Re: FB designs & fighters

On Fri, 03 May 2002 13:03:26 -0700, "Brian Bilderback"
<bbilderback@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Again, if one side is using custom jobs, why isn't the other?	and
what's to 
>say that modifications of the FB designs that CAN deal with custom jobs

>wouldn't be the next step in development amongst the powers?

To be effective, a custom job has to use fighters. You don't have any
other
way around it if you want to survive. The point system is supposed to
produce
ships that are, more or less, balanced for the same cost. This is not
the
case.

The problem, to get back to the essential issue, is the costing of
fighters.
As we have shown, FB1 ships are well balanced against each other, which
means
they are well balanced against ships with a small number of fighters,
say in
the less than 10 squadron range. The way FT is now, there is no option
against
a fighter heavy player than to go fighter heavy, or _very_ PDS heavy, in
response. Since even PDS is under priced versus fighters, going heavily
in the
PDS without buying fighters will mean that you will lose, just not as
badly as
ships without heavy PDS or fighters. The ship points can be equal, but
that
doesn't matter if you don't bring the same technology.

In FT, the fighters are underpriced. Sort of. Actually, the price of
fighters
works out rather well in the Fleet Books. A fighter's usefulness
increases in
a non-linear fashion. Twenty squadrons are more effective
point-for-point than
the cost of one squadron multiplied by 20. 

Depending on how this is fixed, it won't hurt fleets with large numbers
of
fighters. Those who like fighters can still continue to have massive
fighter
versus massive fighter games. What it should allow is for a player with
a
balanced fleet, one that would work well against fighters (though maybe
have
to work for it) and against battleships to hold its own.

Right now the only way to be effective against a min-maxed fleet is to
come in
with fighters. This gives those of us who don't particularly want to
fight
with huge numbers of fighters to produce a fleet using a different
philosophy
and still have a good game against min-maxed designs. A 5000 point fleet
should be effective against a 5000 point fleet. Right now, a 5000 point
fleet
made up of soap bubble carriers is _far_ more effective than any other
kind of
fleet. All that's being suggested is that a 5000 point fleet of ships
made up
of balanced designs have at least a fighting chance against a 5000 point
soap
bubble carrier fleet. Right now it does not.

However it's handled, I suspect the heavily "pro-fighter" people are
going to
scream and cry that the game was "wrecked" because fighters have been
made
less potent. 

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
unimaginable mortician was revealed!"