The ships of FIDE

Archives for ships and fleets. 'nuff said. Most of the ships here are very very old and will not work in current versions of BSF or SM. You have been warned!

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Comus
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The ships of FIDE

Post by Comus »

Hello, all. I've been lurking for a bit, and finally decided to actually post a few ships of my own. I puttered around a bit in the shipmaker before settling on a theme for this fleet. Chess is technically a wargame anyway, right? Of course, traditional chess only has so many pieces, so I've had to add a few from other versions of the game to fill out the ranks. Let's start with the six people are expecting and take it from there...

The Pawn
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A fast drone ship produced by FIDE industries with just enough weaponry to make it dangerous. While it has very low quality armor, the ablative shielding means it can take at least a few hits before it's knocked out. While they can be remote-piloted, they're traditionally just left to their own devices. The AI installed on them tends to act like a bulldog, getting in as close as possible and gnawing on the enemy, ignoring the damage it takes. They're a cost-effective alternative to traditional manned ships, and very popular in systems with a low population.

HP: 150
Armament: 2 x Gatling Pulse, 2 x Missile Launcher
Speed: 10
Turning: 4
Accel: 4

The Knight
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The Knight is one of the oldest designs of FIDE industries, a workhorse battleship that has served without major modification for decades. It was designed as an attack craft specifically to target important targets, using its two jump engines to get in and out, around major defensive positions. Its heavy weaponry and respectable armor means that it can pose a danger to most ships even in a straight fight. Several prototypes of a replacement for the Knight have been tested, though none have matched the original's simple strengths.

HP: 300
Armament: 2 x Gatling Pulse, 4x Gatling Blaster, 2 x Flak Cannon
Devices: 4 x Deflector, 2 x Jump Engine
Speed: 6
Turning: 0.4
Accel: 0.5

The Bishop
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A less popular, more expensive battleship than the Knight, the Bishop is nonetheless a trustworthy design. Its weapons are designed to allow it to attack from unexpected angles, often allowing it to go around an enemy's strongest defenses to hit a weak point. The Bishop also works well in larger fleet battles, its quad blasters able to engage opponents over a large angle and its point defenses shielding nearby friendlies.

HP: 300
Armament: 4 x Quad Blaster, 4 x Flak Cannon
Devices: 4 x Deflector, 2 x Teller
Speed: 6
Turning: 0.6
Accel: 0.5

The Rook
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The Rook is a battlestation, a floating fortress in space. It is designed to provide support via fortification, deploying weapons platforms and generally making a given area of space very unfriendly for hostiles to fly through. While enough ships firing at it can eventually tear it down, the Rook is designed mostly to last long enough for backup to arrive, providing something for the enemy to worry about so he ignores a real threat from Pawns and the like.

HP: 450
Armament: 20 x Missile Launchers, 4 x Flak Cannon
Devices: 8 x Platform Deployers, 8 x Deflectors
Speed, Turning, Accel: Stationary

The Queen
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The Queen is one of FIDE's flagship products. Literally. It is a mass-produced ship designed to take a central role in any fleet, tearing into opposing battlestations and monitor-sized ships. Costs for its production are kept down by making the Queen more in line with a fleet than as a single ship. It is a simple hull, packed with armor and a few token weapons, and the controlling components for the six drones called, collectively, the 'Crown Jewels'. Each boosts the power of the weapons module often referred to as the 'Imperious Gaze', and provides defensive support to the array. The 'Imperious Gaze' itself is a collection of beam weapons that use broadcast power to energize enough weapons to strip the heaviest armor as if it were paint.

HP: 1000
Armament: 9 x Beamer, 6 x Mega Beam, 14 x Scatter Beam, 8 x Flak Cannon, 4 x Gatling Blaster, 6 x Quad Blaster.
Devices: 36 x Deflector, 36 x Booster.
Speed: 1
Turning: 0.75
Accel: 0.02

The King
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The King is a command-control ship, the unit pictured sporting a massive fighter-drone array and several support satellites including the powerful 'Excalibur' weapons array. There are very few King-class ships active, most of them remaining in the hands of FIDE's corporate fleet. Each one is hand-built to the specifications of the user, so no two are exactly alike. Given that they tend to be used to coordinate an entire fleet, though, the loss of a King-class ship can be devastating, destroying an entire chain of command. As such they are almost never deployed alone, most often escorted by an entire battle array.

HP: 1000
Armament (as pictured): 4 x Quad Blaster, 12 x Drone Launcher, 14 x Flak Cannon, 6 x Mega Beam, 1 x 'Wave Motion Cannon' (30 x Driver), 1 x 'Pommel Strike' (36 x Railgun).
Devices: 12 x Drone Pod Launcher, 6 x Booster, 32 x Deflector.
Speed: 0.30
Turning: 0.10
Accel: 0.05


Admittedly, the last two are rather overpowered, but they're royalty. They don't have to follow the same rules as mere commoners. :wink:
Mjolnir
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Post by Mjolnir »

Those are actually pretty damn awesome.
[img]http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8666/cylonbasestareyevq0.gif[/img]

Mjolnir, Hammer of Thor. Id like to see you try to kill me, and why would you want to take my stuff, its all crap anyway.
Cerebrus
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Post by Cerebrus »

I agree. While I usually don't like the overuse of Boosters, it looks really cool on the Queen.
[i]...can we hold on...?[/i]
Monkey
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Location: the funny farm

Post by Monkey »

:shock: um i think that you made them very much like the actuall peices bravo.
I'm an idiot who tried to embed flash in his signature, nevermind the fact that wouldn't work even if the code tags were removed.
TheBlueEcho
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Post by TheBlueEcho »

Cerebrus wrote:I agree. While I usually don't like the overuse of Boosters, it looks really cool on the Queen.
Makes the queen look like she is wearing a headress.
Those Look Great, and I Like the Rook. Looks like what a battlestation should look like. :wink:
Comus
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Post by Comus »

Thanks, everybody! I didn't expect so many positive responses! :D

I'll get some pics together of the other ships in the fleet. Most are based around non-Orthodox chess pieces, so I'll note the origin of each as I go through.
Choines
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Post by Choines »

Holy crap, this is like, these are like, the best designs I've seen. I just have one little problem with The Queen- 36 Boosters may be a little too much.
Ayup.
Lizzie
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Post by Lizzie »

Very, very nice. :)
Image
Ixranin
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Post by Ixranin »

Definately like the designs of the first four, and how you made the box of a Rook look pretty good despite its being a box. Not sure what to think of the King and Queen though, heh.
Wilbky
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Post by Wilbky »

Quite sexy, but the queen and all her boosters look a little strange.
Syngyne
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Post by Syngyne »

But are they BONA FIDE? AHAHAHAHA (Ed: God, that was terrible Syngyne - Arc.)

Seriously, though, those are some really, really nice designs. :)
Comus
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Post by Comus »

Hello again. Here are a few more of the ships from this line. One's only a minor variant, but a fun one. The Unicorn is a little over the top, but I had fun designing it.

Sacrificial Pawn
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The Sacrificial Pawn is a fireboat, a suicide drone designed to disable an enemy with simple brute force. It's basically the hull of a Pawn, outfitted with thinner armor (just enough to keep out micrometeors and enable it to survive long enough to get to the enemy), with the weapons ripped out and replaced with the most cost-effective that could be mounted, and then having the remaining hull space taken up with explosives, the most notable being Corbomite integrated directly into the ship's hull. Most commanders keep Sacrificial Pawns well on the sidelines, sending them in either as an opening salvo or when the enemy is distracted.

Sacrificial Pawn as a chess piece: Well, everyone knows where this one comes from - sometimes a good strategest will let one of his pawns be taken so as to take another piece, or to give himself a more advantageous board position.

HP: 50
Armament: 2 x Pulse Gun
Devices: Corbomite implanted in hull. (Same principle as the Kinetic Missile and the like, lots of tiny high-hp bits parented and hidden so it makes a bigger boom when it dies.)
Speed: 10
Turning: 1
Accel: 1

Advisor
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The Advisor is a fleet-defense ship, designed to escort and protect others. As such, it includes a lot of point-defense weaponry, but as a consequence is rather light on offensive weapons. It's also not a fast ship - just fast enough to keep ahead of an escorted ship, but not so fast as to leave them behind. They've become very popular with merchant lines, as they're fairly cheap and very effective. They're occasionally seen in military fleets as escorts for flagships or groups of fighters, but don't sell well to clients who already include point defenses on their stock ships.

The Advisor as a chess piece: In Xiangqi, Chinese Chess, the Advisor is a piece that serves entirely to protect the General (king equivalent). It can only move in the same small area as the General, but plays an important role in avoiding checkmate.

HP: 400
Armament: 6 x Flak Cannon, 6 x Particle Gun, 4 x Blaster.
Devices: 2 x Deflector, 1 x Flux Projector, 2 x Impeder
Speed: 2
Turning: 0.30
Accel: 0.20

Unicorn
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The Unicorn is a prototype ship being field-tested by FIDE. It is a next-generation battleship that is, once complete, slated for limited production. Several clients have already expressed interest after seeing it in action. The Unicorn is designed specifically to deal with heavily shielded and armed opponents, stripping off their weapons with its Lancelets and Railguns, taking down their shield with its Frosch devices, and avoiding deadly strikes with its Jump Drives. Some have complained that it lacks a single 'big punch' weapon such as is deployed on some ships by rival companies.

The Unicorn as a chess piece: The Unicorn is one of the pieces of Raumschach, a type of 3-d chess. It moves like a bishop, except in three dimensions. That is, not only does it go diagonally across the board, it also goes diagonally up and down. More correctly, it moves through the vertices of cubes, triagonally.

HP: 600
Armament: 22 x Railgun, 10 x Point Defense Beam.
Devices: 3 x Jump Drive, 14 x Deflector, 1 x 'Unicorn's Horn' (Aegis'd spar with 6 x Frosch, 7 x Lancelet, 7 x Nanomatrix)
Speed: 3
Turning: 0.75
Accel: 0.10
TheBlueEcho
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Post by TheBlueEcho »

I'm very Pleased with the Time and effort you took to plan and research each and every ship. And I like how each and every one has a specific purpose.
Choines
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Post by Choines »

Perhaps 10 is a little too much for the speed of the Sacrificial Pawn? Also, when will the downloads be up?
Ayup.
TheBlueEcho
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Post by TheBlueEcho »

If it is going to kill itself(aka Kamakazi) it has to be fast so it can get right on top of a ship and Detonate for maximum damage. Too slow, then it defeats the purpose.
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