Talk:Starships

If humans are only allowed 1 Dreadnaught, then why do they have 7? Three Elbrus-class dreadnought plus one under construction, three Everest-class Dreadnought (one is not named, the SSV Everest says it is one of three), and a single Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnaught.


 * It works by ratio, 5:3:1. For every five dreadnoughts the turians have, the asari are allowed to have three, and humans one. So if the humans have seven dreadnoughts, the asari have... what... twenty one dreadnoughts, and the turians thirty five. -- Tullis 14:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There is no such thing as an Elbrus-class dreadnought; There are 3 Everest-class dreadnoughts and 4 Kilimanjaro-class dreadnoughts (one of the four is under construction).76.117.235.231 23:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Large Military Vessels
Larger warships are classified in one of four weights After which follows a list with 5 different qualifications....157.100.47.114 18:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

''DESTROYERS are small, slow ships that are heavily armed and used for system and space station defence. The destroyers of the Systems Alliance carry a crew of about 20, roughly the same as frigates. Destroyers don't carry any form of dropships or fighters but are armed almost as heavily, if not heavier, than cruisers. It is still unknown what Alliance destroyers are named after. (See Page 7 in the Prologue of Mass Effect: Revelation)''

I removed this. This type of ship is not used in the Alliance Navy, at least as seen in the (game) year of 2183. Thus it does not appear in the in-game codex. Further, the writeup appeared to be entirely speculation on the part of the writer. If someone wants to add destroyers due to a reference in the novels, I'd suggest rewriting based on the idea that the classification is no longer used. They would be light escort vessels that morphed over time into the frigate designation (as has happened IRL in the post-WWII era). Stormwaltz 20:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Frigates, destroyers, AEGIS cruisers, carriers, and some scout vessels are still the main craft in the current military, frigates and destroyers are still separate craft. Furthermore, it should be noted that Drew wrote the books and is the lead-writer on the game, and as such if he mentioned destroyers, it would make sense for them to still remain, especially since as of yet a fast-assault craft has not been identified in the Alliance Navy as frigates are basically just scout vessels carrying small strike teams and used for hit and run attacks, cruisers being used to screen other ships while also taking a beating, and the dreadnoughts and carriers being used for long-range interdiction and bombardment. A craft actually meant for close-mid range combat, as well as capable of bombardment of battle-stations or other craft (such as depth-charges for a destroyer) as of yet does not exist, and the current explanations have quite a few issues in regards to military based styles. --Delsana 03:23, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I know this is a couple months old and I don't wanna open up a new can of worms or anything, but factual inaccuracies about the US military drive me nuts! Stormwaltz is quite correct in his example of changing naval designations. Frigates DID NOT exist in the US Navy till after WWII. Before that, there were destroyers and destroyer escorts. And in another example, the US Navy appears to be phasing frigates out of service again. No new frigate has been built for the US Navy in 20 years. Only 30 are left in service, with the Navy intending to retire them very soon, and when they are decomissioned, they will not be replaced by new frigates, but by smaller Littoral Combat Ships. So in reality, there are no "issues in regards to military based styles", as military designations fluctuate fairly often (historically speaking. SpartHawg948 09:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Merge?
Is it really necessary to link to a new page for each ship, even if it has only a single sentence of description? If there is a paragraph or less of information about a ship, shouldn't it be on this page for the sake of convienience?

The critical ships that play a role in the main story, and derelicts Shepard can explore should still have their own pages, naturally, but I don't see why some of these other ships need their own pages when the information could be included here without disorganizing or over-complicating the page.

Carrier
From a comment Shepard makes in the game when being interviewed, and due to parallels between the ratio of dreadnoughts allowed and the real-life treaty between the US, Britain, and Japan concerning battleships, I believe carriers area human speciality. That, or something about human carriers gives them or the human fleet an edge over the other Citadel fleets. Shepard does say that human carriers showed the turians, salarians, and asari that humans can think "outside the box."
 * That was the impression I got as well. From what Shepard said, it seemed like the underlying implication was that the carrier had been developed by the Systems Alliance, and that if the other races were even involved in developing carriers, they were struggling to catch up. On that note, I intend to remove the line that claims that dialog "suggests" that Alliance carriers have some advantage over other race's carriers. If anything it suggests that other races do not have carriers. SpartHawg948 01:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * humans have dedicated ships for fighters but other races have fighters although they are probably used like russian sea fighters like the Yak 48 which could luanch from cruiser/carrier shipsDerekproxy 20:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I recently made a post about this on the ME forums:


 * Alliance fighters can be analogized to German tanks in 1939. The great powers of that time dispersed their tanks into infantry formations and used them as support weapons. The Wehrmacht built formations around their tanks to exploit their mobility. IIRC, the French had more tanks than the Germans did in 1940, but they could not maneuver as nimbly as the panzer divisions could.


 * The trend in Council tactics at the time of the First Contact War was to have small groups of fighters as an organic support element to each individual ship. A cruiser might have 2-4 fighters carried aboard; a dreadnought might have 6-12. The fighters would act on the direction of their ship, in support of its attacks. The Alliance built carriers that could send several dozen fighters, and had them operate together as a cohesive attack force. That allowed them to accomplish a lot more.


 * Another relevant analogy is the early days of naval aviation, when aircraft carriers and floatplanes were doctrinally limited to act as scouts for the battleship line. Aircraft bombs were seen as useful support, but not considered decisive or capable of sinking enemy capital ships on their own. It took Taranto and Pearl Harbor to finally kill that meme.


 * Alliance carriers were unique 25 years ago. I haven't given enough thought on how the other races have embraced them. If they have, the Council races have many times the industrial capacity of the Alliance, and they can certainly out-build us.


 * Stormwaltz 22:18, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * True they could out build but it took the allies decades to match german tanks and only won because of the fact the germans were out produced tank wise plus i think the only race that would be interested in carriers would be the Turians as they are the military might of the Council plus the council is more concerned about Dreadnoughts like Destiny Ascension not carriers so Humans probably field more carriers then any other raceDerekproxy 22:33, 17 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry if I seem to always be nit-picking, but I think attention to detail is very important, so Derekproxy, the plane you are thinking of is the Yak-38, not 48. The Yak-48 was a regional business jet design that eventually evolved (w/ some Israeli help) into the Gulfstream G200. SpartHawg948 10:51, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

my bad I'm better with guns and armored vehicles like tanks and APCs eventhough i signed into the marines to fly the MV-22B but life had other plans for meDerekproxy 23:39, 18 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, it took the Allies less than a decade (approx 5 years for the brits, 3 for us, and 2 for the soviets) to surpass the germans in quanitity (and in the case of the soviets, quality) of tanks, not decades. And actually, the british and french actually had better tanks than the germans in 1939, they just didn't employ them effectively. SpartHawg948 09:49, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * the first good tank the US produced was the M1 that came decades after WW2 the Patton series was just a bunch of modified Shermans plus the Leo 1 out classed any Patton in fact the Leo2 was used to make the M1 the only thing that would have won the Nato cold war if it went hot was better training I don't what armor we olny made tanks that could out perform the super tigers which were nothing but over engineered to where they would work right and the french tanks were not better then any panther plus this should go on our talk pagesDerekproxy 19:02, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Dropships and Planetary Assault / Exploration Craft

 * Moved to User talk:Delsana as it does not refer to the Starships article. --Tullis 23:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Dropships are starships, a discussion zone is meant to discuss inconsistencies or problems or ideas, it isn't a forum true, but open discussion wasn't the point nor was it what happened, and dropships were mentioned above, I simply made a logical decision, and it wasn't "combative" to state how it was insulting to the military if in fact, it would be considered an insult to their tactical and logical capabilities. --Delsana 04:19, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Enough, please
Delsana, this is NOT the purpose of a Talk page. Talk pages are used to discuss or make comments about the article they are attached to. They are not a free space to post long treatises regarding your personal dislikes within the game, and the wiki does not exist to host individuals' soapboxing. You have effectively been spamming Talk pages with your personal opinions, which belong on a forum and NOT on a wiki. I have also already warned you about combative language, and am therefore disappointed to see phrases like "this is just insulting to the military as well as common sense in all forms" appearing.

Please remove this from the Talk page forthwith, and in future please restrict comments of this length and tone to a more appropriate venue like the BioWare official forums. --Tullis 04:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Im with you Tullis plus why would the Systems Alliance use dropships when their frigates can drop troops and vehicles onto planets as seen with the Normandy on Virmire and when ever the Mako is dropped onto a planetDerekproxy 23:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Recoil
""An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one 20 kg. slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s (1.3% of light speed) every two seconds." While the acceleration strains plausibility, it was necessary to retain the 38kt damage mark." This implies that the recoil force of operating the mass accelerator would instantly propel a 20,000 metric ton ship backwards at a rate of 4m/s (8.46 MPH). Doing so would knock every crew member to the ground as if they casually stepped down out of a vehicle that was traveling at a human's running speed. This could be mitigated if the Mass-Effect field of the ship artificially increased the mass of the ship (requiring a huge power input).

Also, if a Mass-Effect field is used to artificially reduce the weight of a slug prior to being fired (as stated in the Codex regarding weapons technologies) in an effort to increase velocity, then the slug velocity would drop down immediately after leaving the effective range of the Mass-Effect field as per the conservation of momentum (e.g. If you make something heavier mid-flight without the input of additional motive force, then its velocity will decrease proportionally to the increase in mass). So, I guess that means Mass Effect is SciFi...

Ships don't use missles
There was a post on the official forums by one one the game designers, Chris L'Etoile. Here is what is said: "I've explained this previously,but it's been a while. :)

Obviously, people can build missiles in the IP. They're well within the tech base. However, canonically, no one builds them for use in space combat.

The final cutscenes of ME1 were far along in development before the designers noticed they relied on missiles. The designers told the animators, "There are no missiles in the IP. Defensive lasers never miss." The animators told the designers, "We have too much work to do to go back and change these."

So, despite what you see in the cutscenes, missiles are not used in Mass Effect space combat.

Anything you saw that you interpreted as a missile was a hallucination caused by Sovereign's indoctrination of you. Please consult a qualified medical specialist."

Link http://meforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=685301&forum=144&sp=30 --96.52.254.124 02:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

so what delivers nuclear weapons are the fired from ships cannons or do fighters do suicide runs because if they luanch it they'll most likely be in the blast radius as they attack ships up close and what does the normandy use to attack as it is a warships and has offensive armerments so what does it use?Derekproxy 20:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * If I had to guess (which is all this is)- any nuclear weapons that may be deployed are probably launched by cannon (there is precedent (Nuclear Artillery), or they may possibly take the form of bombs or missiles launched from fighters (remember, ships don't use missiles, no one said anything about fighters). Just because a fighter launches a nuke doesn't mean it'll be in the blast radius. Since 1945 planes have been configured to drop nukes and not blow themselves up, a fighter should be able to do it quite easily. As far as the Normandy, it uses GARDIAN lasers and presumably mass accelerator cannons, the same as other Alliance warships. SpartHawg948 01:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * the nuclear artillery was a sham to scare the russians in the cold war the troops firing that shell would be caught in the blast making a nuke cannon impractical as wasting a gun isn't artillery stragtegy I was in the marines for a short time plus my grand father was an officer who took part in the sham of the nuke gun. as for the fighers and nukes the planes now are ment to drop nukes on ground targets not air craft and the only air to air nuke missile was abandoned for that reason. Plus the fighters would need a big nuke to break a sheild and fighters are said in the codex to get up close and personal in a fleet battle to hit the large ships where it hurts so they would be in the blast zone of a nukeDerekproxy

There is a post by the very same guy in the very same thread regarding nukes. "Nukes are deliberately excluded from naval warfare because -- contrary to what popular culture says -- they are useless in a vacuum. Most of the damage of a nuclear blast is heat and shock, transmitted by the medium of Earth's atmosphere. The radiation damage decreases at an inverse square. In order to damage an enemy ship with a nuclear blast, you have to get the bomb redonkulously close to them (which is unlikely, given the capabilities of GARDIAN CIWS suites). It's cheaper to fling a bunch of 20kg slugs at 1.3% of lightspeed than it is to build a bunch of slow-moving nuclear-tipped missiles. For more in the ineffectualness of nukes in space, refer to Winchell Chung's awesome Atomic Rockets site." Link to the thread page: http://meforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=685301&forum=144&sp=15 Link to Winchell Chung's awesome Atomic Rockets site: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#nuke 96.52.254.124 05:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

No speculation please
Ok, there wasn't a terrible amount of space in the summary bubble, so here is why I removed the bit about SA frigates being used to transport marines and vehicles into ground combat. It's speculation w/out a solid basis in fact. SA Frigates carry a small marine complement (w/ 3-4 man "away teams") and one small IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle) for use in rapid response situations. Nowhere has it been said that the Systems Alliance Military employs it's frigates to carry troops and vehicles into ground combat. SpartHawg948 01:11, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not speculation as the codex states the Mako was ment to fit into a frigate and through out the game the Normandy is seen doing this the only thing special for the Normandy is that its a specter's ship if all makos were ment for frigates then its not speculation frigates act as troop transportsDerekproxy 03:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, yes it is. There is a big difference between carrying a few troops and a vehicle or two and being a troop transport. An aircraft carrier in the US Navy carries a small number of Marines, as well as helicopters which can carry them. Does this make the carrier a troop transport? No. The codex does state that the MAKO was meant to fit in SA frigates. However, there is NOTHING in the codex that states that the role of a frigate (SA or otherwise) is to act as a troopship. In fact, the codex lists the frigate's role as reconnaissance/skirmisher. Seven marines and a MAKO hardly qualifies a ship as a troop transport. As there is NO evidence that the SA employs frigates as troop transports (which was your original premise), it's speculation. SpartHawg948 09:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Alright alright it is although I wonder if the SAMC operates its own ships like USMC wasp and america class shipsDerekproxy 21:27, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm gonna say it's unlikely, given that the Wasp and America classes, not to mention the Tarawa class are operated by the US Navy, the Marines merely operate off of the ships. SpartHawg948 08:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Geth ships besides dropships
It's often assumed that the only Geth ship class seen in Mass Effect is the dropship, a frigate about the same size as the main character's frigate the Normandy. However, I think that some other geth vessels were in fact present at the Siege of the Citadel towards the game's end.

- here is a video of the battle. At first, it would appear that only dropships were with Sovereign, since it's clear that all the ships surrounding it at 0:13 are dropships. At other moments, ships of other sizes can be seen. The Normandy passes one such ship at 4:50, and shortly later at 4:55 it flys through wreckage of several Geth ships that are clearly larger than it.

Can it be safely assumed that a class of Geth cruisers was present at the battle as well as the dropships? Tophvision 11:36, September 30, 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the ships in this video at 3:35 are Geth cruisers. I also found a video were the relative size of the dropship compared to the [I]Normandy[/I] can be assessed.  Here at 0:40 you can see the Normandy landing at the bomb site, and taking back off again at 1:55.  A dropship heads for the same site at 6:20.  Does anyone else see notable design difference between the Geth ships in the last video and this ship? To me sections of the ship seem longer proportionally- particularly the head and "shoulders" part.  The head doesn't seem angled down as much on the "cruisers" as the dropship, and the cruisers seem to lack the "claws" the dropship has. Tophvision 12:06, September 30, 2009 (UTC)