Concept Idea (please don't hate me)

overmortal

overmortal

Bearded Person
I was playing WCP and skinning turrets in a Panther when I had an idea:

What if confed designed fighters (to be deployed in specific numbers to each vessel) for very specific tasks? For example:

Pre-strike Fighter - Designed as a light, fast, nimble ship with the express purpose in mind of delivering munitions to turrets. Such as dumbfires or Anti-Radar missiles. Key attributes would be high speed, auto-slide capabilities, and significant loadout of one type of missile (such as dumbfire). Not intended for dogfights, but could be refitted with anti-fighter missiles if absolutely neccessary. Gun loadout not particularly strong.

Strike Fighter - Designed to enter strike zone and engage enemy fighters / provide cover for Pre-strike Fighters and Bombers. Not intended for lengthy or extended engagements.

Bomber - Designed specifically to deliver heavy payload to enemy vessel. Basically the same as bombers we already see, such as Broadsword or Devastator. Not intended for dogfighting.

Space Superiority Fighter - Designed around "staying power". Intended for long range patrols/scouting/recon-in-force. Not intended to engage large numbers at once, but capable of doing so in the hands of a very highly-skilled pilot.

Interceptor - "Altername loadout" of the pre-strike fighter. Intended to deliver lethal payloads to multiple targets quickly. Not designed for "staying power" and not suitable for patroling.

I suppose you could probably label these "light", "medium", and "heavy" fighters, but I was thinking of ships that were designed around their specific tasks, and, thus, more effective at them than regular "multi-purpose" ships.

I realize I'm opening myself to a beating by posting this, but, heck, it's late and the idea just seemed amusing to me. Whaddya think?
 
I take it you never bothered reading the WC:p ICIS manual?
 
Briefly. These were supposed to be moreso than the ships in WCP, however. The ships in WCP were actually what gave me the idea. Think of it as the next step in the evolution (or . . possibly a step backwards?)
 
The problem with over-specializing ships is that as their range of operations becomes narrower, you use them less often. It's really a bad idea to find yourself short on fighting forces because your fighter bays are filled with craft that are designed for some task OTHER than what you need at the moment.
 
For example, IIRC, the US is designing mostly general jack-of-all-trades fighters these days, like the F-22 and even more, the JSF.

But let's imagine all these different fighters in action, one would need craploads of fighter-fighters to escort the specialized ones. In my experience with WCP and WCSO, the main difficulty of capship killing missions was dealing with turrets and fighters at the same time, but this particular problem would be solved very well by a wing (hell, I hope that the term "wing" is correct here) of 8 to 12 panthers. There would be no real need of specialized ships, because the "generic" ones do a perfect job (in sufficient numbers), and they can do other, different jobs later, something a specialized ship wouldn't do.
 
I suppose you're right. The only ship in my presentation that I was especially interested in was the turret killer, though. My idea for deploying it was as follows:

As your bomber element is on approach, your pre-strike group arrives at the target (say, five minutes ahead) with somewhere around 4 pre-strike craft and four or six strike fighters (such as the panther). The strike fighters dive in, engaging the surrounding enemies, while the pre-strike craft start their straffing runs. Of course, because of their speed and maneuverability, they can outrun or outfly the aim of any one or two persuers, and possibly take them down with their limited guns. By the time the bomber element arrives (under the escort of four to six more Strike craft), the pre-strikers have done their job (or, at least, enough of it) that the turrets will be no problem. The bombers make a wide sweep around into position while roughly half of their escorts engage enemy fighters, and the remaining half hug the bombers in case enemy fighters break through the line. The pre-strike craft fall back and the bombers make their runs under escort. Once the runs are finished (either the big ship is dead, or they're out of munitions) their original escorts all return and they withdraw from the area, while the original Strike fighters stay active to cover their withdrawal (if there enemy fighters still active in the area).

I'm sure you could probably do this with Panthers, Devastators, and something like a modified Piranha, but making up my own shit was kinda fun, and it was late. Anyway, carry on.
 
Ah, then what you want is a craft dedicated for Wild Weasel missions. With that in mind, you'd probably want a missile loadout similar to what you use on the "Defang the Beast" mission in the Vampire--something like 4 ELRIR/8 ELRAR/4 FF/4 DF maybe, and you'd want a small, quick ship. Take a Wasp, tweak it to extend its range a bit, ditch the Swarmers, and give it a bunch of ELRARs and some Dumbfires instead.
 
Could work well.
Is it just me, or these ERLALELRAE names are less interesting than Spiculum, Dart, etc.?
 
Yeah, most of them are fancy IR missiles. And it's amazing that no one kept the shape of the fighters in memory: the missiles had to "lock" every time. How can it tell the difference from on Salthi to another?
 
Well, they're "image recognition" missiles, and we know they have an all-aspect capability. Presumably the "image" part implies that they're video guided, sorta like the Maverick missile, or the Tomahawk, but more advanced. I would think something that would lock on to the outline of a fighter. The mechanism wouldn't have to tell multiple fighters apart, just distinguish a particular fighter from the background of space and keep following it around until it was time to go boom.

The guidance could be built into the missile, or perhaps directed by the fighter's computer, although the former is more likely, assuming you could pack the technology into a missile, taking into account counter-countermeasures.

I don't know if I'd choose the Wasp for turret killing... those swarmer pods would kinda make it an easy target. I'd think something with a narrower profile would work better. I really don't see anything wrong with using the Vampires, which are generally used in the games for the air defense suppression mission.
 
What I had in mind was something along the lines of the WCM rapier (which you can download at the standoff website) with around 16 dumbfires (personally, I'm a good enough aim that I don't have to lock onto a stationary turret, or even a moving turret, to hit it) and possibly 2 or 4 Spiculums just in case it ended up having to defend itself.

I realize the missile loadout is a bit impractical for a smaller fighter, but perhaps there's a way around that? Such as a smaller dumbfire, or really powerful pod rockets?

And, the technique, of course, would be to kick your afterburners, enguage autoslide, and simply cruise on by the vessel, unloading munitions at turrets as you go. With a decent number of missiles, two or three of these could skin a ship in moments, and leave it virtually undefended against bombers (except for fighter cover, which, as I said before, would be handled by the Strike Fighters)
 
If you use autoslide in this mission, the turrets will seriously frag you. firstly, you will have a "static" vector (i.e., you'll be flying in a straight line). It's easy to lead you with turret fire, and worst, turret missiles.

secondly, in WCP you do not keep afterburner speed after aplying autoslide. that means you'll be flying at the regular top speed.

Considering you're in a small, light fighter, fliyng at cruise speed in a straight line paralell to the cap ship, which makes life easier for the gunners and put you in the field of fire of several turrets... BOOOOM.

In lighter fighter you must use agility and speed to survive turrets, and you strategy negates both...
 
Might I point out that using autoslide with afterburners can let you travel at the same speed without using up afterburner fuel.
 
Filler said:
Might I point out that using autoslide with afterburners can let you travel at the same speed without using up afterburner fuel.
Click to expand...

You might, but I seem to recall the old WC 3/4 trick of using autoslide to get AB speeds without burning AB fuel doesn't work in WCP/WCSO, and, like Ed says, you just return to your top non-AB speed.
 
I thought it was the other way around? I can get AB speed in autoslide in WCP/SO, but not in wc3 . . . haven't tried it in wc4.
 
Believe me, I'm sure the AB-AS trick does not work in WCP-WCSO. It was surelly great in wc3-4. And in the several other space sims where you could use it.
 
And, even if it worked, you'd probably cruise too fast along the cap ship... Probably getting a very short time to shoot each turret. Better take a Vamp with HARM loadout. It can do a really great job, as we learn in WCP.
 
Edfilho said:
Believe me, I'm sure the AB-AS trick does not work in WCP-WCSO. It was surelly great in wc3-4. And in the several other space sims where you could use it.
Click to expand...
Works just fine for me, and I just tested it after seeing this thread. Loaded up a Panther in Sim mission 1 for the test, hit the "lock afterburners" key, then engaged auto-slide, turned off the burners, and kept going with no loss of feul.
 
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