Stick to ship combat and no fighters.

[kreissig]

You're all confused. An ethnic group is a social division, and social divisions obviously still exist. An ethnic group may define itself using racial criteria, which are based on perceived blood relationships, usually phenotype in practice. Think of "African Americans" in the United States, this ethnic group is racial in nature. But the "American" ethnic group is defined only by a common nationality (not the same as legal citizenship). Someone who is ethnically English practices English customs and considers himself part of the English people, regardless of what he looks like. He might secondarily identify as Han, because of the culture his parents taught him, while some people call him "black," based on his skin color.

So, as to Marie Curie, she may hold French citizenship but be ethnically and nationally Polish and racially a Slav. Or she might be both French and Polish nationally and ethnically. I don't know, I've never asked her.

Your post is confusion. "nationally Polish and racially a Slav" Slavic people are not a "race" in any sense. "An ethnic group may define itself using racial criteria". "It" doesn't need to define itself. An ethnic group IS defined by Phenotype - which is the physical manifestation of one or more Genotypes - as well as cultural/customs, food...ect...ect...

How do you think those individual "customs" came about? It is because the people shared a common genetic history (read: gene-pool) long enough to develop a uniform language, followed by customs and culture. So....it begins with genetics.

As for Maria Salomea Sklodowska, she was born in the Russian Empire - so Poland did not exist nationally at that time. Yes...you are right that Polish people are Slavs - but it is in itself a larger ethnic group. (Very similar to the relationship between "German" and "Germanic"). So....Maria was an ethnic Pole, born in the Russian Empire, that moved to and naturalized in France.

She was Polish. Just like a girl I know here in California. U.S. citizen, but Polish.

Black culture in the U.S. is considered a sub-culture of the US by the way. It has nothing to do with their ethnic background. (Note the important use of the word "ethnic" here; not race). Yes, there are multiple ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

[valergain]

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethnicity_vs_Race.

There sort it out. Now lets talk about serious things. Like fighters in space.

 

[Teleros]

An ethnic group is a social division, and social divisions obviously still exist.

Classes are social divisions too, as are nationalities, but the difference is that ethnicity is based on biology, whereas class & nationality is based on, basically, culture.

An ethnic group may define itself using racial criteria, which are based on perceived blood relationships, usually phenotype in practice. Think of "African Americans" in the United States, this ethnic group is racial in nature. But the "American" ethnic group is defined only by a common nationality (not the same as legal citizenship).

There is no "American" ethnic group, just as there is no "British" ethnicity. Broadly speaking, in the UK you have historically had the various Celtic groups (Welsh, Scots, Cornish, Irish), and the Anglo-Saxon (English) groups (along with a smattering of all sorts of immigrants & invaders like the Romans, Vikings, Danes, Normans, blah blah blah).

In other words, race. The current politically correct phrase in the UK is "Black & Minority Ethnic", and if you ever have to fill out forms for Human Resources or equal opportunity purposes etc, you'll be asked to pick your ethnicity in the UK along the lines of "White / Black / Asian / etc etc etc". Perhaps thinking of ethnicity as the subdivisions of a race is the best way to think of it.

(Incidentally, why is it these forms almost always lump black people under a single category, but don't do the same for Caucasians - as the Rwandan genocide etc shows, Africa is hardly home to one vast, amorphous race or ethnicity...)

If ethnicity meant things like cultural traditions etc as some here are suggesting, then someone clearly needs to tell Her Majesty's Government (and a lot of other people besides), because there is no common "white" culture etc. Here's what you say when signing up for the dole in the UK for example:

• White: English / Welsh / Scottish / Northern Irish / British, Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, Other
• Mixed: White & Black Caribbean, White & Black African, White & Asian, Other
• Asian / Asian British: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Other
• Black / African / Caribbean / Black British: African, Caribbean, Other
• Arab / Other Ethnic Group: Arab, Other
• Prefer not to say

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Here's another example of why the "ethnicity is culture" argument fails: take the USA. The USA was founded on principles of liberty and all that jolly nice Enlightenment stuff. Therefore presumably, the American "ethnicity" will mean buying into those values (or whatever you want to define US culture as). In which case skin colour etc has absolutely no bearing on the issue whatsoever, and the issue is essentially one of culture or patriotism (or even nationalism). Putting down "Republican" or "Democratic" etc makes a darn sight more sense in that case than putting down "Black" or "White" or whatever. Instead though, the obsession is with your skin colour and ancestry - ie, with your race.

In the case of Marie Curie, Wikipedia gives her parents Polish names, notes they were living in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) when she was born, and so on - based on that, I would assume her to be an ethnic Pole, but who became a French national (ie citizen) later in life.

+

Now, back to our scheduled squabbling over space fighters ...

Latency. Strictly speaking the tactical advantage of a small manned craft that is operating in real time, is going to be ENORMOUSLY more viable and useful than a drone that would need an operator that is dealing with seconds of latency over the distances that could be potentially involved.

If such reaction speeds matter, then you're absolutely right. However, I think it's quite possible to posit scenarios whereby reaction time is of minimal importance. Drone missile buses for example - if they don't need to dodge point defence fire because they have a longer stand-off range... well, reaction time isn't a huge issue in that case, because you can shoot & scoot long before the enemy has much hope of doing anything to said drones.

Alternatively, scouting out sensor blind spots behinds planets etc should be fine too, because "someone shot our drone down" is (a) safer than losing a pilot, and (b) still provides you with useful intel .

In general though I agree: the more important the OODA loop becomes (observe, orient, decide, act), the more important it is that latency be cut to a minimum. Dogfights in practically any medium will, all things being equal, favour the side who have nanosecond response times over those with millisecond response times.

 

[kreissig]

Classes are social divisions too, as are nationalities, but the difference is that ethnicity is based on biology, whereas class & nationality is based on, basically, culture.

Well written post. An easy way for people to understand Nationality is to realize that a person possesses it. Like possessing an object. One might say, "I posses U.S. citizenship." Or some people posses dual citizenship. The U.S. State Department's website actually has a paragraph discouraging people from possessing multiple citizenships; but it is allowed. There are even US citizens possessing three citizenships. (Yes, I know some.)

Nationality - something in one's possession. (Can be changed)

Ethnicity - Something one is. (Can not be changed)

"Genetic Science....its a thorn in Marx's side" Quote from me. hahaha

 

[Phanixis]

There sort it out. Now lets talk about serious things. Like fighters in space.

Lets see if cannot bring this back on topic.

I see nothing wrong with fighters in space. While it is impossible to predict how a civilization capable of interstellar travel would actually wage war, you could certainly do worse than assuming small, agile and somewhat expendable spacecraft would be employed in combat.

What really amazes me though is that it appears the same posters who insist with almost absolute certainty that fighters are impractical in space combat seem to have no problems with the use of missiles in space combat, despite the extreme similarities of these two methods of combat. In both cases small, autonomous, self-guided spacecraft are being used to deliver a weapons payload to an enemy space ship, and the fighters might very well be fully autonomous drones so we do not even have pilots or life support systems to distinguish fighters from missiles. The only real criteria that seems to separate the two is recover-ability; missiles are expended upon use while fighters will return to their mothership minus fuel and ammo. This makes fighters reusable, which is a clear advantage, but with a size and mass cost associated with that advantage due to the additional fuel and equipment needed for the return trip.

In any scenario missile are viable, fighters are also viable if you are willing to pay the cost of recovery. Whether this cost is reasonable will depend on the technology, logistics and economics of the interstellar civilization using them. Advancing technology might make it where a fighter really doesn't have much more mass and fuel than a missile, economics will determine how easy it is to replace the propulsion and guidance system of a missile with every shot vs. using a reusable fighter, logistics will determine how many munitions you are going to be able to put on target using fighters vs. missiles. It is a complex question nobody has the answer to because nobody has any idea of how an interstellar society capable of space warfare would operate.

Let us assume that to deliver and explosive payload, a missile or fighter would need a fusion reactor for power, a VASIMIR style engine for propulsion, a sophisticated plasmon processor for computation and a LIDAR guidance system. Perhaps as technology advances more sophisticated technology such as reactionless drives and tachyon scanners are used instead. Is it that far-fetched that a space admiral might want to recovery this equipment after it has delivered its payload rather than blowing through this stuff every single time a shot is fired? I think I would want to get that kind of equipment back. There is no way you can automatically dismiss this kind of approach as impractical. If missiles work in a given sci-fi setting, I see absolutely zero reason why fighters can't work equally as well.

 

[Teleros]

What really amazes me though is that it appears the same posters who insist with almost absolute certainty that fighters are impractical in space combat seem to have no problems with the use of missiles in space combat, despite the extreme similarities of these two methods of combat. In both cases small, autonomous, self-guided spacecraft are being used to deliver a weapons payload to an enemy space ship, and the fighters might very well be fully autonomous drones so we do not even have pilots or life support systems to distinguish fighters from missiles. The only real criteria that seems to separate the two is recover-ability; missiles are expended upon use while fighters will return to their mothership minus fuel and ammo. This makes fighters reusable, which is a clear advantage, but with a size and mass cost associated with that advantage due to the additional fuel and equipment needed for the return trip.

All of that is fine so far, and pretty much what I've been saying, but then...

In any scenario missile are viable, fighters are also viable if you are willing to pay the cost of recovery.

Steady on. It's not just the cost of recovery you have to deal with, but the (roughly) doubling of propellant required too. A missile uses propellant to accelerate to the battlefield, and then manoeuvre to attack its target. A fighting uses propellant for all that, but it also has to decelerate near the battlefield, then accelerate away from it, then decelerate to dock with the mothership. This means more propellant being used, which means your fighter will be bigger. That in turn means it's going to be a bigger target, will accelerate slower (all things being equal), will require more space aboard the mothership, et cetera. Then you have to factor in the cost-effectiveness of the fighter or missile: how much bang do you get for your buck? If your fighter takes up six times the space and costs 50% more but is only 5x as good as a missile at its job, maybe another rack of missiles would be better.

 

[Shaktari]

All of that is fine so far, and pretty much what I've been saying, but then...
Steady on. It's not just the cost of recovery you have to deal with, but the (roughly) doubling of propellant required too. A missile uses propellant to accelerate to the battlefield, and then manoeuvre to attack its target. A fighting uses propellant for all that, but it also has to decelerate near the battlefield, then accelerate away from it, then decelerate to dock with the mothership. This means more propellant being used, which means your fighter will be bigger. That in turn means it's going to be a bigger target, will accelerate slower (all things being equal), will require more space aboard the mothership, et cetera. Then you have to factor in the cost-effectiveness of the fighter or missile: how much bang do you get for your buck? If your fighter takes up six times the space and costs 50% more but is only 5x as good as a missile at its job, maybe another rack of missiles would be better.

however the other thing you have to consider is over all cost of fighters versus say capitol ships. it takes far less time, resources, and material to train and build a squadron of fighters, versus say a destroyer, cruiser or frigate. In addition it usually exposes far less people to potential death and loss of life and materials. If i have a choice of sacrificing lets say 10 fighters to take out a destroyer and 3 frigates or i have to sacrifice a destroyer and 3 frigates to destroy a destroyer and 3 frigates. which one is going to cost me less materials and resources in the long run, 10 fighters or an equal number of heavies?


I mean thats the thing, you dont compare fighters to missiles, you compare fighters to capital ships. missiles are ammo, fighters are never classified as ammo in any armed forces as far as i know ^.^

 

[Teleros]

I mean thats the thing, you dong compare fighters to missiles, you compare fighters to capital ships. missiles are ammo, fighters are never classified as ammo in any armed forces as i know ^.^

That's because this debate is specifically about fighters vs missiles, and their respective strengths and weaknesses under realistic conditions.

+ + +

Now, when comparing parasite craft (fighters, bombers, shuttles, and I guess in this case missiles too) to larger warships... well that's obviously a completely different question. In that case, you would probably (but not certainly) prefer to lose the fighters rather than the larger ships (you may not if the fighters are too expensive though...). However, in that case you have to ask yourself why the big ships even exist in the first place, at least as combat starships.

For example, let's take Star Wars, and for sake of argument keep to the official canon (movies + Clone Wars cartoons). Now... how often do we see fighters beating larger ships? Or rather, how often do we see fighters beating larger ships without the benefit of one-in-a-million Force-guided proton torpedoes ?

Well... the Millennium Falcon doesn't like being chased by TIE fighters, but then it's only an armed merchant vessel, not a true warship. Anakin Skywalker is able to disable that Separatist ship with its massive broadside ion cannon (well, technically disable just the ion cannon), but its other guns were still up and running, and were it not flying solo pouncing on Republic forces, it would have a fleet to aid it.

Now... that's actually about all I can think of. The Executor in RotJ had its bridge taken out by a suicide attack after the shields fell, but had it not rammed into the Death Star II the crew would very likely have been able to restore control. In other words, fighters in Star Wars are mostly useless against capital ships and the like. You should not ignore them by any means, but massed waves of X-Wings against a fleet of Imperator Star Destroyers will be lucky to deal any significant damage.

Imagine instead a situation whereby fighters are king: what would the Galactic Empire's fleet look like? Well quite simply it would be extremely carrier-heavy: why bother investing in big guns when battles are determined by fighters? Imperator Star Destroyers would sacrifice a lot of armour, guns and shielding to carry more fighters, and rely on some of their TIE complement for defence. Patrols and the like would still require larger ships for reasons of logistics and such, but the main battle-fleet would resemble massed squadrons of carriers rather than fleets of big gun starships.

Star Wars instead has a mixed fleet composition, in which fighters harass the enemy & run interference, take out critical systems where possible, protect boarding parties en route, pick off stragglers, and so on. A fleet without its fighter complement is an unbalanced and therefore weaker fleet, but it is not a crippled one.

+ + +

In game terms, think about how that last paragraph above can be used to make things interesting. You have the usual beams / kinetics / special weapons on ships, but what if fighters did jobs like those suggested in the above paragraph? Whilst the big ships trade blows, the fighters dash forwards to try and take out the named enemy leader, or cripple their engines, or... well you get the idea. They could easily function as a kind of Swiss Army Knife for your starships in this regard.

 

[Shaktari]

That's because this debate is specifically about fighters vs missiles, and their respective strengths and weaknesses under realistic conditions.

which is a weird comparison to make, missiles will always be cheaper and more cost effective to make vs fighters. your comparing ammo to a delivery system, thats the equivalent of saying which is more cost effective to make, a bullet or a gun? not sure that analogy holds up but i hope the idea comes across?

Imagine instead a situation whereby fighters are king: what would the Galactic Empire's fleet look like? Well quite simply it would be extremely carrier-heavy: why bother investing in big guns when battles are determined by fighters? Imperator Star Destroyers would sacrifice a lot of armour, guns and shielding to carry more fighters, and rely on some of their TIE complement for defence. Patrols and the like would still require larger ships for reasons of logistics and such, but the main battle-fleet would resemble massed squadrons of carriers rather than fleets of big gun starships.

Star Wars instead has a mixed fleet composition, in which fighters harass the enemy & run interference, take out critical systems where possible, protect boarding parties en route, pick off stragglers, and so on. A fleet without its fighter complement is an unbalanced and therefore weaker fleet, but it is not a crippled one.

+ + +
In game terms, think about how that last paragraph above can be used to make things interesting. You have the usual beams / kinetics / special weapons on ships, but what if fighters did jobs like those suggested in the above paragraph? Whilst the big ships trade blows, the fighters dash forwards to try and take out the named enemy leader, or cripple their engines, or... well you get the idea. They could easily function as a kind of Swiss Army Knife for your starships in this regard.

which is what is should be, a balanced fleet with big guns, frigates, and carriers all working together. to be honest i am hoping the way the combat works as such.

frigates, battleships, dreadnaughts, and carriers. where that carriers almost act like a space artillery? providing long range support but if something gets in close they get wrecked. you wouldn't have fighters to control or build or anything but you could build carrier ships with different modules, modules would allow different bonuses for different combat phases., depending on what types of fighter fit in those modules.

 

[Phanixis]

Steady on. It's not just the cost of recovery you have to deal with, but the (roughly) doubling of propellant required too. A missile uses propellant to accelerate to the battlefield, and then manoeuvre to attack its target. A fighting uses propellant for all that, but it also has to decelerate near the battlefield, then accelerate away from it, then decelerate to dock with the mothership. This means more propellant being used, which means your fighter will be bigger. That in turn means it's going to be a bigger target, will accelerate slower (all things being equal), will require more space aboard the mothership, et cetera. Then you have to factor in the cost-effectiveness of the fighter or missile: how much bang do you get for your buck? If your fighter takes up six times the space and costs 50% more but is only 5x as good as a missile at its job, maybe another rack of missiles would be better.

Well obvious part of your recovery cost will be the extra size, mass and cost of the additional propellant required to return to the mothership. And that will be dependent on the ratio of the propellant size, mass and cost to the delivery system size, mass and cost. If the bulk of all three of those quantities is propellant, then you might as well discard everything else rather than spending extra propellant and possibly compromising your delivery in the process due to extra size and mass. But should the delivery system prove to be prohibitively expensive, or perhaps just take up a disproportional large amount of the mass and bulk of your delivery system, then it makes more sense to attempt to spend extra propellant to try and retrieve it. You might even end up in a situation were both expendable and expensive delivery systems are available, but maybe the expensive system gives you and order of magnitude or more of specific impulse. So shorter ranges use missiles but for longer ranges you need the better specific impulse, but can't afford to discard the nicer engine, so fighters get used instead. And given how unlikely it would be the accurate guess how the spaceflight tech of an interstellar species would work, there is really no way to decide where the optimal solution will lie. In this is mostly dealing with conventional reaction propulsion, should more exotic propulsion be used by our interstellar empires, which is not unreasonable given that they are FTL capable and any FTL drive is already an example of a exotica propulsion system, everything becomes that much more inscrutable.

So you might as well go ahead and use fighters if that is what works best for the game, because in any event it would probably look completely ridiculous if we ever found a example of real interstellar warfare to compare it to.

 

[Zilla93]

I'd personally like fighters, and carriers in the game. As for drones, or pilots I think that should be determined by ethos.

 

[Teleros]

which is a weird comparison to make, missiles will always be cheaper and more cost effective to make vs fighters. your comparing ammo to a delivery system, thats the equivalent of saying which is more cost effective to make, a bullet or a gun? not sure that analogy holds up but i hope the idea comes across?

Yes, but if you go back enough pages, basically what got this started was myself & various others pointing out that in realistic sci-fi, space fighters don't make much sense, and that missiles are a better option for most tasks. Then we got all the back-and-forth as to why this is (or is not) the case.

And given how unlikely it would be the accurate guess how the spaceflight tech of an interstellar species would work, there is really no way to decide where the optimal solution will lie. In this is mostly dealing with conventional reaction propulsion, should more exotic propulsion be used by our interstellar empires, which is not unreasonable given that they are FTL capable and any FTL drive is already an example of a exotica propulsion system, everything becomes that much more inscrutable.

Yeah, this is really the bit where authors / game designers / film directors etc can shoe-horn in fighters. "Because of technobabble, fighters become plausible" basically.

So you might as well go ahead and use fighters if that is what works best for the game, because in any event it would probably look completely ridiculous if we ever found a example of real interstellar warfare to compare it to.

I think this is the wrong attitude personally. "It'll look ridiculous compared to IRL so what the heck, use whatever" just strikes me as lazy. If you want to insert an otherwise unrealistic thing into a sci-fi setting, you should have a rough idea of how and why it's there.

For example, Doc Smith's Lensman books have space marines wielding big nasty axes during boarding actions, which is cool... but also very unrealistic. So how does he allow it? Well, everyone wears armour and shields, which can protect against small arms fire. Heavy grenades and such can still work (but collateral damage & friendly fire are an issue), as can heavy machine guns (but heavy). So if you're going to capture someone or take control of the bridge from the crew there, you need to get up close and personal anyway, in narrow corridors and such - suddenly a melee weapon that can deal with personal armour is a good idea.

 

[Sielgaudys]

Fighters, carriers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, transports, cruisers, boarding vessels, dreadnoughts, and anything in between my o my. Give me all.

 

[Shaktari]

Yes, but if you go back enough pages, basically what got this started was myself & various others pointing out that in realistic sci-fi, space fighters don't make much sense, and that missiles are a better option for most tasks. Then we got all the back-and-forth as to why this is (or is not) the case.

well why are fighters and carriers used in naval warfare today instead of battleships with lots of missles?

 

[Denkt]

Missles and drones can be jammed for a relative low cost I guess. A more complex and intelligent device will require more expensive and complex countermeasures.

 

[Teleros]

well why are fighters and carriers used in naval warfare today instead of battleships with lots of missles?

Leaving aside the question of whether we will end up transitioning to a fighter-free navy once drones and such become good enough... basically the environment is very different. The presence of an atmosphere and a horizon you can hide behind are key terrain features that space doesn't have.

 

[Shaktari]

Leaving aside the question of whether we will end up transitioning to a fighter-free navy once drones and such become good enough... basically the environment is very different. The presence of an atmosphere and a horizon you can hide behind are key terrain features that space doesn't have.

your saying spaceships cant hide behind planets? or moons? or in asteroid belts? remember the vast majority of space battles will probably take place at known locations, most likely being star systems. ^.^

the other contributing factor will be distances, most space battle will probably take place at far larger distances then can exist on earth because there is no atmosphere or curvature to worry about. distances in which we are talking i observe them at point A, if i fire my my missiles and my missiles will get to point A, it wont matter because that is where they were hours ago and they have moved away from where the missiles have impacted.

honestly, space combat is going to end up in one of 2 camps most likely. the first camp is that combat will happen at speeds so fast that human reaction just cant keep up, ships whipping past each other at such high speeds that by the time you register a target they have already zoomed by you at near light speed and humans just cant react fast enough.( I recommend the book series The lost fleet by jack campbell for a good representation of what that is like) in which case fighters are useless. the second camp is slower fights at speeds were we can react, but at such distances that you need fighters to extend the envelop beyond the range of your sensors so that you can hit the enemy harder and from farther away then they can hit you.( i recommend the duology In death ground, and The shiva option, by david weber and steve white for a good representation of that)

Also this is a game, in which they have stated they will be using a similar engine to thier EU4 engine to calculate thier combat. So I personally hope, like i said that they do use carriers and fighters, and like i stated earlier i am guessing that carriers would act like a space artillery? providing long range support but if something gets in close they get wrecked. you wouldn't have fighters to control or build or anything but you could build carrier ships with different modules, modules would allow different bonuses for different combat phases., depending on what types of fighter fit in those modules.

 

[Teleros]

your saying spaceships cant hide behind planets? or moons? or in asteroid belts?

Not asteroid belts, because Star Wars style ones aren't real. Our own asteroid belt has each asteroid separated by tens of thousands of kilometres.

For the rest... yes you can hide behind a moon / planet / etc, but it's not like the terrain when you're fighting on (or just above) the surface of a planet, which is the key thing. For hiding behind a planet etc to work, you really have to be engaging the enemy near said planet, because the more light-seconds away they are, the easier it will be to spot you. Meanwhile, you will also have a manoeuvrability disadvantage, due to the gravity of whatever you're hiding behind.

the other contributing factor will be distances, most space battle will probably take place at far larger distances then can exist on earth because there is no atmosphere or curvature to worry about. distances in which we are talking i observe them at point A, if i fire my my missiles and my missiles will get to point A, it wont matter because that is where they were hours ago and they have moved away from where the missiles have impacted.

It's certainly a problem for unguided projectiles, but missiles that can't track their targets don't belong in long range space combat anyway . For beam weapons, unless you've got x-ray (or gamma ray) lasers, you'll need to engage in light-second or maybe light-minute ranges just to have a chance of hurting the enemy when you do hit them (curse you diffraction!).

honestly, space combat is going to end up in one of 2 camps most likely. the first camp is that combat will happen at speeds so fast that human reaction just cant keep up, ships whipping past each other at such high speeds that by the time you register a target they have already zoomed by you at near light speed and humans just cant react fast enough.

That really requires super-duper borderline-impossible engines (and a ship that can survive such acceleration). If your ships can't handle tens of g's of acceleration then you could accelerate at say 1g for a week (or whatever), but that would also require a hell of a lot of propellant, and begs the question of why you'd do that except for a kind of drive-by-shooting attack, because it doesn't leave you any real room to manoeuvre if you screw up.

the second camp is slower fights at speeds were we can react, but at such distances that you need fighters to extend the envelop beyond the range of your sensors so that you can hit the enemy harder and from farther away then they can hit you.( i recommend the duology In death ground, and The shiva option, by david weber and steve white for a good representation of that)

This is possible if there are FTL weapons, but otherwise the speed of light (and laser / particle beam diffraction stuff) will act as a limit to your max range. For example, I showed a few pages back that an x-ray laser could hit Pluto from Earth with minimum diffraction... but it would take hours to get there, which makes it effectively useless for hitting an enemy fleet, assuming said fleet is aware of this weapon and able to jink a tiny bit whilst travelling.

If you're going to duke it out with an enemy fleet however, you need them to be within your effective engagement range, and the more manoeuvrable the enemy is the shorter that becomes in astronomical terms for beam engagements. For missile engagements it depends on their point defence and the endurance of your missiles, though all things being equal a shorter engagement range benefits the missiles, because they can use their propellant to dodge more, and the enemy's point defences have fewer chances to hit them.

So as far as engagement ranges and relative velocities go, I expect that fighters will do just fine. They just fall down for other reasons (curse you physics, why can't Star Wars be realistic?!) .

i am guessing that carriers would act like a space artillery? providing long range support but if something gets in close they get wrecked.

Yeah, I think they'd work quite well in that regard.

 

[stumason]

Steady on. It's not just the cost of recovery you have to deal with, but the (roughly) doubling of propellant required too. A missile uses propellant to accelerate to the battlefield, and then manoeuvre to attack its target. A fighting uses propellant for all that, but it also has to decelerate near the battlefield, then accelerate away from it, then decelerate to dock with the mothership. This means more propellant being used, which means your fighter will be bigger. That in turn means it's going to be a bigger target, will accelerate slower (all things being equal), will require more space aboard the mothership, et cetera. Then you have to factor in the cost-effectiveness of the fighter or missile: how much bang do you get for your buck? If your fighter takes up six times the space and costs 50% more but is only 5x as good as a missile at its job, maybe another rack of missiles would be better.

You seem to be basing your argument on the assumption there is any propellant at all.

Given the game is fundamentally based on the ability warp space-time to achieve FTL velocities, I think we can safely say that any ship which uses "propellant" is a museum piece the minute you start the game.

As for bang vs buck, consider this..

1 missile = 1 bang (and that is assuming you were even able to track/target the enemy anyway)

1 fighter = several missiles and the ability to choose the target late in the day, as well as deliver it closer to the target without the bother of giving away your position to the enemy by targeting them from the capital ship = more bangs.

Then we can look at mission profiles. A missile is a one hit wonder and requires the use of a larger (more expensive) ship to launch it, on top of all the other gizmo's you need to track and engage the target.

A fighter can loiter on station, without any specific target and react immediately (even if the enemy blocks tracking/comms). They are also more expendable. So they would be useful in patrol/recon/escort missions.

 

[AG_Wittmann]

Would still prefer drones over fighters. They dont need sleep, food and entertainment. They can do harder maneuver (high gravity turns etc.) and they dont know fear.