[Ghostavo]

Wouldn't a not constant (like you said) acceleration cause health problems?

[Flaser]

Originally posted by Ghostavo
Wouldn't a not constant (like you said) acceleration cause health problems?

Does being inside a car cause heart problems?
If you're standing or hanging or just staying put the current will wash over you, creating the illusion of gravity and will have a constant acceleration. The reason it's not a constant acceleration the same way as gravity is that the faster you move the less it will accelerate, while gravity always accelerates regardless the speed.

BTW a well degined warp field is homogenous, so it provides the same current in all the space it covers - of course some warpfields can be designed to actually bend and change the direction of the wave so you can move people and equipment more efficiently. - Though I  wouldn't use it for moving ships since a several hundred tons fighter is not something I would just let go with the flow.

[Flaser]

Double post

[Ghostavo]

Seems fair, but still presents one problem...

How many pilots will get space (as in sea) sick? j/k

Actually, wouldn't such a technology be used for something much more useful like perpectual energy? If you've got a field that can literaly lift people in low currents and still isn't "all that powerful"... well...

[StratComm]

But you can't use ether as a theory to build from.  Ever.  Under any circumstances.

The other problem is that this theory relies more on magic and conjecture than simply saying the GTVA can produce roughly 1g artificial gravity (Which, in fact, is all you're saying; a velocity-limiting field is, as I will continue to maintain, a complete logical fallacy, but it's achieving the same goals).  Doesn't require explanation.  Also, you keep refering to this thing as a derivative of subspace drives, with some kind of fluid/plasma acting as the driver for the force field, but the tech room description of subspace drives cleary shows that they are a mechanical device devoid of any kind of circulating fluid.  It breaks too many laws of physics (even by freespace standards) to be a useful theory.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Hellbender
Being overlooked is the fact that ship classifications have been designated and changed (roles and size vessel) several times over the last number of centuries as the current naval ships have evolved from oar-power to sail to modern propulsion. The classifications changed as was convenient for each seperate navy. They continue to change. Ask any naval service people you know. Pick a country's naval forces.

What was considered a destroyer during the 1st World War was considerably changed by the time the end of World War 2 came about. Side by side vessels from each era, though designated the same would look and be fought in rather different ways.

Point is, V was pretty much justified for not using current class designations for their fictional space warships - by the time of the FS Great War era, the classifications would almost certainly have changed completely several times anyway. Sounding cool is just icing on the cake... though I still like "Dreadnoght" as the coolest sounding large ship class.

Not quite. The ship class designation haven't changed for a long time. Battleship designated the mightiest ship in the fleet 400 years ago, and it still does now. It doesn't sound old at all..

Besides, before the world wasn't so connected and there wasn't a general classification method that now exists, so ships have been re-named again and again. Now that one accepted and functioning classification exists, I fail to see why it would change in the future. It's not like the interceptor, scout and bomber are gonan change now, is it?

I fail to see why there is some logic in the Destroyer destroys, thus it soundscool. ALL warships destroy. Cruisers purpose is not to cruise, but to destroy. Cruise generaly means slow moving on the sea, and only big, heavy ships move slow. Destroyers were numerous and they had powerfull AA weaponry.


I'm for a more navy classification - I mean, the current military knows what it's doing and it has all these shipclasses for a reason:

fighter/bomber
gunboat
Destroyer (fs2 cruiser)
Corvette
Frigate/Escort Carrier
Cruiser/Carrier
BatleCruiser/Heavy Carrier
BattleShip

and I do belive that every ship class has it uses and having both carriers and normal Fs2 destroyers isn't really a problem

[StratComm]

No it's not.  The problem comes up when people get their own ideas on what a "carrier" means.  There are about 3 distinct classes of ships that can be considered carriers; the strike carriers, which are essentially corvettes with fighterbays instead of weapons, or small weaponless destroyers more than anything else, small and largely defenseless; there are the destroyers that someone wants to call a carrier (still has firepower equal to that of a destroyer, and simply a larger hanger opening), and there are the "supercarriers" which, more often than not, are misnamed juggernauts and mission-balancing nightmares.  In a modern navy, a carrier and a cruiser are not equal; carriers are the largest ships in the fleet by far, launch fighters, but generally have little in the way of their own defenses.  Some point-defense systems, yes, but not like a primary warship.

And besides, we're not talking about a wet navy here.  Space navies don't necessarily need the same distinctions that a surface navy does.  If we wanted to line up the ship size/role list, then it would actually be (WARNING: MASSIVE ABUSE OF CODE TAGS ):

Code: [Select]


FS2                   Modern Navy
Fighter               Fighter
Bomber                n/a (bombers don't land/take off from surface ships anymore)
                      PT-boat/gunboat
                      Corvette
                      Frigate
Cruiser               Destroyer
Corvette              Cruiser
                      Carrier
Destroyer             n/a (Battleship/Carrier hybrid)


You don't have battlehips anymore, they are too big of a target for too little range to be effective.  Find reference to an active-duty battleship in any navy and I'll take that back, but you won't.  You also don't have battlecruisers as a seperate class either (technically never did, since they were a subclass of cruiser for the 30 or so years they existed)  Carriers also don't fit the conventional warship role; they don't engage the enemy directly if at all possible, rather launching aircraft to do the dirty work for them.  If a carrier's guns ever come on line, it's in deep crap already.  If they didn't pack so much firepower in their fighters, they would be considered a support ship rather than a warship.  If you want to relate the FS-bomber to something in a wet navy, it's the gunboat/PT-boat.

[TrashMan]

I know very well what a carrier means, but since we are taalking FS2 sized ships (thousands of meter long ships), then size is questionable. A Space carrier doesn't have to be larger than a space battleship. It can be, but doesn't have to.. besides, I was just putting general ideas.

Yes, I'm aware that BatteCruiser is a Cruiser sub-class, but I wrote that list the way I see it it should be - not a 100% accurate navy listing..

And yes, today battleships are only on stand-by, but in the future, with realyl big guns and shields and the jumping ability, I guess they would be very important once again..

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by TrashMan

Cruise generaly means slow moving on the sea, and only big, heavy ships move slow

Sorry, but that is wrong. Cruisers are fast, not slow. A cruiser has a top speed of 30+ knots, while a battleship can reach 25, tops. The "cruiser" expression was first made to represent a fast moving vessel, that could "cruise" the oceans stalking its prey, usually heavier and slower battleships.
Destroyers are even faster, with speeds of up to 35 knots or more (the navy never discloses their top speed).
Generally speaking, "cruise" means the average or usual speed at wich a vessel travels, i.e "cruise control", "cruising speed".
It is usually wrongly associated to the expression "cruise liner", wich is a heavy, slow moving passenger ship. There is nothing slow about a navy cruiser, it´s built for speed and firepower.
With the advent of rockets and guided missiles, the cruiser was set aside, and the new type of cruiser/destroyer emerged, the Aegis cruiser. It´s the size of a destroyer, but carries the punch of a cruiser. It is also more focused as an anti-aircraft triple-A platform for aerial warfare, while the destroyer is more focused in submarine warfare.
The battleship itself hasn´t disappeared yet, from modern navy. Allthough the US scuttled its big battleships in exchange for carriers, there are still other countries that maintain them in active duty. Not for much longer, i´ll grant you that...
The carrier is the wave of the future. One carrier can obliterate an entire fleet of battleships, without even setting eyes on them.
The same would and will happen in space.

[Flaser]

Originally posted by StratComm
But you can't use ether as a theory to build from.  Ever.  Under any circumstances.

The other problem is that this theory relies more on magic and conjecture than simply saying the GTVA can produce roughly 1g artificial gravity (Which, in fact, is all you're saying; a velocity-limiting field is, as I will continue to maintain, a complete logical fallacy, but it's achieving the same goals).  Doesn't require explanation.  Also, you keep refering to this thing as a derivative of subspace drives, with some kind of fluid/plasma acting as the driver for the force field, but the tech room description of subspace drives cleary shows that they are a mechanical device devoid of any kind of circulating fluid.  It breaks too many laws of physics (even by freespace standards) to be a useful theory.

Now, excuse me but where the **** did fluid/plasma stuff come from?
You must have watched way too much Star Trek with their blabber about plasma ducts and such flashing gizmo.
BTW does a river or an air current break physics?

Saying that the GTVA can create a 1g artificial gravity is simply put NO WHATSOEVER EXPLANATION.
Moreover if they could do a real 1g strong gravity field wouldn't need any whatsoever engines or lasers...

I never said a subspace engine is a fluid/plasma thingy...
AFAIK subspace is made of the 10-25 dimensions all particles reside in of what only 4 create a continous environment known as space-time, the rest are in dissarray.
Hawking used the orange parallel - an orange is more or less a perfect sphere - but if you look close you realise it's full of small ridges and bumps.
Gravity affects subspace jumps and it is admitedly easier to jump in a gravity field - hence the presense of only intra-system capable jump drives.

IMHO a jumpdrive either alignes a corridor into/through which the ship can travel or what's more likely it forces the particles in the ship to vibrate on the same frequency (the whole source of loop theory treated particles as miniature oscillators) as subspace which forms a more or less cohesive space from points of space that are close only on a different set of oscillatons.

This forced oscillation on along the n-th dimensions is what a jumpdrive should create. I don't know how this is possible - it probably uses a variant of quantum phenomenons that seem to duplicate particles and/or make pairs that seem to "know" of each other.

This resonating phenomenon passes though the whole ship (probably at the speed of light) in repeated waves until the whole ship is aligned with subspace, then transition can occur and a portion of subspace itself is aligned with normal space resulting in the trademark warp.

The resonance probably travels in all direction and covers a globe of space effecting everything inside - this is the reason that you can still hurt a ship while in transition, since your bullets entering the resonance field recieve the same treatment and/or get aligned enough to still cause some damage.

Most capships don't have a globular design, so most of the field is lost, but you still use tons of energy to align empty space.

What I proposed was that big ships can't create a big enough resonance that could cover the entire ship on its own without a needlessly big ammount of power.

Using multiple jumpdrives would be wastefull and too expensive and difficult to synhronise (it is also possible that even too ships jumping into subspace from the same point won't end up in subspace at the same place since their drives were a tad different - the whole subspace tracking technology could be about dealing with this).

So instead building damn big jump drive they distot the field of the existing one, using methods similar to how one would distort a wave inside a pool.
The subspace conducts are actually these resonators and dampers that shape the resonance field best to cover the ship as accuratly as possible.

Warpfield actually uses the resonance wave created by the subspace drive/aparatus. It aligns space to an extent where it can't be used for jump, but does in an assymetrical manner that result in a bend of space-time very similar to gravity.
The problem is that you can't continously do that and a distortion with potent power would probably tear everything aparat. So instead one big distorion, several waves of them are continously passed through the field to result in a constant average distortion field. The reason a person won't accelerate any more in a warpfield once he reached a speed is that he reached the speed with whic the waves are traveling (not the resonance itself which travels at the speed of light just like gravity, but the speed at which the intervining distortions go).

[NGTM-1R]

The Aegis is not the size of a destroyer. While the Ticonderoga-class cruiser is based on the hull of the Spruance-class destroyers, the Spruances are in fact the size of a WW2 light cruiser.

Also, the US is the only country in the world to maintain battleships in even mothballed status. There are two reasons for that. One, the have been refitted with a plethora of surface-to-surface missile systems, so they make excellent centerpieces to a Surface Action Group, and battleship armor plating will laugh off any missile in the world today short of a nuke. Two, these are the only ships capable of providing creditible support to an amphibous landing, and so the only possible way to conduct an opposed landing is with the battleships backing you up.

Carriers are powerful, but they are also hideously vunerable. Go read up on the Battle of Samar some time. As long as a carrier can keep its opponents at arms' length, it has the advantage. But because of Freespace ships' ability to subspace jump, they cannot keep people away. And once you've closed with a carrier, it's essentially a large target.

[aldo_14]

RE: artificial gravity - who gives a ****?  

I mean, really, is this worth spending the next 5 days arguing about?

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
The Aegis is not the size of a destroyer. While the Ticonderoga-class cruiser is based on the hull of the Spruance-class destroyers, the Spruances are in fact the size of a WW2 light cruiser.

Do you realize you just contradicted yourself in that sentence?

Carriers are powerful, but they are also hideously vunerable. Go read up on the Battle of Samar some time. As long as a carrier can keep its opponents at arms' length, it has the advantage. But because of Freespace ships' ability to subspace jump, they cannot keep people away. And once you've closed with a carrier, it's essentially a large target.

Ah yes, but that´s why you have AWACS, isn´t it? If you detect something that can harm your carrier coming through subspace, what´s to stop you from jumping away, instead of just waiting for it? I guess you are assuming the strategist in charge would be of similar inteligence as the GTVA command, but in real life that doesn´t happen. If the carrier gets in any danger, the same mechanisms that allow it to be attacked also allow it to escape. So why would it ever let itself to be trapped? And besides, carriers have escorts, and anything short of a fleet of destroyers would get pulverized the minute it jumped in.

[StratComm]

No he didn't, he's stating that the "destroyer" that the Aegis is similar in size to is actually cruiser-sized in the first place.

And does the inability of your FS carriers to hang around in a fight (or the necessity of fleeing, in this case) not compromise their ability to defend a strategic location?  As important as holding nodes seems to be, I'd think the GTVA would never abandon the ultra-heavy hitting power of a Destroyer.  Why would they do that and then to replace it with a ship that could not participate in a blockade?  And besides, if you're going to give command some brains, then there's no reason that destroyers shouldn't have escorts as well.  It's engine limitations that prevents you from seeing that.  As for the escorts ripping anything that tries attacking to shreads, I'll remind you that if you've got a fleet of escorts hanging around a valuable fleet asset, your opponent won't show up with one ship.

[Kosh]

I'd think the GTVA would never abandon the ultra-heavy hitting power of a Destroyer. Why would they do that and then to replace it with a ship that could not participate in a blockade?

Of course they wouldn't. They didn't in Inferno. All the carrier does is move the fleet CNC away from the front lines and provide dedicated fighter launching abilities. The second part is good because it allows you to make destroyers even more lethal towards enemy capital ships.

[NGTM-1R]

Of course, how many times in Inferno R1 was the Independence sent to do a destroyer-like job...ALONE...

I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact it generally barely escaped from those missions.

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by StratComm
No he didn't, he's stating that the "destroyer" that the Aegis is similar in size to is actually cruiser-sized in the first place.

Yes he did. Read my post, to wich he answered. Even if cruiser sized, as you put it, it is still a destroyer. And what i said was that the new cruisers were smaller, destroyer sized. Of course, destroyers come in many sizes, but all it takes is one for my statement to be correct.

And does the inability of your FS carriers to hang around in a fight (or the necessity of fleeing, in this case) not compromise their ability to defend a strategic location?  As important as holding nodes seems to be, I'd think the GTVA would never abandon the ultra-heavy hitting power of a Destroyer.  Why would they do that and then to replace it with a ship that could not participate in a blockade?  And besides, if you're going to give command some brains, then there's no reason that destroyers shouldn't have escorts as well.  It's engine limitations that prevents you from seeing that.  As for the escorts ripping anything that tries attacking to shreads, I'll remind you that if you've got a fleet of escorts hanging around a valuable fleet asset, your opponent won't show up with one ship. [/B]

First of all, i am not a node blockade apologist. I don´t think wars are won by sitting still at the local bottleneck and wait for the enemy to possibly come through there.
Second, the load of bombers a carrier takes along, is more than enough to take out a destroyer, with minimun losses to the bomber wings. If the destroyer launches his fighters, the carrier has much more fighters of its own to counter that pseudo-threat.
Third, you missread what i intented to say back there. I wasn´t saying the escort alone would deal with the threat, i said the escort AND the fighter-bomber complement. Big diference. The escort ships can buy the carrier time to jump out if needed.
Fourth, i am a fierce apologist of "attack is the best defense". The carrier would never get caught in a defensive situation, because it would be used ofensively. It would detect any possible targets, launch the fighters and bombers wich in turn would make a small in-system jump, and take on the destroyer.
The numbers are simple to evaluate:
You place a destroyer against just a carrier, and the carrier looses. But place the destroyer against a carrier and íts immense complemente of fighters and bombers, and the destroyer looses. The carrier might take damage, but it comes out on top.
Besides, a carrier is faster than the heavy destroyer. It can simply stay out of range of the destroyer´s beams, and still kick it in the ass.
Anyone who doesn´t see the clear advantage of the carrier is a poor strategist to begin with.
The only two things that can take out a carrier are:
1º A poor carrier captain;
2º Another carrier.

[NGTM-1R]

Again, I advise you to read up on the Battle of Samar. Leyte Gulf. Quite instructive. However, substitue Halsey's mistake for a subspace jump, and you'll see where I'm going.

The advantage of the carrier lies in long-range striking power. The problem with this in FreeSpace is that, essentially, every ship is a fighter in terms of its striking distance. Whether a fighter or a destroyer, it can jump halfway across the system and arrive in maybe a minute. This also invalidates the theory of seeing the destroyer coming, because your amount of warning is simply not sufficent to react...and also I could point out that never in FS2 canon is there the slightest hint an AWACs can see into subspace. In all the nebular missions involving an AWACs, you'll notice the Shivan ships arrive without warping in, implying they just entered the AWAC's sensor range, not came out of subspace. In no non-nebular mission does an AWACs forewarn of enemies arriving.

So, the destroyer arrives, with perhaps a minute of warning if any, right next to your carrier, and opens fire. The carrier simply cannot get out of range quickly enough to avoid. Maybe it is faster; that's debatable, but any case it's not fast enough. The escorts will be hesitant to fire at a target so close to the carrier; the carrier's own weapons will be insufficent to deal with the threat. The destroyer's first beam volley is targeted on the carrier's fighterbays. The majority of the carrier's fighters and bombers are now either ashes or trapped in the hanger deck unable to launch.

Meanwhile, the carrier's escorts manuver to attack, only to be met by the destroyer's escorts. The same happens to the combat aerospace patrol the carrier has up. The smaller number of fighters the destroyer has, overall, is not so important here, because it has all its fighters deployed and the carrier has only a fraction of its fighter complement deployed. In all likelyhood, the destroyer's fighters will outnumber the carrier's CAP.

The destroyer fires it's second beam volley. This one is targeted on the carrier's engines. The destroyer will have suffered some damage by this point, certainly, but nowhere near enough to slow it down: destroyers are difficult to kill, and in the face of the an attack from the destroyer's escorts and their being unready for its arrival, it is unlikely the carrier's escorts will have been able to muster a creditable attack on the destroyer.

Even in the best-case scenario, with the destroyer and its escorts driven off or destroyed, your carrier is now severely damaged, dead in space, and unable to launch or recover fighters. What fighters it already has deployed have suffered losses and depleted their available munitions. They aren't getting more: the support ships have to come from a carrier too. The carrier's escorts are also damaged.

This is effectively a death sentence. A carrier without an aerospace group is in extreme danger, and this one can't even run. It's remaining CAP and escort craft are damaged. A mid-size bomber strike could leave no survivours. And, because the carrier represents such a high-value target in a fleet built on your scheme, you can be almost certain that strike will arrive.

Or maybe another destroyer will, along with its escorts and fighters.

[Zarax]

Unless the defensive ring is deployed in a way that jumping in beam range is an extremely risky affair (IE collisions)...
That way the carrier will have the time to deploy a sizeable force while the destroyer tries to close...
Of course you can just sacrifice a couple pf cruisers to do the work on the fighterbay before the whole group jumps... But it's not really an easy work that way too...

[Akalabeth Angel]

So, the destroyer arrives, with perhaps a minute of warning if any, right next to your carrier, and opens fire. The carrier simply cannot get out of range quickly enough to avoid. Maybe it is faster; that's debatable, but any case it's not fast enough. The escorts will be hesitant to fire at a target so close to the carrier; the carrier's own weapons will be insufficent to deal with the threat. The destroyer's first beam volley is targeted on the carrier's fighterbays. The majority of the carrier's fighters and bombers are now either ashes or trapped in the hanger deck unable to launch.

Meanwhile, the carrier's escorts manuver to attack, only to be met by the destroyer's escorts. The same happens to the combat aerospace patrol the carrier has up. The smaller number of fighters the destroyer has, overall, is not so important here, because it has all its fighters deployed and the carrier has only a fraction of its fighter complement deployed. In all likelyhood, the destroyer's fighters will outnumber the carrier's CAP.

     
        I really don't know why you're all arguing the benefits of carriers vs non-carriers. The fact of the matter is, that who wins the battle is _NOT_ dependant on the type of ship, but rather on the quality of intelligence.

         In your example you have a destroyer-lead force jumping in, disabling a carrier and generally surprising the fleet. The problem is, how do you know the carrier is there? Especially given your The escorts will be hesitant to fire at a target so close to the carrier idea. How does it jump so close if it doesn't know where it is? The fact is, it has to KNOW where it is first. And in order to know, it has to scout the enemy fleet, and unless they have superior stealth technology the enemy fleet will know they've been scouted and will be put on alert.  A precise jump like that will require up-to-the-minute information, something which requires a forward observor probably with advanced telemetry gathering capabilities (ie not just a simple fighter).

         And the example itself is flawed. The core of your point is that the destroyer will cripple the carrier's fighters bays before they can retaliate. Well, conversely one can say that a Destroyer or a bomber-strike could cripple an enemy destroyer's engines with the first strike, therefore making it unable to manoeuvre and bring it's primary guns to bear. Making it one big, useless target in exactly the same way. Or hell, why not just use a cruiser to come out of subspace right on top of the Destroyer and rip it apart that way like they use jump-points in Babylon 5. It'd probably work.

         A carrier and destroyer both have their uses regardless of the ability of an individual ship to move through a system at fighter-speeds. The most important thing is who knows more, you or the enemy. The more prepared fleet will have the advantage.