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That's the plan, yes.
OK, here's our "Final Design" for our Carrier Strike Fighter:
Look OK?
Looks fine, I assume the fighters won't be travelling far from the carrier if at all?
They've got an endurance of 600 million km... so that's an out-and-back strike range of 300 m-km... but we aren't planning to send them nearly that far away, since they rely on our AWACS vessels to paint their targets for them, and that's limited to 50 m-km range.
The 600 m-km endurance is useful mostly for station-keeping.
I must say I really like the gnats, survivability through speed, less waste if they are shot down, and delivering salvoes faster, sooner and which are more difficult to shootbdown.
-have you tried making them with smaller missiles though? maybe they could carry 2 size1s. this would increase the strike number to get through pd even more. and if it makes them go faster still...
-have you tried making them with smaller missiles though? maybe they could carry 2 size1s. this would increase the strike number to get through pd even more. and if it makes them go faster still...
That's a possibility... but the nice thing about a strength-4 (or in this case, strength-5) warhead is that it will punch through two layers of armor, and if it hits a spot that has only one layer (because of previous damage) it is guaranteed to score internals. Strength-1 warheads require that you be lucky enough to land successive salvos in exactly the same spot on the armor, or that you use enough of them to "sandpaper" his whole armor away.
Isn't it a pity to not have the option to send them on a long range strike? Could we design a "painter" figher without its own ordinance that can keep the same speed as the Gnats?
Like this?
:rofl: If I reduce the size of that active sensor just a little bit... by 0.2 Hull Squares... I can fit this puppy into the Carrier's Hangar and STILL carry 20 Gnats!
If it's grouped with the 20 Gnats, the extra speed will NOT cause it to separate from them... they will all stay together.
Agreed. But I guess this is all for the far off future though. But I do like the idea of soon that fighters can go off in pack for a day or two scouting and firing at targets if its a good opportunity.
Ok, I've never seen a firm answer to this as some people say that fighters will explode without MSP whilst others, myself included, never bother with it because the PDCs and Carriers do most of the Maintenance work for the fighters and the chances of them having a malfunction during their incredibly short flight times is close to zero. If those in the "It's not needed" camp are correct you could probably shave a few tonnes of the weight by ditching the engineering space. Might even be able to get the fighter up over 10,000 km/s.
I always have the smallest possible engineering section on, I find that fighters kept out for a month overall tend to have their components fail otherwise.
I can certainly have much of this built before the Spy class recce vessels are ready, seven months from now.
One big bonus of Carrier Ops is that the vessel's "main armament" isn't actually part of the ship. You can upgrade a Carrier's combat-effectiveness just by building some new Fighters and landing them aboard... and Fighters can be built in less than a week each.
I think I'd prefer to keep the Engineering Section for now... we can experiment after we've crushed the evil Prix.
Any plans on expanding the carrier fleet to coincide with this?
We're quickly amassing a Kido Butai over here.
We're quickly amassing a Kido Butai over here.
Yes, but no fighter is ever going to operate outside it's Carrier for over a month, is it?
What are the specs of your size 4 missles? I'd kill for to-hit percentages that good.
I say we test all these ideas together in one go. Hopefully, they'll prove very useful like the rocks.
And the bombardament class you've designed, is it a ground only ship or can we use it as some sort of long range artillery in space battles ? (basically what you intended to do with the minelayers.)
Any plans on expanding the carrier fleet to coincide with this?
We're quickly amassing a Kido Butai over here.
I'd like to expand the Dockyards first, so that we can design bigger Carriers.
First, though, I want to ensure a steady supply of minerals. This business of destroying the Prix infestation is fun... it's even important, considering how many free techs we might get out of this... but securing a steady supply of minerals is a matter of life-or-death to our expansion plans.
I meant overall, so if a battle takes several days and you fight your share of them, those components will break and faster with no engineering section.
The missile load-outs will be specifically tailored for planetary bombardment or space combat... but the ships themselves can be used for either, depending on the ammo-load we've given them.
Those puppies won't be ready by next year, though... nor the year after. I don't want to delay round 2 against the Prix for so long that some other bastard steals those wrecks. Unless anyone talks me out of it, I intend to go in with what we've got now, plus a couple of Spy-class recce ships, plus new Fighters, plus new missiles for planetary bombardment (but fired, for now, by those old minelayers).