Re: Fighters and Hangers

Jared Hilal wrote:

> >...I suggest that you read this post:
> >
> >http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00034.html
> >
> >which was posted to this list in July 2000, ie. after FB2 was
> >published, and therefore supercedes it. Specifically,
> >
> >"For the record, a fighter is less than 1 mass (probably much less),
> >but needs 1.5 mass of bay and support stuff."
> >
> >Jon hasn't said anything more on this subject since then, so this is
> >what we have to work with.
>
>That message is dated 4 July 2000.
>
>In your own message in that thread, dated 5 July 2000:
>
>http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00085.html
>
>you wrote:
>"I suspect this'll become somewhat more common with the explicit rules
>on fighter rearming and reorganization in FB2."
>
>Which sounds like FB2 had not been released at the time that you wrote
this.

As Steve wrote FB2 was released in April 2000; and I did indeed use the 
future tense because there were still many players who hadn't yet read
it 
at the time of posting - and many of those who had, hadn't yet had time
to 
comment on it.

>My own view is best summed up by Roger Books' reply to Mr. Tuffley in
>the same thread on 4 July 2000:
>
>http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00074.html
>
>where he wrote:
>"In terms of game balance how does being able to switch from small
>craft bay to hanger bay affect play?  Does it give a major advantage?

The answer to which is unfortunately "yes". Not as long as all the bays 
involved are 9 Mass, certainly - but not all small craft bays are 9
Mass, 
and you *don't* want your local powergamers to start thinking of those 
differently-sized bays in relation to fighter group sizes since changing

the number of fighters in a full-strength group affects just about every

aspect of the fighter game balance (such as it is :-/ ).

The end result is that you either come up with PSB explaining why
fighters 
can't use small craft bays, or you try to invent PSB explaining why 
full-strength fighter groups have to consist of exactly 6 fighters (6 
"effective" fighters that is, if you scale them down as suggested in 
previous posts)... and I strongly suspect that you'll find the former 
alternative to be *much* easier than the latter.

> >If you want large ships vs small fighters, the two easiest options
> >are to play with actual large ship designs and to say that each
> >fighter group actually represents more than 6 fighters even though
the
> >group as a whole has 6 "hit points".
>
>That only works up to a certain point, and that point is very low on
the 
>scale.

Seems to have worked pretty well for Dean Gundberg's "CrossOver"
scenarios 
<shrug>

While your listing of mass and volume data for various Star Wars ships
is 
impressive, it completely ignores what we see on the movie screen -
namely 
that even though Star Wars capital ships are extremely huge compared to 
Star Wars fighters, and even though there aren't very many fighters
around 
(*) individual fighters can inflict griveous damage on capital ships.
And 
no, I'm not just thinking of a certain psychic hot-shot :-/

(*) A Victory-class Star Destroyer is over half a mile in length yet
only 
carries two 12-fighter TIE squadrons, and even the huge Executor
(claimed 
to be some eight miles long by the sources I was able to find on a quick

web search) carries a mere 12 squadrons. The Rebel Mon Calamari cruisers

carry 5-6 12-fighter squadrons each.

In B5 fighters seem to pack less punch relative to the capitals than
they 
do in Star Wars - in spite of the fact that the size ratio between
capital 
ships and fighters is generally smaller in B5. B5 fighters are usually
only 
an annoyance in the larger battles, able to pick off surface systems but

rarely doing more than that; and most of the large ships destroyed in B5

battles seem to be destroyed by other large ships (unlike Star Wars were

the capitals seem to be able to pound each others for ages without
anything 
much happening - unless of course the "capital" firing happens to be a 
Death Star!).

Honor Harrington battles are far worse for the smallest units, of
course. A 
pinnace or assault shuttle is able to damage a defenceless freighter,
but 
its only chance to hurt a warship is to bring its wedge up inside a boat

bay or possibly to physically attach limpet mines to the hull of the 
ship... and the pinnace is rather slower than the warship too, so would 
need a fair amount of luck to catch the warship outside planetary orbit.
As 
for modelling Shrikes as escort-sized FT ships, well...  the Minotaur 
carried 96 Shrikes, and the later LAC carrier classes - particularly the

Havenite ones - had larger strike groups. An average heavy task force in

the latest HH book includes 2-3 of these carriers, occasionally more, so

can be expected to have some 2-300 LACs. Are you really serious about 
modelling each of those LACs as an individual TMF 20 ship, or even a TMF
4 
one? Sure, modelling the LACs as "fighters" would mean that DDs become
very 
small too - but since they're pretty much ignored in any HHverse battles

involving capital ships, that seems quite appropriate to me.

All in all, I'd say that if you model the game on what you actually see
on 
the screen rather than on theoretical mass considerations, the "certain 
point" beyond which using large capital ships and 12- or 18-fighter
groups 
no longer works is *far* higher up on the scale than you believe :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry