Re: Fighters....Re: Full Thrust vs Starmada

The GZG Digest wrote on 4/28/2005 1:00 AM:

Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:52:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@cse.Buffalo.EDU>

> Now now, the basic premise of not limiting the number of fighters 
> that can attack based on range is itself tied to particular 
> backgrounds.	Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5, 
> heck *most* televised sf have fighters that need to get right up 
> close and personal to attack ships.  Not limiting the numbers of 
> fighters that can attack in these backgrounds would seem to require a
>  handwaving psb it would seem to me.

Ignoring for the moment that TV and movies have fighters "up close and
personal" with ships because it tends to be boring otherwise, I've read
sci-fi where fighter engagement ranges are far greater than that shown
on TV. I think I've seen some anime where fighters launch strikes at
ships from a hefty distance, but I'll let the anime experts comment on
that. Then there's good old reality. Modern fighters can engage surface
ships from as far away as 60 km and further. I can easily imagine "hard
SF" suggesting similar engagement ranges.

If you encode the PSB in the rules, then the rule makes no sense for
universes where the PSB makes no sense. This isn't a problem when you
write rules for a specific universe. However, FT prides itself on being
a generic game. If you encode PSB in the rules, you wreck FT's generic
nature.

> Bottom line, if limiting the number of fighters that can attack each 
> size of ship (perhaps based on mass) makes for a better game, then 
> the rule is far more important than the "reason" for it.

Does it make it a better game? What is this supposed to fix, anyway? It
makes lots of fighters less powerful. However, it does nothing to fix
the PDS imbalance. In fact, by limiting the number of fighters attacking
a ship you lower the amount of PDS needed to make a ship invulnerable to
fighters.

Let's go back to Oerjan's original rock-paper-scissors comment, where
fighter heavy fleets destroy anti-ship heavy fleets, PDS heavy fleets
destroy fighter heavy fleets, and anti-ship heavy fleets destroy PDS
heavy fleets. What this limitation does is makes it easier for PDS heavy
fleets to destroy fighter heavy fleets, and gives anti-ship heavy fleets
the capability of doing major damage against fighter-heavy fleets.

In other words, all viable fleets will be either anti-ship or PDS heavy,
with PDS heavy fleets looking more like anti-ship heavy fleets. Fighters
would not be viable.

-- 

Allan Goodall		http://www.hyperbear.com
agoodall@cmaaccess.com	  agoodall@hyperbear.com