Well, with enough power behind it, it could.

Land based nuclear explosions are so powerful because of the atmospheric shockwave it creates. In space there would be no shockwave just the initial blast, and radiation.

If you propel an object fast enough it could penetrate almost anything, and thats the theory behind railguns.

Who needs shields when you can just chrome plate your ships reflecting any beam fired at it off.

So far i see a mixed bag of old converted cargo ships, and new strictly military designs for TEC. The Kol IMO would pass for a cargo ship hastily converted into a battleship. Along with the Akken, Kodiak, Siege, Scout, and Dunov. The Sova looks like it was designed from the get go to be a carrier. Not a converted freighter or cruise liner. The Marza i agree is a ship built around its weapon. The rest look too "new", and designed strictly for combat. We can speculate that these newer, or strictly military looking ships were built because of the 2 front war. Who is to say that TEC didnt have military ships before the war. There are outlaws and pirates to deal with. Perhaps rebellious planets. Just because they had 10000 years of peace didnt mean they didnt fight small skirmishes, or not have any civil strife. So there would be a need of a small military force if only to act as police. Hence the newer cobalt frigate design. It may be an old design to deal with pirates upgraded to deal with the newer threats. So we are seeing newer combat oriented ships being mixed in with the converted fleet. The thing is the lore needs to be updated to reflect that TEC is starting to build ships of the line.

I agree on the Auto Cannons. I'd love to see the TEC Captial Ships just loaded with them instead of other weapons so when they enter combat the area is just completely filled with auto cannon fire, like the old WW2 videos you see of battleships firing at aircraft with hundreds of different guns.

@ Major Stress: The Kol is one of those ground up designs (The beam weapons are actually reverse engineered from the Vasari, and look at the way the hangar is built, it looks like it was meant to be a hangar and nothing else). It was only actually 1000 years of peace, and you don't need battleships to deal with pirates (Well, maybe beta2 pirates ). Back when the lore included some ship descriptions, it did talk about how the TEC were building new dedicated ship designs.

which is why the inclusion of the cruisers makes so much sense.

Like I said in previous posts I'm fine with the cruisers now, however I think the Kodiak because it is a combat Oriented Cruiser deserves upgrades in the weapon department. And I would like for the ship to be equipped with Autocannon Turrets, seeing as the weapon has only been used on one ship so far. And it just plain rocks!

In a perfect game , Autocannon Turrets should be on all ships

Yes and yes!!!

Hmmm let me rephrase that , all CAPITAL ships

i think thats good the TEC should be weaker cos they have not been fightin for 10000 years but can churn ships out quikly so have large fleets as the vesari and advent are advanced so thier ships are rely good but are expensive. You could balance the teams by making the tec have higher caps maby cos if you think about i the vasari battle ships would be able to take on like 3 kols by emm selves but maby take up 2x the price and take up 3x the space or something like that. In games i have to say i like a fleet with a few but strong ships

and outo cannons should be able to shoot fighters but be crap at hitting them

Definately more AA on ships, i mean come on you build a multibillion carrier/battleship
And dont give it any chance of defending against a Single bomber squadron, that just doesnt
make any sense. 1000 years of peace doesnt mean the whole TEC empire got Stupid beoynd
redemption does it?

On the issue of lasers, manufacturing lasers compared to cannons/railguns is just plain
STUPID, railgun powered by a source made by a spacefaring race
with ten thousand years of experience on countless areas of science conducted by
enormous amounts of private companies would be far superior than any amount of strap on tech,
thousand years of peace does not mean youre backward in all military technology,
experience is one thing yes they dont have that but that doesnt mean they couldnt make
a semi-effective combatants in matter of weeks with dozen different models ready to be
tested on field.

On the issue of effectiveness between lasers and cannons, pick a guess 30gram object at
a speed of 200 000km/s (imagine the velocity really carefully) would punch through a
mountain with ease if no severe gravity or athmosphere isnt there to affect its speed and
the object it self ofcourse, which is the case in space ofcourse. Theres nothing you could
possibly do to stop it from tearing a kilometer wide ship to pieces in matter of seconds

Now lasers on the otherhand, No, theres no way you "chrome plate" against a directed
electron charged stream of light. No substance in universe can protect you if a laser
is powered by say equilevant of modern day nuclear powerplant, the energy is discharged
in so small an area that any material that reflects light would burst in a massive
flash of light in few nanoseconds, Only commonsense way to protect would be a forcefield
of sorts, more specifically a gravity field capable of diverting photons by big enough
angle so the beam wont hit your ship, and no this is no honor harrington so forget
those sidewalls and impellers hehe. Ofcourse theres the "positron shields etc.." thanks
to startrek argh...


But back to idea of which would be sensible, laser that destroys small areas of ships
beoynd recognition or railguns/cannons that buckle/weaken/onehit ships in one or two shots,
lasers needing atleast 50% more energy to reach same amount of released energy because of
the power needed to build the free stream of electrons in first place (no chemical lasers
wont cut it in weapons) hmm dont know about you guys but i'd go for the railguns and wipe
anyone stupid enough to try just how effective they can be.

PS. Please dont be insulted by this post, totally meant for clarification of few "facts" if
you can speak of those in sci-fi, Good amount of ideas guys and i'd personally like to see
more ships in style of bucket of bolts and nuts with lots of kinetic weapons ready to
barrage the enemy with constant stream of death and carnage.

Nice rant.

I want my autocannons.

Autocannon Turrets, not just the garden variety autocannons. The Turret Version!

Yeah. With the shiny flashing red lights on top!!

OOh i like lights ! yess add those !

lights, windows, and auto cannon turrets.... *bliss*

I hope the devs are understanding the want for more autocannon turrets, think their getting the message?

DEVS

A MEMO FROM THE PEOPLE OF THE SINS FORUMS

GIVE

US

AUTOCANNON

TURRETS

ON EVERYTHING !

K THX BAI.

That will get theyre attention.

The thing is armor plateing is probably designed too withstand rail weapon impacts that's why it takes a number of shots too destroy a ship.

Sure you can smack a ship with a railgun but depending on how the armor plate is made it can often abosrb tremendous amounts of energy.

Ceramic armour plateing can also serve a dual purpose because a large majority of energy weapons do their damage by flashing metal too it's boiling point. That said ceramic plateing when mixed with the correct composites can be stronger than steel while being only slightly less strong than depleted uranium armour.

As far as I know they have yet too make a weapon that can flash ceramic too vapour that and said weapon would require retarded amounts of power.

Though the thing is ceramic is very brittle and has a nasty tendancy too spall hence why it needs too be mixed as a composite because normal ceramic doesn't flex enough too make good armour.

After my post, they better.

OR i could start a random thread about it if you like.