Re: Brian's fighter idea

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomb" <tomb@dreammechanics.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:24 PM
Subject: Brian's fighter idea

> 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.

Well, ultimately, this is how it would go... anti-ship strikes from
regular
fighters just wouldn't be that useful any more.

I'd have to test it out before I could decide for sure if that was a
good
thing.	Indeed, torpedo bombers would pretty quickly become the only
serious
way to attack ships under this rule.  Although in my games, they're
usually
about the only things trying it these days anyhow.

> It also would do a poor job of simulating some genres
> where people repeatedly attacked larger ships without returning to the
> carrier.

Perhaps what is necessary is to have two different sets of CEF for
regular
fighters.  This would be modelled after Star Wars, Star Blazers/Yamato,
and
real life genres, where all-purpose fighter-bombers have bombs/missiles
for
attacking starships and lasers/guns for attacking other fighters.

Against other fighters, they attack as they do now.  They _can_
optionally
use their anti-fighter weapons for "strafing runs" against starships,
but
such attacks would only do damage of one point on a roll of 6 (no
rerolls).
Interceptors would also be permitted to strafe with their weapons, and
since
they have better anti-fighter weapons than regular fighters, they'd even
get
to do it on both a 5 _or_ a 6 (again, no rerolls).  These weapons would
work
against other fighters just as they do now.

For attacking starships, any fighter that has a payload designed as such
--
standard fighter loads, attack fighters, or torpedo bombers -- would get
a
single shot as such, seperately from their anti-fighter guns.  All of
this
would work as it does now.

To stack against this, PDS would be made somewhat more effective... at
the
very least it would be allowed to shoot at fighters as an interceptor. 
For
the scatterpack side, heavy fighters would only apply a -1 penalty to
kills
from scatterguns rather than 50% as it is now.	(In other words,
fighters
that really wanted to "strafe" ships with their anti-fighter weapons
would
probably be giving up a very lopsided exchange unless they just badly
outnumbered the enemy's defenses.)  In addition, ADFC should recover
their
ability to shoot at any fighter group within 6 MU even if they're not
attacking a friendly ship in that area.  PDS would have a similar effect
on
missiles, though neither PDS nor scatterguns would get the additional
help
against plasma.

The end result of this is to make fighter strikes a bit more decisive
but
brief.	More fighters would die without getting a shot off, and the
fighters
that survived would only be able to fire effectively at ships once
before
they'd be forced to use their anti-fighter weapons for strafing runs,
which
probably won't be even remotely effective... even the more powerful
interceptor strafes (which seem realistic to me) would do less than half
the
damage per shot than a true bombing run from anything with real
anti-shipping weapons.	Just as a comparison...

A standard fighter group with 6 CEF and its anti-shipping strike would
do a
total of 10.8 (4.8 from its bombing run, 1x6 for its strafing runs)
damage
to a ship with all weapons, assuming no losses from seven seperate PDS
shots
back at it.

An attack fighter group would do 7.2 from its bombing run.  A torpedo
bomber
group would do 15 points.  It would be assumed that neither of them
carries
anti-fighter weapons that are capable of strafing effectively.

An interceptor group could theoretically strafe for 12 points average
damage
total with its improved anti-fighter weapons in a strafing role if it
lives
through six seperate challenges to the defender's PDS.	I realise that
seems
somehow wrong, but given the rather weak damage it does in exchange for
the
improved PDS fire in return this doesn't bother me too much.  Besides,
it
alleviates the situation where an admiral may have brought a good number
of
interceptors and then suddenly find them all useless if his enemy brings
all
battleships.  They still won't be very effective, but at least they
wouldn't
be completely wasted space.

I'm kind of liking this whole idea, myself...

E