Re: Fighters/PDS

Alan Brain wrote:

 >Possible solutions to the Bubble Carrier:
 >
 >Plan 1
 >Restrict the number of fighters that can attack any given ship.
 >6 groups, 1 per arc, seems reasonable.
 >
 >Result (I think): The VF still gets creamed, but not by much. Not a
 >fair fight, but much closer to it than currently.

Er... well. Depends on your definition of "not much", I guess - if you 
restrict the battle to the same 6 fighter squadrons throughout the fight

it'll take "morale-less" standard fighters on average 4 turns to destroy

the VF for the loss of 11 fighters, whereas morale-using fighters take 6

turns to destroy the VF for the loss of 16 fighters.

OK, this is considerably better than a massed wave of 114 fighters (19 
squadrons, ie. the strike groups from soap-bubble carriers worth roughly

the same as 2 VFs) which take the VF out in one single turn for the loss
of 
only 4 fighters, since with the restricted-number-of-fighters-per-target

concept the VF at least has the chance of fleeing into hyperspace before

the fighters can destroy it.

(I haven't counted the VF's own fighters, since the enemy has
overwhelming 
fighter superiority anyway - the soap-bubble force will have at least 6 
intact enemy squadrons available to engage the VF once its fighters have

been destroyed.)

 >Plan 2
 >Each Hanger requires 12 hull to mount its launching system on. This is
hull,
 >not mass, so the minimum size carrier must have a mass of 25, and a
cost
 >of 84+18 for 6 fighters. (thrust 1, mass 25, 12 hull. 1 Fighter bay,
FTL).
 >This would mean only 6 fighter groups vs a VF, pretty close to a fair
fight.
 >(If I've accidentally de-legalised an existing FB1 design, just adjust
the
 >figure 12 downwards as neccessary).

You have to adjust it all the way down to 5 (PHC Draath), though the NAC

carriers aren't much better (6.7 and 7 respectively). As Roger noted,
this 
makes this suggestion rather toothless. Even if you include both hull
and 
armour in the "hull" requirement you can't go higher than 8 damage boxes

per fighter bay.

 >Plan 3
 >Each PDS on a ship must fire at a different target. BUT any PDS that
 >misses ( ie doesn't cause a casualty) can fire at a fighter group that
 >hasn't been fired at yet.

I see three immediate problems with this:

* This is very similar to how old-style (pre-3rdR) Starfire advanced
point 
defences worked. Having to continously re-assign new targets to PDSs
slows 
the game down by a factor lots.

* "a different target" includes missiles as well as fighters. Are you 
really sure that you never want more than one PDS to shoot at any
specific 
missile salvo..?

* The formulation means that ADFC suddenly has its value increased by a 
couple orders of magnitude or so, since that's the only way your idea 
allows multiple shots against a single target. This makes the FB ships
look 
even more under-PDSed than they are now, given their general lack of
ADFC.

 >Result: PDS do less damage against small numbers of fighter groups -
 >e.g. a VF + an escort cruiser could only fire at most 2 PDF vs a
single
 >fighter group attacking on its own. As opposed to what, 7?
 >PDS do more damage against large numbers of fighter groups attacking
 >the same target. It might actually be better to use fighters in dribs
 >and drabs rather than a massive swarm.

The PDSs do more damage against large numbers of fighter groups... but
they 
still don't do anywhere near *enough* more damage to give the FB1 ships
a 
fighting chance against a fighter swarm.

 >The basic problem with most solutions to the Soap Bubble Carrier
syndome
 >are that they penalise fighters across the board.

Except the "reduced-effect PDS fires against all" one :-/ That one has 
problems of its own, of course

 >c) Adopt the "principle of minimum change". Under no circumstances
 >change the PV or make existing FB designs illegal. And keep the rules
 >changes to a few sentences at most, no new mechanics if possible.

c) is mutually exclusive to itself. Given the magnitude of the fighter
and 
big-ship imbalances, you can't avoid changing the PVs unless you're 
prepared to make pretty significant changes in the game mechanics -
because 
under the current game mechanics, the PVs are quite simply wrong for
massed 
fighters vs anything else, and for large ships vs small ones.

(As Laserlight noted, small numbers of fighters don't need to be useful
for 
attacking *SDNs* - as long as there are other tasks for them to carry
out. 
However, if the enemy has nothing *but* SDNs - and given the current 
big-ship advantage, that's fairly likely - attacking SDNs is the only
task 
available for them... so the big-ship advantage needs to be trimmed down
as 
well. Which in turn means either to introduce new mechanics, or to
change 
the PVs.)

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."