[TopAce]

It depends how quickly a newer version is developed. If there were a better fighter than the Erinyes, the Erinyes would be available for less experienced pilots.

[StratComm]

Actually, if there were a better version of a ship as rare as the Erinyes, they'd stop making it.  So no one would get to fly it.  Each fighter class serves a purpose; they won't stop flying Herc II's just because they can produce vastly more expensive Erinyes fighters for less than the top of the line duties.  You'd see a complete halt of production of the older models.

[Zarax]

They would be making a milked version, with cheaper components for standard use...
Anyways, that problem is what fighter cover is needed all the time...
No matter how powerful your ship is without air (space) superiority you're going to have your fleet crippled...
A fighter cannot destroy a sath but a wing of them can disable and disarm it (although you need really skilled pilots for that job and a strong luck)...

[Swamp_Thing]

Actually, i think the wisest strategy to follow would be to invest only on big carriers and lots of bombers and fighters. With the advent of subspace, you can just as easely get in the frey as you can get out. So, instead of spending billions in destroyers,  you can build a few wings of bombers that will do the job of a destroyer for a fraction of the price. Plus, they are faster, more mobile, and more versatile. You can split your bomber wings into smaller pieces.
If by any chance the carrier in in risk of being attacked by a destroyer, it can just jump out, or out run it. And with a large number of fighters, you make sure the enemy bombers stay away of your carrier and don´t disable it´s jump drive.
It´s like the navy of today. Sure they have more ship types, but the carrier reigns supreme. The battleship no longer rules the seas, as it´s easy prey to a couple of strike bomber wings.
Just imagine how many bombers can you build with the resources used to build a Colossus... It´s thousands!!! And thousands of bombers and fighters can wipe out a fleet of Sathnii in minutes.
I say dump the cap ships, keep and build only big carriers, give them a good early warning AWACS system, a good fast engine, and load it up with Medusas and Erinyies!

[Ghostavo]

For the last time, can you really put more fighters and bombers unto the hull of a destroyer class ship?

[Swamp_Thing]

Uh??

[Ghostavo]

I see a lot of people using the idea that current FS destroyers could hold a much larger fighter complement, yet, they don't say why. In the tech room they already say that the Orion's (for example) fighterbays, etc are enormous. Yet people continue to say that they could house much more.

[Swamp_Thing]

I hope that wasn´t for me, then. Because i was talking of carriers, not destroyers that carry fighters. They might seem the same but they are not.

[Ghostavo]

I was talking about destroyers... there is no such thing as carriers in FS, Destroyer sized hull if you wish.

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by Ghostavo
I was talking about destroyers... there is no such thing as carriers in FS,

I never said there were. I said it would be the best strategy to follow. I´m talkinf future here, not present or past. Take the big hulled ships, hollow them out, take out all the destroyer tipical stuff and turn them into carriers. And build only big carriers, not destroyers or corvetes.
If an Orion´s fighterbay holds a lot of fighters and bombers, then imagine how many would fit in a real carrier!
Besides, they are cheaper, and resources are everything in war.

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by Ghostavo
I see a lot of people using the idea that current FS destroyers could hold a much larger fighter complement, yet, they don't say why. In the tech room they already say that the Orion's (for example) fighterbays, etc are enormous. Yet people continue to say that they could house much more.

...

1) What makes you think that destroyers have much space occupied by weapon related things?

My list of things:
1.1 - Beam Weapons

Pre-FS2 capital ships don't have beam weapons, and when they started getting beam weapons there wasn't much change (no change at all) in the quantities fighters could be housed within them which leads to one of the following conclusions:

a) Beam weapons energy reactors don't require much space at all

b) They use the same energy reactor as the previous weapons

c) They use a new type of reactor that occupies the same space

If you use the first option, that means that the large power consumption that a beam weapon has, is nothing to modern FS2 reactors which are small. If you choose the second one, seeing that in spite of this "radical" change in weapon configuration, the Destroyer still functions as it functioned, only much better. I don't see much issue.

The first option clearly states that if there is a new reactor, it is really small. The second option requires you to think a bit. Think about how many weapons an average destroyer has, and think of the energy it requires to fire... say... a huge turret. Think of the damage it does and try to make a fighter equivalent to it. Seeing that fighters aren't cruiser sized, it is safe to admit that such reactors are not huge (probably the size of 2 small fighters, maybe less). Of course they take up space, but such a reactor would probably be needed to use the subspace drive.

Then there is the issue about how large are beam weapons, seeing that fighter housing issue is out of the way, I'd say they don't occupy that much space too and occupy as much as the previous weapons.

1.2 - The weapons size

How large can a turret be if it's stiking out of the side of a destroyer instead of being inside of it? How large can those lasers be if the Erinyes has 8 gun points while being aproximatly the same size as most fighters?

1.3 - Crew

Even if what you were saying was true about destroyer sized hulls carrying more fighters, how much more crew would be needed to operate them? Pilots, larger maitenance crew, etc... Which in turn leads to more bedrooms, larger R&R center/room(if there is such a thing) bigger "cafeteria" (galley?), larger storage rooms (for more food, fighter related stuff, etc...) How much larger would they need to be?

2. There is a thing where there are too many fighters in a fight and missiles like piranhas take fighters by the dozen.

3. Same scenario as above but friendly fire, a lot of it.

4. Same scenario as these two above but a capital ship fires a beam which intercepts many fighters.

5. Flak guns suddently become fighter killer extreme!

I think that is all for now, I exausted myself in 1....

[Solatar]

Ok, so everybody decides to build carriers and lots of fighters and bombers.

Then some genius invents a cruiser that warps in, fires off beam salvos, and then jumps out. Well, the fighters and bombers would take care of it right? The fighters and bombers have to be launched first, which takes some time.

Once the fighters and bombers are out there, the cruiser's fighter escort has fun.

EDIT: and then somebody loads up a cruiser with flak cannons as well. Like shooting a hose at a swarm of bees, you're going to hit something.

[Swamp_Thing]

Ghostavo, you forgot a lot of things there. A whole lot of them, .
Since you are gung-ho on this, i will ask a simple question.
Take a battleship and a carrier. Say, the USS Missouri and the Kitty hawk. Both are of similar sizes.
The Missouri represents a Hecate, the Kitty Hawk represents a future carrier class, non existant in FS today.
Wich one will win the battle?
Well, the Missouri needs to be atleast at 30km of the carrier to hit it. The carrier can launch from 1000 km away.
Now we take them up to space, ok? The destroyer has heavy armour (takes a whole lot of space), it´s not meant to be fast, it´s meant to be tough.
The carrier is faster, it has no armour, no big beam guns, no huge reactors to power them. All it has is a fast engine and a hull filled with fighters and bombers.
The destroyer tries to get close to fire, but the faster carrier illudes him and out runs him, and launches it´s bombers. While the destroyer has AAA weapons, they aren´t neally enough or accurate enough to stop a wing of bombers of launching torps.
It has fighters a few of them, but they are readilly overpowered by the carrier´s fighters, in greater numbers.
So, wich ship survives the encounter?

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by Solatar
OkEDIT: and then somebody loads up a cruiser with flak cannons as well. Like shooting a hose at a swarm of bees, you're going to hit something.

When was the last time you were shot down by the flak?
If you were, you need to improve your pilot skills!!

[Ghostavo]

Let me correct your path of thought,

1 - Subspace drives
2 - Kitty Hawk wouldn't have more fighters than the Missouri and even if it had (very big if), it would only have about 8 more fighters/bombers MAXIMUM
3 - Missouri would have weaponry capable of obliderating the Kitty Hawk should it be in range (see point 1)
4 - read my previous post

[Flaser]

The only problem with the fighter/bomber based fleet is the lack of strong armor - area wepons could devastate such a navy.

Said weapons wouldn't put a single dent in a cruiser or corvette, but would devastate smalller ships.

Moreover it is subspace that grants big ships their validity - the ability to jump instantly makes them feasable once again, since the reason battleships aren't built anymore is their lack of range and mobility compared to a carrier.

However the fast fleet idea does have merit - such ships could do true flanking manourvers.

These Lightning ships could rush in and give the old pounders a taste of the new weaponry suited to this warfare - fast torpedoes, and bay weapons.

I have had a campaign idea centered on two such prototype battle-cruisers/battle-corvettes for quite some time.
I will try to demonstrate the posibilities through the description of these ships:

The GTVBc Hector and GTVBc Achilles are both lightning ships - they are the first capships to use pure skeletal frame - no outer frame elements.
This allows the ship to use extreme thrust since the frame can dynamically take the stress. The downside is since there is no outer exo-shell to mount the armor onto.
The ship has a lot weaker armor compared to more convetional designs.

The Sobek and Deimos also had skeletal frames, but combined it with an exo-frame to mount armor. This reduced the effectiveness of the skeleton, but it still allowed a more secure mounting of internal components including reactors and engines.
Moreover the  frame couldn't take the stress of such thrust without irrevocable damage.

The Hector and Achilles prototypes take the concept further: the engines and the reactor are handles as a sigle unit with a direct plasma feed from the high-pressure reaction chamber. The design gives an unprecedented ammount of thrust but destabilizes the reactor in turn.
At ordinary thrust strain - comparable to older designs - the design gives of 60-120% more power, while in its own full potential 200-300% more.
Such drain however takes a master helmsman and engineer to operate and careless manuvering can snap the ship's own backbone. Moreover the reactor is in an increasingly instabile state during these manuevers.

With the new frame and integrated thrust systems comes a new reactor concept - the dynamic reaction based over-sized explosive reactor.
Instead a closely-knitted control present in convetional reactor, this design allows the reaction to operate in a looser more rampant manner. Such operation was termed extremely hazardeus in the past, but recent studies of fusion reaction and plasma dynamics allow a finer reaction control - the pontential for reactor breach and meltdown is still a lot greater than on other ships
.
The reactor is still too powerfull for the a ship of corvette size and is possible only thanks to the frame's ability to bend and take greater strains.

The weaponry designed for such a powersource is equally powerhungry:

This is where the ships differ

Achilles

The Achilles uses a beam array, that uses a great plasma capacitor running the lenght of the ship's backbone.
The ship has two huge emmiter arrays on its port and starboard fashioned in a vedge form to fire the immense ammount of plasma from the huge capacitor.
Unlike convetional beams, the ships uses the sheer pressure from the fusion reaction instead linear accelators to propell the beam. Though linear accelators are still present in the array-vedge for aiming and focusing the beam array.

The array can focus the plasma into small fields and windows for anti capships engagements with devastating  piercing abilities.
The greatest potentioal of the array however is the loose open focused firing technique - intead beams or beam blocks, whole areas of space can be irradiated wiping out entire bomber/fighter wings and devatate the whole turret system of a capship.

The downside of the design is its hunger for abundant plasma - the extreme plasma capacitor solves it, but recharging takes some time even with the powefull reactor, so firing is reduced to 3-4 salvos per engagment unless the ship gives up its mobility to just recharge the main capacitor.

When the capacitor is exhausted, plasma can be directly shunted into the array, but with such feed it can only operate at lower output comparable to standard beam emplacements.

Complementing the complicated and by many critics termed too unstable beam array is another revolutionary desig: the high-speed torpedo laucher system.

Convetional missile design allow the ordenance to leave with its own engine, or help it with some limited linear acceleration.

The Achilles however utilises its complex plasma venting system for an unconventional purpose - steam catalysation. The torpedoes are fired with a lot greater initial speed thanks to this catapult system.

Hector

Whereas the Achilles focuses entierly on utilising beam technology, the weapon designers of the Hector tried a different approach. Instead mounting a massivly powerfull weapon, they tried to come up with a CIC system capable of handling a previously unprecendented ammount of weapons.

The result was the weapon bay - it mount a devastating array of conventional guns, with a limited aiming ability compared to turrets,  but an awsome mass firepower in return.

Each bay can holds 20-to-100 conventional weapons and all are handled by a single fire-control station.
By concentrating firepower the bays proved to be superior over convenional design, even if somwhat maintinance intensive, morevover their anti-fighter capabilities were lacking.
To counter this the Hector also mounted conventional AAF turreting.

Beside its 4 bays on both port and starboard, the Hector recieved another weapon system that draws on pre-beam design: the ship has a spinal railgun in the same place where the Achilles has its main capacitor.
The ammunition was nicked by technicians crowbar thanks to its I-shape and the name has stuck ever since.

The power spared by the lack of beam weaponry is most needed for the huge linear accelerator - it has piercing abilities to cripple capships even when most of the armor still present.

It was only during the testruns when a welcome suprise was found on both ships - the capacitors for the railgun as well as the plasma-less array could hold enough energy for 2 more imminent subspace jumps.

However to do so the ship has to sacrifice 1 or 2 salvos of its maingun and only a single salvo will be availibel after jump.

With this development in mind both ships role were immediately redevised - originaly they were to perform suicide runs and emergency fleet support during a Shivan invasion.

That role was switched for a harrassing a blitkrieg tactics that took use of the battle-corvettes extreme manueveribility.

[Akalabeth Angel]

RE: Is there more space on a Destroyer for fighters

     Sure there is!! Just look at your main area pic! Look at all that empty space, big empty hall with little shelves for fighters on the sides. If it had shelves all the way across we'd get many more fighters in!

     Look at the Psamtik, there's a huge amount of space in there for more fighters. The fighters aren't even stored onscreen.

     And beyond that, who cares about the inside of the ship, what about the outside! Just put docking clamps up and down the hull, have a hatch to get in the fighter and pop off and hit your engines. Yeehaw. You only have to go back inside for regular maintenance.

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Zarax

On the other side you may take the Lilith way... an overgunned vessel of mayem...

With crappy AAA protection. I think that was the Shivan cruisers biggest weakness, too many anti-capital ship cannons and too few AAA guns.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
RE: Is there more space on a Destroyer for fighters

     Sure there is!! Just look at your main area pic! Look at all that empty space, big empty hall with little shelves for fighters on the sides. If it had shelves all the way across we'd get many more fighters in!

     Look at the Psamtik, there's a huge amount of space in there for more fighters. The fighters aren't even stored onscreen.

     And beyond that, who cares about the inside of the ship, what about the outside! Just put docking clamps up and down the hull, have a hatch to get in the fighter and pop off and hit your engines. Yeehaw. You only have to go back inside for regular maintenance.

What about the storage space for those fighters supplies & living space for their pilots?  (and the supplies to keep those pilots fed & watered)

Also where does maintenance take place?  What happens if a damaged fighter crash-lands on the flight deck?

And wouldn't slapping mini-airlocks onto the exterior hull be adding structural weakpoints?  (not to mention explosion damage from fighters blown up on the hull surface).  How would those fighters / bombers be armed?  (and isn;t strapping a helios-laden Boanerges onto the side of the hull asking for trouble?)

[Akalabeth Angel]

Actually if it wasn't apparent I was being mostly sarcastic

But to answer your first question, we put all of the pilots in light cryosleep and only wake 'em up to fight. Just like the Zentraedi!