The Shipyard: Earth Alliance Kitty hawk-class light carrier
Welcome back to the Shipyard where today I will be taking a look at the Kitty hawk light carrier from Babylon 5 and how you can include this ship in your games of A Call To Arms.
The Kitty hawk is a light carrier based upon the Olympus-class corvette hull and was originally created for Babylon 5 Wars by Richard Bax with a lot of input by Leonard Farnsworth. To the best of my knowledge there was no version created for A Call to Arms.
The Olympus corvette is a very competent ship, it has decent speed, is quite maneuverable, reasonably tough thanks to its interceptors, and has good, though not exceptional, all round firepower from its mix of pulse weapons, railguns and long range missiles. It is a very solid skirmish level ship only beaten in certain areas by more specialized craft.
It would seem therefore that a variant based upon the hull of the Olympus would be a reasonably good idea, certainly not a bad one. You would of course, in this case, be wrong.
The background for the Kitty hawk has the ship as a product of the wishes of politicians, rather than a requirement by Earth Force. Starfury's were seen as being a really good and important part of the Navy strategy, so more starfury's would be better, and if they were on a ship that was not a huge behemoth and thus cheap, that would be more betterer. The Earth Alliance had a lot of territory where provision for orbital facilities to house starfury's was not currently possible. A ship capable of carrying them on extended patrols was therefore deemed to be 'a good thing'.
To achieve the conversion into a light carrier, all that was needed was to strip out the missile launchers and magazines, do the same with the Railguns, and then use the freed up space to accommodate 12 fighters, and the associated equipment and crew. The result was a ship that didn't make a very good carrier as it lacked endurance, and didn't make a good carrier because it couldn't carry many fighters. The Navy didn't want them, the crews hated them, but the politicians thought they should get lots and lots of them.
It would seem therefore that a variant based upon the hull of the Olympus would be a reasonably good idea, certainly not a bad one. You would of course, in this case, be wrong.
The background for the Kitty hawk has the ship as a product of the wishes of politicians, rather than a requirement by Earth Force. Starfury's were seen as being a really good and important part of the Navy strategy, so more starfury's would be better, and if they were on a ship that was not a huge behemoth and thus cheap, that would be more betterer. The Earth Alliance had a lot of territory where provision for orbital facilities to house starfury's was not currently possible. A ship capable of carrying them on extended patrols was therefore deemed to be 'a good thing'.
To achieve the conversion into a light carrier, all that was needed was to strip out the missile launchers and magazines, do the same with the Railguns, and then use the freed up space to accommodate 12 fighters, and the associated equipment and crew. The result was a ship that didn't make a very good carrier as it lacked endurance, and didn't make a good carrier because it couldn't carry many fighters. The Navy didn't want them, the crews hated them, but the politicians thought they should get lots and lots of them.
The Ship in A Call to Arms
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| The Kitty hawk with its fighters |
So how do we make this playable in ACTA? its doable, since nothing is preventing you from making up your own ships or doing anything you want. The trick is how to make the Kitty hawk look good on paper but be very bad at everything it does.
First I took the base Olympus corvette, the 3rd age (Delta) version and removed the missiles and railguns. This leaves it with its pulse cannons. they aren't bad guns, they are just not great. Next we add in 2 Starfury flights. Starfury';s are amazing, but unlike the light carriers introduced for other races, This carries 2 flights, everything else carries 4.
Finally I decided to give it scout. The original version had Richard Bax put the power freed up go towards engines. instead I opted to improve the sensors which was the original suggestion by Leonard Farnsworth and gave the ship scout. This would give the ship marginal use in the scout role, since it has scout, but no stealth. I was tempted to give it some stealth, but this would have given the ship a second useful ability and would have seen it compete too much with the Oracle, which is faster, and has better stealth.
Finally I decided to give it scout. The original version had Richard Bax put the power freed up go towards engines. instead I opted to improve the sensors which was the original suggestion by Leonard Farnsworth and gave the ship scout. This would give the ship marginal use in the scout role, since it has scout, but no stealth. I was tempted to give it some stealth, but this would have given the ship a second useful ability and would have seen it compete too much with the Oracle, which is faster, and has better stealth.
I hope you agree that the Kittyhawk is a carrier, a gunship and a scout, but can't perform the roles of a carrier, a gunship or a scout very well.
Let me know, would you use this ship? is it too good? what would you change?
Enjoy! Thanks for reading and I will see you next time.
Art by Corvin Lee Hiller
STL's by Tyrel Lohr
Painting by me
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