Re: Fighters and Hangers

["Alan and Carmel Brain" <aebrain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>

> Not surprising, since the FT fighter-to-fighter rules are currently an 
> unholy mess :-(

> 1) Ranged combat (FT2 p.17): A fighter group can fire at any *one* fighter 
> group (no splitting fire) within 6 mu, as long as neither group is involved 
> in a dogfight or furball. 
> 
> 2) Dogfight (FT2 p.17): One *single* fighter group is in base-to-base 
> contact with one *single* enemy fighter group. 
> 
> 3) Multi-group dogfight aka "furball" (FB1 p.6): 

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Full Thrust fighter rules 
> don't need to be *amended* -  they need to be *completely replaced*.

Then there's the game-balance problems of attack fighters, heavy fighters,
the fact that there are a horde of special rules and systems for fighters
making them more complex than needed...

Let's get back to basics.

What do we *want* the fighter rules to accomplish? Here's my list - and others
will surely have different opinions.

1. To have something logical and reasonable for fighters in the Tuffleyverse.
2. To have a generic set of rules for other genres and settings.
3. Game balance, for only having a few fighters (as in FB1)
4. Game balance, for having huge quantities of fighters (the familiar Soap Bubble Carrier fleet)
5. With as few exceptional rules and special systems as possible.
6. To have Midway-analogs, Battle-of-Britain-analogs and Hunt-the-Bismark-analogs possible.

My bugbear is section 5. I like re-using game mechanics if at all possible.
We now have a reasonable selection of good mechanisms for getting to the
desired result, *without* making new ones.

What I would like to see:
Fighters are capable of taking any 1-mass weapon (such as a Beam-1) but with
the following restrictions:

a) Range is contact - they have to be in base-to-base contact with the target
to use it. For game purposes, they should be able to "Burn an endurance" to
move 3mu (vector) or 6mu (cinematic) after ship movement to do so, in initiative
order.
b) They must "Burn an endurance" to attack, which means they have a limited number
of shots.

Fighters may be bought with screens (simulating ECM etc) or 1 pt of "armour"
(that is, casualties are halved - it takes 2 pts to kill them). As 1 pt of
weaponry and 1 pt of armour/screens is a lot to put on a less-than-mass 
unit, the armour isn't as effective as normal armour, so round fractional
kills up. 5 hits = 3 kills, not 2. And certainly not 5 "half-kills" leaving
all fighters operational!

Then use all existing anti-ship and anti-fighter mechanics.

EXAMPLES:
A fighter with a PDS equivalent is capable of doing 1 pt of damage to a ship
on a 6 (no re-roll), but has the usual 4,5=1, 6=2+re-roll on other fighters
OR MISSILES.

A fighter with a B1 equivalent is capable of doing 1 hit on a fighter or
missile on a 5 or 6, but has the usual 4,5=1, 6=2+re-roll on an unscreened
ship.

Difficulties:
What about Kravak 1-shot scatterguns? What about Submunitions, also a 1-shot?
Fighter "screens" would affect PDS equivalents, but not B1 equivalents: is this
a bad thing? And there seems no place for Torpedo Fighters. Can weapons fits
be changed - have a PDS load, then after re-loading, a B1 load? What about
Phalons and SV?

Nonetheless... I think we can simplify things a lot if we just have Fighters
having either a PDS equivalent ( anti-fighter/missile with minimal anti-ship
ability) or B1 equivalent ( anti-ship with some self-defence and anti-missile
capability).

One possibility that would fit in with a lot of Genres is to have all
weapons being 1-shots, needing re-load before re-use. Fighters "escorting"
their carrier (in base contact with it, moving with it) are deemed to be
able to periodically pop back in for a top-up, so have unlimited re-loads.
(This would mean we couldn't have true 1-shot weapons like submunitions packs)
Because they're using their carrier's FC systems, they should be able to shoot
at anything within 6mu range, no need to be in contact.(Question: although
the "unlimited reloads" applies to fighters escorting carriers (only), what
about when they're escorting other ships? I'd say no unlimited reloads, but
can fire within 6", assuming there's at least 1 FC operational allocated
to the target ship. And when fighters are escorting carriers other than their
parent, the number of fighter groups that get "unlimited reloads" is equal to
the number of hangers / SV Drone Wombs )

This means that when using fighters independently, you need a lot of them,
to both do the initial strike, and as escorts to stop defenders from bouncing
your defenceless targets after they've fired. But when using them as 
"elephant escorts", carriers become quite mean if they mix-it with the
opponent's battlefleet at 6" range. Which would explain the NAC FB1 carrier
designs.

Any reactions?