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To Wade’s question about destroyed fighters and picking up ejected pilots, we could work around that and say that the fighters are actually drones, remotely controlled by pilots sitting in a VR chair somewhere on the carrier. A destroyed fighter means that the carrier has one less piece of hardware to launch, but the pilot can just link up to another fighter until the carrier runs out.
That way we don’t have to worry about the RP consequences of our pilots being basically invincible while the ships are decidedly not…
I wonder how the designations will work out. In the Sandbox mission script, they will have to dock before any transitions are being made – sector-to-sector or through a jump gate – as they won’t be coded into the Sandbox to reposition when the ships do.
There are also other bits of code that won’t affect them (gravitational waves for example – an exciting addition we’ve not yet encountered). That could be explained easily enough, either fighters could have inertia systems installed to counteract gravitational distortions (or auto-thrust systems), or that their mass is small enough not to be impacted.
I don’t know that I like the idea about having remote controlled “drones” as our fighters… Yes, it make an easy work around for if the fighter is destroyed, but to me it also takes some of the “drama” (the good kind) out of the RP. It’s a lot more fun to have a group of men and women out in small fighters risking their lives and making daring maneuvers than to have a room with a bunch of pilots who are essentially playing video games. I understand that that is essentially where we’re headed IRL to preserve lives, and in real life I’m ALL for that. But I’m still not sure that’s quite the direction we’d want to go for our RP.
For the gravitational waves, I think it’d be better to go with the mass being less effected. We could combine both of them into one and say that they’re less effected and have thruster systems that can compensate for the minimized effects.
I know through our testing that we’re starting to get the idea of how we deploy and what communication and tactics we use, which was SO AWESOME last week.
We STILL need to come up with a squadron number, name, and motto though. I’d like to see some ideas posted here, if y’all don’t mind. 🙂
Right, a couple of problems with the flightlead/CAG/SWACs position:
Target designations don't appear on screen for fighters. Friendly designations don't appear on screen for fighters. Friendly designations can change depending on who panics and picks a different fighter.Solution:
Flight lead is the leader flying who can suggest formations. SWACs/CAG is on a science console on the carrier directing individual ships toward targets relative to their position since the target designations do not show up on the fighter's screens.Assuming we ran a carrier, had a sci-comm combined role, and only ran three fighters, the crew would still number 9. That would be the Commander, helm, weapons, engineering, sci-comm, SWACs, flight-lead, and two fighters. Unless we can keep our numbers up, we probably wouldn’t be able to afford the manpower cost.
A full crew would be 6, and we would want to run 4 ships as it is (assuming we scrap one of the cruisers for a carrier), so we would need 33 people at LEAST in the division to run a carrier.
That’s just my two cents.
I agree with everything in your post Allard. Your solutions to the problems you presented are spot on.
The structure would then be as follows:
Standard crew for carrier plus SWACs/CAG at 2nd Console focused on fighters giving them estimated relative bearings to targets and marking targets via relative position. I.e. “Target is 2nd from left” or something along those lines.
Flight Lead gives orders to Flight pilots based on situation. One example would be that a pilot calls out “Integrity 50%!”, the Flight lead could either order them to stay in the fight or return home.
As far as friendly designations not showing up and switching up based on people panicking and hitting a button, a way we could bypass that is to not worry about which numbered fighter we take.
We can do a couple of things or a combination of both that I’m about to suggest.
For one, if we narrow down a squadron name and number, like “73rd Fighter Squadron – 4th Light Sabers” (see what I did there? :P) then we could go with designations such as “Saber Leader” for flight lead and then “Saber 1” through “Saber 5” for the rest of the flight.
Another option would be that each person would choose a call sign, kinda like we did the other night with Jemel as “Higlander”, Allard as “Gambler”, Kenon as “Hotdog”, and myself as “Ronin”.
We could also use the chosen call signs for those that have them and then the flight designations for those who come in new that don’t have them.
However, the SWACs/CAG still sees the fighters by their in-game designations, so organizing via that manner will present a hurtle.
Perhaps we still need to do our best to work out a launch order. I know it presents quite a challenge when we’re trying to scramble fighters quickly, but in order to keep organization together, it may be a necessary inconvenience. I’m thinking we start at the bottom and work our way up like we did during the last duty shift, but call out the ship number we’re taking when we do so. Of course, implementing this really depends on how much of a need there really is for the SWACs/CAG to communicate with individual fighters.
I’ve found the perfect name for our fighter squadron!!!
I was looking up different birds of prey, and I came across one that is the size of a Robin and yet still hunts prey such as small rodents, small birds, reptiles, etc. Thus I give you….
Shrike Squadron
It’s a great bird to represent a fighter in terms of our Division and it has an intimidating sounding name. Here’s some info and pics of the bird:
http://www.birds-of-north-america.net/shrikes.html
Shrike is a good name.
Oh, wait… You’re not talking about The Great Impaler? Well, the little one is cool, too. It’s a bit hard to say clearly, though, at least for me.
The Geocities ones, or the TSO mirror-universe Klingon ones?
Maybe if the carrier was Kraken, the fighters could be Tentacles. For extra Kraken-releasing.
@Blaze Well actually “Great Impaler” isn’t far off as “Shrikes are known for their habit of catching insects and small vertebrates and impaling their bodies on thorns, the spikes on barbed-wire fences or any available sharp point. This helps them to tear the flesh into smaller, more conveniently-sized fragments, and serves as a cache so that the shrike can return to the uneaten portions at a later time.” – from Wikipedia
@Maurice That’s right… We did go with “Hornet Squadron” the last time we did the fighter test. Hmmm….So what’s the general consensus? Do we like “Shrike Squadron” or “Hornet Squadron”?
Could we do some kind of poll for it?
Or perhaps we could use one name for the Squadron, and the other for the actual class of fighter, since you don’t like them being called “Allard Class”?
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