Re: FB2... hmmmm...

stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

>We don't use fighter morale in general (or involuntary striking of
>colors, etc)...

and

>We don't use them, and we also allow recombining of wounded 
>groups into larger wholes even if we did.  When there's 240+ fighters
>out there with you, losing three of your buddies doesn't seem like a 
>reason to panic to us.  :)

OK, this explains a lot. The fighter morale rule is *the* major
balancing
mechanism for human/Phalon fighters; removing it roughly doubles their
firepower.  ("Balance" as in "don't need to pick exactly the right
super-specialized gimmick fleet to have a chance against my enemy's
super-specialized gimmick fleet, but have a fighting chance with a
fairly wide selection of fleet styles".)

Both of the Fleet Books were written and their mechanics balanced
assuming that the fighter morale rules are in use, so it's no big
wonder that you find fighters so effective. Whether or not Jon was
aware that he'd assumed this I don't know, but I for one certainly did
:-/

Without the fighter morale rules human/Phalon fighters should have a
base cost of 8 points each (48 per squadron, rather than the current
18). All costs for heavy/attack/ long-range/torpedo fighters rise in
proportion (+2 pts/fighter for Attack or Long-Range, +5 pts/fighter for
Heavy, +7 for Torpedo).

Re-organising depleted squadrons on the fly (rather than aboard the
carrier) is almost as good as not using the fighter morale rules at
all. Knock 1 point off the base cost (to 7 pts/fighter), but the extra
costs for
non-standard fighters remain as above.

>>KV fighters never get any damage re-rolls, so they inflict
>>considerably less damage than human fighters against unscreened
>>targets (including all fighter types) and are only marginally better 
>>against targets with level-1 screens.
> 
>Yes, but the trade-off you get for being able to ignore screens is a
>lot less than the advantage.

The big gain is their Ro'Kah ability, and that's a rather two-edged
sword. They effectively treat all targets, screened or not, as having
level-1 screens (or level-0.95).

>>Firing plasma bolts at an ADFC phalanx means that 1) your own
>>fighters can't easily attack said phalanx without getting fried
>>themselves and 2) you maximize the number of PDS or equivalent
>>systems available to shoot the plasma bolts down.
> 
>Positioning fighters together with plasma bolts so that both can
>attack shouldn't be that hard.  Position the fighters on one side of 
>where you expect them to be, position the plasma on the other.

And where exactly do you expect a high-thrust (or Kra'Vak/Sa'Vasku)
ship starting at speed ~24 to be? <g>

>>Compare the amount of PD dice a Phalon ship can fire with the
>>number of PDS systems on comparable human ships (particularly 
>>from FB1), and you'll usually find that the Phalons have more PD 
>>dice available than the humans.
> 
>Yes, with the designs in FB1... however, IMHO, the designs in FB1 
>are very poorly equipped in the PDS category.

Not really. The main difference between the FB1 ships and the currently
~800 player designs from all over the planet I've collected over the
years since FB1 was published is that the custom fleets tend to have
more units with ADFC, but the overall number of PDSs is rather similar.
However, most or all of those designs were created for use with the
fighter morale rules just like the FBx ships were; I'd be quite
interested in adding your designs to the archive as examples of ships
designed for other types of games.

[On Phalons vs. fighters]

>Well, 40+ fighter squadrons would annihilate the Phalon designs in 
>the book.

Without the fighter morale rules, certainly. With them and the standard
reorganisation rules it'd be a quite interesting battle - and I
wouldn't put
all my money on the fighters.

>>>1200 mass
>>>Structure:  360 (Avg)
>>>Thrust: 1
>>>FTL
>>> FireCons (13)
>>> Armor (30 or so)
>>>Plasma Bolts (8 x 4 dice each)
>>>Fighter Bays (41 or so, all normal fighters)
>>>Class 3 batteries (10 x 3 arcs)
>>>Needle beams (15)
>>>PDS (about 30)
>>
>>Rounds out at Mass 1232, 5109 points including fighters.
> 
>Here's the actual math I did when I sat down to do it... if you don't
>have a fixed-width font on your mailer this may come out looking 
>funny...

11 armour and 17 PDS instead of the ~30 of each suggested above.
Looks OK.
 
>...with 15 needle beams, that's two and a half hits per turn.

With 15 needle beams on a thrust-1 ship in Cinematic, you're lucky if
you get to fire three needle beams per turn. If all of your needle
beams are in the same fire arc you'll get to fire them at best once
during the battle. Not very "sustained" fire IMO, but YMMV.

>>>Now then... what you'll have coming at you is 32 dice of plasma
>>>bolts and 41 fighter groups.
>>
>>The Dreadstar is virtually immobile, so assuming a reasonably large
>>gaming table the only weapons able to reach the enemy are its
>>fighters - unless the enemy either screws up, or allows you to shoot
>>him for some reason. You can play on a small table with fixed edges
>>in Vector, of course; that'll make your above design quite effective.
> 
>We play cinematic on a table where about 70MU usually seperates 
>the two sides at the start and about 15-20MU behind each side is the
>boundary.

About the same size of table as I have, though I use floating table
edges as well.
 
>>>It wouldn't necessarily be invincible... but off the top of my
>>>head right now,  _I_ sure can't think of too many (broadly sound)
>>>tactics that would stop it.
>
>>On a fixed-edge table, the easiest options are to take a Kra'Vak
>>fleet (kiss your fighters goodbye and watch your PBs miss <g>),
> 
>Not convinced of that at all.	To take down that many fighters, you're
>going to need about 80 scatterguns.

Since you don't use fighter morale rules, maybe. Even an FB2 Kra'Vak
force composed to counter a fighter-heavy force can have more
scatterguns than that though, plus a bunch of back-up K1s for
anti-fighter work; a custom Kra'Vak force in a battle without fighter
morale rules would of course have more scatterguns

>If I hold back the fighters until the plasma has burned away either
>your fleet or your scatterguns, 

If you hold back your fighters that long, there's a very real risk that
you don't have any dreadstar left when the fighters finally commit.
Assuming a half-competent Kra'Vak player your PBs won't hit them until
they make their first serious attack run, and by then it's a bit too
late.

>>or a Phalon fleet with decent Interceptor support (8-12 squadrons is
>>enough to break up your squadrons enough for the Pulsers and 
>>PBLs to deal with the rest) and all Pulsers set to C configuration.
> 
>8-12 squadrons of interceptors would get annihilated by 41 
>squadrons of regular fighters... and with only about 60 dice of point 
>defense, the remaining fighters and plasma together probably 
>wouldn't be terribly worried there, either.

I assumed that you used the fighter morale rules and the standard
re-organisation rules. With them the 8-12 Interceptor squadrons will
certainly be annihilated, but they'll cripple enough of your fighter
squadrons to give them problems with their morale checks. Without the
fighter morale rules, dump all Phalon interceptors and bore straight
in. You need to kill the entire Phalon fleet in approx. 2 turns, or
lose the
dreadstar. Without the dreadstar, the fighters will die eventually
<shrug>

>>On a floating-edge table, any ship with a single Class-4 or bigger
>>beam and a thrust rating of 2 or more will eventually pick the
>>dreadplanet apart once your fighters have been swatted - unless it
>>hypers out first of course, but in that case it has conceded defeat 
>>anyway.
> 
>This is more feasible if you have large enough space (we don't
>usually, we play on a floor with inch-scale and if you go off the
board,
>you're gone)

On a floating-edge table you have unlimited space, which is the very
reason why I specified a floating-edge table for this tactic...

>and if you know what I'm doing in advance (which, again, we don't).

<g>

>>[On Sa'Vasku]
> 
>Most of this is granted.  My initial thoughts on this subject appear
>to have been completely wrong. :)

Easy to do with the Sa'Vasku. I'm afraid we underestimated them too
during the playtests :-(

>><ping> too weak
>><ping> too strong
>><ping> ...
> 
>Heh... yeah, it's hard to say.  But Oerjan's comment about a ship
>being able to throw 13 drone groups and _then_ go at thrust 9 or 
>throw some very powerful beam fire at you, and costing less than a 
>human carrier with thrust 1, fragile hull, and 13 fighter bays w/ 
>fighters... ouch.  Hadn't done the math on the Sa'Vasku examples yet,
>but that's something of a sobering thought.

It is indeed. There are some mitigating facts - eg., it'll take the
Vas'Sa'Teth at least four turns to launch its full brood, it can only
move at thrust-4A during the first three of these and it has 12
carapace and 2 biomass boxes left afterwards, so if someone manages to
close with it while it is growing drones may find itself in deep
trouble... but that assumes that it keeps growing drones instead of
re-absorbing some of them and turning itself into a battle-dreadnought
instead :-/

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry