Fighters vs. non-fighters doctrines

Small note:  This post also answers laserlight's comments to me as well.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Burton West" <roger@firedrake.org>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 1:55 AM
Subject: Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

> My standard comment is this: it looks like Rock-Scissors-Paper, but it
> isn't. Say I have three major choices for a weapons loadout:

> (1) conventional anti-ship weapons;
> (2) heavy PDS+ADFC;
> (3) fighters.

You're oversimplifying here.  Let me add a few categories, accounting
for
just about every sort of tech base other than S'V:

(1)  "conventional" anti-ship (i.e. FB1)
(2)  VERY heavy PDS + ADFC
(2-a)  balanced-heavy PDS + ADFC
(2-b)  balanced-heavy scatterguns replacing the PDS in (2-a), preferably
with advanced drives as well (loosely speaking... Kra'Vak with slightly
better than average FB2 scattergun loads)
(3)  soap bubble carriers
(3-a)  less extreme carriers, dreadnoughts, or other ships with fighters
as
a decent or main weapon but with no real backup doctrine for dealing
with
heavy point defense
(3-b)  balanced carriers with plasma armaments to back up their
fighters,
and scatterguns to make up the gaps between themselves and any (3) or
(3-a)
fleets that throw more fighters than they do

A rough guesstimate table of how many games in ten you'll win in each
matchup possible here:

	  I bring     (1)   (2)    (2-a)    (2-b)   (3)    (3-a)   (3-b)
You win total:
You bring
(70 possible)
(1)		       5      10       6	  6	  0	   0
0		     27
(2)		       0       5	0	   0	   8	    6
7		     26
(2-a)		      4      10       5 	 5	 0	  9	
  0
33
(2-b)		      4      10       5 	 5	 9	 10	
 5
48
(3)		      10      2        10	 0	 5	  10	
  1
38
(3-a)		     10      4	      1 	 0	 0	  5	
  0
20
(3-b)		     10      3	     10 	5	9      10	
5
52

I would stipulate that anything that is on the wrong end of too many
10-0
matchups (i..e. they lose those fights for free) or close to them is
generally an unsound tactic that is simply not going to work in a
lengthy
war effort.  Note that FB1-style ships have such a problem against
anything
that involves any half serious numbers of fighters -- even the lowly
(3-a),
which has the lowest overall score on the table (ironically).  As you've
already observed, overspecialized PDS ships also have this problem
against
anything with a half serious direct fire armament.  However, the
much-maligned soap bubble carriers _also_ have such matchups -- against
everything that mounts a serious scattergun defense somewhere.

(2-b) and (3-b), I would conclude based on this, are the two most
fundamentally sound doctrines in the game outside of Sa'Vasku tech. 
This
doesn't even really disagree that badly with past observations -- Oerjan
commented in a similar discussion to this one about a year or two ago
that
Kra'Vak cruisers (which very closely mirror the (2-b) doctrine) are the
best
all-around ships you could ask for, and I'm basically agreeing with him
with
an additional endorsement of plasma/fighter combinations as a similarly
formidable co-dominator.  No single design doctrine that I know of beats
either of them more often than half the time without overspecializing to
a
degree that you lose almost all fights that _don't_ follow your
specialization for free.  A bit of argument can be made about whether
(2-b)
or (3-b) beats the other... but I leave it as the only even fight that
isn't
between largely identical forces because it really does come down to who
handles their ships better and can manage to outguess or get luckier
than
the other.

And yes, granted... soap bubble carriers -- (3) -- are the most powerful
thing in the game IF you remove these two from consideration.  They beat
everything else for free except for (2), and (2) itself brings out the
paper-rock scissors game.  But I think I've made my counterpoint pretty
clear:	bring scatterguns and you can forget about (3) altogether.

(Yeah, I hear you saying, "But what if we don't want to use/allow
scatterguns?"  Well, that's a judgment call.  Allowing custom designs in
your games is a house rule decision.  Allowing those custom designs to
stretch to the level of soap bubble carriers is a house rule decision.
Allowing people to use scatterguns to efficiently stop those soap bubble
carriers, or forcing them to be stuck with PDS to have to do it
_in_efficiently, is a house rule decision.  (PDS will do fine if the
fighter-reliant fleets aren't downright soapy.)  Allowing one person
with
your house rule decisions to build soap bubble fleets without allowing
his
opponents to pack scatterguns to efficiently stop them is... a mistake.
Read:  either allow them both or don't allow either one.)

E