Re: Fighters and Hangers

--- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:
> If all the ship's surface systems are shot away, it turns into a
> drifting hulk rather than a cloud of debris - but it is nevertheless
> "destroyed" in FT terms, since it can no longer manoeuvre or fire 
> weapons and has no hopes of repairing any of the damage within the 
> time frame of the battle.

And if you give it its proper size and hull integrity, then in game
terms, it does have the crew (DCPs) to repair systems and continue the
engagement, barring heavy use of needle-type attacks.

> 
> >RE: relationship between fighters and ships
> >OO responded:
> > >In Star Wars the smallest FTL-capable ships are single-person
> > >fighters (eg. X-wings), not Corellian Corvettes.
> >
> >They may be the smallest FTL *craft*, but I would not count them as
> >*ships*.
> 
> And why not? Merely because they're called "fighters" in the SW
> canon, or because you need a distinction between them and the 
> Corellian ships to have a reason to claim that mass scale is too 
> low to allow SSDs to be playable, or for some other reason?

None of the above.  I see the differences as paralleling wet navy
distinctions:
small craft
boats
ships
but ignoring colloquialisms, like calling submarines "boats" and
super-high tech settings were the ship can run itself.

Ships have large crews and are equipped for extended voyages.

Boats have smaller crews and are equipped for shorter voyages.

Craft have minimal crew and are equipped for very brief voyages.

For the space settings, small craft would not have galley or sleeping
accommodations and often only 1-4 crew who are all required for general
(non-combat) operation.  Maximum medical facilities are first aid and
emergency survival-type kits.  Includes fighters/bombers, shuttles,
pinnaces, gigs, etc., often max life support endurance measured in
hours or days.	Yes, pilots might sleep/meditate/torpor in the cockpit.
 Once you get to bunks, you are straddling the line between craft and
boats.	As technology increases (and crews decrease correspondingly),
the same tasks shift towards craft classification e.g. B-36 -> B-52 ->
B-1B -> B-2.

Boats in this setting would have galley and sleeping accommodations and
a larger crew.	Minimal medical facilities, i.e. stowed
equipment/supplies but no dedicated facilities, with 1 or more crew
members cross-trained to the standards of "medic's assistant".	The
crew is large enough that for general ops there are enough crew to
stand at least two watches.  Includes system patrol vessels, Honor
Harrington LACs, etc.  Max LS is often measured in 10s of days or
weeks.	Equivalent to wet navy MTBs, PTs, PCGs, etc.

Ships in a sci-fi space setting have full crew accommodations and
include personnel upkeep facilities missing in boats such as medical
facilities with at least 1 crew member specialist, whether "ship's
surgeon", "corpsman", "sick bay attendant", or whatever.  Minimum
training equals paramedic or equivalent, larger ships with qualified
nurse and/or doctor, etc.  Larger ships intended for long deployments
require additional specialists, both officers and enlisted for the care
of the crew which, on a boat, either would not be required (dentist,
barber) or are duties shared by the small crew (cook, security).

This s for military vessels and craft.	Civilians and merchants will
have smaller crews.

Thus the Corellian Corvette/Gunship/Blockade Runner is a quite small
"ship", while the Corellian Freighter is a civilian "boat"; 2 to
operate minimally, 4-8 to crew fully in combat.

> 
> Looking at another of your example SF backgrounds B5 StarFuries and
> other single-person fighters are explicitly called "ships" in that
> background.  If the B5 StarFuries qualify as "ships", why don't SW 
> X-wings and similar do so?

1) I don't remember them being called "ships".	Can you refer me to an
episode so I can check?

2) It is common practice for modern pilots, both military and naval, to
refer to fighters, bombers, and helicopters as their "ships".  This
dates to before WW2.  In no way would anyone believe these machines are
in the same category of endurance and capabilities as a destroyer,
cruiser, battleship or fleet carrier.  The context of the dialog would
have to be examined.  

> 
> I'm sorry, Jared, but I get the impression that you have already
> decided that SDDs and similar huge craft are unplayable and that you 
> are now actively searching for arguments to keep them that way. What
> I don't understand is *why* you do this.
> 

No, I have decided that massive super-vessels cannot be used
*simultaneously with small craft*.  There is a big difference between
that and "are unplayable period".  If the small craft drop off to
insignificance, then the supership is just fine as long as you don't
care about the small craft.  The problem occurs when you want the
fighters to matter.

> >We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise.
> >Using Dean Gundberg's SSD as a reference, sectional ships seem much
> >weaker than the same systms on a single ship because
> >
> >1) a much lower amount of damage will cause threshold checks
> >2) area effect weapons can be interpreted to affect more than one
> > section
> >3) a single section can be critical to the ship, and concentrating
> > on that can eliminate the ship while bypassing the rest of the
> > ship's strength.
> 
> You have just listed three of the six main reasons why large ships
> cost so much in the CPV system, and thus also why breaking them up 
> into sections would reduce their total CPVs.
> 

As I have no experience with CPV, that is a meaningless referent for
me.

J