Re: FB designs & fighters

At 4:40 PM -0500 5/6/02, Allan Goodall wrote:

>
>The problem righ now isn't with Ark Royals and other FB ships, its with
people
>who design soap bubble carriers to easily transport 20 fighter
squadrons
>around.

So if you change the rules, how will Ark Royals Fair against other FB 
ships? Ark

>  >Making fighters more expensive will make it harder to use fighters
in
>>a reasonable amount.
>
>Fighters don't need to be more expensive. Massed fighters need to be
more
>expensive. Or, put another way, 1 fighter squadron is worth 18 points.
20
>fighter squadrons cost 360 points but are worth WAY more than 360
points. A
>360 point vessel would be, what, a BC? Heavy cruiser? 20 squadrons can
shred a
>cruiser in one turn. Then, they move to the next and shred it. Since a
PDS can

What does 6 squadrons do against a Cruiser? It should shred it as 
well. Regardless. 6 squadrons is the weapons fit of an Ark Royal that 
makes it different from a Valley Forge. It should have such an 
effect. If 3 Valley Forges rolled up on a target they could

>
>Not useless. My favourite suggestion is allowing PDS to fire at
multiple
>squadrons, but it hasn't been tested.

Really all that will happen as I understand it is that the 
"effectiveness point" for fighters will be moved higher. Requiring 
more min-maxing in order to get more than one suicide mission of 
fighters. The best I can see is allowing limited use of PDS against 
fighters within 3" radius. Several DDs or CAs could buddy protect 
each other as they would during such an engagement.

This has always seemed reasonable to me. Perhaps the caveat of this 
would be that those ships would have to be "Netted together" in order 
to coordinate. Class 1s would have their 6" range on the anti-fighter 
role. Then, you could add that ADFCs allow PDS on that ship to fire 
at fighters out to 6" and Class-1s out to 12".

>
>Ummm... true in what sense??? We're talking sci-fi here! It's debatable
if
>"carriers" as defined in FT are realistic. If you want realism we'd
see, oh, I
>don't know, how about clouds of water vapour accelerated to significant
>fractions of C? Or intelligent missile swarms firing in on a fleet. Or
how
>about simply making SMs vector based, so that you can launch them at
speed 50
>and have them travel at 50 out of the tubes. "True carrier group
actions" are
>only "true" in comparison to modern day or World War II. If you want to
model
>"trule carrier group actions" you should be playing something like
General
>Quarters.

So then explain to me why St Jon included fighters and carriers in 
the game at all if they aren't realistic? I'm giving rational 
doctrine behind fighters and you're saying it's nonsensical. If the 
basic doctrine for fighters is non-sensical, then I guess the whole 
function of fighters in the NAC is the same as they had during the 
late stages of WWII. Does the NAC really have that much of an 
over-population of crop-dusting farmer's kids?

-- 
--
Ryan Gill			  rmgill@mindspring.com
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