| But the fightercraft is still smaller than the scout craft. Lighter, weaker weapons? Yes. But it can still dodge weapons fire far more easily than a scout craft, due to the combination of its small size and fast speed. I factor that into it, in part. A fighter might not be able to take a hit, but it doesn't need to -- it's small and manueverable enough to dodge most fire from a larger ship. |
Lucian, if the weapons are weaker, then it doesn't do any good, does it? "Are we experiencing a cosmic ray event, ensign?" "Captain! No sir! It's just those wacko Imperial TIE fighters! Their energy weaponry is too weak to break through our screens, and their missiles cannot scratch our neutrino paint job, sir!" "Ah. I see. How pretty. Get my personal Trid camera out so I can tape this for my kids."
Lucian, you are missing the point. All of them. You have to have effective weaponry. If you can make the weaponry for a fighter effective, then you'd want to pack in that weapony, as much as you can. And the bigger hulls would pack it in more, and you gain economy of scale as you go bigger. What's better, 2 World War 1 Sopwiths (air fighters) or 1 modern B-52? If smaller was truly better, we'd still be building fighters the size of a Sopwith (a mere few meters) rather then fighters that are a few 10 meters long and wide.
Anything you can do in a Tie fighter, in reality, you can do in a Star Destroyer, and do it better. That's where your reasoning keeps falling down. Both use the same engine and power generation. Devote the same proportion of space on the Star Destroyer as the Tie Fighter, and you get a Star Destroyer that turns as fast as the Tie Fighter, and has tons more space for weaponry and defenses! You do not gain "maneuverability" by going smaller in space. You only gain maneuverability by strapping on bigger engines!
As for being small... that is completely meaningless in space. Again. Being small helps here on earth because there's always something around to help hide you. A small aircraft can literally hide behind a rain cloud or a flock of birds here. In space, we can track targets the size of quarters that are orbitting the moon from research ships the size of small frigates on the ocean! Have you any idea how much better sensor tech gets in GC? Being small, means that the fighters have to get in close to hit with their minature weaponry. Getting in close means that the weaponry of that CAPITAL SHIP which can track a target at relativistic speeds several 10s of AUs away have no trouble tracking and firing one something the size of football field that is actively approaching them from a range of just an AU or two. Small only helps in space if you got something to hide behind, or you are being cold (not making any maneuvers, not thrusting, not putting out any energy) and stealthy! A fighter isn't going to "coast" in on their targets in a hot combat zone. On a first strike, sure, but those capital ships would be manevuering to hit other ships or maneuvering to force the fighters to maneuver to give themselves away!
Small doesn't make you maneuverable enough to dodge incoming fire. You've got to approach your target, you've got to follow your target. Again, in space, it's equavalent is PT boats fighting Destroyers, Cruisers, and Battleships. The PT boat is stuck at going near their speeds. It isn't the Tie Fighter/X Wing dance across the sky while artillery guns are pushed around entirely by the gunnery crew's spit. Nor is it in that same universe where light travels at speed discernable to the human eye. Remember that.
| they're sort of a "power through numbers" thing in space. I'm talking TIE Fighters. Those are what I imagine space fighters really being like. Swarming, speed, manueverability, small size, cheap mass production. You lose ten, fifteen squadrons? Who cares? You can produce another fifty in a month! On the other hand, the scout ship you're mentioning still costs more to produce per product, making them more valuable than a single fightercraft overall. In the end, you'd end up with roughly the same power overall with either one, though, but wildly different tactics. |
That's what fleeting is for. To allow smaller ships to "swarm" or "group attack" the larger ships. We are getting "Fleets" (a combat stack that acts like one unit) in GC2. I believe it's on the Beta schedule as a Stage 3 feature. Obviously, a squadron of fighters would be a "fleet", to begin with.
You will need GC2's production system changed, to support your needs. Right now, you can only make 1 ship per turn. Obviously, Fighters would need to be built in multiples. Of course, in GC style, they probably would never be built through the military build queue. Instead, you'd pay a one time cost when you build that hangar tile/module, or when you build that carrier. After that, you'd just be charged a maintenance cost as part of the ship. Your fighters would never lose strength, as they are just a weapon system (in terms of maintenace). Otherwise, it would probably be too much micro-management. It might be realistic to fly your fighters around between various bases up to your fleet on the front line, or having to build "ferry" carriers to bring them up to replace loses, but it wouldn't be fun to do for long.
| Fightercraft should have bonuses attacking larger, heavier vessels which haven't the engines to provide them the thrust necessary to have good manueverability. But Fightercraft attacks against smaller, lighter vessels with better engines should have penalties. |
So, maneuverability should grant bonuses to attack/defense? That's fine by me. Humm... tell me this. Why don't we just extend the concept, so I can build a mother "tender" ship, which has all the long term life support and maintenence functionality on it, and build large, highly maneuverable, highly weaponed ships? They can carry their own FTL and basic life support, but all the heavy non-combat tasks are moved to the tender. Hospitals, maternity wards, big maintenence shops/shipyard facilities, etc. Now, I have serious combat rated and combat devoted ships, but you whack my mother goose ship, and my fleet is in serious trouble. Unless I've got a spare that can get to them in short order.
