Carrier

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 17:07, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

   In Earth's wet-navies, an Aircraft Carrier is a specialized warship dedicated to carrying a complement of small craft which serve as its main armament.  This concept translated directly to the Confederacy Navy's carriers.  A space Carrier exists to transport, maintain, launch, recover, repair, and rearm assorted military small craft such as fighters, bombers, strike craft, and other combat support craft.  A Carrier will also carry an assortment of non-military small craft such as tenders and shuttles.
   Carriers tend to be very large and optimized for the maximum capacity while being fast. Their ability to strike at distance and provide defensive fighters for friendly ships makes them enormously useful in fleet operations.

Strengths

A Carrier's strength lies entirely in the fighter and bomber squadrons it can carry. While some science fiction has tried to merge the carrier and battleship into a single platform that can operate independently and 'do it all', that notion is rather silly. This is a very specialized platform to do nothing but carry smaller, relatively short-range but inexpensive small craft, and any additional capabilities must come at the expense of losing space for their primary role of carrying smaller craft.

Weaknesses

Carriers are unstealthy, huge fat targets that are extremely difficult to harden. They must have large hanger and flight decks to accommodate fighters and bombers, carry stores of weapons, gases and fuels and have little, if any, armor. Superior damage control operations are critical on carriers as any damage received is likely to risk fires and loss of operational capabilities much more than more armored, compartmentalized vessels will. While a Presidential class carrier has some defensive armament, receiving direct fire from strike aircraft or capital ships means that the strike and fighter complement has failed in their mission somehow.

Operations

Strike Operations

A bomber strike makes like utterly miserable for any craft on the receiving end of the strike, particularly any smaller vessels that are more vulnerable to the weapons of a bomber. During World War II more ships were sunk by aircraft strike than by surface action.

Reconnaissance

Finding an enemy fleet first, while remaining undetected provides a massive tactical advantage and carrier-borne reconnaissance craft excel at providing this. Even if both fleets are generally detected, any vessels that are hoping to remain undetected in order to fulfill their role will lose that ability quickly if reconnaissance, and to some degree other strike or fighter craft are operating. Most World War II fleet engagements were significantly decided by scouting and reconnaissance operations that allowed one side to deliver a blow on the opposing fleet first, thus degrading the available combat power they could respond with.

Confederacy Carriers

The Confederacy operates the following carrier platforms:

• Midway - a close support carrier similar to an amphibious assault ship
• Nagina - A NON-CANON ship identified in the "Cosca" series
• Presidential - a CANON vessel appearing in Month 30 of the timeline, and the largest ship in the Confederacy fleet
• Lawrence - A small mobile base for patrol bombers, usually called "Larry"

Sa'arm Carriers

The Sa'arm are only known to use one design of specialized small-craft carrier:

• Lares - a local-space-only structure described as "a bomber roost"

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