balancing Fighters

I'm in agreement with Kieth and others that fighters are too cheap for
their
power in FT. I like kieth's idea of costing them as ships, but that
would
make PDS a too cheap way of getting rid of them. If you do it that way,
I
think you'd have to drop PDS as a concept (or specialize it only as an
anti-missile system) and make the primary antifighter weapon the Class 1
beam - perhaps add a new system as an Anti-Fighter Fire controll to
enable
Class 1's to fire as PDS do now (with the same dice etc).

Another idea that pops up is a way of neutralizing large fighter swarms
w/o
jiggling present costing too much. 

Kill Zone
Ships being attacked by large numbers of fighters (or missiles) can give
up
all anti-ship fire for the turn and direct all available weapons fire at
the
incoming swarm. Choose one arc (or two adjacent - depends on balance)
All
bearing weapons in that arc may fire at the fighters in that area as if
at a
target at 6". Total damage from the volley is the number of fighters
destroyed (or half that, depending on balance probably even less for
missiles). The Kill Zone is in addition to normal PDS/ADFC fire. PSB is
that
even though heavier weapons are hard to aim at fighters/missiles you're
saturating a relatively small area of space with them.

Noam