Re: Fighters and Defense

From: David Griffin <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com>

>The objective is to get one shot at the fighters
>at range BEFORE it gets close to the ship. Any
>other rule construction that does that would be
>satisfactory. It's just that fighters move with
>such phenomenal speed and lack of regard for
>momentum.

Understood, but PDS/ADFC do precede fighter attacks and can either
destroy
the group, or cause a group to fail morale with even minor damage. The
fighter movement rules have been subject to many discussions on the
list,
and several alternate fighter movement systems have been proposed and
may
indeed be in use in different places as house rules. If you can take
fighter
groups out before they have any chance of dishing out damage, then
they're
borderline useless.

>In other words, say you decide the range is 18".
>The fighters start out 25" and move to right
>next to your ship. After the fighters moved, you'd
>get one shot at them as them moved into range.
>I don't really care, I just want that middle line
>of defense. I wouldn't want to fight a modern
>naval wargame without my SAMs either.

Fighter secondary movement, while burning a CEF, should make this shot
useless, unless you're saying the missiles should be faster than beam
weapons. Also, the AFHAWKS, for example does effectively the same thing.
One
might even argue PSB that allows PDS fire to take out closing fighters
at
range beyond 6". This is simply "narrative flavor" rather than any
change of
rules: If a fighter group is closing from 29" to 5" range vs. 5 PDS,
they'll
take out ~4 fighters on average. Who's to say that some of them aren't
falling from massed PDS at 10" during their attack run? It's all in the
interpretation.

That being said, I also don't want to fight a modern naval wargame when
I
play FT. Rules that make FT play more parallel to modern naval patterns
are
a bad idea, IMO.

>> My conclsion: Even if fighters are slightly
>> overpowered (something I
>> disagree with, certainly if you use morale rules),
>> then SUMS are overkill.

>So the idea that someone could build a long range
>missile system to kill space fighters is crazy
>talk, is it? 

I didn't say or imply crazy, just overkill.

>But building fighters that can 
>go 36" in one direction, stop on a dime and rocket
>back the next turn is an easy technological feat?

I could play PSB games with you for days arguing how it could be
perfectly
fine, but that's not the real point.
Fighters, with their current movement rules, are balanced vs. the rest
of
the systems in the game. Throwing something _more_ in the mix that
effectively neutralizes them at a distance (interceptors can do that
already) makes them not worth putting in the game. The PSB in that
consideration is irrelevant, but, as I said, there are alternate
movement
rules for you to pick. Look in the archive for some. Here's a link for
another:

http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/noam_izenberg/Homebrew.htm#SM/FG_Speed

and another way of attacking fighters at long range (though I'm still
worried about balance issues): 

http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/noam_izenberg/Skunkworks.htm#LRDFC

In fact, I don't see why the entire concept of SUMS can't simply be
replaced
by an Interceptor squadron. It can do exactly what you want - kill
fighters
at a distance - for the same cost of a launcher plus a couple SUMS
rounds.
It is in fact better, beuase one Interceptor group can neutralize or
compromize the effectiveness of up to 3-6 fighter groups. Heck, if
missile
PSB is that important to you, rename the Interceptor Squadron as
"Robotic
Anitifighter Missile Clusters" or some such and think of them as 
missile
racks wrapped around and engine+AI core, using the same rules as
interceptors.

One of the true and underutilized beauties of FT is the ability to take
the
simple rules and put very different dressings on them to make them
"feel"
quite different. 

Noam