Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 7:28 PM
Subject: Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

> From: Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com>
> > 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.

> And allow mixed tech.  If you have a swarm of fighters on one side and
> straight HuMan Fleet Book designs on the other, very shortly you will
> have a slightly smaller swarm of fighters and a cloud of scrap.

I don't really consider that much of an argument... FB1 designs fare
very
poorly against a great many custom-design doctrines, fighter swarms
being
only one of them.  Their point defense woes make them just as vulnerable
to
having entire task forces annihilated by a single heavy barrage of
either
missile salvoes or plasma bolts, and even in direct firefights it isn't
difficult at all to bring enough pulse torpedo firepower to shred them
ship-to-ship.

It _is_ possible to bring human tech custom designs and do just fine
against
fighters.  For a force of 5000 points, 120-150 PDS grouped together in
an
area defense phalanx will cut any fighter swarm short of flat-out soap
bubble fare down to size in moments.  It's area defense phalanxes like
that,
that have long since convinced me to stop relying on fighters alone
unless
they're supported by something else.  It used to be needle beaming
escorts
to take out ADFCs, now I'm favoring plasma bolts.  But fighters by
themselves don't work in our games any more unless you bring 50-60 of
them,
and that's just putting too many eggs in one basket.

E
(aka Stilt Man)