weapon platforms, weight ratios and modding questions

[Arkcon]

orev_saara, interesting points raised. In SE3, when you advanced in troop technology sufficiently, you gained the ability to have a group of them fire from the planet surface as if they were an anti proton beam. From this hokey beginning, planetary defence in the form of weapon platforms was born.

Personally I'd rather defend my planet with orbital facilities, but starbases are expensive. And you need a shipyard. I tried modding in a smaller hull, but I didn't do it right and then I lost interest.

I always wonder about this, take Star Trek Next Gen, the borg arrive and are met with a half a dozen fighter craft. In star wars, the death star arrives at Alderan, pauses, destroys the planet.

Hello, home world, some defensive ships please. The population should be glad its there and defer some of the maintenance cost.

[ January 23, 2003, 23:15: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Suicide Junkie]

One thing you should quickly realize is that KT really means nothing, and is the default unit of measure for everything in the game.

Don't read it as anything more than that and you'll do OK The numbers are all relative anyways.

[Pax]

Originally posted by orev_saara:
I'm in the process of creating my own personal mod, and a thought struck me Last night: Why weapon platforms? They really make no sense. For projectile guns and missile launchers, you have all of that gravity to overcome. Launching a missile out of orbit uses tremendous amounts of fuel. As for energy weapons, you have atmosphere to get through, which would degrade just about anything, espacially those projectile guns. A depleted uranium cannon firing from ground, through atmosphere, and escaping orbit? Ludicrous. Not really impossible, but far costlier than putting a similar launcher in orbit beforehand. The whole concept of planetary weapon platforms is somewhat fanciful, but they can have a huge impact on SE games, especially if you allow any WP range extending mounts. If anything, there should be WP range-decreasing mounts. Maybe someone else already said all of this.

P&N v3.x -- Gravitic Manipulation racial trechnology ... Graviton Flux Cannons.

Weapon-platform only, uses theplanet's own gravitational field as a weapon. Very odd damage-at-range table (lots of damage in a bell-curve pattern ... with a "myopic zone" where no damage is done at all); one normal-mount and one "biggest" mount GFC on a Large WPlat makes for DEAD ships, at extreme ranges.

And then I started wondering about fighters too. 20 kt for a fighter? Not sure about that, and probably nothing I can do about it. I'm sure someone has noticed that before.

Remember those are SPACE fighters. 20,000 ton displacement, and probably a crew of twenty to fifty.

"Escorts" are (AFAIK) roughly the size of a modern nuclear aircraft carrier; you MIGHT manage to get an Escort to hold one Fighter bay and one cargo bay, to handle four fighters. Tops.

Modern aircraft carriers handle and launch/recover scores of "fightercraft" as we, today, know them.

[Phoenix-D]

""Escorts" are (AFAIK) roughly the size of a modern nuclear aircraft carrier; you MIGHT manage to get an Escort to hold one Fighter bay and one cargo bay, to handle four fighters. Tops."

Actually the -fighters- are bigger than most current carriers.

EDIT: or some, rather. Displacement on the Nimitz class of carrier (US nuclear, biggie) is 97,000 tons.

Phoenix-D

[ January 24, 2003, 00:09: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Wanderer]

Mmmmm. A 150kT escort is about the same mass as two supercarriers. Quite large for the first 'proper' ships a race launches into space, if you take the figures literally. It's best not to.

On the other hand, here's a rough comparison:
note: I was looking at making the fighters smaller over Christmas, (by making everything else 10 times larger ) so I did some checking of figures.

SE4 Large carrier 1,200kT
SE4 Large fighter 25kT

American supercarrier 60-80kT
F14 fighter jet 0.03kT (33 tons fully loaded I think)

Current HMS Ark Royal 20kT
Sea Harrier (small fighter?) 0.006kT (unloaded - probably about 10t with fuel and weapons)

The SE4 carrier is 15-20 times bigger than a modern supercarrier, but the SE4 fighter is almost a thousand times bigger than the modern equivalent. This is mostly due to SE4's tardis-like cargo handling.

Again, they're just numbers. If you don't like 'em (I'm more concerned about being able to fire heavy ship weapons at fighters at the moment), change 'em.

The other thing I've discovered is that British tons and tonnes are almost exactly the same mass, but American tons are slightly different.

[Fyron]

The other thing I've discovered is that British tons and tonnes are almost exactly the same mass, but American tons are slightly different.

Tons, like pounds, are a measure of Force, not Mass. The Slug is the british system (which only the US uses anymore) unit for Mass.

[orev_saara]

Thank you one and all. I think I'll go and look for the wish list for the next patch/SEV now.