[General Battuta]

Very nice. Thank you!

[ChronoReverse]

While certainly the case, drones are cheaper than trained humans (after economies of scale) and a stupid mistake can be corrected quickly with new firmware.  Humans are harder to update and can make stupid mistakes too (clearly not every pilot will be a star pilot).

[Nuke]

unfortunately humans write that firmware, which of course will have new bugs.

[ChronoReverse]

So your premise is that because humans write the code there will be errors.  There's not really a problem with that.

What prevents normal human pilots from making errors?

[Snail]

What prevents normal human pilots from making errors?

Nothing. That's why they die.

[Colonol Dekker]

AI should be used to navigate and target, Humans should make all strategic desiciions.


Re: original topic,


I reckon realism-ships would turn out either like the cruisers from Nexus in shape or like Confed craft from Wing commander ( 3 and 4 ) just because i like the functionmal design, IE, build a runway with engines and slap a bridge on (TCS Victory + Lexington )

[Aardwolf]

What's the point of a runway in space?

[BengalTiger]

If the runway is really short and has arresting gear, it could be really usefull.

[Aardwolf]

These are spaceships. They don't need a runway to get up to speed in order to take flight, because they don't need to get up to speed to take flight.

[Snail]

Maybe they need it for ships going INTO the fighterbay can get onto the right place. Or maybe it's just a guide. Or maybe it just looks better that way. Or maybe they don't want to put windows on the "runway" so instead they put a runway on the runway. It could be there for any purpose.

[Polpolion]

These are spaceships. They don't need a runway to get up to speed in order to take flight, because they don't need to get up to speed to take flight.

They'd need a runway to land, though. Or at least something with some kind of arrestor wire, so they don't fly though into the bay and crash.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I like the idea of an automatic landing system. When you come out of subspace, press a button and your fighter lands itself. A runway would be a practical aid for that.

I would like to see an Orion with runway lights. Has anyone ever done that?

[NGTM-1R]

These are spaceships. They don't need a runway to get up to speed in order to take flight, because they don't need to get up to speed to take flight.

No, but there are still valid reasons for them. For that matter, anyone conversant in WC would realize that the runways are for landing; fighters launch from launch tubes. (Or on the Victory, a cat launch. See the novels, and note in the WC2 launch animation the fighters aren't actually in contact with the deck as they exit the launch tubes.)

Put simply if you just shove the fighter out the back, aside from maybe frying it with your thruster exhaust, it's very vunerable while it gets up to speed. Launch tubes and catapults on runway-like structures make good sense from a tactical standpoint, as they get people off the deck moving fast enough it's not a simple matter to just blast them as they appear. BSG has its own launch tubes for the same reason.

[Snail]

I would like to see an Orion with runway lights. Has anyone ever done that?

The High poly one has runway lights in the form of glowpoints.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

No I mean real runway lights. Not just a few lighted spots. But anyway, I'm going off-topic.

The only real reason to use runways in the FS universe is that they look good, I guess. It's a pity that only the Orion has them. Yes, it's a large, uncovered area, and therefore relatively weak to fighter/bomber attacks. But with some creative turret placement, that can be solved. And runways do look good.

EDIT: Oh yeah, they could be used as assembly points as well. Like the top of the Aquitaine in Mystery of the Trinity.

[lostllama]

No I mean real runway lights. Not just a few lighted spots.

Actually, I think those lights that I think Snail was referring to on the high-poly Orion do kind of resemble runway lights. They're sort of like running lights which are synchronised so they flash one after the other, from one end of the runway to the other end. Unless you mean something different.

The Orion's runway is kind of long and looks like it could have ships stationed on it for assembling on-masse. But I don't think it's like a seaborne aircraft carrier with elevators and the like (though that would probably be a cool thing to add on an Orion).

[ChronoReverse]

What prevents normal human pilots from making errors?

Nothing. That's why they die.

Exactly =D

AI should be used to navigate and target, Humans should make all strategic desiciions.

Of course.  Drones would be best for doing the gritty work, but there's still a place for humans.  With that, piloted spacecraft ought to be much fewer in numbers because you wouldn't need them as often.  If you're doing a direct attack or just want a group of fighters killed, drones are perfectly suitable and you'd fallback to pilots only if that fails.



Incidentally, Macross Frontier had a perfect example of that.  They sent drone Ghost-type fighters to deal with an unknown threat first and only when they failed because of jamming did they send pilots (who also failed, but that's beside the point).

[Snail]

Perhaps AI is ineffective because they can be easily hacked.

[Nuke]

a runway would have the advantage of providing friction assisted landings when combined with magnetic fields, artificial gravity, or trhusters. allowing you to save fuel on landings, as well as to let you land at higher speeds. as battlestar galactica has shown us, such a system comes in handy sometimes.

[Admiral_Stones]

Perhaps AI is ineffective because they can be easily hacked.

Uhm... Not really.
Okay, when they are (security wise) like the pentagon, any alien bedroom kid could hack them.
But if anyone makes a good job stuffing the security holes, you'd need to hack them 'head on', and have you ever seen which amounts of time it takes to decrypt a six character password even when you've got the hash? Already today, we have 1024 bit and more encryption, which takes weeks on Blue Gene/L (which has a peak of 600 TERAFLOPS). And I guess they pretty tested these drones for security holes, because they really don't want them to turn against them.

My two cents.
(not to be inpolite to a mod, though)