Which B5 Fleet would you take.

[Deepcrush]

Not the shadows but the centari. EA had newer systems that would allow for a visual scan and also track vessels by their wake as much as the ship its self.

A whitestar was rated as the equal to an Omega class by over all ability. A blend of greater speed, targeting, range and with enough forward fire power to match all but the Sharlin. The Omega had greater firepower over all but was much slower and had a hard time locking onto the membari ships.

[mlsnoopy]

Well to go back on topic, I would take the IA fleet, fanatical wariors, whitestars and victory destroyes, can't beet that.

[Jim]

Well to go back on topic, I would take the IA fleet, fanatical wariors, whitestars and victory destroyes, can't beet that.

I thought the destroyers were a very poor design.

[Deepcrush]

I'm not sure how you see a poor design. They worked very well for the IA. Its also the only ship out there that can match a Sharlin in battle. The only major problem faced by the IA is that they have trouble building Victories at any fair rate of speed. They are very expensive and the advanced tech requires a good deal of time to manage. Also if you want fanatical warriors then you need to see the reformed Army of Light.

[Jim]

I'm not sure how you see a poor design. They worked very well for the IA. Its also the only ship out there that can match a Sharlin in battle. The only major problem faced by the IA is that they have trouble building Victories at any fair rate of speed. They are very expensive and the advanced tech requires a good deal of time to manage. Also if you want fanatical warriors then you need to see the reformed Army of Light.

Maybe I am thinking of the wrong ship. Now I gotta go try to find pictures...

[Reliant121]

Dont worry. I know very little of the sips from B5. I recognise a Sharlin (who doesn't), I know of the Earthforce ship Prometheus and I know of the Raider fighters.

[Jim]

I'm not sure how you see a poor design. They worked very well for the IA. Its also the only ship out there that can match a Sharlin in battle. The only major problem faced by the IA is that they have trouble building Victories at any fair rate of speed. They are very expensive and the advanced tech requires a good deal of time to manage. Also if you want fanatical warriors then you need to see the reformed Army of Light.

No, that is the one I was thinking of. I realize that most of the ships in the B5 universe are relatively immobile, but the VCD was basically straight line in battle. Then their main weapon drains all the ships power and leaves it 100% desenseless and immobile. I didn't get the impression that the secondary weapons could do much more than maybe two oe three Whitestars could do, minus the mobility.

[Sionnach Glic]

Overall, it was an alright ship. But the main weapon was the epitome of 'suck'.

[Deepcrush]

Well the VCD only had the fire power of two or three whitestars. But what she had over them was armour that could withstand far more punishment and believe it or not was just as fast if not faster then the whitestars in a dead run. She wasn't as good at turning but her weapons aloud her to fire in any arc they so wished. There were also two wings of thunderbolts and that main cannon was only used if it was truly needed. Though the fact that no ship including a VCD could survive a single hit tells me that the weapon had some good reasoning behind it. Another thing is that we rarely see the VCD used as they were meant to be used. They were built to be the flagship of a fleet. Not a loner out on patrol. If the enemy has a battleship of some kind leading it then you use the VCD main gun to turn it into a pretty fireball. The VCD can survive without power since her armour is second to none and no one wants to have to deal with that many fighters. Again, being without power for sixty seconds isn't that much in a B5 battle. Some of these battles have lasted for days. So a single minute really isn't that much. Plus, they were built with Vorlon power systems in mind but had to settle for membari. If you judge the VCD then you have to think about what it was designed for, not what it ended up doing because of rushed writers.

In the end the VCD's had more good then bad.
-They could destroy any known ship in a single shot.
-Survive attacks that would destroy a Sharlin or Warlock and just shrugg it off.
-Out run all but a whitestar.
-Lunch her fighters in under a minute. BOTH wings of them.
-Has a C&C center for fleet command.

And finally.
-There is still no younger race ship that can match the VCD in single combat. This means that if a VCD is sent then you would need a small fleet to oppose it. Even the membari feared this thing where as they thought that the Warlock (the greatest ship every built by the EA) was "a fitting little brother" to the sharlin.

[Jim]

Overall, it was an alright ship. But the main weapon was the epitome of 'suck'.

So it was a Star Fleet design?

[Deepcrush]

No, because the VCD didn't blow up when the reactors came online, nor did every system fail because of someone tripping in a random room.

[Jim]

My lack of mobility comments did not infer a lack of straight line speed.

Your argument did open me up for the possibility of changing my opinion on the ship though. Is there any information as to what sort of hit it could withstand as opposed to that a Whitestar or other B5 universe ship can take?

[Deepcrush]

Very little sad to say. The armour was tested against Membari weapons and that is where their shock came from. The VCD survived! The armour itself is MOSTLY Vorlon with Membari tech added in to fill the gaps. Its not so strange for the armour to be as tough as it is. The biggest shift was that the Membari used thinner amounts of armour to keep their ships fast and light. The VCD's were built by humans in which they added far more armour then the Membari had first planned on. The Sharlin has 3 or 4 meters of Membari armour. Whitestars have 2 meters of advanced armour. The VCD has between 6, 8 and 10 meters of the same armour as the Whitestar. Every part of the VCD was built as a test hull then when the human techs got it they mistook the armour as being only for laiding purposes. Then they started to add more. Then more after that. So much so that the ships mass became so much that it had trouble turning while at anymore then half speed. In all the VCD have less then twice the weaponry of the Sharlin or about 4 times that of a Whitestar. But it what it does have is a massive boost in power, speed and best of all, its survivability. It also requires far less crew then standard EA ships.

On a side note. The EA does look into making VCD's the new class of capitol ships in about 20 years but is halted when the Marathon Class Cruiser comes out and is by far cheaper to build. The Marathon is the first ship to be a "True Equal" of the Membari Sharlin. Though, in my humble thoughts the Marathon may have surpassed the Sharlin. The crew may still be larger but now that EA has the tech to match Membari weapons the gap between has been closed. My thoughts as to the Marathon being better is that the EA uses 3 times the amount of hull armour then the Membari. Equal weapons with better armour. Its an opinion as the cannon is still not which is better.

Just so you have an idea. The Marathon is more or less a Warlock hull with earth built shadow tech added on. Its the first purely earth built ship to have heavy cannon turrets on them that match the range and power of the Membari weapons they were made to mimic.

[mlsnoopy]

wasn't the vcd planed to be equiped with an organic hull, but were rushed into service.

[Granitehewer]

Breen there, done that