Battlecruisers

Blaster

Blaster

Rear Admiral
I’ve decided to start a thread about battlecruisers mainly because I find them very interesting.

Before reading Star*Soldier I thought that the biggest advantage capital ships had over fights were their strong shields, I was very surprised to find out that both the confederation and the Kilrathi built large numbers of capital ships without any shields at all but are still able to hold their own against fighters.

Star*Soldier also mentions that, because of a tungsten shortage, civilian fighters have to use lower quality armor which makes them much slower. If it’s difficult to get enough tungsten alloy armor to cover a fighter than it must be even harder to get enough for a battlecruiser. Is it likely that the military battlecruisers are faster or have stronger armor than the ones seen in Arena?
 
Action Stations seems to imply the same thinking that was around during WW2, which is that aircraft carriers were little more than a novelty and that any major naval battle would be fought by battleships and destroyers and carriers would only really support ground troops. Of course then Pearl Harbor happened and Michael Bay lost what little prestige he had, er, I mean Pearl Harbor was attacked and all we had left were carriers and they proved their merit. The same thing happened in Confed after McAulliffe and focus shifted over to carriers and fighters. At least that's my take on the situation.
 
Shaggy said:
Action Stations seems to imply the same thinking that was around during WW2, which is that aircraft carriers were little more than a novelty and that any major naval battle would be fought by battleships and destroyers and carriers would only really support ground troops. Of course then Pearl Harbor happened and Michael Bay lost what little prestige he had, er, I mean Pearl Harbor was attacked and all we had left were carriers and they proved their merit. The same thing happened in Confed after McAulliffe and focus shifted over to carriers and fighters. At least that's my take on the situation.
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Well the OP was talking about battlecruisers in Star*Soldier -- that is, in the period of time between Secret Ops and Arena... well after McAulliffe.
 
With an internal fighter complement of 72, I imagine the fights between two or more battlecruisers can be very scary. My guess is that the 'idea' of the battlecruiser was to counter powerful torpedos which bypass shielding entirely.. a strong shield doesn't do much good when the projectile can slip through and smoke your ship in a single hit.

It makes more sense (at least if you can feasibly produce armor for it) to have a ship with no shields at all that can take multiple hits from high yield warheads before being in trouble. and those point-defense hardpoints are a daunting challenge for any pilot.

I bet battlecruisers in the Nephilim campaign serve both as multi-role carriers and very heavy strike craft for totally unseating an enemy presence in a system.
 
Flashpoint said:
I got the impression that there was a tungsten shortage because it was all being used on capships
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I thought it seemed more like the shortage was caused by the fact that so many ships were destroyed during the war, but it’s entirely possible that I missed something. I think it’s time for me to reread Star*Soldier.


Nomad Terror said:
Well the OP was talking about battlecruisers in Star*Soldier -- that is, in the period of time between Secret Ops and Arena... well after McAulliffe.
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I was talking about the battlecruisers mentioned in Star*Soldier but I don’t have a problem talking about the Pre-McAulliffe battleships too if people are interested.


NinjaLA: It’s true that torpedoes can pass right through shields as if they weren’t there, but a bomber is extremely vulnerable during the time it takes to get a torpedo lock which makes the shields still quite useful. Although I do see the advantage of making ships that have enough armor to survive multiple torpedo strikes and lots of anti-bomber/torpedo weapons.
 
Blaster said:
NinjaLA: It’s true that torpedoes can pass right through shields as if they weren’t there, but a bomber is extremely vulnerable during the time it takes to get a torpedo lock which makes the shields still quite useful. Although I do see the advantage of making ships that have enough armor to survive multiple torpedo strikes and lots of anti-bomber/torpedo weapons.
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Don't forget that bombers started mounting plasma cannons that also passed through shields. It's very likely that mid- to late-war even heavy fighters packed plasma cannons. It would make sense that if a defensive component failed to stop even cannon strafing runs from causing fatal damage, it'd stop being used.

I would imagine the tungsten shortage has more to do with the military gobbling up all of the supply to create the super-armored warships, rather than there suddenly being a lack of mines rich in tungsten. Kind of like the steel drive in early WW2 where people donated their pots and pans and everybody was scrapping everything to eek out that one extra Sherman tank in the hopes of ending the war just a little sooner.
 
Did not the Project Omega Dreadnought-class Battleship referenced in Fleet Action lack shields? In an environment where heavy weapons such as torpedoes and antimatter guns completely bypassed shields, and lighter fighter-based guns could cause little damage to tungsten, isometal, or platolum armor, shields may have become simply a waste of energy that could be diverted elsewhere to better effect.

Alternatively, the massive battery of plasma weapons on Confederation and Kilrathi Battle Cruisers may have required all available power - even that which ordinarily would have gone to the phase shields.
 
Going on a tangent, I wonder how those battlecruisers fare in fluid space - without shields, I wonder what adaptations were done to allow them to function.

In general, shields also allow navigating through hazardous environments, e.g. TCS Tarawa hiding inside the gas giant planet.
 
I would imagine that the Battle Cruisers have some sort of navigational deflector. Star*Soldier's reference to their lack of shielding probably just means that they don't equip phase shields as a defensive feature. They most likely have some sort of force field system to provide for inertia dampening or protection from exterior radiation.
 
It may very well have been. Although, the Project Omega ship was supposedly proof against medium-yield (?) torpedoes. The Behemoth was most certainly not invulnerable to torpedo fire. For all we know, the Omega may have been prototype or predecessor to the Plunckett class Heavy Artillery Cruiser.
 
A lot of good points have been brought up in this thread. Even in Secret Ops we see Nephilim ships attacking the Cerberus with plasma weaponry (not to mention Cerberus's own plasma cannon and the plasma cannon mounted on the Devastator), so perhaps with so much of Confed's resources going to the war effort rather than R&D, it was far more feasible to slap extra armor on the capships to extend their longevity rather than develop, test and retrofit the next generation of phase shielding.

Also, most sci-fi universes make distinctions between shields (protectional force shields) and navigational deflectors. Also atmospheric containment fields are considered seperately themselves. The ships are generally air-tight other than the hanger/recovery decks and any breaches caused by collision or combat, so even if there were fluidic space right on the other side of the hangar deck forcefield I don't think it would be a major issue.
 
I read the no shields on battlecruisers quote to mean that they dont have combat-rated shields, but still have some sort of shielding to protect from radiation and space debris, much like the tender Sindri in False Colours.
 
Dragon1 said:
Did not the Project Omega Dreadnought-class Battleship referenced in Fleet Action lack shields?
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No. While the Hakaga was designed with a "ram it down your throat" approach, the Omega were supposed to be stealthier ships.

Omega is also not Project Behemoth.
 
Battlecruisers are, by defenition, a heavily armed, fast moving vessel. It's purpose is to quickly engage opposing capital ships and inflict heavy damage. Such a vessel would likely lack heavy shields, but mount armor capable of withstanding hits from heavy capital ship weaponry. That kind of armor would hold its own against fighters without much difficulty.
 
Heh it's more interesting because my nick is a play on Durandal as my profile pic and signature show.
 
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