I wonder what dedalos first working self design ship will be I'm personally hoping for something similar to a star destroyer like the victory or harrower but with a hidden bridge
@Cave_Canem Were you inspired by the Bobiverse books by any chance for Diadalos/Vanguard/Future Copies?
'Cause that was the first thing that came to mind when he came up with the copy plan.
I wonder what dedalos first working self design ship will be I'm personally hoping for something similar to a star destroyer like the victory or harrower but with a hidden bridge
Three Adamants stacked on top of eachother is clearly the optimal formation afterall and no one can tell me otherwise.
Probably not any star destroyer-alikes, but I am thinking the first will be something like a clean sheet redesign of the Manticore or Adamant - something to get used to designing capital ships, that doesn't involve the expense of a full size Battlestar if something goes wrong.
Clearly the most thematically appropriate SW ship would be the Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser; just with heavy gun batteries, flak, and missiles/torpedoes.I wonder what dedalos first working self design ship will be I'm personally hoping for something similar to a star destroyer like the victory or harrower but with a hidden bridge
The Adamant actually only has Light guns, the Berzerk is the one with Medium guns. But yeah, keeping them close and operating as a Wolfpack makes a group of Adamants a real danger to most of the things they encounter.I prefer to stagger them out, with the ones further up also further forward, so that they don't end up shooting into each other when I invariably end up dropping three ship's worth of torpedoes into whoever was foolish enough to get close to them.
I love Adamants. They have got just the right mix of armor, weapons, and speed that makes them dangerous without being glass cannons or so slow as to lag behind the rest of the fleet. Then on top of that they've got hangar space for a squadron of strikecraft and munitions launchers. That being said, had I the option I'd drop the launchers in a heartbeat if it meant being able to switch out the ship's medium guns for heavier alternatives.
Missiles aren't great damage dealers not to mention there exist other ships better equipped for the role of arsenal ship. Torpedoes are better but with them you have to close to point blank range to have a chance of them connecting with the enemy and the nastier targets that Adamants require that kind of firepower to take down will chew through the armor of any ship that approaches them. Nukes meanwhile can be loaded aboard strikecraft and since Adamants come with a hangar, they don't need dedicated launchers in order to deploy them.
A triple stack of Adamant variants equipped with heavier, longer ranged guns, that are as well protected and maneuverable as base Adamants would be absolutely wonderful. I might even be willing to give up the hangar for that.
Any hints at how they're going to end up being modified?
Possibly, though probably not going to be any SW ships popping up here.Clearly the most thematically appropriate SW ship would be the Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser; just with heavy gun batteries, flak, and missiles/torpedoes.
@Cave_Canem Were you inspired by the Bobiverse books by any chance for Diadalos/Vanguard/Future Copies?
'Cause that was the first thing that came to mind when he came up with the copy plan.
Okay hear me out hollow the Manticore out and stick a spin-ahem a giant cannon along it's longest axis for uhh shooting at basestars from really far away on the cheap?
Funnily enough, that might just end up getting Daidalos hailed as a military genius.That's pretty much the goal at least, albeit both Daidalos and Vanguard, as they stand, have some tactical analysis programming but other than that do not have any actual experience.
[...]
On the other hand, the sheer unpredictability of someone whose only command experience is other stories on SV, BSGDeadlock + similar, and ww2 documentaries could well make up for some of that inexperience - in the sense that no one from a proper tactics school would ever think to try it, because they know it wouldn't work.
Three Adamants stacked on top of eachother is clearly the optimal formation afterall and no one can tell me otherwise.
The latter might be the wiser option, I think. Give the upgraded Adamant-class (Mithril-class? Orichalcum-class?) a few flak batteries, and it will be absolute murder against raider swarms. Then add the fact that Daidalos will be much more effective than any human-crewed and commanded fleet when coordinating flak-fire from multiple ships and directions, and before long the Cylon raiders will start thinking of Daidalos as some personification of death.The Adamant redesign would be possibly fitting some of the Medium guns like the Berzerk has, plus some PD guns to make them more capable as close escorts for larger ships. They would indeed likely give up their missile armament to get space for this, though being ground up redesigns they also don't need crew spaces, so they might be able to find space even with them - not decided yet, but then again being flat better than their forebears is kind of the point of doing a full redesign with newer tech like this. At the very least would want to give them some ventral armament, either a mirrored version of their normal broadsides or moving them to be able to fire both up and down. The former would be if going with just more Light guns to shred opposing escorts, the latter if they were upgunned to Mediums.
Turning the Adamants into even more of a dakka-mobile with just more Light Guns is pretty enticing, I must admit. Though in that case their roles start overlapping with the redesigned Manticores again.... Hmm, maybe go the other way, turn Manticores into Fast Attack boats with a whole lot of short range missile weaponry?
The Adamant Wall is one of those, most likely.Funnily enough, that might just end up getting Daidalos hailed as a military genius.
If you think about it, a lot of the things the professionals know wouldn't work are things that don't work because of the human factor... because in order to make them work, you'd need to get thousands of humans to behave in certain not particularly intuitive ways, and coordinate it nigh-perfectly. Daidalos and his sub-commander AIs don't have to deal with that factor, meaning a lot of impossible things suddenly become possible.
And since he doesn't know they're supposed to be impossible he won't hesitate to try them either.
The latter might be the wiser option, I think. Give the upgraded Adamant-class (Mithril-class? Orichalcum-class?) a few flak batteries, and it will be absolute murder against raider swarms. Then add the fact that Daidalos will be much more effective than any human-crewed and commanded fleet when coordinating flak-fire from multiple ships and directions, and before long the Cylon raiders will start thinking of Daidalos as some personification of death.
As for the Manticores... in Deadlock, I exclusively use them for reconnaissance, but in that role they're indispensable. They're not as fast as strikecraft, but they have much better sensors and can still escape from heavier cylon ships without much trouble. Maybe double down on that, make them even faster with even better sensors, and also use them as e-war and jamming platforms?
Oh they will. Most likely Adamants, because as pointed out earlier, they basically can do a little of everything - they're not as good a carrier as the Berzerk, but they can carry fighters, they don't have as many missiles as a Ranger or Janus but they do have them, they don't have particularly heavy guns but the ones they do have are good for dealing with a range of threats, etc.I would prefer if 1st ships built are multirole, as until you get enough industry and shipyards, you will get a limited amount of ships, so the more effective/efficient combined arms doctrine wouldn't work for 1st few months.
My thought was more along the lines that the combined arms doctrine requires more hulls, and with the budget cuts starting to hit the military they decided the best thing they could do was make sure all the ships they did have were at least reasonably capable of taking care of themselves.Another interesting thing about the Fleet of the 12 Colonies we see in Deadlock is that in some ways it's actually much more complex and sophisiticated than the later Colonial Fleet. Lot's of specialized designs working in concert, amplifying each other's strengths and covering each others weaknesses. Carriers, gunships, missile-centric ships, dedicated scouts and escorts, etc, etc...
By the time the colonies where destroyed that combined-arms centric fleet had given way to a much smaller number of "one size fits all" multirole battlestar designs... basically just the Valkyrie and the Mercury classes, with the rest of the fleet being leftovers from the first Cylon War, like Galactica, or that one Berserk-class seen in the miniseries.
If I had to guess, before the First Cylon War, the various colonial militaries followed a sort of combined arms doctrine, only to find out during the war that their neat theoretical doctrine, while optimal in said theory, didn't really work in practice. Chances are, what it came down to was once more coordination... if we look at how Adama and Cain handle their ships in the series, it's not an easy process.
Any realistic human command structure trying the sort of maneuvers players in Deadlock will routinely pull off would probably end up crashing their own ships into each other. At best, the fleet would be to ponderous and too slow to react to effectively implement their combined fleet doctrine as it was intended. Which would explain why the doctine was abandoned.
Again, it comes down to coordination. And that means Daidalos might just pull it off.
Po-tay-to Po-ta-to; End result is all the Artemis ships were decomissioned and replaced by later Battlestars.I thought it wasnt that the artemis couldnt be upgraded it was just very difficult to do so and so the colonials decided to just make a newer design rather than expend the effort to upgrade the artemisses
One must also consider that it was presumably assumed that when the doctrine was created it would be coordinated with AI assistance.My thought was more along the lines that the combined arms doctrine requires more hulls, and with the budget cuts starting to hit the military they decided the best thing they could do was make sure all the ships they did have were at least reasonably capable of taking care of themselves.
But being harder/impossible to coordinate in the way Deadlock players do is a fair interpretation too, yeah.
Since we're more or less between the wars, Colonial Fleet does still have a fair few Adamants and others knocking about.
Though the Artemis and Janus classes have been pretty much entirely phased out, the former not being upgradable to the new standards while the latter was already considered old at the start of the war, and simply not being considered worth the effort to modernize.
probably a mix of mothballing and sending them to scrapyardsWhat do the colonials do woth old ships that can't be upgraded? Mothballed for parts, or do they strip everything out and then send it into a sun for destruction?
Reason I ask is that since Daidolus is a ship yard, could also strip older ships of critical components and armor for reuse on other ships, then melt down the frame of the derelict ship into new metal to be used for new ship construction
The 'side' mounted PD in the game seems to just be a concession to the game engine anyway - ships have no trouble firing PD on fighters approaching from above (to they extent that they can) or behind. But yes, making sure ti have full coverage is important.One advise when writing the redesign of vessels, particularly big capital ships like Minotaurs, Heracles or Artemis. Don't leave the light and point defense guns in the sides only, put as many as you can in all aspects, ideally so they can have overlapping fields of fire. Having all AAA in the flanks leaves ships incredibly vulnerable to frontal strikes, rear chasers or raider wings coming high or low after an initial pass.
Also forget about the Adamant stacks, unlike the game ships can roll in order to redirect all firepower to any specific point so for light ships like Adamant, Berzerk or even the heavier but still nimble Minotaur a formation that allows the ship to roll in order to focus fire or to present undamaged armor in one particular direction would be better. Think of the WWII heavy bombers combat box formation that was designed to allow the greatest amount of firepower to strike at an enemy coming from any direction, in particular those most vulnerable like the frontal aspect.
Pretty much the plan yeah, and ships will of course still carry Warriors for boarding and Counterboarding actions, as well as smaller repair drones.I find it at the beginning that the MC builds a few normal ships as they are and manned them with robots so that the knowledge is built up how ships and small fleets are managed and so that he has an escort for Daedalus. I believe that it will take some time for ships to be redesigned so that they become more automated. Incidentally, I would still leave room for crews at the end, even if they are very small and boarding crews, you never know when you have a human with you or when you have to capture an enemy ship.
One must also consider that it was presumably assumed that when the doctrine was created it would be coordinated with AI assistance.
What do the colonials do woth old ships that can't be upgraded? Mothballed for parts, or do they strip everything out and then send it into a sun for destruction?
Reason I ask is that since Daidolus is a ship yard, could also strip older ships of critical components and armor for reuse on other ships, then melt down the frame of the derelict ship into new metal to be used for new ship construction
Not sure I'll include headsix or headbaltar, they were my least favourite parts of the show. I'm glad you like the story though, even if any homeworld connections are purely coincidental (and because its a really nice game).Definitely enjoying the story, especially liking the Homeworld vibes. Daidalos will need to repair/upgrade it's systems on its journey, meanwhile researching new tech and designs, starting off with just small craft and resourcing units. Shame there's no Bentusi-like group to back him up unless you go back to Old BSG with the "Beings of Light," such as John. Then again, I figured they became nBSGs 'hallucinations.'
CNP isn't even on the drawing board yet - they had only *just* finished rolling that version out hence a top of the line modern Battlestar like the Pegasus still getting the upgrade installed. I don't think there were too many prior versions and there was probably some kind of problem with them preventing a full rollout before that point.Wonder if the CNP project has gotten started yet? It was perfectly functional and secure until Six got at it (see the Pegasus after they purged the latest update and rolled back to the one they still had on their computers since the 'upgrade' to her OS wasn't finished yet, that being why they were in dock), so a review of current fleet programming projects cued by Daidolos having two last-ditch contingencies activating at once and everyone shitting their pants wouldn't find anything amiss... unless Six had already started work on it through Baltar, of course...
Also, I wonder what will happen once Taskforce Daidolos finds evidence of BioCylons. Low-level processes have determined the Scorpia Government to be compromised or annihilated, will those same processes allow the conscious mind of Daidolos to override the subconscious and send a report warning of infiltrators in, either to Scorpia or to the Colonies as a whole? Didn't Dead Hand cause all the (outdated) authentication codes and stuff to be wiped? Is he even able to report in as anything other than 'unidentified signal coming from Cylon space, sir'?