Frigate: attack run. Feedback/critique
- Thread starter wbyrd
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Love it! And saved to my Vault of Traveller Goodness
It's not "exactly" how I envision a warship would look like, but that's just a matter of taste and nothing actually important. It's damn good and that's all that matters!
I am honored to now that you have enshrined it thusly... If you have any suggestions or ideas for a look you lie let me know..I am open to suggestions and really need to practice different looks...
I can also be bribed to do custom jobs.... coffee, aspirin, pizza, and other supplies for all night work sessions etc...
I can also be bribed to do custom jobs.... coffee, aspirin, pizza, and other supplies for all night work sessions etc...
As I told Dale and Fly recently, we need to say "Thank you" to you creative types for good content much more often.
Suggestions? No no no no no no no no no no no no... NO! I've no artistic talent whatsoever. I can't even draw a bath. bah-dum-tiss
I've never been much of a fan of the long, thin, mecha-like, weapon tubes but that's just me and it isn't important. Those long weapons in this picture are perfect because of the air of menace they project.
That frigate is in the process of gutting something and I think we're lucky not to see the ship being disemboweled.
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I appreciate the thought. Sometimes it seems like a waste of time when all you hear back is the sound of bored crickets.
Fear not the unclean scum they are sending screaming to the void deserve it ! I had to edit out the results they were just too disturbing... and I haven't quite got the "it's blown the crap of" part down yet..
thanks for the feedback.I was going for just what you described...
I have other designs with a bit more of a heavy look. I build several different styles and this batch was the sleek lethal, variety. This is another look I was working on...basically one big gun.
Here's a view no one wants to see.....gun charging ready to unleash hell.
Ooooh... spinal mount...
What do you know about the Nth Interstellar War? About the two technological breakthroughs which gave the Terran Confederation victory?
They were jump3 and the meson gun spinal mount.
I don't know if it was ever written or suggested in actual canon, but the thinking for many years was that those first Terran meson gun-armed battleships were little more than a spinal mount with some drives attached.
Krakatoa looks exactly how I thought those early meson-armed battleships looked.
What do you know about the Nth Interstellar War? About the two technological breakthroughs which gave the Terran Confederation victory?
They were jump3 and the meson gun spinal mount.
I don't know if it was ever written or suggested in actual canon, but the thinking for many years was that those first Terran meson gun-armed battleships were little more than a spinal mount with some drives attached.
Krakatoa looks exactly how I thought those early meson-armed battleships looked.
I'm not familiar with the war...at least not off the top of my head...
The Krakatoa is a jump mobile gun platform..meant for defenses....or to blow te crap out of stations once mobile targets have been eliminated...usually they just hook a tow ship to it to move it between systems...
http://wbyrd.deviantart.com/art/Intersystem-Mobile-Gun-Platform-Krakatoa-579799007
However, it would make a spiffy image for a low tech battle wagon
So it's a siege gun... interesting...
Have you read Agent of the Imperium yet? In it, Mr. Miller employs a slightly different nomenclature regarding warships, something just different enough to give the reader a Not in Kansas moment and just familiar enough so that it doesn't need to be explained.
Rather than continually using terms battleship, dreadnought, battlecruiser, and so on, Mr. Miller simply refers to them all as capitals as in "capital ships". While individual classes are still referred as a battleships et. al., squadrons and so on are simply called capitals.
Among those capitals are a subgroup called sieges. Those vessels are shown traveling to a system's belt, carving kinetic kill munitions out of the NiFe planetoids there, fitting them with rudimentary thrusters & controls, and then launching them via mass driver at the target planet. It's not clear if that's the only capability the sieges have, whether it's something all sieges can do, whether sieges carry other weapons, or whether only some sieges carry other weapons. Sieges are shown as part of an arriving battlefleet, however, some place they have no business being if all they can do is fling rocks.
Anyway, it seems as if you're developed your own version of Mr. Miller's siege ships.
Have you read Agent of the Imperium yet? In it, Mr. Miller employs a slightly different nomenclature regarding warships, something just different enough to give the reader a Not in Kansas moment and just familiar enough so that it doesn't need to be explained.
Rather than continually using terms battleship, dreadnought, battlecruiser, and so on, Mr. Miller simply refers to them all as capitals as in "capital ships". While individual classes are still referred as a battleships et. al., squadrons and so on are simply called capitals.
Among those capitals are a subgroup called sieges. Those vessels are shown traveling to a system's belt, carving kinetic kill munitions out of the NiFe planetoids there, fitting them with rudimentary thrusters & controls, and then launching them via mass driver at the target planet. It's not clear if that's the only capability the sieges have, whether it's something all sieges can do, whether sieges carry other weapons, or whether only some sieges carry other weapons. Sieges are shown as part of an arriving battlefleet, however, some place they have no business being if all they can do is fling rocks.
Anyway, it seems as if you're developed your own version of Mr. Miller's siege ships.
Sadly I havent gotten to that book yet....
I started doing ships for a game I was running in my own setting...In it's Backstory Earth has suffered three "Incursions" by a hostile race...the first was a direct assault and landing..it was messy( reduced population to around 2 billion) because Earth hadn't been contacted by any other races at that point... It was defeated by a relief fleet of Off world humans ( long story how they got out there...20k years, and some alien influence involved.)
the second was an attempt to breach the defensive cordon around the system and invade again....defeated by a newly formed Alliance of spacefaring nations on earth and their off-world allies...
the third was a stealth attack, a disguised"Mining Ship" slipped into the Oort Cloud and began to chop up asteroids and comets sending them in long prepared orbits that had them all arriving in the inner system at the same time...target..north and south pole of Earth
Interstellar Protocols prohibit that sort of thing..but hey, the bad guys were using a ship that couldn't be traced back to them...
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
Somthing like the behemoth in WC3?
A big gun with an engine/power module with a tiny bridge at the back.
It may be from another game, bit that's it. Nothing more than as HUGE a meson gun as the Confederation can build crammed aboard as LITTLE a "ship" they can construct rapidly.
The rest of the fleet - all those pre-meson ships - have just been reduced to the role of escorts. All they do is run interference, slap down the occasional missile volley, and sacrifice themselves as necessary while a handful of spinal mounts masquerading as warships remind the Vilani of the Terror of Sabmiqys.
It's a doable concept, minimal construction time, with multiple units deployed even if you get one, there are more firing from max range. The deciding factor would be the screening force...if it buckled the big guns would be meat on the table...
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I love the smell of near fusion plasma in the morning....
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
The 'Dragon Heavy Fighter' is my favourite. But back to designs, back in the MT days I used the modified Durango class destroyer "Intrepid" from WC4 as a prototype in modular warships. The underslung hangar bay could be swapped out with any module you like - allowing it to be a destroyer one day, light carrier the next, hospital ship the day after.
Thinking on the siege ships - while they can be just rock chuckers, you could possible have them throw things other than planet killers. Wind down the size/speed/shape of the impactors and you could have a mobile version of the 'Rods from God' array for precision cracking of bunkers and weapon sites that are nuke/meson shielded (like deep meson sites). Combine the siege component with troop landers and the siege mothership can act as overwatch/fire support while the transports detatch and land. And if you do need to do a planet scrub - just wind the throwers up to full power and start firing.
I like the the concept of a mobile "Siege Tower" transport/fire base
the second ground defenses saw that thing enter the system they would know it was about to get messy.One idea I toyed with fr a scenario was having a covert stroke version of siege ship. A disguised Mining vessel, just puttering along cutting up asteroids like a good little worker bee...filling its holds up with ingots of Nickle Iron and other goodies.
A some point a second ship..a freighter comes along docks with the processor, storage ship to pick up a load of ingots....and begins to fire a rapid stream of football sized projectiles insystem...thousand of them moving at 100,000 Kph.
It could be firing 100 rounds a minute for hours before it was destroyed. and how many nickel iron footballs can you fit into a 1000dton cargo box??? a lot of them.
You aim the footballs of death at the orbital bands around a planet, any stations or ships in orbit are going to have to evade or crank up the PD to 11.
If you jump your attack group in at the same time the Siege gun opens up...that's gonna be a mess. Interceptors have to be diverted to stop the stream of fire from the Siege gun, which diverts resources away from the system defense group.
It would be a very tricky bit of deception to get the first stage of the plan up and running, by infiltrating a mining ship into a target system and keeping it from being discovered while it builds up a reserve of ammo...
the plus to that is it wouldn't even have to be crewed by a crew loyal to your cause. It could be owned by a sympathetic agent, and crewed by locals...since it is only a mining ship with nothing to discover such as weapons, or troop bays.
The only time it would become a weapons platform is when the "cargo ship" with the launcher showed up. You cold easily transport a team of marines on that ship to take over and secure the station with loyal personnel and replace or eliminate the local crew.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
That's a good illustration of the advantages and disadvantages of the concept. If yu can keep a clear line of fire it's a nightmare to fight. However, if you can find a way to evade, or negate incoming fire long enough to get within range, you can rip it to shreds with conventional weapons...
It's also possible to overwhelm the ship with small attackers such as fighters, or board it directly suing small craft. Its main gun loses its advantage when the enemy is using multiple waves of small ships. it can destroy them in a single hit but they are hard targets, and even if half of them are destroyed int he approach run, you still have to deal with the other half.
Unless tonnage was devoted to point defense turrets and secondary guns fighters would simply pick it apart. Something like a formation of 200 ton strike ship with missile bays would tear it apart.
cinematically that sort of counter would be gold. The hero ships streak in exploding one after another as the big ship swats at them like a giant swinging a telephone pole. the survivors get revenge as they unload their tubes in the infamous Macross Missile Massacre....
geesh I really need to learn to animate scenes like that....You guys give me the best ideas
It's also possible to overwhelm the ship with small attackers such as fighters, or board it directly suing small craft. Its main gun loses its advantage when the enemy is using multiple waves of small ships. it can destroy them in a single hit but they are hard targets, and even if half of them are destroyed int he approach run, you still have to deal with the other half.
Unless tonnage was devoted to point defense turrets and secondary guns fighters would simply pick it apart. Something like a formation of 200 ton strike ship with missile bays would tear it apart.
cinematically that sort of counter would be gold. The hero ships streak in exploding one after another as the big ship swats at them like a giant swinging a telephone pole. the survivors get revenge as they unload their tubes in the infamous Macross Missile Massacre....
geesh I really need to learn to animate scenes like that....You guys give me the best ideas
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
Then you just switch to 'grapeshot' mode. Instead of one big slug, you blast out pellets in a cone like a shotgun. Unlike a shotgun the range is infinite amd put enough velocity behind it and even a ball bearing could go straight through the hull - or at least make a mess of exposed things like sensors or windows. Even better the shot pellets are 'cold' with no emissions so the only way to detect the shot is with active sensors, which means you just waved a big sign saying "Here I am. Shoot me!"
Or even cheaper option, just bolt on a disposable missile pack or two. So the next time a ship full of kids tries to be clever, the system just fires off its missiles while locking on with the BFG.
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