Fighters

<Joachim wrote:>

>  Hiya y'all.	It's time for my next question about fighters.	I don't
>think this is really covered by the rules, so I'm mostly just
>wondering what you do in your campaigns.  There are a bunch of
>different types of fighters: regular, fast, heavy, interceptor,
>attack, diet, long-range, torpedo.  My question is whether you combine
>these fighter types and if so, what do you allow and what not?

Our group is still getting into the rules and haven't had a whole lot 
of experience with all of the different fighter combinations.  To keep
things simple while we learn the rules we've adopted a general house
rule
stating that you CAN'T mix up fighter functions.  I think one day we
will
but until we know the rules cold we're going to limit fighters in our
games
to one of the 'types' described in More Thrust.

>  I think my group finally agreed on a system where you can take a
>regular, fast or heavy fighter and add to it the interceptor, attack,
>long-range or torpedo abilities.  Something like that.  Some of the
>properties conflict (interceptor and attack) so that seems like a good
>reason to make those mutually exclusive and make the fighters
>"layered".

This is a good idea and I'd probably start 'layering' fighters in a 
similar fashion when our group is ready to do so.

>  Say, that brings up a third point.  If I always round up the amount
>of mass I can use for systems (again, this is mentioned in FT in their
>discussion of non-FTL ships), why don't all of my ships have odd
>masses one point below the normal mass.  Why ever build a mass 36
>ship when a mass 35 ship can hold just as much stuff?	This is a real
>difficulty for my gaming group because we're building our own fleets
>and this seems like one of those rules loopholes that makes everybody
>add some (almost) useless optimization to stay ahead of the game.
>Argh.	I hate that.

Our group rounds UP the system mass but rounds DOWN the damage boxes.
An 18 mass Destroyer would have 9 systems and 9 hits.  A 17 mass
Destroyer
has 9 systems but only 8 hits.	Not much of a difference, I admit, but
at
least there's a small tradeoff.  You could reverse this if you feel that
system mass is more important and state that a 17 mass Destroyer doesn't
get extra system mass but does get an extra hit.  Guess it's up to your
personal preference.  

Pete