Re: Another tack on fighters

At 2:44 AM -0400 5/3/02, Thomas Barclay wrote:
>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.

I think the best way to think of it is that the FB designs are from a 
snap shot of "history" at the very beginning of the third Solar War. 
Just like at the beginning of WWII, ships didn't have as many 
Anti-Aircraft guns. A few years into the war they were starting to 
really get built (especially where the US was concerned). By the end 
of the world, the fast battle ships were bristling with Area and 
point defense anti-aircraft weapons. The Anti-Aircraft gun optimized 
cruisers were also a mid war design.
>
>
>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.....

I'd say only Area Defense systems should do this.

>
>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.

Well, one thing that is a WWII axiom as well as a modern Axiom is 
that when using fighters or Missiles, you pretty much have a strike 
method that can out weigh the defensive capability of an opponent 
given a comparison of two variables (defensive fire power and 
offensive firepower). What is missing in these games is  the 
uncertainty of where your targets are in a given area of space. That 
is what modern warfare is hinged upon.

The most basic is the strike group of Bear Bombers trying to find and 
attack the Carrier Battle Group in the GIUK Gap. If the Carrier's AEW 
and F-14's can find and execute their attacks on the Bears before 
they can launch, the Carrier pretty much wins. If the Bears are able 
to get their one massive strike in and get the F-14s with their pants 
down, then they will win with their one massive salvo.

This was how Carrier war evolved during WWII. It is appropriate in 
the game context in my opinion.

What is missing is not balance through weapon designs (play chess or 
some other simple game), but a mechanism for controlling what ships 
are on the board at a given time....

>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.

And this is correct. Its also how it should be. Instead of making 
radical changes to how fighters work. Tweak the system a little bit.

Enable ADFCs (or a specialized version of it) to control Class 1's 
and give an escort ship a zone space defense of a 12" radius. The 
PDF's would cover 6", the Class 1's would cover 12" out. But make 
that a separate ADFC and restrict its use to a 180 or 90 degree arc. 
Due to the requirement for the added Class 1s and the 2 C1-ADFCs, 
you'll only see it on big ships that are optimized.

This mirrors the 5"-38 DP guns that really made the US Fast Battle 
ships excellent carrier escorts during WWII. It also gives your big 
ships that have been optimized, an edge.

-- 
--
Ryan Gill			  rmgill@mindspring.com
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