Possible Roles For Fighters

[Mikey]

They happily carry noncombatants aboard their front line warships. They gave a ship to Janeway. They don't teach their ground troops how to fight or even give them decent equipment.

Agreed. All of that doesn't mean that I have to like or agree with how they do things.

[Sionnach Glic]

I can see casualties amongst pilots being heavy alright.

[Vic]

US losses among torpedo bomber forces were very high, even divebombers which should have been at least marginally safer was also high. There is no doubt about just how dangerous these things are. Has there been any thought about EW systems ala the mercenary ship that was looking for the Stone of Gol?

[Reliant121]

It's a simple thing really. Fighters are dangerous. Simple as that. A fighter today can be downed by a missile through the wing. A fighter in the past could be downed by a few cannon shots in the fuselage. In the future, a fighter SHOULD be capable of being downed by a few phaser shots. It's a fighter, not a miniature battleship. They should be so fast and maneuverable, that its almost impossible to get a shot off on one.

[Coalition]

It's a simple thing really. Fighters are dangerous. Simple as that. A fighter today can be downed by a missile through the wing. A fighter in the past could be downed by a few cannon shots in the fuselage. In the future, a fighter SHOULD be capable of being downed by a few phaser shots. It's a fighter, not a miniature battleship. They should be so fast and maneuverable, that its almost impossible to get a shot off on one.

The difference between modern fighters and modern ships is the environment they operate in, water vs air. Add in the ability for fighters to move in 3D, and ships mainly 2D, and you see the advantages. Finally, the advantage of altitude allows a plane to get longer sensor ranges than a surface ship.

In space, ships and fighters are operating in the same environment. Fighters would be more along the lines of PT boats, rather than small nimble vessels. They would be easily manufactured, crewed, replaceable, and understood. Manufacture and replacement means that they can be built on a planet, without needing space-based industry. This allows more planets to contribute to the war effort. With a smaller crew it takes less time for them to get used to each other and understand their quirks. By making them all have the same capabilities, a commander doesn't need to remember what type of starship or upgrade they are the details. She just has to figure out how many of them are needed to do an attack, and allocate that many. Damaged ones are routed to the carriers for repair/scrapping, and are removed from tactical consideration.

[SomosFuga]

The difference between modern fighters and modern ships is the environment they operate in, water vs air. Add in the ability for fighters to move in 3D, and ships mainly 2D, and you see the advantages. Finally, the advantage of altitude allows a plane to get longer sensor ranges than a surface ship.

Plus, modern fighters are way faster than modern ships and also can make attacks over ground many Km far from the coast, those advantages probably wouldn't apply for starfighters.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, it's a bad idea to say that because fighters now are very powerful, they will be the same in the 24th century.

[Reliant121]

I actually like the idea that Coalition has for fighters being more like gunships or PT boats. It sorta makes sense in a way.

[Mikey]

I actually like the idea that Coalition has for fighters being more like gunships or PT boats. It sorta makes sense in a way.

It makes all kinds of sense. The problem is that the difference in medium for modern PT's and 'Trek fighters continues to apply when one gets hit. There's no John Kennedy/PT-109 heroic survivals goign on in space; if a shot pierces the hull, you're done. Game over. That's it. No "holding it together to get a last heroic shot off," no "we'll huddle together here until help arrives;" just the choice of dying in the fire/explosion aboard, or in the vaccuum of space.

[Nickswitz]

I actually like the idea that Coalition has for fighters being more like gunships or PT boats. It sorta makes sense in a way.

It makes all kinds of sense. The problem is that the difference in medium for modern PT's and 'Trek fighters continues to apply when one gets hit. There's no John Kennedy/PT-109 heroic survivals goign on in space; if a shot pierces the hull, you're done. Game over. That's it. No "holding it together to get a last heroic shot off," no "we'll huddle together here until help arrives;" just the choice of dying in the fire/explosion aboard, or in the vaccuum of space.

See, I always saw it as if they would be wearing enviro suits, and have some sort of transporter tracker on them, then, ship gets hit, they eject with thruster maybe, they hit the beacon, get transported to the ship. That's how I saw it at least.

[Coalition]

The difference between modern fighters and modern ships is the environment they operate in, water vs air. Add in the ability for fighters to move in 3D, and ships mainly 2D, and you see the advantages. Finally, the advantage of altitude allows a plane to get longer sensor ranges than a surface ship.

Plus, modern fighters are way faster than modern ships and also can make attacks over ground many Km far from the coast, those advantages probably wouldn't apply for starfighters.

ST fighters would have a top speed on 4* higher than the ships they are with (assuming the fighters travel at c, and the ships are liited to 25%c). 20th-21st century fighters are 10* (or higher) faster than surface ships. You also have the issue that modern fighters have to thrust constantly to maintain their capabilities, while ships can just sit there. As to the idea of space fighters being PT boats, I got the basic ideas from here.

Technically, a carrier could load up its fighers with extended life support, and send the fighters in ballistically. The fighters don't use their main engines, saving fuel, while the pathetic demands of life support are handled by a small reactor. The fighters perform a pass on the planet, dropping nuclear ordnance on selected targets, and continue on their way, where the carrier picks them up. Of course, the fighters will be spotted by the heat needed to keep the crew alive (space being 3 Kelvin, and humans over 270 Kelvin), so the carrier will either have to launch out of the sun (using the sun to blind the target's infrared sensors), or hope the local defenders are sleeping. The defenders will be launching side sensors (sensor pods launched to the side to try to spot anything coming out of the sun) to try to spot a fighter launch early.

Of course the obvious question is why not use a missile bus for the attack, as unlike trained crew it is expendable, and can be cooled to near 3 Kelvin before launch to reduce its sensor signature. The disadvantage is the level of computer prediction you can build/program. If the defenders can fool the sensors on the missile bus, it becomes useless. This is assuming the defenders have enough time to fool the sensors, meaning you get the wonderfull fun of ranges, repeater buoys, comm security, etc.

The advantage is that the carrier could sit outside the effective range of the enemy's weapons, and send in strikes over and over. That would be a nice little fiction story, where a damaged carrier (so it does not want to engage the base directly) has to launch strikes against an enemy base, but each wave of fighters gets smaller and smaller. The people in the fighters would be necessary to deal with the changing sensor emissions of the base as it tried to counter microphoton launches. Long-range torpedo strikes would be vulnerable to sensor jamming and similar, making them effectively useless. Kinetic strikes (aka asteroidal bombardment) would use up too much energy. The base is maneuverable enough to make long-range phaser shots worthless. So you have to send in crew on each strike, hoping that you can outthink the enemy and deliver enough damage to make up for the losses. The defender has to keep the attacker guessing, either by hiding defenses initially to reveal later, self-repair, electronics tricks, etc.

Transporter trackers sound interesting, but you better hope the enemy doesn't use jammer technology (or anything else that could interfere with a transporter beam) to prevent crew rescue. This would then lead to a few kamikazis, as the people figure if they are going to die anyway, they are going to hurt the enemy in the process.

Lots of fun.

[Mikey]

Nice, as long as the enemy is kind enough to hit them in such a way as to both not damage any of the mechanisms involved AND to allow time for it.

Coalition - I'm in agreement with your assessment of the different media applicable, but as to this:

ST fighters would have a top speed on 4* higher than the ships they are with (assuming the fighters travel at c, and the ships are liited to 25%c).

Why would we assume that?

[m52nickerson]

As stated by others fighters could be useful in larger battles were ships would not really have time to pick off the smaller target because they have to deal with the larger ones. The Starfleet Command Games demonstrate this. The fighters are not by themselves that dangerous, but when faced with a larger ship and a few fighters you are forced to deal with one while the other(s) take their shots at you.

[Sionnach Glic]

While games are a pretty poor source of evidence, your reasoning is indeed sound here. With the large vessels distracted by enemy warships, torpedo-bombers can slip in and deliver a payload of torpedoes before withdrawing rapidly. In the midst of a chaotic large battle, such attack craft could wreack havok due to all the cover and distraction the battle itself would provide them.

[Tsukiyumi]

While games are a pretty poor source of evidence, your reasoning is indeed sound here...

I agree.





I'll also add that I employed the Hydran fighters very effectively in SFC1.