Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: AlphaOne on February 15, 2007, 07:20:57 am
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Well the question is quite simple! After capella will the GTVA start moving towards dedicated carriers . The kind of ships that can carry up to 300 or 500 fighters?
Would they be usefull?
At the current level the closest thing we have to a carrier is the Aquitane ! It is a combination of C&C ship with destroyer class abilaties and a carrier put totghether. In a future carrier class you would see IMO the stripping of the C&C abilaties from the ship along with the destroyer class firepower but loeads of aaaf defences. A carrier class depending on its size would even mount AC weaponry but only a few 4 or 5 at bets and depending on the size of the ship they could be anything from slahsers to BFG!
Also one requirement that a dedicated carrier must have is its abilatie to launch realy fast fighters and bommbers from its hangar bays. We just do not see that happening right now.
Mi take on this would be to install on the bottom of the ship lauch tubes similar to the ones on the Galactica!
Have like 8 or 12 of them in adition to normal lauch methods from the hangar bay's!
this way from the tubes you could lauch a fast response team or lauch interceptors realy fast to cover the ship as it lauches its heavy fighters and bommbers. I mean from mi POW you could lauch the entire interceptor squadrons from those tubes.
Also carrier's even these days are fast ships! No matter how small or big they are they must be fast ! They must be able to reach a top speed equal to the max speed of a corvette for example or even faster ! Why?
Because carrier need to be able to out run most cap ships ! At least IMO!
I await your opinion on this and coments !
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They already pretty much have & utilise dedicated carriers. They just call them by a different name..... the Hecate and Orion are carriers with C&C roles, especially the former. The Orion is even described as 'carrier/destroyer' in the ref bible.
For me the most feasible concept of a 'carrier' is (with the added launch capacity you suggested, although I'd suggest the rapid launch tubes from BSG are as much a homage to the original as a necessity, and I'd note we never see a fast fighterbay scramble in mission - so there's no reason to presume it's impossible) a large destroyer sized ship with nothing but flak and a small amount of AAAf beams, normal speed (you don't need to 'outrun' ships; that's what jump drives and defensive screens are for - modern naval carriers don't go any faster than other naval warships because they need them for defensive purposes), and - crucially - dedicated facilities for small craft (fighter, bomber, support ship) repair -or even building - and munitions manufacturing.
With the AC weapons you describe, a carrier is simply an uber-ship.
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No, I don't think so. The trend from the old FS1 to the newer FS2 ships has been one of integration. Bombers that can double as fighters, fighters that can double as bombers in a pinch (Myrmidon, for instance, although it's never used as such). The Hecate is designed to be a fleet carrier/command and control ship, but it's also heavily outfitted with weaponry that allows it to go toe to toe with other ships.
Not only that, but why would the GTVA create dedicated carriers if it's current compliment of destroyers can carry enough fighters to throw up a pretty formidable fighter screen.
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You mean like the Starshatter ones? (Starshatter Carriers are the only ships with fighters, and they have to rely on their fighters and escort when another cruiser/destroyer moves in.)
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GTVA trends seemed to focus more on capships for every role, rather than a fighterbase. Corvettes seemed to take center stage, so I expect that more cover-all-bases capships would be the trend rather than all out fighter production and carriers.
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Perhaps not massive carriers (Warlock), but smaller ones may be deployed (Fury, Leneaeus).
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Hmm that seems rather strange to me! Having dedicated carriers means you can use and build ships dedicated towards cap ship killing for example.
Also since we see the shivans having a huge numerical advantage in every way whouldnt the added fighter/bommber wings prove to be a decisive factor towards the outcome of a battle.
I mean we were confrunted not once but many times with the choice of taking out the enemy warship or taking out the bommbers or heavy fighters swarming the aaaf defences of a capship Hecate Deimos etc.
Mi idea was of a fleet baset around a fleet carrier capable of caring some 300 to 500 spacecrafts. While the destroyers would be like battle carriers or strike carriers.
WE have seen many times the need of the GTVA to deplpy its fighters very fast and in suficient numbers to protect various targets. But we have also seen the GTVA getting hammered by the enemy fighters/bommbers since they usualy outnumber the ally fighters by at least 2/1 ratio.
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I find it irrelevant, the destroyers can already hold, what? 100, 200 fighters / bombers?
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Hmm that seems rather strange to me! Having dedicated carriers means you can use and build ships dedicated towards cap ship killing for example.
That simply doesn't work, because a dedicated ship will have an opposite achilles heel which will be exploited. So it can't be truly specialised; and the more specialised it is, the smaller it should be because of the expense. i.e. it's better to have a small carrier that is relatively cheap than a Colossus-sized one which represents an enormous target and which the enemy will swiftly target. Smaller capships are cheaper, more flexible, and more tactically maneuverable.
Also since we see the shivans having a huge numerical advantage in every way whouldnt the added fighter/bommber wings prove to be a decisive factor towards the outcome of a battle.
Nope; there simply isn't an infinite amount of resources.
I mean we were confrunted not once but many times with the choice of taking out the enemy warship or taking out the bommbers or heavy fighters swarming the aaaf defences of a capship Hecate Deimos etc.
Mi idea was of a fleet baset around a fleet carrier capable of caring some 300 to 500 spacecrafts. While the destroyers would be like battle carriers or strike carriers.
Such a large ship would be enormously expensive, slow to build and a liability due to the reliance upon a fleet to support it. It'd be a Colossus, but without the ability to defend itself. The enemy would swiftly exploit that weakness, and the result would be devastating upon the fleet.
WE have seen many times the need of the GTVA to deplpy its fighters very fast and in suficient numbers to protect various targets. But we have also seen the GTVA getting hammered by the enemy fighters/bommbers since they usualy outnumber the ally fighters by at least 2/1 ratio.
Because they have more fighters full stop. And if you shift the GTVA output to more and more fighters, then the GTVA becomes compromised in another manner. It's a simple resources game; the Shivans can always put out more, and bigger. So more fighters on ships won't help unless it's all balanced in terms of cost, risk to that ship, etc - the destroyer really represents the pinnacle of the carrier as a frontline warship, able to perform C&C, fighter cover and go ship-to-ship. So to have a carrier, it needs to compensate that vulnerability with an advantage that is proprtionate. Putting out more fighters doesn't cut it, because the GTVA will always lose in a resource war. So what IMO you need, is putting out fighters in more places; covering more holes, allowing deeper patrols and quicker deployment. And that, I'd say, needs more, smaller ships with tactical flexibility. A destroyer is hugely expensive, that's what stops more of them being around to deploy fighters. So a bigger, single, equally expensive ship won't work.
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Well I did not say it had to be only huge carriers altough that though was the one I used ! But I see you point!
Also since what the GTVA needs is more manouverabilaty and the abilaty to rapidly deploy fighter/bommbers everywhere shouldnt that be a reason for building dedicated carriers smaller ones. Also has anyone done the math as to how many fighters a destroyer could carry if it was stripped of its weapons (cap ship weapons and the aditional generators heat sinks etc?
Also this brings me to another idea that of the support carriers or poket arriers. Something smaller then a destroyer yet a bit bigger then a corvette capable of carryng 50 or 60 fighters and 4 slashers for example?
Wouldnt such a ship be fast versatile relatively cheap to build and relatively fast to build ? I mean such a ship equiped with fighters with inter-sistem drives could cover ,monitor, guard something like 2 sistems at once. Couple that with a compliment of 2 or 3 corvettes and they could prove to be a very formidable weapon sistem.
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Smaller Carriers, such as a Deimos/Sobek with a fighterbay or a few Leneaeus, would probably be the way to go. The Shivans already have one. Too bad they never deploy any fighters from it. :lol:
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Well I did not say it had to be only huge carriers altough that though was the one I used ! But I see you point!
Also since what the GTVA needs is more manouverabilaty and the abilaty to rapidly deploy fighter/bommbers everywhere shouldnt that be a reason for building dedicated carriers smaller ones. Also has anyone done the math as to how many fighters a destroyer could carry if it was stripped of its weapons (cap ship weapons and the aditional generators heat sinks etc?
There is no real math to do; the only broad assumptions we can make are that fighters don't use up too much crew relative to turrets. The issue with dedicated carriers is that you simply can't cover everywhere; no matter how you jiggle about ship types and specs, there is a finite limit to what you can put on the field. A small carrier might be cheap (depending on spec), but it still costs money, and means removing some other ship from your order queue.
Also this brings me to another idea that of the support carriers or poket arriers. Something smaller then a destroyer yet a bit bigger then a corvette capable of carryng 50 or 60 fighters and 4 slashers for example?
Rather unrealistic, I'd say - just under half the fighters of a destroyer, the armement of a Deimos, on a ship only a 'bit' bigger?
Wouldnt such a ship be fast versatile relatively cheap to build and relatively fast to build ? I mean such a ship equiped with fighters with inter-sistem drives could cover ,monitor, guard something like 2 sistems at once. Couple that with a compliment of 2 or 3 corvettes and they could prove to be a very formidable weapon sistem.
Relying on other ships is a dangerous game, though; and is this truly any better than a destroyer+corvette pairing?
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Maibe it is not better but it is cheaper ! Also such a small task force would be capable or rapidly engaging any threat that comes its path. I was just thinking of a means to provide fighter/bommber cover without resorting to the aid of a destroyer.
Of course destroyers are more dangerous but also prove to be a huge and juicy target for the enemy and when one of those is lost it is a very serious blow both economicly and in terms of skilled men and expensive equipment not to mention a blow to the morale.
The whole pourpose of this was to find a way in which you could have both the overall firepower of a destroyer and its fighter complement yet not expose such a valuable ship to the enemy unless it is absolutely necesary.
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Maibe it is not better but it is cheaper ! Also such a small task force would be capable or rapidly engaging any threat that comes its path. I was just thinking of a means to provide fighter/bommber cover without resorting to the aid of a destroyer.
Of course destroyers are more dangerous but also prove to be a huge and juicy target for the enemy and when one of those is lost it is a very serious blow both economicly and in terms of skilled men and expensive equipment not to mention a blow to the morale.
But what makes a carrier with 2/3 corvettes cheaper than a destroyer?
The whole pourpose of this was to find a way in which you could have both the overall firepower of a destroyer and its fighter complement yet not expose such a valuable ship to the enemy unless it is absolutely necesary.
You can't, pure and simple; any ship with the importance of a destroyer will bring the enemy to it.
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Unless they don't know about it, but it would eventually be revealed anyway.
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I find it irrelevant, the destroyers can already hold, what? 100, 200 fighters / bombers?
But that does not matter when they dont deploy all of them. I still dont see why they dont spit out every fighter and bomber they have, when their about to die, or before it? Why not 4-5 wings on patrol at all times? Why let everyone die inside a cap (orion or Hecate etc) with only 1-2 wings defending agienst countless shivan wings?
It's a bloody waste, thats all.
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Because the game can't support it. If it was possible, they would.
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Funny, when you think about it a group of several smaller specialized ships have 3 distinct advantages over a big one.
1. They can split up and cover a larger area, devide the force more eavenly.
2. If you have 3 corvettes and loose one with 2 damaged, you lose 1/3 of your firepower. If you loose the destroyer you loose it all.
3. You can outmanouvre the enemy. Shivan ships in general have a limited field of fire for their AC weapons. While one corvette distracts the enemy, the other(s) can take free shots at it's weak side.
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I find it irrelevant, the destroyers can already hold, what? 100, 200 fighters / bombers?
But that does not matter when they dont deploy all of them. I still dont see why they dont spit out every fighter and bomber they have, when their about to die, or before it? Why not 4-5 wings on patrol at all times? Why let everyone die inside a cap (orion or Hecate etc) with only 1-2 wings defending agienst countless shivan wings?
It's a bloody waste, thats all.
Because those fighters cover not just that ship but every allied one in the fleet.
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Aha there you have the niche which a dedicated carrier would fill. It could besides act as a force projection platform act a a guard dog for the fleet ! I mean deployng fighters from such small vessels to cover a fleet is a lot safre then letting a destroyer wihtout fighters when it even tualy engages the enemy. Also Trash Man good point. If the GTVA continues on this path with the terans focusing more on C&C and carrier abilaties of its cap ship and phasing out the orion and the vasudans headind the oposite way I forsee without a doubt that the GTVA will produce some sort of dedicated carriers to fulfill various tasks too......unimportant so to speak for a full grown destroyer.
couple that with corvettes and.....well.......it is a very plausible situation both economicly and from a strategic point of view. Especialy when you have to cover a lot of ground yet cannont build the suficient amount of large ships to cover it.!
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Here's another thing: The destroyers carry enough fighters / bombers that if they launched every single one of them (In a combat situation against a Sathanas), they could literally attack every turret using two ships per turret, while the rest attack the hull directly. Now if there was a carrier type that could hold 500, they could use five ships per turret, which would disarm said Sathanas in seconds, while the other 250 are launching their heaviest warheads at it.
Using so many ships in the battle would make the game too easy, regardless of the terms.
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And the Sathanas wouldn't deploy its own fighters, whyyyyyyy? ::)
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Well the almighty Alpha One could just vaporize them all, as always.
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True, true. :)
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Blasted Alpha1 i'm really starting to hate that guy! Bercause of him all his wingmen such!
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Aha there you have the niche which a dedicated carrier would fill. It could besides act as a force projection platform act a a guard dog for the fleet ! I mean deployng fighters from such small vessels to cover a fleet is a lot safre then letting a destroyer wihtout fighters when it even tualy engages the enemy. Also Trash Man good point. If the GTVA continues on this path with the terans focusing more on C&C and carrier abilaties of its cap ship and phasing out the orion and the vasudans headind the oposite way I forsee without a doubt that the GTVA will produce some sort of dedicated carriers to fulfill various tasks too......unimportant so to speak for a full grown destroyer.
couple that with corvettes and.....well.......it is a very plausible situation both economicly and from a strategic point of view. Especialy when you have to cover a lot of ground yet cannont build the suficient amount of large ships to cover it.!
You're making the same mistake of assuming infinite forces....
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Blasted Alpha1 i'm really starting to hate that guy! Bercause of him all his wingmen such!
Suck.
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:sigh: why the heck doesn't alphaone use the spell check =/
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Until such time as intersystem drives for fighters become the rule rather than the exception, a dedicated carrier is a liablity on the battlefield because it lacks the capability to defend itself against concerted attack, and, so far as we know, intrasystem drives allow near-instantanous attack on any object in a system to develop from any other point in the system. The Shivans in particular have demonstrated a capablity for precision jumping and devastating a target before any reaction can be made. As a carrier represents an extremely high-value target placing it somewhere it can be attacked without warning is very foolish.
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It depends on what type of future fleet GTVA will choice. Fact is that without fleet based on light forces GTVA would definitely fail in next war with Shivans. It's because Shivans have got lots, lots of AC-oriented capships, but small ships handles themselves much better. Now what kind of light-forces-based fleet is main question. However I don't think that fighters and carriers are good idea. Some time ago c914 made concept of gunboats, 100m long small ships replacing fighters completely. Advantage of gunboats over fighters are: much more powerful weaponry (not only froward, but also some turrets), being unable to be locked by AC weaponry (they're too small and too fast for that), ability of making intersystem jumps on its own and better effectiveness/prize (for prize of one gunboat you'd have at most three fighters). There would be three kinds of gunboats: Space Superiority (with lots of powerful turrets and average froward firepower), Assault (with lots of froward gunmounts, quite large secondary capability and few average turrets) and Torpedo (average turrets and froward gunmounts, but large secondary capability and ability to carry superhuge bombs).
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Question is - is 100m small/big enough to avoid mean lockage? And how fast would those gunboats be? How costly? Intersystem jump drives are very expensive, that's why only elite/SOC squadrons have them.
And 3 fighters to a gunboat.. Gimme 3 Ares fighters (Keysers, Maxims, Trebs) and that gunboat is toast.
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AAAf turrets seem to be able to lock onto any speed, there's simply a 'miss factor' from maneuverability (well, actually a tbl value...) such as the target jinking; so you'd want maneuverability ahead of raw speed. Flak, importantly, doesn't need to worry about miss factor - it just creates a cloud of lethal explosion 'shrapnel' (or something; I'm not sure on the physics of propagating an explosion through a vacuum, but presumably you know what I mean by this).
Gunboats are cool - from the player perspective. It's like carriers (which are fun because the player launches from them), in that it's more a 'game' than a 'tactical' concept. People will make carriers because the player can launch from and then defend them. And they'll make gunboats because they have lots of guns, which are cool. But that doesn't actually mean they make tactical sense......
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Well agreed untill the GTVA makes inter-sistem jump drives mandatory on all of their fighters/bommbers then the carrier as a cap ship is in a very dangerous position but then again that depends. It depends on weather or not the GTVA will decide to stick corvettes to it (carrier) at all times or net. It depends on the instalment of inter-sistem drives on small spacecrafts. I was thinking for the futurein 5 or 10 years time. I believe that the GTVA will make a concentrated effort to equip as many fighters/bommbers with inter-sistem drives as they can since well they do not really have the abilaty to carry them to where they are needed with a cap ship (destroyer) .
Also I believe that subspace tech will advance in the very near future for the GTVA and will advance quite a lot ! Perhaps to the point where a capship can microjump. I mean that would prove to be a very lethal combination. A carrier lauching its fighters jumping out to a nother point and if it comes under attack lauch aditional fighter then microjump to a safe distance. We all know that FS2 era bommbers and fighters can take out cap ship with relative ease. Especialy shivan cap ships.
But still that al depends on the future of the fleet and how it will be equiped. If the GTVA will move on the same lines as they did until Capella then we can rest asured that destroyers will make up the backbone of the fleet. But if they decide to mix large cap ship with smaller cap ship corvettes or frigates(not necesarily a copy of the Iceni) then I believe that carriers will be more then a welcomed adition to the fleet.
Carriers may not have any significant AC firepower but then again they do not really need to since they have other ships guarding them and they fighter/bommber compliment can disarm with relative ease shivan capship and provide fighter cover for the fleet.
Man so many things can go wrong with using dedicated carriers small or large and yet so many things can be won with using such ships I can not decide weather it is a good thing or a bad thing. So basicly it all depends on the future of the fleet and how it looks.
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Actually gunboats (in my version) are five times larger than fighters and two times smaller than Fenris. Also take a note that technology develops. I think it'll be enough advanced and cheap in about 20 years after Capella to give gunboat ability of intersystem jump. Also if you send 3 Ares fighters on my Space Superiority gunboat you still lose as gunboat with powerful shields can negate Trebuchets for enough long to get close and destroy your fighters with turrets and froward gunmounts (not to mention it'll also launch Trebuchets).
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That is close to a strike cruiser then a gunboat. I mean today fighters ar something like 3 times or 5 times smaller then a fenris I mean the largest bommbers that we find in the game. So that means that you gunboats are more along the lines of a small cruiser. smaller then a fenris but not in any significant manner.
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Actually gunboats (in my version) are five times larger than fighters and two times smaller than Fenris. Also take a note that technology develops. I think it'll be enough advanced and cheap in about 20 years after Capella to give gunboat ability of intersystem jump. Also if you send 3 Ares fighters on my Space Superiority gunboat you still lose as gunboat with powerful shields can negate Trebuchets for enough long to get close and destroy your fighters with turrets and froward gunmounts (not to mention it'll also launch Trebuchets).
That's assuming that in the years after Capella fighters haven't advanced to the point of comprehensively outmaneuvering any low-maneuverability, high reliance on forward firepower ship. Which they almost certainly would have. Ships over a certain size simply aren't maneuverable enough to be dogfighters; what you're describing would be an excellent bomber - albeit one reliant on fighter cover to stop interceptors tearing it to death like a wasp on a tarantula.
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Essentially, the so-called 'gunboat' is more of a super-bomber.
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AAAf turrets seem to be able to lock onto any speed, there's simply a 'miss factor' from maneuverability (well, actually a tbl value...) such as the target jinking; so you'd want maneuverability ahead of raw speed. Flak, importantly, doesn't need to worry about miss factor - it just creates a cloud of lethal explosion 'shrapnel' (or something; I'm not sure on the physics of propagating an explosion through a vacuum, but presumably you know what I mean by this).
That "miss factor," believe it or not, on my part is just not moving while the beams target my ship. I've literally taken less hits from stopping my ship while anti-fighter beams fire at me than I have punching burners and making wild jinxes.