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Fishman -> RE: The future: DW Fighters? (4/30/2010 11:54:38 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: lordxorn
The carrier is still king of the seas precisely because of the aircraft it carries, which can project power much further and put eyes on before hostiles get to close. Unfortunately, missiles have a range which exceeds that of aircraft, as they do not need to return. Additionally, while the carrier's AIRCRAFT are still valuable resources, especially as most opponents lack a credible airforce, the supercarrier itself is simply a sitting duck, and better results could be accomplished by smaller, cheaper, lower-profile escort carriers.
quote:
ORIGINAL: lordxorn
Plus a civilian liner would be retarded to ignore the numerous warnings it would receive by flying to close to a Carrier Battle Group's area of influence. I'm going to assume you did not mean "fly", as ships do not fly, which is their main weakness, but a carrier group's influence at which it can reasonably command people to stay away is not sufficiently large that it can declare such a zone without effectively blockading the entire Persian Gulf, or a similarly sized region. The coastal sea is a crowded place, and at any given time, hundreds of civilian ships could be easily within missile range.
quote:
ORIGINAL: lordxorn
In a full on war where some lesser naval country would love to sink a flat top, all civilian traffic will be re-routed and all the hostile targets will be weeded out by the numerous screening ships in the CVBG. The navy is also upgrading it's carriers to metal storm missile defense systems that can fire a million rounds a sec, youtube it. Yes, those CIWS systems are impressive, but how many missiles can they really stop? One? Ten? A Hundred? None of these is enough!
quote:
ORIGINAL: lordxorn
While you are 100% correct that missile cruisers/frigates have surmounted even the time honored battleships from modern navies, carriers remain a integral part of any 1st world's navy. Otherwise if you are correct, then myself and all the smart navy brass that have studied nothing but naval warfare are completely wrong. The military is always ready to fight the last war. Remember the WW2 battleship admirals? It was demonstrated well before the war started that battleships were obsolete and easy prey for aircraft. This advice was largely ignored because in the event that those battleships were downsized, the admirals would lose their jobs, and so they were unwilling to believe. This same thing will happen in the next war. The carrier battlegroup is a doctrine evolved from WW2, to fight enemies of comparable strength in battles. In the modern world, nobody fights like this anymore. The supercarrier is a piece for a type of a war that no longer exists, clinging to life because many thousands depend on its existence for their livelihoods.
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ORIGINAL: jam3
He kind of sound like the guys who thought there would be no need for cannons on fighter jets in the vietnam era cause missles would prevent combat from ever getting that close plus the speeds would be to great. Yeah, well, they were wrong. Turns out cannons are great for shooting up the many things that don't actually have missiles, and compared to the cost of the rest of the plane, they are pretty cheap. It is true that there are not really any serious dogfights carried out with cannons, but cannons still find a lot of use outside of interceptor dogfights.
quote:
ORIGINAL: jam3
In space you could come up with several scenarios where this would be applicable as well, its all fantasy anyway. It's always possible to invent a scenario in which Space Fighters somehow find a use that makes sense. However, DW has sort of locked itself into a corner here: Fighters have no meaningful role in DW without massive changes to the rules.
quote:
ORIGINAL: jam3
Thats one of the reasons pilots will probably always be better than a drone. A pilot has an innate sense of mortality and like any other organism a unique desire to survive. Pilots are also remarkably squishy, have demanding life support needs, and extremely poor tolerance for acceleration. A desire to survive is very nice, but this is contrary to the goals of a missile, which wishes to plow into its opponent, causing the gruesome deaths of everyone involved. A fighter, with a live pilot, that wishes to survive, must now carry 4x the delta-V and additionally needs weapons, and life support with magical properties. A drone missile needs none of these things, being that it simply needs to accelerate to the target and plow into it. Warhead optional, kinetic energy is quite lethal in space.
In the context of DW, fighters suffer the problem of either being indistinguishable mechanically from missiles, or being very easily killed if they emulate shiplike properties, as FRIED systems are available midgame and upwards, and render any such small, easily destroyed craft completely obsolete. Ever see what happens when you let off a shockwave in the presence of a swarm of larger-than-fighters escorts? They all kinda die. Given that the traditional role of space fighters in fiction is attacking large capital warships, and mounting shockwave generators is a standard item according to the description of capital ships, this will result in the instant death of all of your fighters.
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