199 réponses à ce sujet

[jamesp81]

JunMadine wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't see why carriers would make dreadnoughts obsolete - they fill different roles. The chief effect of carriers would seem to be to effectively give FTL capabilities to fighters, which would make offensive operations easier and perhaps reduce frigate's screening role in fleet engagements.

All of the galaxy's warships seem pretty much useless against the reapers, though.

Space carriers appear to make space dreadnoughts obsolete for all the same reasons that real carriers make real battleships obsolete.

I felt this would be the case.  Carriers are not limited by the Treaty of Farixen. So the Alliance must have more than any other race as they were the ones to poineer them.  The number of fighters they carry and the number of warheads that the fighters can send at a Reapers shields combined with supporting fire from other ships can make a dent. 

I am sure that a carrier would have guardian defenses and maybe a small (Thanix cannon?) gun to fight ships.

In reality, I suspect carriers would do everything they could to stay as far away from other ships as possible, and use frigates and cruisers as meat shields against other warships.  That's pretty much how it works nowadays.  A carrier centric space fleet would also likely spawn a class of dedicated escort ships.  I would not be susprised to see specialized frigates that have nothing but GARDIAN defensive weapons to protect from missile attacks.

[TheRevanchist]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

kylecouch wrote...

Whos that?...I've been gone from the forums for several months now and returned to find a Mirandafied Ashley Williams and have been venting in rage ever since...

About the only person on these forums, a self-proclaimed Renegade (but really only pro-Miranda/Cerberus) poster who inulges in that rhetorical insanity.

Sounds like a human being with a very sad exsistence....in that case I profusely apologize to the other Renegade players for lumping them into a catagory like that.

[nikki191]

Clonedzero wrote...

honestly i dont see the wisdom in dreadnoughts, sure they're massive and destructive. but its a single vessel and for the same amount of resources, money and manpower you could create a small fleet of frigates and crusiers which would be far more useful

personally i'd rather have two dozen cruisers than a single dreadnought. since i think a reaper would actually have an easier time fighting a dreadnought or two than a fleet of cruisers.

i mean look how badass the SR2 is. the thanix cannon on that worked pretty damn well against the collector ship. and it was a fleet of figates and cruisers that killed sovereign. the dreadnought in that battle was fairly useless from what i could tell.

dont forget that equally the admiral that inspects the sr1 would of prefered to of spent the resources on fighters, etc

[Jigero]

jamesp81 wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't see why carriers would make dreadnoughts obsolete - they fill different roles. The chief effect of carriers would seem to be to effectively give FTL capabilities to fighters, which would make offensive operations easier and perhaps reduce frigate's screening role in fleet engagements.

All of the galaxy's warships seem pretty much useless against the reapers, though.

Space carriers appear to make space dreadnoughts obsolete for all the same reasons that real carriers make real battleships obsolete.

That doesn't make much sense, The only reason carriers on earth made Battle Ships opsolete is because carries could launch attacks far out of the range on a battle ships guns. Where in space the Carriers would be at the dissadvantage. The Dreadnuaghts have practally unlimited range, firing rounds that move just under the speed of light. They would easily snipe a carried from half way across a solar system and move away before the carrier could even scramble it's fighters and have them get into range of attacking or even move out of the way.

[jamesp81]

Jigero wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't see why carriers would make dreadnoughts obsolete - they fill different roles. The chief effect of carriers would seem to be to effectively give FTL capabilities to fighters, which would make offensive operations easier and perhaps reduce frigate's screening role in fleet engagements.

All of the galaxy's warships seem pretty much useless against the reapers, though.

Space carriers appear to make space dreadnoughts obsolete for all the same reasons that real carriers make real battleships obsolete.

That doesn't make much sense, The only reason carriers on earth made Battle Ships opsolete is because carries could launch attacks far out of the range on a battle ships guns. Where in space the Carriers would be at the dissadvantage. The Dreadnuaghts have practally unlimited range, firing rounds that move just under the speed of light. They would easily snipe a carried from half way across a solar system and move away before the carrier could even scramble it's fighters and have them get into range of attacking or even move out of the way.

Your estimation of dreadnought weapons is incorrect.  According to the codex....

"An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one twenty-kilogram slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% the speed of light) every two seconds."

1.3% of light speed isn't in any way "just under the speed of light".  At 1.3% of light speed, a carrier would have plenty of time to evade a projectile fired from long ranges.  Also, defending escort vessels would have plenty of time to engage incoming projectiles with active defenses.

Space carriers still obsolete dreadnoughts for most of the same reasons.  Fighters can attack from ranges at which dreadnought weapons are largely ineffective.  Also, the complete loss of a carrier's fighter squadron represents far less in terms of manpower and materiel lost than the loss of a dreadnought.

Dreadnoughts are too expensive to be risked in combat and are vulnerable to attack by much cheaper weapons systems.

Hell, Admiral Mikhailovic in ME1 indicated that for the cost of Normandy's drive core, they could've built drive cores for 12,000 fighters.  Fighters are cheap.  Carriers can easily evade dreadnought weapons fire as long as they have enough speed to maneuver against a dreadnought (not hard, considering how large and unmaneuverable a dreadnought is).  While a carrier can't maneuver against frigates or cruisers, that's what escorting frigates and cruisers are for.

[MDT1]

I'm not so sure you can say Dreadnoughts are obsolete because Battleships are obsolete on earth.
Didn't know a BS could FTL at 120km distance fire its main gun once or twice and see the carrier explode 30 seconds later.
Even if less maneuverable a FTL space fleet can outrun any fighter squad aproaching it if there is no reason to stay there. I see carriers in ME more as an addon to a "conventional fleet".

[Wulfram]

What made sea Dreadnoughts obsolete were torpedoes and aircraft.  Carriers were just a part of that.

In the Mass Effect universe, Fighters aren't a new invention and if Dreadnoughts were so vulnerable to them then they would always have been pretty useless - and the aliens unfeasibly stupid in not coming up with the carrier idea.

The Thanix cannon is a more serious threat to Dreadnoughts role on the battlefield, though, since that is genuinely new tech.  The whole concept of such ships relies on their superior armour and shields giving them meaningful protection - if offensive power steps up without defences making a similar breakthrough then they're in trouble.

[JunMadine]

I know that I want to a fleet engagement in ME3. However conventional tactics would probably not work against reapers. Does anyone know if Nazara had anti-fighter defenses? I don't think so but you think that it would.

[MDT1]

Has it been confirmed by BW that Thanix cannons scale well with size?
It has to be seen if it realy makes dreadnought main guns obsolete. Though Sovereign hit hard it didn't seem like nuclear explosions to me ^^. Perhaps they were just his close combat weapons.

Modifié par MDT1, 13 mai 2011 - 09:24 .

[Bad King]

ReconTeam wrote...

iOnlySignIn wrote...
http://masseffect.wi...eaty_of_Farixen

Considering the Systems Alliance is now a full council member, I expect that means humanity is/ought to be building more dreadnoughts

Plus the Alliance has built a load of carriers which are outside the Treaty of Farixen's jurisdiction.

[Nashiktal]

Bad King wrote...

ReconTeam wrote...

iOnlySignIn wrote...
http://masseffect.wi...eaty_of_Farixen

Considering the Systems Alliance is now a full council member, I expect that means humanity is/ought to be building more dreadnoughts

Plus the Alliance has built a load of carriers which are outside the Treaty of Farixen's jurisdiction.

Dreadnoughts take a long time to build. Even if one was built in the 2 1/2 years since ME1, thats a whole lot less than can take on the reapers.

[jamesp81]

JunMadine wrote...

I know that I want to a fleet engagement in ME3. However conventional tactics would probably not work against reapers. Does anyone know if Nazara had anti-fighter defenses? I don't think so but you think that it would.

I wrote a fanfic that dealt with anti fighter defenses on Reapers (see my sig)

Short version, I theorized that their main guns could be tuned to fire much lower power bursts with a much higher rate of fire for the purpose of fighter defense.

[jamesp81]

Nashiktal wrote...

Bad King wrote...

ReconTeam wrote...

iOnlySignIn wrote...
http://masseffect.wi...eaty_of_Farixen

Considering the Systems Alliance is now a full council member, I expect that means humanity is/ought to be building more dreadnoughts

Plus the Alliance has built a load of carriers which are outside the Treaty of Farixen's jurisdiction.

Dreadnoughts take a long time to build. Even if one was built in the 2 1/2 years since ME1, thats a whole lot less than can take on the reapers.

That's kind of my own point about dreadnoughts not being so good against Reapers.  Reapers can pretty much insta kill anything they can get their weapons on.  Dreadnoughts are a case of putting too many eggs in one basket.  Terribly expensive and vulnerable to something like a Reaper.

[jamesp81]

MDT1 wrote...

I'm not so sure you can say Dreadnoughts are obsolete because Battleships are obsolete on earth.
Didn't know a BS could FTL at 120km distance fire its main gun once or twice and see the carrier explode 30 seconds later.
Even if less maneuverable a FTL space fleet can outrun any fighter squad aproaching it if there is no reason to stay there. I see carriers in ME more as an addon to a "conventional fleet".

The problem is that carriers have the same FTL drive that dreadnoughts do.  The same tech that lets a dreadnought dart around at FTL gives the carrier the same ability to dart away.  Furthermore, charging up an FTL drive is likely something that would easily show up on passive sensors, so it's not like you wouldn't know it's coming.

[MDT1]

jamesp81 wrote...

The problem is that carriers have the same FTL drive that dreadnoughts do.  The same tech that lets a dreadnought dart around at FTL gives the carrier the same ability to dart away.  Furthermore, charging up an FTL drive is likely something that would easily show up on passive sensors, so it's not like you wouldn't know it's coming.

Well I don't know how fast the dn could jump out again, but that wasn't the point. It was more about jumping in and sniping the carrier.
Also if the carrier just jumps out he looses his fighters.
Ther are two problems in this discussion:
1. You just can't compare modern naval combat with space combat
2. I don't think real space combat would look like anything presented in ME especiall if you have ftl drive (I gues ftl a solid object into another would surpass any destruction).
While two hand a half times hiroshima seem to be impressive for a DN main gun, russia detonated a nuke that was more than 3800 time hiroshima.

But in the fictive ME setting I wouldn't be surprised if the only problem with DN vs reapers is that there are to few DNs.

Modifié par MDT1, 13 mai 2011 - 10:17 .

[Random Thoughts]

How many carriers are there? Carriers can't be really effective weapons if there are too few.
Also, I thought carriers were the size of dreadnoughts...

[wulf3n]

MDT1 wrote...
Also if the carrier just jumps out he looses his fighters.

With fighters having the ftl capability themselves (note: thats an assumption based opon the fact that the kodiak shuttle has ftl, so the drive core obviously fits in small craft, but it is never said that fighters have ftl) the carrier doesn't even need to be anywhere near the combat.

Which is exactly why aircraft carriers are so effective. A way to deploy cheap vehicles with the capability of destorying enemy ships (thannix cannon) without ever putting your expensive carrier in harms way.

[Wulfram]

I assume most fighters have no or limited FTL capability, because building an expensive Carrier to ferry around FTL capable ships seems a bit pointless.

[wulf3n]

Wulfram wrote...

I assume most fighters have no or limited FTL capability, because building an expensive Carrier to ferry around FTL capable ships seems a bit pointless.

Probably limited given the size, but it's still not really pointless. Even if they had as much ftl capabilty as a carrier, they still need to resupply, refuel, re-arm, pilot needs rest and food, and a carrier is a mobile base, with all these things.

edit: And if they have no ftl, chuck a thannix cannon on a bunch of kodiaks and call it a fighter. 

Modifié par wulf3n, 13 mai 2011 - 11:42 .

[kaiki01]

jamesp81 wrote...

Jigero wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't see why carriers would make dreadnoughts obsolete - they fill different roles. The chief effect of carriers would seem to be to effectively give FTL capabilities to fighters, which would make offensive operations easier and perhaps reduce frigate's screening role in fleet engagements.

All of the galaxy's warships seem pretty much useless against the reapers, though.

Space carriers appear to make space dreadnoughts obsolete for all the same reasons that real carriers make real battleships obsolete.

That doesn't make much sense, The only reason carriers on earth made Battle Ships opsolete is because carries could launch attacks far out of the range on a battle ships guns. Where in space the Carriers would be at the dissadvantage. The Dreadnuaghts have practally unlimited range, firing rounds that move just under the speed of light. They would easily snipe a carried from half way across a solar system and move away before the carrier could even scramble it's fighters and have them get into range of attacking or even move out of the way.

Your estimation of dreadnought weapons is incorrect.  According to the codex....

"An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one twenty-kilogram slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% the speed of light) every two seconds."

1.3% of light speed isn't in any way "just under the speed of light".  At 1.3% of light speed, a carrier would have plenty of time to evade a projectile fired from long ranges.  Also, defending escort vessels would have plenty of time to engage incoming projectiles with active defenses.

Reading this sentence. It looks like 4025 km/s is not the max velocity of a mass accelerator, just the acceleration for the slug is 2012.5 km/s^2. Since the sentence says "every two seconds" rather then "in two seconds".

[Dean_the_Young]

Nashiktal wrote...

Bad King wrote...

ReconTeam wrote...

iOnlySignIn wrote...
http://masseffect.wi...eaty_of_Farixen

Considering the Systems Alliance is now a full council member, I expect that means humanity is/ought to be building more dreadnoughts

Plus the Alliance has built a load of carriers which are outside the Treaty of Farixen's jurisdiction.

Dreadnoughts take a long time to build. Even if one was built in the 2 1/2 years since ME1, thats a whole lot less than can take on the reapers.

Dreadnoughts take resources, but time-restraints in the Mass Effect universe for building things have always been incredibly short.

[wulf3n]

kaiki01 wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...
Your estimation of dreadnought weapons is incorrect.  According to the codex....

"An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one twenty-kilogram slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% the speed of light) every two seconds."

1.3% of light speed isn't in any way "just under the speed of light".  At 1.3% of light speed, a carrier would have plenty of time to evade a projectile fired from long ranges.  Also, defending escort vessels would have plenty of time to engage incoming projectiles with active defenses.

Reading this sentence. It looks like 4025 km/s is not the max velocity of a mass accelerator, just the acceleration for the slug is 2012.5 km/s^2. Since the sentence says "every two seconds" rather then "in two seconds".

What it's saying is a dreadnought can fire a Single 20kg slug at 1.3% percent the speed of light  every two seconds, meaning in 4 seconds it would fire 2 20kg slug at 1.3% percent the speed of light.

Once the slug has left the 800m mass accelerator it stops accelerating.

[jamesp81]

MDT1 wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

The problem is that carriers have the same FTL drive that dreadnoughts do.  The same tech that lets a dreadnought dart around at FTL gives the carrier the same ability to dart away.  Furthermore, charging up an FTL drive is likely something that would easily show up on passive sensors, so it's not like you wouldn't know it's coming.

Well I don't know how fast the dn could jump out again, but that wasn't the point. It was more about jumping in and sniping the carrier.
Also if the carrier just jumps out he looses his fighters.
Ther are two problems in this discussion:
1. You just can't compare modern naval combat with space combat
2. I don't think real space combat would look like anything presented in ME especiall if you have ftl drive (I gues ftl a solid object into another would surpass any destruction).
While two hand a half times hiroshima seem to be impressive for a DN main gun, russia detonated a nuke that was more than 3800 time hiroshima.

But in the fictive ME setting I wouldn't be surprised if the only problem with DN vs reapers is that there are to few DNs.

As I said, it's not as if a carrier won't see the dreadnought coming when it detects the DN's mass effect drive spinning up.  The solution is simple.  The carrier simply spins its drive and jumps a short distance away.  It doesn't even have to be far.....just far enough that the DN's main gun isn't lined up on the carrier anymore.  There's no reason why a carrier can't make this short FTL jump.  They also don't leave their fighters behind when a carrier makes a short jump.  Even if a carrier made a "long" jump all it has to do is jump back to recover it's fighter squadron.

Dreadnoughts are too slow vs Reapers.  You need ships that aren't sitting ducks for a Reaper's main weapons.  That means mostly frigates and lots of fighters.

[jamesp81]

wulf3n wrote...

MDT1 wrote...
Also if the carrier just jumps out he looses his fighters.

With fighters having the ftl capability themselves (note: thats an assumption based opon the fact that the kodiak shuttle has ftl, so the drive core obviously fits in small craft, but it is never said that fighters have ftl) the carrier doesn't even need to be anywhere near the combat.

Which is exactly why aircraft carriers are so effective. A way to deploy cheap vehicles with the capability of destorying enemy ships (thannix cannon) without ever putting your expensive carrier in harms way.

Even if the carrier FTL jumps out of the battle for a while, it's not as if the fighter squadons auto-die because the carrier retreated.  When the battle is over, the carrier simply returns to recover its squadron.  And that's assuming fighters don't have FTL.  I don't actually know the answer to that, but given that the shuttle has it, it's at least conceivable a fighter could too.

Hell, now that I think about it, there's no reason for carriers to be within FTL jump range of a dreadnought, ever.  Carriers could just drop out of FTL, dump their squadons, and leave by FTL.  They can return to recover their fighters when the battle ends.

Modifié par jamesp81, 14 mai 2011 - 02:33 .

[jamesp81]

kaiki01 wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Jigero wrote...

jamesp81 wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't see why carriers would make dreadnoughts obsolete - they fill different roles. The chief effect of carriers would seem to be to effectively give FTL capabilities to fighters, which would make offensive operations easier and perhaps reduce frigate's screening role in fleet engagements.

All of the galaxy's warships seem pretty much useless against the reapers, though.

Space carriers appear to make space dreadnoughts obsolete for all the same reasons that real carriers make real battleships obsolete.

That doesn't make much sense, The only reason carriers on earth made Battle Ships opsolete is because carries could launch attacks far out of the range on a battle ships guns. Where in space the Carriers would be at the dissadvantage. The Dreadnuaghts have practally unlimited range, firing rounds that move just under the speed of light. They would easily snipe a carried from half way across a solar system and move away before the carrier could even scramble it's fighters and have them get into range of attacking or even move out of the way.

Your estimation of dreadnought weapons is incorrect.  According to the codex....

"An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one twenty-kilogram slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% the speed of light) every two seconds."

1.3% of light speed isn't in any way "just under the speed of light".  At 1.3% of light speed, a carrier would have plenty of time to evade a projectile fired from long ranges.  Also, defending escort vessels would have plenty of time to engage incoming projectiles with active defenses.

Reading this sentence. It looks like 4025 km/s is not the max velocity of a mass accelerator, just the acceleration for the slug is 2012.5 km/s^2. Since the sentence says "every two seconds" rather then "in two seconds".

I don't think that's what it's saying. I ran the math.  A 20 kilogram slug traveling at 4025 km/s has the kinetic energy of a 38.7 kiloton nuclear weapon.  In the game, the gunnery guy speaking to the recruits on the citadel makes the point to the new recruits that the slug impacts with this much kinetic energy, and that a dreadnought fires one of these projectiles every two seconds.

The mass accelerator on a human dreadnought fires one 20 kilogram slug every two seconds, each with a velocity of 4025 km/s.  It is exactly as it appears by the codex entries and by the speech given by the soldier on the citadel to the new recruits.

Edit:

This is the youtube clip of the guy chewing out the recruits and explaining the mass accelerator on a dreadnought.  Take particular note that he says, and I quote:

"it impacts with the force of a 38 kiloton bomb"

Notice the word impacts.  That means when it strikes it's target, the projectile has the kinetic energy of a 38 kiloton bomb.  As I said above, I crunched the numbers: a projectile massing 20 kilograms moving at 4025 km/s has 38.7 kilotons of kinetic energy (actually, kinetic energy is properly measured in joules.  A 20 kg object moving at 4205 km/s has 162006250000000 joules of energy.  That, however, converts to 38.7 kilotons).  That means when the projectile leaves a dreadnought's main gun, it's going 4025 km/s.  It will continue going 4025 km/s until it hits something.  And then that something that got hit will have its day ruined.

Modifié par jamesp81, 14 mai 2011 - 02:51 .