I always thought some of the designs from the Colony Wars PSOne games were pretty cool...

__________________
I like crinoids.

Hrm... your right. Maybe if it was some kind of sticky substance, making me think of space paintball now.

Raspberry jam :roll:

I prefer the Stovepipe design from Niven and Pournelle's Footfall, perfectly realistic and buildable today.
Idea is, pull the main guns off a battleship, to each of them add autoloader, lifesupport for a few hours, maneuvering trusters, targeting radar, one volunteer(preferably with no family).
Pull a lot of them to intersecting orbit with an Orion type carrier and let them loose, then watch the pretty lights.

__________________
It would be hard to imagine an uglier building that hadn't won a major architectural award.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry; Lonestar!

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

At distances where the speed of light limit becomes a factor you can't effectively engage in battle with lasers because by the time the light from the target ship reaches you and the light from your laser reaches where it appears to be it will be long gone. Engaging in slight random easive manuvers makes a ship pretty much unhittable at distances greater than say, the orbit of mercury.

From what starting location, sun? Earth?

I think that battles may be fought from thousands of klicks but not millions.

__________________
"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

What about the great Moonbase Alpha Eagles. They at least LOOK like a real spacecraft. That was always my favorite as a kid- although just about any starfighter from any other movie could destroy them...

I was thinking of Mercury's orbit radius and a large capital ship for this example, allthough if your craft is small and agile a distance comparable to that of the Moon's orbit radius around the earth will do.

This thread is about space fighters not capital ships.

__________________
"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

If I must go to war please put me in an advanced prototype Gunstar. I want to look good in battle and that baby looks good.

The point of my posts was how close one would have to be to effectively engage in battle of any kind and to demonstrate that small quick fighters would usually be an asset over larger ships.

Ah, ok. But don't forget that the capital ships might have more powerful reactors to charge beam weapons, larger and more efficient propulsion, and better armor. However, I still think that fightercraft will have a place in space combat.

__________________
"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax