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
Daidalos Rises - nBSG AI/SI Story - Interwar Period!
- Thread starter Cave_Canem
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Cave_Canem
Giant Transforming Robot
I've not read those books I'm afraid, but it is (somewhat loosely) based on the idea of 'Forks' that shows up in a lot of sci fi involving AI's.
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.
Spart117MC
Amateur human
- Location
- Cali
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?
Tabi
Expert Jissou Abuser
Clearly the most thematically appropriate SW ship would be the Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser; just with heavy gun batteries, flak, and missiles/torpedoes.
Cave_Canem
Giant Transforming Robot
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.
The Manticore is likely to have some of its armour, missiles and that one big Corvette Gun sacrificed to make it more of a colonial equivalent to the Cerastes - something fast, relatively lightly armoured but with a lot of Light and PD guns that can shred strikecraft and other smaller ships, as well as forward scouts.
Relatively fragile as cap ships go, but not really a problem as it is still more than able to handle its intended prey of Raider Swarms. Its the only thing I can think of for a purpose for them, I never really liked the Manticores as they came in the game.
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?
Decisions, Decisions...
Possibly, though probably not going to be any SW ships popping up here.
Stargate ships (the human ones, I mean) are similar enough to BSG style ships (albeit SG has smaller ships)
TheShadowDeamon
Mighty Dragon
Yeah, good series. I like how the author wrote out how the divergence of the Bobs worked
Watched. I love the fct that the colonials get to watch their working AI killing the malfunctioning AI. This is to big to be kept secret espescially once Daidalus starts attacking the cylon holdings for real. So how would the public react to finding out that the perfectly ok Anti cylon Ai was turned on by two greedy idiots and then proceeded to do its job like described?
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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?
The Adamant could do with more guns to give her more teeth it is by far the most capale vessel with a cheap price tag. Also redisigning a ship to be human less operted will make mass amounts of space free for other equipment.
I mean no kilometer long hallways, no Bunkrooms, no Kitchens, no Cabins, no Toilets, no Showers, no Air and water recyclers, no Storage rooms for Human needs, no Piping for said showers and Toilets, no or less light fixtures, no Heating systems, no or less Artificial gravity plating, more automation in compcter form than human operated machinery, and so on.
It is fairly obvious that once you get to the redisign your ships will blow the colonial standard out of the water. I mean the late war Jupiter class carriers 400+ vipers and 5000 crew just think about how much space not needing to take care of the squishies will be made free.
I mean no kilometer long hallways, no Bunkrooms, no Kitchens, no Cabins, no Toilets, no Showers, no Air and water recyclers, no Storage rooms for Human needs, no Piping for said showers and Toilets, no or less light fixtures, no Heating systems, no or less Artificial gravity plating, more automation in compcter form than human operated machinery, and so on.
It is fairly obvious that once you get to the redisign your ships will blow the colonial standard out of the water. I mean the late war Jupiter class carriers 400+ vipers and 5000 crew just think about how much space not needing to take care of the squishies will be made free.
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Driven by Apathy
Formerly known as Brain_Caster
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?
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Driven by Apathy
Formerly known as Brain_Caster
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 too slow to act and react to effectively implement their combined fleet doctrine as it was intended. Which would explain why the doctine was abandoned. The Cylons, for their part, seem to have gone through a similar process of doctrine simplification, likely for the same reasons.
An AI controlling the entire fleet by itself like the player in the game wouldn't have that problem. And that means Daidalos might just succeed where the Colonials and Cylons failed.
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 too slow to act and react to effectively implement their combined fleet doctrine as it was intended. Which would explain why the doctine was abandoned. The Cylons, for their part, seem to have gone through a similar process of doctrine simplification, likely for the same reasons.
An AI controlling the entire fleet by itself like the player in the game wouldn't have that problem. And that means Daidalos might just succeed where the Colonials and Cylons failed.
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Cave_Canem
Giant Transforming Robot
The Adamant Wall is one of those, most likely.
In principle its simple enough - flying in very tight formation such that all three Adamants can concentrate fire on a single target, coming into range at exactly the same time while still keeping their weapons clear, while their target has to either spread their fire or focus on a single ship - which leaves the other two free to focus on offense, as well as meaning all your damage is being done on a single armour facing, rather than needing to wear down the armour separately on two sides.
But its very much a game only invention, for the simple reason that unless you have perfect control of what each Adamant is doing like you do in the game, you're likely as not to have them accidentally shoot eachother or collide from trying to fly so close together.
Things like that, where the main reason they're impractical is that ships are crewed and helmed by humans I suppose.
Given I already often use Adamants to screen heavier ships - they have the armour to take a few hits and they can handle smaller threats so the Cruisers or Battlestars can focus on bigger ones - making them more efficient at shooting down missiles and hostile fighters is probably the way to go, yeah.
Manticores as fast scouts and ECM platforms could be an idea, maybe taking some cues from the Orion or the Blackbird? The latter is one of the only Colonial ships that we actually know what its made from after all.
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.
A few Adamants put together can do at least s decent approximation of any single specialist vessel while often being cheaper, and still useful as screening elements even in larger fleets.
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.
Cave_Canem
Giant Transforming Robot
Po-tay-to Po-ta-to; End result is all the Artemis ships were decomissioned and replaced by later Battlestars.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
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.
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.
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.
- Location
- San Diego
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
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
- Pronouns
- He/Him
probably a mix of mothballing and sending them to scrapyards
ExaltedNekoKun
Exalted Glorious Feline Light Source!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him/Lord/Fuzzball
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.'
- Location
- The deathworld-in-miniature that is Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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'?
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'?
Cave_Canem
Giant Transforming Robot
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.
Advice on formations is good too, thanks.
Pretty much the plan yeah, and ships will of course still carry Warriors for boarding and Counterboarding actions, as well as smaller repair drones.
And yes, that's very true.
Pretty much what Lonely Samurai said, they're either broken up or left in mothball fleets in deep space.
Poaching a few could be a quick way to build up forces, but they do have some Fleet presence just to deter scavengers, and these ships aren't usually jump capable.
Of course, you don't need a ship to be jump capable when you have a mobile shipyard specifically designed to carry multiple under construction Battlestars through a jump...
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).
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.
The whole program was a result of the Adar government trying to score points.
Dead Hand means that Daidalos basically has to consider Scorpia if not compromised then untrustworthy - but importantly, the automated systems designated the Cylons as the likely culprits so they are the only ones marked as Hostile, with the rest of the colonies being considered neutrals at the moment. His current RoE would permit warning neutrals about potential attacks from hostile factions. There's even possibility for cooperation with Friendlies/Allied forces, they just can't assert command.
Daidalos was designed to defend scorpia above all else, but he was supposed to be able to distinguish between the perpetrators of an attack, uninvolved third parties and those helping Scorpia - he's a War asset, not an indiscriminate murder machine, even before the SI.
The biggest problem for Daidalos is the fact that, with all prior codes being deleted and new ones issued, he cannot recieve or send coded transmissions that colonial systems can understand. He can transmit 'in the clear' like he did to the Raptors, but that has obvious issues with anything sensitive.
Fortunately there is an unused diplomatic station just sitting there where physical and electronic documents can be provided in person, isn't that nice?