I’ve read over this and I feel rather bad. Originally this was going to be part of an AETAS post where I would also make some cutting remarks at Shingo’s character, but then I realized that most people probably could care less about all of this. So now it looks like a Zombie bashing fest, which was not my intent. Meh. I suppose I’m a little bitter that no one else has nearly the same ideas of ship combat as me. Sorry for any offense this may cause.
"Zombie" said: Ferals are capable of "shrugging off" mostly anything short of a killing blow. *Cejer once again rolls his eyes* Well, the thing about that is… all ships by their very nature can “shrug off” all attacks short of a killing blow. Because either you breach the hull with an attack or you don’t. The exceptions to this rule of thumb are ships equipped with cloaking or energy siphon systems, because these trap energy within the hull and prevent it from venting into space. In short, ship hulls don’t operate with a “hit-point” system. Instead it’s an all or nothing system: your weapons make it through, or they don’t. If your weapons get through there is a minor chance you hit a vital system. The only other option is to shatter the enemy hull so vital systems are no longer protected.
"Zombie" said: They are patchwork mechanics. Holes in the hull won't do too terribly much unless they are rather large. Their ships are always compartmentalized. Again, holes in the hull do very little to damage ANY ships, because all ships are assumed to have some sort of self-sealing mechanism to prevent atmosphere leaks. The only chance of significant damage is if the weapon that caused the hole hits some vital system or conducting wire. And compartmentalization is a very expensive (in terms of resources, time, and interior space) procedure. Essentially, you set up a system of airlocks within the ship so a major hull breach in one section of the ship doesn’t vent all of the ship’s atmosphere into space.
"Zombie" said: The cruiser, being a rather large patchwork monstosity, could shrug off the first nuke volley because of a very limited heat-dampening matrix. The field distributes heat evenly across the entire hull and vents it at several points. However, nuclear weapons have the tasty effect of causing the generator to explode. In such a case the cruiser would have been impervious to anything heat related short of nuclear weapons anyone threw at it, which was not, I believe, your intent. Second, the heat-dampening matrix would not take place quickly enough to negate nuclear weapons without massive back up from heat resistant hull. Enough so where anything short of nuclear weapons is again, ineffective.
"Zombie" said: Did you seriously expect it to be that easy to take down the Ferals? I’m guessing that you want the Ferals to be some sort of terrifying super-pirates that cut everyone down without mercy, but immense personal combat abilities have absolutely no bearing upon ship combat abilities, and in the Ferals’ case they probably interfere with ship combat. Until they manage to board, they’re just another race crewing a group of ships, vulnerable to the same tactics as everyone else.
"Zombie" said: Good idea with the projectile weaponry, though. Not only does that effectively circumvent the sensory jamming the Ferals have going, it also renders their energy shielding rather useless. See now why the Koneko isn't equipped with particle or projectile weaponry yet? Firing slugs through the cruiser would have ended the battle quickly, but then no one would learn much about the Ferals. Briefly answering the comments in order. Thank you. That’s the point of projectile weapons. Not really. Not really. I’m going to give a little more explanation now. The point of projectile weaponry is its consistency. Energy weapons have a wide range of effectiveness against enemy hull alloys and shielding methods, but armor piercing shells bypass both obstacles quite effectively. However, unless you get lucky and hit a vital system or a vital person, putting holes through the enemy ship doesn’t adversely affect performance. So the Dalgûn use explosive shells to shell enemy ships like peanuts. The shells explode shortly after passing through the enemy hull plating and blast the armor into space. Then the internal components are exposed and can be quickly destroyed with whatever the Dalgûn feel like using. Shells that spread out to deal a lot of damage are also stopped easily by armor, and so firing those before removing the armor plating is usually pointless. And I thought you mentioned that data was the last thing to be worried about. Wasn’t survival (and thus quick destruction of the Ferals) the highest priority?
"Zombie" said: They will learn from this battle, though. :3 They may be stupid, but that doesn't mean that they don't know how to properly fight and defend. Yes, but weapons don’t become less effective just because the enemies know the weapon exists. If they cannot produce better-armored ships, stronger shields, longer ranged sensors, etc, then whatever they learn about our weapons is fairly meaningless. And since such improvements take time, the only data that is useful to them is our tactics, which aren’t set in stone like our weapons are (well, for now anyway).
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