Fixing the Polaris

[Shadow Reaper]

So, I wanna whine some. I'm not happy with the Polaris as designed. Here are the four fixes I think it needs.

1) It needs 2 Large fuel tanks. 2 Medium fuel tanks is stupid. This is a Corvette, not a tending vehicle. My guess is this was a mistake and they intended L tanks. Basically 2/3 the fuel of an Idris.

2) It needs an efficient C class Q drive and two Large class jump drives, so it can repeatedly micro-jump around the battlefield. CIG gave this ability to the Caterpiller, and it should be here in the Polaris, to give that reputation for speed the Corvette deserves.

3) It needs an additional Medium class reactor for flying the Ship in stealth mode. That or batteries. You should be able to shut down everything but a medium reactor, life support, sensors and torps and kill enemies from the inky black void.

4) The chin mount needs an upgrade to match the newer, bigger gun mounts found on so many smaller ships, and they need to bring back the previous canister launcher with an area effect burst for shooting down fighters, missiles and torpedoes. That was cool and they dropped it out of laziness. Gimbled S7 gun that launches canisters with a range of 5 km, at 1,000 mps, 60 rpm, burst radius of 400 meters, burst damage of 1,000 dps. It's fine to make it an EM hog.

 

[vahadar]

I agree with your first proposal, medium tanks is a bit weak, even the Hammerhead has 2 Large tanks. This is probably an error since concept was revealed, and never fixed.

As for 2 and 3, i guess it is very subjective.

4 will most probably be reworked i guess.

Edit : to clarify my reply for 4, it is just about visual rework. I don't think the Polaris should have bigger sizes guns for the front one. It is already S5 turret with double gun. Globally the ship is already quite powerful.

 

[BUTUZ]

I guess we'll have to wait for it to be built till we can see what needs fixing!

 

[Bambooza]

I guess we'll have to wait for it to be built till we can see what needs fixing!

Indeed given its sitting in concept and not even on the roadmap for the vehicle pipeline.

 

[Makimera]

did'nt they say somewhere it was going to grow a little bit? (not alot)

 

[Bambooza]

did'nt they say somewhere it was going to grow a little bit? (not alot)

No clue. The last update on the Polaris was it was getting sent back to be reworked in concept and so anything can happen.

 

[Gambit]

Words come and go - brochures, commercials, under pressure questions... To be fair, they do fix the obvious stuff (like the mentioned fuel tanks), but tend to leave less practical & immediate stuff aside - for the future.

The thing, imo, is that there is always something, some new tech, that tell will point out that justifies waiting its arrival so the proper review can be made. Because, let's be honest, all legacy ships need a heavy pass and many newer ones also require touches.

If you really want the Polaris to be well equipped, it's better to hope it takes a loooong time to come. RIP Constellation.

Only Zardu Hassafrau can help us during these times of abundant questions.

 

[Ayeteeone]

So, I wanna whine some. I'm not happy with the Polaris as designed. Here are the four fixes I think it needs.

1) It needs 2 Large fuel tanks. 2 Medium fuel tanks is stupid. This is a Corvette, not a tending vehicle. My guess is this was a mistake and they intended L tanks. Basically 2/3 the fuel of an Idris.

2) It needs an efficient C class Q drive and two Large class jump drives, so it can repeatedly micro-jump around the battlefield. CIG gave this ability to the Caterpiller, and it should be here in the Polaris, to give that reputation for speed the Corvette deserves.

3) It needs an additional Medium class reactor for flying the Ship in stealth mode. That or batteries. You should be able to shut down everything but a medium reactor, life support, sensors and torps and kill enemies from the inky black void.

4) The chin mount needs an upgrade to match the newer, bigger gun mounts found on so many smaller ships, and they need to bring back the previous canister launcher with an area effect burst for shooting down fighters, missiles and torpedoes. That was cool and they dropped it out of laziness. Gimbled S7 gun that launches canisters with a range of 5 km, at 1,000 mps, 60 rpm, burst radius of 400 meters, burst damage of 1,000 dps. It's fine to make it an EM hog.

1) Ok.. agree with the fuel tank thing; as it's been brought up, the Ship Matrix of Deceit is not trustworthy.

2) What sci-fi universe are you using here? On the Cat, the Large Quantum Travel (QT) drive is in the main hull. There is a smaller drive installed in the cab for when it is undocked. The two do not and will not work in tandem.

How do you define 'micro-jump'? As the system works (and has been confirmed going forward) you will need a marker as a QT target. That can be someone else in the group, a celestial, a scanned point of interest, or whatever limited bookmark system we are provided. Minimum QT distance may change but in extensive gameplay shows to be around 30+ km. Perhaps useful on the battlefield, but more likely not.

3) There is absolutely no data to support the idea that a medium reactor would support it as a capitol ship. While I wholeheartedly agree with the stealth approach, until the Polaris's bespoke systems are actually in the game there is no way to know. Batteries are a planned item, and places for them are showing up in the newer ships (Pisces for example). A power plant's signature is also tied to it's draw - in the game right now are size 3 power plants whose power-to-EM and Temp-to-IR are lower than some size 1's, so the judicious choice of already existing components may achieve your objective.

4) No opinions on the guns.. if my ship has them, so will the other guy so all I care about is if they are appropriate to target. But "they dropped it out of laziness" is a ridiculous statement, passive-aggressive to the point of hyperbole.

The flak cannons that were discussed for the Pioneer sound much like the concept you describe, but as your solution would be seriously OP, doubt that it will happen that way.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

How do you define 'micro-jump'? As the system works (and has been confirmed going forward) you will need a marker as a QT target. . .Minimum QT distance may change but in extensive gameplay shows to be around 30+ km. Perhaps useful on the battlefield, but more likely not.

Micro-jumping is jumping toward a target but exiting early so that you can jump very small distances, for reasons other than going to the target you select. It's that way in Star Wars Combine and in SC. There are many vids online especially of the clumsy slow Eclipse, navigating around and micro-jumping over and over in order to position itself on the battlefield. This is BTW, the only real reason to overclock your Q drive. Otherwise, who cares if you have to wait an extra 7 seconds to jump? Overclocking the Q drive is specifically intended to enable micro-jumping, and does not affect travel time at all. It effects spool time only.

There should be many, many scenarios where frequent microjumping is useful, and the only way to get around the long spool times of the various jump drives is to have more than one of them. I can't imagine why you'd think frequent jumping would not be useful, but for the Polaris, consider it in combat against a Vanduul Cap ship like the Void Bomber, which is its primary intended prey.

The VB has three spinal mount S10 guns it wants to bring to bear against any opponent large enough to hit. The problem with these is they they can only point as fast as the ship can turn. So if in an engagement a Polaris can micro-jump quickly, to the beam or stern of its opponent, it can stay out of range of all the secondary turrets, and out of the fire arc of the S10 spinal mounts. That's pretty useful, if you can pull it off. Simplest is, fire Torps from just outside the S10 Vanduul range (say 30 km) then jump toward and past the VB, to a position 30 km behind it. One hopes the Polaris will rotate faster than the VB, get on target, shoot and jump away again. There's a good chance this will work since the torps are self guiding, and can be launched within 11* arc of their target, while the Vanduul S10 guns actually need to point at where they will shoot. Additionally, targets will move and the Polaris can try to strafe out of the gunfire, while the VBs can't strafe out of a torp track.

Yeah, that would be useful! and maybe can be done with a single Q drive. Maybe not. Certainly though, this would require great navigation and piloting, which is what we ought to expect of an entire bridge crew. Otherwise they're sitting around bored.

Batteries are a planned item, and places for them are showing up in the newer ships (Pisces for example).

As I said, batteries or a secondary reactor. Note, you cannot swap out the reactor in the Polaris. It has a Cap class reactor, which is not a swappable component. The ship is built around it. You'd need to tear apart and reassemble the entire ship.

But "they dropped it out of laziness" is a ridiculous statement. . .

No, really it is not. There are many things we were promised years ago that later were rescinded because CIG decided it was too much to expect. So for instance, they told us we could step down a gun size in any mount, and have two of them, and CIG rescinded that several years ago. If you want to call it something other than laziness you can, but the fact is they made the change to save themselves the work of designing a second mount for every gun, and that's what they said when they cancelled that feature. The flak cannon they never spoke on. They just removed it. We may see it one day, but it was removed to save CIG the effort of developing a new kind of weapon. BTW, they didn't just "discuss" the flak cannons. They published their stats. Once you do that and then later change course, you're taking away from what others were expecting.

These are the things that would make the Polaris a good hunter. IMHO, It's the only cap ship that ought to be able to be effective when powered down, specifically because of the torpedoes. It should be immensely effective attacking from stealth at 20 km, in just the same way the Sentinel is effective attacking with missiles from 5 km.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Edit : to clarify my reply for 4, it is just about visual rework. I don't think the Polaris should have bigger sizes guns for the front one. It is already S5 turret with double gun. Globally the ship is already quite powerful.

The turrets were all designed to be twin S4. The chin mount was supposed to be a single S5 remote turret, but that was back when there were no S7-9 guns, and now there are. IMHO, for that mount to be the threat it should be, needs to be at least S7 remote turret.

 

[vahadar]

The turrets were all designed to be twin S4. The chin mount was supposed to be a single S5 remote turret, but that was back when there were no S7-9 guns, and now there are. IMHO, for that mount to be the threat it should be, needs to be at least S7 remote turret.

To be honest the actual threat of the Polaris come from its torpedoes, not its turrets.

The ship has already 7 turrets twin mounts with 2 guns each, totalizing 14 guns (1*2 S5 and 6*2 S4). In comparison the Hammerhead has 6 turrets quad mounts with 4 cannons each, totalizing 24 guns, all S4. Both ships have like 32 S3 missiles. So if you compare them, Polaris been heavier, slightly longer, and coming with a small ship up to sabre size (could fit multiple smaller ships instead), plus the 24 S10 torpedoes, i don't think the Polaris needs a S7 gun. It is supposed to be a big torpedo ship, i dont think it will be used a lot as a gunship even though it is perfectly able to engage smaller ships up to large ships with turrets i bet, but not like the Hammerhead. All in all it is a jack of all trade for combat (plus medic bay and ability to repair/refit its figther).

It is already quite balanced, will need some rework for sure, but it perfectly fills the gap between a Hammerhead and an Idris (which has 7*2S5 and 4*2 S4 plus its S10 for the P version) or a kraken (1*S8, plus 4*2S6 + 4*2S5).

But if they put a S7 i wont say no

 

[AntiSqueaker]

I mean, the Nautalis has twin S7 cannons on it and ideally it shouldn't even see an enemy ship lol.


I'd not be surprised if it get upgunned a bit, but CIG might be wary of giving it too big of guns since it already has more torpedoes than you can shake a stick at.


Assuming the Odin is CIG's holiday check to themselves, you may have more guns than you know what to do with soon enough

 

[FZD]

So if in an engagement a Polaris can micro-jump quickly, to the beam or stern of its opponent

I don't think that micro jumps would be quite so short, larger quantum drives currently have 70,000 km disconnect range, unless you're fighting a moon that's just kinda way too long. I can see it being shorter if you tweak it, but I doubt you'd get it down to or below 100km

 

[Gambit]

... unless you're fighting a moon that's just kinda way too long.

You are right. Absolutely right - Unicron can & will be a enemy in this universe as well! Good thing we have torpedoes... and beer!

Some of you may not have the age to remember, but robot beer was essential in the battle against the moon bot. Just like we will!

Wreck-Gar : Yes friends, act now, destroy Unicron! Kill the Grand Poobah! Eliminate even the toughest stains!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoEJpK4pY2U


ps. Baa weep grahna weep ninny bong!

 

[Printimus]

It aint broke, it just ain't what you thought it out to be. Big ass fuel tanks on a corvette? NOPE too much weight to haul around in inertia rich zero G. If you played the game, you would get the feel for how ships move in space.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

It is supposed to be a big torpedo ship, i dont think it will be used a lot as a gunship

People can do whatever they like with the chin mount. Personally, I liked the flak cannon idea because that fits in perfectly with the torpedo boat role. If you use it defensively by installing something to thwart missiles and torps, it makes perfect sense. The flak cannon did not however do enough damage to justify its size--there are S4s that do more damage. The point was to give large and cap ships a defense against missiles and torps, like the countermeasures found on small and medium ships. (To date I have not seen countermeasures on a large ship. Has anyone here?)

I don't think that micro jumps would be quite so short, larger quantum drives currently have 70,000 km disconnect range

I admit that is a little long, but you can work with that. We don't yet have ranges for S10 torps, but the Seeker IX and Typhoon IX have 50 km ranges. If a target was at 35 km, you could jump back and forth past it. Closer would be better, so long as you're outside the target's weapons' range, but I could work with 35-40 km, especially if the Polaris is quiet enough it can't be seen at that distance.

The Quantum dampeners in both the Cutty Blue and Mantis have 20 km radius area of effect, so there's plenty of room to keep and hold a big cap ship. Just find your best pilot to fly all crazy like that.

 

[FZD]

I admit that is a little long, but you can work with that. We don't yet have ranges for S10 torps, but the Seeker IX and Typhoon IX have 50 km ranges. If a target was at 35 km, you could jump back and forth past it. Closer would be better, so long as you're outside the target's weapons' range, but I could work with 35-40 km, especially if the Polaris is quiet enough it can't be seen at that distance.

Hmm, yeah, if it can hit from 50km out, and you manage to overclock a large drive for such short distances, then yeah, it could work. Well, it'd be easier if you can fit like smallest possible quantum drive in the slot though, those have LOT shorter disconnect ranges, Drift has just 14,258km... Well, still would need to trim that by like 99%. Would make traveling between destinations bit of a pain though.

 

[Talonsbane]

I'll keep my hopes simple in order to have a good chance of them coming true. I want to be able to paint my Polaris flat matte black & give it gold accents, so that whenever bullies, griefers & enemies see it appear, they'll scream in terror, "Oh shit, we're so screwed because that beast is going to TESTify us all!"

 

[Black Sunder]

I'll keep my hopes simple in order to have a good chance of them coming true. I want to be able to paint my Polaris flat matte black & give it gold accents, so that whenever bullies, griefers & enemies see it appear, they'll scream in terror, "Oh shit, we're so screwed because that beast is going to TESTify us all!"

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR MONTOYA? HAVE A TORPEDO AND THINK ABOUT IT!

 

[FZD]

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR MONTOYA? HAVE A TORPEDO AND THINK ABOUT IT!

BLASPHEMY! EVERYONE KNOWS THE ONLY CORRECT PROJECTILE YOU CAN LAUNCH TO SPREAD TESTISM IS AN AURORA ON A CRASH COURSE!