Proposal: Scaldpack Shuttle.
By Jeff Wile
USS Kansas.

These are Stellar Shadows Journal proposals.

During the height of the fighting of the General War(sometime after year 178) a carrier captain, beset by by an aggressive and relentless enemies, having used many of his fighters, low on drones, and having lost one of his escorts, ordered his deck crews to prepare scatter and shatter packs.

When informed that there were not enough drones left to fill all of the Admin Shuttles available, he instructed the deck crews to fit 1 phaser 3 pod to each of the shuttles and spread the standard drone I's and drone VI's evenly between the shuttles being prepared.

The addition of a single phaser 3 to a scatter/shatter pack , by itself does little to enhance the offensive power of the shuttle...but is superior to sending it out "short loaded".

Proposal: Searpack Shuttle.
By Jeff Wile
USS Kansas

It has been theorized, that a shuttle fitted with 6 phaser 3 fighter pods(inplace of the drones ), could be a significant danger to an opposing starship if the range at the firing point could be held to 4 hexes or less (the closer the better). Such a 6 phaser pod shuttle has been termed a "Searpack", but it is not certain that all 6 phaser pods could function in such a manner, or indeed, could be fitted to a admin shuttle in such a way that the shuttle wouldnt be consumed in the firing of the phaser 3 pods. (residual heat may be the reason that there is a limit on how many phaser 3 pods could be fitted to fighters.)

In any event, the conventional wisdom holds that any shuttle launched without a pilot may well be a scatter pack, and the first response is to destroy it before it could "blossom".

Generally, Any shuttle that is launched in such a way that it could be a scatterpack (or variant thereof) has a high probability that it will be destroyed out of hand by an alert enemy regardless of what type it is. the presence of phaser pods does not bestow any benefits or protections to the shuttle...although if an enemy closes to within range of an "unblossomed" Searpack... the resulting 6 phaser 3 shots at a single shield might be significant.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, May 29, 2006 - 06:00 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

Unworkable.

Drones released from shuttles are controlled by ships using the standard reflected energy focused on the target by the controlling ship, or their own (in the case of ATG) fire control.

They do not have to score direct hits but detonate nearby (further if spoofed by ECM).

Phasers added to a shuttle would have no more access to the shuttle's fire control than the shuttle's own phaser-3. If you you can control the phaser-3 pods, you could control the shuttle's own phaser-3 (or phaser-3s in the case of fighter packs armed with more than one phaser-3, or phaser-G in the case of a fighter pack or Hydran MRS operating as a scatter pack, or the phaser-2 on many fighters, or disruptors, fusion beams, hellbores, or photons).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, May 29, 2006 - 06:38 pm: Edit

SPP:

Thank you, I withdraw the proposal.