Thoughts on battleships

[P*Funk]

Re: blunt vs monk... Agree with blunt. There's a reason nobody has built a battleship since before WWII. Not just bombers, but ordinance in general (rocketry is a big one) has badly surpassed armour technology at sea. In the olden days battleships didn't need protection; they WERE the protection. I guess the question is, what erra does a Freelancer battleship fit into? Is it the monster that takes point and shrugs off everything the enemy throws at it? Or is it the bombardment tool that hides behind a screen of defenders? (If it's the bombardment tool then it doesn't really has no practical use in the hands of players)

CP

Battleships so were NOT the protection. Battleship screens have been in effect for a very long time and they continue to this day with Aircraft Carriers. The Battleship was always vulnerable to attack simply because its HUGE and no matter how much armour you have if you are that big and that dangerous then everyone is gonna shoot at you. Napoleon said when faced with many enemies put yourself between them and face the strongest. Whats the strongest in a fleet? The BS of course. So a battleship is slow, sturdy, and armed to the teeth. The main purpose of a BS is to be a moving weapons platform. They throw big crap at stuff and that stuff doesn't survive that big crap.

The simple matter is that in the beginning of time we had small boats. Then we met other people with small boats. We decided that we wanted to take what the other people had and we attacked their small boat. That didn't work so well cause it was an even match. So we made a bigger boat. They made an even bigger one. Eventually we ended up with massive ships that counter the other massive ships. Then someone thought "Hey those suckers are huge and I can swim circles around him if I'm smaller". Then you have corvettes and destroyers and eventually submarines. So how do you counter the smaller ships when in a bigger one? You throw a wall of crap at them and have a bunch of small maneuverable ships with you to A get hit before you and B chase after the ships too fast for you to hit.

Then you get to aircraft... well they really screw with the BS but thats where we end cause if space ships are like water vessels then there is no aircraft. Maybe fighters. Point is that a BS was always vulnerable alone. The Bismark was wounded by one torpedo from a Bi-Plane torpedo bomber. One dinky plane with one torpedo injured the greatest BS ever to the point that it was vulnerable to all the other big suckers. The BS doesn't need to be all powerful cause it already is. Look at its guns. In a fight a fighter cant even slow it down, only a bomber and even then alone you likely get wasted. The problem a BS faces is being faced with many enemies without support.

So should a BS be impossible to sink? No, it is in reality quite vulnerable. Forced plasma weapons and torpedoes etc... all of them can rip through a ship that big and that ship can't really evade. So the balance issue really only comes from people who don't want to fly around in groups. A group of a few bombers can waste a BS if they fly correctly. Same with GBs. But you take a BS and have a few fighters for GBs for escort and suddenly a few lone bombers or GBs isn't gonna be so hot. Then you need another BS to throw big crap at the other BS and you also need more fighters to fight the other fighters... etc...

So what are our balance issues? The ships themselves I don't think are that bad. The problem is that cooperation is required to kill them. Not much either. The only downfall of that is that it takes many millions to make a GB or Bomber worthy of killing a BS and since we're getting weird on who uses which guns then well how am I gonna get a NOVA if I can't dock with that Molly base in Dublin?

Guided ordnance is too expensive to kill a BS since you can lose half a mil in 10 seconds if you get killed so we need NOVAs basically, but maybe we need an equivalent everywhere. Same with Coladas and Tizonas. That brings RP into alignment if we all decide to like... play as a team when we see a pesky BS. After that we don't have a worry since a BS can't pirate and they're too slow to actually fly solo into asteroid fields and isolated places all over.

The other thing I think of is RP reasons for having one. Well if we limit people to needing an excuse to have one, say I've got a Liberty Military Tag and I'm in a Liberty BS then yay you win you can fly the sucker. But fly it alone without escort and you're dead. Give us RP guns everywhere that we can use that aren't Corsair only and then average people can maybe think of taking them on too.

Ugh... long post for a guy with less than 100 posts.

I'm gonna get my flame retardant jacket on.

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Out of hibernation. Gauging the winds.