It might be a Space Ork truism, but it fits humies just fine too. And I got a free copy of Mothergunship from the Epic store, I have to give it a checking out for sure.
Humanity follows one of two design filosophies when it comes to war-vehicle design, Either: More turrets, turrets on top with turrets on the side, extra turrets hold the turrets. OR Take gun, biiiig gun, now build vehicle around gun. in both cases, moar dakka more better reigns supreme.
Often times the main course is a ship built around a big gun, with turrets we an appetizer, turrets for dessert, a nice bottle of fighters, and endless bread sticks....err I meant missiles. Endless missiles
Admiral Rickover : build a nuclear powered submarine Shipyard : we don’t have a reactor that will fit in a submarine Admiral Rickover: Well build a submarine around a reactor, F*** a D*** ! Do I have to F***ing think of everything?
@@darkdruidsvaleand “let’s add a drone to it to act as a fire control device and make it so accurate with its actual tons of daka that the enemy surrenders ti the drone” (real thing that happened)
@Tula-cs1ef I would argue reloading is part of the logistical chain between "round is manufactured" and "round is fired at enemy", it's just part that's not considered because people usually consider the "logistics" part to end a step or two before that.
From the "70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" - #6 - If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it. #55 - It's only too many weapons if they're pointing in the wrong direction.
@@charlespedersen5752 considering the Nova design later bred the Omega class destroyer, and then the warlock class cruiser.. no. Earth Force also kept her remaining Novas. She's a good ship, powerful, a bit slow yes, but that 8 thousand ground pounders is amazing. Basically became an over glorified transport with enough firepower to give most of the galaxy pause before attacking.
@@Darqshadow Plasma cannons make great Orbital Support weapons for the GROPOs. Ground Commander: "Captain, do you see that fortification in front of us?" Nova Captain: "I see it" Ground Commander: "I don't want too!" Nova Captain: "Understood. FIRE!"
I'd like to quote "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" Maxim #25 If a manufacturer's warranty covers the damage you did, you didn't do enough damage. and Maxim #34 If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.
@@redwing1629 we humans would like to remind you that. No we don't actually believe in minimum safe distance. We can, well, and have fired our weapons in point blank range and if all else fails. We will ram you and fire our weapons from inside your ship. Then blow up our own ship just to make sure we take you down
Humans have been knocking eachothers head in for 100.000 years. There are two lessons. 1. The guy with the biggest stick wins. 2. There is always going to be somebody with a bigger stick. Nova class is example of lesson 1... (Vorlon of lesson 2).
Technically the Minbari surrendered, so yeah, officially its a win. Even if its was a de-facto "okay, we will not wipe your entire species out after all" from them.
@@_Muzolf They only surrendered because of the "Minbari do not kill Minbari" and the soul-transfer to Earth meant they were essentially killing their own people. Sinclair=Valen, thus they'd lose the Shadow War of 1260 before they even met the humans
It was closer to “holy f*ck we killed a lot of you guys. You know, we’re kind of starting to feel a little bad about that, so we’re “surrendering” as a symbolic act of penance.” At least that was from the Religious Caste perspective. The Warrior Caste was more like “WTF? We’re surrendering?! WHY?”
It's a universally human tradtion. Seriously, we've been doing it for a *long* time. Just look at the sailing ships of the line - guns, guns and MORE guns. If only they'd made the turrets superfiring or just put some angles on the hull, it could have been truly glorious. Pity the poor bastard that gets all of those trained on them at once "well, shit..."
@@markfergerson2145 I don't have access to some of the stuff I read in the past but IIRC they only counted the heavy guns in the ship's total so a 74 gun two decker could easily have two or three times as many light guns as heavy. Now that's a lot of dakka!
@@MrGrimsmith Yeah, ships were rated for a certain amount of guns but they often had more guns than there were rated for. AFAIK the rate was determined by the number of gun ports. Well, you could mount guns on the main decks which would add to the number the ship was rated for.
A lot like the American late-WW2 concept: Is there free deck space? Why is there free deck space? Put a gun there you idiot! :P Only now they can put turrets on all sides and not just on the top, because SPACE. :D
Afaik the red spots on the hull of nova and omega are supposed to be the missile silos. So they give you a good ol broadside. And they also shall be the main weapons but were to difficult to animate during the time of B5 so we never see them used.
Yeah, they were VLS style missile launchers and those two kinda flat oval tubes on the underside of bow of the Nova and Omega where supposed to be gigaton mine launchers (later retconned in heavy plasma motors like one B5 gets when it's weapon systems get upgraded in season 2). The Omega's were also supposed to have launched their starfurries from the tips of the rotating section like B5 did but after they changed effects houses they kinda forgot to send notes covering the specs of the ships so the new team never showed that happening. And while we're at it, the Nova wasn't originally supposed to be it's own thing. In the script for GROPOS they were "gunboat" version of the Omega that were designed for landing operations and orbital fire support which is why they had those fuck huge guns.
@@SacredCowShipyards Nope. Original intent was a missile broadside, unused. Why they didn't have DEW broadsides I do not grok. Weber's Honorverse does Napoleonic Navies in space well.
To be fair. The Tillman series of Battleships had some... strange designs. I believe it was Tillman A that had a 4 Sextuple Turrets of 16" Caliber, all in a row of course, so 5 isnt ALL that bad.
@@calvingreene90 Well, Senator Tillman basically told the the naval architects "Your idiot bosses (the U.S Navy) keep asking for more and more money to build bigger and bigger ships. I am fed up with canceling those proposals, so what is the biggest ship you could ever ask me money for?". And the naval architects did the rest. And the ships they designed where totally feasible, though definitely not practical.
@@djolds1 The only B5 ships that had artificial gravity were: (A) Earth Alliance ships with rotational sections; (B) Minbari and Centauri ships (and perhaps some of the Non-Aligned Worlds); (C) the First Ones … if they wanted. I seem to recall reading someplace that the Narn didn't have (non-rotational) artificial gravity because they hadn't been able to reverse-engineer it before the Centauri left Barn.
Germany (III Reich) had, for a moment, plans to design and build a 1000 ton tank behemoth, Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte. The plans were scrapped, but still... One naval turret with twin guns as main, over ten smaller turret for anti-tank ant anti-air purposes.
But it does go the other way. Most US surface warships now have one small turret with one small gun, if that. I feel like we lost something, and not just the ability to conduct shore bombardment to support amphibious operations.
The Standard Missile on US Navy destroyers can be fired against ships as well as aircraft. They have a 130 pound warhead, which is slightly more firepower than a 6-inch shell (primary gun of a WWII light cruiser). If you're a captain and you're not in the mood to use a Harpoon (which has the firepower of an old-fashioned 10-inch naval shell) you can pummel a ship with the equivalent of 6-inch shells that steer themselves into the target. Modern US Navy destoyers don't _need_ a battery of 5-inch guns any more.
@@BogeyTheBear Yeah the Standard missile just has the slight disadvantage of the 4.3 million dollar price tag, per missile. There is kind of a reason the US navy is interested in developing rail guns and lasers. Because missiles are holy shit expensive. Railgun's, Lasers and conventional guns may have a hefty price tag for the weapon itself, but the shots they fire arent. Also one of the reasons the Iowa's suck around for as long as they did until their machinery finally wore out in the 90's. The 16 inch gun might not have the range of a Tomahawk missile, but one tomahawk cost at least as much as a thousand 16 inch HE shells.
@@wyveriusblackfire3834 Yeah, and one of the reasons why aircraft carriers and their air wings arent going to go away any time soon, or really rendered obsolete by swarms of missile boats as some like to theorize. Sure if you compare the cost of a single missile swarm from a bunch of missile boats vs an aircraft carrier and its aircraft, the missile boats and missiles might sound cheaper on paper, until you factor in that planes are reusable, missiles are not. This is especially true when your using aircraft to project power far inland against a lower capability opponent that wont be as likely to shoot them down. Now Railguns and even conventional guns are still an even cheaper way of delivering ordinance than aircraft and aircraft carriers, but railguns arent mature yet, and conventional guns cannot range out as far. And the battleships that carried the big guns are as stated, too worn out to continue to operate, and the current state of naval affairs means that at this time, it isn't economical to build a new big gun ship to fulfill the role. And the Navy has got bigger problems to deal with, like getting a new frigate design out which it desperately needs right now. Or coming up with a replacement for the Tico's.
In the immortal words of the Orkz, "Darez No Such Fing Az Enuff Dakka." Also "If, at any point in time, the entirety of creation is filled solely with and made entirely of guns, as well as having all of those guns firing constantly, at all times, forever and always, beyond the end of existence itself, in all possible, impossible, potential, and long since deceased realities and unrealities, then, and only then, could you possibly reach the point that you could say that there is slightly under 'enough Dakka'. As you would still, even if creation was nothing but infinite guns firing infinite bullets, all existing at the same infinite unbound time, in the same infinite space, not have enough Dakka. Or so I have been told by a rather linguistically gifted Ork." - Unnamed Inquisitor
@@colinsmith1495 Why not. You know the enemy is somewhere in the vacinity of That Way, and there's nothing in space they can usefully hide behind, so blanket the area with enough gunfire and you're bound to hit something. Personally I'd be amazed if there wasn't a research division in the B5 universe trying to make a rotary barrelled plasma cannon so that we could effectively have a dozen A-10s strapped to the ship in turrets
@@andrewmedley3604 the Minbari lost one ship to ten that the humans lost. no the Minbari didn't avoid confrontations with Earth ships. One human colony had ground placed defense cannons that caused the Minbari to send down flyers with troops and vehicles (which due to being smaller, nimbler were able to avoid the fire from heavily fortified cannons) since their ships would have been blasted apart if they tried to get close to do an attack from orbit
Would love to see your take on some of the ships from Farscape, specifically the Prowler and Leviathan, the two most-featured ships in the series. One being a massive civilian transport vessel, and the other, a fighter. I think the series really had it's aesthetic down, but I'm no expert when it comes to function. are they good at their jobs, or is it just plot armour?
If you want to experience the Nova in all of it's glory, I recommend the Dilgar War fanfiction by Lightning count. It's a fantastic story that explores that underdeveloped conflict in lengthy and loving detail. The author really knows how to write a prequel, it easily fits into canon. As for the Nova? The first battle between the EA and the Dilgar has a battleline of 100s of Novas unleashing their full broadsides (with the turrets on one side firing perpendicularly across the hull) into the Dilgar fleet. It was glorious.
Yeah... definitely fanfiction. There's absolutely no way Earth ever had multiple hundreds of Novas. I'd say it's stretching it for Earth to have just 100 of these monsters. Multiple 100s is just ridiculous.
@@Darqshadow Well no actually. The 10 000 nuclear missiles barrage that followed though (a third of EAs stockpile)? That made them shit their pants. Not J'Hadur though. She was too much in awe for pants shitting. Also there might not have been any Prussian tune, but there was a Haka from a Maori captain of a Nova Dreadnaught. Just the verbal part. The physical would be very hard to do in zero gravity.
Well, there were more like some dozen. It was even written how much ressources, money and time to build even one consumed. I think it was like they could build 2 max in a year? Is several years ago i read that, so i dont know the correct number anymore, so thats what i think it was. Edit: Reading it at the moment again. I am at chapter 61 atm, the start of Human - Dilgar war. Earth Alliance has 6 fleets at start and two more waiting for completion. Each Fleet has around 500 ships.... + 50 Novas.So there are around 300 - 400 Novas. And i was completely wrong with 2 Novas in a year. Its more like 2 in a week.
This ship was very much a case of "we don't care if it wouldn't be possible even in our show's own universe! Just add more stuff on it!" Even if you account for the scaling the amount of space required to provide power up to 22 fuck off guns, 6 beam projectors, space for the missile magazines, then SOMEHOW find space for almost 40 fighters AND THEN 8,000 troops just isn't there. If you like ship stuff "Drachinifel" has a channel that discusses them and the pre WW1 ships in particular are cocaine levels of crazy.
I recommend "When Hotels go to War" about the French Pre-Dreads. They were hilarious. As far as the guns go: You don't need to power all the guns at the same time, since usually you try to avoid being surrounded on all sides by enemies. I do remember reading something about the Nova being actually unable to use all it's guns at the same time and that even using "just" a single broadside requires them to reroute energy away from the engines, leaving them at half-ish efficiency if they use too many guns or somesuch. But I don't know if that is fully canon or from a semi-canon source (i.e. the games).
So the drawback on the Nova is that it has abysmal deployment endurance. This is not a patrol ship. It is not a convoy escort. It is not something you station anywhere it does not have CONSTANT access to resupply. It is meant to be deployed, fight one battle, and then return home for resupply.
This episode was cool. Turrets. I wish there was more on the Dilgar era. I've probably missed some information somewhere but I'd love to see the juxtaposition of Terran military being dominant with what happened against the Minbari. I did not know the Nova class carried 36 fighters. Sounds like my ship designs in 4x games. Always put in a fighter bay, even if the game mechanics don't recommend it. The lore in my head demands it.
If we get to space and ftl is discovered, EVERY ship would have a flight bay. In 3d space, fighter screen as well as smaller craft are invaluable for electronic warfare, missile screen, and etc.
there are a number of babylon 5 rpg source books. scribd has a number of them. you should be able to get a thirty day trial to look a number of them up
You want ridiculous tank designs look at the Ratt. 4 "secondary" turrets orginally made for the maus the largest tank ever built and a main gun from from a crusier. Was it ever a viable design that was remotely workable let alone practical? No. Even if it was was the giant montian of steel an easy target for tall boy bunker busters? Yes. Would the nazis even have had the fuel to run it or metal to build the thing late war? Proably not. But the fact anyone designed a tank around the main gun from a heavy crusier is still kind of awesome and of all the ridiculous impractical nazi super weapons I find it the neatest
Tbf a tall boy wouldn't be that likely to land close much less _on_ even that beast in 1945 unless some crazy fuq tried dive bombing in a Lanc. Totally obliterate the land-drydock it's built in tho.
@@johnassal5838 considering all the other stuff British Intelligence pulled off during the war, modifying a Lancaster to be a super heavy dive bomber would be one of the most sane.
What I *really* love about the Nova is one little tidbit I remember reading about: they put so many guns on it, it's Fusion reactors couldn't actually generate enough power to fire them all at any one time! They didn't just strap as many guns as they could onto it; they specifically put *more* guns than its power plant could actually handle! And then they put Hyperion-class cruisers and pathetic little Olympic-Class corvettes next to it to scare away any fighters. Because what do you do when you're the least-advanced major power on the block and everyone has better capital ships than you? Take simple hull. Add guns. If you have space left over, add armour. If you still have space left over, repeat step two because you obviously didn't do it right the first time! No, I don't care if it can't actually shoot that many guns: they're going to take hits, so those extra guns are just *spares*. One goes down, turn another on. Repeat process until enemy go bye-bye.
If you think the Italian battleship design was crazy with the 2 5-gun turrets, wait till you hear about the Tillman IV battleship design, it had 4 6-gun turrets. The Tillman designs were called the "maximum battleships" for a reason. Though nobody actually took them that seriously.
The O-I had four turrets? Yes, yes it did. And before those designs we have the majestic Vickers A1E1 Independent and OKMO T-35, both of which had *FIVE* turrets!
I love the Novas! They are one of the few sci-fi ships that LOOKS like a warship. I bet even the Mimbari looked at it and thought "do we really want to f##k with this thing?"
The rear mounted particle lasers make perfect sense. This series was meant to show Newtonion physics but they forgot mostly. I always presumed the Nova and Omega were meant to approach a battle via a flip and burn, so arse side on. Therefore they had 4 lasers mounted in line with the main engines, which presumably would be pointing at the enemy as they were burning to counter their momentum. Only the later Novas had the lasers I believe, as they were developed for the GOD satalites and then scaled down for the Omega and then could be fitted to the Nova, as they shared a commonality of parts. Oh and it has the large plasma "mortar" launchers on the front, the dual oval tubes between the hanger bay and large pylon. Quite why it is called a mortar (if it is canon information) when there is no gravity to counter in space, is anyones guess.
The Nova's main role according to some sources was planetary assualt, so maybe they are called mortars because they were specifically designed for orbital bombardement. Though I am quite sure the two big tubes are not those mortars, since the Omega has them too. In my opinion those are either thrusters, so they can break without having to flip 180° or the missile tubes... more likely the former.
@@Norbert_Sattler Actually the computer imaging supervisor for Babylon 5, Paul Bryant have said that two big oval tubes are use to launch gigaton class mines, almost similar to the energy mines that the Narn cruiser use against the Shadows.
G.O.D. Cannons are particle cannons, not lasers. Also, Novas had reaction drives and any idiot presenting his/her main drives to enemy is an idiot. It isn't armored and it is ship's "legs". With firepower Novas carried they didn't need show their most vulnerable spot by braking.
@@AKUJIVALDO they were supposed to be particle lasers, whatever those are. And let's take a moment to think about it (it helps, no?) if the ship has to come to a stop or change direction within the physics limitations of our universe, how else would it achieve that without flipping and burning? Go on, explain how?
@@Cr4cKf0x so if you engage your brain, you would realise that reaction drive ships will not YOLO into enemy capital ships formation nilly willy...and then suddenly start braking maneuvers by flipping 180°. But hey, you changed goalposts yourself. I talked about combat braking and you talked about maneuvering itself, in your reply. Slow clap, good chap/s.
well, the Baltic Fleet of Lenin's Red Navy did have a Galleon (yes, an actual 26 sail wooden Dutch galleon) on it's books as late as 1989... it was used for submarine hunting with magnetic detectors....
I've been watching your videos for the last few weeks and really enjoy them. Have you ever thought of trying to design your own warship? I'm half convinced it would be ugly as sin but absolutely brutal in functionality.
@@SacredCowShipyards Design? Just take a brick, add really big engines, and stick a gun, missile battery or turret on every flat, angled, and curved surface available. When that fails, put bigger engines on it. oh, don't forget the parts for the squishy's. a bunk and some tubes to skulk around in should be sufficient. I mean geez, it's 0-g, why walk anywhere.
@@chrisbaker8533 Yeah, cover all the sides with weapons, and Borg ships seem like pretty much the perfect design for a fighting ship in space. At least if you're considering real world physics, and not the "spaceships fly like airplanes" physics often depicted in sci-fi. Probably the only thing better than a cube would be a Sphere, and the Borg do those too.
the reason for all the Turrets in the first place was that Human Plasma Cannons were not very reliable or powerful, so Humanity added a lot of them, enough that we could finish the Dilgar war and use captured Dilgar tech to upgrade our weapons and ships
You may be interested in the fleet tactics from the series "legend of the galactic heroes" in which ships battle like napoleonic line infantry, firing at each other in block formations from a great distance away
Love your various ship assessments, always good to see B5 getting some love. Hope you get to some of the non-humie ships too. Additionally, it'd be great to hear your take on some of my earliest sci-fi loves, the ships of Robotech, such as the Veritech fighters or the SDF Macross.
Bit unfair on picking on the Japanese Squishies for a prototype 4 turret vehicle. The Soviet Squishies made over 500 T28s with three turrets for one cannon and 4 machineguns; but that wasn't enough, they then went on to make 60 T35s with 5 turrets for one big cannon, two smaller cannons and up to 6 machineguns. The Squishies do seem to have a genetic predisposition for turrets and dakka for dakka sake. And don't get me started on the dakka they installed in atmosphere craft!
@@williambrown319 A German pilot sent out to stop B-17s would agree with you. Even a lone B-17 was a threat. Ask The fighters that tried to take out Charlie Brown and the "Ye olde Pub". When a B-17 flies at with all turrets blazing you know you messed up.
Reminds me of the TF2 engineer. "How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind. The answer, is a gun. And if that don't work, use more gun." It is some sound advice.
same, i'll bring the popcorn and the marshmallows for that particular dumpster fire of a final report. those ships make zero sense even from a scale of relative-pretty. on the upside their (non-ammo based) pew pew does make some degree of sense, a shame about the rest (so random im performance characteristics it would make a D20 seem reliable).
He'd say all bad things about the Anaconda, especially that observation deck on the fucking nose. Better off hoping for a Federal Corvette or an Imperial Cutter review.
To be fair to the Nova, its slightly less manoeuvrable than an orbiting moon while all its potential opponents could fly around like over caffeinated wasps. Turrets were the only way they could shoot anything.
I think one of the stupidest design in B5 is the bigger of the two Vree saucers that has a fantastic gun that can shoot a rain of high-damage projectiles at incredible fire-rates... exactly in a single direction - downwards... Looks cool when it unloads though. ^^
More guns, bigger guns mean more and bigger explosives and if something can survive that, well there is another volley and another until the target is dead. Just be happy we haven't figured out how to set enemy space ships on fire. I really want scifi version of Molotov cocktail, even better if it has same spite/trolling fueled creation story.
I would love to see ships from Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which has the most epic space battles of all time, not to mention practical, pragmatic things, like being able to withdraw the navigation bridge into the armored hull of a warship during battle), Space Battleship Yamato (the number of guns on a Gatlantis warship makes the Nova class look like it just went swimming in ice cold water) and Banner of the Stars/Crest of the Stars (which has some of the best space combat involving ftl at a tactical level which I have ever come across).
I could have sworn that Babylon 5 Wars by Agents of Gaming (RIP 😢 ), the tabletop miniatures game, listed the twin guns on the Nova DN as Heavy Pulse Cannons. But it’s been a very long time since the game and company disappeared. And therefore a long time since my EA fleet has seen the light of day. If I get the urge to dig around in my garage I’ll find the game to see what is what and report back. They had modeled the ships based on JMS/Warner Bros. B5 writer’s guide so I think it can be trusted. Probably. Maybe. 🤷♂️
Check my reply at the top, I'm gonna drop a fat post about Mongoose's A Call To Arms about it, which was sourced from the same writer's guide, and used B5 Wars as a guide too.
I'm not too familiar with the Babylon Universe, but you mentioned that about the only blindspot on this mountain of guns is directly behind. If they are using anything like a reaction drive then directly behind it is about the worst place imaginable for you to be. Kzinti Lesson anyone?
Forget the plans to build ships with 4 barrels in a turret, what about the ones that actually saw service? Though they never got much of a chance to do anything, the French built two separate classes of warship, the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, which had dual 4-gun turrets. Though these are only a technicality, since each turret had a thick bulkhead down the middle, making each four-gun turret really more like two two-gun turrets fused together, since they shared completely separate systems except for ammunition reserves; different hoists, different rangefinders, etc. The British though? They fully embraced the 4-gun turret, building FIVE warships with two four-gun turrets and one two-gun turret each, with each four-gun turret acting as a single, unified turret. This caused no small amount of problems, to the point where it was not uncommon for some of those ships to have both four-gun turrets knocked out due to malfunction rather than enemy fire, but when they did work they worked shockingly well. Hell, it's not just ships and tanks either; I'm surprised you didn't mention aircraft, which forced us as a species to invent entirely new technologies and implementations of existing technologies solely dedicated to fitting as many turrets as possible on a vehicle where weight and space are both extremely limited to begin with. As an aside, I know space is more your purvey than terrestrial concerns, but if you want the true Human experience of being able to personally attach as many gun turrets to a hull as possible, and then keep going, I highly recommend taking a look at Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts - it's a simulator focusing on Human terrestrial naval shipbuilding from the late 19th century to mid 20th century. And you can put a LOT of gun turrets on things.
Hahaha, The Nova was a serious chunk of baddassery, as long as you didn't run it against the Minbari heavy cruisers without opening up at long range and then running like hell. But as you state, it surely did the job double-plus good against the Dilgar, and gave humanity a swelled head it took nearly being crushed by Minbar to adjust back down to size.
The IJN's Fuso class and French Lyon class battleships agreed on more turrets and more dakka, The Iowa class, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Texas battleships disagree on the not floating thing. Not in service, but they are floating, though the Texas is having issues. She is a very old girl now.
7:45 there’s an old American tank that does turrets on turrets, I think it was called something lee, it had a Limited angle main Gun cylinder turret A slightly smaller gun on a whole 360 turret and A armored Machine gun turret on top of that.
IIRC, the Nova did have one serious limitation: there wasn't enough power to run all the guns at one time, or so one early source says. Allegedly they could only fire one half of the big guns at a time, owing to the power requirements of using the same fusion reactors to powering the engines and the weapons simultaneously. So they tended to fire half, then switch to the other half, then back to the first half. Presumably this is why the Omegas have fewer guns on them. I can not for the life of me remember where that came from. Some semi-official online source 20 years ago.
Ive been playing a game called Avorion and everything he said in this video ive been doing in that game over 300 crew to fly it with over 20000 ground pounders (so i can board and steal ships and space stations) and 100 fighter polits for all my figher squadrons over 120 turrets with like 40 on auto fire alone all the anit fighers/ torpedoes turrets (x50) are auto by default
Spacegoing A10 warthog. I'm in lust . Needs a BFG railgun on the prow. Think a spinal mount. Add a few PDC mounts loose half the groundpounders to make room for the upgrades
I think its more comparable to the early period of dreadnoughts than it is the predreads tbh since it seems to follow the philosophy of investing purely in one caliber rather than 10s of secondary calibers, and the early dreadnaughts did have some really questionable turret configurations as well including HMS dreadnought herself.
Mr. Dockmaster, I wish to suggest a ship to undergo inspection at the shipyard: The Nemesis from Transformers Prime Or The Nemesis from the original G1 cartoon from the 80's
I realize this is a space dock, but USS St. Louis (CL-49) is also a beast with turrets and gns. too. Maybe SCS could do a review on that if you have not already?
I mean, the Omega still has the turrets. They're just smaller and more efficient guns. And they pack even MOAR starfuries, the turrets can literally shoot other projectiles out of the skies, and they're just ludicrous on toast and better able to take minbari ships.
The beam weapons are the particle weapons. All of the beams in the show are particle beams, sometimes specified as neutron beams, other times just called particle beams. Based solely on how they looked in combat scenes in the shows, plasma weapons had higher rates of fire but longer travel time to the target. Smaller ships rarely had beams, but the ones that did tended to be the Minbari ships. I think even their fighters had beam weapons. The human ships primarily had plasma weapons and few beam weapons, so you get an implication that plasma weapons are older tech and beam weapons are both higher tech and probably problematic to put on fighters and other small ships. But I don't think they ever say any of that, you just get the implications from the visuals in the show.
@@milamberarial B5Tech.com specifies the existence of "particle beam guns" and "particle/laser" weapons. Now, that could be simply different nomenclature for the same or generationally different tech, but there's at least a slight distinction to be made. Minbari beam weapons are all gravitically-steered neutron and fusion beams, while the Narn and Centauri go back to the same configurations the humans used.
@@SacredCowShipyards Narn and Centauri use Bolt weapons. Generally a massive step above PPC weapons. Humanity however stunned everyone else with the beam weapons on warships( however inefficient they were originally). Though sadly the Vree were hung up by stupid humans and "reperations for abductions".
Love your content, dude! And every time you cover B5 ships, it really warms my heart a little. That show was so unbelievably good and every reminder of its greatness is thus pure gold to me. Question: Have you ever considered taking on the various ships of Star Citizen? I honestly think that with your history in the navy and the expertise you've demonstrated so far, you would be able to provide invaluable feedback that might even lead to actual improvements of those ships, as everything is still under development and will be for while. That kind of quality in-depth feedback paired with your excellent sense of humor would be a very welcome addition to that gaming community, I believe (and as a result should also grow your channel by a sizeable amount, I would expect). In case you do not already own a game package for it at this time: There will be an in-game aerospace convention next month in the game where approximately a hundred or so ships will be available for testing and it is usually paired with a free-fly, meaning that during the event you do not actually have to have invested any money in order to be able to play it. Would be a great opportunity for you to take a look, form a few opinions and then grace us with your wisdom. ;-)
I believe I was one of the original, admittedly lowest-tier backers back when it was originally being proposed. I've not bothered to keep up with it since, but I'll check on it.
New to the channel and absolute love how you take apart and sometimes even complement all these ships that we so love. Just have one nagging suspicion. Does your Space dock also serve as a construction facility for Borg....Cubes ?????? would make a lot of sense. :-) Keep up the great work.
With the new series of doctor who starting can you look at a space ship from that show, like the TARDIS? Also this video made me come up with a new support ship for my own scifi universe, having finished drawing it, it looks a bit insane but cool (it's a small support ship that launchesfrom a large warship and has around 60 light anti fighter turrets on it, even on the engines and two small fighter hangers, it has no living space, the only areas not taken up by engines, power and shields is an engineering section, the bridge and small tubes to reach the turrets).
New subscriber here! I just stumbled across your channel and holy hell, your content is extremely entertaining!! Im a space weeb and aviation enthusiast with my private pilot's license working through my additional ratings, so your videos comparing fictional spacecraft to aircraft that they might have gotten their design inspirations from are right up my alley! Will you please consider taking a crack at some "Elite Dangerous" spacecraft? The Anaconda and Krait come to mind with both good and bad design choices. Regardless, I'll still be here chuckling along with your commentary. Thanks SCS!
Was watching Star Trek TOS and was reminded of the Immortal words of Susan ‘ I am the hand of vengeance. ‘ Ivanova who said‘ Congratulations Captain, You are about to go where EVERYONE has gone before. ‘
From what I remember the O-I was suppose to be a mobile bunker, not so much as a tank, it would be parked to defend an area, or used as an area denial weapon.
pretty funny how the Solarian League had to abandon usage of most of their warships since they were just going to be coffins after the first time encountering the advanced missile tech that the Manticore Navy used and the Manties were horrified at the casualties they had inflicted on the Solarian Navy during this first battle.
Heck, you could argue that our fascination with MOAR TURRETS started back during the good ole pirate days of wooden ships, where they made Galleons and other warships bigger with MOAR CANNON ports on the broadside. And this is back when ships were made of _wood_ which means a flying cannonball did astounding damage. Imagine a big Galleon pulling up alongside you bringing a couple dozen of those to bear on you. You were screwed. Sure, the accuracy and range of fire on those stunk, but when you've got salvos of 24 hot steel cannonballs flying at you, chances are, one or two of them are probably going to hit.
@@barrybend7189 which one? senator "what is your biggest one" tillmann commissioned over seven which leaf to at least 4 more. yes, i also watch drachinifel
Something any creater of a Sci-Fi universe should consider. Be it beam weapons, torpedoes or missiles, find a reason for broadsides, because nothing is more epic than ships exchanging broadsides. If I were to change anything on the Battle of Endor in Star Wars, it would be longer and more numerous scenes like the one of the Nebulon-B frigate duking it out with a Star Destroyer, getting too close for the Star Destroyer to bring it's overwhelming weapons complement into play while, struggling to survive what the Star Destroyer can bring into play while desperatly dishing out what little it can.
Hey, nice channel! Here’s a subscription. Also, power use is often ignored in fiction. I get they must have fusion power, yadda yadda, but it’s a logical plot point.
![ทุกครั้งที่หลับตา (Lucid Dream) - AYLA's [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4i1OBAQyv58/mqdefault.jpg)
"When the Gun doesn't work... Add more guns... MORE, BIGGER GUNS... If that doesn't work... Use missiles instead."
- Terran Shipyards inc.
Sol system
And yet, they aren't wrong...
If you aren't getting results through violence, you aren't being violent enough!
Humans are space orks.
@@patrickjanecke5894 and it is my Shipyard's design philosophy...
@@sststr "...and when missiles don't work... Use Nukes."
"Because more dakka, more better!" I died laughing at that remark and the tone it was said in.
A g-g-ghost post! 😱
It might be a Space Ork truism, but it fits humies just fine too. And I got a free copy of Mothergunship from the Epic store, I have to give it a checking out for sure.
Well, is true, more Dakka, more better.
More Turrets, More Dakka, More Better!
@@exidy-yt It's why Space Orks like humiez, humiez understand Dakka and put More Dakka on their Dakka, because there is never enough Dakka.
Humanity follows one of two design filosophies when it comes to war-vehicle design, Either:
More turrets, turrets on top with turrets on the side, extra turrets hold the turrets.
OR
Take gun, biiiig gun, now build vehicle around gun.
in both cases, moar dakka more better reigns supreme.
why not both, build a gun, build ship around, give ship turrets.
Maybe add some turrets on the big-gun-with-a-side-of-ship design is valid too.
Often times the main course is a ship built around a big gun, with turrets we an appetizer, turrets for dessert, a nice bottle of fighters, and endless bread sticks....err I meant missiles. Endless missiles
Admiral Rickover : build a nuclear powered submarine
Shipyard : we don’t have a reactor that will fit in a submarine
Admiral Rickover: Well build a submarine around a reactor, F*** a D*** ! Do I have to F***ing think of everything?
next well paint our space ships red so dey go fasta
There is no such thing as enough dakka, there's only "we need better logistics so we can send more dakka downrange"
Fuck yes!
also "we need better targeting computers so all the dakka fired actually hits something and doesn't just eat a whole load of infinite vacuum"
@@darkdruidsvaleand “let’s add a drone to it to act as a fire control device and make it so accurate with its actual tons of daka that the enemy surrenders ti the drone” (real thing that happened)
What about reloading?
@Tula-cs1ef I would argue reloading is part of the logistical chain between "round is manufactured" and "round is fired at enemy", it's just part that's not considered because people usually consider the "logistics" part to end a step or two before that.
From the "70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" -
#6 - If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
#55 - It's only too many weapons if they're pointing in the wrong direction.
You forgot an importunate one, Maxim 37- There is no "overkill" only "reload" and "open fire".
#71 - if all else fails. Ramming speed
SCHLOCK MERCENARY FTW
Number 12:
"Violence isn't the answer, it's a question, and the answer is yes"
@@steve86sabas Addendum - If you need a calendar to calculate minimum safe distance, there may actually be "overkill".
Me when I see how many turrets the Nova-class has:
**sniffle** "I've found my people."
Ah... a kindred spirit!
and yet, is it ever truly enough?
@@charlespedersen5752 considering the Nova design later bred the Omega class destroyer, and then the warlock class cruiser.. no.
Earth Force also kept her remaining Novas. She's a good ship, powerful, a bit slow yes, but that 8 thousand ground pounders is amazing. Basically became an over glorified transport with enough firepower to give most of the galaxy pause before attacking.
@@Darqshadow Plasma cannons make great Orbital Support weapons for the GROPOs.
Ground Commander: "Captain, do you see that fortification in front of us?"
Nova Captain: "I see it"
Ground Commander: "I don't want too!"
Nova Captain: "Understood. FIRE!"
Ah people of culture
I'd like to quote "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries"
Maxim #25 If a manufacturer's warranty covers the damage you did, you didn't do enough damage.
and
Maxim #34 If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.
I forget the number, but there's also, "There's no such thing as 'overkill'. There's simply 'open fire' and 'reload'."
@@SacredCowShipyards 37. There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.'
@@SacredCowShipyards addendum: if you need a calendar to calculate minimum safe distance, there may be "overkill"
Also... if you're scratching the paint, you need WAAAAYYYYY bigger guns!
@@redwing1629 we humans would like to remind you that. No we don't actually believe in minimum safe distance. We can, well, and have fired our weapons in point blank range and if all else fails. We will ram you and fire our weapons from inside your ship.
Then blow up our own ship just to make sure we take you down
Humans have been knocking eachothers head in for 100.000 years. There are two lessons.
1. The guy with the biggest stick wins.
2. There is always going to be somebody with a bigger stick.
Nova class is example of lesson 1... (Vorlon of lesson 2).
"The guy with the biggest stick wins"
Basically every empire builder in history :
Allow us to introduce ourselves
Well the Minbari and the Earth Minbari war, count as Lesson 2
"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet." I guess we can call that a "win" 🤣😁
Technically the Minbari surrendered, so yeah, officially its a win. Even if its was a de-facto "okay, we will not wipe your entire species out after all" from them.
@@_Muzolf They only surrendered because of the "Minbari do not kill Minbari" and the soul-transfer to Earth meant they were essentially killing their own people. Sinclair=Valen, thus they'd lose the Shadow War of 1260 before they even met the humans
Sheridan did survive battle with a Minbari Fleet. He blew a cruiser and her 3 escorts with a fusion bomb. That was before the battle of the Line.
It was closer to “holy f*ck we killed a lot of you guys. You know, we’re kind of starting to feel a little bad about that, so we’re “surrendering” as a symbolic act of penance.” At least that was from the Religious Caste perspective.
The Warrior Caste was more like “WTF? We’re surrendering?! WHY?”
It's a universally human tradtion. Seriously, we've been doing it for a *long* time. Just look at the sailing ships of the line - guns, guns and MORE guns.
If only they'd made the turrets superfiring or just put some angles on the hull, it could have been truly glorious. Pity the poor bastard that gets all of those trained on them at once "well, shit..."
/Just/ enough time to realize you made a significant error.
In those days they didn't have turrets so they added moar gun decks.
Entire decks of dakka.
@@markfergerson2145 I don't have access to some of the stuff I read in the past but IIRC they only counted the heavy guns in the ship's total so a 74 gun two decker could easily have two or three times as many light guns as heavy. Now that's a lot of dakka!
@@MrGrimsmith Yeah, ships were rated for a certain amount of guns but they often had more guns than there were rated for. AFAIK the rate was determined by the number of gun ports. Well, you could mount guns on the main decks which would add to the number the ship was rated for.
They will find its firepower quite impressive. For a few seconds.
"Because more Dakka,
More better" - thus reinforcing the _Humans are Space Orcs_ theory.
"So how many cannons do you want on the Nova-class?"
"Yes."
A lot like the American late-WW2 concept: Is there free deck space? Why is there free deck space? Put a gun there you idiot! :P
Only now they can put turrets on all sides and not just on the top, because SPACE. :D
More dakka more better
I'm Mr Torgue. And I approve this message.
we need an American of guns on it.
@@Norbert_Sattler If for some reason you can't put a gun in there have some dude stand there with a gun.
Afaik the red spots on the hull of nova and omega are supposed to be the missile silos. So they give you a good ol broadside. And they also shall be the main weapons but were to difficult to animate during the time of B5 so we never see them used.
I was under the impression those were escape pods.
@@SacredCowShipyards who needs those when you can have more gun???
@@SacredCowShipyards escape pods wut considering the speed of which ships destruction happens your wasting time on escape pods
Yeah, they were VLS style missile launchers and those two kinda flat oval tubes on the underside of bow of the Nova and Omega where supposed to be gigaton mine launchers (later retconned in heavy plasma motors like one B5 gets when it's weapon systems get upgraded in season 2). The Omega's were also supposed to have launched their starfurries from the tips of the rotating section like B5 did but after they changed effects houses they kinda forgot to send notes covering the specs of the ships so the new team never showed that happening.
And while we're at it, the Nova wasn't originally supposed to be it's own thing. In the script for GROPOS they were "gunboat" version of the Omega that were designed for landing operations and orbital fire support which is why they had those fuck huge guns.
@@SacredCowShipyards Nope. Original intent was a missile broadside, unused. Why they didn't have DEW broadsides I do not grok. Weber's Honorverse does Napoleonic Navies in space well.
The Nova: A Dissertation on the "Humans Are Space Orks" Theory by Sacred Cow
To be fair. The Tillman series of Battleships had some... strange designs. I believe it was Tillman A that had a 4 Sextuple Turrets of 16" Caliber, all in a row of course, so 5 isnt ALL that bad.
The Tillman design studies were the result of an idiot Congressman not a naval architect looking for something that he could actually build.
@@calvingreene90 Well, Senator Tillman basically told the the naval architects "Your idiot bosses (the U.S Navy) keep asking for more and more money to build bigger and bigger ships. I am fed up with canceling those proposals, so what is the biggest ship you could ever ask me money for?". And the naval architects did the rest. And the ships they designed where totally feasible, though definitely not practical.
@@Hello-ogDid I seriously misspell idiot? And I lost that account so I can't change it, damn.
@@hanzzel6086 Haha! It is mine once again!
Edit: And I might have lost that account now.
@@Hello-og Nope!
Ah yes the Nova. Aka the "we hope you like Zero G because we have no gravity control". Its refit the Nova X is basically the proto Omega.
You dont need gravity control when you have enough guns to make your own gravity well
@@imcardbored8394 Propulsive simulated gravity via turrets. Totally a human concept.
Orion Drive.
@@williamobrien9666 B5 ships did not have thrust plates. To my knowledge, "Deep Impact" is the only popular media to ever depict Ye Olde Bang Bang.
@@djolds1 The only B5 ships that had artificial gravity were: (A) Earth Alliance ships with rotational sections; (B) Minbari and Centauri ships (and perhaps some of the Non-Aligned Worlds); (C) the First Ones … if they wanted. I seem to recall reading someplace that the Narn didn't have (non-rotational) artificial gravity because they hadn't been able to reverse-engineer it before the Centauri left Barn.
The Russians outdid the Japanese, with the T-35 having FIVE turrets! :-D
Let's Play: OGRE - in real life.
Honestly I'm happy he went with the japanese monstrosity. That one I didn't know about.
Russia, striving ever closer to making the first Baneblade.
Germany (III Reich) had, for a moment, plans to design and build a 1000 ton tank behemoth, Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte. The plans were scrapped, but still... One naval turret with twin guns as main, over ten smaller turret for anti-tank ant anti-air purposes.
Bonus points for the pic of the Schwarzkopf.
*MOAR TURRETS!!!*
Cries in Arleigh Burke...
96 VLS cells though, so still more something more better. Don't need turrets if your weapons are self-guiding robots.
Warheads on foreheads, its not just for the airforce...
Chanting* TOMAHAWK, TOMAHAWK, TOMAHAWK, TOMAHAWK.......
the Arleigh Burke is a showcase of "why bring a tank with just a gun if you can bring a missile battery" concept... just on water
But it does go the other way. Most US surface warships now have one small turret with one small gun, if that. I feel like we lost something, and not just the ability to conduct shore bombardment to support amphibious operations.
To be fair they did remove most of the turrets to make way for a ton of missiles
The Standard Missile on US Navy destroyers can be fired against ships as well as aircraft. They have a 130 pound warhead, which is slightly more firepower than a 6-inch shell (primary gun of a WWII light cruiser).
If you're a captain and you're not in the mood to use a Harpoon (which has the firepower of an old-fashioned 10-inch naval shell) you can pummel a ship with the equivalent of 6-inch shells that steer themselves into the target.
Modern US Navy destoyers don't _need_ a battery of 5-inch guns any more.
@@BogeyTheBear Yeah the Standard missile just has the slight disadvantage of the 4.3 million dollar price tag, per missile.
There is kind of a reason the US navy is interested in developing rail guns and lasers. Because missiles are holy shit expensive. Railgun's, Lasers and conventional guns may have a hefty price tag for the weapon itself, but the shots they fire arent. Also one of the reasons the Iowa's suck around for as long as they did until their machinery finally wore out in the 90's. The 16 inch gun might not have the range of a Tomahawk missile, but one tomahawk cost at least as much as a thousand 16 inch HE shells.
That's what we have planes for nowadays.
@@wyveriusblackfire3834 Yeah, and one of the reasons why aircraft carriers and their air wings arent going to go away any time soon, or really rendered obsolete by swarms of missile boats as some like to theorize. Sure if you compare the cost of a single missile swarm from a bunch of missile boats vs an aircraft carrier and its aircraft, the missile boats and missiles might sound cheaper on paper, until you factor in that planes are reusable, missiles are not. This is especially true when your using aircraft to project power far inland against a lower capability opponent that wont be as likely to shoot them down. Now Railguns and even conventional guns are still an even cheaper way of delivering ordinance than aircraft and aircraft carriers, but railguns arent mature yet, and conventional guns cannot range out as far. And the battleships that carried the big guns are as stated, too worn out to continue to operate, and the current state of naval affairs means that at this time, it isn't economical to build a new big gun ship to fulfill the role. And the Navy has got bigger problems to deal with, like getting a new frigate design out which it desperately needs right now. Or coming up with a replacement for the Tico's.
In the immortal words of the Orkz, "Darez No Such Fing Az Enuff Dakka."
Also
"If, at any point in time, the entirety of creation is filled solely with and made entirely of guns, as well as having all of those guns firing constantly, at all times, forever and always, beyond the end of existence itself, in all possible, impossible, potential, and long since deceased realities and unrealities, then, and only then, could you possibly reach the point that you could say that there is slightly under 'enough Dakka'. As you would still, even if creation was nothing but infinite guns firing infinite bullets, all existing at the same infinite unbound time, in the same infinite space, not have enough Dakka. Or so I have been told by a rather linguistically gifted Ork." - Unnamed Inquisitor
The nova class, up until sheriden used nukes as mines, was the only ship the minbari feared. Reason? So... Many... Turrets. So.. Much... Dakka!
Who needs a target lock when you can just shoot the entire sky in all three dimensions?
@@colinsmith1495 Why not. You know the enemy is somewhere in the vacinity of That Way, and there's nothing in space they can usefully hide behind, so blanket the area with enough gunfire and you're bound to hit something.
Personally I'd be amazed if there wasn't a research division in the B5 universe trying to make a rotary barrelled plasma cannon so that we could effectively have a dozen A-10s strapped to the ship in turrets
wasn't there another ship they had that the minbari avoided like the plague because of the amount of fire power it had?
@@andrewmedley3604 the Minbari lost one ship to ten that the humans lost. no the Minbari didn't avoid confrontations with Earth ships. One human colony had ground placed defense cannons that caused the Minbari to send down flyers with troops and vehicles (which due to being smaller, nimbler were able to avoid the fire from heavily fortified cannons) since their ships would have been blasted apart if they tried to get close to do an attack from orbit
@@233Deadman Funny thing about that... They made one eventually for the Excalibur Class.
Would love to see your take on some of the ships from Farscape, specifically the Prowler and Leviathan, the two most-featured ships in the series. One being a massive civilian transport vessel, and the other, a fighter. I think the series really had it's aesthetic down, but I'm no expert when it comes to function. are they good at their jobs, or is it just plot armour?
The Leviathan is really durable even for a space whale. But the Prowler is decent but works on Tie Fighter principles.
@@barrybend7189 Prowlers do have hedge drives so they do ftl.
@@toomanyaccounts but a basic space flight pod did hit one and the prowler tumbled into debris.
@@barrybend7189 the prowler tumbled into an asteroid after clipping the pod since the pod no longer had any engine power
"Zathras! Lay off the coffee!" -Zathras
If you want to experience the Nova in all of it's glory, I recommend the Dilgar War fanfiction by Lightning count. It's a fantastic story that explores that underdeveloped conflict in lengthy and loving detail. The author really knows how to write a prequel, it easily fits into canon.
As for the Nova? The first battle between the EA and the Dilgar has a battleline of 100s of Novas unleashing their full broadsides (with the turrets on one side firing perpendicularly across the hull) into the Dilgar fleet. It was glorious.
Yeah... definitely fanfiction. There's absolutely no way Earth ever had multiple hundreds of Novas. I'd say it's stretching it for Earth to have just 100 of these monsters. Multiple 100s is just ridiculous.
Still, that much Dakka while blasting some sort of heavy metal or Prussian military tune on all channels would have made the Dulgar scream in terror
@@Darqshadow Well no actually. The 10 000 nuclear missiles barrage that followed though (a third of EAs stockpile)? That made them shit their pants. Not J'Hadur though. She was too much in awe for pants shitting.
Also there might not have been any Prussian tune, but there was a Haka from a Maori captain of a Nova Dreadnaught. Just the verbal part. The physical would be very hard to do in zero gravity.
Well, there were more like some dozen. It was even written how much ressources, money and time to build even one consumed. I think it was like they could build 2 max in a year? Is several years ago i read that, so i dont know the correct number anymore, so thats what i think it was.
Edit: Reading it at the moment again. I am at chapter 61 atm, the start of Human - Dilgar war. Earth Alliance has 6 fleets at start and two more waiting for completion. Each Fleet has around 500 ships.... + 50 Novas.So there are around 300 - 400 Novas. And i was completely wrong with 2 Novas in a year. Its more like 2 in a week.
@@andreaswidham3607 Is it bad that I think that's disturbing? When Death Walker is in awe, wouldn't that be horrific?
This ship was very much a case of "we don't care if it wouldn't be possible even in our show's own universe! Just add more stuff on it!"
Even if you account for the scaling the amount of space required to provide power up to 22 fuck off guns, 6 beam projectors, space for the missile magazines, then SOMEHOW find space for almost 40 fighters AND THEN 8,000 troops just isn't there.
If you like ship stuff "Drachinifel" has a channel that discusses them and the pre WW1 ships in particular are cocaine levels of crazy.
I recommend "When Hotels go to War" about the French Pre-Dreads. They were hilarious.
As far as the guns go: You don't need to power all the guns at the same time, since usually you try to avoid being surrounded on all sides by enemies. I do remember reading something about the Nova being actually unable to use all it's guns at the same time and that even using "just" a single broadside requires them to reroute energy away from the engines, leaving them at half-ish efficiency if they use too many guns or somesuch. But I don't know if that is fully canon or from a semi-canon source (i.e. the games).
@@Norbert_Sattler or "the battle of Samar: odds? what are those?" Taffy 3 giving zero fucks and chasing the Yamato away
So the drawback on the Nova is that it has abysmal deployment endurance. This is not a patrol ship. It is not a convoy escort. It is not something you station anywhere it does not have CONSTANT access to resupply. It is meant to be deployed, fight one battle, and then return home for resupply.
This episode was cool. Turrets. I wish there was more on the Dilgar era. I've probably missed some information somewhere but I'd love to see the juxtaposition of Terran military being dominant with what happened against the Minbari. I did not know the Nova class carried 36 fighters. Sounds like my ship designs in 4x games. Always put in a fighter bay, even if the game mechanics don't recommend it. The lore in my head demands it.
If we get to space and ftl is discovered, EVERY ship would have a flight bay. In 3d space, fighter screen as well as smaller craft are invaluable for electronic warfare, missile screen, and etc.
there are a number of babylon 5 rpg source books. scribd has a number of them. you should be able to get a thirty day trial to look a number of them up
@@MasterGhostf Fighters are missiles that can be fired more than once.
I am convinced that the Centauri were charmed by our demented attachment to turrets as reason for establishing relations.
You want ridiculous tank designs look at the Ratt. 4 "secondary" turrets orginally made for the maus the largest tank ever built and a main gun from from a crusier.
Was it ever a viable design that was remotely workable let alone practical? No. Even if it was was the giant montian of steel an easy target for tall boy bunker busters? Yes. Would the nazis even have had the fuel to run it or metal to build the thing late war? Proably not. But the fact anyone designed a tank around the main gun from a heavy crusier is still kind of awesome and of all the ridiculous impractical nazi super weapons I find it the neatest
Tbf a tall boy wouldn't be that likely to land close much less _on_ even that beast in 1945 unless some crazy fuq tried dive bombing in a Lanc. Totally obliterate the land-drydock it's built in tho.
@@johnassal5838
No need to waste a tallboy on it. Just coat it in napalm and suffocate/roast the crew.
A proto-BOLO tank is what that thing was. =^x^=
@@johnassal5838 considering all the other stuff British Intelligence pulled off during the war, modifying a Lancaster to be a super heavy dive bomber would be one of the most sane.
@@braith117 The pilot would still be absafraggin nuts.
What I *really* love about the Nova is one little tidbit I remember reading about: they put so many guns on it, it's Fusion reactors couldn't actually generate enough power to fire them all at any one time! They didn't just strap as many guns as they could onto it; they specifically put *more* guns than its power plant could actually handle! And then they put Hyperion-class cruisers and pathetic little Olympic-Class corvettes next to it to scare away any fighters.
Because what do you do when you're the least-advanced major power on the block and everyone has better capital ships than you? Take simple hull. Add guns. If you have space left over, add armour. If you still have space left over, repeat step two because you obviously didn't do it right the first time! No, I don't care if it can't actually shoot that many guns: they're going to take hits, so those extra guns are just *spares*. One goes down, turn another on. Repeat process until enemy go bye-bye.
"So anyway, I started blasting"
If you think the Italian battleship design was crazy with the 2 5-gun turrets, wait till you hear about the Tillman IV battleship design, it had 4 6-gun turrets. The Tillman designs were called the "maximum battleships" for a reason. Though nobody actually took them that seriously.
Guns are like cowbell - we always need more.
Great job, glad to see a channel covering some of the awesome vessels from the '90's sci-fi series.
I love this channel. You just go full send and I love that.
The dial came with only 11 on it.
The O-I had four turrets? Yes, yes it did. And before those designs we have the majestic Vickers A1E1 Independent and OKMO T-35, both of which had *FIVE* turrets!
I love the Novas! They are one of the few sci-fi ships that LOOKS like a warship. I bet even the Mimbari looked at it and thought "do we really want to f##k with this thing?"
Probably, Minbari doctrine was “always hit this thing with our longer range weapons first, in any fleet engagement”
I'm becoming more and more convinced this guy is just an intelligent Ork.
Shhhhh, we don't want him to know, we know. We like him.
@@hollowedshadow2822 Who wouldn't like him? Who could dislike him?
Umm, isn't that just a human?
The rear mounted particle lasers make perfect sense. This series was meant to show Newtonion physics but they forgot mostly. I always presumed the Nova and Omega were meant to approach a battle via a flip and burn, so arse side on. Therefore they had 4 lasers mounted in line with the main engines, which presumably would be pointing at the enemy as they were burning to counter their momentum.
Only the later Novas had the lasers I believe, as they were developed for the GOD satalites and then scaled down for the Omega and then could be fitted to the Nova, as they shared a commonality of parts.
Oh and it has the large plasma "mortar" launchers on the front, the dual oval tubes between the hanger bay and large pylon. Quite why it is called a mortar (if it is canon information) when there is no gravity to counter in space, is anyones guess.
The Nova's main role according to some sources was planetary assualt, so maybe they are called mortars because they were specifically designed for orbital bombardement.
Though I am quite sure the two big tubes are not those mortars, since the Omega has them too. In my opinion those are either thrusters, so they can break without having to flip 180° or the missile tubes... more likely the former.
@@Norbert_Sattler Actually the computer imaging supervisor for Babylon 5, Paul Bryant have said that two big oval tubes are use to launch gigaton class mines, almost similar to the energy mines that the Narn cruiser use against the Shadows.
G.O.D. Cannons are particle cannons, not lasers.
Also, Novas had reaction drives and any idiot presenting his/her main drives to enemy is an idiot. It isn't armored and it is ship's "legs".
With firepower Novas carried they didn't need show their most vulnerable spot by braking.
@@AKUJIVALDO they were supposed to be particle lasers, whatever those are.
And let's take a moment to think about it (it helps, no?) if the ship has to come to a stop or change direction within the physics limitations of our universe, how else would it achieve that without flipping and burning?
Go on, explain how?
@@Cr4cKf0x so if you engage your brain, you would realise that reaction drive ships will not YOLO into enemy capital ships formation nilly willy...and then suddenly start braking maneuvers by flipping 180°.
But hey, you changed goalposts yourself. I talked about combat braking and you talked about maneuvering itself, in your reply. Slow clap, good chap/s.
well, the Baltic Fleet of Lenin's Red Navy did have a Galleon (yes, an actual 26 sail wooden Dutch galleon) on it's books as late as 1989... it was used for submarine hunting with magnetic detectors....
That... almost makes sense.
It really doesn't matter the mood I am in. Your work never ceases to make me smile. Please, don't stop.
More dakka, more better......
I've been watching your videos for the last few weeks and really enjoy them. Have you ever thought of trying to design your own warship? I'm half convinced it would be ugly as sin but absolutely brutal in functionality.
I can ramble just fine, but not design so much.
@@SacredCowShipyards Design?
Just take a brick, add really big engines, and stick a gun, missile battery or turret on every flat, angled, and curved surface available.
When that fails, put bigger engines on it.
oh, don't forget the parts for the squishy's.
a bunk and some tubes to skulk around in should be sufficient.
I mean geez, it's 0-g, why walk anywhere.
@@chrisbaker8533 So a Borg cube from Star Trek then?
@@blackhawks81H Pretty much.
Although, borg cubes never seemed to have enough guns on them.
More Dakka!
@@chrisbaker8533 Yeah, cover all the sides with weapons, and Borg ships seem like pretty much the perfect design for a fighting ship in space. At least if you're considering real world physics, and not the "spaceships fly like airplanes" physics often depicted in sci-fi. Probably the only thing better than a cube would be a Sphere, and the Borg do those too.
the reason for all the Turrets in the first place was that Human Plasma Cannons were not very reliable or powerful, so Humanity added a lot of them, enough that we could finish the Dilgar war and use captured Dilgar tech to upgrade our weapons and ships
You may be interested in the fleet tactics from the series "legend of the galactic heroes" in which ships battle like napoleonic line infantry, firing at each other in block formations from a great distance away
Love your various ship assessments, always good to see B5 getting some love. Hope you get to some of the non-humie ships too. Additionally, it'd be great to hear your take on some of my earliest sci-fi loves, the ships of Robotech, such as the Veritech fighters or the SDF Macross.
Bit unfair on picking on the Japanese Squishies for a prototype 4 turret vehicle.
The Soviet Squishies made over 500 T28s with three turrets for one cannon and 4 machineguns; but that wasn't enough, they then went on to make 60 T35s with 5 turrets for one big cannon, two smaller cannons and up to 6 machineguns.
The Squishies do seem to have a genetic predisposition for turrets and dakka for dakka sake.
And don't get me started on the dakka they installed in atmosphere craft!
The dakka on atmopheric craft is quite effective. Ask a reciever of said dakka
@@williambrown319 A German pilot sent out to stop B-17s would agree with you. Even a lone B-17 was a threat. Ask The fighters that tried to take out Charlie Brown and the "Ye olde Pub". When a B-17 flies at with all turrets blazing you know you messed up.
Reminds me of the TF2 engineer. "How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind. The answer, is a gun. And if that don't work, use more gun." It is some sound advice.
I would love to see your take on the elite dangerous ships, particularly the anaconda. Been binge watching your content after I found you :)
same, i'll bring the popcorn and the marshmallows for that particular dumpster fire of a final report.
those ships make zero sense even from a scale of relative-pretty. on the upside their (non-ammo based) pew pew does make some degree of sense, a shame about the rest (so random im performance characteristics it would make a D20 seem reliable).
@@IRMentat i would say otherwise but i would love to watch him tear into my beloved anaconda
He'd say all bad things about the Anaconda, especially that observation deck on the fucking nose. Better off hoping for a Federal Corvette or an Imperial Cutter review.
I mean, why does it only take one guy to man it?!
it's three times the length of a 747!
But it's important to have an exposed cockpit that can shatter, which also has the HUD.
To be fair to the Nova, its slightly less manoeuvrable than an orbiting moon while all its potential opponents could fly around like over caffeinated wasps. Turrets were the only way they could shoot anything.
Yeah. Who needs manouvering when you can just shoot at over the place?
I think one of the stupidest design in B5 is the bigger of the two Vree saucers that has a fantastic gun that can shoot a rain of high-damage projectiles at incredible fire-rates... exactly in a single direction - downwards...
Looks cool when it unloads though. ^^
@@Norbert_Sattler An alien version of a a10 Warthog or a C130 gunship then.
"Tactical, do you see that disgusting xenos vessel?"
"Yes sir"
"I dont want to"
"Understood sir"
..methinks you are a(n occasional) fan of Messers N. Moran, and I. McCollum ??
If so, so am I
More guns, bigger guns mean more and bigger explosives and if something can survive that, well there is another volley and another until the target is dead. Just be happy we haven't figured out how to set enemy space ships on fire. I really want scifi version of Molotov cocktail, even better if it has same spite/trolling fueled creation story.
I would love to see ships from Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which has the most epic space battles of all time, not to mention practical, pragmatic things, like being able to withdraw the navigation bridge into the armored hull of a warship during battle), Space Battleship Yamato (the number of guns on a Gatlantis warship makes the Nova class look like it just went swimming in ice cold water) and Banner of the Stars/Crest of the Stars (which has some of the best space combat involving ftl at a tactical level which I have ever come across).
Hello from the Lazerpig
Hi, LazerPig sent me good job
When you want to make "more dakka" comments but it's already on the video, anyway here's a comment for the algorithm.
I could have sworn that Babylon 5 Wars by Agents of Gaming (RIP 😢 ), the tabletop miniatures game, listed the twin guns on the Nova DN as Heavy Pulse Cannons. But it’s been a very long time since the game and company disappeared. And therefore a long time since my EA fleet has seen the light of day. If I get the urge to dig around in my garage I’ll find the game to see what is what and report back. They had modeled the ships based on JMS/Warner Bros. B5 writer’s guide so I think it can be trusted. Probably. Maybe. 🤷♂️
Check my reply at the top, I'm gonna drop a fat post about Mongoose's A Call To Arms about it, which was sourced from the same writer's guide, and used B5 Wars as a guide too.
I'm not too familiar with the Babylon Universe, but you mentioned that about the only blindspot on this mountain of guns is directly behind. If they are using anything like a reaction drive then directly behind it is about the worst place imaginable for you to be.
Kzinti Lesson anyone?
Forget the plans to build ships with 4 barrels in a turret, what about the ones that actually saw service? Though they never got much of a chance to do anything, the French built two separate classes of warship, the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, which had dual 4-gun turrets. Though these are only a technicality, since each turret had a thick bulkhead down the middle, making each four-gun turret really more like two two-gun turrets fused together, since they shared completely separate systems except for ammunition reserves; different hoists, different rangefinders, etc. The British though? They fully embraced the 4-gun turret, building FIVE warships with two four-gun turrets and one two-gun turret each, with each four-gun turret acting as a single, unified turret. This caused no small amount of problems, to the point where it was not uncommon for some of those ships to have both four-gun turrets knocked out due to malfunction rather than enemy fire, but when they did work they worked shockingly well.
Hell, it's not just ships and tanks either; I'm surprised you didn't mention aircraft, which forced us as a species to invent entirely new technologies and implementations of existing technologies solely dedicated to fitting as many turrets as possible on a vehicle where weight and space are both extremely limited to begin with.
As an aside, I know space is more your purvey than terrestrial concerns, but if you want the true Human experience of being able to personally attach as many gun turrets to a hull as possible, and then keep going, I highly recommend taking a look at Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts - it's a simulator focusing on Human terrestrial naval shipbuilding from the late 19th century to mid 20th century. And you can put a LOT of gun turrets on things.
Hahaha, The Nova was a serious chunk of baddassery, as long as you didn't run it against the Minbari heavy cruisers without opening up at long range and then running like hell. But as you state, it surely did the job double-plus good against the Dilgar, and gave humanity a swelled head it took nearly being crushed by Minbar to adjust back down to size.
in defense on the human fixation with turrets, they have this really fun feature fixed guns dont have.... its called turning
Y'all need to work more on phased array tech.
@@SacredCowShipyards do those turn?
The IJN's Fuso class and French Lyon class battleships agreed on more turrets and more dakka,
The Iowa class, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Texas battleships disagree on the not floating thing. Not in service, but they are floating, though the Texas is having issues. She is a very old girl now.
7:45 there’s an old American tank that does turrets on turrets, I think it was called something lee, it had a Limited angle main Gun cylinder turret A slightly smaller gun on a whole 360 turret and A armored Machine gun turret on top of that.
M3 Lee, that abomination of a tank.
Main gun is literally a ship gun. Complete with a ship spnsoon or what is that called
IIRC, the Nova did have one serious limitation: there wasn't enough power to run all the guns at one time, or so one early source says. Allegedly they could only fire one half of the big guns at a time, owing to the power requirements of using the same fusion reactors to powering the engines and the weapons simultaneously. So they tended to fire half, then switch to the other half, then back to the first half. Presumably this is why the Omegas have fewer guns on them.
I can not for the life of me remember where that came from. Some semi-official online source 20 years ago.
Ive been playing a game called Avorion and everything he said in this video ive been doing in that game over 300 crew to fly it with over 20000 ground pounders (so i can board and steal ships and space stations) and 100 fighter polits for all my figher squadrons over 120 turrets with like 40 on auto fire alone all the anit fighers/ torpedoes turrets (x50) are auto by default
Spacegoing A10 warthog. I'm in lust . Needs a BFG railgun on the prow. Think a spinal mount. Add a few PDC mounts loose half the groundpounders to make room for the upgrades
"1.5 Kilometers of good old fashioned Human F*ck you!"
Pure Poetry.
You cannot remove the guns from our ships, you’ll just find more guns
I think its more comparable to the early period of dreadnoughts than it is the predreads tbh since it seems to follow the philosophy of investing purely in one caliber rather than 10s of secondary calibers, and the early dreadnaughts did have some really questionable turret configurations as well including HMS dreadnought herself.
Drachinifel has gone on similar rants re: American ships. i.e. Admiral: Hey! There's empty deck space on this ship! Put some more guns there!
The Mighty Jingles made a similar statement regarding the M2 Medium tank - "It's made of guns!"
@@TheCoffeehound he also made similar statements on the Tier 3 American battleship, saint Louis.
@@rifleman2c997 ya the St.Louis is favorite of mine. A fun boat.
Mr. Dockmaster, I wish to suggest a ship to undergo inspection at the shipyard:
The Nemesis from Transformers Prime
Or
The Nemesis from the original G1 cartoon from the 80's
Personally I think this ship needs more turrets.
We can make each turret a set of 7 and then stack 3 more turrets on top of each other.
I realize this is a space dock, but USS St. Louis (CL-49) is also a beast with turrets and gns. too. Maybe SCS could do a review on that if you have not already?
I mean, the Omega still has the turrets. They're just smaller and more efficient guns. And they pack even MOAR starfuries, the turrets can literally shoot other projectiles out of the skies, and they're just ludicrous on toast and better able to take minbari ships.
bigger gun == better gun
They're different turrets. It's never really articulated whether plasma, particle, or beam weapons are "better".
The beam weapons are the particle weapons. All of the beams in the show are particle beams, sometimes specified as neutron beams, other times just called particle beams. Based solely on how they looked in combat scenes in the shows, plasma weapons had higher rates of fire but longer travel time to the target. Smaller ships rarely had beams, but the ones that did tended to be the Minbari ships. I think even their fighters had beam weapons. The human ships primarily had plasma weapons and few beam weapons, so you get an implication that plasma weapons are older tech and beam weapons are both higher tech and probably problematic to put on fighters and other small ships. But I don't think they ever say any of that, you just get the implications from the visuals in the show.
@@milamberarial B5Tech.com specifies the existence of "particle beam guns" and "particle/laser" weapons. Now, that could be simply different nomenclature for the same or generationally different tech, but there's at least a slight distinction to be made.
Minbari beam weapons are all gravitically-steered neutron and fusion beams, while the Narn and Centauri go back to the same configurations the humans used.
@@SacredCowShipyards Narn and Centauri use Bolt weapons. Generally a massive step above PPC weapons. Humanity however stunned everyone else with the beam weapons on warships( however inefficient they were originally). Though sadly the Vree were hung up by stupid humans and "reperations for abductions".
MOAR DAKKA! great videos as always. i love seeing how your subcount more than tripled since i found you. lets fkn go!
It's been wild.
Love your content, dude! And every time you cover B5 ships, it really warms my heart a little. That show was so unbelievably good and every reminder of its greatness is thus pure gold to me.
Question: Have you ever considered taking on the various ships of Star Citizen?
I honestly think that with your history in the navy and the expertise you've demonstrated so far, you would be able to provide invaluable feedback that might even lead to actual improvements of those ships, as everything is still under development and will be for while. That kind of quality in-depth feedback paired with your excellent sense of humor would be a very welcome addition to that gaming community, I believe (and as a result should also grow your channel by a sizeable amount, I would expect).
In case you do not already own a game package for it at this time: There will be an in-game aerospace convention next month in the game where approximately a hundred or so ships will be available for testing and it is usually paired with a free-fly, meaning that during the event you do not actually have to have invested any money in order to be able to play it. Would be a great opportunity for you to take a look, form a few opinions and then grace us with your wisdom. ;-)
I believe I was one of the original, admittedly lowest-tier backers back when it was originally being proposed. I've not bothered to keep up with it since, but I'll check on it.
with the ending comments youve got to do the borg cube, the ship that can't be compressed into a cube, bc it already is one!
He'll just compress it into a tinnier cube :p
New to the channel and absolute love how you take apart and sometimes even complement all these ships that we so love.
Just have one nagging suspicion. Does your Space dock also serve as a construction facility for Borg....Cubes ?????? would make a lot of sense. :-)
Keep up the great work.
With the new series of doctor who starting can you look at a space ship from that show, like the TARDIS?
Also this video made me come up with a new support ship for my own scifi universe, having finished drawing it, it looks a bit insane but cool (it's a small support ship that launchesfrom a large warship and has around 60 light anti fighter turrets on it, even on the engines and two small fighter hangers, it has no living space, the only areas not taken up by engines, power and shields is an engineering section, the bridge and small tubes to reach the turrets).
New subscriber here! I just stumbled across your channel and holy hell, your content is extremely entertaining!!
Im a space weeb and aviation enthusiast with my private pilot's license working through my additional ratings, so your videos comparing fictional spacecraft to aircraft that they might have gotten their design inspirations from are right up my alley!
Will you please consider taking a crack at some "Elite Dangerous" spacecraft? The Anaconda and Krait come to mind with both good and bad design choices.
Regardless, I'll still be here chuckling along with your commentary. Thanks SCS!
Welcome aboard!
Was watching Star Trek TOS and was reminded of the Immortal words of Susan ‘ I am the hand of vengeance. ‘ Ivanova who said‘ Congratulations Captain, You are about to go where EVERYONE has gone before. ‘
8:12 and I thought the French had a lot of guns with the 4 gun turrets they had on their dunkerque and richelieu class battleships.
From what I remember the O-I was suppose to be a mobile bunker, not so much as a tank, it would be parked to defend an area, or used as an area denial weapon.
I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the ships from David Weber's Honor Harrington series.
pretty funny how the Solarian League had to abandon usage of most of their warships since they were just going to be coffins after the first time encountering the advanced missile tech that the Manticore Navy used and the Manties were horrified at the casualties they had inflicted on the Solarian Navy during this first battle.
Now take this same layout and replace the plasma cannons with anti-fighter guns and flak cannons and you got the Aeolus cruiser from FreeSpace 2.
Very good reference. Gwad I miss that game.
From Lazerpig
Heck, you could argue that our fascination with MOAR TURRETS started back during the good ole pirate days of wooden ships, where they made Galleons and other warships bigger with MOAR CANNON ports on the broadside. And this is back when ships were made of _wood_ which means a flying cannonball did astounding damage. Imagine a big Galleon pulling up alongside you bringing a couple dozen of those to bear on you. You were screwed. Sure, the accuracy and range of fire on those stunk, but when you've got salvos of 24 hot steel cannonballs flying at you, chances are, one or two of them are probably going to hit.
I always love the designs of flying bricks.
*40k*
Allow us to introduce ourselves
Those are flying churches.
You can never have too much dakka. Also you increased your subs by like 3400% in 2 weeks
It's been /wild/.
also the USS Virginia for doublestacked turrets is my favorite one, im still a fan of floating hotels
i normally find this stuff boring, you proved me wrong sir. subbed
Are you ever going to do an episode on 40k imperial ships? I think your analysis could really bring something new to the discussion
Seriously, this is a fun channel.
French BBs in the interwar period:
How many guns per turret?
YES!!! (aka quadruple barreled turrets on battleships)
You have not seen the Tillman Battleships. 6 gun turrets. 4 of them.
@@barrybend7189 which one? senator "what is your biggest one" tillmann commissioned over seven which leaf to at least 4 more. yes, i also watch drachinifel
@@supsup335 Tillman 3 had both armor and 4 six gun turrets.
Something any creater of a Sci-Fi universe should consider. Be it beam weapons, torpedoes or missiles, find a reason for broadsides, because nothing is more epic than ships exchanging broadsides.
If I were to change anything on the Battle of Endor in Star Wars, it would be longer and more numerous scenes like the one of the Nebulon-B frigate duking it out with a Star Destroyer, getting too close for the Star Destroyer to bring it's overwhelming weapons complement into play while, struggling to survive what the Star Destroyer can bring into play while desperatly dishing out what little it can.
Humans are space orcs. ;)
Love your stuff found your channel a week ago, binge watched your content. Sad you don’t have more subscribers it’s really good content
Oh, the sub count is increasing at a frankly terrifying rate.
Glad you're enjoying it.
Hot turrets-on-turrets action. :P
Alternately: humans have turrets syndrome.
Well played sir, well played.
okay I love the recommendation of the Bradley Video....SNARK
Never enough dakka
Hey, nice channel! Here’s a subscription.
Also, power use is often ignored in fiction. I get they must have fusion power, yadda yadda, but it’s a logical plot point.