- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Do we know that those railroads will be needed at some point? I think you're begging the question. If more efficient Logistics options present themselves now, enough to fulfill all Logistics needs that are visible in the short and medium terms, then "we have to build the inefficient railroads eventually so we might as well do it now to avoid leaving dice fallow" is not a very good argument.
What need do you foresee the railroads fulfilling, that cannot be fulfilled by other projects?
Your impression is mistaken.
If the Firehawk (with QAAMs) were a match for the Barghest-A, capable of matching them at numerical parity, then when a squadron of Firehawks engaged a squadron of Barghest-As, the FIrehawks would do most of their killing at long/medium range, the Barghest-As would do most of their killing at close range, and on average the shoot-down totals would be equal on both sides.
But if that were true, then when three or four squadrons of Firehawks attacked a single squadron of Barghest-As, the expected result would be a total slaughter of the Barghests. Because the density of the missile salvo encountered by the Barghest squadron would be 3-4 times greater, and they'd all be shot down before even getting close enough to shoot back.
Except that didn't happen. Somehow, roughly 3-4 squadrons of Firehawks attacked one squadron of Barghests, presumably fired off plenty of air to air missiles, and yet failed to kill all the Barghests from range. At least one or two Barghests must have survived to get in close among the Firehawks, at which point they did a good deal of killing before being shot down themselves or chased off.
...
So while massed swarms of Firehawks can still take down Barghests (probably including Barghest-Bs), we're left in the awkward position of needing swarm tactics, where:
1) Even extremly large waves of Firehawks on the attack, with 3:1 or better numerical superiority, cannot be assured of killing all the enemy Barghests at long range.
2) With the advent of the Barghest-B, each of the Barghests is likely to take one or more Firehawks with it at long range before even merging for a dogfight.
3) Furthermore, the ability of the Barghest-B to kill Firehawks becomes even more bloodcurdling at short range, and we already know from combat experience that Firehawks cannot stop Barghest-As from reaching close range, let alone Barghest-Bs.
...
Please don't do the thing again where you get so invincibly convinced of your own interpretation of the in-game reality that you start ignoring evidence from the text and direct pronouncements by the QM. Please.
That's out of an attack force on the order of 30-40 Firehawks, though, which should rightfully have steamrolled the Barghests if they had parity as airframes.
Why? The Air Force already has an interceptor capable of countering Barghests: the Apollo fighter. Their reaction wasn't "somehow upgrade the Firehawk," not least because there's no obvious way TO upgrade the Firehawk without developing novel weapons that don't exist yet.
What the Air Force decided it needed was the things it already assigned priority to- namely, the aforementioned novel weapons. Without those, there is no viable refit package for the Firehawk and no viable replacement anyway.
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