Corvettes: Paradigm vs Venture?

Puts us back where we were, doesn't it? I mean, without a size stat, we're pretty well stuck.

You know what, forget about size. Let's look at their respective capabilities for a moment.

Paradigm: 200 kps, "Poor" acceleration, "Poor" Maneuverability, ?? Shields, 80/65/65/50 cm Armor - 2MES, 2TAC, 1IPC, 3xLASTUR, 3xMASTUR, 10x1DF, 2x1 IR, 1x1 HS
Gilgamesh: 250 kps, "Poor" acceleration, 2 dps, Phase Shields, 250/200/200/250 cm Armor - 2FLAK, 2AMG
Southampton: 200 kps, 10 kps^2, 5dps, 2000 cm Shields, 1000/1000/1000/100 cm Armor - 9xLASTUR, Light Fighter compliment.

The thing to note is the type of armament and the relative strength of the defenses. While the Paradigm may have more guns, none of them would be particularly effective against enemy capital ships, but they would be good against pirates, raiders and such. I mean, the Antimatter Guns on the Gilgamesh can bypass shields, so that's a definite anti-ship capability. Southampton...well, it's guns aren't all that strong necessarily, but they'd be sufficient to swat down incoming torpedoes or give incoming enemy bombers hell, and that's where its strength of defenses comes into play.

Strength of defenses...well, a centimeter of Durasteel is a centimeter of Durasteel is a centimeter of Durasteel. I mean, you can conceivably kill a Paradigm with civilian-grade weapons, while its contemporaries generally require torpedoes.

The Paradigm is clearly not a front-line warship - no matter how "advanced" it ostensibly is - but as a pirate interdictor, it could do the job without taking one of those heavier craft off the lines. It'd probably be cheaper to build too...all the more reason to even build something like this in the first place.

Anyway, I guess that's my argument for calling it a destroyer escort. It is stronger than the Exeter and Venture, no argument there.

Without going too deep into size, I'll play devil's advocate by saying that the ship could be really small and the guns normal-size, thus appearing big relative to the ship. Like I said, though, without a size stat...

Oh, it actually says that? <flip...flip...flip...... /> Page 53. Sure enough. Okay...a big "never mind" from me, then.

Can be. I work over it again and here it is:
Upside: 10 Turrets

Downside: 6 Turrets:

In the Privateer Manual it has : 2 Meson, 2 Tachyon and 1 Ionic Impulse Cannon and 3 Single Laser and 3 Single Mass Driver Turrets.

Now here I need to change that to the 16 turrets. Finaly I give it: 3 Tachyon Turrets, 5 Mass Driver Turrets and 8 Laser Turrets (more firepower as the original). Its not a counterpart to a real destroyer (except the Ralarad with the weapons),with its shields and armor not really a match to the other ones. A few AMG hits and this ship is history. But! I make a single mission to test the balance.... 40 fighters attacking the Paradigm. Over 20 ships are lost! I try it with Dralthi, Darkets and Vaktoths. The first wave of 10 Darkets are blown up in the first seconds. Afterall you can say: its a heavy threat to Kilrathi fighterwings. If Confed would build 2000 of this class and not the crappy Behemout, Blair don't do the suicide run with the Templor bomb. They 2000 would destroy every fighterwings the Kilrathi had.

PS: still problem with the eniginecoordinates :/

I appreciate seeing where the turrets are - but (without meaning to sound like a jerk about it) I do have to ask what part of "never mind" was unclear......

I read it too but I liked your idea.

Against a Southampton the Paradigm is just a little egg. Much more shields, armor, Capship missilelancher, AMG. Against a Gilga less shields, armor, 2 AMG vs. none. Even the light Ralarad with no AMG has much more shields and armor. So its a class between the Venture and the bigger destroyers. Better armed as a Kamekh but less armor and shields.

Really? I always just thought it was a ship of the line, not any type of carrier...

For the purposes of adding it into a game, I would use all the size stats & role designation from the manuals, then add weapons to make it match those stats. As is said above, the weapons seen in-game obviously are as such to balance the type of gameplay in Privateer, where you are only engaging several fighters & single capship, with no wingman (in most circumstances).

To work with Saga style gameplay, I would be adding laser turrets for anti-fighter defence, slapping on a couple of anti-capship weapons (amg) and perhaps defensive missile armament. Hell, add torp launchers if needs be. Although some of the charm of the Paradigm (apart from the aesthetic) is the wide array of energy weapons, in my opinion gameplay considerations should be the focus. In a roundabout way, that brings it closer to achieving its purpose - a 'Destroyer' - in essence serving the fiction & literature rather than game-specific stats.

Does that make sense? Does in my head. But vomiting my brains onto the internet can be difficult. (and messy)

You should put the Behemoth gun on the Paradigm.

The paradigm is actually a moon.

True story.

On the other hand, nowhere does it say that the fighters are all docked in an internal landing bay. In "End Run" we get to see fighters docking externally, for example.

Perhaps they had a long rope with them and attached the Rapiers to it, like those old sail ships had sometimes

It's too big to be a moon. Probably some kind of space station. If I want a venture I usually just tape a bunch of cats together.

That's enough I'm not going to be responsible for prolonging the death throes of this thread. Somebody hand me a sidearm and I'll shoot it in the spine or cloaca or something.

Yeah, definitely every one of those turrets should be a Behemoth gun.

Wow, that's... I don't know a word for that

That sure is a fine bit of art. I miss the days of opening up gaming magazines and having my imagination set alive with some new half-page blotter of starships or whatever.