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At least with the USS Defiant, it can fire at targets off-axis with standard Phaser Arrays, so it has all axis covered.
The Main guns are still foreward firing for maximum damage, but it isn't worthless when attacking off-axis.
But the Klingon Bird of Prey & the Romulan Winged Defender generally only have weapons facing foreward.
Does having only "Foreward Facing" weapons make sense?
Especially given that we've seen Klingon Bird of Prey's do attack runs that strafe the target and they have to fly back around; wouldn't having some backwards facing Plasma Cannons help with hitting targets more often as you're escaping from them when doing a attack run help?
I imagine you could pump more energy in a spinal mount…but TNG phaser stripes gives you the long barrel without actually having a long barrel. The spheres from Vengeance allow you to fight by proxy…if Vengeance can pump power to them like Cardassia did to the orbital batteries.
I imagine you could pump more energy in a spinal mount…but TNG phaser stripes gives you the long barrel without actually having a long barrel. The spheres from Vengeance allow you to fight by proxy…if Vengeance can pump power to them like Cardassia did to the orbital batteries.
This isn't a Federation / StarFleet Problem.
Their Weapons design actually makes logical sense and has good overlapping firing arc coverage.
I'm talking more about the Klingon / Romulan designs.
Hell even the Dominion Scarab Fighter has a similar flaw, in that it's main weapon is foreward facing, but at least it has a MUCH wider attack frustum. But the Dominion still needs something mounted on the back of the ship, otherwise it can only really attack when facing the enemy.
The Klingons / Romulans have it worse off in that their attack frustum is really tiny compared to even the Dominion.
Granted their Plasma bolts hit REALLY hard for their size / caliber, but they can only fire when making their initial attack run and have to go around for extra passes to really hit.
If their attack doctrine requires them to do that every single time, shouldn't they at least mount a secondary set of Guns facing backwards 180° opposite of the main guns?
Traditionally, the Klingon Bird of Prey's main guns are arranged like Air Wolf's arrangement.
One Big Gun for the large caliber, heavy hitting Plasma bolts that have a slow rate of fire.
Two Smaller Gun Barrels fore Rapid Fire Plasma Bolts.
My idea would be to modify the "Main Gun Design" to have 2x Large Barrels facing foreward and 2x Large Barrels facing Aft.
Think of a "Over & Under" shotgun. Two Large Barrels sitting on top of each other.
The 2x sets of Gun Barrels would be 180° opposite of each other.
Given how Slow the main gun fires, it would behove them to alternate between all 4x "Foreward" facing barrels to keep on pounding the target like a machine gun, then while they're escaping, they can continue doing the same thing.
Move the Rapid Fire small Plasma Guns to protruding Turret emplacements that I've marked in Red.
You can easily mount lots of CIWS style point defense barrels with 4x Barrels on the Fore-Port & Fore-Starboard sides.
The turret can have 2x barrels that sit on Top & bottom of the mounts on each side.
The aft sides will have 4x Single Turret Mounts with Double-Barrels per turret with slightly better than Hemispherical coverage.
Given that the "Bird of Prey" primarily operates in space and only occaisionally visits atmosphere, it's a more than worthy trade-off IMO.
This would allow them to throw more energy bolts at the target while on the attack approach & escape vector.
The Smaller CIWS style Plasma Cannons could take care of "Point Defense" or extra bonus damage when near the enemy.
Look at the silly shape of the ships. Listen to the sound in space. Look at how they move like jet fighters or galleons in zero-G. That's our baseline.
In my experience, it varies both by how ships and technology in a given universe work, and what range of mobility they have. The TNG era phaser strips seem like a specific step forward over fixed emplacements on older designs, with the Excelsior having more emplacements than designs like the Miranda and Constitution. Plot tends to be the biggest determinant.
Warships in Battletech have fixed arcs that can cover every major axis, with the rule that they're typically built parallel (every mount on a port broadside arc is mirrored on the starboard arc). Such vessels are typically not particularly agile, and it's not uncommon for warship arsenals to be designed for fighting other warships (but sometimes also with a higher emphasis on fighters or other smaller craft, for escort duty). Space to surface attacks are not unknown, but are generally more rare because of the sheer destructiveness they entail. Such attacks were usually considered a violation of the Ares Conventions governing war unless the threat was extremely dire.
Battlemechs and other ground vehicles don't always mount rear weaponry or turret mounts, due in no small degree to issues of cost and space along with the intended mission profile. The Charger mech series is somewhat infamous for its original configuration, being a heavy mech with only a handful of smaller lasers because it was initially intended to be a large scout and not a brawler. Later models gave it a broader range of weaponry.
Being a game setting, part of the issue is also balancing units. The use of warships has become a bit of a running joke in ways, because mechanically they've always had problems and the game designers don't want aerospace elements to overshadow the ground elements that the series has always enjoyed, so they basically wrote some plot arcs to get rid of big naval fleets. Ironically not long after the Inner Sphere regained the technology to build warships at all.
Look at the silly shape of the ships. Listen to the sound in space. Look at how they move like jet fighters or galleons in zero-G. That's our baseline.
StarFleet vessels definitely aren't lumbering like Galleons from the "Age of Sail".
Most of the UFP StarShips don't move like Fighter Jets, more like agile small Speed Boats in a harbor setting.
The only one that even came remotely close to being Jet Fighter like was "The Defiant", and even then, it's loop de loop was huge, bereft of a larger vessel, not something Fighter Jets would manuever like.
If you've actually seen how tight and manueverable Fighter Jets are, they're far more agile and amazing then what we see on screen.
Look at the silly shape of the ships. Listen to the sound in space. Look at how they move like jet fighters or galleons in zero-G. That's our baseline.
