Re: Fighters and Hangers

[agoodall@xxxxxxx]

Rand wrote:

> So what's the difference between dogfighting and ranged combat? No, 
> don't give me the snappy answer. Yes, thier bases are touching. So? So 
> you've got different rules, why?

Fighters attack ships out to 6 mu. Someone at some point probably said, "Okay, so I can attack a ship 6 mu away. If a fighter group ends its movement within 6 mu of me, why can't I fire at it instead of a ship?" Makes sense, otherwise all sorts of weird things happen, like two enemy fighter groups end their movement 1 mu apart but can't fire on each other, meanwhile an enemy ship is 6 mu away and that _can_ be attacked.

I'm almost positive the dogfight concept came later, as a way of pinning fighters and as a way of representing interceptors engaging the FT equivalent of fighter bombers. The idea is that the fighters should have to worry about enemy fighters before they can attack a ship. The dogfight rules were necessary to have fighters behave as they do in real life: screen friendly ships from enemy fighters by engaging the enemy fighters with your own fighters.

It made sense when one fighter group was up against another in a dogfight that the fighting occur simultaneously. When multiple fighter groups ended up in a furball, the simultaneous resolution system was seen as a problem. It may have involved different fighter types. If I have torpedo fighters and heavy fighters in a furball against your interceptor fighters, and resolution is simultaneous, who gets to assign casualties? What if different types of fighters have different defensive capabilities? It's easier and fairer to just do it in initiative order.

So, out of the noblest of reasons we have three different types of fighter combat resolution... not including resolution of fighter attacks against _ships_.

> Why can't they split fire? I roll for each unit in a group on whether it 
> hit's or not, so they certainly aren't using a mutual targeting system. 
> So why only one target at range?

If you allow fighters to split fire among enemy fighter units, it makes sense that you allow them to split fire against enemy ships, too. However, you have to declare fire against enemy ships so that PDS fire is resolved when the ship is activated. Can you imagine the mess you could get into when a player with multiple types of fighters starts dividing up his fire amongst multiple ship and fighter targets? "I want two heavies from this squadron firing at the destroyer, one heavy at the corvette, and the three remaining heavies at the cruiser. Now, I want two torpedo fighters firing at the corvette, and the remaining four firing at the cruiser. With this third squadron, I want..." It becomes very hard to remember what fighter is attacking what.

Since one of the hallmarks of FT is simplicity, not allowing split fire just makes the game a lot easier to play.

> If a group is in a dogfight already (one group moves at a time) then 
> according to rule 2, they can't be fired on by anyone else. OR, rule 3 
> means that part of rule 2 is over-ruled, and makes other segments of 
> rule 2 useless/impossible. (Can't fire at anyone else, simultanseous 
> fire isn't)
> 
> So, either rule 2, or 3. Not both...

There's no contradiction.

Rule 2 is one fighter squadron engaging another, forming a dogfight. No ships or fighters may fire into the dogfight from a distance.

However, other fighter squadrons can still move into the dogfight, resulting in a furball. Rule 2, that says no ships may fire into the dogfight and no fighters may fire into the dogfight from a distance, is still preserved. A furball allows fighters to join the dogfight. 

Rule 3 is needed. Say I have a squadron down to 1 fighter, a squadron of 6 fighters, and you have a squadron of 5 fighters. If you move first and engage my single fighter in a dogfight, it doesn't make sense that my squadron of 6 fighters can't engage you in the same dogfight. Realistically my fighters should be able to jump in and help. That's just one reason for the furball rules.

Okay, so let's do away with the rule that stops you firing into a dogfight. Then you get cases of a single fighter pinning a squadron of 6 in place, and other fighters firing into the dogfight without any chance of retribution. How do you resolve that? Well, with split fire, allowing the fighter squadron that's pinned to fire at the guys not involved in the dogfight. Oh, but then you have the issue of split fire, with fighters firing all over the place at different targets, including ships. That gets very confusing and difficult to adjudicate PDS fire. How do you eliminate that confusion? Simple. Activate fighter squadrons like you would a ship. They fire at whatever they want to, just like a ship. Oh, but then you have problems remembering when a ship had already used up its PDS attacking another squadron and with how many PDS. After all, if you allow split fire by squadrons you have to allow split fire by PDS. You've also done away with the dogfight rules that were intende!
 d to let one squadron grab the attention of another squadron. Ignoring the fact that we now just broke the dogfight rules for a second, how do you fix the bookkeeping issue with regard to PDS? You could allow PDS to fire like any other ship's weapon system. That's no good, as PDS is a defensive system that should trigger on fighters attacking it. It would mean that PDS couldn't be used before the ship is activated, so even though fighters are attacking a ship, the ship couldn't use PDS to fire back until it was activated. This now becomes an argument in favour of simultaneous fire resolution, but that takes away one of the key tactical aspects of the game, and still doesn't get around the "how many fighters were there before they were shot at?" bookkeeping issue.

Now you might have an idea of the problem areas involving fighters and why the rules evolved the way they did.

> Um... no... I'd assume that a dogfight, since it _depends_ on 
> base-to-base contact, it's declared in movement, not fire, phase. Which 
> would mean it's effect would last through multiple phases, leading one 
> to conclude rather easily that it lasts through one more phase (firing) 
> intact.

Then you have a bookkeeping issue with lots of fighters. "Was that fighter in a dogfight?" You also get other cheese, like a squadron of 6 engaging a squadron of 1 at close range to other fighters and ships with PDS. The ships and the fighters can't fire on the 6-fighter squadron because it is in a dogfight, even if that single fighter was destroyed early in the turn.

Your idea makes a certain amount of sense, but it's easier to play the game by not allowing fire against fighters in a dogfight. You'd also have people looking at it and saying, "Can you explain the PSB that has 6 fighters destroy one fighter, but no one else can fire at them for the rest of the turn?" If two squadrons touch each other throughout from the movement phase until the end of the game turn, it abstracts the fact that they were engaged in a dogfight for the whole game turn. If one of the squadrons is destroyed before that, it abstracts the fact that the dogfight ended early and that there is no longer a threat of hitting friendly fighters.

None of this touches the _real_ problems with fighters, such as the fact that large numbers of fighters are disproportionately powerful for their cost.

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