Re: Brian's fighter idea

> Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 00:28:50 -0700
> From: "Eric Foley" <stiltman@teleport.com>

>
> > > 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,

Starblazers ships can use thier main energy batteries to engage
fighters from outside the fighters attack range.

> > 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.

The Last Starfighter game disagrees. The titular unit uses the rules
for capital ships rather than fighters.

> 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.

Not really a good example of a scenario one would wish to play as the
Colonies though. Note that the Cylons brought a signifcantly larger
force to the ambush than the humans. Because thay had an empire
several times bigger. And the humans were under orders to safe all
thier weapons. the only way the Cylons could have had more advantages
would be to have the Humans agree to have bombs preplanted on board
the Battlestars.

The later fights are more even and involve no more than 3 or 4
squadrons on the human side and a lot of B1 anti fighter fire.

It should be notice that carrier resupply was very important in that
universe. Balter manages to run his squadrons out of fuel at least
once by ordering them to return for a second attack.

> 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.

Only If you want the only strategy to be massive fighter attacks. What
some of us would like is for balanced ship designs to have a chance on
the table.

And ship designs with much of thier mass in PDS are not balanced
designs.

> > 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.

Why, you just called Three man crew cylon attack craft fighters. They
fufil the same role. Thus use the rule that fits.

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

And a fighter is a small gunboat in a deep space game.