| Author |
Side Mount Weapons & Battleship class ships |
Southpark
Admiral
Joined: February 25, 2004
Posts: 132
From: Texas
|  Posted: 2004-03-15 05:56
Ok, a feature of Darkspace ships that i always loved were the weapon arcs, nowadays the spots that get the most attention are fore and full mount weapon slots. Side and rear facing weapons slots have been woefully neglected.
Some of the smaller ships feature side mount weapons(such as the icc minelayer destroyer) which i feel are much more accurate in terms of how a ship would mount weapons, some weapons are just going to have limited side firing arcs, since a lot of ship-to-ship combat should be broadsides especially from large ships.
Currently there aren't any "big" ships cruiser size and up which make use of side mounts. I guess i'm arguing for a return of "more weapons" per ship, but using the arcs more than just fore/full mount weapons.
re-introduction of these types of mounts would spur more strategy to combat other than "point forward part of ship at enemy and charge" or "circle strafe until end of time".
Anyhow, the primary point i wanted to make was:
Introduce a new class of ships! Battle-ship class!
Dreadnaughts for each fleet are becoming rather stale and underpowered with the recent nerfing of weapon slots and shield/armor mounts.
In addition, there is a wonderful variety of ships from cruiser class on down, but it dries up horribly at the dreadnaught level, and then there's the plain jane station. Battleships(or more variety in the dreadnaughts) could fill the void between dreadnaught and stations.
Anyhow, closing comments, bring back more innovative ship design! (weapon slot allotment, and more use of the side/rear mount slots instead of all these FULL range slots). And possibly some more variety in the upper level ships. Current dreadnaughts aren't very "devastating" in their combat ability anymore, i for one would love to see a new class of ships intorduced with heavier firepower albeit limited to side firing (broadside style!) weapon mounts. This would also allow people to engage multiple targets (on each side of them) if they were skilled enough ~^
thxthx!
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Meko
Grand Admiral
Joined: March 03, 2004
Posts: 1956
From: Vancouver
| Posted: 2004-03-15 06:05
Great idea......
Battleships for GA as well........... then it would be incentive for ppl to exeed FA pres....
also, having side mounted weaposn would be a DREAM, cause i hate the "spiral straf to the end of time" tactic. or the "zero power stand beside each other and shoot" style..... id love to try an ackbar slash between two stations with a battleship or somthing.....
ackbar slash = two enemies u run between them and they shoot each other.
battleships, thats making me exited =)
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2004-03-15 06:40
*cough1.482cough*
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Southpark
Admiral
Joined: February 25, 2004
Posts: 132
From: Texas
| Posted: 2004-03-15 06:40
*cough* 2005 release eh? *cough*
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Jim Starluck
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: October 22, 2001
Posts: 2232
From: Cincinnati, OH
| Posted: 2004-03-15 06:44
No, actually, once we get all the lag and bugs in 1.481 fixed, it should make it into Beta in a matter of weeks. All the actual WORK was done months ago, now it's just a matter of Faustus plugging those numbers into the game code. Sure, some stuff might need a little tweaking, but that's easy to do.
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Astral Viper
Cadet
Joined: February 27, 2003
Posts: 343
| Posted: 2004-03-15 07:49
actualy dreadnaughts are susposed to be the largest ship that moves freely a battleship is somewhat smaller hate to burst your bubble.  but yeah how come 70% of weapons are mounted on turrets how many turrets do you honestly think will fit on a ship. As or for the kluth 90% of weapons are mounted on 10% of the ships surface ( the front) ok my neurons have stopped firing im off to go um well sit here at my computer some more.
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[ This Message was edited by: Astral Viper (Save the Gaifens) on 2004-03-15 07:58 ]
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Banshee
Grand Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: August 28, 2001
Posts: 2181
From: Philadelphia, PA
| Posted: 2004-03-15 08:55
This looks familiar...
While its an interesting Idea, Broadside weapons are a thing of the past... (Napoleon, Nelson etc) from Sea battles that nobody would dare fight anymore.
Modern warships have weapon systems that cover a 360 degree arc, some 'sides' of the ship have more coverage than others,
thats in the space of 300 or so years, add another few hundred years on top of that, AKA DS, hardly going to revert to a system nearly 1000 years old 
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Coeus {NCX-Charger}
Admiral, I can't read,
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: February 16, 2004
Posts: 3635
From: South Philly
| Posted: 2004-03-15 12:50
Wing Commander - the movie 
Horrible movie - cool ship-to-ship fighting sequence.
Who cares about "Oh! But they wouldn't do THAAAT! Thats not realistic!"
Lighten up, its a game! Lets put them in, make them bigger than Battleships - give them broadside combat, and we'll see a rebirth of the 'Crossing the T' manuver and oldschool fleet warfare from the WWII era.
This can be WW2.5!
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Southpark
Admiral
Joined: February 25, 2004
Posts: 132
From: Texas
| Posted: 2004-03-15 14:49
since we're actually playing on a "2d" playing field since we do not control the Z-axis of movement, this is more similar to WWII style combat than you imagine.
depending on what genre of ship history you look at, dreadnaughts were "labeled" first, but were then labeled pre-dreadnaughts once the "real" battleships were developed. current day definitions make battleship and dreadnaught synonymous, but more often in europe is the ship called a dreadnaught, and in the west(US) its called a battleship.
Primary differences included the size of weapon mounts, and armor class.
Since current "dreadnaughts" boast armor rivaling that of a destroyer, with most cruisers benefiting from more armor, smaller profile(less area to hit). and more shields. Either current dreadnaughts need to be re-hauled to have increased armor/shields to represent a "true" battleship class ship,
OR
we can class our current much-loved dreadnaughts as pre-dreadnaught class ships, and include designs for battleship class ships with increased armor(primarily on the sides, since "realistically" there's a lot more surface area on the sides, thus they'd mount a lot more armor there. and increased firepower.
CLARIFICATION:
on the battleships of "today" yes, there are turret mounts which give near full range capability. BUT there is a PHYSICAL limitation on turrets.. unless they're mounted on the very tippy top or very tippy bottom, they do not get full 360 degree fire, unless you want to shoot your own bridge off.
another SUGGESTION!
implement a 180degree/270 firing arc to represent forward facing turrets, and rear facing turrets.
What the idea here is to make combat require more thought than point and spacebarspacebarspacebar. Sure , your dreadnaught features 10 fusion torpedos. but only 6 of them can fire in the forward 270 arc, and the other 4 can only fire in the rear 180 degree arc, what does this mean? to fire all 10, you have to maneuver to *UNMASK* all 10 gun mounts at the enemy. which is why combat ships usually went "broadside" to unmask the majority of their weapons at an enemy.
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Juxtapose
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: May 11, 2002
Posts: 1308
From: Give me your bullets!
| Posted: 2004-03-15 15:07
Southpark has a pretty persuasive arguement going...especially that bit about this game really only being 2d (very observant as well, I might add). I would also have to agree with his design of 270 degree archs on forward and rear Dreadnaught Torpedo/Cannon Turrets. Of course, if you were to implement that now, with the present weakness of Dreads, you would drive that final nail in their coffin.
But, Southpark, never fear. The apparent weakness of the Dreadnaughts, their insufficient armor and mediocre weaponary (when compared with their size) has been a well-voiced topic in this Forum and I believe it is something the Development team has in the bag for ol'482.
But if I was to engineer a ship so phallic in shape and design as the UGTO Dreadnaught, wouldn't a spinal mounted weapon make more sense than a broadside? Though, of all Dreadnaughts, only the UGTO can I picture banks of cannon under the brim of the white armor.
And the ICC's Assault/Combat Dread just doesn't look like it is a ship that would broadside anything. That ship looks like it comes at you head on (instead of running away like most Combat Dreads do now).
But I'm pretty sure Spinal mounted mega-guns have a lot more limitations than Broadsiders or the present design...
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Sandals
Fleet Admiral
Agents
Joined: January 21, 2002
Posts: 2001
From: Redmond,WA,USA
| Posted: 2004-03-15 15:48
If you guys remember the UGTO Carrier Dread, the new model that is, I believe it will have mostly side arcs, or 145-degree arcs.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2004-03-15 16:33
Quote:
| This looks familiar...
While its an interesting Idea, Broadside weapons are a thing of the past... (Napoleon, Nelson etc) from Sea battles that nobody would dare fight anymore.
Modern warships have weapon systems that cover a 360 degree arc, some 'sides' of the ship have more coverage than others,
thats in the space of 300 or so years, add another few hundred years on top of that, AKA DS, hardly going to revert to a system nearly 1000 years old |
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Hehe guess what? That's exactly the system DS will have in 1.482 This is coming from Gideon in the lobby a few days ago so it can't be taken for a guarantee, but the plan is to have a category of ship called a 'line ship' (ship-of-the-line) that features broadside guns as it's main armament. I think the combat dread will be one of these. It will be a tactical choice of what type of ship to pilot in 1.482, unlike now where everything is kinda the same (either front or full weapons). There will be other ship categories too but I can't remember the whole chat (anyone have a log of it?)
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Sandals
Fleet Admiral
Agents
Joined: January 21, 2002
Posts: 2001
From: Redmond,WA,USA
| Posted: 2004-03-15 16:38
The other thing being, 360 arcs are unrealistic with our ship models... the most you can reasonably expect is a 270 arc.
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Lupino
Cadet
Joined: March 23, 2002
Posts: 359
| Posted: 2004-03-15 16:54
Battleship is easy to impliment-just improve the dreads!
Turrets I will agree, although I'm not too keen on a "broadside"-specific ship. Just add limitations to the firing arcs on dreads and you've solved the problem.
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Fatal Command (CO)
Marshal
Fatal Squadron
Joined: November 27, 2002
Posts: 1158
From: over here in New York noticing some ppl are like canoes.....they need to be paddled.
| Posted: 2004-03-15 18:51
ICC combat dreads are as useful as a screendoor on a submarine when compared to other ships of same/comparable size.lack a good offensive/defensive weps/slots.so its really good for just practicing flying and dying in if you take on a dread of the opposing factions.
just as the hvy criuser isnt hvy....just a cheap knockoff of the AC without its weps.
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