ForbinProject
Commander
Joined: 16 May 2016
Posts: 318
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 Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:11 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Babylon 5's Cobra Bays were ultimately a product of their primitive gravity tech available to humans in that universe, |
If that were true the B5 StarFury's would be launching the same way from their warships. And in the combat scenes with Earth warships we see fighters launching from landing/launch bay similar to Star Wars at the front of the Omega Destroyers, not launch tubes.
Babylon 5 however is a big fat barely movable target and it's launching/docking bay is an easy target to disable or destroy with those honking big warship lasers.
So a couple of dozen individual launch tubes guarantees the stations fighters can get into the fight before the tubes could be destroyed. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16345
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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Actually, the original design of the Omega-Class included Cobra Bays on the rotating section of the ship's hull, but they were never used due to the show's budget constraints.
There is also the issue of space limitation. Babylon 5's Cobra Bays were located in the same section of the station as the landing bays. Transfering Starfurys from the landing bay to the Cobra Bays would not be a major design issue. On the Omega, however, the entire ship would have to be built around a transfer system that could move Starfurys from the ship's bow out to the outer edges of the rotating section, which would cut into the available habitable space aboard the ship.
Gravity launch tubes aren't the only design constraints with which ship designers in the B5U must contend.
And none of this changes the fact that drop-type launch bays in the SWU are found only in cut-away scenes from video games. It's obvious from the films that ships in the SWU launch and land in wide-open bays, and have no need for such a method. The only exceptions would be races with primitive gravity manipulation technology, or ships so small that size constraints don't permit them to use anything larger (in the case of drop bays).
But anyway...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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