FT Fighters (was: Re: Troop Capacity)

[snip]
>
>Which tangentially brings me to fighters in FT. They seem to have an
>extremely short lifespan. Are they remote piloted? Military forces
>can't put up with the massive wastage of men, and the morale
>implications are rather poor. Even if the fighters can be mass
>produced, the pilots probably take years to train, and soon run
>out. Or should we perhaps think of kills in FT for fighters (and
>perhaps even for normal ships) as being mission kills. The drifting
>hulks recoverable and many survivors picked up by the side that
>'holds the field'.
>
>Just my .02 credits ;)
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Richard Slattery	      richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk

Fighters are in FT because they are popular in many (most?) of the TV or
movie-based SF backgrounds (Star wars, Galactica, B5, etc, etc, Trek
being
one of the very few exceptions), and in all of these the fighters are
human
piloted, more to make good storytelling than for good military sense...
:)
The "official" FT background assumes human-piloted fighters because it
is
(IMHO) more fun and dramatic that way, and for no other reason. If you
want
yours to be automated (RPVs or AIs), or prefer to dispense with fighters
altogether, then feel free.
I would agree that a lot of the fighter kills could be mission kills
with
the fighters either being disabled (or simply forced to abort) or the
crews
ejecting from destroyed fighters (a la B5 etc). For a campaign game you
could roll for each "killed" fighter to see if it limps back to its
carrier
during or after the battle, or if the drifting ejection pod is picked
up.

Jon (GZG)