Just throwing some ideas around
- Thread starter Somebody
- Start date
A very interesting idea. 
If I would use something like this in one of my settings, I would probably
add some "diplomatic" functions (to spread news and propaganda from
the core worlds in order to strengthen the connection between the core
worlds and the frontier) and some "medical" functions (to enable the car-
rier to respond to desasters), because this ship will probably often be the
first and only instrument with a competent crew on the scene.
A real world example could be some ship types of the US Marines and of
the French navy, multipurpose ships that can handle no role really well,
but can do at least something to deal with all sorts of crises, from combat
to evacuation of civilians.
A point I do not understand is why the ship should intentionally be unable
to overwhelm fleet units of similar size ?
If I would use something like this in one of my settings, I would probably
add some "diplomatic" functions (to spread news and propaganda from
the core worlds in order to strengthen the connection between the core
worlds and the frontier) and some "medical" functions (to enable the car-
rier to respond to desasters), because this ship will probably often be the
first and only instrument with a competent crew on the scene.
A real world example could be some ship types of the US Marines and of
the French navy, multipurpose ships that can handle no role really well,
but can do at least something to deal with all sorts of crises, from combat
to evacuation of civilians.
A point I do not understand is why the ship should intentionally be unable
to overwhelm fleet units of similar size ?
You could replace one of the SDBs with, for example, two 100 dton scoutsSomebody said:
and one 200 dton armed transport to give the ship some reconnaissance,
long distance communications and supply capability, but I would see no
reason to have more ships around, at least not permanently.
rust said:A very interesting idea.
If I would use something like this in one of my settings, I would probably
add some "diplomatic" functions (to spread news and propaganda from
the core worlds in order to strengthen the connection between the core
worlds and the frontier) and some "medical" functions (to enable the car-
rier to respond to desasters), because this ship will probably often be the
first and only instrument with a competent crew on the scene.
I like the medical aspect. It reminds me of the US aircraft carrier that responded to the tsunami back in ’04. I can imagine this vessel arriving after word of a world wide event. The crew would address the aftermath and investigate the cause. The projection of power aspect could be used to counter hostile forces from another system coming in to take the world over in it’s weaken state. All kinds of Evil Referee ides are just begging to be put down in writing:
The ship arrives and find the Zho (insert your favorite adversary) have responded first, how is it that they were prepared and in the area?
Is the call for aid due to catastrophe a prelude to invasion or even colonization by K’Kree or even Aslan forces?
Did some faction just reverse engineer a ‘star-trigger’?
As for the 200 dton armed transport I mentioned above, my experience
with a frontier patrol campaign was that there alway was something (e.g.
equipment, supplies, spare parts ...) or someone (e.g. troops, patients,
refugees, prisoners ...) which / who urgently needed transport from some
point A to some point B, and that there rarely ever was a ship with a relia-
ble crew available to do the job. In the end our patrol cruiser quite often
had to interrupt its ongoing operations in order to ship some cargo or pas-
sengers to somewhere, spending weeks away from where the action was
- a real pain in the neck. We would have happily traded a fighter wing or
two for a decent transport ...
with a frontier patrol campaign was that there alway was something (e.g.
equipment, supplies, spare parts ...) or someone (e.g. troops, patients,
refugees, prisoners ...) which / who urgently needed transport from some
point A to some point B, and that there rarely ever was a ship with a relia-
ble crew available to do the job. In the end our patrol cruiser quite often
had to interrupt its ongoing operations in order to ship some cargo or pas-
sengers to somewhere, spending weeks away from where the action was
- a real pain in the neck. We would have happily traded a fighter wing or
two for a decent transport ...
Is the intent of the ship to do power-projection throughout the system, or just in say the local area of a planet? Those are two-different tasks and would require two different load-outs.
I would make it a dispersed hull, with a number of docking ports around a centralized hub. This would allow you to have a mixture of ships as needed, so some times you might be carrying 400 ton SDBs, other times you may need more hulls and you might carry twice as many 200 ton patrol craft.
This would also let you be able to carry other smaller craft, say free trader Q-ships for systems with suspected pirates in them, or assault transports for police actions.
For the lighter stuff I'd prolly stick with say 40-50 ton fighters. Perhaps you could deploy them in sets of 4 with a 'mothership' of a 50-ton modular cutter that carries fuel, munitions, and offers a place for the crew to sleep and streach a bit on really long patrol missions. It's certainly large enough to do all of that, within reason.
I concur with the suggestion that your ship carry say 4 scouts to allow it to notify nearby star systems in case it needs backup. 4 would give you enough flexibility, though maybe you would carry a pair of 200ton scouts with a larger jump radius.
As far as ships troops, if you are wanting the ability to make a quick assault on something, I'd go with a reinforced company of marines, equipped with grav tanks (no need for g-carriers since you are the military), grav APCs and say 20-30 powered armor troopers. They pack a lot of punch, and these guys can be deployed to space targets where your grav tanks aren't much use. You'll still need some smaller craft, say a few shuttles or assault shuttles to deploy with them, bringing your HQ and supplies and other support personnel and whatnot.
I would make it a dispersed hull, with a number of docking ports around a centralized hub. This would allow you to have a mixture of ships as needed, so some times you might be carrying 400 ton SDBs, other times you may need more hulls and you might carry twice as many 200 ton patrol craft.
This would also let you be able to carry other smaller craft, say free trader Q-ships for systems with suspected pirates in them, or assault transports for police actions.
For the lighter stuff I'd prolly stick with say 40-50 ton fighters. Perhaps you could deploy them in sets of 4 with a 'mothership' of a 50-ton modular cutter that carries fuel, munitions, and offers a place for the crew to sleep and streach a bit on really long patrol missions. It's certainly large enough to do all of that, within reason.
I concur with the suggestion that your ship carry say 4 scouts to allow it to notify nearby star systems in case it needs backup. 4 would give you enough flexibility, though maybe you would carry a pair of 200ton scouts with a larger jump radius.
As far as ships troops, if you are wanting the ability to make a quick assault on something, I'd go with a reinforced company of marines, equipped with grav tanks (no need for g-carriers since you are the military), grav APCs and say 20-30 powered armor troopers. They pack a lot of punch, and these guys can be deployed to space targets where your grav tanks aren't much use. You'll still need some smaller craft, say a few shuttles or assault shuttles to deploy with them, bringing your HQ and supplies and other support personnel and whatnot.
AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
Somebody said:
Space wise, internal hangars take the same amount of storage space as the ship being stored (assuming you aren't using full hangars, which could work well on this ship if they want to do maintenance). Docking clamps on the other hand don't take up the internal volume but in a way use more tonnage as the drives need to be sized to include the tonnage from docked ships + the dock clamps themselves.
Somebody said:
Could work for this, just use a modular hull.
AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
Somebody said:
Agreed, full hangars would be a good idea for this type of ship. Meant that full hangars would work well in the previous comment. Though you don't have to have a full hangar for everything. Say you have 20 fighters, you aren't going to be repairing all of them at the same time.
Ah, you know, I would not want my ship's pilots to hide at the repair han-Somebody said:
gars while somewhere else something ugly happens that damages my
small craft.
Besides, when a small craft is damaged there is a good chance that its
pilot is damaged, too, and has to spend his time at the sickbay instead of
the repair hangar.
So, counting pilots as repair crew is nice if the repairs happen after the
action, but if the small craft have to get fixed and to return into action as
soon as possible, the pilots are usually more urgently needed elsewhere.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Most work that is done on a small craft is not repair work, it is routine maintenance.
Modern fighter craft have something like a 25% readiness rating; meaning that at any given time only 25% of the fighters are actually combat ready.
Even if you double or triple that for higher TLs, that still leaves up to half of your fighters needing some kind of maintenance (fixing the out-of-alignment Flux Capacitor or replacing that sticking over pressure relief valve). None of this kind of work will injure the pilot, so in these circumstances, the pilot could help with the work.
Unfortunately, most pilots are too important to get their hand dirty doing real work... :wink:
Modern fighter craft have something like a 25% readiness rating; meaning that at any given time only 25% of the fighters are actually combat ready.
Even if you double or triple that for higher TLs, that still leaves up to half of your fighters needing some kind of maintenance (fixing the out-of-alignment Flux Capacitor or replacing that sticking over pressure relief valve). None of this kind of work will injure the pilot, so in these circumstances, the pilot could help with the work.
Unfortunately, most pilots are too important to get their hand dirty doing real work... :wink:
