Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[arwan]

If there's FTL in this sci fi world we're talking about, there's no way you COULD see me coming. Remember? Light takes time to get places

....but yeah, fair points. It's a little sad that space warfare in real life would be so boring. At the same time though, I pray for the day where something that violates common sense as flagrantly as space fighters becomes less popular. Battleships, in my own opinion, are much more interesting. They have crew on them, crew that has to work together to achieve a common goal. Fighters are just rock stars, solo acts that somehow get all the credit. I think there's a lot of self projection and literary entitlement that goes into the trope.

you didn't start out going light speed. and besides that this is supposed to be realistic remember by  your own words anyway and thus light speed is impossible due to the laws of physics we have now. more likely would be teleportation technology. but at that point why would we be using such trivial weaponry as missiles and lasers.. got to think grand scale.. if we can harness the power of stars. i would just use the power of a supernova to take out your entire system.

[Iscariot]

It takes a lot to push an asteroid out of orbit.

Also, war is more often about conquering territory than annihilating everything. It'd be pretty *** to wreck someone's entire planet-- for you AND the enemy. For them, they're all dead. For you, you just spend billions of dollars moving asteroids out of orbit, then pushing them onto a collision vector, and then waiting the millions of years for that rock to get there, and you don't even get anything out of it.

[Arbitae]

I don't exactly see missiles filling the escort and patrol roles very well compared to fighters. And if you're going to say, "obviously, the missiles are launched from the escorting/patrolling ships", then you'll need to also add the cost of the ship when comparing to fighters.
A missile Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship would cost a lot more than a wing of fighters in terms of resources, manpower, and supply. You might be able to afford a lot of missiles compared to a fighter wing, but would you be able to afford a launch platform for them that is cheaper than said wing of fighters?
I doubt every space faring organization would be able to field battleships on even a rare occasion.

[Iscariot]

you didn't start out going light speed. and besides that this is supposed to be realistic remember by  your own words anyway and thus light speed is impossible due to the laws of physics we have now. more likely would be teleportation technology. but at that point why would we be using such trivial weaponry as missiles and lasers.. got to think grand scale.. if we can harness the power of stars. i would just use the power of a supernova to take out your entire system.

This is always an uncomfortable issue in sci fi writing. As I admitted myself, purely realistic sci fi is a little boring, but I don't think that you have to throw all of realism out the window. It's about verisimilitude, not realism. Realism isn't a switch, you can be realistic in some places and not realistic in others.

For me, the choice is pretty clear. I accept FTL and other stuff because it makes sci fi in a traditional sense possible. I don't accept star fighters because I don't think they're necessary and I think they're /too/ unrealistic. I don't have any hate for anyone who thinks otherwise, and, as I said, if you WANT star fighters, fine. Just accept that they make no sense-- as opposed to less sense, like a battleship would be.

[arwan]

Also, war is more often about conquering territory than annihilating everything. It'd be pretty *** to wreck someone's entire planet-- for you AND the enemy.

but if i can control the power of a star i would not need your solar system. i just eliminated you because you were a threat to my way of life.. instead i would use the power that i have to create a new solar system after yours was gone.

[Iscariot]

I don't exactly see missiles filling the escort and patrol roles very well compared to fighters. And if you're going to say, "obviously, the missiles are launched from the escorting/patrolling ships", then you'll need to also add the cost of the ship when comparing to fighters.
A missile Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship would cost a lot more than a wing of fighters in terms of resources, manpower, and supply. You might be able to afford a lot of missiles compared to a fighter wing, but would you be able to afford a launch platform for them that is cheaper than said wing of fighters?
I doubt every space faring organization would be able to field battleships on even a rare occasion.

There's a lot of tropes at work here, and I'll try to address them.

First, I'm using battleship in a VERY broad sense here, and by broad I mean I basically mean any kind of warship that isn't a fighter. For an escort role, a lighter warship is definitely in order, hell, it could even have only one crewman if the automation's good enough. As I said, what defines a fighter isn't any external appearance, but the fact that it returns to a carrier, and a carrier would be a mightily *** escort vehicle indeed.

Second, I don't see how a wing of fighters could be cheaper than a small frigate of some kind. The fighters can't survive for very long because they can't carry a lot of supplies, so they need to return to a carrier, which would of course be much more expensive than just a frigate. And, as I've proven, fighters make pretty *** strikecraft.

[Iscariot]

but if i can control the power of a star i would not need your solar system. i just eliminated you because you were a threat to my way of life.. instead i would use the power that i have to create a new solar system after yours was gone.

Why would you be threatening each other in the first place if you both had the power to create new solar systems? When did we agree that we could create new solar systems? What are we even arguing about? I'm not disagreeing with anything here, I'm just confused now.

[arwan]

you didn't start out going light speed. and besides that this is supposed to be realistic remember by  your own words anyway and thus light speed is impossible due to the laws of physics we have now. more likely would be teleportation technology. but at that point why would we be using such trivial weaponry as missiles and lasers.. got to think grand scale.. if we can harness the power of stars. i would just use the power of a supernova to take out your entire system.

This is always an uncomfortable issue in sci fi writing. As I admitted myself, purely realistic sci fi is a little boring, but I don't think that you have to throw all of realism out the window. It's about verisimilitude, not realism. Realism isn't a switch, you can be realistic in some places and not realistic in others.

For me, the choice is pretty clear. I accept FTL and other stuff because it makes sci fi in a traditional sense possible. I don't accept star fighters because I don't think they're necessary and I think they're /too/ unrealistic. I don't have any hate for anyone who thinks otherwise, and, as I said, if you WANT star fighters, fine. Just accept that they make no sense-- as opposed to less sense, like a battleship would be.

in any case that which is realistic for today is sci fi for yesterday, and that which is the future is sci fi as  well. ultimately i accept you dont like fighters.. no skin off my back. they may make no sense today. maybe they will tomorrow maybe they wont who knows unless you have a real time machine. what i tried to do earlier was get this thread back closer to the track of the OP. can we do that yet. or are we never going to deviate from the sci-fi/realism mix that this has degraded into now.

[Iscariot]

Fair enough, back to tactics then.

As I alluded to, I don't really like fighters, so I mostly use them for point capping. Usually I set capture orders out on all but one or two of the points on screen at a time, then an assault on the central point.

I like Xiphos's a lot, because they're such buff little fighters, so I actually do use them to run down frigates and keep them from recapping points that I control, but the bulk of my strategy typically involves getting enemy carriers on sensors so I can run them down with cruisers and battleships.

You really can't underestimate the intercept order, it's quite useful. I never let bomber or torpedo bomber wings go without an intercept order, because they're real dangerous.

[arwan]

my tactics are pretty similar to yours it looks like.. i launch my ody with a flotilla of fighters just to capture points. then i launch my larger ships for the umph they bring to the battle.

[SgtAlex86]

I don't exactly see missiles filling the escort and patrol roles very well compared to fighters. And if you're going to say, "obviously, the missiles are launched from the escorting/patrolling ships", then you'll need to also add the cost of the ship when comparing to fighters.
A missile Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship would cost a lot more than a wing of fighters in terms of resources, manpower, and supply. You might be able to afford a lot of missiles compared to a fighter wing, but would you be able to afford a launch platform for them that is cheaper than said wing of fighters?
I doubt every space faring organization would be able to field battleships on even a rare occasion.

There's a lot of tropes at work here, and I'll try to address them.

First, I'm using battleship in a VERY broad sense here, and by broad I mean I basically mean any kind of warship that isn't a fighter. For an escort role, a lighter warship is definitely in order, hell, it could even have only one crewman if the automation's good enough. As I said, what defines a fighter isn't any external appearance, but the fact that it returns to a carrier, and a carrier would be a mightily *** escort vehicle indeed.

Second, I don't see how a wing of fighters could be cheaper than a small frigate of some kind. The fighters can't survive for very long because they can't carry a lot of supplies, so they need to return to a carrier, which would of course be much more expensive than just a frigate. And, as I've proven, fighters make pretty *** strikecraft.

u can carry afful lot of fighters on carrier and those fighters can cover lot more area than frigate or dozen...   and u havent actually proven anything of the sort that fighters would make *** strike craft just lot of theories no evidense has been seen  :3 and why should patrol craft be equiped for days at time if u fly fast enough u wont need so much supplies... "be back for lunch"

[Iscariot]

Why would carriers carry a lot of fighters? Why are you just assuming this? Of course fighters make terrible strikecraft, they need to carry enough fuel to get them home. Fuel weighs mass, mass slows you down.

Just because they're a very high upper limit on the speed you can go doesn't mean you can move as fast as you want. As I said earlier, humans can't take that many Gs, so there's a limit on how fast they can accelerate.

[arwan]

Why would carriers carry a lot of fighters? Why are you just assuming this? Of course fighters make terrible strikecraft, they need to carry enough fuel to get them home. Fuel weighs mass, mass slows you down.

Just because they're a very high upper limit on the speed you can go doesn't mean you can move as fast as you want. As I said earlier, humans can't take that many Gs, so there's a limit on how fast they can accelerate.

LULz.. im envisioning a big rubber stamper [FAILED] over a vanilla mission folder

at anyrate you wont have any more argument from me Iscariot i think we wrapped up nicely LOL. have a good debate.

[SgtAlex86]

Why would carriers carry a lot of fighters? Why are you just assuming this? Of course fighters make terrible strikecraft, they need to carry enough fuel to get them home. Fuel weighs mass, mass slows you down.

Just because they're a very high upper limit on the speed you can go doesn't mean you can move as fast as you want. As I said earlier, humans can't take that many Gs, so there's a limit on how fast they can accelerate.

cause carriers usually do? and fighters in my scifi use fuel that has so little mass it dosnt make any difference.. and dont even start with the inertia compensators that allow for tighter than human limit turns ;3
and if fighter carries big enough weabonry to take on any space ship it happens to engage it doesnt even need to be more agile than bigger ships, both ships shoot killing each other and smaller is cheaper to replace ^^

[Iscariot]

cause carriers usually do? and fighters in my scifi use fuel that has so little mass it dosnt make any difference.. and dont even start with the inertia compensators that allow for tighter than human limit turns ;3
and if fighter carries big enough weabonry to take on any space ship it happens to engage it doesnt even need to be more agile than bigger ships, both ships shoot killing each other and smaller is cheaper to replace ^^

I'm not arguing about your sci fi, I never have been. If in your 'sci-fi' you choose to break Newton's laws that flagrantly, then sure, you can justify it, but you're jumping through hoops for more or less no reason.

EVEN IF you could eliminate the effects of Gs with 'inertial compensators' (a device, I am sure, you couldn't possibly describe to me the operation thereof in non-technobabble terms), humans just aren't as fast or precise as machines. We evolved in an environment where we rarely ran into anything that could move faster than thirty miles an hour, with eyes that were designed to see about as far as the horizon and no farther, and you're trying to tell me that this sad sack of meat can outperform a machine in an environment where ***'s moving at thousands of miles a second, and there IS no horizon?

I've already explained to you while the cost argument makes no sense, but I'll do it again:

Let's say you have a hypothetical space fighter that costs '1'. It's designed to take down capital ships, so its carrying a torpedo that also costs '1'. In order to make it drop that torpedo on an enemy warship, in other words, you're paying '2' to drop '1' cost's worth of ordnance. Moreover, there's a chance that your fighter isn't going to make it back, necessitating that you have to pay another fighter in order to deliver the next bit of ordnance. To go even further, you can only launch as many torpedoes as you have space fighters to carry them.

Why is that better than just launching two guided torpedoes? If you did, you'd be paying 1 in cost for 1 in ordnance, rather than 2 for 1. It is MUCH more cost effective to just launch guided torpedoes.