The Fighter Question
Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 7:55 am
I'm a devoted fighter junkie. Part of that is probably the romance of weapons that are the fastest, most maneuverable things in the modern sky, and part of it is because I find them an efficient idea: they are the most amount of weaponry that you can strap to a single or two-seat aircraft to go as fast as it can, hit as hard as it can, then come home so it can do that again another day.
One of the battles early on in the series made me wonder if they have a place in the Seikai universe. I noted that those mines that certain classes of ships tend to launch behave a lot more like disposable attack drones than they do mines: like sophisticated missiles, they're deployed, seek out their target and then make impact to do damage. They're a one-shot deal once they go off-either they hit, or they don't and the total sum of your investment is zilch. That's what bugs me about that part of the Abh naval paradigm: I find no flexibility in that.
In a series I find similar, Legend of Galactic Heroes, most of the combat was played out by large warships which fought by maneuvering and firing en masse over great distances, but they still employed fighters as raiders, attackers and on occasion for reconnaissance and scouting. Their combination of speed and firepower allowed them to rush in during a pitched battle and start causing enough chaos to force formations to break off or crumble. Even when their contribution would be minimal on paper, they could deliver crucial attacks and had more flexibility than other forms of attack since they were essentially an extra gun on a little craft that a big ship could launch and retrieve.
That's what leads me to this, the fighter question: are ship-to-ship attackers, specifically reusable ones, a probable evolution of the way either side of The War fights? My bias would lead me to say yes, and is only reinforced by the already-low crew requirements of Abh ships-Baronh Maidguy von Pantsonhead could fly a small, armed ship all by himself, and seemed to be pretty good at handling it right up until he took a whole load of anti-substance to the face. So would it be that much of a stretch to imagine craft specifically built for knife fights with ships much bigger than them to guarantee damage?
One of the battles early on in the series made me wonder if they have a place in the Seikai universe. I noted that those mines that certain classes of ships tend to launch behave a lot more like disposable attack drones than they do mines: like sophisticated missiles, they're deployed, seek out their target and then make impact to do damage. They're a one-shot deal once they go off-either they hit, or they don't and the total sum of your investment is zilch. That's what bugs me about that part of the Abh naval paradigm: I find no flexibility in that.
In a series I find similar, Legend of Galactic Heroes, most of the combat was played out by large warships which fought by maneuvering and firing en masse over great distances, but they still employed fighters as raiders, attackers and on occasion for reconnaissance and scouting. Their combination of speed and firepower allowed them to rush in during a pitched battle and start causing enough chaos to force formations to break off or crumble. Even when their contribution would be minimal on paper, they could deliver crucial attacks and had more flexibility than other forms of attack since they were essentially an extra gun on a little craft that a big ship could launch and retrieve.
That's what leads me to this, the fighter question: are ship-to-ship attackers, specifically reusable ones, a probable evolution of the way either side of The War fights? My bias would lead me to say yes, and is only reinforced by the already-low crew requirements of Abh ships-Baronh Maidguy von Pantsonhead could fly a small, armed ship all by himself, and seemed to be pretty good at handling it right up until he took a whole load of anti-substance to the face. So would it be that much of a stretch to imagine craft specifically built for knife fights with ships much bigger than them to guarantee damage?