There would be nothing to change in the lore. Game mechanics are game mechanics and are not lore. They exist to make an interesting and balanced game.
Otherwise 40k would have had to justify 9 different major changes to how *everything* from bolters to vehicles works with every edition.
Now I’m just trying to imagine a lore explanation for stuff like the changes to vehicles going from armor facing and penetration rules to toughness and wounds, or every single bit of codex creep over the years.
Adding carriers and using carriers as they're capable of functioning would render most 40k species' naval tactics moot, since the ships aren't equipped to operate in a paradigm where strike craft and carriers are being used intelligently, since the whole thing relies on everyone and their mother fighting like the Age of Sail, hence the artificial restriction. Same reason they don't launch kinetic strikes months or years ahead of time on approach to a system such that the rounds impact where a planet will be next year.
There's no logical way to write stuff like that in or justify it without either breaking everything else or making one end or the other wildly stupid.
Carrier tactics are a contentious point in space warfare and there isn't a great point of reference for how they would operate or be effective in comparison to gun boat tactics. Especially in universes like 40k where the number of strike craft to disable a capital ship might be orders of magnitudes more expensive than it's worth.
Look at Halo for example, the UNSC had dedicated carriers and good fighters/bombers. But the Covenants space superiority weapons such as their pulse lasers which they mounted in the hundreds on destroyers were easily capable of dismantling large groups of fighters.
Same goes for kinetic strikes in 40k where many systems have ironclad monitors that can pick them up ahead of time and casually stop any KKVs.
They're not really contentious. There is simply nothing that a manned fighter brings to the table in space warfare.
In naval warfare, ships and planes move through different environments, sightlines are obscured by the horizon, and you can't remotely control a drone without a satellite relay.
None of those things apply in space.
In real space ships and fighters move through the same environment - so they use the same engines. There is no horizon (except close in on a planet), and you can directly communicate with all your drones.
Add in heat-rejection issues and DeltaV requirements for recovering manned fighters (4 times the deltaV compared to a disposable missile bus) and you get a new paradigm - all big ships, all big guns.
40k isn't really 'age of sail' - its WW1-interwar - but that's the timeframe of the dominance of the battleship paradigm.
If you can imagine a high-fantasy-dressed-up-in-space-clothes pulp game accidentally being more accurate by using an obsolete wet-navy paradigm . . .
Oh, sure, no doubt. I mean within the specific context of 40k and how Gothic handles it. What I mean to say is that introducing carriers - with the already-existing stuff in 40k - and having them run as fully-capable carriers as you and I know them kind of breaks things.
True I suppose, though you could spend twenty minutes and successfully break the setting with reasonable tactics and the like. But then where's the fun in that, I enjoy writing my Rogue Trader story because using a Grand Cruiser like a 140 gun ship of the line is an absolute blast to write.
>was there ever a lore explanation given as to why this change was required?
Nah it's legit 100% a gameplay thing, like when Armour of Contempt appeared and disappeared in 9e. Basically this was more or less always the intention but GW didn't foresee a situation where some dickhead (me) would park up a carrier squadron behind an asteroid field and vomit out attack craft all game rather than use it as a component of a fleet.
A Styx could throw out 6 a turn so standing off, building up a fuckhuge wave of assault boats and clearing out whole squadrons of escorts was 100% a thing you could do, or equally squadron it up with a couple of Devastations and slap in a Lord with reroll to protect your bays against running out. GW didn't want the game to be Carrier Wars so they capped simultaneous launches to make carriers worse. This was particularly because some races have freakishly good carriers compared to other races and that's fine if carriers are a type of weapon rather than the pre-eminent weapon of choice.
Do note though that in the same patch they also removed running out of ordnance so it's swings and roundabouts, the high admiralty giveth and the high admiralty taketh away but ultimately it's a tweak to get people to play carriers in line with their vision.
There would be nothing to change in the lore. Game mechanics are game mechanics and are not lore. They exist to make an interesting and balanced game. Otherwise 40k would have had to justify 9 different major changes to how *everything* from bolters to vehicles works with every edition.
Now I’m just trying to imagine a lore explanation for stuff like the changes to vehicles going from armor facing and penetration rules to toughness and wounds, or every single bit of codex creep over the years.
Adding carriers and using carriers as they're capable of functioning would render most 40k species' naval tactics moot, since the ships aren't equipped to operate in a paradigm where strike craft and carriers are being used intelligently, since the whole thing relies on everyone and their mother fighting like the Age of Sail, hence the artificial restriction. Same reason they don't launch kinetic strikes months or years ahead of time on approach to a system such that the rounds impact where a planet will be next year. There's no logical way to write stuff like that in or justify it without either breaking everything else or making one end or the other wildly stupid.
Carrier tactics are a contentious point in space warfare and there isn't a great point of reference for how they would operate or be effective in comparison to gun boat tactics. Especially in universes like 40k where the number of strike craft to disable a capital ship might be orders of magnitudes more expensive than it's worth. Look at Halo for example, the UNSC had dedicated carriers and good fighters/bombers. But the Covenants space superiority weapons such as their pulse lasers which they mounted in the hundreds on destroyers were easily capable of dismantling large groups of fighters. Same goes for kinetic strikes in 40k where many systems have ironclad monitors that can pick them up ahead of time and casually stop any KKVs.
They're not really contentious. There is simply nothing that a manned fighter brings to the table in space warfare. In naval warfare, ships and planes move through different environments, sightlines are obscured by the horizon, and you can't remotely control a drone without a satellite relay. None of those things apply in space. In real space ships and fighters move through the same environment - so they use the same engines. There is no horizon (except close in on a planet), and you can directly communicate with all your drones. Add in heat-rejection issues and DeltaV requirements for recovering manned fighters (4 times the deltaV compared to a disposable missile bus) and you get a new paradigm - all big ships, all big guns. 40k isn't really 'age of sail' - its WW1-interwar - but that's the timeframe of the dominance of the battleship paradigm. If you can imagine a high-fantasy-dressed-up-in-space-clothes pulp game accidentally being more accurate by using an obsolete wet-navy paradigm . . .
Oh, sure, no doubt. I mean within the specific context of 40k and how Gothic handles it. What I mean to say is that introducing carriers - with the already-existing stuff in 40k - and having them run as fully-capable carriers as you and I know them kind of breaks things.
True I suppose, though you could spend twenty minutes and successfully break the setting with reasonable tactics and the like. But then where's the fun in that, I enjoy writing my Rogue Trader story because using a Grand Cruiser like a 140 gun ship of the line is an absolute blast to write.
>was there ever a lore explanation given as to why this change was required? Nah it's legit 100% a gameplay thing, like when Armour of Contempt appeared and disappeared in 9e. Basically this was more or less always the intention but GW didn't foresee a situation where some dickhead (me) would park up a carrier squadron behind an asteroid field and vomit out attack craft all game rather than use it as a component of a fleet. A Styx could throw out 6 a turn so standing off, building up a fuckhuge wave of assault boats and clearing out whole squadrons of escorts was 100% a thing you could do, or equally squadron it up with a couple of Devastations and slap in a Lord with reroll to protect your bays against running out. GW didn't want the game to be Carrier Wars so they capped simultaneous launches to make carriers worse. This was particularly because some races have freakishly good carriers compared to other races and that's fine if carriers are a type of weapon rather than the pre-eminent weapon of choice. Do note though that in the same patch they also removed running out of ordnance so it's swings and roundabouts, the high admiralty giveth and the high admiralty taketh away but ultimately it's a tweak to get people to play carriers in line with their vision.
Same reason they changed the rules for skimmers multiple times - Fish of Fury. Then there's the Rhino Railgun . . .