Re: FT: Carriers

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 02:47:15PM -0800, Brian Bilderback wrote:
>Roger Burton West wrote:
>>If they're going to be re-entering, and your ship's in orbit, you want
>>to fire them downwards and backwards more than anything else.
>Which should be downwards and backwards?  Do you mean the fighters?  If
so, 
>why?  Reentry heat?  What about shielded underfuselages?

Delta-V. The fighter needs to change its velocity vector from "forwards
round the orbit" to some approximation of "down"; almost certainly it'll
want to reenter at less than orbital speed, because of heating concerns.
Firing it backwards along the orbit pushes it in the appropriate
direction.

>This is the image I had:  Large ships orbiting on station, noses
pointed 
>"Down", allowing their fighters/small craft to do a "Controlled fall" 
>towards the surface.  In the Renegade Legion universe, this is how Grav

>tanks do hot drops during invasions.

I can see two approaches:

(1) environment is safe enough to ship to hover on its tail; fighters
will be moving backwards relative to the ship in order to get to the
planet.

(2) ship is orbiting; fighteres need to decelerate relative to ship.

So I'd expect to see carriers optimised for planetary assault with
rear-firing fighter launch tubes.