Another tack on fighters

I don't agree with Mr. Foley on all his points. 
Perhaps the thing to keep in mind here is this: 
The models we mostly buy are FB ships. The 
ships used in most games (esp tournament or 
convention) are FB ships. So if fighters 
operating within the FB1 universe are 
overpowering (which they actually are), then the 
FB1 ships would not have evolved. Taking from 
the ex cathedra presentation of the FB, we then 
work backwards and say "how could this have 
come to be? why do ships only have 2-3 PDS? 
why isn't everyone using carriers galore? or 
SMR ships?" Obviously one approach is to toss 
out FB1 designs, but that isn't realistic for most 
people/situations. So the attempt is to try to 
find a band-aid for the problem. 

One interesting idea not yet discussed is the 
idea that fighter weapons are perhaps not as 
effective against all targets. A big slow SDN is 
an easy target perhaps, but a small high thrust 
scoutship might be quite a task to hit. Perhaps 
the issue may be addressed by changing the 
attack resolution for fighters so that the 
number of hits scored had some relation to 
mass or thrust or both, thus large slow targets 
could meet them less effectively (but they have 
armour, more PDS, and escorts) and smaller 
ships would not get gnawed up so fast. 

Also, letting ships engage fighters that are NOT 
attacking is one way to help prevent fighter 
swarms from forming in the middle or rear of 
your formation.....

And lastly, another thought (why I don't like the 
fighter group limitation): If we're dealing with 
100 or 1000km measuring units, then fighters 
can attack from 600 or 6000km. Just put that 
in a sphere and imagine how many fighters 
could attack.... the number would be pretty 
damn large. Yes, we can PSB this inconvenient 
basic physical fact away with some handwaving, 
but it isn't really that satisfying (or so says I). 

And one last thought - 25 PDS wouldn't even 
have slowed down the fighter swarms that 
came after my three Komarov mods in the 
CanAm a year and a half ago. Would have 
helped, but wouldn't have got the job done. 
And any escort in this game smaller than a CL is 
pretty much mincemeat after (at most) one 
round of ADFC duty.

So much of how FT plays depends on which 
weapons you use, which rules, etc. You can 
build an SDN with 18-25 PDS, but a swarm of 
SMR corvettes will really ruin your day anyway. 
And an enemy SDN built with no PDS will equally 
ruin your day. Why? Because any situation 
where such insane matchups could occur makes 
no accounting for evolutionary design, fleet 
intelligence, etc - you don't generally have no 
idea what your foe is bringing to battle. In fact, 
you generally have some decent idea of the 
capabilities/designs of most of his classes. You 
might not know which ships will arrive (although 
you might have a good guess), but you 
probably know most of the types of ships that 
could show up reasonably and how many. But 
in a lot of one off games, it is an oddball 
version of paper-scissors-nuclear device. 

Tomb
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Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

No Battle Plan Survives Contact With Dice.
-- Mark 'Indy' Kochte