Re: FB designs & fighters (& strawmen)

 From me:

>> Total fighter -
>> and to a lesser extent missile - power scales nonlinearly with number

>> of
>> groups, whereas almost all other weapon and defense systems (most
>> importantly PDS) scale linearly.

 From Eric Foley:
> No, it doesn't.  30 fighters is a catastrophic threat to a fleet with
20
> PDS.	It's a footnote in operations to one with 100 scatterguns.

Comparing 20 PDS to 100 scatterguns? You're kidding, right? Not to 
mention missing the point entirely. The fighter imbalance has been 
stated clearly enough, and enough times, its not worth reiterating it if

you're not interested in the facts.

>> IMO you seriously undervalue speed and agility, which reduces real
>> difference in offensive capability. Your favored duel setup with a 
>> fixed
>> edge exacerbates this mindset.

> It has nothing to do with speed or agility.... The example I used just

> _happened_ to have thrust-2.

Then it was a poor example. No one can do comparisons against ships you 
_could_ have proposed.

>>> The design I gave earlier does not make these mistakes, which is why

>>> one has
>>> to search, and hard, to find a FB1 grouping that would stand much of

>>> a prayer against it

>> It took only a few minutes to come up with several.

> Yeah... several that brought half again as much hardware.  This is an
> argument that MY design sucks?

No, it compensates for the known problem in costing large vs. small 
ships for one-off duels.

>> Calling the correction of a flaw in the costing system a legal
fiction
>> neither heals the flaw nor invalidates the correction. The numbers 
>> speak
>> pretty clearly on this.  You want legal fiction, talk about a fixed 
>> table
>> in an open space starship duel.

> Uh huh.  And everyone knows those poor mass 12 soap bubble carriers 
> have it
> SO hard because they're small.

So you want to exploit both major  errors in the design system in one 
scenario by taking minimal carriers against an uber ship. In the five 
second analysis, all this does is indicate that the fighter imbalance is

greater in magnitude than the Mass/Cost imbalance, since your soap 
bubble swarm will crush a Mass 400 DN that's not loaded almost entirely 
with PDS, and a 400 Mass Ubership will lay waste to an equivalent 
(unmodified) cost of any other Mass 12 ships hands down.

> I mean, when you might bring fleets of mass
> 400 dreadnoughts, boy, my soap bubbles are going to be in trouble! 
...

Snip a halfway decent simultaneous illustration of both broken points in

the design system.

> I _fully_ see that this is a _much_ better idea than my silly
suggestion
> that some people like to play on those heretical "fixed tables".

1) You can choose to ignore both the fighter and Mass/Cost imbalances if

you wish. That doesn't make them any less real. If you want to play with

fleets that exploit those loopholes, you're welcome to (even if they get

closed in a rules revision). I am unlikely to be playing you, so neither

of us can do more than catcall each other.
2) Restricting combat area in an open space duel is not heretical - it 
is arbitrary and ridiculous for the genre, and plays into the hands of 
wall crawlers,and ships that protect their rear arcs by sitting on an 
edge or corner.

"Re-Zone, Big Man"    (Noam Izenberg intimidating his basketball