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La Beret Rouge

La Beret Rouge

Petty Officer
I am writing a TL about the exploits of a refurbished Exeter class destroyer immediately prior, during and after the Kilrathi raid on Earth.

My question is if you could change anything in regards to the weapons complement or the layout of the ship, what would you change? My thoughts would be to improve the speed of the vessel, weapons complement and increase the amount of spacecraft carried. After all it is larger than a Gilgamesh destroyer, so the space is there to expand the weapons carried.
 
The Exeter (8,000 tonnes) is smaller than a Gilgamesh (10,000 tonnes.)

I don't really understand the point, though; if anything needed to be 'changed' it should be to suit the needs of your story, not because random people at a message board say so.
 
Let me restructure my question, this Exeter will see combat against WC 2 and WC 3 era Kilrathi capital ships. In order to fight successfully, what changes does the board think necessary?

Personally I am looking at refitting phase shields, upgraded engines and anti matter cannons.
 
If you don't mind me asking, do you specifically need an Exeter-class ship for your story? What's your premise?

I imagine Confed decided sometime in the late 2650s that the Exeters needed a total overhaul...better shields, armor, speed, armament, the works. So they designed and commisioned the Gilgamesh-class and started selling off the surplus Exeters to the Landreich, or started turning them into razors...

That's not helpful, of course. Again, need the premise.
 
Okay a system on the fringe of frontier and confed space decides to improve its own security as it is subject to the depradations of Pirates and Kilrathi. Significant to the system, insignificant to the overall war effort, hence the system looks to its own defences. So if a system is looking to augment their militia a second hand ship is appropriate. Alternatively I am thinking of making a well armed frigate / corvette which might be more appropriate.
 
Given that the Exeter is capable of holding a single squadron of fighters, I would say that it should have the option of launching torpedo-carrying ones--for example, Angel mentions that the Epee can carry a single heavy torpedo. The Exeter is too small to carry full-on bombers (unless they can get their hands on the Sabre-D fighter-bombers or Crossbows), but light/medium fighters with a small torpedo loadout would be useful given that your scenario is apparently one of "resources stretched thin".
 
Okay a system on the fringe of frontier and confed space decides to improve its own security as it is subject to the depradations of Pirates and Kilrathi. Significant to the system, insignificant to the overall war effort, hence the system looks to its own defences. So if a system is looking to augment their militia a second hand ship is appropriate. Alternatively I am thinking of making a well armed frigate / corvette which might be more appropriate.
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Wouldn't you WANT the ship to be outclassed for this story to work? "It's an old Exeter... but it's been modified somehow so it's as good as a more recent ship and everything is just fine" cuts out the drama you're imagining with the setup. Make the fact that an Exeter is noticably slower than a Gilgamesh or a Southampton part of the story rather than seeing it as a reason to come up with some retcon about how it has new engines.

But there's a good lesson fanfic writers everywhere should take away from the novels: Dr. Forstchen managed to make it through the entire Kilrathi war without ever mentioning the class of destroyer you were "seeing"! The fewer technical details in prose the better.

Personally I am looking at refitting phase shields, upgraded engines and anti matter cannons.
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It's safe to say the Exeter already has some sort of capital weapon, possibly a plasma gun or a higher caliber laser. You can see it in Claw Marks (and in the game) - a large triple-mounted "battleship turret" on the center-top of the ship.

Given that the Exeter is capable of holding a single squadron of fighters, I would say that it should have the option of launching torpedo-carrying ones--for example, Angel mentions that the Epee can carry a single heavy torpedo. The Exeter is too small to carry full-on bombers (unless they can get their hands on the Sabre-D fighter-bombers or Crossbows), but light/medium fighters with a small torpedo loadout would be useful given that your scenario is apparently one of "resources stretched thin".
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I don't agree with this; destroyers carry fighters for a specific role and not because they're trying to/are able to be miniature carriers. Look at real destroyers, which went from having cranes to launch float planes in the 1940s to helipads today. Why not tiny platforms for a pair of STOVL F-35s capable of strike missions? Because that's not the mission you fly in support of a destroyer. The difficult process of integrating launch capabilities into a destroyer was so the aircraft could support the ship with reconnaissance, S&R, minelaying, etc. missions rather than the other way around.

And really, it has to be a trade off; if you can just say 'add fighters to it!' then why not do that with every ship? A carrier has to be much more precious than several destroyers... and a big part of that is likely the roles they're capable of supporting. An Exeter being able to launch a squadron of Hornets may mean that they're for spotting missions alone... it may not have the ability to arm them for strikes, or maintain stores to support them for any serious duration... or even launch and recover them with at all the same speed/capacity of a carrier... things like that. Space must be incredibly limited on a tiny destroyer, so it doesn't seem likely that even if you can mount a torpedo on a light fighter that an Exeter would suddenly be able to accomodate a whole new additional sort of munition and the processes assosciated with storing, prepping and maintaining it (or be able to support missions that use it in the first place, from a tactical standpoint.)
 
La Beret Rouge said:
Okay a system on the fringe of frontier and confed space decides to improve its own security as it is subject to the depradations of Pirates and Kilrathi. Significant to the system, insignificant to the overall war effort, hence the system looks to its own defences. So if a system is looking to augment their militia a second hand ship is appropriate. Alternatively I am thinking of making a well armed frigate / corvette which might be more appropriate.
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Okay...so that's the premise. Now, what's the point of conflict for your story, and how do you want it resolved?

Alright...so we've got a situation probably analogous to a State National Guard in modern terms...which probably means that (in a time of war) its units have all been assigned to combat. You might have a ship that was in combat from the planetary militia for a while, was upgraded in hardware along with the rest of the class (in as much as the Exeters were upgraded during the war; if you count Standoff as canon, they were active up to the Battle of Earth at least, though probably not many of them survived), and has been sent back to the planet due to its obsolescence. Probably the colony would have to had paid through the nose for any further upgrades, and what they would've had to start out with was something that should've been broken up and sold for scrap.

A corvette story might be a little more interesting...more within the realm of possibilities for a planetary militia/ISS craft too, methinks. But that's just my opinion.


Missed LOAF's post before I hit "send"; I agree, a destroyer is a pretty small deck to put fighters on. A single spotter/SWACS craft, maybe. Fighters, no.
 
capi3101 said:
if you count Standoff as canon
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Don't get me wrong -- I love Standoff as much as the next guy, but it will never be canon. At best, one might consider it fanon when making their own works.

Sorry to nitpick. It's just that the word "canon" gets incorrectly thrown around a lot, and it just tends to confuse people when that happens.
 
Your right. The Exeter is 360m long, the Gilga only 312. And the Exeter has a fighter complement of 18, the Gilga standart none (in Standoff there are 8 or 10 Fighters onboard) But the Giga has the better armor.

When you make the Exeter WC3 ready it needs a better armor (increase the 8000 to 12 - 15000 tons), in the tripple turrets heavy AMG, but I would decrease the fighterwings. In my opinion the 18 are way to much. More then twice as a Talla Cruiser? Maybe 12 max. The WC3 fighters are bigger then the WC1. So if you make the story in the WC3 Timeline 8-12 fighters.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't agree with this; destroyers carry fighters for a specific role and not because they're trying to/are able to be miniature carriers. Look at real destroyers, which went from having cranes to launch float planes in the 1940s to helipads today. Why not tiny platforms for a pair of STOVL F-35s capable of strike missions? Because that's not the mission you fly in support of a destroyer. The difficult process of integrating launch capabilities into a destroyer was so the aircraft could support the ship with reconnaissance, S&R, minelaying, etc. missions rather than the other way around.
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What I was thinking of was that this was a situation sort of like the Border Worlds was in in WC4, where they had to take whatever they had and cobble together upgrades that were never really meant to happen in order to make them perform halfway-decently against otherwise-superior opponents. Basically, since they don't HAVE anything else that could deliver light strike fighters, they might try to cram them onto craft that are meant to carry light escort fighters instead.

That said, any "extra" mods might, from a story perspective, work out better as being cobbled-together add-ons--for example, how the Johnny Greene had an extra pair of engines and a rear dual Mass Driver turret welded onto the exterior that were salvaged from defeated Kilrathi ships. You could for example have extra turrets on the destroyer, but they would have been bolted and welded onto the hull as an afterthought rather than integrated into it, and so could be shot off more easily by enemy fire . . .
 
Nomad Terror said:
Don't get me wrong -- I love Standoff as much as the next guy, but it will never be canon. At best, one might consider it fanon when making their own works.
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Mentioning the events of the game in a future "canon" release would make the events/characters in Standoff "canon", just as Hawk became a pilot on the Tiger's claw in Prophecy, while Blair never refers to him as that in WC4.

Back to the main story, Your exceter is likely a spit-and-glue ship, and would be assigned on defensive duty(patrols) only, OR running around in either Landreich or UBW with salvaged/tuned components for upgrades. No way confed would keep her active because maintaining the ship would cost more then replacing her alltogether.
 
Deathsnake said:
When you make the Exeter WC3 ready it needs a better armor (increase the 8000 to 12 - 15000 tons), in the tripple turrets heavy AMG, but I would decrease the fighterwings. In my opinion the 18 are way to much. More then twice as a Talla Cruiser? Maybe 12 max. The WC3 fighters are bigger then the WC1. So if you make the story in the WC3 Timeline 8-12 fighters.
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Admittedly, 18 is a not explicitly established in canon, but it is based on canon data - we encounter 18 Rapiers from the Gwehyvar that we encounter throughout SM1 & 2. I don't see a reason why it couldn't be correct. You can't simply reject established facts because they don't feel right to you - I can certainly imagine how the Exeter might carry more fighters than a Tallahasee because its role (whatever it is - there are destroyers, and then there are destroyers) calls for it. You could of course argue that only some of those Rapiers we saw came from the Gwenhyvar, and the rest came from somewhere else - but what would be the logic behind this? There's nothing in the canon to warrant such an assumption, except for your feeling that 18 is too much for an Exeter.

And no, WC3 era fighters are not significantly larger than WC1. The Arrow, for example, is actually 6 metres shorter than the Rapiers that we see on the Gwenhyvar in WC1, and 2 metres shorter and significantly narrower than the Hornets that we could potentially see. Heck, the Scimitar is also about as big as the Rapier, and the Raptor - well, the Raptor is a 36 metre giant. We know that, as a minimum, the Rapier can fit onboard the Exeter. That allows us to assume that both Arrows and Hellcats (which are slightly bigger, but not much) can fit.
 
When you make the Exeter WC3 ready it needs a better armor (increase the 8000 to 12 - 15000 tons), in the tripple turrets heavy AMG, but I would decrease the fighterwings. In my opinion the 18 are way to much. More then twice as a Talla Cruiser? Maybe 12 max. The WC3 fighters are bigger then the WC1. So if you make the story in the WC3 Timeline 8-12 fighters.
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Perhaps the whole point of the design is the tradeoff; faster and better armored destroyers don't carry as many fighters. 'Every ship should be made equal!' seems like a needless thing; a loss, even.

Admittedly, 18 is a not explicitly established in canon, but it is based on canon data - we encounter 18 Rapiers from the Gwehyvar that we encounter throughout SM1 & 2. I don't see a reason why it couldn't be correct. You can't simply reject established facts because they don't feel right to you - I can certainly imagine how the Exeter might carry more fighters than a Tallahasee because its role (whatever it is - there are destroyers, and then there are destroyers) calls for it. You could of course argue that only some of those Rapiers we saw came from the Gwenhyvar, and the rest came from somewhere else - but what would be the logic behind this? There's nothing in the canon to warrant such an assumption, except for your feeling that 18 is too much for an Exeter.
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Blair has a bit in the movie novelization where he mentions how cramped it was sharing a berth with the seventeen other pilots on the Formidable. (I think we only see nine--five in Secret Missions 1 and then four more in Secret Missions 2.)
 
Hello Gents - good to see a robust exchange of ideas, thanks for your input.

The role for the destroyer is the maintenance of Space Lines of Communication, by escorting transports within their system to the front. Originally their threat begins with a light pirate presence, which a destroyer can prevent, and evolves to increasingly frequent raids by the Kilrathi. This necessitates an expansion of their capabilities to allow the destroyer to project a larger bubble around the convoy.

My plot begins with the destroyer escorts a convoy to a carrier, prior to launching a deep strike into Kilrathi space. The carrier has lost an escort and Commander Task Group orders her into his task force as a replacement. Part of the plot acknowledges the problems caused to the maintenance schedules for the destroyer and how the ship's company adapt.

As for the airwing I may go with a minimum manned air wing, as I feel that it makes sense for a second or indeed third line ship. 6 - 8 light or point defence fighters and 2 shuttles would suffice for a minimum CAP over a convoy. Personally for the airwing - Epees, but that reflects my own predilictions more than anything else. Although Ferrets may be more appropriate... thoughts?
 
The Epee seems like a terrible choice of fighter for a destroyer staffed with reservists. It's fast and has a lot of firepower for its size, but lacks protection. It's a deathtrap for unskilled pilots and given the weak shielding and armour probably also quite hard to keep flying with the minimal maintenance facilities you'd be able to fit on a destroyer since you'd always expect to come back from an enemy encounter with a bit of systems damage. The more durable and lower-tech (fewer systems to go wrong) Ferret/Super Ferret seems like a much more sensible choice.

Of course, the actual choice of fighter for such a ship will largely be "whatever was available". Where was the destroyer last overhauled/refurbished? What fighters did they have available there?
 
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