Many months ago, my office wrote an open letter to the Concord Director. The letter was simply stated, “What is Concord’s relationship to the Drifters”. The official response from Concord to me was, “It’s classified”.
That is alarming.
Now we see leaked intel on the Concord Marshal Battleship that its design is fully duplicated by the lines of Drifter structure.
This is alarming.
/s/ Max Singularity
Would it be possible if you publish an that “official response” message. I prefer when thing are backed with evidence.
And the hulls they are completely different.
Based on what? The only image of the Marshall that I’ve seen is so shadowed, there could be a small army of Drifters with laser rifles standing on the hull and you wouldn’t know it.
One of my staff did brighten the image a bit, and it does look somewhat similar to a Vigilant Tyrannos battleship in general lines. Of course, given that CONCORD is undertaking a fleet modernization effort, and Tyrannos battleships are rather potent, it makes perfect sense for CONCORD to attempt to mimic or adopt any Drifter design techniques or technologies that CONCORD can manage.
Now, if CONCORD showed up in genuine Drifter battleships, that’d be very interesting.
As it stands? Well, I’d certainly be curious what sort of reverse engineering has been successful, but otherwise I’m not worried.
It doesn’t seem all that unusual to try and cannibalise, or reverse engineer, Drifter technology given we’ve been doing it on a smaller scale with Sleepers.
Tech3 cruisers and destroyers, anyone?
It would make sense. It would also explain why they have spent so much effort on secrecy and sabortaging capsuleer attempts at understanding the Drifters. Keeping the tech for themselves give them an edge.
Or the Drifters themselves… e.g.: Alpacas.
Concord gets it´s tech from everyone and everywhere, the Drifters are under intense scrutiny and it´s nothing unusual that they would be mimicked.
Concord already kills everyone they want almost instantly, a drifter design doesn´t scare more than that.
Uh … actually, that’s some kind of system they only have access to in highsec, Ms. Tsukiyo. The ones in null can be attacked and blown up just like any other baseline warship.
anyone who thinks the drifters and the pigs are connected are an idiot. the pigs just don’t like to talk to us podders
They only equip in high-sec would be a better statement. Since null sec is out of their official jurisdiction, those probably don´t want to use insane murder weapons and attract attention to themselves so people start wondering Quis custodiet ipsos custodes and what the hell are they doing there.
As far as anybody’s been able to figure out, Ms. Tsukiyo, it’s some kind of system that exploits a weakness in the capsule-- a failsafe. It doesn’t seem to work on conventional ships to begin with.
I can see not wanting to let the outer powers get a hold of it, though. Maybe that’s also why you never see CONCORD ships engaging conventional hostiles in highsec?
As a capsuleer, i tend to focus on the weapons that can kill me. If it´s a CONCORD limited failsafe instakill or a drifter blueshield mega shot, i don´t care much what kind of design CONCORD does have. It just indicates that they´re advancing their knowledge of Drifter engineering, and eventually we will too.
As it stands from my own analysis of the design and hull, the bow is reminiscent of planetary ocean-faring ships which were designed to break waves and allow for improved speed, effectively “cutting” waves as they pass.
The bow’s design does have some interesting implications when combined with shield technology, and ballistics. If these vessels were shot at head on, the armor’s angle would deflect shots, such as traditional projectile weaponry, or substantially decrease the amount of energy behind it by spreading it out over a larger area, decreasing potency, such as in the case of energy or hybrid weapons.
The weapon placement also fascinates me, as the main armament is placed on the underside of the bow, on both sides, giving thought to a possible tactic of raising the bow to fire, and oncoming damage is reduced due to the hull’s shape.
All in all, it makes sense for CONCORD to adopt well-known designs such as the Drifter Battleship, and all other equivalents, as they were designed to counter Capsuleer tactics and weaponry, which - conveniently for them - is mounted on all other vessels in New Eden. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.
While I find your slur despicable, I would like to make a note of particular comparison in that Drifters don’t like to talk to us either.
If I may direct you to my last message, and expand upon it after…
CONCORD is stretched thin throughout New Eden, especially when they’re trying to wrangle rouge capsuleers who gank others in High Sec, as well as keep the greater pockets of the pirate rabble out in Low and Null.
So when a new faction rolls up in tech that’s arguably more advanced than anything the Jove have cooked up, it makes sense that they would emulate the Drifter designs in order to get an edge. Besides, despite the number of Drifter BS wrecks (which are difficult to acquire) that are surely to be in CONCORD’s hands, neither they nor we can reverse engineer or rig the primary doomsday or secondary weapon without it being extremely unwieldy and impractical in design. So it was either make a new battleship of the line, or make a weapon platform with limited usage, and you could only make one with limited tech resources.
Keep this in mind, I do NOT work for CONCORD’s ship design and enginnering division, but having worked for a land-based armored vehicles foundry and lab, we did many of the same things in order to stay one step ahead of our competitors (and to stay alive, but that’s less important), and while original design can do a lot of good, when an unregistered and unsanctioned enemy comes at you, and they’re rocking sweet tech the likes of which you’ve never seen? You make some patents on that stuff and call it “classified”. It’s the rules of unconventional war, against an enemy who came out of nowhere and has no legal rights in your society, and they straight up attack you.
I swear I must have missed that part of the curriculum that teaches capsuleers to see boogeymen and conspiracies everywhere.
It’s actually something CONCORD’s only recently allowed to be put on the overview.