Murray said:
A general question to the community. It might be stupid, sorry if so.
A regular 15m fighter has at least 4 hard points for energy weapons, say 2 laser canons and 2 photon cannons. How come a 275 meter long capital ship is equipped with only 6 turrets? I mean, do the turrets have a longer range than the regular fighter mounted guns? Are they consuming too much power? If they are so powerful, how come the fighter shields can withstand them?
I mean, take a regular carrier from WW2. They were having 10s of flak guns and point defense weapons. I bet you saw the footages from WW2 when these carriers are engaged by enemy aircrafts. The sky was literally full with flak.
Is there a specific reason why there are so little number of defense turrets in WC capital ships?
The simple reason is power plant distribution. Capital ships are much more complex then fighters, and has a lot more essential needs. Capital ships has to be able to distribute their power to maintain not only shields, engines, weapons, radar, jamming systems, communications, redundant backup systems, and damage control systems, but also necessities to maintain 200 to 300 people such as electricity, logistics, recycling system, sleeping facilities, hygeine facilities, food, artificial gravity, etc etc etc. Basically, you can see that a capship needs a lot more resources to run then your average fighter. You can't sleep, eat, shit, work out, make love inside a fighter, but you can do so on a capital ship.
Putting too much weaponry on a capital ship will only suck power from the power plant that is needed to run all of these other things. It would be really dumb if there was enough energy to power over 100 dual laser turrets, when the entire crew is already dead because there wasn't enough power to run the oxygen recycling system.
In addition, there are facilities which need electrical power and targeting systems to point and fire these turrets. All a fighter pilot needs to do is line up his fighter on the target, press a button on his joystick and his guns and missiles will fire. But capital ships have multiple batteries in which each one has to be able to operate independently of itself, turn by itself, and fire at a target. In addition, they have to have targeting systems that can individually target an attack a fighter/capital ship, or link it with the main gunnery officer in command. All of this stuff, plus the backup resources incase the ship gets crippled in combat (no capital ship is designed without some sort of backup or redundant system), requires energy from the power plant.
This is why many people just don't get it. It's the same reason why we don't mount hundreds of gun and missile mounts on our current warships of today.
But for all its worth, in the WC novels there's mention of, in addition to the dual laser turrets and Anti-Matter Guns, other weaponry that complements it and helps in point defense. They exist, but due to game engine limitations, they are not there.
The warships in the Terran Confederation Navy carry two types of weapon systems: guns and warheads. All capital ships carry guns, but not all of them carry warheads.
The guns are classified into four categories:
Main Battery – these are the largest guns on a capital ship. These usually include multiple anti-matter guns for cruisers, a single one (or two) for destroyers, turreted lasers for fleet carriers, frigates, and corvettes. It should be noted that turreted lasers are main battery for fleet carriers, since they do not carry any larger energy weapons. The Vesuvius-class is however, an exception.
Secondary Battery – These are the second-to-largest batteries carried on fighting ships, for cruisers and destroyers these are turreted dual lasers. These are general purpose weapons that can fight both fighters and capital ships.
Tierary Weapons – Some capital ships carry a third level of energy weapons. Basically capship mounted versions of fighter based laser cannons, these automated weapons (similiar to the 20mm cannons or .50 cal machine guns of WW2 fleet carriers) are programmed to engage any fighter or warship within 5000 kilometers. Tierary guns are considered point defense weaponry because they are normally too light to prove to be any offensive threat. Why? Because they just comprise of fighter-size laser cannons, the same mounted on fighters. And we all know that pinpricking a large capital ship to death with just a pair of laser cannon . . . well . . . sucks.
Close-In Weapons – Gatling mass driver miniguns are considered a capship’s last ditch defense. If all else fails, they have to run the gauntlet.
Many of ConFleet’s fighting warships, such as cruisers and destroyers, carry these four types of weaponry. However, other ships such as fleet carriers, frigates, and corvettes employ turreted lasers as main battery, there are no secondary battery.
That was my theory on capital ship design. You newbies can take this advice into heart, or you can just write it off as "generic hateful statements". It's up to you.
Sincerely
Just an "idiot"