Re: Fighters and Hangers

At 9:36 PM +0100 2/25/04, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
>
>...and also crammed full of equipment like rapid refuelling and 
>rearming gear which is absent in the small craft bays. While a 
>fighter group could land in a

Men with hoses and ordinance handing gear work the same on an LPH as 
they do on a CV as they do on the ground next to trucks and 
hovercraft. You're probably pumping the same kind of fuels if you're 
smart about your fuel trains.

>small craft bay it can't be refueled or rearmed nearly as rapidly 
>there as they could in a proper fighter bay (in game terms: they 
>can't re-launch); and a small craft doesn't fit inside a fighter bay 
>unless you jettison all the fighter support equipment first.

Some of this seems a matter of design philosophy. I started thinking 
more about this when I was designing an LPH for interface craft. 
What's the overall difference between a bay for interface craft and 
fighters? Both are craft that work in a vacuum. Both types of craft 
need fuel, ordinance and other kit as well as methods to load. In the 
context of an LPH, you could have one large bay (think of the well 
deck and landing decks as one internal volume now.

This really points to fighter launch facilities needing separate 
costs from their handling and recovery facilities. The only real 
argument I can see is the catapults to launch them out for combat ops 
with extra velocity as opposed to flying them out of an open bay. Not 
much difference overall between the lower deck Cats on some early 
WWII aircraft carriers and the upper deck catapults.

>>One could argue that the bays are in fact all one big bay with 
>>redundant systems. Overall cost is the same. 1.5 mass for the 
>>hanger for 1 mass of craft.
>
>Except that according to St^3 Jon fighters aren't 1 mass; they're
smaller...

It's one of those fuzzy sizes that they're effectively 1 mass.

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