Approved Starship Beholder Support Frigate

[Jorus Merrill]

Spoiler

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: Restore the primacy of cloaking devices! Scare the feth out of non-cloak stealth!
• Image Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vOe3E
• Canon Link: N/A
• Restricted Missions: N/A
• Primary Source: N/A

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

• Manufacturer: Royal Naboo Shipwrights
• Model: Beholder Support Frigate
• Affiliation: Outer Rim Coalition, closed market (ask first)
• Production: Limited
• Material: Durasteel hull

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Classification: Escort Frigate
• Length: 450m
• Width: 210m
• Height: 140m
• Armament: Low30 turbolasers
• 5 general purpose warhead launchers
• 40 defensive autoturrets

[*]Defenses: Moderate
[*]Hangar: 2 squadrons
[*]Maneuverability Rating: Average
[*]Speed Rating: Average
[*]Hyperdrive Class: 1

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Multispectral target-painting burst projector (battlefield/transorbital range)

Strengths:

• Burst projector dramatically increases sensor signature of any nearby vessels, including any stealth vessels not covered by a stygium or hibridium cloaking device.

Weaknesses:

• Some nearby ships (e.g. nearby civilian traffic, its own starfighter escorts) will experience sensor and communications interference while the burst projector is active.
• Burst can only fire every 20-40 seconds (timing varies to throw off predictors).
• Very lightly armed.
• Can be targeted at longer ranges than most capital ships.

Description:
A Beholder Support Frigate is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a front-line ship. Despite tough shields and armor, the Beholder's odds of survival drop drastically as soon as it starts doing its job. A multiaxis target-painting burst projector sweeps the battlefield or an orbital approach vector with a multispectrum scan burst. The Beholder lights up like a Life Day tree on fire so far as sensors are concerned...but all across that battlefield, other ships' sensor cross-sections increase as well. For a fraction of a second, expensive stealth ships - any that don't have cloaking devices - show up on sensors. The Beholder's systems automatically correlate those new pings with other sensor data (or the lack thereof), and identify the contacts most likely to be stealth ships. It's a pretty straightforward concept, and one that can cause all sorts of mess and trouble for nearby civilian traffic's comscan systems, so the Beholder's burst projector is only deployed when there's a good reason to believe a stealth ship is in the area. The burst is highly effective against passive stealth, such as Nightshadow or reflect, and moderately effective against active stealth (e.g. sensor masks). Sensor jammers and targeted ECM have limited impact on the Beholder when it operates in a fleet context. No matter how much ECM a Beholder is taking, the burst is still painting all targets, and other ships may notice a blip associated with a stealth vessel.

In all other circumstances, the Beholder is just a durable, lightly-armed frigate capable of deploying a couple of fighter squadrons. Those capabilities let it handle light patrol duties, or serve a low-impact screening role during fleet action. Canny commanders may decide to use the Beholder's burst projector to interfere with the sensors and communications of nearby enemy fighters, in the right situation. However, commanders who aren't as canny as they think they are may sow serious chaos through their own fighter screens if they give a Beholder the wrong orders.

 

[Gir Quee]

Under Review.

 

[Gir Quee]

Armament: Low 30 turbolasers 5 general purpose warhead launchers 40 defensive autoturrets Defenses: High Hangar: 2 squadrons Maneuverability Rating: Average Speed Rating: Moderate

A quick plug in of the ratings into the Excel spreedsheet nets the "seems very overpowered" result. Dropping both fighter squadrons eliminates this, but I'm flexible on how you would like to balance it. This doesn't address the core feature of the ship though.

A multiaxis target-painting burst projector sweeps the battlefield or an orbital approach vector with a multispectrum scan burst. The Beholder lights up like a Life Day tree on fire so far as sensors are concerned...but all across that battlefield, other ships' sensor cross-sections increase as well.

So in other words, this is something like typical starship sensor suite that has a temporary overcharge mode?

There's a vague but definite canon precedence with the Alibata-Unyo advanced sensor system, which supports with both the idea of temporary boosting sensors and vaguely detecting "cloaked" ships. There's probably some gameplay mechanics involved with this, but I think it would be reasonable that such a boost would just as applicable (maybe even more so) to stealth starships.

My most major concern is the vagueness of "stealthed" ships in this context. While this device certainly make sense in the context of ships that are solely using passive stealth systems (because it essentially directly reverses their processes), how would this handle active stealth devices or ECM deployed to thwart specifically sensors in general?

Some example devices to consider: sensor dampener, sensor blind (and by extension, normal sensor jammers as well), sensor mask

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Gir Quee"]

Forgot that fighter squadrons counted for so much these days. Edits made.

 

[Gir Quee]

The additions on multispectral target painter look good.

Forgot that fighter squadrons counted for so much these days. Edits made.

My memory isn't always the greatest I'm afraid, so I don't remember what the ratings previous to your edits were. However, I plugged the current ratings in again and still got "seems very overpowered". Like you said, fighter squadrons count for a lot these days. It looks like a total of two ratings (wherever you want to choose them) would have to drop throughout the ship to keep the two squadrons.


The additions on multispectral target painter look good.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Gir Quee"]

That looks like a flaw in the Excel sheet. All my stats average out to Average except fighter squadrons. Limited production is a two-point bump, which should equate to a High rating for fighter squadrons. The frigate example templates only have a reference point for Very High (3) and Very Low (0). Two squadrons sounds like a Moderate or High to me, and the target painter is pretty much balanced in itself. Far as I can tell, this ship is as good as I can get it.

 

[Gir Quee]

That looks like a flaw in the Excel sheet. All my stats average out to Average except fighter squadrons. Limited production is a two-point bump, which should equate to a High rating for fighter squadrons. The frigate example templates only have a reference point for Very High (3) and Very Low (0). Two squadrons sounds like a Moderate or High to me, and the target painter is pretty much balanced in itself. Far as I can tell, this ship is as good as I can get it.

The hangar section in the basic frigate template itself states that 1 squadron is "average", and that 2 squadrons is "very high". This is assuming that the frigate is "average"-sized. Size certainly does play a part in it, which is why the 500 meter long carrier frigate example can have three rather than two squadrons. Conversely, it is harder for smaller ships to carry more starfighter squadrons. This makes sense from a logical standpoint as well, as a smaller ship with less internal volume will naturally have less space to store starships.

The spreadsheet, while certainly not perfect, actually accounts for this. As I change the size of the vessel in the spreadsheet, the rating of the vessel changes even if the number of squadrons does not change. I'm not sure if you have access to Excel software (I personally OpenOffice, which you can download for free), but as an experiment, you can input the stats for the Beholder and change its size. At 250 meters, the Beholder comes out as overpowered. However, if I change the size to 500 meters (and nothing but the size), I get the result "looks sensible". As I do this, I can see the official "rating" change next to the hangar with its size. As I play with the spreedsheet, moving the size to 450 meters gives us the result of "seems slightly overpowered, you can balance it with a suitable weakness". Anything lower than 450 meters gives the "seems very overpowered" result.

I personally wish that squadron counts were higher across the board for all capital ships. However, as a judge, I will be roughly following the spreedsheet in order to maintain a relatively close equality for the whole process as performed by other judges, and in comparison to other submissions.

EDIT:

To put some additional perspective to this with a ship close to the current Beholder's size, our template carrier corvette is 200 meters and carries one squadron.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Gir Quee"]

I'd always understood that rating X was rating X within a ship class, regardless of size. Something to re-examine. Edited.

 

[Gir Quee]

I'd always understood that rating X was rating X within a ship class, regardless of size. Something to re-examine.

Generally this is true. The issue is that ratings are all relative to ship size. Starfighter squadrons, however, are not any different in terms of performance regardless of if they are launched from a corvette or a star destroyer. This is not the first time this issue has come up.

I'm going to link you to one of our RPJ's commentary on this from a different submission.

Edited.

I see that several ratings have been lowered, and also that the ship's size is also noticeably smaller to point that I would consider judging its hangar size as a 200 meter corvette (especially considering its powerful anti-stealth feature), as the spreadsheet does not have a 200 meter frigate option.

Here are a list of rating options that would be approvable at the Beholder's current length of 210 meters:

Armament Rating: Low
Defense Rating: Moderate
Hangar: 0
Maneuverability Rating: Average
Speed Rating: Average
Note: Keeps all current ship ratings the same except for hangar

Armament Rating: Low
Defense Rating: Moderate
Hangar: 2
Maneuverability Rating: Low
Speed Rating: Low
Note: Keeps both fighter squadron, loses 2 ratings (taken from speed and maneuverability in this example)

Armament Rating: Low
Defense Rating: Moderate
Hangar: 1
Maneuverability Rating: Low
Speed Rating: Average
Note: The middle ground option: losing one rating(taken from maneuverability in this example) and one squadron

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Gir Quee"]

That's the width. There was a typo in the amended length.

 

[Gir Quee]

Awesome. Pending Secondary Approval. Thanks! [member="Jamie Pyne"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

Approved.