octagon999 Posted March 11, 2004 Report Share Posted March 11, 2004 I was thinking that it would be very logical to have a smaller fighter bay/drone rack available. I was thinking about current era ships which have a flight deck/helipad for a couple of auxilliary planes/helicopters and thought something similar would be appropriate for our starships. What brought this up was when wanting to make ships to have a small number of fighter types (or drone types) either in battle (using a few fighters for CAP) or patrolling warp points (patrol craft) without devoting 10,000 tons of space to such an endeavour. Similar reasons for a small amount of drones if you have gone the drone route. You could call them Flight Decks, or Fighter Pods, or something similar, make them 500 - 1000 tons each, and if you wanted to add a little overhead tonnage so that they aren't as efficient as a full-fledged fighter bay but are used for the intended uses. Setting aside a small space on a ship to add fighter/drone capability. The max space I would think would be appropriate would be around 1000 tons, and if you give it a 10% overhead, then it would cost 1100 in weight. This would be enough for a line ship to add a couple of gunboats, or a few patrol craft. Something like that. Anyways, insert drone for fighter wherever appropriate. Respectfully submitted, Thomas A. Adams Secretary to the Chancellor Rathe Federation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ur Lord Tedric Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Something else, in a similar vein, it would be good to know, is how Fighters/Drones are treated in combat - to help decide whether this would be a good idea, or not. The FBP's indicate that we can give the varying classes of ships different Fighter & Drone options. Using a very simple example, one could design some Attack Carriers to put in Class V and some Escort Carriers in Class E. One may then have the V's with Standard Attack and the E's with 'Cover' (not sure, rules not handy, the one that is effectively the CAP or Close Defence ). One might therefore assume that one could decide which type of Fighter to put in each ship - the Escorts would have the anti-fighter Fighters, but the V's would have the anti-shipping specialists. However, Fighters are just load as cargo in the fleet and not assigned to individual ships/classes. So, what's the benefit of having those different discrete orders? How does the programme 'decide' which to use? Take, for example, Fighters (2nd Gen) and Strike Fighters (3rd Gen) and your fleet has both and you assumed they were split between E & V classes in a ratio you wanted: Both are general and can both attack ships, or defend against Fighters, Drones and Missiles. Say you, quite reasonably, wanted to commit your Fighters to the attack, whilst keeping you Strike Fighters in defence, or the other way round, or a mix.... How do you do this? If you can't and the programme does funny things, what point is there in having your fighters split between different ship classes? As a curious side note, I have been very happily reading the Weber/White books (which, to me, are just like reading about my favourite game! ), and noticed the number of Fighters quoted. Squadrons are only 6 of them, and the biggest carrier mentioned carries only 96..... That rather over-egged design of the misbegotten Pirate had 100 bays for 10,000 Fighters (and that's not Gunboats, which are something else). That's pushing the numbers just a bit......, but the design wasn't unrealistic in game...... Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric (with his new library courtesy of Amazon! ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orin Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 As a curious side note, I have been very happily reading the Weber/White books (which, to me, are just like reading about my favourite game! ) I have read all of Weber 'Honor' series and they do deal with mega space battles. He did not use 'fighters' per say but what he calls LAC (light attack craft) which hold up to a dozen men. In he books, LAC's are used for close ship distruction since most major battles happen 10's of thousands of K away and are mostly all missle battles (nukes, lazer headed and Xray headed ). Although..in the last book he did have the LAC's go head to head. They did have to design a special carrier for them thogh CLACS (carrier LAC's) and that was all they really did... no defence other then the LAC's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 As a curious side note, I have been very happily reading the Weber/White books (which, to me, are just like reading about my favourite game! ), and noticed the number of Fighters quoted. Squadrons are only 6 of them, and the biggest carrier mentioned carries only 96..... That rather over-egged design of the misbegotten Pirate had 100 bays for 10,000 Fighters (and that's not Gunboats, which are something else). That's pushing the numbers just a bit......, but the design wasn't unrealistic in game...... Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric (with his new library courtesy of Amazon! ) Hmmm...wakes up from hitting the send/receive to see that Mr. Ur-Lord might be throwing a slam my way. 10,000 fighters? who had that...They're bombers sir so only 5000. Depressing that I am 2 turns away from Gun Boats (3 turns from the build). That would have put my fleet 4 turns behind and since some CIDS ships are being built by Mr. Mindsphere I needed to get there fast. Side Note: I think smaller fighter bays would be good as well. You could put patrol crafts on board etc... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octagon999 Posted March 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Thanks for the thread hijack guys, but could we go back to the actual topic? What about my idea of having smaller component fighter and drone bays? Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 I like it....I think smaller fighter bays would be nice. Maybe improved ones? :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sssarass Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Isssn't that the complaint of all IT folksss, ssscalability... :lol: CTO, Sssarasss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ur Lord Tedric Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Thanks for the thread hijack guys, but could we go back to the actual topic? What about my idea of having smaller component fighter and drone bays? Tom Sorry, not a hijack, but quite apropos....... If you can't define what your fighters/bombers/gunboats do, then there's little point in them being on anything other than carriers in V...... And the other point was that, in this game, 10,000 tons is already SMALL...... As the "misbegotton Pirate's" ship proves...... And it wasn't a sideswipe, merely an <IC> phrase covering all pirates...... Our trade routes will be patrolled and I might just want the flexibility for my ships to defend against those bombers, or attack the ship...... Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 all pirates! Are there more out there? Hmmmm... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ur Lord Tedric Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 As a curious side note, I have been very happily reading the Weber/White books (which, to me, are just like reading about my favourite game! ) I have read all of Weber 'Honor' series and they do deal with mega space battles. He did not use 'fighters' per say but what he calls LAC (light attack craft) which hold up to a dozen men. In he books, LAC's are used for close ship distruction since most major battles happen 10's of thousands of K away and are mostly all missle battles (nukes, lazer headed and Xray headed ). Although..in the last book he did have the LAC's go head to head. They did have to design a special carrier for them thogh CLACS (carrier LAC's) and that was all they really did... no defence other then the LAC's. No... I did mean the Weber/White set (Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option & Insurrection)... They are clearly 1 man fighters in Squadrons of 6 as I described....(then the Bugs, followed by the Gorm get to play with gunboats - and some of the fighters are clearly bomber-like) My guess is that the oracle has read these too... Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric's bedtime reading... PS And I've yet to read the Honor set, apart from the short stories. Amazon have delivered all but one - and that's the first one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pig Skin Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 A 10,000 ton ship is small - you can build over 50 of them a turn. I'd much rather see many other things first than a smaller fighter bay. IMHO this is very trivial. -Pig Skin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Gun Boat = 500 tons. 10,000 fighter bay = 20 Gun Boats. Maybe 2 wings of 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octagon999 Posted March 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Gun Boat = 500 tons. 10,000 fighter bay = 20 Gun Boats. Maybe 2 wings of 10. Exactly, and I want to be able to throw a couple of my gunboats on a frigate or destroyer and not build a 10,000 ton fighter bay on it. I want to be able to build a frigate and stick a half dozen patrol ships on it, again without building a 10,000 ton fighter bay. I might want to throw a line of small ships with a few drones each as a line of skirmishers or a screen. I see smaller fighter/drone bays/racks as giving designs more versatility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pig Skin Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Well then why not make all ship systems smaller and standardized? Maybe everything should be in fixed 100 ton increments? I'd like to have plasma torpedos at 100 tons too. Survey landers and Science labs too. Pig Skin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octagon999 Posted March 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 Well then why not make all ship systems smaller and standardized? Maybe everything should be in fixed 100 ton increments? I'd like to have plasma torpedos at 100 tons too. Survey landers and Science labs too. Pig Skin Because weapon systems weigh what they weigh. Fighter and drones, on the other hand, have a set weight also. All we are discussing is what size container to carry them in. I want to be able to put them in 8 oz. or 16 oz bottles, rather than have to buy a gallon at a time. Does that make sense? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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