Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

I've been playing custom-design games for a while, and both "lots of
fighters" and "few fighters" designs have made their way into my games.
(Long time listers who remember me as "Stilt Man" will probably remember
some of the discussions I used to get into about this... I can be
infamous
for my fighter-swarming tactics.)  As such, I can say this...

Fighters are a powerful weapon, but no more than a great many other
things
that exist in the game, even without morale.  In our games, we usually
bring
5000 or 10000 points of ships and slug it out.	My experience from about
four or five years of such games on fighters goes like this:

1.  Yes, if you bring lots of fighters, and your opponent doesn't bring
something prepared to deal with them, you will probably win for free. 
This
much is granted.

2.  Dreadnought schemes with 20 fighters or so in a 5000 point battle
can
work against a carrier force that brings half again to twice as many
very
well or very badly depending on a lot of other factors.  If the
dreadnoughts
have no other effective plan for stopping fighters other than their own,
then they're dead, end of story.  If the dreadnoughts bring scatterguns
(PDS
won't do) as a second line of defense, then they can win.  If the
carriers
bring plasma bolts (missiles won't do either... too bulky for the return
after you've already brought the fighters) to neutralize those
scatterguns,
then the dreadnoughts are in trouble if they can't outmaneuver the bolts
effectively and the carrier admiral is smart enough to keep his fighters
in
reserve until the plasma has shut down that second line of defense.  If
the
dreadnoughts bring advanced drives to evade the plasma... well, then
things
get really interesting.

3.  Battleship forces with no fighters in a 5000 point battle can bring
either lots of PDS or lots of scatterguns and still have a reasonable
chance
of success.  The general ratio of desired PDS to enemy fighters will be
about 3-4 per enemy fighter group, and about 2 to 1 in scatterguns.  (We
don't require you to split up your point defenses by fighter group in
our
games... on that scale it's too much of a mess.  YMMV.)  For most
reasonable
carrier forces, that means you're looking at about 120-150 point
defenses
and about 80-100 scatterguns.  The point defenses will cause you to take
losses, but you will be grinding fighters down fast enough that they
won't
be a serious factor by themselves unless your opponent is bringing an
unwisely large number of them.	(More on that in the next point.)  The
scatterguns will basically shut them down cold.... 80-100 says your
opponent
needs better than 50 fighter groups to hurt you much.  150 says your
opponent may as well not bother with fighters until they've got some
other
weapon to wear your scatterguns down.

4.  In general, you need to use a bit of balance on both fighter swarms
and
point defenses, because neither of them will work very long by
themselves.
If you bring so many fighters that you have no other weapons, you're
wagering your life that your enemy won't be able to stop it.  If you
bring
so many point defenses that you're figuring on just forgetting about
fighters, you're wagering your life on your enemy actually bringing
fighters
to make those defenses useful.	In either case, you're wagering your
life on
your opponent doing exactly what you expect them to do... which is
generally
a foolhardy way to go about winning a war.

5.  Overall, the most effective operational doctrine that employs
fighters
as an offensive weapon that I've found is to bring about 30 of them over
a
5000 point battle and support them with about 30-40 dice worth of plasma
bolts.	If you handle your materiel properly, there is no (balanced)
doctrine of operations that can be used against you such that you won't
at
least have a very good fighting chance of defeating.  And anything that
doesn't bring both scatterguns _and_ advanced drive maneuverability, you
will probably beat for free.

6.  The Kra'Vak model is very easily the best general idea of how to
fight
against fighters.  The offensive weaponry you choose is up to you, but
the
part I'm talking about is the combination of scatterguns and advanced
drives, with or without a dreadnought scheme of a light swarm of
defensive
fighters added on.  If you're bringing a light fighter screen of your
own,
you're looking to cut down enough fighters before they get to you that
your
scatterguns can stop the rest, and if you're not, you're looking to
bring
enough scatterguns to beat their fighters outright.  The advanced drives
are
there to keep you from losing your scatterguns to their plasma while the
fighters sit back in reserve.  There are a few different feints and
other
tricks the plasma-and-fighters doctrine can use to make this difficult
for
you, but you'll have a serious fighting chance of beating them
regardless of
what they do.  And if your enemy is bringing fighters without plasma
(or, to
a much lesser degree, missiles), you will probably beat them for free. 
(You
might not beat fighter/missiles for free, but you'll beat them for $1.49
with coupon.)

As such... I don't think fighters really need to be shifted around.  If
you
want to put up house rules for "ops decks" or something, there's nothing
stopping you at all.  But fighters are perfectly viable as a fighting
force
as they are as long as you've got the operational doctrine to use them
right.

E
(aka Stilt Man)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean Bayan Schoonmaker" <s_schoon@pacbell.net>
To: "Full Thrust Mailing List" <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

> On 4/30/02 1:40 PM, "Roger Books" <books@jumpspace.net> wrote:
>
> > That brings up another common discussion.
>
> [snip]
>
> My personal view is that fighters are just about right as they stand
> (meaning that roughly an equal number of player complain that they are
too
> weak/powerful ;-).
>
> While I like the idea of Hangars and Launch Tubes, they would need to
be
> implemented in such a way so as to not affect balance much. That's the
> challenge.
>
> Schoon
>