RE: FT-Fighters and launch bays

Other genres have scads of fighters, though. I think of Battlestar
Galactica, Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Robotech as examples just off the
top of my head.

The Canadians got caught without fighters for a number of reasons. One
was that the Canadian team did not get together until late. Another was
the rules on what you could take and the limitations on how you could
modify the fleets (what was designed to provide balance accually
suggested the all-or-nothing approach of the US team). Laserlight still
has the rules posted (the game was slightly different, but the
construction rules were as posted) at
http://angelfire.com/va/laserlight/CanAm_Rules.htm.

For a 6000 point fleet under the construction rules, 25 flights of
fighters was the absolute maximum we could achieve (or at least the most
that we could figure out).

As someone pointed out the problem with fighters is that their strength
increases at more than an additive rate. That is 1 fighter group is
pretty worthless. It does not provide enough offense agianst an ADFC/PDS
net and can only tie up 1 other fighter group. 3-4 fighter groups puts
them about on par with other weapons. And 6+ fighter groups tips the
balance in favor of fighters. Thus the value of fighters rises quicker
than their cost as their numbers increase. I personally think that
fighters are slightly broken, but cannot think of a good, easy, way to
fix them.

---
Brian Bell
bbell1@insight.rr.com
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
---


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU] On Behalf Of David Griffin
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 5:17 PM
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: FT-Fighters and launch bays

Maybe these were some fixed universe we're talking
about, but some genres which FT is used for don't
have that many fighters typically. It's not 
extraordinary for a fleet to be without fighters
unless the people they fight have a lot of them.

For instance, let's take Star Trek. Not a lot of
fighters there. Even in SFB the only game where
fighters appeared in the ST universe, fighters
were not a major force in the game. The Feds only
had 1 carrier model and it didn't show up too
often in games I played anyway.

When You play pick up games (or maybe convention
games I don't know) and you can't tell what kind
of opponent you'll get, you could have anything
from massive fighters to none. Prepare for massive
fighters against an opponent with none, and he'll
use all those points he didn't use for fighters or
fighter defense on guns to cut you to pieces,
especially if YOUR fighters are interceptors only.

So how irresponsible was it in the universe this
game was being played in to have a fleet with
a low grade fighter defense?

--- Jaime Tiampo <fugu@spikyfishthing.com> wrote:
> Chris DeBoe wrote:
> 
> > Concur.  In FT:1stCanAm at GZGECC, the Americans
> had something like 25
> > fighter squadrons and it moved much more slowly
> than I'd wanted.  No
> > fighters next year.
> 
> I don't think 25 fighter squads in a game that big
> is overkill. I would
> have expected that many. I think it's a mistake not
> to include them next
> year. I think fighters add a great dimention to the
> game. How the
> Canadians got caught without fighters is beyond me.
> 
> I'm also a big fan of designing your own ships.
> That's one of the big
> strengths of the game, might as well use it.
> 
> Jaime

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