[Ghostavo]

No there is no such inhibitor field, if there was it would have been used in the blockades and the NTF would have won by default (no one would enter those three NTF systems).

[Drew]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
Yes, but does the government truly understand that? Given real-world examples...probably not.

Any economist will tell you that any government that excessivly prints money will eventually destroy its own economy.  The massive amount of material loss during the war and at cappella dictates that there is way to much to rebuild to just print money and hope the economy dosnt fix the input.  The only way the GTVA could use an inflated money supply is if it _forced_ companies to recognize it as worth somthing, when its actually worth nothing.  Even then, in a free economy, companies and people wouldlnt recognize the forced currency, because it wouldnt be able to meet their needs, and then you would see market type currency where people start using things that have fixed value for currency, like metal, ore, drugs, subspace coils, or anything like that.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
Hmm...let me repeat.

There is no rear area. Everyone in a system is equally vunerable to attack. A carrier must be able to defend itself against attack from a ship of the line. And a ship of the line must be able to defend itself against bomber attack. Distance does not provide you insulation from hostile attack anymore.

Not completely true. Subspace jumps take a few minutes and can be detected. We seen bofore that ships can hide undetected in-system, thus a carrier would bea completely plausable design.

I'm not adocating the replacmenet of destroyer with battleships - in fact, I think it's best to have all - carriers, destroyers AND battleships. Each has it's own pro et contra, and a sensible military likse diversity...

A destroyer can deliver more damage per time unit than an absurdly amount of bombers. That coupled with subspace drives, makes a pure carrier a not practical idea. If you try really hard to make a carrier in FS, odds are (if it's balanced of course) that it will look like a FS destroyer.

Where do you get that from? 2 wings of Ursas with Helios outstrip any destroyer in terms of firepower.

GoreChild: do you understand the concept of subspace in relevence to FS? No, a ship cannot just enter subspace. Subspace for capital ships needt to be done in a jump node, or there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING keeping them from being persued. This is canon, the shivans can track through subspace.

the GTVA can allso track ships trough subspace. You allso forgot one thing - subspace drives need time to charge. If a carrier jumped immediately after the Shivan destroyer jumped in, it couldn't follow instantly. that would give the carrier a small head start, and when the destroyer comes after him in subspace, the carrier could make use of the distance gained and it's fighters. Besides, carriers would probably be faster than destroyers...

In the 5 seconds it takkes for a subspace drive to engage, at 40m/s, even pointing DIRECTLY away from a planet, you have fallen several hundred meters. FS fighters and bombers don't have enough force nescessary for them to EVER acheive escape velocity, and even if they could enter susbspace in an atmosphere, they MUST jump to somewhere INSIDE the planet's gravity field.

Whare did you get this?
We have no idea if FS2 fighters can land and take off of planets and we have no idea just how much power would that require given their reactors and stuff... It is highly possible they might have some anti-gravity drive to take off planets (the repulsion force of such drive would be weaker the further from the planets surfice, so it wouldn't be practical in space) or something else.

Besides, who said that fighters have to take off bunker on planets? Ever heard of fighterbases? (space station designed purealy for housing fighters).

subspace speed is a constant... Whatever time they enter subspace apart from each other, is the distance they will stay.

Something is bothering me. If subspace speed is nocstant, why can fighters outrung a capship in subspace then? How the hell did the fighters/bombers catch up with the Lucifer then?

That makes no soense at all....

Also, should the carrier run through an intra system jump, it is instant, and is immediately stuck somewhere else in the system untill ITS drives recharge. something that the shivans would presumably do faster, and they would be tracked, no doubt...

What? In-system jumps are not instant! Every jump takes time - the greater the distance, the longer the time.
System-system jumps take 15 minutes or more (Lucifer jump), while in-system jumps are much shorter.

It takes time to charge up for a subspace jump, people don't go around with their jumpdrives charged and ready to go. And as I've pointed out before, a destroyer can target the carrier's hangers and engines with its first and second salvos in whatever order it deems fit. Poof, you can't run, and you are restricted to whatever fighters you already have on combat aerospace patrol, a small fraction of the aerospace group that probably doesn't include any bombers.

Depending on where the hostile destroyer exits subspace, it may even be physical impossible to jump out. If he's parked himself right in front of your bow, you're pretty screwed.

A carrier would have multiple fighterbays, so it's practicly impossible to disable them all so fast. Espacially if they are on opposite sides of the carrier.

Oh...and do you forget the 3 axis thingie? What's stoping the carrier to turn up or down and jump?

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Where do you get that from? 2 wings of Ursas with Helios outstrip any destroyer in terms of firepower.

1) 2 wings of Ursas (8) worth of Helios do about 108800 damage per minute, unless I'm misinterpreting the following link http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/fs2/fred2/tables/fs2weaponchart.shtml

A single BGreen does 46588 damage per minute, half of it each time it fires!!
http://home.att.net/~clay.h/fs2/beamfaq.htm#BEAMTABLE

2) It might be more expensive trying to get 2 wings of Ursas equiped with Helios to destroy something than having a Destroyer do the samething, with the bonus of not having to reload.

3) Helios can be stopped in midflight, a beam cannot.

In a long battle, bombers might prevail, but in the first minutes of the battle, a destroyer rules supreme, afterwards, it's kind of tied.

[StratComm]

Trashman, we've had this argument with you before.  I'll address some of the bigger points:

Originally posted by TrashMan
Not completely true. Subspace jumps take a few minutes and can be detected. We seen bofore that ships can hide undetected in-system, thus a carrier would be a completely plausable design.

Subspace jumps take a seemingly arbitrary amount of time, yes.  But there really isn't much canonical evidence to support any theory about transit time.  I will point out that with subspace tracking, a carrier would be traced very quickly once an enemy ship comes across one of its combat patrols.  And tracking only works if an allied ship with tracking equipment is within a limited range of the jumping ship, so you can't count on any kind of early warning.

Originally posted by TrashMan
Where do you get that from? 2 wings of Ursas with Helios outstrip any destroyer in terms of firepower.

But it's rare that a destroyer actually has two wings of heavy bombers available at all, much less ready to go at a moment's notice, armed to the teeth with the most powerful and expensive bombs available.  A destroyer's cannons, on the other hand, can be charged up and fired with literally a moment's notice.

Originally posted by TrashMan
the GTVA can allso track ships trough subspace. You allso forgot one thing - subspace drives need time to charge. If a carrier jumped immediately after the Shivan destroyer jumped in, it couldn't follow instantly. that would give the carrier a small head start, and when the destroyer comes after him in subspace, the carrier could make use of the distance gained and it's fighters. Besides, carriers would probably be faster than destroyers...

Shivans have superior subspace technology.  Relying on that "head start" to keep your carrier out of harm's way is stupid.  For example, the enemy capital ship can launch it's strike craft to jump after the carrier and hastle or disable it until the destroyer's engines recharge for persuit.  And why, precisely, would carriers be faster?

Originally posted by TrashMan
Besides, who said that fighters have to take off bunker on planets? Ever heard of fighterbases? (space station designed purealy for housing fighters).

We've got no canonical evidence that fighterbases are practical, if ever even deployed, in the Freespace universe.  Arcadia's are the only stations we ever see with a fighter compliment, and those are assumed to be small, police-like outfits.  The fighterbase can't retreat, and so is no good when there is no front line to protect it.

Originally posted by TrashMan
Something is bothering me. If subspace speed is nocstant, why can fighters outrung a capship in subspace then? How the hell did the fighters/bombers catch up with the Lucifer then?

That makes no soense at all....

The subspace corridors for system-to-system jumps are somewhat like corridors in normal space; there is an overall "flow" but craft can navigate within them with the same level of thrust and speed as they could in normal space.  Fighters are faster than capships, so they can give chase to them in a subspace corridor.

Originally posted by TrashMan
What? In-system jumps are not instant! Every jump takes time - the greater the distance, the longer the time.

All evidence points quite to the contrary, actually.  In-system jumps are so close to instantaneous that any tactical advantage that time would allow is pretty much negligable.  The only time we even see a ship taking longer than a few moments to arrive is when the Carthage and Dashor come through to secure the Knossos, and then the most logical conclusion is that their delay was due to their subspace drives powering up rather than some transit delay.

Originally posted by TrashMan
A carrier would have multiple fighterbays, so it's practicly impossible to disable them all so fast. Espacially if they are on opposite sides of the carrier.

Oh...and do you forget the 3 axis thingie? What's stoping the carrier to turn up or down and jump?

That's not an arguable point.  The Hatshepsut's fighterbays are on opposite sides of its hull, and the Hecate's bay is tucked away where there is practically no good line of sight.  So it's a trend that already exists.  But without an early warning system (which can't exist in Freespace due to reasons stated above) you'd have to keep a huge variety of craft on ready status, and quite frankly heavy bombers just aren't common or expendable enough to have on deck ready to launch all the time, and that's assuming the flight deck would be available with interceptors and space superiority fighters being deployed all over the system.  At any rate, the carrier would be hard-pressed to launch more strike craft than an attacking destroyer (who would have everything available ready to go for the attack) in the time it would take to resolve an engagement.

As for turning out of the way, have you actually played Freespace?    Capship turning rates are abysmal at best.

[Jal-18]

Funny thing though, how if pitted against each other the bombers would beat the destroyer...

edit: in response to above post,

The situation everyone seems to be using is if a carrier gets jumped by a destroyer it dies, and therefore it sucks.  Consider the following:

1) In the converse of that statement, the carrier has far greater air superiority and would take down the destroyer.

2) A carrier is not a defensive weapon.  You use carriers to project force and to transfer insane amounts of fighters to where you need them, fast.

3)Related to above: any ship will suck if put in a certain situation.  If we based our opinion of the Ursa on how it handles in a dogfight, (with say...Dragons) [V] would have taken it out a long time ago, no?  But since that's obviously not it's role, we still use the Ursa, as the bomber it was ment to be.  A carrier is not supposed to be able to fight off a surprise destroyer attack.

And everyone seems to forget that carriers always have escort groups.  You simply can't jump a lonely carrier: at the least, it'll have some cruisers to protect it.

edit2: Ghostavo apperantly agrees with my point 3.  And I used the example since they were debating which does more damage, destroyers or a wing of bombers.

[Ghostavo]

Because the bombers are designed to destroy capital ships while capital ships are design to blow each other apart, have you thought of that? What you are saying would be like saying:

"Funny thing though, how if pitted against each other the fighters would beat the bombers..."

EDIT:
I hate editing... anyway

About your point 3, there are other scenarios where such a carrier group (if such existed) would fare poorly when compared with a FS destroyer group, like running blockades for example.

[Jal-18]

Which is why you would use a destroyer/battleship group for blockade running.  We're assuming (against all proof) that the GTVA aren't complete morons.  You use ships that are good for certain missions on those missions, and avoid getting them into spots where they aren't.

[Ghostavo]

But what advantage does having multiple groups grants if FS destroyer group can do all a carrier group can and even more? It's more expensive building several classes of ships than just one class of ships.

[TrashMan]

Precisely why I said that ALL staded ship claees are usefull in certain conditions and should all be in-game.

All evidence points quite to the contrary, actually. In-system jumps are so close to instantaneous that any tactical advantage that time would allow is pretty much negligable. The only time we even see a ship taking longer than a few moments to arrive is when the Carthage and Dashor come through to secure the Knossos, and then the most logical conclusion is that their delay was due to their subspace drives powering up rather than some transit delay.

What evidence? when command sez reinforcements are on the way, it ALLWAYS takes AT LEAST 5 minutes for them arrive..even fighters. Since they charge hteir jump dirves ain just a few seconds, then they would arrive nigh instantly if the in-system jump was instantanious...

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by TrashMan

Not completely true. Subspace jumps take a few minutes and can be detected.

I think I already argued this with you, or someone, once, and proved it wrong. Basically, all we can deduce about insystem subspace travel is that while there must be some kind of restrictions, we don't know what they are, and so therefore must assume there are none.
The longest lead time we can give for any forewarning of an incoming ship is about a minute. That's not much time, not enough to plot a subspace jump and get your drives charged or launch more then two more wings of fighters.

Originally posted by TrashMan

the GTVA can allso track ships trough subspace.

Irrevelant. Warning time is too short to make effective use of this information.

Originally posted by TrashMan

Besides, carriers would probably be faster than destroyers...

Considering the noncombatant role you're advocating for them and the idea they carry ub3rmillions of fighters, no, I suspect they'd actually be SLOWER, since they aren't supposed to be near a battle and actually have to move to engage or disengage.

Originally posted by TrashMan

Ever heard of fighterbases? (space station designed purealy for housing fighters).

Such an installation would be even MORE vunerable to attack then a carrier. At least carriers aren't always in one place. And they would almost certainly top the target list of any potentional enemy, so they will be the first to recieve attention from bomber squadrons or destroyers.

Originally posted by TrashMan

A carrier would have multiple fighterbays, so it's practicly impossible to disable them all so fast. Espacially if they are on opposite sides of the carrier.

But that's not how FS ships do things, is it now? They have one or two fighterbays only. And that makes good sense, really, because a fighterbay is an inherent weak point in the ship's hull. A carrier with six or seven fighterbays is asking to have itself blown apart when somebody shoots into the bay and sets off fighter munitions stored there.

Originally posted by TrashMan
Oh...and do you forget the 3 axis thingie? What's stoping the carrier to turn up or down and jump?

But changing course takes time, during which you will get pounded on and possibly lose your engines or be destroyed.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Jal-18
And everyone seems to forget that carriers always have escort groups.  You simply can't jump a lonely carrier: at the least, it'll have some cruisers to protect it.

If you're going to start arguing carrier groups then be fair and give the destroyer the same advantage you're giving to the carrier.

[GoreChild]

I'm glad some people have seen my point.

Having all 3 classes of ships would be ideal. In fact having destroyers AND battleships would be excellent for assaults and "forced entry" into systems with defended jump nodes, a case where a carrier would be exceedingly vulnerable.

Engage enemy capital ships with destroyers and battleships while the destroyers' fighter complement defends it and its fleet from bombers and takes out fixed emplacements like sentry guns/mjolnirs or whatever.

Assuming the enemy at the jump node are pushed back or sufficiently engaged, at the critical juncture carrier(s) jump in and deploy fighters and bombers which would be fueled, armed and waiting in the tubes(real carriers keep fighters on their catapults at all times during rough times). This would most likely tip the battle in the GTVA's favor.

I dont remember in the game if there are mined jump points but that would certainly complicate things.

[Jal-18]

@Ghostavo: Because right now, destroyers are doing mediocre jobs at the tasks they're assigned, which leads to more loses.  If you split them into carriers and battleships, you spread out your forces, and you maximize their effectiveness by having them worry about one task and one task only.

@karajorma: since they're talking about a single destroyer jumping in and attacking a carrier, the destroyer doesn't get the benefits.  If you have a destroyer group jump in and attack a carrier group, then it becomes a fleet battle and not a true test of carrier-vs-destroyer. (Although that makes me realise that a destroyer coming in out of nowhere isn't exactly a fair combat test either.)

[StratComm]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Precisely why I said that ALL staded ship claees are usefull in certain conditions and should all be in-game.



What evidence? when command sez reinforcements are on the way, it ALLWAYS takes AT LEAST 5 minutes for them arrive..even fighters. Since they charge hteir jump dirves ain just a few seconds, then they would arrive nigh instantly if the in-system jump was instantanious...

The support ship is all the evidence you could ask for.  Arrives the moment you call it in.  And the outer limit on reinforcements is 3 minutes in the previously mentioned mission, not the minimum as you are implying.  And most of the time, fighter wings show up precisely on cue.

The reason these debates always degenerate into arguments of defense is that defense is precisely where the dedicated carrier/battleship idea fails.  Offensively, they are capable of outclassing a destroyer, without question.  But defensively, they are both severly handicapped by the ability of an opponent to exploit its weaknesses.  Talking about escort groups is a non-sequiter, because for whatever reason neither Terrans or Vasudans (who have their own seperate command priorities) nor the shivans EVER actually escort their capital ships the way any current tactician would want.  In fact, I can't think of more than maybe one mission where a capital ship was actually being reinforced by a cruiser or corvette, in either Freespace game.  So it's not that the argument that "an escort would do this" is a bad one, it's just a useless one because, for whatever reason, escorting ships in the context of subspace and the Freespace universe in general is obviously something that isn't done.

[TrashMan]

LOL..battleships handicapped defensivly?

StratComm, the WW2 battlehip Iowa has 116 AA guns and uber-thick armor. It would take a whole lot of fihhters to take one down. And it wouldn't be standing still waiting to get blown up.

--------
Don't get me started on that carrier/battleship discussion. The BB's lost in Pearl Harbour don't count.  the only other battleships sunk by airplanes I can think of are the Repulse and Priince of Whales, and to sink them, the japs mobilised every airplane they had in the vicinity from multiple bases - hundereds of them.
Mind you, the Prince of whales and especilly the Repulse (it was a battlecruiser actually) have vastly inferior AA armament than the american designs (they learnt their lessons well).
----

Allso, did it ever occur to you that [V] didn't put battlegroups in for other reasons? As in - ship limits and game speed.
In game there is a constant mention of battlegroups, alltough we only see the Colossus battlegroup.

EDIT: Remeber that many things were done for gameplay resons - like fighter wings that you call popping out allmost instantly, while the one command scramles take a lot longer.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by TrashMan
LOL..battleships handicapped defensivly?

StratComm, the WW2 battlehip Iowa has 116 AA guns and uber-thick armor. It would take a whole lot of fihhters to take one down. And it wouldn't be standing still waiting to get blown up.

Single strike by a midwar US dive-bomber squadron. Not so hard after all.

Originally posted by TrashMan

--------
Don't get me started on that carrier/battleship discussion. The BB's lost in Pearl Harbour don't count.  the only other battleships sunk by airplanes I can think of are the Repulse and Priince of Whales, and to sink them, the japs mobilised every airplane they had in the vicinity from multiple bases - hundereds of them.
Mind you, the Prince of whales and especilly the Repulse (it was a battlecruiser actually) have vastly inferior AA armament than the american designs (they learnt their lessons well).
----

First off, the Japanese aircraft that sank Force Z were old, obscelent Nell bombers, 1920s-era aircraft; second, there were only about forty of them.

Let me start naming the other battleships lost wholely or in part to air action for you then: Bismarck, Tirpitz, Hiei, Yamato, Musashi, Ise, Hyuga, Kongo, Haruna. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head; I've probably missed one or two Japanese ones that were lost toward the end of the war.

[DIO]

Originally posted by TrashMan
LOL..battleships handicapped defensivly?

StratComm, the WW2 battlehip Iowa has 116 AA guns and uber-thick armor. It would take a whole lot of fihhters to take one down. And it wouldn't be standing still waiting to get blown up.

--------
Don't get me started on that carrier/battleship discussion. The BB's lost in Pearl Harbour don't count.  the only other battleships sunk by airplanes I can think of are the Repulse and Priince of Whales, and to sink them, the japs mobilised every airplane they had in the vicinity from multiple bases - hundereds of them.
Mind you, the Prince of whales and especilly the Repulse (it was a battlecruiser actually) have vastly inferior AA armament than the american designs (they learnt their lessons well).
----

Allso, did it ever occur to you that [V] didn't put battlegroups in for other reasons? As in - ship limits and game speed.
In game there is a constant mention of battlegroups, alltough we only see the Colossus battlegroup.

EDIT: Remeber that many things were done for gameplay resons - like fighter wings that you call popping out allmost instantly, while the one command scramles take a lot longer.

WTF?
PoW had a great AA defense for that time, and there was only 44 Nell and Betty bombers that attacked PoW and Repulse.
Where the hell did you got that information?
Also, There's much more battleships that was sanked in airattack.
Tirpitz, Marat, Petropavlovsk, Conte di Cavour, Impero, Roma, Strasbourg, Clemenceau, Setsu, Hiei, Haruna, Ise, Hyuga, Musashi and Yamato.

[StratComm]

And while your at it, you may as well count the Bismark.  Not technically sank by them, but aircraft certainly were essential to taking her down.  Battleships are no longer in service precisely because of the overwhelming superiority of airborn offensives.  Never mind that you still can't seem to get past WW2.

And if you want to argue about something in a game, use what's in the game for your arguments.  If technical limitations of the engine are what prevented battlegroups from showing up (and I actually agree that they are) then that becomes part of canon anyway, since the story arc was built under those limitations.   Deal with it.

[Night Hammer]

bravo  StratComm

*thunderous applause*