Sounds almost like you are trying to compare police with the Army. By my understanding a Patrol boat is a long endurance craft that is used for watching the border and will probably need to deal with people who would rather not be noticed(smugglers, pirates, etc), while they may often be out-gunned, they are not expected to fight toe-to-toe against hostile forces, they are more law-enforcement and will call in the space-force if anyone shoots serious ordinance at them.
A fighter is more of a short-term per-mission craft that will occasionally patrol hot-spots where combat is a significant threat(no-fly zones for example), but are expected to return to base every day or three. Personally, I would be rather concerned if the spotter craft flown by the border patrol was capable of going toe-to-toe with a fighter jet. That is not their role, and there is no call for the spotter plane to carry much in the way of ordinance. What I *do* want is a low-cost plane that can spend tens of thousands of hours in the air patrolling the border for a relatively low cost. I would expect a similar comparison to a Coast Guard patrol ship and a Battleship. One is police, the other is Navy. Police deal with the public, Navy deals with hostiles. On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everybody, > > I have been thinking about the effectiveness of reasonably heavy > starfighters and smallish patrol boats. > > * The starfighters would be in the 30-ton range, two crew or one crew and a > robot. > * The patrol boats would be in the 100-ton range, 8 crew, with facilities > for crew rest and maintenance. > * In any comparison, the fighters get superior numbers, either scaled by > price or scaled by crew. > > Will the patrol boats benefit from efficiency of scale or will they get > swarmed? To make the comparison, first I have to define the technology. > GURPS 3E, TL11 or higher with superscience like reactionless thrusters and > FTL engines. > > Warp drives are problematic in 3E because of the limited FTL weapons. Jump > drives would probably mean that the fighters are not FTL-capable, which > distorts the picture. That leaves my old standby, hyperdrives. Just how well > do they work in a short-ranged, tactical mode? Will spacecraft 'microjump' > every couple of seconds? How about missiles? > > If the FTL drive does not work on a tactical scale, the longer-ranged > sensors and beam weapons of the patrol boat should swat any number of > fighters, but by the same reasoning a cruiser would defeat patrol boats. The > light stuff is just for patrol and 'tripwires'. Unless I can make missiles > effective, then the higher number of platforms should let the fighters > prevail. > > Any predictions before I get to the nuts and bolts? > > Regards, > Onno > > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
