Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => World => Topic started by: Duzzyy on August 09, 2013, 05:10:22 am
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Ok so I guess this is sort of therycrafting but, my friend and I have recently start to wonder if the ships we are flying would be considered a Navy or an Air force
One would think Air force because we're flying in the air (durr) but I can't help but think the battles we fight are move like naval combat more that air dogfights
What do you think guys?
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Zeppelin were used in the first and second world war to e certain extend. This is basicly the closest our airships are.
My german wiki says
"Alle anderen Nationen verwendeten ihre Luftkreuzer hauptsächlich bei der Marine. Während des Krieges kamen insgesamt rund 300 nichtstarre und etwa 100 starre Luftschiffe zum Einsatz."
Translated it means everybody used their airship in the navy.
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Sooooo... we're a naval air force?
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Essentially yeah.
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Navy doesn't seem that strange. I mean, they're referred to as ships, with all the different ship parts on them like bow and stern, port, starboard, etc. and they basically manoeuvre like boats, just with an added dimension of movement.
In addition, in the faction feature for the Mercantile Guild, it explicitly states that the Guild has a considerable naval force, used to patrol aerial trade routes.
So there you have it, airships are considered part of the navy. The only trouble is differentiating between airships and seaships. Do they call both "the navy"? do the factions each even have a sea navy? So many questions, so little answers...
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To my knowledge the Naval air force does already exist. Aircraft carrier belong to them.
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I think naval airforce includes airplanes operating at sea and their carriers. And I don't think calling airships a naval airforce would work because there is no airforce to go with the navy, it's just ships. And anything navy related is to do with warships. Essentially, navy = ships, airforce = planes. If there was some kind of military until of planes operating off of an airship carrier, you might call that a naval airforce.
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The united states air force didn't exist until 1947 , control of air support was under the US army.
Considering the alternate history of GOI begins around the time of WWI before most countries officially had air forces I think the better question would be.
Air Force, Navy or Army?
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The Royal air force exists since 1918 and the Royal navy exists since the 15th century. The fleet air arm was founded even before the second world war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Air_Arm).
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Air Force, Navy or Army?
Well, as I said previously, it's basically been confirmed by the Guild faction feature that military airships are referred to as the navy. And land forces would obviously be the army. The only thing I'm torn on is the area of aeroplanes. My best guess is that, since the concept of planes is probably a new or not yet perfected technology, the nations haven't come up with a definite title for their units of planes.
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Well, in Science Fiction, ships operating in space are considered Naval vessels.
I figure we're all Navy since tactics, weaponry, and positioning is more Naval. The only relation to the airforce is that we're in the sky.
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We have to remember that this might be set in a post apocalyptic world it it either the same year or in the very near future and has the same tech as the early to mid 1900s so the humans that are currently alive wouldn't know what a Air force or a Navy is, let along the difference.
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Air Force and Navy are constructs of our civilization which in this world collapsed and is replaced with a different civilization. For all we know the ship are flying under the authority of "Town Guard," "Militia," or "Department of Transportation." I if I had to choose between Air Force or Navy, I would go with Navy. An individual unit of the navy is expected to work autonomously for several months where as an individual unit of the air force has to go back to base every day.
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I would say that the name would depend on the faction. It would have most in common with a Navy, but it is very much distinct from a Navy. Much like Hamster said, a town could have airships as part of its defense force and not call it a Navy. the word Navy could even not exist in certain parts of the world.
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Well the navy wouldn't be completly out of idea. I don't know the exact story or the timespan. But If your civilisation jumps from in holes living people to airships in such a short time it's very unlikely they haven't had any knowledge about that technology before. Even people from the 1900 know of the navy and it sure has been well documented or at least there would be enough remaining stuff lying around (thinking of the big war ships) to give at least a hint on what that is. The idea to invent something completly new wouldn't be the case but rather adopting something like this. And if we're speaking about technology there sure was a ship (as in floating in the water) before there were air ships. So it's more likely a navy came first to control the seas.
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I think the original point of the thread was to decide on whether airships are an airforce or a navy. And I think we can all agree that, between those, navy is more appropriate.
In regards to the second issue of what people would physically refer to their airship forces as, it can vary. As a whole, a faction's total force of airships is probably their navy based off the fact that they must have had sea boats at one point and probably kept the terminology. However, a specific group of ships would probably be referred to as various things, ranging likely from things like fleet or armada.
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Just because we're using Naval terminology doesn't mean that it's part of the Navy. If you go by definitions:
Navy - The branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations at sea.
Air Force - The airborne branch of a country's armed forces.
Then Airships are airborne, therefore they are part of the Air Force.
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Well I've just always thought of the airships as ships, and just like in sci-fi, related everything in naval terms. I wouldn't really worry too much about our present description of the term, cause with the established setting it fits pretty well to just transfer the whole thing to an "aero navy".
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Just because we're using Naval terminology doesn't mean that it's part of the Navy. If you go by definitions:
Navy - The branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations at sea.
Air Force - The airborne branch of a country's armed forces.
Then Airships are airborne, therefore they are part of the Air Force.
Your definition is overly simplistic, and doesn't work for any nations military forces I can think of (it doesn't work for UK, France, Germany, US, Russia, etc.).
Dedicated air forces are a relatively young concept (starting 1918 with the RAF). Navy and Army forces have had their own air units for almost as long as there has been flight, and continue to do so.
I go with Navy. It works better with the style of the game. Two airships are based on nautical vessels (Galleon, Junker) and most of the armament is closer to naval or army examples.
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Guys you're all wrong.
It's quite obvious since we fly airships that it's administered by a nations naval air force armed unit division.
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Just because we're using Naval terminology doesn't mean that it's part of the Navy. If you go by definitions:
Navy - The branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations at sea.
Air Force - The airborne branch of a country's armed forces.
Then Airships are airborne, therefore they are part of the Air Force.
The Navy's got a pretty formidable airborne force in real life, man. These definitions are a bit flawed.
Each nation would call this something different, I'm pretty sure. Some would, I'm certain, refer to their fleets as a Navy. Others would likely call it something along the lines of an Air Corps. The less civilized of them might have some native word for Sky-Raider, or something equally metal. If there's a large and well known force, maybe even a common enemy amongst nations, the name of that large force might spread to several neighboring areas (including hostile ones) and replace their own word for the force.
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Even more interestingly, why would they have a Sea-based Navy at all? If you have a limited pool of resources to make an army with, why would you limit some of your force to naval engagements? Considering most of the factions will be waging ground wars, and will have to deal with difficult terrain (thinking The Wastes, here) it would make sense to put your resources into airships, and be able to attack any threat anywhere.
Also, we have to take into account that where we are in the timeline is at least a hundred years after Gabriel, meaning airships have been around for a while now. This leaves enough time for true Navies to be phased out, and simple fishing and immigrant convoys being all that remain. That, and we know the environment got messed up to high heaven- how the heck is there a warship in the middle of Duel at Dawn and in Dunes? It's clear the sea level must've dropped considerably, leaving many ships hung and dry. Factoring in all the environmental difficulties airships are the most sensible and easiest method of transport.
So, in terms of lore, humanity was at a WW1 stage- we had dreadnoughts, tanks and guns, verging on aerial combat. However, a catastrophic event caused a massacre of the human population. As this technology was ground breaking (and induced by an arms race) it was confined to a group of individuals, be that scientists and manufacturers. Due to the event, however, they were killed and the knowledge died with them. The reason why they held on to some technology is some people survived- say for example we had a similar event happen now. We'd retain knowledge we were taught, say if your profession was a doctor, but you wouldn't have a clue how to rebuild a car, let alone how to salvage parts from it. This is how they have partial knowledge and a disparity in technology. Some groups would've had completely different skill sets, we're still pre-Gabriel here.
Anyway, ignoring my massive tangent, there probably wasn't a proper fighting navy, simply a couple city-states defending themselves. Once air travel was perfected Empires became an option.
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Actually, that's a very good point that the terrain makes airships a necessity, which, in turn, makes seaships completely obsolete. And I don't think any of the factions would have needed a sea navy before the age of air, with the possible exceptions of Anglea and Chaladon, which I'd imagine probably had some form of sea navy before the age of air.
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To expand upon Wazulu's point about the obsolescence of a seaborn navy. I think it is incredibly likely that the traditionalists in charge of the navy would prefer to evolve their technology than acknowledge that their institution was obsolete and hand over power and prestige to a different organization.
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Assuming that the Handwavium physics that allows GOIO airships to fly at all hasn't completely buggered up the AM economy and moved it too far from reality..
Airships are fine for hauling high value, low volume commodities (high tech finished goods, people, ideas, etc.). But for the low value, high volume commodities (grain, coal, etc.) surface shipping is cheaper (unless there's some Handwavium thrown in to significantly up the cost of surface travel). I would assume that there is still a seagoing trade between coastal ports, and land caravans between inland cities. Where there is seagoing shipping, there will be navel forces to protect trade routes and enforce tariffs. It's cheaper to mount the armament of a Galleon into a seagoing equivalent, and the surface ship will be better able to cope with bad weather and storms. Surface ships are also effective at moving men and materiel in large numbers.
I'm interested to hear Muse's ideas for the AM economy. But I'd be disappointed if it uses airships for hauling all goods between every city.
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I do agree that there would almost definitely still be shipping and fishing through sea vessels, but I would say that they would still use airships to protect trade routes because the great thing about airships is their adaptability to different situations. For instance...
"We need to protect this sea trade route."
"Okay, lets send in a few airships."
Later...
"Well that sea trade route doesn't need protection anymore, but this land route does."
"Okay, we'll just use those same airships again to protect this trade route."
"Well, what about this air trade route?"
"After we're done with the land route, we can send the ships to patrol that route too."
etc. etc.
So you see the point, airships would make the sea navy and likely any kind of land navy (???) obsolete by being able to be used in any situation.
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Not really. Airships are a bit like aerial tanks. They can strike, but they can't take ground without assistance with mopping up, and they can't hold ground without assistance. Over the sea, they're fair-weather sailors at best. Their armour and fire power will always be limited compared to surface based alternatives - no matter how much Handwavium is thrown at them. They'll be blown by the wind, and eventually grounded by adverse conditions long before their surface equivalent need to head for home or port.
Look at the modern day. Tanks haven't replaced infantry, helicopters haven't replaced tanks. Maritime aircraft haven't replaced naval shipping. If you look at recent convoys in hostile territory - say Iraq or Afghanistan. Has the presence of helicopters removed the requirement for ground-based escorts? If not, why not? And is this any different to what's being postulated for GOIO AM? And look at modern seagoing shipping - has the availability of long-range aircraft and satellite surveillance reduced the need to physically station warships off the coast of Sudan to protect against piracy?
What is the context difference in GOIO AM that would cause things to be different? - Handwavium has made the physics of airship flight easier and cheaper, but has it affected the overall limitations of LTA transport or the balance of the roles of air/sea/land forces?
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Well, you could argue that airships would become the dominant force because of the difficult terrain you have to travel through, such as deserts wastes, mountains etc.
It's this that makes airships a huge necessity for land travel, being able to move seamlessly over rocky terrain at high speeds. And the difficulty of the terrain would probably lead to every faction adopting airships as their primary military force, needing airships themselves to counter airships. However, I don't think land forces have been completely abolished and, as you said, they would most certainly be needed to conquer settlements, but I still think they would, at least a lot of the time, be transported by airships.
You could also argue that a lack of plentiful resources makes airships the go-to option over sea ships. Say, for instance, an airship costed 100 metal and a sea ship costed 80 metal. You have 800 metal to spend and both land and sea borders to protect. You could go for 10 seaships and have an impenetrable sea border, but no land forces, you could go for 4 airships and 5 sea ships and have to split your total military force, or go for 10 airships and have a highly versatile force that can be used anywhere.
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go for 10 airships and have a highly versatile force that can be used anywhere.
.. to do very little.
You're directly equating the value of one airship with one of anything else. Airships are weak, poorly armed and fragile compared to surface vehicles.
What if your surface ship has a weapon loadout ten times more powerful with one hundred times the payload capacity? For less cost because you can make it from iron and steel with no need for expensive Handwavium?
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Okay, I'll admit my explanation could have been better.
But while I can admit that airships are fragile, I do not think they are poorly armed. If airships were your primary military force and you had a really powerful gun, you would find a way to put it on an airship, using all the handwavium you could find. I mean, obviously you won't be putting any fjords super cannons on there but you'd be able to put on it whatever you could on a land tank.
But, if a tank has the same, if not better firepower as an airship, and has heavier armour, and is cheaper, why would they ever go obsolete?
Because they're just too immobile for the GoI world. With all the difficult terrain and vast open deserts, you would either not be able to get to your destination, or get there a week later than you should have. Say you have an emergency on the other side of the country. With an airship you're there in a few days and ready for action. With a tank or foot army you're there in a few weeks and are too late to help.
So, while more expensive and, in battle, airships may not be as useful as land forces, the difference is not enough to sacrifice the versatility of an airship. And this, along with things like resource scarcity and their use as a counter to other airships, is what likely made the factions shift their militaries entirely in the direction of airships.
(Btw, I'm really enjoying the debate)
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None of these weapons of war would go obsolete, because each of them has an application. Decide that you only want airships and see how another force that integrates airships with conventional arms steamrolls right over you.
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o o
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o o <- airship fleet - holding at 5 km altitude
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. \--- tanks armed with heavy-merc like weapons
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Haha, I was going to describe that very problem, and a solution of sorts, but it seems you beat me to it, Keon.
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You've got to land sooner or later.
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You've got to land sooner or later.
Yeah, in a few weeks if you're really unlucky. Really begs the question of what an airship's max altitude is.
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Uhm what about Flak canons? There were more then one model able to shoot up at to that hight (even before WWII)
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We go back to the point about lost technology. We have Flak Cannons (Although they aren't actual Flak guns, no) but the problem still remains that the propulsion method simply isn't up to scratch. If I had to guess I'd say they were operated via pressure system, a version considerably less efficient than the method used by today's standards. That, and the rounds fired are unlikely to be of high quality or possess much aerodynamic potential, resulting in extreme limits on the range of weaponry.
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If they're able to build ships that rule the air I don't think nobody bothers to invent ground based anti aircraft weaponry. it's not that hard either. Also if technology was lost, before there were airships there must've been Ships, Roads or even Trains. You don't simply switch from 2 dimensional transport to 3 dimensional. There must've been remains of the world before that apocalyptic end.
We come more down to the question what fits more into the univers of airships. But since this is our world it plays in we can judge by previous events in our history.
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Here's an idea, maybe, before the age of air, all the different nations were extremely independent from each other to the point of rarely ever meeting, and not bothering to put in the effort to build things like railway lines. It was only after airships were created, and long distance travel became easy, that the factions started to have international deals and diplomacy. This would also explain how all the different factions have such wildly different governments and cultures, because they never really had any contact with anyone else.
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Here's an idea, maybe, before the age of air, all the different nations were extremely independent from each other to the point of rarely ever meeting, and not bothering to put in the effort to build things like railway lines. It was only after airships were created, and long distance travel became easy, that the factions started to have international deals and diplomacy. This would also explain how all the different factions have such wildly different governments and cultures, because they never really had any contact with anyone else.
That is... actually the lore you know :P No but yeah, in the age of dust everyone clinged on to their own small settlements, and traveling between them were troublesome to say the least. But after Gabriels escapades, and the re-invention of airships, the people could reclaim the land once more.
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aight if that's the story we could stick with that then :P
I just have the problem with this when it comes to expansion of your land. Every race/faction would normally want to expand their territory of influence. Resource gathering and exploration would be almost inevitable. Whoever got the technology first would be declared the most advanced civilisation. As we know each faction has their own style/type of ariships. So some kind of knowledge must've been passed on. There are civilzations living on the water who I don't think never crossed the seas.
Also trains would not only be faster but could also be more efficent in carrying heavy loads of stuff around. I live in the alps and we have a train network since 1898. Even if the world got departed i find very unlikely that they had no knowledge of each others existence.
But yeah just my opinion. I'm happy with whatever the storywriter comes up :D
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I think it's rather, they knew other people existed, but they didn't care. They didn't bother trying to build railroads because it would be too much effort. Only when airships made long-distance travel easy did they say, "Hey, those guys up in the rusted range, maybe we should pay a visit? It would only take like a day or two." And then would begin the relationship between the two nations.
And, of course Chaladon, being an island nation and having to deal only with sea as an obstacle, probably would visit across the sea because travel by boat is easy, but they'd likely only visit coastal areas. So, a few nations probably did know each other before the age of air, because it's a hell of a lot easier to travel long sea distances by boat than long, rocky, desert filled land distances by foot.
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I hate to burst your balloon, Keon, but there are plenty of WW2 aircrew that never made it home because of FLugzeugAbwehrKanone (flak), and they were flying a lot higher than 5,000 meters. Heck, they were pushing 6,500+ and that was without pressurization or heaters. Anything over 3,000 meters for extended periods and you'll want to be sucking air from a canister.
Also, the pressure that steam operates at would dramatically decrease at altitude, even super-heated or super-pressurized steam, so you'd be seeing almost no gain from steam-powered anything at height. For those of you who live in high-altitude areas (looking at you, Colorado), think how much longer it takes you to boil water and how much quicker the water cools down. I think the anime Steamboy legitimately put all the real issues with steampunk together into one movie and solved them with a wavy-handy-ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain type manner.
Pickle is right, you gotta land sometime and somewhere, and airships don't capture and control ground. Just like a navy can't retain control of land that it rains lead onto, it can set up some awesome blockades. (Hence, my support for the airships as navy viewpoint.)
But, wavy-handy aside, communities and nations are isolated, airships are the major mode of transportation, and land routes are limited and treacherous. That's the awesome thing about fiction, and Muse seems to have theirs fleshed out fairly well.
Edit: Fixed Pickle's name. No 's' involved.
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the pressure, even super-pressurized steam, so you'd be seeing almost no gain
System internals are closed off to pressure, however systems will expand/contract etc. Couldn't find it on wikipedia, but high altitude planes, such as the U-2, will leak fuel at ground level due to being made to be a perfect fit at higher altitudes. Made in 1950s. Regardless, all I've found on google is people mentioning steam engines lose no power at high altitudes, and read once or twice that efficiency is higher. Your statement contradicts itself, which is why I quoted it. Super-pressurized + lower pressure = same pressure or still higher pressure.
For those of you who live in high-altitude areas (looking at you, Colorado), think how much longer it takes you to boil water and how much quicker the water cools down.
Cools down the same, unless you mean it going from steam to liquid.
You gotta land sometime and somewhere, and airships don't capture and control ground. Just like a navy can't retain control of land that it rains lead onto, it can set up some awesome blockades. (Hence, my support for the airships as navy viewpoint.)
marines
Navy, under the same concepts that decide space warfare would be conducted by Navy. See the Navy's page for seal astronauts.
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Have to agree to some degree with Thug Willis up there. While our ships are made for 4 man crews, we have to admit that it would likely take a few more for extended operations. Every last one of these ships would otherwise be considered a short range vehicle due to lack of cargo space, the absence of berthing areas and a galley.
Four man crew plus a couple of fireteams? Depending on the training of those men, you could employ them in the same vein as ground troops, even going so far as to get them within a couple miles of a ground objective (quickly, if we're using a squid) and dropping them for movement to contact.
If we're going to start considering the applications of these ships, consider two things only: Logistics, and the limits of your imaginations.
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Okay, have you ever had something that sounded better in your mind than when you wrote it down? Well, that's kind of what I did with the steam portion on my post. Learned a thing or two about closed steam systems after Thug Willis' post. I was thinking more of open system without any regard for closed systems. Closed systems with superheated steam do perform excellently at altitude. I think an issue would be air induction for heating the boiler, but I don't recall seeing boilers on the ships. And I meant to say the speed to boil water is faster at altitude, and the condensation is quicker. Grah. But thanks for the boot to the rear.
The plane that you're talking about is the SR-71, built in the 60's. Its fuselage and other components would expand into place because of the heat caused by the friction of the molecules in the atmosphere being compressed against the leading edges of the aircraft. The U2 is a high-altitude, relatively slow-speed, jet-powered sailplane.
Marines are a tricky thing, because we're not very good at long-term strategic occupation. We don't have the logistics for that. We're assaulters. Occupation is usually what the army is there for. But that's not saying that the merchant marine had the ability to move vast numbers of troops. Look at the Liberty vessels during the Second World War; Navy civilian merchant marine and moved hundreds of thousands of troops.
The ships that we have in game are more comparable to brown water corvettes or gunships. Relatively lightly armed and armored, with a minimal crew manning it. Could you put troops on them? Sure. We did something similar with Marine Raiders during WWII. Does it have long term viability? Need the logistics. Completely viable in a fictional Steampunk world where the engines don't make any mechanical sense? Absolutely. I look forward to where they go with it.
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You're saying we a lot up there. What's your MOS?
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Okay, have you ever had something that sounded better in your mind than when you wrote it down? I was thinking more of open system without any regard for closed systems.
Lol. I haven't looked at the engines, I usually just slap them and move to the next part. About to look. When I was typin I thought it would probably be open system, but pretended like it wasn't.
~I don't see anything besides gears and propellers.
The ships that we have in game are more comparable to brown water corvettes or gunships. Relatively lightly armed and armored, with a minimal crew manning it. Could you put troops on them? Sure.
Seems more comparable to submarines or any surface ship that isnt a carrier to me. I'm thinking of LCSs.
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Quite a big difference between a DD (destroyer), a FF (frigate), a CG (cruiser) and a LCS (I'm assuming that you meant the Littoral); although the LCS is an apt modern day comparison. Small, sleek, lightly armed and armored, minimally crewed, and a survivability of close to nothing. Yep, those're our airships. :P Although I'm a little more old-fashioned when it comes to comparing the airships to waterborne ships; I always think of them as sailing vessels.
Charon, see your PM.
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Check.
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The airships of GOI from a political sense are a navy. The navy is used to impose a nation's will over trade, all the guns and torpedoes are for frightening off other nations from using their navies to impose their will over your trade. The airforce's roll is more to destroy infrastructure and prevent your enemy from doing the same back to you. You can't blockade a port, seize contraband, or impose tariffs with an air force. You can however do that with an airship fleet.
It would be extreamly difficult for an airship to be used in an infrastructure destroying capacity if that infrastructure was defended by the same weapons available in the game world. The airships can't fly high enough to be unhitable from the air based weapons in the game much less any beefier ground based variants that don't have to worry about weight. That plus bunkers would have better armor than an airship due to the complete lack of weight restrictions. So using an airship to fight through a fortified position would be next to impossible. If normal airplanes still exist (which the orriginal GOI and adventure mode seem to indicate), those airplanes would be much better suited for infrastructure destroying raids and therefor be the GOI equivalent to an air force.
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I could see a massive airship with an enormous cannon (heavy howitzer, anyone?) bombarding a port from afar.
These are definitely navel vessels, and now that I think about current ships, it wouldn't be hard to imagine an Airship carrier that houses a dozen Squids as almost-airforce.
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I could see a massive airship with an enormous cannon (heavy howitzer, anyone?) bombarding a port from afar.
These are definitely navel vessels, and now that I think about current ships, it wouldn't be hard to imagine an Airship carrier that houses a dozen Squids as almost-airforce.
There wouldn't be a point in that, that's like a carrier launching out speedboats. It would have to launch out something similar to airplanes, traveling at speeds MUCH faster than the carrier/normal ships. Other wise why not just have this giant ship blow the crap out whatever, or just carry around normal ships with more fire power to survivability to cost efficiency.
It would be extreamly difficult for an airship to be used in an infrastructure destroying capacity if that infrastructure was defended by the same weapons available in the game world. The airships can't fly high enough to be unhitable from the air based weapons in the game much less any beefier ground based variants that don't have to worry about weight. That plus bunkers would have better armor than an airship due to the complete lack of weight restrictions. So using an airship to fight through a fortified position would be next to impossible.
Amphibious invasion has been historically inefficient (reference Seal Team Eight, the book, idk proper notation), which is why you don't do it except as a last resort, or when you're 100% sure you can sustain the heavy loss to take the position. As seen with D-Day, WW2. Navies dry out countries, they don't invade (except with Marines and the proper invasion point. You were saying it, but you don't explain it very well. Also, they wouldn't go high they would go far with long range weapons. Hitting a stationary target from multiple moving positions will be easier than hitting multiple moving targets from a stationary position imo.
I agree with most of what you said though.
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I like Zenark's idea. The whole airship carrier full of airships is rather amusing, but that type of thing has been done before. I don't think smaller airships would be carried, but given that there are monoplanes existing in the Guns of Icarus world, I could see something like the USS Akron (a rigid airship that carried Sparrowhawk pursuit biplanes) or heck, Don Karnage's Iron Vulture from TaleSpin (am I dating myself here?). That would be rather neat to see monoplanes being launched from underneath a behemoth airship.
And putting a heavy gun in an airborne craft is nothing new. Aircraft that I can think of are the British Mosquito Mk.18, the Ju-88P, and the B-25G Mitchell. All with super-heavies (for aircraft). I think something like 75mm or so.
But that brings to point what HamsterIV was talking about. The airspeed velocity of a coconut-laden swallow. No, not really, but it is a matter of weight ratio. Airships, steampunk or otherwise, will always be carrying the lighter-weight weapons. They need to. Whereas ground installations can have as heavy and as powerful as they possibly can field; weapons that can not only out-distance the effective range of an airborne arsenal, but out explodey it too. Hitting a stationary target is fine, it sucks when that stationary target can also bring to bear more firepower and withstand more beating than you for a longer period of time.
The hitting of moving targets isn't much an issue, because all you need to do is hit the section of the airspace that they're in. One thing my great-uncle, who was a waist gunner for a B-24 during the Second World War, always mentioned, was how terrifying the flak fields were. Because it was so thick, so precise, so impersonal, and so invisible. All you saw was the puff of black smoke, not the fragments of shrapnel nor the rounds ascending. And there were tens of thousands of rounds all trying to occupy the same airspace that you were in.
Also, in the concept that you can just bombard a defense into submission and it'll work, well, I have an island to sell you on that idea. It's called Iwo Jima, and the American brass thought that after a three days of bombardment (some of which was 14-inch munitions) that the Japanese would be so shell-shocked that the American forces could just relatively waltz in. Instead, the Japanese kept their heads down, dusted themselves off, and some 36 days later, after 26,000 American casualties and almost 22,000 Japanese dead, Americans had secured the island.
Defense and offense are always vying against each other, and ground to air defense is always a better bet than air to ground assault (given relatively equal technology advances).
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The use of the word 'beam' in the signal commands: "Enemy sighted on port beam!'
Contextualises the airships as naval vessles.
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Navy always covered land sea and space.... so i mean that's a thing but the navy has more aviators then the airforce.... which is the same awkward note that shows the army having more boats then the navy. either way i would say these are navy.
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Yeah, but the Army's only rockin' tugboats, recon ships, a log train and some landing craft. Not nearly as close a comparison to the Navy/Air Force debate here.
But again, unless every nation has some kind of standardized terminology, they're probably going to have their own weird words for it. There may not even be a precedent that they can remember to name it after.
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The Airship fleet is the law enforcement arm of the Department of Transportation (DoT). The DoT is responsible for inter city infrastructure which, in this world without highways, is airships. The DoT funds itself by collecting taxes on intercity trade and maintaining airship docking stations. As we have seen, these airships can't land on their own. In fact the DoT forbids the construction of any airship without the pesky bottom fins to protect their monopoly on docking facilities. The airships that we fly in Guns of Icarus are out to enforce the DoT's will on a variety of issues ranging from tax evasion, illegal docking facilities, piracy, and smuggling.
Just like until 2003 the US Secret Service were agents of the Treasury department, so are we agents of a benign sounding yet ruthless bureaucracy.