Fighter heap endurance

Was "Retrograde skirmishers" but we've gotten back into fighter
discussions
again so I changed the subject...

Oerjan wrote:
> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> >The average is probably about 60-80.  I think I've been pretty clear
> >about that. 
 
> No, you have not.

All right, if I wasn't before, I'm being clear now.
 
> >Heck, I've twice given you an exact count of ships and numbers of
> >scatterguns for a battleship-oriented force (90 scatterguns on five
> >ships in my K'V based custom force, 60 PDS on three screen-2
> cloak->capable battleships with ADFC in one of my more common groups).

> The Kra'Vak case, yes. You wrote that before you had tried the KV in
> battle, so I don't count it as an example of your average designs or
> fleet mixes.

The ships I designed for that particular game were roughly similar to
what
I'd probably fly as a custom KV-based force in a more average design.  I
originally envisioned about 95-100, wound up designing it with 90 for
the
actual game.  That's probably a number I'd aim to approximate in most
games
with my designs.
 
> In the latter case, you stated "10-20 PDS on each heavy battleship",
> without saying anything about a) how many battleships you were talking
> about in the fleet or b) whether or not there were any area-defence
> escorts around to support those ships.

I _did_ say exactly 20, in groups of three.  It _is_ true, however, that
I didn't specify what escorts they'd fly except that they probably would
throw nova cannons or needle beams, thus implying that they'd be their
own form of attached skirmish mini-squad rather than part of the main
phalanx, but OTOH, I wasn't completely clear on that one.

> >Keeping track of fighter endurance isn't terribly hard for me because
> >there are few situations where I will have any number of fighters
less
> >than the sum total that I'm flying actually fire at once.
 
> Not even when some but not all fighter groups use secondary movement?
> Or is *all* secondary movement free in your house rules, and not just
> the dodging of WGs/NCs? You haven't said.

No, secondary movement is not free in our house rules.	That _is_ a
pretty
good question, but my answer at this point is that I don't think I've
_ever_
used secondary movement for just part of the force.  I tend to fly my
fighters in a pretty monolithic mega-flotilla, such that they move and
attack
all at once.  When I fire, I tend to pile them all on one ship at a time
to
assure that ship's destruction, then move on to the next.  If I'm firing
on
more than one ship it'll be because (a) I'm not going to expose them to
much
more PDS fire on two ships than I would on one and (b) I'm not expecting
that either of your ships with meaningfully survive even if I divide my
fire
between two of them.  The thinking's pretty simple:  maximum damage for
minimum
exposure to counterattack.  If you were to divide your fleet up in hopes
of
dividing up my fighters, I probably wouldn't divide the fighters into
more
than two flotillas at a time anyway... which just means, at worst, I
have to
keep track of two numbers for the active piles on the board instead of
one.

When I fly them this way, keeping track of how many shots they've got
left
isn't usually terribly hard, because they'll usually all have the same
number.
If they don't it's usually when I've involved just some of them in
fighter
screens, in which case I'll usually just not bother having the
screen-duty
fighters use their last few shots over the whole because that would
expose
them to PDS fire in smaller numbers, thus making their attack that much
less
cost-efficient.  In those cases, I'll just bring the whole heap back to
their
carriers and refuel them all at once to resolve the disparity.

> >I'm talking about ships that might dedicate about 10-20% of their
total
> >weapons mass to point defense being played in my games.  Maybe as
   ^^^^^^^ ^^^^
> >high as 25% if they're really stocking up.  Noam, on the other hand,
has
> >suggested everything from his BDN that had a single class 6 beam and
> >42 PDS/2 ADFC (read:  48 mass on an offensive weapon and 46 mass
> >on point defence) to a destroyer with a single needle beam as its
only
> >offensive weapon and 5 PDS/ADFC (2 mass on offense, 7 on point
> >defense).

> 46 mass for point defences are 27.6% of the total Mass of Noam's ships
					      ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^	   ^^^^^
> (TMF 174 each). Your "maximum" 25% would be 44 mass for point
defences.
> Huge difference, no?

VERY huge, considering that I'm talking about one thing and you're
talking
about another.	Weapons mass != ships mass.
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