Benefits and drawbacks of the "all big gun" warship.

[Korzon77]

So, in our real world, the idea of warships with mixed calibers of armaments (say 12 inch, 9 inch and then six inch cannon) went away to the idea of a warship with usually as many big guns as you could put on it, with a smaller DP battery.

So how does that work in btech? Say I build a ship and instead of mixing weapons, put on as many HNPPCs as I can, maybe with a DP battery of NL-55's.  The only "Standard" armament would be point defense systems-- AMS and such.

What is the advantage and disadvantage of such a ship when compared to the more mixed weapons we see on many IS warships? My assumption is that it woudl have an advantage because you can put light weapons on dropships and fighters-- you can't cram an HNPPC on them, so every ton on a warship that isn't going to a capital weapon is in some regards wasted tonnage.

[Liam's Ghost]

Going from memories of stuff I read fifteen years or so ago, the main problem of mixed armaments on "pre-dreadnought" vessels was because the larger twelve inch guns were doing all the killing against other battleships. Poorer armor penetration and range of the other guns made them superfluous in battles like Tsushima.

In the battletech universe, these issues aren't present. There's no event where a naval weapon will bounce off of capital armor, and punishing too hit penalties from the longer range bands and ECM, as well as the shear speed of warships relative to their effective range, mean the range difference is manageable to insignificant. Generally speaking, concentrating on putting the biggest main guns you can get on your ship will get you more maximum damage overall (especially if you go for naval autocannons), but if bracket firing is an option, bays containing larger numbers of lighter guns give you the option for better accuracy. And big bays of naval lasers give you that option along with the anti-air firing mode.

Of course, too many smaller guns drives your fire control tonnage up and eats away at your available hitting power. What it comes down to is there is no real good simple answer to what makes a good warship. A ship concentrating on the biggest weapons will probably be a brutal close range slugger, one concentrating on larger numbers of smaller weapons will probably be a decent fencer, and one with a mixed armament is likely to have traits of both without being objectively worse than either.

[Getz]

Pre-dreadnought battleships operated on the principle of blanketing the enemy with fire at short ranges.  The heavy (usually 12") guns were not there for long ranged fire but rather to punch through the thickest armour on the target and deliver the knockout blow while the secondary battery of smaller (usually 6") fast firing guns attacked them with high explosive and tore up the softer parts of the ship and reduced it's fighting ability.

This worked pretty well when the ships were only a few thousand yards apart - the battle of Tushima is the classic example.  Admiral Togo engaged in a a bit of ineffectual long ranged sniping at first before closing to short range and pummeling the disorganized Russian ships.  However as the big guns had improved in design, Admirals had already started trying to exploit their greater range to fight at longer distances - the Battle of The Yellow Sea was fought mostly at medium to long range, with the Japanese and Russians generally only inflicting a modest amount of damage to one another even when they got close enough to fight their secondary batteries.

The mediocre performance of the big guns at range in these battles was nothing to do with any deficiency in the weapons themselves, but rather came down to the fact that the pre-dreadnought battleship was not a weapons platform optimized for long ranged gun fights.  The Navies of the world quickly realized that the age of long ranged gunnery had arrived - no matter whether the ships they currently possessed were suited to it - and the race to develop a proper long range gunnery optimized warship was on.

The abandonment of the mixed battery warship was driven by the complexities of actually hitting your target at anything but point blank range with period fire control.  At short ranges the higher rate of fire of the smaller guns compensated for their reduced hitting power, but as ranges grew the only way hit something was by firing as salvoes and correcting the fall of shot.  Mixed batteries required a different firing solution for each weapon type, and as correction was performed by visual spotting the only way to reliably distinguish exactly who was hitting what and with which gun was for the guns to fire in coordinated salvos, thus negating the smaller guns advantage in rate of fire - the very reason they were mounted in the first place - and at very long ranges they could not contribute at all.  Under those circumstances it made more sense to dispense with the secondary batteries entirely and mount only the heaviest, longest ranged guns which could then be coordinated together in a unified fire control system - and so the Dreadnought was born.

Incidentally, you should not get confused by the fact that later dreadnoughts carried a defensive battery of 6" guns similar to those of many pre-dreadnought ships.  In a pre-dreadnought these guns were part of the offensive armament, whereas a dreadnought's secondary battery was primarily a defensive weapon set and was an evolution of the anti-torpedo boat battery also found on most pre-dreadnought's.  As Torpedo boasts had grown bigger and more dangerous over time, these guns had also grown from 3" hand worked pieces up to 6" turret mounts to handle the threat.

What does this have to do with Battletech?

Well basically, what I'm saying is that the all big gun battleships was created under a particular technical paradigm and only represents the optimal solution if your war game is designed around the same core assumptions.  These is no particular reason why a dreadnought style big gun ship would be the best solution in Battletech unless the relationship between range, rate of fire, hitting power and most importantly fire control was modeled on real weapon technology from about 110 years ago.

Edit:  Corrected some bad spelling and grammar that was bugging me.

[Khymerion]

The worries about additional fire control tonnage is almost negligible honestly when you are talking ships that are in the hundreds or millions of tons in weight and using canonical designs are a reference, having vast chunks of the ship being near empty cargo space.    It is really only the highly optimized player designed warships where trying to squeeze that last few tons in to make a barely acceptable amount of maintenance and general supplies does that really matter.   Heck, toyed around with a warship once that was like a space going version of first rater with fifty+ laser gun batteries per broadside, broken up to maintain the needed limits on damage caps and the added weight of the fire control barely dented the weight of the ship.


But BT will never see an 'all big gun' warship because the central concept of the the big gun warships was the idea of a centralized battery of guns that could cover a good deal of arcs.   In essence, the idea of the centerline turret combined with the big guns that Getz and Liam covered helped usher in this type of ship.   BT is completely against the idea of centerline turrets, in any form or fashion... be it dorsal, ventral, port or starbord.    By the very design of the game, we are trapped eternally in a space version of the pre-dreadnaught era.

A BT 'Big Gun' warship would be a revolutionary warship.   Being able to mount what most other warships would have to mount on two or more arcs would all for a smaller warship to hit harder.   Since the super big ships, our McKenna, Texas, Leviathan, and Nightlords are too expensive, too long to build, perhaps a smaller warship mounting the big guns of the old guard warships could seem appealing.  That and with the high speeds that people love to point out a good deal when dealing with warship, a BT 'big gun' centerline warship would have the benefit of being able to cover it's weapon arcs better instead of having a good deal of arcs that are not doing nothing except having large chunks of the crew sitting there keeping the seats warm.

A big gun centerline space warship might actually be the next stage of BT warships.   A smaller, more efficient warship.   A smaller crew.  Easier to keep supplied.   Still able to bring the big guns of the older, larger warships.   A few big batteries heavy capital guns on the centerline backed up with batteries of naval lasers or sub-cap naval lasers would be an appealing warship... especially over the current generation of warships that have sailed the stars of BT since the earliest days of the setting.

[StCptMara]

Benefits of an "all big gun" warship: it will hurt other Warships faster.

Drawbacks of having only PD and AMS weapons for secondary? Vulnerability to
fighters.

[Khymerion]

Benefits of an "all big gun" warship: it will hurt other Warships faster.

Drawbacks of having only PD and AMS weapons for secondary? Vulnerability to
fighters.

Massed naval lasers and sub-cap lasers operating as secondaries could improve the chances.   Then again, compared to the older warships of the Star League, an all big gun warship would survive just as long as they used to.

[Getz]

Benefits of an "all big gun" warship: it will hurt other Warships faster.

Drawbacks of having only PD and AMS weapons for secondary? Vulnerability to
fighters.

Well, a proper "dreadnought" warship would have some sort of defensive anti-fighter armament as fighters are the "torpedo boats" of the setting.  What it wouldn't have is any small or intermediate armament as a component of the offensive armament.

[sillybrit]

Drawbacks of having only PD and AMS weapons for secondary? Vulnerability to
fighters.

It depends. Capital weapons aren't as bad for anti-fighter defense as some might believe. Sure you hit fighters less often than standard weapons, but you potentially can start shooting sooner and, more importantly, what you hit typically dies in one shot, whereas standard weapons might require multiple hits to kill or cripple a fighter. The possible problem is that while you're shooting fighters with your capital weapons, you're not shooting at any larger targets that might be in range. If the larger targets are a group of transport DropShips, then that's not going to be something to worry about, but if there's an enemy WarShip, then you might need to reassess your targeting priorities.

[StCptMara]

It depends. Capital weapons aren't as bad for anti-fighter defense as some might believe. Sure you hit fighters less often than standard weapons, but you potentially can start shooting sooner and, more importantly, what you hit typically dies in one shot, whereas standard weapons might require multiple hits to kill or cripple a fighter. The possible problem is that while you're shooting fighters with your capital weapons, you're not shooting at any larger targets that might be in range. If the larger targets are a group of transport DropShips, then that's not going to be something to worry about, but if there's an enemy WarShip, then you might need to reassess your targeting priorities.

And considering how abysmally low most warships are, armour wise? Where, simply put, Naval Autocannons are something
to worry about on anything except the Mjolnir and Leviathan-series of ships? Those fighters hitting for 1 or 2 points of damage
every turn is an issue, as well. And, that is where the choice becomes more a "So..um..do you think we can jump out now?
because, if we can't..we are just deciding how we want to die."

You know...this choice pretty much explains the Davion tendency to go ramming speed..

[Weirdo]

...this tells me that you don't play many aero games.

Trust us, those "underarmored" ships take a LOT of killing to put down.

[Jellico]

Benefits of an "all big gun" warship: it will hurt other Warships faster.

Drawbacks of having only PD and AMS weapons for secondary? Vulnerability to
fighters.

Sorry guys. You missed the point. Go re-read Getz' excellent post. "All big gun" has nothing to do with centreline fire or hitting other ships faster. It was a technological solution to a very specific problem in the first half of the 20th C. It basically became obsolete as a concept in the 1940s with radar. It certainly isn't an issue now outside of logistical concerns.

Now the large centreline turrets you seem to be describing are another issue entirely. Centreline batteries came about because guns got heavier in relation to the ships. There is no great advantage to use super heavy weapons in BT so why have them?

[DarthRads]

...this tells me that you don't play many aero games.

Trust us, those "underarmored" ships take a LOT of killing to put down.

People hear 'vulnerable to fighters' and imagine a single squadron taking down a WarShip I think. I've heard/read reports of an Aegis taking on 90+ fighters and walking away!

[idea weenie]

People hear 'vulnerable to fighters' and imagine a single squadron taking down a WarShip I think. I've heard/read reports of an Aegis taking on 90+ fighters and walking away!

Well, that is only ~9000 tons worth of offensive firepower, vs an Aegis massing ~700 ktons (~40 times the combat power, allowing for KF core using up tonnage).  Two of its NAC/30 almost mass as much as the entire formation of fighters (and it carries 18 of them, plus other weapons).

What I would want to do is put in a form of hardened armor so fighters need heavy weapons to even have a chance of damaging the Warship.  They might be able to strafe and damage surface items, but to actually damage the Warship they will need PPCs, AC/10, AC/20, GR, Thunderbolt missiles, or the heavier Clan lasers (except Pulse lasers which are a cluster of small hits).  You also have fighters trying to target the Warship through its multi-ton jamming platforms, and trying to dodge the targeting from its multi-ton targeting systems.

Warships engage each other, but use their secondary batteries to deal with enemy Dropships if possible.  They have antifighter weapons, but should not use them that often.

Dropships support their side's Warship, try to keep enemy fighters away, and deal with the other side's Dropships.  If they can, they target single sides of a Warship to punch holes for fighters to exploit.

Fighters dogfight, they try to damage enemy Dropships, and exploit weak spots on a Warship.  If they are sent against a mint warship, they are either carrying a heavy load of antishipping weapons (including on external racks), or it is a desperation run.  Fighters will try to stay in a warship's damaged arc, because if they wind up in a fresh arc their targeting goes bad, and the fresh weapons in that arc will pop them.  Think the Star Wars Death Star Trench Run, for a comparison.

[Khymerion]

Now the large centreline turrets you seem to be describing are another issue entirely. Centreline batteries came about because guns got heavier in relation to the ships. There is no great advantage to use super heavy weapons in BT so why have them?

Why?   Because you can pack more effective firepower on a smaller chassis.   Less wasted space.   It is one of the most annoying things about designing a BT warship is that you have so many weapons that are dead weight.   It is truly like watching ironclad warships of the pre-dreadnaught era go at it.   Decentralized guns in what amount to barely better than casemate gun batteries firing at each other ineffectually with so many guns and crews doing next to nothing unless you have some fool hardy captain drive his ship right in the middle of an entire fleet and praying they can hammer the other fleet down before they are reduced to scrap (or, they are doing the 'heroic' death ride thing.)

And what advantage would there be?   Why wouldn't you want to have the ability to only have to pay for a single 45 pt heavy N-PPC battery that could cover the broadside and fore arcs instead of having to pay for numerous batteries to get the same coverage?   Instead of having to pay for a gun battery of those Hvy NPPCs on each broadside and then another on each of the nose sides to cover while still missing the line right along the bow what a turret with 270* could do means paying nearly 4 times the weight for a negligible amount of cover.   Half that weight in a pair of heavy turrets along a centerline would be able to do EXACTLY that.

There was more to the development of the all big gun warship than just the development of heavier guns.  It took a change in the way people thought about ship design.   It was also the revolutionary concept of concentrating those guns for major effect.   That is what made Dreadnaught revolutionary.  More without having to go bigger, to use existing yards to get better results.   Less dead weight that could be used better for structure, engines, and armor.    The superfire turret configuration is what brought the super-dreadnaught into existence.   No longer with turrets being ineffectually placed on the wings like Dreadnaught or in odd configurations like the German dreadnaughts that fired across the beam.

That is why the idea of having warships with big guns but locked in primitive pseudo casemate firing arcs seems silly but that is ultimately the way the game is designed.   So we are continuing to live with ships that have massive amounts of wasted space on heavy weapons that rarely get to come to bear and sit idle, space that could be better used on armor, speed, fighter capacity, fuel and munitions for those small craft, and other things besides idle heavy weapons.

Especially in a modern era of the 3100's where ship yard sizes are by nature smaller, the idea of a smaller, cheaper, and more efficient compact warship mounting and being able to bring to bear the effective strength of a broadside worth of weapons of a super heavy warship to a single arc and still with an effective armor belt would seem rather attractive...  not a detriment or an 'anachronism' of the 20th century.   BT warships are actually more of an anachronism than anything else.

[DarthRads]

Well, that is only ~9000 tons worth of offensive firepower, vs an Aegis massing ~700 ktons (~40 times the combat power, allowing for KF core using up tonnage).  Two of its NAC/30 almost mass as much as the entire formation of fighters (and it carries 18 of them, plus other weapons).

What I would want to do is put in a form of hardened armor so fighters need heavy weapons to even have a chance of damaging the Warship.  They might be able to strafe and damage surface items, but to actually damage the Warship they will need PPCs, AC/10, AC/20, GR, Thunderbolt missiles, or the heavier Clan lasers (except Pulse lasers which are a cluster of small hits).  You also have fighters trying to target the Warship through its multi-ton jamming platforms, and trying to dodge the targeting from its multi-ton targeting systems.

Warships engage each other, but use their secondary batteries to deal with enemy Dropships if possible.  They have antifighter weapons, but should not use them that often.

Dropships support their side's Warship, try to keep enemy fighters away, and deal with the other side's Dropships.  If they can, they target single sides of a Warship to punch holes for fighters to exploit.

Fighters dogfight, they try to damage enemy Dropships, and exploit weak spots on a Warship.  If they are sent against a mint warship, they are either carrying a heavy load of antishipping weapons (including on external racks), or it is a desperation run.  Fighters will try to stay in a warship's damaged arc, because if they wind up in a fresh arc their targeting goes bad, and the fresh weapons in that arc will pop them.  Think the Star Wars Death Star Trench Run, for a comparison.

That sounds like a rule I proosed on these boards a while back. Only weapons that can do 10+ points of damage on their own (not cumulative) can actually damage WarShip armour.

[Wrangler]

What about the introduction of Sub-Capital Weapon Systems?   If the WarShips production hadn't been removed from the franchise, would-be future WarShips designs changed their weapon strategies by introduction of such weapons?

Anti-Ship Missile for fighters adds something of a factor as well if you have enough of them firing I would imagine.

[Jellico]

Why? 

Hmm. Not sure how to respond to that. Its like no one ever thought of all big guns on the centreline before HMS Dreadnought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devastation-class_ironclad

Indeed it is amazing that these things never took off to dominate the age of sail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_ketch

The first thing I would suggest is to stop thinking in 2D. Though the game is 2D, space is 3D. For all we are aware the weapons are getting their maximum flexibility in the z axis rather than the x or y.

More importantly there are probably real limitations. Mainly to do with rotating huge weights in relation to the mass of the ship. You should check out some of Cray's explanations of what stray grav decks can do to a ship. 

[Khymerion]

Hmm. Not sure how to respond to that. Its like no one ever thought of all big guns on the centreline before HMS Dreadnought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devastation-class_ironclad

Indeed it is amazing that these things never took off to dominate the age of sail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_ketch

The first thing I would suggest is to stop thinking in 2D. Though the game is 2D, space is 3D. For all we are aware the weapons are getting their maximum flexibility in the z axis rather than the x or y.

More importantly there are probably real limitations. Mainly to do with rotating huge weights in relation to the mass of the ship. You should check out some of Cray's explanations of what stray grav decks can do to a ship. 

You know what, you are right.  I am not a super math genius.   I have only played a few games that have been 3D oriented combat, in both digital and table top.   But from those experiences, short of having a player try to do something 'super creative' like splitting up their forces and coming at me from two different angles... which thanks to the wonders of long ranged sensors, is usually seen pretty clearly and usually depends on an incredible amount of luck... as in 'I must not be looking at my screen or the table for the last 30 minutes or more' amount of luck... or some mitigating factor (in combat hyper drive jumps)...   most 3d combat tends to degenerate rather quickly to what might as well be 2d fighting.

I am going to assume that if a ship is coming at a 30 degree down angle towards me and I choose to actually fight, I am going to be aiming my ship up the appropriate amount to be able to intercept him and bring my weapons to bear or at least level out the angle of engagement between the warships.   In essence, because both me and the person I am trying to fight are both wanting to engage and want to close.   That means we both need to be actually pointing at each other.   At that point, the 3d aspect starts to dissipate quickly.

Our maps could be a fight where the enemy's ships are coming down straight from the zenith and the other player's are coming straight up.   Sure, we could do some really complex math that would bog down a game or...  tilt the map.   Since we don't operate in a game where we keep track of altitudes in space, it means that effectively, we are fighting on a 2d plane, no matter how 3d we want to get....  unless again, someone pulls off a one in a million shot of lining up and predicting perfectly the arrival of two attacking forces against a different target, especially if that target is moving.   Then and only then would I advocate 'thinking in 3d' in terms of this game.


Now, as for the problems of warships mounting turrets...  we are talking about ships that are hundreds of thousands of tons.   The smallest warship is effectively bigger than the largest combat ships by a significant margin of error.   Sure, a triple heavy N-PPC weighs in at 9000 tons, as much as a WWII heavy cruiser but then again, we are talking cruisers that are on average 500K to 700K tons with capital ships screaming past a million to two million tons.   We are not talking about standard gravity held in barbarette turret.   Aircraft turrets already prove that it is possible if we put our mind to it to get guns in a turret that isn't held in by gravity and if a one million ton warship can pull 2 or 3 gravities of acceleration or turn a 180 without coughing, then the added stress of some kind of proper turret shouldn't be a problem.

I am sure someone can come up with numbers to justify why every weapon on a BT space cruiser needs to be mounted on what is barely better than a casemate waist gun like a pre-dreadnought era ironclad.    I am sure that some writer can come up with some really interesting way that these gun batteries actually are on fantastic mounts that pivot up, down, left, and right INSIDE the warship... since the artwork is pretty suspect most of the time and the fluff text for the ship designs is even more unreliable (detailing turrets that are not there).   So that explains why they are pseudo turretted weapons and are actually covering a cone (not that it matters in game).    Fine...  and I guess I will accept that the dorsal and ventral side of any ship is actually completely ignored and thus why no ship has any way of actually mounting a weapon that can conceivable cover more than a single arc at a time... with the few arcs that do over lap each other.

But hey, I am probably completely wrong and await being put in my place.

[Getz]

Hmm. Not sure how to respond to that. Its like no one ever thought of all big guns on the centreline before HMS Dreadnought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devastation-class_ironclad

Indeed it is amazing that these things never took off to dominate the age of sail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_ketch

The first thing I would suggest is to stop thinking in 2D. Though the game is 2D, space is 3D. For all we are aware the weapons are getting their maximum flexibility in the z axis rather than the x or y.

More importantly there are probably real limitations. Mainly to do with rotating huge weights in relation to the mass of the ship. You should check out some of Cray's explanations of what stray grav decks can do to a ship.

Although Khymerion has made a mistake by associating the development of turreted armament with the Dreadnought revolution - the perfection of the turret was instead one of the key technologies behind the evolution of the Broadside Ironclad into the Steel Battleship (or pre-dreadnought battleship as it is more commonly known) - he is quite correct in everything he says with regard to the significance of turrets, or rather the lack of them, in Battletech warship design.

The rules give us ships analogous to the early seagoing ironclads which carried a mixture of guns in casemated mounts on either broadside and enjoyed serious advantages in seaworthiness compared to the early turreted battleships.  Early turrets were very heavy relative to the total mass of the ship and tended to concentrate the mass of the ship high up, resulting in designs with either limited freeboard (relatively safe, but only in flat seas) or too much top weight (unsafe under any conditions).  As the technology behind turrets was refined, the machinery got lighter and ways were found to concentrate the weight lower in the hull.  It wasn't long before the Casemate Ironclad was rendered obsolete as the armament layout was fundamentally inefficient compared to a turreted setup.

It's significant that during the late dreadnought era a battery of six secondary guns in three double turrets was considered much superior to ten guns in casemates.

By the time Dreadnoughts appeared on the scene the gun turret was a mature technology and superimposed gun mounts were only slow to appear because they entailed a serious penalty in weight (and by extension, stability) compared to wing turrets and there were concerns about blast interference from the guns and requirement for axial fire - indeed, Dreadnought herself very nearly got a superimposed turret layout, but it was considered too risky in a ship of "only" 18,000 tons with an 82' beam which was already charting new water in weapons and propulsive technology.

[Khymerion]

Although Khymerion has made a mistake by associating the development of turreted armament with the Dreadnought revolution - the perfection of the turret was instead one of the key technologies behind the evolution of the Broadside Ironclad into the Steel Battleship (or pre-dreadnought battleship as it is more commonly known) - he is quite correct in everything he says with regard to the significance of turrets, or rather the lack of them, in Battletech warship design.

The rules give us ships analogous to the early seagoing ironclads which carried a mixture of guns in casemated mounts on either broadside and enjoyed serious advantages in seaworthiness compared to the early turreted battleships.  Early turrets were very heavy relative to the total mass of the ship and tended to concentrate the mass of the ship high up, resulting in designs with either limited freeboard (relatively safe, but only in flat seas) or too much top weight (unsafe under any conditions).  As the technology behind turrets was refined, the machinery got lighter and ways were found to concentrate the weight lower in the hull.  It wasn't long before the Casemate Ironclad was rendered obsolete as the armament layout was fundamentally inefficient compared to a turreted setup.

It's significant that during the late dreadnought era a battery of six secondary guns in three double turrets was considered much superior to ten guns in casemates.

By the time Dreadnoughts appeared on the scene the gun turret was a mature technology and superimposed gun mounts were only slow to appear because they entailed a serious penalty in weight (and by extension, stability) compared to wing turrets and there were concerns about blast interference from the guns and requirement for axial fire - indeed, Dreadnought herself very nearly got a superimposed turret layout, but it was considered too risky in a ship of "only" 18,000 tons with an 82' beam which was already charting new water in weapons and propulsive technology.

Thank you for the correction.   I was misremembering and more attributing to the general term instead of the class itself.

[I am Belch II]

I hate to be "that guy" but are we talking about Navy Ships now, or Warships in the future?

[Khymerion]

I hate to be "that guy" but are we talking about Navy Ships now, or Warships in the future?

Combination of both.   Concepts bleeding over from one to the other since mindsets of one mimic the play style of the others.

[Wrangler]

Given that future of WarShips are dead subject.  Talking about past is all we have.

[Khymerion]

Given that future of WarShips are dead subject.  Talking about past is all we have.

And that is a real shame in the end.

[Maingunnery]

What about taking about Aerodyne/Spheroid PWS with "all big gun"?  ;)

[Jellico]

What about taking about Aerodyne/Spheroid PWS with "all big gun"?  ;)

That is somewhat relevant.

The discovery of the 7 ERPPC bay in the nose of the Assault Triumph was a revelation. Huge bays of single types of weapons kill ASF!
Up until then there weren't many such bays. Maybe the Overlord A3 and Neko and that was it.

[Getz]

I hate to be "that guy" but are we talking about Navy Ships now, or Warships in the future?

Although I am probably guilty of going off at a tangent, I think that discussing why things happened the way the did in reality helps us understand why they don't have to necessarily work the same way in a futuristic war game.

Space combat games often share more than a a passing resemblance to naval combat games and a lot of the basic assumptions about the technology are cribbed more or less directly from naval design.  Some games like GW's Battlefleet Gothic (which, incidentally, is one of my favourite space combat games despite being firmly at the beer and pretzels end of the spectrum) make no apology for this and there's nothing wrong with that.  However, if you're trying for something a bit more hard sci-fi then it doesn't really do to just say "wet navies have gun turrets and aircraft carriers, so space navies would do too" without thinking about whether the systems would be viable or desirable in a space combat scenario.

[Wrangler]

If i had one thing i found difficult to use in space going side of Battletech, its properly the carriers.  Being able keep track of numerous fighters swarming your intended target is pretty daunting task.   Thera being super-carrier of WarShips, its be hard to see being able reasonably deploy squadrons of fighter from that vessel.  While the ship itself has reason offensive firepower on its own, i would find it challenging to be able make it easy going space game against someone if any of its legions of fighters got involved.

I guess thats why the bigger gun ships and small fighter bays is the norm in most of the universe's designs.

[A. Lurker]

It's now my personal headcanon that BT warships have perfectly fine and workable turrets for their various weapons already. The mistake is simply in thinking that when we put them on the map we're looking at them from the top -- when it's obvious that we're actually viewing them sideways and what we think of as their "port" and "starboard" weapons are instead actually simply their respective "top" and "bottom" batteries. :D

[RebelRunner]

It's now my personal headcanon that BT warships have perfectly fine and workable turrets for their various weapons already. The mistake is simply in thinking that when we put them on the map we're looking at them from the top -- when it's obvious that we're actually viewing them sideways and what we think of as their "port" and "starboard" weapons are instead actually simply their respective "top" and "bottom" batteries. :D

The funny thing is that, as I see it, the high-altitude map supports this.