[assasing123]

i m curious as to why cannot beams be fired manually from capital ships towards the target, and how those Ewar jammers work?

and on another not so BP question, why capital ships cannot or don't have any shields?

[Black Wolf]

Cap ships never have shields - they'd be largely pointless anyway, since beams pass right through them (arguable for Lucifer style sheath shielding, I guess).

[Kosh]

I would presume the beam jammers mess up the targeting systems so direct beams can't be fired accurately. As for why they can't be aimed manually, it's mostly likely because a warship in space is a windowless box, making it hard to aim accurately.


No capship shields is probably because of energy requirements. There could be an exponential energy use curve which makes it unfeasible to shield anything bigger than a bomber. The only capship to ever have a shield of any kind was the original Lucifer, but even then it took like 5 huge reactors to make it happen. Beam cannons however make shields useless, so much so that even the Shivans couldn't be bothered with shielding any of their other ships.

EDIT:

Cap ships never have shields - they'd be largely pointless anyway, since beams pass right through them (arguable for Lucifer style sheath shielding, I guess).

As I recall  stated a while ago that beams would in fact penetrate the lucifer's shielding.

[Ravenholme]

I would presume the beam jammers mess up the targeting systems so direct beams can't be fired accurately. As for why they can't be aimed manually, it's mostly likely because a warship in space is a windowless box, making it hard to aim accurately.


No capship shields is probably because of energy requirements. There could be an exponential energy use curve which makes it unfeasible to shield anything bigger than a bomber. The only capship to ever have a shield of any kind was the original Lucifer, but even then it took like 5 huge reactors to make it happen. Beam cannons however make shields useless, so much so that even the Shivans couldn't be bothered with shielding any of their other ships.

EDIT:

Cap ships never have shields - they'd be largely pointless anyway, since beams pass right through them (arguable for Lucifer style sheath shielding, I guess).

As I recall  stated a while ago that beams would in fact penetrate the lucifer's shielding.

I just realised, an experimental Tev capital ship that had a shield in the vein of the luci would absolutely stomp the UEF - because they do not have beams.

[The E]

i m curious as to why cannot beams be fired manually from capital ships towards the target,

Because they can't. Beam weapons, in BP, are streams of Plasma encased in a magnetic bubble. Said magnetic bubble is somewhat susceptible to outside interference, and while natural interference can be compensated for, the artificial jamming coming from a UEF AWACS is not that easy to circumvent, unless you manage to get FTL readings on the jammers. Which is why that unlucky AWACS whose name I keep forgetting from Delenda Est had to be tagged before it could be targeted.

Slash beams can get around that by arcing through the jammers' area of influence, and because their containment fields are much stronger than those of direct-fire beams.

and how those Ewar jammers work?

Very well, thanks for asking.

and on another not so BP question, why capital ships cannot or don't have any shields?

In universe, capital ships can't have shields due to exponentially rising energy requirements. In other words, the energy required to project a full shield bubble around a capital ship is several orders of magnitude above what would be required for a fighter; and while in BP canon capital ships have shield generators layered into their armor at critical spots, it's still problematic to keep all these systems up and running while also powering beam cannons.

[assasing123]

No capship shields is probably because of energy requirements. There could be an exponential energy use curve which makes it unfeasible to shield anything bigger than a bomber. The only capship to ever have a shield of any kind was the original Lucifer, but even then it took like 5 huge reactors to make it happen. Beam cannons however make shields useless, so much so that even the Shivans couldn't be bothered with shielding any of their other ships.

if is that so, why not actually use several small shield generators to cover critical systems of a ship or the entire hull, the generators to cover a whole bomber would be TINY compared to the ship hull but would cover a nice area, also the ammount of power  they require would be tiny compared to what a capital ship reactor can provide, since they would be just a lot of small generators, and yes this would make a LOT of sense against the UEF. given they don't have beams at all.

[Kolgena]

Shields on turrets would be a neat concept, but probably of minimal benefit. I mean, the entire point of shields on a fighter is that they become regenerating HP. When fighter shields give like maybe 800 HP at best, and capital ships have like 100k HP, the tiny relative amount of HP that regenerates makes the whole thing rather wasteful.

[NGTM-1R]

Shields on turrets would be a neat concept, but probably of minimal benefit. I mean, the entire point of shields on a fighter is that they become regenerating HP. When fighter shields give like maybe 800 HP at best, and capital ships have like 100k HP, the tiny relative amount of HP that regenerates makes the whole thing rather wasteful.

While BP-bombs annihilate shielding, this is not true of all mods. Shielded turrets or other promenient features at which bombs are likely to be aimed, which could soak the hit with minimal damage to themselves or the ship, is actually a pretty neat idea for some other mod to use.

[assasing123]

Shields on turrets would be a neat concept, but probably of minimal benefit. I mean, the entire point of shields on a fighter is that they become regenerating HP. When fighter shields give like maybe 800 HP at best, and capital ships have like 100k HP, the tiny relative amount of HP that regenerates makes the whole thing rather wasteful.

true they might not offer protection against capital ships, but on BP they would be REALLY usefull to protect a ship against UEF fighters as to avoid it getting disarmed so easily.

[Dragon]

You'd be suprised, there was a mod which used shielded turrets, namely Over The Top. Tau Imperium ships (the white ones) had main turrets covered with shield mesh.
Unfortunately, the ships in question are quite buggy and outdated, as is the rest of OTT dump.

[Qent]

Maybe it would be better purely with SEXPs.

[Snail]

Also destroying one turret shield would cause all the bubbles on that side of the ship to pop.