Heavy Spinal Mounts

[Mazar_Paktu]

I've been thinking about this idea for a while: why not have heavier spinal-mounted weapons? For example, you could have something like a large railgun mounted spinally in a destroyer. What does anyone think about this?

[iwanthw2]

What's the point?

[zenogias]

What's the point?

Big gun, low accuracy, big chance of slagging the target in one hit.

Think about it.

[MrNonchalant]

*eyes grow wide*
*mouth drops open*
*runs to wall*
*pushes red panic-button*
*alarms starts sounding*
*speaks into microphone*
*voice booms out loudspeaker*
"All citizens, all citizens, we have an uncontained super weapon idea in sector 43, repeat, an uncontained super weapon in sector 43!"
*door crashes down*
*dust clears*
*twenty men in yellow suits are seen*
*four of them train bazookas on the target while the rest of them move in a carefully coordinated pattern to find any trapped civileans*
*no civileans are found*
*bazookas fire unr....

You get the picture, anything that even resembles a super weapon is doomed to death.

[Spaz]

Why not have a Destroyer with rotating guns. It could be cylindrical and have 2 or three rings with 3 or 4 cannons on each. BIG guns... I have no Idea what I'm talking about.

[reki]

so

a railgun is a superweapon, chris? i hope my fleet meets yours someday ;)

[zenogias]

I don't really see the problem with spinal weapons. Just give 'em a low rate of fire and enough damage to waste a frigate in one hit, but make them too big to mount on anything smaller than a heavy cruiser, and give the frigates a little more speed and maneuverability so that the spinal weapon won't be able to easily hit them.

Spinal weapons would go well with locational damage, because fighters can be instructed to take the weapon before it wastes your fleet. Without locational damage, then it trule does become a super weapon (think about how hard it is to take down an HC, even with massed firepower, and you'll know what i mean).

[Alpha_Monkey]

So basically, we're talking about a SniperShip?

Actually no, more like a really big recoil-less rifle...

Balancing:
How 'bout we make 'em stealthy, but really slow n' bulky.
As soon as one opens up, you could beat the crap outta it with artillery.
This'd also encourage big fleets to send fighter sweeps up ahead...

Hmm...mebbe, mebbe not...

[Pheonix75]

The idea of big spinal weapons aleways sorta appealed to me...no only in HW but in SW as well. If the guns are made liket eh ion frigate, with like 1-2% coverage, then they can be quite powerful without being a 'super' weapon. I liked the hive frigate. It could send in it's swarmers then support them with its heavy (relatively) fixed guns. The idea of not having to mount a weapon in a turret means that the gun can be much bigger, or have more of them, as the turret of a ion cannon/railgun would have to be quite large in comparison to the gun itslef.

[zenogias]

Wanna know something really cute?

You can design an energy weapon so that its firing apeture rotates (sort of like a ball turret on a WW II bomber), giving the weapon a wider coverage. For really big weapons, you could still tilt the lense a little. The main part of the gun, of course, remains inside the ship, so you don't have to sacrifice too much firepower for coverage.

The Air Force has actually be test flying an anti-missile plane using this concept with a laser that fills the plane's cargo compartment (I think they've been test flying, but I could be wrong; it might still be in the planning phase).

[Ender's Shadow]

It's called the Airborne Laser program. They're modifying a 747 to hold a high-energy laser lengthwise through the fuselage with an aimable aperture in the nose. I believe they're still in the construction phase although it may be in testing by now.

Do a search for "airborne laser" at www.af.mil and you can finds tons of info.

[Mazar_Paktu]

and this is relevent because... oh. i see. :err: but i wasn't really thinking of it as a laser, just a big mass driver. it's not that much of a super-weapon, it would have slow RoF, but have plenty of power/accuracy. like A-Monkey said, destroy it with fighter sweeps.

[ceejayoz]

Originally posted by Ender's Shadow
Do a search for "airborne laser" at www.af.mil and you can finds tons of info.
or just go to www.airbornelaser.com :)

[zenogias]

You know, I'm sure the airborne laser won't operate as well as it's been hyped, but it's unbearably cool anyway.

Just thought I'd that.

[SWPIGWANG]

A big Ion Frig....hmmm......

[Alpha_Monkey]

You know, I'm sure the airborne laser won't operate as well as it's been hyped
These kind of black projects never do.
The only one I can think of is the Aroura's engine technology, and none of that "exists"...

[Mazar_Paktu]

not a big ion frig, this thing has RANGE.
well, then again, the ics did have range, but this is like 15-20 kiloms. you'd need some sort of socut to see that far out, though. or perhaps you could fire like the siege cannon...
or perhaps it would just have short range and tons of power?
or possibly two different ammo types?

p.s. i've edited a screenie to show my idea, but i don't have any way to get it onto here

[IgnusDei]

send it to me and i'll post it on my webspace

[Omi-kun]

the airborne laser is about as good as it could get, unless you count a SR-71 type laser craft. The idea sounds appealing, but what's the real difference between that and the ion turrets on a heavy cruiser?

Other than the fact that it's 'bigger'

Truth is, HW2 shouldn't be doing any 'accomadations' such as mounting a heavier weapon than its predecessor. HW was about inovation with a level of realism (i.e. mass-drivers, missiles, extensive background information) and HW2 should be carrying on that tradition (it'll be a tradition as soon as HW2 continues it) of inovation.

So, IMHO, the question shouldn't so much "what d'ya think about making bigger weapon?" than a "what d'ya think of this new never-before-thought-of weapon system?"

Basically, I'm suggesting more along the lines of a realistic evolution to a whole new generation of weaponry for HW2, passed the stage of improving the existing designs. (such as TNT2 Ultra --> GeForce256)

Oh and reki, Chris is still rather new, give him some time to warm up before contenting w/ him. ;)

[Tygre]

mess with the .shp files with the Ion frigate to try it out then. I tried with the repair corvette...huge bullet, slow, crapload of damage. Unfortunately, the rc's ai moved it around so much it couldn't hit anything smaller than a heavy cruiser anyway. :err:

[Spaz]

Well, talking about long range Lasers... I made a REALLY slow dread that could take some damage, but the main thing was its Lasers on top and bottom, they could really reach out and kill somebody. (Im insane, and this isn't balanced: VERY LARGE with a multiplier of 100 and a 1 sec ROF :) )

[Pheonix75]

One thing i thought weould be sorta cool would be for the, i think kushan carrier, to fire probes outta its big frigate hangerbay. That coul dbe an intersteing idea, have to manually build the missiles for like a carrier, but the missile go like 4000m/s, and the impact would send the target (if frigate) to so spinning away, and if its dest or bigger than it gets thrown off course, and maybe rolled once. All the while taking a lot of damage.

[Ghent]

I want more MOD'able missiles in HW2.... changing them around in HW1 is extremely limited in the options that you have. :( Very frustrating when you need more than 1 missile type.

[Liberator]

Since this theoretical weapon is mounted along the spine of the ship is should have access to the power of the Hyperdrive. I mean seriously that is a massive amount of power. any weapon drawing on that kind of energy reserve/generation capacity would be insanely powerful. We're talking Deathstar level destructive capability:trix: here, it wouldn't be used in fleet combat, it would be used to take out the fleet half an AU away. That is a whole new class of weapon that make Ion cannons look like silly string.