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

There is also something to be said about thinking about a problem too
hard.

Isn't just about everything in FT situational in nature: armor,
screens, certain weapons tied to fast/slow platforms, movement styles,
etc.?

(Granted some situations are bigger offenders than others - but it's
situational and difficult to account for.)

Can you really ever fix that?  No.

This is the trap of a points system - while there may be a good
solution out there somewhere the minute you get it out to the genpop
someone will break it.

You are always going to have edge cases that will break a system.  For
me the fleet books set the tone for my games and designs so I was
never really concerned about the system's edge cases.

D.

On 5/3/10, Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Damond Walker <damosan@gmail.com>
>>On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com>
wrote:
>
>>> To some degree, I agree... although if you allow easy fire at
fighters,
>>> they just stop being effective.
>
>>They become less effective to be sure but they don't stop being
>>effective.  All this talk about fighters (for all these years) seems
>>to be keeping the rest of the system from moving forward.  Fighters
>>are much too cheap for what they bring to the table -- if everything
>>else stayed the same has anyone toyed with simply increasing the point
>>cost by 100% or so?  I'm sure someone has done this...
>
> "Fighters are too cheap for what they bring to the table"... this
statement,
> in and of itself, is not true, never has been, and never will be.  It
is
> _conditionally_ true if one side has a lot of fighters and the other
side
> has neither fighters nor a strong point defense.  It is quite false if
one
> side has a lot of fighters and the other side has a lot of point
defense.
>
> Fighters are not the only weapon in the game for which this is the
case,
> it's only the simplest one to use.  I could go on for hours about
other
> examples.  (e.g. A fleet with all slow battleships with wide arc
direct fire
> weapons but without point defense will get killed by salvo missiles,
which
> get killed by Kra'Vak escort cruisers, which get killed by the slow
> battleships again.)  When it comes to custom games where all the
gloves are
> off, a lot of the pre-game strategy is about balancing out your fleets
so
> you are prepared for a wide variety of things your opponents could
bring,
> and giving up as few "skunk jobs" where you're just caught unprepared
for
> what they've got as possible -- and you have to play in a group where
giving
> up a disastrous loss _because_ you gambled on something is considered
the
> worst case scenario (because in real wars, it is).  The end results of
this
> evolution can still be fun to play with, but they won't resemble the
fleet
> book ships _at_all_.
>
>>Thankfully I've only ever played small fleet games from the FBs so the
>>players couldn't easily bring hordes of fighters with them --
>>basically only light and fleet carriers.
>
> Yeah... and honestly, I do think that FB1 games are fun in their own
right,
> but I think that if you want a game quantified reason why they stay
that way
> and don't evolve into a fighterfest with much stiffer point defenses,
a
> logistical limit on the number of fighters is the best way to go. 
Even at
> that, the FB2 powers kind of throw the balance off in a different
direction
> altogether, because every one of them is better at either defending
against
> fighters or cranking them out themselves.
>
> E
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