Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

----- Original Message -----
From: <laserlight@quixnet.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 9:14 AM
Subject: RE: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

> I said:
> > FB1 ships get devoured by fighters, unless you bring almost all
Beijing-E
> or something of that sort.  How would you fix it so:
> > a) fighters are useful
> > b) masses of fighters are not unbalancing
> > c) FB1 ships are useful
> > d) we do not have to change the published SSDs (ie you can tinker
with
the
> rules of what existing systems can do, but don't come with a new icon
for
the
> SSD).

> Eric/Stilt said:
> >These four goals, taken together, are not possible.	Period.

> You will recall that I said in a different post that the Test List
*has*
come up with a solution.  No, I'm not saying what it is--among other
reasons, I want to come up with a *new* idea rather than hash out an
idea
the Test List has already discussed.

All very nice.	But you've snipped the operative point that I was
attempting
to make here:  the system is fine.  Yes, fighters are a factor that need
to
be anticipated if you want to survive very long.  But the system gives
just
as many tools for dealing with them as it does for using them, and the
tools
are themselves far less bulky and expensive than carrying the fighters
themselves is.	I fail utterly to see how this is "unbalanced".

The problem comes when one insists that the FB1 ships must be accepted
as a
canon that should be able to stand against all comers.	That simply
misinteprets both the spirit of the game as a generic system that can be
used to represent anything you want to dream up (a context in which it
is
very simply one of the no-arguments best around), and the FB1 ships'
purpose
as a set of example ships, within an example background, that you can
use
"out of the box" if you _want_ to but are by no means _required_ to do
so.

And as I said before (and you snipped)... fighters are only one of
_many_
ways to break the FB1 designs into little bloody pieces.  If you don't
want
to use fighters, you can take a SD-sized hull, give it thrust 2, about
30-35% of its mass in combined hull and armor to whatever ratio suits
you,
and about 15-18 PDS, with the rest of its mass in ship-to-ship weaponry
and
you'll kill every SD design in FB1 just as dead as you would with
fighters.

That's the short version.  The long version of their failings goes like
this
(if you're willing to bear reading the whole list):

1.  They're woefully unable to deal with fighter attack.  (This is a bit
redundant, and all parties are basically agreed here.)

2.  Every capital ship in the book devotes too much hull space to
non-weapons systems.  All the star nations depicted are guilty of this
in
some way.  The NSL's capital ships carry strong hulls and armor.  The
ESU's
ships throw screen-2's on top of that.	The NAC and FSE's ships bring
average hulls, thrust 4 (or more), armor, _and_ screens.  The end result
is
that, across the board, 60-70% of the mass of each ship is taken up in
systems other than weaponry.... which, quite frankly, is too much to be
effective.

3.  The capital ships try to do too much without being very good at
doing
any of it.  The dreadnought designs all try to bring ship-to-ship
weapons
_and_ fighters without bringing enough of either of them to be effective
against an enemy of the same size that devoted a more focused effort to
fulfilling one doctrine or the other rather than trying to throw a sop
to
both.  This only serves, together with point 2, to dilute the things
they
actually _can_ do well.  The dreadnoughts will indeed be capable of
making
mincemeat out of most all the other ships in the book, but this dilution
of
their strengths would make them woefully inadequate against a ship in
the
same size class that devoted its full weapons suite in a more focused
fashion.  (As my example before this list illustrates.)

4.  Most of the ships carry too many beams and not enough other weapons.
When they do carry other weapons, it's just one or two or three of them,
not
really enough to make a significant difference.

5.  Too many of the beam emplacements are class 3's, even though class
2's
are superior in arc coverage and firepower at every range they're able
to
reach, and class 3's simply can't throw enough dice at their maximum
range
to really make much of a difference anyway.  Worse, most of them have
the
class 3's fitted in an arrangement such that the only arc you get their
full
weight of fire through is the front one.  That doesn't work real well in
either vector _or_ cinematic;  in vector, class 3's and class 2's fitted
in
3 arcs all-forward will generally beat that, and in cinematic you can
take
just over half the class 3's and devote the rest of your armament to
class-2
all arcs and beat them no matter what they do (if they come straight at
you,
they squander their long-range advantage quickly the moment they pass
within
the 24" range band... if they don't, your nose-on firepower is greater
than
their side-arc firepower while they're trying to keep the range open).

And so on.  It's not fighters that are the problem.  The FB1 ship
designs
are simply weak, because they follow design doctrines that just don't
work
that well.  If you want to assure their viability, I see it as a pretty
simple solution:  require that every custom design you allow into your
gaming follows those same general doctrines, warts and all.  But I see
it as
beyond pointless to break down the generic nature of the rest of the
system
just to coddle the ineffectiveness of the demonstration designs.

E