Re: [FT] Fighters - some thoughts

In message <3CD48D95.982F8F42@sympatico.ca>
	  Richard and Emily Bell <rlbell@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> 
> 
> Charles Taylor wrote:
> 
> > Remote Piloted fighters (which brings us back to the Andromeda
thread
> > :-) may make morale checks or not as desired (the pilots, 'back
home' on
> > the mothership decide which is more important, conserving fighters,
or
> > attacking). If they chose not to check morale, they will suffer
double
> > casualties.
> 
> The viability of remotely piloted fighters is strongly dependent on
the psb
> of the measurement unit.  If one mu is only a few dozen kilometers,
than you
> are fine.  If one mu is one thousand kilometers, the double delay of
pilot
> seeing what is happening and the vehicle responding to his commands
makes it
> impossible to more than screen the ship that the pilot is on.  Without
FTL
> communications, remotely piloting  something that has to strike a
dodging
> target, or jink away from incoming fire is impossible, and if your
onboard
> systems can handle those, automatically, why bother with remote
flying.
> 

Valid point - lacking some kind of 'instanta-coms' (which is a whole new
can of worms) you'll probably want to keep remote piloted fighters near
to the command unit - so use them for screening duties.

We could add complexity to the remote piloted fighter rules to have
their performance degrade with distance away from the command vessel -
any ideas?

And it keeps the 'human element' in charge, although personally I'd
rather have the whole show run by hyper-intelligent, hyper-fast machine
intelligences :-)

Anyone got any rules on AI/MI run starships?

Charles