Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters? Phil Pugliese 08 Oct 2014 23:08 UTC
Ian, We also know that the Terrans beat the Vilani using fighters & that's about the best record there is! We also know that both the TerranConfed & the ZiruSirka both used & stuck w/ fighters all thru the Interstellar Wars. The fact that the 3I has stuck w/ them for over 1,000 years is quite significant, I think. There have been many times (when they were stalemated by the Julians, after the early Frontier Wars & the resultant civil war, the aslan wars, & the 3FW/SolRimWar as examples) when the 3I undoubtedly 'rethought' their basic strategy &, in fact, it's probably a continuing process. Witness the 'back & forth' pendulum effect wrt the proper balance 'tween BB's & BR's. Yet, for some reason, the 'big ships w/ many, many fighters' template has endured. [Also, AFAIK, the SolConfed followed/follows this doctrine also] This 'gels' w/ my contention that it is effective & that other doctrines have been found inferior. Still, I also have been struck by the 3I's poor record wrt *some* wars that it seems like they should have won. (Remember, the OTU was initially conceived during the post-VietNam 'hangover' here in the USA.) But there's many, many reasons why a large heterogeneous polity like the 3I can't keep it together long enough to win wars that they should. But they did win the really BIG ones. Like the 3FW/SolRimWar which went for more than 2 decades, didn't it? Losing either of those would have had major, major repercussions. They also won, though not 'decisively', the 5thFW as the Zhodani attempt to seize Rhylanor failed once again & the Zhos were driven back to their territory, & the 3I even made some small territorial gains. (Remember, the Frontier Wars have been defensive in nature so driving the invaders out is a victory, IMO & certainly NOT a defeat) I would say that it appears that, in the end, the 3I didn't really want to, or want to bad enough, achieve a decisive victory in those wars. So they settled for a lessor one. That hardly qualifies as a defeat. After all the 'only an Unconditional Surrender' policy is hardly universal these (RL) days & has been more the exception than the rule in RL history. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Wed, 10/8/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters? To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 2:37 PM Phil, We also know the 3I has a really, really bad record in major wars - despite only fighting them one at a time, they have been unable to get decisive victories in any of the Frontier Wars, and the Solomani War saw the Imperium run out of steam after capturing Terra, leaving the Solomani Confederation as still an interstellar polity that can threaten the Imperium. And this with an average 1 TL advantage against it's opponents. Maybe this gels with my contention that their fleet is full of ships that really, really suck, and that their doctrine needs major work ? On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 8:13 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote: This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows: Ian, We know that, w/i the 3I, there not only are old-style BB's (no longer in production) that carry many, many fighters. We also know that there are, currently in production, capital ships specially designed to carry many, many fighters. We also know that this has been the case going all the way back to the Interstellar Wars. So, IMO, the main question, as posed in the subject line, is; "Why do those big ships carry so many fighters?" We know the fighters are there in large numbers & have been for thousands of years. Since they are present I prefer to speculate about what they are used for rather than argue that they shouldn't exist. As always & obviously, YMMV. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Wed, 10/8/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters? To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 1:57 PM Phil, The role of picket and scout is much better done by something with a jump drive, because if the main body needs to leave, you dont need to either lose them or wait for multiple days for them to get back. A basic tech-12 jump-3 Scout/Courier - and its not easy to build better than jump-3 ships that go in the line of battle in Trav - costs about the same 1 MCr per dton every other military ship roughly costs, coming in at a base MCr96 for 100 dtons. A squadron of these can travel with the battlewagon, meaning it doesnt need to piss several percent of it's total volume up against a wall in carrying fighters that are equally unimportant in battle and cannot run messages back and forth to the fleet's other detatchments. If, for some reason, the Navy absolutely insists on carrying non jump capable craft that arent useful in the line of battle, then the Navy should commission some sort of close structure platform for them that can sit somewhere safe while it's fighters do the best they can to replace the Type S. But me, I say buy the good old Type S by the tens of hundreds, and if they need to go at jump-3 or jump-4, then build dedicated close structure carriers for them (a 20kton tech 13 jump-4 jeep carrier came in at a base GCr11, and carried 40 100dton and 2 1kdton craft ie 40 scout/couriers and a pair of fuel shuttles). Ian Whitchurch On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote: This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows: Uh, yes they do work just fine. The discussion *has* been about their use as pickets, scouts, etc, for which they quite capable but even so, in sufficient numbers they can be effective against much larger craft (depends on exactly what you mean by "real military ship" as there are plenty of escort types that don't carry much armor) though those *are* escorts. I think the main problem is with the term 'heavy fighter'. It seems to imply a capability that really cannot actually exist. It's only 'heavy' in the sense that it's 'heavier' than some other designs such as a 10-11dT 'light' fighter I recall from somewhere. Azhanti HL class maybe? -------------------------------------------- On Tue, 10/7/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters? To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 4:26 PM Phil Pugliese alleged "The canonical 50dT heavy fighter that the 'Tigress' class carries works fine in CT, less so for later morphs..." No. It doesnt. Under Book 5 High Guard They cannot actually scratch any real military ship built with actual armor, and they dont have a big enough Size to avoid internal crits, or enough crew to cop radiation damage. They are auxilary craft, useful against civilians and other auxiliaries. On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 6:20 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote: This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows: -------------------------------------------- On Tue, 10/7/14, Jeffrey Schwartz <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters? To: "tml" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 11:59 AM On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: > Yes, gravitics change a lot. But you still need streamlining to > operate in an atmosphere -- both per the rules, and per reasonable > extrapolation. A streamlined shape will move through the air more > easily, with less turbulence. This is going to be especially true for > a fighter, which presumably will be zipping around at high Mach > numbers. All those smooth curves and fairings are dead mass for a > vacuum fighter. Do they have to be dead mass though? I mean, the curved surface is going to contribute to armor protectiveness, for example, which is an advantage in space as well. I guess the amount of 'waste' depends on how much unusable volume is between the hardware and the skin. I think the rules give a 10% increase in weight for streamlining, and I half remember wedges having no weight penalty for streamlining. Is 10% a big enough difference for a _meaningful_ edge? IIRC, the example fighter in MT was too small for M-Drives, so it had "just" 12G of gravitics, and accepted the penalty for using gravs on the distant edges of a gravity well. I'd read that as out between 50D and 100D, the fighters have 1.2G or 1.3 G of accel, both of which round down to 1G for combat rules... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The canonical 50dT heavy fighter that the 'Tigress' class carries works fine in CT, less so for later morphs... ======================================================================================== ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a