"When the Gun doesn't work... Add more guns... MORE, BIGGER GUNS... If that doesn't work... Use missiles instead." - Terran Shipyards inc. Sol system

"Because more dakka, more better!" I died laughing at that remark and the tone it was said in.

There is no such thing as enough dakka, there's only "we need better logistics so we can send more dakka downrange"

Humanity follows one of two design filosophies when it comes to war-vehicle design, Either: More turrets, turrets on top with turrets on the side, extra turrets hold the turrets. OR Take gun, biiiig gun, now build vehicle around gun. in both cases, moar dakka more better reigns supreme.

From the "70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" - #6 - If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it. #55 - It's only too many weapons if they're pointing in the wrong direction.

Me when I see how many turrets the Nova-class has: **sniffle** "I've found my people."

I'd like to quote "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" Maxim #25 If a manufacturer's warranty covers the damage you did, you didn't do enough damage. and Maxim #34 If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.

Humans have been knocking eachothers head in for 100.000 years. There are two lessons. 1. The guy with the biggest stick wins. 2. There is always going to be somebody with a bigger stick. Nova class is example of lesson 1... (Vorlon of lesson 2).

"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet." I guess we can call that a "win" 🤣😁

"So how many cannons do you want on the Nova-class?" "Yes."

It's a universally human tradtion. Seriously, we've been doing it for a *long* time. Just look at the sailing ships of the line - guns, guns and MORE guns. If only they'd made the turrets superfiring or just put some angles on the hull, it could have been truly glorious. Pity the poor bastard that gets all of those trained on them at once "well, shit..."

"Because more Dakka, More better" - thus reinforcing the _Humans are Space Orcs_ theory.

The Nova: A Dissertation on the "Humans Are Space Orks" Theory by Sacred Cow

Ah yes the Nova. Aka the "we hope you like Zero G because we have no gravity control". Its refit the Nova X is basically the proto Omega.

Afaik the red spots on the hull of nova and omega are supposed to be the missile silos. So they give you a good ol broadside. And they also shall be the main weapons but were to difficult to animate during the time of B5 so we never see them used.

The Russians outdid the Japanese, with the T-35 having FIVE turrets! :-D

To be fair. The Tillman series of Battleships had some... strange designs. I believe it was Tillman A that had a 4 Sextuple Turrets of 16" Caliber, all in a row of course, so 5 isnt ALL that bad.

*MOAR TURRETS!!!* Cries in Arleigh Burke...

Bonus points for the pic of the Schwarzkopf.

"Zathras! Lay off the coffee!" -Zathras

Would love to see your take on some of the ships from Farscape, specifically the Prowler and Leviathan, the two most-featured ships in the series. One being a massive civilian transport vessel, and the other, a fighter. I think the series really had it's aesthetic down, but I'm no expert when it comes to function. are they good at their jobs, or is it just plot armour?

But it does go the other way. Most US surface warships now have one small turret with one small gun, if that. I feel like we lost something, and not just the ability to conduct shore bombardment to support amphibious operations.

This ship was very much a case of "we don't care if it wouldn't be possible even in our show's own universe! Just add more stuff on it!" Even if you account for the scaling the amount of space required to provide power up to 22 fuck off guns, 6 beam projectors, space for the missile magazines, then SOMEHOW find space for almost 40 fighters AND THEN 8,000 troops just isn't there. If you like ship stuff "Drachinifel" has a channel that discusses them and the pre WW1 ships in particular are cocaine levels of crazy.

I am convinced that the Centauri were charmed by our demented attachment to turrets as reason for establishing relations.

If you want to experience the Nova in all of it's glory, I recommend the Dilgar War fanfiction by Lightning count. It's a fantastic story that explores that underdeveloped conflict in lengthy and loving detail. The author really knows how to write a prequel, it easily fits into canon. As for the Nova? The first battle between the EA and the Dilgar has a battleline of 100s of Novas unleashing their full broadsides (with the turrets on one side firing perpendicularly across the hull) into the Dilgar fleet. It was glorious.

You want ridiculous tank designs look at the Ratt. 4 "secondary" turrets orginally made for the maus the largest tank ever built and a main gun from from a crusier. Was it ever a viable design that was remotely workable let alone practical? No. Even if it was was the giant montian of steel an easy target for tall boy bunker busters? Yes. Would the nazis even have had the fuel to run it or metal to build the thing late war? Proably not. But the fact anyone designed a tank around the main gun from a heavy crusier is still kind of awesome and of all the ridiculous impractical nazi super weapons I find it the neatest

"So anyway, I started blasting"

I love the Novas! They are one of the few sci-fi ships that LOOKS like a warship. I bet even the Mimbari looked at it and thought "do we really want to f##k with this thing?"

The nova class, up until sheriden used nukes as mines, was the only ship the minbari feared. Reason? So... Many... Turrets. So.. Much... Dakka!

What I *really* love about the Nova is one little tidbit I remember reading about: they put so many guns on it, it's Fusion reactors couldn't actually generate enough power to fire them all at any one time! They didn't just strap as many guns as they could onto it; they specifically put *more* guns than its power plant could actually handle! And then they put Hyperion-class cruisers and pathetic little Olympic-Class corvettes next to it to scare away any fighters. Because what do you do when you're the least-advanced major power on the block and everyone has better capital ships than you? Take simple hull. Add guns. If you have space left over, add armour. If you still have space left over, repeat step two because you obviously didn't do it right the first time! No, I don't care if it can't actually shoot that many guns: they're going to take hits, so those extra guns are just *spares*. One goes down, turn another on. Repeat process until enemy go bye-bye.

Guns are like cowbell - we always need more.

This episode was cool. Turrets. I wish there was more on the Dilgar era. I've probably missed some information somewhere but I'd love to see the juxtaposition of Terran military being dominant with what happened against the Minbari. I did not know the Nova class carried 36 fighters. Sounds like my ship designs in 4x games. Always put in a fighter bay, even if the game mechanics don't recommend it. The lore in my head demands it.

If you think the Italian battleship design was crazy with the 2 5-gun turrets, wait till you hear about the Tillman IV battleship design, it had 4 6-gun turrets. The Tillman designs were called the "maximum battleships" for a reason. Though nobody actually took them that seriously.

I've been watching your videos for the last few weeks and really enjoy them. Have you ever thought of trying to design your own warship? I'm half convinced it would be ugly as sin but absolutely brutal in functionality.

Bit unfair on picking on the Japanese Squishies for a prototype 4 turret vehicle. The Soviet Squishies made over 500 T28s with three turrets for one cannon and 4 machineguns; but that wasn't enough, they then went on to make 60 T35s with 5 turrets for one big cannon, two smaller cannons and up to 6 machineguns. The Squishies do seem to have a genetic predisposition for turrets and dakka for dakka sake. And don't get me started on the dakka they installed in atmosphere craft!

I'm becoming more and more convinced this guy is just an intelligent Ork.

"Tactical, do you see that disgusting xenos vessel?" "Yes sir" "I dont want to" "Understood sir"

To be fair to the Nova, its slightly less manoeuvrable than an orbiting moon while all its potential opponents could fly around like over caffeinated wasps. Turrets were the only way they could shoot anything.

The rear mounted particle lasers make perfect sense. This series was meant to show Newtonion physics but they forgot mostly. I always presumed the Nova and Omega were meant to approach a battle via a flip and burn, so arse side on. Therefore they had 4 lasers mounted in line with the main engines, which presumably would be pointing at the enemy as they were burning to counter their momentum. Only the later Novas had the lasers I believe, as they were developed for the GOD satalites and then scaled down for the Omega and then could be fitted to the Nova, as they shared a commonality of parts. Oh and it has the large plasma "mortar" launchers on the front, the dual oval tubes between the hanger bay and large pylon. Quite why it is called a mortar (if it is canon information) when there is no gravity to counter in space, is anyones guess.

I would love to see ships from Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which has the most epic space battles of all time, not to mention practical, pragmatic things, like being able to withdraw the navigation bridge into the armored hull of a warship during battle), Space Battleship Yamato (the number of guns on a Gatlantis warship makes the Nova class look like it just went swimming in ice cold water) and Banner of the Stars/Crest of the Stars (which has some of the best space combat involving ftl at a tactical level which I have ever come across).

I would love to see your take on the elite dangerous ships, particularly the anaconda. Been binge watching your content after I found you :)

the reason for all the Turrets in the first place was that Human Plasma Cannons were not very reliable or powerful, so Humanity added a lot of them, enough that we could finish the Dilgar war and use captured Dilgar tech to upgrade our weapons and ships

More guns, bigger guns mean more and bigger explosives and if something can survive that, well there is another volley and another until the target is dead. Just be happy we haven't figured out how to set enemy space ships on fire. I really want scifi version of Molotov cocktail, even better if it has same spite/trolling fueled creation story.

in defense on the human fixation with turrets, they have this really fun feature fixed guns dont have.... its called turning

I could have sworn that Babylon 5 Wars by Agents of Gaming (RIP 😢 ), the tabletop miniatures game, listed the twin guns on the Nova DN as Heavy Pulse Cannons. But it’s been a very long time since the game and company disappeared. And therefore a long time since my EA fleet has seen the light of day. If I get the urge to dig around in my garage I’ll find the game to see what is what and report back. They had modeled the ships based on JMS/Warner Bros. B5 writer’s guide so I think it can be trusted. Probably. Maybe. 🤷‍♂️

You may be interested in the fleet tactics from the series "legend of the galactic heroes" in which ships battle like napoleonic line infantry, firing at each other in block formations from a great distance away

Forget the plans to build ships with 4 barrels in a turret, what about the ones that actually saw service? Though they never got much of a chance to do anything, the French built two separate classes of warship, the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes, which had dual 4-gun turrets. Though these are only a technicality, since each turret had a thick bulkhead down the middle, making each four-gun turret really more like two two-gun turrets fused together, since they shared completely separate systems except for ammunition reserves; different hoists, different rangefinders, etc. The British though? They fully embraced the 4-gun turret, building FIVE warships with two four-gun turrets and one two-gun turret each, with each four-gun turret acting as a single, unified turret. This caused no small amount of problems, to the point where it was not uncommon for some of those ships to have both four-gun turrets knocked out due to malfunction rather than enemy fire, but when they did work they worked shockingly well. Hell, it's not just ships and tanks either; I'm surprised you didn't mention aircraft, which forced us as a species to invent entirely new technologies and implementations of existing technologies solely dedicated to fitting as many turrets as possible on a vehicle where weight and space are both extremely limited to begin with. As an aside, I know space is more your purvey than terrestrial concerns, but if you want the true Human experience of being able to personally attach as many gun turrets to a hull as possible, and then keep going, I highly recommend taking a look at Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts - it's a simulator focusing on Human terrestrial naval shipbuilding from the late 19th century to mid 20th century. And you can put a LOT of gun turrets on things.

You cannot remove the guns from our ships, you’ll just find more guns

It really doesn't matter the mood I am in. Your work never ceases to make me smile. Please, don't stop. More dakka, more better......

The O-I had four turrets? Yes, yes it did. And before those designs we have the majestic Vickers A1E1 Independent and OKMO T-35, both of which had *FIVE* turrets!

Love your various ship assessments, always good to see B5 getting some love. Hope you get to some of the non-humie ships too. Additionally, it'd be great to hear your take on some of my earliest sci-fi loves, the ships of Robotech, such as the Veritech fighters or the SDF Macross.

I love this channel. You just go full send and I love that.

Hahaha, The Nova was a serious chunk of baddassery, as long as you didn't run it against the Minbari heavy cruisers without opening up at long range and then running like hell. But as you state, it surely did the job double-plus good against the Dilgar, and gave humanity a swelled head it took nearly being crushed by Minbar to adjust back down to size.

7:45 there’s an old American tank that does turrets on turrets, I think it was called something lee, it had a Limited angle main Gun cylinder turret A slightly smaller gun on a whole 360 turret and A armored Machine gun turret on top of that.

Great job, glad to see a channel covering some of the awesome vessels from the '90's sci-fi series.

Spacegoing A10 warthog. I'm in lust . Needs a BFG railgun on the prow. Think a spinal mount. Add a few PDC mounts loose half the groundpounders to make room for the upgrades

The IJN's Fuso class and French Lyon class battleships agreed on more turrets and more dakka, The Iowa class, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Texas battleships disagree on the not floating thing. Not in service, but they are floating, though the Texas is having issues. She is a very old girl now.

I'm not too familiar with the Babylon Universe, but you mentioned that about the only blindspot on this mountain of guns is directly behind. If they are using anything like a reaction drive then directly behind it is about the worst place imaginable for you to be. Kzinti Lesson anyone?

Drachinifel has gone on similar rants re: American ships. i.e. Admiral: Hey! There's empty deck space on this ship! Put some more guns there!

The turret on turret concept is pretty sound but I think it could be done betterer, like a wedding cake. I'm sure you could get a couple of Riflemen (Rifleman and Riflewoman) up top with some um, rifles?

I mean, the Omega still has the turrets. They're just smaller and more efficient guns. And they pack even MOAR starfuries, the turrets can literally shoot other projectiles out of the skies, and they're just ludicrous on toast and better able to take minbari ships.

When you want to make "more dakka" comments but it's already on the video, anyway here's a comment for the algorithm.

I realize this is a space dock, but USS St. Louis (CL-49) is also a beast with turrets and gns. too. Maybe SCS could do a review on that if you have not already?

Reminds me of the TF2 engineer. "How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind. The answer, is a gun. And if that don't work, use more gun." It is some sound advice.

In the immortal words of the Orkz, "Darez No Such Fing Az Enuff Dakka." Also "If, at any point in time, the entirety of creation is filled solely with and made entirely of guns, as well as having all of those guns firing constantly, at all times, forever and always, beyond the end of existence itself, in all possible, impossible, potential, and long since deceased realities and unrealities, then, and only then, could you possibly reach the point that you could say that there is slightly under 'enough Dakka'. As you would still, even if creation was nothing but infinite guns firing infinite bullets, all existing at the same infinite unbound time, in the same infinite space, not have enough Dakka. Or so I have been told by a rather linguistically gifted Ork." - Unnamed Inquisitor

Ive been playing a game called Avorion and everything he said in this video ive been doing in that game over 300 crew to fly it with over 20000 ground pounders (so i can board and steal ships and space stations) and 100 fighter polits for all my figher squadrons over 120 turrets with like 40 on auto fire alone all the anit fighers/ torpedoes turrets (x50) are auto by default

Ship yard master: MORE DAKA!! Me: Pfthahaha! Oh damn, that was golden...

Something any creater of a Sci-Fi universe should consider. Be it beam weapons, torpedoes or missiles, find a reason for broadsides, because nothing is more epic than ships exchanging broadsides. If I were to change anything on the Battle of Endor in Star Wars, it would be longer and more numerous scenes like the one of the Nebulon-B frigate duking it out with a Star Destroyer, getting too close for the Star Destroyer to bring it's overwhelming weapons complement into play while, struggling to survive what the Star Destroyer can bring into play while desperatly dishing out what little it can.

I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the ships from David Weber's Honor Harrington series.

IIRC, the Nova did have one serious limitation: there wasn't enough power to run all the guns at one time, or so one early source says. Allegedly they could only fire one half of the big guns at a time, owing to the power requirements of using the same fusion reactors to powering the engines and the weapons simultaneously. So they tended to fire half, then switch to the other half, then back to the first half. Presumably this is why the Omegas have fewer guns on them. I can not for the life of me remember where that came from. Some semi-official online source 20 years ago.

Was watching Star Trek TOS and was reminded of the Immortal words of Susan ‘ I am the hand of vengeance. ‘ Ivanova who said‘ Congratulations Captain, You are about to go where EVERYONE has gone before. ‘

New to the channel and absolute love how you take apart and sometimes even complement all these ships that we so love. Just have one nagging suspicion. Does your Space dock also serve as a construction facility for Borg....Cubes ?????? would make a lot of sense. :-) Keep up the great work.

Personally I think this ship needs more turrets. We can make each turret a set of 7 and then stack 3 more turrets on top of each other.

8:12 and I thought the French had a lot of guns with the 4 gun turrets they had on their dunkerque and richelieu class battleships.

Are you ever going to do an episode on 40k imperial ships? I think your analysis could really bring something new to the discussion

also the USS Virginia for doublestacked turrets is my favorite one, im still a fan of floating hotels

I always love the designs of flying bricks.

Love your content, dude! And every time you cover B5 ships, it really warms my heart a little. That show was so unbelievably good and every reminder of its greatness is thus pure gold to me. Question: Have you ever considered taking on the various ships of Star Citizen? I honestly think that with your history in the navy and the expertise you've demonstrated so far, you would be able to provide invaluable feedback that might even lead to actual improvements of those ships, as everything is still under development and will be for while. That kind of quality in-depth feedback paired with your excellent sense of humor would be a very welcome addition to that gaming community, I believe (and as a result should also grow your channel by a sizeable amount, I would expect). In case you do not already own a game package for it at this time: There will be an in-game aerospace convention next month in the game where approximately a hundred or so ships will be available for testing and it is usually paired with a free-fly, meaning that during the event you do not actually have to have invested any money in order to be able to play it. Would be a great opportunity for you to take a look, form a few opinions and then grace us with your wisdom. ;-)

“How do I keep some big mean motherhubbard from tearing me structurally superfluous behind? The answer a gun, and if that don’t work use more gun” -The Engineer from TF2

C'mon Chief Dockmaster, I know you want to cover Honorverse ships, AND the craft from UFO. (Feel free to have lots of pics of Dr. Strange's mum. Wanda Ventham was haut!)

New subscriber here! I just stumbled across your channel and holy hell, your content is extremely entertaining!! Im a space weeb and aviation enthusiast with my private pilot's license working through my additional ratings, so your videos comparing fictional spacecraft to aircraft that they might have gotten their design inspirations from are right up my alley! Will you please consider taking a crack at some "Elite Dangerous" spacecraft? The Anaconda and Krait come to mind with both good and bad design choices. Regardless, I'll still be here chuckling along with your commentary. Thanks SCS!

Now take this same layout and replace the plasma cannons with anti-fighter guns and flak cannons and you got the Aeolus cruiser from FreeSpace 2.

MOAR DAKKA! great videos as always. i love seeing how your subcount more than tripled since i found you. lets fkn go!

Interesting side note, the Omega has almost as many turrets. It looses 2 turrets to the grav section, and gives up the pair of superfiring turrets on the "cheeks." They just replaced the 12 along the body with smaller, PDC looking things that never got used in the series, at least until the Shadow Omegas. And interestingly enough, the one time Shadow Omegas saw screen time, they used those little turret mounted blue beams, but never used the big, cheek mounted stuff. I wonder if that was related to limits in CGI tech/budget...

Humans are space orcs. ;)

with the ending comments youve got to do the borg cube, the ship that can't be compressed into a cube, bc it already is one!

"What do you need besides a miracle?" "GUNS---LOTS OF GUNS!" Matrix.

okay I love the recommendation of the Bradley Video....SNARK

Speaking of overgunned, I realize that strictly speaking Keith Laumer's Bolos are not ships despite the later Marks being capable of interstellar and interplanetary travel. But for crying out loud- a nuclear-powered multi-thousand-ton sentient *tank* armed with one or more fusion-pulse Hellbore cannons that can destroy starships orbiting the planet the Bolo is on plus mortars and mine-laying capability PLUS multiple nuclear VLS *PLUS* dozens of "infinite repeater" anti-armored vehicle and antipersonnel weapons *that the Bolo can make its own ammo for from raw materials in its environment*? You should take a gander at them. Pay no attention to their ripoff imitators from the Ogre and WH40K franchises.

Hello from the Lazerpig

From what I remember the O-I was suppose to be a mobile bunker, not so much as a tank, it would be parked to defend an area, or used as an area denial weapon.

I must admit I haven't seen a lot of your videos, but I've seen a few... and this one's great!

Hot turrets-on-turrets action. :P Alternately: humans have turrets syndrome.

Love B5 ships! Any chance you might get into Wing Commander?

MORE DAKKA!!! I'm amazed that not only was that phrase USED, but it was used in proper CONTEXT. It's astonishing how popular Warhammer 40K terminology has become.

With the new series of doctor who starting can you look at a space ship from that show, like the TARDIS? Also this video made me come up with a new support ship for my own scifi universe, having finished drawing it, it looks a bit insane but cool (it's a small support ship that launchesfrom a large warship and has around 60 light anti fighter turrets on it, even on the engines and two small fighter hangers, it has no living space, the only areas not taken up by engines, power and shields is an engineering section, the bridge and small tubes to reach the turrets).

I'm curious Can you hide a gun as a gun?

Never enough dakka

well, the Baltic Fleet of Lenin's Red Navy did have a Galleon (yes, an actual 26 sail wooden Dutch galleon) on it's books as late as 1989... it was used for submarine hunting with magnetic detectors....

"1.5 Kilometers of good old fashioned Human F*ck you!" Pure Poetry.