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Miniature Carriers

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NickP

SOC-9
I play CT using Book 2 rules (because I like to concentrate on the role playing so that all the characters are as involved in everything as much as possible).

The characters have come up with an idea of dumping their cutter and replacing it with five 10-ton fighters so that they are able to kick substantially more butt in space combats.

I can't find anything in the rules which say categorically "You can't do this" but nor have I seen any design with ships under 1000 tons having several fighters.

This is strange because, if it is possible for small ships to carry as many fighters as they can hold, then it would completely change the logic of all small Naval vessels. A mere Free Trader could carry eight fighters, each with a triple missile rack which should be able to take out a normal ship of up to 1000 tons for a fraction of the price.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Should it be possible for small ships to have as many fighters onboard as they have space for, or are there reasons why it shouldn't be possible.

A secondary question. It says the 10-ton fighter can have triple missile racks, but how many missiles in total would they be carrying in total?
 
Dumping their cutter? Would they be operating a Type C 800ton Mercenary Cruiser of the version with 2 50ton cutters and 2 spare modules? There is an option for just such a substitution in the canon book on it (though the details escape me at the moment).

Technically it is feasible and allowable. Launching and recovery will probably be a pain though, taking AT LEAST five times as long. Minimum of 5 turns (1 turn per) launching I'd say, and longer to safely recover them. Rushing recovery could lead to damage, to the fighters and/or the hanger. Possibly catastrophic. All this because you only have the one launch facility/hatch to operate out of.

A Free Trader is not built (by dimension or strength) in the cargo bay to handle small craft, so no, I'd not allow it without substantial and expensive retrofitting. There is also canon to support this in the way of a 600ton subsidized liner converted to Q-ship/Mercenary duty that has several fighters aboard in disguised hangers (in place of some staterooms iirc).

In Book 2 a missile launcher has 3 missiles ready. So a triple turret carries a total of 9 missiles. If I recall correctly (but it's late, I'm tired, could be wrong). Any additional missiles would require more tonnage (20 missiles per ton*) and a loader (crew or auto).

* though I usually make it 18 missiles per ton to allow for crating and to match the launcher loadout numbers
 
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They are actually flying around in a captured Veng in Vargr space at the moment.

A corsair ship with fighters would be an ideal combination, so it's quite difficult to rationalize why no one else has thought of doing it in the history of the class.

Yes, Book 2 rules are that there are three missiles per turret and then they have to be reloaded, so I think that 9 should be the absolute maximum. Even that seems pushing it on a 10-ton ship that's only 2/3rds the size of an F/A-18.
 
Adv 7 Broadsword has a cutter module carrying 4 6tn / 8tn TL12 fighters. The module is unstreamlined, can deploy all the fighters at once, but they have to re-attach one at a time.

Yes, you could load fighters into your cargo bay, subject to the dimensions of your fighters. It would be sensible to arrange them so at least 1 could lauch straight away via a cargo hatch, but it would be a slow launch (got to manuever through the hatch and hope your exhaust does not damage anything behind you - nothing like the launch tubes seen on BSG). Getting the 2nd fighter out is more of a problem as you may have to drag in into position.

It can be done but I would suggest they would have to retrofit their cargo hold.

It is worth noting that standard decks are 3m high, the AHL had fighter decks 9m high to get their 15tn fighters in. So the 3m deck height would limit your choice of fighters.
 
Support for fighters

I would think they'd have to set aside considerable space for ammo, spares, a maintenance area, and fuel. There's more to being a carrier than just cramming in fighters.
 
That could be fun, having ammo and fuel stuffed into one side of the cargo hold and launching fighters out the otherside - can anyone say hot engine exhaust:)
 
They would certainly burn through a lot of missiles very quickly if they send five fighters into combat with nine missiles each.

I have already informed them that their magazine holds 72 missiles/sandcaster barrels.

I am sure that the next question will be if they can carry more missiles in the cargo hold.

Does everyone agree with far-trader's figures of each missile being just 50kg? This seems very small to me considering they can do d6 hits to a ship.

Is this canon or just a guess?
 
NickP said:
Does everyone agree with far-trader's figures of each missile being just 50kg? This seems very small to me considering they can do d6 hits to a ship.

Is this canon or just a guess?
Click to expand...

It's canon :) LBB 2, page 17, near the top.

They do seem small for that kind of punch. I've imagined one of two possibilities:

Civilian Kinetic Kill Missiles - The longer the range the higher the speed and damage. So the D6 hits represents how much speed the attacker can put on before hitting.

Military Nuke Missiles - Range is not a factor, a hit is a close proximity nuclear detonation with the D6 representing how close.

As for storing missiles in the cargo bay. No problem imo. Unless somebody starts shooting in there (...and that'd never happen ;) ).

As for thrusters not being hot, I have to disagree. If we're going to call the maneuver drive thruster tech in CT LBB2 then I say we also go with the description of them being very hot radiators as well. And if we want to stick with CT LBB2 maneuver drives as originally imagined... well, you really don't want to be thrusting out of your cargo bay, that fusion torch drive does a hit per maneuver G at close range. You'll want to use your station keeping thrusters to gently nudge out of the bay and clear of the ship before firing up the maneuver drive. Unless you're abandoning ship and hoping to scuttle it on your way out.
 
External docking

We had a couple of games where we attached a couple of Ramparts to the outside of a Type A with docking clamps. Meant we had to do an EVA to launch 'em or do maintenance.

We also toyed with a design that hung fighters like the old Zeppelin/dirigibles used to, except with a flexible airlock tube for the pilot to get aboard. Once aboard, the airlock is retracted. There was also a demountable temporary airlock that could house the fighter for maintenance.

In either version, mother just lets go of the docking clamps and the fighter lights off his engines.
 
I think you can put fighters in the cargo hold of any trader (as long as the doors allow them to enter and exit), the main drawback is the inhability to launch them at once (if you lack launch tubes, launch rate is 1/turn/10 kdton, as HG page 32 specifies, unless configuration 7 ship). It would be easier (IMO) with a clampshell doors cargo bay.

MT Vigilante (Assignment Vigilante module) design is just one such addaptions of a type M lineer, carring 6 x 20 dton fighter/landers (or some more smaller crats) in its hold, and with clampshells to make launching them easier.

About fitting them in place of another small craft, IMO it would be inefficient, as most those hangars are shaped for the specific small craft they carry. In you have a hangar for a 50 dton cutter, trying to fitll it with 5 10 dton fighters would be impossible. You'll be lucky if you can fit 2 fighters in this space (try to fit some 10 ml cillinders into a 50 ml syringe body, and tell me how many could you fit in, and the problem only grows as most fighters have wings, no matter how small, for atmospheric performance)

Rancke2 said:
Not with thruster-based maneuver drives, no.

Hans
Click to expand...

IIRC in Exit Visa is explained how a quick launch of a free trader may have left several casualities among nearly people due to exhaust. And free traders use to have thruster based drives...
 
far-trader said:
It's canon :) LBB 2, page 17, near the top.

They do seem small for that kind of punch. I've imagined one of two possibilities:

Civilian Kinetic Kill Missiles - The longer the range the higher the speed and damage. So the D6 hits represents how much speed the attacker can put on before hitting.

Military Nuke Missiles - Range is not a factor, a hit is a close proximity nuclear detonation with the D6 representing how close.
Click to expand...

Yup - you're absolutely right. It's there in black and white.

Wikipediaing around, I see that the current equivalent - anti-ship missiles such as Exocets and Harpoons - come in around the 700kg mark, so it seems as if missile technology in the future a lot faster than ship armor does.
 
Traveller missiles would be similar to AIM-9 Sidewinders. Sidewinders are a bit bigger at 86kg, but the difference can be explained by tech advances making the Traveller missile smaller.

Or even better, the AGM-114 Hellfire

Neither of those would be anti-ship missiles, but I don't see the standard Traveller missile as an anti-ship missile. That job would be reserved for (at least in Mongoose Traveller) the heavy missiles or torpedoes.
 
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