Re: FB designs & fighters

On Mon, 6 May 2002 15:33:38 -0400, Ryan M Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
wrote:

>But you have to carry that squadron of 20 around. The problem with 
>this argument is that fighters have to be used en-masse in order to 
>be useful. The way things are now, I find fighters tricky to use when 
>I have an Ark-Royal and what I consider to be a realistic escort of a 
>CA, 2 DDs and a FF or three.

The problem righ now isn't with Ark Royals and other FB ships, its with
people
who design soap bubble carriers to easily transport 20 fighter squadrons
around.

>Making fighters more expensive will make it harder to use fighters in 
>a reasonable amount.

Fighters don't need to be more expensive. Massed fighters need to be
more
expensive. Or, put another way, 1 fighter squadron is worth 18 points.
20
fighter squadrons cost 360 points but are worth WAY more than 360
points. A
360 point vessel would be, what, a BC? Heavy cruiser? 20 squadrons can
shred a
cruiser in one turn. Then, they move to the next and shred it. Since a
PDS can
only fire at one squadron per turn, you'd need 20 PDS on a ship to have
a good
chance of handling those 20 squadrons. Try putting that on a 360 point
cruiser
and seeing what's left over. And those 360 points of fighters will still
be
potent after the 20 PDS fire.

>Not less potent, but useless. Folks that try to make up balanced task 
>groups are already limited by the excess cruft that the NAC carriers 
>have. Why do I need Class 2's on a ship that shouldn't ever be within 
>48" of enemy ships? I'd rather put that into added bays.

Not useless. My favourite suggestion is allowing PDS to fire at multiple
squadrons, but it hasn't been tested.

>The game already dis-favors true carrier group actions. A carrier 
>should be off on a second table somewhere with a portion of the game 
>placed on the enemy Carrier or Space Action group trying to find that 
>carrier.

Ummm... true in what sense??? We're talking sci-fi here! It's debatable
if
"carriers" as defined in FT are realistic. If you want realism we'd see,
oh, I
don't know, how about clouds of water vapour accelerated to significant
fractions of C? Or intelligent missile swarms firing in on a fleet. Or
how
about simply making SMs vector based, so that you can launch them at
speed 50
and have them travel at 50 out of the tubes. "True carrier group
actions" are
only "true" in comparison to modern day or World War II. If you want to
model
"trule carrier group actions" you should be playing something like
General
Quarters.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
unimaginable mortician was revealed!"