Secutor Ingame

[Vulcanus]

Is not the point, his worthlessly used, I mentioned it. Yes it was equipped with 144 fighters, but as already said  it's a fact.
ISD Executor class, it is not just a big ship with lots of guns.

And yet, as in real life, a carrier is only as good as the fighters it carries. If most SSDs couldn't be given a full fighter complement without sacrificing fighter support elsewhere, what's the point in calling it anything but a big ship with lots of guns?

Most of the time SSDs were parked in orbit over important planets. In these situations it was likely that most of the local fighters were on surface bases rather than the SSD, so it didn't need to carry a thousand fighters, just provide an orbital pilot recovery and repair yard for the planetary fighters in case the system was attacked.

[Black Onix]

And yet, as in real life, a carrier is only as good as the fighters it carries. If most SSDs couldn't be given a full fighter complement without sacrificing fighter support elsewhere, what's the point in calling it anything but a big ship with lots of guns?

Most of the time SSDs were parked in orbit over important planets. In these situations it was likely that most of the local fighters were on surface bases rather than the SSD, so it didn't need to carry a thousand fighters, just provide an orbital pilot recovery and repair yard for the planetary fighters in case the system was attacked.

We're not talking about fighters, we discuss the role of the ship.
In the Empire were good fighters and another thing that is not in such numbers in what could be. Paradox, spent unimaginable money on super projects and at the same time save on fighters. Again, the number of manufactured TIE fighters grandly, for example WW 2 the number have matters (in the right hands).

[Lord Xizer]

Hm.. you not correct about ISD Executor class, it is not just a big ship with lots of guns. Do not forget how many fighters were located on it as well as ground troops. Imperial command just worthlessly use them, they are also fairly expensive to operate (I mean not only game).

Well yes and no. Imperial High Command and the general thought process of most Imps was that Fighters were incidental to victory rather than essential. They were considered more of an afterthought. This is why TIEs are so cheaply made. The fact the Executor carries only 144 when you consider the sheer size of it is evidence of that. The Executor was designed mainly as a symbol of terror. It shows up and you give up because you can't fathom fighting it. It was designed as a domination weapon like the Death Stars, Devastators, and other Dreadnaughts. They were meant secondarily as mobile siege and garrison vessels. The TIEs were just for when they didn't want to bring full force forward s like you said maintaining them was nightmarishly expensive.
Time and again SSDs fell prey to Starfighters, Iron Fist, Executor, Lusankya, Reaper...not to mention countless ISDs.

[Mat8876]

If you think about it you'll probably find most ships and space stations were destroyed by fighters compared to other means. And most SD sized and larger were destroyed by fighters.

[Lord Xizer]

If you think about it you'll probably find most ships and space stations were destroyed by fighters compared to other means. And most SD sized and larger were destroyed by fighters.

It's a natural thing. Though I love the allure and majesty of the Dreadnaught, carrier fighters/bombers are more effective

[Pali]

I shall rephrase then: it was pretty much always USED (and, implied by this, viewed by fleet commanders) as a big ship with lots of guns.

And as was pointed out earlier, since WW2, in RL fighters and smaller units dominate naval/air combat because we reached a point in the tech race between weapons and defenses where a small unit can carry sufficient firepower to blow up a much bigger unit, yet costs far less to construct and operate.

However, I'm less willing to assume that writers were going for real-world parallel here than I am that they just wanted a way to keep the action focused on our characters - which are almost always the fighter pilots.  It's hard to feel like Luke saved the day if he's one of a hundred gunners on a capital ship and one can't tell whose shot actually made it into the exhaust port, you know?

[Lord Xizer]

I can see Hans line to Luke in that version, "Great shot kid that was one...of many."

[Pali]

Followed by an off-comm whisper to Chewie of "At least, I think it was - which turbolaser battery did he say he was in?"

[Lord Xizer]

Sounds like a thrilling story indeed

[battlefury13]

Nice ship.

[Pomerancak]

Lookg amazing. May I ask will Alliance (aka Imperious-class Star Destroyer) or Pellaeon-clas Star also appear? I think Warb_null open sources some models and thought it might involve some stretch to coevered time period it would be nice to see them in-game.

[Slornie]

Highly unlikely; both of those ship classes existed over 100 years after the end of our time period.  That's not so much a stretch as 5x the length of our existing time period!

[Corey]

First, welcome back!

As for the ships, though, the Viscount (commissioned 25 ABY) is a timeline stretch. The Imperious and Pellaeon classes (~137 ABY) would be timeline gaping holes.

[Pomerancak]

Thank you Corey, its good to be back

I haven't actually been playing any games for quite a while but that couldn't last forever, could it?  I the time of my absence was used well. I can't wait for your next release with all the additions outlined in the annoucements posts I smell that RaW will be dethroned as best mod for EaW 

As for the time period, my mistake, should have made a proper research before asking.

[Tortique]

What a pity I wouldn't be able to get Secutor with IR. Still nice to see I get new stuff to destroy.

As for carriers/SDs comparison, it is not correct to compare real life situations. IRL the main reason for big ships with big guns loosing to carriers was not only the small aircrafts ability to carry very powerful weapons, but also ineffectiveness of guns at great ranges. But that's for guns. After WWII we never seen large scale naval combat so we can only assume that small aircrafts will dominate the battlefield, maybe iceans will be dominated by missile-carrying submarines and cruisers. Or not, who knows. As for space, Lucas was definitely inspired by WWII while creating space fights but there is major difference between space and naval combat. In space you don't have such thing as the horizon that was obstructing ship's line of sight and making it very difficult to shoot at long ranges with satisfying accuracy while in open space ithere is no horizon so the big ships with many guns seems like reasonable idea (ofcourse if you have FCS that can provide accurate shooting at great ranges).

[Lord Xizer]

What a pity I wouldn't be able to get Secutor with IR. Still nice to see I get new stuff to destroy.

As for carriers/SDs comparison, it is not correct to compare real life situations. IRL the main reason for big ships with big guns loosing to carriers was not only the small aircrafts ability to carry very powerful weapons, but also ineffectiveness of guns at great ranges. But that's for guns. After WWII we never seen large scale naval combat so we can only assume that small aircrafts will dominate the battlefield, maybe iceans will be dominated by missile-carrying submarines and cruisers. Or not, who knows. As for space, Lucas was definitely inspired by WWII while creating space fights but there is major difference between space and naval combat. In space you don't have such thing as the horizon that was obstructing ship's line of sight and making it very difficult to shoot at long ranges with satisfying accuracy while in open space ithere is no horizon so the big ships with many guns seems like reasonable idea (ofcourse if you have FCS that can provide accurate shooting at great ranges).

But you do have entire new fields of difficulty for gunners firing at snubfighters. It's constantly mentioned how the larger guns can't track a snub(while if it DOES hit it kills it in one shot) and unlike naval warfare said snubs can attack from literally ANY angle and escape at any trajectory. SSDs in particular have limited fire arcs horizontally and to the rear due to their designs. Added to this is the extra capabilities of the snubs for TRD and other anti ship tactics. Gravity wells, solar irregularities, nebulae and asteroids all provide additional woes for gunnery.

[Tortique]

But you do have entire new fields of difficulty for gunners firing at snubfighters. It's constantly mentioned how the larger guns can't track a snub(while if it DOES hit it kills it in one shot) and unlike naval warfare said snubs can attack from literally ANY angle and escape at any trajectory. SSDs in particular have limited fire arcs horizontally and to the rear due to their designs. Added to this is the extra capabilities of the snubs for TRD and other anti ship tactics. Gravity wells, solar irregularities, nebulae and asteroids all provide additional woes for gunnery.

As I said, the ability to track small craft is only limited by ship's FCS. I don't know about FCS on Star Wars ships, but IRL we already have fully-automated CIWS capable of destroying not only the planes, but actively maneuvering missiles.

Sure, we have new difficulties to overcome in space combat but actualy from what I've seen in Star Wars there are not so many of them that actualy takes place in the universe at least from movies and TV shows perspective. What I've seen is just shamefully inaccurate guns while firing at fighters. Well, as I've said before, we should not compare what we got in star wars with real-life. Combat in it portrayed here as it is because authors are inspired by the look of real-life combat in WWII, not the actual reasons of this look.

Also, on the actual topic. What fighters will be carried bu Secutor? And how many?

[Pali]

What a pity I wouldn't be able to get Secutor with IR. Still nice to see I get new stuff to destroy.

As for carriers/SDs comparison, it is not correct to compare real life situations. IRL the main reason for big ships with big guns loosing to carriers was not only the small aircrafts ability to carry very powerful weapons, but also ineffectiveness of guns at great ranges. But that's for guns. After WWII we never seen large scale naval combat so we can only assume that small aircrafts will dominate the battlefield, maybe iceans will be dominated by missile-carrying submarines and cruisers. Or not, who knows. As for space, Lucas was definitely inspired by WWII while creating space fights but there is major difference between space and naval combat. In space you don't have such thing as the horizon that was obstructing ship's line of sight and making it very difficult to shoot at long ranges with satisfying accuracy while in open space ithere is no horizon so the big ships with many guns seems like reasonable idea (ofcourse if you have FCS that can provide accurate shooting at great ranges).

Beam cohesion will also provide a limit on effective weapon range in space.  Star Wars weapons are not true lasers, but charged particle beams that travel at sublight speeds, so they will disperse much faster than a laser beam (the particles will need to all be charged the same way, else they would neutralize each other and do no damage - but this means they will repel each other as the beam travels, dispersing it).  If we're going by the books and movies, this range is measured in kilometers, double-digits at most for very large weapons like turbolasers (which don't seem to be different technologically, just in scale - you can pack more particles into the blast, so more will remain centered on target longer simply because it takes time for them to shove each other away).

Star Wars turbolasers mimic Earth-based projectile weapons exactly - they have a very limited range, based on size (how much explosive can be packed in to propel the shell vs how many particles you can create a cohesive beam with), with decreasing damage potential as range limits are reached (air resistance slowing the projectile vs beam losing cohesion and dispersing its own energy), and the bolt moves fast enough that ships won't truly be able to dodge the fire, but slow enough that the target's movements can still throw off your aim - but just because it is mimicry doesn't mean it's without merit conceptually.  Projectile weapons in space actually are likely to have longer absolute range than energy weapons, due to the above problem of beam cohesion being lost during travel, but if you can calculate the gravitational/electromagnetic effects the projectile is going to deal with as it travels, it's range is just about infinite - it won't stop until it hits something.  The downside is they're much slower than particle beams, so this range advantage is mitigated by the enemy's ability to dodge - never, ever build space stations that can't move themselves at least a bit, or the bad guys will just shove an asteroid at it. 

Under these conditions, small, fast and maneuverable ships will be able to get much closer to a target than large, slow moving ones, as the big guns won't be able to change their aim as quickly to compensate for the target's movements as the smaller guns, but the smaller guns won't have the range of the big ones.  If you retain the ability for these small ships to be capable of hurting the big ships, and especially if the small ships have an ideal firing window where they enter their own effective range before they get into effective range of enemy guns capable of tracking them, then they remain very potent indeed.  This tradeoff works whether you're talking WWII or space combat, because range, accuracy and firepower are always going to be at odds when designing a weapon, no matter the type.

[Lord Xizer]

Very accurate analysis

[Pali]

Thanks. I'm happy to criticize the things Star Wars doesn't do well, like representing distance in space, and hyperdrives don't match up well with any hypothetical FTL I'm aware of (its acts somewhat similar to creating wormholes, but isn't quite consistent with them to my layman's knowledge, and the descriptions of how it works are pure nonsense - Star Trek's warp drive, OTOH, mimics an Alcubierre drive very well both in behavior and description), but the weapons fit well into actual science and are consistent in their use.