[Yooey]

Several potential options are available, and it will likely take a combination of these tactics to bring our quarry to heel. Success rate of any of these options could be improved by way of landing an electronic warfare tag on the Crooked Star; however, this could tip our hand as it would almost certainly require all of the same tactics just to get the tag in place.

– Induce target to doubleback on ordnance in flight.
Horizon attempted two separate close-quarters launches of heavy ordnance in our last engagement. On both occasions, the target narrowly escaped by means of jump drive or warp burst. The less effective means at the Crooked Star’s disposal seems to be the warp drive: at warp speeds it is only marginally faster than heavy ordnance. It is possible that a ship, perhaps in concert with another vessel, could lure the Crooked Star on such a flight path at warp speeds that our target doubles-back on the flight path of our ordnance.

– Through coordination, catch them with Teleback systems cooling down.
Coordinated action between multiple vessels could also result in a successful delivery of heavy ordnance. The goal here is to take advantage of the target’s inability to jump repeatedly in rapid succession. This maneuver would involve one vessel confronting the target and inducing it to Teleback, where a second vessel would be waiting to deploy their own ordnance at close range.

– Extreme risk, point-blank firing of ordnance.
Imagine an Echo-2, but instead firing Omega-3 at a range of less than 100 in order to all-but-eliminate target’s opportunity to react. The potential pitfalls of this option, even performed at warp speeds, are obvious. Risk is substantially reduced if deploying more conventional torpedoes, though if our target has a tractor emitter getting locked down could still have a deadly result.

– E-War Tag
Tagging the target should reduce the Crooked Star’s jump range, and possibly its warp duration, preventing it from fleeing out of ordnance range quite so readily, but it still has a good chance to escape incoming torpedoes through a combination of its jump and warp modules.

– Cluster Mine
Even after we’ve landed an EMP, our target’s shield grid is extremely resilient. Bringing it down would require several successful impacts from heavy ordnance, and it’s abundantly clear that self-propelled projectiles are hit-or-miss. The ability to make our own miniature minefield in a desired location on-demand could provide the necessary impact and deliverability.

Our safest, most effective option is probably a point-blank delivery of an EMP and E-War Tag, followed up by luring our target over a cluster mine. Should the safe method fail, greater risks may become necessary.

[Yooey]

A main area of concern with regard to choosing a location is early warning. As we will have all noted, our advanced warning for our most recent home away from home was barely adequate despite having half a sector of open space in the way of warning. Few if any other potential locates improve on this level of notice of incursion. Some attractive sectors feature nebula ribbons that connect to several adjacent sectors; however, whereas we would enjoy obscurity while based there, so too would inbound patrols combing the system for just our sort of riffraff. Even if we were to eliminate these patrols silently, it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out which ribbons tend to result in their ships going MIA. If we wished to seek out locations similar to the one we previously enjoyed, there are a few comparable ones.

The asteroid field in Onwia II offers us a similar threat detection perimeter, and the asteroids themselves offer a kind of passive drone screen for the base as well. However, that screen works against us in a defensive scenario as well, getting in the path of our own ordnance as well as presenting another reason for our shields to fail besides enemy fire while maneuvering–sorry, helm officers, but it happens to the best of us. Another asteroid field in Drenan IX by and large gives us all the same opportunities and consequences as Onwia II.

Onwia IV features a sparse debris field and spotty off-cast nebula. Not much to hide behind, and mighty close to our previous location, this is perhaps not our best option. Conversely, depending on what our fleet alien psychology students have to say, the ill suitability may be the best way to go unnoticed.

The disconnected ribbon in Drenan XIII features a slight improvement upon most nebula ribbon locations. There’s plenty of open space on most sides for us to detect inbound patrols, and the ribbon does have that breakage in Drenan X that affords us the opportunity to catch patrols that are routed along the nebula.

A final technique we might employ is to simply forego a stationary base of operations and run with a mobile one for a time until either the heat dies down or we find ourselves simply unable to continue our mission. A supply convoy kept mobile along the adjoining ribbons and asteroid field throughout Drenan III, IV, VII, and VIII gives us numerous intersections around which we might juke Hegemony traffic. This would give us the option to not necessarily destroy warships on approach, so that we cannot be triangulated from our wake of destruction.

Then again, there’s also the option of bugging out to Ibroan and commuting to our assigned target area.

[Yooey]

If our goal is to disrupt the hegemony war effort while avoiding collateral damage, our objectives should be to:

– Destroy military assets: ships, static defenses, resupply posts, materiel and supply transports, and communication centers.

– Disrupt economic factors: destroy existing stocks of raw material, prevent acquisition of new material, harass civilian shipping and induce delays in the movement of non-military goods and even recreational activities that generate revenue that could be appropriated for the war effort.

Mr. Pierce pointed out the Whale Hunting grounds in Drenan §4. Given our recent attacks on mining facilities and the shipyard, this would seem to be a rational target to hit instead. I’m not well versed in the Hegemony’s culture or economic structure; however, regardless of whether these hunting grounds serve a recreational or material role in our foes’ lives they are likely to be the softest target for our next sortie.

The next best alternative, if we wish to avoid habitually striking the same locales repeatedly, is to attempt to disrupt and delay everyday traffic by harassing transports moving between gates, stations, spaceborne facilities, and planets. We don’t even necessarily need to destroy our targets if we can induce them to try to flee from a perceived threat and attempt to lose their pursuer in a direction that doesn’t correspond with their flight plan. The biggest hurdle in this activity is obscuring our identity, limiting this activity to areas where clear sensor readings cannot be taken.

It might even be ideal if we could successfully shut down one of the gates in Drenan or beyond for a significant period, just to bring regular movements to a standstill. Indeed, we should be harassing traffic and crashing gates as frequently as we can without revealing a pattern to our movements.

[Yooey]

I took the liberty of rebasing to 2012 for you. File has been sent to you via Discord direct message.

(mentioning it here so onlookers see that it’s been done).

[Yooey]

Update: With a couple handfuls of notable exceptions, I have finished the process of (1) fixing every beam, impulse, and maneuver node that was previously not working, (2) adding maneuver and impulse nodes to any ships that previously lacked them, and (3) exhaustively testing every single ship to ensure every single node works–albeit a few do require particular angles of attack.

Exceptions:
– Ntani Ranger: as a solar sail craft, it seemed appropriate that it should lack any nodes of any kind.
– Biomechs Stage 1-4: they’re pseudo-biologicals we don’t quite understand, and they can be scrambled by Comms messages. These points seemed reason enough to skip them.
– Command Ships: as I discussed with Xavier, the vast majority of command ship beam nodes will remain “broken” so as to preserve the threatening nature of these vessels; however, they all now have at least ONE beam node which DOES WORK from the right angle. Impulse and Maneuver nodes on all command ships now also work.
– Caltron Swarm and Superswarm: caltrons provide a rather unique challenge for fixing their beam nodes. It might even be impossible to preserve existing arcs on some of them while making them work properly. For the Swarm and Superswarm, being command-esque versions of the caltrons, I opted to leave most of their nodes as they are, in a non-working state, and make just a couple nodes work. Impulse nodes are fixed and tested working. As for maneuver nodes, no caltron of any size or combination has any maneuver nodes. I took that as a hint and didn’t add any.

I performed all of these fixes on a base of TSN Mod Version 2011. I’m ready to generate a branch and initiate a pull request on Github whenever y’all are ready for it. Just drop me a line and let me know which Repository to branch from.

[Yooey]

I spoke to Matsiyan about getting the civvies done last night. I have many (all?) of them ready, and asked about which Git Repository from which to branch and generate a pull request. I’ve been asked not to create a pull request to implement the civilian node fixes until a number of other things are worked out with regard to reconciling some other vesseldata branches. Matsiyan has stated he’ll let me know when he’s ready for them.

Until then I’m moving forward on fixing literally all of the non-working nodes (including beam nodes, with a few notable exceptions, i.e. command ships), and adding impulse / maneuver nodes to any ship that doesn’t have them.

[Yooey]

Video of testing session as requested: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/497471398

[Yooey]

You’re right that boosted beams will recover far and away faster than beams left at baseline. The gains made will be different depending on whether beams are fired manually or automatically. I’d need to talk to Starry to confirm the precise figures, but it is my understanding that 300% beams fired manually will cycle 9 times faster than baseline, whereas 300% beams fired automatically will cycle only 3 times faster. Working from a 40 second baseline, that’ll be 4.4 seconds manual and 13.3 seconds auto. You could take these figures and toy with them to work out how often you want to fire when boosted.

Now, you could spin this in one of three ways:
– Take it as an opportunity to adjust the beams to hit harder without worrying about trying to conduct firing passes more frequently than you’d expected, as you suggest, or . . .
– Accept it as a feature that you don’t need to boost beams under most conditions. You can instead shunt that power and coolant into keeping both fore and aft shields healthier and cooler for longer periods of time without failing, along with boosting warp or maneuver to minimize your exposure, or . . .
– Optimal damage requires free reign on the target. It is entirely reasonable that you’re going to land fewer shots on target while avoiding fire than if you were to post up and blast away. This is true with all manner of weaponry and vehicles. Your attempts to evade enemy fire necessarily prevent you from killing your target as quickly as you could otherwise.

Now, the 4.4 second boosted firing rate may simply be a valid answer to my Gunnery-Boredom concern, particularly when engaged in Kappa or when locked into a tractor beam. One thing you definitely don’t want is to be tractored by a Skaraan Executor, have your weapons officer miss the weapon node on his first shot (which in manual will expend all beams in range simultaneously in most cases), and end up sitting there clicking furiously for 20-30 seconds while the Executor looks back at you through mirrored sunglasses taunting you: “Stop trying to hit me and HIT ME!”

[Yooey]

I absolutely love what you’ve done with this. The only factors that jump out at me as items that would inhibit this from being a candidate for a Line vessel would be, well, its comparative inability to hold a line: its want of shield strength and total lack of appropriate drone defense in the form of a beam that fires more than once before lunchtime. As a support and harassment vessel, I think it would be nicely effective.

The mobility, arcs, and engagement philosophy should keep a helmsman happy and engaged. Speaking solely as a Weapons Officer, I worry about your gunner’s boredom with beams that *all* have long cycle times and such a tight leash on ordnance. The engineer, however, would have no shortage of things to do between bracing for an attack run and helping the helm set up for the next pass. I don’t see that this ship’s design significantly affects either of the Science or Comms roles.

For a Delta-1 Attack specialist–officially described as firing on the enemy while avoiding return fire–the beam arcs are not the design I would have chosen; the narrowness and progressive shortness of arc necessarily means that when you fire on the enemy you *will* be taking fire in return, and if acting alone very likely swooping down the lion’s maw rather than merely exposing yourself to its claws. However, beam arcs as shown will certainly lend well to the strafing run approach which we usually see performed, and which you describe as the focus of this model.

At current stage of my thinking (albeit less than an hour, and I am one to obsess for several before making solid decisions) I don’t know if I would recommend the Kharvaach as a mainstay of the 4th Light’s lineup, but I’d be overjoyed to have her as a supporting element.

TL;DR: Great Job! I think I’d have fun with this ship, but as a Weapons Officer I don’t know if I’d want a permanent posting on it.

[Yooey]

It may also be worth considering misdirection maneuvers to draw Rumerian attention away from our intermediate and/or ultimate destinations. We are small in number, which impresses even more the need to be perceived as somehow both everywhere and nowhere.

Perhaps the Hjorden, under stealth, could spoof 4LD ship signatures and quietly slip away. We could even go as far as dispatching TSN Lancer with her superior speed to penetrate deeper into Rumerian space under silent running to create a ruckus, and then sneak away again to rendezvous with the rest of the division later on.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Xavier.

[Yooey]

I practically write a novel on the subject and you only disagree with one thing?
I don’t believe you. There must be more. Fess up!

But on that subject, the sequence of events that I envision is as follows:

A fleet is spawned and begins moving to target. As is typical, they form a line with some spaces between ships; neither a dense cluster nor a particularly spaced out line. Just far enough that they don’t have overlapping arcs of fire with each other. It is into that gap that the Independent Broadside or Hybrid Broadside embeds itself: drop out of warp and maneuver between those ships, situating within one ship’s firing arc, but directly astern another foe. The broadside then lets loose with port and starboard guns with the weapons officer switching back and forth between targets. It takes less than a second to reposition the cursor from one ship to the other unless there is a fair amount of lag. With a normal cycle time of 6 seconds and running at 300% power, the weapons officer would have a 2 second window to switch targets from A to B and back to A again without losing any dps in the process (except for what is sacrificed by not using manual beams).

I imagine the targets would die before other (non-fighter) enemies would close-in, since full damage is brought to bear on both targets. In this time, the ship is taking damage only from one enemy, and after they’re dead the independent / hybrid broadside goes looking for another such juicy gap, or is free to engage ‘normally’ with only one side. Overlapping Broadside wouldn’t have this capability.

But maybe opportunities like this aren’t as common as they subjectively seem.

[Yooey]

Let me just open with this: please do not read this as complaint or whining or huffing & puffing. This is just my process as I try to think through the problem in an organized fashion. This STARTED as an essay to argue in favor of the merits of implementing a ship with a Broadside configuration, and then I decided to broaden my scope and try to articulate the problem itself in addition to my favored solution. For this reason, this could be a bit disjointed, although I’ve tried to clean it up.

At the end of the day, this is just the text document I wrote for myself to keep my own thoughts recorded so I didn’t forget something. So, getting into it…

Having our Ares-class discussion in the way we’ve been doing it on Discord–jumping between narrow focuses over an extended period of time with a bunch of Lancer mess inbetween–strikes me as less than ideal. It doesn’t offer a broad overview of design flaws, compromises, and strengths. I decided the best way to approach this (as most things) is with a comprehensive writeup. So here’s a write-up of my accumulated thoughts on the subject.

Full disclosure, I’m a huge proponent of a broadside class. I’m in love with the idea. I was putting one together (for a non-TSN group) before I even heard that Phoenix was being reclassed. Nonetheless, I’ve made an effort to consider other possibilities (see below), although admittedly I’ve done so without spending hours conceptualizing how each of them could work. If one of the alternative possibilities spark interest, I’ll consider it further.

Controlling Ideas. 

Fleet config -- then & now: 
Raven -- Battlecruiser // Artemis
Phoenix -- Artemis // Ares
Horizon -- Valkyrie // Valkyrie
Viper -- Apollo // Apollo
Lancer -- Nemesis // Nemesis

No treading on other roles: 
Artemis - Jack All, from which all others are derived.
Valkyrie - Torpedo specialist
Apollo - Face-to-face brawler
Nemesis - Interceptor

Intended Role: 
Ares - Bunker Buster (Anti- single hardened target)

Phoenix used to be the only Artemis-class. Raven has taken that class now, creating a perceived need for another unique class: Ares class. I struggle to see the distinction between a bunker buster and the tankier & up-gunned Apollo, or the long range bombardment style Valkyrie. There’s four methods of combat in Artemis, and they seem to have all been written off: enhanced beams and shields are forbidden because of Apollo, torpedoes are forbidden because of Valkyrie, fighters are forbidden because of crew restrictions and general hostile environment in TSN, mines are forbidden because of their general applicability to kill pretty much anything (they don’t play well with the idea of killing a single target dead better or easier than the other classes can), and jump drives are forbidden because they would trivialize Nemesis interception and flout the whole idea of formation flying.

That doesn’t leave much to work with. So let’s go a bit more lenient on these points and try some subcategorizing on the assumption that we don’t want to just have TWO Artemis class ships in The 4th Light Division instead of only one. So let’s start by breaking unique points down as they differ from Artemis class as a classical configuration.

Apollo: heavier front shield, weaker aft shield, harder-hitting & faster firing beams at normal range.
Valkyrie: extra torpedo tube and guided ordnance to fill it (but fewer mines), softer-hitting beams at normal fire rate with longer range.
Nemesis: more mobile, more beams that hit softer and fire faster at both longer and shorter range.

Extrapolated independent differences that ‘matter’ include:
+ Mobility
Mobility is great, but without a hole in a target’s beam arcs (or having no visible beam arcs to begin with), it is a meaningless attribute for a Bunker Buster.
+ Shield strength
Shield strength, particularly having ‘enough’, is most certainly part and parcel of any ship that enters a hardened target’s weapons range.
+ Beam strength
Beam strength is a solid way to modify firepower without directly impacting energy consumption and thus the longevity of active operations.
+ Beam count / fire rate
Beam count and fire rate are both effective ways to modify firepower while altering energy consumption: more shots fired, regardless of whether they’re from X number of beams or how fast a beam fires, has a linear relationship to energy expenditure.
+ Beam range
Range is an easy way to make an otherwise threatening enemy into a paper tiger; unless weapon ranges are redone across the board, a ship that out-ranges base beams or command ship beams will pretty much outrange everything, making poor play the only way to have fun.
+ Tube count
Tube count can relate to reaction time or strength of reaction depending on the captain’s style; more tubes mean more situations a ship can be preemptively ‘ready’ for to reduce reaction time, or it can mean the ship can react more strongly from an empty state after the same amount of time as a ship with fewer tubes.
+ Ordnance type
Ordnance type, insofar as it is used in practice, has two categories: splash and single target. Homing torpedoes are single target and (recently) sport respectable damage output; everything else is splash damage, limited in supply, and best used for clearing groups of ships rather than single targets. Even Nukes and Mines only deal ~160 damage to any single enemy, the rough equivalent of two homing torpedoes or 13 standard beam shots.
+ Drive style
Jump drives clearly have no useful application to destroying a target–any target. They can, however, make a ship a phenomenal interceptor and penetrator of defensive lines by cutting out the middlemen of time and terrain.
+ Directionality of fire (wink wink)
Directionality of fire can drastically affect engagement strategy and in some cases (wink wink) offer a relative boost in the ship’s defenses without altering any defensive values, just by nature of utilizing both shield facings instead of being forced to withdraw after only the business-end shield is down. Of course this change in direction of fire demands a change in ship’s heading relative to the target, making some long standing maneuvers impossible or much more demanding on the crew. Some benefits, some drawbacks. More on this much later, when I go into my detailed thoughts on a broadside configuration.
+ Extra Shield Nodes
This idea just occurred to me, so forgive my haphazard description (I may or may not fix it before posting). A ship could greatly improve its combat effectiveness with more shield nodes. As some know, and others may be surprised to learn, shield permeability does not increase with system damage. If there are 10 forward shield nodes in engineering, and only one of them is online, the only impact on your shield efficacy is regeneration rate. A combat procedure is conceivable wherein a ship enters combat running 250% beams with 8 coolant and 300% shields with no coolant but a large number of shield nodes. It could overheat the shields to total breaking point before disengaging and just hanging out a little while while damcon teams fix the shield nodes. This isn’t really applicable to the role of Bunker Buster specifically, because it would work equally well against any and all combats, but if somebody were looking for a way to enhance a ship’s durability without increasing its raw shield value, this would effectively prolong the time that a ship could run 300% shields and maintain the resulting reduction in damage taken. It just becomes an exercise of finding the right ratio of beam power to shield power to cause the shields to completely burn out at the same time that the beams begin to threaten to burn out their first node. Manual damcon team management would be important for this, else they’d all die as nodes burn out while they’re standing in them.

So the role of the Ares is to tackle a single hardened target such as a Command Ship or Starbase. What kind of tools would such a task require? For starters, Command Ships have thousands of shields even after being hit by an EMP (3000 for a Torgoth). So high damage output is required, be it burst damage or sustained dps. But exactly how much dps depends on how durable the strike craft is, because Command Ships have weapons. Weapons that do damage! The Torgoth command ship has beams that will do 1.67 dps (assuming no overlap of those beams). Thus the Ares class will need protection unless it does all of its damage with torpedoes or long range beams.

Just to get a feel for things, let’s take a look at the Apollo class, being the current go-to for such a job in lieu of the former Raven Battlecruiser. The Apollo at 300% beams w/ 8 coolant does 18 dps for 35 seconds (630 damage) and 15 dps thereafter (250%/8 coolant). How do the numbers hash out? Apollo must fire for 193 seconds to bring down the Torgoth’s 3000 shields–to say nothing of the hull. In return, Apollo can crank shield power to 300% for 29 seconds without coolant (burning out 3 nodes and nearly the 4th) and receive little shield damage (~16) in that time before they are forced to normalize shield power. After that, the command ship will whittle away Apollo’s remaining 94 shields over the course of 56 seconds (85 seconds total). Thus, Apollo is forced to withdraw after dealing 1380 damage over 85 seconds to the command ship. Apollo can’t do it; not all at once, not 1v1 anyway.

So a few things come to mind about what that means for the Ares class. Either it needs to be substantially more powerful than Apollo to get the job done; or we admit that Command Ships henceforth will always be team efforts. If we concede that Command Ships will always need to be team efforts, then we need to ask what Ares can do in order to specialize in hardened target destruction. It can either: bombard it with oodles of heavy ordnance and possibly risk splashing friendlies; or bombard it with oodles of homing torpedoes; or have nice strong beams with shields to match; or be a glass cannon; or be a tank to eat up damage while other ships do the damage, or tickle the command ship with long range beams to keep the pressure on while others recover and come back for a deathblow. What are some combinations we could consider to meet this goal of the Ares class being an effective bunker buster without simply being flatly overpowered?

Ares role realization methods:
+ Glass cannon — conflict Lancer
+ Heavier beams and shields — conflict Apollo
+ Splash-heavy torpedo boat — conflict Valkyrie? Also turns into superb fleet-buster, conflicting intended role.
+ Three-or-more tube Homing Torpedo boat — conflict Valkyrie? Fits the role, at least. Hammer a single target with weapons that hurt only a single target, and have enough of them to end a command ship or two.
+ Minelayer — mines don’t trigger on bases, and mines are ideal fleet-busters, conflicting intended role
+ High damage, very short range beam with long cycle time — impractical, forcing a dive-bomber like approach which is very unfriendly to users, and folks seem to hate it
+ High damage, very short range beam with normal or short cycle time — decidedly overpowered (conflict Lancer 😛 )
+ Medium damage, short range beam with normal or short cycle time — conflict Apollo
+ Low damage, long range beam with any cycle time — boring; awful damage-per-energy; little need to ever enter danger zones; fighters or drones become the only threats, and drones not so much depending on firing arc
+ Simple Broadside — no real conflict, popular idea, possible balance issues, might not actually get enough protection out of both shield facings to make it any better at busting bunkers than Apollo
+ Upgunned Broadside — conflict Apollo (maybe less-so, since shields will be standard or weaker, and combat model will be distinctly different?)

If none of those approaches appeal, maybe we can change the state of the game to create a way for the Ares to fill this niche without stepping on any toes.

Game modification to avoid treading on other roles:
+ script bases to be ships so mines work on them — nobody wants to do that, right?
+ Take homings away from everybody and turn them into single-target bunker busters — nobody REALLY uses homing torpedoes anyway as far as I’ve seen, and TSN hates batteries too. Win/win?
+ somehow alter another torpedo type (everybody hates pshocks) — isn’t it impossible to alter non-damage characteristics?

If changing the state of the game doesn’t appeal, and if we can think of no way to agreeably satisfy the declared role of Bunker Buster, perhaps it warrants an alternative job for the Ares to do that would contrast with the rest of the fleet.

Alternative roles:
+ Carrier — TSN doesn’t like fighters, and lacks pilots
+ Tank or otherwise heavier ship — emphasis 4th LIGHT division & previous issues with OP Battlecruiser
+ Minelayer / Fleetbreaker / Area Denial Specialist — creates hazards for friendly ships or otherwise just goes splash crazy with Echo runs. Terrain is important in Artemis, but generating friendly-safe anti-hostile terrain from a ship is clunky and ineffective without accepting significant wait times to lure enemies into them.
+ Non-mine Anti-Fighter — either outrun the fighters ala Lancer, or be well enough protected to tank the swarms while plinking them down with porcupine beams pointed out in multiple directions; would be pretty silly to watch it fight warships by cranking maneuver and going all fidget spinner on them (The Last Starfighter: Death Blossom!!)
+ Scout — Lancer doesn’t sound like they want to be a scout anymore, so there seems to be an opening here.
+ Pure Missile Cruiser — would never be in any danger; outranges all enemies, and just kites drones at warp while flying in circles and firing torpedoes. The RavenBC at least had the potential to take damage sometimes.
+ Jump Drive ship — beat the Lancer at the interceptor game and flout formation flying at the same time!
+ Dive bomber — Swing in, fire a big beam shot, and escape until the weapon reloads. Perhaps this is what was intended with the first iteration of the Ares class with the short range high power beam; a repeat strafing run vessel. Feedback suggested that it was difficult to employ for having no way to check if the main gun was ready or not without a stopwatch, and that all the time spent setting up for another pass made performing the job a larger time-suck than simply handing the job over to Apollo. As noted in above realization methods: not user friendly, and folks seem to hate it.

==========

So finally we come to my favored solution, an up-gunned broadside configuration, to attempt to meet the role of Bunker Buster without walking directly on Apollo’s territory. It shares similar beam power, but the different directionality of fire forces changes in engagement strategy and creates new weaknesses. This next part of my thought process is in 2 parts: Broadside as it compares to traditional configurations in general, and broadside sub-configurations as they compare to each other.

Broadside Ares-class in General — Good and Bad relative to standard configurations

The good:
1. Realistic ability to take advantage of both shield facings in combat.
2. Depending on turn rate, potentially excellent at staying on a single target’s unprotected flank (that is, dancing around an enemy’s beam arcs)
3. Up-gunned (if you don’t up-gun the broadside, Apollo will be flatly better at the Ares niche than the Ares)
4. Satisfies crew desire for uniqueness.

The bad:
1. Weaker single shield facings. (I recommend 65/65, as I’m sure the proposed 45/45 is MUCH too little.)
2. More difficult to keep a target in optimal firing arc.
3. Easily overtaken by enemy fleets for lack of ability to kite while firing optimally; i.e. if you “cross the T” with this ship, you can’t just go into reverse to maintain a standoff with only the leading elements. Either you you break contact, or tank the fleet as it comes into range and risk severe damage.
4. Easily overrun by enemy fighters; exacerbated by “bad” points 1-3.
5. Cannot pursue a tango-train and mop up an enemy fleet from the rear with impunity.
6. Gambles on increasing power to shield facings, or burns out quickly to run both.

Interpretation:
A broadside configuration would excel at contending with singular targets using the advantages of greater optimal firepower, and greater potential survivability. It would be very similar to the Apollo class in those ways; however, It would in contrast struggle to contend with larger enemy battlegroups and most especially carrier groups due to a relative immobility when bringing optimal firepower to bear. It would be particularly vulnerable to encirclement by fighters because it could not protect against hull damage by rotating shield facings after one facing, individually substandard, is overloaded.

It is not a tank-qua-tank. In contrast to the Apollo class, its defensive advantage is situationally dependent on the ability to present an alternate shield facing to a target without losing firepower, which is difficult to do with precision if consistently possible. Additionally, in lieu of extra coolant, it can’t maintain large power increases to beams and both shield facings simultaneously. That defensive pool stands a good chance of being substantially weaker than standard symmetrical facings while the crew attempts to predict which facing will receive the next shot: if they’re wrong, that’s a lot of damage that didn’t get absorbed by a hardened shield. The flip side, if the crew doesn’t gamble, is that engagement time is otherwise limited by how long the engineer can keep both shields running hot. (Honestly, writing this paragraph out has me convinced that 65/65 shields will probably be too little!)

Suffice to say, the broadside doesn’t come with only advantages. It comes with some serious gambles or even liabilities in the realms of combat maneuvering, opportunity to fire, and durability. But what it does do, unequivocally, is fill the niche described: a ship tuned toward dealing with difficult single targets without necessitating a bunch of extra heavy ordnance and treading on the Valkyrie’s action. A role, however, which the Apollo could still perform better unless the broadside is similarly up-gunned. To be sure, the Apollo will be decisively superior when engaging enemy fleets thanks to the ability to kite and engage leading fleet elements without allowing rear fleet elements to close into range, combined with a much stronger business-end shield facing.

==========

Configuration Comparison — Good and Bad relative to other broadside configurations

Overlap configuration:
1-2 fore arc, 1 aft arc, each with firing angle greater than 180°

The good:
1. 360° arc of fire granting abnormally easy single drone interception capability.
2. Doesn’t lose ENTIRE damage output if targets are not in the narrow port or starboard arcs.
3. Doesn’t tempt crew to play fleet cracker by barreling into the middle of a fleet to utilize both port and starboard guns.

The bad:
1. (Potentially) Fewer total beams prevent mass drone interception even if skilled crew were to try. Overlap configuration would have similar limitations under ideal circumstances to other ships in their own ideal circumstances (i.e. overlap broadside won’t be clearing drones any more quickly or effectively than traditional configurations).

—

Independent Broadsides Only:
1-2 port arc, 1-2 starboard arc, each with firing angle substantially less than 180°

The good:
1. Capacity for double dps with good positioning and fast clicking weapons officer.
2. (Potentially) Greater total beam count, allowing for mass drone interception on par with Lancer under ideal circumstances.

The bad:
1. No fore or aft beam coverage resulting in more difficult drone interception.
2. Very narrow arcs of fire, and zero capacity for damage outside those arcs.
3. Tempts crew to play fleet cracker by barreling into the middle of a fleet to utilize both port and starboard guns. (Some say manual beams with shorter cycle time would approximate the gain of firing both sides and reduce temptation and efficacy of attempting to fire both. I disagree at present.).

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Hybrid Broadside & Point Defense:
1-2 port arc, 1-2 starboard arc, each with firing angle substantially less than 180°, and a point defense beam.

The good:
1. Meets or exceeds fleet baseline for drone interception, both in arc of fire and number of drones per volley.
2. Capacity for double dps with good positioning and fast clicking weapons officer.
3. (Potentially) Greater total beam count, allowing for mass drone interception on par with Lancer under ideal circumstances.

The bad:
1. Could misfire point defense and waste it, having done no damage for the energy or cycle time expended.
2. Very narrow arcs of fire, and zero capacity for damage outside those arcs.
3. Tempts crew to play fleet cracker by barreling into the middle of a fleet to utilize both port and starboard guns. (Some say manual beams with shorter cycle time would approximate the gain of firing both sides and reduce temptation and efficacy of attempting to fire both. I disagree at present.).

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…and some unrelated side-musings:

Torpedoes: 75 damage, or +50 energy on convert

Assuming 8 energy per beam shot and 12 beam damage per shot, 50 energy means: (6 • 12) + (12 • 0.25) = 75 damage.

Beams are flexible, predictable, and operate on-demand. Beams can do damage to a target, or defend the ship against a drone. When doing damage to a target with beams, you can easily predict which target shield facing will be impacted.

Torpedoes are comparatively unpredictable in angle of contact (possibly causing unhelpful damage), cannot be used for defense, and require forethought for use. Benefits of torpedoes include only bait for anti-torp targets and range.

Straightup energy can also be shunted to shields or propulsion. Energy is extremely flexible. Torpedoes are not. The game truly punishes using torpedoes, because the energy is so much more valuable.

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