Q-ship

posted on March 8th, 2013, 4:47 am

Has anyone considered having a Q-ship as part of the outpost buildlist. A Q-Ship is basically a heavily armed freighter. For example you could have three regular miners and one Q-ship to give raiders a surprise. I guess that's the idea behind the Klingon freighter dropping it's pods to become a K'tinga-class ship but I think the other races would have the same idea, although they wouldn't drop the pods per se, they would simply have some weapons to hold off raiders until help arrived. I'm thinking about incorporating that into my Star Wars mod. Maybe give it a limit of 1 or 2 and have it armed with pulse cannons or something.

posted on March 8th, 2013, 9:01 am

In a fashon, they do. If you are a modder, you can add a weapon to the freighters, or even make a second that has weapons, but does the exact same thing as the regular ships. (See my mod for example)

If the Devs can add the concept to stock FO, that would be useful, though the only reason the Klingons have now them is because they love battle and would gladly drop everything and shoot what weapons they have.

Good idea though.

posted on March 8th, 2013, 10:05 am

Armed civilian ships always sounds good, but unlikely to happen outside of modding. Canon has shown that they can do good against pirate raiders they're armed to protect themselves against (ENT-Era Human ones, at least), but gamplay comes first.

Star Trek civilian ships are armed to defend themselves from pirates and the like, but the devs don't seem to like the idea of them being competent in a proper military raid:

In the Star Trek Universe, freighters and construction ships probably do have phasers for firing on asteroids. However, in the 24th century simply having a phaser without a targeting system does not win a fight. With Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), anti sensor hull plating and I-don’t-know-what (good references are that TNG technology block or the Dominion War episodes) a construction ship would not be able to target the opponent or even hit it. That is why civil weapons are ignored by Fleet Operations in game. The Klingons, for instance, spend resources on processor capacity and install small advanced targeting systems on their construction ships - and that's why these vessels have weapons in Fleet Operations.

I personally do not agree that they should all be unarmed and useless, but civilian ships are much less capable than military ones.

posted on March 8th, 2013, 4:31 pm

I first encountered the idea of Q-ships in Star Fleet Battles, where they are used as a complement to a convoy's regular escorts to add an element of surprise. While they were a bit more effective than the Q-ships of World War II, they were still pretty much a one-shot wonder.

The issue for the devs would be in balancing them though. Too good at their job, and players won't bother with regular freighters; not good enough and they'll just become another unused option.

Edit: as an aside, while I don't agree with the position the devs take on armed "civilian" vessels, it's their game.

posted on March 8th, 2013, 5:17 pm

i don't like the idea tbh. real life qships were used to counter submarines. there is no real analogue to submarines in fleetops. raiding is done by fleet combat ships. submarines sucked in a straight slugging match on the surface. that's the only reason weapons small enough to be concealed had any effect. against any actual surface ship, qships wouldn't stand a chance.

i think ds9 had it right with dukat's freighter in DS9: "Return to Grace". its weaponry (designed for taking out asteroids) couldn't even tickle the unshielded weakest part of the weakest ship of the klingon fleet. later it took kira's street smarts to convince dukat that they can macgyver one of the weak disruptors from the destroyed base to work with their freighter, the disruptor so weak that it couldn't save the base from 1 bop the first time. this weapon is too powerful for the freighter, and damages the freighter when it fires.

they then go on a cliché revenge mission against the drunkest, most incompetent bop crew in the history of a very drunk and incompetent race, the klingons decided to stop off for lunch on the way to their next target, and dukat's freighter beats them to it and sets up an ambush. the klingons then (unintentionally this time) let dukat's freighter get a free shot at their vulnerable underbelly, with shields down. so they fire their new gun. this weapon is powerful enough that it damages its freighter when fired, but we see now that it still does pathetic damage against the unshielded klingons, it doesn't even stop the bop returning fire. no wonder it couldn't protect the outpost the first time.

the point here is that this weapon was far above what the freighter routinely has, and it still wasn't of much use against the weakest klingon ship. if that klingon ship had shields up, the weapon would have done almost nothing.

freighters are designed to carry cargo, not fight. combat ships in fleetops are just so far ahead of freighters in fighting , that disguising a combat ship as a freighter would be impossible. for one weapons are visible (phaser strips/torpedo launchers/disruptor cannons) on the hull. second the shields would be more powerful and a sensor scan would show that. third, all those weapons and shields systems different form a freighter would need way more power, the qship would have a power signature different from the other freighters.

we never saw this used in canon. we did see escorts for non combat ships, though. that's how i'd like it to remain.

maybe change the guard command so that when ship A guards ship B, it keeps the relative position of ship A to ship B that it had when the guard command was issued. so that you can choose where to have your guarding ship be in relation to a moving freighter. and make it so that when a ship is attacked near a ship with a guard order, a lot more noise happens on the minimap.

posted on March 9th, 2013, 1:40 pm

i came into this thread thinking "but the Q are a race that dont need ships"
you learn something new everyday.

posted on March 10th, 2013, 11:32 am

i came into this thread thinking "but the Q are a race that dont need ships"
you learn something new everyday.

I had a similar experience, but thinking about it Q ships were used during first and second world war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship

As for gameplay, not sure if it'd be a worthwhile addition since the vessels in FO are heavily armed and Q-ships were designed to counter relatively light armed surfaced U-boats.

posted on March 10th, 2013, 3:54 pm

Wouldn't an uncloaked B'rel be an equivalent to a surfaced U-Boat?

posted on March 10th, 2013, 7:20 pm

Wouldn't an uncloaked B'rel be an equivalent to a surfaced U-Boat?

no. a brel is a mainline combat ship. it engages other combat ships. in naval terms it's a destroyer.

a submarine is different. a submarine relies on stealth, being underwater makes it harder to detect. the huge difference is that when a brel decloaks it regains all its combat abilities, its shields go back up to full and it has full manoeuvrability. when a submarine surfaces it gains no additional defence against incoming fire, and it's still not manoeuvrable at all.

a surfaced submarine could be heavily damaged by very weak weapons fire (much weaker than normal naval weapons), hence why the concealed weapons of a qship could hurt it.

a decloaked brel would be a destroyer again, and hence would require the attentions of an enemy destroyer or better.

there is no analogue to a submarine in fleetops. cloak is halfway there as it involves stealth, but a decloaked ship is still a combat ship. a submarine is reliant on stealth at all times.

posted on March 10th, 2013, 8:29 pm

Wouldn't a civilian ship like a mining freighter or colony ship be like a Q-Ship? It could carry minimal weapons to defend its self, especially if it has a defensive escort.

I think in history some Q-Ships may have been escorted as well or had a defensive force/floatalia close by if it really was out gunned and out numbered. Maybe one Q-Ship wouldn't stand a chance but how about 2 - 4 more all concentrating their fire on a single target; say the most dangerous one? (Of course this is just a guess.)

posted on March 10th, 2013, 9:51 pm

Wouldn't a civilian ship like a mining freighter or colony ship be like a Q-Ship? It could carry minimal weapons to defend its self, especially if it has a defensive escort.

I think in history some Q-Ships may have been escorted as well or had a defensive force/floatalia close by if it really was out gunned and out numbered. Maybe one Q-Ship wouldn't stand a chance but how about 2 - 4 more all concentrating their fire on a single target; say the most dangerous one? (Of course this is just a guess.)

a qship isn't defined by "having weapons designed for self defence" it's defined as having concealed weapons used for destroying the very weak submarines. qships wouldn't stand a chance against a surface ship, concealed weapons had to be small and weak to be concealable.

civilian ships in fleetops DO have weapons. just like dukat's freighter. they are used for destroying things like asteroids. they are useless in combat. you can choose to interpret this one of two ways:

1) the weapons are so useless that the captain puts all power to shields and engines in the hope of lasting until help arrives. just like the teutoburg.

2) the weapons are just ignored as they are useless for gameplay. the intrepid can fire volleys of 6 photons at once. image how busy the screen would be if all your intreps were firing volleys that big. that's one of the biggest annoyances of the e2, the screen gets busy when lots of torps are fired. civilian ships would each fire weapons, adding to the clutter on the screen, but these weapons would be useless, so don't contribute much to gameplay.

posted on March 11th, 2013, 12:25 am

I don't see armed civilian craft being very useful in FleetOps 3.2.7 for balancing reasons, but...

I can see a federation or dominion avatar having armed civilian craft as their 'perk'. They wouldn't be very powerful, probably similar to the klingon's construction ship, but having 4 mandrils with weak phasers to defend themselves would definitely be a boon against light raiding parties.

posted on March 11th, 2013, 1:16 am

I've studied history and WWII and they did have hidden weapons, but who actually says that they weren't in fact for defense against submarines and other minor ships that would possibly attack them. Everyone has their own opinions on Q-Ships though and stated what it seems they were used for, it seems some could have been assigned secret missions.
http://www.answers.com/topic/decoy-ship
http://www.military-sf.com/Shiptypesandclasses.htm
http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?p=3589
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/swos/ops/73-13.html
http://defensetech.org/2012/03/22/private-arsenal-ships-in-the-fight-against-piracy/
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA425342
http://feraljundi.com/716/history-the-q-ship-and-how-they-could-be-used-to-battle-pirates/

posted on March 11th, 2013, 1:47 am

I had expected someone would bring this up, but alas. Aside from Q-ships being too lightly armed (compare them with the firepower of a scout) and thus being nothing but eyecandy, there is already one side who can turn their miners into combat vessels: Klingons.

By distributing Q-ships amongst 1 or more races means that the Klingons lose one of their defining features.

Personally i think this is a bad idea and that the idea of q-ships should be dropped immediately.

posted on March 11th, 2013, 9:46 am

I've studied history and WWII and they did have hidden weapons, but who actually says that they weren't in fact for defense against submarines and other minor ships that would possibly attack them. Everyone has their own opinions on Q-Ships though and stated what it seems they were used for, it seems some could have been assigned secret missions.

you misunderstand what i have said. i'll try to be more clear:

the weapons were designed to surprise submarines. submarines were weak against weapons, they died easily, but subs tried to choose their targets well, they wanted to attack merchant ships that had no weapons. qships had small weapons that were concealed. these weapons were so small that they were only effective against really weak targets like submarines. these weapons would fail against even the most weak surface combat ship (destroyers). the qship was designed for only one thing: fighting subs. subs would see an easy target, wouldn't want to waste valuable torpedoes, so they would surface and use their own weak deck guns. at this point the qship would (presumably) shout "surprise buttsecks" and fire back.

any surface ship small enough to be sunk by a qship wouldn't be used to attack merchant shipping. ships that small would have all of the weakness of a submarine, but absolutely zero of the stealth benefit.

qships were used mainly in ww1, and they still didn't do as good a job as unmanned minefields, some say they are overrated. in ww2 they didn't score a single victory before the project was abandoned. they never really were that important.