yes, sounds like don canaille allready *g*

Damn, now I really have to use Kane in one of the games I'm planning.

I see him doing that over-the-top stuff!

...

Oh... Oh... OH! Evil, evil thoughts indeed!!!

Why bother with Cannon, go with low recoil methods of assault, Missile bays, Lasers, Gauss rifles, and (my fav) spray weps. nothing like crop dusting the tangos with narcojet.

I also thing it would be fun to have random motorcycles and ATV dropout of the thing.

The Body of 36 is pretty misleading, because a lot of that space is required to hold the lighter than air gas.

An interesting form of troop deployment instead of LAV's could be the gliders from Arsenal. Probably with a modified Piper Brat for cover. With VTOL 2 and some weapons, you could probably land the "Very Light Jet" on the Zeppelin. The Brat could easily be replaced by any number of flying drones with weapons, such as the Lockheed Optic-X.

All this talk about airships and gliders and troops and evil maniacs and such... makes me of something else in addition to classic cartoons I grew up with... no, not just Tailspin... but...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN034sBeF4c

you'll see at :30 of the clip. Though, ok, not exactly a zeppelin, but that's what I also think. heh.

I thought you were posting this

Although I couldn't find any clips of it, there was an airship in this show, wasn't there?

PBTHHHHT: exactly what I was thinking.

Yes there was, it was the airship by Cyberbiotic corporation, the first one was destroyed after Goliath and co were tricked by Xanatos to steal a diskette from it. The second one Goliath help save. The first one was seen in the opening arc of Awakening, the second one was in the episode Outfoxed.

Zeplins are only as good as the rocket it takes to pierce the hull blowing up the helium, and therefor out of the sky. Personally when I think about when science meets magic in a world like SR I think if you want a flying station you use some technology (maybe a less unstable gas possibly like hydrogen) and magic (say bound air spirits holding up the base.) Personally I think something like this would be a perfect corporations research base for illegal research of course. It's mobile, the spirits can probably generate cloud cover, and almost impossible to find if they cover their bases correctly. One plane goes into the clouds of the sky train and another one leaves the cloud and looks exactly like the previous plane RFID tags and all. It would be expensive, but probably even harder to find then an orbiting space station. I like the idea though of the research station having something go wrong and a few highly skilled teams are sent into investigate it before the station crashes (because the unbound spirit only has two days left before one of the last remaining air spirits leave the station and the research base crashes.)

Either that or a sky train research base just crashes (possibly in a city possibly in the barrens) and it is a mad dash to get what you can and get out (except for the fact that it might be more to bite off then anyone can handle.)

Batman The Animated Series opening had some Police-Zeppelins . . and in Patlabor i think Zeppelins are used as Weapons doing skydives through cityscapes . . damn that was cool ^^

I don't think those are zeppelins in Batman. I'm pretty sure I saw an episode where one got damaged and deflated, which would mean that they're blimps. Zeppelins have a rigid frame, though people have convinced me before that the "zeppelins" in SR probably only have semi-rigid frames.

Does anyone else think that a zeppelin would make a very powerful flying ANFO device?

if you tell me what anfo means i will answer that question O.o

Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil explosive device. It goes boom.

Does anyone else think inflatable mascots in public places would make a great anfo device?

(Please note: I in no was condone such action in RL.)

nah, i'd be more Joker-Like and fill them up with some chemical/biological weapon and have it released slowly . .
and i mean the OLD Joker Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier in the very first Batman movie ^^
"Bob? Gun." *gets gun handed to him by Bob, shoots Bob*

Jack Nicholson wasn't in the original Batman movie...

Um... I think he is saying that the campy Batman movies with Adam West do not count. The first movie with Jack Nicholson playing the joker to me would be considered the first blockbuster movie as I refuse that a movie where robin says "holy rusted metal Batman!" should play first fiddle to what I love about Batman. Also the one with the Governator aka Arnold should just not have been.

well, i actually thought Mr. Freeze was cool . . yes, i know, lame play on words . . but seriously, he's my all time favourite for batman villains . . ok, aside from Bane, as i love Trolls ^^
but yes, in my eyes the Batman movie with Jack was the first of a good series of two movies . .

I think you got that backwards. Helium is inert, and won't blow up or combust no matter what you do. Hydrogen is the extremely flammable one. The Hindenburg was originally built to use Helium, but was converted to the more dangerous Hydrogen setup after the US set up a Helium embargo.

Is there any way to prevent an LTA craft from simply being punctured, either by small arms fire or rockets? I mean, it sounds like they're giant targets and anyone with a heavy enough rifle or a cheap rocket could take one down by blowing a whole in the side of it. How do they respond to that threat?

Self-Sealing Airbags. Just like we have Self-Sealing Tires and Self-Sealing Gas Tanks nowadays.

kevlar and leight weight ceramic plating?

Self-sealing as in having repair drones with patches for the hull inside the floating body.

nano maintenance?

Bubba the Task Spirit, who floats around doing patch jobs all the time?

magical weightless bullet-shields?

Rival gangmembers duct taped to the hull?

If you're willing to make the thing frigging huge, you can go ahead and armor the gas-bag, just like the hull of any airplane or helicopter gets armored if you're taking it into combat. It sacrifices lift, but you can make that up by increasing the size. If you don't want to make it that big, you can just keep it too high to be shot at. It will still be vulnerable to attack jets and the like, but if you're looking for something that's impervious to attack jets, you're just getting greedy.

Stratospheric craft, 40000m+ are all but invulnerable to jets. F-14's armed with AIM-54's have those sort of legs, at least at the lower Stratospheric altitudes, and they've been out of service for a couple of years now.

Your only real threat at that height are orbital mass-drivers or laser weapons but if it can shoot you, you can shoot it.

Rockets don't fly that high?
OTHER Air-Ships like that ?

Now i have this very cool image in my mind of some of those babies duking it out with each other *-*

It's difficult to find operational ceilings for missiles but the stuff I could find seemed to be pretty limited. I don't recall precisely but about 20000ft seems to be about right. Beyond that you need an aircraft to act as a firing platform and you still only get another +20000ft from the altitude it's fired from. Most combat aircraft top out at 60-65000ft.

I suppose you could get into MRBM's and above but then you're just getting silly.

Mmmmm, Blimp-Wars....

If pure lift is a concern, couldn´t one create a bunch of bubbles that can be expanded to provide under-pressure? Some form of nanostructure that reacts to electrical energy? If some bubbles were destroyed, the remaining ones could compensate (to some extend).

Someone who came up with hard facts? Don't confuse people with fact damn it! Seriously it is a good thing to hark back to that period in aviation. Sure the tech levels have increased- foamed aluminum frames and stuff BUt the tnigs that went worng then should still be looked at now. The Zeps have the ability to stay up for a lnog time but they are slow vulnerable to damage and can be at the mercy of the weather- USS Akron and USS Shanendoah (sp) were warships built with the best tech at the time and without unnessessary luxuries and yet both were destroyed by inclement weather.

The Germans suffered much the same fate in WW1. more than one Zep raid turned back because of bad weather and even ice forming on the zeps could be dangerous-as areas ice over, fragments could fly off and puncture stuff- like gas bags.

Even at their best Zeps werevulnerable to weather. Anyone heard of the Hiddenburg? Bad weather delayed it's arrival in Jersey because of the fear the storms in 'Jersey could cause problems landing.

We can talk about how much they can lift but no one's asking how much should they lift? Each extra you add on adds to weight. great in the shop and on mock ups but in the air, when a storm hits, each extra pound is going to her that less easy to handle. In the 1920s France and Britain both tried to build luxery zeps but they overloded them stupidly and both were setroyed in bad weather.

Going up so high that you think planes can't follow?(F-15's can carry anti-satilite missles now) Sure. that will mean reinforcing the shell to be more pressurized and bottled oxygen and, need me to keep going? All that stuff adds to mass. Tiny wires to defrost the shell? sure BUT that add more weight. How much? not much but everyt little bit cxounts. They stopped painting the freaking external food tank on the space shuttle because they wanted to reduce wieght-the same with B29's in 1945. andto that you want to add tanks? helos (and the less said about launching something with a rotary blade on it's TOP righ next to the rest of the ship oy!)

Lastly, you guys are talking about Helium. OK and the PPC is going to sell that to you? That much? A supply source will be needed and it'll be pretty clear where that much gas is going. So if you don't have helium you're talking Hydrogen. the no smoking light is definately ON.

Rigid airships are pretty much immune to punctures by design. Because their internal presures are very near the external air pressure they don't leak significantly. You could pretty much swiss cheese a zeppelin with machine gun fire and it would still keep going. To take one down via gas loss you have to cut off large swaths of material. Hydrogen airships are, however, extremely vulnerable to incendiary weapons.

full-ridged is useless tech.
semi-ridged is only needed for the REALLY big jobs 200,000 ft^2 and up

as for taking hits. he Goodyear blimp gets shot all the time. it really dosn't phase it. they patch with duct tape between actual repairs.
when you are talking about 100,000 ft^2 of gas that is a lot of volume.
Imagen draining an olimpic swimming pool with a garden hose. it will take weeks.

Huh? Did I missing something? I'm not sure to what "people" you are referring.

Weather can be quite a limitation. I suppose thats why modern militaries don't use any vehicles that are limited by adverse weather conditions, like you know helicopters for example. Also, I can't be sure (what with all the IEs running about) but I don't think anyone in the 1930's could conjure up a great form spirit of air (with that o' so handy guard power). Or, you know, get an up to the minute Doppler radar forecast on their commlink. Yep weather is a bitch.

As for big, slow, unmaneuverable objects being utterly defenseless BY THEMSELVES I'm pretty sure a modern aircraft carrier would fit in that category. Somehow they manage to keep those things protected from a variety of faster, more-maneuverable threats, don't they?

And as far as helium goes- the OP didn't say this was some hood rat building a zeppelin in his mom's basement. Its some ex-corporate CEO who happens to be eccentric, crazy and ridiculously wealthy. Turns out rich people manage to do all kinds of silly stuff with helium. Case in point.

Now more to the point: if Dumori wants to use a gimungous troop-carrying LAV-launching air-ship in an over-the-top cinematic battle scene in a game that features dragons, cyborgs, immortal elves, AIs and NERPS what exactly is the problem? Its pretty easy to shoot down peoples ideas. Do you have anything helpful to add?

I think the only modern carriers that went up against an enemy force with an air force that was on the roughly same level (tech and number-wise) were the pocket carriers of the Royal Navy in the Falkland war. And in that case, both the terms "modern" and "same level" is debatable.

That program was cancelled in 1988 and had cost $345M per missile at that point.

USA-193 was shot down in February using an SM-3 ABM at a cost of $9.5M for one missile.

Like I said, you can shoot them down at that altitude but you stray into the realms of the ridiculous. When the weapon is an order of magnitude more expensive than the target you have chosen poorly.

Unless the damage the target can cause makes using the weapon worth it.

You're better off destroying the manufacturing facilities first or you're fighting a war of attrition that you will lose very rapidly.

hmm . . wouldn't stratopheric(spelling correct?) zeppelins be more or less perfect for bombing things?
well, if they actually get there . . because i heard there are some mean winds up there . .

Apparently the Stratospheric boundary is where that actually gets a lot more manageable.

Check this out.

edit.

Sixty to a Hundred knots is manageable, LOL.

hrm . . i wonder . . if you were to reinforce the airship enough, would it be able to ride the jet-streeam to travel faster? O.o
and 60 to 100 is only manageable to planes i'd say *g*

I was thinking about satellites that serve as recon assets, and similar force-mulitpliers. Or weapons whose position make them priority targets - like snipers, or artillery spotters.

Well those guys at Lockheed Martin seem to think it's manageable. USS Akron could manage 78 knots in 1931 with just propellers. You don't get any of that gusting and turbulence crap up there so you just need sufficient power for station keeping.

The jet stream screws up dumb bombs. When the Superfortresses started bombing Japan they found that at high altitude dumb bombs were blown all over the place and accuracy was impossible. Smart bombs should get past that.

She was complimenting you for using historical facts in a conversation where most people were just using game theories.

Ok, I think all the little tid-bits people have been throwing out so far add up to this: Zeppelins can do damn near anything you want them to. They can be an armored airbase that's nigh-invincible and can carry just about anything you want. But the costs are going to be extremely high. The thing can carry as much weight as you want, but you'll have to make it bigger to gain the extra lift, which will mean needing a bigger hangar, more ground crew, etc. The thing can be armored heavily, but again, it will need to be bigger ot make up for the weight, which will in turn mean more armor (but the ratio of volume to surface area increases with size, so making it bigger to account for heavier armor IS feasible). The thing will be susceptible to weather, but that's what air spirits are for, though that's expensive. The thing can go really high, but stuff can still get to it, but that stuff's expensive, too. It can drop bombs and be really good at it, but those bombs need to be guided, which will cost a lot. Am I leaving anything out, or is that an ok summary?

more or less, you just about left out the cool zeppelin air-fights and general coolness factor of zeppelins *g*