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Why "Flight Deck" Cruisers?
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I hope someone from the Dev Team could answer this, but why name these new Orion ships "Flight Deck" Cruisers?
Why not:
If you have your heart set on "Cruiser" why not "Support Cruiser"?
But why use an ancient turn-of-the-century term for aircraft carrier?
Why not:
- Escort Carrier
- Light Carrier
- Fleet Carrier
- Assault Carrier
If you have your heart set on "Cruiser" why not "Support Cruiser"?
But why use an ancient turn-of-the-century term for aircraft carrier?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Look at the T4 Orion ship:
It has 4/3 weapons but only one hangar.
The T5 Klingon Carrier has only 3/3 but 2 hangars.
So My guess is they want to keep "carrier" reserved for ships that follow the Klingon carrier pattern, but at lower levels.
Support cruiser is probably reserved for Gorn-style ships because both the Draguas and Varanus have the "support"-prefix in their name.
The Orion ships are more like the Japanses Mogami fighter-carrying cruiser variant than a true carrier.
http://images.suite101.com/977684_com_carriercon.jpg
http://media.hannants.co.uk/pics/TA78021.jpg
oh? Interesting
So we get a small (lower tier) flight deck cruiser and a larger (higher tier) Fleet Carrier.
edit: okay I didn't read the OP all the way through. I agree with mister_dee. I think the layout is the difference. But that still dovetails with the historical reference in that the lower tier is more of a cruiser and the higher tier is more carrier.
Exaclty my point, the first Carriers like the USS Langley were converted cruisers. But the term itself is obsolete. It's like calling a car a horseless carriage.
And lets not forget in Star Trek, technically all ships are Flight Deck Cruisers. The Akira, the Galaxy, and the Sovereign-classes have very large shuttlebays that are termed as "flight decks" but yet the ship's themselves aren't referred to as "flight deck carriers".
So why don't Cryptic use more modern terms that actually fit the genre than choosing quick names from Google and Wikipedia?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/USS_Langley_%28CV-1%29.jpg
the Langley, while a converted cruiser, is nontheless a "flat top" so the term carrier for her is fitting.
While the Mogami was an actual hybrid and not totally converted like the Langley hence calling her a carrier is not quite right.
It seems Cryptic used that logic when they decided on the terminology for the Orion ships, they're hybrids not "pure" carriers.
As for the Federation versions, well they never actually carried small craft dedicated for an space combat (unless we take the intended "Akira is a torpedo boat/ carrier/ battlecruiser" stuff that was completely dropped into account) even though they were not shown to be useless in one.
So they were more akin to "ships with a lot aux craft" than "flight deck cruisers".
I can also honestly not remember when their shuttle bays were every called flight deck in any episode.
Oh I agree Azurian (wow....didn't think I'd say that
The reality of space carriers is to work they have to carry ALOT of fighters, replacemt fighters, extra pilots, maintainece crews etc.
SO Guys relax.. As for the fed complaining about KDF carriers.. do be aware it could be much much MUCH worse.
Imagine this.. The big KDF carrir not launching a mere 8 fighters or 4 BOP, bup 4 BOP AND more like a wing of 32 to 64 fighters! Now THATS a carrier. Everything is scaled down in effectivness to provide a playable game. And carriers one player can handle. To simulate a real carrier in this game would require 2-4 players operating the ship. One JUST operating the ship, and the rest operating the wing of pets that would be seperated into various attack or defence elements. Fighters for point defence Space superiority, and anti ship attack. ANd lets not forget sci/eng shuttles to provide support to the attack craft well away from the carriers! In a propper sim you would never get close nuff to the carrier to shoot at it even assuming you can find it in the first place!
Carriers as decepted in STO have only the wing of small "jeep" and escort carriers. There are no true light or fleet carriers in the game. and be thankfull. It would take an entire group of ships to take them on.. Fighters in STO other them player operated fighters are rather fragile beasts.
Now, I wouldn't mind seeing a Federation ond KDF super-carrier where player operated fighters are operated off of. Thing of going into a fight with 15 of your buddies beside you!
that reminds me of a very old Playstation game where you as the player built robots from components and gave then simple commands (4 types each i think) designned and built by you using Tiles of software that acclomplished certain tasks like " Search for enemy" or " go to (click or location) then" or " circle enemy left ". etc.
How about something like that?
kinda big and slow though, might work as a time consumer for the player if one had to slow programm him to be a better NPC captain.
Lower levels lower range of simplier abilites to program - seek, fire, escort, attackj
at Higher levels more complex and intrincate. A seasoned officer onbaord a seasoned carrier.
Actually wer not the first aircraft carriers basically cruier with a flight deck built on them?
Otherwise I agree they need to be better defined and possibly tweaked further before release.
I would like to see in the future more types of ships like this on the Fed side, maybe a proper Aikira
Thats exactly where the term originated from. But with the Orion ships, stripping the hull to accomodate a larger fighter complement doesn't make it a "flight deck cruiser", after all look at the size of the Galaxy and Soverign main shuttlebays, if Cryptic applies the term to the Orion ships, then they have to do the same for these ships as well.
Feel free to pick up an issue of Jane's. These ships are officially aircraft carriers, not cruisers.
But looks like Cryptic is going to win this round.
It's a lot of window dressing... a number of RN officers I know used to bemoan the fact that all we had were "through deck cruisers" rather than proper carriers. Of course that was before they were axed in the last round of defence cuts...
So anyway, I think the Orion term is a nice descriptor for a cruiser with some launch capacity rather than the 'purpose-built" carriers... which it would be hard to justify below T5 in terms of size.
I'm not sure where they supposedly stripped anything.
The Orion T4 thingy is about the size of an Ambassador class ship with the same firepower and consoles as the Venture (and since it's a P2W ship the same hull as the Negh'var).
That's the difference: the RL cruisers you're referring to were completely converted so they had at best defensive weapons and when you looked at them (visually and armamentwise) they didn't actually look remotely like the ships they were converted from.
With the Orion ships you can look at their stats and see how closely related to the cruisers in this game they still are despite their hangar.
Jane's considers everyone and his dog that can carry a fighter a "carrier" which is a typical oversimplification. The Russian (meaning the actual official) designation for the Kuznetsov is "heavy aircraft carrying missile cruiser" and they built the darn thing.
Also if it's a "flight deck cruiser" then that would mean it has a pretty large shuttlebay to accomodate fighters and shuttles, right? Then by that same logic, the Akira, the Galaxy, and the Sovereign would be renamed "flight deck cruisers" because their shuttlebays are HUGE compared to other Starfleet vessels.
Not exactly your point from where I'm standing.
The "flight deck cruiser" has some of its offensive firepower removed compared to a cruiser of the same size/mass.
However the cruiser converted to a carrier has a significant amount removed, leaving little to no weaponry left.
Compare the Kuznetsov's armament to that of a "true" carrier twice its mass and you'll see a drastic difference.
Compared to the Russian model the armament of the latter is laughable but the other way around for a ship of its size the Kuznetsov has a fighter capacity that is laughable.
So to translate that into STO terms (using the KDF carrier as a rough template) a carrier of a specific tier would at best have the same number of weapon mounts as a Federation science vessel at the same level.
Which is not what the Orion ships are.
As for ships like the Sovereign and the Galaxy, please keep in mind they have large shuttlebays but none of those shuttles are employed to defend the ship in combat; unlike those used by the Orions who employ small "ships" designed for that purpose.
And, this is not rhetorical, who should name those ships "flight deck cruisers"?
Starfleet? To them it's just a large utilitarian area. They don't even seem to consider the concept of a carrier of any sort.
Cryptic? Neither the Galaxy nor the Sovereign have a hangar in this game which kinda defeats the point of calling them "flight deck cruisers" when they don't use it.
And a final point:
Given its current stats it feels like the T4.5 Orion thing with the same hull and turnrate as a Negh'var the power of a Venture is immensely overpowered.
Why does it not lose a console for its flight deck or anything else?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_deck_cruiser
Their intent about these ships is clear
So this is a labeling issue only? The name seems inapropiate?
Seems a easy fix- rename the vessel.
Ojk, on to the bigger bujgs!
Except that, this being Star Trek, even a small starship carries a complement of explosives individually ranging upwards in power from the Tzar Bomb. Without all the exotic energy fields not just protecting the hull but actually holding the hull together you don't take something into combat.
And with all that, now you're just towing an independently operating ship around.
The term being outdated has no bearing on its use here. The term Battleship (used extensively in the game) is also outdated, in fact it's been longer since a battleship has been in active service than a flight deck cruiser.
So you have to put a sign on it:
http://www.mytrucksigns.com/img/lg/S/Trailer-Turns-Truck-Safety-Sign-S-6974.gif
and you have to make the sign flash every time you hit "Evasive Maneuvers".:)
while there is no need for it to be part of the hull making it part a part of it allows you easier access to the hangar/flight deck (both to bring in goods like spare parts and fuel and for easier maintenance) as well as offers the same protection the rest of the ship enjoys.