Ship Discussion - Merits and Issues

Just to throw ideas around.

Some things I notice -

Many people put windows in. In space, where, odds are, your enemy is hundreds of km away, why bother? While stars are pretty, windows provide a convenient target for breakage and decompression.

Armor. Yes, you only need one block thickness of your hull, but supposing your shields drop? It's like having a rice paper hull.

realspace thrusters. Scaling the engines to match the ship will give them ridiculously high acceleration, or stupidly low effiency. There is no such thing as "slow" in space.

FTL drives. There often is no outward indication if this. While Jump Drives and Hyperdrives don't usually exhibit these, it could be added for interest.

And, yes, I draw heavily off BSG for my ships. Very much so. This is because I like having aseveral meters of armor and several thousand tons of water tank between my command center and space.

Commander Error wrote:

Many people put windows in. In space, where, odds are, your enemy is hundreds of km away, why bother? While stars are pretty, windows provide a convenient target for breakage and decompression.

I mostly agree with that. I think there should probably be some windows, somewhere, because ships in Star Wars are like that, but OK. Transparisteel in Star Wars isn't any weaker than normal steel, though, so it's a different scenario.

Commander Error wrote:

Armor. Yes, you only need one block thickness of your hull, but supposing your shields drop? It's like having a rice paper hull.

I agree with this too. You can't really tell from the pictures in my ship log, but the Alderaan-class's hull is an outer shell of iron, followed by a middle layer of obsidian, followed by an inner layer of iron.

Commander Error wrote:

realspace thrusters. Scaling the engines to match the ship will give them ridiculously high acceleration, or stupidly low effiency. There is no such thing as "slow" in space.

I'm not sure I understand this, but most spaceships seem to have big engines. They look better.

Commander Error wrote:

FTL drives. There often is no outward indication if this. While Jump Drives and Hyperdrives don't usually exhibit these, it could be added for interest.

I suppose. They're inside the hull in pretty much all science fiction.

Commander Error wrote:

And, yes, I draw heavily off BSG for my ships. Very much so. This is because I like having aseveral meters of armor and several thousand tons of water tank between my command center and space.

OK.

Just to throw ideas around.

Some things I notice -

Many people put windows in. In space, where, odds are, your enemy is hundreds of km away, why bother? While stars are pretty, windows provide a convenient target for breakage and decompression.

Windows are a sign of opulence, a sign of extreme superiority. My more recent ships use holographic displays on the inside that gives one-way glass. Most weapons are powerful enough to blast through the hull regardless of whether it's a window or not.

Armor. Yes, you only need one block thickness of your hull, but supposing your shields drop? It's like having a rice paper hull.

I really don't see the point in this. Rather that using all those extra materials to build thicker armor, use a small portion of them to build better shield emitters. I have said this numerous times: that as soon as your shields are down, you're dead. Having a three block hull is really only going to stop railguns and low powered lasers for a few direct hits, and anything more powerful will do massive damage to your ship. Essentially, shields will probably have 10-20x the defensive strength of the hull (unless you want to waste materials and make it 15 blocks thick, and then replace the damaged areas every battle).

realspace thrusters. Scaling the engines to match the ship will give them ridiculously high acceleration, or stupidly low effiency. There is no such thing as "slow" in space.

Most of my ships don't use thrusters, as they seem quite primitive compared to other methods of movement. There are issues of inertia to deal with, you do need more powerful thrusters to accelerate ships faster.

FTL drives. There often is no outward indication if this. While Jump Drives and Hyperdrives don't usually exhibit these, it could be added for interest.

No way am I putting my ships' sensitive equipment on the outside where anybody can take it out once the shields are down! Especially as I would need them to escape!


And, yes, I draw heavily off BSG for my ships. Very much so. This is because I like having aseveral meters of armor and several thousand tons of water tank between my command center and space.

That is only because the Twelve Colonies were too lazy to develop shield technology.

Well, that, and the fact that a railgun won't get though that without signifacnt effort. And as soon as YOUR shields drop, you're dead. I build ship for purely utilitarian use, so balls to opulence.

Besides, my ships have shields. I just dislike having nothing past shields. Nothing short of a superweapon can 1shot a BattleStar.

""No way am I putting my ships' sensitive equipment on the outside where anybody can take it out once the shields are down! Especially as I would need them to escape!""

What? what happened to "as soon as your shields go down, you're dead"?

I'n going to tell you this: Real space battleships don't need windows, big Engines, they should be flying cubes of Metal and turrets but as we are a game we can allow ourselves do things differently .

Big Engines look cool, thrusters look cool. If your ship will move with the speed of light all the time the whole fun in space battles is gone.
Windows are cool couse you can see through them , people don't like staring at walls even if the have heliographic displays of the outside. For some reason the little thingy that sits in us and we call it humanity (actually its egoism ) demands windows couse it’s used to them here on earth.

Also there is no sound in space and no explosions, in most of it there is no light, so you can't hear or see for s*** .

Well on my ships I use speed and lots of it.No need for armor when you have speed.

Jack Root wrote:

Well on my ships I use speed and lots of it.No need for armor when you have speed.

Until those lasers hit.

Commander Error wrote:

Jack Root wrote:

Well on my ships I use speed and lots of it.No need for armor when you have speed.

Until those lasers hit.

Good point.But I still have Project and Op. F.A.T.E. and you have no idea what it is.

(Edit:Project F.A.T.E. is in dev. [It's a ship].)

Commander Error wrote:

Just to throw ideas around.

Some things I notice -

Many people put windows in. In space, where, odds are, your enemy is hundreds of km away, why bother? While stars are pretty, windows provide a convenient target for breakage and decompression.

Some aluminum oxides can be clear, like corundum. If aluminum is in FC it could be used to make this transparent sapphire ultra-glass for not that expensive.

Or you could have force-field windows that are indestructible so long as there's power?

Anyway, as I said: I would much rather spend the resources that you would use on a thicker hull that would protect you for the 10 seconds needed to escape on a better shield emitter that will cost less resources, allow more interior space, and last for a lot longer as a protection.

Be that as it may, what about before you have shield emitters available? I'll launch my unshielded ships first, then upgrade them as the resources come in. 'cuz an unshielded ship vs. a shielded one in drydock is fairly...onesided.

My ships have an additional Yttrium alloy FTL amplifier on the hulls. It's not necessary, but adds extra range.

One other strategy would be to have a lot of useless stuff on the outer edges of your ship, that doesn't matter if it gets destroyed, but that could be expensive and if you don't lock down a hull breach, your f***ed

stufuzzycat wrote:

One other strategy would be to have a lot of useless stuff on the outer edges of your ship, that doesn't matter if it gets destroyed, but that could be expensive and if you don't lock down a hull breach, your f***ed

Why waste the resources when you could used the materials the make a better shield.

Because shields don't need to be the be-all-end-all of FC. I like having some seconds to escape after I lose shields.

Or it's because shielding won't be instantaneously available in-game, ergo you'll either need to wait for it or launch without it.

blockman42 wrote:

stufuzzycat wrote:

One other strategy would be to have a lot of useless stuff on the outer edges of your ship, that doesn't matter if it gets destroyed, but that could be expensive and if you don't lock down a hull breach, your f***ed

Why waste the resources when you could used the materials the make a better shield.

I was just throwing ideas around, and in this case, it kinda splattered against the wall and slid down with a squelch.

Commander Error wrote:

Jack Root wrote:

Well on my ships I use speed and lots of it.No need for armor when you have speed.

Until those lasers hit.

Ummm....Furyion might disagree with you there.

Weaponry in BSG is decidedly low-tech compared to what will be in this mod. Even battlestars are scared of nukes, which do next to nothing in space since most of the energy simply dissipates.

Against hypervelocity weaponry (railguns/coilguns) increasing your armor lets more energy transfer to your ship. So, when the round simply sails through it won't destroy the whole ship but if it absorbs all the energy of the round you are likely to have a significant portion of your ship vaped.

And ships will have larger engines to allow for greater acceleration and, therefore, a higher combat speed.

Avenger_7 wrote:

Commander Error wrote:

Jack Root wrote:

Well on my ships I use speed and lots of it.No need for armor when you have speed.

Until those lasers hit.

Ummm....Furyion might disagree with you there.

Weaponry in BSG is decidedly low-tech compared to what will be in this mod. Even battlestars are scared of nukes, which do next to nothing in space since most of the energy simply dissipates.

Against hypervelocity weaponry (railguns/coilguns) increasing your armor lets more energy transfer to your ship. So, when the round simply sails through it won't destroy the whole ship but if it absorbs all the energy of the round you are likely to have a significant portion of your ship vaped.

And ships will have larger engines to allow for greater acceleration and, therefore, a higher combat speed.

Fury's busy killing stuff.