RE: Re: Fighters

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Ryan M Gill wrote:

> At 1:19 PM -0700 5/7/02, Brian Bilderback wrote:
> >
> >Hmmmmm....
> >
> >Not sure I agree with this.	Not sure I disagree, either.  However, 
> >it is ironic that this brings us back to my original question about 
> >connecting multiple fighter bays to 1 ops deck (launch/recovery 
> >system).
> 
> The problem isn't fighters. The problem is fighters in such massive 
> numbers that ships get eaten like biblical locusts settling on 
> fields. If you've got that many fighters flying around just killing 
> stuff, why aren't you killing those carriers? Where are those 
> carriers? So what we do is make it so Soap Bubble carriers are hard 
> if not impossible to make.

The Soap Bubbles are parked about an inch in from the back edge of the
blasted table; you start somewhere near the other edge of the table. SBs
barf insane amounts of fighters at you, which come hammering in at full
move (24"); they meet your squadron/ship/fleet somewhere in the middle
of
the table, and do that locust thing before you're even within B4 range
of
their carriers, never mind more conventional sized weapons ranges!

It makes for the most boring, irritating games of FT it's possible to
play. My favourite games have always had either minimal fighters (10 or
less squadrons) or none of the damn things at all. That allows for
actual
maneuver, tactics, and things like that. (Imagine - a game where space
devoted to Thrust isn't "wasted"!)

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -
- http://wind.prohosting.com/~warbard/games.html -

> 
> Fighters get launched out of a Cat with a 24" direct move in from the 
> carrier. That Catapult needs to really throw that group out there. 
> Its not releasing them like in B5, it's throwing them out there. That 
> means the fighters get shot out in a ballistic path from the carrier. 
> So that massive structure needs to be aligned with the ship and has 
> to be really solid. I take it Kra'Vak ships are generally pretty 
> solid what with their large rail guns. We postulate that the cats 
> need a good solid ship so unless the ship is already a fast mover 
> (and can impart energy then turn) then you need a solid ship. Average 
> Hull. Lighter hulls are allowed for smaller ships as they have less 
> bending.
> 
> Up the the 1.5 masses to 2 masses and break it out.
> 
> .5 mass for recovery and .5 for launch and .5 for service and .5 for 
> spares/consumables/armaments/aircrew/flight crew stowage.
> 
> One can fiddle with the amounts you have for each available for 
> launch, storage and recovery. But one impacts the other. You'll get 
> some carriers like the Early US and Japanese carriers that had Cats 
> on the  second deck. Or you can dispense with Cats and have the 
> fighters launch from bays. They start out at the same V as the ship 
> and are optimized for zero speed recovery. The trick is that they 
> have to use an endurance factor to launch and an endurance factor to 
> recover if they don't just hang with the ship in escort mode. (Its 
> still not true vector, but it helps.)
> 
> Or I could build an escort carrier that has fighters that launch and 
> just escort the ship. They spend lots of time hovering around the 
> ship, they don't spend endurance unless they leave or fight. If they 
> come into hover, they spend an endurance.
> 
> Fighters launched by a Cat do get a free move no endurance cost. 
> Normal fighter movement is no endurance cost. Combat still is 1 
> endurance factor.
> 
> I could have a Fleet Carrier with Cats enough to launch 3 fighter 
> groups, recover 2 per turn and space enough for 8 fighter groups, my 
> turn around time would be limited by the smaller number of rearmament 
> bays. It really all depends.
> 
> All of this would make the carrier players think about the fighter 
> functions more and build the carriers as more than just a Launching 
> platform that carries them around.
> 
> Think about the structure and play with the system....
> 
> -- 
> --
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