Orion War Ship?

[TimeWaits4NoOne]

We all know the Orion is in concept phase but lets think about what we know about the ship thus far. This is a mining ship with a mining laser powerful enough to break apart asteroids. Now what are your thoughts on that laser dismantling other ships. There is also droids on the orion for mining but could it be possible to have them pull apart an enemy ship or use miltarized drones to do this. This is all hypothesis due to our lack of knowledge so far. I would love to hear your guys thoughts and opinions on this

[Fizzlefuse]

What I'm thinking is that the laser probably isn't actually doing enough instant damage to be effectively used as a weapon, meaning you need to hit a target for a while to actually have an effect.

 

That and seeing how a large ship equals a lot of mass and thus will probably not be as maneuverable or fast as some other, more viable warships. I guess you could potentially do a lot of damage if your target in question isn't moving at all and you get enough time hitting it with that beam... but other than that I doubt a Orion being viable as a warship. Not that you won't be able to upgrade its weapons, and those flak cannons sound very interesting to ward off enemy fighters..

[Nevermore]

Not really if the laser was meant to destroy heavy armored ships I wouldn't want to use it for mining expensive/fragile ores...

ship is too big, not very maneuverable and the cockpit would be way to easy to destroy for a small fighter

 

the drones are made for mining not combat they might have some sort of armor but nothing compared to a fighter 

you getting your hands on militarized anti ships droids are not likely even if they fit inside the orion 

[Psychopath]

always the option of retro fitting more guns to it ?

[HoodedRobin]

I think that it would probably be an option in the full game because of the modularity that CIG plans to implement on all of the ships. According to Chris Roberts, everything (including armor) will be modular; in this case, you could technically apply heavier armor to the Orion and possibly even its drones, allowing it to be more capable in combat (although still probably very slow).

[Nevermore]

you can't just add additional hardpoints  without a socket for it

you can change out the CPU, the shields,  exchange the scanning room for a med bay etc...

I can't just add 1000 guns on my 890 jump with duct tape

[Moofasaa]

Good base/space station destroyer maybe?

Just need a few fighters for protection though.

[Inkarnus]

but but but duct tape™ solves everything even fitting an 890 into a idris but dont shake it too much ;P

[Nevermore]

it's made to slowly dissolve/break down rocks/ore

Not to shoot at a heavily shield/armored base/ship I doubt it would even have the power for it

the idris m has a dedicated power plant just to shoot the railgun  

 

you could just bring a retaliator to take out the base...

 

the orion is a dedicated mining ship not a jack of all trade like the connie.. most of the ship is "cargo space for ore" 

[Deadhiel]

In 10ftC Chris talked about "itemports" and commented that the ore saddle bag's on the Orion are attached via itemports.  Makes me think that EVENTUALLY we will be able to swap in / out all kinds of stuff. 

 

So for now, (as much as I love theorycrafting) we have no idea what can or can't be fitted to the ships (once the game goes live).  

[macgivre]

Yeah remind me of Ion Cannon Frigate of Homeworld :

 

http://shipyards.relicnews.com/kushan/ion_cannon_frigate.htm

[Mister_Spud]

Not sure how effective it would be as for large ships designed for combat it would lose due to its lack of firepower and speed and for small ships such as the hornet I don't believe it would very well as most of the ships possible weapons such as the laser are designed for precision cutting, so there not gonna be able to move very fast. Plus the ship is not very maneuverable or fast enough to outrun them.

[Gremlich]

I think that it would probably be an option in the full game because of the modularity that CIG plans to implement on all of the ships. According to Chris Roberts, everything (including armor) will be modular; 

NOBODY knows exactly how far CIG plans to take modularity, Even they are still trying to figure that out, but it will be different and technically limited for every single ship (Cutlass Black will be very customizable, but the Blue and Red, not so much). The confidence that CIG will have the modular changes everybody wants for whatever ship they want needs to be ameliorated with some common sense and the knowledge that there will be limits to actually how much customization you will actually be able to do. I bet most of it will be internal, but, I cannot be sure.

 

Dream all you want, but be prepared to not have all of your fanciful dreams realized. Saying "I hope CIG will have the modularity that will enable us to X, Y, or X a "insert ship here" " is okay, however, don't say "I think....." because that leads one to believe that "you" actually know what the modular options will be.

 

The Orion as a warship is laughable, frankly, its maneuverability is sufficient for it to move slowly through an asteroid/planetary debris field. Upgrade the engines and use it as a battering ram? A one time, last ditch use, methinks.

 

this is a post from Ben:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/3685587/#Comment_3685587

 

 

 

I’m not sure how much more bluntly I can put this, but… if you are angry because you have heard that Star Citizen won’t have modular ships, or won’t have an upgrade system, or that we’ve totally changed the upgrade system we promised, then you are a victim of an especially odd hoax.

 

As best I can tell, the people who insist on maintaining these claims are angry because they didn’t like the Cutlass variants; instead of an ambulance or a paddy wagon, they wanted some sort of ‘Super Cutlass’ (along the lines of the Super Hornet) and were disappointed when that didn’t happen. Our opinion is that offering one clear ‘best one’ as a variant isn’t a great practice… it feels more marketing-driven (pay more for the good one!) than design, and that’s not the goal here.

 

Despite what has been repeated ad nauseam in this thread, the Cutlass is fully customizeable. You can remove, update and change the guns, the engines, the turrets, the engine, the powerplant, the thrusters, the computer system, the seat leather, paint the hull, decorate the nose, tint the glass, etc. You can decorate the interior. You can build out your Cutlass for the role you want, focusing on any of a dozen different paths in different degrees (stealth, armor, speed, maneuverability, firepower, etc.)

 

You can decorate the interior, you can use the cargo space for other modular parts (work bench, fuel tanks, interior defense systems, etc.) In the case of the Cutlass Blue and the Cutlass Red, you can remove the internal equipment and use it for cargo space. The single thing you can’t do upon launch (with the current schedule) is reposition the internals of the Blue and the Red into another ships; either they have the autodoc/prison or they don’t. If that’s the end of the world for you, then I am terribly sorry… but also happy to point out that WE want to do this too, it’s just not something we can put in the schedule today.

 

If your backing of Star Citizen was based on a desire to remove the medical equipment from one kind of Cutlass (which you can do) and then put it into another hull type (which we can’t promise at launch, but intend to do) then you should be outraged. If you define customization as pretty much any other thing, then you should be pretty happy with our system. (And here’s a pretty important distinction: that’s not to say you can’t use medical equipment in a Cutlass other than the Red… it’s to say you can’t have the built in autodoc specifically.)

 

The fact that the Cutlass variants work this way is not a broad change in design; we have been doing variants exactly this way since the 300 series’ 350R model. Now, for some reason you have also been told that the change from ‘upgrade slots’ is representative of this design change. Speaking as the person who wrote the original design document that introduced upgrade slots, I can tell you: it’s totally unrelated, and does not in any way signify that ships can’t be upgraded. (Similarly, I have seen people insisting that this means their favorite ship will be exactly the same way… in particular, the Retaliator. I’ll just go ahead and confirm that isn’t the case: the design behind the Retaliator remains that you swap out the bomb bay area with a section that suits your mission objective.)

 

In the initial design spec, “upgrade slots” represented a ship’s ability to mount upgrades beyond the standard plug-in points. I hate to always go back to Privateer, but the idea was that every ship had limits on weapons… and then a sort of ‘collected’ value to account for the mass of all other things like gun coolers, extra fuel tanks, jump drives, afterburners, etc. The initial thought was that these ‘things you don’t see’ would have a single value that would be subtracted from when you purchase an internal upgrade, and that this would give you an interesting limit that also allowed for a lot of creative freedom. (Ie, a ship might use all its slots on gun coolers and have an amazing refire rate… but be terrible at everything else.)

 

What “happened” to them is the fact that that doesn’t really make any realistic sense. I have space to stuff ten radiators in the back seat of my car, but they aren’t really going to do any radiating. So we turned those values into something that makes more sense: a ship might have space on the weapons tree for one weapons system upgrade and two fuel tank upgrades and to store a workbench that’s three freight units wide. (And of course we actually build every part now instead of just having them be internal imaginings.)

 

This does NOT make the ships “less customizable”; it just makes them customizable in a way that makes sense. Within that rule set, we can focus on creating all sorts of cool things for each point… and they’re cool things people will actually do instead of ways people will find to abuse a system that doesn’t show Its work. What it DOES, though, is prevent a significant amount of min/maxing at this stage in the game; spreadsheet pilots don’t get given a single, holy number that defines their ship’s total upgradeability (although as an average number, the old upgrade slot numbers still hold true.)

Let me quickly run through the ship development process, with an eye towards how customization works.

You’ve seen stage one in Arena Commander. You can use the holotable to configure your ships to an extent; not every subsystem is online (most aren’t!) but the bare bones of a configuration system are there. If you have several ships you can swap parts between them and play at building the best ship for your game style. Stage one is going to expand a great deal in the coming weeks, as we start to build more generic equipment that will be available for use in the holotable.

 

Stage 2 is more broad changes to the ship itself, and you’ll see the first of that very soon. We’ve got folks upstairs who have a paint system up and running… and then we have all sorts of other ship systems that will be added to the game: things like stealth parts, engine enhancements, cargo modifications and the like. (And as we introduce equipment for more specific roles, you’ll see generic versions of things like the Cutlass autodoc… and lots of other cool bits and bobs.)

 

There’s also internal modifications included in this. Ships like the Constellation have internal hardpoints for mounting equipment (like the C&C table.) These work just like the external hardpoints… they’re specific areas where you can make a change, and we have design control over what those changes might be. Put in a medical bed, put in a food dispenser, put in a space toilet, etc. The issue there is that, as the engine works today, it has to be pretty specific: you have to know exactly which parts a player can install where. So there’s a place on the Constellation where we can install a C&C table or a scanning bay or a repair panel… and then there’s a cargo area where you can leave free-floating items (there is also a decoration system, being developed.) That’s essentially why you can remove internal parts from the Cutlass but you can’t swap them out yet. When a ship is designed to be ‘modular’ internally, we accomplish that by building X number of optional modules. 

 

That’s where we hope to be at launch. Down the road, we want to do even more – let people rearrange the internals of their ships like they’re playing The Sims. There are a lot of technical and design issues with that. Speaking to the former, it’s an issue with map streaming (which we will likely have down before launch)… and to the latter, it’s essentially introducing unlimited ways for players to break the game. Figuring out how to do it in a way that’s fun but not unbalanced is a challenge… it’s a challenge we’re willing to take up, but not one we can promise we’ll solve before the game leaves beta.

[Deadhiel]

 Upgrade the engines and use it as a battering ram? A one time, last ditch use, methinks.

 

Great post @Gremlich.  While I very much doubt the Orion will make an uber warship, I definitely think it can make an effective weapon!  Your post says it all.  I'd happily use it in this manner against one of the capitals that had already been engaged by a fleet of combat ships.  I won't go into actual tactics here as that should be kept to any "fleet" sub forums only but the idea has merit.  

[Mister_Spud]

 

Upgrade the engines and use it as a battering ram? A one time, last ditch use, methinks.

 

 

Your gonna need to do some large upgrades for the engines and the power plant if you wanted to try that and probably drops it mass as much as possible. (remove unneeded parts, remove cargo ect).

[Painmiester]

It will be a challenge to come up with effective changes that will enhance the tactical value of said ships to fit  the situation. where as you beef up the armor, weapons , ecm. engines,  and the reverse........

[DASKOMMTDAWEG]

If you want to use the Orion in any military fashion I recommend to fill it with

explosives, bring it on ram speed and drive it into a space station...

At least from TEST I expect similar tactics...*g*

[CheeseNorris]

Good to remind people again about modularity and the limits of it

[North-Dakota]

To be honest from what I've heard the Orion will take an absolute battering and as long as you have some support ships in the form of fighters or an Idris for support you'll be fine. 

 

Just go to Jump if you need to, nothing stopping you at the moment anyway. 

[Nevermore]

but if you have the Idris why would you need the orion ? 

[Whittle]

 

The Orion as a warship is laughable, frankly, its maneuverability is sufficient for it to move slowly through an asteroid/planetary debris field. Upgrade the engines and use it as a battering ram? A one time, last ditch use, methinks.

 

Agreed! ***

 

 

*** Until I'm proven wrong by an Orion pilot mining me to death   

[Gremlich]

but if you have the Idris why would you need the orion ? 

This is too rational a concept to make any sense - to use a ship designed for combat as a combat ship and a non-combat ship for its intended purpose.

 

You talkin' crazy!!

[macgivre]

Because the plasma gun is bigger ... the bigger, the better (that's what she said ^^)