Re: Fighters

At 10:08 AM -0500 5/7/02, Allan Goodall wrote:
>On Mon, 6 May 2002 20:02:55 -0700, "Eric Foley" <stiltman@teleport.com>
wrote:
>
>>Yes, but there's a problem with this argument:  it goes both ways, and
>>you're not accounting for that. 
>
>Okay, here's the math.
>
>Komarov: 751 NPV.
>41 fighter squadrons: 738 NPV

umm 41 squadrons is 1107 points just for the bays.

Given a thrust of 1 and a fragile hull and FTL, you need 492 mass of 
ship to support that many bays costing 1845 points.

I'd hope that at a bare minimum 2583 points of weapons aimed at a 
single ship would destroy it handily.

Assuming more realistic carriers, say a Modified American pattern Ark 
Royal (not as armored, faster and carrying more fighters); 200 mass, 
690 points, weak hull main drive 5/FTL, with 9 PDS, and 9 fighter 
groups. Then you'd need 4 of these guys to get 36 fighter groups. 
That costs 2760 less the fighters. 36 standard fighter groups costs 
648.

Now, if you're someone like me who tries to run fighter groups that 
actually match something like the multi role functions of a carrier. 
Then you've got more points sunk into fighters that aren't going to 
do a thing against ships (Interceptors) and some points sunk into 
fighters that actually do more against ships but die faster than 1.5 
times their number (Attack and Torpedo bombers).

All this rule will do is push folks like me away from using carriers 
at all since it will now be pointless to have an Ark Royal on the 
table with 1 Interceptor, 2 Standard, 2 Attack and 1 Torpedo type 
fighter on the deck.

This kind of Ark Royal has parity with other carriers on other task 
forces if they don't have all Interceptors. If they have all Heavy 
fighters it gets a bit rough. The Best defense for fighters is your 
own fighters of similar quantities or less if you have heavies or 
Interceptors (or both or combo types).

By the same token, Ships fitted with all P-torps will make mincemeat 
of ships with heavy shield complements. The problem is that ships 
take years to build and folks get into phallus matching contests with 
designs that appear after a day's worth of "Munchkining". With FT/MT 
it was make the biggest ship in the class or make a Super massive SDN.

When I wanted to try the arsenal ship theory with a mixed component 
of MT missiles, I asked and described the ship. I wanted to try it 
out. It wasn't something that I threw at players every chance I 
wanted. When someone else in our gaming group started carrying cheese 
to every game one of our Resident Savasku players asked to try 
something. Have his fighters ready from the start. So, with two 
Savasku Carrier's worth of fighters and his Mother ships keeping 
their distance the 120 or so drones wandered over and proceeded to 
destroy the 500 mass station with 1 thrust point and lots of class 4 
beams.

Don't let the munchkins drive the game. Play your designs realistic. 
Play your games with theory and doctrine behind them and things will 
make more sense. There will be less need to 'fix' the game.

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