Boarding, was Re: [FT] Fighter thoughts

Oerjan wrote:

 >>Now, the other week, I had a small 2000 cpv fleet, consisting of 4 
destroyers, 1 heavy cruiser and 2 light carriers which between them had 
24 PDS, 26 B-2 and 8 heavy fighter groups. >>These in turn were swarmed 
by 55 boarding pods (from a 4000 cpv fleet), fortunately in three waves.

In the end I only lost 1 destroyer to boarding, [...]

 >What boarding combat rules did you use?

We were using the boarding cutter and boarding action rules designed by 
Beth and Derek Fulton (hi guys, great rules, thanks for sticking them up

for us lesser mortals to use!). The only changes we made were to the 
boarding cutters themselves. In the first game using them with the new 
fighter rules we found 2 CEF were not enough to make them useful for 
more than 1 turn, and the player using them found 50 to 60 of them a bit

beyond his accountancy skills, so we came up with the idea of replacing 
their CEF with a simple die roll. At the end of each turn 1 roll was 
made per surviving pod to see if life support/power failure had occurred

or indeed if the unpleasant things inside the pods had got bored and 
simply devoured each other. If it had only made a primary move then the 
pod was removed from play on a roll of 6, if it had made a secondary 
move and/or jinked it was removed on a score of 4+. This system, though 
fairly arbitrary, worked well considering the number of pods/cutters in 
play, and led to many an amusing Benny Hill (please forgive me) style 
chase sequence with cutters chasing starships around the place.

When fired on I treated the cutters as heavy missile's under the new 
rules, though for heavy weapon hits such as pulse topes or K-guns we 
actually rolled for damage as the pods do have 2 hull points.

Regards,

Matt Tope