OK, so for my biggest and baddest ship, I decided on a supercarrier, mainly because, whilest I love giant dreadnoughts, carriers are far more interesting and dynamic. I find it entertaining that, even in the real world, carriers work really well. They can hit far beyond the ranges of battleships with far more firepower. But they are rediculously complexe. So are the ones in starmade.
I've been thinking about how to make the basic carrier systems that we know today on say a Nimitz class in a starmade ship. The asthertic I'm building into my fleet naturally caters to a carrier, but some of the systems needed to replicate the operation of a real world carrier I'm not sure are possible. A catapult system IS possible with either push beams, or an automated rail system (I'll probably do the later, which means I need to figure out how to build with logic). Couple issues is I need to know if it's possible for a rail system to accelerate a ship upto server max speed, or even half server max speed. If not, then I'll go with the push beams, or maybe even a combination of them both.
Guiding a ship into a narrow landing window is easy too. Just use the simple "meatball" system, that is a light (beacon) is required to be placed in a certain position between a different group of lights placed in front of the beacon. Then the pilot simply lines up the lights so what he sees is the beacon shinging through a hole in the center of a group of dimmer lights. This allows the pilot to follow the optimal path to land the fighter. Very simple.
The biggest issue I have is stopping the fighters once they've landed. The carrier I'm building is using the CATOBAR system that the worlds navies use today for the largest supercarriers. That is, the landing runway is canted at a 15-30 degree angle so that fighters can land and take off at the same time. Saves a ton of time in a combat zone. But how would you stop a fighter once it's landed? You could use a stop beam "net", but this would also halt the carriers movement as well. And I don't think I could use logic and rails to stop a fighter moving at 100-200 m/s. And because of the CATOBAR setup, I can't shoot the stop beams out the ship at an angle directly at the fighter. I figured someone might have a suggestion for me.
I've been thinking about how to make the basic carrier systems that we know today on say a Nimitz class in a starmade ship. The asthertic I'm building into my fleet naturally caters to a carrier, but some of the systems needed to replicate the operation of a real world carrier I'm not sure are possible. A catapult system IS possible with either push beams, or an automated rail system (I'll probably do the later, which means I need to figure out how to build with logic). Couple issues is I need to know if it's possible for a rail system to accelerate a ship upto server max speed, or even half server max speed. If not, then I'll go with the push beams, or maybe even a combination of them both.
Guiding a ship into a narrow landing window is easy too. Just use the simple "meatball" system, that is a light (beacon) is required to be placed in a certain position between a different group of lights placed in front of the beacon. Then the pilot simply lines up the lights so what he sees is the beacon shinging through a hole in the center of a group of dimmer lights. This allows the pilot to follow the optimal path to land the fighter. Very simple.
The biggest issue I have is stopping the fighters once they've landed. The carrier I'm building is using the CATOBAR system that the worlds navies use today for the largest supercarriers. That is, the landing runway is canted at a 15-30 degree angle so that fighters can land and take off at the same time. Saves a ton of time in a combat zone. But how would you stop a fighter once it's landed? You could use a stop beam "net", but this would also halt the carriers movement as well. And I don't think I could use logic and rails to stop a fighter moving at 100-200 m/s. And because of the CATOBAR setup, I can't shoot the stop beams out the ship at an angle directly at the fighter. I figured someone might have a suggestion for me.