[The E]

I dunno, but I think a few capital missile launchers that fire VLS-style would be quite awesome on a ship that size. You don't have to go all Solaris on it, but... Well, see, I have this thing for big missiles....

[Black Wolf]

I dunno, something this size in the TV War era... maybe should be struggling to defend itself? It'd almost certainly be the biggest thing on the battlefield - giving it anti-cap capabilities would make it pretty damned advanced.

Although, if you do end up giving it capital armaments, depending on the lore, and the date of its construction, GTD Goliath might be a good name...

[Hades]

I dunno, something this size in the TV War era... maybe should be struggling to defend itself? It'd almost certainly be the biggest thing on the battlefield - giving it anti-cap capabilities would make it pretty damned advanced.

wat

that makes no sense

[Black Wolf]

I just mean that if they had the capability to build something this big that was also able to put out reasonable offensive punch with missiles, why go backwards to smaller Orions with presumably less fighter capacity and no anti-ship missiles? Why would the missiles never be used again, even on the Hades? There are solutions to all of these, of course - especially if the missiles involved are Fusion Mortars, for example, but I just think that making anything more powerful than the orion for the TV War era is... potentially messy, story wise.

Although, given what Vengence has said regarding the background tech info for this thing, that might all be covered.

[Snail]

Well, personally, I'd go the F-Project way and just say that it's a gameplay quirk. What we saw in FS1 (capships taking hours to kill each other) was representative of the universe, but flexible for the purposes of gameplay.

[Mobius]

Since when you think that, Snail?

Anyway, I don't see the problem here, and would prefer missile launchers over laser turrets. Less advanced technology than that shown in FS1, but still threatening (regardless of its effectiveness).

[Vengence]

I think I should really explain what's going on I guess.

I'm making this ship playable in the FS2 era with FS2 level power but with its own quirks. Construction was initially started in the TV War Era but delays and budget problems more or less prevented it from being completed in a timely manner. In fact construction pretty much stopped in favor of Orions.... that is until Ross 128 and the Plato incident. The arrival of the Shivans prompted the GTA to ramp up construction on all fields, including building this carrier. It really took the destruction of Vasuda Prime to push this ship to completion, but even then it arrived on the scene very late.... Lucifer in Delta Serpentis late. The GTCa Aegaeus fought in Delta Serpentis, assisting GTA forces against shivan fighters. But when Alpha Wing from the Bastion defeated the Lucifer, the advanced GTCa Aegaeus found itself cut off from home.

The carrier is in a precarious situation. With all of the major schematics and designs for the ship lost at Earth, it is virtually impossible to properly maintain the Aegaeus and its 'advanced' systems proved to be the ship's failing. The Aegaeus uses a triple subspace warp system, a triple redundant capacitor that can allow the ship to perform 3 consecutive warps without recharging and all of its major weapons are linked to this system to flush energy into it. If the GTVA tried to mount large beam cannons in its 12 main turrets, it'd fry the subspace drive and the capacitor system is too ingrained into the shiip's vital systems that trying to bypass it would do more harm than good. In the end, the Aegaeus does not mount a single large beam cannon, rather its 12 main turrets are equipped with downsized light-medium beams. It can defend itself pretty well against a corvette in the FS2 era, but as soon as a  frigate or destroyer comes into play, there is little the Aegaeus can do except run or deploy its fighters and bombers. However mounting flak guns was successful so the Aegaeus can unleash a frightening flak cloud when needed.

However, in the FS2 Era, the Aegaeus is a dying ship. Without schematics or original plans for the ship available for maintaining the ship, it is slowly decaying.

Hope this clears some things up. Least in my story there is only one out there.

[Jadehawk]

Fighter Killers, Bomber interceptor missiles would be good for missiles unless you want larger ones for ship-to-ship combat too?

[BengalTiger]

Without schematics or original plans for the ship available for maintaining the ship, it is slowly decaying.

Lack of reverse engineering the parts to recreate the plans is a plot hole in this description, especially when there are canon things like the Sekhmet and the Kayser, which are reverse engineered from Shivan designs.

[Vengence]

I thought about that. Though to reverse engineer you'd have to take it apart which is likely to render the ship inoperable. I'd imagine the GTVA fleets for a few years had to be on alert after the GTI rebellion and general chaos empire wide from loosing two homeworlds, so no usable property would have been needlessly destroyed to be reverse engineered. I honestly believed that rather than put the biggest ship in the fleet in a dock for years, they'd take parts from other ships and substitute. A temporary solution but in the end it only degenerates the ship even more with incompatible parts. Maybe for about a decade they had time to patch up the ship and replicate some of its technologies, but I imagine the thing would be on near constant activity, and without the original plans or the will to take it out for good (until the colossus came) it will be a slowly dying ship.

I hope I'm clearing this up. Honestly I'd like any lore suggestions. It'd make for good missions for a campaign someday.

[The E]

Hmm.

I am a bit skeptical about the whole "we can't reverse-engineer this" aspect. Unless you are talking about wildly divergent tech bases, reverse engineering is always possible. And even if you can't afford to rip out the working hardware, you still know its specs; building a replacement is a straightforward engineering challenge.
Second, given your proposed age for this project, the technologies developed for this ship have to have been used in late-flight Orions. At the very least, the lessons learned in building this vessel would have been circulated in shipbuilder's circles.

Also, if a GW-era ship could have performed rapid sequential jumps, that's a tech advantage the GTVA can't afford to lose. Even if it would mean losing their big Carrier, the benefits of examining the tech and then refitting other ships with it outweigh the loss of combat power.

Not to mention that purebred carriers are a deeply flawed idea in FS' tactical environment.

[Luis Dias]

I'm not skeptical about the whole "we can't reverse engineer" this, I think it's more of an option by the GTVA of "forgetting" this design, it has too many tactical flaws about it.

One could, however, always incorporate the "lessons" that E is talking about into the canon, with caveats.

For instance, core reactors could be "too expensive" to produce multiple to single ships. Or they could create "too much radiation", being something very bad to the crew. Or they could prove to be amazingly unreliable in some technobabble justification, for being three reactors linked to the same wires. Or they could prove to be too dangerous, as in cores being more vulnerable to attacks, or when the ship blows up it has a worse radius of hazard than usual, killing all escape pods and fleeing fighters in the process.

Anyways, it's a pity that this carrier has so many problems , for it is an excelent design .

[The E]

Well, other mods might have other uses for it. For example, those turrets could be quite awesome if fitted with Gauss Cannons.....

[BengalTiger]

You could create a new element/assembly/machine with some design constraints, such as max size, minimum power output etc., to fit into the original mountings and fulfill the same function.

A better story IMHO would be that this ship was built with triple jump drives, but then the big beams were developed, and with them whole new ship designs and beam spamming tactics, making the Aegaeus obsolete, so no one wants to invest big cash in fixing it. This would give a reason that it's being neglected, and there is no 'we can't reverse engineer it' plotline.
On the other hand it's unique abilities are a strong argument to keep it in reserve, and so it's just flying around, slowly getting older...

Something like the Iowa class battleships with their 16 inch guns* are in the real world, having been in service or reserves well into the missile cruiser and aircraft carrier age.

*- guns that could spit 2 salvos of 9 rounds per minute until their ammo storage of about 1220 rounds is depleted. The AP (Armor-Piercing) rounds are capable of penetrating 6.4 meters of reinforced concrete from 18 km away. The HC (High-Capacity) rounds explode making a a crater 15 m wide and 6 m deep

[Vengence]

Hehe okay you got me  . Though the idea for a pure carrier came when I was talking to some friends and jokes that if any faction had enough Alpha 1s they'd be unstoppable. Well I guess you're right, though, they'd probably deem loosing a ship to make better jump cores and build them without the old age flaws. Bengal's idea sounds pretty good though if it were being neglected I guess they'd still take it apart and catalog anything they couldn't when Earth got cut off. I'm pretty sure the actual mission makers can make a better story idea than me XD.

Still, the idea in my mind is something like an old ship built right before Earth got cut off, was too important to stuff away in the short term, but still served well in the new age wars despite being handicapped except for its redeeming strengths.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Bah, don't bother coming up with a story for your ship - any mod that uses it will have it in its own context anyway. Just build the design you want, people will make their own backstories for it.

The fighters launch from the front section, the long part. In each of those 'sections' staggered apart are going to be launch... I dunno what it is called but it will be something somewhat similar to the Sova Carrier from Sins of a Solar Empire. Granted ... if I can't get animated launch pods like that then I might be forced to use simple doors. What do you think? Would you like to see the carrier 'open' some launch pods from the body and shoot out fighters? Or them just fly out of bays sideways B5 style?

That would be a cool thing, indeed. There is an animation trigger "on launching/landing fighters", so theoretically it should be feasible with only slightly hackish docking bay paths

[BengalTiger]

IIRC one or more of Esarai's ships had hangars with animated doors, feel free to DL them and see how it's made.

[Vengence]

What's the name of it?

[Commander Zane]

Phoenix Rising.

[Vengence]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm working on a contract work and it is time consuming.