@L'homme because it looks like the Orion is a dedicated missile frigate. With less PDCs than the smaller Corvette it's clear that her doctrine is to stand way in the rear. You give her a railgun and someday, somewhere, a commander will make a stupid decision and bring her into a knife-fight range for which she isn't built. She's meant to go into combat supported by other fleet elements anyway, at least she would in a proper navy and not a terrorist gang. The Roci had that undersized forward fixed railgun installed because they would be operating alone. The Donnagers mostly serve as a stationary fortress that can relocate and operate alone, so big railguns make sense for her. The only times we see her being outdone by anything is because they had no way of seeing it coming.
@L'homme: the roci had the heads of Mars and the UN navy on their side. They’re not a “few civilians” they’re supported by basically the entire sol system. With access to any military grade weapons they please. That being said I’m pretty sure it was fitting in a Mars shipyard. But I could be wrong.
@@jugganaut33 No, it was on Luna’s shipyard but I am pretty sure it’s kind of similar equipment as the one fitted on the anubis class, with light fast-firing railguns.
@L'homme actualy the donager wasn't outmached, quite the oposite, the donager destroyed 3 ships from a distance, one using PDC, the issue was that, the crew was overconfident, but outside of the captain noe had combat experience and her experince was against pirates, so not much.
Funnily enough, I also named this heavy frigate as the "Orion-class"; I made a post for a Minecraft re-creation a few months back that I made under the name. Great video!
Hi! I’m a big fan of your work and I messaged you a while back on planet minecraft :D You may actually be the reason why I called it the Orion Class. I saw a couple of other videos online that also referred to it as the Orion, and they may have also gotten it from you haha
@@dark_ops1651 yeah, i read a wiki page on it and apparently the minecraft build is the reason people call it the orion-class, pretty funny the creator ended up here xd (wiki page was on fandom though, so might not be correct, but im assuming it is)
Am I the only one who sees this ship and its big torpedo launcher chunks port & starboard of the bow, and thinks, "HAMMERHEAD corvette"? I do like that last concept design after thinking out its PDC coverage, but the final show one just looks like a badass flying hammer and has visible lineage with the now-legendary Corvette Class.
I have a thought about the 8 single shot bays. Not only do they have the advantage of quickly firing heavy salvos during combat (because they dont need to be relayed to firing mechanisms like bullets in a gun) but they might be able to switch warheads more easily. Ships in the Expanse carry a variety of warhead types as you say, but its implied that to switch them round someone has to crawl into the torpedo bays and change the warhead manually (not something you want to be doing in combat). My thought is that that those single shot bays are also surrounded by machinary that can switch warhead types on their missiles remotely, so that if they need a specific type for a specific combat scenerio they have them ready to hand. This would also make sense with nuclear warheads especially, since it helps you avoid throwing them around when you dont need to.
Modern warships keep their missiles in single launch VLS tubes, it allows for much faster firing and therefore larger salvos, since that determines if you get a hit or not, to me the real question is why do ships on the expanse not use a system like this
We have never seen them changing warhead types during battle or even after (other than when they swapped out a nuclear warhead off a missile to store the protomolecule, but that doesn’t count. Instead the torpedo magazine will almost certainly have a mix of different torpedo types, and the autoloader will pick the required round type to load into the torpedo tube for launch, like modern day tanks with autoloader and naval warships. The 8 single shot bays would have been for rapid launching of the torpedos far faster than the autoloader could manage. But comes at the cost of increase footprint, hence the one less PDC.
VLS in modern warships is pretty much single-use launch tubes in practice. Reloading is a real pain, requiring going to a port (or really calm waters nearer to coasts). But one advantage is that you could fit a larger amount of missiles, compared to having autoloader feeding into a few launch tubes. The analogy I would use is that VLS is like a carton box of soft drink cans, while autoloading launch tubes are vending machines. Forgoing all those loading mechanisms saves space and weight (for the same amount of missiles), which is a premium in spacecraft. In some way I feel that having VLS in combat spacecraft actually makes more sense. (Although there can be counter arguments to that. Torpedoes in submarines are quite long, and there is only so much space in the front of the boat. The submarine-launched missiles, however, actually launch from the top similar to VLS. So maybe form-factor cam be a factor as well)
Really like the design of this one, rather thoughtful (as per usual) of the expanse team to give a larger ship a smaller amount of pdcs. It makes total sense that a ship more centered around missiles could rely on support from other ships for PDC fire will it focused on long range combat. I would love to see a martian ship with a spinaly mounted rail gun like the rosonante, seems like they would have caught up to that by now.
The spinal mount has a number of issues though. The roci had to use it in an absurd way against the Pella. It's better to have turreted rail guns in general. That being said small Corvettes with rail guns are OP as fuck
@@2KOOLURATOOLGaming a game where we could design warships using preset components that come at certain costs would be interesting. Having to pay extra for martian PDC cannons and computers at the expense of being stuck with a belter or earther drive cone could be fun. You then test those ships in battle against other players
@@will2brown50 I'm not too interested in the customisation aspect but upgrading your ship would be a great mechanic, especially for belter ships, being the majority of payable ships. I just want a first-person tactical realistic shipvsship space sim.
@@will2brown50 Yes but I was thinking more based on the original MMORPG that The Expanse was first supposed to be. Now that it has a massive following I think it could really work! There isn't really a game like it, although a few are coming out recently like Into The Black. It would be a very ambitious game but a viable product can be rather small and then grow, adding more features during development until we have an expansive array of game tools and mechanics to fight, trade, float and die in. The beauty of such a game would be the stories able to unfold naturally. You shouldn't force players into these narratives, the game would be set up so that they just happen. Of course it will be very hard to make because you are simulating a bunch of complex physics, really big numbers and you need Devs to be good in many aspects of the development. But OMG I've been thinking about this for weeks now. Multiplayer crews for friends or strangers, bot ships and bot crews for lone players. Hiding behind an asteroid waiting for a tradeship to pass by cause you got a tip off about their route at the docks. Shutting off the drive to stay dark, seeing them on passive scans as the fly past the asteroid. Waiting until you are almost behind their drive plume (blindspot), light up and burn hard after it. Your friend is a noob but you put him on fire control anyway. The freighter (botship) begins burning hard, you tell the friend to cripple the ship and that he needs to load flechette warheads onto a torpedo. He fiddles with the unfamiliar display but it is intuitive and he fires two torpedoes to converge on the freighter's drive cone. Its small ballistic interceptor cannon tries to destroy one but misses by a lot. The freighter is crippled. Now depending on the finished state of the game, you either dock to the ship and receive rewards or you can actually board the ship with your guns and armour and kill its bot crew, now having control of a larger ship. Tow it, repair it, scrap and scavenge, send it on autopilot to a station or base, retrofit it with a torpedo launcher, turn it into a distress call trap to lure in a different ship, but be careful, maybe a nearby UNN frigate will make you the one in distress, floating with no more ammo. The first problem with making this game is getting the rights and licensing to use The Expanse because there's no way you can make anything like this without being sued by Amazon who I am sure will have the rights to all Expanse digital content :(
Well, that's kinda neat seeing my stuff in there ! Also I guess it's called the Orion now ? I like it, sure sounds a lot nicer than "Unnamed Martian Heavy Frigate-class"... And yeah, i'm kinda sad we didn't get to see more of it this season, I mostly hoped we'd see a bit of the interior design, but eh, it's done now...
@@dark_ops1651 Pleasure is mine ! Your videos are actually very nice, thanks for making them. If you ever need renders of the Orion class for a video, don't hesitate to hit me up !
Head canon time. MCRN originally intended the Corvette-class to fill the gap between the Morrigan-class and a full-size destroyer. In practice, however, it's more practical to operate a pair of Morrigan-class, as this allow a more flexible mission profile while still having nearly as much combined firepower and occupying as much docking space inside Donnager-class and other MCRN bases, rendering the individual superiority of Corvette-class less significant, and leaving a gap in MCRN fleet composition between a patrol destroyer and a full-size destroyer, which, while pretty small, are too large to be house inside internal bay of Donnager-class. The heavy frigate is made as a part of the program to fill this gap. MCRN need a ship that can provide the larger habitable spaces of the Corvette-class, while provide at least twice the firepower of the Corvette, and still fit inside the docking bay of a Donnager-class. Proposal ranges from simply a stretched out version of Corvette, a Corvette with keel-mounted railgun, and an enlarged Morrigan, among multiple designs. The final design end up being somewhat new design, taking some components of the Corvette-class, but house a newly design forward section to accomodate a much larger torpedo bay. (I assume that the Heavy frigate is small enough to barely fit inside the Donnager's hangar bay, from the look of it)
I'm not actually entirely sure yet. I'll definetly cover anything that comes up in the finale next week, and maybe I'll cover some other ships. Perhaps the Barkeith or Drummer's salvage ships in season 5? Might even expand beyond the Expanse as well 😉
the single-use torpedo tubes really give way this is for use as a fire support ship to saturate an fleets defense. also it would be useful for the opening alpha strike if used for raiding potentially allowing a small pack of these to take down much largers ships or a large convoy.
I think Orion had the misfortune of going up against the hero ship some of course it would come out on top. An in universe explanation is not that they are screwed if a ship can get inside of torpedo range but rather the belters didn’t have access to a ship this militarized before the free navy so haven’t developed or have the tactics to effectively use a ship of this type against other military built ships like the Roci or any of the other inner ships. To simplify you can give Somali pirates a USA frigate or destroyer but without training or knowledge of how to use it’s weapons and defenses correctly then it’s just a larger target. Or give the Chinese a USA Nimitz class carrier right now without the knowledge of launching, recovering aircraft, what to do in case if a catapult failure or landing cable breakage or what to do with storage of fuel, bombs, and aircraft it’s just a pretty looking target. That’s not to say the belters, Somali, or Chinese couldn’t learn it’s just they need to develop those procedures and can’t skip the line.
Crew of the Roci were all exceptional at their job and well versed in the operation of that ship. Crew of the Heavy Frigate they faced were of an unknown caliber and had only weeks to learn the ship before they faced off with a determined, experienced crew and ship.
With only 5 PDC's on the Heavy Frigate, while the Roci has 6, the ship would have lost it's PDC ammunition in the fight against the Roci and Drummer early enough. At least if there isnt't an automatic reload system.
You can also use torpedoes to take out other torpedoes. Which is what we see in the episode as well. Seeing as getting rid of that 1 PDC gives you 20 more torpedoes and an additional 2 rapid launchers and 8 single launchers, I’d go with the torpedoes.
@@dark_ops1651 The heavy frigate is much bigger than the normal frigate, thats why is has 20 torpedos more. The Roci has 6 PDCs with overlaying firing ranges. To lose one PDC is ok. The heavy Frigate has 2 PDCs at the same place, if one of these two PDCs is out of service the other can take over. The other 3 PDCs are critical for the survival of the ship. Loosing one of them can result in total destruction, through torpedos or the Roci that comes to close with its Railgun. The Heavy Frigate is a platform to use in swadrone, not as a stand-alone fighter.
@@joeyalpha I agree. If a standard Heavy Frigate, and the current Rocinante went toe to toe, the Roci would definitely win. But the heavy frigate is very useful in a fleet, as we see in season 5 :D
I do quite like how the show mirrors history in that a lot of ship terminology is different between the 2 superpowers. Earth for example has absolutely gigantic 'Destroyers' which are comparable in size to the MCRN Heavy Frigates and Light Cruisers. Also the terms battleship, dreadnought and battlecruiser are not very unified across the 2 either, much like during world war 2.
@@CoffeeFiend1 You do know frigates are smaller the Destroyers right???? Earth Destroyers being frigate size would be small and Light Cruiser size would be only slightly on the large size.
Nice summary on "Orion". That mix of the three ships is kinda weird because frontal pdcs would be useless with enemy behind drive. At corvette class almost all pdcs can fire at some level behind drive which makes 6 vs 3 maybe 5 depends of those 2 on sides but frontal ale definitely blocked.
That’s an interesting idea. I suspect that it might be because that could only target a torpedo coming directly at them, which means that after the torpedo gets destroyed, they would have shrapnel coming directly towards them? Not the best reason but that’s just my headcanon
Rocinante can fire all 6 of its PDCS (and Railgun) in front herself at once, thanks to her front and middle turrets been in superfiring position. (She did it in S2x12) So there no need in additional nose gun.
If I remember correctly, the Nathan Hale is a Leonidas Class Battleship :D Unless theres something else you're talking about, I believe what you're looking for is the new Xerxes Class ship. Surf TrekTonics made a great video if you're interested! 😄
@@dark_ops1651 it is officially called the Nathan Hale-class though. Also we haven't seen the original Nathan Hale since the end of S2/beginning of S3, so it could quite easily have been decommissioned or destroyed during the earth/MCR war, we see some Leos converted into supply ships and others refitted with new engines and railguns so the ones that weren't converted or refitted could have been decommissioned and the resources going towards newer/more efficient vessels like the Truman and Nathan Hale classes. Ps. Take anything you hear from Surf Trektonics with a bucket of salt as he is blatantly making some of the stuff he says up as there nothing in both cannons to support alot of the things he says.
PDC counts: Morrigan destroyer - 2 'Orion' heavy frigate - 5 'Pella' light cruiser - 9 Scirocco heavy cruiser - 14 Donnager battleship - 59 Them frigates have a typical pdc loadout relative to thier size. Its just the very large number of pdcs on the Corvette class (6) that is out of kilter, probably because they sacrifice torpedo ring weight (only 2 launchers, same as a little Morrigan destroyer)
My guess would be because it was designed for different purpose than the Rocinante. This Orion-class heavy frigate was probably designed to bolster the offensive firepower of an MCRN fleet, which is why it has many more torpedoes than the Corvette-class light frigate. The light frigate, on the other hand, was designed to protect an MCRN fleet from enemy torpedoes which it has more PDCs than the Orion.
@@ronin3381 I agree with this assessment, and I love that about these two classes. The two classes are obviously "cousin" classes, slightly changed to fulfill different roles. I can't really think of too many other examples of this, and I wish we saw it more often.
its the Roci that has an exceptional number of PDC, at the cost of torpedo mounts. If you were to simply scale up the weapons loadout based on size, from the Morrigan to the Donnager, it would make sense for the light frigates (ie Rocinante) to have 4 PDC and 3 or 4 fish launchers, however they are actually designed with 6 PDCs and only 2 fish launchers. It is a ship with a clearly defined role, ie as either a gunship or a CQB escort for larger ships, however if you want the most torpedo output, the heavy frigate and Morrigan destroyer both give more 'bang for the buck'
So the Orion class has less PDC's than the Rocinante? Seems weird. Having more torps is pointless if you get smoked before being able to fire enough off.
The Expanse Wiki is a good source if you want to dive deeper. But I gather my information via manually watching scenes over and over again. You can pick up a lot of information from Season 5 about this ship class! 😄
@@jamesdouglas6977 I’m sorry that you see it that way. Spacedock did a collaboration with the Expanse team if you’re looking for something like that :D
People don't want to live in an inclosed space for the entirety of their lives. The settlers who came to mars missed the open sky of earth and wanted to replicate it. Doesn't necessarily make sense on an economic scale but it does as a social movement.
Maybe because for the laser to be effective enough, they have to be charged for a certain amount of time? Whereas PDCs can instantly respond and fire very fast?
Lasers would be excellent for point-defense the problem is that they're actually shorter ranged than kinetic PDC's, or rather shorter in *effective* range. PDC rounds have travel time, they have mass but they move very fast. Lasers (for all intents and purposes) do not have mass and they bleed out energy in every single possible direction and angle, the further they travel, the less effective they are, unlike PDC rounds which will carry on travelling forever until they hit something.
I had always wondered about this as well. IRL there's a lot of R&D for small compact chemical lasers as point defense against drones and hypersonic missiles, so you'd expect that in 200 yrs they'd be good enough for space combat. You can't outrun the speed of light, in space there's no atmosphere to degrade their effectiveness, and fusion power is common enough to power them. I wonder if the Expanse is just trying so hard to get away from the old pew pew laser sci-fi tropes, kinda like BSG...
@Jemand Zufälliges Lasers do expand, even if you have a perfect focused laser you have a spread from the charge Photons carry and that expands the beam. For example, a Perfect Laser Beam fired from earth to Moon would be 50km wide hitting the moon.
I would assume the "Orion" class would operate in more of an offensive, striking role due to its heavy torpedo armament with just enough pdc's to defend itself. Whereas, the Corvette class has fewer torpedoes but more (even if it's just 1 more) pdc's which would put it in more of a screening role for other, larger ships. TLDR: the Orion class is an offensive ship, and the Corvette class is a defensive ship.
I'd hate to be THAT GUY, but I have watched the season 5 finale battle easily over a hundred times. There are clearly 5 PDCs, not 6. There's two facing "up", one facing "left", one facing "right", and one facing "down".
@@dark_ops1651 It has 5 PDCs. One was removed to allow room for double of torpedoes. Makes sense as more torpedos would me much more valuable than one PDC.
Really hate how those PDC are firing off into space for no reason, not even looking at the Roci, even though we we have seen and know they could have. Plot armor that massively thick is just one side of why Expanse under Amazon has really sucked.
they are firing the wrong way as a belter ship launched a ring of torpedoes at the other side, the pdcs were pointing the other way to blow up this ring of torpedoes, leading to them no being able to track back fast enough to hit the Roci. A Morrigan was railgunned by the Roci the same way - another belter ship put a ring of torpedoes onto the side opposite where the Roci was attacking to distract its pdcs.
The Corvette class makes for a very effective escort and screening vessel for larger ships. As we saw in the battle with the Zmeya the Roci cleared an entire torpedo swarm with only one gun jamming. A Donnager class ship can potentially carry four of them with capacity to resupply so they make excellent escorts but slightly less capable independently. Although as the Roci shows, operating that way does not make them any less formidable. The Heavy Frigate however is more a direct assualt ship, and might be a bit more independent thanks to a larger supply bay (since they do not share that space with any PDC's the way the corvette class does). And four of these ships can still be packed into a Donnager. They are not total replacements for the Corvette class, they just do different things differently while retaining enough similarities.
![Yeat & Quavo - 5BRAZY [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4XxnTAwyxus/mqdefault.jpg)
Putting a railgun on the Roci was such a gamechanger. It has been imperative to its survival.
@L'homme because it looks like the Orion is a dedicated missile frigate. With less PDCs than the smaller Corvette it's clear that her doctrine is to stand way in the rear. You give her a railgun and someday, somewhere, a commander will make a stupid decision and bring her into a knife-fight range for which she isn't built. She's meant to go into combat supported by other fleet elements anyway, at least she would in a proper navy and not a terrorist gang. The Roci had that undersized forward fixed railgun installed because they would be operating alone.
The Donnagers mostly serve as a stationary fortress that can relocate and operate alone, so big railguns make sense for her. The only times we see her being outdone by anything is because they had no way of seeing it coming.
@L'homme: the roci had the heads of Mars and the UN navy on their side. They’re not a “few civilians” they’re supported by basically the entire sol system. With access to any military grade weapons they please.
That being said I’m pretty sure it was fitting in a Mars shipyard. But I could be wrong.
@@jugganaut33 No, it was on Luna’s shipyard but I am pretty sure it’s kind of similar equipment as the one fitted on the anubis class, with light fast-firing railguns.
@L'homme actualy the donager wasn't outmached, quite the oposite, the donager destroyed 3 ships from a distance, one using PDC, the issue was that, the crew was overconfident, but outside of the captain noe had combat experience and her experince was against pirates, so not much.
@@themax9913 acualy it was tyco station, luna at the time was of limits to them,
Kudos to you sir for picking up where Spacedock has seemingly fallen asleep.
spacedock sees to just redo the same ships over and over which really annoys me.
Funnily enough, I also named this heavy frigate as the "Orion-class"; I made a post for a Minecraft re-creation a few months back that I made under the name. Great video!
Hi! I’m a big fan of your work and I messaged you a while back on planet minecraft :D You may actually be the reason why I called it the Orion Class. I saw a couple of other videos online that also referred to it as the Orion, and they may have also gotten it from you haha
@@dark_ops1651 yeah, i read a wiki page on it and apparently the minecraft build is the reason people call it the orion-class, pretty funny the creator ended up here xd (wiki page was on fandom though, so might not be correct, but im assuming it is)
Am I the only one who sees this ship and its big torpedo launcher chunks port & starboard of the bow, and thinks, "HAMMERHEAD corvette"?
I do like that last concept design after thinking out its PDC coverage, but the final show one just looks like a badass flying hammer and has visible lineage with the now-legendary Corvette Class.
I have a thought about the 8 single shot bays. Not only do they have the advantage of quickly firing heavy salvos during combat (because they dont need to be relayed to firing mechanisms like bullets in a gun) but they might be able to switch warheads more easily. Ships in the Expanse carry a variety of warhead types as you say, but its implied that to switch them round someone has to crawl into the torpedo bays and change the warhead manually (not something you want to be doing in combat). My thought is that that those single shot bays are also surrounded by machinary that can switch warhead types on their missiles remotely, so that if they need a specific type for a specific combat scenerio they have them ready to hand. This would also make sense with nuclear warheads especially, since it helps you avoid throwing them around when you dont need to.
Modern warships keep their missiles in single launch VLS tubes, it allows for much faster firing and therefore larger salvos, since that determines if you get a hit or not, to me the real question is why do ships on the expanse not use a system like this
We have never seen them changing warhead types during battle or even after (other than when they swapped out a nuclear warhead off a missile to store the protomolecule, but that doesn’t count. Instead the torpedo magazine will almost certainly have a mix of different torpedo types, and the autoloader will pick the required round type to load into the torpedo tube for launch, like modern day tanks with autoloader and naval warships. The 8 single shot bays would have been for rapid launching of the torpedos far faster than the autoloader could manage. But comes at the cost of increase footprint, hence the one less PDC.
VLS in modern warships is pretty much single-use launch tubes in practice. Reloading is a real pain, requiring going to a port (or really calm waters nearer to coasts).
But one advantage is that you could fit a larger amount of missiles, compared to having autoloader feeding into a few launch tubes. The analogy I would use is that VLS is like a carton box of soft drink cans, while autoloading launch tubes are vending machines.
Forgoing all those loading mechanisms saves space and weight (for the same amount of missiles), which is a premium in spacecraft. In some way I feel that having VLS in combat spacecraft actually makes more sense.
(Although there can be counter arguments to that. Torpedoes in submarines are quite long, and there is only so much space in the front of the boat. The submarine-launched missiles, however, actually launch from the top similar to VLS. So maybe form-factor cam be a factor as well)
Really like the design of this one, rather thoughtful (as per usual) of the expanse team to give a larger ship a smaller amount of pdcs. It makes total sense that a ship more centered around missiles could rely on support from other ships for PDC fire will it focused on long range combat. I would love to see a martian ship with a spinaly mounted rail gun like the rosonante, seems like they would have caught up to that by now.
The spinal mount has a number of issues though. The roci had to use it in an absurd way against the Pella. It's better to have turreted rail guns in general. That being said small Corvettes with rail guns are OP as fuck
@@will2brown50 GIMME A GAME ALREADY!!!
@@2KOOLURATOOLGaming a game where we could design warships using preset components that come at certain costs would be interesting. Having to pay extra for martian PDC cannons and computers at the expense of being stuck with a belter or earther drive cone could be fun. You then test those ships in battle against other players
@@will2brown50 I'm not too interested in the customisation aspect but upgrading your ship would be a great mechanic, especially for belter ships, being the majority of payable ships. I just want a first-person tactical realistic shipvsship space sim.
@@will2brown50 Yes but I was thinking more based on the original MMORPG that The Expanse was first supposed to be. Now that it has a massive following I think it could really work! There isn't really a game like it, although a few are coming out recently like Into The Black. It would be a very ambitious game but a viable product can be rather small and then grow, adding more features during development until we have an expansive array of game tools and mechanics to fight, trade, float and die in. The beauty of such a game would be the stories able to unfold naturally. You shouldn't force players into these narratives, the game would be set up so that they just happen. Of course it will be very hard to make because you are simulating a bunch of complex physics, really big numbers and you need Devs to be good in many aspects of the development. But OMG I've been thinking about this for weeks now. Multiplayer crews for friends or strangers, bot ships and bot crews for lone players.
Hiding behind an asteroid waiting for a tradeship to pass by cause you got a tip off about their route at the docks. Shutting off the drive to stay dark, seeing them on passive scans as the fly past the asteroid. Waiting until you are almost behind their drive plume (blindspot), light up and burn hard after it. Your friend is a noob but you put him on fire control anyway. The freighter (botship) begins burning hard, you tell the friend to cripple the ship and that he needs to load flechette warheads onto a torpedo. He fiddles with the unfamiliar display but it is intuitive and he fires two torpedoes to converge on the freighter's drive cone. Its small ballistic interceptor cannon tries to destroy one but misses by a lot. The freighter is crippled.
Now depending on the finished state of the game, you either dock to the ship and receive rewards or you can actually board the ship with your guns and armour and kill its bot crew, now having control of a larger ship. Tow it, repair it, scrap and scavenge, send it on autopilot to a station or base, retrofit it with a torpedo launcher, turn it into a distress call trap to lure in a different ship, but be careful, maybe a nearby UNN frigate will make you the one in distress, floating with no more ammo.
The first problem with making this game is getting the rights and licensing to use The Expanse because there's no way you can make anything like this without being sued by Amazon who I am sure will have the rights to all Expanse digital content :(
Well, that's kinda neat seeing my stuff in there !
Also I guess it's called the Orion now ? I like it, sure sounds a lot nicer than "Unnamed Martian Heavy Frigate-class"...
And yeah, i'm kinda sad we didn't get to see more of it this season, I mostly hoped we'd see a bit of the interior design, but eh, it's done now...
Man it’s such an honor to have you comment on my video 😄 Your renders are absolutely beautiful!
@@dark_ops1651 Pleasure is mine ! Your videos are actually very nice, thanks for making them. If you ever need renders of the Orion class for a video, don't hesitate to hit me up !
Do you have a discord or something I can message you with?
Yessss finallllyyyy someone has covered one of the coolest ships there are
I approve of this channel I hope you keep it going along these lines
Head canon time.
MCRN originally intended the Corvette-class to fill the gap between the Morrigan-class and a full-size destroyer. In practice, however, it's more practical to operate a pair of Morrigan-class, as this allow a more flexible mission profile while still having nearly as much combined firepower and occupying as much docking space inside Donnager-class and other MCRN bases, rendering the individual superiority of Corvette-class less significant, and leaving a gap in MCRN fleet composition between a patrol destroyer and a full-size destroyer, which, while pretty small, are too large to be house inside internal bay of Donnager-class.
The heavy frigate is made as a part of the program to fill this gap. MCRN need a ship that can provide the larger habitable spaces of the Corvette-class, while provide at least twice the firepower of the Corvette, and still fit inside the docking bay of a Donnager-class. Proposal ranges from simply a stretched out version of Corvette, a Corvette with keel-mounted railgun, and an enlarged Morrigan, among multiple designs. The final design end up being somewhat new design, taking some components of the Corvette-class, but house a newly design forward section to accomodate a much larger torpedo bay.
(I assume that the Heavy frigate is small enough to barely fit inside the Donnager's hangar bay, from the look of it)
I don’t think it could fit, the corvettes are 46 meters long whereas the heavy frigates are 66.
@@AnonD38 very true
Two morrigans can fit and they are 33m so it might fit perfectly.
@@hunterjarman4728 That's a tight squeeze for the Corvette-Class, Orion would be too large
Thanks for linking the music man.
Well done on being the first to cover this class. You might give spacedock a run for his money. What are you going to cover next?
I'm not actually entirely sure yet. I'll definetly cover anything that comes up in the finale next week, and maybe I'll cover some other ships. Perhaps the Barkeith or Drummer's salvage ships in season 5? Might even expand beyond the Expanse as well 😉
@@dark_ops1651 yeah i'd really love to hear about the Tynan. Ashfords old ship.
the single-use torpedo tubes really give way this is for use as a fire support ship to saturate an fleets defense. also it would be useful for the opening alpha strike if used for raiding potentially allowing a small pack of these to take down much largers ships or a large convoy.
I think Orion had the misfortune of going up against the hero ship some of course it would come out on top. An in universe explanation is not that they are screwed if a ship can get inside of torpedo range but rather the belters didn’t have access to a ship this militarized before the free navy so haven’t developed or have the tactics to effectively use a ship of this type against other military built ships like the Roci or any of the other inner ships. To simplify you can give Somali pirates a USA frigate or destroyer but without training or knowledge of how to use it’s weapons and defenses correctly then it’s just a larger target. Or give the Chinese a USA Nimitz class carrier right now without the knowledge of launching, recovering aircraft, what to do in case if a catapult failure or landing cable breakage or what to do with storage of fuel, bombs, and aircraft it’s just a pretty looking target. That’s not to say the belters, Somali, or Chinese couldn’t learn it’s just they need to develop those procedures and can’t skip the line.
yes and dont forget the roci had the high ground. it was stupid to attack
Crew of the Roci were all exceptional at their job and well versed in the operation of that ship.
Crew of the Heavy Frigate they faced were of an unknown caliber and had only weeks to learn the ship before they faced off with a determined, experienced crew and ship.
You can see this ship in season 3 opening scene. When the camera drifts from Venus -> Earth -> Mars. Just look carefully, it's clearly there.
With only 5 PDC's on the Heavy Frigate, while the Roci has 6, the ship would have lost it's PDC ammunition in the fight against the Roci and Drummer early enough. At least if there isnt't an automatic reload system.
You can also use torpedoes to take out other torpedoes. Which is what we see in the episode as well. Seeing as getting rid of that 1 PDC gives you 20 more torpedoes and an additional 2 rapid launchers and 8 single launchers, I’d go with the torpedoes.
@@dark_ops1651 The heavy frigate is much bigger than the normal frigate, thats why is has 20 torpedos more. The Roci has 6 PDCs with overlaying firing ranges. To lose one PDC is ok.
The heavy Frigate has 2 PDCs at the same place, if one of these two PDCs is out of service the other can take over. The other 3 PDCs are critical for the survival of the ship. Loosing one of them can result in total destruction, through torpedos or the Roci that comes to close with its Railgun.
The Heavy Frigate is a platform to use in swadrone, not as a stand-alone fighter.
@@joeyalpha I agree. If a standard Heavy Frigate, and the current Rocinante went toe to toe, the Roci would definitely win. But the heavy frigate is very useful in a fleet, as we see in season 5 :D
I do quite like how the show mirrors history in that a lot of ship terminology is different between the 2 superpowers. Earth for example has absolutely gigantic 'Destroyers' which are comparable in size to the MCRN Heavy Frigates and Light Cruisers. Also the terms battleship, dreadnought and battlecruiser are not very unified across the 2 either, much like during world war 2.
@@CoffeeFiend1 You do know frigates are smaller the Destroyers right???? Earth Destroyers being frigate size would be small and Light Cruiser size would be only slightly on the large size.
Nice summary on "Orion". That mix of the three ships is kinda weird because frontal pdcs would be useless with enemy behind drive. At corvette class almost all pdcs can fire at some level behind drive which makes 6 vs 3 maybe 5 depends of those 2 on sides but frontal ale definitely blocked.
Like the ship breakdown's vids of the expanse that u did, faster than spacedock lol
U won a sub from me ;)
I’ve always wondered why no ships have nose mounted pdcs, if they have incoming missiles they just point the nose at them and have a good shot at it
That’s an interesting idea. I suspect that it might be because that could only target a torpedo coming directly at them, which means that after the torpedo gets destroyed, they would have shrapnel coming directly towards them? Not the best reason but that’s just my headcanon
Rocinante can fire all 6 of its PDCS (and Railgun) in front herself at once, thanks to her front and middle turrets been in superfiring position. (She did it in S2x12) So there no need in additional nose gun.
It has 6 PDCs. You can count them as they move around the ship
During season 6 there was actually a stealth version spotted when MCRN attacked the ring gun sentries
why does it has a 40 torp magazine when it bas 8 single use torp launcher? wouldn't the single use torp launcher would only fire only once each?
Oh my, the intro music is setting an extremely good setup for watching your quality content
Its called "Dust", and its found in this mix: ruclips.net/video/DMc641-k9B8/видео.html
Wats the new sketch armor the roci got? Awesome video
Also Raptor's Class light Cruiser (Fast attack)
I bet a ship designed around dual facing full length spinal railgun would be incredibly effective in-universe.
Hey what's up with the new Nathan Hale class, any thoughts. Maybe a video?
If I remember correctly, the Nathan Hale is a Leonidas Class Battleship :D Unless theres something else you're talking about, I believe what you're looking for is the new Xerxes Class ship. Surf TrekTonics made a great video if you're interested! 😄
@@dark_ops1651 it is officially called the Nathan Hale-class though.
Also we haven't seen the original Nathan Hale since the end of S2/beginning of S3, so it could quite easily have been decommissioned or destroyed during the earth/MCR war, we see some Leos converted into supply ships and others refitted with new engines and railguns so the ones that weren't converted or refitted could have been decommissioned and the resources going towards newer/more efficient vessels like the Truman and Nathan Hale classes.
Ps. Take anything you hear from Surf Trektonics with a bucket of salt as he is blatantly making some of the stuff he says up as there nothing in both cannons to support alot of the things he says.
Update: I am totally making this video right now! :D
@@dark_ops1651 look forward to it, but I would hold off until after the last episode.
@@dark_ops1651 Thanks
Hi, where did you get this concept image of the Heavy Frigate? 0:20
Its not concept art, its a fan render of a heavy frigate by Theo Bouvier 👍
@@dark_ops1651 Ah okay. Its very well done, I mistook it for an official image
@@TheVargr I know right? Dreamy 😍
@@TheVargr Well thank you !
All they do in the show is blow up.
Confirmed again by the season finale.
IMO the Orion class doesn’t have nearly enough PDC’s. If it’s worth putting 50 on the battleship it’s worth putting 10 on the heavy frigate.
Five PDCs is sufficient to defend itself, as we have seen in this show. Besides, it has more than enough torpedoes to make up for the lack of PDCs.
PDC counts:
Morrigan destroyer - 2
'Orion' heavy frigate - 5
'Pella' light cruiser - 9
Scirocco heavy cruiser - 14
Donnager battleship - 59
Them frigates have a typical pdc loadout relative to thier size. Its just the very large number of pdcs on the Corvette class (6) that is out of kilter, probably because they sacrifice torpedo ring weight (only 2 launchers, same as a little Morrigan destroyer)
@@Debbiebabe69 noted, ty
Why does a bigger ship have less PDCs?
My guess would be because it was designed for different purpose than the Rocinante. This Orion-class heavy frigate was probably designed to bolster the offensive firepower of an MCRN fleet, which is why it has many more torpedoes than the Corvette-class light frigate. The light frigate, on the other hand, was designed to protect an MCRN fleet from enemy torpedoes which it has more PDCs than the Orion.
@@ronin3381 I agree with this assessment, and I love that about these two classes. The two classes are obviously "cousin" classes, slightly changed to fulfill different roles. I can't really think of too many other examples of this, and I wish we saw it more often.
its the Roci that has an exceptional number of PDC, at the cost of torpedo mounts. If you were to simply scale up the weapons loadout based on size, from the Morrigan to the Donnager, it would make sense for the light frigates (ie Rocinante) to have 4 PDC and 3 or 4 fish launchers, however they are actually designed with 6 PDCs and only 2 fish launchers. It is a ship with a clearly defined role, ie as either a gunship or a CQB escort for larger ships, however if you want the most torpedo output, the heavy frigate and Morrigan destroyer both give more 'bang for the buck'
4:27 puts me in mind of a Baby Donnager
So the Orion class has less PDC's than the Rocinante? Seems weird. Having more torps is pointless if you get smoked before being able to fire enough off.
It's part of their fleet diversification program. By having specialized torp ships, they can carry out specialized roles in a much bigger flotilla.
Good clip :)
What’s the source for the armament and other specifications of this vessel?
The Expanse Wiki is a good source if you want to dive deeper. But I gather my information via manually watching scenes over and over again. You can pick up a lot of information from Season 5 about this ship class! 😄
@@dark_ops1651 ok so no official information and no research if the special effect seen on screen was screwed up somehow.
@@jamesdouglas6977 I’m sorry that you see it that way. Spacedock did a collaboration with the Expanse team if you’re looking for something like that :D
Still not enough O’Neil Cylinders.
Building thousands of them makes more sense than terraforming planets.
People don't want to live in an inclosed space for the entirety of their lives. The settlers who came to mars missed the open sky of earth and wanted to replicate it. Doesn't necessarily make sense on an economic scale but it does as a social movement.
how do you know itsa orion class, we never leraned the class, its always identified has a heavy frigate
just trust me bro
@@dark_ops1651 still need evidence of it,
onion class
shrek ogre class? 😳
It would be interesting to know why they don’t use lasers to shoot incoming torpedoes. They certainly have a large enough power supply.
Maybe because for the laser to be effective enough, they have to be charged for a certain amount of time? Whereas PDCs can instantly respond and fire very fast?
Lasers would be to effective. Like Killerrobots and Laserguns. The battles would be boring.
Lasers would be excellent for point-defense the problem is that they're actually shorter ranged than kinetic PDC's, or rather shorter in *effective* range. PDC rounds have travel time, they have mass but they move very fast. Lasers (for all intents and purposes) do not have mass and they bleed out energy in every single possible direction and angle, the further they travel, the less effective they are, unlike PDC rounds which will carry on travelling forever until they hit something.
I had always wondered about this as well. IRL there's a lot of R&D for small compact chemical lasers as point defense against drones and hypersonic missiles, so you'd expect that in 200 yrs they'd be good enough for space combat. You can't outrun the speed of light, in space there's no atmosphere to degrade their effectiveness, and fusion power is common enough to power them. I wonder if the Expanse is just trying so hard to get away from the old pew pew laser sci-fi tropes, kinda like BSG...
@Jemand Zufälliges Lasers do expand, even if you have a perfect focused laser you have a spread from the charge Photons carry and that expands the beam. For example, a Perfect Laser Beam fired from earth to Moon would be 50km wide hitting the moon.
It looks like that concept art would have 8 pdcs
I feel like a bigger Roci would have more PDCs than the Roci.
It has 1 less PDC to accommodate for a much larger torpedo capacity.
I would assume the "Orion" class would operate in more of an offensive, striking role due to its heavy torpedo armament with just enough pdc's to defend itself.
Whereas, the Corvette class has fewer torpedoes but more (even if it's just 1 more) pdc's which would put it in more of a screening role for other, larger ships.
TLDR: the Orion class is an offensive ship, and the Corvette class is a defensive ship.
The heavy frigate had clearly 6 pdc not 5 .
I'd hate to be THAT GUY, but I have watched the season 5 finale battle easily over a hundred times. There are clearly 5 PDCs, not 6. There's two facing "up", one facing "left", one facing "right", and one facing "down".
@@dark_ops1651 It has 5 PDCs. One was removed to allow room for double of torpedoes. Makes sense as more torpedos would me much more valuable than one PDC.
Really hate how those PDC are firing off into space for no reason, not even looking at the Roci, even though we we have seen and know they could have. Plot armor that massively thick is just one side of why Expanse under Amazon has really sucked.
they are firing the wrong way as a belter ship launched a ring of torpedoes at the other side, the pdcs were pointing the other way to blow up this ring of torpedoes, leading to them no being able to track back fast enough to hit the Roci.
A Morrigan was railgunned by the Roci the same way - another belter ship put a ring of torpedoes onto the side opposite where the Roci was attacking to distract its pdcs.
Tbh with this ship around the Corvette-class doesn't make much sense.
It may be a replacement for the Corvette-class
@@Bamboozled1917 indeed. IIRC the book equivalent of this ship is even called a "next generation frigate"
The Corvette class makes for a very effective escort and screening vessel for larger ships. As we saw in the battle with the Zmeya the Roci cleared an entire torpedo swarm with only one gun jamming. A Donnager class ship can potentially carry four of them with capacity to resupply so they make excellent escorts but slightly less capable independently. Although as the Roci shows, operating that way does not make them any less formidable. The Heavy Frigate however is more a direct assualt ship, and might be a bit more independent thanks to a larger supply bay (since they do not share that space with any PDC's the way the corvette class does). And four of these ships can still be packed into a Donnager. They are not total replacements for the Corvette class, they just do different things differently while retaining enough similarities.
You're not spacedock
No sir I guess not 😄