Re: FB Fighter Questions (longish)

At 08:58 PM 10/14/98 +0100, you wrote:
>Up to six attack turns, yes - but if you manage to shoot this many
times
>without losing your fighters, your enemy is doing something seriously
>wrong IMO :-/

Well, you're probably right on that count, but it did create a serious
questions regarding play balance.

Here's how the situation came up.  In our Imperium campaign, we've
limited
fighter purchases to basic combos of less than 25 points.  This was
because
in Imperium fighters cost 1 RU and the conversion rate is 1 RU = 25 FT
points.  Also because fighters are useful, but not overwhelming.  We
thought about just sticking to basic fighters, but opted to try this
instead.

The Terrans (NSL) player had purchased several squadrons of attack
fighters
and stationed them in various key systems along with his handful of
ships.
Exactly how many and where they were was unknown, since we are using
"bogey" movement.  The Vilani (FSE) player had managed to divert most of
the Terran ships chasing off scouts and decided to launch a probing
attack
on a key system, expecting it to be lightly defended.

His main fleet, a Jerez, two Suffrens and four Ibizas jumped into the
system.  Total point value of the force: 899 points.  The defenders had
6
squadrons of planet-based attack fighters; total value: 144 points.

On turn one, the fighters concentrated their attacks on the heavy
cruiser.
On turn two they split their attacks between the two light cruisers.  On
turn 3 the Ibizas managed to activate their jump drives and escape the
5+
remaining enemy squadrons.

Now, in our after-action debrief the Vilani player admitted that he does
not usually play with fighters and so did not have a real sense of what
he
was up against.  He said that if he had, he would have jumped as soon as
the fighters were spotted.  Since he did not, he came in "fat and happy"
and got reamed.

Now there are several factors going on here and we're taking steps to
remedy some of them already.

First of all, none of the "representative ship designs" of the FSE
presented in the Fleet Book have any AFDC assets, so it really wouldn't
made a difference if these had been standard fighters.	While it could
be
argued that the FSE are supposed to bring along those big carriers and
lots
of their own fighters, this kind lopsided battle begs the question of
why
they should even bring ships (other than carriers) in the first place? 
And
how can a small force that can't afford a carrier compete?  And what
about
those of us who want to have fighters as part of a balanced force but
don't
want to recreate the Marianas Turkey Shoot in space?

Second, there is the Imperium play balance question; fighters are useful
in
Imperium but not overwhelming.	Part of that is the "screening" rules in
the game which would prevent six of anything from singling out one
target
at a time and destroying it.  While this isn't really a problem for
ships
since any ship can fire at any other ship in range, fighters can ONLY be
fired upon by the ship they are attacking and ships within 6" which are
equipped with AFDC.

This is one of the reasons I made AFDC standard on all of the v.2 ships
I
just finished designing recently.  It eliminates the invulnerability of
fighters to other ships in the task force that occurred in the above
battle.  The other alternative would have be to adopt one of several
generally unsatisfactory house rules to force the outcomes into more of
a
balance.

Third, there is the question of generic play balance.  Are attack
fighters
as a system more powerful than is warranted for their cost?  Is a mere
24
points fair for that kind of killing power?  Does it seem lopsided in
comparison to standard or even torpedo fighters?  Lord knows, it
wouldn't
be the first time something from MT got declared "unbalancing" now would
it?  ;)

We've tossed around the idea of adopted a house rule that another of the
players from our group uses which essentially imposes a -1 penalty on
fighters when engaging ships.  I suspect this may have been a result of
this very sort of thing.  Before we go and impose an across the board
penalty on all fighters,  I wanted to get an official take on the attack
fighter question to see if perhaps we were handling it wrong or if it
was a
"known bug" that had already been addressed.

Jeff