[Spaceships] The hard, ungrateful life of a CAG (fighter squadron leader)

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Ur-whatzitz measn nothing to me

An old and very popular (in its day) space combat game called Star Control. The Ur-Quan had ships that looked kind of like the Battlestar Galactica, and they launched little fighter squadrons (and had a spine cannon that launched massive damage shots, unlike the BSG...).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

An old and very popular (in its day) space combat game called Star Control. The Ur-Quan had ships that looked kind of like the Battlestar Galactica, and they launched little fighter squadrons (and had a spine cannon that launched massive damage shots, unlike the BSG...).

Ah, no. Not old by my standards. My idea of an old space combat game is Galaxian (arcade version). :)

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Ah, no. Not old by my standards. My idea of an old space combat game is Galaxian (arcade version). :)

Star Fleet Battles....I still have copies of the Energy Allocation Forms...and Ship SSDs...and the sheet protecters...and a box of 2-3k cardboard counters...

Saw a fleet battle once with a "Drone Slave"...a "volunteer" who was given the target records of all the drones for one side and spent the entire battle just moving little drone counters...every impulse...32 of them a turn... edit about 8-9 ships a side...but only 2 sides...

An Awful job when someone had about 100 drones in the "air"...each of them have to be moved every impulse...

LoL think I am gonna go play a little SFC from Interplay now...

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Witchking

Star Fleet Battles....

Also 1979.

You probably need to go to SpaceWar! to get older.

[Lord Carnifex]

To get back to the original post:

The tasks you're looking at likely will be carried out by someone back on the carrier or (as in TL 8 western navy) in some sort of spaceborne controller aircraft that serves the same purpose as an E-2 Hawkeye, E-3 AWACS, or Mainstay. This person may or may not be a pilot or former pilot, and may or may not have any command authority. They may even be an enlisted-rating controller with no actual command authority other than vectoring ships onto their targets.

If the CAG is out flying, he'll stay out of any dogfight, probably in an attack or strike craft. It becomes his job then to coordinate attack passes on capital ships, stations, or dirtside targets He'll probably only do this sort of thing when there's no real dogfight he has to manage, and he can hang back flying in circles until everyone's got their orders.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

To get back to the original post:

The tasks you're looking at likely will be carried out by someone back on the carrier or (as in TL 8 western navy) in some sort of spaceborne controller aircraft that serves the same purpose as an E-2 Hawkeye, E-3 AWACS, or Mainstay. This person may or may not be a pilot or former pilot, and may or may not have any command authority. They may even be an enlisted-rating controller with no actual command authority other than vectoring ships onto their targets.
.

If you watched Macross or Robotech, that was the job of Misa (Lisa in Robotech)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

To get back to the original post:

The tasks you're looking at likely will be carried out by someone back on the carrier or (as in TL 8 western navy) in some sort of spaceborne controller aircraft that serves the same purpose as an E-2 Hawkeye, E-3 AWACS, or Mainstay. This person may or may not be a pilot or former pilot, and may or may not have any command authority. They may even be an enlisted-rating controller with no actual command authority other than vectoring ships onto their targets.

If the CAG is out flying, he'll stay out of any dogfight, probably in an attack or strike craft. It becomes his job then to coordinate attack passes on capital ships, stations, or dirtside targets He'll probably only do this sort of thing when there's no real dogfight he has to manage, and he can hang back flying in circles until everyone's got their orders.

So are you simply saying that there is no position of rank among active fighter pilots? As in, everybody who launches out of the hanger is de-facto Rank 0, even those who are nominally in a leadership position? What is the actual use from assigning a 'Gold Leader', 'Red Leader' and 'Rogue Leader' among squadrons etc.?

[Lord Carnifex]

I don't know what the Navy equivalent is, but in the U.S. Air Force, they're Air Battle Managers

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So are you simply saying that there is no position of rank among active fighter pilots? As in, everybody who launches out of the hanger is de-facto Rank 0, even those who are nominally in a leadership position? What is the actual use from assigning a 'Gold Leader', 'Red Leader' and 'Rogue Leader' among squadrons etc.?

No, we're saying that the ranking pilot doesn't do Command Tasks in the Spaceships system. But he can still give orders.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No, we're saying that the ranking pilot doesn't do Command Tasks in the Spaceships system. But he can still give orders.

Ah. So what is the actual benefit of having (a) leader(s) in 'out there', as opposed to slapping everybody with Rank 0 and giving the Carrier's captain Rank 1?