Re: Spoiler Alert.......Omega Class DDs in B5

Hey, Rog,

>Potential Spoilers, Relates to  4th Season esp No Surrender, No Retreat
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>Have any of you guys out there who have put together B5/FT adaptations
>revised the stats of the Omegas based on the above episode.
>
>How do you class the 4 rear firing projectors which seemed to be pulse
>cannons yet were doing major damage to B5s Star Furies. The projectiles
>seemed to be of the same sort fired from the forward projectors. Do you
>reckon these are Pulse Cannon or PDAF/Interceptors.

Well, for one, jms kinda doesn't differentiate too much between 'pdaf'
weapons and 'batteries' (pulse cannons). The 'interceptors' on B5 seem
to be able to fire on ships just as well (note battle with Centauri
warship at end of Season 2, episode "Fall Of Night"). It's not clear
in "Severed Dreams" if the interceptors are firing soley at enemy
fighters, incoming weapons fire, and/or enemy ships.

I tried to keep things simple, not over-complicate things, with my
rendition of the rules. JMS *always* manages to throw a twist in things,
though.  ;-/  Such as using the same weapon to fire in different modes.
(eg, HBW projectors firing in pulse cannon mode, HBW mode, and PDAF
mode).

With the limited weapons arrays available to FT, my take would be to
say the pulse cannons are *-batteries, and the fire poured onto the
'Furies was PDAF fire.

Either that or drop *DAFs altogether, allow *-Batts to engage fighters
as *DAFs, and/or act as Interceptors.

Blah!

>Also I noted that the Omegas did not use their Lasers against the White
>Stars, does this indicate the big Lasers can't be used against targets
as
>small or as manoeuverable as the White Stars.

Aaaactually, give yourself a treat and rewatch the ep. The POLLUX fired
a barrage of heavy beam weapons (HBWs, BREWs, whatever you wanna call
'em)
that hit a White Star twice. Said White Star lost control and in a
burning
fury slammed (not on purpose, I'm sure) into the forward structure of
the
POLLUX, ultimately destroying the POLLUX.

>In 'Face of the Enemy' we see the lasers being used, but only I think
>against other Earth Ships.    
>
>After watching any Omega episodes I have seen the following armament:
>4 X heavy Lasers (2xfwd, 2xAft)

If you look closely, there *seem* to be 4 aft lasers. In each corner
there appears to be a similar tube projector which we have seen once
in a while fire a laser.

And only 2 forward.  *shrug*   No one said JMS was a tactician or
efficient ship builder.  ;-)  We do what we can with what we got.
My take is that if I can't represent individual weapons, then I can
use the FT weapons to represent groups of weapons. After all, there
is only so much room aboard an FT ship of a given mass, and weapons
all mass so much (if I had my way all *my* A-batts would be 1-mass,
and my opponents' would be 5, but since I don't...  ;-)

>6 x Pulse cannons (2xfwd, 4xaft) fwd weapons intercepting incoming fire
in
>'Severed Dreams'
>4 x Turret mounted weapons (prob defence grid or Interceptors)
>1(maybe more)x laser type weapons apparently amidships (used to shoot
at
>the White Star in 'Messages from Earth' 

And it could have been one of those many pulse/pdaf projectors mounted
all over the ship that suddenly was able to fire a laser.  ;-)

Three things we can do, though. Book #7 has a fairly detailed
description
of the primary weapons systems of the Omegas as part of its B-story. JMS
has said that Book 7 is ~80% canon, so it should be safe to assume the
details given are fairly accurate. It's been a while since I read it,
but
I *think* it only mentioned forward and aft laser cannons.

The second thing is to get ahold of the official copy of Babylon 4 Wars
game. They are more SFB in nature, but are supposed to be fairly
accurate
in the weapons arrays on the ships (the AOG guys have been in contact
with
jms on this matter, among other things).

Third is to drop either JMS or George Johnsen a line. My experience has
shown George is more prone to answer.  ;-)

>Any comments?
>Looking forward to see the 'official' rules by Jon in Earthforce
Sourcebook
>but wonder if we've seen anything recently in the show which might
change
>things.

I haven't altered things terribly much in my version of the rules
(partly
pending Jon's rules which are due out "any day now" as I understand it,
and partly due to lack of time).

>PS Just come back from the Wolf 359 Con, when Jerry Doyle turned up on
>Monday, we had every B5 main Cast member from Season One onwards except
for
>Andrea Thompson.
>Awesome.     

One of these days I'm gonna see 'em all, too...<sigh>

Mk
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"Yyyes ! Haha!! Tremble before the twin-headed, four-legged eleven foot
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