Re: [FT] Unified Fighter Rules? Re: Re: [GZG] Re : Full Thrust Playtest? (Simon White)

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John Tailby wrote:

> Some immediate questions about the wording
>
> > Move fighters/missiles (Primary). Beginning with the player who
> > lost initiative, alternate moving one Fighter Group/Heavy Missile at a
> > time for their primary move distance.  Heavy Missiles pay one CEF for
> > a primary move; fighters do not.
> >    · Instead of moving, fighters within 3 mu of any ship-friendly or
> > enemy-may declare that they are screening that ship.  They move in
> > Phase 5 with their screened ship, rather than in Phase 3.
> >    · Instead of moving, fighters within 3 mu of a friendly fighter
> > group may declare that they are escorting that group.  They move when
> > their escorted group moves, and must remain in base-to-base contact
> > with it.
>
> If a heavy missile does not make a primary move does it use up a CEF or 
> can missile remain stationary as area denial weapons.

The original intent was that a Heavy Missile burns 1 CEF in each primary 
move phase, regardless of whether or not it actually moved that turn. I've 
played it both ways though - the "space mine" capability is quite 
interesting, though in my experience the main effect of it is that the 
enemy uses otherwise unengaged anti-ship weapons to destroy the loitering 
missiles before they get close enough to attack anything.

> Fighters escorting other fighters must start within 3mu but must remain in 
> base to base contact??? How does that work?

The non-condensed version of this rule reads:

"A fighter group within 3 mu of a friendly fighter group may declare
that they are escorting that fighter group. Both groups must then move
into base-to-base contact during the primary move, and must remain in
base-to-base contact throughout the turn. "

which is a bit clearer.

> Salvo missiles, plasma bolts and AMTs automatically gain a -3 DRM.
> So essentially you can't shoot these weapons with beam weapons at all.

Not true, because the target's DRMs do not affect rerolls (analogous with 
the reroll-screen interaction; screens are effectively a kind of target's 
DRM). A Beam Die will hit a Plasma Bolt on an initial die roll of 6 (which 
scores zero damage but allows a reroll) followed by a reroll of 4+.

Good catch BTW; the interaction between rerolls and DRMs isn't mentioned in 
LL's condensed version of these rules.

> AMTs must declare an attack against all ships within 3 mu.
> How does this work? The missile can't physically move into contact with 
> all ships within 3mu.

NO missile, fighter group, plasma bolt or whatever moves during the attack 
declaration or attack resolution phases. They are all left right where they 
ended their primary move, launch or secondary move (whichever came last), 
just like in the Fleet Book 2 rules.

> Kra'Vak scatterguns and Sa'Vasku interceptor pods
> may not use ADFC guidance.
> Currently they don't need to because they have ADFC built in.
> Are you proposing to remove this capability from these systems?

Yes. If you want to fire scatterguns or interceptor pods in support of some 
other ship, or at some un-engaged target, you have to use FCSs to control 
the fire. (You can do the same with PDSs too, of course.)

> Scattergun       6mu      1d3                    1
> When did you change this weapon from 1D6 to 1D3 and no ADFC. This nerfs KV 
> anti ordinance.

No, it brings the scatterguns' capabilities into line with their cost 
against all types of small targets, instead of making them slightly 
overpowered against missiles and massively overpowered against fighters :-/

Against *fighters*, scatterguns with ADFC capability are really worth 
somewhere around 12 pts apiece - but since that cost would make KV and 
similar scattergun-users utterly unable to defend themselves against 
*missiles*, the FB scatterguns were instead priced according to their 
anti-missile capabilities. Unfortunately I failed to factor in the value of 
their ADFC capability during the FB2 playtesting, so that capability was 
effectively free of charge in FB2... Bringing the scatterguns down to 1D3 
hits and removing their inherent ADFC capability brings their anti-fighter 
capabilities down into line with their cost, ie. 5 pts apiece.

Against *missiles*, the scatterguns usually waste much of their firepower 
anyway. You don't need 1D6 hits to kill a Heavy Missile (even 1D3 is 
overkill); and against an SM salvo a single scattergun is too unpredictable 
so most players I've listened to prefer to use 2 scatterguns... with the 
result that the salvo will be stopped four times out of five, but on 
average half the scatterguns' hits are wasted... with the result that 
cutting them back from 1D6 hits to 1D3 hits has a surprisingly small impact 
on their anti-missile capabilities.

Against *plasma bolts*, finally, the scattergun goes from 1 beam die 
without rerolls to 1D3-1 which is a 50% *increase* in firepower :-/

> You do not list stinger nodes as anti ship able to attack ordinance is 
> this deliberate or did it get left out in error?

It is deliberate. The core point of the UFR is to allow ships to use most 
of the points and Mass they've invested in weapons for anti-fighter defence 
(though not all of that Mass will be equally good at the job). On SV ships 
most of the "weapon Mass" consists of power generators... so if a SV ship 
wants to use most of its "weapon Mass" to shoot at fighters, all it has to 
do is route the power through its spicules or pod launchers.

> These fighter rules heavily favour one shot fighters like torpedo bombers. 
> They can only make one attack run and so can burn 3 CEF to be unhittable 
> then attack survive and fly back to rearm for another go.

It hasn't quite turned out that way in the playtests to date - partly 
because torpedo fighters are so much more expensive than other fighter 
types, but also because 1 CEF spent on a clever secondary move can often 
give your fighters better protection than 3 CEF spent on unthinking evasive 
manoeuvres.

> Having used a similar version of these rules it doesn't make a significant 
> difference if the fleet uses its anti ship weapons to try and stop a 
> missile wave. You might force the missile barges to get a bit closer to 
> say 48" before they fire but you won't have enough firecontrols to target 
> the missiles even if they don't bother to defend.
> With each missile burning endurance to dodge incomming fire, the book 
> keeping becomes much harder as you have to track different endurance 
> states for each missile rather than just being able to calcualte the 
> endurance for each wave.

In my experience to date, whether or not it makes a difference depends 
rather heavily on the target fleet's velocity. If the missiles can reach 
their targets in the same turn they were launched, then you're quite 
correct that there won't be enough FCSs. 'Course, if the enemy can launch 
Heavy Missiles from 48mu away and have them reach you in a single turn, you 
could always try closing at a slower rate (not necessarily *flying* slower, 
mind you, but approaching on an oblique course rather than head-on); 
whether this is a viable option depends a fair bit on the size of your 
gaming table.

If OTOH it takes *more* than one turn for the missiles to reach their 
targets, their ability to make evasive manoeuvres is *very* limited. Each 
primary move including the launch uses up 1 CEF out of the HM's original 3, 
so if it takes the missiles 2 turns to reach their targets they can either 
burn 1 CEF on evading on *1* of the turns (but not both) or they can make a 
secondary move so whatever target they want to attack is the closest one. 
Two turns of fire against non-evading targets are rather more effective 
than a single turn of fire against evading targets, not least because it 
effectively doubles the number of FCSs you have available :-/

Also, if I understood your variant correctly you gave the Heavy Missiles a 
flat -*2* DRM against anti-ship fire? That would reduce the usefulness of 
long-ranged beam fire against an incoming missile swarm quite a lot... 
under the UFR heavy missiles usually can't afford any DRM at all until the 
turn they actually attack, and even then they can usually only manage a -1 DRM.

> Our version of how we play was inspired by these rules but we dropped the 
> mechanism of endurance burn because it was too complicated.

The endurance burn is certainly the most complex part of the UFR. For us it 
hasn't been big problem with fighters (at least not when using fighter SSDs 
like LL described), but it can be a chore when you have lots of Heavy 
Missiles on the table. Our fighter group models all have IDs; not all of 
our missile markers do :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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