Gateworld Virtual Fleet 4.0 - Discussion thread

[thekillman]

Ive had a quick scan of the designs and i do like them. I have concerns over the size of Gaia, 600m is 50 smaller than the Deadalus and it has significantly more components. I would suggest revising that to maybe 800 or 850..if its a battleship.

we put a 304 at 350 meters.

The Athens i like as well but the unconventional drives also push up production costs as we can manufacture in bulk, engines should be one of the major engineering and R&D branches of whatever we now call SGC/Area 51. I think sticking to standard but scalable and cost effective engines for all ships would be the best idea. I support Ion technology as that standard because its scalable, cheap and can be mass produced unlike other non conventional engine drives which might give some advantages here and there by in the grand scheme of things there are only two widespread types of engines in stargate, inertialless and ion. Production and repairs throughout the galaxy would be easier than having to ship specific parts to repair individual vessels, wheras if the engine types are common, but if ours are a more refined and better powered version it still gives us the advantage but also compatibility if we need it. This ship also lack size references which makes it harder to vote for as well.

given the energy densities of naquahdah we're talking about maneuvering thrusters with the power of capital fusion drives..

I like the Valient but i think it suffers from a small size and an overreliance on missiles, a flaw common in all the designs actually. My favourate design is actually the Dreadnaut, although im not sure on the name not its lack of a detailed history. But in terms of specs it strikes the right balence between sustainable firepower and hardhitting energy weapons whilst also benefitting from a multifunction capacity with its fighters, which as we have seen with deadalus can be an important feature for battleships.

the definition of a BB is a ship with powerful guns. we add missiles cause it adds a lot of "disposable weaponsfire". unmatched by any energy weapon

In terms of naming conventions and this is just my opinion, if you want to strike a balence between mountains, greek mythology and the whole pinnacle of earth's technology symbology, the Olympus class really would work well for our line of battleships.

as long as it's greek

[bradly08]

it's useful if there's a possibility to get them onboard.

imagine if you're the only ship in a 1000 Ly radius and you need to retrieve a tel'tak. without some retrieval bay you're screwed

some kind of retrieval bay would be ok, but Battleships shouldn't be using 302's as part of their weapons arseanal.

[immhotep]

we put a 304 at 350 meters.

Ive never seen a figure that low for the deadalus, the promethius is usually quoted as 250, but the lowest ive seen for deadalus is 450, and most use 600 or 750. 350 is tiny. Its almost 1/3 of hatak. It would substantially revise that... unless ive missed a huge amount of scaling thread rehashes.

given the energy densities of naquahdah we're talking about maneuvering thrusters with the power of capital fusion drives..

In what context? Ion drives have no need to be naquadah based, the only issue is power and durable conductive material, both of which naquadah provide but conventional matterials would be able to be mixed in for it not to be dependant on naquadah. Ion drives only need to be powered well, even a conventional show naquadah reactor would be able to provide more than enough power to meet the demands of engines built with conventional real world materials.

the definition of a BB is a ship with powerful guns. we add missiles cause it adds a lot of "disposable weaponsfire". unmatched by any energy weapon

Yes but overreliance on the disposables thereby decreasing the amount of powerful guns able to be mounted on to the ship really doesnt match the definition. If you want a big powerful battleship with big guns, make one. Put as many big guns as you can. Load it with as many power generation systems as you can fit. Tie it all together with a shield, hyperdrive and sensors. Have some missiles for close in defense but the vast majority of missiles can be intercepted or deflected and a finite, whereas energy weapons and at this stage in our tech development rail guns have longevity in battle and pack a punch. A Battleship needn't be a fly in one shot kill vessel. Its there for sustained heavy bombardment during the course of a battle, wherin other ships which can be armed with high power nukes can deliver their payloads and the final blow. Its why carreirs should have alot of fighters equipped with big missiles to deliver the death blow. Not put all the big missiles on a ship which is by definition going to be the biggest and hardest hit target, so once its gone its gone with everything in the basket. Wheras at least dividing the heavy weapons around the fleet enables the battle to be won even if, during the final encountered your main battleship is taken down but you can finish the job it started which is to deliver sustained high impact damage throughout.

I just think missiles are not the sustainable kind of weapon that space combat needs. Energy weapons deliver more firepower over a greater period of time and cost less. Once missiles are gone, they are gone. Im not saying remove them entirely from a design, a small compliment of nukes is fine but dont take away larger calibre energy and rail guns which wont run out in order to pack in a small number of potentially high impact shots.

[Davidtourniquet]

The stargate wiki has it as 225 metres long.
Hence why I've got the greater energy weapon usage out of all of them.
Mine's doing really badly.

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

Technically, Plasma cannon and Rail guns will run out of ammo eventually, too. They have to fire something.

Current count:

Valiant: 1
Gaia: 4
Dreadnought: 2
Athens: 6
Luna: 0

Voters:
Davidt (2/2), Thekillman (2/2) , Awinita (1/1), Crazy Tom (1/1), Bradly08 (1/1), Mcoy (2/2) , Blackluster (1/1) , fugiman (1/1), Immhotep (2/2)


I gave you two votes, 'tep, because you're - well - you, but people without submissions are really supposed to get just one vote.

[bradly08]

The stargate wiki has it as 225 metres long.
Hence why I've got the greater energy weapon usage out of all of them.
Mine's doing really badly.

The Stagte wiki is the last place you want to use for figures like that.

And the only problem I have with you ship is the name, other than that its a interesting ship.

[Davidtourniquet]

What's wrong with the name, it's a strong make, to be honest this is about the specs not the name.

[immhotep]

Yeah stargate Wiki is not that place i trust. The Ship scaling thread in this section is the most reliable and comprehensive scaling of the stargate ships and should really be used.

Thanks for the two votes.

http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/2...=1#post5160887

I trust this, and if you search through there are more updated versions which increase the size but thats generally my reference point as its the most consistant, realistic and detailed scaling thread of its kind.

[Davidtourniquet]

I know, I'm just making the point that the value used here isn't the smallest someone has quoted.

[immhotep]

Well i think someone really needs to edit the wiki..

[bradly08]

Well i think someone really needs to edit the wiki..

That would take a very long time, their are some god awful mistakes on it

[Davidtourniquet]

But at least it'll get done. I wonder how they extrapolated the size of the daedalus.

[Experiment 442]

My vote is for Athens.

[thekillman]

some kind of retrieval bay would be ok, but Battleships shouldn't be using 302's as part of their weapons arseanal.

never said that

Ive never seen a figure that low for the deadalus, the promethius is usually quoted as 250, but the lowest ive seen for deadalus is 450, and most use 600 or 750. 350 is tiny. Its almost 1/3 of hatak. It would substantially revise that... unless ive missed a huge amount of scaling thread rehashes.

official is 200 meters. but it depends. i don't think the model would match.. at all for sizes over 400 meters. i mean, the antenna in the front and on the ship itself would be dozens of meters long then.


nope, looks outside the windows, F-302 launches made me believe it's supposed to be smaller. the CGI people just can't scale.

In what context? Ion drives have no need to be naquadah based, the only issue is power and durable conductive material, both of which naquadah provide but conventional matterials would be able to be mixed in for it not to be dependant on naquadah. Ion drives only need to be powered well, even a conventional show naquadah reactor would be able to provide more than enough power to meet the demands of engines built with conventional real world materials.

i never said it would be an ion drive. also we'd need an INCREDIBLE advancement in such tech to make them that powerful.

Yes but overreliance on the disposables thereby decreasing the amount of powerful guns able to be mounted on to the ship really doesnt match the definition. If you want a big powerful battleship with big guns, make one. Put as many big guns as you can. Load it with as many power generation systems as you can fit. Tie it all together with a shield, hyperdrive and sensors. Have some missiles for close in defense but the vast majority of missiles can be intercepted or deflected and a finite, whereas energy weapons and at this stage in our tech development rail guns have longevity in battle and pack a punch. A Battleship needn't be a fly in one shot kill vessel. Its there for sustained heavy bombardment during the course of a battle, wherin other ships which can be armed with high power nukes can deliver their payloads and the final blow. Its why carreirs should have alot of fighters equipped with big missiles to deliver the death blow. Not put all the big missiles on a ship which is by definition going to be the biggest and hardest hit target, so once its gone its gone with everything in the basket. Wheras at least dividing the heavy weapons around the fleet enables the battle to be won even if, during the final encountered your main battleship is taken down but you can finish the job it started which is to deliver sustained high impact damage throughout.

according to my calcs, battle power for the BB-310 will burn up KILOGRAMS of naquahdah PER SECOND>

I just think missiles are not the sustainable kind of weapon that space combat needs. Energy weapons deliver more firepower over a greater period of time and cost less. Once missiles are gone, they are gone. Im not saying remove them entirely from a design, a small compliment of nukes is fine but dont take away larger calibre energy and rail guns which wont run out in order to pack in a small number of potentially high impact shots.

energy can't end fights that fast.


also it's cheaper to add a block of naquahdah to one of the 30 000 nukes on earth than to burn it up for plasma weapons

The stargate wiki has it as 225 metres long.
Hence why I've got the greater energy weapon usage out of all of them.
Mine's doing really badly.

yes and it's such a crappy ship in terms of tech, the only reason it got great was because the asgard made it so.

[Crazy Tom]

no

Would you care to elaborate?

The Athens i like as well but the unconventional drives also push up production costs as we can manufacture in bulk, engines should be one of the major engineering and R&D branches of whatever we now call SGC/Area 51. I think sticking to standard but scalable and cost effective engines for all ships would be the best idea. I support Ion technology as that standard because its scalable, cheap and can be mass produced unlike other non conventional engine drives which might give some advantages here and there by in the grand scheme of things there are only two widespread types of engines in stargate, inertialless and ion. Production and repairs throughout the galaxy would be easier than having to ship specific parts to repair individual vessels, wheras if the engine types are common, but if ours are a more refined and better powered version it still gives us the advantage but also compatibility if we need it. This ship also lack size references which makes it harder to vote for as well.

I disagree, nowhere on the how was it said that Ion engines were the mainstay of the galactic propulsion technology. And their incredibly low acceleration, especially compared to a NPP style drive such as the Athens are almost beyond contempt. Neither is the design of an NPP drive so complex, a force-field reaction chamber makes it almost laughably easy, compared to the large magnetic fields used by the original design study.

Yes but overreliance on the disposables thereby decreasing the amount of powerful guns able to be mounted on to the ship really doesnt match the definition. If you want a big powerful battleship with big guns, make one. Put as many big guns as you can. Load it with as many power generation systems as you can fit. Tie it all together with a shield, hyperdrive and sensors. Have some missiles for close in defense but the vast majority of missiles can be intercepted or deflected and a finite, whereas energy weapons and at this stage in our tech development rail guns have longevity in battle and pack a punch. A Battleship needn't be a fly in one shot kill vessel. Its there for sustained heavy bombardment during the course of a battle, wherin other ships which can be armed with high power nukes can deliver their payloads and the final blow. Its why carreirs should have alot of fighters equipped with big missiles to deliver the death blow. Not put all the big missiles on a ship which is by definition going to be the biggest and hardest hit target, so once its gone its gone with everything in the basket. Wheras at least dividing the heavy weapons around the fleet enables the battle to be won even if, during the final encountered your main battleship is taken down but you can finish the job it started which is to deliver sustained high impact damage throughout.

I just think missiles are not the sustainable kind of weapon that space combat needs. Energy weapons deliver more firepower over a greater period of time and cost less. Once missiles are gone, they are gone. Im not saying remove them entirely from a design, a small compliment of nukes is fine but dont take away larger calibre energy and rail guns which wont run out in order to pack in a small number of potentially high impact shots.

I disagree on both accounts. A nuke should not in fact be a weapon reserved for the final coup de grace, but launched in the first or second wave of battle, it's high yield makes it the perfect weapon to deal the first blow to an enemy's shields and soften them up for the weaker DEWs.
As to the interception issue, I'll deal with that in a bit.

Ultimately the reliance on nukes is a question of a ship's mission. Small patrol craft do not need to take on large warships toe to tow, and would thus favor a energy armament, while larger ships that are designed to act as part of a fleet would mount nukes.

Now, I'm not convinced that bigger is better when it comes to nukes. A bigger nuke may give you a higher yield, but it's less tactically flexible and it degrades the performance of the delivery platform due to it's enormous mass. Not only that but, it makes it more difficult to torn that nuke into a Cassaba-Howitzer type shaped charge, without which most of the energy of the detonation is wasted. Thus, I [propose a bigger number of more maneuverable naqudah enhanced warheads designed as shaped charges, fired in salvos seeded with ECM and decoy missiles would work better.

Edit:

I support the idea of adding a small craft bay, cal it a "boat bay" to the Athens, it does need the capability to house at least a shuttle for the sake of flexibility.