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

The GZG Digest wrote on 4/29/2005 1:00 AM:

> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:06:11 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Grant A. Ladue" <ladue@cse.Buffalo.EDU>

>     All very true.  My point is that you are *already* encoding a PSB
into the
>   rules.

That's very true. However, the PSB that's encoded in the game 
(particularly no aft arc fire) is there to make the game better. As I'll

explain later, limiting the number of fighters attacking a ship has 
shown to _not_ make the game better.

>    I disagree.  What it can do is make your decision more reasonable. 
If the
>  number of pds you need to buy to make your ship invulnerable to
fighters is
>  more reasonable, then you will not be nearly as crippled when facing
a non
>  fighter using foe.

You are on the right track. If you take out one of the three parts of 
rock/paper/scissors, then you make fleet composition more interesting. 
The problem, though, is that limiting the number of fighters attacking a

ship may do nothing to this balance. And, if it does, you essentially 
remove fighter-heavy fleets as an option. This is bad because there are 
a _lot_ of genres and a _lot_ of players who like fighter-heavy fleets.

Limiting the number of fighters attacking a ship _was_ playtested. What 
they found was that it had very little impact on the rock/paper/scissors

thing, and introduced problems of its own.

I think the limit was 6 fighters attacking any given ship. This meant 
that anything short of a battledreadnought was destroyed outright, as 6 
fighter squadrons were usually enough to take out smaller ships, 
regardless of their PDS. Battledreadnoughts and above, though, could 
survive the fighters, and mount enough PDS to be invulnerable. The 
number of PDS was less (since they only had 6 squadrons, max, to contend

with) but they still needed enough PDS that they were at a serious 
disadvantage against non-PDS fleets. At the same time, it exasperated 
another problem in FT, that small ships are less powerful -- for the 
price -- than bigger ships.

You could boost PDS effectiveness, so that fewer PDS are needed. That 
makes fleets invulnerable to fighters, while making PDS-heavy fleets 
more viable against non-PDS fleets. However, as I mentioned above, a lot

of players _like_ fighter fleets. This rule would essentially kill 
fighter fleets.

What the unofficial fighter beta test rules do is similar to what you're

thinking: they take out one of the three tiers of the 
rock/paper/scissors triad and make the two remaining fleets viable 
against each other so that tactics decide the battle. The beta test 
rules don't eliminate the fighter fleet, they eliminate is the PDS-heavy

fleet.

The beta test rules change the balance quite a bit. They put limits on 
PDS anti-ship ability, making a PDS-heavy fleet less useful against a 
non-PDS fleet. At the same time -- and this is the key -- it allows 
non-PDS fleets to fire their main ordnance against fighters. Thus, 
PDS-heavy fleets can still be invulnerable to fighters, but they are 
even more vulnerable to non-PDS fleets. Non-PDS fleets now have a good 
chance against fighter heavy fleets. In fact, the optimum non-fighter 
fleet has a small amount of PDS, making them look a lot like the ships 
in the fleet books.

So, with the beta rules, the PDS-heavy fleet is the one that disappears.

It wins all the time against fighters, but loses all the time against 
non-PDS. A PDS light fleet, or one with no PDS, has a fighting chance 
against fighters but wipes the floor against PDS fleets. So, if you're 
not sure what your opponent will bring, you bring a non-PDS or light-PDS

fleet. If your opponent happens to bring fighters, you'll still have a 
good chance of beating him.

>    In any case, I wouldn't try to argue for this idea alone.	It
certainly can
>  be combined with the "all weapons fire on fighters" idea, and in fact
I fully
>  support that.

Which would hurt fighter fleets even more, as mentioned above.

Allan

-- 

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