Bay 12 Games Forum

Phalanx and such, despite being the reasonable application of that idea, which is naval/ground defence against missiles, don't work 100% of the time.

Quote from: RAM on October 31, 2017, 02:47:19 pm

but for now we can use Blood Eagle? I mean, the guidance makes these missiles pretty predictable so we wouldn't need much...

What? You want to mount ERA on the fucking planes? That isn't your regular stupid, that is advanced stupid.

How is ground turrets the reasonable approach? By forcing the missile to follow in the wake of a moving target you extend the time to intercept and reduce the angles of attack. And ships just straight-up are not the ideal. The are moving, which adds complexity to the target, they are mounted on a large target and can be defeated by a hit pretty much anywhere along the length, which offsets them from the target site, and the platform is generally in rocking, thus changing the effective horizontal plane constantly. They are implemented because ships are expensive and they are capable of mounting the things, but it is far from the most reasonable application when looked at exclusively from the turret's perspective. Recall that objects on a collision course do not change bearing, an autoturret would be effective against anythign that tries to dogfight. I am not sayign that it would be a 100% perfect defence against everything, but against Can pilots that don't know what the sun is and Can missiles with the aerodynamics and profile of a backwards-facing grotesquely-deformed obese-bovine they ought to have a non-zero neutralisation rate.

I very much doubt that the Cans have proximity detonators. so a missile, especially a huge one, is going to be a single big impact. While aircraft do need to be mindful of weight, they can mount a disturbing amount of armour, especially the larger ones. I mean, we could literally stick a Blood-eagled Salamander in the back of an Ice Giant and have it tank the hit by running its engine hotter than the plane does, albeit temporarily, or just setting fire to the thing... We could also just have people shoot rockets out the side and hope that the missiles like the taste of rocket... I am confident that we could, if we so chose, design an aircraft that could effectively mount E.R.A., and that it would be effective at stopping the majority of a single missile's damage. Whether it is feasible with our current designs is another matter, and whether we can actually mount it where the missiles would hit is another, but it is not quite as ridiculous as one would assume at a glance from "aircraft=light"... And part of what makes these games great is that we can do silly-but-vaguely-plausible-sounding-when-served-with-excessive-spin things and get away with it.

I possess a great interest in both individual proposals and mad science. Onward to reading the first post!

Quote from: StagnantSoul on October 31, 2017, 01:44:44 pm

Maintenance is annoying

play with it off but still design ships and give orders as if it were on. Basically the same effect, you're just cutting out annoyances.

But then you don't have the option to push it too far and play the odds. Do you let the fleet get underpowered or go over maintenance and wait for the next shift to arrive? If you do, will they get back to dock in one piece or will an engine explode? What of the lone ship that survived its battle, but lost an engine and now struggles home as its clock steadily rises... I can't help but feel that you are keeping the tedius design impediment and mission spam while losing all the substantive resource expenditure and all the glorious tales of crews struggling home as their ship crumbles around them.

But meh, to each their own.

Feel free to make the design. I honestly didn't think of it, but it occurs that there might be bandwidth and transmission issues with sending the information to soldiers who don't have the scanning gear? But still, if you can come up with a good implementation it sounds like a decent option!

Do our existing goliaths get the upgrade? Do we need to send them home for refurbishment?

Well, sure, they could put that money into new ships, but then how would they pay for the end-of-year bonuses for the upper management? You can't expect them to cope with the mental anguish of being solely responsible for an interplanetary corporation without a private waterpark can you? I am certain that they will get around to producing the necessary vessels as soon as they have covered their fundamentals...

I made my system-gaming openly and honestly. And then I submitted a legitimate design too.

0: Reduced Safety Margin
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1, RAM: V.I.S.O.R.