Re: Salvo missile escalation

Brian Bell wrote:
> Schoon wrote:
> > Don't forget fighters. These DRASTICALLY reduce SML effectiveness.
 
> Or increase it if used WITH the SML's.

My experience tends to be that missiles and fighters dilute one
another's
effectiveness rather than increase it.	SMLs and fighter bays both take
up
about the same amount of mass, so if you've got a lot of one, you can't
have a lot of the other.  Fighters and missiles both work best in
overwhelming
numbers; if you don't have enough of them to swamp your enemy, you may
as
well not bother carrying them at all.  Neither of them offers anything
that
covers for the weaknesses of the other, and diluting the fighter numbers
to
make room for missiles is just begging the other guy to kill the
fighters
first, pretty much regardless of how they're counteracting it all.  If
they're
playing with carriers, you've given them fighter superiority for free. 
If
they're playing with battleships, their PDS phalanx can just erase the
fighters
in the first round and shrug off the missiles because you don't have
enough
throw weight to make them care about them with only one shot, then they
turn
their PDS at the missiles and eliminate them as a factor in turn, all
the
while they've been shooting you to ribbons with whatever they've got in
return.

Fighters and plasma work pretty well together because the plasma offers
an
area effect weapon that deters battleships from packing together and the
slight fighter disadvantage can take out the enemy carriers' striking
power
enough that the plasma will hold the field.  Fighters and missiles don't
really offer anything in tandem that one or the other of them wouldn't
do
better with alone.
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