RE: Fighters

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> [mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Allan Goodall
> Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 6:46 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: Fighters
>
>
> On Tue, 7 May 2002 12:46:08 -0400, "laserlight@quixnet.net"
> <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:
>
>SNIP<
> Now, here's a problem. If you change PDS so that it
> can take attack all
> fighter squadrons against it, are you swinging the
> game too far the other way?
> 20 PDS, for instance, costs 60 points and 20 mass. If
> 20 fighter squadrons
> attack, that's 20 times 20 attacks by the PDS. Bye
> bye fighters. Wouldn't
> custom designed ships just pack on a whole bunch of
> PDS this way and defeat
> fighters totally, just as lots of fighters defeat any
> ship totally?

Allowing PDS to fire on all attacking groups will IMO 'break'
the game for standard designs. Mini-maxed designs fare better,
or unbalanced fleets of lots of carriers, but we were talking
about FB1 designs originally (your open tournament, step up to
the table, pick ships out of the book to a certain points cost
and slug it out battle).

>
> I'm beginning to think this problem can't be solved.
> Changing the PDS rules
> might make the fleet book ships viable against custom
> designs with lots of
> fighters, but would it also kill fighters totally in
> custom designed battles?
> This would move things from, "Lots of fighters are
> the only way to go in
> custom games," to "Don't waste any money buying a
> fighter in a custom game".

I was thinking about allowing PDS to fire on only a certain
number of attacking groups per turn, then I remembered; The
change of turn order for FB2 takes into account knowing which
fire arc a fighter group/missile salvo is coming from, so how
about PDS nominate fire on all fighter groups/missile salvoes in
one arc (i.e. roll against each group/salvo in that arc) ?

This brings on a little tactical work for large fighter groups
to try to position attack runs from multiple fire-arcs, thus
spreading out the PDS fire, but equally may make them vulnerable
to ADFC equipped ships in a well thought-out formation.

Overwhelming fighter groups will still be powerful, but will
either need to be positioned a little more thoughtfully or spend
CEF in the secondary move phase to avoid massed PDS fire.

It might 'break' salvo missiles though as they tend to come in
across 1 or 2 arcs at max range.
>
> The proper solution may be a campaign system...

I don't think fighters are necessarily 'broken' in FB-only
one-off battles with balanced fleets, and the logistics issue of
most campaign games would avoid massed carrier battles anyway.

Rgds,

Alfie
http://www.alfie.finch.btinternet.co.uk/