Currently, a fighter is one mass and takes up that kind of space in the
hangar. but to maintain it and arm it etc. itakes up 1.5 * its own mass. My
thinking is this, if you want to carry spare fighters, then place them in
cargo and they take up one mass apiece (or 24 CC as in my earlier note, where
1 Mass = 25 CC). If you want to break out the fighters from storage, then you
better have a hangar ready for it. It takes one strategic turn to break it
out, warm it up and have it ready for the next fight, etc.
Gort, Klaatu barada nikto!
Phillip spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> Currently, a fighter is one mass and takes up that kind of space
I'd still think less than 1 Mass per fighter in storage, or at least for a
broken down one. Try this (a variation on what you have)
Ready-For-Flight Storage - all it needs is preflights, fueling, quick
check, arming - stores as 1 Mass Point. Takes X time to ready.
Broken-Down Storage - needs reassembled from basic modules, more
detailed checks including maybe some small test flights around the
carrier, arming, fueling, calibration - stores as 1/2 or 1/3rd mass
point. Takes 2-3X time to ready.
(Whatever X time is, fit to your own taste).
Thus, you can carry either fighters ready to be moved into empty bays in a
short time, or fighters packed for longer term storage. This may
even not be carrier info - it may be info for the "CVE" or "fleet
provider" designs. But it would be useful somewhere....
> Gort, Klaatu barada nikto!
/************************************************
> Phillip E. Pournelle wrote:
Not wishing to detract foom the discussion too much!!! Sorry Phil, but the
fighter does not have one mass per fighter. In FTII terms, if the fighter is
one mass then it must be a parasite fighter without any internal support on
the 'carrier'. In FT2.5 terms the fighter would have a 'support level' equal
to
one half of the fighters mass in supplies/spares, not a realistic
value to sustain the fighter for any period of time. Therefor, the 'Fighter'
is a fractional value of mass and the entire squadron may be less than one
mass.
I do however agree that for transportation purposes the (single) fighter
should be considered 1 mass.
I do feel this discussion is just another attempt to justify a larger
compliment aboard a carrier. If you feel the need to
do so, just do it! There is no 'permission slip' required.
To drag out something I suggested the first time 'round: Double the number of
fighters on the carrier, pay the costs, and as you launch two squadrons move
two of the spares into the now enpty bays and ready them for launch.
Bye for now,
> John and Roxanne Leary wrote:
> I do feel this discussion is just another attempt to justify
Actually I think it does have relevance for a campaign game. In a one off
battle I would prefer to have as many ready fighters and the capability to use
them all. However, if in a campaign, replacing fighters becomes an issue and
how to get those fighters (since they have no integral FTL <unless its
Starwars or Bab5 jumpgate> there is no easy way to transport fighters to the
front. This leads to the question of 1) are all fighters transported to
forward bases in freighters, presumably in a space saving configuration that
requires some assembly and testing or 2) is a method of transporting fighters
to the front that makes them mobile, but perhaps unarmed - much like
ferrying fighters to Europe from the US today. In a campaign the admirals
would obviously like to see a method which gets the most fighters to the front
with the least amount of preparation at the sharp
end - front line crews are going to have a hard enough time keeping
the equipment they have in order. And so the discussion is revolving
around this sort of grey area of a freighter/carrier. At one end is the
pure freighter - you can stack X amount of fighters per mass and it will
take Y amount of time to get them ready. At the other end is a light fragile
carrier that can carry a bunch of fighters in ready to fly mode, perhaps
unarmed perhaps not that would allow fighters to be readied within the time
frame of a FT battle. One of the questions to be asked then is does the
economics of the background support these types of ships? In peacetime, it
does not make much sense to have a lot of
auxillary carriers - peactime budgets are going to have a hard enough
time keeping and maintaining the frontline classes unless there is a need
for this type of carrier as a low-level peace keeper. In this case it
would seem that shipping fighters in bulk in freighters would be the most
common method of transport. At war footing, lots of fighters may be produced
and
required at the front and so several auxillary carriers - perhaps even
converted from bulk merchants would probably be devised to fill this need. In
this example I would take a bulk merchant, use 9 mass for one launching bay
and use the remainder of the cargo mass for fighters. The assumption would be
that a setup fighter would require about 1 mass worth of weight and space to
maneuver and work on. Since only one bay's worth of mass was dedicated as a
launch facility, the carrier would be limited to launching one squadron at a
time and repairing or preparing one squadron at a time. What this would mean
is that if it took a day to prep a squadron from storage to flight capable
that a carrier with only one working bay would take the better part of a week
to prep all the fighters it carried (assuming 6 squadron carried)
Another question to be asked is how quick can you prep a fighter? There is a
great difference between land based aircraft and carrier based
aircraft - and even within carrier based aircraft. For instance I
assume
a Harrier can be stored in a relatively ready to fly manner - load up
some
fuel and armnament and it's ready to go. An A-6 requires a bit more
work since you need to unfold the wings, which you can only do really on the
flight deck, but because of the design it could be fuelled and armed below
decks. Most planes nowadays are flown to the end user, not sent packed away,
but what if you had to pack them, even if it was to make loading
and unloading easier - you would need to stuff them into a container
with appropriate restraints so that the fighter didn't bounce around when the
container moved or the transport accelerated. How long to remove the
restraints and extract the fighter? The fighter would probably be shipped
cold and powered down - how long for a systems check? To minimize
the hazard of transporting them, they would be empty of fuel - how long
to refuel - both main and reserve tanks? Prepping a fighter from cold
storage is much longer than rearming and refueling an active one. Is this
something that would occure in a FT battle time frame or would this take days?
If it took too long I would definietly support the idea of an auxillary
carrier that could burn in fighters while in transit and produce fighters that
were ready to fly, if not fight when it got to it's destination. The
difference would be in armoring, weaponry and cargo capacity. If I can get an
auxillary carrier with the same capacity or greater than a fleet carrier for
less cost I would purchase one for transport duties if it provided an edge in
delivering fighters to the front in a more ready state. This would allow the
fleet carriers to remain on station, rather than having to return to base to
rearm or be docked in a vulnerable manner to a freighter and use valuable
space and crews to try to bring up fighters to combat readiness.
--My 10 cents worth
--Binhan
> John Leary wrote:
> Phillip E. Pournelle wrote:
Yes, it does - I assume Phil means FB when he says "currently". At least
all hangar bays in the FB require 1.5 * the Mass of ships carried inside, a
fighter bay is Mass 9 (therefore capable of handling 6 Mass of small units)
and carries 6 fighters. This strongly indicates that an FB fighter is, indeed,
roughly 1 FB Mass.
The FB Mass unit is roughly half the size of an FTII Mass unit, so in FTII
fighters are only about 0.5 Mass.
Regards,
As any one tried putting together a supercarrier with the same number of
fighters (about 144) as an American naval carrier? My version, loosely based
on the NAC style in the Fleet Book, came out like this:
Displacement: 60,000 Tonnes (MASS 600). Hull Type: Weak (Hull Integrity 120).
Armament: Nil. Defences: 9 PDS; Level 2 Screens; Grade 15 Armour. Sensor
suite: Standard sensors, no fire control systems. Drive systems: Main Drive
rating 4; FTL (Jump) drive. Hangar Bays: 24 bays each holding 6 fighters.
TMF: 600 NPV: 2085
Naturally, I would expect this big a vessel to be guarded by other ships, just
like a naval carrier.