Damn this is just getting more convoluded the further it goes. Ok, so catapults get you up to combat speeds quickly. So why don't we use them in WC3 on the Victory or WC4 on the Lex?
So under a cold launch your sitting at 400kps instead of 500kps as you clear the carrier deck, I'd love to try to hit something that was doing 400kps anyway (that outlandish speed argument is for another time and another post), but can you honestly tell me that you don't slow down to make manuevers in WC? I'd love to see you tail a Dralthi in an Arrow at full throttle and not either run up his tail or overshoot and make yourself the target. So what makes you more vulnerable when your leaving the ship at 400kps (which in another 1sec won't matter cause you'll be at top speed anyway) than it does in the case when your doing 430kps following a dralthi with his wingmen tearing you apart?
As for launching with the scoops closed, it would be pretty stupid to do so.
First of all if you were running from the target and didn't turn around, your fighters (considering they got out using catapults) would have to decelerate to a dead stop and go back the other way using their own thrust (which is about as bad as cold launching). Plus the Carrier is moving at 100's of 1000's of kilometers a second with scoops closed, do you think that by the time an engagement was over, you'd be anywhere near recovery distance for a fighter? Lets see, say the carrier is moving at 100,000 kilometers per second (which I think is what the Tarawa was moving at under battle damage in End Run) say we have a short engagement of 45 seconds. That puts the capship at 4.5 million kilometers away. The ship is still moving at that clip so by the time you acheive a full scoops closed speed your hella far from your carrier and probably not gonna catch it before you run out of fuel.
Second, you are running from the target and turn around to launch. Basically same story, even with a catapult launching you to 2000kps you still have several thousand kps to bleed off through your own power or scoops before you can accelerate in the direction of the attack. And again, you have the same "can I make it back to my ship" argument.
Third, you are running to a fight and you launch your ships in the direction you are traveling. Your fighters have to bleed off energy to engage the enemy but the carrier's still moving at 100's of thousands of kps. So the carrier blows on past you to the enemy where it gets slaughtered, so you need the fighters to do what exactly?
Conclusion - launching fighters with scoops closed is not a good idea anyway so why would you do it?
Alright I hate leaving a post, coming back to type some more, and someone else stole my points
. Anyway, Frosty why are you badgering him over something that Bear says about only going 1kps in an atmosphere before you start to burn up? This is a nice little discrepancy from novel to game, since we leave (and return to) an atmosphere in the hanger at much more than 1kps in WC3. I guess it could be explained away as a difference between WC2 and WC3 style shields (since I think End Run was set about WC2 time). If not that would mean that catapults are open to space, which is fine by me.
I'll agree that catapults make sense in launching fighters fast because of some 27th century reason (since Doomsday says so in End Run) other than accelerating fighters to more than combat speeds for that extra 'edge', but by 21st century know-how, why bother?
C-ya