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Star Wars: Ship Designer Quest

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For the love of all that is right in the galaxy stop trying to make mass drivers happen. They aren't going to happen. They take up an absurd amount of size and the customer doesn't want them, we're not building our own "we think we're smarter" navy, and we have zero mitigation for their issues. This is the star wars setting, not bsg or expanse or whatever uses them.

This comes up every time and I am sick and bloody tired of it.
 
The primary weapons for this corvette model will mainly focus on AA defenses, meaning a ship designed to handle fighters and bombers. Could possibly add a single turbolaser to give some minor punch to handle anything larger?
 
So looking at Wookiepedia-
Mass Driver in Canon: AT-TE and AT-AP
Legends: The only space units to have them is a battleship from 10,000 years earlier from a West End Games supplement and the Consortium.

That implies to me that there are major shortcomings in universe on the mass-driver (not the least of which is carrying ammo for all those shots) and since ships are still shielded against physical objects you still have to overcome enemy shields. Thus a mass driver ship much like a missile ship has a limited endurance. Hence why you tend to see a mix of missile and laser weaponry on ships.
 
The only weapon system on this thing is going to be laser cannons. Ion cannons are slower tracking and not good enough to serve as anti-starfighter weapons. Also no mass drivers would not work for this and flak rounds won't change that. Flak rounds are not anti-fighter weapons the primary purpose of flak is to stop bombs and missiles. Hitting a fighter is just a sometimes bonus.
 
Void Stalker said:
So looking at Wookiepedia-
Mass Driver in Canon: AT-TE and AT-AP
Legends: The only space units to have them is a battleship from 10,000 years earlier from a West End Games supplement and the Consortium.

That implies to me that there are major shortcomings in universe on the mass-driver (not the least of which is carrying ammo for all those shots) and since ships are still shielded against physical objects you still have to overcome enemy shields. Thus a mass driver ship much like a missile ship has a limited endurance. Hence why you tend to see a mix of missile and laser weaponry on ships.
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From what I understand, the shortcoming is particle shields, which at least in this verse completely no-sells most if not all mass drivers...
 
Themarineguy said:
From what I understand, the shortcoming is particle shields, which at least in this verse completely no-sells most if not all mass drivers...
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Military particle shields can take Kinetic hits from weapons. Normal particle shields on strike craft and non military ships are only built to handle micro meteorite impacts and debris and would be overwhelmed by a weapon designed for heavy combat. The issue is that flak isn't a anti-fighter weapon and is useless against ships. And a normal mass drivers would need to be on a much bigger ship in order to have the power to be a threat in a big fight.
 
Probably should just plan to redo the cockpit from the start since it needs two tries each time we produce our own.
 
Adventwolf said:
The only weapon system on this thing is going to be laser cannons. Ion cannons are slower tracking and not good enough to serve as anti-starfighter weapons. Also no mass drivers would not work for this and flak rounds won't change that. Flak rounds are not anti-fighter weapons the primary purpose of flak is to stop bombs and missiles. Hitting a fighter is just a sometimes bonus.
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I dunno, ion cannons absolutely can act as an anti-starfighter weapon, and are actually pretty decent in the role, based on my memories of TIE fighter. Plus, they bring a lot of utility for the craft, as you start to have options to disable and capture your target. Absoultely essential for peace-time customs duties. And very useful for hypothetical privateering. Great at dealing with shields, too.

They shouldn't be the main weapon, of couse, but some ion cannons give a lot of options to a ship.
 
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Maybe as a bow mounted weapon on the ship so it can swap at shielded craft as they approach or supply supporting fire to allied ships.
 
Adventwolf said:
Ion cannons are slower tracking and not good enough to serve as anti-starfighter weapons.
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Kornet said:
I dunno, ion cannons absolutely can act as an anti-starfighter weapon, and are actually pretty decent in the role, based on my memories of TIE fighter. Plus, they bring a lot of utility for the craft, as you start to have options to disable and capture your target. Absoultely essential for peace-time customs duties. And very useful for hypothetical privateering. Great at dealing with shields, too.
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Ion Cannons are explicitly designed to serve in Anti-Starship roles, and come in various sizes too, such as Infantry-scale, (Which hasn't been made illegal yet,) not to mention that, for the most part, Ion Cannons track just as fast as any other cannon, it's just that once you get to a certain size, the limitations of turret capability renders tracking small targets impractical at best, which is almost always at 'Planetary Defense Emplacement', which, keep in mind, is designed to knock out Capital and Super Capital sized vessels, which would hilariously overkill Fighters, probably to the point of cooking the people flying them.
 
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InquisitionAI said:
Ion Cannons are explicitly designed to serve in Anti-Starship roles, and come in various sizes too, such as Infantry-scale, (Which hasn't been made illegal yet,) not to mention that, for the most part, Ion Cannons track just as fast as any other cannon, it's just that once you get to a certain size, the limitations of turret capability renders tracking small targets impractical at best, which is almost always at 'Planetary Defense Emplacement', which, keep in mind, is designed to knock out Capital and Super Capital sized vessels, which would hilariously overkill Fighters, probably to the point of cooking the people flying them.
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Another problem with Ion Cannons is that until you're working at the scale of Star Destroyers or said planetary defense emplacements, the range is pretty negligible, even in comparison to the laser/blaster cannons you'll find on most starfighters.
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Another problem with Ion Cannons is that until you're working at the scale of Star Destroyers or said planetary defense emplacements, the range is pretty negligible, even in comparison to the laser/blaster cannons you'll find on most starfighters.
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Yeah, but when you're getting knifed by Starfighters, it'll reap its toll.

Plus, ngl, the plan was to use Ions as secondary/tertiary weapons, with more powerful, general use, weapons being primary.

It'll probably something like the Lancer class.
 
IndustrialVice2 said:
I'm tempted to put the mass drivers on this one. Flak rounds will absolutely shred light, disposable snubfighters like Vulture droids or TIEs, as well as pirate garbage, and they'll still provide a decent anti-capital punch with proton warheads.
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The flak rounds (a horrible usage of the acronym, by the way, my German mind hates it) are usable to a certain degree against fighters. But they are unusable in most fights this corvette will find itself in. We're speaking of an escort that is used in an anti-fighter role for a local defense force. They won't go around and fight galactic wars, they will defend their home system. Maybe close to space stations, civilian ships etc., so basically soft targets. A laser bolt that doesn't hit, burns out after some time. A debris field, created by the amount of ammunition you need to fire to kill an attacking squadron of starfighters will continue to expend. The shown anti-fighter shells of Episode 3 have their place on a large-scale battlefield where they defend against fighters as well as fired weapons like missiles.

Not on a small-scale defense ship, any local defense force will take a look at the Mass Driver and ask "Why don't you have a laser turret there? Seems like wasted space and for such an outdated weapon system! And who is going to pay for the rounds?"

I also suspect that the danger such a weapon poses to civilian crafts and stations means that the Republic has forbidden such weapons, at least in my headcanon. Not Mass Drivers but burst-shells. That is the logical reason why they aren't used widespread until the Clone Wars.

Also, proton torpedos are still nothing most people think about when they have to go against a Captialship. In Star Wars I think it was the Republic doing the Clone Wars who came up with the tactic thanks to Anakin Skywalker.
 
There's also the whole 'weapon advances, countermeasures advance, weapon goes away, countermeasures stick around until everybody forgets what they're for, then the initial weapon is reintroduced after everyone forgets how to build the countermeasures' thing that seems to be going on in Star Wars as part of it's frequent technological backslides.

It seems to be a result of active defenses outpacing weapons, but then being too expensive to justify when nobody's using those now ineffective weapons, while the exact opposite happened with shield belts.

One of the many reasons nobody in power wants war with the Hutts is that they like to keep things like capital-grade mass drivers and war-droid armies around as trophies, and they keep them in good condition for centuries. Sure, you can easily defend against the mass drivers with even the cheapest of planetary shields, but good luck paying for enough to cover every planet you remotely care about, like those argiworlds that feed your population. Pretty sure that happened in the EU.
 
Having read through this I'd just like to add for those of you who keep trying to stick mass drivers onto everything that apart from the AT-TE you're using the Zann Consortium to space based weapons. The AT-TE used its mass driver to punch through the thick frontal armour of CIS Armoured Assault Tanks and Multi-Troop Transports. Both vehicles lack any form of significant shielding.

On the Consortium side aside from the Canderous Assault Tank which uses twinned mass drivers to shred ground targets you have the Vengeance Frigate and the Keldabe Battleship. Both of which use Capital-Grade mass drivers. The Vengeance sacrifices its shields to use its guns even if it does boast supposedly thick armour, a cloaking devince and a pair of turbolaser turrets as a last resort. Granted, a shielded version could be built but it basically gave those up to be able to kill capital ships in the hope that it could kill its target before its target could hit back too hard. As for the Keldabe, well, it's a battleship. Its mass drivers existed to round out its considerable armament by giving it an extra punch fore and aft, not to mention that it would have kept shield techs on their toes.

Those uses are rather telling as they either see use on the ground where shields are rare and can't easily flip between modes or as dedicated anti-capital roles in space. In that spaceborne role it is either mounted on capital-scale ships and large space stations as part of a large weapons compliment or on a single frigate. Said frigate sacrifices shields and probably a fair bit of internal volume to carry the mass drivers and is a glass cannon intended for ambush strikes against far larger targets. That tells us that in-universe such weapons are not considered a useful part of a standard asenal for most ships but can be effective against capital ships if used properly. It also tells us that the weapons strong enough to damage said capital ships have to be rather large, again, the only ship we know to have used mass drivers that was intended to stand in a battle-line against Star Destroyers was a battleship itself. Sure, they can be mounted on smaller ships but those ships are highly specialised and lose a lot of space for what I assume is the large amount of space needed for the ammunition. In short, until you can make Star Destroyer scale warships it isn't generally worth it to mount mass drivers from what can be observed from known uses of the technology unless you want to make one hell of a commerce raider.
 
Honestly the only use a mass driver has currently is if you use it as part of a budget Nova canon assembly (to rail accelerate torpedoes at the target to make them faster and less likely to be shot down or avoided)...

Since the tech used in 40k for the acceleration is gravity tech if memory serves... And in SW interdictor tech of that level is lost tech that's not rediscovered till the empires a thing for at least a decade.

So rail accelerators could be used to imitate the effect (not as good but actually achievable)

Hell... Would make a better orbital strike weapons than turbo lasers if tarkins white elephant plan goes ahead)

Since projectiles trump plasma turbolaser bombardment (since 90% of the projectiles power ain't lost just going through atmosphere...)
 
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Personally I think, as I said before the forum outage at my first post on this, that putting an Ion Cannon on the ship is a generally good thing to consider, because it's often useful to have the ability to shoot someone until they can be boarded instead of shooting someone until they are exploded.
 
For pirate defense ion cannons are great as a lot of pirates have shit maintinence and a erent energy arc can kill or disable as well or better than a turbo laser
 
One turbolaser and one ion cannon might not be terrible, but let's see what we've got space for once we get there.
 
Huh, and here i was thinking this might be the one time the mas driver folks have a potential argument. Starfighters durrimg this era usually had either little or no shielding, so i figured anti-starfighter was one of the only roles where mass drivers wouldnt be a complete joke.

But yeah, once you point out the ammo issues and their knack for causing navigational hazards in thr future, the chances of us selling a ship with them onboard dropped back down to zilch. These are system defense ships, remember? No one will ever want weapons on them that will ruin their own home.

As for ion cannons, they're definately worth it. Remember, this is a corvette for planetary defense. Ion Cannons are less-than-lethal weapons that are good enough to see us in full blown wars. On a corvette that's probably going to get stuck doing cosast guard duties for long peroids, they're an obvious choice.
 
When exchanging Advantage points for anything else (like reducing Cost) the cheapest rates we ever get are when we are designing components, like right now. We should not anticipate spending any points to reduce cost or space used at the end, because that's the most inefficient way to go about it.

For the cockpit, I think we should spend 1 or 2 advantage on reducing cost if we can, and then bank the rest.

30 Cost and 30 Advantage are going to be difficult enough to reach that we need to be angling for that goal at every stage of the project.

Edit:
After doing some number crunching, I've changed my tune.
Void Stalker said:
Small Strong 6 Double Deaths
Advantage: 33 + Bridge (5+)
Flaw: 10 + Bridge(0) -1d6
Cost: 23 - 1
Weapon: 12 + Bridge (bridge starts at 0)

Net 23 + Bridge(5+) + 1d6

Small Light 12 Double Deaths
Advantage: 51 + Bridge(5+)
Flaw: 16 + Bridge(0) -1d6
Cost: 29 - 1
Weapon: 24 + Bridge (bridge starts at 0)

Net 35 + Bridge(5+) + 1d6
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I'm not really seeing where your math here is coming from.

Starting with looking at the Compartment Spaces, with the small cockpit we start with 16 but immediately must earmark 5 of those for the customer's Free Spaces requirement, leaving us with 11.

The smallest shield generator takes up 1 space, and the smallest military crew bunks takes up 2, so the maximum number of Compartment spaces we can use for Weapons is 8.

Your second option set has 12 Double Deaths though? Which makes no sense to me, unless you either forgot to set aside those 5 spaces or are deliberately not doing so, which I question the logic of.

If we use all 8 remaining compartment spaces on Double Deaths they collectively are worth 24 Advantages and 8 Flaws, for 8 Cost.

If we're using the smallest military crew bunks (2 Spaces, 1 Advantage, 0 Flaws, 2 Cost) and the smallest shield generator (1 Space, 4 Advantage, 2 Flaws, 2 Cost) that works out to:
Advantage: 7 + 4 + 1+ 24 = 36 (+ ~5 Cockpit)
Flaws: 2 + 2 + 8 = 12 (- 1d6 Q&A)
Cost: 8 + 2 + 2+ 8 = 20 (+ ~5 Cockpit)

This is... distressing. Our Costs are well within tolerances, but we can only barely get our Advantages up high enough to beat the Flaws by 30. If we assume that the bonus from our Dug cockpit engineer will manifest in other ways than more Advantages, and we don't spend any advantages on anything, then a roll of 1 on the 1d6 reduced flaws roll will get us to Flaws + 30 Advantages by the skin of our teeth.

Spending any advantages, or choosing options that earn us any fewer of them, means risking that 1d6 roll not being high enough.

Unless... do we know for sure that the requirement really means net Advantages?
 
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