Yeah, but we're talking having enough ordnance of any given type last an entire battle, plus the extra quarters and life support necessary to accommodate the ground crew and flight staff. So I don't think that they're all that good on space.
Supposedly that includes enough space for those things. Though Pilot ready rooms, combat simulators, etc are a very tiny increment more.
The IN have hundreds of ships per sector, sure a few of them are carriers. That doesn't mean that they are carrier centric. In fact, it would imply that their carriers are more often used for ground support rather than fleet actions. Presumably one of the reasons for the existence of the escort carrier is to provide cheap ground support for the IG, as well as for their role in escort duties.
Sig, according to fluff since AT LEAST Codex: Eye of Terror, IN has about 100-150 warships in it's very largest sector fleets. (The Bastion Fleets surrounding the Eye of Terror).
The problem is that the IN have nothing but hybrid carriers. A pure carrier is going to be far better than a hybrid and so any addition of a pure carrier is going to make all those hybrid carriers redundant. Not a good way to go. Similarly, without significant restrictions (and 2/500 isn't a restriction at all) you alter the interfleet balance too much.
The problem with that is, again, the Defiant appears in very few fleet lists. And, and if we were supposed ot keep pure carriers out of IN we missed the boat in 2010.
You see only the strength of bays as being the reward for being a true carrier. However, the only other true carrier in the basic game (the Styx) has penalties to its strength. So that is not out of the ordinary. There are other possible benefits we can give it. We could give it a-boats, making its strength 2 wave slightly more effective against escorts when on solo ops and giving it another option in fleet engagements. We could give it +1 to reload making it, and potentially any ship in squadron with it, more reliable. We could give it +1 turret, as a lot of carriers have extra turrets. Etcetera.
Having no other weapons is
not a penalty?
(Note: I'm actually against the +1 turret now. It already has over the odds for a CL and the fact that Admech/Bakka versions get an extra turret on top and can potentially go up another 2 turrets with FDT making for a 6 turret monstrosity has convinced me it's a bad idea.)
The +1 ld is also a pretty bad idea if you think about the Bastion fleet list.
Two escort carriers still out AC it. This isn't an issue though, and never has been. At 2 AC for 100 pts the Defiant is still better than a CVE both in terms of 1 on 1 and point for point. What's more it's capable of being used in the line, which is where it's supposed to be. A 2 AC Defiant is perfectly viable.
Yes, but it's still not competitive with the ships it shares lists with.
However, IN CLs don't get a dorsal mount and it'd be cluttered for an AM version. So that left the psuedo-dorsal mount, which to be honest, makes me want to gag.
*shrug* This whole ship revolts you, I suppose that some part of it might make you want to gag.
So by all accounts 3AC looks to be impossible. Well, almost. I can think of a way to do it cleanly, but it does require a precedent. Instead of making it P/S launch bays we could just make it a single hardpoint bay, strength 3. Just call it Launch Bay, or midship launch bay. Any port OR starboard crit will take it off-line till repaired.
Hmm... Note to self: Sig being moderately reasonable. Check for horsemen riding through sky.
If we make this ship balanced and useful, something bad could happen....... people would start to use it...... we should only make it not too crappy, so people would start to consider it to fill a small AC gap...
Well...
Making otherwise broken and useless ships useful and viable is what BFG:R is SUPPOSED to be about. Deliberately making a ship broken and useless so people won't play it is sort of the opposite of that.
It's sort of like making men slaves in the name of freedom or committing terrible sins in the name of God. Yes, people have done that, but their hypocrisy tends to taint the things they stood for.
@BaronI, why don't you believe me? I gave all evidence from the book. If you give the Defiant the landing bays you are breaking the rules. Period.
That's just it, I grant what you're saying is true about the space, however, the 'carrier' rule it was assigned in every single other instance reduces the space that launch bays take. So saying that 'The space matched' if it follows every other ship with that rule, actually means that it cannot be that component, because the space would be less than 4 per bay.
And, again, the ships with 'non removable' components were given that rule as a trade off for having components at a discount and/or because they could not otherwise take them. (Which would clearly apply here.)
