Re: [FT] Should all Beams fire at fighters/ordinance?

--- Chris DeBoe <LASERLIGHT@QUIXNET.NET> wrote:
...
> > Any fighter which is attacking probably isn't
> > evading at all,
> 
> Yours may not be.  Mine have Auto-Evade, doesn't
> occupy the pilot's
> attention and keeps him alive.
> 

Auto evade (say that means jinking about the sky/
space) would tend to make manual firing somewhat
problematic. You *could* have automated targetting
systems which compensated, but then really you're
just one step away from programming the whole attack
and just carrying the pilot along for the ride.

Besides, 10G is pretty severe. Even if you have 
some kind of advanced acceleration compensators
(a la Star Trek) to keep the pilot from being
too busy being crushed to do much, the ship is
still undergoing considerable stress. This 
probably isn't the best moment to fire a laser,
railgun, or missile for optimum effect. I would
think even if you *could* hit your target under
these conditions, you'd be able to hit it a lot
better if you didn't do this kind of superjinking,
at least at the moment of release. You might well
find you had to develop all kinds of things to
release weapons under that kind of load. Even
the internal parts of the weapon might not work
under those conditions unless they're specifically
designed to do so (and it would make the bird a
lot more expensive).

So what I'm saying is you can imagine anything
you like for your fighters and no one can tell
you it's not true as long as it doesn't provoke
a rule change (I do that for other parts of my
background). However, I just have a somewhat hard
time believing that fighters are doing this kind
of hard maneuvering AT weapon release time.

Any actual fighter pilots out there who can comment
on what gets done with modern aircraft?

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35