[AlphaOne]

Not true the Collie has more then enough reactors to handle its beams. It's standard beams. Remember the Collie overloaded most of its beams if not all of its beams to do more damage to the Sath before it could escape or get into weapons range.

Also remember that a Hecate can carry 150 spacecrafts in its bays. And when you first look at it it does not seem to be much space in it.

A corvette with 10 fighter/bommber wings on it with limited ac weaponry or no ac weaponry but loads of aaaf weaponry could carry probabli the same amount of spacecrafts posibly a bit more something like 12 wings.

As for the ac weaponry on a small carrier to me would be more of a defensive measure since the beam cannons while powerfull could not protect the ship against a dedicated warship .

Also remember that the Hecate is more of a dedicated carrier and C&C ship then a destroyer like the Orion or the Hatshepsut which altouh have similar large fighterbays posibly a bit smaller the Orion has something like 100 spacecrafts and the Hecate maibe something like 120 or so have also more firepower in terms of beam cannons.

As for the small number of ships inside a carrier based on a corvette to me it seems more then adequate . Think about it you have something like 20-48 spacecrafts on it I mean that is half the amount an Orion has and 1/3-rd the number of a Hecate in a ship that is less then 1/3rd of a Hecate . Remember its not just the lenght of the ship it is all the dimensions.

[aldo_14]

Not true the Collie has more then enough reactors to handle its beams. It's standard beams. Remember the Collie overloaded most of its beams if not all of its beams to do more damage to the Sath before it could escape or get into weapons range.

Also remember that a Hecate can carry 150 spacecrafts in its bays. And when you first look at it it does not seem to be much space in it.

A corvette with 10 fighter/bommber wings on it with limited ac weaponry or no ac weaponry but loads of aaaf weaponry could carry probabli the same amount of spacecrafts posibly a bit more something like 12 wings.

As for the ac weaponry on a small carrier to me would be more of a defensive measure since the beam cannons while powerfull could not protect the ship against a dedicated warship .

Also remember that the Hecate is more of a dedicated carrier and C&C ship then a destroyer like the Orion or the Hatshepsut which altouh have similar large fighterbays posibly a bit smaller the Orion has something like 100 spacecrafts and the Hecate maibe something like 120 or so have also more firepower in terms of beam cannons.

As for the small number of ships inside a carrier based on a corvette to me it seems more then adequate . Think about it you have something like 20-48 spacecrafts on it I mean that is half the amount an Orion has and 1/3-rd the number of a Hecate in a ship that is less then 1/3rd of a Hecate . Remember its not just the lenght of the ship it is all the dimensions.

Albeit aren't you making a huge assumption in that every technological component can be reduced in size equally with the physical size of the hull?

[Mustang19]

My ideal ship would be a unarmed, bare-bones carrrier, with just enough space to hold 15 or so fighters and logistics support. Like in all space-fighter games, capital ships in Freespace are little more than dumb targets, even though FS capships are the most capable of any game. Carriers, corvettes, and so on seem extremely expensive. I'd rather buy 5 Ursas or 20 Perseus than a Leviathan. Go into FRED and create a mission with 5 bombers against a Aeolus- even if it's average AI flying the bombers, the cruiser won't stand a chance.

So, yeah, a fighter bay on a GTVA corvette would multiply the corvette's combat power by two or three times.

[Mobius]

Why you're saying that carriers are unarmed?!?

They should be the best defended warships in existance!

[Mad Bomber]

He's talking about mini-carriers, LGM. Minicarriers. Cheap and mass produced, not big hulking flagship mommas.

[Mustang19]

FS bombers are way more effective than the capital ships they're meant to destroy. Freespace is meant to be enjoyable from a player's point of view as a fighter pilot, as are all space shooters, so capital ships are necessarily nothing more than targets. FS2 ships have impressive flak and beam defense, but what really protects them are the fighters. Try playing Bearbaiting, Slaying Ravanna, or a similar mission without the fighters, and you see how weak the capships really are against proper bombing tactics. I understand the need for large ships for storyline purposes- most players expect a game to have destroyers, cruisers, and even Sath-type ships for the sake of the "oooh, look at that big ship" factor. But ships like the Colossus, although impressive individually, aren't an efficient use of resources. This is because FS2 bombs are rather powerful versus the armor they're meant to destroy. As an example, it takes no more than 20-30 Harbingers to kill a Lucifer (without invincibility, of course). Compare this to the Yamato in 1945, which survived over 100 torpedo and bomb hits.

A light carrier would be ideal, something like a hollowed-out Satis with a fighter bay inside. It could outfight anything fast enough to catch it and outrun anything else.

[Mad Bomber]

A Satis is waaayyy too small.

A heavily gutted Argo might be able to carry a wing and the supplies and spare parts for it (making a reasonably nice Q-ship), but it'd be godawful poor at defending itself.

A Triton with a special cargo (*coughs in Axem's direction* ) could probably carry a full squadron worth or so, including supplies, but again it would be poor at defending itself. For reference, useful bay space in a TC-TRI-sized fighterbay would probably be about 45m*85m*150m, after making room for pilot quarters and secondary stockpiles and spare armor and such.

So, functionally about one squadron, assuming a suitable level of spare parts and no Ursas. Smaller, less ammo-intensive fighters like Ulysses, Thoth or Loki would probably be common in there.

I'd estimate that to be a tactically and logistically viable deployment platform, a minicarrier would have to be at least 2-3 times the volume of a Fenris.

[MarkN]

For those of you who have seen Babylon 5, or played the Babylon Project (although that doesn't show how it works so well) how about something akin to the Raider carrier there. this has a minimal habitat area, and the stores the fighters externally, or even more extremely the Black Omega carrier, which is basically a shuttle with six fighter hung from the bottom.

[TrashMan]

My ideal ship would be a unarmed, bare-bones carrrier, with just enough space to hold 15 or so fighters and logistics support. Like in all space-fighter games, capital ships in Freespace are little more than dumb targets, even though FS capships are the most capable of any game.

You havn't played X-Wing: Alliance then. Try attacking a ISD there. It's like a Hecate where ALL of it's weapons are flak/aaaf!

[Mustang19]

Nope, I never played X-Wing Alliance. I never caught on to the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series, maybe because I only have the old games. But I do remember that what we would call "blob turret fire" in FS2 moves much faster in the X-Wing series, your shields are lower and it's harder to dodge. So you're probably right. Interesting challenge. Kind of like attacking an Aeolus by yourself, right?  (HLPBB needs a good space fighter smiley.)

In the FS1 mission Reaching the Zenith, the SC Zenith, a Lilith class, is "said" to carry 2 fighter wings, or 6 fighters (3 Manticore 3 Scorpion). There isn't a functional docking bay on a Lilith or Cain if you go into FRED, but docking bays are visible on both models. Now, the Lilith is an incredibly strong warship for its size, with 75,000 HP, almost enough to make it a destroyer. If you were to strip all those heavy weapons off, I assume, you could make a somewhat smaller carrrier that still carries 6 fighters.  It's just hard to tell. We have no way of knowing how much logistics support FS fighters require. What I would prefer are a few small ships for the fighters to dock at traveling with Elysium ammo carriers to give them missile reloads. Hell, those support ships seem to carry A LOT of weapons, don't they? Why not just use them for your "carriers"?

As for the Argo-carrier not being able to defend itself. Yeah, but I assume that as kind of a given for a light carrier. It's not supposed to be right up there at the front with its fighters, it deploys fighters, they jump out and then return to base. An Argo can survive 3-5 bomb hits, which is enough. If you're taking more bomb hits than that, you're probably in bad shape anyway and it's better to loose a cheap transport than a real carrier.