[General Battuta]

So, I've been thinking.  Everybody knows the GTVA needs a way to kill juggernaughts, Saths and whatever else the Shivans have.  Yeah, that's fine and good, there doesn't seem to be much agreement on exactly how, but it's certainly a priority. 

There's another tactical concern I see, though.  The Shivans have shown considerable aptitude for deploying hordes of bombers.  Seraphim, Nephilim, Nahema...you name it.  This was a particular concern during the evacuation of Capella, when the convoys were hit by overwhelming numbers of bombers. 

What kind of potential is there for a cheap sub-cruiser gunship mounting flak, an anti-fighter beam, and a few turrets?  The idea would be to provide a picket screen for larger warships and lightly defended targets.  Get as much flak and AAAf fire up as possible - we all know that the Aeolus is quite resilient against bomber attacks, and the idea is to make a smaller version.   

I'm not sure I like the idea myself.  A wing of Herc IIs can dispatch a cruiser in a few seconds.  Gunships would be all the more vulnerable to heavy assault fighters.  There's the practical example of the Satis gunships from Derelict, but I seem to recall they weren't particularly survivable and certainly didn't have any armament beyond blob turrets. 

Maybe it's a niche not meant to be filled. 

Lastly, how do weapon systems like Harpoons work on capital ships?  There's not much better at getting me to break off an attack run than a missile launch tone.  Seems like a few 'poon launchers would do most cruisers good.

If there are existing user-made mods regarding any of this, I apologize for bringing up redundant topics. 

[AlphaOne]

I had such an ideea a while back altough it adressed a different area.

The Aeoulous class of cruisers were very expensive at the time to build. they were how shall we say this ahead of theyr times and you could say they are still one of the best ships terrans ever produced if not the best.

Restarting the production of the Aeoulous would seem more apropriate then create a whole new class of ships which would take time and money to do. Something the GTVA has little.

However i do believe some smaller ajustement to the Aeoulous could be made altough more in lines of its overall design (aestetics) rather then anithing else. Also putting on some vasudan power cores and reactors and powergrid would be a very good idea since they seem to be more advanced in this area then theyr terran allies.

If you want a gunship then you need something which has the abilaty to take out cruisers very fast without fighter/bommber support and has enough aaaf defences to fend off a few wings of fighters/bommbers.

I mean just put loads of firepower in the front use the rest for aaaf defences give it a small hull high speed an manouverabilaty for its class and you have a gun ship. The same could be done using side facing weaponssistems like the GTVA usualy does .

[BlackDove]

There, that ought to take care of it.

[Mars]

Damn sexy BlackDove... now if I could just play BWO 

I had such an ideea a while back altough it adressed a different area.

The Aeoulous class of cruisers were very expensive at the time to build. they were how shall we say this ahead of theyr times and you could say they are still one of the best ships terrans ever produced if not the best.

Restarting the production of the Aeoulous would seem more apropriate then create a whole new class of ships which would take time and money to do. Something the GTVA has little.

However i do believe some smaller ajustement to the Aeoulous could be made altough more in lines of its overall design (aestetics) rather then anithing else. Also putting on some vasudan power cores and reactors and powergrid would be a very good idea since they seem to be more advanced in this area then theyr terran allies.

If you want a gunship then you need something which has the abilaty to take out cruisers very fast without fighter/bommber support and has enough aaaf defences to fend off a few wings of fighters/bommbers.

I mean just put loads of firepower in the front use the rest for aaaf defences give it a small hull high speed an manouverabilaty for its class and you have a gun ship. The same could be done using side facing weaponssistems like the GTVA usualy does .

I am Mars... resident canon whore... ph34r |\/|3

There is no canon information on the cost of Aeolus cruisers... all that is known is that production was halted... and in many ways this is not canon, this information wasn't available to normal players, only since the SCP came along and the tables are more commonly read (and the Ctrl+Shift+R "cheat" for the tech room was introduced)

Really though, cruisers in general are just big gun ships, taking up less than half the voleume of a corvette, granted, they're huge for todays standards, but the Fenris is really only twice as long or so compared to a Boeing 747. A culture that can turn out Destroyers like it so obviously does won't blanch too much when it comes to cruisers.

Now non-canonically

Axem's GTC Cretheus cruiser (available at Hades Combine) was a nice little gunship, it was slightly larger than a GVFr Satis, had slightly less hitpoints than a Fenris (although I think it should be about the same or higher personally) and had 5 Flak guns. If wxFred is ever introduced, and I make a campaign, I'm using that *****.

[NGTM-1R]

I'm not sure I like the idea myself.  A wing of Herc IIs can dispatch a cruiser in a few seconds.  Gunships would be all the more vulnerable to heavy assault fighters.  There's the practical example of the Satis gunships from Derelict, but I seem to recall they weren't particularly survivable and certainly didn't have any armament beyond blob turrets.

Well, it depends. The main question isn't whether fighters can dispatch them, since they are meant to dispatch fighters and so that should not be a concern. The Aeolus can hold out against enemy fightercraft impressively well, for example.

The main problem is what happens when a Cain or Lilth jumps in.

[Mefustae]

Having a gunship serving as an anti-fighter platform in the midst of a battle would be extremely useful when you're running bomber duty. With a few flaks and a triple-A beam, it would provide a safe haven from the harassment of enemy fighters while you reload, and would be a hell of a lot more useful than allied escort fighters usually are.

[Mars]

If a Cain or Lilith jumps in?

Send a wing or two of bombers

[General Battuta]

Mmm.  I hadn't thought of using them in conjunction with bombers.  It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a safe haven to reload behind, something cruisers are great at.   

Might provide an answer to Inferno syndrome, though - unescorted superships.  Gunships would make kill-the-big-one missions so much more interesting.  I'd rather have the excitement of having to punch a whole through a screen of smaller vessels to deliver warheads, than sit through another rehash of Bearbaiting or High Noon. 

[Sarafan]

I immediately remembered the Kurgen from Starlancer when I started reading the thread . Okay, a gunship with the exclusive goal of taking down fighters and bombers would be really effective against the Shivans, specially if they're deployed in a group of 3 with a wing of bombers for anti-capship duty, IMO.

Making one wouldnt be so hard for the GTVA. The Leviathan has one of the best anti-fighter weaponry and the best coverage with those 4 beams, its only lacking flack turrets, so taking the main anti-capship beam cannon (they have to occupy a big space on it) to add a couple more turrets, changing some turrets to flacks (3 would be fine), getting a bit more armor or speed and thats it, you now have a highly deadly anti-fighter gunship.

Or you could take the Aelous, replace those two anti-capship beams for a higher powered one (a Vasudan one and destroyer scale if possible), add some more armor, change another turret to AAA-beam and it'll become the Lilith version of the GTVA.

[Goober5000]

Here's the Aeolus tech description I wrote for Scroll:

The GTC Aeolus, originally seen as an extravagant peacetime expense when it was designed during the Terran Reconstruction, decisively proved its worth in the Neo-Terran rebellion and the Second Shivan Incursion. Aeolus-class cruisers are used throughout the alliance to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings. They also serve effectively as escort cruisers complementing larger warships such as the Deimos.

This is a fair extrapolation IMHO, since the FS2 tech description says production ended in 2365, before the whole Neo-Terran mess even started.

[Trivial Psychic]

Now non-canonically

Axem's GTC Cretheus cruiser (available at Hades Combine) was a nice little gunship, it was slightly larger than a GVFr Satis, had slightly less hitpoints than a Fenris (although I think it should be about the same or higher personally) and had 5 Flak guns. If wxFred is ever introduced, and I make a campaign, I'm using that *****.

I was thinking of that ship myself, but I had thought that it mounted more AAA button-turrets, rather than the all-multi-part-flak-guns layout.

[NGTM-1R]

The GTC Aeolus, originally seen as an extravagant peacetime expense when it was designed during the Terran Reconstruction, decisively proved its worth in the Neo-Terran rebellion and the Second Shivan Incursion. Aeolus-class cruisers are used throughout the alliance to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings. They also serve effectively as escort cruisers complementing larger warships such as the Deimos.

Oddly enough, I wrote something similar, though mine was the Aeolus proving its worth in Capella and ending that credited with over a thousand Shivan fightercraft kills.

[S-99]

Speaking of flak since flak is mainly the key. Someone should make a primary flak weapon. The maxim was designed and shoots bullets, why not shoot some explosive shells, or even better to create flak, explosive shells with mini proxi sensors. In the least in regards to the maxim, explosive shells, and even possibly equipped with some form of proximity explosives. Proximity explosions can be dealt in two ways, equip the explosive with a proximity sensor, or give the fighter OS an upgrade to detect proximity via radar and target lock to tell the explosive shell when to explode and when not to. This type of feature could be used to distinguish detonating an explosive bullet around a hostile, and not exploding on a friendly.
This kind of an upgrade to the maxim or new weapon completely could turn certain fighters into some wierd ass firepower gunships. Such ships like the erinyes or something, i really wouldn't know what kind of fighter to equip flak onto to make a makeshift gunship. Either way it'd be a neat enthusiast weapon to use.
When making a gunship, and making it smaller and more maneuverable than a cruiser is going to lead you down the road of making something that should be freighter sized most likely, or a new kind of fighter with heavy armor.
Brings about the idea of retrofitting some of the bombers that have turrets like the medusa and ursa. Equip a flak like weapon on the turret, and another flak like weapon on one of the normal firing points, and you'd have something that could rip fighters and bombers apart.

[General Battuta]

It's possible that fighter-caliber flak shells might not be strong enough to provide anything more than a nuisance. 

Those capital flak turrets are quite big.  (Does anyone else beside me think they might be caseless, given their rate of fire?  MetalStorm principle, perhaps?)

[S-99]

They probably are caseless. I mean that's the way of the future. Caseless bullets take up less space, don't require a hammer, and don't leave a mess of bullet shells behind.

Perhaps somebody could design a flak weapon as a secondary, that i would find useful, it'd be like an uber morning star that does serious damage.

After that an upgrade to the maxim having explosive shells instead of the normal ones would be even more effective at taking down cruisers.

[General Battuta]

The Maxim was caseless, if I recall, though when I first heard the term I didn't know what it meant.

I had the idea that the bullets were literally 'without casing' and were just big sloppy chunks of metal, or perhaps something like shotgun pellets.  Ah, the naivete of youth. 

Though if someone did make a fighter-mounted shotgun, it might help me kill Dragons. 

[Sarafan]

They probably are caseless. I mean that's the way of the future. Caseless bullets take up less space, don't require a hammer, and don't leave a mess of bullet shells behind.

Perhaps somebody could design a flak weapon as a secondary, that i would find useful, it'd be like an uber morning star that does serious damage.

After that an upgrade to the maxim having explosive shells instead of the normal ones would be even more effective at taking down cruisers.

Wouldnt AP bullets be better? Specially against Liliths.

[General Battuta]

I'd certainly rather have armor-piercing caseless rounds than explosive ones, yes.  Penetration is certainly ideal.   

[S-99]

Well, a maxim with explosive bullets could be like the  maxim of preference in actually taking out shields with a maxim like weapon. And a maxim with AP bullet would be ideal for the cruiser sniping.

[phatosealpha]

You know, I'm not sure what role picket ships would be ideal for.  If they're just there to provide extra flak and AAAs for fighter cover on a bigger ship, it occurs to me you'd be better off just building a slightly bigger bigger ship and putting the extra weapons on it?

The thought occurs to me that if a cain or lillith jumps in vs a big ship with extra flak, it does some hull damage and gets blown up.  Vs a big ship with pickets, it might concentrate on taking out the picket ships, leaving the big one vulnerable to a follow up bomber attack.

If the picket ship is for extra cover away from big ships, why not just send more fighters instead?  Same general effect - extra cover - without the big "SHOOT ME HERE" target that a cruiser represents.