Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Also, how much internal space would a fighter take up? You could dock it on the outside, only needing to come into the ship for maintenance. It's not like you need to worry about induced drag or keeping them out of the rain.

Heck, they could even fly on their own 99% of the time and be accompanied by a dedicated support vessel.

It may be due to FTL needs, some ships can't be outfitted with proper FTL or may need a mobile repair bay.

De Marquis: A carrier is a dedicated support platform. They provide housing for the craft, a means to take off, fuel, munitions, spares, and dedicated shops and repair crew just for the small craft.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Dec 27th 2018 at 5:35:05 AM

What purpose would a fighter have for flying alongside the ships, unless they were attacking a remote outpost or world? Be a tremendous waste of fuel.

For normal patrol, they'd simply be inside. Nature of space dictates they'd long detect at threat before said threat could pose a threat to the ship without the fighters being launched.

"They provide housing for the craft, a means to take off, fuel, munitions, spares, and dedicated shops and repair crew just for the small craft."

The first two are unnecessary in space, the rest can be provided by a support vessel. Of course, if your plot requires carriers, then carriers you must have.

"What purpose would a fighter have for flying alongside the ships, unless they were attacking a remote outpost or world? Be a tremendous waste of fuel."

The fuel requirement is precisely the same, whether the lighter ship is flying independently, or the larger ship is carrying the extra weight. You're asking the wrong question-what purpose does building an entire extra ship serve?

Wouldn't a larger ship meant to house fighters work better as a long term support vessel as logically a larger ship would have larger fuel tanks than a fighter?

Force multiplier, distribution of firepower, things like that. A fighter wing can spread out and be harder to hit than a space battleship and each fighter can engage an independent target of its own accord with the maximum number limited only by the number of fighters available. You'll be able to carry far more fighters for the same size carrier than you'd fit VLS (or equivalent) batteries or gun turrets.

Fighters also provide greater versatility. Unless you intend to be supervillain evil and just glass a planet, when the space battle is over a space battleship becomes almost useless. Fighters can then run air support missions, air/space superiority missions, bombing runs, scouting missions and so much more when the battle turns to the ground.

Are fighters an ideal instrument of space war? No, but they are not worthless or useless unlike what Atomic Rocket keeps spouting off.

I mean a battleship doesn't have to glass the planet to be effective. They could provide Space-to-surface Warfare.

"Wouldn't a larger ship meant to house fighters work better as a long term support vessel as logically a larger ship would have larger fuel tanks than a fighter?"

It actually doesnt matter. For any given thrust to weight ratio, whether the fuel is stored and burned in lots of little ships, or the same amount of fuel is used to push the same amount of weight in the form of a single larger ship, the net amount of fuel used is identical. This assumes that both types of ships use the same type of drive.

De Marquis: Actually you do need to house the craft. At some point, it will need to be sheltered to permit a safe working environment without having to mess with independent maneuver for maintenance also re-arm and refit and replenishment of various expendables. It gets a lot easier to do that when you don't have worry about your service crew working in a vac suit of some sort and trying to work on equipment and personnel transfer between two different moving craft. It is a completely unnecessary complication. Also, there are quite a few good arguments for a launch mechanism to help conserve fuel so a craft doesn't bur as much into reserves to accelerate fast enough to pull away.

Also, no the fuel requirement is not the same. There is quite a bit of difference in constantly burning up fuel vs hauling extra fuel. The small craft flying alongside is constantly burning its fuel supply which it can only carry so much which means replenishment has to be carried by someone else. Having them docked when not needed saves fuel and doesn't constantly eat into fuel stores. It not only saves fuel but saves on maintenance hours, consumption of spares, and reduces all other expendable consumption. We covered this when someone a while back suggested trying to fly missiles around casually instead of keeping them in a safely sealed ready to launch container or ready to fire silo or launch unit. There are more reasons to not fly them around like that than to fly them constantly.

Your first point is a matter cost/ benefit comparisons- which is more expensive and incovenient: making your maitenence crew work in vac suits (or using remote controlled robots for the job, which I regard as more likely), or building a large pressurized hanger which represents a single point of failure (as opposed to multiple independent vac suits). Large sheilded pressurized structures arnt easy to build or defend. But it would depend on the exact circumstances prevelent in a given fictional universe.

Your second point is simply wrong. Why would a smaller vessel be burning its delta v if the larger one was not also accelerating as well? If both craft have the same thrust to weight ratio, then you are simply pushing a given amount of weight with a given amount of fuel. Whether you divide the weight, fuel and thrust into two or more units of different sizes, or combine it all into one large mass (which is what you are doing when you dock one ship to another) is irrelevent to the equation.

The exact same considerations apply to missiles, which are nothing more than scaled down spaceships. Assuming that all these different types of ships are using the same drive design, you could indeed let your missiles fly independently if you like. Of course, the reason why they dont do it that way in near-future simulations like Children of a Dead Earth is because the missiles are using a different, higher thrust engine design that the firing ships are. This is the primary reason why a space combat ship would be equipped with on board missile launchers.

I personally think that near term it not unlikely that space missiles will use chem fuel engines, while capital ships are more likely to rely on something more fuel efficient, like Nuclear thermal, or something that doesnt scale down, like an Orion type pulse drive. In that scenario, you would have a stronger case.

If the fighters use a different drive type than the larger ships in the fleet, you might have some reason to dock them to the larger ships. That would depend on how fighters are designed in a particular universe. Small, single crew dogfighters, a la Star Wars, might indeed be differently engined. The larger multicrewed patrol ships we sometimes discuss here are less likely to be. So, to a certain extent its up to the author.

But given the same drive design, there is no clear afvantage to housing the fighter inside a carrier.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 27th 2018 at 9:31:29 AM

Considering things like delta V for space fighters is a useless endeavor, IMO. Once you get down to trying to figure it out space fighters reveal themselves to be utterly impractical compared to just carrying more missiles.

I think the better question is what stylistic setting you’re trying to invoke. If you’re going for a WW 2 in space setting like Star Wars, fighters make sense, as men scrambling across a flight deck to their craft as alarms blare is an iconic scene from that era. If you’re going for WW 1 in space it might make sense to have the fighters operate individually, as air combat stories from that era are more focused on individual aces, flying on their own. A modern combat theme might have a combination of the two.

What about lack of a FLT drive, typically FTL capable ships (not including Star Wars) are large vessels that need the size to A) support the drive and B) support the reactors and computers with the drive.

Also if we're talking fighters we're not talking patrol ships, we're talking craft meant to perform multirole duties such as defenders or escort runs. Heck even harder Scifi has ships docked within other ships, the Donnager for example from the Expanse houses several corvette class ships such as the Rocinante, presumably for needs other than just refuelling and maintenance.

Another reason would be unloading and loading of crew, something easier inside a ship than outside it unless you use specific bridges.

Finally is why would we presume our fighters use the same type of engine to accelerate as our carrier? Fighters would likely have a less efficient drive system to get more "oomph" and get to combat zones faster, or leave them faster.

Well, the “ships within ships” thing has limited utility outside of maintenance, as you’re using the exact same amount of fuel whether the ships are docked or seperate. The overall weight of the ships doesn’t change an ounce when they dock together. Unless you’re so far from home that maintenance has to be done in the field I can’t see much reason for that. IIRC, the Donnager carrying smaller ships is a narrative device to allow the main cast to get away with the Roci.

FTL drives are basically magic and can work however you need them to work for the story, so if small ships need to dock to a larger FTL ship that could be a reason. In Star Wars, at least, small ships seem perfectly capable of going FTL all on their own.

There’s also a world of difference between a multirole frigate and the space equivalent of an aerospace fighter, and we are talking about fighters here. You’d be better served carrying an extra rack of missiles than a space fighter.

Edited by archonspeaks on Dec 27th 2018 at 7:07:04 AM

@Archon: "Considering things like delta V for space fighters is a useless endeavor, IMO. Once you get down to trying to figure it out space fighters reveal themselves to be utterly impractical compared to just carrying more missiles."

Well, there is that, yes. If you go back to Tactical's OP:

"So, what's the general consensus on non-carrier class starships having fighters? From Frigates (depending on your definition) having simply four for additional escort and protection, to mile-long dreadnoughts."

Count me in the "dont need no carriers" group, and let the final determination depend on the narrative.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 27th 2018 at 10:28:45 AM

I guess I can’t see the utility of a frigate carrying a fighter escort, when you consider that in the space a fighter and all of its support equipment would take up you could fit hundreds of missiles that would do a far better job of protecting you.

You could, but fighter pilots make cool characters.

People relate more to people in cockpits fighting for their life in a massive space battle than Missile 274's targeting computer.

I think that kind of goes back to my original point, which is that including fighters is a narrative or stylistic choice rather than one based in any technological or tactical concerns.

Any realistic space battle is going to be conducted by automated systems at speeds and scales well beyond a human’s ability to control. Even today, combat is increasingly being left to ship and aircraft systems that are able to act and react far faster than any human ever could. Humans fighting for their life in a massive space battle is cool, but it’s also basically a WW 2 movie with sci-fi trappings.

Edited by archonspeaks on Dec 27th 2018 at 7:38:24 AM

Although in my own fiction I regard the hardness of the science as a writing challenge. But YMMV.

I vary on hardness, fighters don't exactly exist in my Space'verse which I'd consider one of my hardest at a level 4 (One Big Lie) but fighter class ships do exist but are moreover escorts and corvettes for larger scale battleships.

One of the biggest requirements for a ship to be properly licensed is a habitation block within it, as the crew can't spend all their time in the cockpit and must have a place to stay. The other requirement is a proper phase drive.

I think escorts in space might actually end up as a rehash of air defense cruisers here on Earth. The main advantage to having multiple ships is spreading your capabilities around so that losing a ship doesn’t cripple your fleet, and one of the most important capabilities you’d have would be defense. Escort cruisers might just be flying defensive batteries, providing a screen for a more combat-focused warship.

I think the US military might also disagree about the necessity of a crew space. B-2 Pilots are known to stay in their aircraft for 50 hours or even more, with essentially no crew space available.

Edited by archonspeaks on Dec 27th 2018 at 7:46:06 AM

It's a legal requirement because goddamn there are a lot of ships out in space now with a lot of them being run not just by military crews but also mercs, freelancers, and even some non combat ships run by day to day folks.

Considering you have long haul truckers and cops who will drive 10-15 hours at a time and sleep behind the wheel, and military pilots who stay in their aircraft during alerts potentially for days, I can’t imagine a crew space being a requirement. For any ship where the mission is under a week, your “crew space” is probably going to be minuscule, if it’s even there at all.