Imperial Spire Fleet Lore?

[Alex Heartnet]

Me trying to pick apart the subtle lore behind the Spire Fleet and the other so-called "spire" ships.

(assuming that the AI is not a Spire Hammer, Spire Descendent, or Spireling type; I am not going to bother with metalore.)

My current theory is that no one has the technology to replicate the Spire Fleet proper.  The smaller, simpler fleetships have be reverse-engineered, but neither humans, zenith, and AI alike can replicate the capital ships.  Only crude mimicry of the Photon Bombardment Cannon is possible.  Shadow Champions can mimic anything, but for all intents and purposes the Shadow as a race simply do not exist.

Spire Fleetships aren't meant for Exogalactic Travel, so they kinda got left behind when (if) the Spire Fleet regrouped.  However, the AI has been doing exactly this due to its impressive Warp Grid and in fact probably favors using Spire Fleetships against the Imperial Spire just for the sheer irony.  The AI got ahold of these fleetship designs though cliché reverse engineering, and we all know how the humans love to steal AI tech.

The Spire Starship, while destructive in its own right, is little more then a crude attempt at mimicking the Spire Fleet.  Same goes for the Zenith Beam Frigate, the Zenith Beam Starship, AI Wraith Lance, AI Heavy Beam Guardian, and Human Heavy Beam Turret.  Some of these exceed the specifications of the Spire Capital Ships that they are based off of, but none of them have actual Photon Weapons.

However, this theory falls apart when faced with the Spire Corvette.

A starship-sized vessel developed by retrofitting the smallest Imperial Spire combat design with human technology. Has a moderately powerful photon lance, but can also mount a small number of modules.

If the AI was the one using these, it would make sense that the scatterbrained cloud-computing-gone-wrong AI would deploy Corvettes without deploying Frigates.  But the humans utilize any and every ship design they can get their grubby hands on.  If the humans found the design for the Red Dwarf they'd probably make use of it.

Retrofitting the Spire Frigate makes sense only if Spire Frigates are actually available to retrofit (i.e. Fallen Spire).  The humans would be eager to use their Spire Frigates alongside their shiny new Spire Corvettes despite the latter being the superior ship.  Yet the Spire Frigate is unavailable to manufacture without the help of the Spire.

And there is the asteroid Spirecraft.  These are Spire ships how?

Spirecraft are pre-existing designs with no research needed, and the only reason why the humans are not mass-producing them like everything else is that their construction requires large quantities of rare materials.  They are built for humans, by humans, utilizing technology readily available to the humans.  Perhaps the Spire has used them once, but they no longer have the awe of the Imperial Spire Fleet that has inspired so much mimicry.  Nowhere are they present in the Imperial Spire Fleet.  They are so far removed from such, and the humans are the only race currently known to be using such, which makes them human ships.

'Tis a strange galaxy indeed.  Even Captain Kirk could not imagine such a world.

[keith.lamothe]

Bear in mind that there's a difference between an adaptation of a military unit that is primarily based on technology originally developed by (Race A) and the actual modern military units of a large political bloc of (Race A).

Not that I claim there's a super-coherent explanation of all of the above, but generally the stuff I've added is coherent with itself in at least a basic level.  It's not always particularly coherent with the stuff Chris added (Spirecraft, for instance)

On the corvette itself, I don't see why it's strange that the humans would be unable to replicate the standard FF, but would be able to build a smaller design incorporating significant features from it (notably the exterior and the photon lance) while pulling in a lot of human tech to fill in the gaps, like their experience with "small" modular starships.

[Draco18s]

On the corvette itself, I don't see why it's strange that the humans would be unable to replicate the standard FF, but would be able to build a smaller design incorporating significant features from it (notably the exterior and the photon lance) while pulling in a lot of human tech to fill in the gaps, like their experience with "small" modular starships.

I think this then becomes a question of "where are they getting the hulls"?

[keith.lamothe]

On the corvette itself, I don't see why it's strange that the humans would be unable to replicate the standard FF, but would be able to build a smaller design incorporating significant features from it (notably the exterior and the photon lance) while pulling in a lot of human tech to fill in the gaps, like their experience with "small" modular starships.

I think this then becomes a question of "where are they getting the hulls"?

Growing the exterior layer is easier than growing the whole thing?

[Draco18s]

Growing the exterior layer is easier than growing the whole thing?

And the exterior layer just so happens to come with an included Photon Lance?

[keith.lamothe]

Perhaps that was replaced by an entirely different form of handwaving?

[Draco18s]

hehe

[Vyndicu]

When you look at the raw stat (hp, range, armor piercing, metal cost, damage per second, damage total, and other factors) of the two ships: Core Corvette and Spire frigate.

I get the feeling that the corvette line is based on an older obsolete design compare to what the "modern" spire imperial fleet uses for frigate. You can tell that because the spire frigate has more range (13k vs 8500) and you can build up to 60 frigates with spire 5 cities vs just two max per mark.

[Alex Heartnet]

When you look at the raw stat (hp, range, armor piercing, metal cost, damage per second, damage total, and other factors) of the two ships: Core Corvette and Spire frigate.

I get the feeling that the corvette line is based on an older obsolete design compare to what the "modern" spire imperial fleet uses for frigate. You can tell that because the spire frigate has more range (13k vs 8500) and you can build up to 60 frigates with spire 5 cities vs just two max per mark.

Indeed, Human infrastructure is non-existent, and they don't reliably have access to tech above MKI.  Challenging the AI openly would require a huge fleet, which simply cannot be maintained by a few measly space docks and a couple of mobile builders.  I wonder if some other entity out there is capable of rapidly building huge dockyards and massive capital ships...

The Core Corvette is a terror though (along with Core Anything).  Try comparing it to the Spire Cruiser.  The Spire probably has the capacity to make their capital ships better, but decided it would be better to build more capships instead.

This is probably why the Spire Frigate has no module slots.  While the Humans are trying to squeeze maximum performance out of each and every corvette, the Spire instead just build more of them.

After all, those Photon Lances aren't exactly lacking in firepower even if they aren't top-of-the-line models.

And the exterior layer just so happens to come with an included Photon Lance?

...Dangit now I have to do a quick game with all the beam-using units just to make sure.

[Alex Heartnet]

So it appears the Spire Starship and Spire Corvette do indeed both use the Spire Photon Bombardment Cannon.  However, it's a poor chinese knock-off and not anywhere as good as what an actual Spire Frigate has.

The Beam Frigate uses what is best described as the "Zenith Pulse Beam".  It's not a continuous stream of energy at all, but rather a blink-and-you-will-miss-it zap zap.

Not quite sure how the Human Mark IV Heavy Beam Cannon performs in comparison to the above.  It kept vaporizing test subjects with a single shot.

[Aklyon]

The HBC blows things up good, the Zenith beam blows things up in a less doomlaser fashion (which seems sorta odd considering the zenith tendency for giant golem-based weapons of numerous sorts), and the Photon Lance both blows up  things and performance up according to keith if you bring out enough of them.

[keith.lamothe]

The HBC blows things up good, the Zenith beam blows things up in a less doomlaser fashion (which seems sorta odd considering the zenith tendency for giant golem-based weapons of numerous sorts)

Yea, the heat beams were the first beam mechanic, back with the Zenith Beam Frigate in the first expansion.  They actually hit everything on the line.  Now they hit like up to 9 things on the line.  Iirc that makes for a pretty high effective dps vs dense enemy groups, but it's probably not up there with the HBCs, which are basically "Turrets of Overpoweredness"... but far too entertaining to nerf.

and the Photon Lance both blows up  things and performance up according to keith if you bring out enough of them.

Guns: All 1000 Spire Frigates are in position, sir!

Captain: Target The CPU.