Yet Another Ship Poll - The Octurion

[katadder]

24" range on the beam would probably work as only change. you could change front ion cannons for heavy ones i guess, or replace m atter cannons with heavy ion cannon.

 

[emperorpenguin]

24" range on the beam would probably work as only change. you could change front ion cannons for heavy ones i guess, or replace m atter cannons with heavy ion cannon.

I'm with Katadder on this one

 

[Triggy]

24" range would be a small enough change that I'd be fine with it. Unfortunately, it's such a small change that it's unlikely to happen on its own.

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

I'm unconvinced that the ship needs to be changed, and the radical changes in e2 on the Centauri was supposed to take them away from being yet another beam heavy fleet.

However if they are consistently underperforming in most centauri fleets, then I'd prefer to see the following changes:
a rear beam, only about 4AD of precise beam should be enough to guard it's behind.
Increase the AD of the main beam, but leave the range the same. This works better than just adding double damage in that the beams seam to be there as much to cause critical hits as to kill ships, and more AD means more criticals.

Just my opinion though, like I said, they still prod buttock down our way.

 

[emperorpenguin]

it's not lacking firepower, just range. It is outreached by almost every other war level ship.

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Which seams fitting for the shortest ranged fleet in the galaxy. it's just the way they fight these days.

 

[emperorpenguin]

except that most other Centauri ships can cope due to speed and agility, the Octurion has neither. Put it this way, when I suggested the change to Ion Cannons I never intended such a shortening on the Octurion. It went too far

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

I'm still not convinced that the problems are that serious, think the Octurion can cope unless caught in really bad circumstances, which for it would be open space against a long range fleet, when it can't jump in at closer range.

Perhaps what it needs is slightly more speed more than anything else.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I still say it fails at a battleship's role - taking on and destroying other battleships. Basically everything at war+ has hull 6 and/or some kind of defence. The Octurion has very little way of overcoming such defences. Only the beam can reliably hit hull 6 and the so-called ship-killing weapons, the ion cannons and matter cannons can be intercepted.

 

[locarno24]

And there is no real requirement for it to do this. The 'official' warship designations are and always have been almost completely meaningless for babylon 5 capships.

Despite the battleship tag, there is therefore nothing inherantly wrong with the Octurian-class being a close-range brawler, nor with it being a ship designed to dominate multiple smaller opponents rather than beat down the one big one. The problem is that as described, it is the Primus-class Battlecruiser's bigger brother in basically every way.

Since it offers no real difference to the battle-priority ship, it's difficult to justify taking one Octurian over two Primus with better speed, better net firepower, the same total fighter wing, and since there are no active defences, better toughness.

A 24" range battle laser would be fair enough, but then one has the obvious question of why the Primus gets the short end of the stick...it's a simple fix but then provokes demands for another. Plus the whole point of the re-thinking of the centauri fleet is to stop them being dependant on beams as a primary armament! Finally, doing so repeats the issue (to a lesser degree) one priority level up; the Adira-class is such a standout ship from the rest of the fleet at least in part due to those long-ranged Drakh neutron cannons.

(Question to the playtesters: Why exactly is the sullust armed with such a long-ranged (by Centauri standards) main gun?)

I like the suggestion of replacing the beam and matter cannons with plasma accelerators (although with a range boost). There's no problem with using interceptable weapons as a main ship-killer; if everyone must have a non-interceptible primary weapon then interceptors themselves become next to pointless.

 

[emperorpenguin]

(Question to the playtesters: Why exactly is the sullust armed with such a long-ranged (by Centauri standards) main gun?)
.

No idea. Matt never budged on that one :wink:

I like the suggestion of replacing the beam and matter cannons with plasma accelerators (although with a range boost). There's no problem with using interceptable weapons as a main ship-killer; if everyone must have a non-interceptible primary weapon then interceptors themselves become next to pointless

Me too, I'd be quite happy for no beams but you'll never get enough support for that