Re: Brian's fighter idea

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Books" <books@jumpspace.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 3:03 AM
Subject: Re: Brian's fighter idea

> On 10-May-02 at 05:53, Eric Foley (stiltman@teleport.com) wrote:

> > From: "Tomb" <tomb@dreammechanics.com>
> > > 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.

> You know, this just triggered something.  What are you
reading/watching
> where there are repeated attacks on large ships without carrier
resupply?
> I can't think of any with traditional (1 or 2 seat) fighters.  Anime?
> I don't watch much of that.

Battlestar Galactica and Last Starfighter are two of the main examples I
can
think of.

In the former in particular, fighters were every bit as vicious as their
critics in this forum argue they are in FT -- point defense was simply
not
enough if you got dogpiled.  In fact, the Cylons wiped out all of human
civilization at the beginning of the series by duping them into keeping
their own fighters in their launch bays with a feigned "peace
initiative",
and only needed half their attack fighters to wipe out the entire human
military in those circumstances -- the other half wiped out the Twelve
Colonies of Man in a turkey shoot.

Which... all things considered, leaves me wondering if fighters aren't
about
right the way they are, since there are indeed some genres you might
want to
imitate where they _should_ be quite powerful.

> The only thing I can think that might be a problem is HH LACs.  It
still
> feels odd calling something with an 8(?) man crew a Full Thrust
> fighter.

I don't really consider the LACs to be true fighters.  They're more like
small gunboats for the size involved.

E