Making EM Guns Viable in Space Combat (3e)

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Witchking

The usual answer in scifi fiction (at least that I have read) is:

FTL travel (whatever flavor) requires drives of a size that you get 'Battleships' or something similarly honking huge.

Fighters are possible, do damage outside their weight class, are not very survivable...and are carried in FTL buy a combination of Battleships, Carriers, etc.

Yeah, that leads to 'carriers', not battleships. 'Battleships' and 'battlecarriers' is such situations are almost certainly a waste of tonnage (and thus money, resources, and crew). If they're not, because their big guns, missile launchers or whatever are worth having, you then have to explain why the small craft are worth carrying. Note that nobody's ever got a 'torpedo boat carrier' to work, and certainly not as a major fleet element.

Also note that WWII is an example of when you did see battleships and carriers at the same time, because it was a major war right at the point of transition between one and the other. You can do this in a space setting as well, of course - someone invents a new high-performance but size-limited drive making small craft viable as offensive units, or a gun/shield combination that only works if it's large that makes missile-carrying small craft become obsolete once it's in general use.