Re: [FT\DS2] Fleet and Army sizes for games

<< SNIP lots of stuff about cheese-reeking bubble carriers and similar
space-naval abortions...>>

Reading all this stuff about the power of fighters has been interesting,
esp. given that I'm involved in an ongoing argument with other members
of
my gaming group about the cost of Ft fighters.

Personal bias addmission: If fighters vanished from FT tomorrow, I
wouldn't miss them one bit... 

Given that that's not going to happen, does anyone else think that
fighters are significantly undercosted and/or too powerful for their
present cost?

Fighters are, in FT, the *only* weapon system where if one player brings
them and the other leaves them at home, the figherless player is more
than likely to loose... No other single system, if one player doesn't
have
it, will unbalance the game this way.

I've not done the design work or math, but fighters are basically 6
all-arc B1s, with (effectively) near-tabletop range, and they're far,
far
tougher than any other method of transporting 6xB1, because you can only
kill them *after* they can already shoot at you. Not only that, they're
the only 6xB1 delivery system that bigger guns cannot kill at greater
range than the B1s can reach. You've got to have specialized
anti-fighter
systems to deal with them.

Two math-type problems that someone might want to tackle: 

1. With 9 Mass & 18 NPV, what sort of ship could you build, and would it
be anywhere near as fast, dangerous or survivable as a basic fighter
squadron? (My strong feeling is No, most totally No...There is, after
all,
no ship that's totally unhittable if it's over 6" from your ship...)

2. Can 18pts & 9 Mass of ADFC/PDS do a good, quick job on a standard
fighter squadron? (Probably, but I'm not sure...)

My 'fix' for fighters would have them fire as PDS - 4/5/6(x2) at other
fighters, 1pt on 6 against ships. That, or at least double the cost of a
fighter squadron. Given that the rest of my playing group is much
enamoured of fighters and doesn't see any problem with them, I've
got the proverbial snowball's chance of having any modifications
accepted.

My (longish) $0.02...

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -
- http://warbard.iwarp.com/games.html -