[StratComm]

I havn' seen no conclusive evidence. What you have is assumptions and estimates.
I do not overestimated the space requred for fighters - I calculatd it back home. Or do you want me to post a pic of it?

I said two pages ago that I'd like to see that picture.  It has nothing to do with estimated weight though, so I'm not sure what it would prove.  Never mind that the assumptions that aldo is making, like those I am making, are based off of FS canon, whereas yours are based on your own imagination.  Again, stick to canon or it is all completely meaningless.

I don't get you..maby it's my english..
first you say that I game the BB a weapon other ships don't have. Then when I say otehr ships have the same weapon you are allso not satisfied? If you fear that that's not cannon, you don't have to worry.. that's a special table set I use when making my campaign..I do have the standard FS2 tables and hte BB works with them too.
There is NO NEED for new weapons, alltough it would be nice to have the plasma gun.
But one simple thing that seems to elude your grasp is ---- the shi pis not supposed to be cannon. It can't be canon. It's just supposed to be able to function in the limitations of the canon universe. And large caliber Plasma Turrets are everything BUT impossible.

The point is, if you are going to be able to justify a ship in the freespace universe, you should be able to justify it using the weapons and features available in the FS universe.  Super blobs, ultimate reactors, Mithril armor; none of that actually exists in the FS universe so any justification for your pet class has to exist without any of those features.  I don't give a damn what you do to your own personal tables, we're arguing about FS tech, not Trashverse tech, so stick to it.  That's the complaint.

I have over 2500 books at home...half of those fall to naval ship...most of those about naval warship and their different aspects. And they do go into VERY much detail about armor....the same pinciples work in space too.
Being heavily armored doesn't mean to have armor that is thicker than everything else - but to have it devided and placed optimally and an armor of suficient thickness and quality to witstand most of that the enemy is supposed to throw at you.

I never said anything about a "new" armor type - you're (again) putting words in my mouth.

It's implicit.  You are still exhibiting classic naval warfare (specifically, historical naval warfare) thinking, where specific threats can only approach along specific vectors.  In a wet navy, to armor against torpedos, you add an armor belt around the waterline and below.  To armor against shells, you plate the deck.  To armor against missiles, you strengthen the hull walls above the surface.  And so on.  Unfortunately for you, we're not talking about a wet navy.  We're talking about a space fighter sim.  Key word: space.  There is not really a defining "up" or "down" in space, much less a restricting vector for which an attack can come, so you cannot specifically armor the areas where your enemy is most likely to hit you.  He could come at you from any direction.  Therefore, you have to protect all of the ship equally, which means heavier armor all around, which then means more mass (thus lower speed) and less internal volume.  If your 2.5x strength armor does not incur those penalties to speed and manuverability that you are insisting it does not, it's a "new armor type", whether you state it explicitly or not.

No we don't have localy based damage but the overal armor effectivnes must be approximated with a HP count, regardelss how inssuficiant it is. Suffice to say that BB would have an overall better armor placement (and slightly thicker armor too) and thus this can only be represented by increase of HP. If you find antehr way, please tell me.

b.t.w. - tehre are obviously different types of armor in FS2. The Deimos is stated as having a specific armour type, suggesting that maby older ships don't - either becouse or design, age or cost issues.

The Deimos armor is considered state-of-the-art, so is the absolute best the alliance can offer in all respects.  It's expensive, and it's only on the Deimos because it's state-of-the-art.  That said, there's not really any proof that hitpoints would scale linearly with a size increase (and in fact it is less likely than more for simple geometry reasons), so saying that a battleship 3 times as long as the Deimos would have 3 times the hitpoints isn't valid.  If you want to get in to the math then that's fine, but I'm not going to write out the proof if I don't need to.

[Prophet]

BTW. While you're arguing about that armor and hitpoints thing... Remember that ships durability is influenced by the hull structure. Like what kind of material it is, dense are the supporting structures and how is the structure designed and build. Not much use having a mithlir armour when the weight bearing structure behind it crumbles and the whole wall floats off in to space.
You cant glue some armour in to triton and make it a warship, if the structure isn't designed to handle that kind of stress.

Just thought I'd thorw some fuel in to the fire

[wgemini]

It's interesting that the Deimos is both an argument for and against BB.

Against: Deimos is a very effective killing machine. It's far more powerful than cruisers, yet still versatile enough. I really don't see the need to have a Battleship to do the samething. Maybe change the slashes to BGreen to attack bigger ships.

For: Deimos is interesting as they were totally unnecessary before the Great war. The lack of power weapons means cruisers like Leviathan was more than enough. However, things changed greatly since than. Powerful beam weapons created the necessity for much higher survivability, whereas AAA beams prevent the military from relying totally on fighters. Deimos was created as a standalone battleship, pretty much to fill the same role as old Leviathans. What is it to say that even high survivability would not be needed if Beams became even more powerful?

I consider the Ravana to be a battleship rather than a destroyer. It does provide fighter cover, but Demons do much better jobs with greater beam coverage. Ravana was designed for one thing only, tore apart anything standing in front of it while live to brag about it. With enough fighter coverage, a group of Ravanas are the most dangerous.

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, the most effective argument for a BB would be the Iceni. 3 BGreens on a hull not much larger then that of Deimos, with superior durablity.

Edited for misplaced word; proof I needed to go to sleep.

[StratComm]

I consider the Ravana to be a battleship rather than a destroyer. It does provide fighter cover, but Demons do much better jobs with greater beam coverage. Ravana was designed for one thing only, tore apart anything standing in front of it while live to brag about it. With enough fighter coverage, a group of Ravanas are the most dangerous.

And yet, destroyer it is.  That's why this whole argument makes no sense, given the constraints of the universe, battleships are destroyers and vice versa.  It's re-inventing the wheel to try and reconcile them.

And the Ravana is actually listed as being more of a fighterbase than the Demon, interestingly enough, instead of the other way around.  This may be more related to hull strength than firepower, but that's the official line.

[Mefustae]

Actually, the most effective armament for a BB would be the Iceni. 3 BGreens on a hull not much larger then that of Deimos, with superior durablity.

Indeed, i've always thought of the Iceni as an excellent example of a 'Pocket Battleship' for pretty much the same reasons you described...

[karajorma]

I consider the Ravana to be a battleship rather than a destroyer. It does provide fighter cover, but Demons do much better jobs with greater beam coverage. Ravana was designed for one thing only, tore apart anything standing in front of it while live to brag about it. With enough fighter coverage, a group of Ravanas are the most dangerous.

But it's a destroyer. It has lots of fighters. And yet it still manages to pack all that anti-capital ship badassery into it's hull. Your argument for battleships is actually an argument against them. My whole point is that anyone designing a battleship in the FS2 universe would realise that destroyers are battleships with a fighterbay attached and put one on. Even Trashman has ended up having to conceed the point that fighter bays are cheap and stick a quarter sized fighter bay on his design.

For: Deimos is interesting as they were totally unnecessary before the Great war. The lack of power weapons means cruisers like Leviathan was more than enough. However, things changed greatly since than. Powerful beam weapons created the necessity for much higher survivability, whereas AAA beams prevent the military from relying totally on fighters. Deimos was created as a standalone battleship, pretty much to fill the same role as old Leviathans. What is it to say that even high survivability would not be needed if Beams became even more powerful?

You're making a false assumption though. You're assuming that this is a linear progression. The Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay because you couldn't put much inside a Deimos. It's too small. The Shivans did put a fighterbay on the Moloch but as we can see it couldn't do more than carry a few ships. The designers of the Deimos and Sobek probably thought about a fighterbay and decided it wasn't worth it for a single squadron. Same goes for the Iceni. On the other hand if you made the Iceni 2km long you'd suddenly find you had lots of space inside the ship that wasn't being used. So why not open up a section and turn it into a fighterbay?
 
So the Iceni isn't an argument for the battleship at all.

[wgemini]

Actually, the most effective argument for a BB would be the Iceni. 3 BGreens on a hull not much larger then that of Deimos, with superior durablity.

Edited for misplaced word; proof I needed to go to sleep.

Yes, I agree. However, to me Iceni is an anomaly. A plot tool if you will. I doubt the GTVA would be able to mass produce the Iceni.

[TrashMan]

Assumtions, assumptions..

Geez people, cool down and read carefully before you start putting words in my mouth..
firstly - I never specified the speed of a BB. Show me where I gave an exact number. Nowhere? Good..next point.

The reactor power, number and workings are all speculations of yours and you're using what you THINK is the canon limit to cripple the BB class.

Let's look at it this way - a few cannon facts.
If you look at the Heacte (which some of you say is the most advanced and the best the terrans can do) youd notice that for a ship it's size (bigger than an Orion) it's woefully underpowered. Yui'+d expecct the newer ship to have a far more advanced reactor than a Orion, and wield more firepower, right.
And yet it doesn't. If you look only at the Hecate you8'd might conclude (falsly) that the best terran generator can't pump out enouhg power for more than 4 TerSlash and 1 BGreen..
and then you have the Oldie Orion that has twice the firepower...either it has more reactors or better ones - that would be the logical assumption.
How would you explain that? It makes no sense..what could be hoggin all that power? the extra 30 fighters? nope.. the AF defense? No way several flak and AAF guns can drain more power than a BGReen.
What then?
Could it be that is was simply designed like that?

Or what about the Iceni? - according to you is SHOULDN'T exist..after all it packs MORE power than a Hecate in a smaller frame!

Is there any theoretical limit of hte reactor size and power in FS universe? nope. Do we know how effective the mass/energy conversion is and how much heat is produced? nope.
The only thing we know is that the Colossus power grid was damaged during the battle with the Sath, however that's more than inconclusive - maby it suffered some damage from the Repulse? Maby the conduits weren't designed to pump so much power into those 4-5 cannons and that caused a backlash and destabilized the reactors? As any engineer will tell you, pumpin more power trough a wire than it's designed to transmit is BAD for everytihng - on both sides of the wire.
We don't even kbow what type of reactor it had - after all it was designed 20 yearrs ago.


And no..in order to function withing FS2 universe, the ship doesn't have to wook with only canon FS2 weapons (even if the BB could work without them to, so even if you could disprove this argument, it certanly doesn't work against it) - it just musn't use things that go out of the framework or are too far out. Like I said, the THT is plasma-based and it's not powerfull either, as it's not a dedicated anti-cap weapon. Given that the terran posses that tech for years, is it unbelivable that they MAY have heavier verions of it but that they didn't mount of capships before?

If you still claim it's impossible, then you're allso claiming that a missile cruiser/corvette cannot function in FS universe, as it would need it's own set of missiles, and we havn't seen them in cannon, so it can't work.
Answer that...

v

It's been there since the begining actually..ever since the very fist verions of my BB was released.

It's implicit.  You are still exhibiting classic naval warfare (specifically, historical naval warfare) thinking, where specific threats can only approach along specific vectors.  In a wet navy, to armor against torpedos, you add an armor belt around the waterline and below.  To armor against shells, you plate the deck.  To armor against missiles, you strengthen the hull walls above the surface.  And so on.  Unfortunately for you, we're not talking about a wet navy.  We're talking about a space fighter sim.  Key word: space.  There is not really a defining "up" or "down" in space, much less a restricting vector for which an attack can come, so you cannot specifically armor the areas where your enemy is most likely to hit you.  He could come at you from any direction.  Therefore, you have to protect all of the ship equally, which means heavier armor all around, which then means more mass (thus lower speed) and less internal volume.  If your 2.5x strength armor does not incur those penalties to speed and manuverability that you are insisting it does not, it's a "new armor type", whether you state it explicitly or not.

You're again wrong. Armor placement is allways important.
I might have far thicker armor around ammo storage, the engines, fire control, reactor and main guns.
And while you COULD attack where teh armor is thinner(if you know where that is..visually you can't see much) and do damage, that damage won't be critical. So you can blast the forward mess hall? The extra bunks? Crew quarters? The Kitchen? Half hte corridors?
Who cares if it isn't critical! That's the differnce!
A BB will be turned into a smoldering pile of metal, but it's critical systems will still be in tact and it will still shoot. A lesser ship would allready be disabled or destroyed by the same ammount of punishemt.

Oh one more thing - teh Deimos is very well armed with a special armor (sez so in the tech room) and still has excellent speed. And it's the only hip reported with that armor type (you can assume otehr have it but you can't prove it...actually I think Iceni had it too). Are you tellimg meit's new if my BB is covered with that? And it surely isnt' magical..

EDIT: will post the fighterbay pic later

[wgemini]

And yet, destroyer it is.  That's why this whole argument makes no sense, given the constraints of the universe, battleships are destroyers and vice versa.  It's re-inventing the wheel to try and reconcile them.

And the Ravana is actually listed as being more of a fighterbase than the Demon, interestingly enough, instead of the other way around.  This may be more related to hull strength than firepower, but that's the official line.

To me, a destroyer is the center of a fleet, much like a modern aircraft carrier. It usually stay behind the front line, command the fleet, provide fighter cover, only provide fire support if necessary. The fighters and bombers are the offensive weapons, not the beam cannons. The Ravana does not fit the profile. It's designed to attack right in front, tear enemy line open, so the rest of the fleet can break through. Something has to cover its ass, or it's toasted. I doubt it was ever the flagship of a Shivan fleet.

Battleship and destroyers are never going to be too different. They share the same platform, which means they have similar constraints. They just have different emphasis. Battleships emphasize raw fire power, destroyers emphasize fighter cover,  balanced fire support, communication and command infrastructure. A battleship is simply a specialized destroyer. That's why I don't see battleships act alone. They are only the vanguards of the fleet.

[wgemini]

I consider the Ravana to be a battleship rather than a destroyer. It does provide fighter cover, but Demons do much better jobs with greater beam coverage. Ravana was designed for one thing only, tore apart anything standing in front of it while live to brag about it. With enough fighter coverage, a group of Ravanas are the most dangerous.

But it's a destroyer. It has lots of fighters. And yet it still manages to pack all that anti-capital ship badassery into it's hull. Your argument for battleships is actually an argument against them. My whole point is that anyone designing a battleship in the FS2 universe would realise that destroyers are battleships with a fighterbay attached and put one on. Even Trashman has ended up having to conceed the point that fighter bays are cheap and stick a quarter sized fighter bay on his design.

Destroyers are not battleships with a fighter bay. Battleships are destroyers without proper fighter coverage and command infrastructure, but far more front firepower. Destroyers act as the leader of a fleet (or battlegroup). Normally, you should never have more than 1 destroyer in the battlegroup. It would just be a waste of resources. Destroyers can act as the defense center of a system. Maintain order, weed out pirates, etc... Battleships can do none of that. They are specialized destroyers for large scale battles only. They need other destroyers to provide fighter cover and other battleships to cover their rare. However, they are far more effective against enemy cap-ships, since they do not rely on bombers as their offensive weapons. I personally don't tihnk that battleships even need fighter bays, they will never provide proper fighter cover anyway. The Ravana is a Shivan battleship, maybe they have the technology to put more stuff into its limited hull. Still, we see that it's very vulnerable acting alone.

That being said, Terrans will not need battleships in the near term. They do not have endless resources like Shivan does. If each battlegroup needs 2-3 battleships, the cost will be unbearable. They can never hope to outgun the Shivans anyway, so why bother.

You're making a false assumption though. You're assuming that this is a linear progression. The Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay because you couldn't put much inside a Deimos. It's too small. The Shivans did put a fighterbay on the Moloch but as we can see it couldn't do more than carry a few ships. The designers of the Deimos and Sobek probably thought about a fighterbay and decided it wasn't worth it for a single squadron. Same goes for the Iceni. On the other hand if you made the Iceni 2km long you'd suddenly find you had lots of space inside the ship that wasn't being used. So why not open up a section and turn it into a fighterbay?
 
So the Iceni isn't an argument for the battleship at all.

Because the extra spaces are need for more powerful reactors and armors. What's the use of fighter bay if the destroyers can provide fighter cover for the fleet? I do not support the argument that others are making that Battleship can act alone. They can't. They can never provide enough fighter coverage to survive an onslaught of bombers. One battleship has no hope against one destroyer. However, 2 battleship plus 1 destroyer with crusier escorts can kill a destroyer with cruiser escorts faster and with less casualties than 3 destroyers. (Assuming bombers are more expensive to build than fixing battleship's hull and subsystems).

[wgemini]

Assumtions, assumptions..

Geez people, cool down and read carefully before you start putting words in my mouth..
firstly - I never specified the speed of a BB. Show me where I gave an exact number. Nowhere? Good..next point.

The reactor power, number and workings are all speculations of yours and you're using what you THINK is the canon limit to cripple the BB class.

Let's look at it this way - a few cannon facts.
If you look at the Heacte (which some of you say is the most advanced and the best the terrans can do) youd notice that for a ship it's size (bigger than an Orion) it's woefully underpowered. Yui'+d expecct the newer ship to have a far more advanced reactor than a Orion, and wield more firepower, right.
And yet it doesn't. If you look only at the Hecate you8'd might conclude (falsly) that the best terran generator can't pump out enouhg power for more than 4 TerSlash and 1 BGreen..
and then you have the Oldie Orion that has twice the firepower...either it has more reactors or better ones - that would be the logical assumption.
How would you explain that? It makes no sense..what could be hoggin all that power? the extra 30 fighters? nope.. the AF defense? No way several flak and AAF guns can drain more power than a BGReen.
What then?
Could it be that is was simply designed like that?

Or what about the Iceni? - according to you is SHOULDN'T exist..after all it packs MORE power than a Hecate in a smaller frame!

Is there any theoretical limit of hte reactor size and power in FS universe? nope. Do we know how effective the mass/energy conversion is and how much heat is produced? nope.
The only thing we know is that the Colossus power grid was damaged during the battle with the Sath, however that's more than inconclusive - maby it suffered some damage from the Repulse? Maby the conduits weren't designed to pump so much power into those 4-5 cannons and that caused a backlash and destabilized the reactors? As any engineer will tell you, pumpin more power trough a wire than it's designed to transmit is BAD for everytihng - on both sides of the wire.
We don't even kbow what type of reactor it had - after all it was designed 20 yearrs ago.


And no..in order to function withing FS2 universe, the ship doesn't have to wook with only canon FS2 weapons (even if the BB could work without them to, so even if you could disprove this argument, it certanly doesn't work against it) - it just musn't use things that go out of the framework or are too far out. Like I said, the THT is plasma-based and it's not powerfull either, as it's not a dedicated anti-cap weapon. Given that the terran posses that tech for years, is it unbelivable that they MAY have heavier verions of it but that they didn't mount of capships before?

If you still claim it's impossible, then you're allso claiming that a missile cruiser/corvette cannot function in FS universe, as it would need it's own set of missiles, and we havn't seen them in cannon, so it can't work.
Answer that...

Let's put it this way. Giving the equivalent technology and cost. A battleship should be equivalent to a destroyer in term of overall effectiveness. It can be more effective in one area by sacrificing effectiveness in other areas. It's always a trade off. You can't just say a battleship is more advanced than existing destroyer. If so, why not just upgrade existing destroyers or build new ones rather than creating a brand new type of ships? It has to be inferior in some perspective. So according to you, what's the weakness of your battleships?

The Iceni is one of a kind. Bosh spend a lot of time and money on it. It might cost even more than the Hecate. It may only be able to serve 2 or 3 years before it breaks down. It was never designed to be a long term solution anyway. I wouldn't use it as an argument just like I would not use the Bravos.

[wgemini]

BTW, please do not say that battleship or any other ships can jump in, shoot, then jump out before anybody could react. If so, we will just have a bunch of ships, shifting in and out of subspace, never firing a shot. I think it takes at least 30 minutes to calculate a intrasystem jump. Any thing faster than that would be dangerous since you could jump right into a sun (say 10% chances). It's fine for suicide missions, but no captain would do it on a regular basis. You can not do the calculation up front either since there are too many variables.

[aldo_14]

Let's look at it this way - a few cannon facts.
If you look at the Heacte (which some of you say is the most advanced and the best the terrans can do) youd notice that for a ship it's size (bigger than an Orion) it's woefully underpowered. Yui'+d expecct the newer ship to have a far more advanced reactor than a Orion, and wield more firepower, right.
And yet it doesn't. If you look only at the Hecate you8'd might conclude (falsly) that the best terran generator can't pump out enouhg power for more than 4 TerSlash and 1 BGreen..
and then you have the Oldie Orion that has twice the firepower...either it has more reactors or better ones - that would be the logical assumption.
How would you explain that? It makes no sense..what could be ho; in essence it reflects the cumulative damage of a single hit anywhere on the shipggin all that power? the extra 30 fighters? nope.. the AF defense? No way several flak and AAF guns can drain more power than a BGReen.
What then?
Could it be that is was simply designed like that?

Orion; 16 turrets (3 AAF, 3 Terslash, 3 Big Green, 4 Terran Huge, 3 Terran turret)
Hecate; 27 turrets (5 Terran, 1 Terran Huge, 6 Std. Flak, 2 LR Flak, 2 Heavy flak, 6 AAAf, 4 Terslash, 1 Green beam)

The techroom also describes the Orion as being 'retrofitted' for new beam weapons.  Which can include the provision of new power sources; we can probably justify some form of increased efficiency in the 45+ year history of the Orion in that context.  In any case, the Hecate has at least equal firepower; it's just not anti-capship firepower but fighter defense.  This type of scenario is often referred to using the magical word 'balance'.

And no..in order to function withing FS2 universe, the ship doesn't have to wook with only canon FS2 weapons (even if the BB could work without them to, so even if you could disprove this argument, it certanly doesn't work against it) - it just musn't use things that go out of the framework or are too far out. Like I said, the THT is plasma-based and it's not powerfull either, as it's not a dedicated anti-cap weapon. Given that the terran posses that tech for years, is it unbelivable that they MAY have heavier verions of it but that they didn't mount of capships before?

If you still claim it's impossible, then you're allso claiming that a missile cruiser/corvette cannot function in FS universe, as it would need it's own set of missiles, and we havn't seen them in cannon, so it can't work.
Answer that...

Yes we have; trebuchets.  There's your stand-off weapon right there.

ou're again wrong. Armor placement is allways important.
I might have far thicker armor around ammo storage, the engines, fire control, reactor and main guns.
And while you COULD attack where teh armor is thinner(if you know where that is..visually you can't see much) and do damage, that damage won't be critical. So you can blast the forward mess hall? The extra bunks? Crew quarters? The Kitchen? Half hte corridors?
Who cares if it isn't critical! That's the differnce!
A BB will be turned into a smoldering pile of metal, but it's critical systems will still be in tact and it will still shoot. A lesser ship would allready be disabled or destroyed by the same ammount of punishemt.

Well, that's another of the gigantic assumptions we talk about, isn't it?  That other ships would have some illogical placement of key systems by design, just so you can say your battleship is more formidable.   Do you really think the GTVA puts the engine, weapon, etc subsystems in the most vulnerable places?  Or maybe the larger-than-ship-geometry subsytem boxes represent the cumulative damage effect upon a certain area of the ship.

One problem is that any part of the ship represents an element of structural integrity; as well as the obvious issue of turrets (and any ship so reliant on it's own weaponry would be immediately targeted in that manner, that's the whole point of fighterbays and bombers ahead of pure turret defense or offence), any impact to your hull would have reciprocal effects in terms of crew, life support, etc;  for example, you lose your inegrity in one section and you compromise decks above and below that, possibly lose power conduits, etc; it's impossible to put all your critical systems within the inner hull so long as you have weaponry, weapons, comms, sensors, etc on the outer hull; these will never be isolated.  A secondary possible issue is that the more space between the device (say turret, comms sensor, engines) and the 'control' (reactor, engineering, weapons command, bridge), the more cabling and connections there are inbetween the two to go wrong.

The main problem is that you're describing a suicide ship - one that fights until destroyed, even assuming your strange hypothesis of every enemy ever playing right to its strengths is met.  No crew or captain in their right minds would serve onboard a ship tasked with 'fight until you die' missions; unless you want to put Stalinist comissars to shoot them for retreating.  Moreso, it's an incredibly wasteful philosphy; if your ship is designed to have all non combat critical systems in the most vulnerable areas, then you're looking at long times in repair docks until it can actually take a crew on board - you lose the bunks, food supply, r&r and you can't support your crew; and you can't fight without a crew.

NB: Pegasus/Ptah stealth recon can be used to pinpoint weaknesses in the armour.  In any case, it'd only be a short while before combat weaknesses were exposed, especially for a ship designed to operate in such a kamikaze manner.  Regardless, as we have no locational damage system we havbe noe concept of placing non-critical systems in unarmoured areas, etc; we have one value representing the structural strength of the ship.

Oh one more thing - teh Deimos is very well armed with a special armor (sez so in the tech room) and still has excellent speed. And it's the only hip reported with that armor type (you can assume otehr have it but you can't prove it...actually I think Iceni had it too). Are you tellimg meit's new if my BB is covered with that? And it surely isnt' magical..

I actually had trouble deciphering this, but from what I can tell.... if you use the Deimos as your basis for armour and speed relationship, you must also use it for calculating the feasible number of turrets.  Also, it's worth noting that hitpoints will not necessarilly increase with size in any case; in actuality it shouldn't, as the hitpoints value is a general value reflecting the ship as a whole.

[karajorma]

To me, a destroyer is the center of a fleet, much like a modern aircraft carrier. It usually stay behind the front line, command the fleet, provide fighter cover, only provide fire support if necessary. The fighters and bombers are the offensive weapons, not the beam cannons. The Ravana does not fit the profile. It's designed to attack right in front, tear enemy line open, so the rest of the fleet can break through. Something has to cover its ass, or it's toasted. I doubt it was ever the flagship of a Shivan fleet.

So you want to re-write the definition of what a destroyer is to suit yourself? The game is quite clear on the point that the Ravana is a destroyer. It is simply one that has a good offensive potential too. That's it.

Furthermore we frequently see destroyers doing front line combat. Look at the assult on the Ravana, the various node blockades etc. Destroyers were always up there on the front lines kicking arse. The Hecate is actually the only destroyer we don't see doing this. If you're forming your opinions of what a destroyer is based on the Hecate you've chosen the wrong destroyer.

Battleship and destroyers are never going to be too different. They share the same platform, which means they have similar constraints. They just have different emphasis. Battleships emphasize raw fire power, destroyers emphasize fighter cover,  balanced fire support, communication and command infrastructure. A battleship is simply a specialized destroyer. That's why I don't see battleships act alone. They are only the vanguards of the fleet.

I agree with you on the idea that there will be front line and rear line destroyers (compare Orion and Hecate if you need an example of that) but for ****s sake stop calling a destroyer a battleship. The game is quite clear on the name of the class and on a thread like this it just serves to confuse everyone.

Destroyers are not battleships with a fighter bay. Battleships are destroyers without proper fighter coverage and command infrastructure, but far more front firepower.

Only in your mind. We are not subservient to your made up definitions. Especially when they contradict the game.

The Ravana is a Shivan battleship, maybe they have the technology to put more stuff into its limited hull. Still, we see that it's very vulnerable acting alone.

The Ravana singlehandedly took out the GTD Delacroix and damaged the rest of the battle group (presumably including the Aquitane which after all probably was part of the battle group). In fact if the player flies badly the Ravana takes out the Champion, the Khenmu, the Heisenberg, the Yakiba, and the Somtus as well. So it's obvious that the Ravana can handle itself.
 You're making the assumption that the Ravana doesn't carry a lot of fighters but you have no evidence whatsoever for that claim. We faced fighters from the Ravana in the two missions before Slaying Ravana and you're completely failing to count the number of fighters seen in that mission as well as the fairly large number that must have been used up kicking the **** out of the fleet. I really doubt that the Ravana is a low in fighters as you seem to believe.

Because the extra spaces are need for more powerful reactors and armors.

I don't buy it. When you double the size of a ship you don't simply double its internal volume. You quadruple it. You'd have plenty of space left over even with the bigger reactors and armour.

What's the use of fighter bay if the destroyers can provide fighter cover for the fleet? I do not support the argument that others are making that Battleship can act alone. They can't. They can never provide enough fighter coverage to survive an onslaught of bombers. One battleship has no hope against one destroyer. However, 2 battleship plus 1 destroyer with crusier escorts can kill a destroyer with cruiser escorts faster and with less casualties than 3 destroyers. (Assuming bombers are more expensive to build than fixing battleship's hull and subsystems).

I don't buy that either. The three destroyers can launch fighters and bombers three times as fast. That's a much larger effect that you make it out to be. Hell use the maxim effect I've mentioned before and the fighters could probably do it without the destroyers even getting scratched.

BTW, please do not say that battleship or any other ships can jump in, shoot, then jump out before anybody could react. If so, we will just have a bunch of ships, shifting in and out of subspace, never firing a shot. I think it takes at least 30 minutes to calculate a intrasystem jump. Any thing faster than that would be dangerous since you could jump right into a sun (say 10% chances). It's fine for suicide missions, but no captain would do it on a regular basis. You can not do the calculation up front either since there are too many variables.

Whilst you're telling people what to do how about I suggest not quadruple posting? The edit button is there for a reason and as you can see I've managed to respond to all your posts in one single post.

Anyway while I disagree with mini-jumps too the comment about it taking 30 minutes to calculate an intrasystem is complete bull. Go play Kings Gambit again as it seem to be a requirement for this discussion for lots of other reasons anyway.

[AlphaOne]

STOP IT ! You guis are giving me a head hurt!
First of all who said a battleship has to as big as the C or as small as a destroyer?? And where did that ridiculous ideea of putting some 12 or 13 cannons on a battleship came..?? Come on you just can't do that. Even I realized that its ridiculous! The mai ideea behind a BB was to be bigger then a destroyer, smaller then the C yet have a much bigger punch then the most powerfull destroyer in the GTVA the Orion!

Also If let's say a detroyer has a top speed of 30m/s (i'm not sayng that it does its just a example) then a BB would have a speed of lest say 20m/s .Get mi point??

Also while the role of a BB would be limited compared to that of a destoyer you still need a ship that can take out fast an ORION for example which the GTVA does not have at the moment. While you could use bommbers then again so could you use fighters to protect that target. Just how many destroyers would you need to take down a shivan juggernought (sp.?) . This ship would be used primarili to take out warships not engage in large tactical operation or something like that.

Here are mi specs:
3,5-4km long with lets say double the armour of the most heavely armoured ship in the GTVA.
tops speed: dont know exactly since I dont know the max speed of a destoyer in FS.
Weapons: well I was thinking like 3 BFG and 2 LRBG as well as lets say 3 or 4 slahs beams. of course this mai be a bit much but as you can see the ideea is to have mainly heavi weaponry. Then you would have lets say 3 to  5 AAAF beams as well as at least 8 missile launchers and at least 8 flack guns. If it is overpowered please feel free to downsize just remember that the emphasis is on the heavy weaponry. Also if it is not too ridicouloss you could implement a fisghterbay of some 24 interceptors.

Then again you could leave it blank with no interceptors what so ever but provide it with a permenant escort of a destoyer or a speacialized carryer the same size as a destroyer but a lot more fighters and no ant-ship weaponry execp for some flacks and AAAF beams and stuff like that.

As I said above if these specs are too out of sinc please feel free to adjust them but keep in mind 2 things:heavy armour and heavy weaponry.

Also there were some other ship classes that I wanted your opinions on like the dreadnought which could be basicly  a little bigger then a destroyer say 500 to 700m longer with about the same size of fighterbay maibe a little smaller then a DD but with say like the beam cannons of the Orion the antifighter capabilities of the Hecate or which destoryer has the best AAAF capabilities but with more armour like say 50% more armour. Take into acount that this ship would still have to be smaller the its bigger brother the BB. If lest say the Hecate is at about 2.2 km long this ship would be 2.8 or at maximum 3 km long no bigger it still has to be at least if not much more then just 500 m smaller then a BB.


Also there were the idea of using very advanced destroyers at a max of 2 km long but with specialized features.

They must still have a decend fighterbay but must be also fast moving must a  HP of  equal if not slightly bigger HP(max 10 or 15 %) then theyr bigger brothers and still have a firepower equal to the Orion.

Notice that I  took the orion as a template because it has a good fighterbay size and very good anti-cap weaponry while at the same time beeing able to take a pounding and sice the Orions are taken out of service and the Hecate is useless when taking on anithing bigger then a corvette I wanted something to fill the gap.

I doubt Terran prive would let the Vasudans as having the only decent destroyer.


Also there was the question regarding a friggate class warship similar to the one Boch  had! Also creating new specialized corvettes which would be something like the Aeouleus cruiser in the role they played (sp?). Very deadly to foghters/bommbers but with a lest say small fighterbay and a beam cannon mounted on the front. This ship would be used mainli as a anti-fighter screen. A very deadly one at that.

Tell me what you think! Please excuse the spelling and the long post!

[TrashMan]

The techroom also describes the Orion as being 'retrofitted' for new beam weapons.  Which can include the provision of new power sources; we can probably justify some form of increased efficiency in the 45+ year history of the Orion in that context.  In any case, the Hecate has at least equal firepower; it's just not anti-capship firepower but fighter defense.  This type of scenario is often referred to using the magical word 'balance'.

Game balance and universe balance (or logical balance) are two different things. I ask you to explain the vast difference in power output between the ships. If both have the same power output, why not fit better anti-cap weapons on the Hecate, for you claim they take up very little space?
The thing is - the [V] guys aren't physicists and ship constructors - whatever universe tehy make is bound to have a few holes in it, wether for the sake of game balance or becouse they simply didn't know better.

Whatever - the Iceni is the best proof that a BB is possible in the FS universe, as it's everything a BB would be, only in a smaller package. So..since you can't

Yes we have; trebuchets.  There's your stand-off weapon right there.

And it's allso a fighter-based weapon. Have we ever seen any capship use it? I don't think so...

Well, that's another of the gigantic assumptions we talk about, isn't it?  That other ships would have some illogical placement of key systems by design, just so you can say your battleship is more formidable.   Do you really think the GTVA puts the engine, weapon, etc subsystems in the most vulnerable places?  Or maybe the larger-than-ship-geometry subsytem boxes represent the cumulative damage effect upon a certain area of the ship.

One problem is that any part of the ship represents an element of structural integrity; as well as the obvious issue of turrets (and any ship so reliant on it's own weaponry would be immediately targeted in that manner, that's the whole point of fighterbays and bombers ahead of pure turret defense or offence), any impact to your hull would have reciprocal effects in terms of crew, life support, etc;  for example, you lose your inegrity in one section and you compromise decks above and below that, possibly lose power conduits, etc; it's impossible to put all your critical systems within the inner hull so long as you have weaponry, weapons, comms, sensors, etc on the outer hull; these will never be isolated.  A secondary possible issue is that the more space between the device (say turret, comms sensor, engines) and the 'control' (reactor, engineering, weapons command, bridge), the more cabling and connections there are inbetween the two to go wrong.

Well, I guess you should go then and tell all of hte ship costructors that made ships in WW2 and all that are making them now that they are all total idiots. For you see, the reasons above were the reason BB's were so hard to kill.
There's nothing illogical about the placament of things - it all had it's purpose nad reasons..and there were many.
from cost, to mass, to internal volume, bulkheads or sotage compartment to god knows what else. And the purpose of the ship in question was allso important - after all, why up the cost of a carrier by putting armor and making it slower when you don't have to and when it's unlikely it will be attacked at close range anyway?
Smage guiding principles apply to FS2 ship and any vessels everywhere..

The main problem is that you're describing a suicide ship - one that fights until destroyed, even assuming your strange hypothesis of every enemy ever playing right to its strengths is met.  No crew or captain in their right minds would serve onboard a ship tasked with 'fight until you die' missions; unless you want to put Stalinist comissars to shoot them for retreating.  Moreso, it's an incredibly wasteful philosphy; if your ship is designed to have all non combat critical systems in the most vulnerable areas, then you're looking at long times in repair docks until it can actually take a crew on board - you lose the bunks, food supply, r&r and you can't support your crew; and you can't fight without a crew.

Strange...WW2 bb's were designed that way and they were never short of crew or captains. It's not a kamikaze approach, it's the "I can take more than you and still fight back" approach.


EDIT:
@AlphaOne - if you're making your own campaing or something like that, I suggest you download my Archangel Battleship from Hades Combine. It's a bit too overpowered for your tastes, but that's what the table editing is for. Other then that, it fits your specifications rather nicely....

[karajorma]

STOP IT ! You guis are giving me a head hurt!

If you're only going to post every few days you can hardly complain if we entertain ourselves when you aren't posting.

First of all who said a battleship has to as big as the C or as small as a destroyer?? And where did that ridiculous ideea of putting some 12 or 13 cannons on a battleship came..??

Blame Trashman. Read the topic through. Much of what has been said is applicable to your ideas too. Especially any stuff about why the BB isn't worth the amount it would cost to build it.

Here are mi specs:
3,5-4km long with lets say double the armour of the most heavely armoured ship in the GTVA.
tops speed: dont know exactly since I dont know the max speed of a destoyer in FS.
Weapons: well I was thinking like 3 BFG and 2 LRBG as well as lets say 3 or 4 slahs beams. of course this mai be a bit much but as you can see the ideea is to have mainly heavi weaponry. Then you would have lets say 3 to  5 AAAF beams as well as at least 8 missile launchers and at least 8 flack guns. If it is overpowered please feel free to downsize just remember that the emphasis is on the heavy weaponry. Also if it is not too ridicouloss you could implement a fisghterbay of some 24 interceptors.

I would say that your ship is actually fairly reasonable in design terms. The GTVA could possibly build a ship exactly like yours given what they learned from the Colossus (might have to tone down the biggest cannons perhaps but the rest seems reasonable). 
 The objection isn't could the GTVA build such a ship it's would they build such a ship. Most of us think that they wouldn't. Look at the Colossus.  Your ship is 2/3 it's length. I doubt the GTVA could build such a ship in under 5 years even if they bolt Colossus tech directly on to it. If they have to make new stuff up for it (which they would seeing as how the Colossus never actually had BFGreens or LRBGreens) then you're probably looking at double or triple that.

If the need to take down Destroyers is so pressing surely the time would be better spent on making better bombs and bombers as you could get those off of the drawing board much faster.

Also there was the question regarding a friggate class warship similar to the one Boch  had! Also creating new specialized corvettes which would be something like the Aeouleus cruiser in the role they played (sp?). Very deadly to foghters/bommbers but with a lest say small fighterbay and a beam cannon mounted on the front. This ship would be used mainli as a anti-fighter screen. A very deadly one at that.

Now this I have much less of an objection to. The fighterbay on a corvette or frigate class would probably be quite small but as long as you don't overpower the beams then I don't have an objection to a corvette that specialises in fighter killing over anti-cap.

[aldo_14]

Game balance and universe balance (or logical balance) are two different things. I ask you to explain the vast difference in power output between the ships. If both have the same power output, why not fit better anti-cap weapons on the Hecate, for you claim they take up very little space?

AFAIK no-one other than you has claimed turrets are in some way low space or low complexity.  Um... in any case, the tbl entries give the Orion and the Hecate exactly the same reactor values (and the same speed and hitpoints).  So it's clearly a tradeoff of heavier beam weaponry for AAAf, and possibly some internal space (the Hecate is something like 100m longer) for flak ammunition (as it's undefined as whether this is energy or munitions based).

So...there is no difference in power output atall to explain.

The thing is - the [V] guys aren't physicists and ship constructors - whatever universe tehy make is bound to have a few holes in it, wether for the sake of game balance or becouse they simply didn't know better.

Given that we're operating in a purely theoretical universe, it doesn't matter all that much beyond what we can derive of Freespaces physics.

Whatever - the Iceni is the best proof that a BB is possible in the FS universe, as it's everything a BB would be, only in a smaller package. So..since you can't

The Iceni also disproves your notions of exponential weaponry counts.  It's also a ship designed and built to run, not fight.  So you're concept of a smaller battleship is a vessel built to escape capture, not one which played any sort of front line combat role (hell, for the majority of the NTF rebellion it seems to have been hidden as an asteroid).  There's a solid reason for that, of course; Bosch wasn't fighting a war, he was creating a distraction.

And it's allso a fighter-based weapon. Have we ever seen any capship use it? I don't think so...

We've seen capital ships use MX-50s, which are weapons capable of being used by fighters and bombers.  It's not a big jump to assume that Trebuchets are similarly usable; the issue comes, as stated, with the storage requirements for large quantities of these weapons (technically, there's no table restriction upon it, although obviously that's not a canon indication).  That's vastly different from taking the BFGreen or similar, and assuming you can build a longer range version without severe penalties such as heat and energy requirements; particularly because the self-enclosed and self-propelled nature of a guided missile means it has a lot less design implications; offhand, all you need is a launch system (a glorified tube-with-hole), a rearm system (trickier, but proven technology for other missile types), and a designation system (already exists for targeting ships with beams, other missile types, etc).  We're not talking anything that requires a sudden technological advancement here.  In essence, we have a proven weapon, and a proven basis for a launch system.

Well, I guess you should go then and tell all of hte ship costructors that made ships in WW2 and all that are making them now that they are all total idiots. For you see, the reasons above were the reason BB's were so hard to kill.
There's nothing illogical about the placament of things - it all had it's purpose nad reasons..and there were many.
from cost, to mass, to internal volume, bulkheads or sotage compartment to god knows what else.

Battleships - and I presume you must mean the WW2 version - weren't actually hard to kill once the fighter came along.  that's why they were all dumped or relegated to shore bombardment.   The problem is that, firstly, this is a spaceship.  You can't just get the crew to pop out on deck and easily transfer over supplies; you lose the living supplies onboard a spaceship, you lose the ship.  It's closer to a submarine in operating principles (except can't 'surface').  Secondly, you can't 'hide' key systems, and if you can, it's not going to offer any advantage over every other ship in existence.  So any impact (compared to other ships armour and vulnerability) shuffling about subsystem locations has is negligible at best.

And the purpose of the ship in question was allso important - after all, why up the cost of a carrier by putting armor and making it slower when you don't have to and when it's unlikely it will be attacked at close range anyway?

But I thought you were saying ships could jump in and engage at close range willy-nilly thanks to subspace?

So are you now citing the weight and resulting speed loss of heavy armour as a disadvantage?  Doesn't that effectively cripple your 2.5x Orion battleship?  Now it can't move fast atall, and it must be engaging destroyers at long range!

Smage guiding principles apply to FS2 ship and any vessels everywhere..

Smage?  I presume you must mean same, here.  Except, er, you've made up your own principles in order to validate a class of ship based on an obsolete naval design.

Strange...WW2 bb's were designed that way and they were never short of crew or captains. It's not a kamikaze approach, it's the "I can take more than you and still fight back" approach.

Tell the Yamato, the Musashi, the Bismarck, the Tirpitz, the Prince of Wales, Jean Bart, or Roma that they could 'take more'; all were either sunk or disabled by small, light, aircraft.  Hence why they became obsolete as soon as naval based air-force projection was introduced, because aircraft carriers can operate well outside a battleships firing range.  That's why the Tirpitz spent it's last days in a fjord, hiding.

Given that the same basic facts of range apply in FS2, and it's now well established that 'air' power dominates over larger immobile vessels, any captain worth their salt would surely question the logic of sending their ship in to act as a sacrificial lamb purely to draw fire from an enemy they can't even hit.

[Shade]

Specialized mid-sized capships would make sense to me, as well. The underlying problem with a battleship, ignoring all the arguments about whether this or that is possible or not, is that it just takes up too much time and resources to construct for being both vulnerable to bomber strikes as all capships are, and only able to be in one place at any time.

Corvette sized ships do away with both as they are much less of a loss if they do get jumped by bombers, and you can get something like 3-4 of them for the price of one of the proposed battleships allowing them to cover several areas at once.