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A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

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[X] Plan: YOLO-class Escort Carrier Slooo
-[X] 4xHangar
-[X] Holo-Field
-[X] 2x Aethersail

It's quite mobile, has a holofield and sends a LOT of attack craft around. It's mostly submitted as a late joke, damn is that a lot of smallcraft in a small hull.

It doesn't have anything else going for it, but 8 strike craft squadrons is still nuts enough that it'd be a viable joke.
 
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Karugus said:
I really wouldn't underestimate just how much a holo-field is going to do combined with a really agile platform to create decent survivability. Most starship weapons have very limited angles of fire, and if an enemy has to turn about to present weapons to try and kill these escorts rather than close with our real killers than that's a win as far as I'm concerned.
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There is also an important fact that we have Eldar crewing the spaceship and being at the helm.
Being able to get a feeling for the future and using that to do maneuvers that will evade all the enemy shots is a thing they can do and I think lore wise do.

The Eldar are a good bit more scary when it comes to fights in the void then they are on the ground.
And when they aren't being murder mechanically for balance.
 
inirlan said:
It's quite mobile, has a holofield and sends a LOT of attack craft around. It's mostly submitted as a late joke, damn is that a lot of smallcraft in a small hull.

It doesn't have anything else going for it, but 8 strike craft squadrons is still nuts enough that it'd be a viable joke.
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This is really funny, but it's important to consider the hanger doesn't include the attack craft so...22,515 EP and 1,920 Starcrystal per destroyer. Strikecraft are expensive, and can and probably will spring for a cheaper model, it's probably always going to be the most expensive system aside from exotic point defense/CIWB.
 
Karugus said:
Holo-fields to actually hide which of our escorts are which is actually a really cool idea I hadn't considered
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I'd maybe even try to focus our R&D on making holo fields really good at scrambling ship signatures, so that you don't even know if it's an escort or a capital ship before you're actually hit by the twin Ultra-Lance in your backside.
 
inirlan said:
It doesn't have anything else going for it, but 8 strike craft squadrons is still nuts enough that it'd be a viable joke.
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I mean, the only strike crafts we can actually fill these 8 squadrons with right now are civilian jetbikes which would look very confused in space.

[X] Bramble-class Escort Cutter

My hunch is bolting PD on it is trying to do too much. We should do a specialized screening escort sometime, but for a workhorse escort best defense against strike craft is being fast + not a priority target.
 
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Karugus said:
This is really funny, but it's important to consider the hanger doesn't include the attack craft so...22,515 EP and 1,920 Starcrystal per destroyer. Strikecraft are expensive, and can and probably will spring for a cheaper model, it's probably always going to be the most expensive system aside from exotic point defense/CIWB.
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Have a feeling that the best CIWB system will be using Fatetwister Cannons due to accuracy and finding weak spots.
Not something we will do on anything but capital ships due to expense, but something that i expect will be really good.

In short range vs other ships it would likely do a lot of disabling of weapons or slots.
Against fighters, bombers or torps I expect all of them to end up be speared like a bug and taken out in short order.
And i think it is actually better in the CIWB role than the Starlance. On the other hand not a fan of using them for macro cannon vs Starlances just melting other ships in half.
 
Skjadir said:
On the other hand not a fan of using them for macro cannon vs Starlances just melting other ships in half.
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Kiting is a time honored eldar tradition so using light speed weapons for that role is a logical choice.

Fatetwister is nice but it is still a kinetic weapon. And no amount of precognition would help you if your opponents just walk out of its firing cone.
 
vsh said:
I'd maybe even try to focus our R&D on making holo fields really good at scrambling ship signatures, so that you don't even know if it's an escort or a capital ship before you're actually hit by the twin Ultra-Lance in your backside.
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I think that's a way towards developing the Dark Eldar's Mimic Engine, though I could see Mechanis saying a baseline holo-field could allow that. Notably looking at that page, it seems like the Mimic Engine is an engine modification so it might not be something we can universally roll out without making some compromises.

Skjadir said:
Have a feeling that the best CIWB system will be using Fatetwister Cannons due to accuracy and finding weak spots.
Not something we will do on anything but capital ships due to expense, but something that i expect will be really good.

In short range vs other ships it would likely do a lot of disabling of weapons or slots.
Against fighters, bombers or torps I expect all of them to end up be speared like a bug and taken out in short order.
And i think it is actually better in the CIWB role than the Starlance. On the other hand not a fan of using them for macro cannon vs Starlances just melting other ships in half.
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I don't dislike a few ships carrying Fatetwister batteries because I suspect they really shit on escorts/holo-fields (and grav shields for that matter), but to me it is fundamentally a more specialist weapon system compared to heavy laser-lance/starlance use (probably supplemented by naval plasma weapons eventually).

But in general, I agree that Fatesheer CIWBs are probably a really good investment for the same reasons. The Assault Ketches should give us a lot of psy-scopes to use elsewhere for those sort of things. I'm leaning towards 2 different Ketches built out of the Assault Ketch, one built around the Heavy Starlance, and one around a Fatesever CIWB in 3-to-1 ratio for a frigate squadron of 4 frigates with ~4 las-cannon pd, 1 Fatesever CIWB, 5 Las-lances and 3 Heavy Starlances.

Zoolimar said:
Kiting is a time honored eldar tradition so using light speed weapons for that role is a logical choice.

Fatetwister is nice but it is still a kinetic weapon. And no amount of precognition would help you if your opponents just walk out of its firing cone.
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While true, the Fatewister actually has a surprisingly wide firing cone:
These weapons are effectively similar to the Macro-Cannons of other races, but possess unnatural accuracy and the ability to fire significantly "off bore
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Given how Craftworld ships tend to mount more guns by fixed/forward mounts, throwing in a dash of Fatetwisters and Fatesever CIWBs every now and again is a really good way of getting more weapon coverage for enemy escorts and getting the benefits of a forward concentrated armament.
 
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vsh said:
I mean, the only strike crafts we can actually fill these 8 squadrons with right now are civilian jetbikes which would look very confused in space.

[X] Bramble-class Escort Cutter

My hunch is bolting PD on it is trying to do too much. We should do a specialized screening escort sometime, but for a workhorse escort best defense against strike craft is being fast + not a priority target.
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You do have a (light, not shielded, moderately expensive) fighter-bomber, the Bright Eagle, which are filling your current fighter and bomber role and are mostly Okay at either.
Zoolimar said:
Kiting is a time honored eldar tradition so using light speed weapons for that role is a logical choice.

Fatetwister is nice but it is still a kinetic weapon. And no amount of precognition would help you if your opponents just walk out of its firing cone.
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The principal advantage of Fatetwister Cannon batteries is that the enemy cannot, in fact, "walk out of the firing cone," because the things are using space-time manipulation for homing bullets and therefore have more of a firing sphere. unless the enemy is also using some kind of space-time Fekery as a defense themselves, of course. (Or just has a defensive system that can nope a giant spike of Wraithbone, like a Void Sheild)

Edit: essentially, you should treat Fatetwister Cannons as something more like a battery of guided-missile launchers with a KKV warhead than a "normal" macro-cannon.
 
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Karugus said:
But in general, I agree that Fatesheer CIWBs are probably a really good investment for the same reasons. The Assault Ketches should give us a lot of psy-scopes to use elsewhere for those sort of things. I'm leaning towards 2 different Ketches built out of the Assault Ketch, one built around the Heavy Starlance, and one around a Fatesever CIWB in 3-to-1 ration for a frigate squadron of 4 frigates with ~4 las-cannon pd, 1 Fatesever CIWB, 5 Las-lances and 3 Heavy Starlances.
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I would actually not use any strategic resources in any of the escort build.
That pretty much prevents any mass production we might be able to get out of them.
Also because they are all quite fragile and losing one + what ever strategic resources we put into it would make losing them hurt way more.

It makes more sense on capital ships because we can't really spam them, and we can give them enough survivability that also putting in several hundred strategic resources into one worth it.
 
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Zoolimar said:
Let's not talk about Hrud. They are nightmare fuel.
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I mean, I was mostly alluding to the Necrons, for whom "some kind of space-time Fekery" describes like a third of their options for defensive systems (GEE I WONDER WHY THAT COULD BE) or Daemonships/Chaos types doing something with Warp Nonsense, but sure, those too.
 
Mechanis said:
You do have a (light, not shielded, moderately expensive) fighter-bomber, the Bright Eagle, which are filling your current fighter and bomber role and are mostly Okay at either.

The principal advantage of Fatetwister Cannon batteries is that the enemy cannot, in fact, "walk out of the firing cone," because the things are using space-time manipulation for homing bullets and therefore have more of a firing sphere. unless the enemy is also using some kind of space-time Fekery as a defense themselves, of course. (Or just has a defensive system that can nope a giant spike of Wraithbone, like a Void Sheild)

Edit: essentially, you should treat Fatetwister Cannons as something more like a battery of guided-missile launchers with a KKV warhead than a "normal" macro-cannon.
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That tells me if we want our fleet to get ready to fight Biel Tans fleet we should get our Battle Carracks repaired considering each has 3 Fatetwister batteries.

That 24 ships that just got a bit higher prio to get repaired at least in my eyes.
 
Yeah, I'm really seeing Fatetwisters as effectively being our torpedo equivalent amongst other things. They're a situational and specialist weapon but having a battery of those on our heavy cruisers and capital ships is incredibly useful.

Skjadir said:
I would actually not use any strategic resources in any of the escort build.
That pretty much prevents any mass production we might be able to get out of them.
Also because they are all quite fragile and losing one + what ever strategic resources we put into it would make losing them hurt way more.

It makes more sense on capital ships because we can't really spam them, and we can give them enough survivability that also putting in several hundred strategic resources into one worth it.
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You're misunderstanding just how many Assault Ketches we have. That proposal costs 1,050 SC and 40 PS for 4 frigates. The Assault Ketches we have 108 of that need to be refitted cost 870 SC and 50 PS per frigate. Refitting 4 Assault Ketches into that squadron *gains* us 2,430 SC and 160 PS. Refusing to use any exotic weaponry on the 108 Ketches we currently use is gutting our navy's firepower for no reason whatsoever.

That Assault Ketch refit program would produce 65,610 excess starcrystal and 4,320 psy-scopes.
 
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Just realized that Eldar on Eldar voidcraft dogfight is when there's a jedi in a fighter, a jedi on a point defense gun, and point defense gun is also a jedi.
 
Mechanis said:
  • 2 Combat Brig (Starcaster Mega-Lance disabled)
  • 2 combat brig (Æthersails destroyed)
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I just realised if we want to fix the first two here we might need to spend 2000 Starcrystals on them, which would probably still be worth it honestly. We'll have over 6000 next turn, and and it sounds like a lot of the Starcrystals we need for refits will be recycled from obsolete detachments and ships.
 
vsh said:
Just realized that Eldar on Eldar voidcraft dogfight is when there's a jedi in a fighter, a jedi on a point defense gun, and point defense gun is also a jedi.
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I mean, once we bulk out our strikecraft squadrons and hopefully slightly unfuck our psykers with our soul modification program, I'm seriously considering having a warseer be the squadron leader for some of our strikecraft.

Karnax626 said:
I just realised if we want to fix the first two here we might need to spend 2000 Starcrystals on them, which would probably still be worth it honestly. We'll have over 6000 next turn, and and it sounds like a lot of the Starcrystals we need for refits will be recycled from obsolete detachments and ships.
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Yeah, I was considering that and repairing ships is an exotics cost to be mindful of in the future. I'm hoping since it says disabled rather than destroyed it's not full cost to repair them but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
 
Karugus said:
Yeah, I was considering that and repairing ships is an exotics cost to be mindful of in the future. I'm hoping since it says disabled rather than destroyed it's not full cost to repair them but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
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In fairness whilst we will want to refit them at some point to add Holo Fields and Grav Shields I don't see us replacing the Mega Lance, so that's a cost we'd need to pay at some point anyway.
EDIT: Assuming the system slot costs remained the same for Combat Brigs as it does for Destroyers I think the current design actually has 3 System slots free, which would be enough for both a HF and a GS. Though there might be more slots we can free up considering some of what's on the ship just doesn't work anymore with the loss of the pantheon.
 
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Karnax626 said:
EDIT: Assuming the system slot costs remained the same for Combat Brigs as it does for Destroyers I think the current design actually has 3 System slots free, which would be enough for both a HF and a GS. Though there might be more slots we can free up considering some of what's on the ship just doesn't work anymore with the loss of the pantheon.
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I suspect capital ship scale grav shields and holo-fields take up more space given they have separate NEP costs and presumably offer better protection. We might wind up splitting off a second class that retains the Webway Gate and a class that trades it for just some Warhost transportation capacity.
 
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Holo-fields are holo-fields, regardless of scale---that is why they're a binary "have one or don't" type choice---the difference in scale is more in the area effected/how far away they can create believable illusions than in how "good" the protection is. An infantry holo-field might only be able to displace an image a couple of meters, but that's plenty to make a shot from most weapons miss by a proverbial mile; one covering a 15 kilometer Voidship is probably able to displace an image a few tens of kilometers at "good enough to fool advanced sensors" effectiveness but despite the scale difference it's still fundamentally the same trick, for example.

Holo-fields are "you can't hit me, because I'm invisible, surrounded by illusuary smoke, and there are a half a dozen illusion clones your sensors can't tell apart from the real thing scattered over the nearby area." Or "you can't hit me, because I'm surrounded by flashing lights that are confusing your targeting system, swarming clones that are all merging and passing through eachother, and also I'm four feet from the edge of the mass and invisible" type shenanigans.


Edit: essentially, if you can think of a way to make it difficult to impossible to hit you with an incoporial---but otherwise convincing---illusion over an area generally around 2-5 times the sphere-volume you occupy, then a Holo-Field can do that. It's like having your own pocket Bastard Illusion Mage trying to keep you from getting shot, and yes it is exactly as frustrating and nightmarish to fight against as that description implies.
 
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