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Finally got all the bugs worked out with respect to missiles and AI. So now its all play balancing.

The way it works right now, the battles are "slow" fighters and stuff stil turn and burn like no tomorrow, but the cap ships, missiles, and weapons in general are slow and deadly, think the battles fo battlestar galactica.







Screens will be dumped to this site for now

http://members.shaw.ca/ProjectSeven/Screens/

Later!

Wholly CRAP. Those are frigging amazing! GREAT JOB!

I like the torps. Curious, how good are the anti missile defenses?

50/50

the bwa's ships really have not, the uec has a good seutp, but the smaller ships like that destroyer really are hit and miss since its a projectile type defense, the bigger uec ships will have point defense beam weapons(we are still talking over what KIND, has to be something that could actually work_

The Meggedon, the workhorse of the standard BWA fleet, not something you want to meet up, only the uec cruiser and take this one down, and not in a straight face on fight, uec ships are tech based and long ranged, bwa ships are designed to maul up close, and this baby maules!

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX
the bigger uec ships will have point defense beam weapons(we are still talking over what KIND, has to be something that could actually work_

I would vote for some kind of laser: It hits instantly, can be aimed easily with optics/grav fields (dont know what kind og tech you guys will have). I mean, we're developing a pt def laser (<--link) right now (the US i mean). I dont know about power outputs/supplies, but it seems to make the most sense.

o my goooooaaaddd..
Damo, man those things are looking sweet as..well....droooolll.
I want an interview...

Looking amazing. And just because I know you like it here's a thread about particle beams and lasers.

ya um
I need to find a few people, if they want, to do some research on possible weapons.. say project youself 200 years in the future.. maby 300

around there, they need to be practical, with a real backing in science, also, there is a tech lag, here, the BWA is like russia basically, heavy metal with very limited tech capability,

the uec is like the americans, unbelivible tech, weapons, advantaged and battlefield tactics, but limited numbers and no real experience in wars(that part is different)

I"m looking at point defense lasers, we have an antimatter cannon for the bwa, a cannon that shoots out antimatter plasma, very short ranged, and slow, since its all magnetically accelerated, with very limited range.

Point defense lasers- I've been pondering this concept for my own modding the last few days, as well. The lasers should either be low power (requiring multiple hits to destroy incoming projectiles, that is) or very slow firing. I also toyed with very low tracking speeds combined with long fire duration and low damage rate. Gameplay wise, this would make ships not very effective at covering eachother from missiles moving laterally to them. But missiles with little lateral movement are far more vulnerable to these low-speed lasers.

They would require fairly extensive playtesting, though, I would think.

Would the antimatter plasma weapon be missile defense capable?

______

*EDIT*

Oh, and I love the new BWA models. Verra nice. [8D]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

ya um
I need to find a few people, if they want, to do some research on possible weapons.. say project youself 200 years in the future.. maby 300

I'm not 100% sure I can get a realistic picture of that far in the future, but I can certainly tell you where we'll be in about 100 years.

around there, they need to be practical, with a real backing in science, also, there is a tech lag, here, the BWA is like russia basically, heavy metal with very limited tech capability,

the uec is like the americans, unbelivible tech, weapons, advantaged and battlefield tactics, but limited numbers and no real experience in wars(that part is different)

Normal method of showing a tech lag is by making the more advanced side's weapons and equipment faster, smaller and with smoother edges, and have a higher efficiency (more damage per MW for energy weapons).

I"m looking at point defense lasers, we have an antimatter cannon for the bwa, a cannon that shoots out antimatter plasma, very short ranged, and slow, since its all magnetically accelerated, with very limited range.

PDLs are extremely easy if you have the necessary power. A 5 MW laser emitter can be rotated approximately 30° per second today, and that will likely increase to nearly 50° in around twenty years. In 100 years the track rate of that caliber of laser would be almost instantaneous.

An anti-matter containment shell can be made for firing out of a standard cannon or mounting as a missile warhead, with impact disabling the containment.

Anti-matter projectors are the only one of those that I can't forsee as being a viable offensive weapon (perhaps an emergency anti-missile/anti-fighter weapon). The end of the magnetic field would have to extend several dozen meters beyond the hull without distortion or the antimatter could flow back toward the firing ship. Range and velocity wouldn't be all that bad. With linear magnetic acceleration it would be easy to get the anti-matter stream out to a hundred kilometers with a velocity of twenty or thirty kilometers per second from a cannon that weighed only a couple tons (the beauty of ultra light projectiles). A sliding magnetic accelerator would have significant;y lower range and velocity along with more weight and more complex machinery, but it could still easily get a range of twenty kilometers with a velocity of around 300-500 meters per second(it would also be pulses instead of streams).

Thats all very usefull info.

This is the way its looking as of today(always damn changes)

UEC

The UEC is technologically more advanced, they have artificial gravity, faster ships, enhanced armor, better sensors, weapons, the works.

Their weapons are based on projections of future weapons, with a lot of guess work, the main cannons on most ships are Rail cannons, with massive range and firepower, the projecties have built in tracers and a self destruct, to prevent them from flying on forever and smashing into something(unlikly but thats buracracy for you)

For longer range they have torpedos, one and two stage weapons, they are self armored, fast, carry massive payloads and have excellent tracking, but are non-nuclear.

Point defense includes projectile defense, think the phanex gun on aircraft carriers, and for the bigger ships point defense lasers.

Now, these are some things we are considering but have not researched yet for them, some of these are just wild guessing too so bear with me.

1. A point singularty weapon, create a microscopic black hole and hurl it at a target, very low range and medium speed but very deadly. Capital ship weapon only

2. Some form of major laser/partical cannon, no idea what kind yet, but it would be big, only the bigger ships would have it, long charge and recharge time, very impressive range and good damage output, would be turrent based(this is just so we can get the cool tracking effect really, and the fact that with mirrors, and if its a laser, you dont need everything in line(theory))

3. Drones, launched from the bigger ships, they fly and fight on their own with no control from the cap ships, dont even know if this is possible in SS.

4. Some form of plasma/pules, whatever can be proven to work to replace the smaller rail guns.


BWA

The border worlds alliance has been isolated from the UEC and the rest of humanity for around 100 years(more info later), their tech is based on the need to survive, they dont have advanced tech, they dont have the time to make everything nice and soft and smooth. Everything they design is built to help them survive.

Their ships are slow, underpowered, and have massive armor. THey have limited sensor ranges, and low tech weapons, but every day is a fight to survive for them, they are not weak.

For weapons they use missiles, and lots of them, most BWA ships have 2x to 3x the number of tubes as the same class of UEC ships, theiir missiles are fast, but they have lesser ranges, and much less internal protection, a few stray shots can take them out, the longer the range, the less damage they can do(space and tech problems) unlike the uec.

Projectile weapons come from smoothbore cannons(as of right now, I want to change this) average range and average damange, the only good thing is they have a lot.

Most of their weapons are forward faceing, most of their ships dont have turrents.

For point defense, we are experimenting with patriot missiles, they would shoot down incomming torpedos and fighters, they would fire slow tho, and do a lot of damage, possible they could be kinetic if I cna get that to work.

Other weapons we are considering:

Mass Drivers: Massive guns on the bottom on some ships that hurl large projectiles are ships, do massive damage, average speed, long range. limited ammo

Antimatter projectile: A piece of antimatter is created and inserted into a tube via mag fields then accelerated down that tube and out towards the enemy. Slower speed and limited range(ANYTHING it contacted would wear it down) but massive damage, no armor would be able to wistand this. we were thinking of a torpedo, but, storing antimatter on a ship seems insane, and it makes the torpedo that much more complicated to have everything built in, have to see how practical this is.

EMP missile : knock out enemy electronics have no idea how long it would work for, or how you defend

Some kind of plasma weapon, posible to replace the smoothbores(I dont like the idea of them.. way to low tech for me)





To see this in modern terms, for the cap ships, imagine a Seawolf sub going up against an Akula, the seawolf has every advantage, but the akula has more tubes/firepower up front, 8 normal and 4 external or something, I cant remember

For fighters, think of a mig21 going up against a F22(ya its that bad)

Yeah, the Mig21 v. F22 is about right. The Mig can only win by sheer numbers and hitting power. Throw enough missiles at the Raptor, and at least a few should get through.

It's basically going to be tech versus the horde. Should be a blast[;)]

And now I've got to get back to writing up more of this stuff.

i think any PDL's should be very accurate rapid-fire anti-fighter/missle with low range and damage

oh, and the modles... WOW[&o]

If you're going high tech vs survival tech, large lasers vs rail guns would fit better.

For the high tech side:
A ten+ gigawatt laser (scientists recently test fired a one gigawatt laser without failure of any components) would work great for the main guns. It could be designed to use ammo as each shot could deplete the gasses in the discharge chamber, and mounting the lenses inline increases efficiency (and requires a turret).

A hundred megawatt laser for secondary weapons on the big ships and primary on the medium ships. Again it would need ammo in the form of replacement discharge chambers.

A five megawatt laser with a large focal lense for point defense weapons (the large focal lense to increase the amount of damaged area on the target).

A large bore rail gun firing exploding flak shells for fighter defense.

For the low tech side:
A large combustion smoothbore cannon (it's been around for nearly 600 years, why wouldn't it still be used in another 300?) firing shells with very large shaped charges for the main gun.

A medium combustion smoothbore cannon firing similar shells for secondary guns on the big ships and as main guns for the medium ships.

A static linear magnetic accellerator firing small steel slugs at a very high rate of fire (you can get a ROF of over 2000 rounds per second if you can load them fast enough) for a point and/or fighter defense weapon.


That's what I see for a tech split of an information based society (the US) vs an industrial based society (USSR) 300 years in the future.


Other things:
Point singularity projector - Very effective if you could get it to work, but due to each point singularity weighing several thousand to several million tons and requires a similar amount of gear to contain the gravity field and move it around, it becomes unrealistic to use on a ship (it takes 500 TW to launch a 1000 ton projectile at a speed of 1000 m/s).

Drones - Should be do-able with non-player controlable ships.

Mass driver - The tech necessary to build something that big would likely be beyond the ability of the low tech side's capabilities. A large linear combustion cannon (Hitler had one built in France during WW2 that could fire a 2,000 pound shell to an estimated range of 3,000 km) would be in line.

Anti-matter projectiles - I don't know exactly whether anti-matter can really be formed into a solid or not (current theory is no, however), which could make anti-matter projectiles a bit difficult.

EMP missiles - We currently have the technology to shield against EMP blasts. In 300 years EMP likely isn't going to be a concern to anything.

Plasma weapons - These fall into the same problem described under the anti-matter projectors in my previous post.

Anti-matter warheads - The anti-matter is stored (possibly created just prior to battle, depending on the size of the ship) elsewhere on the ship, then the anti-matter is injected into the containment system just before the shell is loaded into the gun or the missile is loaded into the launcher.

This is great advice

the 10gig and 100 watt are being implimented for the uec

the bwa is getting the pds rapid fire system

I"m looking at massdrivers for the big ships, along with other stuff

right now the bwa has the antimatter projectiles, they are the mag accell type, low range, high damage, might change later, but I kind of like them now cause of a cool effect with trails, I"ll post screens later

I have read from somewhere that today's experiments with antimatter require massive machinery and with that machinery it is possible create few grams of antimatter in each year (don't take this as fact becouse it might not be). With these numbers how low-tech army can possibly mass produce antimatter, no matter how far in the future? I also think that point singularity weapons are too advanced for 300 year technology. Maybe after 3000 years...

What exactly are mass driver and smoothbore weapons? I have idea but not very accurate. Anyway those seem to be large cannons which fire shells (like today's tanks). Could be useful in starship combat at close range, but wouldn't large stealth nukes had already vaporized target from 100k kilometers?

Speaking about it, I don't remember any word about stealth fighters, stealth bombers and stealth nukes. Are those going to be included? How big is Meggedon? 300 meter long? It would be easy to attach few black stealth nukes (which size would be near 3-phase Apollo rocket) to Meggedon's outer hull (think about missiles in fighter's wings). If UEC ships are nearby, just turn radar off, track UEC radar signatures, lock on target, use visual equipment (camera, telescope) to identify target, fire nuke! They don't see a thing. Or if they do and they turn their radars off...

And finally my vision about space dreadnought in the far future



Black squares are energy weapon turrets (laser, particle beam) and large black lines in edges of the hull are missile tubes (2+ missiles per tube). Large circle in middle of the front view is port of the straight facing energy cannon (laser, particle beam), which is capable use all available energy from reactors. Becouse it is in deep inside of the hull, it can't be destroyed. Speaking about reactors, those would take most interior of the ship and feed energy weapons.

Mission role: destroy defending starships and planetary to space weapons. Capable survive several hits of large nuclear weapons.

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX
3. Drones, launched from the bigger ships, they fly and fight on their own with no control from the cap ships, dont even know if this is possible in SS.

it could be done with fighters, make 'drones' and put launch bays on the capships and just launch the drones. The problem is there no way to enforce only putting the drones on certain capships. However, thats how I'd do it.
Perhaps milo could quick add some sort of (optional) filter (similar to fighter hardpoints) that only allows certain fighter/LCA types to be included as fighters on ships.