RE: Re: Fighters

At 1:19 PM -0700 5/7/02, Brian Bilderback wrote:
>
>Hmmmmm....
>
>Not sure I agree with this.  Not sure I disagree, either.  However, 
>it is ironic that this brings us back to my original question about 
>connecting multiple fighter bays to 1 ops deck (launch/recovery 
>system).

The problem isn't fighters. The problem is fighters in such massive 
numbers that ships get eaten like biblical locusts settling on 
fields. If you've got that many fighters flying around just killing 
stuff, why aren't you killing those carriers? Where are those 
carriers? So what we do is make it so Soap Bubble carriers are hard 
if not impossible to make.

Fighters get launched out of a Cat with a 24" direct move in from the 
carrier. That Catapult needs to really throw that group out there. 
Its not releasing them like in B5, it's throwing them out there. That 
means the fighters get shot out in a ballistic path from the carrier. 
So that massive structure needs to be aligned with the ship and has 
to be really solid. I take it Kra'Vak ships are generally pretty 
solid what with their large rail guns. We postulate that the cats 
need a good solid ship so unless the ship is already a fast mover 
(and can impart energy then turn) then you need a solid ship. Average 
Hull. Lighter hulls are allowed for smaller ships as they have less 
bending.

Up the the 1.5 masses to 2 masses and break it out.

.5 mass for recovery and .5 for launch and .5 for service and .5 for 
spares/consumables/armaments/aircrew/flight crew stowage.

One can fiddle with the amounts you have for each available for 
launch, storage and recovery. But one impacts the other. You'll get 
some carriers like the Early US and Japanese carriers that had Cats 
on the	second deck. Or you can dispense with Cats and have the 
fighters launch from bays. They start out at the same V as the ship 
and are optimized for zero speed recovery. The trick is that they 
have to use an endurance factor to launch and an endurance factor to 
recover if they don't just hang with the ship in escort mode. (Its 
still not true vector, but it helps.)

Or I could build an escort carrier that has fighters that launch and 
just escort the ship. They spend lots of time hovering around the 
ship, they don't spend endurance unless they leave or fight. If they 
come into hover, they spend an endurance.

Fighters launched by a Cat do get a free move no endurance cost. 
Normal fighter movement is no endurance cost. Combat still is 1 
endurance factor.

I could have a Fleet Carrier with Cats enough to launch 3 fighter 
groups, recover 2 per turn and space enough for 8 fighter groups, my 
turn around time would be limited by the smaller number of rearmament 
bays. It really all depends.

All of this would make the carrier players think about the fighter 
functions more and build the carriers as more than just a Launching 
platform that carries them around.

Think about the structure and play with the system....

-- 
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
- Ryan Montieth Gill			     '01 Honda Insight -
- rmgill@SPAmindspring.com			    '85 CB700S -
- ryan.gill@SPAMturner.com		 '76 Chevy Monte Carlo -
- www.mindspring.com/~rmgill		       '72 Honda CB750 -
-				      '60 Daimler FV701H Mk2/3 -
-				   '42 Daimler Scout Car Mk II -
-	      I speak not for CNN, nor they for me	       -
----------------------------------------------------------------
-    Smart ID cards in the US, Smart ID cards in Hong Kong,    -
-		      what is the difference?		       - 
----------------------------------------------------------------
-  C&R-FFL  /  Protect your electronic rights!	  \ EFF-ACLU   -
- SAF & NRA/  Join the EFF!  http://www.eff.org/   \ DoD #0780 -
----------------------------------------------------------------