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Mark wrote:Unless some tech could be devised to scamble a weapons lock. But we see cap ships with locks missing each other on a regular basis anyway. Could a high speed fighter prove too much for a cap ships weapons to effectively target?

When the fleet actions begin. Targeting seems to become a major problem. We can safely guess that ECM is involved.

Captain Seafort wrote:And I'm saying you'd be much better off with a normal gun warship than a Battlestar. In Trek 100% guns > 50% guns, 50% fighters.

Why would you even think to be cutting 50% of your guns anyways? 100% gun + fighters... If you have shuttle space, use it for fighters. The Battlestar has a hard outer shell covered in guns and the inside is spaced for fighters. She may not be the longest ranging ship around but she's a hell of a hard hitter.

When?

The very first scene when Sisko orders the fighters to attack. We see three of them punch a hole in the side of a Galor. As Dukat orders some of his ships to break formation, we see a Galor getting turned into a fire ball by a squadron of fighters.

Plus, with a SF Battlestar opening fire on you with everything its got, your going to be a little distracted to spend time tracking its Vipers as well.

Oh hell yeah... just think of the fire we saw coming off of the nBSG... Imagine that being turned into Pulse Phasers and PTLs...

Like I said, its like having DS9 with warp engines!

What a space battle scene

Now rather then just one... think about if there were one hundred twenty of them... with fighters... and warp drive... and marines...

Deepcrush wrote:Now rather then just one... think about if there were one hundred twenty of them... with fighters... and warp drive... and marines...

.. {cough} Excuse me while I go change my pants..



What?

SPIT COFFEE ALERT

Deepcrush wrote:Now rather then just one... think about if there were one hundred twenty of them... with fighters... and warp drive... and marines...

I don't think even IMAX has enough screen for that.

I think a fighter heavy ship might work okay against the Cardassians, Romulans and Klingons who all seem to have large, fixed forward firing beam weapons with somewhat limited firing arcs.

But against the newer Federation ships that have the linear arrays I think you are looking at a slaughter. Simply put I don't see how one can build a fighter that can take even a quarter power shot from a major, capital ship borne phaser array. While targeting may not always be perfect the sheer volume of possible fire is going to be very high due to the lower power necessary.

The Cardassians seemed particularly vulnerable to something like this as their main weapon had a horribly limited firing arc and their other weapons seem pretty weak. I would not want to make an attack run on a Sovereign in any fighter that would be reasonable to build.

But thats when the big guns of the Battlestar would come into play. You have a ship like a Soverign, and you can engage it with the Battlestar, while the Vipers (if launched at all) could dart around and make on attack runs on the blindspot (they're small but there). If you were the Captain, are you going to order your tactical officer to fire on fighters or the big ship?

Mark wrote:But thats when the big guns of the Battlestar would come into play. You have a ship like a Soverign, and you can engage it with the Battlestar, while the Vipers (if launched at all) could dart around and make on attack runs on the blindspot (they're small but there). If you were the Captain, are you going to order your tactical officer to fire on fighters or the big ship?

To some extent but most Federation ships have all around coverage. There will be un-engaged arrays that can and will vaporize your fighters.

Assuming two ships are built with the same tech and expense the all gun and torpedo ship will have more weapons and shields than the carrier style ship so it won't be outgunned. The only way this works is if the battlestar type has equal or near equal firepower and fighters, but then I could probably get two all gun ships for that cost.

There will be un-engaged arrays that can and will vaporize your fighters.

But who's going to be targeting them and shooting? And that would also be a quick way to exaust phaser power taking potshots at fighters.

First draft...

Mark wrote:

There will be un-engaged arrays that can and will vaporize your fighters.

But who's going to be targeting them and shooting? And that would also be a quick way to exaust phaser power taking potshots at fighters.

Yeah, but the point is all the space on the battlestar that could be used for weapons and generators to make more power is tied up in a huge space to handle fighters. You need hangers. You need machine ships to keep the things running. You need weapons storage. If you want the fighters to be warp capable you need a fuel handling system.

So on ships of equal expense the one with fighters is going to be less powerful to some degree than the one without fighters. The only way to even them up in combat capability will be to spend more on the ship with fighters. So what it comes down to is if you are gaining or losing with the fighters vs whatever else you could have if they were not there.

In isolation and as a surprise I think you might do ok. If people know you are building this thing with fighters I think they will make some pretty easy changes to how they arm ships and you will suffer badly.