Re: [GZG] Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions

Eric Foley wrote:

> >Being unable to change roles on the fly takes most of the evility out
of
> >it, though... you get to launch them as (extremely expensive)
interceptors
> >*or* as torpedo bombers, but if you want to use them in the other
role
> >you'll need to recover them on a carrier for rearming. Very useful in
a
> >campaign with reasonably explicit supply rules; not quite so useful
in a
> >single battle.

(The text below is snipped for brevity rather than clarity, but I think
I 
managed to keep the most important bits. The original post should be 
available from the list archives, wherever they are located at the
moment.)

>[...] In our old games, our safest bet was to have a first wave of 
>fighters to establish superiority and a second wave to do the bombing
run. 
>The first wave had to be either interceptors or some sort of regular 
>fighters [...] and it was a dilemma whether to risk bringing
interceptors 
>that would be useless if your opponent had no carriers. The second wave

>pretty much had to be torpedo bombers, [...]
>
>Now higher-quality fighters can blur the line between the two waves
[...] 
>if you ran into no carriers, you just launch them all as torpedo
bombers 
>right away. If you ran into fighter opposition, you launch some or all
of 
>them as interceptors, or send ahead a somewhat cheaper superiority
fighter 
>in a first wave [...]

Oh, I fully agree that the swing-role types greatly reduce the risk of 
bringing the wrong fighter mix. I just don't think that they're any more

evil than a *correctly-guessed* mix of single-role fighters, due to
three 
compensating drawbacks:

1) High cost. While a swing-role Int/TB group only costs ~10% more than
a 
single-role TB group (once you include the cost of the fighter bay and
its 
supporting hull, engines etc.,	ie. an extra 40-45 pts or so per group
in 
the NPV system), it is nearly 50% more expensive than a single-role 
Interceptor (or Standard) group - so for any given fighter budget, a
mixed 
force of single-role fighters weighted towards the interceptor side can 
match the swing-role force interceptor for interceptor-role swinger and 
still have a bunch of single-role TB groups left after all the 
interceptor-equivalents on both sides have wiped one another out.
Similarly 
if the enemy only brings cheap interceptors, a screen worth merely half
of 
your fighter budget is enough to force you to deploy most or all of your

swing-role fighters as interceptors in order to win the fighter
superiority 
with minimal losses to your very expensive swing-role fighters - which
ties 
in with drawbacks 2 and 3 below.

(Sure, such a mixed fighter force or pure interceptor screen is more
risky 
to buy than the belt-and-braces swing-role ones, but no more so than it 
used to be under the FB rules... in fact, if the option to take
swing-role 
fighters makes *you* more inclined to bring fighters to the battle at
all, 
then *your opponent* also runs less of a risk of wasting points if he 
brings single-task interceptors! Isn't the pre-battle guessing game fun?
<g>)

2) Rearming time. Once the fighter superiority battle is won the TB 
component of a mixed force of single-role fighters can attack
immediately; 
OTOH swing-role Int/TBs that started out as interceptors need to rearm
for 
the TB role which will take them at least a couple of turns (and
probably 
more, if their carriers are outside the enemy close-combat ships'
range). 
Of course you can keep some swing-role squadrons in reserve and send
them 
alone on an anti-shipping strike while the interceptor-roled ones are 
rearming, but due to drawback 1 above doing this will leave you with a 
rather smaller second wave than if you'd either used a correctly-guessed

mix of single-role fighters or waited for the rearming swing-role
groups. 
OTOH keeping all your fighters back to send in a consolidated TB wave
later 
on leaves your close-combat ships to fend off the enemy's warships for 
those extra turns, so either option leaves some part of your forces to 
fight unsupported for longer than a correctly-guessed mixed  force of 
single-role fighter would.

3) Rearming attrition. The fighter rearming rule makes any fighter group

that scores a '1' on its rearming roll unable to re-launch for the
duration 
of the battle. Even though your swing-role fighters will probably have
more 
favourable numbers (and thus take fewer losses) in the fighter
superiority 
battle than the interceptor component of a mixed force of single-rolers 
would, the rearming attrition means that you'll usually only have a few 
extra TB-role groups for the subsequent anti-shipping strike than you
would 
with a mix of single-role fighters - and you get those few extra TB-role

groups at the cost of the time delay discussed above.

  (Yes, that 1/6 attrition rate for rearming is an optional rule and "if

you don't like it, change it", but it is the fighter rearming rule the 
equally optional swing-role fighter rule was written for. If you make
the 
fighter rearming rule more lenient, then the cost of swing-role fighters

would need to increase as well to compensate.)

So all in all, I don't see the swing-role option as any more *evil* than

correctly-guessed mixes of single-role fighters. *Different* yes, in 
particular much less likely to be total turkeys, but they have a number
of 
drawbacks to go with their advantages.

>A true high-quality fighter force can answer to different needs with
good 
>effectiveness and not be caught in a paper-rock-scissors guessing game 
>where you have to guess which fighters you want to embark.

Not exactly true, as shown above... the swing-role fighters add a 
continuous spectrum of intermediate positions between rock, paper and 
scissors, but they don't remove the guessing game entirely.

>Something other than the overwhelming quantity-over-quality methods of
the 
>Sopi and their bubble pods and basestars pouring maximum fighters for 
>minimum ship cost into the fray would actually be viable regardless of 
>what your opponent was doing.	It's more interesting, more fun, and
more 
>believable (if that even applies to a sci fi wargame) that quality 
>fighters could be more flexible.

Oh, agreed. But this is, at least IMO, something quite different from
your 
initial response of "I don't know why I'd ever use any other sort of 
fighter" which very much implied that you considered them the nuke of a 
"rock-paper-scissors-NUKE" game <g>

>Good stuff, Hugh.

x2 :-)

Regards,

Oerjan
orjan.ariander1@comhem.se

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

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l