There's something called design complexity. Not to mention that the enemy only has to hit the rails and the system is useless. Railway-based weapons are just not efficient at all, regardless if the rail is on a ship, or terrestrial.
What about some sort of magnetic treads? Point defense tanks!
...That's a little silly.
@GWG I was talking about the turrets >.>
I know. I was applying the exact same argument to the fighters.
@Paris: You're looking at something that's many more times expensive than a standard, fixed mount turret. While it could be somewhat effective, depending on what weapons it as, you are still looking at a very large investment per tank.
Not as much as a whole fighter.
PD weapons exist in any case, be it against missiles or asteroids. Take that as fact.
This means that missiles both exist, and are used on the field.
This means there are tactics developed to counteract the enemy point defense.
This means fighters are possible during the same phase of engagement where missiles are possible.
Possible, yes. Effective, efficient, worth making? You haven't shown that.
Weapons precise enough to destroy fighters can destroy or damage these weapons with ease, as they are attached to much slower-moving capital ships.
Whereas fighters are going to have severe trouble dodging any kind of weapon unless they're at extreme distances, so they're also going to be easy to hit.
The opening phase of the fight therefore becomes an exchange of salvoes that targets the individual weapons of the enemy - it's the best way to render the enemy helpless. This is especially true if ships are valuable enough to refrain from destroying them with abandon.
Wouldn't your logic make the ship with more PD weapons and PDstroyers the one with the advantage?
Single large weapons become weakpoints. They become secondary weapons meant to be used when it's necessary to destroy the enemy, after its precise defensive weaponry is removed.
Assuming, of course, that the exposed part of the weapon is A. easy to damage and B. important to the function of the weapon.
Multiple mobile weapons with enough range and precision to inflict damage on sensitive parts of the enemy become favorable.
Wait, how did "mobile" become an advantage? You kinda slipped that in there without explaining it. And why do I suspect you're going to immediately jump from "mobile" to "not on the ship" without explaining that, either?
Attack drones start being employed as secondary precision weapons platforms.
Called it.
They are used at large ranges to avoid incoming enemy fire where regular weapon turrets are incapable of this,
Why? Again, the turrets can be made mobile if it's that much of an issue, and the ability to dodge in space is pretty much nil except against kinetic weapons at low speeds or extreme ranges.
Attack drones use starts to expand when both sides use drones. As they are mobile weapons, the engagement ranges close to eliminate the possibility of dodging due to laser lag.
You mean it was possible to dodge before? Referring to those fighters, there.
Eventually fights progress into mixed drone/ship combat with ships and drones both exchanging fire at long and medium ranges.
Unless, of course, you have accurate, long-range lasers that can heavily damage ships before they get in fighter/etc range. Or you could always shoot down the drones as they get closer.
Unless drones possess individual intelligence on par with human, effective countermeasures are being employed to fool the opposing sides' drone AI.
Which are most eaisly and cheaply remedied with a patch, not--
Human presence is required on the field to control and direct drones in situations where light lag would prove disastrous.
--that.
Squadrons of mixed piloted and drone fighters are adopted as standard, all designed to appear identical on sensors, to provide in-situ control of AI drones.
Which requires wasting space in the drones so they have fake life support and whatnot.
That's about as far as I can hypothesize it.
Mind starting over?
Now, what if it was a capship weapon that took out the rails (As a side effect of hitting the main hull itself.)
So anti-capital weaons are suddenly not worthless?
As for the design, the ship would be easier, as the rail weapons also need their power supply taken into account, and a destroyed reactor on the hull could have pretty catastrophic effects so that's not exactly a suitable option. Batteries would have limited charge, and ammo being loaded into the turret would be far more difficult if it is mobile.
We already have rails that give power to what's on them. They're called electric trains, I've ridden on them. They have functional electric lights and everything.
And since when would the reactors be on the hulls? And, um. wouldn't the fighters also have reactors pretty near their puny hulls?
quick reminder: heat weapons (lasers) need to stay on their target over time to work. additionally at long range in space you have light-speed sensor limits. small targets can move perpendicular to the line of fire and the lasers, even with instant reactions, won't stay on them.
If you're not constantly spending delta-v to change your course (a tactic so fraught with issues I won't go into it unless asked), you're going to be moving in a straight line. PRetty easy to track your movements then.
there is no true 'instant weapon', and accuracy limits still apply.
Moreso to the little weapons than the big ones, since the big ones will have access to better...well, everything that can be made better, really.
additionally, a ship intent on close-quarters combat can build up momentum from outside effective range, and their limiting factor is mostly how fast they can slow down.
And their delta-v.
oh, and not everything has to be turreted. you can hull-mount fighter/drone weapons without issue, and they only need small sideways movement options, they can mostly go forwards/backwards and rotate.
Your point?
regarding rails, continuious damage heat weapons (lasers) can draw large circles or grid patterns without precise aiming, and rails, by their nature, can't be armored. you can confine / limit railed turrets to a single area at much longer ranges than you can pick individual turrets/targets off.
Unless the ship moves relative to where the lasers are being aimed. Why is that possible for the fighters but not the capital ships?
That depends on the laser. If it's pulsed operation, it wouldn't need to stay on target since it delivers all it's energy in one, large blast. Sorta like the sectopod main cannon or a lasgun.
Both of which are from pretty soft sci-fi (XCOM and 40k)...
A pulsed laser only hits once. it doesn't fire a continuous beam at the target.
So?
even that large blast has a duration. if it only hits for part of the time it is fireing, be it pulsed or not, it will only do a fraction of its normal damage.
So, skipping over the argument of whether a small attack craft is even feasible, what does a fighter have over a drone? As Lenglon said, life support is minor- brains can be supported by a torso, with room left over (robobodies have accurate anatomy as far as muscles, and there's some decent musculature in a torso).
Um, a drone piloted by a brain instead of a computer is still a drone for all intents and purposes.
However, there are ways to make space wizards more effective. For a moment, recall Miyamoto fighting the sods with meat shields. IIRC, he made a massive heatblade which bisected the building he was in and continued on into the upper atmosphere. That would be very effective against a spaceship. Miyamoto could do that, because he was in an avatar of war. Isn't an Avatar about the same size as a large fighter? You could make a Avatar that is entirely space based, give the user a universal manip, coat it in as much stealth stuff as possible, and voila! You have a hard to detect fighter craft that can chop capital ships in half. And it's more durable than a equivalent fighter made of metal. It's probably really expensive though.
And Avatars are not, by default, equipped for any kind of zero-g acceleration. Imagine an overshot on a manipulator roll just to get moving...
And that's assuming you don't run out of charge while maneuvering.