If the Blade Ship only holds two Bug Fighters, how come there are always so MANY Bug Fighters zipping around. Maybe it's just my mental block, but I always figured there were enough Bug Fighters for a small "swarm". At least a dozen or so.
Which, I guess, wouldn't make sense if the Blade Ship is only 8 or 9 times the size of a Bug Fighter. Then again, as Esplin said, is that length or overall size?
Also, is there a Pool Ship in orbit over Earth the majority of the time, or just when Visser One is there?
They're escort, show of force, I need to finish re-reading the books but I'm pretty sure they
do say that the Blade Ship can hold fighters, I just don't know how many, still again two seems to be the number that sticks in my mind, and its a decent number if you assume, as has been implied, that the Blade Ship is meant as a destroyer, not a carrier. The pool ship, which is in constant orbit around earth, would be the more likely carrier as in book 8 it's the one reported launching the swarms of bug fighters at the
Galaxy Tree.
Being a Visser's personal vessel it would make a degree of sense that the Blade Ship is never forced to use just its own fighters in fact might not even launch its own fighters unless actual battle errupts. See if it and its escort leave the Pool Ship at the same time it has a constant escort and the landing of all craft is less of a logistical hassle, if it leaves the pool ship then scrambles its own fighters later there's a window where it has no fighter cover, and it would have to take them back in before docking or going to Z space. There might be a middleground of it launching its own and still recieving an escort as then it doesnt have to wait to launch them if it does get ambushed, and could always take them back aboard while the bug fighters are docking, assuming the Visser wants to wait, I think they may have played it by ear.
The two bug fighters would be more of a door stop than an actual force, in the event that a Blade is found alone without an escort and comes afoul of an andalite ship the fighters would provide some cover or a distraction while the Blade retreats, Yeerks after all, don't fight battles they cant win.
I miss the old Wing Commander games . . .
The first Blade Ship is built in the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. By the beginning of the canon series they would be much more widely disseminated.
Oh man I
just read the Hork-Bajir chronicles like a couple weeks ago and I forgot that, now I'm really embarassed.
However the statement about Andalite superiority is made by Elfangor in the TAC, and he himself didn't recognize the Blade Ship when he saw it, suggesting that during TAC at least, Blade Ships were at least somewhat rare, or at least classified under "not so inferior" so that he wouldn't have been told about it. In The Alien Aximili recognizes the Blade (so it's taken out of the "classified" file drawer I guess) and is properly nervous suggesting that Blade Ships can and have defeated Dome Ships in the past in fact Visser Three's ship makes short work of the brand new
Galaxy Tree.
Which leads me to wonder why the Andalites didn't try to design their own anti-Blade sooner, were they
that convinced of the superiority of their Domes?
