Re: [FT] Fighter thoughts

Grant A. Ladue wrote:

>  Actually, explaining anything to Lord Vader is potentially
unpleasant.  :-)

Exactly. It was nice knowing you, Grant Needa...

>Really though, the SW universe is a terrible one for this discussion.

So is the BattleStar Galactica universe. So is the Space: Above And
Beyond 
universe. So are the Babylon 5 and Renegade Legion universes, and any
other 
fighter-using SF universe I've seen to date where the background physics

are not derived from this particular game mechanic. (In fact, I strongly

suspect that the only SF universe which would *not* be a terrible one
for 
this particular discussion is one you yourself has created based on the 
game mechanics, and where your own game mechanics-derived background PSB
is 
therefore in force :-/ )

> >However, your proposed rule makes that distance less than *one
tactical
> >combat game turn's* worth of ship movement for any "excess" fighters
- thus
> >my above question about SHORT sprints.
>
>Unless I'm misremembering, fighters have a primary move of 24 mu, and a
>secondary move of 6 mu, right?

You are misremembering, though it doesn't matter for the discussion. 
Fighters have primary moves of 24 or 36 mu depending on whether or not 
they're Fast, and a secondary move of 12 mu no matter what type they
are.

>Now, the only way for a ship to outrun a fighter right beside it is to
be 
>accelerate past a move of 30 mu.

Past 36 or 48 mu/turn. That's seven or nine turns of acceleration from
zero 
by an NAC or FSE heavy cruiser straight out of FB1; less if the ship is 
already moving... usually about one turn's worth of accelleration if I'm

flying it :-/

>That means it's got one big honkin' engine or else it it was hauling
extra 
>fast to begin
>  with.

Extra fast? Personally I consider 30-35 mu/turn to be a pretty normal 
cruising speed for thrust-6 ships, but that's me :-/

>In the first case, shouldn't a giant engine *be* able to outrun a 
>small	fighter?

Outrun a fighter which itself consists mostly of engine, and has far
less 
mass for said engine to push? Very doubtful IMO, unless you're talking 
about much longer distances and time scales than you get in a tactical
FT 
battle.

>In the latter case, it doesn't seem like a short sprint to me.

Seven turns of movement from standstill for an NAC or FSE heavy cruiser 
still looks like a pretty short sprint to me, I'm afraid. Particularly
in 
stern chases (like the example you provided below), of course.

>I mean the rule as it is now means that a large ship can *never* outrun
a 
>small fighter,

Correct; and your original proposal also means essentially this same
thing 
- a large ship may be able to outrun SOME of the fighters, but your
concept 
means that it can never ever outrun ALL of them no matter how fast it
flies.

Your second concept - burn CEF whenever the fighter is moving faster
than X 
mu/turn - avoids this feature, but has an interesting feature of its
own: 
it explicitly forces the fighters to burn fuel to *maintain* an achieved

"higher-than-normal" velocity even if they're moving in a straight line.

Air resistance in deep space, or something? :-)

Over to the PDS-vs-fighters comparison:

>Ok, let's *really* simplify it:
>
>	  Assume a single ship being attacked by 3 salvo missile groups 
> (standard
>	  SM's).  No enemy is within range to fire at any fighters 
> screening the
>	  ship.  No ADFC or any form of outside assistance is available.
>
>	  Which is going to shoot down more missiles:
>		  4 PDS or
>		  2 PDS and 1 fighter group screening?
>
>That should adequately simulate a missile attack on a ship approaching
the
>enemy.

Interesting tactical situation. If there are no enemy ships nearby but
your 
ship is the target of missiles, you pretty much has to be the chaser in
a 
stern chase - your ship may be approaching the enemy, but the enemy
units 
are moving *away* from your ship (otherwise they'd almost certainly be 
close enough to shoot at your fighters by the time the missiles arrive)
and 
seem to be dropping missiles behind themselves to slow you down. The 
absence of any friendly ships suggest that your ship is singlehandedly 
trying to chase down an enemy squadron... not necessarily a good
tactical 
idea, but if you're a battledreadnought chasing enemy cruisers or
similar 
it could work out OK. (The admiralty might ask some rather pointed 
questions about what a BDN is doing haring off without its escorting 
lighter units, but let's assume that your escorts have already been 
destroyed/crippled in the earlier fighting. Could even be the last
turn's 
missile launch that nailed them, of course.)

But I digress. In this specific situation, the PDSs don't need *any* FCS
or 
ADFC guidance at all (there is only one possible target for the enemy 
missiles to attack, all the PDSs are mounted on that one target, and PD 
weapons don't need FC support to engage missiles that engage the ship 
they're mounted on); similarly the fighters have no use for their
inherent 
better targetting flexibility - so you're only comparing the 4 PDSs 
themselves with 2 PDSs + 1 fighter group.

The 4 PDSs fire 4 dice at the missiles; the PDS/fighter combo fires 8
dice 
- ie. exactly twice as much. If you only look at the number of missiles 
shot down, it should be pretty trivial to determine which of the two is 
more effective.

However, the total *cost* (ie., including the cost of the basic hull 
structure, engines etc. supporting the systems) of those 4 PDSs is only 
20-25 pts whereas the total cost of 2 PDSs + 1 fighter group is 70-80
pts 
(or even more, for some designs). In other words, the PDS/fighter combo 
shoot down *twice* as many incoming missiles as the 4 PDSs, but it costs
at 
least *three times* as many points to buy. Suddenly the choice isn't
quite 
as clear-cut any more, particularly if you have a limited amount of
points 
to buy your ships with.

If you add some FCSs and/or ADFCs to the 4 PDSs, their total cost goes
up 
quite fast - which pushes the balance further towards the PDS/fighter 
combo. If you add in anything that could shoot your fighters down before

your fighters can attack the incoming missiles, the PDS/fighter combo no

longer gets its original 2:1 firepower advantage over the 4 PDSs, which 
pushes the balance the other way instead.

 From Grant's later posts in this thread:

>BDN's and SDN's frequently have 4+ PDS and 1 or more groups of
>fighters.  They could well be better off dropping the PDS and adding
another
>fighter group.

As you can see above, doing this would also increase these ships' points

cost a fair bit.

>The negative is that the enemy can shoot up your missile/fighter
defenses, the
>increased mass (not that big a deal on the larger ships),

The increased *mass* isn't that big a deal. The increased *cost* can be 
quite significant however.

>and the potential of running out of cef.

That's a pretty damn high potential, unless the battle ends quickly :-/

>The positive is [snip a number of true positives] no vulnerability to 
>threshold checks, and fire directed at your defenses is fire *not* 
>directed at your ship.

"No vulnerability to threshold checks" is a pure red herring: fire
directed 
at your defending fighters *destroys* (cannot be restored by damage
control 
parties) one "PDS equivalent" (ie., fighter) per beam hit inflicted, 
instead of *damaging* (can be restored by damage control) on average 1-2

PDSs in the first threshold check after some 20-30 beam hits (for the
FB1 
BDNs and SDNs that is; for custom designs these numbers will of course
vary 
quite a bit).

Similarly the fact that fire directed at your defending fighters isn't 
directed at your ship is also a bit of a red herring: while your *ship* 
doesn't risk losing any weapons to threshold checks as long as the enemy

concentrates on the fighters, your *fleet as a whole* loses one beam
die's 
worth of offensive firepower for each beam hit on the fighters.

(Generally speaking, you seem to be thinking in terms of one single ship
at 
a time. Unless your entire fleet actually consists of only one single
ship, 
this approach has a rather large numbers of pitfalls - you need to look
at 
the entire fleet as a whole to avoid them.)

> >PDS and fighters definetly, but just fighters...eeek.
>
>Don't they typically exceed the number of available of PDS as well?

On a single ship, yes. In an entire fleet, usually not (though of course
it 
depends on the exact fleets used).

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