Re: Fighters and Hangers

[agoodall@xxxxxxx]

Randall wrote

> Some nit-picking, 10 fighter are not likely 
> to kill a cruiser in one turn.  

Okay, say a destroyer. Or add enough fighters to make it possible to kill the cruiser.

> Bob was 
> foolish for jumping the fighter's already assigned to attack, he needs 
> to jump ones that haven't been assigned.

Won't make much of a difference, as long as Jack wasn't silly enough to have them clumped together. Jack moves to Destroyer 1. Bob moves against one of Jack's unassigned fighters. Jack moves a fighter to Destroyer 2. Bob moves against one of Jack's unassigned fighters. Jack now has 8 fighters to move. He could have all 8 of them jump on one of the ships already assigned, so he now has 9 fighters going up against a destroyer (instead of 10 in my first example). 

> And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem.  (Dirtside has 
> solved this problem, in an elegent way, IMHO)

I wondered if you were going to bring that up. SG2 has the same thing. It won't help matters much if splitting squadrons on the fly are allowed, and will probably make things worse. Say Jack goes first. He moves one fighter into contact with one of Bob's fighter squadrons, pinning it in place. Bob elects to wait as he still only has one fighter squadron left to move. Okay, so Jack moves another fighter to pin _that_ squadron in place. Now Bob can't move and jack has 10 fighters he can move as a lump. 

You have to allow Bob to be pinned, though. If you don't, Bob has too much of an advantage. If you don't let fighter squadrons pin others in place, Jack could jump one of Bob's squadrons with all of his fighters, and then Bob could simply move it out of the way. You could allow some sort of proportional pinning, but what proportion is fair? If it's at least 2:1 odds, then a squadron of 2 fighters could never pin down an enemy squadron of 5 or more fighters. They would never dogfight unless the bigger squadron wanted to, which isn't fair either.

This is why allowing variable sized fighter squadrons opens up a whole can of worms. 

> If you allow variable group numbers, why enforce grouping in 
> space?  Ie.  Bob has 1 group of 6, Jack has 6 groups of 1.  Bob splits 
> his group into 6 groups of 1, and engage's as per normal.

The argument was that one fighter group of 6 was just as effective as six fighter groups of 1. What Steve and I have been showing is that isn't the case, and that there are problems when you allow variable sized squadrons. If you allow splitting, in essence you have changed it so that each fighter squadron has 1 fighter in it, period. You may have a group of 6 moving on one stand, but that's essentially just to ease movement. Do you really want to play FT with each fighter mounted on its own stand? 

> Finally, as I read the rules, I see no reason why groups of 1, 2, 10 or 
> 50 aren't allowed.  The rules explicitly provide for mass per fighter, 
> of hanger space, thus giving the ability to hold partial groups of 
> fighters as is. 

If you have fighter groups of variable size, the guy with the smaller size always has an advantage, as Steve and I have been showing. Two fighter groups of 3 are better than 1 fighter group of 6. You want to put your fighters in groups of 24? Great, I'll play with mine still in groups of 6. Or groups of 1. I'll have the advantage for the same number of fighters.

Is there a reason for not allowing fighter squadrons of 1 fighter? Not really... except it has a horrible effect on speed of play. So, a minimum size needs to be set, as there's always going to be an advantage to having squadrons of the minimum size, and no advantage to having squadrons bigger than the minimum size. So, what should we set as a minimum size? How about... 6, which is what Jon has done in the RAW.

--
Allan Goodall              agoodall@att.net
http://www.hyperbear.com   agoodall@hyperbear.com