Re: [GZG] Monster ships

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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI thought the
NAC ship designs were a reflection of political/corporate purchasing. By
including a system from as many different corporations and political
territories as possible you make it attractive to vote for the
procurement.

The ESU ships all look like they come out of the same industrial complex
and have very standardised components. 

The NSL ships look like they are hamstrung by lack of decent engines so
make up for the lack of engines with wider weapon arcs and more weapons
to compensate.

But the calibre of weapons doesn't produce anything like the performance
variation of naval weapons. A 16" naval weapon has much longer range
and hits much harder than an 8" weapon. In FT terms the weapons would
have  range and damage proportional to their size class and a rate of
fire inversly proportional to their size. 

That would make battleships able to track and kill their opposite
numbers but could make them vulnerable to being swarmed by multiple
smaqller ships with rapid fire close range weapons.

________________________________
From: Brian Burger <blurdesign@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Tue, 5 January, 2010 4:07:36 PM
Subject: Re: [GZG] Monster ships

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:

> Particularly the larger class beams make for quite a difference. Once
> you outrange the opposition, you can do some serious damage even
> before they get in their outer range band.

Somewhere in my FT notes I have a few designs and more notes for a
fleet where everything down to the cruisers has at least one B4
mounted, and the SDNs had B5s. The number crunchers tell us that the
B3 is the most efficient shipkiller in a damage/mass calculation, but
having a squadron with a dozen damage dice way out at 36"-48"+
rangebands was sweet.

"Reach out and touch someone"... keep in mind these were
vector-optimized ships, ie narrow arcs, and I used assymetric arcs and
the "rolling" maneuver to increase effective arc coverage. They're
also "dreadnaught" designs - big guns, point defence, and not much in
between. No wild mix of weapons like too many of the FB ships have.

The NAC & NSL are the worst for this. The FB1 NAC Victoria battleship,
and it's NSL Maria von Someone counterpart, both have higher beam
throw weight than the SDNs on their side, IIRC. The NSL SDN in
particular is a "let's take one of everything" mess. I know the FB
ships are deliberately non-optimized (and they're cinematic designs,
so the arcs are wider than they need to be), but the NSL SDN is a bit
OTT in this regard.

Brian
warbard.ca/games.html
(redesigning that website is somewhere on my 'real soon now' list, I
promise...)
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