Re: [FT] back to fighters

> I KNOW I'm going to regret getting involved in this argument
(er..."heated
> discussion") at this stage, but here goes nothing....

Well of course...

> space IMMEDIATELY AROUND the target ship actually ISN'T all that big
> anymore, and is going to get awfully crowded with lots of fighters
zipping
> past each other, especially if they're arriving from different
directions!!

Oh really???  This depends on how big an MU is and how much time one
turn
is.  The accepted, but un-official, scale is 1 MU = 10,000 km's and 1
turn =
10 minutes.  Let's half both of thoes to be on the safe side, 1 MU =
5,000
km's and 1 turn = 5 minutes.  Each ship can be attacked from 720 degrees
(the surface area of a sphere).  This means that the attack area at 6
MU's
is over 376,991 square km's.  That's not big?  At 1 km from the target,
the
attack area is over 12.5 km's assuming the target is a point.  Note that
at
this scale, the velocity of the fighters is 60,000 km/h.  You can shove
alot
of fighters through that space in 5 minutes at that velocity...

> In this case, making fighters attack in "waves" (or even as individual
> groups), with PDS able to fire at each successive attack, becomes
eminently
> reasonable under the PSB......

In Desert Storm, the U.S. used co-ordinated air attacks to prevent just
this
from happening.  Why would fighter attacks in the future be more
primitive
then they are today?

It think the problem is that there are no good escorts.  Player's are
taking
un-balanced fleets into battles and getting hosed by fighters because
they
haven't built the fleet to deal serriously with fighters.  If you look
at
early World War 2, capital ships had much the same problem.  How did
they
deal with it?  They added lots more anti-aircraft guns to existing
capital
ships and built real escorts.  I don't see this as a game mechanic
problem.
I see this as a mistakes being made by players.

Good Escort Example:
Victoria BB, remove 1 class 1 beam,  1 class 2 beam, downgrade 2 class 3
beams with class 2 beams.  Add 3 ADFC (assuming 1 mass per) and 9 PD's. 
You
now have a ship with the firepower of a Vandenburg/T Heavy cruiser, but
with
3 ADFC and 12 PD's.

I wonder how effective fighter attack would be if you down graded the
anti-ship armament of ALL ships larger then DD's just enough to add one
ADFC???  If anyone tries this, please let the list know how it turns
out.