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Of Cruisers & Escorts
calintane753
Member Posts: 289 Arc User
If memory serves (or, rather, if school serves), the World War II saw the biggest naval battles of the modern history.
Let's look at some of the ships that fought in the WWII and focus our attention to the weapons, the bigger the better.
Iowa-class Battleship
:.. 9 ? 16-inch (406 mm)/50 cal. Mark 7 guns
Oregon City Heavy Cruiser
:.. 9 ? 8 inch/55 caliber guns (3?3)
Gearing Destroyer
:.. 6 ? 5 in /38 cal guns (127 mm) (3?2)
If I'm right: big cannon for a big ship.
So I wonder: why a MkXII array (that is a powerful and supposedly big array) can be mounted on a small ship?
I don't know if this is canon or not, but it is definitely not plausible.
And now the proposal: big weapons for big ships.
Bye / Qapla' / Jolan tru
Let's look at some of the ships that fought in the WWII and focus our attention to the weapons, the bigger the better.
Iowa-class Battleship
:.. 9 ? 16-inch (406 mm)/50 cal. Mark 7 guns
Oregon City Heavy Cruiser
:.. 9 ? 8 inch/55 caliber guns (3?3)
Gearing Destroyer
:.. 6 ? 5 in /38 cal guns (127 mm) (3?2)
If I'm right: big cannon for a big ship.
So I wonder: why a MkXII array (that is a powerful and supposedly big array) can be mounted on a small ship?
I don't know if this is canon or not, but it is definitely not plausible.
And now the proposal: big weapons for big ships.
Bye / Qapla' / Jolan tru
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Now in star trek cruisers are for ....cruising...like exploring ,not war.What cruisers should do is tanking and do exploration.
Don't look for any semblance of reality in Star Trek. You'll only be disappointed.
Short answer: because a space-magic directed energy weapon isn't at all analogous to a primitive chemical propelled projectile artillery piece.
If you do that, then people will just abandon escorts for cruisers, and then you'll end up with just another class of the month situation.
The solution to the imbalance is not to make certain weapons more powerful, but to make cruisers and science ships more viable (read: make their abilities more useful). Since the game is designed around killing mobs, damage is really the only factor a player should be taking into account currently; any ability that doesn't do damage or doesn't directly boost your damage output is unimportant.
The only other solution I can think of is to make all weapons do equal damage and let exotic abilities like attack patterns and tachyon beams, etc. become the star abilities. This way, your choice of ship is not limited by which weapons it can mount (which is currently what makes escorts more favorable), but which abilities you want to use. If all ships did equal damage, then suddenly skills and how you use them become more interesting.
I'm not a systems designer or balance expert, but I can definitely see that the problem isn't that escorts are too powerful--it's that cruisers and science ships aren't competitive in terms of damage output.
So it is very plausable that a shuttle can have a MK XII beam array on it.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
But on the flip side you will not find any of the positives for flying a Cruiser because there is no real exploration or long-term space voyages. There is no need for heavy armor, everything dies in 3 seconds. Plus Escorts would be upset if they could not kill a Cruiser in a single pass. There is no need for large cargo holds, more than one shuttle craft, holodecks, or anything else a Cruiser would be used for, due to it being a game.
This is a game of "Balance" (whether it is or not) so Cruiser = Escort = Science ship. Size and shape of the ship is only there for looks and has no bearing on what it is or does.
Just a random thought. . .
The intent behind them was that they were supposed to be extremely powerful glass cannons, and for a time they were.
But thanks to all the new little variants with universal and lt.cmdr engineer slots, doffs and what not, they can easily tank like your "average" cruiser.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
But when was the last time the thread included a suggestion to make every escort a three-fer?
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
Amusingly, bigger ships are actually able to pivot in water faster than smaller ships(the larger central mass creates a better 'fulcrum') and typically have a larger engine assembly for even higher top speed. World War 2 was also in an era before extremely precise weapons existed(which turns size into a liability).
I do think there is something 'wrong' with tiny little ships being able to power as many 'heavy weapons' as, say, a battlecruiser. (A federation cruiser, I could understand as a lot of power is going to be routed to non-combat functions.)
Really though, this is a corner Cryptic has backed themselves into and I really don't see it changing without a dreaded "Combat Revamp"... and most of us should know what those usually do to an MMO.
Aircraft carriers quickly made all those big guns obsolete.
Yamato wasnt sunk by any big guns...just a bunch of planes armed with 30 cal. machineguns and torpedos/bombs and as far as I know a battleship didnt sink any carriers...I maybe wrong since Im not a WWII history buff.
Japanese realized battleships were obsolete so they stopped production on the 3rd Yamato super battleship class and turned it into a carrier.
If I remember right the Bismark was basically disabled by a plane then finished off by the cruisers/destroyers/whatnot that caught up.
70+ years later Im not even sure any country in the world has an active battleship.
Bigger doesnt always equate to better...just makes more scrap metal.
P.S. Im not a carrier fan in this game...just using it as an example.
Another example..cell phones back in the 80's were bricks of plastic and todays cells are 1/10th the size/weight...technology gets better things get smaller and more efficient.(Brick is a MKI and a Iphone is MKXII)
And none at 10,001m.
Don't bother looking for realism.
A bunch? You know it took hundreds of aircraft to score hits with 17 bombs and 19 torpedos to sink the Musashi, same deal with the Yamato. It took over 300 aircraft to score 13 torpedos and 15 bombs on her in 3 hours of combat.
How about the Tirpitz? The Allies bombed that thing with a total of 32 raids, that contained over 900 sorties over the course of Four Years and even then it took 3 direct hits from 12,000 lbs Tallboy Bombs to sink her.
defiant is nothing but a gun platform with engine. it is known to be as comfortable as a shuttle.
galaxy on other hand is a big multipurpose ship. it has various scientific and engineering laboratories, big shuttle bay with dozens of small crafts, schools and kindergartens, various recreation facilities, hairdressers and so on .
galaxy is actually a "city-ship" designed for years of independent flight.
You know,
"Please take this cargo that will only fit in the cargo hold of a Galaxy class cruiser to planet X. It should take you three weeks at high warp to get there"
"No problem, I will load in into my Type 8 shuttle and have it there in 5 mins.?
I did say I wasnt up on that part of history but I do know that these big battleships became obsolete during that time.
Yea it may have taken 32 raids and 900 sorties to sink Tirpitz but how many ships did Tirpitz actually sink during that time,type and size compared to how many battleships were sunk by carriers?Wasnt Tirpitz holed up in some port for a year or more and was scuttled by the crew?or am I thinkin of a different battleship?
Either way I get what ya mean.They were monstrosities and took alot to sink but in the end obsolete is obsolete.
The thing people are forgetting that large ships like the Sovereign and Galaxy weren't limited to "8 weapon slots", the Enterprise-E had like 14 Phaser Arrays and 12 Torpedo Launchers. While the Defiant has the Phaser Cannons, one or two Phaser arrays and 3 torpedo launchers. So while the Galaxy was made as an explorer, she held her own as a warship. And while the Defiant was an agile fighter, she wasn't as armed as a traditional cruiser.
Unfortunately, that did not translate well into STO when they made ship layouts.
Not only tanky, but highly efficient killers as well.
Last night I saw someone in a Risan Corvette soloing Borg Red Alert. The Borg groups died before we could even fire. In a couple of ESTFs, I seen 1 Escort solo each side of Infected and Khitomer Space. And then try accomplishing that with group of Cruisers and/or Science Ships (minus Vesta). There is a clear difference in performance.
That's how stupid STO has gotten with Escorts.
In the universe of classic Star Trek canon, "cruiser" type ships are the default and most numerous vessel of the Federation because the Federation is primarily an organization for exploration, research, diplomacy, and colonization. They build cruisers because they have the flexibility to host a summit, defend a convoy, deliver colonists and fabricate a colony, and explore a strange particle cloud all on the same mission. Many of us grew up with The Next Generation... How many times did you hear "The Enterprise is being refitted for its next mission"? Rarely. Because it already had all the stuff it needed to do pretty much anything.
Escorts were introduced because they were more efficient at filling a needed role in a destabilizing galaxy, which was combat patrol. They were small, quick, efficient in materials and manpower, and aggressive. They delivered all the firepower of an advanced cruiser without the bulk of also carrying industrial fabricators, fancy scanning systems, and everything else that cruisers needed to deliver on their multi-role mandate. Escorts were not intended to go on missions that could range to years in length or to perform advanced research or provide logistical support. They were built and fielded to fight, which they do well, while cruisers and science ships were still built and fielded for other missions.
Now we look at STO, and realize: Every single mission is combat-based. Mission events that require scanning or beaming are just buttons we push before enemies leap out at us. Every ship has the same cargo capacity, the same technological and sensor abilities, the same mission endurance and range. The only thing that actually relies on your ship's equipment and realtime performance metrics.... is combat. "Escort" type ships are designed specifically for combat, at the expense of all areas which are not combat, which is why they seem to be favored so much: Every game mission favors their strengths and turns a blind eye to their weaknesses.
Virtually every mission in the game has focused on pew-pew since day 1. It's not surprising that the highest DPS ships would end up getting the most players - especially since end-game doesn't require anything but damage to win. If the end-game were designed better you'd see more ship types being needed and used. Since you don't need tanking or debuffing to win in STO there's no reason to take tanking and debuffing ships.
And so, in STO, escort, cruiser, and science vessels should be classified by their role(war, exploration, research), not their ship size.
Um...no...ahem.
Honestly I would have preferred more non-combat gameplay instead of trying to shoehorn every ship class into combat roles.
Like... Bartering. Cruisers should be far better than other ships at this because of their cargo capacity. Science ships should be able to go on scanning and exploration missions. Duty officer slots should be based on crew size, the more people you have to boss around the more you can have them do. Some missions should take "months" of time to complete, where damage accumulates on small ships that can't keep up with the refitting.
Etc. Etc.
Except they are. You don't even need an official book to tell you either. The Constitution class was called a cruiser in the original series. The Intrepid is slightly bigger. Hence, in terms of size classification, the Intrepid is a cruiser.