Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
The best defense against a laser would in my mind be to cover the ship in a superconductive material which are attached to an efficent heat dissapation system. That sort of system would effectivly make any energy weapon useless, provided you could elimante the heat from the energy weapon faster then it accumalted. So maybe you could have a deployable supercondietive sail? I picture larege cloth barriers attached to long roads almost like umbrellas exteneding out around the ship, which provided great laser defense but get torn apart by any other kind of attack.

I imagine then for this reason you'd want to close range to do kenetic or explosive damage. So having a mixed strategy of lasers, guns and missiles seems sounds.

How about filaments of superconducting material throughout your armor, as well?

Quote:Original post by serratemplar
"That could be exploited" (as in, used against you) was my first thought when I read that...then really I thought that could apply to almost everything defensewise in the game.

Right, there should always be this spiral between arms and armor, and the trick will be always matching offense and defense so that it stays interesting but not impossible for you when you play.

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No defense is fullproof (which is cool) and I imagine getting ALL the defenses would be next to impossible (unless you were inordinately wealthy...and thus have maybe won the game),

Well, the way I see it you COULD pack alot into defense, but you'd be a lumbering beast that the AI would nip at constantly. But since there are several strategies for taking down a ship, nothing is going to be foolproof. Even if you beat all the normal ships in the game, there are still the space monsters (Siegers) which have highly non-standard attacks like psychosis and morale drain. If I can wedge in tech levels (which are really just changing stats) then things will cycle between flux and stability, which should keep fights interesting.

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so maybe part of the game could be sensors/sensor hacking/etc, trying to determine your enemy's weakness(es)...as, at this point, there are so many you might never guess...so a round of fire may be entirely wasted or just what you needed to hit them with.

Intrinsic strategy. =)

Right. Normally, I think if a game has set piece battles where you HAVE to fight an enemy, then there should be a wide variety of strategies. But if there are more offense types than you could possibly carry in one ship, your gameplay should shift to recon and information gathering rather than just barging in not knowing what people are shooting with. This will keep the cycle of NPC interaction (via intel), leveling and money sinks going for quite some time.

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
O.K. THere are a couple of gaps in the structure of the ship armaments. 1 really cool thing you could do is have point defence lasers nothin powerful just enough to knock out hte missle or other small debris asteriods, slow moving weapon slugs, people, small 1 man fighters.

Good point. I did, however, post a thread that was strictly defense oriented here, if you're interested. Funny enough, it didn't have anywhere near the longevity of this thread (which tells me something about what people want to do[grin])

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OH and make sure there is no siloing where the customability of a ship can completly shuts down the fair ness like a ship that can hold over 50 slots of missle racks then the game is kinda over i dunno i ve betaed a few space games and ive seen them go down the drain from poor weapon balancing.

I know what you're saying, and I agree.

Balance should come naturally from stats, such as mass, acceleration and turn rate, power consumption and connective infrastructure. I'm not opposed to you having 50 missile racks, but you'll eventually find yourself pitted against ships that minimize your strategy: highly armored ships, or point defense laden squadrons, or ships too small and fast to target.

The way I see it, by the time you can have any kind of dominant strategy you'll need alot of high level ships with mixed weapons. If you get to that point, you deserve to be able to kick some serious butt.

Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
The best defense against a laser would in my mind be to cover the ship in a superconductive material which are attached to an efficent heat dissapation system.

Let's remember at this point that superconductive material isn't superconductive at all temperatures, and moreover isn't a perfect conductor of heat, only of electricity. Larry Niven's "superconductor of heat" still hasn't been realized in the world at large.

ld

"Another weapons system is something like interlocking weapons systems, so say you have target A, with ships B C and D within weapons range, ships B C and D fire at the target, hopefully destroying it."

I dont know who origionaly posted this but I stole it from soneone elses post.

What your talking about is called the "Link" system used extensively throughout the Navy. There are different variations on the Link system but the most commonly used for weapons and defense is Link 14. Link 14 allows all ships in a battle group to share radar and communication in real time and allows Aegis class DDG's and FFG's (Guided missle destoyers and Frigates) to instantly cordinate weapons and defense which is largely computerized.

The Aegis class destroyers and frigates are awesome pieces of equipment. A standard Aegis Class Guided Missle Destroyer has the automated Aegis system which allows it to 1, cordinate through link 14 to all the other ships in the battlegroup and 2, automaticaly (when set) detect and engage any non friendly IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signal. When a non friendly IFF signal is detected an Aegis class DDG or FFG fires 2 missles per target and keeps shooting until all targets are dead. These targets include incomeing missles, air planes, ships, ect. If the incomeing target is a missle and, in very rare events, the missle accually gets past our missles the ship fires it chaff guns filling the air with metal strips (meant to confuse radar) and the Seawiz(or phalanx) fires up.

If any of you have seen Sum of all Fears you've seen the Seawiz. It looks like R2DU on steroids with a hard-on.

Seawiz(Phalanx)

The Seawiz fires 20mm depleted uranium rounds at 3000 rounds per minute.

Now this is all just one ship. With 2-4 DDG's or FFG's in a battle group along with several other support vessels and a carrier one of our battle groups has more then enough firepower to defend itself. Then with a carriers fighter compliment of nearly 107 planes and the DDG's capable with firing cruis missles at a range of up to 1000 miles a battle group has more then enough fire power to retaliate.

Now imagine this in space? Close formation battlegroups utilizing link 14 cordinating all weapon, radar and defense systems...would be awesome...