Brian's fighter idea

Brian, 

I'm fairly certain that if I only had 1 strike coming off each run,
suddenly attack fighters or (even moreso) torpedo fighters come off
looking much better. This is because the latter particularly were
optimized for this kind of fight and the former make their one strike
that much worse. It also would do a poor job of simulating some genres
where people repeatedly attacked larger ships without returning to the
carrier. It also, as you noted, doesn't do a lot for small fighter
formations or to nibble away at the non-linearity of fighter value. That
doesn't make it bad, but it should be recognized for where it may help
and what it may not address. 

Also, unrelatedly:

Part of the whole mass/cost controversy, and why big ships rule, stems
from the mechanics of breakpoints in FT. Firing breakpoints (if my
ubership wins, I fire 1000 points before you fire) and threshold
breakpoints (causing thresholds in smaller ships disables systems faster
than you can on a big boy). With simultaneous fire (not very tactically
interesting, some say) you kind of take away one of those two issues.
But the other still remains. There is still a marked economy of scale,
which is what the correction formula was envisioned to address. 

My own experience with fighters falls in two categories:
1) getting eaten alive by the locust swarm and being unable to fire
2/3rds of the fleet at them
2) flying them and watching them either eat the enemy alive (no need to
rearm) or get killed (no need to rearm)

As it stands, my carriers are closer (with the exception of the
Konstantin) to freighters - their rearming capability is absolutely
unused. There are rarely survivors from fighter missions (more than 2 or
3 lone ships anyway) in an equal point roughly balanced fighter count
battle anyway. And in the other case, I don't have to really worry about
rearming as the other side is usually dead dead dead from the locust
plague. 

One interesting thought would be to try to define things which fit in
different fighter genres. That might give us an idea of how each genre
balances. 

Human pilots (morale)
vs. 
Robotic fighters (no morale)

Overwhelmable PDS
vs. 
PDS that can attack any number of targets any number of times

Large beams able to engage fighters
vs.
Not able to (Star Wars Star Destroyers main guns)

Ships require ADFC
vs.
All ships have ADFC like ability automatically

Weapons that engage beyond PDS ranges (for fighters or ships) (modern
day fighters tend to outrange their targets many times)

Fighters with long endurance (star wars)
vs. 
Fighters with one good attack (some modern fighters)

Fighters with FTL (B5, SW)  -- these can deploy to a game SANS carrier
vs. 
Fighters without (standard FT)

Area effect anti fighter weapons (Pulsers, Scatterguns, E-mines)
vs.
a lack thereof

Fighters that can't cause much damage (Leviathan)
vs.
Very Dangerous fighters (some anime, Luke's Xwing...)

etc.

By trying to build genre rules combinations, it should be possible to
suit everyone who wants to play modern carrier ops or WW2 carrier ops,
those who want to play star wars or B5, etc. It should not be required
to shoe horn everyone into the same mould. HOWEVER, having said that,
one genre should be "the canon Tuffleyverse" and thus a baseline set of
rules balanced by NPV for one off games with standard designs should
exist.

But maybe that's a too revolutionary thought... that there should be a
way to get the beast of all worlds....