Re: Brian's fighter idea

Tomb wrote:

>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.

Absolutely, specialized fighters become more important.  Interceptors
also 
come into their own, because now you want saome fighters out there to
meet 
and greet the attack and torp fighters.  It means what fighters you
employ 
becomes one more tactical consideration you must make, and I like that.

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

And for those genres it could easily be ignored without much trouble.

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.

A little, but not much, you're right.

>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.

I agreee. and have always preferred simultaneous fire games.

>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.

Although if you can create a fleet with fighters but not in swarm 
quantities, and keep it alive through that first wave, this rule does
make 
things interesting, since it makes carrier survival an issue.

>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.

That would make far too much sense.

>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....

You always were a heretic, Tom.

One other suggestion for PDS modification that's minor but significant: 

Allow PDS to attack any fighter group that passes within a certain range
of 
the ship, whether it attacks that ship or not.	Even with only 1 attack
per 
turn, this makes PDS in a formation much more effective.

3B^2

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