Nephilim war tactics

[Blaster]

How much do we know about the tactics and strategies used during the Nephilim war on both sides? Any idea about why both Confed and the Kilrathi decided to use giant groups of heavy hitting capital ships?

One possibility I thought of was that they tried to split the Nephilim fleets into smaller groups and than hit those hard with a very large force. That way even though the Nephilim had a higher number of total ships, Confed would have a numerical advantage in individual battles.

 

[Dundradal]

Star*Soldier has some tidbits about the war in a few of the sections. It seems like carrier groups were sent into Nephilim space with the intent of carrying out raids and the like. Can check when I get out of work.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

(Space Point)

I think that one of the misconceptions about the Kilrathi War is that it was all carriers -- the vast majority of the fighting was destroyers and cruisers engaging destroyers and cruisers... fleet carriers were an incrediblyr are commodity that only existed in the center of major campaigns.

That said, it's worth noting that the battlecruisers in Arena *are* carriers - they have some giant fighter complement each. Overall, though, I think the implication is supposed to be that the war became a contest between heavy-hitting warships, with the Confederation and the Kilrathi working together to put whatever they could up against fleets of Orcas and Tiamats and such.

 

[Blaster]

Star*Soldier has some tidbits about the war in a few of the sections. It seems like carrier groups were sent into Nephilim space with the intent of carrying out raids and the like. Can check when I get out of work.

I just took a looked at Star*Soldier. It says the Port Broughton was “one of the first ships modified to fight effectively across the barrier” I’m not sure exactly what kind of barrier it was but it does say something about confed making raids into “Nephilim fluid-space”

(Space Point)

yay

I think that one of the misconceptions about the Kilrathi War is that it was all carriers -- the vast majority of the fighting was destroyers and cruisers engaging destroyers and cruisers... fleet carriers were an incrediblyr are commodity that only existed in the center of major campaigns.

That makes sense. We probably wouldn’t have encountered so many destroyers and cruisers if they weren’t a big part of the war.

 

[Bremmon]

A fun question... here is my attempt:

I'm going to go with phase shield technology going completely obsolete again during the war whereby it would now make sense to bring out armored battlewagons style ships as opposed to medium armored attack carriers/destroyers and lightly armored fleet carriers.

In spending all that money to armor up the cap ships, bombers cannot take down massive cap ships in two to three shots and the fighter battle becomes less critical to the effort. If it's less critical, you no longer field fleet carriers and go back to the battleship era with fighters/bombers being used just to over-saturate defences and take down defence systems.

The bad news is that you now have less ships since they are so expensive and a single battlecrusier and small raiding carriers can end up devestating huge areas of space if they slip behind enemy lines or there isn't enough ships to cover all the jump points. I think this sort of goes with the spirit of Arena though, that most worlds ended up "on their own".

I think it also matches up with the fate of the Midway class... lightly armored fleet carriers like the Midway soon become raiding vessels whereby if they are caught by a battlecrusier they simply have to run, yet their fighters can still take out industrial targets, etc.

 

[Vinman]

I just took a looked at Star*Soldier. It says the Port Broughton was “one of the first ships modified to fight effectively across the barrier” I’m not sure exactly what kind of barrier it was but it does say something about confed making raids into “Nephilim fluid-space”

My guess was always that the bugs were from hyperspace or at the very least, a very different part of the universe. I guess I was pretty close!

 

[Dundradal]

I just took a looked at Star*Soldier. It says the Port Broughton was “one of the first ships modified to fight effectively across the barrier” I’m not sure exactly what kind of barrier it was but it does say something about confed making raids into “Nephilim fluid-space”

Yeah, that's the section I was thinking about. When S*S first came out I started this thread so we could go through it and break down all the new knowledge we had.

The article on Port Broughton IIRC has a little part about the raids and the other Midways (IIRC that's where I found most of the data for the list of Midways).

There is also a mention of "reefs" or something in one of the articles.