Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
We do it with a prehensible nozzle.
Imperial Battleships
- Thread starter korpz
- Start date
Theophilus
Banded Mongoose
It reminds me of the battle scene in the expanse where the rocinante had been upgraded with a fixed mount rail gun.
Thrust...cut thrust...yaw ship 360°.. fire as she bears.. stop yaw...and thrust.
Trailing ship knew when she cut thrust she was yaw, fire and thrust, so they got evasive dodge.
Or Battlestar Galactica, yaw the vipers fire yaw and thrust.
So why not with traveller spinal mounts?
Thrust...cut thrust...yaw ship 360°.. fire as she bears.. stop yaw...and thrust.
Trailing ship knew when she cut thrust she was yaw, fire and thrust, so they got evasive dodge.
Or Battlestar Galactica, yaw the vipers fire yaw and thrust.
So why not with traveller spinal mounts?
Indeed. That is how they are meant to work, and for almost all warships is sufficient. My thoughts above were for edge cases where you want to keep up continuous thrust (perhaps to open range) but still fire.
The Vipers from BG aren't in that situation; they're mostly in a close maneuvering one, where the majority of their thrust is being expended on evasion. Evasion and aiming aren't at odds here.
The Vipers from BG aren't in that situation; they're mostly in a close maneuvering one, where the majority of their thrust is being expended on evasion. Evasion and aiming aren't at odds here.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
That may make a new kind of Crazy Ivan possible: cut thrust for a moment with no intention of yawing or firing, in hope of making the other guy evade a shot that isn't coming, and lose more thrust time than you do.
ross
Cosmic Mongoose
What a Dreadnought is, what a Battleship is, and what any other class was isn’t necessarily how it will be. The Third Imperium could just as likely say that anything under 400,000 dtons is a Battleship, and anything over is a Dreadnought and anything over 700,000 dtons is a Super Dreadnought, or Battlestar, or whatever. What was the history of these names doesn’t really matter much and Mongoose can pick and choose whatever. Ultimately it’s not really a valid argument in my opinion.
But isn't that the point of using a label? To convey a concept? If I build a 500k Dton warship and I call it a destroyer, that's fine I suppose. But when the label (or naval nomenclature in this case) says 'nyet!' to that, does that still make it valid?
That's kind of the point of using commonly applied labels. To take that which already exists and has been applied and agreed to and reuse it to convey a similar concept to an audience. Now, were we talking about someone who knows zilch about naval history, has never heard of, read about or used such terminology, then sure, I suppose if you wanted to establish a reset for the meanings then that would be an opportune time to do so. However that concept would only remain a truism so long as they never received other information that contradicted that.
I think so long as we continue to extrapolate from historical naval concepts we should continue to hold true to what they have commonly come to mean.
There is validity to the tonnage being a relatively ambiguous place to say a ship has morphed from a battleship to a dreadnought to a (insert label here). As we've seen tonnage is not always a good hallmark to the mission of the ship, though they do, generally, go hand-in-hand. The USN, being the USN, refused to classify the Alaska class as a battlecruiser when it was pretty much a battlecruiser when compared to similar ships built before it. They just didn't want to use the term, so the classified it as CB - large cruiser. As we've seen in Traveller literature, a tiny little ship called the Kinunir is listed as a battlecruiser. Fast forward to the first HG supplement and all of a sudden that's no longer valid and not even if the 7th layer of hell froze over should it be classified as such by any navy due to it's measly comparative tonnage. Such is the nature of RPG's that don't establish their core conceptual framework universe bible at the beginning.
BSG was fine to call a ship a battlestar (base stars if you liked those guys who had lights in their head), but centons and microns? Gibberish you had to infer the meanings to. That's where I personally draw the line - gibberish. Sure, make your neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie heavy cannon if you want, but a laser is a laser is a laser if you want to share the kewlness of it with everyone else.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
But what about feldercarb?
collins355
Emperor Mongoose
To be fair, even in Adventure 1, the "battle cruiser' label was a joke.
Except that we don't do that even now.
The USN at one point just renamed a bunch of guided missile frigates as guided missile cruisers, primarily because of congressional whining about the Russians having more cruisers than the US did. But also because the words don't have any intrinsic meaning.
Currently, USN calls things cruisers if they are primarily area defence & command platforms, while they are destroyers if they are more multi role and don't have flagship type capabilities. While the main difference between destroyers and frigates is currently that destroyers are more focused on being in a fleet or carrier group, while frigates are more likely to be independently patrolling or escorting non combat ships. More or less. Depending on what year you ask.
Other nations have more strict classification differences.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Terminology tends to be culturally based.
Sometimes, loanwords.
You also have to take account evolution, since the original star destroyer was a double cockpit fighter, apparently.
Sometimes, loanwords.
You also have to take account evolution, since the original star destroyer was a double cockpit fighter, apparently.
WHULorigan
Emperor Mongoose
And in A New Hope, Han Solo called them Imperial Cruisers . . .
WHULorigan
Emperor Mongoose
Terminology tends to be culturally based.
Sometimes, loanwords.
You also have to take account evolution, since the original star destroyer was a double cockpit fighter, apparently.
Was this actually referred to as "Star Destroyer" somewhere, or in history?
"Zerstörer" in German just means "destroyer".
"Star" is "stern".
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
He also thought parsecs were a unit of time until a massive fix tried to make that make sense, so take the naming conventions he used with a shaker of salt.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The story has been around for decades, that in the original script, Lucas described star destroyers as two man fighters.
I knew that the Messerschmidt One Ten was termed a Zerstorer.
I just made the connection earlier this morning.
I knew that the Messerschmidt One Ten was termed a Zerstorer.
I just made the connection earlier this morning.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
To quote Harrison Ford: "Hey kid, it ain't that kind of movie.".
WHULorigan
Emperor Mongoose
He also thought parsecs were a unit of time until a massive fix tried to make that make sense, so take the naming conventions he used with a shaker of salt.
So perhaps the term "Star Destroyer" is reserved for the largest, most advanced, highly performing, top-of-the-line, Imperial Cruisers currently in service . . . .
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Going by the Prequels, they were all designed during the Republic period.
The Venator class appears to have been described as a star destroyer.
The Venator class appears to have been described as a star destroyer.
ross
Cosmic Mongoose
That is exactly my point. Who knows, and why are we arguing about it?
