Holding the line questions

You can use the data on these craft from the WCRPG stats to come up with alternate airwings, if you utilize the Size Classes of the craft installed as a guide. For example, the Wake carries 12 Ferrets (SC 6), 12 Rapier-II/Gs (SC 9) and 12 Sabres (SC 10) in it's default "End Run" configuration. Size Classes in WCRPG were deliberately set up with the power of doubling in mind, in that each step up roughly doubles the bounding box volume of the previous step. When going down a step with Size Classes, you can assume there's room for twice the number of craft; the opposite is also true. So let's say we want to fill the Wake with SC 8 ships like the HTL Dauntless. Based on the Size Classes of what it already carries, it can hold 75 SC 8 craft (12 SC 10 craft becomes 48 SC 8 craft, 12 SC 9 craft become 24 SC 8 craft, and 12 SC 6 craft become 3 SC 8 craft, 48+24+3 = 75). Now, most of the Borderworlds craft from HTL are SC 7 or 8, so you've got some room to play there. Based on that information, the Wake is capable off supporting up to six squadrons of SC8 craft at 12 unit strength (if you want the same kind of cramped conditions Bear complains about in End Run, of course). I'd go with a squadron of Lynx, one of Intruders, one of Stalkers, one of Retaliators and one of Dauntlesses. That's five squadrons, it gives you some pretty diverse capability, it doesn't cramp the space and it gives you room for extra craft should the need arise. If you really want to fill it up, give them a unit strength of 15 craft per squadron.

As for the Confed one, you're pretty much on your own; I don't know which set of techs you're going with. The Miles D'arby class in 7.4 of the Core Rules has a pretty reasonable wing as is, IMHO. Converting the Size classes using the same doubling/halving technique, it can carry 21 craft at SC 12 based on its default wing - as good of a starting point as any.
 
Quarto said:
Well, if shuttles seem too big, that may be because people are trying to use them incorrectly. I see above proposals for a carrier wing that includes 4 SWACS and 8 Condors on an ordinary carrier. That's just plain ridiculous. How many of these things or these do you think would normally be present on the deck of a typical US aircraft carrier today? And it's not even just a matter of size. The United States, a superpower whose military spending eclipses the combined military spending of the next ten military powers, has a grand total of 32 E-3 Sentries. This is specialised equipment which simply is not produced in significant quantities today. Why would we assume that WC would be any different in this regard? Confed is obviously a far bigger beast than the US, and has need for many more ships in general, but that doesn't mean they're going to be putting four SWACSes on every carrier. And eight Condors on a carrier with 96 fighters borders on the idiotic - that's almost one Condor for every ten fighters onboard.

Even the Midway probably only has one or two SWACSes and Condors onboard. And the Cerberus? Let's face it, the only reason it's got a Condor onboard is because nobody wanted to modify something as trivial as a S&R cutscene for a low-budget project like Secret Ops. An ordinary carrier would probably have just a couple of the smaller, more universal and less sophisticated transport shuttles of the kind that we see in WC3 and WC4. And note that in most WC games, we see heavy fighters doubling as S&R craft, and even, in some rare cases, as fast personnel transports. That's a very big hint about the number of shuttles to be expected onboard a typical WC carrier: they're a rarity.

However, keep in mind also that shuttles, like other bigger craft, can almost certainly also dock externally with a carrier, or land in an internal docking bay which, at least in some cases, appears to be separate from the flight deck (e.g. WC movie).
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The sentry is an us air force plane the e2 Hawkeye is the navy bird and a typical cvw consist of 4-6 of them in order to have at least two duty ready and the rest in maintenance same with tanker and helps which the condors and Phoenix shuttles would be doing the job of also the tanker you showed was also an air force aircraft the navy tends to use modified A-6 intruders or more recently modified superbhornets for the role of tanker support.
 
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On the Jutland class with nine squadrons I was looking at 1 piranha scout squadron 3 tigershark multi mission squadrons 1 wasp interceptor squadron 1 panther squadron 1 shrike squadron and as these are the heavier carriers of the inner fleets they would also carry 1 vampire squadron and 1 devastator squadron. In addition it they would also carry 4-6 swacs depending on mission and 8 condor shuttles four of them tankers four them SAR. As well as two Phoenix shuttles to act as couriers and personnel shuttles. The Lexington heavy carriers would carry an additional panther squadron over what the Jutland carry everything else would be the same. The reasoning behind these decisions is that by 2681 there was mabye six Vesuvius class carriers and the inner fleets would have built around one of these plus five or six additional carrier groups which more than likely would have consisted of two Lexington and three or four Jutland carriers. The reason behind these deployments is that just like modern navies today you put your biggest most awesome looking ships where the most powerful and the highest taxed people can see them. With this in mind the confederation would have built their five inner fleets around this model while the three to five outer fleets would have been built around Concordia class carriers. While maritime trade routes would have been patroled by either Murphy destroyers or Miles D'Arby CVEs groups. This would have allowed confed a good amount of strategic and tactical flexibility while also allowing many show the flag type missions. For training and possibly anti piracy or insurgency missions they would use older lighter carriers like the Yorktown class CVL or mabye even the Wake class CVE.
 
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