new excalibur

casperXJ

Spaceman
while i was writing, i had an idea for a new version of the excalibur that would have the a miniaturized MID drive like the one on the Vigilant in my story for vastly increased speed (1600+ klicks with afterburner)

i was also thinking it would have a high-speed railgun, like the stormfire, but with longer range, really slow refire delay, and damage enough to kill most fighters in 1 shot - 2 of those, plus 2 strong and 2 weak energy guns, and a few missiles

tell me what you guys think - whether it makes sense, what the statistics should be, and what the guns & missiles should be
 
I'd have to say it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Wouldn't you need to build a completely new craft to accomidate a device like a MID? I'm sure the Excalibur's power supply couldn't handle one of those. I could, however see a long-range interceptor with few energy weapons and a MID.
 
i'd like to make it based on the excalibur because it's a border worlds fighter that confed can associate with (both Bulldog & Tsu have to be able to operate it)

the railgun would carry maybe 50 rounds only - have one of those, two weak guns, and 4 missiles

i was hoping for a more enthusiastic response, but not all's fair, i guess :(

anyway, get back to me on this - i hope to put it in a sequel to DDX
 
Make the gun have a 12 second refire delay, and have 2 ion or 2 lasers for the light weapons, and probably have 4 FoF and 4 IR. These missiles are not that big.

Here are the specs of the WCSO Excal: 4 tachyon, 2 ion and 4 FoF and 4 IR
 
here's a compromise:

thanks to fuel research, Confed can fit the Excalibur with afterburner fuel 30% more effective at a 25% penalty in amount & a slight decrease in normal speed

475/625/1700 kps, 70/75/50 y/p/r
2 pulse particle, 2 tachyon, 2 stormfire Mk2 w/ 250 rds ea.
4 artemis, 4 pilum
280cm shields, 100cm armor, jump drive, cloak

by the way, i was looking at cic's so guide, and wondering why a panther has 280cm armor and an excalibur has 110cm

hopefully, this is a better balance & more realistic - let me know
 
That sounds more reasonable. This ship , however, should not be standard confed issue; more like a prototype or testbed for new tech, or some small series of long range scout ships(which makes their cloak reasonable). The majority of Excaliburs in confed service would still be the vanilla variant.
And I would change the part with the fuel research; from your description it just sounds like they crammed more fuel onto the ship in expense of maneuverability and speed.

casperXJ said:
by the way, i was looking at cic's so guide, and wondering why a panther has 280cm armor and an excalibur has 110cm

There are ten years of research between this two fighter craft. It's just more advanced.
 
i figure this excal will be a special "space control" variant developed by CASPER, with the mission of flying into a system & sweeping a large portion of it

instead of missiles, i was thinking it would carry a guided projectile gun like the BLAM (see http://www.eng.auburn.edu/department/ae/labinfo/AAL/blam.html) with maybe 50 rounds - damage 220

add that to the excal, plus 2 tachyon, 2 pulse particle, no missiles, & same shields/armor/speed as my previous message

see what you think...
 
I'm still wondering why you're sticking to the old Excalibur design. First of the Excal is not a BW fighter, it's 100% Confed, I have heard nothing about the Border Worlds using it. And their's a whole slew of new ships like the Vampire or Panther to work with that are more advanced and efficient, is CASPER the nostalgic branch of Confed R&D?
 
holding the line (the only other big WC fan fiction that I've seen and thus a major source for me) states that the border worlds fleet operates excaliburs as heavy fighters

as for using newer fighters, wouldn't those be going to frontline service? CASPER has high priority when it comes to getting technology, but in the novel, they manage to acquire some excaliburs and Bulldog grows to like flying it - since he's the fighter division boss, he gets his way

plus, it's my favorite fighter - author's privilege :)

for those of you who've read the novel through chapter 2 (and i hope you would have by now), i've decided to cut any new innovations in favor of something the novel has already established: drones

i figure if you have a two-man excal (shame on BW for messing with all those fighters but Bulldog and Tsu are a good team), the backseater can control 2 or 3 drones - the excal could probably fit 2 inside its missile bays while retaining all of its weapons & performance characteristics

since each drone carries a dust cannon & 2 missiles, that halves the missile armament but increases gun power by a bunch, & you can attack from multiple directions

seems more realistic to me than all 4 of my previous posts

again, let me know what you think
 
Fenris Ulven said:
Excal is very fast... sad thing.

Please don't bump up threads that are half-a-year old, especially one with a WC-hater fanboy topic.
 
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