Fighter Complement

Main problem I see here is that numbers can be quite inconsistent as sources only list up the compliment of certain starfighter classes, not necessarily accounting other types of Star fighters. It isn't necessarily a problem on regular ships, which tend to feature 24-72 fighters in compliment regulary, but it becomes more of a problem, when we talk about carriers like for example the Venator class or partially even more problematic the Lucrehulk-class ships.

As for the Lucrehulk though this problem somewhat solves itself, when you account the fact, that the starfighters it carries are mostly droids, which doesn't mean anything other than they throw a lot of fragile spaceships into combat. The normal loadout of a Lucrehulk battleship is 1,500 Droid star fighters.
Given that we have a canonical example, namely the Fortressa, who featured in rebell service a maximum of 500 X-Wings, I assume that we list these specifications within the ship database up as well in order to give a rough reference of what for example a human compliment would be. Though I wouldn't want to argue that vice-versa any non-Separatist ship would automatically be able to feature the standart starfighter loadout x 3 as that might lead to abuses.

Furthermore another problem is that some ships are massproduced in a way, that they will most likely work solely with certain capital ship types. The TIE line specifically is always hanging within hangars except for some ship types to name one famous example. I guess nobody really minds it, if someone lands a TIE just the way we see it for example in the old Battlefront II- Star Wars game, as probably many Legends and Canon sources did this regulary - yet I'm not sure if we want to judge starfighters that strictly, because some are 1 or 2 meters longer than the standart compliment.

So in the end I would rout for leaving the system as it is, as we can always judge abuses during ongoing RPs, consult players how to solve it better, while we eventually list up those issues within the database (as in example with the Separatist capital ships how many droids can be replaced with humans for maximum in order to keep stuff balanced).
I would however suggest that we might specify rules for custom ships, which function as carriers of how many starfighters they are allowed to feature, so that people get a rough idea of what is a common starfighter loadout for ships of specific star ship classes and what aren't (as I would assume that both the Lucrehulk and the Venator are exceptions to the rule).

This would be my suggestion.


edit: also a brief note:
If we talk about starfighter loadouts getting regulated, we especially need to talk about shuttle space as well.
Because most times it is stated that a ship carries 'various shuttles' along with a star fighter complement, but doesn't state exactly how many it can feature for a maximum.
Thus being problematic if you have a ship, which features Lambda-shuttles for example, but you want to replace some of them with larger or smaller shuttles.

Ok, I would like to bring up two points.

First, the Fortressa was destroyed in the process of launching fighters. Before it was destroyed, 500 x-wings had managed to launch, thus setting the minimum limit the class could carry. However, the reactions indicated that many fighters were still on board & lost in the destruction. This gives me the impression that the number of fighters still on board was considerable enough to be counted separately from the crew of the carrier. That or there was a bias on the part of the starfighter pilots to prioritize the loss of fellow starfighter pilots.

Second, while the ISD has been shown to usually hold 72 TIEs in special racks, several sources allude that more fighters could have been loaded, provided a more available fighters. This is not counting the fact that ISDs are regularly shown to capture ships up to 200 meters & park them in their hangers in addition to their fighter groups. I would suggest that any TIE specific carrier would simply need minor modifications to alter the landing racks to hold most types of fighters (though ships like the ARC170 would probably give the system some serious trouble).

Those points being covered, my stance is usually to count fighters as part of the fleet numbers. This does, at times, make things difficult as it requires choosing between having a loaded carrier or a few warships. I feel it provides a better balance than being able to assume you have free fighters with an carrier.

Guess it depends of how complex of a system we would want to create...

I think what he meant was that carriers typically have a lower armament than destroyers for the most part in regards to offense, focusing more on carrying larger complements of fighters instead.

At its simplest, I feel anything within the starfighter range should be capable of fitting in any hangar at full compliment (25.99 meters) then anything else begins to cut down on room.

Personally, I always look at starfighters based on the average length, which for starfighters, it ranged between twelve and twenty meters. At that point, anything higher could eat up room, to which we simply build it by an average of twice the size, triple the size and so on and cut the space based on that. No need to make things overly complicated to keep things so heavily focused on designs that it forces people to go out of their way to watch their sizes for the common size starfighters.

So, at this present state, things are as such:


Ships will receive their specified compliment based on their wookieepedia article/Ship Database Entry.
For Canon ships, their capacity is based on the length of the ships typical to their faction. From there, if someone got hold of a Imp-SD and wanted to fill it with X-wings, you would halve the amount of starfighters that could fit into the ship.
Just as if someone wanted to put TIE Fighters into hangar bays meant for larger starfighters, you would double the amount.

For Custom ships, their capacity is going to be based on an average for what ever faction they most likely associate it with.



OR were we just going to set a baseline for each size range and go from there?