And, to repeat one of the things I mentioned in that thread, because it was so wasteful - since it was designed to do everything, most of its capabilities were always wasted on any given mission. The only thing the higher pricetag really gave Confed in return was the option of stocking a carrier with a full wing of identical ships - which is not much consolation, when you can instead spend a lot less on a full wing of several different types of ships that, taken together, can handle the exact same roles a Dragon wing could handle.The Dragon's lack of availability post-WC4 has been discussed before, but the short form is that a) given its use as a terror weapon (biowarfare and incinerating civilian ships from the inside out are hardly SOP for Confed), the political costs outweighed the benefits, and b) the Dragon was prohibitively expensive for mass production, thanks to all of the advanced technologies included in it (cloak, capship-style matter/antimatter powerplant, and so forth).
Okay, so mass producing these suckers is a bad idea.
How about the flash-pak?
I'd love to be the pilot to test those babies out against the bugs.
Inside out bugs? We'd have to rename the flash-pak to some more appropriate roach killer term.
The flash-pak's usefulness turns out to be fairly temporary at best - even before it's used in WC4, Confed is already building ships that will be flash-pak-proof (...at least from the outside).How about the flash-pak?
I'd love to be the pilot to test those babies out against the bugs.
Inside out bugs? We'd have to rename the flash-pak to some more appropriate roach killer term.
The FP was unable to penetrate later armors, like that mounted on the Vesuvius' hull, and since Nephilim armor isn't even metal, but organic material, the FP's ability to penetrate bug armor is even more dubious.
Keeping a weapon around whose primary use was for terrorism, on the slim chance that there may come along a race, in about a decade, on whose ships the FP might work is kind of silly, don't you think?
Well, we keep around a lot of unconventional and really nasty stuff like deadly germs and neutron bombs on the off chance that they may come in handy some day. Wouldn't hurt to have a cache of flashpacks somewhere, after all, what do the things weigh? A pound and a half? A Hornet could carry a hundred of them into battle.
And, to repeat one of the things I mentioned in that thread, because it was so wasteful - since it was designed to do everything, most of its capabilities were always wasted on any given mission. The only thing the higher pricetag really gave Confed in return was the option of stocking a carrier with a full wing of identical ships - which is not much consolation, when you can instead spend a lot less on a full wing of several different types of ships that, taken together, can handle the exact same roles a Dragon wing could handle.
(come to think of it, the WCP manual even spells this out for us, explaining that during the War, Confed ships were designed to handle any given task, while the post-War ships are specialised. So, the Dragon is the pinnacle of War-era fighters... but Confed chose to go in a different direction)
On something like this, I'd tend to think that it would simply be a cost issue that might have killed the Dragons. So you waste one capability when using it for another...so what? This only means that you can launch two wings of Dragons on two different missions, and if nothing else, if a wing configured solely for a CAP suddenly ran into a couple of destroyers, they could fly back with very little turnaround time and rearm/relaunch to join the wings that were most likely launched a little while earlier to take care of it, backing up that first strike mission. Maintenance would be a cinch, as everyone would have the same parts for the same aircraft and the same mech knowledge in fixing it up.
As a real-world example, the Navy has completely replaced F-14 squadrons with F/A-18 squadrons for the same reasons I'd listed above. The only difference is, the Hornet is a lot cheaper, both in dollars and in time, than the Tomcat in terms of building and maintaining where the Dragon would be the opposite...at least in terms of rolling off the assembly line, if absolutely nothing else.
I see nothing wrong with having a deck full of one type of fighter that can fulfill every mission...it's hugely advantageous and would allow hella-flexibility in combat operations.
Are they Dragons or Lances???
Yes, well, that's pretty much what I said. Naturally, it would be great to have a cheap fighter capable of doing everything - but the Dragon is a very expensive fighter capable of doing everything, so it's more effective to use a bunch of cheaper fighters, instead.On something like this, I'd tend to think that it would simply be a cost issue that might have killed the Dragons. So you waste one capability when using it for another...so what?