters are inside and ready to launch)


@Aldo_14

What my point is?

Any ship can escape when attacked (but not instantly - it will take several seconds). If you're allready escaoing, you'll probably escape towards one of your bases and safety, so for now, let's assume the ship can't be chased after.

The point is that a BB can deal more damage in those several seconds upon arrival, before the enemy ship escapes, than a destroyer can.
Allso, note that when I say BB then I mean design with great coverage from main gus...I consider ships with focused weaponry dreadnoughts.
That's why a BB would be very capable of both attacking and defending, no matter his position/orientation towards the enemy.

As for ammo storage for missiles on a BB, considring how much a fighter carries and uses, a destroyer would still have much bigger weapon storage bays than a BB...But that's onyl if a BB has treb launchers..that is a onl a possibility.

The problem is that your main justification centres around theoretical weaponry and technology; namely reducing crew requirements, longer range weaponry, assumptions about heat and energy requirements, and presuming that it's even possible to load up a ship with both long range, point defense, and anti-capship weaponry with higher armour and absolutely no consequences in terms of size/profile or cost.

Crew number would be smaller since there is no fightercrew. Simple logic. It's no theory.
I never really defined a weapon range for a BB. Doesn't have to be longer.
I'm making just as much assumptions about heat and energy as you are - a BB would have several reactors, spread across (like Lucifer) It would have bigger beam cannons with a LOT bigger heatsinks - that would give it increased surface for heat dissipation. And we know it would have plenty of room to spare. and of course, the weapons wouldn't be clustered, but spaced away and heavily armoured.
Essentially a wrecking ball of a ship laden with a multitude of hitherto unseen turrets of remarkable power, range and low heat/energy requirements and possesing nigh-invulnerable armour that sits and pulverizes a willing enemy force and has no weaknesses beyond less fighters (but is somehow invulnerable to enemy bomber attack and not hunted down by more mobile enemy forces to be slowly attrited).

and of course, I never said that it wouldn't affect the cost or size in any way. That depends. It might be more expensive to build than a destroyer (without fighters...maby even with them), but it's running cost would be smaller, as it has less crew and doesn't require as much supplies. 

[karajorma]

the Maxim issue is hte thing that bugs me the most.. It doesn't make sense..
If it's such a uber-weapon for fighters against capships (and it is9, why isn't it used anywere except in ONE mission, against shivan gas freighters???

A quick grep of the FS2 missions shows 9 missions where the maxim is available including several where there are ships armed with them by default. What in hell are you on about 

You'd think it would be mandatory when you're assaulting large targets. And you had ample stock of it too. not to mention the fact that it's grossly unbalancing...parking 3 klicks aways from a ship and shooting at it isn't what space-fighter gameplay should be all about.. and I doubt [V] wanted it that way.
That's why I think it was a mistake.. I played FS2 several times, and only after several play-troughs have I found out about the Maxims range. If I can miss it, so could [V]'s testers.

The hud even gives you indicators that show you when you can hit something with your guns so I've got no idea why it took you so long to notice the range but nonetheless FS2 is full of examples where the ships in the players wings are given substandard guns. The idea was that the player was supposed to choose his strategy. Unless you think there was some tactical reason why Command kept sending out fighters armed with the prom R after the S was back in service (well a reason other than a Just Another Day style round of lay offs  )

Anway the maxim is basically a mass driver, a weapon with an incredibly high theoretical range. If anything have made the range of the maxim lower than the physics would put it at. When it comes to mass drivers targetting ability is a far greater hinderance.

Ships in subspace guarding a corridor? Waiting in subspace? Well, that's the first I've heard of that. Certanly not cannon.
The blockade is on the other side of the node, they don't know when an enemy is coming or what kind of enemy it is.
The attacking force would have a small fleet securing the other side, so that no recon wings can come trough and report back.

Very well I shall use an argument we have seen in canon. You assume that a BB can leap in and attack the ships guarding the node but lets take a look at the best mission in FS2 where we see something like that actually happening, Kings Gambit. Where is the Hedetet parked in that mission? 5km from the node. Well out of the range of anything in the fleet that was coming at it.

Strikes me that this is the expected possition for a blockade. The ships in a GTVA blockade aren't just sitting there ready to be surprised by enemy forces that jump in. They're positioned away from the node ready to launch alert fighters and move in and kick the crap out of anything that does try to enter the system.

Yes, a blockading force would have more fighters out, since they don't trave trough nodes. This is a advantage the defending force allways has, regardless if it's up against a BB or destroyer. What's your point?

I would still give a BB better damage or survival chances than a destroyer + fighter wing (exiting the node, so other fighters are inside and ready to launch)

My point is that your assumption is wrong. The BB would take more damage because it has no way to reach out to the fighters with the maxims and prevent them from firing at it except for getting them in range of it's own AAA. That would give the fighters a minute or two of unapposed maxim fire against the BB.
 A destroyer on the other hand can send out fighters and force the enemies fighters to dogfight. Due to that factor alone it could come out better. even a minute of sustained maxim fire is going to do serious damage.

Crew number would be smaller since there is no fightercrew. Simple logic. It's no theory.

You're making the assumption that the greater number of turrets doesn't eat into that number. You're the one sticking 50 maxim turrets on your ships. How many people do you need per turret? Cause just 10 crew = 500 extras.

I'm making just as much assumptions about heat and energy as you are - a BB would have several reactors, spread across (like Lucifer)

And we all saw what an Achilles heel that was.

[FireCrack]

My main qualm with caqpships in freespace has always been situations liek the maxim/trebuchet.

In my perfect world all capships would be armed with weapons long ranged enough so you actualy had to fight them.

[aldo_14]

@Aldo_14

What my point is?

Any ship can escape when attacked (but not instantly - it will take several seconds). If you're allready escaoing, you'll probably escape towards one of your bases and safety, so for now, let's assume the ship can't be chased after.

The point is that a BB can deal more damage in those several seconds upon arrival, before the enemy ship escapes, than a destroyer can.
Allso, note that when I say BB then I mean design with great coverage from main gus...I consider ships with focused weaponry dreadnoughts.
That's why a BB would be very capable of both attacking and defending, no matter his position/orientation towards the enemy.

As for ammo storage for missiles on a BB, considring how much a fighter carries and uses, a destroyer would still have much bigger weapon storage bays than a BB...But that's onyl if a BB has treb launchers..that is a onl a possibility.

The problem is that there's no way you can just add all that weaponry cost-free; just look at a Deimos compared to a Leviathan or Aeolus; there's no exponential increase in weapons capacity with size - more a diminishing return.  If you're envisaging a 'no matter what orientation' approach, it means you can't have focused weaponry due to simple size, energy, etc restrictions that are demonstrated by the varying sized ships in FS2 (for larger vessels, compare the Colossus with the Hecate, Orion and Hatshepsut).

For example, what protection does a battleship have against long range (trebuchet) bomber attacks?  And against attacks by beam weaponry?  Or close range flak bombardment from a vessel with focused weaponry, or flanking assaults by smaller ships armed with beams ala the Deimos?

Perhaps to make it easier, why don't you specify an approximate size, armament and turret placement for such a ship; I'm pretty sure you'd find a weakness of some sort, as there is with all vessels.

Also, specifically, a larger magazine space constitutes a vulnerability; because that stuff would naturally have to be stored close to the turrets (for fighter munitions it can be held well-protected in internal stores with only operational stocks in the prep areas), it makes a vulnerable target for splash damage.  IIRC FS1 or 2 states that support ships can cause a significant explosion when destroyed, so what of a capship-sized magazine?

Crew number would be smaller since there is no fightercrew. Simple logic. It's no theory. I never really defined a weapon range for a BB. Doesn't have to be longer.
I'm making just as much assumptions about heat and energy as you are - a BB would have several reactors, spread across (like Lucifer) It would have bigger beam cannons with a LOT bigger heatsinks - that would give it increased surface for heat dissipation. And we know it would have plenty of room to spare. and of course, the weapons wouldn't be clustered, but spaced away and heavily armoured.

and of course, I never said that it wouldn't affect the cost or size in any way. That depends. It might be more expensive to build than a destroyer (without fighters...maby even with them), but it's running cost would be smaller, as it has less crew and doesn't require as much supplies. 

Firstly, several reactors constitutes a severe weakness. 

Secondly, those reactors have their own requirements for cooling, energy transfer, and crucially seperation (to protect the ship from damage by internal reactor overloads), affecting size and space usage.  Again, diminishing returns.

Thirdly, I'm not sure you just need surface area for heat dissapation; IIRC, heat dissipation requires transfer of that heat energy (in crude terms) to another medium; in space you're in pretty much a vacuum, so you'd need some form of active cooling (IMO part of the reason for the Colossus suffering hull damage from long-term beam firing would be these coolant systems overheating and thus affecting the outer hull; I assume the outer hull because an overheating system is a fire risk, and it's easier to vent oxygen on the outer areas of the ship).

Fourthly, as Kara pointed out, the much smaller Deimos has not a proportionally smaller crew to the Orion.  (6000 to 10,000; and 30,000 to the Colossus IIRC).  Given that destroyers have, what, 100-odd fighters and support, I'm not sure you'd need more than 1000 people to service them (that'd be 8-9 mechanics to each fighter, with maybe 2 pilots each on average, plus some flight support crew for arranging takeoffs, etc).

In terms of cost; the problem is that a battleship is not efficient, even if combat effective.  A destroyer/carrier - even a fighterbay-equipped corvette or cruiser- has a massive projection of force, can provide fighter/bomber support and escort across an entire system, can act as a staging post for an offensive, has an extremely long range defensive net (from interceptor patrols - assuming it has no support groups, ala the Falklands RN taskforce, for perimeter defense), and is still formidably armed in order to extricate itself from tricky situations (offhand, I'm not sure I remember any destroyer-on-destroyer fights in FS2.... might be wrong, though, but IMO they would delegate it to mixed forces of cruisers and corvettes with fighter support). 

A battleship, on the other hand, is a formidable ship, but one which can only have a very limited individual impact (very short range projection of power; only to the range of it's own guns) and would likely require fighter support from an allied destroyer in order to avoid it being wore down by bomber attrition.  That, and it also may be much more expensive if it does have multiple reactors, etc. 

So it's got less tactical flexibility than a destroyer, about the same firepower at best (because it will only have a few seconds of time to inflict it if it is powerful, and a carrier/destroyers firepower can be measured including the fighter wings it holds), cannot provide support to other vessels and may actually require to be provided it (for bomber defense), can only attack or defend a single position (opposed to bomber and fighter wings from a destroyer covering an entire system), and a similar material cost to a destroyer;  To me that would make it obselete if the idea was ever even considered by the GTA/PVN/GTVA.

[TrashMan]

Anway the maxim is basically a mass driver, a weapon with an incredibly high theoretical range. If anything have made the range of the maxim lower than the physics would put it at. When it comes to mass drivers targetting ability is a far greater hinderance.

So? The laser has obscene range. Hell, years ago we shot a laser on the moon. You'd think that by FS time they'd be able to make something similar...

Very well I shall use an argument we have seen in canon. You assume that a BB can leap in and attack the ships guarding the node but lets take a look at the best mission in FS2 where we see something like that actually happening, Kings Gambit. Where is the Hedetet parked in that mission? 5km from the node. Well out of the range of anything in the fleet that was coming at it.

Strikes me that this is the expected possition for a blockade. The ships in a GTVA blockade aren't just sitting there ready to be surprised by enemy forces that jump in. They're positioned away from the node ready to launch alert fighters and move in and kick the crap out of anything that does try to enter the system.

Good argument. Strange that  there havn't been ships developed designed for fast-aircraft-launch actions. Carriers wiht several fighterbays. They would be able to launcha storm after clearing the node, and the enemy destroyers would be too far away to atack it with it's guns.

However, are you sure they are that far? I recall the Vasudan destroyer being in weapons range and shotting at ships that cleared the node (adn they were shooting back).

Eitehr way, no sane admiral would send ships one by one to break a blockade, but rather he would take a more en-masse approach. Whole fleets. And that is where the BB + carrier + destroyer combination is better than 3 destroyers.

Yes, a blockading force would have more fighters out, since they don't trave trough nodes. This is a advantage the defending force allways has, regardless if it's up against a BB or destroyer. What's your point?

I would still give a BB better damage or survival chances than a destroyer + fighter wing (exiting the node, so other fighters are inside and ready to launch)

----------
My point is that your assumption is wrong. The BB would take more damage because it has no way to reach out to the fighters with the maxims and prevent them from firing at it except for getting them in range of it's own AAA. That would give the fighters a minute or two of unapposed maxim fire against the BB.
 A destroyer on the other hand can send out fighters and force the enemies fighters to dogfight. Due to that factor alone it could come out better. even a minute of sustained maxim fire is going to do serious damage.

Somehow I think that minute of heavy beam fire is kinda more dangerous....

Crew number would be smaller since there is no fightercrew. Simple logic. It's no theory.
-----
You're making the assumption that the greater number of turrets doesn't eat into that number. You're the one sticking 50 maxim turrets on your ships. How many people do you need per turret? Cause just 10 crew = 500 extras.

I have no idea what you're going on about here and what's those extras you come up with..  having 50 turrets would require - 50-100 crewman more. While having 50 fightes would require 300-400 crewman more.

I'm making just as much assumptions about heat and energy as you are - a BB would have several reactors, spread across (like Lucifer)
And we all saw what an Achilles heel that was.

Everything has to have a weaknes...

[aldo_14]

I should really leave this to kara, but I'm quite bored

Eitehr way, no sane admiral would send ships one by one to break a blockade, but rather he would take a more en-masse approach. Whole fleets. And that is where the BB + carrier + destroyer combination is better than 3 destroyers.

How do you know it's possible to send a multitude of ships at once through a node?

I have no idea what you're going on about here and what's those extras you come up with..  having 50 turrets would require - 50-100 crewman more. While having 50 fightes would require 300-400 crewman more.

Turrets need maintenance, for one thing.  Then there's crew to man the things; presumably at least one, in 8 hour average shifts or so.  Then there's maintaining the stuff that hooks up to the turret; energy and cooling conduits, whatever machinery and sensory ties things into the outside world (to actually see their targets), maintaining said tracking technology, etc.  And also the guys who handle the ammunition storage and soforth, for the likes of flak and missile turrets.

So? The laser has obscene range. Hell, years ago we shot a laser on the moon. You'd think that by FS time they'd be able to make something similar...

I don't think that laser was capable of cutting through armour plating, though.....

Everything has to have a weaknes...

Point is how bad a weakness it is.  The destroyer can be viewed as an 'average' class in many areas, but that's a consequence of having no specific, easily exploitable and key weakness.  Whereas relying on multiple reactors is rather a key weakness; lose one and you at the very least lose a big chunk of your offensive capability; if you're unlucky, you could possibly lose something even more critical, like (part of your) life support or engines.

Somehow I think that minute of heavy beam fire is kinda more dangerous....

That depends on if the enemy vessel is in the FOV or in range, and if the beam hits (all beams have a miss factor); also that the incoming fighters don't hit your weapons subsystem and specific turrets, which a sensible defense would do.   Plus a primarily fighter / bomber blockade is free from that.

[karajorma]

I should really leave this to kara, but I'm quite bored

The more the merrier I say

So? The laser has obscene range. Hell, years ago we shot a laser on the moon. You'd think that by FS time they'd be able to make something similar...

And? Did it blow up the moon? Did it do any damage at all? Thought not. The GTVA only figured out beams 30 odd years ago. They don't have long range lasers of any power.

However, are you sure they are that far? I recall the Vasudan destroyer being in weapons range and shotting at ships that cleared the node (adn they were shooting back).

The caps come into range thanks to their inertia when exiting the node. But it's worth pointing out that in that case the GTVA had the mjolnirs in position and new the enemy caps wouldn't last long so they could afford to be a little closer in order to ensure maximum damage. When dealing with a BB they'd pull even further back.

Eitehr way, no sane admiral would send ships one by one to break a blockade, but rather he would take a more en-masse approach. Whole fleets.

As Aldo pointed out there is no evidence whatsoever that you can even do that. Kings Gambit seems to point against it in fact.

Somehow I think that minute of heavy beam fire is kinda more dangerous....

Of course it is. But the BB has no one to spend one minute of heavy beam damage on. It's just slowly moving towards the enemy and taking a kicking that entire minute because it's weapons aren't in range of anyone.
 As I said before even 1 wing of fighters launched immediately from the destroyer can close enough distance to the enemy fighters to prevent that tactic.

I have no idea what you're going on about here and what's those extras you come up with..  having 50 turrets would require - 50-100 crewman more. While having 50 fightes would require 300-400 crewman more.

Where are you getting those numbers from! Look at the deimos. What does it require 6000 personnel for if not for tending to the turrets? Your crewmen numbers were simply picked at random. You have no canon proof whatsoever to back them up.

[FireCrack]

Because there's no medium to transfer heat to in space, radiators are all you c an use.


Nontheless, freespace ships have never seemed to show large radiator panels of any sort.


and the GTVA does have long range weapons, they just cant hit anything with them.

[Jal-18]

@aldo: Although I can't remember specifics, there are several missions in the Freespace games where multiple ships are seen exiting the same subspace node at the same time - the FS1 escort mission in Alpha Centauri is the best example I could come up with in the 20 seconds it took to write this.

[StratComm]

But those ships are all small.  There's plenty of oppertunity, but you never see anything larger than a cruiser exit subspace near another ship.  A simple argument here would be that the space "inside" a node (the area from which you can enter the subspace corridor from real space) is only so large, and multiple capital class ships cannot occupy it at the same time.  The physical size of the node model backs that up.

[Mehrpack]

@aldo: Although I can't remember specifics, there are several missions in the Freespace games where multiple ships are seen exiting the same subspace node at the same time - the FS1 escort mission in Alpha Centauri is the best example I could come up with in the 20 seconds it took to write this.

hi,
yes, but this was transporters and fighters.
no bigger ships.

i cant rembemer anytime to see, that any big ships jump in the same moment out of the supspace.
they came every time, one by one.

maybe the space in subspace is limit, but a shantans is very big too.
its a little bit strange ..

Mehrpack

[Mefustae]

@aldo: Although I can't remember specifics, there are several missions in the Freespace games where multiple ships are seen exiting the same subspace node at the same time - the FS1 escort mission in Alpha Centauri is the best example I could come up with in the 20 seconds it took to write this.

Yes, but they were likely only cruiser-size and below. Trashman is suggesting three vessels of Destroyer size and above coming through the same node at the same time, roughly facing the same direction (although a radial deployment would look shiny). F*** me, the node is barely big enough to accommodate a single destroyer, let alone three vessels of larger size and a safe amount of space between them!

[karajorma]

It's also worth noting that not only did the GTVA know when the capships would arrive from the node but they knew on which vector they'd exit.

If you've ever set up a mjolnir in FRED you'll know that it's a pain in the arse to aim correctly but all of the Mjolnirs in Kings Gambit point in exactly the right direction and the capships are also positioned so as to close the box on the NTF ships.

That seems to  suggest that capships can only leave a node facing a certain direction. Never tried looking for evidence to contradict that though so it may have just been a stupid manouver on the capships part. However if it is true Trashman's capships would all have to exit on the same vector and avoid piling into each other.

[NGTM-1R]

There are a couple of times in FS1 (one of them the dreaded "Death of Hope" which screws with several other faucets of canon) where ships exit a node in multiple directions, but never in FS2 IIRC.

[AlphaOne]

Oki now that i've read all this it makes me wonder if some of the people here were accidently dropped on theyr heads when they were children?? I mean WTF  where do you get 50 maxims or 50 treb launchers on a BB? That bloody thing wasnt suposed to be as big as a Sath or the colossus for that matter. It was just suposed to be slightly bigger then a dreadnought but with massive more armour and with heavier weaponry NOT NECESARILY MORE .

As for the whole fighter cover did anyone bother to read the fact that the BB would have a small fighterbay exactly for bommber/fighter protection or rather added fighter/bommber protection.

As far as I know there is no bomb/torpedo/missile that has a lockon range bigger then a few km. A beam cannon can reach up to 10 km and more (corect me if i'm wrong).

The main lesson is that I need to downsize the dreadnought and the BB.

Oh and so that I dont forget:WHAT KIND OF AN IDIOT SENDS A BB OR A DREADNOUGHT OR A DEDICATED CARRIER TO ENGAGE THE ENEMY OR SMASH A BLOCKADE ON ITS OWN?????? I figured you would send in like a dreadnought or a BB with at least a destroyer or a couple of corvettes and cruisers and a small dedicated carrier to provide that much needed "force projecion" . But hey thats just me i would not send these kinds of assets to theyr doom just because others would!

[karajorma]

Oki now that i've read all this it makes me wonder if some of the people here were accidently dropped on theyr heads when they were children??

Insulting behaviour will get you in trouble. Keep it to a minimum.

I mean WTF  where do you get 50 maxims or 50 treb launchers on a BB? That bloody thing wasnt suposed to be as big as a Sath or the colossus for that matter. It was just suposed to be slightly bigger then a dreadnought but with massive more armour and with heavier weaponry NOT NECESARILY MORE .

The 50 maxims thing is Trashman's idea of a BB. I find it funny that even you find that excessive

As for the whole fighter cover did anyone bother to read the fact that the BB would have a small fighterbay exactly for bommber/fighter protection or rather added fighter/bommber protection.

In the FS universe a BB with a fighterbay is a destroyer. In your case the destroyer you're envisioning may stress front line capabilities over fighter lauching ones. That simply makes it a destroyer on the other end of the scale from the Hecate which has the exact opposite use.
 Most of us are arguing against Trashman's definition of what a BB is not yours. His destoyers have no fighter cover in order to maximise their number of weapons. Most of us simply don't think that's realistic.
 
Personally I don't think your ship ideas were that realistic either but others had already explained why they thought that and you weren't posting any counter arguments so I've been showing Trashman why he's wrong. If you want me to start up on you too, I'm more than happy to

As far as I know there is no bomb/torpedo/missile that has a lockon range bigger then a few km. A beam cannon can reach up to 10 km and more (corect me if i'm wrong).

You're wrong. The BFRed and the LRBGreen have a range of around 7-8km. The other anti-capship weapons are capped at 4km and the anti-fighter ones at 1.5km.

Oh and so that I dont forget:WHAT KIND OF AN IDIOT SENDS A BB OR A DREADNOUGHT OR A DEDICATED CARRIER TO ENGAGE THE ENEMY OR SMASH A BLOCKADE ON ITS OWN?????? I figured you would send in like a dreadnought or a BB with at least a destroyer or a couple of corvettes and cruisers and a small dedicated carrier to provide that much needed "force projecion" . But hey thats just me i would not send these kinds of assets to theyr doom just because others would!

As was stated several times there's absolutely no proof whatsoever that you can have multiple ships arrive via a node that way. Sure maybe the admiral commanding the fleet wants to do that but there's no proof that he actually can. And the mission King's Gambit does rather seem to suggest that he can't.

[TrashMan]

How do you know it's possible to send a multitude of ships at once through a node?

How do you think fleets move their ships? One by one?
We have seen the Lucifer and several fighter wings occuping the same node corridor at once.
We have allso seen transport entering the node en masse (wiht 1-2 seconds delay)

In King's Gambit the enemy warships were running from the Colossuss towards GD in no particular order.
And a fleet jumping doesn't mean they have to jump all in the same nanoseconds, but in VERY small intervals (several seconds)


There's alls othe Sathanas Issue. If it's big enough to jump trough the node, then so can two destroyers side-by side... that of course, if we assume they jumped at the exact same time.

Turrets need maintenance, for one thing.

Of course they do. But fighters need more.
A 30 turret destroyer and 150 fighters and  60-80 turrets BB.
Gee.. I wonder which needs more crew?


b.t.w. - I did a small test in Truespace where I arranged 120 fighters as seen in the FS mainhalls on how terran hangarbays look, and compared that to hte Orion. Guess what - they take a helluva lot of space. Far more than even I tought!

I don't think that laser was capable of cutting through armour plating, though.....

It was a low-powered laser and primitive at that, whose purpose was to mesure the distance to the moon, not to do damage. GTVA has fusion reactors, power plants on fighters and far more advanced laser tech than we have now.  So the damage is something they can easily increase by that time.

Point is how bad a weakness it is.  The destroyer can be viewed as an 'average' class in many areas, but that's a consequence of having no specific, easily exploitable and key weakness.  Whereas relying on multiple reactors is rather a key weakness; lose one and you at the very least lose a big chunk of your offensive capability; if you're unlucky, you could possibly lose something even more critical, like (part of your) life support or engines.

Again, this falls back to design - where are the reacort located? How armoured vulnerable are tehy? Does the sihp even need all of them or are some back-ups?


And back to the argument of not being able to fit all that heat sinks and weapons and reactors into it - there's a canon example you're completely wrong.

Leviathan and Fenris - same size, same shape. Leviathan has more than twice the armor and firepower.
And you're telling me you couldn't do that on a bigger scane, on a bigger hull?

That depends on if the enemy vessel is in the FOV or in range, and if the beam hits (all beams have a miss factor); also that the incoming fighters don't hit your weapons subsystem and specific turrets, which a sensible defense would do.   Plus a primarily fighter / bomber blockade is free from that.

If you want good node defense your capship have to be in range to deliver the hurt. Blockading the node focuses on crippling/destroying enemy warship as fast as possible, before they can launch fighters or bring more reinforcements trough the node.

Pulling back your capships and reliyng only on fighters/bombers is a bad idea, as while they are focusing on a BB and wearing it down, more ships will jump in to provide support.  In this scenario the BB is practilcy buying time as it takes a bit longer to destroy. And thus the defending fighters will have to face enemy capships point-defense and their fighter complements.

And if you amass your capship aroudn the node, you're practicly letting the BB fire off a few salvo's at them, since you can't destroy/disable him fast enoughto prevent it. And again, support jumps in and you're f***, since you have damaged capships, a enemy BB that's still "afloat" and mroe enemy capships and fighters incoming.

This is all assuming, the defending force doesn't have BB's.

[karajorma]

And back to the argument of not being able to fit all that heat sinks and weapons and reactors into it - there's a canon example you're completely wrong.

Leviathan and Fenris - same size, same shape. Leviathan has more than twice the armor and firepower.
And you're telling me you couldn't do that on a bigger scane, on a bigger hull?

The Leviathan pays very heavily in terms of speed for that armour. Apply the same logic to a BB and you end up with something that moves at 5m/s. If you're willing to accept that consession then fine but in previous arguments you have repeatedly stated that you see no reason why a BB should be much slower than a destroyer, even going so far as to quote wet navy speed figures for the Iowa class as if that is somehow relevent to the discussion.

If you're finally admitting that these things slow down the BB in comparison to the destroyer at least we're making some progress.

How do you think fleets move their ships? One by one?
We have seen the Lucifer and several fighter wings occuping the same node corridor at once.
We have allso seen transport entering the node en masse (wiht 1-2 seconds delay)

But we've never seen two heavy warships exit at the same time. Have we. It might not be possible for two ships large ships to enter or exit subspace like that at the same time.

In King's Gambit the enemy warships were running from the Colossuss towards GD in no particular order.
And a fleet jumping doesn't mean they have to jump all in the same nanoseconds, but in VERY small intervals (several seconds)

They may have been running but there's no indication anywhere that they were under fire from anything as they actually entered subspace. As for jumping in close to each other where do you think they'd end up if they did that? Smacking into each other!

As I said earlier there is canon evidence that capships (at least) come out of a node facing a certain direction. They'd simply steam into each other. Not to mention that they'd get in each others way.

There's alls othe Sathanas Issue. If it's big enough to jump trough the node, then so can two destroyers side-by side... that of course, if we assume they jumped at the exact same time.

Again your assuming that size is the issue here. It may not be. It could be that avoiding a subspace pile up or the simple fact that there is only one route out of a node that is the issue here.

A 30 turret destroyer and 150 fighters and  60-80 turrets BB.
Gee.. I wonder which needs more crew?

Check the WWII stats for the Iowa you're so fond of and you'll find its the BB. The big guns required upto 110 people each. Given the number of crew the Deimos requires it could easily be the same with beam cannons.

b.t.w. - I did a small test in Truespace where I arranged 120 fighters as seen in the FS mainhalls on how terran hangarbays look, and compared that to hte Orion. Guess what - they take a helluva lot of space. Far more than even I tought!

Which surely helps my argument that you're wrong about internal space being the limiting factor on number of guns a destroyer can carry. Although to be honest all the FS2 ships appear to have tardis-like qualities. Simply stack up the number of missiles a fighter can carry next to the fighter itself for proof of that.

It was a low-powered laser and primitive at that, whose purpose was to mesure the distance to the moon, not to do damage. GTVA has fusion reactors, power plants on fighters and far more advanced laser tech than we have now.  So the damage is something they can easily increase by that time.

But as I pointed out it hasn't. Beam cannons are 30 years old and have an effective range of 1.5km. Fighter lasers are even more limited. There's no canon evidence of these super long range lasers that you claim exist.

I'll deal with the rest later.