Cool! We have a sharp, clear disagreement. Luke, stepping out of our pseudo-physics discussion, tell me why fighters are lame in terms of imagery and storytelling!
Given the IE “no AI ever for any reason!” freakiness of the culture, I’d assume Flying Iron would require a Crucis. It’s all a bit potentially Robotech (10pt. tech trait: Iron that can fly! A fighter that becomes Iron!), which is my only look/feel concern.
p.
It kinda depends on your definition of fighter, doesn’t it? First of all, I love that website with all my heart, and reference it whenever I need to prove fighters are lame, but in the IE we’re talking about a situation where you have reactionless drives (fuel becomes a comparative non-issue) and weapons that can obliterate the largest, heaviest armoured ship in a single hit. In THAT context, smaller corvette sized warships with a crew of two or three become viable. Further, given that SEx drives allow ships to nip about and change direction while thumbing their noses at Einstein and Newton, long range engagements become more problematic, as do kinetic kill missiles. If the no-escape envelope is too large, it’s impossible to saturate it sufficiently to generate a hit with kinetics.
I’m also cool with Q-beams being colour generally. Any space engagement in BE is assumed to be in close proximity to a planet. If you want, you could make an unweildy weapon that obliterates any target in a single hit, but any cover negates it entirely. But I’d just as soon make Q-beams ‘the right tool for the job’
Totally disagree. Fighters are the “irregular” troops in space. I agree that they’ve been imagined in a rather one-dimensional way (star wars/battlestar galactica, etc…). IE fighters serve a different function than “theirs”. Nothing’s new except in how it’s re-imagined.
The site you quote is excellent, but brother they’re hard core. It gives me hives after reading one page or two. Great for “2001: A Space Odyssey”, not so great for “Dune”.
In which case it’s a missile, not a fighter. We have both missiles and manned warcraft now. Why have both? Because a manned vehicle has advantages over an unmanned one.
-Chris
Given the nature of the Firefight rules, I don’t even see any necessary modifications to any aspect of the game other than pure narrative: some equivalent of Iron that’s intended for space/air battles, stentor-equivalents for fussing over your old flying Iron, etc.
p.
I’m very keen on the idea of fighters as a specialized asset, e.g. for operations “in the Well” where the distortion drives and weapons that rule most of space are off line. I’d also agree that the standard WWII model of fighters has been done to death – and combined incoherently with WWI-style battleships: Yes, there’s a place for a wide variety of vehicles serving different operational needs, but why in heaven do you have TIE fighters and Star Destroyers in the exact same engagement, operating at the exact same ranges? If that’s what Luke means by “lame,” I’m agreeing.
Luke, can you define the parameters of lameness? Chris, can you elaborate on fighters as “irregulars” in the Iron Empires?
Sydney, I’m bored (to death) with sci-fi=refighting WW2, that’s why. “Actual” space fighting is SO MUCH COOLER than Battlestar Galactica. So. Much. Cooler.
Anyway, to continue firing my AA at you pesky gnats:
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Fighters have to be returned to base. That makes them short ranged. Missiles and AKVs are one way (which gives them a longer range).
This means I can engage you outside the range of your fighter swarm with KKMs, AKVs, probably even lasers, and definitely Q-Beams.
Which means I can lure your fighters out to their attack range and then just blink away. Leaving your pilots to die of hypothermia…
If they make it back to base, pilots need to be housed and fed. They take up valuable room that could be assigned to ordnance or engines.
Food and supply then limit the range of the carrier.
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We’ve handwaved relativity away, do we have to handwave away oxygen, heat and food, too?
I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be small craft out there. But the small craft that I’m envisioning is 3 crew and 40 meters bow to stern. Something that can support the crew on extended missions and carry serious (serious) ordnance.
-L
That’s actually pretty much exactly how I envision fighters. Not weency little ties and x-wings, but ships that, while they can’t make it out of the system, are speedy and pack a punch. If you are incapable of using the word Fighter without wincing, how about ‘gunboat’? That also takes us back to the age of sail… or we could use Sydney’s ‘cutters’
As for the iron equivelent in space, I kinda assumed those would be Hammer Hussars.
In real life, even a relatively light “tactical fighter,” the F-16 – nicknamed “Viper” by its pilots in homage to Battlestar Galactica! – is 15 meters long with a 10 meter wingspan, and weighs more than 16 metric tons. A bomber like the workhorse B-52 is 48 meters long with a 56 meter wingspan, weighing in fully loaded at almost 220 metric tons, with a standard crew of five. The B-1 bomber, which is designed as a high-performance flier not unlike a fighter, is 44 meters long with a 42 meter wingspan (with wings swung out), with a full combat load of 216 metric tons and a crew of four. I think that’s very close to your 40-meter small craft, right there.
So let’s stop thinking in terms of Spitfires-in-Space and model our spacefighters on the much bigger and more complex combat aircraft of the real world.
[EDIT: Crossposted with Mike. Once again our thinking is eerily similar. Do I have a long-lost twin in Canada?]
As much as I have come to loathe David Weber’s writing, he did a damn fine job of designing effective ‘fighter’ style ships for the honorverse. The smallest of these fighters mass 10,000 tons. That’s probably a bit hefty for IE, but is an example of how far from the x-wing paradigm fighters can range.
Edit: Cross posted with Sydney - Heh, I already have a twin who was born 2 years before me =) He’s written a few children’s military history books and is working on his masters. But I like to think that it’s just that we’re smart and right =) Would you believe I was specifically thinking of the B1-B?
Really? I’ve stayed vehemently clear of the “Honorverse,” based on everything I’ve heard about it, starting with the titles. So I’m ignorant. Describe an Honorverse fighter for us, Mike!
I’m fine with all of that. Gunboats it is! Or what about Hammerboats? Hammersleds? Gunsleds? Guncraft? Gunfu? Gongfu? Gongli?
I personally like Hammersleds. But I guess sleds are for grav vehicles.
Anything but “fighters.” (Anything that ceases to conjure up images of single-man light attack craft).
Also, Mike, there is in-atmosphere reactionless drives, but, according to the game design (which counts for nothing, I know), all hammer craft require reaction drives and all the attendant awesomeness.
-L
PS: And it just goes to show you, there’s no accounting for taste.
How about “gunships”? That has a nice spread of associations, from shallow-draft coastal gunboats to attack helicopters and the AC-130.
Oh, and to toot my own horn more, I derived the Hammer Hussar by apply the Husar standard traits (i.e. the +2D to Observation, the wonky AI, and the improved signals, sensors, and agility) to the Assault Shuttle, which is no small bird. The result is a two-seater craft with a frickin’ Artillery-scale weapon that’s presumably right in Luke’s 40-meter size range.
Eh. The first two or three are actually pretty decent space opera. After that he just starts tech and number-wanking, and it becomes impossibly clear that Honor is one of the worst mary sues ever (She’s pretty! She’s sad cause she thinks she’s ugly. She has a special pet! She’s tele-empathic! She’s a crack shot! She’s lethal in hand to hand combat! She can’t do math unless it really matters and then she does it by instinct and gets it right! She’s a terrific swordfighter! She’s the best naval commander EVAR! Everyone loves her! Anyone who doesn’t love her is EVIL or else discovers the error of their ways and loves her.)
Honorverse LACs… I’m going on memory here.
The Shrike class LAC, which is sort of the first LAC that plays a large roll in the books, is in the 10-60 thousand ton range. It boasts acceleration of about 600-700 gs. It is armed with a single spinal mounted capital ship grade graser, with an effective range of about 400 thousand km (which is, by the way, knife range in the honorverse), four rotory missile launcher each with about 6 small bomb-pumped xaser missiles, about 100 point defense missiles, and eight-ish point defense laser clusters.
Later on they introduce the Ferret, which is an all-missile varient that sacrifices the spinal graser to mount a hell of a lot of point defense. They were tasked with protecting the Shrikes on their approach.
The Katana is similar, except it is specifically designed for an anti-LAC role, with lots of small missiles and small laser batteries.
There’s a fourth one, with a french name, that was soley designed to launche a wall of dirty nuclear missiles that would produce a collective radioactive cloud that would fry enemy LAC’s sensors.
Edit: Bah, enough with the cross-posting! Luke, while you can only use the gravitic drives in a gravity well, I consider the SEx drive to screw physics enough that it doesn’t count as a reaction drive. When you are getting more velocity than your reaction mass says you should be, that’s reactionless, to me.
Good discussion! Luke, you’ve trusted me to avoid lameness thus far. Trust me with the fighters (or gunboats, I agree “fighter” is a loaded term).
Syd, by Irregulars, I mean napoleonic cossacks. I know one of our BWHQ fellows is into Napoleonics… think of the role the cossacks played in the 1812 campaign. That’s how I see fighters… as a swarm. Yes, you can ‘swarm’ missiles too, but they are, as stated, a one-way ticket, basically only good in combat. What gunboats (!) give you is the ability to saturate a system with armed ships, that can change their mission as the situation requires. If your opponant has a giant Q-beam armed cruiser and you have a carrier fielding a dozen speedy, well armed gunboats, you have the ability to swarm your opponent. His cruiser can guard one vulnerable point. What is he going to protect? Is he going to protect the mining facilities out in the asteroid field? Or maybe the listening post on the moon around the gas giant? How about the convoy that’s due to arrive in two hours from out-system? Or the orbital factory? He has one hull, you have a dozen. You don’t have to choose a target, you can go after all of them. You can make his life a living hell.
I love the idea of light, irregular-style forces. They fuck with your logistics. They screw your ability to protect everything everywhere. They’re impossible to defend against unless you have something similar to fight them off with. And while the cruisers have their armor and fuel and big guns, the “cossacks” have the advantage of numbers, speed (distortion 9, the maximum factor possible), military-grade offensive weapons, and first-class sensors. And they’re flexible, unlike remote-control drones.
As for fuel, it’s not a huge deal in-system. As long as your gunboats aren’t intending to use HEx, they can carry enough fuel to cruise for a long time. So small ships… whatever you want to call them… are going to be out there. Not every Hammer Lord will go that route, but a lot of them will, and there are reasons for doing it.
-Chris
PS - off topic, I just got back from seeing Ghost Rider… omg, the worst diologue and plot ever (although the burning skull looks cool).
although the burning skull looks cool
I’m there.
This is probably somewhat off-topic, but what’s the primary planetary defense mechanism against the ol’ mass-driver attack? You know, grab a few dozen large asteroids, bolt an engine onto them and send them hurtling at a planet. Maybe blow up a couple at speed to create a big ol’ dust cloud to spam Q-beam attacks…
I’m just spitballing here.
Chris, thanks for elaborating. So you’re envisioning gunboats (gunships, fighters, whatever) as having subliminal distortion drives, not merely conventional thrust?
Absolutely. And remember that all Distortion Drives can either operate at subluminal expansions or “dial up” to HEx. There are control elements required to permit HEx… the “distortion tail” being the most visible, but the cost in Standards and Tonnage are negligible. The real limiting factor is fuel. A week’s worth of fuel at HEx equals a month or more at Sublight.
Perhaps it really would be more useful to think of these ships as corvettes or gunships rather than “fighters”. There’s not much use for a CTA-only warship, unless you’re on some sub-index world that can’t build anything better. Once you’re in “the well”, grav/pressor drives are more economical. CTA would only really be useful in pushing you out of The Well to allow your DD to engage.
Oh, and per your earlier question about fuel ranges… the average load for a warship is 4 weeks of fuel. Major star systems will have fuelling facilities at North or South Watch to allow fleets to refuel without entering the disk. Refuelling at less advanced facilities (ie: gas giants or on planetary facilities) would take much longer, especially for a large fleet. Here are some design notes re: fuelling from my wargame Vaylen Wars:
Human Tanker Squadrons would be operated by a commercial guild. Some Leaders may have their own, personal Tanker squadrons, but 9 out of 10 human Tankers will be private, and pretty unreliable. Probably tending to park themselves on low-index worlds, along popular trade routes, charging fleets to refuel/revictual. They might almost be considered to be Neutral forces. It should be very hard to get them to move, unless it’s with a really big stack, that they’ll be sure to get big $$ from. Maybe they should move randomly (or if the player tries to move them, there’s a 50% chance that the vaylen will do it for him). the human player should be able to eliminate 1 private Tanker squadron in order to “take over” another. This reflects siezure of private Tankers… but it should be a desperation measure only, and result, not only in the burning of one Tanker, but in the increasing reticence of private Tankers to stick with the fleets. (and future “burnings” should be more and more expensive: 2:1, 3:1…)
-Chris
I wanna put in a vote for “gunship”.
That’s gunSHIP, cause “boat” is kinda wussy, yeah?
My vote is for “corvette.” It’s more old-world.
What are the crews of these things? Are they functionally any different than the “Hammer Patrol” ships that are already in the book? ie faster, more specialized payloads, etc.?
p.