- Location
- Utrecht
Dark eldar managed it, so it is possible in the setting.
A nearby planet, Ectosa, has uncontrolled terraforming tech making the planet an ice-world.
A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)
I have no doubt. I want it for a great melta+freeza combination for the people who will have to fight in sieges
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Sounds cool.
Sidenote: I think that we should have vote for the names of the ship classes. I personally propose poisoned flowers.
This is a great idea, I like it. Would be cool if we could vote in naming convention and ask QM to enforce it.
Neat, but going torpedo-only is not a good idea in the 40k universe. The mechanics around the weapons mean you want at least some regular dorsal batteries to complement the torpedo loadout.
- Location
- Germany
Maybe if they were designed to be deployed alone you would be right, but they aren't.
They are intended to be used in larger fleets in support of capital ships and ships like the ketch designs, their job is pretty much dump all the torpedoes and then go back to being pretty much invisible to most/all sensors while reloading/lining up for the next salvo.
They are pretty much just intended to be cheap to create en-mass and dump lots of torpedoes while staying hidden using their Holo-Fields (which pretty much allow them to be invisible to most/all sensors when not shooting).
Also helps that this isn't like the table top where most things are crippled in some way for balance reasons.
Edit.Best way is to think of them as a submarine in how they would likely fight, just in space.
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- Location
- Utrecht
The trick is getting your proportions right.
A ship with that many torpedos packs a disproportionate punch for its weight class, especially as we get more destructive weapons, like Grav and Melta bombs, but can't perform well in more generalist roles due to the nature of torpedo weapons.
A ship with that many torpedos packs a disproportionate punch for its weight class, especially as we get more destructive weapons, like Grav and Melta bombs, but can't perform well in more generalist roles due to the nature of torpedo weapons.
- Location
- Germany
Here the QM post on Holo-Fields and what they can do.
They are pure BS that are a nightmare to deal with for the otherside.
And yes they can do invisibility on a ship scale.
I'm well aware of those issues, I've got some posts discussing why strikecraft are one of the best ways to deal with our fleets right now which was why I was advocating so hard for PD over CIWB.It's more cases of guided torpedoes (there's no reason to assume only the Tau will ever get them), strikecraft, or special area of effect weapons like Nova Cannons being pretty much unmitigated by our defenses that has me concerned. PD addresses the first two, and we may want to look into our own laser modifications ala Turbolasers and Volcano Cannons to even more thoroughly address that- but like you said there's very little we can do to address the fragility itself of an escort. I'll probably just advocate that we keep this design as the sole escort using exotics in the long run and push for the first truly new capital ship to be a light cruiser with a minimal (but still present) exotic load out.
In other words, I live in terror of the day we run into an Adeptus Mechanicus fleet and the Priests of Mars cheer as their nigh-universal Nova weapons are brought to bear
I suspect our general purpose escort is probably going to be a torpedo boat- because if nothing else torpedoes are fantastic ways to force the enemy to maneuver in ways you'd prefer, and that probably will want some of the juicy non-exotics we'll have coming down the pipeline.
That said, our escorts are particularly well suited for avoiding AoE attacks and homing weapons compared to other escorts. Since Fatetwisters have a near 360 degree firing arc our escorts will be able to perform far more erratic maneuvers while still being able to engage targets, ditto for homing torpedoes as our escorts should be able to more consistently take the best evasion routes while still staying on target.
The fact that we are Eldar also means that we can potentially field battlefield precog which would allow us to reduce the chance of a Novacannon shell detonating near our escorts.
That said, carriers are probably our best solution for guided torpedoes and strikecraft. If you've ever played Battlefleet Gothic Armada 1 or 2 you'll know that a single 4 hangar capital like an Emperor or Void Stalker can shut down multiple torpedo volleys or multiple strikecraft groups from lesser carriers.
Given that the QM has stated that the hangars on larger ships can carry more strikecraft I'd advocate for using a capital ship for when we decide to design a carrier. Depending on if we want to go the light, fleet, or supercarrier route I'd say that our best hull choices would be the Dhow, Clipper, or Galleon hulls as those have the most system slots. While our current Combat Brig isn't terrible it isn't a match for something like the 4 hangar Void Stalker.
Agreed, we could definitely use a torp-boat in our fleet roster. Interestingly, in BFGA2 the Eldar torp escort follows this pattern as they tend to be cheaper than their lance escort cousins.
Since you brought up non-Tau homing torpedoes, I think we are in a good position to develop something like that. We could take our existing Psy-Scope tech and try to develop a cheaper derivative that doesn't manipulate space-time but instead just "nudges" the projectile towards their target.
While that would probably increase the cost of any torpedo launchers we develop I think it would be worth it so long as we don't actually need to spend Psy-Scopes on it given how cancer Tau-homing torpedoes are in BFGA2 multiplayer (basically made bringing a carrier heavy fleet mandatory for many factions if you fight them).
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Aren't PD and CIWB the same fucking thing (Turrets rating in BFG terms), but one is bigger and longer ranged than the other? It's the difference between having a couple of CIWS on your destroyer and having a dedicated short-range SAM system.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Space USA with supercharger doctrine building our fleets around giant supercarrier capital ships.
There hasn't been any indication from the QM that CIWB has more range, only that since the CIWB weapons are generally larger so they can hurt starships at close range which itself also indicates that CIWB effective range isn't greater than PD since it's only effective at close range.
Here are some WOG's regarding CIWB and PD.
Note that the main distinction the QM made between PD and CIWB was regarding their ability to deal damage to starships, not anything about how CIWB has greater range (note how "more like" was used instead of outright calling CIWB dual purpose guns which indicates they do not fulfil the exact same role).
Just because a weapon is bigger doesn't mean that it has greater range than a smaller weapon, to use an extreme example heavy Meltas or Flamers are almost certainly going to have a fraction of the range of something like a Needler carbine or rifle.
Heck, the same weapons can have differing ranges depending on what it's mounted on. For example, the Volcano cannon on a Shadowsword or Falchion superheavy tank explicitly has worse range than the Volcano cannon mounted on a titan despite both being superheavy weapons.
A volcano cannon would do. It's a superheavy lascannon that's half strength of a laslance.
Mechanis
Confirmed Techpriest
- Location
- Deep Net
TLDR version, Point Defense is Bofors/Phalanx/machine guns/Chicago Pianos; light caliber weapons with high speed tracking. CIW is 5" or 8" dual purpose gun type things---less effective against small fast moving stuff in exchange for, you know, actually being a threat to another ship.
(The comparison isn't exact, of course, as there's a bit more nuance vis a vis different weapons types, factional design preferences, and the differing realities of Void combat compared to surface naval battles, but as a somewhat accurate metaphor it's, well, accurate enough.)
Cramming a Superheavy weapon into a fighter/strike craft is indeed possible, and does allow it to threaten voidships (Meros did exactly that this turn)... But bomb bays also do that, and are a fair bit cheaper and need fewer compromises. Especially on things that are closer to single seat fighters than, say, a Stormbird.
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Judging by how Mero's swarm of Turbo-laser armed gunships was able to damage and even kill Ork warships and the fact that CIWB weapons can hurt starships at close range I'd guess that any of our weapons that are in the superheavy vehicle mount category could do that.
Here's a list of all the superheavy vehicle weapons available to us right now based on our Wargear list:
- Starlance
- Starblade
- Fatesheer
- Spike Cannon
Not to question how you intend for these systems to be represented in this quest but historically it was found that heavier guns were more effective as anti-fighter weapons as the larger shells could fit stuff like VT fuses which massively increased the kill probability of each shell (it's why postwar PD got chonkier with the 76mm replacing all others since it could use fused shells) and when combined with their significantly superior reach (a 5 inch gun had around 3 times the effective range of a 40mm Bofors) meant that they were generally racking in kills before bombers could even deliver their payload while the smaller weapons didn't have anywhere near as much time to act.
Given how you have emphasized how PD is the superior option over CIWB when it comes to engaging strikecraft and ordinance does mean that PD has comparable range against those kinds of targets or are you saying that PD is vastly more effective within it's effective range but has shorter range than CIWB against those kinds of targets?
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- Location
- Germany
PDF systems are generally vehicle sized weapons.
CIWB are super heavy weapons (main weapons of a titan as an example), they also tend to have a lower fire rate to get even more damage per hit).
PDF is perfectly fine to kill generally vehicles sized stuff which fighters, torpedoes and bombers generally are.
Generally have a pretty good rate of fire, range, and you have a lot of them all over the ship. It's why the special resource cost is really damn high when used.*
CIWB have a quite high range, low rate of fire and likely overkill the fighters, torpedoes and bombers by a lot if they hit. AOE is not a thing for weapons at stage when we are talking about space.
*as in the Brigs Fatetwister PDF system uses more scopes than all 3 Fatetwister macrocannon + Fatetwister CIWB on the Carrack.
Intersting that you class them this way because the first category almost completely fell out of favor durring WW2, only to return in the Phalanx CIWS because it's small and light enough to bolt in on a lot of ships without hassle. The big guns got better both because of improvements in mount/aiming technology that lead to synchro-mounts slaved to radar fire control, and because they could throw a shell large enough to kill an enemy plane outright rather than riddle it with holes so that the oil leaks out of the engine and it crashes in 2 minutes. Which is certainly analogous in WH30/40k, where an ork might get his wings blown off by lascannon fire but he can still delive Da Bomba to where it needs to go. The bigger titan-scale guns can blow things up in one hit much more often rather than just knocking off a few wounds.
- Location
- Germany
Checking the numbers of CIWB vs PDF on the capital ships.
Seems to be 16 CIWB weapons vs 180 on the PDF system. (Carracks CWIB system vs the Brigs PDF and using the cost to get the number of weapon systems)
Sufficient to say that the PDF system likely has little to no blind spots and a lot more fire to actually score hits.
Mechanis
Confirmed Techpriest
- Location
- Deep Net
As mentioned, the comparison isn't exact; partly because "proximity flack" is significantly less dangerous in space where there's no medium for blast-waves (and doesn't apply to most of the energy weapons/exotic Weird Stuff anyway), partly because Superheavy weapons are just... Physically large, and it's a lot harder to swing the things around really fast without damaging them. And the same physical volume issue restricts where you can put the things, and how many you can mount, which compared to "eh just bolt em on wherever" vehicle scale weapons that are practically structurally irrelevant on the scale of voidships...
- Location
- his hidden lair
If we really just want to lean into spammable PD, we probably want to revisit our laser designs to make something more tailored made for it, or accept that CIWB has worse performance in exchange for being significantly more affordable (and I think something like the Turbolaser would do well there). As is, a Las-Cannon PD grid is notably more expensive than anything besides Heavy Naval Batteries and that's our cheapest PD option.
Edit: And on the Carrier front, obviously we should get a dedicated carrier design or two but I think you're right in that we should really be focusing on carriers as a way to run interference and a defensive tool rather than a striking arm of our navy. With a lot of NEP and resources being invested in naval batteries, and a lot of the system slots that would normally be carrying strikecraft carrying more defenses instead we're probably never going to have a dominant strikecraft advantage without compromising our existing advantages and areas of focus.
Given the difference between effective range and actual range when it comes to leading a torpedo volley properly, would you peg it as a more mid range or short range weapon? It's been ages and I never really did multi-player but I was always pretty aggressive about getting in close to land torpedoes with more reliability. Close range weapons seem like they'd pair nicely but I think part of that's just my own biases with BFG2. Obviously guided torpedoes are going to have a greater effective range but I'm not assuming we'll get those in time for a first gen torpedo escort.
Edit: And on the Carrier front, obviously we should get a dedicated carrier design or two but I think you're right in that we should really be focusing on carriers as a way to run interference and a defensive tool rather than a striking arm of our navy. With a lot of NEP and resources being invested in naval batteries, and a lot of the system slots that would normally be carrying strikecraft carrying more defenses instead we're probably never going to have a dominant strikecraft advantage without compromising our existing advantages and areas of focus.
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- Location
- Germany
CIWB also costs 2 slots compared to the PDFs 1 slot.
So that is part of what one pays for the PDF higher cost, something i think is in general worth it.
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