Re: Space carrier fighter philosphy

John and Roxanne Leary wrote:

>     I do feel this discussion is just another attempt to justify
> a larger compliment aboard a carrier.   If you feel the need to
> do so, just do it!   There is no 'permission slip' required.
> To drag out something I suggested the first time 'round:
>     Double the number of fighters on the carrier, pay the costs,
> and as you launch two squadrons move two of the spares into the
> now enpty bays and ready them for launch.
>
> Bye for now,
> John L.

  Actually I think it does have relevance for a campaign game.	In a
one off battle I would prefer to have as many ready fighters and the
capability to use them all.  However, if in a campaign, replacing
fighters becomes an issue and how to get those fighters (since they
have no integral FTL  <unless its Starwars or Bab5 jumpgate> there
is no easy way to transport fighters to the front.  This leads to the
question of 1) are all fighters transported to forward bases in
freighters, presumably in a space saving configuration that requires
some assembly and testing or 2) is a method of transporting fighters
to the front that makes them mobile, but perhaps unarmed - much like
ferrying fighters to Europe from the US today.	In a campaign the
admirals would obviously like to see a method which gets the most
fighters to the front with the least amount of preparation at the sharp
end - front line crews are going to have a hard enough time keeping
the equipment they have in order.  And so the discussion is revolving
around this sort of grey area of a freighter/carrier.  At one end is the
pure freighter - you can stack X amount of fighters per mass and it will
take Y amount of time to get them ready.  At the other end is a light
fragile carrier that can carry a bunch of fighters in ready to fly mode,
perhaps unarmed perhaps not that would allow fighters to be readied
within the time frame of a FT battle.  One of the questions to be asked
then is does the economics of the background support these types of
ships?	In peacetime, it does not make much sense to have a lot of
auxillary carriers - peactime budgets are going to have a hard enough
time keeping and maintaining the frontline classes unless there is a
need
for this type of carrier as a low-level peace keeper.  In this case it
would
seem that shipping fighters in bulk in freighters would be the most
common
method of transport.  At war footing, lots of fighters may be produced
and
required at the front and so several auxillary carriers - perhaps even
converted from bulk merchants would probably be devised to fill this
need.
In this example I would take a bulk merchant, use 9 mass for one
launching
bay and use the remainder of the cargo mass for fighters.  The
assumption
would be that a setup fighter would require about 1 mass worth of weight
and space to maneuver and work on.  Since only one bay's worth of mass
was dedicated as a launch facility, the carrier would be limited to
launching
one squadron at a time and repairing or preparing one squadron at a
time.
What this would mean is that if it took a day to prep a squadron from
storage to flight capable that a carrier with only one working bay would
take the better part of a week to prep all the fighters it carried
(assuming
6 squadron carried)

Another question to be asked is how quick can you prep a fighter?  There
is a great difference between land based aircraft and carrier based
aircraft - and even within carrier based aircraft.  For instance I
assume
a Harrier can be stored in a relatively ready to fly manner - load up
some
fuel and armnament and it's ready to go.  An A-6 requires a bit more
work
since you need to unfold the wings, which you can only do really on the
flight deck, but because of the design it could be fuelled and armed
below
decks.	Most planes nowadays are flown to the end user, not sent packed
away, but what if you had to pack them, even if it was to make loading
and unloading easier - you would need to stuff them into a container
with
appropriate restraints so that the fighter didn't bounce around when the
container moved or the transport accelerated.  How long to remove the
restraints and extract the fighter?  The fighter would probably be
shipped
cold and powered down - how long for a systems check?  To minimize
the hazard of transporting them, they would be empty of fuel - how long
to refuel - both main and reserve tanks? Prepping a fighter from cold
storage is much longer than rearming and refueling an active one.  Is
this
something that would occure in a FT battle time frame or would this take
days?  If it took too long I would definietly support the idea of an
auxillary carrier that could burn in fighters while in transit and
produce
fighters that were ready to fly, if not fight when it got to it's
destination.
The difference would be in armoring, weaponry and cargo capacity.  If
I can get an auxillary carrier with the same capacity or greater than a
fleet carrier for less cost I would purchase one for transport duties if
it provided an edge in delivering fighters to the front in a more
ready state. This would allow the fleet carriers to remain on station,
rather than having to return to base to rearm or be docked in a
vulnerable manner to a freighter and use valuable space and crews
to try to bring up fighters to combat readiness.

--My 10 cents worth
--Binhan