[ToecrusherHammerjaw]

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but why is it that more vessels of the corvette class do not carry fightercraft?  I've seen the sizes of corvettes.  They could carry fighters.  They could.  The size of your standard Deimos is slightly over 700 meters, which is still longer than the largest current U.S. aircraft carrier.  Plus, the size of an Apollo class fighter is only 8 meters longer than an F-14 Tomcat, several of which are (or were) carried on aircraft carriers.  It seems to me, that, given the dimensions, corvettes should be able to carry at least a sizeable escort wing on board, and destroyer type vessels shouls be able to carry a lot more.  Explanations?

[karajorma]

Probably that it's just simply more efficient (in terms of logistics, money, manpower or something else) to stick all the fighters in a destroyer instead of spreading them out across the fleet. The GTVA is fairly small for the number of destroyers it has so maybe there's no need to have fighters on a corvette because there's always going to be a destroyer in system which can provide fighter support.

[asyikarea51]

Methinks fighterbays should be added to anything of frigate class (I consider Iceni a frigate).

So Cruiser (more ASA, small anti-warship) -> Corvette (less ASA, medium and large anti-warship) -> Frigate (moderate ASA, medium anti-warship, Ftrbay, better hull) -> Destroyer (large anti-warship)

Might just be me though.

*ASA = anti-spacecraft artillery

[AlphaOne]

Forget about that just go poket size. Produce a few dozen frigates like the iceni only more powerfull get together and construct a few dedicated carriers same size of a destroyer but pack about 250 spacecrafts in it and go to war. Ypu would have your noral destroyers but they would be able to concentrate on actualy taking out large warships instead of fleeing from cruisers when they run out of fighters

[Bob-san]

There's a cargo crate for carrying like 4 fighters floating around somewhere... I think Axem made one... anyways...

Someone should really use that for the next post-Capella campaign. I could see an entire asteroid field depot swarming with defending fighters... that would be awesome to see as 10 crates make 40 fighters.... 40 fighters make lots of destruction.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

well, the moloch carries some fighters, i dont see why the GTVA doesnt put fighterbays on the corvettes...maybe it reduces room for the reactor core, and for the piranha missile banks.

question:does a pilot have capability to have an airtight spacesuit? not necessarily with air and everything for an hour long spacewalk, but i was thinking that if they could dock with a cruiser or corvette, the pilot could simply hop out, float to the docking door (im assuming it has an airlock) and stay for a bit while the corvette releases a small repair drone to fix the fighter.

Not exactly a fighterbay, but it would give corvettes and cruisers on extended patrol the opportunity to keep fighter support close at hand. maybe a corvette could be desgined with about 4-6 dock points...give it room for a wing of fighters and two or so bombers to complement, in case a Lilith shows up and we dont want to damage the corvette


Fighterbays would be ideal though

[NGTM-1R]

Supporting a single fighter for an extended time takes a surprising amount of space and people to accomplish, moreso when like GTVA craft the fighter is the size of a house. A corvette could ferry them into battle dropship style and perhaps perform rearming and minor repairs, but no, it really doesn't have the space to support a fighter over the long term. At most they might be able to operate independently for a week or two.

[Trivial Psychic]

BR's campaign "Homesick" would suggest that this would be possible, since a mercenary squadron is based aboard a Deimos.

[Mustang19]

You could probably jury-rig something up, but apparently it isn't done. It MAY be possible to have fighters on small ships, though, as several campaigns base their squadrons from all kinds of warships, from Fenris to Deimoses. Even though Deimoses, etc. don't have fighter bays when you look in FRED, neither does the Cain cruiser but apparently it can still carry fighters. You can see fighter bays on the Cain model itself, and in Ships.tbl it's listed as a "strike cruiser" meant to carry fighters. Also, in the FS1 mission "Reaching the Zenith", it says a Lilith has two fighter wings.

The Lilith is a very strong cruiser, so we can assume that adding fighters to a ship doesn't significantly reduce its firepower or armor.

[Bob-san]

Nice points.

What sticks out to me is there are some 20 destroyers... there are more destroyers then some useful classes of cruisers! (Aeolus... namely) Remember how big fighters and bombers are... there's a thread called "Size DOES matter" or somethin that has comparisons between a 747 and a bunch of fighters and a leviathan.

It would be like landing 3 747's on-top of eachother inside a cruiser....

Perhaps the reason they don't have fighter bays is because it would theoretically be a spot to do a small kamikaze run into... you could easily go through the blast doors on a light ship.

[Mars]

What sticks out to me is there are some 20 destroyers...

Uh... according to the hornet tech description the 2.6 million stockpiled hornets were divided amongst the battle groups of the GTVA, and each received 100,000 hornets so 2.6 million / 100 thousand and = 26... so there are 26 battle groups, and from what we've seen every battle group has (at least) 2 destroyers, so that would be more like 52 destroyers... unless I'm wrong.

[Mustang19]

Except in FS you have these strangle invincible forcefields surrounding fighter bays.  IMO :V: should let  you in part of the way but have some kind of "door" preventing you from reaching the interior of the ship.

Even considering the vulnerabilities a docking bay would entail, it would still probably work pretty well. Most likely, the GTVA stations all of its fighters on destroyers and lets corvettes do the fighting. Think about it- the GVCv Sobek has four or five beam cannons versus the Hecate's four or five! It seems to me like destoryers are really meant to hang back while smaller ships do the fighting. If this is true, then most of the extra space on a destroyer probably goes into armor and repair facilites (they would defintely need those, as most craft return to base with fairly heavy damage and it's a challenge to keep your whole fighter complement fully repaired all the time). Destroyers also have a lot of extra space for troops, command-and-control, battle computers, etc. most likely, which explains why they are so big and so lightly armed compared to cruisers and corvettes.

Often, in user-created campaigns you'll hear about Terran or Vasudan cruisers that carry fighters. These are probably jury-rigged to carry 8 or so fighters and weren't originally designed that way.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Except in FS you have these strangle invincible forcefields surrounding fighter bays.  IMO :V: should let  you in part of the way but have some kind of "door" preventing you from reaching the interior of the ship.

Uh... they do. Not on the Arcadia or the Hades, but the Orion and Hecate both have fly-in-able docking bays.

[Bob-san]

But still if you have a kamikaze run from a fighter or bomber against a lightly armoured door, as a cruiser doesnt have enough of a reactor to hold forcefields in a high-damage situation. They'd buckle and the explosion would rip through the hull!

[Mustang19]

Well, then you have to get through Docking Door #2. And 3, and 4, and 5....

[Bob-san]

But a cruiser at least with a fighter bay... it can't fit any more then about 3 doors into the figherbay. The point is a high-velocity fighter can weaken or destroy the outer door, then severely damage or destroy the second door at least! Quite possible that it heavily damages the third door. Remember, after the second door is in the hull... they can't safely repair the doors as there is no airlock (one door that could be barley holding everything in).



Has anyone made a model that you can actually damage it and see damage? I was thinking it could be cool to model the interior of the ship, as well as the exterior... not even that complex of a thing. Like if you can destroy the fighterbay doors of an Orion, that you see more inside of the ship! Destroy enough of them, and eventually you are "inside" the ship... but you can only go in a few metres before even a Ulysses is too big to fit in. Just add corriders that seem to go in different directions (but just end a few metres to each side). I would do that and add 2 very weak turrets as "marine defence" weapons... something to really make anything scared of boarding!

[Mustang19]

Presumably FS ships have all kinds of interior defences, which IMO explains why boarding attempts are so rare and why it's usually more profitable to destroy the ship.

And considering that damage is always applied all over the hull, i.e. you can't pentrate a specific portion of the ship like in real life, I think that FS ships are covered with "dynamic armor" that evens itself out autmatically so the whole ship has basically the same strength. This is the only way we could explain how ships never go down even if you fire 10 Harbingers into the exact same place. Real, seawater ships take damage like this- a hull breach in one quadrant damages the ship in the sense that it causes the ship to take on water, but in space if you get a hull breach you're probably toast. I do think that radiation from these blast does a lot of damage to the interior, though, because you'll hear of a few points in the campaign where ships take crew losses after hits (like the first mission where you take out the Sath beams, the GTD whatever claims to have taken 25% crew losses).

[Bob-san]

:-/

Well dynamic armour seems to be impossible in pre-Capella GTVA... maybe for the Shivans as their ships seem more organic, more alive with something above plants...)

In terran ships, there is nearly nothing organic... however in Vasudan ships, it seems they're made out of organics like plants... the tan armour reminds me of an anime I used to watch... the ships they used for interstellar travel were mostly like trees...

But anyways maybe the reason a ship can take so many hits by a beam before it cuts through is because the energy is dissapted through the armour? Like you can take so many hits before the armour no longer makes a complete circuit, and at that time it starts to melt entire areas of the ship with the energy... sort of like what happened with Lucifer's "laser" in the cutscene... it cut through the Orion in a few hits.

[Mars]

Presumably FS ships have all kinds of interior defences, which IMO explains why boarding attempts are so rare and why it's usually more profitable to destroy the ship.

And considering that damage is always applied all over the hull, i.e. you can't pentrate a specific portion of the ship like in real life, I think that FS ships are covered with "dynamic armor" that evens itself out autmatically so the whole ship has basically the same strength. This is the only way we could explain how ships never go down even if you fire 10 Harbingers into the exact same place. Real, seawater ships take damage like this- a hull breach in one quadrant damages the ship in the sense that it causes the ship to take on water, but in space if you get a hull breach you're probably toast. I do think that radiation from these blast does a lot of damage to the interior, though, because you'll hear of a few points in the campaign where ships take crew losses after hits (like the first mission where you take out the Sath beams, the GTD whatever claims to have taken 25% crew losses).

I don't think they're rare... the Athekton SDG is the second most produced gun behind the Subach... they must be using it for something.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Presumably FS ships have all kinds of interior defences, which IMO explains why boarding attempts are so rare and why it's usually more profitable to destroy the ship.

You mean why we don't board Shivan ships (hallfight, anyone?). I recall several boarding operations involving the Vasudans in FS1.