[Commander Zane]

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.

[Snail]

And the Sathanas wouldn't deploy its own fighters, whyyyyyyy? :

[Commander Zane]

Well the almighty Alpha One could just vaporize them all, as always.

[Snail]

True, true.

[AlphaOne]

Blasted Alpha1 i'm really starting to hate that guy! Bercause of him all his wingmen such!

[aldo_14]

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....

[TrashMan]

Blasted Alpha1 i'm really starting to hate that guy! Bercause of him all his wingmen such!

Suck.

[neo_hermes]

  why the heck doesn't alphaone use the spell check =/

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Qwer]

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).

[TrashMan]

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.

[aldo_14]

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......

[AlphaOne]

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.

[Qwer]

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).

[AlphaOne]

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.

[aldo_14]

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.

[Snail]

Essentially, the so-called 'gunboat' is more of a super-bomber.

[Commander Zane]

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.