Idea: Broadside ships with Guiding Lasers

[The Sovereign]

Perhaps as one of these?

Flagship Titan (Official Only) (?) - ?

[Hubjump]

Okay, good bye page of counter arguments now ive remembered this is for an entire new ship class.
i have to say this ship class to be effective must have insane speed and manoeuvrability (to get around this hard to aim business) but that against current weapons would mean the ship will never be hit if turret steering. Also just remembered that might not be a valid point seeing how these broad siders will be heavies them selves, BUT!!!! like what valors sometimes do to TS'ing foes, 90ms speed, Engine kill, Force the foe to face your FG or lose their close quarters advantage. Another ship can do this to force this broad sider to turn their face to you to keep in broad side range if this gimmick is their main method of attack.
Also you got the same issue with what ive flown for ages now, in conn... my redemption never broad sides with its 5 cerbs a smaller ship type. This heavy ship would have to be a dreadnought killer like how you have tanks and anti tank-tanks irl.

This post might be messy af dealing with 3 chats at once and editing bits in the middle of what i first typed.

[Titan*]

It doesnt need that much speed

I think these ships should be same as zoner colonyship or little bigger, Huge armor but very slow turn speed
Atleast 3 or 4 Broadside weapon with 2k projectile speed so it will have chance to hit ships if they get in-sight of the weapons
Long range and Short Range type of Weapon maybe with 30-45 degree weapon arc with like 1-3 Turn Speed
Short range should have high dps low damage and Long range should do more damage but low dps
maybe around 8-12 Defence Turrets
They should move slower than battleships but should able to cover its position without worrying about range

and i think these ships should be Vertical, it would be great.

[Thunderer]

I like the fix. I think that it should be applied to all forward guns, and to all SNACs (technically SNACs are FGs, too, just for bombers, and obviously, suffer from the same bug). All weapons that have the ability to fire even if their gun muzzle is not facing the same spot that your pointer is have this bug.

I think that this could be an interesting idea to play with, but I don't think that broadside guns would actually be any useful, at least in comparison with turrets (which additionally have automatic aiming, need I mention). The broadside guns of 18th century ships-of-the-line were replaced by turrets in the 19th century for a number very, very good reasons (for example, not being limited to only half your firepower on each side, being able to fire forward/backward as well, not having to turn your whole ship to aim but only turrets, etc, etc). I think that Sirius is smarter than the 18th century humans.

I can only think of one use for broadside cannons.
Let us imagine a very, very powerful gun. One whose machinery, power and ammunition supply can't fit into a turret. One whose force of firing would knock a turret off of the ship. Like the Warwolf, the Valor forward gun -- except that the Warwolf was made for taking out ships from afar, ships that move, so it sacrificed some of its damage for speed. This is why it "only" does 850K damage per shot. Now, if you sacrificed speed for damage instead, you could maybe get, I don't know, 1,500K damage per shot, but the speed would be about 300m/s instead of 580m/s. You won't hit anything at 3K distance with it, though. So, you will have to get at, let's say, precisely 0K distance to reliably hit anything. Alright, you've just done that. You've fired it, it's awesome, fireworks, nice. But the target isn't dead. That is because you can only fit one to fire forward, because your ship is shaped like a cigar. You could, however, mount three on each of your broadsides. Then do this same "getting close" thing again, but with a small alteration: turn your broadside when you're there. And BOOM!

There's a few problems, though.

1) The energy efficiency stays the same as of the original forward gun. This means that your usual, generic Cerberus turrets, which everyone can buy these days, even a Zoner -- are more energy efficient than your big mighty broadside guns! But, since you can't hit anything at 3K anyways, and you'll just use it at point blank, you won't need this range. Reduce the range of the weapon, and increase the efficiency!

2) You could also increase the speed and decrease the damage, though, and then carry replicas of the Valor forward gun on your broadsides. You won't hit anything, though, not even with those fancy laser aiming systems of yours. Well, at least not at any range where you yourself can avoid getting shot to pieces. Turrets are much better here. More practical. I mean, this will work, don't get me wrong, but it will work in 1/10 cases, while those evil, cunning turrets will steal victory from you 9 times out of 10! Not to mention that your ship is huge and you have one cannon on your stern, one on your centre and another one on your prow, so even if you hit, you will only hit with one most times. Well, unless your ship is not huge, but then these guns will be tiny and do tiny damage, too. They'd be a big laughing stock, though.

3) Or, you could concentrate all your broadside guns at one spot. Wait, you canouldn't. The reason you're doing this in the first place is because you can't fit them all on the front, or inside a turret -- if you could, that would be great! But you can't. Sad.
You also can't mount any heavy or medium turrets because your ship is decorated with broadside guns like the broadside of a Christmas tree! Double sad. Christmas trees are sad, too -- they are tree corpses, and the decoration only makes that look awkward, not less sad.
So, no turrets. Only broadside guns. I mean, you can mount some snub defense turrets, solarises, secondaries, I don't know what you prefer, but that will hardly dent anything bigger than a snub. So, if you miss your broadside, or if the enemy is at your blindspot, you will be biting your lips. Freely continue biting them, doesn't matter. Bite your nails off if you like, too. You won't need either when you die. And that will happen pretty soon in this case.


So, in conclusion, this is insanely fun (for a short amount of time, until you start biting your body parts off). But it is also crazily useless. And it's mad for sure. You know how they say in the movies, "so mad it might work?" Well, this isn't a movie.

This is a video game. Well, not inRP, but I'm sure there's quite enough of edgy people inRP to actually consider this a good idea. I do read the communications channel from time to time, I know!
If this is going to be implemented, then yes, we need a special new class of ships.
If they are gunboat sized, they could wreck normal gunboats by firing those monsters while passing beside them, then withdrawing to safety until the energy is charged, and then passing again. They'd be wrecked by cruisers though, since they need to get close to actually hit them, and cruisers are just much stronger from close, no matter the armament.
The same goes for cruisers and for battleships. In short, this weapon is only good against the same (well, similar) ship class. By that reasoning, it would work best on battleships, because there is not a bigger class that could roflstomp them if they come close. There's just light, heavy and medium battleships, but a light one would still defeat a heavy one with this -- well, unless the heavy has it, too. Both will have precisely 0 weapons to deal with cruisers or battleships that have turrets and the ability to stay far, though.

So, a weapon only useful for brawling, and only useful against battleships. One of the numerous weapons whose primary use is against battleships. But what are battleships against? So far, while I've been flying my battleships, I've learned that everything is actually made to kill me, while I'm made for... I don't know? Are denial-something? What area am I supposed to deny, maybe a POB? I'll just get torped by a swarm, and then it's only a matter of time. Shooting at immobile bases? Killing... other battleships? Come on! Battleships must be made for killing something! They are -battle- ships! Hah. I surprise myself every time I kill someone who is not just another battleship!

I think that battleships don't need another weapon to fight each other. They can do that perfectly well already. I think that battleships need more weapons to fight other classes of ships. Razors are nice, but too specialized. Missiles are nice, but too unreliable -- one CD, or one CM, and poof! There goes the mightiest warhead in Sirius, disappearing into the vacuum, being as useful as us while we are playing video games. Fifteen Solarises also sound nice, 2000m/s speed, woah, but apparently they are very good at missing a boxing fighter at 500 meters distance. I swear I saw @Backo direct me a trollface when that happened!

Cruise disruptors for battleships could maybe be a nice start. Make them POB produced if you are worried about it. Can't be more cancerous than cloaks for sure. The CM slot already houses a CM, or a cloak, or an anticloak, and the turret slots already house this or that type of guns (albeit the medium slots are somewhat underused, they only have two types of weapons, primaries and pulses). Maybe a JD slot, or a docking bay slot? The docking bay slots already house nothing because docking bays don't work.


Lasers for aiming. A great idea for fixing the forward gun/SNAC bug. Would have never thought of that. The rest has somewhat of an "invented by a mad scientist" aroma to it, but aiming lasers I would never have thought of. Implement as fast as possible, I say!

PS: Sorry for the wall of text, by the way. I'm usually against these abominations. Oops. I just kept on writing. Don't read if you don't want to. Better go take your Valor to California than read some crazy thread that will have as much consequences as the one about reducing Gallic ship costs.

---

Bretonian Treaty Database Bretonian Armed Forces Recruitment Center
Bretonian Charter of Interstellar Law Bretonian Secrets Act

[sasapinjic]

Broadside ships have been proposed before, but since can actually be newbie friendly, it will not happen.

---

Spoiler

welcome to Loberty
^ where you can get Freelancer ISO , in emergency

These two spoilers were too big so now they're both one ~Champ

[TheShooter36]

In case of it is for a new class, then opinions changes, if given enough tankiness and enough projectile speed plus turn rate at cost of impulse speed, then it could work. As an example take Redemption, upscale it by %50, slap it 4m armor, reduce impulse speed to 45, slap 12 warwolf cannons to broadsides, profit.

---

[Thyrzul]

take Redemption, upscale it by %50, slap it 4m armor, reduce impulse speed to 45, slap 12 warwolf cannons to broadsides, profit.

---

[Enkidu]

If only titans didn't have to go byebye after a certain amount of time. Currently Unique Ships are more appealing than titans due to the time lock on Titans.


If Titans were limited only by being undone in death, then they'd be more fun. Want the titan gone? Kill the titan, don't wait it out.

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)

Information | Recruitment | Message Dump |
Feedback | Diplomatic channel

(Links pending redevelopment).

[Chills]

It would be too difficult to turn the cap in the right and exact position to be able to hit. just... make normal very heavy guns with small arcs that can fire in 45 - 90 degrees broadside. your laserpointers wont help handling the ship less complicated.

[Whenawhere]

I usually don't post in this kind of threads and I am for more ships in general. But please, do NOT bring more guns with fixed arcs. Those we already have are painful enough. Especially in laggy environment of Discovery.

---

No, I won't update my account to enable 3rd party hosting!