[Luis Dias]

the answer is that ECM is magic

Oh so it's an apple product?


On a serious (not really) note, why don't they just subspace warp a meson bomb against a sathanas?

Or, alternatively, calculate a subspace jump of an old cruiser or destroyer and subspace it towards the insides of the juggernaut?

One could even generalize it and turn massive asteroids into full blown weapons of subspace destruction if you stickied them with a small subspace engine (and awacs for the calculations, and so on and so on).

[Snail]

Yeah, and just as expensive.

[Destiny]

Ships have a gravity well, although not that big, but still large nonetheless. Perhaps that prevents you from emerging from subspace directly into the hangar of the Temeraire so you don't have to undergo the Control Tower's "Alpha 1 maintain a holding pattern, Epsilon 4, Beta 5, Omega 6, Alpha 7, Rho 8, Upsilon 9, Lambda 10, Tau 11 is still on approach."-stuff.








...not that it'll be safe anyway to warp into a hangar.

Although, before destroyers or any capship for the matter jump in anywhere, fighters are always sent first. Those flying Maxims won't do a thing. If they wanna build flying Maxims, they should change all those Terran Turrets and Huge Terran Turrets on all GTVA ships into Maxims instead of building flying Maxims.

If not, Morningstars.

[Mars]

Squadron of (Uhlans with Gattler) or (Herc IIs with Maxim) + Squadron of (Uriels with Paveways) or (Ares with Stillettos)

+

1 (Hunter-Killer team) or a (couple Narayanas) and escorts

=

One very large, very dead ship

[Destiny]

Ares with Maxims-Trebs + Ares with Maxim-Stilettos would be more efficient than a Herc II squadron actually. As you already know the Ares has insane recharge rate (you can even use it as a pseudo-interceptor with full engines!)...Ares fighters can survive longer than Herc IIs too. (no pun intended)

[Logistics]

Squadron of (Uhlans with Gattler) or (Herc IIs with Maxim) + Squadron of (Uriels with Paveways) or (Ares with Stillettos)

+

1 (Hunter-Killer team) or a (couple Narayanas) and escorts

=

One very large, very dead ship

Just playing economics here, but I'm wondering just how many drone escape pods equals that Strike team, fighter assets, and associated secondary ordinance. Given the size of the ships involved...I'm just going to guestimate several thousand, considering just how much more effort it would be to create a livable *ship* as opposed to a flying gun. Maxim cannon might not put that much of a dent in capital-class vessels on an individual level, but in aggregate, I do think the death-of-a-thousand cuts would apply.  It would never actually be able to be implemented in-game, but I do rather like the idea of hen-pecking ships to death. Course, the tradeoff is you lose flexibility in response if you put all your effort into making drones.

[General Battuta]

It would never actually be able to be implemented in-game, but I do rather like the idea of hen-pecking ships to death.

how do YOU know

[Luis Dias]

Sure but I think that the reasonings should not prefer realism, but exactly in-game "awesomeness". I'm all for the implementation of this idea, because it's cool and offers another tactical variable to interest the player.

Consider that subspace missile attacks are also quite undefensible, a much much better strategy, IMHO, than "beam rape tactics", so it wasn't omnipresent in BP, for it would create a boring game, not a cool one.

[PsychoLandlord]

I'm interested enough in this concept that I think my first bits of screwing around in FRED are going to be based around this idea, just to see how well it works in Gameplay. Here's hoping these idiot Doctors clear me soon.

Mars is right about the existing strike capabilities the human factions have, but the way I see it, that would take time to set up, and, if something screwed up, could be some horrendous losses. These Drones could be used as essentially minefields in many situations, very hands off sort of fire and forget weaponry in others, and as potent defenses of nodes and installations period. Assuming Logistics logistics (heh) are right, cutting back in other areas a bit to surround all of you nodes and key installations with swarms of attack drone snipers doesn't seem like a terrible idea at all.

[Luis Dias]

It would never actually be able to be implemented in-game, but I do rather like the idea of hen-pecking ships to death.

how do YOU know

Well I'd personally hate the idea of a new Delenda Est PLUS a thousand of small "pods" firing maxims. My laptop is already begging for mercy as it is.

[headdie]

it all comes down to how polly intensive+texture the model is and how the drones are deployed in the mission

[Zacam]

how many amazon drones were killed in T-V/Great War era training?

None. As stated for each Training mission, you were in a Simulator. Which means no actual assets employed, even though you still flew like it was in real-space and against real assets. Therefore, no need to re-build anything.

[Luis Dias]

it all comes down to how polly intensive+texture the model is and how the drones are deployed in the mission

... and the number of maxim shots going on screen...

I can easily see models of 300 polys (very very simple models) with a single 512 texture, instanced 1000 times (which gives 300k polys...).

But now imagine a single round of maxim shots by all the 1000 drones, multiplied by 50 shots per round.... 50k maxim "sprites" inside the scene. Not funny.

[General Battuta]

The engine will hit the objects limit well before you really have to worry about performance.

ed: well, depending

[-Sara-]

Purely out of a tactical point of view, I wonder why the GTVA didn't make a capital version of the Maxim. I supposed a much larger maxim cannon (medium to huge turret size) would shoot further and hurt more. Smaller than a mass-driver anyway, with a good refire rate.

[Snail]

how many amazon drones were killed in T-V/Great War era training?

None. As stated for each Training mission, you were in a Simulator. Which means no actual assets employed, even though you still flew like it was in real-space and against real assets. Therefore, no need to re-build anything.

No, (as far as we know), only the FreeSpace 2 training missions were stated to be simulators. You could fudge it and say that the FS1 ones were too, but there is absolutely zero evidence to support that.

[Luis Dias]

The engine will hit the objects limit well before you really have to worry about performance.

ed: well, depending

Well that negates the whole point, right? If you won't be able to have 50k maxim "sprites", then it's true that you *can't* have a thousand-drones swarm firing maxim. I mean what's the point of having that and them not being able to do what they were built for.

OTOH, one could have instead a smaller swarm of drones, like fifty, they would appear to be "lots-f-them" to the player, and with maxim cannons, they would be *very* powerful indeed. If each drone has one canon, they would have a firepower of 170 damage points per second, and with 50 of those we are talking about 8500 per second, continuous, for the whole swarm. That's a Deimos in less than 10 seconds.

Now granted, there would be a degradation of the prowess there, since we would see the Deimos, for instance, blasting off the drones with their AAA beams, and flak, etc.

But this can be, of course, fine tuned. And when drones come back to the swarm frigate, they could be "replenished" for a second attack.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, uh, I was definitely not thinking 1000, and definitely thinking something smaller.

However 50 or even 1000 drones with Maxims will never kill a Deimos iirc. They could disarm and disable it but never blow it up.

[headdie]

except damage flags put a spanner in those plans, but if you send in smaller swarms of drones to dissarm/dissable the target so you can then smack it with conventional forces then i think you are onto a better strategy

[Nuclear1]

Actually, your swarm idea did remind me immediately of a homeworld ship, the drone frigate:

That's an Assault Frigate