Fighter beys &c.

In message <01IGCA9XKD2W9GVUX8@avion.stsci.edu> SHADOW means never
having to say you're sorry writes:
> External Fighter Racks Topic below - no spoilers here
>
> Going on a bad analogy, why are there dedicated carrier ships in wet
navies?
> What purpose does it serve to have hangar bays for fighters on these
ships?
> You can prolly draw parallels between the functions and duties of
fighters
> bays on a starship, and those of hangar bays in wet navies.

Wet naval analogies aren't always so bad, since they form the basis
of the SF cliches that drive FT. I feel obliged, however, to point
out that one recent (recent meaning 15 years ago) military campaign 
notably used impressed merchant shipping as platforms for fighter
aircraft to be IIRC transported in, and flown from, at least in a CAP 
role (rather than as a heavily laden bomb-truck requiring a runway). 
Harriers, natch. Vacuum makes it rather tricky to clear the decks and 
hop on/off/under a plane on deck tho'. OTOH there's no stall speed,
so it's all VTOL.

Tooling around with the descriptive design thing, I had occaision to
ponder many core FT rules/ideas and I did get to thinking about
fighters. I think there's much room in FT for the use of fighters to
be much more involved, and to make specialised carriers much more
interesting, particulary if they incorporate some of the fighter 
movement ideas floating around. A basic "fighter bay" could be much 
as in FT now, and be fitted to dreadnoughts and the like as a 
multipurpose store/launch/recover facility. For carriers these 
functions could be broken down. Specialised launch tubes could 
launch fighter to much faster velocities than allowed for normal bays. 
Specialised recovery systems could recover fighters with a greater 
tolerance. Combined this could give carrier based fighters a greater
effective operational radius tha normal (because velocities would be
higher). Storage bays could hold fighters in a more efficient way 
(less mass) so that true carriers could have really serious fighter 
complements. All with seperate display symbols and threshold rolls, 
natch.

Parasite racks? I suggest that due to the neglegable maintainance
these fighters get that each group takes a 1-die hit before combat
to determine how many effectives survive the journey. A gamble,
then.

-- 
David Brewer