[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by DeepSpace9er
They cost millions if not billions to produce and the technology on them isnt at all cheap. They are slow, easy targets, piss poor at defending themselves, require cheap fighters to protect them etc. Why bother build them! There is no point! You might as well have Carriers defended by Aeolus type cruisers. Oh, and long range strategic fusion warheads capable of incinerating a station in one shot.

Because they are much better at blowing **** up than Aeolus cruisers (would you really want to put those two SGreens up against an Orion's two BGreens and TerSlash?). Plus the GTVA has only a few Aeolus cruisers and tons of Orions.

Originally posted by ChronoReverse
They also die ridiculously fast until attack from a few squadrons of heavy bombers covered by a few wings of fighters.

So? An Aeolus would die even faster, although the bombers might suffer more casualties.

If an Orion or two ambushed the carrier group, the carrier would be blown to pieces in no time.

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, turrets are definitely cheaper to replace than fighters (at least I'd hope so).  But losing four wings of fighters wouldn't cause the carrier to suddenly lose a lot of its striking power, while losing 4 turrets would for a destroyer.  And turrets are easy to destroy even if you ignore stillettos.  That Maxim and the Trebuchet, both readily available, tend to kill turrets really quickly (the exception being the main turrets of juggernauts).


Yeah, a the fuel would definitely be more problematic on a carrier.  But again, a carrier wouldn't be in a situation where it would be easily attack unless it was ambushed (in which case a destroyer is unlikely to survive either).

What I mean is that for a given capacity of mass that a ship can support and a certain size, a carrier would have less areas that are critical and need heavy armor since beam turrets, heatsinks, plasma cores and power conduits aren't there.

If you give the carrier equivalent reactors to a destroyer, then why not mount destroyer weaponry on them as well.

Maybe for the express purpose of quickjumping?

In any case, the Pheonicia was firing before it jumps out, I'd say they're energy reserves were strained at best.  And how long do you think the Pheonicia could've possibly been in front of a Sathanas?  Not very long I'd say.



About the Colossus.  They don't show the heatsinks and power conduits and plasma cores either. In fact, beam turrets are just these little dimples on the surface.  There's obviously more inside it that what is shown.

In any case, if there's so much empty space, then a carrier class is even more justified, it means that a smaller vessel with less empty space can still carry much more fighters than a destroyer.



Supply.  Yes you're right.   However, I'd like to point out that a carrier would carry much more fighters and bombers in the first place and thus also be able to last longer despite them being blown up.

I'll discount the stillettos, but there's plenty of other overpowered fighter and bomber weaponry by the end of FS2.



@woolie wool

Hmm, I thought that everyone was already clear on how a carrier group attacks.  I guess I assumed wrong.

[Liberator]

Umm, the Phoenicia is supposed to die I thought.

Anyway, OT, the whole premise that the carrier would be able to field enough fighters/bombers to successfully screen the destroyer's strike craft is flawed.  Destroyers are frontline units and correspondingly get the skilled pilots and newer fighters before other units would.  The pilots would probably win the day in the engagement especially if Alpha 1 is present.

At best they'd come up even.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by ChronoReverse
Erm, don't normal hybrid destroyers also carry these same munitions?  Come to think of it, aren't ursa bombers full these bombs too?  But when you kill one or see one collide and die against a cruiser, you don't see a huge explosion, nor does the cruiser get wiped out.

So I'm not convinced of this one.

As for why the carrier would have more armour protecting critical areas, it's because specialized carriers would have a smaller proportion that would be considered critical.  A single fighterbay is not critical since losing it would not directly cause the ship to explode (even if you don't take into account my belief that a hole through a fighter bay wouldn't completely disable its function).  A bay full of heatsinks, plasma cores and power conduits for the beam weapons would.

Chrono. You cannot sit on both sides of the fence. Your comments about heatsinks and plasma cores are based on an extrapolation of what we see in FS2. Your comments on why munitions don't explode rejects a similar extrapolation.

Either stick to exactly what we see in FS2 or stick to extrapolations. You can't do both.

[karajorma]

Chrono. You're also making two basic assumptions which I very strongly disagree with.

1) Carriers would be able to jump out at the first sign of trouble.  Nothing in FS2 suggests that jumping is very accurate or quick unless special precautions are taken. Think of all the escort missions that would have been much easier if the ships simply jumped in at the node and then jumped out again immediately.

2) You assume that a large proportion of the space on board a destroyer is taken up by its weapon systems and therefore a carrier would be smaller. I disagree with this.
 A large portion of a destroyer is taken up by hanger bay(s).  Don't believe me? Take a look at this. A comparison of an Orion Class next to 25 Ursa Bombers. Remember that the Orion can carry ~110 fighters and bombers
 


And that only shows the size of the bombers themselves stack on top of each other. It doesn't include the space you'd need to arm them and prep them. Something you'll need a lot of space for if you're going to launch wave upon wave of ships.
 On top of that if you want the hangers to be independant of each other you're going to need prepping space for each bay rather than one central one like the current GTVA destroyers no doubt have.

In addition to this the Orion didn't get any larger when it was updated to carry beam cannons. Nor did the changes make it any slower (which suggests no overall change in its mass).

If you're trying to claim a carrier can carry more fighters than destroyer you're going to have to make it a larger than a destroyer.  This means that for any carrier you make you could just as easily have built a destroyer plus some other ships.

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by karajorma
2) You assume that a large proportion of the space on board a destroyer is taken up by its weapon systems and therefore a carrier would be smaller. I disagree with this.
 The majority of a destroyer is taken up by hanger bay(s).  Don't believe me? Take a look at this. A comparison of an Orion Class next to 25 Ursa Bombers. Remember that the Orion can carry ~110 fighters and bombers

If that's so why a modern day carrier (350-400 meters) can carry something like 80 fighters?
The Orior is 2km long right? So the space inside is: 125 times larger than that of a real carrier... even if the ursa is 10 times as large as an F-14 (and i don't think so) i suppose in a 2km carrier you have still space for more than 1200 of them...

Something it's not right imho...110 are too few for the Orion to carry. Maybe the subspace engines are reeeeeeally large?

[karajorma]

You couldn't fit 1200 into an orion. Even if you took everything else out!

I edited my post cause I'd said that the hanger bay was the majority of the internals when it's clearly not but you got your post in too quickly for me

I'd imagine that the engine systems, reactor and the jump engines take up a fair bit of space on all capships.

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by karajorma
I edited my post cause I'd said that the hanger bay was the majority of the internals when it's clearly not but you got your post in too quickly for me

Yep

yes, as you say, probably you could fit more than 1000 if the Orion is just an enormous hangar bay, much like modern day carriers are (no weapons, and engines don't take too much space)
Probably the hangar bay is just a moderate fraction of the ship, after all, it's a destroyer, not a carrier.

[Ghostavo]

Remember that modern day fighters are much smaller than a FS2 fighter... in which the smallest is 15m unless I'm mistaken.

Either way, you can't live without fighter, you can't live without destroyers... each has it's role, and that's why you need hybrids, because it's more versatile. Destroyers in FS2 should be much stronger than what they are, you shouldn't have fire helios in the same place and expect it to blow, and that is why geomod is the way to go!!

Now stop discussing this and go model a carrier cooler and then a Ravana... than I'll see your point

[Woolie Wool]

An Ursa bomber is a whopping 41m long and ~30m wide. The average modern-day fighter is 10-15m long and 7-15 meters wide.

An Orion probably carries 16 Ursas (Ursae?) at most. 25 Myrmidons or Apollos would be more appropriate.

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool
An Orion probably carries 16 Ursas (Ursae?) at most. 25 Myrmidons or Apollos would be more appropriate.

From the tech database:

"The Orion's cavernous hanger bays easily accommodate more than two dozen fighter or bomber wings."

[aldo_14]

The point of a destroyer is to destroy things.  That's why it's called a destroyer and not a lightlymassagetheenemyer.

Nuff said.

[ChronoReverse]

Chrono. You cannot sit on both sides of the fence. Your comments about heatsinks and plasma cores are based on an extrapolation of what we see in FS2. Your comments on why munitions don't explode rejects a similar extrapolation.

And yet you also ignore some things that we ALSO see in FS2.  Bombers don't go boom.  Even when they collide.  And the supply ships, they don't go boom either.  I've blown plenty up personally, had them blow up in my face, shot out while reloading, colliding and killing them.  But they don't go boom with even enough force to kill me in my myrmidon, much less a large capital ship.

The ONLY time munitions explode when shot at is when they're actually in flight.  And if you read the technical database, it says that the bombs WON'T arm until you get a lock (for more than one weapon in fact).  While I've interpretted as to say that the fuse won't go off unless you got the lock, perhaps I got it wrong and that it won't arm and the warhead doesn't explode at all if you don't.

1) Carriers would be able to jump out at the first sign of trouble. Nothing in FS2 suggests that jumping is very accurate or quick unless special precautions are taken. Think of all the escort missions that would have been much easier if the ships simply jumped in at the node and then jumped out again immediately.

And again you ignore what I've pointed out in the campaign.  There has been many cases where a quick jump would've been lifesaving.  However, I've never even suggested the use of the jump drive for really shortjump (at least not in this thread).  I suggested that they use the shortjump drive to just GET AWAY.  This requires only one factor: speed.

Now before delving into that.  I've pointed out two cases where the dialogue suggests that subspace shortjumps ought be be RELATIVELY (that is, not extremely) accurate.  What I mean is that, given proper coordinates, a shortjump shouldn't land you 5 km from the intended point.  If we be really conservative then you could say that 2km is a reasonable distance (the fact that the NTF jumps in at about 2km in the very first mission, every single time, supports this).

Even when the Psalmtik jumped in 9km away from us, the conversation was that of surprise and troubleshooting why that happened.

A lot of the SOC missions have either you, the rescuing forces or the "rescuing" forces jumping in within 3 km of you (usual much less).



Now, why can't you even consider the possibility that a quick jump to get away is possible?  In any case where it occurred in FS2 (not FS1 since the technology seemed to have improved) you've dismissed it.  While I realize that in many points of the story a quick jump to get away would've simplified thing, this does _not_ include a really shortjump to get closer to a node.  This is not an example of a quick jump to get away.

So kindly show me other missions where is was shown to be impossible to jump out quickly since you've dismissed my examples of how it _might_ be possible out of hand.  Since I'm using the existentalist argument, you will have to prove it's impossible.



@aldo_14

Precisely my point.  I've revised my argument somewhere up there to say that destroyers ought to focus on anti-capital weaponry and armor (and even be somewhat smaller).

[karajorma]

The helios is an anti-matter bomb. Extrapolate that into an explaination for why it doesn't explode when damaged.  
In fact making ammunition cook off as soon as a ship explodes has been suggested as an SCP addition several times because there is no way to explain why the helios doesn't explode when a bomber is killed.


The reason that any capship can't immediately jump out as soon as it gets into trouble is obvious in Kings Gambit. Even though those ships were in very deep trouble they all hang around for 2-3 minutes before attempting to leave. That shows that it takes time to recharge jump engines.  
2-3 minutes is plent of time for enemy forces to take out a ships engines.

If a capship has just jumped in it can't jump again for several minutes. That's the impression given by several missions.

Even if this wasn't true and the carrier could immediately jump out there is nothing to stop another ship following after it and taking some more pot shots at it.

Besides do you really believe that Command was so stupid as to lose capship after capship when it simply could have told them to jump out?

[Ghostavo]

Didn't the supply ships go BOOM really loud in FS1 and released a shockwave?



And one more thing... take Alpha 1 out of the equation.

[ChronoReverse]

Hmm?  The Actium jumped out immediately after command ordered them to.  Command ordered Colossus to jump out.  The Psalmtik jumped out immediately after its engines were fixed.  The Phoenica jumps out immediately without being order.

The helios is an anti-matter bomb. Extrapolate that into an explaination for why it doesn't explode when damaged.

Easy, we don't know if antimatter may necessarily explode when coming into contact with matter in a uncontrolled manner.

It has been suggested that the anti-matter may in fact "skip" along normal matter in a similar way to how if water comes into contact with a 500 degree object, the result should be an explosion, but if the volume of water is small compared to the surface area of effect,  this doesn't happen.

Since AM reactions generate gamma radiation  and gamma radiation only (which doesn't really do too much to matter in terms of physical damage), it's possible that the FS2 bombs require another stage to actually convert the antimatter to explosives.  Thus explaining why bombs must be armed and not simply fired dumbfire with a contact/proximity fuse.

And these are using ideas that hav been proposed in reality for how antimatter _might_ react with matter.  It also seems to fit the description.





And King's Gambit is where they jumped in, and jumped out (if you don't blow them up) right?  I've already said that a carrier wouldn't have jumped into an attack in the first place.  So the only reason left for it to initiate a quick jump is if someone else jumps in on it.  In which case, the destroyer that jumped in wouldn't be able to quickly jump again.  And thus your argument of being followed doesn't work.



And Command _is_ stupid.

"Hold back the Sathanas Phoenica"




@ghostavo

I would, but that makes the carrier even more overpowered since it would then be able to have more than 2 wings of fighters protecting it, attacking, etc.

In any case, I've cited an example where I did almost nothing (I just shot some Lokis and fired one pair of Helios) and watched my wingmen, a bomber wing, a fighter wing and one corvette take out an Orion on a whim.  That's right, on a whim, because Command said so.

[karajorma]

The example I gave of where a carrier group attempts to take on a blockade is an example of where the carrier would have jumped in to attack rather than having the enemy attack it.

In fact any situation in which the carrier has jumped anywhere makes it vulnerable.

So what you do in a like for like battle is have one destroyer leap in and force the carrier into making a jump. Then a second destroyer takes on the now immobile carrier.

[J3Vr6]

So you're saying one destroyer sits and waits for the carrier to jump in?  But you never know where the carrier is going to jump to...

[karajorma]

If it's arriving in the system you do If you want to ambush it when it arrives at an Arcadia you do.

And all this is only needed if you believe Chronos arguements that command are so stupid that they'll leave destroyers to die rather than jump them out but will act to save a carrier in the same situation.

[aldo_14]

Y'know, Freespace destroyers are carriers.  It even says so in the FS Reference bible.  So you're arguing about the merits of 2 hypothetical ship types that don't_even_exist as definition (either that, or they are both the same thing-  your choice) in FS.