Re: [GZG] FT:XD changes, part 1

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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lIf fighters are
very hard to replace, then their campaign cost (if you want to think of
it that way) would have to reflect that. At that point, other units
other than carriers would come into vogue and you have problem solved on
the mass-fighter appearance. OTOH, you haven't solved the BDN single
fighter squadron being worthless. 

I don't think a BDN with a single squadron is worthless. I can see the
single squadron being used as:
Extra point defence if attacked by enemy ordnance.
Recon to de blip the enemy at long range and get a scan of what you are
going up against. Also to stop the enemy getting such information from
your ship.
Pursuit of enemy scout ships, frigates and destroyers that your BDN has
encountered and you want to stop them getting away, a squadron of
fighters could make a real mess of an enemy unit that is trying to
activate it's FTL and so can't manouvre or use weapons.
 
All of these uses would be relatively high survivability so casualties
would be low. Certainly compared to attacking enemy fleet ships.
 
In our games (and our ships are custom designs with higher point defence
suits) fighter groups are pretty much one shot.
 
Even if you adjusted the existing fleet SSDs to increase the PDS suits
all you do is make the problem a lot worse. If ships typically run with
10% of their mass as PDS then you either need to have a doctrine of
every ship is a carrier or you don't bother at all.
 
I think if you want to fix the ordnance "problem" then you need to
review the whole firing rules. Having completey different rules for
targetting fighters and for targetting small frigates seems to me to be
the root cause of the problem and you won't fix it until you have PDS as
short range rapid fire weapons at one end of a graduated scale of
weaponry.