*edit*
It does say in Omnibus 1, "Eight-Ball Elegy" that both Daedalus and Prometheus were ignored and allowed to jump system. Aside from that, I don't think anythings been written about what happened to Daedalus.

-Droken

No, that was Prometheus. The reference is in Patience 1: Pursuit:

"... ISN says it was the Jollies."

Daedalus is mentioned briefly in UF4 Crossroads; she got clear and spent most of the Exile having been hidden in an Undisclosed Location by ReRob. The ship he constructed, WDF Phoenix, which met an unfortunate end during the Second Battle of Zeta Cygni, was originally intended as a sort of external warp propulsion module for Daedalus, but the larger ship wasn't ready in time, so she was left behind and Phoenix went into the battle without her.

After the War of Corporate Occupation, Daedalus was refitted to serve as a WDF Academy training ship. Almost all members of the WDF Armored Cavalry who are trained in space Destroid operations (including orbital drop) cut their teeth aboard Daedalus, as do the Navy personnel who will go on to staff the operational assault ships that carry the Armored Cav when it's for real.

--G.
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It probably would have been both faster and cheaper to just buy a new carrier - GENOM, I'm sure, would have given the IPO a good deal on a brand new Venator-class Star Destroyer, for instance - but modern carriers are far larger than the old Hawkbats and require simply enormous crews, so the operating costs and problems with staffing would have outweighed the initial savings by quite a bit. And then, of course, there's sentimentality to consider...

--G.
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Polychrome

Polychrome

Yep. In fact, Challenger has the same model computer system and metapoint generator (though the software she runs on that computer system is quite different, since Challenger has three FTL drive systems to keep track of).

--G.
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Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "Here at the Advanced R&D Center it's not a normal fiscal year until we have to save the universe."

The CREW can do it; the ship cannot.

...yes I am being silly.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Or am I being even sillier than Geoff this am???

Well, let's see. Off the top of my head, there's making a successful entry into a gravity well, operating as a surface navy vessel, carrying more than a token quantity of small craft (all of which Prometheus can do), properly deploying an orbital assault force, infiltrating - pretty much anywhere... she didn't do all that well at taking on a third of Starfleet with only moderate support... no Omega-class weapon (in fact, now that I think of it, no vessel in the IPSF fleet has an Omega-class weapon, and that may be on purpose)... she'd be very unlikely to make it to another galaxy without outside help...

Quite a bit, actually.

Anyway, the hyperdrive is mainly there as an emergency system; its primary usefulness is in the event of a metaspace navigation failure. I certainly wouldn't consider it a strategic capability. It's like those little emergency slipstream turbines jetliners have so the cockpit lights will stay on if the generator fails. :)

--G.
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Would it be possible to put a Wave Motion Cannon on the Prometheus, since it has Wave Fusion engines? I realize that the muzzle of the cannon would likely require another radical refit, and would eat a lot of hanger space. Maybe a pair of smaller mounts, mounted dorsally and concealed? Just a bit of silliness...and remembering that the ship is in the same force commanded by the guy that put a reflex cannon on a YT-1300 series freighter.

-D-

"...and the whole ship is just one big blage. With a grapping window. Why do the words 'warp core breach' come to mind?"
"Because if any of the fine technicians in this room grapp up, we are going to light up like a supernova. This sucker shouldn't even come near a planet, much less be sitting in Newport News. But I try to downplay that..."

No - a wave motion cannon would require wave motion engines; Wave Fusion® is a hybrid technology combining wave-motion principles with advanced thermonuclear fusion. It's more stable than straight wave motion power, but doesn't have quite the same output and can't be used to power a wave motion cannon.

With quite a lot of structural jiggery-pokery, it would be possible to mount a phase-transit cannon, but experience with Omega-equipped carriers (such as Concordia) has shown fairly conclusively that the disruption to flight deck operations involved in maneuvering to fire such a weapon for effect isn't worth the trouble. It's much simpler and more tactically flexible to just add a separate Omega-equipped vessel to the carrier battle group (an Argo-class heavy cruiser, for instance). Or bring along some Reflex torpedoes, if you absolutely must haul around the capacity to destroy a small moon in one go aboard the carrier herself.

Anyway, hang as many weapons as you want on her superstructure, a carrier's hardest-hitting, longest-reaching fist is always going to be her air wing. Those three Judicator squadrons and one Astrofortress squadron may take slightly longer to destroy an enemy ship than a blast from a wave motion gun, but it'll be just as dead when they're through, and they don't leave the ship all but dead in space while they're gone.

Or that's the theory, anyway.

--G.
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I was thinking more along the lines of an anti-ship weapon in the unlikely occurance of a ship decloaking / emerging from metaspace/hyperspace / defolding while the air wing is deployed. I realize there would at least be a CAP, but in a strike like those that occured (and will likely occur again) in Infamy, there are times when a carrier is stripped to bare bones.

Truth be told, I was thinking something more along the lines of a hold-out blaster sort of weapon, only anti-ship grade. Something to make an attacking ship think twice while the air wing is out doing its job.

-D-

"...and the whole ship is just one big blage. With a grapping window. Why do the words 'warp core breach' come to mind?"
"Because if any of the fine technicians in this room grapp up, we are going to light up like a supernova. This sucker shouldn't even come near a planet, much less be sitting in Newport News. But I try to downplay that..."

That's pretty much what those turbolaser and phaser batteries are for; they discourage capital ships while the quad blasters and missile batteries (and the CAP) deal with enemy small craft. Unless they're off participating in a surface assault, there are also the Destroids to consider. The Rifleman remains an air defense platform with few peers, and only a seriously foolhardy commander would ignore the threat four Raidens and their heavy beam emitter arrays can pose to the average warship.

It is not, perhaps, the definitive argument-winner that a sawed-off 12-gauge is, but Prometheus's close-range defensive firepower is not to be sneezed at. :)

--G.
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And, to continue wailing on this analogy, they can, unlike the 12-gauge/WMC, keep making that argument clear, without needing to pause and reload.

--
-Pasha ("Well, we know that he can multiply, and *he* can subtract, who wants to talk?")
What was that feeling again?
Oh yes.
-Rage-

Beyond what Gryphon's already listed, it's really not possible to parallel park her, although some people think that Kozue Kaoru could do it. :)

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

i'm sure that something of that nature would have to involve a drunken bet...

-Z

---
Remember kids: guns make you stupid, duct tape makes you smart.

Parallel schmarallel. With Kozue at the helm I bet Challenger could pull a BOOTLEGGER park.

It's not so much 25th-century tactics as 25th-century sensor technology. Nowadays, as far as I know, you need an AWACS-type platform mainly because a) it can haul around that giant radome and b) it can carry the computers and manpower required to process all the necessary information. In the 2400s, the sensor and computer packages aboard fighters can handle pretty much all of that on their own (with the occasional assist from the battlespace management systems back on the carrier), and if you really want to have a human sensor operator in the mix at the sharp end, as it were all those Judicators have weapons officers in the back.

--G.
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There is no horizon in space, so, there you go. :)

--G.
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The ship does have photon torpedo launchers, which, if one assumes the same design philosophy as next gen Trek, means the ship can also launch an assortment of probes that can serve in the same capacity as an AWACS without risking the bodies of the operators in a relatively fragile craft.

-D-

"...and the whole ship is just one big blage. With a grapping window. Why do the words 'warp core breach' come to mind?"
"Because if any of the fine technicians in this room grapp up, we are going to light up like a supernova. This sucker shouldn't even come near a planet, much less be sitting in Newport News. But I try to downplay that..."

And if THAT didnt occur to UF-G before, RL G should whisper the idea in his metaphyscial ear...

In the 25th century that would be kind of a silly way to design a carrier, actually, given that they can't launch or recover fighters with their shields up.

--G.
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So, carriers are bulked up with point defense, lots o' armor, and a boatload of AEGIS-like equipped escorts for the counter-space piece, and a core battle group with a ton of long-range missile shooters too I guess...

I can picture a lot of fights in space being very fast, very long range, with lots of "launch and leave" type weapons, unless the counter-measures force everybody back into in close to knife fight range...

then things get REALLY ugly I imagine...

Giddyap!

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.

IOW, rather like today's carrier doctrines. Only thing that's changed is no horizon to hide behind unless your engaged in-system.

All the radar work and BVR tactics ain't gonna be that exciting to read, much less watch...simply put, dogfighting is much more dramatic and cool, no matter how you slice it. So, you just need some more or less plausible excuses to get the space fighters and super high-tech nasties into the merge :)

But, the thing I ALWAYS get a kick out of, regardless of media or story, is HOW MUCH TALKING goes on over the radio! Seriously, with all that jibber-jabber in Star Wars for starters, it's no friggin wonder almost everybody got shot down, they never heard the dang threat calls with because they're too busy "standing by" and telling each other to "stay on target" -

It's called clear, concise, and tactial! ;) But it's not exactly exciting to read, nor does it make that much sense without visual references...

All snarkiness aside, I just accept that as cost of doing business to be able to follow what's happening and add dramatic tension - a couple dozen paragraphs of single-line radio calls, all in callsigns and tactical comm words wouldn't be all that interesting, to us mil geeks let anyone anybody else...

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.

however, most of that chatter is there for the same reason as you point out skipping the BVR engagement and go straight for the merge... Chatter is more interesting to hear than just the grunts of pilots keeping the blood in their brain.

It's not just that it's more interesting; it's that it's considerably more informative. Without the pilots talking to each other, a sizeable chunk of the audience would've had a much harder time keeping track of what was going on. Remember, Star Wars came out in 1977, long before 24-hour military documentaries on cable, Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag, the IMAX Experience, or Tom Clancy novels.

--G.
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And lest anyone think Lucas was making all that chatter up out of whole cloth, go find a copy of The Dam Busters. Not only is it a pretty good movie with *astonishing* special effects for 1955, but you'll find quite a bit of the dialog very, very familiar. :)

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

The Rebel Alliance at least had the excuse of not having heavy training. If I remember correctly, the X-wing was designed so they could throw an untrained farmboy with no Force sensitivity into the cockpit and not watch him spiral into the ground.

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

You dont remember correctly. Or rather, there is so much debate nowadays that no one remembers what Cannon is.

I was always of the understanding that the X wing was developed as a space superiority vehicle, but lost to the TIE fighter because the empire preferred cheap disposable fighters. And being tied to your mother ship because of no hyperdrive kinda puts a dampner on defecting and taking your gear with you, no?

The Rebels, on the otherhand being on the wrong end of that equation needed the X wing because its everthing the TIE was not... durable, multirole, and capable of extended operation away from bases.

I am certain, however, that we have passed into the territory of "we are investigating this WAY to closely" quite some time ago...

Well, see, this is why I don't do anything like hard military SF (or, really, hard anything SF). This is why starship fights in UF tend to come off like World War I battleship slugfests in outer space, or at the most modern, WWII fleet engagements. Because that right there, that you just described? Even if it could be made interesting to read, it's be dead boring to write.

At around the time that the early Wing Commander games were hugely popular, there was another PC space combat game out that tried to be much more of a hard spaceflight sim. (I can't remember the title now, which should give you some indication of what's to come in this little description.) The box made much of the fact that Real Space Scientists had been consulted in an effort to extrapolate and model the most realistic possible prediction of how combat in outer space would be fought.

And here's the thing: It was unfathomable. Combat happened by remote control, with hypervelocity weapons, at colossal (by comparison with aerial combat, anyway) distances, way beyond visual range. You'd basically sit around in the dark looking at a radar screen, unable to figure out what anything it was telling you meant, and then, for no reason you would ever know, you would die. When it wasn't being impossible to play, it was the dullest game ever made. Imagine Missile Command with the missiles modeled as realistic ICBM-launched multi-megaton MIRVs.

I don't want my space battle scenes to be like that to read or to write, and that's why - and I don't mind admitting it - I deliberately eschew realism in that area. :)

--G.
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Besides, as much as a good space battle scene is fun to read, it's the people involved with it that make it that much more compelling. Who cares about a big furball of space fighters all piloted by Generic Pilot v2.3? Unless there's someone important in the mix, it can handled in a sentence or two and then moving on to more important bits...

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

"Plausible" is more important than "Realistic" in my book, and as long as the level of elasticity in plausible stays pretty much constant, I think that's how the best sci-fi/fantasy/whatever works....

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.