Re: FB designs & fighters

Ryan Gill wrote:

>>>So then explain to me why St Jon included fighters and carriers in
the 
>>>game at all if they aren't realistic?
>>
>>Because Star Wars has fighters. Battlestar Galactica has fighters. 
>>Babylon 5, although it wasn't aired until well after FT was first 
>>published, has fighters. Lots of Anime has fighters. If you want to 
>>create a generic space combat game which can be used to game out
battles 
>>in any of these backgrounds, that game has to have space fighters.
>
>Ok, and under this new system the Death star never ever ever would have

>been destroyed by three squadrons of small fighters because it's 200
PDS 
>systems all would have been able to fire at every single squadron with
no 
>consideration to anything.

Incorrect, for two reasons:

1) The Death Star was not destroyed by "three squadrons of small
fighters". 
The original Death Star was destroyed by ONE fighter - specifically, one

fighter piloted by an Ace, who used a scenario house rule allowing him
to 
fire a Needle-style shot to take out the Death Star's power core... and
who 
was lucky enough to roll a "6" to hit with that shot.

2) The Death Star's guns, like those on the various Star Destroyers in
the 
movies, were ship-killers, not fighter-killers, and rather ineffective 
against fighters. I'd rate them as B1s at best, not as PDS.

>And the two Cylon Carriers that the two main characters fooled into 
>hovering too close to the planet surface would never have hidden
because 
>they were bluffed into thinking that 8 (or how ever many) squadrons of 
>fighters were on their way after them.

When was the other Base Star destroyed in that way? At the moment I can 
only recall the first one (in the pilot movie) <shrug> As in Star Wars,
the 
Base Stars's guns are used both against fighters and ships - ie. B1s,
not PDS.

>>However... all these shows have one thing in common: they're space
opera. 
>>Science FICTION. Realism as we know it has very little to do with any
of them.
>
>And in these shows, lots of large ships that show up and spew lots of 
>fighters will rip you a new one if you are over matched. That's why the

>Galactica was running.

No, the Galactica was running because it was threatened by enemies with 
resources an order of magnitude greater. You'd run too if you had a 
5,000-point fleet (...and that's counting the nominal points value of
all 
those unarmed refugee ships...) and had a 50,000-point fleet consisting 
entirely of warships looking for you - at those odds even a soap-bubble 
carrier force wouldn't survive very long.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."