Re: Fighters....Re: Full Thrust vs Starmada

> 
> >even with a religious directive to enable them, a force  would have a
hard
> time affording to train a huge number of expendable "crew".... The
> strikeboat concept is a fun one to play with sometime, but it's not
truly
> viable in a "real world" way.
> 
> At the high end, say 200 strike boats with 10 crew each, total 2000
out of
> a population of at least a billion.  Add in official government
> encouragement, either indirect ("your five year old looks like a sweet
> girl, it'd be a shame if something was to happen to her") or direct
("your
> vessel doesn't have FTL, so if you want a ride back, you'd better
win"),
> and you'll get crews. And most of the strikeboats are on patrol duty
and
> therefore not expended anyway. I think the platform cost is more
likely to
> be the problem, but YMMV, of course.
> 

    Yeah, but this would be the "adjunct" portion I was talking about. 
Those
  200 strike boats are scattered all over hell's half acre, not
concentrated
  together as your "fleet".  There's still a number of 6000 point fleets
who
  are there for the main fighting.  What I'm saying is that a large
strike boat
  only fleet is not truly viable.  While it might be possible to very 
  occasionally assemble truly large numbers of those strikeboats for
major
  operations, it's far more likely that there's 5 to 10 of them working 
  together with your local fleet elements.  It means those 6000-point,
150 
  strike boat fleets just aren't really very likely outside of the
"throw 
  together a one off force for a pickup game" type of thing.  Most 6000
point
  forces consisting of more normal ships are far more likely as "real"
fleets.

    In any case, it's not finding the bodies that's necessarily the
problem 
  (although depending on the culture, it might be), it's the cost of
training
  them and training their replacements.  Those 2000 men are expected to
die
  quickly when war comes.  If they're killed in 1/4 the time it takes to
train
  a replacement, then you're going to have to have something like 4 to 5
spare
  crews ready to go per active boat just to maintain the force (and that
  presumes you can build the boats that fast).	That may be a
maintainable 
  rate during war time, but it's likely to be a huge logistical drain
any time
  else.  Actually you can make similiar arguments about those huge
fighter
  forces.  One of the main reasons you wouldn't see them is because of
the 
  vast amount of resources they use up during peacetime.  Now if the war
lasts
  significantly longer than the time needed to train crew and build
super large
  carriers, all bets are off.

    Sorry, didn't mean to take this seriously....  :-)

   grant