Re: [FT] Questions from a new Full Thrust player

> >1) Where exactly are the advanced fighter rules?  (ie, torpedo,
> >interceptors)  Are they in FB2, or is More Thrust still in
production?  (I
> >have FT and FB1)
 
> [C]The advanced fighter types should be in FT1. I think, not having a
copy
> in front of me right now.

The fighter types were originally in MT.  New costs and movement rules
are
in FB1, and a repeat and revision of their abilities are in FB2.

> >2) What sort of size fleet are people normally playing?  We've played
a
> >2000 and 3000 pts per side (2 players per side) game, and are leaning
> >towards 2000 each person.  What has people's experience been for
'ideal'
> >size fleets?
 
> [C]We tend to lean towards to 1500 or so points a piece, using fairly
> standard FT1/2 fleets and stuff. Stiltman uses much much bigger fleets
but
> chops out huge amounts of the paperwork that is associated with big
fleets.
> (and large amounts of fighters) No real fleet size is ideal but around
> 1500-2000 seems to work for a small game of 3-4 people to be completed
in
> 2-3 hours. 

Corey's description of my habits with big fleets is actually pretty
accurate.
My gaming group and I have taken a lot of additional steps (over and
above
the basic rules) to make handling fleets a lot easier and simpler, and
as
a result we have little trouble scaling our battles however big we want.
 We
routinely play five- and ten-thousand point battles inside an hour or
two.
Five is our usual size for a task force encounter, ten if it's
considered a
major engagement.

A few of our ways of doing things that, IMO, make it easier to handle
larger
fleets:

1.  We don't fill out full display pages of all of our ships.  Instead,
we
keep a reference page(s) handy on what our ships are, and just jot down
a
list on a piece of scratch paper of what their armor and hull strengths
are
at a given time.  This way, you don't feel any particular pressure to
play
the same ships every time, because all you have to do is look up the
ships
and write a few numbers down and you're there.

2.  We use what we consider "simplified" fighter rules.  In simple
terms, we
consider the six-fighter-per-group amount to be an arbitrary figure for
the
convenience of telling us how many counters to use in a given group.  If
you
fire into a pile of fighters, you tally up however many casualties you
inflict
and take off a clean number of counters and mark down the remainder in
the
one wounded group somewhere.  No fighter morale rules, no "I have to
stop
counting kills because I did six", no "I have two fighters in this
group,
three in this one, one in this one, five in this one, etc".  Just plop
the
counters down and fire at them as if they were one big group.

3.  We don't bother with move orders unless ship speeds, cloaking
devices,
and/or placed weapons make it an issue that might become important.  If
maneuvers aren't an issue on a given turn, we don't sweat it.  (And on
most
turns, they aren't.)

4.  We use simultaneous damage.  All the fighters and placed weapons
hit,
threshold phase, all the ship-to-ship weapons hit, threshold phase, no
initiatives or anything else to muck things up.

There are a few issues that some people sometimes take with my playing,
and
when I'm mixing it up with people outside my own group I generally just
defer
on whatever they take issue with.  Some people accuse me of overpowering
fighters with our way of doing things; my experience is that you do have
to
adjust your designs a bit, but that fighters aren't unbalanced beyond
that.
Fighter advantage is certainly helpful in my games, but doesn't win
games
by itself against solid opposition.
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