Re: {Q} Efficient Designs

> > PDA's are single purpose anti-fighter weapons, while the 1-bat can
be used
> > in two roles (anti-ship, anti-fighter).  How many fighters can a
PDA defend
> > against before being overwhelmed?  I think the answer is 2.5 or 3.
So you
> > need at least 2 PDA's per-expected flight of fighters.

Stilt said
> This is simply too low.  What you're saying here is that if your
opponent
> has 30 fighter groups, all you need is 60-72 PDS in order to defend
against
> them.  This is simply too little; you'll do quite a bit of damage to
their
> fighters but they'll do far more damage to your ships.

Using Stilt's assumptions (all fighters are lumped together, no
fighter morale) and assuming your opponent forgot to add heavy
fighters to the mix, for 30 fighter groups (180 fighters) you'd need
225 PDS available to defend whatever ship(s) the fighters decide to
swarm.	Hm.  Assume that your opponents fly from Arks Royal, that's
five of them for 3450 points + 30 standard fighter groups at 18 points
is 540, so that's 3990 points.

Divided by 30 = 133 ash Shaulahs - 10% for non-FTL  = 120 SMR ...
Just enter the map at high enough speed, recognize that some of your
crews will be enjoying the houris later that afternoon, and launch.
Perhaps you lose 30 boats on the way in to one round of fighters, then
you launch 90 missile salvos of which let's allow the fighters to kill
30.  So your problem is, can you arrange to lay out 60 SMR so that
each of the 5 Arks Royal eats 5 salvos?

Or you could put some juicy target (say, an arsenal ship) in front and
a destroyer 30mu behind.  When the fighters swarm the bait, the
destroyer fires a Wave Gun.  Your ship takes 7 damage (assuming you
haven't lost it to fighter strikes already) but the wave gun wipes up
all the fighters in the area.

Assuming you allow mixed species tech, you could also just drop 1
point Plasma Bursts where you plan to end your movement.

So there's more than one way to skin a cat--but all of them are messy.