Re: Massed PDS vs fightes (was: Re: "Custom" fleets)

Indy wrote:
> Somebody else (I forget who) wrote:
> > Certainly more than 3 PDS per Beijing/B.  I think it's closer to 5-6
> > per cruiser, so roughly 100-120 PDS against 41 groups.  With 3 PDS
> > per fighter group, they average 2+ kills, cutting the number of
fighters
> > to 160 from 246.  Their first attack will strike with 100+ dice
> > assuming morale rules are in use.

> Actually, iirc, stiltman explained that they don't use fighter morale
> rules, and they do what is in effect 'instant fighter reorganization'.
> IIRC he said they just tally up all the fighter squadrons into one
> final count of fighter (thus 40 squadrons means 240 fighters, not 40
> seperate groups of 6) and subtract from there. This *could* give PDS'
> a very *slight* advantage in the reroll department, as you would not
> necessarily have to assign PDS suites to fighter groups, but just
> tally up the number of PDS' you are going to put up for fighter
defense.
> So if you would happen to get hit with the Teske Field during that
> defense, a given PDS could potentially knock down more than a single
> squadron of fighters, something one cannot do normally.

This is all correct.  We just consider the 6-fighters-per-group number
an
arbitrary statement of how many markers to stick on the field and in
what
increments of fighters we buy bays for.  Functionally, if you've got 240
fighters we wouldn't bat an eyelash if you threw 12 groups of 20 rather
than 40 groups of 6.  We keep groups of 6 anyway because sometimes we
wish
to divide into smaller groups from the huge piles that will often come
up
(say, if a fast flanker ship wants a modest fighter screen), but if any
given confrontation of fighters with either other fighters or PDS comes
up, we don't mess with morale and the rolls are considered against the
block as a whole rather than as a series of discrete groups.  If you
kill
15 fighters out of a block, we just pull two markers off the board from
the block and consider a third marker to only represent 3 remaining
fighters,
rather than possibly taking one out of each of 15 fighters.

This makes the fighters a bit more powerful in some ways (no morale,
auto-
recombine), weaker in others (excess damage carries over to other
groups),
and VASTLY simplifies keeping track of how many fighters are on the
board
on this scale (since you don't have to keep 40 seperate tallies and keep
every single marker on the board straight).
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